It Was More than Music…So Much More

What do you say when a genuine legend passes? Tower Records founder Russ Solomon died at home Sunday night, sipping whiskey and watching the Academy Awards, an original to the end. He was 92. His passing triggered the expected nods, from NPR to Rolling Stone, and my Facebook feed is full of posts from my Tower tribe tonight, expressing sorrow and condolences to Russ's family.

But the recurring theme that stands out above all is one of gratitude. Truly the stuff of legends, Russ built a billion dollar international company from a card table in his father's drugstore, and we got to be a part of it. At one time or another, every single one of us thought, "This is my job—I get paid to do this." We got to come to work in jeans and t-shirts, listen to music, be surrounded by books, magazines, movies, and music, and most importantly, we met each other. We formed our tribe. We were proud of being a band of misfits, joked about being unemployable anywhere else, and collectively knew more about music, books, movies, and pop culture than anyone on the planet.

It all came to an end 11 years ago, which on any given day can feel like a lifetime or a week. But the passing years only strengthen our bond. I've given up trying to explain what it is that holds us together to people who've never experienced a job that was anything more than just a job.

Russ had his quirks, and didn’t worry about speaking his mind. He told me on more than one occasion that a book ad I'd helped design was "absolute shit." Then he followed up with, "But what do I know, kiddo? I'm just an old man," said with a sparkle in his eye. At one time, my office in the advertising suite shared a common wall with his office. And I always heard music playing. The man dearly loved all kinds of music.

The last time I saw Russ was in October of 2015, during our giant three-day reunion that coincided with the release of the Colin Hanks movie, All Things Must Pass. He was pleased with the movie and touched by the crowd of former employees who came to Sacramento to relive our glory days, still insisting that it was us, "the kids in the stores," who made Tower the success that it was. I thanked him for an amazing 22 years, and he said, "Twenty-two? Were you twelve when you started?!" That charm and humor plus a passion for making his stores more than just places to buy CDs and books built an empire. Tower was more than music...it was an experience, a lifestyle, and it was a family. Thank you for everything. Rest in peace, Russ.

Once, Therefore Always...

Bookseller (book-sel-er) n. 1. A person whose occupation or business is selling books. 2. A person who previously sold books, whose heart and soul still belong to the printed word, regardless of their career path.

Sometimes you just have to reconnect with your roots. As I'll tell anyone willing to listen, bookseller isn't just an occupation—it isn't just something we do, it's something we are. While it's true that I haven't made my living in the book biz in eleven years, I'm no less emotionally connected to the industry and my bookselling identity. I still buy physical books, prefer to buy them from real, independent bookstores, and feel compelled to support those stores whenever possible. 

Case in point: Last Tuesday, I jumped into the car after work and drove to one of my favorite indie stores, to go to my favorite author's book signing. Win-win. Robert Crais hadn't been to Northern California on tour in nine years, so I was thrilled to see that Book Passage was hosting a reading and signing of his latest novel, The Wanted. I had no intention of missing the event, late night be damned.

Why would I undertake a nearly 200-mile round trip in the middle of the week to get a signed book?

1. See "bookseller" above.
2. I'll always go out of my way to support indies that host author events.
3. I fell in love with Bob's recurring characters, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in the late 80s.
4. As illustrated elsewhere in this space, I can be a bit of a fangirl at times.

There's nothing quite like hearing someone whose work you admire talk about the writing process and the amount of research and hard work that go into creating his bestsellers. Bob talked about how attached he's become to Elvis and Joe over the past 30 years, answered audience questions, and made wise cracks Elvis would be proud of.

I chatted with a woman sitting nearby before the event began. She'd only read one book, and wanted to know what it is that keeps me interested in the series. I told her I've long wished Joe and Elvis were real people, because I would want to know them. They're good, honorable men trying to stay true to themselves and navigate life's challenges with grace. Joe Pike's signature shades hide the pain in his ice-blue eyes, and his red arrow tattoos remind him there is no going backward. Elvis Cole looks for bits of magic where he can find them, not giving a damn that the Pinocchio clock and Jiminy Cricket figurines in his office are a disconnect from what most people expect to see when they hire a PI. The strength of their bond is a beautiful definition of friendship.

Elvis Cole and Joe Pike have been real to me for more than 25 years, the sign of a truly gifted author. Did I pay for the late night the next day? Yep. But I'll do it again without a moment's hesitation.

U is for Understanding

Somehow I've been at what I still consider my "new" job for almost a year. 2017 has flown by, no doubt at least partly due to mental exhaustion from sheer information overload. The learning curve feels less like an Escher staircase these days, but I still often find myself in a meeting, wondering WTH people are talking about as they casually toss around terms that send me scrambling for the acronym glossary I was given, along with a metric crap-ton of other info, my first week on the job. When that fails, there's always Google, in which there's no shame, as my boss's boss once told me the CEO caught her surreptitiously searching for a term he used in an EVP meeting. (As a testament to his character, he paused and said he wanted to be sure everyone was clear on what he was talking about). 

Such instances have gotten fewer and farther between without my noticing, but I got caught last week. I was on a WebEx (how most of my meetings take place, as State Fund has offices all over California) with a supervisor,  my boss, the head of Government Affairs, and the manager of our Special Investigation Unit, the guys who detect and prevent fraud. To put things into perspective, the insurance industry has its own lingo, and workers' comp, being a specific type of insurance, has its own dialect, so to speak. Add to that, the particulars of SIU, with terms like sub rosa (the coolest so far) and I'm feeling pretty good that I'm holding my own in the conversation.

Then my boss asks, "Do we have an MOU with that vendor?" What on earth is an MOU?? To Google I go, quickly discovering that it means, Memorandum of Understanding. W. T. F? How is that even a thing? Wouldn't any reasonable human being just say agreement or contract? Welcome to the government, boys and girls...I think that one wins the prize for this year. But something tells me 2018 has more than a few gems in store for me.

It’s All too Much

INFPs aren't very good at self-promotion, said the text book example of one of the 16 personalities on the Myers-Briggs type indicator who prefers writing over talking and shudders at the thought of being expected to mingle with a room full of strangers.

Creative types are often introverts, being more at home expressing ourselves through our chosen medium rather than talking. But what happens when an introvert wants to let the world in on her craft? When she wants people to know what she does and maybe even land some freelance gigs? For me, when it's time to—gulp—talk about myself, I can expend huge amounts of energy coming up with reasons not to.

Even launching this blog caused internal debate ad nauseam. (Like the world needed yet another blog). I've also thought about creating a website, and it isn't just a lack of technical skills that's prevented it (and yes, I know, there are things like wix.com for the tech-impaired). It's the thought of filling pages, or even one page with...me. Ugh. A friend recently pointed out my deficit in self-promotion skills, saying I just share a link to a blog post without any preamble, as if to say, "Here it is, read it if you want to." And?

So all of the above led to the creation of this page. If the point of my blog is to show potential freelance clients that I can in fact write, it made sense to include examples of said writing and a list of the kinds of projects I've done. That's enough self-promotion for now...I'm exhausted. 

Paper…For the Win

In the battle between paper books, magazines, actual newspapers, and all things e, many people wrote off paper ages ago. It's just so much easier to download a book or magazine onto the device of your choice, or find news or whatever else you might be looking for online. We've gotten so used to having instant access to the internet in our pockets we take for granted that anything we want to know is at our fingertips. And it's true that we have massive amounts of information a tap or click away. But what happens when we find the information we we're looking for? Here's where it gets interesting.

The very nature of being online turns us into multi-taskers. Click on this link now, or finish the article, or at least the paragraph first? The sentence? Oh, here's a new email, a Facebook notification, a new text, and a pop-up ad. In The Shallows: What theInternet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr likens being on the internet to trying to read a book while doing a crossword puzzle. Lab studies have proven that the internet makes us stupid, at least temporarily. Problem solving (searching, navigating, finding that info) plus divided attention (ooh, what's that?) equals cognitive overload. And cognitive overload kills comprehension.

So what to do when comprehension (rather than info gathering) is the goal? Enter our old friend, paper, whose super power is comprehension. Reading a book or magazine is a single activity, free from distractions. It's just you and the words on the page. But where paper really scores over the digital world is in note-taking. If you take notes on a laptop in class, can you type faster than you can write those same notes longhand? For most of us, the answer is yes. But as this nifty infographic from the National Pen Company illustrates, handwriting leads to better recall because it creates a spatial relation between each bit of info we jot down, it allows us to think more deeply about what we're writing, and because it's more difficult to take notes verbatim, we have to process the information we're hearing in real time and summarize it in a way that makes sense to us.

The massive amount of information available online will continue to grow, and all things digital will continue to become enmeshed in everyday life. But, in the cosmic game of rock, paper, scissors, don't rule out paper just yet.

These Dames Mean Business

Prohibition era San Francisco. Gin joints, speakeasies, bootleggers and mobsters. Welcome to Frankie's world.

I can't claim to be an authority on comics or graphic novels, although I did purchase quite a few of the latter for my stores back in the Tower days. So I have a pretty good sense of when a particular title is going to do well. And I'll make a prediction right now that one such title is, "The Tommy Gun Dolls," by Daniel Cooney.

Full disclosure: I know Dan. He was a graphic designer and scan tech in the advertising department at Tower when I was the book ad manager. And he's a great guy with a wonderful sense of humor, a keen eye and plenty of talent. He's also an inspiration. He has a job, a family, and responsibilities like most of us. And yet, he finds time to pursue his art. I want to be like Dan. Create. Put your art out there. Be like Dan.

Volume 1 of the Tommy Gun Dolls, "The Big Knockover," introduces us to Frankie, a tough-as-nails grifter who finds herself heading a troupe of burlesque girls as they try to avenge the death of their friend. Cooney's fast-paced story line and incredibly detailed drawings are worthy of film noir narration. Frankie and her pals are no Dumb Doras, as the men who get in their way find out. You might be tempted to fly through the story to see what happens, but you'll want to slow down and appreciate the historically accurate depictions in each panel.

Dan is currently hard at work on volume 2 of The Tommy Gun Dolls, which is good news considering the cliff-hanger ending of volume 1. Frankie and the other dolls will be back to roam San Francisco, from the Tenderloin to Nob Hill. Everything's jake.

Word Crimes

The fact that language is living and ever-evolving is a good thing, or we'd still be speaking the King's English and sound like extras in a community theater production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Words fall out of use and are replaced by new ones, and language adapts to the needs of its users.

Evolution aside, I need to rant about the word crimes that are currently raising my hackles at my day gig. Going to work for the state, I was prepared for a certain amount of business-speak, and of course, the non-stop acronym parade, but the following is just. Too. Much.

Report out. When did this little gem come into popular use? Can't we simply report results? Why must we report them "out"? Out where? We report for duty or report to a particular location; did someone just pick "out" for the hell of it? I'm aware of the trouble many people have with those pesky prepositions, but come on...

Change champions. How anyone can use this term with a straight face is beyond me. "Change agent" was bad enough, but this? The only upside is Queen popping into my head.

Listicle. This one has been around for quite a while apparently, yet I'd remained blissfully unaware. Dictionary.com defines it as "a published article structured in the form of a list, typically having some additional content relating to each item." That sounds like what it is, and given our shrinking collective attention span, I get it, but it just sounds wrong.

Agreeance. What on earth was wrong with "agreement"? I'm just going to stubbornly refuse to accept this one, no matter what Merriam-Webster has to say.

A colleague saw me roll my eyes at listicle and when I said it was a silly made-up word, his response was that all words are made up. That may be true, but I have my doubts that anything on this list will stand the test of time. If only I could actually cite people for word crimes...