Podcast Hotel - Best Photo So Far

IMG_0107.JPG
Originally uploaded by Eric Rice.

i mean, seriously.

food, glorious food

day one at Podcast Hotel was quite the success. only thing i keep forgetting to do is eat a meal. I don't recall a meal at all yesterday (got too busy) so the last time i ate was over a day ago, not including the $5 cookie i ate last night in my hotel room. do they have restaurants in seattle? i'm hoping to find out before i take off tomorrow.
meanwhile, it's back to business...


Update 3/4/06 - indeed there are places to eat in Seattle. photos of restaurant experience are right here

Hungover In Seattle

Hello from Seattle and Podcast Hotel. For my less 'cast savvy friends - the podcast hotel is not an actual hotel. The actual hotel where I am staying thinks it's in New York, but in NYC it wouldn't be nearly this cool or have any of these ammenities. I'll explain - with a list. When i woke up this morning, these were my thoughts, in this exact order:

1) why are the lights on
2) this down comforter is nice
3) so are these down pillows
4) why am i sleeping diagonal
5) where is fletch
6) did i really drink beer or was that cider?
7) oh shit, who did i call and what did i say
8) what did i say and who did i call
9) wow this is nice, there are 8 down pillows on this phat bed
10) do i have to be somewhere at 8am?
11) what did i say and who did i call
12) can't i just stay in bed?
13) Let's have a cd listening party in second life

Now i am off to start the day, already running late at 7am. This event is already proving to jar my thoughts beyond the mostly trite list above. Last night ER told me his son recognizes his avatar as "cartoon daddy." I can't get this out of my head. the neurobiological & cognitive implications - a dissertation waiting to happen.

Digital recognition of human attributes in pre pubescent youth

or something like that.

And now i'm off to blow off any memories of my drunken self and hang with more of the 'sphere i love so dear.

Stop by the ioda lounge today at the triple door in seattle and say hi. I'll be the one with the hangover yapping about changing the world. I'll have t-shirts, swag and ideas.

Stay Tuned.

Seattle Bound... The Podcast Hotel, Feb 23 - 26, 2006

PodcastHotelNapkin
Originally uploaded by crazywanda.

I'm off to Seattle in the morning to attend the Podcast Hotel. And why the napkin? you'll have to go to the site & figure it out. Til then, if you are in the Seattle area 2/25, I'll be w/ the philosophs at the 1pm panel on Podcasting & Digital Distribution (music). Join us & ask smart questions.

The napkin entry you see here on my blog is the first of many. Who doesn't draw ideas on napkins? It was the birthplace of my thesis. We meet again, paper napkin. we meet again...

Ambulance Ltd in Promonet

this is pretty exciting...I've been smitten by this band since this time last year when they caught us all by surprise at SxSW05. This new EP is not yet released (coming March 14) yet here it is....straight outta Promonet.

New English EP

Ambulance LTD
TVT Records
Download the mp3 of "New English"

Digital Hippie Strikes Back

i've heard the term "digital hippie" and "cyber hippie" (because it was a term used for me) and while i fully understand the direct connotation I disagree with this assessment of my person. I'm not offended. But annoyed i be.

you're a zealot, missWanda, they'll say

you talk about wiki and tagging and new media in terms of revolution, missWanda, they'll say

Well, that's true. Not the zealot part, but the rest, maybe. I've spent a large portion of my still-short life observing and analyzing communication. I'd be dr. wanda, psycholinguist now if i hadn't received an offer to enter the one industry i'd been aiming for (on the side) for....ever. (music). i digress.

Communication has been an obsession of mine since I was a child. the first word i learned to spell with alphabet magnets was "Annapolis" (the maryland state capitol) and by the time i was 3 i knew that "polis" meant city. Turned the age of 4 and i was making jr podcasts (sorta) - i started recording myself singing as soon as my dad told me what buttons to push. within a year i had my own show and was interviewing family members, the mail carrier, the lifeguard - I wanted to know what they had to say. I wanted to record it and play it back and think about it. Communication has always been my game. Diagraming sentences was fun in 5th grade. And the advanced class at hopkins was even more fun. Diagramming sentences turns language into math. I never stopped, took my love of breaking down sentences into all sorts of shapes, parts and sizes all the way to college and beyond. Does that make me a cyber hippie? to recognize communication for what it is?

Communication is also more than parts and shapes and numeric value. In sociological and anthropological terms, It is the fuel of revolution, it is the impetus of mass hysteria in all its varied degrees. It proved to be the death of Grizzly Man.

Communication was what i saw as the future of my 1st computer, the commodore Vic20. I couldn't wait to use a modem. I was obsessed with the phone jack in the 5 lb brick of a modem i first owned. i kept asking my grandma if i could use it to call someone else. But back then, well, we didn't have skype, or even IRC. just a vic20, and deep knowledge of BASIC. a language by its own right.

Where do i begin. it's not that i truly take offense to the term "hippie" - name calling is a bore. It's more the semantics of the term - the perception created by the use of "hippie." the name "digital hippie" implies that my obsession with communication is a nuance. Fleeting. Short-lived. it's negated to some level of Trippy man. Hippies never made a goddamned difference. I cannot relate.

In college, i became fascinated by Phineas Gage. Phineas had a hole in his skull from a tamping iron accident, got up and walked away (with the tamping iron still sticking through his skull) and his brain injury only affected his communication skills. He's the first documented case of aphasia. I went on to build a database of Broca's Aphasia at the University of South Carolina. The first of it's kind in the ENTIRE field of psycholinguistics! I read more books about brain injury and its effect on communicative skills than any normal person would ever want to, trust me. Wernicke's aphasia is neat, but it's no Broca's.

So you see, the natural event of having a gal who is fascinated with communication lost in a world of wiki, and obsessed with the consequences of every shift in communication - and how these shifts relate to music (also a form of communication by it's own right) is not the making of a digital hippie.

it's sexy.

ok, maybe it's not sexy to you.

but someone out there finds it sexy. Dwight, Hartigan and Marv from Sin City definitely worship it.

and just you wait, i haven't even begun to address entropy or string theory. talk about arousing.

OH Audi OH

Valentine's day has never been my scene, not because it is a day for lovers and i'm just a tough bad ass girl...but because it's so entirely fabricated and rooted in consumption rather than, well, love. it's a faux holiday, a day reserved for spending and missionary sex. It's the closest american culture has gotten to open sexuality which doesn't say much. But once again, thanks to technology, some nerdy (tough?) girls have a chance at enjoying February 14th. I mean, how can i opt out on hearts day when two of my favorite things have finally been digitized and realized in physical form...
As Seen In Playboy.
AudiOH

Grizzly Man: How Else Would It End

I've been watching a lot of movies lately. I mean, I am a regular movie-watcher but recently i've rented from Lost Weekend Video often enough to finally be on a first name basis with all 4 of the cute clerks behind the desk. They know i like Italian film, old movies, new movies, kung fu...they know a lot about me now and i'm ok with it. (Lost Weekend Video is also next to Ritual Coffee house, which makes for a nice duality - coffee, then video, but i digress, back to grizzly man.)
While Grizzly Man is supposedly a documentary, it should definitely be filed under comedy when it moves off the new release shelf. I mean, this thing is seriously ridiculous. And i love animals. I really do. I love some four legged creatures more than humans in some ways (and no, not that way) - i respect the peace and quiet of natural habitat, i leave no trace, i have experienced some of my most prolifically peaceful moments on mountaintops, while climbing them, and descending.

I saw a mountain lion once, they are abundant in the CO Rockies where i lived for 6 years. And even though it would be nice to pet a lion, b/c cats are just so cute, I knew enough to leave it alone. The mountain lion, while sought after by poachers, doesn't know that i'm the "good guy" - i smell like food. i smell like fear. I am, by their standards, a domesticated creature, far too civilized to put up a proper fight. I'm a human. I weigh a lot less than the mtn lion. Same thing for a grizzly.

But this guy, Timothy Treadwell, yes he named himself, decided it was his job to "protect the grizzly." fair enough, i see his point to some extent. And he felt comfortable in nature. Cool, me too. So far we have a few things in common. Now let's move on to where timothy and i differ.

Treadwell, aka Grizzly Man, lived in the grizzly maze in the alaskan wilderness for 13 summers. so far, we're still good, tim is still the man. Here's where it gets weird.

The guy actually thought he was a bear. He began to touch the bears - the GRIZZLY bears, and literally filmed himself showing "love" for a bear's poop. Yes, he touches the poop. States he loves it, because it came from a bear.

But wait, there's more.

I really could relate to treadwell's love of nature, and even his regular "i love statements" were understandable.

"i love you tree"
"i love you fox"
"i love you bear"
"i love you rock"

etc etc. you get the idea.

And he was using his footage for educational purposes, free of charge, touring around schools to teach kids about the grizzly habitat. Let's just hope the kids don't grow up and desire living with grizzlies. Still, Even though he touched poop and said "i love you bear poop" - he's treading well on the thin ice of sanity, but still tolerable. That is, if there weren't other factors.

- he's gay. just watch the movie, or don't, but trust me, he's gay. there's nothing wrong with being gay at all, i'm just sayin, this guy is on fire.
- he says he's not gay. he's lying.
- as time went on, the footage clearly shows that this guy thought he was a bear, and started to refer to areas populated with humans as "the people world"
- he began actually frolicking with the bears, as if he was a bear

so how do you think this idiot's story ends? the bears eat him, that's how.

GRIZZLY BEARS LIKE TO EAT PEOPLE.

unfortunately the lens cap was on during the consumption of timothy treadwell, but the audio was all caught on tape - however, the movie chooses not to use this as a climax. I wanted to hear him get devoured. That's how much i hated him by the end of this movie. Let Me Hear The Bear Eat Him i begged the dvd. I had to go through all 5 phases of acceptance before i came to terms with the fact that i was not going to be able to watch or view the bear eat tim treadlame.

Of course, the sad part is that on the final expedition, tim had a woman with him. The story goes like this, and i really wish i could watch:

- hungry bear (tim overstayed his welcome and it was hibernation time) who wants to eat and hibernate attacks tent
- starts to eat timothy treaddead
- girl starts to hit bear on head with frying pan
- when the bear is done with tim, he eats the girl

one can only hope the bear went to hibernate, but no - when the remains of the remains were found, so was the bear, he was shot, emptied out, and the remains were flown back to a hospital (in two trashbags).

the Grizzly Man's watch was found, and it is still ticking today.

I wonder if there is any leakage online of the bear attack? by the end of this movie, ya kinda want to see this guy get his head split open. I mean, seriously. How else would this tale of non fiction end?

Robosapien Prefers Black Angels

RobosapienLikesMusicJPG
Originally uploaded by crazywanda.

ever since the riots, it's all he really wanted

The Real World

pynchon
Originally uploaded by crazywanda.

"would you believe that there's a show now called 'ice skating with the stars' and it's popular?"
um, yeah. i would. and do.

"television today is just another sign of the degradation of modern society."

oh, eff you.




Television [programming] has become what it was destined to represent: meaningless minutiae. Television programming fads are not the sign of degradation. the fact that we take it less seriously as a generalized population, and put less stock in what the deadish green eye spews at us is another sign of the communicative revolution at hand. Programming trends are mainly a point of reference in popular culture (for which the doublespeak is "water cooler talk"). And for some of us, It's a sociological meter by which counterculture is measured. Perhaps those who rely on the act of watching television are less free, overtly deviant only if it's sanctioned by the programming, not because self awareness. The remainder of the population, subculture, participates (perhaps unwittingly) in every alternative form of expression. With "home computing" as popular as microwaves, the personal computer is a source of entertainment with the power to replace a (general) population's addiction to the boob tube. And now that we can subscribe to video programming by way of our personal computers, television has become exactly what it was meant to be. A piece of equipment, also reliant on a vacuum tube is finally recognized by popular culture as mindless entertainment, not a heat source of intel and widom. It's more like the excretion of what popular culture left behind. Now popular culture revels in it's own shit for entertainment, without looking for deep meaning. Nothing we can take too seriously if we want to survive in any intellectually stimulating environment. Because for entertainment to stimulate the senses in a real sense, it must relinquish some power, and leave itself vulnerable to audience reaction. Censorship of the airwaves and the domination of government sponsored propaganda (the surge of which occurs during election periods) have lead the general public to a door. When opened, it reveals a new communicative space, wrought with kinetic potential. We have the ability to overtly communicate with art, so who needs meaning from the other tube toy...?

we're back to the old days, the all or nothing days.

A symphony without applause in Mozart's day was one which would not survive in the performance circuit. The audience at Cats had a chance, night after night, to reject it and knock those kitties off broadway. But audiences, en masse, subscribed to these performances. And now by way of digital communication, audiences once again have the means to subscribe and approve or reject entertainment as they see fit, as they see it and hear it. The massive amount of entertainment available leads to a long tail effect, the new buzzword but a valuable one, and audiences have a real time vote, and one they can use retroactively. Lucky Audiences, once again, or perhaps for the first time ever, now also have leveled opportunity to become creators. Creators, Consumers, Subscribers. All at once.

Population and art once again interact, where media is no longer screaming at us, but instead asks us to subscribe. Radio which beamed repetitive playlists at us are now on the eve of destruction. Media is once again a breeding ground for the evolution of ideas, not the dissemination of instruction and rules, which is how it has been utilized in american consumerist culture. But in a time of revolution, as we've seen in european history time and time again, population regains control of media, as the sentiment is reflected in the artistic output of a culture.

The first sign of revolution is a genuine shift in communication. Communication is a living entity. To avoid stasis, communication finds holes, creates gateways, behaves like grass buried in sidewalk concrete - communication is a force of energy and must breathe. It will fight suffocation and so far has demonstrated over centuries that it will win. It is fuel for change and evolution. Communication is a natural living art.

In "3rd world" mesoamerican nations, revolution was fed by the counter culture's ability to use radios for communication. Thanks to radio, communities were able to organize and revolt.

In america, we took the high road and have wound up in the same place. In the digital age, revolt is known by another name. Wikipedia.

My Name's Trinity.

Trinity
Originally uploaded by crazywanda.

Trinity: My name's Trinity.
Neo: *The* Trinity? Who cracked the IRS d-base?
Trinity: That was a long time ago.
Neo: Jesus...
Trinity: What?
Neo: I just thought... you were a guy.
Trinity: Most guys do.

Good Vibes

Why I Love SF - Reason #603:
I walk by Good Vibrations just about every day - it's in the mission, next to the T Mobile store. An SF landmark, Good Vibrations is a "worker-owned, women-owned cooperative providing access to accurate sex information and sex toys, books and videos through its retail, call center and publishing companies, to promote healthy attitudes about sex."

Suffice it to say, it's a rad place.

But yesterday morning, something amazing happened as i strolled on by the shop. The Good Vibrations delivery van pulled up. Delivery van! Good Vibrations...delivers.


ps: later that night I drank a 'vegan white russian' at one of our neighborhood bars. (reason 604)

Who Inspired

Who Inspired


I just discovered this blog and had to share it, so i used the handy "blog this" button in the blogger menu bar.

check out "Who Inspired" - a vlog all about...The Who.

By The Time I Get To Arizona

as promised just 2 posts ago...



"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is Like Christmas

where are the members of heaven's gate, maybe with this technology we can pick them up from hale-bopp next time he swings around.



you know, there is kind of an irony in having a nasa project take safe landing in mormon country. either way, today is like christmas because this is one of the coolest blurbs i've read at nasa.com since their subtle endorsement of "Contact."


NEWS RELEASE: 2006-009
January 15, 2006

NASA's Comet Tale Draws to a Successful Close in Utah Desert
NASA's Stardust sample return mission returned safely to Earth when the capsule carrying cometary and interstellar particles successfully touched down at 2:10 a.m. Pacific time (3:10 a.m. Mountain time) in the desert salt flats of the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range.

"Ten years of planning and seven years of flight operations were realized early this morning when we successfully picked up our return capsule off of the desert floor in Utah," said Tom Duxbury, Stardust project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The Stardust project has delivered to the international science community material that has been unaltered since the formation of our solar system."

Stardust released its sample return capsule at 9:57 p.m. Pacific time (10:57 p.m. Mountain time) last night. The capsule entered the atmosphere four hours later at 1:57 a.m. Pacific time (2:57 a.m. Mountain time). The drogue and main parachutes deployed at 2:00 and 2:05 a.m. Pacific time, respectively (3:00 and 3:05 a.m. Mountain time).

"I have been waiting for this day since the early 1980s when Deputy Principal Investigator Dr. Peter Tsou of JPL and I designed a mission to collect comet dust," said Dr. Don Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator from the University of Washington, Seattle. "To see the capsule safely back on its home planet is a thrilling accomplishment."

The sample return capsule's science canister and its cargo of comet and interstellar dust particles will be stowed inside a special aluminum carrying case to await transfer to the Johnson Space Center, Houston, where it will be opened. NASA's Stardust mission traveled 2.88 billion miles during its seven-year round-trip odyssey. Scientists believe these precious samples will help provide answers to fundamental questions about comets and the origins of the solar system.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Stardust mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, developed and operated the spacecraft.

For information about the Stardust mission on the Web, visit www.nasa.gov/stardusthttp://www.nasa.gov/home .

Friday, Jan 13th

email rsvp[at]iodalliance.com

Macworld, MIDEM, IODA, and RFK

as macworld kicks off, the ioda office warming party rises on the horizon, Stern's first show on sirius debuts, sxsw just 2 months away, my friends and cohorts readying for france to take MIDEM by storm, and the skins ship off to seattle, it's time to invoke two of my favorite RFK quotes. Hangin' with the innovators requires inspiration every now and then. Innovation and inspiration was Robert Francis Kennedy's forte. A friend to MLK, you can bet i'll toss up an mlk jr quote next monday. For now it's all about robert. and macworld. and Creating. Learning. Visions. Forging the future. Viva La ________ !!!!

"Some people look at things as they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?" - rfk

“It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.” - rfk


have a nice week. I've been blog-apathetic as of late. just busy is all.

Curumin/ Quannum Projects

Quannum Projects is more than just another hot San Francisco based indie label. It is dj shadow's label and this is yet another promonet test. I picked Curumin b/c i have been listening to this record about once a day for 3 months.

Achados E Perdidos

Curumin
Quannum Projects

• Buy at iTunes Music Store


• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody

Futurama

The return of futurama?

What If That Guy From The Smashing Pumpkins Lost His Car Keys?

ok, ok, so i work for the guy and have for a few years. I still laugh my ass off at his records. So here's a promonet test, with an artist from one of my favorite indie labels...


Superhero
Stephen Lynch
What Are Records

• Buy at eMusic


• Download the mp3 of "Talk To Me"


• Download the mp3 of "Best Friends Song"


• Download the mp3 of "What If That Guy From Smashing Pumpkins Lost His Car Keys?"