Aug 31 2006
A Wedding in Santa Fe:
Headed to New Mexico this weekend for a family wedding. Expect blog traffic to be light.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Headed to New Mexico this weekend for a family wedding. Expect blog traffic to be light.
"I've often said that one of the stories I'd like to write would have the beginning "we never get over having been a child" because that so much of where it happens, ya know, it all begins there. And the sad thing for a lot of us is that, of course, we live our lives and can't remember the moment that things began for us and because we can't remember that moment, we continue living sad lives."
Feels exactly like this. I had to move a stack of "to be reads" out of bedroom because I was tripping over them in the middle of the night. It's now in my office and well over six feet high.
So a quick look at my next book project, a Jewish history of American popular culture, has the proposal in my agents hands and me working on the introduction and the sample chapter. I'm a few thousand words deep into the first and feeling that muted sick feeling of hacking heavy through brush but feeling lost anyway. The argument makes sense but is too broad, is cute but has a big "So what" stamped on its forehead. I usually work this way, spewing nonsense until I have what looks like a finished pile of nonsense then trying to shape it into something. I end up with good stuff and the end but it tastes forever and forever is the last thing I have.
I'm not going to make my deadline. I need to do a ton of research for my sample chapter and I don't feel like I can make room for it until the introduction is done. And I've got other projects to make money while the book finds its own weaving way.
One foot, then the other.
The long-awaited next episode of my podcast Your 10 Minute World is now available for your listening pleasure. The reason it's episode #11 and not #10 is because I'm preparing something wonderous for epsiode #10. Stay tuned...
"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via The Writer's Almanac).
"Chose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life" --Confucius.
(via The Writer's Almanac)
I don't have it in me for yet another article and the resultant debate over what the hell is the matter with publishing. I think we should begin a self-delusional holiday like Carvinal called "Everything is OK Day" where, for a single 24 hour, period, everyone who works in publishing must act like times are golden and there's nothing to whine about.
Kelly Clarkson sings Sweet Child o' Mine. She's not only hits it but is a pretty good sport about Metal Skool's skeezorific behavior (via Pitchfork).
Ever feel like you need to have one stupid anal thing you do everyday just to feel a little centered. Mine lately has been cleaning up the archives of this blog, 5 years of babble three software platforms and several dozen life changes.
Starting from the back, I clean up one post a day, fixing formatting, adding categories and decent titles. I don't fix broken links because that's what I meant to link to back then and it seems like iconoclasm to change them.
It's oddly soothing.
War of the Worlds (2005): "This is a movie about how it's better to die in the first act than survive until the end of the movie." --My buddy Keely
Notes: Seen at my friend Keely's house. Suuuuuuucked.
I saw this on a bumper sticker affixed to the wall at Coffee to the People, where I write most days.
"Get Involved: The World is Run by Those Who Show Up."
I love that.
So I realize the other day I've been totally slacking off on both my reading habbits and reporting in when I finish a book. To catch up then.
What I've Read Recently:
Public Radio: Behind the Voices by Lisa Philips
A collection of profiles of NPR's biggest personalities. A treasure for the public radio geek and a shrug for just about anyone else. I fall into the former so finding out that Steve Inkseep and Renee Montagne don't sit in the same room when recording Morning Edition Scott Simon is very handsome was just divine.
Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate
A wonderful novel about three generations of women whose story overlaps with the blaxploitation period of Hollywood. Fun, sassy, sad and touching. Highly recommended.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl.
My favorite of the lesser known Roald Dahl books that I hadn't read in about 20 years. Glad I went back. "The Swan" and "The Fingersmith" are still two of my favorite short stories ever.
Reading Now:
Talking Right by Geoffrey Nunberg
Just started this one. More complicated than Going Nuclear so I have to read slowly. I'm already learning a bunch about how Republicans have, say, turned "liberal" into an insult and seem have a monopoly on the term "values."
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Every now and then, I grab an older book by either a favorite writer or one whom I've always been curious about. I've known about Ishiguro for several years but have never tried him out. Enjoying it a lot.
Notes of a Native Son by
James Baldwin
For my two-person book club. Just getting started with this one.
Jerry Maguire (1996): "Saying what you feel is the best idea but it takes awhile to seem like it"
Notes: Seen via Netflix as part of an ongoing effort to revisit movies I once dismissed. This one grows on you.
I was pretty angry after suffering through this episode of Forum, our local yap show. Ostensibly a look at the new television series debuting in the fall, it ended up a gang of television critics complaining for the 5 millionth time that there's nothing good on TV and the host, the normally commendable Michael Krasney, beginning the epsiode with the "Television is a vast wasteland" rag, a sentiment about as contemporary as I Like Ike.
Here's my deal. Premising a conversation on television being a sludge bucket is like beginning a conversation about pop music with a take-down of Britney Spears. It's a cheap, easy target that lets you smug-coast right past the glaring evidence to the contrary. It plays the snob gallery by letting you ignore that you are not only mypoic but wrong.
I'm sure you can find some television programming that feels like wet mashed potatoes. With 18+ hours, 7 days a week from now until the end of time to fill, much of it will be junk. But but for the first time in recent memory, much of it is much better than that. Thanks to cable, HBO, DVD and TiVo which means you don't have to wade through chaff to get to wheat, good television programming grows thick and tall. Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Criminal Minds, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Veronica Mars, are all regular viewing for me. You may not care for one or many of them but to call them wastes of time and talent is nonsense. To use them as evidence that there is "nothing on TV" means a) you need more than a half dozen shows a week to be satisfied and are a glutton and b) you're not looking hard enough for them.
Maybe TV isn't your bag? No shame in that. But television is a platform not a state of mind. What matters is what's in the box, not the box itself. The box doesn't invade our lives like a cancer unless we let it. Worried that you watch too much or that it's easy to fall back on it like an unhealthy ex-lover? Throw a tablecloth over your set. You'll be amazed how soon you forget.
Salon's Heather Havrilesky says it well in this feature and this roundup of the new fall series. I'm excited for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Six Degrees" already. The rest I'll test out without guilt.
Tron (1982): "We all dodged a bullet back in 1982 when our computers didn't eat us for lunch"
Notes: Seen at the Castro Theatere in 70 mm as part of the Midnites for Maniacs series in the company of Consumators and Metagrrrls. Nerdy goodness.
But I'm kinda close to finishing my book proposal. Meep Meep!
I've been about eight kinds of busy the past week with Lollapalooza and four separate deadlines the past week. But the smoke is starting to clear and I'm going to be focusing heavily on book proposal stuff for the remainder of August. And trying to do a little blogging as I feel I've been neglecting things a bunch around here.
In the meantime, you can check up this segment I did for Dailysonic on the band The Mystic Underground. And an interview I did for Canadian Press (their equivalent of the AP) has surfaced from I don't know where. But I was glad to find it.
If all systems are go, I'll have pieces in Fast Company, The LA Times and Poets & Writers this fall. And I've been asked to blog for this esteemed institution.
All of which is incredibly but if you see me taking on more porject which keep me from completing my book proposal, please hit me with something heavy.
Okay, it's a phrase. But it's defined as "When your social commitments reeks havoc on your physical well being."
That's where I'm at. Which is why I had a two hour massage this morning and am staying in tonight. More tomorrow (via Wired).
Little Miss Sunshine (2006): "You will never hear the song 'Superfreak' the same way again"
Notes: Seen in Chicago on my birthday. A lovely present.
The last six months have been some the hardest of my adult life. Again and again I've listed to "Bye Bye Pride" by The Go-Betweens which I first heard on Sound Opinions in May.
These are the last lines...
But I didn't know someone
Could be so lonesome
Didn't know a heart
Could be tied up
And held for ransom.
Until you take your shoes
And go outside, stride over stride,
Walk to that tide because
The door is open wide.
Little lies, they'll take your pride.
Until you take your shoes
And go outside. stride over stride,
Walk to that tide because
The door is open wide.
Stride over stride
Walk to that tide.
Bye, Bye Pride.
Because the door is open wide.
The door is always open wide.
The door is always open wide.
My credo. Have a good weekend.
So it took three long days but my college roommate Justin and I braved this year's Lollapalooza. 16 bands, 3 days, several changes of clothes and about 9 hectaliters of sweat and body odor.
But boy was it worth it. I've never seen so much great music packed into one space over such a short time in my life. Below is a recap of everything we saw. I got home late last night and decided I'm never listening to music again.
That lasted about 20 minutes.
The Place: Grant Park, Chicago, IL.
Day 1: Friday
Justin: Such a charming Canadian pop group. No, I don’t mind at all if you curse (they apologized for swearing).
Kevin: Probably the nicest band at Lolla. Matisyahu could have beaten them up.
Kevin: I was convinced after hearing LS featured on Sound Opinions that she was a short black woman with an afro not the sixth Spice Girl booted out of the band for beating up a hotel chambermaid..
Justin: When, at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon, half of the crowd answered “Who here is drunk?” in the affirmative, I knew Chicago was Sov’s kinda town.
Justin: Jack White may be big enough for this festival, but this band’s sound sure wasn’t.
Kevin: No matter how cute Jack White is, his band is too down and dirty to be on this giant outdoor stage. The air swallowed their sound whole.
Justin: The rockin’ ladies gave one of the tightest live sets I’ve seen. I hope their ‘hiatus’ is very, very temporary.
Kevin: The female Rush. Coming from me, a huge compliment.
Day 2: Saturday
Kevin: My highlight of the festival. More fun than a giant trampoline.
Justin: You never forget your first time seeing The Go! Team. The second time was pretty great too.
Justin: They rocked like nobody’s business. I’m convinced that the world needs more bands fronted by skinny dudes sporting Jew ‘fros and intoxicatingly high vocal ranges.
Kevin: What Justin said.
Kevin: A great album in need of a better live act. Just too groovy and laid back for the day's midpoint.
Justin: They were a very entertaining, massively hyped gimmick that deserved better sound guys.
Kevin: I am the only person within Chicago city limits who have not heard of this band. Loud, power-pop fun.
Justin: Smoking Popes is emo… that will kick your ass!
Justin: We were stuck at the back of the field, so what could’ve been the weekend’s greatest spectacle looked like an entertaining TV show.
Kevin: I really need to see them again at full strength and not after a day of baking. I'm sure they are great. I just wasn't up for it.
At this point, Kevin and Justin split up to see different headliners.
Kevin: I love TNP and have all three of their albums but this is the second time I've been let down by their live act. Why do they always seem to be performing half asleep?
Justin: Thievery was the sleeper act of the weekend. They need to come back for the World Music Festival where they’ll have a more captive crowd.
Kevin: Kanye got dogged by a lousy sound system but once the gear caught up with him, he practically set the park on fire.
Justin: Manu’s world party is an hour and a half of hard rock, salsa, reggae, rumba, funk, and flamenco punctuated by a leaping, sweaty, and pharmaceutically enhanced crowd.
Day 3, Sunday
Justin: These kids must have some damn good band camp stories!
Kevin: I'd kill to see them on a double bill with The Extra Action Marching Band.
Kevin: Bruce Springsteen meets Tom Waits meets a giant glop of Catholic guilt. Holy wonderful!
Justin: Lead singer Craig Finn noted this was some of the most fun he’s had before 3pm. I call it some of the best live rock I’ve heard before 3pm.
Justin: Don’t know what I was expecting from a modern bluegrass band at a big festival, but they exceeded expectations.
Kevin: We sat down for this one. Lovely summertime chillout music.
Kevin: Who knew the typical Matisyahu fan is a shirtless frat boy?
Justin: Clear the way for the funky, funky Hassid…
Justin: Wilco is a very satisfying live band. They didn’t transport me to a higher plane and I didn’t feel their pain, but it was a beautiful Sunday night homecoming.
Kevin: I would love to see Wilco again when I haven't just been on my feet for the last three days. Wilco is a great band but I was done.
And there you have it.
I turned 33 years old and had the rockinest birthday ever. Yay!
So I just got back from Marin County where I was picking up a shoefly pie. Please don't ask.
Tomorrow I head out to Chicago for Lollapalooza and a birthday dinner (mine) with 25 of my closest friends. I may be blogging while out there but most likely not.
See you Tuesday then. The next time, I'm here, I'll be 33.
Josh Wolf, who was one of my bloggers for the San Francisco International Film Festival, is in federal prison tonight for refusing to turn over video footage he shot of a war protest in San Francisco last year. The government wants to use it as evidence in the attempted vandalism of a SF Police car. Wolf claims that, if we begin down the road of journalists having to surrender their footage to government investigators, then how do we protect the confidentiality of sources?
I haven't make up my mind about who is right or wrong here and I really don't care. As a blogger, a maker of citizen media, Josh is a brother in arms. That I know the guy and know he's out to make a point, not a stink for its own sake, means I support his case all the more.
So I ask to all readers: Please post this story on your blog. And if you can, make a donation to Josh's legal defense fund. I don't want to see more of him and us, jailed in the name of "crime prevention."
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
