Article 783 of alt.etext: Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!agate!hilbert.dnai.com!redstone.interpath.net!mercury.interpath.net!not-for-mail From: ctporter@mercury.interpath.net (Chris Porter) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.etext,alt.zines Subject: (news)letter 1:24 Date: 1 Sep 1994 23:04:37 -0400 Organization: Interpath -- Public Access UNIX for North Carolina Lines: 339 Message-ID: <3464o5$67s@mercury.interpath.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.net Xref: news.cic.net rec.arts.books:107172 alt.etext:783 alt.zines:5418 (news)letter "Say the thing with which you labor." Thoreau from the porter micro.press Volume 1, Number 24 August 30, 1994 _________________________________________________________________ Please send suggestions and submissions. To get on the mailing list, send your name and address to: CTPorter 317 S. Tate St., Apt. 3, Greensboro, NC 27403 or e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. The Internet is trendy now, and everyone wants a piece of it. It is indicative of the current attitudes towards business and the Internet that the magazine Inc. would have a headline on the cover of the August issue that proclaimed "Inc. Does It: We Launch a Business on the Internet (or Try To)." Turn to the article, page 59, let's see how they went about it: first, the teaser on the article's first page: Inc. does it. Like you, we just knew there was gold to be found on the information superhighway -- so we sent a techno-savvy writer out to launch a business on the internet and prove it. Here, expletives deleted, is her report. (59) The author, the "techno-savvy" Anne Murphy (remember that phrase) then goes into her reasons for wanting to write this story: "our fortunate readers would get an exhaustive explication of how to make a bundle on the Internet, and I would get the bundle" (59). She doesn't even have any idea of what kind of business she'll set up -- she'll let what she finds on the Internet determine the nature of the business. What she's doing, basically, is announcing herself ready for business, and expecting the Internet to drop everything in her lap for her. And I think it totally appropriate that this glossy, money-oriented magazine should come out with a piece like this -- good for them, I say, because they've shown that they don't have a clue about what's going on (besides showing horrible business acumen), just like most of the press. It's not a bad article as far as it goes. It is an examination of what it takes to find your way around the Internet and the "techno-savvy" author has a horrible time trying to learn her way about the languages and the procedures involved. But to combine the business angle is downright silly and blatantly crass. You don't send a boy to do a man's job, and you especially don't attempt to "open a business" without researching first the market you want to enter. Finding your way competently about the Internet is a hard job. We're not talking about watching a television program or hooking up your stereo to play a CD. This market is computer- oriented and will remain so for some time in the future and that doesn't mean a computer with Windows on it. It means reading manuals and figuring things out for yourself and knowing that the strength of the experience is that it's not television -- it's active, not passive, entertainment. The psychology of the Internet is such that the users disdain people like this, those who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. "Oh, we'll just start a business -- any business -- on the Internet because that's where the money is. And it doesn't matter who we send in there, it has to be easy, right?" Yeah, right... And speaking of the Internet, I thought it funny that the September issue of Internet World would be packaged to include an America On-Line (AOL) start-up disk. AOL is now a part of the Internet because it is a network with a gateway to the Internet, so strictly speaking they are counted among the users. But AOL is not the Internet. The AOL users and the old-style Internet types certainly have some bad blood between them. When the gateway was opened AOL users came into the various newsgroups with a roar, rather than a whisper -- problems in the software at AOL kept posting the same messages as often as eight times so the Internet veterans got all sorts of mad and instantly formed a newsgroup called "alt.aol.sucks". This was a fun newsgroup for a while, you could find these veterans of flame wars just taking apart some AOL kid who had no idea what was going on. It got old when the novelty wore off -- there's only so much fun in watching a professional fighter slap around a first-year boxer. They are two totally different mentalities: AOL with its point-and-click interface where, every option is controlled for them, as opposed to the Internet where users are used to figuring things out for themselves and the resulting freedom that comes with learning how to make your own choices. But I'm not totally down on AOL -- it just seems that including a start-up disk with an issue of the Internet World is more indicative of the magazine, which does all it can do to hype the business opportunities on the Internet, than of the Internet itself. Bad Man I hate false advertising! Last week I picked up the book The Natural Man by Ed McLanahan. Here is a thin little book that I thought I could zip through and not feel guilty about reading, and what's more this one blurb on the cover promises humor: "the funniest novel I've read since A Confederacy of Dunces." Another reviewer wrote that this book "will eventually find its place beside great coming-of-age books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye." So I didn't feel guilty about picking it up. But it's just another book about boys learning about sex with a lot of scatological humor and the like. Not a bad book, mind you, but far from a classic in the genre. I couldn't even finish it because it was just so average. There were funny parts, but Natural Man, you're no Huck Finn. It's like those Chevy Chase movies, pretty good for a laugh once in a while, but they'll never be nominated for an Academy Award, no matter how many people go to see it. I can't understand the rationale behind the hyperbolic blurbs. Didn't someone somewhere in the packaging process say "stop, we can't make those claims"? Does no one feel guilty about heaping such ridiculous praise on a book? This book doesn't belong on the same shelf with those two and I should be shot for letting a blurb like that raise my interest. Good Man Has anybody ever heard of a performer named Robert Post? I saw this wonderful program on PBS called "Robert Post: In Performance." He did several one-man skits with some props. One was a murder mystery in which this flat on the stage served at different times as a wall, or a door or a closet. Post would be one character, say the detective, then he would go behind the flat and emerge right in step as another character with just a minimal costume change, maybe becoming blonde French gold digger by adding a wig. Later he might turn the flat on its side and it would become a bathtub or something like that. It was just the actor, the flat, and a bunch of props, and it was pure genius as a way to tell a story. Just his expressions and contortions alone were as valuable as the words, which were pre-recorded. Another skit that was really good was the "Seven Ages of Man." All through the skit he was caught between two "rewards," a huge, all-day lollipop for when he did things right and a plastic bat that would pop him upside the head when he did something wrong. The last scene he had been in war and shooting missiles (these were signified by full balloons let loose and you'd hear the "phweeeet" as they flew out of view) firing off a couple of squirt guns, all the while guarding a flag. At the end, I guess he was supposed to be receiving a medal and both the lollipop and the plastic bat were poised ready. He didn't know which one he would get and there was such a pitiful look on his face as he expected the worst but hoped for the best, and all he'd been doing was performing his job, doing what the boss men told him to do. What a powerful show, look out for him in the future. Bitten Man I watched People's Court one night last week, chanced upon Judge Wopner, and what an interesting little episode they had to show. The defendant's son was accused of shooting the neighbor's dog (the neighbor being the plaintiff) in the eye; the kid denied doing it but his father had paid the first couple of veterinarian bills for the dog. He'd balked when the plaintiff presented him with a third bill for over three hundred bucks -- "you should have put the dog to sleep for ten bucks at the very beginning, he's just a mutt" is what the father told the neighbor. The father looked like he wouldn't put up with anything from anyone but who certainly had a respect for the courtroom and the judge. Well Judge Wopner sided with the plaintiff because the father had originally paid the bills, showing that at one time he had believed his son guilty. So when the Judge decided the case, the parties came out and talked to the reporter; first comes the defendant and he reiterates that he believes his son and he never should have paid in the first place but because the judge said he should pay this last bill then he would; asked if he and the plaintiff could be good neighbors again the father said "I don't think so; you know how used car salesmen are..." So then the plaintiff and his wife and dog come out and the first thing the dog does is to bite the reporter on the knee cap! No lie, it really happened. At first I thought the dog had only lunged at the reporter, but after the interview the reporter pulled his britches up past his knee and there were teeth marks and a bruise. That really shot the sympathy that the couple had won, and when the fellow was answering questions for the reporter after the bite, he was really nervous -- he knew his dog had blown it, and he didn't know what he was going to have to do to get out of this little fiasco. Punk Man I've been seeing the name Henry Rollins a lot lately so I decided to look up his work. The library didn't have any of his stuff but I was determined to read it and so went to the New Book Store and asked the clerk. She said, "no, we wouldn't have any of that!" but then checked and yes, there he is in the poetry section. She seemed really surprised at my request so I asked her, "who is he?" "Oh," she told me, "he's a punk rocker." I later asked Ted about him and learned that he's a semi-legend in the DC Punk scene and once stabbed a friend of Ted's with a ballpoint pen at the Greensboro Armory. Ted did tell me that it was odd to see such a figure become "mainstream" and it wasn't until later that I realized that I was that "mainstream." It was quite a shock, but I deserved it. I still haven't seen Rollins' tattoos, though: the author's photo on the back of Black Coffee Blues shows a noble profile, patrician and serious, not at all like the punk longhair described to me. Anyway, the book is pretty good, more a journal than poetry I'd say, though who am I to argue with the New Book Store shelving methods? Two sections of this book that I really liked: "124 Worlds" which is a collection of short scenarios; and "Black Coffee Blues" a collection of journal entries from various European tours he made with his band, inspired by different cups of coffee at inns and hotels along the way. Rollins presents a violent persona in his writing, often writing of shooting someone in the face, but I get the impression that he's barely serious -- it's like this hard-boiled tough guy act that he works so hard to cultivate totally breaks apart during the rigors of touring, when he's beaten down, exhausted, and just wants to get on with it. Music Man Here's a plug for Crunchy Music Stuff, a local record store here in the neighborhood. I got on their mailing list and they sent me a 'zine titled "Crunch." Besides reviews and general music news and notes, there's a couple of pages of the "Chris McGee Fanzine." What inspired writing! I was reminded of a statement I read in the book Cyberpunks, about the admiration aroused for someone who you might not necessarily agree with: "he admired an imagination that could follow such a steady course on such an outlandish trajectory" (161). In a section on "Poor People" the author proposes ways in which we could get rid of them: a better solution would be to just be real rude to the poor people so they will want to go far away. or we could all learn latin and just speak that whenever poor people come around. every time the poor people want food, we could pretend like we didn't understand and just give them a pretty pack of crayons instead. See the quote of the week for a brother in arms to this guy. Later I went by the store and picked up another 'Zine, this one called "Soda Jerk" and put out by Dave and Nicky here in town. Here are music reviews, a few 'Zine reviews, band interviews and occasional pieces, as well as plenty of graphics. The authors propose a solution to the problem of writing the universal third person pronoun. Instead of writing "his or hers" when you mean "somebody's," why not just use "shim's." They go on to give examples of how it would change the language, and they even propose that it could save the world: "We can change the Earth's name to Shimmyville. Would you start a war in a place called Shimmyville? We can all be Shimmyites or just Shimmies." I wouldn't mind being a shimmy at all, would you? Start using the word, it could lead to world peace. Every time I go into the store I get the strange feeling that everyone's laughing at me because I'm such a "mainstream" old fogie, but I admire the guys who run it. They have the guts to do what they want to do, and they seem to have fun doing it. So support your local independent record store. Killer Man From the very opening scene of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers you know you're in for a ride. Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) are in a roadside diner and when a lewd redneck starts bothering Mallory all hell breaks loose, literally. Man this film is violent! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time just waiting for the next innocent bystander to be blown away. Despite its violence it's also a very good movie, and I give Oliver Stone some credit for the style. The film is a montage of images, tableaux in movement, and the effect is fun, in its way. The story itself is hard to believe -- Mickey and Mallory never come across as that cold-blooded; I just can't believe they'd kill so many innocent people. All of the actors do very well, from Rodney Dangerfield as the lecherous, abusive father in the hilarious home movie sitcom, to Tommy Lee Jones as the prison warden and his spittle-spraying drawl. Robert Downey, Jr., is just about average until the adrenaline starts to flow: the wimp turns into a real man during the prison riot and in the middle of the death and mayhem he calls his wife on a cellular phone and demands a divorce; next he calls his lover and says he's coming over for oral sex. Isn't violence liberating! In the end the violence is a means to an end. Who would go see a movie about Mickey and Mallory if they were petty thieves? At least everybody's talking about it and Oliver Stone will reap some big paydays out of this film just because people want to see what the furor is all about. But it is a creative movie, too, and I'll bet more filmmakers will adapt from this film than would care to admit. You'll be seeing echoes of this movie for years to come, I'll bet. The funny part is that the film itself is an echo of the state of the media, taking a little bit from cartoons to I Love Lucy to Hard Copy. It's like Stone has pasted together a story out of a few months of channel surfing on cable television. Quote of the Week I saw this letter to the editor in the Charlotte Observer this morning. John M. McDowell writes that he's disappointed to see the paper making a big deal out of parents who choose to stay home with their kids: You portray these parents as making sacrifices for their families; instead, I see the families assuming their rightful and rewarding responsibilities of nurturing their children. Also, aren't there any "stay at home" fathers out there? ... When I drive home in the evenings and see parents bringing their children home from day care, I think about what the children are losing -- losing the parent's nurturing, losing respect for their parents. I also wonder if these working parents are satisfied with the upbringing that their day-care provider is giving their children. I for one do not want my children learning about life from a 19- year-old minimum wage worker. Why did this bother me so much? Sure, there are "traditional family values" here, and I think most of us are pro-family. But I'd like to hear the wife's side of the story, if she speaks for herself. And does he really think that that "19-year-old minimum wage worker" wants to be in that position? Or that all day care workers are irresponsible louts? Do all families have the option of having a parent stay at home with the kids? He shares a lot with the sentiments of the "Chris McGee Fanzine": one is funny and one is arrogant. What do you think?