today is my last day with The Academy

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For a guy who used to go to the corner of Hollywood & Highland on Oscar Sunday to try to snap a glimpse of the red carpet, you can imagine the thrill of ending up getting an All Access pass for several years to document it on Instagram and Snapchat.

The rest of the year I covered our events; interviewed members; shone a light on the incredible archive, library, and forthcoming museum. And of course posted content on all our social channels.

But best of all I got to work with some of the smartest and talented people you could meet. Seriously. I learned so much from them from so many aspects of the history of cinema to what works (and doesn’t work) when building online communities.

Shout out to Josh Spector who hired me and gave me the freedom to post 3-4 times a day pretty much anything I wanted. He also set up a department that had creative graphic designers, an amazing video team led by the super cool Ryan Velásquez, and an IT dev team.

So when you see on my resume that our Instagram followers increased by over 4,000% during my 5 years it wasn’t just because I was posting pics of McLovin. It was a team effort in every way.

For a while I sat next to Nathaniel Thompson. At a place like AMPAS there are movie buffs, true geniuses of film. Nate not only knew his movies but also music, tv, and how to write about it quickly and cleanly. When I posted the Genie you’re free, it was after brainstorming a little with Nate and following the general instruction of Josh to try to start using movie quotes with a still from the film. It ended up reaching over 68 million people. My mom saw it on Good Morning America. I got emails of congratulations from the executive floor but it was a team effort – like all hits are.

Speaking of my mom, taking her to the Oscars was one of the best things in my whole life and I’m so grateful to the Academy for being generous to their employees with tickets. Pretty much the best perk a job could give.

The last year i was in the office I sat next to Rosalyn Hummel, another freaking brainiac and bookworm who just happens to know everything about the history of US presidents and presidential libraries (!?).

I’m grateful that I got to work with Matt Severson, and Anne Coco and everyone at the library. And I’ll never forget setting nitrate film on fire with May Hong Haduong.

This job was the longest one I’ve ever had. My third day George Lucas said hi to me. And as cool as that was it was just as cool talking with Joe Rendon and watching Lauren C Selman create magic.

I have no idea what’s next for me, but this one will be hard to top.

walked in the rain

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what else you gonna do.

saw a dude. saw another dude.

saw a dude on a bike, lots of junk in his baskets. smelled of cigarrets.

he said what, then said who? he was talking to a parked car.

mike? oh hey mike.

then he turned to a woman with short hair on the other side of the street.

rebecca! he yelled. you’re so stupid!

and i walked past rebecca, who was still unsure. mike?

but she crossed the street anyway.

i guess the dude was right about her.

butterflies on the windowsill

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for the last five months ive been grinding. barely a day off. barely a night where amber doesnt fall asleep and i stay up all night in the living room working on the project.

even on sundays which is against the bible but i had little choice. i promise you, i didnt

and now the first part, the hard part, the big part is over.

i feel like how contractors must feel after theyve dug the foundation and put up the bones of a building and now its gotta get this and that and the other thing on it before the paint and the shrubbery shows up.

is it good all by itself right now? no. is it bigger and better than i expected it to be? yes. people cooperated. i was allowed space. and time. and resources. and for all of that i am eternally grateful.

there were hard parts for sure. i didnt know a lot going into it. i didnt know who could help me, if they would help me, or what they were talking about at first. i didnt ask the best questions in the beginning. i fancy myself a good interviewer. i was not good until the end. i am good now.

so many have said i should have a podcast. now i believe them. but only now. only now do i know how to get the other person to the root of the issue. all the jibber jabber is fine but the root is where its at questlove.

yesterday i was so excited that i didnt go to sleep until 10am, and i woke up at 6 when amber came home. she has not enjoyed this period of my life. i have snapped at her. i was emotional. i was not myself. i apologize. she wants me to take a walk around the block, and by block she means arizona. why dont you got to spring training for a few days she asks. shake the cobwebs out of your head.

and i would love to but i dont know when the next step is going to happen and when i am needed. theres other things i could do but i have not heard. and thats ok. but here it is 119pm and i havent gone to bed yet. last night i went to bed at 1030pm but im like a baby i cant sleep through the night. the night time is when my head is ready to rock, i woke up at 2am and i havent gone back to sleep yet.

i want to. i may. if there was wine in this house i would drink a glass. but this is a straight edge home. its warm outside but i have a headache from lack of sleep. ive been doing laundry a lot. watching so much youtube. learning and learning. i miss the outside. i love the outside.

i have lost my mind.

ever have a day where you do everything wrong

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when i was a kid there were only two shows my mom gave me a hard time watching, SNL and Soap

i was only 9 when SNL debuted and even though she told me she didn’t like me watching it, i could never make it too long into it before id fall asleep.

a few years later Soap premiered and it had a parental warning. she’d hear it and shout, turn the channel.

i was like Awwww Ma!

and she would say you’re 11. you are precisely what that warning is about. i am the parent and it is warning me.

somehow i got the idea of watching it With her and even the intro and summaries at the beginning of each episode were hilarious. but yes, they did have adult themes: death, homosexuality, divorce, aliens.

i need to rewatch that show.

here’s Robert Guilliaume talking about navigating the idea of playing a butler when youre a proud black man in the late 1970s

my mom was all, i thought i saw you at the oscars

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i was like ma thats tom morello from rage against the machine

who not only looks like a thinner, wealthier, healthier me,

also happens to be a damn guitar hero.

as in, he’s one of the guitar heroes you have to face off against in the billion dollar best selling video game guitar hero

born in harlem, but raised in naperville i think.

like chicago, his mom is half italian half irish and his dad is from kenya. but the good part of kenya. his great uncle was the country’s first elected president. i guess they had kings before that. who knows. who knows anything?

tom probably would. he graduated from harvard and then found his way in one of the most powerfully aggressive hyper political heavy rock bands of the 90s. the singer zach de la rocha had this wild afro and stormed around the stage exactly like you would if you were trying to incite a riot.

riots were incited.

only one guitarist in this band that sounded like it had 80. and that one was tom. he plays solos like no one else.

it’s painfully sharp at times.

it sounds like what electrocution probably feels like.

the music is meant to get under your skin. the bassist has a stylized filled in giant tattoo of all black.

also, tom is a cubs fan. also, he played in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band for a little while, and on eight tracks of his album “high hopes”.

when chris cornell left soundgarden for a little while, rick rubin suggested that he hook up with tom and rage because zach had left them to do something far more interesting than be a super star singer of a incredibly important band

chris and tom and tattoo guy and the drummer (who has been dating juliet lewis for a while) made a band called audioslave which showed us what rage would sound like with an otherworldy singer instead of a dynamic rapper shouter.

they kicked ass.

audioslave’s first record went triple platinum, and their follow up went regular platinum. they had a medicore third record, broke up, and tom found himself in a band with the dude from cypress hill and chuck d from public enemy called prophets of rage which was an interesting thing on paper but weirdly… bruce, chris, chuck d, b real, there was something very different about tom and zach

it was a one two punch in the middle of grunge that took it up a notch. for years if you wanted to put a little spice into a huge festival youd have the red hot chili peppers, but on a night of say 15 bands, if rage was on the bill they better be put on last because how are you gonna follow a hurricane of angst and power and barbed wire solos?

which brings us to sunday. some devout fans of rage and tom thought that presenting at the oscars is the opposite of punk rock, and to wear a tuxedo is not very rock n roll.

but anyone who has listened to him in interviews would know, he’s not really here begging for you to love him. he’s just here to save the world.

looking forward to the live action shorts tomorrow

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Went to the movies tonight as my last chance to see a nominated film before the Oscars. I saw they were screening all the nominated Live Action Shorts, so I went. Mama mia, what an intense experience.

4 of the 5 nominees are about kids in grave peril and the other is about a sweet old French-Canadian lady on her death bed. So: tearful to say the least.

The two though that really stood out for me were “Skin” which is about hate crimes based in racism, and “Detainment” where two kids are accused of killing a 2 year old.

Walking out of the theater I was giving the edge to “Skin” because it was told slightly better, but the performance of 11-year-old Ely Solan in “Detainment” is tremendous and when I got home I watched the trailer just to see him do it again.

If there was a Juvenile Oscar like they had back in the day, this kid would have walked away with it. Not just because he can bring the waterworks but because the script was based on the interrogation transcripts, so this lad embodied history and spit it out as if it was truly happening to him.

But, alas, there’s controversy about this film. Turns out the parents of the victim are super pissed that they weren’t consulted, and feel like this 30 minute short humanizes the pair. Apparently there was a petition created once the film got on the short list and once it got nominated people, like me, started paying attention. Now a quarter million people are demanding that the director or the branch or whoever has the power can get it pulled from contention. But what up n coming director wants to work on something and then give up right before crossing the finish line?

Which is why I bring it to your attention. It’s a totally compelling movie of a super tragic incident and young Ely is such a natural in this role as an child being drilled by cops into slowly telling this grisly tale. Merely for acting sake it’s worth watching.

Also it’s a weird little lesson in perspective. From this side of the pond it’s one of the best short movies of the year, and from that side it’s, I guess, a skeleton in the closet that very few want exposed and retold.

So it will be very interesting to see, if it wins, what backlash, if any, will come from the UK onto the director when he brings the statuette home. I’ll also be curious how this affects his career as a director. Will he have to move to America? Change his name? Become an Uber driver?

All of the UK will be watching that oft-overlooked category extremely closely.

if i wasnt so lazy

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If I wasn’t so lazy,
I would start a GoFundMe to buy Fox News
I’d change the name and play music videos on it all day
hosted by VJs.
There would be a daily dance show,
one about Hip Hop,
cartoons and a game show called Remote Control.
On Fridays there would be concerts.
First a half hour by a small band
then a half hour by a medium sized band
then an hour from a giant band.
On Saturdays at midnight there would be a midnight movie.
There’d be news but it would be about music.
I’ll need about $5 billion, it seems.
fine.

the secret to growing communities that grow

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i have been so lucky to have been able to work at some of the coolest online ventures around. from LAist to the LA Times to the Oscars. but it all started here on this very blog, the busblog.

one thing i learned at LAist was – it helps if you love the content as much as you love the audience.

when you love something you do it with rose colored glasses. so you might miss some of the issues. but thats ok because when you notice that certain things are bad, you will rush to fix it. not out of any weird power trip but because you want everyone else to enjoy the thing you’re making with them.

so the first thing is love. love it, love them. otherwise it’s just work and you can tell if something is being run by someone who loves it compared to someone who is just doing it for the money and health benefits.

the next thing is be open to change, be open to creativity, be open to possibilities, be open to things that are scary, be open like youve never been open before.

if America wasn’t open to expansion we would never have had the Louisiana Purchase and we would have never made it to the Golden State. And now California is as mighty as most foreign countries. it pays to be open. it pays to figure out ways to grow. will there be growing pains? of course. don’t freak out. as the hitchhikers guide wisely advises: dont panic.

at every group blog ive seen or worked with there were more than a few superstar writers who some thought were irreplaceable. we are all irreplaceable. the yankees have won championships without Babe Ruth. the Lakers have won without Magic. life goes on without tony pierce and all the rest. and thats ok. what is freaky is how quickly life can go on without this star or that one. it’s been over 35 years since SNL lost John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray and that show still trends every Sunday.

the show will go on. so dont fear change. if you wanna be punk rock, embrace it. and if you wanna be new wave: be the change.

which brings us the my favorite facebook group Howard Stern for Fans who Actually Like Howard Stern.

no one asked for this group. i started it last year, wellllllll into the last stages of his career. he only has a show 3x a week, 2x a month. there were already at least 100 howard stern groups, and yet suddenly ours is on pace to being the most popular one on Facebook. how?

because i have set rules. i enforce the rules. it’s just me plus some superfans who let me know via flagging or instant message when people are being rude. and i allow the group to metaporphisize into whatever it’s gonna be. and i will call bullshit on certain trends. and i am not afraid to boot people or protect others.

but i really think the secret sauce is i love howard’s show and history, and i know it, and ive been around the block in regards to social, so i can see trouble before it happens.

what i love about this chart on the tippy top is, anyone can have good numbers in your first 6-7 months cuz youre new and cute. but if you suck people will bail out and stop telling their friends. whats interesting about this group is it started hot, and has continued to be hot for the last 6-7 months too. even though howard has had hella vacation, even though more stern groups have sprouted. even though ive been obsessed with a secret project. the growth is growing at a pace of 61%.

every week we are getting between 250-350 new members. and theyre staying. lots of posts.

i had one guy say, how many admins do you have? i said me. he said, im in this group but i admin another one about a cable TV show and we have 4 admins. how do you do it? i say, i let them be. he said, no way would that work with us? i asked why? he said the founder of the group wants everything approved. that takes time. and the quality is better.

i said how do you know if the quality is better if its always been one way. maybe when people are free they write better or they say things that omg that One guy doesnt like or the other 3 admins. thats a lot of ways to get vetoed. here i only have a few ways to get vetoed: poop, disparaging howard robin or beth, politics and a few others. most people are cool with that and it allows space for people to be free.

freedom is everything for growth. give a tree a lot of space, a lot of sunshine, and tons of water and that baby will grooooooooooooow.

now bababooey to you all.

tony what is the purpose of anything?

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dear tony, why should we try? why should we try to push the boundaries, the envelope, whatever you want to call it? why shouldn’t we just march in formation and do whatever the person with the loudest bullhorn says?

dear sweet reader,

i don’t know about you. but when i look at the map of the USA my eyes move from right to left. often very quickly.

when i look at the East Coast i see the past. i see a bunch of smooshed up places all knotted up with each other and really only one or two of the places matter. boston knows it doesnt matter which is why theyve flooded the place with colleges so they could figure it out.

but ive figured it out. we need progress, which is why the eye moves from right to left on the map. from the past to the wholesomeness to the wild west. the west is the future. somewhat the present but more the near future.

we need that progress to live. ask Payless and Sears and Circuit City what happens when you are not constantly progressing. you die. you die right there in the rut that you buried yourself in.

is it exhausting to be ahead of the pack? isn’t easier to just lay back and coast along with the middle? yes. and fewer bugs hit your windscreen. and you’re more likely to hit a pothole or black ice or a swarm of bees.

but is also provides the best view, the most excitement, and schools aren’t named after followers, they’re named after leaders, explorers, warriors.

do your job. live up to expectations. make magic when no ones looking.

and get fucking schools named after your ass