My Virtual Monocle Has Popped Out
Hey so how about that The New Yorker Magazine? With them funny animal cartoons and all that erudite whimsy and shit? It is perhaps the only publication in New York that doesn’t have escort ads in the back — the only one I’d read, anyway.
So they’ve got this fiction podcast. (Link goes to iTunes store) It’s not as accessible as The Moth podcast (see earlier post) but it’s just as interesting.
Contemporary writers read classic pieces of fiction from the magazine’s archives, then discuss their importance. I know this already sounds like a homework assignment, but it’s actually pretty great. In “Luck of the Draw”, A.M. Homes reads Shirley Jackson’s classic “The Lottery”.
I remember when we read “The Lottery” in high school. Our English teacher had us collect stones outside, then huck them at her TA. True story! The TA was pissed. She had senioritis and here she was being pelted by sophomores with rocks. And they weren’t the smooth kind described in the story. They were the prickly rocky kind. They hurt.
She’s lucky we didn’t throw them very hard — technically we could have stoned her to death and gotten off scott free because we were just following orders.
So — the New Yorker Fiction podcast. Pretty great! Not as accessible as The Moth podcast with its stories of twins making out and people being stabbed nearly to death, but pretty cool in a fancy, upper-crusty kind of way. CATCH IT
Hello, I’m New Here
I just realized that I’m coming into two established organizations as a newbie. They are this one and this one too.
I haven’t been new at a place in a long time. This is going to be interesting and weird. In fact I can’t remember the last time I was new somewhere. I tend to not change my surroundings very much.
My plan is to just shut up and observe. See how and why things are done. If everyone suddenly puts a fez on their head, I too will wear a fez. If a rite of passage is to secretly place a pumpkin on Philip Seymour Hoffman’s roof in the middle of the night, then that pumpkin’s going up on that mother f’in roof.
It’s kinda delightful to be new somewhere — to not know things and to need to learn them. Feels like I still got space to grow and things to do, and people to teach me things.
Good things, champ. Good things.
Drawn To The Light and Trapped There
Hey people. So, The Moth: Live storytelling by every day people in front of packed audiences. Some of the most interesting true stories I’ve ever heard are collected on their website. Listen to some here.
And now they have a podcast. (Link goes to the iTunes store)
Some highly recommended stories that I’ve listened to on their podcast:
- Ed Gavagan: Victims Impact — A man tells the story of how he was randomly marked for murder by five gang members as part of their initiation; nearly stabbed to death but survived, only to go through so much more.
- Paul Bacon: Bad Cop — A cop tries to catch a few Zs, accidentally locks himself in the back of his own squad car. OPPSS
- Ted Conover: Sing Sing Tattoo — A corrections officer tries to decipher the poem tattooed on the back of an inmate. Its origin is surprising.
Many more await you. All true, all wise and interesting, and all for free! FREE!! What a country!
I also know a place where you can get bacon for free. It’s called heaven, and you have to die first. But you can listen to The Moth Podcast right now! What a plane of existence!
Making “Keyboard Cat” Your Ringtone Puts a Weird Spin on Every Call
Hey I really like this little dude. He’s becoming a bit of a meme now (I heard he was featured on CNN last night), but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for a very talented cat that can play the piano. Although, he does seem to put on airs about himself — he’s hot shit and he knows it — but I like his style so much that I’ll forgive him.
So the meme now is that people will add Keyboard Cat to the end of existing Internet videos. For instance, Keyboard Cat playing off the wheelchair/escalator incident, crazy old Miss Teen South Carolina, and that kid telling his mom he’s an atheist now. There’s even a freakin website of these: PlayHimOffKeyboardCat.com.
I’m not sure what I find so funny about Keyboard Cat. Is he just absurd? I hate to use this word in relation to comedy, but is he “random”? I don’t know. I just like him. He’s cute and he makes the sun shine.
So Keyboard Cat is my ringtone now. This puts a weird spin on every call I get. Like when my mom calls or when the hospital called to let me know that my face transplant is a go. Keyboard Cat is the sad trombone of the 21st century — wahhh wahhhh waaahhhhhhh….!
Update: Keyboard Cat is apparently the brainchild of a genius named Charlie Schmidt (original video here.).
I am told that the video was shot twenty years ago, and the cat featured in it is now dead… Poor kitty. But I’m sure that he’s doing his thing up in cat heaven.
Also, an anonymous, enterprising soul created the Keyboard Cat ringtone that you can find here.
“The Language Archive” and a Lazy Sunday at South Coast Rep
There are a lot of questions as to what the continued viability is of theater in modern times. For the last century movies/the cinema has been well established as a medium for storytelling. Video games are now coming into their own as well. What about live theater? Will live theater continue to last?
If you want to go see some live theater, there’s no better place to do it than South Coast Rep. It’s a bit of a schlep from my place — about 45 minutes down the I-5 into Orange County. But man — what a beautiful facility.
This past Sunday I went to go see a friend’s new play reading at SCR — Julia Cho’s “The Language Archive”. It was a beautiful, cerebral, emotional play. It had laughs, energy, lots of interwoven threads underneath. Just the kind of stuff I like to see.
It’s a play about language and marriage — there’s a linguist, his wife that’s leaving him, and a lot of insight on how people communicate and form their own languages through their relationships. It’s about how relationships begin and fall apart and come back together.
It is a great play, and I can’t wait to see it staged.
And that’s what theater is about — it provides a place for stories that can’t be told in any other medium. Stories that are eloquent in words and relationships but aren’t necessarily visual stories or stream-of-consciousness stories — stories about people and the infinite permutations of interaction that occur between them.
There will always be stories like this, so I have a feeling that theater will always be alive. And a study of theater is essential for anyone who works in other mediums, or anyone who loves storytelling.
Anyway, cruising down to OC and checking out a wonderful piece of storytelling in development is a great way to spend a Sunday.
Electronic Messages from a Distant Shore
I was having lunch in NYC with Joel and Dan — Korean food, naturally (Hangang at 34 W. 32nd Street, recommended!) — when we started talking about iPhone apps. I just started playing with the developer’s kit, so I’ve been looking for something to work into an application.
Joel pointed out an app called Distant Shore. This is a very interesting anonymous chat client. It works like this: You are on a beach. You walk around, leave footprints, find seashells in the sand. When you collect five seashells, you get a bottle.
Once you have a bottle you can write a message and throw it into the ocean. Someone that is also running Distant Shore will anonymously receive your message and can then reply to it with their own bottle.
You get some interesting conversations going. Some that are simple but telling. For instance, I sent out a bottle with a message that said, “Don’t worry — it’ll be all right.” The reply: “Are you sure?” My reply: “Yes.” Their reply: “Thanks.”
Sometimes you get uninteresting responses (Me: “Good names for a dog?” Reply: “Max or Belle”), but other times you get some really thoughtful ones:
Me: “Favorite TV show of all time?”
Reply: “Waltons for family drama. I Love Lucy for laughs. Star Trek (original) for campiness but making us believe in the impossible. All in the Family for daring to be real about issues. ER for longevity and consistency in telling a good story. MASH for helping point out the absurdities of war at a time we were in Vietnam. As you can see I am older and grew up living it.”
That’s a lot more information and thoughtfulness than a person would normally give a complete stranger. But there it is — anonymity plus an interesting interface gives people an opportunity to confess, advise, ask questions, and provide answers in a unique sort of way.
Plus since you “work” for the opportunity to send messages and replies (it takes time to gather shells and seek out bottles), each opportunity to communicate is precious. You don’t want to throw them away.
Or you can just be absurd. It’s interesting how anonymity allows you to truly be yourself in some ways.
A bit of a left turn here (but related to the post above) is something I really love about NYC: Standing on the subway platform and seeing a train go by.
Through the windows you see people on the train whoosh by — zip zip zip — and you see a snapshot of each person’s life for a split second. Oh, that lady has two little kids, one looks happy and the other one’s sad — I wonder why?.. There’s a young man, I wonder what he’s got in that box that he’s holding real close… That woman is beautiful, I just fell in love with her…
And then the train goes by and they’re gone. Zip zip zip, like ghosts. And they’re out there living their lives in parallel — so many mysteries, a mystery in every window. And maybe you’ll meet or maybe you’ll live your life and they’ll live theirs, and that moment you saw them is the closest you will ever come to knowing who they really are.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
