10 29 08 10:50 |No comments yet The Shape of Punk to Come

So I'm hosting a TV show for Comcast OnDemand. Yup, that's right. On camera and all the fixin's. For those of you in Comcast Country (Philly market at least) go to OnDemand > Go Local > Philly Reality > Strange in the City. Strange in the City, sure is. We're a little show in the backwaters of local OnDemand content that features people, places, and things in Philadelphia that may not be on the mainstream cultural radar. It's a lot of fun to make these shows and we hope to be able to make a lot more of them. These photos of me and the crew were taken at Faeriecon 08, a Faerie convention at the Philly convention center. It was a trip. The gentleman and puppett I'm interviewing there are from the Froud family. They did the creature design for Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal and Labrynth. Toby there was actuall the baby that was stolen in Labrynth. And there's the crew. CCFV's finest. Fearless. So check out the show, hope you enjoy it. 

In other news ; the Phillies. Chrissy and I had my folks over for dinner on Sunday night and were startled by being able to hear the roar of 80,000 fans from Citizens Bank Park in our Kitchen! We turned on the tube and experienced the delay between the live roars and the broadcast roars. It was amazing. My sound brain was trying to figure out how many seconds of delay vs. how far the stadium is to our house, but was distracted by sausage and escarole. 

Saw Ed Ruscha on Iconoclasts last night. They showed the piece that Andrea Landau and Chrissy worked on with the Fabric Workshop and museum. Not a great episode. Ruscha is not a very interesting/insightful person.

10 02 08 4:17 |No comments yet The beast without

The global economy is self aware and very much alive.  It expands and contracts as a reaction to its environment and knows how to protect itself. It is strongest when it is left alone and allowed to succeed and fail. It can learn and teach. The US financial sector should be allowed to prosper or perish while exemplifying the possibilities of a truly free market economy. Private banks have made very bad investments, investors have made very bad investments, consumers have made very bad decisions and all should be free to continue to do so. I think all lenders are predators, that's how they make money. A debtor knows this going into an agreement and must know enough to read the fine print. Lenders have gottten a little fat and very, very stupid in recent years and are now paying for it. In light of all this I am not a supporter of an economic bailout of any kind. I think periods of growth and recession are healthy for an economy and the minds and hearts of those living with that economy. Maybe a major crisis that really hits 'main st.' is just the wake up call that the US needs in order to really start to deal with energy, health care, and its position in the world. Or perhaps in the months ahead we come to the conclusion that our system is broken beyond repair, that the beast is dead. That maybe we should socialize our banks, maybe we should make it a lot more difficult to get credit, and maybe it is the Chinese economy that poses the greatest threat to our national security.