Killing Ernest
a blog by Timothy Alex Akimoff
Wrestling with Hawaii – My Life and the Islands
Jan 22nd
Hawaii has figured interestingly in my life. At the age of 13, which is the beginning of a terrible season of change, my parents decided to uproot us and travel to Kona, Hawaii for nine months. As an awkward adolescent trying to find his way in the world, Hawaii added another dimension to that in a world of seething racism, drugs, peer pressure and the beauty and despair of living on an island.
My first exposure to many of life’s great mysteries happened on that big rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
I was offered drugs, in fact, I looked upon them with my own eyes for the first time. They were different than the depiction in the text book from my 6th grade Oregon classroom. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign still rang fresh in my years.
I fell in love, at least I think I did. She said no, but it was the first time I worked up the courage to ask.
I learned to surf on a big, old, yellow banana of a surf board. I caught my first wave at Childrens’ Beach, and I learned the rest at H Bay with my buddy Dan Catanzaro.
I got shot with a BB gun by another buddy and had to have the BB extracted from my forefinger by a local doctor.
I returned to Hawaii some years later. My girlfriend had gone ahead of me a few months, and I decided to show up with a ring and propose to her in the most romantic setting I could find.
She was attending a school with some strict relationship rules, and the only place we could be together alone was the laundry room of the remote school at the north end of the Big Island. Still, I proposed to her on a cool, rain-soaked Hawaiian night beneath a single bulb and the hum of insects and water droplets playing percussion.
Cold Walking – Spenard Edition
Jan 1st
I don’t know if it was the fact that I’ve been cooped up in the house for two weeks or that it was 13 below zero outside, but I decided to take a walk around Spenard tonight.
Cold walking is the same as regular walking, but it’s a bit more purposeful.
The first half mile I was too focused on my breathing to pay attention to anything else. I kept a watchful eye out for our neighborhood moose, but I was fixated on my frozen nostrils and the billowy clouds of breath coming from my mouth.
Night walking in Spenard
At 13 below, the neighborhood was quiet. A few cars passed by, but the sparkling, popping sounds of super cold were my only companions. Businesses along Spenard wished patrons a Happy New Year, promising to return on January 3.
The working women were not at their usual posts, but then I didn’t really expect them to be.
Near the Puffin Inn, I saw my first human. A couple huddled together carrying a few groceries from the nearby Tesoro. They looked up and nodded as they walked by. I find the nod to be an interesting interaction. Less formal than hello, the nod simply affirms that you are a person and that you are passing by. It’s neither overly friendly nor completely ignorant.
At about 20 minutes into my walk, my jeans felt like boards, and the cold had reached my finger tips through the leather gloves I was wearing. I turned back toward the house and felt a moment of panic at how cold I would actually feel by the time I got home.
The sodium lights seemed to pop in the intensity of the cold, each one giving off a chilly blue heat that never seems to reach street level.
By the time I reached Barbara Drive, my teeth were chattering, and I had a hard time making a fist with either hand. I worried a little about how to get the key into the lock. I walked a little faster down the dark street, ignoring the possibility of our neighborhood moose showing up unexpectedly.
The rush of hearted air when I opened the door was most welcome, and I ran warm water over my hands until I could flex them easily again.
Happy New Year: Watermarks and Brackish Lines
Dec 31st
2011 Sunset
I didn’t make any resolutions on this day in 2010. Resolutions require you to attempt to become something you are not.
For instance, to look like a super model would require an impossible combination of genes, a cocaine addiction and a horrible eating disorder. I just don’t have that in me.
I didn’t really set any expectations for 2011 either. The last time I did that, I lost my job and my house and found myself working in the Last Frontier. And when you’re in Alaska, you kind of have to roll with the punches, so to speak.
In a place that can kill you in a 1,000 different ways, flexibility is a key component to survival. As is Vitamin D.
And bear spray.
And since years are a measure of time and time is capable of producing much change, 2011 left its mark.
As the Weakerthans sing in their song “Watermark:” “Let me scrub that brackish line that you got
when something rose and then receded.”
It was not a watershed year, but it rose and then it receded, and this is me pontificating about that brackish line.
From a personal standpoint, at 37, on the cusp of 38, I’m probably entertaining the tingling-beginnings of that midlife crisis I’ve read so much about over the years. What that looks like for a generation Xer with a best friend for a wife, three adoring kids and a great job, I couldn’t even begin to imagine. I certainly don’t think it’s a bright red sports car, and I know I won’t be climbing Mt. McKinley anytime soon.
I suppose the only thing to do is wait for it to get here and ride it for all it’s worth.
Or maybe that tingling sensation is just a cold coming on. Who knows.
From a professional standpoint, 2011 was a year of learning. Someone told me that in any new job it takes a full year to become fully proficient at what you were hired to do. This is the first year that I really understood that statement. And I was patient with myself within that understanding. I allowed more time to realize the bigger picture, which allowed me to gain a greater understanding of where I fit into the system.
From a familiar standpoint, and by familiar, I mean familial, it has been a profound year. In Oregon and Missoula we had developed a supporting cast of friends and family. Our kids developed relationships and hobbies.
Alaska has proven a bit forbidding to this strategy. As a result, we’ve spent a lot more time together, and even though we’ve spent the last 13, 10 and 5 years together, respectively, we’ve come to know each other far better in this last year than in any single year before. I’ll always be grateful for this time.
As another marker draws near, a timeframe comes to an end, a tax season cuts off, I’m aware of just how much I don’t want to resolve anything by setting some unattainable goal that requires me to be something I’m not.
And yet if I take what I learned in 2011 and make a practical application of it in 2012, I’m bound to have another brackish line a little higher and to the left of the one I’m standing at now.
I don’t want a watershed year. Like learning how to drive a car, you practice for congestion and parallell parking in tight spaces, but you hope for an autobahn to cruise on.
A new experience, or two, would be nice. More friends is always a good thing. But deeper relationships with the friends I already have would be better.
Passing a date in time won’t make it so.
So goodbye to the best hardest year I’ve had so far. Bring on the next. If it’s harder, then I hope it’s a better harder year than 2011.
Happy New Year!
Change is Hard, Irrelevance is Harder – Changing the World One Story at a Time
Dec 27th
Change is hard.
As an agent of change, I should know this better than most people. But I’m just as susceptible to the fears and ingrained prejudices surrounding it.
I like consistency and patient, drawn-out practice that makes perfect. I love when beautiful things are established and become solidified in our culture.
And this is very different from the world we live in today. We live in the time of the cult of done, and fail fast, fail cheap.
Falling in love with journalism is often the product of an intense relationship with a particular medium. For print reporters, it’s often the feel of news print between their fingers, the layout on the pages, a formal-looking byline in black on white. For television reporters, it’s the addictive nature of appearing on television. Done well, it’s one of the most exciting forms of communication.
Best Narrative Songs: The Stories Music Tells
Dec 19th
Best Narrative Songs
I have more PTO than I can possibly use, and I’ve decided to use the time off to figure out a few things. I’m not going to start my New Years Resolutions on January 1. I’m easing into a year of change one day at a time by spending my time slowing down to a crawl so I can get back on my feet again.
The year 2012 will be the year of the story. So here’s the first in my list of things to do.
Music has been a lifelong companion. I played clarinet in 5th grade. I switched to alto sax in 7th grade, tenor in 8th and 9th and bass guitar in 10th. But notes were never my forte, it was always words.
And beyond that it’s the stories in the words.
Here then is my current list of 10 musical narratives. Stories in song form. These are simply songs I’m familiar with. There are many others, and I want to explore those too. But just as there are lists of top books and albums, surely there must be a top 10 list of best narrative songs.
I’d love to know what your favorite narrative songs are. I’d love to hear why you think they are. And by the end of this year, I’d like to rewrite this list, or cement this list as, at least in my mind.
1. A Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash
2. The Road Goes on Forever – Robert Earl Keene
3. The Devil Went Down to Georgia – The Charlie Daniels Band
4. Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
5. Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
6. El Paso – Marty Robbins
7. Tangled up in Blue – Bob Dylan
8. Lawyers, Guns and Money – Warren Zevon
9. Red Barchetta – Rush
10. Choctaw Bingo – James McMurtry
Add your favorite narrative songs in the comments. But be sure to give a reason why.
Checklist for being a “real” Digital journalist
Dec 15th
This is my response to the Stuff Journalists Like blog post, Checklist for being a “real” journalist.
I have done most things on that list, with the exception of having conducted a phone interview while completely naked. At least I don’t remember having done that.
So here’s my Checklist for being a “real” digital journalist.
1. Written a 3-inch story, posted it to the web and then socialed the link in 5 minutes.
2. Corrected a loved one’s grammar on Facebook.
3. You read food blogs instead of eating lunch.
4. Have downloaded at least three scanner apps to your iPhone for work and paid for them yourself.
5. The crumbs in your keyboard could feed a small African nation for a month.
6. You can’t get laid off, because no one else knows how to update the web site.
7. You’ve never “really” had a weekend off.
8. Can no longer read a web article without submitting it to Digg, Yammer, StumbleUpon or BoingBoing.net.
9. Learned that being called and asked if you can help someone upgrade their browser or submit a picture is just part of the job.
10. Never wake up in a cold sweat anymore, because you can just update the story with the correct information.
11. Spend your downtime updating your company Facebook and Twitter to keep the engagement and referrals up when you’re not working.
12. Slept in your chair, because you were trying to create a Google Mashup on deadline, and you bit off way more than you can chew.
13. Found that fine line between interest and obsession. And you not only crossed it, you obliterated it.
14. You’d never call your editor for bail, because you can’t get away from your computer long enough to get in trouble.
15. You check in and live Tweet city council meetings just for fun, because no audience is going to follow that.
16. You work 16 hour days, because no one else can do what you do.
17. Have conducted a Skype interview in pajama bottoms and a button down shirt.
18. You have a 32 gb thumb drive for a briefcase. And it’s full.
19. Threatened to quit over a Lindsay Lohan post.
20. You often consider doing something else, but you don’t, because you’re the only one who can do what you do.
Thom Petty – Ciao, my Friend
Dec 13th
I looked down and spotted a Bible on a bench near me in an old Quonset hut in Manoa Valley. I picked it up and read the inscription in gold leaf on the bonded leather cover. It read Thom Petty. I held it up for a buddy to see and said, “Hey, do you think the Heartbreakers know that Tom Petty is a Bible thumper?”
Turns out Thom had added the h to his name to differentiate himself from the blonde-locked rocker of “Free Fallin’” fame.
The Real Thom Petty
I was a little afraid of Thom before I ever had a chance to meet him. He had developed a Gordon Ramsay reputation in the kitchens that he oversaw.
I finally met him as he was passing through Honolulu. He offered to cover dinner prep for a group of about 65 people. I had landed the privilege of dinner duty with Thom that weekend, and though my friends were playing an intense game of volleyball on the sand court near the kitchen, I asked Thom if I could stay when he told me he really didn’t need any help until it was time to clean up.
It was partially the huge bottle of Gallo that he’d take a swig of between adding it to a massive kettle of pasta sauce and part his crusty demeanor. I felt like there was something else that needed exploring.
Little did I know.
Thom Petty might be the most interesting person I’ve ever met.
I could say something like Gallo in the kitchen almost always reveals a good soul, but Thom was a force of nature. Grouchy and almost unapproachable with his greying whiskers, his pure Italian bravado and his deft touch with a wooden spoon and a slow-cooked pot of Sicilian tomatoes with vegetables and seasonings, he didn’t exactly invite you into his inner circle.
An inner circle I figured could’ve had mob ties if I didn’t know Thom was happier as a restaurateur than Vito Corleone.
“The Help” – Stories that Change Lives
Dec 11th
The best review of a movie is not the plus or lack of tomatoes associated with it. Neither is it the over-exposed viewpoint of someone named Roger. In my opinion, it’s the individual response that a movie elicits.
Saturday night is dinner and a movie night. We usually search for something the whole family can enjoy. Often educational, we try for something that will take us to another place. Something that will help us understand others.
Last night we watched “The Help.”
Of all the movies we’ve watched around the table on Saturday nights, I have not seen the kids so enthralled, so completely mesmerized by a story before.
There were the obligatory tears, the tangible evidence of emotions gently or greatly tweaked by truth. Big, ugly truths. There was indignation, disbelief, anger pride, joy, elation, a range of emotions very rarely experienced all at once.
My oldest boy had seen the movie already. He looked at us often throughout the film, perhaps looking for visual cues to the things he now understood about life because of this movie.
My middle boy wears his heart on his sleeve. The tears were real, and I held him close as he dealt with feelings he didn’t quite understand.
I could say my youngest was too young to feel much of an impact from the film, but that’s not necessarily true. She understands story if not context right now. She understands the raw, exposed emotions of others.
There are a lot of amazing movies out there. Incredibly compelling stories presented to us by artists.
“The Help” is so powerful, so utterly deep in its ability to connect one human being to another, that I’m having trouble thinking of another movie that has impacted me in the way this movie did.
The only movies that come to mind are filled with actors and actresses whose faces I can see more than the message of their characters played. The cast of “The Help” are like characters in a book to me. They are nondescript but for the depth of the exploration of their souls be a writer skilled enough to develop them for the visual medium.
In other words, they are not helped by facial recognition, the contents of their bank accounts or the hardware won for previous films.
I’m a huge fan of story. “The Help” ranks among the best stories I’ve experienced. More so for the shared experience of watching it with my family. For the way it made us understand something and therefore understand each other more.