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Friday, July 11, 2003
Event-O-Dex LXVI Saturday, July 12: Plunge Into Death dives in with Peelander Z, Laughing Light, and Travers at the Oni Gallery in Boston. Sunday, July 13: The Fully Celebrated Orchestra parties hearty at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade. Virtual Book Tour: Corpses and Conversation II Even though Mary Roach and the Virtual Book Tour have moved on from Media Diet, Mary agreed to a brief follow-up interview via email. Media Diet: Yesterday, when we were talking on the phone, you said something intriguing. I had just told you which pages have made me queasy so far -- pp. 48 and 68, the sections involving the "dead houses" of Scottish churches and the process of bloat and putrefaction -- and you said something to the effect of "You get used to it after awhile." Are you at all queasy or squeamish by nature? Mary Roach: Oh, quite the opposite. I'm happy in an O.R., standing at a surgeon's elbow as he's operating. In fact, on the several occasions I've done just that, they've had to politely ask me to step back. Bloating or putrefying bodies are about as queasy-making as life gets, but even then, my curiosity outweighed my revulsion, and it wasn't really hard for me. It's possible there's something wrong with me. MD: Did you encounter anything that made you wonder whether you should keep going, though? Roach: My first research excursion was to a local mortuary college to sit in on a student embalming. The guy had been autopsied before he got there, so all his organs were taken out and put in a plastic bag like giblets, and his body cavity was all hollowed out and meaty and wide open. The image stayed with me for a couple days and kept intruding in my thoughts. I'd be having a pleasant conversation with an officemate about the plants on the roof or something, and then FLASH! there's the ghoul from the embalming lab. I worried that it was a permanent condition. And that I might have made a serious mistake deciding to do this book. MD: What helped you keep focused and driven? Roach: The flashbacks went away after a day, and I calmed down and carried on. I'm a workaholic. I love reporting and writing. No problems there. MD: On pp. 13-14 you mention what it was like to have the project come up in polite conversation. What drove you to write such a book in the first place? Roach: The book grew out of a Salon column I did, which had to do with medicine and the body. As a writer, I tend to gravitate to the less-explored fringes of a subject. And I enjoy writing about topics that seem to be taboo in mainstream publications. Anyway, two or three columns had to do with cadaver research. These were among the most interesting and certainly got some of the highest hit rates. I found the topics fascinating, and clearly others did too. And it struck me as one of the very last subjects that hadn't been written about in a book. Honestly, it was either cadavers, or, I don't know, squirrels. MD: Last year, something akin to the Scottish dead houses hit the news when a Georgia crematorium was charged with discarding corpses it was paid to cremate. What's your take on that case? Roach: It's actually in there, in chapter 11. [I'm currently on chapter 10. -- MD] My take is that Ray Brent Marsh is either extraordinarily, unfathomably cheap (I mean, it doesn't cost that much to keep a crematory retort burning.) or he's nuts. Marsh's antics gave a real boost to a new disposition process that's waiting in the wings. It's called water reduction -- or, less euphemistically, tissue digestion. Basically, a pressure cooker with lye. Reduces bodies to liquid and a couple pounds of bone hulls. Right now, it's just used on livestock, but ever since the Marsh brouhaha, the company that makes the machinery has been getting calls about building a mortuary edition. In other words, Marsh was mondo bad PR for cremation. It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World XXVII I don't know whether Andrew Keller and his team at Crispin Porter + Bogusky are behind the BMW Mini print advertising campaign, but they keep trotting out some fine innovations. If any Media Dieticians ever visit the Big Blue Couch on Church Corner, you'll see that I've punched out and assembled the perforated paper-board Minis inserted in some magazines in recent months. And while I'm not too convinced of the practicality of this month's "Mini Guide to Tranquility, Bliss and Utopia" insert -- a map indicating mileage counts between American cities such as Allgood, Alaska; Difficult, Tennessee; Loyal, Wisconsin; and Soso, Mississippi -- I am thrilled silly by another recent ad insert. Headed by the phrase "Let's embrace Evel," the Mini advert is an iron-on transfer featuring daredevil Evel Knievel illustrated in classic '70s fashion design style. The insert even includes a quick how-to to ease your iron-on pain. "Jumping iron over image will not be effective," BMW warns. I know I own an ironing board, but I wonder: Do I own an iron? Magazine Me XXXVIII Last night, the August 2003 issue of Details magazine almost restored my faith in a periodical I've had trouble pinning down for more than a decade. While I breezed -- breezed! -- through the current issue of Men's Journal paying attention to next to nothing, the current edition of Details is quite impressive and interesting. Despite Details's contention that it's not oriented toward gay men -- while Men's Journal is published by Wenner Media, a company chaired by a gay man -- its sexual orientation continues to confuse me. On the cover, Tobey Maguire is touted to take off his tights. Whitney McNally dissects gays and guidos, claiming that the Italian stallion and Chelsea boy are indistinguishable. (p. 32) Augusten Burroughs touches on the risks of checking out other men's endowments while standing at the urinal. (p. 60) And Lee Smith considers whether the Taliban were gay. (p. 62). Yet people continue to debate which side of the bed Details sleeps on. What impressed me? Steve Kurutz blurbs It's a Man's World, a new book from Feral House celebrating pulp adventure magazines. (p. 40) His quickie Q&A with editor Bruce Jay Friedman is a nice thing to see in the usually ho-hum, edge-free magazine. Jeff Gordinier's page-long look at what he -- and others, it turns out -- terms "dadrock" is a welcome consideration of "music performed by aging rock stars; also, music that is strongly influenced by groups from the '60s and '70s." (p. 49) Go back to school, old school. And local literati Pagan Kennedy queries "Can a Car Run on Corn Oil?" in her profile of alternative fuel advocate Justin Carven. (p. 84) Another nice, on-the-edge piece for Details. That said, it might be Kevin Gray's feature, "The Bone Collectors," that clinched the deal for me. (p. 140) His extremely well-photographed (by Reuben Cox) article about a team of U.S. soldiers and scientists exhuming corpses in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia resonates well with my reading Mary Roach's Stiff. In fact, I need to recommend the article to her. To Esquire's credit, its August issue also pushed some buttons. First there's the Q&A between Paul Giamatti and cantankerous comics creator Harvey Pekar, whom Giamatti portrays in the forthcoming movie American Splendor. (p. 22) Best quote from Pekar: "I didn't hold it against you that you played an orangutan." Dirty monkeys. Then there's this little item: Best Execution Scene I might have skimmed past that had I not been reading Stiff. Funny how you see stuff you're not looking for just because it's on your mind! Virtual Book Tour VII Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers -- and the Virtual Book Tour -- have moved on to their fifth stop. In Min Jung Kim's blog Brain Dump, Kim likens reading the book to watching television programs such as CSI and Dead Like Me, citing the shows' witty dialogue and humor as reasons why their subject matter is so palatable. Kim also mixes in a bit of scatological humor. Both are present in Roach's book -- humor and scatology. Roach approaches the subject matter with a keen mind and a sharp wit, perhaps using humor to distance herself somewhat from the people and places she encountered while researching and reporting the book. We laugh at what makes us uncomfortable. Similarly, Stiff shows a deep interest in the solids and fluids our bodies produce while living and dead: bile, blood, feces, saliva, sweat, tears, urine, and vomit. In fact, I've felt queasy twice so far while reading the book. On p. 48, Roach details the "dead houses" of Scottish churches, structures in which bodies were locked until they had decomposed past the point of usefulness to anatomists, who would rob graves for research subjects. And on p. 68, Roach expands on the process of bloat and putrefaction, which I mentioned Tuesday. Roach's fascination with fluids isn't as strong as, say, that exhibited by Paul Spinrad's book Bodily Fluids. But there are enough crying decapitated dogs (p. 207-208) and excretion-based medical remedies (chapter 10) mentioned in the book that if it's gore you want, it's gore you'll get. Special thanks to Mary for being such a Media Diet sport yesterday. Wanting to up the ante in the Virtual Book Tour a little, I kind of put her through the paces. She rose to the occasion in fine style. I'll continue to follow the tour as it progresses. Thursday, July 10, 2003
Virtual Book Tour: Products I Love Funeral directors and other professionals who work with the dead have a wide array of products and tools available to them. Here are two of the leading suppliers in such goods: Virtual Book Tour: Magazine Me Subscriptions to the now-defunct Casket and Sunnyside and other trade publications are costly and hardly worth it for rubberneckers like myself. The simply curious [morbidly curious, or curiously morbid? -- MD] are better off browsing the Web. Here are a few eye-opening online selections: Virtual Book Tour: Corpses and Conversation As part of the Virtual Book Tour, Media Diet conducted a brief interview with author Mary Roach via email. Media Diet: Early in the book, you find yourself in a University of California, San Francisco, medical school anatomy lab to witness head dissections. Yvonne, the lab manager, gives you a hard time: "Does publications know you're here? If you're not cleared through the publications office, you'll have to leave." Did this exchange surprise or worry you? Mary Roach: Both. I'd had a hell of a time getting into that lab. The surgeons who were running it turned me down -- not that I blame them. If you were a plastic surgeon giving a nose job to the severed head of someone who'd donated their body to science, would you want a journalist there? Not likely. I'd even considered paying the $500 fee and showing up as an ersatz surgeon, hoping no one would notice that I was dissecting my head with a pickle fork and an Exacto knife. In the end, I'd had to call in a favor from a plastic surgeon I knew. I was cleared, though not through publications. MD: When organizing your interviews with the various sources and at the different facilities, did you regularly have to seek permission and clearance? From people and departments other than your direct source? Roach: Yep. I'd wanted to visit a military plane/helicopter crash site, because the military routinely does injury analysis of the bodies, and I had a chapter on that. The pathologists were fine with it, but the legal department turned me down, saying they had to protect the privacy of the deceased and their families. No way around that one. With all the military sources, I had to get permission from highers up. Meant of a lot of letter writing, assurances, and stating my case -- followed by out-and-out pleading. Definitely the hardest part of doing the book. MD: In chapter four, you describe how cadaver UM 006, which was used at the University of Michigan to research side-impact car crash damage, was masked and gloved to obscure his identity. How careful were sources to disguise cadavers' identities in your presence? How careful did you have to be to ensure anonymity? Roach: In most cases, the faces were not covered. They explained the importance of my not revealing identifying features, and they pretty much trusted me. (Except for the military folks.) In one case, the researcher had the identity card lying out on a table. But I had no reason or wish to reveal anyone's identity, and I think they knew that. MD: What kind of fact checking did you do with sources and others involved in the book? Did anyone request to clear what you wrote about them before the book went to press? Roach: I did a round of fact checking, double checking my notes and sources. Ideally, you want a hired fact checker to do this, but it's an enormous and costly undertaking, and few authors do it. (Magazine pieces, on the other hand, are almost always fact checked.) People often ask to be shown what you've written. Usually they phrase it as an offer to read the manuscript over for accuracy. You never say yes to this. They may intend to read for accuracy, but invariably they want you to emphasize something else, change what they said, or omit something that might get them into hot water. Your job would never be over. MD: Without giving up too much of the ghost, what would have liked to include in the book -- but couldn't because you didn't get permission or approval? What interviews did you miss out on because you couldn't get clearance? Roach: I wanted to visit Gunther Von Hagens' cadaver sweat shop in China. He's the guy who did that plastination exhibit of preserved, flayed humans that caused the big furor in London last year. His technique is time- and labor-intensive, and he hires a lot of Chinese to do the work. His staff stalled me for weeks, and I finally decided that they were never going to grant permission anyway. To be fair, though, if it were my operation, I wouldn't want a writer coming to visit either. Virtual Book Tour: Books Worth a Look Welsh medical historian Jan Bondeson wrote an entire book about live burial. It's called, no surprise, Buried Alive. Came out about three years ago. Bondeson not only knows everything about the subject, but he owns a private collection of old (i.e., pre-stethoscope and EEG) medical devices designed to determine for certain that a patient was dead: nipple pincers, hand-cranked tongue pullers, and a rococo bagpipe-like affair designed to administer tobacco enemas up the -- as Bondeson genteely calls it -- "rear passage." If they weren't dead yet, they probably longed to be. Virtual Book Tour: Sites for Sore Eyes II This is hard for me, because what I really want to be doing this morning is reading Autopsy Report. The hardest thing about writing Stiff was the constant distractions in the form of peculiar and wonderful Web sites I came across. Here are some of them. Now you, too, can become distracted and nonproductive. The Web archive of Frederick T. Zugibe's Pierre Barbet Revisited offers photographic proof that the cadaver hoisted upon a homemade cross in Dr. Barbet's lab in 1931 does indeed, as I say in the book, look like Spalding Gray. Barbet was attempting to use his anatomical savvy to prove the authenticity of the blood stains on the Shroud of Turin. The site contains a paper by medical examiner and contemporary Shroud researcher Frederick Zugibe, refuting Barbet's theory. Zugibe puts volunteers up on a cross of his own (using straps, not nails), which is housed in his garage in upstate New York. This document is the official report of the Medical/Forensic Group that examined the bodies of the victims of TWA Flight 800. To solve the mystery of why the plane went down (missile? bomb?), the government brought in injury analyst Dennis Shanahan, who makes his living examining the bodies of crash victims to try to figure out what happened during a crash and why. The cadavers, contrary to the conspiracy theorists, say a fuel tank exploded. Warning: The report is quite detailed ("Code Red = loss of 3 or more extremities or complete transection of body" etc.). Then there's the official Web site of the Swedish human composting movement, which I talk about in chapter 11 of Stiff. Human remains -- but not cremains -- make excellent fertilizer. The plants to be fertilized would be memorial trees or shrubs, not pole beans or a crop of corn. The movement's founder has the King of Sweden and the Church of Sweden on board. Rest in pieces. That's it for now. More soon. Virtual Book Tour: Sites for Sore Eyes Autopsy Report is a "log of experiences as a medical examiner intern" published by Brian. Seemingly launched in mid-May of this year, the blog shares stories about plane crashes, stillborn babies, visiting morgues, the lack of current research in forensic pathology, and other day-to-day encounters as part of Brian's internship. Brian's writing is a mix of reportage on how people died, as well as the medical underpinnings and analyses of the autopsies performed. He also offers a range of medical and forensic links. The blog is an in-depth, personal peek at the life of a medical examiner. Readers of Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers might find it an intriguing parallel read. Thanks to Metafilter. Virtual Book Tour VI Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers -- and the Virtual Book Tour -- have moved on to their fourth stop. At some point today, Mary will join me as a contributor to Media Diet, offering pointers to and commentary on magazines, books, movies, music, and other media items and artifacts related to the subject of her book. Nervy, Pervy XVIII Media Dietician Noah shares this "more pervy" Web resource: Mobile Asses. Perhaps not the most inspiring application of moblogging, the site claims that it is the "real reason mobile phones have cameras." Basically, it's a Hot or Not?-style rating site in which you can grade cell phone snaps of people's hind quarters. The photos are of varying degrees of quality and resolution, and the occasional horizontal shots will bring on a crick in your neck if you're not careful. Despite the silly fun of the idea -- they even offer T-shirts! -- I won't be revisiting the service. Still, it's nice to see the photographer credits, locations of the shots, and other information. Wednesday, July 09, 2003
From the In Box: Music to My Ears XXXIX Special thanks to Media Dieticians Joe Germuska, Andre Torrez, and Sean Kennedy for the dub pointers. Andre even asked, "Reggae dub or like techno trip-hop dub?" There's a techno trip-hop dub? Let the learning begin! Technofetishism XL It's been a good PowerBook day. I downloaded and installed Eudora 5.2.1 so I could access my personal email in OSX instead of using Classic. I started running a mail server on my laptop so I could do email without depending on the off-and-on auxiliary mail server at work. And I installed Fugu, a fun little GUI SFTP client that's been helping me snag all sorts of wonderful dub music from a friend. Music to My Ears XXXIX Lately, I've been jonesing for some dub, but I don't really know where to start. If any Media Dieticians can recommend any necessary dub recordings, let me know. That said, a friend in Chicago suggested I check out Urban Funk Ordinance. Listening to their song "Da Da Da," I'm stuck by memories of other largely white funk bands: the Red Hot Chili Peppers and their copycats, natch; Billy's Sandbox; and Uptighty (which doesn't really fit this list). UFO's no Trouble Funk, and there's a little Digital Underground thread running through their music, but it's fun stuff. Perfect for a slightly rainy Wednesday. Corollary: Conferences and Community IV I decided not to go to the first international moblogging conference in Tokyo earlier this month so I could take some vacation time in northern Wisconsin. Luckily, Justin Hall and others helped document the event. Yesterday in the Feature, Justin reported on the proceedings. Among the Literati XLIII Dude. Ben Weasel, former frontman for Screeching Weasel, a wonderful Chicago-area punk band, slags Norman Mailer in his blog this past weekend. This is neat on several levels. One, I had no idea Ben blogged -- I'll have to add him to my frequent reads. And two, while I've yet to read his book's Like Hell or Punk Is a Four-Letter Word, I'm quite delighted that the author of such lyrics as "Why don't you beat it? Why don't you go away, you smelly butt? Why don't you go away? You're just a turd. Why don't you go away? Sit on it, nerd? Why don't you go away? Dummy, dummy, dummy, dummy, dummy, dummy," is ripping into Mailer. "Why don't you write properly?" Pot. Kettle. Thanks to Dr. Frank's Blogs of War. Magazine Me XXXVII A former CNN reporter and producer is launching a new magazine aimed at women who travel. Atlanta-based Stephanie Oswald's title Travelgirl hits the stands this week, entering a niche crowded by heavy hitters already reaching a sizable female readership. How will Travelgirl stand out? Travelgirl attempts to lighten the load with articles on how to survive a road trip with small children and how to travel safely and comfortably during pregnancy. There are also stories on planning a bachelorette party, financing a child’s college education, and cooking exotic meals. Each article falls into one of five core areas: family, finance, health, humor and spirituality. Media Life quotes Oswald characterizing the new magazine as a lifestyle title with a travel bent. I'll have to check it out! Virtual Book Tour V Jessa Crispin of Bookslut has some valid criticism of the Virtual Book Tour to date. Some of her comments hit rather close to my own responses so far as a participant, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers contributes to Media Diet. Roach will also be "taking over" Jason Kottke's blog for a day later in the tour. I think those two tour stops will shine. Yes, Kevin is still working out the process and format for the tour. Stick with us! And Jessa's instinct to start her own virtual book tour is right on in fine DIY style. Technofetishism XXXIX Awesome. After two months of frustration trying to figure out why they couldn't get the Ergo Audrey I sent them to work again, my mom and dad decided that it was their ISP. When my dad dials in from the desktop, it can take several tries before a connection is made. Because Audrey doesn't indicate the status of your dial in or connection, they had no way of telling what was happening -- or whether they needed to try again. Then, their ISP announced that it was shutting down its local office and that no local dial-in numbers would be available any more. So they switched ISP's. And the new service provider rocks. Audrey works. My mom's back online in the kitchen. And she's been peppering me with emails -- one chastising me when I suggested she tweak her settings somewhat. "Give me a break!" she wrote. "I'm lucky to do Audrey at all!" I'm lucky to get emails like that. Audrey rocks. Nervy, Pervy XVII Media Dietician Richard Lawrence turned me onto a new "public art apparatus" titled I Shot Myself. Each day we exhibit a new folio in which the artist presents herself in a bold statement about nudity, fame and the Internet. This is Selfploitation. It can make you look, make you think, make you jelly-kneed, and if you want, it can even make you famous. Think Suicide Girls by way of Hot or Not?. Think the Mirror Project via Natacha Merritt's Digital Diaries. The concept of selfploitation is interesting. On one hand, it's a new way to seek microstardom. On the other, it's a nice experiment in DIY media making and self-documentation, albeit on the softporn tip. With just over 100 "artists" -- read: models -- submitting more than 1,500 photographs in almost 60 folios, the service is still relatively young. I had some trouble accessing the site using Explorer, and I can't log into the discussion forums with my username and password, so there might still be some technical kinks Richard needs to work out. However, based in Australia, the project was inspired by American photographer Spencer Tunick's visit to the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Tunick photographs people naked in public places. The project has an intriguing lineage and shows promise. Besides, it's nice to see so many people uncovered down under. Virtual Book Tour IV Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers -- and the Virtual Book Tour -- have moved on to their third stop. In her blog Rogue Librarian, Carrie Bickner considers the contributions that cadavers have made to automobile safety research -- and offers a personal comment on the impact of the book: "I'll never look at my own flesh quite the same way." On the T this morning, I reached page 92, just into the fourth chapter that Bickner discusses in her post today. I've been making ample notes on the books, magazines and journals, and other media mentions that Roach makes throughout the book. There are some fascinating resources available. And Monday evening, while reading on the T ride home, I saw a woman sitting across from me reading Michael Paterniti's Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain. While Roach doesn't include the book in her bibliography, I'm sure it'd be an interesting parallel read. From Amazon.com: After Thomas Harvey performed Einstein's autopsy in 1955, he made off with the key body part. His claims that he was studying the specimen and would publish his findings never bore fruit, and the doctor fell from grace. The brain, though, became the subject of many an urban legend, and Harvey was transformed into a modern Robin Hood, having snatched neurological riches from the establishment and distributed them piecemeal to the curious and the faithful around the world. I'll continue to follow the tour as it progresses, and this week Thursday, July 10 -- tomorrow! -- Mary will join me as a contributor to Media Diet, offering pointers to and commentary on magazines, books, movies, music, and other media items and artifacts related to the subject of her book. Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Virtual Book Tour III While I thought I was participating in the first ever Virtual Book Tour, it turns out that there's a precedent. Last spring, Jason Kottke participated in a virtual book tour to promote Greg Knauss' book Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard. Virtual Book Tour II Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers -- and the Virtual Book Tour -- has moved on to its second stop. Kristin Garrity's blog Booboolina includes a brief excerpt of the book, focusing on a vignette in chapter three about the University of Tennessee Medical Center's forensic anthropology facility. It's a poignant part of the book -- the second bit that made me feel queasy while reading last night -- and ground already well covered. The facility has been featured by Popular Science, Newsweek, and CNN. Regardless, Roach's juxtaposition of the facility and the photograph taken from The Wizard of Oz that leads off the chapter is clever. Do you recall the Margaret Hamilton death scene in The Wizard of Oz? ("I'm melting!") Putrefaction is more or less a slowed-down version of this. The woman lies in a mud of her own making. (p. 68) I'll continue to follow the tour as it progresses, and this week Thursday, July 10, Mary will be joining me as a contributor to Media Diet, offering pointers to and commentary on magazines, books, movies, music, and other media items and artifacts related to the subject of her book. Among the Literati XLII Former Fast Company contributor and Iowa Writer's Workshop grad Curtis Sittenfeld just sold her first novel. The book's titled Cheer, and Publishers Lunch describes it as a "humorously observant and uncannily realistic story of a fourteen-year-old girl who chooses to attend a prestigious East coast boarding school and soon realizes how different from her romantic illusions the reality of her new home is." The book is slated to be published by Random House. Congratulations, Curtis! Street Art VII Cabbing into Fast Company's New York office from LaGuardia this morning, I was struck by some paint work on the barrier wall along the highway near the airport. Initially thinking that I was seeing some sort of postmodern, abstract art akin to zebra or giraffe spots dotting the red barrier wall, I soon realized that it was in fact spray paint marking stress fractures, cracks, and chips in the wall -- areas that require repair. Boy, was I disappointed. Still, we take our art where we find it! Then, the taxi was driving a couple of car lengths behind a tricked-out van with a full-body graffiti-like wrapper that said, "Are You Hip-Hop?" along with a URL for the WonderTwinZ, which seems to be a radio program produced in Long Island -- or "Strong Island." Sonic and Lord Vader appear to be the heads of "All Time Flava," a DJ and graf crew that specializes in hip-hop and R&B theme parties. They also publish a magazine called the Connex List, which features a resource listing of media shows, support services, producers, and retailers for the hip-hop industry, as well as articles and editorials. The TwinZ also do radio promotion. Wow. More vehicles should have URL's on them. That'd get us even closer to hybrid moblogging and mapblogging. Monday, July 07, 2003
Corollary: Auto-Numismatic It is the H.E. Harris & Co. folders that include the additional contextual history, not the Littleton Coin Co. editions. Clarification made, stick to the coins, please, regardless of my interest in coins as touchstones of history. [This entry was transmitted via Sidekick Hiptop.] Comics and Computers IV "Last year at SPX, Brad Collins wandered around and asked everyone to draw robots in his sketchbook." The results are online. Thanks to Go Away. Blogging About Blogging LXIII Bryan, proprietor of Arguing with Signposts, recently stepped up as the new lead editor of MediaReview. Founder Kevin will remain an active contributor. Additionally, after a year and a half of active publishing, MediaMinded is shutting up shop. I've never really followed either site, but with the new energy and insight Bryan is sure to bring MediaReview, it might be worth Media Dieticians' attention. Mikey Dee, Deceased I hardly knew Mikey Dee, a long-time local music supporter, show organizer, and radio DJ. But I know how important he was to -- and how influential he was in -- the Boston music scene. I felt a loss when he was hospitalized following a stroke in 2000, andf I feel an even greater loss today. Mikey Dee passed away early Sunday morning. Area musicians, friends, and family are posting memories and testimonials to his Web site, and people -- including Media Dietician Brad Searles are posting appreciations on their respective blogs and Web pages. Boston has missed Mikey Dee. I've missed Mikey Dee. And now we will miss him more. Rest in peace, Mikey Dee. And rock on. Auto-Numismatic Don't worry, I'm not such a geek that I've become a coin collector (just kidding, coin collectors). But I have recently become fascinated by money. Part of this stems from my parents' interest in the 50 State Quarters Program of the United States Mint. And part of it stems from the coffee cans full of wheat cents we used to store in our basement when I was growing up. In any event, I've recently acquired several coin folders, and I've started sorting my big bag of change by year and mint location. Once I go through the bag, I'll take the remaining change to a Coinstar machine to cash it in. In any event, this is a surprisingly fun hobby. For one, there's something soothing about the manual labor involved in sorting and organizing one's change. I don't have many projects in my life with such repetition, much less clear goals and progress. Secondly, the connection between coins and history is amazing. When I come across a 1968 penny, I think about what happened in 1968 -- politically and culturally. When I discovered a 1978 nickel, I thought about grade school. We carry touchstones to the past in our pockets every day, and we handle them without thinking. It's also interesting because of the accoutrements of numismatics. Several publishers offer coin folders, and they're all different. I know which kind I like the most, and it might be useful to share my comparisons and commentary with you. H.E. Harris & Co.'s coin folders are my least favorite. Even though they've been in the business since 1916, the cover paper -- and backing to the coin slots -- is much too thin. Will it rip? In addition, the cover designs are rather garish. I much prefer the mottled covers used by other coin folder manufacturers. Of those, the custom coin folders made by the Littleton Coin Co., which has been in business since 1945, are a close second. With an austere mottled green cover, these folders offer a much better backing. That said, the coins almost fit in too easily. Will they fall out? While the Littleton folders offer as much historical information about the coins in question as H.E. Harris & Co.'s wares, they also include somewhat distracting corollary history about current events of the time. Stick to the coins, please. Lastly, my clear favorite, the Whitman coin folders supplied by St. Martin's Press. With their classic mottled blue covers, ample backing, occasionally too-snug coin slots, and coin-related history, these are my pick of the litter. To my surprise, H.E. Harris & Co. acquired the Whitman line of numismatic products from St. Martin's early this year. Ouch. If president Mary Counts isn't lying when she says, "We are committed to continuing the Whitman legacy," H.E. Harris & Co. would be well advised to follow in the footsteps of Whitman and drastically improve their product line. When I was shopping for the folders, H.E. Harris & Co.'s folders dominated the shelves. Whitman's quality is, oh, so much higher. Sheesh. You know you're a geek when you complain about the quality of coin collecting folders. I think I've crossed a line, Media Dieticians. Hiking History VII Saturday, before leaving for my week in Wisconsin, I went on a historical walk and talk through the South End of Boston. Offered through the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and organized by Mytown, the two-hour walk included several interesting labor organizing-, multicultural-, and counterculture-related sites, many of which I wasn't familiar with previously.    Starting at the Back Bay T station, we gathered at the statue of A. Philip Randolph, an African-American civil rights leader who helped organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. After walking through Tent City, an affordable housing complex now located on the site of a protest against urban renewal that involved 100 neighborhood activists, including Mel King, we continued to the original location of Harriet Tubman's house.    From there, we walked through the Southwest Corridor Park, a 4.7 mile-long green belt between Back Bay and Forest Hills that was originally planned to be an 8-12 lane highway. That took us to Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe, originally opened in 1927. Owner Charlie Poulos served blacks and whites before many establishments in the Boston area, and his restaurant also served as a hang out for jazz musicians and labor organizers. If you go, look for the dice set in the sidewalk in front of the entrance. Lore has it that local craps players left one set -- a lucky 7 -- so Charlie would always have good luck. That set sank, so they left another. The original set rose again, and now there are two sets of lucky 7 gracing the pavement.    Leaving Charlie's we went to the Lucy Parsons Center, a long-running radical bookstore and community center that's also had homes in Central and Davis squares. What I didn't know was that it's now located at the original site of the Academy of Musical Arts, an educational facility run by a Native-American woman who wanted to provide affordable arts programming to disadvantaged area youth. From there, we passed the former residence of Martin Luther King, Jr., who lived in Boston in the early '50s while attending Boston University. The final stop was Wally's Jazz Cafe, which opened in 1947 across the street from where it is now -- and was part of the Chitlin Circuit of jazz clubs that supported African-American musicans. After the tour ended, I swung back by Lucy Parsons to see if it had opened. It hadn't. Regardless, what a wonderful way to start my vacation! Anchormen, Aweigh! XXVI It's not often that the Anchormen advertise our wares and whereabouts beyond our own circles of friends, but we're taking out an ad in Magnet.  Nifty, eh? Virtual Book Tour Media Diet is a member of the Virtual Book Tour, which starts today. Over the course of the next two weeks, Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, will be making her way to and through 10 different blogs -- including Media Diet. Today, you can read Mike Carvalho's impressions of the book in his blog Barking Moose. I'll continue to follow the tour as it progresses, and this week Thursday, July 10, Mary will be joining me as a contributor to Media Diet, offering pointers to and commentary on magazines, books, movies, music, and other media items and artifacts related to the subject of her book. The Free-Range Comic Book Project XXIX This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project: Detective Comics #743 (DC, April 2000). Writer: Greg Rucka. Artist: Shawn Martinbrough. Location: On a bench at Downtown Crossing on the Red Line. For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry. |
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