Features Anushka Shankar, Wayner Shorter and Chaka Kahn. All on one track. Really.
Sri Krishna
Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve…Learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. Then, you will achieve your destiny.
~ Krishna quotes from The Bhagavad Gita
Liberal vs. Conservative
When you look at the raw definitions it almost seems like a no brainer. Which one are you?
liberal |ˈlib(ə)rəl|
adjective
1 open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values : they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people.
• favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms : liberal citizenship laws.
conservative |kənˈsərvətiv; -vəˌtiv|
adjective
holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.
• (of dress or taste) sober and conventional : a conservative suit.
The age of serious satire
I love this post on Huff Po today.
Young Americans See Colbert/Stewart as becoming a serious news outlet
What Colbert and Stewart have brilliantly done is they have slowly and patiently changed the landscape of the common news language. The duo of the old guards of TV news and the political system has gotten to be such a laborious joke that everyone knows it. But to be fair everyone also knows some of the information that the news conveys is important. So why not combine the two, right? Stewart has been the master of that. I can watch The Daily Show on any given night and get all the information I need whilst also laughing my ass off.
The only downside is that I can see young people will become cynical to a fault. Extensive exposure to the Stewart Colbert vernacular creates an air of acceptance that the system is fucked beyond repair and all we can do is grin and bare it. That’s partially true but also hopeless. We must not loose site of the great experiment that America is and can still be. Anyway, it’s an interesting post on Huff Po.
50% off of 10%
I find this to be the most telling portrait of what consumers are doing with their smart phones. While Apple hovers around a 10% market share of smart phones in use, they dominate mobile web traffic at nearly 50%! Does this mean surfing the web on a Blackberry or Windows Mobile device sucks? yes. But that also means that’s not why people buy a Blackberry. With such a huge numerical disparity I would go on to say that the iPhone isn’t even a smart phone – a new “mobile computer” category should be created.
Dispatch: A life of horses and waves
About three weeks ago, I woke up to the email below. It was actually sent to a friend of mine who then forwarded it to me. I’ve changed all the actual names in order to respect the private lives of these people. Doing that certainly takes some of the weight of this fabulous life changing epic of a story. Nonetheless, it’s still a brightly lit tale of wonder and hope at how ones life can change into magnificent forms if given the chance. It is entirely true by the way, this is not fiction. Ole!
yes, darling Susan, life does take very strange turns and mine is one which i would never in a million years have imagined. where to begin? well, i suppose it all evolved rather unexpectedly when Jack Thomas the beverage tycoon came knocking at the miller house and offered to buy it for any amount i wanted. at the time i had absolutely no desire to leave the house but somehow he ended up living there and i followed roberto the eternal surfer down here to baja where we´ve had a vacation house since the mid 70’s…the thought of living in a desert by the sea never appealed to me but as i had sold the house i decided i could use this place as a base and travel which i did for several years after leaving LA . all was well until one day i woke up with a strong need to get a horse which i found and purchased that same day. i figured the horse would be an anchor and something i could relate to in this rather arid wasteland. i prefer balmy tropical beaches to windswept ones…the horse did engage me and gave this place a much more romantic perspective. i would saddle up and roam the humble back country where people lived biblical lives tucked away in the hills…all was idyllic until a very out of season rain drizzled three days in a row , not a heavy rain but enough to make arroyos which had been dry for fifty years run steady, carrying large branches, bushes etc down and eventually blocking narrow passages. the force of the dammed waters when they finally burst came powerfully, wrenching hundred year old trees and carrying everything in its path down to the sea. my horse included…i cannot begin to describe the agony , the loss and the remorse i felt, for i had had a premonition , difficult to explain in regards to the beautiful spot where i kept my horse but had not acted on it. the day before the rains came i opted to leave him against my inner feeling of moving him to another place…that was the beginning of my demise. i felt so much remorse i spent months combing the wasteland looking for this fanthom horse. i put adds and posters for reward and i went everywhere that people told me they had seen such a horse. eventually i gave up and moved to new york..naj and peter were staying in a magnificent loft which jackie sanders was selling and i was just about to put an offer when roberto called me from here telling me he thought someone had found my horse. i stupidly flew back and that is where it all went wrong , or rather my life took a completely different path, a path i never envisioned in my wildest dreams, one which has caused me to abandon all i thought was me, caused bittersweet joy and sorrow, broken heart beyond repair and a complete renewal of life priorities. ..for seven years i lived in total isolation, no electricity, no phone no connection with the outside world in this place called todos santos which was until a few years ago the perfect spot to ride a wild horse along a 60 mile span of wild coastline. it turned out that the horse which i came back to was a wild beast and demon which i rejected at first sight. however, as life would have it, i was destined to meet the greatest foe and challenge of my life and i took him on with fear and trepidation for it was this very horse who destoyed my life and gave me what i had always been afraid to claim, my own natural power… the last decade has been a lesson of patience, perseverance, returning to the dust. through this initial horse connection i have since fostered a herd of twenty spirited and noble wild beings which are teaching me what i needed to learn but was impossible to do within human relations. i had to choose between a life of comfort, a husband and a life of uncertainty and complete surrender to responsibility of dozens of horses dogs and different species which have come to further instruct me in the joy of living dangerously with an open heart…this may sound a bit pretentious , vague and predictable, just a romantic excuse for menopausal syndrome. whatever it is, dear Susan, here i am in a most unlikely place, living a most unlikely life, one which i can´t even pretend to like but knowing that this is what i am meant to be doing right now and perversely enjoying it… this is a very scant sketch of what i have been up to since i left LA ..and you? i get news of sightings of you here there and everywhere. our grapevine reaches me now and then, specially now that i have returned to the world via internet. this is magical!. i remember when Tommy was describing and championing all this. i though it science fictional… what a strange turn indeed! you remain one of the most memorable events of my life. i too think of you often and those wonderful special times are vivrant in my heart. i love you, most elegant and generous lady. Que viva la vida!!
Pick of the week: My Morning Jacket
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjLFG0i2_AE]
I posted this a couple months back on my old Tumblr blog. It’s so good that I had to re-post. “Giddeon” live on Letterman a few years back.
On 2008 – a round up of sorts (part 1 of 2)
Writing about myself is a laborious exercise that I do not wish to engage in. I’ve often found that while I have many good tales to tell that actually putting them down into a digestible bits of sentence structure is tricky. Someday I will seek guidance from the gods and take another whack at it, until then I’m going to keep the self indulgence down to the bare minimum and write about things that interest me.
2008 was generally a very good year. Professionally, I found myself unceremoniously jettisoned from the advertising world into the music business. Much to my surprise, it’s worked out nicely. It seems that the music business has room for someone who thinks about branding, campaign ideas and how audiences are spending time in the digital world. There are still dozens of others who make sense out of the touring business, how labels work (or don’t), PR, radio promotion and the other tactics that music relies on to make it into ones earbuds. How it all works together is anybody’s guess. I keep saying that if anyone has the future of the music business figured out they are lying.
I’ve just returned from Sao Paulo, Brazil and San Francisco, CA. Sao Paulo is where I’ve, more or less, called home for the past 15 years. I do reside in Los Angeles but my family house slipped into mythic status some years ago while leaving no physical proof that any of it actually happened. So by default, the lovely home in Sao Paulo where my mother and her companion live is my closest thing to “home.”
San Francisco was home to the two night New Years run of Bob Weir’s Ratdog and Phil Lesh and Friends. No matter how old they get or how far away Jerry seems, I have to attend as many of these dead relics as possible. It’s just so great to hear the songs! Perhaps, a more detailed review will follow. Until then, I’m psyched for The Dead’s 09 run.
People often ask me about the state of Timothy Leary affairs. Unfortunately, this is a slow moving process that I have no answers for. Most hasn’t changed in the past year – there is no update on the archives, there is no update on a feature film project and many of his books are still out of print and hard to get. The good news is that there is perhaps a glimmer of hope with the leary.com site. It seems that the ever passionate Denis Berry and Joi Ito have enlisted the help of one Lisa Rein to direct the proceedings of that site and another more archival effort into reality. Leary.com has only a minor update at this moment but there are some talks with Chris and Joey to give it a decade long needed jump start. We’ll see. The archival site, http://www.timothylearyarchives.org, actually exists and is quite fun. In order to get really deep and sticky it requires a hefty investment to digitize all of the archives in order to get them into a web friendly form. Many avenues are being pursued on that front. If you want more concrete information on any of this you can contact Denis Berry at [email protected].
Culturally, my round up is as follows:
Shows I went to – some more than once and in no particular chronological order. Festival sets are also included.
Radiohead, Kings of Leon, Metric, Vampire Weekend, Duffy, Coldplay, Santogold, Sweetwater, Jenny Lewis, Nine Inch Nails, Jay Z, Death Cab for Cutie, AC/DC, Roger Waters, Ted Brown, Jon Brion, Nick Cave, Cat Power, Spirtualized, The Secret Machines, Prince, Kraftwerk, Gnarls Barkley, M83, School of Seven Bells, Portisehead, Aphex Twin, Kate Nash, MGMT, Minus the Bear, Gogol Bordello, Tom Petty, The Raconteurs, My Morning Jacket, Ratdog, Phil and Friends, Animal Collective, Serj Tankian, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Return to Forever, Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Motorhead, Testament, Beck and Spoon.
There might be a few others that I’m forgetting…
Albums I loved – in no particular order
TV on the Radio “Dear Science”, Santogold “Santo Gold”, Metallica “Death Magnetic”, M83 “Saturdays = Youth”, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals “Cardinology”, My Morning Jacket “Evil Urges”, Kitty Daisy & Lewis “Kitty Daisy & Lewis”, Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes”, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”, Of Montreal “Skeletal Lamping”, Coldplay “Viva La Vida”, Jenny Lewis “Acid Tounge”, The Raconteurs “Consolers of the Lonely”, Stephen Colberts “A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!”, Apes and Androids “Blood Moon”
And about a dozen others that I can’t recall at the moment…
Products and Trends
Amazons Kindle – I myself do not own of these but i was tasked with bringing one down and loading it up. I give it 8 out of 10 stars. The digital paper screen is extremely readable and as non digital as could possibly be. Something about the quality of it adds an analog texture to it that is certainly conducive to reading books. I would guess that Amazon took some cues from Apple – the opening of the box is quite rewarding, the set up is extremely easy and the product design is elegant. However, Amazon has no Jonny Ives and some of the devices flaws are within the product design itself. There is no reason why the alpha-numeric keyboard needs to be slanted like that, its extremely annoying. Also, there is a “next page” button on the left that does not need to be there – it fucks up the equal weight distribution of “previous” and “next” that should exist. This is a first generation attempt – it will be really interesting to see where this product lands 2 or 3 generations later.
It is a small miracle when you turn it on and it instantly connects to the Sprint 3G network for speedy downloading. That alone is worth the price of admission and the back order wait time. Kinda makes me wanna become a reader.
iPhone apps: Fieldrunners, Bloom, Smule Ocarina, Amazon, Google, MLB at Bat, Shazam, RjDj, Style.com
To be continued…
More MTV Reality
“These new series reflect Generation ‘Why Not?’ — living, working and playing on their own terms, ‘adventure capitalists’ if you will, pursuing a variety of thrill-seeking, 2.0, express-yourself enterprises,” says MTV entertainment president Brian Graden.
I’m not even sure what that means. I’d love someone to tell me. That sounds like lots of buzz words or one of those great marketing cliches that are spawned out of one of those DIY phrase generators. What is a 2.0 express yourself enterprise?
One one hand, I’m glad MTV doesn’t matter much anymore. It’s pop culture relevancy has pretty much gone to shit with emphasis really being handed over to tweens. On the other hand, there was something cool about great videos having a centralized viewing location. I guess that belongs to YouTube now?
On Dock Ellis
Psychedelic culture loves its mythic stories. This is, arguably, the greatest of them all. In 1970, the story goes, Dock was unaware that the team was playing a double header that day let alone that he was to pitch one of the games. He dropped some acid while in his hotel room with his girlfriend when the two of them realized that “oh shit. i have to pitch today.” It was too late to turn back at that point, so he did what any self respecting athlete would do – he suited up and showed up. The results we all know – he overcame 8 early walks and then notched a no hitter. His only no hitter of his 12 year professional baseball career.
Dock Ellis died yesterday at 63. He went 138-119 with a 3.46 ERA from 1968-79, spending most of his career with the Pirates. After his baseball career he went on to become an anti addiction counselor for young athletes.