marcusharwell.net

It’s okay to hate Los Angeles. Really. I nursed a long love-hate relationship with the city for years. It’s dirty, noisy, people are plastic and flaky, mass transit sucks, it takes forever to get anywhere, and did I mention people are flaky?

But lately I’ve been getting into the feeling that I like it anyway. I feel a certain smug satisfaction in being contrary to the majority opinion, sure. But ticking down the list of things I want in my personal living environment, L.A. fits most of them really well. I’m close to the ocean and decent surf, but near enough to mountains that I can camp or snowboard without much trouble. It’s a giant urban nexus, with a continual influx of new people. There’s more to do than time to do it all. The winters are mild, the summers not too long or blistering. Nearly every band I’m interested in will come through if they tour at all. And if I’m to go anywhere with my voice acting, there really isn’t anyplace better.

Screw my elitist sense of superiority, I like it here.

Man, I am digging St. Vincent.

It occurs to me that a lot of friends have left me in the course of my life. They or I have moved away, and there are probably a few more casual friends who have just lost touch. But I think most of the friends with whom I used to be close stopped making an effort to stay in touch when the distance was greater than it afforded a regular face-to-face meet-up.

Friendship is the most important thing in life to me. It takes me a long time to get close to people, in general, and when I do, I don’t let go easily. While friends have occasionally abandoned me, I can’t think of a time I’ve done the same. Though there have been times when the relationship changed on its own, and the loss of closeness was more a “growing apart” than a breakup. I hesitated to use that term before, but losing a friend is quite similar to a couple’s dissolution. So having a primary importance on friends, a small circle I’d call my best friends, leads to a thrilling intimacy, a deep connection that is hard to let go of. It also hurts quite a lot when that connection is lost.

But, for me, the potential for pain is worth the risk. Deep friendship is a wonderful experience, unparalleled in human interaction. It makes for more joyous times, it makes for better sex, it makes small things important. When I was 20, I sacrificed everything to stay with a friend who I thought needed me. When I could give no more and had to finally leave the situation or stay destitute and homeless, I felt broken. It hurt me terribly, and I went to stay with my grandparents to nurse my psychic wounds. My grandfather knew how much pain I was in, and I suppose he wanted to turn me from the path of cynicism I was headed toward. He said, “You gave everything you had, and you got burned. Okay. But it’s better to get burned sometimes than to lose your ability to love and to give.”

Maybe some of us desire so badly to get married because it means we get to hang on to our closest friend indefinitely. The friendship doesn’t have to end just because your buddy got a better job in New York, or his parents moved him to a new school. Maybe that’s why I like the concept of marriage as a partnership. It’s just a commitment to be with your best friend as long as possible, and you get to hang out permanently.

I’ll take that version of marriage over any religion’s.

It’s not just the thunderous crack of his snare, or the nimble kick beats that put a smile on my face and makes me shake my head at his prowess. Bonzo had restraint. This was made all the more plain when he really cut loose, as on Moby Dick, say. But most of the time, he worked his kit like a fine machine, coaxing it, making it sing, underpinning Plant’s wild keening and Page’s maelstrom of guitar, matching Jones’s punch to get the guts of a song as solid as bedrock. And, shining over everything, a periodic cymbal crash like the burst of a geyser, misting down for long seconds as the song moved relentlessly ahead.

Misty Mountain Hop has my favorite drum fill of all time, just after the final chorus before the outro. Nothing fancy, just a roll and eighth note hits. But its simplicity is its power, and it makes me grin as, inevitably, I find myself nodding to the beat.

I tried putting an acronym up there, but it got unwieldy. I have no good term to substitute for media, even though it’s easily confused with news media. No, wait, let me just have a quick look at a thesaurus . . .

Nah, nothing jumps out at me. “Creativity Roundup” is just pretentious and silly, “Art” means visual art to most people. I’ll leave it and hope I think of something else if I do this again.

MUSIC

Okay, I haven’t mentioned it yet, but this year I’m trying to avoid buying any music that falls under the RIAA’s umbrella. I’m getting a subscription to eMusic, and checking RIAA Radar for everything I want, barring those I know are self-published, like Brad Sucks and Jonathan Coulton. That said, I received Spymob’s terrific Sitting Around Keeping Score for my birthday, so it doesn’t count. Another great album was originally RIAA-shackled, but Steadman has offered up Revive for free downloading, so go get a helping of ear candy.

BOOKS

Small Gods, by the irritatingly great Terry Pratchett is my bedside reading. Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is read at work on breaks. There are others barely started that are too numerous to enumerate.

TV

All hail Netflix, because that’s how I’m watching most of my television these days. Battlestar Galactica, and Carnivale top the list. DVR’ed are Lost, Good Eats, Daily Show, Colbert Report, The Soup, Venture Bros., Dresden Files . . . Hm, that’s rather a lot. I suppose I’m still watching most of it from the box, albeit 90% time-shifted.

FILM

Liked Little Miss Sunshine, bored to tears by Capote, underwhelmed by Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (but loved Johnny Depp), and liked Idiocracy, although, and yes I know it’s a cliche, it’s no Office Space.

PODCASTS

I lament the end of The Show with Ze Frank, as well as the Penn Jillette show. The Sound of Young America finally got me to subscribe. Keith and the Girl are still funny, though I can’t keep up with an hour plus nearly every day. And I like Channel Frederator, Cory Doctorow, and Idolator.

That ought to do it for now.

Mom sent a link to an article on a couple of new fiber art exhibitions in New York. The piece’s accompanying photo is an interpretation of the Mona Lisa in spools of thread, done by Devorah Sperber in 2005. What would Leonardo make of it?
At least it’s something he could acknowledge as possible in his time. It’s a work he would have a reference for, technology he’d be familiar with. He wouldn’t have time to check out the new methods of creating art, even photography. He’d be overwhelmed by the web, television, cell phones, computers, cars, planes, iPods, film, and junk food. So much so that he might not have the presence of mind to ponder all the thousands (millions?) of tributes to his own work.

We are overwhelmed by information. Imagine how a man plucked from time, even a genius of Leonardo’s caliber, would cope with it all. Would he go crazy consumer, gorging on Big Macs and downloading more porn than he could possibly watch? Or would he shut down, get curmudgeonly, and rent a Kaczynski-like shack in the Italian countryside and rail against the evils of the technoverse? A good SF story lies in the latter concept, an awful Will Ferrell movie in the former.

Guess who’s been watching Channel Frederator? Another sketch here, for a logo. We’ll see if he gets his own series in the future.

In the beginning, it was just entertainment. It was always available, always ready. All I had to do was pick up the remote, and hit the power button. The endless glow massaged my senses into oblivion, and if I didn’t need to sleep or eat, I’d have stayed there forever. When networks lost their luster, there was digital cable. As soon as I had a handle on whatever was new, it brought me fresh novelty. When the number of channels overwhelmed me, DVRs were available. Faulty guide software kept recording repeated airings of new shows, which I ran anyway, nostalgic for last week. I deleted more than I watched.

New has nothing to do with quality, of course. Was any of it any good? Sure. But with so much in constant supply, it was easier to put Harry Potter on for the twelfth time as background noise while I read novels’ worth of Boing Boing on the web.

Satan did not appear and offer me the bargain of my dark fantasies.

I did not grow fat on Cheetos and peanut m&ms.

But the infinite feed still waits in the corner of the living room, even now urging me to re-mortgage my house, and buy a newer, safer Jetta, not to mention extolling the virtues of video bliss to be, coming in February, coming this summer, coming soon.

What am I not doing in order that I might experience that which is always, and forever, coming soon?

Here’s the second image. Company name changed, of course. More stuf in the new year, so I’ll try to get regular, as I try each year.

Here’s the first of the cards I illustrated for the mortgage company.

See? The snowman is actually a percent sign. Percentage –> mortgage? Not everybody got that, so maybe I should have done something to make the connection obvious.

Ever have one of those days when your doodles take on a secret alter ego of their own? Um, me too.

(Trademark that title, Marvel & DC, I dares ya.)