Haven’t posted in awhile. My business, HouseofCopy.com, is filling the hours, and I am working on changing the entire look and theme of this site to something simpler, more streamlined and smooth. Not to mention, supported.

When I started out on this whole project back in 2007, I was using Weebly, a free website creator and hosting site that allows anyone to create a minimal, basic, functional webpage with free hosting in less than 15 minutes. That worked great until I decided that I wanted to be able to put a portfolio up of the SEO/SEM/PPC and Copywriting work I have done. You know, because these days it helps to have a job.

I had used WordPress before and was familiar with pretty much every basic when it comes to creating and launching a site using the WP platform. So I set up my hosting (thank you Lunar Pages), installed some FTP software (thank you Cyberduck) and set out to find a theme I liked.

I found a great theme called “Options” by Justin Tadlock, who runs ThemeHybrid.com. This was a theme framework that came with “Child Themes,” a fairly new innovation to WordPress, so I’m told. Child themes work off of a main or “Parent” theme framework, which has its own look. Child themes manipulate various aspects of a parent theme to create an entirely new look and layout. Basically, the parent theme I have been using is called “Options,” which provides the framework, and the child theme I have been using is called “Shadow.” What you see on the actual screen is “Shadow” using the “Options” framework. Pretty cool, no?

Of course, if you are able to find the “Options” and “Shadow” themes (as I mentioned in the beginning, Tadlock has since discontinued them, so there is no longer any support) you will notice that the original version of Shadow looks nothing like my site. That is because, and I’m proud to say it, that starting back in late 2008, I took nearly four weeks to teach myself how to manipulate CSS, HTML and PHP elements in a page so that I could change the layout, color palette, fonts, etc. Looking back, I probably should have started learning from the beginning in a more classroom-like setting (God knows my code, while validated, probably isn’t up to snuff) and learned about coding, structure, etc. from some professionals. But, either way, I learned a lot and now know how to get what I want.

That said, I think my time has ended with the “Options” theme and I am moving onto another framework. The new themes were also created by Justin Tadlock, and are called “Hybrid” and “Leviathan.” As I said before, these will keep the site more simple and sleek, while retaining all of the functionality I want. At the same time, “Leviathan,” the child theme, is designed for the more “long-winded” writer like myself. I’m hoping this works out since I’m narrowing down my posting topics at this point to focus first on my fiction and also on a couple more genuine interests.

Anyway, if you are interested in using any of my suggestions above for hosting, FTP access or themes Justin Tadlock’s themes, feel free to follow the links above.

Say adios to this version of brianthomasclark.com. The new one should arrive shortly. Thanks for all of your support.

I was recently a graduate student at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, so I am still on their email lists. This was an alert I received today:

“SUSPICIOUS PERSON – UPDATE

Safety alert for faculty, students, staff, auxillary staff:

This is a Safety Alert from Cal Poly Pomona. This is an update to the earlier message on Wednesday, April 8.

University Police concluded their investigation of a suspicious person wearing all black seen with a sword.

Police confirmed that individual was NOT carrying a sword and is not a threat to the campus.

Classes are still in session and business continues as usual. No further action is required at this time.”

Can’t walk around holding anything these days without someone calling the cops on you. I wonder what he was carrying?

Introducing House of Copy!

About a year ago, my business partner and I decided that we wanted to stop working for corporations. We had been working for the major players in the world of search engines, copywriting and marketing for nearly 7 years; Google, Yahoo!, Disney, Ask and many others.

While we enjoyed working for these companies, we had always felt that our writing skills could be leveraged even more, to businesses that really needed it. We knew we could do something like this with a business of our own. Despite the health plans, strictly-kept hours and Thirsty Thursdays that corporate America offered, we began to ask ourselves that age-old question that all entrepreneurs must ask:

“If not now, when?”

We came up with the idea for House of Copy after deciding that, in this economy, small businesses needed more help than ever when it comes to online marketing and networking. Knowledgable help.

That was it. After a couple of months of research, harried website creation, content production and some marketing, HouseofCopy.com was born.

We call ourselves “SEO, PPC, Copywriting and Social Networking Specialists” and we hope to grow up and up.

So if you feel like your business could use a boost from actual creative individuals, and not just a bank of customer service people, check us out at HouseofCopy.com or at info@houseofcopy.com.

I decided to wait to post this review of “Watchmen” because I am a moviegoer in favor of more realistic, gritty and less-campy superhero films.  With that, you can probably already guess that this review is not 100% positive.

Here is how the movie-business works (keeping in mind that it’s a business): If people do not go to see a film, less films of that particular type will be given a greenlight, not to mention a budget. I’m hoping studios are realizing that PG-13 superhero films are fine, so long as they push the limits to the very edge of PG-13, a la “The Dark Knight,” but that more R-rated superhero films are necessary, based on the caliber of material currently out there. Campy superhero stories were the norm 30-40 years ago, but nowadays, writers of comics and graphic novels are pushing the envelope, so why not the films based on them?

Ok, now here we go.

This is not the movie anyone could have expected. Fans of the comics will most likely expect them to tone down the sex and violence (because it’s Hollywood) and those who have never read the comics won’t know what the hell to expect. But you do not have to be a fan to enjoy the film.

It’s an alternate 1985. Richard Nixon is still president and the United States is on the verge of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The “Watchmen” were a group of superheroes that were active back in the 60s and 70s and helped the US win in Vietnam, hence Nixon’s re-elections. They have since aged and retired and other superheroes have taken their place, but they no longer perform “hero work” after running afoul of the American public (think “The Incredibles” without the lawsuits).

One night a member of the old “Watchmen,” known as The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is murdered. A creepy hero known as Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) is determined to find out who and why, in the process bringing some of the younger, hidden Watchmen back into play.

I loved the juxtaposition in the film concerning the ethos and mythos of the Superhero. It will test you. Try not to be shocked when The Comedian shoots a Vietnamese woman that he impregnated. Later, try to understand his motives when you see him take down random innocent citizens on the streets. These are not the superheroes you expect, and this is certainly not Metropolis.

Where the film succeeds most is in how effectively it immerses you in this alternate 1985. Nixon’s makeup is terrible in the film, but the immersion succeeds because of the detailed, epic filmmaking from “300″ director Zack Snyder. Note the opening credits sequence: crisp, beautiful, vibrant shots of the most polarizing events in 20th Century-America’s history, twisted to fit the existence of the Watchmen, all set to the nasal twangs of Bob Dylan and not a single word uttered. Snyder had far too much story to deal with, but he handles it with a poet’s eye.

The acting suffices, especially from Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach and Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan. Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) leave you flat and uninterested, which is saying something since they encompass the love story. This is most likely due to their characters being too one-dimensional; Snyder shows the amazing backstories of Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan, but with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre we really only get some slight exposition and a lot of humping. I realize it is foolish to ask for fleshed-out characters in a superhero film, but “Watchmen” succeeds in giving us another side of superheroes, so why not go all the way? If you are going to make a 3 hour film, fill it up.

The film is too long. Other reviews share my sentiments with one difference: I think it is only 20 minutes too long, other people think it is an hour too long. I have no problem with 3-hour epics, so long as they deliver all the way through; “Watchmen” does not.

Finally, there are a few things I just have to mention about the film. Some are gripes, others are just observations and suggestions. Keep in mind that I am not a Fanboy of the books:

1. The Giant Blue Penis

Alright, so it had to be mentioned. We get that Dr. Manhattan is naked (he should be allowed after having his body torn apart by radiation and being forced to rebuild it on his own), and we get that he can grow 300 feet tall, but we don’t need to see a 20-foot wang. Although I must say the scene where his is having sex with Silk Spectre II while simultaneously working on his nuclear project was hilarious.

2. The Costumes

Are they all supposed to induce laughter? Because that’s what I was doing the moment I saw some of them, in particular Nite Owl II, Ozymandias and Silk Spectre II. You end up holding your sides more than anything else. The acting of these characters seems to be equated with the stupidity of their outfits.

3. Since When Do Superheroes Use Guns?

I realize I just asked for more realism in the beginning of this review, and I know the story of the Watchmen turns the superhero mythos on its head, but The Comedian may as well be a bar-owner from Detroit.

Scenes to Remove:

1. The pointless sex scene (I don’t care if it’s in the book). It doesn’t add to the atmosphere, mood or overall tableau of the film. I don’t even know why they bother with sex scenes anymore. They have never added anything to a film unless the plot was specifically about sex. As far as I can tell, “Watchmen” is about superheroes getting knocked off. Why get it on? If this is why you go to the movies, stay home and get yourself some porno.

2. Final fight scene. It’s weak and solves nothing. It’s the tidal breath of the film. The actual choreography is nothing we haven’t seen before in other films, not to mention the first half of the damn movie. They fight Ozymandias, he beats them, that’s it (this is the 20 minutes I mentioned earlier).

Scenes to Add (and yes, I know this isn’t faithful to the book):

1. More of Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it yet, go. Not for a brilliant film, but for the type of film you demand. We can’t let poor box office performance for this film force us to be given only campy, kid-friendly superhero films in the future. If that’s what you want, I encourage you to stay home and get that porno I mentioned before.

Watchmen at IMDB

Showtimes from Yahoo! Movies

I’ve noticed a rash of these kinds of profile photos and avatars lately. I’m sure this technique has been around for some time, but I never took much notice of it until recently after being on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc. It started me thinking about perceived “uniqueness” and the so-called “global community.”

To me, the increasing number of these types of photos are another in a long line of methods to make oneself feel “unique” across the internet. Which makes me laugh right away, seeing as how one of the higher purposes of the internet is to connect people across cultures. “Social Media,” as it is called nowadays, is on the forefront of this culture-mashing trend. Creating a global community is the higher goal, but, as usual, the manic desire of people to differentiate themselves from others by any means necessary is the dominant theme. Showing up to work or school with pink hair is no longer necessary now that everyone connects online: “I want to be different online” is now the cry.

Trends gestate out of a need to look and feel different, but the more subconscious need is to belong. The kid who arrives at school one day with his ball cap tilted to the side, the guy who drives a souped-up Honda Civic complete with enormous spoiler, or, in back in my day during the mid-90s: the guy who shows up at the local Starbucks with greasy, slicked-back hair wearing a leather jacket. These are all tactics used to separate yourself from one community but ingratiate yourself to another. This is a total contradiction because what these people are truly looking for is acceptance. And acceptance means belonging.

With all of the talk these days concerning “globalization,” “global community” and the like, it is no wonder that the need to belong while not belonging is still prevalent. It might as well be labeled as a human instinct at this point since I don’t see too many animals practicing this behavior. It should also be noted that marketers and advertisers play a large role in this. Deciding on one’s own is difficult, especially being raised in this media-smothered era. Trends appear, become adopted by a sub-section of individuals, advertisers take notice and monetize it, and before long the trend is stale, out of touch and suddenly does not hold the same aura it once did. Look at flannel, Doc Martins or (hopefully soon) those God-awful Ed Hardy shirts.

Let’s face it, “globalization,” “global community”? These are just buzz words concocted by technology journalists, PR specialists and bloggers (like me, ha!). Human beings will never have a truly “global community,” even if we all were to somehow do away with war, religious conflicts and the like, because human beings like to one-up. I’m not saying we are all inherently insecure but…well…it is much easier for us to hate than like, that much is clear (just take a look at any IMDB message board; a friendly critique of a film almost always mutates into a hate-mongering profanity-fest). Love, community, helping others; these things take work, solid effort. Hate is the always-boiling pot on the stove, ready to be used at a moment’s notice, but kept on the back burner to make room for the other pans that need constant attention.

You might be thinking that pulling all of this out of a few half-portrait-style photos is taking a bit too far, but the trend of using these types of photos to represent yourself tells me something: The need to at once belong to a particular group but separate yourself from the individuals within that group will never cease. Even into adulthood, this need remains (do I need to give any more examples of the gripes among different departments within an office: sales department vs. editorial, etc. or to use a more pop-culture example, the subconscious need for many musicians to belong to a particular genre of music but to continually subvert any attempt people make to label them as a member of that genre?). Insecurity dogs us at every turn, and dear God how terrifying it is to think that someone might be different from us despite our own best attempts to be different from everyone else. The contradictory nature is blatant.

My girlfriend often accuses me of being an “old man” when it comes to my opinions and general take on life. I’m sure I will hear the same when it comes to what I have said here, but, when it comes down to it, I just can’t help wondering, Why can’t you just take a damn picture of yourself with a nice smile? Does EVERYTHING have to be modified in order to make you feel special? Do you really need to pull a tough-guy face or catch only half of your head? It’s a profile picture for Twitter. Just take a normal picture and stop trying to point yourself out.

Sigh. So much for making my posts shorter.

I am not a sage, nor am I a millionaire, but I am doing what I love for a living, working from home, and waking up excited about every single day. Keeping that in mind, read on:

We have all heard that the unemployment rate is getting worse, and the reasons why are obvious. Banks and businesses are folding left and right in this Grizzly Bear of a market. You can find one individual’s tale about unemployment here. The latest figures I have seen from the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts 24-54 year olds at 4.8% and growing everyday. 25-29 year olds are at 6.5% and 30-34 year olds at 5.2%; virtually unheard of since I have been alive. Hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs every month since last summer, and it will only get worse.

I have an acquaintance on unemployment. Let’s call this person, “Acquaintance.” This person falls into the 30-34 year old crowd.

Acquaintance has been fired from their last three positions due to ineptitude, laziness or simply because they were not seen as the “right fit” (translation: they were annoying their co-workers to the point that they felt the need to speak up). They always chalked it up to someone “having it in” for them but I think deep down they knew the truth.

I understand the need one would have for the occasional night out, cocktail, whatever, and unemployment can help provide those things. We are creatures of habit, after all, and to suddenly be confined indefinitely to the home whereas once you were out everyday can be a severe life-change. It could even bring about negative effects.

At the same time, I am a conservative individual when it comes to work. I enjoy working hard and reaping the rewards. It is difficult for me to not work, to cut loose and take time out to play. I have never been accused of being lazy, but I have been accused of being a workaholic.

That said, I do not agree with unemployment acting as a crutch; few people do. As in, looking at the amount you are allowed to take and resting on your “laurels” so-to-speak, leisurely trying to find work that only pleases you while happily depositing your checks from the government.

This is not the problem with Acquaintance.

Unemployment can be an enabler; that is nothing new, but these days, and in this economy, people are doing anything they can to get by.

A person with no children, no car payment, no mortgage has more ability to generate an income than those with those responsibilities. Children, mortgages, etc. necessitate doing everything and anything possible to generate an income because, to put it bluntly, unemployment checks are not enough. Unfortunately there are individuals out there who “play” the system as much as they can. The issue was a strong one in American politics, but not today what with a crumbling economy, war, terrorism and other issues on the minds of voters.

Instead, we have individuals awaiting thousands in unemployment money, idly searching for jobs on the internet, “trying out” various career choices to see what might suit them. Meanwhile, the weeks pass, and in their downtime from surfing Monster, CareerBuilder, Craigslist, or signing up and going out on a couple of interviews with the occasional Recruitment Agency, they watch movies, play video games and go out, spending government money that should be put to better use.

It is not that I do not sympathize with the unemployed or laid-off; I do, and I wish them luck in finding a job in today’s difficult job market. But when I see individuals much older, much less able-bodied, and with much more pride in their work ethic taking menial jobs that they were probably doing twenty years earlier in order to make ends meet, I become upset.

As I said before, I sympathize with someone who has to go on unemployment, FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, and even with the person on unemployment who still needs a night out or drink at times. Hell, we all do.

I have had the good fortune of quitting every job I either did not like or was not good at. I never worried about quitting jobs, even with nothing else lined up, because I knew I was going to be up the next day, heading to a restaurant to serve table, knowing that it would be temporary and just to pay the bills. On my time off from said restaurant, I would job search, schedule interviews, etc.

Every day is work. That’s the bottom line.

This is for Acquaintance and every other person out there in the same situation, not for people with larger responsibilities:

People without children or mortgages need to take this time in their lives to make a decision about who they are and what they truly want to do. What are you truly passionate about? What would you do every single day even if you weren’t being paid and had no children or mortgages to worry about? In short, what do you love to do? Figure out a way to monetize and get to work. Don’t waste your time searching for another position that might give you status, money or attention from others. Don’t waste your time looking for praise.

If all you do is spend your time searching for something “big” or the almighty dollar, you are always going to be beaten, or fired, as it were. Because if you are not working at what you are passionate about, you will not be willing to put in the hours, and before you know it, the person who actually is passionate about that thing is going to stomp you into the ground. And there you will be, back to square one, looking for the next big paycheck, but in the meantime, collecting a small one that you did not earn.

And you know what? You deserve it.

It’s the classic tale performed in a classic style at The Met Theatre in Los Angeles.

With a few exceptions.

Despite an awkward opening that eliminates the classic prologue in favor of a cast melee (replete with several actors yelling at the Stage Manager in the far back corner of the theatre – confusing), director Louis Fantasia’s unfussy handling of the material kept the language and action in fluid thematic focus. Fantasia is also Director of The Huntington Library in Arcadia, CA. Howard Schmitt’s elegant, straightforward costumes helped keep us within the period and did not distract.

Romeo (Frederik Hamel) is portrayed exactly as you would like to see him: impetuous, illogical and wholly earnest when it comes to love. In both mannerisms and the occasional crack in his voice, Hamel brought him to young life by conveying Romeo’s complete naivety when it comes to matters of the heart, particularly in the famous “Balcony Scene” (II.ii).

Juliet (Megan Goodchild) is normally the character I worry most about when seeing a production of this play. She can be so easily pigeonholed into the “giggly teenage girl who is SO into him”-type of female character. Goodchild, however, pulls the maturity out of the character that exists in the text and runs with it. There are the giddy moments, but they are necessary to ensure that the audience remembers that we are witnessing the story of two children literally killing themselves for love.

Other gems came from Mercutio (Michael Matthys, who I learned has played the character five times), who is essentially one half of the comic relief, the other half being the Nurse (Jill Holden). Both drew plenty of laughs through witty performances.

The two standout performances were from Tony Motzenbacker as Friar Lawrence and Niall Padden as Lord Capulet. The moment either of these actors entered their scenes, you were engrossed. Both performances were immaculate, especially for two characters who, while vital to the story, are not normally meant to shine so brightly.

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, the premise and action of the play is simple, but it is in the basic execution and delivery that a production shines. When you add veterans to a company production, you can hear different emphases in the dialogue, making even the most ancient syntax and vocabulary completely understandable. If this company were to mime their production, using only body language, facial expressions and sets, your heart would still break. Props were minimal, as they should be, and the attempt to recreate a Globe stage and atmosphere succeeded on all levels.

Highly recommended. Runs until April 5th.

Romeo and Juliet
Directed by Louis Fantasia
The Met Theatre (click)
50% Discount Through Goldstar Events (click)

This came from Paul Graham’s website, www.PaulGraham.com, and they are some of the best tips I have ever read for launching a business. My co-founder and I are trying our best to use them in our new business venture, and so far they’re working. Just wanted to share them:

1. Pick good cofounders.

Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.

2. Launch fast.

The reason to launch fast is not so much that it’s critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven’t really started working on it till you’ve launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you’re wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users.

3. Let your idea evolve.

This is the second half of launching fast. Launch fast and iterate. It’s a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.
4. Understand your users.

You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives. [2] The second dimension is the one you have most control over. And indeed, the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second. As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That’s why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.

5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.

Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can’t expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It’s easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. And perhaps more importantly, it’s harder to lie to yourself. If you think you’re 85% of the way to a great product, how do you know it’s not 70%? Or 10%? Whereas it’s easy to know how many users you have.

6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.

Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what’s possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Go out of your way to make people happy. They’ll be overwhelmed; you’ll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn’t scale, because it’s a way of learning about your users.

7. You make what you measure.

I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You’ll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you’ll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you’ll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.

8. Spend little.

I can’t emphasize how important it is for a startup to be cheap. Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly. [4] But it’s more than that. A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.

9. Get ramen profitable.

“Ramen profitable” means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders’ living expenses. It’s not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It’s also great for morale.

10. Avoid distractions.

Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you’ll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.

11. Don’t get demoralized.

Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company is run by stupid people (which can’t be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized. Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it, just as you’d be careful to bend at the knees when picking up a heavy box.

12. Don’t give up.

Even if you get demoralized, don’t give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn’t true in all fields. There are a lot of people who couldn’t become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. But startups aren’t like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.

13. Deals fall through.

One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It’s very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don’t, but because it makes them less likely to.

Original article can be found at http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

I read something interesting on Wil Wheaton’s blog over at www.WilWheaton.Typepad.com (poor guy effed up his site or something so he’s stuck at that crappy URL until it gets fixed). Wil Wheaton, some of you may remember, played Wesley Crusher, Dr. Crusher’s snot-nosed son on Star Trek: The Next Generation. More importantly, however, he was the kid who liked to write in the film classic, Stand By Me.

He posted an article about a musician named Zoë Keating, a cellist who has, to put it mildly, HARNESSED THE MIRACLE OF TECHNOLOGY to create absolutely stunning music using only a cello, her hands, and a MacBook (once again, go Mac). The post was more about how Wil had been listening to a program on NPR (89.9FM here in LA) in which a piece of one of Keating’s songs was used as intro and outro buffer music. The producer of the program apparently did not see it as very important to give credit to the musician whose tune he was hijacking to bumper in and out of KCRW donation request advertisements. This pissed Wheaton off. Apparently he was heard too, as Keating was giving proper credit both on the air as well as on the NPR website after the story had surfaced.

For her part, Keating also seems like a genuinely cool person, because she responded to Wheaton’s post with:

People have written saying I should be flattered. Yeah, I’m flattered, but I have mixed feelings. I feel the same as [I did] when a Channel 4 doc used my music without permission, money or credit. I’m flattered… but also bummed that 1) my music isn’t worth anything and 2) no one thought to ask if I cared about how they edited it, or in what context it’s used.

Also, the economics of it are kind of a bummer… I’m an obscure experimental musician. Just a link on the All Things Considered music page, along with all the other links to music used in yesterday’s show, would help. RadioLab is a good example of this. They use my music with my permission and they credit me. I am happy for them to do this because I love and support what they do, and I benefit from increased exposure and substantial iTunes sales (thank you RadioLab!). That is a fair exchange… (although sometimes I think I should pay a cut to RadioLab because they have helped me so much).

Sometimes this business is such uphill going that I have to remind myself why I spend all my time doing it (er, why? something about the need to create, blah blah). Maybe it would be easier to go back to being an Information Architect and just [doing] a little music in the evenings for my own benefit. Ha! Not likely.

Anyway, I agree with Wheaton’s point that it is difficult enough for writers, musicians, any artist in fact, to create what we do and try to make a living off of it, so make sure that if you are using something we create (and believe me, we are grateful), give credit where it’s due.

By the way, this is how she does  it: She begins playing a beat or a kind of “sound-bed” that will lie under the rest of the music (using only the cello), then captures it with some kind of program in the Mac (GarageBand?) to form a loop, which plays consistently throughout the song. She then moves on to the next part of the song, creates a loop, moves on to the next part, loops it and so on, all the while utilizing effects pedals normally used with guitar, until what you have is an absolutely extraordinary song.

Anyway, here is the mind-blowing song. Look her up, buy her album, it’s on iTunes.

Zoë Keating’s website: www.ZoeKeating.com

(Thanks to Wil Wheaton)

Update – The program she uses on the Mac is apparently Ableton Live. Aren’t you happy now?

Still with this crap, eh Google?

I first noticed this little jewel in my search results back when I started this site in ’07, and still nothing has been done. I appear on all of the other results (thank God in the first position, too), but what is it going to take to get this damn sexual offender in Florida the hell away from my name??

This is growing tiresome. As is the fact that the guy looks like my Dad without his beard.