Feb 26 2003
Off to Florida...
for my father's 60th birthday. No blogging until Sunday.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
for my father's 60th birthday. No blogging until Sunday.
My friend Josh is doing his PhD at Cornell on the history of video stores and the retailization of motion pictures. He's collecting oral histories of anyone who worked at or owned a video store between 1975 and 1990. If you fit this bill, why not help him out? Only takes a minute.
Of Kevin's Day Off with the Simpsons, 22 episodes on DVD all with directors commentary. This is as self-indulgant as it gets.
Jeez, what a weekend.
Saturday I was a panelist at Mills College as part of their MFA Professional Survival Day. Spent the day talking about how publishing works and how being a professional writer usually involves more networking than selling plumbing supplies. Much chatting, many business cards exchanged. Got home from Oakland about 5:30.
Sunday Jon from Central Booking and I took the train out to Concord and spent the afternoon recording with Eric Rice of Slackstreet for a syndicated radio program we've got in development. Left at 9:30, got back at 5.
All great stuff to be sure. I love my work but that was not a weekend. I think I'm taking a personal day today.
Bad Taste Bears, the cutest little perverted figurines you've ever seen. My friend Eli got me one of these for Hanukah, a bear with his bleeding heart in his hand and a big innocent smile on his face.
After a lively exchange from my last post, reader Matt Kirkpatrick sent me this story on how attendence in creative writing classes, of both the savory and not so variety, is on the rise. Interesting stuff.
Novelist Ann Patchett was on City Arts and Lectures (no archiving on their site for some inexplicable reason) last night and was fantastic. It's such a relief to hear a writer talk about "the craft", how she's never wanted to be anything but a writer, and yet wear it so lightly. I'm beginning to think there is nothing worse than a self-important writer with no sense of humor.
My favorite part? Someone asked her the old standard "I want to be a writer. Do you have any advice?" Most writers will equivocate when asked this for fear of alienating their readers and sounding like a snot. Patchett did not and answered perfectly with this story. I paraphrase...
"Everytime I go to a cocktail party, at least one person says something like this...'I'm a neurosurgeon but I'm thinking about writing a novel. So I'm going to take Tuesdays off and write a novel. To which I answer 'What a coincidence. I'm going to take Tuesdays off to practise neurosurgery!"
Writing is work and study. Years of it. It doesn't mean everybody doesn't have the right to try. It just means that "writing" and "operating a word processor" are two very different things.
I'm sold. Now I have no excuse for not reading Bel Canto which Suzan's sister Anne Marie recommended to me last fall has been sitting on my shelf for like 6 months now.
Maybe because acquisitions, particularly in the web world, are rare these days but Google buys Pyra is all over the news. Megnut has an excellent listing of articles if you're curious.
Everybody probably knows by now that Pyra Labs, the makers of Blogger, has been acquired by Google. My friend Evan Williams, one of Pyra's founders, has naturally been on the firing line throughout Blogland about his decision and I'm sure has been called a sell-out more than once. Though the debates I've read have been mostly positive.
Nobody's really asking for my opinion and, although Ev has explained his grand vision of what Blogger can do on more than one occassion, It's still to cosmic for me to comprehend. Nonetheless, I have been at the helm of an independent web project for the last four years (albeit a much smaller one) and know precisely what it's like to carry one around on your back--even with partners, even with friends--as your full time job. Eventually you hit a glass ceiling as to what you can do on the strength of your own labor. The desire to find a large benefactor with deep pockets is powerful, as is the urge to keep going at it alone and not have to follow anyone's vision but yours.
I don't know how what will become of Blogger or Google or Ev or Jason or the others at Pyra I haven't met. But I do know this sort of decision is a natural evolution of something like Blogger, not Ev having a lapse in integrity. He's worked his ass off and deserves to see Blogger leave the nest and not require his constant care. He deserves paid vacations and adequate resources for a tool that over a 1 million people use. That doesn't sound like selling out to me. It sounds like level-headed analysis and the belief that both you and your project deserve a life beyond each other.
Good for you, Ev.
I'm going to be on the radio today. The show is Invisible Ink, the frequency 91.7 KALW FM in San Francisco or streamed live on the web at kalw.org. The time, 2 PM PST. Please adjust according to your time zone. I'll be telling a little story about loving bad music.
UPDATE: The show sounded GREAT! It's now archived online. If you hear it please let me know.
I was fortunate to perform last night at a benefit for the Center for Digital Storytelling which was celebrating its 10 year anniversary. Fray has had a long time association with the organization and Derek asked a couple of us frayers to come and represent.
Based on a wealth of talent that showed up, it looks like a neat little organization that associated with lots of artists in multiple storytelling traditions. Glad I got to know them.
Swappingtons looks like a new way to dispose of old books, CD's videogames and other media that have outlived their usefullnes for you. You list items you want to get rid of and the site assigns a certain number of points to them. Someone them offers to "buy" them with "swap points" that they've earned from trading items. Although the service has a long way to go--customizing searches by author/filmmaker etc., a quick entry of items via ISBN/UPC number like Half.com, community features to engender loyalty--I'm curious to see how it develops.
I'm so rediculously busy this week that everytime I stop to breathe, I remember something else I'm supposed to be doing. It's like falling asleep and getting woken up by a car alarm every five minutes.
It's all good stuff, professional opportunities that I didn't have a year ago. But I'm at the stage of my career that when these opportunities arrive, I can't really say no. A) Who knows when they might come again? and B) Most of them are ongoing. Say yes once and you place yourself on the priority list to be asked again. Then you can say no all you want.
But now I'm in a situation where I have a book review due today (of a book I haven't finished), a performance tomorrow, and a reading Saturday.
This is madness.
So the Oscar nominations have been announced and my buddy Dave pretty much nailed it. I've given up trying to guess these things long ago but stay fascinated with the piddling details of pagentry on the fridges of the awards.
Best example: The Academy always some third-tier has-been actor to announce the awards. I remember it was Laura-Flynn Boyle once and this year it was Marisa Tomei who won an Oscar an eternity ago for My Cousin Vinny and hasn't done much of anything since.
Why this little bit of ceremony continue? Is it a way to offer someone pariciptation and then get out of inviting them to the show? Payback for some under-the-table Hollywood agreement? I'm baffled.
If you saw the cast of the Simpsons on Inside the Actors Studio, I hoped you enjoyed it as much as I did. Often I think James Lipton is a tool, throwing over the reputation and history of the Actors Studio, for more fame-friendly guests (I mean, really, do we need drill down into the careers of Ben Affleck? Or Drew Barrymore?). In this case, his fawning smug interview style worked beautifully. For like ten minutes, he fired questions at each of the six cast members for them to asnwer in their character's voices. And because these are immensely talented performers and not simply voices-for-hire, their answers were hilarious.
Why didn't Lipton give them two hours like he did for Spielberg? I would have watched for nine.
Public Radio Fan is a godsend for sound geeks like me. Its main feature is an enormous real-time list of what public radio programs are on right now, at every streamable station in the country. So instead of plundering the archives of This American Life (which I've probably done eight times over), you can sample an enormous list of music, news, and arts programming from around the world, at any hour of the day. Fantastic.
Last night, I played cards with his wife. I've never seen him without a shirt until now. My thinking is you have to be pretty hairless to pull this sort of thing off.
Wishbone Zine is now Slolane.org I think because Wishone creator Angela has given birth to twins. Something tells me we won't be seeing the zine again which is sad because it was one of my favorites. But it's not like I don't understand.
If you're a regular reader of Where There's Smoke (now there's just about enough of you to fill a regulation-sized school bus), please consider signing up for The Smoke Signal, my occassional newsletter of good book recommendations, when I'll be performing or on the radio and other mild self-promotion. I've been consolidating Central Booking's mailing list over there as well as its getting too big for the freebie software we've been using.
If you're not interested, that's cool too.
Nick Hornby's new book Songbook (published by McSweeney's) , a collection of essays on his favorite songs with an accompaning CD is fantastic. I'm not the worlds biggest fan of Hornby's fiction, even though I've read them all. Although I've always had fun with his novels, I think he's week at character voice. Or put another way, I feel like I've got a story in front of me and Nick Hornby jabbering in my ear about it.
His non-fiction though, oh yeah. His pop music column in the New Yorker are sublime, even when they focus too often on bands like Sublime. So Songbook was a slam dunk for me, albeit a rather pricey one. It's a little book (like 150 pages) but nearly 25 bucks. Yeoow. However the production quality (complete with lovely illustrations by Marcel Dzama) is superb.
Right now I'm on a three song a day diet and very satisfied.
AirlineMeals.net is a collection of photos of airplane food from flights all over the world, most with hilarious captions. Fasincating in a trashy-John Waters sort of way (via the latest issue of Bitch Magazine).
Some prize finds at this weekend's Alternative Press Expo...
--Alison Elizabeth Taylor, a bright, sexy comic book artist from Los Angeles whose book Synthetic Universe reminds me of a blunter Ghost World. She's also a painter and illustrator. I picked up a mini comic of hers called "The Perfect Job."
--Comic Dork Comics: They're a boyfriend/girlfriend operation (I think) out of Grass Valley, CA a little town northeast of Sacremento. I don't know exactly what to make of their first comic "The Cosmics"which is on its way, but they ain't exactly in a comic book mecca so I appreciate their spunk.
--C. Scott Morse. A catalytically talented artist who has done stuff for Dark Horse, Marvel, Top Shelf, the biggies of comics as well as self-publishing. I picked up a sketch book of his bound in foam rubber. Far out.
--Black Velvet Studios. I'm totally unclear on what these guys do but the artwork is way way phat.
--"Raptoonist". A term used to describe a cartoonist with a hip-hop sensibility. Aaron McGruder, creator of "The Boondocks" and Keith Knight of "The K Chronicles" pioneered the field but its growth has only just begun.
I'm still in disbelief over the destruction (explosion, implosion what?) of the Space Shuttle Columbia that I'm don't feel quite like it really happened. All I can say at this point is that the tragic end to the Space Shuttle Challenger happened when I was in the seventh grade and was one of the defining civic moments of my childhood. I liken it to how my parents felt about the Kennedy Assasination.
The next spring, I attened the Space Academy in Huntsville, AL with a friend from school. Each of us were divided into teams named after one of the Space Shuttles;. Naturally there was no team Challenger. My friend was on Team Atlantis. Me? Team Columbia.
The radio show here in San Francisco I contribute to, Invisible Ink, a clever attempt to merge zine culture and public radio, has begun archiving its shows on the web. Now you can hear the first 4 episodes of a great new program I'm describing as "Utne Reader on the Radio." I'm not in any of them but that shouldn't stop you. I'm set to head into the studio this week to record my first story.
Invisible Ink can be heard every Sunday at 2 PM PST on KALW 91.7 FM public radio in San Francisco or live via the web at KALW.org.
Suzan and I ran into Roman Mars, the esteemed creator of the show yesterday at the Alternative Press Expo where we both gabbed about the zine world while she mostly rolled her eyes. More on that later...
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
