Posts Tagged by Writing
The 8th Wonder of the World
| April 11, 2012 | Filled under Photo Album |
Last week, for work, I got to take a tour of the sad and dusty Astrodome.
It was my first time, and probably last time, in the building. (I’m a late-blooming Texan.)
In spite of it’s weathered appearance, it was still absolutely beautiful. My resulting slideshow ended up getting quite a bit of traffic thanks to Deadspin. If you’re feeling nostalgia-y, take a tour of the world’s first domed stadium.
On Basketball, Tragedy and How I Became A Writer
| May 17, 2011 | Filled under Video |
In 2008 Oklahoma finally got a professional major league sports team. For years people said OKC could not support such a venture. Boy were they wrong.
I’ve always been a college basketball, never a pro fan, but that’s changing now that the Thunder are in the playoffs, against a Texas team even. Yesterday, on the even of the Western Conference Finals first game, my mom sent me this video.
In Oklahoma, basketball goes hand in hand with tragedy. But something else struck me about the story above.
I was 14 years old when the Murrah Building was bombed. I was in junior high, had not yet taken my first creative writing class, had not yet worked for a newspaper. But I loved to write, and I had been keeping journals every year. Watching the video now reminds me of my desperate need for info after the bombing. How voraciously I consumed every newspaper, magazine, news report and update. It never occurred to me before, but in no small way did the OKC bombing influence my later development into a news junkie and journalist.
Compare and Contrast
| January 24, 2011 | Filled under Video |
Jerry Lee Lewis in 1957.
Jerry Lee Lewis on January 21, 2011.
He can still hammer those keys away, even if he was a little slow-moving on stage. I have always, since I was nine years old, wanted to see him play. I remember taking a road trip to Missouri with my grandmother and listening to a JLL greatest hits tape and loving him even back then.
Read my write-up of the show on Rocks Off.
Put your hand inside the puppet head
| January 18, 2011 | Filled under Video |
This week in “I Love My Job,” here is how I spent my morning.
And here is the accompanying story.
In a past life I was an entertainment writer, though covering music has really always been my thang. I went to this as a last-minute assignment. Covering kids’ puppet shows ain’t exactly my idea of a lively beat but it was a super fun laid-back interview and they insisted after the fact that I try my hand at it. My job, it is so hard.
Why hello there
| January 11, 2011 | Filled under Blog, Photo Album |
Time to say a proper farewell to 2010, a year that kicked my ass, mostly in good ways. I spent a lot of time thinking about it over New Years. Christopher and I went to Hot Springs, Ark., a place I’ve wanted to visit since I was a teenager, and exactly the kind of slow and quiet town that makes introspection easy.
Hot Springs is beautiful and we spent a lot of time sleeping in, staying up late, and walking all over town. Bathhouse Row is pretty damn amazing, but there are other awesome middle-America aspects to the town that I’ll talk about in a future post. We were so lazy we didn’t even go hiking, and going to some pace outdoorsy was one of the main goals. Oh well. Just gives me something to do next time, and believe me, in fell enough in love with the town that there will be a next time.
The whole time we were there I kept thinking about where I was and what I was doing the year before. We have to travel so much to see family during the holidays (this year it was Oklahoma for Thanksgiving and Florida for Christmas) that New Year’s is usually our own holiday together. After all the stress and buildup of the previous months we usually like to get away to some place secluded. In 2008 it was Robber’s Cave, Oklahoma. Last year it was a week through west Texas, culminating with a camping trip in Big Bend.
2009 had been a pretty shit year for me. I won’t go into details but I will say that two major events sent me spiraling into a well of hate and depression. I’m not really much of a metaphysical person, but on New Year’s Eve, just outside of Big Bend, I decided to do something I’d never done before: I wrote down all my heartbreaks and regrets on a piece of paper, and I threw it into the fire at La Kiva in Terlingua.
It didn’t matter if it worked or not. It made me feel better. Then I got waaaay too drunk on champagne and puked in the National Park the next day.*
What’s crazy is, it seems like it *did* work. 2010 was one of my most amazing years in memory. I started it off by running my first half-marathon. In March I went to SXSW for the first time. In May I found out my portfolio was accepted into the creative writing program at UH. In June CLH and I went to Sweden for a month, spending July 4th weekend in Stockholm.
Just before our trip to Sweden, I’d been asked to fill in for my music editor at work. I was flattered by the responsibility. On my last day, I found out about a job opening there. Not just any job opening… and opening for my dream job. But, it had been years since I’d worked full time, and I agonized and agonized over applying. After applying, I agonized over whether I’d take the job if offered. Then I agonized over not hearing anything about it for the month I was in Sweden. I actually did my job interview from the kitchen of our apartment via Skype, miles and hours away from my interviewee. And then, a few days after we got back to the US, I was offered the job.
Life since then has been hectic and happy. Believe me when I say I am literally working at my dream job, the kind of place I wanted to work at when I decided to study journalism. But it is a 24-hour position and has left little room in my life for other pursuits, like all my crafting projects, blogging and the thing I miss most from my former life — travel. But I am working to balance things out and hat is one of the goals for 2011.
But the awesome year didn’t stop there. Probably the most amazing thing I did this year was jump out of a plane. In November a large group from my running club got together to do the scariest thing I can possibly imagine doing. I hate heights, I hate the feeling of not having something underneath me (like when you’re standing on a ledge) and I hate airplanes. But skydiving is probably the most amazing and formative experience I’ve ever had in my life. There is no way to describe the freedom you feel, freedom of movement and freedom from fear, as you are falling 120 mph toward earth. It was so peaceful. I can’t wait to do it again.
Just look at the grins on our faces there. That is life well-lived. I also kind of feel like I’ve done the scariest thing I can possibly imagine, and it was awesome, so what do I ever have to be afraid of again?
So what will 2011 hold for me? In three weeks I’m running my second half-marathon and I may run a third at the end of February. Other than that, I have really no idea. I have a lot of goals for work, for my personal life and for my creative endeavors, but if this year is half as challenging and rewarding as the last one was, I’ll be happy. Bring it on, Elevensies.
* Didn’t think about it until now, but might this have been some kind of purging of negative energy? God, listen to me.
Business Woman Special
| July 18, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
I did not invent Post-It Notes (although I adore them), but tomorrow I’m going to try and pull this off:
Two years and some change ago I had one of the best nights of my life as a music lover in Houston. Dengue Fever was playing the Orange Show, and I caught them for the first time and had a chance to meek Zac and Senon before I split Southeast Houston and headed toward the Montrose to catch the Born Liars, The Ugly Beats and The Fleshtones at Rudyards. It was a legendary show, and my picture, along with my friend Alice’s, ended up on the Houston Press music blog.
About a year after that I started writing for the Houston Press myself, first penning travel stories, then becoming a music blogger. I was thinking about how all this had come full circle Friday night when I saw the Fleshtones and the Ugly Beats again, this time at the Continental Club, and in the capacity of a reviewer for the show. There’s Alice in this picture too. (I’m in on the far right.)
I quit my job as a full-time reporter at a newspaper when C and I got married and moved to Korea. While over there, I began freelancing, but then we moved back right as the job market crashed and so I’ve been working part time and going back to school for fun since then. But all that’s about to chance.
Starting tomorrow, I will be the web editor at the Houston Press. I am excited and terrified and more than ready to start what is quite literally my dream job. Everything I’ve worked for, from my first degree (in journalism) to my freelance work to finishing the hardest semester of school I’ve ever experience in two different programs (the second being literary nonfiction), has been a means to this end. Can. Not. Wait.
I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache
| May 24, 2010 | Filled under Blog, Internerd, Photo Album |
Why yes, that is me, doing a down-down from a hallowed-out lawn flamingo while tailgating at a sold-out Jimmy Buffett concert.
Here is my review from my first-ever Jimmy Buffet concert.
I regret to inform you that I might now be a Jimmy Buffett fan. I am certainly no Parrothead, but I had a working knowledge of his music before Friday night. However, as I say in the review, it’s fucking impossible not to like the guy. His early work is sentimental without being cloying. His later work is innocent escapism. His politics are sound. And he loves manatees. It’s the first show I’ve been to in a long time in Houston where the drunken crowd didn’t get aggro. It was a damn good time.
You can see a slideshow of pictures here.
* The title of this post? I want to learn that song on the ukulele.
