BEITEL-BLOG

Life in the Digital Age

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:17:00 +0000

Just finished Henry Adams's Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. (Verdict: Two thumbs up.) Interesting passage towards the end that has little to do with high art and everything to do with the chain of events that has led us to the current ubiquity of digital media.

There were a lot of reasons for Jackson Pollock's meteoric ascension in the late 40s and early 50s, but one of the biggest catalysts was an article in the August 8, 1949, issue of Life magazine. Adams writes, "Pollock's fame would never have occurred without Life, a new kind of mass-market magazine, with sales in excess of five million copies a week." And what made Life a new kind of magazine? It wasn't the writing or the way the magazine was distributed or anything like that. It wasn't even the photographs, for which the magazine was so well-known. Not exactly, anyway. It was, Adams writes, a technological innovation: "...fast-drying printing ink [which] made it possible to print on coated paper run through high-speed rotary presses, with the result that photographs of high quality could be reproduced in vast quantities at a fraction of what it had cost to print them before."

Henry Luce, the publisher of Life, saw this technological advancement as the game-changer it was, and Adams quotes him at length in his summation of what the new media world would be all about:

To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to see strange things -- machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon, to see man's work -- his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed.

All of which could -- of course -- be applied directly to our very beloved interwebs. Like, verbatim. The interwebs which, to Henry Luce, was not even a blip on the radar screen of his imagination. So that just confirms to me that we've always been voracious in our desire "to see strange things...to see and take pleasure in seeing," and that we've always sought to make ever more efficient tools -- fast-drying printing ink, iPhones, etc -- to help us meet that insatiable desire.

Therefore. Folks who bemoan the death of newspapers, magazines, and even the book (all bemoanable deaths, I admit) should at least ponder the thought they're not really dying, per se. It's just print media's version of evolution's punctuated equilibrium: a rapid burst of change that produces a new species more capable of thriving in its environment. Now whether it's an environment worth thriving in, well, that's a whole 'nother question for the great ethicists of our time (Joel Osteen, Al Gore, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, et al)...

For Auld Lang Syne, My Love...

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:03:00 +0000

Being as it's the last day of the first decade of the New Millenium (whoa: that's a mouthful), we (Royal We!) thought it might be fun to wave bon voyage to 2009 with a review of the best of Beitelblog for the past year. Lots of potential ways to do it, but since this is America and democracy rules (ish), let's leave it to the fine folks at Google Analytics, who've worked their fingers to the bone tabulating who clicked what and when. So, without further furthers, here are...

The Top Ten Beitelblog Posts of 2009*

#10. Sunday Links: How Come Art's Not Weird Anymore? (May 31)
#9. Thirty Bald People I Love (July 20)
#8. Sunday Links: A New Millenium D.I.Y. Arts Empire (October 4)
#7. TJB/POV: Asphalt Ascension (June 28)
#6. The May Archive (well, May)
#5. 15,077.36 (August 15)
#4. TJB/POV: What My PC Coughed Up (May 30)
#3. Obit Orbit: Michael Jackson (June 26)
#2. Why Bill Simmons Is Important (Part II) (September 19)

...and the most-clicked Beitelblog post of 2009 was:

#1. The Rise and Fall of Joaquin Phoenix and Its Implications for the Future of Contemporary Art (March 1)

Thanks to our guests, our sponsors, the studio audience and most important, thanks to all you viewers at home. Drive safe and we'll see you 2010!

_____
* By virtue of unique pageviews

Is That A Horse's Head or the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:22:00 +0000

"When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of the paint. There is no accident. Just as there is no beginning and no end. Sometimes I lose a painting. But I have no fear of changes, of destroying the image. Because a painting has a life of its own, I try to let it live." -- Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956)

30 Things I Love Right Now

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:02:00 +0000

1. Listening to The Frames/The Swell Season/Tom Waits (what a total broken record [pun noted but not completely intended] I am) and writing 30 Things I Love Right Now... 2. Day 11 of 16 days off in a row... 3. Vacuuming the stairs for the first time in, like, well, ever... 4. Thomas Hart Benton (see above)... 5. Jackson Pollock (that's him up there playing the harmonica)... 6. Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock by Henry Adams... 7. Art history in general... 8. Art in general... 9. History in general... 10. Story in general... 11. Modernism... 12. The 20th Century... 13. Six small meals instead of three big ones... 14. My dog... 15. Clean clothes... 16. A tee time in late December... 17. The end of the first decade of an entirely new millenium... 18. Brian Orakpo... 19. Long lost loved ones... 20. Rudolph's Shiny New Year (which was so totally weird but nobody thought anything of it)... 21. A clean(ish) house... 22. Buckwheat pancakes... 23. Lip balm... 24. Vanilla yogurt and prunes... 25. Pomegranate juice... 26. Blogging (sort of)... 27. A quality exfoliator... 28. Thinly veiled metrosexuality... 29. Plans for New Year's... 30. Drinking cider in a field in Malahide being chased by a bunch of thugs who wanted my leather jacket. (You can take your partner and have a little waltz if you wish...)

20 Questions for Father Time

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:02:00 +0000

1. So are space aliens really just humans from the future who have figured out time travel?... 2. That's a bitchin' beard but it must be a pain in the ass to maintain. Secrets?... 3. How come scythes are out of fashion?... 4. Rudolph's Shiny New Year is chock full of fateful clues regarding the End of Days, isn't it?... 5. (PS, what was Burl Ives really like?)... 6. Does it piss you off when people set their clocks, like, five minutes ahead so they're always early to things?... 7. Is it your revenge that said people are eventually way earlier than they intend to be because, over time, the pad of time on said clocks mysteriously expands?... 8. Time Bandits or Somewhere in Time?... 9. "Time Has Come Today" or "Time Is On My Side"?... 10. So, wormholes: what's up with that?... 11. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you're not exactly God, per se. You're just Time. But you look a lot like God. Are you, like, brothers or something?... 12. Am I correct in the belief that there are indigenous peoples who have no concept of time?... 13. If so, that suggests you weren't exactly around at the very beginning of things. Or really for a long time after that. Like, maybe you just showed up 10,000 years ago or whatever. Which is not that long ago at all. And even then only in select locations. That's weird, right?... 14. My dog has an abiding hatred of the timer on the stove. Nothing in this world sends her into a more hysterical barking fit. I take this as evidence of her deep-seated spiritual wisdom (i.e., time is a human construct that obfuscates the notion that there is only ever one Now, etc.). Am I crazy?... 15. Can you tell me why, as a general rule, American football coaches are only fair-to-middlin' when it comes to managing the clock late in games?... 16. Uh, Greenwich Mean Time?... 17. To quote Josh McHugh of Wired magazine in his article about lay theoretical physicist Peter Lynds: "What if Zeno's real lesson isn't that movement from point A to point B is impossible (obviously it isn't), but rather that there is no such thing as a discrete slice of time?"... 18. And while we're at it, how exactly does matter move through time and space?... 19. Did you know that Back to the Future was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar?... 20. A passenger train leaves the train depot 2 hours after a freight train left the same depot. The freight train is traveling 20 mph slower than the passenger train. What's the rate of each train, if the passenger train overtakes the freight train in three hours? (PS, show your work.)

Happy, Happy from Ye Olde Beitel-blogge

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:32:00 +0000

We (royal we!) here at Beitel-blog wish you and yours a happy etc. etc. After a quick stop to see some college friends in Charlotte over the weekend, I been a-zoomin' around the snowy Federal City, calling on family (some of the long-lost variety) like nobody's business. No caroling as of yet. Or egg nog. Or even mistletoe. But there was some lubieh bel zeit to make you wanna smack your baby brother. Ditto with the fatteh bel djaje. Also a ton of people-watching at the ritzy high-dollar mall where everybody's, like, prettier than average. In a weird (though, you know, not unpleasant) way. Can't quite figure out the reasoning there: better nutrition? the socioeconomics of courtship and mating in humans? something else entirely? And I'm not talking about all the plastic surgery, which is also prevalent. That's different. Anyhoo. All that's to say: it's Christmastime! And also the Holidays. (Which, I'm noticing, lots of folks these days want to make an issue out of or something -- lots more "Merry Christmas!" out there, etc. -- because of, I don't know, Rush Limbaugh or somebody. Don't know if that's in honor of Jesus, Santa, or just some sort of nostalgia for 1950 or whatever when no other religious holidays used to exist...) So, all that's to say, this is the post where we (royal we!) wish for peace on earth, goodwill toward men (and women and people of all faiths, ethnicities, and all like that, even if they're heathens who don't like toys and trees and tinsel and mall parking lots with 40% more cars than parking spaces and so on). Etc!

Assignment: Recipe for Curing Malaise

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:48:00 +0000

Laura, man, she's not letting up. She thinks we need to be doing assignments. And dammit I agree. Holidays excuses? We don't need your stinking holiday excuses!

So here's an anecdote before I share this month's to-do. Today's the last day of work before the holidays and that means a luncheon. Turkey. Ham. Green beans. Sweet potato casserole. Stuffing. Pies. (Except for there was only one pecan pie and I'm pissed. But we'll let it go.) Etc. Plus you get an ornament for the tree and then at the end they give away all the poinsettias on the tables and it's a mad dash to get you one. (Except I don't because I'm headed out on Ye Olde Holiday Junket tomorrow morning and that's a death sentence to any unwitting poinsettia.) Anyhoo. So it's a big thing where you're sitting at long tables like some Viking feast, except the tables are plastic and so are the forks and knives and the guy next to you's wearing a Santa hat or whatever.

But that's where it gets appropos. Because said guy wearing said Santa Hat was talking about how this X-mas is rife with family drama. I won't go into it here, but suffice it to say it's the part about how families, in general, are basically wacked out. They don't make NO sense whatsoever. And here's the deal: everybody knows the holiday season is just chock full of this stuff. So I ask you: is there a better time for this particular exercise? You can be all pie-in-the-sky and say how you love the holidays and all, but the rest of us, we'll just call it like we see it: it's a stressful time and the malaise can set in, but quick. Therefore, courtesy of Laura in the Berkshires, here is your mission:

Recipe for Curing Malaise

Write a non-medically-related recipe for curing depression and/or malaise. Make a flyer with the recipe on it and hang it at your local health food store (or wherever else that would be good to hang a flyer). Provide proof of the posting of said flyer. (perhaps on the flyer... "share results of this recipe by e-mailing: intheeeyesofeveryone@yahoo.com".... Just an idea...)

God bless us, everyone! [See below for my response to this assignment...]

My Recipe for Curing Malaise

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Ingredients:

1 can Make Stuff™
Something borrowed
Something blue
Something loud (optional)
1 part Inspiration
9 parts Perspiration

Combine ingredients in any one of the following containers:

backyard... birdbath... birdfeeder... blog post... bread pan... canvas... carnegie hall... casserole dish... central park... city hall... clay... disposable camera... golden gate park... guitar... grand canyon... greeting card... homemade present... letterpress... lincoln memorial... linn park... memoir... moscow... notebook... novel... parents' basement... paris... piano... piccolo... poem... potter’s wheel... punk rock band... rome... sears tower... short film... sidewalk... slr... space needle... story... studio... tape recorder... times square... ukulele... water colors... winter wonderland... wishing well... yoga mat... your body... YouTube...

If you don’t have access to one of the containers above (but, I mean, of course you do):

IMPROVISE.

Serves 6.7 billion.

[Send documentary proof of results to intheeyesofeveryone@yahoo.com. Pass it on…]

Update Update: Finish Line

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Put the "finishing" touches on ye olde book project yesterday. I wanted to do it today, actually, because it's the 13th and that number features prominently in the manuscript -- hard to explain the reasoning. You'll just have to wait for it to be published or whatever. But I couldn't wait, really, and I feel like it's done. Knowing how such things work, I know that it goes in phases. This phase is done, but who's to say there won't be other phases? Prolly there will be.

Anyhoo, can't figure out yet what it all means for the blog. I'm headed on a big holiday road trip starting next Saturday. Think I might lug ye olde laptop around and chronicle some of it. So there's a good chance the bloggery will start to pick up again in the next couple of weeks. We shall see...

Alas, Poor Eldrick, I Knew Him Well

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:38:00 +0000

That’s Tiger Woods.

When you strip away the red shirt on Sundays. When you strip away the billion-dollar net worth. When you strip away the 14 majors (and counting) and the hundreds of smaller victories (and counting) on golf courses all over the world. When you strip away the perfect pecs and the perfect mansion and the perfect product placement. When you strip away the sultans and the celebrity pals and the Oval Office photo-ops. When you strip away the hagiography and the iconography and the brand integrity. When you strip away the honest-to-god unmatched athletic heroism.

Even when you strip away the club-tossing tantrums and the plasticized mistresses.

That’s what’s left. A weird little golf geek, from way back.

_____

People forget that there was a time not long ago when golf wasn’t even close to cool. I remember because I was a kid not much older than Tiger, and I was something of a weird little golf geek, too. Back then, golf wasn’t really seen as a sport, it couldn’t really help you make time with the ladies, and you couldn’t really even get rich by playing it professionally. Not in the last quarter of the twentieth century, anyway, when young Eldrick was setting his sights on being the greatest golfer who ever lived. First prize for the Masters in 1975, the year Tiger was born, was $40,000. When he first won the tournament, in 1997, he took home $486,000. In 2009, the winner’s check was $1.35 million. Professional golf has enjoyed an astronomical leap in prize money, corporate sponsorship, and media notoriety over the last decade, and that has everything to do with Tiger Woods. But Tiger Woods was Tiger Woods before there was a Tiger Woods. It is a testament to his insatiable will and ambition that he was able to shape the reality not to what he was, deep down, but to what he wanted to be.

_____

Because the early Tiger Woods was, you know, a little odd. Skinny. Bespectacled. He even stuttered. Here’s a quote from a fairly recent hagiographic documentary I found on YouTube: “I’m still very shy. All my friends will say that too. I am shy… I had a very difficult time as a kid talking to people because I was very shy.”

Throw in the fact that he was obsessed with a goofy sport — even if he played it better than anybody else his age — and you can see the foundations of a psyche being set. And let's not even get into the question of ethnicity and how it, even more than his precocious talent, set him apart from his peers — that's another blog post altogether.

Then, of course, there’s the question of parenting.

Also from the hagiographic documentary: “The killer instinct — either you have it or you don’t. When he was young and I see that he got the killer instinct, I encouraged him. I try to tell him this: When you’re ahead, you’ve got to finish it off.” You might think that’s a quote from his dad, Earl, the well-known quintessential stage parent. It’s not. It’s from his mom, Tida, who also said this:

I walked to every tournament with Tiger. And I always keep the score. Sometime he take too much serious and he perfection…and he get mad at himself. So I asked Tiger when he finished the tournament, I said, “Tiger, whose fault is that? Is it the golf bag’s fault? Is it your ball’s fault? Who hit the ball then?” He said, “Me.” I said, “Whose fault is that?” He said, “Me.” I said, “If it’s you, why you hit your golf bag or you throw your club or you do something like that? It’s not the equipment’s fault. It’s your fault. If you want to hit, you hit on your head. You hit yourself. You the one at fault.”

So he was a bratty and pathologically competitive misfit. And he was scared shitless — not of his Green Beret father but of his five-foot-tall tough-as-nails Thai mother. (What, I wonder, does such a man make of any woman who isn’t his mother? What does he make of the idea of mothers in general? And what happens, I wonder, to such a man when he confronts the fact that he’s married to [and shares a bed with] somebody’s mother? Then there's this $300,000,000* question: what percentage of all skanky sex scandals are rooted in just this sort of fecund psychological soil? 50%? 80%? More? Hmm. Paging Drs. Freud and Jung. Drs. Freud and Jung, you’re needed on the first tee…)

[*That's the lovely Mrs. Woods's original pre-nup payout, for those of you scoring at home. Word is her people are getting with Tiger's people to, uh, renegotiate. From a, uh, position of strength.]

_____

In 1997, I read Charles Pierce’s Esquire article about the burgeoning Tiger phenomenon, and it confirmed what I thought at the time. Tiger was a towel-snapper. He told dirty jokes. He was obsessed with sex. He was an aggressive, sophomoric frat-boy type, maybe as an overcompensation to bury the weird little golf geek inside. Pierce spent a good bit of the article considering the messianic zeal that surrounded Team Tiger at the time, how Tiger himself both toed the line and resisted it. Tiger and his people hated the article — it almost singlehandedly led to his legendary message control — but I bought was Pierce was selling. Little did I know how prescient he really was. A pull quote from the article:

I believe that Tiger will break the gospel before the gospel breaks him. It constricts and binds his entire life. It leaves him no room for ambiguity, no refuge in simple humanity. Earl and Tida can't break up, because the gospel has made their family into a model for the "unfortunate" broken homes that produce so many other athletes. Tiger can't fire his lawyer, because the gospel portrays him as a decent and caring young man. Tiger can't be an angry black man — not even for show, not even for money — because the gospel paints him as a gifted black man rewarded by a caring white society. Tiger can't even tell dirty jokes, because the gospel has no place for them, and they will become events if someone reports them, because, in telling them, he does it:
He blasphemes against himself.
I believe in what I saw at La Costa, a preternaturally mature young man coming into the full bloom of a staggering talent and enjoying very much nearly every damn minute of it. I watched the young women swoon behind the ropes, and I believe that Tiger noticed them, too. There was one woman dressed in a frilly lace top and wearing a pair of tiger-striped stretch pants that fit as though they were decals. I believe that Tiger noticed this preposterous woman, and I do not believe that she was Mary Magdalene come back to life.
"See her?" said one jaded tour observer. "Last year she was following Greg Norman, and there were sharks on her pants."
It is not the world of the gospel, but it is a world I can believe…
He needs so little of what is being put upon him. I believe in the 21-year-old who tells dirty jokes and who plays Nintendo games, and only the fighting games at that. I do not believe in the chosen one, the redeemer of golf and of America and of the rest of the world. I hope he plays golf. I hope he fucks around.
I believe he can blaspheme himself. And I hope to God he does.

So. Yes. Whether the gospel broke him or he broke the gospel, Tiger Woods has gone and blasphemed himself. He has also betrayed and humiliated his wife and, though they don’t know it yet, his children too. In the process, he has damaged — but not crippled — his brand. Charles Pierce might say — and I would definitely agree — that this isn’t the surprise. What's surprising is that we let ourselves (I did too) believe he had transcended the paradoxical core truths of his youth — the geek-turned-towel-snapper; the spoiled misfit kid who was the focus of unrelenting, outsized demands from the moment he popped out of the womb — to become something like a balanced man. Someone extraordinarily ordinary — “boring” by his own description — who had, against all odds, carved out a private bubble of perfect “normalcy” for his New-American Gap family. But Tiger’s not “normal.” Not by a long shot. Never has been. In a weird way, that’s what makes him just like the rest of us.

And that, just as strangely, is strangely reassuring.

Douglas Coupland: Technology Kills Bees. (Or Something.)

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:29:00 +0000

Just finished listening to Doug Coupland, he of Generation X fame, talk on the Nationale Publique Radio about his new book, Generation A. It's about bees. But not really -- because there's no bees in it. That's the point. No bees = Apocalypse. But not really. Just it's that nobody has any souls anymore or something because instead they're talking on the cell phone. And, you know, blogging or whatever. A selection:

Communist Radio Man: You have somehow commingled the death of bees, bees are non-existent in this book, with the death of communication and conversation between people. What inspired that?

Coupland: I remember the first time, I heard about bees having the colony collapse disorder, syndrome, and I just about wanted to vomit. It was such a frightening thing to even consider. And at the time when people began to notice that colonies were leaving home and never coming back, it was postulated that it was cell phones that were causing it, the cell phone towers and the waves. And I thought to myself, oh boy, Doug, you're a human being, you know your species, if people had to choose between bees or cell phones, what would they choose? And everybody would probably say, oh, bees, of course, but then they would be secretly off in the garage or the stairwell making cell phone calls. And that got me confused and worried about communication and what it does to us.

And then this:

CRM: I don't want to negatively impact your Amazon ratings too much, but this was a very, not an uplifting book, I thought.

DC: [Laughs too long and too hard, clearly thinking, You Communist bastard! You just kneecapped me on your communist radio show!!] There is hope at the end of it.

CRM: Yeah, there is.

DC: I'm not a pessimist. I'm not a Pollyanna. I'm kind of realistic about human behavior. I think that in the end we're 50 percent plus one more to the good than we are to the bad. But I do worry about people a lot, actually.

Yeah, that's about the ratio there, Doug. [PS, that bee up there, it's -- he's? she's? -- just sleeping. I swear. Seriously. No bees were harmed in the making of this blog post. Communists neither...]

Movie Still Shot: Response #2

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:24:00 +0000

[Click here to learn what's up with the whole assignments thing in general. Hint: it's hours of fun for the whole family! Or something. So this go round, we got two people to respond. One I didn't even know! Which is not bad. Gotta start somewheres. Thanks to the artistes -- those who responded and those who were just sorta latently inspired (and we all know how painful that can be...). Stay tuned around mid-month for another opportunity to make more stuff!]

Update Update: Self-Helpless

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:20:00 +0000

Thar she blows. Just to prove to you I'm not just blowing off Ye Olde Blogge, that I'm actually doing something that precludes bloggery at anything like my former pace. So. Yeah. Printed her out. 309 manuscript pages. Not done yet. Just reading it through now. Then I have to add, uh, footnotes. (Sorry.*) Pleasantly surprised (so far) about the ratio of Sucks vs. Doesn't Suck. Pages 228-250 are unsalvageable. Completely and totally. But! That's the only 22 pages I can say that about so far. Anyhoo, think I'm on shed-yool. A full draft that feels complete (if not finished) by 12/31/09. In the words of the inimitable Jim Zorn: Hip-hip-HOORAY!

_____

* This is a sort of scattershot apology. To the cosmos? To David Foster Wallace? Dave Eggers? All the other clever meta-writers, past, present, and future? And what am I apologizing for? Er. Um. I think it's kind of like all those judge shows on TV, where two loser people get up there and have somebody who may or may not have been an actual, you know, judge decide whatever cockamamie dispute they got themselves into. There's only one Judge Wapner, only one Doug Llewelyn, only one Rusty the Baliff. In short, only one The People's Court. And it was what it was. It occupied its place in the cultural consciousness and now that's over. But folks go back to that well and back to that well, until you get the equivalent of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, ad infinitum. So, yeah. That's me. Shoving a blurred "original" through the feeder and hoping something at least partly legible presents itself in the output tray.

Movie Still Shot Assignment: Response #1

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:49:00 +0000

"From the movie The Scapegoat."

[Click here to learn how you, too, can do this very assignment. Also about what's up with the whole assignments thing in general. Hint: it's hours of fun for the whole family! Or something.]

Your Mission, If You Choose to Accept It

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:41:00 +0000

Okay, I've got this friend, see. And she's a Creative Compatriot from way back. We worked on this together. Plus we've just got a kind of platonic Cosmic Compatriation thing going. She's good peeps. And about six months ago we were like, you know, how can we go ahead and change the world or whatever? We hashed it out, thought about it. Made notes. Sent a lot of emails and stuff. Talked on the phone. Then we were, like, how about we're just accountable to each other for creative output? Okay. And then let's take it another gigantic step. What if we're accountable to the entire effing world for its creative output? Or, you know, just a very small pocket of the world? What if we take it upon ourselves to ask people to, you know, make things? Things they might not otherwise make on their own. Because it's so much better to be asked, you know?

So we said let's start with each other. That seems reasonable. And we did. And here's what she -- she, by the way, is Laura -- asked me to do:

Assignment: Imagine you are making of a movie of your life. Pinpoint a version of yourself--a past you or a future you--that is not you now. Photograph yourself (y'know how they do photo shoots on movie sets), playing this version of you in your movie, doing something only that version of you would be doing (wearing something only that version would be wearing, perhaps, or eating something you'd only have eaten then, whatever helps distinguish it...or maybe it looks just the same, and that's alright too). One photo, three, five, whatever works.

And I did it. And here is (part of) what I did:

It has something to do with books, words, idears. And reaching for them. Even if it's ugly. Even if I'm ugly. Or whatever.

But here's the main point. I'm now asking YOU. Yes, you. Do that very assignment. Right now. Send it to me. tjbeitelman at g mail dot com. I'll post it on this here blog. (Or not, if you don't want me to. Just do it and send it, regardless.)

The idea is not that it's good or artful or whatever. It's that you did it and that you were accountable to someone else for doing it. That you spent the time and the creative energy to step outside the everyday thing you call yourself and made yourself a Maker.

Do it. I'm effing expecting it of you. You know who you are. You went to college with me. And/or high school. Or grad school. You paid me money. You took a class I taught. You work(ed) with me, you're related to me. You dated me. You hated me. You've shared a meal or a beer or a turn lane with me.

Yes: YOU!

Do it.

Now.

Due date: Monday, November 30.

Quick Question: Chimp Attack

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:06:00 +0000

Um. Okay. This pisses me off, for some reason. (No, not the pic, which is one part adorable and two parts gross. I mean, look how long that guy's bangs are. Eww.)

A) This lady that went on Oprah, the one who had her faced ripped off by a chimpanzee, has known suffering I hope to GOD I never know. It's safe to say that that much any of us can agree on.

B) But, I mean, isn't this yet another sign of the apocalypse? Jay-effing-sis. Seriously? We do this? We put people on the teevee who don't have faces anymore because this unconscionably random and horrible thing happened to them and we're supposed to...do what, exactly?

You know, I think some of this has to do with the fact that I have no teevee anymore. I realize that people with no teevee are bad to be all "Eww--you suck for watching teevee!" and stuff. That's annoying in its own right, for sure.

I just want to know, though: are we supposed to be afraid that chimps will rip our faces off? Because, I mean, I can see where that's where this is headed. And the effing chances of that happening are, like, a kajillion-to-...[fades off into defeated silence...]

Hello? The world is out there waiting. There is stuff happening. I'm sure of it. And don't take my word for it. I'm a recluse. Just, like, go out there and look. I'm sorry that the lady got her face ripped off by a chimp. Really I am. That's so, so awful. But. Like. There are coming up on SEVEN BILLION EFFING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. There's a lot of shit happening, and a good portion of it is not so good. (Also, PS, some of it is so effing amazing you can't even see straight.) Just ask Al Gore.

So I guess all I'm asking is that we, yes, have some compassion for the lady who got her face ripped off, but can we also think about stuff that, you know, we maybe can kinda-sorta do something about?

I don't know. That's a boring post. But it's heartfelt. And that's pretty much what this here TJ Beitelman is all about. I'm boring as hell but I really mean it...

Beitel-blog: Glossary of Frequently Used Terms, Concepts, Curios, and Obscurities

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:24:00 +0000

Settings: Coordinates & their associated monikers.

The Magic City. Birmingham, Alabama. AKA, the Stomping Grounds.

The Heart of Dixie. Alabama, Alabama. AKA, Sweet Home.

The Federal City. Washington, DC. AKA, the Erstwhile Hometown.

Dramatis Personae: Influential spirits/corporeal bodies, on stage & off.

Nate Silver. Founding editor of the American political website http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/. Quite possibly the brainiest person in the whole entire Universe. American Hero #4.

Thomas Friedman. American op-ed columnist and bestselling author primarily concerned with geopolitics, sustainable energy, and making an awful lot of money.

David Brooks. Everybody’s favorite reasonable American conservative commentator whose massive mancrush on the 44th President of the United States is as adorably obvious as it is slightly unnerving.

Malcolm Gladwell. Canadian writer and cultural critic. What Nate Silver is to numbers, Gladwell is to words. Fourth All-time Favorite Foreigner.

Bill Simmons. American sports and popular culture writer. AKA, The Sportsguy. As it relates to literacy, the J.K. Rowling of bored suburban American males aged 18-thirtysomething. American Hero #3.

Glen Hansard. Irish rockstar. Poet. Prophet. All-time Favorite Foreigner.

Benazir Bhutto. Martyred former Pakistani head of state and all around dreamboat. Second All-time Favorite Foreigner.

44. Barack Obama, the forty-fourth American President. AKA, Son of Jor-el. American Hero #2.

My Anonymous Sister. A foil and font of wisdom/puzzlement. I’d say more, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy.

Scout-the-Dog. A faithful and wise companion. Virgil to my Lost Pilgrim. A dilettante of sorts, possessed of artistic, philosophical, and spiritual faculties heretofore unseen in an American canine. American Hero #1.

Pastor Jim. A real-life Baptist preacher in the southeastern quadrant of the so-called Heart of Dixie who also pens a syndicated column for the Anniston Star in Anniston, Alabama. Pastor Jim is unfailingly brave and smart and steadfast in his vision of the erstwhile Nazarene as a progressive revolutionary who rarely came upon an orthodoxy he didn’t want to shake up. American Hero #5.

The Erstwhile Nazarene. Jesus of Nazareth. Who was, you know, an interesting cat as far as I can tell. Fifth All-time Favorite Foreigner. Cautionary Tale #1 (i.e., be very careful who you get to handle the posthumous bios -- or better yet, write a memoir!).

DFW. American fiction writer and essayist David Foster Wallace. Cautionary Tale #2 (i.e., there is such a thing as being too smart).

Thich Nhat Hanh. Smiley little Vietnamese monk. Third All-time Favorite Foreigner.

Thomas Merton. American(ish) poet-monk who loved silence, oatmeal, and warm baths. Cautionary Tale #3 (i.e., Electric Fan + Warm Bath = Untimely Death -- even if you're Thomas Merton).

Terminologies: Unintelligible tics, tags, and coinages.

TJB-POV. Slapdash amateur photo essays shutterbugged by yours truly. Usually with an edifying quote attached. No extra charge.

Shutterbug. n. photographer / v. to take pictures.

The Royal We. When we (!) pretend Ye Olde Blogge is maintained by a multitudinous staff. Fun times!

Travelogues. When we (!) take this puppy on the road.

Cultural Writing. Writing about, you know, culture. Which is to say, Everything.

Thirty Things I Love Right Now. That would be, uh, you know...thirty things I love right now.

NYT. The New York Times.

WaPo. The Washington Post.

TED. Technology, Entertainment, Design. It's this, uh, thing for smart liberal people with a lot of money and a lot of guilt that they're all smart and liberal and rich and, in some cases, famous. So they meet up every year and hang out for a week in Monterrey (or somewheres) and go to lectures and be all smart and liberal and guilty (and well fed) together. Plus they have a website about it, with video! Fun times.

Sunday Links. A good many Sundays -- not all Sundays, but a sizable percentage -- I'll brew me up a coupla cups o' joe and scan the interwebs for cool stuff. Actually it's mostly a scan of the NYT and WaPo, with some TED thrown in for good measure. Sunday Links is your veritable one-stop shop for a little bit of inspiration coupled with some food for thought. Etc.

FYI/411. Extemporaneous links and accompanying gloss.

Quick Question. That's gonna be a quick question that seems maybe rhetorical but I answer it anyhow. Because somebody's got to.

Alabamiana. Paul Bowles had Tangiers; we’ve (!) got the Heart of Dixie. The BBQ’s better and they speak English. It’s a no-brainer.

Update Update. Kind of like an update but better. (Actually it's just an update, no better or worse, but I like how it sounds kind of meta- or whatever. Because a blog entry is like an update to begin with, so calling a blog entry an update is sorta...ah, forget it.)

Beitel-blog: FAQ

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Who are you and why are you here?

I am a child of the Nineteen-Seventies, the Aquarian Age. I spent my unassuming formative years on the outskirts of the self-proclaimed Most Important City in the World, Washington, DC. Mine was the American boyhood: the endless pursuit of sporting contests, real or imagined. I was small but fast, and I could throw a football in a tight spiral. I disliked school. Etc. My father was an old man, a frustrated visual artist with a weak heart and abiding passions: the endless pursuit of sporting contests, real or imagined; Sunday morning political talkshows; atheism; a venomous hatred of Ronald Reagan and the so-called supply-side economics. These he passed on to me—or tried to. Some took root better than others. Even the ones that took have changed over time. My mother was different. She took risks. She loved and lost. Crashed Harleys. Examined the wreckage through the bifocal lenses of the New Age and Pop Psychology. Mash all that together—Art; God; America; Love; the accompanying wreckage, frustration, dreams, and visions associated therewith—and transplant it in the fertile cultural soil of the American South at the dawn of the 21st Century. A Beitelblogger sprouts up.

Are you a superhero sent here to save us from ourselves?

No. I’m an ordinary man of average means trying to make his way in the world.

That’s very nice, but what are your credentials?

Credentials for what?

Anything. Making your way in the world.

I don't know. Isn't that what Google's for?

Is it cool having a name that sounds like a bug? Seems like that could have its pros and cons.

Actually it’s not Beetle-man. It’s pronounced with a long i-sound. Like “bite.”

That’s not nearly as fun. Do you care if we still pronounce it like the bug?

Yes. I do care.

Is blogging your superpower?

Yes. I suppose it is.

Does it bother you to have such a lame superpower? You don’t get webshooters or cool gadgets, no superhuman strength, etc.

With great power comes great responsibility. With no power or responsibility comes total intellectual autonomy. It’s a tradeoff. Plus YouTube’s a cool gadget. In a way.

So it does bother you.

A little bit, yeah. But the world needs bloggers, right?

If you say so, man. If you say so.

Oh-Hi-Oh-Hi

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Still alive. Making nice headway on Ye Olde Booke Projecktte. Also I'm fittin-a do some housecleaning around here. Add a few bells and whistles over there on the righthand portion of things. Updates. Raison d'etre [Plurals of that? Hmm.]. Whatnot. Stay tuned. Until then: carry on. Live long. Prosper. Etc.

30 Things I Love Right Now

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0000

1. Tom Waits (which is not new, of course, but Jay-sis he's the stuff, man: How can I be the him of literary arts? That's the question that I, if I'm worth my salt, will spend the rest o' me days figuring out) -- 2. People I've taught reaching for the brass ring (making demo CDs or accepting awards in swanky Manhattan eateries in front of the literati, getting text messages from agents, but also just sitting at the keyboard and grinding it out [which is still and always the real work], etc) -- 3. Abraham Lincoln (again: Jay-sis) -- 4. Projects: the aforementioned Self-Helpless then this one thing in the general vicinity of Mr. Lincoln, which I'm "reading on" now and which I've decided is my own personal "November Rain": which is an inside joke with myself re: Axl Rose, who once said that if he didn't get that particular song produced the way he wanted it, he'd quit the music bidness -- then, of course, he put it on one of the most self-indulgent and (at best) uneven double albums of all time: Use Your Allusion, which I like as a document of my particular culture but is, you know, uh, uneven -- 5. Eight hours on a Saturday of just plain, flat-out, writing -- 6. Typing standing up (courtesy my friend Ben G., by way of Thomas Wolfe, who was crazy) -- 7. Turmoil in Ashburn, Virginia! (As a dyed-in-the-wool 'Skins fan, I shouldn't admit that I'm fricking captivated by the trainwreck they've got going on now...but I am) -- 8. Jim Zorn (don't care if he's a bad head coach; dude's a good guy, period) -- 9. Shelby Foote -- 10. Weird dreams -- 11. Full Moon B-B-Q -- 12. the Digital Age, the mess that it is -- 13. the White Hot Core, for better or for worse -- 14. John Wilkes Booth -- 15. Boston Corbett -- 16. the Nineteenth Century -- 17. Pancakes -- 18. Butter -- 19. Syrup -- 20. Pie -- 21. Plans -- 22. No plans -- 23. ChapStick -- 24. Elizabeth Gilbert -- 25. Mia Hamm -- 26. Natalie Portman -- 27. Ana Marie Cox -- 28. Mainly a shifting stance toward the idea of 24 - 27 and what that means for who I am and what I am to become -- 29. Hiccups -- 30. Vanquishing the hiccups.

Update Update: Radio Silence

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:47:00 +0000

Hey there, hi there, ho there. It's me. your Humble Beitelblogger. Here's the deal: in the last week, I've traveled, which always necessitates a get-back-into-swing-o-things recalibration, plus!

Here's the other deal: all this bloggery has actually inspired me to push forward with a nonfiction book manuscript I've been rasslin' with for a few years now, on and off. (Working title: Self-Helpless: A Misfit's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Click here for a sampling.) And I'm using the same, I don't know, nonfiction mojo or whatever for that thing as I usually do for this here blog. And there's only been so much of me to go around -- that's been the case in the last week, for sure, but it'll also hold true in the next few months as my goal is to have a completed draft of the MS by New Year's Eve.

So this is me forewarning you that the nonfiction thingy is gonna take precedence in the next bit of time here. I'll hold myself to a one post per week minimum -- how's that sound? I set a goal at the start of the year to have 500 posts in 2009, but I'm at 293 now (which is a lot) and 207 posts in two and a half months seems a little excessive to me. 207 posts is more posts than I made in all of 2008. So, you know, I'm gonna cut myself some slack.

Also! Today I was on a roof in Montevallo, pounding down shingles. Which was sorta cool, as such things go. It was kind of cold by Alabama standards, but otherwise there was the tangible sense of a job done well (well, actually, a job done fair-to-middlin' but nonetheless in earnest...)

So there's that. How are you, btw?

FYI/411: What the Nobel Peace Prize Means in 2009

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:29:00 +0000

This just in: we live in a world where folks who win the Nobel Peace Prize have to first consider how they're gonna spin it before they actually comment on winning the durned thing. As if it's a bad thing to win the Nobel Peace Prize. (Newsflash: in this case, it is, in fact, a bit of a headache for our guy in the Oval.) I guess you could also say we live in a world where the folks who award the Nobel Peace Prize weigh things like nine months of charming, feel-good PR just as heavily as they do, you know, actually waging peace and stuff. Now don't get me wrong: that's not a knock on the Nobel folks or on 44, really. Just an observation that, you know, more than ever, the medium is the message. Or something.

Update Update: Meeshigan

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:46:00 +0000

So, FYI, I'll be out of pocket here starting on Saturday. Headed up to Michigan to see some old friends. Well, you know, they're not old. They're younger than me, actually, by a little bit. But you know what I mean. Anyhoo, don't be sad if posting's sporadic (at best) for a few days. Be back late Tuesday night. Meantime, here's some fun facts you probably didn't know about the Wolverine State!

Quick Question: Anderson Cooper?

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:45:00 +0000

In a new segment on Beitel-Blog, we'll (Royal We!) ask a rhetorical question, kind of spitting into the cyberspatial wind, as it were. It'll be of some great import about how we work and live and breathe on Planet Earth in the contemporary age. Thus! Here's Quick Question #1?

Is Anderson Cooper bad for the Universe? Probably so, right? Or am I missing something?

Technically, yes, that's, like, three questions or whatever. But it is deserving of that level of befuddlement because, on the surface, Anderson Cooper seems to be working toward the Greater Good, right? I saw him do one show on blood diamonds. How that's, you know, bad and whatnot. There's blood involved, for crying out loud!

Then tonight I watched him with the sound down at a Mediterranean fastfood eatery and it seemed that he was talking about young people being shot in Chicago. Again. I'm certainly not for young people being shot in Chi-town (any more than I'm for the whole blood diamond situation, such as it is), and Anderson seems agin it as well. But. Don't you get the sense that -- and maybe you need to watch Anderson Cooper with the sound down to actually get this sense -- it's all some kind of scam? That blood diamonds and kids getting shot in Chicago is incidental to the care and feeding of the CNN/Anderson Cooper [and his ilk] machine?

FYI/411: Really Funny People + Stable Interpersonal Relationships = Oil + Water? Yeah, Pretty Much...

tjbeitelman@gmail.com (TJBeitelman...) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:18:00 +0000

Because I'm too lazy to write anything about a certain talkshow host (folks in England call it a chatshow, which is kind of cool, right?) and his erstwhile gal Friday, here's what media critic Tom Shales has to say about it. Take it away, Tom! (PS, This is what I would've said if I wasn't lazy and/or cared a little more about it.)