I, Brandon

Day 3 of my 40 Day Positivity Challenge

I’ve spent the last three days basically on my couch. Some sort of weird virus has sapped my energy and left me with 100 degree temperatures. Nothing beyond that; I just sit around, feeling tired and achy.

That being the case it’s been incredibly easy to be positive, at least in terms of my Lent commitment of not openly expressing negativity. This is because I haven’t really been around anybody.

I don’t bother griping about things to Lori because she generally knows how I feel. It’s one of the advantages of being together so long – I don’t have to spell things out at all for her to know how I feel (the number one thing I’m grateful for today.)

My one main negative? I heard some screaming kids outside around 10pm…and it isn’t the first time. I live next door to an older couple, who are very nice but keep to themselves, like all the people around us. But they have a child…I guess it’s theirs, I don’t know. He/She shows up in a trashed out minivan, with the spouse and a few kids in tow.

The kids scream and generally go nuts all through the night, typically outside, in their back yard. Their back yard happens to be right outside Nate’s room, and nothing irritates me more than something that wakes Nate up. That sleep is valuable, dammit. No one messes with that sleep, because that sleep messes with Lori’s sleep, which messes with my sleep.

They’re obviously lower-class, or at least struggling middle class. I base this on their car, the way they dress, etc… and I judge them because of that.

Idiot.

How quickly we forget the path we take.

When I was a kid, we lived in a rotting trailer house with leaks and full-on holes in the ceiling in the room I shared with my brother.

And I was crazy. Absolutely crazy.

You’ve never met a kid as wild as I was. My parents weren’t there to discipline me the way i should be, and when they were around they were too tired to deal with me.

The reason? They freakin’ worked all day. Not just 8 hours, but two jobs for Dad and a job plus school for Mom.

I work one job and can barely handle Nate’s elevated voice. Imagine two of them, screaming, whining, begging for attention.

My neighbor’s kids? Hell, they might be well behaved for lower class kids. I know I wasn’t.

Restitution (or #2): I’m eternally grateful for the sacrifices my parents made for me. I truly believe this sacrifice is what drove me mother to do what she did, and I’m going to pay for that the rest of my life, even if it isn’t my fault.

(#3) I’m also grateful for my upbringing. Because I know what it’s like to struggle and wonder where food is coming from, or what it’s like to hide on the other side of a room during a rainstorm because of the hole in the ceiling. My parents gave their happiness and well-being so I could jump off their shoulders onto something bigger and better.

If living in a trailer park, patching holes in the ceiling with duct tape and eating out of a dumpster is white trash, then I am damned proud to be white trash. Without those experiences I am not nearly the person I am today.

It was brutal and because of what happened with my mother, I don’t know that I would ask for it again. But from where I stand now, I’m thankful for the rough road this one-time country boy had to haul.

Those of you who have followed my various blogs and other publishing ventures know that every year I try to do a little something for Lent. I’m not Catholic, but the idea of self-improvement and appreciation for God through self-denial is totally appealing to me.

I’ve altered from the traditional sacrifices – meat is a must in my diet, particularly seeing as how Lent overlaps my birthday, which historically comes with a meat feast at Rodizio here in SLC. I try to give up things that drag me down majorly, but I also take a little different avenue by adding behaviors that I want to become habits.

My biggest hang-up, maybe in life lately, is negativity. I realize I can never give up negative thinking – there’s a line crossed somewhere after adolescence that exposes one to the real stains of the world, like politics, the emptiness of the pursuit of wealth, and the dawn of the work-10-hours-a-day-then-die life. It would frankly be a little dangerous to look at the world through rose colored glasses all the time, so a little realistic, even pessimistic, viewpoint can be helpful.

But I OD. I make Debbie Downer look amateurish. And I spread it around hardcore. Everyone knows that it only takes one person complaining and whining to get the rest of a room started.

First pledge: No verbalized/expressed negativity. Includes whining, cussing, taunting, poking, badgering, teasing, and on and on… Especially zero snarkasm, which we all know it my favorite.

Obviously I will break down. Old habits die hard. In fact, I usually only make it through about two weeks of Lent before I just give up. But for every expressed negative, I vow to remind myself about a positive.

Second pledge: Keep up a positivity journal to remind me of all the good things I have going, plus rectification for my “pledge one” relapses. Most of these will be posted on my blog, some on my Twitter, some written down in a notebook, 1.0 style.

Second pledge (b): I read somewhere that sitting quietly in positive meditation for even 10 minutes a day has great physiological effects on a person. I’ve tried it before, and it totally works. The problem is actually finding 10 minutes of silence. Late and early I fall asleep, and if I try to do it at work then that just raises a whole stink.

Third pledge: Floss nightly. I’m good for two or three nights a week. Not an every night man yet. Workin’ on it.

Fourth pledge: Don’t be a topper. I’m not a topper by any stretch, but I’ve become surrounded by them. You should hear the stories. One guy’s visit to McDonalds turns into someone else’s visit with the Ray Croc, which forces someone else to chime in about their visit with the Dalai Lama. Even though I’ve hung out with Shaq, I’m not going to try and top them. If my story doesn’t fit, or if it feels gratuitous, then I’ll hold back. Most toppers don’t listen to anyone else; I like to think I’m a listener.

In the past I’ve tried other pledges, like giving up the F word, or not eating pudding, but I realized that I was cheating myself out of real growth by going for low-hanging fruit. I don’t use the F word very often and I don’t eat pudding unless I’m at a Chinese buffet, which I rarely am. I’ve been lucky to avoid a lot of destructive behavioral traits, but I think the few that I have stem from my cynicism and negativity, so I’m taking aim right at the core.

The goal? I want to be fully aware of just how much I’ve been given in life, to recognize the good above all other things, to the point where I’m oblivious to the small things that just don’t matter. Hopefully then I’ll be one of those folks that is able to make people feel better after a few minutes together, the kind of people can stand to spend more than 10 minutes at a time with.

Sorry to go a little Stuart Smalley there on everyone, but my sentiment is genuine.

So, join me in giving something up, even keep me accountable if you like – bsc @ bscarter.com if you’d like to email me. Got something you’re going after? I can help with yours as well.

“Man” has surely seen better days than yesterday.

From BSCARTER.com

From my Twitter program, Seesmic.

Happy New Year everybody!

Myspace Graphics | New Years Images | Myspace layouts

Whhoo! Glittery MySpace graphics!

What’s that you say, it’s February?

Crap.

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I have VERY LOGICAL reasons why. And they don’t even include the fact that I’m mostly incapable of writing less than 500 words on a given topic.

We’ve been traveling. First we spent the post-holidays in Oklahoma with my family. I got to go to Pete’s Place, which is still awesome.

I was home for about 72 hours, then headed out again, this time to Anaheim to work social media at a trade show for a client. We kicked ass, trending twice on Twitter. That’s a big deal for a craft & hobby company to become such a hot topic in the midst of the Brett Favre/Purple Jesus Vikings meltdown.

On top of the travel, we began a transition to a new email server at my office. Did I mention I’m now the IT guy? You know how hard it is to transition people over, especially when some of them are used to big city-style massive IT departments? We have Macs and PCs, iPhones and Blackberrys, people using Outlook, Entourage, Mail, Thunderbird and Gmail, we have people who are in the office everyday and people who don’t even know what it looks like.

What I’m trying to say is I’ve been working essentially around the clock, and I’m tired of looking at computers.

But it’s my job, and I want to remain employed. Even if I’ve pulled out every one of my hairs and still haven’t solved all the problems.

Okay, so there’s my excuse for not posting for a while. Moving on.

This is the post I had hoped to make at the end of 2009

What a strange ten years.

My initial reaction upon looking back was to say “What a crappy ten years.” I thought about 9/11, wars, the current financial crisis, toiling for two years in the bowels of the Delta Center for basically nothing, struggling to find a job after jumping out of college, the death of my grandfather and on and on…

Then I thought about how good it was. Amazingly good, in all the ways that truly matter. I graduated college, got married and had a son. I’ve advanced in my career as a writer/PR guy/IT director, and have a home plus two vehicles.

I have nothing to whine about.

Now for the part where I stroke my own ego and share what I think was superior from the Aughts

Top Five Albums of the 00s – Not based on some artsy-fartsy trend crap, like Animal Collective, but based simply off of the albums that I listened to over and over again:

5. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
4. Kanye West – The College Dropout
3. Muse – Black Holes and Revelations
2. Radiohead – In Rainbows
1. Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf

Top Five Movies of the 00s – Again, this is what I liked, not what “advanced the art of film making” or “the movie that speaks for a generation”:

5. Pineapple Express
4. All 27 hours of the Lord of the Rings trilogy
3. O Brother Where Art Thou
2. The Kill Bills
1. The Dark Knight

The Best Oklahoma Football Teams of the 00s:

5. 2001 – Ridiculous defense, terrible offense
4. 2008
3. 2003 – Put Quentin Griffin on this team, and they destroy LSU
2. 2004 – Still don’t know what happened in the USC game
1. 2000

Politicians Who Were Corrupt and Will Continue to be:
1. All of them, stop supporting one side or the other. None of them give a damn about you until it’s time to vote. Find ways to work with people for the sake of ousting corruption, not working against people for the sake of standing behind some entitled scumbag “public servant”

Best Food I had:
5. Ganesh Indian here in Utah
4. Jambalaya on Bourbon Street
3. Red Iguana in SLC
2. Crepes in Cancun
1. Ribeyes at Joe Allen’s in Abilene

Things I’m looking forward to in the 2010s:
5. Growing my little business
4. Time Travel and Hovercraft Skateboards
3. The birth of my niece, which will be in May this year
2. By the time the decade is over Nate will be a teenager. Okay, I’m actually not looking forward to that.
1. Another child (not right now, dangit, but eventually)

Favorite screen-cap I snagged in the 00s:

Favorite screen-cap I grabbed yesterday – this kid had just committed to play football at USC and was celebrating on Twitter:

Yaaay Happy New Year!

I really only go three places during the week: My house, the gym and my office. Since I go to the gym late in the evenings the parking lot is mostly empty and I don’t have to deal with bad parking (though I have been there around noon on a summer day, and the housewife putting on makeup while on the cell with her seven kids screaming at her from the back rows can hardly be expected to steer her Armada Tank Edition between two TINY lines).

My office is a different story. For whatever reason, these people can’t seem to get it right.

Adventures in Parking, Part II (Part I here)

First up, this car gets extra space because it’s in the handicap spot. Whoo! It’s like the last bathroom stall! Truly the executive suite of parking spaces.

The trick this car pulls off is almost as bad as the four-spacer. I don’t know what to call it, but the person only managed to get about half the car in the space. Even then, he wasn’t able to get inside the lines. If we as a human race can’t achieve even the most basic principles, such as pulling our Man Moving Machines into the designated areas, then we deserve the destruction heading our way at the hands of God’s great laser beam in 2012.

Man I wish this picture was better. This is the Matrix truck driven by the she-beast. No one does more to further the art of bad parking than this woman. In this particular picture it as if she got sort of close to a parking space, and just hit the brakes right there in the middle of the driving aisle. Failing to even come close to any yellow lines? She may just be the Rosa Parks of bad parking.

The terrified bug eyed looks. The sadistic emotionless face of Ronald. The Hamburglar, who has a serious hamburger addiction issue, prepares to give in to his habit with lustful glee.

It’s not in the photo, but to the side of this scene is a river, where Grimace, pantsless as always, is attacking the fish. In other scenes, Birdie the Early Bird flies away with a chicken McNugget that is desperately reaching out for it’s mother* with tears streaming down it’s nuggety face. The mother has her own issues, as Mayor McCheese has declared her his next “intern.”

Nightmare Fuel.

Click on the pic to get a larger version. This is part of a mural painted on the walls of a McDonald’s in Sandy, Utah. A mural of terror.

*- I’ll assume it was a mother. I’m not up to speed on the sex characteristics of McNuggets. If I find something out, I will report it to you.

I’ve been to plenty of places where bad vehicle etiquette is commonplace. Dallas had death-defying freeway drivers. Tulsa has lots of rubberneckers. Abilene was full of people who couldn’t park to save their lives.

Utah is the first place I’ve lived that combines all of these into one. The drivers here are insane – they’ll barge through three lanes, cut you off, then flip you the bird simply for being in the area they decided to fly into. They do this in Dallas, but they’re very methodical about it – they have a plan. In Utah, they drive like Rex Grossman plays football – as if to say, “F@$# it, I’m changing lanes and I don’t care who has to bail out to avoid hitting me.”

It’s strange because they’re usually quite nice outside of vehicles, but give them a piece of anonymity I guess, and they’ll raise hell like most folks.

I’m not bold enough to capture their highway antics – I have a hard enough time dealing with my own car; I can’t handle trying to take snap shots of the crazy bastards around me.

However, I have started a small collection of their parking misdeeds. This place is full of people entirely incapable of fitting in between two lines, whether it be due to their massive vehicles (“Mormon Minivan” typically refers to large ships on wheels, aka the Escalade, Denali, Expedition, etc), or sheer laziness.

I suppose somewhere in the universe theres a poetic element to it, akin to a child that cannot (or chooses not to) color in between the lines. Since most people are stuck behind cubicles and computers for little money and raising children, they can only express themselves in abstract ways – parking obtusely being preferable to taking an art class or learning decoupage I guess.

Here are some recent favorites…

We don’t need no stinking lines!

Here’s a car at Whole Foods. At least this one is out of the way

One lady (yes, I’ve seen her get out of the MakingUpForSmallGenitaliaMobile she drives) who shares our parking lot simply can not park to save her life. In fact, she can’t even do a bad job – she does an awful job. What’s worse is that she parks badly in the good spaces, in the middle of where everyone else tries to park.

Unacceptable. At least midlife crisis Corvette guy parks diagonally in the back of the lot.

Two stalls are not enough for her. She often takes three, and a couple times has ventured into the rarefied air of the four-spacer. Why a lady needs such a massive machine, when she clearly has no concept of how to properly operate it, is beyond me.

From BSCARTER.com

See that? utmatrix.com is run by people who DON’T KNOW HOW TO PARK.

The rare, vaunted Four-Spacer. A remarkable feat indeed.

Obviously I looked forward to this game for a long time, seeing as it was finally a chance for these BYU folks to see a real, nationally-competitive team that plays in a tough conference and boasts some of the best talent in the nation. With OU’s personnel losses after last year I didn’t think it would be a massive blowout, but I fully expected something along the lines of 42-21 or thereabouts.

But we all know what happened. OU laid an egg in what may be their most embarrassing performance since the BCS blowout against USC, in which the guys basically quit after the first quarter. BYU walked away with maybe the biggest win in the history of their school, while OU is left to wonder what, if anything, they can correct before more tough teams come through.

Before I say anything else, I want to give credit to BYU. They came in with great schemes and players that wanted it more. They out-everything’d OU and deserved to walk away with the win. BYU had their own issues heading into the game, with a patchwork offensive line and a really good running back on the sidelines, so their performance was fairly remarkable.

Now, on to OU business.

Every game OU has lost in the Stoops Era has been due to one or two poor units or unfortunate plays. This was often simply a secondary that couldn’t cover anything deep. More recently it’s been naps in the fourth quarter of games. (Again, the USC game is the exception here. Nothing worked in that one)

This game showed things I’ve never seen OU do in horrible, Megatron combinations. How many false starts can you have? And how in the world do you let the play clock run out on the GOAL LINE? I’ve never seen an OU team drop more than a couple passes, but there were at least six in this game. I can’t remember the last time we lost two fumbles in one game.

And the scary thing is none of this has to do with our Heisman quarterback getting hurt (except for the goal line flub, but I pin that on the coaches more than anyone else). The hit on Bradford was clean and he just fell on the shoulder the wrong way; this Coleby Clawson requires no death threats or condemnation. Those still go to the Oregon ref until further notice.

OU did more to beat themselves in this game than I’ve ever seen, and it has to be blamed on the coaches. They weren’t prepared to play, at all, and it only got worse after Bradford went down. Landry Jones, despite looking bewildered, played about as well as one could hope for a freshman stepping into a buzzsaw. Too bad the receivers dropped his passes as well.

The god part of the game was our defense turned in a great performance. To hold BYU to 14 is a great effort on anyone’s part, and I for one don’t blame them for giving up the long drive to put BYU ahead – when you play that much, and get that little support from your offense, you get worn down at the end of a game. Gerald McCoy may be the best defensive tackle in the nation, and I’ve never seen someone at that position do more to take control of the situation than he did.

The safeties were often out of position and Ryan Reynolds is a step slow, but as a unit they still did their jobs. The special teams were great as well. Hell, Tress Way’s punting may have been the highlight of the game for OU.

In retrospect, we were lucky to only lose by one. BYU will have a great year but they’re probably the fourth or fifth best team on the OU schedule. Next year the Sooners open with Cincinnati and Florida State in 2011. If we had been playing either of those teams, or Miami in Florida, it could’ve been a much wider loss.

The problem boils down to this: the U coaches took the same scheme from last year and applied to a mostly-new group of players. Nice thought, but now we know that having Sam and the running back’s back doesn’t make this last year’s team. Maybe by the end of the season they’ll get it and be running on all cylinders (a la the Bomar year) but I think we may see two or three more losses before then.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens for OU this year. Bradford will eventually come back, but his top target (Jermain Gresham) won’t, which means that someone, anyone has to step up as a consistent, trustworthy playmaker. The offensive line needs to come together and settle down; I think Stoops’ decision to abandon the no-huddle will help a great deal.

Two side notes: After the game I immediately received several messages from Mormon friends who saw it as an opportunity to promote their religion. Sorry folks, but I think that’s a low-class move. It’s a football game, not the freakin Crusades, and if God were really behind a team, wouldn’t they win by more than a point?

The only thing I can think to compare it to is this: When Texas Christian beat BYU fairly soundly last year, would it have pissed off LDS folks if people were posting to Twitter about the game with the good ole #christian hashtag, talking about what a great win for Protestants it was? Of course it would.

It’s a football game, folks. A bunch of Mormons beat a bunch of Christians/Muslims/Hindus/Whatever OU players worship on a football field, and outside of a few PR opportunities for the LDS, it means NOTHING to religion. If it does mean something to you, then you might want to rethink your confidence in whatever faith you have.

Irregardless, I pass their zealotry off to simple excitement, and my crankiness due to seeing my team play like crap, and we all moved on.

Again, it’s a football game.

Which brings me to the point number two, and it’s the most important one of all: I heard earlier in the day about a plane crash in Tulsa, and didn’t think much more about it until late at night after the game. As it turns out, I knew the five people who died in the crash, and one of them fairly well.

Suddenly the football, and the idiot religious zealots, and the hurt quarterback, all meant very little. I hate that it takes something like this for me to remember how fragile life is and how little something like a football game can be.

The Lesters are a family I was familiar with and had been around a couple of their kids a few times. They were just one of those special families that emanated love and were good to everyone that came around them.

Same thing with Dr. Ken Veteto. He was one of those guys who spent a lot of time at church and even if he didn’t know you that well, would do whatever he could to lend you a hand. It’s people like him that I strive to be like, and I can’t imagine what it’ll be like to have Park Plaza without him.

God rest their souls, and thanks for letting us share your lives.

Join this Facebook group to share your memories and remember our lost friends.

I write prep football stories for the Deseret News. It’s a cool gig that doesn’t pay very well but allows me to sit around and watch a football game for a couple hours then throw together a 500′ish word recap. I do it because I love the sport and enjoy the high school version of it, but I also do it because it’s good writing practice. My day job rarely requires me to throw together 500 coherent words in 30 minutes. I like the challenge.

I used to be one of those guys that whined about sports media, how they’d get a stat wrong or misspell an athlete’s name. The popular mob for sports fans to be a part of these days is to be convinced that the media have a bias against their team. Yes, I was on the message boards, holding my virtual pitchfork, ready to take down any and all media.

Anonymously, of course.

Then I tried it. I tried being one of “them.”

Needless to say, my tune changed. It’s tough, and I just write game stories. It’s not like I have to follow the team around every day and try to find news for the fans as a beat writer.

One thing that particularly stuck with me is comments. This is the difference between my job and the job of a sportswriter, or any other media member. We live in a world that has shifted to the point where if you’re putting youer real name on something and sticking by it, people are going to HAMMER you. I wasn’t prepared for this. As a PR guy, I deal with my clients and the media, but the criticism aired toward me is almost never public.

I try desperately not to look at the comments on my stories because I know what’s coming. But the site shows the first couple of comments, and of course, I can’t help but peek. That’s enough for me; I never click through.

You’d think the people reading a prep football story would be there to talk about football, but instead they’re actually editors.

“You got the kid’s name wrong!” and “You left out (kid’s name)! He played a HUGE game!” or “You’re an awful writer. This paper used to be so good.” “Whoever wrote this clearly never played football,” is always my favorite.

Here’s the truth that hit me hard a couple years back when I started doing this.

In football there are 22 kids on the field plus referees. Every one of them matters on every play.

There will be well over 100 plays in a typical game. For anyone to encapsulate the entire game and catch every important aspect in 500 words is impossible. Try sitting down and writing out a 500-word story that touches on every key play, every key call and every mess-up. Seriously, make a run at it.

Many prep games don’t have rosters. If your kid’s name is misspelled,I’m sorry. Just take it up with your athletic director or coach. I’m stuck going by the photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy that hangs around the press box and has all the numbers wrong because it was created before two-a-days even started.

And parents, I feel your pain. I really want to include Bobby in my story, but it’s just a game story. Even if he is a .400 hitter in baseball and a straight-A student, if he’s not making a key play or dominating the game then I just don’t have room for him. I’m sorry, but thanks for introducing yourself before the game.

It took me a bit when I started, but I can take the pressure now and sort of thrive on it. My night job is a BLAST. In fact, I take a great deal of pride in putting something out there with my real name on it and knowing that “AwesomeFan1066″ and most folks would never have the guts to do that. It pushes me to become better and have a deeper appreciation for the guys who do this every day, for little pay and heaps of criticism.

Now, sports columnists are a different entity. Rip on them all you want; they’re sadists…

The next time you’re signed in to your local newspaper site under your acronym of “KillerKool69″ and ready to unload on that writer who credited the wrong DB with an interception…well, have at it.You have every right to do it, and no one is going to make you stop.

But one day, you ought to try being on the other side.

It’s actually a LOT of fun.

PR people – you ever send out a pitch that you know it’s money? Where the story/source you offer is just perfect for the editor/publication you’re sending it to, and you know it’ll be perfect for their readers? Of course you do, 99% of your pitches should be like this (the other 1%, long shots. It’s okay, we all have them.)

And you get a response from the editor, agreeing that your story is one they really want to tell. They want to talk to your client, and clients of your clients. Send over product shots and anything else you have. SAMPLES!

So you fire off that email to the client, trying not to sound like you’re bragging, like you do stuff like this every day. It winds up looking like this:

Hello Jimmy,

We pitched your story to (Major Media Outlet) and they have great interest. Would you be able to do an interview with (Famous Media Personality) later this week? I’ve attached some background info on (the outlet) and some talking points.

Thanks,

Sammy

But if you were being honest, it would read:

Dude!

Holy Crap!

You’re going to be in freakin’ (Outlet)! I just made more revenue for your company that you’ve put together in years! How awesome am I? How lucky are you, ya lucky bastard?!

Let’s talk about upping that retainer, brah.

-Sammy

But then, the editor just disappears. No responses to emails or phone calls.

This happens to me almost weekly, and it seems to be getting more frequent. Maybe it’s due to overworked editors or constantly shifting beats. But sheesh, just tell me nevermind or “sorry, it’s a no go.” Just don’t ignore the emails; not after you’ve agreed to work with me.

All I can say is Dude, WTF?

How do you handle this and why does it happen?

Dunno. I guess you just take it in the pants from the client and try again.

———-

Yesterday the wife and I were cruising the hardened, tough streets of Sandy, Utah when an ad came upon the radio. It seems Pearl Jam is coming to town. Hooray!

For a “big” city, Salt Lake sure doesn’t get a ton of good shows. We get the ones who go to 220 cities a year like Kenny Chesney and Green Day, but the ones who don’t tour year-round rarely come here. I’m looking at you Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Kings of Leon. (Though some of our smaller venues should be credited for getting good ones such as Sigur Ros, MIA and Sonic Youth)

So to hear that Pearl Jam was coming was obviously a big deal and a no-brainer to attend.

Then they said the date.

Right smack dab in the middle of our Oklahoma trip. For a wedding that was called off.

#$%@#

Then to top it all off, they said the opening act is Ben Harper.

#$@%$#

Thus completes another week of schadenfreude, courtesy of Brandon Carter.