jhcase's blog

I'm standing in the kitchen, peeling skins off par-boiled cipollini when it hits me: I'm eager for fall. Maybe it's the smell of garlic and rosemary filling the room, maybe it's the rain tamping down the August sky outside my window, whatever it is, I'm left with that longing for fall. For brightly-colored leaves, for small, shapely gourds, for the weather banging at the sills.

It's a dangerous thing when editors start tweaking the facts and details of your story. Sometimes this happens and we writers know about it; most often it happens after we've turned in our final edits.

While the majority of magazines I write for are conscientious, there are some out there that aren't, and I'm suffering under one such magazine right now.

Working as a freelance writer is great. It's romantic. (And like most things romantic, not terribly profitable.) But, it allows me to tell the stories I like to tell, and most of all it allows me to learn things I like to learn. For instance, why Walla Walla's 2005 vintage was so good. Unfortunately, much of what I learn I forget once my story is filed. Perhaps my brain is a computer, and every now and then it needs to be repartitioned.

I'm in love---momentarily---with Weezer. Just for the moment, but really smitten.
You see, while working on the aforementioned viral marketing storyrecently I stumbled upon the new Weezer video "Pork and Beans." (www.weezer.com or www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI) It's smart. And it reminds me of Seurat.

It's about 2:30 in the afternoon, Seattle time, when at long last I give in. I'm in a conference room at Avenue A/Razorfish, talking with Jeremy Lockhorn about "viral marketing" for a story I'm doing for a local business magazine when I realize that I have, officially, become a fuddy duddy.