Saturday, February 23, 2013
Growing Up is Hard: Byron Crawford releases Infinite Crab Meats
Note: I now blog at Blownhorizonz.com. It's much prettier to look at, and more focused on fun stuff like weird fiction, extreme music, and awesome art. Also check out my Tumblr at blownhorizonz.tumblr.com.
Back in 2003 or so, I somehow discovered a blog by a guy called Byron Crawford. At that time, I had just graduated from college and, after six or seven months in the netherworld of working as a substitute teacher and living on a friend's couch, I had actually scored a semi-professional office job where, as I've since learned is the norm for semi-professional office jobs, I spent a lot of time screwing around on the internet.
Byron Crawford (aka Bol) was maybe the best thing on the entire internet at the time. He was funny, he was crazily honest about himself and his life, and he covered the main thing I was interested in then, rap music (actually Bol covered indie rock at least as much as he covered rap, but I was still not quite comfortable enough with my whiteness to listen to that much indie rock. I had only just cut off my dreadlocks, of which thankfully no photographic evidence exists). I read his blog obsessively, to the point where when I made my own rap record (in retrospect, good enough that I wish I'd had more know-how about promoting it) he was one of only two or three people I sent a copy.
I started to lose track of Bol when I quit that job about two years later to go to grad school. I would check back in on him every once in a while, but it seemed like more and more of his blog posts were just pictures of large-breasted (almost exclusively white) girls in bikinis. Not that I object to that per se, but it didn't really hold my interest as much as his profanity-laced, self-loathing work from the early oughts had.
I guess I have continued to check on him less and less, because I completely missed the fact that a year ago he published a book, Mindset of a Champion. I sat down and read it today (took me about three hours) and it was incredibly enjoyable. Partly, that's because I still feel like I have a semi-personal relationship with the guy - we're both in our early thirties, both came of age with the same music, come from semi-similar backgrounds and very similar mindsets. But much more partly (?) it's because it's a great read. In many moments, Bol is just as hilarious as he ever was, and more than that, the book is full of fascinating/disturbing information on the inside workings of the hip hop journalism world that Bol was at the outskirts of for half a decade, all while speaking truth about it in a way that, as the book reveals, was ultimately self-destructive.
That self-destructive streak is the bothersome part of both the book and Bol's identity and story, and also where, as things tend to, this becomes about me. Because while I'm sure his writing appealed to me because we have similar backgrounds (middle class, good college), Byron has had a much different path than me since then. I had some trouble getting going after college, but before too long I'd done what I thought was the 'right' thing, or at least a 'right' thing - gone to grad school and started pursuing a profession, mostly with a manic workaholism that was self-destructive in its own way. Bol, on the other hand, on his blog and in Mindset, tells us about his time working at White Castle, bouncing around many minimum wage jobs, and finally settling in to working something that rounds up to a decade at K-Mart. For anyone who's read his blog, there's an uncomfortable disconnect here - that this incredibly smart guy could have spent most of his twenties making his main nut working the lowest of low-end retail is just befuddling.
Bol is unsparing in explaining why this happened - his depiction of himself is pretty consistently as a day-drinking, terminally unambitious laziest-man-alive. And on the other hand, he did spend five or so years as a professional blogger - he drops numbers in the book, and I'd say that from blogging for XXL alone he was making about 2/3 of what I was making for much of my time as a grad student. So it's certainly a question of optics, with Byron all too willing to downplay his own very real accomplishments.
Of course there's one more thing - Byron's black, and I'm white. I know he'd be the last to blame that for much, so I'll take care of it: if Bol were white, even if he were still the same lazy shit, he probably would have semi-magically fallen into something that would have supported him in a lifestyle that didn't involve quite so much White Castle, and that definitely wouldn't have involved him getting his eye put out in a workplace accident.
But I'm not here to cry a river for Byron Crawford. Whatever the nature of his journey, what fascinates me the most is that we've ended up so close to the same place after a decade. He's a better writer than me by a mile (though we both enjoy unmasking bullshit), and I have a couple extra letters after my name, but we both released our first books at about the same time, and we're both trying to generally step up our game as we get dissatisfied with what the world has so far offered us for our efforts as cultural arbiters/interpreters of various sorts. Byron just told me via twitter that he bought my book, which is incredibly flattering, and though his internet persona would definitely find it full of hot air, I harbor a secret hope that the real Byron Crawford - clearly a sensitive type - appreciates it. I had a fun lazy afternoon reading his first one, and I'm excited to take a crack at the second. It's blowing the fuck up on Amazon right now, so hopefully he won't have to work at K-mart ever again.
Monday, February 4, 2013
In Dialogue on Money at Absolute Economics
I'm cited in a post at Absolute Economics where a few of us are working through ideas about the nature of money. I was the instigator of the conversation, but Michael Kaplan, Joshua Ramey, and others are operating at such a high level that I wasn't really able to keep up after that. It's a great, if head-spinning, read:
Paradoxes in Money and Value: A Dialogue
Paradoxes in Money and Value: A Dialogue
Noriko Manabe on Dengaryu and Stillichimiya as 'Rural Rap.'
Great article at Japan Focus from the enduring Noriko Manabe. Dengaryu's album is titled "B Kyuu Eiga no you ni," which means "Like a B Movie." So, that's a big point in his favor already.
Video with subtitles:
Video with subtitles:
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Dr. James Tracy and the Paranoid Style in Floridian Academia
Starting December 20th, just one week after the shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Dr. James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University began offering a version of the events quite different than that seen on the nightly news. On his blog, Tracy has speculated that the Connecticut medical examiner in charge of the case was an impostor, and claimed that there were two to four gunman in addition to accused shooter Adam Lanza. He has written that “compelling geopolitical and diplomatic conditions” suggested those additional shooters were part of an Israeli paramilitary team. In the culmination of these postings, Tracy wrote that he “is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shootings ever took place, at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described,” and suggested that the event was engineered by the Obama administration to help erode civil liberties. Even in its skillfully hedged form, the claim that Sandy Hook didn’t really happen, combined with Tracy’s position as a tenured professor, has made his claims national news.
Tracy has other odd ideas – his blog refers to weather-controlling “chemtrails,” FEMA-run concentration camps, and a shadowy conspiracy aimed at undermining American sovereignty. These echo a shockingly widespread belief in what is known as the New World Order, conceived by adherents as a massive plot to establish a single, oppressive, authoritarian global government. The New World Order is believed to include such groups as (variously) the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and the Rothschild banking family. These groups and others are believed to have orchestrated everything from the Kennedy Assassination, to first contact with space aliens in Area 51, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Sadly, without the “PhD” after his name, Tracy’s strange beliefs would be unremarkable – the conspiracy industry is big business in America, with figures like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and Pat Robertson peddling versions of the “Master Conspiracy” to an eager audience. Of course, it’s all hokum, part of a long tradition of fabricated pseudo-politics that stretches back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document showing an international Jewish plan for world domination, but which was really cooked up the Russian secret police in 1903 as a way of whipping up anti-Jewish hysteria. The Protocols were eagerly touted by notorious American Nazis such as Henry Ford, and to this day anti-Semetism remains a major underlying theme of New World Order ideas. But conspiracism crops up in many smaller ways; For instance, when the Pinellas County commission voted in 2011 to remove fluoride from county drinking water, it was partly due to New World Order theories that linked the mineral to government mind-control. But isn’t this the province of some narrow lunatic fringe? Hardly. Dr. Tracy’s strange and hurtful outburst illustrates an important point about conspiracism – very smart, sometimes very accomplished people can be pulled in by strange ideas, and they tend to be very good at defending their conclusions. Tracy’s blog is soberly written and carefully argued, for the most part sticking to the common conspiracist tactic of ‘raising doubts’ about the official narrative, and concluding that the discrepancies must mean there’s a larger, malevolent force at work.
Tracy’s descent into the rabbit hole shows the fine line between the healthy distrust that has driven some of the best of American politics, and a growing plague of conspiracism that threatens to erode the common cause that allows our society to function. There are some very good reasons to be skeptical of both government and the media – for instance, the tragedy on 9/11 really was used as a political tool to institute frightening curbs on American civil liberties, and programs like COINTELPRO and FBI surveillance of Occupy show that the U.S. government sometimes works against its citizens’ freedoms. Skepticism of the media, moreover, is vital to real democracy, and Tracy has published respectable academic work unpacking various forms of media bias and institutional failure. In fact, Tracy’s scholarly work is very similar to my own – we even both got our doctorates from the University of Iowa. Where does healthy skepticism cross the line to destructive conspiracism, and why?
The conspiracist fallacy is an emotional as much as an intellectual one. We live in a world of human imperfection, one in which not just natural disasters, but the failures of individuals and institutions seem constant. Depending on your politics, you’re likely to see various failures as causes of the Sandy Hook tragedy – but only a few of us will be tempted to explain those failures as part of a larger, carefully coordinated agenda. In a strange way, the conspiracist viewpoint is comforting – it transforms the complicated and sad reality of our imperfect world into one in which dark, Machiavellian forces are the source of all suffering. James Tracy and conspiracists like him would rather live in a world ruled by sensible evil, than have to confront senseless tragedy.
Tracy has other odd ideas – his blog refers to weather-controlling “chemtrails,” FEMA-run concentration camps, and a shadowy conspiracy aimed at undermining American sovereignty. These echo a shockingly widespread belief in what is known as the New World Order, conceived by adherents as a massive plot to establish a single, oppressive, authoritarian global government. The New World Order is believed to include such groups as (variously) the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and the Rothschild banking family. These groups and others are believed to have orchestrated everything from the Kennedy Assassination, to first contact with space aliens in Area 51, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Sadly, without the “PhD” after his name, Tracy’s strange beliefs would be unremarkable – the conspiracy industry is big business in America, with figures like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and Pat Robertson peddling versions of the “Master Conspiracy” to an eager audience. Of course, it’s all hokum, part of a long tradition of fabricated pseudo-politics that stretches back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document showing an international Jewish plan for world domination, but which was really cooked up the Russian secret police in 1903 as a way of whipping up anti-Jewish hysteria. The Protocols were eagerly touted by notorious American Nazis such as Henry Ford, and to this day anti-Semetism remains a major underlying theme of New World Order ideas. But conspiracism crops up in many smaller ways; For instance, when the Pinellas County commission voted in 2011 to remove fluoride from county drinking water, it was partly due to New World Order theories that linked the mineral to government mind-control. But isn’t this the province of some narrow lunatic fringe? Hardly. Dr. Tracy’s strange and hurtful outburst illustrates an important point about conspiracism – very smart, sometimes very accomplished people can be pulled in by strange ideas, and they tend to be very good at defending their conclusions. Tracy’s blog is soberly written and carefully argued, for the most part sticking to the common conspiracist tactic of ‘raising doubts’ about the official narrative, and concluding that the discrepancies must mean there’s a larger, malevolent force at work.
Tracy’s descent into the rabbit hole shows the fine line between the healthy distrust that has driven some of the best of American politics, and a growing plague of conspiracism that threatens to erode the common cause that allows our society to function. There are some very good reasons to be skeptical of both government and the media – for instance, the tragedy on 9/11 really was used as a political tool to institute frightening curbs on American civil liberties, and programs like COINTELPRO and FBI surveillance of Occupy show that the U.S. government sometimes works against its citizens’ freedoms. Skepticism of the media, moreover, is vital to real democracy, and Tracy has published respectable academic work unpacking various forms of media bias and institutional failure. In fact, Tracy’s scholarly work is very similar to my own – we even both got our doctorates from the University of Iowa. Where does healthy skepticism cross the line to destructive conspiracism, and why?
The conspiracist fallacy is an emotional as much as an intellectual one. We live in a world of human imperfection, one in which not just natural disasters, but the failures of individuals and institutions seem constant. Depending on your politics, you’re likely to see various failures as causes of the Sandy Hook tragedy – but only a few of us will be tempted to explain those failures as part of a larger, carefully coordinated agenda. In a strange way, the conspiracist viewpoint is comforting – it transforms the complicated and sad reality of our imperfect world into one in which dark, Machiavellian forces are the source of all suffering. James Tracy and conspiracists like him would rather live in a world ruled by sensible evil, than have to confront senseless tragedy.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Ends of the Forest
I just posted a new fiction work, "The Ends of the Forest," at Wattpad. It's a short story that you can enjoy in about thirty minutes.
http://www.wattpad.com/9374280-the-ends-of-the-forest
http://www.wattpad.com/9374280-the-ends-of-the-forest
Django Unchained
I just saw Django - the closest to release day I've seen a move in ever - and I thought it was solid. The most important part, for me, was that it in no way tried to downplay, trivialize, or exploit the horror of slavery for any purpose but to be as gut-wrenchingly awful as it really was. There are sections of the movie that should be hard to watch even for a wizened gorehound like myself, not because the blood is so over-the-top (that part makes the gunfights spectacular and fun) but because we are unmistakeably witnessing an entire system that forces people to become evil, and rewards those who enjoy being evil the most.
Everything else is somewhat incidental - this movie could not have been good if it didn't face the morality of its subject matter head-on, and the fact that it does is probably the most important thing about it. Otherwise, as a movie, I'd say the ending is very predictable - which it's kind of supposed to be, but that doesn't make the last fifth of the film any less plodding. Everything up to that is really great, though. Basically, every part of the movie that has Christoph Waltz in it is fantastically fun, because he's a genius.
Oh wait, spoiler alert.
Everything else is somewhat incidental - this movie could not have been good if it didn't face the morality of its subject matter head-on, and the fact that it does is probably the most important thing about it. Otherwise, as a movie, I'd say the ending is very predictable - which it's kind of supposed to be, but that doesn't make the last fifth of the film any less plodding. Everything up to that is really great, though. Basically, every part of the movie that has Christoph Waltz in it is fantastically fun, because he's a genius.
Oh wait, spoiler alert.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
All Good Things . . . The End of STOIC and Bradley Kokay's CHEAPER THAN ARROWS, 11/16
Just a quick reminder and endorsement, if you haven't made it out to the current show at the Venture Compound in St. Petersburg, STOIC and Bradley Kokay's Cheaper Than Arrows, this coming Friday will be your final chance. Starting at 9pm, The Venture Compound is hosting Boston's Pile, along with local bands Ghost Hospital and Just Satellites, and after the performance, Cheaper Than Arrows will close.
Going into it none of us were really sure what to expect, but in the frantic all-night runup to the opening these two guys turned out a truly intimidating installation, with one of Brad's trademark organic collages running the entire length and breadth of a gallery wall, four of STOIC'S iconic hungry skulls marching the remaining perimeter, and each leaking/bleeding out onto the pitch-black ceilings and floor.
This is the most striking, new, dramatic art currently on display anywhere in St. Petersburg, and maybe in Tampa Bay. After Friday night it will be ripped down, painted over, and DESTROYED.
You've been warned.
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