This past December, I conducted a series of interviews with people about the value of sharing information and resources in their respective fields of work. The interviews were edited into a podcast for GOOD entitled “We Like to Share” that was made available to people who attended the GOOD December series of events in Los Angeles. Last week, GOOD began posting CC BY-licensed text versions of the interviews on its website and will roll out one a week over the next few months. The first interview is with Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, who was the online strategist for the Barack Obama campaign. Check back at “We Like to Share” each Thursday (starting tomorrow) to read interviews with iconic sharers like Jimmy Wales, Chris Dibona, Frances Pinter, Jesse Dylan, and Curt Smith.

In honor of the 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade on Saturday I’d like to submit Reverend Billy’s Free Speech TV Series, “The Last Televangelist”, for review. Specifically, our episode on Coney Island and the Mermaid Parade entitled “Freak-a-lujah!”

We have five half-hour episodes of the series online at the Church of Life After Shopping website: http://www.revbilly.com/work/the-last-televangelist

Here’s the Freak-a-lujah episode: http://www.revbilly.com/work/the-last-televangelist/freak-a-lujah

“The Last Televangelist” is like “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” meets “The 700 Hundred Club” meets “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. You will be changed forever. Viewing it in your web browser will clear your Bookmarks of consumer websites. Ok probably not, but we’ve heard stories! I hope you folks like it, we love Alterati and appreciate all your support. -Michael O’Neil www.revbilly.com

Here’s a few links to audio collections I’m building from panels, talks and conferences I’m recording at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. I have over 30 hours of this type of material recorded so far and will be releasing it all over time on pod.lafilmfest.com.
Enjoy!

• Filmmaker Lunch Talks  Los Angeles Times Entertainment Writer John Horn talks to various producers, writers, editors and directors about their filmmaking experiences.
• Finance Conference Various industry experts and filmmakers talk about the “art of finance” for the independent filmmaker in the current economic climate.

Joseph Matheny discussed the state of independent film and ponders some solutions to the “Internet dilemma” with his friend and partner, Michael Mailer. Also, a new episode of “In Your Ear” with Psuke. Recorded 2 weeks ago, so JM could podcast the LAFF this week.

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Michael Mailer (born 1964) is a film producer and the oldest son of writer Norman Mailer. He has produced over 17 films. He has one sister Kate and two brothers Matthew and Stephen an actor. He is the co-founder of Bigel/Mailer films. He is married to Sasha Lazard and they have one son Cyrus. (wikipedia)

• IMDB
• MMF
   The GSpot: Michael Mailer [43:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
  

A high school student pulled one over on the school administration and graduated before her work was discovered.

Sadly she’s been forced to pay for and apply stickers to the covers of all the remaining yearbooks, and, being the senior yearbook editor she’s probably feeling pretty fucking stupid… but I thought it was great, and suspect that the ongoing, and growing coverage this cover is getting is highlighting the power her prank has had in creating a viral story. So for that, I give her a thumb’s up.

Joseph Matheny reunites with an old friend from Chicago, Steve “Diet” Goedde. They talk about old times and Steve’s new release: Goedde Concerto with Robert Waechter. Also, an episode of In Your Ear.

Steve Diet Goedde was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and learned the basics of darkroom work and photography from his father, who was an amateur photographer. By the age of 13, Steve was obsessed with taking photographs and started educating himself about photographers that inspired him, most notably Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, and Diane Arbus.

He moved to Chicago in 1985 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he studied filmmaking and painting. He refused to study photography stating that he had already acquired his aesthetic and visual style.

In 1998, photography publisher Edition Stemmle published a collection of Steve’s Chicago work entitled “The Beauty of Fetish” detailing his fascination with such fetishistic fashion elements as latex, leather, and PVC. Later that same year, he moved to Los Angeles where he started a series of photographs which would later become “The Beauty of Fetish: Volume II” (2001), also from Edition Stemmle.

Slish Pix in 2005 released a career retrospective of his work on DVD entitled “Living Through Steve Diet Goedde”. In addition to the numerous animated photo galleries, the DVD featured interviews, commentary, and behind the scenes footage.

Steve Diet Goedde currently lives in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles.

 The GSpot: Steve "Diet" Goedde [61:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Richard is currently at work on The Gun Speaks; The Baader-Meinhof Gang at the Dawn of Terror.

http://www.baader-meinhof.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

http://www.richardhuffman.com/

What events or conditions in 1960’s Germany lead to the formation of the Red Army Faction?

There were a number of factor that directly and indirectly led to the RAF. An important factor was the massive upheaval going on in the German university system; in the space of just a few short years, you had a very rigid system where students quietly listened to their professor’s lecture to them in a god-like manner, to an environment where students in many university’s were voting on their professors, their grades etc. Basically students were becoming empowered as never before. Coupled with this was an extremely strong Marxist ideology that permeated the university system. Marx’s theories on Capitalism were accepted as fact, and the notion of a Revolution among the western societies was accepted as well. It wasn’t a matter of IF there was to a revolution, but WHEN there was going to be a revolution and who would lead it.

Events in Germany politics also pushed many young leftists away from the mainstream. In 1966 there was no clear majority party winners in the federal elections, so the two main parties chose to form a super-majority government comprising about 95% of the elected officials. This “grand coalition” convinced many young left-wing Germans that the supposed left-wing party (the SPD), did not have their best interests in mind.

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The book @fenris23 and @zenwerewolf wrote and published is now on amazon - since it’s also freely available online via the snazzy image on the left sidebar over there, we only ask that, if you’ve enjoyed it or found it useful, that you let other amazon readers know by fleshing out the comments.

Life, Inc, by Douglas Rushkoff is one of those books that are timely, timeless and extremely important for understanding how Things Work Around Here.  Which is *not* to say that everyone will get it. Personally, I think Amazon ought to bundle this book together with Making Money by Terry Prachett as an aid to Getting It…but alas, there will still be those who do not, or will not get it.  For the rest of us - those willing, whether out of desperation or natural inclination - to look beyond our shared social hallucinations, Life, Inc is an extremely useful book.

It’s not always the easiest book to get through, mind you.   It gives  a step-by-step  history of the monopolic (it’s a word now, dammit) rise of  ‘centralized currency’,  money dispensed by a single organization (in the case of the US it’s the Federal Reserve), and the corporations that rose alongside it in a sort of feedback loop from hell.  The tone is at times polemical, and more than once he uses the term ‘abstract’ as a dirty word.  Being the sort of person who believes that life is far more complex than it’s generally given credit for, and also believes that there’s rarely (not never, but rarely) such a thing as an unmitigated evil I took exception to this. Abstractions can be incredibly useful, as anyone who works in math and physics will tell you - and not everything that happened in the wake of the rise of corporations and centralized currency was, or is, bad.  Whether those consequences were intended is irrelevant IMNSHO.

Before anyone comes down on me like a ton of bricks, let me say that I am in no way saying that corporations are “good.”  Corporations are not “good”, and often even when started with the best of intentions they end up doing evil things in the name of their bottom line and the interest of their shareholders - something which Rushkoff discusses in the book.  But they an be extremely useful.

By the end of the book, after he’s as sure as anyone can be that he’s gotten you to put on the damn glasses, Rushkoff admits to this is a roundabout sort of way.  He also admits that we probably cannot, nor should want to, get rid of corporations or centralized currency altogether. Corporations and centralized currencies both are tools, no more evil than a hammer or fire.  Still, it is also true that both of these tools  have run amok - like a cooking fire left unattended that is burning down the house it was set in and is now moving on to consume the house next door, and may quite possibly take out the whole town.

What do we do about that?  Rushkoff’s answer is what bookends Life, Inc - the lesson of the past (in the Middle Ages) opens the book, and how it might be applied now is what closes the book.  It is the idea of ‘complementary currency’.  Complementary currency is community created currency that lets locals create their own “value” in a way that is not-so-subject to the manipulation and disaster that we are witnessing now (and in the dotcom bust, and the Great Depression, and the Real Estate collapse that halted the Japanese economic conquest of the world, etc).  It is called ‘complementary’ because it is meant to work alongside centralized currency, not replace it.  It is a huge, fascinating and often misunderstood concept and I could go on and on about it…but really, that’s what Life, Inc is for.

So, read the book…excerpts are being posted on BoingBoing and on Rushkoff’s blog if you want a taste before you make the plunge.  Rushkoff’s website also includes forums for discussion, including discussions of practical applicatons or implemetations of the lessons of Life, Inc.