Last night the air was thick and smoky like my neighborhood was on fire. I was walking up the street to walk Maya home from a friend's house, thinking, their house is the house on fire, I'm gonna have to walk through fire, I'll get everybody out and then one of them will go, 'the cat!' and I'll be all 'first goddamn time that cat didn't run out the door when I showed up! OK, cough, cough, wade through fire, here, kitty kitty...', then I checked Twitter and was all, whew, just a massive marsh fire! That is pretty much what parenthood is like all the time.
The kids informed me they are all doing the Spotify and I do all I do for the kids. I thought I didn't like their search thing, but I was all wrong about it. It's fine, plus I like that I can get my local stuff through the player. The links changes with the times. I can't testify to the mobile Spotification experience since you have to pay for that, and I already pay for Rhapsody. I can live with the ads. The play queue is a little counter-intuitive.
My protests against Loaded as a quality listening experience are as foolish as my ones against Spotify as a means to listen to it. When Maya was extolling her new love for XTC yesterday, she said, "That nerd at the record store was right, the one talking about Velvet Underground or whatever; he said, 'You are gonna like bands other than the Beatles and he was right.'" Mark this day, nerd; a female person said you were right about music.
Offbeat editor and birthday boy Alex Rawls has a great review of the new 33 1/3 books about Marquee Moon and Some Girls. Oxford American editor Marc Smirnoff has an insightful head-to-head with a former intern on the subject of internships. Any other of my editors - current, past, and prospective - out there with new articles needing a kind breeze blown up their sundress? Where y'at, Hails and Horns?
After that Drug Kingpin Hippos show, I'm into the idea of plutocrats and their private zoos, and particularly how the animals invariably get loose when the plutocrat falls. Do they go around and open the cages on their last Humvee ride around the compound? I might. Prince Rainier used a tour of his zoo to woo Grace Kelly. Gaddafi's son had one, and now there is nothing but peacocks roaming the grounds. Incidentally, Time.com seems to be the go to source about private zoo exposés. What do they have?
From Wikipedia's "List of Zoos", I found out that their a shit-ton of zoos in the Philippines and that Jorge Hank Rhon, president of the municipality of Tijuana from 2004-7, had a private zoo and was
also known as an animal lover and trader. However, his purported love for animals has been fouled by reports that many of his animals are the result of smuggling. Jorge Hank says his favorite animal is women. In 1991, he was directly linked to a failed illicit deal for an endangered gorilla, but was never formally charged.
and
Hank was first arrested in 1995 at the Mexico City airport when he was caught carrying a suitcase full of articles made of ivory tusks, pearl vests and coats made from the skins of endangered ocelots, but Hank claimed that no law had been broken and the merchandise was legal. He was released on bail and was later acquitted.[21][22]
as always with Wiki, I cannot vouch for the veracity of this story nor can I really condone their editorializing (bold: mine) without offering a quote or something in support. I'm just saying, roll the phrase "The Private Zoo of President Hank of Tijuana" around on your tongue and see how it tastes. Like a marsh fire but better and worse at once.
OK, today was pretty awesome. this post was originally a demonstration for #digitalbrands on the strike tag, and how to augment/correct a published post, so I will.
I was invited to be on WNYC's Smackdown to take on the notion that Steve Jobs was the most important person in music in the last 25 years, and while I will contend he nets the crown for finalizing, monetizing, stylizing, de-brick-and-mortaring the contemporary digital music industry, I offered Prince as my choice. I'm not the world's biggest Prince fan, but His Purple Mountain Majesty was the first to really subvert was it meant to be a big star since Elvis, how to conduct business in a digital age in his own tms, even crack the notion of a indelible branding by becoming his own anti-brand.
Prince has managed to remain indelibly relevant, revolutionary even despite not releasing an album really worth a second listen in 23 of those 25 years. My argument can be tempered by this thought: were I to for some reason buy one of those dozen or so albums released after Graffiti Bridge, the first place I'd go is iTunes. Advantage, Jobs.
I also did a lecture on Baton Rouge blues for a friend's class. My ego was on the verge of imploding.
I didn't listen to one note of music today and I had a crappy, hastily maw-crammed lunch from Wendy's. Without music and food, I'm left with nothing to blog but my own vanity.
Maya took a liking to XTC's Oranges and Lemons when I payed it for her the other day and today said XTC might be her new favorite band. She said she likes how their name means "happiness". Somewhere in the time-tunnel quanta of influence, my teenage XYC-obsessed self swells with strange, distant pride.
I dunno, should I switch to Spotify for this? I really like the way Rhapsody does its thing but I suppose there is a public alienation that comes with the sign-in wall when/if you click on one of those links. That's what was so nice about our fallen companion lala.com. It lent itself to linkage at its core. This question really hinges on: why post these links anyway. Does anybody follow them? Am I throwing linkage at a content problem? (taps) Is this thing on?
I'm getting an unexpectedly nice reaction off a story about Bayou Goula's Stray Record studio featured in the latest Country Roads. I mean, it's a good piece; it's just its getting more notice than a lot of stories like it. It happens that way. Also, I have a review of Au Ras Au Ras' eponymous debut and a profile on Wye Oak in this month's OffBeat, two acts deserving every micron of attention they can muster.
First rule about blogging is don't talk about blogging. Second rule about blogging is don't reference Fight Club. Third, is be funny. This #digitalbrands class has put these three rules to the test, proving their ultimate flimsiness, which is a good thing. If you can't teach yourself out of having a rule, why do it? Otherwise, you could just lay out the rules and walk away.
David "Honeyboy" Edwards has passed after 95 blues-heavy years. Chicago Tribune obit. I never did get to see Honeyboy play, but his records are the bomb and I understand he was a motherfucker live up through his last ramble.
David "Honeyboy" Edwards, "Gamblin' Man" from the 2004 film Lightning in a Bottle
Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations in Cajun Country: It was a beautiful episode and it made me happy to see him hanging out in my favorite location covered in my book, Lakeview Park and Beach in Eunice. Here's the story that I did about it for Country Roads about a year ago. It really is one of those place that, when you visit, you feel like you made some weird, fortunate turn in your life to get you there.
The other key is something Lolis Eric Elie said in that episode while tromping around Treme, paraphrased: I know they ate something in Ohio before McDonald's showed up. Celebrate that. Right there is the point of culture writing; not to revel in sepia of history but in the vibrant prism refraction of the present. That's the message...
I'm only 24 out of 636 electropages into Moonwalking with Einstein and I'm already annoyed with it. I'd throw it across the room if it wasn't in my iPad. No fault of Foer's; he's funny enough and is engaged in the standard non-fiction trope of lemme see if I can do this, that this being competitive memorizing, with the unexpected result that he becomes world champ at it. My rage is projection: my memory is a sieve and it irks me. I would be a better writer if I had a wide-swipe, annotated understanding of history or politics or anything. Even the micro subjects of which I am supposed to have some expertise, I'm shockingly ignorant about. I read somewhere that you write not to pass on what you know but to transmit what you can find out, which is either a great credo or a great cop-out, or both. I'd rather write lines through the dots I have and see what picture emerges. I am of the sort when asked Is Google Making Us Stupid?, responds: do libraries make us stupid? Do grocery lists make us stupid? and then in converse: Is it bad that clothes make us warmer? That cars make us faster and extend our physical circles? That medicine keeps us from dying the ignominious deaths of our forebearers?
I don't believe the important part is the medium; it's the message. We need to understand the medium, to be proficient at it so that it becomes transparent. It is our job as talking monkeys to bend the technology of understanding to our will, to use it as a means to facilitate the goofy purpose of our humanity; to understand things. So if Google can put a lifetime of remembering at my fingertips, great! Thanks! I understand they have an ulterior motive in doing so. Everything has an ulterior motive. I have one. Everyone does. So, to those in Foer's book, memorizing the order of shuffled decks of cards, have fun with that. And when, through your memorizing skills, fulfill world domination plans hatched out of bitterness stemming form countless afternoons spent at shuffled deck memorization contests, have fun with that too.
Irony: I Googled the word prolix after seeing it in someone's FaceBook post. Dig deep enough at the X on your map and you will strike a cache of mirrors, cracked by your shovel.
I Googled ulterior (I always think it is "alterior", master of mediums that I am) for fun and though it is usually used in conjunction with "motive" to mean "duplicitous" or "sneaky" but really it is "further; future" (which seems like the kind of motives we should have) twisted in context to the negative - how dare there be a motive that I don't immediately understand?
Enough with the rabbit-hole of understanding, plus, I am unnecessarily throwing Joshua Foer under the bus. I read every post of the Atlas Obscrua site he founded, in fact squealed "I've been there!" at the recent entry on the Blythe Intaglios, thrilled that I was finally worldly enough to register on his particular map of reality.
Joshua Foer: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone and Study Yourself Failing
This 99% talk explains what he was getting at. You push past the wall to achieve greatness or you land on the OK plateau and engage autopilot. I am a wuss like everyone; I want to emerge on the scene great and since that never happens, reach my "upper bounds of innate ability" and stay there and that is loser-talk. Experts circumvent these boundaries, climb through the balcony hanging over a locked door. They parkour the road to the palace of wisdom while the rest of us marvel at the paving stones, going "Lookit all that purty excess!" Something like that.
So, I don't know if this ties into it all, but I hit up Fat Cow Burgers to try a tricked out burger with arugula, pears, goat cheese with a side of duck fat fries. The place is cool; it looks like a Food Network set. You feel smart and hip for having come here, at least until the hour-wait for your hamburger takes its psychic toll and then you get it and the toppings are weird, smart, a little ingenious, but the burger itself is only OK. Then, today, I went to tried and true Dearman's, a decades old drugstore lunch counter that has outlived its drugstore, and have the same genius burger I always get there. Foer says experts collect data about what they are doing which is maybe what I do here on this blog. I don't know if I'm an expert on my data, on the media and food I take in, on what my kid is doing, but that honing is what communication is about. Its graph is an arc reaching to heaven, the limit as y approaches understanding, over an x-axis of experience, and your expertise at communication manifests as how far you can pull someone up that parabola with you.
Tarwater! No one ever told me they were my favorite band! Did anyone even know? They make the sound the pipe between the heart and the brain makes when you put your mouth to it and go woooooooo...
Tarwater, "A Marriage in Belmont"
Great class yesterday, #digitalbrands people. Today is my teaching cohort Dr. Porter's birthday, so be sure to give him shit about being old when you see him. To be fair, he holds up well for a man of his vintage.
The above (John Denver's Spirit) and below (Gil Scott-Heron's Reflections) were among the covers perused at Vintage Vinyl on the way home from class. I do like having a record store right there. If they installed a cappuccino machine and had free wi-fi, I'd be in trouble.
Newby maritime state hurricaners: do all your laundry beforehand because you will sweat through everything, fill up the tank of your car, get some water and charcoal for the grill and alcohol (it will be useful when trading with the teenage marauder bands) and be prepared to get the f outta dodge should the power go out for a week. There is little dignity in riding out a storm.
Seriously, Tarwater, y'all.
Tarwater, "When Love Was the Law in Los Angeles"
While in the mirror of Gil Scot-Heron's shades, your fire-hardened crust is on full display.
