Sunday, October 26, 2008

Story time

For the past few days I have been walking the streets of the North Shore to interview as many random people as I can. To be brief, I am covering personal finance and economy stories for the next four weeks, and the interviews I conduct this weekend are critical to finding foundations for these stories.

As a result, I am realizing how incredibly difficult it is to find good stories.

I finally saw that I always took good news stories for granted, but today that has changed.

It's easy as sin to think of great stories, but to actually find evidence of them in the real world is another matter.

It takes a lot of hope, endurance and resolve to delve underneath some people's answers to poke at the real flesh of what they are saying, and even then it's not guaranteed that what oozes out is worthy of a story. Yet, no matter how much I try to track down awesome stories, I find them incredibly evasive. Many times it feels like chasing a ghost of my mind.

After a few hours of tiresome interviewing, I sat at the Metra station in Wilmette, cold and sleepy. I looked down the endless strip of metal and wood to my left, to my right, and wondered how wonderful it would be to have a story find me.

Then I realized that I have known this wonder - that I have been the one sought after by the Story itself.

It is, after all, the greatest story of them all. If it were left up to me to find it, I would be in infinitely vexing, fatally deep despair. But to have it find me - that is incredibly liberating. I can rest now, because I have it and it has me.

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On another note, I sent my absentee ballot yesterday. I won't say who I voted for here, but I wanted to share this photo and caption that a good friend of mine shared with me.

Obama ice cream © Callie Shell / Aurora for Time
I loved that he cleaned up after himself before leaving an ice cream shop in Wapello, Iowa. He didn't have to. The event was over and the press had left. He is used to taking care of things himself and I think this is one of the qualities that makes Obama different from so many other political candidates I've encountered. Nov. 7, 2007.

(Here's more of where it came from.)

Saturday, October 18, 2008

The Earth Will Shake

Turn up the volume for this one. (See the whole gig here.)


Friday, October 17, 2008

Thursday, October 16, 2008

You really gotta hold on me...

The leaves are turning beautiful shades of gold, brown and red, a distinct crispness permeates the air, layers and jackets are worn again, butterflies flutter around my stomach as their wings brush my heartstrings...

*sigh*

Yes, it's that time of year again: Fantasy Basketball fever is upon me, and I love it.

This year, I'm in a 9-cat, 20-team league, and this is my team:

Sassy Boys
1. (12) Danny Granger
2. (29) Jose Calderon
3. (52) Gerald Wallace
4. (69) Greg Oden
5. (92) Manu Ginobili
6. (109) Derrick Rose
7. (132) Hakim Warrick
8. (149) Rudy Fernandez
9. (172) Andrea Bargnani
10. (189) Russell Westbrook
11. (212) Sean Williams
12. (229) Aaron Gray

Sassy Boys 2008-09: You'd better not break my heart.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Your lips, your lies, your lust

Screw Nick and Norah's endless list of songs.

Here is a finite playlist of songs that has helped me to stay awake until 4 a.m. multiple times during the past couple weeks.

Also, at the end are trivial photos of my desk. (I have to use these to learn the art of photo editing tomorrow.)

Enjoy.

(Hopefully I'll have a more heartfelt post soon. My brain's just been fried lately.)

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Anberlin - Feel Good Drag


Anberlin - Breathe


Oasis - Waiting for the Rapture


Oasis - Soldier On


Paramore - Hallelujah


TV on the Radio - Halfway Home


TV on the Radio - Crying


mewithoutYou - In a Market Dimly Lit


Thrice - Firebreather


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PICT0172
PICT0168
PICT0170

Monday, October 06, 2008

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION

Sunday, October 05, 2008

I love to have written

On Friday we had a guest lecturer (Bob McClory) come in and talk to our class about feature writing. It was fantastic. He was an old guy who had a wealth of experiences and stories to share, which was great. It reminded me a bit of why I wanted to head into journalism in the first place. I really needed it.

Anyway, he quoted a lady he knew, who said something that resonated with me...hard. It gave me goosebumps. I looked it up online and found that it actually came from Michael Kanin. Here it is:

"I don't like to write, but I love to have written."

AMEN.