Blue Mandy, that's Mandarin if you're nasty

2010-09-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

You Want to Know What a Content Strategy is? First, Think Communications and the Glue That Holds All the Pieces of a holistic Marketing and Communications Strategy.

Last Tuesday night, I attended my first SF Content Strategy Meetup. It was titled "A Day in the Life of a Content Strategist: Panel Discussion." Speakers were Kris Corzine, Content Strategist, eBay
John Alderman, Creative Director, Razorfish and CC Holland, Content Strategist, Cisco. The moderator was Frank Marquardt of Barbarian Group, who hosted.

So what is a content strategy and how does it fit into other categories thrown around the Online Mar/Com world? What's the intersection between content strategy, social media, mobile, interactive gaming, brand creation, brand strategy, user interface, design? Content provides the underpinning to all of these departments and so the content strategist asks the questions that help determine how all these content pieces and divisions work together to realize a company or organization's goals.

Content is not just about writing, not about stuff. It is about asking the questions of what stuff should be created and then asking again, why? It is about drilling down to the basic, almost simplistic questions: how does this relate to larger goals, how will users understand how to consume content, how does a brand communicate its message?

How do content strategist provide deliverables? The panel and audience came up with multiple options: Content Inventory, A Content Audit, (yes) Editorial Style Guides with SEO chapters, Social Reward Maxtrixes.

The Content Strategists works across departments to enable conversations and most importantly, ground those conversations around concrete goals. Most often, the content strategists role is found in AVOIDING and SOLVING marketing/communication obstacles simply by saying, "NO."

NO to the flashy new campaign idea that confuses the consumer.
NO to the creative concept that sounds good in a conference room, but tries to change user behavior before the user is ready.
NO to user interface content that overwhelms.

Content Strategy makes a difference when an organization, company or client has that "Ahha Moment." Razorfish's John Alderman gave the best example. He shared Yahoo's dilemna is creating a new celebrity site/component to Yahoo. After hours of rigorous brainstorming, thousands of questions -- who are we talking to, what are we trying to stay, what do we want to the user to think -- John's content group came up with the recommendation to create a new microsite, OMG. It fit. An Ahha Moment ensued.

Content Strategists need to document these successful case studies. This will be the subject of future MeetUps. Check them out. In four years of regularly attending these events, last Tuesdays ranked as one of the most valuable I have attended.

2010-09-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

Three Marketing Lessons found in Wired Chris Anderson's Declaration: "The Web is Dead" article

Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, recently co-write an article declaring the "Web is Dead".

Anderson's basic premise is that as the World Wide Web has grown astronomically, the explosion of content has planted the seeds for the rise of a semi-closed Internet experience based on convenience and manageability. Anderson captures this dynamic,

Blame human nature. As much as we intellectually appreciate openness, at the end of the day we favor the easiest path. We’ll pay for convenience and reliability, which is why iTunes can sell songs for 99 cents despite the fact that they are out there, somewhere, in some form, for free. When you are young, you have more time than money, and LimeWire is worth the hassle. As you get older, you have more money than time. The iTunes toll is a small price to pay for the simplicity of just getting what you want. The more Facebook becomes part of your life, the more locked in you become. Artificial scarcity is the natural goal of the profit-seeking.

Anderson's article emphasizes media consumption. Through this lens, his article captures larger digital trends, which de-value the wild openness seen in the World Wide Web. In contrast, the rise of Apple and Google's Apps-markets and Facebook's emergence as the Web's dominant social entry-point signal a marked move away from open-ness to convenience and what some have called "walled silos".

However, the accompanying discussion amongst Federated Media's John Battelle, O'Reilly Media's Tim O’Reilly and Anderson highlights the gaps and omissions in Anderson's piece. For example, O'Reilly moves the conversation beyond a consumer's media consumption and focuses on how the changing digital landscape impacts the business enterprise,

But the evidence is strong that instead, we’re going to have a multi-player platform, one in which openness and interoperability are required for all the pieces to work together....

It seems to me that one of the alternative futures we can choose is a future of cooperating internet subsystems that aren’t owned by any one provider, a system in which an application might use Facebook Connect and Open Graph Protocol for user authentication, user photos, and status updates, but Google or Bing maps for location services, Google or Nuance for speech recognition, Paypal or Amazon for payment services, Amazon or Google or Microsoft or VMware or Rackspace for server hosting and computation, and any one of a thousand other developers for features not yet conceived.

This is a future of horizontal integration, not vertical integration….The Internet Operating System may end up looking more like a Linux distribution than a Microsoft or Apple PC or phone operating system. VMware might perhaps provide a cloud computing “kernel” while Facebook provides a social UI layer, Google or Bing provide alternate search subsystems, Android and iPhone and Nokia and the next generation of Windows Mobile provide mobile phone front-ends, and so on.

Later, John Battelle joins the conversation utters the most simple, yet important re-joinder to Anderson's unilateral declaration, "Engagement is what matters. Inventory is irrelevant."

So the key question becomes where, how and through what tools will companies engage consumers online? And this raises a larger, inverse question: what will motivate users to go online and engage content?

Anderson captures the powerful, visible trend behind the rise of smart phones, the accompanying Apps-markets and the rise of Walled Gardens like Facebook, all of which provide more elegant and compelling tools through which users engage content online. But again, his view-point is media-centric.

For marketeers, what lessons can be learned? While Anderson highlights some obvious digital trends, behind the curtain, some important lessons can be drawn.

ONE: THE PRESENT LANDSCAPE IS MESSY so choose professionals.
As Anderson highlights a changed online experience, O'Reilly captures the complicated, rotating, fast-changing pieces that any entrepenuer must choose from. By extension, for marketeers, the pieces and tools have NEVER BEEN MORE NUMEROUS from which to craft an online marketing plan. So resist the urge to save money on that low-cost freelancer, and instead, seriously consider paying more for professionals whose experience will pay dividends in deciphering this fast-changing environment.

TWO: DEFINE YOUR GOALS CLEARLY AND THEN GO OVER IT
Before considering your spends, define your goals. In such a fast-changing landscape, do DUE DILIGENCE. One of the best resources in my opinion is found on Jeremiah Owyang's blog and in particular, check out his research slides to help define your own goals.

THREE: DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUTURE, THE PRESENT IS COMPLICATED ENOUGH
The present is complicated. There have never been more technologies and marketing decisions from which to choose. Don't worry about the future. New trends will always emerge, but wait for them to come in from the margins. That's where your business should always be.

2009-09-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

[Kol Nidre, My Grandpa Abe and The Fires Burning in Iran, Paki/Afgan, The Palisade's Air & Hollywood's Magical Spirit]

Lewis Haidt remembers his grandpa,
Abe Haidt

This High Holiday season, I find myself reflecting on the life of Abraham Haidt, my paternal grandfather. Abe was born in 1917 and grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

He was the second child to my great-grandfather, Samuel Haidt, a man who had three wives and four children. Abe’s mother, Rose, (Samuel’s second wife) died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Samuel soon married Rose’s sister, Rebecca Davidson. Samuel’s last two kids - my great-aunt Frances and great-uncle Harold (the baby) Haidt - were born.

It was the height of the Depression.

After Samuel’s death in 1936, Abe helped the family, dropped out of school and found a job. His siblings were able to finish high school and go on to college. My grandfather joined the Army. When World War II began, he re-enlisted and served in Europe. He received the Bronze Star (Ed. Note: 5313 stars awarded to division for WWII service) and France’s Croix de Guerre medal.

In my 20s, as an aspiring independent producer, my focus was on my Great Aunt’s glamour, her Chelsea penthouse and larger-than-life personality. I wish that my focus had expanded; that my grandpa and I had time to share stories, just to listen more to each other. I was too young, too seduced by my own magical thinking, too myopic to give him the psychic due credit, far too imbalanced in my attention and focus.

This quiet gentleman in front of me was ignored.

But now he has received some long over-due recognition and my gratitude, respect and love.

(re-published from Ikar 5770 Yizkor Book (Memorial testimony for deceased family and friends - 250 word limit. Title added.)

2009-08-31T15:40:00.000-07:00

Since I'm a Navy Baby
I'm down w/ these bad-ass Navy Sailors. This is fandom at its best. That's what you get born @ Bethesda Naval Hospital. Go NAVY!

2009-03-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

Between Kate Puzey and ACTA: The Middle Road for You and I

Two recent posts on BoingBoing are worthy of publicizing and demonstrate the need for more sophisticated and nuanced analysis about so-called "social media" and "social change". They also demonstrate a sad, yet in no way surprising, set of contrasts: two examples of American power, one with a graceful open spirit and the other with a closed, myopic one. Xeni Jardin memorializes the incredible life of Kate Puzey, a murdered Peace Corp activist in Benin, who also kept a blog and photo gallery of her experiences (link). The other by Cory Doctorow documents the ludicrous The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the corporate supporters behind this super-secret copyright treaty, which the Obama administration has claimed is a matter of "national security."

In the middle are the rest of us, who must decide how we want to impact the world, both using social media tools, but also recognizing the hype, the herd mentality, the obvious idea that social changes requires more than becoming a "fan" or some forms of online action.

As we move forward in this conversation, we should be careful not to set up simplistic us/them divisions or fall back on the tired cliches of corporations=corruption. The massive gap between these poles --- let's not simplify the challenge as an noble individual versus evil corporation, as there's a whole network of institutions behind Puzey's Peace Corp mission and there are so people within the corporate world who support innovation and change --- represents the awesome, complex challenge facing all of us. Each of us must negotiate this middle space.

We need more subtle forms of conversation and listening, ones with substance worthy of examining complex issues of networks, communication, individuals, institutions and power. We need new tools and institutions, social media and not, that truly empower global citizens.

But now it's time to get back to the job search.

2008-09-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Interactive Media Spotlight: Praise the Lord, Tracy, Dean and Jesus (TDJ) Have Come To Save Los Angeles

Tuesday night at the Comedy Central stage, Tracy, Dean and Jesus rolled into town, praise the lord, blessed be he. "Hailing from the Waldorph Christian Parish in Goshen, Ohio, [these warriors] are currently on a mission trip to turn blue states red, starting in the belly of the beast, Los Angeles. Join us for an evening of revival, preaching, the Lord's music, the destruction of Power-couples, and the devil."

Any sane individual who's has studied the powerful ways of the Hollywood movie/myth-making machine will give thanks that Tracy has arrived on our far, Western shores. Composed of Andre Hyland playing the youth minister and rock savior with Mike Mayfield and Paul Erling Oyen as supporting church members, the show opened with an inspiring travel video. Tracy journeyed to Monroe, OH, home of the largest Jesus statue in this Great Land at Solid Rock Mission and gave thanks.

The show then proceeded with Tracy leading the revival, calling up a blasphemous, female sinner - a self-declared PERVERT. But he saved her, forcing the devil out of her belly. Tracy brought the word of the lord to Hollywood and is on a mission. Hollywood has spread its images of glamour, celebrity, sex, hip-hop and more sex and violence around the world. The Hollywood power is immense; the seductive flame of Hollywood dreams still holds great power and Tracy is ready to challenge Hollywood's corruption, head-on

Storming around the room, Tracy railed against the devil, the Hollywood corruption that permeated the Comedy Central space. For a back-drop, this mission -- this desire to bring the Lord to Hollywood -- faces many obstacles. Hollywood is stubborn, determined to protect its own foundation in the face of disruption, whether that be preachers from Ohio or technologies from the World Wide Web. There examples of Hollywood's determination, of the "biz's" awesome power are:

• One, the studio's lobby, the MPAA, wants to break into the home of God-fearing, American Christians and take control of your home movie/television theater.
• Second, they're are attempting to limit Christian-loving European's ability to harness technology in the Lord's full majesty
• Three, their ideological myopia prevents studios from unleashing the glory of technology in its greatest splendor, ultimately enriching themselves and us. Oh, how did our lord love Napster and the musical bounty it unleashed!).

The climax is always the destruction of the card-board devil. This time, Tracy destroyed the devil in its Hollyweird incarnation: the evil-seed of Hollywood power-couples Bradgelina and TomKat.

Andre Hyland is creating true interactive media, exploiting "social media" in all its glory. TDJ has their own website; Hyland has created another persona, "his alter ego Tim Hutchins, a ponytailed douche with yogic aspirations in perpetual confab with his cell-phone headset. Cameras hidden, Hyland yammers improvised quips to no one, shushing passersby or asking for their help with one of Hutchins' ridiculous quests (a blind date, for instance). He invariably loses his New Age cool, screams and dunks his phone into the concrete. (link). Hyland and friends have their GooTube channel, BlondChili (in honor of Cincinnati, OH's Skyline Chili). Hyland exhibits a true anarchic, trickster-tricky spirit, exploiting the web in its most creative, remix-able ways. He challenges our sense of decorum in public, and theatrical, spaces.

God bless him.

PS: Their next show is September 15th at El Cid

2008-09-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Interactive Media News: Video Jungle TV Launches

When Tim Berners-Lee created the HTML coding necessary to power the World Wide Web fifteen years ago, he made a critical decision that is disrupting the film and television business as we know it. He chose to share his knowledge for free.

Sunday, September 7, 2008 at Lakay Studios in Burbank, Video Jungle TV launched a demonstration of live and on-demand interactive programming. Whether or not Berners-Lee imagined rich media being distributed over the web, a decade later, the flood of content represented by YouTube during the Web 2.0 period has proven to be only a precursor. More innovative, sophisticated, independent programming is just beginning.

Mic Espinoza came up with the idea for Video Jungle TV about five months ago. As a spin-off of IC News Television, a User-Generated Video site for news television stations and newspapers to upload live or recorded video, he wanted a place for affordable live, online digital broadcasting. “I wanted a programming space not limited to the small digital cameras, one with the same abilities as any other corporate television station.” The one missing piece was a production studio. "The rates were just too high everywhere," Espinoza said in a phone interview.

Creceda Lemaire, the owner of Layak Studios, created a space for Los Angeles' independent artists, a space to broadcast content for commercial and non-commercial use. “Three years ago, I started creating a TV show called, Great People Doing Great Things,” said Lemaire. Lemaire was looking to increase business and like many Angelenos, turns to Craigslist.

Adam Lightplay, the owner of LightPlay Production, saw the advertisement looking for an assistant studio manager. “I saw the ad and came and talked to her and it was a nice match cause I was looking for an office where I can edit, but here I could both edit and have a studio to shoot in.” Lightplay had been working with Espinoza for years, introduced the parties and the package was complete.

On Sunday, all the pieces came together and premiered a demo show with , stand-up comedian/host Sean Hennigan the Master of all Wackiness. The band, Ren Street, performed and showed that the technology pieces worked. Consisting of Ren Hemstreet Lead Vocalist/Guitar, and Rocc Thomas--Bass, Steve Price--Drums, the band was aware of Video Jungle TV for months. “Mic manages me and I got friends all over the world,” Ren said. "But I [now] can say, check me out here, see, listen, watch, learn. It’s a good way to keep people updated on the project.”

Live, online television is going back in time. Where once the national corporate broadcasting companies such as NBC, CBS and ABC promoted live, dynamic content, now it is web producers such as Espinoza, Lemaire and Lightplay who are changing the ball game. At the same time, as the digital broadcast flag and net neutrality struggles demonstrate, corporate television and motion picture actors are working to enclose these new channels. The key questions are: how many will watch and listen and how open will our telecommunication lines stay?

2008-09-06T02:51:00.001-07:00

Amazing example: A librarian fined 4 legally protesting McCain on Public Property!!!

(If interested: UPDATE -- AMERICAN REPUBLIC LOST ALL LEGITIMACY; QUESTION: rebuilt; PROGNOSIS:..... (not good this week)

2008-09-06T02:42:00.001-07:00

Richard Serra and Eli Broad: Why can't children play "freely" in your spirals and take pictures to share w/ friends?".

Click To Play

2008-09-03T05:06:00.001-07:00

Want to know who top man John McCain really is:

who better to ask than a fellow Annapolis classmate who attended the Naval Academy from 1957 to 1961 and was also a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. Thanks to we can meet Doctor Phillip Butler.

He is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war.

After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Listen to what he says about McCain's character and personality:

2008-08-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

My question is what voices will dominate the coming years: ones showing some humility found in the quiet of nature? At the other extreme, how often will thing implode, will the center not hold?

I'm embedding two videos that show two possibilities. Of course, our path will be somewhere in between. But enjoy as we move into the thick of our hyper-partisan election year. I'm going to try and stay hopeful, turning off the MSM completely and incorporaTING SOME soundscapes I took in Big Sur as a counter-point, but we shall see.....

2008-08-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

Memo to Hollywood: Stop Dividing Up the World and Enclosing the Commons.

Why Not Join a True Global Commons, Ecology Movement?

In a series of Hollywood pictures and videos, particularly the opening night of the HollyShorts Film Festival -- the surreal, celebrity flows of light, sounds and images were revealed to me. I saw the incredible hunger that exists for more and more celebrity images.

I've been exploring the sounds and spaces of LA in different locales, public and private, ranging from the downtown Disney Hall to the streets of Hollywood to our pubic parks, all seen and heard from a fresh angle, all contributed to this emerging digital commons. Thanks to Josh Kun and the larger sound studies school, I began this exploration.

The beautiful Egyptian Theatre's courtyard, its natural light, or darkness, was so overwhelmed and inundated by the streams of flashes that, if a photo was taken without a flash (as I did), then the actresses, actors and other human bodies, shapes, and figures appear fragmented and distorted. Check out my photo-stream for examples. Of course, the flashes eventually move on, but traces remain in the images that zoom around the world.

I actually love this effect and would totally check out TMZ or MTV with some behind-the-scene DIY photos. The Cubist, cool effect got me thinking about how innovation can and should exist in mainstream Hollywood.

It is human nature to want to share memories, to pass along images, to recommend sounds from one friend to another. Entrenched industries are always scared when technologies give consumers new, disruptive tools through which to use established products and services. As we saw when the Writer's Guild of America embraced social media, there is no reason that the studio media world cannot co-exist with the Access to Knowledge/Free Culture camps. I discovered the existence of these networks in my Set Top Cop seminar with Cory Doctorow. One label used is the "Access to Knowledge" (A2K) movement.

We are about to enter the next stage of technological, "social media" innovation and digital media convergence. The press may call this the "Web 3.0" phase or the "social web." We should all step back, listen and look at our digital and public spaces? Do we finally want to take back some control over our own tools?

Final message to Hollywood powers that be: we are not your enemy; we simply want cool, interactive tools, ones we have control over. We want to be able to share content with our friends.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

2008-08-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

FANS OF THE LA LIBRARY AND BEYOND

Cory Doctorow, a co-editor over at BoingBoing, recently covered the American Library Association conference panel that he participated on, "Privacy: Is it time for a revolutiond." Cory's talk is an inspiring call to the librarians, and through the WWW, a worldwide digital audience to wake up, support libraries and create effective ways to ensure consumer privacy and consumer freedoms in a digital age (link).

Cory and I have a history; he has been one of the most influential people in my life. In his visiting Fulbright graduate Set Top Cop seminar, I spent a full semester learning from Cory about global struggles to protect the emerging "digital commons" and ensure Access to Knowledge. Some people have called this movement a new "Knowledge Ecology." So in a deja-vu to that fall almost two years ago when I had serious insomnia, I happened to be online and was the first person to comment on Cory's above post,

White papers are important and panels are excellent (it be nice if they were publicized beyond the converted however), but what about planting one's feet on the ground, like, maybe LA Public Library might want to make a Facebook group, before walled gardens and basic groups on FB req. an "advertising", ur, I mean, posting sur-charge.

Another BB reader called me out and challenged me to start a FB group myself.

I have spent a lot of time over the last two months thinking and writing about the future of the Internet. Are all these new, funky, interactive, digital media tools at their core just a social networked means for marketeers to promote brands, discuss what we should call these things amongst our own echo-chamber, Silicon Valleyed worlds and how to organize them? If there is something really called a digital commons, what are the norms - the lessons learned - around participation in such a "commons" and "unpublishing" those who allegedly violate these unclear standards? Finally, if there is a new digital commons (as I believe there is), then must all content distributed via the WWW be "free" or will we ever enable a "rich" digital culture so that creators are compensated for work spread online?

But a certain point, one needs to shut up, stop commenting, conversing, marketing, and blabbering and take action. So our little Facebook library group has been birthed. It's not the start of anything special; but public spaces are needed; the issues are complex; we should all have a little more humility, and fun, while we challenge Walled Gardens. Our group will be a little place to discuss these things, hopefully pushing FB to embrace more open standards. These walls exist in our Vegas-like, faux-urban Grove shopping malls, in our data-mined, over-commercialized, sorry-but-u-cant-control-yr-own Facebook profile or, most importantly, in our own over-networked minds, so often satiated with the latest consumer appendage for which we had no need.

So simply put, if you believe that children deserve to play, that public spaces should be open (and that we need more of them!) and that libraries are the perfect model and their computers should not be restricted by DRM, then join our FB group. If you want to be a part of a growing A2K, digital commons movement, then figure out some way to pitch in. Joining our group is a very small start.

2008-08-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER CITY IS POSSIBLE LOS ANGELES

On July 11, I attended the Farmlab's "Under Spring Optimist Breakfast...So-named because the first such program was held early in the morning in 2007 underneath the N. Spring Street Bridge on a Friday the 13th. 'That's a date and time only an optimist would love,' said one of that program's organizers. The upbeat moniker stuck" (link).

It was great catching up with old friends from USC, like my Professor Manuel Castells, who gave the keynote talk at lunch later in the day and at breakfast, whose talk proceeded, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. It was also sweet running into Janet Owen, who participated in a USC Free Culture panel I helped organize and moderated entitled, "“Free[ing] Culture in Los Angeles: Beyond the Ivory Tower" (link). See my photo-stream from the day.

Mayor V rolled in well after the morning's talks had begun. It was amusing watching the Mayor scan the "room", urrr, outdoor public space under the bridge, trying to find fellow V-supporters to make eye contact with. It was even more interesting to see the Mayor respond to Manuel Castells' talk on "Grassrooting the Global City," particularly how Los Angeles could create a system of "distributed, grassroot parks" and move away from the inclination for "grand" central parks. Take a listen of the talk, unfortunately, I ran out of memory when Castells get to the heart of how Los Angeles can embrace such a vision. Given that Castells is one of the most intelligent men on the earth, it's still a good listen. Enjoy.

2008-06-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Where is Today's Cyd Charisse?

Why can't young women grow up and aspire to this: Thanks BB & Richard for the find. Anyone single woman who can pull off that red-dress act, keep it going (and let me know)...

2008-05-23T23:17:00.001-07:00

Props to the LA Times

The LA Times new media group deserves serious props for a moving tribute to California's fallen soldiers, California's War Dead. I was fortunate to intern with some great peeps at The Times' new media group last summer and this project has their signatures written all over it.

I was particularly moved in discovering the tragic death of William M. Sagua, a fellow graduate of Los Altos High School. I couldn't stand prom back in the day, but went anyways, and William was the prom king for his senior classs many years later. The simplicity and power of this piece speaks volumes and is more profound than any talking chatter to be heard on the airways this Memorial Day weekend.

2008-05-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

Up Above My Head

Tony's post on Wanda Jackson got me in the mood for the true godmother of rock'n'roll, Sister Rosetta Thorpe. Her 1945 song, “Strange Things Happening Every Day" may be the first rock-n-roll song!!!! She lived an amazing life --- how's that for a history lesson - rock n roll was birthed by kick-ass, black woman guitarist, sucka!!

Enjoy!

And for xtra spring/almost summer enjoyment.

Isn't that entrance that badest ass on the horse-drawn carriage, oh my!!!!

2008-05-13T11:01:00.000-07:00

Information Overload, Causes and Fans

I. The Internet offers us an infinity of information
II. People's lives are over-networked.
III. It's never been easier to click on a symbol and support a cause.
IV: But what happens when complex issues aren't so reducible?

Postscript: I highly recommend that folks check out Fred Berensen's new project: CAUSE CALLER, participatory, open-source tool to create phone banks and call politicians. Here's his presentation. Quite the contrast to simply becoming a fan....

2008-05-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Social Media and a robust Digital Commons: Tensions and Opportunities

Over the last month, while conducting a job search in the social media marketing space, I've had the opportunity to meet some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the field ranging from Jeremiah Owyang to Rohit Bhargava. I attended the Web 2.0 conference. While there were no new "2.0" techno-breakthroughs, this was the year Corporate America showed up and seems to have accepted that the ball-game is changing.

One tension emerged and deserves our attention. This is the tension between marketeer's use of social media to converse in new ways with their consumers, ultimately, promoting their brands versus remix creators/producers' use of social media tools to promote a robust digital commons, possibly re-mixing these very brand images in creative, yet to the brand, possibly harmful ways. This issue again rose to the fore in the artist, Nadia Plesner's mashup of the Louis Vuitton's bag in a Darfur awareness campaign (Thanks to Jeremiah I was alterted to this).

The Internet itself was created in Silicon Valley as a result of four different networks, each with their own logic. There was the v.c. community, the egalitarian "Well" community, the developer/computer university/government-funded science inventors and start-up entrepreneurs. It is important to remember that conflicting logics constitute the core of the Internet.

What is interesting is that there are also four levels, which provide a framework to analyze this tension between the consumer's ability to exploit the internet in its full distributive, remix potential and marketers openness to engaging with these same consumers. The first level attempts to enclose the Internet in a proprietary, closed network (we see this is Comcast's failed attempt to monitor traffic). The second level allows some enclosures and some freedom (we see this most often, in Vuitton's suit, in YouTube's suit while Viacom wants the free Internet distribution for their Comedy Central content, etc). The third level is found in the open-source world of Creative Commons or Linux, collaborative development. The fourth level would include P2P technology with new copyright regime, which would allow individuals like Nadia to mash-up content without fear of "take-downs."

These pieces create natural tensions with one another, going back to the co-existence of "The Well" egalitarian communities with the early Silicon Valley venture capital sector. As social media marketeers, we should realize that we are in a transitional period and these encounters will only increase. As John Bell offered in response to Jeremiah's "What should the CMO-do" question, these tensions create opportunities for new conversation between brands and a variety of consumers. As social media marketeers AND democratic "practitioners", we should look forward to these new conversations, encourage a robust digital commons, realize that groundswells have a force of their own and accept that if corporate marketeers want to embrace social media tools (as they should), it should be done in a way that does not restrict most democratic, creative potential inherent in these new forms of communication. If that means corporation's risk having their brands challenged, then it is a fair price. Soon, the smart corporations will also realize opportunities found in such encounters.

2007-11-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

Don't Walk, RUN

Thanks to BB, I discovered this hilarious video that answers the question: what happens when the world fastest walker is chased by crazy Samurais?

2007-09-17T05:21:00.001-07:00

An Open Letter to JNF - Jewish High Holidays '07

Props to JTA and JewSchool for bringing the below story regarding JNF to light. An interesting example of social media used as a spotlight. Special props to leaders like Deborah Newmeyer of Moving Traditions who speak out.

This open letter to the Jewish National Fund was sent September 16th.

Ms. Jacobs:

I was extremely troubled by news in JewSchool of your organization's decision to auction off a Playboy event. Furthermore, your statement that Playboy does not objectify women is astounding.

I am a graduate student at USC's Annenberg School for Communication Program for Online Communities (APOC). In a digital age, images are extraordinarily powerful. While grown men and women are free to enjoy all forms of sexual imagery, your belief that children are not impacted by images that prioritize naked, often surgically-enhanced breasts and "dumb-blond" female archetypes is both ignorant and disturbing.

As my attached blogpost points out (link), your decision both demonstrates problematic decision and a Jewish philanthropic world cast adrift from what is most transformative and appealing to us many progressive. Jewish organizations like yours will have to look hard at your own identity, decide whether to engage in actions with more transparency and utilize the range of social media technology tools that will appeal to younger Jews.

Adults should choose whatever sexuality and play is available, but when a leader such as yourself is quoted in such a troubling context and when your public, leadership position requires that you consider how such actions send messages to Jewish youth, I respectfully hope that your organization reverses course and finds another way to appeal to Jewish men and make Judaism "attractive."

Sincerely,

Lewis Haidt

Postscript: Write up one Jewschool, new/social media success! Received from Anita Jacobs, 8:36, pst:

Thank you for your concern regarding the auction of more than 100 items including the Playboy Mansion golf tournament item at a local New York JNF event.

JNF more often than not gets things right, but of course sometimes we don’t. Clearly this is a case of poor judgment.

The item in question was donated by local New York lay leaders who were only trying to help raise money. If JNF could reverse its course we would, but since we can’t, we apologize for accepting the donation and have removed the item from the list.

Wishing you a Shana Tova.

Jewish National Fund

Now this is type of humility and action that gives one a reason for optimism, if we start small and take action...

2007-07-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

Cyberwars: Estonian versus Russians-Israelis/Jews versus Islamists Oh My!!

The global network is heating up along identity lines just in time!

Mobius over at JSchool has a great post on the faultlines in Israel; Here's a NYX article on "Digital Fears Emerge After Data Siege in Estonia" when Russian hackers tried to take down whole Estonian broadband infrastructure and architecture:

When Estonian authorities began removing a bronze statue of a World War II-era Soviet soldier from a park in this bustling Baltic seaport last month, they expected violent street protests by Estonians of Russian descent.

They also knew from experience that “if there are fights on the street, there are going to be fights on the Internet,” said Hillar Aarelaid, the director of Estonia’s Computer Emergency Response Team. After all, for people here the Internet is almost as vital as running water; it is used routinely to vote, file their taxes, and, with their cellphones, to shop or pay for parking.

What followed was what some here describe as the first war in cyberspace, a monthlong campaign that has forced Estonian authorities to defend their pint-size Baltic nation from a data flood that they say was set off by orders from Russia or ethnic Russian sources in retaliation for the removal of the statue.

I'm doing research on examples of cyberattacks between Islamists and Israelis or Diasporic Jews. If folks know of examples, please comment in the response section.

Thanks

2007-07-03T02:50:00.000-07:00

Racism in Social Networks, Oh My?

Danah Boyd has a great post illuminating the societal divisions revealed in the "white flight" to Facebook and the resulting racial divide between MySpace and the same:

I've been trying to figure out how to articulate this division for months. I have not yet succeeded. So, instead, I decided to write a blog essay addressing what I'm seeing. I suspect that this will be received with criticism, but my hope is that the readers who encounter this essay might be able to help me think through this. In other words, I want feedback on this piece.

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

What I lay out in this essay is rather disconcerting. Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made.

Danah Boyd has a good heart. But over 10 years of life in LA, a deep personal connection to the LA riots fifteen years ago and an interest on the "mainstream media" that is so-easily scorned by hip Phds who love to carp on the dark, Imperial mainstream news gives me a different perspective.

Danah shouldn't be so apologetic. Our society is coded along racial lines embedded in ideological buzz words around immigration and "terrorism" issues. Those of us committed to change need to stop apologizing and confront those who exploit ignorance and employ strategies, which obstruct real, meaningful change. Blue Mandy had the pleasure of attending Danah's talk at the Annenberg DIY series this last school year.

One of the more troubling uses of images was found in Danah's talk as she used (appropriated?) a Black Panther image to make a point. However, probably because she was speaking to the converted, she chose not to address the larger issues of how copyright is used as a weapon to enforce enclosures around knowledge and punk us all (yes, we become their pawns, urr, consumers). That is, until asked about issues of control in the Q & A, Danah chose not to address them.

Blue Mandy was lucky to attend these talks and get to know Danah. What's interesting is that while most participants in DIY talks agree on issues of control, the more important issue is this: how many of them will step outside their comfortable Annenberg Centers or "Ivory Tower" comforts and, like Danah, take action? They're all so busy with publishing papers that things like the massive violence in Harbor Gateway or the LAPD MacArthur Park abuse are seen as little blips on the Professorial/Managerial radar screen, issues to pay heed and support, but take little action on.

Blue Mandy was also exquisitely attuned to this use after taking Cory Doctorow's Set Top Box seminar. One of Cory's undergrads in his Pawned Spring class created a great initiative, The teachingcopyright.org Launch Manifesto, which deserves publicity (link).

We all need humility and sophisticated analyses when dealing with an over-networked world in which racism and inequality neither fall along neat '60ish ex-yuppie/buppy/Arianna-ey radical lines nor match pronouncements from the Ivory Tower.

The next election is too important for pussy-footing.

2007-07-02T02:25:00.000-07:00

Spirit Corrupted and Set Free - Los Angeles, Summer 2007

This last week, a series of articles reveals the ruptures and profound crises afflicting our society. Christine Buckley's LA Weekly cover story, "Aaron Cohen: Sex Slaves, Drug Trade and Rock n' Roll" reveals the dark, insidious underside of globalization (link). Buckley writes:

American school kids are taught that slavery was wiped out with the Confederacy in 1865. But today it is a mounting international menace — the dark side, many believe, of globalization and the Internet explosion. Not to be confused with smuggling (which is always transnational and includes those who consent to the process), human trafficking implies the use of force, fraud or coercion and often involves ongoing exploitation. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, it is tied with the illegal-arms industry as the second largest illegal business in the world, after drug dealing.

Aaron Cohen, an ex-Jewish water polo student, Air Force school drop-out, hob-knobs with Hollywood celebrities - the George Clooneys, Laura Bickfords, Brad Pitts - and looks into the valley of the beast, the dark, hidden alleyways that you and I drive by everyday in Los Angeles (or skip in the back of The LA Weekly).

The LA Times Sport section yesterday features a duo of disturbing stories related in distinct, yet subtle ways. Childs Walker of The Baltimore Sun wrote a insightful commentary on the tragic death of Chris Benoit, the wrestling star who murdered his wife and child, then hung himself (link). Sam Farmer wrote an intersting piece updating the poor-old, ex-Trojan, still pretty boy, Matt Leinart's saga in Phoenix (link):

Leinart found an even more frenzied interest in his private life once he arrived in Arizona. All eyes seemed to be on him — and not just those of traditional football fans hoping he could help turn around the perennially moribund Cardinals.

'Girls were talking about it left and right,' said Megan Finnerty, who covers the club scene for the Arizona Republic. 'It's not like there aren't good-looking men in Phoenix, but when you're picked as one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful people, that's a huge endorsement.'

When Leinart arrived on the scene last year, Finnerty wrote an article headlined, 'Diagraming a Play for Cards' Sexy QB,' a guide for local women on how best to land Leinart as a boyfriend.

Leinart has a foot in two worlds — the public he accepts as a highly paid performer for an NFL team and private moments for which he yearns.

He says he moved into a gated community here about a 20-minute drive from Cardinals headquarters in an effort to preserve some peace and quiet. He felt too exposed in his first house, where twice his truck was stripped of its wheels, and once he looked in from his backyard pool to find an uninvited woman rooting through his kitchen cabinets.

'I was in my pool swimming with my dog, and I could see her through the windows,' Leinart said. 'I got out and said, 'Do you normally go in the house of somebody you don't know?' She was about 50, and I was like, that's some nerve to walk in somebody's house. I just told her to leave.'

That he wants some privacy doesn't mean Leinart always shies from the spotlight.

He threw a birthday bash last month that included a pool party at the luxury Mondrian Scottsdale Hotel, which was attended by Dallas Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens and several members of the Phoenix Suns, who had been eliminated from the NBA playoffs the night before.

Blue Mandy grew up with punks like Leinart, just in the water, playing water polo, and always wanting to learn surfing. What a Trojan tool.

Someone should force all Trojan athletes to read Buckley's piece, watch all the documentaries she referenced and others on the human sex trade. Hollywood glamorizes and fetishizes young, nubile bodies; USC provides the city with a plantation full of great sporting events, gardened for by a immigration underclass and alums/the public eat this up.

A years worth of graduate school paints a picture of society rupturing under the global forces of celebrity, scandal, sex, immigration, terrorism and the international drug trade. After studying with Manuel Castells and Cory Doctorow, it's easy to see these connections, and even more obvious to see that most people don't.

“There’s something so powerful about trying to bring light into the dark places,” Buckley quotes Lisa Miller, who made a documentary focusing on Cambodia and human slavery. “But we’re all trying to heal ourselves at the same time. So when you take it on, it can take you down.” What are the costs of silences and action? Walker returns to the same question. American audiences satiate their thirst for blood right in front of our eyes, channeled through media lust:

As a culture, we've decided that consenting adults are allowed to push themselves past safe limits for our entertainment and their reward. Drug testing and better medical care and safety precautions can lessen many of these risks but cannot stamp them out.

I don't know about you, but when a boxer loses his life in the ring or a football player is crippled or a wrestler turns up dead in his hotel room, I feel complicit.

If I know these acts are so destructive, why do I watch? Do I simply lack the moral fortitude to look past my desire to be entertained? I fear the answer is yes.

In the last few days, scores of wrestling fans have said on message boards that Benoit's death will kill their love of the spectacle. Many more have said that one man's deranged acts shouldn't end an art loved by so many. I agree with the latter and yet, I wonder.

So when Blue Mandy stumbles across something like this, it's worth sharing, courtesy of The New York Times wedding section:

On June 23, Ms. Roter and Mr. Stodel married under a wedding canopy entwined with white orchids beneath a cinematically cloudy sky at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, Calif. During the ceremony, Rabbi Melissa Buyer paused when a passing helicopter interrupted the traditional seven Jewish wedding blessings and said: 'Let’s wait. This is important.'

Moments later, a pair of brown pelicans flew by in the easy, unconscious tandem of a veteran couple on a stroll.

Wow. But how many of us take the time to look and listen to the tranquil sights and sounds of birds in flight?

2007-06-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

A new center - es possible, te piensas?

Please, Blue Mandy's become quite a cynic, and a day after Internet Radio Silence day, it's grounded in the all-too-true, set-top cop chains becoming more and more invisible and stronger than ever.

But two recent articles, Ron Brownstein's LAX "Opportunity knocks for Democrats - At the state and national levels, the party has a rare chance to work with GOP executives on healthcare and immigration reform" (link) and Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek's "Beyond Bush - What the world needs is an open, confident America" (link) offer a more optimistic spin.

At both the national and California state levels, we're seeing blowback against the extremism and idiocy that our dear Dubya represents. Zakaria illuminates the dynamic:

More troubling than any of Bush's rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him. 'They hate you!' says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. 'They don't want you to be in this college!' he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. 'Or you, or you, or you," he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, 'We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us.' On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. 'This is reality, ma'am,' he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. 'You've got to clear your head.'

Fear, uncertainty and labels power propaganda efforts. Our country has been inundated by codes and media messages propagating fear and anxiety. The nadir occurred in the '04 elections when folks voted in a President they knew was lying. Now, we're entering surreal new stages. Brownstein expands:

A TABLOID without a spread on Paris Hilton. A snowball in July. A humble Yankees fan.

Pick your metaphor. None would be as rare as the opportunity now presenting itself to the Democratic majorities in Congress and the California Legislature.

In each case, a Republican executive has signaled his eagerness to sign into law a long-standing progressive goal: President Bush on legalization for illegal immigrants, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on universal healthcare. That convergence represents a unique but fragile asset in today's polarized political culture. Both sides may regret it for years if they fumble these opportunities.

Failure might be most inexcusable in California. With both the state Senate and Assembly approving plans to significantly expand coverage, and Schwarzenegger committed to covering all of the uninsured, California could soon finalize the most comprehensive state-level plan yet to guarantee healthcare for all residents.

Brownstein acknowledges that the possibility of compromise and a new center arising is hard to predict. Given how polarized the electorate, it's safe to say the foundation is extraordinarily delicate.

Anyone want to bet on compromises in both Congress and the state? Yo pienso que no....or following Ozomatli, Can we or "Can't [we] Stop now"?

Or, put another way, Blue Mandy was fortunate to hear Andy Stern at Annenberg in the Spring. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, states in the Times, [Success in California] "would be the most significant thing to jolt the healthcare system [toward national reform]....If we have a California failure, it just adds to the weight of this being an issue no one can solve."

Brownstein closes,

Stern could match his words with deeds if he steers the union's powerful California affiliate toward accepting a deal that couples a higher fee on employers than Schwarzenegger proposed with a requirement that at least middle-income individuals buy insurance. Liberals may resist that price, but if they consider it difficult to impose an employer mandate now, they should imagine trying it without a Republican governor running interference.

Que tu piensas?

POSTSCRIPT: Round 1 was won by the Blue Mandy, Randy cynics. There went the immigration reform bill, adios amigo!

2007-05-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Why r we angry?

This is the most powerful mash-up I listened this to over the last semester. I'm not endorsing these ideas; I've become more culturally conservative after seeing how skimpy and bare (both literaly and figuratively) undergrads view of a common democratic ethos is (yeah, Myspace to bookface to Stickam social networks).

But change is coming. We'll just see whether it does more harm than good given how negligent both the Left & Right has been. New paradigms needed.

2007-05-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Shorts

On the independent film, FIXED, my partner - the writer, director, editor - Neil Matsumoto and I chose to break copyright to finish our film and get it into festivals. We came close to giving up, but I'm proud we didn't. Re-watching a montage Neil composed of his shorts (he directed something like 50, reminds me why the independent film world (the real thing) needs "Free Culture" - a form of copyright that allows artists like Neil to make their work and distribute it non-commercially like at indie festivals.

Both the movement and the ideas.

Neil's an amazing talented director/multi-media wonderkind. I can't wait to see his next body of work. And In case people still don't get the message. Check out this great mashup by USCFC's Justin Hall. Go Trojans!!

Enjoy.

2007-04-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

Thank God this semester is finally over!!!

I again have been pushed to the limit with work during fricking finals, but my audio culture class had great preentations throughout. Here are some more funky music videos I discovered in the class (Thanks Trav)

Pet Shop Boys - Where The Streets Have No Name (U2 Mashup - My Fave)

"Lost Opera" by Kimera & the Operaiders

2007-04-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

Found Music Sunday on Skid Row, Los Angeles with Hillel

Something inspiring took place Sunday. I went with a group of USC Hillel students to a homeless shelter on Skid Row. The Rabbi had done this before: bring his guitar, a bunch of students, his two small kids, talk and play music.

Nothing could be more political or fun.

Something for USC FC and the Popular Music Project to get behind.

2007-03-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

Which Way will USC go?

USC as a university faces a core, defining choice: do we as a community cherish the free exchange of ideas or are we willing to further compromise the same? Universities like USC are at a cross-roads. What is more important - student/teacher intellectual
growth and academic exploration or a corporate Intellectual Property rights logic?

So far, the admininistration has sided on the wrong side - show up Tuesday night and tell them to switch over (see below Free Culture blog link for information. The event is free and open to the public).

See my opinion published in today's Daily Trojan to see what's at stake (link).

2007-03-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

Special Panel - "Intellectual Property Rights and The Modern University: How to Move Forward"

The USC Free Culture group is hosting a high-profile panel Tueday, March 27th, 5:00 p.m (info below). A new human rights "Knowledge Ecology" movement has been developing over the last decade. It's high time that it tips over. For background information on this movement, check out this USC Free Culture blogpost. Societies worldwide have reached a breaking point given the dislocating effects of globalization and the harm done by a specific, American-bred, late 20th Century corporate logic. This harmful logic has infected multiple networks (film, TV, publishing, real estate, medicine) and reveals itself in how one-sided most American's view of Intellectual property. This myopia is not surprising given the stragic, propaganda campaign led by the studio film, television, and music corporate lobbies.

Join us as we begin to re-orient the conversation.

Over the last decade, copyright emerged as weapon for the Recording Industry
Association of American (RIAA) to shut down Napster, alienate a whole generation of music lovers, and most recently, force universities to police their own students. Our distinguished panel will consider the following questions:

How should universities respond?

How do film schools balance students’ desire to mash-up/remix films with the institutional desire to protect copyright?

How is the growing media reform movement addressing these changes?

What: "Intellectual Property Rights & the Modern University: How to Move Forward in the 21st Century"

When: March 27, 2007, 5-6 pm. (Free Admission)

Where: USC’s Taper Hall, Rm 301
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Who: Moderator: Geoffrey Cowan - Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication
Panelists: David A. Abel - President, CEO, ABL, Inc. Publisher/Managing Editor The Planning Report and Metro Investment Report. Chairman, New Schools/ Better Neighborhoods
Lincoln Bandlow: Partner, Fox, Spillane & Shaeffer and Visiting Professor at the Annenberg School of Journalism
Larry Gross - Director, USC Annenberg School of Communication
Michael Renov - Associate Dean, USC School of Cinematic Arts and Professor of Critical Studies
Jen Urban - Director, USC Intellectual Property Clinic and Clinical Associate Professor, USC Gould School of Law

2007-03-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

I WANT THE SMALL THINGS

My favorite class is today and here's two more awesome videos:

First, you gotta love a little boy-band action:

Next, some mild, light punk:

2007-02-26T22:29:00.000-08:00

WAR IN IRAN IMMANENT: WHAT R U GOING TO DO?!

The New Statesman reports,

American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day. They extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran’s military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.....The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for “Operation Iranian Freedom”. Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).

* Sy Hersh: The Pentagon has drafted an attack plan that could be put into operation within 24 hours of authorization.
* BBC: “US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure.”
* Haaretz: “Three Arab states in the Persian Gulf would be willing to allow the Israel Air force to enter their airspace in order to reach Iran.”
* Telegraph: “Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
* Reuters: Raid on Iran wouldn’t stop nuclear program.
* The Independent: “‘There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,’ a source with close ties to British intelligence said.”

Thanks to Jewschool for post (Link)!

FROM MOVEON.ORG

Last Tuesday, a second US aircraft carrier arrived in the Sea of Oman off the southern coast of Iran1 giving a whole new meaning to the term "escalation." The Bush administration is hell-bent on sending up to 48,000 more troops to Iraq against the wishes of most Americans, but now it seems like they might not stop there.

While the war in Iraq grows worse by the day, the White House seems to be turning its sights toward neighboring Iran which could escalate the current conflict into a regional one. This reckless move comes despite the fact that most experts believe diplomacy is the way to go with Iran.

President Bush is out of control, and Congress needs to step in immediately to rein him in. Please sign this petition to Congress asking that they require the president seek their authorization before taking military action in Iran. Add your name to the petition [link]
The President claimed that Iran is aiding the Iraqi insurgency, but analysts continue to cast doubt on the evidence. Even General Peter Pace of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has questioned the claims that the Iranian government is directly involved.2 After all, we are already in a war founded on disproved claims of WMDs.

But the reporting of this news is just the latest. Already we have two aircraft carriers in the region—unprecedented outside of war—and Patriot missiles have been deployed. Neither of these will help to protect our troops in Iraq where most of the fighting is on the ground.

One thing is clear—military action in Iran would further endanger our troops in Iraq and threaten to destabilize the entire Middle East. It could even prop up the Iranian president who is quickly losing popularity in his own country.

We have options: Experts say that sanctions and diplomacy can work. They just worked with North Korea, where we reached a deal last week for them to disarm. And we owe it to our troops to use all of our resources before sending them into harm's way. UN sanctions just went into effect late last week, and the UN Security Council is meeting again today to discuss options. We need to give this process a chance to work before provoking a regional conflict.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has provided some much needed leadership on this:

It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the Administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further Congressional authorization. Nor should the President think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in any way, authorizes force against Iran. If the Administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority.3

Can you send a message to your representatives to join Hillary in demanding that Congress check our out-of-contol president?

Clicking here will add your name to the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/noescalationiniran/o.pl?id=9939-5699066-PYALiq&t=4

Please also support General Wesley Clark and Iraq veterans who have also mounted a petition against war with Iran, just announced today at:

http://www.StopIranWar.com

General Wesley Clark helped them launch their effort with these words:

War with Iran is not the answer now. We must work with our allies, talk with Iran, and use all diplomatic, political, and economic options at our disposal. Military force in Iran is not the solution.

WE SHALL SEE.

2007-02-23T00:34:00.000-08:00

Pump Up the Volume

I'm taking a great Audio Culture seminar where the focus is on developing Critical listening skills and analysis. This has to do with how Western culture historically favors the visual over the aural. The most obvious example - the Englightenment - highlights this.

We had a great class tonight and these two videos were the highlights of the presentation [all links courtesy of Mr. Trav].

The first is an awesome mash-up of the classic Pump Up the Volume song.

The second is the even more classic Carpenters' "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" video and song.

Radio still has amazing power - witness the immigration marches last year that were led by Latino LA radio DJs. Of course, the best example is Orsen Welles' WAR OF THE WORLDS radio play that tons of American thought was a real Martian invasion in 1938. Over the last century, an interesting nexus developed between Martians, radio, the American public psychosis and herd mentalities. Thanks to Orsen Welles, Rush Limbaugh and El Cucuy and friends et al., radio has remained a dynamic sound form, prob. more worthy of attention even than the internet, 2nd to mobile phone technology, which you could argue it's the parent of.

2007-01-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

Thoughts for the New Year - Gratitude and Lists

This last year has been huge for me. Most recently, my first semester in grad. school introduced me to some amazing people doing dynamic work on issues relating to technology, freedom, liberty and society: Manuel Castells, Cory Doctorow, Mimi Ito, Danah Boyd.

While I was in San Francisco over break, I heard a powerful NPR piece on gratitude, which I was reminded of after reading Danah's blogpost on lists. The journalist spoke of a friend who died of AIDS, of his journal left behind. The deceased friend wrote of his gratitude for not vomiting, for flowers he saw at the park, for having the strength to get out of bed. The point wasn't the maudlin, tragic loss for a friend, but about those who live on after witnessing such grace, loss and gratitude. The journalist shared his annoyance when hearing people complain about men being from Mars, women being from somewhere else, other blah single-dating woes, traffic sucking.

What would it be like if people not only made lists of things they were grateful for, let alone funky amusing tidbits, but actually experienced true gratitude for a life lived in the present, in its immediate power. This is what some people experience when they are dying and have time to consider. It was a powerful piece of journalism and a message worth remembering.

2006-12-29T12:21:00.000-08:00

Middle School Girls, and, urrr, Women GoGoGone WILD

Lawrence Downes writes a powerful opinion in today's NYX, "Middle School Girls Gone Wild." Downes describes the shock, the scene at his ten year-old daughter's talent show when a group of middle-schoolers gyrate to Janet Jackson's latest nasty-you-bad-boy, can't-make-a-good-album (Hang it up, please) ditty:

They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. 'Don’t stop don’t stop,' sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. 'Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.' The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

Downes wonders later:

What surprised me, though, was how completely parents of even younger girls seem to have gotten in step with society’s march toward eroticized adolescence — either willingly or through abject surrender. And if parents give up, what can a school do? A teacher at the middle school later told me she had stopped chaperoning dances because she was put off by the boy-girl pelvic thrusting and had no way to stop it — the children wouldn’t listen to her and she had no authority to send anyone home. She guessed that if the school had tried to ban the sexy talent-show routines, parents would have been the first to complain, having shelled out for costumes and private dance lessons for their Little Miss Sunshines.

I’m sure that many parents see these routines as healthy fun, an exercise in self-esteem harmlessly heightened by glitter makeup and teeny skirts. Our girls are bratz, not slutz, they would argue, comfortable in the existence of a distinction.

But my parental brain rebels. Suburban parents dote on and hover over their children, micromanaging their appointments and shielding them in helmets, kneepads and thick layers of S.U.V. steel. But they allow the culture of boy-toy sexuality to bore unchecked into their little ones’ ears and eyeballs, displacing their nimble and growing brains and impoverishing the sense of wider possibilities in life.

There is no reason adulthood should be a low plateau we all clamber onto around age 10. And it’s a cramped vision of girlhood that enshrines sexual allure as the best or only form of power and esteem. It’s as if there were now Three Ages of Woman: first Mary-Kate, then Britney, then Courtney. Boys don’t seem to have such constricted horizons. They wouldn’t stand for it — much less waggle their butts and roll around for applause on the floor of a school auditorium.

There is something amiss here; something I've noticed being back in grad. school where I've been "invited" (or just observed) via Facebook at least 3 "porn-themed" parties hosted/created by women. I'm all for women embracing their sexuality; reveling in their body on the dance-floor and wherever else they choose. I'd love it if our society actually glorified a true female sensuality, where women's shapes, curves, desires weren't pigeon-holed into some pre-pubescent, quasi-soft-porn eroticized image. Our view of what a woman can be, how their bodies should be desired is, as Downes points out, "impoverished." Compared to boys and men, girls and women face an incredibly narrow range of what is considered "sexy," while ironically, it becomes more and more acceptable for girls to aspire to be "sexual" at younger and younger ages (as long as it's limited to talent shows. Don't forget the whore/slut tag once adolescence hits if they stray outside the lines).

Plus, as girls hit adolescence, they're offered a wealth of social networking tools - AIM, MySpace, Xanga, Gootube, whatever's next, offering the comfort of connection, of "friendships" confirmed with a click of the mouse. Thus, female teenagers and esp. undergraduates grow up "connecting" to boys, hanging out. I'm all for the liberating potential of new technologies, but I wonder....

Is it any surprise that, newly single, I've noticed an aversion in women under-25 to actually "dating." We'd all rather just hang out, if things become sexual, that's cool (let's fohget how "relating", urr connecting, leads to dating to, uggg, relationships). Tranquilo. I'm down w/ theat.

Eventually, like every other generation, teenagers have to grow up, become adults, decide what relationships they desire. Such a transition is hard enough as couples are now expected to be "life partners" or "friends for life." These relationships require vulnerability, risk, emotional exposure.

We already have, or at least my cousin and I do, a nice first "under-30" marriage rule. These marriages can implode as one partner needs to do a little more growing, a search for meaning/identity that goes in an unexpected direction. What'll happen as real emotional connection becomes a requirement for a generation used to tools, that at least on a superficial level, offer distance from such real vulnerability?

Probably like the rest of us, they'll just have to muddle through it, with possibly a little more, little later heartbreak, which in the end, might only make the heart grow fonder and stronger (or, could it make some psyches more fragile, delicate, more unable, unwilling to bear heartbreak?).

But we should return to the impact on young girls. Will their upbringing be able to resist such powerful forces? Will their identities be stunted in ways no parent, no uncle can resist, at the level of unspoken norms and "naturally" unavailable opportunities for growth, pressuring them to dance like Janet or Britney does? Will their identity be defined by who they date like Bradgelina?

The final question: how will young mothers and fathers - that first MTV generation now raising their own daughters - balance the fact that consumer choices impact identity, that their girls' bodies deserve a full range of opportunities, that the flow, the opportunities, the abundance of life can be closed off much more easily than they can be opened?

Such enclosures - our consumer gods - close off life's opportunities. They are so obvious as to become invisible, convincing us to stand up and cheer as our little girls gyrate away.

2006-12-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

Raising Kids in LA

As I'm finally near the end of my overwhelmingly busy and draining 1st semester, it's great to catch up with friends. Last night, two families, one with three kids (all under 6), the other with one (under 2), and I went out for dinner. We went to a local pizza joint/bar in my friend's neighborhood and the kids scurried around, playing arcade games, sneaking into the back hallway watching the kitchen, causing mischief and having a good time. Doing the things that kids are supposed to do.

Of course, there were a bunch of adults at the bar too, drinking, having a good time. It's no coincidence that both couples each have one parent who's European. I mean, how many American-creative-class couples, so stressed about their kid's future, their own job [in]security, the general stress/anxiety in their family would take the kids out - regularly - to a LOCAL BAR/PIZZA JOINT? I'm talking a real, honkey-good-time people drinking and having a good-time place. Maybe I'm misjudging, but I'm guessing most parents would feel that it's not the "appropriate" place.

LA is a hard place no matter what to raise kids. There's no place that embraces superficiality better. But there are counter-trends, esp. if you look to the ethnic communities. I'm lucky to live in one. Just yesterday, I saw a mom playing with her daughter, scaring her by pushing the carriage down a hill, then catching it, again and again. Their laughter reached my apartment and I took a break from writing my paper and watched.

2006-12-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

A New World Disorder - New's Flash: There's a Male Identity Crisis

Seriously, today's LAX has two stories, which when read together, explain the War in Iraq and a crisis in Christianity: Wimpy men with "masculinity" issues.

first, the time piece on the Iraq study group crystallizes what many biographers of Dubya have noticed: the guy has serious Daddy issues; the group's whole report is around, well, let the opening speak for itself:

Some bipartisan commissions try to move public opinion on contentious national issues. Others try to help Congress find compromise solutions to thorny problems.

The Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), had a different, and unusual, goal: persuading President Bush to change his mind about staying the course in Iraq.

'This is highly unusual,' an advisor to the group said Wednesday after the panel released its report. "It's one thing for people inside the administration to tell the president what to do. But for an outside group to say, 'Here, son, let us give you a road map for your foreign policy,' that's remarkable."

To try to make it easier for Bush — a man who prides himself on consistency and who consequently is criticized by opponents as stubborn

WELL SON, don't read the column one headline, "MANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS, "Convinced that men are dodging church because it saps their masculinity, some evangelists invoke a tougher Jesus to get the rams back into the fold."

Dammmmmmm.

This actually makes perfect sense. I've just finished a GLOBALIZATION seminar with the world most famous sociologists, Manuel Castells, on the subject. There is massive, world-wide dislocation going on, GLOOOBBALLL, at the level of identity and us men, are being forced to change. And most of us don't like it. Women actually want equality, or at least to be able to get naked on Gootube. 3rd world laborers DO want ALL OF OUR jobs, whether it's obvious through immigration or in the more basic structural changes (job losses due to "increases in productivity" with increasing job INsecurity). Less pay and everyone's working more hours and feeling in-se-cure.

Somethings got to give, so it's not surprising that Christian men are feeling a little insecure. Join the club.

POSTSCRIPT: In an ironic confirmation of my theory, Samantha Bonar wrote a funny bit about the female inverse. So take one male identity crises, by extension, you'll have a hetero-fem. dating identity crisis. Some men are actually EVOLVING and, accoding to Bonar et al, women suffer Post Traum. Stress (Relationship) Syndrome (Disorder) after dating all the degenerates (prob. some people I worked w/ at the William Morris Agency) and don't know how to adjust to boyfriends that treat them right. Time heals everything and until then, as Bonar notes, CHILLLLLL.

2006-12-05T07:18:00.000-08:00

Chester, the Molestor (I mean, Sex Offender): Out of My Neighborhood!!!

Peter Hong has a moving personal column 1 in today's LAX about a child molestor living on his block in Altadena.

Child molestors are our society's boogeyman; we have a whole fricking proposition written, Proposition 83, with the explicit intent to UPROOT, DEROOT and KICK OUT these corruptors, these contagions to our pure children.

Wong's article speaks for itself:

He captures the fear parents feel:

Miletti lives 850 feet from Farnsworth Park, a sprawling complex of playing fields, courts and a playground frequented by children, including my own. Proposition 83 passed overwhelmingly; several neighbors said they voted for it, expecting that Miletti would be forced out of the neighborhood. Both the attorney general and the proposition's authors say ex-convicts can stay put. But it has yet to be decided whether the restrictions will apply to past sex offenders if they move. A federal judge will take up the matter in February.

More than 30 houses line Miletti's block, and most of them have signs calling for him to leave. One of the homes at the end of the block belongs to Erik Hargrave, 40. He recalled the day he and his wife received the mailer. It came on his daughter's second birthday. His wife, who had recently given birth to their second child, burst into tears.

Hargrave and about a dozen neighbors met at Farnsworth Park's Greek-style amphitheater. There was anxiety over having a sex offender on a block with so many young children. They also discussed the potential effect his presence could have on property values and decided both to post the signs and create an e-mail distribution list.

Another of the anti-Miletti organizers, Joseph Llorens, the father of a 12-year-old boy, lives across the street from Hargrave. A manager for a utility company, Llorens, 44, had actually been a friend of Miletti's wife; he had joined her and her then-husband for Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago.

"I do not want him to harm children in our area," he said. "I cannot protect the whole world; my goal is just to get him out of our area."

Llorens and Hargrave once got into a heated exchange with Miletti over their signs. The two raised their voices in anger, while Miletti remained calm.

Llorens felt Miletti wanted to bait him or Hargrave into hitting him so he could make some kind of claim against them, he said. No blows were struck. Miletti also offered to tell his story, Llorens recalled. "I said I don't even want to know. How can you justify doing that to a 6-year-old?" Llorens told Miletti to go home, which he did.

Then, he captures when society's stigmitizes the "other." Of course, the African-American on the block sees through such prejudice:

Some of those who are most against vilifying Miletti live closest to him.

Wayne Weiss, 58, a documentary filmmaker who lives across the street, said he finds the signs unsightly. He thinks they so dominate the streetscape that the neighborhood could end up defined by them.

"They've got Christmas Tree Lane over there," he said, gesturing across Lake Avenue to the neighborhood famous for its holiday light displays. "Is this going to become Pedophile Lane?"

Hari Nayar, 48, and Ruth Landsberger, 47, who have two children ages 9 and 6, also live across the street. The couple don't know Miletti and his wife, and they don't feel their children are endangered. Sexual abuse typically is inflicted by family members or friends, they believe, as it was in Miletti's case. The state's Megan's Law website confirms their view, noting that 90% of child victims know their abuser, with almost half the offenders being a family member.

As they discussed their views with me, their 6-year-old listened in while their 9-year-old sat nearby reading "How The Grinch Stole Christmas."

The sign campaign "may not be teaching these guys good values," Landsberger said. "It is not teaching tolerance. It's more like vigilantism."

Alex and Jackie Bailey, retirees who live at the opposite end of the block from Miletti, also declined to post signs at their house. "You have to live with people no matter what," said Jackie, 64.

She said that about 30 years ago, a convicted murderer lived in the neighborhood, and his daughter played with their children. "You have to take care to protect your children and watch them. You can't stop kids from playing with each other … we just kept our distance from the parent," she said.

The Baileys were among the neighborhood's first African Americans when they arrived in 1968. Alex, 69, said he sometimes wonders if the campaign against Miletti could descend to "the mentality that in the past caused my people to be lynched and now Arabs to be arrested and abused."

Hargrave said he is aware of such fears and has consulted with the sheriff's station to make sure the anti-Miletti efforts remain lawful. "We are not vigilantes," he said.

Societies reveal their true colors by how they treat the most wretched, the most vulnerable, the neediest. I thought we lived in a Christian country? Didn't Jesus say something about tolerance and love. And isn't California a "Democratic", urr, blue, shouldn't we call it black, state?

I'm not denying the incredible harm done by those who sexually abuse children. They deserve to punished severely. Wong decides to keep his children away from his neighbor. This seems like the sensible thing, the appropriate thing to do.

But, a line is crossed when people's basic civil rights are violated, when society legitimizes the state's power to expell lawfully-abiding citizens from their own home. Our society has crossed this line w/ regularity esp. during our "War On Terror" times (example 2: "detainees" disappear into a "military tribunal" system).

Facists (those Nazis, Southern racists and Hutus/Mutus) would uproot, deroot, then exterminate "others" based on their difference: just it was racial and/or religious. But sexual identity is different. RIGGGHTTTTT. It threatens our kids on MySpace. But, maybe it isn't so BLACK and WHITE. Just ask News flash: Republican Rep. of Florida Mark Foley (I love the source of this link) what it's like to suffer from a splintered sexual identity. But I guess we can't give him any sympathy either.

Sympathy, compassion, tolerance isn't allowed when society justifies by such a wide margin the ostracism of sex offenders. Not in our backyards, our neighborhoods.

2006-11-30T22:42:00.000-08:00

A WALK DOWN MEMORY GRAIN

Michael Leddy, my new fave over at Orange Crate Art has written a great piece on "granularity" - the importance of breaking things down to their constituent parts.

It is so simple and so insightful, something it's taken poor Blue Mandy thirty-four years to figure silly: DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BIG THINGS little boys and girls. THINGS MAY, or probably, MAY NOT work out. But give the anxiety a break. Break things down to what is manageable today.

OC also has a poignant piece re: Ralph Ellison, a 20th Century giant if ever there was one. That post got me thinking about the power of memory and place. I've been trying to remember the name of a certain Boba place in the San Gabriel Valley that's magical. But I forget the damn name!!!

I also had forgotten the name of a special place in San Francisco where I had one of my best, recent meals. But then I found it: Burma Superstore. But like the Boba place, the only way to be sure memory "serves" is to return and luckily, I remember the location, kind of, in San Gabriel. But it never is the same as trying something the first time.

PS: LifeHack, the blog which published Leddy's piece also has excellent piece on the power of a good attitude. Worth checking out (I will in further detail once I turn in my first big grad school final paper tom. on the little subject of freedom, liberty, technology and social movements as seen in the Knowledge Good Ecology movement, of which the organization, CPTech (my paper's subject) is a leader. That's what you get when studying under just the most famous sociologist since the 19th Century Emile Durkheim, USC/Annenberg's Manuel Castells)

2006-11-07T05:04:00.000-08:00

Book of Job 30:15-18

In dreams, in visions of the night
when deepest sleep falls upon men,
while they sleep in their beds, God makes them listen,
and his correction strikes them with terror.
To turn a man from reckless conduct,
to check the pride of mortal man,
at the edge of the pit he holds him back alive
and stops him from crossing the river of death.

The power of Uncle Sheriff, let's just call it hope, or the destructiveness of man's basic nature. You decide which is stronger.

PS: Just don't ask Dr. Stranglove or the folks kidnapped regularly in Sri Lanka (home of Free Culture fave Maya Arulpragasam)

2006-08-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Memo to Self: SOLUTION FOR FRUSTRATION-OF-LOSING-CAR/HOUSE-KEY again

TRIP TO BEACH: Remember how good it feels to take shoes off,
walk on sand, sit on the grass, watch the freaks at the Venice skate park
feel the warm water rush up the shore and wrap around your toes
- listen to the drum circle beats surf merge sky fade and try to be quiet

2006-08-18T02:58:00.000-07:00

Baby blue is back.

Blue mandy is back.

It's been awhile - a strange three months, but time to get back in the saddle, and as my dear cousin Jon Haidt aka the happiness expert and now proud father of a beautiful baby boy, would say: RIDE THAT ELEPHANT BOY, RIDE HIM!!!! Now the elephant i'm riding would have a monkey for a companion, but let's slow down.

For those of you who don't remember, cousin Jon wrote a wonderful book on how our consciousness is like an elephant, powered by those messy old emotions, and our head/reason is the rider along for the journey. Now, I'm no academic myself - yet - but my reason ain't no rider. IT'S A MOONNNKEEEEYYY.

No, seriously, a good friend described my head as a very special house of mirrors and once I go in, I sure ain't gonna ride out anytime soon.

Now, I wonder what our friend Jack Bauer would say about the whole consciousness/reason/mind/emotions/body split question. Of course, last time he left us, Jackky boy had more pressing things like getting his ass tortured by the Chinese.

Oh well, all I know fellow Monkeys is that life is very wet, very slippery. You can learn to surf like Blue Mandy has been. There may be days when you drive one hour to a special beach, go there specifically because it's a great beginner spot, the waves suck, you can't even improve on your last time out, the beauty against the Ventura mountains is overwhelming, you get stuck in traffic for two and a half hours on the ride back, which almost ruins the buzz, walk into your home, receive unexpected news and your life changes forever.

But Monkeys fall and elephants get up and Riders ride.

2006-05-18T03:57:00.000-07:00

A delicate flower....

yesterday I went for a run along the beach. On the ramp to the carousel, some clown blew bubbles for kids to chase and pop.

It's amazing how if you run towards a cluster of bubbles rising and falling, your air pushes them in all directions, never popping. but if you stand still, watch, hear the ocean, smell the salt and shit from the bums under the pier, you can see them burst.

and they all do, eventually.

Hitting the ground, or the sky, popped by some child playing or some runner trying to find his way home.

On another day, I watch birds fly from a perch at the corner of Sunset and Hollywood. You know that one ---- that fucking annoying intersection with the interminable wait. The birds rest above, looking down and it must be migration time. Where do they leave and come from? Doesn't really matter, but I notice the huge flock flying as one going somewhere, just like me.

2006-04-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Today's a great day - my little baby sis - Ms. Market Marveliosa - is turning 30 and we're celebrating.

Of course, it's a little sad since Ms. Markie is leaving LA soon and I'll be sibling-less in the big shitty. But I can't blame her: sis has been one of those people just waiting to leave LA first chance they could.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about LA and its spiritual starvation. If I understand Ms. STL, there's a shallowness found in yogi-centric LA circles, compared to pristine, pure ones in dear-old Amsterdam. Now besides that waxing poetic about anything Dutch is the surest way to mi corazon, I'm not sure that attending hipster art gallery openings and downtown-r-they still underground? loft parties is the best way to ground oneself to a stable, meaty LA foundation.

I'm always amazed by people who meow about LA-deprivation, but then peruse the latest, hippest offering. Which reminds me of a simple fact that my dear, FIXED partner, Mr. Matsu shared with a random fan at the Silver Lake fest., if you're sick of the tried and true, shallow, hippy hipster LA circle, TRY SOMETHING NEW.

Go to San Pedro; go to the Thai temple; organize a road-trip to Sierra Madrea; explore the waterfall rock-slides in Angeles forest (this is the trail that takes you to a spot called 1st Water); go to the hot springs off Rt 14 (they're MIND-BLOWING AMAZING!).

Do something new or waste away.

2006-03-30T14:49:00.000-08:00

"'IAC' - in a good way"

Our fest screenings are over and thanks to everyone for coming out and seeing our different type of LA artist film.

The screenings were great and image quality and crowd was way better at our second one Tuesday. This was a great launch for the film and we'll be coming to a virtual townhall near you soon. As my partner Neil said, "it's about castration - in a good way."

2006-03-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

Tis' the day!!!!

So our big night is TO.NIGHT!!!! Our final screening at the Silver Lake Film Festival, 10 pm, Arclight Cinema. We're so excited that the big man upstairs decided to send a big rain storm to LA and CHALLENGE all our friends.

But we know they'll come through and have a full house.

For those who see the film, our biggest, most complex production day was when we shot at Gallery 4-F in Chinatown Chung King Row. It's the scene where Mattew (Jason Van Over) meet Deanna (Tina Holmes) after being told about the party by Audry (Roy Black). Our friends, Michelle Jaquis and Jeremy Quinn of RIIS Industries lent us their video art installations. We hung 3 of the screens from the ceiling and had 3 projections going to each. The scene came out great; our actors, Jason, Tina and Roy nailed it.

I could keep talking about some of my other favorite scenes to quell my anxious anticipation, but instead: it's hope to see you all there.

2006-03-25T08:46:00.000-08:00

FIXED LOCATION NUGGETS:

FIXED had a challenging production schedule. We did essentially two six-day weeks with an unplanned break in the first week, then we took a break for Thanksgiving 2003 and finished on weekends after (a total of 5 1/2 more days). I guess our total production schedule was around 21 days overall (the final few being pick ups), but the heart of it was the first 16 days. Our crew was incredibly hard-working led by Andrew Takeuchi, our DP, Amos James, our gaffer who brought in our AD at a critical time, and Bruce Devan who came in at our break. Check out their credits at IMDB.

My favorite general location area was around San Pedro, CA: this is the town where our lead, Matthew, moves after he starts his drug treatment.

Here, is the only location where we got our location-butts kicked off the property. So, we just went up the hill to a bluff lookng down on the Korean bell and shot our scene. The bluff is right outside the main gallery for Angel's Gate, and we shot Matthew's art gallery scene inside Angel Gate.

We also shot extensively in downtown San Pedro around the art galleries: downtown (we shot in this general vicinity). My favorite musical sequence, kudos to our composer, Roddy Bottom, is the transition when Matthew bikes around San Pedro.

2006-03-25T01:52:00.000-08:00

FIRST AND NOW FINAL FIXED SCREENING @ SLFF

DEAR FRIENDEES:

Our first FIXED screening at the Silver Lake Film Festival took place yesterday at 5:30 p.m. at Arclight Theatre in the big theatre. For those of you from out of LA, you have no idea what an honor it is to play at such a historical site. The Old Hollywood Cinerama Dome is the most prestigious screening theatre out of the 15 theatres that constitute Arclight (the remaining 14 are all modern recently renovated theatres that in LA are known as the most comfortable, moderns ones at any theatre. FIXED has already playing at two of the most impressives historical movie palaces in Hollywood - the other being our special Alternative screening series screening by the American Cinemateque at the Egyptian Theatre.). Unfortunately, our 5:30 screening time prevented a lot of our friends from showing up (even our Exec. Producer, Bruce Devan gave up after being stuck in hellacious traffic on Int. 10).

SO WE NEED YOU ALL TO COME THROUGH ON TUESDAY NIGHT, 10 PM!!!!!!!

We expect a full house Tuesday and look forward to seeing you all

2006-03-24T02:11:00.000-08:00

SO DEAR READERS: BLUE MANDY, HERE, checking in from Avalon's Spider Club opening night SLFF After-PAARRRTEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! Remote access, baby. Oh, my god, Bill Macy, you DEVIL, YOU DEVIL, DEVIL, DEVIL. It's after 2 in the AM and if you saw the things, my eyes see right now....Umm, ummm, can you say - AYAY CANDY.

It's been quite the virginal festival exp - finally got to wear those cool badges that after years of Sundance Envy, just longing to be one of those mighty badged ONES, NOW I AM!!! The lounge @ Arclight. You should all come visit and I'll get special prizes if you tell the people @ will call that Blue Mandy sent you.

Interesting side-note about FIXED: Three of our locations for the doctor Matthew visits in his search for cures were courtesy of Mr. Vaginal Reconstruction Surgeon himself: Dr. David Matlock. Matlock was incredibly generous to us, god bless him: letting us shoot in his operating room, his private work office and his Bel-Air mansion. The operating room was obviously the scene for the big-you-know-what. His office was used for the scene where doctor explains procedure to Matthew. His mansion served as Frederick's home in the scene where Matthew personally installs Frederick's just purchased painting from Audry.

Check out his site and I want to hear from you, esp. the ladies. I mean, I'm all for going South of the border; huge fan of Pinacate, Hermosillo want to travel to the Yucatan, but like it natural, you know what I'm saying.

2006-03-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

TALK ABOUT IRONY:

I was going to lead today's post w/ something below (marked 2), but NOOOOOO!!!! The LA Times had to go and change my plans.

We scored - go Kevin Crust! Believe it or not, Neil w/ FIXED intended from the beginning to portray Matthew as described - an elusive castrator. DON'T ASK what that says about Neil bec. I still don't know.

2006-03-22T07:16:00.000-08:00

The culmination of a 7-year labor pays off this Friday evening, 5:30 p.m. @ Arclight Cinema in Hollywood.

the FIXED premiere.

So, my promise for those who have endured my festival blasts: you want to BE HAPPY??!!! DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE HAPPY!!!???? WHY DOES EVERYONE WANT TO BE SO HAPPY!!!!!

BECAUSE THEY CAN BUY MY COUSIN'S BOOK, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS AND FIND THE ANSWERS YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED AND I GET A PERCENTAGE LINK. Who cares if The New Yorker or The Today Show covered it?

And you can attend this film playing at THE SILVER LAKE FILM FESTIVAL? First, the historical Egyptian Theatre as a special screening, now Hollywood Dome. We feel very fortunate.

I promise happiness through film; my cousin gives happiness away by the bushels.

So there, read, learn, watch and be happy. Life is simple. We'll make it so.

Hope to see all your Happy, Positively psychological asses Friday or Tuesday at the film's screenings.