Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.
Publishing: Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).
« June 2008 | Main | August 2008 »
There's been a lot of fuss in the last couple of days about Cuil, the latest Google-slayer in the search-engine business. Good luck to them, but I entered my own name and got this:
That's my biography, and my LinkedIn page, but the photo? I've never seen that guy before, and certainly not in the mirror. Sorry, Random Guy in a Tie.
Rising Tide logo by Greg Peters
I'm going to be on a media panel at this year's Rising Tide Conference, which will be held Aug. 22-24 at New Orleans' Zeitgeist Arts Center. What's Rising Tide?
Rising Tide is a gathering for all who wish to learn more and do more to assist New Orleans' recovery from the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the failure of the levees that were supposed to protect the area. We will come together to dispel myths, promote facts, share personal testimonies, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a "real life" demonstration of internet activism as we continue to recover from a massive failure of government on all levels.
The other panelists will be Lee Zurik from WWL-TV, my friend David Winkler-Schmit from Gambit Weekly, and Eli, who blogs at We Could Be Famous. I suppose that Lee will represent the TV media, David the print media, Eli the blogosphere, and me...I don't know. (I also don't know if anyone from The Times-Picayune will be there, or has been invited, but I hope so.)
And the keynote speaker will be John M. Barry:
John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academy of Sciences named The Great Influenza, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine, and the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens gave Barry its 2005 “September Eleventh Award.” Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the 1998 Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history...
He has been keynote speaker at a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and he has lectured at the National War College, Harvard Business School, and in many similar venues. He is also co-originator of Riversphere, a $100 million center being developed by Tulane University which will be the first facility in the world dedicated to comprehensive river research.
...Yeah? Well -- I have a Typepad blog!
Anyway, if you're planning to come to Rising Tide, please leave a comment, eh?
Magazine art directors spend a lot of time entertaining dark suspicions about cover-image plagiarism. Often the suspicious covers just end up being a) a hackneyed concept or b) something that's in the Zeitgeist, floating into heads at the same time.
But sometimes you get this:
On the left is the spring 2007 cover of T Magazine, the New York Times' flossy journal about food, travel, shopping, and people with way too much money. On the right, the current issue of Coast, a periodical out of Newport Beach, Calif. dedicated to food, travel, shopping, and people with way too much money.
Sure, two similar magazines might independently conceive of a cover consisting of a close-up of a beautiful woman (with way too much money) eating a sandwich.
But...
...the cropping on the mouth?
...the panini, complete with napkin, grill marks, lettuce, and tomato?
...the blood-red manicures?
...and the ugly rings, placed exactly on the same finger?
The people at T Magazine think Coast has some explaining to do, but they're taking a good-humored, chiding tone. And who knows if this was the work of an independently hired photographer, an art director, or even a stock photographer.
Meanwhile, what hits me is that the original was actually striking, while the copy is just an average magazine image. I think it has to do with the geometry of the original -- the oval of the face, the triangle of the sandwich, the circle of the tomato, the parallel lines of the fingers. All those elements are present in the other magazine, but they're not as well thought out. Or maybe it's just that the first one is just plain sexier -- the mouth as lubricious as a Rolling Stones album cover, the grill marks pointing inside. The girl in the second shot looks like someone told her "Hold the sandwich next to your face and open your mouth slightly."
Remember, kids: drugs are bad...
Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit Ruined
One of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.
Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans Matters
The best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".
