Author: J T. Ramsay

J T. Ramsay http://jtramsay.com

Why I Switched to Poster

You may have noticed some changes here recent­ly. Here’s a hint: fresh con­tent! Want to know my secret? The Poster app! Now I know we’ve all heard that the iPad is not a con­tent-cre­ation device, but I’m find­ing it pret­ty easy myself. In fact, I haven’t reopened my Mac­Book once, not even to change my blog theme!

Why do I like it so much? It does­n’t try to do any­thing more than allow you to draft, sched­ule and pub­lish con­tent. I don’t need a read­er baked into the app, or to see stats on my per­son­al blog. I just want to dive in and bang out 250–500 words about some­thing I liked enough to write about. Like Poster! If you want to start using your iPad for blog­ging, you should check it out.

Ramsayings at the Movies

I used to write about cul­ture! Let me see if I can still flex my cap­sule muscles.

  • Argo: Damon got action. Affleck got auteur. Nice to see Ben make a movie out­side his backyard.
  • The Dark Knight Ris­es: Tom Hardy’s voice was so sil­ly I bare­ly noticed Bale’s Batvoice.
  • Loop­er: A mash up of Look Who’s Talk­ing and Back to the Future! Awesome!
  • Mar­garet: Pos­si­bly more depress­ing than Synec­doche, New York!

In Praise of Richard Buckner

I first learned about Richard Buck­n­er in the late nineties. I’d joined the Pave­ment list­serv and when we weren’t argu­ing over which Pave­ment album was the worst (peo­ple hat­ed BtC) we’d talk about all sorts of artists pop­u­lar at the time among the indie crowd. Richard Buck­n­er was one of the names that got men­tioned often, so I bought a copy of Devo­tion + Doubt. I fell in love with it immediately.

I had­n’t lis­tened to it for quite some time, hav­ing checked out of alt-coun­try or what­ev­er that was all those years ago. Then I read about Buck­n­er’s strug­gles. and I revis­it­ed his work. 

Devo­tion + Doubt is still a breath­tak­ing album. Buck­n­er deserves the atten­tion that’s been lav­ished on Bon Iver. I can think of few albums that do so much with so lit­tle. The sparse arrange­ments leave ample room for Buck­n­er’s expres­sive voice. The sto­ry­telling is great and he nev­er laps­es into the singer-song­writer trea­cle that dooms so many solo artists. It’s just the right mix of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and scorn.

If you haven’t heard Buck­n­er before, check out this live video of Ed’s Song from Devo­tion + Doubt.

Saying Goodbye to Port Fishington

When Helen and I first set­tled in Port Fish­ing­ton six years ago, we thought we’d made a bad deci­sion. We’d moved from a vibrant, bustling street in Pennsport to a des­o­late block above York Street. We found lots of vacant hous­es and even less to eat. It was­n’t scary; the neigh­bors were friend­ly and wel­com­ing. They plant­ed the tree in front of our house for a few bucks and a case of beer! But we still felt like we’d left the place we loved for a place we could afford. That feel­ing of buy­er’s remorse was hard to ignore.

Now that we’re get­ting ready to say good­bye to Philadel­phia, we know we made the right choice mov­ing here. This neigh­bor­hood flour­ished since we moved here, with fan­tas­tic new restau­rants to go along with the music scene. We’ve been spoiled by hav­ing Greens­grow Farm around the cor­ner. If you’d told me then that Stephen Starr would have not one, but two restau­rants here, I would’ve laughed in your face. And then it hap­pened. Heck, I intro­duced the #toomany­gas­trop­ubs hash­tag as a tongue-in-cheek com­plaint about our restau­rant bounty.

We loved it so much, we start­ed a fam­i­ly here. Char­lie loves it, too! We’ve played count­less games on the side­walk in front of our house, say­ing hel­lo to every­one who smiles at him as they pass. We made Mem­phis Tap­room our liv­ing room away from home. We con­vinced our friends to move here, too! We’ve made great mem­o­ries here. Port Fish­ing­ton’s been good to us. We’re going to miss this place when we go.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Podcast

I was first intro­duced to pod­cast­ing by Todd Burns, my edi­tor at [Sty­lus Magazine](http://stylusmagazine.com). He was way out in front on that, bring­ing read­ers the Sty­cast far more often than they deserved. Sure, it may have sound­ed like a painful eye prob­lem, it was much fur­ther ahead of its time than I realized. 

Since then I’d describe my rela­tion­ship with pod­casts as aspi­ra­tional; I treat them like I would chal­leng­ing books or a Bela Tarr movie. I find myself load­ing up on inter­est­ing shows that are all over the map, only to find the badge of unheard shows grow­ing dai­ly. I’d delete them from my iPod and for­get about them for months before skulk­ing back to them like I need­ed to take my med­i­cine. What was it about them that turned me off? 

Were they too ama­teur­ish? Too pro­fes­sion­al? Sim­ply too long?

While they may not have become the enter­tain­ment jug­ger­naut the pod­cast pio­neers thought they might become, pod­casts have come of age rather nice­ly. There are sev­er­al I lis­ten to reg­u­lar­ly, includ­ing Jesse Thorn’s Bulls­eye, a few Ear­wolf shows and The Low Times, host­ed by Philly ex-pats Mag­gie Sero­ta and Daniel Ral­ston, along with some guy Chuck Wool­ery blocked on Twit­ter. I’m also watch­ing a few from TWiT.tv in an effort to get more out of my iPhone and iPad. See? I told you I was aspirational!

I still over­reach: will I ever real­ly lis­ten to the Leonard Lopate show? Some episodes of The Moth are so serious!

What are your favorites? Tell me about them!