Subscribe Thang

Ran into Charles at the Draught Draft Horse House, and he said he didn't read my blog much because I have no RSS feed to subscribe to. I do, but it's hidden at the bottom of the page where it's easier to not get to it.

I set up a link at the left, there, to subscribe to this blaaauuhhhgghhgag.

Enjoyarama.

All Things Being Practically One

I was helping Franc out with her math homework, and we somehow got to talking about pi, and how it goes on forever. Meaning, if you measure around a circle (circumference), then measure the line down the middle (diameter), and divide one by the other, you get an irrational, transcendental answer - a number that goes on forever.

Mmmmm. Pi.

That's a neat word trick, but for practical purposes, measuring things to the 39th decimal place of pi gives you a measurement accurate to the size of a hydrogen atom. Good enough for government work.

Later that night, I was teased by the thought that even for non-practical purposes, pi's value might not actually calculate, without pattern or end, to infinity. Which reminded me of a post on the Futility Closet, which proved that 0.999...∞ is the same as one. Not close to one: they have the same value.

a = 0.999…
10a = 9.999…
10a - a = 9.999… - 0.999…
9a = 9
a = 1

For all practical purposes, ceteris paribus , tat tvam asi, yar.

It's not obvious. But it is true.

I Am He (And You Can Too)

Please go see this animated short. It broke my heart, and then my mind, and I hope it does yours, too.

Laith Bahrani wrote:
"Creep was created as an extension to a series of shorts called `Low Morale’ which I began to develop during a well-paid, comfortable yet soul-destroying job as a senior designer in a multimedia agency. The countless days spent in the run down converted office, churning out banal multimedia and animation for faceless, lifeless, clueless blue chips had taken their toll on my soul. Creep became my creative escape tunnel."

Cool New Side Gig

Colleen Kane has a "reading is fun for mentals" link list, where I discovered Mandy Stadtmiller (could YOU resist clicking on "Bloggy McBlogalot?"). She's a reporter for the New York Post, and a stand-up comedian. She won last year's "NY's Funniest Reporter" award at the Underground Comedy Festival. She has stand-up videos on MySpace. Then she started getting more famous, plus scored a book deal, plus her own Sex and the City-esque column for the Post, and around September I noticed her site wasn't being updated very often.
Last week, I was tidying my bookmarks, and tried again. That day's entry said this:

"Hello,
You may have noticed I am behind. On posting things. Yes, it's true.
So here's a query.
Basically, I'm looking for an intern-type person to help me out with posting articles and shows and doing other not super-glamorous tasks that I fall quickly behind on.
If you're an aspiring writer or performer or just dig some of my stuff and have free time at work, this would be right for you.
I've worked with both paid and unpaid people who've helped in the past. Right now I can't pay but I can provide a bit of experience, insight and future recommendations. Ideally you'd be in New York, but if you're not, it can be done remotely.
If this sounds interesting, please shoot me a one-paragraph email to mstadtmiller at myemail dot com about who you are and why this sounds like something that would appeal to you."

Well, I'm a writer and amateur performer, so what the hoo-ha, I wrote her a paragraph. Nothing ventured, and all.

Figuring my email would get buried in the avalanche, I did NOT expect to hear from her the next day. After phone/text/email tagging, we talked yesterday evening, and I got my first assignment, which I knocked out right quick.

How fun is this? Oh, did I mention she's this totally warm, authentic person who is just sincerely generous, and willing to help however she can? Which is fantastic, but also weighty, because now I can't procrastinate on this book a minute longer. So much for the days of slack and Austin music. I have work to present.

Here was today's Bloggy McBlogalot post:

"A few quick things:

1) Have found two delightful folks to help out and who I can help out. So awesome.

2) Set your Tivos for "Rock Band Band" on Nov. 11 on VH-1. It's funny. I play myself. Meta.

3) Did you know that even though I'm a Lazy Susan and haven't been posting my column here that you can keep up with it by checking out archives here? It's true. Cool.

4) I'm in the semi-finals for New York's Funniest Stand-Up."

So, apparently I'm one of those delightfuls. How very, very, very. Pretty sure shite like this doesn't happen to people every day. Nice to get a break once in awhile. Ol' Bloggy there is right: sometimes life feels so good you just want to punch it in the face.

No Future in Industrial Beer

Miller and Coors became the same company last week, which means they now control 30% of the beer market, leaving the "micro" brewers to supply 2 out of 10 American beers (Budweiser sells half of the beer bought in the US, mostly Bud Lite). Ten years ago when I brewed for Austin's Hill Country Brewery, we were one of about a hundred US craft breweries. Now there are 15 times that many, and sales climb every year.

Over there in Brooklyn, Garret Oliver cranks out some of the most delicious beer in the world (he's a regular winner of GABF medals). He guest Op-Eded in the NYT today, and this article pops.
Photo: David Shankbone

Don’t Fear Big Beer

By GARRETT OLIVER
Published in the New York Times: October 19, 2007
JUST 10 years ago, the proposed merger of SABMiller and Molson Coors into MillerCoors would have worried craft brewers. Back then, “American beer” was thought of as a cheap product with very little beer flavor. But today the United States has by far the most exciting beer culture in the world, and America’s 1,500 craft brewers are undaunted by the prospect of a juggernaut that would have 30 percent of the domestic market. The age of American industrial brewing is over.

Craft brewers used to be called “microbreweries,” but many of us are not so micro anymore. And the people who once thought the craft brewing movement was a fad can now see it for what it really is — a welcome return to normality.
More >>

Lala's Play Opens Tonight - Go See It

Here's her writeup on the ACC Newsroom:

Drama highlights talent-packed fall arts season

Director/filmmaker Laura Somers will helm the Drama Department’s fall production as part of the Arts and Humanities Division’s upcoming season.

The division has organized a full schedule of events. Among them is “Far Away,” featuring Somers as guest director. The former Austin resident helped found the dirigo group theater company before moving to Los Angeles.

“While ‘Far Away’ is a somewhat mysterious play, I believe that when audiences leave, they will be thinking about it for many days to come,” said Drama Department Chair Shelby Brammer. The play runs two weekends in October.


The Press Release:

The Austin Community College Drama Department will open its 2007-2008 season with Caryl Churchill’s FAR AWAY. Directed by guest director, Laura Somers and featuring Equity member and ACC faculty Jodi Jinks, Far Away, opens Friday, Oct. 19th in the Gallery Theater, 3rd Floor, Rio Grande Campus at 12th and Rio Grande in downtown Austin. The show runs Oct. 19^th, 20^th, & 21^st, and Oct. 26^th, 27^th, & 28^th. Friday and Saturday performances are at 8 p.m., and Sundays are at 2 p.m. Admission is by donation, though limited open seating with be available as a part of the TCG/ACot Free Night of Theater project for the October 20^th performance.

"Far Away" is a gripping hour-long play that packs the substance of several full length dramas. Essentially an apocalyptic play about an Armageddon created by its own victims, it provides a searing contrast between the world we treasure and the horror we have made of it. Poetic yet beautifully simple, it observes a time both near and “far away” when the developed nations are no longer just fighting against themselves, but against the world itself.

Stephen Colbert's NYT Op-Ed Piece

With apologies to Alan Ginsberg, it is to howl. I'm making the people in the cubes around me uncomfortable with my spit-takes and snorts.

Enjoy.

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)

By STEPHEN COLBERT
Published in the New York Times: October 14, 2007

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

More>>

New BEIRUT Album is on its Way...

Here's a taste. This house reminds me of late 80s/early 90s parties in Hyde Park, when Austin was a sleepy college town.

Zach Condon's Band
New Album - Cover Art

My Shangri-La Beneath the Summer Moon, I Will Return Again

Happy Birthday, Bapu

Hindustan Times
New Delhi, October 02, 2007

As the country marks the 138th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, the Nobel Foundation has regretted not giving the peace prize to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before he was shot dead in January 1948.

The apostle of peace was nominated five times for the Nobel but the Norwegian Nobel committee believed that he could not be given the honour as he was "neither a real politician nor a humanitarian relief worker".

However, the Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation in Sweden Michael Sohlam says the decision not to extend him the prize was a mistake.

"We missed a great laureate and that's Gandhi. It is a big regret," he told CNN-IBN.

"I usually don't comment on what the Nobel Committees or prize awarding institutions decide. But here, they themselves think he is the one missing," he said.

Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before he was shot dead in January 1948.

In 1948, the Nobel Committee declined to award a prize on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate that year".

Nobel Museum curator Dr Anders Barany told the channel that "Mahatama Gandhi is the one we miss the most at the Nobel museum. I think that's a big empty space where we should have had Mahatma Gandhi. I think it was a mistake," he said.

My Favorite 2 Sentences of 2007

From the latest James Wolcott article in this month's Vanity Fair:

"Be a hugger, he urged those gathered at a Rose Garden event on July 26 honoring the Special Olympics ('If you've never been a hugger, I strongly advise you to be one. That means you stand at the end of the finish line of a race and you hug the people coming across the line'), and even those of us who believe a second Nuremberg jury should be convened to try the president, the vice president, and a host of neoconservative architects for Iraq war crimes would concede that this sentiment presented the president at his most sympathetic and human-seeming."

Next paragraph:

"The chrome peeled off of Bush's halo as national healer in the post-Katrina tragedy of errors, the commendation "Heckuva job, Brownie" tied like a tin can to his legacy no matter how they try to paper things over at the future Bush presidential library and car wash."