Meet Jane
May 13, 2005 11:50 PM
Me: Hello, Jane. Who are you and tell me why I would want to interview you?Jane: I am you sister and you're interviewing me because you thought the deadline for this entry was tomorrow when it is in fact in 45 minutes.
Me: Good answer. So what is it that you do these days?
Jane: Well, I work as an engineer, but I really just surf the internet and read Ultimate Blogger updates all day.
Me: And how much do they pay you for that?
Jane: About twice as much as they pay you for being a teacher.
Me: Wow...sucks for me. So everyone has been trying to get me to drink and eat chocolate around here, but I don't eat chocolate. You don't eat chocolate either, right? Why is that?
Jane: You realize that you keep on asking me questions that you know the answer to, right? But I'll answer your question anyway because it's a good cause. I started boycotting chocolate when I found out that most of the world's chocolate is harvested by children forced into slavery in the Ivory Coast. There is chocolate that I eat though...it's called Fair Trade chocolate. And as you would have it, May 14 is World Fair Trade Day.
Me: Wow, what a coincidence that I would ask you about it today. Is there anything else that you boycott for similar reasons?
Jane: Yeah, they're called Conflict Diamonds. You can read about it with that link I just gave you.
Me: Cool. Let's go ahead and change topics now. Grandma wants to know when you are going to get married and have some great-grandchildren for her. Any comments?
Jane: No.
Me: Okay, good interview. Tell mom and dad I said hi, okay?
Jane: That's it? You're not going to win the challenge with this interview, you know?
Me: Probably not, but can you leave some really good comments to make it seem better than it really is?
Jane: I always do. You better hurry up and post this before the deadline is over.
Me: Okay, thanks. Bye.
The People's Republic of Jazz
May 13, 2005 11:47 PM
It was in my first ambitions to display to you one that incarnates the total world-class playboy, creative genius and primo intellectualist; then I listened to this last challenge again and my ears chanced upon the tragic revelations that I must not talk of myself. So tonight you will only receive the second best, ok?
Musician, traveller, playboy, activist, Mr Jerzy B was fundamental to the emergence of Polish Jazz in the hostile and, dare I say, total dictatorship of 1950's Stalinist Poland. He was at the centre of the artistical and intellectualistic counter-cultures of the 1960's. He rubbed the shoulders of suchlike Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Komeda, Stan Getz and Fidel Castro. He enjoyed a multifarious array of awesome womanfolks, and he enjoyed them everywhere, from Warsaw and Budapeszt to Harlem, Sao Paolo and New Orleans. He was so extensively attached to freedom that he payed for it with time in a Stalinist interrogation cell. But above all, he was a total boss of Jazz drummers and as such, he recorded scores of LP's with so many kings of Polish Jazz that he cannot remember all of it himself! He is in fact so much like me, that it does not surprise for you also to hear that I am in veracity his illegitimate son.
Tell them about this music scene of 1950's
From 1949 onwards, socialist realism was imposed onto all fields of artistic creativity, from writing to painting to music. Jazz was arbitrarily branded as "decadent" and "anti-socialist". If at an official dance, the orchestra started playing anything with a fox-trot, samba or rhumba beat, they 
would immediately be ordered to interrupt what they were playing and return to the more traditional waltzes, polonaises and kujawiaks. At the same time, specialist magazines would publish lengthy and idiotic debates where eminent communists would argue whether augmented sixth chords were marxist, thus ideologically correct, or capitalist, thus possibly on the payroll of the CIA! What is perhaps equally shocking is that an accomplished musician, such as Wladyslaw Szpilman, who at that time held a high position in Polish radio, backed these absurd opinions, regardless of the fact that augmented sixths are common in Chopin, whose works Szpilman was a master of! In 1955, Leopold Tyrmand (writer and jazz activist) invited audiences to Jam Session No.1 and this was the first, revolutionary event in Polish Jazz. He was of course widely criticized by the media; I clearly remember one article, written by some communist bootlicker, whose headline ran "Tyrmand USAnkcjonowany", which is a play on words that translates as "Tyrmand Sanctioned" with the "USA" in capitals indicating possible foreign involvement. Personally, I started performing after the thaw of 1956, when Jazz was no longer strictly illegal - although it was still frowned upon. I guess you could say I was lucky.
Is the augmented sixth a capitalist?
No.
So this makes us ponder that the lives must be rough for artists like us, in those eras?
Yes, it definitely wasn't easy. Although I must say that musicians were better off than writers, who were always hit hardest by censorship. The official books were all about factory workers and peasants, love stories where you could read such marvels as "their love for each other augmented with the rising rate of sodium production"! As you know, I was kept in an UB (secret police) interrogation cell for a year, simply for suspected anti-stalinist sympathies. There was another man there, a fireman, who was imprisoned for having saved the entire communist Central Committee from a fire. After collecting his reward, he had the misfortune to utter "I wish this happened to me more often". A cleaning lady overheard him and dutifully reported it to the Party, who concluded that he had staged the whole thing! God knows what happened to him... On the other hand, it was an exciting time for me. There was a palpable dynamism in counter-culture. For example young fashionable men would go to great trouble to wear loud and colourful ties as a sign of protest against the drab, grey uniformity that was the norm back then. The shops stocked nothing but badly-tailored suits in various tones of grey, so if you wanted to express yourself, you had to buy imported clothes from Paris and America, on the black market. These ties were known as "bikini ties" and the people who wore them were named "bikiniarze". It was a common thing for the militia or ZMP (Polish Youth Union) to simply walk up to a bikiniarz and snip off his tie with a pair of scissors! Tyrmand used to wear mis-matched, colourful socks as a sign of protest. There was a lot going on even if it was difficult to do anything.
You prattle much of Tyrmand. Who else was around your circles in those eras?
In the late 1950's I started playing with the Modern Dixielanders and that's when my career as a musician truly begun. Most of my friends were also musicians of course, but the whole artistic milieu was pretty close in those days. For example, I was very close to Janusz Glowacki, who now enjoys a lot of success as a playwright in New York City; my band leader, Dudus Matuszkiewicz, went to Lodz film school, as did Roman Polanski. Polanski would often come to our shows and I remember going out to restaurants on Marszalkowska street with him and Dudek. He would also came to the Jazz Campings that were held in the Tatra mountains, where a lot of the most creative young people around got together. In 1959, I went on tour to France with the Modern Dixielanders. I remember how impressed I was when Polanski commented his school films in French!
You have also deducted some interesting theories into Polanski's group of friends, yes?
Well, I always found it very strange what happened to them. You see, all these brilliant young writers, actors and musicians that were around him then, died shortly afterwards, mostly in strange circumstances. Zbigniew Cybulski, the "rebel" actor of the day, was hit by a train in 1967; Marek Hlasko, one of our greatest contemporary writers, was probably assassinated by secret agents in 1969; Krzysztof Komeda, the composer, had a tragic skiing accident in the same year; Wojtek Frykowski, socialite and playboy, was murdered along with Sharon Tate by the Charles Manson gang, also in 1969. I still sometimes bump into Frykowski's old girlfriend, she was a real beauty in her day..... This interview really takes me back!
But you have also known your share of beauties, yes? (I make winking noise)
Ha! I will not say the contrary!
Tell them about some of these exceptional womanfolk.
You must know that the whole Jazz crowd was very excessive in those days. A lot of sex and alcohol. At one point I was drinking vodka so much that the other band members would cart me out of the car, plod me on my stool, and carry me back off after the show! So you will excuse me if my memory is a little fuzzy... There were always many women around us, actresses, artists, groupies, and the sexual freedom in our milieu was much greater than for the rest of Poland. We met girls on tour. We had sex parties. I remember how crazy these times were, like when Starowieyski (the famous artist) would get undressed before he entered my house! One story which I always found amusing is when I was going out with Elzbieta, a strip-tease artist. I clearly remember the time I went to pick her up after her show during Fidel Castro's state visit. She had just finished, when Castro walked in surrounded by an army of bodyguards. He must have liked what he saw, because he complained that he had missed her act and made her do it all over again for him! Oh, and this reminds me of another amusing story. When I was on tour in Cuba, with Ewa Demarczyk (the famous singer), we visited a jewelry shop in Havana. Now in those days, in Poland, unusually short miniskirts were the height of fashion. Demarczyk and Ewa Wanat (from the Novi band), wearing these fashionable clothes, were looking at some jewelry on a very low shelf, in such a way that they almost had to bend down to the floor, leaving nothing hidden to the imagination. We were standing outside when we heard a repeated shout after which the shop quickly filled up with men and the shopkeeper was soon forced to lock the door. Someone later translated the slogan that was being shouted as: "Campaneros! Comrades! The Polish women are showing off their asses in the shop!"
With such crazy stuff, I must ask if your adventures sometimes create disasters for you?
Hmm... The craziest situation I remember was in Harlem, New York. It must have been in the early 1970's. I had spent the night in a Jazz club there. There were only black people and I felt great. I spoke very poor English at that time and was not aware that white men wouldn't go to such a club. So after a great time of music and women and alcohol, these guys come up to me, point a gun at me and tell me to give them all I got. Of course I did what they said. But I was lost in a foreign city and had no idea how I would get back to my hotel. So I told my aggressors this. Couldn't they leave me just a couple of dollars? They didn't. But they did walk me to the bus stop and waited for the bus with me. When it came, the bus driver also turned out to be black, so they told him something like "We just robbed this white guy and he needs to get back to his hotel. Take him free of charge, will you?" And so I got home safely that night.
Thank you Jurek. You are total awesome BOSS, and dare I say, superstar of the People's Republic of Jazz!
Thank you Lyova. It has also been a great pleasure for me to share this with you.
Jerzy B must now be located playing in Tygmont Jazz club of Warsaw city, or just sipping his favourite Gin and Tonic at bar, along with other pioneers of this crazy Jazz eras.
The Genius. The Activist. The Celebrity.
May 13, 2005 11:15 PM
For this challenge I, Willow Wonder, channelled the energy of my alter-ego, Miss Nancy Novak, to conduct a series of brilliant and provocative interviews. Whereas Willow is seen as a shrinking violet of sorts -a Girl Next Door, if you will- Miss Nancy Novak is all tart and sass. Embodying both personalities, I become an Award Winning Journalist, asking hard hitting questions to the three people you most want to see interviewed. The Genius. The Activist. The Celebrity.
Click on the photo to read the interview.
The Genius.
Jason Kellermeyer is a Superhero Consultant at the McSweeny's store in Brooklyn, NY. He is also the author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," a memoir.
The Activist.
Amy Harwood is one of the most interesting and opinionated people I know. I asked her about her interests and opinions. She was not amused.
The Celebrity.
Calvin Johnson is a popular television personality. He has it in for blogs and bloggers.
The Man Who Interviewed Emilio Estevez
May 13, 2005 08:30 PM
I have always thought of my father as the man who interviewed Emilio Estevez. My father, Mike, is 62 years old and lives in a small red state town, where for many years he has published a local newspaper. Most of his adult life has been spent in the newspaper business, although as he puts it, "you never would have thought I'd end up that way." I caught up with my dad just a second ago, over the phone. He said he had just finished helping our friend Ralph unload a big truckload of stuff, and that of course he had time to talk about interviewing Emilio Estevez.
Dad is a handsome, thoughtful man who favors Stetson cowboy hats and gigantic 1985 suburbans so battered that several of the many doors can no longer be opened. He grew up in the construction business (Grandpa Henry was a carpenter who died in his arms when Mike was 18, leaving he and my uncle orphaned and dirt-poor) in West Texas, where he lived all his life except for a brief sojourn to Winter Park, Colorado. There, he and my mother lived in a van for awhile ("it was a commune, really," my mom says, "we made our own tortillas."). "I worked my way through college as a Teamster--on the loading docks at night," says Dad, "it was just happenstance that I got into the newspaper business [and interviewed Emilio Estevez]. A lot of it has been luck, but here I am." 
Mike got his first newspaper job in 1967, at the San Angelo Standard Times in Texas. The Standard Times was the flagship paper for the Harte-Hanks newspaper chain. The owner, Houston Harte, "was a dapper little fella about 5'6" and who always wore spats, and that kind of thing, even in West Texas. He was a confidante of Lyndon Johnson." Mike got an interview with managing editor Dale Walton, who he says hired him based solely on the fact that he knew how to type ("if I had not learned how to type I probably wouldn't be in the newspaper business today," says Mike, "there's a cautionary tale for modern youth").
Mike arrived in San Angelo without "a single dollar bill" and showing his future proclivity for the aforementioned 1985 suburban by driving a 1959 Oldsmobile with a driver's side door that you had to hold shut while you were on the road. Walton told him to get a haircut. "I wasn't a long haired hippie even though those were the days," says Mike, "I had the philosophy but not the trappings." Lacking the required dollar it cost to get a haircut in those days, Mike went to work without one, only to have Walton take him aside: "Consider this a signing bonus," he said, handing my dad a dollar bill. Mike worked at the Standard Times for a year, making $85 a week, typing until 3:00 a.m. on an old Royal standard typewriter, "not even electric!"
For someone who had no inclination of joining the business until happenstance plunked him down in a job, my father is one of the most ubiquitously "newspaper-y" people I have ever met. He loves it. When I was young he would take me into the pressroom and let me sit at his desk (this was the happy tradition that led to me being snatched up by a frantic photographer on a deadline who needed a kid to pose with "Equal Rights for Children Smurf" in an issue of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, where my father worked when he interviewed Emilio Estevez.). When he started his own small-town newspaper many years later, he would take us into the actual press building so we could watch the enormous rolls of newsprint spinning over the machinery and being cunningly pressed, printed and folded until they popped out the other end as a complete newspaper. "I love the smell of newsprint," I remember him saying. 
It was at the Standard Times that my father learned to love the business. "I was right there, right in the heat of Vietnam. I worked every night until three, and then we'd all go to the waffle house. We'd talk about the newspaper business, and politics, and that's when I really started learning what it was all about. That was one of the best years of my life, even though I was there all alone, I didn't have anybody, didn't have a dime."
Soon he moved to Dallas to work for the Associated Press. This was where he met a man ("a typical drunk" who "had read all of Samuel Beckett's work in the original French") who introduced him to Jim Lehrer. Lehrer was then trying to get a fledgling television news show called "Newsroom" off the ground. This was in 1969, during the national newspaper strikes. Corporation Public Broadcasting was giving out money to newspaper people so they could start news shows of their own. This was happening all across the country. Now, a Bush Administration lackey has recently been appointed to head CPB, thus striking the final nail into the coffin of what was once a true bastion of free speech and the free press. "But back then, they stepped out there and funded these controversial newsroom programs--longhairs, black people, feminists--showing up on TV in Dallas in 1970, if you can imagine, with liberal ideas, and reporting..it's hard for you to imagine what it was like."
Dad worked on Newsroom with people like Joan Didion and Jesse Jackson. "It was an amazing time," he says. For his first beat, he covered the city council. He'd go to the meetings all day at City Hall, then report on them that night back at the Newsroom. The way the show was set up, all the reporters sat at their desks and the cameras went back and forth to them as they did their stories. There was a telephone sitting right in the middle, "so that the people we were talking about could call up and comment on what we were saying. If I was doing a story on a City Councilman, he could call up and argue with me about it live on the air. It happened all the time."
It was during this first beat that my father had one of his legendary run-ins with the conservative Dallas establishment:
"I covered for a long time the county government. And the county judge and the county sheriff and the DA had all been in office 25 years. They had swept into office as young men, gonna clean up Dallas, you know. And they were all as right-wing as you could possibly get, of course, very interesting characters. I got along good with all of 'em...The judge and the DA were always chewing on big old cigars, and the sheriff was always smoking cigarettes. Bill Decker--real badass. They were all mean people. So I'm there one day in the county courtroom and two of the county commissioners got mad at the judge. They came on newsroom that night and said some ugly things about him. We had a young black reporter named Greg Roverson on the show. At one point he asked "are you saying that Judge Skerrik is insane?" and they both said "yeah." So the next day, I have to go up there and cover the courtroom. And the judge comes out, just fuming, chewing on that cigar. And he comes up to me--court's full, all the cameras are running--he called me Miko. He says "Miko, you tell that jiggaboo out there that this old man ain't crazy." and I said, "judge, i'll tell him, but you ought'n't to talk like that." I went back and I told Jim what he'd said, and I said, "Jim, sooner or later we've got to start calling these people on this kind of thing." He said let's do it. So that night I reported the story just like that. (me: "saying jiggaboo and everything?" Mike, "oh yeah"). Well! The next day I had to go back out there again, downtown to the city hall. The judge was fuming. All the tv cameras and reporters were ready this time, because everybody'd seen what I said the night before. He says "you know Miko? I'll tell you one thing. You're right: I don't like militant niggers and hippies, never have, and never will." I said "judge, i hope you mean what you say because you're gonna have to hear it again tonight on the air."
I went back out and told Jim, and that night---I was at my desk, we had our office chairs, and I sat on half of it and Greg sat on the other half. We were in the same chair. And the camera opened on my face, and I told that story. And when I said that quote, about the militant niggers and hippies, the camera pulled back and there's Greg sitting right beside me. Whew! "
The public response, I ask? "Oh, well. The judge got voted out of office not long after that. Even in Dallas, people were going "God almighty! What kind of thing is this?'"
At this point Dad tells a few anecdotes about my birth (in my notes I have written: "first house = mom pregnant/axe under the bed). Then we begin discussing Journalism in general.
"Why do you think institutions like the New York Times have come under fire from both the right and the left wings lately?" I ask.
"Because the Times was always a standard bearer for the democratic party. And the reason everybody's mad at the Times is because it is LIKE the democratic party today in that it doesn't know WHAT it is. It no longer evidences the strength of its convictions."
How does he feel about blogs and the internet in general? "I say the more the better. But really we are not individually equipped intellectually to handle it. Because we don't know anything. So we go online and we see something like Matt Drudge or some moron blogger just putting out junk, but if it's the junk we like or it rings a bell with us, it reinforces our opinions. So misinformation, there's going to be ten million times more misinformation than ever before, and we are less equipped to deal with even the misinformation we get now. Because our educational system has pretty much imploded."
Dire words from a man who was once optimistic enough to actually bet me twenty clams that OJ Simpson would go to prison. Oh, sweet victory.
In the early 70's, Dad was one of "ten or so" journalists chosen from around the world to receive Neiman Fellowships to Harvard. He lived for a year in Boston, all expenses paid, and took whatever classes he wanted. He was friends with people like Michael McGovern (an ongoing character in Kinky Friedman's novels), and attended lectures by guest speakers like Hunter S. Thompson (whose appearance for the Neimans my dad describes as "a melee.").
I must begin skipping vast portions of my dad's life, as we have already tarried long into the night and my deadline draws nigh (not to mention the fact that I have been lambasted in this contest for being long-winded). "Daddy," I say, "it's time to get to the point." "Well, li'l dumplin," he says, "I guess you're right."
"I had a lot of jobs at the Star Telegram, and my last job there was as the film critic. Emilio Estevez was making a few movies back then, I don't know what happened to him since then. He made the "Breakfast Club", remember that? And he made "Repo Man." Harry Dean Statnon was in it, I sang harmony with him recently. Anyway, so, I went to the movie and then Emilio was in Chicago and his publicist called and said 'do you want to have a phone interview,' and I said sure. So at the assigned time, I called, and I was all set. Because Emilio comes on and he's of course in his best and brightest movie star form..."Mike! Hello, this is Emilio Estevez." And I said, "fuck you, queer." And there was this long silence. And then he caught on--i think he's got good sense--he started laughing. And we had a real good converation after that. I've always been sorry he didn't do better. I don't know, maybe he's happy as a lark."
For those of you who are unfortunately unfamiliar with the great "Repo Man," allow me to explain my father's very funny and dare I say extremely BALLSY joke: There is a scene in this film wherein Harry Dean Stanton is driving next to Emilio, and he yells, "hey kid you wanna make twenty bucks?" and Emilio without missing a beat snarls "fuck you queer." This is an extremely obscure reference for one to make when interviewing the star of the film, particularly when this is the very first thing one says on the phone with said star.
After interviewing Emilio Estevez, my father moved with us to a pitch-black rural mesa with no electricity or running water at 8,000 feet in Colorado. My childhood, which had been idyllic, became abruptly less idyllic, but more interesting. For this I am grateful. Dad started his own newspaper and is still running it in between stints as the owner of an antique store and as an actor ("The Wendell Baker Story," directed by Luke Wilson, coming out sometime, I don't know. He plays a prison guard. He has one line, which is: "Get up. Get off the bus, boy. This is Huntsville." He also is seen riding a horse ("well of course your father is TERRIFIED of horses," says my mom)). 
Before hanging up with my dad, I was very struck by what he said about running a small paper in a very right-wing town:
"Well it's in my mind constantly. I am pretty much a past master at it, 62 years old, done it all my life. Started out in San Angelo, a bastion of conservativism. Worked in Dallas--if you asked anybody in the country what's the most conservative big city in the U.S. they would say Dallas. It's where Kennedy was killed, for god's sake. So I've worked in those kinds of environments. I don't know if it's good or bad, to tell you the truth. It's something I deal with all the time. I almost never put what I really think in the paper. For two reasons. One: most people don't think that way and two: what I really think is also more liberal than what my staff even thinks. So I have a double whammy. I don't only have to worry about the right wing realtors and bankers who are the backbone of my advertising. I also have to worry about the people in my office. And it's an interesting project. Is it healthy? I don't know. It might be because it--I don't know how healthy it is to show no restraint. You know people like that. Is that healthy? I don't know. I'm just doing what I know I have to do to make my business work. And overriding everything else is that I believe in newspapers, I love newspapers. And I believe in giving them the best newspaper that I can, that I can afford to give them."
There you have it. My dad: The Man Who Interviewed Emilio Estevez.
American youth answers to Medya
May 13, 2005 07:23 PM
Justin is the thin one .
I have done many interviews with people in dangerous areas of the worldlike Syria, Iraq, Iran... They are more informative than interesting.
At the same time with this challenge, I found a dutch boy who loves
Kurdistan more than Kurds . I interviewed him here, but I
decided to make another interview that be more interesting than
informative with my American friend Justin for this challange.
M: Justin , are you shy ?
J: I used to be, but not anymore
M: Do you usually swear at you teachers in your mind when you speak with them?
J: Sometimes. Not that often, but sometimes.
M: For example?
J: Um.... I don't know... "fuck this shit" I'm not doing this shit."
"Mr. Crane sucks penis"
M: Have you pulled a girls hair in a fight?
J: My sister's... that's it.
M: You never physically fighted with a girl besides your sister?
J: Nope
M: If you had to choose between Medya's Life and your laptop....which
one would you pick up? Mind that if you choose my life you can't have
a laptop again.
J: My laptop
M: Really?
J: Yeah.... truthfully, why would I want your life?
M: Have you ever farted in the public?
J: Ha ha! Yeah I used to fart in class when I was in middle school.
M: Who is the most foolish person of the world by your idea?
J: J: Well first my father, then that bitch who raped those Iraqis in
Abu Ghraib.
M: Have you condemned your parents for having you?
J: I've felt that way when I was depressed, but when I'm not depressed I
don't feel that way at all.
M: Have you ever wished you were someone else? who?
J: Yes. Someone rich like Bill Gates or Donald Trump.
M: Have you ever wished to die in a particular way? You know, some
like to die like a slow motion movie while they blow themselves up
among infidels, shouting "Allaho Akbar!" ha ha Some people like to die
alone in an old metal bedroom in rain and thunder (Indian movie style)
How do you want to die?
J: That's not something I like to think about. When I die I'd like to
have all of my family members around me, and I want to be comfortable.
I definitely do not want to be alone because death is a very scary
part of life.
M: Ok let change the subject to something else. You know it is three
AM in Iran and I am alone in my dark room…Justin , if you have to
choose between Turkey, Armenia, Iran, South Africa to live which one
would you choose?
J: Preferably neither, but South Africa
M: Have you ever heard that speaking Kurdish in Turkey has been
forbidden for 25 million Kurds, and the word "Kurdistan" is forbidden
there? And have you heard thousands of the Kurds have had their
tongues been cut out for speaking Kurdish?
J: "Yes" to the first question. "No" to the second
M: Why do you think your country calls Turkey the "model of
democracy" while they are the most racist government of the middle
east ?
J: My government sucks.
M: Can you tell me , what you have learnt about Kurds? For example,
where is Kurdistan? What's the difference between Kurd and Arab?
J: Kurds are a race of people who live in the middle east who have
been persecuted by virtually every country. Kurdistan is a theoretical
country that
exists in the middle east that is made up of pieces of several
different countries. Kurds and Arabs are two separate races.
M: Ok Thank you Justin for this interview. I really enjoyed this interview
J: You're welcome. Me too
May 13, 2005 05:21 PM
Would you like politics with that?
May 13, 2005 04:57 PM
Tonight I sat down at Encore Cafe to interview Pete Welsch - friend, collaborator, and wicked DJ. Over our cups of tea and our back to back laptops - his an Apple and mine from Sony - we talked political blogs while surfing the net on the free wireless.
Pete how did you get interested in political blogs?
I got interested in the early days with the Trent Lott business and the hype around Howard Dean's site. I was interested if the hype about political blogs was substantiated. Then I got started working with you, and the others, on BROG [Blog Research on Genre] and added method, as in methodology, to the madness.
So now you are researching and writing papers on political blogs. How many is that now?
Three on political blogs and then four papers with BROG. [NOTE: This is a significant amount of research publication for a Master's student. Some Ph.D. program somewhere will be very happy to land Pete for their program.]
Topics include?
My recent research looks at the relationship between political blogs and mainstream media. I'm using A-list blogs on both sides of the aisle, conservative and liberal. I'm interested in the differences in the social networks around the two types of blogs. In particular how often and what type of mainstream media do they link to for support of their opinions.Preliminary results show that conservative bloggers tent to link to each over with more central A-list blogs getting most attention. The relationship declines very quickly as the ranking falls. This creates a fairly hierarchical structure. Conversely liberal bloggers are linking more redundantly linked thereby creating a much flatter model. The conservative blogs tend to create an echo chamber where the same points reverberate. While the liberal blogs link to many more mainstream media sources. But this trend is changing with more liberal blogs becoming echoish. I should note that the echo chamber behavior is likely an artifact of the expanding set of blogs being tracked in the research. The early results were found from tracking Instapundit and Atrios, where as the later results are from tracking 20 A-list political blogs.
Tell us about your latest project?
I'm working on a program I'm calling Shelob - Shelob Helps Evaluate Links on Blogs. It will be released under a free software license. The program helps to evaluate the type of links found within blogs, thereby freeing up the researcher from making individual evaluations.
You and I have talked before about the mainstream media's characterization of political blogs as the only true blogs. Can you characterize those discussions for the readers?
I think that the press overplay the issue. If you telescope down through the blog phenomena you can find many other ways that writers can be expressing themselves beyond political blogs. The real issue is the intentionality of the writer. When you start a blog it is usually somewhat undefined, you don't settle into a genre until later. Sarah [Sarah Mecure, Pete's wife] and I have found that blogs are great ways to keep in touch with distant friends, mostly college pals.
What drives you crazy about the media's presentation of political blogs?
That would be the discussion of the "self-correcting capacity of blogs."Most of the press presents the idea that bloggers can quickly incorporate corrects into their posts by reacting to readers emails and comments, but the concept is completely unsubstantiated. In the case of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who was accused of taking money to blog in support of the Dean campaign, the accusation was untrue. I wonder how bloggers will react then the accusations are true. You can fire a journalist who has broken the code of ethics but what will become of bloggers that do so?
Thanks for talking to me today Pete. Keep working on your research and keep on blogging.
Pete Welsch blogs at Sampo: The Journal of Abundant Media and can also be found at SLIS Blogs.
An Interview with the Average Male Client
May 13, 2005 12:37 PM
I work sixteen hour days. I spend maybe six hours a day in my house, sleeping, before getting off to work again. My work at the moment is in a strip club. It's the sex industry. It's strange how your view of men becomes distorted, until after a certain amount of time you know exactly what buttons to press, exactly how to hook them in, exactly how to pose, how to bend over, how to whisper and flirt and stretch in ways which produce the desired results. As a woman, you forget that men, in these places, have other lives apart from the time they spend drinking and soaking up the endorphins of an oiled-up dancer in the timeless world of the strip bar.
And sometimes, you remember.
Yesterday I perched on a bar stool when the club was particularly slow, talking to my friend from Belarus, Renata, about her plans to apply for law school. Renata used to be a dancer, until her boyfriend gave her an ultimatum. Give up, marry him and get her green card, or stay dancing. She now bartends instead. To my right sat a burned-out, thirty-something from Wall Street nursing his beer and looking disconsolately at a writhing dancer in various poses of exotic display. I asked him why he was here. He looked up, surprised by a question other than 'Would you like a dance?'.
"I had a bad day. I work long hours on Wall Street. It's hard, sometimes. This place is where I come to hide, I guess."
Hide from what? Was he lonely? He laughed.
"No, no. Life is good. I'm married to an amazing woman, a clinical psychologist - geez, she'd have a field day if she knew I was here! I have a two year old back at home. But sometimes... I dunno. You come to these places because no one can find you. Your phone doesn't work down here, you're surrounded by women, but it's not like a regular bar, with all the issues and the flirting and the sexual politics. Here it's straightforward. It's a man's world. It's a fantasy, I guess."
Does he ever get lap-dances?
"Before, yeah. But now... I gotta daughter, you know? And if she was ever doing this, I'd go crazy. I look at these girls, and now I see that they're someone's daughter. Being a father changes you. It's hard. I heard these people sitting behind me and my wife at the cinema the other day, a young couple, arguing about having children. The guy was like 'How much more difficult could it be than having Sandy?'. Sandy was obviously their dog. I turned around and was like, 'Buddy, believe me, having a kid is not like having a fucking dog'." He laughs dryly, and then buys me a beer.
"What you doing working here anyway? You're not like the rest of them."
What does that mean? I ask him. We're all women, we're all the same. We're playing a part as soon as we step in this place. Me, I don't play the part that well. I usually end up telling the men they're assholes instead of laughing in the right places. But we're all here to earn a living. There are mothers here working to pay for their kids. Students dancing to pay their fees. People just trying to earn a living. I'm here to get some writing ideas, make some cash, observe the world, until the day I can survive from the printed word alone. He looks thoughtful.
"I'm gonna tell you something Mimi. I was a musician, a long time ago, when I was 25. My band just signed a record deal. We played all over the East Village. It was gonna be big. I'd worked for ten years to make it big in music, and after years of scraping together a living, and eating shit to pay for gigs, it was happening. And then the record company folded two days before our first single came out. And I'd had it. I left music and got a job on Wall Street. Married at 28. Had my daughter two years ago. Nice place in the Village. A nanny. And now, for the first time in years, I'm happy. I'm real happy. Maybe you should think about that."
Think about giving it all up? Nothing could induce me to ever give up my dream of being a writer. And the longer I work in a seedy, sweaty world where sex is the currency and my body a hundred dollar bill, the more I know that writing isn't just an escape. It's what I will do for the rest of my life. And this is just a means to make that happen.
He pauses mid-sip.
"Everyone's different I guess. But how do you cope with someone like that?"
He points at a fat forty year-old in tight jeans, white sneakers, his arm wrapped around a tiny dancer, a lecherous grin spread across his face.
"I mean, that guy looks like he's never even heard of The New York fucking Times, apart from as something to wipe his damn ass with. How do you put up with men like that?"
I look at him. Kate, the Chinese Manager from Brooklyn who pimps us out, marches over purposefully and confronts Wall Street Man.
"You gonna take this nice lady to the Champagne Room or you gonna just sit there and waste her time?"
Wall Street Man gibbers an excuse. Kate shoots me a 'give-up-he's-a-tightwad' look, and disappears. I look at Wall Street Man.
"To us, you guys are all the same in this place. Some you can talk to, some it's difficult, but at the end of the day, you're all just a cock with a wallet."
He smiles wryly.
"I gotta go home before my wife gets mad. Thanks for talking to me Mimi. And don't give up. Maybe music just wasn't for me."
He tosses me a ten dollar bill, smiles, and leaves looking lighter than before. I wonder if this was his last visit. And then realise it was probably just one among many. Renata comes over.
"Hey Mimi, these guys are giving you money when you talk to them, right? It's a waste of time if they're not."
I flash her the bill, strapped around my ankle, tucked into the strap of my six-inch heeled shoes, where I keep all the money I earn in a shift. She nods, appeased.
"When you giving up this waitressing and lapdancing shit? You know you should be on stage with the rest of them. You got the body. You got the moves. There's more money there."
Me? I know. I have the shoes ready, the dress and the audition booked, plus the thick skin to go with it. But after my encounter with Wall Street man, I can't help thinking, I'm someone's daughter. He's someone's father. If I can forget that for just 8 hours a day, if I see them all as just a cock with a wallet, then I'll be fine. Just fine.
There's no pictures for this entry. I think the words are probably enough.