Austin Kleon – Page 485

NEW FRONTPAGE (AND STORE COMING SOON!)

Thursday, April 24, 2008

For those of you reading via RSS, pop over to my homepage real quick and check out the new front page and updated portfolio.

Why the change? I’m hoping that the front page will now be a more friendly portal to newcomers.

For those long-time readers, if you want to skip the frontpage and go straight to the blog, update your bookmarks:

http://www.austinkleon.com/blog/

I should also point out that there’s a new subscription options page. If the blog feed isn’t enough for you, you could always upgrade to the Blog + Tumblelog Superfeed!

And for those of you with eagle eyes, you’ll have noticed a (gasp!) shopping cart. Yeah, it’s just a teaser for now, but one of our projects this summer is trying to get some merchandise up for sale. We want to start small with maybe just some mini-poster prints, and then move on to bigger and better things.

A couple questions:

What’s the most successful way to sell products online? Paypal? Etsy? Ebay?
What would you like to see sold in my store? Prints of poems? Mini-comics? T-shirts?

If anybody has any advice or comments, please let me hear them!

AGORAPHOBIA

Thursday, April 24, 2008

AGORAPHOBIA

fear of open spaces: agoraphobia
fear of the influence of the stars: astrophobia
fear of outer space: spacephobia (this one unconfirmed by the OED)

A HAVEN FOR EVILDOERS

Thursday, April 24, 2008

A HAVEN FOR EVILDOERS

THE GOING-INTO-BUSINESS STORY: GHOSTBUSTERS AND BE KIND, REWIND

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Warning! Mild Ghostbusters and Be Kind Rewind spoilers ahead!

This is a silly post for a silly subject.

Ghostbusters is a key movie for Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind: not only is it the first movie the Jack Black and Mos Def characters remake—”swede”— but the two movies actually share the same plotline: friends going-into-business.

Kurt Vonnegut:

Anyone can graph a simple story if he or she will crucify it, so to speak, on the intersecting axes I here depict:

“G” stands for good fortune. “I” stands for ill fortune. “B” stands for the beginning of a story. “E” stands for its end.

A much beloved story in our society is about a person who is leading a bearable life, who experiences misfortune, who overcomes misfortune, and who is happier afterward for having demonstrated resourcefulness and strength. As a graph, that story looks like this:

misfortune graph

This story shape describes most comedies, especially romantic ones:

In the case of the going into business story, it goes like this:

friends go into business to wild success (good fortune)
business gets shut down by government agency (misfortune)
the community rallies behind the friends to save their world (good fortune)

Here’s Ghostbusters:

ghostbusters graph

Friends get kicked out of Columbia, go into business for themselves, land on the cover of Time magazine, etc.
Walter Peck from the EPA comes down and shuts down the power grid and all hell breaks loose
the mayor gets the Ghostbusters out of jail, NYC rallies behind them, and they kick Gozer’s ass

Now Be Kind Rewind:

be kind rewind graph

Jack Black erases the tapes, so he and Mos Def have to record their own movies, and everybody loves them
the lawyers from the MPAA come to shut them down (and the developers want to tear down the building!)
the ‘hood rallies, they make the Fats Waller documentary together, and they have the screening in the building so the developers can’t tear it down

It’s a great plot because it has great American themes: friendship, capitalism, and community.

Okay. So this post might not pass the “so what” test. I’ve had a couple margaritas…sue me.

Can anyone else think of other “going into business” plotlines?

THE “SO WHAT?” TEST

Monday, April 21, 2008

Sophomore year of college. Classics 202: Greek and Roman Epic. Teacher doesn’t say a word, just passes out our papers, walks up to the blackboard, picks up a piece of chalk, and writes:

so what