The Hackenblog

Eric Clapton on Robert Johnson:

Totally lovin’ Clark’s Picks

Related: Couldn’t find Stones in my Passway, but this will do, maybe moreso. You can still hear what Clapton was talking about.

You may bury my body down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit may catch a Greyhound bus and ride.

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Of course I was mere child when this aired but I kind of remember this.

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“LOS ANGELES — If Barack Obama is elected president, his speech on race in America will be remembered as one of the greatest in the country’s history. If he loses, it will still be remembered as a terrific speech, an astonishing display of grace under pressure.

“Those who care about the American dilemma — a racial history that contradicts our stated beliefs — will filter their perceptions through their own life experience, their own political bias, their own emotional stake in this particular election. Whatever the political effect, however, the man obviously said what he really thought.

“He told the truth: We are all racists. That does not mean that we are all prejudiced, but it does mean we notice the color of the people around us, and that affects the way we think and talk and act. And he was probably right about most of us, black and white, when he asserted that our racism is generational, that old men like Pastor Wright and me have more trouble dealing with race than do our children and, I expect, than our grandchildren will.

“That’s the way it is. We are on a long trail to a post-racial society — we may never reach the end — and this election will give some indications how far along we really are.”
Hearing the Obama Speech, by Richard Reeves, March 19, 2008

Yes, I bet even Bill and Hill would be proud to vote for Obama after that speech. This is not an Obama endorsement, but if America has to face it, really face it, on race, all the races, then that can only be good for us and the world.

I think Reeves is wrong about one thing here: whether Senator Obama wins or not, this is going to be remembered as one of the greatest speeches on race in America. It’s a tough subject, I thought he did a stellar job with it.

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Whoa!

PRESS RELEASE

February 28, 2008

——-
BECOME A PART OF THE MANGA WORLD WITH POP JAPAN TRAVEL’S MIND OVER MANGA TOUR
——-

Japanese dojinshi, comics published by the artist and sold at special events across Japan, have become a driving creative force, and a sensational way to connect with other fans. In the past, Pop Japan Travel has visited these dojinshi markets, but only as spectators. That’s about to change.

This August, aspiring dojinshi creators, established small press comic artists and manga admirers alike will have an unprecedented opportunity. Pop Japan Travel’s Mind Over Manga Tour offers guests the chance to go behind the scenes of one of Japan’s most respected dojinshi events, Comitia — and if you choose, print and sell your own comic or art book directly to Japanese readers!

If you apply and qualify, Pop Japan Travel will:

*-Translate your book into Japanese so that the locals can understand it
*-Print your book and deliver it directly to the event at Tokyo Big Sight
*-Help you sell your book and discuss it with readers at a booth at the event

Since 1984, Comitia has been one of Tokyo’s most popular dojinshi events. Run four times a year, it focuses on original, creative art rather than fan fiction. That has made it a key launchpad for new manga artists, with thousands of circles participating each year. It takes place at Tokyo Big Sight, which otaku will recognize from Comic Party, Genshiken and many other anime and manga series!

Even if you don’t choose to sell your own book, you’ll get an up-close look at the way Japan’s manga market operates. And the tour will also include the chance to meet and pick the brains of some Japan’s most important manga and dojinshi artists, plus a visit to a cutting-edge anime studio and Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli Museum.

Naturally, Mind Over Manga also includes our tried-and-true tour of Tokyo, providing a mind-blowing look at the world’s most populous urban area, plus a few excursions outside the city and an optional three-day tour of Osaka and Kyoto, Japan’s thousand-year capital.

The exact itinerary and price for the tour are still pending, but we wanted to spread the word as quickly as possible so you could start drawing!

Tour dates and activities are subject to change. Check out our Web site, www.popjapantravel.com, or contact travel@popjapantravel.com for details.

——-

DIGITAL MANGA’S POP JAPAN TRAVEL is the original and premiere provider of pop culture themed tours of Japan. Since 2003, PJT has operated more than 15 tours with themes focused on Japanese anime, manga, games and more. Pop Japan tours offer a careful balance of the hyper-modern world of J-pop culture and the rich traditions of ancient Japan, and PJT is the ONLY tour agency to provide exclusive experiences such as visits to anime and game studios, meetings with manga artists, and more. Pop Japan Travel tours are organized in cooperation with IACE Travel, one of Japan’s largest travel agencies.

###

Oh. My. God. This is wonderful! For people who like this kind of thing.

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See, this is what I need:

Said the woman who just ordered three more bookcases. Sigh. So many book, so little space.

More cool staircases.

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Yeah, I’m shocked, too.

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“Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army’s subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda’s father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland’s best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union’s plans to absorb and ‘Sovietize’ Poland’s eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.

“But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.

“Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word “Katyn” thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn’t a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland’s loss of sovereignty.”

~snip~

“The real test of Katyn, of course, is whether it remains a part of the Polish national conversation over time, as a handful of Wajda’s earlier films have indeed done. This is not just a question of the film’s quality. Its endurance will also depend on the continued existence of an audience that shares Wajda’s knowledge of twentieth-century Polish history, and that understands the symbols and shortcuts he uses to evoke his national and patriotic themes. Fifty years after it was made, a significant number of Poles still know that when the two young men in Ashes and Diamonds start listing names, setting a glass of alcohol alight for each one, they are talking about friends who died in the wartime underground and the Warsaw uprising, even if they never say so. If, fifty years from now, there is still an audience in Poland that understands Wajda’s characters and references— an audience that intuitively draws its breath when the general tells his men that without them ‘there will be no free Poland’—then Katyn, the movie, will still matter.”
A Movie That Matters,
by Anne Applebaum, NY Review of Books, February 14, 2008

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Dan Savage goes down to South Carolina and lives!

Cognitive dissonance anyone? Are there enough voters like this in the country to get Huckabee elected? This is scarier than anything I can think of right now. Of course, I haven’t had any coffee yet, so I might be back later with something more horrifying.

Thanks, Logan, I needed this.

Oh, man, ya gotta love Dan Savage! And we did at J LHLS in this 2003 interview. Did it all seem so much simpler then? Or was it just not an election year?

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Joseph Cornell site. The chief curator video was a little creepy, but in a can’t look away sort of way. It’s flash and video and well done.

(via Mr. Dan Kelly.

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“However, as the internet gains traction as a viable gown resource, the possibility of brides price-comparing and ‘buying the same dress somewhere else’ becomes even greater. There are discounters and consigners and Craigslist and you can even buy cheap knockoffs from China. So stores are freaked out - after all, they’re losing their competitive edge. Their response strategy? Limiting the amount of information that a bride can leave with. If she can’t look it up, she can’t find it cheaper. Hence, no photos.

“But surely you could write down its brand and style name, so you could look it up for future reference? Nope. Many stores literally rip the labels out of sample gowns, so that you cannot even tell which dress you are trying on.

“I read about this shocking tactic in a handy book, but found it hard to believe until I experienced it firsthand. I was in a pretty posh store, and I liked a dress by designer Melissa Sweet. But it was pricey, and I wasn’t ready to buy. I asked the owner, “Which dress is this again, so I can remember it?” She said, “It’s the Melissa Sweet.” I said, “I know, but which one? I know they all have style names, or numbers or something.” “Nope,” she said, looking down at her hands. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Wow! Wow. Well, all I need to know is that I won’t be making my purchase here!”
Shopping for The Dress, Curious Shopper, January 10, 2007

Heh, wedding industry, take that!

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The Puppet Bike. (via Semibold)

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I got to wake up with a sore throat, but that just means I’m getting it out of the way for the rest of 2008.

And since it IS 2008, I can post this again!

Journal of Bloglandia, because Blogtopia (y!sctp!) was taken.

and

The Journal of Women on Comics, women read comics and write great things about them.

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“Along with his wife, Elsie, Mr. Schnerb made a living repairing and binding dissertations, scores and other reading material. This day, he was working on a copy of ‘La Fanciulla del West’ because a conductor had asked him to rebind three poorly bound scores, one for each act, into a single document.

“Mr. Schnerb began by ripping the old books apart, “unbinding” them, as he calls the process, while trying to keep the pages intact. But inevitably, some pages got torn, which was why he was repairing them with thin paper strips.

“Since the death of his wife last year, Mr. Schnerb has been doing everything in the bindery by himself. His wife used to stitch together different sections of manuscripts using a sewing machine, but Mr. Schnerb never learned to operate the machine, so he resorts to needle and thread.”
As an Age Recedes, a Craftsman Soldiers On, by Raphael Ahren, NYT, December 30, 2007

I had a friend’s dissertation rebound by an artist bookbinder here in LA and, man, it’s a thing of beauty, never mind what’s in it (immunotoxicology, if you must know). But she only takes a few commissions a year and only the ones she likes, so I was lucky she took this one.

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Do other cities do this?

“They are the homeless of the domestic animal world — colonies of feral cats that roam residential neighborhoods and lurk around office buildings and commercial garages, scavenging for food.

“Unlike other strays that might rub up against a leg hoping for a crumb or a head rub, these felines are so unaccustomed to human contact that they dart away when people approach. Feral cats cannot be turned into house pets. When they end up in municipal shelters, they have little hope of coming out alive.

“But one animal welfare group has figured out a way to save their lives and put them to work in Los Angeles. The Working Cats program of Voice for the Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal advocacy and rescue group, has placed feral cats in a handful of police stations with rodent problems, just as the group placed cats in the rat-plagued downtown flower district several years ago — to great effect.

“Six feral cats were recently installed as ratters in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division, and another group will be housed at the Central Division early in the new year.

“Their reputation as furtive and successful exterminators grew after feral cats were introduced to the parking lot of the Wilshire Division nearly six years ago. Rats had been burrowing into the equipment bags that bicycle officers stored in outside cages; inside the facility, mice were sometimes scurrying across people’s desks.

“‘Once we got the cats, problem solved,’ said Cmdr. Kirk Albanese, a captain at the Wilshire station at the time. ‘I was almost an immediate believer.’”

~snip~

“For more information on ‘working’ feral cats, go to http://www.vftafoundation.org/workingcats.htm.”

LAPD enlists feral cats for rat patrol. The felines have been introduced, to great effect, at several stations with rodent problems. Parker Center may get them too. By Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 29, 2007

God bless people who think up brilliant stuff like this. They make me think better of our own species. Why can’t there be more solutions like this? I ask you. Why?

(If the LAT article is behind the registration or paywall, you can click on this: Feral Cats Mousing for a Living in LA [pdf]. Sorry, LAT, this story is too cool not to be read and you can send me a C&D if you think different. Oh, so, while I’m at it, here’s something else Los Angeles, the county this time, is getting right: Los Angeles Outdoor Gyms in Molinia’s district [pdf]. Yay!)

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“I love this semi-animated short film about a man who is tormented by a concrete golem-like creature. The integration of urban design from Montreal and Vancouver is seamless and elegant.”
Drawn.ca, December 28, 2007

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I’m not a huge Klimt fan, but I’m a huge fan of this site about him: iKlimt

Sorry, needs Flash, but is worth it. The site plays a Satie Gymnopédie. How elegant.

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Remembering Molly Ivins.

And it might never stop hurting.

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I wonder how many people don’t know he was a chorus boy on Broadway way back when. He appears to still have it. (via)

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Journal of Bloglandia (ISSN1950-7645)

Journal of Women on Comics (ISSN1940-7637)

Please cross-post, thanks!

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Streetlaughter has the best, circa 1969, definition I’ve ever seen.

Faggots: Dave Berg, Streetlaughter, December 13, 2007 (click for the larger image, but do read the post, it’s a good ‘un).

Thanks, Dorian, this was my first laugh of the day.

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‘”City officials today unveiled the parking meter of the future, which takes the swipe of a credit card as well as small change. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was among the VIPs touting the Easy Park-Easy Pay machine, which was installed in a city parking lot at 11229 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is replacing 6,000 of the city’s 40,000 meters with the multi-unit machines that allow motorists to use cash, credit card, debit card or their cellphones to pay for parking. LADOT officials unveiled the first unit in a city lot in North Hollywood. “Anyone in Los Angeles who has parked on the street or in public lots knows the frustration of broken meters, unwarranted parking tickets, and the stress of scraping for spare change to cover your trip to the local store,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. City engineers plan to replace 1,000 meters in city parking lots and another 5,000 along Los Angeles streets by next spring. If the new meters are deemed a success, LADOT will replace all of the city parking meters within two years. (CNS)’”
Fancy parking meters, Bottleneck Blog, December 14, 2007

Finally! Thank God, technology, and LADOT. Here’s a picture and story at abc.com. Might be time to buy a new cell phone. (Ug.)

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Oh wait…no, it’s a bear in a miter.

Bears in ill-fitting hats

(via Drawn!)

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But not so much nuts in a big group at the right times:

“Conceived by 30-year-old graphic designer Kim Jensen — known by her outlaw-affecting Ridazz handle, Skull — during a late-night ride in Cambodia, Midnight Ridazz was inaugurated in L.A. on Feb. 27, 2004, when the Echo Park resident led five like-minded friends on bikes and two on skateboards on a rolling tour of downtown’s fountains. A sense of community and an almost liturgical fellowship was immediate, says Jensen, as was a consensus on where to take the nascent bicycle club: ‘We were all anti-establishment, creative and feeling a need for speed in a nonconformist format. We were really set on keeping it free and totally noncommercial.’

“In addition to wanting to keep Ridazz events free-spirited, Jensen and company wanted them to be fun. So, in diametrical distinction to the politically charged but leaderless Critical Mass, Jensen set the precedent of promoting festively themed outings late Friday nights, when auto traffic is svelte and mellow, along routes mapped out ahead of time to avoid narrow streets, freeway exits and left turns.”

~snip~

“That’s no exaggeration. Although a few dozen cyclists had joined the core group for that third event, the Belmont Tunnel “Mural Ride,” hundreds began appearing thereafter. Within a year, the group was regularly pushing 1,000. To accommodate the swelling horde, which could no longer pedal through a single light cycle en masse, Midnight Ridazz felt compelled to adopt an extralegal practice popularized by Critical Mass — ‘corking’ — whereby a few lead riders block an intersection so that cyclists who miss the green can stay with the pack.

“‘When we obey the lights,’ says Roadblock of the namesake move, ‘it’s even more chaotic because the traffic is just insane for blocks and blocks. I’ve talked to police officers about it, and they say, “Yeah, keep it together and just get through.” So that’s what we go on.’”
Midnight Ridazz are bound to keep on riding. In the heart of car culture, massive bike rides are hitting the streets. Should you admire them? Scorn them? Or join the pack? By Liam Gowing, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 6, 2007

Ah. Sometimes I really love my town.

(Just don’t try this in Beverly Hills, they hate cyclists over there.)

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“Los Angeles Garment & Citizen has an article on the project our office has embarked upon to beautify our local utility boxes, which are those grey, anonymous boxes sprinkled throughout the Los Angeles streetscape. We have worked with AT&T and our community partners, Central City Action Committee and the Hollywood Beautification Team, to engage local artists and youth in painting these boxes. The Garment & Citizen article highlights the Carlos Callejo piece shown on the left, which Carlos painted with the help of youth in Echo Park. If you have an idea for a good box to paint, contact Kabira Stokes-Hochberg, our CD13 arts deputy.”
New Urban Canvases, Eric Garcetti, December 9, 2007

Woo, nice.

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“Councilmember Greig Smith and I joined with Heal the Bay Director of Programs, Meredith McCarthy yesterday in City Council to proclaim December 20th as “A Day Without a Bag” in Los Angeles. Each year, Angelenos consume some 6 billion plastic bags, almost 600 bags per person per year! Only 5% of these bags get recycled (and it is important to know that we have made it possible for you to recycle plastic bags by putting them in your blue bins–here is a helpful list of what you can put in the blue bin), so the rest wind up in landfills, the Los Angeles River, Echo Park Lake, Santa Monica Bay, and our streets.

“On December 20th, we are encouraging Angelenos to use reusable bags and get into the habit of using these bags for our shopping needs. We have only been using plastic bags since around 1977, so the habit shouldn’t be a tough one to break, but we hope the blogosphere will help do its part to spread the word. If we can begin to live without consuming the amount of plastic bags we currently do, we can save landfill space, clean up our waterways, and reduce the amount of oil consumed and global greenhouse gases emitted in the manufacture of these bags.”
A Day Without a Bag, Eric Garcetti, December 8, 2007

I am SO with this idea. When I lived in Poland and Prague, you had to bring your own bags, usually string, but often canvas. And although I never win the Trader Joe bring your own bag raffle, it’s a habit I never quite lost.

Oh, and you don’t have to be in LA to do this. You can celebrate a day without a plastic bag on December 20 wherever you are.

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“We need organizations who aren’t afraid of what is politically possible and talk about was is morally right. Today the CNA placed a full-page ad in 10 Iowa papers arguing strongly for not-for-profit health care, Medicare for All, taking the example of Dick Cheney’s multiple heart problems, and noting that if he wasn’t receiving the finest in government-run health care, he’d be dead by now.”
Give It Up For The California Nurses Association, by David Dayen, Calitics, December 10, 2007

Whee! California Nurses rule so hard!

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“Indeed, the problem for our great libraries is that books won’t stop coming. The British Library’s UK national collection is currently expanding at the rate of 12.5 kilometres of shelf space a year, and somewhere has to be found to put it all. In 1911, the notion of the copyright library was born, when Parliament decided that the British Library along with five others in Great Britain and Ireland would be entitled to receive a free copy of every item published. But, while the other five - the Bodleian at Oxford, Cambridge University Library, Trinity College Library in Dublin, and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales - have a right to claim any book published in the UK, in practice not all are. Cambridge University Library, for example, estimates that only between 70% and 80% of everything published in the UK are deposited there (they can also request anything within one year of publication). By contrast, the British Library must receive a copy of everything published in the UK each year.

“The British Library, you see, strives to live up to its self-imposed title of “the world’s knowledge”. That knowledge, though, is an odd thing. Along with the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible, it includes Everybody Poos, by Taro Gomi (to help kids over toilet phobias). Not to mention Wayne Rooney’s autobiography, Jordan’s novel and a book called Do Ants Have Arseholes And 101 Other Bloody Ridiculous Questions. The MPs who in 1911 established the legal deposit principle for the five greatest libraries in the British Isles probably didn’t realise the full consequences of their decision.”
Inside the tomb of tomes, by Stuart Jefferies, the Guardian, November 24, 2007 (via BldgBlog, which has more, like some, pictures)

I hear our Library of Congress is going to offer an e-version of the Copyright process in the near future. I also think the price will be $35 for e-subs, as opposed to $45 for the paper way we do now. I know this because I just plunked down $45 (which is robbery) for a copyright. I can remember when it was $10 and it was $10 for, like, forever, so I’ll be glad if the price goes down a little and I can do it all on email.

In other Library of Congress and Mayerson happenings, I just got two ISSN numbers (see sidebar): they were gratis, easy to request (well, I could figure it out), accomplished completely on email, and the LOC turned request around in 72 hours. Was I impressed? Yes, very!

The LOC requests a copy of the magazine be sent in when it’s published, so there must be a warehouse full of magazines somewhere as well. Or maybe they just scan them and toss the paper copy. I dunno.

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Dandyism is having a Fred Astaire festival.

By the way, this isn’t news, but Rita Hayworth is a goddess.

She makes tap dancing sexy.

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“Maria Ortiz’s civic awakening began when her husband fired a pistol into their front yard to ward off a gang member who had insulted him.

“Jose Ortiz hailed from a mountain village in Durango, Mexico, where residents were sometimes forced to take matters into their own hands because law enforcement was so far away. “But Ortiz was no longer in rural Mexico, and he spent time in jail for his actions.

~snip~

“But Maria Ortiz said no. Short and garrulous, she had come to the United States from Mexico at age 6 and knew little about how government worked. She knew, however, that her poor and crime-ridden neighborhood was in trouble, and she wanted to do something about it.

“So, in late 2004, Ortiz volunteered when Herman Barahona, of Los Angeles County’s Community Development Commission, showed up a few months later asking for help in organizing residents to battle crime and blight. It was part of a larger county campaign launched to reach long-neglected communities.

~snip~

“Barahona started by holding meetings at local churches and schools with a few immigrant parents, teaching a kind of Civics 101 class. Among the parents were several mothers at Lillian Street Elementary School, including Ortiz, who worked as a campus aide and whose son attended the school.

“Barahona taught them about each county department, such as Code Enforcement and Public Works, and how and where to go for help. Mostly he wanted to give them a sense of empowerment.

~snip~

“At the time, Florence-Firestone was in the middle of a surge in violent crime, with 41 homicides recorded in 2005 — surpassing the homicide rate in some of the nation’s most dangerous big cities, authorities said. About half of those killed had no gang affiliation.

“At a community meeting, Sheriff’s Lt. John Babbitt surprised Ortiz and others by asking for their help in combating crime.

“Babbitt had been tapped as the first lieutenant assigned to Florence-Firestone as part of the county’s civic experiment.

“It was a tough assignment for a former SWAT supervisor with no experience in community policing and who didn’t speak Spanish.

“To complicate matters, many in the immigrant community were distrustful of law enforcement.

“‘We thought only negative things about the police,’ Ortiz said.

“But residents were impressed when under Babbitt, the Sheriff’s Department assigned 60 more deputies to Florence-Firestone. A special prosecutor was also sent to try neighborhood homicide cases.

“Babbitt renovated a sheriff’s substation and moved his offices there. When Ortiz asked him to speak to Lillian schoolboys who were forming a small gang, Babbitt and three deputies showed up in uniform.

“To help build trust in the community, Babbitt gave his cellphone number to neighborhood leaders. He also called in code enforcement officers on gang and drug houses — two of which have been destroyed. With the help of Public Works, he cleaned up a block of 93rd Street that had become another illegal dump.

“And at his urging, some 200 residents have gone through the Sheriff’s Department’s Community Academy, where they are taught about homicide investigations, the jail system, domestic-violence laws and emergency preparedness.

“‘We learned how they do their job, which is something we didn’t know,’ Ortiz said. ‘What’s been achieved is unifying the community with the police.’

“Since the Florence-Firestone experiment began, the neighborhood has had many successes.

“Crime is down. Last year, homicides dropped in half to 19 after a major law enforcement crackdown.”
Residents of Florence-Firestone flex their civic muscles. An L.A. County program helps the neighborhood organize, clean up blight and make civic government more responsive to their needs, by Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 25, 2007

Maybe things are getting better in LA.

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