Quote of the day…
Sep 30, 2009 philly
Grenades Brought To Mall Movie Theater
“As they tried to arrest him, he allegedly said, ‘What’s the problem? I can take them anywhere I want. They’re my grenades.’”
Welcome to Philly.
Jim Carroll
Sep 30, 2009 etc.
So the legendary Jim Carroll passed a few weeks ago.
I try to stay away from just regurgitating information here and trying to contextualize it to my life or things that are important to me, but I neglected to post anything about it.
I was a huge Jim Carroll fan. One of my friends, Janine, always cries when she watches The Basketball Diaries saying it reminds her of me. Doesn’t that make me so very tragically hip and fatally cool?
In any event, I liked what the guy wrote. I was all hyped when I first moved to Philly and saw that he was doing a book signing at Borders or B&N for Void of Course: Poems 1994 – 1997. I knew or heard he was in recovery, in NA, so I was trying to figure how I could in some secret code let him know I knew he was in recovery, and I was in recovery too. In theory this would lead to the realization we were kindred spirits, and we would go off to meetings, then off to coffee shops and have some great, deep conversations. I thought the perfect opening line to this play and as he signed my copy of the book, I stuttered to him, “You know Jimmy K. too?” A reference to the founder of Narcotics Anonymous. Recovering alcoholics ask the question, “Are you a friend of Bill W.’s?” as their secret handshake, so I figured this was a pretty good shot. I remember a frail and gaunt looking Carroll squinting at me saying, “Who?” as he scribbled in my book. Embarrassed and realizing he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about, I left.
Funny enough there was a girl from Drexel I was trying to smash (Mya?), and I knew she would appreciate an autographed copy of the book, so I went home, got another book of his, went back, stood in line, and without saying anything, got another book signed. And I was right. The girl really, really appreciated it. But apparently not enough to fuck.
Jesus. That story wasn’t even the point of this post. The point is that the NYT recently ran another piece about Jim Carrol’s last days, and the nearly completed book he was working on at the time of his death. (Interestingly enough, going to NA meetings and hanging out in coffee shops… Jim, what the fuck?!) The piece has some interesting insights into his day to day life, and also offers a glimmer of hope that the book might see daylight next year. Fingers crossed.
Tags: Jim Carroll, NYT
This book…
Sep 29, 2009 etc.
Is fucking crajee.
Blank Spots on the Map
The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World
Trevor Paglen – Author
The adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer’s road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and CIA “black ops” sites
Trevor Paglen is a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur. His research into areas that officially “don’t exist” leads him on a globe-trotting adventure into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empire—the unmarked spots on a map, where our military conducts its most clandestine operations. Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire’s annual budget is over $40 billion, yet almost no one knows how it works or what it does.
Paglen spies on the covert site at Groom Lake, Nevada, taking photos from a mountain top thirty miles away. He visits the widow of Walter Kazra, who, while working construction at Groom Lake, was poisoned by the toxic garbage pits there. The U.S. Air Force defense to his estate’s suit? The base does not exist. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
Whether it’s from a hotel room in Vegas, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Central American jungles, Washington, D.C., suburbs, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, Paglen’s reporting is impassioned, rigorous, relentless—and eye-opening. Blank Spots on the Map is an exposé of a world that, officially, isn’t even there.
Is transparency the new objectivity?
Sep 29, 2009 journalism
I thought this was a pretty good post over at Nieman. It’s the old guard being wary of the new guard, mixed in with a little economic and industry implosion, trying to figure out where the line is, when in reality it’s somewhat subjective.
I don’t want to rehash the whole article, it’s pretty damn good so go check it out.
Tags: Nieman Journalism Lab
Charlie Rose
Sep 29, 2009 journalism
I have always thought that Charlie Rose did some of the best interviews on television. Most people around my age have no idea who he is, and that’s probably due to the fact he is on PBS or he isn’t a huge personality who wants to be a celebrity or public figure. He just wants to talk to them. And the total is around 6,500 interviews. From all sorts of backgrounds. Politicos, artists, sports figures, actors and actresses, his website makes a huge amount of them available to watch online.
Fortune just did a great piece on him.
Tags: Charlie Rose, PBS
How we got here…
Sep 29, 2009 journalism
Into this financial mess anyway. I’m fascinated by it, and don’t understand it at all. This American Life did a show breaking it down into terms even Chris Malo can understand. This American Life does a good job of translating everything and providing first-hand accounts and narratives from the industry insiders who participated in the economic collapse. Fascinating.
390: Return To The Giant Pool of Money
In which we mark the anniversary of the economic collapse and the anniversary of Planet Money: recapping some of the original episode, The Giant Pool of Money, and finding out what’s happened to all those guys in the year since.
Prologue.
Host Ira Glass talks with NPR correspondent Adam Davidson about a black tie event he attended in the spring of 2008. The event was an awards dinner for finance professionals who created the mortgage-based financial instruments that nearly brought down the global economic system. Adam checks back with one of the men he met at that dinner and learns how his views have changed, pretty radically, over the last 18 months. (5 minutes)
Act One. Spring 2008.
We replay sections from the original Giant Pool of Money, in which This American Life producer Alex Blumberg teams up with NPR’s Adam Davidson to tell the story of how the U.S. got itself into a housing crisis. They talk to people who were actually working in the housing, banking, finance and mortgage industries, about what they thought during the boom times, and why the bust happened. We hear from a mortgage company sales manager who was making over a million dollars a year and spending his time clubbing with celebrities. We meet a man who got into the mortgage industry after getting hired away from his previous job as a bartender. And we follow a Marine who was tricked into an unaffordable mortgage as he tries to save his house from foreclosure. (30 minutes)
Act Two. Fall 2009.
We catch back up with the people we met in 2008, to see how they’ve fared over the last 18 months. We talk to Clarence Nathan, who in 2008 received a half million dollar loan that he said he wouldn’t have given himself; Jim Finkel, a Wall Street finance guy, who put together and managed complicated mortgage-based financial securities; Richard Campbell, the Marine who was facing foreclosure; and Glen Pizzolorusso, the mortgage company sales manager who led the life of a b-list celebrity. (19 minutes)
The previous week’s show are only up for a week, so check it out while you can here.
More podcasts from This American Life about the financial crisis, done in conjunction with Planet Money, here.
Tags: economy, NPR, Planet Money, podcast, This American Life
Billy Wolf
Sep 27, 2009 etc.
One of the most surprising things about this blog is that Billy actually likes it. When he told me he liked it, I was positive he was fucking with me. Unless it’s MILF porn or his first person military shooter game, I didn’t think Billy liked knew anything else existed online.
So this post is for Billy.
Hi bud.
And here’s his very on-point letter to the City Paper printed a few weeks ago:
Dear Philly Fringe …
I’ve been going to the Fringe Festival for more years than I can remember and even volunteered one year to help out. I remember the days when my crew would do 10 to 15 shows a festival. Most were less than spectacular but there were always a few gems in the mix. You could just never tell in advance where the sleeper was. Last Friday I went to buy three tickets online for a one-hour performance, only to find that the tickets were $30 each. I was further shocked when I saw that all of the “Live Arts” shows were $25-$30. Now, please, save the whole Live Arts-Philly Fringe distinction crap. The whole point of this was to provide a platform where artists who could get no other venue (i.e., “iffy artists”) could perform and also to give Philly a greater cultural reach with acts outside of our area. But $30 for a one-hour show?! Honey, if you were that good you’d be on Broadway, not Broad Street. In years gone by, it would be no problem to go to a show and if it wasn’t good just go to the next one. That was the greatness of the festival. I have to say, if I spent $90 and it was some experimental test run of somebody’s vision that didn’t work out, I would have been pissed. This commercialization of the festival makes it financially impossible to really take risks on what you see and that, I believe, was the whole point. They might be planting the seeds of their destruction because my friends and I are boycotting all Live Arts shows and this is not the first year we haven’t been pleased.
Missing the old Fringe!
Billy Wolf
Downtown
Tags: Billy Wolf
Judge Rules Against Gmail User After Bank Screws Up
Sep 27, 2009 etc.
Saw this over at Mashable the other day. I had read about the story before, but was disappointed and a little shocked the courts ruled in favor of Google. I am a huge fan of Google. I think their Gmail is (relatively) flawless (except for this and this recently), I use Reader and Docs religiously, got an early Voice invitation (still sitting on two of them), am hoping for a Wave invite and recently set up an iGoogle homepage. I think the Fast Flip is pretty dope and am interested in the Sidewiki. On my Gmail and iGoogle pages I have a ton of useful widgets to customize the pages for what works for me.
I know the arguments against Google, against their data tracking and mining. It doesn’t/didn’t bother me. Some of my friends are afraid of the big brother syndrome. Others (Missy) is highly upset that Google collects, bundles and sells information about her. I guess… But I am willing to overlook it all because of the exceptional products and services they offer.
What bothers me about this case though, is that the user did nothing wrong. The bank fucked up. The bank erroneously sent the information to the wrong Google account. Yet the courts sided with the banks. Sometimes I don’t know why I am surprised by rulings like this any more.
Plus there’s questions about the security of Google Docs. Both from the question of someone being able to or finding a way to access documents, and also from the question of how far will Google go to protect their customers information and documents from the government and/or courts. If this case is any indicator, apparently your Google affairs aren’t that secure and Google won’t stand up or fight for the rights of the people that use their services.
Tags: google
ProPublica
Sep 25, 2009 journalism
ProPublica has a few interesting stories that went up.
- Former Iraq Security Contractors Say Firm Bought Black Market Weapons, Swapped Booze for Rockets- Having recently read Big Boy Rules, seeing how under-reported and misunderstood the role of private security companies are playing in the war overseas, found this report interesting, but not surprising.
- Phantom School Districts Tagged for Stimulus Dollars- Hmh. Eleven schools in Kansas are getting over a half million in stimulus dollars? Not surprising. What might be surprising, is that the schools have been closed. Some since 2006. One of the things that ProPublica does, is ask for people’s help in going through the list, and pointing out any abnormalities. That’s how this story was discovered. By a reader using the tracker for their state.
Tags: ProP, ProPublica
