Last Post of 2004:

Today is the last day of 2004 and I've been thinking all week about what to say, as a roundup, as an analysis, as a farewell to a Matterhorn ride of a year. Truth, I'm rather speechless. This was one of the more dramatic years of my life, where the highs rang out like yell in a canyon and lows sank me to my knees. Or rather my bed.

I worked on a book most of the year, that's all but done and is actually up on Amazon. My book. It hasn't felt real until now. I celebrated three years in a relationship with Suzan, love deepened by trips to two countries and a cat named Faygo. I worked on Litquake again, the biggest baddest festival of its kind to date. It's still being talked about several months later. I started taking my career more seriously, leaving The Grotto, building an office, petitioning for membership in the National Speakers Association and entering into talks about my second book. I volunteered at the San Francisco Food Bank, Jewish Family and Children Services and The Hub. I saw friends get engaged, get married, come to San Francisco and move away. Some are starting to have kids. Some are just figuring out what they want.

Seeing John Kerry lose in November broke my heart. It hasn't quite mended.

Most of all, I spend a lot of this year thinking about health and well being. I turned 31 which means worries and concerns you don't have when you're 20. I focused on eating well, exercising, meditating each morning. The first week of the year, I'm getting a physical, going to the dentist and getting my eyes checked. I intend to live a long time. Best to be diligent now, when I'm healthy and active. I'm buying comfort and piece of mind later.

Well being to me also means less ego, less relentless thirst for self-gratification, understanding my place in other's lives and my place in the world. This is the area where I need the most help, particularly with a book coming out next June and a summer's worth of "me me me" ahead for 2005. But I'm going to try to remember that I live my best life as one of many, with an understanding of my loyalties to others, to my family, to my home, instead of as one and only.

So I'm ready for 2005 and the huge changes it will bring. I can best appreciate them if I remember, even as they are happening, that I am still me, am good at being me, and like it.

See you tomorrow. And the whole year after...

Where to Help:

Tsumani Help is a online clearing house of resources and news related to the earthquake tragedy in Southeast Asia (via The Elegant Variation).

Susan Sontag Update:

I posted yesterday about Susan Sontag's passing. Edrants has compiled a good list of Sontag-related resources for the curious.

Eatin' Goodies:

Two food-related finds from Cool Hunting.

*Ripesense is a colored dot food manufactures can put on produce packages. The dot's color will tell you how ripe or spoiled the food is.

*The Mobile Foodie Survival Kit is a paintboxed-size container of 20 different spices and sauces. Never eat a bland airplane meal again.

Sick, Sad, CNN:

In an absolutely disguisting display of what news companies think they have to do for a fresh headline, CNN has decided to cover how the tsumani in Southeast Asia had ruined vacations for celebrities. Ruined vacations for celebrities. 59,000 people are dead and this is where CNN devotes their resources.

Repulsive (via Waxy.org).

R.I.P Susan Sontag:

Susan Sontag, one of giants of public intellectualism, has died at 71. The cause is not yet known. Sontag was the author of thirteen books including what many consider the definitive essays on illness, photography, and "camp" culture. She's been awarded the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and a MacArthur "genius" fellowship.

I became acquainted with Sontag's work in graduate school when my thesis advisor recommended I read her book On Photography for my study of depression-era tabloid photographer Weegee. On Photography may be the single best book ever written on the subject of taking pictures and is so compulsively readable that I have gone back to it several times since just for fun. I haven't read any of her other books, but always meant to.

Sontag had a reputation for being headstrong, uncompromising and a bit of an old world literary snob. Though I didn't car for that side of her, her intellect, diligence and commitment to a life of the mind were second to none. I will miss her.

Closing all Libraries:

Salinas, California, birthplace and muse of John Steinbeck, is closing its three public libraries. The city claims a severe budget shortfall, which has already led to the closing of a rec. center and civil servant wage cuts, as the reason. In November, voters turned down a half-cent sales tax increase that would have funded the library systems. The citizens of Salinas, a mostly working class argicultural town with a large Latino population, rely on the library system for computer access, literacy and job resources.

So what's the take away lesson here? Several.

1) Read your ballot at election time. You never know what you're voting for. Or against.

2) Libraries are no longer dim book warehouses where grumpy librarians say "shhhh." In the 21st century, libraries are community centers, information resources, and one of the few great equalizers in an increasingly expensive digital age. The poor, kids, the homeless and the elderly depend upon libraries for job leads, access to municipal services, homework help and Internet access when they can't afford computers at home. Just because you don't think need them, doesn't mean someone else does.

3) Nobody likes to pay taxes. Nobody thinks government is any good at managing money. That said, society needs money to run and the way the system works is that everybody pays in. If you'd prefer a setup where everybody only pays what they use, fine. Then starting tomorrow, I will no longer pay public school taxes since I have no children. I will no longer pay into veterans funds because I've never served in war. I won't pay highway taxes since I don't commute and won't pay for the free clinic in my neighborhood that provides health care to the poor since I'm not poor.

See how fast this logic unravels? Does this sound like the society you want?

This sucks. It just plain sucks (via Readerville).

Sunday Morning Shards #18

On my mind and in my reading queue this week. The "Getting Well" edition.

*All Consuming.net, a kind of Technorati for books, is a neat site designed by the endlessly creative Erik Benson. It not only tracks what books are being discussed on the blogosphere but allows you create lists from your own book collection and publish them on your weblog. The "Currently Reading" box to your immediate right is a product of All Consuming (discovered on the smooth redesign of Dansays).

*I've gotten dizzy from trying to keep track of all the Best Music of 2004 columns I've seen around. So I'm going with this column in the Dec. 15 issue of SFWeekly which also informed me that a bunch of artists I had heard of, neigh admired, were from right here in Da Bay.

*I had no idea that the legendary Ben Fong-Torres did a column on radio for SFGate. Another reason why The Gate needs RSS Feeds.

*A list of newspapers that have gotten their RSS on (via Micropersuasion).

*"The Next Big Thing" is a dense, rich public radio program like a hardy piece of maple fudge. It's been described as a baby "This American Life" but that doesn't quite get it. It's got the same smart-people-addressing-topic-in-different-ways-format but TAL is a bit more structured, sticking rigidly to Act I, Act II,everything in mellow-tones. TNBT seems to give a bit more liberty to its contributors, honoring the diversity (shrill, whispery, resigned etc.) of their voices. I'm not describing it all that well so let them. I'll just say it's quite good.

*I'm trying out this program Audio Hijack, which lets you do timed recordings of radio, music and audio streams. It may be the Tivo for Radio I've been looking for.

*Mysteries are the most borrowed types of books from the nation's public libraries (via ArtsJournal).

*2005 is being called The Year of Hyper Fragmentation. If even a couple of these predictions comes true, 2005 is going to be a very exciting year to be a cultural consumer.

Cookin for Christ(sakes):

Oy, Jesus even gets a cake on his birthday. But does anybody bake for Judah Macabee? Even a nice plate of scones? Newwwwoooooooo.

Happy Holidays ya'll. See ya on Sunday for da shards.

Rail Across America:

American Orient Express is a fleet of trains that give tours to different points of interest across the country in the old style of premiere luxury train travel. Though the tours I looked up (Pacific Coast Explorer and National Parks of the West) were blindingly expensive (Nearly $4000 per person for base-level accomodations) they really take care of you. Each train is a restored classic, with original furnishings, dishes and uniformed attendants. A porter turns down your bed at night. Some of the tours even have scholars and lecturers on board. Although I don't know if I'll ever be able to afford it, it sure sounds like fun.

'Booking' a Hotel:

The Rosewood Hotel chain is planning to have a poolisde menu of advanced copies of books for guests to chose from while they lounge. Five major publishers are participating in the program. Although I'm guessing the books will be the usual bestselling clutter, I still really like the idea (via Readerville).

One Sentence Movie Reviews #22

Elf (2003): "Will Ferrell is contractually obligated to be the tallest person in every film in which he stars."

Understanding Groupies:

The Cupcake Series blog (supplement to the all-women Cupcake Reading Series in New York) pointed me to this essay about gender and literary fandom. It asks (and I paraphrase) "Can female authors have groupies too? Do male fans select the perfect outfit, show up an hour early and sigh when a female author reads sonorously from her brilliant skeins of prose?"

Answer? Men do engage in groupie behavior but only if the author is really hot. Which means that, should she come on the market, a middle-aged genius like Alice Munro, will probably not be squiring hot young things around town a la Norman Mailer or every third university creative writing professor. Although I think there'd be a certain poetic justice if she did.

In answering why this is, I'm realizing that we're striking at the very heart of why men and women are different, peering deep into the circuitry of the species and and inhaling the sparks. There are whole industries dedicated to answering these questions and most don't do it very well. But I'm going to let them have their fun and have mine by generalizing my ass off.

Men are not lit groupies because we are simpletons. Women are lit groupies because they are overly complex.

Groupiedom occupies that contexted zone between fandom and crush. A groupie, of anyone, doesn't just want to be in the presence of their object of adoration because they love their creative output. Their creative output actually makes that person desirable so groupies would also like to have sex with them. However groupies aren't just about sex either because they could get that at the neighborhood bar with a lot less effort. Groupiedom is about fantasy and self-inflation, the fanstasy of "being with" the admired artist and the self-inflation of believing that being intimate with them somehow lifts you.

This is all very hard work, negotiating the delicate boundries between fan and stalker, between lustworthy and pathetic, between perspective mate and one-night-in-St. Louis stopover. Which is precisely why men make lousy groupies. Namely...

1) We're too godamn lazy. Men might tell you they love pursuit but they hate unattainable pursuit. Creative idols are by definition unattainable. Men see that and give up. Or rather, they salivate from afar and maybe make a desperate lunge when in their presence. This is why you see so many middle aged hairy guys at Donnas concerts. But men don't create elaborate dates and fantasies of being with their favorite writer/musician/artist because it's too much work when you can simply imagine them naked and jerk off. The road to fufillment for us is very short. This makes us very lazy. Not to mention...

2) Terribly uncreative. Men get turned on at a shift in wind or a flutter of the eye. It also goes away that fast. With such a raging (yet ultimately capricious) libido, would you invest the emotional energy getting primped, going to an A.M. Homes reading and imagining yourself on a date with her, when, with a flash of her wedding ring or an utter of "My boyfriend's a musician", it could all vanish? You'd rather just imagine her decorated with custard and stay at home. Men don't need a scenario, an association, even a physical presence to get hot. And since imagination isn't necessary, those skills atrophy and drop off, like wings on a kiwi.

3) The A #1 reason men are not groupies is that somewhere deep down and scary, we feel threatened by public worship. Pamela Des Barres might have parlayed being the "World's Most Famous Groupie" into a successful writing career but that came after years of cleaning puke off of passed out musicians, darning their socks and giving them head before they rushed off to the airport. All this might sound like good ole' rock n' roll fun, but at its core, it requires a willing submission of one's self to a more famous and powerful person. You need them way more than they need you. Men can do that (looks at sports fandom) but they either a) do it in private (see playing the tennis racquet guitar in your bedroom) b) replace the idol with themselves (why men form tribute bands more than women) or c) include themselves in the worship. When the Steelers win, we win. But to squeal at a record stores, to dress up for a reading, to imagine ourselves on someone's arm, well that would mean that we are not the most important person in our own fantasy. And that simply won't do.

What do you think?

Rock On, Chicago:

The Chicago Public Library system now offers free Wifi at all of their 79 branches. This is the future. I hope other libraries are watching.

Missing Flickr:

Salon had an article about Flickr this morning that didn't mention who invented the thing. If I were the folks at Ludicorp, I'd be pissed.

Not Going Gracefully:

Dorothy Geeben is 96 years old and running unopposed for reelection as mayor of Ocean Breeze Park, Florida. This makes Ms. Geeben the nation's oldest mayor. She'll be 3 months shy of her 99th birthday when her next term is up.

Sunday Morning Shards #17 (In the evening...)

On my mind and in my reading queue this week. The "Winding Down" edition.

*My girlfriend Suzan has been posting pictures on her Flickr account. They rock.

*An interview with Mark Pahlow, the man behind the simply awesome Archie McPhee toys in Seattle (via jjg).

*Macworld's Best Digital Music Products of 2004. Guess what? They're not all iPods (via Largehearted Boy)

*The Jimi: A wallet for people who hate wallets (via Cool Hunting).

*EventLab is a new Corante blog about how technology, live events and podcasting. Looks like great stuff and my buddy Eric Rice is one of the contributors (via New Media Musings).

*Chalkhills.org is a rediculously huge site about all-things XTC.

*Inkblots Magazine is looking to bring some additional writers onboard after being hauled valiantly for so many years on the back of its creator Geoff Long. He can't pay you right now but Inkblots is a fine publication and a gold star on any aspiring writer's resume'. Consider it.

*With 2 bobcats, 1 Great White Heron, 3 hawks and a beautiful sunset spotted in a single afternoon, The Tennesse Valley, just north of San Francisco, is a great place for a hike.

Song of the Week #6:

One of my criteria for a song to reach the dizzying heights of "all time favorite song" is that I can remember exactly when and how I first heard it. If history holds, then XTC's "Then She Appeared" will, several years and many thousands of playings from now, will be one of my all time favorite songs.

Suzan and I were watching a Gillmore Girls rerun last weekend and, at the end of one episode where main character Rory kisses Jess (brooding guy she has chosen over nice pretty boy from the 'neighb) for the first time, the gorgeous shimmering guitars undulate under their pre-smootch awkward chatter. At the moment of lip contact, the volume swells and, as Suzan swooned, I yelped That's XTC!"

I'd only been watching the show for a few weeks so the Rory/Jess tension meant nothing to me. Neither really had XTC, whom I only known through "The Mayor of Simpleton", which my friend Jeremy hooked my up with in college and Suzan's old copy of their American breakthrough album Skylarking. I found them quirky, charming, and too weird by half. I'm a musicial lunkhead, perferring songs that poke me in the eye with their attractive qualities, instead of asking me to find them through the opacity of lyrics about Rutherford B. Hayes and reverse amplification of the sitar.

"Then She Appeared" is none of these things (and neither is the rest of the XTC catalog, I discovered after wrongly assuming otherwise). It's a simple, fulsome pop tune about being struck stupid by a beautiful woman. In the hands of a less skilled band, It'd be an asmatic cliche', rock grist for the "nothing-was-the-same-after-I-saw-you" mill. XTC instead captures this overworn moment of first love as just that--a moment. The setting sun of the lead guitar and the plaintive sigh of Andy Patridge's lead vocal hint that the moment will pass but for its 4 minutes, you hold it (and her) between your hands and the beauty takes your breath away.

Download Then she appeared.mp3 (3625.2K)

Where were you when you heard one of your favorite songs?

Read Recently #3:

Little Children by Tom Perrotta

Backstory: I had been keeping a slight eye on Tom Perrotta since enjoying Election, the film adaptation of his novel. When I heard him on Fresh Air a few months ago talking about his latest, it raised an antenna and I ended up buying the book in a fit of hardcover lust. Reading it rather than shelving it was me trying to justify that indiscretion.

Notes: Perrotta is an amazingly skilled writer. Although he doesn't really give his characters voice beyond his own, his narration isn't intrusive but rather, just over your shoulder. It's a resigned whisper, perfect for the vaguely empty suburban stage where the story plays out. In it, two couples with young children contemplate infidelity and succeed on a knot of unexpected levels. There's a former child molester in the neighborhood as well, which grounds the novel in the present day hysteria of Megan's Law and raising kids in a world where "anything can happen" if you really want you imagination to go there. By description it's Updike/Moody territory, educated white people bored with being educated white people and curious about out-of-bounds play. But unlike their verbal acrobatics--a strained attempt to squeeze meaning from novels about people who lack it-Perrotta's language in deft, confident, and sad, a storyteller's voice interested in entertaining rather than wowing you. His ending sputters out and left me unsatisfied. But the novel that preceeded it was like a hearty meal and a nap afterward.

Verdict: Although you've got to find around what happens to everyone, the ending probably won't do it for you. Knowing that, read on. This is a great book.

UPDATE: Fresh Air has just named it one of their Favorite Books of 2004.

One Sentence Movie Reviews #21

The Terminal (2004): Waiting amounts to what you do with it.

VBT Debrief:

Jenny Traig's Virtual Book Tour went off without a hitch. Now back to regularly scheduled blogging.

Devilish!

I'm thrilled to be hosting Jennifer Traig and her memoir Devil in the Details: Scenes From an Obsessive Girlhood for the latest installment of the Virtual Book Tour. DITD is a hilariously touching look at Traig's childhood in rural Northern California and her twin battles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Orthodox Judiasm. Ms. Traig is a frequent contributor to McSweeney's and The Forward. She is the author of a series of young adult books and a humor book, Judaikitsch. She has a Ph.D. in literature and lives in San Francisco

The tour is smack in the middle of Chrismukkah. Consider Devil in the Details an excellent holiday choice for the neurotic (of any faith) in your life. You'll laugh your fool head off.

Tour stops are here. Stops marked "Review Squad" are a new part of the VBT, blogs that have graciously agreed to review the book as part of their daily blogging instead of serving as a more formal tour stop.

Enjoy.

Goin' to Carolina:

Headed to Durham, NC, with some college buddies. Be home on Monday.

Beaver on the Trumpet:

The Polyphonic Spree recently held a "make our video" contest for their song "Hold me Now." The winner was a puppet duo named Glove and Boots. Their video could make an animal lover out of Ted Nugent.

Sunday Morning Shards #15 (Better late than never):

On my mind and in my reading queue this week. The "All Better Now" edition:

The San Francisco Chronicle is doing a multi-part series on Mayor Newsom's homeless program's one year after he took office. This is the first part.

According to Paul Graham, we're living in The Age of the Essay. As a practictioner, I'm inclined (and selfishly motivated) to agree.

The historic Algonquin Hotel in New York has undergone a $3 million renovation in hopes of staying current with the needs of the 21st century traveller. Home to the Algonquin Round Table, perhaps the most famous lunch spot in literary history where Dorothy Parker Robert Benchly held court and the New Yorker magazine was born, the hotel has long been famous as having a grand lobby and cramped, unsavory rooms. The renovation's looking to change all that, by even adding flat screen TVs to the rooms and wireless internet access to the public spaces. It's a start (via Readerville).

Scott Andrew pointed me to a great interview in the webzine PopMatters with six indie musicians on how they pay the bills. Rolling Stone doesn't have ideas this good.

15 Megs of Fame lets bands upload songs for users to listen to then evaluate. Best rated songs end up on the homepage. Haven't tried it yet but interesting concept (via The Digital Music Weblog).

Abandonia is a portal for abandonware games (computer games whose creators no longer support them and have effectively let slip into the public domain). I'd love to have another crack at the King's Quest series but I'm confused as to how it all works. Naturally Abandonia assumes you know, has no "About" page and thus tells you nothing. I assume you have to download some sort of emulator but where? How? What? Help me out here people (via del.icio.us/popular).

Micropersuasion is a blog I've been reading regularly for a few weeks now about how the relationships between blogs, participatory journalism and the pr business. It's more interesting than it sounds.

Faultless list by my buddy Merlin Mann on the crucial mistakes to avoid on musician's web sites.

Suzan and I have been watching the first season of Six Feet Under which up until last Wednesday, I had never seen before. Great TV. Too bad it's finishing up. Ah well. I still have four seasons to go.

Feast of Cool:

Because linking to them several times each post would be dull, if justified, I'm just going to mention that pretty much any day of week, you can find something really neat at these two blogs...

*Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting grew out of the New York-based designer and strategist Josh Rubin did for his clients and research. A half-dozen posts a day on furniture, consumer products and art shows.

*Mocoloco: "A web magazine featuring modern contemporary design news and views" and tons of really cool stuff.

(thanks to Dan Budiac for the hook ups)

I Get This Way Sometimes...

So I didn't end up doing anything for World Aids Day. Didn't even leave the house really. I had a terrific headache on Tuesday and have felt weak and depleted since. I think the touch of flue I had at the beginning of the week has probably passed but I get sick so infrequently that when I do, it throws my stride off almost completely.

Simply put, I try and pack a lot into each day. The downside of that is that unless you're feeling perfectly healthy, all you've asigned yourself to do, no matter how small, seems like an unscalable burden, an orange too-much sticker slapped mercilessly on something as minor as walking to the mailbox.

But that's where I am this week. My body feels too week to exercise, my mind too exhausted to write. I've been able to go out a little, to have lunch with my friend Emily, to take one meeting and attend the magnificent premiere of The Bright River last night, which I highly recommend. But I am not my normal self. I'm not plugged in, alert, creating, consuming, connecting. That's how I like to be most of the time but I have a feeling my body isn't lying to me. I think I needed this rest to not just appreciate how I am normally but to not be that way for awhile.

I feel pretty good about it, different, but good. I'll be me again soon. This week I needed a scaled down version of me, I slower, older, quieter version. So that's where I am. Come by and say hi.

World AIDS Day

Today, Dec. 1, is World AIDS Day. I've been sick the last 24 hours but if I'm feeling up to it, I'm going to visit the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park and leave a candle for Randy Shilts, author of And the Band Played On, whom I've written about on past World AIDS Days. Simply put, he's the reason I picked up reading after an 8 year absence, one of my motivations for becoming a writer, and a the beginning of my awareness about San Francisco and its history.

I never got to meet Randy. He died in 1994, several years before I got to the west coast. So I'm going to pay my respects to him today. I owe him the better part of my adult life. It's the least I can do.