Writer, Creative Director, Musician, & Illustrator
San Francisco, California
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Tune in online to my Boston radio interview this Saturday!
August 31, 2010 @ 10:54 pm
Tune in to my interview on Boston ’s WMWM this Saturday (9/4) at 4 p.m. EST for my book, “Indie Rock 101.” I’ll be talking about the book with DJ Cosmic Amanda and sharing some of my recorded songs. Listen online at www.wmwmonline.com. Should be fun!
Shark conservation panel discussion at the Blue Ocean Film Festival
August 29, 2010 @ 5:59 pm
Yesterday was an amazing day of meeting fellow shark conservationists at the Blue Ocean Film Festival in Monterey, CA.
At 10:30, I attended a panel discussion, “New Strategies In Shark Conservation,” of shark conservation experts moderated by wildlife cinematographer Richard Theiss. The panel guests brought a wide range of perspectives, disciplines and approaches to their discussion around the problems sharks are facing today.
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On Spearfishing, Swimming with a School of Orange Stripe Surgeonfish & Veganism
August 18, 2010 @ 10:27 pm
orange striped surgeonfish
I’ll never forget the recent privilege of scuba diving about 85 feet underwater in Kauai and coming across a large school of beautiful orange stripe surgeonfish. They were cautious but not frightened as I approached and followed from close behind, and for a few wondrous moments they allowed me to swim amongst them before I had to return to my dive team. I also saw a few octopi, eels, starfish, crabs, dozens of sea turtles and whitetip reef sharks sleeping and cruising near the bottom.
An animal rights activist’s guide to staying sane: Words of wisdom from PETA’s Alex B.
June 20, 2010 @ 6:20 pm
Any number of terrible things happen to all kinds of animals every day. 10 billion a year are eaten for food a year, for one thing. But the recent Mercy for Animals undercover footage of cows and calves being brutally abused at the Conklin dairy farm was hard for me to watch, and hard to recover from. Sadly, animal abuse is not an isolated case in the dairy industry, or the factory farm industry, for that matter; it’s the norm. The best way to prevent this sort of atrocity is to give up dairy altogether and go vegan.
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Just say NO to offshore drilling
April 30, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
[If you want to bypass my short rant and get right to petitions and articles, scroll down to get right to the links at the end of this article]
Only a few days after getting upset about Obama’s reversed stance to allow offshore drilling on the East Coast, I read the headlines about what will likely become the biggest and most disastrous oil spill ever.
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On the laughable hypocrisy of 'The Office' (via General Electric) telling you what’s best for your health and the environment
April 20, 2010 @ 10:38 pm
From today’s Wall Street Journal:
What Your TV Is Telling You to Do: NBC Universal’s Shows Are Sending Viewers Signals to Recycle, Exercise and Eat Right. Why?
That’s a question I asked myself a few months ago when I was watching one of my favorite shows, “The Office.” I remember getting a funny feeling watching a scene in which office manager Michael Scott asks the employees for ideas on how they might be better citizens via volunteerism. Then a few weeks later, Dwight harangues fellow employees to recycle as a recycling-obsessed mascot called “Recyclops.” As someone who’s watched “The Office” since the first episode, I also noticed that there sure seem to be a lot of episodes in which people get wasted and it’s depicted as a good time had by all (…except once, when white-trash Meredith, the office alcoholic, lights her own hair on fire at a party. Even so, Meredith’s punchlines revolve more around her twisted sexual misadventures more than they do alcohol-related bummers like loss of a job, DUIs or psoriasis of the liver.)
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Reaching people about veganism: experiences of a 6-month vegan
April 13, 2010 @ 12:37 am
Although I was a vegetarian for three years after college, I went vegan about six months ago. So much has happened since then and I’ve learned so much that it’s impossible to recap it all in a single blog post. In fact, it’s hard to even keep these posts short since I have so much to say. So my strategy is to blog about veganism more in “chunks,” then eventually collate it all into a website.
One of the coolest things about going vegan for me is meeting other like-minded people and having a positive ripple effect on others on the curious. I recently got an email from a vegan that reads my posts and, with her permission, I’ve reprinted her questions here. My responses and thoughts on this follow.
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The New York Times and 5 Other Things that Bug the Sh*t Out of Me
April 8, 2010 @ 9:37 pm
I don’t know why but a few days ago I woke up in a pretty foul mood. I have much to be grateful for and I really do try to avoid feeling snarky or writing snarky posts in general. But man, Monday I just woke up kind of grumpy. Plus I don’t think it’s healthy to keep things inside when they’re eating at me. So. Instead of carrying that around the negative energy, I decided that day to just make a mental note of what was bugging me in that one day. And now, in the spirit of cleansing myself, I’m going to share a short list of what those things are.
Pilgrimage to Bigfoot Country
March 25, 2010 @ 11:35 pm
I’ve been kind of obsessed with Bigfoot since I was a kid. I read all the books, checking the same ones out of three different libraries over and over again. I wrote book reports. I drew pictures. When I hiked through the woods alone growing up in rural PA, I thought I’d be lucky enough to see one if I wished hard enough. You’d think it would be something I have outgrown by the time I became an adult, but I never did.
Will Tuttle lecture (author of "The World Peace Diet")
March 21, 2010 @ 9:30 pm
A few days ago I read a blog entry by one of my favorite animal rights/vegan blog writers, Angel Flinn, enthusing about author/musician and vegan activist Will Tuttle and his new book, The World Peace Diet, which recently hit #1 on Amazon.
I checked out his website, worldpeacediet.com, and lo and behold, he was scheduled to speak a 10-minute drive from my home here in San Francisco at the First Unitarian Universalist Society. It was one of those coincidences I couldn’t ignore.