Hustler of Culture
The South by Southwest Blog is back for the 2003 Interactive Conference. If you’re a weblogging kinda person, SXSW is the perfect opportunity to meet your kin. It’s like the Woodstock of weblogging right deep in the heart of beautiful spring mornings in Austin, Texas.
March 7-11, 2003. I’m speaking on two panels but that shouldn’t dissuade you.
Great fun, don’t miss it.
The Comics Journal, which offers sophisticated talk about the history and art of comics, has started its own weblog, called Journalista! Neat.
To everyone who wrote in and made suggestions in response to my last post. While I’m an avid reader of both Caterina.net and Bookslut, but are a bit too narrowly focused (or personal, dependind on your point of view) for what I’m looking for, a Boing Boing focused on culture and the arts.
The search continues…
A weblog focused on the arts, culture, literature that sort of thing, preferably written by a really smart person. Kinda like what Lemon Yellow was.
Please pass on your suggestions. I don’t want to have to put it together myself.
Since I don’t own a digital camera and am resisting getting one for no reason at all, I’ve never pariticipated in the very cool Mirror Project, founded and run by my friend Heather Champ. So I probably don’t deserve to be in the 10,000 Mirror Project picture, grinning on the right like I’ve got a staple remover stuck in my jaw. I equate it two beginning the 12th man on the league’s best basketball team, spending the whole season on the bench but collecting a championship ring anyway.
Anybody else here visit Newpages, a portal of information from alternative media outlets? Apparently now they’re asking for a password. Were they gonna tell us, the readers, the loyal fans? What did we do wrong?
but I did and spent a rediculous amount of money on an IPod for Windows. Now I only leave the house when armed with 863 mp3’s.
Clearly I’m insane.
So Fray Day 6 was tremendous, over 5 hours of funny, powerful storytelling. My story (about Andrew WK being my brother’s best friend in the eighth grade) went pretty well although I can never really tell about these things because I rarely prep and usually just get up and talk. But I got several compliments afterward so I’m taking their word for it.
Amongst the other stories, Jack Boulware tore the roof off the joint with a story about driving a scammed Porsche for three days. Laura Fraser held a hushed audience in her hands when telling about a guy she dated who died on September 11th at the World Trade Center. And Justin Chin didn’t talk about anything in particular but was riotous.
Mostly, it was just great to see hundreds of people I knew enjoying themselves. Fray Day is really a very special thing.
Fray Day 6 is today, an annual live storytelling event run by my friend Derek, the creator of Fray.com. I’ll be emceeing from 8-9 and introducing author Laura Fraser and poet Justin Chin, who are featured performers. This year, the event will be at the much bigger, Victoria Theatre but will still be packing in some of the smartest minds on the web, as well as folks from the local literary community and casual passers by. If you’re a San Franciscan, please stop by if you can.
Last night, my friends Ben and Mena celebrated their birthdays, just six days apart. Have several wondering, meaningless yet utterly thrilling conversations with Kay (about Cognitive Psychology. She’s a professor), Jason Kottke (about the Journey video game) and the whole room (about weird parental behavior and accents). I dig evenings like this, despite that when I feel most comfortable around people, I tend to get quite voluble, laughing probably too loud and buzzing about the room like a drunk moth. When I was growing up, this meant I was super nervous and was over-compensating. Now it means I’m in my element how odd.
So apologies to anyone I may have hit with an ill-timed remark. It just means I was enjoying your company.
An item I passed on to Cory Doctorow ended up on Boing Boing, the mother of all weblogs. What’s it about? Don’t ask.