Matt's Writing

Oakland's Nightlife Continues Despite Occupy Protest

2012-01-29T03:55:00.000-08:00

Pro Arts Gallery party next to Frank Ogawa Plaza

Inside Downtown Oakland's clubs, restaurants, and art galleries, January 28, 2012 was just another Saturday night in Oakland, California with live music, good eats, and warm atmosphere. But just a few blocks up the street, hundreds of police officers blocked off Broadway from 23rd to 25th Street. Nearly 300 of the 2,000 Occupy Oakland protesters were arrested in a day-long battle between protesters and police who used flash grenades, smoke grenades, and tear gas.

After my unexpected encounter with tear gas earlier in the day, I returned to Downtown Oakland after seeing a lot of Twitter activity about Occupy Oakland. I went to the protest as an observer, not as a participant. I arrived at Frank Ogawa Plaza around 7:45pm. Police officers in riot gear were guarding City Hall.

From 8-9pm, I went up to various protesters and onlookers in Downtown Oakland and asked them "What happened tonight?" The following is what I pieced together from their responses. Occupy Oakland's original plan for 'Move-In Day' was to take over the shuttered Kaiser Convention Center. This venue was to serve as a refuge for those who've had their houses foreclosed from predatory loan practices. The convention center would be re-purposed as a community center where art, music, and theater could thrive. This march was thwarted by police shooting tear gas and arresting 19 people in the afternoon. The remaining protesters regrouped in Frank Ogawa Plaza.

In the evening, between 6:30-7pm, a large group of protesters marched from Frank Ogawa Plaza to occupy the open lot at 19th and Telegraph, next to the Fox Theater. A couple people who were there told me that the police shot tear gas into the crowd without first giving them them orders to disperse. Another told me that maybe the police did give the orders, but he didn't hear them over the noise of the protest. People rushed out of the area, fleeing the tear gas and taking down additional sections of the fence.

The protesters then marched up Broadway, while some broke into City Hall. One group of police in riot gear came from 25th towards the protesters, while another group came behind the protesters.

The police headed off the protesters between 23rd and 24th on Broadway and started firing tear gas at them. People fleeing the gas had no place to run because the police were blocking both ends of the street. Protesters ran into the Downtown Oakland YMCA for refuge. The police then closed in on the YMCA. They arrested people still on the street, and closed off the YMCA.

When I arrived at 23rd and Broadway at 8pm, there was a line of police in riot gear blocking Broadway and letting no vehicle or person through.

Behind the officers was a large, black, tank-like vehicle with a water cannon on top. I did not see this used on protesters on Saturday.

In a phone interview with photographer Joe Sciarrillo who was in Downtown Oakland from 8:30pm-10:30pm Saturday night taking the photos for this post, he said, "In addition to the protesters, it was an interesting scene because there were drunk people getting out of bars and clubs and joking with police in riot gear, saying 'Officer, just let me stumble through. My car's there.'"

Sciarrillo, who also photographed the Nov. 2nd General Strike, said that from what he saw in the evening hours, this protest wasn't as confrontational as the other Occupy protests he's photographed. He saw police cars from all over Northern California, including the California Highway Patrol, Alameda County Sheriff, and Fremont and Pleasanton police departments. Protesters were escorted out of the YMCA and put on San Mateo County Sheriff buses to go to the Alameda County Jail to be booked.

There were several smaller marches after 9pm with groups of about 50-100 people marching around Broadway to Jefferson and Webster. The police followed them in close pursuit, and eventually cornered them and dispersed the crowd by taking over 14th and Broadway.

Sciarrillo said that despite the serious atmosphere of the protest and violent police actions, the evening still had a playful mood. In between the cordoned off blocks, nightlife was bustling. He saw couples bar-hopping on Broadway. Between the bandana-covered faces, it was common to see a man dressed like he was going to a Great Gatsby party, with a woman in a cocktail dress in his arm.

Witnessing today's events, Oakland is a city with great problems. It's also a city with great resiliency. Let's hope Oakland is headed toward a brighter future.
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By Matt Werner. Matt is a writer from Oakland, California. His book Oakland in Popular Memory comes out on March 30, 2012. This post is cross-posted on Oakland Local.

Photographs by Joe Sciarrillo. Joe is a freelance photographer based in San Francisco's Mission District. He's co-founder of the African Advocacy Network.

How researching Gertrude Stein got me tear gassed today

2012-01-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

Little did I know that researching for an article on "Gertrude Stein's Oakland" would get me tear gassed today (Jan. 28, 2012). My day started innocent enough. I went to Bakesale Betty's for lunch. I then checked out the open art galleries near Downtown Oakland as part of the Saturday Stroll.

I spoke with several artists showcasing their work, asking them about how they've enjoyed the increased attention and positive press on Oakland's art world. They spoke enthusiastically about the "urban renewal" and "revitalization" happening in Oakland's Uptown. I then cycled over to the Oakland Museum of California to research local history in their Gallery of California History.

Because of all the construction on the west side of Lake Merritt, I took a circuitous route, which led me to 10th Street, where a large white police van was blocking the road in front of the Henry J Kaiser Convention Center. A police officer standing in the street told me to ride on the sidewalk opposite the Convention Center, so I did. When I took a right onto Oak Street, I saw it lined with trash and debris, including some burned brown paper sacks. They looked like cement bags, which had caught fire.

The air smelled like road flares. I immediately stopped when I saw dozens of officers in riot gear. Police cars were blocking the left lanes. I could see about a dozen protesters being arrested and in the plastic zip-tie handcuffs.

Above, I saw 3 helicopters. On the sidewalk coming towards me, there was an elderly Asian man with pink shopping bags walking as fast as he could to get away from the scene.

Oak Street between 11th and 12th Street was surreal. Here I was just trying to go to the museum to research what life was like when Gertrude Stein was growing up in Oakland in the 1880s, and I ended up picking the day when it was shut down because of the Occupy protest.

Soon, my eyes began to water, my nose run, and the back of my throat became rough with a dry burning. I asked another man taking photos if the police used pepper spray. He said, "The protesters were marching down the street, and the police shot tear gas at them unprovoked. They were exercising their right to free speech." I took a few more photos and left. The air was getting to me.

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By Matt Werner. Matt is a writer from Oakland, California. His book Oakland in Popular Memory comes out on March 30, 2012. This blog post is cross-posted on Oakland Local.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Mixtape

2012-01-16T00:36:00.000-08:00

DJ Matt Werner Presents: The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mix Tape. (6 tracks, 40 MB) Free download!

Features mixes and DJ routines honoring Dr. King’s greatest speeches and sermons mixed by DJ Matt Werner to music by Ronald Jenkees, Eminem, Diddy, 50 Cent, Cham, T.I. and Rihanna, among other artists. For liner notes on DJ Matt Werner’s mixes, please visit: http://mattswriting.com/music/

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute mixes:

1. “Live Your Life” MLK Remix
2. I Have a Dream mixed to Lose Yourself
3. MLK Technology
4. Dr. King Midnight Remix 2
5. If I Had Sneezed Remix
6. Rocky Song Remixed to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dave Smallen's Happiness: An Album Worth Listening To

2012-01-15T01:24:00.000-08:00

Dave Smallen's third full-length album Happiness is perhaps his best so far. There is no weak track on the album, and the songs on Happiness showcase his talent as a songwriter, composer, and also the range and power of his voice.

Smallen has proven he can carry out complex and haunting compositions with tracks like Georgia, Can You Hear Me? on his freshman album with Street to Nowhere, and NYC off his sophomore album Everything Changes and Nothing Changes. But what makes his latest album remarkable is how he showcases perhaps an even greater range of emotion and thought on this album than in his prior ones. Take for example The Rain, which I think is the best track on the album.

Smallen sings the first line "My dad sold his car in 1972." With song writing and fiction, having a catchy first line is the hallmark to a good song. Hearing these first seven words, the listener asks himself, "Why did his dad sell his car in 1972?" This detail is something so specific, while being so inconsequential, the listener is immediately drawn in, wondering why his dad resorted to this action. Smallen quickly moves to the next line to answer the listener's question: "Yeah, he thought that he was headed to Vietnam."

The line rings out very American--involving a car and the Vietnam War. It seems very simple on the surface, but like the writing of Ernest Hemingway, or a Johnny Cash lyric, there's much more subtext behind it.

Smallen elaborates in the third and fourth lines, singing "But the sores on his hands and his eyes got him the pardon// And he walked out clear, instead he met my mom."

The power of this song is in its seemingly simplicity. Smallen condenses complex geopolitical events in his parents' lives into a simple 4-line lyric to start his song. His economy of words takes a seemingly inconsequential act--his dad selling his car--and transforms it into a framework to give a condensed history of his family for the last 4 decades.

This reminds me of the Johnny Cash line "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." or the Raymond Carver line "I'll tell you what real love is," spoken by Mel in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." There is a poetic quality to Smallen's lyrics in The Rain and his other tracks, and it's not until listening to them several times, that their soft sounds and meanings reveal truths to be discovered.

In addition to Smallen's lyrics that're as rich in meaning as they're fun to listen to, the packaging and distribution of the album mirrors the do-it-yourself ethos of the album.

A Chronology of Dave Smallen's album artwork

In his latest album, Smallen returns to his roots: his early music experiments in high school and college when he would spray paint, write on, and package each CD.

With his training in college in woodblock printing (which Smallen discussed in his Fresh Air radio interview), in his last 2 albums, he's carved a picture that represents each track into a block of wood. He then prints a picture from this wood carving and colors it in for his album artwork.

Below you can view a chronology of Dave Smallen's album artwork from 2001 to today. The list below is not complete; Smallen's other singles and EPs can be found on his website.

1. Street to Nowhere's Oakland EP (2001)

2. Street to Nowhere's 2nd EP, featuring Dead Cliché, Parkman Ghost, and Miss Rolling Eyes (circa 2004)

3. Charmingly Awkward (2005) and re-released by Capitol Records in 2006.

4. Everything Changes and Nothing Changes (2009)

5. Happiness (2011)

People do judge albums by their covers, and Smallen's trend has been to move away from the machine-produced stamped-out CD and show the physical album as an item to be coveted and cherished. His attention to detail in the music production is carried over to the presentation of the final product.

Dave Smallen fundraised for Happiness through the crowd-source funding site IndieGogo. He raised $5,171 to cover recording expenses for the album. Each contributor received a copy of the album with a personalized note. His woodcut prints were some of the most popular prizes, which helped him surpass his $4,000 fundraising goal.

Smallen has embraced the Web 3.0 era by moving online connections offline. He has connected with his fans through his music, shows, and artwork. He lets listeners hear his music for free on Bandcamp, and then requests $1 per song if they want to purchase.

Smallen's method of personalizing the music exchange process and showing the means of production behind his albums, combined with the personal touch of hand-made artwork allows for his fans to better connect with him and his music. His fans aren't interacting with a publicist or record marketing executive, but the artist himself, who shows that he cares about his music--not only in the professional production of his albums, but also in their physical appearance. I'm excited to see what Dave Smallen has in store next!

To learn more about Dave Smallen, visit his website: http://www.davesmallen.com/music.html.
Dave Smallen will also be featured in my forthcoming book Oakland in Popular Memory: Interviews with 12 Cutting-Edge Artists from Oakland and Beyond.

The Paradox of Writing about Oakland

2012-01-10T01:52:00.000-08:00

"There" photo by Joe Sciarrillo

How can one city be both the object of praise and blame inthe same publication? That’s what happened in Sunday’s New York Times. The Travel section, in a piece subtitled “Newrestaurants and bars beckon amid the grit,” ranked Oakland, California as the 5^thtop place to visit in the world in 2012.

The same $6 newspaper published the article Shootings Soar in Oakland; Children Often the Victims in its Bay Area edition. The articlegives the sad details that in 2011 over 2,000 people were victims of gunviolence and 110 people died from homicide in Oakland.

To further complicate things, as I write this, Gang Wars: Oakland, Part II is on TV.

How am I to reconcile Oakland being celebrated as one of the top-5 places to travel inthe world in 2012,while at the same time being called a gang war zone?

I’ve been reading a lot and attending events all overOakland to research for the essays that accompany the interviews in my book Oakland in Popular Memory.

I’ve been in the local libraries: UC Berkeley’s Doe andBancroft libraries, the City of Berkeley Main Library, and next I’m going tothe Oakland History Room and African American Museum at Oakland’s Main Libraryand the Oakland Museum of California.

Many of the books I’ve picked up have been largely architectural,political, and cultural histories of Oakland, like Oakland: A photographic journey, Oakland: The Story of a City, Black Artists In Oakland, and Oakland’s Neighborhoods. Although these titles do a good job at portraying life inOakland through the decades, and I recommend these titles for people interested in Oakland history, they largely neglect the elephant in the room:violence in the city.

The question I’m wrestling with is: How do I strike thebalance and capture the ‘popular memory’ of Oakland in my book and not shirk atthe reality on the ground—that there are a lot of homicides in the city? And, how doI write honestly about Oakland to not make the violence the only story, like the sensationalisticGang Wars series does.

I want my book to be an honest representation of Oakland,showcasing the rich collection of artists and voices that have been in the cityfor decades and the new generation of artists from Oakland and musicians who’veinspired those in the city. I don’t want my book to only be about the movementsthat’ve started in the last few years with famous chefs and new artists comingfrom San Francisco.

I’m conflicted: I think it’s great to see thousands ofpeople out on a Friday night in Downtown Oakland going to art galleries. At thesame time, I don’t want this new “there” and “revitalization” of parts ofOakland coming at the expense of gentrification and predatory housing practiceskicking established residents out of the city.

When I told my friend my reservations about this while at lastFriday’s Art Murmur, she responded that “Oakland’s big enough for everyone.” Maybeso. But, I don’t know where I stand on all these issues—that’s why I did interviews, to let others do the talking. As I’m putting the interviews togethergetting closer to my March 30^th publication date, it’s difficult forme to merge these two conflicting identities of Oakland: a leader in artistic innovation and in homicides.

I’m having difficulty living up to F. Scott Fitzgerald’sdefinition: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to holdtwo opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability tofunction."

However, all of Oakland’s identity issues do not need to beneatly resolved in the publication. The city of Oakland is too multi-faceted tofit into a single book, but I still want my book to stand for something—toleave the reader with a heightened sense of the great cultural movementscurrently happening in Oakland.

To fill some of the gaps, I’ve been reading books focusing on the social history of Oakland like Ishmael Reed’s Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, and I recently picked up No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland. This sociology book by Chris Rhomberg, published byUC Press, provides an interesting lens on the social history of Oakland, wherehe asks similar questions about Oakland.

Rhomberg writes about 3 striking periods in Oakland’shistory: the popularity of the Klu Klux Klan in Oakland in the 1920s, the OaklandGeneral Strike of 1946, and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Professor Rhomberg writes about these 3 movements in Oakland:

“Yet all three occurred in the same place and within arelatively short span of about fifty years—in effect, one person’s adultlifetime. How could that be? We are accustomed to thinking of cities as almostorganic entities, each with its own unique biography and personality, thehistory of their physical development embodied in their streets…theircollective memory held together by the accumulated ties of community. But whatkind of community could repeatedly undergo such diverse moments of masspolarization? It is almost as if we were talking about three different cities.”

Oakland’s long history of popular rebellion creates aninteresting historical framework from which to view the 3 major events affectingOakland from 2008-2011: the election of President Obama, the shooting of OscarGrant, and Occupy Oakland.

Reading Rhomberg’s social history portraying Oakland as a constantlyevolving city gives me new insight to my experiences precinct walking in East Oaklandon Super Tuesday in 2008 for Obama. It gives me a new historical perspectivewhen talking about race relations in Oakland in the post-Oscar Grant era. Andit helps me better understand Occupy Oakland by putting it in context with theGeneral Strike of 1946.

Similar to how Rhomberg frames the 3 major societal changesin Oakland from the 1920s-1970s, my book gives on-the-ground testimony fromthose living through 3 dynamic years in Oakland: 2008-2011.

I’m lucky that I had the privilege to talk with many of themovers and shakers during this time about their art, their craft, and what makesOakland, Oakland. I’m honored to have been part of the conversation and to hopefullyadd to it. Oakland has always had a “there” to it. It will be interesting tosee if it’s big enough for everyone.

By Matt Werner, January 9, 2012. This post was also cross-posted on Oakland Local on 1/15/2012

Matt Werner is a writer from Oakland, California. His shortplay on Occupy Oakland will be performed at Theater Pub at Café Royale on Jan.16, 2012. His book Oakland in Popular Memory comes out on March 30, 2012.

Top 5 Nerdy Rap Songs of All Time

2011-12-27T19:53:00.000-08:00

1. Secret Wars Part I by the Last Empreror

One of the most imaginative rap songs ever composed, this song has comic book characters (like Spiderman and the Hulk) facing off in battles against MCs like KRS-One and Lauren Hill.

The Last Emperor's track showcases his creativity in how he matches the personality of the comic book characters (like Dr. Octopus vs. Busta Rhymes). He also creates an enjoyable song, flowing effortlessly for 5 and a half minutes with a complex multi-syllabic rhyme scheme with lines like "Rhymes by the bunches//Bums get dirtier than Middle Eastern dungeons//Ready to settle this like detective Columbo and his hunches." The Last Emperor is an underground legend and lyricist to be reckoned with. He has other tracks worth checking out like Monolith.

2. White & Nerdy by Weird Al

Perhaps the most popular nerdy rap of all time with over 67 million views on YouTube, this parody of Ridin' Dirty lives up to the hype. It shows that Weird Al, moving into his fifth decade as a musician, has staying power because he not only readily adapts to the latest music trends, but can continuously pull off on-point satire across generations. He's also one of a small number of people who could pull off a "Carl Sagan is my Homeboy" t-shirt in a rap music video.

3. Olafur Eliason by Southern Mothers (John Dixon and Russ Armstrong)

Can one make a rap music video from the assumed persona of one of the most successful conceptual artists rapping about his art exhibitions? Can one make this bizarre rap video substituting common hip hop references to cars and jewelry with references to art theory, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Tate Modern? According to John Dixson and Russ Armstrong, you can.

When you first view the video, you may wonder why are these two skinny white guys jumping around a waterfall in Danish attire saying vulgar things in fake accents pretending to be Olafur Eliasson? On a second listen, you realize it's filled with many nerdy references and complex allusions pulled off with Beastie Boys-like flair.

Conceptually, the track does a brilliant job at connecting two disparate artistic fields: rap music videos and high-budget art installations with the common thread they share: braggadocio and overstatement: "Six foot two inches, but I stand with the giants//I can recreate any force of nature or science." Extended metaphors about Eliasson's famous art exhibits involving water and the sun, (which include references to Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god), give this track geek cred and earn its inclusion in this list.

4. Guinevere by MC Lars (feat. K.Flay and YTCracker)

Nerdcore pioneer YTCracker teamed up with MC Lars and K.Flay who raps on and produced the beat for this track about Arthurian legend. Amid references to Chrétien de Troyes, they contextualize the famous Medieval love triangle into terms understood today.

Part of a successful nerdy rap song is total commitment to its premise, and this track has it from YTCracker rapping in a fake British accent and ending the track with "YTCracker, straight outta Camelot." MC Lars has several other literary raps worth checking out, including his Edgar Allen Poe homage Annabel Lee R.I.P

5. Large Hadron Rap - Kate McAlpine

Though not as musical as other tracks on this list, its pure nerdiness and exclusive video footage from CERN, the Large Hadron Collider, give this music video "scientific cred" and catapult this music video onto this list. It's largely an educational rap, similar in inspiration as Bill Nye the Science Guy's science-themed music video parodies, like Water Cycle Jump and Air Pressure.

Honorable Mention: Galactic Empire State of Mind by College Humor and Star Wars Gangsta Rap by Bentframe.

Is there a song or music video that you think should be on this list? Write your suggestions in the comments below.

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About the author: Matt Werner is a writer and DJ. His latest book is Oakland in Popular Memory: Interviews with 12 cutting-edge artists from Oakland and beyond, forthcoming in March, 2012.

What is Hyphy? (1st draft of introduction to Oakland in Popular Memory)

2011-12-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

“What is hyphy?” a Scottish DJ asked me at a Fresh Air: The Alternative meeting in fall, 2008. I had just started grad school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and was attending my first meeting with the student radio club. I had mentioned that I was thinking of doing a show featuring hyphy music.

I explained to the first-year undergraduate that hyphy is a fast, hyper-active style of hip hop music from Oakland, California where I was born. I continued, clarifying that hyphy doesn’t involve just music, but it’s an entire movement, which embodies a culture, lifestyle, attire, and an ever-evolving patois consisting of words that for the most part originate from 3 men named Mac Dre, Keak da Sneak, and E-40.

He was intrigued. I went on explaining that the Hyphy Movement involves sideshows, which are wild rallies, often in abandoned parking lots in East Oakland, where people “go dumb,” doing wild car tricks involving “ghost riding the whip,” which is when the driver hops on the hood of the car while it’s moving so that the car appears to be driven by no one except a ghost.

I then explained that there are several dances associated with the music, most notably the Thizzle Dance, where a guy drops ecstasy and does an awkward dance where he appears like he just smelled something foul.

At these sideshows and around town men wear extremely large sunglasses called “stunner shades” with Raiders caps sideways. Many have long dreadlocks and wear giant white t-shirts that go to their knees. Wealthier men have gold and diamonds covering their teeth.

One of the up-and-coming artists in the Movement called Mr. Fab drives a giant yellow school bus around Oakland with giant spinners on his wheels. When the school bus stops, the rims keep spinning. Vehicles like this are often also equipped with whistle tips, restricting exhaust from escaping the muffler, so that the car makes an extremely loud noise that can be heard for over a mile.

I could see from the expression on his face that his intrigue turned into bafflement. He looked at me trying to decide if I was making up this fictitious culture like a hip hop-inspired Tolkien, or if what I was saying actually happened in this bizarre land called “Oakland.” I promptly ended and told him to just search for “Hyphy” on YouTube.

After interactions like these, I realized that the culture I grew up with, which I took for granted, was as strange to my Scottish classmates as their ancient culture was to me. In their culture, things I’d only seen on TV, I saw in Edinburgh: kilts, caber-tossing, bagpipes, ceilidhs, haggis neeps and tatties, and drinking not only a hair ‘o the dog at the top of Arthur’s Seat (drinking Scotch when you reach the top of the hill), but also a yard of ale when you came back down.

I began my first show in fall 2008 with a manifesto. I said that just as Jorge Luis Borges wrote the rallying cry of the Ultraist movement in the December 1921 issue of Prisma: “The ultraists proclaim the need to free art from its decrepit state,” so too would my radio show free mainstream radio from its decrepit state. On my show, the overly Auto-Tuned music prominent in most top-40 DJ set lists would be replaced by music performed by musicians who actually compose their own music.

My show would feature artists who had vocal training, could play their own instruments, and who had spent years mastering their craft. Many songs on mainstream radio at this time featured more of the talents of their post-production sound engineers than the talents of the artists themselves. Many of the independent artists I hoped to interview didn’t stoop to the lowest common denominator to sell to a commercial market segment, but produced a body of work that’s as intelligent and insightful, as it is enjoyable to listen to.

These independent artists I aimed to interview practiced hard at their craft, didn’t care how large PR agencies told them how to market their music, and didn’t focus primarily on the trending topics of pop music of the era: violence, misogyny, and money.

However, after playing a hyphy-dominated set list for a few weeks, and receiving questions from Scottish people about "Thizz culture" and what it means to get "hella hyphy," I came to see that my dual missions of bringing Bay Area music to Scotland and to heighten the public discourse of music by showcasing independent artists were coming into conflict.

Coming to this realization mid-semester, I selected George Watsky as my first interview which aired on November 11, 2008. I felt he balanced the "Bay" aesthetic that I was trying to bring to Scotland, while eschewing the drugs and alcohol and negative aspects of the Hyphy Movement. Back in high school, Watsky and I had participated in poetry slams with Youth Speaks, the nonprofit spoken-word organization in San Francisco.

The Watsky interview opened up a world of possibilities to me. My show became less about hyphy (although I continued to play occasional E-40 or Keak da Sneak tracks), and I used my Fresh Air radio show as a platform to interview and engage in deep discussions with some of my favorite artists. Oakland in Popular Memory features 12 of these conversations that I’m excited to share, many for the first time in print.

The interviews cover the lead-up to and election of President Obama, race relations in Oakland in the post-Oscar Grant era, and the latest interviews cover the Occupy Oakland movement.

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For more information about Oakland in Popular Memory, please see the book's Kickstarter page.

Oakland in Popular Memory video

2011-12-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

For more information about my book Oakland in Popular Memory, being published in March, 2012, see my Kickstarter page and Thought Publishing.

Oakland in Popular Memory Kickstarter project

2011-10-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

I just launched a Kickstarter project to fund my next book of artist interviews titled Oakland in Popular Memory:

My visit to Occupy Oakland

2011-10-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

(Oakland, California: October 28, 2011) Riding my bike from West Oakland to Downtown Oakland tonight, I wondered what the Occupy Oakland protest would look like. The streets at 7:30pm on a Friday night looked too empty as I crossed under 580 on 7th Street. I took a left onto Jefferson Street, and still saw no one on the sidewalk and very few cars.

Earlier in the week, I had read Oakland Local's coverage of the Tuesday night police action. And I had seen photos of the crackdown with tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and video of an Iraq vet hauled away, with his head bleeding and people shouting "Medic!"

I had an eerie feeling cycling the empty streets, similar to the feeling I had when I was in the West Bank the day before the Israel-Gaza War started back in December, 2008. But this was my hometown and not halfway around the world. These were my streets. I pedaled on.

When I arrived at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall, I was surprised to see so many people there.

I went to Occupy Oakland as a spectator and not as a participant. I felt I had to go because I'm writing a book on Oakland, and this protest is the biggest thing currently happening in Oakland. I've been going through several drafts of my introduction and afterword, reading commentary on Oakland from Ishmael Reed and Chinaka Hodge, and interviewed Oakland intellectuals like Chinaka and Ise Lyfe about Oakland in the post-Oscar Grant era.

And being from Oakland, for the last week working in Silicon Valley, I've had to put up with questions and comments from friends there, like "Why are they occupying Oakland? Don't they know that's not a financial center?" "I heard it's just just a bunch of white hippies with dreadlocks from Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and not actual people from Oakland at that protest." "Dude, you should wear a [bulletproof] vest if you're actually going. And a gas mask too."

Perhaps the most offensive response I heard was after I mentioned that the Occupy Oakland movement is planning a Nov. 2nd General Strike, "Well, that won't make a difference because they're all unemployed anyway."

When I arrived at Occupy Oakland on Friday, October 28 around 7:45pm, a woman was speaking in front of the outdoor amphitheater over-brimming with people. People were standing several rows deep behind the filled seats listening to her giving committee reports and going over the language of proposals they're putting to a vote. It seemed like a loosely-run city council meeting with an agenda, voting items, and a lot of talk about organization, committees, and rules for camping out in the plaza.

I walked around, looking for the hippies in drum circles that my friends in Silicon Valley said would likely be there, but I didn't find them. Instead, here are some images of what I found.

People standing in line for free "Hella Occupy Oakland" posters being silkscreened on demand

Feeling calm and seeing people peacefully gathered, I walked around and talked with a number of people about why they're there, what Occupy Wall Street means to them, and also for personal testimonies about the Tuesday night raid.

People gathered at the Broadway end of Ogawa Plaza

News vans parked outside Ogawa Plaza

Assembly at Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall on October 28

From what I saw tonight, the event was very peaceful, and people were much more organized and committed than I had thought. These were Oakland residents of all ages, colors, creeds, and backgrounds. People from the hills, the flats, and the in-between (like me) gathered in this plaza. There was a mix of working professionals, college students, high school students from East Oakland, union folk, the homeless, the retired, and every other group that makes up Oakland. The only group noticeably absent were uniformed police. No police cars were even parked on the streets near City Hall. (I was later told by one man that the police were there, but in plainclothes.)

I asked people exactly why they're here, and a common response was because so much of the United States' wealth is in the hands of too few people, and that isn't fair. Others said that they're here to show support for their friends who were attacked by the police Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, and to show solidarity against police violence--an issue with a decades-long history in Oakland, for those familiar with why locals call De Fremery Park, "Lil' Bobby Hutton Park".

It's interesting to see a movement without a really strong single message or a single leader still have the support and growing momentum that it has in Oakland. If a major leader were to emerge, I wonder how that would change the landscape of this movement.

What I took as a sign that the protest is gaining momentum in Oakland is that the majority of the plaza was filled with tents, and yet, the speaker said she's sorry that they don't have enough tents for the possibly 1000+ people there, but that OWS NYC was sending an additional 100 tents, which should arrive soon. The reoccupation movement seems to be stronger and more committed than the original occupation movement because now it's taken on a dimension that's struck a chord in Oakland: police brutality.

As Ise Lyfe said in his interview with me referring to the African American community in Oakland: "We have a different relationship with the police." This new centering the Occupy Oakland movement around issues with the police is made evident in the Occupy Oakland schedule for 10/29/2011 which includes after meditation and yoga: Police Brutality Speak-Out and a March Against the Police State:

One way the lack of centrality to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement could actually help it gain deeper adoption across the U.S. is that each community can use this OWS umbrella to address the most pressing social issues in their community--be it housing foreclosures, unemployment, the widening gap between the rich and poor, police violence, civil liberties being stripped, or government corruption. Because there's no defined agenda being pushed by OWS, and each group can define what they want to focus on, it has the potential to take off among these groups who can customize it to their community.

In a city where the locals name parks after people who've been shot by the police and where the name Johannes Mehserle is still raw in people's minds, sending 500 police officers clad in riot gear into Downtown Oakland may not be the best tactic to take. This very visible police action contributed to the resurgence of the Occupy movement because it helped reframe it in Oakland not just to address economic inequality, but to address police violence in Oakland. The protesters call Frank Ogawa Plaza, "Oscar Grant Plaza," and some in the public forum argued that they aren't occupying Oakland, but it's the police who are occupying Oakland.

One criticism I heard from a woman was that the Occupy Oakland movement has spent so much of their group gatherings talking about the organization of the protest, and not the issues that the movement is addressing. She said that they've been busy arranging the necessary logistics: additional tents, toilets, and food, which take precedent over defining why they're there; however sooner rather than later, they're going to need to address what they stand for.

Overall, thought the sanitation I saw on site was actually nicer than many outdoor concerts I've been to. It also had that vibe of an outdoor concert like Bonnaroo, where this was the happening place to be in town, that the movers and shakers were here philosophizing and debating political theory at each other, deciding whether or not they are "decolonizing Oakland from police occupation" or if there's a better way to put what they're trying to say.

However, unlike Bonnaroo, it was not all fun and entertainment, but there was a sense of victimization among some of the public speakers in the open forum. The organizers are putting on workshops/support groups for people suffering from PTSD from the police raids, tear gas, etc.

Tonight was an interesting experience. I can't say I'm a member of the movement, because I'm still trying to figure out exactly what they stand for--and I would only be a part of a principled nonviolent movement with clear deliverable goals and outcomes, like Gandhi's and Dr. King's. Until that happens, it will be interesting to see how things turn out.

"Hella Occupy Oakland" posters being silk screened

Hella Occupy Oakland poster

Memorial for Scott Olsen, an Iraq vet injured protesting Tuesday

This post is cross posted on Oakland Local: http://oaklandlocal.com/posts/2011/10/my-visit-occupy-oakland-oct-282011-community-voices

Visiting Delhi

2011-10-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

In Delhi, I visited the following places: Qutub Minar built by Qutub-ud-Din Aibek in 1199.

My favorite spot to visit in Delhi was Gandhi Smriti, where Gandhi lived his last 144 days.

I stopped by the key government houses, giant sandstone palaces by the British Raj. The President's House, Parliament House, Government Secretariat Buildings were huge and occupied a space that looked larger than the U.S. capitol Mall.

Going down the road from the government offices laid out in a symmetrical French-style city plan was India Gate (War Memorial Arch). There, I saw Red Bull and Formula One had race cars racing in central Delhi, burning rubber in an exhibition race. Here's a video.

I also visited Raj Ghat and Shanti Vana, the cremation sites of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Jama Masjid, and drove past Red Fort. With only 1 day in Delhi and having flown in that morning, I didn't have time to check out the fort. But I would later visit Amber Fort in Jaipur and Agra Fort in Agra.

I avoided Connaught Place shopping center because of my limited time in Delhi, and I'm not that into shopping. As a guidebook, I used The Rough Guide to India (8th edition published in 2011). This guidebook provides a lot of good tips and travel advice.

Delhi was the first stop in my Golden Triangle Tour with Vogue Travels. I'd recommend Vogue Travels for planning a trip to Northern India--more on them in a later post.

From Yosemite to India to West Oakland--in 2 weeks!

2011-10-10T20:54:00.000-07:00

The last 2 weeks have been a whirlwind. On September 25, I left Yosemite for San Francisco. I then went to India for work by way of Dubai. I traveled to Hyderabad and Bangalore. I took some vacation and went to Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Vrindavan, and then back to Delhi and Bangalore. I flew back to Dubai, then San Francisco, and I found myself at the Life is Living festival in West Oakland this past Saturday, October 8.

I've been traveling a ton, and I've and seen some of the most amazing sights on the planet and interacted with such a cross section of world cultures in the last 2 weeks. It's been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Here are some photos of where I've traveled to in the last 14 days. More blog posts will follow with in-depth coverage of each major location.

Me at Glacier Point, Yosemite, with Half Dome in the background

Taj Mahal in Agra, India

Questlove from The Roots DJing at the Life is Living festival in West Oakland

Scene from India: The cultural exchange

2011-10-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

On the drive from Jaipur to Agra on October 3, my Indian driver was rocking out to Hindi music, bobbing his head side to side. After a few hours, he turned around and asked if I had any music that I wanted to play. I handed him my phone and USB connector. He plugged it into his radio. His radio chooses songs from the device at random to play.

“Money to Blow” by Birdman, Drake, and Lil Wayne is the first track from my phone to come on, blasting from his quality sound system. We’re in the Indian countryside with farmers with huge bundles of grain balanced on their heads, their sons with sickles in the fields cutting stalks. Rusted trucks are passing by without hoods—you can see the ancient fan belts churning and their wooden truck beds holding chickens, goats, and men. We’re next to shepherds in flowing robes and camels pulling carts. Women in colorful, thin robes with shimmering of gold from their veils are passing by on the backs of motorbikes.

Here I am with my driver blasting Drake, the Canadian-born hip hop star, my driver’s speakers eking out more bass than the speakers have ever produced before. My driver turns around and asks me what this “Money to Blow” means. I explain. Surreal.

Working from India's Silicon Valley

2011-10-10T03:09:00.000-07:00

I worked the last week of September in Hyderabad (HITEC City) and Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India). Both areas have very interesting cultures with the intersection of IT.

Living in India for 11 days, working with people, and then traveling and really talking and interacting with people, what I found was a lot different from what I’ve read or seen about India’s high tech economy, like in Tom Friedman’s visit to India or the TV show Outsourced.

After working from India for a week, the stereotypes covered in the American TV show Outsourced don’t adequately capture the complexity that is Indian culture. First off, the show's premise that the American boss keeps embarrassing himself because his lack of knowledge of Indian culture and customs isn't really a big deal when you're over there. People seeing that it's your first time in India are very forgiving if you don't fully understand the customs, know all the Indian holidays, and aren't an expert on Hinduism. All you need to do is show respect, and show that you're open to learning about their culture.

(image from article on business etiquette classes in India)

People, especially those working in the IT sector, are very knowledgeable about American culture, and aren't going to be offended if you make an Indian etiquette gaffe. Some Indians even attend classes at executive finishing schools to learn how to best interact with businessmen from around the world, learning things like how you interact with German vs. Japanese clients.

Indians working in the high tech industry are very knowledgeable of Western culture, so playing the "3rd world card" as many of the characters in the show Outsourced do, doesn't really exist with the Indians I encountered. Unfortunately, the US/UK export some of the not-so-great parts of our culture (like this Simon Cowell on X Factor billboard ad I saw in Hyderabad proclaiming "Simon is back!").

Yes, there are differences between Indian and American culture, especially in the villages, and I had some very interesting discussions on things like the caste system, arranged marriage, Hindu/Muslim relations with my tour guides and various people I spoke with in India. Although India is a half of a world away from the U.S., the differences between us aren't as great as the media often portrays them.

The most noticeable differences I found weren't in culture and interacting with people, but the amount of traffic getting to and from work, and an average of 4 brief power outages per day in Bangalore, which lasted until the backup generators started.

Deconstructing the "Tiger Economy"

Tom Friedman calling India a “Tiger economy” and soon to be the world's 3^rd largest economy glosses over the fact that there’s a rising difference between the rich and extreme poor. I saw a lot of construction, mobile phone towers, and wealth in India, however, many in India still farm by hand using traditional methods, build their homes from clay bricks, and rely on animals for hauling and transportation.

A government minister wants the poverty line in India to be 32 Rupees per day for people living in the city, and 25 rupees for the countryside. That’s 65 cents U.S. per day for city and 50 cents U.S. for rural residents! That’s an unbelievably low amount. The Times of India says that if India adopted the UN’s international poverty line of people living off of $2 per day or less, half the country would be below the poverty line. The article says that Aruna Roy challenged the minsters to try to live off of 32 Rupees a day.

Amid this great poverty, there's a lot of construction and development in Hyderabad and Bangalore. People, especially the government ministers taking money from things like the 2G Scandal, are making large sums of money in India. It will be interesting to see how this great divide between the rich and poor plays out in India, and what the response will be from residents in the world's largest democracy to the rampant government corruption that many people I met talked openly about.

There is a lot of growth in India, however, I don't know if the term "tiger economy" is appropriate, perhaps a "lopsided economy," where there will be a lot of winners, but even more losers in the great push for development. Tom Friedman's exploration of India is framed at looking at how Indian call centers are taking American jobs. However, it would be interesting if Indians get angry at Americans now going to India to take Indian jobs. Read more about this trend at Western economies in deep freeze, expats look at India for jobs.

News articles on these topics:

Dave Smallen's new album

2011-10-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

Talented singer, songwriter, and artist Dave Smallen is working on a new album. He's currently fundraising for the project by doing custom woodcuts and art pieces. This is an opportunity not to be missed:
http://www.indiegogo.com/dave-smallen-happiness

History Of Lyrics That Aren't Lyrics

2011-10-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Joe Sabia created another hit with his video "History Of Lyrics That Aren't Lyrics." For background on the piece, read his interview with the Atlantic.

First impressions of Hyderabad and Bangalore

2011-10-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

You hear about traffic in India, and you can watch videos of it. But until you step into an auto rickshaw at rush hour in Hyderabad, you haven’t experienced traffic. My 50 minute commute to go 3 miles was like a roller coaster. My life was in this driver’s hands who spoke virtually no English, who didn’t know where my hotel was and had to keep stopping and asking people for directions, and then speeding off honking what seemed like 100 times during the journey.

My first days in India were filled with sensory overload. So many people, vehicles, animals, sights, smells, and sounds overwhelmed me. The sheer number of people and noises everywhere was a bit of an adjustment, even to an urban American.

Travel is very inefficient in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Not many people ride bicycles, but most are on motor bikes and motorcycles. Next most common are auto-rickshaws. Then you see private cars and cabs with small liter engines. Then you see American-sized cars and taxis. Occasionally, you also see Ox-pulled carts or people pushing carts down the street. People crossing the street risk life and limb and often stand inches away from serious injury. However, you have to put yourself in the middle of traffic to cross the street, because there's rarely an opening in traffic on the main roads.

There’s a lot of construction and poverty in these areas as well. Child beggars come up at intersections asking for money. The streets are filled with so many people all trying to go in the same direction at the same time. It’s just completely jammed up. On a 3-lane road, there are 6 vehicles across, all vying for space, and trying to get through the blocked intersections as fast as they can.

One image I found striking was (because I was staying in the Muslim section of Hyderabad) was to see Muslim women in full black burkas, with only their eyes showing, sitting side-saddle on the back of motorcycles, being driven by a man who they weren’t touching--crisscrossing and zig-zagging through traffic.

If one side of the street was stopped up, motorbikes and auto rickshaws would promptly jump the curb and start driving on the other side of the road, with cars honking at them, then they’d reach the intersection, and get in the far-right lane, and carve a path for themselves through the intersection to get back over the left side of the street they should be on.

Pinkberry and Justin Bieber in Dubai

2011-10-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

I saw the following in the Dubai airport on my layover from San Francisco to Hyderabad, India. Is globalization having a Pinkberry frozen yogurt shop and Justin Bieber book for sale in Dubai?

It seemed odd to see an LA premium frozen yogurt joint right when I got off a connecting flight in the United Arab Emirates, but then again, I guess that’s globalization. The Justin Bieber book was a bit too much. I’m coming to another country to experience another culture, but what I get is more of USA. We’ll see what India has in store.

Meta-documentaries on Emirates airlines

2011-10-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

It’s an interesting world we live in when on an Emirates flight, I get to watch 2 meta-documentaries deconstructing modern consumerist society while flying to the city that epitomizes commercialism: Dubai. On the 15 hour flight from San Francisco to Dubai on Emirates, I watched Exit Through the Giftshop and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, the Morgan Spurlock film. Both are worth seeing.

Recently, there’s been a rise in meta-documentaries. The already postmodern film Tropic Thunder had a making-of film titled Rain of Madness. This is a parody of the documentary Hearts of Darkness, which was a documentary by Francis Ford Coppola about the making of Apocalypse Now.

However, I should point out that these film choices are not quite as random of an entertainment selection as having Brian O'Nolan’s modernist At Swim-Two-Birds as an audio book on Delta when I flew from SFO to New York in August.

Who is Hanksy?

2011-10-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

On a trip to New York City in August, I spotted this Hanksy painting on the wall. Apparently, there’s a guy parodying Banksy going around New York City posting stencils of Banksy’s iconic art with Tom Hanks from Castaway.

This is an interesting addition to the street art conversation. After watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, I wonder if this is perhaps Banksy parodying himself or the work of Mr. Brainwash.

I interpreted Exit Through the Gift Shop as Banksy parodying himself. In the film he’s questioning the commercialization of street art, asking what happens when this form of subversive art becomes mainstream and accepted by the art gallery and art collector world?

The film also pokes fun at what he does by having this French director Mr. Brainwash become LA’s next biggest art sensation, although the vast volume of work he produced for the Life is Beautiful artshow looks like spin-offs and copies of Banksy and Shepherd Fairey’s work.

What’s also interesting about the film is how Mr. Brainwash doesn’t really create the art himself, but it’s largely scanned and Photoshopped work, which he employs other artists to create for him.

The film raises questions of authorship now that the street art world has become more accepted (but not entirely embraced) by the traditional art gallery world—in that if these stenciled pieces or Andy Warhol-esque paintings of Elvis with a gun can be churned out on large-scale inkjets and sold—where is the actual artistry and talent involved in this process? Could anyone just juxtapose 2 images in Photoshop, or do Warhol-esque coloring on a famous face and sell the painting, like Mr. Brainwash with the Madonna album cover?

In this conversation, what would they say about my book, which features characters borrowed from stories by Jorge Luis Borges, recontextualized in present-day Berkeley, California?

Here are some other blogs that reference the Hanksy artwork:

http://www.woostercollective.com/2011/04/hansky.html

http://www.geekosystem.com/hanksy-street-art/

Also related, here’s a Stephen Colbert/Warhol inspired piece of street art I also spotted in Manhattan:

Joe Sabia's latest video: War on Terror

2011-09-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

Joe Sabia just published this video where he takes the findings from a USC study on how the War on Terror is depicted in prime-time television and presents the research in an entertaining way.

Joe Sabia created this film for the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center and the ACLU. It's the latest in a long string of creative videos by Sabia. This video includes findings from the top 50 primetime dramas about the War on Terror. It watches like a trailer for every primetime crime show on TV!

Click here to see the USC study the video's based on.

Inside Google Books: Peering into Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinth

2011-08-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

Today, I published a post on the Google Books blog about the Jorge Luis Borges Google Doodle on Google.com:

Inside Google Books: Peering into Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinth: Posted by Matt Werner, Technical Writer, Enterprise In honor of Jorge Luis Borges's 112th birthday, Google has prepared a special doodle ...

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part VII - Promotion

2011-05-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of do-it-yourself publishing, I've also put on my own little book tour. I've scheduled 4 events so far, including a reading at a local church, a book release party at University Press Books in Berkeley, a tech talk on self-publishing at Google, and reading at the Monthly Rumpus in San Francisco in June.

More events will be forthcoming, but part of self-publishing is getting yourself out there. For more about self-promotion, you can read Steve Almond's piece in the May 2011 issue of Writer's Digest, or his other articles on self-publishing.

Here's the video of me at Google:

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part VI - DIY Book Binding

2011-05-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

My uncle helped me greatly with my self-publishing. He sells book-binding machines and book cover printers and let me use them to complete my book. Friends and family also helped me out over two weekends assemble and bind 1,000 books.

I was very lucky to have a cousin who's a printer and an uncle who's a book binder to make my self-publishing dreams come true. I realize that not everyone has these resources, but self-publishing is about using what you do have to make your dream of publishing a reality. Your own self-publishing could be achieved by reaching out to a local copy shop, print shop, or perhaps putting up an ad on Craigslist for an experienced editor to help you assemble an ebook.

There are many routes to self-publishing, and below is a step-by-step process of how I did it with the help of friends and family.

Step 1: Use a paper trimmer to cut the manuscript in half.

Step 2: Start printing covers with gold-foil printer, and also cut the covers in half.

Step 3: Fold page an extra page to put in back of book, so it creates a pocket for the crossword puzzle insert.

Step 4: Assemble covers, pages, and pocket into complete, unbound books.

Step 5: Insert black binding strip into special gold-foil spine printer. This prints the title of the book and author names on the spine. After printing, this device feeds the strip (which has glue on the unprinted side) into the binding machine.

Step 6: Load the binding machine with the unbound book and press the green button. This squeezes the pages tight and calculates the exact width the book needs to be bound. After the spine is printed, the spine printer automatically inserts the strip into the binding machine.

Step 7: It takes about a minute or so for the glue to get heated and pressed very tight against the pages to make the bind. After it's done, the binding area releases the book, and you remove it and set it on the rack above the binder for the glue to cool.

Step 8: Once the books are cool, you can put them in boxes, and they're ready to sell!

A future blog post will dive into marketing and selling the book and also making it into an eBook on the Google eBookstore.

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part V - Printing

2011-05-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

For printing, I had an advantage: my cousin has a print shop in Sacramento. Specifically, he's spent his career remanufacturing toner cartridges, and he has 100+ laser printers in his warehouse.

We ended up printing the manuscript on recycled toner cartridges. My cousin had many broken and defective cartridges laying around the warehouse, and what he'd do is take the working parts out of one and put them in another, and assemble a complete, working cartridge. We printed 65,000 pages this way (counting double-sided pages as 2 printed pages).

The tough part was getting my Adobe InDesign CS3 file of my manuscript (which I exported as a PDF) to print in double-sided booklet format. This was no easy feat for the 120-page manuscript. I'd done booklet printing before, but never on this scale and with this number of different printers. Here I am with my first successful print job:

There was an abundance of printers, but not many could do double-sided printing. Some took a USB connection from my Mac, but others needed drivers installed, and still others needed a USB to serial port adapter. And once I got the pagination correct, I needed to make sure the margins were right, the toner density correct, no toner bleed or smudges, and many other factors to make sure the page looked exactly as I had layed it out.

Printing took a total of 5 days across 2 weekends because of the constant quality control, I was only able to run at most 5 printers at a time. It required constant attention to make sure paper was being reloaded in the trays, that they were printing in the correct density, etc. I learned a lot about printing during this experience, and it was amazing to watch my cousin troubleshoot and fix any printer error on the spot. Run out of toner? No problem, he'd identify the make and model and refill the toner in his toner hood.

Chip not being recognized by a new printer? No problem, he'd pop out the motherboard from the toner cartridge and replace it with another one. He swapped mag rollers, plastic gears, and worked all kinds of toner magic.

I was happy to head back to Berkeley with 32,000+ pages printed with recycled cartridges!

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part IV - Paper sourcing

2011-05-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

There are 3 key components to self-publishing your own book:

Paper
Printing
Binding

This post is about picking the right paper. I will address ebooks in a later post.

To print 1,000 copies of my book, I knew I needed approx. 32,500 sheets of paper. I priced paper at several local retailers and found that xpedx, one of the nation's largest paper warehouses, had the best prices. Their prices were even lower than quotes I received from the paper manufacturers. And because I was buying in bulk and explained my book project to them, I was able to negotiate a discounted price.

I chose to print my book on 100% cotton archival-quality paper by Strathmore. This is some of the finest (and most expensive) paper you can buy. The reason I chose to go with the fancy paper is that I spent years writing the stories in my book, and I'd be hand-binding it, and for not too much more money, I could get the best stuff, instead of just regular paper.

Why Use 100% Cotton Paper?

I used to work at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley's special collections library, and for manuscripts that we needed to make sure would last a long time, we printed them on 100% cotton paper. It's rated to last 500 years or more. I felt the paper gives my book the best presentation and makes it look rich and high-quality. Because of my belief that the presentation of the book is almost as important as the writing, I decided to splurge in this one area, because it's critical. For most other people, I'd recommend printing on regular acid-free paper. It'll save you some money.

The Finances of Self-Publishing

I calculated that my total cost for the book (paper, printing, binding, plus my travel and misc. book-related expenses) would be around $2.50 per book, as opposed to around $7 going with a print-on-demand service like Lulu. In other words, it cost me approx. $2,500 to make 1,000 copies of my book with some of the finest paper available plus crossword puzzle and map vs. what would've been approx. $7,000 for 1,000 copies of just the book, and not have full control over paper, printing, and binding.

Doing it all yourself can have considerable cost-advantages. However, you need to put in a lot more time and research. To pull off the publishing project, it took my knowledge from 5+ years working in publishing at McSweeney's and Pearson Higher Education, plus me asking many questions to the many colorful characters I knew who are experts in editing, cartography, crossword-puzzle-making, design, paper-sourcing, printing, and binding to pull off the production of this book.

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part III - Print-on-demand, or print the book yourself?

2011-05-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

I decided to not go with a print-on-demand publishing service because I would make little to no profit selling my book on Amazon. I'm selling my book of experimental short stories, Papers for the Suppression of Reality for $14. Amazon.com takes 55% of the cover price, so for each book sold online, I get $7.70.

This sounds okay, except that lulu.com charges $4.30 to print a 120-page perfect-bound black and white 5.5" x 8.5" softcover book. With tax, shipping from Lulu to me, and me shipping the book to the Amazon Advantage warehouse, the total cost comes out around $7. I would make very little profit selling on Amazon.

I think Amazon is a great service, in that it provides authors to get their work out there, but this model obviously wouldn't work for me. I didn't want to just print a few copies for family and friends, but do a first run of 1,000 copies.

Also, I decided against lulu.com because I wanted full control over the book: the writing, editing, copy editing, layout, design, printing, biding, etc. I wanted the experimental writing in the book to be reflected by its physical appearance. That's why I included a massive 11" x 17" crossword puzzle in the book and also a reproduction of a large-scale map of Buenos Aires in special editions of the book:

When I interned at McSweeney's Publishing, I worked on some innovative publications like McSweeney's Issue 17 and the San Francisco Panorama. Working on these projects, I saw that the physical appearance of the publication can be almost as important as the writing. If you're going to print your book on newsprint-like paper that will yellow in 20 or 30 years (as many cost-cutting, Manhattan-based publishers are doing) then what's the point of printing a book, if the ebook will look sharper, cleaner, and provide a better reading experience?

I wanted my book to hold artistic value and give a reason for people to buy the physical book over the ebook.

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part II - Questions to ask before you begin

2011-05-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

Before you embark on your self-publishing project, you need to determine what are your aims for self publishing? Are you doing it to make money? To document family or local history? To create art for art's sake? To get a story out there that only you can tell? (I said yes to the last 2 questions with my book.)

What's key before you begin your project is to clearly define the scope of your book, and how you will evaluate whether or not your book is a success or failure. I defined success for my project as just getting the book out there (as a paperback for sale on Amazon and local bookstores, and an ebook for sale on the Google eBookstore). I didn't have financial gain as one of my goals, but to sell enough copies to break even in the first year of sales.

Estimate how much time you think it will take to write. I had already written most of the stories for my book as an undergrad. Do you have experienced friends who can help you with editing, layout, and design? Can you teach yourself what you need to know, or do you need to pay a contractor, printer, designer, or art school student to do it for you?

If your aim is to make a lot of money from publishing, you can stop reading this blog series now. There are plenty of publishing for money resources out there. You only need to Google "Make money self-publishing" or search for similar terms to bring up a wealth of books and conferences for people willing to take your money to tell you how to do this.

Technically, all you need to do to publish a book in the United States is to purchase an ISBN from Bowker (you can only purchase them in sets of 10 for $275.00), get a Library of Congress Control Number, and bundle a number of pages under a title or create an ebook.

This series on self-publishing is about how I went about making my book of short stories and why I made certain design, printing, and binding decisions, in hope of inspiring others.

Papers for the Suppression of Reality: March 2011 release date!

2011-01-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

Matt Werner’s first book of short stories, Papers for the Suppression of Reality, co-authored with Dr. Shaka Freeman will hit bookstores on March 1, 2011. The book is being published by Thought Publishing. You can pre-order a copy of the book here: http://thoughtpublishing.org/purchase/

Interview with Pale Kid raps fast

2011-01-19T23:41:00.000-08:00

George Watsky's video Pale Kid raps fast is currently the most viral video online, according to the Viral Video Chart. He's been bustin' like that since his Youth Speaks days, and it's great to see him get recognition for his talents.

I interviewed him back in Nov. 2008 on my Fresh Air: The Alternative show. Click here for the MP3.

Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part I

2010-10-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

I'm one month away from printing and hand-binding my first collection of short stories entitled Papers for the Suppression of Reality. My book will hit bookshelves at a small, independent bookstore far away from you in January, 2011. Here's the first installment of a chronicle of my experiences:

Some weeks ago, I went to my local library and picked up Writer's Market 2010, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing (4th Edition), and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing. Of these, I found the last to be the most helpful.

Writer's Market cautions against self-publishing, and makes it sound like an unreasonable proposition, and something to be done only after submitting dozens of query letters to literary agents and only after your manuscript has been rejected by several publishing houses:

"If you've exhausted all these options and you still think you can reach an audience, then self-publishing could be an option for you. However, make sure you research all your self-publishing options to save time, money and headaches. Self-publishing is a very rough road for any writer and often turns into a full-time jobs with a very low rate of success."

Writer's Market is very much ingrained (as it's been around for 90 years) in the traditional publishing landscape of only through an agent and a large publishing house can you get your work out there. I believe that publishing has changed.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross, although it might be a good resource to some, comes off as a bit hokey to me. Chapters titled "Cyber Options Beyond Your Wildest Imagination" and "Killer PR: The Great Equalizer" get in the way of me just trying to get the information I need about how to get cataloged in the Library of Congress, the differences between a CIP and PCN, and questions like that.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing reads like a self-help book for the self-published (which may be a great resource, if you need motivation)--but to me it seems to over-explain things that don't need explaining. And at over 500 pages is a bit too complete of a resource for me. I just want to get answers to the basic questions I have, and I don't need the "Four Rules That Will Almost Guarantee You Success."

Why would they emphasize Guarantee, when it's modified by Almost? This seems contradictory. Subtle things like this got in the way of me taking this book seriously, and its tips on "Hitting the Catalog Jackpot," may be interesting to some, but not to me.

Finally, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing by Jennifer Basye Sander was actually the most sober, concise, and easy to read book I found on self-publishing. Despite its title, it's not written for a Complete Idiot, but it's the best guide on self-publishing I've read. It covers all the major issues in self-publishing in a way that's easy to navigate. One can dive right in and find areas to look into about taxes, setting up a business, intellectual property law, and all these areas that other titles take twice as many pages to cover and do half as well.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing makes self-publishing out not to be the formidable last-option that Writer's Market portrays it to be, but something that's doable if you go in for the right reasons. You aren't going to get rich, but if you're business-smart, you can get your publication exactly how you want it (my preferences are in parenthesis):

Title (long and obscure)
Font (archaic)
Paper (1oo% cotton)
Cover (unique)
Look (non-traditional)
Design (amateur, but well-thought-out)
Feel (amateur, but well-intentioned)
and all the inserts you want (including maps!)

When self-publishing, your only limit is your imagination and pocketbook--not the publishing house's finance officer. And if you do things right, you can even earn a modest profit, because although you're selling far fewer titles than going with a Manhattan-based publishing house, you're making 100% of the profit, and not 8% (a typical author's purse after the money gets distributed to the publisher, agent, distributor, publicist, etc.)

These are my initial readings on the subject. I don't know where I'll end up. It's a journey--we'll see where it takes me.

Joe Sabia's San Francisco Pun Routine

2010-09-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

If you like puns and you like San Francisco, then this is the video for you!

Performed at the Monthly Rumpus, August 10, 2010. The Makeout Room, San Francisco.

For more Joe Sabia puns, check out his Rumpus Radio pun battle with hip hop artist K.Flay.

Another video of this routine is here.

“The Dream Shall Never Die” Ted Kennedy mix

2010-09-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Honoring the life and legacy of Senator Ted Kennedy, I made a mix to one of his most famous speeches: his 1980 Democratic Convention Speech, also known as “The Dream Shall Never Die.”

(Right click here and select “Save Link As” to download the MP3)

Kennedy’s speech is mixed to Letting Go (Dutty Love) by Jamaican American rapper Sean Kingston.

This was inspired by when I saw Ted Kennedy deliver a rousing speech in support of Barack Obama at Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland, California on February 1, 2008.

I also made a remix to Robert F. Kennedy’s famous South Africa speech here: RFK in South Africa Remix

Interview with Playwright Chinaka Hodge

2010-09-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

My interview with Oakland poet and playwright Chinaka Hodge was published on the literary website the Rumpus today. Click here for the interview.

Chinaka is known for her Def Poetry Jam appearances and play Mirrors in Every Corner. But her writing and artistic talents are wide-ranging, and include some pretty dope tracks with the Getback Crew:

Joe Sabia is first in line to get the iPhone 4

2010-06-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

Joe Sabia (whose Whirled Creative viral videos have been reported on in this blog) paid a guy $400 to stay in line for 3 days outside San Francisco's Apple Store so he could be first in line to get the iPhone 4 today.

There are a number of articles on this, including a Tech Crunch article that initially reported that Joe's name was Gray Powell (the guy who accidentally lost the iPhone prototype in a Redwood City bar).

Other articles are here:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/iphone-4-launch-sells-first-spot-in-line-400/19528951/

http://sfist.com/2010/06/24/behold_the_san_francisco_iphone_4_l.php

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/06/steve_jobs_hold_me.php

My past blog posts on Joe Sabia's endeavors:

Joe's pun battle with K.Flay

Mongol Rally trip

Music Video Interactive Game

Obama-Kanye West Mashup Video

RedCups.com--bringing the party to the UK

2010-04-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine from the University of Edinburgh has come up with a novel business idea. After growing up watching the American Pie films, Van Wilder, and countless American teen films that feature party scenes of red-cup-wielding students, my friend has brought this joy to the UK.

Many Americans think red cups are ubiquitous, but from my experience living in the UK this last year, the parties feature small clear cups, similar to what Americans use for wine. At last, university students in the UK can party in real fashion with redcups.com--the only official distributor of SOLO™ Red Cups in the UK. Enjoy.

-Matt

Interview with K.Flay

2010-03-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

I interviewed K.Flay for Rumpus Radio at http://therumpus.net

Topics discussed by San Francisco hip hop artist K.Flay and Rumpus Radio host Matt Werner include MC Lars, K.Flay’s Mashed Potatoes Mix Tape, K.Flay’s songs, Guinevere, No Ignorance (remix of Paramore’s Ignorance), K.Flay staying straight-edge after her father’s passing, and her Do-It-Yourself ethic in music production. The podcast also features an exclusive acoustic version of Bye, Bye Illinois recorded by Rumpus Radio.

A pun battle breaks out toward the end of the interview between K.Flay and the International Pun Champion, Joe Sabia.

Pun battle excerpt:

What do you call it when Sara Palin gets high?

Baked Alaska.

For more on: K.Flay, visit http://kflay.com. And for more on Matt Werner’s podcasts, visit http://mattswriting.com.

Voice overs are by Ben Felsing. Interview photo by Joe Sciarrillo.

Podcast is 26 mins. MP3 file is approx. 60MB. Direct download link: http://mattswriting.com/K.Flay-Interview.mp3

Podcast is also available for free download on iTunes in my Mattswriting podcast channel. Search iTunes for K.Flay to find interview. Here are some photos from the recording of the interview.

DJ Matt Werner recording K.Flay in the Mission District in San Francisco.

Recording K.Flay playing "Bye, Bye Illinois" featured in the podcast.

The interview took place in March, 2010.

Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commission white paper

2010-03-10T17:31:00.001-08:00

While working at UC Berkeley, I assisted Professor Harley Shaiken researching and editing his white paper he recently submitted to the Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commission. The report addresses and challenges Toyota's reasons for wanting to close the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. auto plant in Fremont, California.

The paper was officially released on March 3, 2010 at a press conference at California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer's office in Sacramento. The report can be found on State Treasurer Bill Lockyer's website here: http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/nummi/report.pdf

Treasurer Bill Lockyer also hosted a hearing on the proposed NUMMI auto plant closure at his office in San Francisco on February 24. These photos are from the Feb. 24, 2010 hearing.

Professor Harley Shaiken (right), the author of the white paper, speaks next to State Treasurer Bill Lockyer (left).

Art Pulaski, Blue Ribbon Commission Member and Executive Secretary-Treasurer, California Federation of Labor speaks on why NUMMI should be left open and the 25,000 jobs that are at stake.

From the left, Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commissioners Richard Holober, Executive Director, Consumer Federation of California; California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer; Professor Harley Shaiken; Nina Moore, Fremont Chamber of Commerce; and Art Pulaski, California Federation of Labor.

Professor Harley Shaiken is interviewed by Channel 2 news.

Below is press on the Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commission and articles related to the proposed closure of NUMMI.

Editorials:

Dan Morain: NUMMI closure shows failure of California talk about job creation
Sacramento Bee, Feb. 28, 2010
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/02/28/2568917/dan-morain-nummi-closure-shows.html

Editorial: Toyota, stay loyal to Golden State
Sacramento Bee, March 5, 2010
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/05/2584048/toyota-stay-loyal-to-golden-state.html

Where Toyota Really Lost Its Way
by John Diaz
San Francisco Chronicle, March 7, 2010

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/07/IN5T1C1198.DTL

Media:

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201003031730

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/business&id=7308820

http://cbs13.com/ (see top story section of site)

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-nummi4-2010mar04,0,2432971.story

http://www.kgoam810.com/Article.asp?id=1720013&spid=15884

http://www.ktvu.com/news/22730370/detail.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/03/BUQI1CA99A.DTL

http://www.kcbs.com/bayareanews/Toyota-to-Aid-Employees-at-NUMMI/6489911

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hXz9o8N3IDFT82bFBsekAEA7ar3wD9E7HANO0

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14506844

http://www.ktvu.com/money/22729035/detail.html

Articles in the Japanese Press on the Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commission visit to Japan on March 8, 2010.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201003090393.html

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20100310a3.html

Newspaper articles in Japanese

(Note: to translate articles, enter URL into Google Translator: http://translate.google.com/?hl=en#ja|en|

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/atmoney/news/20100309-OYT1T01138.htm

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/feature/20100203-338161/news/20100308-OYT1T00913.htm

http://sankei.jp.msn.com/economy/business/100309/biz1003091124008-n1.htm

http://sankei.jp.msn.com/economy/business/100304/biz1003040922004-n1.htm

YouTube Links from Blue Ribbon Commission Feb. 24, 2010 hearing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG3yCZ3n-Mw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrHPauhIHoM

YouTube Links from Blue Ribbon Commission March 3, 2010 press conference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq6QMBkIsGo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyIrqgC44vI

Commissioner Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow's blog:

http://www.reyes-chow.com/2010/03/toyota-nummi-commission-japan.html

The Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commission was appointed by California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer to examine Toyota’s proposed closure of NUMMI.

The Toyota NUMMI Blue Ribbon Commission

Professor Harley Shaiken (chairman), University of California, Berkeley

Ellen M. Corbett, California State Senator, District 10

Danny Glover, Actor

Scott Haggerty, Alameda County Supervisor, District 1

Richard Holober, Executive Director, Consumer Federation of California

Bruce Kern, Executive Director, East Bay Economic Development Alliance

Nina Moore, Fremont Chamber of Commerce

Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club

Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, California Federation of Labor

Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)

Victor Uno, President, Port of Oakland Commission

Bob Wasserman, Mayor of Fremont

TED Fellow Daniel Zoughbie speaks at TED2010

2010-02-12T00:10:00.001-08:00

Daniel Zoughbie, the Founder and CEO of the Global Micro-Clinic Project (GMCP) speaks at TED2010 on GMCP's model of "contagious health," working to make healthy behaviors contagious in families and communities.

The GMCP is a nonprofit organization, which works to empower people to prevent and manage disease in impoverished areas of our world. The GMCP currently works to empower people to prevent and manage diabetes in Jordan and India, and to empower people to prevent and manage HIV/AIDS in Kenya. For more information, please visit http://gmcp.org.

For more information on Daniel Zoughbie being selected as a 2010 TED Fellow and the TED2010 conference in Long Beach, California, please visit http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/394

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Mixtape

2010-01-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

DJ Matt Werner Presents, for MLK Day 2010: The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mixtape

Please click on the image above, or click here for a direct download link for the 6-track mixtape. It features DJ routines honoring Dr. King’s greatest speeches and sermons mixed by DJ Matt Werner to music by Ronald Jenkees, Eminem, Diddy, 50 Cent, Cham, T.I. and Rihanna, among other artists.
http://mattswriting.com/2009/08/20/the-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-mix-tape/

iLL-Literacy Releases new album today for free!

2009-11-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

iLL-Literacy releases their latest album "iB4the1.1" on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 for free download at http://ill-literacy.com/. My favorite part on it is Dahlak's opening verse to Finding Emo. The lyrical wordplay, and how it builds up is quintessential Dahlak. For my Fresh Air interview with Dahlak, click here. Adriel and Nico also make strong contributions to this album, pushing the genre boundaries of spoken-word and hip hop.

Dave Smallen Record Release Party in SF on 11/27!

2009-11-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

Dave Smallen, who I recently wrote about for his song NYC, and interviewed on my radio show back in March, is releasing his album Everything Changes & Nothing Changes at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco on Friday, November 27. For tickets and info on the show, please visit http://davesmallen.com and http://www.bottomofthehill.com/

George Watsky releases new video

2009-10-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

George Watsky (the first musician I interviewed on my radio show in Scotland last year), just dropped a cool stop-motion music video for "I Got This Love," recorded by Max Miller-Loran:

Also, the interview I did with George Watsky can be found here.

Dave Smallen releases track NYC

2009-10-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

Singer/songwriter Dave Smallen recently released a great track "NYC" from his forthcoming album "Everything Changes & Nothing Changes." I had the pleasure to interview him on Fresh Air back in March, 2009. Check out his track NYC below:

DJ Matt Werner interviews Edinburgh Composer

2009-10-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

DJ Matt Werner interviewed University of Edinburgh composer Maciej Zurawski about the world premiere of his orchestra piece Love and War on May 25, 2009. The interview can be found at http://mattswriting.com/

In this interview, Werner and Dr. Zurawski discuss music theory, Zurawski's battle with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the role of illness in art, hill walking in the Scottish Highlands, film music, and his compositions, including Love and War, My Home is in the Mountains, What Life Could Be, and The Journey Towards the Open Sea.

Maciej Zurawski's newest work will be premeiring at the Music of Climate Change concert taking place in the city centre of London on Saturday November 28th at 7.30 p.m. Please visit this site for more details: http://earlymusicexperiment.weebly.com/ideas.html

And please visit Maciej Zurawski's website for more of his music: http://www.theseaofmusic.com/

A Mic in the Cathedral EP by Matt Porter

2009-09-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

DJ Matt Werner is proud to present Matt Porter’s first EP: “A Mic in the Cathedral.” This small collection showcases the talent of Scottish organist Matt Porter.

Tracks include Matt Porter playing excerpts of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata in D Minor, BWV 565; Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major, BWV 552; and Dieterich Buxtehude’s Prelude in C Major.

The EP can be downloaded here: http://mattswriting.com/A-Mic-in-the-Cathedral.zip

The Making of "A Mic in the Cathedral"

2009-09-22T15:07:00.001-07:00

"A Mic in the Cathedral," Matt Porter's first EP of organ music, was recorded live by DJ Matt Werner at 3 churches and cathedrals in Edinburgh and Dundee, Scotland, and remastered in San Francisco, California.

Matt Porter at the Cathedral Organ in Dundee, Scotland.

Matt Porter playing Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major on the Cathedral Organ.

Matt Porter at the Organ in Dundee, Scotland.

Matt Porter at the Organ in Dundee, Scotland (tall view).

Impressive Organ pipes in Dundee, Scotland.

Organists Francesco and Matt Porter outside of rehearsal in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Making of "A Mic in the Cathedral"

The Making of "A Mic in the Cathedral" (view of recording equipment).

JC Orton wins Jefferson Award for Public Service

2009-09-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

JC Orton, the Coordinator of Night on the Streets-Catholic Worker, won the Jefferson Award for Public Service on September 3, 2009. His Berkeley, California-based nonprofit has served over 100,000 meals to the homeless since 1997.

CBS Channel 5 News interviewed JC Orton and others on September 3, 2009 for their segment on JC Orton, which will air later this month.

For Bay Area residents, the news segment on JC Orton airs on CBS 5 on these dates:

Wednesdays on Eyewitness News at 6 p.m. on 9/23/2009
Thursdays on Eyewitness News at Noon on 9/24/2009
Saturdays on CBS5 Early Edition at 7 a.m. (times vary, check listings) on 9/26/2009
and on http://www.cbs5.com/ after 9/23/2009

And on KCBS All News 740 AM and FM 106.9:

Wednesday at 6:50 p.m., 9:40 p.m., 11: 50 p.m. on 9/23/2009
Sunday at 11:50 a.m., 3:50 p.m. on 9/27/2009

Below are some photos from the CBS5 filming:

Cameraman is inside the Catholic Worker van, getting a shot of JC handing out food in Berkeley.

JC is helping coordinate resources for the homeless in Berkeley.

JC Orton talks with Mr. G about setting up a bank account to best manage his finances.

"Bottleneck" is interviewed about how JC has helped him and many others in Berkeley.

The award packet:

For more information on JC Orton and Night on the Streets-Catholic Worker, please visit:
http://berkeleycatholicworker.googlepages.com

Mongol Rally

2009-07-11T02:49:00.000-07:00

Joe Sabia is taking the trip of a lifetime. Driving 10,000 miles from the UK to Mongolia. Here's a news segment about his trip:

You can follow his trip at: http://www.rubikcrew.com/

JC Orton on the School of the Americas

2009-07-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest video project. It's currently the top-rated Viewer-Created video on Current TV. Please vote for my video.

To view the highest-quality version of the video, please visit: http://mattswriting.com/JC_Orton_on_The_School_of_the_Americas.mov

The Catholic Worker website: http://berkeleycatholicworker.googlepages.com

Can't Tell Me Nothing by Kanye West, Video by Zach Galifianakis - High Quality Video

2009-06-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

Zach Galifianakis made this funny video to "Can't Tell Me Nothing" by Kanye West. This is the best quality video on YouTube:

Let the Beat Build Remix

2009-06-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

Innovative hip hop video filmed in 1 take:

Nyle "Let The Beat Build" from Nyle on Vimeo.

Eminem teaches Jimmy Kimmel how to rap

2009-06-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Funny video of Eminem teaching Jimmy Kimmel how to rap. Eminem gives Jimmy the rap name "Briefcase Joe."

Obama on Colbert's show in Iraq

2009-06-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report is one of my favorite shows on TV. This week he's broadcasting from Iraq, and last night, President Barack Obama made a guest appearance via satellite:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Obama Orders Stephen's Haircut - Ray Odierno

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Stephen Colbert in Iraq

Illness and travel

2009-05-09T04:36:00.000-07:00

Those who follow this blog may recognize a trend in my travel writing. Wherever I travel for an extended period of time, I seem to pick an illness or infirmity. Berlin was no different.

But first, I haven't written about my Israel/West Bank trip since my January 4th "Leaving Israel: A Tale of 7 Checkpoints", and people have e-mailed me asking what was the outcome of becoming very ill in Israel/The West Bank, and if I ever recovered. Well, it was a long and painful 2-month recovery filled with numerous trips to hospitals here in Scotland, and routines of heavy antibiotics and anti-parasite drugs, coupled with numerous tests to determine what exactly I contracted while in the Middle East.

In my 9 days in Israel, I somehow became infected with the bacterial infections Campillobacter and giardia, and the parasite Entamoeba histolytica. These three things kept me from digesting meat and dairy for about 2 months, and made things very difficult for me from January-February, 2009. But I feel like I've recovered from that and I'm eating normally, except I feel like I may now be a bit lactose intolerant. I started training again for triathlons in late February, and I competed in a triathlon in April, which was a lot of fun.

So I guess the lesson is to be cautious when eating street food and drinking the water while traveling, even when you're in a developed country, because I was in Israel when I got sick. The next post will deal with the obstacles during my latest trip to Berlin.

DJ Matt Werner interview with MC Lars

2009-05-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

MC Lars put on a great live show at The Cathouse in Glasgow on April 15th. Below are some photos from the show. I interviewed MC Lars for my radio show on Fresh Air: The Alternative before his show, and the podcast of the hour-long interview and feature on MC Lars can be found on my website http://mattswriting.com

In the interview, MC Lars and I discuss his songs Guitar Hero Hero, Download This Song, Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock, Hipster Girl, Twenty-Three, Hey There Ophelia, Signing Emo (feat. the Matches), and White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (DJ Khaled Remix).

Topics also discussed include MC Lars’s latest album This Gigantic Robot Kills, Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality,” the rich traditions of punk and hip hop in the Northern California music scene, the suicide of MC Lars’s former Stanford roommate, which inspired the song Twenty-Three, and how MC Lars navigates the racial politics of being a white MC. This show features the voice-over talents of Ben Felsing, and also a surprise, but brief, visit from Queen Elizabeth II.

Click here for the interview.

MC Lars at the Cathouse in Glasgow, Scotland

MC Lars wore the Aquabats' outfit (the California rock band he was touring with)

A mosh pit broke out during the song "Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock"

MC Lars rapping "True Player for Real"

MC Lars on a Guitar Hero guitar for the song "Guitar Hero Hero"

MC Lars shredding on a plastic Guitar Hero guitar for the song Guitar Hero Hero

MC Lars performing "Signing Emo"

DJ Matt Werner's Fresh Air Podcasts are now on iTunes!

2009-04-18T15:42:00.001-07:00

You can download my interviews on Fresh Air: The Alternative, University of Edinburgh student radio on my website http://mattswriting.com/ or on iTunes.

When you search the iTunes store for DJ Matt Werner, my podcast "mattswriting" will come up. Or, by clicking this direct iTunes link, you can download my interviews and features on Talib Kweli, Saul Williams, Dahlak Brathwaite, Kid Beyond, Dave Smallen, Fr. Bruno Clifton, George Watsky, and Ise Lyfe.

Saul Williams Interview with DJ Matt Werner

2009-04-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

Saul Williams Interview
with DJ Matt Werner on Fresh Air: The Alternative

Phone interview recorded on November 21, 2008,
The show aired on http://freshair.org.uk on December 9, 2008.
A PDF transcript by Korin McGinty of this interview can be downloaded here.
The audio of this interview can be downloaded at http://mattswriting.com

DJ MATT WERNER: Saul, I was wondering if you could come on the line now and discuss a little bit about your latest album Niggy Tardust.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Sure, well the name of the album is The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! And it’s a concept album where I am essentially exploring the idea and reality of liberation, of freedom, and what it means in the face of, or under the context of our existing definition of race, and how that relates to music and identity, and what have you.

It’s essentially a very danceable dialogue, you know, self-exploration, and the need to step beyond the boundaries imposed by society as far as what people come to expect of someone when they assume that they’re from a particular place or look a particular way or talk a particular way, or what have you. So yeah it’s basically me finding the freedom to just break out of my shell and make the music that I want to make regardless of the executive who says, “Well this doesn’t actually fit the formulaic mold of what we’re expecting from you, of what we would need in order to get this to these people over here.” It’s about just breaking those boundaries.

DJ MATT WERNER: How was it collaborating with Trent Reznor on the album?

SAUL WILLIAMS: Working with Trent was great. Trent was someone who never stood in the way of any of my creative ideas on anything. And everything that I brought to the table, he’d be beaming with excitement about and basically just helped me facilitate getting those ideas executed in ways that really translated for the listener. So he was extremely helpful.

DJ MATT WERNER: So the first track we’re going to play is your single Black Stacey, and I was wondering if you could introduce the track and talk a little bit about how you came to write it. I’m curious as to how autobiographical the track is.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Right. Well firstly Black Stacey is not from Niggy Tardust. Black Stacey is from the album before Niggy Tardust which is called Saul Williams. Although it’s related to Niggy Tardust in that, that’s the beginning of me wanting to break free of the constraints of race, or the paradigm of race, what have you. So my middle name is Stacey and the song is about simply learning to be comfortable in your own skin and that’s it. I think that’s all you need to know.

DJ MATT WERNER: So this is Black Stacey by Saul Williams.

[Black Stacey plays]

DJ MATT WERNER: You were just listening to Black Stacey by Saul Williams. And here at Fresh Air, on DJ Matt Werner’s show we’re very privileged to have Saul Williams on a pre-recorded phone interview. Saul, the next track we’re going to play is the cover you did of U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday and I’m curious, do you know, has U2 listened to it? Have you heard what their feedback is on it?

SAUL WILLIAMS: I know that Bono has heard it, and I know he liked it enough to let us put it out. [laughs]. Yes, I know that he’s heard it. Aside from that, my reason for doing this song was simply because I grew up listening to it and always related to it as if it was about I guess the struggle that was happening in the United States with African-Americans. I was not as informed about what was happening in Ireland at the time when I first heard the song. And when I learned about it, it just confirmed my perspective of struggle. And being [in a] struggle, regardless of where you face it, how you face it, people that go through some sort of institutionalized oppression or suppression can oftentimes relate to one another, and so I’ve often related to a lot of the music coming out of Ireland for whatever reasons, and this song is a prime example of that. I chose to cover it on Niggy Tardust just cuz I love it.

DJ MATT WERNER: And I think it is an incredible cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday. You’re about to listen to Saul Williams only on Fresh Air.

[Sunday Bloody Sunday plays]

DJ MATT WERNER: You were just listening to Sunday Bloody Sunday the cover by Saul Williams and that is on his latest album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! And the way you disseminated this album was quite unique through an online method. It was very non-traditional, similar to how Radiohead disseminated their album. I was wondering if you could describe how you came to release it how you did.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well yeah, we actually released our album about 10 days after Radiohead released their album. And so it was an idea that friends and I had had very close to the same time that Radiohead had had, when we simply realized that there was a window that was open in the industry and in our ability to be able to reach our fan base at this time without the aid of a label initially. So we decided to just essentially offer it for a very cheap price as a download. We gave people the option of paying for it, or not. So they could pay it—they could get it for free or they could pay 5 dollars and choose the quality of the download that they wanted. We were also able to include artwork and lyrics in their download. And all that led up to our physical release, which we did with The Fader Magazine and Label and yeah it’s worked perfectly for us it’s really gone well as far as the number of people we reached as the result of 1) Of course being able to offer it for free, 2) Being able to offer it at an inexpensive price, so that people who heard of the project and said, “Hmm, I think I want to try it out,” didn’t really have much difficulty in saying, “Ah, you know, I’ll spend the price of a soy latte to listen to this album.” It really works in our favor.

DJ MATT WERNER: And it’s been very popular indeed and if people want to download this album what website should they visit?

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well that’s the thing, once we made it commercially available in stores, and what have you, now it’s available in two places: in stores and on iTunes or Amazon or something like that. So now it’s at the official downloading places. We spent the first not year, but the first 8 months away from those avenues so that we could do it our own way, but now we’re in the mainstream retail places, so iTunes would probably be the best place to go or a store.

DJ MATT WERNER: So for my next question for you, I’m going to go back a little ways. Back to your Amethyst Rock Star album, and I’m going to play the end of your track Wine, and it’s one of my favorite poems of yours. And I’m going to shift focus a little bit because I’m a literature student. I’m working on my Master’s in English literature here at the University of Edinburgh where we broadcast Fresh Air, and one thing I’m fascinated about this song is the line, “We put language in zoos to observe caged thought and toss peanuts and pea-funk at intellect,” and I’ve always been curious as to what that means or what you were intending behind the meaning, because I’ve taken my own interpretation from it, but I’m curious what your take is.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Lao Tzu says, “The Tao that can be told can is not the eternal Tao.” And as someone who writes poetry it’s often been important to me to keep words themselves in perspective, to realize that although I may find myself capable of expressing an idea or a sentiment, that many of the greatest ideas or sentiments are very difficult, if not impossible to put into words. And that intellect itself—and it’s funny because poetry I would argue is not necessarily an intellectual art form it’s an intuitive art form, but because it uses words in the way that it does it’s usually admired by people who have some strong identification with the intellectual process. However I think that often it’s the intellect [that] can get in the way of understanding the poem or understanding love or the simplest most compassionate aspects of reality. It’s not your intellectual prowess that makes you say, “I don’t want to harm animals,” it’s your compassion. And so in many ways I believe that intellect is put up with not necessarily as high as a standard as many would place upon it. And so the poem says “we put language in zoos to observe caged thought.” It’s simply a way of saying that we must keep language and cleverness in perspective and realize that there’s something beyond that. There’s something intrinsically linked to our soul, and that linkage is beyond words, and that’s the goal of life, of art, of music and of poetry and of being itself.

DJ MATT WERNER: So you are about to listen to the end of Wine by Saul Williams off of his Amethyst Rock Star album.

[Wine plays]

DJ MATT WERNER: Saul Williams, to continue with this discussion—I don’t mean to get too academic with it—but I really enjoy studying literature, and some of what you’re saying reminds me of this text I’ve been reading this semester: it’s Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology, and it’s about this whole notion of deconstructing language. One thing that I think a lot of your poetry gets at is how words lack the ability to express the nature of true reality. In your track Release, you have some amazing lines like, “These words are not tools of communication, they are shards of metal dropped from eight-story windows.” And then you also talk about “There isn’t a mantra to fill my being in those moments,” and a lot of that it seems to connect back with even your early writing like the poem you wrote:

they say
that i am a poet
i wonder what they would say
if they saw me
from the inside
i bottle
emotions
and place them
into the sea
for others
to unbottle
on distant shores
i am unsure
as to whether
they ever reach
and for that matter
as to whether
i ever get
my point
across
or my love

And it seems like in the decade I’ve been following your work, there’s this sort of struggle between reconciling language with how reality presents itself.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Yes, I think you have voiced it perfectly. There has been this struggle, although it’s not something that I seem to ponder too much nowadays. I think that being able to clearly articulate a thought, a feeling, an idea is possible. I believe that it’s possible. But within that, I think that there’s also a need to raise one’s ability to confront a topic, an issue, whether gracefully or ungracefully, but I think in that attempt to articulate something, there has to be a strong enough desire to want to articulate it because some things—well they say some things are left better unsaid—but truly I think there’s some things that we may be afraid of saying because of their resonant power, and so there are things that I’ve dodged and things that I haven’t wanted to say or haven’t felt ready to embody them or to hear them aloud, or what have you. But yeah, it’s certainly been a journey and that journey has included that struggle with wrestling with the [Saul gives a long exhale], just the ability of words, as you put it, to express truly what’s being felt. [pause] But I think that dance itself is poetry, you know?

DJ MATT WERNER: And in addition to your playing with language and your infusing with many different sort of linguistic and poetic traditions, another thing I’ve noticed is your interpretation and playing with many different religious and spiritual traditions. Just this summer I had the opportunity to collaborate with a Persian scholar on translating Rumi’s Book of the Sun. And in it there’s a lot of pantheistic Sufi philosophy and collaborating with this Persian scholar, a lot of the ideas that we were talking about in Rumi’s work, I’d first encountered actually in you work, like when off that track Wine you say “All words and worlds are metaphors of me.” And I’m curious as to what different religious influences you’ve had, because I know your father’s a preacher.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well you know, that’s really been where my interest has really gravitated towards over the years. It’s in investigating all these different religions and what have you. As you put, I was raised Christian. My father was a Baptist minister. He pastored a Baptist church, and with time, and when I was a teenager I began questioning that religion. Not really the teachings of Jesus at all, but just the institution surrounding that and those teachings, and realized that institution itself seemed at odds with what I felt in my gut. And when I started exploring a lot of more esoteric Christianity and teachings surrounding that, and then I started studying its roots in Judaism and Egyptology and then of course being exposed also to a lot of Middle Eastern writers, and what have you.

Well one, like Rumi and Hafiz and so the Sufi writers—which is like an esoteric brand of Mohammadism, so to speak—really became influential. And then of course Hinduism and Buddhism, the Vedas, and all of those things. I’ve definitely traveled in terms of wanting to grasp and experience other people’s expression of connection to spirit. It’s all been of interest to me. I think all of these religions have really grasped at articulating something clearly for man to be able to identify with his spirit and express that and enhance that with time, and that’s been important to me, and interesting.

DJ MATT WERNER: In exploring these different esoteric religious and spiritual traditions, I found there seems to be some parallels between your poetry and that of William Butler Yeats like with his poem The Second Coming and also Walt Whitman as well, in the listing in some of your tracks like Release and Coded Language, those seem to very much have that Whitmanian quality to them.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well Whitman is definitely very influential, and I’ve definitely read some Yeats as well. And these older poets have definitely opened a door for me to, [Saul gives a long exhale] I guess, to step beyond. And they have like me I think there is this thing that’s being so deeply entrenched in this Christian society and seeing something deep within it and something well beyond it as well, and wanting to explore and using words to do that and realizing that the writing itself and the reading of the writing in my case often is a form of ritual. So that I look at much of my writing as a form of incantation. Or I’m aiming to essentially call on or release a certain amount of energy, of power through the recitation of this piece. And so quite simply I guess sometimes I go there in the writing in trying to crack open the vortex. I think Whitman for example is someone who’s kept that really in perspective and kept very grounded in his perspective, and I really admire him for that. Whereas Yeats seemed to be a lot more embedded in the same thing that I have to fight against sometimes, which is that Christian upbringing.

DJ MATT WERNER: The final track I’m going to play is Twice the First Time, which has the reference to the Sha-Clack-Clack poem that was famous in the movie Slam. And so we’ve covered a little bit about your linguistic and religious explorations, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the racial dimensions of your poetry, and also how that connects with Barack Obama’s election. Because I know you released recently a track right before the election on telling people to get out and vote, but it was done quite in a unique style.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Yeah, being born in this nation, I think that it’s been implicit that change is coming, and what have you, but at the same time there’s been a consistent need to express for many that we are so much more than how we are perceived. And you know that poem Sha-Clack-Clack is about that, it’s about realizing we’re so much more than the history that’s been taught us about ourselves, and I think it’s been necessary to crack that shell for people to begin to think outside of the box and imagine what sort of future or present is possible. And I think Barack Obama symbolizes that perfectly.

My latest album’s called Niggy Tardust, and I supply him as a hybrid, as somebody that embodies the best of many worlds. And in the same way, I think that’s what Barack Obama symbolizes, this sort of hybrid sensibility, and that people from many walks of life can see themselves reflected through him. And that is something that you know, not only in our art, but in our being and realizing that standing under the banner of race or nationality as if we are simply one thing, is a limiting approach to reality. And this poem is one of my early ways of beginning that quest of expression and shift in perspective. I wrote Sha-Clack-Clack in 1996, the song [Twice the First Time] came out in 1997, I believe, Slam came out in 1998, and here we are now.

DJ MATT WERNER: Saul, thank you so much for your time. You have been listening to DJ Matt Werner’s exclusive interview with Saul Williams it was recorded over the phone on November 21, 2008.

[For more podcasts and show transcripts from DJ Matt Werner, including his interview with Talib Kweli, please visit Fresh Air: The Alternative at http://freshair.org.uk and DJ Matt Werner’s website at http://mattswriting.com]

New website! http://mattswriting.com

2009-04-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

Check out my new website hosting the DJ Matt Werner Show at http://mattswriting.com.

I'm currently uploading podcasts from my past radio shows on Fresh Air: The Alternative for free download.

Video Contest Warriors

2009-03-26T08:24:00.001-07:00

My friends Will and Jake are raising money for their first feature film off of solely money they generate from winning video contests. They've already won a few, and you can follow their progress and vote on their videos at http://videocontestwarriors.blogspot.com/

Talib Kweli Interview with DJ Matt Werner

2009-03-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

Talib Kweli Interview
with DJ Matt Werner on Fresh Air: The Alternative

Phone interview recorded on March 3, 2009,
This show aired on http://freshair.org.uk March 10, 2009.

Click to download Part 1 and Part 2 of my interview with Talib Kweli
Click here for the full 60 minute interview and feature (It's a 142 MB mp3 file).

DJ MATT WERNER: This is DJ Matt Werner on Fresh Air: The Alternative. We’re coming at you from Edinburgh, Scotland, and we have Talib Kweli with us on a phone interview. And so Talib, you’ve been very active this last year, and I’ve read most of the interviews you’ve conducted this last year online: on everything from your song about Lauren Hill, J Dilla, MCEO, and other projects, so I don’t want to repeat questions that’ve already been asked in these other interviews. But my listeners here in Scotland have had two main questions for you. One is on…

TALIB KWELI: Black Star?

DJ MATT WERNER: Yeah, Black Star.

TALIB KWELI: [laughs]

DJ MATT WERNER: They’re wondering about a reunion album, or they’re wondering if any more collaborations are coming up between you and Mos Def.

TALIB KWELI: Well, Mos Def has the album coming out on Downtown Records. I don’t know when, but it should be out shortly. We have a great song on it called History. I don’t know when the next Black Star album will happen, but we’ve certainly stayed active, stayed prolific on each other’s records, since the Black Star album’s come out.

DJ MATT WERNER: And segueing off that, your fans here in Scotland were wondering, When is the second Reflection Eternal album coming out?

TALIB KWELI: That’ll be out this summer. There’s a single—well not a single—me and Hi-Tek did a song with Bootsie Collins just for fun that we put up, we blasted out on our Twitter pages, and we put up on my website http://yearoftheblacksmith.com for download.

Just to let the fans know that we will be coming soon. Right now I’m soliciting, I’m reading video treatments as we speak for the next Reflection Eternal single, and that’s a project that’s almost finished.

DJ MATT WERNER: And how about Liberation 2? You’ve been dropin’ some really dope mixtapes in the last couple of years, and fans were wondering about, will there be a Liberation 2 coming out?

TALIB KWELI: Liberation 2—I’ve been working on it with Madlib. Madlib is real elusive, so it’s hard to work with him sometimes. But I mean, you know, it doesn’t matter how hard it is work with Madlib, his tracks are that dope that it’s always worth it in the end.

DJ MATT WERNER: And now because I’m a literature Master’s student here at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, I’ve been very interested in your lyrics, ever since I first listened to your track Fortified Live back in ’97. And I’m curious as to what your writing process is and how you come up with your similes.

TALIB KWELI: Fortified Live, I mean, it’s changed since then. When I wrote that song, I had a book of rhymes, and I had a bunch of rhymes that I wanted set to beats. And it’s particularly in that song, you know, I try to stay relevant. A lot of rappers were talking about their South American drug connections and stuff like that, like a lot of street rap was on that when I first came out, and that’s why I make references to Assata Shakur and to Cuba, because I wanted to show that the revolutionary aspect could be a lot more “gangster” than the street aspect of it.

Now I just try to stay relevant to what people are thinking about, what people are talking about and try to write to the track. The production, the music to me is king and should be respected as such. And the lyrics, as much as people like yourself appreciate great lyricism—in entertainment and music that’s done onstage and in nightclubs where they got speakers and drinks are flowin’, it’s hard for people to concentrate on lyrics, so you have to figure out what you’re doin’ to bring them into what you’re sayin’, and that’s makin’ sure that it matches the music.

DJ MATT WERNER: I’m curious as to how you define yourself as an artist. On your track Beautiful Struggle, you say, “They call me the political rapper,” but you try to distance yourself from that title. But at the same time, you’ve come out and publicly supported Barack Obama, and you’ve dropped tracks like The Proud, and more recently, Take it Back, where you rap about Iraq, suicide bombers, and you also critique politicians. So I’m curious, How do you define yourself as an artist? Like as a political rapper, conscious rapper? Where do you see yourself fit in?

TALIB KWELI: Well, you know, I mean as an artist, you grow and change, and you shift and you bend. And as an artist who makes music, I would really like to define myself as just a musician. When I made the song The Proud, you know, I was specifically sayin’ in The Proud that I don’t really deal with the politics and that I don’t…You know, you wouldn’t really find me criticizing politicians in that era of my career. You know, I’ve talked about social situations. In the song Take it Back, I’m talking about human life way more than I’m talkin’ about politics.

Now as far as my support of President Obama, he’s the first politician that I’ve come out and support, and I felt like he deserved my support. And it was a big deal for me to come out and support him because I’ve been very careful throughout my career to not only not support politicians but to not talk about, not be critical of politics. When you listen to my record, you might hear me mention the name Giulliani, but Giulliani is a social/cultural figure in the city I’m from. I wasn’t talkin’ about his skills as a mayor. In the realm of politics, you could argue that Giulliani cleaned up New York City. But in the realm of reality, which is bigger than politics, that’s not necessarily a true argument. Because, yeah, he made New York City more ‘Disneyified.’ But the amount of people that he arrested, and he wrongly arrested in that time period, the amount of freedoms that were stripped away from people in that city in order for that to happen, for it to look like the city is better, is really a lot that needs to be thought about and considered as well.

DJ MATT WERNER: One track I’m playing on my half-hour feature of yours is my favorite track of yours, which is your tribute to Nina Simone’s Four Women. It’s the Expansion Outro off your first Reflection Eternal album. And I’m curious as to how you came to write it because it’s a bit different than many of your other tracks.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I mean Nina Simone is probably one of my, if not my favorite artist. And that song Four Women, is just a perfect piece of song writing. And my introduction to it was a live concert of Nina Simone performing at Berkeley. So the first few years I listened to that song, I didn’t realize that is was like a 3 or 4 minute simple song. Because the version that I heard, she was really explaining how she wrote the song, explaining where these characters came from. And I thought that’s just how the song went. So when I wrote my song, I really went into depth with the characters because I thought that that’s where Nina Simone went. As I grew older and became more knowledgeable about music, I found out that you know what, I was basing my version off of a long extended live version. But you know I think that it made my version something different. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to recreate that song without knowing the history of those characters, for a hip hop song, you know.

DJ MATT WERNER: And I’m curious as to how you balance your role as MC and CEO. You have some dynamic artists under you like Jean Grae and you got the crew Strong Arm Steady. And you’re also part of Idle Warship and I hear there’s this Party Robot album coming out. I’m curious as to how you balance this work life while being creative and also having to run a business and oversee other artists.

TALIB KWELI: Well, I mean it’s tough. I wouldn’t lie and say that it’s easy—it’s very tough. And I owe these artists a lot. These artists are artists that…Strong Arm Steady, Jean Grae—these artists are artists that have inspired me to do and become the artist that I am, and these are people I look towards for my inspiration. So if their music ain’t popin’ out there, and their situation ain’t great, then my situation ain’t great, that’s the way I look at it. But I always maintain that I come out of a musical community or a musical family.…So as tough as it is to try to oversee all of this and keep pushin’ all of this stuff, even when people, sometimes they don’t get it, it would be even harder to do it by myself.

DJ MATT WERNER: And part of you marketing is very creative. You got this great website called http://yearoftheblacksmith.com, where you have some videos of Blacksmith TV, where they follow you around with your different tours and different shows, and it’s really quite funny. I was recently watching Episode 4, where it has you on a bike and it’s raining, and you’re saying, “I was trying to be environmentally conscious, and now I’m just wet.” I thought it shows the lighter side, the behind-the-scenes of the hip hop game.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I mean, that’s the key about that show. Definitely.

DJ MATT WERNER: And I’m curious if it’s going to be made into anything on TV. I know you’ve been on MTV a bit, but when’s your next role on TV coming up?

TALIB KWELI: I don’t know. TV is a beast, you know? Part of the reason of doing Blacksmith TV is to develop content that I can control. So hopefully I do get picked up for some sort of situation. I just did a voice over for a web-based show called Blockheads, which is like an animated hip hop thing. And it’s me… Lauren London, and a bunch of people. That was really fun. But hopefully I can do more TV and more stuff like that, you know, I’m into that stuff.

DJ MATT WERNER: Yeah, and part of this cross-over marketing, you talk about in Internet Connection, your first track from your new collaboration with Hi-Tek. And in this, you touch upon how technology and Web 2.0 has sorta changed hip hop. And I was curious if you could elaborate more on how the hip hop game has changed since the late 1990s when you were starting up, and today, when you have YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I mean all those sites are really just digitally building a community. Whereas before, you had to get up and get on a train or get on your bike, or take the bus to the park and meet up with other people and actually go to a show. Now, you can stream whatever. Now you can iChat, or talk on Twitter or whatever. And it makes you more self-absorbed. Because you have to spend more time talking about yourself than you ever did in your whole career, but at the same time, it enables you to connect on a global level, if you figure out how to master it. If you figure out how to freak it and use it to your advantage. If you’re just on the social networks being social, then you’re not really using it to your full advantage.

DJ MATT WERNER: In Internet Connection, when you’re referencing avatars, which I assume was a reference to Second Life, it reminded me of Jean Baudrillard who has this notion of “hyperreality,” where people live their lives mediated by different elements of the media, without actually being there in person. And I thought it was fascinating because you’re known as one of the most provocative live emcees and performers, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.

TALIB KWELI: As soon as they made Second Life, I was one of the first performers on Second Life taking advantage of it. I haven’t really been on it since then, since the start-up of it. But it’s a scary concept, you know? All this stuff is scary. Twitter is scary to me. I’m on Twitter all the time, and it’s scary to me. But I realize if I’m not on it, it’s just another lane that somebody else’s taking advantage of that I’m not taking advantage of. But man, yeah—[Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality”]—
that’s something that’s completely and totally foreseeable for our future. They haven’t figured it out yet, but they’re tryin’ damn hard with these websites and these robots and things they’re making, they’re trying damn hard to get us there.

DJ MATT WERNER: I have another question that goes back to the notion of being the MCEO. I read on an internet forum about Blacksmith’s relationship with Warner Brothers. And I was curious as to how you’re reacting to the news [I read in online forums] that Warner Brothers isn’t going to be distributing the future Blacksmith titles. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that.

TALIB KWELI: Well, actually, that’s not complete true, and I had a problem with Warner [Brothers] over that because I felt that they should’ve did a better job at cleaning that up. But my album with Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek is furnished by Blacksmith Music, and it’s still coming out through Warner Brothers, and it’s on track and it’s on schedule, and we ready to put it out.

I also deal with Warner Brothers as a solo artist. Keep in mind, I only put out one album with them as a solo artist. That deal was a three album deal. And that was a successful album. The deal as far as Reflection Eternal and Blacksmith is not going anywhere. It is what it is. Now as far as Jean Grae, Jean Grae was upstreamed by Warner Brothers, but right now, what we’re we’re just tryin’ to do is figure out which situation through Warner, which arm of Warner, whether it’s the one that I’m on, or the Asylum situation ‘coz of Todd Moscowitz is now the head of Urban at Warner Brothers and if it’s coming out through there. We’re just tryin’ to figure out what makes sense for Jean Grae’s album.

Strong Arm Steady’s album will be coming out through ADA [the Alternative Distribution Alliance], which is another chapter of Warner, which we put out the Jean Grae Jenius album last year through. And also look out for our participation in the Blu situation. Blacksmith as of marketing, with the online stuff, you’re goin’ to be hearing more about Blu from LA, who just signed with Warner Brothers. And you’re gonna be hearin’ more about John Forte.

DJ MATT WERNER: And also I’ve seen that there’s been a number of mixtapes. There was a Coast 2 Coast Mixtape that was just recently released on your site. I was wondering if you could talk a little about this March Mixtape Madness that you’re hosting.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, that’s my man Fillet Harrison [Donald Harrison], he’s a DJ up in Portland. With him and his homeboys, they have this Coast 2 Coast Mixtape, where every month, they have a different artist host a mixtape, and this month, it just happens to be me.

DJ MATT WERNER: I was wondering, is there any question, or an area that I haven’t covered yet that you’d like to address or bring up?

TALIB KWELI: No, besides Idle Warship, that the Party Robot album at this point is still independent. I don’t know if it’s gonna remain independent or if we’re going to put it out through our label or whatnot, but Idle Warship is an extremely, extremely exciting experience for me at this point, doing these shows with this live band.

DJ MATT WERNER: And also, I was reading that you had participated in experimental theater at NYU. And I was wondering if this was accurate. Just ‘coz other artists I’ve interviewed on my show who include Saul Williams, and other people who’ve been on the Def Poetry Jam with you like George Watsky, Ise Lyfe, Dahlak Brathwaite, and all of them have somewhat of a theater background. And I’ve seen that with more of the “conscious rappers,” or people who have amazing stage performances, they have this theater background, and I was curious if this background, you think has influenced how you perform onstage.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I think without a doubt. The thing about theater, especially experimental theater is that you have to embody everything you’re doin’. Like you have to…You get a character, right? But you have to create everything about this character, like the backstory and the blocking, like the way the character is gonna speak and talk and everything like that. And it’s like, that’s what you do when you come up with a rap name, like you create a character. But your character is based on some sort of fantasy version of yourself. You know what I’m sayin’? So it’s like, it’s really the same skill-set. The only difference is you have to write rhymes that go along with the attitude of this character.

DJ MATT WERNER: The thing that I like is that you keep it real, where you just use your own name. And so it’s not like you have this caricature of yourself. But you do come across a lot more fresh and a lot more real than the kind of emcess who’re frontin’ and have this whole image of them set up.

TALIB KWELI: I’m glad I’m havin’ that effect because even though I do use my real name, who you see onstage is definitely a caricature of who I am in real life. And you know, who I am in real life is somethin’ that I strive to protect at times. I’m a lot funnier and I’m a lot angrier in real life. You know I’m sayin’? I’m a lot more balanced as an artist. You try to present a perfect picture of yourself, even in exposing your history. Some artists…I don’t have no real bad, no real traumatic thing in my past to expose. But artists who expose that sometimes, they expose it sometimes with the intention that you’ll feel it.

And with me, the stuff that I reveal, whether it be my social views, or how I feel about somethin’, it’s with the intention that people will be like “Yeah, I feel you.” That is something that drives you on the ego side as an artist. And that’s somethin’ that’s real, but as an artist, as your stage persona, you try to present the best version, I think.

DJ MATT WERNER: And going with this stage persona and presenting your image, one trend that’s been very popular in the last couple of years is the use of Auto-Tune, with people doctoring their vocals. And I was curious—have you pursued Auto-Tune, are you thinkin’ about doin’ that, or are you just gonna keep with your fresh voice?

TALIB KWELI: Auto-Tune: you know makin’ music is not a paint-by-numbers thing, so it’s not a thing where someone could be like “Okay, I’m gonna test Auto-Tune this year, or I’ma try....” If it works for the song, it works for the song. And there are certain songs where it certainly works for. The problem is not Auto-Tune. The problem is people’s overuse of it. Same thing with conscious rap back in the day. Back in the days when PE [Public Enemy] was on top, and you had…[indecipherable]… KRS One, you had a lot of people doin’ conscious rap, positive rap. Not all of it was good, though, and a lot of it felt fake. And so it made the way for groups like NWA. And so they blew up, and then you had a lot of copycat gangstas, and so then that felt forced and fake. And that’s the just the way things go naturally, I think.

DJ MATT WERNER: Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy touring, CEO, emceeing schedule…

TALIB KWELI: [laughs]

DJ MATT WERNER: …to talk with us here on Fresh Air: The Alternative.

TALIB KWELI: Thank you.

DJ MATT WERNER: Thank you very much for taking time out.

TALIB KWELI: No problem.

The Help DJ Matt Werner Buy Auto-Tune Fund

2009-03-16T16:11:00.001-07:00

At $399, Auto-Tune is an expensive software program, but essential for higher-level music production and editing.

I currently use my two turntables and mixer, which I purchased years ago from a friend for $100. On my computer, I mainly use free audio editing software like Audacity and Garage Band. While a great deal for being free, I'm ready to take sound design to the next level, ready to purchase the pitch-perfecting software which has made T-Pain's career, and I need your help to do it.

Please follow the Pay Pal link below to donate to The Help DJ Matt Werner Buy Auto-Tune Fund. (Please note that The Help DJ Matt Werner Buy Auto-Tune Fund is not a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, donations are not tax-deductible, and the donations will be used by DJ Matt Werner to buy Auto-Tune).

Thank you!
Matt

Michael Cera spotted in Scotland!

2009-03-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

Michael Cera was seen dancing in Edinburgh, Scotland in this YouTube Rap video by Chris Hobbs published today:

Obama Weekly Address Remix

2009-03-07T04:13:00.001-08:00

A Remix to Obama's February 14, 2009 weekly address with an instrumental by TI and Justin Timberlake.

Obama's Inaugural Address Remix!

2009-03-07T04:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a mix I made of hip hop music mixed to Obama's first Inaugural Address.

Part I:

Part II:

Joe Sabia does it again

2009-02-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

Joe Sabia, the viral-video-making genius, has once again revolutionized the way YouTube videos are done with his interactive Oscar photohunt. You may have heard about him and his videos, first with his 7 Minute Sopranos, which the New York Times covered, and with his video on how to make viral videos.

Check out his latest interactive feature:

New MLK Day Mix!

2009-01-19T16:52:00.000-08:00

I made this mashup honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on MLK Day 2009. It features Dr. King mixed with "Live Your Life" by TI and Rihanna.

Graduates

2009-01-16T04:41:00.000-08:00

Some friends of mine in LA made a funny pilot for a what will become hopefully a new TV show. It's about some graduate students who "can't quite shake their undergrad pasts." Sounds like some of my housemates. Check it out at: http://www.graduatespilot.com/

Saul Williams Interview on Fresh Air!

2009-01-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

I had the great honor to interview the ground-breaking poet and musician Saul Williams by phone on Fresh Air: The Alternative. This podcast was originally broadcast on December 9, 2008 on Fresh Air, the University of Edinburgh, Scotland student radio.

Topics and ideas discussed in the interview include Saul Williams' third album, the Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, collaborating with Trent Reznor, esoteric religions, William Butler Yeats, poetry as an intuitive artform, what is beyond words, Walt Whitman, how we are so much more than how we are perceived, and Barack Obama.

This hour-long feature on Saul Williams also features much of his poetry and music, including: Sha Clack Clack, Black Stacey, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Wine, Twice the First Time, Release, Amethyst Rocks, 1987, and Children of the Night.

My past interviews can be found at http://www.youtube.com/djmattwerner

Obama/Kanye West Mashup!

2009-01-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Here's the popular Obama mashup edited by the viral video-making guru, Joe Sabia.

I came up with the concept of Obama rapping the words to "Stronger," similar to how this video has George W. Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and also Barack Roll however, I knew my video editing skills were far too elementary to pull off such an editing feat, so I ran the idea by Joe Sabia, the creator of viral videos like the Seven Minute Sopranos and How to Make Viral Videos and the Obama Girl video with Senator Mike Gravel.

Joe Sabia's editing on this one is quite spectacular. It features Barack Obama rapping the words to "Stronger," the Kanye West remix to Daft Punk:

Leaving Israel: A Tale of 7 Checkpoints

2009-01-04T16:56:00.001-08:00

My last photo from inside Bethlehem. A Dutch documentary film crew was in front of me.

(Tel Aviv, Israel) 26 December 2008: Eight days had passed since the ending of the six-month Hamas/Israel truce agreement on December 19, 2008. Each day I traveled in Israel, more and more mortars were launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. I had seen many Israeli soldiers near the Western Wall in the Old City, Jerusalem during the start of Hanukkah. Legions of their army green bags were packed in giant piles with M16-yeilding, smoking soldiers sitting on top of the piles, waiting for buses outside Zion Gate.

I sensed that something was going to happen in the near future between Israel and Gaza based on what I saw and from the Israelis and Palestinians I talked to.

Little did I know that the current Israel-Gaza war would start exactly 19 hours after my plane left Israel.

(Edinburgh, Scotland) 7 January 2009: Now, after 2 weeks of being very ill from a stomach virus I got while traveling, I am finally feeling better again after seeking medical attention in the United Kingdom. I feel strong, young and confident again.

But I don't know if I'm back to 100% quite yet. Perhaps it was unwise to stay in the cheapest hostel in Jerusalem. Perhaps it was unwise to also eat whatever I was given, including street food, drink tap water, and not heed the traveler's credo of "boil it, cook it, peel it or leave it!" I've always had a strong stomach, and I managed to get by okay eating street food and drinking tap water in South America, so I thought it would be the same in Israel. Boy, was I wrong.

My 9-day journey throughout the land of Israel and West Bank felt like a year, not only because of the events I witnessed, people I met, places I visited in such the short time span, but it was also a very maturing and sobering experience witnessing first-hand the extremes of life in the Holy Land, and hearing people's stories, like those of Israeli soldiers who are now deployed in Gaza, the stories of the Palestinian family I lived with for three days, and the Palestinian woman who had her home destroyed in November, 2008. All of this, coupled with having a crippling stomach virus for the last couple weeks has kept me bedridden, and given me much time for reflection.

It's going to take me more than a couple weeks to process all of the experiences I've had and make some sense out of them, so I'll just share some pictures from my final day in Israel and the 7 checkpoints I had to go through to leave Israel. I went through a total of 10 checkpoints/security checks to get from Bethlehem to Edinburgh, Scotland on December 26, 2008.

Here is a first account of my exit from Israel.

Checkpoint 1: Leaving the Palestinian-controlled section of Bethlehem.

Though intimidating-looking with all of the concrete and fences and blast-proof windows, this was the easiest checkpoint, I just walked right through. Little did this foreshadow the intense security I would face later that day.

Once I passed through this steel-fenced area that looks like something you'd run cattle through, the first security gate consisted of a young, 18-year-old-looking girl who was a Palestinian Authority soldier, sitting behind bullet-proof glass. She waved me and the other tourists right through the gate.

Christian tourists and Bethlehem residents waiting in the Israeli security checkpoint line to get back into Israel.

Checkpoint 2: Re-entering Israel from Bethlehem.

I was now on the other side of the Israeli security barrier around Bethlehem, but there was a long line with nearly 50 tourists in front of me waiting to get through. It was at a standstill. They must have been checking every item on every person and searching bags and asking questions. After about 15 minutes of standing unmoved in this line, many tour guides and bus drivers were upset and talking, gesticulating at the Israeli guards. After a while, a new line opened up, and we all rushed to go through that—Palestinians and foreigners, and the Israeli guard behind the blast-proof window waved us all through. No metal detectors, no questions, nothing, just a free pass through.

I was on a tight deadline to make my Lufthansa flight from Tel Aviv back to Edinburgh via Frankfurt, and waiting at this checkpoint cost me valuable time.

Checkpoint 3: Road checkpoint to enter Tel Aviv airport area.

The taxi I hailed whizzed through Jerusalem. I in my semi-incoherent, weakened state, sat in the rear, sipping my 1.5 liter bottle of Sprite, took in the scenery, passing by the golden Dome of the Rock, and then swinging through the highways through the city, and rising up over the hills on the other side.

Bethlehem is only 6 miles south of Jerusalem. Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv is only 31 miles from Jerusalem. I would find out later that the northeast-most point of Gaza is only 45 miles from Bethlehem and 48 miles from Jerusalem. So I was close, but in a land where restrictions on movement are notorious, I wanted to leave as early as I could because this was the only affordable flight that would take me back to the UK that day. Not being able to retain food or fluids for the last 5 days, severely dehydrated despite constantly drinking Sprite, I wanted to see a doctor in the UK that evening.

Soaring up through the mountains west of Jerusalem, I enjoyed the green hills. Coming from the desert, they seemed almost too green and artificial. The earth was sepia toned and chalky from the fragments of limestone rock. Soon we descended and reached the level land again, and after driving for a while, we were approaching the Tel Aviv Airport.

The road checkpoint, placed several miles from the airport itself, looked similar to the ones you have entering California from Nevada that check to make sure you aren’t bringing any produce in from out of state.

The Israeli guard came over to my rolled-down window. He said “hello” as he looked at me and my backpack. I handed him my U.S. Passport, which he looked at for about 20 seconds, and then handed it back to me, without saying anything more. He gave some hand signal, and the taxi driver drove me to the airport road. Several minutes later, I reached the actual airport.

Checkpoint 4: On the sidewalk in front of Ben Gurion Airport.

To get into the airport terminal, you have to first put your bag on a table , open it up and let it be searched by a guard. Then he asks you some simple questions about where you came from, where you're going, and then you pass through a walk-through metal detector. After this, I was finally in the Tel Aviv-Yafo Airport.

A statue of Ben Gurion greets you as you enter the Tel Aviv Airport

Checkpoint 5: Questioning before reaching ticket counter, and first bag scanner.

Lufthansa and another German airline are the only airlines who have their ticketing desks on the Ground floor of Ben Gurion, three floors below where the rest of the airline departure desks are located.

The Arrivals Hall at Ben Gurion is nicely designed, keeping with classic Roman column architecture. I noticed many balloons on the ceiling.

Approaching the roped, maze-like pathway that leads to the ticket counter, I was approached by a group of four attractive females dressed like law clerks, wearing name badges. One with dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail signaled to her colleagues that she would take care of me. She asked me a litany of questions, rapid-fire in English with a mild Hebrew accent.

The first thing she said was that she had to ask questions to make sure that I did not have a bomb in my bag or someone else placed one in their and was planning to blow up the plane. She said that point blank.

I said, of course I do not have a bomb in my bag, and I can open it right now to show you that in it is just a bunch of dirty clothes and a sleeping bag.

She told me to keep it closed and that she had more questions for me.

She asked me about the nature of my visit to Israel, where I stayed, where I came from just now, who took me to the airport, what airline I'm taking back, where I'm going to, and where's my ticket. I answered all of her questions, and told her that I'm taking Lufthansa, that’s why I’m standing in the Lufthansa line, and I don't have my ticket yet, and that's why I'm in line to get it. Many questions were circuitous and unnecessary. The questions continued for a while longer, asking me things like where I purchased my bottle of Sprite because it had Arabic writing on it, and several more questions about what I'm studying at the University of Edinburgh, how I'm getting to Scotland via Frankfurt, etc. It was like a cross examination--all before I was able to get to the ticket counter.

She then took my passport, and walked away to another station, and came back after a few minutes, placing a small sticker in Hebrew on the back of my passport, and handing me a sticker to place on my worn, blue North Face school backpack. I then walked through the empty line, and gave my bag to the next guard who passed it through an enormous blast-proof scanner the size of a large van. The scanner filled a good portion of the hall. My bag came out fine, and I proceeded to the ticket counter and talked with the Lufthansa ladies dressed in blue wearing funny yellow German scarves.

Checkpoint 6: Regular airport security check to enter the terminal.

After getting my ticket, I then headed upstairs for the ordinary airport security point that everyone has to go through with a ticket. This one was unremarkable, and consisted of the universal airport security conveyor belt where you pass all your belongings through: remove shoes, belt, empty pockets, etc. and then walk through the doorway-like metal detector.

On the other side, they had me sit in a chair and came over with wands with little white cloth at the end, which reminded me of the material in a swiffer mop. They rubbed these wands on my shoes, on my passport, and inside and outside my backpack. They then took these sample cloths, which resembled Bounty fabric softener sheets you put in the dryer, over to this giant analyzing device, which reminded me of a 1960s-era IBM computer, and after less than a minute, the results came up negative, and I was free to pass onto the next security checkpoint.

Checkpoint 7: Passport Control, and questions of my German Heritage

This final checkpoint in Israel was also the most difficult. After going through 6 checkpoints, just to leave Israel—I was a bit exhausted and nearly the sickest I’ve been in my life with the stomach virus.

I did not think it would be much of a problem leaving Israel because entering was quite easy for me. Passport control upon landing only took a few minutes. On the flight I took from Manchester, England, to Tel Aviv nine days earlier, I was perhaps the only non-Jewish person on the flight, and the passport control officer then, quickly scanned my passport, stamped it, and handed it back.

However, exiting Israel is another story.

I stepped up to the glass at the Passport Control station, and handed my passport over. The woman looked Aryan, with blond hair and blue eyes and bronze-rimmed, sleek Armani glasses. After a couple minutes, she looked up and asked me in a thick Hebrew accent, “What is your father’s father’s name?” I did not understand what she initially said because of her accent, and kindly asked her to repeat. She repeated, and then I understood her, and immediately thought that it’s probably because I have a German last name.

I told her my father and his father are both named Milton Werner.

She then typed some things into her computer, perhaps doing a search against a Nazi archive. I had lived with a Jewish person who assisted a Nazi-hunting journalist in Argentina, so I knew a bit about Simon Wiesenthal and Nazi hunting, but I thought it was a bit ridiculous with me, a 24-year-old American kid whose great-great grandparents moved from Germany to the United States. I explained to the passport control officer that the Werner side of my family came from Germany to the U.S. in the late 1800s. My grandfather Milton Werner retired a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, and he fought for the United States against the Axis powers as a B-24 bomber pilot. He passed away in 2007.

After a couple minutes of running my passport through her computer, another female passport control officer came over from a nearby office, took my passport from the Aryan-looking woman and asked me to sit down on the bench in the rear of the passport control station. After a few minutes, a male African-Israeli security guard came out and asked me, “It’s Milton Werner, correct? The name of your grandfather?” Yes, Milton Werner, like my middle name, I responded.

Not worried or afraid, I was just insulted that they would not trust my word, and think my grandfather a Nazi. But I thought it not the right place to argue or bring up how my grandfather went to China to become a commissioned officer in the United States Army as a 2nd lieutenant and served with the Flying Tigers under General Claire Chennault as a bomber pilot. My grandfather Milton Werner flew 109 missions as a B-24 bomber pilot against the Japanese, earning three Distinguished Flying Crosses. His achievements are chronicled in the book China Up and Down by John T. Foster, the history of his 308th Bomber group.

After about 20 more minutes, the head passport control officer came out, handed me my passport, and told me I was free to go to my gate.

View from inside the airport terminal at Tel Aviv

Finally free, I only had 3 more security checks: 2 in my layover in Frankfurt, Germany: one getting off the plane in Frankfurt, one to get on the plane to Scotland, and passport control to get back into the United Kingdom. Those all went smoothly, and I was able to see a doctor in Scotland that night, which put me on the 2-week process of recovery. I am now back to 100%.

Checkpoint #9 in Frankfurt, Germany on December 26, 2008, to catch my Lufthansa flight back to Edinburgh, Scotland.

RFK/Kanye West Remix!

2009-01-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

For those of you who wondered what Robert F. Kennedy would sound like mixed with Kanye West, you're in for a treat. I just posted this mashup of RFK's historic "Day of Affirmation" speech at the University of Cape Town, South Africa on June 6th, 1966.

Excerpts of Kennedy's speech are mixed with "Amazing" by Kanye West, feat. Young Jeezy.

The full text of RFK's speech in Apartheid South Africa can be found at http://www.rfksa.org/

Jahvid Best for Heisman YouTube video

2009-01-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

I recently posted a new video on YouTube about Jahvid Best's amazing performance, running 311 yards against Washington. He also rushed 186 yards for 2 touchdowns against Miami in the Emerald Bowl. If he keeps this up in 2009, he's a strong contender for the 2009 Heisman Trophy. Check out my video, where I mixed in some Rick Ross:

Christmas in a Palestinian ER

2008-12-28T06:27:00.000-08:00

I end my Middle East trip early. What I have kept from my blog is that I've suffered from severe diarrhea for the last week. I got some type of stomach virus or parasite while traveling, which has prevented me from digesting food or retaining fluid. My very kind host family in Bethlehem, seeing me nearly incoherent and unable to eat, recommended I go to the local clinic.

On Christmas Day, I went to the ER in Bethlehem, which is part of the Occupied Territories in the West Bank. The people there were very hospitable. I gave them my American passport, and they charged me only 15 shekels to be seen by a doctor (less than $5!). Unlike your average U.S. ER, there were no lines, and they saw me right away. The place looked like any Western hospital, only a lot poorer. My initial impression, in my semi-coherent state, was that it looked kind of like the thrift store of hospitals, in that they didn't change the paper that was ontop of the hospital beds between patients, and most the chairs in the hospital were plastic ones you'd take to the beach. They did not have most of the normal things you'd see in a hospital mounted to the walls: the ear thing, gas, etc.

When the doctor came to see me, he didn't wear a white coat, but a brown jacket, like he'd just stepped off his motorcycle to see me. The first question he asked me, pointing for me to lie down on the bed was whether I was for George Bush or Barack Obama.

I told the doctor that definitely I was for Obama.

"Good," he said.

I don't know what he would have done, had I said Bush. I was just glad he spoke English, because I had heard everyone speaking in Arabic to each other walking in.

He then had me remove the two jackets and Bedouin scarf I was wearing because I was unusually cold. He lifted my shirt and started pressing down on the organs in my abdomen, and all on my left side hurt. My stomach was really painful. He asked where it hurt the most, and I told him on the entire stomach and intestines. And I told him that it hurt to eat anything, even trying to eat bread was quite painful. The only thing I could drink was tea or Sprite. But even tea upset my stomach, and led me straight to the bathroom.

He asked me some other questions in English, which I forget, but he never asked about allergies or if I was taking other medicines, and sat down and wrote out some prescriptions. He escorted me outside the room, to a bed with an IV hanging beside it. I said I didn't want any needles put in me, and couldn't I just drink the fluids? I had to go to the bathroom again immediately, so I did. And I was going to argue out of the IV, because I didn't know if they sterilized the needles, or just used the old ones, like the other things I saw in the office, but I was so incoherent, I couldn't formulate a thought.

I felt like sleeping, even though it was high noon. After the bathroom, I walked slowly back over to the hospital bed for me, and laid down. I was happy to see that the female nurse had a new needle in a sterile package for me. Because I have my Emergency Medical Technician certificate, I watched to make sure she did everything according to protocol. She tied a latex glove around my right arm, wiped down the inside of my elbow with alcohol, and inserted the big needle in me. A little blood came out, and the nurse took out one needle, and quickly hooked up the IV. My head and stomach hurt so much, that I did not really even feel the needle or IV. I had so much stomach pain, that watching her do that stuff was like watching it being done on TV, and not actually to my body. I was happy that she did everything how you're supposed to with sterile equipment, and that I was not going to complicate whatever infection or virus I already have with another one.

I sort of went in and out lying there. I remember thinking, this could be it--I could die in a Palestinian ER on Christmas.

I felt it was unrealistic, but I was not thinking logically. I just felt an odd pain from deep within me that I had never felt before. I do not know what death feels like, but I figured that that's what it could feel like, and it could come sooner than you think, when you least expect it. I then realized that I was probably just deathly dehydrated, and with some more fluid and electrolytes, I would think a little more clearly. I snapped some pictures, which you have here on the blog.

I made the decision lying there, on the borderline of consciousness, if I didn't improve radically in the next day, I'd leave for the UK or US or somewhere that has food I'm used to, clean water, and medical facilities I could trust with utmost confidence to fix me. I felt like I had no more power over the organs beneath my lungs, and I decided to medivac myself out of the Middle East, because I did not want to be wandering around the area in a semi-coherent state.

I knew from earlier in the week that a war was likely going to break out soon with Gaza (which it did). I had seen thousands of Israeli soldiers at the Western Wall with bags packed earlier in the week, either going home for Hanukkah or leaving for some type of mission. Based on their more subdued expressions and body language, waiting outside of the Old City of Jerusalem's Zion Gate, they seemed like they were being redeployed, and not going home for holiday.

I felt a little better after the IV, and when I was released from the hospital, I drank as much Sprite as I humanly could, which was about 3 liters, or little more than a half gallon of soda. I was feeling better, and took a taxi up to the Church of the Nativity so I could see the spot where Jesus was born on Christmas, and to Herodion, where I snapped some pictures for my earlier blogs. But I felt even worse than I did on the 25th when I woke up on the 26th in Bethlehem.

Out of medical necessity, I made the decision to leave Bethlehem, though I loved visiting there for three days. In leaving, I also ended my grand tour of the Middle East, where I was also hoping to visit Egypt and Jordan. I will have to visit those places another time.

I plotted my trip back to the United Kingdom, and little did I know that I would have to pass through 9 security checkpoints (7 in Israel alone!) to make it back to Scotland. More on that later.

I'm now back in Scotland and taking 6 medications after going to the ER in the UK last night. I'm having tests run to find out what the parasite or virus I have that's hurting my stomach. I'm feeling better now than I did yesterday, and hopefully over the next few days, I'll keep improving, and (fingers crossed) I'll be better in time for New Years.

Christmas in Bethlehem

2008-12-25T06:36:00.000-08:00

The tower of the Church of the Nativity, one of the oldest Christian churches in the world.

Manger Square in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, 2008:

The Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve was also the most heavily-guarded church in the world:

Here are about 50 of the approximately 500 automatic-riffle bearing Palestinian Authority policemen in Bethlehem for Christmas.

To enter the church that marks the spot where Jesus was born, you have to duck through a very low doorway, that's about 3 1/2 feet tall:

Once you pass through that, you're in a small room with a metal detector that you walk through, and then you pass through this old wooden doorway into the church itself.

Inside the church:

Constantine's floor: the original floor of the Church of the Nativity built in 333 under the Emperor Constantine I.

Here is the entrance to the underground cave which is the traditional place of Jesus' birth.

This 14-pointed star marks the spot where many believe Christ was born in the manger. This spot is below the altar of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Here is the artwork above the star:

And there's wonderful, ancient artwork throughout the church:

Here's a view of the televised Midnight Mass in St. Mary Magdalene's Church as seen from the Church of the Nativity, which is attached to this church.

View of the entrance to St. Mary Magdalene's Church on Christmas, 2008.

On Christmas Day, I also went to the Shepherd's Field, which is where Catholics believe, according to Luke's Gospel, that a multitude of Angels appeared to the shepherds telling them of Jesus' birth.
Because it was raining on Christmas in Bethlehem, there was a rainbow in the sky above the entrance to Shepherd's Field:

The Catholic church at Shepherd's Field:

Paintings on the inside of the church at Shepherd's Field:

I thought it interesting how the Franciscans chose to represent Jesus as Caucasian-looking.

On Christmas Day, I also went to Herodion, just a little ways outside Bethlehem, an Israeli-controlled landmark and National Park in Israel.

It looked like a volcano from afar. But when I reached the top, I found that it was King Herod's 2,000-year-old fortified summer palace.

The top of the mountain was reshaped around King Herod's ancient fortress, palace, and burial ground.

There's also an intricate network of cisterns and passageways underneath Upper Herodion, carved into the mountain, where King Herod is buried. During the Great Jewish Revolt from 66 to 73 CE, Jewish Zealots took control of the mountain, and waged campaigns from it. I walked through some of the passageways, and it's quite amazing how they carved these deep pathways into the stone mountain using only handtools.

One of the underground cisterns below Herodion.

View from the top of Herodion of Israeli settlement/West Bank olive tree groves with a rainbow in the background.