I Am Not a Parasite

I heard Michael Pollan participating in a panel the other night. This post, however, is not about Michael Pollan and my sometime obsession therewith. So do keep reading.

MP was asked the old standby handwringing question about whether "traditional" media will die. He answered with a cool wave of the hand, saying the old, gray media institutions will remain necessary and adapt to the times, and I'd guess he's right about that.

In such discussions, blogs are the cool new kid in town. Alluring, but scary. Bloggie might let you hang out with him--or he might kick your ass just for fun.

But old media has nothing to fear, said MP. Blogs, he explained, are fundamentally parasitic. They don't report, they merely commentate. Nothing against commentating, that's all well and good. The point is blogs will always need solid media institutions for their raw material. The point is they are not a threat.

I know he's right about this, because it's the prevailing wisdom in media commentary circles and prevailing wisdom is never wrong. I've done my fair share of fact-checking for Columbia Journalism Review and am familiar with the old media panic arc: from freakout (We're all gonna die!) to recovery (No, wait, we are still needed, thankgod.) Recovery generally involves noting the inadequacies of new media outlets and deciding to both beat them and join them online.

It is indeed true that many blogs are the equivalent of the editorial page of a newspaper. (Nothing wrong with that, but they still need the news division, etc.) But I don't think it's giving blogs their due to think of them only as opedoparasites.

The blog is its own written form; it's not a replacement for any existing thing. And many blogs don't leach from news organizations, but create their own raw material.

Tiny Farm Blog is built on original farm photography. Oakland Streets analyzes the byways of Oakland through the lens of urban planning theory. And this long-titled blog, created by a dear old chum of mine, reflects on swimming obscene distances. The raw material is life and the writers' own observations. Which, when you think about it, is pretty nice. And, really, not hurting anyone.

Another Henhouse Heartbreak

I went out this morning and found Camilla dead. She was killed by a raccoon. Feathers everywhere. I thought the coop was secure, but it wasn't.

Camilla deserves every bit as nice a eulogy as Hennessy got, but I don't have it in me to write another one so soon.

The irony is that she came near death a couple weeks ago because of an egg-laying problem and I fought hard and paid the vet a lot of money to keep her alive. I had the new little ones, Winona and Ximena, but it seemed too sad to lose all the originals so young and so suddenly. I had hoped for some flock continuity. Mais, c'est la vie. Or maybe the Yiddish is better: Man plan un Got lacht. Man plans and God laughs.

We buried her by the compost pile. She always loved pecking around in there. I care about my chickens, but they aren't straightforwardly pets and I haven't figured out where to draw certain lines. Having her oviduct surgically removed (a prospect we faced because of her reproductive illness) was an expense and an idea that made me uncomfortable. But throwing soil over her, keeping her in the backyard ecosystem, with the worms she would have enjoyed eating, felt right. I said kaddish.

I'm an avid reader of the plog Farmgirl Fare, and I'm reminded of the words of Farmgirl Susan when her sheep were being preyed on by coyotes: Sometimes farm life sucks.

You'll be missed, Camilla. Sorry I couldn't do better.

Sweet E!, I Pine for You

I have accidentally and only semi-willingly become a participant in a locavore experiment. The experiment does not involve local food, but it does require adherence to rules of virtue and eschewal of trashy modern pleasures and is therefore in the potentially obnoxious, self-righteous mold of a locavore experiment.

I face: no cable all summer.

This was the idea of my virtuous and budget-minded (euphemism alert) boyfriend, who doesn't watch nearly as much cable as I do. I like CNN with lunch and MSNBC in the evenings and E! and more E!! and more E!!! on the weekend nights, when the liquor ads suggest that cooler people are out partying. With my boyfriend.

Okay, he's not partying. He's out winning bread for me and the kitties. Djing. Saturday he had a particularly utilitarian gig, one at which he was forced--by a coercive requester--to play "What Is Love." You know, Baby don't hurt me/Don't hurt me/No more. He was looking for a paper bag to put on his head.

My fate was worse: an evening home alone. Normally, when he's djing and I can't come, I hang out with Joel McHale and the Kardassians and those sad clown Playboy bunnies (or, if I start to feel E!-icky, the Whiskers family).

Dear reader, it was terrifying.

I began in the network region of the dial, thinking surely those channels exist for a reason. But their raison d'être appeared to be crappy reruns. Technically I could have watched SNL, but they were rerunning the George Carlin-hosted debut and I didn't want to be home alone late at night crying; I was rather fond of George Carlin.

My next turn of logic: if I enjoy E!, a whole channel based on titillating entertainment news, maybe I should try the working man's E! I sat through a tedious half-hour about Barbara Walters' memoir on Entertainment Tonight and decided it was made for old people, but palatable nonetheless. So I doubled down and went for TMZ.

That was a mistake. Apparently I like my celebrity gossip cut with the baking soda of irony. I couldn't take the straight stuff. The rest of the night I watched nature shows on PBS, just to scrub clean. Did you know there's a cute little critter in Patagonia that's like a mix of a hamster and a deer? Did you know Patagonia isn't just a type of fleece vest? (Actually I did know that last, I'm just being cute and self-deprecating.)

I suppose if I do this every weekend all summer, I'll be purer and more adequately disturbed about global warming. And imagine all the charming species I won't know about if I watch E! instead.

I don't know, 'Keteers. Can I do this? Do I want to?

My Cat is a Narcissist, But I Love Him

My cat is a narcissist. The lives of every member of the household revolve around his needs.

It's early, we're asleep, but Paulie Walnuts is hungry and Paulie Walnuts is cranky and the campaign of biting and mrowrs will not stop until he is fed and freed to the outdoors.

Pint-sized sister Carmela is hiding away in the closet, snuggled into the winter coat I haven't worn since New York, but Paulie wants to play and does not respect hissing, so Carmela will be driven from her nest and chased around the house until the little tyrant is sated and she can slink back into the closet.

The fish only want to swim among the rocks of the aquarium, but P. Kitty wants to terrorize them and scratch the acrylic while he's at it. The chickens want to peck in peace, but Herr Vallnuts wants to stare at them until they're uncomfortable.

But when he splays his white-furred belly across the bed in a gesture that says, Love me, I'm fabulous, how can I demur? I worship, I shiatsu, I rub the sleeps from the corners of those greedy eyes. And he purrs luxuriously, because Paulie Walnuts loves life and himself, and I can't disagree.

Wayne and Amy: Why Not

Lil Wayne and Amy Winehouse need to get together. Not necessarily a romance, although that would be superb. A-dub likes black Jews. If the prospect of making her own is what it takes to get her away from that Fielder-Civil vampire, I'm all for it. But in a less benevolent universe, I'll settle for a meeting of the minds, a crazy-to-crazy pow-wow.

Generous image of Amy; cracked-out skinny bitch image (and sadly, more realistic) of Amy.

You're no doubt familiar with the five-alarm lunacy and staggering talent of the bouffant the Brits call Wino: cancels shows, smokes crack, bloodies herself variously, and sings the hell out of "Rehab."

As I wrote in a previous post (yes, I'm quoting myself, humor me):

I could never have dreamed that someone would make girl group songs with rappers and Fiona Apple-level lyrics. It's like my inner child is waving hello to my outer adult.

The man; the face tats.

Lil Wayne--bearer of the spirit of Tupac--and his equally stratospheric brand of crazy may be less familiar. Tom Breihan of the Village Voice explains far better than I ever could, describing Wayne's recent performance at Hot 97's Summer Jam:

Rasping his come-ons, Wayne rolled on the floor, humped the stage, stuck his hand down his pants... That willingness to be a complete and utter freak is a huge part of what makes Wayne's superstardom end-run such a crazy story: this tatted-up little gargoyle mess gets Chris Brown screams because he's willing to believe that he'll get those screams, and he doesn't even switch up his syrup-addled libertine persona to get them... The crowd was equal parts euphoric and baffled; I'm not sure I've ever witnessed such a pure and grand-scale WTF reaction to anything.

Wayne doesn't just have face tats. He has eyelid tats. He also writes lyrics for the hip hop history books, like, I am the beast/Feed me rappers or feed me beats/I'm untame I need a leash/I'm insane I need a shrink.

These two have much in common, besides the tattoos: the freakish talent and the just plain freakishness. They both look poised to fall off the deep end at any moment, but they continue to eek out an existence nonetheless.

Amy, famously, is not fond of rehab. Well of course not! If you were a crackbrained genius, would you want to be in there with a bunch of regular people? She and Wayne need their own little rehab, away from all the functionality and the workaday stiffs.

Their disordered musical minds need each other; the rest of us can't possibly understand. If they could just be locked up together and crazy around for a while, I really think it could work. No drugs, no distractions. Just bounce ideas off each other until a new musical genre emerges. Camp for talented headcases! Lauryn Hill could be counselor.

It's a selfish plan, I admit. I want both of them to stay alive and keep my iPod fat and happy.

Smogscapes

HEADING DOWN to Anaheim, or, as some call it, Anacrime & Punishment, this weekend. It's Crim's hometown, but it might as well be mine, since my family moved away from Riverside, or, as some call it, Rivercide.

Riverside is an ill-conceived SoCal suburb in the desert. Anaheim is an ill-conceived SoCal suburb by the coast. I still prefer my desert version, on the principle that one's own shit never smells quite so foul.

It's funny to miss smog-choked skies and 110-degree afternoons, but I do. I miss making the death march for a snow cone, and fleeing baked parking lots for refrigerated buildings.

The forecast for Anaheim is in the 90s, so maybe if I squint...and find some bad air to inhale...


If you hanker for more Inland Empire nostalgia, try this piece I wrote for the local paper a while back:


In defense of the 909
January 12, 2003
By EMMA POLLIN SPECIAL TO THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

I moved to Riverside from New York City at the tender age of 3 and grew up under smog and sunshine before leaving for college in Berkeley. Now I'm in New York again, but home to me will always mean brown mountains and the desert heat that I describe to friends here as a nice dry bake.

Moving so far away has taught me one thing: people love to bash the Inland Empire.

As a high school senior, I remember flipping through a college guidebook to find a description of UC Riverside. Quality school, it read, hands-on professors, nice campus-and then the caveat -- "The city is boring."

I have to admit, there is something gratifying in finding out that the place where you grew up is, officially, boring. Perhaps it's the same kind of pride people draw on if they grew up in Siberia --the clout of having survived something. But now that I'm a little wiser, I don't think I deserve that clout. Rumor to the contrary, the Inland Empire isn't all that bad.

When I tell people I'm from Riverside, I get this look of pity, as if I've just confessed that I grew up in an orphanage. I always ask what they think is so bad, expecting a diatribe about smog and strip malls. But the answers are unpredictable, and I'm amazed by both the uniformly negative reactions and the wildly different justifications for them.

We're all familiar with the region's well-deserved reputation for nasty summers, but I also hear some left-fielders, like "Do you guys have hog-tying contests at, like, the county fair?" Many describe Riverside as "ghetto," which arouses more of that perverse pride, but, of course, isn't really accurate.
The fact that people disparage the Inland Empire in contradictory ways is a clue that they have seen little more than the view from the 91 freeway. (Which is, in all fairness, occasionally scenic.)

Since I left, the "armpit of Southern California" jibes have seemed increasingly out of hand. I hoped I was imagining this trend, but an old North High chum confirmed my suspicions. He explained that the dubiously dubbed "world famous" radio station KROQ had been insulting the I.E. on the air, promoting a "Valley of the Dirt People" image -- a mullet on every head and a meth lab in every kitchen. Then last spring, KROQ's DJs offered a now-infamous apology. They announced an Inland Invasion concert to which all "909ers" would be admitted free. The concert was a hoax. On April Fool's Day, hundreds of humiliated Inland youths, many in "909 PRIDE" t-shirts, showed up for a concert that was never to be.

That two LA DJs should pull such a prank is typical. The worst offenders of the Inland Empire are, inexplicably, our neighbors to the north and west. Now, I can understand people from Paris or San Francisco turning up their noses, but someone from Santa Ana or Oxnard? What makes them so superior?

In most respects, our area is like the entire Southland: too many freeways, ample sunshine, and not enough human interaction. And if the ways that it's bad are typical, most of the ways that it's different are, in my opinion, good.

We have open spaces and a stunning desert landscape. You can buy a house on the cheap and raise your children in a diverse community. As the nation's economy crumbles, the I.E. is one of the few regions sustaining growth. Riverside even has a downtown, which is an awful lot to ask in sprawling Southern California. I won't sugar-coat smog, but how is it that heat makes the I.E. undesirable while Palm Springs is a vacation mecca? In New York's January, I'm craving nothing more than a good dry bake.

Thanks to my Anaheim-reared boyfriend, I have seen more than enough of superior-acting Orange County. Sure, I envy their nearby beaches and eternal 72-degree weather, but I get nauseated by the uniformly paved suburbs that blur together and the endless plains of cookie-cutter houses where lawns pass for nature. I never know if I'm in Anaheim or Tustin or Garden Grove, and I long for some mountains to break things up. Give me the 909 over that.

The Inland Empire isn't just pavement and immaculately planted road dividers. There's raw nature -- hawks, coyotes, and yes, plenty of dirt -- and maybe that is jarring to Californians who like their landscapes tamed. They don't know what to call it, so they call it the boondocks. But beneath all the lawns and pavement, this is what Southern California really is: a big desert wearing a grass mask. And at the end of every gray-skied day, there is a beautiful smogset.

I Used to Love Homecoming

I just downloaded my fifth single off the Graduation album, so it's time to come out of denial: kudos to Kanye on this one. Hate no more, Clebbie, hate no more.

"Homecoming" is a bumpin, circusy summer track. Had it come out last year, I would have blasted it on the drive down to SoCal for my high school reunion. Chris Martin sings the chorus; it melds beautifully.

So I issue the following gripe with regrets, and only in the comfortable certainty that my plog is to Kanye as a mite is to an elephant. No, less than that.

To the gripe.

After a whole song cleverly personifying West's hometown of Chicago comes this:


If you don't know by now
I'm talkin bout Chitown

Kanye. Why.

Of course we know you're talkin bout Chitown! Anyone who didn't "know by now" should be listening to Held Back, not Graduation. Here's the evidence West offers up to the "by now" point:

• Song entitled "Homecoming"
• Chorus: I'm comin home again
• Only Barack Obama more famously from Chicago than Kanye West
• Personified character's name: "We(i)ndy"
• Opens with shouts of "Chi-city" (three)

Digging deeper like Anderson Cooper, "Homecoming" almost too obviously harkens to the Common backpacky classic "I Used to Love H.E.R." (I'm not gonna tell you where Common is from, but it's sort of a secondary city near a big lake where baby bears are popular, and its first four letters are synonymous with "stylish" and the last three with "earlier".)

The "Used to Love" reference is evident from the first line: I met this girl when I was three years old/And what I loved most she had so much soul. Ripped directly from Common, but for the fact that Common met "her" at age ten.

"I Used to Love H.E.R." is an allegory about a relationship. The young lovers start out canoodling in an NYC park and enjoy a fulfilling Afrocentric phase, but eventually she breaks for the West Coast and rolls with gangsta bitches, which is when things go foul. He says he's not sulking about her time spent with them boyz in the hood, but clearly, he is sulking. He impotently swears he'll get her back; their future looks grim.

And then at the very end--Common, you tricky devil!--we find out that he was talking about: hip hop! All along!

(In a humorous twist, some West Coast rappers took the aforementioned sulk personally and wanted to start beef with Common, who is about as un-beef-seeking a rapper as you could find.)

"I Used to Love H.E.R." stays subtle enough to make the big reveal a delicious denoument. Kanye botches the parallel, giving cringe to a song that otherwise approaches perfect.

Haterade reserves purged, think I'll go listen to it again.