Guy LeCharles Gonzalez (aka glecharles) (aka loudpoet)

An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Radio Silence & Recommended Reading

I’m flying down to Virginia tomorrow morning for a long weekend and will be avoiding certain parts of the internet (guess which?) as much as possible while I’m there. Here’s some several-times-daily sites I’ll be missing out on that I highly recommend you bookmark and check regularly:

Andrew Sullivan:  My favorite blog of them all, hands-down, Sullivan is on vacation but has a few guest bloggers filling in who are doing good work in his absence. Hilzoy’s “Dear Chris Matthews: Please Do Your Job” is a must-read for those sick and tired of the “Obama’s inexperienced” meme.

First Read: MSNBC is my cable news network of choice as I find them to offer, relatively speaking, the most balanced election coverage and least overtly biased commentators, particularly Keith Olbermann, Mika Brzezinski, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, and, believe it or not, Joe Scarborough. Their political blog often has solid analysis and interesting nuggets from the campaign trail and doesn’t feel the need to post about every single non-story that comes up throughout the day.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Last night at the Slam

It’s been a while since I judged a slam (publicly, at least!), especially at 13 where I know several of the regulars personally, so I was surprised when Lynne asked me to judge last night’s open slam. I was happy to do it as a critical listening exercise, though, because I think my ears have become much less sharp ever since I launched Spindle, and my focus has shifted to the page.

Way back in the day, I used to believe in never giving anyone less than 7 points for their work, respecting the effort it takes to simply get on stage and perform in front of an audience, but that floor dropped to 5 points last night for a terrible rhyming poem in the first round. Overall, it was a solid slam with no real standout performances and my scores were almost always the lowest or second lowest of the night with one surprising exception.

I wrote notes on each of my scores and here’s some of my favorites:

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Monday Mash-up, 2/18/08

1) Spindle had a great week last week with a strong February update that generated our highest single-day traffic spike yet, and the announcement of our first contest, “Play Ball” — which offers a $50 honorarium for the best baseball / stickball / cricket-related poetry, fiction and non-fiction from a New York City perspective — has been well-received. The winner will be published in April as part of the “Play Ball” issue which I’m really looking forward to. Sports + writing = more fun than work.

2) Speaking of work, issue closings at the day job usually make for a rough week or two but the May/June issue closed last Tuesday without too much ado, partly because I’ve already locked up about 85% of our advertisers for the year. That last 15% is the difference between a solid issue and a great issue, though, so it wasn’t exactly a cake walk, especially since this issue was over-budgeted based on inflated numbers from last year, partly due to the change from a monthly schedule to bi-monthly the summer before. Overall, though, it’s shaping up to be a really good year and career-wise, the decisions I made over the past 18 months have really paid off.

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Continue ReadingMonday Mash-up, 2/18/08
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

I Love Keith Olbermann

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=NGPwXYAmZzQ] "If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it. There is a dictionary definition; one word that describes that toxic blend. You're a fascist! Get them to print you a t-shirt with 'Fascist' on it!" Keith Olbermann's latest Special Comment nails President Bush to the wall, taking him to task on playing the "fear card" (again) and the civil rights fiasco that is the FISA bill. For all of the over-the-top bluff and bluster of most political pundits, I like that Olbermann saves his righteous indignation for key moments like this,…

Continue ReadingI Love Keith Olbermann
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Not just empty words, not just false hope

Not all Obama supporters are being driven solely by emotion and recent articles about the “cult-like” aura surrounding his campaign seem to suggest there’s a not-unexpected backlash brewing in the media. The most overt instance of this was probably the FOX News stunt with one of Frank Luntz’ post-debate “focus groups” where several Obama supporters were asked to name a single accomplishment of his and none of them could. Of course, the combination of FOX News and Luntz has about as much credibility as Jay Leno’s “stupid people” quiz show skit, but they’re not the only ones guilty of such disingenous “gotcha” tactics.

There’s a great video clip on YouTube that’s getting a lot of attention right now of an interview with an Obama supporter outside of the Kodak Theater before the debate a couple of weeks ago, and what starts out looking like a weak attempt at a “gotcha” sound bite turns into the kind of moment that rarely gets any play on the evening news:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kica8hmSdAM]

This kid is much more representative of the majority of people I know who are supporting Obama, and anyone who has primarily been swept up by the undeniable emotional appeal of his message owes it to themselves to learn about what he actually stands for, not just to counter inaccurate assertions about his campaign, but because it’s important to be an educated voter.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Spindle: February ’08

Spindle Spokesbaby: Will DiazIn the midst of all the political blogging I’ve been doing lately, I had a Spindle update looming on the calendar for today and stole time here and there over the past two weeks to sift through the surprisingly steady stream of submissions that have come in since last month.

I was worried in mid-January that the aggressive “official launch” schedule I’d set up for January, posting 15 new pieces over three weeks, would deplete my inventory and leave me scraping through some marginal work to get something up this month but it all worked out nicely in the end as we have new work from Alan King, Eric Payne, Rachel L. Olivares and Julian Taub, plus new columns from Stephanie R. Myers (Myers Music Experience) and Brooke Wacha (On the 1).

Log on now and get into a New York state of mind @ http://www.spindlezine.com

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Like Hope, But Different

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwqEneBKUs]

(Warning: Put down any hot beverages you may be drinking before pressing play.)

On a more serious note, via The Atlantic‘s excellent Andrew Sullivan, comes Kaboom: A Soldier’s War Journal and a post, “Wisdom from the Homefront“, about some of the mail soliders in Iraq receive from American schoolchildren:

…my favorite portion of the miscellaneous stack of our mail room are the letters written to soldiers by American schoolchildren. Most of them offer the same commonplace banalities sent our way from the greater American public – thank you for what you do, please return home safely, we’ll pray for you. Empty words from an empty people; they want to show that they care, but this experience is so unlike anything in their realm of understanding only trodden clichés can fill their vacuum of confusion. I’m not bitter – yet – I’m just commenting on reality.

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