What do get when you melt Fiona Apple and Norah Jones into one person? You get the ultra smooth, bluesy jazz stylings of Rosey and her new album, Luckiest Girl. That is the best description I can offer.

Her previous album was more acoustic/rock than jazz/blues. Tracks from her debut album made it to the silver screen in Bridget Jones' Diary and Shallow Hal. Her first tour was a supporting act for Melissa Etheridge and Meredith Brooks. Ever since that initial success, Rosey's creative path has led her back home to a rich heritage of passionate jazz.

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Photo by Quarlo.com

I’m a sucker for NYC photo blogs (PBs) because I love the Big Apple but I never had the chance to live there on a long-term basis.

So NYC photo blogs are how I try to get my regular fix of things-New-Yoark.

With every photo I remember once again how much I love this sultry, chaotic, and majestic Mother of All Cities.

Here is a short list of my top favorite NYC PBs, plus another which has nothing to do with NYC but one you should really support by visiting.

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SI’s senior columnist Frank Deford is one of my favorite writers. Not only he knows sports inside out but he is a terrific writer as well.

It’s always a pleasure to read what he thinks on any topic.

Deford’s recent column on Olympics again got me thinking about the whole hoopla around the Olympic torch, the Tibet issue, etc.

First off, did you know that the Olympic torch itself was invented by the Nazis, in 1936?! I certainly did not know that.

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There has been some debate over what constitutes a top SEO company. Mark Jackson, my boss at VIZION Interactive, wrote a blog post about top SEO companies as depicted by TopSEOs.com. After writing, Mark’s post jumped to a Yahoo rank of 4 and a Google rank of 11 for “top seo companies.”

As an experiment, I’m writing this post to see how linking to his post will affect search engine rankings. So we’ll check back and see if his rankings improved at all within the next week. And since I provided the link, go ahead and read his post and tell me (or him) what you think about the subject.

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I wonder, seeing how so many search results for my name have to do with SEO “experts” criticizing one of my older articles. Not to mention the fact that any visitor to this site has no idea what to make of me. I am the definition of Random Man. I experienced this problem last January when I was looking for a job. Everyone I sent a resume to visited this website. They got all kinds of random insights into who I am. I’m sure they decided to find someone whose online reputation appears to be more consistent.

So be it. I’m no Seth Godin, but I understand the value of being true to self. A blog is a blessed and dangerous thing. It is my opportunity to leave behind a trace of my mental DNA. Perhaps something in it will make a difference to someone.

Random thought: I just remembered that I promised Karen I would post a list of tips on how to become a copywriter and I never finished. That’s what finding out you’re going to be a dad will do to a guy… everything else fades from memory.

Back to the point, the day will come when this blog (assuming it survives the years to come) stands alone as a rich source of interesting opinions, prose, and ramblings. This site already drives anywhere from 120 to 170 visitors per day, and that’s after having lost all search results for more than a month after I switched the blog platform from Blogger to WordPress.

I don’t really care what potential clients or employers think about this blog. At some point, you have to draw the line and say, “This is my area and no one else’s. This is my personal space - even if it’s public.” I’m having a blast with it. Who knows? I may even land a client for VIZION with it through this experiment I’m conducting for Papaya Clothing. If they notice how much I am promoting their site and collecting valuable information and recommendations from their customer base, perhaps they will hire VIZION to complete their site (so their loyal customers can shop online).

With experiments ongoing and fatherhood approaching, I’m really looking forward to this blog. Maybe I’ll start getting traffic for baby related terms. You just never know.

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For anyone out there with even an ounce of conspiracy theory in their blood, the idea of blogging should terrify you. We live in the age of Homeland Security, legal wire tapping, library card monitoring, internet and email monitoring…. you name it, it’s happening. You don’t even have to believe in the Illuminati or stress out about the World Bank. You’ve got bigger problems. You are intentionally divulging your personal preferences, attitudes, quirks, and traits. If they ever want you, they’ve got you.

Think about it. If you are a blogger and mention anything not completely divorced from who you are, you have just posted yourself out there for the world to see. This could make for a sensational tv series, but a horrifying reality.

What if someone wanted to frame you for a crime you didn’t commit? What if “they” wanted to plan a crime and pin it on a scapegoat? Or what if you belong to any type of racial, religious, or socioeconomic group that someone wants to remove?

If you’re a blogger, you’ve shown them how you think, what you like, what you dislike, what you believe, where you shop, what you eat… the list goes on. Every post is another sample of who you are. And you are willingly making yourself public. Sure, you wouldn’t mind making a little money from it, or getting a little fame. But what if your words can be used against you? I’m not just talking about lawsuits, I’m talking about psychological profiling. Write enough blogs and any psychologist or keen observer could begin to predict your behavior based on the information you have provided.

I think about Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, or Taye Diggs in Day Break. In any conspiratorial situation, public information is used against the victim. If you haven’t seen Day Break, I recommend you visit ABC today and watch the full season, half of which didn’t even make it on television.

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It’s amazing how unpredictable inspiration can be. A person can be doing the most mundane things and be suddenly struck by it.

Last night it hit me. It was the sum of several influencing factors, truth be told, but I give most of the credit to two sources: the film Two for the Money and the blog posts about converting a blog into a book by lifehack.org.

You can read a little more into this on the soon-to-be-updated About Us page. I am going to change the way CultureFeast presents information. Instead of yet another cultural/social commentary, each post will contain original prose and poetry I have written. Not just random prose and poetry, but prose and poetry inspired by specific songs, television episodes, films, news events, etc. I will credit the muse for each piece, and allow you to see for yourself if you can find the subtle cause of inspiration which links the muse to my art.

Comment as often as you like. Guess the connection if you want to, or tell me how the particular piece of pop culture affects you.

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I apologize for the difficulty some of you who have experienced trying to comment on CultureFeast in the past, . I have adjusted settings to allow for comment submissions. They will require approval before appearing online, so don’t be surprised if it takes up to 24 hours for your comments to be shown live.

Thanks for your patience.

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“You’re doing this all wrong,” he tells me.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “How could I do it any better? It’s not like anyone is going to read this crap anyway!”

“Slow down for a second… take a deep breath… there you go. Now imagine each blog you write as a valuable part of your life. The precious time you spend writing a blog and thinking about blogs is time you will never live through again. Picture yourself looking back at today from your fifties. How will you feel then about the time you spend now? Will you wish you could go back and redo it all? Will you see that you spent too much time being fake? I wonder.”

“I’m not being fake! I might not share the deepest parts of my heart with complete strangers, but that doesn’t make me a fake! I’m selective.”

“Call it whatever you want. The truth is that you are still focused on the masses. You want to please the masses so you can make money, but what you keep ignoring is the simple truth: the masses will approve of your work when it stands on its own merit. And your work will stand on it’s own merit when you focus on finding the message within and sharing it rather than finding what topics people are interested in and limiting yourself to them.”

“Maybe you’re right… but it’s hard to know. I sit here and wonder if it’s all a waste of time. I wonder if I’m going to grow old and waste away because I’ve focused on the wrong things. I lose sleep at night wondering about that. But I don’t get any answers.”

“I wouldn’t think so. well, it’s for you to decide. Do what you will; just remember that you will never be 29 again. You will never see this day again. Each moment you breathe, it is a joyous and unprecedented moment and it is also a most grievous and unsettling realization. The finality of Time allows for no second chances. There are no ‘redos’. You can continue to write for AdSense if you want, but I think you will see that writing to express the beauty within is rich and satisfying enough.”

“You could be right… I’ll think about it.”

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Blogging, as most things, can become an obsession that steals away one’s life and time. There have been times when, despite the lack of anything important to say, I feel I must write to reward those regular readers (how precious you few people are) out there.

Days like today, I question why I ever started blogging. I had journals before this, and those took less time to design and update.

There are days when nothing seems to go right, and it feels like the world is against you, and you wonder why you waste your time writing down your thoughts when they aren’t good enough to keep you out of trouble.

On days like today, it’s not worth writing. It’s not worth it.

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You will note that the new WordPress version of CultureFeast is lacking photos. Being the technical genius that I am (not), I have yet to configure the blogs to allow photos without causing stylistic damage to the right column on your screen. Once that is achieved, we will do our best to put some color back into the blog. For now, the only way to add visual appeal is to create separate blog posts for for each photo.

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