My Fav-or-ite Time of the Year:

SXSW Blog is back. Let the excitement begin. Counting down the days until, as McNally calls it. Geek Week In Austin, wherein we Break Bread, Go all 20x2, and stay up way too late gabbing about the state of the future. Glorious Glorious.

Pixar says "No Thanks" to Mouse:

So Pixar and Disney will no longer be partners. Pixer may sign with another studio after it completes the remaining two films in its contract or go their own way, which is my prefered track for no good reason. Their product is consistently high quality, family friendly without being insulting, a nearly impossible feat. I've now watched the trailer for The Incredibles like ten times. I'm not sure I can wait until November.

Knit Neat:

My friend Megan has gone into business designing handmade knitting needle cases. I don't knit myself but I hear from those that do that it's hard as hell to keep the needles from stabbing holes in your supply bag or your hands when you reach into the bag for them. The Organized Knitter looks to be a stylish, compact way of storing knitting supplies.

Cracks in the White House Armor:

So it seems the White House has a policy of ratting out and bullying intelligence analysts whose findings to not jive with their political mission of war at all cost. It shouldn't surprise me, but this morning over breakfast, I fumed.

Findings like these are emerging with greater regularity. Does this spell trouble for Mr. Bush come November? Depends on whether the Hekyls and Jekyls in the Democratic party can use it to their advantage. Republicans have no problem playing dirty, immoral, slime king politics because it works. While the Dems are busy taking the moral highroad, its leading them right out of power.

Ultimately, I see this coming election as the Democrats to win or lose. It his singleminded quest for a war mantle to call his own, Bush has neglected our domestic infrastructure, squandered both our budget surplus and any amity with had with other nations, let our public schools atrophy and cozied up to convicted corporate criminals like Enron and Haliburton. The ammunition is all there to run him out of Washington on a rail, if the Democrats are smart enough to use it.

That's why I like Howard Dean's campaign. For me personally, this election is as much a referendum on the Democratic party as it is on the president. Whatever old way the Democrats had of doing business isn't working. They've lost the White House, Congress and worst of all, the faith of the average American. Dean has reinvigorated politics for millions and illustrate (in hype, granted, more than action) that a Democrat traditionally is a candidate on the side of working families, on the side of women's and gay rights, on the side of environmentalism that means clean air and drinking water for future generations not well tended mountain bike paths for investment bankers in Marin county. Much as I like John Kerry as a person, his campaign smacks of politics as usual and the last thing the Dems need now is anything "as usual."

Why You Shouldn't Read Alumni Bulletins: Lesson #1, Gub'ment.

So this guy and I grew up down the street from one another. I just found out that's he's now a member of the Ann Arbor City Council, recently elected. That's the town where we both grew up. He was interviewed on the local political cable access show by our 8th grade civics teacher.

Sheesh.

Oh, and this is the second time this has happened. This guy and I graduated from college the same year. He was "Jamie" back then.

Update: Leigh and I have been exchanging emails. Which is wild.

Sour Note:

In my quest for new musical horizons, I started using Launch.com and quickly fell in love. Not only does it program your favorite artists but then makes suggestions based on those you give them. I've already bought several songs from the Apple Music Store based on their ideas.

Now I find out that Launch refuses to work on a Macintosh system even if you follow all of their requirements to the letter (WMP 7.0 or above, IE 5.5. Any Mac OS above 8.0 but lower than X. What's next? A tuning fork jammed in your printer port?). I have a beautiful new iBook G4 that I bought with my book advance and I use at work. I figured Launch would be a great way to listen to music while sorting through the day's mundane tasks. Instead, it sticks its tongue out.

Just what do they think they're doing? Macs may be a small market share but iTunes and the Apple Music Store are rapidly pulling away from the pack. If people increasingly use their computers as juteboxes, Launch will leave itself out in the cold. Based on their attitude, its exactly what they deserve.

Is their an answer to this? Another program like Launch, for Mac People?

Update: I've posted to Lazyweb asking the same question. Who has designed (or will design) a plug-in to allow Launch.com to work on a Mac OS X system? Who knows an alternative program to use in the meantime?

Nice Try, Slimeballs:

Is there anyone out there who doesn't believe that this is a thinly-veiled Republican attempt to eat into abortion rights?

I didn't think so.

Iowa in Real Time:

I'm looking around for a site that's keeping track of the Iowa Caucus vote in real time or some close approximation. The best I've come up with the Des Moines Register's site and this Reporter's Log via the BBC. Both seem less than complete. CNN seems ok too. Any other ideas?

UPDATE: Wow, what a finish!

JHU on Air:

I had a brief, unremarkable career in college as a DJ on WHSR, Hopkins Student Radio. I hosted two shows, one called "The Grand Illusion" which was all 80's pop and another with my friend Jeremy called "Access All Areas" where I would play bad 70s arena schlock and he would play Wierd Al B-Sides. It lasted one semester and the station only reached to the buildings on campus. Often we were locked out of the station because the student monitor didn't show up to let us in. Our show was Friday night, 10-12.

So I was pretty happy to hear than Hopkins Radio had been put out of its mercy in 2000 and reborn this year as hopkinsradio.com, streaming live over the Internet. The shows seem more diverse then in my day (it was the early 90s and disgruntled "alternative" was everywhere) and I only hope that online broadcasting has eliminated some of the silly hurdles we had back then.

I'm going to listen and see.

Missing...

Monolguist Spalding Gray has been reported missing. His brother last reported seeing him around Christmas and Gray, who attempted suicide last year, has a long history of depression and lingering injuries sustained in a 2001 auto accident in Ireland. Grey is known for his one man plays and films Gray's Anatomy and Swimming to Cambodia.

Much as I'm a fan of Unsolved Mysteries, I still find this sort of thing creepy and sad. I hope he turns up soon. And not just in a ditch somewhere.

'Line' About Time:

So Loveline finally has something resembling a website, even if it's this token page thrown up by their mother station. The show's only been on the air for what, 15 years now and still doesn't have a website? What are people thinking?

No Regrets:

I'm a few days late here but Tourettes Without Regrets fuckin' rocks! Min Jung invited several of us to this monthly variety show of poetry slammin', hip-hop battlin' and a game show featuring suicide and serial killer trivia. The whole thing is held together by host Jamie Kennedy who swears a whole lot but keeps the rowdy crowd surprisingly upbeat.

The show clocked in at nearly 4 hours but about 90% it is solid--entertaining, smart, well-thought out. Much of this is thanks to Daniland, the East Bay promotional outfit behind much of the Tourettes talent. Dani has a remarkable eye and seems to select artist beased not only on content and performance but professionalism as well. And despite the teenage silliness of it (short skirted-chicks grinding, bras thrown at the stage), there's a workmanlike discipline to the event that I'm defining as East Bay because I don't have any other word for it.

It goes like this. Artists in San Francisco are remarkably proud of their own opression and think nothing of running, say, a Gay-Latino Letter Carrier's open mike night for 3 hours with bad lighting, stiff chairs and so-so talent because everyone's voice should be heard and artists are all second-class citizens anyway so they need a space that's theirs. That's fine if you're on stage but sucks if you're looking to support events like this and the organizers, through hubris or neglect, make it a horrible way to spend an evening. I'm guessing (based on nothing. That's why it's a guess) that the ethic in the East Bay, particularly a hip-hop influenced young arts scene like Tourettes is hard work and proving yourself. Got something to say? Grab a mike and do it. But go too long, indulge the audience in your guts spilling, think you don't have to prep because your lover is the host? Forget it, you're done. The stage belongs to those who can command it.

Gendered Reading:

There's been a great discussion over at Readerville over this article which refers to a seeming gender bias in the New York Times Book Review. It claims that, according to a fairly rigorous survey, the percentage of books the Times reviews and the sex of the reviews skews overwhelmingly male. Extrapolate this and quickly run into some mingling contradictions. Acquisitions editors at major publishing houses (i.e. the people who buy book projects) are a majority female as are marketers and publicists. CEOs and COOs (the people holding the purse strings) are majority male. The winners of pretigious book awards like the Pultizer, the National Book Award and the Nobel are mostly male. 70% of book buyers in the United States are female.

I certainly don't have an answer to these disparities. I think they are much more complicated than traditional gender bias and sexism. But I think as readers and book buyers, most of us are complicit in a kind of personal ghettoization that unwittingly lets this inequity fester. I ask this then: How many of us make a concerted effort to read and buy books by authors of genderd different than ours? How many of us are in dual gender writing and book groups? Perhaps equal representation begins at home.

Give it Away!

Youth Speaks, an organization I am proud to support in addition to being a big fan of, is now the proud owner of a new computer lab, thanks to the generousity of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Although I know very little about this band, this strikes me as an enormous act of altruism. Well done, Flea, Anthony et. al.

What I'm Reading:

I get asked this a lot. This is my first attempt to set it down in digital soil.

Burning Noel:

If you haven't yet disposed of your Christmas Tree, may I recommend finding a friend with a truck, collecting a few abandoned trees, taking yourself to a nearby body of water and setting them ablaze. I did this with Suzan, Kristin and Wendy this weekend and the effect is amazing.

Oh and congratulations to Derek and Heather!

"Professional Starfucker:"

Low Culture referrs to James Liption, host of Inside the Actor's Studio as a "Professonal Starfucker" and that may not be far from the truth when you consider the pathetically lightweight list of guests on this upcoming season. Naomi Watts? Jay Leno?

I must have been the only person stupid enough to think that ITAS had some measure of credibility in mind when it hit the air, something to do with discussing acting as an art instead of a career choice for blandly beautiful people who want to wear designer clothes and make out with each other. That sounds less like a job than senior year at Beverly Hills High School. But I was wrong wrong wrong. Lipton aparently gave up that pretense long ago (the first season included guests like Ellen Barkin and Stockard Channing whose public personnas are about being good actors, not about sitting next to Kid Rock at the MTV Movie Awards) and has contented himself with spending pointless hours worshiping the creative souls of the likes of Pierce Bronson (I wouldn't call Remington Steele and James Bond acting. I'd call it looking good in a suit) which only he can see. And after a perfunctory nod at Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the show has blatantly overlooked young talent like Lily Taylor, Steve Buscemi and Michael Rappaport, old lions of the craft like Ossie Davis and Jason Robards and has booked precious few actors of color that haven't wielded a gun in a summer blockbuster (no Angela Bassett, Ruby Dee or Cicely Tyson is an abomination).

Let's please cut the crap and stop calling this prgram Inside the Actor's Studio when it's obvious what it really is: The Tonight Show with low lighting, an hour of Starfucking with lamely manipulative foreplay (link via Gawker).

All is Quiet:

What a lovely New Year's Day. Suzan and I had our second annual Open House and folks stopped by throughout the afternoon for granola and lounging. Tantek and Amber came straight over from another party and were still in their pajamas. They brought board games and I learned that I suck at Scrabble. Jessa, MJ and Anne Marie braved the rain from disparate parts of the bay to come and visit. Wendy was here all through the Rose Bowl (in which Michigan played pathetically and deserved to lose), a few games of Trivial Persuit and a late afternoon screening of House Party).

It's pouring again this morning but I'm looking at is the floods from above, washing away the old of the previous year and clensing the earth in preparation for the new.

2004. It begins.

Last Minute Reading:

I've compiled a list of Ten Books I'm Glad I Read in 2003. Perhaps if you are flush with holiday funds (er, right) and looking for something to read?

Happy New Year everbody!