Monday, June 05, 2006
(This morning, I tried posting this below but blogger choked on its own tail and wouldn't let me!)
The Truth can be all around us everywhere and all the time and we can be aware we're drowning in it while there's not a drop to drink
On PopMatters today is another of Rob Horning's exceptional musings about Marginal Utility on "interns."
At Burning Man 2000, where I labored on the Man's daily newspaper, The Naked Truth, a fella who was dissatisfied with his regular newspaper career talked to me about his experience with interns. He believed his career such as it was had been impacted, and his sentiments are echoed in Horning's piece. That's publishing.
For me, a record company intern hired because he said he loved music was culled from USC where he played marching drum for the college drill corps and took a class at college in the ghetto jazz that had bubbled up from my old historic neighborhood. He overnight expressed a CD to me that I barely had time to listen to before the interview that had been arranged months prior.
The delivery truck had to bounce a long way up the bumpy road into my rural outpost, and the shipping alone cost more than the CD would in the stores. And the CD was a small square shape, and though not the same hue as that well known brand of by-products it was blue, reminding me all the more of a can of Spam because this was THE anthology collection of the many released prior. That's the record biz.
And just day before yesterday, a former movie producer I know complained about all the guys from Harvard and Yale she'd had to deal with while she made her career in Hollywood, how they'd never read a book even at college because they were devoted to their business training at a prestigious school where they got degrees paid for by their fathers, and she was being streamed into making movies from previous television shows. That's the movie biz.
And it's all combined into the same bigger than ever and steadily increasing piles of glop and undeniable mediocre mush.
Well, I can't do anything about it.
All I do is sometimes make up small songs that capture a prolonged historic moment:
Raspberry Reich Forever ... Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you
see E e e
... e
No harm in that, is there? Or I respond emotionally to smaller facets of this moment that have gone on and on for years now --
Like yesterday when I first saw the little ad box on the yahoo mainpage touting a new release, with an action still of a hero culled from "the new Superman Returns movie" and his red white and blue is nestled next to, not quite blurring into as that would be too obvious, but nearly matching the colors of co-sponsor Pepsi, I burst out in spite of myself:
"Supercan ... thrown at the screen ... da da da DA da da DA da da da .... Supercan"
And I was all by myself. But I could sing that because I'd heard the original superman television theme music. Though it barely matters.
And then I met a fellow who played piano and roadied for elite Warner Brothers record stars, who worked off tour in the Hollywood entertainment sector, but for Fox TeeVee News in the sports section and he described his working partner (maybe the one who ran around the football field with a camera strapped to his helmet) as a genius (so that must have meant he regarded himself as a genius, too, mightn't it, because he's there working right along side him?).
I could go on and on and on with my reactions to these on and on and on stories, but really, it's same-o same-o for everyone else, it seems, and has been for awhile now. The trick is to try to keep yourself amused. ¶ 6/05/2006 05:40:00 PM
The Truth can be all around us everywhere and all the time and we can be aware we're drowning in it while there's not a drop to drink
On PopMatters today is another of Rob Horning's exceptional musings about Marginal Utility on "interns."
At Burning Man 2000, where I labored on the Man's daily newspaper, The Naked Truth, a fella who was dissatisfied with his regular newspaper career talked to me about his experience with interns. He believed his career such as it was had been impacted, and his sentiments are echoed in Horning's piece. That's publishing.
For me, a record company intern hired because he said he loved music was culled from USC where he played marching drum for the college drill corps and took a class at college in the ghetto jazz that had bubbled up from my old historic neighborhood. He overnight expressed a CD to me that I barely had time to listen to before the interview that had been arranged months prior.
The delivery truck had to bounce a long way up the bumpy road into my rural outpost, and the shipping alone cost more than the CD would in the stores. And the CD was a small square shape, and though not the same hue as that well known brand of by-products it was blue, reminding me all the more of a can of Spam because this was THE anthology collection of the many released prior. That's the record biz.
And just day before yesterday, a former movie producer I know complained about all the guys from Harvard and Yale she'd had to deal with while she made her career in Hollywood, how they'd never read a book even at college because they were devoted to their business training at a prestigious school where they got degrees paid for by their fathers, and she was being streamed into making movies from previous television shows. That's the movie biz.
And it's all combined into the same bigger than ever and steadily increasing piles of glop and undeniable mediocre mush.
Well, I can't do anything about it.
All I do is sometimes make up small songs that capture a prolonged historic moment:
Raspberry Reich Forever ... Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you
see E e e
... e
No harm in that, is there? Or I respond emotionally to smaller facets of this moment that have gone on and on for years now --
Like yesterday when I first saw the little ad box on the yahoo mainpage touting a new release, with an action still of a hero culled from "the new Superman Returns movie" and his red white and blue is nestled next to, not quite blurring into as that would be too obvious, but nearly matching the colors of co-sponsor Pepsi, I burst out in spite of myself:
"Supercan ... thrown at the screen ... da da da DA da da DA da da da .... Supercan"
And I was all by myself. But I could sing that because I'd heard the original superman television theme music. Though it barely matters.
And then I met a fellow who played piano and roadied for elite Warner Brothers record stars, who worked off tour in the Hollywood entertainment sector, but for Fox TeeVee News in the sports section and he described his working partner (maybe the one who ran around the football field with a camera strapped to his helmet) as a genius (so that must have meant he regarded himself as a genius, too, mightn't it, because he's there working right along side him?).
I could go on and on and on with my reactions to these on and on and on stories, but really, it's same-o same-o for everyone else, it seems, and has been for awhile now. The trick is to try to keep yourself amused. ¶ 6/05/2006 05:40:00 PM
