Bridges

One of my regular gigs is for bridges.com, a site for youth to check out to read about different career paths and industry trends. It provides me a chance to interview and write about people involved in everything from computer programming to hiking trail maintenance. It's also fun writing for a younger audience. Below are excerpts from a couple of articles I did for them.

[From an article about BMX freestyle:]

Born as an offshoot of traditional BMX—which stands for bicycle motocross and involves riders racing each other around a dirt track—BMX freestyle involves doing tricks on a BMX bike.

Not only does it look super cool, but it feels great to practice tricks enough that you get them “dialed,” as they say in the BMX scene. It’s good exercise, fresh air and gives you a great feeling of satisfaction!

Canadian rider Jeff Favelle isn’t a pro, but he has the same passion for the sport that pros do. He’s been riding, on and off, for “the better part of 20 years.” He’s recently re-discovered his bike, and is riding harder—and better—than ever. For him, it’s a hobby that will never go away. So what does he get out of it?

“Exercise, stress relief, fun, camaraderie and a sense of progression,” he says. “And it’s fun to visualize stuff and work towards it, like any other goals in life.”

Favelle, who responds with a resounding “definitely!” when asked if people should get into BMX freestyle as a hobby, also points out that there are career paths in BMX freestyle, and not always doing the actual riding.

“Like anything in life, you can take this sport to the extreme and become a professional,” he says. “Many try, and very few actually succeed—much like other organized, more traditional sports. But the process involved, the training, the exercise, the discipline, and the mental toughness acquired is all worth it and rewarding, even if the end result is not a full factory sponsorship and being paid to ride.”

Brian Tunney is a professional BMX freestyle rider in New Jersey who also manages to work in the industry, being the Managing Editor of Dig BMX, a cool BMX freestyle magazine.

“Personally, it’s changed my life,” he says of riding. “I’ve been around the world. I’ve learned that anything is possible and I’ll never back down from a challenge. I could go on for days about what I get out of BMX, but on the whole, it’s helped me to understand life a lot more than I ever thought possible. Plus, it gets me to the Bodega everyday for a 99-cent Arizona iced tea.”

[From an article about business analysts:]

If you want to become a private eye but can’t quite get into that line of work, perhaps you’ll find your calling with a jump over to the realm of suits and ties. Business analysts are the detectives of the business world. They solve business problems for companies.

“A business analyst does something different every day,” says British Columbia-based business analyst Darryl Karleen. “It’s a job that combines investigation and detective-like work. Rather than solving a murder case like on CSI, I try to understand and solve business problems. Sometimes this involves changing the way some people do their jobs so that that they can do it faster or more efficiently. Other times, our solution includes the installation and setup of new computer programs to help the people do their jobs faster or better.”

A business analyst needs to have an analytical mind and to be patient and thorough. They also need to be able to understand a variety of graphs, charts and internal documents so having good comprehension skills is also important.

Dave Bieg is the chief operating officer of the International Institute of Business Analysts. He says getting a bachelor’s degree is a start on the road to becoming a business analyst. But as with many careers, getting more education is generally a good thing!

Kathleen Barret, president of the International Institute of Business Analysis, adds that while there is no specific educational requirement, business analysts do need to have certain skills.

“Business analysts should have a good understanding of how business works and IT [information technology] concepts,” she says. “Business analysts must be analytical and not intimidated by ambiguity. It is their job to clarify ambiguity.”

Strung Out

Another one for Monday Magazine, where I wrote weekly and proofread every week until budget cuts and a tough economy found me and the paper saying goodbye. This one was a blast for me, and I think that comes through in the piece. My last few pieces for Monday were some of my favourites I ever did for them.

Punk-Rock Carpet Cleaners

Strung Out change to stay the same

Talking to Strung Out drummer Jordan Burns is a lot like talking to any number of dudes who play in California punk bands. He seems happy. Says “gnarly” more than the average person. Is content with where his band is at, some 17 years into their career, even if it hasn’t brought him to our city that often.
“We’ve only been to Victoria once,” he says while driving to the studio for day one of recording his band’s new album. “Do you remember the time? I do.”
I do too. It was around ’94 or ’95. It was at a venue long-since shut down; I was a young punk rocker and Strung Out was playing with one of my favourite bands, Lagwagon. I had the poster up on my wall for years; at some point I decided to throw it out, which was a mistake. But my memories—however foggy—remain.
Burns has memories of that night too; they involve Derrick Plourde, then-drummer of Lagwagon, who killed himself in 2005.
“We got to the club and they didn’t have a drum carpet for us. So me and Derrick created this plan where we went to a convenience store, walk in and tell the lady we’re here to clean the carpets. Then we grabbed a carpet and just walked out of there with it. We took the carpet back to the club and had a carpet to play on. That’s what I remember about our show in Victoria with Lagwagon,” says Burns, lost in the memory of Plourde. “It was so much fun touring with him; he was such a character.”
For a split second, my mind is elsewhere; it’s 1994 again. Long hair, cassettes, high school. I snap out of it, ask if they took the carpet with them; both Burns and I laugh, but it’s a bit too quick, too loud. We’re both elsewhere.
“Yeah. I got that in storage,” he says. “It says ‘Victoria’ on it.”
I ask about his band’s new B-sides and rarities collection, Prototypes and Painkillers, and get an update on their upcoming studio album almost as an afterthought. Because we’re really not talking about the present anymore; we’re talking about the past. But one thing about Strung Out is that they refuse to live in the past when it comes to their music.
“We’re always challenging ourselves to mix it up,” he says, now stuck in traffic, cursing, late to get to the studio. “This new album is doing that again, it’s completely different. We’ll keep making different sounds, but we always sound like Strung Out.”

-Greg Pratt

Airport runway expansion

This one was for the Business Examiner, where I put together a roundup of business news every issue called "Movers and Shakers" as well as do the event calendar. I also do some writing for them and it's always fun.

Victoria airport extension key to cruise ship growth

By Greg Pratt

Blue skying about a runway extension for Victoria has turned to hard calculation with the slow materializiation of the federal-provincial stimulus plan.
The proposed 1,400-ft. extension to the existing 7,000-ft. strip would bring bigger planes, more tourists and, crucially for the cruise industry’s hopes (see “Snaring the next-gen cruise ships,” page 1), the ability to have heavily-laden international charters land and take off in Victoria.
“It is very safe to say we’re in support [of lengthening the runway],” says Bruce Carter, CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. “It does a number of things for our economy. The first is that it will allow for access for international charters, particularly from Europe and other places far away. That will be good for both our conference and tourism business and will provide a platform to allow us to attract a cruise ship to home port in Victoria.”
Carter, who says this would also help out the high-tech sector, adds that if bigger runways persuaded cruise lines to make Victoria their home base for Alaska cruises, it would substantially benefit the tourism and hotel sectors of the local economy.
“People normally arrive a day prior to their cruise,” says Carter. “So for each of those turns you’d get 300 or 400 hotel-room nights and the associated spending with spending a day in Victoria, as opposed to the current spending somewhere between four and six hours in Victoria and moving on. The economic impact of that is significant.”
A longer runway would accommodate planes that the current runway can not, such as the wide-bodied aircraft that are able to get to Europe in one jump from here, like the Boeing 767, the airbus equivalent, the 330,or the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Carter believes that cruise lines would make Victoria their home base only if their passengers could fly here directly.
Richard Paquette, president and CEO of the Greater Victoria Airport Authority, says that the project will take an estimated $41.2 million to complete; they are proposing a three-way partnership with the provincial and federal governments. (In related news, Nanaimo’s airport is going ahead with a $9.1-million runway extension and upgrade, with phase-one work scheduled for completion in November.)
“This would be beyond the capacity of the Airport Authority to go this alone,” he says. “This is an opportunity for partnership, an opportunity for a project that offers some long-term benefits to the community, and certainly short-term stimulus, too.”
And while money is one obstacle, there are other logistic concerns in regards to doing this, even though the airport has the space on its grounds to do so.
“There certainly will be challenges,” says Paquette.
“Although it costs money to build runways and extend them, it’s relatively easy,” says Carter. “It’s a matter of sorting out what to do with the runway lighting, which is not a huge thing but needs to be addressed.
“My understanding around that is it probably either needs to go towards Sidney, into the municipality, or out into the water.”
“It’s been on our master plan for some time,” concludes Paquette. “We’ve been seriously talking about it for about two years. At this point, it’s still talk, there’s still work to be done, evaluations to be completed, but there’s a new urgency on this. If this is going to be part of the stimulus program for the Canadian and British Columbian government, then we have to get on with it right away,” he says, adding, “We are among the major airports in the country; we have the shortest runway.”

Slipknot

Did this one for exclaim.ca; it's always fun to dig a bit deeper into a bigger band or celebrity. One of these days one of these dudes will just hang up on me, but so far everyone seems into having an interview that is a bit different than the usual.

Conversations
Slipknot’s Corey Taylor

By Greg Pratt

Four albums in and Iowan metal crew Slipknot are still terrorizing the mainstream. I have no idea how they ended up there: this is heavy, heavy stuff. But their latest disc, All Hope Is Gone, ended up at #1 on the Billboard charts, so they must be doing something right. With a renewed focus on his side, singer Corey Taylor is overjoyed at the album, his fans and recent victories like the aforementioned #1 and a headlining gig at Madison Square Garden. The masked men are hitting up Canada with some tour dates supporting the disc, so we took a minute to catch up with Taylor and all things knotty.

What are you up to?
I’m very, very tired. Today I got up at 6:45 because I had to take my son to school. I made breakfast and lunch for him, packed the lunch, took him to school, came home, cleaned the house, went and worked out, came back here, made myself lunch and now this is the second of two interviews I’m doing today.

That’s so not rock and roll.
Well, neither am I. What are you going to do?

So how’s everything going in Slipknot land?It’s going good, man. Everybody seems like they’re in a good place, but you know how we are. That could all go away in a ten-second period. Just the fact that my phone’s not blowing up with emergencies and panic attacks… I’m loving it.

Now that All Hope Is Gone has had a bit of time to sit, how are you feeling about it?
I go through these phases where I just have to put it on. At first, I would start with the front half; now I listen to the back half. It just sounds great. You know how that is, you get an album and fall in love with the first five songs and then you throw it on again and realize the last five songs are killer.

With All Hope Is Gone, you returned to a bit more of a heavier sound. Did that just feel like the right thing to do?
It just happened. We’ve never been the band that sits down and says, “We’re going to sit down and make this kind of album.” We throw shit at a wall and see what sticks, basically. With this album, everything felt dark. Everything felt really heavy.

So would you say the album comes from a good place or a bad place? It’s heavy, it’s aggressive, it’s dark, but you sound very positive about it.
I think all great albums have that; it’s all in the delivery. The lyrics I was writing were kind of both ways. I was raging on a political sense, and I’ve always had something against religion, but at the same time a lot of the stuff I was talking about started in a dark place but inevitably ended up in a positive place. I’ve always tried to put that in there, just saying, ‘Yeah, shit’s fucked up right now but it can be okay and this is why and this is how.’ So it’s just something that I think is overlooked. We catch a lot of shit for being dark and whatnot but unless you’re a real fan people miss the point where we’re like, ‘But it’s alright. It’s okay to be fucked up. It doesn’t have to always be that way.’ On this album, it was a great balance. That’s what we finally found.

And then the album goes to #1 on Billboard. What does that mean to you?
It’s very weird, man. When we were in the studio, I was the first one to say, ‘This album’s going to be #1.’ Kinda just talking shit, but at the same time, you hope for it. You don’t want to hope too much, but it’s definitely one of those things on your list of “holy shit, this would be fucking awesome.” So when it did go #1, it fucking blew me away. I was so fucking excited. I was really happy; I called everybody I knew and told them. I was very proud of that. Everybody talks about how it felt to win the Grammy. But fuck the Grammy. That’s seven old people sitting in a room deciding whether or not they’ve heard of your band. For me, it’s always been more about the albums, the gold albums, the platinum albums, people showing up at your show. That’s your audience coming out and saying, ‘We fucking love what you do. We all do.’ The album was the same way; our fans gave that to us. We worked hard and we earned it but our fans gave that to us just as much as fucking SoundScan did.

Speaking of the live show, you recently headlined Madison Square Garden. How did a band that sounds like you guys do that?
That’s a great fucking question, man. I don’t even know, to be honest. I still trip on it. Leading up to it, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I was like, ‘It’s fucking Madison Square Garden, whatever.’ Then you show up there and it’s like, ‘Holy shit, it’s Madison Square Garden.’ Seriously, when the curtain came up and we’re standing there and I’m looking at the Garden and we had damn near sold it out, my jaw dropped. You couldn’t see it because I was wearing a fucking mask, but it took me a second to get my shit together. I was nervous… I’m never nervous. It blew me away. When we finished the show, I came offstage, I just started balling. It was a heavy, heavy night for me. Nobody plays Madison Square Garden to make money, let’s put it that way. It’s very expensive to play. Someone told me it cost $50,000 just to turn the lights on in that place. So you don’t really play there to make money. You play there because it’s Madison Square Garden. It’s a prestige gig. For me, it was just one more testament to how far we’d come.

So you get offstage at Madison Square Garden and you’re balling; how come?
It was just big. I don’t usually let shit like that get to me, but it was a big night, and it was a fucking great show. It was probably the best show we’ve ever had in New York. Everyone was just going insane. It sounded like everyone was singing every fucking word. It was just one of those golden moments. It was Maiden at Donington, it was Cheap Trick at Budokan, it was Aerosmith at the Texas Jam. It was fucking heavy. The grind of this gig can break you down and make you very cynical but there’s moments like that that make you sit back and say, ‘I am living a dream. Are you kidding me? I get to do this for real?’ So I was giddy. I was 14 in my room reading magazines, just going, ‘Fuck, some day.’ And that day was that day and it made me very happy; I went backstage and hugged all my bros. I was sick as a fucking dog that night too, that’s what killed me. I had a sinus infection, I had an ear infection, a 100-degree fever and it just all went away.

So where do you go from here though? You’ve done Madison Square Garden…
Oh, it’s gotta be downhill. Everything after this has just got to suck. (laughs) In three years we’ll be playing fucking clubs again, by my estimation. But honestly, I don’t know. I definitely know where we want to go. Me and Clown have been conspiring for probably four or five months; we’ve got some ideas and some shit we want to do for the next album but… where do you go? You headline MSG and it’s damn near sold out. Where do you go? I guess you just keep going.

Something that’s always cracked me up about you guys is you have these butt-ugly masks on and you look hideous and you have all these teenage girls screaming at you…
Exactly! What the fuck is that? (laughs) I love it, man.

You must be laughing under the masks.
You have no idea. I smirk damn near the whole time I’m wearing that fucking thing. If you could read some of the letters I get… it’s un-fucking-believable some of the shit these people ask me.

When does grown men wearing masks become absurd?
I’m not sure, to be honest. We probably could ask Gene Simmons. I don’t know… That’s a good question. As long as it means the same to us as it always has I don’t think there’s a time limit on it. For us, it’s not about the bullshit; it’s about the content behind it. At least that’s the way it is for me. For me, it’s always had much more of an artistic bent than anything else. So when it starts to become Chewbacca from Star Wars it’s time to walk. As long as it still feels right and it means the same and it’s not hokey and not bullshit. As long as we don’t jump the shark, I think it’ll be okay.

Kreator

I did this one for Monday Magazine and was pretty happy with how it turned out. Building character in these small pieces is a challenge but I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Of course, when it's metal legends Kreator they pretty much build character all by themselves.

A quarter-century of violence
Kreator just keep on thrashing

It’s strange talking to Mille Petrozza. Petrozza, vocalist/guitarist of pioneering German thrash-metal band Kreator, is the man responsible for countless amounts of incredible guitar riffs and obscenely catchy songs that have been the backdrop to many a night spent drinking beers and talking metal shop with the pals. But Petrozza is a mild man when not on stage, and as we chat, this legend of Teutonic thrash is sitting on a bed in a hotel in Cleveland; “We’re in Cleveland today. The shows are all very good,” he says in a monotone at the beginning of our conversation, with the mannerism of a very polite man who’s done a lot of interviews in his day.
But polite does not a thrash album make: with album titles like Violent Revolution, Enemy of God and, their most recent, Hordes of Chaos, comprising the band’s new-millennium catalogue, you’d be right to guess that lyrics about relationships or drunken nights at the bar would be a bit misplaced. This is serious stuff, and this is where Petrozza starts to open up.
“The thing is, playing this kind of music, playing extreme metal, demands extreme lyrics, otherwise not only would it not fit, it would make the whole music sound ridiculous and pointless,” he says. “I think it’s just necessary to have these lyrics if you want to make sense in your music and what you want to get across to people.”
Looking back, Petrozza pinpoints 1988—four years after the band formed—as the year his lyrical focus shifted from fantasy to reality but is quick to add that he’s not here to preach.
“It’s not that we want to spread a message or tell people what to think but we do want songs that make sense, you know?” he says. “We want to be happy with the music and the lyrics so we can perform them more convincingly.”
In a better world, this man wouldn’t be in a quiet hotel room in Cleveland waiting to play an okay-sized venue as he trucks across North America in less-than-perfect conditions. He’d be rewarded for 25 years of uphill battle, 25 years of thrashing good times, 25 years of being at the forefront of an underdog of a subgenre. Maybe next time around, Mille. But until then, you should stop worrying about trying to convince anyone—your music already does that just fine.
-Greg Pratt

Veganism

I wrote this piece for Boulevard Magazine in Victoria.

Where’s the Beef?
To vegans, it’s nowhere to be found

By Greg Pratt

If you’re looking to spice up your eating habits, one way to add more is to take away. To take away the meat, that is, and switch over to a vegan diet (abstaining from any animal products, including dairy: bye-bye, cheese!). It’s healthy, it’s fun and it’s tasty. These days there’s no shortage of information and organizations to help out; the worldwide vegan scene has come a long way in the past 20 years.
And the face of the local vegan scene is certainly Sarah Kramer. Kramer has written (or co-written) four vegan cookbooks and has become something of a celebrity in food circles. As Kramer and I sit down to eat and chat at a local café, she is recognized by someone who asks, “You write the vegan cookbooks, right?” After Kramer accepts some compliments, she tells me about her growing up vegetarian.
“My mom raised me vegetarian since birth in Regina in the ‘70s, so it wasn’t easy,” she says, as we dive in to a delicious vegan lunch of huge yam crackers with various dips (it may not sound like much but, yes, it’s very filling and very tasty). “There was one health-food store, in the basement of our friend’s house. And there weren’t products; my mom had to make everything from scratch. I think that’s part of where my love of creating stuff in the kitchen came from. I was vegetarian my whole life, except for a small period in high school where I did a little experimenting, like teenagers do,” she laughs.
Kramer, now 40, was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in her early 20s; she says switching to a vegan diet helped her beat the condition. These days she feels and looks great, and goes non-stop promoting the vegan lifestyle. When we got together to chat she had just returned from a book tour for her latest, Vegan A Go-Go!, and is busy putting together a 2010 calendar and unabashedly debunking the myth that you won’t have any energy if you don’t eat meat.
Another myth is that veganism is inherently more expensive than a meat-based diet. Kramer says that if people are buying a lot of fake meat products or other pre-packaged food this may be the case, but if you’re making more meals from scratch, it’s not an expensive way to eat.
“I can make a giant pot of chili for six bucks if I go out and buy all the ingredients,” she says. “But a can of Amy’s chili is four dollars. Making your own wheat-gluten fake meat products is so easy and you can do it for pennies. It just takes a little time.”
The biggest vegan-related myth is that all vegans eat is bread and peanut butter, maybe some twigs for flavour, a bit of dirt as a spice . . . the truth is much different. Chatting with Kramer, we dive into a date/avocado/chocolate vegan cheesecake of sorts, which is almost too tasty for either of us to handle.
“Bland food is bland. So bland vegan food will be as bland as bland non-vegan food,” says Victoria’s Dave Shishkoff, the Canadian correspondent for Friends of Animals, a 50-year-old organization that promotes respectful treatment of animals through animal rights and vegan advocacy. “The most common way to de-bland foods is to spice them up, and luckily the all herbs and spices I can think of are plant-based. Veganism actually opens up a whole new world of flavourful delights for many people. Suddenly, the entire produce section of the grocery store is more in focus, and there is a very wide range of fruits and vegetables out there. Veganism encourages people to expand their horizons and try them all.”
I ask Kramer what her favourite vegan dishes are and it sounds anything but bland: Portobello Mushroom Bake, a side of Edamame Hummus and Vegan Nanaimo Bars or Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie for dessert. So Kramer and Shishkoff (who has been vegan for over 18 years) agree that vegan food doesn’t have to bland; they also agree that vegan living doesn’t have to be expensive. He says it can work well on a tight budget and can offer many very healthy and nutrient-rich foods.
“I favour and recommend a whole-foods diet, with a big focus on greens,” he says. “Since I buy primarily organic produce, it’s a bit pricier, but it’s worth it. One can be vegan and extremely frugal—think of how cheap dried beans, flours, fruit and other bulk items are, along with produce like potatoes and carrots.”
And consensus is having a vegan diet isn’t hard work like some may think it is. Shishkoff says that it takes some effort and a lot of commitment in the beginning, but don’t sweat it: it gets easier.
“It’s like any endeavour one might take on and requires education and adjustment,” he says. “One needs to spend some time learning about all the ‘secret’ animal ingredients in food, such as whey or casein, and apply this knowledge by reading labels and possibly finding new brands that are vegan.” “It can be tough but I think the trick is to be prepared,” says Kramer. “We’re really lucky in Victoria; there are a lot of places downtown where you can get vegan food.”
She’s right: one visit to local restaurants like Bliss (where Kramer and I eat as we talk), Mo:Le, Green Cuisine, Lotus Pond or the Joint, to name a few, will open up your taste buds to a whole new array of delicious, animal-free foods.
And good news for those who are vegan or thinking about making the switch over: things are getting easier. Local organizations like Vancouver Island Vegetarian Association (go to islandveg.com for more info) help people make the transition. Grocery stores are carrying more and more speciality products, and you’re no longer speaking a strange, impenetrable language when you tell your restaurant server you’re vegan.
“I remember back in the day when I’d be hanging out with my friends and all I could order would be salad and a baked potato,” says Kramer. “It’s not like that any more, at least on the west coast, for sure. We’re really lucky.”

New Kids on the Block

Sure, laugh: I think this is one of my favourite pieces. This was for Monday Magazine.

Regret, divorce, compromise
It’s not all good times with the New Kids on the Block

Donnie Wahlberg, he’s got my back against the wall. I’m about halfway through a shockingly candid and interesting interview with the New Kid on the Block/actor and I ask him if he wants to write more serious lyrics than those found on the band’s comeback disc, the Block. I bring up a particularly taste-offending couplet in “2 in the Morning,” where Wahlberg sings “I gotta know if you’re mad at me/before Grey’s Anatomy.”
“What do you mean?” Wahlberg asks after a silence; I don’t really know what to say. I mutter, “It just seems so… kind of…” I fear this could be the end of the interview, but Wahlberg sets the record straight.
“It was written about my wife and my break-up,” he says. “We basically spent a summer not communicating. Pretty much every night we wouldn’t talk until two in the morning. I was sleeping on the couch and she was up in the bedroom. I’d send her a text saying, ‘Are we gonna talk or do you wanna sleep?’ And most nights she said, ‘I’m going to sleep.’” Wahlberg sounds distant and intense; I realize I’ve brought up the wrong lyric. “I just couldn’t compete with Grey’s Anatomy that summer,” he says.
He admits that although the lyric I mentioned is not a good example, there are plenty of “goofball lyrics” on the disc. It’s something he feels the band didn’t really think about: people might not want to hear a 39-year-old man singing about being “your boyfriend.”
“Music comes on certain stations and it’s young people listening to it; some of them are gonna like it and not care, and some of them are going to say, ‘I don’t wanna hear those guys singing it, I want to hear the Jonas Brothers sing that shit.’ But if we do another [album], I think your point is well taken and we may take a different approach, but certainly not because we have regret.”
Regret: something Wahlberg does feel about some of the decisions the band made when they were younger. Not that, say, pillow cases negate musical credibility, but . . . they didn’t help.
“We tried to stay as on top of things as possible,” he says. “It’s just . . . it was so big, you know? When something gets that big it’s really out of control; you have to do all you can just to keep your sanity and not forget who you are. Our mentality started to be, look, it may not last forever but we’d like to have some dignity when it’s done. So enough with the bullshit. Enough with the pink slippers and the cereal and the cartoons. It’s enough . . . it’s enough. We made enough compromises and did enough things that we look back on with some regret . . .” Wahlberg pauses, sounds intense again; I find it hard to believe this is the once-teen heartthrob of a time past; he sounds like a man whose eyes are locked in the thousand-mile stare as we speak; a man who may be talking about his divorce or may be talking about his band’s past when he finishes his sentence: “at some point we said enough is enough.” And he says it with such intensity that I just leave it at that.
-Greg Pratt