Archives for August 2015

If you know me at all, you know that this Ray loves HBO.  Turns out the reverse is true.

If you take a quick glance at all the original programming to be featured on HBO since it started in the 70s, it’s a helluva body of work.  I think my first HBO TV love was Def Comedy Jam…or maybe The Kids In The Hall. Next it was their spin on the 30 minute sitcom (Arliss, Sex In The City) and eventually the sprawling long form dramas they are famous for (Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood being the holy trinity for me)

And to that last point, as we prepare to gather ’round our TV sets (and other devices) to say adios, presumably, to its latest long form master True Detective–and specifically to Colin Ferrell as cop Ray Velcoro–I take pause to acknowledge HBO’s ongoing love affair with interesting characters named Ray in particular…from male escorts to comic book superheroes and all points between.

Here, then, are my Top Five “Rays” Of Awesomeness in the HBO canon (with honorable mentions to follow because, yeah, there are that many): [Read more…] about HBO hearts Ray

My best friend Gair Maxwell is reinventing himself, as the King Of Reinvention, which makes him my hero right about now.

You might say I’m a “serial” reinventionist myself. Been doing it my whole life. I’ve repeatedly come full circle on the career front and the creative front.  They are both important to me, commerce and creativity, and you’d think owning an ad agency would be the perfect convergence of those two.  With three dozen clients across the US and Canada, I get to travel…and strategize and ideate…create…participating in new challenges every day. And we do pretty good with it.  After everyone gets a paycheck and the bills get paid, I get to keep what’s left. God bless America.

But through the years, I’ve alway looked at different career paths and creative supplements.  I’ve run my own weekly newspaper and been as assistant manager at an ice rink (yes, I can drive a Zamboni). Early on as a freshman at UT, I did like so many and started up a band, my beloved Zero Tolerance.  But the truth is that I was better suited toward the PT Barnum side of the music biz, as I wrote about once in the Austin Chronicle, when I mostly hung up my guitar to be a concert promoter with Jim Ramsey.  And when that petered out, I found myself immersing myself again in radio (that mistress who, for 25+ years, keeps calling me in the middle of the night…and I always come running). [Read more…] about Reinventing The Real