Amazon.com Widgets
dangerousminds.net
u.s. geological survey
Happy Mount St. Helens Day!
zgf architects via seattle times
The recession has claimed another victim, the Betsey Johnson boutique on Fifth Avenue.
I don’t think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn’t exactly like you.
sobadsogood.com
This is from Sunday’s “Color Run” downtown, a 5K benefitting Ronald McDonald House. Runners were splashed with “color dust” at points along the route. (Note: This is not at all to be confused with the 2005 teen novel The Rainbow Party, or with the false rumor that that novel depicted a real-life fad.)
“Supporting traditional marriage” as an excuse for banning gay marriage is like “supporting lettuce” as an excuse for banning cabbage.
npr.org
Thriller author Barry Eisler, a born-again proponent of self-publishing (and the first established author to sign with Amazon’s publishing division), told a local audience that :
Needless to say, in many parts of the book establishment (the most tradition-bound establishment in all the lively arts), them’s fightin’ words.
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Meanwhile, authors Sarah Weinman and Maureen Ogle have put up separate online essays. Each questions the future of “serious non-fiction” in the digital age.
Under the old regime, profitable publishing houses subsidized this work with large advances against royalties. In many cases, the publishers knew authors would never earn these advances back. It was the companies’ way of subsidizing prestigious “loss leader” works.
But if self-publishing becomes the new business-as-usual, Weinman and Ogle ask, what will become of long, research-heavy projects—projects that could take as many as five years of an author’s full-time attention?
There’s always Kickstarter.com. That’s where local comix legend Jim Woodring is raising funds so he can work full-time on his next graphic novel.
And there are always grants, fellowships, teaching gigs, and working spouses (for those authors who can land any of them).
And there’s another answer, one that’s right under Weinman and Ogle’s proverbial noses.
Both essayists note that the most successful e-book self-publishers, thus far, are fiction writers who churn out several titles per year.
Non-fiction writers can do likewise.
They can chop up and serialize their longer works, one section at a time.
When it comes time to put out the full book, authors can still revise and re-sequence everything.
In another sector of the digital media disruption, music-biz attorney Ken Hertz reminds you that even (or especially) with the new marketplace, bands still face tremendous odds against “making it.”
It is with a heavy heart that we must say goodbye to Publicola, for three years the go-to site for insider wonk-knowledge about Seattle political minutae.
Josh Feit and Erica C. Barnett studiously roved the corridors of City Hall and associated parties, fundraisers, caucus meetings, and planning conferences, always coming back with clear, engaging reports.
But, as we previously noted in regards to the equally ambitious SportsPress Northwest, local content sites just can’t make in on banner ads alone.
Goodness knows, Feit and Barnett did all they could.
They added arts and entertainment reviewers (officially billed on-site as the “Nerds”), then dropped them when their contributions didn’t lead to added revenue.
Later they did the same with veteran crime reporter Jonah Spangenthal-Lee.
More lately, their initial financial backers pulled out. Feit and Barnett asked for donations from readers to keep the site going. That helped them to meet an immediate cash shortage.
But Feit, Barnett, and their initial backers knew the site’s long-term prospects as a for-profit, stand-alone entity were poor.
So Publicola, as its own thing, is shutting down.
But Crosscut.com, Seattle Weekly founder David Brewster’s nonprofit local commentary/analysis site, is bringing Feit and Barnett on board. Their coverage will continue at Crosscut in twice-daily installments. Brewster and co. will stage a fund drive to support permanent employment for the two.
(Just a little dose of random-osity for you all today.)
meowonline.org
Every person I talk to at a signing, every exchange I have online (sometimes dozens a day), every random music video or art gallery link sent to me by a fan that I curiously follow, every strange bed I’ve crashed on… all of that real human connecting has led to this moment, where I came back around, asking for direct help with a record. Asking EVERYBODY.… And they help because they know I’m good for it. Because they KNOW me.
art chantry-designed poster for coca (1991), available at gigposters.com
The Center on Contemporary Art (COCA) was Seattle’s premier venue for avant exhibitions and performances in the 1980s and 1990s.
Then COCA lost its last downtown space to development. Its visibility and funding slowed down.
In recent years COCA has existed in semi-exile, on the ground floor of the Elks lodge in Shilsole. (It’s also had a Belltown “gallery,” a glass display case outside a condo building on a little-walked stretch of Broad Street, and occasional temporary spaces elsewhere around town.)
But now COCA’s roaring back with a full-time space in what’s become a major art neighborhood, Georgetown. Specifically, it’s at the Seattle Design Center. (The huge showroom building for furnishings consultants and interior decorators has had its own troubles during the housing crash. It has a lot of spare square footage these days.)
The big opening party is Friday after next (5/18; also the 32nd anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens kablooey).
Let’s welcome COCA back into Seattle’s “outside the mainstream” mainstream.
liem bahneman, via komo-tv
designboom.com
buddy bunting, via prole drift gallery
udhcmh.tumblr.com
to earn enough money so that you can behave in a way that makes the very existence of other people irrelevant.… Wall Street is far too self-absorbed to be concerned with the outside world unless it is forced to. But Wall Street is also, on the whole, a very unhappy place. While there is always the whisper that maybe you too can one day earn fuck-you money, at the end of a long day, sometimes all you take with you are your misguided feelings of self-righteousness.
to earn enough money so that you can behave in a way that makes the very existence of other people irrelevant.…
Wall Street is far too self-absorbed to be concerned with the outside world unless it is forced to. But Wall Street is also, on the whole, a very unhappy place. While there is always the whisper that maybe you too can one day earn fuck-you money, at the end of a long day, sometimes all you take with you are your misguided feelings of self-righteousness.