I'm so excited to have been chosen as one of the regulars on the next season of The OC. I know, it's a little hard to believe, isn't it? I've been pinching myself since I got the call this afternoon. But it's true. They said they needed someone to play an aging boomer blogger and all-around web hot-dogger, preferably one who'd previously published a couple-three books about internet business that made glancing, indecipherable allusions to Nietzsche, Habermas, Huizinga, and Pynchon -- in that particular order. I guess the coming episodes are going to be like way intellectual or something. Anyway yeah, my name came up in a google search so I guess I'm in. The gig only pays $35k per week, but what the hell. It'll be good exposure for CBO. Evidently, they want to shoot me in my underwear as I try to think up new and exciting things to blog about on behalf of HighBeam Research. They said living in Boulder wouldn't be a problem. All they cared about was the underwear.

from: "The OC" clearly not reality TV by Jeff Wertheimer
source: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 14 April 2004
via: HighBeam™ Research

As a longtime resident of Orange County, Calif., I am intrigued by how my community is portrayed in the Wednesday night Fox drama, "The OC." Now I can imagine how Southerners must have felt watching "The Beverly Hillbillies."

The high school-age students on "The OC" appear to lead a very different life than the kids I have both met and occasionally taught at the real Newport Harbor High. The students I knew actually attended school. The students in "The OC" aren't usually wearing enough clothes to attend class.

Not surprisingly, the parents on the show appear at least as troubled as their children. In one recent episode, one of the mothers slept with a high school student and within that same hour nearly accepted an offer to sleep with the grandfather of another student.

Before one applauds her restraint, despite rejecting the old man's proposition, she made it perfectly clear that she had slept with him on numerous occasions and was willing to do so again, if the price was right. Sadly, even with his AARP card, the old man was going to have to pay full price.

In fairness to "The OC" creators, my sheltered life may not reflect reality. Perhaps, to most of my friends and neighbors, "The OC" may be closer to a documentary than I realize.

Given this possibility I decided to embark on a quest to discover The Real OC. I returned to Newport Harbor High and wandered the campus for several hours. During this time I witnessed no nudity, drunkenness or violence of any kind. Aside from the disproportionate number of Mercedes Benzes in the parking lot, all else appeared normal.

But it quickly became apparent that given my near-blinding bald spot, I would never be able to infiltrate the teenage world of The Real OC. However, I could possibly use my middle-age features as an asset to discover the world of the Real Mothers of the OC. I am happily married, but if OC women are truly that promiscuous, this seems like something I should know about.

I decided to ask my neighbor if she would have an affair with me. Given that her husband is a good friend of mine, this proposition seemed like risky business. Equally problematic, she is tall, blond and deeply religious.

I graciously told her there was no rush, and that if she needed to she could take a week or two to decide. She did not need that long. In her tasteful, religious way she patiently explained that having an affair with an undersized Jew was really out of the question. With that I gave her a big neighborly hug and sprinted out of the house.

I realized, to my relief, that characters on "The OC" no more accurately represent the real-life inhabitants of Orange County than Jed Clampett depicts Southerners.

Now, it's clear as day that Mr. Wertheimer is a Communist intent on destroying our way of life and all we hold dear in this country. Doesn't the Liberal Establishment realize that its concerted conspiracy against that wonderful man Rupert Murdoch and his terrific Fox television station has backfired terribly and is fueling a tidal movement to the Right? And what's this guy's problem with the Beverly Hillbillies for God's sake? Some people just can't find anything good to say about anything. Well...

	For only 8,000 bucks, you can now get all 1,082 Penguin Classics via Amazon. Ultraclassy literary spokesmodel Jane Austen (see above) sez: "Zowie! Such a deal!"

from: Classic novels make a comeback with publishers
source: The Orlando Sentinel, 2 June 2003
via: HighBeam™ Research

An amoral drifter meets a sultry beauty with an inconvenient husband. Two sisters cope with cads as they seek true love. A scientist's experiments at creating human life succeed beyond his wildest expectations.

These aren't the latest noir novel, chick-lit offering or horror tale. They are the plots of three well-known classics _ ``The Postman Always Rings Twice'' by James M. Cain, ``Sense and Sensibility'' by Jane Austen and ``Frankenstein'' by Mary Shelley.

This summer, publishers are pushing the old along with the new. Penguin Classics recently reissued its famous paperback line with handsome new covers featuring period paintings, such as the one adorning Austen's first novel. Knopf's Everyman's Library is adding a Cain omnibus and a collection of Evelyn Waugh's travel writing to its hardcover classics series. And bookseller giant Barnes & Noble has just launched its ambitious Barnes & Noble Classics publishing program with 15 titles, including Shelley's seminal tale of man and monster.

"I think people tend to associate reading classics more as homework left over from school days rather than discovering -- or rediscovering -- a book that has actually stood the test of time," says Nicholas Latimer, vice president and director of publicity for Knopf. [more...]

later: Forgot to mention that I saw this on Technorati's just-unveiled public beta site, in the books section -- although it has since disappeared from that page. It's fast, it's dynamic, don't blink or you'll miss it! And possibly turn into Malcolm "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" Gladwell, the bane of my personal (and what other kind is there?) existence. Don't ask. It's a long story.

When things is good, things is good. What can I say? And it's at times like this -- this being one of those times -- that anything and everything seems capable of eliciting a curiouser a-la-Alice curiosity. Attention overflow retrieval. For instance, don't ask how I got there, but take this item from a page of Arkansas State Penitentiary Records 1918-1920. It seems that one Homer Ross of Lawrence County, prisoner number 15845, escaped on 10 June 1918 and was recaptured on the first of July the same year. I wonder what he was in for, and what he did in those couple weeks when he got free. How surprised would Homer have been if he could have somehow known back then that someone would be wondering about him in the 21st Century? Stuff like that.

Or this strangely beautiful album cover. Dr. John, whom I first knew as The Night Tripper, from whom I first heard of gris-gris and suchlike voodoo arcana, probably smoking opiated hash in some dirty filthy basement (doncha wanna live with me?) circa 1966 -- coming up on what? forty years now by the look of it, and all I got to show for it is I survived.

But kids, this is no mean feat, all told. So if you have days of wondering what it's all about and how you're gonna make it to another sunrise, you just flash on old Homer and what he woulda given for another day. Or on Dr.John, who, strangely, though not so strangely if you think about it for a second, is singing about the Wild Tchoupitoulas on cut #3 of this disc, and I guess it just must be the week for that sort of thing. You never know. And all these people who tell you life is worth living, if you ask them why, they don't have a clue, or else they tell you stuff makes you want to check out immediately, wonder why you didn't a long time ago. Forget those people. Just say no. Just let it float, let it go wherever it wants to. Buy the ticket. Take the trip. And whatever you do, no matter how dark it gets, always and everywhere let your freak flag fly.

Yeah. And why not -- while you're at it, what the hell -- take the next couple days off.

Note: I imaged the code results and replaced the normal output with a screen shot. The presentation in some browsers was just too... perverse.

Say that ten times as fast as you can. I always wanted to write a headline so arcane you couldn't tell whether it was about sports or finance. That was before it got too hard to tell them apart anyhow, but never mind. This one translates to: the Pluck RSS Reader blog just tapped Chief Blogging Officer as its latest Feed of the Day -- and this has increased our hit count enormously. Within mere minutes of appearing on the Pluck blog, CBO overtook boeing boeing, Instapundit, Gizmodo, Metafilter, Sandhill Trek (Wisconsin), Allied (Sicily), Bag & Baggage (Cayman Islands), Halley's Comment (Ibiza), La Vache Qui Lit (France), and Kombinat! (Poland). Why, this is absolutely fabulous!

They're way smart over there at Pluck, too! Cheggidout...

Today's Feed of the Day - Chief Blogging Officer - is a "tongue-in-cheek hack on the proliferation of Chief Something-or-Other Officers in business these days." Written by Chris Locke, [who] is perhaps best known as an author of notable Internet-interested books, including: The Cluetrain Manifesto, Gonzo Marketing, and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy® (I highly recommend checking out the descriptions for each book).

And naturally, my long-suffering underwriter, HighBeam Research, is credited with the excellent good sense (or execrably bad judgment) to have installed me in the web's first official CBO role. I would like to thank Mom and Dad, the Rolling Stones, Aunt Luella in Beefeater Notch, and of course The Academy...

from: The Dallas Morning News Technology Product-Review Column.
source: The Dallas Morning News, 10 June 2004
via: HighBeam™ Research

Pluck, which made its debut last week, is a suite of mini-applications designed to make browsing more efficient. This free IE add-on is a quick download that adds four features: Pluck PowerSearch, Sharing, My Web and RSS Reader.

The PowerSearch allows you to filter information gathered via Google, Amazon and eBay. The RSS Reader introduces users to the joys of "real simple syndication," a way of keeping track of news and information as it is updated across the Web.

But Pluck's real strength is in its My Web bookmark manager, which lets users organize and add comments to links they grab during research.

Land on a page you want to save, and you simply "Pluck" it from the Net by clicking on a button in the IE toolbar. A dialogue box springs up. You can add comments, then store the data in a sidebar folder. Better yet, if you install Pluck in every computer you use, those folders are visible in each.

"It's nice to know that as you move from machine to machine, this stuff can follow you around," says [Pluck co-founder Andrew] Busey.

Actually, I find that last bit vaguely unsettling. But maybe that's just me. As for you, though, do have a look around...

And the not-so-long-awaited answer to our previous quiz is...

Yes, that's right. After some cogitation, I finally remembered that it's only white people who get wrapped all around their own axle about depression and tragedy and suchlike. Now, if that sounds like, well... what it sounds like, let me hasten to add that this is because Black folks gots de Blues. And while I don't mean to insinuate that that's exactly a good thing, it sure as hellfire beats nuthin.

The Wild Tchoupitoulas are a legend in the history of New Orleans music and defined what we now identify as the "New Orleans sound." To my knowledge they only recorded one complete album...but what an album it was! The Wild Tchoupitoulas, recorded in 1976 and produced by the legendary Allen Toussaint, marked the first time that the Neville Brothers recorded together. Decked out in full Mardi Gras Indian regalia, the Wild Tchoupitoulas paved the way for the acceptance of a diverse group of musicians that even includes Robert Palmer!

-from Joe's Jumpin' Juke Joint

The title slug, above, is the name of a cut off this here record on the Mango label. It takes a bit of explaining. And it's one of those things I definitely couldn't have explained before Google and HighBeam. So I'm gonna let Google and HighBeam explain.

And, in no particular order, here's a little somethin might come in handy should you chose to peruse these blues in more depth: A Lexicon of New Orleans Terminology and Speech.

Then, here's some more stuff about New Orleans "injuns" from a very good (not all of them are) About.com page: Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. And what would a CBO post be without some elsewhere-unavailable background from HighBeam Research?

Is it blues, r&b, New Orleans voodoo music, world beat or Mardi Gras street funk?

Actually, the combination of all five is what makes the syncopated sound of Mardi Gras Indian gangs like the Wild Magnolias, the Wild Tchoupitoulas and Joseph Pierre "Monk" Boudreaux's Golden Eagles revered all over. The distinctive, cheery music is among the big draws of the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival...

Boudreaux grew up hanging out with his Mardi Gras Indian father at local gathering places where he soaked up the neighborhood's polyrhythms and chants, often joining the "second line" at traditional New Orleans funerals. It's the same environment that spawned Professor Longhair, the Meters, Lee Dorsey and other Big Easy music legends...

We called Boudreaux, 62, to talk about his delightful solo debut, "Mr. Stranger Man," featuring cameos from Dr. John, Neville and, of course, the Golden Eagles on background vocals and percussion.

Q: Why do Indian groups like the Magnolias, the Tchoupitoulas and the Golden Eagles sound similar but tell different stories?

A: All the gangs have their own songs. The background music might sound the same, but every gang in the city has different lyrics because they're singing about themselves and their history. My song "Battle of New Orleans" deals with the clash between an Indian gang and a white band that was marching on another street. It was 1964 and the second line started some trouble and there was some head busting. Back in those days, there wasn't a lot of guns in play - it was just sticks and bottles. People have gotten together since, whites and blacks. It's not like the '60s anymore.

from: Playlist New Album Releases - The Big Easy's Big Man
source: Daily News (Los Angeles), 29 April 2003
via: HighBeam™ Research

As the final entry in our documentation of anti-depressant tragicomedians, this bit from from emory joseph's recipe for mardi gras. Do not miss his final link, below, which goes to MARDI GRAS INDIANS: Tradition and History. Worth it. But you gotta say that thing three times, just like he tells it here.

Now, although I first heard about the Professor Longhair, Jelly Roll Morton and every-"fessorly"-body down there from a very hip record store lady in St. Louis MO, I first got HIPPED 'bout NOLA by Sal Bernardi of Ricki Lee Jones' "A Weasel in a White Boy's Cool" fame. He heard me reference The Wild Tchapatoulis (a Neville Family, George Porter and Zigaboo music project by, about and for their uncle "Big Chief Jolly" aka George Landry and his Mardi Gras Indian tribe) at the original downtown location of the Lone Star Cafe in NYC and made it a personal mission to make sure I was about the implications of my referensation.

You can find out more about the Mardi Gras Indians (who are a heap might less dangerous to each other now than they were back in the day) by clicking here and saying "Um Bah Way" three time fast.

Now, that could have been it, right there, you know? It's a decent length post as it stands. God knows, some of these blog entries you see these days are like, "I went to the stoar and got a 7-up life sucks." Spelled and punctuated just about like that. Makes you wonder, after all the blood, sweat and tears we shed to make blogging genuinely seditious. Co-opted again. Happens every time. But look, this isn't the end yet, because I feel compelled to explain something more here.

I made some dangerously generalized remarks at the start of this. I mean, about black people. That is to say, African-Americans. And the reason these remarks are potentially dangerous, the reason that ethnic generalizations in general are dangerous, is because, under the skin, Democrat or Republican, neocon or liberal, genius or moron, Americans are seething with homicidal race hatred. Sure, sure, we all pretend we're full of multicultural "understanding" and positively brimming with small-d democratic longings for "equality." Until some Latino swipes our favorite parking spot, or some black dude cops an attitude in the supermarket checkout lane. And it's dangerous to admit such things public or there might be a, you know, race war or something.

However, I want to be totally fair here. It's not a one-way street. Contrary to popular opinion, white people have feelings too. And let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw grown up white people dressing up like indians, or calling themselves silly names like Professor Longhair? (Forget Captain Beefheart for a minute.) I want to argue that white people -- that is to say, generally speaking -- have more important things to think about. Like thermonuclear war, for example. And other neat shit too cool to imagine, like what The Geeks of War, who you can bet are all 99.9% Aryo-Caucasian, think about, which is: The Secretive Labs And Brilliant Minds Behind Tomorrow's Warfare Technologies (by John Edwards, pictured above left). And I ask you, moreover, where are all the People of Color in this important work? That's right: out playing cowboys and niggers -- a Troublesome Word, I'll be the first to admit; or the second, anyway, right after Randall Kennedy -- while the rest of us hard working white people are left to do the thankless job of blowing the world to Kindgdom Come.

And c'mon y'all, I mean, how fair is that?

This one is taking longer than usual, and that's saying something. My thoughts surrounding this issue -- for which I haven't yet even found a name -- have been coming together slowly. Too slowly, to paraphrase the old Westerns. This either means that I'm onto something genuinely profound, or that I'm simply once again lost at sea. It's not clear. For instance, I had some kind of flash last night (no, I don't do those kinds of drugs) that caused me to note down what you see in the title slug, above. I need to think a bit more about what it may mean, if anything. I'll be back soon with whatever thoughts I can dredge up, but meanwhile, here are the three basic elements I've been working with, plus HighBeam clips re the first and second.

you're in the pit the snakes begin to writhe but help is here I throw you down a line

from: Myths of the Blues by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
source: U.S. News & World Report, 23 May 2005
via: HighBeam™ Research

Peter Kramer has been called "America's best-known psychiatrist," and for good reason. The Brown University professor has written five popular books, including the 1993 bestseller Listening to Prozac, and he hosts the public radio series The Infinite Mind. He arguably deserves his fame simply for coining the phrase "cosmetic psychopharmacology," by which he meant the power of antidepressants like Prozac to make people feel "better than well." Kramer describes his new book, Against Depression, as a "polemic" that seeks to finally separate the painful and life-threatening illness of depression from appealing traits like sensitivity and creativity. Kramer attempts to distinguish depression as a personal medical affliction from depression as a cultural idea and argues emphatically that the world's No. 2 killer cannot be allowed to be romanticized despite its artistic and historical link to creative genius.

And then there's this...

from: Books: Journeys into night; Tragedy gives us hideous tales of death and despair - and it does so with huge, life-affirming energy. Jonathan Dollimore asks why the worst events we can ever imagine generate our greatest art by Jonathan Dollimore
source: The Independent (London), 17 August 2002
via: HighBeam™ Research

Hamlet, the most famous tragedy of all, is also one of the most difficult to pin down. What is Hamlet's problem? Who is he? From one point of view he's the most fascinating of all protagonists, and one with whom we can't help but identify. As someone once said, "everyone thinks Hamlet was written for them. I know he was written for me." If his appearance coincides with the emergence of modern individualism, it's also the case that he displays all the symptoms of individualism gone wrong - a dysfunctional depressive who simply can't get his act together.

A larger question has never been adequately answered. Why do the greatest expressions of the tragic vision seemingly coincide with the heights of cultural achievement, even of optimism, as with the Greeks and the Renaissance? Across two millennia, the most famous philosophers and critics have failed to define tragedy adequately. The best that can be done is to propose criteria which illuminate even as they fail. Isn't it something to do with the way we die rather than the way we live? Yes, but only certain kinds of dying count. To die in real life by falling off the toilet isn't going to constitute the tragic fall, not even if you're one of the Great Men of history (such as Elvis Presley). So heroic noble death is the order of tragedy? Yes, except that some tragedies are about being condemned to live, Beckett's Waiting for Godot being the most famous.

Yet this inability to pin down tragedy hardly matters because, from Aristotle to Hegel, failed attempts have become philosophies in their own right. When, in the modern period, the tragic vision became almost a surrogate religion which offered a higher wisdom removed from the allegedly shallow, materialist vulgarity of modernity, writing about it became even more significant. Books such as Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, George Steiner's The Death of Tragedy and Raymond Williams's Modern Tragedy have also been compelling expressions of contemporary concerns, and searching critiques of our cultural past.

Over the weekend, I happened onto the following BBC news item. There was nothing in it that would have normally arrested my attention, except that I'd gotten there from the Wikipedia Current Events page.

Israel plan for new settler homes
Israel has announced plans to build 22 more homes in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

On the Wikipedia page, this had somehow (???) become...

Israel has announced plans to construct a further Schwifty Five homes in a Jewish Settlement on the West Bank.

There I sat, scratching my head and wondering what could have caused this. The spell checker from hell? I see it has since been corrected, so I guess we'll never know. This is the sort of hard-hitting late-breaking world-wide meta-web news you can expect from CBO, so stay tuned!