We went to the north of Mexico and lost our minds on a Thursday night. But this strange kid wanted a music video. Just like the bands he liked. I was in love with him at the time.
We had only one take and I was so drunk I had forgot about the shoot until I saw the footage two days later. I had an erection the entire time. This I was told for I operated the camera while being completely naked. I tried to force kiss a girl. She was covered in fake blood. I really like the music. The kid has a myspace or something.
For those who don't know who Oscar Grant is or what happened to him, he was a 22 year old from the SF Bay Area. In the first hours of new years day Grant was involved in a fight on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), cops arrived to break it up, while handcuffed and laying face down Grant was shot in the back by Police officer Johannes Mehserle. This article is not about the exact details of the murder, it's about technology's role in the shooting and aftermath.
While traditional news sources were censoring video footage and giving warnings like "You may find this video disturbing to watch, you may want to turn away" the internet was a buzz with outraged citizens uploading video footage they took and blogging like an angry hornets nest. The following video is a compilation of the traditional news treatment of the murder and then other footage the news did not release.
This is perhaps the largest scale and most publicly documented blatant abusive of power by law enforcement that America has ever seen. Mehserle is the first California police officer in decades to face murder charges for an on-duty incident. However, the "Oakland Riots" that have occured pale in comparison to the LA riots after the Rodney King beatings despite Grant's murder being clearly a larger and more tragic abusive of power. Below is a video of some of the riots.
Perhaps it is simply that racial tensions in America are more at ease- Obama is to be inaugurated just a few weeks after Grant's murder- or perhaps its technology that is responsible for keeping the Bay Area at peace. There has been a tremendous amount of action by citizens in the Bay Area and the world via the web. In this journalistic video "Oakland Riots" a user by the name of panchito captures the feelings of people on the streets after the riots. In the below video a rally has been formed and the leader claims "Our phones are our Weapons," what she means is that she is steering people towards CAPEOAKLAND, a Twitter group dedicated to keeping protesters organized and connected to what is happening.
When an injustice occurs and people feel powerless they get angry, when people get angry and connect with other angry people violence occurs. Before the age of the internet information flowed slowly and came from top down sources (governments, newspapers, and television) which acted as amplifiers to the emotions and actions of the collective people but not thanks to technology we as a populous can now mobilize, idea share and communicate at incredible speeds and reach vast audiences- this is tremendous and will lead us to an incredibly bright new future. Let's turn tragedies like Oscar Grant into triumphs, let's do as Obama said in his inaugural address and user our "imagination joined with a common purpose" to shape the world to become a better place where we don't need armed cops to begin with.
It is a project I hold close to my heart although in its infancy. It has something to do with my own mortality and false sense of superiority. Our first single is called "Tong Tong Soup" Enjoy!
I had an important audition today. It was for a big role for this play written by this talented young writer who reminds me of Shakespeare in the way he understands conflict. And also reminded me of Bergman and its relation to human drama as a perfect genre.
But now its all gone! The opportunity I mean. You know what they say about those. So I guess I wont be drinking a ten year old red wine from Chile during opening night. Even worse I will have to tell my mom over the phone about my new failure. She tries to comfort me but her tone says much more than her careful words. She has conformed. This wasn't hard for her since years of practice makes perfect.
Is it all worth it?
This is what I memorized and performed today in front of an elegant bunch in cashmere sweaters;
Yes, my friends, its that time of year! When the impoverished snowbirds flee their summer habitats and make way for greener, warmer pastu--uhh, cities. And what better way to see these lovely geese in flight than on the 'ol Greyhound!
To see how the truly poor travel, I recommend the 'Hound. Want to know what its like in prison? On the street? The difference between a psychiatric ward and a seat next to you?
Let me list, on this trip thus far (Portland, OR to Phoenix, AZ, with detours in Sacramento, San Jose, and Salinas), that many characters you may meet:
--Lonely fifty-something's looking for you to rest your head on the crook of her arm and right breast. Oh, she might not say much about why or where she's coming from ("I was just visiting..."), but rest assured, her aged face replete with mascara and pink lipstick says plenty.
--A Mexican drug dealer! Wow! We chatted a bit as he boarded from Hayward, CA. I told him of my aimless wandering--a lie--and my seduction techniques in order to secure housing. "Usually, I just seduce fat chicks and sleep on their floor," I say. His stoned eyes lit up with something other than the glow of a pipe. "Dude, you're like the... eh, Zodiac Killer. Check this guy out, ese," he said, gesturing to his friend in the seat in front of him. I told him that he smelled like marijuana, more specifically "a grape Swisher Sweets blunt." He pulled out the plastic wrapper--DIRECT HIT. I sunk his battleship by the time we hit Sacramento.
--Indian girl. "I love your country, but India has better culture." She's right, and I learn that her father is a university-trained musician. "I just cannot stand Mexican music. It gives me a headache." I try to reason with her that because she had not grown up with it nor understand it, she may miss why its important. "IT GIVES ME A HEADACHE!!!" she faux-yelled. I could feel the sadness of Mexicans all around us. Then, I learned that she has no job other than cooking for her brothers and cousins.
--Deadheads! Yes, with a hat and a pin to boot! We chatted briefly about the scum that ride, like a passenger who had an open headwound on our bus (I'm not kidding--his hair was glued to the oozing blood). Deadhead Guy seemed pretty protective of this cross-eyed young girl riding from Seattle to Houston. His old man tendencies came out in one instance, and then he asked me to "take care of her". "I'm too old for that now, but you...," he said with a sigh, "just remember to do the same when you're an old man." Needless to say, I slept alone the next trip.
Now, those are just the outstanding ones I've met, but a quick interview will yield the same answers--recession, women troubles, prison, and just plain kookiness. This isn't Anderson Cooper or CNN--real deal, folks.
TEASER: If you want to really amp up your pulse of the country, may I suggest hitchhiking? On one ride, I met an alcoholic Mexican heroin dealer. He bought me a beer to match the two between his legs and some spicy Asian peanuts. And I got to go on a drug deal, too!
(I'll try to accumulate all the past hitchhiking experiences, from nude beach adventures to having all my stuff stolen in Dunn County, North Carolina... who knows, you might learn something!)
I always say that "killing two birds with one watermelon." People rarely acknowledge it and even more rarely laugh. I'm not sure why that is. My intention is to simultaneously reanimate a dead metaphor and elicit a chuckle- as a high school chess club friend of mine once said "every move must have more than one purpose" I try to apply that principle to my life and humor. It kinda makes sense right? I'm starting to see that sorta thinking in the world around me and it is awesome.
The first instance of a dual-process system like this that I have encountered was when I learned about the web technology company ReCAPTCHA. I'm sure you've seen one of their CAPTCHA's before if you've filled out enough website registration forms- it's one of those annoying little boxes with the scrambled letters that you must enter the correct letters before you may proceed. Ok so you have. So what? Those annoying things are everywhere. What's so special about that one?
CAPTCHA an acronym for CompletelyAutomatedPublicTuring test to tell Computers and HumansApart were created to do just that. The goal is to generate a word that only a human can identify, because computers nowadays can analyze image data and decipher letters and numbers, because we've designed them that way. It's called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and it used for great things like the digital archiving or books and bad things like harvesting email address & data for internet spam. But often times the OCR can't decipher certain words.
The special thing about ReCAPTCHA is that they saw a human problem (verifying a human user) and a computer problem (not being able to identify certain words scanned by an OCR) and devised a brilliant solution to solve both problems at the same time.
The next company I came across that does this, albeit in a very different context and through different means, is TOMS Shoes.
TOMS' mission is to provide 1st world customers (who can afford a $42 - $68 designer slippers) and 3rd world children (who badly need of footwear but can't afford anything) a decent slipper. One could look at this as a sort of transparent form of Robbin Hoodery or as a responsible type of dual-process capitalism.
As the world shifts to a new economic and political paradigm perhaps we should look to cultivate this way of thinking with how we create and how we do business. Imagine fast food deep fryers that output biodiesel, garment companies that recycle used fabrics, passenger trains that act as mobile office buildings, and childhood education that merges two subjects into one.
So in case you've been living under a rock or only listening to your priest/rabbi/mother-in-law for the last year there is this thing at CERN in Switzerland called the Large Hadron Collider and it's supposed to do some pretty amazing things in the science world. Without further ado- Check It Out!!! What What!!!
What do these three men have in common? Blogging, the term for "web log" or posting digital content on the internet, that was coined by Jorn Barger in the late 90s, is what they have in common. Barger, was a computer programmer, and until recently a blogger.
Barack Obama's campaign for presidency extensively used his website and blog. Now that he is President-Elect he launched a 2nd blog called change.gov that aims to make his administration more transparent and accessible to average citizens.
The two American rap icons Kanye West and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs have launched their own blogs. While West's blog focuses more on kitchy designer products and music and Diddy's blog seems to be all over the place ranging from what he looks for in employees (P.Diddy Blog #12), to encouraging people to vote, to musings on exestentialism (Diddy Blog #11) what's most interesting with P. Diddy's blog is, wether he intends this or not, he is bluring the line between celebrity and average citizen- as Obama blurred the line between politician, celebrity and average citizen.
In Diddy Blog 35: "I Am King" (which is embeded below) P. Diddy introduces a mini-movie he made named "I Am King" which he claims is his "audition tape" to become the first black James Bond. Although the film is a high production commercial to market his new fragrance, when juxtaposed against the no production blog entry, it is simultaneously lowering P. Diddy from the pedestal of celebrity to normal citizen. Furthermore, the blog contains a message that is similar to that of spiritual activist Marianne Williamson's passage "Our Deepest Fears" which is often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela.
Blogging is changing the way the human race communicates, understands and runs the world. If you've ever had roommates you'll know how sometimes the best solution is to have a big board with notes in the kitchen so everyone knows who needs to do what chores and who is where doing what. Blogging is like enabling the whole world to do that- let's take a second to understand how jaw-droppingly-awesome that is.
Alela Diane, the beautiful native American folk singer, who is from Joanna Newsome's hometown of Nevada City, is about to drop her new album "To Be Still" on Feb 18th.
Here is the music video for the single "White as Diamonds" from the same album.
I've been an Alela fan for a couple years now. Last april while visiting Berlin I went to an awesome art building called Tacheles. On the top floor is hodge podge bar and the bar tender was playing Alelas last album "The Pirates Gospel." The Germans like her, Portland likes her, and I like her :)
SALVATION SOUP
If ye be an internet explorer who has travelled much distance and grown weary indulge in some of our Salvation Soup and you'll be feeling right as rain in no time. Go ahead, treat yourself to a nourishing bowl. Then either pat the chef on the back or tell him off. That's right this content is "the cream that... rise[s] up to the top" but if, like Jarvis, you think sometimes "shit floats!" Please agree to disagree and let the world know.
