Crushing Krisis

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Monday Morning Remainders

Monday, August 30, 2010

I performed with Filmstar for the first time on Saturday, but you have to wait a day or two to hear about the results and if I’m still feeling conflicted about playing with the band.

First, here are your Monday Morning Remainders – eight blogs I’ve enjoyed or tweets I’ve flagged.

1. Philly (and the internet at large) got up in arms last week about a so-called “Philly Blogger Tax,” which was really just the city’s business privilege license being applied to Bloggers. My virtual friend JoeBeta sussed out a sensible explanation and critique of the policy, from Technically Philly co-founder Sean Blanda.

It’s certainly a horrible waste of resources to pursue blogs with revenue in the hundreds when some companies and individuals owe the city millions in back taxes, forcing the city to do things like offer a tax amnesty to the dead beats.

2. Rocking local blog Phrequency had a flash concert for TJ Kong on the freaking Broad Street Subway. I love TJ Kong and my old promo shots were from the Walnut Street station, so in my opinion this is approximately the best thing ever.

Do not hold your breath waiting for me to do one on the El, though.

3. A Vancouver realtor’s Facebok page gained over 4,000 fans in 12 days. Crazy pyramid scheme for iPads? Nope – good old fashioned content that people give a shit about. (via @morganb.)

4. I’ll just repeat what Torrez said:

Imagesoak is a fantastic application for finding things to read and look at based on the interesting photos and images that accompany them. Nevermind what I just said, just go there.

5. Matthew Leone, bass player for the Chicago based band Madina Lake, sustained life-threatening injuries while trying to defend a stranger from brutal domestic abuse. Sweet Relief, a fund that supports musicians in times of illness, is raising funds to pay for his treatment and rehabilitation. Matthew’s band member and brother has been blogging through the ordeal.

6. Leslie Hunt was one of my favorite recent American Idol Semi-Finalists – she had a real identity and real taste in music, but was quickly kicked to the curb for her quirk. Mpomy.com blogs a video from her new project, District 97

7. Amanda Palmer’s life is so serendipitous. On break from her hectic schedule, she sees a random trio of teens whose photo she feels compelled to take. Almost after she’s gone, one realizes who she is, and catches her to tell her that he’s a big fan. One thing leads to another, and suddenly he’s playing a concert to thousands of internet viewers from her apartment.

8. Amanda’s fiancé is super-famous comic, fiction, and film writer Neil Gaiman. Neil has been in a legal struggle with Todd McFarlane since 2002 regarding unpayed royalties on creator-owned characters he developed for McFarlane’s Spawn. Neil blogs part of the judge’s new decision, which contains delicious text like:

Much as defendant tries to distinguish the two knight Hellspawn, he never explains why, of all the universe of possible Hellspawn incarnations, he introduced two knights from the same century. Not only does this break the Hellspawn “rule” that Malebolgia never returns a Hellspawns to Earth more than once every 400 years (or possibly every 100 years, as suggested in Spawn, No. 9, exh. #1, at 4)…

I hope your Monday is going well. More news (and video) on my weekend as a Filmstar coming up!

Also filed in Philly, weblinks | | Comments (0)

Wednesday Morning Remainders

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I could write a post about each of these links, but in ten years would that be interesting to read? Maybe they need the context of each other to create a narrative beyond their end destinations.

Here we go.

1. Ever fantasized about being a globe-trotting musician headlining your own tour? Amanda Palmer does just that, and her no-holds-barred look at managing the business of her music while on tour via email will either thrill or terrify you.

2. On the way back from our aborted-by-clouds skydiving attempt Wes played a hilarious NPR show/podcast called Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, an hour-long quiz show that’s part Daily Show part Whose Line Is It Anyway. As I’ve recently mentioned, I can be a humorless curmudgeon, but the show’s mix of news, puns, and grammatical humor struck a chord with me. Derek Powazek discusses how the Wait, Wait formula is crowd-sourcing done right.

3. Skydiving was my present to Wes for graduating from Temple Law. HuffPost interviewed Nikki Johnson-Huston, who went from homeless to college-dropout to award-winning graduate of Temple Law. (via JoeBeta)

4. My friend and fellow sky-diving companion Chris is the glassblowing apprentice at Old City’s Hudson Beach Glass, where they are having a design-your-own-pint-glasses special through this Sunday to commemorate Philly Beer Week. I’ve been remiss in not dropping by for one of their open-studio days – an issue to be amended soon. (via UWishUNu)

5. Reminiscent of my blog-buddy Unsolicited Analysis, You Are Not So Smart tackles common misconceptions with detailed take-downs. Their recent “Misinformation Effect” addresses a recurring theme of CK, the persistence and reliability of memory. (via Kottke; on a related note, see his post on “mesofacts”)

6. Also in the UnAnal vein, Flowing Data blogs data visualizations, like heat-mapping tourist routes based on the volume of photographs by location.

7. Are you a worry-wart about things like burglaries, shark attacks, and plane crashes? Meg’s Tumblr provides a handy graphic to divert your fears to identity thefts, dog bites, and automobile accidents. The greater, more probable danger is often in plainer sight than the more fearsome, relatively exotic danger.

8. Do you wield your iPhone or iPad outdoors and while mosquitoes enjoy your pale, savory flesh? Grab an anti-mosquito iApp that broadcasts high frequency noise that’s a total buzz-kill for the pests. (via MightyGirl)

9. Speaking of iPad, imagine if every seat at your longest meeting had one. Seth Godin did just that. Would meetings really become more efficient? Seems like it would apply favorably to political processes as well (and I know some congressional or parliamentary bodies use a similar system).

10. Last month Danny Brown presented a post of his 17 top WordPress plugins, many of which I’ve added to CK in the intervening weeks. Now that I see them in action, it turns out they’re as ubiquitous as they are ingenious, and thanks to them my quality of blogging-life has greatly increased – thanks Danny! I’ll add the suggestion ofAfter the Deadline – a proofreading plugin for both WP and your favorite browser.

11. Design blog NotCot presents a detailed look at the farcical Pre-Handshake Handshake Device from artist Dominc Wilcox. I need Dominic to design a body-suit in a similar style for me to wear on the El…

12. … and/or, when I am all hot post-hypothetical-triathlon, I can buying some Matrix-style gear from Ego-Assassin. (via Warren Ellis; I’ve been reading his Planetary)

Wow, they really did end up as a narrative … for me, anyway.

Also filed in Philly, music biz, under my skin, weblinks | | Comments (2)

Oldies Aren’t So Old Anymore

Monday, June 7, 2010

I have been a huge Madonna fan for essentially my entire life – I have distinct memories of spinning the 45 of “Dress You Up” and its b-side “Shoo Be Do,” which came out when I was three-and-a-half.

My father is a different story – and not just on Madonna. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actively listen to a single song released after I was born (except, occasionally, Billy Joel). His taste in music is firmly rooted in the 50s and 60s – doo-wop, Motown, and early rock – and the radio in his car was permanently and without question tuned to Oldies 98.1, WOGL.

No exceptions, no Madonna tapes. Oldies 98.1 or else. And we spent a lot of time in that car.

When I first was old enough to care about radio stations I thought it was an annoying and restrictive rule. Seriously, no new music? How uncool was that?

Then I got to know the songs. At age five I would perform flawless choreography to “Stop! In the Name of Love” and sing along in parking lots to girl-group classics like “I Will Follow Him” and “Leader of the Pack.”

Those were the obvious oldies – Supremes and Stones, Beatles and Temptations. I’ve owned them for years. But WOGL was more than that – a never-ending stream of doo-wop, 60s pop, deeper cuts, and one-hit wonders. After years of riding around Philly with my dad, to this day I have instant and total recall whenever I hear a classic like “Lightnin’ Strikes.”

Relatively early in my life I remember asking him, “Dad, how old will I be when they play Madonna on WOGL?”

We did some math. Despite playing a lot of Doo-Wop, at the time the majority of WOGL’s songs were grouped around the late 60s and early 70s (disco was relegated to its own hour at night), so my father took The 5th Dimension’s “Age of Aquarius / Let the Sunshine” in as an average example.

“Well, ‘Aquarius’ went to number one in 1969, and now it’s a song we hear a lot on WOGL, in the 1980′s. So, it took it almost twenty years to become an ‘oldie’.”

“So, I’ll hear ‘Holiday’ on WOGL in… um… 2004?”

He laughed. “When you’re 23? Maybe. I don’t know if they’ll ever play Madonna.”

I giggled my agreement – how could Madonna ever be an “oldie”?

Now a full five years past his predicted 23, I’ve heard Madonna on WOGL. It makes a certain amount of sense – she’s an oldie to someone!

What my dad and I didn’t anticipate on our idyllic long rides was that when the oldies’ qualifying line reached forward into the 80s that the oldest tunes would reach their expiry. First it was the more obscure, one-hit doo-wop that went extinct – yes to “The Still of the Night,” but no more spins for The Del Viking’s “Come Go With Me” (very nearly my favorite song all time).

Then it was Doo-Wop entirely. Then the line crept into the sixties pop, slicing through all but the most enduring Motown and Brit Rock – stuff you can still hear on television commercials. Smaller pop singles like Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes” went MIA. Now the midday playlist is mostly 70s classic rock and disco in the day time – where it should never show its spangled face.

Songs I once assumed would be forever woven into the fabric of my life have all but disappeared. Now I rely on random trips to the supermarket to jog my memory – that’s what it took to unearth Friend & Lover’s “Reach Out Of the Darkness” – and it’s from as late as 1968!

The same me that grew up with Madonna grew up with those songs, and this morning when Philebrity‘s Joey Sweeney posted his unfinished thoughts on WOGL 98.1 FM’s recent inclusion of hits from the 1980s into the canon of “Oldies” – complete with name-checking “Come Go With Me” – it resonated with me (and, from the looks of the comments, it resonated with a lot of other 20- and 30-somethings as well).

Yes, “Borderline” is an oldie now. But it’s on other formats, and on Greatest Hits CDs still moving thousands of units a year.

What about “Come Go With Me”? Will any eight year old Gaga-loving kid ever have the chance for that to be his favorite song? Has doo-wop seriously gone the way of ragtime and big band – a dusty antique with no relevance to today.

Probably. I guess that means when I have kids I have to alternate between Madonna and doo-wop on every car ride to make sure they know all of their musical fundamentals.

Also filed in essays, family, madonna, motown, music, thoughts | | Comments (1)

Helping you picture books

Friday, May 28, 2010

The Whale - Illustrated by John Martz

Picture Book Report posts original illustrations of passages from familiar novels. Each artist/blogger chooses a favorite tome to visualize.

These two beautiful images from the illustrations for The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy (rendered by John Martz of drawn.ca) are what originally caught my eye, and if you are a Hitchhikers’ fan you’ll immediately know the passages they correspond to.

The Babel Fish - Illustrated by John Martz

Some of my other favorite images have been the illustrations of The Hobbit, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Tarzan of the Apes but not everything is genre fare – see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or the Grimm tale The Bremen Town Musicians.

Awesome blog concept, beautiful illustrations, and possibly a leisurely-paced book club – assuming you can read faster than the artist on each book can draw.

(found via more(ish) : meg’s scrapbook)

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Support Net Neutrality (Bob Brady, I am talking to YOU)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Yesterday Philebrity posted an article about 74 Democrat Congressmen who have come out against Net Neutrality.

I struggled with how to define Net Neutrality for you, but then I discovered that I had blogged about it before. I love being my own source! That post (re)directed me to Save the Internet, who over the past four years has further condensed the definition to the following:

Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies.

… With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data — not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

Life without net neutrality?

What does that mean for you?

Imagine if your internet provider could meter and limit your internet usage for different things, just like a cell phone plan or your cable TV subscription. Any of these statements could become true..

“Like to shop online? Shopping sites are just $5 extra a month!”

“Get your news from Fox – Fox sites load 10x faster than CNN on our network!”

“Are you an online gamer? Game for free overnight, 1am-8am. Standard hourly rates apply to peak time gaming.”

“Do you need to upload music for your band? Sorry, you’ll need our Business Plan to upload MP3s.”

Basically, ISPs would gain the right to selectively charge, tax, or even restrict your internet usage based on their own internal policies for or against certain sites, activities, or services. Wikipedia can tell you more about the reality of this threat to our internet freedoms.

I appreciate that the internet has been created as a level playing field for information, whether you’re a newshound or a gamer, a liberal or a conservative. It is terrifying to me to think that my blogging or music could be stymied because I can’t find an affordable carrier for it.

Which brings us back to the 74 Democrats, including my representative, Bob Brady.

Understandably, they are looking at the internet from a business and regulation perspective. In Brady’s case, Comcast is one of his biggest constituents. The reps hear companies and lobbyists saying, “We’re providing a utility, so let us regulate it!”

The internet should not become that kind of utility. As soon as you make the internet equivalent to cable TV or electricity, you start pricing people out of the amazing era of democratized production we’re currently a part of.

Yes, maybe businesses need to meter bandwidth, but should they really have power over the sites we access and the services we use? Once that door is opened it can never again be closed.

That is why I called my representative, Bob Brady, to tell him I do support Net Neutrality, and I do not support his signing Rep. Gene Green’s (D – TX) letter to the FCC arguing against neutrality. I told him I would campaign actively against him if he continued his stance.

Mr. Brady, consider this a shot fired across your bow.

You can read the full Rep. Green letter at Balloon Juice. It’s a small step, but if left unchallenged it leaves the door open for further action or legislation against Net Neutrality.

Below I have reproduced the letter and its list of signatories. If you see your representative on the list, please give their office a ring and comment – Philly residents, you need to call either Bob Brady (215) 389-4627 or Chaka Fattah (215) 387-6404. If you’re not sure what to say, I’ve included a sample script from Save the Internet.

Also filed in Philly, politics | | Comments (1)

Blog Spotlight: Unsolicited Analysis

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I have a svelte 400ish blog subscriptions on my feed reader, so it stands to reason I could tell you about one every day for the next year.

That would probably get a little tiresome, so I thought I’d start with one a week. Here’s the first.

I love Unsolicited Analysis. It’s probably my favorite blog of this year to date.

That doesn’t have anything to do with the unsolicited analyzer being my increasingly tight friend and occasional drummer Chaz. It’s more about an obscenely diverse mix of topics, all delivered with decisiveness and snark.

The title “Unsolicited Analysis” is a thesis statement – the blog is dedicated to providing unasked dissections of life’s data. That often translates to providing hard-core (but still layperson-accessible) financial analysis – but also to world events, old and new music (and musicianship), politics, television and film, gender and race relations, reflections on content married life, and first-time home-ownership.

It’s all delivered with an unrelenting attention to rhetoric, but also dedicated to learning stuff about the world and finding moments to be an actual human being in the sometimes dehumanizing process of occupational and financial transactions that make up our life.

Do I always agree with Chaz? Oh god, no. Even when I don’t, he speaks from a place I can appreciate, as in this comment, after pulling a 17hr shift in the office yesterday:

There is no reason for me to have any faith in the future or illusions of inevitable reward for my labor – everything I’ve done will be torn up in front of my face by a mob of regulators and lost in the collapse of the Western democracies.

Nope, no careerism here; I’m just making sure Titanic gleams iridescent fang-white the whole voyage to hell.

Even if my eyes glaze during passages about credit default swaps, I appreciate every post because Unsolicited Analysis is the absolute definition of why someone should have a blog – because they are passionate about writing and they write passionately.

PS: UA is a Tumblr blog, which makes for a lot of community discussion that you can’t take part in if you aren’t on Tumblr. But, you can subscribe to its RSS feed just like any other blog, so the only downside is not being able to mock Chaz when he finally admits he likes Lady Gaga.

PPS: If you are a Tumblr user you can follow a simul-cast of CK there, with occasional bonus re-blogs from other Tumblrs.

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A New Band a Day

Saturday, March 13, 2010

E has a way of ferreting out great new blogs out of nowhere.

Recently one of her finds was an awesome Brit blog A New Band a Day, which provides literate, in-depth looks at young bands on a daily basis. Author Joe Sparrow is deft and opinionated, and the combination makes for a blog filled with love letters to music and withering op eds.

One such op ed that got my attention was “The Trouble With Live Gigs,” which lamented the false promise that live is the only way to hear music. I responded at length in comments, and Joe was so ultimately cool as to collect my commentary into a massive guest editorial, which runs today.

Head over to read The Trouble With Live Gigs: A Response, by yours truly. And stay awhile to discover and download new music.

Bonus new music: Want the Philly local equivalent of New Band a Day? Philebrity just posted ten of their favorite tracks from Philly’s indie music scene, with photos, writeups, and streams for each band.

Also filed in philly music | | Comments (1)

Rats retire from a sinking ship

Thursday, February 25, 2010

I have been enjoying a budget blog called Early Retirement Extreme, written by Jacob – a man who semi-retired into financial independence at age 30.

How? Here’s a glimpse:

I don’t have a driver’s license, I don’t have any debt, I don’t live in a house, I cook everything from scratch, I cut my own hair, I practically never buy new or anything at all for that matter, I am not on any prescription medicines, and I am in great physical shape.

Essentially, he has eliminated the American addiction for conspicuous consumption from his financial diet, and it hasn’t left much else to spend on. I can definitely appreciate his no-frills approach to spending – even within my yuppy, metro life I’ve managed to live marginally.

For a more detailed analysis of how Jacob works his magic, see his recent post Your budget is like a sinking ship. He literally compares the average American budget to a ship, showing how you can plug the leaks. He also aggregates the spend on some common items – like clothing and furniture – across a lifetime, like so:

$2688 a year or a lifetime cost of more than $200,000 simply to have other people prepare your food. If the average income is, let’s say 40000 after tax, would you really want to work 5 years of your life just so you can eat a meal you didn’t make yourself a couple of times a week for the rest of your life?

While his simplistic living might seem beyond your ability to withstand, his bottom line can make sense for anyone – identify the quality of life that you want, and then plug the leaks.

Also filed in budget, thoughts | | Comments (2)

The Church of Gaga

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Communications blog Church of the Customer highlights the five ways Lady Gaga inspires fan loyalty, and they are spot-on.

No matter your sentiment on her music, Gaga’s outreach to fans has been nearly flawless from day one. Note that none of the five points involve buying or selling anything. What makes Gaga’s brand so powerful is she gives away a package of inclusiveness and mythology (not so dissimilar from Tori Amos’s strong success in the 90′s).

You’ve somehow been spared my intense Gaga addiction for the majority of the past year. Suffice to say, I am fully subscribed to her.

Also filed in branding | | Comments (4)

Blog Spotlight: Bluishorange Birthday

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Today I’m giving a presentation about blogs – at my office!

Ten years ago at this moment I had no idea what a blog was. I don’t know if I had even heard the word. I would have told you it was crazy talk that I’d be throwing the word “ubiquitous” around a conference room paired with this zany, made-up word.

Ten years ago around this moment a 21-year-old in Texas named Alison started a blog called Bluishorange.

Bluishorange has been one of my favorite, go-to, must-read blogs in each one of those ten years. I’ve known Alison for longer than my wife! I have read literally every post she has ever written for ten years.

Alison shared her thoughts on the milestone, as well as an archive of her “Best of” posts.

My favorite posts are usually when Alison tells a story, or when she finds some thread in her life that is also woven into mine. Here are ten of my particular memories from ten years of blogging, in no order whatsoever:

her obsession with X-Files

an imaginary album cover

wading through waist-high floodwater

her breasts on a beer coaster

five things you didn’t know about her

a letter to Charlie Kaufman

9/12/2001

a photo of her taking a photo

a story about her drawer (and jail)

why she watches tv (not for Jesus)

Okay, one more: when she compared bug spray to whiskey.

Happy birthday, Alison!

Have you read Bluishorange? When did you start? What’s your favorite post?

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Tuesday Tech Links

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Here’s the techier side of the links I re-remaindered out of last night’s remainders post.

Why did Duke Nukem’ Forever take forever? I’ve read some great articles on this vaporware legend (my fav example of which I cannot seem to track down), but none with a line so succinct and close-to-home as this one:

t’s a dilemma all artists confront, of course. When do you stop creating and send your work out to face the public? Plenty of Hollywood directors have delayed for months, dithering in the editing room. But in videogames, the problem is particularly acute, because the longer you delay, the more genuinely antiquated your product begins to look — and the more likely it is that you’ll need to rip things down and start again.

Substitute “pop music” for “video games” and you have the story of Chinese Democracy, or my long-promised LP. (Via Daring Fireball).

Indie acousta-rocker Scott Andrew got tired of trying to sync his blog to MySpace, so he wrote an app for that.

I’ve been seeing little boxes from LaLa on just about every blog albums-of-the-year/decade list, proffering handy audio samples. Apparently Apple just bought the La^2, and in the process scuttled a longstanding CD swap service. This is notable because they backed out of it in (what I considered to be) an apologetic, helpful fashion. Take note, MySpace/iMeem.

Via Contentious: An E-Book Buyer’s Guide to Privacy charts what personal info different eBook services can track. This chart should be combined with “An E-Book Buyer’s Rights” guide that talks about what privileges can be rescinded by each service. For example, if you replace your Kindle it will not reload your purchased periodicals.

(For the record, I am anti-eBook – if I wanted to read something I don’t own from a screen I’d just keep sitting in front of my laptop.)

Also via the same Contenious post: Backupify to back up your Twitter, FaceBook, and Gmail … for free. That is, sign up for it now, get a grandfathered freebie account even when the service switches over to a paid model. Quote from Backupify president: “[S]torage is cheap while customer acquisition is very expensive.”

Smart guy.

In a similar vein: Download videos from YouTube with Gazzump I come and go on the usefulness of this service. I used to want to sit on my own personal archive of everything. While I still feel that way about my audio collection, I think I’ve sacrificed video to the cloud. Still, handy.

Finally, not strictly a tech link, but: The Flag of Earth.

Also filed in games | | Comments (0)

Monday Evening Remainders

Monday, December 28, 2009

Blogs were good this past week, so let’s get right to it, shall we?

100 Days puts a fine point on your fuzzy resolutions – can you pick ONE THING to do for 100 days in a row? Easier than a year, but harder than aiming scattershot at many different things. For Day 25 Matthew Sheret left a note for a girl whose heart he broke.

Similar is Chris Brogan’s concept of a goalbox, and advice on how to stay on target.

The intersection between that and 100 Days is something close to how I manage my yearly goals, but I like the simplicity of each – things there I can still employ.

The Ghostvillage Project populated an abandoned 1970s village with vivid artwork.

Why Up! was not one of the best films of 2009. Includes a rare (but accurate) critique on Pixar’s paucity of strong female characters. Helen Parr aside, it’s quite a boy’s club in their films.

Sugru is like sculpty or silly putty, but with the express intent of being used to augment existing objects in a permanent way (think: smoothing a rough edge, adding extra padding, filling a chip). Also cool: Gyrowheel, a training-wheels replacement that uses gyroscopic force to keep the bike upright. That would make you the coolest four-year old on the blog, guaranteed.

Why The Simpsons no longer matters. Goes beyond the currently in-vogue Simpsons-hate to talk about how the early-Simpsons experience can’t be replicated on television anymore. (via Kevin Smokler)

Kottke (and many others) posted a link to Jim Lehrer’s rules of journalism. I really ought to keep a folder of these “required reading for J-school” things in case I’m ever teaching a class in J-school (heaven forbid).

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Monday Evening Remainders

Monday, August 3, 2009

My ass was firmly planted on the lazy-train this weekend. I watched a lot of movies and listened to a lot of music in my collection that I’ve been inexplicably neglecting (notably Andrew Bird; how in god’s name did I ignore that one?).

Anywho, all of which is to say that I wasn’t ready with links this morning. Boo-freaking-hoo.

Graphic Design Blog‘s list of 45 Creative Blog Designs will make your head spin (although I note that a lot of those huge headers would push the content below the fold on my laptop). Moradito, Kulturbanause, and Matt Bernstein are favs.

A look at the present realm of reader revenue from the charmingly named “Newspaper Deathwatch.”(via @journalistics)

I wouldn’t have assumed my journalism degree would be obsolete quite so soon. At least I’ll always have my hard-won college lap dancing skills to fall back on.

(Don’t knock them, that’s what convinced E to marry me.)

I really enjoyed this list of web ways to learn through play, via Philly blogger Akkam’s Razor.

Here’s a list of the top 42 “Content Marketing” blogs. It’s not definitive by any means, as exemplified by alternate sources provided in the comments – notably, the Ad Age 150 and AllTop’s Content Marketing Page. (via @ritubpant)

The echo chamber of marketing blogs can make me a little nauseous when they’re all trying to reinvent writing with every post when posts are barely 500 words long. I chatted a little more about what I refer to as the “epiphany epidemic” in a comment on Danny Brown’s post “Why Mediocre Blogging Can Still Be Great.”

For posts that go beyond sound-bite to actually make you think, check out the killer “What Twitter & Facebook Can Learn from Phish at Mashable, a social media workflow at the consistently smart P Morgan Brown, performing a social media audit from regular read Overcommunicated, and the two-part The Future of Influence post at Colorado Business Mag. (PMorgan via @kimwood; CBM via @TobyDiva/@ThomasFrey)

Want to break out of the echo chamber? PodCamp Philly is an unconference on social and emerging media, or, in their words, “for anyone interested in podcasting, blogging, video-casting and social media.” Which, um, hello, that’s me. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to who has attended has amazing things to say about it. It’s on October 3 and 4 for just $20.

I think that’s enough remainding for the time being. I’m off to a #blamedrewscancer meeting in NoLib.

Also filed in Philly, Twitter, critique, journalism, weblinks | | Comments (3)

Blog Spotlight: Meish.org

Thursday, July 30, 2009

I’ve decided that as frequently as I can I’d like to highlight a specific blog I love by talking about the blogger and linking to my favorite recent entries. It’s only fitting that I start with the single blog that was at the top of my link list when I launched nine years ago, and continues to be a daily read today:

Meg Pickard’s meish.org.

Meish wasn’t always Meish – it was once Not So Soft. In that capacity I consider it my parent blog, as I created my own specifically to ape what Meg was doing daily.

I’ve read Meg ever since, and she’s never stopped being compelling. She lives in London, was schooled as a sociologist, and spent time abroad conducting ethnographies. She presently works in some capacity for The Guardian.

Meg has a way – as all great bloggers do – of making the common seem very compelling. She also writes wonderful lists (frequently etymological in nature), takes clever and pretty photographs (even with an iPhone), and shares thoughts on social media.

And, as borne out by her original blog name (an Ani reference), Meg has wonderfully eclectic taste in music (and shares some of my OCD organizational qualities).

Some other recent highlights: she tracks the occurrence of “Flying Ant Day” with uncanny accuracy; she ruminates on the concept of time tourism (which I have discussed at length with Rabi); attempts to create a universal theory of measurement; dissects nationalist “visit us” campaigns; makes tables out of old maps; details past packing mishaps; and she bemoans a lack of adjectiveless sandwiches.

And that’s all just in the last year. Meish posts a few times a week, which makes it easy to follow in RSS; more voracious readers will want to subscribe to Meg’s many-times-daily tumblr.

Having met Rabi a long time ago, and Alison more recently, I’d say Meg is probably the blogger I’d most like to meet in real life.

Also filed in ani difranco, bloggish, rabi | | Comments (1)

Is misogyny okay if it is tacit?

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

I am angry about something. I ran the same situation by Elise, and she just found it amusing.

I’m interested to know what you think, posed in both hypothetical and actual flavors.

Hypothetical:

You are attending a conference titled “Asian-Americans Emerging in Social Media.” Whether or not you are Asian is irrelevant; assume you’re interested in the content of the conference, and that 98% of attendees are at least partially of Asian descent.

While picking up your registration packet you recognize a non-Asian blogger, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that says, “I’ve got yellow fever!”

Later in the day, you run into a white female you don’t know wearing a tank top that says, “I’m turning Japanese.” Perhaps it’s just text, or perhaps it’s paired with a minimalist illustration of slanted eyes on an “O” face in a nod to the song’s subject. Later, at a party thrown by a Chinese culture website, her apparel bears something to the effect of, “Don’t worry boys: size doesn’t matter … to me”**

Note your initial reaction to the shirts, considering the context of the conference. Now, consider that both wearers blogged/twittered a promise to “pack their most inappropriate t-shirts” for the conference. Has your reaction changed?

Actual:

This is a recount of something Grace of What If No One’s Watching witnessed at the recent BlogHer conference.

The attendance, while not 100% female, is very largely so. I haven’t seen more than 20 or 30 male attendees since I’ve been here.

The first one I saw just after arriving, at a restaurant in the hotel. I noticed him due to his shirt. It showed a graphic of a woman with her breasts exposed, her nipples replaced by @ signs. It read “show me your tweets.”

Then, not an hour later, I saw a man sporting a shirt saying something along the lines of “I love mommy bloggers–they put out.” The next day, the same man attended a party, hosted by an ostensibly feminist website, sporting a shirt reading “I am having very spiritual thoughts about your breasts” or some similar nonsense.

Did you have a similar reaction to those slogans? Note that they’re clearly aimed at women no matter the setting, while in my hypothetical two of the shirts wouldn’t have been as striking sans Asian context.

Again, does it change your opinion that that both bloggers blogged a promise that they had packed some offensive apparel?

Both the hypothetical and the actual rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, they might be wryly humorous, but why bring that wry humor to a place celebrating a medium where a specific minority has escaped marginalization and become empowered?

Elise – an Asian woman – found them both amusing – especially “yellow fever” and “show me your tweets.”

Are Grace and I humorless feminazis for being offended?*** Or, is Elise is a self-hating Asian woman?**** Neither. Grace and I don’t appreciate tacit misogynism. Elise gives people the benefit of the doubt.

A final fact: both of the male bloggers commented on Grace’s post, claiming they wore the shirts to get noticed and start conversations (they apparently forgot that they’d be noticed simply by being a male). Those comments were followed by friends/readers who vouched that no offense was meant (they have “good hearts”), as well as a number who less-than-kindly called Grace overly-sensitive (a gem: “Is it possible it’s your own insecurities causing this? Seems to me that you feel like you’re less than a man.”).

Seriously?

Next year BlogHer is in New York City, and I’m contemplating attending. And you had better believe that if I do I am going to spend at least one day hanging out with Grace wearing the most hard-core grrl-power t-shirt I can find.

* If you’ve never heard the phrase before, it is a particularly unclever way to note that you are a non-Asian who is primarily attracted to Asians.

** In the same way that people assume all black men are heavily hung, there’s also an assumption that Asian men are uniformly not. Neither assumption is statistically supportable.

*** I can’t speak for Grace, but I kinda am.

**** No.

Also filed in elise, feminism | | Comments (12)

Monday Morning Remainders

Monday, July 27, 2009

Some links I’ve been meaning to share for a while that don’t quite merit their own posts, but work well traveling as a pack.

Last week Ad Age ran a great article on Social Media taking cues from indie music. They highlight four artists taking the lead in connecting to their fans on the web, and the #1 example is my personal fav Amanda Palmer, about whom they gush, “[She is] more sophisticated than almost anyone on the internet — musician, brand or otherwise — when it comes to gathering her audience around her and keeping the conversation going.”

In a not-dissimilar topic, NYT ran an article highlighting how bands are increasingly eschewing labels in favor of self-releasing or seeking alternate funding. Fluffy on content, but features Metric, whose self-released Fantasies is killer. Metric is my Garbage replacement while Shirl and the boys chill out. Metric’s manager just detailed the funding behind the record in an open letter; dense, but a fascinating peek into the Canandian indie industry.

Nerd Boyfriend is a photo blog that posts modern and vintage photos of well-dressed nerds you’d probably like to date, and offers suggestions of how to match their look. Their Scott Walker post is one of my recent favorites, both for fashion and photography.

“How to decide if you have a good job” is a fantastic post about start-ups, stress, and loving your life. It also give a bit of background inside into Alice.com, a novel start-up that regularly delivers all of your household necessities to your home at a discount over big box stores.

On the flipside, big box corporations are co-opting the “buy local” movement, the same way they’ve all undertaken “green-washing” their businesses. Disappointing on the surface, but there is certain a local element to chains with e-tailing encouraging people to continue to hit their brick and mortar locations or customizing their sales to a regional audience. Neither are bad things.

Um, the melting arctic has released a torrent of “biological goo” on the Alaskan coast and we are not alarmed why? Sounds like the beginning of a terrifying episode of X-Files to me. (via Cecily of Uppercase Woman).

September is a month dedicated to raising awareness of cancer in children. I’ll be busy planning Blame-a-Thon, followed by my corporate charity campaign. If your month isn’t so insane, you could host your own Alex’s Lemonade stand. If you don’t know much about Alex’s history, check out how Alex’s little stand can teach big marketing lessons.

That should be enough to keep you occupied on your lunch break.

Also filed in Making Music Work, charity, dresden dolls, weblinks | | Comments (0)

Whuffaoke or Bust

Monday, July 27, 2009

I don’t have it in me to articulate today’s adventures quite yet, but:

Whuffaoke is a country-spanning karaoke tour based out of one amazing winnebago. They are also some of the sweetest people I have ever met. Over the course of seven hours I sang “Video Killed the Radio Star,” “Since U Been Gone,” “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Time Is Running Out,” “Don’t You Want Me,” and – amazingly, as I’ve never performed it before – “Here We Go Again” by Whitesnake.

In addition to not having it in me to articulate, I think I may have also lost the power of speech.

Whuffaoke continues on Monday at 13th and Sansom at 5pm sharp. Be there.

Also filed in Philly, Twitter, blamedrewscancer, kelly clarkson, memories, performance, photos, singing, stories, thoughts, weblinks | | Comments (0)

Escaping Mediocrity

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

I am not a major reader of mommy-blogs.

Sure, I have my certain mommy favorites, as well as several long-time reads who happened to be or become moms, but I don’t typically seek out new moms to read. They’re just in a different part of their lives than I am, at the moment.

All that said, Maverick Mom is a blog worth reading. It’s not just about motherhood. Or, maybe as of a month or two ago it was. Right now it’s about motherhood (and the rest of life) as an adventure that is helping blogger and entrepreneur Sarah Robinson “escape mediocrity.”

Escaping mediocrity. Does it mean anything to you? If not, you should read her gripping post about nearly losing her son to a riptide. At the end she has the wherewithal (and good humor) to compare the riptide to the tug of mediocrity.

Sarah’s post poses a challenging question: are we accepting the average because it’s easy, eventually to discover that we’re lost with no sign of what’s good, right, or successful?

I know the first impulse is to say, “Nope!” Our lives are awesome, right? We totally love them.

Okay, sure. But, loving life doesn’t exclude the chance that you’re settling for something. Can you honestly say you don’t have anything in your life that is disappointingly average – not as challenging or fulfilling as it could be? We all know I aim to kick ass at all times, but even I can cop to pieces of my life that aren’t living up to their potential. I wage a constant war on some of them, but in all honesty I let others slip by. Easy can be nice. Status quo is even keel.

If your answer about anything is “maybe” or “yes” or “omg, definitely,” then you should start reading Sarah’s blog, perhaps beginning with the escape plan she’s hatched to push past the mediocre elements of our lives.

Sarah, you are anything but mediocre.

Also filed in betterment, resolve, self-critique | | Comments (4)

not-so-prompt prompts

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

In my Google Reader I have a tag called “PROMPT” that I affix to posts that made me think or feel something that I might like to share on CK.

I’ve discovered that prompts are best served fresh – ideally I should be writing a post about that intangible thought or feeling within a day or two of having it.

There are presently prompts on my list from as long ago as September. That is scary. It is sitting in the way of me being prompted to tell you about new thoughts or feelings. I need to flush out all my prior prompts so I can post about prompts promptly when they prompt me.

Let me see if I can string some together in a way that makes sense to us both.

Spezify is a visual search engine, but that doesn’t mean what you probably think it means. Spezify searches the web for text, photos, and social media mentions of your search term, and arrays the results in a collage on your screen. It’s a great way to catch a quick snapshot of a person, place, musical artist, or brand. See what it has to ~~say~~ show and tell about crushing krisis or Philadelphia. Link via Fresh Arrival.

The imitable Maggie of Mighty Girl posted about her husband’s project, Typekit. Typekit seems to still be in a closed alpha, but the gist of it is that it allows you to dynamically embed text in any font onto any webpage, regardless of if you (or the end user) has that font. You can follow the development on the Typekit blog.

In my humble opinion, Mighty Girl continues to be one of the definitive personal blogs on the internet.

Geekadelphia (an excellent blog) recently posted a mammoth interview with J. C. Hutchins. Hutchins parlayed the net-success of his podcasted 7th Son trilogy into a publishing deal and subsequent tangible book. Said book – Personal Effects: Dark Art – comes complete with an intricately crafted alternate-reality game component that expands the narrative far past the boundaries of the book. Probably the next piece of fiction I will read, and setting the bar high for the next evolution of the novel.

(PS: M. Hutchins dropped by to comment less than twenty minutes after this was posted. Nice to see his publishing deal hasn’t changed his net savvy :)

Matthew Sheret (who I found via Warren Ellis) is a writer and photographer with an intriguing list of projects. I am fascinated by his recent post This is a Souvenir, in which he details writing songs for an imaginary band, and how he’d like to take it a step further and have an imaginary record label.

I love that sort of thing – a simulacrum of the footprint left by actual media, but in the absence of said media.

(Speaking of Ellis, I enjoyed his dissection of what it means to be a “digital magazine,” and how that ought to be different from a bells and whistles flash interface with whosits and whatsists. His point (and mine)? You can change the method of delivery, but “magazine” should still mean “magazine.” But, can “newspaper” still mean “newspaper”? Compare to a recent Conversation Agent post about what happens when your local paper goes entirely online.)

Lane is a remarkable photographer I have been a fan of for a long time. Today she posted an unreal photo of a rainbow seen over the New Mexico desert. Recently she volunteered with Review Sante Fe, a local photography exhibition. She posted a sampling of RSF photographers, and their work was uniformly amazing.

Now that Lane is back in the US I need to buy a print from her.

I saw what was perhaps my first double rainbow ever a few Saturdays ago on the way to E’s show at The Saint in Asbury Park. It was so close it seemed like we could drive right to the end of it.

Also filed in Philly, art, flicks, memories, photo, weblinks | | Comments (3)

Streaming live at 12 midnight for 12for12k

Monday, June 29, 2009

If you’re awake at midnight EST on the Monday-to-Tuesday divide you can catch the first ever live, streaming concert of my music – in support of an awesome, international charity drive called 12 for 12k.

I think I’ll call it at12for12for12k. Cool?

Founded by social media marketer Danny Brown, 12 for 12k throws down a bold challenge to social media users – can you use your social networks for good in concert with people all around the world to raise $12k for a new charity every month for a year?

This month’s charity is Unicef’s “Believe in Zero” – the belief that we can stop children from dying from preventable causes. And so far there is less than $1,200 pledged for the month.

It shouldn’t be that daunting. 1,200 people could do it for a reasonable $10 a month – three less trips to Starbucks. 12,000 people can do it with no issue – $1 a month, each! Easy pickings. If more than 10,000 Twitter users turned their icons green for Iran, surely just as many can muster $1 a month in donations to a good cause?

If you know me you know that projects like this are very close to my heart. I used Blogathon as a platform for my music to raise money and awareness for my favorite charities. I have cancelled Christmas in favor of giving charitable gifts. I volunteer with Lyndzapalooza – a musical non-profit dedicated to giving a voice to more of Philly’s independent artists. And starting tomorrow I am helping to plan a major non-profit project for this September.

12 for 12k is at once easier and harder than those projects. Easy, because it’s simple to support with a small donation. Hard, because it’s about making your giving a year-round trend – not just a once a year event.

I’ll be playing at midnight, and at the very least I will donate $1 for every song I play … and my songs are short, so that could get pretty expensive! In fact, I think I could play 12 songs in an hour… 12at12for12for12k!

If you’re awake at midnight – or even if you aren’t – will you do the same? Just ten of us donating $12 each is 1% of this month’s goal. We might not make it to $12k this month, but we can make giving a regular part of our lives, and save lives while doing it.

The power of social media compels you!

(PS: I promise at least Madonna & David Bowie covers, and almost can promise MJ as well. Dunno if the Lady Gaga is ready yet… you’d all have to donate a lot of money to hear that.)

Also filed in betterment, events, my music, weblinks | | Comments (0)

Good blogs and the opinions I spouted at them.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

This post could easily be about how I spent the last two weekends sweating my physical and intellectual butt off to completely reorganize my home office and upgrade CK to WordPress 2.8, but you would be like, “Whatever, it looks the same to me,” or “Um, I’m reading you on my RSS feed, so I don’t really care,” or possibly, “Dude, I haven’t read blogs for two years. Send me a tweet about it.”

Which is fine. I mean, should I also tell you about how I swept the floor? Backstage is backstage for a reason. Props people work hard to keep actors focused on their performance, not for the applause.

(Plus, at CK I’m the prop person and the actor. And the box office manager, the technical director, and the old lady ushering you to your seat. You get the idea. Excelsior…)

In my increasingly uncluttered life I’ve been trying to make some more time not only to read other blogs I admire, but to interact with them. That means reading carefully and responding, which sometimes yields thoughtful comments.

I’m sometimes hesitant to leave my thoughts lying around in other people’s homes when they could possibly lead to interesting content back here at my own homestead, but I’ve arrived at a happy medium – I’ll link to all of said intriguing posts as well as giving you a snippet of my reasoned replies.

Here’s a glimpse at some of the discussions I’ve weighed in on in this past week.

(If you find yourself wanting to do the same, try subscribing to Backtype, a simple monitoring service which will doing all of the the keeping-track for you.) Continue reading ›

Also filed in WordPress, admissions, betterment, bloggish, corporate, theatre | | Comments (2)

Have an Infinite Summer

Monday, June 22, 2009

Once I was in a very bad place, and also in the hospital, and I asked my mom to walk to B&N to buy me David Foster Wallace’s massive masterpiece Infinite Jest.

It kept me sane through three days in the hospital, and kept me awake at night for another month – which, at my faster-than-light speed of reading, is quite the feat. Try as I might, I could not devour it in a few sittings like I can with any other book. It was a novel that required digestion.

This summer has been declared Infinite Summer, which gives you an entire solstice-to-equinox season to read the book at a snailish increment of 75-pages a week.

As I understand it, your reading will be accompanied by encouraging blog pep-talks like this one from Kottke:

So sure, it’s a lengthy book that’s heavy to carry and impossible to read in bed, but Christ, how many hours of American Idol have you sat through on your uncomfortable POS couch? The entire run of The West Wing was 111 hours and 56 minutes; ER was twice as long, and in the later seasons, twice as painful. I guarantee you that getting through Infinite Jest with a good understanding of what happened will take you a lot less time and energy than you expended getting your Mage to level 60 in World of Warcraft.

Is that more or less haranguing than my Beatles screamo diatribe from last week? I think the Big K was meaner than me.

In any event, it’s a wonderful, maddening read, there are nifty bookmarks bearing the schedule, it makes a wonderful pillow and/or doorstop, and I might re-read it too if I can find a spare moment or two to read the second half of Outliers.

Also filed in books, weblinks | | Comments (2)

Lefsetz publishes Amanda Palmer, lashes the Billboard Top 100

Saturday, April 11, 2009

I am suddenly a fan of savvy music blog Lefsetz Letter, who provided me with the link that inspired my previous post.

I found him via Amanda (fucking) Palmer, who sent him an email about the power of twitter and why she wants to get dropped from her label – the intersection of which is that she had to explain Twitter to the VP of Media at her OZ label, who dished it, and she proceeded to put together a TwitMob event in under 24 hours.

Between this and not liking her video because she looked “fat” RoadRunner records are looking like total asses. No wonder she wrote this charming song about them, to the tune of “Moon River.” Stick with it ’til the end, it’s hilarious.

Meanwhile, back @ Lefsetz, he apparently does a weekly analysis of debuts and big climbs and drops on the Billboard 100 album chart. This week he was pretty harsh, laying out the reasons why a dozen albums aren’t going to make back their production costs, let alone go platinum.

The one he singles out for praise? Lady Gaga. Not because she is fucking ubiquitous in dance clubs (I know this because I just went to one, so there), but because she has gangbusters viral marketing and can sit alone on a stage and do this. Which, honestly, so can I. This one is a bit better.

So, basically, if Amanda would produce a matching album of bangin’ club versions of all of her songs she would rule the charts.

And, scene.

(ps: check out a bonus Amanda interview I was kindly asked to blog a few months ago and got lost in the honeymoon morass.)

Also filed in dresden dolls, weblinks | | Comments (2)

Polyhacking since a few days ago

Friday, March 13, 2009

My esteemed friend Matt Lydon has left the confines of LJ for his own WordPress blog.

This is worthy of announcement because – not entirely to my surprise – Matt is a very compelling blogger. He swings from classic literature to pop culture to personal reflection with the ease of a natural writer with a limber pen. His blog is just that – the journal of a natural writer, who happens to post online.

It was my strong opinion that his talents and efforts were being wasted in the vacuum of LJ. Please pay him a visit and see if you agree.

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Classic Modern Classics

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

There is a wonderful meme sweeping the illustrators of blogland wherein they render an antiqued paperback cover for a modern classic.

I first caught this meme earlier in the month from the blog of author Martha Wells, who pointed to these clever Harry Potter covers, in the style of classic Penguin books. The same artist – M. S. Corley – also took a shot at Lemony Snicket and Spiderwick. I recommend spending a few minutes with Corley’s blog during which you scroll down to some of his prior work, much of which is fascinating.

However, that one blog didn’t push my to my posting tipping point – I needed a reminder. Earlier today I caught a link from Neil Gaiman for illustrator Mike Baker‘s entry for a classic Coraline.

Apparently Baker caught the bug from Spacesick, who rendered covers for cult cinema classics like Back to the Future and Highlander. Some of them are particularly excellent – I might print a set and wallpaper my cube.

Finally, Storyteller’s Workshop offers a primer on how to achieve the effect on your own.

If you have seen this meme elsewhere on the web please point me towards the art so I can update this post or pen a sequel.

Also filed in art, books, weblinks | | Comments (1)