Finding music in the old city
Tonight I enjoyed an excellent classical guitar concert at
Musik Valvet (the music vault) in Gamlastan (the old city).
After work, I ran through the rain on cobblestone streets through 14th-century pathways to arrive on time for the show. The venue was an old cellar underneath a pub, accessible through a long, steep, narrow stairway. It was a romantic setting underneath the city.
The program was primarily a series of 19th-century Spanish songs by Fernando Sor which were written for soprano and guitar. I never knew he wrote anything for voice, though I'm familiar with much of his solo guitar repertoire from my own studies with Michael Bracken. I listened with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised by both the music and the performance.
While sopranos normally give me a headache -
no offense intended, G - the underground venue gave her voice a very wet and warmly resonant sound. The love songs and lullabies were all very good, but I have to say that Sor's accompanist parts were a bit dry and unevolved.
There were also a few solo guitar pieces, including one of my favourite pieces: Brazillian composer
Heitor Villa-Lobos's
Etude Number Four. It was one of the 12 Etudes he published in 1929 that were made famous years later by Andrés Segovia in one of his recordings.
I used to play that piece frequently when I lived in Vancouver and attended UBC. I remember one time in particular, when a lass named Scotia from Eureka, California was hanging out in my Totem Park residence room on a rainy afternoon. She asked me to play something sad for her because she felt homesick and didn't want to be alone in her sadness.
I played that piece for her twice, once incredibly slowly and dramatically, and then repeated it at tempo. She was crying when I was done and gave me a big hug before she left to go for a walk in the rain.
Since then, that piece has been my universal anthem for homesickness and all the feelings that go along with it.
I wasn't surprised that its melody found me underground in a medieval city 7,000 miles from home.
Or maybe I'm just being dramatic...
Google Earth, Google Moon and a Giant Leap
A few weeks ago I posted about Google Earth and how
very, very cool I think it is. I followed-up on that blog post with an article for
NOW Magazine titled "Around the world with Google Earth" (
my version ¦ the NOW version) that is running in tomorrow's paper. Any comments on that article can be posted here.
On a related note, today, in honour of the anniversary of the first manned moon landing, Google launched
Google Moon with markers of the six Apollo landing sites. Check it out, and make sure to zoom all the way in for a funny Easter egg...
If you're a junkie for the big cheese, also check out the
One Giant Leap: The Legacy of Apollo 11 mini-site my team at the Discovery Channel Canada produced back in the day (1999). There are even some
stories from my li'l sister, from when she was an intern.
Some great friends, and a penis story
The pics from Noah's wedding are starting to roll in, and I thought this one was particularly compelling due to the fact none of us are doing anything disgusting. For a moment, you might even think we're all nice, decent lads who actually know how to dress themselves. Alas, you can't judge a picture by a thousand words, or something like that...
I'm on the left, Captain Q. Farf is on the right and the groom is in the middle.
On an interesting, somewhat-related and completely hilarious note, a wedding guest took some pictures of their miniscule genitalia with one of the cameras left on one of the tables. What they forgot, however, was that through a simple process-of-elimination of the guests sitting at that table, it was rather simple to determine who the
wee prankster actually was. It's a terrible shame; and I'm not referring to the photo.
Oy, My Aching Neck!
My neck and back are sore today. I thought it was caused by pulling something while lifting Noah,
A Man Who Does Not Walk Lightly On This Earth, on a chair and then dancing madly with him at his wedding yesterday. But after reviewing some more pics of Saturday's show, I think it might just be my own damn fault...
This is another pic from the show, taken while Russell, Larry & I are playing a madly frenetic and super-high-energy rendition of
Scenester. The blur on bass is me...
Note that the camera was shooting at normal speed and light settings, which means I must have been doing some ooooold-school headbanging and dysfunctional thrashing-muppet-in-an-electric-chair dancing. From Ska to Celtic to Reggae/Metal, the RLB plays it all...
So while my neck may ache a bit today, I can't help but smile.
The RLB at The Reverb
Saturday night was likely my last gig with The Russell Leon Band and the energy in The Reverb was incredible! The house was rocking, the rhythm section was dead-tight, and the soloists - as always - played delectable, delicious and inspirational melodies.
The set was 13 songs and paced itself out with an elegant, dynamic flow that kept the audience interested as we crossed genres and mixed it up a bit. We debuted two new full-ensemble songs ("Nip 'n Tuck" and monster pop hit "The Coffee Song") and they both seemed to go over very well.
The Cast of Characters, from left to right: Noah Egelnick on congas, guerro, interpretive dance and auxilliary percussion; Dan Restivo on flute, penny whistle and backup vocals; Ansgar Schroer on harmonica, diatonic harmonica and percusssion; Larry Kline (hidden) on drums and percussion; Russell Leon on guitars, lead vocals and percussion; Brian Elkin on trumpet, flugelhorn and percussion; Jeffrey Haas on bass and percussion; and Keith Reid on tenor saxaphone.We even got the babes (
excuse me... Ladies) up and dancing to the Latin, Swing and Ska songs. There is
NOTHING quite so inspirational musically as looking down at a crowd of appreciative womenfolk who are jumping about because your basslines make them wiggle like fish on a hook...
This is a pic from soundcheck, where the soundman was trying very hard (and quite successfully) to get a good mix for horns and flute (the most delicate of wind instruments) in a rock band setting at a large club.
This is another pic of the whole band rocking out:
And here we have the lovely and talented Brian "Big Lips" Elkin checking the levels on our recording gear for the show:
I have a collection of other pictures, too, and will review 'em later. If any stand out, I'll post them.
Reflections? You want reflections? I notice that I don't really put myself out there all that much on here, do I? Something to think about...
Well, I'll say I had a great time on Saturday, and am very thankful for the experience. I love sharing a stage with these incredible musicians, and am honoured that I was allowed to play with them for almost three years. Music is SUCH an important part of life, and I shouldn't let myself neglect that part of my soul's nourishment.
Other than that? Well, I think it's cool that the club's owner offered us a gig opening for Percy Sledge in the Fall. If the RLB doesn't have a new bassist by then and I can arrange to be in town, then maybe this wasn't really my last gig after all... and that would be perfectly fine with me!
My last show with the RLB is tonight!
I'm back in T-Dot (Toronto) for Noah's wedding and to settle some personal business, and I also have a show tonight with the
RLB. It's likely going to be my last gig with them and I'm sad about that.
They have FOUR bass players coming out tonight to see the gig and get a sense for the music in a live setting. Auditions for my replacement start next week.Playing with this band has been a spectacular honour, a humbling experience, a wonderful time, an artistically fulfilling moment and a beautiful part of my life.
Getting BACK into playing live music was one of the best things I did for myself in my late twenties. I was working too hard, spending too much time thinking about business, and not playing much at all, and I'm so, SO glad I decided to start auditioning for bands, and even gladder that I found
this one.
The calibre of musicianship in the RLB is staggering. Between Gentleman Keith Reid on sax, Brian "Big Lips" Elkin on Trumpet, Larry Kline on drums, Russell Leon on Guitar, the insanely talented Ansgar Schroer on Harmonica and percussion, and the ludicrously gifted Dan Restivo on flutes and penny whistles, I've had to
play up and drastically improve my own musicianship over the years in order to catch up, keep pace and rock out.
When the album is released in the fall, you'll all know what I mean...Being a full member of the RLB for almost three years has been wonderful, and I'd like to thank them all for letting me have that in my life. It's been magical to perform with them, and I'll remember these experiences always.
As a 31-year-old business-oriented Canadian now living in Europe and working in a very intense, fast-paced, high-pressure industry, I'm not sure if and/or when I'll play in a band again. As I've often heard, Rock 'n' Roll is a young man's game. And while I can't say whether or not I'll have another shot at performing live, I'm completely stoked, excited and happy about what's going on tonight at The Reverb.
We're headlining one of the A-list venues in the city on a Saturday night, in the same building where we opened for Ike Turner and Russell Leon and countless other bands. It should be mad fun! And I hope any of you who might read this blog entry in the few hours between now and when we go on (at 11PM tonight) take the time to come out.
FYI, this is what's been posted on
KickInTheHead.com for the last few days:
The Good Word
I'm a proud Canadian. I'm a music fan and a musician, and also a technologist. I built this site in 1998 for the Canadian music community because we needed it.
I know it needs an upgrade. I'm working on that this summer. The site wasn't built to serve 20,000 page views and half a gig of bandwidth every day (more than 145K hits/day). The Google Ads that run here usually cover hosting costs, but not always.
My last gig with The Russell Leon Band is this Saturday night (July 16) at The Reverb in Toronto. I'm moving to Europe to pursue a new job and this will possibly be my last gig ever with a band in Canada.
In seven years, I've never asked this site's users for anything. The site is free to use and unmoderated. While some people take advantage of that, tens of thousands of Canadian musicians benefit. As a one-time favour for me, come to The Reverb and show some support for a great Canadian Band. We go on stage at 11PM and cover is about $7.
The band is an 8-piece Rock/ Reggae/ Ska/ Latin/ Celtic/ Funk/ Pop/ World music band with some very serious players. We're sort of a cross between The Police and Spirit of The West on a very hot August night, and are really tight after playing together for three years.
Cheers. And thank you.
Jeffrey Haas
Executive Producer, Programmer, Webmaster, Proprietor
KickInTheHead.com - True North, Strong and Loud!
Posted: July 15, 2005
Also,
this is what I posted here after our surprise gig @ NXNE.
My neighbourhood
Some people have asked to see what it's like in Stockholm. And I realize I haven't actually posted any information or observations yet... And I'm still not doing that today. :) But here are some pics of my neighbourhood, as taken on a morning run.
Walking out my door on Blekholmstorget and taking 12 steps to my right, this is a view of the canal and part of Kungsholmen (an island where I'm looking for an apartment) from Blekholmsterrassen:
And this is a view from the top of the steps, before running down to the canal:
Taking the stairs down to the canal, this is part of my current morning route:
I run past the city hall, and this is a view of Sudermalm (literally the Southern island) from Kungsholmen island:
This is a view of the canal from a bridge:
And this is a view of Gamlastan (the old city):
This is a view of old city hall:
And this is a view of Gamla Stan (on the left) and Sudermalm from the steps of old city hall:
And this is Blekholmsterrassen, right before I go inside to wash the sheen of sweat from my grimy body.
So there ya go... it's just like you were with me on my morning run. :)
On my way to work, I took a moment to snap this pic, too. Isn't it gorgeous?
Chillaxing in London
I was in London for the weekend, and had a great time chillaxing with Marty, Liam & Emma. We enjoyed a fair number of bevvies, ate our way through an outdoor market, enjoyed an afternoon at the
Tate Modern (including a great new
Frida Kahlo exhibit) and even delved into some catacombs.
This is a pic of us (Jeff, Liam, Marty & Emma) on the very cool new
Millennium Bridge:
I arrived the day after the bombings and I have to say I was astonished by the
Stiff Upper Lip attitude of the Brits. In Marty's local pub, the barkeep basically said that "After The Blitz and the IRA and the Nail Bombings, we're used to this. And we're not going to let the bastards get us down."
I doubt I could be so nonchalant if I were directly exposed to something like that. Not that I ever want to find out...
On an unrelated note, I found the
Mark Rothko exhibit at the Tate to be unusually captivating in a deeply sad, almost depressive way. His Seagram Murals (in the Rothko Room) are presented in low-light and the shadows play dark tricks on the mind. While I normally dislike abstract expressionism, these murals have stuck with me. Remembering
the emotional experience of seeing and feeling them makes me sad.
As for the Frida Kahlo exhibit, I thought that was wonderful. It was possibly the largest collection of her work that has ever been collected for a showing, and the curator did a great job organizing it and providing context between her life's phases and the artwork that was born in each of them.
Kahlo's life story is very interesting, as is her art. I'm not sure I would have appreciated it as much without the background information, and I know from Marty & Liam that this is something that is often debated in the artistic world. Without it, I probably would have just thought of her as a self-obsessed, narcissistic, bi-sexual auteur who had all the subtlety of a chainsaw. With it, however, I thought she was all that, as well as a great artist, and I had some empathy for her life.
Following the WSOP final from Stockholm
After my run this morning and before going off to work, I went to my favourite blogs for updates on the attack in London and the first day of the 2005 World Series of Poker main event, both of which occured yesterday. During work on Thursday and late into the evening, I was alternating between news of the horrors in London on the BBC and updates from Las Vegas. There is a surreal contrast between these two subjects that are both receiving unprecedented levels of attention from world media.
And is it just me, or is the net really slow today? I wonder how much of that is due to RSS...
While there are lots of sites providing updates on the attacks in London (I think Europhobia and the BBC have the best coverage, and Technorati and Google News have the best aggregation), there aren't any sites that are clearly pointing out where to go for WSOP updates. So this is my $0.02 on the subject. As for London, well I AM still going there tonight and I'll post my reflections on that next week.
I wrote most of this last night, and just want to post it before running out as I won't have a chance to get back to it until Monday.
The BEST live 2005 WSOP coverage in the blogosphere
- Tao of Poker - Without a doubt, or any competition that even comes close, the best source for real-time coverage of the WSOP main event is Dr. Pauly's blog. He's been there since before day 1 and knows the game and the players better than any of the other pundits, punters or various miscreants in the fourth or fifth estates. He put almost 18 hours into covering Day 1A, and updated us all as the playing field contracted through 6 blind levels from 1885 to 650 players. He's also living the blogger's wet dream as requests to republish his writing (or to write freelance articles) are pouring in. He's contributing to Fox Sports' WSOP coverage, and even made their front page yesterday. It was big news when the NYTimes hired their own poker writer, but frankly they probably made a mistake by not just hiring Pauly. Kudos to him. I am very impressed.
- Technorati - It would be tough for any single normal human to keep up with the veracity, frequency or acuity of Dr. Pauly, but as an aggregate force the world's other bloggers do a reasonable job. This is a link to the tag "WSOP" on what I think is the world's best blog aggregator.
- PokerRoom.com/blog/ - Rod, Tod & Thomas are representing the home team and all the players that qualified on PokerRoom. They are posting regular updates, and adding some videos, too. It's well-worth checking out. Many people here in Stockholm are waiting anxiously for news about how our players are doing (3 Ongame staff are competing in the main event).
- LasVegasVegas.com/pokerblog/ - A collaborative effort from flipchipro, the poker prof and more. Always excellent. Check out their growing photo gallery, too.
- Lord Admiral Radio - There are a number of podcasters covering the WSOP, but this is the best. Phil Gordon's podcast is also worth checking out.
- PokerStarsBlog - Brad "Otis" Willis is doing an incredible job blogging the event, and his tag-team coverage with Howard Swains (who is focusing on European players in the blog's Europe section) is by far the best blogging effort by ANY of the online poker sites. I'm impressed that PokerStars gets it and are investing appropriately. Of course, 1116 players qualified for the WSOP on PokerStars and that means they have a one-in-five chance (all else being equal, which it's not) of having one of their players win again this year. And if they aren't the place "Where Poker Players Become World Champions" anymore, then maybe they'll reinvent themselves and embrace blogging as the wave of the future (which it is).
- CardPlayer.com - This team is providing some decent coverage, but they're still treating it like publishing a magazine online, although I do particularly like their video gallery.
- PokerNation - Good attitude and writing, though not in real-time. Great pics, though.
Other live 2005 WSOP coverage in the blogosphere
I think these three blogs are notable because of how many of the other sites are NOT blogging from the WSOP. When you spend that much money promoting an event this big and when hundreds of thousands of your customers participate in qualifiers and when this many people are watching the people who beat them out for seats, how can you NOT show up to cover the event on your website? Even if you are a 900-pound gorrilla with 52% of the market, you shouldn't ignore your players, the evolution of communications technology or the fact that the web is all about community. 'nuff said.
So kudos to these sites for showing up and getting it:
- UltimateBet - John Vorhaus writes
- ParadisePoker - Paradise Girl writes
- FullTiltPoker - Jay Greenspan writes
If I missed anything here, please let me know. And good luck to anyone I know who might be playing (specifically Dave Scharf, Erez Savion and Daniel).
UPDATE: Moz just told me that Erez played in Day 1A and survived. According to CardPlayer's tournament ranking results, he's ranked #258 with 29,225 Chips. Now he gets two days off before Day 2. Good luck Erez!
The view from my office
I haven't written much about life in Stockholm because my mind has been more focused on living here than reflecting on living here and then writing about it. I'll certainly get into some details soon. For now, here are a few pics.
This is the view from my office window:
And this is the macroscopic view of my office's view, from a bridge over the street outside. I work in the Central Station building in central Stockholm (on the right):
And turning 180-degrees from where I took the above picture, here's the view from the other side of the bridge:
Stockholm is gorgeous, and I'll post more pics soon as I've been taking lots of 'em.
WSOP Poker Blogs
THIS is a great post by Brad "Otis" Willis on UpForAnything.net about being a card player in Vegas. The writing is spectacular, and his storytelling is quite fun, too. Otis also writes the impressive
PokerStars blog, and I like experiencing the difference in style between his personal and professional writings.
In a recent entry, the
World Series of Poker Primer, he writes about a lot of rules I wasn't aware of, including a 10-minute penalty for anyone who uses the f-word at a table. I would love to see that rule enforced at a home game sometime... it could be fun!
I've been following the WSOP for the last month through
LasVegasVegas.com and Dr. Pauly's
World Series Of Poker Live Blog. I also check the video updates on
CardPlayer.com and religiously check Daniel Negreanu's
poker journal on FullContactPoker. Negreanu is an incredible humanist and I am constantly impressed by how much he's grown up since high school when we were all derelicts shooting pool at Palace Club Billiards. Sigh... those were the days.
PokerRoom.com also has an official
WSOP blog where you can follow the progress of their players.
On another WSOP-related note, I wish
Check n Raise Poker.com's
Eric Pit Boss all the best with his sojourn to Vegas for the main event which starts on July 7 with
6600 players! Good luck.
And can you believe that PokerStars alone is sending 1116 players to the main event? I wonder what their marketing team will do if one of their players doesn't win, because their brand positioning is almost entirely based on: "Where poker players become world champions." Sure that's true for the past two years, but this year? Should be interesting to see...
Finally, I just want to say that I'm really impressed with the redesign of
FullTilt's website. It's a spectacular improvement.
Pizza. Must have pizza...
Ok. Now I've figured it out. What I really need is some 'zza. Good old-fashioned deep-dish pizza. It doesn't even have to be Amato's Pizza or Papa Ce's Pizza (though wouldn't that be spectacular if it were). Even PizzaPizza would do.
Unfortunately, the only options in Stockholm are PizzaHut and old-school European-style thin crust 'zza, and that just won't do.
Sigh...
Maybe this weekend in London?
Downloading esthero, Ranting about DRM & a new Swedish law
KD from karaokediva.blogdns.com left a friendly comment on my blog a few days ago after I chided her (in the comments section of a blog entry) for writing about downloading esthero's new album and enjoying it. I said: "by downloading the album, I certainly hope you meant paid for and downloaded so you could support the artist and her work."
In her response, she said that she understood why I was concerned because I was "friends with her brother," but that she was going to buy the album after the sneak preview because she is a "big fan" and, it turns out, she just wanted to hear the songs before the live show in Seattle.
If that's how it always worked, then I would be a large proponent of unlimited filesharing. I imagine it working like this:
- People could search for and download whatever media (music, TV shows or movies) they wanted to experience on legalized DRM P2P filesharing networks.
- Seven days from first play and/or after five listens, if the files haven't been unlocked with a DRM key (available from inside physical product and/or from DRM licensing stores) the files should degrade into unplayable bits.
- If a person finds media they like and wants to keep the files on their machine, they can either purchase a physical copy (which will always contain a DRM key), purchase a digital copy, or just buy a DRM license which unlocks copies available on the legal P2P networks.
- This would probably incorporate a central registry for DRM certificates, to limit the number of digital copies that can be unlocked with a single license and/or to only allow unlocking of files on devices registered to the DRM license purchaser and authenticated using a network device's MAC address or mobile number.
If that could be the situation, then I would support opening the floodgates. Let's let trial periods for media be universal, accessible and free. Good music is like crack, and crack dealers always make the first taste free. As the music industry is like a huge conglomerate of crack dealers, the addicts they peddle to should also get free tastes of different flavours...
There are three points I'd like to make here:
- People should only ever have to pay to license music once. When they've done that, they should have the exclusive, perpetual, non-transferable right to use it across any personal device.
I've been meaning to write an article for NOW trashing Rogers for their INSIPID policy of triple-charging their customers for licensing music for personal use. If you have a Rogers music phone handset and you want to download a song as a ringtone, that will cost you $1.50. If you want to download that same song to your PC, the cost is $1.25. And if you happen to have the Nokia 6620, then you have to pay ANOTHER fee to have that same song be playable on your phone. While these three uses each require distinct music encoding and file formats, the premise is unconscionable.
Half a brain from Rogers' legal team and half a brain from the CMRRA evidently got together and decided that each use represents a different mechanical reproduction and thus requires its own licensing fee. If their argument were based on bandwidth and delivery costs, then that (even though it would be ridiculous to charge this much for bandwidth) would be more reasonable than asking consumers to pay three fees to use one song in three formats.
Anyway, that's my first point as it related to my utopian vision of free DRM-based filesharing networks.
- Filesharing whole albums is wrong, especially when you really like what you've downloaded. And if you do like it and you keep it and you don't pay for it, then how do you justify it?
When I stumble across a blog (or meet someone) and I learn that someone "loves" some art they "found" on the net, I always ask them if they have supported the artist who created it. Sometimes they say that they have, because they've told all their friends (or readers) about what they've found, and other times they say that they have because they've gone out and purchased a copy themself. I normally stop the conversation if I hear the latter...
I would guesstimate that at least 5X as many copies of Breath from Another were downloaded as were sold in stores. The ratio is probably even greater than that, because of the social climate regarding downloading when the album was first released. If you cross-reference the number of fans she has worldwide and her greater buzz factor with actual sales, the imbalance is staggering. Looking for obscure singles is one thing, but stealing whole albums from an artist who could really use the money for rent is bullshit.
I'm not going to get into morality lessons, but I will say that people piss me off when they steal from my friends.
- Yes, this is personal.
Her brother Jay and I go way back. I've known his little sis since she was about 13 years old. She was another one of the surrogate little sisters that all of us had. When she moved to t-dot, I used to go to the Free Times Cafe in Toronto and see her perform with Rob Joy playing guitar and the two of them singing some weird, beautiful music - including some crazy hat song. They were brilliant.
Once, about a gazillion years ago, the two of them opened up for my band (FRUST) at some dive on Queen street in Toronto. We stopped playing shortly thereafter, but she kept at it and got much, much better (as evidenced by her new album).
I've seen her play open stages, small clubs, big clubs, outdoor festivals (here's a pic I took in 1998) and TV shows. I've seen her come up from working at Future bakery on Bloor street to being attacked in the press for being the falsely-messianic Next Big Thing (Mike McCann wrote about this for ChartAttack and included a LTE I once wrote NOW). I've seen the flight of the Phoenix, and the rebirth.
The things I've seen more than anything else are artistic growth, personal development and perseverance that would knock your teeth into the back of your windpipe with a glare.
So when I ask if you've actually paid for it or not, you better have a fucking great excuse if the answer is no.
Now who the heck am I to even be talking about this? Well, I've been talking about it for about eight years now, and feel my perspective is valid. As a musician and member of numerous indie bands, and as a technologist, and as a music fan, and as the proprietor of KiTH, I've communicated with thousands of musicians and music fans over the years.
If you like art, then support the artist. It's as simple as that.
Now, in respect to the utopian DRM system I outlined above, it's obviously too little too late and probably a bit overly-simplistic, too. I've been thinking about it a lot over the past few days because of the incredible news about a new Swedish law that came into effect yesterday. As of July 1, it is illegal to share copyrighted material over the Internet in Sweden. Basically, the technologists failed to create a system that allowed artists and fans to co-exist peacefully and the heavy-handed imagination-challenged content industry pressured the government into creating strict controls that belie cultural reality. Of course, as I argue above, it's not completely bad, but I think it's unfortunate that things have come to this.
It could have been so much better.
The queer blogosphere and a dire need for editors
The blogosphere is such a dynamic, incredible vortex of wind and blather. While there are amazing writers who can throw words into keyboards so violently that they hit my monitor with SPLOOSH! sounds and then hang there wet and steaming while I devour them with my eyes, there are others who limit themselves to writing pedantically about other people writing about other people (normally focusing on themselves) and bore me to tears. And I suppose this myopic narcissism is sort of what this entry is all about. Well, that and the fact that there really ought to be red marker-wielding editors roaming about the web as intelligent agents helping us focus and remove unnecessary, redundant and superfluous words.
As some of you know, I am a tech culture writer for NOW Magazine in Toronto. It's a great weekly (similar to the Village Voice in NYC) with a circulation of about 300K and my editor there is extraordinary, talented and beautiful (gotta put that in, just in case she ever finds this entry – though I insist it’s all true). I get to write about almost whatever subject or theme I want, and she helps me tighten and focus my own blather into what are normally fairly decent pieces.
Going from 1200 words (my version) to 700 words (the version that runs) is a process I highly dislike, but that I respect as a necessary evilgood. I get too attached to my words and need to take an objective knife to my creativity – something that’s impossible. Just as it’s difficult to carve up your own child with a knife (even old Abraham had a tough time with it when the Big Guy asked him to slice Isaac), it’s similarly difficult to cut up a few hundred words that you’ve written while high on caffeine and sugar. Well, maybe that isn’t quite an appropriate analogy, but you get what I mean…
For examples of the difference an editor can make, you can check almost any of the articles I’ve written for NOW. My versions are here, and the versions that have run in the magazine are accessible from a link at the top of each page. While I think my versions are better (damn it, why do publications need space for advertising?), especially when dealing with complex issues or really captivating (to me) stories, I think the dead tree versions are all tighter, more focused and easy to digest (particularly for people in transit).
I publish my versions on my site because:
- It’s my site and I can do anything I want here.
- It’s interesting (at least to me) to compare and contrast the versions.
- I like to have an archive of my writing, and think some of my stuff is actually useful to people.
- Extra content means extra pages views when the search engines’ indexing spiders come crawling.
- Extra page views means extra ad impressions.
- Extra ad impressions means extra money from Google’s AdSense program.
- Extra money from Google’s AdSense program means that I can buy an extra cup of coffee each month, which I can then use as fuel to create more blather and help accelerate the cycle!
See… now THAT never would have been allowed to appear in print, but because this is an editor-less medium, I can do whatever the heck I want and all you can do is suffer through it, skim it, skip it, leave it or ignore it. You know… just like anything else on the web.
But I provide great value. :)
While NOW lets me write about almost whatever I want, I also sometimes get very specific assignments because I can turn things around quickly (just gimme a keyboard and the words spill out) and I’m a metainfovore who can dredge up infotainmentnuggets on the most obscure topic imaginable that will inevitably exist in abundance in the Internetweb's darkest corners (ya gottta love boolean logic).
A few weeks ago, I received an assignment to create a list of Smart and Sexy Queer Blogs for NOW’s pride issue. Being queer only in that I’m odd, and gay only in that I’m sometimes rather happy, I solicited some assistance from an old compatriot who has been known to bat for the other team.
TheFlink, an artiste and writer who would definitely qualify as a non-blatherer, agreed to help. She asked her devoted audience "What's your fave queer blog?" and they responded with underwhelming enthusiasm.
It turns out they didn’t have favourite queer blogs because most of them didn’t know of any. We got a few suggestions from the masses, but had to roll up our sleeves and do our own work. The quality-oriented queer blogosphere was surprisingly elusive, and difficult to pinpoint amid the plethora of sex, drugs and post-op transgender pics.
Going through about 120 gay blogs in a few days was the first major blogtrip I’ve taken in a while. I have some personal blog favourites, and they are part of my regular surfing habits, but I haven’t just gone out exploring a particular flavour of blog since I went through all the poker blogs exhaustively in November, 2004 before going to the first annual poker blogger’s tournament in Las Vegas (where Check n Raise Poker.com was the title sponsor).
Most of the queer blogs I found just sucked. And there’s no double-entendre there.
For some reason, most of the bloggers I found who blogged about being gay in society just didn’t do it in an interesting way. I suppose I could care about their physical endowment, onanism, shopping trips or their running count of bedpost notches, but only if they wrote about it in an interesting way. Even complete sentences would help. As would spellcheck.
I think that a sincere blog about someone’s real experiences dealing with homosexuality in today’s society would be fascinating to people of all sexual orientations. I looked for this type of thing specifically, and found nothing. Even blogs about people in the closet or recently out of the closet (or even straddling the closet) were difficult to find. Those few that I did find were not worth writing about. And that’s a shame.
(Of course, while I may understand the cathartic benefits of writing about technology, music, life in Sweden and other such things in this forum, I suppose the same might not be true for someone struggling through sexual and personal identification issues.)
In the end, TheFlink and I collaborated to create a fairly decent list and we both got some really good feedback about it. She wrote a good follow-up that started a bit of discussion, evidently the punters (1 & 2) liked the references, and I got warm fuzzy props for my writeup of gaypornblog.com: "A weblog obsessed with gay porn. That means explicit, hot gay man-loving sex. Don't visit and complain to us that you found information on hot guys having hot gay sex there. We know." Wheee. Fun. How often will I ever get to write something like that?
Reminder to all: Don't search for the web for gay porn blogs at work on your first day of a new job. There are some conversations and looks from IT that you don't want to have... Fortunately I was up to speed on that one in time, but I'm sharing the tip in case it's relevant to others.
Anyway, digressions from digressions aside, the need for good editors in the blogosphere is huge. And I'll do myself and all y'all a service by ending right now and promising that I'll make a short, succint blog entry sometime soon.
