Winter Storm Watch

February 26, 2009


Todd Epp at South Dakota Watch (and Kansas Watch, and High Plains Buddhist, and Epp Law Report, et al), who apparently didn’t have enough to do in updating seventeen blogs and three Twitter accounts with the same post, constructed a South Dakota Blogosphere parody of today’s winter storm warning.

Black Marks on Wood Pulp:

The ice encased my car like a Saran Wrap covering a bowl of potato salad. The beauty of it inspires me to renew my hope in the Indiana Pacers making the NBA playoffs.

Har har, Todd. Joke’s on you!

I don’t even LIKE the Pacers anymore! Ha!

Tags: Blogging, Meta |

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Meme-ry

February 4, 2009


The thing about blog memes is that, while they are annoying – akin to the e-mail jokes I get from my aunt titled HILARIOUS SIGNS YOU WILL SERIOUSLY CRACK UP OVER THESE!!!!! which, no doubt, are 80% photoshopped and, naturally, 5% funny – they are also a slight ego stroke.

After all, someone thought highly enough about your blog to consider you one of their seven choices. Right?

Of course, the need to complete a meme depends on a complex equation of events. Do you have time? Do you have anything interesting to say? Do you have seven friends to tag?

If you’ve answered “No” to any of these questions, you’re typically ready to complete a meme.

It’s been a long time coming, I suppose. And now, after being tagged twice in two months by Make the Logo Bigger and Where’s My Jetpack, I guess I’d better get my ass in gear and MEME THE SHIT OUT OF THIS POST. Yup. It’s a “Seven Things About Me” post. Lucky you.

There’s one problem.

I write a personal blog. Which means, by nature, there’s little information I haven’t spilled to the adoring public (much to the chagrin of my beautiful wife, Kerrie). And, to make matters worse, I’ve already done this in a pretentious and ego-boosting way three and a half years ago. 100 Things about Corey.

Oh, who cares. Here it is. Seven Things About ME:

1. My favorite bands have been, in this order: The Monkeys, Metallica, Bad Religion, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Get Up Kids, Modest Mouse.

2. I only use Sharpie Ultra Fine Point markers when writing for work. At home, I use whatever is available, but then only use a Moleskin notebook.

3. I purchase 80% of my clothing at Banana Republic during crazy days sales. Because I like the BR style, but I’m cheap. Really cheap.

4. I have never golfed. Ever. (But I loved Sid Meyer’s SimGolf.)

5. The most famous person I’ve ever met was David Sedaris. He shook my hand, smiled, signed my book, and told me that I had great skin.

6. I never wore Girbaud. (Through no fault of my own.) P.S. - They’re apparently still around. Weird.

7. I’ve been in two gruesome bicycle accidents. Once, when I was in grade school, a bicycle actually RAN OVER MY FACE. I don’t remember how it happened – only that the bike came over the top of the hill at a very fast speed and barreled into me. I fell down under the bike, etc. (The other time I flew over the front of my handlebars at the bottom of a hill because my wheel had come off. I had lots of stitches, ruined a t-shirt and still can’t grow hair in a certain place on my chin.)

And now, I lovingly wrap this meme and send it via UPS to the following:

• Todd Epp could stand to take a break from this whole Daschle mess at SD Watch.
• I’ll throw a meme shot in the dark out to Abi at Heat Eat Review. Maybe she’ll put it on her tumblr or something.
• Condalmo deserves to be tagged, if only because it shows a little lit-blog credibility on my part.
• I probably owe Dawnne Gee a million link-backs from past posts on The Otherwhirled.
• Why not hit up a fellow Sioux Falls copywriter: Katie at OverCaffeinatedKatie.
• It’s not about green marketing, but maybe Veerman at It Grows On Trees wants a shot.
• Tony at Other Men’s Flowers won’t get this until tomorrow because he’s across the pond, six or seven hours away.

And finally, for an eighth, let’s try to drag Jeff at Syntax of Things back into the blogosphere. Because we miss him, terribly.

That’s it. Follow the rules, not my example. Do as I say, not as I do, amirite?

RULES:
• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Tags: Blogging, Meta, Random Links |

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Black Marks on Heat Eat Review

January 12, 2009


My TSO.A few months ago, I ate a Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers General Tso’s Spicy Chicken meal.

As I often do when I walk by the Healthy Choice section, I thought immediately of one of my favorite sites: Heat Eat Review.

I sent a tweet to Abi Jones and asked, “Can I write a review?” And she said, “Hell Yes, Dawg.” And I took a artfully moody-looking picture and dug in.

The result is here:

“The sauce was the selling point and, ultimately, the downfall of the dish. Put a classy sauce over awful chicken and you can possibly get away with a saved meal. But this sauce, while proper in consistency, was lacking in taste. It was like homemade sweet and sour sauce that was made with an unequal amount of ingredients – as if the sugar was running low, so they used silica gel instead.”

I love reading works of food criticism. So, it should come as no surprise when I say I’m pretty excited about my first Heat Eat Review post.

So go check it out, already.

Tags: Blogging, Food |

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FreeDarko Presents…

November 25, 2008


Free Darko presents...Hi.

First of all, if you’re a basketball fan or a fan of well-written, intelligent sports literature and you aren’t reading FreeDarko, you’re should reconsider. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re pardoned - just follow this link, add it to your RSS feed (along with Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie and ESPN’s True Hoop) and enjoy the three best blogs in basketball.

Now that we have that covered, I want to inform all of you that I have what could be the greatest basketball book ever written in my hands. The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats and Stars in Today’s Game by FreeDarko.

Forward by Gilbert Arenas.

Yeah. You heard me.

(And before any of you say anything, trust that I might be adding a little hyperbole to this. Yes, David Halberstam’s Playing for Keeps was a phenomenal pro basketball book, and there are countless more I haven’t read. But at this point in time, nothing is beating this FreeDarko masterpiece.)

The book is fantastically designed (a dying art, the design of books) and phenomenally written, touching on the best aspects of the game we all love. You can find it here.

BUY IT AND LOVE IT.

That is all. If you wonder where I am for the next two weeks, it’s reading this fucking masterpiece.

Tags: Basketball, Blogging, Literature, Random Links, Sports |

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The Corey Vilhauer Brand

November 19, 2008


“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”

This past week, I was given an offer on one of our photos – a picture taken almost as a throwaway, rescued from the pile and produced into one of my favorites. A national publication wants to use it. And they’re willing to pay us. Us. Little amateur Corey and Kerrie, skilled in ways we never realized.

A friend of mine asked how this possibly could have happened. How do you take a photo and, a few weeks later, without any promotion or marketing, get it sold?

And the answer is easy: The Internet. An amazing tool. (As long as you use it correctly.)

Three years ago, my entire creative portfolio consisted of six articles for a local men’s magazine and one blog. Yet, I desperately longed for a career in the creative industry. I wanted to be a writer, but didn’t know how to position myself.

So it was complete blind luck that I began to realize my name was starting to gain a little equity, thanks to both a published column and, even more surprisingly, this little blog. I associated my name with Black Marks on Wood Pulp, one of the few consistent South Dakota blogs at the time. I made friends with other bloggers – primarily the political ones – left comments and became sort of well known in the S.D. blogging community.

The person I interviewed with for my first ever writing job was familiar with my blog. She enjoyed it. She hired me.

From here, I realized I had something. I submitted Black Marks on Wood Pulp to 9rules, gaining a larger audience and more connections. These – and most of the local marketing or web design personalities – turned out to be the first twitterers I ever followed – and, in return, my first follwers. I took up flickr to post our photos and, through a mixture of the three, my name was suddenly known for writing, photography and basic Wordpress blog design.

There are a lot of people out there who are much more talented than I am. So it has a lot to do with luck as well. But I’ve managed to make give my name value – both through recognition and results – in a way that I never could have without the ‘net.

And in giving my name that value, I turn up on more people’s searches. Because I have a background already, my creative endeavors are automatically given more credence. All things being equal, you choose the more well known person over the unproven kid, simply because you know what you’ll get.

To answer the question my friend asked, I simply put my stuff out for all to see. I unabashedly brace for failure, discover a lack of it, and forge ahead. I embrace feedback, write and contribute to the teeming humanity located within, and come out with something I can be proud of.

This networking, though for the most part passive, has given me – and countless others – a feeling of success. The type of success that drives us to continue creating, even if only to a small audience.

Because we know that, for every person who leaves a comment, there are hundreds who stop by and silently admire. For every person who complains or writes off, there are just as many who are coming across your work for the first time.

Because it’s always out there, my name continues to gain value. And with it, my creative endeavors gain traction faster than they did when I was starting up.

It takes a long time to build brand equity into a name. But given enough time, and the willpower to continue linking back to your identity, someone will take notice.

And when they do, you can finally begin to reap the rewards.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Blogging, Career, Photography, Vilhauer |

2 Comments

Welcome, L.A. Times readers

October 16, 2008


My post on Five Parenting Books was picked up on Carolyn Kellogg’s Jacket Copy blog on the Los Angeles Times Web site.

From the post:

Litblogger Corey Villhauer recommends Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, as an atypical favorite parenting book. He read it, he writes, when his daughter was very young.

In the weeks after Sierra was born, I would spend a lot of time rocking her to sleep. Long after she was out, I would continue to rock, back and forth, back and forth, simply holding her and feeling her warmth and weight and being amazed that she was real; a fully conscious part of our lives, not going anywhere any time soon.

So welcome, anyone coming from there. I rarely write about books anymore, but it’s good to get a little sugar from the MSM blogs.

Tags: Blogging, Books, Journalism, Literature, Sierra, Writers |

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My 2001 presence

October 1, 2008


2,960

Eight years ago, I had no Internet presence.

This is not completely true. Eight years ago, as we prepared to roll over into 2001, I was pretty active on the Internet. I had already created three Web sites, including a site for local band Floodplain and a personal writing site called “…Prying.” But I had no presence in the sense of searchable product. My personal sites were rarely linked to, so my standing in the world of search engine metrics was a big fat zero.

Google, eight years ago

Fast forward, and here I am. Nearly 3,000 results. Not a lot, but worthwhile. Nearly a thousand of these are surely BMOWP blog posts, and at least a thousand more are probably based on date and tag hierarchy in BMOWP.

Google, now

I say, “Here I am.” But really, I should say here we are. With blogging, social networking and the advancement of public records on the Internet, most of us can Google our name and find a vast amount of information, both self-published and governmentally controlled.

It’s an ego boost, for sure. And it’s an incredibly revealing exercise. What do others see of you? If someone searched your name, what would they find? How are you presenting yourself to the public, and is it okay with you?

I’m fine with my standing on the Internet. I feel I’m represented well. Others, not so much – ask any kid whose parents find drinking pictures on Facebook.

Where were you in terms of searchability eight years ago? In honor of Google’s 10th anniversary, they have set up a special Google search based on their January 2001 database.

Were you Internet popular in 2001?

Is there anyone whose standing went down?

Ask Al Gore.

Tags: Blogging, Meta, Vilhauer |

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