Diatribes by Joah

Guest Post: One Long Overdue Reality Check

[The following is a guest post contributed by Austin Marshall, the lead in SXSW showcasing film Blacktino. He is a friend.]

Right in the middle of my first week of school, I realized something important about myself that I never seriously thought about before: I can be very hard on myself. I am constantly comparing myself to others, and my accomplishments to others. I never give myself as much praise as I should. And I do deserve more praise than I give myself; I’ve accomplished a lot and experienced more in my 17 years than most kids my age. Sometimes I think I’m having a half quarter life crisis, but really I’m just having a bad bout of insecurity.

Perhaps I feel like I’m not living up to the exceptionally high standards I set for myself, or that I’m failing in proving myself and set myself apart from others my age. But I can also feel that way socially and Facebook has done a great job of making me feel worse about my social life. It never fails that I can log on every night and see all of my peers having tons of fun doing whatever! Whether it’s at last Friday’s party or a small dinner party at a sushi bar, it is tried and true that I will log off feeling inferior to my peers.

Really, I’m just jealous that I’m not living life like all of my other peers. But I realize that it is nobody’s problem but my own. It’s very easy for me to be bitter and be a hater towards everyone else who’s having fun and doing whatever they want, because I could very easily be doing the same thing. Instead, I choose to sulk in my room each and every Friday and Saturday night, wishing I was out doing something. I choose to not be a bit more outgoing and seek out opportunities to do fun things, meet new people, and make new connections. There really aren’t any roadblocks preventing me from doing what I want, it’s just me. Chances are, if I continue through my senior year with this sour attitude, I’ll go to college with it and go out into the real world with it. I would hate to be in my thirties, not living a fun and exciting life, just because I chose not to.

So, I’ve made up my mind to get rid of all self-pity in my daily life! I am in direct control of my happiness, and I have the power to turn things around if I wish or to keep things the same. I choose to be content with who I am and happy and proud of everything I’ve done. I choose to work hard to make sure that everything I want, I can make a reality. I choose to be more proactive socially; to have more fun and excitement in my life, but also make all types of connections with different people. Most importantly, I choose to give myself a reality check every once in a while to put everything in perspective.

Newest addition to my art collection (via Austin Art Garage)

Support local. Support artists.

Friday Jam: Bobby Brown

Who Should Support Public Transit in Austin? Here's a start...

Austinites are accustomed to seeing their city profiled and praised by magazines and websites.

Austin is in the top three in Richard Florida's "Creativity Index" for cities. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Austin was the best U.S. city for job growth and Forbes.com called us the "best boom town in the US", the best bargain city and the best city for recession recovery. To say the least, Forbes.com (and publications like them) love Austin.

But it doesn't stop there, RealAge said Austin was the third best city for young people which likely feeds right into our top 10 ranking on Men's Healths list of the top socially-networked cities and Portfolio.com's statement that Austin is the #1 city in America for young adults. Add that to the fact that MSNBC.com called Austin one of America's best college towns, Kiplinger said Austin is top of the list for "best cities for the next decade" and Entrepreneur magazine named Austin the best "Creative Center" in its annual "Innovation Nation" rankings last year. Austin is even ranked the third-most dog-friendly city in America according to DogFriendly.com. No joke.

The best compliment Austin has received in recent years has been by The Atlantic, which listed Austin as the only, yes the only, American city on its list of the 30 most dynamic cities in the world, ahead of Hong Kong, Cairo and Montreal. Badass. This city is a Convention & Visitors Bureau's dream if I ever saw one.

You know what isn't so badass? Austin was in the top 5 in Men's Health magazine's list of America's Drunkest Cities largely because of the 2nd highest binge drinking rate amongst American cities and 8th highest DUI arrest rate. When Cars.com made a list of the top 20 cities with drunk drivers, Austin was the only Texas city in the top 10 (behind four cities in California). This is not something to be proud of, which is precisely why you won't hear anyone pitching incoming freshmen or job prospects or tech employers on moving here because of how much we drink and drive.

There's an analogy that I like here. When you see a so-so looking man with a gorgeous woman, some guys say, "looks like he out kicked his coverage". It's a football analogy, which is appropriate since we're approaching that season, but it applies here as well. When it comes to drinking and driving, Austin regularly out kicks its coverage. We drink too much. We drive too much. We get arrested too much.

Why? We out drink-and-drive the coverage of our public transit system. Austin's feeble transit system.

This is precisely why there are some prime groups of people who should be 100% behind public transit in Austin:

Austin Police Department

Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Bar and restaurant owners and bartenders

Parents of teens, college students and young adults

Barhoppers

If you're in one of the groups above, I ask you to think about the 10,839 people who died in 2010 due to alcohol-related car crashes (one every 50 minutes) in the US. I know we like to call car crashes "accidents", but if you're opposing light rail or any other legitimate public transit option for Austin out of some farse fiscal conservatism or some ignorant concern about whether or not people will use it, that's no accident at all.

It's just stupidity behind the wheel of a drunk driver - and we obviously have plenty of them in Austin - matched with stupidity behind the ballot. Don't stand in the way of light rail unless you're willing to accept that some of these drunk drivers wil be coming through your neighborhood and driving on the other side of the road from you one of these nights.

If you're wondering why this topic is so near and dear to my heart, I should probably share that I was involved in a head-on crash with a drunk driver on the night before my high school graduation. I walked away largely unscathed thanks to alertness and sheer luck. Those 10,839 people weren't so lucky.

People always talk about teenage drunk drivers, but on this night it was a 40-somethings woman behind the wheel and a sober high school senior on the other end. Drunk driving has no age limit or bias. Thankfully, neither should an effective public transit system.

What do Rick Perry and Bill Clinton have in common?

They both take credit for good* economic conditions. 

When the Gulf war was won, George Bush (41) looked nearly impenetrable. He’d rode in fairly unscathed from Ronald Reagan’s two-terms of conservative glory and the end of the Cold War. He’d introduced America to Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas. He’d paid his dues in previous administrations. A second term seemed fair.

Then, a swagger-filled, charmer-of-a-Governor named Bill Clinton from a Southern state took the nation by storm by playing the sax on Arsenio Hall’s couch. Well, sort of…but you get the picture. The guy was good. Good enough to unseat the man described above and become President of the United States of America.

Back then; Texas had a Democratic woman in power by the name of Ann Richards. But by 1994, Bush’s son W. swept into the Governor’s mansion just as Newt Gingrich and his buddies shamed Clinton in D.C. with the “Contract with America”.  Newt was ousted and Bob Dole was dusted in ’96, but the damage was done. William Jefferson Clinton would have to up his game as commander-in-chief and Texas would never be the same.

Clinton had to cater to Republican demands for changes in entitlement programs. His wife, Hilary, and her healthcare proposal didn’t make it past second base. A scandal some of you may have heard of became the talk of the universe.

His saving grace, though, was this blistering economy. Thank God for that President Clinton and his economic prowess and policymaking. Where would America be without such a good president manning the books.

Well, let’s see…there was the Atlanta Olympics, MTV and a hot music industry, movies like Forrest Gump and Ms. Doubtfire coming out every other weekend, Wal-Mart opening new stores around the world, Microsoft installing Windows in every school and the pre-2000 tech industry.

But somehow Mr. Clinton got all the credit. Or at least a lion’s share of it. Was that fair?

Well, let’s see…it’s 2011 and this Southern governor by the name of Rick Perry is trying to oust a once-seemingly impenetrable President, one who has all the charisma and Facebook fans and donors and comedians on his side. This President’s name is Barack Obama and he was responsible for catching and killing a guy named Osama bin Laden. College students everywhere owe him an unpaid internship for his reforms to the higher education financial system. That healthcare plan Hilary wanted so badly in the ‘90s is now on third base.

But damn that economy. Obama and strong, vibrant economy go together like oil and Greenpeace if we’re looking at his first 30 months in office. The country is starting to feel snake bitten. At least the people who voted for him in the hopes of seeing him turn the Great Recession into a 21^st Century version of the New Deal.

Fortunately for Rick Perry, we’re not actually in a World War, just a political one. And his side has been winning. Add that to the fact that he’s wavin’ that same economic-kingmaker flag that Clinton used to wave – Texas is creating jobs, unlike the rest of these states, Perry will remind you – and you get the making of a presidential contest.

 

Not a contest in the sense that Rick Perry vs. Barack Obama will be on the ballot come November 2012. No, this is a contest to see if it’s Obama’s campaign or Perry’s campaign that are first to realize something very important.

If taking credit for economic conditions is something that is going to define this upcoming presidential election, the big winner is going to someone extremely familiar and their last name happens to be Clinton.

Move over Rick, Bill Clinton, the self-described economic guru himself has something to say. Move over Obama, Hilary just may bring that healthcare baby home.

 

* - May or may not actually be true.

 

About NABIL, the director of Bon Iver's Holocene video..and others

The interwebs went nuts just now for the new Bon Iver video for "Holocene". The song is amazing. It reminds you of that Sunday morning when you were still an innocent pre-teen not quite ready to take the plunge into teen angst and the level of insecurity that only adults have. But it's not just a great song, it's also a great video - capturing precisely what I just described.

 

Chicago-born, Australia-bred director Nabil Elderkin aka NABIL was behind it. He's brilliant at this craft of music video direction. Common's "The Game", Kanye West's "Welcome to Heartbreak", Frank Ocean's "Novacane", K'Naan's "Wavin' Flag", and much of the photo work on Kanye's "Glow in the Dark" tour are just a sampling of his work in recent years. Read some of his Q&As here and here.

If you really like his work, I highly recommend his documentary on breakdancing called Bouncing Cats that won him accolades in documentary filmmaking.