Media Glutton April 16, 2008

Media Glutton

This past weekend I went up to New York City to do some readings and help promote my Geek Mafia and Geek Mafia: Mile Zero at the NY Anarchist Book Fair. It was a pretty interesting experience all things considered. I did two events at the wonderful Blue Stockings Books, a collectively run radical book store that is a great locus for reading, activism, and hanging out. I had a reading there Friday night which was, well, not packed. Still, it was fun. Then the next night wa part of a group salon of authors and artists and we had the place filled to the gills, which was awesome. I had a great time ad encourage anyone in NY to stop by the store and see what other events they've got coming up - they're always doing something cool.

The book fair itself was a little smaller than the one in San Francisco, but it's only in it's second year. The room got to sauna-levels of heat and humidity by the afternoon, but the location across the street from Washington Square was nice and let me slip out and get some air (and delicious street food) pretty much at will. Again, I was almost the only novel there and I'm not sure the attendees come looking for much in the way of fiction. I didn't do a reading or presentation this time, so without that to drive some interest there wasn't a whole lot. There was one other novelist there that I saw, but he was giving away copies of his book. I talked to him for a while and was surprised to find he'd printed up 10,000 copies and had been giving them away for a while now. It wasn't even really a marketing gimmick as far as I could tell - he just wanted to get his story out there. I'm sad to say the story didn't grab me at all as I tried to get through it that afternoon, but I admire his mad devotion to his art.

One of the cool new projects that I've come across is Josh MacPhee's new book of public domain art for use by activists. The book is called Reproduce & Revolt and is a really great idea. A committed activist and talented artist himself, Josh has long been tired of going to protests or meeting activists and trying to puzzles some meaning out of poorly designed, inscrutably laid out fliers and signs. Weirdly enough, I heard the hosts of the podcast This Week in Media complaining about much the same thing several weeks ago. Anyway, Josh and company did something about it and produced a cool book chock full of what I'd call "activist clip art." The images are there for the copying, ready to be transposed on to any media an activist might want to produce. The book is in Spanish and English and contains a cool section about the basics of layout and design. I talked to Josh extensively and I know he worked hard pulling all of this stuff together. The material will also be available for free download online in various formats. Good stuff.

When I got back home Monday night I got to catch up on some of the TV I'd missed, and of course I started with Battlestar Galactica. The season premiere had left me not quite disappointed but not quite totally freaking excited either. This second episode erased any doubts and sucked me right in to everything I'd been missing. First of all we get some exciting Cylon internal politics, which might not sound exciting (if you're crazy) but is in fact super interesting. And of the tuff on Galactica was really good too, and I like the way those story arcs are setting up - especially Baltar talking to an imaginary version of himself, which is so perfect. My enthusiasm is officially back to peak levels.

I didn't get out to the movies this last week - not only was I busy, but there was nothing out there that grabbed my interest. But there's always Netflix, and last night I watched There Will Be Blood again. That movie is just hypnotically good in my opinion. Daniel Day Lewis just sucks me in whenever he's on screen, and the music is so evocative I'm thinking of actually buying a film sound track for the first time in I don't know how many years. I wish there was a director's commentary on the disk, but I hear the bonus features disk is full of interesting stuff so I'll get that soon. Juno comes out on DVD this week and I haven't seen that yet, so I'm looking forward to that. After all the times I said, "I'll wait and see it on video," I now feel sort of obligated to do so, not that I mind. Soon the big action flicks will rocket our way, starting with Iron Man, which I'm really looking forward to. That I won't wait for video to see...