Disc golf is a game where you find your rhythm and maintain it over 9-to-18 holes, or suffer the consequences. Of course, rhythm is a mental construct, but one that plays out physically. So, if anything disrupts your mental outlook on the course, it’s a potential rhythm buster.
Let’s look at some of the things that commonly disrupt one’s game:
1) Pedestrians
2) Searching for a lost disc, a.k.a. fishing for plastic
3) Losing a disc
4) Three or four putting
5) Slow play ahead
6) Wind gusts
7) Rain delay/Lightning
8) Keeping your dog on a leash throughout
9) A poor throw
10) A series of poor throws
Con Cen Tray Shun, baby. All golfers need it just to survive out there.
I don’t know about you, but my game suffers when I spend 10, 15 or 20 minutes looking for a disc in the rough. I’m always relieved to find the disc (if I find it); regardless, the effort it takes to beat through thickets, searching up and down and all around completely throws me off my game.
Just this morning on the Greenway Disc Golf Course in Beaverton, I scored a birdie 2 on Hole #4, but threw into the woods off the 5th tee, and by the time I finally found my trusty Shark, I was sweaty and mentally fatigued from talking to myself, and convincing myself to not give up on the hunt. Needless to say, I ended up four-putting for a 7. Then I double-boogied the next hole.
Since moving to Oregon in August 2008, I have had the extreme good fortune to spend my birthday celebrations with friends and family, mostly in pursuit of wine and food.
This year, Darby and I motored to Seattle early on the 4th. After a morning business meeting and a light lunch on Capitol Hill, we checked in to Hotel Vintage Park (one of three Kimpton properties in the city), before walking over to Seattle Art Museum during First Thursday proceedings. Soon thereafter, the Newmans swooped in to pick us up for the much anticipated birthday dinner in Ballard.
By the way, it is a real honor to travel to another great American city and enjoy a birthday dinner for eight.
When we got to The Walrus and the Carpenter, a tiny room for Seattle’s most popular oyster bar, we were told the wait would be two hours. Normally, that means one hour. On this night the hostess was a woman of her word. It took two hours and fifteen minutes to get seated. Thankfully, an accommodating bar up the historic Ballard street hosted us while we waited to dine on local edibles from the sea.
Writing about Seattle as a Portland resident is kind of like writing about your beautiful “Prom Queen” sister. You either come off as adoring, or bitter.
A year ago, at another fine dining establishment in San Francisco, Darby and I had a great time with three NorCal friends. Our friend Andy spoke about how “abundance mentality” is prevalent in California, while “scarcity mentality” tends to preside in Oregon. The conversation has stayed with me ever since.
Seattle clearly weighs in as an abundance heavyweight. It is an opulent city on seven hills. Part Minneapolis high design, another part San Francisco funky. I have heard mention of the “Seattle freeze,” but I do not encounter cold shoulders there. I find the people friendly and willing to engage in frank discussion, which of course, I appreciate immensely.
I suspect the very things that make Seattle attractive to me, are the things many Portlanders and Oregonians reject outright. As one good friend here told me last week, “Oregonians don’t want (that kind of) progress.” Right. And this is what makes Portland, Portland and Oregon, Oregon. Unlike Seattle and San Francisco, Portland is tucked away, 60 miles upriver from the coast and the world beyond. The city is also nestled in a valley and protected by a wall of western hills and Forest Park green space. To say Portlanders have a fortress mentality may be a bit extreme, but it is also true to some degree.
Of course, Portlanders and Oregonians do have something to protect. Few would argue otherwise. My interest here, in this geo-cultural exploration of three West Coast cites, is mostly about alignment and how we might reposition ourselves as a community. The “G” word, Growth, is seen as an impolite intrusion in Oregon — a reduction of green space and an increase in traffic, pollution and noise. Yet, growth simply is. There’s no way to stop it, and even with an urban growth boundary, there’s no way to maintain a psychic gate around this precious place. The question is how might Oregonians better align themselves with this planetary force?
Urban planners, economists, engineers and politicians have some good answers, but no one group of thinkers or doers has all the answers. The problem however is well documented. The median income for a Seattle family – $91,300 – is nearly half as much more than the family income in Portland of $63,400. To me, that’s a startling difference for two cites 167 miles apart from each other. Also, one in 20 Seattle homes is valued at more than $1 million. In Portland, the ratio is 1 in 100.
If we are to believe the management guru and best-selling author, Steven Covey, “abundance mentality” is something we can choose to consciously manage for personal gain. It stands to reason then, that the people of a city or state might also invite abundance into their lives for the betterment of the community. Too bad there’s no on-off switch to go from scarcity to abundance in a flash. Like most good things, it’s a process that takes commitment, a plan of action and time.
YACHT lights me up. Their grooves are infectious and the meaning in their work is at times profound.
I know this is high praise for any artist, but it’s not everyday that a New New Wave band with deep philosophical underpinnings kicks ass like YACHT kicks ass.
“The Earth, the Earth, the Earth is on fire. We don’t have no daughter. Let the mother fucker burn.”
Pop lyrics with juxtaposing ideas. That’s fresh. “Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans make anthemic power jams, play them backwards and soak them in nearly-psychedelic cherry cola inspired live shows,” writes IFC.
“Utopia/Dystopia” is my favorite song right now. Which is kind of amazing considering I generally do not enjoy techno. Of course, YACHT can’t be defined merely as techno. The band is clearly borne of DEVO’s rib, and I respect their weirdness and ability immensely. But there’s more here. YACHT makes you dance and feel good — all while thinking interesting thoughts.
According to YACHT’s Mission Statement:
YACHT is a Band, Belief System, and Business conducted by Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans of Marfa, Texas and Los Angeles, CA, USA. All people are welcome to become members of YACHT. Accordingly, YACHT is and always will be what YACHT is when YACHT is standing before you.
In addition to five studio albums, YACHT is the author of The Secret Teachings of the Mystery Lights: A Handbook on Overcoming Humanity and Becoming Your Own God, which you can download for on iTunes.
Evans is also a well respected science writer, who “examines the intersections between art, science, technology, culture, and all the lunatic fringes in between.”
Alas, YACHT believes, as I do, in the power of place. In fact, they operate in a Western American Utopian Triangle of their own making — with Marfa, Los Angeles and Portland as the three points in their geographic/geometric formation. My own Western American Utopian Triangle is configured differently — with Omaha, San Francisco and Seattle as my three axis points. Either way, I am charmed by the idea of a vast spiritual territory and the exceptional work of this provocative band.
It’s been one week and a day since the terribly disappointing season ending episode of “Downton Abbey.” I do like a well made dramatic series, so Downton’s seasonal close leaves a void. One we are attempting to fill by watching “House of Cards,” the newly released series from Netflix.
Already, Darby and I have consumed 11 of the 13 episodes, and we will likely watch the last two this evening. What’s interesting is Netflix intended us to watch the show this way. Instead of doling episodes out once a week, like network and cable TV have done for decades, Netlfix released all 13 episodes at one time on February 1, 2013.
“Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the show’s producer Beau Willimon told The New York Times in January.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Netflix Chief Content Office Ted Sarandos said, “The Internet is attuning people to get what they want when they want it,” Sarandos said. “‘House of Cards’ is literally the first show for the on-demand generation.”
The LA Times also notes that the absence of ads means that each episode has more time for story lines and relationships — as much as 15 more minutes of story per television hour. That’s an opportunity missed in my opinion. Some of the plot lines in the show are incredulous at best, and the portrayal of female journalists is outrageous — “I used to suck, screw, and jerk anything that moved just to get a story,” Janine tells Zoe over green curry. But let’s stay with the business side of the story here, and look at how Netflix came to the decision to develop and distribute their own content in the first place.
David Carr of the Times points to the company’s adept use of data.
Big bets are now being informed by Big Data, and no one knows more about audiences than Netflix. As a technology company that distributes and now produces content, Netflix has mind-boggling access to consumer sentiment in real time. Netflix looks at 30 million “plays” a day, including when you pause, rewind and fast forward, four million ratings by Netflix subscribers, three million searches as well as the time of day when shows are watched and on what devices.
I suppose the all the data did make it easier to invest in big stars like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, and director David Fincher (he directed the first two episodes). But there’s also timeless storytelling here. In fact, Netflix is not the first to produce the Michael Dobbsnovel. BBC aired a four-show run in 1990. Amazon Prime members can view the episodes here. The original programs are also available on YouTube.
Thanks to advances in point-and-shoot technology, everyone’s a photographer today, or so we imagine. Of course, taking pictures for fun is a different practice altogether than making images of artistic quality with a camera.
For more information on the latter, please see the following documentary from 1958 about Ansel Adams’ technical approach to photography.
“Perhaps music is the most expressive of the arts,” suggests Adams. “However, as a photographer, I believe that creative photography, when practiced in terms of its inherent qualities, may also reveal endless horizons of meaning.” Indeed.
Adams proved his belief over and over again, as he traveled the American West with his marvelous eye and technical skills. He helped us see Yosemite and the West in new and unexpected ways. He helped us get to know and cherish our most magical lands. That he accomplished this with the help of technology goes without saying, but I marvel at the analog nature of it all and the manual labor involved.
We use our tools and our training to see the world and to make meaning of the world we see. It seems fair to ask how our modern technology is aiding or clouding our vision as artists and as people. Let’s consider that filmmakers Orson Wells and John Huston never had the benefits of digital cameras or editing suites. Same with Adams; yet the visions shared by these masters are impecable.
Likewise, America’s greatest writers are from a time before the widespread adoption of the computer. Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and hundreds of other American classics were not made with the powerful tools of our time. They were written longhand prior to being transcribed into a manuscript.
My point here is there’s something valuable to be gained by knowing, honoring and practicing the old ways. I’m not writing this article by longhand, nor am I putting it through several rounds of edits. Be that as it may, I know that process and revisit it frequently.
Chris Brogan has unleashed a meme, or narrative construct, that helps sum up what you want to work on, change or improve in the coming year.
My friend, Dian Crawford, is participating in #mythreewords. Her three words are “Velocity, Simplicity and Laughter.” I had to consider my three words for a bit, but eventually landed on Grateful, Committed and Traditional.
Grateful. My mom is a glass-half-full person. But this trait did not come down to me via genetics or environment. I am quick to point out what is missing, rather than what is there. Can I change this about myself? I think I can, but it will take a realignment of sorts and a more spiritual approach. Speaking of, we watched this little film last night called Happy. The filmmakers visited people around the world who are happy and the common denominator, in case after case, is close connections to family and friends. When you have these bonds at the center of your life–and to a large degree Darby and I do–you have much to be grateful for. So, I can look at my present work situation, for instance, and a) chastise myself for not earning more money and making a bigger name for myself in the four years since leaving my last job, or b) I can see that I am more successful now than ever, on the right path and that the money and recognition will come. Bottom line, I am grateful to make a living as a writer and thankful for all the people who help make this reality possible.
Committed. I have lots of ideas and my mind wanders. For most of my life my body wandered with it, from one state to the next, one job to the next and from one group of friends to the next. I am grateful for the depth and diversity of experiences, no question, but I’m also intentionally working to go deep, to connect and plant roots. Oregon may not be the perfect place for this, but no place is. Advertising may not be the perfect profession either. But since when is perfection required? What is required is confidence that being here in Oregon is right and good, that all can be achieved here, as a writer, a businessman and a person. On the writerly front, I will need to be more committed than ever, as my plans for 2013 are on the ambitious side. I intend to write fewer blog posts and more long-form pieces, including new short stories and a book about marketing. The plan is to write a chapter or story a week for 16 weeks starting now.
Traditional. I got a record player for Christmas this year and a collection of used records, including Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell, Katy Lied by Steely Dan and Happy To Be Just Like I Am, by Taj Mahal, among others. I grew up in an analog world, but I lost touch with it. I do not see losing tough with it as a positive. There’s no doubt that I was (and still am) genuinely excited by certain digital developments like push-button publishing and streaming radio. But it’s not all good. For me, it’s about using common sense and determining what is, and is not, an actual advance. Take cell phones. They suck as phones, but we accept the dropped calls, the spotty reception and lack of audio quality (to say nothing of the high prices) as the new norm. It’s stupid. You know what else is stupid? I was driving on I-5 today and this guy in the middle lane was going way too slow. I passed him on the right, as I approached my exit and I looked over to see him texting. On I-5 with cars and trucks everywhere going 60+ miles per hour. We’ve made some advances connected to digital culture, but we’ve also regressed. Of course, I can’t concern myself with which video games are rotting the minds of millions, or what other corrupt forces are at work. All I can do is pause, examine and evaluate for myself what I find valuable and what I do not. Increasingly, I see that Facebook and Twitter can be enriching, but there’s a cost attached–even if the cost is only time spent. I want to write and read books, not completely out of context microbursts from friends and strangers. Ergo, I will be grateful for and committed to our traditional works of American literature (like Moby Dick, which I have started to read on my Kindle).
It occurs to me now, I could change my three words to “Read Moby Dick” and call it good.
Oregon, as great as it is, is a long ways from a lot of people we love. Which means we must travel to our people, and the special places where they reside.
Of course, we were not able to go everywhere and see everyone during 2012, but we did spend time with family and friends in northern California, the mountains of Colorado, the Utah desert and of course here in the beautiful Beaver State.
Here’s a run down of the year in place, a.k.a. the places (other than home) where I* spent at least one night in 2012:
Brownsville, OR
Gold Beach, OR
Boonville, CA
Tiburon, CA
San Francisco, CA
Jacksonville, OR
Allenspark, CO
Broomfield, CO
Bend, OR
Otter Rock, OR
Salt Lake City, UT
Rockville, UT
My trip to Rockville, Utah earlier this month was a special visit to an incredible and sacred place. Rockville is a small town just a few miles from the west entrance to Zion National Park. My host and close friend, D.K., was right to remind me that we had moved (in D.K.’s all wheel drive Audi) from the basin-and-range topography of north and central Utah, to the grandeur of the Colorado plateau. To see the desert snow-covered in December, and with so few visitors to the area, was a treat I won’t soon forget.
*Darby went on all these travels too, except the December trip to Utah.
It took me eight years, but I finally did purchase and read every word of Phil Lesh’s autobiography, Searching for the Sound. I am glad I did, as Phil offers us his humanity and his immense mind with this telling. It’s also the only first person account of the formation of Grateful Dead by a band member.
As a fan of the band and its legendary bass player, I wanted to like this book. As a student of the 1960s, I wanted to like this book. And Lesh is an eloquent spokesman for his generation. The man is smart as a whip, which comes across in his music, naturally, but it also sails through in his prose.
I wanted to play in a way that heightened the beats by omission, as it were, by playing around them, in a way that added harmonic motion to the somewhat static chord progressions of the songs we were playing then. I wanted to play in a way that moved melodically but much more slowly than the lead melodies sung by the vocalists or played on guitar or keyboard. Contrast and complement: Each of us approached the music from a different direction, at angles to one another, like the spokes of a wheel.
I have long been astonished by Phil’s musical mind and his ability to play what’s in it. He invented a new way to play bass, and his new, inventive style fit perfectly with what Jerry Garcia was playing. Bring in the other spokes and you’ve got an extremely potent form of heavily amplified improvisational music.
Phil also writes candidly about his, and the band’s, use of LSD.
At one point, I looked over at Jerry and saw a bridge of light like a rainbow of a thousand colors streaming between us; and flowing back and forth across that bridge: three-dimensional musical notes—some swirling like the planet Jupiter rotating at 100 times normal speed, some like fuzzy little tennis balls with dozens of legs and feet (each foot wearing a different sock!), some striped like zebras, some like pool balls, some even rectangular or hexagonal, all brilliantly colored and evolving as they flowed, not only the notes that were being played, but all the possible notes that could have been played.
Throughout the text Phil’s ability to recall in detail the people, places, events and yes, even the psychedelic adventures of his youth, some 40 years after it all happened, is pretty amazing.
Later in the the book when my own direct experience of the band is a factor, I realize that while Phil’s finely honed details are plentiful, they are also highly selective, as well as totally personal. As it should be, the point is how plentiful and rich this narrative pool is. For instance, when Phil discusses the band’s Europe tour in October 1990, it’s a story about his family vacation. Nothing wrong with that, but my own (undocumented) stories from that particular trip are slightly more adventurous.
Today, we have books about Jerry from skilled biographers, we have Phil’s own take and there’s a smattering of efforts from fans, and from the academic community to describe and catalog the Grateful Dead experience. I feel like what’s missing is a platform for Deadheads to tell their own tales. I am envisioning a data-based structure where hundred of stories from each show can be curated, and possibly edited into a group writing experiment.
What really happened between the notes on a given night? Ask the hive mind. With so many real life stories, photos, video and drawings to pull from, the hive delivers fractal-like reflections of a place in time and space, 2000-plus times over. Also, these narrative accounts of Grateful Dead shows would be fun to match up against the audio recordings. We know what it sounded like on a particular night thanks to soundboard and audience tapes, but what did it feel like? The liner notes from fans can help answer that.
Politically speaking, last week was one for the history books. A black man with a funny name was voted to the highest office in the land for the second time, proving 2008 was no fluke.
And the right wing’s chief screw tightener lost his shit during a live “news” broadcast.
In case you missed it, Fox News called Ohio, and thus the election for The President. Karl Rove said not so fast, just like he did in 2000 for Bush. Except this time, he was way off, and the Fox anchors were forced to say so. But before they were willing to put this highly paid mouthpiece in his place, the producers asked Megyn Kelly to walk back to the war room, where the real data crunchers were pouring over the results.
Just the suggestion from Rove that Fox might be in error, led to a five minute fact-finding mission aired live on national TV. Rove had power, but he lost it on Tuesday. Even his right wing friends are turning on him. Brent Bozell, president of For America, said, “If I had 1/100th of Karl Rove’s money, I would have been more productive than he was.”
New York Times op-ed writer, Frank Bruni, reflects on the Rovian meltdown:
Of course arrogance, or at least self-assurance, is a consultant’s stock in trade. That’s what we buy when we buy advice: not just the content of it but the authority, even the grandiloquence, with which it’s delivered. We exchange the anxiety of autonomy for the comfort of following orders. And Rove gives great orders, rife with arcane historical references and reams of data.
Historically, the need for bluster and misdirection may have been there. But thankfully, the times they are a changin’. Rove’s game is from another time. Twelve and 8 years may seem like just a moment ago, but in terms of the digital dynamic and its impact on communications as a whole, and thus politics, it was eons ago.
Let’s marvel for a minute at what communications technology is doing to our culture. The Web is deeply democratic and thus totally revolutionary. People are empowered by the information they take in and share, and an empowered electorate is a massive disruption for old time pols and their advisors. As Romney learned in Ohio this fall, we live in a nation of fact-checkers now, and that makes it real tough to lie and get away with it.
Thomas Peterffy, 68, of Greenwhich, CT is the epitome of self-made man, a first generation American and one of the richest men in the world. He’s also a political advertiser.
According to Forbes, Peterffy was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944 during a Russian bombing raid. He immigrated to the United States in 1965, and by 1977 purchased his own seat on the American Stock Exchange where he began trading options. In 1993 he launched the electronic brokerage firm, Interactive Brokers. The firm paid its first dividend to investors in December 2010, dolling out a whopping $1 billion.
Peterffy’s own wealth is reported to be $5.4 billion, making him the 189th wealthiest billionaire in the world. In other words, this is a man with little to be worried about. Yet he is worried. He’s worried that the Hungary of his youth and the America of our present are too similar — that we are a nation sliding into socialism.
Gyro/SF creative director, Steffan Postaer, thinks Peterffy’s ad is well done.
Yes, the music and imagery are pedantic. And yes, it’s pure propaganda. But the fact isn’t the facts: It’s the story. And the story is riveting. Whether Mr. Peterffy is right or wrong doesn’t matter. He believes he is right. And his argument is unwavering as it is stoic. When he infers that under President Obama “The rich will be poorer, but the poor will also be poorer” we are thunderstruck. I was anyway.
Personally, the only parallel I see between post-war Hungary and modern day America is the widespread use of propaganda. The desire for a prosperous America is pretty much universal, even radical independents like myself are for it. It’s how we achieve that prosperity and how we reinvest it, that calls for debate and more delicate solutions.
The fear of a Socialist America is an impure fabrication. To what end, I can’t quite conceive. Also, I question the idea that socialism is bad, or that it robs people of ingenuity or an incentive to achieve great things. Modern socialism — the kind found have in Sweden, for instance — means we’re all in this together, and we’re going to provide for one another. That isn’t wrong, it’s right.
It’s also right to point out that Mitt Romney has a great safety net firmly in place. It’s called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Peterffy wants to see Romney in the White House because it quells his childhood fears of a socialist state. To each his. Oh but that’s not what Romney, the good Mormon, believes. No, he wants to impose his will, like the Bishop/CEO/Governor that he is.
Help me out here…the insanely rich guy from Hungary wants the super rich guy from Michigan for President, in order to promote capitalism and it virtues, but the super rich guy for President is really a bit of a totalitarian jerk?
