Life
Taylor Swift, Bill Burr, & Making Art
My name is Steve and I am a people pleaser who makes stuff and shares it with the public. This is both fun (I can make friends quickly!) and a nightmare (I hyper-focus on the people who don’t like my work!). As a result, I’ve largely avoided social media as a creative outlet for the…
Did Einstein Suck at the Violin? [Nerd Out 9/16/23]
I like to make noise. I’ve been playing the piano since I was a kid, and picked up the guitar in college, but trying to learn the violin over the past decade has been a different beast entirely. When I last lived in Nashville (2012-2015), at the age of 30, I decided to try learning…
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White Whales And Murder Mysteries [Nerd Out 8/5/23]
Now that I’ve broken free of “must read all the books in my queue”… I’ve been revisiting a lot of my favorites for a second or third time. I’m rereading Brandon Sanderson’s entire Mistborn series, and last week I also reread Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. She shares a story about Herman Melville complaining to Nathanial Hawthorne about not finding…
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Judd Apatow and the Moment of Creation
Recently, Emmy Award-winning director, screenwriter, producer, author, and comedian Judd Apatow jumped on Sam Harris’s “Making Sense” podcast and talked about comedy, creativity, and flow. One quote in particular jumped out at me – the “moment of creation” that makes it all worth it. It’s these pure moments of creativity that allow Judd to put…
2022: Retrospective
Did you watch The Rings of Power or The House of the Dragon this year? Both new shows were perfectly…fine. They took place in lovely locations, had solid production values, and were a good connection to their respective universes. However, both shows felt like they were setting the chess board and moving the pieces around…
2021: Retrospective
“This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live.” -Seneca 2021 was a Tale of Two Cities for your boy Steve: the best of times and the worst of times.…