gecko, behind the Dali

I'm not trying to be surreal; this is just what happens when you live in the subtropics through a long sticky summer: things hide behind other things that shouldn't be there but they are. I have a lot of Dali posters scattered throughout my house. Absolutely none can match the thrill of seeing the original in person, but we try to reproduce life as we can – it's human nature.

Besides, in my neck of the woods it is possible to see some of Salvador Dali's 2-story tall paintings live. Now, art museum etiquette frowns on folks taking photos of masterpieces, but in our ubiquitous digital world, there's no longer any real vigilance against this practice. I saw plenty of iPhones snapping in the museum, trying in vain to capture the enormity, the textures, the details, but it can't happen. Even my reproductions barely scratch the surface - I sometimes wonder why I bother. There are art gallery websites, of course, that allow us to magnify each sector of the world's art output, but it's all still web resolution artifacts and device-dependent pixels. Maybe that's why the Dali doesn't truly police their no-photo law: they know nothing can replace the experience of eyes-on-canvas.

The live music world has long ago lost that battle as well; but I believe they now actively court an audience that comes armed with their tech, so the next day I can see the whole event replayed on YouTube. (Was that me in that crowd shot?) Seriously, sitting in the balcony at the Pet Shop Boys show, I beheld the sweaty swath of audience below me, hundreds of phone screens shining brightly at me, hundreds of phone screens instagramming, facebooking, probably YouTubing. In fact, while sitting in a mezzanine lounge before the concert, I gazed down at 2 couples at a table directly below me. All were animated in conversation, all were manhandling their phones, texting, swiping through photo galleries and who knows what else at the same time - and these were people my age, not tweens.

I had the thrill of attending two concerts in one weekend and my digital life allowed me to not only preview the set lists from previous tour stops, but also scope out fan photos of the swag booths. (which makes sense, because at the swag booths, there were more people snapping pix of the merchandise than standing in line to purchase.) And sure, the kid in front of me was pulling up the Depeche Mode setlist so he knew what was happening before it was happening, but I swear I saw him go to iTunes to search for which song being played was on what album and he might have even purchased it right then and there. Internet advertisers, take note: this is interactive marketing at its most immediate and sublime. 

As an aside, I also truly believe that very soon there will be a whole explosion in augmenting our appendages via plastic surgery. Right now there is no defense against "zombie thumbs" as devices get smaller. The only solution: shave off most of our thumbs in order to be more stylus-like. No matter, the kid at the concert thumb-typed at least 85+ wpm (although I hope he isn't using autocorrect, one of the true scourges of the digital world).

So, my only digital question left is: no one raises their lighters anymore in our nanny-state during ballads. Is there an app for that yet?

Dead tree media, eulogized

Part of my 2013 reconstruction is to thin out the herd of space and mind-controlling media. Not just to supplement my pea-sized income, but to curb my enthusiasm for acquisition for acquisition's sake. I just listed my entire collection of Disney's commemorative D23 magazines on amazon.com. If you haven't seen them, they're these ultra-ultra-glossy 11-something by 12-something delicacies with "Life"-sized photos all Laura-Palmered in cellophane (the super-strong print ink smell that makes me swoon is hopefully disney-fied non-toxic). The mag is a treasure for collectors: one part history, one part sell-the-parks, one part sell-the-new-movies. Compared to trolling for news on the internet, the magazine experience, for me, was always more intoxicating.

I didn't start subscribing to magazines until I returned to Tampa Bay back in '98. Before that, magazines were the little stacks of love that I scooped up during my weekly excursions to book and record stores. Barnes & Noble remains the last vestige of the awe-inspiring wall of magazines - but  I accept they are but a dim reflection of what they used to be. Back in the day, even Borders could sometimes be counted on, in some cities, to provide a cornucopia, a cavalcade of glossy goodness from all over the world, for every stereotype and inclination. Quasi-counterculture digs like Tower Records always had such interesting and controversial rags in their stacks, some looking like they'd been mimeographed in the backroom earlier in the day. 

As a grand aside: one of the perks of being in New York City in the '80s was the ever-present newsstands that sat like sentinels on many major thoroughfares. Just like in the movies, the newsstand guy never claimed to be a library and gave you the stinkeye if you perused for too long. Melody Maker, NME and all those cool Brit music rags were hysterically expensive, but mine for the peeking.

Ultimately, sadly, with the advent of digitized media, the allure of magazines has certainly diminished. It has helped, of course, that 99% of them have folded up or reinvented themselves online, where - arguably - it is function over form and the eye candy has been sorely neglected due to concerns about downloading speeds and how much of one's dataplan is being sucked up. Stupid internet.

The last two journals I subscribed to filled a specific niche, allowing me to lull myself to sleep over their instructive but beautiful photos: Coral Magazine, for the days when I intensely cultivated a saltwater reef tank and a late lamented curated enclave called Backyard Living with great recipes for tropical container gardens and pond fountains with koi. When it blew out of existence in the middle of my subscription, the publisher gamely tried to soften the blow by replacing the magazine with their apparently more successful birds-and-birdbath mag. I declined just as softly.

So here's the cortege of dead tree media, my elegy to days at the racks:

Like most hip youths, I quickly figured out how Rolling Stone was pandering to a wide range top40 audience, and although I admired their political reportage, I spent most of the '90s hunkered down with Spin, reading Dennis Cooper interviews and believing I was alternative...but not as alternative as dumping Spin for being too mainstream and hooking up with Alternative Press, until they, too, covered too many "radio" acts and I ended the '90s devoted to Outburn (when they were goth/synth friendly, not death metal as they eventually evolved). Ravaged as I was to get the latest new music releases, I admit I did sometimes empty my pockets for issues of Billboard and Ice.

Honorable memoriam: CMJ New Music Magazine - with a sampler cd! I was loyal for at least a decade and wish there was a way to discover cool to music like that again. (Yes, I have diddled with Pitchfork, whose attempt at pushing mainly independent singer/songwriters with guitars got way too predictable. Where's the electronica!? Where's the industrial?!)

As a film-o-philiac, I was less interested in celebrity gob than interviews with directors and FX guys. Premiere and Movieline satisfied those needs for a good long while, along with the occasional free Entertainment Weekly year subscription. The real artistry came when I was able to dive deeply into genre with jewels like Cinemascape and the great experiment that was the encyclopedic Star Trek magazine.

Finally, there were a few design magazines worth mentioning because I enjoy step-by-step tutorials much more than annoying how-to youtubes: Photoshop User, Layers, maybe Print (never How or Comm. Arts, unless it was an office subscription).

I currently subscribe to only one magazine, both for the utter joy of discovering it rolled into my p.o. box a few times a year and its distinction of being "the Southern magazine of Good Writing": The Oxford American. I can't praise it highly enough.

Color me an adult with a tiny, defiantly analog, streak.

 

Discovery, now in my underwear

Less than 2 months into my diatribous blog about this sure-to-be lifebranding year and I'm already re-riffing on riffs already riffed upon. But once again, I find myself mourning over a local small business closing: not just an indie record or bookstore but the mom & pop diners that are evaporating at an alarming place (there's nowhere to nosh after last call anymore except for drivethru fastfood) and now the big army/navy store in Tampa Bay is no more.

But is the army/navy just a holdover of my formerly alterno funky DIY vibe? Finding a decent pair of combat boots in any new city I moved to was always the top of my to-do, whether it was in an innocuous Tampa Bay stripmall or a rundown part of downtown Atlanta. New York City used to be lousy with army/navys and thrift shops - I still have a canvas military camera bag that was dyed a wild blue (everything was dyed back in the '80s. That's how we recycled and marked up).

I understand the concept around military surplus and how the plan to sell reasonably wellmade items to the general public has probably lost its curb appeal. Thrift stores continue to prosper, as everyone has more crap to unload than they can hoard. And, of course, their sad evil cousins -  pawn shops - are popping up like Amscots and We Buy Gold on every corner. Why does this sting so much more than it should, since the de-evolution of retail really shouldn't bother a postmodern guy like me, but I miss the days I would wander aimlessly on a Saturday, discovering new and exciting corners of a city. Rolling down to the Target through miles of endlessly under-construction Pinellas County roads does not suffice.

In the '80s I lived for a time across the East River from Manhattan in Astoria, Queens. The elevated subway ride was short and I'd look forward to solitary Saturdays exploring the city beyond (after thorough research through the arts section of that week's Village Voice). My train would plunge underneath the river and I'd find myself in a maze of steamy passageways until emerging into the bright light somewhere around Central Park South. I'd spend the entire day straddling Broadway block after block, numbered streets counting down to historic names by sunset. Along the way, I'd enjoy a huge bookstore or two (one off of Times Square specialized in nothing but plays and theatre books), sometimes standing in the discount theatre ticket line for a matinee that had no stars, just enthusiastic understudies. If not, I'd settle on an art film or - before the happiness of home video - what was known as a revival movie house. This was in the days before Disney gentrified 42nd Street, so I stayed away from the more sticky moviehouses until I got down to the Village later on in the day. In the meantime, there were little record shops on Carmine St. to explore and the holy mecca of Tower Records to wile away the time. A bookstore on 8th St near a Haagan-Dazs, a respite in Washington Square watching the skateboarders, another bookstore on Spring Street, maybe the endless shelves of the Strand. Along the way I got to partake the bounty of tiny Chinese kitchens, pizza by the slice, stalls on St. Mark's selling jewelry and sunglasses until ultimately joining a sleepy crowd and pool game at my favorite bar.

By the mid '90s I found myself living in Atlanta without a car, but easily finding a way to reinvent solitary Saturdays - although now with less independent stores and more chains. I still remained discerning, still experienced the excitement of the possibility of discovery. A Waxtree records, indie bookstore, and Junkman's Daughter in Little Five Points was an exotic destination some weeks; the MARTA up to Lenox Mall in Buckhead to catch a movie, hit the Tower Records, HMV, two-story Borders, and a veggie sandwich at California Pizza Kitchen on others. 

Today I spend solitary Saturdays right here in front of my Mac mini, perusing used books on Amazon, rediscovering old music on iTunes, streaming forgotten film on Netflix. It's not the same, certainly -  not by a longshot. Not merely the lack of exercise or a chance meeting when you turn the corner at just the right moment. There's nothing remotely romantic nor cutting edge about shopping in your underwear. I don't know what Saturdays were supposed to be when this time of my life rolled around. I do not know what everyone else does. I know something's lost when there's less reason to leave the house and find adventure.