Dadblog

Been thinking a lot about curating recently, and then this slid in:

Here’s the thing, I think it’s fair to say that the term “curator” may not be used, even metaphorically, unless there is some “keeping,” “collecting,” “conserving”  involved.  It’s not clear to me that digital curators have anything to do with keeping.   If there is someone in the digital world, who shows a genuine curatorial reflex, I think that’s Sarah Zupko.

 

Please, don’t say that the new curators leave an archival record.  Everyone leaves an archival record.  And real curators don’t just leave a record.  They assiduously build their collections, so that each new entry is made in full knowledge of its predecessors and with a deeply thoughtful anticipation for what comes next.  These collections vibrate like a spider’s web with each new entry. 

Real curators think with their collections.  The collections are intelligence, memory, conceptual architecture made manifest.  I love the idea that someone would take up this function in the digital world.  But that’s not what I see the new “curators” doing.  This richer, more authentic, more sincere rendering of the term could accomplish something astonishing.  It would help sort and capture contemporary culture with some feeling for context, relative location, relative weight, what goes with what.  This is the sort of thing that Pepys accomplished, unwittingly, with his diary.  This notion of the curator has yet to find its champion.  I don’t think we quite yet have a Pepys of the present day.

Via Russell Davies.

Because it’s Sunday evening and tomorrow’s going to be hellish:

As anyone who’s been around me at Channel 4 recently, I’m mildly obsessed with Skins. I think it’s fantastic and amazing, and after yesterday’s rant about the quality of writing on British television, Skins is a notable and wonderful exception. Here’s a fantastic video about a young man who writes for the show. Authentic.

Not much going on this morning, so I followed Russell Davies’ lead and played around with a background image designed to organise my desktop. It’s flagrantly ripped off his. File this under “work on productivity done to displace work on real work.”

It has become almost axiomatic amongst the “Mark Lawson has the same taste as me” middle-class literati to state that we are living in a “golden age” of television. Or rather, American television. Ever since the Sopranos first came over the pond, we’ve been falling over ourselves to pen homages to the great American TV production machine which seems to have hit a sweetspot of creativity. The instinct is now so ingrained that I’ve even heard people say Brothers and Sisters is worth a look. It’s almost obligatory to say “the Wire is the best television programme ever.” If you don’t think that, runs the unwritten subtext, there’s something a bit wrong with you. Or you’re working class. Or both.

Trouble is, there is a flipside to all this praise of American telly, and it’s this: British television is now categorically shite. There. I’ve said it. We’ve gone from having “the best telly in the world” to having some of the worst.

How do I know this? Because
Ashes to Ashes has been commissioned for a second series, and its executive producer is away with the fairies:

Julie Gardner, the executive producer for the BBC and BBC Wales head of drama, said she was delighted Ashes to Ashes would return.

“The series epitomises all that is great about BBC drama with its bold, confident storytelling and great characters. I can’t wait for more blue eyeliner, [Audi] Quattro cars and 1980s music to burst on to our screens in 2009.”

Unknowingly, Julie’s nailed the issue. Ashes to Ashes does epitomise British television, and here’s why: It’s a spin-off from a one-of-a-kind success. Life on Mars, despite its occasional longueurs, was witty, original, fast-paced and exciting. It was the product of a small writing team who worked as a team, sharing the duties and combining their vision.

Ashes to Ashes has “difficult second album” written all over it. Why are second albums difficult? Because the first album was the product of years of thinking and dreaming, of hunger and commitment, of desperation. The second album has none of these things going for it.

American television avoids difficult second album syndrome by investing, specifically in writers and story development. British television doesn’t do writing teams; American television is built on them. Without writing teams, British television writing becomes lazy, flabby and stupid. And without fresh blood, all TV shows go this way. Coronation Street was successful for years because of the parade of writing talent that worked on it; it’s now a shadow of itself. Casualty, which should be a test-case for successful writing teams, is one of the worst things on television.

How do you build a writing team? You take an exceptional, energetic and super-creative human being (or sometimes a pair of them), you give them a great degree of creative control, you give them a budget to develop stories and writers, and you let them get on with it. To my mind, in Britain in the last 10 years that’s only happened twice at a mainstream level: with Paul Abbott (Clocking Off and Shameless) and Russell T Davies (Dr Who et al.). Perhaps the biggest question in British television right now is: what happens if Russell T Davies falls under a bus?

Is the conjunction between veganism and sexism worthy of a feature in the Grey Lady? Yes it is!:

The issue of sexism in vegan circles is “extremely polarizing,” said Bob Torres, an author of “Vegan Freak,” a guide to living a vegan lifestyle, which generally means avoiding the use of animals for food, clothing or other purposes. Mr. Torres, like many vegans, disavows the “essential idea at the heart of some animal rights activism that any means justifies the ends,” he said. Certain activists, he added, care only about “animal suffering and ignore the suffering of humans,” a category into which he would put women who are exploited.

According to a 2006 Harris poll commissioned by the Vegetarian Resource Group, which publishes The Vegetarian Journal, only about 2.3 percent of the adult population of the United States is vegetarian. At most, half of those are practicing vegans. But the vegan philosophy has achieved a prominence greater than those small numbers would indicate. There are many celebrity acolytes, including Natalie Portman, who recently introduced a line of nonleather shoes. The best-selling diet book “Skinny Bitch” and a follow-up cookbook, “Skinny Bitch in the Kitch,” promote veganism. Both have been accused of sexist undertones.

The great John Lanchester has written about scent and taste in the New Yorker:

“The question that women casually shopping for perfume ask more than any other is this: ‘What scent drives men wild?’ After years of intense research, we know the definitive answer. It is bacon.”

Burglary statistics in the US and in the UK are down, apparently, over the last 30 years, and here’s why:

For almost 20 years, Mathis burglarized homes to support a drug habit. He only got caught a few times. Mathis says he stopped breaking into homes because there’s just no money in it anymore.

“If you’re going to do a burglary, you need to have some buyers,” Mathis says. “Everybody has everything now.”

Mathis says there’s just too much on the street already. Everyone he knows already has a digital camera, iPod knockoffs and pirated DVDs shipped in from China.

Note that is burglaries, not robberies, which in the States are perpetrated on individuals outside the home. I imagine robberies are up dramatically, if my teenage son’s experiences are anything to go by. But I love that phrase “everyone has everything now.”

Call me a sentimental old liberal, but by God this reads like our generation’s defining speech:

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

I don’t know how I missed this at the time - it’s nearly two years old - Meet The Newspaperers is bloody hilarious. And worth a dozen “We the Media” conferences, too.