NEWSPEAK Blog

Dear The Colorado Springs

Hello everybody. I had intended to blog a greeting from New York sooner, but have enjoyed not blogging so much that it got away from me. Wanted to say hello and to send update for the kind folks who've emailed wondering what happened to us.

First wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about EJ. I didn't know Jayson, but very sad and my condolences to all. He was a great and amazing person in the bike community.

Marina and Ursen and I are doing well. It was an incredibly rocky adjustment for the first couple months, but I'm settled in now at WNYC (HERE is one of the episodes of the show I help produce). Marina just got a job at The Whitney Museum working on a two-year archival project involving Edward Hopper's works on paper. Ursen has been in Y camp all summer and starts school, if all goes according to luck (the public school system is as impenentrable and difficult to navigate as you can imagine it being), at a little red school house in Park Slope. We seem to spend a lot of our free time doing free things in the neighborhood. The Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn Library and Prospect Park, where we've had the pleasure of hearing everyone from Phillip Glass to Deerhoof and Bob Dylan, are just a few blocks from our apartment. Our apartment is more or less a polished turd they managed to pass as a "renovation" in the Crown Heights neighborhood with the usual craplords. It didn't have a toilet the day we moved in, which just so happened to be the hottest day of the year with a billion percent humidity, but rent's cheap and location's great as are the neighbors and neighborhood kids. On top of that, it hasn't really gotten above 85 degrees for over a month, though I'm sure we'll see another heat wave here at the end of August. Here are some pictures of things courtesy of Marina's blog:

Out in front of our building:

Here's the view out our kitchen window:

And here's a street meat cart that we watched explode on the Lower East Side about a month ago:

It appears that I will be back in Colorado Springs in late April of 2009 to read poems with the great Ron Padgett at Colorado College. Look forward to seeing you then.

All best, Noel Black

A big long rant on music.

I just finished up a pretty solid draft of the article I'm submitting for the August issue. As you know, the issue's theme is "rock 'n' roll." I've spent the past week or two talking to bands, managers, and fans about the music scene in town and why it sucks so viciously. I've met a lot of cool folk and seen a couple bitchin' shows.

I'm terribly exhausted from running, driving, and biking all over town to get interviews done and party with all of you sons of bitches. I've had a terrific time doing it, and I've had a lot of really good conversations. And, as you might have guessed if you've talked to me recently, I'm completely exasperated.

Yes, this is probably going to be another too-long rant. I'm going to try not to give away the milk of my article for free, but I definitely have more to say than fits into the word count I was allotted. A lot more. Prepare yourself.

Imagine you're working on a project with a bunch of other people. Imagine it's a rather large project. The rational approach would be to identify the steps needed to complete it, delegate out who would be responsible for each element, and develop methods to deal with glitches and problems that arise along the way. In short, the group would have to come together to work for a common goal, with each individual element operating on its own, but collaborating together on certain things to make one complete and finished product.

I have described, to a point, the exact opposite of the Springs music scene. For every band that has a good idea, there is another band with the same good idea. None of these bands share these good ideas. The venues do their part to make things better, but so many of the bands that have the most at stake are doing almost nothing to help themselves.

Now, the bands I've talked to are made up of great people, and I've been glad to meet and talk to all of them. I hope to develop personal friendships with all of the people I've met. They're all friends with one another, too, and that's what makes it so frustrating: here are a bunch of people who get drunk together and hang out and see one another's shows, but nobody is talking about the things they need to be talking about.

Geoff Brent was exasperated about how little bands seem to promote their own shows. Bands that I talked to about ideas that other bands had mentioned to me had never thought about the things I was saying to them, or never talked to anyone else about them. It's all a great big "us against the world" clusterfuck out there and everyone seems content to bitch about it without actually taking steps to change it.

Can it be changed? I don't know. It's certainly beyond my capacity to do it on my own, but I'm trying. If it were my full-time job to get this shit to where it should be, maybe I could do more. At this point, all I can do is write my 3,000 words and hope that the ideas I put into people's heads lead to something.

Kenneth from Be Thou My Vision walked up to me after their show on Saturday and thanked me for talking with them about the things I did. He thanked me for giving them some really important insights. That makes me feel good, but is that enough? Will these bands start talking to one another about the things nobody wants to talk about?

Better yet, will these people realize they're all in it together and start making sacrifices for the greater good? If Band A is playing a show and Band B loves them and wants them to be successful, what's stopping Band B from promoting Band A? Not on an "invite our friends to this show" level, but on a "go out with fliers, handing them out to people and trying to drum up some interest" level. Imagine that sort of synergistic selfless support system for the success of the scene. Also, I am very proud of that last sentence.

I did 10 Minutes Max at the MAT and was interested to notice that the MAT had information and promotional materials for other galleries in the area in their coffee shop area. Here are people who are more-or-less advertising for their more-or-less competitors. And why? Because when people support local art, regardless of where it's being housed or displayed, the art community is better off.

I have a sticker on my laptop that says "art creates community." I'm sure you've all seen the one: bright red, and with logos from Smokebrush, Newspeak, Peak Radar, et al. It's true that art makes community: a shared appreciation of something--beautiful, controversial, grotesque, poignant, whatever--brings people together.

At the same time, community creates art. Not only that, but community creates business and community creates progress. The musicians and venue managers in town need to realize this and embrace it. They need to realize and genuinely work and sacrifice toward these ideas. Create a genuine musical community in town, creatively and financially, and work out from there. Talk about the business side of things. Talk about ways to work together to bring more people into shows and performances. Talk about ways to build a larger community of people that appreciate and support music in this town.

Maybe it's hopeless. I'm sure a lot of people will read this and come up with a million reasons why it can't and won't happen. It's true that there are a lot of inherent things about this town that get in the way, from location to politics to business trends. All I am saying is this: everything that can be done to make this town a little more cultural, a little more communal, and a little more united under the banner of furthering arts, culture, and the successful industry of such is worth at least giving the old college try, right?

This is a long rant about war and stuff.

It is no surprise to anyone reading this that someone would say we have a problem in this country. Quite a few problems, as it were. We've got problems as a people, across subcultures and races and religions and any other sort of classification one might assign to the lot of the American people.

Americans don't get angry about anything. We might get riled up and a little incensed but we don't really get balls-to-the-wall pissed off. There's a sort of defeatism and complacency in the American mindset. It's a “nothing I can do” attitude, a sense of helplessness that has turned into subsumed frustration and rampant escapism.

The pace of the world is too fast. The work we have to do is too vast in volume. We move and move and move and the status quo becomes more and more intense, more and more demanding. 40 hours a week of work isn't enough to keep moving upwards. Overtime is the new standard. We keep letting this happen to us and we don't fight back.

So we drink a lot, we go see overpriced and usually terrible movies, we buy new televisions to watch overwrought and usually terrible television programs, we do lots of drugs and sleep around and basically do anything we can find that's mindless or mind-altering so we can get the hell out of the wretchedness of the pressure that is put on us to succeed financially. This is young people, this is old people, this is poor people trying to become less poor and rich people trying to get more rich. We keep letting this happen to us and we don't fight back.

Last night I went to the Iraq Veterans Against the War meeting and met a lot of very pissed off people. People who are friendly, who smile and laugh and shake your hand warmly and look you in the eye and say “thank you for coming, thank you for talking.” They are very angry people.

I am a very angry person. I smile and laugh and will look you in the eye and shake your hand warmly and say “it is nice to be here, thank you for having me.” I am as guilty as anyone else of not being angry enough. We're fighting a war for pretty much no reason at this point and even angry people aren't angry enough.

The biggest part of any movement is the numbers it brings. It must have good leaders, charismatic people who lead the charge and keep things organized. It must have a devoted and determined following that will genuinely and truly fight for the things they believe in. Most of all, however, a movement needs numbers.

Colorado Springs is a town of hundreds of thousands of people. Not all of them are W-bumper-sticker-sporting, NASCAR-loving, “God hates fags” folk. There are thousands and thousands of people who are good and fucking angry about the way our country has gone these past 7 some-odd years. So why is it that a group of pissed-off and scarred people who've seen the face of this bullshit war, seen the death and slaughter of the innocent and the guilty alike—why is it only their friends show up to talk about how fucking angry they are?

“Well, it was a Tuesday and I had to work early and I really don't know that there's anything I can really do so why bother?” Or maybe it's “I think they did what they signed up for and knew what they were getting into, and they're cowards for bitching about their jobs”? Or perhaps it's “there's so much to protest, there's so much wrong—where do you start? What can you really do when it's the government, the corporations, the military, and they're all against what you want to accomplish?”

You get off your ass and get active. You get pissed off and you grab all your pissed off friends and they grab all of their pissed off friends and next thing you know an art gallery with 20 people in it for a protest is an art gallery with 100 people in it, or 200 people spilling out into the street. Then all that anger and resentment draws onlookers, more people who say “fuck yes, I'm not alone. I can be a part of something that has meaning.”

I don't think Colorado Springs is going to get shut down anytime soon due to protests and marches. I think we could do it, though. We haven't. I'm as guilty as anyone else of all the things I started this off with. Maybe protesting was for the hippies. When did protesting become so cliche? Why is getting really outspoken about things you think are fucked up become a big joke? Maybe big marches and signs and civil disobedience are relics of a time we simply can't replicate.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Why aren't we even trying? Why aren't we getting angry? Why are we just taking it? I don't know. Maybe it's because we're so close to the elections, and things might just change on their own, and we can sit back and worry about the price of oil and zone out in front of our enormous televisions and wait for the world to turn itself right again. It seems like that might just be an option. Why bother with all the other work?

One of the speakers last night made a very good point—outside of military towns, it's damn near impossible to discern that we're a country at war in two different nations. Most towns in this country are almost completely unaffected by the war. Even in a city that is directly effected, for instance Colorado Springs, doesn't really have anything to say about it.

Why, why, why? That's all I can ask myself after last night. Why aren't we pissed off?

America or burst.

Why was ABC so popular in the late '80s and early '90s? It can't be due to the drippy, gooey, family-friendly fare that they produced (exempli grata: Full House), because that shit was awful, and if I see the girl who played Stephanie "How Rude" Tanner, I will punch her in the mouth. I posit this: it was in fact the show's theme songs that made the shows: themes bursting with such sanguinity, such open-eyed plucky charm, that people would tune in just to hear them and then forget to change the channel. Here're two examples:

From Perfect Strangers:

And from its spinoff, Family Matters:

Not only do these songs have absolutely nothing to do with the shows they precede, but they also have little in the way of subject matter altogether. Instead, they're aural Rorshachs, simple tropes to happiness—and yes, all of this is just an excuse to be able to post the theme song from Perfect Strangers.

An open letter.

In response to this article in today's 'Zette, we've received a curious missive. To wit:

Open Letter to Pam Zubek,

For many years, I have been masterminding a plot for a terrorist attack on your quaint city of Colorado Springs. Yet just as this plan was nearing its execution, it came to my attention that your police department had obtained anti-terrorist equipment from the Department of Homeland Security branch of your United States Government. This knowledge brought our conspiracy to a startling halt. In the days that followed, our confusion at this development was only compounded by the silence of your police department regarding exactly what equipment they had obtained. Our plans for attack were placed on indefinite hold as we speculated with frustration what fearsome new capabilities these might be, and how they might surely obstruct our elaborate plans for your destruction.

Thankfully, these days of inaction are now at an end, thanks to your article on the front page of today's Gazette. With one fell stroke, you destroyed their pathetic attempt at security through obscurity, by the clever means of recourse to publicly available information. Our fears of unknown anti-terrorist devices were recast into fears of specific devices and technologies: video surveillance equipment.

You may laugh, but do not underestimate the efficacy of such things. Our brothers faced many difficulties in their valiant attack on your Freedom on September the Eleventh, 2001 -- those of learning to pilot a wide-body, quad-engine jet aircraft, those of holding hundreds of fearless American citizens on their knees at the blunt point of a boxcutter knife -- none were so seemingly indomitable as those presented by airport security cameras. Yet our brothers persevered, recording the greatest victory yet for enemies everywhere of freedom and the American Way. As we shall triumph in our efforts, which are today reinstated in light of the information you were so foolish to let fall in our hands!

Now that we know the video surveillance of which you dispose in opposition to us, I can assure your that your city, or a significant portion thereof, shall soon lay a pile of smoldering ashes! All this thanks to your treachery against the obstinacy of your Chief of Police. I assure you these actions will not go unrewarded upon the event of your impending demise, by the reward of many virgins, such as those being indoctrinated under the sexual education programs of your foolish American educational system. Allahu Ackbar!

Signed,

A. Terrorist

Dear CC Students

Many of you already know this, but the fact that you have the right of way in the crosswalks doesn't mean that people are going to stop for you. Many people in the community ("townies" I believe you call them) don't necessarily drive past the college much or know that it's a tradition to stop for people inside the striped lines. Those who do know may also resent the fact that CC is the only place in the area (aside from Manitou) where people are expected to stop for pedestrians. They may see the fact that many of you barely look up from your cell phones and UGG boots to check for oncoming traffic as an example of how a disconnected community of generally overpriveleged young students who don't generally give a shit about the town they're living in generally expect the world to stop for them at a moment's notice. They may also simply not see you. Every single year, it seems, someone (this year two students have been hit) gets hit in the crosswalk or somewhere else because he/she is accustomed to walking across streets with a false sense of both safety and entitlement. It would behoove you, though you do, as I pointed out, have the right of way, to be, generally, more conscious of your surroundings in the larger and smaller sense, generally. Here's wishing a speedy recovery.

Sincerely, Newspeak.

Happy Ending

Dear Kenny Taylor:

Just wanted to let you know that I found a huge chunk of our stolen CDs that you sold to Independent Records this weekend. The big tipoff was the copy of Spurts that was signed "To Noel ... etc". Perhaps you didn't notice this because you were too busy showing them your driver's licence for them to enter into the computer that linked your name and driver's license number to the sale of our CDs?

Look forward to meeting you at the next MENSA meeting!

Cheers, Noel

Yet another unprinted letter to the Independent

To the Editor:

This is in response to Mr. Routon's scathing column on Dr. Michael
DeMarsche in the August 16, 2007 issue.  Aside from sounding like a

jilted lover when talking about De Marsche's imminent departure, Mr.

Routon also seems to have no confidence in the city of Colorado Springs

to be self-sufficient.  We should be grateful for the new ideas

DeMarsche introduced to this sleepy community - Chihuly, John Waters,

and Thomas Hoving, among others - plus a set of exemplary artistic
standards.  We should also thank him for doubling the presence of the

Fine Arts Center, giving us a second gallery downtown to show the work
of Colorado artists, and accompanying it with a delicious, innovative
restaurant. Finally, instead of whining that he has gone on to another

interesting project, we should congratulate him on tripling the Fine
Arts Center membership and finding over $28 million in this community
and creating a world-class museum for all citizens to enjoy. He has also
put into place a plan for the future and hired an excellent staff to
carry it out. The hard work is done; the man on the white horse has
moved on. Now it is our job as citizens of this beautiful city to insure
that De Marsche's legacy, however short his tenure, is continued with

the same enthusiasm, dedication and flair that he put into it.  We do
not have time to form any "scars", much less heal them.  We have a new
museum to celebrate and a truly visionary Fine Arts Center board of
trustees to support, and they are not going anywhere.

Sincerely,

Eve Tilley
President, Pikes Peak Arts Council

Dear Pete Freedman

You did a really good job with the local hip-hop story in today's Indy! A great counterbalance to the police department's fairly racist response to recent events. It's a well-reported and balanced, if not necessarily skeptical, look the very real subtext of violence that's part of the local hip-hop culture. Also much more comprehensive than the Gazette's shallow coverage of the matter a couple Sundays ago.

Sorry this has to be a back-handed compliment, but it seems like you're best suited to reporting these kinds of longer stories. Why not suggest to your boss that Matthew Schniper, who has much longer and deeper ties to the community, be named Arts & Entertainment Editor while you handle more stories like today's and focus on writing? I can't imagine they're paying you enough to bear the title and responsibilities anyway. (Maybe you should also suggest to your superiors that they join you at the Labor Unity Picnic at Turkey Creek Recreation Area at Ft. Carson that's advertised in the centerfold!)

Sincerely,

Noel Black

An Open Letter to the Indy: "Calling For Ethics One Final Time"

I'm posting this open letter to the Independent below, which also appears in the August print edition of Newspeak (on stands now), because Indy Publisher John Weiss has insinuated to us in an email that we publish subjournalistic falsehoods without giving people an opportunity to respond. Let me make this clear first: we've never claimed to be journalists or a "newspaper" per se in the traditional sense (we prefer "trashy entertainment tabloid") But unlike the Indy, we have, and have had since our inception, a blog with an open comments section where anyone can respond or write comments uncensored except in cases of defamation or libel. We've also never received a single phone call or letter from anyone at the Indy (or anywhere else, for that matter) seeking correction to these supposed falsehoods. However, we HAVE contacted the Indy directly via email several times in regards to the subject in the open letters below to no avail. We find this ironic considering John Weiss's comments and Ralph Routon's Side Dish, "The Last Bite" in which he complains about the Gazette refusing to answer his "legitimate questions." I mean, shit, we could be wrong. But if we are, then why won't they respond? Perhaps some of you, dear readers, will be inspired to ask the Indy yourselves: please send them a letter at letters@csindy.com and ask them!

Dear John Weiss (Publisher) Fran Zankowski (CEO). Ralph Routon (Editor), and Pete Freedman (A&E Editor),

We're sure you think you're quite clever—snagging Adam Leech from us after only a few installments of his column had run in Newspeak. As a matter of fact, we were excited about the possibility of you getting the column: Adam is a good friend of ours, has supported us since the Toilet Paper days and knows the music scene well, which is why we originally asked him to write the column after much bellyaching from him about the pathetic state of the music writing in the Indy and lack of any coverage in the Newspeak. We were excited when he graciously contacted us about his column running in the Indy because wider readership for his column might, after all, mean good things for all of us: good for Adam (more money and publicity than we can afford), good for the Indy (let's face it, your music section sucks—see our open letter to Pete Freedman below), good for the music scene (wider distribution), and good for Newspeak (some acknowledgment for us and the fact that we originally had the foresight to solicit the column and helped Adam shape it into something you wanted). We thought it might actually have the potentional to create some positive energy between our two publications. Unfortunately, you decided it was simply going to be a good thing for you—the Indy.

John, you all but ignored our emails for weeks and none of the rest of you even bothered to respond. When you did finally respond days before the column went to print, you claimed that we had no right to even ask for acknowledgement because Adam Leech wasn't an employee of Newspeak, but a freelancer and free agent. Fair enough. You got Adam, and in the process you not only eliminated any potential good will from us, you also butchered Adam's column, making him sound like a feckless dolt and a sellout, thus immediately discrediting his column in the Indy as a voice for the scene.

We're sure you saw it, on some level, as payback for all the nasty things we've said about you, but have you really forgotten all the years you spent nastily nipping at the heels of the Gazette with no acknowledgement? It's funny because you, Ralph Routon (former Gazette columnist, lest we forget), just this past week, were chastising GO! Editor Warren Epstein for refusing to reply to your repeated requests for comment about the ethics of having an anonymous food critic. You wrote:

"… the Gazette has never addressed our legitimate questions about the ethics of having a much publicized 'public' contest to find a new reviewer, encouraging readers to enter, printing stories about the 'competition' process—then selecting a staff writer under a fake name."

Here are a couple of legitimate questions for you, then, John, Fran, Ralph and Pete:

- First, how do you justify hiring a columnist away from a tiny locally-owned paper that doesn't even have the resources to hire employees and that you, John, accused of having no journalistic ethics?

- Second, how do you justify hiring a local music store owner to write a column about local music when you purport to uphold the highest standards of journalistic ethics yourselves?

Here's what Bob Steele, Senior Ethics Faculty the Poynter Institute (the organization you also cite in your ethics inquiries, as it were) had to say about that very scenario when we called him last week:

"I would say that the individual may have competing loyalties. And competing loyalties can create conflicts of interest. If he is writing about issues or events that have any direct connection to his business or competitor's businesses, then there could easily be a perception that there is a conflict of interest. There could be a perception that this individual would not be fair in how he covers the local music scene because some may believe that his primary loyalty is to himself and his own business if he's mentioning his own business in the column, and how he treats other businesses, which are his competitors"

We already emailed you the questions, but since you haven't "addressed our legitimate questions" yet, we thought we'd ask them again in print (and here on the blog) just like you did! Please do let us know how journalistically ethical individuals you truly are! Newspeak, of course, has never aspired to such standards, but we love to learn from those of you rabblerousing alternative types who do pretend to such high-minded endeavors.

Sincerely, Newspeak (Noel Black and Aaron Retka)

p.s., When you do respond, please let us know what it is exactly that makes you an "alternative" weekly. As John Weiss might've pharsed it: You may call what you write alternative, but we do not.

p.p.s. We're also deeply impressed with your vast knowledge about blog ethics since you, y'know, don't have one!

p.p.p.p.p.s, the same Robert Steele that we spoke to at Poynter is quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story about restaurant critics using pseudonyms as saying this: "If you know the colonel's coming to the barracks, you're going to spiff it up," he said. "Journalistic honesty is always important, but it's a common-sense agreement that to do a genuine, independent review, it needs to be done without the knowledge of the restaurant." Now what!?