Revised Vision:

I generally thank the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore for my quiet yet enduring interest in folk and outsider art. AVAM had just opened when I graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1995 and through a connection at the Baltimore Jewish Times, my first employer, I managed to get a private tour of their opening exhibit called the Tree of Life. I went back to it a dozen times, taking every person I knew in town and several visitors.

Visioniary Art is loosely defined as art produced by non-professionally trained artists, often the handicapped, the incarcerated, the insane, the voiceless who have found their voice buried in the folds of their own creativity. In contrast to Folk Art, often defined by untrained artists working in thousand-year-old traditions, Visionary Art often seems to come from nowhere, artists whith few influences save their own lives. It's a movement with very loose boundaries and therefore prone to a lot of curators with political agendas but the style nonetheless hits me right between the soul and the conscience.

Around that time, I had been spending what little disposable income I had on the work of local artists to decorate my apartment. My main criteria were if I liked them as people and their price. Style didn't really matter. I had it in my stupid 23-year-old head that I was an art collector, and pursued it with the same organizational vigor that one applies to a baseball card or dead moth collection.

AVAM changed that. I got interested in folk and visionary art not as an acquisition or even a hobby but as a passion. I would go to shows and follow artists I could never afford nor meet, artists whose work I enjoyed on their own rather than how it might look on my wall. I realized that buying art, if you're serious and respectful of where it came from, carries with it a certain social responsibility, to care beyond the point of getting, to know of what and whom you speak.

I've got a long way to go, before I could be a serious art collector but visionary and folk are where I'll go when the times comes. And when I've learned a thing or three...

Places to Start: Visionary Art

• American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore, MD)
• Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago, IL)
• Intuit's directory of Visionary and Outsider Art Galleries.
• Raw Vision magazine
• Visionary Art.com

Folk Art:

• Folk Art Society of America
  
• American Folk Art Museum (NY, NY)
  
• Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe, NM)
  
• Folk Art & Craft Exchange (online marketplace)

Scubbing in Style:

If you like to pay fine attention to the mundane as I do, have a look at Soap in the City, a New York store specializing in handmade soaps of every conceivable size, texture, odor and sensation. It's not cheap stuff, but fun to think of rubbing yourself with a cucumber/honey/cinnamon sugar mix with a great smell and feeling as your reward. I walked out with a bar of read clay something, that felt neat and looked like showering with a bar of raw earth.

Warning: Their site has a completely illogical, hard-to-navigate design but the clerk told me they do a decent ecommerce business and seem nice enough that they'd let you return a soap you didn't like the smell of it. But I'd ask them first.

And now I'm back...

My dad used to say that the sign of a good vacation is when you are ready to leave and happy to come back. And while I had a large time in both Baltimore and New York, with much to share in the coming days, all I've been saying this afternoon is "God, it's good to be home."

So Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to the holiday season, WTS-style.

Off we go...

Ya'll Blog Back Now, Ya Hear?

Leaving for da east coast and Thanksgiving with my family. Blogging will be sporatic, if at all. I come back a week from Saturday. Happy Holidays everyone!

"It's Still True..."

Did you know that Paul Harvey, Mr. "Hello, Americans", is still on the radio after, like 500 years in broadcasting? It's true. If you didn't have a classmate who did a Paul Harvey imitation in 7th grade homeroom like I did or you're under the age of 90, you probably know Harvey as the guy who parodied himself (well Harry Shearer did it actually, but whatever) on that Simpsons episode when Marge and Homer are trying to inject a little romance into their marriage. They buy a sexy audiobook, called "Mr. and Mrs. Erotic American" narrated by Mr. Harvey.

Called the world's largest one man radio network, Harvey can be heard on over 1200 radio stations and 400 Armed Forces Networks throughout the world. At 84, the dude still gets on the air six days a week and has a few words with millions. They might seem like antiquated papp (and they are) but he's been doing this little soft shoe for so long that it's almost hard to remember American radio without him. And that kind of brilliant run gets a hat tip from me, in addition to the compulsory smirk.

Crap.

My credit card company has been bothering me for two weeks insisting I owe them money. I told them I told them I have a record of the check in the exact amount of the money they say I owe. I get my bank to send me a copy of the check and it turns out I sent it to the wrong credit card company.

Crap.

Now I have to find out who cashed my check, get it to the right people all before I leave for the east coast on Thursday and below the finance charge bury me alive.

Crap again. I hope I'm not the only one who has made such a personal finance blunder although it's beginning to feel that way.

That's the Cache!

I hadn't gone geocaching in a while but it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and my buddy Britton and I were looking for some whopah do so off we went. What fun. It still gives me a high when you finally locate the cache after many minutes of walking in circles and moving fallen tree branches. .

I'm going to have to go hunting when I get to Baltimore later this week.

One Sentence Movie Reviews #4

Town Without Pity (1961): A great way to tie a bow around a film that doesn't have much going for it is to title it after a popular song and then play that song endlessly.

In Praise of 'Malaise':

The other night I was wasting time playing Game Neverending and Suzan called me in to the living room where she was watching part two of Jimmy Carter: American Experience, a biography from his election to his receiving of the Nobel Peace Prize this fall. I wasn't in the mood to watch anything but I ambled in anyway. Now I'm glad I did.

Jimmy Carter is a great man. I don't think I ever realized this when he was president (I was in the first grade) and never quite took a close enough look afterward. Here is a man who had a disasterous run at the most powerful job in the world, then turned around and devoted himself to building homes for the poor, building a center of international diplomacy and acting as a moderator for peace efforts around the world.

I know this is a PBS documentary intended to convey that message but call me converted.

And in 2003:

The South by Southwest Blog is back for the 2003 Interactive Conference. If you're a weblogging kinda person, SXSW is the perfect opportunity to meet your kin. It's like the Woodstock of weblogging right deep in the heart of beautiful spring mornings in Austin, Texas.

March 7-11, 2003. I'm speaking on two panels but that shouldn't dissuade you.

Great fun, don't miss it.

One Sentence Movie Reviews #4

Riding in Cars with Boys (2001): Getting pregnant can be the best thing that happens to you especially if you're pretty damn smart already.

It's a "conference."

Every postmodernist worth their quotation marks will be present at Living Literacies, a Toronto conference about literacy in the digital age. The opening panel will be a site for discursive analysis on the meaning of "conference" and whether the attendees are actually present or not.

And the inductees are...

Suzan has been walking on air the last few days since three of her favorite bands from childhood (The Police, The Clash, and Elvis Costello and the Attractions) have been inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. Me, I was much less cool as a teenager so I got an equally big charge out of AC/DC receiving the same honor. It's about time loud, unironic white boy cock-rock got its due.

I love following the Rock Hall inductions every year because 1) It's a study in baby boomers coming to terms with their mortality. As each year passes, the eligible class of inductees moves further away from the 1960's and the Rock Hall establishment must contend with inducting Punk, New Wave and soon Hip Hop alongside the bands of their youth and 2) It inspires endless discussions between my college buddies Justin and Dave over who should be induced and why. We never guess correctly. We've picked Patti Smith twice and the Hall has inexplicably passed over her. The fun is in chucking the possibilities around.

Question then: Who do you think should be inducted? The rules are it must be 25 years since the release of your first album. Based on that, who?

101, 100, 99, 88...

Feeling better, fever broken. Life goes on.

The Extra 8 Mile:

The Eminem vehicle 8 Mile has debuted at #1, raking in $54.5 million at the box office this weekend. I remember thinking vaguely to myself when I first saw the trailer, Eminem is going to evade our criticisms once again and make a good movie. Or maybe I just wanted him too because we're fellow Southeast Michigan boys and I'll see any movie set in Detroit.

I'm glad, actually. Reading Frank Rich's cover story about Enimen in last week's New York Times magazine confirmed that 8 Mile is really just Saturday Night Fever or Coal Miner's Daughter with hip hop as the musical form of escape. And I really really like those kind of movies.

99, 100, 101...

I have a fever. This sucks.

Forward From Here:

If you got a charge out of the movie Pay It Forward and its concept of doing nice things for three strangers instead of "paying back" the person who did something nice for you, check out how its ripples in the real world: The Pay It Forward Foundation underwrites school programs that teach kids about social contribution and creating their own "pay it forward" projects. The Pay it Forward Movement site is a thorough directory of community groups using PIF principles to thrive. A woman who calls herself Ariel even named her blog Pay It Forward.

And while the movie didn't exactly set the world on fire when it came out two years ago, it seems it will have social impact that will long outlast its brief movement in the spotlight. Getting recognized after the fact is still better than not at all.

Insert Obvious Joke:

I might be in The Asshole Monologues. Nothing definitive yet but I'll keep you posted.

The real meaning of "eulogy":

Anil Dash has a eulogy to Jam Master Jay which gives me more solid evidence as to why he's among the finest writers on the web today. How hard is it to pay tribute, admit your biases and and stay honest but not hokey in three paragraphs. Mr. Dash makes it look easy.

And "eulogy" means "song of praise." Mine pales in comparison.

New Blog on the Block:

The Comics Journal, which offers sophisticated talk about the history and art of comics, has started its own weblog, called Journalista! Neat.

And on your left..

I've started a mailing list for this blog that I'm calling The Smoke Signal. Well, more for me actually. I'm starting to get published in a wider variety of places and speaking engagements are beginning to take me to other parts of the country. Instead of posting about it every single time, I'll send out an email every now and then to those readers who want to hear about such things. And as it becomes more regular, I'll start doing special book recommendations, books you might enjoy, on the mailing list too.

To sign up, jest drop yer email in that there box in the upper left hand corner.

Go on now.

Road to Nowhere:

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco today and Suzan and I decided to take a long drive with no destination in mind. I can't recommend doing this enough if your curiosity is deep and your afternoon leisurely.

We headed over the Golden Gate Bridge and snaked along the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping in whatever little Marin County town suited our fancy. After respites in Dogtown, Olema, Inverness and a few others, we ended the day in Point Reyes Station an little tourist town that still manages to feel like an artists outpost in the mountains.

When in Point Reyes Station, the staff of Where's There's Smoke recommend a visit to Gallery Route One, an arist-run cooperative space doing excellent work in sculpture, painting and installation as well as a stop by Point Reyes Books, a solid neighborhood bookstore with the most comfortable seating area my butt has seen in quite some time.

R.I.P Jam Master Jay (1965-2002):

You've probably heard it already but the legendary hiphop D.J. and producer Jam Master Jay of Run D.M.C was murdered Wednesday night while taking a break from recording at a studio in Queens. Apparently Jay (real name Jason Mizell) was relaxing and playing video games when a masked man entered the studio and opened fire. Jay was shot once in the heart and died almost instantly. He was 37 and left behind a wife and three children.

What the Beatles were to rock n' roll, Run D.M.C was to hiphop, not only bringing the music to audience whose size no one had quite imagined but elevating it artisically as well. Much up hiphop until Run D.M.C's breakthough single "It's Like That" were rap vocals laid over synthesized disco beats. Run D.M.C pioneered the use of rap over hard rock samples and heavy electric guitar, paving the way to their historic 1986 collaboration with Aerosmith, "Walk this Way."

I first heard Run D.M.C in 1985 when half the kids in my 6th grade class were singing "King of Rock" in the hallways. That spring, Chike McCleod, the coolest kid of all, showed up to school wearing a Run D.M.C T-shirt. A half-dozen more followed.

That spring made me a hiphop fan which I continue, proudly, to be to this day.

Sadly, much of the press thus far has focused on what a peaceful man Jay was, a social activist who avoided the gangsta posturing of some hiphop stars, and shouldn't have met such a violent end. The truth is, none of us should die this way but we have a notion in this society that hiphop and its listeners are a culture soaked in violence. Just last week, an article in USA Today tried lamely to link the Washington D.C. sniper suspect to a separatist hiphop act as if rapists, murders and thieves have not drawn inspiration from rock n' roll, country and classical music (they all have).

I hope we recognize the subtle racism embued in feeling like we have to justify that Jam Master Jay wasn't a violent man. Most hip-hop performers, producers and consumers are not violent people. But if we can look at the deaths of Jay, Notorious B.I.G, Tupac Shakur, DJ Scott La Rock and others as endemic to the culture of hiphop rather than tragic anomolies, we can somehow explain it away as a freak subculture of young black men. The truth is hiphop is now a worldwide cultural phenomenon, with African-Americans influencing the way young people across the globe dress, dance, and communicate. The significance of that is both enormous and as American as jazz, baseball and apple pie.

Hiphop is our American culture now as much so as the sitcom. Get used to it. It's not going away.