Media Ecology Association 10th Birthday, 9/4/08

Today is the 10th birthday of the creation of the Media Ecology Association, an organization that is close to my heart.

What is Media Ecology and the MEA? It is an interdisciplinary study of language, technology, culture, and symbols, with heavy emphasis of social critics like Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman (who arguable coined the phrase Media Ecology), Jacques Ellul, Walter Ong, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Douglas Rushkoff, Harold Innis, Lewis Mumford, Eric Havelock, Susanne Langer, Erving Goffman, Edward T. Hall, George Herbert Mead, Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and Gregory Bateson, and language philosophies like General Semantics.

For more information on the MEA, check them out here:

media-ecology.org.

Wikipedia on Media Ecology:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology

Institute of General Semantics:

generalsemantics.org

Wikipedia on General Semantics:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics

This video sort of sums it all up in a humerous way:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsHhNCLaT5s

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEDIA ECOLOGY ASSOCIATION!!!

The Faustian Bargain of Cell Phones

Images taken from Internet

The omnipresent cell phone has proven to be a true Faustian bargain, a term that social critic Neil Postman used to describe a role of technology. As an axiom of Media Ecology posits, when a technology is introduced into a culture, the culture not only cannot go back, but that the new technology does not change any one thing, it changes everything.

It is not that cell phones exist that is a problem. In fact, I can cite a number of times it has proven quite useful, such as when trying to locate pals, help when directions are needed, calls for emergency help, or in one case I know of personally, a cell phone camera has helped an activist friend prove a case of false arrest.

The problem lies in the difference between publicly needing and wanting to make a call. All those people who used to ride public transportation and basically spend the ride staring at their nails are now either on the phone loudly chatting with no purpose other than to kill time, or sitting with a blank stare holding their still phones tightly in their hands as if it were some fetish object, or religious icon. Certainly it has taken the place of the rosary and worry beads.

We all have stories of inappropriate behavior mixed with TMI. Cases in point for me include a woman angrily yelling at her husband for leaving rehab and spending their money buying drugs when there were already some in their apartment, and one guy whining to a pal that if he doesn’t get $12,000 to “Vinny,” he’ll never be caught up with the interest, which would be disastrous for his own knees.

Of course, the biggest issue is not content, but rather a mix of context (spatial or semantic environment) and volume. Certainly, if one is in public – and as a comedian once pointed out, there is no privacy in public – if one must scream on a phone to be heard, than one should not be on the phone at all.

The New York MTA is going to have the subway stations, and then the tunnels, wired for cell phone use “in case of an emergency” (i.e., fear of terrorism). An easy solution is to just have it wired to accept 911 calls, but there is no financial gain in that, as it is the telephone companies, who stand to gain the most reward, who are going to do the wiring.

While the noise pollution toll is heavy, so is the body politic. How one uses their own physicality when in relation/ship with a cell phone can also prove problematic. The day I write this, I was exiting a subway stop, and the line to get up the stairs was blocked by someone climbing very slowly because he was checking his phone. Waiting the 30 literal seconds to climb the stairs was too much to wait; it was certainly more important for this person to slow up 100 people behind him because he could not wait, even for one flight of stairs.

We’ve all seen the weaving and/or slow drivers on the road. Used to be it was usually the classic “old man in a hat,” but now it is the person deeply engaged with someone not present. The scariest case of this I’ve encountered was when I saw a huge Yukon style SUV often sliding into my lane in front of me. As I sped up to pass this scary vehicle, I glanced over and saw the woman driving: she had a cell phone cradled in her neck. A cup of coffee in her right hand, and a cigarette in her left, while she drove this tank with two fingers.

There is also the proximity of the polluter and the pollutee. Sitting on a subway car at the end seat by the door, I’ve had people hold onto the overhead bar and lean right next to my head, or leaning on the door facing me, yelling into a phone. When asked to not do that, they get huffy, or pretend not to hear, or even threaten me, the person who is stuck there, forced to listen to this volumous talk right into my ear. After all, in their mind, they’ve paid their $2 and so have earned the right to be abusive.

It needs to be socially acceptable to say, “Please stop yelling in my ear.” There is nothing in that request that is a personal affront to the speaker; it is simply a request not to be disrespected.

At times when parts of eateries were set aside for smokers, I remember seeing a one-panel cartoon titled “How smokers view restaurants.” The image was of a room with one part that had a sign that said, “Smoking Section,” and as if by magic, the smoke only stayed on their side. Public cell phone users seem to practice this, as if they are the only ones who are affected by their noise. And don’t get me started with the T-Mobile walkie-talkie style phones. I hope I never meet the person who invented that little piece of modern communication. He will certainly get an earful from me, during which I will interrupt each sentence with a blearing electronic sound.

There is a man who rides the Long Island Rail Road who has quite famously been ferocious with the rude and the loud. He has yelled at people, gotten into physical fights, and even threw coffee in people’s faces. While I agree with his argument about the lack of necessity of the interruption, the excessive methods employed by this ex-police officer are equally abusive, if not more so. Asking someone not to be rude is not the same as assault.

I once commented to my brother that the start of this whole public lack of regard as far as sound stems from the VCR. My argument is that people got used to talking during films that were being played in their own living room, especially those who grew up with the medium, so it was a natural transition to be talking in theaters. This led the way for people to feel natural conversational in public, which was exacerbated by the cell phone.

He disagreed. What he felt was the turning point was the pre-Walkman boom box, where people started blasting music in public spaces, making disregard for others’ silence moot. I believe my statement is truer, because while the boom box is “others” making noise (the music), talking during a pre-recorded film is more a personal “expression,” if you will.

Mostly, though, I think we are both correct. Both the VCR and boom box had a cultural effect and affect. Whether the expansion of cell phones is to the positive or the negative is in the hands of whomever is in control of that supposedly personal technology, which has changed everything.

More Memories: Alpine Theater, Bay Ridge

All photos taken from Web

During the much of the ‘70s, I worked at a couple of local movie theaters as both an usher and a ticket ripper. I had my little red jacket, white shirt and black bowtie as a uniform in both.

Alpine Theater
The second one, in the late ‘70s, was at the Alpine Theater, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. It’s the kind of place that events that happened sound like they are made up, but that is far from the truth. It was a period of cosmic weirdness, in an area made famous by disco, the 2001 Odyssey Dance Club, and "Saturday Night Fever". Here are some stories of working there; they are not chronological, but just as they come to mind. And this is just a smattering.

By the time I started the job, I had already been involved in the punk scene, and my fanzine was well underway, between my third and fourth issue. Of course, I was the only one there who had any idea about things like CBGB’s, Max’s, Ramones, or anything other than Kansas, Yes, CSN&Y, and especially disco. When Sid allegedly killed Nancy, the ushers kept teasing me. When Sid died, I knew they were going to really bug me about it, so I took one of those huge metal laundry safety pins and put it in my lapel. One by one the ushers came in and before they could say anything, their curiousity piqued, they asked, “What’s that?” I answered firmly, “Its for Sid!” They left me alone.

There is a book called “Billy Lives”, by Gary Brandner, which is basically a novel about the marketing of a rock star after he as died in an accident. It’s cynical as all hell, but one thing that made me buy it in the first place was the cover, which is a painting of a photo of the New York Dolls. It’s is a kind of crude rendition, but it’s definitely them (If I remember correctly, it was taken from the cover of the “Too Much Too Soon” LP). One day, in 1978, I was on my lunch break, and was reading the book while eating a tuna salad sandwich at the luncheonette diagonally across the street from the theater. I was sitting on a stool at the counter (where have all the counters gone, long time passing…)

As I’m chompin’ away, there is a middle-aged woman sitting next to me is waiting for an order she placed. She turns to me and says, “Isn’t that David Johansson on the cover?” Mouth filled with tuna and a head full of “Wha?”, I nodded my head to the affirmative. She started saying how she was from Staten Island, and her daughter used to date him when they were teens. Took me totally by surprise. I mean, now it would not seem uncommon for someone to recognize him, even from a piss-poor drawing of him, since the Dolls have been around for so many years and David had such an illustrious solo music career (every middle class person probably knows “Hot Hot Hot”), or even his limp stab at acting, but in the ‘70s, someone that age would not necessarily be familiar…unless of course he took their daughter to the prom!

I’ve never been a fan of pot. Tried it, found it boring, so I stopped. Late one night, during the last show, one of the ushers pulls out a joint the size of my arm, and says, “Let’s smoke!” The manager had gone home and we were closing, so except for the dozen people watching the film and the candy counter person (who hadn’t had a sale since the film started), we had the lobby to ourselves. “Nah, I’m not interested, but you go ahead, I won’t tell.” He lights up, and before long, he’s leaning on a column, wrecked. I snuck up behind him and started whispering, “Reeses…..Reeses….Reeses.” With an anguished cry, he ran – nay, stumbled – over to the candy counter and bought three huge and expensive packages of the candy, then stumbled back to the column. Just as he was about to take a bite, I jumped up and make a goofy face saying “Boogah boogah!” He started laughing, inane as it was, because he was stoned. I kept doing goofy things to keep him laughing, so even though he had the candy, he couldn’t eat it, as it quickly melted in his hands. The next day, he was really mad at me, and probably rightfully so.

Late one night, I was in the utility closet putting away one of those tiny brooms, when the security-guard-for-hire walked in. “Hey, Larry,” I said. Without saying a greeting, he took out a non-legal handgun, cocked it, put it to my forehead, and said in a dissonant whisper, “You know, if I wanted to, I could kill you right now.” I quickly thought, “This is ridiculous…this guy isn’t going to kill me in a utility closet in a movie theater.” So I looked at him straight in the eyes and said, “Go ahead.” He uncocked the gun, lowered it, and said, “You know, you’re the first person that didn’t crap in their pants!” I thought, “What a jerk,” and left the closet.

About 20 minutes later, what he said came back to me, that I was the first person…. That meant he had does this to others. One by one, I questioned the other ushers, who were tough Irish and Italian kids, and they confirmed that sure enough, he had done that to just about all of them, which scared the hell out of them because many of them were “connected”, and a gun meant something else to them than it did to me. I gathered the boys (back then, ushers were male, cashiers were female), and we collectively went into the manager’s office. She was a morbidly heavy woman in her ‘60s who was known to walk through the lobby picking up stubs people threw down, and then sent them to the district office claiming them as refunds, keeping the cash. Her son was a police officer at the local precinct, so we figured she would back us up.

When we told her, she said, “So?” Not what we were expecting. We said, “We want your son to come down here an arrest him. He’s not supposed to be carrying a gun.” She said, “I don’t want to bother him, he’s busy.” I said, “You don’t understand: he held a GUN to our HEADS.” Her reply was, “I don’t want any trouble, so just ignore it.” The biggest usher, who was her favorite, said, “look, either he goes, or we all walk off the job together.” Finally, she relented and said she would ask for someone new the next day, but she wanted him to finish out the night because of the hour.” We agreed and started to walk out the door. Then I grabbed the sleeve of the big usher and dragged him back, and said, “You cannot tell him why. If he’s dumb enough to pull a gun on us, he’s dumb enough to come looking for us for revenge.” She looked like she was about to argue when the big usher said to me, “You go, I’ll talk to her.” He was in there for about 10 minutes and we could hear loud voice. Finally he came out, and gave me the thumbs up. It was the last we saw of the rent-a-cop, but you can bet we all looked over our shoulders for a while after that.

Patience, please

My apologies for the length between blogs here, but here is the reason:

I was recently let go from my job, and when they confisgated my laptop, they also took away about 30 CD reviews for my column in Jersey Beat, and about 4 blogs that I was getting ready to put up, including those dealing with the Media Ecology Association conference at Santa Clara University in June.

Also missing now are about 800 photos that I had PhotoShop'd of the conference, that I will have to redo.

Note that these were all done at home, with the permisson of the company, and not on work time.

Sigh.

So it goes...

School Violence with Mr. Carr

All images for this piece are from the Internet

There was always a level of violence that occurred in schools where I was a student during my pre-college days. Because it was a different time, some of it was at the hands of the teachers, who did things in the ‘60s and ‘70s that a teacher could not even dream of doing now….

When I was in 8th grade science, I had Mr. Carr, who was quite old. In fact, he had taught my mother in junior high, who went to the same de facto school, PS 281 (which had recently moved into what was then known as Bensonhurst Junior High, but became Cavallaro Junior High during my second year there).

Not only was Mr. Carr old, he was quite diminutive. Standing at less than 5’5”, he always wore a white lab coat. The only other thing I remember about him physically was his hair was shock white, and he had a very neat and trim moustache.

About the second or third week into the term, he gave us a surprise test. Science, it seems, was made for pop quizzes. The next day, he passed them out. As he got to the front of the class, a huge 8th grader (I’m guessing one who had been held back a few times because he was built like a pro football player) stood up and said, “What do you mean an “F”? You better change it, motherfucker!”

Mr. Carr turned around and said, “I’m having a little trouble hearing you. Would you please come to the front of the class as say it to me again?”

The brute stormed to the front, and demanded, “I said you better change my grade mothe….” That is as far as he got. All I saw was a blur as Mr. Carr picked up this guy who was taller and seemed to weigh twice his mass, and slammed him down flat on the ground so hard, the floor reverberated.

Mr. Carr put his finger in the student’s face and said, “Show some respect for your elders.” He then ordered the guy to the principal’s office, and he meekly went.

As it turns out, Mr. Carr was a high level black belt, and about once a year or so, he needed to show his capabilities.

After that, NO ONE messed with Mr. Carr.

Random memory: Brooklyn Shakespeare

All images for this piece are from the Internet unless indicated

I spent my later teen years in Brooklyn, attending Lafayette High School. Good things were rare and far in-between back then (such as meeting my friend Bernie Kugel). In the past few years, it has been referred in local papers as "The School From Hell." In fact, it is so bad, the city has decided to close it down shortly.

Back then we were always told that the school was known for high academics, and yet I was surrounded by…well, it was best said by Dan Aykroyd in a spoof on Saturday Night Live called “Samurai Night Fever”: “Isn’t it great to be young, stupid, and have no future?! I love Brooklyn!”

Here are a couple of true examples of living in Bensonhurst in the ‘70s, the first being a digression, the second getting back to Lafayette:

I was coming off the train station, and there were two teen girls who looked like they stepped out of “Grease” mixed with “Saturday Night Fever” (as both movies were released around this time). As I came down the el steps, Girl #1 says to me, “She likes you,” and both start to giggle in a way to indicate a “Let’s embarrass you and see how you react” thing going on. I looked at Girl #2, who supposedly “liked me”, and said to her, “What’s Tony gonna say?” Both girls turned white. “Ohm'gawd, he knows Tony; if he find out, he’s gonna kill me!” With that, both girls ran off, near tears.

[FFoto by RBF]
No, I’m not Kreskin. It’s just that Girl #2 was wearing a high school football jacket that had the name “Tony” sewn into the front, so all I needed to do was read.

See, that’s the thing about where and when I grew up. If one saw a group of people standing on a corner, and walked over to them and asked anything from “Define Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism” to “Where is the corner”, you’d pretty much get the same answer: “Hunh?”

With that as a foundation, the main story I want to tell has to do with Lafayette High School and Shakespeare.

We had an imaginative teacher, who tried to be hip and find new ways to get her students to learn. Her idea was to try an experiment where the boys read the female parts, and the girls read the male parts, hoping it would shed some light on the way characters lived in the time.

At first, it went well. The girls in the class did a bang-up job reading the opening. But the trouble came when it was the guys' turn, who (a) were NOT interested in the play, and (b) resented reading a female piece of dialog and risk having their friends see them as anything less than macho.

So, the scene where we first meet the titular female lead, as the Nurse is calling to Juliet. As this piece is read, hear it in thick Brooklynese (if you have problems with that, try it as one of the Sopranos, which would not be far off).

Nurse says (and the Guy #1 shouts) “WHAT!!!! Juliet, ya called.”

Guy #2 as Juliet responds, “Who calls?”

To which the Nurse Guy #1 yells back “Ya MUTHA!”

That was the point where the teacher realized the error of her ways and stops the experiment. She gave up, and ended up taking us to see the Franco Zeffirelli version of the film at the local theater.

Traveling in Canada, April 2008

All ffotos by RBF

The airport was pretty empty at the Canadian airport at 5 AM. It was late April and the sun was already rising. At the ticket counter, while checking-in, there was only one person ahead of me. I was nice and calm as there was an hour before my flight home.

Amazingly, the duty free/newsstand/gift shop was open, so I went in and bought some presents for the person who was taking care of our cats, and a book on local ghost stories that was perfect for travel on a little amount of sleep in that they are short and do not take much brainpower.

There were about 30 people on line for the security check, but the line was moving relatively swiftly. Everyone seemed in a good mood, albeit sleepy. I had my backpack and a small carry bag, with nothing checked. I like to travel light, if compact.

Soon it was my turn and I took off my jacket and put it in the gray plastic basket, put my computer in another, and passed along my bags through the x-ray. They didn’t want my shoes, which is always a bonus. Everything was going smoothly.

However, if there was a soundtrack, the tones would probably be turning into disonant.

I stepped through the metal detectors without a peep, and waited for my bags. And waited. I was used to this; for some reason my bags always get second looks, my guess is usually because of the cords and cables that come along with the computer, or whatever. As I am not a smuggler, and as such had absolutely no contraband, I wasn’t worried. This happened plenty of times before.

Also as common, they asked permission to swab the top of my bags to test for anything weird. No problem. They swabbed and tested. And they closed the line of people waiting to go through behind me. A very stern woman in uniform came over and said, “If it’s all right, I am going to ask someone to come over and frisk you.” Again, nothing of concern as I didn’t have anything on me, other than some minor amounts of paper cash, and cards in my back pocket, such as for the likes of Costco, my work building pass, and the New York Public Library.

She signals over a guy who pleasantly explains that he is going to search me, and is there anything he should know about before he does. I said the truth….nope. After putting on a fresh set of non-rubber gloves, he asked me to stand, with my arms outstretched. He then pats me down. As we’re in the middle of the airport, I wasn’t worried about a cavity search, but it got quite intimate. I was almost expecting him to say, “Mind if I move it over to the left?” It was thorough as it could be, though I didn’t feel violated, but more curious and bemused. I asked him if he wanted me to remove my shoes, but instead he just had me lean of the counter with both hands, and then lift one foot at a time, and he checked them out that way.

Meanwhile, I noted that there were three or four official people taking everything out of my bags, and my jacket, again quite thoroughly. The stern woman asked me (sternly, of course), “Do you know why we are doing this?” I told her no, but that I was definitely curious about it. She said, “Not only did your bag test positive for TNT, but it tested for a large amount of TNT.” Well, she got my attention with that one.

She then inquired if I was near any explosives, or if my bag was near any. Of course, I answered in the negative, explaining that the only place the bag has been in the last 10 days was either on the floor of the bedroom (where there are no explosives), in the cab, and at the airport. That’s it. While I was explaining this, they also swabbed my hands and test it, along with most other things.

Then they had me turn on my computer and my camera, to make sure they were legit. At this point, the stern woman started filling out a form, and I told her my name, rank, and serial number…and anything else she wanted to know (what my job was, where I worked, etc.), and carefully writing with nice, large penmanship).

At this point, I was beginning to wonder if I’d make my flight, as this was taking some time. We never left the space just past the x-ray machines. It was weird, as I was more worried about making the flight than anything else, remaining calm and somewhat cheerful.

She asked me a question that made me nervous then: what is my work phone number. Crap, I don’t know that. I never dial it, so I never remember it. I gave her the area code, the main three digits, but I don’t know my extension; hell, I don’t even know the main front-desk. The idea of checking the computer bottom came to mind, as it is bar coded and property of the place, but all it had was the name of the company. And my work badge is a building pass, not a company pass, so it doesn’t say the name of the company on it. She asked for a business card, but I don’t have one of those either. She finally settled for my home phone.

Still, she seemed to be calming down after this. My guess was it was probably (hopefully) the most exciting thing that happened in that building in a while, other than someone complaining about not being allowed to carry more than 3 oz onto the plane.

Once again she asked about it, and I told her I was flummoxed (though I don’t think I used that word). Basically she said she was flummoxed as well (again, not that word), as just the top of the one bag had the heavy traces, but nothing else did, including the contents of the bag or my hands. I was wondering about the backseat of the cab on the way to the airport, but the trace would have been on the bottom of the bag, not the top. Stern woman said that the fact that it was only present on top eased her conscious, and she turned to the x-ray area and shouted (heck, it was only about 6 feet, she could have whispered), “Open line 3”. With a “have a good day,” she took the form and left.

I zipped up the bags where they had put everything back (would they have returned the contents in NYC?), and walked, somewhat started and bemused, to my gate, and just walked right onto the plane with no wait.

As I only had about 40 minutes between the two next flights (yes, they broke the way home into three sections), I was concerned that my name was on a list somehow, and they would search at each and every turn. But the first connection was smooth, I went through customs with no hassle whatsoever, and when I had to go through the x-ray area again before heading to New York, there was no problem and sailed right through. I wonder what’s going to happen the next time I go through that airport again, though.

[NYC frowny face]
After I arrived home and called my partner to let her know I was alive, I told her of my adventure. She came up with interesting theory about the explosive. Seems the house she’s occupying had a new furnace put in while I was there, and according to the landlady, after it was lit and started, there was a sour smell that permiated the house for about an hour. She figured that perhaps some of whatever it was came out through the registers, and as my bag was on the floor next to one of these vents, it came through an landed on top of the bag. Another possibility was that it was a false positive, such as when one eats poppy seeds and a blood test will read it as positive for heroin.

Either way, I do know that as shortly after I got home, I washed that damn bag.