BitchBuzz: You Can't Erase Your Past on the Internet

What is it with NY politicians and sex scandals? "Excelsior" must have another meaning I have not considered. So, in a timely manner, I combine my teaching with the news:

You Can't Erase Your Past from the Internet

By K.A. Laity

Much has been made of the internet in recent weeks as the golden-haired saviour of troubled nations, who use the magical power of Twitter and Facebook to foment revolution and declare freedom from the hierarchical powers of corrupt fascists dictators.

True enough: while it's overstating the case to call Tunisia and Egypt social media revolutions, there's no doubt that having these handy tools of communication helped keep people informed. Before we all start patting ourselves on the back, let's think about a couple of things: one, that we're all at risk of losing the net we take for granted. Once lawmakers heard it was possible to "turn off" the internet, every little black-hearted gnome was lining up to find a way to do so.

More importantly, we need to remember that most of us will only see revolution from the safety of our armchairs—or more likely, I suppose, our desk chairs (if we see it at all). So we have a lot of time to waste and a raft of temptations. Like children left on their own with a box of matches, we're far more likely to get into trouble than to build a scale model of the Guggenheim. Much of the internet allows a kind of passive consumption that releases the inner Homer Simpson in us all. I always remember the "Soul Mate" episode where Marge tracks down her wandering husband by heading in the direction that Springfield slopes down and looking for something shiny...

Read the rest here: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/you-cant-erase-your-past-from-the-internet.html#ixzz1DZunneK5

I am behind: this, I realise, is not news. I have an incredible amount of work to accomplish before I head off for Rome. I must continue to believe that it is possible. I do this by not looking at the entire stack of things, but only at what's just ahead of me. It's the only way. And as those on Facebook have seen, practicing saying "no" -- for a while I had been doing well on that front, but I've slipped a little since the first of the year and now I am shaking a finger at myself (is that physically possible) and affirming I will do better.

Philadelphia and NYC

I am off to Philadelphia today to make a flying visit to the always stressful conference for the Modern Language Association. Fortunately, this is probably the last time I'll have to go to the conference (at least for the foreseeable future) and I am neither interviewing candidates nor interviewing for jobs, so my personal stress level should be reasonably low (assuming all goes well with my travel plans -- one can never tell). I plan to see friends for dinner, then chair a panel and a brief meeting on Tuesday before I head back to NYC and then dinner with Robert. Wonder if I can squeeze in a visit to the Mutter?

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend; I actually got a good bit of writing done, which always cheers me. Nothing completed, but a couple of things well along the way. I also watched a number of movies on DVD as well as The Road which I saw with my pal Peg on Tuesday, but haven't had time to write up. I always have too much to do and too little time in which to do it.

Don't forget: there's a new episode up at The Mangrove Legacy, in which Alice chats with a very pleasant ghost. You may notice, too, that there is a new look to the serial which should make it much easier to read (or so the initial feedback suggests).

How many of you have time off this week? What do you plan to do with your leisure?

BitchBuzz: Jane Austen Writes

My BB column this week revisits the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan which I enjoyed so much last week (and yes, the William Blake exhibit is still on for a few more weeks). It's such a delight to see Jane's own handwriting and little pieces of her life gathered together for this exhibit, which offers a good sense of the Regency period in which she lived:

Through March of next year, the Morgan Library & Museum in NYC features an excellent exhibit, "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy" which contains her handwritten script of Lady Susan as well as many letters, mostly written to her beloved sister Cassandra, and other personal effects.

While it seems impossible that we don't know everything there is to know about Jane (which isn't as much as most fans would like), it's a revelation to see so much written in her own hand.

Sure, there's the fannish squee of being so close to something Jane herself touched (then again, I'm a medievalist who shed a tear upon seeing for the first time the one and only Beowulf manuscript), but it's also an intimate window on the world in which she lived: one where paper was so precious that she used up every bit of surface area in her letters by writing across her own lines with further perpendicular lines (known as "cross-hatching")...

As usual, you can read the rest at BB HQ. Please help spread the news be retweeting, sharing and linking here!

Bill, Lenny & Bob

I headed down Thursday to Bard for a talk about Blake's quiet years that promised to fill in the missing details. I had been surprised to hear about an event at Bard before the actual day of the event, a rarity. However, when I got there and found the room, I also found a note saying the lecture was delayed. I decided not to wait around and went to Robert's, where he was making a tasty dinner -- much better. If the lecture's any good, it'll be published, right?

The next morning we headed down to the Cloisters to get a little medieval. If you haven't been there, the museum located in the lovely Fort Tryon Park offers a nice little taste of the Middle Ages in Manhattan with artifacts, bits of chapels, tombs and other treasures. After having a good wander around the grounds, we headed over to the New Leaf Café, which Robert informed me was run by Bette Midler, but we didn't see her in the kitchen, but we were able to enjoy a really good lunch while supporting the New York Restoration Project.

We took the A train downtown in order to get to the Morgan. As we passed through the 42nd Street station, Robert helpfully pointed out the tubes that were part of the internet, which as we all know is a system of tubes. Quite knowledgeable my brother. Why the Morgan? Well, they're having a Blake exhibit which more than made up for the missed lecture. It had so much more than I expected, not just pages from his books, but letters, manuscripts and watercolors. Wonderful!

Of course, the main event was seeing Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden. The sold out show featured most of his hits which pleased the crowd (full of an awful lot of balding heads we could see from our vantage point up near the top), but the energy and exuberance of Cohen and his band really impressed me. Although 75, he was dancing and skipping on and off stage during the 8pm show which lasted until 11.30. He seemed truly joyful, telling the audience, "I don’t know when we’ll be passing through here again, so I want to tell you that it is our intention to give you everything we’ve got tonight” -- and they did. Fantastic band all around, including his frequent collaborator, Sharon Robinson and an amazing Spanish guitarist. Everyone got a turn in the spotlight, but the crowd was there to see Cohen and he gave them everything, turning songs like "I'm Your Man" from intimate love songs to an offering to the thousands assembled. You can find videos for many of the songs like "So Long, Marianne", "Tower of Song", my fave "Famous Blue Raincoat" and the perennial fave, "Hallelujah" but I am so glad I was actually there. Some nights are just magical -- and this was one.

Of course getting back was less than magical -- not only was there a rail replacement bus for the A train uptown, but it was pouring and we had to drive back to Hudson. But we kept each other awake, listening to Peter Cook until we finally made it back to Robert's about 3.30am. Totally worth it.

A Taste of My Weekend

It's my long long day, so I'm not sure I'll get around to writing up all my adventures of the weekend, but here's a little taste of what I did and saw. An absolutely amazing concert!

Python Reunites!

The surviving Pythons will be reuniting in NYC on October 15th for the premiere of a new six-part doco series that will be airing on the IFC channel October 18th-23rd. In addition to the documentary and timed to 40th Anniversary of the creation of Monty Python, The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will award The Pythons with a Special Award honoring their outstanding contribution to film and television.

“This is the documentary I always hoped would be made - something so complete and so faithful to the truth that I don't need to watch it,” said Terry Jones.

The complete Python troupe – John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and even the late Graham Chapman – will attend this official Python reunion event, which will include a screening of the theatrical version of the Original IFC documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut). Following the screening, all five surviving members of the Monty Python team will sit down for a Q&A discussion and will be presented with a Special Award from BAFTA to honor their outstanding contribution to film and television.

Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Lawyer’s Cut) will be told in six parts, airing one-hour each night during IFC’s “Python-a-thon” beginning October 18, 2009 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. IFC will also air Python feature films including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

This six-part series features interviews with all the surviving Python members, along with archive representation for the late Graham Chapman. The Pythons tell their life story and reveal deeper truths alongside the more tried and tested Python history lessons. The documentary also features comedians and contemporaries including: Eddie Izzard, Olivia Harrison, Steven Merchant, Dan Aykroyd, Tim Roth, Lorne Michaels and Seth Green, among many others.

A select number of tickets will be available to fans online at www.IFC.com in mid-September.

[h/t to Todd! yes of COURSE I'm trying to get a pass to this]

NYC and Beckett

I headed down to the city on Saturday and the first stop was to have brunch with pal Dana from the Horror list. Dana joined the list when he was thirteen, so he made me feel ancient. Nonetheless we had a good time laughing and gossiping over our meal at Iguana. After our meal, I sauntered down to Studio 54 to see Beckett's Waiting for Godot. They still have the leopard skin carpet that Bianca and Andy waltzed down while on their way to groove the night away with their plastic bags.

It was a interesting production. The difficult things with stars is that it's hard to see them as anything but themselves. As good as Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane are, you can't really forget that they're who they are and not really Didi and Gogo, although I completely believed their adventures. The clowning aspects in particular came off well -- the hat sequence and the (apparently) fortuitous popping off of Lane's hat into Irwin's hands. Wonderful! Goodman, too, was wonderful, but you couldn't stop seeing him as Goodman.

Glover, however, made me forget who he was. He was Lucky. He took up this often stylized part and made it both shocking and real. I have a beef against Glover because I really didn't like his audio book version of The Thief of Always, but I suppose it's time to let that go and let him get beyond Lionel Luthor.

Walking toward Columbus Circle and Central Park, I saw this woman-positive advert and tried to take a picture of it to capture the Hooters restaurant in the background (that's the orange neon), but I don't think my phone was up to the complexity.

I hung out in Central Park and watched the people who crammed the park playing and relaxing, before heading back to Grand Central and the train via the cramped and sweaty subway. I got some lovely cards from Papyrus which I plan to use and enjoy, and drove back from Poughkeepsie listening to Robyn Hitchcock (yes, still!).