Concept: It's Friday. Here is some stilly stuff, therefore.

CONCEPT: I'm back.

I was a good, consistent blogger from 2002 to 2007. But ever since I moved back to Chicago, I've been more unreliable about it. I'm hoping to return to the blog soon, and I will shortly be making changes to the appearance and content. In addition to more frequent updates, the blog will be:

- More professionally oriented.
- More streamlined.
- More navigable and straightforward.

That said, I'm going to continue the admixture of the political and the artistic, the esoteric and the routine, that has made this fun to work on for the last seven years. I hope you'll be a frequent guest, and if you have any suggestions for the update (which should start to nose its way in later this week), please let me know.

Concept: Collaborative Writing Project This Summer.

Elisabeth Blair and I are composing/editing a Gothic Funk novel to be titled Hollywood. However, it is set in Chicago.

I'm taking charge of the writing, and Lisa of the music, but we're looking for additional collaborators. In addition to a tangible application of the "gothic funk aesthetic," Hollywood will also be a teen noir (or at least a 20-something noir) for those of you familiar with that term... think of an episode of Veronica Mars codirected by Baz Luhrman and David Lynch. It will also be a hypertext novel a la Judd Morrissey, Shelley Jackson, and John Cayley.

Let me know if you're interested in contributing writing (or something else) to this piece, or if you're interested in more details.

It isn't a paying gig, but you will get credit for publication via the Internets.

Thanks,

Connor Coyne

Concept: My Cosmo Dogood Blurb

Check out this short article I wrote for Bookish.us:

The Decline and Fall of Cosmo Dogood's Urban Almanac.

Concept: Michael Jackson is Dead.

New York Times: Michael Jackson, 50, Is Dead.

Concept: I Am Back

Malware removed.

Now I have a long process of repairing the website, although the blog appears to be minimally impacted.

For the last month, I posted a blog in exile here: http://blueskiesfalling.wordpress.com/.

Posts there included Martuz!, No Exit, Event: The Marketplace of Ideas.

I'll post more tomorrow about what I've been up to for the last odd month.

...

It has been a very odd month.

Concept: Blue Skies Falling Blog Infiltrated.

On May 15, 2009 my personal website (connorcoyne.com) was infected by a malware program associated with Martuz .cn that inserted scripts into dynamic and static files at over 1500 distinct sites. The bug is discussed at http://blog.unmaskparasites.com/2009/05/18/martuz-cn-is-a-new-incarnation-of-gumblar-exploit/. Evidently the infection isn't the result of any specific action on my part. I was setting up a book review blog through WordPress (using the toughest password I've ever come up with) and this was what the program targeted. The infection caused Google to blacklist my site for viewers' protection, and when Twitter picked up on the Google listing, it suspended my account. So far Facebook has not responded, but to say this is a major headache would be an understatement.

Sam from Forge 22 (http://forge22.com) has helped me with these problems -- he's a great guy and a great designer, and you should throw him some business if you can.

Bottom Line: connorcoyne.com, connorcoyne.com/blog, and associated sites are safe to visit, but Google has not lifted their warning yet, and I don't know what the timetable on that will be. Until it's lifted, however, there isn't any reason to visit. The damage was extensive and will take time to repair. In the meantime, I suggest you check back from time to time, and I will post an announcement as soon as things are a little bit more normal around here.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

~ Connor

Concept: Just give me a little space, okay?

Check out my nerdy essay on punctuation, spacing, and text-justification at bookish us.

Concept: Shake Rattle and Read and the Uptown Story.

Read my article on the Uptown book and music store Shake Rattle and Read at Bookish Us: Shake Rattle and Read and the Uptown Story.

This article has also been promoted on the Uptown Update blog.

Concept: Ashburn, Chicago.

Today I explored Chicago's Ashburn neighborhood because it's the setting of several plays I am currently revising. That sentence implies a circular paradox. Why wouldn't I have explored the neighborhood before drafting the plays? In a sense, I did.



When I was a First Year at the University of Chicago (in 1997), I chose Ashburn as a setting for a Frankenstein play because the name had a cool sound. Ash + Burn... hmmm... sounds pretty gothic, doesn't it?



According to Wikipedia (and the Trib, if I recall correctly) the name comes from the dumping ground for the city's ashes. In '98 I did have a chance to go out and check the neighborhood out. But I didn't have a car, and I wasn't very familiar with the CTA back then. The trip from Hyde Park would have typically taken ninety minutes, or more. Then, on arrival, Ashburn is a huge neighborhood. I've only been been back there twice, once in 2003, and once in 2005. In the meantime, I have written another play, Raspberry Crush, which I also set in Ashburn.



The neighborhood is young... it didn't take off until after World War II, and during the sixties and seventies, school integration was a hot-button issue here. The neighborhood has gradually integrated, from being predominantly white through the early nineties to a more heterogenous makeup today. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago home ownership remains high, and "racial steeting is not tolerated: 'for sale" signs have been cooperatively banned; lawsuits are filed against realtors who do not comply. In recent years the only signs that have appeared on Ashburn lawns -- en masse -- read: 'We're sold on Ashburn.'" If this seems a little heavy-handed to you, acquaint yourselves with the massive post-World War II sell-offs that devastated much of the South Side.



The neighborhood can be effectively subdivided into three parts. The easternmost part, known as Wrightwood, is now mostly African American, and the housing stock is older than other parts of the area (dating all the way back to the 1950s). The westernmost part, Scottsdale, is still predominantly white, and it is filled with a maze of streets and parish churches and small Chicago-style bungalows.

The central part of the neighborhood, known simply as Ashburn is, you guessed it, the most integrated. It also seems a bit grittier than the other parts, although I suspect this mostly is due to the Southwest Highway (Columbus Ave.), which is a sort of abbreviated industrial corridor that passes through the area on a diagonal, northeast to southwest.



These photos are all from the central, Ashburn section of the neighborhood. They are not fully representative. I was exploring and taking pictures at my leisure. I didn't get any shots of Wrightwood or Scottsdale, or of the myriad churches and parish schools, of Bogan High School or the Richard J Daley College, of Ford City or the strange industrial hinterland just to its east. You can see all these things on Street View though. Strange views sprout from the unlikeliest sources.



And this is an unlikely source...

Excepting its dubious history of racial discord (which, compared to most other areas hereabouts has had a relatively happy ending), Ashburn could be described as one of Chicago's most boring neighborhoods.

I mean that in a good way.



The neighborhood's youth is obvious. The business strips are almost uniformly derelict, and therefore a bit depressing. The residential areas, which take up the most space, are green and tree-lined with prim yards and swept porches and bricks still untarnished by the frost and ice... these spaces are bright and cheerful, and have a slightly suburban feeling.



It's the sort of neighborhood where one would want to raise his kids, and the kind of neighborhood where those kids, as soon as they have access to a car and some friends will probably try desperately to escape. All this gives Ashburn a sort of bittersweet soulfulness; a marriage of youth and maturity and old-age that participates in a basically stable and satisfying life, and yet which is constantly aware of the passage of time.

Of course, all this also begs the question of to what extent we can trust such impressions. We don't know what's happening in the living rooms or the basements (I'd say attics, but most of these houses are single story). It could be black-box theater or political experimentation. It could even be the creation of a Frankenstein monster.

I grew up in a neighborhood much like this, and I find them to be unavoidably poignant places.

They certainly deserve to be the subject of plays and stories.

Concept: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

I've enjoyed the show so far. I think that there was a shared tactical understanding from the beginning that he couldn't outweird Conan, and Letterman and Leno have the cynical and the everyman roles down, respectively. Why not put a "nice guy" on Late Night? That's their strategy, I think.

In the first month or so, the interviews have been maybe a little fluffy, more than needed. The show's greatest genius has been in the audience interactive bit, for example, the "Shared Experience" bits where everyone discovered a snuggie under their seat (which seemingly subsequently turned the entire studio into a deni of Jedis). I also think that the show has made a varied and versatile use of the Roots, their band. It's the first time a hip hop outfit has been used in this capacity on any major late night talk show, and the Roots have the musical chops for the job.

I think that the Jimmy Fallon show will continue to grow on me the longer I watch it. But that doesn't mean I won't be looking forward to O'Brien's reemergence on the Tonight Show. And of course, props to Leno for all those free shows he's been doing for the unemployed.

Concept: Detroit Video

from ESPN: Detroit In The Spotlight



It plays a bit like a Bing campaign ad, but otherwise it's pretty cool. Magic Johnson and Mitch Albom are eloquent as always.

Concept: New Link: "Reef Diaries"

Reef Diaries is the very young blog maintained by Red Mangrove Eco Adventures in Belize. My wife and I loved our honeymoon in Belize, and this sort of nature-oriented blog is always refreshing. What I think is so cool about Reef Diaries in particular is the thoughtful and circumspect treatment of the bull shark issue posted less than a month after the blog was launched. The writers treated the subject with seriousness and showed great respect for their readers; this is the only approach that allows those of us living in (for example) inland, cold, freshwater climes to appreciate the difficulties and challenges of the sensitive reef ecosystem.

I have added Reef Diaries to the sidebar, and you should check it out.

Concept: New Link of the Week.

This article by the Chicago Reader is awesome! It almost makes me pardon their superficial one-sided canning of the 2016 Olympics bid. Also, I directed a play that went up in the Trumbullplex.

Concept: Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

So not too long ago I finally sat down and watched the direct-to-DVD Dragonlance movie that has so many fans bleating and bleeding not that long ago. It really sucked.

Dragonlance is the greatest paradox of the early TSR novels, because it satisfied many definitions of kitsch while also exhibiting the traits of a complex and nuanced artistic work. It was essentially a high fantasy recasting of the fall of the Roman Empire and rise of medieval Europe transported to a high fantasy setting. When a meteor strikes a sinful city, the result is an ocean the color of blood. This is set on a tiny continent sitting squarely in the southern hemisphere and the planet is orbited by three moons which endow magical powers. The gods are represented by constellations that disappear when the gods take on material form. In these aspects and more, Dragonlance established a more off-kilter allegory and theological inquiry than its genre or audience typically demands. It has always been both more compelling than other TSR lines, and more problematic.

These issues would have made a film version challenging with any amount of money. The project could've utilized its modest budget much better in a series of short cartoons (a la Nickelodeon's old Mysterious Cities of Gold perhaps?) or even as an HBO-style series. It could have paid for this perhaps by replacing the talented knowns with talented unknowns.

Even considering this, though, the film was bad. It attempted to combine Hanna Barbara-style animation with really really crappy CGI for the dragons and the draconians a la Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. The first forty-five minutes deployed the first hundred pages of the book at a well-edited clip, only to dissolve into incoherence right when things should have been getting good. I was able to occasionally lose myself (early on) in the craft of the writing, and in Kiefer Sutherland's admittedly spot-on Raistlin Majere. But there should've have been more drinking on my part. The movie was that bad. Too many compromises were made in all the wrong places.

I realize this critique is disordered. It is not nearly as disordered, however, as the film was.

It was bad.

Concept: New Link: "The View From Fez"

A few weeks ago, before hereisnowhy.com went belly up, I had just finished a correspondence with the Morrocan blog The View From Fez, based in Fez, one of the "four imperial cities" in that nation and a UNESCO World Heritage Site to boot. The site is a real treat, in both writing and images. I've added it to the sidebar and encourage you to check it out!

Concept: Here I Go, Playing Star Again.

In the worst of St. Seger.

So. The blog is live again, no thanks to my old server Simple Host, who 1) lost a large number of files one two occasions, only attempted to restore them on one and even then threatened to charge me a $50 penalty for their trouble (nevermind that I was paying roughly 50% higher than what I'm paying now), and 2) failed to update my account information after two attempts, meaning that my domain registration expired. This is how I lost hereisnowhy.

As for my new server, Bluehost, it's early in the relationship and they just got my money. However, they've already presided over a difficult and time-consuming content transfer, helped me change domain names, and have been professional and efficient throughout the process. A good sign of things to come.

Hereisnowhy.com was not a great domain name to begin with. People didn't know if it was "here" or "hear," "no" or "know," "why" or "y." It wasn't clear what it stood for. My wife suggested urbantasm.com as an enticing alternative... and I thought about it seriously... but I ultimately went with the ever practical connorcoyne.com. I figure that if I can keep the content of the website interesting, it doesn't matter how boring the url is.

It would be nice if I found a way for this website to cover its own expenses, which is currently about twenty-five cents a day. I'm planning on starting up a parallel blog which will maintain book reviews (some of which I've already written) and feature ads. It will be updated as needed, but since it's supposed to earn a quarter a day, I don't intend to sink a lot of time into it. When I have this up and running, I will let you know.

In the meantime, there is another route to a self-sustaining site, and one which is ultimately more important because it also applies to my career as a writer. I need to effectively use this site to promote my writing (specifically my novels and fiction) and as a way to obtain writing commissions. I'm not a freelance writer per se, and this is a very particular niche I'm filling: Talented Literary Experimentalist and Opinionated Guy.

With this in mind, I humbly request any Friends / Advocates to update / add links to connorcoyne.com, and to just generally share the blog and website with anyone you might think is interested. The same goes for individual posts of interest, etc.

And of course, your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Concept: Welcome to my Street Fair!

A Street Fair

I've eliminated the distinction between "frequently" and "infrequently" updated friends, and I've added some links for friends who've been blogging for awhile now. A lot of these sites are really cool, and you should check them out. So imagine this: you're walking down a grassy unpaved street amidst big old brick buldings on a warm sunny day in Blue-Skies-Fallingville. You turn a corner and wham! You're in the midst of a street fair. Ideas are on sale here; art and politics and anecdote and adventure. Where do you turn? You wander from kiosk to kiosk. Here's what you find:

Black Maze Books is a small press publisher specializing in raunchy poetry, but previewing mysterious and grandiose works for the future. It is just adjacent to Bud to Blossom, which is a sort of pseudo-ambassadorship to Australia with delicious scent of fresh-baked good food floating through the air. EGAD is populated with all sorts of political progressives, astrophysicists, Minnesotans, Israelis. It's a mess of telescopes and charts.

One finds EGAD to be hauntingly similar to Elisabeth Blair and her sister sites. They both have telescopes. Now this is a big table with lots of goodies; music and art and history. It's fronted by an equally artistic but more politically driven Dazzling Surprises, heir apparent to the Third Rail Themes. These tables feature an eloquent and compelling lecture series, currently driven by observations of Ghana.

(f)lawless occasionally stops by the other tables to steal their food, or maybe to egg Black Maze Books. Forge 22 Web Design tries to look all sleek and professional, but is inclined to steal food as well.

Two masked carnivalers serve up jambalaya at From the City of Big Shoulders to the Big Easy, under the watchful gaze of a couple of fierce kittens. This dynamic is whimsically documented by the diligent writers at Gnash Nosh. And Gyda's Song is generally quiet, but selling some stunning antique thoughts. Helen's Cafeteria of Stray Thoughts is populated by a staff of Slovakians with predilections for Harry Potter and Star Wars, and the adjacent John D. Martin table discusses these things from the Egyptian-American perspective.

The Layabouting kiosk may seem the most laid-back of the whole bunch, but they're extraordinarily talkative. If you approach this table, don't expect to leave in less than a half-hour, or without learning twenty new things you never thought of before.

The Leila Texts features a consortium of awesome text-messaging Leilas (but almost all of them are imposters!) which is necely set off by the steady stream of Italo blasting out from the Middle Branch Productions table. Such grooves are carved into bias-smashing arguments and dance over at The New PolyAnna.

Oh fragious day, calous, calay!, Once Bitten, Twice Registered, Unieuph, and Virtually Cleistogamic all have a decayed, unattended air to them. The cypress moss hangs heavy here. Most of these are adorned and stacked-high with relics of scavenger hunts past and gone. The same could be said for Small Shelly Fauna, with, of course, the addition of the skeletons of extinct denizens of the Permian Period.

The Patience Family is chilling out, patiently, which is to say a la San Francisco. The Pork Chop Express farms out behind their kiosk, trying to speak in halting Italian.

Smallhouse Log is one of the strangest looking tables: An admixture of religious imagery and dada-like art. Don't confuse it with the throne of The Wolf Baron, where you can get three opinions for the price of one.

All of the goods here are technically free. You can buy them for the price of time.

Concept: Gothic Funk Party #19: No Luck in Love, AND Paramanu Pentaquark Launch Event

Gothic Funk Nation
Party XIX: NO LUCK IN LOVE
In collaboration with Black Automatic and Front 312.

Launch of the
Paramanu Pentaquark:
A GOTHIC FUNK Journal

Afterparty of:
AWP Writer's Conference

Artists:
Reinhardt Suarez
Elisabeth Blair
Jacob Saenz
Pierre Abelard

$5 Donation from 8 - 10:30
Includes a Copy of the Journal

$5 LeTourment Absinthe
$3 Domestics
$3 Well Drinks
$2.50 PBR

Friday, February 13
8 PM, 2nd Story Loft, 1931 N Milwaukee
Above Lucky Number Grill

The Gothic Funk Nation: http://www.GOTHICFUNK.org
Flier Design: http://www.forge22.com.

---

This event has been a long time in the coming, which is why I'm spending this much time gushing about it. We tried to create a journal starting in November 2007, and it's finally coming to fruition. That this launch coincides with the AWP Conference (when all sorts of writers from all over the country are in Chicago), and Front 312's monthly event, and Friday the 13th, and Valentines Day is like a grand conjunction of the stars.

Check out the Front 312 poster:



The launch is going to be hot, but if you can't make it, the Journal will be available online from www.gothicfunk.org as of Friday the 13th.

In case you're wondering, Gothic Funk Parties look like this:



and this:

Concept: Television vs. Books.

It is popular among educated and upper middle-class people to inveigh against television. The same people who boast about the quality and quantity of books they own are also proud that they don't have a TV set. "Watching television," they say, "that's so passive." I don't buy it.

First, reading a book is a necessarily sedentary activity. I know; sometimes I have read while walking and it's difficult. The amount of concentration it takes to process what is put on a page is equivalent to what it takes to process on a screen. Which isn't to say that reading is more physically passive than watching TV. They're both fundamentally passive activities.

Second, the whole attention-span argument. I don't think that this is true for television and it's certainly not true for culture in general. We are often exposed to the sound-bite MTV argument that modern audiences have no patience for extended concentration. Why then aren't we offended by haikus? Why don't we accuse Shakespeare of being a commercialist when his sonnets are like tiny specks compared to manifestoes like Howl or Prufrock? Or, on the other side of the argument, how do we explain increased markets for extended works in all media. How many people romped through 3,000 pages of Harry Potter, ten hours of the Lord of the Rings films, or going-on five seasons of Lost?

Third, isn't it a convenient coincidence that the book, the medium with the presige of a heritage, and one which readers can collect as a tesimony to their taste is concidered the reciptacle of worthwhile thought? Meanwhile, television, a public medium accessed by billions that has been around for less than a century, is described as an agent of passivity.

Books make an ongoing contribution to society; in some form or another, we will always be reading. But the elevation of books at the expense of television is just one more permutation of the "high art" vs. "low art" debate, in which the vocabulary changes but never the premise. We are living, in fact, through a golden age of television today. Perennial dramas such as Deadwood and Lost are challenging viewers with complex characters, storylines, and visual language, while American Idol today fills the shoes that The Ed Sullivan Show filled in the early sixties. Online outlets such as hulu and YouTube are making television more accessible and versatile, while DVDs as a mode of storage make television more collectible, and can, in fact, be works of art in their own right.

If you claim to be open minded and a populist, it is a very, very bad time to deplore television as a medium.