3 blogs and 2 remixes

For the last two years I've taught a short story by Holly Goddard Jones called "Proof of God." It's a great story to discuss the complexities of a third-person limited narrator that, in a variety of nuanced ways, both encourages and discourages sympathy with the troubled protagonist, who, with the friend he is secretly in love with, winds up raping and killing a young woman in a college dorm room. I read her blog several months ago on a late-night whim--the second blog I had ever read--and her voice struck me as direct, honest and reflective. I just checked her blog out again, and while there is some personal stuff (about making, and then never making again, berry cobblers) and info about dogs I would skim, there is an interesting recent post about gendered expectations in her work and in general. I especially enjoyed her discussion of her strengths and proclivities as a writer, from a craft perspective.

In this post, Jones links (in the way that leaves her page!) to a post by Kevin Wilson, an author I haven't read, but whose story collection, also the name of his blog, sounds familiar: Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. In the post, Wilson discusses a recent study about how underrepresented women are in "various" magazines, which occasioned his realization that during the past year he read four times as much work by men as by women. Wilson earnestly vows to remedy this imbalance. I recall a radio interview years ago of the British author Martin Amis, in which he said that Nabokov declared himself to be "homosexual" in his literary taste, a remark I remember at least partly for Nabokov’s infelicitous word choice, but also because it struck me at the time that I, too, favored male writers. I probably still do, actually, though not at a 4 to 1 clip. Anyway, I think Wilson’s evaluation of his unconscious reading habits, and thoughts on how to adjust them, is worth a look. Incidentally, he has a second blog, about sporting and the outdoors, called The Kitchen Sinkhole.

I listen to a lot of jazz, but since not very many people I know do the same, I'm often not up-to-date on what's going on in the jazz world. I'm aware of most of the clubs in NYC, so I check their websites from time to time, but that's about it. NPR has a jazz blog, cleverly titled A Blog Supreme, an allusion to Coltrane's seminal A Love Supreme. Most of the blog entries themselves are rather brief, but it contains all kinds of links to audio clips and interviews and other articles and events. It looks like a nice resource to browse. Since a high percentage of what goes on in the jazz world goes on in New York City, there's a good chance that many of the various links will have local significance too. On a side note, the jazzmobile org runs cool free concerts throughout the city during the summer. Check 'em out.

Stephen Colbert interviewed the remix maestro himself, Lawrence Lessig. During the interview Colbert invites people to remix the interview (in his satirical shtick). During the interview, Colbert takes out a pen and changes the title of Lessig's book to "Memix," draws a picture of Snoopy, and substitutes his name as the author. Lessig points out that the book is now worth much more. Ironically, the various remixes of this interview are nearly unwatchable to me (though I'd love to get my hands on the the copy of Memix). The remixes buried the original interview on youtube to the point that I had to retrieve it from Colbert's site. Another irony is that when I clicked "embed" on the longest remix I found, youtube said, "Embedding is disabled by request." Hmmm...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lawrence Lessig
www.colbertnation.com
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I've become quite a fan of Sesame Street clips lately. My daughter is a year and half old. She has little patience if there's no song, but I tracked this piece down after she turned in for the night. Here we have a delightful take on Waiting for Godot, retitled Waiting for Elmo, as part of the Monsterpiece Theater series, hosted by Alistair Cookie (played by the Cookie Monster). Like many Sesame Street clips, it would otherwise be a spoof/homage hybrid, but this particular piece is a remix because the creators use actual audio from a performance of the play that Cookie Monster extols as "so modern and so brilliant, it makes absolutely no sense to anybody, including Alistair Cookie." There are several other Monsterpiece Theater episodes, whose collective appeal to children is hard to imagine--especially the ones with the long-build up of the various book titles and framed photographs--but I appreciate them greatly.