Rob Sterling

There’s a terrific investigative article by Matthew Fleischer in the most recent L.A. Weekly. Called Navahoax, it unmasks the celebrated Navajo author “Nasdijj” as a Michigan-born Anglo named Tim Barrus.

Sherman Alexie is quoted extensively in the article, as probably the first prominent literary figure to realize that Nasdijj was full of crap. The best bit in the article is Alexie’s explanation of why white people seem to be forever impersonating Indians:

My stepfather once told me, if you want anyone in the world to like you, just tell them that you’re Indian. For some reason we are elevated simply because of our race. I’m so popular I could start a cult. I could have 45 German women living with me tomorrow.

The fact of the matter is that Sherman Alexie’s considerable draw is the result of his talent and his body of work, not his ethnic background. I’ve read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and I saw Smoke Signals when it was released, I think at the Angelika in Manhattan. I enjoyed both and I really ought to get around to reading more of Alexie’s short stories and novels. (I’ll skip the poetry.)

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…Captain Lou Albano has his very own Wikipedia entry.

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OK, I had a high school flashback the other day and remembered what is probably the smartest - or at least the most clever - thing I’ve ever done.

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I got so much traffic from my iPod write-up that I thought I’d mention a trick I discovered several years ago. When I had my brand-spanking-new anodized aluminum 12″ Powerbook just a few months in the spring of 2003, I put an irregular-shaped CD in the slot drive and it got stuck. (The CD was both too small, and also cut into the approximate shape of a business card.) To my sorrow, the slot drive locked up, neither playing the CD nor ejecting it.

I took the Powerbook over to Tekserv, a well-regarded Apple service provider in Manhattan, and they wanted about $80 to crack open the laptop, and then the superdrive, to remove the disk. They said they’d need to keep it for about three days. For the labor involved $80 was actually a bargain.

But three days! How could I do without my beloved Powerbook for three whole days? At that point I was still sleeping with the thing under my pillow! I made an appointment to bring it back on Friday and went back to work, which at the time was about ten blocks away, up Madison Ave. On the walk back, however, I had a flash of inspiration. Upon returning to the office, I put my plan into action. I slid a 3M Post-it note into the slot drive until I was pretty sure that the adhesive side had come into contact with the CD. Then I used my thumb to bend the note, so the edges would push upward with some force. I then released the pressure and slowly pulled the Post-it note out. Sure ’nuff, the CD came with it.

I don’t know if this approach will work for everyone, but I do know I’m not taking responsibility for any damage you might do to your slot drive while attempting it. Still, it saved me time and money, and the slot drive on my Powerbook is still going strong, 2 1/2 years later.

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I found this post at Philly2Hoboken via a blog from my hometown of Lacey Township, NJ. Furey, the blogger in question, was paying an estimated electric bill for more that seven years, and he’s just found out that he owes $8000 to PSE&G.

Merry Christmas.

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I was checking out the Rhino Records site for Christmas presents and found the Rhino/Blender list of The 100 Greatest Rock n’ Roll Movies of All Time. My first thought upon seeing the link was “this is some transparent attempt to sell schlock surplus DVDs.” But I was wrong: it’s actually much worse.

Brace yourself.

Saturday Night Fever comes in at #2, which would be fine if the list was called The Top 100 Greatest DISCO Movies of All Time, but it ain’t, while Grease, which has the same male lead, the same plot and some actual rock music, inexplicably comes in 17 places down the list, at #19. Number 14 - hold on - is Madonna’s docu-atrocity Truth or Dare. High Fidelity, an excellent flick, doesn’t show up until #22. Rock n’ Roll High School, which introduced the extraordinarily untelegenic punk rock Ramones to a national audience, is along with The Buddy Holly Story and The Doors so far down the list that I can’t even bring myself to type the numbers. All three are great films that tell the history of rock.

Perhaps worst of all, Eddie and the Cruisers, which should be in the top ten, is ranked #92 and Light of Day isn’t even on the list. Eddie and the Cruisers is worth watching just to see what Joe Pantoliano looked like before his nose job, and the soundtrack is amazing - probably the best original rock soundtrack ever. Light of Day isn’t a great film on its own merits, but it is a great rock n’ roll film. The title song was written and composed by Bruce Springsteen, and it’s damned good. Also, Trent Reznor has a cameo, and that oughtta be worth something.

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I’m a bit bemused to find that someone is trying to hack into my Google Earth account. I received an email yesterday from the product’s authentication server indicating that someone was requesting a temporary password for the account. The IP address of the offender is in Chicago.

I can’t imagine why anyone would do that. It’s not as if I keep any valuable data there.

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…I have decided to have some fun at the expense of those inbred yokels at Gawker. If you have a site of your own, please add a link to Gawker with the anchor text set as “inbred yokels”.

I know, it’s so 2002. Can’t help myself.

Consider it an expression of my larger interest in fiddling around with search engine optimization strategies.

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Allow me to be the last person to write about Krucoff’s dismissal from Conde Nast as a result of “leaking” an email to Gawker. As the person who introduced Andrew to the Gawker Media crowd in 2003, I take full responsibility for the utter destruction of his life in the intervening two and a half years.

It’s not your fault, Andrew. It’s mine; I never should have exposed you to those horrible people. Now go find a new job.

Also, since Krucoff was promoted from the B-list to the A-list at Blogebrity simply for being fired from Conde Nast, can I get a bump to the B-list from the C-list for being the one who created the circumstances for the firing to occur?

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I recently installed a piece of open source software called phpGedView. “GEDCOM” is the database tagging system developed a few decades back by the Mormon Church, which is big into genealogy and retroactive baptism of the ancestors of its converts. The phpGedView code base takes existing GEDCOM files and makes them easy to view and edit online, basically allowing a bunch of researchers to work off one file library and saving a lot of confusion and integration problems down the road.

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