Jason C Ward

I have no direction.

Let me clarify. I spend most of my time moving, but with no final destination in mind.

That sounds awfully bleak. I guess it can be, when I stop to think about the ramifications of the fact. But I rarely do. It is a stark realization, like what I do has no meaning beyond the immediate future. It is not unlike combing the desert for your next drink of water, then looking out at the landscape and realizing that there is only more thirst to follow...

A shout out to all of our supporters.

Muchos Gracias to:

Nick Klooz, for your work on the upcoming website

Dustin Lynch, for your design thinking

Jeff and Nathan at Cosmic Wombat, for your partnership

During May of 2013, I made a weekend trip to Pittsburgh to visit my friend, Jimmy, who had just moved there a few months earlier from Austin. Austin is a great town, with a lot of unique experiences. Jimmy had yet to discover any similar unique aspects to Pittsburgh. So I made it my mission that weekend to help him do so.

Thusly, we found...

Yep, that says "The Church Brew Works." A brewery in an old church. Genius!

The bar area was really cool, with stained glass windows behind the brewing tanks. The food was pretty good too, and the beer was top-notch!

And that is indeed a series of brewing apparatuses where the alter used to be. It is an awesome sight!

Beasts of the Southern Wild

This was a phenomenal film. I'm not alone in this opinion. But beyond the acting of the young girl in the film, and beyond the story itself, there was one staggeringly beautiful attribute that this film possessed.

The setting.

I'm not talking about The Bathtub, or even the "deep south." 

By setting, I mean the foundation that the story rests upon. That foundation is...

Poverty. Not the sort of poverty that we see every day in the breakfast lines of our public schools, or on the streets of our aging inner ring suburbs. The poverty that undergirds Beasts of the Southern Wild is something entirely different. 

The setting is nearly post-apocalyptic in its visual and textural elements. There are remnants of a post-industrial society evident in The Bathtub, but they seem out of place to the people who subsist somewhat happily (in spite or the turmoil and destruction) among the wreckage. These are a people who forage, fish and farm what they need, and they seem happier in that reality than most of us do amongst the gears of capitalism and consumerism.