August 2008 Archives
Ariane and I attended the World Hoop Day event on Treasure Island - which had a "Treasure Island" theme, hence the pirate outfit. More than 200 hoops were given to formerly homeless and at-risk youths and more than 200 people turned out to hoop for peace. Here are my photos.
Many moons ago, way back at the dawn of the millennium, Choire Sicha railroaded me into starting something known as a blog with him. It was called East Coast, West Coast and we wrote about our lives as best friends living on opposite sides of the country. Neither of us knew what a hyperlink was, much less how to code one, and even though we didn't have a clue about html or web design either, it apparently didn't matter. During that early age of blogging when it was this thing still very much relegated to the uber commandos of the geek squad, perhaps it wasn't too surprising that a couple of queer crackpots sharing way too much information about themselves found an audience on that newfangled interweb.
The day Choire added a stats meter to our site, months after it began, we were shocked and awed. There were visitors reading our postings, lots of them. While it took a little getting used to, it quickly became rather addictive and for myself, with my own personal history involving rehab, I was pretty much ready and waiting for the new crack. It wasn't long before I not only didn't mind airing my dirty laundry online, I found myself participating in even more outrageous antics so I could blog them - just as long as there was an ever-growing audience for it all. Initially masking our insanity behind pseudonyms, all sense of privacy had to go. We'd become lifestyle blogging web stars, albeit dysfunctional ones, and I wanted full credit for my dysfunction!
Forgive me as I digress here for a moment, but I must take a moment to confess that the whole story behind my sleeping with East/West's 500,000th visitor simply for having landed on our blog at that magic moment, was an act of complete and total fabrication. Not that I wouldn't have slept with him, probably, but when Jonno won the actual honors, what he wanted was a good juicy story instead. Conjuring up a night with a fictional half-a-million prize winner at a cheap motel in Oakland was juicy enough. In fact, scandal ensued. Are these guys really whoring themseves for internet hits? While the answer in this case was actually "no" - the truth was in fact, absolutely!
While that incident added fuel to an ever-growing fiasco, the men behind the curtain were soon exposed. Writing as the mole behind Puppetmaster, the online web game hosted by Ernie Hsiung, the game ended with a bang which put an end to all the guessing games as to whether East/West's cyberwhores were even real people. Finally unmasked, nobody seemed to mind that we were snake oil peddlers who'd somehow landed in Blogville via a tornado. Choire and I soon found ourselves multi-nominated for Bloggies - and we won. I had somehow become a famous blogger and truth be told I couldn't get enough of it. When Rannie and the Toronto bloggers rolled out the red carpet when I arrived for a Martini party, when I found myself surrounded by New York City bloggers at the Idlewild bar when I was biting the Big Apple, when the majority of my friends became other people with personal web sites, when I fell in love with a blogger in Michigan and we started a long-distance relationship, somewhere along the way I'd stopped blogging about my life and my life had become the blog.
And yes my dearest, there was a price to pay for it all. The cause célèbre, for a time, I found new kids on the blog kissing ass, while others who had sung praises rather suddenly stopped liking me. Strangers at a party were overheard saying things about yours truly that weren't exactly kind while someone I'd never seen was so excited to finally meet me. Somewhere between all the self-centered parading on my part and the internet's insatiable need for the new and improved extra super-tingling flavor, I found myself in angst. While I'm not sure of the where and why of it all exactly, my fear that we were no longer the "it" blog really bothered me. Wasn't I blogging just as much and just as hard as ever? Wasn't I still landing myself in ridiculous situations and silly outfits for your enjoyment? I wanted all the limelight and started acting like a pig. When the nominations for the Bloggies came that year and East/West wasn't on the list, I did what any fiending publicity-drug addicted mediawhore would do. I attacked a few of the nominees.
Throwing myself into the grave at the funeral and flinging dirt wherever there was a potential target for conspiracy was just sad. While the redemption for my finger pointing came with a spike in web traffic rolling in, like people who go to the ocean to watch beached whales die - when the Bloggies were over the tide rolled back out. There were, however, numerous people wounded and I am deeply sorry. There were those who took their blogs offline after being chased by a lynch mob I created, long-term online friendships were damaged and ruined. I attacked the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area Bloggers claiming a conspiracy that all-in-all was pretty ridiculous at best. I attacked my good friend Min Jung Kim for scoring a best LGBT blog nomination out of self-righteous jealousy trying to justify my antics with her heterosexuality. Rannie and I had a falling out as I acted like the incredibly spoiled, vindictive brat that I'd become. I'd always had condemnation for the flamers of the internet who attack others from the safety of their computer screens, only to find myself winding up doing just that in the end. I sincerely apologize to everyone I hurt and the blogosphere as a whole for any and all damages my tirade caused. If there is someway for me to make it up to you, please let me know. I'd like to make the situation right. My most sincere apologies. I was a total ass. I wish you all nothing but the absolute best there is in life in abundance.
Boston Dynamics "BigDog" is the "alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal's, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule. BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog's control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary." I think it's incredibly nteresting. Watching the video it becomes more and more difficult to believe BigDog is a machine. Watch for the part where BigDog gets kicked or when he winds up on the ice. Blade Runner anyone?
Rome: Confessions D'Un Voleur D'Ames
Indifference is the enemy. In a martial industrial folk style with a clearly Death in June heritage, yet without the parental pitfalls, Rome delivers transformational marching orders within Confessions D'Un Voleur D'Ames. Jerome Reuter's confessions are a "call from a world where love and despair are locked in an embrace. A black craving in the fangs of war, the joys of stealth in a riot of blossoms." The Luxembourg based artist has stated in interviews that he won't be limited by genres and Confessions easily weaves dark wave, apocalyptic folk, neo-classical and more into a soundtrack for the quietest recovery of sight, losing blinders to see our true uniqueness, giving reign to the highest self. There are messages in the dark, notes like "If we stop, if we stay quiet, we die." At Cold Meat Records, Myspace, Download on iTunes
Chiodos: Bone Palace Ballet
For those that remember my Year of Rock and Roll, the year that rocked harder than any other before or since, then you know that I have been known to embrace my inner headbanger. The Chiodos brothers deliver an incredibly complex release with Bone Palace Ballet. Metallic arpeggios, metalcore breakdowns, piano ballads, bounce pop music explosions, orchestral strings, often all within the same song. In this age of watered-down marketing produced and targeted demographically "artistry", Bone Palace Ballet isn't compromising. Craigery Owens' melodramatically androgynous and angelically ageless vocals can't put the sound in a box either. The result is something I immediately liked and have come to appreciate its brilliance more with each and every listen. Chiodos.net, MySpace, Download on iTunes
Happy Rhodes: Find Me
Happy Rhodes has never achieved commercial success even with eleven releases to her name in the past twenty years. What she has achieved though is a very impressive catalog of incredibly heartfelt and forthright songs, as well as a personal reign as queen of the dysfunctionally dark, damaged and oppressed that have encountered her along the way, a role she acknowledges on her new track "Queen." While most don't make it past her cover art, this being possibly her most accessible to date, even with the demons she added to her self portrait, those who do are likely to stay for her intimate lyrics, dynamic musicianship, stereophonic techniques and four-octave voice that can go from Kate Bush to Annie Lennox in a nanosecond. Her first album in nine years, Find Me was worth the wait. Happy Rhodes, MySpace, Download on iTunes