Bend, Ore as a haven for the Times' affluent readers

I skimmed this odd solipsistic piece in Slate last week, and in fact forwarded the link to my friend Joel:

Are Journalists Underpaid? - Pity the sad, broke New York Times reporter.
By Daniel Gross

The piece is about journalists (and other members of the "creative class") "suffering" from, Gross writes, "what David Brooks (in his excellent Bobos in Paradise phase) identified as status-income disequilibrium."

(Brooks was insightful back in those days. As I wrote to Joel, I regret I read half of "Bobos" and then set it down for some reason--it really is a good book. E.g., I set it down just after getting through a section about Jane Jacobs and her Amazon.com: The Death and Life of Great American Cities--another book that's been on the to-read list for a while.)

Gross went on to mention something I'd been noticing too--the Times has been going heavy into "reporting" on the lifestyles of those whose status and incomes are closer to an equilibrium--at high levels:

...much of the expanded coverage of both the Times (Thursday Styles, House & Home, Real Estate) and the Journal (the Friday weekend section, the Saturday edition) is dedicated to the sort of high-end consumption that reporters can't really afford.

Those sections mentioned above, plus Escapes, that pile up at the end of the week...as usual, the question is, who is it that can afford to live like this? The liberal elite, I suppose the populist right-wingers would say.

At times, this coverage tends towards self-parody. Last Friday's Escapes had a piece headlined "The Third Home Comes Within Reach"! The three featured couples for whom that 3rd home has come within reach: an elderly lesbian couple, a younger gay couple, and a token hetero couple (but interracial).

All this is prelude to another piece in that Escapes section. This installment of "Havens": Bend, Oregon: Where Timber Was King, the Golf Club Replaces the Ax.

Thought that one might be of interest. Plenty of real estate quotes sprinkled throughout, plus Pros ("Growth has brought big-name music - Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Bob Dylan - to town, and restaurants appeal to sophisticated palates.") and Cons ("Bend is 94 percent white. The joke among locals is that diversity means Subarus of different colors.")

Performancing

Just wanted to wish all y'all a happy holidays. We've let this rot for a while here. As I just wrote over here, it's certainly not the case that I want to be spending more time on the web in '06. But I still think we need to have a forum for interacting--trading links, ideas, thoughts. B/c othw next thing you'll know it'll have been years and we won't know what to talk to each other about.

Here's something that might facilitate some action: Performancing for Firefox. First you'll have to download Firefox 1.5, which is where you should be doing your browsing anyways. Then install the Performancing Extension, and you'll be able to compose a post within Firefox while viewing any webpage--an editor comes up in the bottom half of a split screen--and send it to direct to Blogger. It's pretty nice. I'm posting from within it now.

happy birthday to the fatmango...

...one day late. I wanted to put together a mix CD for this occasion too--but I still
haven't done one for juniocooper's birthday. I may just have to roll it all into one
year-end mix that goes out to all of you. Once again, I'll post the tracklisting up in
here.

2005 almost done. "Time is moving on, you better get with it before it's gone." (g.u.r.u.)

Peter Scholtes in City Pages: PE, Prince, Mpls hip-hop

Clearing out some more of the weekly e-mail newsletters that fill up my inbox. Figured this link was appropriate to post, since we've had a running conversation about the historical significance and continuing relevance of PE and Chuck D:

Welcome to the Superdome
How Hurricane Katrina made Public Enemy relevant again
by Peter S. Scholtes
November 2, 2005

It was news to me that PE dropped a track titled "Hell No We Ain't All Right!" via shutemdown.com amid the Katrina aftermath.

That transitions into a review of two PE discs thave have just dropped: Power to the People and the Beats: Public Enemy's Greatest Hits and New Whirl Odor.

BTW, Scholtes seems to know what's he's talking about. I've come across two of his CP features from the summer of 2004 that were just mind-blowing:

One Nation, Invisible
The untold story of local hip-hop: 1981 to 1996
by Peter S. Scholtes
August 18, 2004

Who knew there was any story of Twin Cities hip hop from '81-'96??

And then there was this, which tells a story where you know the players, but their prehistory is amazing:

School of Funk
Jimmy Jam was a DJ. Morris Day was a drummer. Prince was a kid with a huge afro. Before they changed popular music, Mom told them to turn
that racket down.
by Peter S. Scholtes
July 14, 2004

That feature goes a large part of the way towards explaining something I've always wondered about: how did a genius of black music like Prince manage come out of Minneapolis, of all places?

last.fm - making the connection

Been listening to radio streams via last.fm every now and then at work. Just now, it served up James Brown's "The Boss", which is apparently on the "Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" soundtrack.

Something about the horn and guitar on the track sounded famililar. Took me a second to place it: it's the basis for smoking beat behind Nas's "Get Down."

This bit of sample-spotting reminded me to suggest we resurrect a project me and Juniorcooper discussed but never got going--spotting lyrical allusions.

Following the GFoS in the radio stream: "Better Things" off of Massive Attack's classic Protection.

my new favorite track of the moment...

T-Pain, "I'm Sprung"--check the video here.

Made an impulse purchase of the track from the iTMS last night. Got it in heavy rotation this morning here at work.

Those deep south beats plus the Roger Troutman-style vocoder got me...sprung.

Now I just got to track down the Bay Area Remix--"Go Dumb"--which is in seriously heavy rotation on the radio up here.

happy b-day to juniorcooper

I'd been planning to put together a mix CD for the man's birthday, but not surprisingly it hasn't happened yet. At least I got a good excuse this time, what with all the chaos Anj and I have been dealing with over the last few weeks. In fact, I haven't even had my laptop through most of it--left it at the spot while we evacuated to the Fisherman's Wharf hotel that first weekend, and Anj took it with her to Berkeley this week--b/c her Powerbook's hard drive died the same week all this went down at our place! When it rains, it pours, and it just came down hard.

So I'll put something together this coming week/end. I figure I'll offer it up to the dillytaunt team, as a general commemoration of the date. Look for a tracklisting up here next week.