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Named after an essay by Lester Bangs, a rock journalist and one of the my favorite authors, this blog is my scratch pad for ideas, commentaries, and links.
-RSSPlease note: The following is cross-posted with Then Dig, an archaeology group blog. It's part of a group of in which archaeologists write about their favorite tools. Thanks to Terry Brock for putting this "session" together.
Archaeologists love their trowels, but for my money, when I go into the field, the thing I want with me at all times is my clipboard.
Alanna and I recently got Kindle readers as a wedding present. Woo hoo! We both love them, and are enjoying them immensely.
However, I'm pretty rough and tumble with my gadgets, and I knew that I would need something to protect the kindle. There are some really nice cases available from Amazon, and elsewhere (I particularly like the oberon cases). But I'm pretty broke these days, and that, combined with some inspiration, led me to the idea of making my own kindle cover.
I've always loved comic books, ever since my folks bought me a multi-pack at Walmart in the late 1980s. Almost immediately, I found that comics became a means to relationships. Many of my longest friendships over the years were fortified by comic books. Chatting during my wedding reception, the Minister of Intrigue and I realized that comics were the thing that first got our now-19 year friendship going. Similarly, DHP and I have had many intense discussions over as many years about Sandman, Preacher, and more. Although comics have always had characteristics that attracted me--unique art, compelling storytelling, collectibility, etc...--what made them so important to me was the sense of community.
David Hajdu's new book "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
It's hard to overestimate the importance of Robert Johnson to the 20th century. Though he only made 42 recordings over the course of his short life, they have lived on, and inspired many, long after his violent death in 1938. His life has been mythologized to an extent that doesn't seem possible our modern, materialist age, where myth has supposedly disappeared in favor of reason. He supposedly sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical talent. He was poisoned (possibly) by a jealous husband of a woman he was flirting with in a bar. He was only known to have been photographed twice as an adult, including the photo on the shirt. And his music, haunting and powerful, was long thought to have been played and recorded by two people, until contemporaries confirmed that he had done it all with his own two hands.
I've finally moved most of my crap back to Toronto, and am currently doing some spring/summer cleaning. I have a whole slew of posters that I've accumulated over many years, which have hung on walls of various bedrooms and apartments. I've just photographed them for sentiment, in a similar fashion to my t-shirts of the past, but I'm planning on getting rid of them, once and for all.
So here's your chance. Check out the Flickr Set that I've made of the posters. If you want any of them, send me an email (whenelvisdied at gmail dot com) or leave a comment on this post, and we'll work something out. I'm not looking to make any money, but I might ask you to shoot a few bucks into my paypal account to cover shipping and packing costs.
And tell your friends! These will be available on a first come-first serve basis, and I'll only be doing it for the next 10 days (until June 20th, 2010). After that, they're going to the recycle bin.
I think I bought this shirt when I was 16 or 17. Tool's first three albums (well, technically, an EP and two full-lengths) were in almost constant rotation in my life during the first years that I owned this shirt.
"Won't sleep, won't shut up"...words to live by.
I bought it on a Washington High School Orchestra Trip to Kansas City. We used to do these crazy trips with High School choirs, bands, and orchestras, where we would travel, and play some music, and then get set loose on wherever we ended up. On this particular occasion, we decided to visit scenic Kansas city. I'm pretty sure DHP was there, but I definitely remember Michael Busha, and Dylan McCort (Rest In Peace). We were wandering around some mall, and I found this shirt in a Spencer gifts-type shop. I was astonished, as I had just discovered Henry Rollins spoken word stuff, thanks to the Minister of Intrigue, I believe.
If anyone could be said to have been in the right place at the right time, it's Henry Rollins.
My dad grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. Sioux City is an interesting place, and it's a pleasure to listen to him talk about its folklore. He has a whole map in his head with all of the town's hidden mysteries, and I've been priveleged to take that tour more than once.
One of the points of reference in Sioux City is the Tastee Inn and Out.
I have many, many t-shirts. I've always liked T-shirts--they're one of the most referential forms of clothing you can buy, and for an obsessive nerd like me, a t-shirt with a logo, a band, a phrase, or something else was a way of distinguishing myself. In some ways, it was kind of like a hyperlink--an object that points to an entirely separate series of information. The irony of distinguishing myself through a commodity is not lost on my faux-marxist brain....
But of course, like all artifacts, T-shirts (or any clothing for that matter) carry emotions, memories, and associations independent of their production. It's one of the great ironies of capitalist life--we're always subverting and reconfiguring the things we buy toward new ends, undreamed of by people who made them and sold them to us. For clothes, this is especially salient, I think, because clothes are so embodied--we carry them next to our skin, and they are with us in almost all of our daily interactions with other people.
Thus, I always have a hard time when I'm cleaning out my closet. I have T-shirts that I love, and would never want to part with, but simply can't wear, for any number of reasons. But, I hit upon a solution, and I figured that I would get started enacting that solution today.
I've taken pictures of T-shirts that I'm discarding, and using them as an excuse to write about the memories and feelings they inspire. It's maybe a little self-indulgent, but it's also a means for me to get rid of some old clothes, and exorcise/exercise the memories that I have attached to them. I've created a Flickr set of my t-shirts, which you can see here, and I'll do a post on each shirt in the series over the coming weeks.
When I was 14, my High School drama department held auditions for "Amadeus", and I tried out on a lark. I had always liked theater, and had done some smaller plays and other skit-type things when I was a little kid. Plus, I loved the movie, and F. Murray Abraham's searing portrait of Salieri, a man pulled in two by his own jealousy and his love for music, inspired me to want to play the same character. Of course, I had never acted before in my High School, and I totally expected to not get a part, or to get a background role.
I wandered into school the day after auditions to find the roles list posted on the door of the drama office. I scanned the list, starting at the bottom, and as I moved upward, I didn't see my name, and assumed that I simply hadn't been cast. It was only when I got to the top that I found my name, next to the part of Mozart. At first, I didn't believe it. There is a role in the play for a "Mozart Double" and I assumed that I had been given that role. But after a minute, I realized that I was playing the real deal. As Emperor Joseph II says: "Well. There it is"
I really threw myself into the part, working on my high-pitched giggle, learning to play the piano part that Mozart uses to show up Salieri in front of the Emperor by rote, and teaching myself to breathe slowly and slightly when Mozart died. Somehow, during the dress rehearsal in the dark of the back-stage, I managed to walk into an old water pipe, and cut my head open enough to get six stitches. Fortunately, we had wigs that covered our foreheads and my injury remained hidden through the performance.
It was a wonderful experience, and I'll never forget it. I kept up with Theater all through High School, playing Shakespeare, musicals, Greek comedies, farce, high drama, and more. In college, I was involved with a great group called "Theater for Engineers" and spent a few more fleeting moments onstage with some amazing people. Since I've come to grad school, time and interest for acting have faded from my life, but many of the skills I learned have come in handy in teaching--poise, clear speaking, and comfort at talking in front of a crowd among them.
So here's to acting, and to a time in my life when nothing seemed more natural than putting on a costume and talking with someone else's voice.
The senate finance committee voted against the "public option" today. I call it like I see it.
Monday, July 4, 2011 at 12:04PM