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I took part in Media of Birmingham's panel disussion about Birmingham media's future in the digital era. The panelists were myself, Joe O'Donnell of b-metro and Ty West of Birmingham Business Journal.  The panel was moderated by Birmingham View's Vickii Howell.  Read more...

The hour-long drama that romanced the world five seasons ago, has beaten me down, lifted me up, tricked me and confused me so many times that I have now entered into a complete and pitiful numbness.

Because of my background in marketing and writing, I watch television with a keen awareness of story lines, plot twists, suspense builders and commercial placement. (Yeah I know it's totally lame, but I can't help it, okay!)  Watching Lost is like watching all of those story elements strung out on heroine.  The exploitation and manipulation of emotions that ABC puts into this show is the most obvious display of cheap that I have ever witnessed.  The reason this show has such amazing ratings is because the writers and producers have learned how to manipulate and exploit the human psyche.  The system worked successfully for a while, but eventually weakened when the writers started running out of ideas. Read more...

My favorite yogic breathing exercise is breathing in for 1-2-3-4, holding it in for 1-2-3-4 and breathing out for 1-2-3-4.  It forces you to pay attention.  It keeps you accountable for every second of breath and it helps achieve what is so difficult to achieve in meditation, stillness.

I first attempted meditation in high school.  I'd read some book that offered a beginners meditation practice in which the meditator focuses on the flame of a candle in a dark room.  So I lit a candle, turned the lights off and I sat down in a half lotus position determined to master this meditation thing.

I did not master that meditation thing. Read more...

that for the past few days we've been releasing articles in a Pavo series called Labors of Love.  Doing the research for these articles has been surprising and heart warming.  So far we've covered Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Studio by the Tracks, Alabama Dance Council, The Seasoned Performers, and Sidewalk Film Festival (Paint the Town Red--a digital art festival--will be up tomorrow).  Each one of these organizations helps the community in some way and shines a pretty light on Birmingham, but what's truly astounding is that all of them rely not on federal grants or personal endowments, but on VOLUNTEERS...on people just working their hearts out for the sake of giving to the community. Read more...

an unexpected hip hop song came out of my speakers.  I'm not exactly a hip hop kind of girl.  In the past I would have skipped the song but that day I just let it play.  Unintentionally, I went from driving a modest 65 MPH to a dangerous 85 MPH, weaving in and out of traffic, "smokin'" grannie's left and right.  I was surfing a wave of adrenaline.  The pace of the lyrics, the shoulder shaking beat, the synthesizers...raised my heartbeat and I was sailing on that concrete ocean, unstoppable.   When the song was over, I immediately felt like less of a badass and subconsciously slowed to a comfortable 73.  

After a couple mellow songs, my ipod shuffled to another hip hop song (EXTREMELY BIZARRE because I have maybe 10 hip hop songs out of about 3000) and there I was again zooming away.   Read more...

Interim Mayor and Mayoral Candidate Carol Smitherman was the featured guest at a panel discussion focusing on Arts Entertainment Sustainability in the City of Birmingham.  Work Play donated space for the event and Code Red organized.  Code Red is a new arts organization that worked in conjunction with the Red Cross this past summer to bring an innovative art show to downtown Birmingham.  The event featured live music, good beer, scrumptious food and--the best part of all--the work of local artists projected onto the sides of buildings, on screens lining the streets and in shop windows.  A friend of mine, David Jolley (soon to be featured on Pavo) won the audience pick for the show.  All in all a very cool thing indeed, yet...I digress. Read more...

It is bizarre isn't it?  I don't know where the thought even came from.  Wait, wait, wait...I think it was Target. Target always hoodwinks me.  Back in college I put a ban on my Target visits.  I'd walk in to buy a birthday card and walk out with $150 worth of stuff I "really" needed but couldn't afford.  Like Steel Magnolias and Goonies on sale for $9.44.  A friend recently told me of her similar experiences, referring to them as "black outs."  As in, "I got that hideous lampshade during a Target Black Out."  You go in with a purpose and you come out accessorized, in debt and not really remembering why you made such irresponsible (yet oddly rational) shopping decisions. Snug Read more...

I wonder what George Crumb was doing when he came up with the idea of putting a gong inside a plastic tub filled with water and then banging on the gong while lifting it in and out of the water.  Was it an accident or completely intentional?  I'd like to think that the 80-year-old (yet still very spry) composer just happened to one day drop a gong or two in some water and discover the haunting sound it creates when you play it.  Either way it was genius.

I'm in no way a connoisseur of orchestral music, so if you're thinking that...stop that right now.  Right now! Read more...

Every Sunday night you can bet money that I'll be tuned in, hanging on Don Draper's every syllable.  It's not only John Hamm's manly frame that keeps me watching but the historical references, the exquisite writing, the jagged plot lines.  Last night while I was glued to the tube, there were several mentions of Martin Luther King, Jr's famous speech and even a mention of the deaths that occurred at the 16th Street Baptist Church.  Read more...

I'm not at all interested in the mysterious handsomeness of Andrew Bird.  I don't care that he has an aura that makes teenaged girls shimmy inappropriately or that his frame is reminiscent of Jack the Pumpkin King. It's his violin, his silky voice, his swaying head, his on-stage stumbling--a result of a cold/flu picked up in New Orleans--that earthquakes me. Read more...