Baltimore

No, I've never watched The Wire and your references will be lost on me.*  Yes, I'll get to it.

I am headed for Baltimore from Tuesday til Thursday.  I haven't been there since a day trip from DC when I was a kid where I saw an 18th Century Man-o-War and the rest of my family got lost in the projects looking for Edgar Allen Poe's house.

In honor of the trip, here's a cut from the super-depressing Lyle Lovett album, Joshua Judges Ruth



I'm going for work, not pleasure.  But I hope to have fun working, which, you know, weirder things have happened.


*The only characters' names I know from The Wire are Omar and Bubbles and I know what happens to Omar because the internet is full of people who hate narrative payoff, I guess.

Conversely, My Favorite Things About SXSW

So what DO I like about SXSW?

Well, people come to town

A)  The Annual Visit and report from NathanC

Nathan was two years ahead of me in high school, and I think I only met him after high school.  He wound up at Trinity University with my brother, so in the summers, we'd all hang out (and they were in the band named for the seminal comic, Stray Toasters, back in the day).

Nathan was also good friends with Jamie in college (she went to Trinity), and so even after he graduated, we all got to hang out as he found work in San Antonio.  Today, Nathan is a big-wig at Texas Public Radio in San Antonio.  He carries multiple duties, and has recently transitioned from programming and station management at the classical station to marketing and web presence for TPR.  You'll see me link to him a lot as he's also the resident film guy at Texas Public Radio, and hosts the summer series with TPR.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Dietrich

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Garbo

SXSW is here again - and, no, I am not going, again

I've never paid for a SXSW badge.  The only SXSW badges I ever got were through work for (a) the relatively new SXSW Interactive around 2000 and (b) about three years ago I returned to Interactive.  I've never paid for film or for music.

I've never been to a SXSW screening of a movie, and the few times I saw music at SXSW, it was near accidental and incidental.  It's probably safe to say that I'm not particularly interested in the scene, and the idea of dealing with the crowds, the lines, and sheer volume of people at all of these events has been off-putting enough that whatever appeal there might be to seeing bands or movies is significantly reduced when I weigh the cost factor of dealing with the scene around SXSW.

For those of us in town, SXSW is an annual period where we sort of just avoid downtown between certain blocks and as locals who feel the presence of the tide, we know to brace ourselves for:

• The bizarre take on Austin that journalists mistake for Austin but which is really just the bubble of SXSW (East Sixth is not "no-man's land".  It's a few hundred feet from regular Sixth.  By the way, no one really goes to Sixth anymore but tourists)
• The number of people who, based on the drunken revelry to be had during SXSW, associate those good times with a need to move here - and they do
• The handwaving that SXSW isn't, basically, spring break for three industries and that this is somehow work 
• People who are the True Believers in SXSW seeming shocked and indignant (and often demanding answers) when you say you don't want to spend the money or time

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Liz

Your Questions Answered: The Full-Text and less pithy response to Question #4

Jim D asked:

4. Can we trust those youths who have no meaningful memories of the 1990's?

My original answer was:

I tend to think not. I drive past a high school every day on my way to work, and the kids are starting to dress like they're in a Young MC video or maybe big Madonna fans. I don't think they know that's what they're emulating. The undergrads I see are basically okay, but they're easily distracted and swayed by anything from donuts to sparkley lights. Basically, I don't trust anyone who still has dreams or aspirations.

I work on a college campus.  Almost every day I am surrounded by bright young people who were born between 1990 and 1995.  Many are lovely people, and if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't work there.  But I also know that this is the first time they've stepped away from the helicopter-parenting, special-snowflake environs in which they were raised.  One bubble into another.

I don't know if I'd anchor my answer necessarily to the 1990's, other than that the 1990's were the era in which I passed from teenager to college graduate, and the cultural and historical events of the era no doubt had a huge hand in how I think of things today.

Do I trust a 19 year old telling me about hip new bands?  No, I do not.  I've had almost twenty years to outgrow the bands I liked, understand their influences later on - and stop believing that they sprung from the earth fully formed as geniuses, the like of which the world had never seen before.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Ronnie Spector

We Finally Watch: On the Waterfront (1954)

Somehow, and I don't really have a good explanation for this considering I have seen Manos: The Hands of Fate at least four times in its entirety (including once in the theater), I had never seen the 1954 Marlon Brando starring classic On the Waterfront.

This is young, virile Brando, who was full of ideas about acting that would change the artform forever and who made the ladies swoon.  As much as I like old, weird Brando, you need context, and between this movie and A Streetcar Named Desire,  it's not hard to see why the name still gets tossed around.

And, before we begin, was Karl Malden just born aged 42?  Because, seriously, Karl Malden.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Louise Brooks