Feb 28 2006
Long Overdue Podcast:
Episode #7 of Your 10 Minute World has been posted.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
The Libreral Guilt Oscars. Even though I liked all of these movies, it's not a bad summation.
Sad the Olympics are over? Perhaps a spin through Hot Athletes.org will do you some good (via Justin).
Now here's one I've never heard before. I decide to stay in this evening and call Bombay Indian restaurant for some dinner. I've done this dozens of times, enough so that they know my order (Saag Paneer and Chapati). Only this time, right after I'm done giving it they tell me "Sorry. it says here you cancelled the last order. So you can no longer order from us."
I argue. I protest. I say "You're saying you don't want my business?"
To which they reply "We don't need a customer like you."
Let me get this straight...
1) I have no memory of this ever happening. So maybe Suzan did it. Fine.
2) Even if either of us did, did they really waste the food? Am I the only person that evening to order saag paneer and chapati? You couldn't give it to another customer? An employee at the end of their shift?
3) What if I had suffered a heart attack and was being rushed to hospital and that's why I cancelled my order? Why are they assuming my reasons are suspect?
4) Had this not have happened, I would have continued to order from them as long as I lived in the neighborhood. Which means that for the cost of one meal they will give up dozens that I would have ordered from them.
This is perhaps the dumbest business practice I have ever falled pray to. If you live in San Francisco, I recommend not patronizing Bombay Indian Restaurant. They do not respect their customers nor have any interest in being good neighbors. Their motto "great food, excellent service" is a half-true joke.
I'm only the 936th person to discover the MC Hammer blog. Speed is my middle name.
Because things that do not get mentioned, not by anyone, need me to come along and get their time in the light, may I present: Malcolm Gladwell's Blog.
Carry on.
In the neverending struggle between meaningful work and work that actually pays, I'm trying to write where I can, what I can. Thus this How to Pitch piece for Media Bistro which was actually a lot of fun.
Since I don't drink coffee and it's now been confirmed that Starbucks promotes a gay lifestyle, all those lingering questions you had about my sexuality can be put to rest (via Sara).
According to the Writer's Almanac, February 21, is the birthday of Chuck Palahniuk, Erma Bombeck, David Foster Wallace and W.H. Auden. How's that for a quartet?
I'm three weeks late but Dan Says, so I jump.
Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Scorekeper of youth hockey games (cold)
2. Fence painter/dirt shovler at town home complex (messy)
3. Paper holder/room measurer for property appraiser (cushy)
4. Grunt in production office of movie Dave (glamorous slavery)
Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. 12 Angry Men
2. The Karate Kid
3. Crooklyn
4. Dazed and Confused
Four places I’ve lived:
1. Ann Arbor, MI.
2. Baltimore, MD
3. Los Angeles, CA.
4. Austin, TX.
Four TV shows I love:
1. Criminal Minds
2. The Gilmore Girls
3. Veronica Mars
4. Grey's Anatomy
Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Dublin, Ireland
2. Havan, Cuba
3. Kona, Hawaii
4. Mendicino, CA.
Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Hamburger and curly fries.
2. Salad. All of it.
3. Saag Paneer with chapati.
4. PB&J.
Four sites I visit daily:
1. New Media Musings
2. Readerville
3. Cinema Treasures
4. SF Gate
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Austin, TX
2. Los Angeles, CA.
3. Chciago, IL.
4. Anywhere where friends are found and ideas are hatched.
Handoff. I hearby tag...
After seeing it mentioned in Bitch, I investigated Swagtime and still only sorta get it. Is it a shopping site for celebrity swag? But you can also buy baskets of celebrity junk and the money goes to charity. There's also something about "being an insider" which sounds like they're asking you to rat on your employer. Maybe I just lost patience with it. Could use RSS feeds though.
So rumors abound that Spin magazine might move to San Francisco, a weird geographic time reversal from when Spin's arch rival Rolling Stone, split San Francisco, the city of its birth, and moved to New York in 1976. Spin's having a hard go of it and may be for sale. Hartle Media, publishers of local rag 7x7 Magazine, have expressed interest.
What's this mean for people in my line of work? Remember that Simpsons episode when the family is at a giant bookstore and Bart teases the clerks by saying "I hear there's an adjunct professor job opening." San Francisco is lousy with underemployed journalists. I'm guessing Spin already has inquiries even though they haven't advanced a single step towards California.
Episodes of School House Rock are now available on iTunes. Rock on!
Also, you can now get select episodes of the Strong Bad Email from Homestar Runner send to your iPod directly. I tried it though and only got audio. What up with dat?
Finally, I've been terribly neglect at posting a new epsiode of Your 10 Minute World. Way too many many workin's going on over here. I'll explain soon.
Please listen to this episode of The Treatment and tell me why Tim Burton, even when talking about getting beat up in junior high, sounds like he just got through playing Middle Linebacker for USC?
Title: Letters to a Young Artist
Author: Anna Deavere Smith
Backstory: A stop-in at A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books. Couldn't resist.
Notes: I've been a fan of Anna Deavere Smith since reading about Fires in the Mirror more than 10 years ago and have followed her career closely. I failed to get her last book Talk to Me. And despite hating the author of Letters to a Young Activist and the substance of Letters to a Young Novelist, I figured this one would have a heartier mix of wisdom and practicality.
Verdict: It almost does. While Smith doesn't touch on how to get the press to come to your art opening or how make music while holding down a day job (probably less the concerns of high school and college-age "young artists"), her insights about avoiding to curse of "cool" and empty rebellions against "the man" are dead on. At times, she's a bit slight, more treacly than wise. But these times are far outweighed by the majority of the essays: careful, astute and necessary.
If you're not interested in creativity, you won't be interested in this book. Me? I found it inspirational.
So I haven't been talking about a lot of career stuff here lately and wanted to bring you all up to date.
About a week and a half ago, my agent asked for the in-process proposal for my second book which I handed to him. The book is a case study/analysis (a la Gladwell or Freakanomics) exploration of this generation of American Jews, people in their 20s and 30s and their role in shaping American Judaism's future.
So Agent Jud spends some time with the proposal and advises me to revise, putting less emphasis on the growing coolness of Jewish culture (see Braff, Zack, Stewart, John and the Jewish Fashion Conspiracy) and more on how this, the third generation of Jews born in America, is shaping our collective fates. He also recommended I write the opening chapter and one sample chapter. He said I should have completed these tasks by summer
Yow. That means this do a min-dry run of what I'll be doing for the next 2 years if we can sell this thing. It's exciting yes but a cold splash of reality too. Summer's only four months away and I ain't exactly snoring in the basement waiting for it to arrive.
Being an author is great. First you gotta write some books. Obvious yes, but now its time to hit the sidewalk. Wish me luck.
The Princess Diaries (2001): "Any off the shelf movie can be made a heckuva lot better by being filmed in San Francisco, with notable exceptions.
Check out this photo (via my friend Sara) of snowy New York. Any wonder why it's not much of an auto culture out there?
So thanks to this stupid half-flu I have (no sneezing or runny nose, just achy and tired all the time) I missed last night's giant pillow fight. Laughing Squid has these great photos.
Add to the list A Little Friction's concert and Flickr's Second Birthday Party. I am sick of being sick.
Now that Western Union is shutting down its telegram operations, this very good piece in the NY Times recalls some of the medium's greatest hits. My favortite? Robert Benchley to his editor upon Benchly's arrival in Venice...
Streets filled with water. Please advice
I can't believe I've never heard this one.
San Francisco writer Bucky Sinister has taken up a challenge. Fill his Netflix queue with 500 movies (the most you can have) then try and watch them all in a year. KQED, our mammoth public broadcaster, is sponsoring his effort through this blog.
On my mind and in the RSS Hopper this week...
*I spent an ungodly amount of time on Wikipedia the other night looking up entries for The Olympic Games, rituals surrounding The Olympic Torch, the opening ceremonies and Eric Heiden. Time well spent.
*On the Media did a killer program this week all about the media and Middle East coverage. I dug.
*Yes, Barry Manilow has the #1 album in the country. In 2006. And pigs wear pajamas.
*Can MTV stay cool? When was the last time it was (via Micropersuasion)?
*In light of the James Frey mess, Sherman Alexie had a few things to say about Native American literary hoaxes.
*Transcript of Craig Newmark's keynote speech at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (via Tigerbeat).
*Where are the female film critics? (via my friend Danyel).
*SXSWi. T-Minus 25 days and counting.
Episode #6 of my podcast Your 10 Minute World is ready for your listening pleasure.
So last night after the Mission Minyan, my friend Brian invites me to Shabbat dinner at a strangers house. Amongst the guests were the hostess, a fellow reviewer for the Chronicle book section, the director of this documentary about Israeli punk rock, the founder of Negative Progression Records and a mathmatician working on ranked choice voting.
If that ain't a stranger/new friend discovery of a lifetime, I'm staying inside from here on out.
Not bad eh?
This fellow and I grew up on the same block and rode big wheels together. I'd vote for him.
Did you know Mark Spitz was Jewish? Found that out to day via Nextbook. Didn't have any idea.
If only to have the cred to clean wetsuits of the guys who can do this only a few scattered miles south of San Francisco. Holy good lord (via Jeff Chang).
The New York Times reports this morning that the Democrats are not taking advantage of dents in the Republican armor, much the way the GOP did in 1994. Why doesn't this surprise me? Why do I have to belong to the party with all the right values and not a lick of an idea on how to win elections?
Sheesh.
I love the history of popular expressions. My buddy Dave has a book on his coffee table that charts where phrases like "Kick the Bucket" or "At Sixes and Sevens" come from. I read it every time I'm over there and promptly forget them all the moment I board the plane.
So I was glad to find Idiom Site which has a whole mess of expressions and their origin. The design is strictly Web 1.0 and these folks wouldn't know an RSS feed if they fell over it. Still, I've beeen shuffling through it for an hour now and having a blast.
SXSW Baby has posted the film festival's initial schedule. I'll be there!
Feminist legend Betty Friedan has died. Slate has this tribute. Salon asks what has become of feminism since Friedan's groundbreaking 1960 book The Feminine Mystique.
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (1986): "An epic life like Richard Pryor's deserves more than 90 minutes to tell it."
Episode #5 of Your Ten Minute World has been posted as has Episode #2 of Talking Pictures with Kevin & Dave. Enjoy
So I wrote an Op-Ed piece appearing in the Baltimore Sun today about how the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is Generation X's Kennedy Assassination. I was an editorial page intern at the Sun back in 1994 which makes this doubly sweet.
So despite living in a great music town and having tastes recently updated past say April 1987 (thanks Paste!), I really know almost nothing about the local music scene here in San Francisco. May be that I don't drink so don't find much reason to hang out at live music venues. Also could be that I'm a Grade A Lamerod and am usually in bed by 11 but really, why speculate? Let's just say I'm willing to learn, eh?
Glad then that I found the Done Waiting blog San Francisco editon via my buddy Willo, the Rodney Bingenheimer of the Bay Area. My buddy Justin had alerted me to their podcast but I hadn't grasped the extent of what they were up to. Looks like they do concert promotions, host several blogs, sell stuff and hem pants as far as I know. Pretty neat.
I'm pretty much done with the James Frey debacle but it sure was nice to read this essay on truth, memoir and William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow by my friend and book club buddy Mara Naselli.
So I haven't even finished Episode #5 of Your Ten Minute World and I've already started another podcast. My old friend Dave and I have taken to recording our conversations about movies and turning them into Talking Pictures, a little movie podcast.
Have a listen. It's fun.
Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams after 145 years. The company's doing fine, by the way, having switched its business to money transfers years ago. But it still seems like we've lost a little something (via Kottke).
Walk the Line (2005): Great love stories are hard fought and not always won, at least not right away.
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
