tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22483018455399263842024-03-12T20:57:03.990-07:00Steven Barrie-Anthony's stories from the Los Angeles Times<p>
This is an archive of some of my work from the Los Angeles Times. Here's a current
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-barrieanthony/#blogger_bio">
bio</a>. If you care to, check out my blog on
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-barrieanthony/">
The Huffington Post</a>.
</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.comBlogger106125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-87589598789621457232006-09-17T06:56:00.000-07:002007-04-19T06:59:32.097-07:00Divine intervention<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday September 17, 2006</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1">Divine intervention</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* Believers A Journey Into Evangelical <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place> Jeffery L. Sheler Viking: 324 pp., $24.95</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony </p> <p>EVANGELICAL Christians are responsible for President Bush's presidency, but electing a fellow born-again only made them hungrier. Now these 60 million soul-winners are intent on transforming our democracy into a theocracy under Christ. At least, that's a common conspiracy theory among liberals who, still shell-shocked by the emergence of evangelicals from their cloisters of non-engagement, see them as simple-minded people of unified intent.</p> <p>But evangelicals are not a monolith, political or otherwise, as Jeffery L. Sheler illustrates in his compelling and important survey of evangelical <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. (Evangelical, like fundamentalist and born-again, can be defined in different ways.) Most evangelicals share a few characteristics -- the Bible as God's word; salvation via a personal relationship with Jesus; spreading the "good news" -- yet as Sheler converses with evangelical preachers, academics, televangelists, missionaries, teenagers and cowboys, it becomes increasingly difficult to lump them together.</p> <p>Sheler successfully taps into the vast complexity and pluralism of evangelical Christianity -- and it is a sizable achievement. Too many nonbeliever journalistic and scholarly authors reduce religion to the sum of its statistically measurable parts, particularly when addressing evangelicalism, which from the outside can appear simplistic and mechanistic. On the flip side, believer accounts are often awash in theological assumptions and fail to take a critical view. The trick is to balance respect for religious experience with an informed analysis, and Sheler walks the line with aplomb.</p> <p>It undoubtedly helps that he was a longtime religion writer and editor for U.S. News & World Report and a former evangelical himself. The meta-conceit here is Sheler's own spiritual journey -- as a teen he rebelled against his parents' mild religiosity by joining a fundamentalist Baptist church -- and he wonders if this journalistic exploration will rekindle the spiritual fire of his youth.</p> <p>The evangelical story comes alive, its roots in the Protestant Reformation, the optimism and social benevolence of the early 1800s followed at the end of that century by a darker outlook -- premillennialism and the idea of the Rapture -- and, over the past century, by the seesaw of political and cultural engagement and non-engagement. What results is a book that's valuable for anyone who seeks to grasp the nuances of American evangelicalism.</p> <p>To begin untangling the knot of evangelicalism in politics, Sheler visits <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> and meets with Richard Cizik, a vice president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals. Cizik is a force for the life-cycle concerns of the 30 million NAE members -- anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-embryonic-stem-cell research -- but he and like-minded colleagues are also steering the evangelical lobby toward a more diverse range of causes. To the list of what they oppose, append some "pros": pro-humanitarian aid to <st1:place st="on">Africa</st1:place>, pro-religious freedom and, perhaps most vociferously in Cizik's case, pro-environment. The "shadowy forces" of the Christian right in <st1:state st="on">Washington</st1:state> are not engaged in an epic battle only against <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Darwin</st1:place></st1:city>, it seems, but also against global warming. Protecting God's creation is the broad Biblical rationale, and Cizik is busy forging alliances with fellow evangelicals and with unlikely political allies such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.).</p> <p>Even among leading evangelicals, disagreement about how to define and execute the cause is common and sharp. There remain, first of all, those who believe that religion and politics should not marry, but the large turnout of evangelical voters in the last two presidential elections, combined with substantial anecdotal evidence collected by Sheler, indicate that most evangelicals are not headed down the path of noninvolvement.</p> <p>So evangelicals are ready to engage on a multiplicity of issues, and some have shrugged off the anti-intellectualism that handicapped the movement for much of the 20th century. The task at hand, then, is defining a political and social agenda that appeals to the wide diversity within evangelicalism but fails to alienate its traditionalist roots. This gets hairy. When Cizik and other NAE leaders published a statement interweaving typical evangelical concerns with environmental and humanistic ones, radio and TV host James Dobson co-signed -- while the vice president for public policy in Dobson's organization, Focus on the Family, opined to a reporter, "The movement to preserve marriage characterizes evangelicalism. The issue of global warming does not."</p> <p>What is the future of evangelicalism, then? Some of its most prominent stewards are aging, most notably Billy Graham, who at 87 suffers from Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer and is by his own account nearing the end of his life. Who will take Graham's place? The sheer variety of perspectives in Sheler's book suggests a plurality of futures for evangelicalism rather than a singular destiny, and yet there will always be overarching trends.</p> <p>Sheler channels two opposing visions. On the one side is radio host R. Albert Mohler Jr., who lays into the universalism and inclusivism that he sees sneaking into progressive evangelicalism. Opposite Mohler is Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pasadena</st1:place></st1:city>. Mouw agrees that hard truths are essential to evangelicalism, but he allows for some mystery in the mechanics of how Jesus goes about saving souls, how exactly the spiritual phenomena happen. Perhaps ecumenicalism and evangelicalism need not be mutually exclusive.</p> <p>No amount of left-brain analysis can unveil the experience of religion, however, and although Sheler weaves in statistics and expert opinion, he's at his best when traveling with missionaries to build a hut in Guatemala or hanging by the campfire with teenagers at the Christian rock festival Creation 2005 or interviewing a middle-aged couple still dripping from their baptismal dunking at a mega-church in Orange County. These voices are often refreshingly disengaged from divisive "join-us-or-be-damned" rhetoric. Agree or disagree with the theology, it's tough not to recognize some of yourself here, in the desire to call on God personally, to invite celestial order -- or, better yet, grace -- into the messiness of life.</p> <p>And so it is a bit disappointing that Sheler, our shepherd through this complexity, doesn't reveal much about his own spiritual struggle. He embraces evangelicalism as a child, leaves it as an adult, and when, in researching this book, he revisits the church of his youth, he is unmoved. It's fine that there's no dramatic reawakening or rejection of faith, which would probably seem inauthentic anyhow. But didn't his exploration of a vein that spoke so fervently to him at one time evoke some personal journeying? If yes, it would have been valuable to hear about it. If no, well, it doesn't seem right to wish that Sheler had revised his spiritual arc for the book's benefit.</p><p>*</p><p>Steven Barrie-Anthony is a research fellow in religious studies at <st1:placename st="on">Occidental</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">College</st1:placetype> in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> and journalist-in-residence at NewSchools Venture Fund.</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-63727096902495524142006-07-24T06:55:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:00:29.124-07:00Taking more than candy?<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Monday July 24, 2006</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1">Taking more than candy?</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* Jill Greenberg's photo technique has Internet bloggers up in arms.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>STEAL a toddler's lollipop and he's bound to start bawling, was photographer Jill Greenberg's thinking. So that's just what Greenberg did to illicit tears from the 27 or so 2- and 3-year-olds featured in her latest exhibition, "End Times," recently at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles. The children's cherubic faces, illuminated against a blue-white studio backdrop, suggest abject betrayal far beyond the loss of a Tootsie Pop; sometimes tears spill onto naked shoulders and bellies.</p> <p>The work depicts how children would feel if they knew the state of the world they're set to inherit, explained Greenberg, whose own daughter is featured in the show. "Our government is so corrupt, with all the cronyism and corporate lobbyists," she said. "I just feel that our world is being ruined. And the environment -- when I was pregnant, I kept thinking that I'd love to have a tuna fish sandwich, but I couldn't because we've ruined our oceans."</p> <p>"End Times" debuted in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> in April (a portion was previously posted to the gallery site, www.PaulKopeikinGallery.com), and soon thereafter an Internet brouhaha broke out that has continued to this day. Bloggers such as Andrew Peterson called Greenberg's lollipop technique abusive and exploitative, while Greenberg, her husband, Robert Green, and gallery owner Paul Kopeikin defended the work, the process and one another. The conversation, cycling between rational and hyperbolic, says as much about Net communication as about the art in question.</p> <p>"Jill Greenberg is a Sick Woman Who Should Be Arrested and Charged With Child Abuse," Peterson wrote under his pseudonym Thomas Hawk at ThomasHawk.com, a blog that focuses on new media and technology. For Peterson, Greenberg's technique was "evil."</p> <p>"When the Michael Jackson trial was going on, people kept saying, 'What kind of parents would let their child spend the night alone in a room with Michael Jackson?' " wrote Peterson, an investment advisor from <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">San Francisco</st1:city></st1:place>. "It seemed absurd. And it seems absurd that any parent who loved their child would purposefully take their children to Greenberg's studio to then be tormented to the point of emotional outrage."</p> <p>Green responded with an e-mail that Peterson appended to his blog: "I'm married to the artist in question. With that said, some facts: Jill did not 'abuse' the children.... The parents were there monitoring the whole time. This is the exact technique used in ads and movies and TV." Cordial at first, but later, on his own blog, AnotherGreenWorld .blogspot.com, Green wrote of Peterson: "He has no morals, no ethics, nothing that would make me recognize him as a fellow human being."</p> <p>*</p> <p><b style="">'Much ado'<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>THE mixture of debate and invective spilled into the mass media -- the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, Slate -- sidestepping the art world almost entirely. Few photographers or art experts, when questioned, seemed to take umbrage with Greenberg's technique.</p> <p>"It's much ado about nothing," said CalArts professor of art and photography Jo Ann Callis. "Jill was trying to create a metaphor between a child crying, looking desperate, and the times. It's a perfectly logical thing to do. She should just have lied," Callis said with a laugh, "about how she did it."</p> <p>But while the art academies slumbered, bloggers worked overtime, debating far and wide across the informal syndicate that is the blogosphere. Internet users without their own sites took up residency in the comments section of Peterson's and Green's blogs, often under the shroud of anonymity; some even found websites that Greenberg and Green had made for their children -- so that family could keep track of the kids' photos -- and wrote nasty comments in the guest books.</p> <p>The anonymity of their opponents enraged Greenberg and Green. "What this has unleashed, this inchoate rage that's prevalent in the Internet atmosphere," Green said, "has a lot to do with anonymity and power, the ability to express sentiments online that you cannot express to someone's face." So Green did some Internet sleuthing using the "whois" database (accessible at Whois.net) to look up the registrant of the domain Thomas Hawk.com, thus unveiling Peterson as the man behind the pseudonym.</p> <p>Green promptly posted Peterson's true identity on the relevant blogs, and then he took it further, noting that Peterson was writing blog posts during the workday and calling Peterson's employer to complain. Peterson reported the development on his blog, and super-blog BoingBoing.net picked up the battle cry. "Greenberg and her husband have threatened to sue [Peterson] for libel and called his employer," the post read. Peterson's "response is a good one: He argues that if they disagree with him, they should disagree with him, not attempt to silence him."</p> <p>The day Boing Boing ran its post, the Kopeikin Gallery website rocketed from its usual 1,000 hits to 14,000. Kopeikin was receiving enough angry e-mail to consider hiring extra security. At one point, Kopeikin posted a comment on Peterson's blog: "I sincerely thank you for the attention you have brought to the exhibition and my gallery," he wrote. "I have made several sales to people who you have introduced to the work and who understand and appreciate it."</p> <p>In fact, that assertion was false, Kopeikin admits, but then Kopeikin views Peterson as a fount of untruth, from his pseudonym onward. "I was just sending him information to see if he'd print it," Kopeikin said. "Jill and I were like, 'Let's tell him we're thanking him, because we're selling tons of prints.' ... Which wasn't true.... He totally took it."</p> <p>American Photo magazine dubbed "End Times" the most controversial photo exhibition of the year in its July-August issue, and the two-page spread received a greater response than any other article printed in the last five years, said David Schonauer, editor in chief. Most respondents have been shocked and angry. An online forum on the magazine's website dedicated to discussing Greenberg was shut down because of abusive posts, Schonauer said.</p> <p>The media coverage has focused almost exclusively on reiterating the he-said, she-said blog battle, and few outside sources have been brought in to comment -- such as Ilene Knebel of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, whose 3-year-old daughter, Elise, was among the children Greenberg featured.</p> <p>"We got a call through Ford Models," Knebel recalled. "I believe the agent said something like, 'The children are going to be crying.' I said, 'She does that all day every day, so whatever.'.... To me, this is the same as if we go to a photographer who says your daughter's going to be in a swimsuit or a ballet outfit. Your daughter's going to be laughing. Your daughter's going to be crying."</p> <p>Elise stood shirtless on a wooden box, her mom just feet away, Greenberg behind her lens. An assistant handed Elise a lollipop; Knebel took the candy away. The wailing and the shoot lasted 20 or 30 seconds, Knebel said. Elise "sniffled a little" afterward, but then she got multiple lollipops in trade for the stolen one. These days Elise doesn't remember it happening.</p> <p>Peterson, who has four young children himself, bristles at the notion that parents or Greenberg can predict the long-term effects of the lollipop technique. "These very public photos will get put up in other contexts, will continue to torment these children," he said. "We don't know what kind of an impact it's going to have. You need to err on the side of caution." (Greenberg said that the children who attended the show's opening were delighted to see themselves on the gallery walls.)</p> <p>Greenberg is primarily a commercial photographer and has done work for magazines, including Time, Rolling Stone and The Times' Sunday magazine, West. Her first exhibit at the Kopeikin Gallery was 2004's "Monkey Portraits," in which monkeys posed similarly to the toddlers in "End Times," only dry-eyed. The controversy hasn't hurt her commercial career, Greenberg says; in fact, at one point Macy's inquired into buying the entire "End Times" series for use in its advertising. The 42-inch-by-50-inch prints, in editions of 10, start at $4,500 apiece.</p> <p>Career aside, accusations of child abuse deeply offend Greenberg, who lives in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place>. "I have a loving family, I come from a normal family, I've never done anything awful in my life," she said. "Pictures of crying children are upsetting, powerful. There is something instinctual that makes you want to protect them.... But people are taking the pictures literally, as if they are evidence of awful things happening to these kids."</p> <p>It's true that things are not entirely as they seem; the images were enhanced during postproduction, Greenberg said, to make the children appear more upset than they really were. She used Photoshop to darken furrows in brows, shine tears until they glistened.</p> <p>In the end, "This is more a story about blogging than about photography," said Stephen White, formerly a gallery owner and currently a private dealer and collector in <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Studio</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">City</st1:placetype></st1:place>. "It's about a generation that's so caught up in itself that everything it says it thinks is significant, even though it's not saying anything at all.</p> <p>"People in the photography world, anyone who is sophisticated about photography, knows that this is not offensive," he said. "Taking away a lollipop is not child abuse. There's no irreparable harm. I'm just not sure there's any significance to the photographs, either."</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-61909401725041563632006-06-21T06:53:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:00:51.098-07:00Cellphones: Just a leash for children?<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Wednesday June 21, 2006</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="headline1">Cellphones: Just a leash for children?</span></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>Fifteen-year-old Jordan Murphy loves to play hoops, so after school he and his brother Joshua, 13, jump on bikes and troll their neighborhood in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Shawnee</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Kan.</st1:state></st1:place>, for pickup games. Often they pedal through a hectic blind intersection to get to courts at the civic center, and then toss their bags on the ground and start dribbling. They don't hear their cellphone ring-ring-ringing, don't allay the fears of their single mother who's telling herself that all's fine, probably, but if only they would just answer the phone....</p> <p>Then in April mom Jacqui Fahrnow bought Jordan and Joshua a cellphone from Sprint Nextel that doubles as a tracking beacon. Now if the kids haven't arrived at the civic center or other designated courts by 3:15 in the afternoon, Fahrnow's phone jingles and up pops a color map of their location, replete with street addresses. If they're at or near the courts or at Aunt Valerie's house or the grocery store, Fahrnow doesn't worry; if they're far afield, she knows where to find them. Peace of mind for just $9.99 a month.</p> <p>"It's like having another set of eyes," says Fahrnow, who owns an office management business. "This will be even more useful when they get older and start driving. With four wheels under you, a lot of things can happen."</p> <p><b style="">Keeping tabs on the kids<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>Sprint Family Locator, which debuted in April, is just one of many newly released cellular services that use global positioning satellites -- originally developed for military use -- to allow family members to keep tabs on each other via their phones. Disney Mobile, which opened for business earlier this month, includes child tracking among its basic features. Verizon Wireless' Chaperone service lets parents enclose up to 10 areas in virtual fencing, and to receive a text message if their children breach a boundary.</p> <p>This technology isn't cutting-edge, exactly; similar location based services have been marketed with limited success over the last few years, notably Nextel's Mobile Locator designed for companies to track employees. But cellular carriers are in a tizzy to fulfill a Federal Communications Commission mandate that 911 operators be able to pin down phone locations -- and it stands to reason that they recoup their investment by offering that same capability to subscribers. Carriers make beaucoup bucks, parents like Fahrnow rest easier; everybody wins.</p> <p>Everybody except the people being tracked, say teens and privacy advocates who peg this trend to an unhealthy desire for control. "What do we get out of this?" says Hunter Ligon, a 16-year-old from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Oklahoma City</st1:place></st1:city> who has discussed the technology with his mom but as of yet remains untracked. "We go to school every day, we work our butts off, and there are such strict limitations on our life already. We need to expand our boundaries, to become more independent, and yet now we have one more thing to pull us down."</p> <p>Communication technology has become synonymous with youth, says Hunter, who carries a T-Mobile Sidekick II so that he can text and instant message and occasionally even call his friends. Kids these days rarely galavant around the neighborhood until dinnertime, as their parents did; boogeymen on the evening news have driven them indoors, and community has in large part gone virtual. Which makes it particularly galling that technology would become a turncoat, an informer. "Most parents can barely turn on a computer," Hunter says. "They're always asking us for help."</p> <p>As is the case with <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> mom Leila Pellant, who couldn't figure out how to set up Sprint Family Locator -- and asked her son Spencer, 14, to activate it for her. Spencer obliged, and thenceforth the service "keeps Spencer on point all the time, knowing that I can find out where he is," says Pellant, a real estate agent. "As far as privacy goes, my children don't deserve total privacy."</p> <p>The argument that it's OK to track kids because it'll keep a few of them from being kidnapped or making mischief is specious reasoning, says 17-year-old Katt Hemman, from <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Hutchinson</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Kan.</st1:state></st1:place> It's the same argument that the Bush administration makes in defending warrantless wiretapping, she says. A marginal increase in safety isn't worth forfeiting our civil rights, and adults who balk at being spied on and then turn around and spy themselves are hypocrites.</p> <p>Hers is a generation always looking queasily over its shoulder, says Katt, whose parents haven't (yet) signed up for cell tracking but do monitor her Internet activity. "I don't trust as many people as I want to," she says. "I have moments where I don't trust my own family because I feel as if they're reading everything I write on the Internet."</p> <p>Of course, kids will fight back, much as they do when schools attempt to block access to MySpace and other "noneducational" websites. One teen guesses that encasing his phone in aluminum foil might divert the signal; another especially crafty teen reveals his plan, should mom and dad ever begin phone-surveillance: 1) Tell parents he's going to a friend's house. 2) Go to friend's house. 3) Tie his cellphone to their dog, so it moves around. 4) Leave to live an unobserved existence.</p> <p><b style="">Privacy versus safety<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>But what if your kid is too lazy or obedient to fight back? Or if you track her without her knowledge -- and catch her in a lie? How do you explain that you've been watching her through a satellite in the sky? (The Sprint Family Locator notifies kids via a text message when they've been located; other companies, such as Disney Mobile, do not.)</p> <p>"It's an invasion of privacy in a huge way," says Charles Sophy, a psychiatrist and the medical director for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. "You're sending them a message that you don't believe in them, don't trust them to make solid decisions."</p> <p>Already Sophy has encountered a number of sticky situations surrounding cellphone tracking, "especially with these high-end Hollywood people in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city>," he says. Tracking without permission often leads to painful family meetings, with everyone -- not least of all the parents -- apologizing for their misdeeds. Still, Sophy says that in a world of natural and man-made disasters, tracking can "absolutely" be of benefit if prefaced by honest family conversation. Even teens find the safety net appealing if they ignore the Big Brother (or Big Mother) aspect, and some admit that tracking might coax their most out-of-control friends back from the brink.</p> <p>Of course if kids and the rest of us continue using technology for ever greater self-revelation, the debate over surveillance may be rendered moot. Soon MySpace will be accessible on cellphones, and experts say that mobile social networking, instant messaging and the rest are poised to merge with tracking technology to provide not just virtual access to all friends at all times, but physical access as well. "It will be hard for science fiction to outpace what's going to happen," says Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Oxford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>. "You'll walk into a cafe in <st1:city st="on">Paris</st1:city>, and ask your cellphone if any of your buddies are in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city>. Or you can ask it if any of the friends of your 10 best buddies are in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city>."</p> <p>Alan Phillips is an ardent proponent of this revolution. In 2002 he caught his 14-year-old son skateboarding when he was supposed to be at a friend's house, and Phillips promptly founded uLocate Communications, in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Massachusetts</st1:place></st1:state>, to develop location-based services for mobile phones. These days the Phillips family can check each others' locations via a cellphone click (or on the Web) and can even view the rate of speed at which family members are traveling.</p> <p>"My son plays soccer," Phillips says. "We set up 'geofences' so that when he's coming back from games on the bus, every time his phone comes within five miles of the school, we are alerted. So that we know when to pick him up."</p> <p>Very convenient; but even Phillips admits that sometimes the ever-present eye is a little much. "I have intentionally turned off my phone to suppress data from my wife," he says. "If I'm leaving late and had told her that I'd meet her somewhere...."</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-26391076087917289552006-05-31T06:52:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:01:31.468-07:00Through hell, high water or Web filters<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Wednesday May 31, 2006</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1">Through hell, high water or Web filters</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* As Congress mulls action, some schools already limit MySpace access. But it hasn't kept teens off the site.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>Excuse me, Congress? You know that bill you're thinking about passing, the one that would prevent kids from accessing social networking websites like MySpace.com at schools and libraries? Kris Sosa, a junior at <st1:placename st="on">West</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Ottawa</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">High School</st1:placetype> in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Holland</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Mich.</st1:state></st1:place>, has something to tell you:</p> <p>"Anything that youth attaches themselves to, the public gets scared about," he says. "And with this, just like with anything else -- underage drinking, for example -- youth is going to find a way to get what they want. It's inevitable. Even if this law passes, even if it goes into effect, there's going to be a way around it. It's just a matter of time."</p> <p>Sosa is sure that he'll beat such a prohibition because he and many of his teenage compatriots already have. Like a growing number of schools and libraries nationwide, <st1:place st="on">West Ottawa</st1:place> blocks students from social networking websites. But instead of glumly relinquishing access, Sosa and "a majority of the other kids at my school," he says, use technological workarounds to access whatever they darn well feel like. When administrators block one route, kids find another.</p> <p>Which suggests that the mess of politicians, teachers, parents and other adults engaged in a feisty debate over the bill recently proposed by Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), the Deleting Online Predators Act, are perhaps asking the wrong question. It's not whether lawmakers should bar kids from accessing social networking websites but whether they can.</p> <p>"There's no question that kids have become savvier," says Michele Shannon, senior director of product management for San Diego-based WebSense, a maker of Web filtering software. "If anyone's going to figure out a way through, it's them. We try and stay a step ahead."</p> <p>In this arms race, Team Youth has an important adult ally. Bennett Haselton, a Seattle-based computer programmer who works on contract with the <st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> government to fight Internet censorship in places like <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Saudi Arabia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, spends his free time doing the same thing on American turf. Through his website, Peacefire.org, Haselton provides free access to tools that Saudi Arabian citizens and American students alike use to tunnel through their respective barriers. (Authoritarian governments and school districts often employ the very same filtering software.)</p> <p>"Historically, teenagers have been much closer to adults than children," Haselton says. "It's only in recent decades that the teenage years became classified as an extension of childhood rather than part of adulthood. Just because kids stay in school longer, it doesn't mean that the natural age of human maturity and responsibility has gone up."</p> <p>The technology behind blocking software, and the software to circumvent it, have remained mostly the same since Haselton began this crusade about 10 years ago, when he was a freshman at <st1:placename st="on">Vanderbilt</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype> in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Nashville</st1:city></st1:place>. Peacefire was then, as now, a "students rights organization." Its motto: "You'll understand when you're younger." The challenge has been less inventing new technology, Haselton says, than disguising the same technology over and over so that the enemy can't recognize it.</p> <p>Filtering software generally resides on a school or library's central server computer, a gateway to the unfiltered Internet beyond. All the connected computers direct their Internet traffic through this server so that if a giggling adolescent in a computer lab types in Playboy.com, the server intercepts that request and sends back a blank page instead of a naked woman.</p> <p>Problem is, the Internet is a vast landscape of billions of sites, expanding by the millisecond. It's obvious that a school would block Playboy, a known entity, but what of the unknown? Despite receiving daily or even hourly updates from filtering-software vendors, it's simply impossible for software programs to censor the Web in its entirety. So Haselton and teenagers everywhere set up and abandon porthole after porthole under cover of anonymity.</p> <p>Let's say that instead of typing in Playboy.com, that same giggling adolescent typed in Birthdaycakebatter.com. Chances are that the server would grant his request because this new address isn't on the list of blocked sites. Unbeknown to the server, however, Birthdaycakebatter.com is one of a never-ending stream of "circumventor" websites created by Haselton and others, each one located at another random, innocuous-sounding Web address (for instance, Magneticpizza.com and Seahorseolympics.com).</p> <p>Now all the kid has to do is scroll down on the new page to where it says, "Enter the URL below that you want to access," type in Playboy.com, and voila: His request is rerouted not through the central server but through an outside server willing to retrieve whatever he so desires. Freedom ... for a few hours or, if he's lucky, a few days, until the filtering software bans the portal, called a "proxy server," and it's time for Haselton to think up another silly address, which he e-mails to a cast of thousands and word-of-mouth does the rest.</p> <p>There's intrigue and subterfuge. "We have Yahoo and Hotmail and other free e-mail accounts that we use to subscribe to [Peacefire's] mailing lists under crazy names, so we can be informed about these proxies," says Drew Yates, a network administrator at <st1:placename st="on">South</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Fulton</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">High School</st1:placetype> in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">South Fulton</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Tenn.</st1:state></st1:place> Yates also relies on teachers to identify and report renegade students.</p> <p>"The right of free speech is alive and well, and that's fine," Yates says. "But in an educational system, Haselton's position on free speech does not exist. It wouldn't bother me a bit if they passed a law that banned stuff like MySpace." (It certainly wouldn't change much at South Fulton High, which already blocks social networking.)</p> <p>The collateral damage from this arms race, says Benjamin Edelman, a Harvard doctoral student and an expert on Internet filtering, is that as filtering companies fight to hide all forbidden content and students fight to reveal it, the Web gets censored in an increasingly broad, slipshod way. Google's image search, for instance, has long been known as an easy way to access images residing on banned websites; but if it gets blocked, "then when a kid wants a picture of Nelson Mandela, they can't get it," he says.</p> <p>Or, rather, they can get it -- but they find themselves using forbidden techniques to access allowed material. Cameron Stolz, 17, of <st1:city st="on">Griffin</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Ga.</st1:state>, recently tried to research the <st1:place st="on">Bay of Pigs</st1:place>, was blocked and employed circumventor software to complete the class assignment. Stolz, by the way, is in favor of moderate filtering: "I'm not an anarchist kid who thinks that we should be able to do whatever we want," he says. "We shouldn't just be able to roam the Internet."</p> <p>Joel Key, a Spanish and art teacher at <st1:state st="on">New York</st1:state>'s <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Bronx</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">High School</st1:placetype></st1:place> for the Visual Arts, is likewise in favor of filtering but says that currently it just doesn't work. Students on an Internet scavenger hunt for collage images found that all basketball photos were blocked, Key says, "but for some reason they can get porn, and they can get Internet television sites, such as Youtube.com. We've tried to get those blocked many times." MySpace and the wildly popular social networking site Sconex.com are blocked, but kids find ways to access them anyway, Key says.</p> <p>OK, so it's clear that kids don't take Internet censorship sitting down, and a congressional ban might well make them more belligerent. But let's say that a social networking ban does work, on some level, for some kids. What then?</p> <p>It'll strike a blow to the ne'er-do-wells "who are crawling through the profiles that our children are creating at school while their parents are not around," says Fitzpatrick, the congressman who wrote the bill, which is currently in the Energy and Commerce Committee and has 21 cosponsors.</p> <p>No, what it will do is create a "participation gap," says Henry Jenkins, co-director of the comparative media studies program at MIT. Kids who are wealthy enough to have a computer and an Internet connection at home will access social networking from there, while whoever must use school and library computers "will be locked out of participating in the defining experiences of this emerging generation."</p> <p>Everyone just hold on a second, please, asks Brad Novreske, a high school freshman in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Cedar Rapids</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Iowa</st1:state></st1:place>. This war is based on a misunderstanding: Social networking isn't evil, he says, "It's just friends. Growing up, you have to have friends and social ties. Otherwise you feel alone."</p> <p>Until his school district, and Congress, come around to his way of seeing it, Novreske will continue to access social networking illicitly. But he'd rather see kids and adults MySpacing together in peace. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-2826694451237062722006-05-20T06:50:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:01:53.934-07:00Early `Code' risers<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Saturday May 20, 2006</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1">Early `Code' risers</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* Does 6 a.m. seem a little extreme for taking in a screening of the `The Da Vinci Code'? Not to this crowd.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>USUALLY, when obsessed fans line up for an early-bird premiere, it's the cape-and-tights and light-saber crowd. But these were book people -- and grown-ups at that -- who showed up at 6 a.m. Friday for the first screening of "The Da Vinci Code" at the Hollywood ArcLight. Fanaticism was not required.</p> <p>Or was it?</p> <p>Janan Jem, a 26-year-old advertising student, traveled all the way from London to catch this showing -- yep, you read that right -- and dubbed the big-screen version of the bestselling novel by Dan Brown a raging success. The overseas trip, she said, bobbing her head giddily, was well worthwhile.</p> <p>Early indications from multiple sources outside Sony, the film's distributor, suggested that midday attendance figures were strong but unlikely to set any records, despite book sales that have surpassed 60 million copies. Steve Elzer, senior vice president of media relations for Sony Pictures Entertainment, said business was "very encouraging," adding that "matinees are strong."</p> <p>Opening-day tracking also suggested the movie might hold more appeal for younger adults than earlier research indicated.</p> <p>The ArcLight crowd seemed to bear that out. Consider Corey Jovan, a 26-year-old <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> video game tester who normally doesn't rise before noon. Period. "I'm lazy," he says. But there would be no waiting until after work to see this film, so Jovan and his fiancee joined some 800 bleary-eyed Angelenos who packed the lobby before sunrise, collecting free T-shirts emblazoned with the movie's motto -- "So dark the con of man" -- and choosing between popcorn and soda or the breakfast foods (juice, pastries) made available at the concession stand.</p> <p><st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Lauren</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Ocean</st1:placename></st1:place> looked quizzically at the offerings. "Orange juice just doesn't seem like legitimate movie fare," said the film producer from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>. "I guess I have to get a soda." Ocean had stayed up late Thursday night, racing through the last few pages of Dan Brown's international bestseller, the basis for the film. The book was a Mother's Day gift, but even so, Ocean left her kids and husband slumbering and arrived solo.</p> <p>"It was my turn," Ocean said, grinning. "My husband got to see the midnight showing of '<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mission</st1:place></st1:city>: Impossible III.' "</p> <p>That critics generally disliked the movie didn't seem to faze a soul.</p> <p>"I'm my own person," Jovan said. "We've come to see the best movie of the year." Nearby in the lobby, Marlene Picard, a writer from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Santa Monica</st1:place></st1:city>, chimed in: "The critics have had their say, now we're going to have our day."</p> <p>The ArcLight wasn't alone in betting that Angelenos would trade sleep for an early showing; the AMC in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Santa Monica</st1:place></st1:city> rolled back its curtains at a brazen 5:15 a.m. In <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>, at least, the bet was a good one: The ArcLight's Cinerama Dome filled to capacity by the time a Gilbert Gottfried sound-alike asked the audience to refrain from text-messaging during the film, gestured grandly toward the screen, paused for applause, and the lights dimmed.</p> <p>For such a passionate bunch, the next three hours were surprisingly sedate. Little discernible laughter, hissing, cheering, crying. The applause before the film was far more spirited than after, and few people stuck around to hobnob or catch breakfast, touted as "The Last Breakfast," in the theater's cafe.</p> <p>"It was pretty good," said Sandarsh Kumar, 26, rushing to his job as a biomedical engineer at USC. "At times, though, they compressed the timeline. When I watched the movie I was left hanging. When I read the book, I was never left hanging."</p> <p>There was some criticism from the crowd. Donnie White took issue with Tom Hanks' physique. "In the book, his character was in better shape," said White, a personal trainer visiting Southern California from <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>. "He's a swimmer, and that's a lot of cardio. His lats would've been very defined."</p> <p>And then just 15 minutes after credits rolled, the theater and the lobby were empty, save for employees and a few journalists trying belatedly to document the hype. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-11640220114561696062006-05-10T06:49:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:02:19.244-07:00Take a number, pal<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Wednesday May 10, 2006</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1">Take a number, pal</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* Web etiquette goes wacky when ranking friends becomes an exercise in lifeboat ethics.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>LET'S begin with an exercise. First, name the eight most important people in your life -- friends, family, rock stars. These are your Top 8. Now rank those people in order of importance. Finally, send a copy of this list to everybody you know, including people who didn't make the cut. Be careful not to hurt the wrong feelings, or you may end up getting bumped from other people's Top 8s.</p> <p>Go ahead and bite your nails. Realize the magnitude of these decisions.</p> <p>OK, so, you're either lost in terrifying flashbacks of middle-school cruelty -- or you've already made such a list, already showed it to all your friends, and since you didn't make all their Top 8s, you've already deleted the offenders from your list (and prayed they noticed). In other words, you're already on MySpace.com or one of the many other social networking websites such as Facebook.com or Friendster.com, doing your best to navigate this complex new world of friends-of-friends-of-friends-etc. with as few social casualties as possible.</p> <p>If the Internet was once ungoverned by etiquette, those days are gone; MySpace and its siblings, by many accounts the future of the Net, are rife with discussions of good manners versus unforgivable faux pas. There isn't an aristocratic class, just yet, but you can see the lines forming in the sand, renegades and bad boys posting bulletins pell-mell, uploading risque pictures, collecting "friends" as if it's all some big popularity contest -- while mannered netizens look on disapprovingly. Screw up and you just might get dumped, online and off.</p> <p>J.D. Funari is hoping that clarity prevents offense. A week after logging onto MySpace, the 24-year-old TV editor from <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Studio</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">City</st1:placetype></st1:place> posted a disclaimer above his Top 8: "Since this 'preferred' listing of friends can quickly become unnecessarily political, I'd like to briefly explain my sorting technique," he wrote.</p> <p>"The first spot will always be my brother (for obvious reasons) and the second spot will always be my friend Katie (for reasons obvious to Katie and I). The third and fourth spots are reserved for music and movies of interest. Five and six are wild-cards which may be related to how well I know the person and/or if I'm dating them (opposite sex only) and/or if they've paid me for inclusion. The final two spots are, to be perfectly honest, the two most attractive current female photos from my list of friends."</p> <p>The posted explanation sent ripples through Funari's 97 interconnected friends. "It's very flattering," says Katie Rose Houck, 23, an actress in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> who occupies slot No. 8, reserved for attractive females. "We've only known each other for a couple of months, and we have a flirting banter going on between the two of us. This reaffirms that he knows that I'm pretty, that I know that he thinks I'm pretty, and all of his extended friends know that he thinks I'm pretty."</p> <p>Houck admits laughingly that she has browsed through Funari's other friends to see whom she bested. Then again, she is No. 8 on the list, while No. 7 went to Amy Vo, a 25-year-old receptionist from <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Maryland</st1:place></st1:state>, who happens to be wearing a bikini in her MySpace picture. "I have an outfit on, so of course Amy is going to get the first spot," says Houck. "Naked wins over pretty."</p> <p>Vo has never actually met Funari in person; the two connected through Funari's No. 1 friend, Katie. It went like this: Funari clicked on Katie's picture and was whisked to her profile, where he spied Vo in spot No. 3. He clicked over to Vo's profile and sent her a message. "He said, 'Oh, you're so pretty,' " remembers Vo. "And I said, 'Oh, you're so nice.' " Then Funari requested Vo as a friend, she accepted, and soon she rose to spot No. 7 on his page. (Alas, Funari, you're absent from Vo's Top 8.) These, the newfangled dances we dance.</p> <p>At first it seems as if Funari's strategy might just work. Play the honesty card, let people know where they stand, watch them celebrate or nurse their wounds and then move on. But life threatens to throw a monkey wrench into his beautiful absolutes. "The first spot will always be my brother," his rules explain. Problem is, Funari has two younger siblings who will soon be logging on themselves. What then? And what if he gets serious with a girl -- will she be happy at sixth place?</p> <p>"If he was my boyfriend, and he didn't put me in the top 5, I would be a little offended," Houck says. "And if he kept his best girlfriend at No. 2 -- and she's pretty! -- I would be a little offended. Maybe that's why he's still single."</p> <p>Well, he is single. It says so right on his page: "Status: Single." MySpace profile pages are customizable in many ways; you can add pictures, music, write blogs, list your interests or skip all this entirely. You can allow friends to jot comments directly onto your page, viewable by all, or you can retain absolute control. But try as you might, you can't avoid classifying your relationship status, which isn't always easy to do.</p> <p>After the Top 8, relationship status causes the most ire in the MySpace world.</p> <p>"It gets highly dramatic," says Danah Boyd, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley who is studying the culture of social networking. "Sometimes one person thinks they're single while the other person thinks they're dating.... You can't have your status be, 'I'm in a relationship that I'm not entirely thrilled with, I'm waiting for something better, come talk to me.' "</p> <p>What results is an inordinate amount of "swingers," an allowed choice that's sufficiently deviant for teens, ironic for adults (minus actual swingers) and has quickly become socially acceptable within the MySpace mainstream. Still, there remain many conventionalists who choose "single" or "in a relationship," and watch their physical and digital worlds intertwine.</p> <p>Five months ago, 27-year-old James was "in a relationship," according to his MySpace page. Then James, a <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> public relations executive who declined to provide his last name, broke up with his girlfriend and switched to "single."</p> <p>In the real world and online, James and his ex remained friends, so when James started dating another woman, he didn't want to rub it in his ex's face. He delicately broached the MySpace topic with the new girlfriend, and they agreed not to switch their designation to "in a relationship" just yet. So: single online, together off.</p> <p>It was four months of limbo before James and his girlfriend decided the time was right. "I was at her Easter family dinner," James remembers, "and that pretty much constitutes a relationship."</p> <p>They went online, made the change and all's well -- unless things go sour. "There's a tension that never existed before," James says.</p> <p>In this case, James and his girlfriend were making the safe assumption that their exes engage in "MySpace stalking," the practice of secretly keeping tabs on friends, lovers, co-workers, celebrities or complete strangers by reading their profiles.</p> <p>If stalking in the real world implies some dangerous psychological imbalance, on MySpace it's essentially the norm, although etiquette suggests that you keep your stalking to yourself. Mention so-and-so's dating status too loudly in the wrong context or without the required I'm-just-kidding jocularity and you risk being judged a stalker in the regular sense.</p> <p>Where there's stalking, there's reverse stalking. After all, wouldn't you want to know who's watching you? To watch them watch you without them knowing they're being watched? Um, of course you would. At first. And then you realize that if you watch whoever's watching you, then you'll also be unveiled to everybody you're stalking, which puts a real damper on the initial voyeuristic enterprise.</p> <p>Some social networking sites, such as Friendster, allow users to view who has visited their profiles; MySpace does not. Which simply means that MySpacers are more desperate than ever to unearth a reverse-stalking technique and then hide it from everyone they know.</p> <p>In February, James hit gold. He came across a website, Whospyme.com, which gave users the ability to watch the watchers. Unlike the dozens of hoaxes circulating throughout MySpace, this one actually worked. "It showed who visited my page and the exact time they visited. One girl, an old friend, checked it almost every hour." James was omniscient for nearly two weeks until MySpace blocked Whospyme, returning him to darkness.</p> <p>Tom Anderson, president of MySpace and its most beloved member -- he regularly receives marriage proposals among the thousands of comments on his profile -- explains: "We can't allow somebody to create a service like that, which reveals who's looking at your page. That's a violation of privacy." If MySpace were to unveil such a feature, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> says, each user would get to make an individual decision about whether to be traceable. Yet another decision fraught with online and offline complications.</p> <p>There are plenty of other decisions to make in the meantime:</p> <p>Number of friends: Too many, you're deemed a "MySpace whore," too few, a loser. (Caveat: If you're in a band, or you're a middle-school kid who lied about your age to get on MySpace and are competing with friends to see who's most popular, "too many" is a good thing.)</p> <p>Profile picture: Posing in your skivvies opens you to scorn, but, depending on your friends, it may also increase the probability that you'll score some Top 8 spots. "I can't stand it when people put pictures up, trying to look all sexy," says Lori Carter, 25, a <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Salt Lake City</st1:place></st1:city> office manager. More specifically, Carter can't stand it when her husband accepts such people as his friends.</p> <p>Grammar: "I am not a grammar Nazi," says Michael Block, 23, an <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> search engine marketer who uses MySpace and Tagworld.com. "But I do feel terrible for words like 'probably' and 'someone' that are constantly bastardized into 'prolly' and sumone.' " Etiquette here is often divided by age, with teens writing in slang that evokes fury in their twentysomething elders. Block has been unable to decipher this message, for instance, which he received from a 15-year-old stranger from <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:state>: "y u want people 2 look at u 4. u thinken that u looken sweet 4 da females."</p> <p>Bulletins: These are messages that users post to virtual bulletin boards. Perhaps the most common social networking pet peeve are posted versions of the chain letters of yore, the "if you don't send this on you'll never fall in love again and then you'll die a horrible death" variety.</p> <p>If you've steered clear of social networking so far, enjoy that simple existence while you're able. Sooner or later friends will ask -- then demand -- that you migrate toward multidimensionality. There are more than 76 million people on MySpace (about 270,000 join daily), and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> wants to expand the MySpace experience until the entire Net rests within it. "Anything you do on the Internet, I want you to be able to do on MySpace," he says. "That's the goal and ambition. Almost all the things you can do online can be enhanced by the social structure of MySpace."</p> <p>Which suggests that the Top 8 will become only more central to the human experience, more dizzyingly complex.</p> <p>"It's the Seinfeldian Speed Dial Dilemma of our generation," says <st1:personname st="on">Sarah Ciston</st1:personname>, 22, a page designer at the Long Beach Press-Telegram. "I love it. But I think you should also get a Bottom 8, or a Bottom 20. A hall of shame of sorts." </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-89973086352975974232006-05-09T06:46:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:02:42.767-07:00Digital memories overwrite real thing<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Tuesday May 09, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">Digital memories overwrite real thing</span><br /><span class="deck1">* Camera phones let anyone capture the moment -- but they risk missing the experience.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>None of the 250,000 or so protesters who crowded around <st1:street st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Los Angeles</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">City Hall</st1:placetype></st1:street> on May 1 have license to forget that day. Nor to remember it incorrectly. The Nation of Islam SUV rolled by just after the mariachi band, not the other way around. Don't believe me? Review the tapes, archived on more than a dozen public photo and video sharing websites like Flickr.com and Buzznet.com. Opinion is irrelevant. We've got the facts.</p> <p>It's tough to find a cellphone these days that doesn't double as a camera, and at the demonstration, cellphones joined countless digital cameras, video cameras and even conventional film cameras to document history in progress.</p> <p>Truth is, practically anything beautiful or terrible or just slightly unusual calls for the interposition of a lens these days -- stop along PCH to watch the sun set over the Pacific and you're bound to encounter passersby holding up their phones, watching the digital version. At the recent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, hundreds of people packed into UCLA's Royce Hall to see Arianna Huffington interview Gore Vidal, and I watched a man watch the entire hourlong conversation on his 1-inch-square cellphone screen, snapping pictures along the way.</p> <p>Photographing the moment is only the beginning. Next stop is dissemination, in which that experience, that memory, is transferred, at the push of a button to other cellphones, to computers, to any of the several dozen media sharing websites, joining more than 122 million photos on Flickr alone and millions of videos on Youtube.com. And then it spreads further still, filtering through some of the 57 million MySpace.com pages and onward through Facebook.com and Friendster.com, and the rest of the social networking universe.</p> <p>A memory for one is a memory for all; the fallibility of memory is no more. Arriving home, sweaty and satisfied after an exhilarating immigration protest -- or cool and quiet after watching an auburn sunset across the sea -- talking about your day becomes a different exercise than it once was. Remembrances are no longer ambiguous collages of past and present experiences but rather the well-defined digital records sitting in front of us. We don't close our eyes to invoke memory; we open them wide to decipher the proof, the truth. It's clarity of one sort, though maybe blindness of another.</p> <p>A stranger across the globe who knows me only as my Internet moniker can stare through my camera-eyes and interpret my experience, perhaps more accurately than I can. Perhaps she notices a smaller mariachi band just before the Nation of Islam SUV, at the border of the frame. Perhaps that sunset was more red than auburn. Perhaps Gore Vidal was rising to stand, at the moment of applause, when I remember him lowering himself toward his wheelchair.</p> <p>Whatever I remember, the image overwrites it. Computers may catch viruses, may be prone to crashing, but they don't have creative imaginations that color their memories.</p> <p>We perceive images and videos as "ground truth," says Elizabeth Loftus, distinguished professor of psychology at UC Irvine and an expert on memory. Studies have shown that when people are presented with doctored family photographs, they often adjust their memories, even invent false memories, rather than questioning visual evidence.</p> <p>Didn't Aunt Betty die in '93? Well, I guess not -- here she is at the reunion in '95. I remember now! She played piano with Cousin Lou!</p> <p>Technology marches giddily forward, and it's a safe bet that cameras and other recording gadgets will proliferate further, that distribution channels will become more immediate and accessible, and that in sum, collective memory will interact with individual memory in ways we cannot yet comprehend. In one sense, this web of interconnection is the awe-inspiring stuff of Buddhist "inter-being"; it conjures a thousand mystics saying in their various tongues, "we are all one." It threatens to disappear the fractious boundaries of place, time, race, sex, self even.</p> <p>But it also can be seen as rendering the moment something other than the moment, transporting us into the past and the future -- anywhere but the present -- and transferring our experience to everybody except the self.</p> <p>It's difficult to imagine Robert Frost, say, stopping in the woods on a snowy evening, giving his harness bells a shake with one hand while holding a camera phone with the other, and still taking in enough of the experience to conjure it later in verse. Another poet could write from Frost's photo record, although whose woods those were he might not know.</p> <p>Enlightenment or alienation. Or something in between.</p> <p>"The whole idea of personal experience, if it were simply left to the person alone, would be pretty meaningless and superficial," says Ken Gergen, professor of psychology at <st1:placename st="on">Swarthmore</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">College</st1:placetype> in <st1:postalcode st="on"><st1:street st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:street></st1:postalcode> and author of "The Saturated Self." "It's only because we're engaged in relationships that it becomes something. We never do see things through our own eyes; we always see them through the eyes of others. In some sense, it was always the others' sunset, the others' City Hall confrontation."</p> <p>Yes, humans long to share, and we begin to conceptualize memory before the moment ends. We fantasize about future conversations, rehearsing them in the car and the shower until they finally come to pass. Yet the culture of immediate connectivity is something else -- not good, not bad, but with possibilities for both.</p> <p>"We're a culture in transition," Gergen says. "We thrive on the notion of authenticity, individuality, interiority. At the same time, there's something isolating about that as well. The techno-civilization is moving us into connectivity very rapidly. There is something to be glad about, which has to do with breaking down these isolations, bringing us together. My sense is there's reason to be optimistic. But only if we start thinking, considering, debating about it."</p> <p>The danger, I guess, is that we'll watch everything change through our viewfinders and then get so carried away with sharing that we forget to reflect.</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-11721035246701607782006-04-18T06:45:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:03:05.659-07:00If Big Brother had a blog, he would be its webmaster<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Tuesday April 18, 2006</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="headline1">If Big Brother had a blog, he would be its webmaster</span></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>Lightning struck near the tiny valley town of <st1:city st="on">Livingston</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mont.</st1:place></st1:state>, the other day, frying a radio tower and, for a few long hours, plunging some of its 7,000 residents into an Internet-less world. "I wasn't above having thoughts of God's wrath," says Walter Kirn, one of those residents, a novelist and critic who lives by himself on 500 acres of hay and roving herds of antelope. The laptop sitting on his kitchen table rendered useless, Kirn tried typing into his cellphone, then drove through town, trolling for anybody with an unbroken connection. A segment of his newest novel was set to be published in a matter of hours, and it wasn't even written.</p> <p>Kirn, given his pastoral surroundings, might seem an unlikely candidate to be writing an "online novel." But the author of "Thumbsucker" and "<st1:city st="on">Mission</st1:city> to <st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region>" is hardly a transcendentalist loner, either -- he's well-connected in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> publishing circles and isn't averse to attention, having written, for instance, an article for GQ about his experimentation with Ritalin. When the editor of the online magazine Slate approached Kirn last December and asked if he'd be willing to write a novel, posting chapters to Slate as he went, Kirn says he warily agreed.</p> <p>"I was both enthusiastic and doubtful," he says. "The old school part of me was brainwashed into thinking that writing on the Internet was a form of slumming or self-cheapening, kind of like publishing your own book at Kinko's." On the other hand, the editor assigned to the project was Meghan O'Rourke, formerly a fiction editor at the New Yorker and hardly an illiterate Web nerd.</p> <p>The result is "The Unbinding," a serialized Web novel and a rumination on technology today, its first segment posted at Slate.com in March with postings continuing twice weekly through June. Kirn depicts technology as a looming Orwellian force, spying on the citizenry, turning our insides outward; yet Big Brother is not an ominous other but we, the people: We've internalized the totalitarian apparatus, and thus technology becomes at once our attempt at salvation, connection, love, meaning, and the vehicle of our own oppression. The loss of privacy makes for comedy, at first, and then for a sense of foreboding as trampled boundaries refuse to reappear.</p> <p>In short: Everybody's spying on everybody (including themselves). At the center of it all is Kent, who works for the omnipresent corporation AidSat, which monitors millions of sensor-transmitters worn by its subscribers. Lost? Having chest pains? Can't remember your brother-in-law's boss' birthday? Press a button on your AidSat enabled bracelet or earring and you'll reach an operator like Kent who tracks you with satellites, monitors your vital signs and provides whatever help or information you so desire. Sometimes, operators track you unbidden.</p> <p>Meet <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Sabrina</st1:city>, <st1:country-region st="on">Kent</st1:country-region></st1:place>'s comely, single neighbor -- and an AidSat subscriber. <st1:country-region st="on">Kent</st1:country-region>'s interested, <st1:country-region st="on">Kent</st1:country-region> has access and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region> can't resist doing a little background research. But Sabrina notices being noticed and calls upon her own connections with their own computers. We watch Sabrina watch <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region> watch Sabrina; we, the readers, are implicated in the watching. The story unfolds through "found documents," such as <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s blog-like online diary. "I decided this month to write it all down," <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region> explains. "Everything, my morning and my nights, and to file it for perpetual safekeeping in the great electronic library of lives. I'm an interesting person, I've come to see. We all are. We don't deserve to disappear."</p> <p>Kirn watches, also, through the Internet, sitting up nights at the kitchen table at his farm, wearing boxers, an owl hooting in the blackness beyond. He watches the world, watches us. He follows the political furor surrounding the National Security Agency wiretapping controversy, the parental furor arising from teens baring their souls (and other things) on social networking sites and video repositories such as Youtube.com. News of our world filters into the world of "The Unbinding," which filters back into our world -- say, this article -- which filters back into "The Unbinding." The first mainstream media review of this novel-in-progress, in the Boston Globe, appeared as a link in a following chapter. An AidSat operator tracked it down; apparently, their computer systems index multiple worlds.</p> <p>Want to appear in a Walter Kirn novel? Now's your chance. Quick, do something crazy, and do it publicly. The clock's ticking; "The Unbinding" won't be evolving forever, it's set to be published as a book -- to be bound -- after its run at Slate. Kirn is considering selling the print rights on EBay.</p> <p>"One of the essential lessons this book has already taught me," Kirn says, "is that the greatest threat to our privacy may not be the intrusions of Big Brother, but our own instinct for self-exploitation. People put out more stuff about themselves on Myspace.com than the government could ever hope to collect about them. The fear that we're being watched, these days, is evoking a kind of exhibitionism that may be as dangerous as being spied on."</p> <p>Kirn's isn't the first online novel; the Internet boomed with hundreds of amateur "hypertext novels" almost as early as the birth of the medium, filled with links giving way to links, a postmodern pastiche of traces, although most of these read more like code than literature. Stephen King began publishing his online novel, "The Plant," in 2000, about a supernatural vine that infiltrated a paperback publishing house, offering up limitless wealth in exchange for human flesh.</p> <p>"What made 'The Plant' such a hilarious Internet natural," King wrote in 2001, "was that publishers and media people seemed to see exactly this sort of monster whenever they contemplate the Net in general and e-lit in particular: a troublesome strangler fig that just might have a bit o' the old profit in it. If, that is, it's handled with gloves." King netted $600,000 from readers who paid on the honor system, then ceased publication after six chapters.</p> <p>Dave Eggers serialized a political novel for the online magazine Salon in 2004. "I wrote that really as a chance to react quicker, in some oblique way, to what was actually going on in the political world," Eggers says. "There were references to things going on in the real <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Illinois</st1:place></st1:state> senate campaign, the one Barak Obama won, and references to the Bush family. But most of the time, reality outpaced my ability to create fiction from it. I wish there was a bigger audience for this kind of thing, I think it could be very exciting."</p> <p>The audience for "The Unbinding" hovers between 3,000 and 9,000, depending on the day, says O'Rourke, the editor. "Even if we had 700 readers," she says, "I was going to be very happy." O'Rourke is pursuing other writers -- well-known writers, although she declines to say names -- to publish their novels online in Slate. "If you're going to write a novel, the deal we're offering is very good," she says. "It's not an insignificant amount of money for just working on the novel. It's a model that writers have had for a long time, since going back to Dickens, being paid to serialize a novel." O'Rourke says that online readers are also likely to buy the physical book.</p> <p>Of course what separates "The Unbinding" from previous serializations is its intertwining of form and content, its evolving investigation into the membrane between writer and reader, these umbilical cords, these flickering screens. Kirn has little idea where the story will take us, whether Kent and the others will embrace technology until all walls crumble and they find nirvana in the freedom of self-revelation -- or whether they'll turn away, if they're able, seek solace in ye olde flesh-to-flesh.</p> <p>He receives guidance, constantly, from the nethers of the Net. "It's creating a little bit of a paranoid atmosphere," he says. "Just as my characters in the book are making friends with people who are actually spying on them, just as my characters are spying on people they're pretending to befriend, I get e-mails from readers, and you have no idea who's writing and why. I have lots of uncertain karma," Kirn says, and chuckles -- he's known for publishing harsh literary criticism. "At first, getting e-mail delights you: 'Oh, they're reading, someone's thinking about it!' But every once in a while I look at an e-mail and say, 'Well, here's someone determined to push me off track.' "</p> <p>So, lightning struck, the Internet died and Kirn went searching for access. He found it, at a coffee shop downtown, plugged in, began to write; as he did, the watchers showed their human faces. "Literally, while I was writing, the town eccentrics were looking over my shoulder, asking about what I was writing, listening to my explanations, offering their two cents," Kirn says. "It had gotten around town pretty quickly that what Walter was doing inside his house could be viewed easily on a computer. I thought, 'This is more interactivity than I can stand!' But it was interesting too."</p> <p>*</p> <p>(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">Eyeing and spying love</p> <p>A sample from "The Unbinding," an online novel by Walter Kirn published in installments at Slate.com:</p> <p>Big news from Sabrina: I have another stalker. His name is Kent Selkirk, he lives across the courtyard, he drives an older black Ford mini-pickup with bumper stickers proclaiming that he's a Democrat, a paintballer, and an organ donor, and on Wednesday I got a weird anonymous note quoting a diary the guy's been writing about some tricky scheme of his to go through my file at AidSat, where he works (you know: "AidSat -- Always at your Side"), and use the info inside it to seduce me.</p> <p>The funny thing, and the thing that makes me think the letter-writer must know both of us, is that I've been eyeing this <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region> since he moved in here. He seems like my type: a fouled-up jock with brains who goes around wearing flip flops and pocket T-shirts and a ridiculous pair of thick dark shades that wrap around his head like plastic bat wings and emphasize the squareness of his huge skull. He reminds me of one of my crushes at U Mass, that guy who supposedly date-raped all the swimmers but wriggled off because of his top tennis ranking, except that he's less obviously psychotic in terms of his walk and posture and general aura. If he passes a dog, he pets it just like I would, and I've seen him hold doors for old ladies in his unit and carry a pregnant Hispanic woman's grocery bags. He also happens to be about half-gorgeous, with one of those partly caved-in boxers' noses sprinkled across the bridge with sandy freckles.</p> <p>Which all adds up to a favor, little sister. Is there somebody clever in your tech department, some nerd you can maybe bat your lovely lashes at, who can use this guy's name to find out what he's been up to before he spotted yours truly and fell in love? It's pure high school, I realize, and totally unfair. But it might be good for [grins]. Maybe that isn't how computers work, though. I wouldn't know. I'm just a facialist. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-2130321161694058662006-04-05T06:44:00.000-07:002007-04-19T07:03:28.047-07:00A judge of characters<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Wednesday April 05, 2006</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1">A judge of characters</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* `Who Wants to Be a Superhero' lures those seeking to impress comic book legend Stan Lee and emerge as the next great crime fighter.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>It's a dark and stormy Tuesday morning in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>, just the kind that draws villains -- purse snatchers, hobgoblins -- from their shadowy lairs to terrorize the gentle citizenry of this vast metropolis. Rain splatters the cavernous soundstages at Sunset Gower Studios and streams off the rooftops, turning sidewalks into rivers.</p> <p>On the street, a green van sputters and turns but won't start. And slowly, quietly, masked and caped men and women arrive. And though they're armed -- the usual stuff: guns, knives, musical instruments, bananas -- it's easy to see from their smiling and handshaking that these are friendly heroes. Angelenos are safe -- for now.</p> <p>Anonymous crime fighting is so passe. It's high time, these superheroes say, that they got theirs. Fame, that is. Money. Sex appeal. So when comic book god Stan Lee announced last June that he would hold tryouts for his new reality show, "Who Wants to Be a Superhero," set to air in July on the Sci-Fi Channel, word spread almost instantaneously through Internet message boards, comic book conventions and clubs. All told, about 300 superheroes would brave the rain and muck to demonstrate their powers to Lee.</p> <p>Big Pappa arrives nearly two hours before auditions are set to begin and stands outside, unbothered by the rain. He looks a little like a pimp, with a giant gold "BP" on a chain around his neck, a garish "$$$" ring and a black cape. "My walking stick moves so fast that it can stop bullets," Pappa explains in a gentle voice. "It can also smash steel, and it emits a laser beam from the bottom. My pocket watch freezes everyone in time, but I can only use it once a day. Most important, I have the power to enchant the ladies." By day, Pappa is Bob Carey, 37, and he teaches test prep courses at Kaplan.</p> <p>"Two years ago, my wife started calling me Big Pappa," he says. "And I started calling her Baby. I constructed all this to irritate her."</p> <p>Only 11 contestants will be chosen next week to inhabit a secret lair and compete on various missions and shenanigans, with Lee as judge. But the final prize is enough to make any superhero quiver in her tights: an original comic book about the winner, by none other than Lee himself, and a movie version for the Sci-Fi Channel.</p> <p>"I'll probably be the next Donald Trump," Lee says. "Instead of saying, 'You're fired,' I'll have to come up with another line. Maybe, 'Take off your costume!' I'll be the ultimate judge. It's a great responsibility, and I take it very seriously. It's a great weight on my shoulders and I just hope that I will be up to this test. Because the eyes of the world will be upon us."</p> <p>Eventually, the team of producers with clipboards takes pity on the masked masses -- rain is not good for costume makeup -- and invite them into a bare soundstage where lights flicker appropriately. When a superhero whose power is craziness screams gibberish and claims that his straitjacket can fly, a shirtless man in a corner changing into spandex tenses and says, "I think somebody let in a villain!" But that's not the case, and all remains good and right.</p> <p>Dominic Pace, a.k.a. the Server, draws his power from professional ire. In his secret identity, he's a 30-year-old waiter at the Geisha House, see, but by night, "I extort money from the cheap tippers and bad customers," he explains. He carries a bulletproof silver serving tray, which doubles as a shield and a projectile, and he uses a pepper mill -- which he wears at his hip in a holster -- to "spray pepper like shotgun pellets." He carries a calculator in an arm holster so that "when I catch the bad guys, I can tally up how much they owe."</p> <p>Nearby, Ice Bitch struts her stuff. She's in a skimpy outfit of see-through fishnet stockings, boots, a black bustier and platinum wig. "I've been Ice Bitch for at least 20 years," says the 42-year-old freelance art director. "It's all about the eyes, they freeze the bad guys. I am a defender of the environment. I go after litterers, poachers. I teach those who are teachable, and punish those who are not teachable."</p> <p>Most of these heroes are giddy about the chance to meet Lee, who arrives at 11:30 a.m. to shake each and every hand. Conventional powers such as flight and invisibility are OK, says Lee, but "we're not going to ask anybody to fly or leap tall buildings with a single bound. We can't test that. But what we can test is this: Every superhero has certain qualities and characteristics on the inside, characteristics like courage, character, honesty, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion, resourcefulness. We can test that stuff."</p> <p>However, few superheroes seem interested in showing off their sensitivity and intelligence. One man dressed conventionally in a brown suit and spats uses a motorized pump to blow up a giant balloon and tries to climb into it without the air escaping -- to a resounding "pop!" "Sometimes that happens," Buster Balloon explains afterward. "But the world needs a vaudeville crime fighter."</p> <p>POW! BAM! A woman in white and a man in black begin a vigorous hula-hoop duel in the middle of the room. An accordion player in whiteface wearing a fedora belts out a ballad at the top of his lungs: "Stan Lee, Stan Lee, he'll make a superhero out of me...." Monkey Woman polishes one of nearly a dozen bananas strapped to her garter belt and fur underwear.</p> <p>And Man-Fey, probably the oddest of the admittedly odd bunch, turns and dances until the flesh of his behind, barely covered by spandex, shivers. Superheroes gather around to stare and offer queasy congratulations.</p> <p>"I stand for the freedom to party down when you want to without the man telling you not to," says Damen Evans, a 24-year-old art student from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Laguna Beach</st1:place></st1:city>. "This costume started out as a bad joke," he says. "But now I've been doing this for five years." </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-23574908598521275452006-04-02T06:43:00.000-07:002008-04-18T18:26:17.620-07:00The last mystery of Vidal<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday April 02, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">Style & Culture</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">THE WRITER'S LIFE</span><br /><span class="headline1">The last mystery of Vidal</span><br /><span class="deck1">* A writer steeped in history and remembrance makes his stand in a city of reinvention.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>YOU hear Gore Vidal long before you see him, the steady tap-swish-tap of foot and cane on an upstairs landing in his sunny Spanish Colonial house in the Hollywood Hills; then there's the slow whir of a mechanical chairlift carrying the novelist-essayist-playwright-screenwriter downward. Vidal is 80, with an artificial knee, and in 2003 he left his Mediterranean aerie in southern <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region> overlooking the <st1:placename st="on">Amalfi</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Coast</st1:placetype> -- not far from where the sirens sang, and Odysseus sailed on -- and returned to his sometime home in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> to live out the rest of his life.</p> <p>The 1-kilometer trek from the house in Ravello to the piazza became difficult, Vidal explains once he's settled into a floral print armchair in a drawing room that brims with books yet to be shelved, paintings wrapped in brown paper leaning against naked walls. "I could walk it," he says, "but it takes me half a day. Also, I have diabetes. Also, the Cedars-Sinai years are here."</p> <p>Vidal pauses and gazes out across the high-ceilinged room to where a tall window reveals sunlit greenery atop an adobe wall. It's a comfortable silence; Vidal is in no hurry to recollect, but he's in no hurry to finish recollecting either. He has been drawing deeply upon his memory in the last few years as he puts the finishing touches on his second memoir, "Point to Point Navigation," due out in November from Doubleday, the sequel to 1995's "Palimpsest."</p> <p>"I always knew that we were going to need a house for the Cedars-Sinai years," he says. "Which is indeed what happened. But we always rented it out, until the last few years, when Howard got sick. And here I am." Vidal rarely mentions Howard Auster, his companion for half a century, when in the company of the press. It was Auster's cancer, as well as Vidal's bad knee, that spurred the move from Ravello. And then Auster died less than a year after they arrived.</p> <p>These explanations make sense; but there remains something odd about Vidal's choosing Los Angeles as his final home, his patrician demeanor and deep sense of history clashing with the never-ending reinvention that pop culture requires of this city. Why did he and Auster not return to Rome, say, where for two decades they lived in a grand penthouse atop a palace in the Historic Center, and where the hospitals are just as good as they are here? Vidal adored <st1:city st="on">Rome</st1:city>, he has said and written, but he does not by any means love <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. A writer lives in his head, he says, and so place is mostly immaterial. But then a writer is also human and hardly oblivious to his context.</p> <p>In a 1985 essay for Architectural Digest magazine, Vidal contrasted his home in the "unfashionable Hollywood Hills," near Runyon Canyon, with his idyllic Roman penthouse: "In Los Angeles we live in our cars," he wrote, "or en route to houses where a pool is a pool is a pool and there are only three caterers and you shall have no other. A car trip to Chalet Gourmet on the Sunset Strip is a chore not an adventure. But a trip down our street [in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city>] is a trip indeed."</p> <p>So why not <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Rome</st1:city></st1:place>? Or <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>, where he buys most of his books from Heywood Hill?</p> <p>"Come to my funeral and ask," Vidal answers, and pauses for a long time. The only sound is the rattling of ice as Vidal sways his tumbler of whiskey. "One hospital could kill you just as easy as another."</p> <p>*</p> <p><b style="">Old wounds<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>VIDAL grips his brown wooden cane, lets it go. His maternal grandfather, the blind senator T.P. Gore, holds a similar cane in a black-and-white studio portrait, published in "Palimpsest." A 10-year-old Vidal stands alongside, his arm over the senator's shoulder, his eyes gentle, his posture reverent, protective. Vidal has called the <st1:city st="on">Washington</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">D.C.</st1:state>, estate that his grandfather built at <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Rock</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Creek</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype st="on">Park</st1:placetype></st1:place>, where he spent the happiest moments of his childhood, his "true home." When at Rock Creek, Vidal's gentle eyes stood in for his blind grandfather's useless ones. Reticent no more, Vidal enthuses -- but slowly, with aristocratic poise -- about reading the Congressional Record aloud to the grandfather he idolized. These are good memories, and warm.</p> <p>Why not settle in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>, then? The Malaysian ambassador has moved into the old Rock Creek house, sure, but there are other estates nearby.</p> <p>"God, no," Vidal says. "Unless you hold office, there's no point in being there." That was the plan, in the beginning. To live in <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place> and hold office. Vidal knew this as he wrapped his arm around his grandfather and his grandfather leaned proudly upon his cane and the flashbulbs popped. But now Vidal is a year older than his grandfather ever was, and he's a long way from the capital.</p> <p>A clue to this mystery of place sits on the brown rattan table, here in the Hollywood Hills. A pile of books, titles like "Extreme Islam," "Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?," "Worst Pills, Best Pills." Among them, Vidal's own novel, "The City and the Pillar," the first serious literary work by an American author to deal openly with homosexual themes. It was a death knell for a politician at the time (although Vidal ran for Senate in 1982, coming in second to Jerry Brown in the <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> primary) and it forced a change of course. Vidal knew the consequences, he says now; it was a calculated decision, the right decision. "It's probably the only worthwhile thing I ever did in public life," he says. "Assuming that publishing is public life. Which is a great leap."</p> <p>Vidal was just 23 when he published "The City and the Pillar," but it was his third novel and he was already a literary star. He dedicated the book "For the memory of J.T.," initials that remained mysterious for years. Today, Vidal speaks openly of Jimmie Trimble, a fellow pupil at <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">St. Albans</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">School</st1:placetype></st1:place> in D.C., and Vidal's first love. "He was an athlete," Vidal says. "Now we think of athletes as just dumb-dumb boys, they're all muscle and no brain. But our athletes, at least of the class we came from, the political class, from <st1:state st="on">Kentucky</st1:state> -- he was from <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Kentucky</st1:place></st1:state> -- they were not only body boys, they were brain boys."</p> <p>Trimble and Vidal were inseparable for a while, sexually and otherwise, and then fate intervened in the guise of Vidal's shrill and beautiful mother, Nina, who, concerned about her son's mediocre grades, transferred Vidal from St. Albans into yet another boarding school, <st1:city st="on">Exeter</st1:city>, near <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:city>. Vidal saw Trimble one last time, at a dance in 1942, and they fled the hall together briefly, doing what teenagers in love are apt to do, leaving behind Vidal's fiancee, a young woman named Rosalind. Of course, Vidal never married Rosalind. And Trimble joined the Marines at the height of World War II and was killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima.</p> <p>Vidal has written that he never again felt unity with another sexual partner -- at least, he hasn't yet. "It's not something you look for," he says sharply. "Things happen or they don't." He's been sliding down into the comfort of his armchair during conversation, and now a bit of his midriff peeks between his white button-down and his slacks. He's dallied with plenty of men, and some women, over the years -- more than plenty -- but none, except that first, was of lasting import. His relationship with Auster was platonic; which is exactly why it endured, says Vidal.</p> <p>"In any country on Earth but the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, people would understand this," he says. "For grown people, [sex] is something apart from living with somebody; it's just a disturbance." But people in the States "want total fidelity from the other person, and as much sex as they can get on the side. Preferably in a massage parlor. We are not," he says, turning for emphasis, "regarded as brilliant by other people."</p> <p>It wasn't a marriage with Auster, nor a partnership. Vidal doesn't like to name what they were, just as he hates being pigeonholed as homosexual. No, they were Gore Vidal and Howard Auster, two men who decided to spend their lives together. "He's a private person," Vidal demurs. "There's not much to tell."</p> <p>He must feel Auster's absence? "It was only 55 years," he says. "I don't know. It's.... Everyone handles it in their own way." He stares into a distance beyond the room. "I'm at the age where I'm asked to dinner parties with numerous widows and widowers, and they're all kind of cheery in a macabre kind of way. One illustrious lady said to me, don't you hate it when people tell you that time will heal all wounds? Of course I hate it. Time just reminds you of what is lost and not coming back again."</p> <p>*</p> <p><b style="">The old <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>VIDAL shares the house with his Filipino cook, Norberto Nierras, while his 23-year-old assistant, Daren, lives in an apartment above the garage. He goes out very occasionally -- he enjoys, for instance, the acoustics and architecture of Walt Disney Concert Hall -- but mostly he stays at home. Work remains the constant throughout his days, as it always has been. He reads and writes in an upstairs study, where three windows look out onto swaying palm fronds; beyond, fancy cars speed too quickly around the curves. He prefers a typewriter or pen and paper to the computer, which he calls "that machine," but he respects the Internet and has published several political essays on his friend Robert Scheer's website, Truthdig.org. He rarely writes letters, because "practically everyone I know is dead." What friends remain do come calling fairly often. He abhors the telephone.</p> <p>Today, when his tumbler runs dry, Vidal glances down at leftover ice. "Where's my Filipino gentleman?" he asks, fiddling with an intercom on the table in front of him. Daren has left on an errand, so for the moment Norberto is doling out the whiskey. The intercom doesn't seem to be working; "Norberto!" Vidal bellows, and back comes an indiscernible guttural shout. "It's an ancient Philippine folk song," Vidal says, half-smiling, and then Norberto arrives, middle-aged and in street clothes, and hands over a fresh tumbler, filled to the brim. Vidal has been drinking like this for years, but there's no noticeable effect on his formidable oratory and wit.</p> <p>Norberto seems relaxed with Vidal, comfortable. After Auster died, he took the liberty of installing a chair in front of the door leading from Auster's room into Vidal's study; atop the chair he placed a large wooden puppet. "It's something superstitious," says Vidal, smiling. "He's a Filipino, and they have all sorts of meanings. I intend to get rid of it. Maybe it's to ward off the evil eye."</p> <p>So. About <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place>?</p> <p>"Rosebud," he says, echoing Charles Foster Kane's dying whisper in "Citizen Kane," and the idea that a single object or place can unlock the mystery of a life. He's joking, of course, hinting at the ridiculousness of this vein of inquiry. Vidal is in this city but not of it, he accepts but does not embrace it. "Rosebud" adds another wrinkle, however -- it is born of the movies, which are born of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. And Vidal's language, if you listen closely, is run through with references to the product and process of film.</p> <p>About the way memory works, he says: "When you were 10 years old, which in my case would be 60 or 70 years ago, you broke your leg. Trauma. Duly recorded, somewhere, on the tapes in your head. But if you recall it, the moment when your leg broke at the age of 10, you're not summoning up that movie, it's not as though you can just get the experience going in your head again. What you do, which is much more interesting and strange: You remember the last time you remembered it."</p> <p>And it begins to make sense, now, to ask Vidal to remember remembering his first days as an adult in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, the days when, he says, "the magic of the movies got through to me." Perhaps here lies the anatomy of his choice of home: It was 1945, and Vidal, the 19-year-old first mate of an Army freight-supply ship, was trying to jump from the ship to the dock at <st1:placename st="on">Dutch</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Harbor</st1:placetype> in the <st1:place st="on">Aleutian Islands</st1:place>. He could not; his knees simply wouldn't spring. He had been drenched with icy water from the <st1:place st="on">Bering Sea</st1:place> more than once, and osteoarthrosis was the result. Many years later it would require an operation, an artificial knee, but at the time it delivered him to a hospital in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anchorage</st1:place></st1:city> and left him pondering "home."</p> <p>The Army sent soldiers to convalesce close to their hometowns; for most of them, that was an easily locatable destination. Not so for Vidal. His mother, Nina, was living at the Beverly Hills Hotel after two divorces and the death of her third husband. "I much preferred my father to my mother," Vidal says, "but I much preferred <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>, or the notion of it, to either of them. So, '<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> is where I come from,' I said." He was delivered to <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Birmingham General</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place> in Van Nuys. "It was pretty wonderful. Charles Laughton used to come over and read poetry and act plays. But only for the guys who were interested; he didn't want the ones who were just in it for autographs."</p> <p>Nina's friend Jules Stein, head of MCA, gave Vidal a pass to all of the studios, and he would hitchhike in and watch the movies being made. The first set he breached was that of "Marriage Is a Private Affair," written in part by his dear-friend-to-be Tennessee Williams. Vidal remembers Bette Davis, on the set of "The Corn Is Green," standing in front of a manor house "in a riot of Harris tweed" and struggling to mount a horse. "You don't need an actress," <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Davis</st1:place></st1:city> was saying. "You need an acrobat!" Vidal, now in his armchair, chuckles.</p> <p><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> stole Vidal for a few years, which is where he met Auster, who had given up a career as a singer and was pursuing work in advertising. "He was having trouble getting a job in a <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> advertising agency, despite an NYU degree," Vidal remembers. "The agencies, in general, did not hire Jews. So I said change the 'r' to an 'n.' He did, and was promptly hired by an agency that had turned him down the previous year." (Auster was thus known as Austen, in some circles.)</p> <p>Then <st1:city st="on">Hollywood</st1:city> wooed Vidal back; he signed a screenwriting contract at MGM and he and Auster lived with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Shirley MacLaine's old house in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Malibu</st1:place></st1:city>. He worked on "Ben-Hur," among other movies, but was ultimately dissatisfied with the studio system. It was too rigid; fluid collaboration seemed impossible. <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place> beckoned; he answered. <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city>. Ravello.</p> <p>"I was fascinated by the movies," he says. "We all were, my generation." Fascinated, in past tense. "The problem with movies is that they're not for encouraging argument, for the mind," Vidal says. "It's for emotions. And you can excite people to a point.... Well, a medium that has that trouble is in deep trouble. And I think one of the problems of today is that literature has no prestige, while movies have all the prestige. And movies cannot do argument, they cannot do the mind, they cannot do anything -- except get your pulses going a little faster."</p> <p>*</p> <p><b style="">Despair and dreams<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>MOVIES, in other words, cannot do change, or at least cannot do it effectively enough. It was change that Vidal was after through politics, as well; in one way or another, he's always been after changing society, under many auspices, wearing his many hats. He is credited as the first to label the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> an empire, back in the 1970s, and has long been an outspoken critic of what he sees as American stupidity, greed, reliance on archaic moral structures. It's as bad now as it ever was, Vidal says, with Bush and the neoconservative agenda running the White House. "Did you see that story in the <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> paper?" he asks. "All the money that Halliburton owes the government, and they're being forgiven this vast debt, because it's Cheney. In a well-run country, that wouldn't happen, a country of law. But we're now lawless."</p> <p>"I don't see any optimistic signs on the horizon," Vidal says. "It's just, how much money can we wring out of the public, before all the oil has dried up and before soybeans can be properly processed? So we're at a curious point; obviously there are intelligent people who do have solutions, but not one of them will ever get inside the White House, not one of them is going to get to Congress, and God help you if you take on the bench. So all doors are shut at the moment."</p> <p>Even in liberal <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>, after a year in which gay sheepherders fell in love, a preoperative transsexual reunited with her son and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow took a stand against Sen. Joseph McCarthy, all in front of audiences' eyes, even after this, Vidal sees little reason to rejoice. After all, "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>" failed to win the Oscar for best picture, exactly as Vidal predicted. "Nobody believed me," he says, relishing his prescience. "I said there's not a chance in the world the older members of the academy, the carpenters, the grips, the this's, the thats, living over in Van Nuys, they're not going to vote for that."</p> <p>It seems hopeless, really, and yet, at 80 years old, Vidal continues the fight. "I have no choice," he says. "I have no selfish interests. All of my selfish interests are public interests." Under the weight of the world, at the apex of his frustration, Vidal is wont to smile. There is satisfaction in the muck, somewhere. "I'll never forget the joy," he says, and trails off, and pauses, and sips. "The four greatest words on Earth are 'I told you so,' " he says. "I have seen to it that I'm able to say that at period intervals, like a cuckoo clock."</p> <p>One of the few people Vidal speaks with regularly on the telephone is Barbara Epstein, his longtime friend and editor at the New York Review of Books. "Like many people in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, he's in exile," she says of Vidal. "<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> is a place of exile. In a way, I think the one fits in the other very nicely."</p> <p>Perhaps home, for Vidal, is exactly that -- exile -- a home that is not a home, from which he spies, somewhere in the nowhere of the distance, a better world.</p> <p>But Vidal is not sentimental. The closest he comes is in his dreams. On good nights, as he sleeps in a second-floor bedroom down the landing from his study, he dreams of his father. "I'm always happy to see him again," Vidal says. "He starts climbing up a hill, and I follow him up, and it gets more and more full of bushes and so on. And then he vanishes." The landscape is not <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> and not Ravello. "It's placeless," he says. "It's just a hill. It's wild country. When you dream of your father after a certain age, you're having a death dream. Any more of these doctors, and it won't be a dream."</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-70110688996863166272006-03-06T06:41:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:04:31.184-07:00Paying homage to a `real woman'<p><span class="emphasized1">Monday March 06, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">{THE OSCARS}</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">BEST ACTRESS</span><br /><span class="headline1">Paying homage to a `real woman'</span></b></p><story></story>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-38785119790554601262006-02-26T06:40:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:04:52.852-07:00Chewing the fat at the Pig<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday February 26, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">{THE OSCARS}</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">THE WORDSMITHS</span><br /><span class="headline1">Chewing the fat at the Pig</span><br /><span class="deck1">* From Oscar nominees to struggling wannabes, these writers have got a hot spot.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>WHAT a bunch of poseurs, thought Josh Olson, when he first stepped foot inside the Bourgeois Pig. The screenwriter was visiting this <st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place> cappuccino bar with a friend, and all around were "punks sitting there with laptops," Olson says. "Pretenders. Jerks."</p> <p>"But Josh," said his friend, "how can you be so sure that they aren't actually writing something?" OK, Olson admitted. It was curiosity, partly, that brought him back the next morning (with his own laptop), and the next. And soon he was coming not to gauge the poseurs but because days at the Pig were eight- and 10-page days -- good stuff too -- and five years after setting up shop here, Olson received an Oscar nomination for his script, "A History of Violence."</p> <p>It wasn't until a few weeks ago, after the nomination, that a scruffy-bearded Olson spotted fellow best adapted screenplay nominee Dan Futterman ("Capote") sipping coffee at a nearby table. "Josh came up to me and said, 'I know who you are!' " says Futterman, who takes his reading to the Pig. "We talked, and now, since I have a new house to decorate, I'm going to go check out his girlfriend's artwork."</p> <p>Futterman won't have to look far. Olson's girlfriend, Annie Kehoe, an actress and artist, often shows her paintings at the Pig. (Olson and Kehoe met here just over a year ago.) But Olson and Futterman aren't the only of this year's best screenwriter nominees interested in Kehoe and her work. Stephen Gaghan, up for best original screenplay for "Syriana," snagged a Kehoe portrait of a newborn baby off the wall at the Pig, and intends to purchase more.</p> <p>Oscar-nominated patrons aside, there are no red carpets unfurled here across floors of chipped concrete, and Olson worries each day that his favorite perch -- in a corner between the wall and the baked goods -- will be commandeered by some unknown scribe. The Pig sits on a lively, funky block of <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Franklin Avenue</st1:address></st1:street> plucked from the <st1:placename st="on">East</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Village</st1:placetype>, with cafes, a newsstand, a record store, the French bistro La Poubelle; but on either side is urban sprawl that's chromosomally <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, a shattered apartment windowpane repaired with tape, a man with exhausted eyes pacing the sidewalks hawking popsicles.</p> <p>"If you come here for a long time, you're here for that grittiness," says Andrew Chadsoy, who has hung out and worked at the Pig since he was 18, and now is 31 and the manager. "It's part of what gives way to creativity. If you didn't have that, the writers wouldn't be here." The Pig is a reminder that while <st1:city st="on">Hollywood</st1:city> and the Oscars appear to be about impossibly out-of-reach starlets and super-refined notions of glamour, in <st1:city st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city>, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city> is just part of town.</p> <p>"Character, life, people, it's what I want to absorb, no matter who they are," says Jeremy Donner, a screenwriter with shaggy red hair who works across the table from Olson every day. "You have to be a patient listener to be a writer." There is a tangible divide here between observers and the observed: Silent writers sprawl across all available table space while noisy regulars gab at the counter or on soft purple couches; at the row of tables outside, young men with beards suck on cigarettes and argue politics.</p> <p>It's people-watching at its finest, and writing is the perfect excuse for voyeurism. On a recent morning, Michael Abel sits at the counter, doodling devil horns on a picture of Dick Cheney in The Times; next, his pen makes a mockery of Condoleezza Rice.</p> <p>"More than one person has gone to sit outside because of my politics, I'll admit that," says Abel, a cappuccino caterer and Pig regular for some 11 years. After passing around the augmented newspaper to halfhearted interest, Abel leaves -- but returns later to show off a freshly handmade shirt that reads, "Dick Cheney Hunting Party," replete with birdshot holes and faux blood.</p> <p>"The problem with this place," says Ed Mattiuzzi, a musician seated nearby, "is that I tend to come in and procrastinate. I got here this morning at 8:30, and I'm supposed to be at work by 9, but now it's what, 10:30?" Zin Chiang nods, smiling. "Most people who get their coffee in here are friends," says the writer for a Taiwanese music magazine. "I had a snowboarding injury once, and [Abel] is really good at deep-tissue massage, and he fixed it for me."</p> <p>*</p> <p><b style="">Coincidence, you say?<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>EXCEPT for the seated observers, this feels like a small-town coffeehouse along the lines of, well, the cafe in Olson's "A History of Violence." And there is a regular named Joey, which is the name of Viggo Mortensen's character in the movie. And the Pig, like the cafe in "Violence," has been robbed at gunpoint.</p> <p>No, no, no, says Olson. Coincidences, all. (Which makes sense; his screenplay was based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke.) Even so, it's easy to wonder if bits and pieces of this joint are smattered across the silver screen, by osmosis if not by intent.</p> <p>"The women here are so beautiful," observes Ben Zolno, a twentysomething documentary sound designer, working on his first screenplay. "But [writers] aren't here because we're comfortable. You'll notice that music is playing, and that most people are trying to drown it out with their own headphones. It's like being at a Buddhist temple. We fight through resistance. There is something to being alone with other people."</p> <p>Being alone with other people at the Pig is more complicated than you might expect; the subculture of writers here has developed its own unspoken code of conduct. It took Donner months of sitting across from Olson, for hours a day, before they acknowledged each other. "After we were both comfortable that the other person wasn't a wanker, we started with head nodding," Donner says. Then saying "hello" and "goodbye," and at long last trading numbers.</p> <p>Olson usually stakes out the table first, then Donner arrives, followed by the third and newest member of their clan, Mishna Wolff, a comedian. "The most flattering moment at this table was when Josh called me and said, 'People are trying to sit at the table, do you want your seat?' " Wolff says. "That was after I had been sitting here for six months." The trio piles laptop bags, papers and jackets onto the remaining chairs until all appear taken.</p> <p>Then writing begins, in silence. Earphones in place mean: Leave me alone. One earphone in, one out: I'll listen until you finish your sentence, then zip it. For Wolff, earphones are often just unconnected props.</p> <p>They buy tea and coffee, sometimes lunch, and leave when enough work's done or whim moves them. The writers are not a cash cow for the Pig, to say the least. And business has been difficult lately, says Chadsoy. He's making changes to bolster the hipster nighttime clientele, many of whom are drawn to a back lounge perfect for making out; he plans to darken the ambience, add red lights, play louder music.</p> <p>"The computer crowd has inundated the coffeehouse scene," says Jeff Zardus, who works nights at the Pig, open daily until 2 a.m. "People have forgotten that this is an alternative to bars. You feel resistance to it, people asking me to turn the lights up and the music down. I think that coffeehouses have gone soft."</p> <p>Soft or not, this is just the way Olson likes it. "The day I come in here, and it's sold or closed, I'll have to find a new line of work," he says. "That's terrifying."</p> <p>"We really should put a plaque on your chair now," says the waitress behind the counter, Amelia B., when Olson goes to order another double <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Americana</st1:place></st1:city>. "No!" Olson says. "No, please. Please, just a 'reserved' sign." </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-59908889266312523842006-02-19T06:34:00.000-08:002008-12-09T00:00:21.350-08:00Less is more at a Carmel Valley retreat<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2pNf_l5of7hkn96ctV5EbdOf29IDKgUqEXc1osSAJpO4K4IA0_0eYOVHzJ7NKDgkpe5Ujwp2OZro23sBIZbrBroXmTUSIGBufu7LjE4VdvrwAhVUgY58xWpZYuZVpgnpS_Z6taHC8W0_b/s1600-h/flowers+and+knf.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2pNf_l5of7hkn96ctV5EbdOf29IDKgUqEXc1osSAJpO4K4IA0_0eYOVHzJ7NKDgkpe5Ujwp2OZro23sBIZbrBroXmTUSIGBufu7LjE4VdvrwAhVUgY58xWpZYuZVpgnpS_Z6taHC8W0_b/s320/flowers+and+knf.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5055133425036990226" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAldHOHM-RWw9vURf8rmowsJyp3Y982Vu4CYK5v2OS4R3652IW1mHtLUkvLAPKKFxWuc1QHarFkrTlTMG3P0qI6bLUgo971ZhQFNDRlUCFTObusxxJMv_g_9ih4jZtP6HOJetFuG2SrAKb/s1600-h/meadow.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAldHOHM-RWw9vURf8rmowsJyp3Y982Vu4CYK5v2OS4R3652IW1mHtLUkvLAPKKFxWuc1QHarFkrTlTMG3P0qI6bLUgo971ZhQFNDRlUCFTObusxxJMv_g_9ih4jZtP6HOJetFuG2SrAKb/s320/meadow.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5055133425036990242" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjADLVxGNjoJHrYKBOZaZd2ulyzvrTvUNNMmpJHbRlLeDbXf1lgOD7GubbemyGa2j5b_hhZmbrZ0hDUErH39eTIO0ScV_PXiMqJQbaiQiFSCdVeFVxJ2dl51uAhVCNdQVjkXkkBuTCRflYo/s1600-h/feet.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjADLVxGNjoJHrYKBOZaZd2ulyzvrTvUNNMmpJHbRlLeDbXf1lgOD7GubbemyGa2j5b_hhZmbrZ0hDUErH39eTIO0ScV_PXiMqJQbaiQiFSCdVeFVxJ2dl51uAhVCNdQVjkXkkBuTCRflYo/s320/feet.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5055133429331957554" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br /><p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday February 19, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">Western Travel</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">WEEKEND ESCAPE</span><br /><span class="headline1">Less is more at a Carmel Valley retreat</span><br /><span class="deck1">* Getting back to basics at Tassajara Zen center is made easier by gourmet vegetarian fare and dips in natural pools.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>Tassajara Hot Springs, <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Calif.</st1:place></st1:state> -- THE plan was simple enough: Pick up my girlfriend, Katie, rent a vehicle that could withstand an infamously bumpy dirt road, and leave the busy, gritty, noisy cityscape behind. Growing up near <st1:city st="on">Berkeley</st1:city>, I had long heard of <st1:placename st="on">Tassajara</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Zen</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype>, a retreat in <st1:placename st="on">Carmel</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Valley</st1:placetype>'s Ventana Wilderness as famous for its vegetarian cuisine as for its salve-for-all-ills <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">hot springs</st1:place></st1:city>.</p> <p>Tassajara is one of the oldest Soto Zen training monasteries outside of <st1:place st="on">Asia</st1:place>, but anyone, including non-Buddhists like Katie and me, is welcome to visit from April 28 to Sept. 10 -- if they can get a reservation. Rooms, cabins, yurts and dorms are doled out on a first-come-first-served basis; the most eager will mail in their requests this week, when the center begins accepting them. I sent ours at the first opportunity, and even then we didn't get our first-choice cabin.</p> <p>But what ends in tranquillity always seems to begin with mayhem. I misplaced my car keys, then my driver's license, then my cellphone. It was already dusk by the time we began inching our rented SUV up Interstate 5 -- and we were both grumpy. The goal was to push through half the 300-mile trek that evening, stopping to dine at some charming roadside cafe. Instead, we grabbed burgers at In-N-Out, then slept in a smoky motel room decorated with a painting of a neon pink flamingo. Morning brought more greasy fare (Denny's) and more driving.</p> <p>We stopped at a fruit stand and pressed on, spitting cherry pits out the windows. Finally we left the freeway and wound through brown-green hills, past cattle and horse pastures, rusty mailboxes and patches of yellow and purple wildflowers.</p> <p>Katie is a city-loving sophisticate who appreciates nature -- from a distance. (This long weekend trip in May required more than a little cajoling.) She used the last reaches of cellular service to commiserate with her mother about the indignities to come: no shower or hot water in the cabin and oil lamps instead of electricity. Bring wine, her mother advised, and lots of it.</p> <p>At a dusty convenience store somewhere on the outskirts of the Ventana Wilderness, we surveyed jugs and boxes and a bottle or two of wine. We chose a few and threw in a bottle of Thunderbird simply because the idea of taking it to Tassajara made us laugh.</p> <p>The last leg of the drive, on an ill-maintained dirt road, lived up to its reputation as a harrowing experience; a precipice loomed to our right, we knew, but our tires kicked up billows of dust across the windshield, and I found it difficult to discern where land ended and freefall began.</p> <p>*</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">Simple and quiet</p> <p>I was glad we didn't die, if only for the food -- all cooked by Zen students and priests. But before eating anything we had to cart our luggage from car to cabin in an oversize wheelbarrow. The path led through a wooden gate welcoming us to Tassajara and past several priests dressed in simple black robes.</p> <p>The property spans about 160 acres, and hiking trails traverse the shaded hills; trek far enough and you'll find waterfalls. Guests are welcome to join residents for chanting and meditation each morning and evening, but many choose instead to lounge on the soft grass outside the meditation hall or stroll through nearby gardens.</p> <p>Our redwood cabin was an airy room with abundant light, a hardwood floor, twin beds that we pushed together, lanterns on elegant wooden tables and -- to Katie's irritation -- a bathroom shared with an adjoining cabin. (Our friendly but absent-minded neighbors faithfully locked the two bathroom doors but rarely remembered to unlatch the door to our side afterward.)</p> <p>We crossed a wooden bridge to the dining hall, which overlooks the stream along which the cabins lie. Here we began eating and didn't stop for the next three days. The dining hall was empty except for us, but a passing priest assured us that the flan and fruit and tea were snacks for the taking. We downed three big pieces of flan between us, grabbed some fruit and headed down a dirt path to explore. The only sound was the tinkling of the stream, the mellow chatter of passersby and the click-clack of Katie's high heels.</p> <p>The nearby swimming pool smelled of sulfur, but we took a dip anyhow in its warm, viscous, salty spring water, then dozed on chaise longues poolside, half watching black-yellow butterflies against the backdrop of green mountains. The butterflies were joined by horseflies whose bites proved surprisingly painful, so we dressed, borrowed a chess board from the communal game room and set it up on a smooth tree-stump table.</p> <p>Lunch at Tassajara is a choice between a sit-down meal and a do-it-yourself buffet of gourmet salads, vegetables, fruits, beans, grains, fresh baked breads and variations on humus and tapenade. We chose the buffet both days and took our lunch on hikes. On our second day trekking downstream, we found a pool deep enough to leap into from overhanging rocks. The water was clear -- we saw several fish -- and shockingly cold. I managed to lose a sandal downstream, so I hopped the few miles back, reassured by the knowledge that, if I injured my city-soft sole, I could recuperate trailside while Katie kept us fed by spear-fishing with her high heels.</p> <p>*</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hot springs</st1:place></st1:city> bath</p> <p>DIRTY and tired, we headed for the bathhouse, a Japanese-style enclosure with two wings divided by gender during the daytime, coed at night. On each side, natural <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">hot springs</st1:place></st1:city> poured into tiled plunges with window views of the stream below; outside, people struck yogic poses on a large wood deck or lounged in an outdoor tub or steam room. Brave folk alternated between hot plunges and the freezing stream.</p> <p>The bathhouse is clothing-optional, but when I climbed into the steaming water wearing my bathing suit, a naked middle-aged man informed me, "The tradition is that we don't wear suits in here. It introduces a foreign element." ("Nonsense," a regular visitor told me later. "That man needs a good dunking.") In the evening, Katie and I visited the bathhouse together, and I ventured in nude, Katie in her Hawaiian-print bikini. What were the chances that a pal from college and his new girlfriend would show up, both nude? We laughed off the awkwardness but couldn't quite figure out where to put our eyes.</p> <p>Many of the visitors that weekend belonged to a bird-watching group and spent their days wandering around staring through binoculars, apparently more interested in the far off than the nearby. They weren't much for conversation. But on Saturday evening, over a dinner of North African vegetarian stew, roasted carrots and couscous, and a delicious date almond torte, Katie and I befriended five delightful guys (mostly from Southern California, it turned out) with whom we've kept in touch.</p> <p>The following afternoon, our new clan gathered on a porch near the stream, and out came nuts and fancy wines and ... the Thunderbird. Sure, there was laughter, but among aged Cabernets, it was exotic.</p> <p>A tolling bell meant meditation time for the resident monks and nuns, and a monk-in-training invited Katie and me to try it. We followed him into a large room with rows of cushions facing walls or raised wooden panels. A gong rang out in rapid succession. We took off our shoes, Katie discarding her lime-green pumps. (A nun stopped to chide her for the shortness of her mid-thigh smock-dress.) Then we were seated, legs folded beneath us, listening to silence and to natural sounds we hadn't noticed before. Forty minutes of stillness flew by, then a peal of the gong, and we walked out into warm air and mosquitoes underneath an expansive sky.</p> <p>I can't really speak for Katie, but I could swear she seemed sad to leave. For the fun of it, she hopped in the wheelbarrow alongside our luggage, and I pushed us all uphill to that dusty SUV. It was a long haul home inching along the coast, but neither of us got the least bit grumpy.</p> <p>*</p> <p>(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">Zen and the art of rest</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">GETTING THERE:</p> <p>From <st1:city st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city>, it's about 300 miles to <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Tassajara</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Zen</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>. The last stretch, a 14-mile dirt road, is bumpy; if you don't have a high-clearance vehicle, you might want to rent one. Or park your car in nearby Jamesburg and board the Stage, a rugged shuttle that ferries travelers that last leg of the journey. It's $35 per person; arrange when making Tassajara reservations.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">WHERE TO STAY:</p> <p>A range of lodgings is available, including large family-size cabins and dormitories suitable for the solo traveler. Stone rooms (Friday-Sunday, $145 per person; single occupancy $265) feature wood stoves and a view of the creek. Redwood yurts (Friday-Sunday, $154 per person; single occupancy $283) include private decks and two single mattresses that double as a king. Rates are less on weekdays. There is no electricity in any of the cabins (kerosene lanterns provide light), and all bathing is done in the communal bathhouse.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">WHERE TO EAT:</p> <p>All meals are included in the cost of lodgings. Tassajara serves gourmet vegetarian cuisine. The kitchen is often willing to accommodate dietary restrictions.</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">CONTACT:</p> <p>Tassajara Reservations, <st1:address st="on"><st1:street st="on">300 Page St.</st1:street>, <st1:city st="on">San Francisco</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">CA</st1:state> <st1:postalcode st="on">94102</st1:postalcode></st1:address>; (415) 865-1895 or www.sfzc.org/tassajara. A reservations phone line, (415) 865-1899, opens March 20. Until then reservations are accepted by mail (print out a form from the website).</p> <p>-- Steven Barrie-Anthony </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-61931679595277225212006-02-04T06:33:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:05:45.670-07:00The halftime coach<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Saturday February 04, 2006</span></p> <p><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="deck1">Detroit</span></st1:place></st1:city><b><br /><span class="headline1">The halftime coach</span><br /><span class="deck1">* Don Mischer draws the plays as the Stones and the rest of the Super Bowl show team near game day.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>IT'S only a few days before Super Bowl Sunday, and the guy directing and producing the pregame and halftime shows would like to know, please, which songs the Rolling Stones will perform. But the Stones aren't ready to decide yet. And so Don Mischer, who is reprising this role from last year and has also produced opening and closing ceremonies for two Olympics, eight Emmys and the 2004 Democratic National Convention, is sitting in his temporary office in a converted locker room in the bowels of Tiger Stadium, guessing.</p> <p>It's an elaborate game of pretend. Numbered pieces of paper taped to lockers represent some 20 cameras awaiting Mischer's command at neighboring Ford Field. "Keith and Mick often make great moves away from the band," Mischer tells Gregg Gelfand, the show's associate director. "But I'm assuming that Keith will always start on the left side of the stage." This isn't a blind assumption; Mischer took in four Stones concerts in the last year and has reviewed countless hours of tape. He knows their lyrics, their moves. Everything except their darn set list.</p> <p>"What if they sing 'Get Off of My Cloud,' " he says, pressing buttons to find the song on a CD. And in an instant he's on his feet, chair flying backward, calling out camera switches in rapid fire to best capture the essence of these imaginary Stones. Gelfand sets cues -- "ready camera five on Mick" -- and Mischer waits, waits, waits: "Take!" he shouts, fists pounding the air. Take, take, take!</p> <p>Mischer can appreciate secrecy. When Muhammad Ali was chosen to light the torch in the 1996 Olympics, Mischer sent nearly all staff and security packing and practiced with the boxer late at night with a flashlight. But secrecy has a different tilt to it after Janet Jackson bared a breast -- the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" -- in the 2004 halftime show, prompting a flood of viewer complaints and a Federal Communications Commission fine of $550,000 leveled against CBS. This year's halftime show will be on a five-second tape delay for the first time in Super Bowl history; it wasn't deemed necessary for last year's show, perhaps since the more staid Paul McCartney wasn't likely to go off script (he turned in his final set list months before the game).</p> <p>Even though McCartney was a safe choice, he was an odd fit for an audience fueled by beer and adrenaline, and even Mischer, who directed the show, admits that the stadium didn't reverberate. There must be some middle ground between McCartney and a naked breast, and in late spring 2005, the National Football League began a dialogue with the Stones about "a season-long platform," says Charles Coplin, vice president of programming for the NFL, which has kept a closer watch on the halftime show ever since a breast marred its family-friendly spectacle. "They agreed to play a few songs at our kickoff show, and ABC used one of their songs, 'Rough Justice,' for Monday Night Football, and it will all culminate in those 12 minutes at halftime."</p> <p>Not only did the Stones agree to participate, they agreed to do the halftime show for Super Bowl XL (40 for you non-Latin speakers) gratis, even paying for some of their own special effects. At a news conference Thursday, Mick Jagger noted that "<st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> has changed since we first came here, it's almost unrecognizable," as has Mick, who's a long way from his bad boy days. But maybe not that far. He ended his comments with his own mini shocker, turning to a bank of TV cameras and saying, "Network television, they're always worried about how many times you're going to say [expletive] on the air." Then, to soothe NFL nerves: "They needn't worry about it. Calm down more and take life as it comes."</p> <p><b style="">Halftime conundrum<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>The question is, does anyone really care about the halftime show? Millions of people watch the Super Bowl, sure, but at some point they've got to get off the couch to use the loo and burn some more nachos. Commercials used to serve that purpose, but who wants to miss the Bud Bowl? "Of the three parts of the Super Bowl -- the game, advertisements and the halftime show -- the halftime show is the least evolved, the least thought out and the poorest," says Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. "It remains an ancient anachronistic remnant of the Ed Sullivan era." Not so, says Coplin. "People perceive the halftime show as big entertainment and spectacle."</p> <p>Whether or not the halftime show matters to a worldwide audience, it matters in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:city>. Aretha Franklin, who with Stevie Wonder will appear in the Super Bowl pregame show, made headlines in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Michigan</st1:place></st1:state> when she criticized the NFL for failing to showcase Motown at halftime. "We thought it was a little bit remiss that they came to <st1:city st="on">Detroit</st1:city> and didn't use at least one artist from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:city>," she said at a news conference. (The invitation for her and Wonder to play in the pregame mollified her somewhat.)</p> <p>Regulars at the Sweet Water Tavern, a few blocks from Ford Field, hear <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> loud and clear. There's a sense at the tavern, amid smoke and liquored good cheer, that Super Bowl XL is in <st1:city st="on">Detroit</st1:city> but not of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:city>. The Steelers and Seahawks are playing rather than the hometown Lions, and recent cutbacks at General Motors and Ford mean that many Detroiters are more concerned with paying rent than buying Super Bowl tickets.</p> <p>"What they should've done is have the Motown theme for halftime," says Johnny "Cheese" Petracci, the tavern's manager. "The Stones are 60 years old, man. They're dead." A friend at a nearby table raises his beer in agreement. "People would've liked to see the Temptations or Diana Ross," says Darryl Powell, an assistant manager. "It should've been another act. The NFL is just another elite group of people. Everything has to go their way."</p> <p>Mike Kunik, a 26-year-old musician wandering by the tavern with a friend, disagrees. "I think Detroiters just need something to [complain] about. Motown is not a current thing. People don't listen to it. And anyway, during the halftime show I'll probably be getting another beer."</p> <p>Regardless of the halftime snub, locals are pitching in to make halftime happen. About 300 unpaid volunteers spent long hours the week before the Super Bowl learning how to pitch the Stones' massive stage (117 by 100 feet), which on Sunday they must do in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, Mischer and various ABC producers joined dozens of volunteers on Wednesday before the game to rehearse part of the pregame ceremony honoring MVPs from all the previous Super Bowls.</p> <p>"We want to thank you guys for doing this," Mischer told the group of mostly twentysomethings assembled at nearby <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Wayne</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">State</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>'s basketball gym. Cue music, cue announcer, and here come the MVPs. John Elway has lost weight, he's wearing dangling earrings, and -- wait, that isn't Elway. It's Summer LaViolett, a 23-year-old <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:city> native, waving to imaginary fans, carrying a picture of Elway before her face.</p> <p>Mischer, again, is guessing. The real MVPs don't arrive until Saturday, and they'll likely walk and act a little differently than these Detroiter stand-ins. "Do you think we should have them stop in the middle?" he asks Fred Gaudelli, a producer at ABC. "No," Gaudelli says. "Some guy might want to milk the moment because of his ego."</p> <p>The scene at <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Wayne</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">State</st1:placename></st1:place> is jovial and lively and feels like summer camp; in contrast, Ford Field, with its layers of security and metal detectors and thousands of workers with badges milling about, seems more like the Pentagon. On game day, Mischer and his team will race between a trailer across the street stuffed with video monitors and controls and a skybox in the stadium. Thursday evening finds Mischer in the trailer watching Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone and John Legend rehearse the pregame show on the field, and practicing cues and cuts.</p> <p>Mischer is on his feet as Wonder sings, scanning all available camera angles and yelling -- Take! Take! -- until Wonder waves a hand and halts the number. He can't hear Legend, he explains. And "my ears keep popping," he says, fiddling with an earpiece. "These are valuable ears. I need them."</p> <p>At 9:45 or so, rehearsal ends and the musicians pack up. And Patrick Woodroffe, the Stone's lighting designer, drops by the trailer to say hello to Mischer. The Stones have still not set a playlist, but what's "really interesting," says Woodroffe, is that the NFL will allow the band to sing the word "come" even if it can have another spelling and meaning.</p> <p>Mischer laughs nervously, but smiles.</p> <p>"As long as everybody's happy," he says.</p> <p>*</p> <p>'NFL Super Bowl XL'</p> <p>Where: ABC</p> <p>When: Pre-game, 11:30 a.m.; Game, 3 p.m. Sunday.</p> <p>Ratings: Unrated </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-55341749496347545562006-02-03T06:32:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:06:12.421-07:00That Song Sounds Familiar<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Friday February 03, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">COLUMN ONE</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">That Song Sounds Familiar</span><br /><span class="deck1">* An online service helps users find new music through a 'genome project' that maps tunes' traits and spits out matches.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">OAKLAND</st1:place></st1:city> -- In the beginning, there was music. Childhood and young adulthood floated by to a soundtrack of lyrics and rhythms and searing guitar riffs that consumed you, became you, constituted your identity, galvanized your intent, spoke your soul.</p> <p>But time passes, classrooms fade to cubicles, and a vast landscape of new music turns foreign and unexplored. For Jeff Hersh, 31, the stereo came to double as Proust's madeleine, its purpose to invoke memories rather than create them.</p> <p>"Finding music was easier when I was younger," says Hersh, a vice president at Smith Barney in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>. "In college I lived in a fraternity house with 70 guys all around me at all times, listening to various kinds of music. But as you get older, you work more, you get isolated."</p> <p>Then in November, a friend told Hersh about Pandora.com, an inventive "Internet radio" website that generates music streams -- "stations" -- based on one's favorite artists or songs. He started his own private thread of music that was a combination of Neil Young and Pearl Jam, Hersh says, and in an hour he heard more new music he liked than he had in the last decade, much of it from obscure bands that shared musical traits with Young and Pearl Jam.</p> <p>He fine-tuned the station, giving a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to certain tracks, and soon he was loving nearly every song it threw at him. He started new stations, jotted down song names -- and barely left his apartment that weekend.</p> <p>Since the free version of Pandora made its debut in November (you can listen with no ads on the screen for $3 a month), 8 million stations have been created, and record label and radio executives and technologists are aflutter with interest.</p> <p>Pandora is more than just a fad; its unusual methodology, which marries traditional musical authority with the wisdom of a group of experts, raises philosophical questions about the shape of Net culture.</p> <p>Customizable Internet radio such as Yahoo's Launchcast.com has been around for years, but Pandora is a twist on the concept: Instead of relying solely on computer software to spit out playlists, Pandora draws on its Music Genome Project, a 6-year-old effort by a group of musicians to identify the hundreds of traits and qualities that form the building blocks of music -- and then to map out each individual song within this framework, or genome. Genre disappears, and every song is at once relatable, however closely or distantly, to every other.</p> <p>"This raises the bar significantly," says Ted Cohen, senior vice president of digital development for EMI Music. "For the moment, it's the coolest thing out there. The whole idea seems to be to give people just enough interaction so that the listening experience gets better -- and it works. When I plugged in the Raspberries and Todd Rundgren, it came back with Dwight Twilley. That's it! If Eric Carmen and Todd Rundgren had a child, it would be Dwight Twilley."</p> <p>The operation's hub is in a nondescript building in downtown <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Oakland</st1:place></st1:city>, where on a recent afternoon a dozen or so "music analysts" sprawled in front of rows of computer monitors, wearing headphones, tapping out rhythms and humming. They get paid $15 to $17.50 an hour to listen to music, and set their own shifts to accommodate gigs and recording sessions.</p> <p>"This is an ideal job for musicians," says Rick Higgs, 55, a senior analyst who found the company through a "help wanted" poster in a record store. "They pay me for skills I never thought I'd use in a commercial context."</p> <p>Analysts begin their shifts by selecting a CD from nearby bins and choosing a song, then they log on to the computer system and, using about 400 scales, identify and define the aural traits that make each song unique. They isolate and analyze each vocal thread and instrument, discern melody from improvisation. How lyrical or angular is the principal melody? Does the drummer tend toward sticks or brushes?</p> <p>The result is that when a Pandora user seeds a station with Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," a message pops up informing the listener that the playlist arises from "folk roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, acoustic sonority, major key tonality and melodic songwriting." Song selection will always differ from user to user, but a certain "Mr. Tambourine Man" station began with Dylan's own "Farewell Angelina," Arlo Guthrie's "I'm Going Home" and Doc Watson's "Nashville Blues."</p> <p>Technical complexity aside, Higgs doesn't care much for computers and says he has tried Pandora only once or twice. But like most of his colleagues, many of whom are struggling musicians, he feels strongly that Pandora will help obscure performers find an audience. After all, a user listening to Pandora is just as likely to hear an unknown garage band as the Rolling Stones.</p> <p>And any musician, whether signed to a label or not, is welcome to send in a CD to be auditioned for inclusion in the database.</p> <p>Many do. Pandora headquarters is overflowing with about 40,000 CDs: in crates, on desks, lining dozens of bookshelves around a pool table and a raised stage with a drum set, guitars and keyboards (for when analysts feel like taking a break and jamming). The majority were purchased by Pandora or sent by labels looking to publicize artists, but a steady stream of hand-addressed packages arrive from amateurs.</p> <p>In the last decade, cheap personal computers and software such as ProTools have turned bedrooms into professional-quality recording studios. But the laissez-faire vision of a million musicians quitting their part-time jobs is thwarted by the reality that labels and commercial radio stations remain the stern gatekeepers to wider audiences and their wallets.</p> <p>A handful of networking websites such as MySpace.com connect musicians directly with friends and fans.</p> <p>"Pandora and MySpace are the best things that have happened to music in the last five years," says Adam Leiter, lead singer for <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:city> alt-rock band Sad Marvin, who recently sent an album to Pandora. "I like being able to stay independent, to market ourselves and manage ourselves. There's an absurd number of bands out there, but now if someone is using Pandora they can put in a band like Pearl Jam and out comes us."</p> <p>Of course, there is the flip side. A hipster music lover who seeds her Pandora station with indie jewels may end up listening to some mainstream pop; the electroclash band Le Tigre, say, may spawn -- among equally hip fare -- Lindsay Lohan and Ashlee Simpson.</p> <p>Included in the hundreds of e-mails that Pandora receives each day are complaints that the mainstream infringes on the counterculture, as well as an occasional admission that, umm, I guess maybe I kind of enjoyed it. "I just found out that I apparently like Enrique Iglesias," writes one user. "It was a really good song. Shameful."</p> <p>One high school teacher is taking advantage of this cross-pollination to teach cliquish teens an appreciation of diversity and difference. "High school students use the style of music they listen to to define themselves," Michael Osborn, an English teacher in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Broomfield</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Colo.</st1:state></st1:place>, says. "I had been using Pandora, and I noticed that it tested some of my preconceived notions of music I thought I didn't like.</p> <p>"So I built a lesson around Pandora. I have each student create a station, write an essay about what kinds of music they like and don't like, and then trade. It works, it catches their interest, and it's a great way for them to learn to respect each other, which helps when we move on to more sensitive subjects."</p> <p>Yet some wonder whether Pandora's basic scheme is reactionary.</p> <p>James McQuivey, an assistant professor of communications at <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Boston</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, enjoys Pandora but notes that it "runs counter to the democratizing trend of the Internet." Instead of using "collaborative filtering" software pioneered by Amazon.com and Apple's iTunes ("customers who bought this album also bought these albums"), Pandora "puts the power of the recommendation in the hands of an expert system," McQuivey says. "Pandora will succeed only if its centralized system proves superior to the wisdom of the crowd."</p> <p>Pandora founder Tim Westergren is delighted by users' enthusiasm. After all, five years ago, Pandora was an anonymous and struggling start-up, and now Westergren's workdays are punctuated by about 300 messages from users. He responds to all before falling asleep at 3 or 4 each morning; when his fingers ache from typing, he switches on voice recognition software and dictates into a microphone.</p> <p>Westergren is 40 and looks 30, though at day's end his eyes are tired and the gray creeping through his brown hair appears more pronounced. But even on a few hours' sleep, he's boyishly enthusiastic about the possibility that Pandora will change the music world. He yearns, he says, for the day when "growing up wanting to be a musician is like wanting to be a teacher or a doctor," instead of the impractical journey it is today.</p> <p>Pandora was born in part out of Westergren's attempt to eke out a living as a keyboard player in acoustic rock bands and his conclusion that "the music industry is broken."</p> <p>"There's so much good music out there that ought to be supporting people," he says. "Instead of having 12 artists turn the corner, there should be 12,000."</p> <p>He gave up touring and spent the late 1990s as a film composer in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. The routine was always the same: "A director would say to me: 'Here's a couple of pieces of music that would work for this project. Now write me something new,' " he remembers. He was, essentially, functioning as an unconscious version of the Music Genome Project he went on to devise.</p> <p>In January 2000, Westergren and two pals found investors, set up in a studio apartment in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city> and began listing the 400 or so variables that define their pop genome. (Other genomes would follow: hip-hop, electronica, jazz, world music.)</p> <p>They hired analysts, but no average musician would do. Every analyst must have the equivalent of a four-year education in music, pass a music theory exam and complete 40 hours of training. Even then, 10% of the music is analyzed a second time by a "senior analyst," and any difference of opinion over a point on each of the hundreds of variables is flagged and reviewed.</p> <p>They licensed technology to Best Buy and AOL, but the resulting recommendation engines -- Like that? Try this! -- didn't seem to harness the project's full capabilities.</p> <p>In July 2004, newly arrived Chief Executive Joe Kennedy suggested that the company concentrate on delivering music as well as recommending it.</p> <p>Although iPods are extremely popular, research suggested that users tire of the rigmarole of uploading new music and end up listening to the same playlists ad infinitum. At the same time, a large number of people have flirted with Internet radio (an estimated 45 million in 2004), but Pandora found in its study that few people are satisfied with the experience. The market seemed primed for a solution that walked the line between familiarity and exploration.</p> <p>In short order, Pandora users created millions of stations -- all without the company spending a dollar on marketing. Instead, employees respond to every comment, insult and inquiry they receive, and watch Pandora propel itself across blogs and podcasts and the physical world. This kind of viral marketing, which Google used to lure millions of users to its e-mail service, takes for granted that a retired janitor who blogs from his sofa might have as much marketing power as a full-page ad in Newsweek.</p> <p>And then there's ye olde conventional word of mouth. Hersh, the vice president at Smith Barney, says he has "personally turned on at least 50 or 60 people to Pandora. I've even used it as a pickup line with girls."</p> <p>Despite its popularity, the company has not turned a profit. Licensing fees to play music over the Internet are higher than on terrestrial radio, about a cent and a half per listener per hour, and the ad revenue from the Pandora homepage, combined with commissions from Amazon and iTunes whenever a user clicks to buy an album or a song, isn't enough to cover expenses.</p> <p>Westergren and Kennedy think profitability will come, and in the meantime they are in talks with cellphone, cable and other companies for the next step: snipping Pandora from the Web and making it portable.</p> <p>That would be awesome news to Kelsey Schultz, 17, a student near <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ann Arbor</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Mich.</st1:state></st1:place> "These days, a lot of people turn on MTV to find out what's popular," she says, "but with Pandora you can really expand your musical library and experience what's out there."</p> <p>Still, if she finds a really fantastic new band, she might not tell her friends. "I like to keep my own secret music stash without people getting in on it." Then, when it pops up in somebody else's radio station, she can say: "That's my favorite band. I found them first!"</p> <p>*</p> <p>Compatible music</p> <p>Pandora creates personal "radio stations" by matching users' selected artists or songs with "songs and artists that have musical qualities similar" to their choices. The matching music selections are different each time a user inputs an artist or song, based on the aural characteristics of that particular search. Here are two examples:</p> <p>Original selection: Radiohead</p> <p>* "Dollars & Cents" by Radiohead</p> <p>* "Stay Awake" by Dishwalla</p> <p>* "Your Skull Is Red" by Team Sleep</p> <p>* "Lonely Dirges" by Paul Michel</p> <p>* "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" by Radiohead</p> <p>* "The Last High" by the Dandy Warhols</p> <p>* "Will You Tell Me Then" by the Faunts</p> <p>* "Treefingers" by Radiohead</p> <p>* "God and Mars" by Days Away</p> <p>* "Station in the Valley" by the Sea and Cake</p> <p>* "If" by 13 & goD</p> <p>* "No Surprises" by Radiohead</p> <p>Original selection: The Beatles</p> <p>* "Hung Upside Down" by <st1:city st="on">Buffalo</st1:city> <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Springfield</st1:place></st1:city></p> <p>* "Lady Luck" by Journey</p> <p>* "I Me Mine" by the Beatles</p> <p>* "My Destination" by <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:city></p> <p>* "For Pete's Sake" by the Monkees</p> <p>* "Hot Child in the City" by Nick Gilder</p> <p>* "Dream Away" by Afterglow</p> <p>* "Starman" by David Bowie</p> <p>* "Old Brown Shoe" by the Beatles</p> <p>* "Caroline" by <st1:place st="on">Jefferson</st1:place> Starship</p> <p>* "Sleeping With the Television On" by Billy Joel</p> <p>Source: Pandora.com </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-51709799847775580592006-01-29T06:30:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:06:34.025-07:00Building cachet by association<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday January 29, 2006</span></p> <p><st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on"><span class="deck1">Architecture</span></st1:placename><b><st1:placename st="on"><span class="deck1"></span></st1:placename><br /><st1:placetype st="on"><span class="headline1">Building</span></st1:placetype></b></st1:place><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="headline1"> cachet by association</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* With sleek elevations and drama to spare, out-of-the-box modernism manifests itself on a massive scale. But when a prominent work becomes a backdrop for blouses or set decoration for soda, does commerce dishonor art or can both come out ahead?</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>LONG before Skyy Vodka put the finishing touches on their new ultra-premium elixir, Chad Farmer was jotting notes and planning studies to figure out how exactly to market the stuff. "We look at culture," says Farmer, president and executive director of the Carlsbad-based ad agency, Lambesis. "We look at what's happening in industry, what consumers are doing, we look at the rational and emotional reasons for why people drink vodka." Farmer and his team chose five potential advertising themes -- exotic; aphrodisiac; old world, old stills; clinical; and high design -- and spent months researching, whittling the list to one.</p> <p>"We decided on high design," Farmer says, "because it's the biggest cultural opportunity right now. The masses are starting to have a higher aesthetic; just look at Philippe Starck at Target. Now that the masses are buying TVs and electronics not because of picture quality but because of high design, our choice becomes very obvious."</p> <p>Skyy Vodka, meet Walt Disney Concert Hall. Frank Gehry's slopes of polished steel, home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, play a primary role in the marketing campaign for Skyy 90, to be unfurled in coming months across all variety of media. "We searched around the world for instant classic symbols of modern design," Farmer says. "Disney Hall is one of the most iconic symbols of modernism."</p> <p>It has also become one of the more prominent images used in advertising, along with other local buildings such as the District 7 headquarters for the California Department of Transportation, the Pacific Design Center, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. "High-end architecture is getting hotter," says Ron Smothermon, a <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Newport Beach</st1:place></st1:city> ad producer. "More and more modernistic, high-end architecture is flowing through the advertising industry." A wide swath of companies has filmed and photographed Disney Hall for ads since the building opened in 2003, including Microsoft, Sony, Supercuts, Macy's, Vidal Sassoon, Nokia, M&M's, Bass Ale, Oral B and many automobile brands.</p> <p>Architects are generally flattered by the attention, says James S. Russell, editor at large for Architectural Record. "Buildings exist in a public space, and if they get used as the backdrop for ads, if anything, the architects are tickled," he says. But there are those who cringe when they see temples of modern design used to hock cars and toothbrushes, who bemoan the unchecked commercialization of their craft.</p> <p>Some of the executives and producers behind these ads, such as Skyy 90's Farmer, are scrupulously aware of the architecture they feature; each shot is meant to convey specific social, aesthetic and economic values and to associate them with the brand. In these productions, the architecture is usually clearly recognizable, rising in full form as a backdrop to poured vodka or a gleaming luxury sedan. "High architecture -- like Gothic cathedrals, English accents and classical music -- is shorthand for beauty, sophistication and aspiration, for confidant urbanity," says Bob Garfield, ad critic for Advertising Age magazine. "It can be useful to sell credit cards, insurance and high-ticket items, especially for well-heeled people who imagine themselves worthy."</p> <p>Other executives and producers are less interested in borrowing architectural prestige than in using blurred shots of walls and ceilings and architectural details to subtly compliment foreground products. In this case, buildings are often barely recognizable. "I loved the lines at Disney Hall," says Deborah White, senior art director at Macy's, who arrived there to shoot a section of the store's fall 2005 catalog. "The lines were just perfect. Our trend of clothing was burnt-out velvets, and beading and so forth. Disney Hall lent itself to the whole look -- sleek and elegant."</p> <p>*</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">The phenomenon goes public</p> <p>JUST down the hill from Disney Hall, the ultra-modern Caltrans building is another mecca for advertisers, receiving 36 commercial film and photo shoot requests in 2005, more than any other state-owned building in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. Last year it played host to Nintendo, Sony, MasterCard, Clairol, Mitsubishi, Samsung and others. Which didn't surprise its architect in the least.</p> <p>"We could anticipate that this would take place," says Thom Mayne, who unveiled the massive Space Age project in 2004. "We had film crews in the building before it was even occupied.... I think this reflects society's continued interest in the present, in something contemporary. Architecture tends to be put under forces that are fairly conservative, and advertising has a different set of rules. It's much more open and willing to explore.... This is another way that buildings are absorbed by the public; it's not a problem -- it's not even a good or a bad thing. It just is, and should be."</p> <p>Gehry tends to agree. "I guess in some way I find it flattering," he wrote in an e-mail. "And I don't really have a problem with Disney Hall being used in advertising if it benefits the [Philharmonic] in some way, which I guess it does." Indeed, site fees collected by Disney Hall and the neighboring <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Music</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> bring in about $150,000 per year.</p> <p>But other architects and aficionados of the craft find its use in advertising troubling. After all, they say, there's a thin line between appreciation and appropriation. Didn't at least some people cringe when a deceased Fred Astaire danced onto TV screens with a Dirt Devil-brand vacuum cleaner? When Mercedes-Benz played Janis Joplin's soulful treatise on materialism, "Mercedes Benz," as the soundtrack to a commercial? Why should great architecture, when used for commercial purposes, not be included in that same discussion?</p> <p>"It's pretty obvious that there's a desperate hunt for really strong iconographic imagery that supports whatever's being sold," says Jeffrey Scherer, a Minneapolis-based architect who designed the Rancho Mirage Public Library, unveiled this month. "As buildings get more public currency, if [the advertising] isn't done right, it devalues that currency. Architecture should be understood in a reflective way, but American culture is not about reflection, it's about persuasion, about trying to grab attention in a way that quickly creates value through association."</p> <p>In <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region>, Scherer notes, it's illegal to photograph architecture for commercial use without first obtaining permission and paying a royalty to the copyright holder. "That sends the signal to people that three-dimensional physical objects that are occupied have as much artistic value as two-dimensional, plain-old art," Scherer says. "It's important to have some way of acknowledging, publicly, through legal means, that this is not throwaway, that it has inherent value." In the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>, art and music receive broad copyright protection -- while buildings are protected only in that architects cannot duplicate structures or architectural plans without permission. When advertisers decide to use Disney Hall for an ad but don't want to pony up a site fee, they can and often do film from the parking lot across the street.</p> <p>The Caltrans building draws into broad relief the distinction between art and architecture. The structure itself is Mayne's creation -- but neon strips adorning its facade are actually an installation art piece titled "Motordom" by <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> artist Keith Sonnier. Art and architecture intertwine, and advertisers seek out the totality.</p> <p>"The long, colored neon tubes on the building, they have a lot of energy, kinetic energy," says David Tanimoto, vice president and group creative director for Santa Monica-based ad agency Rubin Postaer and Associates, which handles marketing for Honda. Tanimoto opted to photograph the 2006 Accord in front of the Caltrans building. "We thought that the juxtaposition of that energy, with a static car, expressed speed and excitement and reflects the car's aerodynamics as well," he says.</p> <p>While Mayne doesn't mind his work appearing in commercials, Sonnier says, "My plumes are up about that. I've gotten tons of calls now, 'I saw your work on television!'.... I have a preference that it not be used at all unless I'm contacted first.... I just want to be paid like everybody else in this country.... The downside is that your work could be used in the wrong context; maybe they'd be using the ad to sell Agent Orange or something."</p> <p>*</p> <p style="font-weight: bold;">Appropriateness enters the picture</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENTS for Agent Orange have yet to be filmed at the Caltrans building -- but technically they could be. Anyone who makes a filming request is allowed on the property, once logistical concerns are worked out, says Gamal Kostandy, the agency's statewide filming coordinator. That's not the case at Disney Hall, where applicants are screened more carefully. "We're definitely concerned about what it is they're going to be shooting," says Chris Christel, the production director at the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Music</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> who oversees filming there and at Disney Hall. "Frankly, it's only become an issue on very rare occasions. We're hesitant to allow anything that puts the building forward as something that's conducive to skateboarding.... The stainless steel really doesn't like that."</p> <p>The kids at <st1:placename st="on">Diamond</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Ranch</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">High School</st1:placetype> in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pomona</st1:place></st1:city> are certainly interested in architecture -- or at least in advertisements that feature architecture. McDonald's. Nissan. Volkswagen. These companies and others have shot ad footage on the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pomona</st1:place></st1:city> campus, designed by none other than Mayne; and when the ads debut, the student body and faculty are all aflutter.</p> <p>"The students love it," says principal Monica Principe. "They think it's very prestigious, they brag about it all the time. They're teenagers, they like the attention." It's good and bad, she says. "We are a high school, and we're in the kid business. Our main focus is education and academics. There are a lot of interruptions, a lot of phone calls, people wanting to walk around [campus] to film it, location scouts coming in, and we're trying to balance that with education. At times, that becomes cumbersome, but we work through it, because we're proud of it."</p> <p>And then there's the money. All location fees feed into the school district coffer -- which opens up a new dimension to architecture that hasn't been much considered, Mayne says. "It's an interesting side effect, the building actually producing funds that go back to students. I like the politics of that. It lends the building a secondary value that no one thinks about."</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-20142624822993907962006-01-25T06:29:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:06:52.896-07:00BlackBerry outage? Oh, the horror<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Wednesday January 25, 2006</span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="headline1">BlackBerry outage? Oh, the horror</span></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>Scott Mitchell Rosenberg will not stay at a certain upscale <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> hotel, no matter what you say to persuade him otherwise. He remembers vividly the moment when, traveling on business, he realized that his BlackBerry didn't get service in the hotel. That's OK, thought Rosenberg, chairman of Los Angeles-based Platinum Studios -- he unsheathed a second BlackBerry, with a different cellular carrier, which he keeps on his belt for emergencies like this one.</p> <p>It didn't work either.</p> <p>"I walked through the halls holding both of them, looking for [reception] bars," he remembers. "Neither of them worked anywhere in the hotel." Rosenberg, who has charted <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> freeways and byways, restaurants and movie theaters in terms of which BlackBerry works best where, buys the devices for all his employees and says that his organization relies heavily on their e-mail and scheduling functions. If somebody doesn't want a BlackBerry, they're in the wrong company, he says. "When I first give an employee the BlackBerry, some people find it annoying. But then they get addicted."</p> <p>Now Rosenberg and about 4.3 million others are grappling with the possibility of going through "CrackBerry" withdrawal en masse. Research in Motion, which manufactures BlackBerry devices, is being threatened with an injunction stemming from a patent dispute, and on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. RIM says it has a plan to continue service even if forced to stop using the current technology, but is sketchy on details. And among BlackBerry aficionados and addicts, tension is high.</p> <p>Elsewhere, BlackBerry foes celebrate. At the technology news website Digg.com, users write: "Shouldn't this read: 'CRACK-Berry Shutdown ordered, Millions of Drivers Rejoice??" and "They make people look self-important and busy" and "Die Blackberry! Die!"</p> <p>There's a saying: Toss a Tinseltown player, and you'll hit a BlackBerry. Or there should be. And at the Marriott Hotel in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Park City</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Utah</st1:state></st1:place>, headquarters for the Sundance Film Festival, news about the possible BlackBerry outage came as a slap. Producer Anastasia King held her BlackBerry in her lap, waiting for a print of her film -- a look at black disenfranchisement in recent elections -- to arrive for its Sundance premiere. Since buying the device nine months ago, "it has really improved my work flow so that I can be mobile," she said. The title of her film is an apt metaphor for the BlackBerry crisis: "American Blackout."</p> <p>Nearby, Sydney Levine wore her BlackBerry on a dainty silver chain around her neck. She looked stricken at the idea of losing service. "We are a worldwide company," said Levine, president of Filmfinders, a Sundance festival sponsor. "We get hundreds of e-mails a day. If we had to wait for computers to access our e-mail, I don't know how I'd get my work done."</p> <p>Many BlackBerry users will tell you: This is life or death. In a few cases, they're not kidding. At MedStar Health, a nonprofit that runs seven hospitals in Baltimore and Washington, about 460 executives and managers use BlackBerrys to keep in touch, says Sameer Bade, assistant vice president. "During some recent communication outages, BlackBerrys were the only way we could communicate with critical service employees," Bade says, and warns that uninterrupted communication is vital to hospitals in the nation's capital.</p> <p>But there was a time before BlackBerrys, wasn't there? And doctors still healed the sick; movies still came out. These were simpler, more human times, say BlackBerry critics, many of them the spouses or children of vehement BlackBerry enthusiasts. Pamela Rosenberg actually cheered when she saw on the news that RIM was in trouble -- to the chagrin of her husband, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, he of the dual BlackBerrys.</p> <p>"We can't have a nice dinner or go to a movie without him getting e-mails," says Pamela Rosenberg. "It's constant, all day and all night, in the middle of a conversation." <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rosenberg</st1:place></st1:city> rues the day she made her husband promise to get rid of the laptop he once toted everywhere; that was the day he purchased a BlackBerry. "At least with the laptop he couldn't hide very far. Now I find him hiding out with it in the dressing room closets. I have to take my hand and put it over the BlackBerry if I want to get his attention."</p> <p>In his own defense ... well, actually, Scott Rosenberg mounts no defense. Guilty as charged. "We were on a family vacation once," he says, "and everybody was having dinner. I excused myself to go to the restroom, but I didn't use the facilities. I just went in there and wrote on my BlackBerry for half an hour. Then I came back to the table and said I had a stomachache. My uncle looked at me and whispered: 'BlackBerry.' "</p> <p>This "BlackBerry divide" exists between people at the highest levels of government -- and their children. Says Debra Wong Yang, the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> attorney for the Central District of California: "My daughter hates my BlackBerry. She thinks it's too intrusive into our life. But I'm too much of an addict to notice. She has taken it upon herself to hide it from me. I've gone on major searches looking for it. It's funny now, but then it wasn't so funny." Most colleagues are too polite to josh her, says Yang, but her 12-year-old just won't quit. "She's gotten more vociferous since she's gotten older, more articulate. Once she asked me, 'Mom, when you die, do you want me to put the BlackBerry in there with you?' I said, 'Only if I can get a signal.' "</p> <p>Ignored children and spouses, however, ought not celebrate yet, even if they do have a <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> attorney's daughter on their side. If BlackBerrys go blank, the world will be still for a moment. Traffic will screech to a halt. Songbirds will sing. And then, "I would be in the store immediately, replacing it with some kind of device that would allow me to communicate that way again," says Scott Pansky, BlackBerry addict and general manager of the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> publicity firm Allison & Partners. Sorry, kids.</p> <p>There is a giddy schadenfreude that pervades the rest of the cellphone industry. "Wireless e-mail was ushered in by BlackBerry," says Rip Gerber, chief marketing officer at Intellisync, which bills itself as the second-largest provider of wireless e-mail after BlackBerry. "It was a great first act, but the show goes on. The audience has matured and wants much, much more. Thank you BlackBerry, the market will take it from here." Others who stand to benefit include Palm Inc., whose line of Treo smart phones is a popular alternative to BlackBerry, and new offerings from Nokia and Motorola.</p> <p>Soap opera intrigue aside, legal experts say RIM simply has too much invested to let service stop; One way or another, they say, BlackBerrys will remain. (Internet gambling site Youwager.com is giving 2-1 odds that BlackBerry will be shut down in the next three months.) But there is something intriguing about the possibility of technology reversing its forward march. We have never held technology in our hands and loved it and hated it and watched it disappear. There should really be some sort of gizmo to help us weather these feelings we're having. RIM? Anyone? Anyone?!</p> <p>Times staff writer Robin Abcarian contributed to this report from <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Park City</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Utah</st1:state></st1:place>. Staff writer Martin Miller also contributed. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-5727356199455918292006-01-18T06:28:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:07:14.157-07:00Hey, what about that drink?<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Wednesday January 18, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">[THE GOLDEN GLOBES]</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">GOLDEN MOMENTS</span><br /><span class="headline1">Hey, what about that drink?</span><br /><span class="deck1">* George Clooney and others shimmy through the sea of stars at post-ceremony galas to wax philosophical about movie trends, pose, dance, and -- oh yeah -- grab a glass of something wet.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>If you're George Clooney, it takes almost an hour to make your way from the red carpet to the bar. Wearing his tux unbuttoned at the neck and holding the Golden Globe statuette he picked up earlier in the evening Monday for his performance in "Syriana," Clooney makes his way past the hordes of press and the fans -- but can't seem to get a vodka soda. It's a curse, having this many friends.</p> <p>"I just need some alcohol," he says, and starts a dash further into the In Style-Warner Bros. party off the lobby at the Beverly Hilton, but Charlize Theron does an intercept and ties him into a hug. Nearby, Clooney's publicist muses, "I know a lot of people. But he knows even more."</p> <p>There's a theme to conversation this year at the Golden Globes galas, most of them held in the Hilton after the ceremony, and Clooney says it well: "My theory is that if we can raise questions about our movies, we succeed. It's happening in society at the same time that it's happening in movies: People sit around the table, and for the first time since Watergate, they are asking questions about politics." After a ceremony feting movies that challenge the audience socially and politically -- "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>," "Transamerica," "Good Night, and Good Luck" -- tipsy stars preach to the gathered choir: The message matters.</p> <p>Chocolate also matters and, as is the norm at these shindigs, there's plenty of it. In Style has arranged a Godiva lounge/museum replete with truffle sculptures, wall coverings and a chocolate martini bar, and Jeff Daniels is one of the first arrivals to choose a truffle from a silver plate. He eats it in a corner, by himself, looking sad. "I live in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Michigan</st1:place></st1:state>," says Daniels, who was nominated for his role in "The Squid and the Whale" but lost to Joaquin Phoenix. "Where I live, it's mostly a 'King Kong' town, people rarely go to see an indie. But they went to see 'Squid' because I was in it, and they came out just rocked. People forget that they can see a movie and it will stick with them for 10 days."</p> <p>And here comes the ubiquitous Clooney, patting Daniels on the chest and grinning. No drink yet.</p> <p>Inside the main tent, a cover band blasts a mixture of classic rock, grunge, funk. Backlit blue walls with splotches of red give the space a psychedelic flavor. And Paris Hilton, as much a party mainstay as open bars and massive platters of shrimp, deserves to win some kind of award for her party acrobatics. At one point she is gabbing on her cellphone, typing on a Sidekick, munching a lamb chop and posing for pictures. You figure out the mechanics.</p> <p>Natalie Portman walks by mumbling "chocolate," reaches in only to discover it's a lamb chop and is sorely disappointed.</p> <p>Jamie Foxx clearly doesn't trust the paparazzi to do him justice; he totes his own camera -- a credit card-sized digital gizmo, decorated with what looks like diamonds -- and he wants his picture taken with all passersby. Holding court on a low couch, wearing sunglasses, he snaps photos with four women. It takes a beckoning Eva Longoria to raise him to his feet; and then Foxx wants a photo with her.</p> <p>A few feet away, an ebullient Sandra Oh from "Grey's Anatomy" stares disbelievingly at her Golden Globe. "I started in this business 20 years ago," she says. "My sister is here, my friends are here. Some awards come and go, but this one.... I don't see how you can fathom winning." Kevin Spacey walks by with a posse of men in black tie, all laughing uproariously.</p> <p>And Jon Voight, ever the party philosopher, takes up where Clooney left off. "Every film says something. Sometimes there's just more to say than at other times. People are making political films. But I'll tell you, just because a film's political doesn't mean I agree with it."</p> <p>Each year on Golden Globes night, the Beverly Hilton transforms into a castle with a red carpet moat. Outside are the fawning masses; on the periphery, the media. But there are demarcations on the inside as well, as the hotel divides into assorted galas and a ticket to one doesn't mean a ticket to all.</p> <p>The rooftop soiree held by Universal and Focus Features is second only in buzz and A-list attendees to the In Style-Warner Bros. bash. The decor is moody, with groups of paper lanterns hung in clear boxes like moored balloons. As the Globes end, celebrities pour in.</p> <p>Keira Knightley and winner Rachel Weisz hunker down on an old sofa. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner embraces "Will & Grace's" Debra Messing. Eric Bana chats with <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Nathan Lane</st1:address></st1:street>, and Universal President Ron Meyer swirls around the room with DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg (apparently the soured merger did not scotch their friendship).</p> <p>Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't show, but his "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>" co-stars Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams spend the evening cuddling and doing some fancy maneuvering to avoid scuffing her resplendent purple Givenchy frou-frou. Ziyi Zhang is accompanied everywhere by an older woman in a black suit, who carries her yards of lime green Armani organza in crowds; when the "Memoirs of the Geisha" star sits down to eat, her helper arrays the dress around her in swirls. "Match Point's" Emily Mortimer just hoists her black train around her knees as the night goes on to avoid getting tripped up by her clothes.</p> <p>By 11, "Brokeback" director Ang Lee is tired and ready for sleep. "But it's a high-class problem," he admits. Those statuettes are heavy.</p> <p>Times staff writer Rachel Abramowitz contributed to this report. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-66949376624430636802006-01-02T06:17:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:07:36.096-07:00Going to Extreme Measures<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES<br /></span></span> <p><span class="emphasized1">Monday January 02, 2006</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">COLUMN ONE</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">Going to Extreme Measures</span><br /><span class="deck1">* Even as digital countdowns and televised timers fill our waking hours, does anybody really know what time it is?</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>This story will take you approximately 11 minutes to finish. If you skip every other line, it will only take 5 1/2 .</p> <p>Once measured by the arc of the sun through the sky, by the changing of the seasons, life these days is measured by an increasingly complex and exacting system of timers.</p> <p>There it is, on the Caltrans signs dotting Southland freeways: "25 min to downtown LA." Walk signals count down until the light changes. In the digital sphere, time is sectioned into a series of laptop and cellphone battery meters and iPod song timers.</p> <p>Radio stations alert listeners to time intervals, a la "more Howard Stern in two minutes" or "30 minutes of uninterrupted music." Al Gore's new network, Current TV, displays a progress bar at the bottom of the screen indicating the amount of time left in each segment.</p> <p>On hold with the credit card company? The automated system informs you of your "estimated wait time." Soon you'll be able to track the specific moment of arrival of buses, trains and ferries, on your cellphone, via satellite.</p> <p>Time takes on a prescient flavor; it orients the present moment and also reaches out into the future, taking hold of what will be.</p> <p>The trend will balloon in coming years, experts say.</p> <p>"It seems kind of obsessive," says Thomas Goetz, deputy editor of Wired magazine. "There has long been a niche of people who want to know how many seconds a song is going to last or how long a file will take to download. But it's interesting now that it's kind of being catapulted into the public sphere, that our governments, even, are now heeding the same kind of restlessness."</p> <p>Proponents say the development inserts a modicum of sanity into a frazzled society. But critics claim that our focus on time as a commodity is the source of our frenzy rather than its salve, and that it leads to a kind of "time famine" and to all sorts of stress-related maladies.</p> <p>"This is a public health problem of extraordinary dimensions, similar to smoke in public places," says Peter C. Whybrow, director of UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and author of the book "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough." "We've become the victims of our own technology."</p> <p>We have an "old brain" inherited over many millenniums, Whybrow says, a brain that is conditioned to "measure time through the seasonal variation and the rituals that were tied to that, to the day-night cycle, all tied to the sun." By binding ourselves to a concept of time not anchored in nature, "we're perturbing the insides of our heads in a way that's quite disturbing and distressing."</p> <p>The concept of "time famine" is increasingly entering into public and academic discourse. Seattle-based Take Back Your Time, an education and public policy nonprofit, aims to "challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and our relationships, our communities and our environment."</p> <p>Timing devices aren't by definition a bad thing, says Take Back Your Time President John de Graaf, author of "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic." The problem is the extent to which we use them to schedule ourselves into a frenzy. "People are feeling increasingly like they've got to find a way to save every second," De Graaf says. "It used to be that when asked, 'How are you?' People would say, 'Fine.' Now they just say, 'Busy.' "</p> <p>The result, says De Graaf, is a society that prides itself on massive productivity and a luxurious standard of living without realizing our devil's bargain. "If you want to judge standard of living on who has the most toys or stuff, then we win. But if you look at health, mental illness, strength of families, divorce, general equality or levels of education, we aren't No. 1. We pay a huge price for the phenomenal amount of overwork we do."</p> <p>Huge price or no, some busy people say that an accelerated pace of life is a foregone conclusion, that we might as well harness timing technology to help us navigate.</p> <p>"This is just my reality," says Samantha Slaven, a fashion publicist in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. "I'm in a fast-paced business; I run my own company; I work in 15-minute increments all day long. I get impatient, and these devices just help you manage your expectations. My favorite is crossing the street in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city>, the signs that tell you how many seconds you have left until the light turns red. I'm so busy that the thrill of mystery just throws me off. I would like to know, for instance, approximately when my dog is going to have to go to the bathroom."</p> <p>Love the timed life or hate it, both sides agree: Timing ourselves is addictive. "The progress bar has become like the crack of Current TV," says David Neuman, the network's president of programming. "It's the single most complimented thing on the whole network. There's a suspense to watching that progress bar move. It's like those freeway signs; in a universe that's characterized by so much chaos and disorder, maybe these little things give us a sense of psychological control."</p> <p><b style="">You Have Approximately 7 Minutes of Reading Time Remaining<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>Controversy about time is as old as time-keeping itself, and a new furor seems to arise whenever time moves further from its natural moorings. Once time was simply the cycle of the sun and moon through the sky, the passage of seasons, the cropping up of wrinkles on skin. Then humans invented ways to quantify the pace of change, such as sundials and almanacs derived from natural cycles.</p> <p>Even the earliest mechanical clocks were set according to the sun. But in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> in the early 1800s, time began to move in fits and starts toward the disembodied breed we know today. And controversy bubbled forth.</p> <p>Take this tale of two clocks in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">New Haven</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Conn.</st1:state></st1:place>, in 1826, recounted by Michael O'Malley in "Keeping Watch: A History of American Time."</p> <p>The town's dual timepieces were constantly out of sync. One was the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Yale</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">College</st1:placetype></st1:place> clock; the other, a clock at the town hall. They would display the same time one moment and then fall out of sync with each other, forever engaged in a game of tag that left the townspeople befuddled and choosing sides.</p> <p>The Yale clock kept "apparent time" -- according to the sun's arc, like a sundial -- whereas the town hall clock offered "mean time," an averaging out of the sun's daily variation. A lively debate sprang up in the Connecticut Journal, the local newspaper, over which clock was right. "It is said that the clock gives mean time. But what is mean time?" wrote one reader in a letter to the editor. "Mean time is not true time, nor is true time mean time. A public clock, which tells the truth four times in a year, is something very much like a public nuisance."</p> <p>An anonymous reader disagreed, noting that the vast majority of watches and clocks tell mean time, so "surely the public at large ought not to have all their operations deranged, or their timepieces injured, by attempts to follow the variations of apparent time."</p> <p>The Journal doesn't indicate how this issue was resolved locally, but we know from the thrust of history that mean time roundly trumped apparent time.</p> <p>And time-keeping continued to evolve. In 1883, standard time was introduced by the railroads, breaking up the country into zones. In 1918, daylight saving was imposed, largely to conserve fuel during World War I -- but was repealed a year later. The people who most objected to daylight saving time, O'Malley notes, were those who lived at the boundaries of time zones, where daylight saving spelled an even greater distance between nature and the clock. (Daylight saving was governed by local jurisdictions until Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which standardized daylight saving times.)</p> <p>While factory hours and train schedules had once been adjusted to fit the light/dark pattern of each season, with daylight saving, time itself became adjustable.</p> <p>Slowly, a new conception of time as synonymous with the machine integrated itself into the American psyche. Early science-fiction movies halt time by showing a clock with frozen hands, indicating that when the physical clock stops, time stops, while the rest of nature and humanity continue unabated. Time is no longer that mysterious passageway we enter at birth and exit at death; it is a commodity, external to us, that we can control.</p> <p><b style="">You Have Approximately 4 Minutes of Reading Time Remaining<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p>Displaying traffic information on electronic signs along <st1:place st="on">Southern California</st1:place> freeways was a no-brainer, says California Department of Transportation spokeswoman Jeanne Bonfilio. A network of about 15,000 censors was already in place along urban highways, so all it took was some rejiggering of wires and circuits, and in early August, commuting here became significantly less ambiguous.</p> <p>Each of 14 signs displays the amount of time it will take to reach up to two destinations. Caltrans has plans to expand the program.</p> <p>"We feel that it's putting traveler information in the hands of the motorist," Bonfilio says. "It will make the freeway systems more efficient."</p> <p>But as with the two clocks in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">New Haven</st1:place></st1:city>, not everybody has embraced the new model. By late October, nearly 300 motorists had evaluated the signs via the Caltrans website: 42% were either "very or somewhat satisfied" -- and 52% were "somewhat or very dissatisfied."</p> <p>"I was headed to work and was able to estimate that I would be a little late," wrote one person. "I called ahead and informed my co-workers, since we had a meeting that morning. It's nice to have the information right on the spot!"</p> <p>Others disagreed. "Estimated time does not help because I am already on the road," and "What's the difference between 25 or 45 minutes? Are there any alternatives once you are at that point?" and "Too much information!"</p> <p>The Caltrans signs and other time-keeping devices are only the most rudimentary of an expanding array of products designed to impose data on the physical world, a snowballing trend that technologists call "augmented reality."</p> <p>Just like TiVo enables us to time-shift the way we view television, augmented reality devices change the way we interact with physical space. "We get these moments in real life, walking down the sidewalk, going to a movie, where you can actually pull out select data information that otherwise in an analog world wouldn't be available to you," said Goetz of Wired magazine. "You might have a [global positioning system] built into your pair of glasses, say, so it looks like you're just looking through glasses but you're actually getting a data feed. And there will be different levels of filtering that you can select."</p> <p>Augmented reality "is going to happen hugely," says Saul Griffith, a partner at Squid Labs in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Emeryville</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Calif.</st1:state></st1:place> "Especially now that a lot of electronic devices are going mobile, information can follow you around."</p> <p>Squid Labs is at work on a portable computer screen with a digital video camera on the reverse side. Hold it up to the world and it looks like a transparent pane of glass. But click on certain objects and view digital information transposed onto the world: the architectural plans of a standing building, say, or pipelines underneath the street. Solid surfaces become permeable; rules of physics no longer apply.</p> <p>As time-keeping meshes with gadgetry that blurs the boundary between the digital and physical worlds, people stand at the edge of a "techno-utopian nightmare," says UCLA professor Whybrow. "Most people don't look at what the world is about anymore. How many people -- even the people who go to the beach -- watch the sunset? The things that make us happy are actually tied to the types of behaviors that we've had for millions of years. Having all sorts of information doesn't make us any happier."</p> <p>"About 33% of the population say they feel anxious most of the time," Whybrow says. "This is driven by the fact that we've leapt the barriers of time and space. Light and dark don't mean anything anymore."</p> <p>Squid Lab's <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffith</st1:place></st1:city> contends that the difference between people who embrace augmented reality and those who abhor it is mostly generational. "Let's just say that for anyone under the age of 30, this isn't even a question to them. When I have children, they won't think it's a problem, and I'll be a grumpy old man saying I can't deal with it."</p> <p>But what of those moments of utter boredom, sitting around on a sluggish Sunday afternoon, when there are no stimuli except an air conditioner's whir or some distant drip-drip-drip -- and you actually forget about time? Creativity experts suggest that the timelessness of boredom is the font from which inspiration emerges, and various spiritual traditions seek to invoke just this timeless sense of being.</p> <p>"You like to have some moments where you can just take a breath," Goetz said. "But those kind of dead zones are being chipped away at, which makes me sad."</p> <p>On a practical level, however, even the folks most concerned about an overly timed life find that, short of dropping off the grid entirely, escape is a difficult thing. O'Malley, who wrote the book on the history of time, remembers a moment in high school: "I had finished an assignment, and I was sitting there for the bell to ring. I was watching the clock, and couldn't go anywhere, and I started thinking: What gives the clock its authority?"</p> <p>Since then, O'Malley has tried many strategies to extricate himself from time's grasp. "I didn't wear a watch. Then I carried a pocket watch, because it was more irritating to take out. But I find that I just can't live without it."</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-39820550930346678012005-12-25T20:45:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:07:58.741-07:00Faces to watch 2006 - Media<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday December 25, 2005</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">Faces to watch 2006</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">MEDIA</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony </p> <p>MACARENA HERNANDEZ</p> <p>Editorial page columnist</p> <p>You may recall Macarena Hernandez, 31, as the journalist who exposed former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair as a plagiarist. More recently, you may have heard Fox's Bill O'Reilly call for a boycott of the Dallas Morning News after Hernandez -- who this year became the first <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Latina</st1:place></st1:city> editorial page columnist for that paper -- suggested that O'Reilly uses illegal immigrants as scapegoats. What you probably don't know is that Hernandez grew up three miles north of the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Rio Grande</st1:place></st1:city>, laboring in the fields with her migrant worker parents, feeling the sting of racial and class division. "My father was a really proud man," she says. "Really handsome. Around his friends he was a towering figure, very generous. But every time I would see him in the fields, next to these farmers, watch him beg for work, I saw him shrink. It broke my heart to see him so humiliated." On her college paper Hernandez began to "tell the stories about people like me who, growing up, I felt were invisible," and that ambition remains. "I hate to label her as a <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Latina</st1:place></st1:city> voice," says Charles Whitaker, assistant professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. "But she's going to be an important voice on issues of race and class, speaking eloquently from a perspective that we don't often hear."</p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-45062515711794488802005-12-25T20:44:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:08:16.140-07:00Faces to watch 2006 - Media<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday December 25, 2005</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">Faces to watch 2006</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">MEDIA</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony </p> <p>ARASH MARKAZI</p> <p>Sports journalist</p> <p>Arash Markazi, 25, realized in high school that "at 5-foot-6 or -7, my dream of playing basketball in the NBA was probably not going to happen." Instead, he joined the school newspaper to cover the sports beat and hasn't stopped writing since. In college at USC he won nearly every student journalism award imaginable and since graduation has worn dual hats at Sports Illustrated, reporting for the magazine and penning a weekly column titled "The Hot Read" for SI.com.</p> <p>Markazi has published intimate and quirky portraits of Wayne Gretzky and Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo, and frequently jets around the country covering the full gambit of college sports (in a particularly entertaining column, Markazi joins USC football greats Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush in a Manhattan nightclub after the presentation of the Heisman Trophy). What you won't know from reading his stories is that Markazi has battled cancer twice, in college and then earlier this year, and that he continued to write columns from his <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> hospital bed while sports games blared from a nearby television set. "It was just like a big relief to know that I could continue to write, to cover sports," he says. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-9660172793684958722005-12-25T20:43:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:08:33.593-07:00Faces to watch 2006 - Broadcasting<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday December 25, 2005</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">BROADCASTING</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">Faces to watch 2006</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony</p> <p>YUNJI DE NIES</p> <p>TV reporter</p> <p>An education at Yale and the UC Berkeley School of Journalism plus a coveted internship at "Nightline" could hardly prepare Yunji de Nies, 26, for covering Hurricane Katrina. But she was one of only three reporters for WGNO-TV, a local <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:city> station, who opted to remain on the job once the storm hit.</p> <p>With water levels rising, De Nies and her crew abandoned their homes and camped out in neighboring <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Baton Rouge</st1:place></st1:city>, making forays into the devastation. She sweet-talked National Guardsmen into letting her pass, learned the back roads and, cameras rolling, conveyed firsthand the city's chaos, grief and rage. <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:city> is far from healed, and De Nies continues reporting on the reconstruction of levees, of lives.</p> <p>The WGNO headquarters is in shambles, so she and her colleagues work in double-wide trailers, broadcasting their evening newscast against a revolving backdrop of burnt-out buildings and washed-out streets. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-43856533302762444502005-12-18T20:42:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:08:51.640-07:00What's killing the messenger<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday December 18, 2005</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">2005: SHAKEN & STIRRED | CULTURE</span><b><br /><span class="deck1">THE PRESS</span><br /><span class="headline1">What's killing the messenger</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>IT'S a gloomy Christmastime for print journalism. There have always been doomsayers in this business -- we're a curmudgeonly breed -- but after a year of hard knocks and tough realizations, even happy-go-lucky newshounds are questioning their fate.</p> <p>"The sooner [2005] is over, the better," says Michael Massing, a Columbia Journalism Review contributor. "There have been so many negative developments, it's easy to say, 'Things can only get better.' But that's probably wishful thinking."</p> <p>In the last year, newspapers have:</p> <p>Lost readers. Industrywide weekday circulation dropped 2.6% in the six-month period ending in September, and many observers expect a continuing decline. Even more startling is the fact, supported by demographic studies, that few young people read the paper. They'd rather get their news fix from inkless, un-foldable computer screens. What nerve.</p> <p>Lost advertisers, mostly tied to declining circulation numbers. Classified advertising revenue -- once a cash cow -- has also plummeted, in part because of websites like Craigslist.com offering ad space for free.</p> <p>Trimmed staffs. Buyouts and layoffs have become common. The Los Angeles Times has cut 85 editorial positions; among other papers, the Boston Globe was planning to cut 35 and the New York Times 45. Hundreds of newspaper jobs outside of newsrooms have also been lost. All of which journalists tend to find abominable, given that most papers remain highly profitable.</p> <p>Endured the Judy Miller brouhaha. The ex-New York Times reporter spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal a White House source -- and then flip-flopped after that source, I. Lewis Libby, sent her a letter. Critics say that Miller's brand of "trust-me journalism," which relies heavily on anonymous sourcing, spawns uncomfortably close relationships between journalists and sources, and that it was this kind of reporting that led Miller and journalism at large to accept the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.</p> <p>Still, not everybody is resigned to the craft's demise. "Professional news-gathering organizations will survive and prosper in the future," says Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">New York</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>. "But not without changing a lot -- more than many of them are prepared for." </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-59382634767190522532005-12-18T20:41:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:09:13.048-07:00Taking Wraps Off Good Side of Compton<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Sunday December 18, 2005</span></p> <p><span class="headline1">Taking Wraps Off Good Side of <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Compton</st1:city></st1:place></span><b><br /><span class="deck1">* A toy giveaway brings cheer to 3,000 kids. Nearby, 220 guns are turned in to deputies.</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>Thousands of kids stood in line Saturday morning and afternoon outside <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Compton</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">City Hall</st1:placetype></st1:place>, tugging on their parents and daydreaming of presents.</p> <p>"I want clothes for winter and summer," said Terrel Hyder, 12. "And I want a job and a drum."</p> <p>His mother, Valerie Singleton, smiled.</p> <p>"We don't have any money, nothing," said the in-home caregiver, who recently was laid off. "Without this, my four kids wouldn't get anything."</p> <p>Like Singleton, many of the parents who gathered at this third annual Winter Wonderland Giveaway, organized by Councilwoman Barbara Calhoun and sponsored by the city, expressed relief that in this time of giving, their kids would feel included.</p> <p>"I used to buy presents in September," said Renee Siguas, standing alongside two of her four children. "But I was laid off from Vons, and now I have to spend all my money on groceries. My daughter Rosa wants a flying Barbie."</p> <p>Throughout the day, about 5,000 toys donated by retailers and local businesses were distributed among nearly 3,000 kids, said Councilman Isadore Hall. Only <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Compton</st1:place></st1:city> residents ages 16 or younger were eligible for the giveaway.</p> <p>After waiting in line for an hour or more, each family was welcomed into the foyer of the converted City Council chambers, where a jolly volunteer led them in singing Christmas carols of their choosing.</p> <p>Few had time to finish their songs, however. Soon they were rushed through a door into the inner sanctum, a room brimming with punching bags, dolls, videogames, bicycles and unopened boxes, and manned by dozens of harried volunteers.</p> <p>Somebody would yell out a kid's age and gender -- "Boy! 12!" -- and in seconds a volunteer would thrust two age-specific presents into the hands of each wide-eyed child. The exit was clogged by gleeful children, hugging toys to their chests, too stunned by their good fortune to move their feet.</p> <p>It's this image of community and generosity that should represent <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Compton</st1:place></st1:city>, Hall said. <st1:city st="on">Compton</st1:city>, which has the highest homicide rate in <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Los Angeles</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">County</st1:placetype></st1:place>, "gets a bad rap because of all the shootings," he said. "But we're working very hard to try and turn that around."</p> <p>Indeed, at a shopping center just blocks from City Hall, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was conducting another sort of giveaway, dubbed "Gifts for Guns." Anyone who showed up with a gun was allowed to trade it in for a $100 gift certificate to Ralphs, Toys-R-Us or <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Circuit</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">City</st1:placetype></st1:place> with no questions asked.</p> <p>At the end of the day the department had collected more than 220 guns, said Sheriff's Capt. Eric K. Hamilton.</p> <p>"We did exceptionally well," he said. "We had so many people lining up that we ran out of certificates, so we had to ask City Hall and the Sheriff's Department to provide extra funds. People turned in all sorts of guns: assault weapons, Uzis, shotguns. Each gun taken off the street can mean the difference between life and death."</p> <p>Back at Winter Wonderland, Juan Caldera, 7, waited in tense anticipation. He was excited about presents, sure, but even more exciting was the prospect of playing in the snow that organizers had spread on a cordoned-off portion of <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Compton Avenue</st1:address></st1:street>.</p> <p>"I've never touched snow before," Juan said, lugging a new football and videogamewhile leading his mother, brother and two sisters in the direction of flying snowballs.</p> <p>When he finally touched snow, he leapt back for a moment, and ran to the fence to tell his mother, "It's cold!" Then he galloped off to pelt his oldest sister. </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2248301845539926384.post-84809406684917733602005-12-09T20:41:00.000-08:002007-04-19T07:09:32.144-07:00A reluctant revisiting of 'Brokeback'<p><span class="emphasized1"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">LOS ANGELES TIMES</span></span><br /></span></p><p><span class="emphasized1">Friday December 09, 2005</span></p> <p><span class="deck1">Movies</span><b><br /><span class="headline1">A reluctant revisiting of 'Brokeback'</span></b></p> <p class="author">By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer </p> <p>E. Annie Proulx is sipping coffee at the Four Seasons in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Beverly Hills</st1:place></st1:city> and talking about literary ghosts.</p> <p>She has struggled for years to get Ennis and Jack out of her head. These are the two leads who fall in love in Proulx's short story "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>," male ranch hands whose secrecy and self-denial is bleak and heartbreaking and -- to anyone who has experienced homophobia and its ramifications -- disquietingly familiar.</p> <p>Proulx, 70, in town recently for the premiere of Ang Lee's film adaptation of "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>," says that while she was "blown away" by the movie, she doesn't welcome the return of Ennis and Jack to the forefront of her consciousness.</p> <p>"Put yourself in my place," the author says. "An elderly, white, straight female, trying to write about two 19-year-old gay kids in 1963. What kind of imaginative leap do you think was necessary? Profound, extreme, large. To get into those guys' heads and actions took a lot of 16-hour days, and never thinking about anything else and living a zombie life. That's what I had to do. I really needed an exorcist to get rid of those characters. And they roared back when I saw the film."</p> <p>The story bubbled forth from "years and years of observation and subliminal taking in of rural homophobia," says Proulx, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Shipping News," was also adapted for the screen. She remembers the moment when those years of observed hatred began taking form. It was 1995 and Proulx, who lives in <st1:state st="on">Wyoming</st1:state>, visited a crowded bar near the <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montana</st1:place></st1:state> border. The place was rowdy and packed with attractive women, everyone was drinking, and the energy was high.</p> <p>"There was the smell of sex in the air," Proulx remembers. "But here was this old shabby-looking guy.... watching the guys playing pool. He had a raw hunger in his eyes that made me wonder if he were country gay. I wondered, 'What would've he been like when he was younger?' Then he disappeared, and in his place appeared Ennis. And then Jack. You can't have Ennis without Jack."</p> <p>Proulx didn't think her story would ever be published. The material felt too risky; Ennis and Jack express their love with as much physical gusto as any heterosexual couple, and it happens in full view of the reader, without any nervous obfuscation. The backdrop is that wide expansive West that bore forth John Wayne and the Marlboro Man -- but here the edges of the mythos fray, and the world becomes chilly and oppressive.</p> <p>The story was published in the New Yorker magazine in 1997, and screenwriter Diana Ossana read it one night when she couldn't sleep. "It just floored me," Ossana says, speaking after a screening of "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>." She ran downstairs to show it to her writing partner, who happens to be Larry McMurtry ("The Last Picture Show," "Lonesome Dove") and suggested they turn it into a screenplay. "I've known [McMurtry] for 20 years," Ossana said, "and this is the first time I've heard him say yes to something I suggested, without an argument."</p> <p>The following day the screenwriters sent a letter to Proulx, asking to option the story with their own money. Proulx agreed.</p> <p>"She trusted us more than she should have," McMurtry says. "She trusted us not to make the story unless we could make it right."</p> <p>Proulx, for her part, found their enthusiasm "interesting" but thought to herself, "this is not going to happen." She had never considered "Brokeback Mountain" to be a cinematic possibility -- it pushes too many buttons, challenges too many norms. "Never, never, never, never, no," she says, at the Four Seasons, shaking her head. "Uh-uh." Then, three months later, Ossana and McMurtry sent her their screenplay, a spare and unfailingly faithful rendition of the story. The divergences grow organically from what's on the page, and the rest is as Proulx wrote it, nearly verbatim.</p> <p>"I thought it was good," Proulx says. She had a few quibbles, mostly about language -- some of it seemed to her more <st1:state st="on">Texas</st1:state> than <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Wyoming</st1:place></st1:state> -- but those were worked out in the next and final draft. It made sense for the screenplay to stick closely to its source, Proulx says with her typical candor. "This was a strong story. It had a very solid framework, it had terse, good language. It would've been hard to change that without maiming everything."</p> <p>The rest happened slowly, and Proulx had little involvement, retreating into <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Wyoming</st1:place></st1:state> and her writing, trying as best she could to banish Ennis and Jack from her mind. Lee initially turned down the project to direct "The Hulk," then signed on again afterward. Casting the two leading roles was particularly difficult, Ossana says.</p> <p>The movie, like the story, does not pull any punches. The sex is just as graphic, the critique of rural homophobia just as angst-ridden and raw. Proulx doesn't pretend to know how the movie will play with audiences, but she likes that her message will be broadcast through such a popular medium.</p> <p>"There are a lot of people who see movies who do not read," Proulx says. "It used to be that writing and architecture were the main carriers, permanent carriers, of culture and civilization. Now you have to add film to that list, because film is the vehicle of cultural transmission of our time. It would be insane to say otherwise, to say that the book is still the thing. It isn't."</p> <p>Perhaps true. But for many of Proulx's most ardent fans, the story is the thing. Take Michael Silverblatt, the radio host of KCRW's "Bookworm" program, who says that this kind of literary genius is "uncapturable" by film. Silverblatt remembers reading "<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brokeback</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>" in the New Yorker and the sensation of being surprised in stages: "Here's a story that was taking place outdoors, which is unusual enough in the New Yorker. And it's a western, another rarity. And creeping up on me is the feeling: These cowboys are falling in love!" (The story was recently posted on the New Yorker website at www.newyorker.com/archive/content/articles/051212fr_archive01.)</p> <p>Since Proulx was in town for the film's premier, Silverblatt arranged to moderate a question-and-answer session with Proulx after a screening of the film at the ArcLight. "The story let me cry and the movie made me cry," he told the audience. "I feel there is a sadness ladled on in the movie."</p> <p>Proulx replied: "I think it's good for us to feel the emotion that the film engenders, whatever its source."</p> <p>"The story began in 1963," said a woman from the audience. "Do you think things are better now, in terms of attitudes?"</p> <p>"I wish," Proulx said. "But one year after the story was published, Matthew Shepard was killed less than 30 miles from where I live. I was called to be on the jury for one of the killers."</p> <p>The tough-guy Western mythology undergirding our national identity should be questioned, Proulx says, and she hopes that her story -- and now this movie -- will spur that kind of dialogue.</p> <p>Which already seems to be happening. Bill Handley, an associate professor of English at USC, was in the audience at ArcLight, and plans to put together a book of essays on the story and the film.</p> <p>"It's a groundbreaking story, worthy of close attention," he says. "The essays will focus on a whole range of questions on sexuality, landscape, authenticity, and labor in the West. Who knows what the response to this film is going to be, and what that will tell us about the culture." </p>Steven Barrie-Anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920143284546303054noreply@blogger.com0