Mark Lukach

I’ve never been in a .gif before, but now I am…skating at Pacifica Skate Park. Thanks to Beamer for filming and putting this together.

I’ve never been in a .gif before, but now I am…skating at Pacifica Skate Park. Thanks to Beamer for filming and putting this together.

good:

The finalists for best magazine writing of the year were announced today by the American Society of Magazine Editors. We’re not mad or anything that we weren’t nominated (#hatersgonnahate), but we thought we’d take a moment to celebrate some of our favorite magazine writing published in…

hendel:

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” Kurt Vonnegut’s writing tips. 

Beehivin’ (Taken with instagram)

Ever since I first saw Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers perform at the Outside Lands Music Festival last fall, I have been a big fan. Their music is a warm and fuzzy mix of blues, rock, and folk, and the on-stage chemistry between Nicki and her husband Tim, who is a staple of the California alt-country music scene with his band The Mother Hips, and is the guy who discovered Nicki’s singing voice in the first place, and to top it all off plays guitar in Nicki’s band, is incredible. They are so in love and sing about love and it makes you feel tingly inside to watch them perform. At one point during the set, I scanned the audience behind me, and every person was smiling.

They have a good life, these two. Tim used to be the epitome of the wandering California soul searcher, notorious for disappearing into the rugged coast to surf or into the Sierras to do who knows what. But then he found Nicki at a party, who sang a karaoke song on a whim, and Tim invited Nicki back to San Francisco to make some music together. Their collaboration led to romance, and everything sort of fell in place from there. They now disappear into the Sierras together, and drive around pursuing their passion together.

(I know all this background, by the way, because I got the chance to interview them for a local paper during Outside Lands.)

Nicki’s standout single off her most recent album “Driftwood” is called “Stick With Me,” a song about staying with her lover Tim, regardless of the circumstances. When I first googled them before Outside Lands, the top his was an enchanting unplugged version of them performing the song near the Golden Gate Bridge, and “Stick With Me” has remained my favorite of theirs.


But if you google Nicki Bluhm now, the first thing you’re going to find are the Van Sessions. Because all of the sudden, Tim and Nicki are sitting on top of a viral sensation.

With all the time they spend on the road, the band has taken to performing cover songs while packed in their van. Absurdly beautiful cover song I’ve been following Nicki and Tim on Twitter for a while, and I always look forward to when they post a new Van Session. I often listen to the Van Sessions youtube channel when I’m working at home. Some of my favorites have been their versions of Material Girl and Here Comes The Sun. This morning I heard on local radio station KFOG that the set-up is refreshingly low-fi. They hang an iPhone up on a velcro strap attached to the rear view mirror of the van, and everyone just plays…while en route to their next show. They’re a band that makes music in between performing music. Exceptional. Through trial-and-error they’ve figured out which instruments tend to work at which volumes best, so that the recording comes out much cleaner sounding than you’d expect from a mere iPhone.

So then all of the sudden, with their most recent Van Session version of “I Can’t Go For That” by Hall & Oates, the Van Sessions have gone viral. The video was posted on March 23, and at the time of this writing, a mere 5 days later, it has 250,000 hits. The video is getting posted on blogs and tweeted by celebrities like Jay Leno, Cameron Crowe, and Hall & Oates themselves. Compare this to Material Girl, an equally enjoyable Van Sessions song, which has gotten about 20,000 hits in 5 months. Why the sudden tipping point?


There are few greater enigmas than what makes a viral sensation, and this one is equally perplexing. I like the new cover, but honestly, I don’t think it’s one of their best. I’m still a sucker for Material Girl and Here Comes The Sun, or even Buddy Holly’s “Everyday”. But by covering Hall & Oates, I believe that the Van Sessions have wandered into the land of internet memes. Whether deliberately or unwittingly, Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers have covered a band that is huge with the Internet right now. Yeah sure, people like Madonna, but that love is more like a background hum, but the internet has turned people’s feelings towards Hall & Oates into love love, like l-o-v-e LOVE. It’s an homage to the music, sure, but I think the popularity of the band is also because they are kind of easy to make fun of, as unfortunate as that might be. There’s the mustache. And the fact that the tunes are so goddamn 80s-ish, and liking the songs feels ironic and hipsterish. And then there’s the fun of punning Hall & Oates, like the “Callin’ Oates” hotline that sent blogs into a frenzy in December 2011, when some guys made a phone number you can call to listen to a Hall & Oates song. As the pinnacle of meme-dom, Funny or Die made a Helen Hunt, keyboard cat, and Hall & Oates video mash-up.

And now Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers have become part of that l-o-v-e LOVE. I don’t know if the band steered the Van Sessions towards Hall & Oates with the deliberate intention of jumping on a viral bandwagon, but they’ve certainly struck internet gold by doing so.

As a fan, I think this is great. It’s awesome for really talented musicians to get some of the recognition they deserve. But I’m a bit wary, mostly because like I’ve already said, I don’t think this is their best Van Session, but beyond that, I don’t think the Van Sessions are the high point of the band. Yeah, they’re awesome covers, but Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers should not be mistaken as a cover band. They are out there recording and performing lovely original music, and I hope that newfound fans of the video can recognize that. Tim Bluhm is a seasoned musician who has made dozens of worthwhile albums, and I’d hate to think that his one major blip on the pop culture radar is a Hall & Oates cover.

So one of the Van Sessions episodes has gone viral. What I hope this means for Nicki and Tim Bluhm, neighbors of mine whom I sometimes see when I’m out walking my dog on the beach, is that their bands go viral, too.

glukauf:

Recreation time for the seminarists at St. Ignatius Loyala shrine at Azpeitia, Gipuzkoa (Guipúzcoa) in Spain, 1955.

jayrosen:

Master manipulator with nerves of steel.

I cannot recommend highly enough episode 460 of This American Life, in which Ira Glass and crew have to retract and apologize for an earlier show based on Mike Daisey’s one-man stage play, ”The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” The facts you need to understand the new episode, simply called Retraction, are in this New York Times story.

Daisey’s play is about terrible working conditions in Apple factories in China. It became a hit, raising awareness of the issue and adding pressure on Apple to improve those conditions. But it was based on a lie: that Daisey had himself witnesssed what he presented as the record of his experiences in China. In many cases he had not. And he lied to the producers of This American Life when they tried to fact check his performance before putting excerpts of it into their show. 

All of this becomes clear in Retraction, which is an extraordinary display of transparency in corrective journalism. (So listen! It’s an hour.) Daisey is interviewed for the show about his deceptions. He tells Ira Glass that he always feared this day would come. Well, it came. And when he was asked to go on This American Life to account for his lies, he had only two choices. Sane choices, I mean.

Choice One: To agree to be interviewed and prepare to be stripped naked, on air, as a kind of cleansing act. You are revealed to millions of people as a bald-faced liar and a cheat about the things you care about the most, but by being ruthlessly honest and unsentimental with yourself, you stand a chance of coming out of it with at least some dignity. But if you cannot go through with that, there’s…

Choice Two: Don’t go on the air. Let them talk about you and send a note with your regrets. 

There is no choice three. 

But Daisey took door number three, anyway. That’s the one where you say to yourself…

I’m a master manipulator with nerves of steel. I can talk my way out of this, out of anything. This is just another performance! And I am one of the great performers out there. Of course I will have concede ground, and that’s going to be embarrassing and painful, but I can also gain ground by winning people over to the greater truth beneath my deceptions. Which is… I really care about this! Through the magic of theatre, I made audiences—big audiences, who love me—care! Now they care about something they damn well should care about! Ira Glass couldn’t do that. I did. The New York Times wouldn’t do that. I would. Me and the magic of theatre, which is my love. I didn’t betray my love. I betrayed his love, Ira’s, and, yeah, that was wrong, but beyond that he has nothing on me. For I am a master manipulator with nerves of steel…

What you hear in the show is this very performance coming completely apart— before your ears, as it were. Ira Glass picks up on it right away. He realizes what Daisey came into the studio to do. And he permits a monstrously over-confident man to audibly disassemble himself. (Transcript.)

So this is what Daisey wrote on his website:

What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic ­- not a theatrical ­- enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.

The post doesn’t have a title. I suggest: Fuck it. I take door number three.

Jay Rosen is as smart as they get.

I don’t need to summarize “Retraction.” It’s all over the news. But I have feelings about it.

I think that “Retraction” is an eloquent apology by This American Life, and I respect that. They got caught with their pants down, cutting corners on fact-checking, and it bit them in the ass. And they could have buried it, but they owned up to it. Compare that to Rush Limbaugh, and it’s not hard to qualify this as admirable behavior.

But there’s something about “Retraction” that really bugs me. Truth is, there’s something about Ira Glass that tends to bother me in general. He is so smarmy and smug, so self-aware of his contributions to storytelling and journalism. I love his show but have a tough time with him and his narration, even though that’s a big part of what defines the show.

But with “Retraction,” I couldn’t help but notice the naivete in Ira’s horror that somewhere dared to lie to him. It’s almost like, “yeah, we made a mistake, but I’m Ira Glass, people are supposed to tell the truths of their life to me, not lie to me.” But that’s what happens sometimes, Ira. People want their story to sound better, you are in the business of making people’s stories sound good, so you might stumble into some exaggeration. You don’t sit atop the golden throne of journalistic excellence, but instead are just like the rest of the folks out there. It’s sort of like the cool teacher at school, the one who thinks all of his students love him, and then he finds himself on ratemyteacher.com and realizes that a lot of his students thought he was a dick. Not like I’m speaking from experience or anything.

Listen to Retraction. It’s one of the most interesting things I’ve heard on public radio ever, even if I didn’t fully like it.

This girl is awesome.

Man oh man, what a way to live life.

npr:

I’m in the teeny tiny slice of folks who can take or leave pizza. I’d rather have Idris Elba. — Tanya

ilovecharts:

Six Surprising Pizza Pie Charts

via maryontheinternet

I’ve never been good at waiting, and I’m not getting any better.

I’m waiting for some of the biggest news in my life. My agent has submitted my manuscript to a few dozen publishers, and we’re hoping that one of them will want to publish it.

So far, so tepid. Not nearly the enthusiasm that we were hoping for.

This sucks. I’m pretty much tearing my hair out. It’s rainy and cold and I’ve got a sore throat and a headache and nothing can distract me from the wait.

Good news. Bad news. I prefer the former, but I just want news.

I love this song and this video because it’s almost exactly how I dance around my house.

My new favorite job application letter, from 1934. He ended up winning an Oscar for screenwriting!

(via Letters of Note)

We like words too.

(via good)

For years my bulldog has been digging rocks when we go to the beach.

All I have to do is pick one up, dangle it in front of his face a little bit, and then he’s irrevocably fixated. No turning back. All he wants is that rock. And when I throw it to him, rather than pick it up, he digs a big hole around it. Not to bury it, or even to lie in. Just to dig the rock.

When it’s time to leave the beach, he brings the rock with him, all the way to the car. Once every few months I have to go into the back seat and clear out all of the rocks that have gathered there. It’s usually dozens.

So now recently me and my friend have taken to digging rocks. One day while walking we noticed an unusually well-shaped, cubical rock jutting out from one of the sand dunes. We unearthed it. It was pretty clearly chiseled down to be that size on purpose. We tossed it aside without thinking too much of it. At least I didn’t.

My friend was still curious. He did some research when he got home, and he’s pretty certain that those rocks are old cobblestones from the roads of the city. Back in the early days of the city’s history, boats will send goods up the river to Sacramento, and the freight heading back was all rocks, mined in Folsom, to pave the cobblestone roads of the burgeoning downtown. From Folsom to Folsom Street.

Eventually the cobblestone roads were ripped up, and replaced with cement. And what I think we’ve discovered is that many of the cobblestones were shipped out to the beach to fortify the dunes, just like they do with any old concrete or cement.

So now, my friend and I dig rocks when we go to the beach, and carry them back to his car. He wants to build a firepit in his backyard out of them.

And as we dig, my dog sits there, curious at what we’re doing, but also clearly amused. We lug the heavy cobblestones back to the car, and believe me, they are heavy, and I’m pretty sure that if my dog could talk, he’d simply say, “Now you know.”

I listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell me each weekend and I have to say the show from March 3 with Alec Baldwin was one of the funniest I have ever heard. Well done to the panelists for making it a really memorable broadcast.

Listen to it.

theatlantic:

How Cheap Should Books Be?

If the regulators are right, and the big publishing houses really did get together with Apple to plot a price hike, it would seem to be a clear violation of antitrust law — old fashioned price-fixing conspiracies are the sort of corporate skullduggery that can get an executive tossed in jail. Justice’s suit could also mean a return to the wholesale system that gave Amazon its free hand to whittle down prices. 

But one has to wonder if, in this instance, the law is really serving the best interest of the public. Consider this question: are readers really better off in a market dominated by the whims of one large company, even if it means they get to pay a little less for the new Tom Clancy novel?

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

One of my favorite sketches from Portlandia.

Although I did not like the end of it.