This is Deeplyshallow, and I'm the guy you can blame for it.

DS turned ten years old in 2008. It began as an online literary journal, published until 2001 (though I receive submissions from writers to this day). That year I finally bought the domain and the site became my personal archive of work. I began writing a blog in 2001 as well. (The current archive dates back to 2002; the first eighteen months of posts were lost in a series of misadventures. Wayback has a few cached pages of the missing content here. You're not missing much.)

In 2004, after working six years as a web designer for a few small agencies, I left my day job and began freelancing full-time. Since then the site has evolved to include a portfolio of my work -- though most of the work shown is from the freelance years. In 2006 I left the freelance life behind, and went back to the grind. The grind just happens to be a much better one than it used to be.

About Me
Content Features
Photography
Fine Print

I was born in 1978, and raised alternately in Alaska and Texas. I have since lived in Washington (not bad) and Nevada (downright evil). I've (somewhat recently) relocated to Arroyo Grande, California, which I don't really like very much. I am an associate creative director for LEVEL Studios in San Luis Obispo.

I am: a shameless movie geek who once drove three thousand miles just to see a movie I'd already seen fifty times before. A factoid in The Wall Street Journal. A competent (at best) third baseman. A drummer with wrist problems, which makes me all angsty and shit. A writer with a couple of not-that-special novels under my belt, along with one (still unfinished) really good one.

I am known for: occasionally dancing (in cowboy boots, no less). Stomping around in said cowboy boots. My inability to see or hear anything Alaska without becoming homesick. Southern Comfort and Coke. Being that guy in the office with the chronic insomnia (though that seems to have worn off lately). Being a night owl (which makes the insomnia less problematic, now and then). Sneezes so famous that they've been sampled in last year's number one hit record (Billboard Brazil, Dec. 2007).

I believe: that night skiing is the only ski worth ing. That there's not much better than a road trip through the Pacific Northwest. Except maybe any road trip to just about anywhere. That Darryl Strawberry had the sweetest swing the game has ever seen (and I totally dare you to prove otherwise). I don't recommend his recent autobiography, however.

Scattered amongst the unforgivably large number of posts about insomnia is some actual, unique content that's got some value, if you don't mind slogging through the archives to dig it up. To that end I've tried to make it a little easier to find (hence the heart-stoppingly long columns of links). Here are some points of interest:

The Eleanor Sketches
Eleanor is the working title of a novel I have been writing since 2002. Unlike previous books, this one has proven a greater challenge. I've been writing and publishing 'sketches' on DS since early 2004 -- short-form explorations of plot, character studies, and so forth. Not all will conform, chronologically or otherwise, to the actual novel's story. All, however, have helped me to better write that actual story (which is at present still very much unfinished). The sketches are always available in the sidebar, or can be read here.

Movie & TV Reviews
Anybody who knows me has probably regretted a number of conversations they've had with me about movies. I tend to go on and on. In 2004 I started writing occasional reviews of movies that interested me, whether they were current or not. The review archive includes everything from classics (The Hustler) to personal favorites (The Mosquito Coast). Reviews are located in the sidebar.

The Dialogue Archives
For a short time several years ago, I abandoned the site's traditional blog format and began writing (mostly) fictional conversations. I've always been a sucker for well-written dialogue, and wanted to try my hand at it. The dialogue archives can be found here, but since they're a dusty relic of the site that was, they exist on gloriously broken pages. If you can ignore the chaos of broken images and code, you'll find they're worth a few looks.

Manual
In 2002 I was part of a writing experiment that produced Manual, an anthology of fiction, essays and a single lonely poem. Seventeen writers participated, and offered the anthology for download on each of their web sites. Last I heard, the thing had been downloaded some forty thousand times rather quickly after its release. That was six years ago, so who knows who's been reading. If you haven't, then you should. It's not like you were planning on actually doing anything today.

Most of what you see on this site I'm probably responsible for. Good photos are probably accidents. Older photos -- childhood pictures, 1980s Alaska, etc. -- were shot mostly by my folks, back in the days when they were young and life was all boundless and such. The really crisp photos were taken with a Canon Digital Rebel that doesn't belong to me. The rest were shot either with my older-than-shit first digital camera, the Kodak DX3700, or with my trusty Canon Powershot A620.

Hosted by Kionic. Studiously observed by Mint. Content published in Wordpress. Content publication wonderfully prettified by Tiger Admin. Graphical type set in Proxima Nova. Icons are from Stockholm. Kickass favicon courtesy of Mr. Keberly. 9rules member since 2006. Content remains, unless otherwise specified, copyright Jason Gurley, and you better believe my girl will kick your ass.

the blog and design portfolio of Jason Gurley. (Learn more.) This site has been around since 1998; me, since 1978. In 2005 I drove 3,000 miles to see a movie. 2009 is pretty aimless so far, but I'm sure I'll get around to something sooner or later.

Subscribe to RSS feed

My Flickr photostream

My Twitter feed

on this tuesday
the short form wins again
weekend roundup
far more complicated and interesting
sneaking back into the party
eleanorwitt.com
eli
cred like fogerty
sick day
disconnected threads
View complete archive

Lust, Caution
Double Indemnity
Iron Man
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
There Will Be Blood
Gone, Baby, Gone
Live Free or Die Hard
The Indian Runner
The Iron Giant
Contact
An Inconvenient Truth
X-Men: The Last Stand
Superman Returns
Enigma
Nobody's Fool
Look, Up in the Sky
Numb3rs
Mission: Impossible III
Heaven
The Abyss
The Constant Gardener
The Mosquito Coast
The Hustler
Limbo
Grizzly Man
The Verdict
Superman Returns
Elizabethtown
Battlestar Galactica
You Can Count on Me
Rolling Roadshow 2005
The American President
My DVD collection

01. dreaming of falling
02. marvelous descent
03. a conversation
04. the colors
05. huffnagle island
06. a hundred million
07. sixty-six stories
08. anyone earthbound
09. a girl named eleanor
10. a route obscure and lonely
11. a certain stillness
12. this is jack
13. wide flat lands
14. going home
15. girl unscrewed
16. slow rehabilitation
17. twenty-three stories
18. a far-off point
19. fifteen years quiet
20. a one-beer fella
21. luminescence
22. one-sided conversation
23. hearts big and stupid
24. nineteen seventy-eight
25. first light
26. a hundred years
27. too long to stop now
28. plainswept
29. a widower in training
30. spies and assets
31. thirty years and then some
32. leaping over couches
33. cricket song
34. eleanor's first kiss
35. like so much ballast
36. too much
37. the longest wait
38. the second ice storm
39. rocket summer
40. waiting
41. wax wings
42. breakup
43. tough beans