I have always been a junkie for some good music. I have been since I was a kid. There is nothing in my life that that I have spent more time thinking about and exposing myself to. The way that you discover a band, or a particular song, can do a lot for how you feel about it. For instance: When I was 14 my friend Christy Miles scooped me up and brought me to one of my first punk shows. I hadn’t heard of Samiam before but I was stoked like they were my favorite band. I bought a t-shirt and threw it on stage in between songs and told Jason to sign it. He took a sharpie and wrote “BOB” – with quotes – showed the crowd and threw it back at me. Ever since then, the album Soar has been one of the longest records I’ve kept close. Unfortunately every album that they released after that was horseshit and they stopped playing their old songs at shows.

The point is that the way I discover music is part of what makes that music important to me. When you’re sharing music with your friends, if you’re anything like me, it’s critically important how that music is presented. Weaving together the perfect mix that has meaning, mood and a great flow. There are thousands of ways of doing this however most of the mixtapes that old girlfriends’ ex-boyfriends made for them, that I’ve heard, totally miss the boat.

There are some pretty specific times to make a mixtape and each time calls for a different technique. Admittedly, most of them have to do with girls, but it isn’t the case all the time. These are examples of actual mixes I made for actual people over the past seven or so years. Each of these playlists were made for their own purposes, which I will explain.

The names have not been changed to punish the guilty. More »

When you don’t update your blog for a while your last post starts to kind of look like a headstone. It seems that sometime last summer I hit a wall of complacency and stopped updating this blog. I blame it all on having a job.

I started this blog pretty much right when I was laid off in February of 2009. I intended it to be a place where I can talk about how awesome I am at the Internet so people would want to hire me. I’ve been employed now for nearly a year and this joint has been collecting dust for about seven months…see how that works out? The time and motivation slipped through the folds of my brain into chasm 13. Not all of my motivation, mind you; just the motivation to blog.

I work in digital marketing now so blogging should be part of my makeup, but sadly it isn’t. I published two successful photoblogs last year and managed to get them off the ground with nearly no time spent on putting actual words on the screen. I also mess with SEO and Social Media all day, every day, for the company I work for. So how have I gotten by for this long? I have been relying very heavily on the hep of others. Meanwhile my time is being taken up by a bunch of different tasks, plans and events, which happen to be what I sat down to talk about today. More »

For a long time I’ve wanted to write about some of the incredible people I have met throughout my misadventures. I finally bit the bullet and told a story about my friend Igor a couple of posts back. It was a lot of fun to write, and I learned that if there’s nothing to write about, I know I will always have a wealth of stories to tell about the unique people I have met…and there have been many, trust me. I am having a ball with these, so you can expect to see more in the future. For now, here’s some background…

When I moved to Colorado from Virginia, I did so with one carload of my possessions. I left VA for a variety of reasons; the biggest one being that I couldn’t find a job. After my clothing store closed I was pretty destitute and I had a lot of trouble finding a job. I came across a roadblock like this from time to time.  This one found me living out of my car on the streets of Virginia Beach, not even able to get a part-time job at 7-11. I knew it was time to pick-up and move on. More »

About three or four years ago I bought a juniper bonsai, at the Mile High Flea Market, and it was all over. Since then I have raised a few bonsai, and killed a few more. I now have five different, healthy bonsai. They all have their quirks and temperaments and it’s super cool to watch them change and adapt; to the edge of life and back in some cases. Because of the close, careful attention you pay to keeping plants like these, I developed a closeness to and understanding of growing. More »