The more things seem to change, the more we realize that’s the way they’ve always been…
Exhibit A:
From 43 Folders: “Ye Olde Hipster.” The pages of Jefferson’s notebook are made of ivory (sorry elephant-lovers), which could be written on in pencil and erased after he transferred his ideas to more permanent residences.
P.S. Anyone who thought PDA meant “public display of affection” needs to go directly back to junior high, do not collect $200, do not pass go.
Cactus Music & Video, Houston’s last real music store, is hosting a triumvirate of Texas troubadours (how you like those alliterate apples?) in the next month or so at its in-store performances.
The Houston Kid, Rodney Crowell plays Thursday, Sept. 8th at 6pm. James McMurtry (minus the Heartless Bastards it would seem) plays the next night, Sept. 9th same time same place, and Billy Joe Shaver on October 1st at 4pm.
Cactus is a great place to see your favorite artists in an intimate venue. St. Arnold’s is known to serve up some refreshing beverages from time to time. Limit 2 per customer. Usually they’re gearing up to play some place that evening. Crowell is playing the Continental Club the 7th and the 8th, and Gruene Hall in New Braunfels the 10th. McMurtry is also at the Continental on the 9th. Shaver’s playing the Firehouse Saloon on Oct. 1st.
The New Yorker’s Henry Alford expounds on the venerable practice of encyclopedia and dictionary publishers including a fake entry in their tomes in order to catch poachers with their hands in the lexicographic cookie jar.
Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and you’ll find an entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled “Flags Up!” Mountweazel, the encyclopedia indicates, was born in Bangs, Ohio, in 1942, only to die “at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”
Apparently the Oxford English Dictionary has paid homage and baited the trap with a word of it’s own design. Alford set out with a crack team of linguists to bag the culprit.
The word has since been spotted on Dictionary.com, which cites Webster’s New Millennium as its source. “It’s interesting for us that we can see their methodology,” McKean said. “Or lack thereof. It’s like tagging and releasing giant turtles.”
Didn’t go into work. Didn’t even think about work. It was glorious… and then I happened to be browsing around on the web (non work-related) and found this:
[uno] Over the Rhine just released Drunkard’s Prayer to wide acclaim. Listen to “Born” (mp3) off the new album.
[dos] Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez were featured on David Dye’s World Cafe not too long ago. Listen to their set on NPR. Chip’s pretty savvy for an old dude (you know he wrote ‘Wild Thing’? dang…) check out his podcast. They’ll be here in Houston at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck on September 20th.
[tres] Robinella are coming out with a new album on Dualtone Solace for the Lonely in November. Catch “Break it Down” on the Dualtone jukebox.
I suppose everyone has their guilty pleasures. Barbarella is one of mine. I have the original Barbarella promo poster hanging behind the door to my room (pictured at left) that a friend gave me after we wrapped up his shoot. (Check out the Nostalgia Factory if you’re into vintage posters) For the uninitiated Barbarella is based on a french comic book and stars Jane Fonda as a space vixen who is sent to track down evil scientist Duran Duran (yes, this is where the band got its name) and has a series of double-entendre-laden adventures along the way. The film is unbelievably campy, directed by Fonda’s then husband Roger Vadim, with a script by beat icon Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider) and produced by Dino De Laurentiis (who produced Italian neorealists Fellini, Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, Antonioni and cult-favorites Blue Velvet, Flash Gordon, Dune & Conan the Barbarian). If that weren’t enough Marcel Marceau the french mime appears as Professor Ping.
Imagine my delight to discover the Museum of Fine Art in Houston will be screening this classic epic of risque sci-fi as part of their Movies Houstonians Love Series. Bold choice Annalee Jefferies! Not happy about waiting until March 13 for the screening though.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has long believed the U.S. government has been trying to kill him. American Televangelist Pat Robertson did little to allay his paranoia with this statement:
“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson said. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”
Read the full article from Fox News (just in case you think this is more conspiring by the liberal media)
Behold, an early christmas present from one wack-job to another. It will be interesting to see if Chavez is able to parlay this into an even stronger political position (he’s already got a 70% approval rating) in a country where many are deeply suspicious of U.S. intentions (that oil comment at the end didn’t help) in a surge of anti-American sentiment. I would love to see how this plays in Venezuelan media, where the distinction between Robertson’s views and administration policy will likely be muddied.
As for Robertson’s suggestion - aside from the obvious theological issues it raises, the jaw-dropping stupidity of such an action politically, and the questionable strategery of notifying the person you’d like to see assasinated of your intentions in a very public way (not so covert now, is it Pat?) - it just happens to be illegal. Illegal for very good reason, I might add. World War I started with an assasination. (Franz Ferdinand isn’t just a cool band name, incidentally.) JFK tried to have Castro assasinated. Didn’t turn out so well for Jack, though Castro’s still kicking. Add to the mess that many in South America believe, not without reason, that the CIA has lead or had a hand in numerous assassinations and many more attempts. We would do well to remember that assassination is historically a form of terrorism, not a morally supportable or pragmatic defense against it. Venezuela’s Vice President notes this in responding to Robertson’s statement in a NY Times article.
Patrick Wright writes on the contribution of artists to advancing the practice of camouflage in World War I:
‘I well remember at the beginning of the war,’ Gertrude Stein wrote in 1938, ‘being with Picasso on the Boulevard Raspail when the first camouflaged truck passed. It was at night, we had heard of camouflage but we had not seen it and Picasso, amazed, looked at it and then cried out, yes it is we who made it, that is Cubism.’ Stein went on to suggest that the entire First World War had been an exercise in Cubism. Hailing Picasso as the first to register an epoch-making change in the ‘composition’ of the world, she concluded that a great convulsion had been necessary to awaken the masses to his discovery: ‘Wars are only a means of publicising the thing already accomplished.’
Now it seems hard to imagine the military without camouflage, but before WWI, such tactics were derided by military commanders as dishonorable. Wright outlines the debate and early experiments, some ludicrous, such as Thayer’s attempt to paint tanks to match the pink sunsets he imagined them blending with. Interesting read.
Um, yes, actually. How weird is that? According to an article in Popular Science, the Cavendish, the only banana most people are aware of is under attack:
In 1992, a new strain of the fungus—one that can affect the Cavendish—was discovered in Asia. Since then, Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia.
Experts are saying there’s not a whole lot that can be done, given the Cavendish’s remarkable genetic uniformity, the product of a few decades of perfecting “quite possibly, the world’s perfect food.” No more banana splits? Bananas Foster? Are you kidding? Even weirder, it’s turns out it’s deja vu all over again for the poor banana.
Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike,” accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest. … Growers adopted a frenzied strategy of shifting crops to unused land, maintaining the supply of bananas to the public but at great financial and environmental expense—the tactic destroyed millions of acres of rainforest. By 1960, the major importers were nearly bankrupt, and the future of the fruit was in jeopardy.
In a related note, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I’m a culinary infant. Gurgling and squawking, oblivious to my environment and totally helpless in the kitchen. Not only did I not realize there was more than one type of banana (I do love fried plantains however)
Houston traffic being what it is, I spend a lot of time trapped in the car. This is all the more intensely annoying since I used to be able to read the entire Times or Journal or 30 to 40 pages of book on each leg of my commute in Boston. Enough is enough. Time to reclaim the time lost to traffic tyranny.
Then oddly enough, I realized, I don’t really need Audible, even though that’s what got me started. I don’t really need a huge collection of audio books and I’d like to be able to loan what I listen to to my friends if I wanted to. Amazon sells new and used audiobooks on CD, why not “rent” an audiobook by buying it and then selling it to someone else when I’m done? I can’t do anything but listen to the mp3 file from Audible, but I can do whatever I want with my well-packaged CD - give it to a friend, resell it, whatever. Moreover, the I can copy CDs to my computer and onto my ipod, generally in more user-friendly format since it’s divided into chapters on the CD and comes in one hulking file from Audible. Audible executives take note. There are chinks in your business plan.
Got some ghettofabulous news in ye ole inbox today. Woolley Andrew says…
O.W.W.W
The Organization of World wide web
Barnby Worldwide Business Information
9 Leapal Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 4JX
Dear Sir/Madam,
We the Organization of World wide web is happy to inform you that you
have luckily log in to the one million timer count. This is to mark the
years of internet existence on earth and to inform you that you have
been selected for a cash prize of
£1,000,000.00 (one Million,Great British Pounds)
This is in line with the first ten lucky winners and the Big cash prize
of ten million Great British Pounds goes to the overall winner picked
from the first ten luck winners.
The selection process was carried out from all web site in the world
through one million timer count computerized email selection system
random selection from a database of over 10 000 000 000 email addresses
drawn from all the continents of the world. This is the first of its
kind since the years of internet existence on earth
Prize collection:For the processing of your prize you are to contact
The D.C.V.D for the winning Prize using the contact as stated below
I’m not sure how I ‘luckily log in to the one million timer count’ but I can only figure I’m just a heva lucky guy. I’m waiting on pins and needles for my one Million Great British Pounds.
Kinky Friedman really is running for governor. This is a bit weirder than I can really fathom. I suppose I should be prepared for this kind of thing, in this Schwarzeneggerian political-era, but… now this is just weird. The New Yorker is hot on the Texas Jewboy’s campaign trail…
“The Governor has decided on pancakes!” he barked, finally. “Jewford, are there pancakes at this buffet? Do you see any kind of pancakes anywhere?” “Pancakes for the Governor! The Governor will have pancakes!” Little Jewford shouted, and promptly did nothing about it. Little Jewford—who was born Jeff Shelby—was one of the original Jewboys, a conservatory-trained pianist who played keyboards, accordion, clavieta, toy trumpet, and kazoo. In this new road show he acts as Kinky’s driver, all-around bodyman, and voice of reason—or, often, a sort of profound unreason. They have known each other for almost fifty years, since they were children, and they play off each other in a continuous Marx Brothers-style high vaudeville—Kinky does Groucho, Jewford does both Chico and Harpo. Kinky, who has never been married, often introduces Jewford to crowds as “very possibly the next First Lady of the state of Texas”; when asked about it, Jewford tends to shrug and say things like “I need a gig.”
Finally a video service to do what Flickr did for photos. Upload a video to share and send me a nice bandwidth-friendly link. Stop filling up my e-mail inbox. You people know who you are. Here are some favorites:
Just caught Lise Liddell and Teresa Kolo swapping songs at the Mucky Duck’s sunday supper session. I heard Teresa Kolo’s song Traveling Hat on KPFT maybe four years ago and tried to track it down without success. Seeing her tonight inspired me to dig a little deeper and I finally turned up her album Carapace on the Teresa Kolo page on MyTexasMusic. Terrific songwriter, particularly loved Traveling Hat and Blow Bite Blow. More here when the album arrives…
Amadou and Mariam met at the Institute for the Young Blind in Mali, where they discovered they shared a love of music. They married and began a career in hotel bands before setting out on their own. Check out the Amadou & Mariam Videos on their website.
Jennifer Granick is the Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford, and is by all appearances a crack IP lawyer and a prolific blogger. She doesn’t appear to sleep as far as I can tell, or apparently has cloned herself, or maybe she’s a GTD samurai? Greplaw has a great interview and profile.
She’s recently posted a fascinating four-part series on Mike Lynn, her latest client, who created an uproar and got himself sued for revealing that it was possible to remotely execute code on Cisco routers. Since Cisco routers are ubiquitous, sky-is-falling types are postulating the entire internet could grind to a halt if details on creating an exploit fell into the wrong hands. Cisco has been aware of the issue, but has kept it under tight wraps, raising the interesting chicken-egg sequencing dilemma of whether it’s better to publicize the vulnerability (thus alerting potential hackers) or keep it secret (whereas your customers can’t patch what they don’t know is vulnerable). Well worth the read…
James Surowiecki has a great article in the New Yorker this week (does he ever not have a great article in the NY any given week, love that guy) on the state of Hollywood’s current identity crisis “Disk Averse.”
What’s becoming increasingly clear is that the people who buy DVDs are, for the most part, not the people who go to the movies on opening weekend. According to research from Fox Home Entertainment, DVD buyers tend to be older than your typical theatregoer. More of them are women, and most of them don’t see movies in theatres before buying them. Most important, the new DVD audience is so diverse that companies can target niche markets and still sell millions of disks. Because specialized markets are more predictable, the risk of failure is much lower, and so small-to-mid-budget movies can be very profitable indeed.
Sounds like a long-tail argument to me. If there was any fundamental change in business practice to emerge from the dot-bomb shenanigans, this is it. In the words of an Amazon employee, “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.”
So part of the movie industries problem is that each film is competing not only with its contemporaries but with all the great films that have come before it. Why would I want to see one ridiculous knock-off after another, when I can get the real deal on DVD for $9.97 and $8.98 respectively?
I love these guys. It’s not the music (though that’s pretty dang good as well), it’s not even the pop-diva choreographed dance routine complete with the requisite killer fake kung-fu shadow-boxing sequence. It’s all of those plus the fact that they look like officemates at the local cubefarm. (Look at this and try telling me the singer’s not Samir from Office Space) Oh and there’s this from the bio of their website:
OK Go came up with a collection of demos so strong they grabbed the attention of super-producer Tore Johansson, the hugely sought-after man behind Franz Ferdinand’s debut album and the Cardigans’ hits. Tore’s first words are gruff. “When you are finished with a take,” he tells them in his half-menacing, half-hilarious Swedish accent,” I will not come running into the studio smiling and waving my arms like some American producer. If I say something is OK, it is perfect. If I say nothing, you will do it again until I tell you stop.” Tore spends ten minutes deriding the cookie-cutter slickness of America, home of editing systems smarter than the people who use them. It will be much simpler here, Tore assures them. “You will go into a room together and you will rock.”
It’s segments like this that make This American Life the best show on public radio.
American Life producer Alex Blumberg investigates a little-studied phenomenon: Children who get a mistaken idea in their heads about how something works or what something means, and then don’t figure out until well into adulthood that they were wrong. (13 minutes)
My favorite:
“there’s another guy I spoke to who thought well into his 20’s that the word ‘quesadillas’ was spanish for ‘what’s the deal’.”
I’m happy to report that the Devil is alive and well and living in Portland. After a long hiatus I was beginning wonder, but the Devil is working as a media buyer, just had a baby girl, and still manages to rage like it’s 1997 every now and then.
He’s the Devil. He know’s it. I know it. Why can’t he just admit it?
I feel like the last one on the bandwagon, but in case there is still anyone out there who hasn’t heard of Getting Things Done (GTD to the cognoscenti) I can’t recommend it highly enough. I was a little skeptical when my coach first recommended it, but now I’m a convert and I feel like sharing. GTD is a personal productivity methodology pioneered by author David Allen but recently it’s started to take on a life of its own. The best overview I’ve found is from 43 folders which does a great job of laying out the basic principles.
Here’s how I would sum it up: At any given moment your brain is juggling all of your tasks, responsibilities, wishes and dreams, recycling reminders through your conscious mind in order to keep from forgetting, interrupting your thoughts at times when you can’t do anything about it. As a result, your mind is constantly distracted by these reminders, thwarting your attempts to concentrate, to get organized and to plan your day with any semblance of sanity. Allen contends that the way to quiet these reminders and free your mind for productive, creative work is to quickly tag and organize these to-dos into actionable tasks and file them in a system your mind will trust to remind you at the appropriate time. Once your mind is satisfied that the task won’t be forgotten, it quits trying to remind you and allows you to focus on the task at hand.
That’s the premise, there are lots of ways to implement such a system. The 43 Folders site takes it’s name from the number of folders (12 months, 31 days) used to build a physical “tickler” file to remind yourself of tasks at the appropriate time. For those of you who shudder at the thought of using a technique so barbaric and undigital, I’ve just downloaded a trial of a Outlook Plug-in. Whichever way you cut it, it’s a great way to start thinking about and improving your productivity.
According to the site, “HEL LOOKS is selected street fashion from Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The pictures are taken in the streets and clubs of Helsinki from July 2005 onwards.” I’m kind of curious as to why all these Fins dress like my friends Josh & Mariah. Things that make you go hmmmmm……
OR cats secretly control the internet. Those are the only plausible explanations I can think of for why sites like My Cat Hates You, Stuff on My Cat and Kitten War exist. More evidence for the latter is the very Hostetlerian Infinite Cat Project.
Closer to home, my Dad has started to send out cat pictures. This should be a cautionary tale for all of you who work at home. Consulting is not without its dangers. His wife has two cats and he has taken pictures of them frolicking around the house and then e-mails them to people with cute captions. At first I thought he might be going through a phase or trying to make nice with the wife, but then he sent out this one on the right. It was the cat he had as a kid. I had to face the truth. He’s always been that way. I should have seen the signs. They were so obvious looking back at it. He always went out of his way to pet other peoples cats, and lingered just a little too long rubbing their tummies. Cat lovers aren’t products of social factors or just making a lifestyle choice. They’re born that way. We just have to own up to the truth and love them for who they are.
Just got a chance to check out the recent appearance of Feist on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. She is my new musical girlfriend. Looks like she’s skipping North America for the rest of this tour, so for now you’ll have to be satisfied with the videos and tracks on her website. Hmmm…. I wonder if she’s avoiding me….
to wide acclaim. Listen to “
Here are some favorites:
