SXSW is Happening

This week is SXSW conference in Austin, a gargantuan of a successful idea from the Lewis Black mindset, the editor of the Austin Chronicle, Austin's free alternative newspaper. To all things free many gifts are bestowed. Try figuring out the magic of SXSW and what a catalyst, aphrodisiac-like attraction the event has become for the movers and shaker-bakers from every coast, hill and valley. My thought is that calling Austin the "Live Music Capital of the World" helped ignite the magic. When you can name it, then you claim it. The genius who invented "Live Music Capital" sparked the thing and SXSW, a play on the Hitchcock film title, "North By Northwest," was also marketing genius. Lewis Black, a movie maven,  was an RTF grad student at the University of Texas in an earlier incarnation. RTF means Radio-TV-Film for the uninitiated and SXSW means South By Southwest. SXSW began as music festival and now has three parts-- interactive, film, and music-- a sturdy three-legged stool if there ever was one.

The most controversial element so far occurred at the Interactive portion (computer people) of SXSW. Some company, how's that for a generality, hired homeless people to act us wireless hot spots, which as I understand it means they provided places, like human towers, where you could get wireless access to the internet. Some said the idea was piss poor, underlining the narcissism of high-powered techies who have the illusion that life begins and ends with them. The rest of the people are carbon life forms. Others liked the idea that the homeless people had been included on some level. Talk about a digital divide! I'll look at my laptop, smart phone etc. while you just hold that lamp.

Oh well, some things are so reeking full of irony that you can hardly comment, they comment on themselves. But there was something very allegoric about the whole issue, an Aesop's Fable of sorts. There once was a man with a laptop computer and another man holding a microwave antenna....

Go Outside

Go Outside. This was the article of an Austin American Statesman article from the other day. American kids don't play outside, eat sugar and suffer from diabetes, don't exercise and have become obese. And when you stay inside in an air-conditioned environment your body does not have to cool itself down. We burn less calories by living in an "air-conditioned nightmare," as Henry Miller said in the title of his 1945  novel. Leave it to a novelist to figure out air conditioning signaled a step down a slippery slope way back in 1945.

So what's the alternative to living inside in an air-conditioned nightmare. Go outside! What will you find out there? Who knows... never can tell. I have been walking the hills of a nearby neighborhood.

A friend explains Andrew Breitbart's early demise as a case of him being "too tense because he could not control the future of the world..."

Giving up control... now there's a theme!

Why do we prefer outside to inside? In days of yore the outside was a dangerous place, full of wild animals and physical threat. We tamed the American continent and built incredible infrastructure and well-insulated houses. The suburban palace is a programmed environment. Temperature controlled. Media systems come in through the flat screen televisions. We can even broadcast ourselves now on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, punching away on laptops and cellphones. Why leave the house? (see paragraph one)

What, me drive?

Went to see Drive, the new Ryan Gosling. Gosling plays a "Los Angeles wheelman," as stated in the Sept. 23 review in Entertainment Weekly (EW). As someone with limited driving skills just going to the film posed something of a threat. I don't mean the actual driving to the theater; well, that's always part of it. A film premise based on high speed driving really pinches my insecurities. But wait a minute-- the Danish director does not drive at all in real life! He just sidesteps the issue completely. Doesn't drive in his personal life but makes movies about surly, skillful drivers aiding and abetting masked desperadoes on the journey to and from their targeted businesses. Movie directors have always admired tough guys-- who drive insanely fast, beat people up, kill people, threaten, intimidate, rob, commit adultery with noir dames and a whole range of behaviors at odds with the Ten Commandments. But this Danish director does not have a driver's license-- and the Good Book makes little mention of the dangers inherent in using the interstate highway system. Of course, you likely get more people dying on the American highway than committing bank robberies or any of a slew or cinematic sins. Other notable directors without a driver's license include Alfred Hitchcock and Spike Lee. Detect a pattern there? Not sure. I sympathize with the Danish director and his fascination with good driving skills. As a passenger, Nicolas Winding Refn has the objectivity to see driving as the impressive skill it really is. But, take a closer look at that middle name-- Winding! That's a Winding of a middle name! And the opening scene of the film is a wingding of a scene. EW called the scene an "addictive getaway sequence." I agree and want to study the sequence-- but it won't become addictive until the movie is available on DVD or Youtube, correct? I like LA noir movies, Chinatown, from 1994 being the best ever. The Ryan Gosling vehicle vehicle lacks some of the finer points of Polanski's 1974 depiction of Thirties LA, character development and dialogue for starters. LA in the Thirties did not have near the number of skyscrapers and electric lights blazing you get now and so Driver constantly refers back vertical skyscraper shots. A note of supreme irony is the appearance of the name Frank Capra III as one of the film's producers. Frank Capra I was the anti-cynic, the anti-noir, a man of optimism and cheerful romance built upon the subtle use of dialogue. Capra the First must be spinning in the grave at the long, wordless gazes between Ryan Gosling's Driver and Irene, the waitress with the heart of gold played by Carey Mulligan. If words were sex these two two would be DOA on their honeymoon night. But back to Chinatown. Roman Polansk correctly anticipated the knife as weapon of choice for the 21st century noir. Polanski, playing a thug, slashed Jack Nicholson's nose, opening Jake Gittes a roomier nostril. Drive features the knife, stiletto, straight razor with much gusto. This new, old-fashioned tool of death, steel to the gut, eye, artery, has become the film artist's best method for dispensing with bad guys, an alternative to the first-person shooter of video games-- though a video game aesthetic thrives throughout the film. And now I've got to start worrying about shaving.

American Moment

Flew back yesterday, Aug. 28, from Washington DC. Changed plays at DFW in Dallas for the last leg to Austin. I was sitting in almost the last row of an American Airlines jet next to a U.S. Army soldier, a young white guy in combat fatigues, seem to be the standard uniform, and a tall, friendly African-American guy sat on the other side of the soldier on the aisle. I eavesdropped on their conversation and learned the tall guy grew up as an Army brat as a kid and knew about the military environment. As they spoke I learned the military guy had a wife in Austin about to give birth to their first child, a baby girl. As we neared Austin, a flight stewardess approached the military kid (looked early twenties) and said she wanted to make sure he was the first off the plane so he could get to the hospital, hopefully in time to see his baby born. A minute or two later she got on the PA system and asked the passengers to remain seated when we made it to the gate, so the soldier could be the first to depart. She came back on moments later and said a first class passenger had volunteered to give his seat to the soldier. She asked the soldier to get his bags and move to the front of the plane. The passengers applauded the thoughtful gesture. The plane kind of took a nasty bump at that time as we descended. I got a bit nervous-- thought maybe we were getting too much ceremony here in the cabin, but things leveled off. The stewardess added in her final announcement how it was nice that they were still "good people in the world." Not sure if she meant the American soldier or the first class passenger or both? In either case, the chain of events added a human touch to the end of my journey.

Memory Motel

Rode from Montauk to Speonk on a bus as the LIRR did not have the rail lines in service. I was surprised to see a little dangling chain with a flier announcing the trains would not be running at the Montauk rail station, the end of the south fork line. Montauk is The End of Long Island, jutting further into the Atlantic Ocean at the easternmost point of the land mass. The beaches are clean and the water is very clean. I bobbed around in the cool salt water on Mon. and Tues. afternoons. The ocean props you up with so much buoyancy you can lay flat in the water like some swami on a bed of nails. High school friend Pete S. has a house in Montauk, very comfortable, and he showed me around. Pete showed me the yellow house, a little shack of a rental down by the beach, which attracted an offer of $1.5 million, an offer rejected by the owners. I think the owners rent the place for $1200 a week in the summer season. Seems like they should have taken the offer.

So I rode the bus and got to travel through all the Hampton towns: Amagansett, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Southhampton, Hampton Bays, Westhampton and finally, the always-popular, Speonk.

The End, as in the end of Long Island, also reminds me of the Jim Morrison song. There is a motel in the business section of Montauk called Memory Motel. Pete said the Rolling Stones have a song with that title, based on their stay at the place, a kind of biker hotel, as he described it. I'll look for the song.

Pete filled me in on some of our Berner classmates and where they ended up. These are guys and gals in their sixties and so the bigtime bruiser on the athletic field, or the guy bullying in the hallway is now a retiree with a beer bully and fond memories of intimidating the mild and the weak. Well, at least that's how I fancied the big galoots now brought to earth and bulging waistlines, varicose veins, and senior discounts on the railroad by Father Time. I did like seeing a document with everyone of my Class of 1967 classmates listed. I saw my pals names from homeroom, the girls who made my heart race, the guys I competed against in the popularity rankings. It was a Memory Motel, I tell you, full of grist for a thousand hours of pondering.... where did the time go? Ask Joni Mitchell...

Pappy in Wonderland

Pappy was beginning to get very tired of sitting in his backyard in Austin, while all the twenty-somethings partied their lives away down the block, and of having nothing to do: once or twice he visited the library stacks at the University, but the books had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Pappy, "without pictures or conversations."

So he was considering in his own mind (as well as he could for high carb meals made him sleepy and stupid), whether surfing the Internet would be worth the trouble of getting up and going to his office, when suddenly his White Rat Terrier ran close by him.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that Terrier dog nor did Pappy think it so much out of the way to hear the Terrier say to itself, "Oh dear, Oh dear! I shall be too late! (when I thought about this later it occurred to me odd that a Terrier should not be in hurry up, but hey, even puppies can suffer from driver behavior of the neurotic sort; but when the Terrier actually took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, you had to wonder who carries watches anymore, not to mention pocket watches, but Pappy jumped up and burning with curiosity about a Terrier with a waistcoat-pocket and a watch to take out of it, saw it pop down a small rat-hole under the patio tiles in the backyard.

The Terrier went straight down the rat-hole and Pappy went after it, never considering how in the world he was to get out again.

The rat-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way in the direction of Arroyo Seco, a dry creek running through the neighborhood, and then dipped suddenly that Pappy had not a moment to think about stopping himself before he found himself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.

Me and Margaret and Ian

Should Bristol Palin host a talk show? Should Danny DeVito play for the NY Knicks? Starting a blog with two questions indicates a certain lack of vitality. If one has things to say, why end with a question mark. And speaking of my writing temperature… I took my writing temp… or profile.. or analysis via a computer program called “I Write Like.” Try it for yourself! Here is the link (http://iwl.me/) The program asks you to paste in a few paragraphs of your writing and then tells you which famous writer you most resemble.

First time I showed up as Margaret Atwood, my prose correlated most closely to Ms. Atwood. Not a bad writer to be compared to and she’s very ecologically minded. Then I ran another writing sample of several paragraphs, through the computer and I correlated to Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame. That seemed a bit more masculine, you gotta love 007, at least I did back in the Sean Connery era. And I did read Fleming’s books in my teenage years and found Bond to be very compelling. Knew his guns, his liquor, his way around a woman. So that’s my starting point, Margaret Atwood and Ian Fleming.