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Grave Concerns

Zombie comic book series wants Eugene’s braaaains

This originally appeared in last week's Eugene Weekly, the February 16 issue. I angle for EW's cover story now and then, which is not to say I always land it, and I was honestly sort of surprised when my editor Rick Levin lobbied to put this particular story on the cover. I certainly didn't write it with that in mind. It does seem to have struck a bit of a chord, though, as more folks than usual have sought me out to tell me they liked it. Evidently the Association of Alternative Newsmedia was diggin' it, too, as they posted it to their top stories for the week.

Many thanks to Chris Roberson and Michael Allred for the interviews!

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Eugene can be a contradictory place. Some find numerous opportunities here, seeing Eugene as a community full of music, culture, good food and outdoor adventure. Others characterize the city more prosaically, as a nice place to live, but maybe a little … lacking in diversions.

Count cartoonist Michael Allred in the former category. “Growing up in Roseburg, Eugene was always the exciting place to go,” he says. Allred, creator of the independent critical-darling comic book Madman, moved on to college in Utah (where he met his wife, comic-book colorist Laura Allred) and eventually lived for a time in Eugene. He later relocated to various points all around the country, and even to Europe. But Eugene always held a special place in his heart.

Now Allred is the artist of a comic book series that is not only set in Eugene, but also embraces the line our city walks between the everyday and the extraordinary.

Published by DC Comics’ imprint for adults, Vertigo, iZombie follows the adventures of Gwen Dylan, a UO dropout who hangs out in a diner, makes her living digging graves in an eco-friendly cemetery and who just happens to be an undead zombie.

Gwen, helped along by her friends Ellie the ghost and Scott the were-terrier (yes, you read that right), solves supernatural mysteries, eats the occasional brain and dodges an ancient order of monster hunters … all punctuated by routine trips to the diner for chocolate and coffee.

Comparing his work to a cross between Archie comics and Scooby-Doo, iZombie series writer and New York Times best-selling author Chris Roberson, who lives in Austin, Texas, says that balancing the mundane and the fantastic sides of Eugene is one of his goals. Roberson’s stories cleverly subvert the standard monster-movie formula by showing how the undead spend their down time.

“It’s almost required that the moment that someone becomes one of these supernatural beings, they become angsty,” Roberson says. “If I became a werewolf, I’d still be the person I am now, I’d just have some personal hygiene issues once a month, or have some self-control issues.”

Roberson, who has never visited Oregon, relies in large part on online street views to inform the sense of place inherent in his writing. But his collaborator Allred just moved back to Eugene after a stint on the Oregon Coast. Having one half of the creative duo based in the city where the story is set has its advantages.

Besides advising Roberson on details of Eugene geography and daily life, Michael Allred incorporates real Eugene landmarks into the comic’s illustrations, which are in turn brought to colorful life by Laura Allred.

In the Eugene of iZombie, vampires troll for dates at the Downtown Lounge. A UO science lab is used as a staging ground for communing with extra-dimensional beings. The Shelton-McMurphey-Johnson mansion at the base of Skinner Butte doubles as the home of a centuries-old Egyptian mummy. And the diner where Gwen and her spooky friends hang out is modeled on Fins Drive-In in Springfield.

Continue reading "Grave Concerns" at Eugene Weekly.

Elastic Journalism

On Friday, the First Lady of Inkville and I checked out "Multimedia Journalism & the Landscape of News," a talk by The Daily's Gabriel Dance. It was sponsored by my old stomping grounds, the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication.

Dance was a popular act; we arrived a few minutes late, and found the room already at capacity and hotter than Hades. Good on him.

A lot of what Dance had to say really hit home, especially his strong recommendation that 21st century journalists need more than one skill set. And as I can attest both as a freelancer and as a former magazine staffer, it's hard out there for a pimp, assuming the pimp is a writer trying to support himself solely through freelance.

Dance's song-and-dance about multimedia was interesting, and he aptly demonstrated how the concept of "journalism" is elastic enough to encompass computer animators, designers, illustrators, and other creatives.

All Dance's examples stemmed from his time at The New York Times, and I'll admit I was hoping for a bit more about Dance's new gig at The Daily. But that job is new, so perhaps Dance deserves a pass for at least a few more weeks. And frankly, The Daily has thus far failed to impress me.

But what really left me scratching my head was the amount of culture shock Dance must be experiencing transferring from the Times, a supposed liberal bastion, to working for Rupert Murdoch. As I type this, Dance's personal website features a link to an article about a journalist's "battles" with Murdock, so perhaps The Daily really is enacting a separation of church and state for the purposes of doing business.

Call Me a Duck

My marketing job in the University of Oregon's Office of Admissions allows for a whole lot of creative leg-stretching. An indulgent and supportive boss, ditto.

Videotaping a ghost hunt in a cemetery? Go for it. Facebook-based essay contest? You betcha. Foursquare scavenger hunt? Sure, why not?

But nothing—and I mean nothing—has been so much fun (and so unexpected) as the writing, production, and creation of "Call Me a Duck."

Based on Maino's "All the Above," the video was launched last Friday, and as of this writing we're closing in on 160,000 views on YouTube... and still climbing.

Originally the brainchild of my boss Holly Moline Simons, "Call Me a Duck" was fast-tracked and produced on a shoestring budget once we learned that On the Rocks, the UO's resident male a cappella group, was going to appear on this fall's The Sing-Off on NBC.  (By the way, "fast-tracked" in academic parlance means just under half a year.)  Our boys were eliminated just shy of the final round, but hey, we'll take it!

Besides teaching me how to spell "a cappella," this project afforded me the chance to write and produce a rap song, which is a résumé line item I never would've considered. 

I was privileged to work with an amazing cast and crew.  Special shout-outs are due to Holly, as well as director Michael McDermott, director of photography John Waller, amazingly organized assistant director Christopher Parker, effervescent OTR liaison (and crystal-clear tenor) Jeffrey Rogers, audio engineer (and OTR founder) Peter Hollens, and the rock of UO Admissions, Jett Nilprabhassorn.

Funny side note: In a few weeks the UO plays Auburn in the BCS championship game.  I learned something interesting today.  Guess what l'il ditty Auburn has adopted this season as the football team's "pump up" song?

Maino's "All the Above." Complete coincidence, Tigers, scout's honor!

Photo courtesy of Michael McDermott.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

Last week Inkville took its show on the road to sunny San Diego, the city playing host to the 2010 American Marketing Assocation's Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education.

I took in some great (and not so great) presentations and talks.  Here are some highlights.

Alicia Nestle, assistant director for new media at Nazareth College, presented "20 Tips for Powerful Story-Driven Branding & Communications." Besides the fact that I am a professional storyteller, I also liked this presentation because its Letterman "Top 10 List" style  provided a lot of practical ideas one could implement immediately.

In what appears to be a possibly disturbing trend at this symposium both of the years I have attended, Nestle was joined in her presentation by a representative of the media firm that partnered with Nazareth. Many of the presentations involved one person from the academic side plus one corporate partner, in fact. If schools want to partner with outside third parties, sure, go for it. We do here at Oregon. But I'll admit it does give me pause in considering whether a presentation might be discounted by the AMA planners simply because the academic side presenter planned to fly solo.

Most of the conference sessions surrounding social and new media suggest to me that the University of Oregon is already at the forefront in this arena. We aren't doing everything we could, of course, but we're doing what we reasonably can, given that social media isn't at the tippy-top of any UO staffer's job description (to my knowledge, at least).

Gratifyingly, the location-based services presentation by Joe Hice of North Carolina State (who presented sans corporate partner) even used my UO Foursquare online materials as a demonstration of schools on the cutting edge of this particular medium. (By the way, NC State's social media plan is amazing, and include some cool ideas for QR codes, in particular.)

I was in awe of Purdue's "Makers, All" campaign as presented by Teri Thompson, that university's vice president for marketing. The campaign is simple and elegant, and offers return to a core branded identity while maximizing use of a mascot that might be confusing or awkward in the 21st century. But really, how could a presentation called "From Gatorade to Lady Gaga" fail to disappoint, especially when its presenter charges onto stage in a triumphant pop music opener?

Better Read than Dead: Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans

Inkville's "mostly New Orleans, much of the time" coverage continues with this installment. And by the way, the images after the jump sort of stray into NSFW territory. And definitely stray into "Ewww" territory.

The book pitch I have been kicking around for a few years now centers on ghost stories of old New Orleans. So what better research item than, well, Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans, Jeanne deLavigne's 1946 treatise on supernatural hauntings throughout the French Quarter and other NOLA neighborhoods?

The book is sadly out of print and going for around $125 online, so I'm indebted to the University of Oregon's interlibrary loan program, and to the libraries of the University of Texas at Austin and Brigham Young University.

Here's a photo of deLavigne, which she has signed as a gift for another favorite New Orleans author, Robert Tallant. Seem slike a nice older lady, doesn't she? You'd never expect she was a macabre freak.

deLavigne was part of the early-to-mid-20th century New Orleans artistic and literary renaissance as fueled by the Works Progress Administration, a contemporary of Lyle Saxon and a sort of spiritual inheritor of George Washington Cable. I haven't read an awful lot about this period of NOLA history, but on the surface, some of the relationships, artistic output, and activist bent of the whole thing seem reminiscent of the Irish Literary Revival's Yeats/Synge/Lady Gregory complex across the pond, just a few decades later.  It's temptingly easy, in fact, to cast deLavigne as a sort of Southern Lady Gregory, gathering the spooky tales of the common American.

Semi-Fresh

You know how you can be so excited to finally see that movie you've been dying to see, only to be disappointed when it finally opens? Boy, I sure do. I had a similar experience last week at the Social Fresh social media marketing conference in Portland.

I'm always on the lookout for ways to enhance the professional Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter profiles I maintain for the Office of Admissions at the University of Oregon. But I should have known by the fact that orange is major branding color for this company, but an inauspicious hue for Oregon Ducks. For a conference that seems to be billing itself as the nuevo-hip marketing opportunity for bright young things, what with all the pimp hats and zippy fruit-related graphics gracing their materials, the conference was a little short on innovative content. Much of it felt rather de rigeur: the ol' "line-up-behind-the-mic-to-ask-a-question-of-our-panelists" bit.

There were some bright points. I almost skipped the talk by Bryan Rhoads of Intel, and I'm glad I didn't. He had some interesting things to say about his company's adoption of social media, and even made time for a quick Second Life jab. Carri Bugbee revealed she is the tweeter behind the semi-official Twitter account of Mad Men's Peggy Olson, and her panel provided some good ROI pointers for Facebook and Twitter. As an Evernote geek I was glad to see Andrew Sinkov on a branding panel, the same one in which Matt Singley couldn't help but entertain by somehow repeatedly circling back to sex and alkyhol... and somehow tying it all together to make a less-than-lascivious point.

So, that's the good. As for the not-so-good... The talk by one breakout speaker consisted of a single Google Analytics tip, padded by some shilling for his shingle. The afternoon keynote speaker was spastic enough that I felt like I was watching a sitcom. And my attempt at doing the ol' question-at-the-mic thing resulted in a couple of rather smarmy marketers sliding up to me, while the presentation was still happening, leaning across a colleague to make a stage-whispered sales pitch.

Said colleague, the amazing Debbie Williamson-Smith, agreed that SoFresh was worth the two-hour jaunt from Eugene, but perhaps wouldn't have been worth an overnight hotel stay or a flight. Debbie did indulge me with a quick side trip to Captain Henry's Pirate Store in the Lloyd Center Mall, so, you know, arrrgh, matey.

While I was being rung up for the jolly roger sticker that now graces my laptop, the college-aged pirate co-ed behind the sales counter took care to compare my credit card's photo to my actual mug, leading me to remark on the irony of thoughtful security in a pirate-themed store. She had a response at the ready, that it was all about professional obligation, quality assurance in the pirate world.

Now that's branding, me hearties.

The Prophet

This month was Lane County's annual Project Homeless Connect, described on the program's website as "a one-day, 'one-stop shop' event serving people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless." Back in 2007 I interviewed a couple of the project's clients for articles for my graduate program. That work was never published, so below I am polishing off an oldie but (I think) a goodie. Enjoy.

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Though I offer to keep it under wraps, Paul Lehman wants his full name used for this article. Paul is a poet and author, and the extra publicity can’t hurt. Paul is also a guru. Consumer-driven culture holds no appeal for Paul, so he has elected to engage in a self-imposed exile from mainstream society, to shoulder a life of contemplation, and the lifestyle of a beggar.

At the moment, Paul’s immediate concerns are more earthly in nature. His bodily vessel is hungry, so Paul has made the trek from the mobile home park, his current base of operations, to nourish it. Yes, Paul is a guru, and he dresses the part. A maroon cap bears a Tibetan-looking pattern, crowning a gaunt visage of deep, watery gray eyes and a cascading white beard. At lunchtime Paul holds court, breathlessly reciting one of his own works to a couple of volunteers, a poem about personal growth, and the beauty of truth, and a higher power, surprisingly wrapped in an almost-iambic pentameter.

Neither a free meal nor the role of supplicant are new to Paul, but then he has played many roles in his six or seven decades on this plane… choirboy, soldier, high school teacher. Once he even helped build a boardwalk over a Florida mangrove swamp. Society is a curtain across truth, says Paul, a fog obscuring our knowledge of the power of the self. “That’s why I hang out outside the system,” he grins conspiratorially.

Paul’s self-appointed job is to free the masses from “the shadows of their own poor understanding.” He is Gandalf, Merlin, Teiresias, sprung from the storybook page to sound a word of warning in these dark times.

Historically, mankind feeds and clothes its prophets out of reverence, or awe, or fear. But eventually the wise men almost always combust, set afire by the glare of the social order they serve through its subversion. But Paul does not apologize, and has adopted his own credo, codified in the words of one of his poems:

'Twas then I set aside my reason, / In favor of the moment, / And began to live / in every season / Without need of atonement.

Shutter Island: The Epiphanies of Confinement

In my recent video interview for the University of Oregon's Talk project, I was asked to name one thing I fear. I replied, "an enclosed space." I've always been somewhat claustrophobic. Recently the First Lady of Inkville and I were walking in the woods here in western Oregon, and we came upon a damp playground situated in a quiet campground. I remarked that the cement tubes painted in bright pastels, placed near the swings for children to crawl through, had always given me the creeps as a kid.

Back in the city, we watched a trio of films that, coincidentally, each address notions of confinement, claustrophobia, and the epiphanies that arise from confronting oneself in a closed system. Be forewarned, for herein lie mild spoilers for Shutter Island, Coraline, and, yes, believe it or not, Couples Retreat.

Scorsese's noir Shutter Island is a lush, beautiful film. It's not the visual confection of Coraline or Amelie, but the saturated color, beautiful stars, and unforgiving, verdant landscape are visually compelling. And while Shutter Island is, indeed, frightening, it's not the slasher thriller the trailer makes it out to be; its heart-in-the-throat thrills derive as much from the plot's implications for its protagonist's life and lifestyle, as from any shadowy boogeymen.

The film opens on a Boston harbor ferryboat in 1954, with a pair of U.S. marshals, a surprisingly likable Leo DiCaprio and the reliably wry Mark Ruffalo, assigned to investigate the disappearance of a violent escapee from an island mental institution. What they uncover, of course, is not so straightforward.

With its forbidden zones, violent secrets, abandoned facilities, and requisitely spooky graveyard, the closed system of the Shutter Island prison is as much a stand-in for the human mind as it is an actual filmic environment. This is a "locked room" mystery adventure writ large, and it's only through the DiCaprio character's' submersion into his own psyche that said mystery can be solved. Along the way, the protagonist must abandon his detective smarts, and ultimately, his very identity, to emote his way through a maze where logic fails. Eventually he must face the reality of what Shutter Island represents for him personally, and, related, what sort of man he has become. It is only through the confinement, the enclosure, of the island that DiCaprio's character is able to grow.

The Märchen Rap

Remember my post about the Three Little Pigs?  One played pipes, the others danced jigs?  Let's call that my excuse, shall we?  This was composed to amuse Camilla Mortensen. With apologies in advance to Guntis Šmidchens and Daniel Wojcik.  Okay, hold onto your copies of Aarne-Thompson.  A-one and a-two...

Tale-type indexin' like a mad, mad fiend,
Perrault's actin' Grimm and Richard Burton plays mean.
Students only know that whack Disney crap,
But this is my slant-rhymed Märchen rap.

Um.  Yeah.  It's a folklorist thing, you wouldn't understand.  Honestly, I'm not sure I do, either...

In other news, this l'il ditty has the dubious distinction of being the first Facebook comment to graduate to Inkville blog entry status, Joseph Campbell help us.

Loaded Sixteen Tons, What Did I Get?

Taking a cue from my University of Oregon media colleague Zack Barnett, I thought I'd use this space to explain what it is, precisely, I do in my day job. It's a job I love; I have even waxed eloquent in public about how much I dig it.

In a nutshell, I maintain and produce new content for the website of the UO's Office of Admissions. That sounds a bit dry, though, and isn't really representative of the fact that I'm constantly trying to drag more of our communications and student recruiting plan online. Fellow writers sometimes seem surprised I'm so happy in a marketing job, but I believe in the product, and trust me, the job offers plenty of room to flex my creative muscles.

It's not a one-man band, of course. The other musicians with whom I'm making this beautiful music include  fellow admissions staffers like my boss, higher ed communications expert Holly Moline Simons; amiable and talented back-end web developer Tony Herrig; designer/photographer/videographer/jack-of-all-e-trades Isaac Viel; and wondrous wordsmith Randianne Leyshon. We're kind of like the Justice League, but with more paper cuts.

I also partner with key media innovators across campus, including the aforementioned Mr. Barnett; Debbie Williamson-Smith of the UO's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; and Katherine Gries of the UO's Clark Honors College. We're kind of like the A-Team, but with more carpal tunnel.

My direct work for the Office of Admissions website includes maintaining all the existing pages of the site, and developing new content such as fairly recent additions aimed directly, for example, at green messaging, student veterans, and Spanish-speaking families. Sometimes it's exhausting keeping on top of it, with so many stakeholders. This site has a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and a lot of the chefs from other departments they all seem to want to perform a taste test. But I'm blessed that Holly and my other bosses seem happy to let me do most of the cooking.

An outgrowth of the UO's web presence, the new, minty-fresh, interactive online Virtual Tour has been a yearlong exercise in creativity. The project has many parents, and it was my job to sort of ride herd on all the various fronts: film, music, design, photography, development, and writing. To date, this is the UO project I'm most proud of, and one that I hope will net us a lot of student applications. This is the exciting part of my job, cooking up innovative methods of communicating with students. This is the sort of thing that makes all the headaches worth it.

Anyone who knows me well enough to be a regular Inkville reader probably already knows how addicted I am to Facebook. Who knew I'd land a job in which I can get paid for it? It's like I somehow found a way to sit around reading comic books. Oh, wait. I did. If you haven't already "fanned" the UO Admissions Facebook page, what are you waiting for? Daily doses of my scintillating wit, filtered through the higher ed propaganda machine. I use the page to remind fans of application deadlines, answer student questions, and basically act as an ambassador for the incredible wealth of academic offerings and student culture on the Oregon campus. The Oregon Daily Emerald, the UO's student newspaper, just ran a little article about the page and how I use it.

You know, early on, I used to dig Twitter. A lot. And some still do. But the more time I spent tweeting from my personal account, the more I felt like I was just sort of screaming into the void. The UO was probably right to hire a man-child like me to helm this job, but I think even I have reached my personal generation divide with twitter: I guess I'm just more of a Facebook guy. That said, I do tweet, early and often, from the account I maintain for the UO. And I guess someone's watching: the higher ed site .eduGuru recently listed my stream as one of its "Best Admissions Uses of Twitter."  As if my narcissism wasn't bad enough already...

This academic year has seen our staff moving more and more into the production of short online videos, another strategy to attract the teenage audience that is the lifeblood of an admissions office. My passion for the project was stoked and re-focused by a presentation by the media manager of Connecticut College at this past November's American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education (*whew*) in Boston. Most of the work here is by the aforementioned Mr. Viel, or by a talented local videographer named Erik Talbert. Erik's "Game Day Walk to Autzen Stadium" video does a great job of conveying the energy here in Eugene on game day, as close as we get to a state-mandated religion here in liberal Eugene. And Isaac's basketball-themed film is so compellingly beautiful that even I'm attempted to convert. Well, for a minute, anyway.

Well, there you have it. I have work-related profiles on MySpace and Flickr as well, but they're either not a primary mode of communication (in the case of the former) or in need of a bit more work (in the case of the latter).