I watch a lot of television. I came to this highly unexpected place through my own choices, somehow, from the single young flight attendant who actively followed the arts and cultural scenes of San Francisco and New York and kept her parents' cast off television in her bedroom closet, pulling it out mostly for Big Games or election debates and returns. The transition was complicated but certainly complete. I went from philosophically opposed to fully engaged somewhere between 30 and 50. We've grown up together, television and I, from a few black and white choices back in test pattern days that I'm old enough to remember, to thousands of choices, DVR programming from my iPhone, picture in a picture if the need arises (usually for sports or politics), always tweeting while watching, an interactive television experience.

Our children, and presumably our grandchildren, help keep us young, and most of us will overcome any obstacles to remain in communication with them, so even the most hesitant, resistant and downright unwilling among us will adopt our children's media if that's what we have to do to stay connected. But that's not me. I was an early adopter. After living my life deeply immersed in one form of marketing or another (the daughter, step-daughter, neice, sister and wife of marketing executives on both the agency and client sides), I was blessed to be part of a team that pioneered using offline promotion to drive online interaction. In fact, we were the first people on the planet to do so, and helped the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office define how interactivity is novel and non-obvious, but I digress. I was regularly communicating with my kids via AIM in the late '90s, early '00s, and by '99 had been cyberquatted, in itself a new media lesson. Since then I've intentionally grabbed each new kind of interactivity as it came along, determined not to be left behind (again), equating it with professional vulnerability, viscerally excited about the new potential in each and every one.

So now, television is the old guy (we like to call ourselves middle aged, but is that really what it is?) and it's got this hot young sweetheart, the internet. Suddenly, I don't just watch television, but I watch it with a crowd of others assembled on one social media platform or another. Lets face it, we seniors don't get out like we used to. I work 45 hours a week in a complicated, hectic, adrenaline-drenched environment, and I have Crohn's, so watching television flat on my back with my laptop is about all I have energy for at the end of my work day. My kids are grown and have homes of their own. I'm tired, but also not as busy as I was used to being. I've always been very social, so I welcome the chance to talk about what I'm watching, even if it's just 140 characters at a time on Twitter or with folks I know on Facebook.

When I hear my contemporaries dismiss social media, primarily as a "time suck", I hear an old fogy shouting "Get off of my lawn!" Refusing to learn for no good reason smells of fear, smells of failure to grow, and rationalizing it as somehow right to think that way smells of self-deception. Twitter gets called "narcissistic" more than other platforms, and it's a common whine, "Why would anyone want to know what you're doing/eating/seeing/etc.?" Except that's the point when "etc." includes thinking and you use Twitter not just to follow people but to follow ideas, subjects of interest, current events, other media, even television. In most areas of our lives we are bound with others by the things we have in common: our geography, our social stations, our ages, our activities or those of our children; but in each of these there are clear signals that create preconception: how we look, where we live, what we wear, what we drive. It's different when we interact on social media because there we choose connections largely, if not entirely, because of shared ideas; and on Twitter, unlike some other fora, we can follow the ideas first as a path to find the people with whom we wish to connect.

This started as a post about the awkwardness of the interaction between television and social media, at least from television's perspective, but has veered into one about how television is enhanced, made fresh, by the internet. Maybe it won't be long before interactive television becomes routine, but, at least for now, it remains a one-way medium. We watch it, but it doesn't really know we were there. However, in tandem with social media it becomes a part of a greater interactive whole, and life becomes less lonely when we watch while "talking" by typing about what we're watching on Twitter and Facebook with others who are watching it too.

As I was editing this post, I watched Leslie Stahl's 60 Minutes interview with Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, while following all tweets that contained the word "facebook" on Twitter. I also DVRed it because the Falcons game ran late and I didn't want to miss it, so I have it stored in my TV's memory. The segment closed with the announcement of yet another Facebook redesign deployment tomorrow and invited viewers to visit the show's website for a tour of the new interface. Gotta run (in this beautiful interactive circle) y'all. It's a great time to be alive.

Television viewers everywhere are the losers since AMC foolishly canceled the deliciously deep spy thriller Rubicon after thirteen gorgeous episodes. It was the best thing I've seen on television in a long time, the show I'd think about for days and wanted to watch again and again. As Maureen Ryan wrote, "This was a thoughtfully made, beautifully filmed story with an atmosphere, look and vibe all its own." It follows an interesting group of overly intelligent personalities who work together at a high security clearance, Three Days of the Condor style think tank, the American Policy Institute (API), as they track terrorists and fend off foreign attacks amidst what appear to be deeply embedded domestic conspiracies. The story consists of an intriguing maze of messages hidden in crossword puzzles, codes, white papers, four leaf clovers, along with healthy doses of loneliness, longing, loss and addiction, and I couldn't help but feel very invested in the characters. Well written and visually gorgeous, it's worth watching just for the beautifully framed architectural shots of New York if not for the stellar performances by James Badge Dale, Michael Christofer, Arliss Howard, Dallas Roberts & Lauren Hodges (and one of them blows the boundaries off of gay stereotypes on television).

I promoted the show on my little tiny corners of Facebook and on Twitter, where I also often interacted with other fans, a handful of critics and the folks who were tweeting as the show's characters, most of whom don't look like they're planning to stop tweeting just because no network is currently planning any more episodes of Rubicon. It seems our friends from API, as seen on Twitter, were in Juarez, Mexico at an attendance-mandated company "retreat" when the news broke that they'd been canceled. From their perspective, they've been locked out of API, and they're openly planning their next moves. Note to networks launching new television shows: Go ahead and sign up all your characters' Twitter identities before the show starts, because if you don't somebody else will. Oh, who are we kidding? Somebody else will even if you do, but get your voices out there first to stake your show's territory on Twitter or you'll have zero control over where it goes. So, now that we know that AMC wasn't really so serious about its proclaimed philosophy Story Matters Here (more like Zombies Happen Here), it looks like this story is in the hands of strangers, a multi-user, interactive live story-telling online.

Television viewers everywhere, go now, find the thirteen episodes that are Rubicon (Amazon iTunes) and watch them, or gift them to a friend who likes well-written television drama. Then follow @TruxtonSpangler @TheWillTravers @TanyaMacGaffin @Grant_Test_API @MilesFiedler @KaleIngram @KatherineRhumor @JuliaHarwell and their various nemeses because their story is living on Twitter. It's in their hands now and they are making it up as they go along. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?

Thanks so much for stopping by. Peace, out, y'all.

Warning: This post may contain vague spoilers, but does not contain concrete ones. I don't come out and say it, but it's impossible to write about Catfish without at least alluding to the story's secret. Read at your risk. Even better, go see the movie, then come back and read.

I lucked into a special showing of Catfish, with co-director Henry Joost in attendance, making it two movies in a row I've seen that were followed by Q&A with the film's maker, since the last movie I went to was The Big Uneasy in New Orleans on 8/30 with Harry Shearer. I intentionally didn't read much about Catfish, because I didn't want to know the secret, and I went early in its release, the second day, because I knew I couldn't stop myself from finding out for long. I also wanted to see "Catfish" before seeing The Social Network, wanting to see the story built on Facebook before seeing the story of how Facebook was built. It was an afternoon showing on a sunny Saturday, so the crowd was small, and I sat down front and right, so it just happened that Joost was five or six feet from me when answering questions. Even better, he spent time in the lobby signing autographs and talking to folks after the show, and really seemed to be a great guy. Pictured with me at right, he looks remarkably like The Youngest (much less so IRL).

The film follows Nev (rhymes with Steve) Schulman, a photographer and the brother of Joost's business partner, Ariel, with whom he runs a film production company in New York City. The three shared an office space. In this highly recommended recent piece, Joost describes it simply: 

Our threshold for considering something interesting enough to film is very, very low.... When Nev started to correspond with an 8-year-old kid who reached out to him on the internet, Ariel pulled out his camera instinctively.... We film ourselves all the time.

Their resulting work follows Nev's evolving relationship with that kid and her family, immediate and extended. The virally popular trailer calls what happens when they head out on a road trip to meet these people "shattering", but I don't agree and think that's even misleading. I found the surprise liberating and sweet, maybe even the opposite of the scary it's been depicted. It's more like discovering Picasso's "lie that tells the truth," defining art and the creative spirit, even if some of that spirit, that art, is accidental, even if someone could get hurt. I was wondering if it was true, and some in the media have suggested it's a faux documentary, a story built to look like the truth, a device. "Is it true?" was one of the first questions asked of Joost during the Q & A that followed the film, and Joost didn't just answer, "Yes." Much, if not most, of the discussion that followed was less about the movie and more about the experience that these young men shared, more importantly, the remarkable people they met. They saw something unfolding in front of them and documented it without knowing where it would go, almost stumbling into a deeply moving story and one that also speaks to a core value of social media: its ability to relieve the loneliness and isolation that so often burden ordinary people, perhaps especially those overwhelmed by loss, difficulty, routine, emptiness, pain, its ability to help us hold onto "fragments of things I used to be, wanted to be, never could be." BTDT.

Ultimately, the film's creators find the eruptive, disruptive, irrepressible nature of the artistic soul, affirming the notion that the thing you can't not do, that thing that comes out anyway, even when you or the circumstances of your life try to keep it in, will find a way even if it's sideways, even when our burdens bend us, bend it. These young men, perhaps overly eager, some have suggested self-absorbed, turned out to be as gentle and generous souls as the ones they discovered. Instead of judging, they embraced. "Catfish" isn't scary or shattering; it's tender and enlightening. As Joost put it, "The biggest surprise in living the experience and making the film was that we didn't find a villain on the other side of that door." I'm so glad I saw "Catfish" and got the chance to talk with Henry Joost. It's one of those movies you keep thinking about long after it's over. If it's not playing where you are, click here and request the movie in your area.

The current crop of documentaries really is seriously enticing. I'd also like to see "Waiting for Superman" and "I'm Still Here". I loved "Catfish" but warn you not to expect some huge stunner of a reveal, because it's a more ordinary but elegant story they unfold. Next weekend I'm going to go for the big studio fiction based on real life, the movie about Facebook, "The Social Network". I'll try not to expect Aaron Sorkin to be there.

The Museum

My recent trip to New Orleans for Rising Tide 5 and observances of the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall and the flood that followed in New Orleans started with a an event at the Louisiana State Museum, Katrina 5.0: A Symposium on Technology and Blogging. I commend the museum for their choice of subject and hope they'll continue the discussion of Social Media in Disaster, because there isn't a community in this country for which this has been more important than SE Louisiana. In the wake of the hurricane in Mississippi, the flood in New Orleans and the diaspora that followed these events, for the first time in this country, citizen-generated online content distributed vital information, became emergency communication used to look for the lost, locate the safe and to broadcast, in the truest sense of the word, real-time vital information. Social Media, including Craig's List, blogs and online message boards, became the means through which dispersed communities re-formed their existing connections and established new ones, based on their ongoing shared experience. This was the environment in which first the NOLA Bloggers and then Rising Tide organized.

Troy Gilbert, @gulfsails, was on the Symposium panel to discuss his live blogging of the immediate aftermath of Katrina in River Ridge and the flood in Lakeview, which he did initially by texting to post on Blogger and later charging his laptop via a generator and finding a live hard phone line so he could access the internet with a laptop and a dial-up connection. This information led to a lively discussion on the particular value of text messaging (and dial-up) in an emergency, followed by a discussion of the remarkable way in which Twitter was used by New Orleanians in the Gustav evacuation. Because Twitter can be accessed for both sending and receiving tweets using text messages on the most ordinary cell phones, and because it's possible to follow tagged subjects (#gustav #nexthurricane) in addition to people (@bestfriend) on Twitter, a group of technologically inclined New Orleanians and their extended digital support system saw Twitter's potential as an emergency management tool and intentionally adopted the platform, set themselves up as a group, knowing that it would be useful in an evacuation, given what they'd learned in numerous evacuations, including recent memories of the extended one that followed Katrina.

Text messages are tiny packets of data, that, once sent, hang in the ether until they manage to get through, able to do so, eventually, even when cell towers are struggling with power problems and whole area codes appear to be down. By the time Gustav made his landfall, there was a very developed active network of NOLA tweeters. Evacuees were reporting traffic conditions as well as fuel, supplies and accommodations availability on the road. Their friends in other locales were tweeting to them updates on the storm and related news, while folks who chose to remain in New Orleans were tweeting conditions there, even up to, on days two and three and four, going house to house looking for porch lights intentionally left on for just this purpose and informing their friends, via Twitter, when their electricity came back on, all reporting from the evacuation or the storm, vital information, 140 characters at a time. Suddenly, Twitter wasn't just a game, or a fun thing to do, not just a clever marketing channel or a silly time suck, but an excellent emergency management tool, that if deployed by responders could function something like interoperability lite.

It's important that we talk about it, write about it and share ideas, because we're all just learning how to do this and there's value in shared knowledge. Kudos to the Louisiana State Museum for furthering the discussion, for spreading the word. I was very glad to get down there for it, and I look forward to the museum's upcoming exhibit: Living with Hurricanes, Katrina and Beyond opening 10/26/10.

The Message

So there they were in the summer of 2006, these newly-forming NOLA Bloggers, almost a year into the internet explosion that erupted from the diaspora, already instinctively trying to correct the erroneous terminology of Hurricane Katrina, the Natural Disaster that struck MS vs. The Flood, the Infrastructure (or Engineering) Failure that followed in New Orleans, erroneous terminology that was taking hold in the national narrative, when Scout Prime, then blogging at First Draft, suggested to Oyster of Your Right Hand Thief, that there could be a conference. Her suggestion resulted in this post, which resulted Rising Tide 1, which led to Rising Tide 5, this year, that Rising Tide webmaster, Lance Vargas, described in Fear and Loathing at Rising Tide 5, as "the largest concentration of myth dispellers in any one place that weekend." Myth dispellers, bloggers and their readers, tweeters or just supportive interested parties, gathering with experts brought in to help find the truth buried in all the noise, gathering to ask questions that help define the message that they would in turn broadcast, if not pioneering new media advocacy, certainly trying to perfect having fun trying.

It's a mission based on the notions that the words matter and that corporately funded media can't be trusted to get it right, that they're compromised by obligations to sponsors on one side and ratings on the other, thus inclined to deliver a pre-packaged PR story to suit their advertisers that also manages to pander to their audience's preferences, and that this infects all kinds of officials, public and private, so much so that a president who must know better still suggests that the flood in New Orleans was a natural disaster and limits declaration of the man-made failures to the response, or lack thereof, still making no mention of a catastrophic infrastructure failure. Maybe that's just too scary. Terrorists really are superfluous when we have all these hidden time bombs in our infrastructure.

So, it's been a desire shared by many to at least try to correct the message, to try to find and further the truth rather than the neatly packaged stories we're given by a for-profit media, that started Rising Tide and fuels its growth, a desire to gather and look for the truth that will help define the message, an evolving mission to change the words, and not just about the flood, because these same mistakes get made over and over again, most notably, recently, with the oil spill, and will be the same with the oil spill as long as we keep calling it the oil spill. Spill is something one does with their coffee. I'll even go so far as to accept that spill is something that happens when an oil-carrying tanker loses its load, but BP and Transocean and Halliburton and their sub-contractors and all the parts of the U.S. government that participated in their oversight, primarily the MMS and Congress, in the process of trying to take something that probably oughtn't belong to them in the first place out of the earth, broke the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, opened a gash through which the contents of the earth gushed out, and they were unable to stop it because they hadn't bothered, in their headlong rush to get the prize out of the earth, to prepare for the possibility that something could go wrong, hadn't bothered to have a real plan in place in case they, well, broke the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Safety First was performance art used to cover up just another greed-corrupted, profit-driven culture. When they did break the earth, they lied about it, like a naughty child covering up the mess they'd made, hoping Mommy wouldn't see it. When that didn't work, they threw poison on it, a poison with only one purpose: to make the oil less visible. They didn't care that the poison, Corexit, was worse for all the things that live in (around?) the Gulf of Mexico than was the oil, that it would make it harder to find the oil, so it would make it harder to remove the oil, and also that it would infect the food chain from the bottom up, that there was no science to tell them exactly how this would manifest, whether it could go all the way from killing of species of marine life to creating dangerous seafood. No one knows, but BP didn't care. Hiding their mess was the only thing they cared about. But I digress, sort of.

Profit-driven cultures frequently evolve this way, with appearances trumping reality, and finding a way to tell your immediate superior what they want to hear rather than the truth becomes a necessary tactic for advancement, since how it looks is way more important than how it really is, and the words, the spin, and the shiny tale told seems more real than the ugly, broken, failing true story that lies beneath. Whether it's levees built on goo, or an overly gaseous well, or a crumbling system of pipes carrying explosive natural gas through residential neighborhoods, the current corporate/government/big media culture is that it's best not to talk about what's going wrong if you want to keep your job. Nobody cares about what they can't see.

So we all just do what we can, because we can, because the words matter and we can say that loudly, and it's pretty glorious that others before us fought all these years in this country to protect our rights to say what we're thinking publicly, the way that other Americans have, all the way back to Thomas Paine, except now, our little homemade pamphlets are, if ephemeral, wildly distributable to a potentially huge audience, able sometimes to tap into a public energy that can sweep a topic up into the larger consciousness, making it possible, with a few bytes posted online and oft repeated, to influence what happens next, to change the words, which brings me to The Movie.

The Movie

On Monday, August 30th, still in New Orleans, I went to see Harry Shearer's documentary film about the true causes of the flood versus the myths built into the most widely accepted stories, The Big Uneasy, at the Prytania Theater with @VirgoTex and @RacyMind. We found the aforementioned Oyster there and attended one of the shows after which Shearer spoke briefly and took questions. I liked the movie, although I am not its intended audience but rather its echo chamber. There wasn't much I learned, as I've spent the last five years kind of studying this, but it was interestingly presented and it's a movie that needs to be seen and talked about and quoted, all as part of this same mission, this message, this perhaps stupidly old-fashioned idea that truth matters, that knowing what really happened matters, that making sure it or something like it doesn't happen again or somewhere else matters.

The movie was initially scheduled to play one night only on 8/30 in theaters across the nation, and the DVD can't be sold until ninety days after the theatrical release, but Shearer has promoted it fiercely and the film's gotten some legs, so there've been some additional screenings scheduled and extended clips posted online. He does a good job of explaining the science of what happened, including perhaps the best graphic of the time line of the levee failures that I've seen. If I can find that clip online, I'll post a link as an update. John Goodman's "Ask A New Orleanian" segments are nice comic relief that also yield valuable information, and the film's pace was comfortable even on a belly full of Franky & Johnny's fried catfish and a couple of beers.

During the Q & A that followed, when asked how he funded the production, Shearer said, "I like to think that this is Rupert Murdoch's money that paid for this; I just acted as a conduit." The audience laughed at his reference to his work on The Simpsons for Fox, and he later added that he made the movie because what we call the mainstream media failed to report truthfully, "Why else would a schmuck from Spinal Tap and The Simpsons have to do this if they'd done their jobs?"

Perhaps most interesting in all of the post-release stories is one Shearer told that night that's since taken on some life of its own via the internet, about his attempts to purchase underwriting on NPR, which he did when he realized that neither Morning Edition nor All Things Considered would be covering the release of his film. What followed is not something one would've expected from NPR. Here's how Shearer described it:

NPR's legal department ruled that these words were not acceptable in the announcement: "documentary about why New Orleans flooded", that the only words that would work for them were "documentary about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina" -- this despite the fact that the movie IS about why New Orleans flooded, and it most certainly is not about the hurricane (since the experts interviewed in the movie agree that the flooding was a "man-made engineering catastrophe").

It didn't surprise me later to learn that Shearer's inspiration to make the movie came at Rising Tide 4, for which he was the keynote speaker (that link is to @sophilab's video of his keynote address), because what struck me most, what I kept thinking about on the drive home to Atlanta, what led to this whole long-winded ramble of a post, was that his mission in making this movie was maybe identical or at least very close to identical to our mission with Rising Tide: to dispel myths, to help define the words that are used to describe these events to the rest of the world, to take the definition of those messages away from the entities and organizations with financial interest in the outcome or something similar and use whatever kind of platform we have to replace the spin that had been sold as truth with what really happened; and that this mission doesn't end with New Orleans' flood, but includes what we call what BP did to the Gulf of Mexico and whether we consider the mammoth commercial apparatus that reports news for us our mainstream media, or what it really is, bought by and operated for sponsors, corporately-funded, for-profit.

I'm sorry to go so horribly long (although it's hard to believe anyone could possibly still be reading), and am almost ashamed at how much time it's taken to get this written, but it seems to me this is important because it looks like it's going to be a long, hard fight.

This is Part 4 of a 4-part post of thoughts about Rising Tide 5 weekend. I'm publishing it separately so it will be independently searchable and so folks who are coming here after searching "Rob Thomas set list" don't have to dig through The Museum, The Message & The Movie to find it.

For those who don't already know, while in New Orleans for Rising Tide 5 I had the opportunity to see Rob Thomas play Studio A at the IP Casino in Biloxi. It was a bit of a mad dash in the pouring rain, but in the able hands of @brenyb, we just made it. I'll never know if the dependably punctual performers were just a tiny bit late starting as a response to our pleas via Twitter, but we're so glad they were, as we were in our front row seats just in time to take a big, deep breath before the show started. We were disappointed that we couldn't buy a beer as the venue shut down the bars 15 minutes before show time, which sucked, but I don't care. It was still Rob and, playing with Matt Beck and Frankie Romano, he was still wonderful.

It was a tough decision because a lot of us work really hard for a long time to put on this conference, and debriefing with the organizers after the main event (a/k/a the after-party) is one of my favorite parts of the weekend, but this was a special acoustic concert, the last of a special acoustic tour to raise funds for the Sidewalk Angels Foundation that he runs with his wife, Mari, as well as a local charity at each stop along the way. Who knows if he'll ever do a tour like this again? He's never done it before, and I'd never get tickets like these again. I'm so glad we went. I only wish I videoed every song, just for me. I've hesitated to publish the ones I did capture. Rob doesn't normally ask fans to take down his work they publish online, although he could, and I so would, but I hope it's okay with him if I post this one that I shot with my iPhone 3GS (in my lap), of his singing 3 A.M. to an appreciative audience, singing it right back to him.

Now, as promised, here's the set list for Rob Thomas, IP Casino, Biloxi, MS on Saturday, August 28, 2010:

I had hoped to try and grab some lucidity as the last few days' adrenaline subsides and I drift into a short stupor before I have to drive back to Atlanta and return to my day job, so I could put down in words at least some of the things that have happened, that were created and shared by and with these NOLA Bloggers, this fifth anniversary of Katrina's landfall and of the infrastructure failure that occurred in her wake, but, nah. I'm afraid it might be too late for that. So, if you don't mind I'll ramble and link to some of the fine friends who are better bloggers than I am. It will be best for us all if y'all go and read what they wrote. If you're looking for well-written, cohesive narrative, I fear you're in the wrong place. Here's my report from Rising Tide & Rob Thomas with a few ReTweets thrown in, my RTs.

Loki, who once again did a great job as Master of Ceremonies, has posted a Cinchcast of Mother Jones' Mac McClelland's keynote speech, including the Q&A that followed. While she's been generally regarded as the hottest keynoter yet, I happen to think that depends on how you define hot, since she's up against last year's keynoter, Harry Shearer. (Stop it, I'm serious. He's certainly hotter from my POV, but I digress.) Aside from being brilliant and beautiful, she rocked for being the first keynoter to come to the Friday night party, and she signed NOLADishu's Halliburton Cementing Handbook. Shearer, however, gets his own special kudos for being the first keynoter to show up at the year after his keynote Rising Tide as an attendee, which also rocked, a lot. His documentary, The Big Uneasy, shows one night only nationwide on Monday, August 30th. If you miss it, look for it soon in DVD.

Veracity Stew has a good recap of Tim Ruppert's presentation on the differences between levees and dams, in fact and in how they are considered, regulated and maintained by governments, whether federal or local. It turns out those differences are big and important and affect millions of Americans who don't live anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico. The Big American Night has a long post that pays particular attention to the Public Safety and Environmental panel discussions. If you didn't follow Liprap's live blogging on the Rising Tide blog on Saturday, then scroll down to see her live posts. @Dakinikat did something cool, putting up a post early in the day and then letting the comments thread be the live-blogging. I don't agree with everything she says, but it's a nice record, and her comment after noting that our keynoter was dropping f-bombs and drinking a Bloody Mary, "She's gone native," was hilarious (h/t @skooks).  

We had a great crowd, with folks coming in all day and very few leaving, until the very last panel, or because of the very last panel, which was Maitri's Treme panel. Jeffrey gets the quote of the day as a questioner when he asked Eric Overmyer, Treme's co-creator and executive producer, whether there was a danger of "curating to death" the culture that the show is trying to capture. Overmyer recognized that danger. 

I'll toss up the links to pictures and interesting reports, hopefully including video, as updates to this post as I find them, and promise another post covering the Katrina 5.0 Symposium at the Louisiana State Museum as well as Shearer's movie, later. We had over 200 attendees at this year's conference, plus probably a dozen or so more press comps and unregistered panelists (it was my job to count them and I'll work on getting the final, final head count after I get this post up). The Howlin' Wolf turned out to be an almost perfect venue and h/t to Howie for getting it done on game day. The Marriott Springhill Suites was perfect as a conference hotel. With quite a few organizers encamped and many out of town guests, including our keynote speaker, I heard not one single complaint. Somehow, miraculously, our non-attendee hotel neighbors didn't even complain about us, or at least not that I know. Walking back and forth between the hotel and the Wolf it was impossible not to notice the front of the Convention Center less than two blocks away, and I couldn't help but wonder what passed in those spaces five years ago.

The organizers kicked ass, many shouldering multiple responsibilities. I did my best to manage the registration process from afar but would like to thank the real organizers for an amazing job done well: Peter Athas, Patrick Armstrong, Jeffrey Bostick, Leigh Checkman, Alli deJong, Mark Folse, Mark Moseley, Lisa Palumbo, Tim Ruppert, Rob Steinmetz, Lance Vargas, George Williams, and especially, our Chair, without whom it would have been something completely different, Kimberly Marshall. I kind of miss the days of live-blogging Rising Tide, because manning the check-in table means I don't get to pay full attention to the program, although this venue was better for doing both at the same time than any place we've previously held the conference. I end up doing more tweeting than blogging and trying my best to follow as we go along on Twitter by keeping one eye on the #rt5 tweet stream, of greatest value when used as a guide to longer content by clicking the links shared. There were lots of great tweets, but my favorite was from Lamar White of @CenLamar who tweeted to @RisingTide the day after the conference, "This year was a smash success. Rising Tide is quietly emerging as the State's most relevant and insightful annual conference." Also, check out his report of running into President Obama at Parkway Bakery on Sunday.

It was a hard decision for me to make, because debriefing with the organizers after the conference is one of my favorite parts of our traditions, but last April, when, on a whim, I tried to buy tickets for Rob Thomas' acoustic concert in Biloxi on 8/28 for his Sidewalk Angels Foundation, the last of the summer tour, I hit the jackpot and came away from Ticketmaster with front row seats. I was fortunate enough to enlist @brenyb as my enthusiastic partner in crime, and we high-tailed it out of Rising Tide and to Biloxi in the pouring rain, without eating dinner or so much as having a beer, landing in our seats barely in time to catch our breath before they started. Playing with Matt Beck and Frankie Romano, he performed a mix of his solo material, Matchbox Twenty favorites, some covers and two Tabitha's Secret songs, one of which I'd never heard, and really liked, Swing. Matt Beck did one excellent solo song that I have on video. My Flickr Pics are here, but I'm a little uncomfortable posting the videos I made. Unlike most artists, Rob doesn't take down concert vids folks post online, but these are such high quality that I'm not sure it's okay (or maybe I just want them all to myself?). It was a soft concert, relaxed, with everyone seated except at the very end, with the appreciative audience singing back to him all night. On our ride back to New Orleans (okay, after a stop for a late dinner at Waffle House), we talked about Rob's way with words, and maybe I'll come back and write a whole post on his remarkable ability to distill complex concepts into a very few cleverly turned words, and add a set list, but this line from MBT's Hand Me Down, which he did not sing on Saturday, seemed to us to perfectly fit the day's theme, nailing what passes for information right now in this country, what a corporate for-profit media teaches us: "gonna like the way they lie, better than the truth."

Jeffrey pointed out a few things in a blog post on the Friday before Rising Tide that I think bear repeating. First, he points out this paragraph from the RisingTideNOLA.com home page:

We come together to dispel myths, promote facts, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a "real life" demonstration of internet activism as we continue to recover from a massive failure of government on all levels. 

Then he adds this:

I very much like that little block of text. It says an informed, engaged public can debunk and overcome damaging untruths which emerge either through general laziness or from powerful institutional malefactors. This is, in my opinion, the very best of what internet media offers us.

I hope people came away from this year's Rising Tide both more informed and engaged. I know I did.

*** We already have an update. Crystal Kile's video of Mac McClelland's keynote is here.

**** Watching Treme has a comprehensive post up here with detailed coverage of the Treme panel.

***** Mark LaFlaur's live blogging for Levees Not War. The conference is always better for having Mark around.  

I've started using the #Kat5 tag on Twitter when tweeting about events and ideas related to the upcoming 5th Anniversary of Katrina. It's shorter, leaving more room for text, and has its own interesting subtext. While Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm and dealt New Orleans only a glancing blow, the collapse of the city's federally constructed and maintained flood protection system under conditions it was supposed to withstand, which represented the final fraction of a gargantuan and complicated failure of a national flood protection system many decades in the making, was, at least metaphorically, a colossal Category 5 Perfect Storm of Failure.

It's hard to believe it's been five years, but it has. I remember it like it was yesterday, with a clarity including feelings, and I'm a little surprised at just how emotional I feel in the run-up to my trip to New Orleans next week. There are all sorts of remembrances going on, events in New Orleans and online, and I'm going to highlight a just a few for you here.

Katrina 5.0: A Symposium on Technology & Blogging: Wednesday, August 25, 5:30 - 8:00 at The Presbytère, Jackson Square. I'm still trying to figure out how to get away early enough to get down there for this event held by the Louisiana State Museum. Subtitled, conversations on the social web and how it can help in a disaster, this event features our friends and NOLA Bloggers Bart Everson and Troy Gilbert. It's a short program, in the evening from 5:30 until 8:00 and lets you off in a perfect spot for dinner in the Quarter. I think I've just talked myself into it. To get a sense of how much these fellows know about using social media to communicate in an emergency, mosey on over to Troy's blog, scroll down past his Twitter updates to "Remembering Katrina - Top 15 Posts" and start with #1 The Storm, then work your way to #16 The Void, Troy's "live blogging" of the flood. You won't regret it.

A Howling in the Wires : An Anthology of Writings from Postdiluvian New Orleans: Thursday, August 26, 7:00 until, Mimi's in the Marigny Upstairs. This is a book launch, and the book features the writing of too many friends to list here. There will be selling and signing and reading and drinking and eating and bloggerati in abundance, and Mimi's is a delightful spot with wonderful tapas.

Rising Tide 5: A Conference on the future of New Orleans: Alone, reason enough for the trip. RT5 is being held entirely at The Howlin' Wolf in the warehouse district, both the Friday night social on August 27 and the main conference from 9 - 5:30 on Saturday, August 28. The pre-registration price of $25 includes breakfast beverages and pastries provided for the third year by sustaining sponsor Levees.org and The Howlin' Wolf's lunch. Author and human rights reporter Mac McClelland, who's provided some of the best coverage we've seen of the Gulf oil spill for Mother Jones is delivering the keynote address, and will be followed by an expert panel discussion on the environmental issues facing New Orleans. The day will also bring panel discussions on local politics, public safety and HBO's Treme. The Treme panel includes Eric Overmyer, the show's co-creator and executive producer, but that's really only the beginning. There will also be a presentation on "the inequities between the Federal Government's design methods for dams and levees," given by Tim Ruppert, but don't take my word for any of this. There is much more detail about the panels and panelists here or with chronology added and even MORE details, here (subject to updates). Go. Now. Read. Wait. Or go here. Go. Now. Register. Through the 19th, you can reserve a room with our special rate at our "official" hotel, the Marriott Springhill Suites right across the street from the Howlin' Wolf so you can get to Rising Tide on foot and won't miss one single thing. I know what I'm going to do.

Sunday will be a day of solemn remembrance, perhaps involving some collapse, some staying indoors and with any luck, some blogging. I was initially planning on driving back to Atlanta on Monday, but have decided to stay to see the New Orleans showing of last year's Rising Tide Keynoter Harry Shearer's film The Big Uneasy at The Prytania Theater (beware noisy link), with Harry on hand for a Q & A. The film is playing nationwide for that one night only, so check for a theater near you. It would be a nice way to remember, y'all.

Finally, I will be live-blogging as much of these activities as possible, and will include instant pictures whenever possible (is it a great time to be alive, or what?), but realistically, there will be more live-tweeting and live-Facebooking going on. You can see my tweet stream in the right gutter on this page or follow me on Twitter here. It's a lot to do, and those are only a few of the events (um, President Obama at Xavier U. on Sunday), and I'm getting tired just writing it all, so scroll back up and click some of those links.

See y'all in New Orleans next weekend. Peace.

I'm sure Elizabeth Gilbert is a lovely woman, and that her book, Eat, Pray, Love and the hit film made from it are both full of great spiritual guidance, universal truths and enlightened insights beyond my imagining. I just cannot muster the desire to explore the wisdom of a woman who sought to heal from her terrible, terrible divorce by taking a year to travel the world, poor dear. While I'm pleased for her that she was able to turn healing her broken heart into a really great career, I'm much more interested in the women left to raise children alone or those who're forced into the workplace for the first time in decades after being dumped for a younger model, or maybe the ones dealing with not ending a hopeless marriage because they can't possibly afford the divorce, or they're married to men who really can't take care of themselves. I'd even listen to the stories of the average wives just muddling through or brave women holding their heads high while stuck in dead-end jobs they hate because they, well, need to avoid homelessness and keep or provide health insurance.

Maybe I'm being unfair, and I know that these less fortunate women with fewer, um, travel options aren't nearly as, well, scenic. I also risk sounding bitter and cynical, although I really do feel happy and optimistic; I swear; pinky swear; double fuckin' pinky swear. Seriously, I don't mean to be mean. I might even really like her book or its movie. I just don't have the stomach to find out. Please, forgive me.

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. will present its 5th annual new media conference on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on Saturday, August 28, 2010 at The Howlin' Wolf, 907 South Peters St. in New Orleans. The one-day conference features speakers and panel discussion on the status and future of the culture, politics, criminal justice system, environment and flood protection of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc.is a non-profit organization formed by New Orleans bloggers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federally-built levees. After the disaster, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, and friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, to mark the anniversary of the flood, the bloggers of New Orleans organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the arts, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action. The idea for the conference originated with Scout Prime, then a blogger for First Draft and a tireless advocate for New Orleans. Her idea resonated with Mark Moseley, Oyster of Your Right Hand Thief, culminating in this post and the first Rising Tide Conference.

Conference registration is open and only $20 until July 31. Registration includes lunch, and there will be a pre-conference party hosted by the New Orleans bloggers on Friday evening August 27, also at the Howlin' Wolf. More information is available at the Rising Tide website and blog. You can also follow Rising Tide on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook for regular updates.

This is always a great event. I look forward to seeing y'all there.

I don't care who we hire, as long as their primary objective is to stop the hemorrhage of oil. We can start with their competitors, but BP has forfeited its rights to execute any operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Karen Gadbois said it on Facebook: "Our border has been breached by BP," and, "If this were oil being thrown at the U.S. by some other nation we would have guns drawn." Let's start by insisting BP stand down. 

Facebook's been changing features, interfaces and privacy settings at such a startling frequency that it's hard for even the most technologically savvy among us to keep up with it, leaving those millions of boomers that they so aggressively courted and snared, defenseless, ripe for the picking. It's not unlike what ChoicePoint took fire for: profiting from individuals' private data without properly informing them. In a way, what Facebook is doing is worse, because they're feigning permission while constantly changing the rules, resetting users' privacy defaults to open and available to third parties every time they change the interface and Terms of Service, forcing their users to retool any real privacy over and over again in hopes that they won't get it done, the way an insurance provider denies claims over and over in hopes of tiring their customer into just paying the damn bill. It's hard not to think they're doing this intentionally, that it's their strategy for gaining access to our information for financial gain.

Now, more than ever, it should be obvious to us that commercial interests will succumb to greed and abuse, in one way or another, unless forced to be good citizens by authority or oversight. Sometimes we accept our vulnerability. We tolerate abuses by companies like BP or Massey because what they provide is so valuable to us that we look the other way if it's what we have to do to keep the price down, much like we try not to notice the carnage on our highways out of blind love for driving cars. Maybe some of this is going to change now, but trends, by definition, precede the consumer protection they require. Facebook, or its founder, has engaged in a series of actions, from the beginning, that prove them to be untrustworthy, and Dan Yoder's piece on BusinessInsider.com 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account details it much better than I can, complete with links for each transgression (h/t @Phil_Rubin).

Of course, I'm not deleting my Facebook account (see Nicholas Carlson's 10 Reasons You'll Never Quit Facebook), but that doesn't mean I'll stop kicking and screaming (okay, whining) about the Scurrilous Facebookery, their bait and switch, luring with privacy and then taking it away once they've got you. What bothers me the most is the bad interface. In time, the law will stop Facebook from doing what they're trying to do with our private information, but only our finding another option can save us from the really shitty functionality. Where we were once able to craft our profile using words, now our entire profile is comprised of links to other Facebook pages. It gets worse. When one of my "jobs" led to a dead end link, I took them up on their offer to "Create a page," only to discover after doing so that the newly created page wouldn't be the default landing page for the profile link that started the whole thing in the first place. I can fix it, but, like trying to determine the order in which profile links appear, particularly important with jobs and schools, it's not easy or obvious. It's bad enough that they want to use all that we've told them about our likes and dislikes to amass wealth, but they broke the hell out of Facebook. It no longer works very well. 

Of course, there's an opportunity here for someone to fill the void, perhaps particularly among Boomers. I wrote about the future of web apps and the trend pendulum in this post, considering the fact that the "old folks" had "invaded" Facebook, speculating that "the tweens and teens, are developing their ways of interacting outside the view of their parents, just like teenagers have done forever, and I have no doubt that the young ones' places to play online will evolve in a new direction where we're not." So, where are they going so they can say and do things they don't want their parents to see? Places like Formspring, where they ask questions ("Do I look fat in this picture?"), which are then answered anonymously by other members. No way that can go wrong, right?

Ultimately, I have to hope that if our government is going to bestow citizenship on corporations, that we as a society will find some way to make these corporations responsible members of society. We'll try public shaming first, or maybe even vote with our feet, but ultimately, our courts and legislatures will make them behave, or not (h/t American Zombie).

Peace, out, y'all.

I signed up to participate in the Dow Live Earth Run for Water a few weeks ago when I learned that Rob Thomas was going to be playing after the Atlanta event. Hosted in Atlanta by the Atlanta Track Club as part of a global event to bring attention to the water crisis facing so many, the 6k walk/run is roughly the distance that many, mostly women and children, have to walk every day for water, which is often not even clean. A week or so ago, factoring in training (or the lack thereof), pollen, Crohn's, Big Bid Deadlines at work (way too much adrenaline, y'all), and the general foolishness of doing anything but, I emailed the nice race people and told them I couldn't run, but could my registration fee be a donation and I become a volunteer. I had a great time. The Track Club (and on Twitter) did a great job. The event's location downtown, Pemberton Place, was a lovely open space flanked by the World of Coca-Cola and The Georgia Aquarium, neither of which have I visited, I'm ashamed to say. It was beautiful, a perfect day, sunny but not too hot, and my brave Best Friend (partner in crime) soldiered on where I stumbled and completed the race, her first ever, in the middle of the pack.

It was a very small crowd. In fact, I felt it was poorly publicized, especially given just how huge the event was, how noble the cause, how excellent its entertainment participants, including John Legend, The Roots, Collective Soul and Melissa Etheridge. Honestly, if I wasn't stalking Rob Thomas (well, I don't know what else to call it), I would have had no idea it was happening. When I asked an organizer (from Dow) if this was to be the first Dow Live Earth Run for Water, he wouldn't say. There were a few polite protesters, and I get the irony. Dioxin (Agent Orange) in Vietnam was real, Bhopal was real. Dow has dirtied way more than its share of our planet's water, but if they want to devote their considerable resources towards raising awareness of and funds for the global water crisis, that's a good thing, and goes a long way towards repairing their tarnished reputation. I hope they stay with it, and that this event is only the first of many. If nothing else, I'm glad to have learned about one of the non-profit partners for the event, The Global Water Challenge. 

Finally, if y'all aren't watching Treme on HBO, fix that tonight. It's wonderful, as good as television ever gets. I know I said it in my last post, but while you're watching Treme, you should also be following the krewe of NOLA Bloggers writing about it over at Back of Town, where you'll find the most interesting Treme discussion going on anywhere. I promise.

Peace, out, y'all rock.

We have new HBO coming tonight, y'all, and it's yummy, eagerly anticipated, David Simon-created, New Orleans-flavored HBO hour-long drama. I'm so excited. It hasn't even aired yet, and it's already great because of the writing it's inspired, the way it's lit a fire under the NOLA Blogosphere. If you want the best, most insightful, expert commentary on all things Treme, you'll find it here at the Back of Town blog, where some of the best writers in the NOLA Blogosphere shine their exceptional talents on David Simon's most recent creation. Some of Back of Town's contributors are the same bloggers who created Got That New Package, a blog dedicated to Simon's previous, critically revered series, The Wire, so they're already Simonites (Simonistas?), but now he's come to their beloved city to set his new show, and chosen one of them, the late Ashley Morris, as model for a main character, Creighton Burnette, portrayed by John Goodman (emphasis: loosely based). We can't know what Ashley would think of all this. I have to hope he'd be glad to have his words reach such an audience, to be cited as so resonating by Simon, whom he so admired, to be incorporated in such a major work. Ashley's widow, Hana, describes the painful irony here on his blog, now their blog, where she comments on The Colbert Report segment shown here (below, right). In this clip, Simon fields Colbert's provocative schtick with humor, intelligence and grace, and attributes some of Goodman's character's words to Ashley. If your intellectual curiosity wants to explore Simon's inspirational source (highly recommended), scroll down on his blog and browse Ashley's "Greatest Hits" posts.

The Academy Awards are upon us. I've only seen a few of the films (like the ones that are available On Demand), but I have some strong feelings about the films I have seen. I loved The Hurt Locker. My boys' father is a Vietnam combat veteran who admits to bringing home an adrenaline addiction, so I particularly loved its ending; and I was already a fan of Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner and am still sad about the cancellation of The Unusuals. The Hurt Locker is getting a lot of buzz for Best Picture; and, while there have been a couple of controversies during the closing days of Academy voting, a big deal is being made about the fact that its director, Kathryn Bigelow, is going head to head with her ex-husband and former collaborator, James Cameron, and his blockbuster, Avatar. But I will be cheering for another film when the final award gets handed out (okay, I'll be cheering if I'm still awake).

Spoiler Warning. Plot reveals below.

I didn't love Inglourious Basterds, nominated for eight Academy Awards, until the second time I saw it. At first I was displeased, even indignant, with Quentin Tarantino's arrogance, his disregard for history, his blatant and obvious self-conscious pleasure, almost glee, so visible in his filmmaking, as if he was somehow giving the whole world the finger, showing off without regard to historical facts, because he can. I came away irritated with him, woke up the next morning wondering, "Just who the hell does he think he is?" But the second time I saw it, I stopped fighting it, accepted it for all its serious silliness and intricate layers, embracing it and holding on for the ride. I've been teased about having watched it so many times, but I've yet to watch it without noticing something new.

It was brilliant, joyful storytelling by exuberant craftsmanship, beautifully written and perfectly acted. Christoph Waltz's menacingly erudite SS Colonel Hans Landa is one of the finest and most interesting character creations ever seen, anywhere. The world will be stunned if he doesn't win Best Supporting Actor, and I'm sure film students will dissect this complex character for years to come. Antagonist to Brad Pitt's protagonist, Lieutenant Aldo Raine, Landa is exact refinement, all elegant formality covering hypocritical evil versus Raine's casual vernacular, distinctly American, Southern just short of caricature, but grounded in insistent consistency between the facade and what's inside, integrity even to the point of brutality, admitting to the SS Colonel, "I'm a slave to appearances," having clarified elsewhere, earlier, "We like our Nazis in uniforms, that way we can spot 'em... so I'm gonna give you a little something you can't take off." Landa is revealed in his reactions to the nickname he's been given during his tour of duty in France, The Jew Hunter, first defending it with feigned pride when discussing it with Monsieur LaPadite in the opening scene, then reacting with honest disgust at it when sharing the matter with Raine, a perceived equal instead of a potential victim, at the end of the film. I could go on and on. The entire cast shone, a pitch perfect ensemble, amidst a script and soundtrack rollicking as one. They all appeared to be having the time of their lives. Every little thing was wonderful, every performance, every line, every haunting intersection of story and score (excellent post about the soundtrack here).

Set in occupied France during World War II, it's ostensibly about war, but it's a film about honesty versus artifice and a film about film, the artists and media as weapons, figuratively and literally, incendiary. It is filled with Tarantino's characteristic references to the work of previous artists, fine and not so fine (can you say The A Team ?). I've watched the climactic Chapter 5, Revenge of the Giant Face, over and over (and over and over) again and highly recommend watching it one time just to focus on his use of the color red, itself a tip of the hat to filmmakers who came before.

One of the most elegant things about Inglourious Basterds is the weighty meaning put into commonplace utterances, the enormity of the strained "yes" answers of LaPadite and "Emmanuel" under Nazi interrogations set at disparate dining tables, the palpable terror expressed in a desperately understated, "Oui." From Hans Landa's threatening, victorious call, "Au revoir, Shoshanna," to Marcel's triumphant, adoring, "Oui, Shoshanna," rarely have such ordinary words seemed so powerful; but my favorite quote from Inglourious Basterds, the one I find myself saying out loud, finding it's meaning applicable more times than I'd like to admit, is delivered at the movie's end by Pitt's Raine, who, when threatened with serious consequences of his misdeeds, perhaps speaks for the filmmaker when he dismisses all worry with, "I'll get chewed out; I been chewed out before."

I hope it wins Best Picture.

I've been chewin' nails and don't know why. I need a sabbatical, some time alone, a chance to breathe. I try to keep myself centered in the maelstrom that is my day to day. I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it? 'Cause it's pretty easy to stay centered amidst calm, right? I generally do a pretty good job of keeping a smile, a stiff upper lip, or whatever it is I'm supposed to keep to stay pleasant enough to stand to be me. When it's not working, it must mean I need to take stock and get rid of all the thinks that take away and cultivate more that give back. That "thinks" was a typo, but I'm keeping it because it's in a way more accurately descriptive than what I was trying to say.

I've always been way too big into not upsetting the apple cart for my own good. I've taken not being a complainer to a psychotic self-abusive extreme. I mean, isn't indignant outrage and extreme wave-making sometimes the appropriate response to things? I don't think tantrums are ever justified, and they violate my zero drama tolerance rules, but is there no interim problem-solving process between expressing displeasure or concern and walking the fuck out? When is it time to stop throwing good money after bad? When does our life's energy become something too valuable to squander on that which we don't love, that which doesn't add to us as least as much as it takes from us?

Here's how I spent my Valentine's Day. It was perfect:

I need a better plan. In the meantime, I'll do my best not to say what I really think. If I manage to survive this week, I'll have a post about my new favorite movie, Inglourious Basterds, ready for this weekend in advance of the upcoming Academy Awards. "Burn it down!" Peace, out, y'all.

Do they march or do they dance or does it matter that it's their own version, and some of both? Folks are flocking to New Orleans to celebrate an NFL Championship game that's being played in Miami, to celebrate amidst New Orleanians, amidst Carnival Parades, all black and gold on top of purple, green and gold, all King Cake as football food, "Who Dat? Say Who Dat? Say Who Dat say dey gone beat dem Saints?!" as Mardi Gras anthem, all so beautifully tangled.

Winning the game tomorrow matters, but it seems to me that getting there is the most important thing, that everything since the NFC Championship game has been a victory celebration. Gambit's Kevin Allman said it on The Blog of New Orleans, "a city holds its collective breath," and he's right. They're holding their breath. They've been holding their breath, marching forward with their heads down, determined. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, I think they've already won. Geaux Saints!

So check out the Carnival schedule here and watch the Uptown parades roll down St. Charles past Napoleon on ParadeCam from Fat Harry's, in honor of their previously scheduled celebration of life, or watch the video below (again, h/t Kevin Allman & Gambit). Tuesday, win or lose, the Saints will have their parade and a grateful city will get to say their thanks in person.

I guess the contents of a text message sent to Saints' linebacker Scott Fujita by his wife, Jaclyn, pretty much sums it up:  "The people of New Orleans love the Saints, not because they provide a distraction from their fall but because they are a reflection of their rise."

Follow #SB44 on Twitter or check out the NFL's blinding Super Bowl social media aggregator.

Peace, y'all, and Who Dat?!

I'm past due an aimless ramble, must be. The pace of everything is always so breathless that it's hard and almost scary to stop, to reflect, to write it down, to breathe. My job is sending me to Dreamweaver school tomorrow & Friday. I'm excited and grateful. I have all these websites that need to be built. How did that happen? They're coming at me from different directions and there are five needed yesterday and a couple more just a tad less urgently, so I've got to think this is something I'm supposed to do. Work has also bought the developers' version of WordPress Thesis , which is harder than it looked, even though I'm fairly comfortable in WordPress. I think I can manage it once I get it installed, but it's beginning to feel more like if I get it installed. I feel driven to do this, feel like I have to put my head down and work every night until I can build an elegant website, and it's Christmas!

And I made angels, for the first time in years. I used to make and sell them, before I went to work full time at our agency. I'd meant to last fall, brought a bag of Coleman porcelain home, but never got to it with Bel and Mama being sick and dying. I wish I had made angels with Bel and remembered to buy some bendy straws. So, I had a last minute burst of angel making Sunday and Monday nights. Some credit has to go to my friend, David, whose visit forced me to clean off the "dressing room" that had grown on Bel's bed, so he could sleep in it. I slapped the canvas covered slab of Corian (the cooktop cutout from when we re-did the kitchen, or was it the sink?) onto the bed and went to town with the year-old bag of clay. I made twenty-eight of them. We have to get them through the fire, and probably just a hotish bisque. I'd like to try to get a couple through a glaze fire, but they're very thin. Bisque is bleached-bone pretty, its unfinished nature beautifully representative of the subject, I think.

So, throughout this busyness I've had all that Rob Thomas music in my head, after seeing him perform twice during his current tour . Our brokenness continues to be a theme even beyond Matchbox Twenty's evolution, but much of his independent work is all about remembering that time is fleeting, life is short, and the ways we make each other feel each moment are what matters. It's good marching music, facing each task in their turn with joy and an effort to be fully present, resisting my natural inclination toward impatience. I didn't love Cradlesong the first time I listened to it, but I do now. It's been helpful to me. Wish me luck. It's getting to be embarrassing that I've tried this hard and long to learn Dreamweaver and gotten nowhere, and the angels still have to survive the fire that takes them from unthinkably fragile to what remains from past civilizations. And this weekend, I will buy and put up and decorate a Christmas tree. Life just rocks. Y'all rock too.

Having breakfast with Dangerblond at the IP Casino in Biloxi. If it's any indication, we're heading towards recovery because this place was packed last night. After a long and gloriously energetic concert by Rob Thomas and his band in the enviably cozy venue of Studio A, we took a longish midnight stroll through the casino and it was hopping, tables filled with hopefuls inexplicably drawn to the risk and thrill of betting to win. We stopped and spent $6 at one slot machine ($5 of it was Dangerblond's) and were treated to the unthrilling feeling of pouring money down a toilet and immediately agreed this gambling thing isn't for us, at least not this kind of gambling. There's just something intrinsically sad about casinos.

I'll have more to say about the show later, as I have a long drive ahead of me to think on it, but wanted to go ahead and get the setlist up. I think I have it right, although my little flip notebook system was imperfect and I'm not sure I didn't lose my place and maybe double back, a general tendency of mine, both actually and digitally, so something (Falling to Pieces?) might be out of place... and clearly my iPhone couldn't handle the sound. Please correct me if you see a setlist mistake and feel free to complain about the bad sound on the vid. I need better equipment. Donations welcome. For now, here's the show Rob Thomas and his band gave to those of us lucky enough to be in Studio A last night:

Leading marketing blogger, Michael Hyatt, asked yesterday, "Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog?" Well, this blogger doesn't make all ten of them, and nobody's going to accuse me of posting too often, but I certainly make most of them. Of course, Hyatt's article is based on the assumption that every blogger blogs for traffic, which isn't necessarily so. I started this blog because I wanted to scream from somewhere the things I couldn't say in real life. It was initially named "My Rants" and can still be found at myrants.blog-city.com, but it didn't take any time before readers showed up and started leaving comments, which quickly bloomed into conversations that quickly spread to their blogs, and, next thing I knew, I didn't feel right writing so publicly about the things I came here to write about, mostly the difficult people in my life, maybe difficult people in general, and sometimes the dangerous institutions they create when they gather in an organized fashion and continue to behave badly as a group.

So, a circle was formed. I felt lonely and isolated by close relationships with difficult people, some of whom have since died. I was driven to write, driven to publish those words, driven to have them be seen, but once I realized they were seen, once I found people who wanted to hear what I was saying, who commented with thoughtful understanding, I suddenly couldn't write about it, but didn't need to so much anymore because, in the course of seeking to be seen and heard, I was. By not looking for traffic, by writing what was in my heart, by fiercely protecting the avocation, I filled the void that drove me here. Now, I've been here so long and said so much and met so many wonderful online people, that I have this sexy little search machine and no clue what I want to do with it, no idea what's left that I need to say, 'cause I know that all I have to do to make it heard by many, is tag.

Of course, there are still difficult people and I still wish I could talk to them about it, but I know better. There will always be those so self-conscious they can't ever relax with or into another, those who deflect meaningful interaction by turning immediately to quick and focused anger out of a primal need to pretend there's such a thing as getting to control another, such a thing as winning a fight with one they claim to love. Vicious words negate pretenses of affection and aren't gone just because they're not being said at the moment. Once said, they can't just be left out there. I'm not suggesting that we should expect to live our lives without any anger, but anger without full acknowledgment of the pain we've caused, without genuine remorse expressed as long as it's necessary to assuage the hurt we leave behind, kills love. I promise. The regular recipient of anger, especially if they're in recovery from such behavior themselves, having finally chosen not to be that way any more even if it is how they were raised (which it most likely was if they're in a relationship with someone who interacts that way), is left with no choice except a deepening internal retreat, inevitably asking for nothing from the other, except away. 

So, it's my birthday, and I'm indulging myself. I'm going too long after posting too infrequently. I'm not focused on my brand. In fact, I'm not selling anything, but talking about me, me, me. I'm staking a claim on my little corner, building my place where I can talk about anything I damn well please and if you get ugly about it, I can toss your ass out of here, ranting. I'm indulging myself and repeating myself because I can, and to my loyal readers, my fine and honored internet friends who've heard this all before, please forgive me for needing to say it again and again:

Calling some feeling you have inside yourself love, doesn't make it love. If it's just about the feeling you have and doesn't manifest as a loving pattern of interaction driven by a generosity of spirit towards the other, then is doesn't matter what you call it, it isn't love, but rather a form of emotional masturbation, immature and self-indulgent. Unlike it's physical counterpart, it's gross. If your primary motivation isn't the other's genuine fulfillment, joy and happiness, then you don't love them. No one will ever win anything or convince another of their rectitude, by seeking to hurt through anger. This is just a fact. All that matters is reality, what actually happens between us when we interact. There's no one watching, no arbiter to judge our performances and declare a winner. In relationships, it's just the people, the family, the friends, whether they're parents and children, spouses, siblings, employers and employees. In relationships, the way people treat each other whether alone or when others are watching is all that matters, and when one person uses preemptive anger defensively, everyone loses. 100% of the time. Guaranteed.

A relationship in which one must hide one's reality, in which there is no safe way to resolve conflict, alleviate discomfort or facilitate intimacy, isn't a relationship at all; and when one person wants to pretend to be the loving sibling, parent, spouse, child or friend to the whole world while interacting hatefully in private or behind one's back, well, no amount of calling that love can make it be love. And it doesn't help to know that we all started as innocents, that people who use anger to deflect intimacy got that way because it was done to them, because it was done to many of us, and at some point we have to say we're adults and take responsibility for how we choose to be with others, at some point we have to choose to change, or else we all lose. Finally, it isn't loving to let someone we claim to love or at least to have tried to love, treat us that way because ultimately it damages the abuser more than it does the abused who's survived and moved on, and the last act of love we can give them is to withdraw, and take away their method of self abhorrence by harming others, finally refusing to be a part of their offense. Just because we embrace another's faults as geological, their broken places, the cracks in the rock, doesn't mean we should allow it to continue, participate.

I'm not exactly sure where that rant came from, 'cause I've had a wonderful Thanksgiving (and birthday) weekend and I hope you have too, but thanks for listening. Now there's a Thanksgiving post I haven't written about how the holiday needs a PR makeover and how we should drop the silly delusional Pilgrim romanticizing, especially given what came after, and focus on the National Holiday that Lincoln declared in an effort to bring healing to a war-scarred nation, because that's what it really is, or at least some ancient pagan harvest ritual, but I digress, as usual.

But now we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming, or the lack thereof. Oh, and there's going to be a test on this, every day.

Peace, y'all.

I remember when the words just tumbled out like music made by my heart, and the work was in keeping up with them, typing fast enough to catch the ideas before they slipped away, so there'd be something beautiful to come back to and clean up. It doesn't happen any more. Steeled to survive the difficulty of a workplace that doesn't quite fit and the disappointments of home, there's nothing to turn into words, no feelings, just silence and putting one foot in front of the other, the everyday price of settling for taking joy in the little things, finding pleasure within, or in spite of, compromise, seeking at least some nobility just for carrying on. The truth of it is just too painful, exposed to light, the wound, too sad. So many things are better, left unsaid.

Terminally cheerful, in spite of myself, I made some changes in the way it looks around here, just little things, a lighter background and new header, trying to find some inspiration. I might as well have something to look at even if I don't have something to say, and I chose a special picture, one I took from a bluff overlooking the Pacific just north of La Jolla, California, last August at a sister's son's wedding, a wedding done right, one filled with love so deep and strong and complex that it felt like magic, exactly twenty-eight years, to the hour, after ours.

Isn't that what weddings are supposed to be, the physical manifestation of the community, the webs of affection that surround the couple through time, providing cushion from the universe and at least some of life's difficulties, sustained by its joys? We gather to honor our parts in their pasts and mark our places in their futures, so the love we celebrate when we gather for weddings isn't just the bride's and the groom's, but that of all who love them, each embracing the other, celebrating their increase, celebrating the couple, greater than the sum of its parts.

It's hard to describe how much it moved me, these two beautiful young people, how comfortable it felt for us, his family, to be among her family, how welcoming they were. It was perfect, simple, elegant and genuine, family as sustenance, represented, micro and macro, and the poignant juxtaposition of our attempt so long ago, to the hour, redeemed, at least for me, by the presence of three beautiful adult sons. We gathered finally, on that Saturday, the first of August, after days and nights of celebration, as the sun began to slip behind the ocean, and the bride and groom were married. Then, still outside by the sea, we had drinks and dinner, and there were toasts, and with the light of day just gone, the couple took their first dance.

Then it stopped. The lights went up. The DJ started packing, and the guests began their good-byes, but the last-last song, played without the benefit of the sound system, explained the bags of lemon drops that served as our dinner table seat markers and was one of my all-time favorites, one my readers already know, one that sent The Yongest rushing to my side, and we stood and swayed and savored together, Izzy's Classic medley of "Over The Rainbow" and "Wonderful World". I cried.

The guests, including our large, exhausted, extended family, headed out the next day, by air and by road, tired and happy, filled and fueled by genuine, loving interaction, lifted forward by, well, each other. That's what we do, isn't it? We lift each other forward, nourish each other, take each others' sides, because that's what it means to love. Not everyone can do it, some don't even want to, never try, they're so badly broken, and nobody gets it right all the time, but for that one weekend last summer we celebrated the possibilities of choosing love, and it was very, very good.

Peace, y'all.

I love every chance to go to the Fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta, from rainy Saturday afternoons of my childhood playing make believe with sisters and friends in its exotic spaces while we were supposed to be watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson elevate dysfunction, to stage plays and concerts and one silent film accompanied by orchestra. I've never had a bad time at The Fox.

The Youngest graciously accepted my invitation to come along, and we met up with some friends of his before the concert, first at their beautiful Ansley Park home and then at Livingston in the Georgian Terrace. It was great to see this iconic hotel's jawdroppingly beautiful transformation, even if I was sorry to miss Carolina Liar and the first part of One Republic. We don't get things just right every time, and the opportunity to get to know the friends I'd heard so much about was worth it.

Thomas opened with "Fire on the Mountain" and to a standing, singing audience's obvious adoration and quickly thanked everyone for choosing to be there, recognizing the value of time and resources spent, pledging to give everything he had to make the experience worth it. It sounded real and he lived up to it. Alternating between the keyboards and guitar reminds us he's the musician behind the sound, but we are there to hear him sing his words, words about beauty in our broken places, about our imperfect struggle to connect with others and ourselves, words about joy and pain.

There was a wonderful feature article by Erik Hedegaard in the August 6th issue of Rolling Stone, "Confessions of an Unapologetic Pop Star" subtitled, "How did Rob Thomas survive a violent redneck childhood to become one of the top songwriters of his generation?" It goes a long way towards explaining the angst and points out how unfairly he's been stereotyped. Unfortunately, they've removed the content from the online edition, so if you want to read it, I guess you'll have to go to the library. How weird is that?

He played a hearty seventeen song setlist of tunes from Something To Be and Cradlesong (plus Little Wonders), before his Matchbox Twenty bandmates, Paul Doucette, Kyle Cook and Brian Yale joined him on stage for two songs for the highly aroused crowd. Just as his words speak to the complexities and nuances of human being and interaction, his expansive relationships with his former bandmates teach by example. Rob Thomas and Matchbox Twenty are not mutually exclusive, and if one eclipses the other, neither is less for that. We should all embrace growth so magnanimously. It made me want to go listen to Paul Doucette's current work for The Break and Repair Method.

Thomas closed with a beautiful, haunting version of "Smooth", like I've never heard and that I couldn't find anywhere online, followed by "This is How a Heart Breaks", ending too abruptly. It felt like no encore, felt weird. I know now that the whole thing was an encore from the time MB20 came on stage, and that their arrival sort of interrupted what would have been the concert's end, so it just felt like no encore. Sometimes I'm easily confused. This did lead to an interesting conversation about encores in general, and what they mean, and whether or not this is something an audience earns or something to which an artist is obligated, but I digress (sort of).

Here's some homemade video from the Matchbox Twenty portion of the concert. The Youngest mentioned during the show that Thomas takes the red plaid shirt to a whole new level. I expect we'll see more vids of the show as time passes. From our seats towards the back there was a sea of cellphones held high all the way to the stage.

So, maybe Thomas isn't edgy or cool, but I don't really care. There are folks in this world for whom being cool is easy, who saunter through their days certain and secure, free of anxiety and self-doubt. Rob Thomas is for the rest of us.

*******************************************

I thank @brenyb from Twitter for convincing me not to sell the tickets, for linking the above video, for pointing out the Rolling Stone piece and providing a copy of it, sending me the set list, and helping me embrace my inner groupie geek. Maybe I'll do it again. Maybe next time I'll have better seats, take pictures, take notes and write a proper review. Maybe next time will be December 5th in Biloxi. You just never know.

*********************************

Update 10/22/09, since I'm rocking search I should put up the Setlist for Rob Thomas' show at The Fox 9/30/09:

• Fire on the Mountain
• Meltdown
• Real World 09
• Lonely No More
• Mockingbird
• Sunday Morning, New York Blue
• Street Corner Symphony
• Natural
• Getting Late
• Ever The Same
• Cradlesong
• Someday
• Little Wonders
• Falling To Pieces
• Gasoline
• Her Diamonds
• I am an Illusion
• Brightlights (with Matchbox Twenty)
• Disease (with Matchbox Twenty)
• Smooth
• This Is How A Heart Breaks