Archives: September 01, 2005

Great Moments in Journalism

Thursday, 29 September 2005 11:51 AM

From "NellyStyle" by Clare Barker, a profile of hip-hop artist Nelly in Fashion Rocks (a promo supplement to a bunch of October Conde Nast publications, and tied to some music/fashion extravaganza):

These days Nelly's image is clean enough, if not downright squeaky. He is known for his involvement with 4Sho4Kids, a charity that helps underprivileged children, and JesUs4Jackie, the bone-marrow-registry campaign he started with his sister before she died of leukemia. A die-hard sports freak (he has performed at two Super Bowls), he recently bought a stake in the Charlotte Bobcats, an NBA expansion team.

Still, he wants some slack. "It is impossible to be perfect. I'm not going to say everything is wrong with me, but I'm sure a lot of people will tell you I'm not perfect. That's humanity. We are here to make mistakes. We are here to learn. If we were born knowing everything, what we would do all this time on this earth?"

One option would be to expand your international brand power.

I'm still trying to figure out whether the author is being sarcastic or not. My guess: not.

Hello my treacherous friends

Wednesday, 21 September 2005 11:09 PM

A small assortment of links and notes for your entertainment:

If you're looking for an interesting theatre experience in Pittsburgh, check out the New Works Festival, currently in progress. I especially recommend seeing Up On the Roof, which features the highly-talented local actress Katy Wayne (sister of My Brilliant Mistakes). It runs Sept. 22 - 25, so make plans today.

Have you listened to Oh No, the new album by OK Go? It has been the soundtrack of my life all month. Go listen and groove on it.

And what about Haughty Melodic, by Mike Doughty (previously of Soul Coughing fame)? That has been the other soundtrack of my life recently. Plus he's coming to Pittsburgh next month.

There's one particular couch that has seen more of New York City than I have. (Link via Screenhead.)

There is still time to bid on this guy's unworn leather pants. (Link via TMFTML.)

Collected at random: Back to school edition

Wednesday, 07 September 2005 11:18 AM

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (of "The Office") are considering creating a run of online talk/humor radio shows - "about a half hour of new chat each week" avaoiable for free. They're conducting a poll to see if people would be interested. Show your interest (or lack thereof) at the Ricky Gervais website: http://www.rickygervais.com/radiovote.php

If you haven't yet seen The Blue Explosion's video for "Burn It Off," or if you haven't had your daily dose of skeleton pirates and sharks as fighter planes, you'd best click here right away.

Looking for something very different that rocks just that hard but also reminds you of the early 80s? This is for you.

Does the arrival of early Fall have you feeling nostalgic for dormroom cuisine? Lifehacker has collected some delightful recipes featuring ramen noodles. (Personal note: I subsisted on ramen for most of freshman and sophomore years, until I contracted mono and had to adopt healthier eating habits. So I must warn you to approach these recipes with caution, as ramen is decidedly habit-forming.)

The city that care forgot

Tuesday, 06 September 2005 05:07 PM

Continuing from my previous post on Letters From New Orleans: Rob Walker was interviewed by Flak Magazine several weeks ago about his book, and that interview now seems eerily prescient.

Since Hurricane Katrina hit and throughout the still-unfolding aftermath, he has been asked many times his thoughts on the situation in New Orleans. Here is his latest response.

The aftermath of Katrina will, I suspect, have the effect on many people of feeling that they have seen a mask fall away. Certainly anyone who has lived in or really knows New Orleans already knew that behind the beauty of the French Quarter and the Garden District lay a sprawling and sometimes desperate underclass. Generally this is mentioned only in the “arts and culture” context, as a backdrop to, say, the creation of jazz, or more recently the rise of several major rap stars. But obviously it is just as true in a socio-economic context: The city has long been full of people living in brutal poverty; the city has long been full of cheap violence.

I was back at home in Jersey City by late Tuesday night, watching with anyone else who cared just how badly things can fall apart, and reading reports the systematic theft of guns, of a forklift commandeered to rip through the metal gate protecting a drugstore, of shootouts, of breakdowns in basic social behavior. It is likely that as the stories of life in the Superdome and elsewhere in the city for those days eventually reach us, they will be ugly and grim. It is hard to believe the idea of the city that care forgot disintegrating into chaos and misery. It makes me angry and it breaks my heart.

Down by the river

Friday, 02 September 2005 01:15 AM

I've never visited New Orleans. I've been afraid to visit during Mardi Gras, not so much of the scene but more what it might bring out in me. People say Jazz Fest is the better time to visit: all the fun of Mardi Gras with less of the frat boy element. I think I'd rather go when there's no significant thing going on. I'd like to see how the city is when it's simply being itself.

One book that awakened in me a real desire not just to visit New Orleans but to go and stay a while, experience it and understand its rhythms, is Letters From New Orleans by Rob Walker. In his professional life he's a journalist covering advertising and marketing for the New York Times, as well as an editor and more. But he also lived in New Orleans for a few years, and during that time he wrote emails to friends about his experiences. Earlier this year he published the collected letters in this book. It's wonderfully written, graceful and simple yet full of insight, presenting the city in a way that's rich and textured. It's clear that New Orleans can be at best only half-captured in words, and it's all the more appealing for its mystery.

I wanted to show you an excerpt that would give a feel for the book, but it's so hard to choose just a small portion. Each bit flows into the others and connects back to what's come before. Look, here's part of a chapter that talks about the levees, and how people build these towering structures on them at Christmas time for the sole purpose of burning them in a mass conflagration.

So E and I drove up River Road, which runs along the levee, then at Pauline we doubled back and found a place to park in Gramercy. The levee is a man-made hill, its ridge about 20 feet higher than River Road, stretching out like an endless wall between the water and the towns near the water. Heavy rains in states further up the river make its water level rise (it's at an unusually high 13 feet above sea level around New Orleans right now), and without the levee there would be -- and there has been -- disastrous flooding. So the levee is a central fact of life in the River Parishes, or in any community along the Mississippi, from the Delta to New Orleans.

At the top of the levee is a foot path several feet wide. From there it slopes on either side, at an angle steep enough for children to have a good time rolling down. That's what they were doing on Christmas Eve Day in Gramercy and Lutcher.

We walked the levee and studied the towers close up. A few locals had assembled shapes more ambitious than a simple tower. The volunteer fire department made a huge boat out of logs. There was another log-boat a few hundred feet away. And then there was the cottage.

The cottage -- big enough to walk around or lie down in, or to sit on the front porch -- was such an impressive structure that we had to compliment its creators. The ringleader identified himself as Reginald, and said he'd been helping make bonfire-fodder pretty much his whole life. He and his crew seemed to be the only black bonfire-makers in the immediate area, and in the big, taped-off area in front of the cottage stood a wooden cutout of a black Mr. & Mrs. Claus, embracing. Reginald showed us pictures of last year's project: a log Impala. Another year they built a log Superdome. This year they'd made the cottage. We told him it was a shame to think of burning it down. But that's why we built it, he shrugged.

Really you'll just have to buy or borrow a copy -- it's a quick read, fits into anyone's schedule. When I first read it I wished it had been longer. I find it both saddening and soothing to read these days.

It's hard to imagine how an area can recover from devastation like New Orleans has experienced this week. Then again, cities like New York and San Francisco have overcome their various disasters, man-made, natural, and combinations of the two. I think we have to help, and we have to hope.

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey