Burnin’

“I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.” -Leo Burnett

The nearest I’ve come to pursuing real creative glory is the time Linda Harless said I was one campaign away from a job at Goodby. That felt good. I could finally taste it, the elusive fruit of respectability. This was in November of 2000, right after Tom Evans fired me for being “contentious.” I’ve been let go two other times, including this morning from Slack Barshinger for lack of enthusiasm (for their work). So, I’m three out of seven. What is one to do? I’m not being rhetorical here. What I MUST DO is hold out for a mentor. I need to work for someone I respect, on a personal and professional level. Because I tend to respect ability over authority, that someone will naturally need to be a great creative leader. In this city today, that might mean Steffan Postaer. It might mean Jim Schmidt, Matt Brennock, Dennis Ryan, Cheryl Berman, Mark Tutssel, Bob Scarpelli, or Mark Figliulo.

Lasater Grassland Beef located in eastern Colorado raises cattle the old-fashioned way. Their sustainable ranching practices produce healthier and better-tasting beef. Equally important is the fact that grazing animals are vital to the environmental health of the Great Plains. Lasater cattle–like the roaming herds of bison once did–harvest grasses, till the soil with their hooves, fertilize the ground and then are moved to fresh pastures, leaving the grazed plants to fully recover. When the pastures are rested (typically 70 to 80 days), the grasses develop to their full potential–growing extensive root systems that help them survive drought.

Franklin & Marshall has a new president, John Fry, who came from Penn. He’s young and he’s agressive. To succeed in his new job he will need to raise a mountain of money. That’s his job, as it is every private college president’s job. I do not know Mr. Fry, but this week I received a letter from him. It detailed his support for bringing official recognition back to the Greek system which the college abandoned 16 years ago. Whatever Fry’s motivation, and I suspect it is directly related to fundraising, the Greek system will do nothing to improve the quality of student life on campus. Unless one considers exclusionary practices, alcohol abuse, sexual assault, everyday degradation of women, cheating, fighting, and the inability to wear a baseball hat correctly as improvements.

I receive a lot of rejection notices. In fact, it might be said I seek them out. I got one the other day from Cutbank. Four poems sent. All rejected. They communicate this finality (as do most lit mags) in little rectangular blocks of paper that can easily be mass-produced at the Xerox machine. The logo’d blocks come in an envelope you, the writer, provide for this very purpose—the delivery of your formulaic rejection notice. I have an entire spreadsheet of my rejection notices and a neat collection of these paper blocks.

In direct counterpoint to this official rejection there is the personal encouragement of a friend. My college buddy, DK, a professor of philosophy and force of nature, contributed cold hard cash via my Pay Pal account to support the efforts here. Thanks Deacon!

From the estate of Jerry Garcia we have a new imprint, Jerry Made. Like the Dick’s Picks series which features gems from the Grateful Dead vault, Jerry Made will release choice live recordings of Jerry’s various side-projects. The first in the Pure Jerry series is a three-disc affair, recorded in 1977 at Theatre 1839 in San Francisco.

Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium plays host this week to baseball’s College World Series for the 55th year in a row. My grandpa took me to CWS games there when I was a boy. More recently, while living in Omaha as an adult, I saw what a big party the CWS is and what a boost it is for the city’s image, as well. Watching on ESPN from my apartment in Chicago, I see my hometown the way it truly is—as a great place for baseball and sports in general.

Rosenblatt is also home to the Omaha Royals, KC’s triple A farm club.

When I logged on to my free Web-based e-mail account today, I was pleasantly shocked to see that Yahoo expanded my inbox storage to 100 megs from 6 megs (a gigantic leap forward). And the size limit for a single e-mail is now 10 megs, perfect for song files, photos, and book-length PDFs. Thanks Yahoo.

p.s. Here’s the Wired article explaining Yahoo’s motivation.

Malika and Weez hosted a great brunch this past Sunday. To help support their friends in the arts, they encouraged the display of photography by one young woman. Another friend displayed his anarchist politics in the form of this t-shirt:

You can order one from Controvert.com. Strangely enough, I have a Web site devoted to this very topic. However, I’d like to think my spin on the subject contains at least a shred of hope.

Jeff Tweedy, alt-county superstar and leader of the Chicago-based band Wilco graced the cover of the Chicago Reader this week and news of his rehab for addiction to pain killers has been recently in the news. He’s also been top of mind this week due to our viewing of the band’s documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, a revealing look at the creative process and the business end of the music industry.

Tweedy also has his first book out, Adult Head, a collection of poems released in March by Omaha’s Zoo Press and distributed by University of Nebraska Press, the nation’s second largest university press.

Can you ever really know what it is like to walk in someone else’s shoes? Probably not. But if you want to give it the old college try, here are my new kicks. They’re handmade in Burbank.

Fueler by Cydwoq (pronounced sidewalk)