Nostalgia for Musak

Today when someone put my phone call on hold I got to listen to some musak. And while I would never buy an album of that type of stuff, I realized that I have a strong nostalgic attachment to the genre. It conjures up for me memories of going to the grocery store with my mom, riding in elevators, and generally going out into what I conceived as the adult world. In other words, as a kid I learned to associate musak with maturity and sophistication. And, at least a little bit, I guess I still do.

New food weekend

This last weekend Laura and I received a free hotel room in Salt Lake City. So we decided to forego our recent extreme thriftiness and have a good time. And that meant eating at several new restaurants.

First, we ate at Mountain West Burrito. Its a new shop located right in between Provo and Orem. Despite its terrible name and location — it's literally in gas station — I'd constantly been hearing good things about this place, from people whose tastes I highly respect.

So we went and it was pretty fantastic. I got the "half and half" burrito, which had chicken and vegetables, among other (more typical) burrito ingredients. At one point I took a bite and realized there was zucchini in my burrito. It blew my mind. And the chicken was probably one of my top five experiences with restaurant chicken. Ever. So try this place out if you're in the area.

After eating our burritos we drove the rest of the way up to SLC. We went to gallery stroll, which was cool(ish). While we were walking around we saw this place called Gourmadise. We thought it would be a good place for desert, and it was. Though the atmosphere was extremely chaotic and disorganized, the food was delicious. I had the croissant pudding, and Laura had a raspberry tart. Though I would never go back to this place at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night, I would definitely go back at a time when there was a smaller crowd. (Laura just told me she wouldn't go back to this place because she thought it was overpriced and under-qualitied. I think she just ordered the wrong thing, but take that for what it's worth.)

The next morning we ate breakfast at Bruges, a Belgium waffle place near Tony Caputo's. We both got waffles. We were especially excited to eat at this place because we went to the actual city of Bruges over the summer, and ate Belgium waffles there. Surprising as it might sound, the ones we got in SLC were actually better. There was quite amazing, and filling (despite looking small, we were both full afterward.) I've read some people complain that this place is too expensive. And it was pricey; for two waffles we spent something like $13. So obviously I wouldn't eat here all the time. But on the other hand, I was as full and satisfied as if I had purchased a larger-looking meal. Also, the taste was incredible.

Finally, on our way home from SLC, we stopped and got sandwiches at Flour Girls and Dough Boys, in American Fork. Though sort of out of the way (it's in American Fork, after all), I can't say enough good things about this place. I ordered a ham and honeybutter panini, which was great, but I also highly recommend the apple and brie panini, or the cranberry-walnut-turkey-brie sandwich. The environment is cool (allbeit in a sort of, middle-aged, mom-ish way), and the sandwiches are delicious.

TV News

I really can't adquately express my disdain for network TV news. Before working at a newspaper, I thought it was just pointless fluff that existed as a relic from a previous time. At best, it was mindnumbing, and at worst it made (usually middle aged) people mistakenly think they are informed.

But since working for a newspaper I've seen an even worse side of the TV news business. After a recent rape hearing, camera's chased down the victim and stuck lights and lenses in her face. They literally chased her and her family into an elevator, despite the fact that new organizations pretty much all have a policy against revealing the identity of sex crime victims.

Earlier this week, I also saw a man get some tragic news (possibly that a family member died in a fire, though I was out of earshot). The man nearly collapsed on the ground with sorrow, and was sobbing uncontrollably. And of course, a TV camera man ran over with a huge light and got in the guy's face.

Of course, not every TV camera man is bad (I knew a cool one not too long ago), but I can't say I've ever seen a network news broadcast that wasn't pointless. And now, I can add insensitivity to the idiotic things TV news does.

(I should mention though that I'm talking exclusively about network affiliates of ABC, NBC, Fox, etc. not CNN and MSNBC.)

Job Realities

A few days ago I dreamed I was a film critic for Vanity Fair. It was awesome. Then I woke up, only to realize I was a crime writer at the Daily Herald.

"Poetry Month" and a little bragging

Yesterday I learned that if you google the words "poetry month" this Rhombus article is in the top 10 hits. What makes that amazing is that I wrote that article!

Now, granted, not a lot of people google "poetry month," but the search returned about 4.3 million hits when I tried it. That means of those millions of hits, my article is deemed by google to be one of the most relevant. Huzzah!

I discovered the high ranking of this article, btw, when I was curious why the article has consistently been in the top 10 articles on Rhombus lately. Other articles I've written, such as this one on the Neon Trees, will show up in the top google results, but only with more specific queries (googling "neon trees provo" will get you to that one). "Poetry month" on the other hand is something that's pretty general and which people who have never heard of Rhombus, Provo, etc. might look up. And apparently they are because the article continues to get traffic.

Obviously this could change at any moment, but I was both thrilled and astonished by this news. It was a great reminder that the internet is a crazy place where something can blow up or go viral at any minute.

Well, it looks like I'll be in Provo a little longer...

Laura and I spent the summer traveling, and when we got back I decided to continue pursuing a career in writing. (My trip renewed, to some extent, my desire to go into academia, though I’ll go into that later).

I enjoy writing and have been told I am good at it (though not necessarily when I’m blogging), so I briefly explored writing opportunities in Utah. Laura, after all, has a job she really likes in American Fork, Utah, so we had an incentive to stay.

After looking around for a while, however, I decided that there just weren’t many opportunities in Utah, either for jobs or simply to make contacts in the field. I met some cool people during my search, and began writing freelance for the Daily Herald, but nothing that had any long-term prospects.

So, by mid fall, Laura and I had decided we needed to go somewhere else. We settled on New York because A) it has seemed great on our previous visits, B) there are many publications there, so even if competition for jobs is much more fierce, at least opportunities sort of exist, which they don’t really in Utah, and C) Jay-Z/Alicia Keys said that big lights would inspire us.

Anyway, after deciding that we’d go to New York I began contacting everyone I knew who lived there. Many people gave me tips and advice, and several good friends spent a lot of time writing emails about how to make a good transition. I also contacted dozens of publications about doing internships, and eventually lined some up.

By mid November, Laura and I had a lot of info on New York. Our plan was that I would move out there in January, and Laura would follow when the school year ended. This plan was actually pretty developed. I had an internship lined up at a daily newspaper called amNewYork, as well as a couple of possible additional internships at Brooklyn papers if I wanted them. I even had a place to stay through January until I found somewhere to live.

Obviously this plan had some disadvantages, the biggest being that Laura and I would only see each other through video chat for about four months. However, it was also going to cost a lot, because I would be basically working for free while living in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Still, we were going to make it work and I took a temporary job sometime in the fall to save up additional money. (We also went into the austere money-saving mode we were in before our summer trip.)

Then, about a week before Thanksgiving, the Daily Herald contacted me saying that a job was opening up and that I should apply. Before that day had ended, I had been offered the job. It was as a full time reporter in Provo, and was really what I think of as a “grown up” job (i.e. salary, benefits, two weeks vacation, etc.) I’d never actually had a job that wasn’t hourly, so this was serious.

Laura and I discussed the job. We were really excited to move to New York, but a job offer seemed to render more internships unnecessary. Also, my internships weren’t necessarily going to get me jobs, and if they did, those jobs might be anywhere in the country. Plus, my sense is that there are probably at least 100,000 (maybe more) unemployed writers/journalists/whatever in Brooklyn where I was going to be living. I think that eventually I could have beaten those odds, but it would have taken a long time and have been very expensive.

Ultimately, I decided to take the Herald job because, after all, that is what I was working toward all along. I figured that getting a paying job at a paper I like in a place I enjoy is pretty awesome. And while covering news (my beat is courts and cops) isn’t necessarily my long-term goal (I’m shooting for something more in features), it’s pretty cool. I’m also perpetually amazed that I’ve somehow landed a fulltime reporter position without a degree in journalism while the industry is dramatically contracting. I hesitate to say something cliché like “this is a dream come true,” but it’s close. I’m very fortunate (and covering the crime beat is making me more and more aware of just how fortunate I am).

So that’s an update and, for my NYC friends, an explanation. And while we may not come out next month, Laura and I will continue to be looking for ways to get to NYC in the future.

I've been a lazy blogger

So I haven't posted anything here for a while. I've been super busy with lots of freelance jobs, and now with getting a full time job. Also, Laura and I are trying to find a new apartment in Provo. If you have any leads, let us know. We want somewhere awesome, with character, in a good location, and inexpensive. That's not too much to ask, right?