I’m just back from Burning Man*, an experience that’s not unlike web browsing—you walk and run and get lost and found and stumble upon the most amazing people, places and uncategorizable things. That’s why I returned to the Black Rock Desert after a few years skipping the event. And I’m so glad I did. Burning Man is at once an intensely individual experience and a massive experiment in a shared experience—and stories very much connect the the personal and collective experience. It’s a place for bringing stories, sharing stories, and making up new ones along the way. There’s plenty of places to feast on words, photos and videos about Burning Man, so I’ll just share one project that blew me away, especially as it’s so appropriate on Labor Day weekend.

Strolling through the desert, I came upon a collage of photos in which each person held up a sign with a few words scrawled on it Bob Dylan Don’t Look Back-style. A note within the collage explained that I was staring at WDYDWYD?, aka Why Do You Do What You Do?, (more…)

When Josh Neufeld and I first met last fall to talk about a webcomic about Hurricane Katrina, one of the things I posited to him was that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast might start to recede from the media’s attention. By doing a serialized story on SMITH chronicling the lives of a handful of people who escaped Katrina, I thought we could both tell a story the way we know and love best—one person at a time—and do whatever small part we could to keep reminding people about this disaster.
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A.D.’s writer and illustrator Josh Neufeld, along with “characters” (we wish we had a better word—these are real, amazing, flesh-and-blood people) Denise and Leo, talked about the making of A.D.—and their lives now—on NPR’s national show, News & Notes on Friday, August 24.

“A.D. is a combination of my life and Josh’s interpretation of it,” Denise told host Farai Chideya, explaining that after some initial concerns about how she was portrayed, Josh listened to her and rather than having a knee-jerk reaction he worked with her to represent her in the most accurate way. She explained that of the reasons she agreed to participate in the project is because she thought “it was an opportunity to get some truth out about Katrina because there were so many lies.”

“When the comic strip first started …. it brought a lot of things back for me,” offered Leo. “I really remembered those last moments before we left and how tense they were. I don’t know if it helps me get over it, but it does help me remember it. And that puts things now in perspective as far as making sure I do appreciate everything I have in my life now—and how easily it can be taken away.”

Listen to this fascinating discussion here.

THIS JUST IN! A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge’s writer and illustrator Josh Neufeld, along with Denise and Leo, two of the story’s main characters, will be on NPR’s national show, News & Notes, Friday, August 23 at 1:20pm EST. The show airs at different times in different cities—check your local NPR station’s schedule here.

As the second anniversary of Katrina approaches, lots of people are finding out about A.D.—from the many bloggers who have spread the word, to coverage in places like Rolling Stone, Wired.com, Boing Boing the Toronto Star—with many other spots covering it in the coming days. And yet, there are still too many people who should know about A.D. and don’t. If you love SMITH, New Orleans, and original storytelling, we’d be so grateful if you took 20 seconds to help us spread the word. We really appreciate it.

Here’s a list of media of all flavors who have sprinkled some love on A.D.

The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is a big story—10 major Time, Inc. publications, for example, are featuring Katrina coverage according to The New York Times. A lot of the coverage focuses on the politics of Katrina and how the government failed its own, a notion Spike Lee explored so well in When the Levees Broke. But our webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s new documentary, Kamp Katrina, focuses on the individual stories of a handful of people who lived through it. For six months, the filmmakers embedded themselves into the life of Ms. Pearl, a 56-year-old Upper 9th Ward resident whose backyard became a self-made tent community for 14 displaced residents.

The film debuts at NYC’s MOMA this Thursday, August 23, moves downtown to the Pioneer Theater for a weeklong run, before traveling the United States. Some SMITH editors will be at the Friday night screening at the Pioneer. It’s far from a popcorn flick, but if any SMITH readers can make it, let us know—first bucket’s on us.

Cross-posted on the A.D. blog.

On the Road isn’t exactly a book that you a) need an excuse to re-read or b) write about. Still, much has been said and done on a book that generation after generation have the supreme pleasure to discover for the first time. Back in the day, I taught the book to a group of high school students in a course called, “I got my tie-dye at Macy’s: The 60s meets the 80s,” (which I thought was quite witty at the time).

A piece in the (now smaller but still grand) New York Times meets and greets Kerouac and co. on the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication. As is the (em>Times’ way, the package around the piece online is rich: a PDF of the original Times review in 1957; an audio reading of the first chapter; tons of reader comments, like this one by “Kendal”:

After WWII it was necessary for transcendentalism to be condensed like a can of soup for the quick consumption of late 20th century moderns. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. The lesson is that these themes continue to influence us, parsed, however, in terms that reflect the gritty reality of the street, or road, if you wish.

Here, here!

Now, not to sprinkle too much hate on a book I love, but I wonder: You have to figure that, while the book is certainly considered a memoir, Kerouac had to have exaggerated part of his journey. And who’s kidding who? Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the book you of course read shortly after On the Road) is not pure nonfiction. Does it matter if the essence of the storytelling experience for writer and then reader rings true? If so, should future editions states: this ain’t all true? How is this different than James Frey and others who’ve been accused and caught of fabrication or gross exaggeration?

On the Road image from Flickr’s Corvar.

Here’s an interesting meta-personal media moment: Google News recently announced that it’s allowing comments to news stories from the people mentioned in the stories Google publishes. If you envision some serious smackdowns, you’re right. Lots of spots, including SMITH, allow anyone (who proves he or she’s not spam) to respond to a story. Exhibit D: Followers of our webcomic, A.D., took in a recent exchange between a reader who questioned if one of the characters would actually use the language Josh Neufeld attributed to her and the character herself. Here’s a snippet:

Dean Haspiel: A.D. continues to amaze … My only criticism is with the last panel when the woman screams “I’m gonna die in this bitch!” It felt forced and took me out of the drama.

Denise: That woman is me, and that is exactly what I was thinking at that moment and for many, many moments during the hurricane. I was terrified, and that was my expression of terror, not false bravado.

That’s an excerpt from a longer (scroll down to “comments” area below the panels), really interesting exchange between Dean and Denise, reader and webcomic character (and indeed real person). Pretty cool, huh? And perhaps it’s the future of journalism.

How do you go from Three’s Company to Iraq to SMITH to Colbert? Simple.

1. SMITH contributing editor Michael Slenske pitches a photo essay of the unusual and entertaining photos of Iraqi vet Todd Bowers

2. SMITH editor Larry Smith says: “Love it. Bring it on in, man.”

3. Said story runs on SMITH with following caption, a quote Bowers overheard from a Marine: “Suzanne Somers is hot and all, but why the fuck is she sending Thighmasters to Fallujah?”

4. SMITH reader and SMITHmag.com squatter Rupert Murdoch—still pissed he didn’t get SMITHmag.net—takes brief break from buying The Wall Street Journal to view all 37 photos in SMITH’s Iraqi photo essay, sees the Thighmaster shot, and texts Page Six editor Richard Johnson, who then stops the presses!

5. The next day an item called “Thigh Anxiety” appears on Page Six.

6. A few days later on The Colbert Report, Colbert riffs about the Department of Defense’s funny ways of supporting the troops … with Thighmasters.

It doesn’t take much to get me excited about storytelling these days. Not that storytelling is new: we’ve been telling stories to each other since a couple of cavemen grunted some juicy gossip over a fire (this was B.U.W., but those cave peeps could still be cruel). Swapping stories with each other—via grunts, in fully formed sounds, in the form of confessions, with just six or 100 words, employing timelines, or telling common tales—has never been easier because of all the cool technology at our (occasionally nail-bitten) fingertips. This is the golden age of storytelling.

Which brings us to the recently revamped Experience Project, a social networking site fueled by the notion that your public persona isn’t about who you went to college with or how many “friends” you have, but by the life experiences that make you you. The site’s organized by categories of shared experiences, from first kisses to battles with depression to the many, many folks who are extremely proud of (and clearly very experienced at) being Irish. I like to get lost in the Experience Project’s dreams area, where people post and interpret each other’s sleeping life (don’t get me started on mine). Writers can be anonymous or not, but the site’s mission is to help writers reveal the “real you” within its open, expressive community. It’s homey and high-minded and a good sign of the times. Plus, the Experience Project crew–some of whom we met at Blogher–have extremely good taste.

Dreams via Flickr’s stephentrepreneur.

Sometimes the proverbial meme pops up on SMITH. The meme of the moment*, I am thrilled to report, is vaginas (my friend Doy calls his boyfriend’s dog’s her hamantashen, but I can’t even go there). At Blogher, Bite My Cookie blogger was spreading the love with her “Vagina is for Lovers” tees (as well as her tasty cookies—no double meaning intended), while artist Molly Crabapple sent in a brush with fame about spreading the love for a photo shoot in fashion photo legend Patrick Demarchelier’s place (it’s not what you’re thinking). Back when we launched, like a hundred years ago, Kathy Ritchie took us to her inner-sanctum in a very funny story about her gynecologist, Angelina Jolie, and well, just read the piece.

Hamantashen from Flickr’s roboppy.

Vagina is for Lovers from Flickr’s Girl’s Gone Child.

*Admittedly, I pretty much wrote this post so I can now Twitter out “blogging about vaginas.”