I just can't get over how perfect this song is for an aging jaded wannabe hipster like myself at this moment in history: "Losing My Edge", by LCD Soundsystem. It's so hilarious and cynical and sad and clever and stinging and brilliant. Just check out some of the lyrics, my fav lines:

I was there in Jamaica during the great sound clashes.
I woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.

But I'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.
And they're actually really, really nice.

I'm losing my edge.

I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody. Every great song by the Beach Boys. All the underground hits. All the Modern Lovers tracks. I heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import. I heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit - 1985, '86, '87. I heard that you have a CD compilation of every good '60s cut and another box set from the '70s.

I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Yaz record.

I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.

I hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.

In other words, for those who miss all the allusions (cuz you're so uncool), "I hear that you care way too much and struggle too hard about completely useless bullshit that I now finally understand is absolutely unimportant."

Just found out about this new Tucson art blog called TuScene. Interesting. I've been thinking how few people I know in this town are really the "wired" type, that hardly anybody I know or work with creatively has a blog here, other than using Facebook or Myspace (bleah!) and most of my online friends are far away, in SF or PDX or NYC or London or wherever. I've also been thinking some lately how sometimes the Tucson "scene" feels a little small. Compared to some places I've lived I'm a little.... nostalgic. I especially feel this way when I read the "Goings On About Town" pages of The New Yorker... of course nowhere will ever live up to NYC, and noplace should try to, it's just embarrassing when a city does that.

But anyway, maybe that new blog and some other networking efforts will help me feel more "dialed in" to what's going on in this town and more satisfied with it. Ya think?

And I should stop reading that part of the New Yorker. And the Arts pages of the Times.

Sigh.

In other news, a short video of mine will evidently screen at the All Souls Procession Film Fest this week. And they waived the app fee for me.

I read yesterday on Feministing about how Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls was told that shots of her belly had to be edited from a video of hers because she was too fat. What sexist assholes. Even if she was "fat" (click the link, watch the video, and see that she's not, anyway), no record label or employer of any kind has the right to do that. She dropped them and her fans are enraged and posting photos of all their varied bellies to a new site, and rightly so. No woman should ever tolerate such bullshit. Fuck You, Roadrunner Records!

Great politically-charged hiphop video that mentions war taxes in one verse about 2/3 of the way through. It's also a great image collage.

I finally got around to editing some video I shot at this year's All Souls Procession here in Tucson (link):

The video features many friends of Sali Eiler, who was murdered recently in Oaxaca. She was a tireless volunteer and organizer who was involved with No More Deaths here in southern Arizona and had spent many months in Oaxaca working with CIPO-RFM and women's groups there. On November 9, her friends and family came together in Tucson, had a memorial at Dry River Radical Resource Center, and participated together in the All Souls Procession. This video documents their presence in the procession and some footage of the spectacular performance spectacle after the procession. [More info about Sali and her work: http://arizona.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=509&category_... ]

I like how it turned out and I'm glad I was able to document it.

• 08:47 looking @ VC2 pods that CurrentTV wants but i'm so disillusioned with Current. They've let me down so mny times. some1 give me a reason2care #
• 08:58 glad i finally edited latest tucson roller derby trailer tinyurl.com/5ceggc #
• 11:30 typing a long complicated email about an incident at a memorial service. sigh. #
• 14:10 oh wow what a day for listserv drama... #
• 16:58 wow. looks like Current is cancelling their collective journalism program. amazing. #
• 21:05 thinking about 67 Ramona... #

The radio show I do every week (err, I mean, that my good friend Esteban Caliente does), The Difficult Listening Hour, is still going strong. I've discovered that the shows that are pre-taped seem to be the best, probably because of various technical problems and discomforts at the Free Radio Chukshon studio. So Esteban will probably continue to pre-tape in my studio and then bring in and play the show at its air time (fridays, 4-6pm).

Every week is a different theme around which floats a cloud of songs, noises, field recordings, and often interviews and conversations - so far the show has covered noise, technology, education, bicycles, elections/voting, and more.
The 8th installment, focused on religion, just aired last week and is now archived on the site. So go have a listen.

You can even subscribe to the show as a podcast at http://freeradiochukshon.org/station/archives/2/feed.

In the last 2 or 3 weeks Greta and I have had 4 sets of houseguests. It's been kind of insane. And they have ramped up steadily in terms of how stressful they've been. First our friend Peter from Bisbee, then Greta's friend from Prescott and her friend. Then our photographer friend from Germany. And now, for the past 5 days, 3 bicycle pornographers from Oregon.

I like having guests but it's hard to stay focused and to get work done and to stay sane when our small home is so disrupted over and over. Especially because as a filmmaker I have a lot of requirements in terms of equipment and space and concentration, especially when I'm editing. Hopefully things are going to turn around by tomorrow.

Meanwhile I'm still psyched about my experience last week working on Video The Vote on election day including footage of a little episode with an off-duty Border Patrol agent that evening. And of course I'm psyched about how the election went. It's interesting that now everyone and their brother, especially in the progressive non-profit world, is speculating about what Obama will mean for their work, and they're sharing that speculation with all their mailing lists. I've never seen such a heady atmosphere of anticipation. It seems anticlimactic with over 2 months to go before he's actually president.

• 06:27 big day today. polls already opened here at 6, half an hour ago. the sun is just starting to rise. #vtv #
• 06:34 need to finish getting ready, charging batteries, breakfast, and then meet rest of crew in half an hour or so. then it's out to film. #vtv #
• 09:24 Saw 2 guys w guns frm az state attny ofc hanging out @ s. Tucson pollng place. #Vtv - got footage. #
• 11:06 back at studio taking a break & catching up on news. looks like my last from phone tweet didn't make it. it's quiet in tucson. #vtv #
• 12:23 Couple of friends said lines were long wher thy votd right at opening but now no lines. #vtv #tucson #
• 12:48 ok this is weird. txt tweets are coming in way slow. #
• 12:48 back in studio to upload footage from 2 polling places in south tucson. #vtv #tucson #
• 13:05 Just checkd @ Grijalva?s hq and they say no reports of prblms - all quiet in tucson! #
• 13:24 messing with Compressor to get it to compress video the way Video The Vote wants it. #vtv #
• 13:52 watching mary capturing footage she and francesca shot of a polling place (church) with a yes on 102 sign on their main sign. #vtv #tucson #
• 16:55 taking a break and waiting for more reports of poll place troubles. things have been pretty quiet this afternoon. #tvt #tucson #
• 17:06 mccain "holding out from the bunker" acccording to CBS pundit just now. is that a reference to Hitler? #
• 17:12 only 11% of kentucky results in and they're already calling it mccain's? wtf? #
• 17:18 amazed at the blurring of the line between prediction and fact on TV coverage of the election. especially with onscreen graphics. #
• 17:23 looks like we're getting another video the vote assignment from our dispatcher... #vtv #tucson #
• 17:25 Retweet: #jennyholzer POLITICS IS USED FOR PERSONAL GAIN #
• 17:26 border patrol parked outside polling place on tangerine road! we're going out to get footage!! #vtv #tucson #immigration #intimidation #
• 18:14 I guess tucson not as quiet as we thot. Heading out 2 3 dif trouble sites! #Vtv #tucson #