More for Slant: I review the latest Ducktails full-length, his first proper LP since 09′s Landscapes. Remember “LandRunner” from Landscapes? Remember how it was the best? This new record has no “LandRunner.” Click, please: Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics.
RS
Here’s the first in what is hopefully a long stretch of work with a terrific online magazine, Slant. My first assignment? The latest from Madlib, maybe the finest producer working in hip-hop today. Click, please: Low Budget High Fi Music.
RS
The 2010 Three Rivers Arts Festival is quickly approaching. Here’s how you can tell: (click, please).
RS
I’ll be doing a bit of writing for the Greater Austin Creative Alliance, an up-and-coming organization that connects the community to the arts. Check out my first blog post for them here.
RS
Like most of my days, today began with a phone call to a high-profile celebrity. So just use your imagination to imagine Mr. Behrendt’s hands full of phone instead of artfully-wrapped vegetables.
Read read all about it:
RS
So Three Rivers Arts Festival is a project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. After the Festival ended, I did some freelancing for the Trust, writing pieces for their blog on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s website. This position required me to step out of the office a bit more – I conducted more interviews, met with gallery curators, covered the openings of new businesses in Downtown Pittsburgh. I even trolled YouTube for videos of David Copperfield illusions (eyeopening, truly). Take a look:
David Copperfield and His Best Illusions
Physical Conditions (Interview with Murray Horne)
RS
I began work for Three Rivers Arts Festival back in 08 as a marketing intern. Before the Festival, I worked on press releases, pieces describing the headlining bands, etc. During the Festival, I did everything from sorting garbage to taking pictures of artists and musicians. Then, during last year’s Festival, I came back aboard, this time maintaining the Festival’s blog. Below you’ll find links to a selection of my posts, sort of an Arts Festival Blog Greatest Hits. No filler, no fluff – you get the idea.
And now for a special treat. Here’s one post that was deemed, a-hem, too provocative for the blog. Apparently, it’s depiction of trash was too real for some people. So now, for the very first time, a post you were never supposed to read:
The Greening of Three Rivers Arts Festival
It’s hot. Despite all the warm suntan lotion I’ve smeared on the part of my neck the baseball cap’s brim doesn’t shade, the strip of naked skin still feels like it’s cooking. Of course, that’s an exaggeration… but it is hot. Hot enough that if you leave a water bottle sitting in sunshine for even five minutes, you won’t want to drink from it.
And the garbage smells. Excuse me – the garbage and the compost.
Last year when I worked trash detail at Three Rivers Arts Festival, I became intimately familiar with the difference between garbage and compost. For example: aluminum foil? Garbage. Corn dog (with stick)? Compost. Cup from McDonalds? Garbage, definitely. Spoon from the Festival? Compost.
And that’s where the problems would start:
“Sir, that spoon you got at the Festival actually isn’t trash. It’s derived from potato resin and can be composted.” Pause.
The man with the grey beard and the Harley Davidson sleeveless shirt, the one featuring motorcycles with eagle wings soaring across the rolling fields of America, stares at me like I’m speaking in a foreign tongue.
“All right,” he says, and dips his tanned arm into the bag of trash to grab his spoon. Then he tosses it into the green compost bag.
I could applaud this man.
Not everyone was so kind. Sometimes you’d just miss stopping the sullen looking teenager from dropping his half-eaten paper plate of funnel cake, complete with compostable Festival forks, into the garbage. And when you told him, he’d stare at you, maybe toss his hair back, and then walk on.
Because of things like this, I came to love rubber gloves. Your hand would turn a ghastly shade of sweaty white if you left it on for too long, but it kept you food free when you went adventuring through bags of garbage, looking for compostables.
Believe it or not, I came to enjoy the job. Each piece of aluminum foil I fished from a bag of compost boosted my happiness meter by three or five points (depending on how the day was going). The sun didn’t feel quite as hot when people noticed the signs and disposed of their trash correctly, or stopped to chat with me about how wonderful the greening initiative was. That was maybe the most impressive part of the job – just how many people composted at home and were ecstatic that the Festival was finally catching up with their private environmental crusades.
To all those people, I say thank you. I also say: Good news. The greening initiative is back.
In 2008 Festival patrons diverted 50 tons of waste from landfills. This year, let’s shoot for more. Let’s keep the Festival at the cutting edge of event environmentalism. And yeah, I’m working on this blog, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t see me at the Festival in 2 weeks, showing you where to put your trash. But maybe you’ll already know.
RS
