Friday, December 21, 2012

Well, That's That...











This is a big day for the world. It is the last anniversary of this blog. This was a blog about everything, whether it were heady or absurd. I wrote about various categories for example: music, sports, politics, sex, spirituality, videogames, giraffes, the Snorks, the crumb sitting on the coaster in front of me right now, people with the last name: McGee, snowmen, cars, and the mysteries of life, among many other various topics that happened to pop into my head at that moment. So park'er in that desk chair you got on clearance at Office Depot and suffer through the journey of a mind which straddles the border between genius and maddness.

Ah man, do I have to end this blog? I don't want to. I remembered how much fun it was, this past week composing and writing my blog posts, like old times. Then my dad commented about how he'll miss the blog, and Peter of JolVlogs commented about how he enjoyed reading my posts. I totally thought this blog was self serving. And then I started reminiscing over my old posts.

Here's why I decided to end this blog: first, I started a new job in 2011. Adjusting to the new routine, I didn't have a lot of energy for blogging or YouTubing, so they both kind of fell a way for a little bit. But the YouTube channel came first and I picked it back up. So, October 11 last year, as I went to write the anniversary post, I didn't have a whole lot to write about. When I began this blog, it sort of revolved around my life, so reviewing the year of this blog was like reviewing a year of my life. YouTube and Facebook have absorbed a lot of that, so it just wasn't the same. And I just didn't have the energy or drive to try to come up with something.

So, that post sort of hung in limbo for a while as an unsaved draft. I didn't want to post any of my new videos or any other blog post ideas I had until I finished the anniversary post. It was an annual tradition after all. Then, after getting fired up about "going the next level" with my YouTube channel this past summer, I decided it was too much to keep up with both blogging and YouTubing. So, after over a year of nothing, I decided that this was officially a dead blog. I had toyed with the idea of doing a final post for a while.

Then, I read on Facebook about the end of the Cort and Fatboy show. I decided it would be fitting to revive the blog to write about it, seeing how I've covered their story throughout this blog. And seeing how it ended a story which seemed to be tied into this blog, I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to do my final post. Then I got the brilliant idea to tie it in with the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar business.

So here is that post. It's all over now, as per Mayan prophesy. Well, it's been fun.

You know what? Screw the Mayans! They're just a bunch of dead guys/gals who used to sacrifice humans to their gods! They don't control my destiny!!














This is a big day for the world. It is another day of this blog. This is a blog about everything, whether it be heady or absurd. I will continue write about various categories for example: music, sports, politics, sex, spirituality, videogames, giraffes, the Snorks, the crumb sitting on the coaster in front of me right now, people with the last name: McGee, snowmen, cars, and the mysteries of life, among many other various topics that happen to pop into my head for the moment. So park'er in that desk chair you got on clearance at Office Depot and suffer through the journey of a mind which straddles the border between genius and maddness....
the latter being rather prevalent...

And so, I've decided after all the hype, not to end this blog. I generally try not to be one of those people who makes a lot of hype and then changes their mind, but I guess for today I am. I don't know when the next blog post will be, but sometimes it's nice to be able to compose my thoughts/ feelings/ ideas into written form and include a fitting image. And so that's how this blog will remain; available for the next time I want to post. This blog will officially end when I have a new blog... more about that later.

So, I guess the Mayans were wrong about this blog. The sun will come out tomorrow, after all. See you next time. J-Dubb out.







Monday, December 17, 2012

Superstar of All Time


Ever since day two, Superstar of the Week has been one of the defining features of this blog. Superstar of the Week would come and go, dwindling down in the beginning of the year, and then picking back up in the summer. It began as a joke; I'd arbitrarily select some random person, usually a celebrity, to feature that week as the Superstar of the Week. No explanation as to why this person had been selected, no excerpts or information about this person, just a picture.

The week of the one-year anniversary of this blog, the year of the Chuck Norris facts, I decided to feature Chuck Norris as the Superstar of the Year. Every year following this, until the last two years, I would select a Superstar of the Year and write a full post on why I had selected this person.

In 2009, I decided that the old Superstar of the Week gag had run its course, and instead decided to purposefully select a Superstar of the Week, writing a full article about this person.

I posted Superstar of the Week/ Year, on Mondays. And so, for the final Monday of this blog, I have selected a Superstar of All Time. After careful consideration, I have decided to select Richard Dean Anderson.

Richard Dean Anderson represents two inspiring characters. The first of these is the well-know, Macguyver, of the 80s television show. In modern times, the term "macguyver" has come into popular use as a verb, meaning to jury-rig, or to create from scratch with limited supplies.

Macguyver represents an attitude. Lock most people up in a supply closet, and they'll sit there wishing that they had a key, a weapon, a window, that someone would rescue them, that they weren't locked in a supply closet, that they had never come on that trip in the first place. Macguyver, on the other hand, would look around and find some way to create an explosion, a makeshift key, or a non-lethal weapon, and be out of that supply closet. There's no such thing as a lock for Macguyver. There's just different types of doorknobs.

The common attitude in life, is to wish that something were different, that something would change for you. The Macguyver attitude is to recognize what you need in your surroundings and go from there.

The second character is Col. Jack O'Niell (two Ls) from Stargate SG1. What I find inspiring about Jack O'Niell can be summarized in one quote: "I don't trust anybody who doesn't have a sense of humor." In a world on the verge of blowing a gasket, always worried about something, constantly honking their horns at the "idiot drivers" who inconvenience them in traffic, there is Jack O'Niell; totally sincere yet always playful.

One of the great questions of modern society is: "does the man serve the machine or does the machine serve the man?" The common lifestyle in this society is to spend one's life serving the machine with no real purpose; not to experience joy, or serve one's fellow human. Ultimately, not even for the paycheck, but because it's what we're "supposed to do." But if you serve the corporate structure merely for the sake of the corporate structure, then what is it's purpose?

Then there are those who live with a purpose. Joy and well-being represent the purpose of life whereas despair, anxiety, and depression indicate that something isn't right, something needs aid. Instead of arbitrarily sacrificing ones joy and well-being for no real purpose, one lives for the purpose of alleviating suffering and increasing well-being. A sense of humor is like a gauge indicating whether one's attitude would serve the well-being of life, or snuff it out.

A fictional character, such as Jack O'Niell, represents a personalized set of ideals which one can choose to identify with and align with in themselves. Do I feel playful, or righteously indignant? If the latter, then something is off-kilter.

And so, as I prepare to end this blog, I feature a character who quite possibly represents the purpose of J-Dubb's Theatre. When I was younger, J-Dubb's Theatre was instrumental at a time when I was easily tempted to take myself too seriously. Well, I'm still easily tempted to take myself too seriously... but I got better.

If playing goofy characters helps me to not take myself too seriously, then maybe I can do a better job of serving the well-being of life. If that's the case, then this blog from which J-Dubb's Theatre sprang has served a purpose.

Now, stay tuned for the final blog post, December 21...

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Cort and Fatboy is Dead

The End of a Chapter
It's been a while since I last posted here. The post beneath this one is a video I did over a year ago featuring a short-haired me. I'm not even entirely sure how to post anymore, as the Blogger layout has completely changed. The last post I went to write was the 2011 anniversary post, following the tradition of October 11 every preceding year since the original post. I wrote the title and uploaded the fireworks images just like I did in the original blog post and every anniversary post since. But I didn't have anything to write about. This blog, once the center hub of J-Dubb's Theatre, had become nothing more than a place to embed my YouTube videos, which people were already watching on my channel and on Facebook. This blog had diminished, and YouTube had become J-Dubb's Theatre central. So, the completion of that anniversary post became a back-burner "to do list" item for awhile, until I finally gave up the ghost.

So, I found it fitting to revive this blog once more to chronicle the end of CortandFatboy, as I find this event, in a way, to be karmically intertwined with the fate of this blog.

In October of 2005, I was a young security officer working for a call center. I would pass the time by listening to 101 KUFO at my security desk. I would catch the end of the Cort and Boomer show, and then listen to the Tim Savage show. The writing in my original blog posts was inspired by the speaking style of Tim Savage. Eventually, Boomer left the Cort and Boomer show to be replaced by some guy named Fatboy. The time slots were then changed around to make room for the Marconi show, Kufo's new main event, so I didn't hear much of the Cort and Fatboy show at that time. I read a couple of Fatboy's blog posts though, and decided the guy was funny.

At the end of the year, I quit my security job to focus on school full time. In the mornings I would listen to the Adam Carolla show on Kufo, until, for whatever reason, I started listening to cds instead. At some point, I stopped listening to the Marconi show. As a grown adult wanting to be successful, I felt I had outgrown a fourty-something who still acted like a college fratboy. As I changed the J-Dubb's Theatre image from collegian to adult, I removed the Kufo link from this blog.

Some years later, I'm unsure why, I decided to tune in to Kufo. I must have been in a reminiscing mood. The Cort and Fatboy show happened to be on at the time. This was my first time really listening to their show since its inception, and I decided I was a fan. They were not douchey shock-jock fratboy wannabes like Marconi. They were funny and intelligent adults. I was delighted to learn that their show had taken over the Marconi time-slot, and Marconi was a thing of the past.

It turned out that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. They had a large fanbase of people who despised Marconi and felt refreshed by CortandFatboy's intelligent humor and discussion. Many people referred to them as the "saviors of radio" in that radio had become a poor medium for music in light of iPods and CDs, and this show was the only reason these people tuned in to the radio.  

Around that same time, still in the reminiscing mood I guess, I decided to listen to the Adam Carolla show one morning. After driving for a little bit, I realized that it wasn't Adam Carolla I was listening to. This was something different called the Rick Emerson show. This was a sophisticated, adult-oriented show. Rick Emerson was perfectly complimentary to his foil, Sarah X. Dylan. And newscaster, Tim Riley, added the perfect touch. It seemed Kufo had grown up with me.

I began following Cort and Fatboy and the Rick Emerson crew on Twitter. I learned of the many local events these guys held, including midnight movies and the "survive it and drive it" event. I began following other "Portland" related people through their retweets. It turned out these guys were a major part of the Portland community. During that time, I became less interested in YouTube and more interested in Portland media. I've lived the majority of my life in the Portland area, but never felt more connected to the Portland community than this time.

I added the Kufo link back to this blog.

Then, October 2009, as I was about to tune into the show, I saw a rumor buzzing around Twitter that Cort and Fatboy had been fired. I turned on the radio, and sure enough, they were gone. The next morning, it was confirmed that the Rick Emerson crew had also been canned. Everybody involved with Kufo up to that time had been fired and replaced by Alpha Broadcasting, the new owners of Kufo and several other Portland stations. For the next several days, the only thing the station broadcast, was a countdown in a robotic voice with intermittent "mother ship refueling." As a further slap in the face, the newly revamped station brought back the despised Marconi. I covered this incident in my post, The Day the Radio Died.

A local podcast called PDX Sucks, hosted by Portlander, Robert Wagner, left a voicemail number for people to call and leave angry voicemails about the canning of Cort and Fatboy, and played the voicemails in a podcast. I was one of those people. I also wrote a couple of definitions for Kufo on Urban Dictionary, which people seemed to enjoy.

After a few weeks of angry tweeting and blogging, the Cort and Fatboy show made a comeback in podcast form. They resumed their midnight movie showings at the Baghdad, beginning with Raising Arizona. Also, Sarah X. Dylan along with Greg Nibler, former producer of the Rick Emerson Show, began a new podcast, Funemployment Radio. Cort and Fatboy eventually moved their podcast to PDX.fm, a podcast network run by Robert Wagner of PDX Sucks. After a while, Rick Emerson started a show on PDX.fm as well.

I listened to PDX Sucks, Cort and Fatboy, and Funemployment Radio for a while, and the list began to grow. At one point, PDX.fm hosted a large Portland telethon. This happened uncannily simultaneous  with me posting a video about a mock fund raiser. I became irrationally concerned that people involved in the real fund raiser may have thought I was making fun of them. This is now one of many embarrassing life memories.

After a while, all the podcasts came to be too much. In the past, I could have the radio on in the background while working, and the Cort and Fatboy show would come on, and I could stop and listen. But I couldn't work while listening to a podcast. My podcast listening dwindled down to just Cort and Fatboy, and eventually,  I stopped listening to that on a regular basis, as well. In 2010, my Portland media interest diminished, and I made a comeback on YouTube.

In April of 2011, I don't remember how, but I found out that Kufo had gone off the air. After the Alpha Broadcasting revamp, ratings plummeted until the station just didn't hold up any longer. What was 101 KUFO since 1989 was replaced by talk radio. I have memories of listening to the radio in my room as a kid in the 90s and hearing the KUFO call letters. As of April 2011, that station is no more.

Around the same time, I'm unsure of the proximity or sequence, Robert Wagner sold Cascadia.fm, formerly known as PDX.fm. He went back to being an independent blogger/ podcaster.

And now, in conclusion to the saga, the Cort and Fatboy show has ended. The final show was held live at the Baghdad Theatre. Regrettably, I wasn't able to attend because I had accepted a late shift before I knew about the show. But it's over.

And now, I have decided to follow suit and end this blog. This was chapter one of J-Dubb's Theatre. Chapter two, my YouTube channel, is going strong. But this blog has been defunct for a little over a year now. So I've decided, rather than letting it dwindle into the ether of abandoned blogs, I will give it a ceremonious ending.

And so, just as the Mayans predicted, December 21 2012 will be the end. Stay tuned...

edit: At the time this post was written, I had not published anything to this blog since October 2011. It was very much a defunct blog. As of June 2020, all videos that were uploaded to the J-Dubb's Theatre YouTube channel, between October 2011 and the date of this post, have been published to this blog, dated according to their original upload dates.