Up The Downstair

2009-10-15T19:53:00.002-05:00

I have had a blog in one iteration or another for many years now. But, as of late, I have been delinquent. I'm guessing now that, because of my lack of upkeep, that I have no readers left and am writing this purely for my own satisfaction. My life, as of late, has been a series of disappointments and failures- save one. I am going through one of the worst times of mt life. It seems that everything (again, save one) is going to shit. This leaves me with a feeling, not only of complete and utter failure, but of emptiness and solitude. I wallow to the point of doubting even my own value and worth as a human being. I know that people love me, but what value am I to them. I feel myself falling more and more into the human embodiment of a leech or a tick. Sucking the very life from those around me and excreting it as ruined spent waste.

This is why I haven't bothered with my blog. Being in an almost constant state of depression is hard enough without feeling the guilt of not writing all about it for the world to ingest. I'm sure the stories of my decent into jobless poverty, alcoholism and bankruptcy would have made quite entertaining fodder, but I simply have a hard enough time living it without having to write about it all in some witting and creative manner.

I haven't decided what to do with this blog. I don't know yet if I will simply delete it and leave it to the Google archives or let it rot here until it can return to humiliate me- or just leave it sit until I decide that life is worth sharing again through these pixels.

You can find me on Facebook, but if you "enjoyed" any part of this blog, don't expect the same content. Too many prying eyes and known quantities to actually express myself in any way other than the simple and the mundane. Too much embarrassment for what I have become to share with people I don't trust- or don't know.

Until, perhaps, some time, my incorrect commas are off.

Damn Rolling Stones

2009-07-03T17:55:00.000-05:00

"You can't always get what you want.
But if try sometimes
you might get what you need"

If you don't know the song, crawl out from under the rock you've been living and catch up on pop culture before the 1990's. For the rest of you, I'll get to the point.

This song blows. More precisely, the lyrics blow. I have been in a funk living in a life that is nothing like what I want. I have all but given up up on what I want to settle for for what I've got. I've accepted the hand that I've been dealt and have every intention to bluff the shit out of it until the end. So I realize that I will not get what I want. So how is this exsistence anything close to what I need?

Do I need to be unemployed? Do I need to see my saving gone and my checking account dwindling to nothing? Do I need to feel constantly streessed and exhausted? Do I need to wake up every morning wishing that I hadn't? Do I need to have my closest friends be fictional television characters?

Is this "life" really what I need?

Go to hell Mick Jaggers.

Something New

2009-05-28T01:02:00.000-05:00

There are not many things in this screwed up world that really make me feel alive.

For instance, there's the first big wave that crashes over my body and knocks me right on my ass and makes me take notice that no matter how big my head may get or how powerful I may have felt, the ocean is a shit load bigger and more powerful than any man. It's better than a cold shower first thing in the morning to get the senses going.

Then there's the quiet wonder of being alone in the forest with nothing but the birds and the leaves as my soundtrack. I may be a completely modern man, surrounded by LCD TVs, game systems and computers, but when I am in the woods with no fellow humans meddling in my bliss I feel that primitive connection to the world that all the electrons and circuit boards steal away.

Today I stumbled upon a new one. I replaced the brakes on my bike today. This required a test drive to make sure everything was assembled correctly and that no air snuck into the lines. It was threatening rain and the forecast was calling for thunderstorms, but I decided to chance it and sneak in a quick test ride before the heavens opened up.

After a few starts and stops around the neighborhood I decided to hit a more open road and get up a bit of speed to really set the pads. So I headed on the road a few miles, turned around and headed for home proud of myself having correctly changed the brakes on my bike for the first time.

I was maybe a mile and a half from home when my luck with the weather ran out. I was cruising at roughly 60-miles-an-hour in wholly inappropriate riding attire. Namely tennis shoes, shorts, a t-shirt and my trust Icon helmet. It was, after all, a quick test ride and I didn't want the hassle of donning the fell leathers. And like a brick wall I hit a sheet of rain, hail and win that would make Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton pay attention. I was soaked head to toe in seconds and pepper with precipitation that felt like innumerable needles being shot into my skin.

After a minute of "oh shits" I had a strange thought pop into my helmeted head, "I can't remember the last time I played in the rain!" And suddenly "oh shit" became "woo hoo." I could feel everything drop string my skin, I could feel the spray off the rear tire up my back, I could feel the growing puddles in my shorts legs (from the rain, gutter mind)- I could feel every nerve of my continuously aging body alive with electrical energy. It was, in a word, awesome.

My Summer So Far

2009-05-21T18:23:00.000-05:00

My summer has been crazy (at least for my otherwise boring life). I've been working my ass off everyday trying to finish up a documentary I'm editing for CSU/STO. And I was able to squeeze in a roadtrip to Richmond, VA with The Cuz and DLee. I'd share all the great stories about the beer bong fun in a Day's Inn on VA Beach or the 5 mile drunken crawl through Cary Town, but why make this blog entertaining now?

How I Spent My Easter

2009-04-16T23:28:00.000-05:00

Grandpa has been having light-headed spells that the doctors originally tried to blame on medication reactions. So last week they had him wear one of those take home over night heart monitor things. Turns out that his heart (in the short 24-hour period he wore it) had actually stopped twice for approximately four seconds each time. For those of you not acquainted with human anatomy, when the heart stops it is a very bad thing.

So off we go to Mercy Medical Center in Canton for a pace maker. This is a small device planted under the skin with leads that, well lead, to the heart and basically tell it to "wake the fuck up!" when it decides it wants another four second nap.

It is now Sunday, Easter Sunday, and I am at hospital passing time with Grandpa, the Twins and some random Western on AMC. We're having a nice chuckle at the lame little Easter Basket handed out by the hospital. I can best describe them as what the Easter Bunny would hand out if he/she/it worked for WKYC or for one of big three. It was tiny, didn't have enough grass in it to make a joint out of and contained a whopping five jelly beans. During the discussion, Grandpa complains that he is feeling a bit light-headed and lays back in his nifty recline-o-matic hospital bed.

Has anyone ever thought about those beds before? It's not like they have a brand new bed for each new patient. They just hose them down (I hope), throw on some crisp laundered sheets (again, I hope) and throw the next victim onto it. Those beds have been used more than Rosie O'Donnell's vibrator. Think of all the nasty fluids and death those things have seen. (Or the afore mentioned "personal massager" for that matter)

Anyhoo, hopping back to my fun Easter Adventure...

So as soon as Grandpa lays back two nurses and a doctor come hauling ass into the room with panic on their faces and a portable defibrillator in their hands. Neither of these things is somethings you really want to see in hospital. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if there exists a list of things you never want to see in hospital, those would be near the top- probably even above projectile vomit and explosive diarrhea.

Turns out that as we were sitting there he had had a heart attack. The hospital staff type people were sitting at the nurses station and happened to see that his heart monitor had gone a bit dodgy. Proving again that the news lies. There was no chest pain, no shooting pain in the arm, no shortness of breath- NOTHING. Just said he was feeling light-headed and continued the conversation. Damn good thing that those hospital people were keeping a close eye on those monitors. Next time you're at a hospital and feel like getting annoyed at the gaggle of nurses hanging out at their little nurses station- DON'T.

Well, the "cardiac incident" put the pace maker plan in a holding pattern and threw a heart catheterization into the approach pattern.

To make my long post less long: Monday was the heart cath. which was clean, Tuesday was the pace maker and Wednesday he was home.

He's fine now. Sore as hell from the surgery and has already attempted to raise his left arm above his head (one of the things on his to-do-list, also known as the list of restricts from the hospital).

Needles to say, but I have now added Easter to my growing list of holidays that I will no longer celebrate for the reasons the rest of the world does.

Bartender

2009-04-11T03:28:00.000-05:00

There are girls who spend way too many years behind a bar. They were once beautiful and sought after, now they are desperate and sad. They have an aroma of dashed dreams, stale beer and acrid cigarette smoke. Their outfits give the appearance of being carefully selected by a blind mute with no sense of direction and their costume jewelery looked good on Ally Sheedy 20 years ago.

At closing time you'll see them obviously flirting with whatever soon to be not lowly dreck that was sad enough to make it all the way to closing time. She'll pretend he's who she wishes he was and swallow her pride and his wad and dream this is not her life.

What she tries to ignore is the aching in the back of her mind that futilely tries to remind her that she was meant for so much more. The obstacles of fun times and her father's curious drunken hands diverted her path. Now she has more than lived up up to their expectations and fallen well short of what she was meant to be.

Life will be hard and sad for her as she tries to push the ever heavier days by. She will spend all her remaining sunsets behind the bar pretending and the unseen sunrises with the latest hole filler trying to convince herself that this is how it is supposed to be.

Logorific

2009-04-09T19:31:00.000-05:00

So I found the time to design a logo. I went with old old wood-cut look. I figure it makes a nice contrast to the very high-tech type nature of what I do. That and I just like old-timey shit. (If a border shows up, blame Blogger. It's not supposed to be there.)

Just call me Bill Gates minus the money

2009-04-07T18:42:00.000-05:00

So I started my own company. Not for any high or mighty reason, just to make tax season next year a little easier. I've been a busy unemployed boy editing a Cleveland State University documentary about their run in the NCAA Championship, so I haven't had a chance to design the site or even the logo yet. (If any creative types out there want to volunteer a cool logo on black feel free.) It does have a name though, Escape Digital Productions. Pretty fancy, huh?

I'll keep y'all posted when the logo is done and the site is up until then I'll be staring at an Avid with a slowly growing hatred and disgust for all thing college basketball.

License To Cut

2009-03-31T18:22:00.000-05:00

Got my hair cut today and something struck me as strange. Why do hair cutter type people need a license to cut hair? What the hell is the point? Was there a rash of wild and woolly eyed bandits roving the hillsides with scissors in hand. Was the mob cornering the market on properly coiffed mullets? What great need arose that called for the government to stick its bureaucratic paws into people's hair?

Goodbye S.A.D.

2009-03-25T22:39:00.000-05:00

I can finally see the end of winter on the horizon. Soon the green will return to the gray hell that is Ohio in winter. I had hoped to keep my camera busy this winter, but I can never seem to find any inspiration in the cold air and short days. I had a few close calls, but as soon as I checked my thermometer I lost it. Now the days are slowly warming and I can feel the call of the viewfinder.

So I made another ill-advised purchase to add to my photographic arsenal. I've had the 10.5mm Nikkor fisheye on my wishlist for as long as I've been shooting DSLR, so I went to Amazon the other day to buy it. Being me, I had to research it again to make sure I was choosing the best I could get. That's when I came across the Sigma 10mm F2.8 EX DC Fisheye HSM. It jump a bit ahead of the Nikkor by being a tad wider (nearly a full 180 degree arc) and it has Sigma's HSM internal focus motor. The Nikkor relies on the camera's focus motor and makes it not compatible with all the Nikon bodies. So looking to the future possibility of a new body, I didn't want a lens that wouldn't work.

I've been playing with it around my place, but haven't taken anything I want to publish yet. As soon as the green comes back to the world I have a growing list of shoots to hit and can't wait!

Another Good One Leaves

2009-03-25T01:04:00.000-05:00

We lost my Great Uncle Johnny. He was my grandfather's younger brother and close friend. He'd come up here and the two of them would head over to IHOP for eggs and stacks about once a month. It was sudden. Over the course of a week he went from going to the ER with really bad headache to leaving this world.

He was a great guy and was taken too soon.

The End I Knew Was Coming

2009-03-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

So I got my final severance check from WKYC about a week ago. It was essentially my last communication with what was my life for damned near ten years. I knew it was coming, but it was still surreal. There was nothing in the envelope but the check and stub. More personal than the regular direct deposit route, but still very sterile and corporate. I guess a fitting close for what was an unceremonious and disconnected end.

Funny, now that I've been away from there for a while I know who my actual friends were. I'm still in touch with them. We still text and call. But they are a very small group as opposed to the "friends" I had while I was still yielding some degree of influence. Make s me wonder just how lonely Napoleon must have been on Elba. No wonder he escaped and fought to get his old job back. Of course, that didn't exactly end well, but that's not the point.

Enough of my "unemployable" depression. So, a few notes on how I've spending my abundant free time.

The end of BSG was fucking great. It is rare when such an iconic television show is able to end with as much depth and class as it's run. The way the writers were able to bring the whole series around and turn "the future" into "the past" was genius. If you never really watched the show, start at the beginning and watch the whole saga. The close will not disappoint.

I am actually a fan of the new NBC series, "Kings." I loved Ian McShane in "Deadwood" so I decided to give the mid-season add a watch. It is good. Not great, but definitely good. As the season unfolds we'll see if the currently predictable arcs hold true or if the show has a set and keeps the twists coming.

Where the hell is "House" going this season? I love the show (since I am Gregory House minus the medical degree), but it is falling a bit short on the multi-show story arcs this season. That and I still have a hard time watching "Kumar" play a doctor... seriously, did the casting director not check his resume?

That's enough from me now. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.

Damn You Greg House

2009-02-03T18:51:00.001-05:00

You know you are depressed when a show that I normally love to watch totally ruins your night. Some of the lines that stuck in my head:

"Find a job that fulfills you and makes you happy."

and

"What he does is what he is."

Every time I think I've found the ground floor, the stupidest things help me find my way to the next sub-basement.

Some Days Are A Waste Of A Shower

2009-01-29T23:09:00.001-05:00

Today was a bad day. Every now again I've been having them. Just a shit day of exhaustion from doing practically nothing and a deepening depression.

Being essentially unemployed is making me feel completely useless and hollow. It's a little frightening how much of my life was based on work. My very existence for nearly a decade was based on a job. Now that job is gone.

I've been trying to fill my suddenly abundant free-time with odd freelance gigs and a recent ill-advised shopping spree (doesn't every unemployed guy deserve a 1080p 46" Samsung Series 5 LCD??), but it really hasn't been working. The depression just keeps getting worse.

I need to find a job or a better hobby... or maybe just start drinking more... or maybe start smoking again... fuck.

Child In Me

2009-01-23T16:32:00.001-05:00

There is no way that I am an adult. No way. Not possible.

I see people around me, fairly close to my age, and I have very little, if anything, in common with them. They have families and mortgages. They have diner parties and social mixers. These are things I can barely even imagine.

I play with Legos and actual find real joy in the creations. I listen to Fall Out Boy and Jason Mraz without an ounce of pandering or contempt. I still feel like I'm getting away with something when I buy beer and don't get carded. I LOVE my Wii and Playstation 3 and can spend a whole day zoning on the couch completely engrossed in some random game.

I was doing some math the other day. When my father was my age (32+) I was 8-years-old! I was in third game and hating life in She-Bitch Mrs. Clemmens' class at Geneva Elementary. My brother was a freshman in high school and totally into Duran Duran and just discovering the joys of Rush. How is all that possible? My father always seemed so... well, OLD!

How is it all possible? It has to be some confusing arithmetic calculus theorem that I was never able to figure out or some physics problem that my dumb-shit teacher never bothered to teach me- That can't all be right!

I think I'll just blame the whole thing on marriage and kids and leave it at that.

Compass Points

2009-01-18T23:31:00.001-05:00

Since losing my job, I've been doing the expected. Scouring the internet for openings, e-mailing and calling contacts and generally doing everything I can think of to continue in television. It has been a relatively fruitless endeavor. Sure, there are the freelance opportunities, but they won't pay the bills. So after weeks of frustration I had a dawning- actually it was more of a, "I am such a dumb fuck" moments.

I DON'T HAVE TO KEEP WORKING IN TELEVISION!

I know, it seems strange, but there are other jobs. Good jobs. Better paying jobs. Jobs that don't involve greedy snake-like salespeople. Jobs that are ruled by dying media companies. Jobs that don't force you to act nice to spoiled sudo-celebrities with IQ's smaller than my shoe size. Jobs that allow you to have some semblance of a life outside of the company.

Just because I've been walking in one direction for almost 9-years, doesn't mean that I can't turn right and see what lies down that path. The road may not be less traveled, but I'm fairly certain the view will be different.

Hum Hallelujah

2009-01-15T18:39:00.003-05:00

It's all a game of this or that, now versus then
better off against worse for wear
And you’re someone who knows someone who knows someone I once knew
And I just want to be a part of this

The road outside my house is paved with good intentions
Hired a construction crew, 'cause it's hell on the engine
You are the dreamer and we are the dream.
I could write it better than you ever felt it.

So hum hallelujah,
Just off the key of reason
I thought I loved you
It was just how you looked in the light.
A teenage vow in a parking lot
"Till tonight do us part"
I sing the blues and swallow them too

My words are my faith to hell with our good name.
A remix of your guts-your insides X-rayed
And one day we'll get nostalgic for disaster
we're a bull, your ears are just a china shop

I love you in the same way, there's a chapel in a hospital
One foot in your bedroom and one foot out the door
Sometimes we take chances, sometimes we take pills.
I would write it better than you ever felt it.

So hum hallelujah,
Just off the key of reason
I thought I loved you
It was just how you looked in the light.
A teenage vow in a parking lot
"Till tonight do us part"
I sing the blues and swallow them too

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelu...
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelu...
(Hum hallelujah (Hum hallelujah), hum hallelujah (Hum hallelujah))

A teenage vow in a parking lot
"Till tonight do us part"
I sing the blues and swallow them too

So hum hallelujah,
Just off the key of reason
I thought I loved you
It was just how you looked in the light.
A teenage vow in a parking lot (Hum hallelujah)
"Till tonight do us part"
Love in a parking lot (Hum hallelujah)
"Till tonight do us part"
A teenage vow in a parking lot
"Till tonight do us part"
I sing the blues and swallow them too

Fall Out Boy

Bad Day

2009-01-12T19:06:00.000-05:00

I reached out to a few of my ex-television co-workers today. I thought I was being thoughtful and just trying to be a good networking worker bee. Wow, what a fucking mistake that was!

Some of these people have been sans tv job for quite a bit longer than I and can still find nothing. Some of them have more experience and a much higher skill set than I and they can't find gigs! This fucking blows!

Maybe this is just a bad day, maybe I'm just upset, maybe its the S.A.D. but today really sucked!

Enough bitching...

Freetime

2009-01-08T17:48:00.000-05:00

So I was laid off. It's a bit like being hit in the balls with a sledge hammer. A sudden sharp pain followed by prolonged misery and suffering. I'm still working through my feelings on the whole thing. On one side I am now free to do whatever I want whenever I want, on the other side I was shit canned for no better than reason than to temporarily make the bottom line of a failing company look better for one more miserable quarter.

It sucks that thanks to the make-up of corporations these days, I don't even have anyone to be pissed at. I can't fume about some evil boss or manager that had it in for me, just the opposite. My bosses were genuinely pissed at having to fire me.

Bottom line is that I worked for a failing newspaper company that refuses to see the forest for the trees. The company relies on cooking the books and strangling their businesses to keep the stock from being delisted. Corporate mantras about, things getting better and the internet somehow being the answer substitute for actual actions to save the jobs and not the stock price.

I'm torn about my feelings. Sure, I am unemployed for the first time in well over a decade, but it could be worse... I could still be working and suffering through the uncertanity of keeping my job, the indignity of pay cuts, the hypocrisy of bloated union assholes and the dilusion that the the CEO and Board of Director would see the error of their ways and choose thousands of jobs over a ten cent rise in the price per share.

Needless to say, but I now have quite a bit more freetime. I've been trying to stay occupied by playing with Legos and watching Robotech (yes, I am the ten-year-old version of myself all over again). I'm doing some light freelance web design and production stuff, but that's about it. I have a daily ritual of sending out resumes and hoping that over ten years of experience making television will count for something somewhere. (I guess a Sony MVS-8000 is something like a glorified cash register)

So.. You want fries with that?

Guess I'm a Professional Now

2008-10-05T10:41:00.002-05:00

I finally sold my first photo. Sure, I've allowed them appear here and there for free, but this was my first actual sale. Funny thing is, I don't think its that great a picture, but what the hell do I know.

Here's the big winner:

On another note, there are plenty of new other pictures over on the Flickr! page:

Two Wheeled Reasons

2008-08-23T17:09:00.002-05:00

Made my way to the AMA Museum in Columbus today and got to check out the bike (BMW R1100 GS) owned by the man (Neil Peart) that wrote the book (Ghost Rider) that was a major influence on me deciding to buy a motorcycle.

Click on the link on the right for more pictures.

A Brief Update

2008-08-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

I'm a pretty shitty blogger these days. Didn't even post in July.

Here's life since I stopped writing:

~ Promoted @ work - I'm now a director, technical director, producer and writer. More work, same pay! I am the poster boy for failing upwards on the corporate ladder- that or just the luckiest no talent dumb shit since Bono.

~ Just got back from this year's OBX trip. Nothing eventful or noteworthy this time 'round. Just hours of blissfull stress free nothingness.

I have trouble understanding the need of some people to plan and regiment a vacation. Shit, there are whole businesses built around itineraries and tour tickets scheduled down to bathroom breaks and whore house visits- WTF!?! Isn't the whole point to step back and not worry. Isn't a vacation supposed to be just complete sloth in some exotic locale?

Oh well.

Still Living On Flickr!

2008-06-16T01:25:00.001-05:00

Regular visual updates on Flickr.

Written updates are much harder to come by.

For Memorial Day

2008-05-26T11:53:00.000-05:00

Uploaded a few holiday specific photos. Life updates later.

Not Gone, Just Away

2008-05-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

I know I've been neglecting this here blog again, but I've been busy. I hopefully have some rather huge career and life news to write about soon, but for now I have to stay mute for fear of jinxing the whole thing.

I will say that if everything works out as I hope, my Ashtabula family will be very sick of me very soon.

Head over to my Flickr page for a set of pictures I captured during a walk around Wendy Park. The sky was really ugly and not very conducive to good photographs, but I was able to get a few. I hope to return to the island for a longer session with a better sky and greener trees in the near future.