Here!

My heroes have always been peaceful resistance leaders fighting against military juntas

I’m in love with Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s democratic party who was under house arrest in her own country for 15 years. She’s brave and bold and elegant, and she has tirelessly led her country’s peaceful resistence in a profoundly admirable way. Read about her. You’ll be inspired.

In September she’ll travel to the United States for the first time in 20 years and she’ll be honored as a Global Citizen at an awards dinner thrown by a think tank called the Atlantic Foundation. Also being honored: Henry Kissinger. Even if you think his particular brand of foreign policy based on the realist paradigm of international relations was worth it, even if your worldview is entirely Machiavellian, you have to admit that the two of them being honored at the same shindig is odd.

Kissinger is a Nobel Laureate, sure, but he’s also responsible for numerous deaths. In fact many writers, political analysts and historians have argued that Kissinger is a war criminal. For an example of Kissinger’s fingerprint on history, here’s a brief look at the U.S. involvement in the brutal invasion and occupation of East Timor by Indonesia.

Happy Belated Fourth: Two from the Archives

I hope you listened to “Fourth of July” by X yesterday.  If not, there’s still time.  Here’s an old post from the archives of B & G to remind you why you should.  Also, here’s a post to tell you another way you can celebrate the Fourth for the rest of the week.

The Pundits are Coming for You

Step away from the squirrel and 13 other reasons to build your own bicycle

… the building of my newest build marked my first building of a build from the frame up. And I’m gosh darned happy with the way my build was built.

What follows is an overly detailed account of building a bicycle. But if you’re interested in building a pretty snazzy two-wheeled ecstasy machine for around $600, you may find some useful information here.

I’m a little reluctant to use the word “build” for what I did. As everyone’s favorite bicycling snarkalufagus*, BikesnobNYC, has noted, unless you’re wearing a welding mask you’re not building a bicycle. What you’re doing is assembling a bicycle. However, the use of this word both as a verb and a noun (e.g. that’s a nice build) is fairly widespread among cyclists and bike tinkerers, so I’ll go with it.

Let it be known that when I endeavored to build myself a bike I was not completely inept with a wrench. I worked construction for more than a few years, doing everything from finish carpentry to building swimming pool filtration systems, and I’ve always (since my middle school BMX days) done the basics on my own bikes. But the building of my newest build marked my first building of a build from the frame up. And I’m gosh darned happy with the way my build was built.

I decided to start from scratch for a few reasons, the first of which is that I had something specific in mind, something you can’t just walk into your local bike shop and procure. A steel-framed bike with affordable but quality modern components that would be: fast (enough); a good all-around, do-everything road bike; and easy to set up randonneuring(ish)[ly] with a handlebar bag and large saddlebag for superlightweight trips that last a night or two.

You can buy something like that, but in general you’d have to order it and you’re looking at >$2,000, keeping in mind that $2,000 is below the cost of most mass-produced “enthusiast” level road bikes with carbon fiber frames. As an alternative, you could get a bike made specifically for loaded touring in the $1,000 range — the Surly Long Haul Trucker comes to mind, and it’s a fine bike — but they’re heavy and come with lots of geehaws and whimmididdles and are geared lower than what I wanted. And I wanted to spend substantially less than $1,000 if possible. Also important: I wanted to build a bike.

I’m sold on the Rivendell / Velo Orange philosophy that most of the people who buy road bikes aren’t getting what they need (or really want for that matter). After years of BMX and mountain biking, I bought my first road bike in 2004 because I wanted to enter a sprint triathlon. The bike I ended up with was one of those aluminum Cannondales with an ugly, oversized down tube. Mediocre and ubiquitous, these are like the James Franco of bicycles. It had a decent parts mix of mostly Shimano 105 stuff and because it was the previous year’s model, I got it for an even grand with pedals and shoes thrown in. Because my only prior experience with a road bike had been the early-80s Yokota that my cousin lent me when I started college, I was generally impressed by the Cannondale’s ability to do things like shift into the correct gear. For a while this was enough. I used the Cannondale on and off for the next six years, mainly to do 20-30 mile rides on the country roads near my house and to enter a handful of triathlons. I never once entered a bicycle race or took part in one of those high-stakes, three-inches-from-death group rides that I sometimes read about but are probably only myths, like the Chupacabra or soft-spoken Long Islanders.

Then about two years ago, on a whim, I bought an early 80s Peugeot road bike for my work commute. There are lots of crappy-as-all-get-out Peugeots for sale on Craigslist, but this one was decent. It had 700c Mavic aluminum wheels on it (instead of 27″ steel monstrosities), and some Simplex drivetrain parts, not too shabby. I slapped some 32mm tires on it (most road bikes come with the far-too-skinny 23mm variety). I use the word slap here, but what transpired was more like being in a cage fight with Rampage Jackson. They were Vittoria Randonneurs, which had good reviews online, but when I took the bike to a now-defunct local shop for a once-over they had the same problem with the tires and ended up cutting them off and throwing them away, which they didn’t intend to do. So when they replaced the brake cables (and the tires of course) they threw in a gratis pair of aero brake levers, which are infinitely more comfortable than those old school things with the cables coming off the tops. Sorry purists, not everything vintage is better, or even good for that matter. Vintage frames: Yes, sometimes. Vintage brakes and brake levers: Rarely.

What later transpired was a slow epiphany. I’d convinced my nextdoor neighbor Richard that he really really needed a bicycle (what have you done for the world lately?) and when I found a pristine, stored-in-the-garage-since-1984 Motebecane with upgrades like Shimano 105 indexing down tube shifters for $130, he jumped on it.

For a while I rode the Cannondale when I went out for solo rides and rode the Peugeot both to work and when I went out for more leisurely jaunts with Richard. Say what you want about the two of us cruising merrily out to Jordan Lake on a pair of French bicycles, rarely breaking 20 mph, but eventually I stopped riding the Cannondale. Sure, it had the nifty brifters, and the 18 different speeds were sometimes convenient, but the ride quality was akin to being on a mechanical bull after taking a bunch of Sudafed — bone rattling and about as predictable as strapping yourself to a couple of rabid squirrels.

The Peugeot was just a lot more fun to ride, especially after I invested in a Brooks saddle.  Eventually Richard and I were doing 60-mile days without feeling like we’d picked a fistfight with a couple of silverback gorillas. The trouble was that I was gradually realizing that both the Cannondale and the Peugeot were too small for me. The Peugeot was advertised on Craigslist as a 56cm, when in fact it is more like a 53cm, and the Cannondale was a 54cm, which is what the bike store I bought it from told me I needed, even though I’m 5′ 10″. Eventually I sold the Cannondale and managed to continue making the Peugeot work. Sort of. Not only is it too small for me, but it’s French (and it’s for sale, incidently), which means that replacing pedals, headset, bottom bracket, stem, seat post, etc… would be difficult. Because the rest of the world is not French. So I’ve been secretly building the bike I really want for the past 6 months or so.  In all I’ve probably spent no more than 20 hours working on the thing, and somewhere in the ball park of $600, but it took me six months to gradually acquire parts off eBay (with a few new components from the Velo Orange and Rivendell sites).

Behold, a totally rad 56cm 1986 Trek 660 with a mix of modern Nitto, Shimano and Velo Orange parts. I have since adjusted the saddle a bit, but this is it. The ride is like a racehorse instead of a squirrel: fast, powerful, predictable, smooth. Amen.

The most difficult tasks I had to do to get this bike rolling all came about in the earliest stages. I bought the Trek frame off Craigslist for $50 — a decent mid/upper level racing steed (it has the word Ultegra written on the chain stays) that dated to a year when Def Leppard was pouring some sugar on us and I had just discovered that I could get Elon College’s (now Elon University) radio station in my rural home if I held my mouth just right while turning the FM dial all the way to the left (yes, that’s a song reference). I framesaved the frame. Or I JP Weigled it. Whatever. And then I had to “cold set” the rear dropouts because way back in 1986 rear dropouts were spaced 126mm apart to accommodate rear cassettes with six cogs. Modern rear hub/cassette combos are 130mm, and so are rear dropouts on frames.

The good news: You can cold set a steel frame, which isn’t possible with other materials such as aluminum or carbon fiber. The bad news: Cold setting is a fancy term for bending. The other good news: You can find out how to do anything to a bicycle online, often in the form of a video tutorial. Though I love and respect what’s going on at the Sheldon Brown website, their suggested method is to lay the frame on its side and spread the dropouts with a 2 x 4.  Scary. Instead, I went for the method suggested on the Vintage Trek site, which is to take a long piece of all-thread and some washers and nuts, insert in the dropouts, and crank the nuts to spread the dropouts. Still a little scary because I needed to spread the dropouts to around 160mm to get them to stay at 130mm once the all-thread was removed. Either method can throw off frame alignment, which lives somewhere south of desirable, but I checked the alignment with string and found that I was fine — cold setting accomplished.

Feeling hubrisly about myself, I moved on to other tasks that I read would be difficult but turned out to be not so difficult. When I bought the frame, it came with headset and bottom bracket already installed, and I wanted to scrap both of those. Removal of the bottom bracket required a tool that I already had. Removal of the headset races is said to be a more advanced maneuver, but in fact is no more complicated than whacking a piece of metal with a hammer; the issue is that bike mechanics generally accomplish this with a $60 tool. But I made a similar tool out of a piece of copper pipe for $0. Likewise, pressing the new races into the head tube requires a special tool, which you can purchase for about $100 or make with a long piece of all thread and a couple of stacks of washers and nuts. I did the latter, of course, and it cost me about $5 to make.

The one surprise I encountered that I couldn’t deal with on my own:  I went with a Nitto Technomic stem, which is a quality bike component that I got new for $45. This is the old-style quill stem used in conjunction with a threaded fork and headset (much prettier than the threadless variety if you ask me). I assumed that the fork tube was straight inside, with a uniform diameter, but this turned out not to be the case. When I inserted the stem, it bottomed out at a certain point, a point that would have left the stem, and therefore the handlebars, higher than I needed.

This is where I was introduced to and subsequently had an illicit affair with and then eventually fell hard for Back Alley Bikes in Chapel Hill. I called them and they said that it was entirely within reason to cut an inch off the stem and that they have a relationship with a machine shop around the corner. I dropped the stem off at Back Alley, and they called me the next day saying it was ready. In one day, they took the stem around the corner, had it chopped at the machine shop, brought it back, and called me. The cost? $5.   I actually tried to give them more money, but they refused, saying that the machine shop owed them a favor and had done it for free. The $5 charge was for Back Alley’s time and effort. But I’ll tell you this:  $5 wouldn’t get a wholehelluvalot of time or effort out of me.

In retrospect I would have tried to purchase some of the components, new or used because they carry both, from Back Alley instead of getting them off eBay. I’m fine with the fact that I supported Velo Orange and Rivendell for some of the new components, but again, I wish I’d bought those at Back Alley. They’ll get my support in the future. In contrast, I have another story about dealing with another bike shop that juxtaposes quite flatulently with my experience at Back Alley. I’ll save that for another post because this one’s getting long and boring.

To wrap up, here was my rationale for the bike I ended up with:

• 80s Trek Frame: Steel, lugged, built in the USA and in excellent shape. To get a new frame like that made recently you’d pay at least $1,000. The only lugged steel frame I can think of for less than $1,000 is the Soma Stanyan, a beautiful, quality bike, no doubt, but not made in the U.S. Not that that’s a deal breaker, but even those are $730, so I think I did the right thing. Plus, I’m not going to baby this bike, I’m going to ride it.
• Drivetrain is all used stuff: Ultegra cranks, rear derailleur and cassette, and a 105 front derailleur. Shifters are new Dura Ace bar ends, which are essentially indestructible and, unlike brifters, I can fix them myself in a pinch if I’m on a mini tour. I went with 9 speed, which is the previous generation of Shimano components, and that significantly lowered the cost. And who really cares about one extra cog? I’ve also read that 10-speed chains are unreliably narrow.
• Some other components are used, such as the Shimano 105 brakes and aero levers.  Inexpensive and work just preciously.
• Wheels are new Mavic Open Sports with 105 hubs (I didn’t build them), which are inexpensive workhorses.
• Handlebars and stem are new Nitto, and the seat post is a new Velo Orange. I went with new because those are things that need to not break.
• Tires are the Bridgestone city 28s from the Peugeot: more confidence inspiring than 23s or 25s, but still sleek and fast.
• Brooks b-17 saddle from the Peugeot that’s just about broken in now. My buns love it.
• I wrapped the bars with cloth tape from Rivendell and finished them the haughty way, with hemp twine and shellac. Loverly.

*BikeSnob Eben Weiss is no longer in hiding.

I followed the Rivendell advice on assembling the bars, stem, and brake levers.

My stand is a cheapo thing I got off Craigslist a while back, but it works. The placement of the clamp at the bottom bracket made running shifter cables difficult when the bike was in the stand. Otherwise, it was fine for everything else.

I have Dura Ace components on my bicycle. Just thought I’d say that.

I bought the book Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance at a used bookstore. It is indispensible as a coaster for the pint of IPA that goes well with bar wrapping night. Otherwise, don’t bother with the book. The how-tos you can find by frisking the Google are much easier to understand.

Alternative Titles for Sarah Palin’s Book

1) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being an Idiot

 

Comment with your suggestions for other possible titles.

5 Beverages You Should Never Drink

In my endless quest to come up with useless lists for my useless twists, and because this blog ostensibly has something to do with alcohol, and because I often give suggestions on what to drink, I decided to come up with a list of things not to drink. Hopefully this ridiculous waste of your time is an antidote to the seriousness of the previous post. I’ll try not to make a habit of either extreme.

5) Wine coolers

You probably won’t have to worry about this one. I don’t think they’re sold anymore, but if you happen to stumble into a time machine set to 1988, you’ll need this advice. Remember Matilda Bay? I don’t. Nothing says, “I’m putting on my Hammer pants, mounting my rice rocket, and heading down to the strip in Myrtle Beach,” quite like this stomach-turning sugar-fest.

4) Icehouse

Or any ice beer for that matter. Pay a $2 cover at your local cheese bar, order some pitchers of Icehouse, throw in a few hot wings, and get ready for a date with a higher-than-recommended dosage of Ibuprofen and a quest to find the world’s softest toilet paper.

3) Boone’s Farm

See number 5.

2) King Cobra

With close runners up: Private Stock, Olde English 800, and St. Ides. Drink a 40 of the Cobra and consider yourself bitten. Simultaneously induces an overwhelming desire to kick other people’s asses while drastically increasing the probability that other people will have an overwhelming desire to kick your ass.

1) Cisco

aka “Liquid Crack.” The makers of this evil fortified wine, who also bring us Wild Irish Rose and aggressively market this swill in impoverished neighborhoods, were forced in 1991 by the Federal Trade Commission to drop the slogan, “Takes you by surprise,” from the product. Additionally, Cisco now comes with a warning on the label: “This is not a wine cooler.”

The effects of this stuff are legendary. I was standing next to a guy who was drinking this at a bonfire party some years ago. When he started casually sipping from the bottle, he was standing there quietly minding his own business and staring thoughtfully at the fire. Without warning, he developed an uncontrollable double restless leg syndrome, dancing in place like he had fire ants crawling up his legs. After a few minutes of the fire-ants dance, he screamed like a howler monkey and walked through the fire. Repeatedly. Entertaining? Yes. Dangerous? Absolutely.

Touching Moments in the Life of a Vagabond

It’s no secret, at least to my close family and friends, that my path to the so-called establishment has been non-linear. I prefer the term iconoclast, but call me what you will. While traveling this proverbial road and cobbling together a career (international development, for lack of a better term), I’ve been, to name just a few things, a waiter, a tutor, a bellboy, a clerk in a music store, a K-Mart employee, a martial arts instructor, a group-home manager, a swimming pool builder, a warehouser, a writer, an editor and a carpenter.

The last of those trades, carpentry, has served me the best financially, and I’ve leaned heavily on its advantages for several extended periods in my life. I’ve managed projects and contracted lots of jobs, but in all honesty, I prefer shunning responsibility, turning off my brain, buckling up my belt, and trimming out houses for other contractors in order to reserve mental energy for things I’m more passionate about. This approach paid my way through graduate school, subsidized lots of travel, allowed me some free time to write, and helped keep my life baggage light so that I might be able to pop off to places like Swaziland from time to time.

Recently, I’ve been up to the same, trying to bridge the gap between my most recent overseas excursion — the United Nations Delivering as One in Mozambique: Joint Programme for Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response — and whatever it is that a specialist in post-conflict countries does in North Carolina. Yes, that was a mouthful, and yes, it was spelled, ‘programme.’  Bloody British English. Call it the DRR project if you like. I did.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t mind building things, framing walls, remodeling kitchens, hanging doors. But it’s become tedious. Carpentry, you’ve served me well, but I no longer love you. I’m sorry.

This week I’ve been helping finish a room in a basement that was previously used as a storage room. The room is next to a basement apartment shared by a single mother and her 11 year-old son. The boy has been sleeping on the sofa and using the coffee table as his study desk; this new room will be his bedroom. His mother told me that this will mark the first time in her son’s life that he’s had his own room.

The first two days we built a closet, enclosed the room with drywall, installed electrical outlets, and added a window. The third day, we continued finishing the room, cut an opening into the apartment, and installed a door. Yesterday, when we showed up in the morning to work on the final touches of the project, we found a chair, seated in front of the new window, facing out. The boy had been sitting there in his new but unfinished room, staring out at the woods just beyond his window.

*Best bourbon to drink while remembering to appreciate the details, even while doing things you dislike: Woodford Reserve.

Artists and the Free Market: The Snuzz Story

image from http://trianglemusic.blogspot.com

Just over a week ago, I had the good fortune of attending Snuzzfest at Local 506 in Chapel Hill. Snuzz, a.k.a Britt Harper Uzzell, is a beloved North Carolina singer/songwriter/guitarist. I first saw him perform some time around the turn of the millenium at a small venue in the bustling town of Elon (I was home from god knows where for a visit) and he immediately won my respect by deftly and politely deflecting the moronic heckling of an inebriated good old boy (GOB) who had wandered in by accident. Snuzz was wearing his signature flat cap, and the very clever GOB remarked, quite loudly, that he wanted to “take a shit in it.” Why I remember these types of things and not which day the recycling truck comes is anybody’s guess. But that’s neither here nor there. Snuzz inhaled deeply — a breath filled with what I was sure would be a venomous burst of microphoned and amplified remarks about Mr. Shit-in-hat’s dirty sleeveless t-shirt, too-tight, knee-length jean shorts, and feathered mullet. That’s what I would have done. But Snuzz exhaled his venomless breath, smiled, quietly explained that the situation wasn’t worth the effort, and cranked out another wonderful tune.

It goes almost without saying that he’s an amazing talent. Great performer, unique delivery, brilliant guitar tone (sorry geeking out on you), and his musical resume really boggles my scrotum: played in Bus Stop, toured with Ben Folds, and was in International Orange with Django Haskins and Robert Sledge. That’s not casual name-dropping; he’s worked with and is respected by some of the most engaging, prolific and dang purty sounding musicians to come out of Cackalack.

Snuzzfest was a quickly organized affair to raise money for Mr. Uzzell, who has lymphoma and no health insurance. The event was incredibly pedigreed, with members or former members of some very well-known NC bands. I won’t get into all that: It’s already been written, and written better, at some of the the links provided in this post.  Better yet, listen here to Snuzz on the State of Things along with Tom Maxwell and Django Haskins.

The show was great. It began with a few quiet solo, duo and trio versions of some Snuzz standards by a few of his very gifted friends. The excellence of the songwriting was apparent: Each song carried a certain gravitational force around which the various interpretations revolved.  All of the performances were remarkable in some way, but Caitlin Cary signing “Like it Matters,” a song about the disconnect between the lonely inspiration of songwriting and the tedium of playing dive after dive after dive, nearly caused me to cry in public. I came so close to tears, in fact, that my “mildly” intoxicated friend and B & G consultant KP from over at My Blog Ate Your Blog asked me if I had swine flu. True story.

Things heated up as bigger ensembles got on stage.  Greg Humphreys played an infectious old Bus Stop number, Snuzz’s old bands Big Kids and International Orange reunited and rocked it after extended dormancies, and Snuzz’s current band, the Numbers, left me cursing the cosmos that I am destined to be such a mediocre musician.

Aside from all that, and aside from healthcare reform — that sumo belly slap of a political discussion that we could easily find ourselves in the middle of — Snuzzfest got me thinking about something in broader terms. Namely, the artist and his or her relative value in our society. Granted, healthcare and Snuzz’s lack of coverage is a big part of that, but it’s only one aspect of a greater question, at least for me.  But for a moment, let’s talk about healthcare. To get started, listen to this, NPR’s Rose Hoban interviewing first Snuzz and then Lynn Blakey of Tres Chicas about the question of musicians and healthcare.  Hoban notes that only 55 percent of professional musicians in the U.S. have health insurance with only 5 percent of those receiving coverage through their work as musicians; the remaining 95 percent are covered either through a spouse, a day job, or out of pocket. It was also noted in the story that Snuzzfest raised about $6,000 for Snuzz, while one diagnostic test alone cost approximately $7,000.

I find it appalling that the U.S. ranks so poorly with other developed (and some not-so-developed) countries in healthcare. Having a sudden illness or a quite commonplace and fixable accident can drive you to bankruptcy and ruin your life in this country, and it just shouldn’t be that way. Not only is it bad for the person, it’s bad for society.  I would ask those water cooler (and tractor) pundits out there who demonize other countries’ systems if they have ever been to, much less lived in, another country. This may be anecdotal and the sample size small, but I assure you that the people I’ve worked with around the world don’t want our current system. They can’t even fathom the idea. The very conservative Australian I worked with?  Nope, he’s quite happy that Australia has full access for everyone. The even more conservative Italian?  Ditto, he’ll take Italy’s system over ours any day. The Brits, the Portuguese? All the same story. Granted, the system in Mozambique, where I worked recently, was terrible, but you could have guessed that, right? Here’s a great slogan:  “U.S. Healthcare, Better than Mozambique.” Take that to your town hall meeting and wear it on a t-shirt.

I’ll also say that I don’t think the bill currently in question goes far enough.  It has some good things in it, but I’m just not sure if the American public has the collective stomach for even these small changes, which, as my good friend and respectable insurance advisor over at Chip Millard’s Weblog has noted, may raise a lot of people’s premiums in the short run.  And as far as broader reform is concerned, I’m pessimistic.  What we’re talking about is an interest group political economy smackdown with a 24-hour media cycle / public opinion tag team.  It ain’t pretty.

Now back to my original thought: the value of artists in society. I can already feel it coming, and it’s a good thing that nobody reads this blog because before I even get started I can sense the ignoble nonplussitude brewing in the anonymity of the internet. Someone named jackmioff69 is going to call me a socialist, which means that thoughtful discourse is over before it starts and that I am obliged to retort by calling him names, and on and on ad infinitum. But here we go anyway.

Let’s say, for example, a youngster decides to attend an art school, or to pursue some sort of fine arts degree at a liberal arts college. He has some talent, and art, music, drama, etc… is something he loves. He comes from a family with little means — which fuels the body of work he will later produce — so he has to rely in part on loans to get himself through school. He comes out with a substantial burden of debt. On the other hand, someone else who lives down the block with a similarly humble upbringing decides to get a degree in business or computer science or some such thing. This person ends up with the same amount of debt, but actually finds a financially lucrative career path just out of school and is able to very quickly eradicate that debt. Meanwhile, the musician (we’ll go with a musician here) plays in a few area bands, gives some lessons on the side, and works in a coffee shop. He struggles to pay his debts  (much less his rent) while living in the same community as the business major, who wears a tie during the day and visits the musician’s coffee shop because the musician is also an excellent barista. The business major also enjoys the brilliant and thriving local music scene on the weekends and sends his child to get guitar lessons from the musician, who, by the way, is still barely getting by. These two people have skill sets that cost the same to acquire but carry very different market values.

What I’m getting at is this. Artists contribute a great deal to society, while most get paid very little for their work, and the rest of us get a whole lot for next to nothing. The places artists tend to live have music and galleries and small theaters and great restaurants. These places are more aesthetically pleasing. They are cool. And advertisers, administrators, computer programmers, and building contractors all like living there. Because it’s pleasant. Because there’s entertainment. Because those musicians are funky and beautiful when they bring out that salad and glass of wine. Artists add a tremendous amount of real property value to an area, but most get very little in return.

Of course I don’t have a solution for this, but I promise to work on it. I’m a big proponent of free market economics for things like mp3 players or running shoes, but in this situation, the system breaks down. If you don’t believe me, then don’t support arts or artists at all, wait until they starve or move, and then go listen to a band full of bankers. Hope you like it.

 

11 Reasons Not to Hate Technology: Reason 4, Podcasts

I haven’t actually come up with a list of 11 reasons, and I don’t know where I’d rank this if I did. But, along with political extremism and free porn, it’s something that seems very popular on the web these days. Making lists that is.

Embracing new forms of media technology to the detriment of more traditional forms of media is something that I’ve shunned, or at least lamented, in the past. But I’m not a crotchety old man just yet, and I’m not above changing my mind. Some little snippets of new media I hadn’t explored until recently were podcasts. Probably most people with an internet connection know what they are, and certainly, most of those people are more familiar with them than I am — or at least than I was. But gosh darnit, I’ll have to say that I’m a fan now. There are lots of podcasts to choose from of course: Try listening to a weekly rundown from The Economist, a daily dose from Slate, or an investigative story from the BBC on your way to work. Better yet, take This American Life with you on that boring 45-minute drive to visit your mother. Podcasts allow the convenience of having these shows with you when you get a chance to listen to them. These shows and news sources aren’t new to me, but now I have them when and where I want them.

Dig around a little more, and you can find something amazing, though.  Something you haven’t encountered before. For example, The New Yorker has a series of podcasts in which famous (this is a relative term these days) writers read some of their favorite short stories by other famous writers — short stories that have previously appeared in The New Yorker.

In order to get an idea of how great these are, start with “One With a Bullet.” This is one of my favorite writers reading one of my favorite stories by another of my favorite writers: T.C. Boyle reading “Bullet in the Brain,” by Tobias Wolff, and then discussing the story with The New Yorker‘s fiction editor Deborah Treisman. Boyle’s reading is skillful and entertaining; he’s said before that he prefers to say that he performs stories rather than reads them because reading sounds so boring. He then discusses why the story works so well and what’s unusual about it without embarking on the usual esoteric wankery of literary theory.

photo from USC faculty profiles

There’s a lot of horse shit out there that passes for literature, and often it seems that modern short story writers are out to punish us rather than entertain us, which may be contributing to the decline of the genre.  Short stories used to matter. Not so much anymore. These little podcasts from The New Yorker prove that short fiction can still be entertaining and relevant. Oh, and they’re free.