Remembering Brad Graham (1968-2010)...

It's taken me the better part of 3 weeks to write something, anything, about the death of my dear friend Brad Graham. I looked forward to seeing him each spring at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. He will not be there this March which feels to me like the entire month has been ripped from the calendar.

I had known Brad for nearly a decade. We met in the fall of 2001 in San Francisco when was new in town, largely going nowhere, trying to find community and a place to fit in. I came to an event I'd heard of but known little about, something called Fray Day, where strangers told true stories in front of a live audience.

I was good at that sort of thing. This Brad person seemed to know everyone there and apparently wrote some very funny stuff on a website a lot of his admirers at the event read.

I told a story, which went over fine, then retreated to a corner. A few minutes later, I ran into this Brad person on my way to the bathroom, who remarked that he had liked my story and that he and his friends at the event were going to brunch the next morning. Would I come?

I did. I'm still friends with many of the attendees at that brunch. Others I did business with or were collaborators and advisers on future creative projects. At at one time all have given me advice, job leads, set me up on dates, invited me to speak somewhere or simply inspired me to try something that before then had scared me half to death.

I trace the beginnings of both my professional life and life in San Francisco to that brunch. It would have never happened without Brad Graham and what made him so special.

To Brad, everyone counted. There were no A-groups and B-groups no "invitation onlys" or VIP lounges. There was "you make the party fun for others" or you don't. "You don't" meant you couldn't come. Everyone else was in. To Brad,  the things he loved--the theater, gatherings, the internet--but a means to create a welcome place for everyone. A community.

Break Bread with Brad, the get-together he hosted on SXSWi's opening night marked its unofficial yet spiritual opening, much in the way the Olympic torch lightening signified the games are open rather than the host country's president saying so. My own smaller, private event on the festival's last night ( Create Kookies with Kevin) was stolen outright from Brad with his blessing. My goal was to create the same warm, open environment in a more intimate setting as Brad had done in a large jovial one. His constant presence at my event is the best evidence I have that I succeeded.

Technology conferences do not usually attract extroverts and game show hosts. But the number of self-described geeks who made lifelong friends thanks to a simple "hello" and "quit standing out here in the rain" from Brad is too numerous to count. I count at least three who met their spouses this way.

I have no objection if your primary relationship with technology is your cell phone plan or mad coding skills. I just think that's limiting, like saying food is about metabolism. As Brad showed me, technology can be about so much more. Brad was a journalist by training (as am I) but saw social media as a method of connecting people, with each other, with culture, with these they love and things they do not yet know they love. Yes, he coined the term "blogosphere" but that matters to me about as much as why Brad passed away so young. Which is not at all. What mattered to me was the power he saw in technology for us all to lead richer lives.

There are plans at SXSW this year for an honorary Break Bread For Brad. The hat is being passed for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis where Brad worked as Public Relations Manager worked for so many years. Fray Cafe (the version of Fray Day that happens in Austin during SXSW) will go on as planned, with me hosting, and the event dedicated to Brad. My dinner this year will have an empty chair, right next to Kevin Lawver, where Brad always sat and made a lot of trouble. 

It's all wonderful, moving and real. But it will never be enough. Maybe if I didn't write about this pain, I could lie to myself and say that Brad is not gone, that spring will come and with it Austin, old friends and another layer of memories. But then we quit lying because we are not children anymore and we cannot bring back last year any more than we can grow younger.

It is the morning after. Or three weeks after. Then we know that that there will be no more Bread Bread With Brads with Brad, that I will never again hear his laugh, which sounded like a football thrown into a copper barrel. That he will never again be my loudest dinner guest. That he will never both make me uncomfortable and crack me up with his broad come-ons. That I will never get share my newfound love of theater with an expertise like his. That he will never again serve as friend, mentor and inspiration to the hundreds of us who learned from him both how to be good and how to be better. And that he will never know my wife, who is coming to SXSWi for the first time this year, eager to share this vital part of my life with me and to meet everyone who makes it special.

I want this confusion, this sadness, this anger to go somewhere, anywhere but here. I want, sometime, some crazy way to turn it into something beautiful. To be as Brad always was...

"To be fabulous, to be unafraid, to be fearless, to hit that note"

We will try, Brad. You taught us how.

SXSW 2009: Freshbooks, Joy from Tedium.

There are few passions I admire more than the desire to convert tedium into fun. And since there are few things I find duller than invoicing and billing, the ladies and gentlemen of Toronto-based FreshBooks are my new Everyday Heroes.

I met the company's "Chief Hanshaker" (on his business card) Sunir Shah in the bar of the Austin Hilton Hotel. He was having way too much fun for a guy who makes his cheddar on business payment software. But there he was, knocking back and cracking wise. Along with his Chief Cat Herder.

Since my own invoicing needs are minimal, I can't say if Fresh Books's offerings are any good. But judging by their Twitter stream they've got a few civic centers full of satisfied and rapidly-aided customers.

See for yourself. Beyond shop talk, it's beery, chucking-the-crap around gabbing, as if happy hour begins about 10 minutes after morning coffee.

I haven't yet been lucky enough to build a work situation, ground up, with a bunch of friends. And who knows, perhaps the FBers secretly loathe each other? If so, they're putting up a great front. Seems to this bear like a rager in "painless billing" land.

"We wanted something better. So we built it," says Freshbooks about its work. This may seem like the essence of the entrepreneurial spirit and thus confined to personalities who wish to lead their tribes to a brighter side of the hill. Or it could mean something broader, a sense that we shouldn't be resigned to hating a task of daily existence just because it isn't obviously exciting. It could be an attempt to make life better, one invoice, handshake and herded cat at a time.

And for that I say, bravo.

Yes.

I'm engaged.

This past weekend, I wrote this in sidewalk chalk in front of John McClaren's House in Golden Gate Park, three blocks from where we will live, the spot where we often begin our walks on Sunday mornings. Under the pretense of picking up the first round of boxes and beginning moving in together, my girlfriend Cariwyl and I got in the car around 10:30 AM, whereby we detoured into the circular drive in front of the McClaren House and I walked her over to the inscription.

After much crying, mostly from me, I asked "Is that a yes?"

We spent the rest of the day at the Wente Winery (a favorite of hers), having ice cream sundaes and telling friends and family.

I couldn't have asked for lovelier, in a day or whom I shared it with. When we took a walk the next day, our inscription was still there on the sidewalk.

I've known people who found the right person for them at a young age. I've known others who never did. I've never believed there is only one right person for each of us but rather, as we learn, as we grow, we arrive at a platform and standing across it, is the person with whom we're supposed to continue the trip. They are never perfect. Neither are we. The hope we all carry, the risk we all take, is that they will be right for us, that together you can do better, be better than who you could be alone. That together, you both will someday arrive at another platform, which is whom you are supposed to be.

The train is arriving, suitcases at our side. I have been looking the better part of my adult life for whom I stand along side as I begin the next leg of learning.

I knew her name months ago. But on Saturday, I saw her again anew. And saw the brave and brilliant journey all over again.

(thank you to our friend Britton who hid behind a tree and took pictures).

The Last Week: Family, Death and Healing

Wherein we discuss where I've been.


MP3 File

At the End of A Very Hard Week...

Wherein we discuss family, illness and graceful endings.


MP3 File

Friends with Flemenco:

My friend Mace teaches and dances flemenco. This is a piece her group put on last week. I didn't get to see it and I'm quite sad about that.

Secret to a full life: Have interesting friends. My two cents for this morning.

Yay Dan Kennedy!

Maddo props to my friend Dan Kennedy whose new book, Rock On, a memoir of a year spent working at a major record label which I loved, is getting some deserved great press. To wit: he taped a segment for "Fresh Air", the holy grail for authors, last month.

I read Dan's first book Loser Goes First and found it hilarious. On that basis, I invited to contribute to Bookmark Now, which he did via an essay on writer's block. Highly recommended also.

Dan blogged his whole tour which will give you an idea of his style. Sample if that's your pattern. But I say just grab Rock On and wolf it down in your pajamas like I did. Great reading, great fun.

 

Sam the Eagle and my Dad:

My dad's favorite kind of humor is when an uptight snob gets his/her just desserts. So I've been sending him and we've been bonding over Sam The Eagle clips. The one above has been his favorite thus far.

And today is his 65th birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!

From the 'Vantage Point" of Friendship:

So I'm taking myself this afternoon to see Vantage Point (trailer) Why? Because it is the debut screenplay of one Barry L. Levy, a close friend of mine from high school. Barry and I have known each other since 1990 and actually wrote a screenplay together all those years ago called "Parental Consent" about a high school boy whose mother keeps murdering his prom dates.

He obviously made much more of our early partnership than I did.

Seeing it this weekend is my little contribution to its opening weekend, the crucial statistic in measuring movie success. I'm busier than sin this weekend and its raining but one of my promises to myself and the people in my life this year is that I support their endeavors, just as I'd want them to support mine.

So congratulations Barry. Your old friend Kevin is hella proud of you.

2008 By The Numbers: A Neat Idea

My close friend Justin Sondak is doing a neat blogging project called 2008 by the Numbers. For this year, he wants to read 52 books, see 100 live theatrical shows and run 1000 miles. He blogs his progress each week and does a little summary of important world events over the past seven days.

Simple, compact, useful. A great use of the medium. Unless this shambling mess you've been reading....