Austin Kleon – Page 566

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD (LITERALLY)

Friday, August 18, 2006

“…for most young writers, maybe for most writers, “theme” is a word they should just strike out of their vocabulary. Because if you think about it beforehand, what you’re really saying is, “I’m gonna control this bastard. This book is gonna be about the impression of the masses [held] by the elite.” Well, the book just died. Because you know too well.”

– George Saunders, interview

This story is giving me big problems. I’ve tried to strangle it into submission. And that never works. So, I’ve had to kill a lot of darlings. This is one of the victims. Maybe she’ll pop up again. You never know…

Whenever I get about as far along as I can for the day, I pick up the ukulele and try to vent my frustration by writing songs. Little soundtrack ditties for the book. This is one of them:

[audio:http://www.austinkleon.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/tiptoe.mp3] [MP3]

I recorded it using a crappy computer lapel microphone, a ukulele, and an egg shaker. That thumping sound you hear is my fist against the desk.

Tonight, we’re going to see the Ditty Bops.

EVERYBODY’S TRYING TO BE MY BABY

Thursday, August 17, 2006

“I don’t want to throw out any sacred things. What…is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.”

– Vonnegut, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

I’ve found music is one of the only really great cures for depression. Yesterday I listened to Carl Perkins’ “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby” probably half a dozen times:

well they took some honey from a tree / dressed it up and called it me

everybody’s tryin’ to be my baby

i went out last night ’bout half past four / fifty women knocking on my door

everybody’s tryin’ to be my baby

Now, there’s some debate as to whether Perkins wrote the song or not (there was a swing band in the 30s who did a song by the same name), but regardless: what possesses somebody to write such a ridiculous song? Do you think Carl Perkins’ life was really like that?

I prefer to think that whoever wrote the song was just using their imaginations. What if, instead of being lonely, a million women were chasing you around? What if, instead of being a nobody, everybody in the world wanted a piece of you?

There could even be a little trace of menace in the song. I mean, does this guy ever get any alone time? If you swapped “to be my baby” with “to get my money,” you’d have a paranoid celebrity song, wouldn’t you?

Either way, I like the song, and it makes me feel happy.

IS A BOOK DISCUSSION THE REMEDY FOR THE 1/4 LIFE CRISIS?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

We’re starting a 20 and 30 somethings book discussion group at the library, and I’m in charge.

Because this demographic isn’t the biggest on book discussions, I’m trying to use pizza as bait. So spread the word. We’re going to read sweet books–a nice mix of graphic novels, prose fiction, and memoirs. If you live in Cleveland and fit the profile (even if you’re off by 5, 10, 15 years) you are invited!

Our first book is going to be Marjane Satrapi’s PERSEPOLIS.

Check out our Myspace page, and if you’re so inclined, add us as a friend.

*** I would like to note that I did NOT design the flyer above. When it comes to publicity, I am at the mercy of our marketing department.

WHERE’S THE WHISKEY ON THIS ISLAND?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I hate mobs, I hate overpriced food, and I hate festivals. But if I have to be at one, I like to camp out with a sketchbook and steal a couple portraits.

Somebody told me that the island used to be a slum for immigrants that just came off the boat from Lake Erie, and that during prohibition the Canadians used to smuggle booze across the lake and move it here (hence the name). Then somebody told me it’s not even an island, it’s a peninsula.

One thing I know: there were some weird-looking Joes around there.

* * *

My Powerbook is in worse shape than before. We took it apart yesterday and replaced the hard drive, but midway through, I pulled the power socket out of the logic board. (Turns out, this is a common problem.) So the hard drive is fine now, but you can’t turn the stupid thing on, because the cable that runs from the power button to the power supply is disconnected! So now I have to find a tiny soldering iron to get in there and fix it… (if anybody in the Cleveland area is reading this and has done such a thing…let me know!)

I’m begging you: if you bought a Mac recently, before your one-year warranty runs out, GET THE APPLECARE. It will be worth it! (That reminds me of this YouTube video of the Animals’ “San Francisco Nights”: “It’s an American Dream / includes Indians, too!”)

And if you’re ever dumb enough to attempt a repair like this, I really suggest getting a guide from this site.

* * *

I have such a love/hate relationship with the Magnetic Fields. Meg and I love their music so much, but when we went to see them live, I wasn’t expecting Stephin Merritt to be such an asshole. Reading Daniel Handler’s liner notes to 69 LOVE SONGS makes me feel a little bit better about the whole thing: he’s obviously a workhorse of a songwriter.

* * *

Other things: David Heatley is posting some of his new work at his blog. Rbally has a Specials show up. Se4n talks interactive fiction. Gerry quotes Vonnegut on oil depletion. Meg reports that going green is getting easier. (Check out Vonnegut’s “Pre-Bush Blueprint for the American Dream.”) And a Western alum has a long, personal eulogy for our alma mater.

IS WAL-MART GOOD FOR CIRCLEVILLE?

Friday, August 11, 2006

My old Cambridge buddy Rob reminded me this morning in an e-mail about a PBS FRONTLINE program called “Is Wal-Mart Good For America?” in which my hometown is profiled. You can watch it online for free.

In Circleville, Ohio, population 13,000, the local RCA television-manufacturing plant was once a source of good jobs with good pay and benefits. But in late 2003, RCA’s owner, Thomson Consumer Electronics, lost a sizeable portion of its production orders and six months later shut the plant down, throwing 1,000 people out of work. Thomson’s jobs have moved to China, where cheap labor manufactures what the American consumer desires — from clothing to electronics — and can buy at “everyday low prices” at the local Wal-Mart…

Steve Ratcliff, a long-time worker at the Thomson plant puts it simply: “If you want these low prices, then you go buy your products from Wal-Mart. But what does that actually do for this country? It’s putting people out of work. And it’s lowering our standard of living. That’s the bottom line.”

Ironically, for Ratcliff and his former colleagues, there are new jobs coming to town. In a patch of farmland right next to the vacant Thomson plant, Wal-Mart has broken ground on one of its new Supercenters. But the Wal-Mart jobs will represent a steep cut in pay from the $15 to $16 an hour workers made at Thomson, and a far cry from the pension, health care, and job security benefits that have long been the norm in manufacturing.

A lot of the kids I went to school with grew up in Logan Elm Village, a housing division right behind the Thompson plant, where pretty much everyone’s parents worked. It was kind of the place to go if you were looking to score pot or get in a fight or something. (I don’t know if it’s still like that.) They had this store in the back of the plant, and all the kids whose parents worked there had the cool new electronics, except they’d be refurbished in some way (missing a battery bay door or a remote or something…) My uncle got me a really nice VCR, except the buttons were busted so you had to use a pencil to punch the fast-forward/rewind buttons…

(I always wanted to set a story there, but George Saunders pretty much hits it all with “Sea Oak“: “At Sea Oak there’s no sea and no oak, just a hundred subsidized apartments and a rear view of the FedEx.” As the man says, “You can’t do Hemingway in the Wal-Mart.”)

But anyways, I never understood it, because there wasn’t even a sidewalk where people could walk to work, even though they lived RIGHT BEHIND the stupid plant. So everybody had to get in their cars and drive the .2 miles down Route 23 to get to work. Unbelievable.

Why are all the communities of my past dying? Circleville…Western…everywhere I spent my young life seems to be in dire straits.

The corporatization of America, folks: get used to it.