Freelancers will relate...

There's a weird thing about working for yourself and planning to take some time off. On the one hand, you certainly don't want (and probably aren't in the position) to turn down work if it comes your way. On the other hand, everybody needs time off or your sanity turns to mush.

I'm taking this week off from work. I'll still blog and email and such but no official work will be done. Instead, I'm spending today dreaming up relaxing activities for myself. Tomorrow, they get put into play.

But what of work? I do several kinds of work for several different people, organizations etc. Do I send out a note to them all? That's a bit much, like a wedding invitation. And then I got it. Behold the majesty of the weblog...

To Jud (agent person): I will have the proposal and a subtitle finished by mid-April when we meet up in New York. Promise.

To Roman (radio producer person): I know I said I wasn't working this week but yes, I will come record tomorrow. Someone is willing to put this show on public radio every week. I'm not going to look that gift in the mouth. And you (at your own risk) want to put me on during pledge time.

To Eric (other radio producer person): We need to get back in touch and figure out a next step for WOTS. I'm meeting with some stations in the coming weeks and might have a plan.

To Oscar (editor person): Review of Larry McMurtry's new book due April 30 right?

To Chris (other editor person): On the lookout for Prozac Nation.

To Jeff: (editor friend): Tim'm and I have talked and will have interview done by April 20th.

I think that's it.

Now is the time on sprockets when we relax.

Fray Cafe the third...

Mr. Powazek has posted the audio from Fray Cafe 3 in Austin. There's some great stuff on there including a couple of fly songs from Scott Lepera, and wonderful tales from Jish Mukerji (on being the biggest stud in third grade), Meryl Evans (about her new baby), and John Styn (on his love for his grandpa). I did a little something about working at a video store. At minute 38:50 on the real audio feed (sound provided by the inimitable Michael Brown).

'Spoken' of...

So the panel on Thursday went well. Audience was pleased and the performers--Paul Flores, Emily Kagan and Tim'm West--were amazing. I've been asked a couple of times if I would have events like this in the future at the Commonwealth Club. The answer is I really couldn't say at this point. The end result is highly rewarding but the workload leading up to it is huge. Plus, I'm not especially comfortable in the role of a special events planner which I feel is best described by my friend Jessa, "All of the grief and none of the perks. If everything goes perfectly, you shouldn't even get noticed."

I'm not sure if that's me. We'll see though. I've given myself a vacation for the entire next week, which I deperately need. I fear I may have suffered a little burnout, shifting into my new career without so much as a breath in between.

Thanks bunches to my friends Jish, Wendy, Tantek, Roman, and Kristin who all made a good showing at the panel. And since they asked, below are several excellent spoken word resources for the Bay Area.

SF Station's Spoken Word Listings: A really fabulous catalog of different venues to see and hear spoken word throughout the region.

Youthspeaks: A youth spoken word and poetry educational group that has top flight performances around San Francisco often.

Black Box theater: A performance and theatrical venue in downtown Oakland that frequently hosts slams and spoken word events.

Berkeley Slam hompage: Also has a calendar of other slam events throughout the region.

Lapse in Communication

Sorry about that everyone. A brief meltdown at server central. Everything should be fine now.

This Week's Recommended Books...

I'm recommending 3-5 books a week at my new mailing list which you can sign up for here. No spam, just books.

Along the Border Lies by Paul Flores ($12.95 in paperback, Creative Arts Books, 208 pages)

Paul is a poet here in the Bay Area whose first novel goes off like a cannon. It's a series of interlocking stories, all with people in their twenties and thirties and their relationship to the California/Mexican border between San Diego and Tijuana. Some on the California side burn with fury about "those fuckin' illegals" even though their parents were once immigrants as well. Others were once prosperous business people in Tijuana before it became a sleezy playground for white, American college students. More still traverse the border with ease, carrying cargo both legal and illegal, with sometimes nothing more than a desire not to be defined by that invisible line across the canyon.

Along the Border Lies is the story the movie Traffic should have told. Tough, unblinking, yet surprising tender, its a great read about a part of this country in daily struggle over the definition of "American"

Authentically Black: Essays for a Black Silent Majority by John McWhorter ($25.00 in Hardcover, Gotham Books, 264 pages).

Professor McWhorter, a linguist at UC Berkeley caused a bit of a row in 2001 when his previous book Losing The Race: Self-Sabatoge in Black America posited that the educational and societal troubles of African-Americans were basic human issues not insititutionalized racism. I read the first 100 pages of Losing the Race while killing time in Cody's Books in Berkeley and was bowled over by how eloquently McWhorter (who is black, if it matters to you) argues what seems like a terribly Un-PC opinion but McWhorter is one smart fella. And I will read just about anything from smart fellas who can write, particularly if they are approaching the fundamental tenents of our society (race, class, gender) in a way I haven't seen before. And I've seen most of them.

His publisher was goodly enough to send me his new collection of essays Authentically Black, which epxands his arguments into the realms of popular culture, the business word, and politics. I just started reading it on the bus yesterday. I can't wait for my bus ride to the office tomorrow.

The Great Movies by Roger Ebert
(29.95$ in Hardcover, Broadway Books, 432 pages.)

In 1996, Roger Ebert pursuaded the brass at the Chicago Sun-Times to let him re-view 100 of his favorite movies and write a bi-monthy essay on each. His feeling was that with the slow death of independent video stores, repatory movie houses and classic movies on late night TV, that film history was in danger of beginning, in most film fan's minds, with Star Wars.

His book isn't an AFI-style list of The 100 Best Movies of All Time. Most of those lists are old news anyway, but rather a primer on the high watermarks of the history of the movies. His essays are personal rather than didactic, allowing me to read the book for pleasure first but then eager to jet to the video store soon afterward.

That Whole Agent Thing...

The whole agent thing now has a conclusion. A few days ago, I signed on. Now Jud Laghi of International Creative Management in New York is my agent. Everyone, meet Jud. Jud, meet everyone.

Dotty!

Aparently there was a mad genius at work behind all those icons (the hour glass, the arrow, the Macintosh swirly-thing) that have now become part of our visual lexicon. Her name is Susan Kare and she works here in San Francisco. She's got a pretty good personal site where you can flip through the icons she's responsible for, a bit mind-blowing. It's like chatting with the person who invented the language of the 21st century. And the tapestry? Let's just say I'll never look at a pixel the same way again.

After O

Another Oscar Night has come and gone. I mentioned earlier I wasn't all that interested but Suzan insisted we watch together. I sat down and got sucked in.

I noticed this was the second year in a row the Best Picture winner was not the evening's top story. Last year, the buzz was Halle Barry and Denzel Washington and African-American talent finally getting its due. There was also some stuff about September 11th, mostly bungled by Tom's Cruise's "Hooray for Hollywood" rotton egg of an opening speech and several more laid by the host Whoopi Goldberg.

Proceedings were again rather restrained this year, continuing a several year trend that has eased out fancy dance numbers and silly song and dance schtick by the host. The star wattage seemed positively dim as every third nominee was also a presenter. Richard Gere even presented Chicago, his own movie, as a Best Picture nominee. They couldn't find one other star to read off a telepromter?

The highlights, for us at least, included Adrien Brody upsetting Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor. The Pianist, easily the best yet most depressing of the Best Picture Nominees, also brought home a Best Adapted Screenplay and a Best Director Oscar for Roman Polanski, who Hollywood effectively banished from the industry 25 years ago. Michael Moore amped up the anti-war sentiment of the evening by devoting his entire acceptance speech for Best Documentry to scolding the President. The audience, which gave him a standing ovation just seconds earlier, now started audibly booing. Huh? It's Michael frick'n Moore. What did you expect him to do? Thank his agent?

So anyway Chicago won best people and nobody cared. It's fun movie, creatively filmed, with some OK songs. In ten years, no one will remember Chicago, just as we are already starting to forget Driving Miss Daisy, The English Patient, and A Beautiful Mind, all movies that won Best Picture when vastly superior alternatives were nominated.

Award this.

Tonight's Oscars cap off a furious season of celebrity award giving, each one more callow than the last. The New York Times had a solid examination of this phenom this morning.

I find myself even less interested in this evening's festivities than last, maybe because Chicago looks like a shoe-in and I didn't think it was all that good. And I know the awards are really just a big party for the entertainment industry but after seeing all the movies in question, I don't feel all that obligated to come to their roast. Also I caught the Independent Spirit Awards on IFC last night and saw precisely what the Oscars lack--spontaneity, wit, and appreciation for movies instead of hype and most of all, fun. The Oscars, ccomparitively, are like a five-hour high school graduation with nicer clothes and no beach balls.

Should you be interested in a more levelheaded approach to the Season of Statuettes, may I recommend Fametracker (look past the attitude) and Gold Derby, which sees this time of year for what it really is, a horse race.

One Sentence Movie Reviews #7

Panic Room (2002): If you buy a house with something called a "panic room", you'll end up inside it sooner than you think.