Categories
outdoors the ancient past

Handmade

Handmade Houses - bed and domeThis pho­to is from an excel­lent 70s pho­to book called Hand­made Hous­es. I bought it after I read this inspir­ing lit­tle piece on Inhab­i­tat, and it has got me think­ing about get­ting back to basics. In this econ­o­my, basics may be all there are. In the win­ter and spring of 1997, I helped my friend Steve make a house by hand on the Cal­i­for­nia coast. At first, it was like Robin­son Cru­soe. No pos­ses­sions to speak of, oth­er than my ham­mer, some books, the sun and ocean, fresh air and work. We worked all day, doing what felt like good, whole­some labor in the sun, bang­ing, saw­ing, siz­ing things up. Slide Ranch - blue trailer - 1996This is where I lived for a while.Then El Nino arrived. After a few weeks, the whole thing had become more like Lord of the Flies. Days and days of rain, mud­slides on High­way 1, crazy-mak­ing iso­la­tion. In between squalls, we framed the house, affixed the ply­wood sheath­ing, put on the deck and roof, and ran the wiring. At some point, I came down with a cold, which even­tu­al­ly became pneu­mo­nia. In the spring, I retreat­ed to the warmth of Doug and Ted's house in Berke­ley to recu­per­ate, a few weeks lat­er I'd tak­en a job at a muse­um, and that was the end of sim­plic­i­ty. For the time being, anyway.

Categories
music the ancient past

So you can't stop moonwalking

I won't bore you with my thoughts on Lisa Marie Presley's MySpace thing about Michael ("I want­ed to save him. I want­ed to save him from the inevitable which is what has just hap­pened"), or relate my sto­ry of find­ing out that the rumor was true (upon read­ing this tweet from Lil' Jon: "RIP M J!!"), or dis­cuss Justin's excel­lent email about how MJ helped him stay in his "eight-year old zone." I will only spread some love about my favorite MJ record­ing, which is a very scratchy demo ver­sion of "Work­ing Day And Night" from the Spe­cial Edi­tion of "Off the Wall."[audio:https://douglemoine.org/muz/mj_workin.mp3]Enjoy.

Categories
aside

Meetings at the crossroads

Remem­ber when Robert John­son met the dev­il at the cross­roads and returned with a whole new kind of blues? Last night, we watched "Noto­ri­ous," the Big­gie Smalls biopic, and there's a sim­i­lar moment. The movie sort of gloss­es over where Biggie's style came from, imply­ing that it began on the street, but that Big­gie real­ly enhanced it dur­ing nine months in a North Car­oli­na prison. It remind­ed me of Mar­tin Scorsese's Bob Dylan doc­u­men­tary, No Direc­tion Home. Where did the Dylan sound come from? Scors­ese dili­gent­ly goes through all of the mem­bers of the 60's Vil­lage scene, but then there's a gap in which Dylan leaves the scene for a few months and then re-emerges with the style we all know. What is it about cre­at­ing a new style that it has to hap­pen in secret? "Noto­ri­ous" is ter­ri­ble, by the way. I wouldn't have thought it pos­si­ble to make a wood­en, utter­ly unin­ter­est­ing movie about Big­gie, Brook­lyn, the ear­ly 90's, and East Coast v West Coast, but they found a way to do it.

Categories
photo politics

A man with a shopping bag

The NYT's Lens blog recent­ly post­ed a cou­ple of great arti­cles about the pho­tog­ra­phers who cap­tured the Tien­an­men Square protests in 1989. The first offers four riv­et­ing oral his­to­ries from pho­tog­ra­phers who cap­tured the "Tank Man" in his moment of defi­ance, and the sec­ond adds a new twist: this amaz­ing image from street level.

Tank Man at street level - New York Times - Lens BlogDis­or­der. Peo­ple flee­ing. This was hap­pen­ing as the Tank Man, seem­ing­ly so calm, stood in the street. I also think it's inter­est­ing that all the men in the pho­to are wear­ing — as a com­menter on the NYT blog put it — "the same drab clothes." A true illus­tra­tion of how much has changed in Chi­na in the last 20 years.

The Roshomon-like details in all of the pho­tog­ra­phers' sto­ries are vivid and heart­break­ing: "Vehi­cles were smol­der­ing," "a line of stu­dents fac­ing a line of sol­diers and a col­umn of tanks," "anoth­er vol­ley of shots rang out from where the tanks were, and peo­ple began duck­ing, shriek­ing, stum­bling and run­ning," "some guy in a white shirt runs out in front," "a man wav­ing two plas­tic shop­ping bags," "wav­ing his jack­et and shop­ping bag," "remon­strat­ing with the tank dri­ver in an act of defi­ance," "he then dis­ap­peared into the crowd," "the PSB (Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau) grabbed him and ran away."

And then what happened?

Char­lie Cole: "I then placed the tank roll in a plas­tic film can and wrapped it in a plas­tic bag and attached it to the flush chain in the tank of the toilet."Stuart Franklin: "The film was smug­gled out in a pack­et of tea by a French stu­dent and deliv­ered to the Mag­num office in Paris."Jeff Widen­er: "I gave all my rolls of film to [some­one named] Kurt/Kirk who smug­gled it back to the A.P. office in his under­wear. The long-haired col­lege kid was wear­ing a dirty Ram­bo T‑shirt, shorts and san­dals." Arthur Tsang Hin Wah: "A col­league rode over on a bike and picked up the film."And Ter­ril Jones, the reporter who cap­tured the shot at street lev­el: "I nev­er pub­lished them, and only showed them to a few friends and fel­low reporters."And the rest is his­to­ry. That keeps unfold­ing, I guess.

Categories
cinema the ancient past travel

How cool was Hong Kong in the early 60's?

Walk­ing around the Maxwell Food Mar­ket near Singapore's Chi­na­town remind­ed of Wong Kar Wai's excel­lent movie about Hong Kong in the ear­ly 60's In the Mood for Love. After I watched it last night, I couldn't decide whether I want­ed to actu­al­ly trav­el back in time, or just walk inside an imag­ined ver­sion of the past. Wong Kar-Wai - In the Mood for Love - MahjongWong Kar-Wai - In the Mood for Love - CafeWong Kar-Wai - In the Mood for Love - Alley

Categories
ixd tech web

For the love of shopping

I'm doing some work in Sin­ga­pore right now, and I've quick­ly noticed a cou­ple of things: Sin­ga­pore­an peo­ple love to shop, and they love deals. But they don't have access to cer­tain brands — Amer­i­can Appar­el, For­ev­er 21, Victoria's Secret, etc. To get stuff from these places, they have to order stuff over the Inter­net, and have it shipped across the world. And this can be real­ly expen­sive.

LiveJournal spree community

A com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice. The prac­tice of find­ing deals.So, some indus­tri­ous, deal-seek­ing shop­pers have cre­at­ed Live­Jour­nal com­mu­ni­ties in which shop­pers can band togeth­er to save ship­ping costs from online retail­ers. These so-called "sprees" usu­al­ly cor­re­spond to glob­al ship­ping deals offered by a retail­er, and they're avail­able until cer­tain cri­te­ria are met — min­i­mum amounts for the ship­ping deal, or when­ev­er the spree-launch­er decides to take care of the order.In the above exam­ple, the spree is for a retail­er called "Appar­el," it's open, and there are 35 "com­ments," many of which are actu­al­ly "orders." That's right, you sub­mit your order in a pub­lic space, so that oth­ers can see how close the spree is to being filled.In order to build trust among their users, the com­mu­ni­ty above pro­vides a way to give feed­back; they've cre­at­ed a sep­a­rate com­mu­ni­ty called "spreefeed­back" where users leave com­ments about the trust­wor­thi­ness of the users who launch the sprees. Hacky, but appar­ent­ly effec­tive. Pret­ty cool, huh?On relat­ed notes, Jane Ful­ton Suri's Thought­less Acts?: Obser­va­tions on Intu­itive Design is filled with intrigu­ing exam­ples of every­day hacks in the phys­i­cal world.

Categories
aside

Dr. Phil's worst nightmare

Charles Barkley recent­ly referred to Ron Artest as "Dr. Phil's worst night­mare," but he's kept a cool head dur­ing this series with the Lak­ers. Most­ly. I mean, he's only got, what, three T's? Any­way, he's intense on the court, but I think that even Dr. Phil would be impressed with his abil­i­ty to sep­a­rate his work per­sona from his life per­sona. At last night's post-game press con­fer­ence: "'Five Dol­lar Foot-Long' is one of the best songs … That's a hot song. You've got the FreeCreditReport.com, and then 'Five Dol­lar Foot-long' comes on. When 'Five Dol­lar Foot-long' comes on, they should play that in the club." I feel you, Ron. For the last three weeks, this has popped into my head: "Five. Five dol­lar. Five dol­lar foot loooong. G‑g-g-goin on. At Sub­way." Again. And again.

Categories
the ancient past tv

Their lives on the B‑list

Ques­tion: Is there a bet­ter lit­mus test of 1980's celebri­ty than a guest appear­ance on Love Boat? Wikipedia's mas­ter list includes Corey Feld­man, Pat Mori­ta, Rich Lit­tle, Menudo, the Vil­lage Peo­ple, and the Point­er Sis­ters. Also includ­ed: Lorne Greene, Shecky Green, Pam Gri­er, and Andy Warhol. Sur­pris­ing­ly omit­ted: The Harlem Globetrotters.

Categories
california outdoors

Days of old (growth)

Sarah brought over an excel­lent old book called The Trees of Cal­i­for­nia, by Willis Linn Jep­son. It was pub­lished in 1909, and it had some amaz­ing pho­tos of the red­woods up north.

Redwood - 16 feet in diameter - 1909

The cap­tion reads: "Fig 15. REDWOOD (Sequoia sem­per­virens Endl.) Mak­ing the "under­cut", which deter­mines the direc­tion of the fall, on a tree 16 feet in diam­e­ter. Hum­boldt woods." Pho­to: A.W. Ericson.Amazon sells Trees of Cal­i­for­nia for $75, but you can read it for free at Google Books. Cool.

Categories
featured lit web

Grammar of the future, future, future

Doug LeMoine is puz­zled that the con­struc­tion of Face­book sta­tus updates requires me/him to refer to myself/himself in the third per­son. This for­mat gives struc­ture to the News Feed, but it also encour­ages the updater to craft the update as a sen­tence begin­ning with his/her full name. The forced third-per­son would seem to cre­ate myr­i­ad gram­mat­i­cal prob­lems as peo­ple try to con­struct mean­ing­ful sen­tences, but pret­ty much every­one ignores gram­mat­i­cal cor­rect­ness (not sur­pris­ing). The sur­pris­ing thing is, gram­mat­i­cal­ly incor­rect sta­tus updates don't real­ly seem weird (to me) any­more.(It's pos­si­ble that I'm tak­ing this all far too seri­ous­ly).When I first joined Face­book, I duti­ful­ly wrote all of my sta­tus updates in the third per­son, as the for­mat dic­tates. Because I am both a gram­mar snob and a rule-follower.

Rule-abiding: Doug … his

Facebook third person status update


This con­struc­tion is appro­pri­ate for the feed, but it's also ter­ri­bly awk­ward. Sta­tus­es are usu­al­ly per­son­al, "microblog-ish" bits of con­tent, and it just sounds weird when per­son­al stuff is writ­ten in the third per­son. Recent­ly, I start­ed to lapse into the first per­son in the body of the sta­tus, and while doing so, I cringed in antic­i­pa­tion of the inevitable condemnation. 

Rule-bending? Rule-breaking? Rule-adapting: Doug … my

Facebook first person status update


But so far, there has been no con­dem­na­tion forth­com­ing. Why? Maybe we all quick­ly become blind to the total­ly obvi­ous dis­agree­ment? Or maybe it just makes cog­ni­tive sense that the con­tent of the sta­tus will be in the first per­son? If the lat­ter is true, how soon will we be updat­ing Fowler and Strunk & White to reflect this new kind of usage?