We’ve so far raised $1655 on Kickstarter for Notebook on Cities and Culture‘s fourth and most ambitious season, but still have $6345 to go before we can make it happen. If we can raise it in the next four days, the show will indeed go not just to Los Angeles, but to Toronto, Copenhagen, and London producing a full sixty (count ’em) full-length conversations with more cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene. If we can’t, then season four will, alas, come to zero episodes.
Find out how you can back Notebook on Cities and Culture season four, and what backer rewards you can claim — thanks, postcards, mentions of your project or message, you as a guest — on the show’s Kickstarter page. Thanks.
Should you get in the mood to read a book on public transit for nonspecialists, I unhesitatingly recommend Jarrett Walker’s “Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives.” Though Portland-based, the transit consultant Walker makes many a clear observation about Los Angeles, its transit, its communities, and its lives. Toward the end of the book, he imagines the tantalizing street of one day this city’s future, which “feels more like a Parisian boulevard in many ways, including generous sidewalks, shade trees, and of course a transit lane” in which “bus and streetcar technologies have converged into a long snakelike vehicle lined with many doors, so that people can flow on and off as easily as they do on a subway,” which is “guided by optical technology” and which, “mostly transparent above waist height,” “feels like a continuation of the sidewalk.”
That day, alas, has yet to come. “I thought about the bus in Los Angeles,” narrates Richard, the hapless young Englishman in Richard Rayner’s novel “Los Angeles Without a Map.” “It was the way to travel. Once I had waited for over two hours at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevard when a driver with a cowboy hat and and a drawling voice like Harrison Ford decided he was sick of his job. His solution to the problem was to stop the bus and make everyone get off.” Richard goes on to tell of enraged aisle-prowlers, robberies by prepubescent thugs, and passing motorists shouting “Lo-sers, asshole losers!.” His blonde, über-Angeleno girlfriend asks him if he really likes riding the bus. “It’s democratic,” he replies. She snorts and asks whether democracy arrives on time. “‘Never had to wait more than five minutes,’ I lied.”
Read the whole thing at KCET Departures.
I haven’t set foot in a Nordstrom in years. Come to think of it, maybe I’ve never entered one at all. They seem expensive, and I — perhaps you, too — tend only to break out that kind of money at the most obscurely specialized of specialty shops: places with new-old-stock tie clips from sixties Japan, pocket squares made of battleship blueprints, aftershave left over from the days of Empire, that sort of thing. Certainly not old-school department stores that make me suspect my purchases will underwrite walls full of dark wood. But that caricatures unfairly a business like Nordstrom, which has provided stylistic succor to generations and generations of men in need of a wardrobe, and which I can’t imagine afflicted by the national plague — downfall of so many other men’s shops — of full-time suit salesmen who dress carelessly themselves. Though our age has seen the decline of the department store as a concept, Nordstrom appears to have retained not just its reliability, but a certain respectability as well. That merits a few points right there.
But a Nordstrom-authorized men’s style guide? Such a book seems somehow at odds with the store’s core mission, which I understand as not just clothes sales but a kind of expertise rental: the high prices buy you peace of mind through a gentle, even genteel, Jeeves-like guidance away from embarrassing choices and toward flattering ones, as well as the dark-wooded environment in which it all happens. Shouldn’t the study of men’s style books, at least as we practice it here at Put This On, obviate the need for just that kind of pricey consigliere service? But even as he passes along his lessons in this sort of expertise in the Nordstrom Guide to Men’s Style, “consumer trend expert” Tom Julian implements the countermeasure of periodically inserting the word “Nordstrom” into his sentences: “You have more than thirty sizes to select from at Nordstrom stores.” “If all this measuring sounds like a nightmare, don’t worry — every Nordstrom salesperson can do it for you.” “All four of these looks express strong, masculine style in their own way — which is quintessentially Nordstrom.”
Read the whole thing at Put This On.
The Kickstarter drive has begun! If we can raise season four’s $8000 budget by noon Pacific time on Monday, June 24th, Notebook on Cities and Culture will bring you 60 conversations with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene in Los Angeles, Toronto, Copenhagen, and London.
For every $200 raised above the $8000 goal, we’ll add another episode to season four’s total episode count. So if we raise $9000, for example, season four will have 65 episodes, if we raise $10000, it will have 70 episodes, and so on. Backing rewards will include:
- $15 or more: I’ll thank you by name in all of season four’s episodes.
- $30 or more: I’ll thank you by name in all of season four’s episodes and send you postcards from the cities the show visits during it.
- $50 or more: I’ll mention your own project or message at the top of one of season’s four’s episodes, in addition to everything you’d get at the previous levels.
- $300 or more: I’ll mention your own project or message at the top of all of season four’s episodes, in addition to everything you’d get at the previous levels.
- $800 or more: You’ll be the guest in one of season four’s episodes: I’ll come to you (recording locations in North America, greater London, or greater Copenhagen only) and we’ll record a conversation about the culture you create and the city you create it in, in addition to everything you’d get at the previous levels.
Find out how you can help make it all happen on Notebook on Cities and Culture season four’s Kickstarter page.
Vital stats:
Format: two publishers talking books, and much else in the cultural space besides
Episode duration: 40m-1h20m
Frequency: 1-2 per month
Checking out any new bookstore, I head immediately to its world literature shelves. That is, I see if it has them at all. It usually doesn’t. Though small, the world literature shelf at Skylight Books here in Los Angeles so impresses me that, often, I don’t leave it for the entire visit. Not that I visit much anymore; shortly after moving to town, a broadcaster friend of mine — probably the best-known non-writing figure in the Los Angeles book world — called up Skylight and recommended they hire me, using some of the most gleamingly superlatively terms with which I will ever hear myself described. When I turned up to talk to the managers, they asked if I had a car, suggesting that maybe I could drive stuff around for events. I didn’t have a car. My applications to a few other such businesses met with the indifference of the universe. I did land an interview with one noted Pasadena bookstore, which proceeded to surround me with at least a dozen other, clammier applicants — supplicants, really — each more desperate than the last, and all more desperate than me, to convince the interviewers of their single-minded dedication to customer service.
That about sums up my contact with that side of the book business, though I do spend much of my time reading about books, writing about books, and interviewing the writers of books, especially books of the international variety. Hence my interest in The Three Percent Podcast [iTunes], the audio branch of Three Percent, a site from the University of Rochester meant to provide “a destination for readers, editors, and translators interested in finding out about modern and contemporary international literature” (which constitutes three percent of the business). Podcast co-host Chad W. Post teaches at the University, runs Three Percent, and also direct’s Open Letter, the University’s own literary publishing house. They’ve put out a few cool-looking titles from the likes of Alejandro Zambra, Mathias Énard, and Marguerite Duras. Tom Roberge, the podcast’s other co-host, works as the Publicity and Marketing Director at the long-respected press New Directions, whose spine logo — a “colophon,” I think they call it — my eyes zip right toward when I scan those world-lit shelves. I trust that little stylized man and wolf. Having introduced before to writers like César Aira, Yoko Tawada, and Enrique Vila-Matas, they probably won’t steer me wrong now.
Read the whole thing at Maximum Fun.
Colin Marshall sits down above Gastown, Vancouver, British Columbia with novelist Timothy Taylor, author of Stanley Park, Story House, and The Blue Light Project, as well as the short story collection Silent Cruise. They discuss what, exactly, Vancouver is; what, exactly, CanLit is; his being born into a nomadic lifestyle; his inadvertent prediction of the modern locavore movement; whether one can live in Vancouver without developing an interest in architecture; his fascination with creative and toxic “dyadic relationships,” as well as the place of emulation and envy in human affairs; how he discovered René Girard’s ideas about “mimetic desire” and came up with a critique of consumerism contra his countrywoman Naomi Klein; the visible desires of Vancouver and its murky, independent-minded past; our quasi-sacrificial system of celebrity; what he learned from watching reaction videos on YouTube; his moves from the navy to banking to consulting to writing; how he grew fascinated with entrepreneurs; why we haven’t eaten so well, historically, in North America; Canada’s potential as the New-Worldiest place in the New World; his search for where people gather when he visits a new city, and where he would say Vancouverites go to be Vancouverites; his disputation of tradition in Canadian literature; his next project picking up on the lives of the characters from Stanley Park; and what to open yourself up to when you come to Vancouver.
Download the interview from Notebook on Cities and Culture’s feed or on iTunes.
I’ve just appeared as a co-host on an episode of Andrew Jonhstone’s Podcast Squared. Under the banner of “Serious Podcast Talk”, we get into topics such as whether podcasting represents not the 21st-century evolution of the radio, as commonly assumed, but the 12st-century evolution of the telephone. “If you’ve ever wondered what the ideal Podcast Squared episode for new comers to listen to,” writes Andrew, ” this might just be it.”
See also my Podthought on Podcast Squared, my previous appearance on Podcast Squared, and Podcast Squared‘s review of Notebook on Cities and Culture.
On the latest Los Angeles Review of Books podcast, I have a conversation about New York, Los Angeles, and rap with Jeff Weiss and Evan McGarvey, co-authors of 2pac vs. Biggie: an Illustrated History of Rap’s Greatest Battle. You can listen to the conversation on the LARB’s site, or download it on iTunes.
Colin Marshall sits down in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, British Columbia with comedian and podcaster Dave Shumka, co-host with Graham Clark of Stop Podcasting Yourself. They discuss what everyone in Vancouver is, a little bit; the city’s much-touted “livability”; becoming that icon of fun that is a comedian in “No Funcouver”; the origin of Stop Podcasting Yourself; the newly classic Vancouver lifestyle up in downtown condos versus the classic classic Vancouver lifestyle in his hundred-year-old house; waking up in adulthood to find himself in a reasonably cool city; the pull, for comedians and media people, of both Toronto and the United States; his job overseeing international music at the CBC, and to what extent it puts his finger on the pulse of the Canadian musical consciousness; whether music will always out-cool comedy; the quaintness of the Canadian media experience; whether Vancouver has stories to tell, and how he’d like to see them told; the scarred hookers of the less-scary-than-sad Hastings Street; how many Torontonians it takes to screw in a lightbulb; the struggle for comedic visas; the descent of the stretchpant; Vancouverites’ tendency to luxuriate in the idea that they could, theoretically, ski and windsurf in a single day; how he heard the call of comedy at a Salvadoran restaurant; his strategic conversational use of mundane topics; Vancouver’s stinkiest buses; and the most fruitful sources of ridiculousness he has, including dumbness and his own simulation thereof.
Download the interview from Notebook on Cities and Culture’s feed or on iTunes.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Mexico City, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara: Notebook on Cities and Culture has visited all these places for in-depth conversations with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene. Last season, we planned on 24 episodes but will put out 31, because hey, underpromise, overdeliver. The podcast’s next season, its fourth and most ambitious yet, will see 60 full-length Notebook on Cities and Culture conversations recorded all around not just Los Angeles, but Toronto, Copenhagen, and London, three world cities meriting a great deal of conversational exploration indeed.
And for every $200 raised above the $8000 goal, we’ll add another episode to season four’s total episode count. So if we raise $9000, for example, season four will have 65 episodes, if we raise $10000, it will have 70 episodes, and so on. Backing rewards will include:
- $15 or more: I’ll thank you by name in all of season four’s episodes.
- $30 or more: I’ll thank you by name in all of season four’s episodes and send you postcards from the cities the show visits during it.
- $50 or more: I’ll mention your own project or message at the top of one of season’s four’s episodes, in addition to everything you’d get at the previous levels.
- $300 or more: I’ll mention your own project or message at the top of all of season four’s episodes, in addition to everything you’d get at the previous levels.
- $800 or more: You’ll be the guest in one of season four’s episodes: I’ll come to you (recording locations in North America, greater London, or greater Copenhagen only) and we’ll record a conversation about the culture you create and the city you create it in, in addition to everything you’d get at the previous levels.
The drive begins on Monday, June 17. I’ll keep you posted right here. Thanks.