As someone haltingly moving toward launch of an online podcast and video space opera called “Saint Stephen’s Dream,” I happened across this remarkable Vimeo sci-fi tale called “Ark.” And had this reaction: ‘OMG-OMG-this-is-so-amazing-I-should-never-deign-to-think-of-putting-my-pitiful-work-out-there-when-other-folks-are-doing-stuff-like-this.’ (This reaction, by the way, is a certifiable entry in the DSM, known as OMGOMG TISA ISNDTTOP MPWOTWO FADSLT Syndrome. Just so know). Watch it and weep. PS | View it in a much bigger, more satisfying HD player directly on Vimeo:

ARK from grzegorz jonkajtys on Vimeo.

Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?”

Read the whole piece here, but here’s an excerpt:

… Why can’t American journalists steeped in the traditional values of their profession be loud and candid about the fact that (Rupert) Murdoch does not belong to our team? His importation of the loose rules of British tabloid journalism, including blatant political alliances, started our slide to quasi-news. His British papers famously promoted Margaret Thatcher’s political career, with the expectation that she would open the nation’s airwaves to Murdoch’s cable channels. Ed Koch once told me he could not have been elected mayor of New York without the boosterism of the New York Post.

As for Fox’s campaign against the Obama administration, perhaps the only traditional network star to put Ailes on the spot, at least a little, has been his friend, the venerable Barbara Walters, who was hosting ABC’s Sunday morning talk show. More accurately, she allowed another guest, Arianna Huffington, to belabor Ailes recently about his biased coverage of Obama. Ailes countered that he should be judged as a producer of ratings rather than a journalist — audience is his only yardstick. While true as far as it goes, this hair-splitting defense purports to absolve Ailes of responsibility for creating a news department whose raison d’etre is to dictate the outcome of our nation’s political discourse.

For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.

Under the pretense of correcting a Democratic bias in news reporting, Fox has accomplished something that seemed impossible before Ailes imported to the news studio the tricks he learned in Richard Nixon’s campaign think tank: He and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions — whether on health-care reform or other issues — they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting. I try not to believe that this kid-gloves handling amounts to self-censorship, but it’s hard to ignore the evidence. News Corp., with 64,000 employees worldwide, receives the tender treatment accorded a future employer.

In defending Glenn Beck on ABC, Ailes described him as something like Fox’s political id, rather than its whole personality. It is somehow fitting, then, that Sigmund Freud’s great-grandson, Matthew Freud, might help put mainstream American journalism back in touch with its collective superego.

This year, Freud, a public relations executive in London and Murdoch’s son-in-law, condemned Ailes in an interview with the New York Times, saying he was “ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard” of proper journalistic standards. Meanwhile, Gabriel Sherman, writing in New York magazine, suggests that Freud and other Murdoch relatives think Ailes has outlived his usefulness — despite the fact that Fox, with its $700 million annual profit, finances News Corp.’s ability to keep its troubled newspapers and their skeleton staffs on life support. I know some observers of journalistic economics who believe that such insider comments mean Rupert already has Roger on the skids.

It is true that any executive’s tenure in the House of Murdoch is situational. But grieve not for Roger Ailes. His new contract signals that when the winds of televised demagoguery abate, he will waft down on a golden parachute. By News Corp. standards, he deserves it. After all, Ailes helped make Murdoch the most powerful media executive in the United States.

As for Fox News, lots of people who know better are keeping quiet about what to call it. Its news operation can, in fact, be called many things, but reporters of my generation, with memories and keyboards, dare not call it journalism.

Howell Raines is a former executive editor of the New York Times and the author of “The One That Got Away: A Memoir.”

“AND NOW LISTEN: THE RULE OF THE FINAL INCH! The realm of the Final Inch! In the language of Maximum Clarity it is immediately clear what that is. The work has been almost completed, the goal almost attained, everything completely right and the difficulties overcome. But the quality of the thing is not quite right. Finishing touches are needed, maybe still more research. In that moment of fatigue and self-satisfaction it is especially tempting to leave the work without having attained the apex of quality. Work in the area of the Final Inch is very, very complex and also especially valuable, because it is executed by the most perfected means. In fact, the rule of the Final Inch consists in this: not to shirk this crucial work. Not to postpone it, for the thoughts of the person performing the task will then stray from the realm of the Final Inch. And not to mind the time spent on it, knowing that one’s purpose lies not in completing things faster but in the attainment of perfection.”

~ DMITRI SOLOGDIN, Chapter 24
from “The First Circle” by Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn

PS: In this day and age of publishing whenever, whatever you want, in whatever fashion you wish, it’s instructive and illuminating to consider the life of Solzhenitsyn, whose works have been among the most influential of the 20th century in exposing the crimes of the Stalinist era,  and arguing for, as Wikipedia puts it, “stoic integrity and humanism” (even despite his own conservative politics once landing in America). Yet for much of his adult life, Solzhenitsyn despaired of ever publishing his works:

“During all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known. Finally, at the age of 42, this secret authorship began to wear me down. The most difficult thing of all to bear was that I could not get my works judged by people with literary training. In 1961, after the 22nd Congress of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party and Tvardovsky’s speech at this, I decided to emerge and to offer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Such an emergence seemed, then, to me, and not without reason, to be very risky because it might lead to the loss of my manuscripts, and to my own destruction. … | read on

How utterly cool — literally. For $10 a ticket, you enter the Crystal Grotto theater carved out of ice (seats 125 cold people),  where musicians play music on instruments  made out of ice, atop a ski lift in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It’s billed as “North America’s only performing arts center created from ice,” which sounds like a pretty safe bet.

Part 2 in an ongoing, navel-reflecting, hit-count-hopeful, insomnia-driven reflection on the act of blogging. Part 1: ‘Blogging = Streaking.’

The bulk of bloggers, I suppose, command audiences that consist of handfuls of occasional readers and a sprinkle of devoted, faithful friends (Hi, Karan-a-go-go! Hey, Captain La La!). At this early stage and level of blogging it is perhaps presumptuous to call them ‘fans.’ Plus, a few pals or fellow travelers may be devoted as they are obscure bloggers, too, checking their own hit counts and wondering whether they are going to be epic fails like you as a blogger. So, it’s like a support group. Bloggers Anonymous.

That word, ‘anonymous,’ gets at some of the strangeness of trying to blog. The fact of the matter is that most bloggers are, for all intents and purposes, anonymous within the cavernous, cacophonous, 24-7 Wal-Mart of the Web. Really, when only 17 people check in with you all day on Feb. 28, 2010 (see graph below),  and one of them is your brother and the other is your fellow ‘epic fail-fearing fellow blogger,’ you can say any ridiculous old thing. It’s not like the world’s paying attention. But, see, that’s the rub. If you do go ahead and post something foolish, earnest and awful, the world or at least a colleague or your mother, (were she still on this mortal coil, God rest her soul), could be paying attention with just an e-mail or stray link (‘OMG, look at this...’). Foolishness and Ridicule are two louts always hanging around the corner in Blogland.

Of course, one’s hit counts, if they languish in numbers that reflect the candles on a teenager’s birthday cake, could have to do with the fact you publish a crushingly booo-o-ring blog. Or one that Doesn’t Speak to Me. Or that 65 visitors daily is better than the 32 when you first started and actually, quite a lot when you consider that that nice old lady, Myrtle, at the dry cleaners on the corner doesn’t have anybody reading her thoughts. Or that all of this is immaterial in the end, everything is an ever-dissolving mirage and that we are all really just ‘Dust in the Wind,’ yes, we are dust in the wind. I’m down with that; I get the whole annica thing.

But please, can more than 17 of you show up today? Thanks, man. (And good morning bro. And Karan. And Captain La La.)

Hit counts since the start of my illustrious blogging career. In my defense for today (which shows, like, 1 measly hit), I am writing this in the pre-dawn hours, stricken with insomnia. My friend(s) and whomever else will wander in today haven’t woken up yet. Though, if you live in France, you should be up already, having a croissant and jam and hot chocolate, and could be reading this blog were there anything about your world of interest in it. Perhaps there is!

Ron Sowell’s Open Stage open mic night at the Unity Church in North Charleston, W.Va., has launched a thousand songs, hundreds of friendships,  probably a score of bands, and dozens and dozens of rounds of Ron’s “I Love My Tomato.”  As a weekend warrior singer-songwriter,  I honed  whatever chops I know in the supportive environment and cozy confines of the Unity sanctuary. It’s where the late and much-missed Becky Webb and I learned how to sing in tandem  in the duo Doogabeka — we were among a host of  area performers nurtured into bloom as performers under Ron’s amiable care and running of this space.

Now, Unity in North Charleston has shut down. The good news is the church is moving to a higher profile locale in the South Hills of Charleston, just up Bridge Road, in a century-old Presbyterian Church with “a nice vibe,” as Ron puts it. And Open Stage lives on. I stopped by in my capacity as a Gazette videographer and documented the move for a video/story online now at the Gazette Web site. Click on the image below or this link. PS ~ Ron, can I ring the bell the next time I’m there?

This is the last, and perhaps the most offbeat, in a series of audio slideshows I created after a trip taken to Rome and Northern Italy in Summer 2008, with my 18-year-old-son Lucas and his cousin, Neil. The trip was a high school graduation present for Lucas. We had intended to go to an Imbrogno family reunion in the town in Calabria where my father was born. That trip fell through after my essential Italian-speaking aunt needed surgery and couldn’t go. One morning, I was eating breakfast in my kitchen and a printout of Carlos Santana floated down onto the table. My son, resolute in his determination to head to the land of his grandfather, had Googled up a concert by Santana in Verona that summer.

Now, Verona is the town where Shakespeare set “Romeo and Juliet,” but is also home to the world’s most perfect example of a Roman coliseum, the Arena di Verona. So it was, that in early July 2008, we sat our bottoms down into the wide stone seats where a couple thousands years before, the Verona populace had sat their butts down to watch gladiator fights. Instead of lions being slain, we got to watch Santana slay the night in a cool concert in a cool setting. I shot the pictures and compiled the slideshow and set it to a soundtrack of some alt-music by Lucas, who records and performs as The Flow (check out more of his his sounds at myspace.com/awalktothethrone). I should add that YouTube strips out pans and zooms from the SoundSlides program I used to make this. If you wish to view the show in its (preferred) original format with much higher resolution, click here.

Should life permit you the deep and abiding pleasure of a visit to Northern Italy, you must include Verona on your intinerary.  Whether or not the Casa di Giulietta was indeed Juliet’s house, tourists are told it is and so flock to its archway up a Veronese side street. Two traditions predominate: 1) rubbing the right breast of the bronze Juliet statue in the courtyard; 2) and writing love graffiti in the archway, adding to the tens of thousands of scribbles through the centuries. A quite impressive work of mass art.

Casa di Guilietta in Verona, Italy, 2008 | Photo by Douglas Imbrogno | click bigger

About time advanced beings from another galaxy saved our hind ends. An “Internet Intervention” directed to the citizens of Earth, courtesy BBC Global News.

. . .
“Top Gun,” Burnsville

While Jerry West may be West Virginia’s best-known homegrown basketball legend, a slender hoops star from Burnsville High School has earned a measure of immortality of his own by setting a national single-game scoring record that has endured for more than a half century. Danny Heater of Burnsville scored 135 points in a contest on January 26, 1960 with Widen, an even smaller high school in neighboring Clay County. The feat, certified by the National Federation of State High School Associations, accounts for the highest point tally ever recorded in a high school, collegiate, or professional basketball game. Heater’s score topped Wilt Chamberlain’s NBA record 100-point game against New York by 35 points and topped the next-best high school scorer by 7 points …

In an interview forty years after the 173-43 victory, Heater said he had mixed feelings about setting the record. “I was happy and sad at the same time,” he said, happy for having his team recognized for a scoring record and sad for humiliating the Widen team.

“I wasn’t raised to embarrass people,” he said. “I didn’t know what to say. What do you say when you’ve done that to somebody?”

Read more about the book and a Q-and-A with Rick Steelhammer here.