I first wrote this in May 2003, and I think I'll save the original, and post occasional brief updates here on top.

Update, March 2005:

I'm working on my first book, contracted to Dutton (Pengui/Putnan). It's most likely to be published in 2007.

Working title: A Lasting Impression on the World: The Definitive Account of Columbine and its Aftermath. It comes from a passage in Eric Harris's journal. After a gruesome rant about wanting it to be bigger and bloodier than Vietnam, Oklahoma City, etc--he quiets down and very calmly explains what he was really after: I want to leave a lasting impression on the world.

Not a nice person.

This Slate story, The Depressive and the Psychopath, is a pretty solid kernel of what the book will be about, although I'll also tell the story of how it tore apart the community.

That project has pretty much consumed my life once again, though I'm also reading like crazy. Still in Denver. Going a little stir crazy here, but it's also incredibly peaceful. Starting to reconnect with the mountains that I had come to take for granted. Always got a lot of writing inspiration up there when I lived in Boulder. Headed back twice the past month, plan to start making a habit of it.

Life is pretty good. Still itching to get to NYC. Once I finish the book.

Original, May 2003:

I'm an author and journalist, which I'd like to be in that order, but it's likely to be the other way around until I can break through that tight (ass?) club of NY magazines. I'm aware that sounds more like an entrance strategy for journalism than an exit--I'll get to that.  

So far, I've weaseled my way into the NYT, Salon, NPR's "On The Media," Pacific News Service, In These Times, Denver's 5280 magazine and a bunch of papers. But mostly it's been Salon. I've done ten cover stories for them, and about 40 other pieces, most notably Columbine (endlessly!) and gays in the military (second part here), my favorite story ever, which also won a GLAAD Media Award, which was the coolest thing yet. 

I'm kind of old to just be getting started, so I'm a bit antsy about my progress. I'm 42. The short story on that is that I broke my back when I was 23, spent most of a year in a bodycast, faced possible paralysis and that scared the shit out of me. Scared me into finishing up my undergrad in a lucrative field. Got a Math and Computer Science degree, believe it or not, spent ten years as an analyst and management consultant at EDS and Arthur Andersen, until a two-year stint as a carpetbagger in Kuwait after the Gulf War allowed me to build up the freedomfund to repursue my one true love. Writing. Went back to grad school at 35, got an MA in creative writing, and was blissfully writing my memoir when . . .

Columbine happened. Two weeks earlier, Salon had given me a shot at covering the first Matthew Shepard murder trial. My first journ gig in nearly 20 years. (Though I had covered politics relentlessly for my college paper, the highlight and lowlight of which was bagging a one-on-one with Bush the Senior when I was 19--he ran circles around me. Very bright guy. Don't know when they dropped Junior on his head). Then those little bastards opened fire at Columbine, and that obsessed me for the next two to three years. Jon Karp at Random House even recruited me to write an ebook about it, but the ebook market never materialized, so they folded the imprint, and paid me off instead of publishing.

So here's what I want to do. Run around the country and occasionally the world, covering fascinating, oddball stories for a magazine or two, maybe three to four times a year. Write insightful, trenchant, amusing yet uncondescending stories about them. Fall in love with one of the topics every few years, discover a wealth of fascinating material on it, develop it into a brilliant book. Write a novel every few years in between.

That's the plan. (So you see how getting into the NY mags is the partial exit strategy? I make enough to live off--they pay pretty well, and I live dirt cheap--and the books will pay much better.) I always want to write for mags to keep me out in the field, I just don't want to do it all the time, and I definitely don't want to do the daily journ thing. I'm not so good on the short stuff (as this entry clearly demonstrates), nor the quick stuff. I'll never be InstaPundit, or InstaAnything. I like to think about it first. For awhile. And then write it 15 different ways. Takes me awhile to figure out what it is I think. And what it means. And how to illuminate it. I'm the tortoise.

Most of my nonfiction work is ethnographic--my good stuff, anyway. My favorite role to play is amateur anthropologist. I did study a fair amount of anthro when I went back to grad school, but the whole participant-observer role I fell for 20 years ago is highly frowned upon in the field. Goofballs. That's all I want to do. Dive in there and experience life in some weird world, then suck the reader in after me. My friend Miles Harvey wrote a blurb for my still unpublished memoir that referred to me as "cultural translator." Huh. That was the first moment I realized what I do. That's my shtick, essentially. Has been for a long time, but he was the first one to notify me.

I'm also a complainer, I guess, which you'll see a lot more of on this blog. Mr. Cranky. Things make me mad sometimes. Or ecstatic. You people are not cooperating much of the time, and that really tends to piss me off. So I vent. But cultural translating, that's what you'll see in the mags and in the books. And there will be books. Lots of them, though I am running out of time. How many good years can I have left? Twenty? Maybe thirty? I am so behind.

If you're skeptical about this cultural translating, and curious for a taste, definitely check out the two-part series "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Fall in Love." (Part 1; Part 2.) That's the best I've ever done. It's all downhill from there.

***

Eventually, this page will take a shot at living up to its billing. And be filled with quote after quote from my Vladimir, The Inspirer. But I'm busy right now. So you'll have to make do with four quickies and one longie: 

1. A link to my author homepage: www.davecullen.com -- have you bought your name yet? you really need to get on that), which provides the highlights of my career, awards, commendations, all that crap.

2. A link back to the recent post explaining the new blog name, which gets at a few of the more underlying themes. Eventually, that will be expanded greatly here.

3. Links to some of my better published work.

4. My bidness resume, which gives you a glimpse of the other, very different side of my life. (The left-brain side? I can never remember which side is which; I come from the side where the people can't keep track of which side is which. I haven't figured out a good way to get the resume pasted in without all the spacing getting screwed; the current version is not aesthetically pleasing, but will have to do for now.)

5. Random other crap on me:

Basics:

• 6'2"
• 185
• blue/ brown (fading to salt and pepper)
• single / serial monogamist / hoping to break out of that one day
• homo
• writer

Former:

• Journalist
• Soldier
• Systems Developer
• Product Analyst
• Management Consultant
• Writer
• Teacher
• Unmentionable
• Journalist
• Part-time consultant again

(in that order: now I try to be a writer most of the time, journalist part of the time and consultant when I'm most worried about my debt)

Cities Inhabited (long enough to work there):

• Chicago suburbs
• Champaign/Urbana, IL
• Blackpool, England
• Champaign/Urbana, IL
• Ft. Benning, GA
• Chicago suburbs
• Champaign/Urbana, IL
• Jacksonville, FL
• Detroit, MI
• Dallas, TX
• Kuwait City, Kuwait
• Manama, Bahrain
• Boulder, CO
• Denver, CO

(in that order. been planning my escape to NY for six years now, but that debt load is starting to cause a real problem)

Best Places I've experienced (in order of favoritism)

• Vietnam (The whole freaking place: can't decide between the interior west of Danang; some trek north of Hanoi where I never found out where I had gone; and even Saigon, which has its own wondrous charms)
• Kulu Valley, India (Himachal Pradesh)
• Chiang Mai province, Thailand
• Fes el-Bali, Morocco
• Cairo (though I didn't get it till the second time)
• Scotland (including and especially the scuzzy parts around Glasgow)
• Prague
• St. Petersburg
• Mt. Chirripo (The summit of the continental divide in Costa Rica: 12,500 feet, nearly straight up, fewer than 40 miles from both oceans. Spectacular.)
• Manhattan
• Paris
• The cabin we built in Upper Michigan
• Wrapped up in Gregg's arms. He's not my boyfriend anymore, but the truth is there are few places I've ever been more blissful.

Places most painful to have still eluded me (in order, these lists are always in order):

• Nepal
• Cambodia
• Kenya
• Indonesia
• Alaska
• Amazon
• China
• Sydney

Favorite books (the first few are in order):

• Catcher in the Rye
• Conclusive Evidence
• Romeo and Juliet (lame plot, best word usements)
• In Cold Blood
• A Prayer for Owen Meany
• Laughter in the Dark
• Class: A Painfully Accurate Guide Through The American Status System (I think the "painful" part worked it's way in out of my own imagination, but I like it better that way, so I'm keeping it.)
• (never made it through Lolita--just can't stand Humbert Humbert)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Housekeeping
• Lincoln: A Novel
• Galapagos
• Presentations of Self in Everyday Life
• Skinny Legs and All
• Still Life With Woodpecker
• Jesus' Son
• Portnoy's Complaint
• Wearing Dad's Head (with reservations)
• The Life and Loves of a She Devil (with reservations)
• The Name of the Rose
• The Party and Other Stories
• Homesick
• The Lord of the Rings / Silmarillion 
• The Interpretation of Cultures

Favorite Fillums:

• Wild at Heart
• Moulin Rouge (Though I hate all other musicals. But I don't think of it as a musical, I think of it as the first fully realized Surrealist film, at least that I know of. This is what Buñuel was shooting for, or should have been.)
• Hope and Glory
• My Own Private Idaho
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• 35 Up
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Trust
• Heathers
• Housekeeping
• The Big Sleep
• Witness
• Harold and Maude
• Manhattan
• Life of Brian
• Living Out Loud (worth it just for the scene where Holly Hunter dances)
• Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
• Field of Dreams (rethinking that one, but it sure blew me away at the time.)
• Broadcast News
• Manny and Lo
• Shakespeare in Love (Not really on a level with the others, but the hero is a writer and he falls in love as well. Hard for a boy like me to resist.)
• Three Kings
• (I'm forgetting some of the best ones. Just can't bring them to mind.)

[Adding to the movies now, years later]:

• Last Year's Fave: The Hours
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Millions
• Brokeback Mountain

Favorite Music:

• The Clash
• Neil Young (including Buffalo Springfield)
• Rickie Lee Jones
• Graham Parker (For some reason he turns up fourth overall, but it's hard not to count "Squeezing Out Sparks" as my most treasured single album)
• Radiohead
• Peter Gabriel
• Warren Zevon
• Randy Newman
• The Killers
• Elvis Costello
• Rockpile
• Little Feat
• The Smiths
• Bonnie Rait (the first two albums, mainly)
• Sex Pistols
• Kate Bush
• U2 (when they're not driving me crazy. But I loved Boy, hated them for awhile but Achtung Baby was amazing. And Zooropa blew everything away, finalized my decision to be a writer. So I owe them.)
• The Replacements 
• Billy Bragg
• Bruce Springsteen
• too many to mention (but I'm definitely locking myself into an era, aren't I?)

Favorite TV shows, current (updated):

• The Colbert Report
• Project Runway
• The Daily Show
• My So-Called Life (forever)
• Will & Grace
• early OC & Gillmore Girls
• The Amazing Race
• Andy Richter Controls the Universe (Is this still on hiatus? And I thought I hated Andy Richter.)
• Charlie Rose
• Masterpiece Theatre (took me decades to give the thing a chance, fell in love almost immediately.)

Reading Lately (this last section updated):

Feb 05: Jose Saramao's The Stone Raft. Sweet, funny, touching.

March 05: Just finished Franny and Zooey. Wonderful.

April 05: The Sheltering Sky. Wow. Had no idea. Leaps into my all-time top 5.

May 05: Girls for Breakfast, by David Yoo..

June 05: True Story: Murder, Memoir and Mea Culpa. Some really great writing, but ultimately infuriating. Misguided approach to the material.

June 05: The Genuis Factory (half of it)

July 05: Nicholas and Alexandra. Great writing, deplorable take as apologist for this ghastly pair. (He merely pathetic, she despicable.)

Aug 05: As I Lay Dying. Also leaps into my all-time top 5.

Sep 05: The Sound & The Fury -- halfway.

Dec 05: The Year of Magical Thinking (got for myself for Christmas. 2/3 through. Wonderful.)