Archives: March 01, 2004

The soothing chirp of a room full of pagers

Wednesday, 31 March 2004 09:15 PM

Tomorrow night will not be a good night to have a computer or network problem in the Pittsburgh area, as it's the first Thursday of an even-numbered month, which means it's Geek Night. The Church Brew Works will be overrun by application developers, network administrators, tech support staffers, and the recruiters who love them.

I love Geek Night and haven't been able to attend in months, not since it was held at the now-defunct Valhalla. I love the Church Brew Works too, and I note among their seasonal beer offerings the yummy-sounding Burly Friar Barleywine. Mmmm. So I've been planning all week to go.

Sadly for me, Todd the Tile Guy needs to stop by my house tomorrow around 6:30 to take final measurements before ordering stuff for my bathroom renovation ... so I'll have to hustle to get down to Pgh while there's still a crowd. So, if you find yourself there, do hang out for a while and stake out a barstool for me.

Eight is my favorite number

Wednesday, 31 March 2004 10:57 AM

Please go enjoy Crazy Arms That Long to Strangle by Rennie Sparks:

The octopus may also wave its arms in rhythmic patterns that attract and immobilize fish. Fishermen off the coast of Washington report seeing hundreds of small fish frozen in the water as if hypnotized by a passing giant Pacific octopus. One fisherman said, "I felt it myself. They had to tie me to the mast to keep me from throwing myself overboard."

Related:

At the Montery Bay Aquarium a few years ago, I saw video, taken by a security camera at night. The video showed a small octopus climbing out its tank, going into another tank to get food, then returning to its tank so the keepers wouldn't know it had left. Until the camera was set up the keepers couldn't figure out how random fish were disappearing. Now, they've installed Astroturf on the sides of the tank, because the octopus can't get a grip on it to climb out.

The Cidri Octopus seems like an interesting role-playing game character.

You must read at a tenth grade level or higher to enjoy this page

Tuesday, 30 March 2004 10:23 AM

Nifty and useful: A readability checker for Word documents and web pages.

(Lia via Cup of Chicha.)

Uglydolls redux

Monday, 29 March 2004 10:32 PM

Several recent visitors found this site by searching for "uglydolls" on Google. I mentioned some time back that I'm impressed with how the creators of Uglydolls developed a following and built the brand through nonstandard methods and good image management. Other than that, this site hasn't been much of a resource on the subject.

So let's correct that. Here's a pic of an actual Uglydoll: Ice Bat. I ordered him the day I learned about Uglydolls, and he arrived a few days later in a strangely large cardboard box. I keep him on my bed. He's terrific: cuddly and sweet and at the same time just a bit creepy. Kind of like a Tim Burton animation. Well, less creepy than that, but just as charming. I highly recommend getting one for yourself or for an unconventional child you love.

(I see that in June/July there will also be vinyl Uglydoll figures, for those who like the look but aren't into the cuddling bit.)

Click the link below for a long and self-indulgent sidebar re: the photo above.

In the picture of Ice Bat you might note the tragically awful brown shag carpeting that still inhabits my hallway. Here's another picture.

It's distinctly 1957 and nasty in every way. I tore it out of the rest of the house but I left it in the hall, with the plan that it would protect the hardwood floor underneath while I renovated and painted the rest of the place.

It's been four and a half years since then. Now, at last, I'm doing all the work in the place all at once. I'm having the main bathroom redone, tearing out the nasty plastic turquois tile and putting in this cool mosaic stuff, and my brother and I are prepping to paint the whole place. It'll be gorgeous. It's also several years overdue.

But when I finally do take out the last of the brown shag carpet? That'll be sweet.

Now I'm wishing I was sitting at a cafe on the Rive Gauche

Friday, 26 March 2004 08:35 PM

I missed this pointless Hemingway diversion yesterday.

I travelled to Europe with my sister Laura a few weeks after I graduated college. I wouldn't have gone but for her: She wanted to travel but our parents wouldn't let her go alone, so she talked/bullied me into it. It was a great trip, but she and I fought a lot of the time, about everything. When to eat, where to eat, what to eat, where to stay, whether to go to a museum or sit in a cafe, what city to visit next, and on and on.

In Paris, I remember looking through the guidebook to find a cafe that Hemingway had frequented and insisting that we visit it. Laura dropped me there and went off to visit a museum or something, some activity I wasn't interested in, with the plan we'd meet up later. The cafe was too touristy and nasty, but I sat there and tried to feel some sort of communion with Hemingway and Paris. I may have pretended to myself that I did feel it.

Recently, Laura told me that if we were to take the same trip again, it would be different. She now loves cafes and sitting for hours to take in the scene. And if we were to take another trip, I would skip the guidebook and rely on her sense of good places to hang out, which she has honed through years of foreign travel. But I'd still like to go back to that cafe, if I could find it again, and try to discover with my current mind what I thought I was doing there then.

How the other half lives

Friday, 26 March 2004 04:03 PM

I've mentioned before that I could well have been the bride of a software mogul. Now we are treated to a view of what my average day would have been like. I have not read the entire article yet -- I find myself gagging every few sentences, and this slows my reading speed -- but I would like to point out a few passages:

9:30 a.m. We get into her silver, two-seat Mercedes SL55 AMG. "I had a Jaguar, and then a Maserati, but Larry wanted me to have this car because of the airbags," she says. There are no vanity plates, for security reasons. We head a mile north to the couple's Japanese-style home in Atherton filled with antique Japanese helmets, folding screens and sculpture. This home is not to be confused with Ellison's six-building Japanese compound that has been under construction for 10 years in Woodside.

...

Craft did not get a chance to eat at the tea, so she has lunch here, sitting on the floor on a low-slung table in front of the fireplace in the living room. "Life with Larry is rigorous,'' she jokes. "You have to sit on the floor and have good posture.'' She usually has turkey, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise on Alvarado Bakery sprouted grain bread, but today, she says, she is being spoiled.

...

The study also has French doors that look out onto the gardens, at the edge of which Ellison has planted a row of bamboo to hide her British garden from view at the main house, where everything is all Japanese, all the time. That is OK with Craft, who is content to have her refuge, even if it's blocked from sight.

"I let him do his thing,'' she says. "I really wouldn't want him messing with my books, my characters. This (compound) is his creative project. It's beautiful. It's not what I'd have built for myself, but it doesn't mean I won't love living there."

...

A flock of wood ducks has taken up residence in the pond. A hundred or more cherry blossom trees, not yet in bloom, dot the landscape. The effect is like a resort, or a theme park of sorts, without any rides. Actually, they do have a boat with an electric motor that they take in the pond. They like to stop under the bridges, where Ellison sings. His favorites are show tunes, especially selections from "Aspects of Love'' (a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber) and "Chess," (a musical by ABBA members Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, with lyrics by Tim Rice). Ellison and Craft are scheduled to meet Tim Rice in Los Angeles for brunch a few days after this interview to discuss a remake of "Chess,'' she says.

Gak.

(Link via Stephany A. at Maud N.)

Print on demand versus self-publishing

Friday, 26 March 2004 02:38 PM

Continuing the topic of the previous post: Stephany Aulenback received an email from a bookseller who explains some issues with print-on-demand. You can read the full text there, and if you've an interest in books and publishing you should, because it's a well-written and interesting letter.

But I'd like to focus on one aspect, which is that print-on-demand is frequently conflated with self-publishing. When in fact they're not the same thing at all.

POD means printing small quantities of a book in a cost-effective manner (but also one hopes in a high-enough quality manner that the book is pleasant to read). Self-publishing means publishing your own book, in either large or small quantities.

I think both are great things, and I believe they are mingled together in many minds because POD make self-publishing affordable to a normal person. But a small or even large publisher might want to take advantage of POD for a book that is predicted to have a small audience, or a very specific type of market, or for which the roll out has to be long and gradual, a building type of awareness among the readers.

POD is perfect for certain books for all those reasons, and has nothing to do with the book being filtered by editors -- I'm referencing the quote in the letter linked above that "the LA Times is refusing to read pods on the basis that they've gone through no editorial filtering," which seems a poor policy on the LA Times's part.

So the irony is that POD could be a great boon to publishing, which is looking for ways around the economics of large-scale publishing (which require a book to sell so many, many copies to be profitable, and few books will ever sell that way); and yet publishing frowns on POD because it wrongly thinks it's only for vanity publishing.

Friday morning mini-rant: the state of publishing

Friday, 26 March 2004 10:51 AM

Stephany Aulenback wonders when electronic books and print-on-demand will come into their own.

I think e-books are waiting for the right delivery mechanism, devices that are easier to read from than the tiny screens on PDAs.

But I don't see any such holdup for print on demand -- the hurdles seem to be in people, in old mindsets and inertia. It's crazy that a finished book takes so long to hit the shelves, that print runs must be so large, that an author can earn just 70 cents per copy sold. It's too broken a business model to sustain itself much longer.

Juicy

Thursday, 25 March 2004 10:22 PM

The launch of my new venture has taken most of my time lately. It is Fat Plum:

We're beginning by offering workshops, private consultations on writing and publishing, manuscript reviews and edits, and so on. Soon we'll expand into writer-focused products. And then we'll start publishing books and other cool stuff.

We have very grand plans, although perhaps they aren't clear from that simple list of current and future projects. But truly they are grand, and I'm extremely excited about it all.

Swank Swink

Thursday, 25 March 2004 08:32 PM

The first issue of Swink arrived in my mailbox today, apparently ahead of the issue's debut in bookstores. Coincidentally, the mag is also featured in today's PW Newsline (a daily email from Publisher's Weekly) under the topic "The New New Literary Magazine." Founder Leelila Strogov is quoted describing the intended readership:

"There are many magazines who are doing things right," she says. "I don't think they're always getting into the right hands." The audience here, she says, is kind of literary-commercial. "It's Granta and but also The New Yorker," she said. "We want a literary audience that crosses over into real-live people."

(Steven Zeitchik wrote the PW Newsline entry.)

Here's my first impression of the first Swink: Looks artsy, with its funky color illustration on the front and its unconventional size (7 in x 10 in). Similar to late-model McSweeney's in its use of the paperback format and heavy reliance on all caps and the list of authors on the back. But then it also has a less affected|art school feel than McSweeney's. The design is a little more mass market, friendlier, more pick-up-able.

Looking at it close up, I think I recognize the dot over the 'i' in the logo as being from the Microsoft Design Gallery (from whence I procured the splat used on the Inkburns mug and t-shirt as well, by the by).

Because of the bigger format, the magazine is easier to read than many lit mags (Paris Review, McSweeney's sometimes), rather like Tin House. No glossy cover like Tin House, though. Also, the interior design is simpler than Tin House, which seems to like to change the page format from story to story.

In short, it looks quite appealing. I'm interested to read it.

This might be a good point to mention that although I subscribe to all these lit mags I read barely any of them. Sometimes I'll dig into an issue of any one of them and get through most of it, especially Zoetrope, but often I'm overwhelmed by an issue's arrival, the sheer mass of quality and challenging writing staring me in the eye. Which makes the name "swink" all the more appropriate, as the masthead says it is a noun (archaic) meaning "labor, toil."

Drinks of the week: Gimlet and Algebra

Thursday, 25 March 2004 08:11 PM

Two drinks for this week, one for each of my sisters....

For Laura, whose birthday is today, a classic drink to which she introduced me years ago in San Francisco.

GIMLET

1 part Rose's lime juice
5 parts gin

Fil shaker two-thirds full with ice. Put in lime juice, then gin. Stir or shake well. Strain into cocktail glass.

(Recipe from The Official Harvard Student Agencies Bartending Course. Did I mention that I'm a graduate of the Harvard Bartending School? It's true.)

The second is for my sister Katy, who is currently starring in Proof at the Butler Little Theatre as a math genius and/or insane person.

ALGEBRA

Creator: N/A

Ingredients:
1 oz. Light Rum
0.5 oz. Triple Sec
2 tsp. Lemon Juice

Glassware: Cocktail Glass

Directions:
Fill a shaker half full with ice cubes. Pour all ingredients into shaker and shake well. Strain drink into a Cocktail glass and serve.

(From Happy Hours: Drink Recipes.)

Both drinks are delightfully citrus-tangy and sweet, and deceptively strong. Enjoy, and make sure you've lined up someone to give you a ride home.

Dancing as fast as I can

Thursday, 25 March 2004 11:29 AM

To any would-be Inkburns contributors, Inkburns writers waiting for contracts, neglected clients, and abandoned friends who are reading this blog to discover clues as to why you have not received a response to your submission/contract/query-about-your-web-update/email of several weeks ago: I am truly sorry. Things are just nutsy busy here. I hope to get to your email this weekend. (Except many of the would-be contributors, because the slush pile is now a truly huge and awesome monster. But some of you will hear from Inkburns soon, and the rest later.)

I could tell you a story that could make you cry

Thursday, 25 March 2004 10:59 AM

I'm pretty sure every fan in the world knows more about the Pixies reunion tour than I do. Shows are selling out even though they're not advertised in local media. I can barely keep track of the announced shows in this area -- now I'm worrying about missing the sale date altogether.

Actually, my greater concern is that the Pixies won't come to the rockingest city in the U.S. at all, but instead will hop straight to Cleveland. I've driven to the Flats and back in a single night to see Frank Black play before, but I don't like to make a habit of it.

(Reuters link thanks to Syntax of Things.)

And you thought you were unhappy before...

Wednesday, 24 March 2004 09:36 PM

The anonymous midlist author who shared her story on Salon this week gets not a smidge of sympathy from other authors, from publishers, from book sellers ... ok, you get the point.

In a New York state of mind

Wednesday, 24 March 2004 11:21 AM

Tremble has been on a roll lately.

Of course, last night he did a reading at the "Giant Tuesday Night of Amazing Inventions" so we shouldn't expect anything new today or perhaps tomorrow. But there's much to enjoy with the recent posts.

I had the good fortune to be in NYC in September on a certain Wednesday night and I made a point of attending How to Kick People. Everything about it was great, and massively New Yorkesque. My friend Nancy and I arrived late and sat on the floor, basically on the "stage" such as it is, which in my opinion was better than sitting in a regular seat. I had already had two or perhaps three vodka martinis before the event, and during the break I had another (we were upstairs from the KGB Bar, and how can one not have vodka when in the KGB Bar?), and then afterwards maybe another or two, and I chatted with Bob Powers and Todd Levin (I think ... perhaps "slurred some compliments at them" is a more accurate description) and fawningly followed Powers to another bar across the street where he sat talking with other people and genteely ignoring me. I was drinking more martinis and didn't mind being ignored so much. Fortunately, very fortunately, my dear, dear friend Nancy escorted me back to my hotel before she caught an extremely late train back to the suburban wilds, so I was able to recover from my hangover in comfy safety.

I actually had an amazing day the next day as well, hangover notwithstanding, as I wandered around Manhattan and met up with my filmmaker friend Louis, whose film screening was the ostensible purpose for my trip in the first place. I witnessed film people meeting and schmoozing, was treated to free meals and drinks, saw a screening in the Conde Nast building and wandered unescorted in the famed cafeteria, then had cocktails in the lobby of the Algonquin. I couldn't invent a day so perfect. Except maybe the hangover part, but then that served to cast the rest of the day in a glowier light.

I could go on, but to bring this post to something of a point, you should read Tremble and also Girls Are Pretty, and if you're in NYC for a Wednesday night when How to Kick People is scheduled, you should attend. But also you should probably limit your vodka martini intake to four, no more than five.

Everyone's a wallflower sometime

Tuesday, 23 March 2004 09:27 PM

Pittsburgh has a bustling literary scene. This is unexpected, I realize, but true. Even the Post-Gazette says so. I haven't made it to any of the events Bob Hoover mentions in the article -- been trying to get to the Slaughterhouse for Choice Cuts for some time but events have conspired against me.

However, I've spent many a fine evening at the Gist Street Reading Series. I'm not terribly disappointed that it wasn't featured in the article because it's already overfull every month: these days one has to arrive by 7:30 or risk being shut out. The readers are excellent, the crowd is fun and non-stuffy, the vibe is simultaneously mellow and charged, the food is eclectic and delish and abundant, and the wine and beer are kept cool in the bathtub in the middle of the room. I wish more people knew about it, but then we'd need a bigger space and that would entirely change the atmosphere. So it's best that it remain an ill-kept secret for as long as possible.

What Bobbie DeNiro and I have in common

Tuesday, 23 March 2004 08:04 AM

We're both fans of Queen. (For you young-uns, Queen was a glam/hard/progressive rock band in the 70s through the very early 90s.)

As much of a fan as I am, though, I still don't think I'd have put money into a Queen musical. And I know I would never call "Bohemian Rhapsody" "Bo-Rhap."

(Can you picture Robert DeNiro singing along to Queen, like maybe "Killer Queen" or "Bicycle Race," while driving in his car? Me neither.)

Misery of the midlist author

Monday, 22 March 2004 12:18 PM

Many literary blogs are linking to the Salon article, "The confessions of a semi-successful author," that tells the sad but common tale of an author who has struggled with the horror that is modern publishing.

For a tale of publishing woe that has a happy ending, check out No Media Kings, where Jim Munroe explains how he came to publish and successfully market books. See also the economic argument for self-publishing and concrete steps to get started.

Fight the power!

We're number one!

Sunday, 21 March 2004 12:47 PM

Exciting in a self-absorbed way: The Closkey.com site currently comes up first when one searches Google for "closkey." Number 1 of about 6,940 results! (The fact that the domain name is the search word probably has a lot to do with it, but still.) It beats out all the McCloskey geneological sites, which is no small feat.

Among the other interesting search results:

A press release from 2002 announcing that "Sean Closkey, director of the St. Joseph's Carpenter Society, one of Camden's most successful non-profit housing developers, was officially named executive director of the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency." (Sean is my cousin.)

The score for a match between Glendermott and Ballyspallen, from the Glendermott Cricket Club site. (Glendermott won by 122 runs. I don't know whether this makes it an exciting match or not.)

And for those who prefer a more organized approach...

Friday, 19 March 2004 03:12 PM

NewPages.com also has a lovely guide to online literary magazines. This too looks thorough. NewPages also offers reviews of literary magazines -- something I've long wished for.

A hidden order amid the chaos

Friday, 19 March 2004 03:08 PM

Laura Hird has perhaps the largest collection of links to known and obscure literary magazines I have seen. I can't find any system to the placement of the mags, but perhaps there needn't be lots of organization: Literary magazines are a pretty jumbled lot anyway. If you're looking for new things to read or places to submit what you've written, you'd do well to check it out.

R.I.P.: J.J. Jackson, original MTV VJ

Friday, 19 March 2004 02:06 PM

I'm sorry to hear that J.J. Jackson, one of the original MTV VJs, died Wesdnesday of an apparent heart attack. He was 62.

Of those first MTV personalities, J.J. seemed to have the most knowledge of the music business and to be more down-to-earth/less gimicky than the others with their hair and pretty faces, at least to my teenage perception. I hope the five years he spent helping to found an empire were fun and profitable for him.

It could break your heart if you really thought about it, so you should never think about it

Friday, 19 March 2004 11:56 AM

The story "You Are a 14-Year-Old Arab Chick Who Just Moved to Texas" by Randa Jarrar is the winner of storySouth's first Million Writer's award. It was originally published in Eyeshot, and you can read it there now.

The fall you moved with your family to America, you were diagnosed with TB, and the old white doctor pointed at the five inch red rectangle on your forearm and said, "That should be three inches smaller." He put you on a battery of medications which worsened your acne, made you gain thirty pounds, and gave you an overall sense of impending death. As usual, your Mama was jealous of you, and wanted to be the one dying instead; it was her first time without a piano, and your first time without friends to comfort you.

Butler, Pennsylvania: Cultural mecca

Thursday, 18 March 2004 07:46 PM

A couple of weekend events for those in western PA:

The Butler Little Theatre opens its production of Proof, the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning drama, tomorrow (March 19). The show will run through next Saturday (March 27), except Monday. It stars my sister Katy Wayne in the role of Catherine; she previously portrayed her in the Red Barn Theater's production last summer. I'm looking forward to seeing how this production differs from the Red Barn's. Details on show times, reservations, and directions, see the Butler Little Theatre's website.

Also tomorrow, Vanilla Soul Revue plays at the Brick House. They're all about "jazzy funk and soul," and a good time is guaranteed for all. If you go, look for the most spastically dancing woman -- that will be me. If you're the type that calls out requests, send out a shout for "Summertime."

On Saturday, the Butler County Symphony Orchestra will be presenting its "March Jubilee" at the Butler Intermediate High School at 8pm. From the Art Council website:

Popular photographer Charles Martin returns to present striking slides as the orchestra play Edelmann's "Gettysburg." The college age young artist competition winner will also appear. The orchestra is featured in Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 2" (Little Russian). Reserved seat tickets are available at the Symphony office, 259 South Main Street, Butler. Presale adults $17, students $7. At the door, $17 and $8. For information, call 724-283-1402.

And for those inspired to exercise their creative sides, on Sunday and Monday the Butler Little Theatre will hold auditions for The Philadelphia Story, to be directed by Bob Meals. Relevant information on the BLT website.

Zeliepalooza

Thursday, 18 March 2004 07:29 PM

As part of the "Save the Strand" project -- an effort to renovate the old Strand Theatre in Zelienpole, PA -- there will be a band fest next Thursday, 3/25, at Sanctuary in the Strip. Details available here. I'm not familiar with these bands but it's for a good cause. Rawk on!

Audio books for your iPod

Thursday, 18 March 2004 10:56 AM

The Guardian Unlimited offers an overview of digital audio book sources.

You've loaded your CDs in to your iPod, you've assembled playlists and discovered the joys of shuffle mode. But the first flush of gadget love is fading. What can you do to re-kindle the affair? Why not experiment with digital audio books? There are several obvious advantages. With books on tape/CD, you're often juggling several cassettes or discs. In contrast, an unabridged doorstopper by Tolstoy fits easily on an MP3 player/iPod, with space for more. And thanks to electronic book marking, you can keep your place on several digital audio books at once.

(Link thanks to Maud Newton.)

Don't make a fedral case of it

Thursday, 18 March 2004 10:37 AM

yourDictionary.com offers 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words.

I'm sorry to discover a few mispronunciations that I'm guilty of ("cardshark" for "cardsharp," "lambast" for "lambaste") -- or maybe I should feel glad to now know how to pronounce them properly. I am pleased to see that I already say most of these properly, including "February."

(Link via The Morning News.")

Frozen River

Tuesday, 16 March 2004 11:21 AM

From Parenthetical Note:

Frozen River

I've been thinking about how many times I've ridden the ferry since he vanished: at least twice a day on weekdays, back and forth to work, and then some on the weekends to drink Budweiser and shoot pool when I had a friend in town. Then there was that night job I had as a photographer for two weeks, when I had to work late in dance clubs on Saturday and Friday nights. Those were the nights I left my apartment at midnight and came home at four in the morning, when everyone else was asleep, when even the people riding the ferry back from the city were sleeping, leaning against each other, drunk or hungover or both. Was he in the water then, under us, every time we went back and forth? Was I on the boat when he jumped?

Tupac caput!

Monday, 15 March 2004 07:12 PM

From Yankee Pot Roast, Celebrity palindromes. A sampling:

"Oprah deified Harpo." — Uma.

"No, Mel Gibson is a casino's big lemon."
— The pope, clairifying what he meant by "It is as it was."

"Vanna, wanna 'V'?"
— Pat Sajak, getting randy after six rounds of Maker's Mark.

"Is Don Adams mad? (A nod.) Si!"
— Director of Mexico's Nick a Noche.

How to film a zeppelin docking at the Empire State Building

Monday, 15 March 2004 11:27 AM

John Hodgman reveals to us Kerry Conran and the technological blockbuster movie he started in his bedroom:

Word of ''Sky Captain'' began to spread around the Internet only after Conran finished primary shooting in London last spring -- extraordinarily late for the Internet, which often seems invented specifically to track movies with giant robots in them. Even then, no one knew who Kerry Conran was. Google couldn't touch him. He was so undocumented in the world of Hollywood that I briefly wondered, when I began pursuing him, if perhaps he was just a front for his producer and partner and mentor Jon Avnet, who is well known for producing ''Risky Business'' and directing ''Fried Green Tomatoes'' but who is not so well known for retro-science-fiction summertime blockbusters, and who unlike Conran seems to have been photographed at least once in his life. I don't think Conran would mind that I doubted his existence. In fact, for a long time, that was the plan.

(Link thanks to Old Hag.)

Jesus Christ: Flavor of the month

Monday, 15 March 2004 09:54 AM

From the Detroit News: What a trend we have in Jesus.

Even before "The Passion" hit screens, pop culture had reinvented the image of Jesus. Tabloid fashionistas such as Pamela Anderson, Ashton Kutcher, Ben Affleck and Lara Flynn Boyle have all been seen sporting the popular "Jesus is my homeboy" T-shirts.

Los Angeles-based clothing company Teenage Millionaire introduced the design three years ago. "We were looking at pop icons of the 21st century, and Jesus topped the list," says Chris Hoy, a partner in Teenage Millionaire. "(The shirts) appeal to the religious people and the hipsters alike."

The shirts present a friendly, down-to-earth image of Jesus, far from the tattered, crown-of-thorns wearing Jesus central to religious texts. They are a more mainstream way for people to support their religious beliefs, "rather than the classic crosses and traditional stuff," says Angie Muir, a manager at Urban Outfitters in Ann Arbor where the shirts are carried.

Read more from the article below, or click here to see the whole thing.

(Thanks to Agenda for the link.)

The message of Christ as homeboy is evidence society is moving from less of an organized religion view of Christ and more to a personal, spiritual view of Christ, says Vicky Thompson, author of “Jesus Path: 7 Steps to Cosmic Awakening” (Red Wheel, $16.95).

“It’s personally saying not that Jesus is my savior, but He’s my best friend and buddy,” Thompson says. “We have a huge population of unchurched people (in America), but often, they aren’t leaving spirituality behind. They still have a desire to feel a spiritual connection, but on their own terms. They’re embracing Christ, but from a different viewpoint.”

Rapping says at the same time people are supposedly embracing Jesus, their lifestyles are not reflecting that. “There isn’t a whole lot of morality to our everyday lives,” Rapping says. “For example, the divorce rate is not going down and adultery is not going down, but there’s a lot of lip-service being paid (to Jesus).”

She says the “Jesus is my homeboy” shirts are little more than the modern day equivalent of Che Guevara shirts, with people sporting them for fashion purposes but with little belief in what the figure actually represents.

Saints in everyday life

Sunday, 14 March 2004 10:15 AM

Saints in everyday life.

Pittsburgh-area bloggers, unite!

Sunday, 14 March 2004 09:53 AM

The Post-Gazette has a nice feature today on blogging in Pittsburgh. They explain blogging pretty well. They also mention several interesting local sites, although they fail to provide links to any of them.

Fortunately, the article mentions Tube City Online (UPDATE: OK, so TCO isn't mentioned after all ... I'm not sure how I found it. I must have been on a mad clicking frenzy. Just lucky, I guess.), which maintains a list of Pittsburgh-area blogs. Compared to the blog circles in NYC or San Francisco, the 'Burghian blogosphere looks laughably small. The situation isn't helped by the Tube City list being incomplete: no Inner Bitch, no Pixel Stupor, no Brilliant Mistakes. (Inner Bitch has a more thorough blogroll of local blogs than I do: check it out.)

I'm sure we'd all benefit from a focused blog collective, like NYC Bloggers. I've meant for some time to search out local blogs, and this seems a great occasion to start.

UPDATE: Bill Toland, the author of the Post-Gazette article, emailed to say that the links in the article have now been activated, so one can hop directly to the blogs mentioned therein. I see also that the PG website is featuring the article on their home page, in the "Hot Picks" column. Nice exposure for everyone involved.

Love is like a rock

Sunday, 14 March 2004 09:14 AM

Esquire magazine will publish a list of "cities that rock," and they've ranked Pittsburgh number 1.

The Tribune Review talked with people in the local music scene. Naturally, everyone's pleased and hoping that this will lure young people to the 'burgh. And everyone's also a little surprised -- or more than a little.

I'm curious to see the criteria that Esquire used in setting the rankings. It's great to have Pittsburgh mentioned so prominently, but I have trouble imaging how it outranked a city like Boston, which has an amazing rock legacy and a thriving community today. Pittsburgh is often skipped by major concert tours, and several clubs seem to turn over yearly, leading me to believe that the audience is fickle.

On a side note, the Trib article mentions that Rosebud will be reopening in April under new management. The new name will be The World. It's a great venue for seeing bands (except for parking, but whaddaya gonna do), and being in the Strip it's easy to reach from north of the city. The club's opening is just in time, as Club Laga will be shutting down next month.

(Links via Pittsblog.)

And while we're looking at the neat and the new...

Friday, 12 March 2004 03:12 PM

Better Non Sequitur looks pretty cool. Here's how they describe themselves:

We are a small, independent media company located in San Diego, CA. We specialize in the publication, production, and distribution of books, films, and music; but we are open to basically any artistic achievement.

So, they do fun, valuable work and they live where the weather is nice?!? Curse them. And then buy their products and submit stuff to them.

Also: Lying, cheating, stealing

Friday, 12 March 2004 02:59 PM

More on Swink (see below): Until March 15 they are accepting entries on the theme of lying, cheating, stealing. Read more and then submit.

Swink

Friday, 12 March 2004 02:56 PM

Everyone over at Maud Newton and elsewhere is abuzz about Swink magazine, which is neat and new, and will be serving online-only writing in addition to their print journal.

They have a contest for fiction and poetry, the due date for which is April 1. The poetry will be judged by Tony Hoagland, who I heard read at the Gist Street Reading Series and can assure all is terrif.

So enjoy!

Nielsen whistling past the graveyard

Friday, 12 March 2004 10:45 AM

Jim Meskauskas in MediaPost comments on Nielsen's plans to report on personal video recorder (PVR) households but not on their viewing of advertisements.

As MediaPost reported last Friday in an article by Joe Mandese, agencies are asking that Nielsen provide, along with the aggregated program "viewing" data, minute-by-minute ratings data so that ratings can be attributed to ads themselves.

Doesn't this make sense? The only reason advertisers look at ratings for programming is because that is the only data made available to them. If we could get minute-by-minute ratings all this time, does anyone in the media planning and buying business doubt we would be using them? Just like demographics are surrogates for trends in psychographics and product usage, so program ratings are proxies for advertisement ratings.

TiVo, and in particular, cable companies offering digital services, are in a perfect position to provide the infrastructure for minute-by-minute ratings data. They have the technology, the scale, and they are already in your homes.

(Link thanks to MarketingWonk, where Tig Tillinghouse adds some additional good thoughts on the topic.)

Hidden assets

Friday, 12 March 2004 12:35 AM

Yesterday I wore a skirt I bought from a travel clothing catalog. I have to be very careful when perusing these catalogs, as they induce in me visions of wandering through the streets of Rome or St. Petersburg, wearing comfortable yet stylish shoes and dark, internationally-styled clothing that magically never wrinkles. In these visions I inevitably discover a tiny, chic cafe where I can lounge the day away, watching people walk by and passing for a native.

These visions send me on a buying frenzy, the result of which is often a box full of clothes that don't look quite like what I'd expected from the catalog's drawings: They're frumpier, and the no-wrinkle fabric is stiff and icky, and I can't imagine wearing them to the local five-and-dime, much less a funky bistro on the Left Bank.

In the case of this skirt, though, the vision wasn't too far from reality. It's a simple black wrap-around skirt, made from a mystery twill fabric that truly doesn't wrinkle much and also somehow repels lint. It wraps around quite far, which is a huge benefit. Many, many wrap skirts don't have enough overlap, and so when they flap open they flash quite a bit more of my nether regions than I'm comfortable sharing with the general public. So in many ways this skirt is perfect.

However, it has one odd feature: a hidden pocket. The catalog described it as a "security pocket" for storing documents and money, safe from pickpockets. Sounds great. The pocket is located on the inside of the skirt, right in front where it wraps. It's fairly sizeable.

However, it's completely impractical. I tried today to stash some cash there before heading into the K-Mart to try and prop up Martha Stewart's failing reputation by buying seed starter kits, and I found I had to bend over and reach way, way inside to get the bills into the pocket. I basically had to open the wrap part, lifting it up and inserting the money upside-down into the pocket, then dropping the wrap and smoothing everything out. There was absolutely no way I'd be repeating that action at the checkout counter.

Also, I found that any item in the pocket distorts the fabric. Depending on what one tries to store there, one gets either a flat, stiff area or an unseemly bulge in a particularly awkward spot. It's no good either sitting or standing. I can't imagine something bumping into the tops of my thighs repeatedly as I walked around, especially on a sticky summer afternoon.

So my otherwise excellent travel skirt has this purposeless pocket. Obviously I can leave it empty and still get plenty of value from the skirt, but I'm still uncomfortably aware of its existence. It's odd that it would bother me, but it does.

Drink of the week: Bourbon Sidecar

Wednesday, 10 March 2004 09:21 PM

Today I found an interesting recipe in the Drink Recipes section of Happy Hours:

BOURBON SIDECAR

Creator: N/A

Ingredients:
2 oz. Bourbon
1 oz. BOLS Triple Sec Curacao

Glassware: Cocktail Glass

Directions:
Shake with cracked ice and serve in a chilled cocktail glass.

I'm always delighted to find new ways of enjoying bourbon, but to me this bears little relation to a sidecar. To be a proper sidecar it should have a sugared glass, I think. Also some citrus. And I don't have any triple sec in the house, but I do have Cointreau. So I propose the following....

MY BRILLIANT BOURBON SIDECAR

Creator: MyBrilliantMistakes.com

Ingredients:
2 oz. Bourbon
1 oz. Cointreau
1/2 oz. lemon juice

Glassware: Cocktail Glass with sugared rim

Directions:
Shake with cracked ice and serve in chilled, sugary cocktail glass.

Based on experiments currently underway, I can attest that this is a delightful concoction, quite tart and refreshing, perfect for either after dinner or before. (Actually, I suspect that if one had a couple of these before dinner, one's appetite would magically evaporate. But such is life.)

Do the current experiments with this new beverage have anything to do with the large and far overdue website that I should be working on at this moment? Why, yes. Yes, they do.

For those unfamiliar with the sugared glass concept, read on for a primer....

As the sidecar is not currently in fashion, I recognize that not everyone knows how to properly sugar a glass, or even why one might want one.

The sugared glass is like the salt-rim glass in which a margarita is typically served, except, you know, it's sweet instead of salty. But the thing is, you can't use regular sugar. You must use beverage sugar, which has smaller grains than regular granulated sugar.

This isn't powdered sugar, mind you: It's beverage sugar, sold in larger grocery stores and party places. Its other distinction is that it dissolves faster than granulated sugar, which is a big asset at a bar. (Never mind that a full-fledged bar would keep simple syrup on hand because it leaves no worry of the sugar stubbornly refusing to dissolve.) Powdered sugar bonds with the rim of a glass, forming into an unpleasant bit of impromptu candy that the drinker finds him-/herself sucking at, unattractively, or ignoring, also unattractively.

(In a pinch, you can pound on granulated sugar in a bag to turn it into beverage sugar. But who has the time?)

In contrast, beverage sugar slips off the rim of the glass neatly into the drinker's mouth, lightly sweetening each sip. The drinker has the choice of working her/his way around the rim, clearing off sugar along the way and trying to match this clearing with drink consumption so the rim is clean at the same time the glass becomes empty; or sticking with a single spot and enjoying the festively decorated glass. Either option is delightful.

Anyway. So to sugar the rim of a glass, sprinkle beverage sugar in a wide saucer, pour a little lemon or lime juice or something in a second saucer, take a chilled cocktail glass and set it, top down, in the juice dish first, making sure to dampen the entire rim, then in the sugar dish, coating the entire rim in tiny granules of sweetness. Then pour your prepared cocktail into the glass and serve.

How to, and why

Wednesday, 10 March 2004 10:08 AM

I'd been thinking of creating a section for Closkey.com about how and why to create a weblog. It turns out that I don't need to, as the Guardian Online has already written one.

Of particular interest are Rebecca Blood's comment on what blogs are and are not, Neil McIntosh and Jane Perrone's glossary of blogging terminology (which they say they will be updating over time), and Neil McIntosh's brief overview of how to choose weblog software and set a blog up.

Nice to see Hugh MacLeod's blogging cartoons featured through all the articles as well.

I'll drive that tanker

Monday, 08 March 2004 02:30 PM

Advertising Age looks at actor/director/marketing-wiz Mel Gibson.

To create this boffo box office, superstar director Mel Gibson employed a raft of guerrilla-marketing tactics, appealing to church groups and religious leaders to help him bring out the faithful. He traded heavily on his celebrity status and the controversy that has swirled around the film to generate buzz about the movie everywhere from late-night talk shows and the cover of Newsweek to religious conventions and Nascar races.

The first movie I saw Gibson in was Gallipoli; the second was the amazing The Year of Living Dangerously. And then there was The Road Warrior. I didn't expect this new movie to do well -- it looked like such a vanity project, and in fact I believe it is one. (The New Yorker's David Denby described the movie as "another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism," which I suspect it could be also.) I confess I hoped it would go away quietly. All the same, I can't help but admire how Gibson and his team have made a highly controversial and difficult-to-watch film into a box office smash.

And damn it, he's still a babe.

It's for you

Monday, 08 March 2004 10:55 AM

How to make friends by Telephone:

Visualize the person you call

Speak to the person at the other end of the line -- not to the telephone -- then you're more apt to be pleasant and understanding.

(Link via The Morning News.)

Drink of the Week

Thursday, 04 March 2004 11:44 AM

In honor of Girl Scout Cookie week:

DIRTY GIRL SCOUT
Creator: N/A

Ingredients:
1 oz. Bailey's Irish Cream®
1 oz. Kahlua®
1 oz. Vodka
1 tsp. Creme de menthe (Green)

Glassware: Highball Glass

Directions:
Pour all ingredients into shaker. Fill a Tumbler almost full of ice cubes, and dump ice into shaker. Shake well and pour drink into Tumbler.

(From Happy Hours)

Making fiends

Thursday, 04 March 2004 09:58 AM

So cool: Making Fiends, excellent animations.

(Link via The Morning News.)

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey