Rob Reid's Blog, page 2
July 9, 2012
Fun Times Up North: Sword & Laser, and … the Stepkids
I was up in San Francisco for a few days last week, and drove up to the lovely town of Petaluma to be on Tom Merritt & Veronica Belmont’s videocast “Sword and Laser.” S&L is a great show. In our tweeting, social-casting, video-enabled age, it’s actually about BOOKS – specifically, fantasy & science fiction. They interview a different author in each episode, talk about new releases, have a book club, and so forth. Here’s my episode:
Tom and Veronica have a great little set. I particularly liked their F&SF bar:
And yes, they do serve drinks in smoke-foaming goblets. Bummer I was driving, or I’d have had a double. Their show is part of Felicia Day’s YouTube channel (Geek & Sundry), and is well worth tuning into.
Also while in SF, I caught one of my favorite new bands, The Stepkids. They were opening for the Mates of State, who are also damn good (going to a show for the opening act always feels a bit like rooting for the visiting baseball team – but both things are fun, right?).
The Stepkids have simple, but incredibly powerful visuals. They dress all in white, have white guitars, a white drum kit, and white sheets draped over all their gear. So they’re a living blank canvas. Then they have this incredible light ninja make lush, gorgeous projections on top of everything throughout their set. So amazing, it even looks great on a crap cell phone camera.
It was a Mates of State audience, but a LOT of people showed up super-early (like we did) to catch the full Stepkids set. And they really wowed the crowd.
I suggest you catch these guys if you ever get the chance. That, and buy their damn album. It’s the best psychedelic rock I’ve heard since XTC faked it as the Dukes of the Stratosphear (and THAT experiment, my friends, was perhaps the finest psychedelic rock ever made). They’re from my home state of Connecticut, but I swear I’m not biased.
Like I said, the Mates of State are a fine band as well – and they REALLY surprised me with their mad energy! From their albums, I thought of them as a sort of 21st century Mamas and the Papas – but they’re a flat-out rock experience when they perform.
My novel comes out tomorrow and I should probably be focusing on that! But it was a great show last week (at the Independent) and I couldn’t help but write it up…
July 6, 2012
Early Reviews-n-Stuff
Monday kicks off the “Mother of All Weeks” in the narrow world of my book, Year Zero. Tuesday is my publication date, and Monday is … well, the day before my publication date.
I’m expecting at least two major reviews to hit next week – but a couple of early ones are already popping up on the book blogs. This one, from Justin at Staffer’s Book Review is smart and detailed, and includes some fun ruminations about the early days of Napster. I’m also a bit partial to it because he describes Year Zero as “the funniest piece of fiction I’ve ever read.” Whoa – thank you, Justin!
Another very thoughtful and detailed review has just been posted to the Minneapolis music and culture blog, Perfect Porridge. I met its author (Greg) right after I gave a talk at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in March. His blog post includes some slides from my talk, and a detailed write-up of Year Zero.
There are also (literally) dozens of other reviews – some of them brief, some quite detailed – at the GoodReads site. Why so many reviews for a book that has yet to be published? It turns out that GoodReads has a VERY cool early access program for its members. Join their site, and you can enter giveaways for pre-release copies of books. In exchange, they ask that you rate and review the books that you get, so that other members can get an early feel for the upcoming releases. Random House gave GoodReads a few dozen early copies of Year Zero, and the fruits of that (38 reviews as I write this!) are now up on the site.
Finally, it’s not a review, but Rick Goetz over at Musician Coaching just published part one of a long interview with me (part two is coming out next Tuesday). It’s quite wide-ranging – including topics like why it’s so important for creative folks (like musicians – and authors) to build direct relationships with their audiences these days.
That’s it for now – more to come next week …!
July 3, 2012
Summer Reading — The Mother of All Excerpts!
It’s a slow holiday week here in the US, and for those of you with time on your hands, I have something to help you pass at least a sliver…
Summer Reading – The Mother of All Excerpts!
It’s a slow holiday week here in the US, and for those of you with time on your hands, I have something to help you pass at least a sliver of the idle time. Specifically … the first fifty pages of Year Zero – in two fun-filled PDF files!
The first file is “Chapter Zero,” which is basically the book’s prologue. I discussed this chapter in some detail here on my blog when it first debuted on Wired.com a couple of weeks ago. The second document is chapters 1-3, which together comprise the start of the main body of the action.
All told this is about a seventh of Year Zero – enough to get you started, and plenty to help you decide if you’d like to read the other 6/7th Enjoy!
By the way – please feel completely free to copy, print, email, share, transmit, and redistribute this if you see fit. In other words, if you feel like posting some or all of this excerpt to a blog or another site, go for it – I’ll be honored! I only ask that you attribute the work to me, and link either to my website, or to a website that offers Year Zero for sale.
July 2, 2012
Intergalactic Tour (Of NYC and Certain Parts of California)
So I’m ready to announce my very first literary tour – it will be an INTERGALACTIC ODYSSEY, covering not only New York City, but also no fewer than THREE California cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco). Some might say this is a teeny, abbreviated, even feeble tour. I prefer to think of it as covering THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT CITIES IN THE MOST POPULOUS STATE IN THE MOST POWERFUL NATION ON EARTH! And New York City, too!
So, the details:
As previously announced, Year Zero’s official launch party will be held a week from tonight – Monday, July 9th – at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in Redondo Beach.
A few nights later, I’ll be performing at w00tstock – an unbelievably fun (and rather ambitious) live show that’s put on periodically by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, Wil Wheaton of Star Trek, and Paul & Storm of … Paul & Storm. We’ll all be at the Balaboa Theatre in San Diego at 7pm on Thursday July 12th – conveniently timed for anyone going to San Diego Comic Con. Tickets are on sale now. My own performance will be a “version 1.1” take on my TED talk, along with some thoughts about Year Zero. And I will be but one performer of many! Well worth your $37.50 (not a dime of which is going to me FYI – so that is a sincere & objective recommendation). I’ll also be doing a panel appearance and a couple of signings at Comic Con itself – more details to follow.
At 7:00pm on Wednesday July 18th, I’ll be moderating a fascinating panel at the Housing Works Bookstore Café in Manhattan (126 Crosby Street). Titled “Copyright & Punishment in the Digital Age,” it will be a wide-ranging discussion of intellectual property and online piracy. I’ve recruited three amazing people to join me on this panel – Drew Curtis, who is the founder & CEO of Fark.com; Ken Fisher, who is the Founder & editor-in-chief of Ars Technica; and Erik Martin, who is the General Manager of Reddit. Full details are here.
Finally, on Thursday July 26th I’ll be doing your basic chitchat and book signing at the Book Smith bookstore in San Francisco (1644 Haight Street). All are welcome, and details are here.
June 28, 2012
High Brow Special: People who Tattoo Their Feet!
This morning I sat down to write a post deconstructing Joyce’s use of imagery and metaphor in Finnegan’s Wake, and/or his treatment of the sacred & profane in Ulysses. But then I found this awesome page dedicated to people who tattoo shoes onto their feet. How cool!
My favorite is this shot of a man with permanent Converse All-Stars…
… but I guess this guy could only afford the B&W version:
Here’s someone who will never have to tangle with laces again:
Then there’s the classic tasseled loafer look. Who says you can’t get inked and still be preppy?
You can find these, and eight more equally tasteful pictures over on BuzzFeed. So I guess I stole a good chunk of their thunder by posting 1/3 of their pics here. But they swiped eight of them from this three-year-old MTV piece in the first place. So you know … live by the sword, die by the sword & etc…
June 26, 2012
Entertainment Weekly Runs Second Chapter of Year Zero – plus THROAT CLEARING SECRETS by John Hodgman!
For years I passed by Entertainment Weekly whenever I saw it on the newsstand, simply because of its title. There was the periodicity for one thing. I prefer publications of the daily, thrice-weekly, or sesquicentenniary ilk. Then there was that word “Entertainment.” I like being entertained as much as the next TV-shunning, celebrity-illiterate nerd. But in a magazine title, “Entertainment” smacks of paparazzi, Justin-n-Britney, and monosyllables.
Then a few years back, a friend of mine went to work for EW – one who hasn’t written or edited a lowbrow sentence in her life (proof: she is now the editor-in-chief of Columbia Journalism Review). So I started visiting their site. I was delighted with what I found – and these days Entertainment Weekly is the first thing that I grab whenever I’m at the airport (although I also make a big show of picking up The Economist).
Entertainment Weekly offers plenty of coverage for socially-well-adjusted folks with normal operating definitions of “entertainment.” But they also do a thorough and passionate job of covering science fiction, fantasy, and videogames. And as a serious music snob, I must say that their music section is excellent. I like that their TV coverage leans toward the smarter pay-cable series. And they cover books, and take them very seriously.
For all of these reasons, I was delighted when Entertainment Weekly took an interest in Year Zero. And today, they’re publishing Year Zero’s second chapter (which I call “Chapter One,” because I’m like that). If you’d like to start by reading the first chapter (which I cleverly named “Chapter Zero”) Wired published it a week and a half ago, and it’s here. But if you’ve already read that, or want to dive right into Chapter One, you can absolutely do that – because Chapter One is where the action starts, whereas Chapter Zero is a prologue that sets up the book. If you want my advice, I’d suggest that you read both – and that you do so right now – because as a good father, I love all of my children equally.
As a bonus, EW is running a video of John Hodgman revealing his PATENTED THROAT CLEARING SECRETS, and teaching them to me in an audio book recording studio. Hodgman, as I mentioned earlier, is the voice of the Year Zero audio book. You can download or stream his reading of the first chapter (‘Chapter Zero,’ remember) here at nerdist.com.
My wife is convinced that this whole throat-clearing ritual was elaborate hoax designed to trick me into drinking Tabasco sauce. She’s probably right.
