Archive for the “life” Category
My appearance on TWIT’s Tech News Today
Thursday, August 5th, 2010I had a great time heading up to Sonoma, breaking through the foggy cloud on the Golden Gate Bridge, heading up up through the sun and brown hills and blue sky to the TWIT cottage in Petaluma where the independent broadcasting revolution really took off. Can’t wait to have my own someday.
It was a blast guesting on Tech News Today with longtime fan and supporter Tom Merritt and kick ass Becky Worley who played fly half on the national women’s rugby team. But yes, they’re real tech journalists who know and research things.
Heather trivia: I played back on my college rugby club where my coach was fellow comic Sabrina Matthews.
future of broadcast tonight TummelVision
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
With Ted Rheingold, Andrew Hazlett, Deb Schultz and Heather Gold
done with a candlestick (H2 zoom mic) in the drawing room (tiny hotelroom)
“The big breakthrough will come…when we are able to handle the truth about people.” Van Jones
Sunday, July 25th, 2010“The big breakthrough will come…when we are able to handle the truth about people.”
-Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod and me, NYTimes op-ed
Van’s entire piece is worth reading about what it feels like to be caught in Washington DC doing politics in real-time right now via the web.
I’ve been exploring the process what it means to be “Private” (aka yourself) in Public for some time now. It’s what solo performer, comedians, performance artists and many performers do. When it’s chosen an you provide the context it can be very powerful. Of course the latest political episode is particular poignant because Shirley Sherrod spoke in public on behaviour of her government employer but apparently of her own choosing and gave plenty of context which made her story about race and class understanding really powerful. And it’s that context which was taken away by Breitbart’s selective editing and the ensuing political playout of anxious reactions.
And I still believe that it is this act that makes the world safe for you as I said during my 20009 SXSW panel Everything I Need to Know About the Web I Learned From Feminism. But the always brilliant and challenging danah boyd noted that it’s a privilege to be yourself in public. And of course people behave differently in different publics.
The “public” of the media and the blogosphere and political DC are all different. Of course our political “public” is theoretically supposed to be the place in which we solve common problems but this kind of judgemental-ness and harsh manipulation which serves political and media business ends isn’t always in the interests of our common good.
This rend is an old media and political one. It’s not new. The fact that the real-time web is speeding it up is a little bit new. What will be new and is necessary is what Van Jones mentions: not the truth about how people are or what they’ve said but when we can handle it.
An individual matures when they can handle difference. It’s called differentiation ( “the ability to separate one’s own intellectual and emotional functioning from that of the family”). An individual heals from depression or trauma when they get to a point when they feel they can handle their feelings. Our body politic and publics seem to me to operate just like a person.  And I think Van is right, the key word is handle.
As an individual you can’t control the world, you can only get better at feeling you can handle it and the change and challenges it presents you with. It’s the same thing for the media and our politics. And sometimes you have to bottom out before you are motivated to change. And it looks like our politics are heading there.
The Net provides a place to attack each other better and I wager it’s connectedness (and our real-life connectedness with each other and our selves) could also help us get better at handling once we decide that’s what we need to work on.
Fun video link: danah boyd’s comments on how gendered behaviour plays out in social networks (thx @allaboutgeorge)
(HT:Â Jerry Michalski)
My Law Project show is next Wed in HOT Fest at NYC’s Dixon Place
Saturday, July 24th, 2010Â
More info and advance tickets at only $10, here.
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Facebook goodness (RSVP to make make my day).
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And yes, my Torts professor really did have Tourettes.
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We don’t need so many new ideas: we already know how to make things better
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
I made this in March 2007 . We know how to make things and a way of life that is generative and sustainable. We need to give our attention to it, which is to say, each other.
The only way out of your inner torment is genuine self-expression
Saturday, July 17th, 2010“When I first saw the thirteen-minute video I was dazzled—the language and rhythms of the piece made it clear Wes and Owen were genuine voices. The possession of a real voice is always a marvel, an almost religious thing. When you have one, it not only means you see things from a slightly different perspective than the billions of other ants on the hill, but that you also necessarily possess such equally rare qualities as integrity and humility. It’s part of the package of being a real voice, ’cause when your voice is real, you can’t screw around. The voice must be served; all other exit doors, marked “expediency†or “solid career move,†are sealed over, and the only way out of your inner torment is genuine self-expression.â€
James L Brooks
((tag: quotes, Owen WIlson, Wes Anderson, the real authority))
Oscar Wilde’s real crime
Thursday, July 15th, 2010“I call upon [each in] the jury as a father to say whether Lord Queenberry was not justified in endeavoring to every man in his power to rescue his son from the baneful domination of the prosecutor [Oscar Wilde] [for]…making his son into a woman.”
-Lord Queensbury’s solicitor in Wilde’s prosecution of him for criminal libel, 1895
((tag: the Law Project, Oscar Wilde, queer, gender, feminist, Victorian England, criminal homosexuality, law))
More on Wilde and the law in the beta of my show The Law Project NYC 7/28/10. BUY TIX.
The first web parody of Howl at Roast the Net SXSW
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
This is the audio of one of the first if not the first events satirizing the web. I put it together at SXSW in 2000.
Details of all the performers are here.
Of special note is Thomas Scoville’s Howl.com (predating the McSweeney’s take on the next go round of web immolation 2.0 style) and Justin Hall, (@jah) the first “blogger” and link list creator reading a list of “Business Opportunities I’ve Missed.”
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((tag: comedy, parody, Alan Ginsburg, web, Internet, dot com, web 2.0, social media))
The first web parody of Howl: Roast the Net 2000
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
This is the audio of one of the first if not the first events satirizing the web. I put it together at SXSW in 2000.
Details of all the performers are here and included
Of special note is Thomas Scoville’s Howl.com (predating the McSweeney’s take on the next go round of web immolation 2.0 style) and Justin Hall, (@jah) the first “blogger” and link list creator reading a list of “Business Opportunities I’ve Missed.”
((tag: comedy, parody, Alan Ginsburg, web, Internet, dot com, web 2.0, social media))
