Welcome to Inkville

Elastic Journalism

On Friday, the First Lady of Inkville and I checked out "Multimedia Journalism & the Landscape of News," a talk by The Daily's Gabriel Dance. It was sponsored by my old stomping grounds, the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication.

Dance was a popular act; we arrived a few minutes late, and found the room already at capacity and hotter than Hades. Good on him.

A lot of what Dance had to say really hit home, especially his strong recommendation that 21st century journalists need more than one skill set. And as I can attest both as a freelancer and as a former magazine staffer, it's hard out there for a pimp, assuming the pimp is a writer trying to support himself solely through freelance.

Dance's song-and-dance about multimedia was interesting, and he aptly demonstrated how the concept of "journalism" is elastic enough to encompass computer animators, designers, illustrators, and other creatives.

All Dance's examples stemmed from his time at The New York Times, and I'll admit I was hoping for a bit more about Dance's new gig at The Daily. But that job is new, so perhaps Dance deserves a pass for at least a few more weeks. And frankly, The Daily has thus far failed to impress me.

But what really left me scratching my head was the amount of culture shock Dance must be experiencing transferring from the Times, a supposed liberal bastion, to working for Rupert Murdoch. As I type this, Dance's personal website features a link to an article about a journalist's "battles" with Murdock, so perhaps The Daily really is enacting a separation of church and state for the purposes of doing business.

Beyond the Walls of the Restaurant

Dealing as it does with Eugene's Marché restaurant, this is a little companion piece to my article "Salve, Sfizio." Both appeared in Eugene Weekly's summer Chow! Guide. And, dealing as it does with our charming First Lady and a visit to the White House, this seemed an appropriate post for the 4th of July weekend. Happy Independence Day!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The term “pro bono” more likely conjures images of legal briefs and power suits than it does freshly-sliced rhubarb or the stark whites of a professional chef. But Stephanie Pearl Kimmel, founding chef and owner of Eugene’s Marché, will be cooking and consulting for free in the coming months as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools initiative. 

As one foot soldier in an army of white-clad chefs invited to Washington, D.C., last weekend, Kimmel and her cohort got their marching orders on the White House lawn, directly from the First Lady. 

The Chefs Move to Schools project is part of the wider “Let’s Move!” initiative to combat childhood obesity, and ultimately to strengthen the federal Child Nutrition program that feeds kids in schools.

“A third of our schoolchildren [in the U.S.] are overweight or obese,” says Kimmel, who cites the “lost creativity, lost contributions and eventually just the medical costs” of that sorry state as major problems for the nation, down the line.

Continue reading "Beyond the Walls of the Restaurant" at Eugene Weekly.

Treme Flow Chart

Continuing what is evidently Inkville's new focus on wall-to-wall Treme coverage... Okay, is two episodes in too early for Treme fan art?

I made this flow chart and submitted it to GraphJam. Thus far, no response. Like other stuff I've done in a humorous (or is that "humorous"?) vein, you kind of have to be in love with the same things I am, to find this funny. And we all know that making arcane references to newly-premiered cable programming is the secret to good comedy, right?

Okay, here's the source material, the opening credits of Treme, featuring John Boutté wailin' on vocals:

Nevah be de' same, eh, cher? How's ya mama and 'em?

The Old Rugged Cross

I had been waiting for last night's premiere of HBO's new series Treme for months. An ongoing program that takes place in perhaps my favorite city in the world, bolstered by the usual deft characterization and commitment to world-building endemic of HBO shows like Deadwood and The Sopranos is too good to pass up.

Watching the series, even just the first episode, felt like coming home. Seeing the dive bars and grimy row homes, and even the Tower Records on North Peters, on television give me that weird little thrill one gets while seeing an accustomed haunt on the local news.

Whether the series is any good remains to be seen. HBO's programming is notoriously slow to start, and Treme's rambling, shambling, 80-minute opening episode is no exception, doling out juuuuust enough characterization for each of the principals to barely keep the viewer engaged. The music was slammin', of course, and the naturalistic writing and acting, de rigeur for HBO, more than make up for the plodding pacing.

It's difficult to watch John Goodman play a character and let the man simply inhabit it; he's always just so John Goodman-y. But I couldn't help grinning and nodding along as Goodman's character lit into a British journalist dismissive (or ignorant?) of New Orleans and what it stands for in the American imagination. Wendell Pierce's performance was reliably droll and understated, and his character's consistent shortchanging of his cabbies was not only duly funny, it was a compelling and simple symbol for the dire straits in which New Orleanians (not to mention musicians in general) found (and find) themselves. And Steve Zahn... well, maybe he'll grow on me.

The true crime behind Treme, the real sadness behind it, is that enough of the city is still in wreckage in real life that the film crew was even able to identify neighborhoods that could pass for the devastation of late 2005. Our trip there in 2008 revealed plenty of ruined homes, three years after their destruction.

Amusingly, with this summer's welcome return of True Blood, HBO will now have two series taking place in Louisiana. And did I mention that 2011's big-budget Green Lantern movie is filming in New Orleans, as well? I just hope the entire state of Louisiana isn't so trendy and gentrified that we're too priced out of it to, well, head down and move into a gentrified neighborhood, provided we someday, hopefully, relocate there.

Until then, I'm trusting Treme to present a nuanced, heartwarming, heartbreaking portrayal of the Big Easy, and to laissez les bons temps (et les mauvais temps) rouler. This opening episode of Treme ends with a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral, but only with the downbeat half that leads to the cemetery, the portion set to a funerary dirge. By forgoing the second, upbeat, from-the-cemetery portion of the jazz funeral, the portion traditionally set to hot jazz, the series indicates its characters are at their nadir, three months after Katrina has ravaged them. The central tension of the series, a tension to which I'm looking forward, will be in watching these characters rebuild themselves, and the city they love.

The Prophet

This month was Lane County's annual Project Homeless Connect, described on the program's website as "a one-day, 'one-stop shop' event serving people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless." Back in 2007 I interviewed a couple of the project's clients for articles for my graduate program. That work was never published, so below I am polishing off an oldie but (I think) a goodie. Enjoy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Though I offer to keep it under wraps, Paul Lehman wants his full name used for this article. Paul is a poet and author, and the extra publicity can’t hurt. Paul is also a guru. Consumer-driven culture holds no appeal for Paul, so he has elected to engage in a self-imposed exile from mainstream society, to shoulder a life of contemplation, and the lifestyle of a beggar.

At the moment, Paul’s immediate concerns are more earthly in nature. His bodily vessel is hungry, so Paul has made the trek from the mobile home park, his current base of operations, to nourish it. Yes, Paul is a guru, and he dresses the part. A maroon cap bears a Tibetan-looking pattern, crowning a gaunt visage of deep, watery gray eyes and a cascading white beard. At lunchtime Paul holds court, breathlessly reciting one of his own works to a couple of volunteers, a poem about personal growth, and the beauty of truth, and a higher power, surprisingly wrapped in an almost-iambic pentameter.

Neither a free meal nor the role of supplicant are new to Paul, but then he has played many roles in his six or seven decades on this plane… choirboy, soldier, high school teacher. Once he even helped build a boardwalk over a Florida mangrove swamp. Society is a curtain across truth, says Paul, a fog obscuring our knowledge of the power of the self. “That’s why I hang out outside the system,” he grins conspiratorially.

Paul’s self-appointed job is to free the masses from “the shadows of their own poor understanding.” He is Gandalf, Merlin, Teiresias, sprung from the storybook page to sound a word of warning in these dark times.

Historically, mankind feeds and clothes its prophets out of reverence, or awe, or fear. But eventually the wise men almost always combust, set afire by the glare of the social order they serve through its subversion. But Paul does not apologize, and has adopted his own credo, codified in the words of one of his poems:

'Twas then I set aside my reason, / In favor of the moment, / And began to live / in every season / Without need of atonement.

That Lucky Old Sun

I recently read two unrelated nonfiction essays by writers I know personally. Both essays are well-written. Both are difficult to read. And both are about the writer in question being raped.

I wasn't sure I should link to this work, honestly. I had to think about it. It felt weird, like I was revealing confidences. But if these two writers are brave enough to post their work publicly (to sites, I might add, that get many more hits each month than does Inkville), good for them.

"Not Like You," Katherine Gries' starkly assertive article, appears on Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. "Why I'm Funny" is a searingly brutal long-form blog entry from Joel Johnson. Each is recommended, if not, perhaps, in the same sitting.

A good friend of mine I haven't seen in awhile was recently in town for a few days, and over lunch I was catching her up on various writing projects. Later that afternoon, she tagged me in a Facebook post, hailing my "gigs writing about cool and fun topics like ghost hunting and Tiki bars."

And you know, she's right. I'm lucky. In life, and in my writing. Just how lucky was driven home by the work of these two writers. So I can prattle on at length about myself and about whatever popular culture flotsam catches my eye. I have the luxury.

Deep-Fried Soul

"I have some bad news," my wife said as she climbed into the passenger seat. It's not what you want to hear when picking your wife up from work, especially in a week in which death has seemed to shadow us and our loved ones at every corner. News of the passing of Ted "Papa Soul" Lee, an institution in the Eugene music and culinary scenes, has left me saddened.

I interviewed Papa for a grad school writing project, hanging around his restaurant a few times over the course of a week in 2007, notebook in hand. Papa was wary of me at first. His star was on the rise, and he'd been interviewed a number of times by various news outlets. My brand of narrative writing, though, calls for some good old-fashioned depth reporting, and Papa couldn't quite seem to put his finger on why I'd want to bum around in his joint multiple nights in a row, and scribble down what his regulars were saying to one another. He was always hospitable, however, even when I'd only buy a single beer and nurse it over an hour. Papa loosened up after I'd questioned him a bit, once he realized I was an ex-pat Southerner who, like Papa himself, was trying to make sense of his own lineage and cultural inheritance.

And when the article appeared in Eugene Magazine, in much-truncated form, Papa framed it and hung it on his restaurant's wall. In a way, having the man memorialize my writing that way was significant for me, perhaps even more so than it was for him: having a respected businessman value my work enough to have it framed was a big mental boost for a young writer, and gave me the confidence to approach other interview subjects fearlessly. I guess I have always thought of the man as a sort of spiritual benefactor, even if he never knew it. In fact, that grinning photo of me you see above and to the right was taken on the sidewalk in front of his place.

And what's more, Papa never forgot me, and hailed me warmly each time he saw me. (A perk of being a reviewer, to be sure.) He was a man with an enormous appetite for life, for both its nurturing and destructive sides... including some rougher elements (drug use, response to racism, a deadbeat father) that were understandably scrubbed by my editor for publication in a lifestyle magazine. And while I understand why the piece had to be gutted, I've always felt something was lost in translation. This seems an appropriate occasion to recognize the life and the works of Ted Lee, to mark what the man stood for.

So I hope my readers will indulge me in this, perhaps the longest blog entry I've posted, the unexpurgated, original version of "Deep-Fried Soul."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s past the dinner hour, and most of the restaurant’s dining customers are on their way out the door, bellies and doggie bags full. In less than an hour the regular Thursday night reggae jam will usher in a new clientele, and in one corner of the tiny Victorian bungalow’s front room, a couple of DJs are already pulling tables into a makeshift desk for their sound equipment. The sound system is cranking out the cream of Motown and soul, all African-American artists. From the kitchen, a cook’s voice wavers as he sings along with “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas. A young waitress joins in under her breath and she putters about behind the front counter.

Peering down at the waitress from the upper echelons of the liquor rack that crowns the front counter, a rubber ducky with James Brown’s distinctive locks mugs next to a peeved-looking Snoop Dogg action figure. They’re mirrored on the opposite side by a grinning Louis Armstrong figurine. The walls of the cottage are plastered with retro-styled posters and “outsider art” featuring black musicians, Robert Johnson and Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmy Hendrix and Stevie Wonder. An oil painting features a large, heavily-tattooed man wailing away on a harmonica.

Affection and Nostalgia

The UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum gives comic books a hero’s welcome

This article, which first appeared in the September 24 issue of Eugene Weekly, afforded me the opportunity to sort of wallow in my own special brand of hedonism, thinking and reading and talking at length about comic books.  I can guarantee you I'll be returning to the museum multiple times before the exhibition has concluded, to commune with the spirits of my gurus.  I was also pleased to discover a kindred spirit in the University of Oregon's Ben Saunders, a man who walks the walk in terms of comic book nerdery.  This guy isn't taking advantage of a pop cultural trend; he's advancing an art form about which he has been passionate for decades.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Can I touch this?” I ask, gesturing to the 70-year-old magazine sitting on the glass top counter of Nostalgia Collectibles, a Eugene comic book store. Darrell Grimes, the owner of both the shop and the comic book in question, gives his assent, and I lift the object carefully, reverently, as if I’m handling an illuminated manuscript from the Dark Ages.

Even encased as it is in clear, hard, protective plastic, the illustration on the comic book’s cover exudes a kinetic sense of exuberance: a boyishly grinning Superman leaps high above the rooftops, his cape billowing behind him.

This is a copy of Superman #1, published in 1939. Fewer than 200 copies are thought to exist. It’s worth $50,000. The very fact this comic book resides in Eugene makes this city noteworthy, in some circles.

And I’m holding it. For me, comic book nerd that I am, that’s like touching the Holy Grail.

This comic, and the nearly 200 pieces of original comic book art it will soon be joining on the campus of the UO, matter to the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of hardcore comic book aficionados in the area.

But they’re also a point of pride to the citizens of Eugene as a whole, or at least they should be. Because the artwork that has been collected for “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero,” an exhibition opening Friday, Sept. 25, at the UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, is one of the most expansive gatherings of superhero comic book art ever assembled. And it’s not hanging on a wall in N.Y. or L.A. or London, or even Portland. It’s here.

“I do think this is the best museum exhibition of superhero comic art to date,” says Ben Saunders, an associate professor of English at the UO, and curator of the exhibition. “‘Best’ in the sense of broadest, most historically comprehensive,” he continues, “and with a large number of key pieces by key artists from the 70 years of the genre.”

It may sound as if Saunders is bragging about the show he’s assembled. But to be frank, the man has a right to brag: Works are on loan from the Library of Congress as well as from 18 private collectors from around the country.

But this show is about more than just volume. Saunders is an expert on this stuff, and he has taken care to present the original artwork. Originals are created on card stock pieces larger than the comic book pages to which they will eventually be reduced, in a manner that tells a story: not just the thrilling tales of spandexed champions or the story of good winning out over evil, but the story of the creation of a wholly new and inherently American way to tell stories in the first place.

“I went in pursuit of key works by key artists,” says Saunders, who revels in name-dropping from the collection’s impressive catalog: “Not just ‘something by Jack Kirby,’ but Jack Kirby’s cover to [Fantastic Four] #74. Not just Bill Sienkiewicz, but one of his large collage poster/covers from the mid ’80s. Not just Neal Adams, but Neal Adams on Batman.” Care has also been taken, Saunders says, to include “once-influential masters of the form” of the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, “who deserve to be better known.”

Continue reading "Affection and Nostalgia" at Eugene Weekly.

Photo by Todd Cooper.

Pocket Full of Clinton-ites

This article appeared, in highly edited form, in last week's Eugene Weekly.

-------------------------------------------------

The first person who greets us outside Junction City High School at last Saturday’s Bill Clinton appearance is a ponytailed, clipboard-wielding volunteer with a Hillary sticker affixed to his shirt. I’m an Obama backer myself, and as we start to complete the forms he hands us, my wife asks whether I’ll be allowed to enter if I don’t sign the paperwork’s pledge to vote for Hillary in the upcoming Democratic primary.

“Oh, I’m an Obama supporter,” the volunteer offers. He’s just here stumping for Hil, he explains, because his wife asked him to. Preach on, brother.

Aces, I'm going to skidoo on over to my blog and shoot off my bazoo

Love my new glad rags. Welcome to my blog, all you cats and kittens.  I was gonna call it Welcome to Dullsville until my wife convinced me not to.