Last week I went with my brother to take a friend of his ice shack off the ice. I am a non ice fisherman, and a non fisherman in general. Ice fishing seems like such a sort of specific activity. When I talk about it with my friends from the south, they literally seem like I am talking about some sort of perversion of the laws of physics.

The idea that adult humans would spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a wooden structure out on the ice, that they would drill holes in the lake in an attempt to get fish…yeah, that seems absurd. Even stranger is this idea of driving ones car out there, and sitting in a wooden structure, next to your car, on the ice, while fishing through a hole drilled in the water.

I like being outside. In the quiet. It would seem that a frozen lake would be a quiet place, but sadly it is not. Often times it is full of cars, snow mobiles, and other vehicles screaming along. Add to that the inevitable drunk human screaming, and holy cow.

So we recently did a podcast about shoes. I love shoes. I was working on a large story about shoe culture, but got removed (yeah, fired) from it. I have loved shoes since I was a young boy hanging out at the Foot Locker in the Wausau center mall. Steve and Billy wearing Air Jordans on the Freshman basketball team. Avias in 10th grade. Nike Mac Attack on Nhien on the high school tennis team. All of this was powerful stuff.

But, I am old now. So, I am less passionate. But, what I am oddly passionate about is instant gratification. And Zappos, they gratify instantly it seems.

So, during the recording of the podcast, I ordered some new sneakers. They arrived at my house within 24 hours, and I did not pay for shipping. AWESOME!

After trying the shoe on, they turned out to be small. So, I lamented it on twitter. Someone from Zappos read my tweet, responded, and intervened.

They literally sent me a second pair of shoes in less than 10 hours. I put it on twitter that the first pair was too small at 10 pm, by 1030 pm someone at Zappos had engaged me. And my 10 am the next day NEW SHOES had arrived on my door. So, I had two shoes from inventory. In less than 10 hours.

I must assume that Zappos has a warehouse in Weston someplace, because that is simply fast.

When I put on the appropriate sized shoe, turns out I did not like the fit of the DC (returning to Etnies). Again, through twitter Zappos sent me a second shipping label, and both shoes are going back free of charge.

No shipping costs at all. I got 2 pair of shoes within 12 hours.

How cool is that?

I do not know the structure that must be in place for a company like Zappos to deliver an item so quickly, but that is a warehouse that is just buzzing along.

I do not often buy stuff online, save for Amazon, but man alive I am going to buy all my shoes from Zappos from now on.

I do not want to be one of those people who writes about the internet, and all the crap out there. I also have wanted to avoid being a hero worshipping fan boy of this new generation of people who do…well…something I am sure. But, nothing I understand. For a while it seemed like twitter was almost entirely about San Francisco, and it seems like right now so much of this talk is almost entirely about the same 100 people. I mean, its amazing that just about everyone of these folks has a book deal.

But, to a point. I live in a small town in the midwest. And this town is rife with gossip, and hush hush talking. It just fills many peoples days. We talk about this person and that person sleeping together even though they are both married to other people. We talk about businesses failing, and starting, and whose money is it really. We talk and talk and talk. But, we have not started a website, created a business plan for this website, and created a sort of demand for this information. That has not started up yet. But, I am sure it will. In a few years.

But, in this web 2.0 world, it seems like the amount of stuff I know about Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuck, or some of the other rockstars of it all is sort of amazing. The sort of never ending discussion about personal brand, corporate brand, lifecasting, Julia Allison, or whatever is amazing. I think I read about the infamous Sara Lacy SXSW thing for like a year. And it was 30 minute interview in which NOTHING was really said, but was awesome to watch. Lacy had a great conversation with a guy, and if I remember right, the world fell on her head.

Julia Allison was on the cover of WIRED magazine. No idea why. I mean I love watching her lipsync to songs, but sort of beyond that what innovation is happening at Non Society? Not sure. It is not really journalistic, it is not narrative, not sure. I mean I dig it, because it is pretty women having a conversation with me in a way, but not sure what is actually happening there.

That brings me to Loren. I am not exactly sure how I found Loren. I do not know Loren in the actual physical world. But, I am a giant fan of this guy. And I think his wife, totally hilarious. Maybe funnier than Loren. Maybe.

Loren has puppet shows. Youtube videos with puppets. Some charecters from this Web World, and others just standing charecters that he has created. He makes these puppet shows and the puppets and the content are truly great commentary about the Web World, and the worship of the persons with in it. His NonSociety puppets are amazing, and that is just such rich material to pull from it seems unavoidable.

Loren has a sarcastic sense of humor, and often times it makes me wonder if I am missing the point, or something. But, even if I am missing it completely, the jokes work on my small level. He is very funny to even a passive Web World observer. I wonder what those on the inside think. Is Loren making fun of them in a way that upsets them, or are they in on the joke?

The other thing that I love about 1938media is the sort of grown up aspects of it. I have watched Loren do panel talks, and invariably, his is the least full of crap that there is. He talks about grown up, real world stuff. Not personal branding, not all the other crap that comes out of the mouths of the so called Social Media experts. Work is work. The rest, it seems to quote Loren, is bullshit.

I like Loren, his wife, his company, his puppets. They make me laugh, and remind me that the world is the world. And I like that.

I was asked to fill in on WXPR, Blues Friday. I love doing it. But, in all fairness, I am not a blues guy anymore. I walked away pretty clean when I left the pub. But, I think I still have a great ear, and I think I am infinitely entertaining on the radio. So, I love doing it. 3 hours of listening to loud music never really hurts, unless it is 3 hours of Motorhead.

So, in the old days I would grab a few mountain dews, drive on up, and tear the show apart. But, now there is this Mountain Dew Amp in Grape flavor which is a wicked mistress. I just assume there is no side affects, it is just soda after all, and I am a massive dude. How will it affect my physiology? NONE.

So, I grabbed three of these things. Drank one on the way up in the car. Then had another during the show. That was fine.

I got home at about 1 am, and took my meds. I take a blood pressure thing, and a cholesterol thing, and since my shoulder was really really really really really hurting, I took the prescription paid pills.

Then next thing I know I am fading in and out of a sort of loopiness. I could feel the lightness in my head, which was a reflection that my blood pressure was lowering and then returning. I would stand up and get a little foggy. It was scary. I was actually scared.

So, I ended up staying awake until about 5 am, waiting for it to stabilize to some extend. I got a little relaxed, and climbed into bed.

It was amazing. You should NOT do that.

I have been thinking about patterns these days. The same things, come up from time to time, and they lead to the same sort of resulting behavior or stimulus. This week was festival upset week it seems. I have no investment either socially or personally in this particular festival. But, I used to. And I care about it very much, and in my opinion it never lives up to potential. And, every year I get emails and phone calls about this or that part of it. And I take these calls, and talk to these people, and then the possibility comes, and then inevitably the process leaves me feeling wounded.

The fest is the fest. And I could honestly care less about it. Millions of people love it, it is a success, and invariably I attend and enjoy myself. So the issue is not that, but rather these phone calls and emails that pop up in my life around this time of year.

What is interesting is, we all have this stuff. This person, or this time of year or this change in season. And it levels some of us, and we end up on the couch, crying in our pajama bottoms. Or we end up eating or drinking too much.

It is an interesting concept in that we allow these things to walk into the open doors of our lives, and they do damage. You would think I would know better than to simply not talk to certain people about certain topics. But, the topic comes up, and i invariably pick it up and off I go. Knowing full well that the path I am on is going to end in corn dogs and 20 hours in bed. But, we pick them up every year.

This year, for the most part I handled this pattern differently. I was unwilling to accept the usual shenanigans from the callers and emailers. I refused to do the usual dance. And, it helped a little bit, but I still ended up taking last night off. And was angry all night, and am stilll angry today. So, it is not enough to change a small part in the pattern, you must change that pattern all together. And in the case of this most recent one, I totally know how I am going to do that. And I am excited.

I totally dig that.

My friend Dr. Rent has his Law of Unintended Consequences.  Today, I think I met that sort of face to face in the least fun manner I can think of. I was left sort of sitting at my desk feeling like garbage. It made me remember a scene in a movie from long ago that I truly liked.

The movie would be “As Good as it Gets” starring Helen Hunt, Jack Nicholson, and Greg Kinnear. For those of you who have not seen it, let me suggest it. It is a lovely James Brooks movie and it is truly a lot of fun. Nicholson plays a successful romance writer, who I think is OCD, or something. He might just be afraid of the world, one can never tell with this sort of stuff.

He regularly eats at the same restaurant, and has the same waitress (Hunt) and orders the same thing. One day he learns that her child is sick, and because he is sick she cannot make it to work.

So, he pays a doctor to go to her home, make a house call, and start treatment of her asthmatic son. This tremendous act of kindness, from a crazy man, is a simple act of kindness that has nothing to do with Hunt really. But, the need of Melvin to get her back at his table, so he can eat.

But, in her head Hunt thinks that something else is going on. Something far more manipulative, or something. She takes the time to go to Udalls house, in the rain, and announce that “I am not going to have sex with you.” Udall had not considered this, ever. He simply wanted his waitress back.

I remember seeing this on screen, and just cringing. The preemptive rejection of Udall, leaves nothing but a wreck of a man. And it was totally unneeded. Udall had not thought about sleeping with Hunt, or anything of that. In a move of class, he shuts the door, and goes on his way. The movie goes from there.

But, it is that act, the preemptive no, the result of a kindness, rings true to me today. I think we experience this sort of thing. Or rather, I did and do often. It is humiliating, and sort of self fulfilling. I mean I know I am not attractive, on many or any levels. Few redeeming qualities are possessed by me, and I understand that.

But, sometimes you just want to do something nice for someone you care about on some level. And sometimes the discussion that results from that kindness is just simply shitty, and humiliating. I bought someone a gift, and cracked a joke (a joke that has been funny in the past), but today the joke was less funny and I needed Helen Hunt to show up at my door and tell me she is not going to have sex with me.

I do not know why I am blogging about this. I am pretty sure this is a giant mistake, but so it goes. I do not understand this human behavior of preemptively setting a boundary that has never been approached. I feel like a dick tonight. I just do.

So off we go.

Over the past ten days, I have seen the movie Book of Eli three times. I went opening night by myself, and then I went with my friend Billie, and my friend Kristy. I was scared to take friends, because the movie touched me deeply, so you want to make sure people who you like very much like the things that you like, and see the significance. Thankfully, both Billie and Kristy are very smart. So, they dug it.

To be honest, I do not know if this is a good movie. I guess I do not really care. It speaks directly to me in ways that are intrinisically mine. I sort of felt a little bit like the first time I saw The Black Keys. I stood there with tears in my eyes, and thought to myself that someone had found my sound. It felt the same way with this movie.

The movie stars Denzel Washington as a nameless walker. In a post end of the world time, a world covered in ash, and devoid of life. People have survived what might have been a nuclear war, or something. A war is referred to a few times. A good many people are blind, and people make reference to having lost their site after the great fire. They also wear sunglasses constantly when outside.

Also in the film is Gary Oldman as Carnegie. A sort of bad guy, overlord of what seems like a western town trying to find its way. In the tradition of the cowboy movies, Carnegie has a ‘road crews’. Guys on motorcycles who roam the countryside looking for what he wants and doing his bidding. What Carnegie really wants is a book. A special book.

Carnegie has a love interest, or kept woman. Jennifer Beals, in a beautiful role. She is a blind woman who absolutely breathtaking looking. She is a sort of prisoner, lover to Carnegie.

Beals has a daughter in the film played by Mila Kunis, from That 70s Show. And, suddenly I am giant fan of this person. She does a great job with a pretty typically written role, but she is a great choice. I hope she gets more work off of this.

The movie is pretty standard stuff. Lone man walking through the world, trying to live rightously. Runs into overlord, has something that overlord wants, overlord tries to corrupt him, and fighting ensues. Then resolution.

I am not going to say that it is groundbreaking. But, Oldman gives a performance of such rage it felt like he was channeling Laurence Fishburne (I think no one plays understated rage better), and when it flairs up I felt actually threatened by the whole thing.

Kunis and Beals do not have a lot to work with. The Beals charecter is played soulfully, and richly, bordering on a sort of earth mother vibe. Kunis on the other hand plays her part with just enough respect for the fact that she is in fact the youngest in the cast. She clearly gets that she is sitting with Denzel Washington, and her face reveals or portrays that she is in awe of both the man or the charecter. Both of which are incredible appopriate.

Denzel Washington is simply great. His performance is not static, and not at all cliche. the banter he and Kunis have, it is amazing patter.  The timing is fun, and realistic, and sometimes blatantly comical, which is nice for a heavy movie like this.

I think the movie is a good movie.  One of the better movies of 2009 2010 so far.  And for me, it feeds into the themes that I love in narrative.

So off we go…

SPOILERS

The movie is really about a lot of my favorite things…books, faith, survival.

I think a lot of people are getting lost in the fact that it is the Bible.  Clearly the statement is that after the war, humans felt that the reason for the fight was religion, and as such the Bible was the cause.  So people sought out, and burned all copies of the Bible.  I found this telling, given where I work for a living.  But, elsewhere, it is telling in our society since we have scope makers putting Bible versus on the weapons of war that are carried by soldier in Iraq.

Either way, I think that the Bible issue is short lived.  Since at the end, in the library at the end of the world, all great works of knowledge are sought out, and those works are what will be used to teach the world about itself.  On the self is the Quran, the Torah, and The Bible.  It is not an unimportant statement.

I also think that the end of the world is important, because the return of humanity will come in the form of a library.  The collection of human knowledge.  Unfiltered, just collected.  And taught back to people.  In hopes that people would see themselves again.  I think that is an amazing concept, and a true one.  The collection of knowledge traces back forever.  Alxander the Great set up libraries throughout the known world.  One of the greatest places in America is the Library of Congress.  The internet could have been a collection of human knowledge, but welll…that went of.

I think the struggle the Carnegie has for the book is interesting.  He seeks to corrupt the concept of faith to use it to control people, to get them to bend to his will.  He even comments that this is not the first time this has been done.  That seems to be a good vocalization of what we struggle with today.  The Joel Osteen bastardization of the Bible, making it into a get rich quick scheme, rather than a guide for rightousness.  Or any of the great books of philosphy, being used to sell tickets to the next war.

I think that Denzel is revealed as blind in the end.  There is some discussion as to where that happened, and I think it happened when he was shot.  And slowly after that his progressively lost his sight.  The red herring people use is when asked how he knows where to walk he replies that he walks by faith, I think that is sort of a diversion.  I think the trauma of getting shot like he does costs him his sight.

If we are to use the rightous man parable, God challenges him.  The vision God has told him is to take the Bible to the safe place, and protect it.  But, Eli is unable to do it.  So, God takes his sight.

The fact that the Bible is in Braile is simply irrelevant to that.  I know many sighted people who took the time to read braille.

The library on Alcatraz is amazing.  It reveals what is important, and how we can in fact save ourselves.  The pursuit of human knowledge, and the collection of said knowledge, that is amazing and freeing.

I think The Book of Eli deals with some of the large ideas of our time.  What is knowledge?  What is of real importance?  How do we change ourselves and the world around us?  What is community?

I think The Book of Eli answers more questions than it leave unanswered.  I am so thrilled to have seen this movie.  I will surely buy it on DVD when it comes out.

A while ago the news broke that Tim Tebow was going to shoot a Super Bowl commercial for a group that at best can be described as homophobic, anti choice, anti women, and really…anti the America I want to live in. I took to twitter, facebook, and all the rest, and I decried that, and I have boycotted CBS, called for the boycott of CBS, and I have actually done pretty well with that boycott. I think that we live in a country that cannot anymore allow FAITH or whatever you want to call it, to be the blanket with which we allow bad behavior and ideas to move forward.

All through my life I have held a strong sense of faith. Deeply held faith, based on my limits. My faith has been something I have articulated in conversation through the years, and as a result felt even better about having it. But, during this time one of my heroes retired. Coach Bobby Bowden, longtime coach of the Florida State Football team stepped down after a lifetime of success. During my life I have cheered for no sports team with more passion than I cheer for FSU football. I am a full on fanboy for the teams of the school, having gone so far as to write to the coach (he wrote and called me back), bought tickets to bowl games, and visited the campus (where I got to meet Coach Bowden and Warrick Dunn). To say that FSU football is something I am a fan of, well that is an amazingly plain truth.

During this time of decrying Tim Tebow as a member of a homophobic group, I found a website the had the donations of various Florida celebs listed. It turns out that Coach Bowden was an active supporter of Republican anti choice candidates. He is also active in the group Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I was not at all ready for this. I looked at the donation list, and tried to justify it by saying that they were small donations, and maybe they were just something he and his wife did out of politeness. But, as time went on I realized that I was simply deluding myself. I was just looking to excuse something because I was a fan of the man.

I do not have answers. How do we react when we find that someone who we are a fan of does something we oppose both personally and professionally? Can we be fans of that person? Can I still be a fan of Bobby Bowden even though he gave money to people who limited an effective Family Planning Waiver (Florida has one of the WORST) and as a result harmed women and families, all the while claiming to be pro family?

How deep should fan dom run?

Is it being an apologist to say that I am fan of him as a coach and not as a man? Maybe not.

I do not agree with the anti choice rhetoric of FCA, but do they do good work in other areas?

Is it more complex than I want it to be? Maybe.

Am I still right to decry Tim Tebow for standing with homophobes? Am I still right for decrying CBS for considering ad money from something so terrible as this group?

Is injustice anywhere, injustice everywhere?

I think what I have come away with is this…I disagree with Bobby Bowden for standing with a group like FCA, or giving money to Mel Martinez. Is that different than a young man, with a career just starting, leveraging that career for a group like he is, I think it is. Bowden will fade, while the light on Tebow will grow.

When I met Bowden, we spent a good amount of time talking about commerce, and how money has seeped into college athletics. How FSU had an early role in that, establishing a relationship with Nike every early on. We also talked about God, and I told him that I was uncomfortable with that. Instead, we talked about faith, as I am more comfortable with it.

If I could talk to Bowden now, I would ask him to not give money to anti choice candidated. I would say that his position can create heat for these candidates, and that he should not do that.

I think Bowden is wrong to work with FCA. There are other groups more inclusive, more effective, more positive than FCA. I think he is wrong to give money to these candidates. There are others who have better visions for his state.

If I could talk to Tim Tebow, I would tell him that he needs to see the world as a whole world. That this homophobic group is leading him astray. They are not as innocent as they portray.

But more than that, I do not know the answer to the big question. What if we disagree with someone we are a fan of? I do not know.

A decade is a long time. So I am going to try to put these in no order at all. I do not think at least. I do not know, blogging is a lot like free form jazz. We shall just see where it takes us.

1. The Black Keys….THICKFREAKNESS…I had thought of making it their first record, the big come up, but decided on this one because of the violence. I thought the first record was shocking in its awesomeness, and the second one revealed that this was not a fluke. The guitar tone, the agression, the violence…I have always said it is like Hound Dog Taylor meets Sonic Youth. And that might be perfect. The output for the band through the decade was worth the top spot.
2. The Rollins Band…The Only Way to know for Sure…the live record I had always wanted this band to make. Chicago, the whole deal. My lifelong friend Jason and I were there, and trapped in a snowstorm, so it was an epic time. When we were standing there, Jason turned to me and said, “thats a band with a stairmaster in the tour bus,” talking about how fast and without rest these guys were. It is a seminal live record.
3. The Murder City Devils…RIP…I got into these guys when Tom Jordan burned me a CD. Then it was amazing. I had to have everything. A punk band with keyboards, well that was amazing. The songs about Johnny THunders and George Jones…amazing.
4. Butch Walker…And the Lets Go Out Tonights…Nothing, nothing at all sounds like LA the way this sounds like LA. There is a reason that Butch is sought after by everyone. His songwriting is second to none. This glorious band made songs about nightlife, about the whole deal. A sort of album about eating at bar time, in your fab clothes. And Sunspot Wendy is jealous that I met him.
5. Mos Def…The Exquisite…Just happened at the end of the year. And honestly Mos Def has a revolutionary voice, and we need that in hip hop. It cant all be about syrup.
6. Prince…Indigo Nights…it came with the book that documented the dates in England. It is an overwhelming live record. Right up there with Live in Osaka.
7. Iggy Pop…Skull Ring…He has to be on the list. It gets no better.
8. Scott Holt…From Lettsworth To Legend…The fact that Scott wanted to do a whole album dedicated to his mentor, and his mentor is Buddy Guy…well that seems good. And it is good.
9. Rakim…The Seventh Seal…I think Rakim is the best emcee of all time. The fact that he came back with such a high minded, and heavy record, shows just how good he is.
10. Rise Against…Appeal to Reason…Blatantly smart. Live the band delivers constantly.
11. Lucero…Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers…I think Ben Nichols is the best lyricist of the last 20 years. His tales of love and loss, and heartbreak make ALL the alt country bands shut the hell up, or I would hope so.

That is 11.  What do you think?