Job Applications In The 2.0

SuperCW And A Really Goode Job Application

Last evening I received an email from a dear friend of mine from back in my days of The Cocktail Circuit in Honolulu, Christa Wittmier. It was a brief note explaining that she was applying for a job, asking her friends and contacts to vote for her video application, and linking us to her application page at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County. The “Really Goode Job” is for a social media whiz whose title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent,” and I think that the concept of requiring job applicants to submit YouTube video footage of why they deserve the job is amazingly fitting.

I really can’t think of a better way to test the talents of a potential social media maven than to request an application via video, and Christa, of course, rose to the challenge, compiling her extensive online curriculum vitae into exactly one minute. The video condenses a Google search into only the most essential information, and showcases it all remarkably well.

As a friend who is very well-acquainted with Christa’s tireless photoblogging efforts at Honolulu Nightlife Diaries, jealous of her constant VIP passes to only the hottest of Honolulu nightlife and arts events, and enamored with her ability to socialize and write it and photograph it all at the same time, I suppose it is no surprise that I voted for Super CW here.

(And also no surprise that I think you should, as well, since I give good recommendations like that.)

But more so I think that this is where job applications should be heading: concise, simple, creative communications of our talents.

In only sixty seconds.

Filed under: Blogging, Media, Net Culture, Technology , a-list, christa wittmier, employment applications, hawaii, honolulu, honolulu nightlife diaries, linkage, Murphy-Goode Winery, pimpage, social media, social networking, supercw, the elevator pitch, video, YouTube

The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For

We created this poster to support the candidate in this critical presidential election who will lead us in a new direction, a better direction for our nation. The last 8 years have been a dark time of government oppression, torture and secrecy. We hope for change in 2008.
— Milton Glaser, on “Reason 3” of “30Reasons.org: 30 Graphic Designers Present 30 Reasons To Vote For Barack Obama”.

I helped elect Bill Clinton the very first time I was allowed to vote.

I will always remember how I felt when I cast my vote that day in late 1992. As someone who had spent most of his life up to that day with his nose in books of literature and philosophy, or his feet on a stage, or his fingers on a piano or Apple Macintosh keyboard, I was embarrassingly uninformed politically (as I am sure some would likely argue I still am). But I had been precocious enough and observant enough of politics and media throughout my childhood that I was not unaware that the 1992 presidential election was so important, not only to the Democratic Party, but to the United States in general. I was not so politically dense that I needed to hear my mother’s nearly daily praises of Bill Clinton and Al Gore and the Democratic Party in order to tell me who to vote for; instead, I allowed my knowledge of the previous administrations’ lack of attention to those issues I cared about, which at the time was an egregious ignorance of the AIDS epidemic throughout the Reagan and post-Reagan eras, to inform my voting decision. So when I cast my very first vote for the President of the United States that day, I was nearly breathless with how important, how necessary, my vote actually was (or, at least, felt), not only because it was my first vote, but because I was voting for something different, a ticket and a party that maybe, just possibly, may have been the change that my country needed.

It feels nice to have that feeling again.

Because no matter what the outcome of this race, no matter that I am not one hundred percent aligned or in agreement with the entire Obama / Biden platform, no matter that I was a supporter of Hillary Clinton going into the primary season, it is a race that I feel will be of supreme historical importance, and resonance. It is a race whose winners could very well bring about a much-needed change in this country and in the way it is governed. And it is a race, more than any other in my recent memory, in which everyone’s vote counts.

So while I may be waiting in line to vote less than 48 hours from now under the rising sun of a tropical island, and not in the chilly New York winds of sixteen years ago, I will still be as breathless, as expectant, as needful, of political change, as I felt back then.

And have I mentioned yet how nice it feels to have that feeling again?

I thought so.

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Author’s Note: Shortly before publishing this piece, I was pointed toward an entry in the blog of Emily Chang, strategic designer and co-founder and principal of Ideocodes.com, entitled “Take Part In Citizen Journalism For The 2008 U.S. Elections,” in which she references many ways in which we as digital citizens may ensure the fairness of the voting process. In her piece you may read about participating in the Twitter Vote Report, Video The Vote, and The Polling Place Photo Project, a joint project of The New York Times and AIGA, the professional association for design. All are excellent ways to continue to be involved in the political process well beyond the moment you cast your pivotal vote in this election, so please be sure to check it out.

UPDATE: Additionally, shortly after publishing this piece, I was pointed toward Simon Owens‘ “Citizens, Media Use Social Media To Monitor Elections” over at PBS’ MediaShift blog. This excellent piece further highlights the many Web 2.0 tools citizens are using to monitor this election, including insights from Nancy Scola, Brooklyn-based journalist and one of the creators of Twitter Vote Report. Please be sure to check this article out, as well.

Filed under: Blogging, Design, Media, Net Culture, Politics , being servicey, defining moments, family, linkage, love each day, memories, needful reminders, what would jackie do

Off The Radar

This morning I settled into my usual table at my usual Starbucks café, with my usual venti Américano with way-too-many sugars, fired up my laptop as usual, and attended to my usual morning routine of attending to email correspondence, oversharing on Twitter, and perusing my RSS feeds. It was not long after I had started this last ritual that I realized that something was different; sadly, drastically different.

Radar Online was gone.

Well, not “gone”. It is still online, and I suppose one could argue that it is still publishing new content (although certainly not as “fresh” nor as “intelligent” as it was only five days ago), but for all intents and purposes, to a fan like me, it is gone. Of course, as news of Radar magazine’s print version finally folding entirely, and its online version’s subsequent acquisition by AMI broke on Friday, I was not surprised when I realized that the content, the writing, the voices I had become used to reading, were no longer there. I was just…sad.

The evening went up in smoke for party girl Mischa Barton and a male friend at Hollywood’s Bardot on Oct. 23. After Mischa’s friend hand rolled a cigarette, the pair lit up right in the club, passing the butt between them. It sure didn’t SMELL like a Winston! —By Staff

This was the first item I read during my perusal of the new Radar Online’s first morning of news offerings. I do not think it should be surprising that I ceased my exploration rather soon after, considering the content to which I had become accustomed.

This. Is. Hilarious. And also sad. The ads for Proposition 8, the voter initiative in California that’ll undo the state’s gay marriages, are out of control. Take the poor blonde in this ad: “You know as well as anyone I love Richard! He’s one of my best friends! But just because he’s gay doesn’t mean I have to support gay marriage!” Then she can’t even figure out how to convince her boyfriend and she’s all “Just look at the website and you’ll understand because everything on it is true!” —By Choire Sicha

The difference between reading the site’s content last Thursday and reading it today was marked, painful, and…well, again, just sad. Gone were the wit, the candor, the intelligence, with which the content was produced by its previous writers and editors. In their places were simply empty blurbs that one could easily read while waiting in the check-out aisle of a grocery store, i.e., nothing special.

Obviously, I abandoned my Radar Online feed rather quickly, in favor of other, yet still related, material, and stumbled across the reasons why Radar Online was so good, and why, over the past year, I had grown to love having it around in my RSS reader as a daily “must-read”. I stumbled across these reasons in Alex Balk’s (former Executive Editor of Radar Online) elegiac entry in his own Tumblr.

I am intensely proud of a lot of the material we brought to the site. It was an incredible honor to get to give chances to new writers, all of whom carried off vague assignments with tight deadlines as if they were seasoned pros. I’m not going to name names, because I’d for sure leave people out, so I’ll just say that every single one of you special, and it was a real honor to have some part in helping them establish your career. [...] So, finally, to the team at Radaronline.com. You should know that if you’ve enjoyed the site at all during my tenure, it was because of their efforts and the quick way in which they figured out how to manage around me. I was brought in to help make the site more popular and relevant, and, wow, did that ever happen. And it happened because of the incredible team that I was given. —Alex Balk

It was, as Balk wrote, an incredible team. Anyone who knows me well knows that I can be an unapologetic and shameless fan boy at times, particularly when it comes to those writers and journalists whose work I read frequently and wholly respect, so it is not unusual that I would be saddened by such an event in the online media world. But what made Radar Online so special, so enjoyable, was unusual: the collection of these truly intelligent voices, producing engaging, smart, unique content in an online world in which it is so difficult to stand out from the unwashed masses.

But they certainly did.

Not long after I finished reading Balk’s eulogy of Radar Online, I returned to my RSS feed reader, entered my “Manage Subscriptions” control panel, and deleted Radar Online. I was reminded, again, of the first news I read of Radar Online’s demise last Friday, by a writer far more esteemed than myself.

This is a sad day for people who love magazines, and for people who love sharp everyday writing, and for people who love risk-takers and dream-havers. It’s sad because Radar magazine — and its inestimable online arm, RadarOnline — have folded. —Rachel Sklar

Truer words were never written.

Filed under: Editorials, Media, Net Culture, Writing , defining moments, linkage, publishing

On Mavericks And Mavens

So ZOMG you guys do you all know who you are going to vote for in exactly two weeks from today? OMG I know, right? Me, too. I totally feel the same way. Anyway this blog entry is not going to be totally political because I do not really roll like that up in these “Curious Affairs” but it definitely will have some political elements involving humor, sarcasm, blonde female conservative right-wing talking heads, and lots and lots and lots of girl-on-girl and guy-on-guy hot homo love. (Also it promises to be a highly random entry, political or not, as I have The Writer’s Block / Malaise and feel like writing in a quirky and humorous style in order to hopefully get me out of this cloudy funk that has apparently covered my entire creative world as of late. Except for photography. I did shoot a lot of incredibly cool images of birds today. But I am saving those for tomorrow’s Hitchcockian entry and are you not just the luckiest readers ever to have that to anticipate?)

HOT HOMO LOVE

Let’s start right off with the hot homo love, shall we? After all, I do indeed have The Gay but so infrequently discuss it here unless I am whining about past lovers who have penises and in fact have been known to write not-so-well-argued pieces in the not-too-distant past regarding my at the time not-too-popular opinions on gay marriage, but as I myself have proved this year people can change and so can their opinions, so this is all about celebrating those of you who have found That Special Someone to have and to hold and blah blah blah forever and ever even though I have not and likely never will.

Anyway, there is this ballot initiative in California called Proposition 8 about which you may have heard should you live in California / America / not under a rock and just to nutshell it for you it would amend the California State Constitution to revoke the rights of same-sex couples to marry that was afforded them by the State back in June. I know, Double-U-Tee-Eff, right?! Now obviously I do not live in California, but since half of my BFFs do, as do a large constituency of my blog’s readers for some reason, I thought I would do my part to pimp the various fabulous resistance efforts regarding Proposition 8.

Choire Sicha has a fabulous piece up over at Radar Online in which he collects a whole slew of the ridiculous / horrifying / jaw-dropping-in-a-bad-way television advertisements in favor of Proposition 8, interspersed with his as usual inimitable commentary on such. It is called “Meet The Hip Young People Who Hate Gay Marriage” and it is well worth a once or twice or thrice over, allow me to assure you.

Additionally, This Girl Called Automatic Win is participating in “8 Against 8: 8 Lesbian Bloggers, 8 Days, 8,000 Dollars,” a coalition of eight amazing lesbian bloggers coming together “in a coordinated effort to help place the discriminatory ballot initiative called Proposition 8 in its rightful place in the dust heap of history.” Which, hey, that sounds fabulous to me. You may learn more about the collaborative effort in that linkage I so thoughtfully provided above, as well as participate, pimp out, and generally support the efforts of these amazing women. Also, check out Auto-Win’s inaugural 8 Against 8 article here, and follow her progress on the project here.

MAVERICKADE!

Following a lovely luncheon this afternoon at the edge of the Pacific Ocean (and the aforementioned and highly random avian photography), I picked up some snacks at my former favorite Liquorette Mart and motored it to the Harbor to relax and watch the sunset. Except I very rarely relax and I am always reading everything so I scanned the back of my Jagged Ice flavored PowerAde (WTF does “Jagged Ice” taste like, you ask? Why, grape, of course. Duh!) and was shocked to discover that The Coca-Cola Company apparently endorses McCain / Palin! Yes, right there on the label, in formidable ALL CAPS AND EVERYTHING! “PowerAde is liquid fuel to feed your MAVERICK SPIRIT!” I know. I was shocked, as well. Because I am a Coke Person and not a Pepsi Person and now I am going to have to switch, G-d damn it!*

Anyway then I remembered a piece I had read and viewed on Jezebel earlier this morning entitled “Elisabeth Hasselbeck Is Full Of Shirt” and was suddenly sick of hearing about her and her female wood for the McCain / Palin campaign and the conservative right-wing in general. Because she is kind of stupid about it, you know? I mean I realize that part of that is because she is on “The View” which I never watch with a bunch of female liberal sympathizers, but really? That whole t-shirt that Hasselbeck “designed” for the McCain / Palin campaign? It totally reminded me of this scene in the classic film “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (1999, dir. Michael Patrick Jann) in which Kirstie Alley’s character is interviewed regarding her various themes for a small Midwestern town’s annual beauty pageant that she coordinates.

Documentarian: So what was the theme of the pageant last year?
Gladys Leeman: Last year? It was, “Buy American.”
Documentarian: And the year before that?
Gladys Leeman: “U.S.A. is A-okay.”
Documentarian: Can you remember the theme of your favorite pageant?
Gladys Leeman: “Can I? I’m Amer-I-Can!” People ask me where I get this. I don’t know, it’s, maybe a gift from God or somethin’.

Yeah. “Or somethin’.” Anyway, that is what I think of Hasselbeck and her “Great AmeriMcCain Hero” t-shirt “design.” Also, does the conservative right-wing not already have a beautiful blonde female talking head who, um, does this kind of thing a whole hell of a lot better than Hasselbeck? Oh right! I thought so.

Anyway, you should also check out Alex Pareene’s “Five Real 2008 Election Winners” over at Gawker, as well, should you, like me, have been eating up the media coverage of the election season over the past several weeks and simply loved it but also have no energy, desire, nor inclination to delve into the punditry / analysis yourself in your own blog.

So that is likely the last anyone will read of politics in this blog until my historically epic rage entry (not drunken this year, thank Hera) liveblogging the actual Election Eve. Which, well, you will just have to tune in to see how it goes.

BEAUTIES AND THE BEAT

But speaking of beauties and the beat, and by that I mean the journalist’s “beat,” and in this case that beat is The Internet, I thought I would also take this opportunity to point your browser toward two amazing pieces I have read in the past week concerning beauty, popularity, and respect on the internet. Regular readers of “Curious Affairs” are likely familiar with my rather obvious love of these two female writers’ work, but I found their latest pieces to be particularly amazing and insightful. AV Flox’s latest, “Hot On The Web: Pageviews vs. Respect,” is a cogent commentary on gender, beauty, popularity, and respect on the world wide web. Emily Gould’s latest, in MIT’s Technology Review, “iTube: Why 23,201 People Care That Justine Ezarik Just Ate A Cookie,” is an interesting profile of the self-proclaimed “I Am The Internet” vlogging personality and the internet fame phenom in general. Both are excellent pieces.

REMEMBER THAT OTHER ELECTION?

Ha ha ha! You thought I meant the Presidential election in 2000, did you not? Fooled you! We are finished with politics here until 04 November, remember?

Anyway, no, I meant that voting thing for the Hot Blogger Calendar that I wrote about back in August, and totally pimped myself out because I had been nominated and asked that everyone who read me go over and vote for me now, damn it? Yes, that one. Anyway, I did not “win.” (The final count had me at 24th place, so, you know, if it was a two-year calendar I totally would have been December 2010, which numerology-wise could have been pretty awesome, but alas, etc.) But since I was honored just to be nominated, and totally heartened by all of the votes that I received, and beat Perez Hilton in the final tally, and none of my readers wanted to see a slutty yet artful photograph of me anyway, it’s all good. However, I am totally pimping the project again.

As the proceeds will be going to a variety of charitable organizations, and as I am a huge fan if not outright BFF of several of the featured bloggers, I must humbly request that you head on over to the site once the calendars are available (likely in a few weeks) and order one or a few for yourself / friends / parents / pets / etc. From what I have already heard, you will not be dissatisfied by all of the blogging hotness.

So, yeah, that is it for this installment. Stop back by tomorrow for a return to the usual nostalgic, emo, non-political fare of “Curious Affairs”.

This time with birds!

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* This is humor, obviously. I’ve no idea which campaign, if any, The Coca-Cola Company endorses, and quite frankly I am such a Coke Whore that I am not sure I would switch refreshing cola beverages for political or any other reasons. Also that Kirstie Alley publicity still was so not taken by me, but instead is copyright 1999 New Line Cinema Productions, Inc.

Filed under: Blogging, Fashion, Film, Food, Media, Net Culture, Photography, Politics, Writing , a-list, alucina, being a gay, being servicey, celebrities, humor, linkage, philanthropy, pimpage, remainders, repartee, retail therapy, rumormongering, television, video

Alive Right Now

“We’re just so lucky to be alive right now, aren’t we?”

Last evening I attended my final First Fashion Friday at Aloha Tower Marketplace. I was not really in the mood to attend such a festivity, and I boasted no Plus One, but since I had just closed the proverbial book on a rather emotionally- and intellectually-draining week, I hoped that the event would put me in the mood to attend, as it usually does. Partnering with the fabulous and creative people at Hawaii Fashion Incubator, Honolulu’s “central hub where members of the community can interact, collaborate, and collectively drive the local fashion industry forward,” Aloha Tower Marketplace has staged First Fashion Friday since July of 2007, every month from July through October (rather appropriately, my final First Fashion Friday was also the final event of the current season). It is always a fabulous evening full of fashion, fun, and local businesses, organizations, and personalities coming together to celebrate fashion and personal style. So I harbored hope that my mood would be elevated considerably without the use of pharmaceutical or alcoholic mood elevators.

I had, however, drastically underestimated what this week had actually done to my mood.

Following the main events of the evening, I wandered upstairs to Hawaii Fashion Incubator’s after party, which was showcasing the University of Hawaii’s Costume Collection and highlighting October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Turning away from the refreshment table with a San Pellegrino, I ran into an acquaintance I knew from my activities in Honolulu’s design community, and although I was not in the mood for shallow conversation, I stopped to chat with her out of politeness.

My acquaintance is one of those very happy, very positive Pollyanna types who is so cloyingly sweet that you want to slap her really hard, or show her a graphic photograph of one of those poor clubbed seal pups, just to show her how bad things really are / can be, but you end up resisting the urge to do either because she is actually so genuine and sincere with her happy, shiny sentiments. She’s like the maple syrup on a stack of Belgian waffles that is so sweet that it makes you want to stop eating halfway through the stack but you continue to eat anyway because you need to finish the stack of waffles, right?

Anyway, we began chatting about this and that, which quickly devolved to chatting exclusively about her “that” after I had divulged that my “this” involved leaving the islands permanently to return to New York this month. (This, I’ve noticed, has been standard procedure with my Honolulu acquaintances as I’ve run into them since making plans to leave; it is as if once they hear that I am leaving, I have already left.) She spoke of a benefit she was organizing two weeks from now, of the rapidly approaching Hawaii’s 5-0 Design Competition, and concluded by smiling this alarmingly wide, silly smile and exclaiming breathily, “We’re just so lucky to be alive right now, aren’t we?”

I am rather certain my facial expression contorted immediately into one that clearly communicated, “Are you high?!” The events and thoughts of the past week flashed like sheet lightning through my head: the economy, so badly Nagasakied, already worrying me in regards to my search for employment and real estate in the 212 (718? Dear G-d, not 201?!) upon my return; the two articles I have been researching and attempting to write all week, but that I am so not that into because they both stem from personal, unpleasant online events during the past two weeks; and I will not even go into the media slaughterhouse that occurred yesterday morning, putting several stunningly talented online media professionals out of jobs and, again, echoing my worries regarding finding any kind of gainful employment within, oh, I don’t know, the next decade?

I furrowed my brow at my acquaintance, who was clearly awaiting my concurrence with her ludicrously narrow-minded assertion. I could not very well agree with her that it is “great to be alive right now,” because, hello, unless you have been living under a rock for the past two weeks, you would recognize that this is simply an assinine statement. However, I could not very well disagree with her completely and suggest that the polar opposite of “being alive right now” would be far preferable, since, well, no one really knows if being dead is truly preferable to being alive, right? I mean, sure, you are dead, and all, but can you have fun? Are there parties? Is there hot butt sex? You don’t know!

So I ended up quibbling with her.

“Yes,” I said, smiling sarcastically. “Yes. It is great to be…alive.”

Filed under: Fashion, Media, Net Culture, New York, Writing , being servicey, defining moments, honolulu, humor, linkage, love each day, needful reminders, questions, red carpet situations, repartee, what would jackie do