Love, Again, Is a Mixtape

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

At the end of the last decade (this post is from 2010), we were curating so much loss.  Mostly of physical artifact.  I can’t find the quote below, but if memory serves, it was from a page at ThinkGeek selling USB drives. 

“Mixtapes are a lost art in a dead medium.

The Mixtape is a fine art that is threatened by the loss of the medium. Two channel analog magnetic tape is disappearing in favor of MP3 files. A mixtape is a snapshot of your musical and social tastes during the brief period in which you created it. That summer in 1992, maybe your mixtape was full of Stone Temple Pilots, Morrissey, Toad The Wet Sprocket, The Cure, and audio-clips from Blade Runner. You gave that tape to your girlfriend. She dumped you, but not because of that mixtape. That was awesome!“

Check. this. out.

I’m glad I’m old enough to have done this on real magnetic tape once upon a time.  Remember taping things from the radio?  The best.   A few months ago I found a tape I made of a local radio station circa 1994.  Almost too beautiful to handle.

St. Patrick’s Day (Observed) and Happy Spring

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

March 20, 2010

It’s official.   Happy Spring!  Don’t forget your free Rita’s Water Ice.

I live down the street from an Irish bar.  This weekend is the St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl in my neighborhood.  It’s 74 degrees here as I write this, and I can hear “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” being bagpiped live outside the bar.   Hard to believe that a month ago we were digging out from two huge snow storms.  Yesterday my son pulled his sled down from the porch, set it on the ground, sat in it and said “it’s going to snow.”  “Not for a while,” we said.  So we decided to sled in the grass.  It was great.

St. Patrick’s Day

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

I just got back from spending some time with good friends in St. Patrick’s honor.  Here’s a picture from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin that I took when my wife and I visited Ireland.  On a wall outside there are memorials to many of Ireland’s famous writers including Jonathan Swift and Samuel Beckett.  Oscar Wilde’s boyhood home isn’t far away and there is, of course, the omnipresence of Joyce and Yeats everywhere in the city. The Book of Kells is another amazing piece of Ireland’s literary (and spiritual) legacy.  Reading the prologue of John’s gospel in something that beautiful and old, well, that’s an experience.

The Floating Plastic Garbage Island

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

Did anyone else happen to see Captain Charles Moore on Letterman last night?  I first heard about the Pacific garbage field a few weeks ago but didn’t realize how recent a discovery it was.

Um, let’s all agree to stop using plastic yesterday.  Or, like Moore says, let’s agree to use it only for things we intend to have around for a good long time.  It’s pretty ironic that we use one of the most durable things we’ve ever created for disposable packaging, utensils, cameras, and other things that are specifically made to be thrown away.

Remember glass?  Good old inert, flavor-saving glass?  Those were the days.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know plastic has made the world better in many ways.  I’m not saying it hasn’t.  But plastic waste is another issue.  It needs serious attention.

This is a single-serving, disposable post, by the way.  I’ve been up all night working and am now about to fall happily to sleep for a few hours.  So no big long post about sustainability and everything.  Just wanted to say if you haven’t heard about the floating waste zone twice the size of Texas, read up on it.  And I also wanted to say good on you, David, for having Charles Moore.

That was Johnny Fever’s name in “Head of the Class,” wasn’t it?  He was also in Flight of The Navigator. And to all a good night!

Brackets

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

I like sports.  I’m a huge baseball fan.  I love the Olympics.  I love the NBA (especially the playoffs) and almost every other thing I’m supposed to.  I like football.

But March Madness just doesn’t do it for me.  I’m also not one of those people that can spend entire Saturdays watching college football.  I don’t think it’s just because I went to a D III school (Go Bears!).   I think it’s the ubiquity of these things that riles me.  I never find myself minding baseball’s omnipresence in its season, but I also don’t spend entire days watching those games and don’t flip between three ESPNs desperately seeking my usual programming in vain.   It feels like every bracket on the guide grid this month says “College Basketball.”

I start paying attention when it’s down to sixteen because that’s when the narratives get especially interesting.  I know that means I’ll always miss out on the ultimate sports narrative, the Cinderella performance, but I’m fine with that when it comes to this tournament.  Always have been.   Clearly, the athletes and coaches are all top competitors and I respect what they do all season.  I’m just not invested.  Sports fans, you tell me: what am I missing?