Three Great Things Happened

1. Mediander with me

Over two years ago, I was sworn to secrecy as I started writing for a crazysexycool new website, the likes of which the world had never seen.

This month, it finally launched, and the world got to fall in love with…

MEDIANDER DOT COM (com, com, com…)

I’ve linked you to the place where most of my “Culture Maps” live––nine and counting. What makes Mediander different is that the research connects disparate topics:  Charlie Chaplin to The Atomic Cafe to books by dictators, Nabokov to synesthesia and lepidopterology, and much! Much! More!

Got off to a good start when researchers at the International Space Station liked my map on the Space Race:

2. That Smithsonian magazine

A childhood dream came true this month when I had an article published in Smithsonian. The piece allowed me to explore science+art at its best, in the form of Guillermo Bert’s 2D-coded traditional indigenous tapestries––one of the coolest artistic concepts I’ve seen in a long time.

Read it here! 

3. WRITE FIGHT

The night before my birthday, I sat down at an old, malfunctioning Olivetti typewriter, on the train tracks.

The purpose? To battle it out in Revolver magazine‘s WRITE FIGHT, a single-elimination showdown with some of my favorite writers in town. It was both humbling and harrowing.

Competitors got the first line of the story, ten minutes to think for the first two rounds, no time to think for the last round, AND there were insane, orchestrated distractions at every turn. First round, I wrote as audience members came up and whispered suggestions in my ear. Second round, I had to put the typewriter on the lap of a stranger, who smack-talked me all the while.

Third round, at the center of a dancing mob, I wrote the story behind what improvisors would call the cruelest possible set-up:

“Even as it happened, I realized this was the most hilarious death ever.”

See what happened in the last three paragraphs of this article! [Spoiler alert, I won.] It was one of the most difficult feats of art I’ve ever undertaken, and my comrades in arms are my heroes more than ever. The… End…?