Do Something Useful

It's a beautiful, sunny, Southern California Saturday and I'm killing time reading magazines before I up and go to parties.

Yup, that's why the summer is better than the winter, the extracurricular activities. First we're stopping by at a Middlebury event, and if there's time left thereafter, we're going to Kevin Weaver's house for an Atlantic Records soiree, where they're serving Umami Burgers...mmm, that's worth the trip, don't you think?

As for the Middlebury event...it's my first in decades, but they tracked me down after I was featured in the "Magazine," so I'm gonna go. But funny thing about the article...I thought it would mean more to me, all these years later, to get a write-up in the publication of my alma mater, but if you're fighting old battles in your head, if you think connecting with a long lost love will make your life complete, it's evidence you're not living in the present, which I finally am, to my great wonderment and surprise.

Anyway, I want to clear the decks so I can get back to my book, Elizabeth Strout's "The Burgess Boys." It didn't get such hot reviews, it hasn't caught fire, but it's ringing my bell, the way it's so intimate, it doesn't seem to be written for the reader, it's like you're eavesdropping on a conversation, and in a world where it's all about the whizz-bang, to focus on the little, the irrelevant to most, is so satisfying.

I'm back on a book kick. I'm burned out on the lousy writing in magazines and newspapers. And Amazon replaced my four year old Kindle with a new Paperwhite, oh I had to pay fifty bucks, but it was a thrill after being on hold and wasting two hours with nitwits in their customer service department. It's not like Apple, the people are not comprehensible and they're just this side of useless, and the Paperwhite...is imperfect, it's got glowing hot spots at the bottom, everybody complains about them online, but I'm doing my best to overlook them.

So I read Meg Wolitzer's "The Interestings." Long on plot, a bit short on insight, it's still the Franzen novel for those who hate his work. And if you ever went to summer camp... I got hooked on these looking back books with Sara Davidson's "Loose Change" in the seventies, I like them. And then I read Claire Messud's "The Woman Upstairs," which the intelligentsia raved about, despite tepid reviews upon release, and I was expecting a dry tome, but it opens so vividly, so realistically, that I was hooked. And the protagonist went to Middlebury! Not that that's relevant. And I had to look up words constantly. And the plot petered out. But there was so much insight! We're all so lonely, looking for fulfillment. And are those who do the right thing consigned to a life of quiet desperation? Read it and tell me!

And I can't tell you how many lousy articles I skimmed, until I found a good one in "Vanity Fair"...an excerpt from Ava Gardner's memoir. The real story about her relationships with Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw. It's almost worth the price of the magazine. But the article I saved, the best for last, just like Vanessa Williams sang, was the one on Mary McCarthy and her book "The Group."

I read it. The book. The article I had to skim, it was nearly pointless. Except something stood out. THE SALES FIGURES!

"The Group," which was released in August 1963, had a first printing of 75,000. Stores were ordering 5,000 a day thereafter. By the close of 1964, nearly 300,000 copies had been sold.

Like a record.

Yes, books were supplanted by records. You wanted to write the Great American Novel and then you wanted to record the Great American Album. And writers and musicians still believe we're living in yesteryear, but nothing could be further from the truth.

In other words, if I'm exposed to any more of the Kanye hype, I'm gonna explode. Because I just don't CARE!

That's the difference, that's what the Internet has wrought. Instead of the populace being hyper-focused on what's hyped, most of us can quite easily avoid it, we're deep into our own niches. The number one record? MOST PEOPLE HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD IT!

But we all know Google, we all know Facebook, we all know iPhone.

So having flipped through "Vanity Fair," I picked up "Outside," and started reading from the back, which is what I usually do, the front is too scary, I've got to ease into my reading. And it was there that I was confronted with a story on Joel Gratz. Of OpenSnow. Or should I say opensnow.com, the go-to precipitation/powder website.

Huh?

Believe me, if you're a skier, you know Open Snow, you know Joel Gratz, he's the one who every day, sometimes twice a day, tells you how much snow you're gonna get at your ski area. Which is devilishly important now that global warming seems to have stopped winter precipitation, this season was better than last, but 2011-12 was the worst on record in Vail.

How did I find out about OpenSnow?

Andy!

We all talk, we all communicate, I was just about to text Andy about this article, even though he's in Colorado right now, just flew in from his home base of NYC. Yes, today our closest friends don't live in the neighborhood, but the virtual village online. I connect with Jake and Marc and Richard more than I do with the people who live in my town, even though they live in Toronto, New Jersey and London respectively.

Joel Gratz gave up his dream, of weather-forecasting. He tried to go straight, getting his Master's, an MBA and a cubicle gig. But he couldn't give up on weather. That's how you know you're a lifer, when you can't give up. Gratz quit his job and started his site.

And word spread.

Because we need to know.

I hate Accuweather, my old go-to weather provider. Because it's not LOCALIZED enough! What they say is Vail is miles away and thousands of feet lower than the ski area, and this makes a huge difference. Hell, it can be snowing atop a peak and bright sunshine a mile from the base.

So Joel showed his work to Chris Davenport, famous Aspenite, famous extreme skier, and word started to spread, because we need the information. Not that OpenSnow scales, I mean Gratz has widened his world to New England and the west coast, but most people just don't care about snowfall, they'd rather it NEVER happens.

But we do. Enough of us to keep Joel in business. He's now running a freemium model. Yup, you can pay more for more, like videos and other chozzerai. And there are people who are just that interested.

So, there's a business in niches. Maybe your music doesn't scale to everybody.

But what's weird is no music scales to everybody today. There's no hit everybody knows, no show everybody's got to go to.

But we all know the aforementioned Google, Facebook and iPhone. And we know Amazon too.

And it's all because they're useful, they provide a service.

That's the modern model, that's what's hip today.

Sure, write your book, make your music, but know the heyday of those creations is past. Could come back, then again, there was only one Renaissance. Oh, people have been painting ever since, it's just that painting...doesn't drive the culture.

But no one in book publishing or the music industry will admit the foregoing. They believe it's the same as it ever was. But it's not. The nitwits might go on TV talent shows, but the educated want nothing to do with the so-called arts, they're all into tech, and tech is about being useful, because useful SCALES!


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