At the end of August, just in time for spooky season, legendary composer, writer, director and somewhat newly minted touring musician, John Carpenter released a new single, Skeleton, on Sacred Bones Records. This was Carpenters first new music since returning to the Halloween franchise to score 2018’s Halloween and his first new non-film release since the stellar 2015/16 full lengths Lost Themes I and Lost Themes II. Skeleton was released with the B-side Unclean Spirit

Skeleton is classic John Carpenter, but departs a bit from his soundtrack work. The first layer introduced is a driving 4/4 sequence with just enough…

For a long time, I’ve been sort of obsessed with the career of Jim Gordon. In music, the studio system of the twentieth century created a very interesting scenario wherein certain session musicians seemed to appear on every hit song of their time. In LA, there was Carol Kaye, James Burton and Hal Blaine. There were a few standout session musicians who were also successful solo musicians (the Leon Russells, Billy Prestons and and Glen Campbells). And there were a few players who were members of successful bands (Plastic Ono Band and Manfred Mann member, Klaus Voormann, pretty much everyone…

I initially posted this as a series of Instagram stories, which people found surprisingly entertaining given the nerdiness of the subject matter. I think maybe my total lack of expertise made it more fun and easier to understand. So, a disclaimer: this exercise is for fun and brain-stretching only. Don’t take it as hard science, and please forgive any technical inaccuracies.

Dimensions

When we talk about a dimension, what we are really talking about is a degree of freedom, or an axis.

A point has no dimensions. It exists at one, fixed spacetime coordinate and has no variable or degree-of-freedom.

The…

You Just Got Outfoxed By A Fox

Full disclosure: I’ve been writing this post for about 3 years. I keep going back, and editing a few words, reorganizing some sections, rethinking an analogy or two, worrying about how it might be viewed, generally procrastinating and questioning whether it’s my place to chime in on clinical depression. I’m not an expert, I’m miles and miles from a medical professional. I definitely use a lot of improper terms and jumbled context.

But fuck it.

After 40 years on the front lines in my personal life, as a family member, as a significant other, as a BFF, in crews, on…

I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to do what Michael Stipe would do in any given situation. I always thought that practice would ultimately be expressed in music…or in some more traditional medium. But the fact is, I’ve been most successful in building social media tools…I’ve made my living in social…so here we are. Here TF we are.

Building a more perfect, more human social media platform would be unbelievably easy. Seriously. That’s not a joke. A couple of competent professionals could do it in a weekend. What would be difficult is this: A human-first social network…

I heard an interesting argument this week explaining that foreign powers/trolls/Trump/Fox News etc aren’t gaslighting the American far right, not because they aren’t trying, but because they don’t need to. The American far right long ago diverted from mainstream reality, and they did so on their own accord.

*note: below I use “American far right” and “American white supremacists” interchangeably. Because they are interchangeable. And fuck those guys.

Basically the argument was that American white supremacists were so traumatized, and felt so personally victimized by Barack Obama’s election…it so SHATTERED their world…that, in order to preserve their perceptions of the…

So I just finished writing this shortcourse for Flyr. Thought I’d post it here as well bc I got that Pippen reach (if Pippen was 3'4"). Long before there was cool technology like Flyr, this is exactly how I started my career: with free tools, no budget, no contacts and way too much ambition 😂

Start Making Money as a Social Video Creator: A Flyr Crash Course

Making money with Flyr is incredibly easy if you have the right tools and a little hustle. …

Preface:

OK let’s start here: I’m no expert. I’m a guy who makes videos for a living. But I do live in a neighborhood where there are shootings. I have seen people shot and killed. I have had a gun pointed at me (TLDR I was like 12 and I jumped behind a transformer box). I have had people try to break into my house at 3 AM. I have slapped up more than one mugger. I have been caught in a riot, and a crowd surge and a road rage incident, and I have been in the vicinity of two…