Previous entry: "Nobody's Saving Nuthin'"
Next entry: "A Post A Day...For A Month?"

03/07/2007: "Evolving Attitude"

Music: KHUM.com
Mood: nostalgic, thoughtful, hopeful

It has been over a year since I returned to Hollywood from my sojourn in Humboldt County, and nearly six months since I moved to Seattle. Sometimes, like right now, I get nostalgic. As I write this, I am listening to the live internet feed from KHUM, a free-form station from Humboldt County. It reminded me when over New Year's 2005-6 there was this insane storm that caused a mudslide on the 101, knocking out the only way into Humboldt, and causing massive power outages. KHUM was on the air during this time, and folks would call in with on-the-scene reporting. It was a brief glimpse into the way a radio station (or any other media outlet) could work.

I was reminded of this by a similar anecdote shared by the Adbuster himself, Kalle Lasn in his book Culture Jam, the latest in a string of books I have been reading recently questioning our modern consumer culture. While I have always raised objections to certain aspects of it in the past, my recent travels have really brought this issue into sharp focus. For most of my life, I sympathized with the "slacker" ethos; you know, everything sucks but there's nothing you can do about it, so let's sit around and have a deep conversation about the hidden subtexts in old Saturday Morning cartoons. It is such an insidious idea you have to wonder if it wasn't dreamed up in a boardroom somewhere.

It certainly is not going to help matters to sit around mired in nostalgia or consumed with a nagging feeling that something is wrong. The question is: where do I start? Well, for one thing, I have bought a bike, I'm up to about 40 pages in the book, and coaching at Landmark Education. One outlet for this evolving philosophy that is brewing will of course be this space, but I want to get back into filmmaking as well.