gargoyle drumming

npr's vocal impressions

It’s been running for sometime, but it was only the other night that I first heard a recurring feature on NPR, “Vocal Impressions.” Listeners are challenged to write pithy characterizations of famous voices. Contributors come up with some great stuff. One likened Henry Kissinger’s voice to “pudding skin.” Another called the voice of Andy Devine “what the fruity bits inside Jell-O salad hear when the Jell-O is vigorously jiggled.” (Even people who don’t know who Andy Devine is could appreciate the inventiveness of that one.) A feature that works especially well because it could only work on radio.

the skinny

Looks as if the full text of Jerome Rothenberg’s Writing Through: Translations and Variations is online. Nice. Also to be read sometime: Nicanor Parra on Neruda.

I’m sitting in a conference room at an Atlanta hotel, watching a roomful of high-school students from around the country write, record and edit radio stories about Atlanta. This is the fruit of a freelance gig I’ve been doing for the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, and it’s been a fun and interesting experience, especially since I’ve never done anything quite like it. I’ve basically been handling all the logistics of this, making sure nothing blows up (and nothing has, though two laptops unexpectedly shut down, causing some data to be lost) and that the trains run on time. Also drinking a lot of coffee, noodling around on the Internet and feeling my sinus cavities become as parched as the Sinai from sitting in a hotel all day. Ah, conferences. I haven’t been to one since I stopped working for Current full-time last spring.

I do like conferences, though, getting to meet new people, see old friends and generally stay out too late, drink too much beer/liquor and be tired the next day. Wed. night I was quite happy that I didn’t have to set up our equipment, which I thought I was going to have to do that night, and I went out to the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta to see Stephen Malkmus. He rocked. Malkmus has gotten a lot jammier since his days in Pavement, which on album doesn’t always tickle my fancy, but in concert it came off much better. “Real Emotional Trash” became an extended jam which appeared to disintegrate time, as good jams ought to do. One thing I noticed at the Playhouse and that I’ve noticed elsewhere in Atlanta is a surprising showing of decent beer selections, even at run-of-the-mill food-court restaurants. Since the South isn’t generally known as a haven for good beer, it’s been a pleasant surprise. I like finding the reliably refreshing Sweetwater 420 Pale Ale on tap most places.

These kids are supposed to be finishing up their stories in, say, five minutes. Odds of hitting that goal: slim. That’s fine. I just want to get it all done so I can get this gear to FedEx by 7 and pack it up, then preferably eat before passing out from hunger, which is how I felt last night. That’s because we took a tour of CNN’s headquarters, which was pretty impressive. The main newsroom is a sea of computer and TV screens sitting under a massive overhead network of lights and wiring. I felt as if I was in the middle of some odd hive embodying the culmination of human communications technologies, a space in which information almost takes shape in the air, as a honeycomb. It was somehow a little frightening. Nothing against CNN, but what if we developed spaces of this kind with an artistic, rather than journalistic, grounding? I guess I’m not sure what this would be, exactly, but I suppose I mean that the outcome of this enterprise would not be geared toward an interpretation of the world grounded in capitalism, but an appreciation of the world grounded in the ineffable. I’ll have to spend more time sometime shaping up this idea and going deeper into a critique of our news-driven culture at the same time.

poetry, food and new york

John Ashbery is on Goodreads! So cool.

The other night I wasted some time making a podcast of myself reading several poems by James Tate. Then I screwed up the audio mix in Audacity by neglecting to switch the one-channel audio track to stereo, so I was only coming through in the left channel. This is why you should always use headphones. For some reason, I wasn’t. The ironic thing is that I’m going to Atlanta this week to teach high-school kids how to use Audacity, among other things. Anyway, I’m going to attempt to repair the damage as best I can and post the MP3 soon.

Tyler Cowen: “Just think how much you are saving: what’s really scarce in life is your time and the mere willingness to get up and go. Just do it.” What I love is that this comes at the end of a post urging you to eat Chinese and Indian food in New York. Cowen’s advice about the best food in DC is just one reason to read his blog. Another is his indefatigable enthusiasm for exploring his city and others, and how this comes through in his reviews, though very subtly so.

I was recently doing some eating, and other things, in New York, on a family trip for Louisa’s spring break, but now is not the time to go into much detail (and if not now, I fear never, or not very soon, for I have much to do). But I will mention that I ate at Babbo and was quite impressed. I had bavette, a thin kind of pasta, with cardoons, which I’d never before encountered, as well as a delicious roasted vegetable salad and a few desserts, including a killer maple cheesecake. Definitely one of the benefits of traveling with my parents is eating at expensive restaurants I might never visit otherwise.

this evening

Some days it feels as if I'm not a freelancer writer, but a freelance diddler.

Chloe, my Siamese cat, has decided that she is too old or chubby or both to jump up on my lap. Now she sits at my feet and meows until I pick her up. She's become an old lady, but I feel like I hardly know her.

For some freelance work I'm trying to get a handle on what AARP thinks its audience is interested in seeing on its website. Here's what I have so far:

AARP readers like Dixie-cup telephones and Yakov Smirnoff. That wacky Russian! Is he still as wacky now that the Cold War's over? Didn't think so. We need a cultural ambassador to explain Putin to us in stand-up comedy form.