Guest Post from My Aunt Joy

In the new age of internet video contests requests like this are more common. But I won’t spam you (unlike a certain old college acquaintance, who if she sends me another email to vote for her video so her mom can get a trip to israel I’m going to personally issue a fatwah against her plane…)

Anyway, a message from my Aunt Joy, who served as a second mother to me during my time in Vermont. Some of the images in the videos come from my uncle John during his tour of duty with the VT National Guard in Iraq.

If you know me, heartwarming messages are the exception, so I promise to soon return to September 11 jokes and offensiveness. But in the meantime, please at least watch, and hopefully vote

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Hi Friends/Family,

I need your help, puhlease….

I created and submitted two ads to moveon.org for their “Obama in 30 seconds” contest. Yesterday they started voting. I’ve looked at A LOT of the ads and I honestly think my ads “Hope” and “Priceless” are up there in quality compared to many of them. For those of you who know them, Kathryn and Jimmy’s 13-yr old son Galen (and his friend Julian) wrote and recorded the music for the ads!

If you can, I NEED YOUR HELP WITH VOTING ASAP, which ends April 27.

They are two doing diff’t types of voting. They are picking the top ten based on best rating in terms of quality. Then they are picking another five based on just how many hits they get, which is more like a popularity contest. The five that are viewed the most (the popularity contest) will also get into the final judging. Those fifteen will be judged by the “experts” like Oliver Stone, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon, etc.

Anyway, if you can use all your powers of e-communications (emails, blogs, myspace, etc.) and spread the word asking people (and people they know and so on) to watch my ads, that would be GREAT! If they rate them HIGH too that would be even better, but since we cannot make them do that (but hopefully they will want to!), just viewing them will be enough. Here are the links to both of the ads:

Hope

Priceless

Each time someone follows a link and watches the ads on the obamain30seconds.org site, they’ll count that toward the total viewers for that ad. (People who watch an ad this way will have to enter their email address before they’re counted; this prevents fraud and makes sure it’s not one person just hitting refresh over and over.)
Anyway, if you can help at all, that would be great.

THANKS!

Hope all is well.

xoxoxoxo

Perfectionism

My 7th grade teacher was the first to accuse me of being a perfectionist.  I thought that her class was too easy, but it was the first time that I realized how difficult it was for me to admit defeat.  I can justify a lot of things.  I’m a terrible communicator with people I have no interest talking with because (I say) I learned the entertainment industry habit of not returning peoples calls if I didn’t want to deal with them then.  Real people get more pissed off than that, but the real reason is that usually I’m scared of giving someone the wrong answer or of rejecting them than just saying no from the get-go.  That’s the truth, I’m a tough person to get a hold of if I’m not interested in talking with you.

I’ve worked on a lot of ideas that have tried to cut to the very core of this fact — willingness to fuck up.  Mostly, because I’m afraid to in my own life.  But I’ve realized that this fear has paralyzed me many times.  I talk about ideas in the third person so I have a (mythical) scapegoat in case the idea isn’t well received.

I would guess that most people don’t want to be judged (in the moment, or later on) for their opinions, tastes, or interests.  I can look back with a (semi-)ironic tone (depending on who I’m talking with) when I mention how much I really enjoyed Middle of Nowhere by Hanson (and I’m not talking guilty pleasure, come on – Dust Brothers!)

Anyway, my goal is not necessarily to apologize for my occasional poor communication skills or my occasional fuck ups, but rather my commitment to fuck up more and not be afraid to speak my mind at certain times, favoring quick rather than prolonged rejection.

As an aside, my good friend Atom will never let me forget the moment during my first week at a new job when I didn’t stand up to support him on his crazily outspoken pro-web-standards stance.  I wasn’t prepared to fight against the CEO and CTO, but I have great respect for him for doing so.  And he should be happy that he changed my desire to always speak my mind. (and stop bringing it up already)

That’s it for now… Tons of crazy projects on the horizon… too many to count in fact.

Love you all.

First Record Purchase In A While- Gowns

Yesterday, in a bit of an impulse buy, I bought Red State by Gowns.
Available in limited vinyl direct from Kill Shaman.

Flickr Shot By My Good Friend Nate.  Who by the way writes an amazing NYC live show guide (Sans Temps Morts) for Impose.

Ezra was in the Mae Shi, Erika was in Amps for Christ.
And I swear the drummer (Corey?) played with the Mae Shi as well.