Ken Layne's Blog, page 21
December 9, 2011
Are the Doors having a good year or what? A new book by Greil...
Are the Doors having a good year or what? A new book by Greil Marcus, that Jimmy Fallon video everybody keeps sending me, now this YouTube holiday viral sensation. (THIS IS IN NO WAY EVIDENCE OF A DEMAND FOR RAY MANZAREK TO GET ANOTHER "NEW DOORS SINGER," LET IT GO MAN, LET IT GO.)
And that's it, I have now looked at email and Google News for the first time all week, I have posted something about a rock group from forty years ago, I have written 20,000 words of a book, good-bye Spindrift Point, good night Muir Beach, the end.
Holy shit, this is amazing: The Doors' "unreleased" Christmas album.
December 8, 2011
youngmanhattanite:
Life's a Riot with TARP vs Tarp
Some years...
Life's a Riot with TARP vs Tarp
Some years ago, the Mayor of New York started the tradition of hosting an annual holiday party at Gracie Mansion for the media, mostly City Hall beat reporters (Room 9'ers), that has the unspoken code of being kinda-sorta off the record. One could argue, though I wouldn't, that there's no real harm or impropriety in these things. (See: White House Correspondents Dinner.) But this year is different with Bloomberg. Very different.
After the NYPD's recent treatment (obviously sanctioned by the Mayor's Office) of the media covering Occupy Wall Street raids and protests, which included the "NYPD aggressively blocking journalists from doing their constitutionally protected work and in some instances is even targeting journalists for mistreatment," it is highly inappropriate to yuk it up at a holiday party and give gag gifts at OWS's expense.
Todd Maisel, the NY Daily News photog who took the photos above, tweeted "Mayor has great sense of humor" which is supposed to make things OK? I guess if I was a billionaire with a private army, I'd be laughing too. As I said before, when you're talking about rising poverty and eroding First Amendment rights, the joke's not all that funny.
I'm shocked this story and these photos haven't gained more traction. Why aren't local media outlets talking about this? Problem is, the ones who should - the ones who normally Tweet every breath out of Bloomberg's mouth and are usually the finest examples of journalism - are the ones who were in that room and they're not saying much.
Access and influence, same old bullshit. You get to eat it.
December 6, 2011
It is never easy to write books. I have less trouble with the...
Spindrift Point.
Evidence of actual work being done.
Sleeping quarters, end of room.
It is never easy to write books. I have less trouble with the actual writing than finding a quiet place to concentrate on the task at hand. Not being rich and usually being poor, there's also the whole working problem, and it is generally useless for me to try to write anything consequential after a day of typing newspaper pieces or political insults for a website. A long time ago, coming back from a (domestic) Balkan war zone and taking a breather in Budapest, I got in the habit of seizing some quiet place and writing in complete solitude for as long as I could stand, a couple of weeks or a month or whatever was possible.
Smarter people just build a shack behind their house and do the writing there, but I never live anyplace long enough to construct a hut. And so, when deadlines real or imagined make their appearance, I run off to a lair somewhere. A decade ago, I rented a beach house south of Ensenada in the off season, $450 for the whole month. The result was a ridiculous parody of the 1990s humorous detective thriller. But it got published (in Australia), and with the $5,000 I bought an old Jeep that lasted for many years and ended my novelty existence as a Los Angeles resident without a car.
And so I'm up in this one-room cabin on the cliffs near Muir Beach. It belonged to a sailor and writer named Charles Borden, author of many swashbuckling tales of the seas and a great lover of wild places. When he died in 1968, he willed the four-acre ragged point of rock and pine to a conservation group in San Francisco. It is absolutely quiet, except for the low roar of the waves far below, and the entire cabin is built of glass panels with redwood beams and planks. Inside is outside, as it should be, and it feels like a narrow sailboat was stranded on this rock fifty years ago and grew into a house of sorts. From the glass walls, I look down on the backs of pelicans and turkey buzzards drifting by on the air below. A big freighter appears on the horizon once or twice a day, and slowly moves through the Golden Gate.
The West Coast ports will be shut down by the Occupations next week; the Sunday paper had a full-page ad from the Port of Oakland arguing against this, using the language of Occupy Wall Street. ("We are the 99%," etc.)
Right now I'm working on a non-fiction book that should've been finished long ago, but it's better that there's a two-year gap between the events and the writing. It is almost always better to think about things for a couple of years. There are so many books, and so many are unnecessary.
Weirdly enough, the only book I've written that I've been satisfied with is Dignity, and I wrote that in spare hours here and there over about six months. But I could only write when my house was empty, when there was a rare day off work, when everyone else was gone, and some of my favorite chapters were written in my car on windy winter days in the desert, after a hike with the dog.
(It is time to sleep now, after a couple thousand words today. That's why I am allowed to post nonsense on my own website. Also, as seen in the picture, there's a history book to read before bed, because it's always good to have a brain-clearing non-fiction book to look at after a long day of trying to be smart.)
November 22, 2011
This is from the 30s. What's that old saying about not learning...
This is from the 30s. What's that old saying about not learning from history?
November 19, 2011
November 18, 2011
Worth another, slow read: @Xeni's Q&A with #OWS Bat Signal Team
Mark Read on Boing Boing:
"It's the beginning of the beginning." I loved that one. So frequently, things happen in the world that make it feel like we're at the beginning of the end. But—"the beginning of the beginning," what a radically optimistic statement that is.
The scale of the environmental and economic crisis we are facing, it's extraordinary. This movement is a response to that crisis. Our leaders aren't responding to any of that in a way that is commensurate to the crises we face. And that one sign has always spoken to me. We have to throw off our despair about the future world we might be facing, because if we come together as people and humanity, we can change it. And what Occupy Wall Street makes me feel is that for the first time in a long time that might be possible.
That means a lot to me. This is choosing hope over despair. This is actively and resolutely making that choice. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be over in two months. It's not going to be just the result of conversation.
November 17, 2011
"That's pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and..."
- Hahaha, I think I'll print out this Noam Chomsky quote and staple it to my first-grader's next Behavior Report. (You know, because he gets bored sitting there after the work is done, and wants to draw or talk or hear a story.) — Via cultureofresistance.
Matt Langer: Here's a thought!
It's novel, I know, but seriously: If you, in your professional capacity as a reporter, run a story based on what "policemen say," when what "policemen say" has been clearly and thoroughly contradicted beyond any and all reasonable doubt by who knows how many thousands of firsthand…
November 16, 2011
Congressional Support Grows For Bill To Shut Down Any Website
Here's a post I just typed up for Wonkette, about the delightful new "Great Firewall" law the "Bipartisan Congress" is cooking up for Obama to sign. And, I guess, this will be all blocked out by Tumblr for the CENSORED stunt, which is good?
