Goosebumps, I say. I’ve ordered the paperback version and will upgrade my subscription soon. “Surfing the Interstates” has bumped “Infinite Jest” as my next goal once I complete The Brothers Karamazov. Your embrace of Anthropic’s Claude in your 70s is profoundly inspiring.
Welcome, my friend. Thanks again. I’ve been a “gearhead”my whole life and have always embraced new tech. Like any tool, AI is just that. Without skill, intention and constant attention, it can always go terribly wrong. Think Skilsaw? There is a huge stigma around AI but it stems from lazy users looking to skip the hard parts of thinking and creating. Those challenges are always present and can only be met by honest work and discipline. I love Dostoevsky.
We've had something in common for 55 years without knowing it. Going down a You-Tube-induced rabbit hole in search of various performances of "Althea", I landed at <dead.net/archives>, looking for info about the first Dead concert I attended, which happened to also be the first one you attended: Irvine Auditorium, Oct. 15, 1970. You seem to recall a lot more about it than I can! My main memories were: 1) the byzantine decorations around the proscenium arch turned into enormous glowing snakes; and 2) backstage after the show, staring dumbly at some of the band members, we accepted the big, soft cookies they offered us. I was living at 4000 Pine in something called "The Experimental College", which was one of Penn's sincere but lame attempts to respond to the student strike of the previous academic year. I look foward to reading your memoirs. Everyone should write a memoir, because everyone has at least one good story to tell, even to strangers.
oh my God, that’s amazing… small world. I’ve always been disappointed by the fact that there’s no tapes of the show, but there are a few from within a few weeks of Bobby’s 23rd birthday. I was living up on 34th off Walnut in a rented triple-decker. Like you, I also worked in the film business in NYC, but I didn’t last long. I did a summer internship with Francis F Thompson Inc. and I also worked a year at MCA universal in Park Avenue as a projectionist. I fled New York City in 1972 never to return. Hated living there. I was also stunned by the fact that your father died on a cruise after visiting Antigua. I lived in Antigua for four years. I’m working on the second book in my memoir trilogy and it’s all about those years in Antigua. Wild stuff, my friend.
Interesting! One more parallel: I was a projectionist too. IATSE Local 273 in Connecticut. I joined because I wanted to get paid to watch movies, so it was either be a projectionist or a film reviewer. Amos Vogel's excellent seminar called (if I remember correctly) "Cinema and..." at Annenberg in 1973 was what got me interested in the close reading of films in their historical-political-cultural settings. And yes, the Irvine Auditorium concert seems like one of the lost ones with respect to the Dead canon; not sure why.
Goosebumps, I say. I’ve ordered the paperback version and will upgrade my subscription soon. “Surfing the Interstates” has bumped “Infinite Jest” as my next goal once I complete The Brothers Karamazov. Your embrace of Anthropic’s Claude in your 70s is profoundly inspiring.
Welcome, my friend. Thanks again. I’ve been a “gearhead”my whole life and have always embraced new tech. Like any tool, AI is just that. Without skill, intention and constant attention, it can always go terribly wrong. Think Skilsaw? There is a huge stigma around AI but it stems from lazy users looking to skip the hard parts of thinking and creating. Those challenges are always present and can only be met by honest work and discipline. I love Dostoevsky.
We've had something in common for 55 years without knowing it. Going down a You-Tube-induced rabbit hole in search of various performances of "Althea", I landed at <dead.net/archives>, looking for info about the first Dead concert I attended, which happened to also be the first one you attended: Irvine Auditorium, Oct. 15, 1970. You seem to recall a lot more about it than I can! My main memories were: 1) the byzantine decorations around the proscenium arch turned into enormous glowing snakes; and 2) backstage after the show, staring dumbly at some of the band members, we accepted the big, soft cookies they offered us. I was living at 4000 Pine in something called "The Experimental College", which was one of Penn's sincere but lame attempts to respond to the student strike of the previous academic year. I look foward to reading your memoirs. Everyone should write a memoir, because everyone has at least one good story to tell, even to strangers.
oh my God, that’s amazing… small world. I’ve always been disappointed by the fact that there’s no tapes of the show, but there are a few from within a few weeks of Bobby’s 23rd birthday. I was living up on 34th off Walnut in a rented triple-decker. Like you, I also worked in the film business in NYC, but I didn’t last long. I did a summer internship with Francis F Thompson Inc. and I also worked a year at MCA universal in Park Avenue as a projectionist. I fled New York City in 1972 never to return. Hated living there. I was also stunned by the fact that your father died on a cruise after visiting Antigua. I lived in Antigua for four years. I’m working on the second book in my memoir trilogy and it’s all about those years in Antigua. Wild stuff, my friend.
Interesting! One more parallel: I was a projectionist too. IATSE Local 273 in Connecticut. I joined because I wanted to get paid to watch movies, so it was either be a projectionist or a film reviewer. Amos Vogel's excellent seminar called (if I remember correctly) "Cinema and..." at Annenberg in 1973 was what got me interested in the close reading of films in their historical-political-cultural settings. And yes, the Irvine Auditorium concert seems like one of the lost ones with respect to the Dead canon; not sure why.