(click image to enlarge)

Photo credits: amarine88 (George Bush), Adam P Schweigert/WFIU (Barack Obama). Photos are remixed by permission of their Creative Commons licenses.

There was — some will say unsurprisingly — an autohomoerotic period in my art, in my younger, fitter years. But it was brief, including only this self-adoring self-portrait and that bebe thing, which I did for the money. I feature it here not only to exercise my electronic exhibitionism but because this happens to be the 300^th post of this incarnation of yorkrules (known here at the YR command center as yorkrules3,) so it seemed appropriate. This is also the final post of this iteration before the next from-scratch redesign (yorkrules4.) I feel a retrospective coming on…

Yorkrules1, which launched in August of 2004, was a static portfolio of my art. A year later, yorkrules2 introduced a whole new design along with a blog. Yorkrules3 — where we are now — debuted the year after that, and it ditched the portfolio entirely as the blog became my art. The first post of the revamped site went up over a year and a half ago, and from then until June of this year, three new posts appeared here almost every week.

My myriad musings broke down into a murder of categories: recipes, essays, interviews, audio recordings, movie clips and more. There were eventually so many — thirty-four at last count — that I decided it was time to simplify: thus the jump to yorkrules4. Before we tear down this web house, however, why don’t we take one last stroll around?

Learn

Learn is the first of the six primary categories. Contrary to the bold title, it was really just the playground of the yorkrules cookoo test kitchen.  I never expected anyone to make a Spaghedilla!, Zonkey Bomb, or Sakecranitangerini, but the The Royal York, like its namesake creator, is wicked easy — just two jiggers of bourbon and a pony of maple syrup — so give it a try, ay!

Look

Primarily a visual artist, much of my creativity found expression in Look.

Desktop Downloads were evenly split between fine art photos and cat pictures. And then there was this one, floating in the aether between.

The original yorkrules website was all about one thing: L.A. Rock Fan. Four years later, it’s stuck around like alligators through evolution. It’s just a little harder to find nowadays, in amongst all the digital bric-a-brac.

I love snapshots. I think that’s partly the instant creative potential and partly that they’re a reasonable and entertaining facsimile of the memory I don’t have.

Excellent point-and-shoot case-in-point: The Ugly Americans.

York Was Here put me in all sorts of spots, usually through the magic of Photoshop or friends.

On an even cartoonier tip, the hand-drawn Unfunnies became Yorkies when I discovered that someone had my titular inspiration long before.

These Far Side-esque drawings then somehow evolved backwards into York Was Here-like Photoshop jobs, culminating with my rebuttal to an e-mail that warned of the imminent Islamic threat posed by Barack Obama — Subject: WAKE UP AMERICA…!!!

Play

Here’s where I lay limited claim to multimedia cred. All the original audio and video content on yorkrules is collected in Play.

The Anthony Project is available here, if you have an hour to get perspective.

Twenty-two bold individuals participated in the Minute by Minute mutual interview audio series. If The Anthony Project doesn’t put you over the top, try this.

(See the tattoo here.)

York TV was the repository for all my motion picture productions. I’m particularly fond of Skywalker: Undercover II, Mosquito Christmas, and The Falcon & the Charlieman, but one thing I’ve learned in my years as a content producer: people love cat videos.

Read

I hate writing. I find all creativity a sort of necessary evil, but writing, and my doing it, is proof enough for me that I’m a masochist. I included Read for just that reason: to compel me to put words on the screen like a shiv in the ribs.

How Not to Start a Cover Letter was an opportunity for me to share some examples from my own archive of ways not to get a job, like my haiku cover letter.

Ideal candidate
More creative than the rest
See my résumé

The best part of our Gay Suicide Death Pact was the comment it got from an appreciative stranger.

This gay suicide death pact sounds like just what I’ve been looking for. You wouldn’t believe how many people are out there talking about how one day they are going to get off their ass and finally start that suicide death pact they’ve been thinking about for all these years and never actually DOING it. Well, you guys have actually done it and I’m very proud of you. The longest journey begins with a single step. Even when the final step in the journey is jumping hand-in-hand off a cliff with your gay friend. So - is there an application process or what? Do I need to submit samples? Of something? Because I’m all over that. Please let me know.

-josh
Not Gay Either but Equally Ambivalent

Share

Oxymoronically enough, yorkrules isn’t all about me. I’m almost as fascinated by others as I am with myself, and Share is where I indulge such interests.

My Required Listening list featured the music I was discovering and the musicians who made it. My favourite featured track?

Artist: Beat the Devil
Track: Shine In Exile
This track is available on

My favourite interview? Probably gotta be The Bird and the Bee.

Show Us Yours presented the work and words of a wide range of visual artists. One question I always asked: Why do you create? Here are a few of the artists and their answers.

We like the process and we like the results. It’s as simple as that. Once we started to figure out that there is more light in the dark than we thought, we wanted to see more of it. So we continued to take pictures at night.

Is the world becoming a better place through culture and fine arts? Yes, we believe so very strongly. But we can’t claim honestly that that’s why we do what we do.

— Cenci Goepel & Jens Warnecke

I create to keep myself entertained, otherwise I may melt into a puddle.

— Tao Nyeu

I’ve always liked to do stuff with my hands. If I wasn’t painting I’d be sewing, or building, or cooking, or fixing something.

— John Lytle White

Because if someone else was doing it i couldn’t sue them for plagiarism.

— Travis Millard

I think I’ve got something to say. Of course, I might be wrong.

— Scott Listfield

it’s my way of talking.

— Jen Corace

I’m a geek. It’s what I do instead of going to bars.

— Wednesday Kirwan

You might as well ask: Why do you breathe? The answer would be pretty much the same. I tried to give up art once. I didn’t work.

— Heiko Müller

I create because my heroes are creators, and i want to be a part of a long thread of creativity. I tend to create works in series, and to create works about things i want to explore and articulate. If i do a good job, i am a gateway drug, opening people up to new ideas, and compelling them to look further than my own work. That way, people might be compelled to create work that i enjoy, that drives me to discover something.

— Andrew Brandou

Every one starts out in the world drawing & creating as kids.
It’s an essential way of working and acting out our imaginations.
But, many people just stop doing those things as they grow up.
As you get a little older…i think it’s harder to relax and feel confident through
personal expression because we grow overly self-conscience. Or, people don’t see the purpose
in it as the “real world” starts to infiltrate our lives. I think that challenge is one reason why i kept drawing,
and also the challenge of continually starting with a blank piece of paper over and over again.

— Mel Kadel

I think it is human nature to find a purpose… someplace we’re comfortable within ourselves. I feel incredibly lucky that art found me and ceased my search at a young age. I can’t remember the first time I drew a picture. It seems like it is something I have always done.

— Evan B Harris

I create because I like doing it. I believe we are here to do things we like.

— Eric Joyner

Your Voice Here offered everyone the opportunity to share their own creativity. Most recently, I enjoyed A Very Charlie Christmas.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, except for Charlie’s mouse,

His keyboard went “click”, his hands in his hair,
The thought of a year-end letter drove him to a scare,

“What should I write, what should I say,
Should I come out of the closet? Should I tell them I’m gay?”

Shop

In theory, you really can make a living through blogging. In reality, if you’re not covering celebrities, technology, or how to make money blogging, don’t quit your day job (if you’re unfortunate enough to need one.)

Of course, such an assessment is based on my own online economic experience, which, like most of the merchandise I made, had almost no purchasable appeal.

But the Adult Video Jesus Christmas card? I should’ve been a Hallmarkian millionaire by now!

Moving Forward

Yorkrules3 covered a great deal of ground in less than two years. Now it’s time for an update. What will yorkrules4 be? When will it go live? Such answers don’t yet exist, but if you’d like to subscribe to the yorkrules RSS feed, you’ll be notified by your newsreader or email application as soon as it goes live.

My thanks to all those artists, musicians, writers, and readers who have been a part of yorkrules (any or all versions of it.) The adventure now continues!

Cheers,

York

Julie My Love and I were both frightened of the future earlier this year. We were escaping from L.A. after a decade in Entertainment Industry residence, so Julie was of course afraid of leaving friends made close by ten years of shared experiences. I, meanwhile, was completing work on my first book, tellingly entitled I Hate L.A., and feared internally, What if I hate my next hometown?

After weekend visits to a few top contenders, Portland, Oregon, was selected by surprisingly wide margins to audition as our new answer for “Where ya from?”

We’ve been here three weeks now, and I’m grateful to report that I’m not just a chronically pessimistic complainer. Los Angeles really is a horrible, terrible town. Portland, by apples & oranges comparison, dances with ideal.

Case in point: a three minute bike ride north of our place is MacTarnahan’s Brewing Company. This brewery has a taproom out front that serves all the company’s brews (and then some) along with bar food that’s archetypal in its excellence.

Twice now we’ve rolled in for the day’s first Happy Hour. We sit out on the sun-dappled veranda, shaded by leafy trees and surrounded with effusive flowers. Julie enjoys a Mimosa while I rotate onto the next 20 ounce beer on my MacTarnahan’s to do list. We also split the taproom’s eponymous burger (a “1/2 pound of Fulton ground chuck on an onion bun, fully dressed with crispy fried onion strings… served with savory garlic rosemary fries.”) The cost of all this afternoon happiness? Less than ten bucks, which still feels nearly free by our old Angeleno standards.

This is just one of the many exciting discoveries we’ve made since our recent arrival in PDX, and we see no end of fascinations ahead. Our nascent list grows daily longer.

Will the approaching seasons’ interminably gray skies rain on our little civic honeymoon’s parade? Well, back at MacTarnahan’s taproom, there’s also a covered and heated outdoor patio, so I’m not forecasting any imminent sequels in my city-slamming bibliography.

(But check back with me near the close of this next winter, as I may have ranting new plans.)

Postscript — Thanks for your thoughts, Z & Morningstar.

In addition to being kind, considered, and multilingual, you’ll also learn that these two travel extensively, love the outdoors, embark on regular adventures, and are artistically gifted. Oh, sweet, sweet envy.

Who are Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke?

We are a couple of two persons who like to be outdoors. That’s where we met, that’s where we started to work and that’s where we’ll continue to be. When we met, Cenci was a painter and Jens was engaged in filming, editing and animation: maybe photography was somehow in between.

Why do you create?

We like the process and we like the results. It’s as simple as that. Once we started to figure out that there is more light in the dark than we thought, we wanted to see more of it. So we continued to take pictures at night.

Is the world becoming a better place through culture and fine arts? Yes, we believe so very strongly. But we can’t claim honestly that that’s why we do what we do.

No.55 | S 54°51’48.1“ W 67°29’41.1“

Provincia Tierra del Fuego, Argentinia, 2007

Each image is named for its location, numerical coordinates followed by a geographic description. You say this is a “lack of phantasy” [sic] on your part. Am I wrong to think there’s more to it than that?

You are right, there is a little more to it. We consider the names to be an invitation. Since the landscape at the location where the pictures are taken is the most important component of the final result, we would like to invite people to visit these places. What is more: we hope to encourage some people to visit these places at night, for that can be a very special experience. Take Lightmark No 57, for instance. It is taken close to Badwater in Death Valley — a horrible place most of the time, packed with busloads of tourists. But in the night it’s deserted. We started to walk towards the middle of the lake about one hour before moonrise. At first it was completely dark, but soon the moon came up and illuminated the surrounding mountains. Then the light swept very fast over the salt crust and flooded the whole valley. It appeared very bright because our eyes were adapted to the darkness and the salt was reflecting much of it: an extremely beautiful scene and a very impressive experience both of us won’t forget.

There is another reason for naming the pictures in this way: it doesn’t provide too much of an interpretation. People tend to see different things when they watch our pictures. Things that range from technological to spiritual. We like to keep it that way.

No.60 | N 70°26’36.5“ E 27°53’27.1“

Tanafjorden, Finnmark, Norway, 2007

You travel broadly for your images: Tierra del Fuego, Briksdalbreen, and Death Valley are just a few of the places you’ve produced your art. How often and for how long do you typically travel? How do you select the locations? How do you conceive the light patterns you create?

We travel as often as we can afford — typically around three times a year. Sometimes we take it slow: in Argentina we cycled from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, which took us about three months. On other occasions we visit the places where we want to work straight away. We always watch out for places with interesting landscapes. The list of places we would like to visit is pretty long already and growing with the speed of light! But that’s only part of the story: one great aspect of the kind of photography we engage in is that one can do it almost everywhere. We took some very nice pictures in the forest just around the corner and even small things like a tuft of grass and some patches of moss can make up a great setting. We experiment quite a lot with different light-sources ranging from LED lights to various kinds of fire.

No.63 | N 61°39’51.9“ E 6°51’27.8“

Briksdalbreen, Norway, 2007

How do love and creativity coexist between collaborating artists?

People can collaborate in creative work without being in love — we did so for a couple of years. And people can be in love without being creative at all. But if both come together, it’s like an explosion!

My thanks to Cenci and Jens for sharing their work. Please visit lightmark.de for more.

Julie My Love and I have recently returned from a sojourn of some significance. We visited a few places we’ve been thinking ’bout moving to: San Francisco, California (Thank you Jen, Jeneva, & Roddy for showing us the town from the locals’ point-of-view, and Aaron, it was great to see you at Zeitgeist); Vancouver, British Columbia (always a pleasure to visit with the Kuhl ladies); and Portland, Oregon (Much obliged for the best room in the house, Marco).

Every town’s got its pros and cons (San Francisco: Golden Gate Park and the cost of living; Vancouver: Granville Island Public Market and Canadians; Portland: microbrews and rain,) but we found that the grass was definitely greenest in Portland (though perhaps that’s just the rain.)

We’re aiming for a mid-July departure, so to free up my time for packing (and finishing I Hate L.A., apropos,) the regular posting schedule here on yorkrules is going on hold indefinitely. Posts will continue on a more infrequent interval (including an upcoming feature on a European couple that creates beautiful photographs of the outdoors at night,) so If you’d like to be notified via e-mail or your preferred feed reader when new posts appear, click on the subscribe to yorkrules button near the top left of the page.

Until then, my thanks to you for making yorkrules a part of your online life!

Cheers,

York

I first heard about Colin Woodward’s recently published book, The Republic of Pirates, on NPR. It must have been a good feature, because I immediately asked Julie My Love to buy me a copy. (Books are like drugs for me: I’m addicted to them, but I prefer to let others handle the finances.)

This is a non-fiction examination of the actual pirates of the Caribbean, drawn from first-hand accounts, contemporary court transcripts, and period publications. Woodward’s extensively footnoted and consistently entertaining writing, however, reveals that the Pirates of the Caribbean with whom we’re all familiar are a reasonable reflection of the reality.

This is evident early in the book, when Woodward describes one engagement in the legendary pirate career of Henry Avery.

Near the Indian coast, the pirates spotted a sail on the horizon. This turned out to be the Fath Mahmamadi, a ship larger than the Fancy, but also slower and armed with only six guns. The crew of the Fath Mahmamadi fired one pathetic three-gun salvo as the pirate ships gathered around them. The Fancy responded with a deafening twenty-three-gun broadside and a volley of musket fire. The Indian captain surrendered, the Fancy came alongside, and Avery’s crew poured onto their 350-ton prize. In the holds they found the proceeds of the Fath Mahmamadi’s trade in Mocha: £50,000 to £60,000 in gold and silver belonging to the ship’s owner, the merchant Abd-ul-Ghafur. It was an impressive haul, enough to purchase the Fancy fifty times over, but Avery wanted more. He placed the vessel under the control of a detachment of his men—a prize crew—and, together with his fellow captains, continued his pursuit of the great fleet.

Two days later, along the shores of eastern India, a lookout spotted another ship in the distance bound for the Indian port of Surat. The pirates soon caught up with what turned out to be the Ganj-i-sawai, a gigantic trading vessel that belonged to Grand Moghul Aurangzeb himself. She was far and away the largest ship operating out of Surat, with eighty guns, 400 muskets, and 800 able-bodied men aboard. Her captain, Muhammad Ibrahim, had reason to be confident of fending off the raiders, having more guns and more than twice as many men as the Fancy and the three American privateers combined. The stakes were high, however, for Ganj-i-sawai was heavily laden with passengers and treasure.

As soon as the Fancy came into range, Captain Ibrahim ordered a gun crew into action. They loaded their heavy weapon and rolled it out of its port. The gunner took aim, lit the fuse, and stood back with the rest of his team, awaiting the cannon’s recoil. Instead of a loud report and a burst of smoke, there came a horrifying flash. Owing to some internal defect, the heavy cannon exploded, sending shards in all directions. The gun crew was blown to bits. As Ibrahim was taking in the gruesome spectacle, the Fancy returned fire. One of her cannonballs struck the Ganj-i-sawai in the lower part of her mainmast, the most critical of locations. The mast partially collapsed, throwing sails and rigging into disarray and compounding the chaos aboard the ship. The loss of sail area meant the Ganj-i-sawai began to slow. Her pursuers closed in.

Swords drawn and muskets at the ready, over 100 pirates crouched behind the Fancy’s rails, waiting for the ships to come together. When they did, lines snapping, sails tearing, their wooden hulls moaning and creaking with the stress, Avery and company rushed over the side and onto the decks of the crippled vessel. [pp. 21-22]

Just like in the movies, Woodward takes his reader for a ride replete with action, romance, and humour.

The pirates, whom one witness said “pretended to be Robbin Hoods [sic] men,” also had a penchant for fancy dress and took the clothes of the wealthy passengers. They also seized a black slave and an Indian boy belonging to an Antiguan planter, but were prepared to let the remaining passengers and crew go. But one of Savage’s passengers, the nine- or ten-year-old child, John King, begged the pirates to take him with them. When his mother tried to stop him, King threatened her with violence and, according to Savage, “declared he would kill himself if he was restrained” from joining Bellamy’s crew. The pirates must have been amused by the little boy, dressed in silk stockings and fine leather shoes, for they took him aboard the Marianne. There were plenty of ten-year-old ship’s boys on naval and merchant ships, and now they had two of their own. To Mrs. King’s horror, her son took an oath of loyalty to the pirates, promising not to steal even a single piece of eight from the company, and sailed away with his new companions. [pp. 148-149]

All did not go so well for the young pirate, however, when, several months later the Whydah — the ship upon which the young master sailed — encountered a storm off Cape Cod.

As the huge seas tossed the ship closer and closer to the crashing surf, Sam Bellamy may well have remembered the wrecks of the Spanish treasure fleet, great hulls battered into kindling by violent, storm-driven surf. Bellamy knew where he was. In flashes of lightning, he could see the great cliffs of Eastham looming a hundred feet above the exploding waves. If they crashed here, there would be few survivors. The surf washed nearly to the feet of the cliffs, which rose precipitously to the tablelands, that windswept, sparsely inhabited plain separating the villagers of Eastham and Billingsgate from the sea. By midnight, he knew the Whydah’s half-ton anchors were the only hope of saving her.

The men struggled to follow the order as waves rolled over the deck. The helmsmen, their feet wide apart, spun the wheel, bringing the great ship’s bow face-to-face with the wind. The anchors splashed into the water and their heavy ropes began to play out. Everyone held their breath as the lines grew taught. There may have been a moment’s pause, as the Whydah briefly stopped drifting toward the foamy chaos behind them, but then they could feel the anchors dragging. The Whydah was doomed.

There was one last chance to save the crew, to do just as the men of the Mary Anne had done. They had to try to bring the vessel ashore gracefully, bow first, hopefully making it far enough through the violently tossing surf to give a swimmer some hope of getting ashore. Bellamy yelled out to the men to cut the anchor cables. As soon as the last strokes of their axes had fallen—the thick anchor ropes snapping free—Bellamy ordered the helmsmen to swing her all the way back around, to run face first into the beach. But the vessel didn’t turn. All watched in terror as the ship slipped backward, stern first, over thirty foot waves towards the white, misty chaos at the foot of the cliffs.

The Whydah ran aground with shocking force. The jolt likely shot any men in the rigging out into the deadly surf where they were alternately pounded against the sea bottom, then sucked back away from the beach by the undertow. Cannon broke free from their tackles and careened across the lower decks, crushing everyone in their path. One pirate was thrown across the deck so hard his shoulder bone became completely embedded in the handle of a pewter teapot. Little John King, the nine-year-old pirate volunteer, was crushed between decks, still wearing the silk stockings and expensive leather shoes his mother had dressed him in aboard the Bonetta months earlier. Within fifteen minutes, the violent motion of the surf brought the Whydah’s mainmast crashing down over the side. Waves broke over the decks and water poured into the bedlam of crashing cannon and barrels of cargo below decks. At dawn the Whydah’s hull broke apart, casting both the living and dead into the surf.

As the storm raged on through the morning hours, the ebbing tide left more and more bodies piled on the shore. Amidst the bloated, mangled corpses only two men stirred. One was John Julian, the Mosquito Indian who had served with Bellamy aboard his periaguas. The other was Thomas Davis, one of the carpenters forced from the St. Michael. Samuel Bellamy and some 160 other men—pirates and captives, whites, blacks, and Indians—had perished in the storm. [pp. 184-185]

If you enjoyed these select passages, you can purchase The Republic of Pirates on Amazon.

Who is Tao Nyeu?

Hello. I am a children’s books illustrator and writer.

Why do you create?

I create to keep myself entertained, otherwise I may melt into a puddle.

Hang on

Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight, Moon and Corduroy all helped to define the person I have come to be. As a soon-to-be-published children’s book author and artist (Wonder Bear will be available September 18, 2008,) you will have your own formative effect on children. What do you think about that?

I think it’s extremely exciting. I just hope the effect is a positive one.

Summer Sonatina

Your visual style is youthful. Do you think it will age as you as you mature creatively, or remain forever young?

I do hope that I mature creatively, but I’ve given up on mature mental development. It hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t think it ever will. I guess I missed the boat on that one. When I make an image I concentrate on entertaining myself. It just so happens that I am on the same wavelength as people around 30 inches tall.

My Favorite Sock

In the short-term, you’ve got your children’s book coming out. What’s atop the to do list in the long-term?

Creating children’s books has been the long-term goal for a very long time so I’m very excited to finally be here. I just want to continue to think up stories and create exciting artwork. I’ve only just begun, so I have a lot of exploring to do.

My thanks to Tao for sharing her work. Please visit tao-illustration.com for more.

Artist: Weinland
Track: God Here I Come
This track is available on

When I interview an artist, I always ask six questions. In every artist feature, like this one, I always include five of those. I don’t edit these interviews (the way someone writes — grammar, syntax, et al. — can reveal as much as what he’s written,) so that one dropped question is the only editorial control I allow to weed out the duds (and I ask plenty.)

My questions can miss their mark for two primary reasons. First, unlike the usual music and art interviews, they’re rarely about music or art, so they can catch the asked off-guard. Second, they can be so open-ended that they may appear unapproachable. Together, these qualities can make my queries just sound dumb, like the one I dropped from this feature: “Life-altering experience. What comes to mind?”

The first thing that comes to mind is the similarity between this question and the questions on my college application. Anyway, I’m on a health cleanse right now and I haven’t ate, drank, or anything else in almost 6 days so all I can think about is tacos. I can’t really think about anything complicated… tacos.

My dad used to say, “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.” Looks like Weinland’s founding member, John Adam Weinland Shearer, just proved him wrong.

Who is John Adam Weinland Shearer?

A man for his place and time. I wouldn’t say hero, cause what’s a hero.

Who are Weinland?

A band to watch, proven to deserve your attention.

Why do you create?

We create because we’re drawn to create; like a mime to the ill at ease.

“God” begins both the song and its title. What is faith to you?

Two nights ago we played a bar in Salem, OR. When we were about to go on we noticed two ministers in full garb sitting at a table in the back. We played “All To Yourself” first and the crowd was receptive. Then we played (after announcing the title) “The Devil in Me”, and the general crowd was receptive. Then we announced our third song, “God Here I Come”. The two ministers rose from their table and exited the building. Faith demonstrates its significance in the lives of a lot of people (one way or another), and clearly the discussion, question, or embrace of it is frightening to many… including to those who dress in the uniform of experts.

Julie My Love and I are planning to leave L.A. this year. Vancouver (British Columbia), San Francisco, and Portland are top candidates for our new hometown. As a Portland native, would you recommend your city or not? Why?

I’m actually a Montana native, relocated to Portland in 1997. I recommend Portland to you if you enjoy a comfortable and unpretentious city. It is an amazing community, particularly for musicians and fans, as this is the place where the line between rock stars and rock fans is thin and at times not present. I think lots of people move here to be normal. Our last home show was a secret show (prior to tour) at a dive bar here in Portland; the guitar player for REM (Scott), the drummer for the Decemberists (John) and the bass player for the Thermals (don’t know him) were all in the audience drinking and having a good time. They enjoyed themselves without the pressure of their success… to my knowledge anyway. That’s a good city.

If I were to click on just one of your link page friends, whom would you recommend? Why?

Click on Norfolk and Western: They are the gateway drug to Portland indie-folk-chamber-pop-music galore.

My thanks to Weinland for sharing their art. Please visit weinlandmusic.com for more.

I used to walk to the store and pay $1.62 for the Sunday edition. When the Times offered to deliver the paper to my door Thursday through Sunday for $1.50 a week, I became a subscriber (an exception proving the rule.) Now, thanks to my “self-employed” lifestyle, my weekend feels four days long, as I spend more mornings than not reading the most incredible things about the most fascinating people by some of the best reporters while lying on my couch.

Many blog-reading people get their news online. This should not negate the need for a newspaper, however, as the experiences are wholly unique.

Online news sites are fast and efficient — click<back, click<back and in two minutes it’s on to e-mail or Perez.

Reading the newspaper — the type that’s printed on newsprint — is a ritual, too, but in a pleasant sense. I retrieve mine from outside the front door as soon as I get up. I pull it out of its plastic protector and sort through the fresh contents. The front page, California, and the Calendar I keep (as well as Opinion on Sunday.) The rest goes into the recycling bin.

A small pot of green tea and a few slices of toast (Whole Foods’ freshly ground honey roasted peanut butter on one and organic Adriatic fig spread on the other) offer sustenance on the coffee table. I lie on the couch, with the rising sun glowing across the twice-folded paper I hold one-handed above me, and revel in our world. Now that’s what I call a ritual.

If you’ve never read the paper on a regular basis, or not since current events in second grade, pick one up this Sunday (a good one, like the L.A. Times or The New York Times.) Give yourself an hour and a latte, and indulge in an entertaining education.

In my self-assigned duties as L.A. Times advocate, I’ll intermittently (or until I receive my next cease & desist) feature select sections of the articles I enjoy. You can click on the title’s link to read the full story online, but it’s so much harder to hold this computer over your head when you’re sprawled upon your settee (and fig jam’s murder on a keyboard.)

New phase seen in Mexico’s drug war
Héctor Tobar, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2008

Millan Gomez’s schedule was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few associates, officials said. But as he headed home accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sport utility vehicle, four cartel hit men were waiting behind his front door.

The bodyguards dropped off Millan Gomez, who entered his home alone. Seconds later, they heard gunshots.

Though wounded by at least eight shots, Millan Gomez was able to grab one of the attackers, officials said.

“Who sent you?” he demanded. “Who sent you to kill me?” He died at a hospital, the third high-ranking federal police official killed in Mexico City in a week.

Young China quake victims fear loss of parents
Ching-Ching Ni, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2008

The worst natural disaster to strike China in three decades shredded tens of thousands of families in Sichuan province in the blink of an eye. Many of those who died were children, killed when their schools collapsed. But many of the youngsters who survived now face the grim prospect of possibly living the rest of their lives as orphans.

On Saturday, a group composed of about 70 high school students who had lost contact with their parents was brought to a medical university here in the provincial capital. Each member was then paired with a college student who had volunteered to adopt him or her as a pal until the young survivors might reunite with their families.

“Don’t lose hope until you know for sure,” medical student Zhang Lei, 20, told Wang Chao, 16, who had yet to find his parents and 14-year-old sister.

As they ate lunch in a cafeteria packed with teens, a girl broke out in hysterical sobs that made everybody pause.

A crucial chapter for the storied Chelsea Hotel
Louise Roug, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2008

“This hotel does not belong to America,” wrote playwright and onetime resident Arthur Miller. “There are no vacuum cleaners, no rules and shame.”

In these rooms, Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin on an unmade bed. Bob Dylan stayed up for days, longing for his estranged wife. Both men memorialized the hotel in song. In one room, Thomas Wolfe wrote “You Can’t Go Home Again,” and in another Arthur C. Clarke penned “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The poet Dylan Thomas spent his last days at the hotel before a drinking binge finished him off in 1953. And 25 years later, the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious was charged with stabbing girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death in their room at the hotel.