ST IN BLUE

Ryo Ishikawa Officially Comes of Age, Remains Ultra-Intense

© Golf Digest Online

Early this week Ryo Ishikawa officially "came of age".  In Japan the second Monday of January is "Coming of Age Day", a special holiday day where those who've reached 20, the age of majority, are celebrated with festivities, ceremonies and parties. 

Soon after the celebration the intrepid young golfer was heading to Hawaii for the Sony Open which begins tomorrow.  In the meantime, an intense ten hour practice round at Waialea Golf Club golf course seemed to demonstrate that the hardworking Japanese superstar had paid little heed to the words of Lee Westwood who a couple of weeks ago suggested that Ishikawa was "far too intense" and "needed to get away from golf more".

The young phenom will be paired with Webb Simpson and K.J. Choi at Sony, and it's a pretty sure bet they'll be one of the most followed groups. 

The Golf Channel's Randall Mell suggested that the "Bashful Prince" was in golf's "hot seat" as he hasn't yet proved himself on US soil.  While some readers agreed with that assessment, many disagree, citing his myriad wins in Japan... and his youth.  In any case, lots of us are expecting (and looking forward to) a Ryo Ishikawa PGA Tour win in 2012.

As one commenter perceptively wrote,  I think a win by a Ryo Ishikawa will do the world of golf a lot of good. 

Note: Many thanks to Noriko, a friend and an avid Ryo Ishikawa fan in Japan. 

Golf Pinning Takes Off - Golf Image Curation With Pinterest

My boards on Pinterest

Much as I try to avoid cliches, I'm going to use a really overused one here: A picture is worth a thousand words. There, that wasn't so bad, was it?  ~ The fact is many (most?) of us are "visual" by nature. We comprehend and retain information much more effectively when it's presented visually.  Visuals enhance our emotional connections as well. 

That's what's behind the massive popularity of photosharing sites like Flickr and Instagram.  Our multimedia lives are now inundated with imagery, much of benign or categorically unaesthetic, some of it incredibly gorgeous, powerful, moving... or downright magical.

Enter Pinterest.  A self-described "online pinboard" that allows you to organize and share the mountain of imagery you run into on the web.  It's been around for over a year, used for the most part, by designers, decorators and DYIers.  Recently however it seems to be opening up to a wider swath of the online population, and growth has been... impressive.  In fact, Pinterest is now one of the top 10 social networking sites.

I originally discovered Pinterest because, as the owner of a quixotic Victorian mansion. I'm continually seeking home decor inspiration. The decor blogs I love led me there, and I was soon spending much too much time purusing victorian design pinboards.

Up till very recently there wasn't much of a golf presence on Pinterest, but that's quickly changing.  A few days ago digital-sports-media-guru, Kathleen Hessert, tweeted about Pinterest and encouraged golfers to start "pinning" their passion for the game. It seems quite a number have heeded her call because golf pins are now beginning to proliferate.

So check out golf on Pinterest, if you're visually inclined and you love the game, you'll certainly find images that delight and you may even be inspired to create your own pinboards.  But proceed with caution, like lot's of good things, Pinterest can be addictive.

Oh by the way, my pinboards are here.

Offerings is a groovy music monthly in Toronto (printed on real newsprint!). I made the cover for the January issue. Pick it up at freak establishments all over the city. Check out the inside cover for a collage collab between me and Andrew Zukerman.

And back in November I contributed a list and a collage to RUIS Magazine, which is run by the KRAAK boys out of Belgium. The list is titled "Top 15 Sexiest Songs of My Life" and its all true.

I may just make it in the paper biz...

Writing a best seller

I've heard of three people who set out to write best-sellers and actually did: Ian Fleming, Robin Cook -- a doctor who measured his own pulse as he read best-sellers to see where it rose, and now, Amanda Hocking.

Amanda Hocking, according to that interview on NPR, had written about twenty novels, but was unable to get them published -- she thought maybe she was writing the wrong kind of book. So she went to Walmart and studied the best-sellers to see what sold well that she would be good at and enjoy writing. She came up with para-normal romance and has now joined that small group of authors whose books have sold over a million copies.

The analysis she did, I'm guessing, was only one (fairly small but maybe important?) part of her success. She sounded like a born storyteller--and certainly a hard, hard worker.

But the idea of taking that realistic look at what's selling and matching it up with your own writing strengths sounds like a really good one to me!

Even if most of us did that, we might not sell that many copies--I think to do that, you need to be not only gifted when it comes to creating characters people really care about and coming up with stories that keep readers turning the pages (those seem to be the main thing books that have sold super-well over time have going for them) but be lucky with your timing. It seems to me though that her analysis took some of the luck out of that: she didn't just keep writing -- she matched her strengths to the market and I think that was smart.


BEST SELLING BOOKS OF ALL TIME (impossible to know for sure--this is just one person's guess/estimate)

The Daily Telegraph's List