Mirage, update

OMG OMG OMG!!!! How did I miss this? Mirage is now available on DVD. Woo-hoo! Nothing is as it seems.

(Sure doesn't take much to make me happy, does it?! Amazon one-click ordering is my friend.)

"You Need Box"

Pronouncements of great import don't always come down from the mountain on tablets. Sometimes you just hear it over the phone from a faceless minion of Comcast.

"You Need Box" is what the Soviet civil-service refugee informed me when I asked why TMC, AMC, and TVGuide Channel disappeared when I switched from my old TV to the new digital-ready one.

In making the switch, I got to relieve myself from the burden of Comcast's digital converter box, its nasty handheld remote (which takes over all of your electronics but doesn't tell you how to control them yourself), and the annoyance of not being able to tape one program while watching another. Oh what a relief! Until I wanted to watch Idol Wrap on TVGuide Channel (shut up).

So I called Comcast to complain about my missing channels, with sleeves all rolled up and ready for a fight, and they'd just better not try to charge me extra for these channels.

"You Need Box"

I don't need no stinkin' box, I've got a digital TV.

"You Need Box"

But, but, I'm getting some stations that go up in the hundreds, how come I can get these and not TMC, AMC, and TVG?

"You Need Box"

Well, the thing is, I still have the box. Comcast isn't charging extra for it, so it's mine to use or not use as I please. Do I plug it back in so I can get my channels but lose my time-shifting record-for-later capability?

Choices.

I ended up exploring some of those upper channels. There are also lower channels with fractional points that come in through my Comcast pipeline. I explored a little - some alternative programming for the local channels. Fine. But in the upper reaches, in 107.300s, I found the music stations - 40 channels of music favorites. Well Top 40, you know, isn't my favorite, nor is country music. But I found (harps strumming, trumpets trumping) SHOW TUNES!!

Happy Dance!

I had the Show Tunes channel on pretty much all weekend. TMC? Heck, isn't that what Netflix is for? (Sorry guys - either open a Hulu channel or say goodbye to your Comcast Box Rejectors.)

So I'm a dork. I put on Broadway's best and got myself up off the couch. Cleaned the apartment, cooked a meal, did a goofball dance - a kickline of one - in the living room. I Feel Happy! (They even played some Spamalot!!)

That's life outside the box. In many ways, we still Need Box - if only to see the limitations that need to be overcome.

love, hosaa
Dancing outside the box

Clay Aiken Stimulates the Economy

Clay Aiken needs to go on tour. If increased consumer spending is what it takes to stimulate the economy, this is the way to go.

Here are just a few of the products, services, and brands that fully stimulated Clay Aiken fans support:

- computers,
- peripherals (keyboards,printers, optical mice, scanners),
- routers,
- wireless services,
- external hard drives,
- computer repair services,
- binoculars,
- cameras,
- videocams,
- flash drives,
- cell phones,
- BlackBerrys,
- GPS navigation systems,
- DVD and CD blank discs,
- Yahoo!
- AOL,
- Google,
- Lycos,
- Rhapsody,
- Pandora,
- Ticketmaster,
- iTunes,
- iPods, iPhones, iTouch, iWhatNot
- video and photo editing software,
- photo gift services,
- concert tickets,
- airplane tickets,
- train tickets,
- bus tickets,
- hotel rooms,
- Hotels.com,
- cheesecake,
- peach ice cream,
- chips,
- McDonald's
- Sardi's,
- Radio Shack,
- Best Buy,
- Walmart,
- Target,
- Kmart,
- Amazon.com,
- Burberry,
- Paul Smith,
- hats,
- scarves,
- pashminas,
- T-shirts,
- university hoodies (sweat shirts)
- books,
- magazines,
- photo paper,
- frames,
- new clothes!
- shoes,
- makeovers and spa treatments,
- new cars,
- gasoline and oil,
- car repair services...

The producers of American Idol should also pay attention to the Clay Aiken Economic Package. American Idol is about selling advertising, so if you have any of these products to promote, consider encouraging [i.e., demanding] that Clay Aiken appear on AI with at least two performances (for example, "Lover All Alone" and, for dramatic irony, "Everything I Don't Need"), an interview segment, guest mentoring, and all what-not.

Win big by paying tribute to the man (so he doesn't sneak up and take the wind out of the show's sails on the finale next time).

Love, hosaa
Stimulated by Clay

Stimulating Arts and Minds

Gosh. I thought I was done tirading about supporting the arts, and could go back to talking about what matters: futurism and Clay Aiken.

The Washington Post this morning carries an editorial by David A. Fahrenthold, entitled "Very Clever. But Is It a Stimulus?" Don't get me wrong - I don't automatically think anyone asking practical questions is a jackasss.

In fact, Fahrenthold does a good job at illustrating the main concerns that people have about investing any money into the arts: what's in it for us? What's the payoff? And how will artists really use the money? (And will I approve?)

He asked a poet how she would spend the money, and unfortunately the answer was a little self-absorbed: she'd buy more notebooks and spend more time on her poems. Fahrenthold goes on to lament:

But it's unclear what kind of ripples she would create in the broader economy. ...And if you think that there's a big commercial market for good poetry -- dense, crystalline stuff that gives up its meaning only with time, like the bitter juice that seeps from a grated onion . . . then you are unaware that the No. 1 song in the country recently was Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You."

BIG opportunity missed here by Fahrenthold, his poet interviewee, and arts supporters in general. If the government is going to put strings on its "investment" in artists, instead of demanding "Tell us how many jobs you'll create and convince me your art is worthwhile," it should be demanding that the artist take a week and go teach a workshop in a school where arts funding was cut.

It isn't fair to blame it all on the success of Kelly Clarkson's current pop trifle. I guess you could applaud the stimulus she's giving the dying record and radio industry. But it's sort of like giving CPR to a corpse. There's more than the economy that needs stimulating.

Showing young people that there are higher forms of expression is an investment in a future of not just better art, but better minds. We're not necessarily teaching them to be artists, but to be thinkers and creators. It stops the decay of moribund minds, which don't just wither from neglect, but turn toxic if we let it happen.

Does Jon Stewart Take Requests?

The "Brawl Street" smack-down heard around the world, seen here at Hulu, inspires me to ask if Jon could please smack RCA for its squandering of Clay Aiken's talent.

As I've mentioned repeatedly, Time magazine noted way back in 2003 that RCA just didn't "get" Clay Aiken, but that Clay instinctively knew what his audience wanted from him. Whatever Clay thinks of the individual employees he worked with at RCA, and he has said kind and collegial things about them at his official fan club, RCA as a corporation squandered him (their resource) and his audience (their customers).

The problem was that RCA was a "cool" shop, and they were handed a "warm" product. RCA was rock 'n' roll; Clay was an entertainer. The closest marketing paradigm they could come up with for him was Barry Manilow, a warm artist but not a product they could sell to customers for cool.

Hell, even I know how to make "warm" go hot. You just blow a bit on the embers and step back. That's all Clay needed.

But if that wasn't simple enough, and RCA still demanded cool, even Clay knew how to do that for them if they'd let him.

How do you turn "warm" into "cool"? Ask Harley-Davidson. How do you sell a teddy bear in a Harley shop? You put a leather jacket on it.


"Cool Luke" photo by HDTalking

Clay knew that. That's what he did for the 2005 "Jukebox Tour," when he was between albums. He made a great show out of nothing.


photo by "Tasapio"

Now that Clay is free of the RCA chains of incompetence, there probably isn't really much of a battle to fight right now. They say living well is the best revenge, and I have a feeling Clay will be living very well for many years to come.

Thanks anyway, Jon. You've got bigger fish to fry.

Love,
hosaa
feeling warm

Quantum Art

Yesterday at Clayversity we were having an interesting discussion about Art. (Not "Ahhhhrrrrt" that the Spamalot French Taunters loved so.)

The question was about Clay Aiken's masterpiece, "Lover All Alone," and whether or not it was more moving now that he is out of the closet. Were the lyrics really about what he was experiencing, and is that what made it Art?

For all I know the feelings
And the picture that I
tried
So hard to find
Isn't mine.

I was frustrated because I was trying to say that the song is art not because it was a true and accurate description of Clay's feelings but because of the way it makes me feel. If all an artist does is tell us what he feels, I don't give a shit. If the art work makes me feel something, then that's why it is art. It communicated something to me.

I realize that isn't completely true. Unless the artist also felt something in the creation, then making the viewer or listener feel something is flat-out manipulation. Those old telephone commercials that had us all reaching out and touching someone - that wasn't art. That was commerce.

So I am revising my statements. It's art when the artist makes you feel what he feels.

A friend asked me about #11 on my Random list, why did "Starry Night Over the Rhone" make me cry? What it came down to was that being in the physical presence of that painting (not looking at a picture of it) took me to the time and place where Vincent was.

In a sense, this is time traveling, but in the quantum mechanics sense of entanglement (I think the New Age term is synchronicity.)

At Clayversity, I snarkily mentioned that I would be attending the Corcoran Gallery's Member's Preview tour of the Maya Lin installation, "Systematic Landscapes," and said maybe someone there knows what art is. Of course that would have been a stupid question, so I didn't interrupt the curator doing the hour-long tour of the five rooms of Maya's landscapes.

(I couldn't help asking one stupid question, though - how the wire-frame grid depicting the undulations of a mountain managed to stay up on the wall. The depiction of the Potomac River using nails as pixels was easy to figure out - NAILS - but I couldn't see anything holding the grid up. It turned out that the end pieces pierced through the wall, clutching it.)

Maya's art consisted of breaking apart the landscapes she experienced into component pieces and systematically reconstructing them. Her vision is so encompassing, it is hard to imagine how it can be broken apart. She brings landscapes indoors where people can look at them and experience them as objects. This changes the way we look at things.

On the way to work, I was looking at the systematic landscapes I pass every day - the stones in the low walls surrounding the property of an office complex, the patterns in the bricks in the sidewalks.

Art is communication and transportation. It's interactive. It makes you see and feel things you hadn't seen or felt in quite that way before. This time-travels you to the heart and soul of the artist and establishes that quantum connection, even for a brief moment.

Here are some photos I borrowed from the Internet. Just Google Image search Maya Lin:







This last one is from the Systematic Landscapes exhibition. The peak of the tallest mountain is probably about chest-high, and the viewer is invited to walk through the landscape.

Once again, I look at art and marvel at what human beings can do.

Love,
hosaa

Artist Unemployment News

The job news is not good for artists. A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts shows a higher rate of unemployment among artists compared with other professionals, and the rate would have been even higher if the discouraged artists had not left the labor force entirely.

Architects and designers, typically the professions with the highest employment rates among artists, have been hard-hit in this recession. Says the report:

As an example of how arts jobs intersect with the larger economy, consider the construction industry. Industry-wide declines, which began in 2006, have contributed to the shrinking job market for architects. While this group usually has the lowest unemployment rates among all artist occupations and all professionals, architect unemployment rates doubled, from 1.8 percent in fourth quarter 2007, to 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

But artists - with a labor force in the U.S. slightly smaller than the military - also have impacts on the economy, the NEA notes:

[A] National Governors Association report recognized that the arts directly benefit states and communities through job creation, tax revenues, attracting investments, invigorating local economies, and enhancing quality of life. There are 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations that support 5.7 million jobs and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year, according to a study by Americans for the Arts.