Intervision

From the Latin
n. what is seen between
v. to see between

Internet Visionary
Interact Visibly
Interest Visualized

Jim Carrey & Prozac

Jim Carrey makes upwards of 20M per flick. He's the highest paid comic actor atound. He is now talking about the fact that he used to take Prozac. I don't know all that much about these legal psychoactive drugs, and sure as hell don't want to. I guess if you go to a doctor with some kind of distress or problem dealing with life, that's what they give you. Don't get me started on the legal drug culture and this intense indoctrination. This massive media marketing of very powerful drugs, directly to the population is off the hook. We are the most medicated culture in history. Vioxx is now removed and five other majorly marketed drugs are about to be, because of deadly side-effects. But what about the intended effects of these drugs? As Carrey described it, the highs and lows are obliterated and you're left to gel around in neutrality. He calls it "a persistant despair". I think this is how most people actually spend their lives....whole communities "gellin". One gelatinous morass of averageness and unawareness. It's considered a problem when you're feeling too much, at least when you don't know how to identify and understand those feelings, and channel them effectively. Jim, obviously, ultimately decided it was better to feel. And look how he channeled that energy... into a free, unique & entertaining identity. I have a lot more respect for that, than folks who tamp their own connection to joy in order to conform. What I wonder is...how many Jim Carreys are we losing to Prozac? Not every person with a unique talent or artistic bent, or even an honest feeeling, is strong enough to resist the deadening effects of these prescription drugs, and the pressure to use them. Here, take this honey, and everything will be OK.
I'd rather see us using drugs which expand consciousness. It's only when we really understand what's going on, inside and out, that we can have the real peace, and the creativity. But that takes time, it takes away from productivity, whose interests prefer people managed over people aware. It is far more efficient and profitable to have people happily in boxes than seeking to have fulfilled lives.
Well, you know, we all want peace of mind, and many people cannot find it in this intensely competitive society. So we prescribe lots of Prozac, and everybody's happy....or at least not making trouble, or revolutionary art, or a point, or an insight... and we lose the Jim Carreys, and the Elvis Presleys and the John Lennons, and probably 99% of our artists. They were, and are, mostly misfits. Clay Aiken recently spoke about a book he wrote discussing his transition from bully target to superstar. Christina Aguilera, who had her voice at 10, talks about how people who now brag about knowing her in HS were throwing pieces of bread at her in HS. Artists are inner directed, they look around, they feel, they question. This threatens people.
At the same time, we idolize these artists once they make money. Aiken is literally "The American Idol". Who and what do we idolize? Is it the artist, or the success? It is probably that incredibly rare human being, who, against all odds, can do both.

Free Culture Manifesto

Free Culture is a student movement started by Nelson Pavlosky at Swarthmore. It is based on Lawrence Lessig's last book, of the same name. I thought the book was pretty much a retread of ideas developed in an earlier book of his; The Future of Ideas. Anyway, there are over a dozen campuses which now have Free Culture groups seeking to spread the word. So, here's their Manifesto, in it's entirety. What I like about it is the focus on the individual and their creativity. For me, this is an issue of using technology to spur creativity and help society. But, given the issues of content ownership and control, this is also, unfortunately, very much a legal issue which requires a very proactive, if not aggressive, stance. They hit all the bases. The link to their website is above.

Free Culture Manifesto
The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure.
We believe that culture is a two-way affair, about participation, not merely consumption. We will not sit at the end of a one-way media tube and buy things until we look like the people on Friends. With the Internet and other advances, the technology exists for a new paradigm of creation, one where anyone can be an artist, and anyone can succeed, based not on their industry connections, but on their merit.
We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism where we do not actually own the products we buy, but we are merely granted limited uses of them as long as we pay the rent. We must halt and reverse the recent radical expansion of "intellectual property rights," which threaten to reach the point where they trump any and all other rights of the individual and society.
The freedom to build upon the past is necessary for creativity and innovation to thrive. We will use and promote our cultural heritage in the public domain. We will make, share, adapt, and promote Open Content. We will listen to Free Music, look at Free Art, watch Free Film, and read Free Books. All the while, we will discuss, annotate, improve, improvise, remix, mutate, and throw yet more ingredients into the Free Culture soup.
We will fight to make everyone understand the value of our common wealth, evangelizing for Linux and the open-source model. We will resist repressive legislation which threatens our civil liberties and stifles innovation, such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the proposed Induce Act. We will organize to prevent Microsoft and others from pushing through hardware-level monitoring devices that will prevent users from having control of their own machines and their own data.
We won't allow the RIAA and the MPAA to cling to obsolete modes of distribution through bad legislation and market dominance. We will be active participants in a free culture of connectivity and production, made possible as it never was before by the Internet and digital technology, and we will fight to prevent this new potential from being locked down by corporate and legislative control. If we allow the bottom-up, participatory structure of the Internet to be twisted into a glorified cable TV service -- if we allow the established paradigm of creation and distribution to reassert itself -- then the window of opportunity opened by the Internet will have been closed, and we will have lost something beautiful, revolutionary, and irretrievable.
The future is in our hands; we must build a technological and cultural movement to defend the digital commons.

Shattered Glass

It's amazing how appropriate people's names are sometimes. Glass, a young reporter for the New Republic, was caught cooking at least 27 of his 41 published features. He "shattered" the myth of objective, factual journalism when he knowingly tells a class, "you can check against objective facts, but not against the word of the writer". Although any reputable magazine or paper does check facts, to protect themselves against libel or invasion of privacy, there are some things, obviously lots of things, that cannot be checked. In fact, the New Republic was fastidious, running each story through dozens of fact checkers and editors. So, what about the NY Times? The Washington Post? NBC? AP? What makes them any different?
When Hillary Clinton spoke about "the vast right-wing conspiracy" everyone laughed at the notion of smoky rooms and Skull & Bones handshakes (which I'm sure did take place). What she really referred to is the unspoken agenda of a huge block of people who act in concert without any central plan. These trends definitely occur in the press and now, even hard facts and austere publications are up for grabs. In these days, when the most revered of our institutions, like the Catholic church, and the self proclaimed Prince of Pop are lambasted.... what do we turn to? Oh yes, the internet.... no wonder things are crumbling even faster... word's out.
But, we still need lots of improvement. Although my twelve year old son gets most of his news from the international press over the internet, most adults I know are still in the dark ages, drinking up what the major news organizations are offering up. I watch it just so I can understand why most of the country is so backwards and stupid.

Orrin Hatch Warning

12/28 - Check out the above link to see what motivates the hatchless wonder
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Orrin, Chiarman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and pawn of show BUSINESS, after failing to shove the Induce Act through this lame duck Congress before he loses his chair, is now focused on the Intellectual Property Protection Act HR2391. At some point I really do need to post something more focused on how they keep changing the law to restrict rights to material we previously held, but, for now, let me say, they are retracting the very limited rights the public has to content, rights that have existed for a long time. This is an umbrella bill that seeks to squeak through very onerous restrictions on our right to utilize and share content and to have control over our lives and what we view. It would be illegal, for example, to block commercials. This is going to have a big impact on the tech sector. The wording is vague, includes lots of jail time for offenders, all sorts of crap the growing entertainment lobby loves... they want to own it all, control what we view and hear, where, how & when. They have fought tooth and nail every technological advance that has given us freedom to control our entertainment, or enjoy it, or share it; from cassettes to video. Can you imagine any other industry showing such blatant disregard, if not outright hatred, of their own market?! The airlines came close, till 9/11. There is no quick solution here, the sides are very far apart, this is a very complex situation, with a landscape that keeps changing. I sure never thought I'd side with ACU (not ACLU, ACU - American Conservative Union - who object to the Justice Dept. being used as a free entertainment industry lawyer.)
So, write your Congressperson expressing your opinion about the Intellectual Property Protection Act HR2391. I guess what bothers me most about this whole issue is watching paid political wonks like Hillary Rosen, Cary Sherman and Mike Green portray themselves as representing and defending the creative community, when they are doing the opposite. They represent those who seek to exploit them. Don't be fooled when you see artists side with them. Those that do, like Eminem, change. After 8 Mile success, M went from worker status to owner... it all gets back to Marx in the end. They do not represent the consumer, they do not really represent the artist, so, who the fuck do they represent? They represent the interests of Capitalism seeking to profit off the ability to own content. It's about ownership, not art. The copyright laws were written to do exactly what has been so successfully done, encourage business people to distribute art. The internet has meddled with forces of nature, as Howard Beal (Network) would tell you. Those who have built up power do not easily let it go.
The scariest part is that this is basically being done under the cover of night here. It's a non-issue for most people, as the media has not done it's job informing the public how its rights are being affected. Fortunately, word is slowly disseminating through the campuses, thanks to folks like Lawrence Lessig and Nelson Pavlosky, who started Free Culture groups at numerous campuses. I promise I will get to these movements.

Around the World in 80 Dates

This remake just came out on DVD. My divorcee version is much better. It's been quite a smorgasboard, and I do believe every country has been represented.

I was walking past City Hall with a date last night and we were looking at this weird little garage lit up in the middle of some flower bed. We're walking around saying, like you would in the Guggenheim, "it is art?". BTW, in the Guggenheim you answer that question by touching the thing. If they tell you not to touch it.... it's the art.

Anyway, the guy, who is in the thing, looks at us and says, "Would you like an explanation?", so he comes out and spends 20 minutes explaining the concept, which sounded like he'd spent a bit too long at a Palo Alto City Council Meeting. Turns out he generates more energy than he uses... something I'm sure we all aspire to. Anyway (trying to get back to my original point here) he also goes out on his little Vespa every day taking pictures of every square inch of Palo Alto getting data on color.....at the end of all this... do you know what he wants to do? He wants to, like, average it, blend it, and get "the average color of Palo Alto". I can tell you right now, it's white. But that's besides the point, he is looking for, literally, the average color.

What kind of comment is this? Do New Yorkers (all the art is in NY, as was this artist) see us as this homogenous? Where New Yorkers sport more of their ethnic identity, we all blend onto one techno-wonk beige, is that it? I even said to the guy, "well, you'll end up with some beige, right?" He's like yeah, and it will be the official color of Palo Alto. I'm serious, I bet it's gonna be on our Shallow Alto letterhead. I'm sure the artisans at Popeye will use it.

As for me, and my original point, it's a wide world out there. Enjoy the variety. Don't try to blend it all into some fuckin shade of beige and then use that as your identity. Biologically, the more genetically diverse the parents, the healthier the child tends to be. Dr. Andrew Weil teaches that the more colorful the diet, the healthier it is. So, nature knows.

If the artist were as close to nature as his little outhouse wants to suggest, perhaps he should go out and shoot, and then find the most vibrant colors in Palo Alto and put that together in a beautiful mosiac of color. Let that be the Palo Alto logo. In fact, I now have an idea for my next painting... after it's finished, perhaps I'll go over and hang it on the bland little cabin in front of City Hall.

Rod Stewart Retreads

This is a close one, the guy's still playing soccer at a pretty high level, surrounds himself with his kids and young wives. So why reincarnate yourself as dead Sinatra? It should work, it did work, you're #1 for god's sake. But, I'm sorry, you've got a voice that could bring attention to something fresher, at least put a new spin on it, something (kilts don't count).

Elevate, not medicate, the sagging boomers. Just because they, and the underclass, are the only ones still buying records is no reason to pander to this level. I mean, I'm sorry you just lost 780M in a judgment cause you bailed on a tour, but you've sullied your rocker cred with me.