Updates to the Photo Gallery

Eight new pictures in the gallery. That's 93 pictures for your viewing enjoyment. Are you happy?

Greenpoint Station

I shot this quick clip as I was leaving my subway station in Greenpoint. I was carrying a handful of packagages and bags so it's a little bumpy. Click the image to watch. Enjoy.

Breakfast at E's Parents

This weekend we went to New Jersey for the holidays. E's dad made made his famous omlette. Here's a clip that turned out too large with a lot of empty space at the end. The tune is "Going to New York" by Jimmy Reed. He didn't have one called "Going to New Jersey," or I would have used that. Click the picture to watch.

Um...

One of the things I do for my day job is edit audio podcasts comprised of my editor interviewing technology marketing professionals. In doing so, I cut cut out hundreds of verbal gaffs, the "ums" and "uhs" most people employ when simeltaneously thinking and speaking. I thought it might be interesting to dump all such sounds into one file and render it as an MP3. Here's a collection of those gaffs that I pulled from this week's interview.

International Parking Day

Yesterday was International Parking Day for which "curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings." Streetsblog has photos of the NYC effort in Midtown Manhattan on 8th Avenue near 30th Street. I think this kind of stuff is great! I wish I was around there yesterday, cuz I would I have joined them.

On the Road with Amanda Congdon

Last week Amanda Congdon, formerly of Rocketboom, announced her new project, Amanda Across America, for which she will travel across the contry in a "hybrid vehicle" blogging (or should I say vlogging) about it the whole way. Here's the first post of this new epoch from Ms. Congdon, emenating from what seems to be her childhood bedroom in Connecticut.

Back when she was Rocketboom's talking head, she always came across as a little desperate for attention, like a high school cheerleader at the nerd's table, milking the mediocre jokes, mugging for the camera, and pretending she cared about Internet trends and video games. Her audience liked the attention, but knew that deep down inside she didn't want to date a one of them, but merely needed them to fix her computer or do her Physics homework...or perhaps make her famous.

Rocketboom has never been a favorite of mine, but you have to give credit where credit is due. It was the geeky brain of Andrew Baron that drove content, and it's the content (in juxtaposition with her inherent sex appeal) that made Ms. Congdon so popular. And now that the geek and the cheerleader have parted, the shine has entirely worn off.

In her newest venture (or at least this post), Ms. Congdon seems maniacally desperate to hold on to her audience, trying to whip them up by using unfunny voices ("Come on, interact with me y'all") and other schtick. But upon finding herself without anything interesting to say, her game quickly devolves into a spasmodic dance that culminates with Ms. Congdon throwing herself on her childhood bed and rolling around on it.

Very strange, and a little sad.

Are you scared of your spinach too?

The Future of TV and Newspapers

Media blogger Haydn Shaughnessy predicts that within ten years," [n]ewspapers will have shorn most of their staff within five years and will be relying on a new breed of writer/audio/video patch-maker." He also sees corporations as taking over a large portion of news broadcasting: "The sports network will be run by Adidas, Puma, Nike and Reebok with no need of content and distribution intermediaries."

Shaugnessy's predictions jibe with an increasing number of media pundits, bloggers and critics who anticipate new media technologies to democratize the distribution of media and, in so doing, revolutionize the way Big Media does business. As far as I can tell, most of the online crew believes that this will be a strong and positive change. I disagree. The way I see it, the quality of our media is just going to get worse.

The move online will not change Big Media. The major players will merely move their operations online, and they will dominate the field. Independent bloggers, online critics, and videobloggers might be able to generate buzz, but won't be able to draw the large mainstream audiences necessary to compete with companies that can mount large scale promotional campaigns and hire superstars to participate in their online programming.

While independent content producers will continue to make interesting stuff, Big Media will tip the scales toward entertainment, and we will see the same poor quality of programming online as we currently see on the major television networks. And if online newspapers move towards video production, they too are delving into a medium which has little to do with quality news.

Coming Soon: The Hardcore Show #5

I had intended this week's show to be a collection of jazz tunes, but at the last minute switched to the blues. I am still not satisfied, something is missing from the selection I put together, so I am mulling over my choices and will release this week's show by Wednesday. So, stick by me loyal readers, all 23 of you.

Updates to the Photo Gallery

Well, there's only three new photos in the gallery this weekend. It was a little slow. Maybe I'll bring my camera to work this week and shoot something in midtown.

Motorcycles!

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This weekend, down on the streets that divide Greenpoint from Williamsburg, several hundred bikers gathered. We were walking home from our day out and happened on it. Here's a quick clip of some of the bikes. This clip is shot with my digital camera.

The Chubby Vegan

I promise not to become one of those people who just posts YouTube video, but I really like this one.

Razzing the Blogging Jazz

Over on Shel Israel's blog, he mentions that blogging may be the jazz of writing. As a blogger and a jazz fan, I humbly disagree with the metaphor and posted a comment to tell him so. I'm not sure I'll win him over with my off-the-cuff comments, but I kind of like of like stirring this pot.

Ornette Coleman in 1979

Holy Crap! Can you believe that they had Ornette Coleman on Saturday Night Live? I can't.

Pop Distraction

In the LA Times, Patrick Goldstein takes an excellent look at the frivolity of American pop culture in the context of his post-September 11th predictions that we were entering a period of new "moral gravity." He laments that even a national disaster could not "quench our thirst for the madcap antics of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Star Jones Reynolds, Jessica Simpson and all the other bobble heads bouncing around our celebrity universe." Goldstein writes:

The faces are different today, but the exclamation points are the same. FHM has a scantily clad Janet Jackson on its cover, boasting "I've never worn so little!" US Weekly has a photo of a frumpy Jessica Simpson, with the tagline: "Dumped! Jessica's First Post-Nick Romance Backfires." And In Touch questions: "Angelina Looks Pregnant Again: Will Another Child Solve Her Problems With Brad?"

In addtition to our collective fascination with this media circus, Goldstein's article also touches on a larger issue, that of a cultural "fragmentation...which has so many hundreds of niche channels and radio formats that we rarely get to share a common reaction to a cultural event."

Karl Rove Strikes Again?

Check this out. Bush has asked the networks to clear the decks for an address-to-the-nation at "9:01 p.m., just at the start of the last hour of The Path to 9/11 on the East Coast." Unless you've been living under a rock, you already know that this ABC/Disney programming has been coming under fire for political bias, slanted clearly in the Bush administration's favor. Perhaps the president merely wanted to address the nation on the 5th year since the attacks, but I'm too cynical to think that Mr. Bush's speech isn't intentionally sandwiched in the midst of the evening's right wing propaganda fest. What do you think?

Chinatown Automation

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This weekend we saw a great movie and then went for dinner in Chinatown. We spent about $26.00 and had a ton of food. In order to walk it off we strolled down Lafayette Street and found this great place where they make delicious little cream-filled cakes with this machine. They're great, but watching the machine work is half the fun.

Jesus was a Japanese Rice Farmer?

Deep in the northern Japanese countyside, where farmers grow rice and apples as they have for centuries, a remote mountain stands. If you take the time to climb that mountain and make your way through a dense thicket of bamboo, you'll find a mound of bare earth marked by a large wooden cross. This, my friends, is the grave of Jesus Christ.

Duncan Bartlett, the reporter who wrote this BBC story wonders why Christ's grave would be marked when a cross when, according to local belief, Jesus did not die at Calvary. Instead, "[t]he story goes that after escaping Jerusalem, Jesus made his way across Russia and Siberia to Aomori in the far north of Japan where he became a rice farmer, married, had a family and died peacefully at the age of 114." Nonetheless, it was Jesus's brother who took his place on the cross, yet the sacrificed brother is also buried in Japan, his corpse somehow having made the journey from Jerusalem after his crucifixion.

The intrepid Mr. Bartlett seeks out the living relatives of Jesus, a "tubby middle-aged gentleman in glasses who ... did not seem particularly Messianic." Jesus's descendent tells our reporter that his family is not Christian, but Buddhist.

What else?

Hardcore Show #4

In this fourth installment of The Hardcore Show I include some music that pre-dates most Hardcore by at least 20 years.

Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman were uncompromising visionaries that created intense, passionate music that, to my ears, has much in common with the best punk. I won't hesitate to recognize the vast musical difference between the jazzers and the punkers, but you might find some surprises if you listen closely enough.

The Minutemen's D. Boon and Mike Watt were heavily influenced by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Black Flag, in its more improvisational modes, was one of the few rock bands to openly embrace free jazz. Avant-jazz geek John Zorn makes no secret about his love for Japanese noise-core.

Take a listen to today's show and consider this your first toe in the water. In future shows I'll be mixing in more jazz and improvisational stuff, maybe even something...contemporary.

Click to Listen

Anthemic Pop Wonder – How Great Was Hüsker Dü
Charles Mingus – Cryin’ Blues
Bad Brains – Banned in DC
Hüsker Dü – First of the Last Calls
Hüsker Dü – Diane
Minutemen – Little Man with a Gun in His Hand
Minutemen – Product
The Lounge Lizards – Well You Needn’t
Ornette Coleman – Eventually
Negativland – Escape from Noise

It's Jerry Time!

Hey, everybody, It's Jerry Time! In this episode, Jerry talks about his early career in New York as he tries to make it in the entertainment business. As always, it's a great one!

CNN Watch: Shameless Exploitation

Personally, I have problems with even the world "anniversary" when it comes to the events of September 11, 2001. In my mind, the word is assocaited with celebration, as in "wedding anniversary," where the event commerated is a happy event.

September 11th was anything but.

But the media has seized upon the fifth year after our grand national disaster and decided to use if for and excuse to air a mess of exploititive broadcasting. Casting aside the obvious, I'd like to point you too CNN's rebroadcasting of their September 11, 2001 coverage in real time. They're doing this, it seems, to promote their new pay-per-view online product: CNN Pipline.

CNN should be ashamed of itself. By using this event to promote their own products, they've effectively taken the horror and shock of that day and turned it into a commercial.

Cheap Beer!

My old friend Dave is relocating his family from California to Washington State and has decided to take the opportunity to travel completely across the country (all the way to Brooklyn) instead of the much easier straight shot. Here, he blogs about a stop in Denton, Texas where he drank his first Red Beer (beer and tomato juice). I'll let him tell you whether it was good or not. But check out that menu! $6.50 for a pitcher of beer!? That's like going back in time! In NYC $6.50 will buy you a pint.

Only Revolutions

Mark Z. Danielewski, author of the great, experimental horror novel House of Leaves, has a new book coming out! Titled, Only Revolutions, the novel looks like a hoot.

According to Amazon, the new book "takes the experiment [of House of Leaves] 10 steps further in a story about teenage lovers Hailey and Sam: the book is printed on two sides--one side tells the story from Hailey's point of view, flip it over and you get Sam's side (literally)." Take a look at the Amazon pages for a view into this experiment in literary typography.

Also, like the HoL, the book has an overdesigned website to promote the book, but after poking around the site I found it a little dificult and tedius to navigate. Maybe I'm getting old, but I still can't wait for the book!

10 Sign-Off Lines for Katie Couric

1. This has been Katie Couric for the CBS Evening News. Please love me. Please?
   
2. Thanks for watching the CBS Evening News, I'd like to give you all a great big hug, but since that's impossible, I probably won't be doing that.
3. Thanks for watching the CBS Evening News. If you see Al Roker before I do, tell him that I said he can stuff his stupid puns in a sock.
4. Tomorrow, tune in for a new segment on the CBS Evening News: Where in the World is Bob Schiffer?
5. It's virtually impossible to sum up me feelings about you guys tonight, so I'll just say thanks a lot, guys. I love you all.
   
6. Thanks for watching America, that makes 16 pounds I've lost so far. How are you doing on the CBS Evening News Weight Loss Challenge?
7. You don't have to like me, It won't hurt me at all. Really.
8. I'd like to give a shout-out to President Bush for granting us the privilege of an interview. And an extra special shout-out to Revlon, for the mascara.
9. What? Are we off? Thank God...I already had to pee half-way throught that Iraq story.
   
10. Thanks for making me a multimillionaire America...goodnight!
    

The News is News

Katie Couric had her shot at the big time last night and, in place of hard news, she decided to show us our first glimpse of Tom Cruise's baby, Suri.

Wotta scoop!

I didn't have the opportunity to watch, but I figured I'd be able to read-all-about-it in the famously MSM-disdaining blogosphere. I wasn't disapointed. This morning, I found what I was looking for and then some.

Check that picture of Baby Suri and tell me if she isn't wearing a Baby Toupee.

Rove's Radical Revelation

Here we have what might be the most frightening anecdote of the morning:

In Sidney Blumenthal's new book, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime, the author recounts the president's visit to the Clinton presidential library, which he toured with Karl Rove. Blumenthal writes: "Rove showed keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W. Bush library and legacy."

"'You're not such a scary guy,' joked his guide. 'Yes, I am,' Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: 'I change constitutions, I put churches in schools.'"

Fragment of Bleeker Street

Click to Play

Another clip from my digital camera. This one comes from today's walk around Manhattan. I know it might be boring for most people to watch these random, contextless clips of video, but I want to keep praticing for more formal projects. I have one or two of those in the works, so stay tuned!

Manhattan from the Brooklyn Side

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Today we took E's parents down to Brooklyn Heights and walked around the promenade where I shot this little clip with my digital camera. There's not much to it, but it was fun to post. After looking at the view, we had dinner at La Traviata.

The Hardcore Show #3

Today, it's covers! Yes, after realizing that each of my past shows included a couple of cover songs, I decided to dedicate a whole show to them. I know there's a whole lot of other tunes that I should have included here, but because I'm trying to keep each show to just 10 songs, I had to to leave some of them out. I'm sure another cover show is in the future.

Today's show finally introduces Hüsker Dü into the mix with their great version of 'Love is All Around,' the theme to the 70s sit-com The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the song 'Eight Miles High,' originally recorded by the Byrds. This recording of EMH has some quality issues. It seems to hae been mixed with its levels pushed a little too high. But you can still hear the power and ferocity of the band's take on the hippie original.

Click this link to listen.

Anthemic Pop Wonder - How Great was Hüsker Dü
7 Seconds - 99 Red Baloons
Hüsker Dü - Love is All Around
Black Flag - Louie Louie
Minutemen - Aint Talking 'Bout Love
Minutemen - Fortunate Son
The Dickies - Theme to the Banana Splitz
Dead Kennedys - Rawhide
Elvis Hitler - Green Haze
Hüsker Dü - Eight Miles High

One, Two, Three...

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I found this clip on the end of one of my DV tapes. I don't really remember recording it, but I must have been testing my camera. I thought it was funny so I added some effects to the clip and slowed it down.

Please don't watch.

Updates to the Photo Gallery

Whoo! Nine new pictures in the gallery. That's not a lot, but there're oh-so-good! Now that's 83 photos for you to look at.

Take My Cell Phone, Please

Not many people who maintain blogs are luddites. But I probably am one of the few bloggers who hates and fears techonology as much as I love it.

I don't share the optimism of folks like Jarvis, Scoble and Winer. These folks argue new technologies have improved our lives by making communication easier, and more effective, because communication has been liberated from its traditions. I'll agree with them on part of that statement—communication today is easier and more effective. However, I do not believe that it has made our lives any better.

For the human condition, technology hasn't done shit.

Take my cell phone. Back when I only had a land line, I hated talking on that thing. When it rang, I'd let my wife answer it, praying that it wasn't for me, and kind of resenting the caller for disturbing my book/TV show/dinner/peace-of-mind.

Back then, when a friend would call to arrange a meeting, we would just cover the details: Where are we going to meet? What time? Okay, see you there. Click.

If we had anything more to say to each other, we'd say it when we met. And, because this was in the day's before cell phones, we didn't have to bother each other with any more calls, we'd just meet up at the time we had arranged. Life was simple then.

But now, I have to carry my phone with me.

When it rings, I still don't have to answer it; I can tell my caller that my battery was dead; or that they must have called when I was in the subway; or just say: I'm sorry I didn't hear the thing on the oh-so-noisy NYC streets.

Nonethelss, my resentment is still the same as it was with a land line when the cell phone rings. I think: Who the heck is calling me now? and glare hatefully at my cellphone's display screen. Usually, the caller is either my wife or my mother, and I feel like a heel for my misplaced animosity.

The telephone-arranged meet-up has also grown dificult. Rather than just one phone call with the cut-and-dried details of where and when, I find myself making countless calls.

If I'm going to be a couple of minutes late because my bus is stuck in traffic, I call my party and tell them that I'm going to be a couple of minutes late because my bus is stuck in traffic. While at the same time, they're calling me to tell me that they're going to be a few minutes late because their cab driver took Madison when he should have taken Park, and now they're stuck in traffic. In all liklihood we're both stuck on Madison, seperated by one or two car lengths.

Couldn't we live without these details?

I hope so, because I'm giving up my cell phone. It's expensive, and it doesn't add to my life.

I'm just as miserable as I was before, only now I have to carry a little nagging burden around with me. If anything, that makes my life worse.

Where I used to be able to leave my house and leave the responsibility of the ringing phone behind me, I now I have to carry it around and be resentfully answerable to it's call.

I've always hated the telephone, disliked talking on it, tried to hide from it. So it's time I stood out from the crowd and dropped the stupid thing. God forbid that I get a cell phone that is e-mail enabled or would let me post video to my blog.

I will refuse.