LOMA does it well.

Today is my grandmother Loma’s 90th Birthday. She’s fabulous beyond words and I am glad that I got to spend the weekend with her and my extended family. We don’t all get together too often, but when we do, it’s always fun. Family is who you turn to when you need to remember who you are. They keep you grounded and always look at you at an even keel. There’s no pretension, no judgment, just an understanding that because you’re family, it's ok to be exactly who you are.

The Mac’s workin’ Loma’s 90th Birthday at Sea Island resort.

Redneckery

If white trash ever wants to know where heaven is, I've found it in Myrtle Beach SC this weekend.

Id like to personally thank all of the blue jean shorts wearin', achy breaky hairstyled, drunk, belligerant, NAS-hole, barefoot, bud lite'rs for a fantastic weekend up on the redneck rivera. I enjoyed every minute of it...really...I did....seriously...Ok..don't believe me.

Because I couldn't possibly make this up, I had to play fotog while I was there to prove it!

Evidentially, this is how they do it in Dixie..

Redneck mating call...

Just in case you ever need a minature liscence plate with your name on it

Racist T-shirts for the whole family

Nothing screams 'real man' like a sharks tooth necklace

Mystery Solved...dolphins are gay

Hot Rednecks on the prowl

Class-in-motion

Surfs Up.

A good friend of mine left recently to go live with and work for The Couch Surfing Project in New Zealand. If you've never heard about it, it's pretty cool. Its a website that connects travellers to local commuinities through free room and board (often a couch). The site is run by volunteers who live in 'collectives' around the world and spend several months donating their time to the cause (ie marketing, technical, customer service, etc). The collectives move locations every 6 months or so to a new fabulous global destination and anyone can join one. The projects 'big picture' mission is to connect people around the world. What it's done realistically is introduced a little more humanity on the internet. I love stuff like this.

www.couchsurfing.com

The New You

Ever wish you could be someone else?

Well now you can be.

Check out Second Life.

Millions of people are doing it and major companies are taking notice. It's already big..but on the verge of becomming HUGE!

Finger...meet Pulse!

Virtually yours.

Eyeque

Web Wars

Two significant lawsuits that affect web 2.0 (life as we know it) have recently come to light and are causing major commotion among professional web-mongers like myself. The beautiful thing about the internet is it almost limitless capacity to deliver content (sight and sound) to end users at lightening speed. While I strongly believe the benefits of accessibility FAR outweigh the negatives, we wouldn’t be in America if we didn’t harp on the dark side of things to cultivate our culture of fear.

Last month the Copyright Royalty Board at the suggestion of the RIAA (The greedy bastards suing 11 year olds for downloading music) released the Internet Music Royalty Schedule for 2006-2010. How is this significant? Until now, internet radio stations that stream music to your earphones have been paying reduced per-song royalty amounts for the music they stream online. This was deemed “acceptable” by the music industry insiders because the majority of the streaming stations are FREE and run negligible advertising. At the time internet radio’s popularity was uncertain and no one was getting filthily rich off of it. Now that iradio has gained momentum among the web population, the RIAA has decided that they deserve to get paid significantly more (110% by 2010) for every song that goes out over the internet. That equals more than most of these stations make in a year. Royalties this high will force iradio stations to start requiring users to pay to listen or simply shut down altogether (the ultimate goal of the RIAA). The scary thing is, this is not a distant future situation; stations could start shutting down in the next 60 days which would signify a significant step backwards in the content and deliverability we’ve come to expect on the web.

Similarly, Viacom Networks announced this week that they are joining a joint lawsuit against Google (the owners of YouTube) over copyrighted content that YouTube users have uploaded and viewed on the site. Google believes they are indemnified because their “users” uploaded the content, not them. Viacom believes that Google is responsible for policing their video content and want damages in upwards of 1.5 Billion dollars for copyright violations. I believe that Viacom is ignorant for not realizing that yanking thousands of less-than-10-minute video snippets off YouTube is only shooting themselves in the foot. More than once users have been “teased” by a show segment on YouTube and then gone and purchased the entire episode from a Viacom supported website or even better, purchased a DVD. YouTube was founded in 2005, and has been chocked full of copyright protected videos ever since. I just find it incredibly ironic that Vicacom (et all) waited to sue until they were bought by Google, a company that has redefined the term “deep pockets”.

I think this all could represent the beginning of the end of the explosive growth of information and free content on the web. Web users are going to get real tired of entering their credit card information on every site they come across, and more importantly, the folks bringing fresh new media ideas to us via the web will be dissuaded from doing so if large royalty/copyright dollars are attached. The web will become a pay-as-you-go experience that will attract limited users, see limited reach and foster limited growth. That’s my two cents anyway.

Master Craftsman

I actually unpacked the last remaining box tonight so I can officialy say Im moved in. I love coming home every night to such a wonderfull home. I feel very lucky to have found this place. I belong here.

Crazy British

I love this guy's videos.

An ode to the Madonna drag queen in all of us.


Robbie sheds his skin..literally (worth a watch if you've never seen it)

Birthday Ballistic!

The Austin Social Season kicked into high gear last night with Kelly V's annual birthday bash at my house. Lots of folks came out to wish him a happy birthday and as usual I was in host mode while the paparazzi worked overtime.

The Cost of Fame

1 all-nighter before a trip home to Texas = Cost of dinner and drinks

Upgrade to First Class= 25,000 Miles

Falling Asleep rather than going out and celebrating your birthday= Priceless!

My Camera...it's everywhere you dont want it to be.

Coulter Shock

So what if Ann Coulter referred to John Edwards as a "faggot". Even if he were gay, (and that were a bad thing) it would pale in comparision to the tactics he used as an ambulance chasing attorney who would stop at nothing to win big settlements for his often undeserving, "work-the-system" clients...not to mention the 50-60% he would keep for himself.

Sure, she should have never said it but give her a break. We need extremist crazies like that to make the rest of us feel normal. As much as the HRC, ACLU and GLTF wants be to be offended, Im just not. I wish they'd stop emailing me about it.

80's fabulous

Love this video from "Music and Lyrics"...it's 100% dead on 80's.

Life Goes On

I’ve been suspiciously absent from my blog over the last month. No real reason. I’ve finally gotten settled into my new place. The furniture I ordered finally arrived so I feel like I have a real big boy house now. I’ll post some photos soon.

I caught a week-long quasi-deadly virus that had me hallucinating and running a high fever a few weeks ago. I felt awful. I missed work. It sucked.

I spent all last week with the CEO of my company here in Austin. Had a lot of meetings, happy hours and nice ‘Austiny’ dinners. He plugged me into some serious political movers and shakers here and I’m finding that my social calendar is filling up fast. I’m keeping my fingers crossed as I may have uncovered a huge opportunity for our agency here in town. Of course the “sure lets do business” was said after a multi-cocktail conversation, but I’m almost positive neither of us were too far gone to not remember it. I’m going to send the strategic follow up email tomorrow. Never send the “follow up” email on a Monday that’s when everyone’s playing catch-up and generally unhappy to be back at work.

The weather has finally turned here. It’s been sunny and warm most days. I love Austin when the weather is nice. I’ve started running again every night around the lake. I stopped for a long while after I came across a big ass snake stretched across the trail. After polling a few hundred people, I seem to be the only person in Austin that’s ever seen a snake on town lake trail. Well I did, and I almost stepped on it so I stopped going there. I’ve finally gotten over it, so im back.

I had a date on Friday night with a really nice guy. It all went very well until he told me he was HIV +. I’m not bothered by his status at all, but would not opt to become sexually active with him for reasons that make sense to me. He totally appreciated my candidness and I hope we can become friends. Besides, the fact is, friends are harder to come by than a piece of ***.

Keliscious will be gracing our presence this weekend for his annual birthday celebration. I’m the lucky soul who will be hosting his crazy collection of friends at my house. He’s emailed me all his demands, I’ve got them all covered….well except for the midget stripper. I’m very excited to have him back in town for a few days.