Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Soundtrack of My Mind: [02.09.10]
So Damien Rice is gonna write you a lyric like "I love your depression and your double chin" which makes him cool automatically. Plus also he's Irish. And there's some evidence that he may, in fact, be an asshole, which I'm okay with. Some of my favorite people are assholes. (Not really, but that sounds cool to say, so I'll just leave it.) But what's so awesome about this song -- and unfortunately you really only get a little bit of it in this YouTube version -- is the weird, distorted, slowed-down-45 kind of singing that sounds like a ghost or some Voice from the Other Side of Something. (Kicks in just after the two-minute mark. The original track has the benefit of some wacky machinery that makes him sound kinda-sorta like Beelzebub. Here it's merely the level of freaky he can muster with his own vocal chords. But, you know, either way...) It's just. You know. Weird. Which is almost always pretty cool.
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Art of Connection

So life is pretty close to perfect, right?
I mean. Yes. Yes. Emphatically yes. These are things that engender a deep and unshakable (unshakable, really?) happiness in one Humble Beitelblogger.
The thing that I want to express, however, has something to do with -- well -- wanting to express something. Because, you see, when a Humble Beitelblogger is deeply and unshakably happy, it sparks a creative impulse. Where he wants to put something down on "paper" that somehow captures, reflects, or otherwise articulates that feeling. Here. World. Look at me. Look at this. Just...look at it. And sometimes that's possible. But sometimes it's not. Tonight I really want to put into words the sense of both peace and delight I feel, all on my own, right here, right now. This perfect, cloudy Monday in February. But there aren't really any words for it.
One of the things I say a lot in fulfilling the duties of my aforementioned day job is this: writing is an act of connection. And I believe that. It's an act of connection. And so is dancing. Or caring for an aging parent. Or celebrating the birth of a child with your dear friends in Michigan. Or eating a handful of blueberries. Or curling up next to the small, warm body of the dog with whom you've shared a life for the last twelve years and drifting together into a deep, wordless sleep.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sunday Link: Ben Dunlap, Wise Man and Raconteur
Um. Well. You know. This is pretty awesome. Just watch it. Can't do it justice with a stylized blurb. Hungarians. The Holocaust. Integrating the textile industry in the American South. Bartok. Harry Potter. The secret to saying YES to the Universe. And the quintessential Renaissance man weaving it all together seamlessly, mellifluously, passionately in the grand tradition of the raconteur indigenous to the American South. Huzzah...
Sunday Link: You Too Can Be a Skateboarding Icon!

Sunday Link: What's So New About the New Evangelicals?

Thursday, February 4, 2010
Soundtrack of My Mind [02.04.10]
In a brand new feature here on Beitel-blog, you'll get you a taste of the musical mantras that on occasion root themselves deep in your humble Beitelblogger's brain, and then he just "sings" them -- out loud and/or not -- incessantly throughout the day. Today it was Ingrid Michaelson. All. Day. Long. Which was fine because I like Ingrid Michaelson and this is a dadgum good song. (This acoustic version's cool and all, but the original is a little more electric and so it growls more. Which I like a little better. Still.) "Something tastes different / Maybe it's my tongue / Something tastes different / Suddenly I'm not so young." Indeed. So. You know. Must've been a good day, then, right?
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
30 Things I Love Right Now [02.03.10]
Monday, February 1, 2010
Sunday Link: The Difficulties of Today and Tomorrow
February = Black History Month. Hence The Speech, in its entirety. YouTube -- what with its weird brand of necromancy -- makes almost everything the present moment, don't it? Monday is Sunday. January is February. And 2010 is (in a weird, parallel universe sort of way) always and forever 1963. ["What the hell's he talking about?" "Forget it, he's on a roll..."]
Or 2009, for that matter.
To wit: here's a bit of last summer's travelogue re: the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign -- the march on Jackson Missippy (under the unrelenting June sun) that was intended to help us Progressive types refocus on King's unrealized vision of adding issues of socioeconomic class to the larger Civil Rights portfolio. Your Humble Beitelblogger was there, of course, and he wrote about it and took pitchers and everything. Now that is a party. Amen. Etc.
Sunday Link: When Up Is Down
And when Sunday is Monday. Because, you know, Sunday Links happen on Sunday most of the time. But there are times and places when they happen on days that aren't even Sunday at all. Monday, say. This is one of those times and places, and this shiny-eyed/-headed, bouncy little fellow tells you why. Sort of.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday Link: What Would Buster Do?

This week, Pastor Jim eschews the headlines to reminisce about his own calling to the cloth. Seems his granddaddy -- a man who was illiterate and wholly unchurched -- thought there weren't too many worse ways to spend a life than as a preacher. Even pleaded with his grandson to reconsider his decision to pursue his vocation in the church. To no avail, obviously. Sayeth Pastor Jim:
I tried to explain to him about a sense of the presence of God. I talked to him about having a calling and a desire to help people. But I could tell he was unconvinced. Finally, after it was clear I would not change my mind, Grandpa said, "Well, if you are determined to be a preacher, try to be like Buster." I don't know if that was his given name or a nickname picked up from childhood. In fact, I never even knew his last name. Buster was a bootleg preacher who didn't have a regular church. He preached wherever he had opportunity. He would hold forth on front porches, or from the back of pickups, and in one bizarre incident, in the produce section at the grocery store. His message was always the same, "No matter what you have done, or how bad you have been, God loves you anyway."
Friday, January 29, 2010
J.D. Salinger: Wait. Wasn't He Already Dead?
Monday, January 25, 2010
FYI/411: The Soundtrack of Tectonic Catastrophe

When the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, Signal FM was playing "Hotel California." The Earth groaned and the building shuddered, but just before the DJ ran out, he had the presence of mind to hit the "repeat" button. So for the first 30 minutes of Port-au-Prince's descent into hell, the only thing you could hear on the radio was the Eagles' standard — over and over and over.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Sunday Link: He (Still?) Got Game

What's an aging jumpshooter to do when he's just endured his toughest week on the most difficult job he's ever had? Why, he takes some time out on a Sunday morning to hoist up a few threes, of course. (And, you know, bring a trusted advisor back into the fold to help with message discipline. All hands on deck, etc.)
Sunday Link: Compassionate Storytelling in Images
Ryan Lobo, photographer, travels to the most dangerous places in the world to take pictures that tell stories. Pictures that hold the secrets of suffering, the promise of redemption, and that ask open-ended questions about the nature of justice. Which would seem to make him like any hard-core photojournalist. But to him, there's something different. A pull quote:
I won't go into details of what led to a decision I made. But let's just say it involved alcohol, cigarettes, other substances, and a woman. I basically decided that it was I -- not the camera or the network or anything that lay outside myself -- that was the only instrument in storytelling truly worth tuning. In my life when I tried to achieve things like success or recognition, they eluded me. Paradoxically, when I let go of these objectives and worked from a place of compassion and purpose, looking for excellence rather than the results of it, everything arrived on its own. Including fulfillment.Which is to say -- if I might take the liberty of a paraphrase -- such a transformation (towards excellence, fulfillment) requires not substances and an Other (I've a sneaking suspicion these are actually quite often obstacles to such transformation) but instead a certain and significant measure of surrender.
Sunday Link: Where In the World Is Cornel West?

IN THE COMPANY OF GREATS I’ve been married three times. I’m married to my calling, but I’m not married to a particular woman. I have no pets. My apartment is full of books and records, the light of Toni Morrison and John Coltrane. And Chekhov, everywhere.
Sunday Link: Pastor Jim re: Pat Robertson, Part II

Friday, January 22, 2010
30 Things I Love Right Now [01.22.10]
Monday, January 18, 2010
FYI/411: Man, Meet Hour
Okay. The folks down in Marketing have long held that a great proportion of the Beitel-blog faithful are ambivalent (at best) about American sport. However. First of all, it's such a huge part of the culture, right? Can you really ignore it? And then there's this: if you splice out the jargon and the jingoism, what you get is just flat-out human interest stuff.
Case in point: the goings on in Knoxville, Tennessee, these last few days.
Let me set the scene for those of you who don't follow the college football. That is to say, in generic terms of human resources:
So, say you're an employer. And you take a fairly big risk on hiring somebody who may or may not be the right person for the job and you commit an awful lot of resources to helping her/him be successful. And then say, right off the bat, he/she says some stuff and does some stuff that embarrasses you and your organization. Just sort of makes an ass of him/herself. Makes things way more difficult than they need to be. And then say she/he isn't really all that successful in completing the tasks of the job. Just kind of, you know, mediocre and uneven. And then -- here's the kicker -- say he/she then, a little more than a year after you hired him/her, at the worst possible time of year for your business, tells you, "Uh, hey, you know thanks for everything, but my dream job just opened up and they've offered it to me. So, uh, see you later and, you know, good luck or whatever."
[PS: I kinda-sorta did this one time, so he who throws stones, etc...]
So that would sort of suck, right?
Okay. So now imagine you're the person said employer interviews to replace said dead-beat. And because the timing's so bad, you're one of a limited group of people in your profession who are both qualified for the job and willing/able to take it. You've got a pretty good resume but things aren't going great at your current job. You've recently been promoted but the jury's still out about whether you can cut the mustard with the new responsibilities. That's a tough interview/probationary period, right? Everybody's suspicious, betrayed, put upon. Plus there's the fact that you've got to hit the ground running because you're making a transition when you really need to be focused on making sure this crucial time of year goes well. Oh and then, PS, a good portion of the process will be documented on YouTube.
Kind of a nightmare, right?
So that's where Derek Dooley and the University of Tennessee football program come in.
I appreciate when people rise to difficult occasions. Yes, Derek Dooley is a football coach. Yes, he can be plastic and annoying in the way that football coaches can be plastic and annoying. (And, of course, he's now the football coach at Tennessee, a program whose fans can be pretty damn annoying just by their very nature.) And maybe he'll fail miserably. But. He nailed the interview. He got everything right. On the fly. Under very difficult circumstances. Even gave shout-outs to his mom (for influencing him as much as his famous football-coach dad) and his wife (for making sacrifices in her own career as a physician to help him achieve his vocational goals). And that deserves to be commended. Even if you hate football in general. Even if you hate Tennessee football in particular.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Sunday Link: DIY Pep Talk

I think I keep slapping up links, etc. here re: DIY (which is to say Do It Yourself) in the arts because I'm trying to rev myself up to actually, well, DI[Myself]. At any rate, here's an article in the NYT about the ways in which DIY is manifesting itself in the film industry:
In the Old World of distribution, filmmakers hand over all the rights to their work, ceding control to companies that might soon lose interest in their new purchase for various reasons, including a weak opening weekend. (“After the first show,” Mr. Broderick said, repeating an Old World maxim, “we know.”) In the New World, filmmakers maintain full control over their work from beginning to end: they hold on to their rights and, as important, find people who are interested in their projects and can become patrons, even mentors.Hey. Damn straight: I'll take a patron. That'd be pretty awesome. Will you be my Peggy Guggenheim? (FYI [not to be confused with DIY]: That's ol' Peg up there on the gondola. And if that ain't a plug for patronship -- you get to wear crazy sunglasses and ride around in a gondola with your little fru-fru dogs -- then I don't know what is!)
Sunday Link: How to Live to Be 100+
Nine simple things anybody can do to live longer and better. PS: Ol' Dan up there is actually 114 years old!! (Not really. But wouldn't it be crazy if he was?)
Sunday Link: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

When it comes to old Pat Robertson, let's just say Pastor Jim's, uh, not a fan:
Pat Robertson, television evangelist and founder of the 700 Club, holds a prayer retreat at the end of each year. During these annual prayer meetings, Robertson meets with God and God tells Pat what is going to happen in the coming year. Of course, someone does not have a very good batting average on these predictions...And it pretty much gets more and more scathing from there. My favorite part is the part where he talks about how/why so-called "contemporary worship services" suck so bad. That doesn't have anything to do with Pat Robertson, really, but a sprawling rant never hurt nobody, 'specially when it's all so dadgum true. ("Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" -- "Germans?" -- "Forget it. He's on a roll...") Auburn First Baptist, man. Now that's a church I could go to.
Click here to read the full op-ed in the Anniston Star...
Sunday Link: Zadie Smith Is (Still) Smart

Smith’s intellectual ambitions are remarkably consistent with those of the postcolonial writers and academics who have settled into the abstractions of a posh postmodernism. “Changing My Mind” displays many of its virtues: a cosmopolitan suavity and wit that often relieves intellectual ponderousness. Smith’s native intelligence, however, seems so formidable that you can’t help hoping she’ll change her mind yet again.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
30 Things I Love Right Now [01.16.10]
Friday, January 15, 2010
Update Update: This Is Your Brain

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
FYI/411: Poetry Must Rely Upon Shameless Self-Promotion

The fine folks at Copper Nickel were nice enough to publish this really long, odd poem I wrote. It's called "In Order to Form a More Perfect Union" and it's about...uh, America? Love? Other things? Plus! It's in thirteen sections. And! Each line has thirteen syllables! It's a veritable OCD cry for help! So. Yeah. Buy a copy of Copper Nickel 13. It's got me plus all these other cool people in it, like such as...
Poetry by: Dan Albergotti (I've met him!!), Jeff Baker, Scott Beck, Mary Biddinger, Jericho Brown, Stacey Lynn Brown, Jessica Cuello, Leia Darwish Clark, Chad Davidson, Kelly Davio, Anna Carson DeWitt, Tyler Dorholt, Michael Dumanis, Kerry James Evans, Noah Falck, Farrah Field, Noah Eli Gordon, Michael J. Henry, Bob Hicok, John James, Jessica Jewell, Marc W. Laughton, Patricia Lockwood, J. Michael Martinez, Adrian Matejka, Karyna McGlynn, James Thomas Miller, Joseph Radke, Adam Theron-Lee Rensch, Brian Ripley, Joshua Robbins, Bret Shepard, R. T. Smith, Alison Stine, Nicole Walker, A. E. Watkins, Karen Weyant, Allison Benis White, David Daniel Williams, Brennen Wysong.
Prose by: Dinah Cox, Charley Henley (I helped commandeer a boat with him!!), Holly Goddard Jones, Laleh Khadivi, Baker Lawley (I played flag football with him!!), Jef Otte, Antonio Salinas.
& visual art by: Krista Franklin.
