Any regulars to barbelith are familiar with the nexus – the anti-establishment post-counter-sub-cultural discussion forum. Recently there has been rather more in the way of conflict and flame-wars than normal – so much in fact that I have been sent a really interesting article from Wired about The Epic Saga of The Well (May 1997). The well was one of the first and most significant online communities, and it was – at times – wracked with conflict and crisis.
Temporary plateau of weirdness reached. Things remain weird, but have ceased to get increasingly so. Chris has said he will put me up for a couple of nights, which is really decent of him and means that I can now slide through into next week courtesy of him and Liz. I am getting increasingly worried about my new potential flatmates however – not in terms of whether I will get along with them, but about when we will actually find a place to live in and what compromises will have to be made in the process. Hopefully I will have resolved this by Friday night.
Most attractive new weblog of the day definitely goes to Fifty-Five.
Trash culture purists only: A comprehensive and interesting site on the comic book Planetary.
Can someone explain to me how it is possible that I can cross the world and crash on someone’s floor in LA for nearly nine days, but when I return to my home country and home city, almost none of my friends are prepared to house me for even a couple of nights. Has anyone got an answer for me?
As ever the best way to cope with the many disappointments and injustices of life (and people) is to ignore it completely and muck around on the net for hours. Which is what I intend to do.
I am delighted to report that vitaflo is back on the air at last. Not a lot seems to have changed, although the site is altogether more … green … The HREF section is still the best guide to the best design sites on the web – a constant source of inspiring work.
Here all about Grant Morrison’s appearance at the DisinfoCon from the site itself. And I quote: “I probably shouldnÌt admit this here, but IÌm not familiar with ‘The Invisibles’ comic, so I had no idea who Grant Morrison was, but he was very funny, very drunk, taught us Magick, and sure that he had been on a ride with aliens in Katmandu, so he had my attention!”
And I am probably the last person to notice this, but Epinions has also finally launched it’s full version, complete with clean and elegant design and cheery little smiley things. The only slightly depressing thing is that I have spent so much time running around like a headless chicken in recent months that I am in imminent danger of falling off the bottom of their Most Popular Movie Reviewers list.
“Hey Tom, there’s a really big party going on in Austin, but you can’t go.”
SXSW fever is running rampant through the webloggers. And those of us stuck five thousand miles away can only pine for what might have been – and of course check out SXSWb, images by pb (day 1, day 2, day 3) and metafilter, and the commentary from powazek, prehensile tales and riothero.
Still it’s not the same as being there.
I feel bad for not talking more about my LA time – so here are a few sites for the minor celebrities I bumped into: Loren Dean [at party with him – he wore lots of plaid], Tyne Daly [wandered around the pier in Venice Beach], Gina Gershon [sat behind us chatting away during a showing of Wonder Boys].
Needless to say I have found a place to stay (take a bow Evil Nick). Bed finally located around 7pm GMT. My luggage arrived this morning at work more or less intact as well. Everything seems to be coming together. I went to see The Insider so that I wouldn’t fall asleep too early. It was a pretty strange film – only in America could people be surprised by the news that cigarettes are addictive. The most interesting part of the film (the media politics and strategies/counter strategies) were unfortunately the bits without the most interesting character/actor/performance. Russell Crowe is a god.
And before I forget – IF YOU DON’T ASK YOU DON’T GET!
Radio Barbelith is back on the air. Every day over the last week that I haven’t been able to update the site I have felt more and more anxious – what if everyone got bored and wandered off? I mean – there are thousands of wonderful weblogs that are updated every day without fail. They wouldn’t let something as tiny as a holiday interfere with their duty to their readers. (I am thinking of stable barbelith links like kottke.org, riothero and megnut)
Well, anyway, it’s back and not likely to go away again in a hurry. And that’s even considering the difficult situation I find myself in. Regular readers will know of my homelessness – a couple of weeks ago I moved out of my flat in Hampstead and took all my stuff up to my parents’ place in Norfolk – and then of course I embarked on my epic voyage to LA. I am now back in London, only to find that Virgin have mislaid half of my luggage, my mobile phone has run out of energy and I can’t contact any of the people who said that they might be prepared to put me up for a couple of nights. Tom Coates – homeless, without any clean clothes or means of communication…
But of course I must not dwell on such concerns (shit shit shit shit shit shit shit), and instead must talk about my time in LA. I can’t even begin to talk about everything, but a few images really stick in my mind – flying over the lights of Las Vegas at night (able to pick out individual casinos and roads), half naked men bouncing up and down on coffee tables, the sun setting over Venice Beach and the madman with the bubble machine. And of course, my ever gracious and hospitable hosts, Kerry and Sean.
Quite a lot has happened on the web while I have been away as well. blogger has been redesigned (by none other than powazek himself and even riothero has reached some kind of design plateau after the frantic changes of the last month. More later, as and when I get the chance…
This is more of a sporadic travel diary at the moment than it is a weblog – but I don’t suppose I can really do much about that – it’s not as if I have much time for surfing at the moment.
LA is an extremely odd place – particularly for someone more used to the rhythms of London. Superficially they have a lot in common – large metropolitan masses, both of which are centres of a country’s entertainment industries. But London is so much more condensed and compact, whereas LA is just so much more … overwhelming … than you’d expect.
I think the thing I feel strangest about is the absolute necessity of cars. In London, I can have a friend to stay and I need almost never see him. People can come and visit, crash on my floor, I can feed them in the evenings and chat to them before sleep – but all the rest of the time, they can jump on a tube and go and do their own thing (if they want). But in LA, if you don’t have a car you can’t even really move.
That puts strains on the guest, who lacks freedom of movement and is continually dependant on his hosts. And that in turn puts even greater strains on the hosts – who are continually having to be stimulating and entertaining (when I’m sure they would much rather be asleep). I should say at this point that Kerry and Sean have been more than great in this capacity – I have been taken to a couple of Hollywood(ish) parties, wandered around the shopping areas and seen a couple of films that aren’t out in the UK yet – some good (Scream 3) and some … less good (Drowning Mona) – I have been made to feel welcome by all concerned.
I can only hope that I am being as good a guest as they are hosts…
Thursday was a very long day. Not one of those long days where you feel like someone has grabbed each end of the day and stretched it, but one of those days when someone actually HAS. And not only that – they pulled with all their might.
I got up at 8am to the sounds of my parents arguing about who would have the privilege of taking me to the train station (“You do it”, “No! You do it” followed by “I suppose I’ll do it”, “No, I suppose I’ll have to”). An hour later, I am on my way to London. By 11am I am crossing London, and by 1pm I am at the airport. Two hours pass. 3pm – we board the flight and then it is a mere 11 hours before I land in LA. 6.30pm LA time (PST), 2.30am for me.
Kerry collects me and soon we are watching episodes of Friends that are repeats to him and partner (Sean), but have yet to even appear on cable in the UK (8pm PST / 4am GMT). Around 10pm PST (6am GMT) Sean and Kerry decide we have to go to a nearby club. I am surprised how chirpy I feel and agree instantly. But by the time we reach 7am GMT (11pm PST) I am wilting savagely. Kerry drives me back and installs me in a bed.
Where I suddenly (of course) find it impossible to sleep (for various reasons – not worth going into particularly). 2am comes and goes (PST), at which point Sean reappears – bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and with a great big grin on his face. It is nearly 5am PST, 1pm GMT before any of us manage to sleep. And by 10am the next morning (which of course I think is 5pm) I am wide awake – eager for stimulation again…
27 hours awake. 5 hours asleep. I will be dead before the week is out.
OK. It is 8am, and I am about to be driven to my train, from whence to another train, and so to the airport, and so for an 11 hour flight to LA, arriving around five-thirty pm. Wish me luck….
According to Evhead, Jason is wearing a cool t-shirt with a body tag on the front and an end body tag on the back (if this means nothing to you it means that you are a dinosaur and will be unemployable within a year). Jason mentions the very same thing on his site – he is apparently wearing this shirt-of-almighty-cool. However, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t done a stroke of work all day, which means I haven’t been able to see him, which means no glimpse of astonishing clothing artefact. Very depressing.
Once upon a time there was this girl called Katy, and I met her at this thing that the ******** ** **.*****.**.** were having in London (it’s a geek thing, and I am too embarrassed to go into details – see if you can guess). Anyway – it was my first IRL meeting with people I had met online and I thought everyone would be a complete freak. Needless to say, they weren’t – and Katy has fast become one of my premièe online friends. Today she directed me towards a really cool thing that another online foxtress (Zannah) has put together: windoze 2000.