Being into golf isn’t original. It’s been around forever. Old people love it. A lot of young people, too. In American culture, it borders on being ubiquitous—particularly given certain demographics.

So as I spent a chunk of this year getting back into a sport I played a lot when I was younger—a bunch of rounds with my brothers, a nice new driver, even an official GHIN handicap—I couldn’t really do the natural fallback people do these days when they’re newly passionate about something, trying to share it with others and saying stuff like “Have you tried this thing called golf? It’s amazing!”

About everyone’s tried it. Not everyone loves it.

Continue Reading In praise of ‘No Laying Up,’ a digital media empire done right

This week, I’d been looking for an easy subject for a blog post to get back in the swing of things. That’s like half of blogging, trying to get back in the swing of things when you’re not. Anyway, I was watching the Packers game at my sister’s place and her fiancé suggested we play a random mobile game I hadn’t heard of.

It was ‘Among Us‘, which Wikipedia describes as “an online multiplayer social deduction game.” If you have no idea what that is, hey, right there with you because we didn’t actually all end up playing it.

Continue Reading ‘Among Us’, Proud Boys and the (sometimes dangerous) power of exposure

Two nights into the 2020 Democratic National Convention, more Republicans have given speeches than Democratic Socialists. Given the party’s clear strategy—even in its more opaque moments—it isn’t surprising the firebrand wing of the party is all but banished from the big stage.

But it still feels pretty gross.

And listen, I get it. Winning come November takes precedent over all else. Gotta have it. If 45 takes this one, it’s all over—if it isn’t already.

Isn’t there more to it, though? Like, isn’t the object to govern in a way that fits a certain set of ideals? To help the greatest number of people? To put a dent in American history, if not the universe?

Continue Reading Progressives should look back for a path forward

The evening after everything settled, as the dust and debris finished falling on the crater that was the 2020 college football season, I saw a reporter tweet that it was a good night for a drink.

Who would disagree?

Fans chimed in expressing a similar sentiment, some sharing pictures of their own beverage of choice. They’d lost their beloved college football Saturdays, the weekly tradition that carried many from late-summer afternoons all the way through winter.

Continue Reading For many, it’s so much bigger than losing college football Saturdays

This is a question I’m seeing a lot. It’s one people gravitate towards. I don’t like property destruction being the focus—or even a large part—of the conversation around this, but it is. It comes up a lot, even in my family’s own group text thread, a source of much political discord.

How would you feel? What would you do?

What would you think if it was your business getting trashed in the middle of an economy-crushing pandemic?

Well, I’d have a lot of questions.

Continue Reading What would you think if it was your small business being destroyed?

I am an excitable person. Getting me going on a particular subject can be a regrettable experience for whoever made such a mistake. I’ve come to acknowledge this. The subject could be Mariners prospects, my favorite neighborhood brewery, progressive politics or Williams’ 1995 classic pinball adaptation of Dirty Harry.

Or it could be my bike, as happened the other day. Picking up beer at my favorite neighborhood brewery. But that’s another post.

This is that excitable rant about a bike. Continue Reading Ebikes are an urbanist’s dream—and my dog’s, too

I am not an expert at this.

Those are humorous first words for the first post of this (resurrected) blog, but there they are. My audio editing training is limited to a half a semester in a course aimed at print journalism majors who, come senior year, figured they should know more than writing.

So I’ve been that guy reading the blog post on throwing together a podcast—and then done it and not embarrassed myself. After recently doing a little Facebook Live on the subject for LexBlog, I figured I may as well write it out.

That’s been in the form of a casual weekly show with my brother and also a more put-together operation with the general manager and radio broadcaster of my favorite baseball team, a podcast that eventually regular became a television show.

Aaaand it’s also been in the form of a 20-something-year-old me carrying a laptop and nothing else into the University of Montana athletic director’s office and just hitting record.

Lessons were learned. Here’s what I’ve got.

Continue Reading What do I need to start a podcast?