And have yourself a good cry.
Now Read This
Using Groupons on a Date: Timely Enough to be Cool, or An Absolute No-No?
Over the summer, I attended a WordPress meetup for the free barbecue. The place was a meat market in more ways than one.
One of the few women in attendance was my friend The Beam, who got hit on by a developer from Living Social, the instant coupon company. His pickup line went something like this: “We have a two-for-one deal to Regal [movie theaters] right now, if you’d want to go…”
So I couldn’t help but wonder*: With the proliferation of Groupon and Groupon-wannabes, is it now cool to use coupons on a date?
I like to ponder these vexing relationships-in-a-digital-age questions, so I started doing some reporting. A quick search online led me to plenty of heated debates and conflicting blog posts, and the people I trust, like Friend Matt, were just as undecided about it as I was:
Is it attractively frugal? Retro enough to be hipster? Or just cheap? Is there a threshold — 10% off is lame but 2-for-1 is worth it?
Like any relationship exploration, what works for one couple doesn’t work for others, la la la. And let’s assume that we are unpacking this idea for early-stage couples, because I know my partner-of-eight-years would not think twice about using a Groupon for a two-for-one deal at Popeye’s Chicken with me, and vice versa. So let’s focus on fledgling relationships. The various approaches:
Continue reading “Using Groupons on a Date: Timely Enough to be Cool, or An Absolute No-No?”
2011 Year in Review: Up in The Air
My friend Patrick Terpstra wrote this of his year: “2011 was like riding a tilt-a-hurl after eating seven corn dogs. But it sure beats watching from the ground.”
I can’t disagree. I did plenty of plane riding, which is the most consistent memory of this year, besides saying goodbye and hello to a lot of people I really love. To rewind:
The Year I Flew Around the World, Twice: After saying goodbye to Texas and The Texas Tribune, I spent 99 days this year away from home, logging 78,931 miles in the air to 29 locations including places like Warsaw, Poland (for fun) and Boise, Idaho (for work). Not proud of the carbon footprint but I can now glide through security like Ryan Bingham.
Don’t Look Back in Anger (I Heard You Say): It felt like a pretty angry and destructive year, didn’t it? My second favorite emotion*, outrage, seemed to abound. I write this as tens of thousands of Russians protest in the streets, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya take their shaky steps toward self-rule, and socioeconomic dissatisfaction continues at home. We said goodbye to Osama bin Laden, Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs (none of whom were picks in my clearly talentless celebrity death pool), an earthquake-tsunami combo led to radiation disaster in Japan, and we experienced a rare earthquake in my new hometown of Washington, D.C.
Favorite Video of The Year Is Also My Favorite Song: “Ching Chong (It Means I Love You)”
After a UCLA student went on a crazy rant about Asian people in the library, she faced a backlash so large she had to quit college. But Jimmy Wong turned his rant response into art — one of the catchiest songs of the year, and an instant viral video. It will get stuck in your head, so if you haven’t seen this, you’ve been warned.
Speaking of Asians, My Most Memorable Welcome to Washington: The Crazy Guy in Starbucks
There was one morning after the devastating Japanese earthquake when I went into Starbucks in Chinatown, natch, when a random guy off the street wandered in, started yelling at people in line, stopped at me, and said this, to me: “Fuck you, go home. You deserved the earthquake.” Then he told the rest of the line we were all going to die. Yep.
Inventions of Sean Blumberg, Revisited
My recent tumble into a marathon 84-episode viewing of Felicity, the series, just ended. (Thank God, because I really need my life back.) Clearly I have a few sistas out there who have slipped into the same situation and felt compelled to blog about seeing a decade-old coming-of-age TV series all over again, so I’ll contribute just one post to the revived pantheon to Felicity.
Among my favorite running gags on the show are the nonsense ideas cooked up by Sean Blumberg, the random guy who was 27 years old but hanging out with college kids. So this time around, I actually paused to write down his ideas and inventions as they were introduced on the show. To wit:
Lact-Oh’s
Milkless cereal. There’s milk baked into every O. So you just add water, and the water hydrates the evaporated milk.
Bagel Knobs
Like doughnut holes, but bagel holes. And you can inject fillings into them like cream cheese, butter, lox spread. “It’s gonna be a big, huge item,” said Sean.
Observations from the Campaign Trail in Iowa
Over the weekend, Photographer Brad and I made a quick trip to Des Moines to drop in on the presidential campaign trail, where six of the eight GOP candidates took part in a social issue-themed roundtable discussion while seated behind a gigantic cornucopia. Other observations:
Christmas is really around the corner. At the county GOP event in the morning, where Ron Paul was the featured speaker, there were lots of ill-fitting holiday sweaters and sweatshirts. The expected number of American flag-themed polo shirts turned up, also.
How about that cornucopia, people. Tell me it is not distracting. I have no idea what happened during some of the forum because I was so fascinated with that thing. A sample of the tweets and comments I got about it:
- What’s with the “horn of plenty” in front that looks like the trash heap from Fraggle Rock?
- From here, it looks like a homeless person sleeping.
- On the floor, is it a body in burlap??, a conservative conceptual yule log?
The horn-of-plenty was not just a draw for me and Brad. Rhonda and Kent, a couple from Des Moines wearing these matching Christmas colored flannel outfits asked Brad to take several photos of them in front of the cornucopia in hopes of getting a good Christmas card photo. Posing in front of the cornucopia actually made us late to the next thing, the governor’s birthday party.
While rushing to the Iowa governor’s bash, which all the candidates were planning to attend, we accidentally crashed a wedding at the Altoona Adventureland Hotel. We asked the bar staff where we were SUPPOSED to be, and they said, “You need to go to AdventureLAND, not Adventureland.” Yep.
Newt Gingrich is most definitely the man of the moment. People mobbed the guy as soon as he came in, even though he wasn’t that nice to them and was generally surly during the forum.
After the long day of work, all the boys ignored me at the microbrewery place to instead pay attention to their cell phones. We watched two college football games on the TV screens but that wasn’t enough. They followed the other two on their phones. To be fair, Young Danny was actually focused on final edits to his story.
In perhaps the most amusing part of a weekend of amusement, a Democratic fundraiser who came into the bar for a nightcap started complimenting us on our fashion. He started talking us up about football, but then pivoted to asking about our various backgrounds. “I wanted to get at where you’re from cause you all are dressed pretty sophisticated for Iowa,” he said. To photographer Brad, he said, “I pay attention to fashion, and you’re pants aren’t Carhartts, so I figured you weren’t from here.”
Rick Perry’s Oopsy Gaffe: Reactions on Twitter, Storifyed
I can’t watch a presidential debate without watching the snarky Twitter comments at the same time, so tonight when my longtime guvnah, Texas’ Rick Perry, totally “stepped in it” (his words, not mine) when trying to name three federal agencies he would cut, the Twitter stream was a sight to see.
With pal Burt Herman’s tool, Storify, which allows users to aggregate that snapshot in time into a chronological stream (complete with other media like links, photos, videos and more), I preserved what happened — and how people reacted — on Wednesday night.
Continue reading “Rick Perry’s Oopsy Gaffe: Reactions on Twitter, Storifyed”
Justin, aka My Partner in Crime, Visits DC
You may remember Justin from such adventures as “Confrustion: Trying to Figure Out How to Use Expensive Podcasting Mics“, or our weekly early morning breakfast summits, which we documented in a video. Or that time we were videotaping the inside of every Marriott hotel in Austin for a side job involving some Romanian employers who needed video of hotels. Or maybe you don’t know about that.
Justin is one of my besties. The Bert to my Ernie. My work-husband, even though I worked (and work) with my actual husband. We toiled together as a reporter-photog team at KVUE-TV, from 2006 to 2009. Then he joined us at The Texas Tribune, where he remains a multimedia producer today. But mostly we’ve involved ourselves with shenanigans, buffets and long nights that journeyed into daylight. There was one summer when we were obsessed with going to Cool River Cafe, a.k.a. “Cougar River” or “Cougar Town”, to dance to one-syllabled cover bands like MAXX or SUEDE with women who were old enough to be our moms, or Liza Minnelli.
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The Four Countries in Nine Days Epic Travel Week
There’s nothing quite like coming off an epic, five-state travel week than to get on an eight-hour flight to start an epic, four-country travel week. Let’s just say I missed a few conference calls today, being anywhere from thirty minutes late to not showing up. But we had some great times over the week, as we visited:
Mont Saint Michel, in Normandy, France
Bruges, Belgium
The Hague, The Netherlands
Warsaw, Poland
1. Talk about random run-ins. In France, on the only street of the other-worldly Mont Saint Michel in the Normandy region, we ran right into an Austin friend, Brad Phillips, who was vacationing with his wife Molly. His firm was responsible for the design of The Texas Tribune. What a mess of humanity. So fantastic.
2. The next morning, Matty and I ran along a little trail from the backyard of the country home-slash-hotel straight to the Mont, a quick 2 kilometer jog. It was gorgeous. I’d run every day if that was my view every day.
3. We finally spent time in Bruges, after we were both introduced to the town by the hilariously dark film, In Bruges, a few years ago. The food was awesome, (try the beer-braised steak dish called stoofvlees if you’re in Belgium), and wandering the old cobblestone streets and canals and churches and all that was really fantastic. So was our bed and breakfast, where the owners made us deliciousness after our relaxing night in their little three-room rowhome.
4. Poland rocks! Warsaw was quite Western — I had expected it to be more, er, Soviet. We enjoyed the Old Town and the Warsaw Uprising Museum the most. They also serve bottles of vodka on the breakfast buffet there. Yep.
5. I came across my first TK Maxx. As a fan of TJ Maxx (which was, incidentally, hosting a fashion show and convention while we were in Boston for Online News Association a few weeks ago), I thought immediately that this was copyright infringement. Thanks to the social media crowd, I learned the TK is actually a legit brand, owned by the TJ Maxx people, to avoid confusion among Europeans with another TJ brand name that’s popular there.
I’ll eventually get the photos together and put up the images here and on the rarely-updated Hu-Stiles Blog.
Blinded By The Awesomeness Of My New Chicken Bag
What is this? Why yes, yes it is a rubber chicken handbag. It’s lined on the inside, but pure rubber chicken material on the outside. I couldn’t even believe it when I saw my gal pal Skyler carrying it to a lobster dinner with me last week in Austin. The next day I squeezed in a trip to Tesoros, the South Congress gift shop where you can get them, so I could purchase my own.
It caused me to miss my flight but this handbag was so worth it.
The Five States In Eight Days Epic Travel Week
I’m finally home after an epic, five state, eight day trip that included three conferences, nine airplanes and a drive to New Hampshire and back. Just so I don’t forget, this is what the actual travel path was, though there is no way for me accurately to capture all the hours of conferencing and debauchery and good times I enjoyed along the way. It was so good to see many of you.
Travel Log:
Sunday: Depart for Bloomington, overnight in Bloomington
Monday: Train reporters at StateImpact Indiana, return to DC
Tuesday: Stop back at the office, overnight in DC
Wednesday: Depart early for Boston, rent car, drive to Concord, NH. Train in Concord. Drive back to Boston and overnight in Boston.
Thursday: Full day for Online News Association and overnight in Boston.
Friday: Depart for Austin, overnight in Austin.
Saturday: Full day in Austin Tribune Festival, overnight in Austin.
Sunday: Depart for New Orleans. Overnight in New Orleans.
Monday: Morning in NOLA for SPJ/RTDNA Conference. Depart for Washington.
Upon my return, while hurrying to get out of my last airport of the journey, who do I run into? New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who was also rushing home after he and other senators made a deal to avoid a government shutdown.
Next week, we’ll be doing four countries in 10 days, just to kick things up a notch.