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Last night at the Slam

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 19, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:2 Comments

It’s been a while since I judged a slam (publicly, at least!), especially at 13 where I know several of the regulars personally, so I was surprised when Lynne asked me to judge last night’s open slam. I was happy to do it as a critical listening exercise, though, because I think my ears have become much less sharp ever since I launched Spindle, and my focus has shifted to the page.

Way back in the day, I used to believe in never giving anyone less than 7 points for their work, respecting the effort it takes to simply get on stage and perform in front of an audience, but that floor dropped to 5 points last night for a terrible rhyming poem in the first round. Overall, it was a solid slam with no real standout performances and my scores were almost always the lowest or second lowest of the night with one surprising exception.

I wrote notes on each of my scores and here’s some of my favorites:

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Monday Mash-up, 2/18/08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 18, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

1) Spindle had a great week last week with a strong February update that generated our highest single-day traffic spike yet, and the announcement of our first contest, “Play Ball” — which offers a $50 honorarium for the best baseball / stickball / cricket-related poetry, fiction and non-fiction from a New York City perspective — has been well-received. The winner will be published in April as part of the “Play Ball” issue which I’m really looking forward to. Sports + writing = more fun than work.

2) Speaking of work, issue closings at the day job usually make for a rough week or two but the May/June issue closed last Tuesday without too much ado, partly because I’ve already locked up about 85% of our advertisers for the year. That last 15% is the difference between a solid issue and a great issue, though, so it wasn’t exactly a cake walk, especially since this issue was over-budgeted based on inflated numbers from last year, partly due to the change from a monthly schedule to bi-monthly the summer before. Overall, though, it’s shaping up to be a really good year and career-wise, the decisions I made over the past 18 months have really paid off.

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Spindle: February ’08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 12, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

In the midst of all the political blogging I’ve been doing lately, I had a Spindle update looming on the calendar for today and stole time here and there over the past two weeks to sift through the surprisingly steady stream of submissions that have come in since last month.

I was worried in mid-January that the aggressive “official launch” schedule I’d set up for January, posting 15 new pieces over three weeks, would deplete my inventory and leave me scraping through some marginal work to get something up this month but it all worked out nicely in the end as we have new work from Alan King, Eric Payne, Rachel L. Olivares and Julian Taub, plus new columns from Stephanie R. Myers (Myers Music Experience) and Brooke Wacha (On the 1).

Log on now and get into a New York state of mind @ http://www.spindlezine.com

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Latino politics follow-up

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 11, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

There’s been some interesting comments so far in Friday’s “When politics gets personal for Latinos” post, including the one point the media often overlooks, that Latinos are not some monolothic entity that can be stereotyped in one particular way. Today, I came across a couple more interesting nuggets, one that digs a little deeper into Clinton and Obama’s support within the Latino community to-date, and another that breaks down Texas’ upcoming complicated not-really-a-primary contest on March 4th that Clinton’s effectively betting the house on.

NOTE: Check out the original post, too, as I added a couple of new references, including one that looks at the potential scenario of the Democratic nomination coming down to the final contest in Puerto Rico on June 7th!

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A relevant look at Health Care from a new mother

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 11, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

Politicians love citing individual stories on the campaign trail to illustrate their ability to connect with the average voter and reinforce the superiority of their positions on any given subject. These stories are often moving, if rarely informative, but it’s always more interesting to me to hear the background on how someone came to the decision to support a particular candidate.

A friend of mine who lives in Texas — an intelligent, married white woman under 40 who recently had her first child — posted privately in her journal yesterday about how she ultimately determined her preferred candidate based on her own research (imagine that!) of their positions on health care and I asked her permission to repost it (with personal details removed) because it’s as clear, unbiased and relevant an explanation of the differences between Clinton and Obama’s health care proposals as I’ve come across so far.

I’ve made up my mind about my democratic candidate, and it’s based on health care.

And my choice is Barack Obama. Here is why.

My #1 issue this year is universal health care. It’s a personal issue for me. It was a terrifying experience for me to be pregnant and slightly above the income level Medicaid. Since I was unemployed during [my daughter’s] birth and most of my pregnancy, I had to have health insurance. And the only thing available to me was to continue my employer’s plan through COBRA, which was difficult to apply when I moved from PA to TX, and whose premiums were incredibly expensive. Now, with [my daughter] to cover, I’m spending $600 a month to cover both of us monthly. And that’s before co-pays, deductibles, and lab fees. I’ve had to pay this with no income of my own–my daughter and I wouldn’t have insurance unless my mom hadn’t graciously paid the vast majority of my COBRA premiums. I’m usually on the phone at least once a week with my insurance carrier getting bills adjusted, and I’m convinced the the system is utterly broken. I loathe going to the doctor because I know it means I’m going to have to spend a couple hours on the phone with the insurance company in two months to get the visit paid for. [My husband], who is working full-time as a contractor right now, has not had health insurance for about a year and remains uninsured.

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When politics gets personal for Latinos

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 8, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:8 Comments

In reality, politics are without question a very personal matter but, partly due to the media’s focus on the horserace aspect of elections and partly due to the candidates often allowing themselves to be defined by labels (or at the least, trying to marginalize their opponents with them), most political debate occurs from a safe, impersonal distance. It’s what I think made John Edwards such an intriguing but ultimately flawed candidate this time around as he was undeniably the most passionate of the bunch but was significantly hampered by the combination of his problematic track record as a Senator and the inherent discordance of a filthy rich trial lawyer attempting to present himself as a champion of the downtrodden, no matter how sincere he seemed to be about his chosen cause.

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to battle it out for the Democratic nomination that was not-too-long ago assumed to be going to be handed to her on February 5th, the admittedly minimal daylight between them on the actual issues are (hopefully) going to get a bit more scrutiny from voters and the media alike, and it’s going to be the most personal issues that will sway voters one way or the other.

Two issues of particular interest to Latinos are immigration reform and U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, the latter of which is greatly affected by a combination of the first two. Like Health Care, there’s not a huge disparity between them on the surface, but there are distinct differences in both their approach and tone that stand out for me.

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Little League Time!

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 7, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

On Saturday, we signed Isaac up for another season of Little League baseball and I agreed to coach again. Last year it was non-competitive Tee Ball and it turned out to be a lot of fun, but this year we’ll be moving up to the Bantam level which is where things officially get competitive. Talking with the league commissioner yesterday, he equated dealing with some of the parents to having a conversation with someone who’d drank 20 beers and was feeling punchy, the kind of thing I was worried about happening last season but never did, and now I’m hooked so I’m not worrying about it too much. If anything, it’s more likely that I’d get into a fight with an opposing coach than one of my parents!

The main differences at the Bantam level, beyond there being winners and losers, is that coaches pitch to their teams instead of hitting off the tee and there’s only 12 kids on the field at a time. While the former will be challenging for most of the kids, the latter will be toughest part as it pretty much requires organizing a weekly practice in order to identify who’s best to play which positions and ensure they understand the various nuances involved in fielding those positions. I never really thought about how complicated the game is until I had to explain it to kids.

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