Words Can't Bring Me Down

Listening to: The Creative Life Podcast. Recently started and already a total favorite of mine, Jenny Yang's hour long podcasts feature "real conversations with established and up-and-coming creatives, and real advice for creative entrepreneurs charting unexpected paths." I really enjoy the long format, Jenny's wonderful interviews, and the chance to hear from artists who are composing and finding their ambitions.

Jenny is a writer and stand up comedian and may or may not actually speak American English, Old Norse, Mandarin Chinese, Chilean Spanish, and Taiwanese. Despite our similar last names, Jenny and I are not related so I don't know if she's lying or not. What does Old Norse even sound like? Thor, Loki, Odin?

Creative Life further caught my attention by featuring Emily C. Chang for her second episode. If you followed spoken word back in the day, Emily was part of I Was Born with Two Tongues and we saw them perform almost a decade ago. I kind of fell in love with her and Denizen Kane right there and then, and it was great to hear about Emily's career since. Her new song and music video, "Need You Near (The Happy Nunchucks Song)" just came out and her MySpace with more music is here. I think I'm still in love.

This past week, the Times had this article about job jugglers living in New York and working many part time jobs instead of just one full time one. The first person they profiled works as "a bilingual-curriculum specialist for the textbook publisher Pearson; handling estate sales and online marketing for a store that sells vintage items; setting up an online store for a custom piñata maker; and developing reality-show ideas for a production company." Sounds like a handful. He's made a little under $2,000 for the month. For all that work I kind of want him to be a millionaire. Instead my takeawy is that setting up online stores for custom piñatas is probably not all that profitable of a venture. Mass market piñatas, now that's the ticket! Here's the reader response to the article.

Also, I've recently discovered Broke-Ass Stuart and his soon to be mini-empire of "brokeitude." Basically this guy Stuart travels around looking for cheap/free things to do and then shares how to do them. "It's a celebration of the fact that you don't have to be rich to enjoy your life. You don't have to have designer clothes and expensive things to prove you're amazing. What makes life interesting is not the things that you own, but the shit that you do." I disagree with the basic premise here. Being rich is amazing and interesting, I mean, that's what I've been taught anyway. Show me the money.

While I don't personally have much interest in Stuart's site itself -- I don't really need DIY soda can crafts in my life -- I am kind of curious about his upcoming show on IFC. It's encouraging that despite his fame and his work, he's still broke and up until recently worked as a waiter to pay the rent. Of course, now he's probably rolling in it but it would probably ruin his broke-ass credibility to reveal that. I hope his devotees don't turn on him when he makes it big.

As captain of the unemployment club, I'm happy to report that applications for membership has doubled, and we're not very picky about who joins -- which is an attitude you won't find with most employers.