Meg and I stayed late after work/school and went to see Scott McCloud tonight at UT:
UPDATE: Here’s the Daily Texan on the talk.
NO REASON TO BE HOITY-TOITY ABOUT IT
This is probably the most clear-headed, straightforward response to an accusation of “selling-out” that I’ve read. It’s from Sam Beam, singer for Iron & Wine, about his song being used for an M&Ms commercial [via]:
I eat M&Ms,” Beam said from his rural Texas home. “There’s no reason to be hoity-toity about it if you eat them. I’ve got four kids and four educations to pay for. There’s a reality to making a living in the music industry. With radio dying and MTV dead, (an ad) is now the most effective way to get music out there.”
JACK WHITE ON ROCK & ROLL STORYTELLING
Everything from your haircut to your clothes to the type of instrument you play to the melody of a song to the rhythm — they’re all tricks to get people to pay attention to the story,” he said.
“If you just stood up in a crowd and said your story — ‘I came home, and this girl I was dating wasn’t there, and I was wondering where she was’ — it’s not interesting,” he said. “But give it a melody, give it a beat, build it all the way up to a haircut. Now people pay attention.”
HOW TO AVOID A BEHEADING
I like to draw while watching TV: I drew this while watching Ken Burns’ new documentary, which is quite good. The guy who told this story is a badass.
VONNEGUT: THREE ACTS OF PUNCTUATION
For my buddy Brandon, who starts teaching his first creative writing class today, an excerpt of an old NYTimes article from 1971:
The class began in a surprising way. Vonnegut remarked that last time they had been talking about form, and he walked to the blackboard and drew there a question mark, an exclamation point and a period. He said these bits of punctuation were the outline of a three-act story.
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