Skip to main content

Announcing the Garden Variety Show

So, why this title? Why this name? Why another blog? Aren't there enough to go round as it is? Who would read this? Who will cite this? So many questions about intent, and I don't have time to truly answer them.

All I know is that I am possibly the 3,445,320,043 oldest person in the world. How do we wrestle with identity in a world where it's all been done before? My answer: We simply go ahead and do the things we have to do to to make our mark in the world. We talk about the things we like, we post links to our favorite things. As I continue through my 13th year on the Internet, I'm making a career out of the whole webbiness of our computers.

And so, I've decided to create this blog to provide a way for me to tell people about what I'm watching, what I'm reading, what I think about what happens. Of course, because I'm a journalist, I'll steer away from anything political. I'll steer away from the controversial, at least as it affects by business. I've got the Charlottesville Podcasting Network and other various sites to be my professional presence in the blogosphere, on the Web. This is me time.

This is actually my second public journal. My first was called Codpiece, and was public from March of 1998 to January of 2000. This covered the time I spent working in Georgetown through the time I spent in Calgary. I stopped it for various reasons I won't get into today, but I wonder what would have happened had I kept it live through until now. I penned several Livejournals for a while, but I kept those anonymous. Halfway through the Codpiece experience, I changed all the names to allay the skittish fears of my girlfriend at the time.

But, this is different. This is about having fun in Charlottesville, starting a business, beginning a family, tending bar at Court Square Tavern, filing stories for Virginia public radio, and who knows what else? It's also very much an experiment. And hopefully, an encouragement to others to blog their lives - not to project an ego, but to simply connect to others.

So welcome, and let's all place our bets.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Running as sense-making

It's going to be a stressful day. I got up at 7:00 AM to start work and I could sit here in front of my computer for the next 10 days and still not get it all done. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but I'm prone to that awful habit when I'm under stress. I'm under stress at the moment as I try to balance work, my other work, and my need to run six miles or so every other day. In 14 minutes my feet will hit the street and I'll be off. No phone. No e-mail. Just me and my feet. I'm even going to skip the iPod today so I can hear the birds, and so I can concentrate on my surroundings. I don't know where I'm going to go. I know I'll leave the condo and will turn left up Commonwealth Drive. From there? I don't know for sure, but I can guarantee you the day will become a lot less stressful.

Video builds the radio guy

I'm watching the tail end of the debut of Max Headroom, one of those shows from the late 80's that seemed so amazingly different, refreshing. The premiere revolves around an advertising conspiracy that's killing people. When I was a kid, this seemed so futuristic and somehow important. A television show was critiquing television practices. Now, the irony comes in because I'm watching this show on Joost , which is a new service created by the makers of Skype and KaZaa. There's advertising, of course, but it seems so seamless, you hardly notice it. A friend of mine sent me an invite today, and there's a ton of content here that I can watch legally, as often as I want. And, the picture is pretty darned good, full-screen. Everything is changing, and changing fast. Steve Safran of Lost Remote was recently a guest on Coy Barefoot's show and continued preaching the gospel of convergence, and Joost is so far the best (legal) implementation I've seen. It lacks

The Fire at Court Square Tavern

My tavern is closed indefinitely tonight, after a fire that broke out early this morning. I had just dropped off my daughter at day care, and heard a bulletin on 1400 AM , one of our two sports-talk stations. I didn't even know they did local news, but at least on this occasion, they did. All I heard was "evacuation at Court Square" and I immediately thought I should drive over there. The big building at 500 Court Square was still standing, so that gave me a bit of hope. People were moving around Market Street, and seemed happy. Or at least, not burned. Then I turned up 5th Street, and saw one of the front windows, covered with a tarp, and a huge pile of debris on the sidewalk. Oh crap, I thought. I've worked at the Tavern since August of 2004, and have gone through many ups and downs while there. I started as a server, and became a manager and began bartending that December. It was the first place I was able to work since my separation from my first wife. Working the