So  yesterday at GR I did a news story about the 58th annual Kutztown Festival– a celebration of the folk culture in Pennsylvania. Among the activities to be held there are pottery making, quilt contests, and feasting on roasted  ox. Appropriately, I found a picture online of a man roasting a huge hunk of a fatty, skinned ox on a spit at a previous Kutztown Festival. It was the sadist in me that found the picture kind of funny, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who feels that way. http://globalrhythm.com/worldnews/FamilyFunToBeHadByAllAtThisYearsKutztownFestival.cfm It’s beautiful.

I spent the bulk of the rest of the day looking up tour dates for various international artists and updating the “World Music Concerts” page with what I found. Here’s one of them: http://globalrhythm.com/WorldMusicConcerts/GregoryIsaacs.cfm Basically what this task consisted of was going to ticketmaster and looking up the artists, then going on the artists’ official website to get a fuller schedule of their planned events throughout the globe.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve gotten a little link happy today. Oh, and I got another snack wrap to which my cubicle buddy said, “You’ve got to stop with this Mickey D’s fix,” to which I responded, “Why, ’cause I’ll get a heart attack?” to which he responded, “No, worse than that…it’ll kill your soul.”

Or something like that.

No, not “blue” as in “sad.” How can I be sad when I’ve had one of the coolest days at GR thus far?

The guys from the bluegrass group, Blue Highway, came to perform songs from their new album, Through the Window of a Train. Though I’ve never heard of these guys, I was nevertheless starstruck, as I’ve never been treated to such an intimate live show before. VIP indeed, my friends, VIP indeed. At least I’d like to think so.

The most touching and harrowing song performed was, hands down, “Two Soldiers,” a song sung from the perspective of a soldier who is given the duty of going to the houses of the families of the deceased and giving them the bad news.

I grabbed one of the 5 CDs they had available because I just had to and plan on listening to that song on loop when I get the chance.

All that aside, work was pretty routine today. I found out I had the wrong font and picture size for the features on the site so I went and fixed them. I wrote two news stories: The Global Reggae Conference, and the African Children’s Choir’s call for assistance to build a suitable educational facility for needy children in Africa. I was informed of the bluegrass performance while typing up the Reggae story, and when I returned and hit “submit,” the site told me to sign in again. And when I did, the story was gone. After bashing myself in the head and cursing silently (but forcibly) to myself, I retyped everything.

I did something during work I haven’t yet done ’til today– I ate! This way I didn’t have to starve and stumble half-consciously on my way home! It was all very exciting. Granted, my choice of food was a Mickey D’s snack wrap, but cut me some slack.

Upon finishing my hearty snack wrap, I uploaded more back issue stuff on to the GR website– this time my old friends, the CD reviews.

Highlights of the day: Blue Highway, seeing my Spotlight piece in print, McDonald’s snack wrap. Yes, in that order.

Yesterday at work my cubicle buddy Tom introduced me to this French band, Cassius, and I fell in love with their song, “Toop Toop.” I spent the bulk of my day at the office on their myspace, listening to tracks from their CD.

What did I do…?

I did three news stories: The release of Ersi Arvisu’s new album, Friend For Life; LAMC’s (Latin Alternative Music Conference) return to NYC, and the release of Karen Casey’s fifth album under the Compas Records Group label.

People were scrambling around all day, trying to put the finishing touches on the latest issue. After doing the stories, I was given some pages from the magazine to edit– most of it was fine, so I contented myself with adding commas here and there and crossing out superfluous words and the likes.

Then I continued Tuesday’s work of uploading features articles onto the website. I uploaded all of them pretty quickly– after a bit, I got the hang of it and was almost doing it intrinsically.

I think my problem is perhaps I finish these things too quickly. I persistently pestered Tad for more things to do– which I suppose on a normal day wouldn’t be so irking for him. But as it was a hectic and important one, I probably got on his nerves. I’ve got to learn to chill out and enjoy moments of inactivity instead of demanding that every minute be filled with work. This is my problem. Not the worst problem to have, but still.

Erin gave me more stuff to edit, including a features piece and the cover story. I found many more mistakes here than I did with the stuff I edited earlier, which made me happy ’cause I got to mark it more. I enjoy editing things. Almost as much as I enjoy writing itself.

Tad knows about this site now. Shhh.

And to address Hamed Derakhshan’s comment on my “Spotlit!” blog– Thanks for the kind words– I hope I do Pouya’s record justice!

And to plug GR further, here’s their blog: http://www.globalrhythm.wordpress.com

Toop Toop.

Yesterday was mostly all about the grunt work.

I started with the usual. Posted two news items on the main webpage: The first, on Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill’s appearance that night on NPR, the latter, about a concert featuring Jose Negroni and Aquiles Baez to be called “A Taste of Cacao.” Both were high priority stories so I had to work under pressure to get it all summarized and reworded in time for publication.

Then Bill handed me this huge stack of press release papers. It was to be my second time entering press info into the This Just In database. This was the brunt of the grunt work (pardon the assonance). It took me forever just to figure out where certain esoteric cities and states belonged in which countries. After about an hour and then some, I was finished.

I sat and fiddled for a bit before my editor in chief, Tad, suggested I start uploading back issues from the January/February issue on to the GR website. I’ve also done this before, so I thought it’d  be a piece of cake. Bill had the PDFs and got an assistant to upload them on to the server so I could access them.

I was thrown for a loop when I was told to upload features articles– as opposed to the CD reviews I was used to– something that was completely alien to me. I was shown the format by which to follow in transcribing the articles on to the text editor. Because copying and pasting text from Adobe onto Word can prove to be an archaic and frustrating experience, these full, lengthy features stories were, to say the least, an eyesore. North African musician Youssou N’Dour was the cover story. I copied and pasted the entire article from Adobe onto Word and proceeded to meticulously comb through word breaks. I adjusted each line to fit the space it was allotted and tracked down the words which began each paragraph to know where to put line breaks. It took forever. By the time I was done with just that one transcription, it was time to go.

While the first part of the afternoon consisted of writing under pressure and time constraints, the second and third parts– data entry and back stories– were all about taking my time and making sure each detail was impeccable. It tested my patience, as I’m usually one for getting things done and over with as soon as I can (unless the task is particularly unpleasant), but I’d like to think I outsmarted my computer that day.

I was also handed a sheet with the whole Zenbumedia– GR’s publisher– staff info on it– and my name was on it! *High fives self*

Today was a whirlwind.

First, let’s get the minutae out of the way. I got trampled a total of four times by the Giants fan parade crowd while attempting time after time to take pictures with my makeshift pinhole camera for my photography class. All subway stations were sealed off, save for the one on Nassau. I took the C to 23rd, got out disoriented, and after much travail, finally got to the Global Rhythm offices, disheveled and ravaged and hyperventilating.

Don’t worry, things got better. I wrote my second obituary for the News Section of the GR website, this time for Cuban percussionist Tata Guines, who died of kidney failure and heart disease at the age of 77. Having already one obituary under my belt, things went rather smoothly this time around; once published, there were a few HTML kinks, which I promptly fixed.

Then Bill came over and basically made my day. He asked if I would want to expand upon my Pouya Mahmoodi album review and turn it into a Spotlight piece. The Spotlight section in Global Rhythm headlines the review section as a whole. The pieces here are not only reviews, they also provide biographical and cultural information surrounding the artist in question. We went over some things I needed to change in my review to make it more reader-friendly and polished. Bill said (something to the effect of) my writing was oftentimes too “literary” and grammatically proper. Said I should make it more conversational and informal so as to connect with readers more effectively.

Once back at my desk, I started work on my Spotlight piece. At first, I kept catching myself being all proper and what-not. I had to coax myself out of that mindset, and ultimately, the finished product was a success. It’s my little baby; I’m so proud of it. This piece not only tested my limits as a journalist– it also taught me that proper English does not always make the most effective writing, depending on the type of writing you’re doing, of course. It was an eye-opening exercise.

I also voted for the first time today. First parade trampling, Spotlight piece, and primary vote cast. Good times.

Woke up at seven today. Got dressed, ate, showered, then came downstairs to check my email to find out from Bill that the office got flooded yesterday morning when a water pipe broke. Spoke to editor-in-chief Tad later on and was informed that the carpet was soaked and furniture had to be moved, work had to be salvaged. So he gave me the day off, “Unless you want to move furniture around.” I hope things get better (and dryer) come next week.