i come to new york, with amy, and we see our friends. different friends than san francisco - these are mostly old school friends and people i've met through some recent business. oh yeah, and my busybusy brother.a few years ago, JC Herz wrote a story about "digital dormitories" or something in rolling stone ("Part P.T. Barnum, part Johnny Appleseed, Hall is wide-eyed about technology, and firmly convinced of its power to give everyone a creative outlet."). I asked her who her editor was and she told me - I called him up and had a meeting. she was non-plussed - i did violate a code of freelance ethics by not asking her. i hope i apologized - here i acknowledge my raw ambition clouded my sense of propriety and appreciation. heck i just wanted to talk to the guy -new york is a desparate orgy of socializing. i am consistently late and rushing to meet the single friend who is miraculously available for lunch between leigh and jesse, while i contemplate how pissed off wilson is that since i have seen him once on this trip i have not called him again.
it's social commerce and it sucks at the same time it is auxilarating to remember that you know and love this many people, each of whom is wonderful and fascinating, at least over drinks.
how would i ever get any work done? by sequestering myself in an apartment somewhere - much like i do now anywhere. the difference being that when i looked out my windows here, i would likely see a grey backdrop of un bridled concrete expansion, if i'm lucky enough to live in manhattan. otherwise i contemplate a far distance from the people i have moved to live near and by that time i might as well stay living abutting a creek in oakland as i am now, with dirt to dig in and time and cleaner air to spare.
bsesides, my community of web publishers still seems ensconsed in or near SF. at least the geek community that has done me so well backing up my publishing efforts. could i find a brian mosely in new york to build a bud.com backend script for love of good code?
perhaps but while webzine 99 is my most recent SF web conference invitation, risingtidesummit, the largest conflagration of net-CEOs on this great planet? is the best that new york has to offer me -
my picture from the risingtidesummit bios
lens flare!thanks greg a-c
there's a frenzy of internet speculation in both places - in san francisco, people work to develop new technologies or solve technology problems, in new york, people are discovering and filling niche markets. motivation: toys or money. isn't that simple?
the conversation between us amounted to a gig for me - a 700 word article about my web page making in october 1995 - for which i got paid $750. fantastic money! to consider when now I leave college and contemplate the cost of my desires. and when i consider that my paying game reviews pay about a dime per word (1500 words - 150 dollars).
so when i was stroking for freelance work I bothered that editor again and he has lined me up with a writing gig there again perhaps. it's nice because the ball is utterly and completely in my lap - there is no question but that it is up to me to make this opportunity into a dollar per word.
and while i am older and ever closer to compatible productivity in the grand machine, i am still wary of the trappings of success. particularly, rolling stone had this ad campaign in the late 80s - "perception / reality" in which they pasted objects from the 60s and their accordingly slicker counterparts from the 80s on facing pages, and finished the visual comparison by inviting the reader to reject their perception that rolling stone was not in fact the tear sheet of a stoned bunch of loudmouth nincompoops, but rather rolling stone was the style bible and mirror for suave young professionals who listened to CDs in their Saabs. All in all, there were over 2 dozen of these ads, which now framed hang around the conference room walls of the rolling stone office. so if anyone comes for a big meeting, they are sure to notice that rather than representing rose coloured glasses, rolling stone today represents tom cruise risky business black shades.
and that's all fine - how could i expect anything alternative to fund a dollar a word. i don't have too much trouble minding this until i witness the june 24 cover and i see "jar jar superstar" which at once is about the wittiest thing you could do with that carribean-jerk-frog, but also just observes a kind of utterly banal pandering to the stale stale and exploitative element of the character, well-skewered not by dave letterman so much as the film critic for the Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern, who wrote of Jar Jar Binks in the new Star Wars - "a Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly with Butterfly McQueen."
all i gotta do i keep my mouth shut and my pen loose, and actually read the magazines tag line for the article: "Ahmed Best (a.k.a. Jar Jar Binks) offers a glimpse of reality amid the Star Wars hype: "People look at Yoda like he's a god. On the real, he's just a puppet with a dude's hand up his ass." "
which ameliorates the situation, by poking slightly at the issue in a jocular fashion. in fact jar jar in this case seems like the only outsider element in the pantheon of well scrubbed star wars leads that rolling stone could pick for its coverage amidst the prequl hype. you'll never see bud.com stoop to coverage amidst the prequl hype!
ultimately, writing and publishing in this realm involves mostly positivity - looking on the brite (sp) side of culture sharing and gradual, moderate truth seeking. either positivity, or adoration. adoration of the myth of rolling stone, or 60s rebellion, or whatever else became part of bill-paying as i discover my own propsensity to capitalize on my studies of the web that i love for content i whore for dead media pimps.
they are one of the best games in town i realize - as i weigh them against the other magazine i recently wrote for. wildweb games published a few of my articles, one without my name attached, and many with the most lively and salacious comparisons and metaphors extracted in favour of thinly-veiled purchasing commendations. hopefully rolling stone will still adhere to its seductive sex and drug laden history - though a noticeable count of the perception/reality ads dealt with the statistical fact that rolling stone readers in 1987 were more likely to turn their parents into DARE than they were to experiment with pot (that's an exaggeration). the ads made a point of clearing RS readers of drug charges, presenting a sober productive consumer readership ready for hot ads to pay justin yeah baby yeah.
anyhow, i received a commendation from bob love, "you have a roaming intelligence" which translates i think into - I hope you can get your shit together. i told editor nathan brackett that i needed an editor to suck the shit out of my brain-hole, focus me, and rising to that challenge we had a solid conversation that lead to an assignment or two. thanks nathan. nice young guy - amongst other things he told me that public enemy, chuck D has a background in design and promotions - that's howcome his song titles are such good sound bytes - "welcome to the terrordome" "bring the noise" "fight the power"
