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.

Marshalled...

Welcome to war. Wish we weren't here.

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.

"Songbook" by Nick Hornby
($26, McSweeney's Books, 147 pages in Hardcover)

I'm pretty sure I've recommended this book before and it's still a bit too expensive for my blood but I can't help myself. Nick Hornby has done a fantastic little book about his favorite songs, a 3 or 4 page essay on each. Comes with a CD with some of those songs but you're better off reading this one next to your computer so can download the hundreds of tunes Hornby mentions so lovingly.

Old readers of my swill will now that I have my issues with Hornby's fictional style. But as a music critic, he's just plain sublime. He writes as a 45 year-old divorce' with a kid, which I think describes most rock critics even though they still think they're 19 and working at the college radio station. Plus Hornby addresses music snobbery head on and calls himself an unabashed pop fan without apology. A listener after my own heart.

"Rory & Ita" by Roddy Doyle ($23.95, Viking, 352 pages in Hardcover)

Roddy Doyle is perhaps my favorite fiction author, one of the few out there where I've read every one of his books. If you're not familiar with Mr. Doyle, you probably are with the movies based on his books, "The Commitments", "The Snapper" and "The Van." This is first non-fiction book, a memoir of his parents, how they met at a New Years dance in 1947 and raised a bunch of kids in the surburbs of the Irish capitol.

I don't have any idea if Roy & Ita Doyle are interesting people or not but I have a feeling that A) they are and B) if not, their son Roddy will make them that way. He hasn't let me down yet and I don't expect him to this time.

"Motherless Brooklyn" by Jonathan Lethem
($13.00, 311 pages, Vintage Paperback)

My friend Nina has been on me to read this one for several months now. When I saw her in Austin last week and she gently reminded me that I had promised, I moved it right to the front of the Nightable line. She's about the 5 person to insist I read this book. Finally I'm listening.

I guess I've been hesitant because Lethem has big Pomo cred which almost always means an author's work is unreadable or as pleasent to dive into as swimming pool without water. And for pete's sakes, it's a crime novel about a detective with Tourettes Syndrome. Yet my buddy Dave, who doesn't have much patience for thicket and bramble narratives either, said "you'll finish it in a day." I'm gonna give it a try.

Ten Things I Learned at SXSW:

1. Reports of the conference's demise have largely been exaggerated. Before I left for Austin this year, I was a little melancholy that talk had been streaking around blogworld about how South by Southwest was over the hill, that there was nothing new to say about this medium and, dangit, where are the limousines and dancing girls of yesteryear? Upon arrival, that sadness lasted about 15 minues. I have no idea what the economic state of the conference is and since I know nothing about the special events business, it's foolish for me to even speculate. Yet the soul of South by Southwest--warm, passionate, creative people in one place committed to building a dynamic future-burns as brightly as it ever has.

2. To that end, the conference is turning a corner. The first wave of web mania is dead and buried. Weblogs are going mainstream and in many circles are there already. These stories have been told. And though it may be comforting, even fun, to hear them again, there are other walls to scale and undiscovered countries waiting on the other side. If South by Southwest is to grow with us, it will need to start telling these new stories, loudly, and asking for our insights in telling them.

3. Those new stories are already being told, on the conference floor, over meals and late-night cocktails. Keep an eye out for panels next year on online multiplayer gaming, digital music, D.I.Y filmmaking, human/web-powered city guides and finding time to pursue personal and creative projects. If you don't see them, ask why not.

4. Hugh is a very capable fellow but most of the dazzling ideas for the conference comes from the attendees. So if you've been waiting forever to see a panel on Web-enabled kitchen appliances, don't moan, do something. Pitch it to Hugh. He isn't going to laugh at you behind your back and you don't have to be all brilliant and sexy and award-winning to offer up an idea.

Case in point: I ended up doing my Book Culture panel because I ran into Hugh in the hallway at the 2002 conference and rudely asked him why there was nothing about the web and books at the conference. He said "Why don't you do something about that?" That's what I did.

5. Being intimidated, while understandable, is a waste of time. Though I've seeing the same faces at SXSW for four years now, there's still a small group of people that I'm afraid to talk to. One I spotted at my second panel and again at Bruce Sterling's house. I finally just tapped her on the shoulder and said "Thanks for coming to my panel." She was very nice, which I would have found out last year had I not been too chicken to speak to her.

I've been talking about this with a few other attendees. I think next year I'm going to make a list of every single person at the confrence whom I've been too shy to approach and talk to them. I don' go to Austin every spring to remind myself of what I was like in junior high.

6. I'm not a spring chicken anymore. This is my fourth South by Southwest and, though that may not make me an old timer, it certainly makes me at least middle-aged in conference years. I several attacks of deja vu walking the convention hallways, my badge bouncing off my jacket. People I used to only know from afar are now old friends. Four years ago, panelists were gods or at least much smarter and better looking than me. I was a panelist this year. Twice. I even found myself at dinner talking to a fellow attendee there for his first conference asking me how it "used to be." Wow.

7. These young attendees, maybe of whom cannot even drink legally, are the future of South by Southwest. We owe it to each other and to the conference as a whole to share with them what we know and to listen to what they have to say.

8. Castle Hill Cafe is as good as its ever been. This year I got to spread its gospel.

9. The most special thing about South by Southwest is how selflessly nice everybody is. Every year I am thunderstuck by how quickly attendees open up their homes, minds and hearts to people they only see once a year, to people with whom they may only have this crazy hobby in common. And while there are plenty of people at the conference I may not be as tight with if we saw each other every day, we have a unique bond one week a year. For that one week, I love them all.

10. I need to feel more often like I do when I'm at South by Southwest. Maybe we all do. I had a rather poignant conversation with two new friends at the conference this year who both remarked with sadness how spoiled they get by attending the conference each year. For a few days, they get to surround themselves with passionate, creative people. Then they have to go back to the routineness of life, its car payments, skinned knees and Monday mornings at the office.

What I realized this year is that I'd like to feel the way I do at South by Southwest a lot of the time. Most of the time. I know the conference is not reality (something I have to say out loud every year as a reminder) and that I am in the fortunate position of being A) unmarried and childless, B) in good health, C) working at a job that I love and D) in decent financial shape in spite of C). Nonetheless, I want creativity, passion, and solidarity to be an everyday occurance. Or at least the neigborhood I live in rather than a foreign country I visit once a year.

I'm going to try and make this happen by saying yes to more events and projects like South by Southwest instead of "I'm too busy," to listen to what those different from me have to offer instead of assuming I know best and to realize the craziest idea is probably the one most worth chasing. Most of all, I'm going to try and nuture the relationships I began in Austin this year, in hopes that we can all carry some of that "conference high" without throughout the year instead coming down as soon as we get home.

I'd say it's worth a try. You coming along?

Like Matt...

Not that it hasn't been said yet but the music Scott Andrew is doing as the Walkingbirds is just great stuff, luminious, sweet intelligent folk without being self-important or slight. And its all available free for download.

My favorite, "Gravel Road Requiem", reminds me of when I first heard Matt Nathanson nearly eight years ago who quickly became my favorite folkie ever.

What am I waiting for?

A couple have asked to see a print version of the poem I did at 20x2 during South by Southwest. Here it is, addressing the question "What are you waiting for?"

What are you waiting for?

When did I last wait for anything?

When did I last open my eyes and wait for the day rather than cursing that it was here?

When did I last wait and say "What am I doing now?" rather than "What should I be doing next?"

When did I last listen before speaking,

ask before assuming,

wonder before judging?

When did I last take the long way home,

take the scenic route,

take an old friend to dinner and say I can be home...whenever?

When did I last, walk instead of hurry,

eat instead of eat and run,

plug the correct time into the microwave instead of :22

:44

:55

thinking that would save me...a little time?

When did I last wait and...........

Take a deep breath before speaking?

When did we last listen,

talk "to" rather than "at"

commit to under-committing,

commit random acts of understanding?

When did we last all, here, wait?

For peace, serenity, clarity appreciation, a moment?

When was the last time we all decided...

to just wait?

Missing Amanda...

I know I'm in the middle of a SXSW wrap-up but this can't wait...

I just got a note that Amanda Davis, author of Circling the Drain and the new book Wonder When You'll Miss Me, was killed along with her parents when her father's plane crashed in the mountains outside Ashville, North Carolina. Amanda had been in Ashville at a reading for her new novel and her parents, who lived in the area, had come to visit.

Amanda was a professor at Mills College in Oakland where I had met her a few weeks ago. We both were featured speakers at the colleges MFA career day. I introduced myself because I could have sworn I had met her before. It turns out we had several friends in common as the literary world in the Bay Area is very small. We exchanged cards and said we should have coffee sometime. I mentioned I was looking forward to reading her book.

How horrible this news is.

The way home...

I’m on the plane ride back to San Francisco. SXSW for me ended around 3:20 Wed. morning when I took in a late night trip to Katz’s Deli after the closing party at Bruce Sterling’s house. In the fog somewhere between dawn and the middle of the night, a dozen of us ate french fries, laughed a lot, and promised to do it again next year, just like we had the year before that.

I love South by Southwest. Just plain love it. For five days each spring, just as winter is beginning to break, I come to Austin, my old home. I see old friends and inevitably make new ones. I stay up way too late and eat badly. I have ideas that I had never considered but seem here to spark of me like metal hitting flint. And by about day 2, “I” has faded, “I” has become “we." “We” are my brothers and sisters I’ve grown to love, hundreds of bright, creative, passionate, warm people I get to keep company with, just as the seasons are changing and what is stale and routine in life now seems reinvented and shined up like new.

I’ve there’s a better way to celebrate the changing of seasons, I haven’t found it yet.

South By Southwest and I have been meeting like this for four years now, roughly paralleling my history on the web. Back then, Central Booking was in its infancy, I lived in Austin, and I was headed over to that big noisy Convention Center next door to see what all this web fuss was about. Now my professional life on the web is largely over and the strangers I once saw from afar, on panels and in the hallways, are old friends. Professionally, I’ve become more like them, speaking on two panels this year, and performing at Fray Cafe and 20x2. My friend Carrie called me a “rock star” and John Styn reflected on the last four years and noted that I’ve “exploded” onto the scene. They’re both exaggerating but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel more aware of my own evolution here than I'm yet comfortable with.

That’s part of why the conference felt different this year, though no less giddy and insane. I’m a bit older now, my headlong experimental days on the web largely behind me. My interest in technology now is largely intellectual rather than the key to my future plans. I know where I’m going professionally. Plus, with talk hanging in the air about how the conference is past its prime, how its got nothing new to say and nobody cares about new media anymore anyway, had me feeling a little less fancy free than in years past.

A word on that: South by Southwest, as a feeling, a happening, a state of mind, is only over when the hundreds of people who make room for it each year in their busy lives decide it is over. Obviously the conference itself needs money from festival passes and sponsors to survive and there isn’t as much of it around as there used to be. That’s for the organizers to worry about. Our job as attendees, as creative people committed to the spirit of the conference, is to A) maintain the energy of South by Southwest in our lives and work the rest of the year and B) if you were disappointed with the offerings this year, say so. Tell Hugh. He wants our feedback, our suggestions. If he can’t fit it on the schedule next year, do it yourself. Send out an email to everyone you met this year, saying “I’m doing a panel on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome on my weblog next year the first week of March because I never see one on the conference docket. Hope you can “attend.” Then do it.

I wasn’t around for the wild dot com ride that defined the conference in the late 90’s so I can only sort-of understand the longing for those days. But I also didn’t get involved with digital culture to complain that today is lame compared to yesterday. I got involved to dream about how tomorrow could be better than today. And then make it happen.

So I’ll be back next year, even if there is no conference, though I doubt its vanishing anytime soon. The time there, in these first days of spring is too good for my soul. And the people, most of whom I only see once a year and I’ll thank privately, are like a second family. I’d miss them too much.

What do we from here? It’s up to us whether we want South by Southwest to be five days long then stop or have an impact throughout the year and on into the next. That’s why I’ll be back, because to me it feels like it wouldn’t be spring otherwise.

See you, hopefully before then.

Report from SXSW:

I'm sitting in the South by Southwest panelists room (Kevin's a panelist? Look at his funky black ass), exploiting the free WiFi access and getting ready for 20x2 this evening where I need to answer the question "What are you waiting for?" in two minutes. I'm doing a kind of spoken word mish-mash that is currently scrawled on two crumbled sheets of paper. I'm going to see if I can fix them up before dashing off to the next event.

My panel this morning went surprisingly well. Carrie, Ben and I did some decent prep beforehand but for about the first ten minutes, I forgot I was the moderator and it was up to me to keep conversation going. After stumbling blindly for a few minutes, the three of us seemed to get back on track. I don't know, I hear the feedback was good but its hard to tell if its you sitting there. I'll wait until the accolades/jeers roll in.

I've got another schtick at 5 pm about getting published and finding an agent and all that jazz which I'm going to go prepp for. More later, perhaps.

And I miss Suzan. I hope she knows that.

Leaving. On a Jet Plane...

I split for South by Southwest tomorrow and will be gone until the 15th. When you do here from me until then, it will be from the conference floor.

See ya soon. I'll let you know how the whole agent thing goes.

So here's the deal...

Central Booking (1999-2003) is done. It's been a terrific ride but it's time for me to do something else. Thank you all for your support. I couldn't have done it without you.

Now for the next step: There's a New York agent who wants to represent me. I've seen some of his other projects. I actually even know one of his other clients.

I've been spending the last 48 hours obsessing over whether I should sign on with him or not, thinking it was about his level of experience, does he have the right relationship with the right editors to make the book happen? That's really not it though. After talking with several other writers and with old friends, what I'm really fussing over is my commitment to this project. Signing on with this agent means this book may very well become a reality, a living, breathing thing that I spend the next two years working on, that ends up on a shelf at your local bookstore, that I go on tour for, get interviewed about and on and on. That's huge. And it scares the wits out of me.

But I'm probably going to do it anyway. Perhaps this agent isn't right for my second book or my fifth, but he is the right person for this one. And if our relationship works for both of us, we'll keep working together when it's time for the next book. If it's not, we won't. We're not getting married.

Last year, I had a conversation with an old friend and I was moaning about all these great professional opportunities that were coming my way, how I wasn't ready for them and what if I screwed up etc. I told him I felt like I was standing on a very tall ladder, affraid to go up or down. He said this...

"I've felt that way too, scared about what comes next. Once I acknowledge that, I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and jump."

Here I go...

The word on my book:

My book just took a big leap forward toward becoming a reality. Enough of a tease for ya?

How to magazine:

So Red Herring Magazine is closing. So is Shift. The Industry Standard and Talk Magazine bit the dust within the last few years. I guess Upside is still around but you can't really tell from their bizarrely altered web site (Note: Upside is no longer around. They closed last year).

It doesn't seem to be a great time to be in the magazine business unless you're small, nichy, maybe non-profit and largely publishing in your spare time. Some of my favorite titles like Utne Reader, Bitch Magazine, To-Do List and Ready Made are all on track to survive longer than their glossier, now-dead counterparts through a combination of these methods. Some already have. It doesn't seem like an easy life but it is possible.

Do you have favorite magazines that also fly below the popular radar?

Sad Day in the Neighborhood...

More on Mr. Rogers passing, a few items...

*I started taking another look at the career and influence of Mr. Rogers after reading a profile of him a few years ago in Salon's Brilliant Careers. The part I like best is when when the writer talks about Rogers routine "Rogers swims -- nude, thank you -- every morning, is a vegetarian, has never smoked or drank and has been married to the same woman for 47 years" and never once lost his cool or publicly humiliated himself. Mr. Rogers was who he was).

*My friend Davvy Rothbart from Found Magazine did a lovely story (real audio file) on This American Life about meeting Mr. Rogers and consulting him about a dispute he was having with his neighbors.

*The Metafilter thread on Mr. Rogers passing made me cry.

And now I'm back...

Aw jeez. I leave for three days and Mr. Rogers up and dies.

Both the 5 year old boy and the 29 year old man are sad today. Sad again.