Author Archives: admin

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E-book, Live

The e-book I’ve been working on with the St. Louis Beacon is available now, for use on Kindles, Kindle apps and iPads.

It’s available at Amazon here.

Jarred Gastreich shot a bit of video for the project.

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KDHX Fall Membership Drive

A full week of pitching ahead. Please put a couple dimes together for your pal, if you don’t mind.

Friday, 10/4: Friday Afternoon Show, 2-4 p.m.; myself and Andy Coco for two hours of rock music
Friday, 10/4: Blues in the Night, 5-7 p.m.; sitting out an hour, then participating for two with Art Dwyer
Monday, 10/7: Talk Block, 8-11 p.m.; running the board and dropping in pitches over five shows, yikes!
Wednesday, 10/9: Juxtaposition, 7-9 p.m.; sitting in with Rob Levy, on one of the station’s longest-running shows
Friday, 10/11: Friday Afternoon Show, 2-4 p.m.; more rock music, this time with Kate of Beep Beep Boop Boop
Friday, 10/11: Blues in the Night, 5-7 p.m.; pitching with Art Dwyer over the second and third hours of BitN

I should also note that the Friday Afternoon Show’s been a joy to do for the past five weeks. The show’s slated to cease with the second week of pledge drive. I’ve written about being back on-air with a weekly (if temporary) slot for the October issue of Eleven magazine, available on newsstands any day now.

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Five Weeks on KDHX: Fridays, 2-4 PM

Along with some other programming shifts, Bob Reuter’s untimely passing has opened up his longtime Friday afternoon shift. When a temporary hosts was requested, I hopped on the opportunity and look forward to helming the “Friday Afternoon Show” for a short-term run. It’ll air through September on Fridays, from 2-4 CST on 88.1 fm or kdhx.org.

First playlist is up here.

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Accidental Acting: Giving & Receiving

There’s something unsettling about seeing your image on a legit movie screen. It’s happened to me more times than I’d have a right to expect. Though, in reality, I don’t expect to be on a movie screen that often. It sorta keeps happening, though.

I know directors, writers, other creators of film and video projects. This leads to the occasional question of whether I’ll help out. And sometimes that means leaving the comfortable side of camera, working in a context in which I have zero training. That’s maybe not totally true. For a chunk of the mid-’00s, I took a fair bit of improv classwork, some of it taught by the late George Malich, under the auspices of the Improv Trick. (Acting for the screen, though? Nope. Never, not ever.)

On Sunday, July 14th, at 7:15, I’ll appear in a movie with George, sharing a scene, or two, along the way. The film’s called “Go South for Animal Index,” and it’s playing the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase at the Tivoli. Having worked on the project for almost two years, it was interesting enough to see short clips emerge, sent via a hidden YouTube page. To see the whole thing, in rough-cut form, just a few weeks back was a wholly different experience; best of all was watching the film in a tricked-out, South Side garage with other members of the cast and crew. A friendly audience, for sure.

As the film’s segmented into several dozen “chapters,” bit of story backed by a specific clip of music, I’d seen a number of the individual chapters over the past half-year. They looked great, Chris King’s direction honed by the fine editing of Dan Cross; all of that imagery culled from a half-dozen different camera operators, with their own distinct eye. But to see them all linked together, in long-form play? Wow. A totally unique and even slightly-jarring experience, indeed. And, let’s be honest: no matter how much I wanted to watch the film dispassionately, as a larger, collaborative piece, every time I popped into a scene, the tension level in my brain jumped a notch. But, to use the classic “car crash” analogy, I couldn’t look away. Though I wanted to. So conflicted!

At a later point in the shooting process, I asked for my character to be phased out. I was working on another, weekend-intensive video project at the time and I needed some mental space cleared. Without giving away anything essential, King came up with an interesting compromise. It was fun to shoot. And that one final scene (shot by Cross) is one I liked watching. In public. With other, friendly people around. Maybe I’ll see you at the next showing, the “real” one, the one coming up pretty quickly.

Or perhaps you’ll come out to the Showcase on the next day. On Monday, July 15 at 5:00 p.m., an 85-minute program at The Tivoli will be dedicated to Documentary Shorts. I didn’t create a doc for this event, though three mockumentary pieces that I produced will show. The three are all related to beer, or bar culture in St. Louis. The cast was largely assembled through my work at The Royale Food & Spirits, where a willing group of people can usually be drummed up for this creative project, or that.

On that Monday, three offerings from the web series Half Order Fried Rice will screen alongside a number of other, short offerings. The assumption is that most of the rest will be true docs, slice-of-life looks at St. Louis by-and-for St. Louisans. It’ll be fun to watch those, though, once again, I’ll be sweating bullets when the HOFR pieces screen. The bits are funny, at least in my mind, largely improv’ed by the cast, based on experiences and characters that I dreamed up as part of alternate, interlocking version of St. Louis. If the funny bits fall flat, or the serious bits get laughs… well, welcome to show business.

There’s a lot of creativity in the St. Louis community, with of folks involved in efforts on amateur basis. And a lot of that unpaid energy’s directed into film and video projects, of all sizes, scopes, angles and intents. That I get to flit through this particular sub-community a bit is still amusing to me. And often gratifying.

If you go to the Showcase and I pop up onscreen, based on either side of the camera, please laugh when you should. And don’t when you shouldn’t. Please?

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Kale Soup Recipe

Kale soup recipe; all measurements exact. Put water in a li’l pot. Add diced onions and start the warming knob. Splash in a couple swigs of fish sauce, a half-pour of honey, a goodly dollop of miso and a smidgen of olive oil. At low boil, add a batch of chopped kale and some bonito sprinkles. Stir occasionally, until kale is all shriveled. Only then, crack in one egg, stirring vigorously for one minute. Stop the warming knob, as you are done. Feeds one. Eat daily, until you can’t eat it anymore. Enjoy.

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Graf x Seven

(Hate words? Go straight to the pics. Or read. As you wish.)

1. Stressed out from grading, paper proofing, writing and other responsibilities, I broke today down into many parts. Intense work. Followed by three hours of riding around, punching a hole in the ozone and taking pictures. Then, several more hours of paperwork. And, now, goofing around on this machine in the dead of night.

2. On the earlier drive, I hit some familiar haunts: East Saint’s downtown and side streets, South City alleyways, the usual. And I hit some familiar topics. Found a Rat Fag. Located a few arrows and red doors, artificial markers that I use to keep my eye focused. Somewhere along the way, I figured (again) that I probably take too many shots of the same stuff. “Misguided dedication,” I texted out, while perched on a dead-end road in East Saint, watching a traffic-jammed 55/70 slowly pass; there, I took a pic of three LD graf writings on the back of long-gone business. But in more time, I realized that these kinds of photo days are really enjoyable to me. They don’t have to pass anyone’s else’s fun test. In fact, dredging up shots of graf’s been a hobby for a bit now. And wasn’t that sky beautiful?

3. Re: graf, I’ve been asking, if not begging my media contacts for someone in town to let me do a long-form, or long-range bit of reporting on graf. I know some hobbyists, past and present. And people who’ve had their buildings touched-up. And civic types who hate it. And art gallery types who’ll incorporate the work into shows. To the credit of stlmag.com, I’ve been allowed to wet my beak on the topic via the Culture blog (nee Look/Listen). It appears that it’s a topic that draws some eyeballs, as pieces on the USS Inaugural and Rat Fag were among the top-five blog items on that site last year. Again, I’m appreciative of the smaller pieces, but I wanna take the big bite, y’know?

4. And here’s where I get confused by how to independently fund self-inspired journalism. Let’s say you’re an individual writer. You want to pursue a larger story, or thread of stories. You do the legwork, then get polite “no’s” from queries, or no responses, at all. What then? A few years back, I tried to raise money to literally live as a solo St. Louis journalist, just pre-Kickstarter/etc. Raised a few bucks that way, but I could never shake the feeling that I was out on the corner, with a tall tale about needing to get to Dellwood on the bus. But if nobody’s buying the pieces…?

5. Oh, so there’s a name going up on walls all over right now: 2buck Brrr (or so I’m reading it; my bad if it’s Brrr 2buck, or a variant that my eyes aren’t reading). I found four pieces yesterday, and assumedly part of an unfinished fifth. The last of the batch were 8720136466_a517a2898efound on the walls of Jeff Lockheed’s abode. Now, Jeff’s done more for public art in town than almost anyone; his reputation for building out the Venice Cafe as a piece of public art, for all to enjoy, is a given. For someone to tag his house? That’s like an altar boy whizzing on the front steps of the rectory. Damn. Brassy. Well, as you see, Jeff’s responded with his own messages, so he doesn’t need me to take up the cause.

6. This wasn’t a total surprise, though, as Jefferson’s been getting lit up lately, with abandoned buildings and rehabs, hydrants and power poles all getting touched of late, with a real emphasis of activity between Gravois and Arsenal. That’s the kind of thing I’d love to tackle, from a multi-faceted angle, talking to all the interested stakeholders; and, yeah, if it meant a midnight run, or two, with the perps, I ain’t scurred; actually, I’d look forward to the conversations. (Of course, now that this is floated out into the public space, I can see a young writer RFT ripping off a “STL’s Top 10 Douchiest Tags” photo spread in the next week. If that happens, oh my. Someone’s house is gonna tagged, alright.)

7. Lastly, things get weird. Before dropping by, yes, the Venice Cafe, I popped into the world-famous Shell station at Lemp and Arsenal, only there to buy a Bob Marley’s Mellow Mood and an Evening-Whirl. Glancing at the Whirl inside the Venice, I notice that on page 4A of this week’s issue, managing editor Brian Ireland’s got a piece called “City Hall’s Petticoat Junction Mentality: Needs More Graffiti…”, an op/ed that essentially argues that the town should be painted liberally. This is a POV that’ll surely get some $1.50 Whirl’s moving off the stands. And it might also be a sign that I should be pitching the Whirl on stories, like, tomorrow.

The Whirl’s a buck-fifty. Yesterday’s pictures are free.