The Real Threat of Blogs

I've been reading and often appreciating Douglas Rushkoff for quite some time. He posted a great prophetic piece about the real threat of blogs which resonated with me. Here's a snip:


Likewise, I believe the greatest power of the blog is not just its ability to distribute alternative information - a great power, indeed - but its power to demonstrate a mode of engagement that is not based on the profit principle.


just to clarify, I don't have anything against profit or markets and especially not entrepeneurship. In fact, it seems to me like blogging is a form of entrepeneurship. Any artist who tries to project a story or a project into the world has felt the contours of that sort of market... Certainly developing or sustaining a "non-profit" organization is a difficult entrepeneurial enterprise. in contemporary times, it is difficult to seperate the concept of market from the concept of "public sphere" and audience...and while i think that if the "market" metaphor prevails too much (in any of those domains), our imagination will be stunted in dangerous ways -- I also can see how that metaphor (of markets) enhances the domains of politics and media and education and church...

but i like Rushkoff's post because it offers an alternative vision of what MOTIVATES people. It seems like much of the rightwing ideology is motivated by a presumption that people are ultimately motivated by money and success in a traditional market...so its refreshing to think about a *real* context where people are *really* motivated to *engage* but not primarily by money...

Over The Rhine Offers Parenting Resources

Granted, I'm sortof, mostly, I hope, OUT of this phase of parenting....

although I did end up cleaning up much more of Noah Leon's poop than I wanted to several weeks ago...

but I still think the song is great. And of course Over the Rhine is always great...

It may be the kind of humour that has a primary appeal to parents / aunts / uncles / grandparents who are still in or emerging from the world of potty training....

Go listen. You'll be glad you did.

Good stuff...

Janson got engaged!



Congratulations Jans! We met Heather last year, loved her, but have been in the dark until a happy email announced the good news. Janson is an old testament scholar who is writing (has written?) a dissertation on the first ten chapters of the Book of Numbers. Seriously. And what's crazy? He's still a really interesting person...

We love to spend time with him....

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My friend Gary is having a big week of successes with his film, wow & flutter debuting at the Palm Springs Shorts Fest, the L.A. Short Film Fest & the Rome Int'l Short Fest.

I'm still super pumped about the fact that Gary got Damien Jurado (!) to record a song for this film. Damien Jurado rocks.



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there's more good stuff, but it would take too long to list it all, so here're some highlights:

1. Lynn wrote me a great note that surprised me out of the blue.
2. I had enjoyable talks with Emily & Andrew the other day.
3. I'm excited to see some of my family soon.
4. I'm actually having *good* experiences working with administration all week (!) -- i complain enough about the other so i thought I'd give some press time to the good.
5. Addison had a great first day of school.
6. J & A & I went swimming at the YMCA last night. They're super adventurous and fun.

The picture is just included because my kids are so cute -- not because it actually came from last night. Those are my brother's kids with mine...

"Andy."

I dreamed that my mom was at the bottom of the steps and said my name really clearly at 4:50 a.m. this morning. That's ten minutes before my alarm clock went off for the first (of two) times.

I was filled with this half-awake, half-asleep creepy feeling that she was really hovering in my dream, but that she really HAD to tell me something. Or somehow that she had driven six hours to Canton to tell me something and was actually waiting for me to wake up. In any case, I decided to listen to her in the dream.

She morphed into Franka Potente and tried to tell me something, but the reception was staticky and not audible.

I had to listen harder.

I finally heard her as she turned into a spruce tree.

"you have to be less stressed." she said.

(I don't actually feel stressed at all, but I felt like this is a message from a dream, a portent, I must attend!)

and then the dead gnarly branches in the bottom of three tree were wiped clean not by an axe, but by a cursor-eraser that somebody outside of the dream was rubbing back and forth over their screen.

Anyone have the corresponding dream about a computer monitor and erasing a spruce tree? Or just have a good interpretation...?

a parable about all the VILLAGEs

semi-spoilers included

I've not talked about The Village all summer even though I've often thought that I had a lot to say.

I'll start with the relevant pre-review-admissions: 1.) I went in expecting to LIKE not LOVE it, but 2.) a fan of M. Night, nonetheless, 3.) I've always been convinced that Unbreakable is the best work he's done yet...even though I like all the other stuff.



Okay. That out of the way, I really only have two things to say.

1. This is a good film, because its one of the best PARABLES about ENCLAVES that I've seen in forever. Isolationism is dangerous. Integration is inevitable. At the beginning of the film, I said to myself: This would be the best parable about fundamentalism EVER except in fundamentalism, the monsters in the woods aren't real. The leaders of the Villages make them up to coerce obedience. So...you can imagine how much MORE i liked the Parable-ness of the movie later...

2. The twists in this movie aren't the payoff. The way that you writhe on the questions of the twists is the payoff. M. Night amazingly uses all the grammar he's set up (color codes is the best, most obvious example) to lure you into elaborate questions which are about trusting him as an author -- while still managing to stay in the story emotionally. And don't tell me that "the" twist wasn't that great. There are at least three major twists in this movie. ANd I agree, the last one isn't great. But the other ones are.

It just seems like we NEED more parables about life in enclaves. We all live in them. When I was just emerging from fundamentalism, I didn't know that. I thought I was the only freakish one who lived in a cut-off way from society. But it turns out that relatively limited spheres of knowledge and relationships are the normative way of being human. The most manageable survivable way to be human....but if you're reading this blog...I think you care about the QUESTION of:

How do we both LIVE IN (affirming) our enclaves, while striving to make them permeable...to, ask William Hurt's character says: Take Risks?

Legal Questions

Can anyone direct me to some information on Breaking and Entering?

I gather that there are different "levels" of B & E that you can be convicted for, and that usually its a charge that's paired with burglary...

So my questions are:

legal defintion,

maximum sentence,

and finally:

if you're just discovered in a building, but you didn't BREAK anything to get in -- is it just trespassing?

And surely the maximum penalty for trespassing is just a fine, right?

You know the scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where Richie & Margot spend the night in the museum...

Doesn't that seem like an amazing experience to have?

And I've been thinking: I'm at the point in life where I should just stop avoiding being arrested. It just doesn't feel like a very real deterrent to me anymore.

Legal websites would be welcome...

All Gods Children

I think that this piece of reporting from the New York Times is one the best -- most succinct -- most well-written descriptions of what evangelicalism (particularly the evangelical christian college) looks like as a cultural phenomenon.

I laughed. I cringed. I nodded. And I started feeling so ridiculous about my enthusiasm, that I thought I'd better post it for some of y'all to respond to. Former LAFILMSTUDIES people will enjoy Craig Detwiler's guest appearance...

more deadly sins announced!

Thanks to tall skinny kiwi for the link to the new deadly sins.

Apathy, apparently is the top choice (after, of course, the existing and ongoing seven deadly, and already established sins.

So part of me wonders whether or not anyone's really apathetic or whether we're all suffering from a kind of information - and - therefore - engagement overload?

At some point everybody goes, "so what?" says Joan Bakewell, but don't we just go "so what?" when our resources of caring are just too taxed?

LIke, for instance, I'm horrified about the Chechen tragedy and about how much m ore I need to recycle -- at least on a theoretical level -- but I'm really BUSY caring about some other travesties in my more immediate (emotional or geographic) proximity.

And it seems like on some level that apathy as a cultural indicator (/sin) is an effect of globalism and globalvillaging, wifi, google, & cell phones.

It's increasingly easy to be connected to tragedy that's distant from us or not immediate important to us.

I know I'm not exactly getting this right though, because on the other hand -- I know that some of my apathy is more rooted in selfishness than immediacy. Or is my perceived immediacy just an effect of how selfish or unselfishly I'm living.

This seems like an increasingly confusing post, but it seems linked to so many other questions i've been obsessed with recently...

insight? anyone?