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In my capacity as copy editor for Blast Magazine, one of the issues I come across on a regular basis is the poorly written, spoiler-filled movie review. Now, Blast has put out some decent material, but as a start-up with pretty strong roots in university talent (read: people who are writing for the clips, not the paycheck), some of the writers are new to writing for a publication, or even sometimes writing at all.

While this creates all kinds of fun for me (like teaching new writers about why they should learn AP style, why we use just a single space after periods, etc.), it also sets me up for some unplanned exposure to information that can really make a movie (or TV show) not as enjoyable as it should be when I finally make it to the theater. Sometimes it’s a writer’s first time crafting a review, and one of the most common traps that new writers fall into, especially those without much to actually say about the film, is to just write a synopsis of the plot, which is a real downer for the people reading it who want to be surprised by all the twists and turns.

So, it raises a bit of a conundrum, especially considering I’m Blast’s only copy editor. If I have to edit a piece that will unintentionally spoil a movie, TV show, book, etc., what recourse do I have, especially in the age of digital media and a news cycle that doesn’t sleep? Waiting until after I’ve seen it doesn’t always work, as I’m usually the last person to catch a film in theater before it goes into that waiting period to appear on DVD. Personally, I just bite the bullet, edit it, and try to teach the writer to be a little less revealing next time around — with an ever-changing staff, it doesn’t always last, but that’s just the nature of the job, I suppose.

So, what do you do when you have to copy edit spoiler-filled material? Do you grit your teeth and plow through? Do you make a colleague who doesn’t care, or who you don’t care for, edit it instead? Do you wait until you’ve seen it for yourself and let the glaring typos and grammatical errors sit there for all to see until you get around to it?

To say I’ve fallen off an update schedule would be a gross understatement at this point: the last time I posted I was sitting at Espresso Love in Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard, home for the summer to work and save money for my last year of college. Now, it’s something like 11 months later, and some things are changing, and others are way too much the same for my tastes. I’ve been starting my mornings at Espresso Love again, which is a great way to start them, after driving Ivona to work, and I have my first shift driving a cab tomorrow morning. And while some of these things are painfully too familiar, it feels like one era has ended and another is beginning.

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We looked at the wrong camera

On account of posting three times yesterday and that it’s almost midnight on Sunday and I have a crazy day tomorrow, I’m going to do a real short post just to throw up a picture I found while looking around on Facebook today. I haven’t posted a single picture before now, which is sort of sad, and in the coming days I’ll post more. Ultimately, I want to get a really nice camera (I know, mom, you bought me one a couple years ago but it has a problem with the lens that might be more expensive than it’s worth to fix) and start teaching myself a bit more about being a good photographer. Then I’ll do a daily photo or something.

Anyway, this is a picture from a New Year’s Eve party a few years ago… maybe sophomore year of college? I guess it’s fitting to post this since I’m posting writing from around that time. It also happens to be a picture of me that I like, which is pretty hard to find. These are all people I went to high school with, most notably my friend David Linfield, who I later visited in Scotland and who remains a good friend. The best part is that there were two people taking pictures and we looked at the wrong camera, but I think it turned out better that way. I’m the guy on the right, for those who don’t know, wearing the black fleece with the Heineken in my hand.

I wrote this sophomore year of college, I think. I used to get infatuated with random girls everywhere and that’s what this poem is about. All those fantasies ended as soon as the ring hit my finger, I swear. Anyway, not necessarily a great poem, but it’s sort of funny to me because at least I understand it.

When I go out to write or read,
The corner-of-the-coffee-shop girl
Becomes
Center-of-my-mind girl
And
Waiting-in-the-rain-for-a-bus girl
Becomes
Saturday-morning-reason-to-not-get-out-of-bed-because-she’s-in-it girl
(And some of you may have noticed by now and I’m sorry
but I won’t hold it against you when you walk out of my life
without a word so we’ll call it even)
The day when singing-to-herself-while-she-walks-ahead-of-me-and-doesn’t-think-anyone-can-hear-her girl
Stops singing to me
Will be very sad indeed.

I took last year off from school and worked as a garbage man to help out the family. I drove a commercial garbage truck, which means I dealt with dumpsters and commercial trash (as opposed to residential, though I did do that once a week). I was up at 4 am or so every morning to don my blue Dickies and bright yellow shirts, stumble into Ivona’s sister’s Jeep that she let me borrow for the winter (man I miss that car, even though it was falling apart), and drive a couple towns over to start my route.

When people ask me about driving a garbage truck, I usually tell them it’s as bad as it sounds, only worse, and then I pause for a minute as if to think reflectively and tell them “well, once you got used to it, it wasn’t so bad.” Maybe I’m just a fake motherfucker, but I get sick of answering the same questions all the time, so I at least have fun trying to perfect the same responses, or make up ridiculous answers (“No man, I loved that job! I found so many cool things in the trash, and I never had to bring my own lunch, if you know what I mean!”). For the first week, I was miserable and convinced I would quit. During training I was riding around in a residential truck with a Brazilian kid named Ramon who drove like a psychopath and would pretend to be a stupid, uneducated foreigner when dealing with some of the customers (“Yes boss! Sorry boss! Next time better boss!”) while I tried to hold back laughter (he and I had actually gone to high school together and his English was pretty good).

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Throughout my college career, several semesters have stood out as having a common theme, as if all my courses seem to be about the same over-arching message. More than likely it’s because I have a certain idea in my brain that I’m thinking about, and that could influence my choice of classes or what I get out of them, but sometimes it seems uncanny how similar the ideas are between the different courses.

The theme of this semester seems to be centered on objectivity and subjectivity. These are ideas I’ve dealt with a lot as a journalist, but lately I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. As I wrote in one of my papers for Covering Race lately, as a journalism student I’ve been told that objectivity is the highest ideal. I’ve pursued it, trying to keep my personal beliefs and opinions out of the discussion. I always had the feeling that perfect objectivity was unnattainable, but lately I’m feeling like even imperfect objectivity doesn’t even exist.

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