What:  Magazine Day: a celebration of magazines and attacking the stack of unread titles piling up next to your bathroom sink.

When: Saturday, February 27th, 2010. That's in a little over 2 weeks. It's also my dad's birthday. He got me hooked on magazines as a young pup. 

How? On Saturday, February 27th, ordinary folk across America (like you, like me) will spend the day "attacking the stack" or reading their way through the unread magazines they've accumulated. If you're a big goody-goody and read your magazines straight through the moment they arrive, you may spend the day at your local library/bookstore/university exploring new periodicals, discussing your favorite magazines with friends, tweeting your favorite articles. As you wish.

Where: I live in San Francisco, California and will be hosting a Magazine Day celebration at Booksmith bookstore in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood from 1-6 PM. Five dollars reserves you a spot which includes all the coffee you can drink, all the snacks you can eat, free reign of the store's ample magazine racks and admission to a 6 PM panel discussion entitled "The Future of Magazines." 

Magazine Day is open to everyone, no matter where you are. Invite friends over and rumage though each other's stacks. Spend the day reading at your local coffee shop or library. Multch your magazines and construct a giant paper mache wildebeest. It's up to you. The idea is to spend the day having fun and forming community around a shared love of magazines.

Why? 90% of Americans read magazines, including me. I love magazines and hate waste. I buy way more magazines than I could ever read so without designating time for them, they will remain next to my toilet gathering dust. And that's a shame.

Does that sound familiar?

Who's idea was this? Mostly mine. I'm Kevin Smokler. Although friends and followers on Twitter did plenty of egging on. 

Colophon:

• In the next few days, I'll be putting together an FAQ and  "How to Host a Magazine Day Party" dossier. Keep an eye out.
• I'm defining "magazine" as "any collection of printed matter you'd like to read that isn't a book." Newspapers count. Xeroxed articles gathered in a pile? Fine.
• This is not a project sponsored by or in conjunction with my employer BookTour.com. 
• Magazine Day questions can be left in the comment section here or on twitter under the hashtag #magazineday.

• Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip breaks 15 year silence with this interview: Cleveland.com
  Welcome back.
  (tags: writing calvinandhobbes billwatterson calvin&hobbes comics cartoon)

• Greg Sandow's great blog on the future of Classical Music
  a must read on evolution of the arts (via Salon97)
  (tags: music classicalmusic gregsandow future criticism arts trends)

• Talking Zoo Keys
  Self-explanatory and a great name for a band
  (tags: toys nostalgia animals zoo products)\

• First, care. | 43 Folders
  The hippocratc oath of creativity (via girlwonder.com)
  (tags: creativity motto projects effort work merlinmann)

• MYMAG: Indivdually curated magazines by "tastemakers"
  Intriguing. Tasty? (via BookForum)
  (tags: magazines celebrity business media mymag)

• 115 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2010
  Ironically from the now closed Folio Magazine (via BookForum)
  (tags: magazines trends predictions print business media)

• Sam Sheppard has a new collection of short stories:
  
  (tags: literature samsheppard stories book review)

--Margaret Atwood (speaking at Davos this past week).

When The Beatles released their ninth studio album in November of 1968, its proper name was simply "The Beatles." The all-white cover was designed by pop artist Richard Hamilton, an admirer of the provocative minimalism of Marcel Duchamp.

The name "The White Album" was probably first dreamed up by journalists and fans to avoid confusion, just as Peter Gabriel's first three solo albums (all named "Peter Gabriel") are nicknamed "Car", "Scratch" and "Melt" according to their sleeve designs. How soon the more wordily nerdy intervened, I don't know, but I've been listening The White Album for nigh on 20 years now before realizing the following..

The name "White Album" is redundant. The word "album" comes from the Latin route word "albus" which means "white."

Early uses of "album" were colloquial variations on "albus" and meant "blank" instead of white. Thus the first uses of the word "album" as a thing, rather than a description of a thing, were used to describe blank things to be filled like sheets of paper. As technology progressed, so did adaptations of the word "album" which adopted to mean something used to hold memorabilia, writings like poems and essays and photographs. 

It's easy then to see how "album" again transformed itself to mean "a collection" of songs when that definition first showed up in 1957. As it turns out, "album" became the term of choice for a record due the appearance of a record jacket resembling a blank book, to be filled by the music inside.

(Learned with gratitude, from Podictionary "The Podcast for Word Lovers" (subscribe) that I recommend highly.)

• How to Survive a 35,000-Foot Fall: Popular Mechanics
  via The Awl
  (tags: howto survival falling lifehacks)

• Netflix Adds About 300 Indie Films For On-Demand Streaming: TechCrunch
  I'm getting mopey with joy.
  (tags: movies netflix streaming cinema films independentcinema)

• Can PepsiCo Make Soda and Chips Healthy? BrandChannel.com
  I'd like to see them try...
  (tags: pepsi food chips branding soda products)

• Indie Promoters worried about TIcketmaster/Live Nation merger: LA Times
  As am I...
  (tags: spaceland ticketmaster livenation merger tickets livemusic music concerts venues)

• SPD.ORG: Society of Publication Designers official site.
  Great blogs (via Subtraction)
  (tags: design publishing typography magazines art associations organizations)

• Economium to The Legend of Zelda "The Greatest Video Game Ever Made."
  No argument here (via Buzz Anderson)
  (tags: games videogames nintendo zelda gaming nostalgia)

• Chocolate Theme Park Opens in Beijing - PSFK
  Quivering...
  (tags: chocolate amusementparks china beijing tourism)

• The ‘GirlDrive’ Project: A roadtrip to examine contemporary America's attitude toward feminism: Bomb Magazine
  (tags: feminism roadtrip book girldrive gender)

It's taken me the better part of 3 weeks to write something, anything, about the death of my dear friend Brad Graham. I looked forward to seeing him each spring at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. He will not be there this March which feels to me like the entire month has been ripped from the calendar.

I had known Brad for nearly a decade. We met in the fall of 2001 in San Francisco when was new in town, largely going nowhere, trying to find community and a place to fit in. I came to an event I'd heard of but known little about, something called Fray Day, where strangers told true stories in front of a live audience.

I was good at that sort of thing. This Brad person seemed to know everyone there and apparently wrote some very funny stuff on a website a lot of his admirers at the event read.

I told a story, which went over fine, then retreated to a corner. A few minutes later, I ran into this Brad person on my way to the bathroom, who remarked that he had liked my story and that he and his friends at the event were going to brunch the next morning. Would I come?

I did. I'm still friends with many of the attendees at that brunch. Others I did business with or were collaborators and advisers on future creative projects. At at one time all have given me advice, job leads, set me up on dates, invited me to speak somewhere or simply inspired me to try something that before then had scared me half to death.

I trace the beginnings of both my professional life and life in San Francisco to that brunch. It would have never happened without Brad Graham and what made him so special.

To Brad, everyone counted. There were no A-groups and B-groups no "invitation onlys" or VIP lounges. There was "you make the party fun for others" or you don't. "You don't" meant you couldn't come. Everyone else was in. To Brad,  the things he loved--the theater, gatherings, the internet--but a means to create a welcome place for everyone. A community.

Break Bread with Brad, the get-together he hosted on SXSWi's opening night marked its unofficial yet spiritual opening, much in the way the Olympic torch lightening signified the games are open rather than the host country's president saying so. My own smaller, private event on the festival's last night ( Create Kookies with Kevin) was stolen outright from Brad with his blessing. My goal was to create the same warm, open environment in a more intimate setting as Brad had done in a large jovial one. His constant presence at my event is the best evidence I have that I succeeded.

Technology conferences do not usually attract extroverts and game show hosts. But the number of self-described geeks who made lifelong friends thanks to a simple "hello" and "quit standing out here in the rain" from Brad is too numerous to count. I count at least three who met their spouses this way.

I have no objection if your primary relationship with technology is your cell phone plan or mad coding skills. I just think that's limiting, like saying food is about metabolism. As Brad showed me, technology can be about so much more. Brad was a journalist by training (as am I) but saw social media as a method of connecting people, with each other, with culture, with these they love and things they do not yet know they love. Yes, he coined the term "blogosphere" but that matters to me about as much as why Brad passed away so young. Which is not at all. What mattered to me was the power he saw in technology for us all to lead richer lives.

There are plans at SXSW this year for an honorary Break Bread For Brad. The hat is being passed for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis where Brad worked as Public Relations Manager worked for so many years. Fray Cafe (the version of Fray Day that happens in Austin during SXSW) will go on as planned, with me hosting, and the event dedicated to Brad. My dinner this year will have an empty chair, right next to Kevin Lawver, where Brad always sat and made a lot of trouble. 

It's all wonderful, moving and real. But it will never be enough. Maybe if I didn't write about this pain, I could lie to myself and say that Brad is not gone, that spring will come and with it Austin, old friends and another layer of memories. But then we quit lying because we are not children anymore and we cannot bring back last year any more than we can grow younger.

It is the morning after. Or three weeks after. Then we know that that there will be no more Bread Bread With Brads with Brad, that I will never again hear his laugh, which sounded like a football thrown into a copper barrel. That he will never again be my loudest dinner guest. That he will never both make me uncomfortable and crack me up with his broad come-ons. That I will never get share my newfound love of theater with an expertise like his. That he will never again serve as friend, mentor and inspiration to the hundreds of us who learned from him both how to be good and how to be better. And that he will never know my wife, who is coming to SXSWi for the first time this year, eager to share this vital part of my life with me and to meet everyone who makes it special.

I want this confusion, this sadness, this anger to go somewhere, anywhere but here. I want, sometime, some crazy way to turn it into something beautiful. To be as Brad always was...

"To be fabulous, to be unafraid, to be fearless, to hit that note"

We will try, Brad. You taught us how.

• Running the numbers behind The New York Times "metered model" proposed this week: Reuters
  I'm cautiously optimistic... (via Tigerbeat)
  (tags: business publishing newspapers media future trends meteredmodel)

• Independent Culture in the Google Age: Broken Pencil Magazine
  Fascinating instead of complainy...
  (tags: culture technology web2.0 music)

• White House Tapes.net: Audio recording of presidents and their dealings...
  Please check out LBJ talking to his tailor.
  (tags: politics presidents whitehouse audio recordings archives)

• Brand Channel.com study of the "For Dummies" books
  (tags: books branding dummies business)

• Why do Black authors have their work adopted less into movies - The Boston Globe
  via Arts Journal
  (tags: film literature black race adaptation)

• On The Boards TV: Free, on demand videos of plays and performance art
  Killer! (via Culturebot)
  (tags: video performance web2.0 theater technology)

• Photo exhibition on abandoned Drive-in movie theatres: NY Times
  Sad, haunting (via Cinema Treasures)
  (tags: movies photography photos drivein american).
  
• How do we explain the enduring crazy love for the novels of Jane Austen? Salon.com
  I'd have to read them to tell you...
  (tags: janeausten austen books novels literature)

• ARE WE TOO PROFESSIONAL? | More Intelligent Life
  This web-only publication by The Economist can do no wrong.
  (tags: business professional creativity professionalism thought)

• Out-of-Work Architects Turn to Other Skills: NY Times
  Like ice cream that looks like buildings. Hmmm
  (tags: architecture recession entrepreneurship design jobs architects)

• djay » The DJ Software for iTunes
  Must get immediately *scratch* *scratch* (via Danger is My First Name)
  (tags: music technology dj mixing software)

• What Many Media Companies Don’t Get About Building An Audience | paidContent
  Only one thing? (via All About George.com)
  (tags: business media audience engagement content strategy)

"The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

...Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul."

--Robert F. Kennedy

• A disjointed but dazzling decade in books: Cleveland Plain Dealer
  You can say that again (via Arts Journal)
  (tags: books decade publishing literature future trend)

• Restaurants Use Menu Psychology to Entice Diners : NYTimes.com
  Works on me. (via All About George)
  (tags: design food marketing psychology restaurants menus business dining)

• Archive of Gourmet Magazine finds home at New York University: NYT Dining Blog
  Finality. Yum. (via The Elegant Variation)
  (tags: food nyu library gourmet archive magazine)

• Pandora Radio: Coming to a car near you: GigaOM
  How to "Thumbs Down" while keeping both hands on the wheel? (via Hear 2.0)
  (tags: pandora music car stereo automotive technology)

• New Yorker profile of John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods
  Now 23% more organic...
  (tags: wholefoods john-mackey entrepreneur newyorker profile food health)

• Project52: An effort to add fresh content to one's website every week for one year.
  Sorry needed, probably neglected (via Kimberly Blessing)
  (tags: writing blogging gtd projects 2010 project52)

• South Dakota driver sets state record for blood alcohol content: Yahoo! News
  We all need to strive for something (via Fark)
  (tags: crime alcohol drinking)

• GOOD Magazine runs down The Decade in Food
  I for one welcome our comfort food overlords.
  (tags: food list topten decade aughts)

• Video: Top 10 Things Killed by the Internet
  An old saw but a servicable one (via MediaBistro)
  (tags: internet culture list future trends)

--Jim Hightower (whose daily commentary is thankfully now available as a podcast)