Will Someone Please Think of the Indies?

Smokler on October 21, 2006

Steve Rubel asked some interesting questions not to long ago around the closing of Tower Records…

This gets me thinking, what’s next? Drive-in movie theaters are gone. Will movie theaters be next? Somehow, I think not. People love the communal experience.

So what about bookstores? Ebooks and audiobooks are hardly mainstream today, but who knows about tomorrow.

My point here is not to play the prediction game. That’s easy. Rather, it’s to remind us that things are constantly changing. New technologies and habits replace old ones. Remain complacent with what you have in atoms and you might be disappointed when it moves to bits. In marketing and PR we need to always be mindful of this flow. That’s because one day, everything will be bits.

I don’t know if I agree with the “everything will be bits” part but this question’s been on my mind a ton lately. I grew up in record shops, video stores and movie theatres. You know you’ve hit a certain age when your childhood feels like a dying era.

I’ve been writing about this a lot lately and I’ve largely concluded that being sentimental (or relying on others to be) is an unhelpful waste of energy. Indie businesses are not teddy bears, cute, heartwarming but fundamentally without consequence on our lives. They have to survive as businesses too. And indulging in hackneyed platitudes about the big meanies who run chain stores or assuming that community goodwill will rule the day, even if it should, is a fantasy none of us can afford.

So while it feels like working the funeral beat, I’m still both fascinated by how this will play out and reassured that genre bookstores are holding on and, according this this article, folks continue to open bookstores. Maybe it’s a fools errand, I don’t know. But from asking around at places like Readerville, this new generation of booksellers has studied the market, formed strong community alliances and are establishing online operations before they open their doors. So maybe there’s hope after all.

If anyone has stories of suvival in the independent video store, movie theatre and record store spaces, send ’em this way. I’m researching another article as we speak.

Gleanings: Incest, Dick Cheney, and Rewiring History

Smokler on October 20, 2006

When I travel, I love to catch up on magazine reading. But a pile of 9-15 magazines is both heavy and impractical since I can’t shed then if I want to save articles. So I came up with this idea to cut out the articles I wanted to read using an Xacto knife, papercliping then together then sticking them in a manilla folder. Light, compact and easy to ditch when done reading. Worked like a charm.

Here’s what I read.

  • Creative Nonfiction had a great interview with Kathryn Harrison whose controversial 19976 memoir The Kiss about an incestuous relationship with her father brought her to prominence. Harrison has been on a tear since then writing six novels, four memoirs and a biography in the last 15 years. I don’t think I’ll ever match that rate of productivity but one can dream.
  • My friend Jennifer Egan was on the cover of last month’s issue of Poets & Writers. She’s got a new novel out, her third, called The Keep, which I just started reading.
  • My friend Adam Mansback has a great article in the same issue about putting together an anthology with his friend and fellow writer T Cooper. T he book is called A Fictional History of the United States WIth Huge Chunks Missing which sounds great and I will buying right quick.
  • Great piece in the Columbia Journalism Review about why editors steer reporters away from “depressing stories.”
  • A rather sobering book review by Larry McMurtry about the history of “ethnic cleansing” in Texas. McMurtry takes issue with the author’s characterization that the Texas Ranger were largely a band of thugs deputized to toss Indians and Mexicans out of the state. The way McMurtry makes his argument though, will shock you.
  • From the same issue, a profile of Dick Cheney by Joan Didion which is as cooly lethal as being poisoned in your sleep. Didion paints Cheney as an opportunistic, intellectual lightweight so insecure of his own abilities that his career amounts to little more than grabs at the nearest stockpile of power. If you’re even a bit liberal leaning, it’s like catnip.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: “Hud”

Smokler on October 20, 2006

Hud

Hud (1963): “Death of a Salesman with Stetsons”

Notes: Seen on the plane home from Michigan as part of my ongoing quest to see all the movies in the AFI 400. Movie looks great and has solid performances all around. It just doesn’t breathe very much and feels competent rather than alive.

Whew!

Smokler on October 20, 2006

I’m home after nearly a week away. Thank Christ. No more travel until Thanksgiving. Although this looks mighty tempting.

High Hands in Houston:

Smokler on October 17, 2006

Memo to Houston Police: Are you freakin’ kidding me?

Saw this on Boing Boing this morning…

Last Friday night, a small music venue here in Houston (Walter’s) was in the middle of a show when a cop walked in on a noise disturbance call (not unusual for Walters), and instead of talking with the management to turn down the music or shut down the show, walked straight up to the stage to tell the band to shut down. The band had no idea what was going on and asked why, at which time the cop tried to grab one of the musicians’ guitar, and then slammed the musician to the ground… of course from that point on melee ensued, with at least three people being tasered by this cop, and several people being arrested. One of the kids tasered was a 14 year old kid who was there with his parents! One account states that the boy’s father was also tasered.

The band, according to SFist, was Two Gallants, a San Francisco duo I’m fond of (I extolled their song “Waves of Grain” on Episode #6 of my podcast)

This is insane. Look at the tape and judge for yourself but at the very least, the city of Houston should be looking into this, the police department should discipline this over and police procedures regarding recruiting and proper procedure in a high density situation like a concert should be reevaluated. It’s a wonder this didn’t start a riot.

We pay police departments to protect us from harm, not to make it worse before it happens. This is not public safety. This officer is a power-hungry thug who deserves to be sanctioned and then dismissed immediately.

Update: Two Gallants reports they’ve had lawyer up. They also break it down over at Rolling Stone and in an interview with SFist.

Friendster Has None:

Smokler on October 17, 2006

This NY Times examination of why Friendster is now a Silicon Valley cautionary tale has been jumping around the web lately. It paints Friendster as a classic tale of Valley hubris gone wrong–A headstrong CEO, investors drunk on hype, product flaws papered over and a blurry eye towards competitors. But it misses one crucial point in a haze of euphemism describing Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams.

“Jonathan is very much an acquired taste,” said Larissa Le, a former Friendster employee and longtime friend of Mr. Abrams. “He’s your typical engineer from the Valley who can come off as very arrogant.” For a time Mr. Abrams, then in his early 30’s, cut a high profile in the Valley, showing up regularly at parties with a strikingly attractive woman on each arm and his head in the stars.

An “acquired taste?” Let’s get one thing straight. I ran into Jonathan Abrams several times at different events and never found him to be an “acquired taste”.” I found him arrogant, standoffish and rude. That may be fine if your that attitude commits you to running a strong business or at the very least gets your company some buzz. It does not work if your company is called Friendster and the founder, the company’s public face is no one you’d want to be friends with

Don’t Tease Me Like That Part Deux:

Smokler on October 16, 2006

I’ve been waiting for about 85 years for Songbird, hailed as the greatest thing in media players since iTunes, to have a Mac version. Well they do now. So I went ahead and download it.

I give it a B-.

The thing looks great. It’s got a lot of neat features like being able to search mp3 blogs and listen to their music files right in the player. You can also tag songs to create snazzier playlists. But it misses the point in one very big way.

I am not looking for another application to fondle. Music listening is, for the most part, a passive experience, turn on, hit play, go. I do not want to hoover over my music player (which is the problem I had with MyStrands, although that may have changed), tagging and moving songs nor use it as a second rss reader to find new music. I’ve got Pandora and Last.fm. I‘ve got Google Reader. I gave at the office.

To convince me to abandon iTunes, I would need to be able to use Song Bird with my iPod (no dice) and some album art would be nice (this one I don’t get. How hard is it to sync the thing up with Amazon or Gracenote and pull down some album art). I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got this in the works because they seem like smart folk. But right now, Songbird is a music geek product and I’m only a music geek a few minutes a day. I’m just an ordinary music fan the rest.

Don’t Tease Me Like That:

Smokler on October 16, 2006

Yes, I would love to get crap delivered to my house at all hours of the night ala Pink Dot in LA and the long-departed Kozmo. But LicketyShip is not the answer, with its $19.95 delivery charge and limited hours. I don’t know what the answer is, short of teleportation, but I hope they have bigger plans than this. ‘Course it’s in Alpha, so we’ll see.

(via Willo).

After the Idea Festival:

Smokler on October 16, 2006

So I’m camped out in my old hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, decmpressing after attending the wildly successful Idea Festival. The amount of collective brain power in there actually make me feel very smart and horribly stupid at the same time.

Got to see my old friends JD Lasica and Elizabeth Spiers. Paled around with Will and Mangesh, founders of Mental Floss magazine whom I’ve known virtually for nearly 2 years but never met. Befriended the new Mental Floss editor Mary Charmicael whose charming as all heck and knows a bunch of science stuff I could stand to learn. And had coffee with Dr. Leonard Schlain who is one of those genius people doubly blessed to be from SE Michigan but currently residing in San Francisco. I hope to be like him when I grow up.

From my wrap-up at the Huffington Post, I had this to say about what I learned…

…I’ve learned from world-renowned primate biologist Robert Sapolsky that chimpanzees commit genocide on rival troupes and that chess masters can burn 6000 calories a day from mental taxation during tournaments. I’ve heard http://www.loe.org/about/steve.htm”>Steve Curwood, host of NPR’s “Living on Earth” propose a government-sponsored corporation ala Fannie Mae to guarantee loans for the building of home solar and wind systems. I’ve heard inventor Ray Kurzweil inform us that we are only a decade and a half away from computers having the processing power of the human brain, witnessed DJ Spooky remixing “Birth of a Nation” live and science writer K.C. Cole explain quantum mechanics in 10 minutes better than my college professors did in 4 months. Along the way, I also missed a presentation on Zora Neal Hurston, another on the mind of Leonardo Da Vinci, and a third on the special effects wizardry of The Matrix. I’m disappointed on the one hand: When will be able to hit on those three topics in a single afternoon again? On the other I’m relieved, because the psychic contradiction they raise may have made my head explode: At the Idea Festival, you feel smart and stupid at the exact same time.

Big thanks to Kris Kimel and his staff for making it all happen. If you’ll have me, I’ll be back next year.

Additional information from…

*The Idea Festival Blog

*Idea Festival at Technorati.

We now return to regularly scheduled blogging.