Uncategorized | Adam Reger | Freelance Writer

July 14, 2010

Is This a Real Question that Real People (Still) Ask?

I’ve been almost completely oblivious of the MTV series The Hills, which I guess just concluded. When I’ve run across it it’s either been through The Soup or just flipping around. When I’ve had the option of giving it more attention than The Soup would, though, I’ve inevitably bailed.

I’ll skip listing all the reasons under the category of how bad and dumb it seemed—MTV, class warfare, blah blah blah—and cite the only one I needed: Was I really supposed to believe that this was real?

It was on the other day at the gym and I was trapped watching it for about thirty minutes. (The remote was with another gym-goer, who seemed sincerely into it.) Even with the sound off, this thing looked much closer to The Office than The Real World (which, granted, is not completely “real” but is not a record of actors playing characters): do reality shows typically station two cameras around a cafe table to record the facial reactions of both participants in a conversation?

I could go on—and to be fair, if I let myself go on at length about this ridiculousness I’d probably get around to talking about the achievement of the young actresses I’ve seen on the show, doing an actually pretty passable job of simulating the utter mundaneness of everyday conversation—but I’d rather not. What spurred all this bloviation is this Yahoo! TV Blog post on the (shocking!) apparent fakeness of the entire show. (Although, to be fair, there’s lots of acknowledgment of the long-running charges that the show is fake, and plenty of intelligent on-the-other-hand equivocation. And the post did point me in the direction of this story, which is pretty excellent.)

July 13, 2010

On Economics

What I know about economics is pretty conventional, and what I have to say is pretty uninformative. My general take is that it’s a fascinating and wide-ranging discipline, capable of analyzing and explaining nearly everything, but that the interest of any particular scholarly article is invariably ruined by the appearance of math. (If you are asking why I would be looking at scholarly economics articles in the first place, rather than sticking with Freakonomics or occasionally perusing Slate: it’s because I work on a scholarly economics journal. I have to look at these things.)

I am only just catching on to the preponderance of economics-for-laymen resources that are out there. In that vein, I’d like to share an economics blog I’ve found super interesting: Dan Ariely’s. He’s a behavioral economist at Duke. Behavioral economics (again, to the extent that I understand anything) is much more focused on the applicability of economics to life, and to that end uses the observed behavior of human beings much more than classic economics. A pleasure of coming across work in behavioral economics, often, is simply noting the topics that these scholars have gotten interested enough in to pursue (and to pursue so doggedly: we’re talking, often, of long-term, labor-intensive studies looking at reams of data, if not pestering thousands of people for survey responses. It’s the kind of thing that, as a creative writer, kind of boggles my mind.). At Ariely’s blog right now he’s discussing happiness, personal efficiency, and the reasons you might let your vegetables go to waste in your refrigerator drawer. And I looked into him after being pretty impressed by this video, which follows a recent paper Ariely published on online dating.

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July 8, 2010

Manmar, Cash; All Others, Trash

Apropos of nothing except its delighting me, a story about a cheeky south Florida 5-year-old who gave himself a truly awesome nickname.

June 29, 2010

Reason #1 to Love Pittsburgh: Anthrocon

[Author’s note: I’ve often been in the habit of titling Facebook status updates along the lines of “Reason #6,387 to Love Pittsburgh: Pierogies,” or whatever. It’s occurred to me that with this blog, it would be fun/interesting actually to quantify the reasons that I love Pittsburgh. So here’s installment #1, in no order.]

This weekend wrapped up another successful Anthrocon, also known as the Furry Convention. If you’re not familiar with furries, see here or, for a definition in their own words, here. As a statement of fact, let me note that I’m not a furry. I’ve never had a desire to dress like an animal, or consort with those who do. And while I find the whole phenomenon hilarious and strange, I’m not completely down on it.

This is the third year in a row that I’ve checked out Anthrocon. (I believe it’s been in Pittsburgh since 2006.) The first year I went, a friend and I ponied up the money to attend the conference legitimately, earning the right to go to panels (on do-it-yourself taxidermy) and things like variety shows and a(n execrable) stand-up comedy concert. Last year and this year, I confined myself to checking out the “fursuit parade.” A fursuit is the image most people have of a furry: a complete animal costume, no skin or other authentic human parts showing through. The fursuit parade is thus a fascinating look at the variety and depth of furries’ commitment to this pastime/avocation/fetish: these are all people who shlepped these massive, physically stifling costumes great distances to see and be seen. There’s always great, weird stuff at these things, too: this year there was a pair of furries (I want to say they were both dogs) wearing hockey jerseys from the movie Slap Shot. What a reference!

I could go on about the furry convention, but I have some photos that’ll probably tell more than I could. And with reference to Pittsburgh, I suppose what must be said is that it’s a special city that can make furries feel right at home. But Pittsburgh decidedly has. The bars and restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the convention center (where the convention is mostly held) have always seemed game, and more than amenable to the decidedly weird, often downright-creepy crowd the convention draws in.

Anyway, the photos:

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June 21, 2010

On Under the Dome; or, 1000+ words on literary versus genre fiction

I’m using that previous post to segue to a brief snapshot of where I am right now as a writer, by way of a long rumination on different modes of fiction.

About a week ago, I was at a party thrown by a Pitt creative writing professor. Invitations went out far and wide, and a lot of old students turned out. I ended up in a completely fascinating conversation with a guy who went through the program in the early nineties. For a few years during grad school and afterwards, he wrote under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon. If the name means anything to you, you may be freaking out now, as I was: Franklin W. Dixon is the author of the Hardy Boys series of novels.

Read the rest of this entry »

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June 21, 2010

And yet . . .

. . . I feel I should introduce myself. So, briefly: I’m a writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I came out here to go to graduate school in creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh. After earning my MFA, I decided to stick around. Pittsburgh, to me, is fascinating, something I’m sure I’ll touch on in the weeks and months to come. It’s also gloriously cheap, which is a boon to creative types.

When I say I’m a writer I am, of course, describing my avocation. A significant goal of mine—and a big reason for my starting this site—is to make writing my vocation. Or at least a larger chunk of how I earn my living. To that end, I’ve been writing occasional non-fiction pieces for the University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt Magazine, the alumni publication. That’s been great fun, and a nice re-introduction to journalistic writing, which I thought I’d put aside some time in college. For the last year I’ve also been ghostwriting a novel. There’s a lot I can’t and shouldn’t say about that job, but it’s been a great experience and has, no kidding, taught me lots about writing fiction, the marketplace, and the fuzzy line between supposed “high art” and “commercial” fiction.

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June 21, 2010

In medias res

I’ve blogged before and have always found overpowering the instinct to begin each new blog with a trumpet fanfare announcing the blog’s purpose and reason for being. I feel the same instinct now, but am going to resist for the reason that by the time anyone begins reading this blog, this inaugural post will be buried beneath a long column of posts.

Also, because that “Hello, World!” entry was starting to mock my slowness to put up a legit first post.

June 17, 2010

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

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