I am not looking forward to the RNC— more details at the Minnesota Independent. It remains to be seen if “Minnesota nice” will prevail, this isn’t LA after all. But somehow, I doubt that will make any difference. The Saint Paul police purchased something like a half a million dollars worth of brand new shiny tasers just for the occasion.
Category: Media
Utopians
I think a lot of people go through a sort of utopian phase— I know I did. Joseph Duemer pointed at a NYT obit for Kathleen Kinkade today, and it brought back memories. While I was in high school, I read both Walden Two by B.F. Skinner and A Walden Two Experiment. I definitely preferred the latter; it had a pragmatic edge that wasn’t as “hippy” as most of the other commune experiments of the time.
What I remember most was the idea that the more disgusting a job was, the more it should be worth—garbage collectors should make more money than CEOs. It seemed reasonable to me at the time. The arc of the obit is interesting, and the memorable spots for me were:
Telling Stories
Chris Abani: February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 16:14
“Art is essential,” he says. “It’s what is human in us. People have always tried to create narratives. Through stories, rock painting, sons. Trying to make sense of what it means to exist in this often-painful life, what it means to be human. Art becomes a way to meditate the terror. It connects us. Like James Baldwin said, ‘Your pain has no meaning unless you can connect it with someone else’s pain.'”
Durban, 4am is oddly compelling as well.
I don’t want to be a drug dealer
While I have been unable to find the actual source of the phrase “nostalgia is death” (generally attributed to Dylan) I did find this interview fragment with Malcolm Jones:
“I’m just rooted back there in the `50s, and what’s got me this far keeps me going,” he says with a grin. “I know people who’ve got that online thing and games and things, but I find it too inhibiting to sit in front of a screen. On any level — I don’t even like to sit and watch TV too much. I feel I’m being manipulated.”
Dylan called his latest, Grammy-winning album “World Gone Wrong,” and meant every word of it.
Two songs are by the late Georgia bluesman Willie McTell, a musician whose passing he mourned in one of his greatest songs, “Blind Willie McTell” (“Power and greed and corruptible seed/ Seem to be all that there is”) and whose work, for Dylan, symbolizes a level of craft fast vanishing.
It’s not a big truck
Quest may not have a big enough truck
While I find Chuck’s tirade amusing, it highlights only one potential perspective on sharing experiences on the internet. When it comes to sharing creative experiences, the creators of said experiences can and should have some input in just how their presence is conveyed. I remember a heated discussion on a King Crimson mailing list years ago about photographing/recording concerts. Robert Fripp tried to establish his possession that such things were evanescent by design, and that it cheapens them by capturing them in substandard recordings.
I don’t know exactly what I think about this, but I do know that simplistic appeal to mob behaviors doesn’t constitute a compelling argument that everything should be/is recorded and broadcast 24/7. I think that trivializes both communication and experience—the internet is not a big truck that we load our experiences onto so that we can share them.
The internet is a series of tubas*
TubaMania!
There aren’t many professional tuba players out there, but there are no doubt many of them in closets. I suspect that there aren’t many people who love the tuba so much that they are willing to devote their life to it. What can a tuba-dabbler to do? I found an interesting answer to that question this weekend at TubaMania in New Ulm, Minnesota. I drove two hours to see it, largely because I’m amazed that such a thing exists.
The framework is actually a marvel of simplicity. As explained by the bandleader, Martin Meidl, they allow anyone with their own tuba and music stand to participate. They rehearse in the morning and perform the concert the same night. They have been doing it for 14 years now, and have a past membership of nearly 100. Their existence seems to me to be a perfect example of an evolution of process rather than product. Indeed, the perpetuation of this basic model of socialization through music thwarts any hope at a perfected “product” as its result.
Internet research revealed that the idea goes further back to tuba virtuoso Harvey Phillips, inducted into the American Classical Hall of Fame at the University of Cincinnati last month. Phillips introduced the idea of Christmas tuba concerts around the world in 1974, and this same group of New Ulm players has been performing a TubaChristmas in Mankato, Minnesota since 1993. They are branching out and offering Oktubafest at the New Ulm Holiday Inn this year.
As Dick Hardt proclaimed, “simple and open wins.” To leave an open channel for people to gather and contribute without a huge personal or professional investment seems to be genius of a sort.
* with due deference to Ted Stevens
Farting Around
The Runner Up
Coffee Nazis
At a coffee shop in Silverlake, CA, waiting for my iced cappuccino
“No modifications to the Classic Cappuccino. No questions will be answered about the $5 Hot Chocolate (during the months we offer it). No espresso in a to-go cup. No espresso over ice. These are our policies. We have our reasons, and we’re happy to share them.”
At his cafe yesterday, Cho explained the policy: “The way we do espresso is different than what people are used to. It’s a very exacting technique. . . . When you pour it over ice, it creates a certain acidic reaction that makes the drink sour.”
He also said some customers have the audacity to order an espresso over ice, then fill the glass with milk at the dairy bar — creating their own iced latte, at a significant saving.
In his letter on Murky’s site, Cho wrote: “To others reading this I will say that if you don’t like the policies, I respectfully recommend that you find some other place that will give you what you want, or select something that we can offer you.”
I despise coffee nazis. I was frustrated in Seattle by the lack of places serving iced coffee drinks (Starbucks being a notable exception—but I would have liked to try some of the smaller places). I have an espresso machine at home. I make iced cappuccinos (including frothed milk) all the time. But you can’t get that drink anywhere, because, as one particularly snotty barista at a Starbucks once told me—it does not exist. Apart from powdered mixes at the supermarket, I suppose.
But at a little shop in Silverlake, the guy behind the counter went ahead and made me one, in disrespect of all the rules of snob coffee. I felt like taking out an ad—the world didn’t come to an end, the sky didn’t split open just because someone combined steamed and frothed milk with espresso and poured it over ice. Sheesh!
Data Visualization
I have some problems with this— it seems to me as if truly local news is as hard to come by as international news in most locales in the US. Instead, what we get is the same top stories repeated by localized talking heads, mostly because it’s cheaper. This does present a great way of visualizing the problem, though.