I've been on the road - playing keyboards with PsychicTV and shooting additional interviews for my Frontline documentary.

We played two gigs this weekend, one in DC and the other in Pittsburgh. Nothing against DC whatsoever, but the gigs were like night and day. Surprisingly, though DC was a super-professional venue called the 9:30 Club, with great sound and an able-bodied crew, the experience paled in comparison with the show we did at a bizarre little garage-becoming-a-performance-space called The Eye (or Thee I).

As soon as I walked into the Eye, I knew we were in for a treat. The vibe was just, well, homey and alive and friendly and special. So was the dressing room, complete with a PsychicTV Set, and Psychic Cross embossed bananas!




The people were great, and somehow the fact that we were playing in a giant concrete room with sound reverberating against every surface didn't seem to matter. (Our sound man, Scott, also had something to do with that.)

So, thanks Pittsburgh for special evening that I know I'll always remember.

For the record, I spoke to soundman Scott after the second gig, to see if it really was so much better than the first. He said that although the energy of the crowd was certainly better in Pittsburgh than in DC, the shows themselves were virtually identical - or at least of identical musical value.



So although it felt as though we played so much better in Pittsburgh, we actually played the same. It was the experience of this music that was so different. To me, this suggests that the music itself is just the medium for a very different kind of exchange. It's not a completely value neutral medium at all - but it is also the potential carrier for kind of transmission between people that can't just happen by itself. Like the bread on which you put the peanut butter.

The music may be the medium, but in this case it wasn't the message.

8:50 PM | link | 4 comments

 

I'm doing three gigs in the next week or so as keyboardist with Psychic TV - thought I'd mention them here:

Washington DC: Friday June 25, The 9:30 Club
Pittsburgh PA: Saturday June 26, The Eye
New York NY: Saturday July 3, The Bowery Ballroom

more info

8:47 PM | link | comment

 

I'm just back from the Media Ecology Association's fifth convention, where I delivered what was, for me, a daring keynote challenging media ecologists to claim 'money' as a medium.

Media Ecologists believe that there's no such thing as a value-neutral medium. TV, the Internet, and even cell phones each have various propensities and biases because of the way they work. The same must be true for money - particularly the kind of money we use here in the United States, which is created by fiat and costs interest to borrow. (There are many examples of currencies throughout history that have worked in other ways, with often better results.)

If true media literacy is the ability not only to read and interpret but to author in that medium, then we should engage in the creation of alternative, complementary currencies. Money needn't only be understood as an economy - it could also be understood as an ecology.

So, I had a good time with that one, and then got a big surprise: in honor of Neil Postman (an amazing scholar and one of the founders of media-ecology) the association decided to create an award honoring someone whose work and life exemplified the values he lived by. And while I would have been delighted simply to have been one of the names that came to mind, I ended up winning the award - The Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

How much better does it get? Not much, really. I couldn't think of an aspect of my career I'd want recognized more than that. It's why I got involved in this whole writing thing, anyway: to participate in the great conversation, and encourage others to do so, too. And while I don't know that I'm quite ready for any sort of lifetime achievement award, I can certainly use the encouragement to stay on such a course.

Neil was a student of Marshall McLuhan, and later said of him, "Marshall McLuhan liked me, but he wouldn't have liked my books."

Neil didn't really like my books, either. Not the first ones, anyway. They were too optimistic and uncritical, in his opinion. But he did like Merchants of Cool and Coercion, ardent critic of electronic media that he was.

And while I may not share all of his trepidations about new media, I certainly see myself as a media theorist in the public service - doing whatever is necessary to raise the level of conversation, communication and, most of all, compassion. Without an occasional troupe of ready participants - of which I count anyone reading this post as a member - that wouldn't be possible.

7:57 PM | link | 18 comments

 

Just back from the BEA (Book Expo America) - the giant book industry conference. It really was a zoo. After five minutes in the convention center, I felt like quitting writing. Sales people pushing 'units,' tens of thousands of titles, cheesy convention-floor displays, acres of wasted carpeting. Books shipped and sold like oil or steel.

The weirdest part were the autograph sessions. They line up forty authors at little tables at the end of long roped-off lanes. Then conference attendees line up for free autographed copies of books (a one-dollar donation to charity is reqested). A majority ask for a signature and date, only. Why? Because they're going to sell them, either on Ebay or in their stores.

That's right - immediately next to the signing area (itself a football-field of lanes) is a huge "shipping area" where people can load their books into boxes, and then wheel them over to a temporary UPS facility. So the book-accumlulators simply get as many books as they can carry, load up their boxes, then return for more copies.

I'm sure it's good for the book business, on some level. These are mostly independent bookstores, just looking to make an extra few thousand dollars a year by selling promotional copies of new hardcovers. (I used to buy "cut-out" - so named for the notch in the jacket meant to prevent returns - promo albums from the local record dealer, too.)

Even then, the scramble for sellable product had little to do with books - I mean, with the words inside the books or the order in which those words appear. The longest lines were cooking and gardening authors, whose high-priced, photo-filled books would garner more on resale.

In spite of it all, I did manage to find a number of people who care about the state of books and the ideas they transmit. Cheers to independent publishers, like Disinformation, Amok Press, and Softskull, whose publications continue to break open new minds, and whose determination to run interference for authors like me keeps literary culture alive in the midst of this marketplace.

Meanwhile, in a related saga of the relationship between ideas and the publishing business, Featurewell and Nation Books have just released a volume called Killed:Great Journalism Too Hot to Print, in which one of my own killed stories has been published along with those of George Orwell, P.J. O'Rourke, and Betty Friedan. They're having an event in NYC (I wasn't asked to read, but I'll do my best to be attending) on Tuesday, June 22, at B&N; Astor Place, followed by a book party at KGB Bar.

11:20 AM | link | 11 comments

 

I'll be doing some stuff in Chicago this weekend, celebrating the launch of Club Zero-G, the graphic novel, as well as the paperback release of my book Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism.

There's a Disinfo/Club Zero-G launch party this Friday evening at a club called SUGAR, 108 West Kinzie at North Clark St. 6-8pm.

Then, Saturday, if you're at the BEA, - a big book convention - I'm signing with the "graphic novel" group at 11am, then in the Crown booth for Nothing Sacred at 1:30-2p, and finally back at the Disinfo booth to sign and give away Club Zero-G posters at 3pm.

No time for play Saturday night, sorry. I fly back to NYC Saturday evening.

8:31 PM | link | 6 comments

 

One of the prerequisites for a civic reality is self-sacrifice. I don't mean martyrdom, but the ability to put the needs of the community over one's own, if even only temporarily. The reason the rock lobsters survive on their dangerous single-file trek across the ocean floors is that any one of them is willing to draw a would-be attacker away from the line, at the risk of its own life.

One of the downsides of American consumer messaging is the implied notion that "you deserve it." A better house, a tastier gum, a bigger portion. After all, we're into freedom here in America and, unlike the founding fathers who may have understood freedom in a more dimensionalized way, today we understand freedom as "free to be me." It's the freedom to be an individual - personal freedom. Singular autonomy.

But freedom, like evolution, is not an individual affair. It's a team sport. Unless everyone is free, no one is free. And to keep everyone free, everyone must be willing to sacrifice. Living in a free society with democratic principles means being willing - even looking forward - to participating actively, not simply receiving benefits passively. The latter aren't really any fun, anyway. Whatever we may think of Kennedy today, he was right when he told us to ask what we can do for our country, rather than the other way around.

The danger of literalist Christian fundamentalism in this country, as I see it, is not that people believe in the sanctity of Jesus Christ; it's that they accept the notion that Jesus's sacrifice was less an example than a proxy. As in, "Jesus made the supreme sacrifice so that we don't have to." Now, that's a bastardization even of the Pauline interpretation of the crucifixion - though it may not be inconsistent with Mel Gibson's more recent effort at literalizing the passion. And, of course, there are also those who would point to the suffering of millions in the Shoah as proof that the necessity for self-sacrifice was already paid in more than full, so that this is now the season to reap the bounty that God has bestowed.

Both of these conceits dovetail frighteningly well with the underlying premise of marketing - which is probably why religious fundamentalism and the marketplace have made such compatible bedfellows in American politics. Sacrifice nothing, give yourself everything. You are the only individual who matters - maybe you and your nuclear family - so buy everything you need for yourselves, share nothing, get tax relief, and hire Africans to fight your wars.

I'm not sorry to say it doesn't work that way. In fact, a world in which you are ready to make sacrifices is a much more fun place to live. Just as a relationship that doesn't make you more vulnerable is hardly worth having, a community with no presumption of individual sacrifice for the greater good, is not a community at all.

6:14 PM | link | 21 comments

 

This one's interesting:

TECHNOSHAMANISM: Digital Deities in Cyberspace
by Douglas Groothuis

Summary

Spiritual explorers are increasingly looking to cyberspace to meet the needs of the soul. Many neopagans, occultists, and New Agers deem the technologies of cyberspace as fitting media for their magical experiments and rituals and view the Internet as a mystical plane of being. For some in this movement, which has roots in the counterculture of the sixties, both hallucinogenic drugs and computers help to demonstrate that reality is strictly a matter of our own perception and therefore can be manipulated and even created. However, this enthusiasm for the mystical potential of human technology is misplaced, illogical, and spiritually dangerous. It vainly attempts to build a spiritual reality on the faulty foundation of silicon, instead of on Jesus Christ.

Full essay at http://www.equip.org/free/DC228.htm

12:38 PM | link | 10 comments

 

I stopped doing this years ago; scanning covers of foreign editions of my books and then posting them up here just took up too much time. But this one - the Russian version of Bull (or, in the US, Exit Strategy) is just too bizarre to keep from you. Click on it for the full-size image.

3:08 PM | link | 22 comments

 

PopImage has announced it, so I guess it's real: my first graphic novel, Club Zero-G, is now on the shelves at a book or comic store near you. Check out they're free preview, too.

From the INTERVIEW:

You started this project a while ago, since its inception has your approach to the ideas in Club Zero-G changed in any way? I notice many of the themes present here are also the basis of discussions in your NYU class.

Well, I always saw Club Zero-G as a way to express some pretty esoteric ideas in a very simple, and tangible way. So while the thinking might be inspired by Hegel, de Chardin, or Foccault, the story and characters are really straightforward. On the other hand, the premise for the story came to me in a dream - so while my dreams are probably affected by the kinds of stuff I read, this notion of a world we can all access together while we're asleep came from my subconscious. Really, for a few days after this weird dream, I was convinced that I had been to a real place, inhabited psychically by hundreds of people I knew.
...more

8:46 AM | link | 8 comments

 

Look, I've steered clear of political commentary for a couple of months now. I know it's annoying, and I know it can be a downer. But it's important we take stock of whether we can do anything - as Americans - about our domestic and global predicament. Then, we artsy types can descend back into the hallucinatory haze of our cultural creativity. Yes, the band that played on the deck of the Titanic was quite talented and a good distraction from the matter at hand, but there may yet be a few ways to prevent this boat from sinking and if we don't tend to it, no one will.

I've been working on a documentary about influence professionals - in both the marketing and political sectors - for the past several months. And, believe it or not, even most powerful conservatives seem to realize that our foreign and domestic activities are no longer guided by any sense of over-arching policy. In three short years, and as a result of a partisan decision by the Supreme Court as well as some extraordinary voting irregularities, we ended up with a regime that spent what remained of America's financial capital since the 1990's and it's diplomatic capital since World War II.

This is not business as usual. While protecting national interests will inevitably lead to violent behavior (until the idea of the nation state itself is succeeded by something more evolved) the actions of the US government over the past three years has been spasmodic, unplanned, and unconcerned with consequence. Yes, America has done nasty things in its history - but it doesn't generally do so as unilaterally or with such little regard for the opinions, interests, and lives of others.

And the world recognizes this. For just one example, shortly after 9/11, fewer than twenty percent of Arabs believed that suicide bombings against the United States were justified. Now, 85% believe such attacks are justified.

Civil liberties in the United States are in the process of being suspended, with little probability that John Ashcroft will be utilizing his new powers for effective counter-terrorism. (He'll just keep arresting hookers.) In a bow to Democrats, the Bush regime created the Department of Homeland Security, but kept its director utterly uninvolved in security meetings. It is not a real Department.

Our negative impact on the globe is so severe, that issues such as the deteriorating environment are now of secondary importance. (Yes, global warming is real - even if a handful of former scientists will accept money to say it's not a statistical certainty, just a high probability. Like the probability that your heart hasn't stopped at this very second.) Today, there are shorter and more immediate paths to disaster.

Our promotion of global violence combined with our inability to act in concert with allies, has led to the greater probability of failed states (that are capable of breeding terrorists), military resources stretched beyond capacity (we stripped our tanks in South Korea of their weapons in order to send them to Iraq), and a marked decrease in our ability to gather intelligence. (As Juliette Kayyen remarked at the Nation conference last night, "Arabs around the dinner table all knew Saddam had no weapons - it was just Arab machismo.") Without allies, we are forced to see everything through our own eyes, and incapable of formulating a strategy, much less dimensionalizing one.

The reason I'm writing now is because the most common question I'm being asked at talks and in emails these days is, "Just how bad is it?"

In the past, I've likened myself to someone talking people off a "bad trip." For the most part, I'm an optimist, and I do work hard to help people see their way out of self-destructive mindsets. That's a lot tougher to do, today, as America appears poised to become one of the world's truly misguided, destructive forces. But all is not lost.

We in America are now aware of how precious - and tenuous - is our right to vote. If the corporations set on taking over the voting process have their way, computers made by Diebold will be our new electoral college, and voting 'irregularities' will become institutionalized. Just watch as exit polls and official results move wider and wider apart. (Yes, the machines are rigged.)

That's why the upcoming election is so important: it's one thing to lose our government to a coup d'etat. It's another to allow that regime to stay in power. No, Americans don't like to take to the streets, and our police forces have gotten a bit more violent with those of us who do. But I do believe that we still have the vote, and that we must not let our cynicism and despair keep us from the booths.

That is way bad guys get to win: they frighten or, in our case, disenfranchise the enemy.

So, please vote. Many of those who would normally vote against the current administration will be stricken from the voting rolls, or intimidated away (they'll be told, for example, that police will be present at the polling places to arrest people who haven't paid their traffic tickets, etc.). But even such dirty tricks should not be able to prevent the recall of a sitting president by such high margins. If everyone who wants him out actually goes and votes, Americans can prove to the world who we really are.

Indeed, it will probably take longer than most of us will be alive for America to restore its reputation and standing to early post-World War II levels. But that's really okay. If America were to rejoin the international community, even in a humbled, hobbled fashion, the world would be a much safer and more enjoyable place.

So, in answer to your questions, how bad is it? Really really bad, but not irrevocably so. In fact, it could be even worse; but only if you allow that to happen.



3:19 PM | link | 21 comments

 

In reaction to a recent spate of camera phone voyeurism in places like locker rooms and bleacher seats, a new bill has been put before the US Congress that would make it illegal to videotape, photograph, film, broadcast or record a person who is naked or in underwear in any location a "reasonable person would believe that he or she could disrobe in privacy."

The bill, authored by Congressman (and former FBI agent) Michael Oxley of Ohio, specifically targets those who take pictures of others when they believe that "their private parts would not be visible to the public, regardless of whether that person is in a private area."

The law is really just an extension of existing voyeurism statutes, adding penalties of up to a year in jail, and using language that applies specifically to the added threat to privacy imposed by camera phones used surreptitiously in public changing areas.

Apparently, several cases of camera phone voyeurism - in which people disrobing in public areas have been photographed - have gone unprosecuted because no legal language existed to restrict such use. Now, it appears, Congress is working overtime to catch up with the legal implications of the wireless lifestyle.

In an ironic rebuff to communications technologies, the bill passed the Senate by unanimous, oral vote.

6:57 AM | link | 3 comments

 

The breaking news report of the moment is that, according to
USA Today
"Bomb tears through Four Seasons in Baghdad"
Reuters:
"An explosion ripped through the Four Seasons hotel in Baghdad on Sunday"

But, according to the Four Seasons website, there is no Four Seasons Hotel in Baghdad.

The reports could be referring to the old presidential palace, where many foreigners have been staying, jokingly dubbed the "Four Seasons" for the four busts of Saddam Hussein on the building. My guess is that within a few hours, the headlines will change, or some conditional language will be added.




4:45 PM | link | 5 comments

 

From: http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_127131818.html

Teacher Suspended for Showing Eighth-graders "Inappropriate" Video

May 6, 2004 11:00 am US/Mountain

A Sandy business teacher is on administrative leave after showing her eighth-grade class an inappropriate video.

The Albion Middle School principal says he received phone calls yesterday from parents whose children told them they watched the video Tuesday.

The documentary called Merchants of Cool depicts American marketing strategies executives use to sell products to teens. The video contained sexuality, violence and foul language.

It aired on the Public Broadcasting System in 2001. And though the PBS Web site says the viewers' age level should be at least ninth grade, school officials say the movie is not appropriate for any age level.

The teacher's name has not been released. The school plans to send students home with letters of apology today.


Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press


Thanks to Professor Pan for alerting me to this story!

4:18 PM | link | 15 comments

 

This is the season when people finishing college or grad school begin to wonder about how the heck they're going to get gainfully employed. It seems like such a hurdle - and, from the point of view of a new graduate, almost anybody who has a job doing something related to what they want to do appears to be so safe and secure.

I remember when I was just finishing theater and film schools, envying the technicians on the sets of television shows. They had a place to come in every morning, knew their jobs, got to play with knobs and keyboards, and were part of the production of a creative product. Until I manged to get my own writing career going, I took a number of jobs like this - even running the sound board for a musical in LA with Sam Harris (the 1980's Star Search winner), for $35/hour. It was heaven - working three or four hours a night, getting great pay, and being part of a theater production, even if it wasn't in the most creative capacity.

I remember during a matinee performance I was sipping a juice in the sunny alleyway (alleys are sunny in LA) when one of the producers of the show looked at me and said "is that a joke?" He was pointing at the old Princeton t-shirt I was wearing. "No, I went there," I said - for once not employing the sheepish embarassed tone I use when admitting I went to such an institution.

"Yeah, right," he replied, laughing. He couldn't believe that someone with a Princeton education could end up so low - doing sound for a Star Search winner's musical play instead of...working for Goldman Sachs, I suppose.

But that job - along with the massive schedule of SAT tutoring I did during those years - was precisely the right thing for me. The career of no career, if you will, total freelance, no commitment, and the time to develop my own set of qualifications and properties. I wrote a few screenplays (some got optioned; none made) met interesting people, found out about the whole 'cyber' thing long before other journalists, began to write about it, got a book deal...

And to this day, I've avoided associating myself with an institution, or even getting a job with a W2 (employment) instead of a 1099 (freelance). (Even my teaching at NYU is a part-time gig.) The few institutions with whom I've attempted to engage have seemed corrupt to the core. Not corrupt in the Republicans-rigging-elections sense, but in the sense that they no longer stand for whatever it was they were supposed to stand for, they stand for themselves. Even the non-profit foundations I've been invited to participate with have seemed more concerned with themselves and their reputations than their missions. Corporations, well, the problem with working for one is that they treat people like cogs rather than autonomous being. Even though corporations are not real - they are agreements, almost like computer programs - they are treated as more important than the people in them. This is intrinsically de-humanizing.

And it's not even secure. Which is what I wanted to explain in this roundabout way: jobs are less secure than building your own franchise, of yourself. I've taken the department store model: write for a number of different places, teach a bit, do some movie stuff, even create some music. Sometimes the jobs are less fun (like writing some kind of analysis of business, or editing a medical report) and sometimes they are more fun (like writing a novel). But everything I do adds to my own resume and list of achievements in a very real way.

Investing one's time an energy into a single corporation isn't necessarily less creative - but it is, ironically, less secure. Corporations just let people go. They give severance and all, but then it's over - and all you can say is what you did for that company. You don't have things out there with your own name on them. And because all of your income came from that single source, once it's gone - it's gone. You are back on the street.

What I've come to realize is that the street is the safest place to be. There's no fear, here, because you're already here. (It's where you are, anyway, even if some company has given you cubicle space - but that's a bit existential for spring.) Your employment is as diversified as your ability to multitask. And the more different kinds of work you take on, the more media in which you can play. It's not a jack-of-all-trades problem, at all, since the more different arenas in which you work, the more clear it gets what you bring to each one of them.

So please: think twice before you let the fear of the unknown pusch you towards a totally encompassing job that molds who you are rather than letting you define your existence from the inside out. A bad economy is no excuse - it exposes the false promise of employment, and suggests just how much safer it is outside.

Find security in your freedom, and true industry in your independence. You're out.

8:22 AM | link | 16 comments