It started innocently enough. I wanted to eat a banana for lunch. And then I happened to attach a video camera to my computer. And then I happened to start taking pictures. And then I grabbed a Sharpie. What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it’s for future generations to appreciate.
I was going to write music for it, but then I’d really be in crazy shut-in artist territory. I need to go for a walk.
If I don’t get a job soon, I’m afraid there’s going more stuff like this in the future. You’ve been warned.
We took my grandmother out to dinner for her 85th birthday yesterday. I mentioned earlier that she told me repeatedly throughout the day she wasn’t a fan of my winter beard, but I think it’s better when you get it firsthand.
By Gavin, February 28th, 2009 at 1:25 pm | Comments
My dad’s photography opening was a huge success last night! I saw a lot of family and family friends I haven’t seen in years. None of them have ever seen me with a beard before, and I got a wide variety of reactions.
Everybody (after doing a double-take): “Oh my god! I almost didn’t recognize Gavin!”
Male relatives and friends: “It looks good! You should keep growing it.”
Males my father’s age: “I remember when I could grow a dark beard. Now it would be all white!”
Female relatives and friends: “Interesting! So, are you going to keep it?”
My mom (to a friend): “I’m going to buy him a gift certificate to a barber shop.”
Today, we’re taking my grandmother out to dinner for her 85th birthday. She’s had my favorite reaction by far.
My grandmother (repeatedly today): “Wow!” and “That beard!” and “I will never get used to that beard!” and “I don’t like that beard!”
I started the beard on New Year’s Day, and the plan was to keep it through February and then go back to my clean-shaven look at the beginning of March, just in time for my birthday. But now part of me wants to keep it, just to collect more reactions.
By Gavin, February 27th, 2009 at 12:38 pm | Comments
This is the first of a weekly series. Each Friday, I’ll write about one of my friends’ blogs and tell you why you should be reading it, too. To kick things off, I’ll start with one of the blogs I’ve been reading the longest.
My friend Rachel, whom I’ve known since high school, has an amazing way with words over on her blog, Diary of Why. Just back from a seven-day trip to Spain, she’s returned to Paris with some photos and stories that are not to be missed.
Each entry starts with “Why”, and her blog’s tagline is “Questions without answers, and answers to questions that nobody asked.” It’s a great format, one I think I subconsciously stole from her a couple times.
Her stories are at once hilarious, heartbreaking, insightful, and always interesting. She’s one of the few people I know who keeps up with her blog in an intelligent, engrossing way that inspires me to step up my own writing.
Earlier this month, she wrote a jaw-dropping story called “Why I’ve gone from Mary Poppins to Cinderella” about baby-sitting for a rather tightly-wound Parisian woman with an expensive apartment and fancy floors. She takes the reader by the hand and walks through the entire ordeal in a manner that has you dying to find out what happens next. This is the sort of blog that should be compiled into a bestselling book and then optioned for a blockbuster movie.
So click on over to Diary of Why for some reading on your Friday afternoon!
By Gavin, February 27th, 2009 at 9:53 am | Comments
Being unemployed is weird and tough. It’s like a surprise unpaid vacation (but you don’t go anywhere) and also your health insurance runs out. It’s stressful, especially when I’m not sure what I want to do next.
But with all this free time on my hands, I’ve been able to catch up on my friends’ blogs, podcasts, and other creative endeavors. I can take the time to absorb the things my friends are saying and doing, instead of just skimming over posts like I did when I worked full-time.
As it turns out, I have really creative, smart, funny, perceptive friends. Many of them are much better writers than me. Most are better podcasters and they’re all infinitely more interesting. Also, I’ve discovered that I start my day with the “Friends” folder I’ve created in Google Reader before I hit any news site to catch up on headlines from overnight.
So, in the spirit of the #followfriday meme on Twitter, I’m going to spotlight one of my friends’ sites each Friday. I visit dozens of friends’ sites, so that’s easy material right there! Also, I’ll be able to single-handedly take credit for driving traffic to their sites. Up to–and in some cases including–ten extra visits!
I’ll put up my first post about a smart and cool friend later today.
By Gavin, February 25th, 2009 at 5:36 pm | Comments
I don’t have cable TV or a DVR right now. I canceled my Comcast service last fall when I completed a year at a promotional price for TV and Internet and they doubled my monthly rate to the “regular price”. Instead, I have a good old-fashioned antenna hooked up to my HDTV, and as long as it’s balanced just right on top of my shelf, it gives me fantastic picture for primetime high-def programming. The Super Bowl was stunning. Jack Bauer’s wacky Monday night adventures come in crystal-clear.
Still, without a DVR, I refuse to re-organize my life around programming schedules. Hulu takes care of a lot of time-shifting for me, but for the past two Friday nights, I’ve sat at home and watched my new favorite block of geeky TV.
On a night when most people go out, I’m at home with a big stupid geek grin on my face. I starts at 8:00 pm with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I don’t care that it has a much slower pace than the movies, or that we haven’t seen a really good terminator fight in months. I can even forgive the shameless and blatant product placement. This season has been a lot of set-up, and I’m dying to see how the knock it all down for the remainder of this year’s episodes.
At 9:00 it’s time for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Whedon is one of my all-time favorite writers, and not just on TV. He can put together the kind of story that is packed with action, yet still has a lot of thematic undercurrents, but he doesn’t beat you over the head with them. It premiered just two weeks ago, so if you haven’t watched, I strongly, strongly recommend you check out the first two episodes over on Hulu. Just like with Whedon’s past projects, he’s weaving a long story arc, and I can’t wait to see where it goes. I embedded the pilot episode at the top of this post to make it super-easy for you to check out.
At 10:00 I have to shut off Twitter because the rest of the world is watching Battlestar Galactica. If you’ve never seen it, start at the beginning. Don’t start now. Too much has happened, and there are only four episodes left. This has been the absolutely most compelling television in the past four years, with maybe the exception of The Wire.
Because I don’t have cable, I can’t get Sci Fi and watch live. I step away from Twitter to insulate myself from spoilers. (People in the Twitterverse love to post spoilers, I learned the hard way.) But Sci Fi drops the ball here. New episodes aren’t available until eight days after their broadcast. Eight! I’m sure it’s a ploy to get those of us without cable to head over to iTunes and shell out a few bucks, and I’m sure that it works.
For two hours, Friday nights are my geek-out nights. If you haven’t checked out Dollhouse, you should give it a try and, if you like it, you should join me while I immerse myself in a world of killer robots from the future, high-tech personality imprints, explosions, femmes fatales, and science projects gone awry. I’ll be on Twitter.
By Gavin, February 20th, 2009 at 9:15 am | Comments
This great clip is a couple weeks old and has been kicking around the ol’ Googletubes for a while now, but I just happened to stumble upon it again and thought I’d share it in case you haven’t seen it. Seth sums up everything about the whole Michael Phelps pot-smoking thing perfectly on Weekend Update with his segment, “Really?!?”. Also, it’s nice to see SNL sticking up for a fellow Baltimorean.
By Gavin, February 19th, 2009 at 3:35 pm | Comments
I feel like I’m the last one to join the Disqus party. I mean, I’ve seen Disqus-powered comments on many, many friends’ websites, and every time I used the service, I’d say to myself, “Hey, that’s pretty sharp! I should install that on my site!” But did I? No, I didn’t. Well, until today, that is.
I took some time this afternoon to tweak the inner-workings of my site. (That sounded far dirtier than I intended, but no time to go back and correct it now!) My comments are now powered by Disqus, which totally rocks, but that had the unfortunate side-effect of clearing previous comments on the site. Oops! So if you left a comment and it’s missing now, it’s wasn’t because of something you said! It’s my new comments system! I swear!
Along with Disqus came support for Seesmic, so feel free to leave a video comment if you just don’t feel like typing. Feel free to go ahead and take the new system for a spin right now!
Update: It was user error! I forgot to click the “Import” button on the settings page for the Disqus plugin. Everything is working harmoniously now!
By Gavin, February 19th, 2009 at 2:37 pm | Comments
I woke up at 3:30 this morning as the first bit of panic set in. I was running on a little under four hours of sleep when I recorded, so this episode might not make a whole lot of sense.
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