Category: quotes

Best. Picture. Ever. Even Kit seems to be smiling (thanks to my friend Amy)

Happy birthday to my buddy Kristin. On Valentine’s day, no less. I can’t imagine having a birthday on another holiday since mine is on an innocuous day in August. But that meant I never got cupcakes in school.

My former employer AlterNet has published a book on level-headed responses to the threat of terrorism and the aftermath of September 11th. It’s called Solutions for a Saner World, which is a lot of what we need right now.

I know nothing about snowboarding but I have been completely won over by Kelly Clark, the 18-year old from Vermont who was the first American to win the gold metal in this year’s Olympics. She won the Women’s Half Pipe a scant 48 hours after the games began.

I do not anticipate her showing up on Letterman or a bunch of commercials for unrelated products because A) She’s a snowboarder and B) She’s not conventially mediagenic. I don’t care. I think she’s adorable: real, quiet, and a world class athlete whose proof is out there on the snow, not in an add campeign for Mountain Dew. Athlete’s like her are the only, rapidly diminishing reason I pay attention to the Olympics at all.

Remember “Soviet Snow?”, a haunting six minute diddy about Chernobyl? My mp3’s do.

After 6 long months, My old computer’s hard drive is now residing comfortably in secondary bay of my new system. All 491 of my old mp3’s have come back to me along with a pile of old data.

In the words of the Velveteen Rabbit, “At last! At last!”

So the Alternative Press Expo was a bit less than expected–about 90% underground comics and maybe one or two zine booths. Not how it was advertized but let the buyer beware, I suppose. Didn’t stop me from picking up an armload of wild stuff including “Mac Afro” which looks like Shaft crossed with Battlestar Galatica, a hand-drawn pamphlet on the history of amusement parks and a very cheap copy of So I Married an Earthling a hilarious novel about a futuristic love story between a scienist and an intergalactic hairdresser. I saw the author Alvin Orloff read some months ago at Dog Eared Books and laughed myself weak.

Also I saw a flyer for something called the Portland Zine Symposium in July which I think is a bit more what I had in mind. And I’ve never been to Portland…

SoThere has published one letter a day from ordinary people who have something to say to one another for three years running. What a great idea. What a great use of the web.

Warning: This post written while stinking up the joint. I just got back from the gym

Sorry I haven’t been around, loyal reader(s?) of Where There’s Smoke. Between moving plans and finishing up a long interview with Jennfier Egan, the week has left the station with me stranded on the platform. Odd, I’ve only been blogging here for about 6 months (maybe more? I haven’t kept track), but I can tell when I haven’t posted in a little while. It’s a bit akin to the sour, metallic taste you get in your mouth if you haven’t brushed in a while.

So hey. Plans on buying the house are proceeding apace. My real estate agent (an old friend and the only way to go if you’re voluntarily morgaging your life away) is out of town this weekend so we’ve gone ahead and scheduled the inspection for next week. I didn’t know this but if you’re buying property, you want an expert to look it over, make sure the walls will hold up the ceiling, that water will flow when you turn a faucet and that a termite metropolis hasn’t sprung up in the floor. After that, you apply for a loan, bicker with the bank over how much they’ll give you, let the seller know, pay a bunch of other assorted fees, hopefully close on the property before an earthquake reduces it to matchsticks and then between paying mortage, property taxes, and climbing that mythical thing to nowhere called The Equity Ladder.

Or so I’m told. There are some other steps in here but I don’t remember. I’ve been trusting Britton the agent and she’s kept me afloat thus far.

To others possibly in the same boat (at last count, my friend Dinah had just moved to town, my friends Mena and Ben Trott may be on their way, and my youngest brother Daniel has his eye on the East Bay), I offer an excellent essay by my colleague at The Grotto, Ethan Waters.

Tomorrow is the Alternative Press Expo, a huge convening of over two hundred independent presses, zinesters, independent comic artists, and other assorted media weirdness. I’m so there. And thanks to the way-with-it creator of Wishbone Zine for keeping me in the loop.

I think Kevin Fox makes a good point: Are you ready for a Sesame Street makeover? Yes, the program’s demographic is getting younger and times have changed but isn’t the idea that the show challenges kids, instead of strokes them?

However, I haven’t lost faith just yet. If anyone can reinvent themselves and stay true to their vision, it’s the folks at Children’s Television Workshop. When I saw the Sesame Street biography on A & E, it confirmed what I remembered asserting at age 4: This is the absolute best that television can be.