Dogged Blog

You're not going to blog about this, are you?

In the last week, two different people asked me fearfully if a conversation we were having was going to end up on my blog. One was a virtual stranger and the other a close friend.

I've read about this phenomenon before, mostly trepidation among the children of mommy bloggers. But it's not unique to them. In fact, my vet mentioned to me once that she hoped when people read some of my negative comments about something a veterinarian said or did that people didn't always assume it was her. I just never extrapolated it out to, you know... the entire world.

I don't share personal information about other people on my blog -- names, addresses, what kind of pajamas they wear. Well, sometimes names, if the person is well-known to my readers, like my friend/editor/Pet Connection colleague Gina Spadafori. But yeah, my blogging, here and everywhere else, is full of snippets of conversations, ideas sparked by someone else's experience, and other examples of me turning life into blog fodder.

In some ways, that's my highest compliment: you made me think. You crawled into my brain. You inspired me.

Some of you don't see it that way, especially if you think there's the tiniest chance that you'll be identifiable in what I write, either because I named you or, more usually, because I gave just enough information that mutual friends can figure it out.

It's not that I don't have a life, that I don't experience it independent of its blog-worthiness. It's more about how I see the world, and always have. I remember walking home from school or sitting bored in classes or at church, telling myself stories in my head. Sometimes it was a simple running narrative of what was happening at the moment, and at other times it a form of commentary. Yes, I editorialized at a very young age. 

People who don't do this might think it distances you from life, but I don't find that to be true. It makes me pay sharper attention, notice more details, and at the same time lets me perceive things more organically, more as a whole moment, place, or incident.

In fact, I've long thought this way of perceiving the world is exactly what made me a writer.

Which isn't to say I don't care how those of you feel who don't like seeing yourselves turn up in my blog posts, columns, or articles. Of course I care. Why else would I be blogging about it now?

Blogging the Xena convention

I'm blogging the Xena convention over at AfterEllen.com... come on by!

What do Xena: Warrior Princess, Marion Nestle, my dog Kyrie, and Scott Walker have in common?

I like Facebook, I really do. I have to work on a lot of different things all day long, and I like to take a few seconds to share a link or joke with a friend (actual or social network versions alike) about something when I task-shift. It's fun, and it seems to re-set my brain.

I also hate Facebook, for all the usual reasons people hate things like that and that I won't rehash, but specifically because I sometimes shoot off a one-liner there, or share a link, that might normally have turned into a post here.

And yes, I'm aware I haven't been blogging here as much as I should. There are only so many things I want to blog about that someone somewhere isn't willing to pay me to blog about for them instead, and the stuff that remains I keep wasting on Facebook.

Here's one that's going elsewhere: This afternoon, Xena: Warrior Princess blogging commences on the blog at AfterEllen.com, as the 14th Annual Xena Convention gets under way. I have interviews with Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor to share, plus KT Jorgensen's live reportage and photojournalism from the con floor -- and backstage! -- as well. (Note to KT: See how I spelled your last name right this time? You'd think after knowing someone for like a decade and a half, a girl could manage that.)

Also this weekend, my impressions of my second viewing of "Scott Walker:30 Century Man" go up at ClubKingsnake.com.

And Kyrie's staph infection just flared up again, for the first time in months. I think I caught it before it got out of hand, and I'll be blogging about some of what I've learned about managing a dog who is carrying resistant staph over at PetConnection.

As for the rest, well... maybe you should friend me on Facebook, where you'll learn that I'm about to walk out the door to have breakfast at the Cafe Flore with one of my heroes, Dr. Marion Nestle!

That's the LEGENDARY Lou Reed to you...

I don't know exactly what year it was, sometime in the late 70s I guess. I was lying on my back listening to a bootleg recording of a Patti Smith concert with my girlfriend.

Like most bootlegs, the sound quality was horrible. But I worshipped Patti Smith and really, back then, it was enough for me to hear her sing.

She started a song I didn't know, not one of hers. I couldn't understand the spoken intro because it was garbled, and after a few minutes, I sat up. "What... what is this?" I asked my girlfriend.

"White Light, White Heat," she said. "It's a Velvet Underground song."

"Oh," I said. "Oh."

And that's how I discovered Lou Reed.

What got me remembering this is that a friend posted a snippet of Antony singing a Leonard Cohen song to her Facebook page last night. Antony is not well-known by the general public, but musicians know him and his slippery, bewildering, beautiful voice very well.

One of those musicians is Velvet Underground founding member Lou Reed, who invited him to be part of a series of now-legendary performances of Reed's album "Berlin" that were filmed by Julian Schnabel and became a concert movie that debuted last year at SXSW in Austin.

I was at that screening, and just after the lights went down, Lou Reed himself walked down the center aisle and slipped into the seat directly across from mine. It's a testament to the film and the concert that I eventually forgot he was there; it can be very distracting to have one of your idols sitting three seats away from you while you watch him perform a work that itself had affected you powerfully from the very first time you heard it.

"Berlin" has been described as a "rock musical," but that's not how I see it. I'd say it's more of a concept album, although to be honest, it really couldn't matter less. It's a collection of songs about a time, a place, and a small group of people; about destruction and suffering, and little pieces of love that never add up to enough.

Some of its songs, well, I don't know what to call them except for perfect: "Caroline Says," "Sad Song," "Oh, Jim."

And you know, that album sank like a fucking stone when it was released in 1973, and now it's on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest rock albums of all time.

I went to YouTube to find a link to Antony singing in the film of "Berlin" to share with my Facebook friend. And I found one; it's at the end of this post. It's actually from the encore and is an old Velvet Underground song called "Candy Says," not from "Berlin" at all, but it should give you an idea of what Antony's voice is like, and also, what Lou Reed's is like now.

Which isn't good, as several clueless folks pointed out in the comments, as if Lou Reed fans are just stoopid and somehow hadn't noticed and if it were only brought to our attention, we'd stop liking him.

And then I realized why I got so angry last night, in my post ranting about an email I got saying that Scott Walker's music sucks.

Scott Walker isn't like Lou Reed in the sense that he's lost his voice; his voice was always one of the most beautiful in rock, and it's still an incredible instrument, haunting and pure, even if the music he's using it to sing is unsettling. But his music has gone off in a direction most of his fans, including me, find difficult to follow. Or even impossible.

But he's like Lou Reed in that both men have had incredible influences on other musicians, and sparked huge musical transformations that are still going on today, while themselves flying under most people's radar. I think it's fair to say that had Lou Reed never recorded "Walk on the Wild Side," most people reading this would not know his name at all. It's probably apocryphal, but Brian Eno supposedly said that almost no one bought the first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did went out and started a band.

Of course I know Lou Reed can't sing. (Neither, for that matter, can Leonard Cohen.) Of course I think Scott Walker is, at least creatively, batshit insane.  It's just that I don't care, because  those artists are at the roots of pretty much every single bit and shred of music that I've cared about in my entire life.

Lou Reed's "White Light, White Heat" is the song that invented punk. Scott Walker transformed the face of alternative music forever. They can't just be dismissed because they're obscure or the voice is gone. They're legends. It's not about liking them; it's about knowing who they are.

My mini-review of "Lou Reed's 'Berlin'" from last year's SXSW film festival, and notes on an audience Q&A with Reed, are here; my liveblogging of his keynote address is here. The photos on this post were taken by my Club Kingsnake colleague, photographer Clint Gilders, during that address.

And this is Antony, singing "Candy Says" with Lou Reed:

It's okay to not like Scott Walker, but do you have to be such an idiot about it?

Okay, I recognize that I'm about to be irrational. If that might bother you, feel free to, you know, move along.

There are things in life I do not like, that other people do. Most famously among them: cilantro and Crocs. Many of my friends (hi, Gina!) like these things, like them very  much. I remain friends with them. I don't doubt their sanity nor their powers of reason. I simply accept that it takes all kinds of personal preferences to fuel a competitive global economy.

There are times, in fact, when I glory in the diversity of human experience. I mean, if I had to compete not only with the other people who find my girlfriend hot but every person now living on the planet, that would be very exhausting.

Who we find attractive, the shoes we like, the television shows that grab us, the music we enjoy listening to, all these things are simple personal preferences and matters of some kind of chemistry or magic.

But how we express our likes and dislikes, and the way we talk about those of other people, gets into an entirely different zone. The zone where everyone who knows me is tapping his or her foot and going, for the love of god Christie stop rambling and qualifying and tell us what the fuck has you pissed off before we slap you silly and make you wear Crocs.

So fine. Here it is:

I don't care if you like or don't like Scott Walker. I don't care if you enjoy his music of the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, or the new millennium. I don't care if you enjoyed Stephen Kijak's film about him or not.

But if you're going to spew out your opinions on either of those subjects, and dismiss either or both as lame, bad, or disappointing, it would be nice if you had some kind of basis for your opinion, if you could put either thing into context in some way, in other words, if you knew what the fuck you were talking about before you informed all the people on the Interwebz of your views on the subject.

Scott Walker is considered by many of the best known and most respected musicians in the world to be a genius and a major influence on not only their work but the entire field of alternative music. It's fine if you don't like him. I honestly don't care. But when you shrug off who he is and how he fits into the music world as if listening to a few songs by him gives you the ability to put him into any kind of context... oh god, someone make me shut up.  Honestly, I shouldn't write when I'm this pissed off.

As for Stephen's film, if you don't like it, that's also fine. But critique it in a way that respects it, that shows some remote understanding of its structure or themes, the craft that went into it, or the field of musical documentary filmmaking. I have a friend who didn't care for it, and when she published a critique of it in her blog, I didn't come here and rant about it. I read it, I saw where she was coming from, and while I didn't see it the same way, she had a foundation for her criticism and I respected that.

But the little girl who wrote me that she's "disappointed Gale Harold put his name on something so weak.... about a musician no one's ever heard of" needs to get her head out of her ass. A hundred years from now, when we're all dust and every TV show Gale Harold has ever been in is forgotten, people will still be making and listening to music that has its roots in Scott Walker's work. And I'll bet that "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" will outlive "Desperate Fucking Housewives" into eternity, too.

If I had blood pressure medication I'd take it. I don't, so I did this instead. I now return you to your normally calm and rational Dogged blogging.

PSA: AfterElton.com loves you. Really.

I get a lot of email about my blog posts at AfterElton.com, particularly when I blog about Gale Harold as I did last night. The traffic shoots through the roof on those posts, but the comments? Nada.

Most of the private emails I get are from female Queer as Folk fans saying the kinds of things our readers normally post on the blog itself. When I've asked some of them why they don't comment right on my post, some say they feel like they shouldn't participate at AfterElton.com because it's a site for gay men.

Hello, I write there and I am a girl. Lots of women, lesbian, bi, and straight, post at AfterElton. Yes, it's a gay and bisexual men's entertainment media site, and yes, most of the site users are gay men. But I have it on the best authority that everyone is welcome to post there.

So if you have something nice to say, by all means, say it there.

If you want to tell me I suck or share girly supersekrit information, well, best to keep that to yourself. ;)

/PSA

The Warrior Princess Effect

I used to suffer terribly from pre-interview nerves. I could be talking to a local family vet about flea control, and for the hours leading up to the interview I was restless, anxious, and sick to my stomach. If I was interviewing someone fairly well known or someone with serious academic credentials, like a scientist or head of a department at a vet school, it was even worse. Sometimes I couldn't even sleep the night before.

You can see the problem.

Fortunately that all went away after a while, and now I pretty much feel completely calm before all my interviews, no matter who they're with (other than a slight relapse this summer when I got to interview Rep. Barney Frank).  I've interviewed very famous people like Sean Penn and very smart people like Dr. Marion Nestle, and while I certainly prepared for those interviews, I wasn't at all nervous beforehand. (And for the record, Sean Penn, who I'd been warned was a very difficult interview, was genuinely lovely. Go figure.)

There is one huge, glaring exception to this new-found calm, though. Whenever I interview "Xena: Warrior Princess" stars Lucy Lawless (Xena) or Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle), it's like I'm back in journalism school and suddenly had the chance to interview the President.

I mean, I've interviewed Sharon Stone, Alan Cumming, Josh Brolin, James Franco, Gus Van Sant, Gale Harold, Karen Black, and dozens of other actors, filmmakers, and reality TV "stars" including Christian Siriano from Project Runway. I've talked to politicians, scientists, and other reporters. I've even interviewed A-list bloggers -- who believe me, in my world are celebrities. I've interviewed people I idolize, and people who've made films about people I idolize.

And no one affects me the way Lucy and Renee do.

Yes, I love "Xena" in all its crazy, campy, lovable splendor. Yes, it had a powerful impact on me at a formative age. And yes, they have teh pretty, both of them.

But they're also remarkably down-to-earth people, politically admirable, with relationships with their fans and the media that are at the same time friendly and unaffected and also very professional.

Is it just fangirlitis that has me nearly unable to eat my breakfast the morning before I talk to one of them? Tell me, oh readers; indulge me with some two-bit psychoanalysis: what's up with that?

Change Google can believe in at whitehouse.gov

I just read this at Mother Jones:

Speaking of Google ratings, Jason Kottke points to the new website's robots.txt file, which tells search engines what parts of the site to include in results, as "a small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government today." The Bush administration's version of the robots.txt file had 2400 lines of code for what it didn't want people finding on Google. The Obama administration has one.

Oh Barack Obama how I love thee.

Get to know us first: What I missed during the inauguration yesterday

All over California, in every county that voted to pass Prop 8, one or more of these genuinely astonishing public service announcements from GetToKnowUsFirst.org aired during yesterday's televised inauguration coverage. (That's why I, who live in San Francisco, didn't see them.) They introduced viewers to several same-sex couples and their families.

The first one features an African-American couple with four kids. One of them is in Spanish and profiles a Latino couple with two adopted daughters and a big, supportive extended family.

Tag line? "Marriage promotes families. Support marriage equality. GetToKnowUsFirst.org."

The PSAs were shown in 42 of California's 58 counties, on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Despierta America (Univision), Levantate (Telemundo), CNN, FoxNews and many local stations. Only one television station declined to air them -- in, of all places, Los Angeles, where KABC decided the first ad, featuring two African-American dads and their four children, was too controversial to air, get this, when families are watching.

Maybe the people at whom they're aimed will hate them. Maybe they'll make things worse. Maybe they're exactly the wrong thing to do. I don't know. What I do know is that they're entirely different than anything we've tried before, and at this point, that has to be good.

I think my favorite one is the first one, with the Latino couple a close second. It's in Spanish, but I followed it easily with nothing more than high school Spanish and living in California my whole life.

The one with two lesbians, no kids, and their dogs didn't work for me, even though really, it should have, because, well... dogs.

So tell me, hetero readers. I know you're all beautifully liberal and support my equality under the law, but you probably still have a bit more objectivity on this than I: do you think these are effective messages? Clearly they won't reach true haters; will they reach anyone?

Day 1 and counting

I promise to actually blog again soon. In fact, likely later today.

Until then, here's something to make you smile, and if it doesn't, you may not be very happy here:

Obama Countdown
created by James Miller