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Grab Hold of the Week Like That Ex Who Just Wouldn’t Let Go

Something about spring, the more agreeable weather and the additional daylight gets me back on the motivation train. The last few weeks have been marked by significant progress on the new novel, Mystery White Boy, and a couple of great events where people responded well to work both old and new.

But Monday’s are still hard for most of us, particularly as the weather grows better. Because you’re able to jam more fun into the weekend, the hangover seems extra severe when 7 a.m. on the first workday of the week rolls around. So what better to get you going than a healthy dose of good, solid rock. Continue reading → Grab Hold of the Week Like That Ex Who Just Wouldn’t Let Go

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Power Pop to Help You Power Through, Good People

Well, I don’t know about you, but around these parts it’s been kind of a rough week. I won’t go into the particulars, because what’s done is done, but I will suggest that now is the time, if you’ve been feeling a little down, to re-motivate yourself in a positive direction.

None of you will be surprised that the way I try to lift my spirits is through music. And while you might have felt more mournful than celebratory over the last seven days, I would suggest that it’s time for the mourning period to be over. Quit your bitchin’ and get to work. Continue reading → Power Pop to Help You Power Through, Good People

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Funky Friday: Sonny Knight and the Lakers Make New Sound Old

I’ve often joked that if I managed to make it to Heaven, I’d want my own horn section whose job would be to follow me around and punctuate my conversation with James Brown-style R&B call-and-response awesomeness.

More realistically, I’m constantly on the lookout for new bands that reach back to that classic soul sound and drag it (sometimes kicking and screaming) into the 21st century. Some bands try, succeed a little, then peter out (I’m looking at you, Red Hot Chili Peppers), while others, like Sonny Knight and the Lakers, do right by the Godfather of Soul. Continue reading → Funky Friday: Sonny Knight and the Lakers Make New Sound Old

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Power Pop Wednesday: A Machine Just Released a Manufactured ‘Beatles’ Song

Like most Beatles fans, there was a time when we hoped the band would somehow reunite for just one last show. That hope took a nosedive first with the shooting death of John Lennon, then George Harrison’s death from cancer.

Along the way, we got a few tidbits, including a new song by the surviving members (Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney) remixed with archival recordings of John Lennon for a best-of collection back in the 1990s. Honestly, that was just a little creepy – basically the three survivors discovering ghost tracks on an old reel, writing a little music around it and deciding to send it out into the world anyway.

Granted, Paul in concert does a pretty good job of echoing the Beatles experience (at least the parts of it on which he sang lead), and he’s even teamed up with Ringo for TV performances here and there. Still, the experience of having the lads back together is one we’ll now have to just imagine. Continue reading → Power Pop Wednesday: A Machine Just Released a Manufactured ‘Beatles’ Song

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NoNoNoNo: The Tyranny of #NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo

We’ve now officially passed the middle of what all writers (and exasperated spouses/family of writers) know as National Novel Writing Month. And I have come not to praise this obnoxious exercise in virtual participatory nonsense, but to kill it, burn it, gather the ashes in a bucket and bury them. In a deep, deep hole.

But what is NaNoWriMo, as it is so frequently described and hashtagged by those writers the rest of us just want to punch in the throat? It is a challenge, issued to writers annually by NaNoWriMo.org, to pound out 50,000 words of a novel during November. Continue reading → NoNoNoNo: The Tyranny of #NaNoWriMo

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Thoughts Upon Turning 47: Embrace the Thing You Love

Forty-Seven

As of today, I’ve spent 47 years roaming this earth (or at least various parts of the United States) with the rest of you, trying to figure out how this life thing is supposed to work.

And here’s a little something I’ve learned along the way:

If there’s something that you’re good at, something at which you excel and that brings you pleasure or joy to others, you are obligated as a human being to pursue it. You might not get paid for it or even get much recognition by others who do it. But your proficiency at this thing and the joy it brings you are the gifts you have been given as a member of the human race. Whether you see it as having come from a divine source or simply from a combination of evolution, heredity and life experience, it’s one of the biggest qualities of being human that sets us apart from chimpanzees and bonobos. Continue reading → Thoughts Upon Turning 47: Embrace the Thing You Love

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Monday Motivation: Keep Things Groovy and Weird

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I always got the feeling when I was working in the full-time office world that – despite the diverse and disparate personalities that surrounded me in the newspaper business – I was always considered one of the worker bees who was a little … off.

Former co-workers can render their own opinions on this, but a few might agree that there was something a bit different about that Pruden guy (whether it was in a good or bad way is up for discussion). I distinctly recall this conversation between me and the day city editor at one newspaper who was filling in for the normal Sunday city editor.

Her: Scott, you’re not wearing shoes.

Me: Shoes? It’s Sunday. You’re lucky I put on pants. Continue reading → Monday Motivation: Keep Things Groovy and Weird

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My Rhode Island Geek Brothers and Sisters, You Have Failed PR 101

First off, I’d like to go on record as saying that I was a big ol’ geek long before I was a journalist, and I have the well-worn science fiction paperbacks, 1980s vintage D&D dice and former subscription to Starlog magazine to prove it.

But I sit here, at 46, as both (geek by birth, professional journalist since the age of 21), and from that somewhat odd point of view, I have to shake my head at the folks from Rhode Island Comic Con organization. Not only have you failed to understand what media coverage is all about, but you’ve also come off as little more that what those who mock you would cast you as: big crybabies.

Why the hubbub? It seems the people in charge of setting RICC’s press coverage policy forgot a couple of things. For instance, that we live in the United States of America, where a free and open exchange of ideas is held sacred, and a relatively unregulated press is part of that. They decided that as part of their press credential application, media organizations would have to promise to avoid “insulting or disrespectful comments and giving a bad image of the show.” As a result, the Rhode Island Press Association (indicated by the tweet above) has chosen not to cover the event rather than sign such an agreement. Continue reading → My Rhode Island Geek Brothers and Sisters, You Have Failed PR 101