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Julie My Love has made many previous appearances on yorkrules, so she was unknowingly obligated early on to involuntarily lose her privacy. She kept what little I left her by electing to avoid my Minute by Minute mutual interview project. I began recording these often intimate … (read more)
Friend and frequent commenter MorningStar recently contributed a bottle of Southern Comfort to the yorkrules test kitchen with a request that it be incorporated into an upcoming cocktail recipe. As she previously explained to me, the MorningStar nickname was bestowed with irony, as … (read more)
I once tried to get a job, so I wrote a lot of cover letters. My first attempts started out very vanilla.
Please consider my résumé for the position of Production Coordinator with National Geographic Television’s Department of Specials & Event Programming.
Concerned that bored potential employers might not make it past the first sentence, I moved the hard sell to the top.
With 10 years of experience in the Entertainment Industry, I am an outstanding candidate for the position of Production Coordinator with National Geographic Films.
But there are plenty of professionals out there with years of experience applying for the same jobs, so I sought a way to make an impression.
I must first tell you, it was a special treat to discover this opening for a Supervising Producer at National Geographic, a position for which I am ideally qualified with an institution that I greatly admire. Hooray!
(I actually applied to National Geographic for four different positions, but three introductions are enough to illustrate that I’ve started cover letters in all sorts of ways.)
I carried that previous conclusion of enthusiasm into the opening of my next letter to Lakeshore Records.
Pick me! Pick me! I am so BLOODY FANTASTIC for the position of Production Coordinator & Art Director that I can’t hardly stand it!
When ebullience didn’t earn me employment, I opened on the past (for a photo production position with Cosmopolitan Magazine)…
When I graduated from film school in ’96, I sent off 40 cover letters and résumés to the top fashion photographers in New York City, then drove across the country to knock on each of their doors looking for a job. Nobody answered, so I drove back and eventually became the Director of Production with Yahoo! Music. After 5 years there, I left to focus on photography again, so I thought I’d knock on your door.
…then the present…
My last job was in Santa Monica, so I may possess the unique quality amongst your applicants of already having dined repeatedly at every one of the restaurants and eateries along Third Street Promenade. This, I expect, will allow me to fit in right away with the rest of the staff at Hamagami/Carroll. Okay, who’s up for the Shack? Anyone?
…and finally, in early ‘05, I reflected on the future with an anonymous ad agency executive…
Read any good cover letters yet, Amy? I’ve hired people before, myself, and reading cover letters often makes me think our public school system has been failing us for a very long time. And do you find it creepy when someone you’ve never met addresses you by your first name? Well, perhaps some day we’ll be good friends, and you’ll know that I’m not creepy in the least (with the exception of that incident at the ’06 Christmas party.)
I was under-qualified for FM Rocks…
Here’s how it breaks down: I am an aggressive hands-on person with strong production knowledge, great people skills, and a fantastic work ethic, but I don’t have the 2 years experience in producing music videos. Sucks for me.
… and over-qualified for the documentary production company specializing in extreme sports.
Reading over your posting on craigslist, I felt so qualified that I just had to respond.
- I live in Venice.
- I have video production experience. 10 years of it, actually. Probably more than would be appropriate for an intern, but lots to help you do what you do even better.
- The wages you’re promising, or lack thereof, work just fine for me right now. The compensation I really want is to go out and see and do cool things. Documentaries, extreme sports, and documentaries about extreme sports all have the potential to deliver such experiences. Fun now, money later.
When there wasn’t any opening, I invented one and angled for it anyway.
I’m not actually applying to be a roving correspondent for JEOPARDY! Clue Crew. I know that’s not the most effective opening for a cover letter, but stick with me just a moment longer.
And occasionally, as the cover letters climbed into the triple digits, certain opportunities inspired inquiry.
My primary career objectives are to learn, experience, travel and be creative. I was very successful in doing all these while working in television, film, and new media production for 10 years. Now I would like move into a new and exciting field, while staying focused on those same objectives. This is why employment with Cirque du Soleil is so appealing to me.
When AOL was seeking a Creative Development Director, I honed my entire message down to a single haiku.
Ideal candidate
More creative than the rest
See my résumé
Applying to Wired Magazine for an editorial assistant opening, my most succinct and expressive introduction was contained within one link.
Please visit yorkrules.com to learn more about me.
Over the course of 3 years and 125 cover letters, I was offered only one job. It was an unpaid position for a music video production company in Hollywood that went out of business before our final interview.
I’ve found peace in my unemployment, so don’t come to me for career counseling, but if you ever want to know how not to start a cover letter, I’m the most qualified candidate you’ll find.
My thanks to those who suggested topics for today’s essay, and congratulations to Johnny for his winning submission. Johnny, your prize is on the way!
George Smith and I have something in common. We both create desktops, those digital wallpapers that make many computer monitors passive expressions of personality. There is this difference: while mine regularly feature my cat, his are intricately layered electrical compositions of post-postmodernism.
Who is George Smith?
I am a 26 year old designer. I am a creative person and love to express my creativity in any way that I can. For the most part, that is visually through photography or digital art. I am a very detail oriented and critical person. I also really like beer, music and video games.
Why do you create?
I create to vent my creativity. For the longest time I have been trying to express myself the best way I can. Drawing, writing, designing, photographing, painting, I have done it all. The ones that seem to have stuck the longest are photography and design. I love showing people the way I see things through my artwork, and I love hearing what people think they see in my artwork.
Alienrevisioned
Why desktops?
Back when I first started to begin messing around with digital art I really didn’t know what I was doing, I would make very small images in Photoshop, I was just playing around to see what I could do. A website that I began to frequent (Customize.org) launched a desktop wallpaper section. This was a huge deal for Customize because their whole thing was skinning, alternate interfaces for applications. There was no art website where you could just submit a randomly sized image and let people view it, or if there was I didn’t know about it. So I began sizing my artwork in wallpaper dimensions so that I could submit them to Customize. I am really glad that I started that and kept with it because to me it is the best way for people to see a digital artist’s work, all the desktops in the world are frames waiting to be filled and because my artwork is already sized for those frames, it’s just that much easier to get my work displayed.
Battlefront
Can infinitely-reproducible digital art be as valuable as the inherently-rarer physical arts such as painting and sculpture?
I think given the right circumstances, yes. A high resolution print can only be made from a high resolution original file, if this is kept out of the public’s hand’s and prints are made on a very limited basis, I think it could be possible. But being an artist myself, I have to question whether I would want my work so restricted like that. As an artist, I want as many people as possible to view my work, and with technology going the way it is, how long will it be before large digital frames are so affordable that anyone could buy them? When that point comes, I can see a market for very high resolution artwork that can be purchased and displayed on them. No one would want a low resolution image being displayed on their 30×20″ digital frame. Even if my digital frame idea is just a pipe dream, I think digital art still has a ways to go when compared to the traditional methods.
Bloom
How might your art evolve over the next year?
I have found myself at a crossroads recently with my artwork. I go through phases and I think I am stuck in between them right now. I really don’t know exactly where it will go, I never do. But I do know that I want to try and get back to including a lot more organic photography in it. I have been going through this phase where everything is digitally created and I think I am finding myself missing some of the natural elements I used to incorporate in my work.
My thanks to George for sharing his work. Please visit endeffect.com for more.
Artist: James McMurtry
Track: Cheney’s Toy
This track is available on 
War breeds art. Goya’s The Third of May 1808 and Picasso’s Guernicaho are vivid examples from centuries past.
Just before I was born, it was the work of musicians, including Buffalo Springfield, Edwin Starr, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and John Lennon that left a lasting artistic reaction to the Vietnam War.
For today’s quagmire, we have our own playlist. I’ve added two more tracks to my iPod this month: Kalashnikov’s George Bush Bin Laden One Love One Family and Cheney’s Toy by James McMurtry.
Who is James McMurtry?
The next big thing.
Why do you create?
It’s in my job description.
You are a Texas native speaking out against a Texan president’s war. How do your Lone Star listeners react to your message?
When I first recorded We Can’t Make It Here, in 2004, I ran straight down to KGSR in Austin and the morning DJ spun it during drive time. I had hostile emails on my website before I even got home. I’ve played the song at every live show since. Early on I’d get a boo now and then, not anymore.
Your father is a novelist, your mother is an English professor, and you studied English at university. What does the addition of music allow you to express that words alone do not?
If you’re good at your craft, you can probably express anything through any medium. For me, music is more fun than words. Rarely will a pretty woman dance to an essay.
Cheney’s Toy is available for free on your MySpace page, and you encourage others to create user-generated content with it. Does online activism against the Iraq War have more or less impact on our nation’s political process than the real world protests against the Vietnam War during the late ’60s and early ’70s? Why?
Online activism doesn’t seem to be stopping this war. I don’t know that those “real world” protests had that much of an effect either. Vietnam didn’t stop because Abby Hoffman and his generation wanted it to, it stopped because Walter Cronkite and his generation finally wanted it to. This war will be much harder to end.
My thanks to James for sharing his art. Please visit jamesmcmurtry.com for more.
In preparation for yesterday’s feature, Willoughby’s manager Stephen at Blaim Media sent me the new album, I Know What You’re Up To. Even better, it came in a limited edition pre-release hand-stamped cardboard sleeve.
The Yorkrules Official Kitten Giveaway was the first time I offered something for free to my loyal visitors. Fortunately, no one claimed that prize, and Haiku the Little One has become an essential member of the yorkrules content team.
Now, with Stephen’s blessing, I’m giving away this awesome artifact of undownloadable music memorabilium — but not for free.
I’ll walk this CD to the Mar Vista post office four blocks away, purchase a padded envelope and postage, and mail it off to the lucky winner, but I want something in return.
In order to claim the prize, you must comment on this post with a suggested subject for a yorkrules essay. That essay will be posted on Friday, April 18, and the winning comment will be the post’s title.
There will be no post this Friday so you won’t be distracted from thinking of some superbly scintillating subject. No comments mean no post, so whichever way it breaks, it’s a win-win-lose-win situation.
Artist: Willoughby
Track: Story
This track is available on
“Thank you for the current sound track to my life…” read one recent comment on Willoughby’s MySpace page. That fan and I seem to be whistling the same tune, because I thought Story was all about my life.
Why doesn’t Story
Ever get it together?
You gotta have a plan.He’s been waiting
Such a long, long time.
We hope he’s gonna
get it together.Just looking for a piece of mind.
We hope it’s gonna work out fine.
Know it’s gonna work out fine.
So I’m Story, and Willoughby is Gus Seyffert. This guy’s already gotten into my head, so now I want to take a look in his.
Who is Gus Seyffert/Willoughby?
my full name is William Gustavus Seyffert, but everyone just calls me Gus, or some version on Gus. Willoughby is me giving a shot at writing and recording some of my own music. i have a long list of friend’s that co-write, perform, record, and help give me advice to make good music.
Why do you create?
it’s the only thing i can do besides drive a cab or join the army .and, i enjoy it very much.
Airplanes are a recurrent theme in the visual identity of Willoughby. Why?
I was trying to think of images of what my music should sound like and I am a fan of old trains, cars and planes. There is a Twilight Zone episode called “A Stop At Willoughby” that tells the story of a man who dreams of this old time town “Willoughby” while on his daily commute on a train. I also thought about old spy movies and car chases. My grandfather was a pilot and a photographer so I have a lot of old pictures of planes he flew.
You studied music at California Institute of the Arts. How has a formal education in the arts influenced your creative voice?
I was studying jazz - upright bass - at cal arts. And though i really like the school, the music happening in the jazz and music school was pretty geeky. It was very mathy and modern. As a jazz musician from Kansas City i was trying to play more traditional swing, play simple melodies and groove hard. Like at most music schools, a lot of the students were trying to play as fast and in as many different time signatures as possible. Although i did learn alot of music theory, i have never been good at anything academic. However, when i became frustrated with the jazz there, the staff was very encouraging to have me experament with writing and playing different styles of music. I was able to study voice, guitar, and harmony which all helped me to start writing and singing my tunes (and let me say, it wasn’t pretty at the begining). I soon learned that the best music at cal art’s (in my opinion) was coming from the visual art program. i dropped out and found myself in the silverlake music scene soon after that.
If I were to click on just one of your MySpace friends, who would you suggest, and why?
It would be Jake Blanton. He and i met in 6th grade at an Arts Magnet “Kansas City Middle school of the arts”. He was the only other kid there who knew who the beatles were. we became BFF’s soon after. Jake was some kind of protege. He could play any instrument better than anyone we knew at the time. I’m very competitive and tried to do the same. We started our first band “Earth’s Core” and also played alot with Jake’s dad Jim Blanton in an acoustic trio playing bluegrass, oldies and some original songs with lots of harmonies. I felt we were on to somthing and could perhaps be the next Hanson, but Jake took to jazz and i soon followed. we both came full circle and he has a band “Slow Bro’s” and still plays jazz around Kansas City.
My thanks to Gus for sharing his art. Please visit myspace.com/willoughby for more.
I call her Julie My Love because it is true. Across a dozen Dickensian years, we have known both the best and the worst of times. I am blessed to have her, and may God and our dearest friends strike me down with pots and pans if or when I screw this bliss up.
We all know it’s possible, and some would say probable, because I lack something. No, not that. It’s that function in my mind that should push the red button: “Don’t say it,” “Don’t post it,” “Don’t go there.”
If the Navy SEALs devised an emotional endurance test for love, it might be me.
So don’t tell her anything, because I want to tell you about another girl.
I wrote poetry once. I still do, but without the muse of youth, with its inherent heartache and loss, iambic inspiration is an itinerant friend that doesn’t come around much anymore.
The first of the few poems I was proud of was called Mavourneen. It was the end of the ’80s, Grunge was coming, and I was just hitting my teenage stride.
I wrote it on a yellow legal pad and archived it on computer before the pad disappeared. Years later, a hard drive crash erased the complete poem form existence. There are now only a few verses extant, the opening among them.
Silken child of hyacinth hue
Aestival image
Blithely draped
In the pool side luxury
Of sun day afternoons
She was Jill Running Bear (another York-made moniker.) We didn’t attend the same high school, but that was about the duration of our relationship, which was always ambiguous at best.
There was passion and apathy, cruelty and concern. But we never kissed. We were never involved. We were just young, pulsing with pain and elation.
Then graduation came. A few years later we met for a meal, and traded an e-mail or two, but that was it. End of story.
But yesterday, I posted my high school senior portrait because I had nothing to say. And now there’s a comment from an author I recall, by the name of Running Bear.
I don’t remember you having this particular hairstyle. Perhaps my memory is fading.
I complained in that post that my blog doesn’t make money, but to connect with old friends is value enough.
Now I can finally ask: Jill, do you have a copy of Mavourneen? (And how has your hair changed?)
I post to yorkrules every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, excluding holidays and pre-announced vacation days. I posted five days a week until I realized that working so much to make no money was too stressful, so I got a job and dropped Tuesdays and Thursdays from the schedule.
Now the job is done, but I’ve continued with the triweekly rotation. The self-imposed stress is less, and I think the content’s stronger.
In addition to strong content, the blogs on blogging say that posting frequently and consistently is important to building your audience and generating income. I will let you know as soon as I am able to illicit some increase in either of these equally important items.
On my off-days I continue to comb for content: interviewing artists and musicians, editing Haiku movies, creating Photoshop compositions, and writing (which consists mostly of unawaredly wringing my hands while thinking of everything else I could be doing right now, and perhaps writing a little, if it’s a good day.)
On good days, posts appear at 10:00 a.m. This is the hour that I set pre-prepared posts to self-publish. I once got an entire month ahead of the relentless clock, but if I can claim to be even one post in the black most days, I am grateful for it.
If a post appears shortly after eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening, however, you can be assured that there’s plenty of handwringing and internal obfuscation occurring within the yorkrules admin.
Why I find myself in this position, this late in the day, I am unsure. Crossed-out below blog in my calendar is catbox. It was not a busy day. There was — oh, right — the unplanned afternoon nap on the couch, the sun slanting through the blinds across Haiku, asleep on my chest.
So today’s delay is mostly my fault. But I want to make it up to you. As a visual artist, any post without a picture feels incomplete to me. How could I add an image that’s easy for me and entertaining for you? A quick scan of my high school graduation meets both needs.
Thanks for your visit. It keeps me creative (though not yet rich.)
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