Today I write about copyright law and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen over at The Morning News.
By the way, this article contains the conjunction “contrawise,” which I hereby declare to be a Real Word. Please begin using it forthwith.
Update: I am now a Contributing Writer for The Morning News.
I’m slated to appear on KUOW’s Weekday tomorrow at 10:00 to blather on about blogs. You can listen to it live (either at 94.9 FM if you live in the Seattle area, or via webcast if you live elsewhere). Or you can find it in the Weekday Archives after the fact and listen to it then. Or you can not listen to it at all — see if I care, you jerk.
If there’s some particular aspect of blogging you think should be discussed, feel free to mention it in the comments. (Note: “VISIT MY SITE IT R0X0R!!!!” does not constitute an “aspect of blogging.”)
Update: If you are a Seattle Blogger but your site is not yet listed at seablogs.hellbent.org you can use this online form to add yourself. This is where I will be pointing those listeners looking for local weblogs.
The theme for the Metro 2003 Poetry On The Buses 2003 project is “Lost and Found,” and a poem I wrote is included.
Firstly! I was on NPR’s Marketplace last Friday doing my Legonomics shtick. You can listen to it online (RealAudio link). My piece is dead last, about 25 minutes into the 28 minute broadcast. Apparently Matthew Baldwin is a “freelance writer” — who knew?
Also! I am quite waaaaay behind on book and movie reviews, so you can expect a veritable passel of those this week.
Furthermore! Last night I dreamt that I became a millionaire selling t-shirts that read “Well Slap Me With Brie And Call Me French: I Oppose The War In Iraq!”
In Conclusion! If Reader’s Digest ever featured a “Drama in Real-Life” entitled Slapped By Brie!, I would totally read it.
I will be appearing on the NPR radio show Rewind this weekend as one of their resident Know-It-Alls. So if you’ve ever wanted to hear the yeti howl, this is your big chance. You can also listen to it online — my schtick begins approximately 28 minutes in.
The question I responded to was:
High school student and basketball phenom LeBron James is skipping college entirely and going straight to the NBA. And why shouldn’t he? What does college offer that fame and fortune does not?
My reply:
As I see it, college has two distinct advantages over fame.
First, in college you can wholeheartedly believe any stupid idea that comes along and no one will fault you for it. People assume that whatever crazy doctrine you currently subscribe too, you’ll soon take another class or read another book that will send you off in new philosophical direction. After reading “On Walden Pond” you honestly believe that, upon graduation, you are going to renounce all your worldly possessions (except for your Phish CDs, obviously) and move to a remote cabin by a lake. And you tell your friends and family this, and they’re, like, “That’s a beautiful dream! We support you!” But inside they’re thinking “Oh well, no need to worry. Next semester he’ll take economics and be all like ‘Greed is good! Invisible hand, yo!’.”
You can’t get away with that when you’re famous. If you announce that you deeply committed to some position or another people will hold you to it forever. How many college kids, back in 2000, said they were going to move out of the country if Bush won the election? All of them, that’s how many. But no one asks them why they’re still around. Alec Baldwin, on the other hand — that poor chump is still getting grief making such threats. Unlike college students, he can’t just brush it off with a “Oh dude, whatever: I was totally stoned when I said that.” And look at Trent Lott. If he were attending a university he could have just said “Oh yeah, I was way into segregation a few weeks ago? But this semester I’m, you know, taking a class in African American history? And now I think diversity is, like, awesome!”
College is like a big roleplaying game: three times a year you get a Course Catalog and have the opportunity to completely reinvent your personality. “Okay,” you say, “I’m going to start this year with Ecology and Renaissance Literature and Nutrition,” and you’re essentially deciding, in advance, that for the next three months you’re going to be a tree-hugging Eurocentric health-nazi. You take a class on Jean-Paul Satre, mope around for a season while listening to The Smiths and declaiming about the pointlessness of life, and your buddies just shrug their shoulders and gently suggest that, next quarter, you might skip “Existentialism 102” and take Microbiology instead.
Famous people don’t have that luxury. We have these platonic ideals of celebrities — Barbara Streisand is liberal and Charlton Heston is a gun-lover and Shirley MacLaine is a nut — and we don’t like anyone messin’ with those, not even the celebrity in question. But in college you can mix ‘n’ match opinions and beliefs like Geranimals, and no one thinks twice. Bruce Willis is doomed to be Bruce Willis forever, but, in college, you can be anyone you want to be, one month at a time.
The second great thing about college is the free condoms.