Archives: June 01, 2004

Pennies from heaven

Tuesday, 29 June 2004 02:10 PM

Jim Munroe of No Media Kings makes a case for arts grants: Don't think of them as free money, think of them as the R&D budget for our cultural future.

I explain it this way: arts grants fund the R&D wing of our cultural operations. Just like research and development in the scientific community, this allows for new methodologies and new strategies to be investigated without having to turn a profit. But in science, experimentation is a valued part of the process. When an artist is called "experimental," it's often derogatory. There's this idea that if it's not understandable to a mass audience or a layperson, it's fraudulent.

But mass culture doesn't spring from a vacuum. The arts and the sciences are both communal activities -- everyone's building on and reacting to the stuff around them. So that neat camerawork in a blockbuster summer movie was inspired by some more obscure film the director saw, which in turn was inspired by an underground photo exhibit, which in turn was inspired by something else... but only the person at the end of the chain of inspiration gets paid -- the guy at the head of the line is the only one who isn't invisible.

Grants address this blind spot of pure market capitalism. As much as economists like to present it as a force of nature, capitalism is a construct we made, a robot that can't tell the difference between things that we feel are priceless and things that are valueless unless we step in. Clean air, for instance, has less inherent market value than a can of Coke. Grants are a little like speculation. By supporting projects and propagating ideas that are currently too far ahead of the curve to make money, we're investing in an artistic legacy that we all benefit from.

Smart marketing

Tuesday, 29 June 2004 02:03 PM

Some excellent material on the marketing & advertising blogs recently:

Adrants argues for a new marketing role, that of "director of customer/consumer conversation/dialog."

Rick E. Bruner of Business Blog Consulting offers tips for driving traffic to your blog, giving ideas that would apply not only to corporate/business blogs but to blogs in general.

But what does it have to do with the album?

Tuesday, 29 June 2004 11:38 AM

The Wrapped Up in Books gameis surprisingly diverting, given its low-tech style.

I like the idea of using a game to promote a music single, as Belle & Sebastian are doing. But couldn't they have come up with a game that ties into the music better? Actually, I'm not a B&S fan, so maybe I'm not predisposed to see the tie-in. The game is still fun though.

(Link via TMN.)

Let the golden age begin

Tuesday, 29 June 2004 10:46 AM

Have you been reading the missives at The Morning News from Gary Benchley, Rock Star, regarding his move to New York to start a band and change the world of rock as we know it?

Before my stepdad dropped me off at Carl's place in the East Village I was thinking about what brought me here. It has been a tired summer in Albany. How many times can you go stand in the back of Valentine's and watch Monkey Gone Mad play "The Bb Song"? Or Sirsy rock out with "Uncomfortable"? Not many times if you want to keep your sanity.

I am not only a vocalist, guitarist, and drummer, but also a liberated man, and I am glad that mom has finally found some loin-heat. But all right. It's three weeks ago, and they're in there making noises, and the walls in this house are thin. I am glad for her, but I don't need to hear all that.

So I'm pounding the skins, drowning out the animal noises from the other room. Trying not to think about how my mom gets much, much more than I do, albeit from a man who sells Snap-On Tools. And right as I'm in that part of "What Is The Light" where the shit kicks in, my mom comes to the door, all sweaty, and asks if I could just do something quiet for a little while because Jad and her are trying to have a conversation. Close up that nightgown, zip that zipper, a conversation. It is time to leave Albany.

That was from part one. He's now on part seven. Rock on.

Year of Glad

Thursday, 24 June 2004 01:58 PM

Let this be a warning to marketing reserach groups that run focus groups, and to the companies that hire them: the people you target are onto you:

In one group for Johnnie Walker Black, it was obvious the marketers wanted us to consider their beverage upscale, for special occasions. Recognizing this, I made up a story about learning my best friend was engaged and telling him, "It's Johnnie Walker time!" The interviewer looked like he wanted to hug me.

Not surprisingly, after the piece referenced above was published, many market research companies expressed alarm. More precisely, they began screaming that all good things in the world are coming to an end:

"It is critical to the survey and opinion research profession that legitimate respondents be utilized in the research process," said MRA Executive Director, Larry Hadcock. "Billions of dollars are expended annually based upon the outcome of survey and opinion research. To suggest ways to sabotage this process puts countless businesses that are critical to the US economy in jeopardy."

Note to Mr. Hadcock and to all marketing research firms: It doesn't help to shoot the messenger.

Related reading: "Mr. Squishy," the first story in David Foster Wallace's new collection, Oblivion. (The story was first published under a pseudonym in McSweeney's #5. I'm still wondering about that: Why should DFW publish a story under another name? It was so obviously his story, so clearly written in his style, that it had to be him. Actually, it is so much in his style that it's almost a parody of a DFW story. Accordingly, one can know before even reading the first sentence whether one will like it.)

(Thanks to Lindsayism for the article links.)

A gleaming little gem of a museum

Wednesday, 23 June 2004 10:11 AM

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today offers a nice overview of the new museum in town, Butler's Maridon Museum, founded by Mary Hulton Phillips.

The institution she willed into being is a gleaming little gem of a museum, a gift to its street, its city and its region. Here or anywhere there is nothing quite like it, offering an idiosyncratic introduction to Chinese and Japanese art through the eyes of an American collector.

About half of the museum's collection is on view in four galleries; most of the rest is in a study gallery for scholars and will be rotated into exhibits.
The wide-ranging Asian collection comprises more than 400 jade and ivory sculptures, tapestries, furniture, landscape paintings, scrolls and artifacts. The museum also houses more than 300 pieces of Meissen porcelain, one of the largest private collections in the country, with several pieces dating to the earliest days of production in the 18th century. The theme that unites these disparate objects and cultures is the human figure, to which Phillips was consistently attracted.

"They tell stories," she said. "The Meissen pieces are very humorous, and that attracted me."

Although the museum lies on my regular jogging route, I haven't yet visited. But I'm interested particularly by the reported quirkiness of the collection. And I have thought all along that the little window that houses Mrs. Phillips's first collected piece looks very like a drive-through window.

I tried to say

Tuesday, 22 June 2004 11:43 AM

Expert parodist The Minor Fall, The Major Lift sees similarities between the writings of William Jefferson Clinton and William Faulkner:

I could hear them talking. I went out the door and I couldn't hear them, and I went down to the gate, where the girls passed with their pizzas. They looked at me, walking fast, with their heads turned. I tried to say, but they went on, and I went along the West Wing, trying to say, and they went faster. Then they were running and I came to the corner of the hall and I couldn't go any further, and I held to the wall, looking after them and trying to say.

"You, Billy." A.G. said. "What you doing, slipping out. Dont you know Hilsey whip you."

"You cant do no good, moaning and slobbering through the Oval Office door." A.G said. "You done skeered them interns. Look at them, walking on the other side of the hall."

Learn to handle chaw and spit through your teeth

Tuesday, 22 June 2004 10:06 AM

Robert Coover, distinguished author and Brown University professor, is is interviewed in McSweeney's Internet Tendency:

[C]reative-writing workshops have absolutely nothing to do with our nation's literature, though writers sometimes, more or less by chance, turn up in them, looking for an agent or romance or someone to start a new magazine with them. Creative-writing workshops mostly have to do with creating other creative-writing workshops. And this is all right, I suppose, because writing is good for people, or at least not seriously harmful. It teaches them to read, for one thing. We don't need more writers, but we do need more readers. We need creative-reading workshops. Students would still have to write in them, but for nobler ends. And the self-proliferation of creative-reading workshops would be a less onerous thing. You asked me if teaching has enhanced my writing in any way, and I'd say mainly it has got in the way of it; might have made me a better reader, though.

Drink of the week: Tachyon

Friday, 18 June 2004 04:22 PM

I have recently discoverd the "In My Bar" feature of Webtender.com, which lists all the drinks one can make with the ingredients one has on hand.* This handy tool brings us this week's drink:

Tachyon

Ingredients:
1 oz Pernod
1 oz Tequila
Dash Lemon juice

Mixing instructions:
Stir over ice. Either strain in a cocktail glass or on the rocks in a highball glass. Serve with curl of lemon peel.

* The site tells me I can make 113 drinks without leaving the house, plus another 868 if I can get someone to pick up just one extra ingredient for me. The numbers aren't trustworthy: some drinks are just renamed copies of others, and sometimes the one missing ingredient is troublesome, like wormwood. But all the same, I'm delighted to know that my current bar can provide such a range of possibility.

And to answer the obvious question, here's the drink I can make that uses the most ingredients:

Vampire's Kiss

Ingredients:
2 oz Vodka
1/2 oz dry Gin
1/2 oz Dry Vermouth
1 tblsp Tequila
1 pinch Salt
2 oz Tomato juice

Mixing instructions:
Shake with ice. Strain over ice in an old fashioned glass.

Hello, I must be going

Thursday, 17 June 2004 11:04 PM

I apologize for posting so little this week. Workload and other life demands have occupied me, and will continue to do so for a few days more.

May I suggest a bit of diverting reading while I'm away? The winners of Bonny Doon Vineyard's parody contest are available online. Here's the beginning of the winning entry, by Bret McFarlin:

“Ululu”
For Allen Ginsberg (Howl)
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by botrytis, addled hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the terroir at dawn looking for a screwcap Chateauneuf-du-Pape,

tippleheaded hipsters howling for the ancient heavenly connection to the oxidative dynamo in the machinery of malolactic fermentation,

who cork-tainted and hollow-eyed and high toking Cohibas, launched flying saucers,

who with radiant lysergic eyes tripped UC Davis realizing infinite oenologic universes disdaining the musty scholars of vin,

who were expelled from Parker’s academy for crazy & publishing salacious odes on the labels of their cuvee,

who vanished into nowhere Zen Santa Cruz leaving a trail of ambiguous Steadman postcards of Doon messiah, Heart of Darkness,

with dreams, with dregs, with waking nightmares of merlot, zin, and endless cabs,

who thought they were only mad when Le Cigare Volant ‘84 gleamed in supernatural clare ecstasy,

who drank Muscat faux de glacier from Riedel night after night...

(A note of explanation: Winning entries had to mention as many Bonny Doon wines as possible, as well as airships and cigars, and possibly one or two other items I've forgotten. And they had to parody well-known works of literature. The winners span the spectrum of literature -- I particularly enjoyed the new versions of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and of David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again.")

Annals of Dating: "Dodged a bullet" edition

Monday, 14 June 2004 01:54 PM

I've had many a bad date, but this tops any story I have: A Manhattan woman went on a dinner date, didn't respond to the guy's calls for a week or so after, and then received an invoice for her share of the meal.

Dear [WOMAN'S NAME]

On June 5, you agreed to accept dinner, paid for in full, by me, based on your stated offer that we would go out again. In that you have ignored all overtures to said follow up meeting, you are hereby considered in breach of contract.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

Friday, 11 June 2004 03:03 PM

And you thought your household budget was a challenge to manage: the Guardian presents a breakdown of the expenses accrued in making a blockbuster Hollywood film such as Spider-Man 2.

In brief:
Script & development: $10m
Licensing: $20m
Producers: $15m
Director: $10m
Cast: $30m
Below the line (physical production expenses): $45m
Special effects: $65m
Music (in Spider-Man 2's case, Danny Elfman): $5m
Prints & advertising: $75m

The article contains some juicy tidbits of backstage Spider-Man 2 gossip and other Hollywood insider stuff. Bonus Billy Wilder quip: "'What is an associate producer?' Billy Wilder was once asked. 'Anybody,' he replied, 'who will associate with the producer.'"

Yer Blues

Friday, 11 June 2004 10:57 AM

Serendipity: My iPod starts into playing the album Band on the Run just as I discover a light article/interview in which Paul McCartney explains that you can't please everyone, so he's decided to please himself.

We're number one!

Wednesday, 09 June 2004 03:10 PM

A new study says Pennsylvania is first in deaths from air pollution, and Pittsburgh is third among major metropolitan centers. C'mon Pittsburgh power plants: It's air conditioning and refrigeration season ... you can make us number one!

Prepare to jump

Wednesday, 09 June 2004 01:55 PM

An unintended piece of conceptual art.

(Link courtesy of Ze Frank.)

Where are your papers?

Wednesday, 09 June 2004 11:39 AM

I commented over at Sticky Notes about the controversy surrounding The Paris Review and its attitudes toward new and "emerging" writers, and Maud Newton's interview with the magazine's editor, Bridget Hughes. But I'm still ruffled enough about it to need to mention it again here.

I'm interested in hearing viewpoints on this topic: drop me a note to share your thoughts at cindy (at) closkey.com.

The best music video imaginable

Tuesday, 08 June 2004 08:09 PM

William Shatner's rendition of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (video/quicktime Object)

(Link via The Morning News.)

...and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Tuesday, 08 June 2004 10:39 AM

How to celebrate Bloomsday (June 16) in Pittsburgh:

The James Joyce Society of Pittsburgh is presenting a reading (in three concurrent sessions) of Ulysses:

Join us for a reading of James Joyce's Ulysses the most famous novel of the 20th century, that made a Dublin day - June 16, 1904 - immortal...at FINNIGAN'S WAKE 20 East General Robinson Street Near North Side (close to the Alcoa Building) parking available in building 8:00a.m. to 11:00a.m.

FREE and OPEN to the public
Bring your copy of Ulysses and read along...

The James Joyce Society of Pittsburgh,
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh,
PICT and WQED-FM
present a reading of
James Joyce's Ulysses in three concurrent sessions

Session 1
8:00am Telemachus
9:00am Nestor
10:00am Proteus
11:00am Aeolus
1:00pm Scylla and Charybdis
3:00pm Sirens
5:00pm Nausikaa
7:00pm Ithaca, Pt.2

Session 2
8:00am Calypso
9:00am Lotus Eaters
10:00am Hades
11:30am Lestrygonians
1:30pm Wandering Rocks
3:30pm Cyclops
6:00pm Oxen of the Sun
8:30pm Penelope

Session 3
8:00am Circe
3:00pm Eumeus
6:30pm Ithaca, Pt. 1

If you'd like to brush up on the history of James Joyce's masterwork and read the whole unwieldy thing online, you can do so here.

Sour grapes

Monday, 07 June 2004 11:18 AM

David Sedaris's reading last night at the Benedum Theater was as entertaining as one could hope. He read two essays -- both from his latest book, Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Denim -- and selections from hiw diary, then talked up a book by a lesser-known writer and took question from the audience.

He also talked about a recent article about him in the New York Times. The reporter, he said, had gone well out of the way to determine how much Sedaris makes, asking first his booking agency (who refused to share numbers) and then other, similar agencies. Sedaris was upset that the number quoted was much higher than what he actually does earn -- he said people would think, "That guy makes how much? I'm not paying to see him!" In general, he seemed even more uncomfortable than usual.

But here's the thing: the NYT article claims he "earns up to $25,000 to appear in large halls (bookstore appearances are free)." Before the show, my friends and I had speculated on what Sedaris earns, and came up with about that same number: tickets were $33 plus various exorbitant fees. If we guess that Sedaris gets about a third of that, for a sold-out 2,000+ seat theater (like the Benedum last night) he should earn over $22,000.

I'm not saying he doesn't earn it. I love his writing, and I love seeing him read it aloud -- I've caught the last three of his appearances in Pittsburgh and plan to see him the next time he comes through. I'll grant that I don't know for sure how the money from such appearances is split between the various interests involved, but if Sadaris isn't earning at least $20K per appearance, he might consider renegotiating with his booking management.

Whether its numbers are right or not, the NYT article (by Warren St. John) takes an unpleasant tone. For example:

[W]hile radio helped propel his early success, friends and colleagues say his efforts to maintain and build on that success have been more calculated. "After his second book, he went through a real crisis of, `What do I write about now? And who am I?' " Mr. Glass said. "He got very scientific about the problem." ... That ambition, Mr. Sedaris's friends say, fuels a formidable work ethic. He wakes early and writes daily; before he switched to a word processor, his speaking contracts required that an IBM Selectric be provided in his hotel rooms. When he reads new material to audiences, he pencils a check mark next to jokes that work and X's for those that fail.

"An editor will say, `You don't need this,' " Mr. Sedaris said. "And I'm like, `No — that's my biggest laugh.' "

The implication here is that Sedaris crassly analyzes how to maintain his success, thereby earning even more money. But after he's written two best-selling collections of stories, what else would we want him to do? Of course he has to find ways to keep his writing and his topics fresh; of course he should take note of which parts of his stories his audience reacts positively to.

Here's the final paragraph of the article:

In the end, Mr. Sedaris said, he has decided that he prefers success to being poor, whatever the complications for his public persona. And he said he has been pleasantly surprised to learn that having money suits him. "It's like discovering a talent you didn't know you had," he said. "Like if someone gave you a sewing machine, and all of a sudden you could make a shirt that fit you perfectly. You would think, `I didn't know I had that skill.' "

With conclusions like that, it's no wonder that Sedaris "has a celebrity's weariness with reporters."

Drink of the week: Magic Bus

Friday, 04 June 2004 01:47 PM

In honor of the opening of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (and its vertigo-inducing bus ride scene>, we present this week's beverage:

MAGIC BUS

Creator: N/A

Ingredients:
1 oz. Tequila Silver
1 oz. BOLS Triple Sec Curacao
1 oz. Orange Juice

Glassware: Cocktail Glass

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into glass. Take public transport home. (Just stand at the curb and hold out your wand.)

(Recipe courtesy of Happy Hours.)

Who's hungry?

Friday, 04 June 2004 01:23 PM

Last year I created and managed the props for the Butler Little Theatre's production of Over the River and Through the Woods, a play primarily about family and love but also about food. During the play, the characters eat and eat, and eat. Eating is hard to manage while acting. There's the risk of having something in your mouth when your line comes up, or of choking on a bite or getting something in your teeth or on your clothes.... And for a props manager, there are also the concerns about providing food that can survive the stage lights and not go bad before the actors eat it, and piles of dirty dishes getting in the way for the rest of the show.

The play is currently in production at the McKnight Players dinner theater, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's food columnist, Suzanne Martinson, is preparing the food props for the show. She has taken the concerns about food safety and edibility to heart, as one would expect. But she's approached it quite differently from how I did.

For the BLT production, the director wanted the theater to smell like cooking: specifically, like onion and garlic and tomato sauce. But not for the whole show, only for the big dinner scene at the end of the first act. We set up a hot plate backstage, put a layer of olive oil in a fry pan, added dried onion and garlic, and set a fan behind it. I turned the contraption on midway through the act -- not too high or the oil would smoke -- and flicked the fan on when the dinner scene started. It took several rehearsals to get the timing exact so the smell filled the 150-seat theater by the correct point in the show, and then didn't linger to nauseate everyone for the next hour. I had to turn everything off and set the sizzling pan outside, by the theater's dumpsters, to cool off while the show continued.

And that was just for the smell effect. The food was a bigger consideration. Here's what the characters eat in the course of the play, all of it dictated by the script and therefore not possible to change:

Coffee and coffee cake
Dinner, including zucchini, veal, salad, bread, and wine
Cannoli
Coffee again
Peanuts
One very tall sandwich (not eaten)
Large platter of antipasto (not actually eaten, just for a sight gag)

For coffee we used Coca-Cola; the cannoli were filled with whipped cream, which is easier to serve quickly and eat than real cannoli filling; the white wine was white grape juice. I substituted toast points for veal at first, then switched to skinned, thinly sliced yellow squash, sauteed and served with a light sauce to look like veal piccata. (We avoided red sauce for fear of tomato splatters on the costumes.) I limited garlic and onion in all the dishes: Every character kisses someone in the course of the second act, and of course they also shout at each other and so forth, and I didn't want the camraderie of the group to be destroyed by rampant garlic breath.

Each night of tech week (the week before opening) and of the eight-night run, I prepared a "meal" of veggies and fake veal piccata for six at home, took it in plastic containers to the theater and set up my station backstage with crock pots and serving utensils, cut up the coffee cake and put the pieces onto dessert plates on a tray, prepared dinner service for six, ran the smell effect (see above). During the show I stayed backstage and handed out trays and serving dishes to the actors, who brought them on stage, served each other, and then brought everything back off. I cleared the table at intermission, squirted whipped cream into the cannoli shells (couldn't prep them too far ahead because they got soggy and nasty), and washed everything up at the end of the night, by hand.

By the end of the show and for months afterward, I couldn't stand even the sight of zucchini, and I had developed an aversion to the smell of the dishwashing soap we used at the theater.

The actors claimed to like the fake veal piccata -- most of the plates came back clear every night. I've never been sure if they meant it or were merely being kind. It is hard to find anyone to handle props, especially food props, and possbily they were thinking ahead to future shows when they'd need my services again. But then, if the food hadn't been at least serviceable I doubt they'd want me to be in charge again. It's the dilemma of doing a thing well: Someone will want you to do it again.

Things to do in Pittsburgh when you're dead

Tuesday, 01 June 2004 10:59 PM

I'm not actually dead, nor even resting, unfortunately. But I may be dead by the this time next week, given the full slate of activities I have lined up. Local folks might want to join in (for the activities, not the dying of exhaustion bit):

Thursday, June 3
Geek Night the 35th, Church Brew Works, Lawrenceville, 5pm - whenever
From the invite: "Join us for the thirty-fifth iteration of the Pittsburgh Geek Night on Thursday, June 3, 2004. Drink beer. Trade stupid user stories. Enjoy the soothing chirp of a room full of pagers." Details, directions, and RSVP info here.

Later that same night, if I can manage it, I'll be at the Rex Theatre, South Side, at 8pm, to see the Reverend Horton Heat. Tickets through Ticketmaster, whom I'd link to if they weren't Evil Incarnate.

Friday, June 4
Gist Street Reading Series, James Simon Sculpture Studio, Uptown, 7:30pm - whenever
Aaron Smith from New York City will read poetry, Lois Williams from Highland Park will read non-fiction. Details, directions, and more here. Arrive early to ensure you aren't shut out. BYOB.

The evening ends on a rather less highbrow literary note: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban opens, and I may try to catch a midnight showing. Gary Oldman with long, shaggy hair: mmmm.

Saturday, June 5
Vanilla Soul Revue, at the Brick House, Butler, about 10:30pm. As always, look for the most spastic, flailing dancer, and that'll be me. But I won't be out too late because...

Sunday, June 6
Early in the morning, red-eyed and smoke-smelling -- yet clear-headed and insightful -- I'll be co-leading a session of the Fat Plum Book Boot Camp. (This first Boot Camp was a grand success, with all the participants giving us excellent feedback. We're already booking people for the next camp, which will be held on Wednesday evenings. Details here.)

That evening, David Sedaris reads from his new book, Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Denim at the Benedum Center, 7pm. A few tickets may still be available.

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey