From the fevered minds of a loose grouping of self-appointed cultural commentators comes a weekly side-swipe at the issues of the day, providing a pithy and often heated debate on pop culture as they see it.

This is The Hot Topic.

Burning it up this week: Technology

From: Mat Brewster
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Technology

At my place of employment we have a strict rule about not using the internet for personal use at your desk. We have set up several computers in the break room for personal use. Last week all of these computers had to be taken out for repair. It was as if the second-coming had happened all over again. Employees were furious, literally and physically angry. Like we had intentionally taken the computers away from them as punishment, and not because they needed repair.

The other day I was standing in line at the local eatery. A young man is standing before the cashier, chatting on his cell phone. The girl behind the counter attempts several times to inquire as to what the customer’s order might be. Cell phone guy gives her an impatient – what does this simpleton want – look and continue to phone conversate. The girl persists, and the man angrily tells the person on the other side of the phone line to hold, and then orders.

When I think upon these things, and others like them, I wonder when our lives became that important. It’s not like most of us are kings and queens, presidents of the free world. Lives are not at stake here. Yet more and more we behave as if reading the newest e-mail and answering our cell phones are all important tasks that simply must be done. NOW!

Ever been on the losing end of the battle between you and a friend’s ringing cell phone? There you are chatting about Arabian policies, the meaning of jacket’s in Tolstoy’s poetry, or the fine art of dancing with tuna fish and suddenly you are forced to sit politely – if awkwardly – while your friend laughs it up with his cell phone?

Where did courtesy go?

Now, I don’t want to sound like a technophobe. I’m no hater of the new, the technological, the lights and beeps of today’s age. Cell phones are a marvel. They have helped mankind over and over again. From asking the wife which of the six different types of pesto sauce she wants when sending the husband to the grocery store; to getting on the spot directions while in the car, and even saving lives cell phones can more than justify their existence.

I flippin’ love the internet. I have a broadband connection at home and use it daily. Without it I wouldn’t be writing this piece, wouldn’t have married my wife, and would have lost, and never found many friendships. Cyberspace connects the world.

Anyone, no matter how strange, no matter how different they feel, can find someone just like them via the internet. You’re trans man or a lesbian vampire who loves cottage cheese? Come over here, join our group and meet people with the exact same interests. Yet with all of this connecting of niche’s I wonder how much of the rest of the world is being left out. Could finding sympathetic souls who understand make us less tolerable of those who just don’t get it? Could connecting online keep us disconnected to our neighbors?

From: Bennett Dawson
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Technology

Addiction, or passion? How much of our society could be summed up under one of these labels? The normal, everyday passions (great food at a tasteful restaurant, single malt scotch, live theater, a well-directed movie, or a song that demands that you STOP and listen) are fundamentally different from the nervous dedication to a cell phone or internet connection, and should not be lumped together. One group is part of the creativity and enjoyment of life, the other is an addiction to being connected, and is one of the strange paths our world has taken. Is this a lasting phenomenon? Will our culture become ever more focused on immediate communication?

I don’t have a cell phone, and I may never get one. I’m one of those folks that has no problem letting the machine pick up a call, whether I’m busy or not. Real emergencies are rare, and most family conversations can wait a bit. Besides, there’s email now, and (no surprise) I take my time with the reply function. Why give anyone the idea that I respond quickly?

Cell phones are a mixed blessing to be sure. The example you site is outrageous, and I’d have been hard pressed not to fling a comment at the rude bastard. Driving and cell phone use is epidemic, and acts to reinforce the poor driving skills of my neighbors. If I lived in the city, where cell phone related mental lapses added up to serious congestion at an intersection that used to flow smoothly, I think I’d fall prey to road rage and high blood pressure.

Ditto trying to have a meeting or a conversation with a friend that was interrupted by cell phone calls. Who needs that? Perhaps I lack the drive; the need to talk with someone for hours about meaningless details, stuff that doesn’t add anything to the relationship or my understanding of the world. Chatter, got some? It’s like, y’know, like cool? Echhh! My son does this on the phone with his girlfriends and I have to leave the room…

But I love the connectivity of the internet, the opportunity to sell stuff to folks in other countries, to access places like Blogcritics and NASAWatch. Before the net, there was no way to do many of the things we now take for granted. Want to know the answer? It’s a few mouse clicks away. THAT is cool!

So I guess I’m willing to ignore all the rest of the nonsense that has infused our society in this digital information age, as long as I can get at all the knowledge and photographs that are part and parcel of my personal areas of interest.

From: DJ Radiohead
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Technology

I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I curse it one minute and hail it the next. I have had a lot of trouble getting my head around this topic because I found myself to-ing and fro-ing up one side and down the other.

I love the high-tech gadgets. I have owned five iPods. I have a home theater system. My wife has my old computer because I am typing this piece on my PowerBook whilst surfing the web wirelessly… you get the idea. I love technology. I wish I had more money for more gadgets. I have been able to keep up with people with whom I would have probably lost touch. I have been able to have conversations with interesting people I have never met. I have access to information and ideas and all kinds of shit I could never have imagined accessing- and it has all become so fucking easy.

Technology has made communicating easier but has it given us any more to say? In last week’s Hot Topic, we discussed why we create. Technology has made it simpler and more efficient to air our creative wares. It has not necessarily improved them. It is so much easier to record an album today but is the music any better than it was 50 years ago? If so, is it because of the technology? In spite of it? Has it had any impact at all?

I think technology has sped the world up more than it has changed it. Technology allows us to better understand how fucked up the world always was. Technology, in the end, is just a tool. The electric guitar does not play itself and ProTools does not write dreadful songs- Jon Bon Jovi and Scott Stapp do. Cell phones are not rude. Assholes who do not know when and where to use them are rude. People have always sucked. Technology and the spread of technology have just given us new, faster, more efficient ways to suck.

I guess I sound a lot like one of the gun nuts. They say, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” I say, “Technology is not bad, people are bad. And you know what? So are cell phones. Fuck them.”

From: Aaron Fleming
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Technology

It’s interesting how technology (like so much else) can become ingrained into normal everyday activity, suddenly checking email, or checking the mobile phone for text messages becomes a regular thing.

Distracting maybe? I must confess that I waste (and I do mean waste) too much of my time sitting on the internet, aimlessly wondering around the same websites (“oh sitemeter, any new visitors? nope, aw well”), and I often feel quite dispirited afterwards (especially if it was an extra long session of nothingness). Not to say that there’s always a lack of constructive use of time, many a session on Wikipedia, or posting some new masterwork on the blog, or contributing to some fine discussion such as this here.

I guess it’s like DJ Radiohead says, technology is only a tool, and it’s down to those who use it. A good example of this, and one I’m vocal on often, is the use of CGI in film. I always slag the excessive use of CGI in film, usually with regards to crapfests like War Of The Worlds (the remake), or some other big budget flick where the only thing it has going for it is the effects. And as we know, no story, no film. Doesn’t matter how good the visual effects are, they are only a compliment (and can be a great one used properly).

And maybe we can see the pointless use of technology in cinema too. My main thinking here, and it’s one that’s humoured The Duke and I often, is the CGI deer in The Ring 2. They’re CGI! It’s not even hard to see, more obvious pixelation I’ve rarely seen. This is just laziness on the part of film makers.

Oh, there’s something else, does technology make people lazy?

Instead of travelling to someone’s house you can just call them on the phone. Then again, in this busy world, who has time for those types of shenanigans. Technology does have a rather dehumanizing effect, witness instant messaging. I use it often, and it’s great for keeping in touch with people you can’t see regularly, but I despise it. None of the natural human nuances come through in a box of text set within a computer screen. It’s very hard to be a sarcastic bastard, or to have that added effect that the like of hand gestures brings to communication.

And how are you supposed to do that thing where you look at the person you’re in discussion with and nod your head in affirming expression? Or motion towards an attractive lady and form a favorable countenance at that beheld before you?

From: Mark Saleski
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Technology

To avoid coming across like a neo-luddite (which, believe me, may be unavoidable by the end of this bit), let me say that technological advance (or innovation) is not intrinsically good or bad. It just is. Where things go wrong is in the area of application.

On the good side, look at the world of medicine. The modern physician’s diagnostic capability via technology is simply amazing. The software engineer side of me has been involved in the development of some of these machines and, even right up close, the wonder and import is not diminished.

On the bad side, there’s technology for technology’s sake. Let’s face it, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. Refrigerators that keep inventory and automatically email orders to the grocer. Computers in your car that schedule appointments via the internet to the dealer. Heck, even food that’s specially constructed to be ‘conveniently’ cooked via the microwave. Convenient, yes? Tasty…NO. Oh, and here’s one of my big pet peeves: laptops at business meetings. I come across as captain luddite at meetings because I’m the only one there with a notebook and a pen. Everybody else is clacking and clicking away, supposedly taking notes but, let’s be honest here…they’re continuing the work they were doing before the meeting started, sending & receiving email, etc. They’re not mentally present. This doesn’t feel like innovation to me.

And then there’s the Internet and cell phones. Again, there’s no denying that both technologies have provided a positive impact. But there’s also the negative social consequences that Mr. Brewster brought up. As much as these things bring us together (and I am just jazzed as all hell about the fantstic collaborations, The Hot Topic surely being one, that this fascilitates), they also put around us a weird buffer of sorts. Ever see two kids driving in a car, both of ’em talking on the phone? How about a couple at a coffee shop, both staring into their own laptops?

I suppose this is some sorta new social construct that I just don’t ‘get’. So be it.

From: Eric Berlin
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Technology

Technology, in the end, means change, doesn’t it? In 2005 what we’re seeing, I think, is change driven into our hearts and homes and minds and spirits and functional utility personal space amplifiers (or what some like to call the “soul”) at an unprecedented rate. Change can be good or change can be bad, it’s all how you roll with it is how I see it.

But let me posit the bright side of the technology onslaught, if I might. Sir Fleming brings up, and very rightly so, some of the downsides of instant messaging a friend whereas, say, as little as 10 years ago one might take the extraordinary step of utilizing human-powered machine-units called “legs” to “walk” to a friend’s house, perhaps, in an act knows in some quarters as “dropping by.”

Be that as it may, technology has recently brought about new universes of communication and community theaters of the mind that were not possible even in the days of cassette tapes and space shuttles and Lee press-on nails.

Let’s take as an example this little band of souls we have right here, bandying and waxing and milking back and forth, straining wit off the muse and considering apocalyptic visions and ideas set forth with worthy visions of producing new understanding and meaning and social synergy.

In other words: we write about shit from disparate parts of the globe and collectively form and argue and forge new understandings about all manner of stuff, without (in most cases) ever having met one another. Which is pretty fucking cool, in my e-book!

So technology allows for people to find one another out there who wish to enter the digital fray for a little sparring and virtual grog swilling. The Duke a good while back said it very well in relating that there’s no longer any shame in meeting a nice young lass online these days. What are the odds of walking into a bar and meeting a chick that liked ska punk records and, importantly, could put up with your idiosyncratic and moody and oftimes megalomaniacal crap?

I got lucky there, as Fate would have it, but pretty damned low, I’d say.

Anyway, technology now allows for an easy and efficient and cheap meeting of the minds from all points of the planet. So for that, if for nothing else, I can put up with the asshole screaming into his cell phone at the head of the line to pay for whatever.

That, and deliciously imagining beating his ass with a metal pole over and over and over again.

Cling to the clang!

From the composite intellectual consciousness of a mighty entity of social and cultural commentary comes the weekly sneering perusal of the issues of the day.

This is The Hot Topic. This week – Creativity

From: Aaron Fleming
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

The need, the desire, to partake in creative activity is something that is ingrained deep within the human psyche; it is an intrinsic part of human existence, or so it seems. Surely there’s more justification for creativity to be an integral component of the human condition, as opposed to the sorts of capitalistic consumerist banality in which life revolves around the acquisitions that we all desperately ‘need’. Here, express yourself!

Creativity is something that can give a life true meaning and enjoyment that goes beyond a superficial depth. I’m no psychologist so I won’t, and can’t, dive too deeply into that train of thought, I’d be drowning in orgones before I was even partially submerged.

Let’s define creative activity for a moment here: writing, painting, producing music, acting, photography, inventing. There are undoubtedly more, but those are enough to set the stage for discussion.

This whole blogworld thing (the blogosphere as it’s sometimes known; I think The Guardian calls it so) is in many ways a manifestation of the need for a creative outlet. It fulfills that need by providing a showcase for all us personal publishing maniacs (and also the diary need of mass narcissism).

So the question is, in this overt environment for individuals participating in creativity, what motivates you in the creative processes, any set routines or procedures, where do those ideas originate?

For me, I like to write, but why?

Catharsis, a purgation of the mind. Putting down those thoughts and ideas has an odd effect, a relief of pressure in the head, abstract or otherwise. As William S. Burroughs said: “Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.”

These things get all stored up in there, bouncing around, I’d hate to see the mess in there, ya know what those little cogitations are like, bunch of fuckers. One time I caught them in a mescaline frenzy, party poppers were everywhere, and the walls were covered in sticky-back plastic, almost a nightmare vision of Blue Peter, now that I think about it.

I don’t really have a set process for coming up with writing ideas. (I doubt many people have a prescribed course for this sort of thing.) Some ideas are kicked off by certain incidents witnessed, or discussions, or something I’ve read, or heard, or watched.

I tend to endeavor to entertain in my writing, usually trying to be funny, with elements of satire and mass exaggeration. My self-deprecating way of looking at it is that I’ve got nothing profound and ground-breaking to say, so I better attempt to humour the world.

Sometimes I’ll get an idea, often lying in bed at night in a state of petulant insomnia, and from there it will evolve and some bits and pieces will come together. Then it’ll be recalled and released into the ether at a later time. Most writing comes from a stream-of-consciousness method when it comes to that release time. And I don’t like drafting and rough versions and all that, partly to do with laziness, and also fear that I’ll do nothing more than make it worse on revision.

Also, I try and write with a nice expressive and varied vocabulary, I enjoy a good dip into the old lexicon. (What’s with all these swimming references? I can’t even swim.) This could be just pretentiousness, and it partially is, no doubt, but it’s also because I enjoy reading prose that uses more than a limited number of words and forms an interesting syntactical structure.

From: Bennett Dawson
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

I wish it was like that for me Aaron, creation and release, but I’m much more agenda-driven than creative. I’ve reached an age where one starts looking at the ledger of accomplishment, the balance sheet of impact on culture or humanity versus time spent partying, and it occurred to me that there was great potential for having a positive impact through the net, by writing about things.

The genesis for this Hot Topic conversation was Stephen King’s On Writing and his views of the creative process, and that struck a chord with me. I devoured his book, and it really pushed me to try to learn to write – to be able to use the mighty word as a lever on society.

Is it actually possible to reach across time and space to touch someone’s gray matter with the words I type? Can I paint pictures of Great Planetary Journeys in their mind, from my little desk in my little house?

If so, I need to get better at writing. It’s simple actually – just write a lot, and that’s where Blogcritics comes in. If I can develop my questionable talent here at BC, I might be able to inspire someone to take more science classes, to excel in mathematics, to push known physics, to become the best pilot in the military, to put in an extra hour checking blueprints, to become someone who helps realize the vision of getting humanity’s “eggs” into more than “one basket”.

So I write about NASA and the space programs hosted by our world’s sovereign territories. I report the news, post the photos, and try to convey the enormity of the potential. I want to get people to imagine, perchance to dream. I want people to want to see this stuff happen.

And I look forward to the day when I don’t cringe at my own posts, three days later. Juvenile! Rushed! Shallow! Incomplete! Clumsy! Fucking Stupid! Brutal self-critique when all I want to do is write clearly, succinctly, and in a voice that taps into just a little bit of the telepathy and time travel that Mr. King describes so eloquently. I’m not greedy; all I want is to paint one picture in the right head. If I can inspire just one person to start the chain of events that has an impact on the right kid…

That kid could walk on Mars.

The process of learning to write has been great, and I see improvement over the past eight months. It’s not Duke De Mondo by any stretch, but it’s better than it was… I’m actually able to write a sentence that doesn’t end up sounding stupid to my inner ear a few days after publication.

It’s coming easier, sharper at times, and I’m beginning to think that this new path was a good idea. I know my best writing is ahead of me, and some of it might actually have an impact on someone, somewhere. All I have to do, is to keep on writing.

From: Mark Saleski
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

These days, for me creativity equals writing.

Why do I write? The clichéd answer is “Because I have to.” But it’s the truth.

This wasn’t always the case with me, as the writing gig (such as it is) didn’t start happening for me until just a couple of years ago. Before that my creative outlets consisted of playing guitar in a band (instigating much improvisation, and grimacing from bandmates)) and reading.

Reading? Yes, the search for new material is never-ending. You may think of the act of consuming characters on the page as a passive activity and, until the writing thing ‘happened’, so did I. But what I discovered was that my seemingly passing thoughts on this stuff were building…and building and building. The mental backlog was there, ready to break free.

No, I didn’t always want to write. When I was a kid much time was spent reading all manner of rock (and other) yacking: Ben Fong Torres, Dave Marsh (though I can sorta do without him now), Hunter S. Thomson, and Lester Bangs. It was all ‘incoming’. If pressed to write a paper in school I would get all sweaty, invoke the Procrastination Protocol, and at some point scratch out a few pathetic pages. Not good stuff.

Many years after college and a sort of flatness became apparent. Two life situations that can surely foster the desire for that great and intangible “something else” are a fading marriage and a stuck ‘career’. I had both. It all felt very….not sure what the word would be….heavy. An explosion of incredible ugliness solved the former problem. On my own, I was left with more time to ponder things like Natalie Goldberg’s book Long Quiet Highway. Yes, a person can change their life. Yes, a person can pursue a life of writing.

But still, I did nothing.

Then Blogcritics happened.

Well, let’s give this thing a go. Let’s get over the fear of the unknown. What the hell am I going to say about this music? Do I have the words? Hmmm…I just might. Keep trying. Read more books. Stephen King’s On Writing. Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird. All of it. More. More.

Now, to use another sort of cliché, I feel like I’ve got a freaking river running through me. It appears to be unstoppable.

Let’s just hope that I can swim.

From: Duke de Mondo
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

I think my own approach to the whole writing affair has been altered beyond all sense in the past year or so. Used to be, if I watched something, it got written about, 99% of the time. What occurred was that a lot of the time, I ended up with sorta amusing at best screeds that maybe took an hour to write an then, as Bennett says, I’d spend the next week cringing at the bastards.

Nowadays that doesn’t happen anymore, and it’s the rogue 2% of stuff that gets written about. What I sorta need to be feelin like, is like I’m attackin’ the fuckin’ keyboard. A man needs enough caffeine in the system to be able to batter the thing ruthlessly, ’til at the end there’s fifteen pages of maniacal gibberish that I’ll leave aside for a time, a day maybe, an’ go back to, edit and the like. (If anyone’s actually read my damn stuff, it may seem odd that any such cutting and pasting occurs, but it does, yes.)

As Sir Fleming muses, there’s a need to be entertaining there. I like to assume that even if folks have never heard of the record or flick in question, or, just as likely, have heard of it, but couldn’t give a half-drunk yak’s wank, they still dig the waxing in question regarding it all.

But in terms of the mechanics of the procedure, I think I need to be in some sorta mindset, usually one frazzled to fuck on caffeine an’ lust, and yeah, I need to feel like I’m carvin’ the damn words outta rock. If I find that I’m writin’ an’ every line has me pausing for a while to think of a word or something, I just quit an’ come back later, when the head is suitably lit.

The result of all this is that I, at least, dig the stuff that gets finished, even if the hard-drive creaks an’ groans an’ rattles with the weight of all the stuff on there that never got past the fifth paragraph.

And it tends to mean less output, but personally I think the output is improved, so I’m willin’ to put up with that.

In times of severe writers’ block or whatever, I need to go off with a book I know will send the psyche reelin’, usually some Hunter S Thompson or maybe Naked Lunch, something in which the language flies off the page like rifle fire, ’til half a fella’s head’s on the walls behind him.

You can’t read something like Naked Lunch and not be inspired to fling words ‘cross screen, or notepad, or whatever.

That’s another thing, actually. I find it impossible to write on anything but a computer, and it has to be my computer, also. In this back room wi’ the vibes on, and then off, and then on, ’cause sometimes a great lyric (at the minute, for example, Adam Green talking bout ‘My asshole in my mouth’) smacks a man upside the chops an he can’t concentrate.

That’s as much as I know about the whys and wherefores of the procedure, least with regards my own scrawls.

From: Greg Smyth
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

Okay, here’s my take on the whole thing…

Why do I write? There’s two answers to this I think, or at least two questions hidden in that rather innocuous query.

1. Why do we write?
2. Why does Greg write?

The first kinda informs the second so we’ll start there.

Why do we as a species, people whatever write? Because we always have. It starts pictorially with the cavemen, gets vocal sometime later, and then once a proper written language is available people start recording and so it goes. It’s not a giant leap from Dave Caveman drawing a picture of how he killed the wild boar everyone’s eating on the wall of a cave, to “the one that got away”. Add that embellishment at every level and, eventually, I’m guessing you get fiction as is. Then you eventually progress to folk tales that get (again, eventually) written down.

We write/create because it’s part of our evolution as a species and because it’s a uniquely human thing to do. We’ve got a very large brain, why not make some shit up?

Why does Greg write? The potted history goes thus: As a kid, I used to make up stories for something to do, and because, as a kid, it’s fun to make stuff up. Keeping a slightly childish approach to life helps in that respect. About the same time I got my first part-time job during my sixth year (age 16/17) I got seriously into music. Aided by the fact that a pretty decent indie record store opened up and a newly discovered love for the NME and late-night radio, I started writing some reviews.

This continues, via being the music editor of the student newspaper, throughout university. I narrowly miss out on writing for the NME though washing the car while the editor rings my mobile. Nothing happens. Currently, I’m doing some writing in an unpaid capacity for a couple of small but really rather good magazines.

Anyway, I don’t know where the creative process happens but for me I think it’s a case of letting your subconscious mind make all the connections over a (hopefully very short) period and then you sit down and write. Literally, just write it. There’s very little actual skill involved. The skill is in judicious editing and the post-production.

I’m forever reading other people’s thoughts on being a proper writer and really it boils down to that. It’s discipline, rather than skill in many cases. If you want to be a writer, then write. If you want to write a novel, then write every day. Simple.

You may, after three months, have a big pile of steaming shit and that’s when the hard work and the real art begins. Bring on The Red Pen Of Death. Cut it to bits and then write some more. Repeat until the work is Finished.

I guess it’s much easier being a critic of some description because you’re never really faced with a blank page. You’ve always got The Product to fall back on like a crutch. Being a critic is about stringing together a bunch of facts, opinions and gossip into a small, neat package. The truth is, though, that the general audience would be just as happy, if not more so, with a picture of the thing and a score out of ten.

Most people couldn’t give a shit about your opinion. Your task is to make it enjoyable enough, whether the thing is good or bad, so that for a second they do.

From: DJ Radiohead
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

Why the fuck do I do what I do? Like I haven’t been asked that 1,000 fucking times. I am more than a little intimidated having seen some of the fine attempts by the rest of this criminal element to grapple with the question but I will take my stab at it…

Expression has been a part of my personality from the word go. I have never been one to shut up – at least this is what I have come to understand from my I have always had something to say (or thought I did). I almost never leave a conversation feeling as though I said everything I intended to say. I never thought of myself as much of a writer until my mom or teachers mentioned it – same thing with public speaking/speeches/etc. I guess I was blessed with at least a nominal ability and certainly a keen interest in such things. It’s in the DNA.

Those of you who listened to Episode 6 of mine own podcast you know I have a compulsion to talk about the music that moves me (fucking self-promotion… you bet your ass). I can’t explain it. It’s just… to quote John Lee Hooker, “Let that boy boogie woogie cuz it’s in him and it’s got to come out.”

My college years were some of the best for me in this regard. I got a gig writing and editing for the campus newspaper. I even started a ‘Music’ section while I was there. I was supposed to be the news editor. I was more interested in music than I was in stories about parking spaces and mascots. It was also in college I got my first taste of big-boy, professional radio. I started out as a DJ. I also got a chance to be a cub reporter and news anchor just after college. I even hosted a 30-minute business talk show. That was more an acting job than a radio job because what I knew (know) about business could not fill a thimble.

A few months after college I took the job I have now. It is a great job and it keeps the lights on and food on the table. There is just not a whole lot of creative expression. In fact, there is no creative expression. I took the money. I sold out. I chose a life with the wife to whom I am married over the pursuit of a career in my field. Do I regret that decision? Not for a fucking minute. I did not think of it as a choice between two competing interests when I decided upon my current path. It just sort of worked out that way. I missed being in a situation where my talents and passions were engaged but if I had it to do all over again I would.

Those first few years were filled with some listless days. I had no outlet for my creative juices. The passion in me slowly diminished. I became surly- OK, surlier. I dabbled around with creating my own website. I got discouraged when I realized no one was traveling to it but me. I quit writing because I felt like I already spent enough time each day talking to myself. It was not worth the effort. I do not know if I will ever find a gig paying me to do what I love. That is no longer the most important thing to me. The internet, my website, Blogcritics… they have given me an audience as well as the opportunity to be amused, inspired, and humbled by the talents of some other folks worldwide.

I realize this is bordering on embarrassing sentimentality but allow me a quick aside: Driving home from work the other night I was chuckling about some of the pieces I read here on BC (in this case in particular something by our own beloved The Duke). As I was pulling into my apartment’s parking space I had a vision: The Duke, at age 90, sitting in the corner of some nursing home staring at nothing with an unlit cigarette dangling ‘tween his fingers muttering bitterly about some cunt named Fay-hee or Fah-hee.

Keep this in mind; I have never seen The Duke. I could not pick him out of a lineup (not that The Duke has ever had cause to be in such a thing). I laughed until at least the time it took me to walk to my front door with that image- just one part of what Blogcritics has given me. I am now a part of ‘The Brotherhood of the Bozo.’

As to where I do what I do… I have been a bit of a vagabond in that regard. I had not had a single place for to do my mad science. That changed this week when the seeds of this discussion were sewn. I heard Saleski, Berlin, et all discussing their creative spaces. It occurred to me I had no such place (some who have read my work and heard my podcast would argue I have no creativity, either)- just wherever. If I could find five undistracted minutes I would work anywhere. That is… until Monday.

I talked the ever-patient wife into buying me a small desk and re-arranging our bedroom to accommodate said desk. Last night, I penned part of my contribution to the upcoming Springsteen discussion to be featured in Mark’s Morning Listen column. I now have an actual workspace.

I am tickled shitless.

PS: Don’t worry Monsignor Berlin and Mr. Saleski: I did not tell the wife the desk was your idea.

From: Mat Brewster
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

I am first, and foremost a consumer of artistic endeavors. My home is literally littered with media of the things I love. Books, DVDs, CDs, and tapes are strewn from here to Valhalla, otherwise known as my bathroom. Every free moment that I have, I spend reading, listening, and watching nearly every kind of art form.

I try to be a critical, educated consumer. I am eternally interested in the craft behind the creation. I am fascinated by the way Martin Scorsese creates a coke-addled odyssey at the end of Goodfellas by means of rock music and fast editing. I am in awe at the means by which John Steinbeck can both fill me with utter disgust over the depravity of man, and swell my heart at the eternal spirit of mankind; all within the same page of The Grapes of Wrath. Just why is it that I weep every time I hear Johnny Cash sing “Long Black Veil”?

The ability of the artist to move those who partake in their art, in some fundamental way is nothing short of awesome.

As both a consumer of these endeavors and a student of the craft, I am often desirous to become creator.

Why do I write? In short, because it is the most accessible of the arts for me. I neither have the cash, the crew, or the equipment to make movies. I do not have either the ability or the instruments to play music. I can’t draw for crap. Yet I have a grasp of the language, and the only instruments needed to write are pen and pad.

I take some amount of pride in my ability to tell a tale. I have a small amount of gift in which to take something mundane and ordinary and turn it into a grand tale of action and humor. Though I must admit, I have struggled to transform an oral story into the written page. The gesture of the hand, and the intonation of the voice are difficult to transform into words on the page.

I must confess, I had all but given up on ever writing something worth the time of a bored gnat. The ideas were all there, but the stamina to put them down and -by gawd- edit them, never seemed to happen.

Then there was blog. My wife and I did a ten-month stint in Strasbourg, France this past year. This was at the height of the blog craze. Politicians were set spinning by bloggers worldwide. I decided to journal the experience of my time abroad through blog. At first, it was a diary, then I began inviting friends and family to read and see just what I was up to. In time, the newness of my days wore thin. No longer was the daily trip to the boulangerie for a baguette of any interest to anyone but the breadmaker.

The blog then became a place to tell stories, review movies, and discuss the book I had just read. Unknowingly, I had become a writer. Do I have dreams of becoming the next Hemmingway, Faulkner, or Steinbeck? Do I dare to believe that my little place in the blogosphere will somehow become the mecca for all great artists? No, I do not dare.

Yet, in writing, I share a little piece of myself. I become a member of a community. And in the end, that is all I need.

From: Eric Berlin
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Creativity

Looks like I’m riding in on the Hot Topic caboose once again. Great topic!

Drawing back to the good Sir Fleming’s definition of creativity, I’d actually broaden it out substantially. It always pains me to hear people say, “I’m not a creative person.” To me, that’s the same thing as I’m saying, “I’m not a passionate person – there’s nothing in the world I care about.” Sure, writing and painting and acting is “creative,” but I think any act of creating is creative.

Forming new ideas about the world, coming up with an inventive solution to a problem, figuring out the right words to form so that your date, instead of throwing Chablis in your face, laughs ever so slyly and runs her well-maintained Lee press-ons through her hair. You know; you get the picture.

In terms of my own creative process, I really subscribe to many of the ideas put forth in the brilliant On Writing, by Stephen King. (And anyone who tries to tell me that that cat ain’t creative will have one bearded mystic figure in the West to contend with, I dare say.) Ideas come from nowhere, Mr. King states, but you have to constantly and forever more be open to receiving the transmissions from the cosmos and harnessing them, wrassling them to the Junior High foam mat with heroic will and concentration, even though everything smells like old tuna and your one-piece is shifting into areas highly uncomfortable and unsettling. That’s the time to really shine, in my experience.

I also like Sir Fleming’s take on entertainment. I grew up hanging about with a bunch of guys in Long Island, New York who were (and are, I’m honored to still keep in touch with every and one) smart as hell and absolutely hell-bent on making you piss your panties with laughter at a given opportunity. Conversations were zing-fests, cut-ins and cut-overs other shouted commentary and build-upons and rising inflections and chord-shifts like songs, epic songs, kicking into high gear. Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying”, where death was laughter, if you can dig.

One day, whilst in the throes of my early 20s let’s say, I tentatively and gently placed the label of writer upon my chest, the heaviest and most serious and intensely visionary thing one can do after working all day stuffing envelopes and wishing to The Lords that you were high even though you weren’t into pot. Writers, the thought went, are serious folk. They write about serious shit, blow people’s minds and change the world and are associated with exotic symbology that eventually ends up on vintage tee-shirts that the hipster kids wear while buying far-too-expensive cocktails at the trendy-trashy lounge.

So that was going to be me, Serious Writer, with gravitas pouring out of me as though out of Kiefer Sutherland’s pretentious lips. And a ten-year quest ensued, fraught with peril and mountainous expeditions and anxiety-extra shot sessions at local coffee shops where I sweated profusely in an agony of frustration over: talk to the girl with the glasses and pretty eyes reading the fancy-looking book or write one lousy more page no one’s ever going to read, let alone care about, one or the other, man!

Now, wizened and sun-washed from years of California walks under palm trees with trusty if mischievous dog Chelsea at my side, I’m a little bit more cool with the whole deal. My creative path has taught me that I like to make the other kids laugh, and if I can’t do that at the least I aspire to be clever.

Writing is an intensely egotistic activity. Take seconds from your life to read combinations of letters and symbols and spaces that I have put in front of you. Trust me to keep you interested and things place right order in the, eh? I do it in the neurotic hope that people will trail the word path and come to the conclusion and sigh softly and take that final and best sip of that latte and say: “Wow, that was really clever.”

Pat me on my head – that’s all I can ask of the world.

From the fevered minds of a loose grouping of self-appointed cultural commentators comes a weekly side-swipe at the issues of the day, providing a pithy and often heated debate on pop culture as they see it. Welcome, friends, to The Hot Topic…

This week’s burning issue: Do You Buy Into The Demise Of Cooking?

From: Bennett Dawson
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Microwave Foodstuff

In an age when it looks like microwavable foods are taking over the gastro tracts of the world, I wonder if I’m part of a vanishing breed that still cooks food the old-fashioned way.

Not owning a microwave, it seems to me that these little radiation ovens have created their own captive market. A market based on reducing questionable concoctions into a sterile and banal fuel for the ever-growing population of lazy lard-asses, and it makes me fear for the future of the classic, home-cooked meal.

My local supermarket is devoting increasing shelf space to brightly colored packages of food designed to be cooked only in a microwave. The cooking instructions assume that you will use a microwave, and there are no directions for using a conventional heat source. In fact, many of them have the words “Oven or stove top – not recommended”.

And I’m not talking about regular frozen vegetables here, ’cause I see nothing wrong with frozen corn or beans as a side dish if fresh veggies are out of season, and admit to being in love with Green Giant frozen Creamed Spinach. I can even go for the frozen oriental meals (just add meat) that come with an icy chunk of mystery sauce. The veggies end up soggy and bland, but sometimes the trade-off (freshness for convenience) works out. I have to admit that the pictures on the boxes are first-class, and make the food look so damn tasty! This is a marketing lie, as it never comes out looking like the picture.

But it’s the new generation of microwavable main courses that gross me out, the pre-cooked foods sitting on the shelves of the supermarket at room temperature. Some of these vacuum-wrapped entrees have chunks of chicken or beef in ’em, am I the only one who finds this disturbing?

Meat – frozen or refrigerated, okay? Room temp for weeks or months in a plastic envelope? C’mon folks, this is a crime against nature! How is this different from a can of soup, you ask? From a purely sterile point of view, it’s probably no different, but my mind rebels, knowing that a CAN is safer, more secure, and physically impenetrable. How DO they sterilize those plastic bags ‘o food?

Whenever I see a box with a plastic envelope containing “Chicken Goulash” or “Jasmine Rice With Raisins” sitting on an unrefrigerated shelf, it gives me the creeps. Check out the shelves, Rice-a-roni has a new line of pre-cooked rice in little plastic envelopes, as if cooking up Rice-a-roni was a big chore in the first place!

The new development to all of this is that the CAN is on the way out too. Yesterday I saw little boxes of soup. The same package that they use for little kids “sippy juices” is now the package for tomato soup, beef soup, and Hungarian goulash… In this room temp packaging revolution, what’s next?

I was raised in a pretty healthy food environment. Microwaves hadn’t been invented yet, and my mom was a health food nut when that sort of thing was just getting started. Raw milk, unstabilized peanut butter, real bread, and collard greens… Wonder Bread never graced the shelves in my childhood home. Instead, we had handfuls of vitamins to choke down, liver and onions, yogurt and granola. Ya know? It’s a long road from that to “just microwave and enjoy!” This said, I have enjoyed my share of microwave burritos, to the ultimate distress of my lower GI tract.

If I owned a microwave, would I feel any different? Would I trust in “the rays” to make everything safe and harmless? Would I get used to bread that felt like shoe leather in my mouth? Sauces that separate and look wrong? Meats that show no evidence of being cooked?

My ultra-healthy brother claims that microwaves remove everything that is good, all sustenance, any shred of valuable nourishment contained in food. I’m not sure if I’d go that far, but I am deeply suspicious of the changes that take place in food that gets “waved”.

How about you? Do you cook from scratch? Do you use your oven to prepare food? Do you buy your meat, vegetables, and sauces separately and put them together yourself? Do you cook for creative satisfaction? Do you cook for the flavors?

Or do you swear by the Microwave? Your culinary requirements satisfied by plastifoil envelopes of pizza pockets, eggrolls, chicken nuggets, and popcorn? Should I think about the time you’re saving, or the rising rates of colon cancer?

From: Greg Smyth
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Microwave Foodstuff

You seem to be making two main points:

1. Microwaving food is potentially unsafe

2. Convenience foods probably aren’t terribly healthy.

As for the first, the anti-microwave stance seems, to my scientific eye, to be a load of superstitious radiation bunkum. Sure, the way microwave ovens work isn’t perhaps conventionally ‘natural’ but, to my knowledge, exactly no studies comparing the effects of microwaved food against otherly-heated food in rats, humans whatever. Maybe there have been and I’ve missed them, but I’m sure that if they’d come out in the negative the popular press couldn’t have waited to run another pseudo-scientific health scare-story.

Until someone proves that a problem exists, I’m cynical (although, admittedly, the testing should have been carried out before microwaves were introduced to our daily lives). As to whether they ruin most of the nutrients in food during the cooking process, my recollection is that it does, and more so than other methods too. However, “is it safe?” and “is it healthy?” are two totally separate, though both important, issues.

Point two: are microwave meals, or any other types of convenience food, healthy? Hell, no! Even the so-called healthy options have been processed to within an inch of their lives and, I’d imagine, any nutritional content remaining is negligible. Obviously, what would be preferable is if everyone cooked low-fat, low-salt fresh food every day. But, in today’s increasingly stressed, no-time lifestyle, that’s unlikely.

Personally, I’d love to spend time making proper meals and, hell, I enjoy cooking. But, by the time I get home from the day job, cook a lovely meal from scratch, and then do the washing up, exactly when do I get to have a life outside of work and eating?!

There’s another advantage. of sorts, to ready meals, and one that might be of interest to the tubbier amongst us: portion sizing. Put simply, a ready meal is an easy way of taking in a known amount of calories, fat, salt, whatever, enabling the slower amongst us to make slightly more educated and sensible choices. That, to me, is no bad thing.

From: Mark Saleski
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Microwave Foodstuff

Hmmm, well… I’m not sure that the microwave is the culprit.

I say that only because it wasn’t, food historically-speakin’, the first step toward ‘convenience’.

TV dinners were probably the first….followed by all sortsa stuff that you could boil in a plastic pouch.

That said, there are all sorts of modern factors that push hard (maybe ‘relentlessly’ is a better word) against real food. this one is the worst:

The Demise of the Family Dinner

Kids have amazing and maddeningly complex schedules these days. A soccer practice here, a drama club rehearsal there. Couple that with the fact that both parents often hold full-time jobs outside of the home and the whole reason for owning a dining room table goes away. It’s kinda sad, really…though I don’t have any answers there.

So if kids never get into the habit of sitting down to dinner with the family, they’re not likely to value such activities later in life. Why go to the ‘hassle’ of buying flour tortillas, beef, cheese, lettuce, and whatever when you can just pop a frozen burrito into the microwave?

Me, I sure as hell cook from scratch…with as much locally grown food as I can get my hands on. But of course, I feel attached to the whole “slow food” movement in part because the family dinner was a big part of my little kid-dom and the social aspects of hanging around in the kitchen are very important to me.

Then there’s the evil of ‘corporate food’ (Chili’s, TGI Fridays, Applebees, McDonalds, KFC…blah blah blah)…lets not even go there today!

From: Mat Brewster
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Microwave Foodstuff

I’ll take my cue from Greg and divide this into two sections covering those points.

Personally, I love my microwave. The convenience far outweighs any negative aspects. Now, I’m not one of those who eats every meal via the microwave guys. In fact, I don’t really do much cooking with it at all. In a pinch, it heats the water for a cup of tea in the morning. It gives a little defrost to the meats coming out of the freezer. I prefer my soups to be cooked on the stove, but during a fast lunch break, the microwave does it just fine. And then there’s leftovers. I’ve never met a leftover that didn’t love a microwave.

I’ve heard the rumors that microwaves kill all the nutrients out of a meal, but I’ve never seen any real documentation on this. Not that I’ve really looked that hard for it. But given the choice between a microwaved bowl of minestrone that’s been zapped of all its healthiness and a Big Mac, I’ll take the minestrone every time.

As far as cooking goes, I’ve got about four good meals. Some people say they really love to cook, but I’m not one of those people. It’s just too much work. Luckily I married a lovely lady who enjoys the art of cooking. She’s got shelves full of cookbooks and enjoys spending an evening reading them and coming up with something new. I’m kind of a finicky eater, so I don’t always love the zucchini sandwiches, but I’ll suffer through a few not-so-tasty meals for the succulent surprises.

We’re slowly trying to get more natural and organic. It helps that the in-laws have a nice-sized garden and often visit with bountiful bundles of fresh vegetables. They also order in bulk from an organic co-op and fill our pantry with the overflow. The local farmer’s market also provides some healthy, tasty treats. Man, we still eat our share of convenience foods, but it’s nice to be able to eat something that isn’t so full of preservatives it will outlast the cock roaches after a nuclear disaster.

All of this reminds me of something my Belgium friend Daniel used to say.

“In America, they eat to live, in France, they live to eat.”

And though it is a broad generalization, it does sum up a large chunk of our cultural concept of eating. We’re so busy with EVERYTHING these days. We work long hours, the kids have soccer, scouts, chess club, fencing, always demanding to be driven to practice, and cheered on, and on and on, and on. Many a day I get home and the last thing I want to do is spend an hour cooking a meal, only having to clean up afterward. It is so much easier to zap a frozen pizza. It even comes in its own little throwaway plate.

Even our restaurants are convenient and fast. And I’m not just talking about Mcdonald’s here. Even your nicer, sit-down restaurants get you in and out quick. The food is pre-prepared, the cook is ready to fix the plate in under 15 minutes, and the waiters move quickly. On your lunch break? Try the Speedy Gonzoles. Catching a movie afterward? You can eat and have the check in half an hour.

Everything is prepackaged, ready to serve. They mixed the jelly with the peanut butter. Heck, they’ve even got premade PB&Js now. Soup in a bowl, frozen pizza, hamburgers, and nachos ready to go. Hit the drive-through, eat while you drive. I’m waiting for new meals in an IV. Inject straight into your stomach. Saves all that chewing and swallowing. I don’t know, it all seems a little crazy. I mean I understand how it happens. We are busy, and the food is convenient. I’m part of it. I’d like to say I cook all of my meals. I’d like to say my pantry is filled with fresh, organic foods straight from the local farmer. But that stuff aint the truth. I’m working towards that goal, but I’m a long way away.

So, do I buy into the demise of cooking? No, there are some lovely, wonderful chefs out there. Good people, cooking marvelous foods for their people. It’s more like a little secret society these days. But they are out there. Like everything else in this world, the meals can get better, but it’s gonna take work.

From: Eric Berlin
To: The Hot Topic Team
Re: Microwave Foodstuff

I’m part of the first generation that took for granted the convenience of the microwave. Whereas my parents grew up in the age of the icebox and stovetop, the “nuker” was an omnipresent fixture of my early years and remains a vital cog in my daily life.

And I fully admit that I’m addicted to the thing. From heating water in the morning for the first of two mugs of instant coffee to late-night heating of whatever happens to be lying around the old refrigerator, it’s hard for me to imagine life without easy access to heating stuff up.

My current addiction is Lean Pockets – as brilliantly over-processed and under-priced a food item as one is likely to find (someone should do a study, I say!) – particularly the Pepperoni Pizza variety. Here’s how I break it down: three minutes for the two luscious pockets (inside their cozy “protective sleeves”), then the frozen mixed vegetables for 1:45 (if I had two microwaves I could double productivity at this stage). Combine the two items and add marinara sauce (note: the sauce comes straight from the fridge, which provides a reaction in which the sauce warms up and the aforementioned and partially completed entrée cools down.

Perfection – a Blue Plate Special of the Gods, served to man for a reasonable fee on the quick.

But seriously, the processed food thing is over-the-top and a serious problem in gluttonous, convenience-addicted America. As you can see, I’m a card-carrying member of the club.

But to address your disgust of room temperature foods, Bennett: are you sure that these are items meant for the hallowed halls of microwavity? There are a bunch of products put out for campers and outdoorsy types nowadays that only require heated water. You boil water, throw it in the bag, mix up and seal, and a few minutes later you have yourself quite a tasty little dish. Seriously, I’ve had curry and stews whilst camping that is far better, dare I say, than my lovely Lean Pockets could ever aspire to.

The bloggers have had their say, now it’s your chance to chip in!

Do you cook your own food, or do you ‘wave’ your tasty morsels? Is what you eat important to you, or would you prefer to take a pill and get on with the party? Do you care? Or perhaps more importantly, could you care less?