Listening Harder

I was at Run for Cover this past weekend (well, it was a few weeks ago now) - it's an annual benefit concert of local DC bands covering pop bands from the days of yore. This year featured In Ex Sexy, Tron Petty, and some bands whose names I can't remember who covered C & C Music Factory (complete with non-ironic shirtlessness) and a great version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by somebody. Total fun - because how could it not be? - and done without camp, which is what makes the night so great to watch.

My friend was commenting on the sound and I found myself explaining that pop/Top 40 music, as a whole, sounds different because of how it's mixed, how the music from the 80s sounds different because "current" sounded different at the time (which explains why things from that era sound "dated" now), how the soundguy was probably used to mixing current indie rock bands and this explained the burying of the keyboards and the general noisiness of the sound. (Of course, the guys also gets props because he was mixing eight different bands in a row and it's not easy satisfying that many musicians.)

I learned how to record and mix sound in college. It's not a skill I use much these days but whenever I hear something like Run for Cover, I'm reminded of the power of the sound engineer. When I saw the Silversun Pickups a few months ago, the show was meh and not particularly memorable except for the songs at the beginning and end of the show when the the wall of sound dropped away. The wall-of-sound approach certainly has a place but it obscures the song and can make music sound the same if the songs aren't well-written or interesting. Anyway, Silversun Pickups sounded good in places because the soundman (and yes, they're almost always male) threw his aural spotlight on different instruments and balanced those sounds against each other in perfect tension - and without the wall of sound - you could actually hear that harmony.

A sound engineer can't improve a song, but he/she has an unprecedented ability to shape a song by choosing where and how to focus the listener's attention and shaping (or not) the sounds of each instrument. Even listening to the results from contests like Radiohead's for Reckoner shows the basics of what you can do with that sort of control over a song. (I didn't listen to them all but this was my favorite of the ones I heard.) For those interested in what it used to be like with high-stakes razor blades and tape, check out Geoff Emerick's book on engineering The Beatles. Speaking of The Beatles, if you ever want to play "Where's Waldo" with music, The Beatles are great because you can listen to those songs on headphones a hundred times and still hear something new that you haven't heard before.

As I said, I did this work for a while so I have a personal interest but I also like to throw my own spotlight on this hidden artform where I can.

Ethics vs. Law

I was surprised by Randy Cohen's Ethicist column in the recent Sunday New York Times Magazine about the ethics of media piracy. Since the woman who wrote in had bought a hardcover copy of the new Stephen King novel and the publisher had decided to withhold the e-book version (to increase hardcover sales), the columnist decided her piracy of the e-book was illegal but ethical.

The dilemma this woman faced isn't unique though it's typically couched in terms of fairness or usability. However reframing the debate about digital media format-shifting as ethics vs. legality gets to the crux of the issue for me.

Today I was making a mix CD and a few of the songs were iTunes files. There are easy ways of breaking digital rights management protection on iTunes files, but the ones I tried weren't working. I had bought the songs - so the artists were paid - and I wanted to share them but couldn't because of the DRM. Which it's illegal for me to break. Now, if I'd ripped my own CDs, then turning these songs into mp3s would be easy and questionably-legal-but-ignorable. In short, there's no way to legally share those songs. For those that try to answer this need, well, the experience of muxtape is a cautionary tale.

Once you start thinking about all the ways people use music, it's not hard to think of other cases where what seems like a perfectly reasonable consumer desire is illegal. What about DJs who buy vinyl and then pirate mp3s? Some manufacturers bundle mp3s with vinyl to cater to that audience, but the rest are violating copyright law. Even President Obama most likely violated copyright law to give an ipod with some showtunes to the Queen of England.

Predictably, Randy Cohen's remarks inspired blog posts with lots of comments wherein each person placed the line between legality and ethics in a slightly different spot. They're an interesting bunch of comments though precisely because so many of them recognize that there is a difference between legality and ethics.

What most people want to do with their music is pretty simple: listen to it, share it with their friends (not the world), and listen to it again in another place/on another gadget. Readers will want essentially the same thing. It's odd to me that any industry would proactively choose to make their consumers become pirates to get a product that they're selling.

To be continued as the film and book world wade into the bog...

Positive Feedback

I went to a couple of shows recently where I found myself thinking about how much venue choice impacts the audience, which in turn impacts the musician's performance.

First show in question: The Holmes Brothers played The Barns at Wolftrap. The Holmes Brothers are friends from my days working at their management/booking agency Concerted Efforts. I used to do advance work on their dates, traveled with them when they went to Singapore, and I'm a fan as well so I go whenever they're in town - to say hello and get my musical fix. They're a blues/gospel/R&B trio known for their three-part harmonies, a killer take of Amazing Grace, and a style that zigzags between sacred and secular. The Barns is a beautiful, great-sounding, converted barn in Virginia not far from DC that holds 300ish in a seated room. I'd never been there before because it's not accessible by public transport.

The key word in that description is seated. The more concerts I attend and put on, the more I believe there's no better way to kill the energy in a popular music performance than to make everyone sit down. Even if you can have a drink in your seat.

Of course, whether the venue is seated or general admission is only one of many factors that go into which venue an artist plays: which venues are available, how big are they, where are they, is the date standalone or part of a longer tour, how is the tour routed, who else is playing in town that night, how recently has the band played the area, what's the ticket price, who's the intended audience...and hardly least of the factors: how much does the venue want to pay the artist.

The second show in question: I saw Yeasayer at the 930 Club a few days later. Yeasayer is the "it" band of the moment and the show had been sold out for weeks in advance. (I scalped a face value ticket in front of the club the night of the show.) The place was packed with people who wanted to dance. But there was no room to dance because it was too crowded. This isn't strictly the club's fault because some government third party sets capacity on a performing space, but have you noticed that club capacity according to fire code is always so much more than seems possible?

So much of live music is about the exchange of energy between musician and audience, where each feeds the other to create a unique experience. Which is why I get annoyed when people are forced to chair dance because dampening that exchange of energy doesn't serve either artist, audience or venue.

Refreshed

Back from New Orleans trip #6 and it feels refreshed this time. As in previous posts, I was there to hang out with a smart, thoughtful, committed group of musicians about activism for a few days culminating in a fantastic rock show at One Eyed Jacks.

Our opening night party at Mother-in-Law Lounge had the best pick-up band of all time with George Porter, Jr. from The Meters, Terrence Higgins from Rebirth Brass Band, three members of Bonerama, keyboardist Brian Coogan, a crawfish boil, and lots of dancing.

Other highlights: meeting David Montana, the Second Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe (read more - my photos were taken with permission), visiting Ronald Lewis and a Mardi Gras Indian and Social Aid & Pleasure Club Museum called The House of Dance & Feathers and po-boys. Leah Chase made the best dinner I've ever had at the legendary Dooky Chase restaurant. From there the night segued into wild dancing to the Stooges Brass Band (listen here) at the Hi-Ho Lounge and a nightcap of beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde.

I know it's easy to forget about New Orleans when it's been nearly five years since Hurricane Katrina and there have been earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Iran, Pakistan, and China, a tsunami in Southeast Asia, not to mention all the smaller and man-made disasters that don't inspire telethons. But New Orleans is ours - the music community's and America's. It's the birthplace of so much American music and we stand to lose a part of what makes us unique if we let it slip away for lack of effort.

Just over a year post-storm, my first trip was so devastating it was hard to imagine that the sky was ever bright over that city. I'm sure it was sunny but my memories of that trip look like this.

This time around I could see progress. Brad Pitt's and Global Green's houses don't look as lonely as they did last time. There is, of course, still plenty to do and there's plenty of anger that it's still undone. There are still people living in Houston and elsewhere. The economic downturn has no doubt slowed down the recovery process. Still, there were also fewer houses with spray paint on them, more traffic, more people out, the sounds of construction, and a feeling of normalcy and hope all around.

Pick-a-Band

Maybe it was a symptom of not being at SXSW, but I've been craving live music lately. And not just the bands I know either.

In addition to seeing a bunch of different live shows last week, the other night I nearly made it out to a non-predetermined club to see whoever was playing. I don't think I've ever shown up at a club for no reason. There's always been a reason - I like their music, a friend wants to go, I work for them, I need to check them out, I was given free tickets. As I said, I nearly made it out, so I don't get full credit, but it felt liberating to not have a plan.

On the planned side, I saw the weirdest live music performance I've ever seen in the form of Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat-singer. I've seen and admired the Tuvan style of throat-singing, but this was different altogether. Imagine that sound you make when you stretch first thing in the morning but while inhaling and beatboxing and sounding tortured. And imagine that you're Bjork and you hug everyone and you really like steaks. I sound like I'm making fun of her, but the cool thing about her was her sincerity and lack of irony. That and she ended the night by saying "Thank you for accepting weird." I was enamored.

The following night at Rock and Roll Hotel I enjoyed the crack band and countryesque croonings of middle opener April Smith and the Great Picture Show while remaining underwhelmed and disappointed by the droning from indie darlings Here We Go Magic - kind of like Arcade Fire but with fewer hooks. Also liked The Dig at the 9:30 Club who I've been meaning to see because they're friends of a friend and Port O'Brien. Portugal. The Man headlined, but by then I was too hungry to hang around; did learn that they're from Wasilla, Alaska though.

Now I head off to New Orleans for another few days of talking about activism with musicians and a rock show at One Eyed Jacks.

I guess the pick-a-band adventure will wait until another night.

Music as Gewgaw

I admit I live in the bubble of the embattled independent music world. Given that, it was an interesting experience to spend two days in the Corporate Music World when I attended Digital Music Forum East on February 24 and 25 in NYC. Some thoughts on my foray into that strange land:

- Music-as-most-definitely-a-business: I was looking forward to hearing David Pakman, formerly CEO of emusic, now with venture capital firm Venrock, because I'm a subscriber and emusic's obviously been looking to grow their audience and their bottom line lately. The noteworthy point for me of his interview was that, contrary to the many emusic subscribers who cried foul when they started offering some Sony titles last year, Pakman describes emusic's niche of independent music as a business decision. They took the path of least resistance - with the independent labels who were more willing to license to them at decent rates - and built a business model around them. Which says to me, that while the indieness-as-godliness image of emusic might still be "authentic", it's an image built to support a business model, not the reverse.

If that's the case, there's nothing wrong with that since it enabled the rise of one of the most successful digital music retailers ever...but I'd bet it's an affront to all those people who hold emusic as a standard-bearer for the indie aesthetic (whatever the hell that means these days). If you think I paint too strong a picture, try googling "emusic sellout" - it's not all about this topic, but it's a prominent theme.

- A guy from MTV Music was asked why they don't play more music videos. That's probably the most asked question to all MTV employees ever. He talked about how the channel is about more than music videos. And since the schedule has all seven hours of music videos programmed, from 3 AM - 10 AM, I agree. But why not own up to it? Just say that "My Life as Liz" garners more viewers than music videos ever did. No, they're not saying that in so many words but they did quietly drop the words "Music Television" from the logo recently.

- Branding, image, markets, profits, brand penetration, so much about music as a thing to sell other stuff. For example, a question asked from the stage: "do you need music to brand a product or just an engaged audience?" Now I recognize that many indie bands would happily license their song to Sears to fund their next tour. Making money to further your career isn't selling out - these days, it's surviving, which translates to winning the game.

My beef with this whole line of discussion is that it's not about music, rather it's about how to make McDonald's/Proctor & Gamble/Jeep more successful - with the incidental help of X artist/song. Throughout my two days there was very little discussion about paying artists, many complaints about licensing costs, and I'd almost swear I saw the audience smile kindly and condescendingly at the one guy who spoke from the stage of signing artists to his label for their music rather than their marketability! As they all acknowledged, it's a rough business to be in - now and ever. If you're not in it for the music, then why bother? Go sell tires instead already.

It's like that call I got once from some guy wanting to know how easy it was to make good money making music. He seemed to expect me to have a roadmap handy. *Smile* *Sigh*

Sipping from the Garden Hose of Words

To lessen the feeling of being perpetually behind, I've been trying to be more intentional with my literal and virtual piles of stuff to read.

I currently have magazine subscriptions to Outside, Cook's Illustrated, and The Atlantic. I also sold my name to TapeOp's mailing list in exchange for a subscription. At the beginning of the year, I swapped Paste Magazine for The Atlantic.

As someone that works in music, it feels odd to no longer receive print music journalism in the mail. But I found I wasn't looking forward to reading Paste anymore since they're so focused on adult-contemporary genres. That, plus having so many sources to find music now, meant that reading it didn't seem necessary. The last music magazine that I remember wanting to read from beginning to end in one sitting was Musician magazine. What was cool about Musician magazine was just how many genres and musician-related issues they covered. Maybe it was a slight foreshadowing of the work I do now?

In terms of long-form reading, I've succeeded in consolidating the "to read" list to one online list on goodreads.com. I still add more stuff to the list than I read - but at least I know what I've been meaning to read.

The blogs, however, are killing me. Can't keep up. Too much content. Not enough time. And the brain only takes in so much in one sitting. Do other people just let all the daily knowledge wash over them? Do they use services to sort through it all? Even though I'm slowly unsubscribing, I think I'm only managing to swap the stuff I don't care about for less stuff that I care more about -- which only makes the problem worse.

Too much stuff to read! Magazines! Blogs! Books! Ahh!

Ode to Snowstorms

I love snow. Even today, on my fifth day of being held semi-hostage by two consecutive snowstorms - I still love snow.

For me, snowstorms are about trudging down the middle of the street in a city that's as quiet as it's ever going to be because lots of snowflakes have forced me and everyone else to give in to something they can't control.

It's not only that snow covers bare ground and purifies the landscape and gives us days off, but it's what a good snowstorm does to people. I come from one of those places where strangers don't talk to each other unless it's about snowstorms or the Red Sox in the playoffs. In DC, like in Boston, snow brings people together. My experience has been that during snowstorms people are kinder to each other - shoveling, pushing cars, helping people over snowbanks; they're more patient - driving slower, standing in lines at the grocery store; they have more fun - sledding, skiing, snowmen, forts, snowball flights. Kindness, patience, and the ability to enjoy life can get lost in the daily grind of "accomplishing things" and snowstorms give people the chance to rediscover and embrace them.

Fair Use Now

I attended Public Knowledge's World's Fair Use Day last week - an entertaining and informative day-long exploration of the state of fair use and how technology is pushing people to invoke it for new purposes.

Fair use is a principle of copyright law that entitles the public to freely use copyrighted work for commentary or criticism without needing permission from the copyright owner - full definition with examples here and here. In order to determine whether a work is fair use, a judge weighs four factors: 1) the purpose and character of the work, i.e. is the use of the work transformative or educational; 2) the nature of the work, i.e. is it fiction or non-fiction, published or not; 3) how much of the copyrighted word is used and is it the heart of the work; and 4) what does the use do to the value of the original work.

Stay with me here, because I know it sounds like a pretty opaque concept at first, but it's used easily and without mishap often. Basically, a song parody or a book review that includes a quote takes advantage of the fair use principle to use the original song or the quoted material, respectively. (Notable exception: Weird Al Yankovic gets permission from recording artists and licenses every song he parodies rather than claiming his songs as fair uses. Check out artist reactions to Weird Al's requests to parody. Kurt Cobain's reaction is priceless.)

What I find so compelling about fair use is that it sits exactly at the place where the law and popular culture and digital culture are colliding. As has been noted umpteen times in the last few years, we live in a remix culture, and remixed work relies upon source material, and source material requires money to create. So the law struggles to untangle the need for creators to make a living from the need for the rest of the public to inform, criticize, comment, and mashup. And that's what fair use deals with.

Most of the programming I saw at World's Fair Use Day dealt with multimedia uses of copyrighted work that were critiques/commentaries that were clearly transformative to me. For example, Jonathan McIntosh's So You Think You Can Be President is an overt critique of the political process but it's an even more inciseful commentary once you read about what he's trying to accomplish below the comedic surface. The same holds true for his Buffy vs. Edward from Twilight (accompanying explanation here).

Fair use in multimedia can be a murky proposition, but seems to be an easier case to make once guidelines are established. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but it's still a far easier argument to make than fair use in music.

After all, practically speaking, how do you recognize a critique or commentary of a song that's being sampled? How do you delineate a non-transformative use of a sample from one that is transformative? I consider Girl Talk, for example, to be transformative in how he juxtaposes and recontextualizes samples, but is that fair use? Cardozo Law Review writes two fictitious opposing opinions, Idolator stands firm, and the New York Times even weighs in.

The existence of that gray area is exactly why I find the topic of fair use so fascinating: sampling in music today creates art that's valid, valued, and culturally relevant but the law has no standardized way to recognize it - imagine it as music in its own private Guantanamo Bay.

All that's not to say there aren't ways to deal with sampling in music. There are, but unfortunately, they're clunky and expensive and not conducive to the creative process. There are also creative remedies to improve the current sample clearance process. But those remedies are almost beside the point if musicians have to circumvent fair use - the system set in place by copyright law for precisely this purpose - to create music that doesn't flout copyright law and and allows them a chance to make a living from their art.

Extracurricular

About 20 minutes after I turn on my laptop and start writing, my machine has begun crashing and flickering like that fluorescent light flicker that gives you a headache. I've decided not to take it personally and let the Genius Bar live up to its name on Monday. We shall see.

Anyway, here's some cool stuff that's made an impression lately:

- A few months ago, I saw Martin Atkins of Killing Joke & Ministry on his book tour behind Tour:Smart. Book tour is a misnomer since he didn't talk about his book - which goes into great detail on how not to kill yourself on tour and the reasons why being a tour manager can be one of the worst jobs ever. He did talk a lot about marketing yourself though and had some fantastic examples to pass around. I thought these were really cool: 1) Moldovar's CD with a working light theremin, song titles written using circuitry, a headphone jack, and a built-in speaker, which altogether make the CD into an instrument of its own, and 2) Shogun Kunitoki's picture vinyl with animation loops that you can see if you get the strobe light that goes with the vinyl. I have a hard time caring overmuch about the music when there's so much extracurricular fun to be had with the packaging. As long as it's not Top 40 crap.

- Last month's issue of Outside is outstanding with a timely article on the perils and challenges of fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

- Clone-themed entertainment I've enjoyed lately: Dollhouse Season 1 and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. There's definitely a creepy factor to both of these, but it's a good creep.

- Music Hack Day featured lots of boys slinging code for a couple of days to make music apps talk to each other. I'm still unclear on the need for the table full of soldering irons. But still, it's always informative to look at the music industry from a heretofore unknown angle and see how the consumer challenges get fixed. Check out the hacks.

- Stevie Wonder performing Superstition on Sesame Street. Money says that was the only time Cookie Monster got name-checked during a performance of that song.

- The Muppets redoing the music video of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Mama! Mama?

- The Puppy Channel from this episode of This American Life. That is, unless you think we've gone over the cuteness deep end?

Missing Pieces

I went back and forth with my friend Shane last week having one of those political science discussions that could've gone on forever - and still might - and ended with us agreeing for the most part.

Shane argues that the progressive movement lacks strong enough convictions to hold Democrats accountable. The conservative movement has the Federalist Society, Ayn Rand and the Christian right to ground its ideas independent of the GOP's political desires. The movement demands allegiance for its votes and its money and in turn, the GOP slavishly listens. For better or worse, the movement has succeeded in kicking out those whose beliefs differ - thus, no more moderate Republicans. This winnowing might eventually undo the GOP if the conservative movement's demands exceed its vote-getting power...but for the moment, the marriage thrives.

The Dems don't have the same ideological obligation to a movement. While the conservative umbrella gets smaller and more exclusive, the progressive umbrella gets ever bigger. I've always liked that the progressive movement has a bigger umbrella and can handle dissent within, but if the term "progressive" is too broad, it loses meaning - the Stupak amendment to the House version of the health care bill is the latest example of the problem. If a cohesive progressive movement had held Dems accountable on the defense of a woman's right to choose, then poor women wouldn't have been sacrificed at the alter of politics. But if a movement doesn't demand or can't agree to demand an action, then why should a political party strictly uphold any belief beyond its own political ambitions? After all, where are traditional Democrat voters going to go?

I bring this up because I've been gaining new respect for the conservative movement while reading Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine which looks inside the current Supreme Court, profiles the justices, their opinions and legal philosophies, the legal strategies that worked and didn't, and chronicles how the conservative movement gained influence in the Court. It's been a fascinating look at how the groundwork was laid and built upon for decades for the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

After seeing the history laid out, I find myself chagrined that the best the progressive movement seems to have is "Palin 2012" and "Down with the crazy Christians!". I exaggerate, but it was easier to be a progressive when it was solely a reactive movement that could blame everything on Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Now, Dems have power and I supposedly agree with them because I don't agree with the GOP...and yet Bush's policies are still in place on trying detainees held at Guantanamo, the definition of torture, warrentless wiretapping, a woman's right to choose, and don't ask don't tell policies on gays in the military. I'm disenchanted. And I wonder who actually represents me. Well, no one represents me since I'm a DC resident, but that's another blog post.

So, who represents me? Before I can answer that adequately, we need more political parties - after all, I might align with the Dems but if they're not advocating on my behalf then who am I going to vote for instead? And most assuredly, we need election reform - voters should never be put in the position of voting "strategically" as it was artfully called in the 2000 presidential election. So, while I've certainly been talking about convictions, I see the lack of convictions as evidence of structural problems. Consider that a promise for part 2!

And thanks, Shane, for the links and the arguments.

Sugarcane Candles

I had my second annual Divali dinner last month (I just realized that when I say it like that, it sounds like a real tradition!). It's a tradition I really enjoy keeping, though my dinner parties don't resemble the Divalis I grew up with.

For one, it wasn't called Divali. It was Divari with the accent on the first syllable. The Indian New Year I grew up with had lots of family and the homemade sweets that you could only have at that time of year and maybe little presents for the kids - or maybe I'm making that part up, not sure. My grandparents' apartment was always alit with candles to keep away the evil spirits and the doorways were decorated with wreathes of flowers and scrolled designs on the thresholds made of colored powders. Everyone endeavored to get along for the night and usually did. Which meant they'd all get together and urge on the child of the house - me - to do the prayer/benediction/ceremony that involved walking around the house with a homemade sugarcane candle chanting the Aireu Maireu (anglicized obviously). I'd wonder at how the piece of sugarcane with the cotton ball wick turned into a candle, get horribly bashful about the chanting, thrill to the moment and then ask for another of the sweets. All the food was always delicious - not just because of the holiday but because my grandmother was a great cook.

Cooking is one of the arts that I wish I had cared to learn from my grandmother when she was still alive to teach me. She died about 10 years ago and it was a few years before I realized the lost knowledge. But I still missed eating good Indian food so I started cooking anyway using cookbooks. It wasn't the same, but I had to start somewhere and I got better the more I cooked. After moving to DC, deciding to have the first Divari dinner party was a big deal - would we end up eating anytime that night? would it feel like something was missing if there weren't sugarcane candles and chanting? what if someone was allergic to something? and of course, would it taste good? It all came together beautifully though and that's when I started branching out beyond Indian food for people other than myself.

I'm not experienced enough with Indian cooking to be the intuitive cook that my grandmother was but, in getting to a place where I enjoy sharing my cooking, I feel like I've reclaimed some of what was lost. Except the sweets. I need to figure out how to make those to complete the lesson!

It's probably just as well that I forget to take pictures at my dinners since these and these are much, much cooler.

Civic Duty

I finished a week long jury trial last week - my first time serving on a jury. The defendant was charged with possession of a controlled substance - pot - with intent to distribute and possession of an unlicensed, unregistered firearm - a semi-automatic Tec-9.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to serve though I'm left wondering how anyone ever gets convicted. My fellow jurors and I were told after we delivered a verdict that the first jury to hear this case couldn't come to a decision. We came close to doing the same, but after endlessly discussing the definition of "possession", we ended up compromising enough that I doubt anyone but the defendant was satisfied. Of course the law needs specific rules, but I'm dismayed at how much of the law is about technicalities and finding the right one to suit the occasion. Technicalities serve both sides, but it's also easy to see how an inexperienced public defender can be overmatched.

I was more bothered by the semi-automatic than a little pot, so convicting the guy on possession of less than $200 of pot stung a bit. But without more evidence there was nothing more to do. Despite popular rhetoric on the sanctity of the Second Amendment, actually getting caught with a gun you're not supposed to have is apparently much more perilous than such small quantities of marijuana.

I also hadn't thought about the impact of having a law student on the jury. It was like having a medical student around when they're learning how to diagnose people: everyone's sick with an exotic condition...rather than just having a cold. The same was true for this guy: why didn't the cops watch longer, were they profiling the neighborhood, maybe the defendant was passing candy bars, how come they didn't find this and that piece of evidence. All valid questions, but you can only judge what's there.

The best part of the experience was talking to both attorneys after rendering a verdict and learning their opinions of their cases. The defense was resigned to losing the drug charge but both attorneys thought the case for the weapon was leaky. It felt very much like being inside an episode of Law & Order and watching the attorney work a little sleight of hand to obscure the missing evidence. These people weren't Sam Waterston, but in retrospect the diversions and the glamours weren't hard to see.

Anyway, my $4/day travel payment is in the mail and I'm off the hook for at least another two years.

Bookshelf: Genes & Julia

I've been reading Steve Olsen's Mapping Human History, which looks at genetics through the lens of ancient history and describes possible migration patterns that brought the human species from the couple of people we're descended from who lived in Africa 100,000 - 150,000 years ago to the 6.7 billion humans we are today.

The big reveal: A few mutations and 150,000 years and it turns out we're all descended from a half-human, half-Cylon hybrid kid named Hera - if one were inclined to mix their media like that. But really, he spends a lot of time methodically disproving the teabagger-types and talking about how, genetically-speaking, we're all much, much more similar than we are different and how race is a social construct and not a genetic fact. The actual surprise is that that's still news.

One of the more interesting sections examines the biologically Jewish population, a distinction that it wouldn't have occurred to me to make. The discussion also reminded me that I've never read the Bible and maybe I should. Ultimately I found the cultural implications of migration more interesting than the biological ones, but still glad I read this.

Also, just finished Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. For the most part, I'm inspired to stay far away from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But then, I'm biased right now since I didn't like Julie Powell's book - maybe the movie's better? It got better the less time she spent feeling sorry for herself.

I'm feeling burnt still from the last few months of craziness, so I've been burying myself in books and the television I've missed. On the reading, I think Freakanomics is next. And I've finally caught up to television on Mad Men and How I Met Your Mother and now have a crush on Neil Patrick Harris. Dollhouse next?

What's Next?

Well, it's done. FMC Policy Summit 2009 is over. I'm very proud of the conference we put on. I'm also in an unfamiliar place personally as a result. This multi-day, three-ring circus of a conference has been my goal for a few years...and now it's a goal attained.

Graduating high school and college count as milestones reached, but those were expectations as much as achievements and weren't choices I made. Moving to DC and making a life here is a personal goal that I've also seen through (four years today, as a matter of fact!) Organizing this conference was different though, because it was the first long-term professional goal that I chose and embraced.

What also makes this moment unique for me is that there isn't an obvious next step. When I graduated from high school, the next step was college. When I graduated college, the next step was getting a job that had something to do with college. Those were questions and answers that were anticipated and prepared for. But I didn't anticipate these questions to spring up right now: What's the next big goal? What drives me professionally now? Are incremental goals enough for the moment?

All questions I'll be figuring out how to answer. But don't mistake me, this is a very cool place to be. Having decided to do something and then succeeding is a point of pride and glee.

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As to the conference itself, here were a few of the moments that stand out:

- The sight of the line to get into our SRO crowd on the first day. I know we put on a great conference, but I never really believe other people agree until they start arriving
- Finally getting to see Copyright Criminals; trailer here
- Rob Kaye's hair (one day we'll get him to dye/shave the FMC logo into his head before he arrives)
- We had to get a campus group to relocate their canned food drive when we arrived which resulted in statements like "I gotta go get rid of the food drive."
- Maps, directions, signs, maps, more directions, bad directions, driving directions, what if they take our signs down?, no clue how to direct you here, and the wonderful volunteers who took it upon themselves to stand at strategic locations and direct people
- Sorta making the live video feed work and "beaming" Peter DiCola in for the sampling panel
- The rock show...and having already seen it before so missing the last half wasn't so tragic
- Scene from Office Space + the room above + two turntables = Mike Relm soundchecking on Tuesday morning
- Our closing night cocktail party at the Eighteenth Street Lounge
- Thursday evening after the Summit at 7:46 PM, when I shut my computer down and realized the marathon was over

Circling

Busy since FMC's Policy Summit is only three weeks away. Ack! The more conferences I attend, the more I realize I like ours - it's not just smart, but it makes an effort not to talk into the vacuum. Among the many cool things planned, I'm really looking forward to the screening of Copyright Criminals, hearing Radiohead's Brian Message, and our panel on IP, privacy and network rights. I guess I've been looking at the title long enough that "Up in Your Bits" is no longer snicker-worthy!

Among my recent thought-provoking, smile-making, huh?- or cringe-inducing moments online:

The Family Guy maybe inspired 179,997 indecency complaints in March. Yeah.

Short and pithy take on the effect of Facebook and Twitter on us. And longer and more insightful take on "white flight" from Myspace to Facebook.

Having watched The Contrarian daily declare war on Comcast, this ode to Netflix is nice to see. That plus the crazy vacation policy, well, I'm jealous.

I like.

Food-related: Cereal-packaging fun. Hubby-hubby. Absolut's newest flavor is Absolut Boston - I wonder if you end up with that awful accent after drinking it? I can't help but cringe at "Fat Princess", a video game that involves saving a princess who the other team has made hard to move by feeding her lots of cake. But I'm also just weirded out. Really? What's the command for feeding her cake? Circle-up-up?

Visiting whattheinternetknowsaboutyou was a little creepy. Not surprised however that browser history is so easy to detect.

Alrighty, off to bed with Guillermo del Toro's The Strain, i.e. non-chick-lit vampire novel. Jury's still out on whether the payoff will be worth the lengthy build-up.

Yes, No, Maybe

I was watching this TED talk by Alain de Botton on success and failure and how meritocracies don't actually exist and got to thinking about the question "what do I care about?"

It's a question I ask myself a lot lately - because it helps me organize my mind and because knowing the answer makes it easier to articulate what I want if I've sifted through the choices already. Since I'm in the midst of my semi-annual event-related frenzy, the question is timely and allows me to loosen up on my micro-managing tendencies. Most importantly, it lets me define success. Botton, whose Art of Travel I really wanted to like when I read it on vacation last month but it didn't resonate for me - meanders his way more successfully in this talk through snobbery, envy, and the comparisons one makes in modern society. Interesting stuff with an equally insightful conversation in the comments.

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In non-work-related things: I caught The Phenomenal Handclap Band, who mercifully didn't feature a full chorus of hand clapping. To be honest, I can't remember what exactly they sound like - the review I just read described them as "indy soul rock jam-core" which could be just about anything - but the crowd - including the two tiny little schoolteacher-looking-ladies-complete-with-pearl-necklaces next to me - and I had a great time dancing and I only paid $5 to get in.

Looking forward to seeing Numero Group's Eccentric Soul Revue and my friend Stew's musical Passing Strange as a concert film by Spike Lee. I will never be fortunate enough to see Tsunami, but instead I've had the good fortune to work with both Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson.

Speaking of Jenny and Kristin, come to FMC's DC Policy Summit (my baby) on October 4-6, 2009 if you're a musician or at all interested in the music industry's future. Register! Apply for a musician or student scholarship! Watch the live webcast! Come to the shows! Watch the film screening! Have a few drinks! Talk too much! What? Ain't that enough???

Kickin' It Live

On the live music front lately:

I caught Run for Cover, a DC tradition where local bands remake themselves into crack cover bands for a one-night-only benefit show. These musicians knew, too, what make cover bands work as entertainment: complete knowledge of the material and total commitment to it. After all, making fun of the music is only funny if you're playing it properly. Otherwise, you're just being lame. Confession: I saw Bon Jovi in high school when Extreme opened for them at Great Woods outside of Boston. I might have thought the music was cheesy, but they were excellent performers because they knew how to put on a show...and it was the same thing with my friends David Brown and David Durst of Poor but Sexy who were part of the covering band. The Runaways and the Top Gun reenactment were also great; sad I missed Casper Bangs leading the Bee Gees finale though.

Tinted Windows (a "supergroup" - a term I hate more and more), in contrast, excelled at playing OK filler songs. Maybe if they'd stuck to covering songs by each of their bands - Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Hanson, and Fountains of Wayne? The only upshot to the evening: US Royalty, the openers, who were worth seeing again.

I don't have plans to see any other live music at that moment, but I am trying to produce my first show for FMC's conference in a few months. I know booking shows and audio and marketing and budgets to varying degress, but putting it all together is new and a little scary since I'm trying not to lose money and put on a show from scratch, i.e. not in an existing venue. But then what's to worry about? It's not like the concert business is losing so much money that they're giving away tickets for free? Hah.

Barcelona: No Straight Lines

When you're going through airport security in the US, you often see signs telling you not to joke about bombs or otherwise try to lighten the asinine process. When I was proving to the disarmingly good-looking gate agent in Madrid that I was eligible to fly to the US, he was simultaneously looking at passports and conducting a poll of the best food to eat in Spain.

That story exemplifies for me what made Spain different. Airport security has fun. There's more PDA on display than I've seen anywhere else: from teenagers making out to middle-aged couples grabbing ass - and I do mean grabbing and squeezing - to the elderly couple who'd probably been married a lifetime sneaking kisses while schooling passerby on how to dance the flamenco. The street entertainment never stops: the guy who keeps the soccer ball off the ground to the guy dressed like the alien from Alien pretending to bite people for spare change to the person who is inexplicably headless with his head on a table next to him. I was wandering around one night after dinner and came across an emo-girl with a faux-hawk and Docs who was blowing enormous soap bubbles to earn spare change.

Even the city's most well-known art feels looser. There's no Mona Lisa primly displayed behind glass - instead there's Antoni Gaudi's fantastical buildings with no right angles. There's the Picasso museum where he recreates Velazquez's Las Meninas paintings in multiple cubist renderings. I admit I don't get Picasso and get tired of assembling his cubes to find the complete image but I enjoyed watching his art evolve over the course of his life from straight forward portraits to cubes that focus on the whole rather than the parts.

Some other highlights:
- The food! Predictably, the farther off the tourist track, the better and cheaper the food. House wine was as cheap as water in many places and I got used to drinking it with every lunch, the egg sandwiches were an excellent breakfast, and tapas were so easy and delicious. I tried all sorts of random edibles: local hard cider, fried codfish balls, some killer blue cheese, all sorts of funny sausages, fish of various sorts stuffed into things, rice cooked in pig's blood, panther's milk which a kindly bartender handed us when we were paying our bill. (The explanation took some doing: "Por favor, que es esto?" "Leche de pantera." "Que es leche de pantera?" "Leche de animal." "Leche de que animal?" "Pantera." "Pantera?" "Si, pantera." "Ah, si, si, panther.")

- The Tour de France: I got to watch in person the end of Stage 6 into Barcelona and the beginning of Stage 7 leaving Barcelona en route to Andorra. The tour has become part of my summer routine - for reasons that would need another post to explain - and this was the one of the nicest surprise moments of scheduling I discovered. Very cool moment to be that close to the action.

The notable lowlight was having all my electronics and my passport swiped in Barcelona on my second day. Other than my photos, it was all thankfully replaceable though caused some hassles at the time. Between my cousin Elizabeth getting sick at the end of the trip and my lost stuff, I ended up visiting all the places one doesn't want to go on vacation: police station, consulate, and hospital.

The free and easy way about Barcelona didn't translate that well when things weren't going well: my police report was full of typos and they couldn't have found me even if they had found my things. The place where my bag was stolen was unsympathetic and told me I should've paid better attention and handed us our astronomical bill. But then, Elizabeth's trip to the emergency room was completely free - a courtesy that the US certainly doesn't extend to travelers.

I'm still replacing crap, but the upside is my new iphone! Elizabeth's photos, too, will arrive eventually.

Anyway, that's it, folks. I seem to have fallen out of the blogging habit while on vacation, but my brain is now considering blog-worthy topics again, so I'll be back on a more consistent basis.

Morocco: At the Beach

Or maybe I should say "Le Moroc: A La Plage". My experience was the same kind of disconcerting as a foreign language that moves too quickly and keeps slipping away. It was the same when I was trying to write in my travel journal: lots of moments but no narrative. Which is probably why it's taken me so long to write this.

This trip is the first time I've really enjoyed all that goes into a beach vacation: getting overheated in the African sun in Cabo Negro, cooling off in the Mediterranean, finally learning how to swim (well, the doggy paddle and crawl), eating beignets on the beach, watching people get fleeced to take camel rides, spending long afternoons reading, speculating on the fishing boats on the water every night, and - one of my favorite parts of every day - late nights spent gossiping on the porch with Mark, Kristin, our cousin Elizabeth and our pilfered beers. We ate on a different schedule in Morocco than usual, which seemed to accentuate the length of the days: a light breakfast in the morning, a bigger lunch around 3 or 4 pm, and a snack with mint tea and pastries (le goutte) around 10.

The best of the day trips was having my father show us the Tetouan of his childhood. You remember that Sesame Street skit called "This is Your Life" with Guy Smiley? The afternoon felt just like that. The fantastic maze of the medina there had spice and thread and fabric merchants as you'd expect, but odd bits of the west, too, like an outdoor television display showing the NBA.

Other day trips were in some ways more memorable for their journeys than for the towns themselves. Chaouen was a beautiful little town all done in blue white-washed paint at the top of a mountain. In addition to beautiful crafts and the only tourists I saw anywhere in the country (probably because the town's a main hashish producing area), the drive to and from was a sliver of a mountainside road of switchbacks that reminded me of traveling through Asia.

A few days later, we went to Cebta, a Spanish protectorate that's simultaneously a half hour and a whole world away since it's technically part of the EU. The border crossing to Spain was helacious and took two hours in the dusty, honking-filled lines. The town itself had some fine architecture, but might have been more interesting if we hadn't spent so long getting there.

By then, we'd been in Morocco a few days and the ways in which women participated in public life was plenty obvious. I've never been in a Muslim country before, so I was somewhat surprised that the local women were dressed in everything from western clothing with their hair out to a full-length chador and everything in between. Women were certainly out and about but never sitting at a cafe. Every cafe - and there were two or three on every block - was filled with men and not a single non-Western women. Even on the beach, the men and women - dressed in clothing ranging from a chador to a bikini - obviously knew each other, but wouldn't sit together. Like women, alcohol was available but kept at a distance since devout Islam forbids drinking and frowns upon drinking in public for everyone - especially women - but makes alcohol easy to find and legal though expensive to buy. Despite recent political changes, my father says that even ten years ago the country was more culturally progressive than it is now.

Still we were somewhat removed from local living and preoccupied once all the rest of the cousins arrived with many children in tow. I loved having the opportunity to reconnect now that all the younger cousins aren't quite so young. Despite the language melange of 3/5 French, 1/5 Arabic, and 1/5 Spanish with occasional English translation, a surprising amount got communicated. Or maybe the semi-immersion experience left me dangerous enough to think I knew more than I really did? Anyway, their presence alone made me sad to move on to Barcelona...which is the next post.