As for
introductions,

writing about himself has always proven to be grueling chore. Grueling in the way something comprised of equal parts self-loathing and embarrassment can be grueling. Like going to a pool party or writing about yourself in third person.

From its throes, he can confidently say these first few sentences are going pretty good for him. However, what he will not tell you is during the time he has spent grueling over the perfect words in this brief introduction he could have easily completed one online writing class.

“They don’t need to know that,” he thinks to himself. Clearing his throat, he raises a glass to his industry, clients and new potential partners, alike.

“I cite myself a sneaker-head-hoop-junkie, inline enthusiast, critical cinephile, pseudo-musician, humble painter, aspiring writer and opinionated creative compound,” he announces, garishly pining for acceptance.

“My name is Jason,” he adds. Half the room glancing back over their shoulders, wading in the line of an open bar. The other half cramming their mouths with free bread and second helpings of the chicken. Collecting content.

Squinting deeply into the forboding and unknown distance, he explains he is a creative director. A designer and ideator. His hands gesture to the air, spilling his mule. Blah, blah blah, he continues. An illustrator. A multimedia artist. A writer & award-winning creative.

“A compound creative,” he says, proud of himself. Stirring it’s watered-down gin,

the industry
rolls its collective eyes.

Short one contestant, Jason was chosen at random to fill an empty seat in the prestigious 3rd grade, open-house-art-contest hosted by his Scarborough Elementary faculty and staff during the Kansas Fall Festival of ‘92.

“Paint the vase of flowers in the center of the table with these water colors,” the art teacher instructed. “You’ll have 30 minutes.”

Men around the room check their watches in perfect unison like a dad ballet. He began painting the stems. Then the flowers. He captured nuanced details like the distorted faces of the other children through the vase and the cat-clock on the wall shifting it’s eyes back and forth with every ticking second to escape these men’s lives. The dad ballet stretching their lower backs as they prepared for the audible groans crescendo of their evening performance.

Thirty minutes later, the timer dinged. Brushes down. Finished, him and his mother both agreed it was the single most important piece of art since his earlier play-doe pieces, he could only then realize as juvenile and avant-garde. He still rememebers the intoxicating feeling. “Jason won, too,” his mother would add.

This cannot be confirmed.

Years later, he sat next to a student who brought her pet iguana to class. A lizard with some ironic, human name like Harold, resting on her shoulder. It’s tail gently grazing his sleeve, or worse his neck.

See herpetophobia, didaskaleinophobi.
Gargalaphobia, even.

One evening in Los Angeles, after a long day of shooting, he found himself seated at a table next to Emilio Estevez for dinner. He ordered the duck and didn’t once say quack. Another time, returning home from a shoot, he sat on a four hour flight, drowning in free drinks with a flight attendant genuinely convinced he was the “dude from Blackhawk Down.”

He wasn’t.

Seat after seat, row after row, there are enough of these moments to fill a stadium. While the stories are more interesting than the seats themselves, each seat is memorable not because of the anecdotes, but the lessons learned just by the opportunity to have a seat.

The power of chance is not lost. If it wasn’t that first seat in the ‘92 Fall Festival to show him he could be creative at all, he would have never sat in any of the interesting, unexpected and serendipitous places being a creative processional has pulled out a chair for him.