I found a bunch of CDs full of old photos spanning all the way back to my days at Oregon State. More to come, I’m sure, as I’m sifting through thousands of photos in my spare time.
The picture of Ichiro is when The Sentinel scored a press pass for me and some photographers at Safeco Field (I used somebody else’s camera). The “No Alcohol” photo used to be my desktop background at school (ironic, eh?). And the bottom photo is my cousin’s children watching the eagles fly along Lake Coeur d’Alene.
So the one year I clean up and snag a chunk of awards from the College Media Advisors’ annual design competition, Best of Collegiate Design, they stop publishing the book of winners.
But of course.
After 16 years of printing this damn publication, they stop when I make it. Supposedly, instead of the book they normally give away, all the winners receive a certificate. How cute.
However, they did make a slideshow that showcases all the winners. And that’s OK, because they only reason I ever liked the book was to see what other colleges are doing. I love flipping through and getting ideas and see who’s used some of mine.
Oh well, at least I won this year. And by that, I mean I made it into the book. And by that, I mean I made it five times! With close to 1300 entries from almost 80 colleges and universities, I’m pretty stoked to say the least.
So all is well in the land of Jakewood –- at least for now.
Here are the awards I won and the pages with them. By far the greatest success in my collegiate career concerning all things design is winning first place in the nameplate category. I spent more than a year designing the template for The Sentinel’s current nameplate, so winning that was huge for me.
NAMEPLATE: 1st Place
HEADLINE PRESENTATION: 2nd Place
SPORTS PAGE: 3rd Place
INFO GRAPHIC: 4th Place
PHOTO PAGE SPREAD: 4th Place
Now that I only have a few days left until my return to Coeur d’Alene, I’m chomping at the bit just waiting to go hunting. If anything, I look forward to being outdoors more than anything else.
Truth be told, I have no problem just camping, target shooting and drinking a few beers each night, while my cousin Gene is embodied by the notion of killing. Indeed, it’s quite exhilarating stalking a deer or herd of elk, but the hunt is what drives me more than the actual kill.
Needless to say, it’s an empowering adventure either way. And since my move to Oregon, I’ll only get a few days this year as opposed to the countless weekends when residing in Coeur d’Alene.
Thus I plan to seriously take advantage.
That being said, in keeping with our archived hunting article history of years’ past, I now present my final sports column from North Idaho College’s paper, The Sentinel.
BOING: DEATH TO BAMBI
By Jake Donahue | The Sentinel
Originally published Nov. 20, 2006AH, THE FRAGRANCE of death is permeating throughout North Idaho. It seems the further you get from downtown Coeur d’Alene it feels more and more like the bad side of Detroit.
Gunshots, killings – and that’s just in the mountains past Lake Fernan.
It is deer season, baby, and I’m getting ready to assassinate the kingpin of the forest. Bambi, once my childhood friend, is about to meet his maker (and I’m not talking about Walt Disney).
Oh how I yearn to bathe in the blood of the dead.
Sure, I have shot a grouse, caught a salmon and dropkicked a squirrel, but to bring down a beast as big as myself makes me shudder just imagining the sheer possibilities – the gallons of blood, yards of entrails and unholy smells are worth the 22-year wait.
I got my first deer tag this year, and I’ll be dammed if I chalk up a goose egg.
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I made a decision: I called in sick to work because I was going to hunt. I was unwavering in my mission (though I did watch the first half of the Michigan-Ohio State game), and prepared for the hunt of a lifetime.
Rifle? Check.
Camo jacket and Carhartts? Check.
Lawn chair, pillow to sit on, peanut butter sandwich and deer call? Check, check, check and check.
Indeed, it was to be a glorious day.
I nestled into my lawn chair under my Grandparent’s deck, tossed a few marshmallows into my hot cocoa and leaned back as gunshots echoed throughout the mountain like Independence Day. I’m the first one to admit that some people don’t call what I do “hunting.”
These are the same people who don’t shoot grouse from moving vehicles or hunt by the light of the moon. They also follow the “laws.”
But my hunting guide (my cousin Geno) told me long ago that we write the rule book as we go. So what if we sat in lawn chairs next to the dryer vent at our grandparent’s house? At least we keep warm.
WE SET UP a decoy up on the hill, complete with a two-way radio next to it. We sprayed deer piss liberally across the meadow. Then we sat under the deck.
Most people wait hours, sometimes days before seeing a deer on their hunt. We waited 15 minutes. But as a massive buck approached and we grabbed our guns, an ear-splitting screech pierced the still air – it was the sliding door to the deck.
We like to consider ourselves great hunters – real men of the wild – yet we often times forget we are sitting next to a house; it was time for Grandpa’s cigarette.
Thus, the deer ran for its life.
So between the door sliding open and close every so often, the occasional sound of cars driving by and the ever-present noise from the washer and dryer on the other side of the wall, we simply waited.
This time, unlike numerous other hunting trips under the deck, we had a radio next to the decoy. That enabled us to use a deer call from the house, through the radio, and it sounded like it came from the decoy!
Illegal? Most likely. But that’s the only way to get the big deer.
After watching one tiny buck cower away from our daunting decoy (the rut was approaching, and thus bucks will attack each other for first dibs at the most beautiful babes of the backcountry), we waited a little while longer.
Being the impatient imbecile I’ve been dubbed, I decided to no longer wait. I’m not missing out on a deer this year, so as it got darker I concluded the next deer to walk out was going …
Boom-shakka-lakka!
I dropped that monster of a doe so quick I heard the valley shake when she hit the mud. So what if it didn’t have antlers, it was a big deer and it was now dead – by my own hands
Nevertheless, my cousin was the one who gutted, skinned and hung the bloody carcass from the rafters in our garage. Long story short, I basically just pulled the trigger and then watched Geno slaughter the slain beast.
But already, I cannot wait until next season. I have the urge to ungulate anther, a passion to kill again. There is a dead deer in my grandpa’s garage right now waiting to be cut up, but I’m already contemplating my next kill.
I may not have butchered Bambi, but I murdered his mom.
The infamous “Geno,” my cousin.
In keeping with the tradition of the season – hunting season, that is – I’ve decided to pull a few “Boing” articles out of the dusty archives.
So, here is part two of the series (part 1 should be just below this post). Coming up next will be the third sports column I wrote about the adventures of Geno and myself, and don’t be surprised if I throw up a “Best of” post featuring my favorite hunting photos from years past.
Enjoy!
BOING: THEY CALL ME TNT, DYN-O-MITE
By Jake Donahue | The Sentinel
Originally published Nov. 21, 2005Breaking up the monotony of my newly-dawned 21-year-old life may seem challenging until you realize that my life is far from that.
Amidst the madness that makes up me, lies the most important aspect that I feel I truly represent: Surrounding myself with those who match my maturity level – thus explaining why I love coaching third grade basketball for Coeur d’Alene Park and Rec.
Indeed, this age group is solely playing for the sheer enjoyment of the game. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself after respective losing scores of 17-3, 16-4 and 20-0. And true, while all is fun, I must gloat about our sole W on the score sheet: a 4-2 romping we barely held on to in the final minutes.
For, to say the least, that’s all I can hold on to. Until my cousin Geno calls me up, of course.
That’s when I set aside my copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Coaching Youth Basketball,” which I really do own, and absorb all that Geno has to offer.
(By the way, this is the same dude who got me hooked on North Idaho’s claim to fame: That redneck’s national pastime of the ever-amazing sport known as road hunting. He taught me that few things rival the feeling an exploding grouse leaves you with. Especially when you shot with one hand from a moving truck, while not spilling your beer in the other.)
But today, he just got done watching Rob Zombie’s movie “Devil’s Rejecets,” and enlightened me with some of his self-proclaimed wisdom he boisterously dubs ‘Geneglish.’
“Even though Rob Zombie’s wife kills people in the movie, I think I’d still date her,” he said. “She’s so freaking hot; I guess I’m just a sucker for danger!”
And this is the guy I’m supposed to hunt big game with the next morning. The same guy who asked me to hunt with him that night (illegal) from his truck (illegal) on private property (also illegal).
“Didn’t you know that a full moon is God’s natural spot light?”
May God have mercy on my virgin-hunting soul.
True, I once vowed to kill Bambi, and while I didn’t share Geno’s gut-wrenching, mind-bending, twisted enthusiasm, I was going to get a deer in my first season, that much is certain.
So before leaving the house last Wednesday morning, I grabbed my boots, Carhartts, hand warmers and camo jacket – no safe hunter’s orange for us, apparently that stuff’s for “pansies.”
“Those deer are just frolicking down there and eating their morning grub,” Geno said. “Little do they know, there is gonna be bloodshed in theat peaceful little village.”
Once in the truck, I felt it necessary to call a friend back in Oregon about my upcoming experience, and share with him my love for deer hunting (lackluster at this point, to say the least). After cussing me out for waking him up at 5 a.m., I was belittled once more: “You’re hunting!?” he blasted. “Since when do they sell Carhartts at the Gap, you preppy little mountain-man wannabe.”
Screw him, I had deer on the mind, and deer piss on my clothes. Welcome to Idaho, where the men are men and the deer are scared, where buttering yourself up in deer urine and huddling around other men in the woods is considered bonding – not bondage!
However, one major problem surfaced during our first legal outing: We both re-learned how big of a klutz I am.
“From now on, Jake, I’m going to call you TNT,” he said. “Because when you walk through the woods it sounds like a bomb is going off.”
That meant only thing, we were back in the old Toyota and headed further into the wilderness, where I couldn’t scare the deer away and Gene could stun them with the brights. Why use deer decoys when the front headlights of a pickup will stop any deer in its tracks.
Illegal? I thought so, too.
“If we go down,” he says, “we go down hard.”
Long story short, day one was filled everything but deer. So the next morning after we camped atop a local mountain, we barreled through the snow-encrusted hills with a ferocious fervor – the first legitimately legal outing we had experienced together.
We used a deer decoy, with no luck. We tried deer urine all over the place, with nothing to show but a God-awful-smelling tent, and then we even tried deer calls.
You guessed it, nadda.
“I think I use the deer call too much,” Geno said. “Just like with women, I call so much I scare them away."
Two more days went the exact same. Sure, I heard deer in the brush, but I’m sure they were bouncing around back there making fun of me, saying to other deer how funny I smelled.
I know I wouldn’t go anywhere near a deer covered in human piss.
The experience as a whole turned bittersweet. While hunting, legally, leaves a morally clean slate, I think I may stick to the warmer climates offered by an elementary school gym. Indeed, there is no greater joy than coaching youth sports, but I’ve still got a vengeance for venison.
Bambi is still numero uno on my list, but we’ll see if I tag him.
As we left the camp, I came to the conclusion I may never hunt with Geno again, for the sole reason he mentioned this demented musing after, noticeably, much thought: “I wonder how bad a deer’s butt stinks when it’s in heat.”
Mother of God.
I’ve got good news and bad news.
The Good News: I’m going back to Coeur d’Alene at the end of this month to fly from Spokane to Austin, Tex., for a design award (thanks to NIC for paying!).
The Bad News: Well, it’s mostly bad for the deer and moose running around Fernan Mountain. My cousin Gene and our buddy Todd will be spending the 3 days following my return from Texas hunting. It will be glorious. Todd has a moose tag, Gene and I both deer, while tree stands are setup already. A few days camping on the top of a mountain in early November, with temperatures (hopefully) in the single digits and snow hammering down, might just possibly be as close to perfection as my young life will experience.
Boom shakka lakka!
Anyway, in the spirit of the season (and because I’m literally counting down the hours until my trip!), I’ve decided to share my four favorite hunting articles – written by me, of course – that I penned whilst editing Sports for The Sentinel.
So, here is the first column I wrote about hunting, while the next three will come in the next few days. From the bowels of Boing (my old sports column), I give you:
BOING: BIRDS, BEER CANS AND BULLETS
By Jake Donahue | The Sentinel
Originally published Sept. 19, 2005I recently experienced the most North Idahoan tradition that I am sure exists: road hunting. Because of this truly redneck ritual, I have ultimately realized how skewed my interpretation of this sport was – nay, how skewed was my perspective of all sports.
Indeed, I may have once deemed any “sport” boasting the use of animals or wheels (such as rodeo and big game hunting, or NASCAR and BMX racing) was as far away from the wide world of sports as one could reach. If baseball was the sun in our solar system of sports, NASCAR was a black hole in a different universe.
I even proclaimed they were simply reasons for rednecks to congregate and drink themselves into oblivion – much like St. Patrick’s Day for us Irish folk, or college for guys like me.
However, after a close friend of mine took me on this life-altering journey through the woods, with a rifle in one hand, a Natty Light in the other, and his knees on the steering wheel, I now understand why rednecks road hunt: It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been around hunters my whole life: my dad, my grandpa, my uncles and my cousins. Oh sure, I went camping and fishing and I’ll be the last one to turn down a venison dinner; I even work for Black Sheep Sporting Goods – the leading vendor of all things fishing- and hunting-related in the Northwest.
But let’s face it: I’m a city kid. While my cousin wears camouflage, I shop at the Gap; when they’re up four in the morning before daylight, I wake up in time for the 1 p.m. Seahawks’ game. While I’m at parties chasing tail, they’re in the woods chasing whitetail.
Needless to say, I’m the last one you’d expect with a gun. Yet all it took was $30.50 at the mighty ‘Sheep, and now I’m an official card-carrying resident hunter/fisher.
And that’s all it took for my cousin to throw me in the pickup with a rifle and 12-pack. The walking, talking, human quote-machine of a cousin of mine has been like my big brother; so if he says it’s legal, I simply assume it is.
“Laws? What laws?” he once said. “I write the rule book as I go.”
We embarked on our journey slowly but steady, a stop for gas, a stop for beer, and a quick pep talk before heading up the mountain to slay the bird locals know as “grouse.”
“In town I may be the biggest loser around,” he said, staring off into the wilderness. After a momentary pause, as a devilish grin slowly spread across his face and the twinkle all but vanished from his eyes, he added: “But up here on the mountain, out in the woods, I am God – I decide what lives and what dies.”
He reared his head back, bellowed a satanic chuckle and peeled up the swerving dirt roads.
I have no other worldly experiences to justly compare the following two hours of my life. In short, I flat-out don’t remember the most of it, simply quick images of the sky clouding up for a rainstorm (“If this weather was a pizza,” said Gene, “than it would be extra-saucey!”).
I remember answering a phone call from my girlfriend – to his complete and utter disgust, as women apparently do not belong in the world of hunting, or even on the minds of men in the “hunting zone.” Yet as quickly as he was to denounce my answering of the call, he yielded one more bit of advice from his ever-growing repertoire: “Tell her that she has the body of a supermodel and the brains of an astronaut.”
At one point, I’m pretty sure we were knee-deep in elk feces searching for a fallen grouse carcass.
All in all, we didn’t end up with a single bird in the bag. In fact, the journey in which I speak of lasted only 25 minutes – that’s all it took before we reached the real hunter’s plateau: a monstrous grass field where grouse are aplenty, the deer and the elk roam, and beer cans and shotgun shells can be seen for miles.
It was indeed a true redneck’s paradise; worse yet, I found myself awe-struck when I quietly muttered one solitary word in this land of animal solitude: “Glorious.”
Apparently road-hunting is illegal, some rule about being 200 feet or so from any roadway. Yet what I considered road-hunting was actually legal: riding to the prairie with guns behind the seat.
Consequently, I have now budged from a position that many felt was impossible: I will be the first to admit hunting is a sport. The adrenaline rush you get when ending the life of another living creature is simply unparalleled.
I’ve never scored the winning touchdown in a football game, but I have played co-ed recreational softball. I’ve coached two Little League teams and I’ve sunk a hole-in-one on the third hole of Seattle’s most notorious mini-golf course.
Yet all those pale in comparison to shooting a grouse. Worst yet, I bought a deer tag this year, too. If they’re at all like shooting a grouse, than may God have mercy on the whitetails of North Idaho.
Bambi, prepare to die.
Remember this mask I made during the election last October? We also printed one for McCain on the other side of the page in The Sentinel.
Well, check out this page.
I really can’t complain about someone stealing my photo, as I often times link to other people’s photos. So I’m not even complaining. I just find it very interesting that a year later someone links to it. And they don’t even reference the photo in their blog post, either. It’s just a visual aide to a topic similar to that of the design.
Recently I’ve been updating an old story I wrote for The Sentinel that will be reprinted in Idaho Magazine’s November issue. They’re running my photos, as well (see my favorite below).
But the hardest part of the entire thing is penning a 50-word “mini-bio” of myself that they will run on the Contributors Page. I didn’t realize how hard writing about myself could be.
But, after toiling for more than a few hours, I finally finished this little paragraph:
A recent college graduate, Jake Donahue is a journalist in every sense of the word. He’s covered student government scandals and opined the cons of handicapped parking; photographed everything from pelicans to panoramic; but above all else, loves newspaper design immensely. He’s a Little League coach, freelance designer and soon to be married.And here is one of the photos I used in the original article, hopefully they pick this one, as well:
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this little ditty I discovered earlier this month: I’m a finalist for the Associated Collegiate Press’ Design of the Year competition, specifically the Front Page category.
Talk about an honor! Here is the page that won:
So, come Saturday, Oct. 31, at the 88th Annual ACP/CMA convention in Austin, Tex., I find out whether I won 1st through 6th place. The top winner receives Adobe software (I guess I can sell it, as I already have CS4). Needless to say, I’m beyond excited. This page already won 1st place in the Non-Daily Broadsheet Cover category for the Student Society of News Design’s University of Missouri design contest. I do have to mention that one of my favorite photographers made this page possible: Tim Sorenson, who shot the helicopter photo and ASNIC pic.
Here is my competition. They all look pretty damn good, and they’re from way bigger schools with proven track records in design success. Cross your fingers!
Since Holly got me that new Canon (see above) last October as an early birthday gift before my Kansas City trip, I’ve taken it everywhere. One of my first posts of 2009 was a recap of the favorite photos I shot in 2008: That Canon shot three of the five I chose, and it’s sure to be accountable for almost every one my “Best of 2009” (of course, that Canon Mach 3 in Florida was pretty sweet though).
I’ve never considered myself a photographer. Let me rephrase that, after high school I haven’t considered myself a photographer. I shot many events and sports for my high school newspaper and yearbook (even winning some major awards along the way), but I was a big fish in a little pond. Since, I’ve settled with being a writer and designer.
But slowly I’ve gained a new obsession with looking through the lens. Maybe the friendly competition we had back at NIC as everyone tried their own photo techniques helped percolate my interest again. They always had way nicer cameras (but they planned on being professional photographers, so they should have nice cameras). Tim Sorenson and James Hannibal are my two favorite and I constantly strive to shoot something that makes them say, “Damn, Jake!”
Needless to say, I never really compared myself to them. And that was fine; while they took award-winning photos, I used those pictures to design award-winning pages. We needed each other.
But now I’m just shooting to shoot. And while I slowly teach myself how to maximize the full power of Photoshop CS4, I’m getting even more excited. Maybe I should have started a separate blog where I only post photos (actually I tried that: www.jakeshoots.blogspot.com). But the designing part of my brain still loves to mix photos with text.
Throw in a few videos thanks to my Blackberry Storm (see mouse), YouTube (see Ari Gold and the Most Interesting Man in the World), not to mention my Poynter summer project (meet my pelican friend, Spot).
I may not write as much as thought I could muster, but I’m a multi-media maestro these days. Could it be for the best? Who knows. It’s my blog, after all, and I’m the only critic I listen to when it comes to this thing.
But to the countless people who actually do read this thing, I just want to say Thank You. Just when I think I'm essentially talking to myself, someone I haven’t seen in a long time comes up and says, “Hey man, I love your blog.”
And then I get excited again. I guess whatever I’m doing works so far.
I remember the exact moment when I started this blog last November. I was sitting at my fiancée's new apartment after helping her move to Portland from Coeur d’Alene (Back then I figured it wouldn’t be long until she moved back to Idaho after not being with me … guess who won?). I had about two hours to myself as she was working at her new job, although the cable/internet hadn’t been hooked up yet and I was extremely tired from unpacking. Too bored to sleep, I noticed my computer somehow was able to steal the neighbor’s wireless web.
Suddenly, I had the urge to write.
Not knowing why, where or how, a glimpse of the blogger.com logo flashed across my memory and I knew at that second I was ready to start a blog.
I had never done this before. I never kept a journal or a diary. The only things I really enjoyed writing up until then were articles about hunting with my cousin or sports stories while on the NIC newspaper, The Sentinel; I loved writing essays for any class, and short stories were fun.
But last November, sitting alone in a dark apartment with boxes strewn about, the floodgates suddenly opened, and Jakewood was born:
__________________________________________________________
fan covering high school venues, I subsequently morphed into a collegiate drunk who typographically stammered through columns about shooting birds from a truck. While in high school, my sports column made fun of fat girls and cowboys, in college it was handicapped parking. Reverse evolution is what they call it, I believe: Getting progressively dumber as time elapses. I finally visited my first art museum. Oh, sure, I’ve been to a few, although I’ve never really spent time in them or truly cared. Why spend $18 to walk through a hall of paintings and sculptures when you can see them online for free?
Anyway, whilst dining and drinking in Indianapolis last Thursday, Nils, Eli and myself happened to run into a woman from Chicago who was pitching her business to us after a short while. She, too, was visiting Indy for a conference (not journalism, but museums). After a few beverages, she coughed up her membership card to the Art Institute of Chicago so that we may experience it free of charge – we just have to mail it back to her at some point.
It was exactly as I expected: Untalented photos blown up so big they looked cool (but still a photo even I could take); a 3’x3’ orange square; a green square of similar dimensions; large canvases with sprayed paint.
Long story short, I simply don’t comprehend how that is art. I have always believed art to be something difficult.
Nevertheless, I was excited to see a few paintings that I remembered from Art History at Oregon State. I was especially stoked when I saw a few Andy Warhol works, as my fiancée is obsessed with him. Here are some photos I took there (I had no idea they allowed cameras).
After leaving Portland last Monday, I drove straight to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where I only had 3 days to see as many people as possible before leaving for Indianapolis. Sad to say, that didn’t work out very well, as I was poor when it came to mixing time with family and friends.
However, the culmination of those three days reared beautifully-smoked garlic- and beer-flavored results from my 
Grandpa’s smoker Wednesday night: four racks of perfectly smoked beef and pork ribs (See them hanging in Grandpa’s wholly customized Brinkman –-> ).
I loved them, my family loved them, but the true food critic of our family (Grandpa, himself) apparently loved them, also: “The best ribs I’ve ever had.”
Indeed, it was true last Wednesday night that perfection can often times be found on a plate.
We left for the airport Thursday morning at 4 a.m., my advisor from The Sentinel Nils Rosdahl along with the paper’s new managing editor, Eli Francovich. The reason for our journey was simple: The Sentinel had been named a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists’ prestigious national award, The Mark of Excellence. We knew we weren’t winning first place, but the college still decided it would pay to send Nils, Eli and myself to pick up the award.
This is the three of us picking up our award at the conference in Indy. Eli and I were the only people in attendance not wearing a collar.Lately I’ve been on a photo frenzy, trying to rally as many sweet shots of my hometown as possible before bouncing to Oregon. And while I’ve never considered myself more than a novice at the photographic art, I do take pride in knowing that I have successfully shot a few good slides in my attempts.
Knowing this, and the fact that I’m never shy of recognition (especially when I deserve it), I was aloof when I stumbled upon this little ditty at the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce:
Instantly, I knew that photo looked familiar – and it wasn’t a photo I had seen somewhere before. Well, actually, I had seen that photo before.
Through my camera lens!
A few years ago I wrote a story about North Idaho College offering a sailing program, and the fact that this sailboat’s owner was also considering erecting an athletic sailing team since Lake Coeur d’Alene offers an immense opportunity to build a successful program.
So, I took a rental boat from work out one day and shot some easy photos with my old digital point-and-shoot. Nothing spectacular, but enough to add a visual element on the page. And in all actuality, the photo above was not even the photo I used in the paper.
Well, I went through my computer, and low-and-behold, look what I found: The rough, unedited, original photo that the Cd’A Chamber has been using for who knows how long:
It figures, one of the lesser-quality shots I’ve taken over the past years is the one that actually gets recognized. Anyway, I’ve since e-mailed the Chamber to see, firstly, how did they even get the photo? I don’t remember sending it anywhere. And secondly, will they at least put my name on it? They do on the others, so I might as well get some sort of credit.
After all, now I can say I’m a published photographer in something outside The Sentinel.
Ingrained in my persona for as long as I remember, there has laid a deep affinity toward the written word. Perhaps this is due to the sharp contrasts with the spoken word: You cannot mumble while writing (a predicament I have dealt with all my life through the spoken aspect), and unlike speaking to a crowded auditorium, you rarely see the expressions from those who read your work while you're in the process of creating it. Needless to say, I have never been one to avoid criticism or comments concerning that which I pen, as my level of modesty is rivaled only by the boisterous Muhammad Ali - cocky, to say the least. Yet in my sophomore year of high school, I discovered I could collect a greater response to my writing than a simple chuckle: Journalism.
Though I started as a simple sports fan covering high school venues, I subsequently morphed into a collegiate drunk who typographically stammered through columns about shooting birds from a truck. While in high school, my sports column made fun of fat girls and cowboys, in college it was handicapped parking. Reverse evolution is what they call it, I believe: Getting progressively dumber as time elapses.
You see, I love evoking responses from those who would otherwise look away. Why would someone read the feature I wrote about an injured basketball player when, if they simply turn the page, they can peruse my defamatory article condemning recycling? Would the reader in turn, if they were so inclined to actually read the feature I wrote next, think I'm some ailing idiot begging for attention, or, after reading the thought-provoking, most-likely comedic and provocative recycling article even read the feature at all? And if they read the feature, would I seem smarter for covering two completely polar-opposite categories of the journalism spectrum, or merely an idiot?
I have ultimately reached a writer’s paradox.
Why is it that I can create a mixture of words, sentences – nay, paragraphs! – that beckon the most strict of college journalism judges to acclaim the serious feature as award-worthy, yet in the same newspaper issue alienate myself from most of humanity with a dim-witted piece on the similarities between Bigfoot and the Bible? More than likely it is to settle a debate in my own spacious mind. For every serious, well-written and gloriously articulated article I construct, subconsciously I must seemingly produce the opposite as well, a counter balance of sorts (see knee-boob column).
Why? I do not know. I would love to write like Ernest Hemmingway, but at the same time I would also love to achieve the same literary success of Tucker Max.
I’m more confused than you are.
However, of all that I’ve done and dreamed of doing, this is the first blog I’ve blogged, and hopefully the first of many.
Posts
All Comments
