RussHutto.com

Over on Facebook, I got tagged by Terrace, my long-time friend, and once upon a time college roomie. Here’s 16 random things about me, some you may know others maybe not.

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

16) I lived in Germany for 3 years. I was 3 to 6 years old at the time, but I remember it vividly. My dad was Air Force.

15) I’m a fairly competent artist. I scribble and doodle here and there and people go, “Ooooo, ahhh.” I think it’s just doodles, but they say I’m pretty good. I almost went the art direction in college but pursued a bigger passion in my life, music.

14) I spent almost 8 years of my life in or around college.

13) I don’t have a degree (see #14). I also worked in the ministry at a church an hour and a half away. So I commuted back and forth a few times each week. Some semesters I just worked and did no school. Not having a degree has not affected my career path negatively, though I wish I had finished it just for me.

12) I love to swing dance. (Thanks, Terrace!)

11) Most of my middle and high school years I wrote hip hop lyrics and made beats for them. I performed twice in front of a 1500+ crowd, and regularly in school talent shows and pageants (as the entertainment portion).

10) I was in a rock band called Blind Men See. We were famous in our own town. We traveled around the Southeast and even did a “midwest” tour with another band called Written In Stone, that took us from Illinois to Pennsylvania. Those were fun times, but pretty much led me to know that the touring rock star life isn’t for me.

9) I love movie music. In fact, one day I hope to compose music for movies. I don’t watch movies for the sake of watching the story, I watch a movie so that I can listen to the music as it enhances the story.

8) I design ads for a company that does regional community magazines in 4 markets in Southeast Georgia.

7) I played trumpet from 4th grade through college. I was in concert bands, jazz bands, small ensembles, and marching band.

6) I love sports. Especially football. Marching band was fun, but what made it great was the free football!!

5) I’ve only seriously dated 2 people in my whole life. I’m married to the second one.

4) I blog at http://www.russhutto.com

3) I am the Media/Music Coordinator at House of Joy in Valdosta, Georgia. I coordinate all things marketing/visual/print/web/music related…which basically means I get paid to do a lot of fun stuff that ultimately is used to influence people for good.

2) I get motion sick. Really. Bad.

1) My wife bought me a pair of Chucks. I love them. I’m wearing them now.

Now, be tagged and tag to your hearts content!

Tagged: klampert, tam, brent, fred, mandy, billy, jeff, papa, brandon, chris from canada, chris moncus, john, jim, jon, mudpuppy, rich

And by black I mean the actual color, not skin color or race, lest I offend my 3 readers. Ha.

Back when I was a rock star wanna-be, we printed up tons of tee shirts. Most of them were black. Somewhere around the early 2000s, pink wedged it’s way into the hearts of many a teen guy, and overnight young fans all over were sporting hot pink shirts supporting their favorite band. We didn’t understand the paradigm shift, but we rode the wave like many other bands. We never made it to rock stardom, but every now and then around the Southeast, I still see an old Blind Men See tee shirt. Pretty cool.

Anyways, the topic today is Narcissm. You know, the strange desire to focus solely on one’s self. Dictionary.com says narcissism is:

inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.

What with all the myspace and facebook profiles, let alone all of the other niche social networking sites, narcissism is in. It’s very accepted and very normal.

With the dawn of the myspace age comes one of the most narcissistic practices ever in the history of mankind…the myspace pose. You know the one I’m talkig about. Girls (and ladies too) all across the world grab their digital camera and put it at arms length and strike a pose with pouty lips, sad eyes, and a peace sign. Some, for an unknown reason, wear their revealing tanks or bikinis and shoot from above to give the entire world a glimpse of their lady lumps.

Not to be outdone by the girls, many a guy, has busted the no shirt pose for their myspace profile pic. You know the one I’m talking about, the guy stands in front of the mirror and captures his most manly flex with his digital camera.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is the complete lack of personal space on these social networking sites. People will post any and everything they have pictures of themselves doing. Here’s a tip, college kids, if you’re a big party person, it’s probably not the best idea to post your beer pong tourneys in your profiles. Everyone can see it and can see how lame you look when you’re drunk. It’s a proven fact that potential employers can access your profiles and many a young, aspiring college grad has been shot down at job interviews because of the content of their photo albums online.

We love sharing with the world what we’re doing. We love seeing what other people are doing. With this surge of narcissism these days comes a weird sidekick. Voyeurism. If we’re honest with ourselves we’ll admit that peering into the lives of other people has some sort of strange appeal.

Whether it’s asking what sunglasses we should sport or sharing with the world our washtub bass project, we love to share what’s going on with us.

I’ll admit that I’ve had to remove people from my facebook news feed and my myspace friends because of my urge to know what kind of shenanigans they were getting into. I guess it’s the former youth pastor in me, wanting to check up on my kids, but geez, if it hasn’t cause more frustration than I’d liked to have ever experienced. I finally just removed them.

Now, I’ll also admit that I love to share what’s going on with my life. Social networking (blogging, twittering, facebook, etc) are tools in my digital toolbox that I use to network with friends and fellow worship leaders and graphic designers from all over the country. I’ve made good friendships. And part of that process has been in sharing what I’m doing.

My question, and what I’m thinking about through this post, is their a line that can be crossed when it comes to social netowrking? Are we too narcissistic in our tweeting, blogging, and myspacing? Is it possible to be humble while social networking? What do you think?

Gentlemen At Arms.

I just received my EP (that I won in a contest on Mudpuppy’s blog). Woohoo.

Good tunes.

Hit em up.

Greetings blog friends. Wednesday through Friday (Oct. 8-10) I was blessed to travel with good friends and fellow leaders from our church to Duluth (ATL), GA for the Catalyst 08 Conference. It was a blast.

I’ll be unpacking my favorite sessions over th next few days. i might get through all of them this week.

Some of my favorite “things” about the conference were:

* Steve Fee live. Need I say more?
* Jon Foreman live with just an acoustic and accompanied by a cello player. Sweet.
* Media/Video Presentation. It was smokin’ hot.
* Steven Furtick. Kid is amazing.
* Step team and cloggers. Not at the same time, but kudos to Catalyst for including 2 opposite ends of the foot stompin spectrum.
* African Children’s Choir.
* Jeff Foxworthy.
* Giant Beachballs.
* Dave Ramsey. Yes. He flippin brought it.

* Twitterer “sit together” priority section during session 8. They served us capri suns and candy bars on a silver platter.
* Getting to know our volunteer leaders just a little better.

It was a great trip. full of challenge and equipping.

Going to ATL with a group from our church. Should be fun.

We’re taking several volunteer leaders so I’m hoping we get some great encouragement, challenge, and equipping.

I’ll be twittering updates.

twitter.com/russhutto