I made gazpacho today. 

It was delicious; smoky, rich, a tiny bit spicy, perfect. 

Then the blender's pitcher got stuck when I tried to remove it. 

Never make gazpacho with a second-hand blender. 

I lied. Nothing from me tonight. Just got back to the hotel (at 11:30pm) and I still need to hit the gym.

Tomorrow - podcasts. Fer real.

(This was just to keep me posting. Trying folks. Falling off the horse, but...)

For any of you who don't know, my day job consists of driving a car. Lots and lots of driving.

This lead me to start listening to 1. Audio books and 2. Podcasts. Lots and lots of podcasts.

I go through a lot of them both. Audio books I burn through at an alarming rate (alarming because of costs involved in getting good quality audio books) and podcasts I 'go through' because I'll subscribe for a while, find that they annoy me in some form or another, and then I'll unsubscribe.

I've heard/read a number of my friends recently bring up  podcasts of one form or another, so I thought I would do a post to get folks talking about it. I would love to find some new casts that I'm not familiar with, and share what I've found to be good/fun/quality in my own hunt.

In case you're curious, I use Pocket Casts for Android. I download the episodes to my phone overnight using the wifi at the hotels so I'm not killing my data plan (and I don't have data in Canada anyway).

Friends

These are podcasts which friends of mine are actively working on/in.

•  Elvis, And - Some of you may already be aware of this one. Kevin Reagan is working on it, and Hot Breakfast! has contributed their musical skillz. Premise: short improvved 'stories' based on details left by friends of the King. Likes: I love me some improv. The fact that I have friends that are really good at it provides me with a great deal of happiness. I love that this is a new (to me at least) idea/format for telling improv stories. Dislikes: It's hard to say if I'll have any actual dislikes for this show in the end because they're just starting out. I'll keep you posted. Note: some of the dialogue in this can be very NSFW. You have been warned.
• Totally Beverages and Sometimes Hotsauce (TBASH) - My buddy Josh (aka JoJo or Intern Josh on the show) turned me on to this. Kinda a strange premise - a show entirely about beverages (and sometimes hotsauces) but it really actually works. Just try an episode or three. You'll see what I mean. Premise: It's a show about beverages. The hosts bring on a new guest and discuss beverage profiles, sample various drinks live (in the 'shootout' segment) and generally talk about... beverages. Are you getting the theme here? Likes: First of all, these guys are really pros. In a sea of podcasts which have the technical skill of "my buddies and me sat around a speaker phone and made a podcast!", this show has the technical skill of a more traditional radio show. Think NPR as a podcast that err... isn't NPR. If you had told me about the concept, and it wasn't cohosted by a buddy of mine, I probably would have turned my nose up at it. I'm glad that I didn't. Dislikes: I honestly don't have any. These guys make what should be a very dry subject (Ouch. Sorry.) really fun.

NPR

Yeah. They get their own category. I listen to a lot of them. I've subscribed and then unsubscribed to a bunch over time, but here's the current list. Most of these, I will assume you're familiar with (thanks to them being radio shows) but I'll jot notes for the ones I wasn't familiar with prior to the podcast. If you want to know more about any of them, lemme know.

• Freakonomics
• Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
• All Songs Considered - Great show most of the time. I love the very broad spectrum of music. Sometimes the do a 'life performance' recording, and I get bored with those fairly quickly.
• Snap Judgement - Storytelling with a beat. I lovelovelove the music that tends to back this show. When I first listened to it, I found the mood... over the top. Now? I crave it. It's enough to make me bounce with happiness when I hear the host come on and the music start. Highly recommended.
• Invisibilia - Another storytelling podcast (probably my favorite type) but with a focus on the hows and whys of human experience. Double thumbs up.
• Intelligence2 (squared) - A debate show about current topics. Focus on the debate, not on which side is 'right' or 'wrong'. Interesting listening.
• TED Radio Hour - Clips from the TED talks and a slightly more in depth (or at least from a slightly different angle) discussion with those who gave the talk.

Business / Entrepreneur

What can I say? I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.

• Smart Passive Income - Ok. I'm going to go ahead and confess: I'm a bit of a Pat Flynn fanboy. Short version? The guy found himself out of a job, and started trying online business ideas. Once he started seeing some success, he started given what he knew back out to those who wanted to hear it. And then he kept on giving. Now he makes a ridiculously healthy living from his online businesses and posts the income statements and all his tricks and tips for the world to see. One seriously refreshingly open dude. 
• Ask Pat - Another Pat Flynn joint. Super short format where he takes one phone call question and answers it. Simple, to the point, and in typical Pat fashion - fun.
• 1 Day Business Breakthrough - Pat and his friend Chris Ducker take an emailed question / request for help from a fan, and disect that fan's business in an attempt to help them grow. Another fairly short but delightful podcast.
• Home Work -  Hosts Aaron Mahnke and Dave Caolo discuss elements of working from home (or in my case - from the road) whether you're a freelancer or just have the ability to work outside the office. This one can sometimes be a bit 'goofy', but it's always good hearted, often helpful, and I like the show.
• Social Media Marketing - Michael Stelzner hosts this show on - you guessed it - social media marketing. Overall a good show, but it sometimes seems like the show is primarilly there to market his live events. That's not to say that the show isn't useful / helpful.
• Social Good - A 1/month show about using the power of your business to help out the less fortunate. I wish this show got more love / support and was able to produce more episodes.
• Internet Business Mastery - Heard about these guys via Pat Flynn. Enjoy the show, and I have to say that aside from Pat, they're the only folks I've ever considered buying from. And I'm pretty sure I will.
• Startup - Familiar with Alex Blumberg from NPR? Well, he's gone off to create a new company - Gimlet Media - and is producing a whole slew of new shows. Startup is a show about startups - including Gimlet Media. Season One was all about how they created the foundation for Gimlet. This one is a seriously high recommendation. (Especially if you like the NPR format for shows.)
• Freedom Fast Lane - I enjoy this one, but as he's talking about investment real estate (among many other topics) I sometimes get the feeling that he's working with folks on a level that I won't be for... a looong time (if ever).
• Confessions of a Pink Haired Marketer - Pretty much what it says.
• Nomad Together - A show I just subscribed to about families living a location independant lifestyle. Don't worry - I'm still not planning on a family anywhere in my future, but I figured the information (or most of it) will likely be useful to me too.
• The Tim Ferriss Show - The author of The Four Hour Work Week (among others) hosts a show where he interviews 'top performers' and attempts to break down their process / methods and determine what makes them so good at what they do. Everyone from Hollywood stars to athletes to business folks. Great concept, interesting show, and somehow I'm not always thrilled enough to listen to the whole thing. Pretty sure that's my ADHD talking.

You know something? There's a LOT more for me to go through and it's getting late, so I'm going to call it a night. I'll try to do a post tomorrow with the rest.

In the meantime, feel free to let me know what podcasts you're listening to and why. I'm always looking for more...

Yesterday, Wide Open Spaces, today, One-Minute Play Festival (runs Mon & Tues nights, at Plays & Players, includes work by OPWer Matt  Casarino). This afternoon, a kindly worded rejection e-mail for This Is Halloween. 

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life. 

Now I've got Mo on my belly demanding attention, and so, to bed. 

Wide Open Spaces, pre-reading setup.

Later that night, Mo responded to The Cat Signal. 

I used to be good at writing. I used to have concentration and was able to build worlds with words and trying to connect each string and build upon that. Sadly, lately it's more a race to be an adult and work on things outside of what I'm trying to get done. But I'm trying, and I think that's what counts. I have projects I want to do next year, and I'm going to have them finished and prepped for getting it done. There's nothing standing in the way that can't be taken on and overcome.  I just wish it would go faster.

Took a big hit by not landing a job that would have taken me to the next level. And then on top of that, lost two more jobs of smaller importance. And I'm just sitting here thinking... Okay... one large step back, but need to put my best foot forward and jump back on track. Which means universe, I have goals and I need to meet them, so either help or get out of my way.

I have loved Richard Avedon since I lived in Pittsburgh and found his photos in a magazine (Rolling Stone, maybe) and felt like I was in the room with the subjects and they were looking at me.  I bought a huge coffee table book of his work and hauled it around for years before sadly decluttering it (I don't like coffee tables because they collect stuff, and coffee table books don't fit on bookshelves).

When Avedon took portraits, he stood next to the camera, not behind it, so that the subject was looking at a human, not a lens.  He fixed them with his intense gaze and got back an intimate portrait, a view of their soul, if you will.  He got a genuine engagement, not just a pose.  This is one of his most famous portraits - Marilyn Monroe, except not looking like a glamour shot, looking like a vulnerable human:

I found out recently that Avedon was Jewish (he died in 2004), and that an exhibition of his portraits was in Philly at the National Museum of American Jewish History, which is around 8 blocks from my job.  The exhibit closes on Sunday, and I was determined to get there, so I took off half an hour early from work and speedwalked there in the rain so I could get half an hour in the Avedon gallery.  The exhibit lives in Israel normally and Philly is the only United States location where it will be seen.

Entitled Family Affairs, the exhibit featured portraits that Avedon had taken of Allen Ginsburg and his family.  Relevant to our other conversations, Ginsburg's father was a poet. The other part of the exhibit was a set of 69 portraits entitled, "The Family."

Rolling Stone tasked Avedon with election coverage leading up to the 1976 Presidential Election and paired him with a writer to do so.  What he did, instead of illustrating articles, was to take 69 portraits of the people who he thought were relevant to the election, including many faces the public never saw.  As an example of his perspective on history, of how visionary he was, he clearly did not take pictures of every politician, but he did photograph Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (though Bush makes sense since he was the director of the CIA at the time).  He photographed Jules Stein, the head of MCA Records, Donald Rumsfeld, Pete Rozelle (head of the NFL, creator of Monday Night Football), Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader, the head of the teamsters union, the head of the mine workers' union, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm ...

Anyway, he photographed the power and the power behind the power.  He saw the wheels turning inside the machine, he didn't just see what came out on the conveyor belt at the end of the line.  My father also has that perspective, he looks at world events and sees the underlying issues and what is really at stake.  I admire them both.

I want to submit this assemblage to the MoMA with the title, stuff my mom is holding on to in case my Grandmom comes back. ​