Posts Tagged ‘944’

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 been a bit of a challenge recently to balance my journalistic and creative endeavors. Between trying to break into Hollywood (remind me to tell you about that later), fielding increasing assignment requests from publication editors (not complaining, keep ‘em coming!), putting out a twice-weekly webcomic, launching a nascent publishing company (again) and playing drums in a kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll band (as well as running the PR and management), I sometimes get a little overwhelmed. Of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I could use more than 24 hours in each day.

My latest story for 944 magazine dropped last week in its Las Vegas edition, a profile of Vegas-based artist Enrique Nevarez. I didn’t include the cover in this post as I usually do, because for some reason the cover artwork of the copy I picked up is different than the one 944.com has posted. Anyway, you can read the story online as well, of course, and wonder to yourself, as Enrique did to me, why his photo was given the Glamour airbrush treatment. I just took on another, lengthier assignment for the magazine’s next issue, so stay tuned for more on that soon.

It’s been almost a year since I last wrote for 944 magazine (Las Vegas edition). There was no particular reason for this dry spell other than 944‘s editors stopped assigning me stories and I stopped pitching to them. Plus, much like the rest of the magazine industry, 944‘s freelance budgets tightened up (not as much as some others). But a month or two back, I was given an assignment out of the blue by 944 to do a profile of Ryen McPherson, who co-runs the video production company Shoot to Kill Media. However, you might be more familiar with his earliest filmed work: Bumfights.

Yeah, I had to interview the Bumfights guy. If you don’t know the story, let me sum it up: Teenagers from San Diego get bums to fight each other on film in SD and Las Vegas. Make it into DVD. Becomes a cult sensation and target of moral and legal detractors. McPherson and pals sell off rights to Bumfights but still end up in court, doing a short stint in jail after some bureaucratic confusion over community service time.

By all reports I could find, McPherson was an anti-establishment, anti-internet maverick who did time for filming homeless men beating the hell out of each other. As you might expect, I was a little anxious about our meeting. But the Ryen McPherson I found at a Starbucks at Sahara Avenue and Maryland Parkway was a calm, reflective, tattooed 26-year-old, passionate about music and film and dedicated to producing the highest quality product possible. He excitedly showed me video clips on his Macbook. He freely admitted the Bumfights ordeal was a folly of youth but an education experience. And he revealed his fiercest ambition is to direct music videos — just for the love of the medium.

You can read the full article (“Killer View”) here, though because of 944‘s limited space, you miss some of the context I provided above. Shoot to Kill just finished a new music video for local band Lydia Vance’s song “Again Tomorrow.” Check it out at Shoot to Kill’s website (click on the song title). It’s both funny and shocking, but overall entertaining. And the music ain’t so bad, either.

Oh, I’m also still writing about local music for the Las Vegas Weekly. My last article, on electrocore band This Romantic Tragedy, ran a few issues back, and I should have a couple more stories in next week’s issue. Also: The Utopian webcomic is back from hiatus. In case you weren’t keeping track. And I have another 944 deadline this week. So things are good. Keep your eyes peeled.