Morast exits, stage right

January 25, 2008


If you’re part of the music scene in Sioux Falls, you’re not supposed to like Robert Morast.

If you fancy yourself a Midwestern intellectual, you’re not supposed to like Robert Morast.

If you’re a friend of the nightlife in Sioux Falls. If you’re a blogger. A message board troll. A hipster. A hip hopper. A local band not covered in the Link. An aspiring scenester. If you’re a skateboarder, a bar patron or anyone under the age of 40 who is desperately trying to be cool, you’re not supposed to like Robert Morast.

I am not supposed to like Robert Morast. I am supposed to pan his every word. I am required through my standing in this city’s social strata - as a young man with a love of music, friends in the scene and a creative-by-nature profession - to look at everything Robert Morast writes with an eye sharpened by criticism, to tear apart every sentence with vinegar-laced fury.

If you’re a living, breathing young person in Sioux Falls, you are supposed to wish Robert Morast away. And the answer to our prayers is here. He is going away.

So why am I sad to see him go?

When we moved back to Sioux Falls, fresh from several years of a near-daily Star Tribune fix, we subscribed to the Argus Leader. We read the paper from cover to back every day, loving every word Sanaa Abourezk wrote and grumbling over the lack of quality box scores in the Sports section. We were Argus-philes, for good and bad.

To us, the bad was squarely on the shoulders of Robert Morast. He was our whipping boy. He was to blame for every Argus mistake. We found him pretentious and pandering. He talked about himself too much and about worthwhile subjects too little. His opinions and interviews were too basic, his stands too weak. We rose up with both fists pounding, screaming for his head and yelling, “HACK! HACK!” whenever we could.

The thing is - he was never that bad. We, as many did, found ourselves caught up in the joy of having a local newspaper personality we could easily hate. Every paper needs one. For those above a certain age bracket, it was Randall Beck. For our generation, it’s Robert Morast.

In fact, Robert Morast has been a perfect local columnist - in fact, one of the best. His opinions aren’t based in what the general population wants to hear; instead, they provoked discussion and were unapologetically his own. Sure, every writer gets grating and self-congratulatory at times - myself included. It’s part of the job. You write from your own mind, and everything therein screams to be included.

He was barbed when he needed to be, probing when he was required. Morast had a style unlike anyone at the Argus, and was able to write not just about his small, structured station in life but about every single type of music that meandered through our dusty villa.

We want our newspaper columnists to mirror our every view. We want to see our opinions carbon copied in print, solid and scrapbookable, fresh for the fridge door. We want our local music reviewer to have the same opinions as us - to reinforce our own wary opinions. It’s the great paradox of alternative culture - the desire to like different things while at the same time wanting everyone else we know to like those exact same differing things.

Over the years, through a combination of better writing and time, Robert Morast became more likable. He probably always was. But we had always just slapped the blinders on and forged forward in a blind hatred spun together by what was the norm at the time.

It’s no secret that I’m not much of an Argus fan anymore. But though my friends seemed to revile everything Robert Morast wrote, I increasingly felt as though he was one of the paper’s few bright spots.

Sports writing is interchangeable. Politics repeats the same tune over and over again. But if you don’t think it’s challenging to write about both the most recent Modest Mouse show and a Chet Atkins concert - to bounce from an Elton John article directed at boomers to a Soulcrate Music preview aimed at us scenesters - you’re crazy.

If you’re anyone who’s anyone, you’re not supposed to like Robert Morast. The thing is, if you’re a fan of journalism that’s a little bit outside the norm, Robert Morast is exactly what you should like. And I’m afraid we’ll all realize that when it’s too late, after he’s gone, when a new replacement is having a hard time in the position, struggling to be our whipping boy and fighting against the rigors of a critical scene.

You’re not supposed to like Robert Morast. And he never cared. Truth be told, Robert Morast was probably more a part of the scene and this city than we’ll ever claim to be.

You’re supposed to be rejoicing right now. And I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Tags: Journalism, Music, Sioux Falls, Writers, Writing |

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Overheard…

January 25, 2008


I stopped into the gas station this morning to get some cheap coffee. There was a short line, held up by a chatty older man with rough looking pants on - a construction worker of some sort, I guessed. As he left, I walked up to the counter, just in time to hear the clerk say to her coworker:

“You know what? He may drink too much every night, but he goes to work every day.”

To which the coworker responded:

“Yeah. He’s a hard worker.”

I could have viewed the comments in one of two ways. And I did. First, I was annoyed. It sounded like a dismissal of the man’s drinking problem - a downplaying of the disease and an enabling statement.

Then, as I got into the car and thought about it, I realized it could have been said in admiration - the man had a disease, but he wasn’t letting it take over his life. In fact, if he can work every day without fail, he might be able to take the next step in overcoming his problem.

It just goes to show you how difficult it can be when you make a snap decision on what someone says, especially when you have no frame of reference. It can be dangerous. Libelous. Or completely harmless.

Either way, I shouldn’t have to think about this stuff before I’ve had my coffee, thanks.

Tags: On... |

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God’s Eye View

January 23, 2008


Here’s some great work from The Glue Society - a design/art/direction agency out of Sydney - entitled “God’s Eye View.”

Recognize these scenes? (They’re big, so apologies for slow loading)



“Moses”


“Ark”


“Eden”


“Cross”

The work’s been out for a month or so, but you know how magazines are - a month behind on everything.

From the article in Creativity magazine (where I discovered the art):

Glue Society creative James Sive spent over three months creating the images, an edition of five selling for $36,000. Dive combed through satellite imagery, analyzing distortions based on height, seasonal colors, oceanscapes and more.

Then he drew our the individual scenarios and searched for them on Google Earth, sometimes stitching together multiple images. Eden, Dive says, is in Belgium. Finally, the 3D elements, like the ark, were constructed along with Sydney modeling shop Cream Studios.

I love Google Earth, so I naturally love this stuff. I’d like to see the elusive “fifth” - I’ve only been able to locate these four images, and all signs point that only four were shown.

It makes me wonder what other historical stuff could be “found” in satellite footage.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Travel |

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Pandora’s box (set)

January 22, 2008


I forgot how much I love Pandora.

We all know about Pandora, but in case you’ve been under a rock for the past two years - or, I suppose, without an Internet connection, which is probably pretty close to the same thing - I’ll explain.

Pandora. It rules.Pandora is a part of the Music Genome Project, a collective that analyzed artists and songs in an effort to better recommend and create listener-generated radio. In other words, if you like Pearl Jam (for instance), the information gleaned from the Music Genome Project should be able to create a specialized radio station based on the music of Pearl Jam and the artists that other Pearl Jam fans similarly like.

On Pandora, all you do is enter a song or artist. A radio station will be created around that song or artist. As additional songs are played, you can give them the thumbs up or thumbs down. And, after a while, your radio station is learning your tastes.

It’s a pretty brilliant system, actually. It’s a million times more advanced than it was two years ago when I first started listening to it. I don’t know if it has remembered my likes and dislikes from back then, but the first five songs played on my Built to Spill channel (since renamed “Indie Rocker Channel”) were:
• Built to Spill - “Velvet Waltz”
• Radiohead - “Lewis (Mistreated)”
• Modest Mouse - “Summer”
• The White Stripes - “The Denial Twist (live)”
• 764-Hero - “Oceanbound”

All great artists, with a spattering of album cuts, rare EP items (Radiohead and White Stripes), early hits and “best known” songs. And on the sixth song, we revisited Built to Spill with one of my favorites - “Stab.”

It’s nothing new to seasoned Internet fans, but to me it’s a welcome remembrance. I’m glad to have Pandora back in my life. It certainly rocks, that’s for sure.

If you’re interested in bookmarking my profile, visit my Pandora Page. My name is mrvilhauer. Add me to your page, and we’ll share musical tastes.

Finally - a (social?) network that I can actually enjoy.

Tags: Music |

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Unmatched everything

January 22, 2008


So I see A’Mentele twitter’n (bragging, more like it) about his unmatched style front page feature. (His blog, Charisma:18, is very pretty. But he does that stuff for a living, so what do you expect?)

Then I click on my blog. Up comes my patchwork representation of blog design, adapted from someone else’s blog design, slow loading and certainly not CSS perfect.

And when I click on Misc. Asst., it’s even worse. That site’s got a lot of work to do.

I’m in over my head. So I ask, with pleading eyes…

…does anyone want to create a pretty blog for me? Pretty please?

Seriously. If you’re a loyal reader of BMOWP (or Misc. Asst.), talk to me. I need a new blog design. I talk about how much I love great design, then I struggle to create my own.

Help!

Tags: Blogging, Meta, Misc. Asst., Random |

3 Comments

A brood of charity

January 21, 2008


Sierra's Brood of ChicksFor Christmas, Sierra received money, some clothes, some toys, a couple of stuffed animals in the shape of garden vegetables, a handful of ladybug-themed baubles and a carousel that plays music.

She also gave a brood of chicks. And of all of her gifts, it may be the one that gives her the most joy.

My mom came up with this idea. She assumed that Sierra wouldn’t be experiencing the materialistic joys of Christmas, what with her inability to understand materialism, so a gift of this sort seemed to make perfect sense. Along with a cute, girly outfit, Sierra received a brood of chicks. Or, I suppose, a brood of chicks was given in her name, to a family somewhere, through Samaritan’s Purse, a non-profit organization that provides Christmas gifts and ministry throughout impoverished countries.

Because this is a difficult gift to illustrate, (Hey, I gave $20 bucks in your name! Merry Christmas! Here’s a card!) my mother cut out an illustration from the Web site – the picture shown above – along with a short explanation of the gift.

From the Samaritan’s Purse Web site:

Gift 38 - A Brood of Chicks

Which came first—the chicken or the egg? For impoverished families that have neither, what actually comes first is the compassion of Christians who minister to their communities by distributing baby chicks provided by Samaritan’s Purse. A brood of chickens, ducks, or other poultry can provide enough eggs to feed a family, with some left over to sell at market. For about $20, we can provide a starter brood of 24 chicks.

We taped the picture up next to her changing table, where she could easily see it. We laughed about it, saying that Sierra’s first crush was going to be on the boy in this picture. We assumed it would be just another adornment on the wall.

It isn’t. It’s become a daily routine. She has looked the young boy in the face nearly every morning and every evening. She smiles at him, then laughs. She waves her hands around and kicks her legs and grins like she’s meeting a long lost friend. In her hierarchy of recognition, I imagine the boy in the picture is ranked just below her parents, her grandparents and her daycare provider.

There’s a connection there that I don’t think we understand as adults. We’ve lost the childhood freedom of recognizing every other child as just that – a child, safe and ripe for friendship. She doesn’t know that she’s staring at her first act of charity. She just identifies with the size of the boy in the picture. She smiles at the chickens. She thinks it’s beautiful. Who knows what she feels about it, aside from happiness.

In years past, Kerrie and I have put together Christmas shoeboxes through Samaritan’s Purse for children in third-world countries, filled with items that were both sensible and fun. We’ve since focused more within our own community – on organizations like United Way and Public Broadcasting. We like to think we’re giving for the entire family – Kerrie, myself, Sierra – even Becket. But truthfully, we’re not.

Sierra hasn’t made her own choice in regards to charity. That’s a decision she needs to make on her own, when she’s older and understands what’s important to her. Right now she doesn’t know how to “give” – she doesn’t even know what the word means.

So it warms my heart every morning and every night, to see the recognition, to know that she feels a connection with that little boy – his face and his youth – and that even though she has no idea what the ramifications of that boy’s picture could possibly mean, she knows that both of them are young. Both are fragile.

In her name, a bit of that fragility was taken away. A little bit of salvation was given. In her name, that family is able to raise chickens for eggs and meat. In her name, she has already made a difference.

Which is definitely more than I could say at the age of six months.

Tags: Sierra |

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Afraid to care

January 21, 2008


I, for one, am a quiet person. In person, that is. I shy away from confrontation, preferring the simple life of tractable conversation to one with any degree of difficulty.

I’m not alone in this. Thousands of self-help quacks have made millions off of people like me – people who are more at home hiding in under a sweatshirt hood than out raising fists and causing riots. There’s a fine line between recluse and polite conversationalist, and sometimes I feel like I’m backing myself into the former.

Still, I have my beliefs, and I’ve begun to exit my shell of safety. This blog has helped a lot in that regard by offering me a faceless (though not nameless) sounding board for whatever it is I feel. Politics, economy, sports, whatever – if it’s a subject worth fighting for, I’ve begun to fight for it.

My reservations aren’t due to meekness. They’re due to a fear of looking stupid. I’m more afraid of speaking out without having my argument down than the actual act of speaking itself. Call it the proofreader’s dilemma. Call it a careful atmosphere of logical thinking. I usually call it chickenshit – you can’t fall down trying if you haven’t bothered to try in the first place, right?

So it’s with a wary eye focused on myself that I even dare to complain about what others are saying.

Yet complain I will, my friends. In an age where knowledge and change are struggling to keep up with the status quo, you’d think more of us would be striving to alter the world. To rise up with voices bleeding, fighting for our causes. And some people do. Some people genuinely care about the world. About life. About what might happen in the future.

And some people don’t. Which is amazing to me. This isn’t a liberal or conservative thing. This is an American thing. This is a case of “who cares?” This is a snapshot of our future – a dumbed down, self-serve society too busy worrying about looks and stuff and general escapism to realize they’re at risk.

At risk to lose the ability to care about anything.

Which means they’ve taken themselves out of the equation altogether, rendered themselves another body in the populous, a voice only heard every ten years on a census form.

My good friend Tim has witnessed a drastic change in culture over the past two years. From the chilly, friendly confines of Minneapolis to the Poindexter-populated metro of D.C., he’s been exposed to a different life. Yet one thing seems to stay the same – a lot of people simply don’t care. And it pisses him off.

From Tim’s most recent blog entry at Misc. Asst.
(Careful - it’s not edited and NSFKids. That’s something else he picked up in D.C.):

Yeah, yeah, trust me I know; you work two jobs, you got two kids and a wife, or maybe and ex, a mortgage and interest on college loans that’s a burden to your unborn children. But quite frankly I don’t give a shit; because: I don’t know what the threshold is… and neither do you.

Tell me: what would be enough? What life situation absolves you of responsibility? Tell me how many hours do you have to work in your shit ass job with people you fucking hate for what reason you don’t even know to justify not thinking about anything greater?

Why is it that everyone just can’t wait until they’re off the hook?

Check out his post at Misc. Asst. You’ll love it. You’ll hate it. Hopefully, you’ll feel one way or the other about it. Because an opinion is your basic right as a free-thinking human.

If you’re not used to opinions, try one on for size. Go ahead. They won’t bite.

Tags: Politics |

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