the zeitgeist report

This occured in Portland last night. It is a type of flashmob event:

Friday, March 3rd at 7 PM, Portland Pioneer Square will be hosting a pillow fight. Help spread the word.

The rules are:
1) keep your pillow concealed until 7 PM sharp
2) hit only others carrying pillows
3) no heavy objects in pillows

This was another set of rules from the group:

1. You do tell everyone about PillowFight Club.
2. You do tell everyone about PillowFight Club.
3. If someone whines or has no pillow, you cannot hit them.
4. Everyone joins in the fight.
5. The one fight starts at the designated time - No earlier.
6. No tar, no heavy things in pillows.
7. PillowFights will go on until they're done.
8. If this is your first night at PillowFight Club, you have to get feathered.

They also sponser "Urban Golf" events. Sounds like good clean pomo fun.

I received the following email today:

From an OPC (Orthodox Prebyterian Church) Elder

We have just co-signed a letter written by the Center for Reclaiming
America for Christ's Executive Director, Dr. Gary Cass, expressing
outrage over the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences'
nomination of "Brokeback Mountain " for best picture.

This movie is simply another outrageous example of Hollywood trying
to legitimize and force their homosexual agenda on the citizens of
our nation.

If you share Dr. Cass' outrage and would like to co-sign his letter
to Academy President Sid Ganis, click on the link.

An odd and misguided bit of media activism, as the film is simply dying at the box office. This sort of publicity is just the sort of thing the producers are hoping to get.

If they were smart the filmmakers would write a press release saying,"We're very sorry for making this movie and whatever you do, please, don't take out any full page ads in any larger city daily newspapers telling people not to watch our movie. Especially not in Los Angeles or New York or the other second tier markets, like say Chicago, Portland or Boston."

This is not a movie that has much cultural resonance. It has a very small market. It has only been seen by as many as it has because of media buzz and curiosity. When people watch it and realize it's not just another "nice love story" they feel sort of robbed.

Parents are complaining about the undertones of this book:

A children's book about two male penguins that raise a baby penguin has been moved to the nonfiction section of two public library branches after parents complained it had homosexual undertones.

The illustrated book, "And Tango Makes Three," is based on a true story of two male penguins, named Roy and Silo, who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City's Central Park Zoo in the late 1990s.

I'm not clear on how moving the title from fiction to non-fiction resolved the objections to the book.

This rang so true with me:

Everyone turning 40 should be issued a wallet-size card at the doctor's office. It would say something like: "Idealizing Your Childhood Years Is Unhealthy and Boring to Others, So Don't Do It! Things Were Not Better Back Then."*

The asterisk would lead to fine print stipulating the big exception: the mid-1970's, which were, in fact, better in numerous, demonstrable ways. They also happen to be years when I viewed life from a preteen perspective, but never mind that.

Their superiority was confirmed beyond doubt last month by the release of a four-DVD set of "The Electric Company," one of the best children's television shows ever. It ran from 1971 to 1977 and, since it was not released on videotape, is remembered mostly by a small generational slice of America: the Early-Post-Baby-Boomers. It is cherished, I feel sure, by every last one of us.

"The Electric Company" and its companion, "Sesame Street," arose like alien monoliths on the vast moonscape of junk television. Joan Ganz Cooney, a founder of the Children's Television Workshop and the brains behind "Sesame Street," assembled the team to create a show for older children. What she got was a hippie-Broadway-vaudeville-Carol Burnett Show hybrid put on by people who knew how to write, sing and act. It had songs by Tom Lehrer, cartoon voice-overs by Gene Wilder, Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks, and a cast of regulars that included Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman, then unknown, who played a wordstruck hipster, Easy Reader.

Check it out!

Why can't Courtney simply return from whence she came and quit trying to destroy everything I hold dear:

Courtney Love has quickly become better known for her red carpet outbursts than her on-stage talent, but if Bob Dylan has anything to do with it, we might soon hear Ms. Love channeling her anger in a much more prolific manner.

Working on her second round of demos for her first album in two years, Love has been getting her inspiration from Dylan's album of uber-emotional songs including "Simple Twist of Fate," "Shelter From the Storm," and "If You See Her, Say Hello."

Let's just work with our old muses, Ms. Love.

There is an exhibit based on the "controversial" theories of Charles Darwin:

Inside another vitrine, an incon­spicuous object catches Wilson's eye. A pocket-size notebook has been left open to a page on which I think is scrawled above a rudimentary sketch of what looks like a tree. "It's the tree of evolution, 1837," he says in a hushed voice. A guard gruffly asks him to take a step back. "I can see why she's worried," he says. "In the history of science, this is like the Declaration of Independence." Two years after Darwin's return from his voyage on the HMS Beagle, his inchoate obser­vations had begun to take shape. But so anxious was Darwin to avoid the controversy he knew his ideas would create that he spent another 21 years refining them. Questioning creationism, he wrote in 1844, was like "confessing a murder."

Belief in Darwinism vs. Creationism is about 50/50 in the public at large, with Darwin experiencing a slight decline.

In an article by Tom Wolfe called "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died", he writes about

A sobering look at how man may perceive himself in the future, particularly as ideas about genetic predeterminism takes the place of dying Darwinism.

And America's greatest Pastor Writes:

Whatever one thinks of intelligent design, it must be admitted that the finest minds in the history of human thought, from Aristotle to Augustine to Aquinas to Galileo to Einstein to today's Alvin Plantinga, at some level, believed in intelligent design. It seems educationally dishonest to withhold from our children what some of the greatest thinkers in history believed.

Well, if Alvin Plantinga...

I have often said, and regretted not committing to print, the idea that websites were going to be the new television station. Websites generate, distribute and create content into highly idiosyncratic concepts designed to reach ever so nichey of audiences. With large cities now becoming wireless internet hubs, the internet is becoming a broadcast medium with the narrowest of castes. Websites can now have a deftly drawn pallette of music, video, and written word content that reflects the tastes and interests of a person or small committee, much like today's magazines which are getting increasingly boutique in their editorial oeuvres.

Rolling Stone had an article on comedy websites that are generating a great deal of interest and are attracting A-list writing talent, including The Simpson's and SNL alumnis:

Before the Saturday Night Live December 17th episode was half over, NBC's switchboard was flooded with calls hailing Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg's white-boy rap video "Lazy Sunday" as the show's best bit in years (the bar, of course, hasn't been set too high lately). By 5 a.m., an MP3 of this ode to cupcakes and Narnia was online, and soon video-sharing sites were hosting clips. Downloaded more than 3 million times, it was an Internet phenomenon.

It also pointed to a quiet revolution that is transforming comedy. The primary breeding ground for fledgling comic talent is no longer the stand-up circuit or network television but the Web. "The Internet takes power away from big companies," says Jimmy Kimmel. "You no longer have to send a bag of coke to execs to get your stuff played."

No one knows the power of the Web better than the team behind "Lazy Sunday," Samberg and his writing partners Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. The childhood friends have posted homemade videos on Channel 101 and their own site, thelonelyisland.com, for several years. "If you make videos in a traditional way, passing around a VHS, no one sees it," says Schaffer. "When we started our site, the dream was that there would actually be an audience somewhere." The site now draws 30,000 viewers a day.

The feature highlighted two particularly good sites: Icebox.com and Channel 101 Which ominously labels itself "The Future of Entertainment".

Icebox.com has an extremely funny, spot on satire of Beach Boys father Murray Wilson call called "Rock 'N' Roll Dad".

And now Futureboy has a feature on a new high quality video sharing site called Veoh.

On Wednesday, Veoh, Shapiro's San Diego-based startup, launched a Web-based version of its video-sharing software to compete with the likes of YouTube, iFilm, and vSocial, which each let users watch, post, and share videos online. Whether or not Shapiro ever catches up to this already-crowded pack, he does have a few ideas that may very well point to how we will all one day be watching TV -- and not just over the Internet.

And, of course, your kids are doing YouTube.com.

And this from Yahoo:

After proclaiming grand plans to bring elaborately produced sitcoms, talk shows and other television-style programs to the Internet, the head of Yahoo's Media Group said yesterday that he was sharply scaling back those efforts. He said the group would shift its focus to content acquired from other media companies or submitted by users.

So as they say,"Stay tuned".

I read this curious passage from a Lutheran Church in McMinnville, Oregon:

Martin Luther was a 16th century Catholic Priest in Germany. He published a list of corrections that he thought the Catholic Church should consider. This led to the Protestant "Reformation." Luther never wanted to leave the Catholic Church, and considered himself a Catholic to the day he died. Luther was clear that he did NOT want a church named after him. His detractors knew this, and so they began to call his followers "Lutheran" just to tick him off. The name stuck. Of the reforms that Luther suggested all but one have now been enacted by the Catholic Church. The only one that hasn't is the one which states that priests should be allowed to marry.

I shall have to reread the 95 Thesis with a scorecard.

Note: When I went to my favorite website for Luther information, Project Wittenberg, I was transfered to another website which lists expired websites. Is this possible?

This article doesn't say this, but clearly the Bush administration looks on with total indifference. Where is the controversial smartness of Kanye West when we need it?

Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness. As the hours progressed, conditions only worsened.

At approximately 4:20 p.m. EST, the sun began to lower from its position in the sky in a westward trajectory, eventually disappearing below the horizon. Reports of this global emergency continued to file in from across the continent until 5:46 p.m. PST, when the entire North American mainland was officially declared dark.

Dave Chapelle may be the funniest man in America. There is a character he portrays that is so mindblowingly funny for all the right reasons in a way that is so wrong: he portrays a blind black klansman who doesn't know that he is black. The racist dialogue coming out of him is so twisted and requires our brains to translate as we go.

His new movie is getting excellant reviews.

In the exhilarating film "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," much of which unfolds over a single rainy day and night, Mr. Chappelle looks and sounds alternately ebullient and weary. It was directed by Michel Gondry, the madcap genius behind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," but in its tone and vibe feels like Mr. Chappelle's all the way.

Ben Franklin said he was not a great public speaker. He said when people heard him speak, they thought him rather a dullard. President Bush seems to have a similar problem. He seems to have amazing management skills. He finds the right person for the right job and quickly and efficiently solves problems.

President Clinton was a cracker public speaker with slight verbiose tendencies but was an awful manager who couldn't make a decision.

This article is a pretty good summary of their differences and the meaning of their communication styles:

That was his gift and his curse: he could explain (almost) anything.

Clinton's performance reminded me of the leadership strengths — and weaknesses — of his Baby Boomer successor. George W. Bush is in choppy water over the Dubai ports issue. And he is so, in large part, because, unlike Clinton, he is a man of bullet points, not explanations; of slogans, not systems; of certitude, not complexity.

I've known Bush for a long time and I know that he distrusts talk, at least public talk. He'd rather make a decision — give an order — and then go out and attack a felled tree with a chain saw. He is confident to the point of arrogance when he makes a "tough call." But he objects by nature to the demand that he explain his reasoning and/or the process behind it.

I am always looking for people who embody the zeitgeist. Perhaps it is this young boy wandering through the Detroit Institute Art who stuck a piece of gum onto an extravagently overpriced painting.

A 12-year-old visitor to the Detroit Institute of Arts stuck a wad of gum to a $1.5 million painting, leaving a stain the size of a quarter, officials say.

The boy was part of a school group from Holly that visited the museum on Friday, officials say. They say he took a piece of Wrigley's Extra Polar Ice gum out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler's "The Bay," an abstract painting from 1963.

The museum acquired the work in 1965 and says it is worth about $1.5 million.

The museum feels confident that the painting will be restored. I am captured by the image of a little boy walking through a museum and sticking a piece of gum to a piece of valuable art. Did he know he was defacing, as CNN reported, "a priceless painting worth $1.5 million"?

I am Boston.

Both modern and old school, you never forget your roots.
Well educated and a little snobby, you demand the best.
And quite frankly, you think you are the best.

Famous people from the Boston area: Conan O'Brien, Ben Affleck, New Kids on the Block


What American City Are You?

Wired has a handy little guide to what is really happening on MySpace. It's another cooler heads prevailing article:

This FAQ relies heavily on an interview with UC Berkeley researcher Danah Boyd, who studied teens' ways during a two-year ethnographic study of the MySpace phenomenon. Boyd speaks on her findings in a recent lecture .

The ideas have been popping up with a little more frequency:

Youth are not creating digital publics to scare parents - they are doing so because they need youth space, a place to gather and see and be seen by peers. Publics are critical to the coming-of-age narrative because they provide the framework for building cultural knowledge. Restricting youth to controlled spaces typically results in rebellion and the destruction of trust. Of course, for a parent, letting go and allowing youth to navigate risks is terrifying. Unfortunately, it's necessary for youth to mature.

What we're seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access. The long-term implications of this are unclear. Regardless of what will come, youth are doing what they've always done - repurposing new mediums in order to learn about social culture.

Technology will have an effect because the underlying architecture and the opportunities afforded are fundamentally different. But youth will continue to work out identity issues, hang out, and create spaces that are their own, regardless of what technologies are available.

Perhaps the malady of the day is the hangover -- nauseous, achy and incapable of appreciating beauty. Maybe we are fogged over and bored and working on a puzzle with 15,000 solutions:

After her I could eat a car but here's
a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake
yum but Hangover, you make me aspire
to a saltine. Both of you need to lie down,
one with a cool rag across the brow, shutters
drawn, the other in a soft jungle gym, yahoo,
this puzzle has 15 thousand solutions!

The best news in the whole world:

Work on Dylan's follow-up to 2001's Love And Theft began early this month with four days of rehearsals with his touring band at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, New York. The crew have now moved to Manhattan to record the songs for Dylan's 31st studio effort.

*hyperbole

This New Yorker profile of Megachurch starter Rick Warren gives an account of the Saddleback Church in Orange County. It is written by New Yorker kookie idea guy, Malcolm Gladwell, linked from his new (started in January) blog:

December of 1979, when Warren was twenty-five years old, he and his wife, Kay, took their four-month-old baby and drove in a U-Haul from Texas to Saddleback Valley, in Orange County, because Warren had read that it was one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. He walked into the first real-estate office he found and introduced himself to the first agent he saw, a man named Don Dale. He was looking for somewhere to live, he said.

"Do you have any money to rent a house?" Dale asked.
"Not much, but we can borrow some," Warren replied.
"Do you have a job?"
"No. I don't have a job."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a minister."
"So you have a church?"
"Not yet."

Dale found him an apartment that very day, of course: Warren is one of those people whose lives have an irresistible forward momentum. In the car on the way over, he recruited Dale as the first member of his still nonexistent church, of course. And when he held his first public service, three months later, he stood up in front of two hundred and five people he barely knew....

Warren speaks of his writing of the blockbuster The Purpose Driven Life:

To write "The Purpose-Driven Life," Warren holed up in an office in a corner of the Saddleback campus, twelve hours a day for seven months. "I would get up at four-thirty, arrive at my special office at five, and I would write from five to five," he said. "I'm a people person, and it about killed me to be alone by my-self. By eleven-thirty, my A.D.D. would kick in. I would do anything not to be there. It was like birthing a baby." The book didn't tell any stories. It wasn't based on any groundbreaking new research or theory or theological insight. "I'm just not that good a writer," Warren said. "I'm a pastor. There's nothing new in this book. But sometimes as I was writing it I would break down in tears. I would be weeping, and I would feel like God was using me."

Gladwell offers an odd and self-serving political interpretation of the Lord's Prayer:


UPDATE: The NYTImes picks up on Gladwell's change of mind from his weblog, which he plans to use for updating his books and article. He now supports Canada's healthcare system.

Google is currently working on a project to digitize about one million books. The books will be searchable and they will have features that tie in books thematically so that users can have the experience of digitally wandering through the stacks:

The goal of Google Book Search is to make all offline books -- currently invisible to Google's eye -- searchable. This means physically scanning hundreds of millions of pages bound between the covers of an estimated 18 million books, recognizing around 430 languages and all sorts of fonts, making the results available for text searches, and replicating the traditional library browsing experience when it's all done. Daniel Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, says he cannot comment on what the company has accomplished so far.

There are parallel projects going on, but Google doesn't want to help. I wonder if they've run out of 'do no evil' t-shirts:

Clancy says Google has developed its own scanning technology. But the company is mum about the technical details of the hardware, optical-character recognition (OCR) software, and scanning rate at their five scanning centers near cooperating library partners at Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Oxford, and New York Public Library.

This set of photos is so fantastic it takes a moment to decide if they are real. It looks like a parody of the dotcom bubble before the bust. They are photos taken at Google's offices. It looks like some sort of advanced new age preschool for adults.