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a week without sweets

February 11, 2013 in columns, mostly non-fiction

jeannelsmith

Editor note: My first great love was personal stories, from the time I first heard Spalding Gray, to my eventual discovery of This American Life, I loved people talking about the extraordinary things they did in their lives or experienced.  The first big addition to Secretly-Important was the inclusion of personal stories from different artists I knew.  Jeanne was one of them.  I known Jeanne since high school, when we both acted in plays together.

 

I love food.  I would say that I choose salty, fried, savory, starchy snacks over sweets, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t addicted to sugar as well.  It’s probably about equal to be perfectly honest.  My addiction to sugar is no recent discovery, I have had an intense relationship with it as long as I can remember.  My mother was and is a notorious sugar hater, preaching that sugar is the devil and even went as far during my childhood as handing out copies of Sugar Blues to anyone who would take it from her grasp.  Every Halloween my two sisters and I would traipse around the neighborhood collecting delectable candies only for them to be confiscated by my parents and thrown into the trash.  That’s not entirely true.  We were able to pick out four or five of our favorites.

Since those sad, early days of wanting, needing, shaking for sugar, I have grown up and become an adult and consequently can eat or drink whatever I like.  Though it was upsetting to me as a child sugar addict to be withheld from sugar so often, I do appreciate learning about the dangers of sugar when I was a kid and feel pretty well informed on the matter.  This still doesn’t dissuade me from indulging.  I have gone on different diets to absolve myself of this addiction, from a candida cleanse to a pursuit of alkalinity.  Regardless of my desire for purification, the next fix is always just around the corner.  Recently I was getting a little out of control with it and even through my winter cold I was still indulging in every vegan treat that came my way.  So when a friend suggested that we cut it out for one week, I was enthused to participate.

So it’s winter, I was sick, and not eating sugar.  It felt natural not to eat sugar while I was hacking my head off and blowing my nose until it was cut from the tissue paper.  But the urge was still there.  I realized the sugar conundrum isn’t even so much a need for sweets.  I use it as a way to kill time, a way to spend money, a way to indulge even further.  What could make this pour over $5 coffee even more rewarding?  Drinking it while eating a vegan chocolate chip cookie.

It feels good to me to be carefree about food.  I do limit my diet as a vegan, and I’m certainly not delusional enough to believe that “because it’s vegan it’s healthy,” but I feel that my diet is restricted in a way I see fit and to give myself license to indulge when that choice affirms me.  In a society of calorie counting it feels nice to never think about it.  But it confuses me because it is gratifying to claim my right to eat what i like and not obsess about food intake, yet at the same time I know it’s not boosting my mental clarity, stamina or immune system.

So the saga continues.  The week is over, and I continue to think about all of the delicious opportunities that await me.  I suppose i believe in taking time off from vices to give myself distance from them and gain some perspective.  This way I have a choice instead of impulsively saying yes to every sweet snack.  I enter this time more aware of my relationship to sweets and my emotional ties to satiating those desires.  I wish to enjoy them more when I do make the choice to, and when I want to only to feel fancy or free to acknowledge what’s really going on.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying my mother will be proud, but hey, I’m trying.

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setting the record straight on dick’s drive-in

March 14, 2012 in columns, mostly non-fiction

When I lived in Los Angeles it was an undisputed fact that aside from the El Pollo Loco theme song, In-N-Out Burger was the best.  I’m sure they have their naysayers, I just never once heard from them.  Even vegetarians love In-N-Out thanks to their meatless burger.  Yes, their burgers are delicious, their menu is secretive, and their fries… unspectacular unless covered in cheese.  People in the American Southwest love In-N-Out with a fervor usually reserved for religious zealots or political parties.

You can imagine my surprise when my mother forwarded me this article at Esquire (fucking Esquire!) that listed Dick’s Drive-In as the most life changing Burger Joint in America.  This was part of their Eat Like A Man Series, where they asked readers to vote for the Burger joint that changed their life.  The staff at Esquire seemed to be as shocked as I was, that not only did some little Drive-In joint from the PNW win, but it mopped the floor with the competition.  It was a landslide victory of 56%, lightyears ahead of In-N-Out, Five Guys or something called Black and Orange (coincidentally from D.C.).  I felt pride in seeing Dick’s featured in an Esquire article, but at the same time my heart ached.

Last weekend while cleaning out my former bedroom closet with my mom, we came across a dozen Dick’s t-shirts from the 80’s, a Dick’s trucker hat from the 70’s, and an original burger-flippers cap from the… 1950’s?  If you look in the kitchen of any of my family members you’re sure to find a bright orange Dick’s tray, and everyone’s wall has a sheet metal depiction of the restaurant at lower Queen Anne.  We’re not just some family of Dick’s fanatics, we owe the iconic drive-in a lot.  You see, my Grandfather co-founded the restaurant in 1954 and ran it until 1992/93.

When I tell people this, their first question is guaranteed to be: is your Grandpa Dick?  The short answer is no.  When I was little the story was much easier to tell, and so I told it to everyone who would listen.  Now that I’m older I try to keep it to myself.  Not because I’m ashamed of the success that Dick’s has attained, but because the story is complicated.  My Grandfather was H. Warren Ghormley and he co-founded Dick’s with Dick Spady, and Dr. B. O. A. Thomas in 1954.  He ran the restaurant until the early 90’s before Dick took it over.  Twenty years later my family has no ties to Dick’s, every time I get asked about a lifetime supply of free burgers there is a little pang in my heart, because what had been an integral part of my family for nearly forty years is now just a handful of memories.

my grandpa on the right

‘Dick’s opened on January 28th 1954, later than expected due to a snow storm that made the parking lot impossible to navigate.  If you look at pictures from the early days your guaranteed to see my family, my mom, my uncles, their cousins.  Though my mom went on to pursue other careers she kept coming back to a series of nightmarish shifts at the Broadway location because it was the best paying job she could find.

Dick’s is the longest operating fast food restaurant in Seattle (58 years).  All the ingredients are local.  The milkshakes are still made with real milk, originally from Carnation Dairy Farm.  The fries are made with real potatoes and make my mouth water just to think about. The meat is made locally and was supplied by Daniel Sandal (Daniel’s Broiler) who delivered a special blend for Dick’s daily.  In the 1980’s when he sold his company a condition was that they would continue to deliver the same fresh blend daily.  Next time you visit a Dick’s check out the cow picture, that came from Daniel Sandal.  Nally relish made an exclusive relish blend just for Dick’s the “sweet banquet blend.”  While you’re looking for that cow picture, look for the antique Coca-Cola clock as well: my Grandfather didn’t believe in advertising his suppliers, even when Coke offered to pay for the Dick’s sign as long as it included the Coke logo.  He refused and the closest they got were the clocks.

I know why Dick’s blew away the competition.  For years this living Dinosaur has kept a thrifty menu, and thrived on memories.  Obviously my family has many of them.  Before they renovated the lower Queen Anne location I used to marvel at the unique lighting fixtures and brilliant orange booths… thanks to my Grandmother.  I remember many, many meals being paid for with Dick’s gift certificates.  I remember visiting Debbie and Freddie the two admins who worked at the head office (the brown house next to the Wallingford location) and wondering how we were related.  I remember going to that same office to tell my uncle, who was working there, that I had eaten my first cheeseburger all by myself.  I can recite my standard order in my sleep: 1 deluxe, 1 cheese burger, 1 frie, a strawberry shake, and if I am feeling particularly gluttenous, a butterscotch sunday.

I feel immense pride every time I eat a deluxe or see the Dick’s name in something as prestigious as Esquire.  It was my Grandfather who kept the restaurant running for nearly forty of its fifty-eight years.  My heart aches knowing that the name Warren Ghormley has slowly eroded away in connection to his life’s work.  Imagine you played first base for the Seattle Mariners for 150 games, then you broke your hand and went on the disabled list for the final twelve games as the team advances on to the playoffs.  The media has forgotten all about you and instead talks only about your replacement, who rarely acknowledges you.  This is what I feel.

from left to right: Dr. Thomas, Warren Ghormley, Dick Spady

Mr. Spady should be credited for helping bring Dick’s into the 21st century and finding a way to blend Facebook nation with classic drive-ins.  I’m not sure that my Grandfather could or would have been willing to fully embrace this changing world.  That doesn’t mean that his many, many, many years should be forgotten, after all, many of the memories and life changing experiences that people have had happened while my Grandfather ran it.

As I prepare to have my own child I am beginning to realize that unless I do something, the Ghormley connection to Dick’s will fade completely.  I can’t be afraid to answer those innocuous questions people ask, I can’t get tired of setting the record straight.  When my kid goes to school I want them to tell the world that it was their great Grandpa Warren who started Dick’s Drive-In, say it with pride, and no heart ache.

The record has been set straight, pass it along.

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hotel congress

March 5, 2012 in columns, mostly non-fiction

february 17, 2012

tucson, arizona

congress: the action of coming together

A few weeks back my wife and I took a trip to Tucson, of all the places to pay a premium price on airline tickets it would not have made the list.  Tucson is located in the Southwestern quadrant of Arizona, a state I’d visited just twice before and in all honesty it had not left a strong mark on me.  This was the land of Jan Brewer, John McCain, and as I was later informed: the land of a mandatory ten day jail sentence for a first drunk driving offense.  All that said, I’d never been to Tucson, I didn’t have any strong impression of what it was like there, the only reason I was going was because two friends who are very important to me were getting hitched.

When my wife and I decided to move to Los Angeles we visited these friends for a weekend.  I hadn’t been to LA since before the riots so everything was new to me.  We’d been advised to avoid the freeways and instead took the surface streets from LAX to Los Feliz.  Anyone who’s made that drive will understand when I say that I was less than impressed (it’s far from scenic).  It wasn’t until we crossed Franklin boulevard that I got a glimpse of what was to be my Los Angeles for the next three years.  Tucson was no different, all my assumptions were correct, at least until we crossed Congress street.

I began to understand just why we were here of all places, celebrating the congress (sorry it’s the title of the piece) of these to great friends.  The wedding was to be held at the Hotel Congress, this also happens to be where we would be staying for the next three nights.  The  hotel was built in 1919 across the street from the Amtrak station along the Union Pacific Railroad.  As it was explained to me the happy couple romantically found the hotel while taking the train to New Orleans.

Hotel Congress was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2003, their real claim to fame has to do with a fire in 1934 and the capture of notorious bank robber John Dillinger.  The hotel itself was like a time capsule.  There are no keycards, no televisions, no digital alarm clocks, and the plumbing is original.  Each room comes equipped with a rotary phone that connects to a switch board (yep) at the front desk.

Our room was my romantic writers fantasy, I needed only to sit at the antique desk and peer through the wood venetian blinds, to become Raymond Carver or David Foster Wallace.  I fantasized about a sweltering August evening, a bottle of Whisky half empty on the side table, a banged up black Underwood typewriter looming on the desk, onion skin paper littering the vanity, the floor, the bed, the bathroom.  A woman who’s name I can’t remember and won’t ask for slinks from my bed and leaves my enclave in the middle of the Sonoran desert.  My great American novel scattered somewhere in that room.  That was all fantasy, the reason for being there was far more romantic.

There are relatively few rooms in the hotel, forty by my count, all located on the second floor.  At one point there was a third floor, which burned in the 1934 fire and subsequently added to the mythology of the hotel and its dozens of ghost stories.  Our supernatural experience occurred our first night.  Our cab driver informed us that one common story centered around a little girl who burned to death in the fire, I thought he was full of shit, doesn’t every old building have a ghost or two?

There’s a bar in the lobby which is loud, if you’re looking for a quite escape this is not the place for you, it’s loud until around three o’clock after that time it gets quite(r).  It was right at three that I thought I heard a faint knock on the door, I wasn’t really awake and pretty drunk so I didn’t move.  A few minutes later we both woke up to the sound of our phone ringing, it was the front desk informing us that they’d received a call about our smoke detector.  There was nothing wrong with it, it never went off, well actually it did the following morning thanks to a steamy shower.  I’m not convinced this was a ghost, but you can’t deny that it was odd.

It was only fitting that the name of the hotel was Congress and that we were there to celebrate a congress.  Not only a coming together of two people but a coming together of many people, some meeting for the first time and others reacquainting.  Part of the charm in my three days there was just knowing that around every corner loomed the possibility that I will run into someone I know.

Our first two days in Tucson had been spent almost exclusively within the confines of the hotel, Sunday, we ventured out into greater Tucson.  It’s nothing to write home about, with the exception of a few interesting looking museums and the hauntingly beautiful Saguaro National Park, the city is basically nothing.

I had expected the wedding to be beautiful, I had expected to see people I’d not seen for some time, I had not expected to enjoy parts of Tucson as much as I did.  You can go to any city in almost any part of the world and you can be guaranteed that the hotels will all be similar, designed to have all the comforts of home even when your 20,000 miles from home.  My time in the Hotel Congress was nothing like being home, and nothing like any other hotel I’d visited.

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should art be free? part 2, the answer

January 27, 2012 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Yesterday we examined the question, should art be free?  Today I will begin by giving you the short answer, no.  If we don’t want to loose an already dwindling artistic community, somehow, someway, someone needs to be paid.  The online piracy problem is not one we can ignore, if we do nothing SOPA/PIPA will return and eventually pass.  The entertainment industries just have too much money and too many lobbyists to let the industry be eaten away by illegal file sharing.

Because art has never been free, and it’s not going to be anytime soon, we have to look to alternatives: subscriptions, donations, direct artist exchange, tax credits.  Whatever it is, it needs to meet some general requirements such as, limited to no corporate involvement, easy accessibility, affordability, and quality.  If the publishing and film industries are anything like the record industry, they’ll resist change until they’re staring death right in the face.  A clear case of ‘if you can’t beat em’ join em’.’

The article that inspired the question, should art be free, made a great point when saying that many technologies that we don’t think twice about today were once seen as a direct threat to the entertainment industrie’s way of business.  Radio begot Sirius, begot Pandora, begot Spotify.  Just as Pay-Per-View begot OnDemand, begot Netflix.  That essentially means that there will be push back at first, out of fear, when they understand how to use the technology to their advantage they’ll embrace it.

The first alternative we’ll look at is the subscription model.  Netflix, Spotify, and Audible all provide content for free, cheap, or relatively cheap.  Netflix and Spotify rely heavily on the notion that ownership is becoming obsolete.  As long as you have a computer or mobile device with 3G or wifi, thousands of movies or songs are right at your fingertips.  While record labels have mostly come around to the idea, the film studios still have great fear of what endless streamable content will do to their business.  Is it cheap?  Yes.  Is it easy and accessible?  Yes.  Is there limited corporate involvement?  For the time being, yes.  Currently they act as a third party, you pay Netflix, Netflix pays the studios.  If this is to actually compete with free file sharing then undoubtedly there will be more corporate involvement, perhaps even commercials.

Essentially everyone will come around to this technology over time, plugging your ears and pretending it doesn’t exist just won’t work.

One of my favorite alternative is direct artist exchange.  You know when you go to a concert and give a band cash for a record they keep in a briefcase?  You can do the same thing digitally.  What really seems to turn people off is the music industry corporate structure.  For instance, on a $15 CD a band is really just pocketing pennies.  On a 99 cent itunes song it’s a fraction of a penny.  Through the miracle of Paypal, now you can pay an artist directly for digital content.

Back in December Louis CK released his latest concert film as a $5 digital download through his website.  The file wasn’t copy protected which was by design.  Sure it will get uploaded to sites like BitTorrent and downloaded by many for free, but in this case it’s much more difficult to justify.  At just $5 you’re getting the film for a steal and supporting the artist directly, not a major studio.  Artists like Louis CK are hoping that you’ll pay for the content on principle rather then get it for free on principle.

This concept is similar to Bandcamp, a website that offers you the opportunity to sell a digital album independently, bypassing the labels.  Bandcamp takes a 15% cut (which is chump change compared to the labels).  If you sell 5,000 copies that number drops to 10%.  Each song is available for individual purchase or you can buy the full album.  The prices are affordable, and on occasion you can name your own price.  the business model is still in its infancy but very promising.  It won’t stop piracy completely but it creates an attractive alternative.

Francis Ford Coppola is skeptical of an artistic industry driven by money.  He points out that artists have only been dealing directly with money for a few hundred years, previously they existed thanks to patrons (royalty, institutions, wealthy individuals).  That model never really went away, but it’s making a more popular comeback with websites like Kickstarter and IndieGogo.

Kickstarter offers almost any endeavor the opportunity to raise a specific amount of money to fund a project.  The money can come from anyone in any amount, the catch is that you must meet your goal or return the donations.  This is a proven method of fundraising, two of our past guests here at the website Karl Blau and Matt Vancil have successfully funded projects this way.

Like Bandcamp, this method creates a direct connection with fans and artists.  It effectively replaces not only the studios but also the pitch process, it’s the fans who either fund or pass on a project.  While most campaigns thus far have been in the $100,000 or less realm, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine this working with a larger budget.  JourneyQuest raised $100,000 and in the end all the content will be available free, without corporate involvement, on their website.

While I don’t see Michael Bay  going through Kickstarter for his next mega-film it does offer an attractive alternative for any independent production seeking funding.

The last alternative is one that I find very intriguing, it’s the most unique and completely untested, but I find it’s possibilities very intriguing.  Author Dean Baker proposes the idea of an Artistic Freedom Voucher (AFV).  This would allow individuals (artistic supporters) a modest refundable tax credit, permitting you to spent up to $100 per year in support of creative endeavors.  Baker suggests that this could either go to the artist directly or through an intermediary who supports a range of work.  I’m leaving out most of the specifics, so you should read his article here.

The catch is that in accepting this money you become ineligible for copyright protection for a number of years.  Baker predicts and I completely agree that this would generate heavy volumes of music, film, performances, fine arts, literature etc. It would restore a thriving community.  The other big catch of course is that this would cost the government money, and in a time when supposedly we can’t provide proper healthcare, or education to a nation heavily in debt, many lawmakers would see this as socialism.  Consider how much the passing of SOPA/PIPA would have coast to enforce, with extra employees and hours of man power, it would have reached up into the millions if not billions.

There is one final alternative that I’m not calling an alternative only because it seems so far off, it’s probably the most likely scenario next to the subscription alternative.  The entertainment industries could simply bite the bullet and find a way to use file sharing networks to their advantage, perhaps even working with them directly.  Sure today that seems just as unlikely as having the government support an artistic freedom voucher, but the music industry felt similar about radio and look how that turned out.  If they keep trying to force a broad bill like PIPA/SOPA through, they could experience a catastrophic backlash from their own customers.

I don’t see a way for art to be truly free.  The alternatives I’ve presented offer new options to a disenchanted group of consumers who have found it easier and more politically motivated to download illegally.  One way or another art is going to continue to cost those of us who obtain it legally some amount of money, there are ways to make it more affordable and accessible with limited corporate involvement.

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should art be free? part one, the question

January 26, 2012 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
-andy warhol

Last Wednesday many of our favorite websites went dark in protest of the proposed PIPA and SOPA bills.  A week later it seems that protest brought enough attention to the broadness of the bill to at the very least postpone the vote.  Count it as a victory, if just a temporary one.  Rather then using this time to gloat about the victory to the supporters of SOPA, we should spent it discussing the problem of piracy and copyright protection.  Like the war on drugs the war on internet piracy is going to continue no matter how strict the laws or stiff the punishment.  In the wake of the PIPA/SOPA protest I’ve seen a tantalizing question pop up all over the place: should art be free?

I was late to the internet piracy thing.  I didn’t have a computer capable of downloading heavy volumes of files or even burning cd’s until 2006.  I missed the Napster boat altogether.  I couldn’t tell you the difference between, The Pirate Bay, BitTorrent, or MegaUpload.  I didn’t make my first purchase from the itunes store until 2007.  I have always and continue to get my art legally.

This might make me sound like more of a big spender then I am, I’m actually very frugal.  Thinking back to the hundreds of dollars I spent on cd’s in my teens makes me woozy.  Likewise I have thousands of dollars worth of books, dvd’s and records currently sitting on my shelves.  If all that was free I would have plenty of money to buy decent health insurance, a nicer car, or even a downpayment on a house.  But is that fair?  Shouldn’t I have to pay for all that art?

First of all it needs to be noted that a certain percentage of people are always going to be looking to get art for free no matter how low the cost.  In that case you’re fighting a loosing battle.  It would be better to focus on other avenues, by first figuring out just where everything went wrong, then try to tackle the piracy problem from a more educated standpoint.

It should come as no surprise that Napster was formed in the late 90’s at a time when the price of music had bloated to an obscene high.  Customers felt like undervalued dollar signs, and when Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, whined to fans about how they were robbing him of a solid gold swimming pool, it seems that everyone reached for their weapons.  You could say it was overpriced cd’s or an abundance of lackluster fluff, but it appears that war was declared when the recording industry began suing music fans for illegally downloading files.  Drunk with power they began attacking what they perceived to be the enemy, when it turns out their enemy was actually their ally: music fans.

The record industry saw their profits drop from $14 billion in the late 90’s to $7 billion today.  The film and publishing industry are headed down a similar path, they just don’t know it yet.  Let me look into my crystal ball and tell you how it will go.  Prices for DVD’s and books have climbed too high, and consumers will begin to look for free digital content, file sharing networks.  The entertainment industry will shut down these networks, angering already fed up film and book fans.  Then they’ll take legal action against their own customers.  I’m not an economist but isn’t one of the major principals of economics “don’t alienate your customers?”

I’m not defending illegal downloading and I’m not saying these are excuses for doing so.  Certainly the film, recording, and publishing industry has a skewed vision of what exactly is occurring here.  You’ve probably seen that commercial at the beginning of a DVD where they equate illegally downloading a movie or song to stealing a car.  It’s more like stealing a candy bar.  Actually it’s more like accepting a candy bar from the guy that stole the candy bar.  The point being that these industries have played a part in this on going problem and until they acknowledge that fact, piracy is going to continue.

Thus begins the question.  Over the weekend I read an article titled: “My Daily Downloads Are Illegal – For Now.”  It presents the opinion of your typical GenYer whose grown up with a world where everything on the internet is free. These aren’t kids who can’t afford an album on itunes for $9.99 or rent a movie on Amazon for $4.99, these kids download illegally on principal.  They’re fed up with the big industries profiting from the art of individuals.  The articles author believes:

I believe corporations shouldn’t be able to profit from someone else’s creativity. In my ideal world, there would be no corporate copyrights and these materials would be free in the first place. Art would not be a way of making money; its only “point” would be to allow people to experience another person’s perspective and use it to grow. Every song in existence would be available to everyone legally via the Internet, and money would be out of the equation.

That’s an incredibly utopian idea and in a perfect world I don’t see anyone who would be against it.  Imagine downloading anything you want without fear of punishment or guilt, a world of free art.  If you think the idea of “art should be free” is limited to just a hand full of articles, take note that even Francis Ford Coppola has weighed in and agrees that art should be free. My assumption is that the article is referring to digital art, but since it never makes a distinction I’ll be looking at all art.

Let’s say art is free, starting tomorrow.  There is no more copyright, you can use and download everything at your discretion.  Under this new structure no one is getting paid, not the entertainment companies, not the employees at the entertainment companies, and not the artists who make the art for the entertainment companies.  Do I really need to drag this on any longer.  First the employees would quit, the companies would fall, and without anyone to promote their work the artists would fold too.  Where is the incentive to continue to work, to produce?

Coppola makes the point that artists have really only been dealing with money for a few hundred years, prior to that they depended on someone else to support them.  Someone wealthy or powerful.  Or they had a second job.  That’s not an unpopular opinion, many people value art very little and believe that if artists want to make money then they should get a second better paying job, perhaps one with health care.  When it comes to Coppola, I have to take his comment with a grain of salt, it’s not like he got up in the morning went to work at a factory making brake pads, and directed The Godfather in his spare time.  Likewise I doubt that Coppola believes that his beloved franchise should be free for fans to do with as they please.  That’s what being older, rich, and established will do for you.  In my research what I found was that those who were in support of free art were either not an artists, too young to know better, or rich and established.

One example of free art that is thrown about is Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which was made available as a pay-what-you-want download.  Most downloaded it for free.  It’s hardly a risk for Radiohead, they’re already quite wealthy and even if no one paid for the album they wouldn’t be hurting for cash.  The novelty of making it pay-what-you-can, is more of a way of connecting with their fans directly.  Another example is that of playwright Charles Mee, who’s entire collected works are available for free on his website.  At first it appears an extremely nobel act, until you learn that he has very generous supporters, who have made sure he doesn’t have to get a second job serving frozen yogurt at TCBY.

I’ve gone around and around on the idea of free art and just don’t see how it could work, at least not outside of utopia.  Here in this world there are powerful industries in place, ones who you can expect to fight for control to their dying breath.  Then you have the artists who are accustomed to making money in their art.  Most likely they feel that what they’ve been doing has worked, and certainly they don’t want to change that.

Here at secretly-important we have talked to and promoted many artists, none of whom are millionaires.  It can be easy to look only at the surface and see albums, art openings, and DVD’s believing that they are making serious money.  The fact is that every artist we’ve talked to hear either has a day job or works tirelessly to keep from having a day job.  And this is in a world where art is not free.  That’s why I put them here on the website, I want them to succeed so they can quit their day jobs and continue to make more of the outstanding art I’ve grown accustomed to.

I want art to be affordable and accessable to everyone, it breaks my heart to see it become a luxury.  Everyone should have easy unimpeded access to it, there just needs to be a happy medium, somewhere in between SOPA and free art.

Look for part two: the answer.  Where I attempt to find some answers to that happy medium, tomorrow.

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if you give a mouse a cookie: sopa & pipa

January 18, 2012 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Today you might have noticed that some of your favorite websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit are dark (offline).  I’m sure in place of their usual content they have an explanation as to why this is.  Maybe you haven’t visited any of these websites, maybe you have no idea what this protest is.  Let me explain.

The January 18th blackouts were devised as a protest against the proposed bills SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act).  For the most part all the major online players are against it, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, AOL.  You’re probably still a little fuzzy as to what exactly SOPA and PIPA are.  Both bills were designed as a way for the US law enforcement and copyright holders to expand their capabilities to fight against online trafficking of copyright and intellectual properties’ and counterfeit items.

This bill was originally a vehicle for major drug companies like Pfizer to help stop counterfeit drugs from Canada or Mexico.  Hollywood saw this as a perfect opportunity to try and stop the sale of bootlegged videos from Asia.

How does any of this affect you?  Actually it could affect you greatly.

If these bills were to become a law many are predicting the end of websites like flickr, vimeo, etsy, and youtube, basically anywhere that relies on user generated content.  It could spell the end of free speech on the internet (which is already limited).  I’ve read where this could extend to the links you post on Facebook and Twitter.  You might say that I and many others are overreacting, consider this analogy for just a moment.  If you’ve read tech news in the last few years you’ve probably seen a slew of articles concerning patent infringement by Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft etc.  In a nutshell what’s occurring here is that each company is busy buying up patents for broad hardware and software components, then suing their competitors for patent infringement.  It’s not good for the companies, it’s not good for the government, and it’s not good for us, but because it’s another way to get a leg up on your competition by restricting them, it happens every day.

This is essentially what I see happening if SOPA and PIPA pass.  Large corporations, like who? (RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, you know a list of real honest and trustworthy companies) flexing their greedy muscles to take down companies for copyright infringement starting from the largest, right down to you and I.

But that’s not written into the bill, so how could all that possibly happen?  That’s where I get to the title of the article.  You remember the book If You GIve A Mouse A Cookie, don’t you?  If you give a mouse a cookie he’ll want a glass of milk.  In this case, if you give a mouse [government] a cookie [SOPA, PIPA], they’ll want a glass of milk [free speech].  It happens all the time with all sorts of laws.  Before long SOPA would turn the internet into our television networks, tightly regulated and controlled, with limited user interaction.

Many of the artists we’ve promoted and respect here at secretly-important, rely heavily on websites that feature user generated content.  Just yesterday I told you about Karl Blau’s new album on bandcamp, certainly they would face tighter regulations, and etsy is a predicted favorite to fall if the law passes.  Maybe we’re all wrong and this bill would do exactly as they say it would, maybe the government would act responsible with this new power, maybe corporations would use logic and restraint, but I don’t want to take that chance.  In this case we’re better off letting the mouse starve, and not having to fork over a cookie and a glass of milk that we just can’t afford.

So why are we not in a blackout today?  Three reasons:

  1. No one cares about us, or at least not enough people, yet.
  2. I don’t know how to shut down the page or replace it with a message letting you know why we’re offline.
  3. This article is probably just as effective as shutting down the site for a day.

What can you do?  Here are a couple of links, the first is to see where your representative stands on the issue.  If you don’t like their stance write an email to let them know.  The second is a blanket online petition you can sign.

Think I’m still blowing this whole thing out of proportion?  Consider one last argument.  According to Craigslist, Monster Cable (the guys who make high end cables for stereo’s and tv’s) list Craigslist as a “rogue site” which would be taken down under PIPA rules.  Why?  Because the sale of used cables on Craigslist cuts into Monster’s sales of new cables.

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lighting the fbomb

January 6, 2012 in mostly non-fiction

I did a little writing this week for the feminist website thefbomb.org, I hope to do a little more in the future, but I wanted to take a little time to not only bring this article to your attention but to raise some awareness for a really great website.

Don’t let the fact that this is a feminist blog turn you off.  Despite the images of unshaved armpits and bra burning, modern feminism has a lot more to do with fighting gender stereotypes, trying to correct the wrongs of the media’s female representation, and equal rights.  In the same way that blogs, have certain negative connotations, so can the word feminism, despite the fact that their are plenty of worthwhile blogs, and honest clean shaven, bra-wearing feminists.

You can check out my article called: Rudolph the Sexist Reindeer here.  To be clear, Rudolph is not the sexist, but the guys who wrote the Christmas classic definitely were.

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occupy capitalism

December 13, 2011 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Unfortunately, the Occupy Wall Street movement has had to grow up in the shadow of another recent movement.  A bigger, more well funded, more popularly supported movement: the Tea Party.  While they share relatively little in common in terms of content, Occupy  Wall Street is under the same threat that the Tea Party eventually fell to: the free market economy.

Tea Partiers are fond of using the term “grassroots” to describe how their movement started.  However, were it not for the help of the Republican party, Fox News, and some corporate backers, it’s hard to imagine a group of wackos dressed in American Revolutionary outfits, preaching for an end to government spending while leaning on their Medicare issued crutch, really catching on.  Their earliest rallies were not-so-subtly sponsored by Fox News, and many political pundits even made appearances at these rallies.  The Tea Party was about as “grassroots” as Mitt Romney.

Politicians, the media, and corporations immediately saw the Tea Party for what it really was - another market to tap into.  Just two short years later the Tea Party is a shell of its former self. The insides having been devoured by capitalism and the parasitic Republican Party.  The GOP skimmed the scum off the top of that moldy cup of tea, gave them a red, white, and blue makeover and turned them into Republican redux.  The price tag of all this was paid for by selling their services to the highest bidder.

It’s not capitalism’s fault, this is what it does.  It finds new untapped markets and transforms them into the product that the market desires.  In this case, old timey flags, Revolutionary War outfits, and conservative values.  Capitalism cannot think on it’s own, it needs a host to tell it where to go and which demographics to exploit.

Not even three months into the movement, Occupy Wall Street is facing similar pressures as the Tea Party.  Even though the two movements share some similarities, they’re very different… vastly different.  For instance, Occupy was a true grassroots movement that started in a park that most people had never heard of.  Unlike the Tea Party, there was little to no media coverage for days, and the coverage they did receive was unsympathetic at best.  There were no real celebrities or media figures initially attached to the protest.  Rosanne Barr is actually credited as being the first celebrity supporter – I’m still not sure what that means.

At this very early point in OWS, politicians and media personalities are not lining up to show their full support.  That doesn’t mean that they haven’t seen the commercial potential within OWS.  Like a pack of salivating dogs, politicians and corporations are waiting on the periphery to make their move and bastardize the movement.

It didn’t take but a nano second for big business to see how marketable OWS was.  There are thousands of occupiers many of whom are under thirty five, and that my friends is a demographic.  Occupying things is hip, it’s cool, it’s marketable, possibly even a boost to your celebrity.  What would a protest be without Susan Sarandon, Tom Morello, Kanye West, Kayne’s $8,000 gold necklace, and Jay-Z.- maybe you heard about the Occupy Wall Street[s] t-shirts he was selling through Rocawear.

“This is Jeremy and he’s Occupying Wall street in style with this tasteful yet edgy Occupy Wall Streets shirt.  It comes in both Obsidian black and marshmallow white. For a cool $22 plus shipping and handling you can really stick it to the man, and look great too.”  At least this is how I imagine an Occupy fashion show would go.  It seems some of the occupiers were a wee bit upset about being exploited for the profit of a big business that… let’s face it, is more similar to wall street then OWS.

OWS is not to be bought and sold. And it seemed that Jay-Z doesn’t understand one of the most fundamental arguments of the movement.  Russell Simmons defended him this way, “You should sell things you’re happy about. You should sell products that you’re inspired by, that promote lasting and stable well-being. Give the world something or sell the world something that you’re proud of. Jay-Z didn’t make a T-shirt [that said] ‘F— the Bums on the Street.’ He wrote a T-shirt ‘Occupy All Streets’ – I’m happy, it furthers the movement, it inspires the movement.”  Simply saying you support the cause means nothing if your actions are completely antithetical to it.

I don’t mean to pick solely on Jay-Z, it’s been a long time since he was part of the 99%.  The truth is that there have been a number of companies printing shirts with OWS slogans on them.  OWS itself recently applied for a trade mark on the phrase “Occupy Wall Street.”  This is just further proof that OWS is under extreme amounts of pressure to give in, just as the Tea Party did, and be corrupted.

Not to be outdone by Jay-Z, Music Television decided to jump on the band wagon with an episode of their True Life series I’m Occupying Wall Street.  Nothing says democratic awakening like a rigidly timed half hour of entertainment from the same channel that brought you Teen Mom and Jersey Shore.  The big fuck you of that True Life episode was the commercial breaks that featured Chase Bank.  MTV isn’t stupid, they know what’s perceived as cool. And you can bet that there is a department somewhere deep within the bowels of MTV with stacks of printouts reducing OWS to a series of numbers forming a simple demographic.  And they don’t want to miss out on that potential market.

Last but not least is the absurd story of the protestors who took over a Law and Order SUV re-creation of Zuccotti park.  I had to read this story twice to understand what exactly was occurring.  It seems that in an upcoming Law and Order episode which features a “ripped from the headlines story”: the Zuccotti Park Protest.  Over a hundred actual protestors managed to shut production down on the show calling for an end to the exploitation of the movement.  Show runner Warren Leight posted a series of frustrated tweets that felt eerily similar to Russell Simmons’.  “Co-opted by corporate media — the irony here is the scene we couldn’t shoot portrayed OWS in a sympathetic light,” was the one that really stuck out to me.  This is still exploitation and it has no business in OWS, if you can’t understand that, then you can’t really be in support of it.

There is some belief out there that any press is good press, but you can ask Herman Cain and he’ll probably tell you that’s just not true.  It’s not press, media exposure, a television episode, or a t-shirt that OWS is against; it’s that they’re not in control of the message that these outlets are putting out there.  They want people to see what they’re doing, they want people to join the movement, but they want people to do it for the right reasons.  An episode of True Life, inner cut with Chase Bank commercials, is an outrageous misunderstanding of why people are protesting in the first place.

As a guy typing this article on his MacBook Pro, I’m hardly one to complain about capitalism.  I enjoy buying things, and at times I’m more materialistic then I would like to believe.  I’m not trying to say that Jay-Z shouldn’t make his t-shirt or that Law and Order and MTV can’t make their shows – it’s completely their right to do so.  But they need to expect backlash from those decisions. Because in the creation of these products they’ve exploited the movement for their own personal and economic gain, and that is exactly what OWS is fighting against.

I do have an answer for all this capitalistic exploitation.  It’s called Free.  Free in a monetary sense; like Occupy Wall Steet[s] shirts for free.  This means free in another sense as well; free from poor commercial choices, and free from uninformed sympathy.  OWS is not to be profited from. Any contributions should be from a completely altruistic standpoint.  For instance take Shepard Fairey’s re-imagination of the famous Obama Hope poster, it’s free on his website for any noncommercial use.  Or take my little credit card junk mailers, their absolutely free. Or the highly intelligent and informative videos of Artie Moffa.  All these works of art and information are free for your use. We want you to spread this stuff around because we want it to pierce the consciousness of America, and the world, to help affect change.

 

Here’s a brand spanking new set of junk mail enclosures.  If you’re looking at these and don’t know what exactly to do with them read this article here.  And Check out Keep Wall Street Occupied which features some great ways to OWS and all the original videos by Artie Moffa… it’s more then worth the few minutes to brows.

 

 

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secretly, i’m an important man: one year anniversary

December 12, 2011 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Last month I realized that I was fast approaching my one year anniversary of blogging.  At first I thought I would just write an article updating you on what’s going on at the website, give you some things to look forward to, and have a little look back on the year that was.  Then I had another idea… to repost my inaugural article.

When I wrote this article on December 10th 2010 I was living at my parents house.  My wife and I had just moved back to Seattle after three years in Los Angeles.  Coincidentally the article’s ending line talks about how much I’d changed since I moved to LA in 2007.  Now, here I am reflecting on how much I’ve changed in just one year.

The website began on blogspot as, Secretly, I’m an Important Man (an homage to the late Steven “Jesse” Bernstein).  I wrote little vignettes concerning my everyday life, as well as articles chronicling my time in LA.  I knew nothing about coding or maintaining a website, in fact I clearly remember spending two hours after finishing this article trying to link it on Facebook.  It wasn’t until June that secretly-important became its own website.  From the humblest beginnings to now, with five contributors, podcasts, and interviews with some incredibly talented people.

If you’re new to the site, thank you for visiting and I hope you like what you see.  If you’ve been with us since the beginning then I sincerely thank you for your support.  We have some really great things happening in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Now, enjoy what was our very first article: completely unedited, poorly formatted, with bad grammar and all.

On Halloween of 2007 I was awake at 5:30 am loading my girlfriend, myself and a wailing cat into the cab of a seventeen foot U-haul bound for Los Angeles, just like the millions of naive 24 year olds before me.  On Halloween 2010 I was again awake at 5:30 am a 10 foot U-haul parked in the driveway of my apartment stuffed with boxes a few pieces of furniture and random treasures like a Millenium Falcon, a stuffed Pink Panther and the head of a bull Pinata from my 27th birthday party.  I my wife, my two cats and my dog loaded up bound for Seattle.

The trip is 1,100 miles and takes around 21 hours depending if I or my wife is driving.  When we were moving to LA it seemed like 11,000 miles and 41 hours,  I spent the whole time bouncing in my chair my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel trying to control this 17 foot behemoth behind me I couldn’t wait for this incredible unknown before me, I would have driven straight through to LA if I could have.  A new apartment, a new city I’d spent less than seventy-two hours in, no job, no family and everything was an exciting mystery.

Now moving back to Seattle things could hardly have been less similar, the trip seemed like a handful of hours and felt like we were just driving to Santa Barbara.  I was full of reservations and I spent the entire drive looking back at where I spent exactly three years of my life where I spent the bulk of my non college  adult life.  It was where I learned to live without family and all the ways in which they can be there to protect you.  It was in LA where I learned how to make new friends from scratch and make them my family away from my family.

I’m a nostalgic person and as we left Los Feliz (definitely the coolest place in Los Angeles) and drove through Glendale and Burbank and Valencia our truck pointed due north on I-5 a course we would not deviate from until we reached a crossroads in the Kent Valley and take the 405 for the last 10 miles of our trek home.  I found it surprisingly easy to forget things like the shitty overpriced food, the insane drivers, the completely narcissistic culture and smog.  Instead I lamented the loss of my neighborhood, the sun, my friends and the thought that just around the next corner could be something completely new and surprising.

Seattle is still full of unknowns but they are less thrilling and honestly a little less unknown.  Seattle is home and is full of friends and family and despite having no jobs it was safe and quaint.

I lived in Seattle for 26 years before I packed up and left it for three and a new beginning in Los Angeles, now I am moving back to Seattle for a new beginning again.  There were plans and there were goals I’m finding that rarely I follow either.

 

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how to use your secretly-important printouts

November 21, 2011 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Last week I published an article on the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The following day the Occupiers outrage boiled over and at least for a day they occupied some rather large things.  In New York they shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, in Seattle they closed the 520 floating bridge.  Despite what the media might have you believe, this was an impressive show of strength on the movements part.

Needless to say there were many upset by the November 17th protests.  Most complaints seemed to be centered around one thing, “it messed up traffic… really bad.”  I spent an hour in said traffic picking up my wife and yet here I sit today still alive and having picked up my wife.  No, I’ll never get that hour back but I’ll also never get the two hours back I spent watching the Green Hornet either.  The inability for everyone to accept a few hours of inconvenience reminded me of an incident back in August of 2001.

On August 28th 2001, a twenty-six year old woman walked out on to the Ballard bridge in Seattle and sat with her feat dangling off a sixteen story drop below to the water.  She caused quite the distraction and slowed up traffic, fed up motorists drove by her hurling insults like “jump bitch jump.”  Eventually Police had to shut down the entire bridge, before she jumped anyway.  It seems that you can lie, cheat, and steal the American people (and the world) out of their “hard earned” money, commit the biggest fraud in American history, nearly cause the collapse of our entire economy, accept trillions in Government bailout dollars then use that money to give bonuses and pad the companies net worth, then after receiving no punishment turn around and do it all again, and the American people won’t bat an eye.  But had those Wall Street execs blocked the evening commute while committing those same acts we would have been outraged.

I’m not part of the 1% and I don’t know anyone who is, I’m not sure I even know anyone who knows anyone who’s part of the 1%.  Since I know a fair amount of people who disagree with the Occupy Wall Street movement I’m left to assume that those people approve of what Wall Street did and continue to do.  I know that statement is false, but how else can I explain the growing dislike for the Occupiers?  Because I refuse to believe that we’re so narcissistic that the disruption of our commute can cause us to look the other way from a serious issue. This isn’t about blaming Wall Street for all of life’s little problems.  This is about every American being a pawn in a giant game of Chess where in our Politicians and Wall Street set about to fuck with us while they made gobs and gobs of money.  They never received any meaningful punishment and there’s nothing to stop them from doing it again.

How many presidential candidates are demanding tighter regulations or Wall Street reform?  Only Obama’s website even mention’s Wall Street and his track record of hiring former Wall Street execs doesn’t bode well.  This just goes to show why Occupiers are so upset.  If you’re still on the fence about the movement check out this article by one best writers currently examining the financial crisis Matt Taibbi.

I’ve included for you a step by step process on how to use the printouts included in my last Occupy Wall Street article.  This is just one of the ways to participate.  And if you’re one of the many who have criticized the Occupies for taking action the “wrong way” and have a better idea please share it.  Because you don’t stop traffic on the Brooklyn bridge to make a point if there’s an easier and more effective way.

 

Step 1. You receive bank junk mail and credit offers with prepaid envelopes in the mail.

Step 2. Open the envelope then take all the bank information, the original envelope and any other junk mail you might have received that day and place it in the prepaid envelope.

 

Step 3.  Print and cut out a secretly-important message.

Step 4.  (if available) glue printout on cardboard or wood shim.

Step 5.  Place printout in envelope.

Step 6.  Seal envelope.

Step 7.  Place envelope in mailbox.

 

Step 8.  Repeat.

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