The film industry is abuzz this morning since I posted the latest scoop on Breaking Dawn, the fourth movie slated to be filmed in the Twilight Saga. Will it shoot in Vancouver, B.C. or in Portland? You can see the full story in my weekly column on The Portlander:
The column is starting to get picked up all over the place!
My History of Blogging
1976 Snail Mail
My friend Kevin moved away and we wrote funny letters to each other constantly. This was my first attempt at “blogging.” Readership: 1.
1978-1978 Letters from Finland
In August of 1978 I left home to spend a year in Finland. There was no email or Internet back then, so again, I relied on my snail mail connection to my friends back home, and my new found exchange student friends all over Finland. I received over 500 letters during my stay, and I probably wrote 600. Readership: 25 family and friends
1986 to 1994 The Desktop Publishing Years
In 1986 I went to work for a company called Frame Technology. Their main product was a desktop publishing tool called FrameMaker. It was the first WYSIWYG desktop publishing tool I had ever used. It could do column layout, rotated headings (if you knew PostScript), and could import graphics! I was in heaven. I immediately started using the product to create my own newsletter and send it out to family and friends. Readership: 45 family and friends.
1994 I See the Light
In 1994 my friend Chuck sent me a link to a website called “Alex the Girl.” I clicked on the link and found a very simple website where a woman named Alex would post her photographs and her musings about life.
“Chuck,” I said. “This is what I’ve been looking for! This is what I want. How do I make a website like this?”
At the time there were no websites like Blogger, MySpace, or anything of the sort. If you wanted to blog you had to create your own website from scratch. I didn’t have the expertise to create my own “Kelly the Girl” website, so I continued to send my family and friends quarterly newsletters through the snail mail.
2003 Blogging Goes Mainstream
In 2003 a friend of mine sent me a Beta invitation to one of the first blogging websites called Yahoo! 360°. It was kind of crude, and didn’t have many users, but I started posting anyway. My first blogs were posted from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Readership: Probably 15 people
2005 Kelly Discovers MySpace
In 2005 my friend Brandon told me about this cool new website called MySpace. He was using it to promote his films and music, and said I should create a page so I could network too. I created my first blog on MySpace on August 1, 2005. It was entitled “Sunday filming.” Readership: 0. My second blog was called “Asses and Crotches,” and was posted on August 2, 2005. Readership: 1 (a guy named JL).
My readership did not really take off until six months later when Margie Boulé, a columnist for the Oregonian, published a story about my blog.
MySpace was the perfect platform for me. There were about 20 million users when I started, and has now flattened out at about 125 million users. That’s a lot of bloggers and blog readers! But with growth come growing pains, and MySpace has certainly had them.
Stay tuned for my “Dear MySpace” letter…
Originally published on MySpace on December 10, 2008.
We’re taping a To the Point TV show today, and these are the topics for today:
International
Five Blackwater employees, all of them U.S. military veterans, were charged Monday with manslaughter and attempted manslaughter in a case where at least 17 Iraqi civilians were killed. Was it self defense? Were they following orders? Should their superiors be held responsible as well?
National
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was recently arrested, accused of trying to trade the Senate seat left vacant by US President-elect Barack Obama. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was recently convicted on seven felony counts. Is corruption becoming politics as usual?
State
The media is having a feeding frenzy with it’s doom-and-gloom headlines every day. Is all of the negative press actually becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and creating a deeper recession?
Local
Vestas, the world’s largest windmill maker has announced that it will create 1,200 new jobs in Portland, relocating its North American headquarters and building a new manufacturing plant. Solarworld is turning its Hillsboro factory into the largest solar-wafer and cell factory in the United States and adding 1000 new jobs by 2010. Is the Portland Metro area setting the stage to become a regional leader in global “green-energy” development?
Chime in before noon and I might quote you on the show!
The episode will be posted online in a few days at www.tothepointtv.org.
Originally published on MySpace on November 20, 2008.
My friend Peter called me yesterday to chat, and let slip that he and his girlfriend were going to see Kathleen Edwards at the Aladdin, blah blah blah. “Wait! Back up! Kathleen Edwards is in town?” I said with anticipation.
I immediately texted Mike (a.k.a. CB), “Kathleen Edwards is at the Aladdin tonight. Want to go?” to which he replied, “Sure as shit!” a direct reference to a Kathleen Edwards song.
We sat at the pub/bar/second-hand-smoke testing facility next door to the Aladdin and feasted on a meal of salad, soup, fried catfish and fries… and then another free salad. It was obvious that one of the requirements for working at that particular food establishment was to smoke a bowl before your shift. I ordered a vodka tonic and got a gin and tonic. I ordered a side salad, got that, and then got another giant salad when they brought the catfish. Just go with the flow.
We finished our meal just as Peter texted me to say Kathleen was coming on stage. He and his girlfriend Anna had saved us seats, but by the time we got into the theater it was too dark to find them. So, we just sat in back. Better for kissing and cuddling anyway.
Kathleen Edwards is one of those artists who loves to banter onstage. I like that about her. She just so happens to be on tour with an artist by the name of John Doe. Know that name? It didn’t ring a bell with me until he mentioned Exene Cervenka. I turned to Mike and said, “No way! Do you know who that guy is? That’s John Doe from the 80′s band ‘X’ and Exene was the lead singer. I saw them in college!”
I was now dying to meet this now middle-aged folk/rock artist who was once a punk rocker.
They bantered some more, and mentioned that the various tour names they had wanted to use. “We wanted to call it Hurtin’ and Flirtin’ but we’ve not been doing much flirting lately,” said Kathleen. Then John said, “And the other name was ‘We’re not fucking’,” to which Kathleen added, “Yet! And we were told it wouldn’t fit on the poster.”
Once the concert ended we went to the front lobby to buy some CDs and get them signed. While standing in the lobby I told Mike the story of seeing the band X in San Diego when I was in college, and how I even had a picture from that night. He encouraged me to tell the story to John Doe when I met him, and I did.
Luckily Peter had a camera with him, so we got the pictures below.
John Doe and Kathleen Edwards onstage
Kathleen Edwards and Me
For Mike…
Peter, Anna and Kathleen Edwards
John Doe, Mike and Me
The hideous outfit (All Goodwill) that I wore to the X concert when I was 18. Yes, that’s me on the far right.
Originally published on MySpace on November 7, 2008.
Cabana Boy (CB) and I had to rise before dawn to make our 7:49am flight to NYC on Tuesday morning. There was nary a mention of my Ford F-150 baggage that morning until we had to drag all of the baggage out to the car in the rain.
We drove to the airport in peace, and parked in the Back 40 (long-term economy parking), so named because you have to take a bus from the parking lot to the terminal.
We didn’t originally have seats together on our long flight from Portland to Washington D.C. You see CB actually has some clout with United so they put him in the Premier section, and put me in Row 16. When we arrived at the airport we informed the United desk clerk of our situation and she immediately said to me, “Would you like six more inches of legroom for $59?” WTF? That’s almost $10 an inch! Then she informed me that since I was basically considered a beggar on this flight (since I have no United clout) that I would also be charged a fee for the ONE bag I was checking. Excuse me? Then she decided to be nice and check my bag under CB’s name since he apparently can check as many bags as he damned well pleases. (CB would like to note here that his bag was small enough to be a carry-on and he had no intentions of checking anything until The Muse showed up with the bag that ate Manhattan).
“We don’t have any seats together right now, but you can check with the gate agent,” she said with a smile that said, you’ll be sitting in the back with some chatty 2-year old while your boyfriend is up front enjoying his extra six inches of legroom. Ha!
We walked to the gate, making a brief stop at the Coffee People kiosk to grab a couple of triple shot lattes before the flight. I approached the gate attendant to see if she could move me into the long-leg zone with CB, or move him back to the knee-binding zone with me. No luck getting me into the Premier section, so CB would have to sit in the back with me.
We boarded the plane and settled into 16A and 16B. I graciously gave CB my window seat since he graciously gave up his extra six inches to sit with me in the back. Unfortunately it turned out not to be such a gracious gift after all, as the woman in front of him immediately fully reclined her seat into CB’s knees as soon as the 10,000 foot ding sounded in the cabin.
Once we took off a flight attendant with a voice that could have put an ADHD 12-year old to sleep came on to announce the in-flight services. “Today we have food-for-purchase available. We have a blue box, a red box, a yellow box a green box. Coffee, soft drinks, beer, wine and cocktails for $6,” blah blah blah. We perused the in-flight magazine for the contents of the colored food boxes and settled on the “Right Bite” which contained hummus, pita chips, lemon-pepper flavored tuna (yeah it was stinky and bad), crackers, Lorna Doone shortbread cookies and a square of dark chocolate. It was basically the only box that contained any semblance of protein.
During the flight we amused ourselves by doing three things:
Punking Carl deserves a blog unto itself (it’s coming). Suffice it to say that we spent at least an hour midflight trying to figure out how we were going to make poor Carl uncomfortable. You see, Carl has never met me, and in fact didn’t even know CB and I were dating, so I thought this a ripe opportunity for some improv of the highest order. Should I show up at a bar as CB’s long lost ex girlfriend from London? Should I be a Russian woman he shared a cab ride into the city with?
In the end we chose the scenario of the Russian woman that CB shared a cab ride in with and could now not get rid of…;^) Let the games begin!
To be continued…
Here’s the special edition of To the Point that we taped last week. Interesting discussions on the bailout and the election.
The production quality is a little off, and I’m not sure why.
This is a 30-minute show, and I know most people don’t have the patience to watch all 30 minutes. 
Technorati Tags: To the Point, Kelly Jo Horton, Bailout,Election
Originally published on MySpace on October 24, 2008.
This is my first attempt at a video blog. My little Vado camera is not that great, so excuse the quality (or lack of quality).
Thanks to Cabana Boy for doing the filming and editing. Muah!
Lenka’s MySpace Page
Lenka and The Muse
Cabana Boy and I had an interesting dining experience last week, and he beat me to the punch with his blog “The $16 Scallop.” Not to be outdone, I’ve decided to write my own version!
Cabana Boy starts: “Every once in a while we are served bullshit.”
Yes that about sums up the entire experience. However, I will expand for the sake of you dear reader!
One evening last week Cabana Boy and I decided we were still quite ravenous even after polishing off a plate of potato chips and a couple of pints at the Lucky Lab, so we wandered down to Carlye for more sustenance.
Carlye is very unpretentious on the outside (located under an overpass in the Pearl District of Portland), but you soon realize when you walk through the door that you have just arrived in the land of $10 cocktails and food that’s more fancy than filling.
The waitress came over, introduced herself and rattled off the evening’s specials which included an appetizer of pan seared scallops. Cabana Boy knows I love the pan seared scallops and insisted I order that for an appetizer. As he readily points out in his blog he was paying, so order the $16 scallops I did. I also asked for an order of bread, yes an “order” of bread. Three dollars for bread and butter! Strike one.
We also ordered a salad of butter lettuce with some fancy dressing, and an entrée of roasted chicken to share. We asked for the scallops and salad to be brought out first as the appetizer, but all three dishes arrived at the same time. Strike two.
When the “scallops” arrived I thought there was a mistake. As Cabana Boy put it in his blog, “One lonely pan-seared mollusk sat in a sea of white china; a small flower by its side.” It’s true. One scallop and what looked like an edible flower, with some fancy drizzle of something occupying the rest of the real estate. I can just hear the chef giggling to himself as he instructs his assistant, “Just drizzle this brown stuff in a fancy pattern in the white space and it will look like a meal!”
Actual size of scallop:
I was waiting for a second plate to come out. Maybe they split the order. We did make it clear we were splitting everything. But no second plate appeared.
I looked at Cabana Boy and said, “Didn’t she say ‘scallops’ as in more than one?”
Even if she didn’t say “scallops” we both decided that $16 was just highway robbery for one scallop, so Cabana Boy called the waitress over.
Cabana Boy describes it this way, “Cabana Boy swung into action with all the frenzy of a cocktail blender.” A cocktail blender? More like the Tasmanian Devil dear! With visible steam coming out of his ears, he asked, “Excuse me, but we ordered the pan seared scallops. That’s scallops plural, and there only seems to be one on the plate. Sixteen dollars is a little steep for a single scallop, don’t you think?”
“I only do as I’m told,” the waitress replied.
Are you kidding me? What kind of response is that? Are you a Stepford Wife or a waitress?
“I’d like to talk to the chef please,” Cabana Boy asked with all the calm he could muster. The waitress disappeared and was soon replaced with a tall thin man in a suit who was most definitely NOT the chef.
“What seems to be the problem sir?” the suit asked with all the authority of a wet blanket.
I could see the Tasmanian Devil was about to resurface in Cabana Boy, but was thankfully replaced by a slightly continental British accent only reserved for situations such as this.
“Well, the waitress described the appetizer special as pan seared scallops not pan seared scallop, so we’re a bit disappointed in tonight’s catch. Do you regularly charge $16 per scallop?” CB said, testing the waters.
“Sir, the chef sets the prices. He has been basically giving away the store lately so we have adjusted the prices,” the suit said, passing the buck. Strike three.
No one wanted to take responsibility for the fact that someone thought they could get away with charging $16 for a single scallop and a flower. The thin man in the suit did offer to take the lonely scallop off the bill, which to his credit was the best he could do at that point.
Cabana Boy ends his blog with a simple moral of the story: “Perhaps the lesson is that when it comes to bullshit be aware of its innumerable disguises and never ever be afraid to address it by its real name.”
Its real name is Carlye! The website says:
Carlyle, for many, is an oasis. Located within the ever-expanding Pearl and warehouse districts of Northwest Portland, its intimate cherry wood bar and tailored urban appointments invite an evening of quiet luxury, impeccable service, and rarefied culinary adventure
Yep. It’s a culinary adventure all right, or rather an adventure in culinary BS.
Now on a happy note, there are two restaurants I CAN recommend.
I can whole heartedly recommend the food at Paley’s Place on NW 21st. Sit at the bar and enjoy the company of the two bartenders Chris and John, while eating the homemade spicy potato chips.
And, the Cabana Boy and I just had a fabulous meal at Paragon last night. Not only was the food wonderful, but the waitress knew her wine and brought out three wines for me to taste before I made my choice. She was attentive but unobtrusive. The perfect combination as far as I’m concerned.
Happy dining!
Kelly Jo Horton is one of the most popular writers you’ve never heard of.
She’s always written; she says she’s “driven to write.” Poems. Essays. Notes. Journal entries.
But last August something changed. Oh, Kelly Jo is still writing. But now people all over the world are reading about her best dates and favorite bands, the day she met Billy Bob Thornton, her frustrations and joys as a parent, even the conversation she had with a college student she met in an aisle at Target.
Kelly Jo has become a blogger, and in the world of Web logs, she’s becoming a star. Her blog is published on MySpace.com (http://blog.myspace.com/kellyjo2), the wildly popular networking Web site with 41 million users, more page views than Google and more members than America Online.
In the few months since she started uploading onto her blog a daily tossed salad of opinions, photos and observations, the number of people reading and responding to her blog has skyrocketed.
She can’t compete with rock bands and celebrities, who collect “friends” on the site that can number in the hundreds of thousands. But “when you divide the bloggers into categories,” she says, “I’m in the top five almost every day” in categories such as “poetry and writing,” “life, work and careers,” “romance and relationships.”
Kelly Jo talks about it all on her blog: facing a cancer diagnosis, kids cheating at Uno, giving pot roasts as Christmas gifts, how to control sibling rivalry (she keeps her videocamera in the kitchen and records her kids’ fights), rock concert etiquette, grammatical errors and the gross birthday cake she made for her delighted teenage son. (He has a blog, too. Kelly Jo reads it regularly. She wishes more parents kept track of what their teens are writing online.)
She also writes about her acting jobs. In fact, her blog already has led to parts in independent films and a hosting job on a cable-access show called “To the Point.”
“The producer of the show found me on MySpace and hired me,” Kelly Jo says. She gets no pay. “It’s cable. But I get exposure. I get experience.”
The 42-year-old divorced mother of three, who lives in the Portland area, has a day job as a software support engineer. “But in every other spare moment I have, I’m acting or writing or doing improv” or being Mom. “I have one job that pays the bills and one that feeds my soul, is basically what it is.” (Full disclosure: Kelly Jo and I do improv at ComedySportz in Portland.)
Kelly avoids politics, but anything else is fair game. “The thing I enjoy most is posting subjects that get people wound up . . . when I post my perspective and I get other people’s perspectives.” She also poses questions: What should she get her father for his birthday? Why is marriage so hard?
She says she hasn’t received much hate mail. “I’ve got people who like to stir things up sometimes.” But Kelly Jo gets to edit the comments that are shown on her blog site. “If they’re personally attacking anyone else, I won’t publish it. I make them play fair.
“The worst things I get are e-mails from tons of young guys. It’s all about, ‘I like older women. Do you like younger guys?’ ”
She doesn’t respond, and she makes it clear on her MySpace home page that she’s not blogging to meet men or collect “friends” on the site. She’s selective: She’ll only let you be a “friend” if you e-mail her (“I prefer e-mails that contain complete sentences”). She then checks out your own blog to see if you have things in common. “I’m not on there to collect strangers,” she says. “I’m there to meet interesting people, and I have.”
Half her readers are men and half women, which shows both sexes appreciate Kelly Jo’s eclectic subjects and her candor. Sometimes her blog is raw. Sometimes it’s utterly sentimental.
“People tell me sometimes, ‘Your blogs are so interesting. Nothing ever happens in my life.’ I say, ‘You know, I could go to Starbucks for 10 minutes and find something to write about. It’s not that my life is interesting — it’s that I pay attention to what’s going on around me. Plenty of my blogs are about absolutely nothing, just my weird perspective on life.”
That perspective has attracted celebrity fans (they use fake names and pictures on MySpace, but they tell Kelly Jo who they really are) and new personal friends from all over the world who e-mail Kelly Jo regularly.
“One of my friends calls it the ‘coffee shop of the millennium,’ ” she says. “It’s like the old water cooler.” It’s addictive, writing and reading responses and responding to those.
In five months. her blog entries have prompted readers to get checked for cancer, listen to new bands, volunteer at the Oregon Food Bank, worry that she’s lonely.
She’s not lonely. She has a large circle of friends outside the Internet, she says. “This just allows me to have a social life on the nights or days when I have my kids and I can’t go out.”
Whether she’s discussing physics, almost missing a plane flight or smelling Ken dolls in Toys R Us, Kelly Jo Horton, single Portland mom, is sharing her sparking brain on the Internet every day, and the world is reading.
“I just love taking the most mundane things and making them interesting,” she says. “I feel better when I’m done.”
