loveitallabove

"The Ghost Dance was a technology. Literally, a technology is a systematic practice or knowledge of an art, and though we almost always apply the term to the scientific and mechanical, there is no reason not to apply it to other human-made techniques for producing desired results. Maybe the best definition would be: a technology is a practice or technique, or a device for altering the world or the experience of the world. To propose annihilating the inexorable march of history and the irreversibility of death was to propose a technology as ambitious as a moonwalk or a gene splice." - River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West Rebecca Solnit p. 114

So I was at Disneyland, staying at the Doubletree in Anaheim , and I read USA Today. What can I do?... Realism and optimism are recession 'musts' Plain Talk By Al Neuharth, USA TODAY Founder You're getting all kinds of advice on how to survive this recession. Some is sound. Some is silly. It's been my good fortune to have lived through 15 recessions and one depression in my 84 years. Based on those experiences, I suggest you not only will survive but ultimately thrive if you practice the proper mix of these two recession "musts": • Realism. • Optimism. Reality is that we've been in a recession since last December, even though it took the National Bureau of Economic Research a year to figure it out. That reality means that if you haven't already done so, you should tighten your belt as much as necessary. Optimism means you must understand that if you handle this problem properly, you can ride high on the wave of recovery and prosperity that follows eve...

Blockbuster Openings, Lackluster Box Office By Michael Cieply "What a year for movie openings. I mean, who could forget 'Twilight'? Teenagers screaming for free tickets outside the dual-theater Westwood premiere here. Mayhem in the malls. Girls thirsting for Robert Pattinson. Box-office projections growing bigger and bigger as online vendors sold out theater after theater. It was amazing. When all is said and done, maybe 24 million tickets will be sold to that movie, based on current sales. That makes it almost as big as, what? 'Patch Adams,' the No. 10 movie of 1998. Or roughly the size of 'George of the Jungle,' which placed No. 13 the year before." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It’s all great fun — and, in the heat of the moment, can seem tantalizingly real. Remember the high-heeled stampede to...

Everyone wants to write a book. And now everyone can. This seems sort of true, though who and what “everyone” means is certainly relative. There are pirates off Somalia and desperate poverty in every region of the globe. But indeed everyone means a lot more of everyone than it did one hundred years ago, even fifty. It's FFFin' beautiful. Look at me write here. It ain't no book, but it sure is published. But on the other hand the printed book industry's crapped out. A good friend who just had a really successful run on a new book says her publisher could care less about the writer. And according to recent OpEd in The New York Times by Timothy Egan : I know: publishers say they print garbage so that real literature, which seldom makes any money, can find its way into print. True, to a point. But some of them print garbage so they can buy more garbage. My mind is still processing the time I spent reading Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: W...

interesting piece re:twitter and friend feed . Inneresting because metrics, value systems and honest assesment of the new life that is on-line. looking forward. james P.S. is it true that twitter won't update my facebook status any longer? is it a feud? or am I just being punished?

From The Chronicle: Year-End Giving Update Charities have chalked up mixed results as they seek donations in the final weeks of the year, reports The Chronicle of Philanthropy . Thirty-seven of the 66 charities The Chronicle contacted said that contributions had dropped this year. The remaining 29 said contributions were flat or had risen. Even organizations that have received big increases are worried, however, because they say demand is increasing fast and they are facing cuts in government aid. The Chronicle will continue to report on year-end results in the coming days; feel free to send your results to editor@philanthropy.com.

We went to Disneyland this weekend. It was the trip of a lifetime. I hope there will be others -- trips of a lifetime and Disney excursions -- and I hope this one stays up there amongst both lists. Coming down, Poppop drove the whole way and there was SNOW in what’s known as the “grapevine.” So we did not go the inland route, but followed down the 101 toward Los Angeles. We did not see the snow, but we’d see it on the way back. Altogether, including a Mickey D’s stop and some sushi well outside L.A. – maybe even before Oxnard -- it was fourteen hours. For me Oxnard was made famous by Ill Repute as the "Land of No Toilets." They had a ”gold vinyl” release of their record “What Happens Next/Oxnard - Land Of No Toilets.” We drove through Oxnard, needed a toilet and found no useful exits. I'm not sure if that’s what Ill Repute meant. But it sure felt true on this trip. Big driving in California is still so weird for me, because I do not know California and it is ...

MILK so effectively stays on-story: Harvey Milk awakens at forty; moves to San Francisco with his new lover Scott; Milk helps develop the Castro as a gay Mecca; runs and runs for office until redistricting turns in his favor and he joins the City’s Board of Supervisors; as the first openly gay elected official in the United States Harvey Milk permanently and irrevocably affects positive change in the American psyche; lastly, he is shot down by a jilted co-worker, shot violently, tragically tumbling down with a banner advertising Tosca at the Opera in clear view. All of this is historical fact (don’t know about the Tosca banner; though if the real-life friends and community leaders who helped to develop the film chose this fictitious embellishment, more power to them…). So I am not ruining anything, and in fact one of the film’s strengths is that, like some other great works of art , it starts from the end. Diane Feinstein’s announcement of the assassination kicks off the film. Penn ...

The closing scene of the film is an elegiac march of candle bearers by the tens of thousands down Market Street – artful harbingers, mournful bellwethers. I remember that image, as a child, on the national news…a strange media silence, before the ridiculousness of the “Twinkie defense” took hold. MILK mentions the “Twinkie defense,” only as a footnote and right before the credits roll. The movie forced my psychic recall of the march and forced away any possible familiarity with Twinkies, junk food junkies , or the eerie old hit penned by Larry Groce that got a lot of play around the same time as Rick Dees' Disco Duck . Meaninglessness. It’s odd and amazing to consider how much the world was upside down when Harvey Milk was being as serious as he could be, as serious as humanly possible. He said then, “My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.”

I saw MILK two weeks ago. I knew MILK would be one of the few movies I saw in 2008. As the father of a two-and-a-half year old boy, my wife and I do not get out to the movies much. When the movie’s forthcoming started a buzz around the S.F. Bay Area, with Sean Penn (a Bay Area celeb) playing the once San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, I knew this one was necessary. And because of Milk himself. MILK. It's important for now and future generations. I was a kid when he was shot. As someone from the east coast, I knew more about the “Twinkie defense” than Harvey Milk himself, somewhat and until now. Sean Penn’s MILK was equally as much a compliment to Penn’s skills as an actor as the characterization was a testament to the fullness of being that Harvey Milk embodied. You got the sense there was enough Milk for Penn to climb up into and populate. In the film, there could have been more about Milk’s philosophy, more about his love life or more about his abasement or spirit...

This Ron Nagle /Don Ed Hardy show at Rena Bransten Gallery is the bomb! This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime things - a mass conflagration of thoughts, adventure & commodity crammed into a small gallery in downtown San Francisco for a brief period of time. It takes you from the distribution of "china," Empire, tattooing and the body-politic politics of body, to pop & funk and the flac·cid·i·ty of late twentieth-century; post-nuclear aesthetics, back around through high-fire ceramics to the commercial distribution of amalgamated mass culture through the recent success of Don Ed Hardy in every Macy's and Nordstrom's in America. It's quiet. But if you can hear the noise, this show's the bomb. And the old guys sit around in the gallery by way of the power of video and say piss and sh*t and f@ck and everything. Jesse Hamlin wrote a nice brief intro in the Chron's Date Lines: News from the Bay Area arts scene : Ron Nagle and Don Hardy have been ch...

In an article showcasing fans at the AC/DC show at the Oracle Arena on 12/4, SFWeekly called out Karen's coworker for whom I did her Angus poster . Caption reads: "One fan shows us a poster made by a Berkeley artist." Comment (1) reads: "Christopher…Great pic of me and my prized Angus painting. Thank you! Artist credit goes to James Leventhal. But all the credit goes to Angus last night for a front row experience of a lifetime! Cheers, Kelly" Comment by Kelly K. from San Rafael on Dec 5th, 2008, 18:10 pm

MAGNES & artist Jonathon Keats bring together a panel of scholars for a disputation, a " synod ". All this as part of the MAGNES project www.magnes.org/atheon Very successful. Panelists included: Dr. Robert A. Burton, neurologist and author of, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not (2008) Professor John Campbell, Professor of Philosophy at UC Berkeley and author of Past, Space and Self (1994) and Reference and Consciousness (2002) Dr. Ilan Roth, Senior Physicist, Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, and Co-Investigator on the Cluster satellites Alla Efimova, Ph.D, Acting Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Magnes

...and painted for the first time in what feels like forever. Angus Young commission. She's gonna see AC/DC and is hoping to get it signed!

Y'know, I can't really say it's the new administration yet, and I guess I know that The Times only prints what its supposed to, but what a news day! ...according to The New York Times: There's dancing on the streets of Baghdad. Because "Pact, Approved in Iraq, Sets Time for U.S. Pullout" Karim Kadim/Associated Press Iraqi policemen danced with a United States Army soldier in Baghdad on Sunday, the day Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact. Dan Rather "...has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network." Germany’s Green Party Elects First Ethnic Turk as Leader Jens-Ulrich Koch/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Cem Ozdemir, whose parents immigrated from Turkey as guest workers, joined Claudia Roth on Saturday as party co-leader.

After 8 years of work- Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California comes out...officially...tomorrow!

After I posted the piece below " Facebookedness First Finale (part III): The 80s Punk Rock Made Me Do It ," I got "friended" by a David Mathison. His "Google Alert" went off, because I quoted Jello Biafra saying, "Don't hate the media, BE the media." Mathison's self publishing a book entitled Be the Media . David wrote, "Yeah I got a Google alert set for "Be The Media." Your tweet and blog came up, thought we should connect. I quote Jello in my book, www.BeTheMedia.com, of course ;-)" You gotta check out Mathison's photo gallery . It's him all runnin' around the country holding his book out in front of web-and-otherwise celebrities. Included are Slash of Guns & Roses (bring on the Chinese Democracy! and the free Dr. Pepper ...) and there's a great shot of Mathison and Bill Moyers pushing each others' book forward at what looks like a book buyers conference. Also on deck are Vint Cerf, Arian...

About a new book by Jed Perl concerning Watteau NY Times reviewer Richard B. Woodward writes, "Among his finds is a taped conversation about Watteau from 1956 in which Jean Cocteau tells Louis Aragon that “all that smoky beauty somehow predicts the storm to come. The people at those parties of Watteau’s are like people coming together as a result of a railway accident, or during a halt or bombardment when they have left their cars on the road.” Overall the review is harsh. I am not a fan of Jed Perl's. But I LOVE this quote above. (Click the pic to read the full review.)

The day after Rosh Hashanah I went to hear Jello Biafra and V. Vale speak at the all-ages, Berkeley, mainly punk venue called 924 Gilman . (When I was growing up in the eighties, Jello Biafra -- lead singer of one of the most important U.S. Punk Bands the Dead Kennedys -- was the biggest thing…at least amongst the “punks” in my progressive high school. I never got to see him or hear him in-person, though. None of us did back in Baltimore. The Dead Kennedys did not come to my town, so getting to hear him finally and see him twenty years later as an adult now living in the Bay Area meant a lot to me.) 924 Gilman was so intimate. The evening made me want to find old friends with whom I had lost touch. And the New Year made be circumspect. Like a lot of forty or almost-forty somethings, I sent pictures or “mobile blogged” what I had from my cell phone. I wrote in my blog: “This evening was some real lo-fi, D.I.Y. …that reminds me of the youthful energy that's got me to where I...

Maybe with the possible exceptions of Chuck Klosterman and Douglas Rushkoff , few writers have spoken for me. Maybe there ain't much to say. Or it's all been said before. What is now intriguing to witness is that history, with the tools at-hand, is being written "live," on-line and together. Soon we will all move to video almost completely, but till then there's still a lot of writing go on. Not just to focus too much on writing/typing, but it's a part. With these tools, we are scanning the analog and making it digital for us to share with each other. This is happening thanks to Amazon and in our living rooms. And on the other end, the Christian Science Monitor just announced this week that they are doing away with their print version entirely to continue on-line in perpetuity. There is certainly a movement afoot. While my story may be personal, the societal implications are huge. Think of it like the thesis of one age – 80’s grassroots alternative rock...

Right around Yom Kippur this year, I did something on-line that felt really good. I was “social networking.” Over the past several months social networking sites like Facebook have overtaken porn sites in popularity, according to Reuters and an article last week in the UK Guardian . The article has been posted a lot on Facebook profiles and received a lot of diggs at DIGG.com . Everybody’s doing it, or at least “three in four US online adults,” according to a recent report by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. And that’s what is so amazing. The massive proliferation of Facebook and LinkedIn has brought it closer to the white pages than any earlier iteration of America On-line or other “services.” I been doing things on-line for years, right? But something was different this time. What did I do on Facebook? I atoned. I made recompense. And I reconnected with a group of old high school friends through Facebook about a stretch of time when we all defined ourselves together for a...

Angela Hill writes in today 's Oakland Tribune: Whenever my brain needs a good teasing, I turn faithfully to San Francisco conceptual artist and all-around cerebral confounder, Jonathon Keats, well known in Bay Area art circles for such works as punching a time clock whenever he had a thought, or producing "intergalactic art" from radio signals from outer space, or developing a prototype voting booth out of a Ouija board. Now he's done it again with his latest public art installation called, "The Atheon: A Temple of Science for Rational Belief," which will be up through February inside a two-story downtown Berkeley building at Harold Way and Kittredge Street. Right now, you can only see it from the outside as the building undergoes rehab to become the new Judah L. Magnes Museum. And to the naked eye, the Atheon appears merely as pretty blue stained-glass windows. But wait. There's more. The blue glow is actually an enlarged version of a cosmic microwave ...

In case you have not already read about it Andy Goldsworthy's got a major commission in Ess Eff and it's a spire . Ken Baker wrote about it in the Chronicle. (Sorry, but his piece sorta sucked...but its got some interesting details.) Today could not have been a prettier day to take the spire in, with the smog as thick as cream. The best view's gotten by pulling over at Inspiration Point, turning off Arguello in the Presidio. (Those are pretty words to type.)

Man, this guy's so grassroots, it is what we should all aspire to... Rock on, Jesse "D.J. Luscious" Townley! Rock on. JESSE TOWNLEY: I am a 19 year Berkeley tenant. I was Executive Director of the non-profit Easy Does It, which provides Emergency Services to people with Disabilities. With the non-profit venue 924 Gilman & the non-profit Independent Arts & Media I’ve expanded low-income access to arts. Councilmember Dona Spring appointed me to the Disaster & Fire Safety Commission in 2003, which prepares our community (and our pets) for hills fires, earthquakes and pandemics. Tenants and landlords need massive help in preparing for the next earthquake & wildfire, including Community Emergency Response Team training & emergency supply caches. As Chair I gave input to the Soft Story Ordinance that will retrofit many unsafe apartment buildings, & to new single family home standards called Plan Set A. I will protect tenants in apartments & houses f...

Jetpack Dreams Trailer from Mac Montandon on Vimeo . ...thing is what trips me out is that is this a guy who described me as "Jim—a poet or whatever..." once in a piece he got published in Modern Spectator , and I dig that. thing is.

Here's some guy I went to high school with who just "friended" me...how the FFF was I ever supposed to find this guy, or have him find me like ever in any other "world model"? Never. He'd've never showed up for the reunion. (Like I would have?!...) He'd've gone off-my-radar...even tho he plays a part or two in sleep-time dramas when my personal 90210 comes on in the midnight hour. Christian Barry - Teaches philosophy in the School of Humanities and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University. - He also produces Public Ethics Radio, an online audio broadcast with ethicists discussing timely and important practical dilemmas. - Christian has served as a consultant and contributing author to three of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports. - He was editor of Ethics & International Affairs, and directed the Carnegie Council's progra...

From Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog Report author Julie Katz goes on to make three recommendations to address the ignorance: 1. Advertise syndication as “easy information.” 2. Create RSS tutorials. 3. Collect and share customer testimonials. RSS feed images from the website inquisitr.comFor information-seekers, RSS is a life-changing experience, and let me give you an example of exactly what this report is talking about. My 27-year old future son-in-law is a manager at a GameStop store. He’s an XBOX360 guy and an expert at “Call of Duty.” He wants to make retail gaming his future and is in with a very good company. Thinking that staying informed about the online gaming industry would benefit his career, I asked him a few days ago if he’d ever heard of RSS. He hadn’t, but that’s no surprise, so I walked him through setting up a feed reader and loading it with news feeds from his industry. He faithfully uses it now, and I hear him quoting things he’s read from the feeds. He admit...

I make the case that Judaism was really intended as a form of media literacy. Out with the heiroglyphs (literally, “priestly writing”) and in with the aleph bet. Judaism asks, “what would a world of literate people look and act like?” Of course, over time, being a literate person got replaced with being a literal person.

...if you don't know the title, it's the name of the Xray Spex song that helped kick off the whole punk rock movement in the 70s, so this interview's gotta have a point to it, right? I mean wasn't the whole scene a play on BDSM culture? From Vice magazine: an interview with Nayland Blake , none of which really touches on the mysterious and mercurial nature of his art, that's VERY focused on his fetishes... but I only just learned at the last interview that being a big, gay man with a BDSM and role playing fascination is a significant part of the singular and insightful nature of his works that are beyond categorization. Below's a clip from the interview (the portrait's by Richard Kern ): VICE : A lot of art films that included graphic sex had no other outlet but those places. I guess it’s a function of just being in New York City, but it doesn’t surprise me that the communities of so-called perverts and artists overlapped a lot. Nayland Blake :I have a ki...