My Muxtape

I just created a new mix on Muxtape – a nifty new music playlist service! I like the super-simple design.

Thanks Scott for the link!

Chicken Shit Bingo – Austin Texas

Footage taken at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon on our last night of SXSW 2008. The famous Dale Watson & his Lone Stars officiating and Cici the chicken standing center-stage.

SXSW2008 – Music to Feed On

Blitzen Trapper @ the Mohawk

The South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin Texas often feels to me like a crash course in the current state of the indie music scene. In just 4 days I saw 31 bands perform with as many diverse styles as there are BBQ sauces in Texas. Now that I’m home, my mind wanders back over the musical banquet I was fed while there and am starting to crave more of some of the sounds I heard. My musical stomach has now been stretched and I’m left feeling hungrier than before for new sounds (because who can visit Texas and not begin to make food analogies?!).

I’ve made an iMeem playlist of some of my favorites from SXSW2008. The two stand-outs for me were Blitzen Trapper and Liam Finn. You can check out my Flickr photoset from both the interactive, film, and music segments of SXSW here.

Feel free to share your own playlists or recommendations from SXSW2008 in the comments. Help feed this ravenous music glutton!

Art as Meditation

I was stressing out a bit at the hospital today.  So while I was on the phone listening to some heinous hold music, I browsed one of my new favorite blogs, Smarts & Crafts, created by the folks at The Curiosity Shoppe on Valencia. 

Then I found this piece and was reminded of the solace a bit of art can provide in times of chaos.

“An experimental animation in a technique being called “stratastencil” devised by Javan Ivey. Each frame is one piece of 4×6 card stock.”

Bay Area Bands invade SXSW!!

Here’s a piece I did for WiretapMusic.com on the Bay Area bands at SXSW 2008!

“It is time once again, my friends, to journey to the vast flatlands of Texas. It is time to voyage to that place where music-obsessives gather each year to feast on tasty musical offerings from far and wide. Yes, we’re talking about South by Southwest 2008 (SXSW 08), and yes, it’s almost here!

We here at Wiretap Music are deeply excited by this year’s line-up and we’re impressed by the incredible amount of reprezentin’ shown by the Bay Area music scene. At last count, there were 73 Bay-Area bands confirmed at the festival – w00t!

Because we know navigating the SXSW landscape can be an eye-crossing task, we wanted to cull the list a bit for you, our beloved readers. Listed below are our Top Ten Picks, a few more random picks, and a full list of Bay Area bands playing SXSW 08.”

Read the rest HERE!

See y’all next week in Austin!

Must We Be Anti-Clinton to be Pro-Obama?

Maureen Dowd’s sexism continues unabashed. In her most recent embarrassment NY Times Op-Ed she attempts to explain Hillary Clinton’s lack-of-popularity as being related to her presenting a ‘masculine’ image when what this country was really needing was a more ‘feminine’ approach (which, apparently, Obama was giving us).

Nowhere does she ever mention the difficulty of a woman presenting herself in the political process. If she is more feminine-styled, especially in areas of defense, she is called weak, if she becomes more masculine-styled, she is seen as cold, strident & ‘too masculine for America’, if she tears up or when she makes a more conciliatory statement about Obama, she’s being calculated-ly feminine. The manner in which this election is being talked about has emphasized for me that racism is far more taboo in our society at the present moment than sexism. Just take the amount of times people have called Hillary a bitch contrasted with the number of times Obama has been called an equivalent racist term. Or the fact that McCain laughed & said ‘good question’ when a town-hall crowd member said ‘How do we beat the bitch?’ as opposed to what he would have done if the n-word had been used in a same statement about Obama.

Obama is just as calculated in presenting his image to America as any politician and a woman with Obama’s style would just not be accepted in the same way. Not that racism isn’t present regarding an Obama candidacy but the public seems much more comfortable with sexism (even from liberals) in their discourse about the election.

I’m an Obama supporter because I think we have the greatest chance of winning with him at the present moment and because he and Hillary are very close on the issues I care about. I’m not a fan of his rah-rah speech style and think Hillary has clearer & better-planned policies (not to mention that she’s just a total wonk when it comes to politics & one of the smartest people I’ve ever heard speak related to foreign affairs in particular but also on health care and other closer-to-home issues).

My realization that America might not be ready for a woman in the White House and the press (and general public’s) treatment of Hillary has disappointed me. We should be celebrating what an incredible, intelligent, accomplished woman she is (and what an asset to our party she is), even if she isn’t our choice for the nomination. She is far more on our side than against it, if we abide by the values of the democratic party.

It got me thinking whether, aside from the sexism in the anti-Hillary sentiments, there’s another issue present in the people’s current behavior towards the candidates.

Is there some reason why we have a need to, in any competition, vilify the side we don’t choose. I believe a lot of our political partisanship stems from this inability to see issues & people as they really are – in shades of gray rather than the much easier-to-accept black/white dichotomy. In our attempt to win our arguments we seem unable to see both positives and negatives in each side of an issue or, in this case, in each candidate. Our tendency to do this has been even more highlighted in this recent race for the Democratic nomination where the candidates have such similar stances on the issues. What is it that keeps us from being able to say, “Obama is my choice, but Hillary has many good points I like and some I don’t”? If I remember correctly, it seems we started out in this place a year ago and then, when political vehemence took over (usually a good thing in my book) it seemed we began couching things in terms of good vs. evil.

I’ve often talked of this human tendency to want to separate things into Good/Bad piles and lack of ability to look at the ‘gray-ness’ of a situation. In fact, I’ve often praised the Democratic party for being able to see the Gray. For example, following 9/11, the ability to see that yes, this was a horrific act but that there were many elements that contributed to the act, including some bad choices made by our own government. Especially at a time when popular sentiment was that the ‘evil’ people did this to the ‘good’ people. Unfortunately this most recent Good/Bad labeling of the democratic candidates has shown that, as progressives, we’re susceptible to the same faulty thinking. I’m hoping more of us can start being aware of our tendencies in this direction, and talk about things as they really are as opposed to this archaic, albeit comfortable, paradigm.

For a lighter treatment of the anti-Hillary sentiment, here’s Tina Fey on this past week’s SNL.

And a fantastic (ire-inducing) sexism-watch by Shakesville here.

Then she twisted the head off a terrorist and everybody cheered.

This is why I lurve Wonkette.

Michelle Obama’s Deep American Shame

Ninja for Library Nerds

A little Happy Tree Friends for all you library nerds out there.  Warning: HTF can be a bit gory.

I <3 the ways in which the evil guys mess with the books.  A librarian’s nightmare!

What $1 Million Gets You!

Not that I, as a social worker, aspire to ever be a home owner in the Bay Area but it’s fascinating to have a little reality check now and again on how much things really cost everywhere else.

I should add that I own, as a social worker, a pretty little 2 bedroom, 1 bath brick home with a large yard in Athens, Georgia. Nice big kitchen, large den & dining room and big office. And the price tag? Right now you could buy a house like this in Athens for about about $135,000.  I bought it for $109,000.

Thanks to Curbed SF for reminding us how wacked prices are around here.

Government Behaving Badly

Several choice morsels from those dis-organizations set up to ‘protect’ us.

Exhibit A
Toxic FEMA trailers and no action to correct the problem for 2 years.

In 2006, after hurricane evacuees living in FEMA trailers began reporting increased respiratory and other health problems, the Sierra Club conducted a study which found, ” formaldehyde concentrations as high as 0.34 parts per million – a level nearly equal to what a professional embalmer would be exposed to on the job.”

At the time, FEMA officials dismissed the Sierra Club’s findings saying that the trailers “conformed to industry standards“. Fast-forward two years later (ugh!) and a lawyer working for a group of hurricane victims asked a federal judge to force FEMA to test its trailers. These CDC tests results were even more alarming.

They found average levels of 77 parts formaldehyde per billion parts of air, significantly higher than the 10 to 17 parts per billion concentration seen in newer homes. Levels were as high as 590 parts per billion.

Of course, NOW the agency is moving like wildfire (or perhaps more realistically, like a sparkler) to move the residents out of the trailers into housing that won’t make them sick. Gee, what a novel concept.

(exhibit B, C, coming soon…)