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North

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

Release Date: 09/01/2023

Warriors show art Warriors

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

Warriors need to be praised. ----- Young men have always been warriors. They’d go fight the battles while the elders sat around the campfire. The elders decided if fighting was the right thing and when and how to do it. The warriors executed the plan. When they returned, they were glorified for their success, or they were coddled in their loss. Either way, they were praised for their efforts. Most old men don’t seek glory like young men do. Something happens after about forty years old, where glory no longer drives behavior. Old men prefer instruction and guidance. Not glory. Learning from...

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Gettin' Through it Together show art Gettin' Through it Together

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

It's been a tough few weeks. This commentary offers no specifics, but I've learned some things. ----- Many years ago, my neighbor in Charlotte, North Carolina knocked on my door one weekday afternoon. His wife had just told him she’s leaving. She climbed her car and drove away. He was dumbstruck and he needed to talk. My wife and I had just moved in. I hardly knew him. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I froze. To my everlasting shame, I rushed our conversation so he’d stop making ME feel uncomfortable. I realized years later he was crying out for help and I failed him. I know...

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North show art North

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

My wife and I were headed to a cocktail reception where we knew no one. "This is an opportunity," I said. ----- My wife and I were driving to a short cocktail reception full of people we’d never met. Most of them knew one another. Us? Not a soul. This is an opportunity, I said. Let’s run with it. I proposed that she and I create a story for ourselves. Pick a personality and a background and a job. We’ll create something bordering on sensational and come up with a few very specific details that will make whomever we talk to truly wonder. About us. About whether we’re telling the truth....

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Burning Our Brains show art Burning Our Brains

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

The heat's cooked our brains.  ------ The heat’s taken its toll. It’s been unrelenting. Brutal. The greenery looks weary. The grass dries and turns brown within hours of any moisture. My car thermometer regularly reads around 110 and I saw online that it feels much hotter. We need a break. We need relief. My dog looks at me and says “No way I’m walking on that street. That street will burn my feet right off” and she’s right. It's affecting us mentally. We’re budding on crazy. It’s cooked our brains. Recent headlines are all you need to see. A lady in Birmingham faked her...

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Crossing show art Crossing

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

Last week I danced in front of a train to try to get it to move. ----- Trains have always held great symbolic meaning. They represent the future, a new destination, an opportunity. In movies, the characters board trains in the hopes of greater things down the tracks. Lovers tearfully depart at train stations. Though tragic it’s what’s best for each of them. Bandits of the wild west knew there was a strong box on a train full of money. Convicts break out of jail and if they can make it to the train it will take them away from the misery of prison. Songs, too. The Midnight Special. Midnight...

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Caricature show art Caricature

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

This week I take an imaginary walk through Jackson Square in New Orleans and ask a caricature artist to draw me something...different.  ----- There are sections of our society that have become parodies of themselves. Once proud, they’re now laughable forms of their former self. Imagine this: You’re walking through the New Orleans French Quarter. You stop at one of the caricature artists on Jackson Square. You say, “Hey Mr Caricature artist. I don’t want a picture of me. I want you to draw a picture of, let’s say, today’s country music.” That caricature artist would draw...

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Thirty Years show art Thirty Years

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

After thirty years of the same family tradition - I give some thought to the future. ----- For the thirtieth year in a row my SUV left my garage headed for the North Carolina Coast the second to last Saturday in July. If we weren’t in it, it would go by itself. It’s what we do. It’s what the car does. And it was packed tight with everything from fishing gear, to bed sheets, to food, to 150 oysters in the shell on ice, two cakes from Bake My Day, and a case of get-along juice, also known as wine. My in-laws have rented a house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina every summer and we are...

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Bunge show art Bunge

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

She hopped to the edge of the platform, raised her arms, and jumped. ----- The video opened on my phone and my daughter was leaping off a bridge and falling out of the frame. It took my breath away. I watched it again and texted her. “Since you sent this to me,” I said, “I assume you survived the fall?” “Yea,” she texted back. “It was awesome.” She’s in South Africa as I write this. She’s spent the month there with a student group called Lead Abroad. It’s a one-month trip where she and about thirty others study leadership and communication skills while experiencing the...

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Coffee with Milo show art Coffee with Milo

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

A cup of coffee with a friend and a few strangers was a wonderful start to a great day not long ago. ----- I’d like to say Hello to Randy Fowler. On Friday mornings he’s in his car on his way to the Restaurant Five in downtown Tuscaloosa with his dog Milo. He’s a regular listener to these commentaries and he reached out to me a few years ago when he liked one to offer a compliment. Turns out Randy’s daughter, Julie Otts, lives a few doors down from me here in Mobile. It’s a small world. Randy and I have visited a few times when he’s in town to visit his daughter, son-in-law, and...

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Tinkle Bell show art Tinkle Bell

Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston

I have an idea for a business. Make up words customers can't understand then upcharge 75%. ----- I think our dog is constipated. She rung her tinkle bell early early in the morning to go outside and she just roamed around the yard in a hurry with her nose down. I have no idea if this is what a constipated dog looks like. I’m assuming that’s her issue. She appears to want to do something but…can’t. The tinkle bell hangs next to the back door. The dog rings it with her nose when she needs to go out. In the wee hours my wife or I stand bleary-eyed in the door waiting for her to do her...

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More Episodes

My wife and I were headed to a cocktail reception where we knew no one. "This is an opportunity," I said.

-----

My wife and I were driving to a short cocktail reception full of people we’d never met. Most of them knew one another. Us? Not a soul. This is an opportunity, I said. Let’s run with it.

I proposed that she and I create a story for ourselves. Pick a personality and a background and a job. We’ll create something bordering on sensational and come up with a few very specific details that will make whomever we talk to truly wonder. About us. About whether we’re telling the truth. They don’t know us. It’s a short event. Let’s see if we can pull this off. Nothing to lose. I used to do this on blind dates back in the day and I got pretty good at telling long haul truck driver stories.

A glance at my wife in the passenger seat and I saw what I’ve come to expect. A roll of her eyes. A shake of her head.

“I think I’ll go with having invented the direction North,” I said. Prior to my invention, no one knew where anything was. People were getting lost in round rooms. I gave them direction. Today I get small commission every time a new compass is printed. And this younger generation today - they use Waze and Google Maps and Apple Maps all the time and North is usually on every screen. I only get a fraction of a cent each time that happens but the money ads up. Each day I spend a lot of time promoting North as very popular direction and I feature it in a lot of my social media. Two other guys came up with East and West and we split commissions on directions when we collaborate. And I have a new direction being released soon but nondisclosure documents prevent me from talking too much about it right now.

Sideways glance. Silence from the passenger seat.

How about I was the original voice artist for the beeps trucks make when they back up. Today they’re electronic, but in the good ole days when they beeped, that’s me. Age has made it hard to recreate that sound any more but… beep beep beep. Can’t you hear it? The recording came down to me and this little pre-pubescent teenaged girl, but she suffered an awful blow to the throat by a masked man outside the studio after her audition. They called me back because I was the only candidate remaining. I’m not exactly famous, but you’ve probably heard me.

Nothing. Time to go for it.

How about we’re royalty from a small principality in Europe called Genovia. People won’t remember the Princess Diaries movies. They’ll have heard of Genovia and maybe think it’s a real place. We’ll tell them it’s similar Lichtenstein but smaller. And near the edge of Austria. Our citizens there are not known as Genovians, by the way. To us Genovian royalty, they’re actually known as our Genotail…

“STOP,” she said. “Just stop. Who we are is plenty. It’s actually more than enough.”

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.