Archive for October, 2009

Curt Franklin and Chris Haley — I wouldn’t call ‘em dear friends, but I would call ‘em internet acquaintances (I’d also call them webcomicdom’s non-couple power couple) — create one of the most clever, well-written, ably-drawn, entertaining webcomics on the ol’ interwebs. It’s called Let’s Be Friends Again, and it features, um, cartoon, Bizarro-world versions of Curt and Chris talking about comics. Sometimes it features parodies of comics. And movies. Or cartoons. But mostly it’s just Curt and Chris being all … them.

Apparently, at one point in the recent past — though not that I remember — I said something vaguely amusing about the guys’ strip. So what do I find on the back cover of Let’s Be Friends Again‘s first print collection, Under Pressure, but this:

Yep. If you’re going to buy this 64-page book, don’t do it because it’s chock full of four-color fun and creator commentary. Do it because you are a Pj Perez completist, and must have every piece of dead tree bark upon which my name appears.

When I was approached — almost last-minute — by the editor of 944 Las Vegas to contribute to this month’s Art & Architecture issue of the monthly lifestyle magazine, I was genuinely excited about the assignment, as those two subjects are among my favorite. The plan was to profile four or five emerging architects and designers and get a dialog going about their reasons for practicing in Vegas, their thoughts on architectural design here, etc.

As time was limited — I had three days to contact all four subjects, conduct interviews and turn in the story — I developed a standard set of questions to ask each person, and gathered the responses via e-mail. When I started putting the story together, I wanted to make it read like a round table discussion, as if the five of us were sitting in a room, talking about one topic at a time. I wrote a 250-word intro giving a little background on the state of development in Sin City, and then wove together the edited responses into a vague narrative. Nothing so complex as the oral history of Maryland Parkway from a few years ago, but something along those lines.

Well, the story, “Deconstructing Vegas,” is now available for public consumption, starting on page 75 of the October issue, or easily found by clicking here. And … it’s not exactly what I turned in. The interviews were split back to one person at a time, rearranged to one-page mini-profiles of each subject. The intro copy was killed. I understand why (I’ve had to make similar editorial decisions for aesthetic reasons), and it still looks great, as the story is enhanced with terrific portraits shot by my good pal Ryan Reason. But I could have saved myself an extra hour or two not carefully piecing together the interviews and just leaving them sort-of as-is. Ah, such is the life of a freelance knucklehead.

It must be October again, because my Google Calendar is reminding me I have a flight to catch to Orlando, Fla. on Wednesday morning. In what appears to be developing into an annual tradition, Sara and I are heading out to the State That F*cked Our Nation For Four More Years for a friend’s wedding, some R&R, and a reminder of why I don’t live in Florida:

Yes, it will be 94 degrees on Wednesday when we arrive and likely raining. If not, it will be 85 percent humid. Either way, it will be hot. And it will be wet. And neither in a good way.

But, all that being said, I’m looking forward to getting away for a few days. It’s been a busy month around these parts, and I worked extra hard the last week to get caught up for this trip. While a portion of the excursion will be spent in Melbourne Beach for wedding-related activities, the rest will be just chilling in O-Town, with no set plans. Well, except for a meet-up with Alert Nerd supreme Matt Springer. That should be fun.

Other than that, there will be the usual Utopian updates on Wednesday and Friday this week, a few CD reviews in the Las Vegas Weekly on Thursday, and I believe the October issue of 944 drops as well, featuring my roundtable discussion with four hot local architects. Keep your eyes open, and don’t break anything while I’m gone.

It must be October again, because my Google Calendar is reminding me I have a flight to catch to Orlando, Fla. on Wednesday morning. In what appears to be developing into an annual tradition, Sara and I are heading out to the State That F*cked Our Nation For Four More Years for a friend’s wedding, some R&R, and a reminder of why I don’t live in Florida:

Yes, it will be 94 degrees on Wednesday when we arrive and likely raining. If not, it will be 85 percent humid. Either way, it will be hot. And it will be wet. And neither in a good way.

But, all that being said, I’m looking forward to getting away for a few days. It’s been a busy month around these parts, and I worked extra hard the last week to get caught up for this trip. While a portion of the excursion will be spent in Melbourne Beach for wedding-related activities, the rest will be just chilling in O-Town, with no set plans. Well, except for a meet-up with Alert Nerd supreme Matt Springer. That should be fun.

Other than that, there will be the usual Utopian updates on Wednesday and Friday this week, a few CD reviews in the Las Vegas Weekly on Thursday, and I believe the October issue of 944 drops as well, featuring my roundtable discussion with four hot local architects. Keep your eyes open, and don’t break anything while I’m gone.

It’s Thursday, and that means the new issue of Las Vegas Weekly has hit the racks around Vegas (and the ol’ intertubes). It looks like my article about Hal Savar’s Acoustic Soul is in there.  This was another situation where I had to cut a tremendous amount of meat from the story.

The piece was originally pitched as “an acoustic cover band’s struggle to break itself away from the ghetto pigeonhole of coverbandland.” But after starting work on the story, I realized it would never fit into 500 words. Hell, I couldn’t fit a profile of the band framed around one night’s show into 500 words. I had to leave out the story of the man who tipped the band $100 to stop playing Johnny Cash, as well as Hal’s origin story of the song veto process. And everything else: The band’s origins, more comments from the audience, etc.

This happens quite a lot. I did a 20-minute interview with Swedish indie-pop singer Lykke Li just to get one quote for a Coachella preview I wrote for Six Degrees, and never did manage to re-sell the rest of the interview. I probably have hundreds of pages of similarly unused interview notes with bands, artists, writers, architects and other subjects collected from these 15 years in journalism. One day I need to transcribe and organize these scraps and create a comprehensive archive. Who knows? Maybe someone will actually want to read them.

In other journalistic news, I’ve started getting back on track (somewhat) with my fine arts coverage at Examiner.com. If you haven’t subscribed yet, I highly recommend doing so if you have any interest in Las Vegas-spawned arts. If not, um … forget it, I guess.

It’s Thursday, and that means the new issue of Las Vegas Weekly has hit the racks around Vegas (and the ol’ intertubes). It looks like my article about Hal Savar’s Acoustic Soul is in there.  This was another situation where I had to cut a tremendous amount of meat from the story.

The piece was originally pitched as “an acoustic cover band’s struggle to break itself away from the ghetto pigeonhole of coverbandland.” But after starting work on the story, I realized it would never fit into 500 words. Hell, I couldn’t fit a profile of the band framed around one night’s show into 500 words. I had to leave out the story of the man who tipped the band $100 to stop playing Johnny Cash, as well as Hal’s origin story of the song veto process. And everything else: The band’s origins, more comments from the audience, etc.

This happens quite a lot. I did a 20-minute interview with Swedish indie-pop singer Lykke Li just to get one quote for a Coachella preview I wrote for Six Degrees, and never did manage to re-sell the rest of the interview. I probably have hundreds of pages of similarly unused interview notes with bands, artists, writers, architects and other subjects collected from these 15 years in journalism. One day I need to transcribe and organize these scraps and create a comprehensive archive. Who knows? Maybe someone will actually want to read them.

In other journalistic news, I’ve started getting back on track (somewhat) with my fine arts coverage at Examiner.com. If you haven’t subscribed yet, I highly recommend doing so if you have any interest in Las Vegas-spawned arts. If not, um … forget it, I guess.