Beloved blog readers,

I’m working on about a million projects right now, so this is a quick roundup and link dump.

I have been writing graphic novel/comic book reviews for Josh Hanagarne over at World’s Strongest Librarian.  It’s the spiritual stepchild of the Book a Week project on a site that a lot more people read.  My first two reviews are of Sweet Tooth and Blast Furnace.  I’m thinking the next entry will be on a collection of some of my favorite black and white comics.

I also just turned in an interview with Irish tenor Paddy Homan for New City, and continuing the Irish theme I’m writing  a cover story on St. Patrick’s Battalion for Extra. I hope both will run St. Patrick’s day week.  If they do, I’ll post links in the comments.

There are a number of other projects I’m working on, including a couple original comics of my own. I have written scripts for these, but I need a comic artist. So, if you have an interest in that or know somebody who wants to draw a comic about a goat in the cutthroat world of ingredient purchasing I would be happy to talk to them about that. Also in the comic book vein, I recently interviewed great penciler Emma Rios, and I’ll be covering C2E2 for Extra again this year, so look forward to that.

Finally, H for Hombre is back in action.  We played a show back in February. We recorded a down and dirty, quick and dirty mix-tape/album, that maybe you’ll be able to buy (for cheap). We will play at my brother’s wedding next week (holy crap, my brother is getting married next week). We will play a show that you all can come to on April 7^th at Goose Island in Wrigelyville.

Thanks so much to anyone checking in on this site and my writing. I ain’t quit yet, I got more stuff for you.

Matt Leacock doesn’t remember exactly how he got the idea for his board game.
“I was a new dad… you’re kind of in a haze when you’re short on sleep,” he tells EXTRA with a laugh. He does remember wanting to create a game that he could play with his wife. He had loved and invented board games since he was a kid and he wanted to share that love with her. It was a romantic idea that spurred this creation, which was odd considering it inspired a game called “Pandemic”.

This game concerns the outbreak of four deadly diseases in four locations across the world. The object of the game is to contain and eventually cure all four of these diseases before they become too big to control. The catch is that as the game goes on and the diseases get more widespread, the game becomes more challenging. Any bad turn may cause a chain reaction and the diseases can win. Luckily, the players of “Pandemic” are not alone. Every player can and must work together.

Matt is a real student of games and he was happy dig into what makes a great game great. He spent much of our interview talking about how to create and sustain challenge, variety and interest in board games.

Matt did not come up with the idea on his own. Besides his wife, whom he cites as his muse, Matt credits a number of other people whose testing and critiquing of his game sharpened and improved it. His wife and family were employed as game testers, but Matt didn’t stop there. He kept taking the game to new people with fresh eyes and perspectives.

One manufacturer said his pieces needed to “map” back to the actual players, and a color blind co-worker told him he couldn’t tell between red and green cities.

Suggestions like these led to changes big and small. Matt made pawns more like individual people with the addition of colors and roles specific to each player, and colors were changed from green and red to blue, yellow and black. Symbols were added so that the cities could be distinguished by two different mechanisms.

The game is designed to be as easy as possible to understand. There are games that are for gamers, people committed to the hobby or the practice of gaming. People like this play games that are often intimidating or inaccessible to the average person. Gamers, though, weren’t the only people Matt wanted to have play and enjoy this game.

“For a game to really come off the shelf for me it’s got to not only be playable with [hardcore gamers],” he says. “What I personally find most gratifying is being able to play it with my aunt, or uncle or my cousin or my nephew.”

For a game as challenging as “Pandemic” is, it’s also accessible. A player can understand the board, cards and pieces of the game without reading English. This was a point Matt emphasized during a speech he gave at Google. He talked about wanting to make sure the greatest number of people could enjoy the game, not just for altruistic reasons but also because the more people who could play the game the more likely it was to be a success.

In terms of the creative process, Matt emphasizes that his idea wasn’t ready right out of the gate.

“If you work too hard on the prototype you become married to it,” Matt says. Instead, he talks about having a strong goal and building toward it.
He collaborated with his family to create a cooperative game and his inspirations were multiple, but one place Matt’s game did not take its inspiration was video games. Matt resists the idea of a cooperative board game springing out of computer games. He is quick to point out that he was never interested in video games, neither from a design standpoint nor as a player.

“I am not a programmer, video games take large budgets and teams to get off the ground,” Matt said. “As a board game novice, I had only seen the idea of playing a game as a certain role in 386 computer classics like Oregon trail, and playing on the same team sounds to me like Mario and Luigi coming together to fight Bowser.” Still, there is actually an entire genre of board games dedicated to cooperation. As a true lover of board games, Matt was influenced by a non-digital world.

When asked why he picked a morbid topic like widespread disease to be the subject for his game, particularly one that he developed with his wife in mind, Matt says simply that it made a good enemy. In a collaborative game where players aren’t monopoly men competing to buy the best stuff or pawns trying to get home on a Parcheesi board, there needs to be something significant for players to beat. That something has to be scary enough to be a believable bad guy. When Matt plays the game with his wife, they are not playing against each other—they are playingto save the world. And that is a pretty romantic idea.

…

Pandemic and Matt Leacock’s other games can be found on his website: http://www.Leacock.com and in many game shops.

This article is available in Spanish here

Aside from writing a travel column for Extra I have also written some features.  This one was on the cover of the August 18th issue

——-

Congratulations on your matriculation! You have made it to college, and while it’s likely many of your friends didn’t get this far you have, and this is your chance to choose your own educational path and get yourself the final credential before you to take on the world.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the educational pack is still thinning out. Most of the colleges in and around Chicago have less than half of their students graduate in four years, some don’t manage 50% graduation after six years. Using your time effectively in college is a challenge and it starts as soon a student signs up for his or her first classes. Getting to college is hard, but graduating maybe harder. So this is survival guide in the real sense. These tips aim to make sure that you make it through the entire exercise

First year tips

More freedom means more responsibility
When you start college there are a number of new things to think about. If you’re living on campus or just moving out of your parents digs there is the whole issue of living on your own to contend with I will leave that advise to another writer in a different article. But, for commuter and resident students there a are a host of new freedoms and responsibilities opening up to a college student that were not available to a high school student

The biggest new freedom/responsibility is the choosing a major
It can be difficult to select a major. While some come to school with a direction in mind others will find it harder to settle on one right away. It is especially difficult considering that many fields of study arecompletely unknown to the average highschool student. To help yourself in this process don’t fret if you don’t know your major when you’re picking your first years classes, but set a date to decide by and use the faculty to help you gain an understanding of what that major includes and requires. While your deciding…

Knock out your prerequisites
This is an oldie but a goody. Most colleges will not let any students graduate without fulfilling some basic prerequisites. If at all possible get these done first. If you have a major this will give you the flexibility to pursue that if you don’t all the more reason do the classes you know you will need.

There is also the issue of scheduling.
In high school your schedule is largely out of your hands. School most likely always starts and ends at the same time. In college you have to coordinate class times and see when the classes you need to take are offered.

Pay attention to the professors
The main factor in any class being good or bad is who the professor is. It matters more than the subject matter, the reading, or what peers you have in the class. There are websites that rank professors, but I would put more faith in the judgment of the peers that you trust. If you’re really committed to finding out about a professor there is no reason you can’t go into his or her office and have a conversation one on one.

Do all the preparation you can
The thing about starting anything new is that it is hard to know what part of the experience will be difficult There will be things that you will not, and cannot anticipate. So do everything you can to get ahead. Especially in the early going before you have exams to worry about.

Be prepared to be surprised by your major or change your mind.
Sadly, there are some things you can’t prepare for. You can’t know what it is like to be a psych major until you are one, and take some of those classes. If you find that you would like to or have to change your majors this is why knocking out prerequisites is so important. The more one can get some of these out of the way the less they will be penalized for changing there minds.

Show up and Don’t Cheat
It should go without saying, but Mickey Brazeal a professor at Roosevelt University says that the majority of the students who fail either cheat or don’t show up to the class. ‘nuff said.

Don’t get fooled by Hollywood’s idea of college
Animal house was a good movie. Since it was made there have been about a hundred imitators that I would argue are less good. They portray college as an unending binge of drinking and sex. I will happily concede that in college, generally speaking, there is some sex and some drinking. But that is a tiny sliver of the total experience.

This, whether or not some of you believe it, is great news. College is many things: the social scene, the extra curriculars, the community and the study. It’s all built with the student in mind.

In the professional world the things that people do are for some purpose other than the employee If you work at a paper it’s to sell the ads or make the content that the readers read, if you work at a bakery you’re engaged in trying to create and sell the goods that the bakery bakes. In college those classes are for you, the student. They are created with the student in mind. The resources, faculty, and peer group created is for the student her or himself. So if you have the chance take advantage of them.

You only get four years… or six… or eight

North and Clark Lives on

Dear Reader,

There is no more tiresome blog post than the apology for a long layoff so I will be brief. Been a long time, but I loved this content and the people who followed this website too much to kill it in the year since I last wrote or recorded anything for it.

In the interim I studied moms for a consulting group, bought a lot of allergin free chocolate and gained about twenty pounds.  All of that was fun but it is over now.

I am back to writing full time, I have a job as a reporter for Extra Newspaper in Chicago and continue to write for other publications.  I am a gun for hire.  If you got something you need wrote I is your man.  Enough update, brevity was promised.

10 Articles I Have Recently Published or Will Publish in the Next Few Weeks

Articles I have Written

Extra Newspaper:

Vamanos: The St. Louis City Museum (A Strange and Beautiful Place)

Vamanos: Tequila Home of Tequila

Movie Review: Dawn

Extra Goes inside Chicago’s Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2)

Interview: Yehudi Mercado (Every Pizza boy has a Story)

Rag Bag Mag:

Top 5 Super Powers for Staying Warm

Spectacles

Upcoming Articles

Interview with Randy Mosher

Vamanos: Minor League Baseball

Living on the boarder (Hammond Indiana)

Chicago on the Cheap 10 Great Galleries to See Free

Also…

We’re getting the band back together

Live Music

David Bowie Tribute July 22

H For Hombre Live at Phyllis Musical Inn July 29

I was out of work a long time.

Not totally out of work, I always had a little work but I was most of the way out of work most of the time.  This makes me either a good person to talk to about finding a job or a horrible one. If I am a good source of advice, it’s because I tried a lot of things that didn’t work.  I have first-hand experience with a lot of failed attempts at getting a job, and practical knowledge of how looking for a job can lead to loss of motivation, damaged ego and malaise.  If I am horrible on this it’s because till recently I didn’t have any success worth talking about.

But, good or bad, my advice is this: if you’re having trouble finding a job, try to find some meaningful work.

It might sound as if I’m putting the cart before the horse.  If you’re having trouble finding a job, how are you going to find work that is meaningful?  I think people (including me) get confused by vocabulary here and forget that there is a difference between having a job and having work.

Right now it is tough to find a job.  10% of the population is unemployed, more are underemployed (working less than they’d like) yet more have given up looking for work are counted as “retired.”  It may be cold comfort but if you are unemployed/underemployed/on furlough/forced into retirement, you are in good company.  That’s the bad news.

The good news is there’s plenty of work.  Even in the best of times, companies, schools and governments have work that they can’t get to, that can’t be made a priority or that they just don’t have enough staff for.  There is always work to do.  Now, in a recession, when companies are laying off people and asking fewer people to take care of more responsibilities there is more work than usual.  Companies can try all they want to work more efficiently but, somewhere along the line, there’s work not getting done.

This is where poor schlubs like me (and at some point probably you, too) come in.

The unemployed, underemployed, etc. do the boring repetitive, unrewarding and thankless work of trying to find a job for free.  They are/I was stuck doing that work for free until I could find some job that would pay me to work for money. Unless.. They make their own work by looking for something meaningful to do, whether or not it pays.

This idea was introduced to me by Brooke Allen, the man who started a newsletter called “No Shortage of Work.”  His ideas helped me in two different and important ways.  First, it gave me  something to do with my time besides pining for jobs I didn’t really want and waiting for rejections that felt inevitable.   The importance of this cannot be understated.  People who are out of work often report depression, say that they spend less than two hours a day actually looking for jobs and end up beating themselves up about the work they are not doing.  Second, it helped me in a more concrete way, by finding meaningful work I was able to gain experience, expand my connections and learn new skills.

There are a lot of ways to approach the search for meaningful work.  I didn’t figure out how I wanted to do it right away, but one of the first things I did was start devoting more time to this blog.  I was often asked if I was blogging to make money but, after a little time dealing with ads and reading a lot of material from pro blogging gurus, it didn’t seem to be a feasible option for me.  Even when it was dealing with things like graffiti or emerald mines, I felt this blog was helping me professionally.

Whatever I blogged, I was always learning about:

• Writing
• Learning To build and manage a website
• Making Connections with bloggers, readers and interviewees

It also lead me to meaningful work elsewhere: writing for Site Sketch, lecturing on social media, and creating media for others (like Try for Dry and the box project you will see in an upcoming post)

But I also worked for free elsewhere when I could.  Fundraising for the Neofuturists, and working on social media promotion for Marketing to Moms.  And this does not include the people I tried to work for where it didn’t work out or I couldn’t spare the time ( like the Witzig Group or enie Marketing)

Anyway, for a lazy bum with no job I actually worked a lot.  Sometimes, it was for a little money but usually for no money.  But not for nothing, because meaningful work is valuable. Experience means learning skills and honing talents, having colleagues means your connections and professional network is growing even if you’re not a schmoozer.

It took me some time to get the hang of working for free and more time to get good at it, but once I stated I found myself happier, more engaged, making more money (though still not very much) and eventually choosing between multiple offers for full-time employment.

The job I have now is a place where I originally worked for free.

It is important to note, I am not at a happy ending. I am too young and scattered to be thinking about endings. But, in the 6 months after my conversation with Brook Allen I started on a path toward meaningful work that has been a happy beginning.

I have started accomplishing the goals on my list, but I am going about it in all wrong order.  Last week,  I got a job (with these fine people).  An honest to goodness full time non-freelance job.

I got the job by working for free (with these fine people) but that is tomorrow’s post.

This checks a big one off my to do list.  I have been under employed for a long time, longer than I ever wanted to be, and a regular pay check is a welcome change. Sadly, this shifts my priorities and I will not be able to attend to this blog the way I once did. Still, I love this blog, I remember the goals I set and I have no wish to let it starve to death from in attention.  I know that no post is more boring than an apology for not posting more often (the irony of complaining about return to blogging posts in a return to blogging post is not beyond me).

There will be a post tomorrow.  North and Clark lives on.

I recently gave a friend some advice that I realized I wasn’t following myself.

I suggested that he start a writer’s journal. I used to keep one when I was
in a creative writing class in high school. I liked it
and it was helpful at the time, so I told him he ought to do the same.  The
point of the journal is to hold onto interesting thoughts
or observations that a writer might use later.  My friend is thinking
of writing a novel but I thought the idea ought to be useful to me as a
blogger.

Things that should go in to a writer¹s journal include, but are not limited
to:

• Metaphors and similes
• Pretty turns of phrase
• A starting idea for a creative project
• Half-formed ideas
• Observations (especially weird things people are doing on the bus)
• Things that make you laugh
• Anything that could go in a post, article or story somewhere down the line

The good news is I like my writer’s journal. I like feeling that
observations and ideas are not lost.  The bad news is, so far I haven’t
used anything from my writers journal in my own writing. Maybe I need
to get in the groove, maybe it is not going to be useful to me in the
short term but I can’t let these ideas go to waste.  So I’m dumping
‘em off on you.  I figure my audience includes a lot of writers bloggers and
all around creatives. Maybe something here can be grist for
your mill.

Either way they are yours, use them as you see fit:

• A sliding door made out of glass is called a “doorwall” in Wisconsin
• It would be funny if a consultant had to advise in somewhere absurd: Hell, A child¹s imagination, the mind of a dog.
• Trains are associated with Christmas even thought they have nothing to do with Christmas
• Bad Acting can often be seen in: School Plays, Pornography, Action
• Movies and Infomercials
• The Loudness of Dress shoes
• Small man, big hair, wide eyes (some dude at my buddies apt)
• Women sitting alone in the window of a Thai restaurant is a visual story.  No date. Wine glass has one sip left in it. Typing away at her smart phone.

There you go world, if you can use ‘em you can have ‘em.

Whether we conform to them or rebel against them we’re all, in some ways, defined by our commitments. Family, work, and rent are some of the basic ones, but there are millions. Generally people think of commitments defining them in a negative way, living for the weekend, being tied to a horrible mortgage or job.

But, commitment can also be a source of success pride and fulfillment. Think of your greatest accomplishments, would they have been possible without what you have committed to? It is hard to adjust to unemployment, retirement, or single life, not only because we miss some financial support or companionship, but also because we are partly defined by what it is we commit to.

I am enthusiastic about the idea of identity and the notion that who you are should be fluid. But some responsibilities limit the expression of identity. There are some clothes that are not appropriate for jobs. Some attitudes that are unhelpful in the presence of family. We have to in conforming to any responsibility suppress some part of ourselves, and its only natural that we should look for a healthy opportunity to let that out. It was with this in mind that I embarked upon a mustache weekend.

I wouldn’t wear a mustache to an interview. I am no mustache man. My uncle Chris might be, I am not. But, for a break on a weekend its nice to look different, to be different then the person you are most of the time. It’s not dishonest it’s a break and a new approach, I enjoyed it.

But, tomorrow I’ll be happy to be clean shaven again.

The Economist recently did an interview with record executive Roger Faxon (Head of EMI music publishing), it fascinated me and it got me thinking about the future of music.

Music is not an object

For years music has been made into an object.  There was a time when we wanted music to be an object–like a CD.  Some people still do want that.  But music is not an object and that makes it hard to make a living from it.

There was a time before anyone had this wrong-headed idea that music was an object.   “(In the past) You couldn’t take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that’s not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience” (David Byrne).

The record, CD or tape have had their day, and while they continue to exist, their importance is going to shrink and shrink. “The object is not the thing people pay attention to, it’s the actual underlying music that they pay attention to.” (Roger Faxon).

Where does that leave the Record Industry and Music Business

The digital download has yet to save the music industry and I don’t think it will.  The record industries profits are still 80% from CDs 20% downloads and everything else.  But, that 80% is coming out of a smaller and smaller pie.

The problem is that if we can access music digitally, and often for free, why buy it?  “Any music that I want to listen to I can listen to at any time, (or at least that is the perception) and that makes me less likely to buy it.” (Roger Faxon)

Maybe there are other ways for record companies to make money, maybe there aren’t.  But, there is a need for what record companies did and still do.

“Somebody has to shine the spotlight on somebody” (Roger Faxon).

To some extent, new media fills that void.  People exchange information through social media and learn so much about the media they consume online.  My friends often discover music through sites like Lala, Spotify or Pandora. These avenues did not exist a couple of years ago.  That said, blogs, myspace and a couple of music sites cannot stand in for what a record label does, any more than iTunes can stand in for record stores.  They might help but they aren’t a complete solution to the problem of marketing a band.

I don’t have a solution either, but if you want me to feature your band on this site your welcome to write me an email.

Good News for the Artists

Many of the costs associated with making music have gone down.  Digital distribution is essentially free and recording costs have come down in recent years.

This is not without problems. While these pieces of music-making have been liberated for individual artists,  the artist’s responsibilities have swelled.  Deciding how to distribute music was the responsibility of a label.  Now, it’s up to the artist how much to partner with outside entities to produce, and distribute music.

The Better News

The music industry is no more music, than music is an object.  Though the industry struggles, it doesn’t mean that artists must do the same.  Musicians may have supported themselves by selling records, but that isn’t all they do.

The music listener isn’t going down with the ship either.  While we may lose permanence and tangibility in the form of a record, that doesn’t mean that there is less music or less engagement with music.  The history of listening to music didn’t end with the record, or the download, and it won’t end here.

The UEFA Champions League, M-1, the UFC, and the WEC are all in the midst of, just finished with or about to conduct major events, and its giving me a peculiar type of sports fantasy.

An International Soccer Primer for the U. S. Sports Fan

In the U.S. we are used to a one sport one league system.  For Basketball there is the NBA, for baseball there is the MLB, for Football there is the NFL, the list goes on.  There are other leagues that play these sports both foreign and domestic but they are little brothers — minor, or development leagues.  There may be players in European basketball leagues or Japanese baseball leagues who could play in the principle American league now or will one day play in that league but the leagues taken as a whole do not have the same talent as the major leagues.

Soccer operates under a different paradigm in soccer there are so many different countries with the desire to watch and a history of supporting club teams that rather than form into one organization like the NBA each country has its own league.  While players may come from all over the world to play each country has its own league with its own championship. Just as the Cubs players are not all from the U.S. many player on Manchester United are not from the U.K. Internally these leagues function similarly to American leagues the difference is in their cooperation.

Club teams in European soccer leagues (and soccer leagues around the world) compete against each other every year in tournaments. These games are not exhibition games but actual championships with prestige and serious monetary consequences for the football clubs.  In Europe where the best talent is divided between many leagues the clubs find a way to have the best compete with the best.

Now Let’s Turn Our attention to Mixed Martial Arts

In its history there have been a number of different promotion agencies associated with mixed martial arts.  They have had different rules different fighters and covered different parts of the world.  Right now the dominant league (in terms of reputation, number of fighters and quality of product) is the UFC. Still, many Mixed Martial Arts fighters are not under contract with the UFC and fight for different promotion agency.  Notably Fedor Emelianenko (considered one of the best fighters in the history of the sport) fights with M-1 Strikeforce.

Many fight fans hope that the UFC will gain such dominance of the sport that they will become like the NFL and rival leagues will be unsuccessful, or simply become feeder leagues. The league has hosted a number of great fights, and is developing a good reputation by putting together regular and high quality events.  For now, however, the UFC lacks a monopoly on Mixed Martial Arts, and in some cases the best don’t all belong to the UFC.  For the fan this means the best don’t always fight the best.

The European Solution

Why not host a tournament of Champions?

To me this solution seems like it is tailor made for MMA and it has a precedent in the world of mixed martial arts. Take eight fighters from as many weight classes as you like and seed them to compete in a two day tournament.  These fighters wouldn’t have to sign with the UFC, Strikeforce, Dream or anyone else they would just be invited to participate in an event where they would be able to fight the very best in the world.

This Tournament like the UEFA Champions League would be overseen by representatives from each of the organizations involved.  It would not effect the title or championships of the respective leagues, it would only give them another bigger better stage to compete on. In Europe clubs dream of the chance to compete against the best in the UEFA Cup there is no reason that a similar tournament couldn’t entice fighters. Its heartbreaking the Fedor doesn’t fight the best heavey weights in the world.  Its also a shame that many of the greatest fighters in Japan never get to face off against their counterparts in the states. This tournament could fix that.

The Ugly Truth

Unlike European Club soccer leagues MMA leagues are young.  They are probably too new and too unsure of their own product and long term viability to host something like a Champion’s League.  But, if they do I will be the first one to tune in…

Especially if it’s not on pay-per-view…

And that’s another thing…