Note: I've been 39 for 358 days and I'll be 40 in 7 days.

Facebook v. Twitter, 2013

Twitter v. FacebookOh, man. Every now and then your heroes validate themselves and it is magical. Two of my long-time internet heroes posted essays today about the difference between Twitter and Facebook, and both essays are absolutely brilliant.

Matt Haughey, the founder of metafilter, a site I’ve frequented since the end of 1999, published an article on Medium titled Why I Love Twitter and Barely Tolerate Facebook. In it he perfectly explains how I’ve felt about the two sites for years.

Jason Kottke, a blogger I’ve been reading regularly for fifteen years and — I’m not ashamed to say — the inspiration for davidgagne.net, read Matt’s post and wrote Twitter Is a Machine for Continual Self-Reinvention. Jason’s essay is another must-read; he likens the ephemeral nature of tweets to the vitality of New York City.

I joined Facebook in September of 2006, but didn’t start using it for at least three years. And I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it by the tidal wave of friends and family that seem to think “Facebook” is synonymous with “the Internet”. To this day I — like Matt — only begrudgingly check it for updates, and the vast, vast majority of my posts there are simply the by-product of other things I’m doing online.

Every now and then your heroes validate themselves and it is magical.

I joined Twitter in April of 2007 and immediately fell in love with the service. I’ve been tweeting continuously ever since, and if I bothered to create a line chart showing the declining frequency of posts on this blog compared to the number of times I’ve tweeted, you’d see something very close to a perfect X.

* I first heard of the two essays on stellar.io, a site Jason created which lets me see tweets that my followers have favorited. I highly, highly recommend getting a stellar account if you can.

The Heming Way

The Heming WayI just received an email from the publisher of a new book about Hemingway. The book is titled The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested Retro-Sexual Legend Within, Just Like Papa!. The email asked if I’d be interested in getting a copy to review, to which I of course replied in the affirmative. The promo copy is definitely intriguing:

More than fifty years have passed since the death of Ernest Hemingway, history’s ultimate man, while today’s young “men” (if you even can call them that), obsessed with Facebook, Twitter, and Playstation — know nothing about his legendary brand of rugged, alcoholic masculinity. They cannot skin a fish, dominate a battlefield, or transform majestic creatures of the Southern Hemisphere into piano keyboards. The Heming Way demonstrates how modern eunuchs — brainwashed by PETA and Alcoholics Anonymous — can learn from Papa’s unparalleled example: drunken, unshaven, meat-devouring, wife-divorcing, and gloriously self-destructive.

Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton

rainThere’s just something about running in the cold rain. You want to run fast to get done quickly but you also want to be careful and watch every footfall so you don’t slip and break an ankle. Of course “cold” is relative: It was 57°F when I started.

And it wasn’t a torrential downpour or anything like that. It was just “spritzing” a little bit here and there. But combine that with sweat and I was drenched by the time I got back to the house. It felt good.

It almost never rains in Los Angeles; the last time I ran in the rain was when I was in Florida when my mom died.

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They Just Seem a Little Weird

I’ve been trying to consistently go for a really long run on Monday mornings and a “regular” run on Thursday mornings. I’ve done a pretty good job at it for about three months now; I even managed to get in a five-miler on Thanksgiving.

Skelton MaskThis morning while coming down Century Park towards Olympic, a man on a bike came towards me wearing a black hoodie and a frighteningly realistic skeleton full-face mask. At six in the morning, just about everyone you see is scary. So you can imagine how much that guy freaked me out.

I also saw a crushed and empty box of Trojan Magnum condoms in front of the “European luxury” hotel on Westwood, and a half-full, uncapped gallon of milk sitting next to a bus bench on Santa Monica.

My right knee was killing me by the time I got back to the house, which concerns me. It seems that about twelve miles is the maximum I can travel before something twinges in there and starts hurting. (It’s fine now, though.)

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Clear Eyes.

“The show will be remembered more as one about a marriage than one about football.”

I don’t know how I missed this article at Grantland: An Oral History of Friday Night Lights. It’s great fun for anyone that loved the show. I was thrilled to read that the actor Kyle Chandler (Coach Taylor) gave a coach-like speech to the cast at one point, and that after the wrap party — at two o’clock in the morning — the whole cast played touch football together.

I saw someone just recently tweet something about how the show’s fans all willfully ignored the nonsense in the second season when Tyra and Landry killed that one guy. That made me laugh. Aside from that, though, it really was a very solid show for five seasons.

The entire series is available on Amazon.com. I highly recommend it.

It Could Be All Downhill from Here

Nothing exciting at all today. Just a brisk run in the cold. 55°F, but the sun was just coming up and it was a gorgeous Los Angeles sky.

This morning’s soundtrack:

  • Anthem — blink-182
  • …Baby One More Time — Spears, Britney
  • Blue Monday — Orgy
  • Celebrity Skin — Hole
  • Crazy People — Rehab
  • Duel of the Fates — Williams, John
  • End of the Line — Traveling Wilburys
  • Give the Po’ Man a Break — Fatboy Slim
  • The King of Bedside Manor — Barenaked Ladies
  • Letterbomb — Green Day
  • Nothin’ But the Taillights — Black, Clint
  • Out in the Cold — Petty, Tom & the Heartbreakers
  • All Downhill — Lovett, Lyle

Sinnerman

According to my iPhone it was a crisp 44°F when I left the house to run at 5:45 this morning.

Once you’ve lived in Los Angeles for over a decade, that counts as “cold as hell”. I wore a hat and one of my Gator hooded sweatshirts, but by the time I hit 1.5 miles I was soaking with sweat. The sweatshirt felt like it weighed about twenty pounds, and even my battered white Providence College hat felt heavy on my head.

I’d like to get one of those long-sleeved Nike t-shirts for the winter, maybe.

Here are the tracks I heard on my run:

  • Alcohol — Barenaked Ladies
  • Sinnerman — Simone, Nina
  • It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry — Dylan, Bob
  • Jane Says — Jane’s Addiction
  • The Boxer — Simon & Garfunkel
  • Mr. Brightside — Killers, The
  • What’d I Say — Charles, Ray
  • Dirt Off Your Shoulder / Lying from You (featuring Linkin Park) — Jay-Z
  • Take a Look Around — Limp Bizkit
  • (F)lannigan’s Ball — Dropkick Murphys
  • Numb / Encore (featuring Linkin Park) — Jay-Z
  • I Just Shot John Lennon — Cranberries, The

The Dogs of War

Happy Veterans’ Day!

Celebrate by watching this compilation of videos of dogs welcoming their masters home from the field.

And a special hat tip to my maternal grandfather Vincent Albanese (1918 – 1986), who fought in WWII as one of Merrill’s Marauders, and to my paternal grandfather Walter Gagne (?? – 2010), who fought in WWII on USS SC-731, USS Boston, USS Lexington, and USS ATKA.

Thanks for everything I have and am today.

Hootie

Hootie and the BlowfishSomehow I never mentioned the fact that in late November of 2006, I attended a black-tie dinner 1 at — of all things — a furniture convention 2 in Scottsdale, Arizona, and — after all the sales awards had been … er … awarded — Hootie and the Blowfish performed.

It was quite surreal, and I’m surprised I never wrote about it here.

1 Yes, I wore a tuxedo.
2 It was for DirectBuy.