"One More Thing"

by ANDREW ZORNOZA

Last weekend, Zack Kushner climbed the mountain of life and stood at the top. His crossword puzzle, "One More Thing," appeared in the NYT: the Sunday edition. How did he get there? What follows is an interview with Mr. Kushner. . . .

Really a fun puzzle Zack. Are you a cruciverbalist, constructor or other?

Thanks. I'm going to go with cruciverbalist, but they're really the same thing. Cruciverbalist just sounds better at parties. According to the definition, anyone who "enjoys crosswords" is a cruciverbalist, but in its normal usage (as if anyone uses the word normally) it means a constructor of crossword puzzles, or more literally, a "crosser of words."

How does it feel knowing that thousands of people all across the globe are poring over your work?

Odd. To be honest, it hasn't really sunk in yet. It was such a long journey to get this puzzle published that having it actually sitting in front of me in the Sunday Magazine is just, well, odd. Also, being in Australia, most of the reactions are coming from far away. I don't have much chance of seeing someone at the next table working on it. I started constructing with the goal of publishing a Sunday Times crossword, and now I've done it. I suppose I'll have to find a new goal, now. . . .

Many writers feel the pull of their profession at a young age. Of course, we all start as readers. How did the transformation from solver to creator happen to you?

With love, of course! I'd been solving puzzles for a long time, but the first puzzle I ever constructed was for my then-girlfriend, now-wife. It was an interesting experience sitting on the other side of the desk, but not one I immediately found addictive. My favorite clue/answer was: "The worst kind of souvenir? / EBOLA". It wasn't until Wordplay came out in '06 that I got it into my head to create a puzzle I could sell. It took me a year of hacking around until I really got the basics of cruciverbalism and another year until I put together a puzzle that met the NY Times standards.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzkBLlw6Azg&feature=related]

Can you give us some idea of your journey to the New York Times?

Outside of the puzzle I just mentioned, my next attempt was pretty ghastly. I tried to do a rebus puzzle using Greek letters. I wasn't quite clear on all the rules of puzzle making and ended up with something that was unprofessional at best. Too many black squares, bad "fill" (the words in the puzzle that aren't theme answers), etc. It was only after I finished it that I saw how unacceptable it was and so I shelved it and started again. My next attempt wasn't as shoddy, a puzzle that included the names of the Rat Pack in the theme answers (i.e. SITS IN A TRANCE). This one I actually sent in, waited a few months, then got the rejection email. In retrospect, my theme answers weren't quality; while SITS IN A TRANCE makes sense, it's not really "in the language." If it's not a recognizable phrase, it won't please editors. FALLS IN A TRANCE, for example, would be better, but still not as good as FALLS INTO A TRANCE. Try doing a Google search of all three terms in quotes and you'll see what I mean. The more hits returned, the more common the phrase, the more "in the language."

Sometime around this point, I realized I was an idiot for not using the specialized software available to cruciverbalists. Software that helps you create a grid, keep symmetry, clue, and most importantly, fill. I use Crossword Compiler but there are others. I also joined the cruciverb.com mailing list and started to soak up the knowledge.

Two years after first having a real go, I met with success. I've sold three puzzles so far: one to the LA Times, one to Simon & Schuster for Mega Crosswords 8, and this one to the NY Times.I'm securely in the novice-professional category. All are Sunday puzzles, which means they're 21x21 instead of the weekday normal 15x15.

You've mentioned your Grandfather as an early influence. He would certainly be proud.

I used to watch him do the Times puzzles in ink, and that always impressed me. It's hard to imagine how he would have reacted to seeing my puzzle in the Sunday Times. He was a quiet man, not overly affectionate. He probably would have made a few jokes about it, hugged me, and told everyone he met on the street.

How much of a personal expression is a single puzzle? Can you bend the clues to express more than a simple theme? Or does the puzzle have a mind of its own?

The way that a puzzle shows its personality is in the theme answers/clues and in the words you choose for the fill. For example, I liked the word CARJACK and worked to keep that in the fill. Someone else might have liked the name of an opera star or a baseball player. While the clues you choose do reflect your personality, it's important to remember that the editor will change a mess of them. In my NY Times puzzle, the editor changed about half my clues including a bunch of theme clues.

Can you take me through some of these? How about 23 Across: Rachael Ray activity eliciting oohs and aahs?

I got some grief in the crossword puzzle blogs for this clue, even though it wasn't one I wrote. My original clue was "Thrilling grilling?" Apparently people aren't too fond of Rachael Ray, but I've no idea who she is. . . .

30 Across: Pantywaist

WUSS just sort of fit the bill in this corner. My original clue was "97-pound weakling."

45 Across: Spacesuit worry

I liked this one too. Finally one of my original clues! TEAR can mean so many things and cluing a word like that is sometimes dull. You end up choosing between one of 100 standard clues (there's a database of clues that have been published which you can pull from). In this case, I had a bit of brainstorm and found an original way to clue a standard word.

38 Down: "I don't get no respect" to Rodney Dangerfield

A fun answer. A nice Yiddish word to get in the puzzle!

above, the novice-professional Cruciverbalist soaking up the knowledge

Will Shortz has said his favorite crossword clue of all-time is "it might turn into a different story." The answer being "SPIRALSTAIRCASE.” Your favorite all-time clue?

Well, I certainly haven't seen all of them, but one I recall is "Pole vault units" / ZLOTYS. I like the fun wordplay there. It's the same kind of thing I was trying to do with "Ones concealing their aims" / SNIPERS.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWOd3_XfWKo&feature=related]

You live in Australia. I was told that Aussie children wear ice-cream containers on their heads to protect themselves from the attacks of magpies. True?

Hah! I haven't seen that, but I'd believe it. My wife says as a child she used to have to carry an umbrella to protect herself from dive-bombing birds.

Any taboos in your puzzle making?

Nope. I try to avoid crappy fill, like all cruciverbalists, but constructing a puzzle is very difficult and I've always been stuck with one or two words I wish I could have avoided (like REGRAB, ugh).

Last question. Scrabble. Are you formidable?

It's all relative, I guess. I play a bunch and I'm good, but I'm not competitive and haven't memorized all those weird words one needs to be a true Scrabble ninja.

I prefer to have fun with it.

Zack Kushner is a transplanted American in Oz. When he is not creating puzzles for the enjoyment of thousands, he pilots the helm of xZackly Copywriting.

KUSHNER'S PLAYLIST

“Smells Like Content” — The Books (mp3)

“New England” — Jonathan Richman(m4a)

"Take me to the Basement" (mp3)

Andrew Zornoza is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the author of the photo-novel "Where I Stay," (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2009). His stories have been published in Confrontation, Porcupine Literary Arts, Capgun, SleepingFish and elsewhere, with work forthcoming in Gastronomica and H.O.W. His latest story is available here. You can e-mail him at azornoza at gmail.com. He lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

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Killing Themselves To Laugh

by Julia McCloy

A year ago a friend tackled me in a snowball fight. It was all fun and games, but I tore my ACL and pretty much made salsa out of my knee. I spent a couple of months on crutches. Not only did I look pathetic, but I sounded pathetic too. I made these horrible crutch noises any time I entered a room. Like I was constantly hitting the rim of a snare drum gently and out of time. I had just cut my blonde hair very short and that paired with my small frame gave me the appearance of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. And America loves that kid. No one wanted to see him on crutches dressed like a 31 year old woman. Which is the way I dress since I am both 31 and a woman. And not in fact Macaulay Culkin. I got a lot of attention. I got a lot of questions.

People I didn’t know constantly asked me how I hurt myself. If there were anything positive that came out of my torn- up knee, it was jokes that I could make out of my appearance. So when people asked me how I hurt myself, I would lean my weight onto the tan rubber at the top of my crutches and I would look at them straight in the face, then I’d say “My boyfriend found out I was pregnant… he pushed me down the stairs.” Then I would shrug my shoulders, look down, and crutch slowly away.

I did this to be funny. But I had a specific audience I was playing to. It was my friends whom I would tell the story to later. I chose to make myself look either demented or more pathetic (or both) for a laugh that I wouldn’t even get to have until I was balancing uneasily on a barstool or with a phone pressed hard against my face. My audience is my friends. I want their appreciation and I am more than happy to freak out a few people to get it. Appreciation in the form of laughter is pretty close to love. I want either/or. Appreciation or laughter. I am willing to feel pain for the cause too.

I am not the only one who feels this way either. Gilda Radner famously broke her rib in rehearsals for SNL by running again and again into a closed closet door, because that what her character was supposed to do. Radner then had her rib taped and proceeded to perform in the show.

Lucille Ball was once knocked unconscious during the taping of The Lucy Show. She was wearing roller skates and was instructed to skate under a table as men lifted the table into the air. She didn’t duck low enough and hit the table straight on. With her head. When she came to she told the screenwriters, “It was my fault; I mistimed it. You just keep writing ‘em, I’ll do ‘em, don’t worry. That is what we do here.”

Ball continued with these shenanigans through her life and made a Times critic uncomfortable with her physical antics in the1980s when she returned to TV. The critic claimed (and correctly) that viewers were more likely to “wince than giggle. When the person slipping on a banana peel turns out to be elderly, the threat of a truly serious injury overwhelms the joke.” We like our old people mellow, fully insured, and wearing foam caps that say, “I don’t give a shit. I am retired.” We also like it when we are pretty sure they don’t know that they are wearing this hat. Because they are wearing it during church.

There is a place in a joke where the joke teller puts the audience at risk. It can be at the onset, the end, or the whole damn thing. If humor is just the presence and then the release of anxiety, then the joke teller must gauge how much anxiety your mere existence causes in order to gauge what kind of potential your joke has. Old people scare Americans. Real bad. And not just because we saw a whole lot of them making out with aliens in Cocoon. Although that certainly didn’t help.

But the elderly are not the only people who scare us gentle Americans. Foreigners and men who wrestle women (or play with gender roles) are the hell out of us too. Andy Kaufman proved that again and again. He was happy to put people in both physical and emotional peril to make a joke. In turn he endeared himself to an army of annoying twenty something males who love to ruin parties by loudly explaining to everyone in earshot that “you have to be smart to get Kaufman. If you don’t get him maybe you’re not smart enough, or know about WHAT IS FUNNY. But whatever it is, if you understood humor then you would think he was funny.” I don’t think he is funny and I have received this lecture several times. Eventually I just starting roofie-ing myself at the onset of the lecture at parties with hopes that I would forget the whole lecture ordeal. If I woke up with my underwear on –well, that was just a bonus.

The above sentence never happened. I have never roofied myself and generally I know where my underwear is. But it is a joke I am willing to make. It falls into the spectrum I am willing to joke about. Very little falls outside of this spectrum, including physical stunts. I want people to laugh at me. And I am more than willing to tape up a jammed finger or make a stranger grimace to get it. Before you judge me, I would ask you to ask yourself what is the craziest thing you ever did for a person that you had a crush on (have you ever written bad poetry, snuck into some place you are not supposed to be). Whatever it is probably much more humiliating than I have ever done. It is probably much funnier as well.

Julia McCloy is a contributor to This Recording. She lives in Memphis.

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by Rachel B. Glaser

POLITICAL TRENDS

The word "Obama" has not run out, now more then ever, the word has a glow on it, its learned to draw itself 3-D, it makes me think of a superstar rookie, a new kind of a food, it makes me think of stores that put O-Rama after, like Sound-O-Rama, Crafts-O-Rama, Pets-O-Rama, Obama doesn't sound like a word with an end. The -ama can go on and on, you might spell it Barack Obama⁴, if you are a math guy, a physics gal, an alien proficient in Microsoft Word.

LOCAL TRENDS

Back on Earth, winter has got everyone gloomy. Everyone is losing a job, or else involved in long conversations about change in their own life -- location, attitude, careers. My dog gets bored and starts eating sticks. Award show airs after award show, I watch them all and cry from my own private depths. Tears are the tiny citizens of my insides, heaved in minor drama to the outside.

CINEMATIC TRENDS

Previews have become stylized editing accomplishments in the short, short film genre. Look for the short film The Preview of Duplicity, starring Julia Roberts and that guy, and for a wild cross genre piece, The Preview of Tyler Perry's Madea Goes To Jail, which leaves theater-goers in disbelief.

HOME TV TRENDS

A distracted cat might walk over the VCR/DVD/TV remotes and create a vertical zig-zag pattern on the screen, known only as Digital Bamboo.

VISUAL TRENDS

The video effect of taking still photographs and slowly moving the background or the subject, which has secretly been split into two layers, gives the now "moving" image a phony sort of life. I first saw this effect in the 2007 NBA Playoff commercials and appreciated it in that context, but the practice is spreading rapidly and last night I saw the effect being used in a documentary on the channel 13 or somewhere.

VERBAL TRENDS

An ancient conversational gimmick making a comeback, has one person mimic what their companion has said in a voice more annoying or high pitched than the original.

To reply in deadpan fashion to questions asked by your parents.

When asked the time, to say the incorrect time, mixing up the numbers by mistake.

When visiting big cities, to comment in a blasé way to your friends about strangers passing in the opposite direction, with any remorse eased by the quickly accelerating two-way gap.

PHYSICAL TRENDS

A high five feels long gone forgotten and nowadays when someone initiates this act, the receiver of the five might waver uncertainly, before striking the hand with five, or getting slapped with five.

In colder regions, there is an added foot clap above the pavement, sneaker to sneaker, boot to boot, upon entering an automobile in the snow.

Sleeping with a pillow between one's knees to aid correct alignment and give the sleeper life luck.

Tossing trash in the trash can in an abstract game winning shot in a parallel place.

No one has slid down a banister in a very long time.

FRIENDSHIP TRENDS

The half-assed hug, missed calls, lots of fun, general sense of understanding, miraculously long history, loyalty, restaurant made food, lending, owing, and reminding about money, digging up of old photos, asking about one's parents, one's boyfriend's parents, one's girlfriend's job, not very much liking a friend's pet, being jealous of a friend's pet, linking to old classmate's naked blogs, comparing breast size by touch, visiting one's sick horse, complaining about friends to girlfriend/boyfriend, complaining about girlfriend/boyfriend to friends in same day, playing voicemails on speaker phone while feeling a shiver of fear, waiting, being late for, dancing with, dancing around, trying to rev up the motivation to dance, arguing good naturedly and loudly down the street.

Rachel B. Glaser is the senior contributor to This Recording. She lives in Massachusetts, where she works in MS Paint and MS Word. Her blog is here.

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Cat's a Jerk, Son

by Georgia Hardstark

I never thought of myself as someone who would say "thanks, but no thanks" to a cat. Although I think dogs are swell and everything, I've always had a cat, and can't really imagine myself without one. In fact, I'm fairly certain I have the very best one right now in the form of a crossed-eyed Siamese named Elvis. I'm the kind of person who lacks the self control to not shout "kitty!!!" every time I see a stray cat, and have found myself on my knees, peering under cars in vain attempts at capturing said strays on more occasions than I'd like to admit.

Sadly, it seems as if I have met the exception to this rule. The exception's name is Curtis, and he's a fucking jerk. When my last (and I mean "last" in "most previous" and "last ever", hopefully) roommate and his cat Curtis moved in with me and Elvis, I had dreams of our respective cats becoming close friends, and fantasies of what it would be like to have one cat to cuddle while the other one was giving me the cold shoulder. While Curtis can be quite cuddly when he wants to be, he spends more of his time doing the following:

• biting me


• biting Elvis


• chasing Elvis


• chewing through expensive electrical cables


• digging through the cat box for NO FUCKING REASON


• eating enormous amounts of food (which I pay for)


• clawing everything but his scratching post


• trying to jump up to the top shelf of my closet which results in things coming crashing down on top of him every single time but which he still insists on attempting


• trying to escape the house EVERY time the front door opens and being successful about half of those times


• being a general nuisance

Curtis!

When I moved into my apartment about a month ago I offered to take Curtis with me since my former-roommate was never home, and I was worried about Curtis's well-being. It was to be a temporary thing, until my former-roommate got settled, but I secretly hoped that Curtis would settle in with me and Elvis and that we'd become a happy family. Nope. Didn't happen.

I just don't get it. While Elvis has the patience and demeanor of a dignified animal, Curtis is wild-eyed and disobedient. I don't think he knows his own name, and shouts of "NO!" don't even cause him to flinch. He walks underfoot constantly, demands attention and then pays you back by biting the shit out of you, seems to think that my putting on black pants or tights is his cue to rub all over my legs thereby leaving white fur all over me, and thinks that his being locked out of a room is a mistake that can only be remedied by yowling and loudly throwing himself against the door.

What's funny is that about a year ago, Elvis was doing similarly wild things, and I thought that companion would solve these problems. "He's bored and lonely," I figured.

Elvis u used to b so centered

Well his problems have been solved, except now he's a shell of the cat he used to be. Though he was once a chatterbox who you seriously couldn't get to shut up, typical of Siamese cats, it's now almost impossible to illicit a peep out of him. He sits quietly and never greets me at the door like he used to. He cuddles with me less, too, which sucks.

So tonight I'm bringing Curtis back to my former roommate, whose plan is to find him a home where he can be loved and hopefully trained. I'll honestly be so relieved when he's gone.

Update: Curtis has found a new home with Former Roommate's friend. The friend seems very nice and patient, and has a young kitty for Curtis to play with and cat-toys in every room of his (beautiful) house. Plus, I have a suspicion that Curtis hates humans of the female variety, and prefers men, so this is a good fit.

Also, Elvis is back to his old self.

Georgia Hardstark is the contributing editor to This Recording. She lives in Los Angeles, and blogs here.

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Go West

by Robert Rutherford

Horace Greeley the then editor of The New York Tribune, supposedly coined the phrase "Go West, young man" in a 1965 editorial. Others maintain that John Babson Lane Soule originated the phrase in a 1851 Terre Haute Express editorial and that it was originally "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country."

The Soule camp, a minority, insists the 14 year head start he had more than establishes him as the originator of the term. The Greeley camp asks for proof, because although there are a number of secondary sources that point to the article dating from no earlier than 1890, there are is no primary evidence, nor can the article itself be found to exist. The argument rages on today.

Here's the thing: No young man, gone west or otherwise, can be reasonable expected to give a shit. This may fly in some cloistered east coast literary salon (do those exist?), but way out left in the vast suck of Southern California, we've gone West, by land and by river and by pool. We're already here, and debating the origin of the phrase is like driving in LA: a lot of work for a terminally useless result.

[Call] Go West, Young Man

[Response] I'm Ghost, I'm Gone

This frontier has always been one more of imagination than reality. The Asiatics who walked across the Bering land bridge (La Brea Tar Pits) were first, Spain tied for second as Mexico established its independence, then Les Etats-Unis walked west and annexed most of California, leaving that little dangle Baja to the drug lords and drug fueled frat boys, and aped Europe at the edge. It was all Mexico anyway. To "grow up with the country" presumes the one that was there before it had not reached adolescence.

This music video and the archaic computer game Oregon Trail summed up the quintessential experience for many Americans. The West has become an idea of cultural hegemony, which splayed itself out across the globe in myriad directions. All foods, one cafeteria. Cultural rebirth through economic migration was the theme, and it has remained relevant along the trail: Hawaii, Japan,  South Korea (Korean BBQ and Koreatown), Israel, China etc. These export markets all became metaphoric American frontiers if not actual ones. The west has run out of new material (Point Break Live) and alcohol is welcome at the viewing parties in the graveyard (Film Screenings at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery).

And now, like a collapsed star or black hole the steady flow out has doubled back in on itself. It may not yet reversed course enough so that the water flows uphill as so often predicted in the dystopias of our films. But if there's nothing but cultural detritus here in the good 'ol USA...as it was on the way out, California will be the case study on the trail back in.

Will the west become lawless? Will we return to vigilante justice? Will superheroes come to save us? Will the new frontier draw a divisive line in the sand right at the old one? What happens when decades of pushing west folds back in on itself? The not-so-far East may very well become the cultural exporter – America the market, Cali the forefront – and the world's attention may yet come back to California Frontier.

I'm going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali

I'm going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali

I'm going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali

I'm going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali

LA: Welcome to the crumbling and regenerating future Alex.

NYC: You'll be back.

Robert Rutherford is the senior contributor to This Recording. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Notes from the Bayou City

by Yvonne Georgina Puig

The Panera Bread here in Houston, at Memorial City Mall, where I sit writing, is filled with people thumbing through newspapers and working on laptops. It's an odd place to find oneself in the wake of a natural disaster. Contrived to encourage work and conversation, but somehow ill-quipped.

Ten days after Hurricane Ike, most people around here don't have internet, and only a few have power. The result is something you don't see very often in this part of Houston: people outside of the house, talking or reading over coffee. The chit-chat is invariably Ike-related. Are you okay? Did your house make it? Did you lose any trees? Everyone has a story.

Mrs. McKissick

In the next day or two however, as cable returns and fewer lack in lights and the (literal) mountains of tree limbs and debris are trucked away, the community atmosphere will have faded. Houstonians will return to business as usual-almost. Ike, like its big sisters Carla and Alicia, is just one of those storms that, to quote the neighbors, "folks'll keep talkin' about."

Gene Parrish, electrician, teacher, veteran

"When Carla hit I was in Hong Kong, in the navy. But I think this storm here is the worst we've ever had. It's nasty. I've been taking them quick, cold baths for a week. Once you turn blue you don't care anymore. It don't take but two minutes to take a cold shower. You just spring in and spring out. Spring in and spring out."

Mrs. McKissick, retired schoolteacher. A tree crashed through the roof over Mrs. McKissick's sitting room.

"I've got two Mexicans coming from Bruce's place and they tell me they'll fix it in a week and do a first-rate job. I hope I don't have a rat in my house. If I do I'm moving out. That storm ruined my carpet. I'm getting a new carpet, the same but it'll be one shade darker."

Mrs. McKissick's poodle, Katie

Anthony "Cleve" Calagna, Village Fire Chief, proud Democrat

"We got a call that night on Timberwild, all huge houses. There's a house end of that street that's 26,000 square feet. We pull up, I keep hearin' crack, crack, pow, pow, trees falling everywhere. Someone had been hit by a tree.

A girl comes out and we find the house is full of bubbas in there. What the shit are a bunch of bubbas doing on Timberwild? The girl's boss said she could go over there if she needed to evacuate and she brought all her kinfolk. These guys smoking Pall-Malls and wearing stars and bars. They were drinking beer outside and got hit by a tree."

Michael Puig, sailor, my dad

"If I hadn't moved my boat I'd be squat right now. The next dock flipped over like a switchblade and would have cut my boat in half.  It was raining dogs and Polecats. If you weren't on a floating dock, you were screwed."

Yvonne Puig is the contributing editor to This Recording. Her tumblr is here.

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True Love Waits

by Molly Lambert

True Love Waits (TLW) is an international Christian group that promotes sexual abstinence outside of marriage for teenagers and college students. TLW was created in April, 1993, and is sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources. It is based on Christian views of human sexuality that require one to be faithful to one's husband or wife, even before marriage.

In addition, they promote sexual purity, which encompasses not only abstaining from intercourse before marriage, but also abstaining from sexual thoughts, sexual touching, pornography, and actions that are known to lead to sexual arousal.

Except, When It Does...

Purity balls can vary in many particulars, but fathers who attend typically pledge before God to protect their young daughters' purity in mind, body and soul. Daughters are expected to remain virgins, abstaining from pre-marital sexual intercourse. Fathers must sign the "Covenant of Purity and Protection," witnessed by their daughters, and openly commit to the pledge.

Miss Manners's opinion is that "polite society does not recognize such a thing as a chastity ring. It is so polite that it presumes that a lady is chaste unless publicly proven otherwise."

The grossest one by far, "an unblossomed rose"

This one represents Jesus cockblocking you

comment from a Jonas Brothers youtube:

"I am so happy that guys are haveing purity ring, I have one and a am a girl and it is hard not to have sex and to have my frinds look at me and think that I am crazy, but I know that God have a man for me and I need to save myself for him. and God will bless you and help you day to day with that if you let him.

I think that is a betwen you and God if you want to go that way, but I have saved myself and still am. i hope and pray that they will stay strong it there wate. God Bless everyone..."

Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas—the teen-pop trio who stand, at this very moment, on the brink of hugeness—wear the metal bands on their fingers to symbolize, as Joe puts it, ‘promises to ourselves and to God that we’ll stay pure till marriage.’

Joe is 18. His ring is silver and adorned with a cross. ‘It actually ripped apart a little bit, just on the bottom, here, but I didn’t want to get a new one, because this one means so much to me,’ he says.

Nick, who is 15, says, ‘I got mine made at Disney World. It’s pretty awesome.’ Kevin, at 20, is the oldest of the three, and while a punk-rock purity ring from Tiffany might represent the ultimate oxymoron, that’s exactly what he’s going for.

His silver vow of abstinence is covered with studs. ‘It’s pretty rock and roll,’ Kevin says. ‘It’s getting banged up a little bit because of the guitar.’”

Kevin Jonas revealed, “We see ourselves as a poprock group.” The 20-year-old member of the group revealed, “We don’t do dance routines. We try to rock out. People classify us as a boy band because they see the reaction of the girls when we play live. But, hey, that can’t be a bad thing. On stage, we’re all having a blast.”

He continued, “When we started making records, we looked to groups such as 'NSnyc and the Backstreet Boys for inspiration. But we have far more in common with the Bee Gees. I love their harmonies and the way they reinvented themselves. We met Barry Gibb and he has become a friend of the family. He told us to take things slowly and enjoy ourselves.”

A good Bee Gees song about purity rings:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNSaLE3YM7U"]

He added, “We want to be an energetic band and have fun playing loud guitars, but you don’t have to be an angry teenager to do that. We play the music we love and write the songs we want to write. There would be no point in us trying to be something that we’re not.’

In steering well clear of the temptations that traditionally derail so many young bands, the Jonas Brothers also believe in rock ‘n’ roll without the sex and drugs.”

The Jonas Brothers, who are not known for their wild parties or any post-gig visits to dubious nightclubs, also wear purity rings. The rings signify their desire to stay celibate until they get married. However, Kevin Jonas insisted, “The rings are a constant reminder to live a life with values. For me, it’s a personal thing.

I’m not going to comment on the way other people live their lives. That’s up to them. ‘Chastity is an interesting term. Wearing these rings is a private decision that we made. It’s a constant reminder. You put a string around your finger to remember to wash your car or take your dog for a walk.”

Molly Lambert is managing editor of This Recording

"For Every Field There's a Mole" - Bonnie Prince Billy (mp3)

"Easy Does It" - Bonnie Prince Billy (mp3)

"So Everyone" - Bonnie Prince Billy (mp3)

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING:

Britney Spears At The VMAs

I'm Miss World, Somebody Kill Me

Mommy Wants Her Happy Sticks

This Recording Is Like A Virgin,
Touched For The Very First Time

State Fair

by Elisabeth Reinkordt

The end of the summer in Nebraska, as in much of the Midwest, is marked by the annual State Fair.  The fair spans a week with two long weekends, and on Labor Day, the fun is over, the cows go home. The Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, though, coincides with the home game opener of Nebraska Football; thus, another season begins.

The Nebraska State Fair began in 1868, one year after statehood, making this the state's 139th fair.  This year marks the 109th Nebraska State Fair at the state's fairgrounds in Lincoln, and the second-to-last to be held at that location.  In response to lagging attendance, the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature decided in its past session to move the Fair to Grand Island, 100 miles to the west of Lincoln.

This is farther from the population centers, marginally closer to much of the agricultural population, and conveniently clears the way for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to develop a so-called Technology and Innovation Park on 251 acres of superbly located real estate.

My parents took our family to the fair just about every year, and usually we'd go on Labor Day, when the gate admission was lower in order to eek out a few extra dollars before the fair shut down. By this time, most of the animals were loaded up into their trailers and headed home to the far corners of the state, exhibits were being torn down, and not much but the Midway remained in the way of active entertainment.

Even though this might not seem to leave much excitement for a child who suffered from motion sickness, I still loved the mixture of bright-colored signs, the stench of livestock, the absurdity of the food, and the aimless crowds.  There was a distinct sense that you could get yourself terribly, terribly lost from your parents.

Entries at the State Fair get selected from the best at county fairs all over the state, with categories in 4-H and Open Class. At the age of eight, I joined a 4-H club, and began preparing projects for the Lancaster County Fair. The first year was pretty miserable, as my neighborhood club, the Hearts & Rainbows, was mostly concerned with making appliquéd sweatshirts with puffy paint, putting Contac paper on big barrels, and hot gluing miscellaneous pastel things to one another.

I started with sewing, however, and entered my first fair with a two-piece tunic-and-capris ensemble. 4-H'ers who sewed were encouraged to model their creations as well, and thus began my days on the runway.  The second year of 4-H, my best friend Alison and I became part of a newly formed club, the Leapin' Leprechauns.

This club was co-ed, and we did everything from model rocketry to CPR to cooking to table setting contests.

My brother, ever the cat-lover, took our family cat Mikesch to the 4-H cat show, where he won the ribbon for "Best Personality" after the cat freaked out at the judge.  My sewing progressed, and eventually I made and modeled my 9th grade promotion dress, a three-piece tailored suit, and finally my senior prom dress.

I also took photography every year, and took several prints to the State Fair. The year our club did Bird Watching as a club project, most of our bird houses went to state, due mostly to the fact that not many other clubs were interested in that project.

For rural clubs, livestock competitions are everything.  Bucket calves - those weaned early and bottle-fed to encourage tameness and easy handling - are meticulously groomed, sheep carefully shorn, pigs washed squeaky clean.

The exhibitors, dressed in starched white shirts and black pants, then bring their prized animals into the arena to be judged against others of the same class.  Judges look carefully over each curve of the pedigree, demand lots of maneuvering of the animals, and, after several stages of ranking, give their justification for ribbon placement. With our wild, grass-fed black Angus, I would never have stood a chance in the ring.

I made two trips to the State Fair this year. Monday night, Boyz II Men were the main act at the Open Air Auditorium.  This, naturally, required attendance.  While sitting down to a fair dinner of Husker Indian Tacos, I saw my parents' neighbor, a rancher who drives tractor-pulled trams around the fairgrounds at fair time.

He noted that, while the Fair had been pretty dead all day, it was clearly packed now.  In a nod to demographics, it was also a far less white crowd than usual - a very different set than shows up for the country music that dominates the rest of the entertainment schedule.

The Boyz did not disappoint, throwing red roses into the crowd during "I'll Make Love To You" and shedding the sport coats they'd sweat through for an encore.  In a nice bit of scheduling, local up-and-comers Triggertown - a band featuring washtub bass, dobro, guitar, banjo, and fiddle - played murder ballads and union songs to close out the night.

Saturday, I braved the football crowd, getting in that last piece of summer, and, admittedly, getting nostalgic about the Fair's leaving for Grand Island.  Not quite as nostalgic as Garrison Keillor's live broadcast from the Minnesota State Fair, but that's his job.

Elisabeth Reinkordt is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer and filmmaker living in Nebraska. Her website is No Coast Films.

MUSIC FOR YOUR TRIP TO THE FAIR

"The Dakota" - City-State (mp3)

"Out of Control (State of Emotion)" - Kenna (mp3)

"Forever" - Stars (mp3)

"Going, Going, Gone (live)" - Stars (mp3)

"Sad Robot" - Stars (mp3)

"The Prize" - Guster (mp3)

"Come On Eileen" - Guster (mp3)

"I Saved a Junky Once" - Final Fantasy (mp3)

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

What light on yonder window breaks.

You change in real life while staying the same on the interwebs.

A film that more than disappointed us, it insulted us.

The Secret History

ed. by Molly Lambert

According to Trevor Paglen, it is not illegal to photograph the U.S.A.'s many secret government bases, provided one does not directly enter a restricted area to do so.

Tonopah, in Southern Nevada, is a vast area containing multiple test sites and secret military bases, including the famed Area 51.

Tonopah encompasses 3.1 million acres and 12,000 square miles of airspace - an area roughly the size of Switzerland.

A montage of available USGS satellite photography showing southern Nevada. Black Areas do not appear on the site.

Budget documents tell little. This year, for instance, the Pentagon says Program Element 0603891c is receiving $196 million but will disclose nothing about what the project does. Private analysts say it apparently aims at developing space weapons.

Trevor Paglen's Black Ops book offers clues into the nature of the secret programs, and a glimpse of zealous male bonding among the presumed elite of the military-industrial complex. Patches can feel like fraternity pranks gone ballistic.

A spokesman for the Pentagon, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, said it would be imprudent to comment on “which patches do or do not represent classified units.” In an e-mail message, Commander Mehal added, “It would be supposition to suggest ‘anyone’ is uncomfortable with this book.”

Each year, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a private group in Washington, publishes an update on the Pentagon’s classified budget. It says the money began to soar after the two events of George W. Bush’s coming into office and terrorists’ 9/11 attacks.

What sparked his interest, Mr. Paglen recalled, were Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks as the Pentagon and World Trade Center smoldered. On Meet the Press, he said the nation would engage its “dark side” to find the attackers and justice. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows,” Mr. Cheney said. “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

In an interview, Mr. Paglen said that remark revived memories of his childhood when his military family traveled the globe to bases often involved in secret missions. “I’d go out drinking with Special Forces guys,” he recalled. “I was 15, and they were 20, and they could never say where they where coming from or what they were doing. You were just around the stuff.”

Intrigued by Mr. Cheney’s remarks as well as his own recollections, Mr. Paglen set off to map the secret world and document its expansion. He traveled widely across the Southwest, where the military keeps many secret bases. His labors, he said, resulted in his Ph.D. thesis as well as a book, Blank Spots on a Map, that Dutton plans to publish next year.

The research also led to another book, Torture Taxi, that Melville House published in 2006. It described how spies kidnapped and detained suspected terrorists around the globe.

Black World, a 2006 display of his photographs at Bellwether, a gallery in Chelsea, showed “anonymous-looking buildings in parched landscapes shot through a shimmering heat haze,” Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times, adding that the images “seem to emit a buzz of mystery as they turn military surveillance inside out: here the surveillant is surveilled.”

In this research, Mr. Paglen became fascinated by the patches and started collecting them and displaying them at talks and shows. He said a breakthrough occurred around 2004, when he visited Peter Merlin, an “aerospace archaeologist” who works in the Mojave Desert not far from a sprawling military base. Mr. Merlin argued that the lightning bolts, stars and other symbols could be substantive clues about unit numbers and operating locations, as well as the purpose of hidden programs.

“These symbols,” Mr. Paglen wrote, “were a language. If you could begin to learn its grammar, you could get a glimpse into the secret world itself.” His book explores this idea and seeks to decode the symbols. Many patches show the Greek letter sigma, which Mr. Paglen identifies as a technical term for how well an object reflects radar waves, a crucial parameter in developing stealthy jets.

A patch from a Groom Lake unit shows the letter sigma with the “buster” slash running through it, as in the movie “Ghost Busters.” “Huge Deposit — No Return” reads its caption. Huge Deposit, Mr. Paglen writes, “indicates the bomb load deposited by the bomber on its target, while ‘No Return’ refers to the absence of a radar return, meaning the aircraft was undetectable to radar.”

In an interview, Mr. Paglen said his favorite patch was the dragon holding the Earth in its claws, its wings made of American flags and its mouth wide open, baring its fangs. He said it came from the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees developing spy satellites. “There’s something both belligerent and weirdly self-critical about it,” he remarked. “It’s representing the U.S. as a dragon with the whole world in its clutches.”

The field is expanding. Dwayne A. Day and Roger Guillemette, military historians, wrote an article published this year in The Space Review on patches from secret space programs. “It’s neat stuff,” Dr. Day said in an interview. “They’re not really giving away secrets. But the patches do go farther than the organizations want to go officially.”

Mr. Paglen plans to keep mining the patches and the field of clandestine military activity. “It’s kind of remarkable,” he said. “This stuff is a huge industry, I mean a huge industry. And it’s remarkable that you can develop these projects on an industrial scale, and we don’t know what they are. It’s an astounding feat of social engineering.”

Paglen showed us pages from the Department of Defense Budget Fiscal Year 2008. The document is publicly available but presents some puzzling numbers. For example, a whopping $ 12.3 million is allocated to toilets which, the document states, must provide soldiers with equipment 2 enhance their efficiency and efficacy."

Paglen displayed more images from a documents of classified strategic RDT&E programs. Some projects with mysterious names such as "Pilot Fish", "Retract Juniper," "Chalk Coral", receive huge budgets but, unlike the toilets do not present any justification. Sometimes the sum allocated to a project does not appear at all, leaving blank spots in the budget. The National Security Agency has mostly blanks in its budget.

This Black World gained more importance in the '80s. The Black Budget became then a big part of the defense budget with President Reagan, a man fascinated by secret weapons. The next issue he tackled was "How do we study something that doesn't exist? Something that must stay hidden?" Paglen turned to geography to make emerge a negative image of these black spots on maps.

That's where he compares his work to the one of an astronomer because he deals with dark matters, with phenomena which are detectable only through the influence they exercise on the visible world. He uses similar instruments as astronomers' to create his Limit Telephotography series.

So what happens with these "Selected Sites Associated with Classified Military Activity"? Money doesn't disappear like that. Paglen calls them the "Black Dollars." A number of places where these figures congeal are located in the South West of the country, more precisely in the desert. That area has a long history of being an unexplored region. In World War II, these places became useful to hide secret bases where airplanes were tested and eventually stage the Manhattan Project.

Limit-telephotography resembles astrophotography, a technique that astronomers use to photograph objects that might be trillions of miles from Earth. Many of the military bases and installations hidden deep in deserts and buffered by dozens of miles of restricted land are so remote that a civilian might be able to see them with an unaided eye.

In order to visually document these places, Paglen uses high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent. Because of the distance and the heat coming off the desert, these images have peculiar aesthetical qualities that sometimes evoke impressionist paintings rather than photography.

CIA sets up civilian front companies to hide these "black" operations, making it look like a normal business. But even front companies must produce flight logs, registration papers, and other legal documents. And most of them publicly available. That's the kind of data you check to know if a plane will land on time for example.

Now how do you find front companies? Documents such as the Civil Aircraft Landing Permits lists the planes which are allowed to land on military landfills. These are companies you have never heard of. You can get a list of the planes these airlines own and from there track information about where they land and from where they fly.

Bases like the ones at Tonopah are located in remote areas and surrounded by hundreds of miles of restricted empty land, making these facilities literally invisible without the aid of a telescope. To photograph these areas, Paglen uses technologies borrowed from astrophotography.

He notes that these areas are so well buffered that it is actually easier to photograph the planet Jupiter because there are only about six miles of breathable atmosphere between someone standing on Earth and the outer planets, whereas dozens of miles of restricted area may separate Paglen from his subject matter.

Even with the assistance of the latest telescopic technology, photographing remote targets such as these presents a unique set of challenges. Paglen is limited in terms of composition, because usually there are only a few vantage points from which he can observe a site.

By Paglen's estimates, the United States is currently spending more money on classified programs than ever before. To demonstrate the extent of these programs, Paglen created the "Code Names" installation, a list of code names for classified military programs whose names have been declassified or have otherwise entered the public domain.

Paglen constantly updates the list, adding new names as they become available and removing those of programs believed to have been ended. Though the list includes more than 2,000 entries, it represents only a small portion of active secret programs because the code names of the vast majority of them remain classified.

Terminal Air, a visualization system that Trevor Paglen developed together with the Institute for Applied Autonomy tracks the CIA aircrafts. You can register and get an email message when a CIA plane is coming to your city.

These companies leave other traces. They must have addresses. One of them led Paglen to a law office which is weird for an aviation company. No one would answer his questions. Then there are signatures at the bottom of documents belonging to the companies. He deciphered the names and found individuals which, unlike the rest of us, leave no electronic trace: they have no credit history, no driver's license.

They all have a single address which is a PO Box in Virginia. Paglen went there and discovered that the P.O. Box was used by hundreds and hundreds of names. It's a long collection of ghosts, of fictional characters. Which makes sense as these people are in the business of making other people disappear.

signature of a non-existing airline company member

These people involved in secret activities have colleagues which are the only persons with whom they are allowed to talk about their jobs. They organize reunions and form bonds. They also give awards to each other but they can't exactly say what this award is for. So someone would get an award for his or her "significant contribution in a remote location."

Since the mid 1990s, the CIA has spearheaded a covert program to kidnap suspected terrorists from all over the world. These people are then brought to a network of secret CIA-operated prisons, called “black sites,” where they are routinely tortured.

The CIA calls this the “extraordinary rendition” program. The locations of these black sites, known by code-names such as “Salt Pit” and “Bright Light,” are some of the CIA’s deepest secrets.

People taken to these secret prisons are effectively “disappeared”: there are no public records of their captivity, their identities are kept secret, and they are prohibited from communicating with the outside world.

Far from targeting the “worst of the worst,” the system sweeps up low-level detainees and even involves the detention of the wives and children of the “disappeared,” in violation of their human rights. The United States illegally used “proxy detention” to empty its secret sites. Among CIA operatives, they are called “ghost detainees.” They usually don't come back.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording.

"Rocket Ship" - Daniel Johnston (mp3)

"God" - Daniel Johnston (mp3)

"The List of Dorms" - Pavement (mp3)

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

We Met The Real Life Iron Man

Celebrity Couples Confused and Amazed Us

Indiana Jones Got Rowdy In A Malt Shoppe

House Hunting

Part Two: Living Alone

by Tess Lynch

little house

The other night the old owner of our condo stopped by unexpectedly. I felt a little embarrassed, since we hadn't cleaned and were lazily eating Trader Joe's mini quiches without napkins on the living room floor - well, really embarrassed, because we were also watching Intervention and I was sitting amongst like ten different empty glasses, and had In n' Out on my shirt - but seeing her was really nice. She complimented our cats, said she hoped we'd enjoyed our place, and was just as pleasant as when I remember buying this place from her.

zulu home!

Two of our neighbors escorted her over to our door, and told us they'd be sorry we were leaving, that we were "sweet kids." It was so nice, it made me sad to leave our bright green walls and really awesome bathtub behind.

I remember leaving my first apartment in Providence, where I was so excited to be living alone and had an ancient claw-foot tub, and then there was the second place, in Wayland Square, where I used to be able to walk to the grocery store even in blizzards, and where I spent all of one summer once just because I had spent my TGI Friday's tips on a wall-unit air conditioner, and could eat Brigham's ice cream (truly the worst casualty, for nostalgia's sake, of the recession) in bed to stay cool.

I've been trying to save myself from being too bittersweet and like someone's old Irish grandpa who hums "Oh, Danny Boy" all day, I've been concentrating on the following:

• ikea. all of it.


• the ever-popular idea of grills.


• the unfounded notion that when one moves, they become anal/organized enough to use these.


• yard = grow your own (vegetables!!)people + their houses (slideshow)

Image from Domino Mag: Small Spaces

There's something incredibly divisive about the idea of living alone. Recently, a friend of mine made the brave decision to leave Los Angeles in the near future - where we'd gone to high school together, where her family lives, and where she currently lives with her sister in a really, really damn cute apartment (atrium!) - for Chicago, and was thinking of living alone. She was kind of excited, and I got excited for her; living alone for four and a half years was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Rosy Little Things: The Little House

I wouldn't trade my current cohabitation for anything, but living alone does have its downsides.

For instance, having to invite people over any time you want to hang out seems weirdly formal and as though you need to ply your guests with some kind of food, drink, or exciting recreational drugs.

You really can't have more than one pet, because the amount of time you would need to put into taking care of them, were it just you and the animals, would make you resent them.

And, of course, the "cooking for one" triple-bummer of

1. having to both cook and clean up afterwards,


2. unavoidably making way too much food, eating it all, and not wanting the leftovers but feeling horribly guilty about throwing them away anyway, and


3. refusing to use silverware because no one is watching and there's really no reason not to just use your hands to "pick" at a chicken, but then having this weird out-of-body vision of yourself as a person who is kind of disgusting.

Solitude: you are a delight

But back to the good stuff. Living alone - like learning to drive, taking tequila shots, appreciating the importance of tipping waiters well, and balancing your checkbook - is a rite of passage the value of which cannot be overstated.

When I first decided to give it a whirl, I was a freshman in college and at the end of my rope trying to get a "psycho single" because, even after changing roommates (thank you Molly Lambert!), I found I couldn't sleep without a Sominex and a really stiff mixture of $11 vodka and Crystal Light. I started working at Ben and Jerry's to get a place off-campus (reality check: $7.50/hour won't pay your rent), worried for a couple of months about my decision to move a mile away from everybody murdering my social life, and bought a futon at the Salvation Army.

I won't lie: it was very strange. There was no one around, and since we were only a few months into school, I didn't know enough people intimately enough to invite them over all the time. This actually ended up being great, because it taught me how to make friends even though there weren't people constantly offering up their hanging-outage.

It's kind of empowering: you have no plans unless you get your ass of your futon, clean the bits of chicken off your shirt, and make plans. Otherwise, you're just hanging out with yourself.

Which brings me to the other great thing about living alone: learning how awesome it is to hang out with you, because you are your own best (sometimes only) friend. And I dig not being able to do that, because my quality of life has drastically improved since I have lived with Peter, but that's also because I love him.

Even though I love my friends, I wouldn't want to live with them, because it's too easy, and I'd worry that when I moved out, I'd never want to see them again. Or the other way around. But maybe I'd worry less about that because since I've lived alone before, I know how totally rad I am to hang out with. I am the only person I survived living with for more than 10 seconds. That must mean I'm mad chill.

Anyway, thinking you're mad chill is something that has no price. And nothing teaches you that like flyin' solo. So, if anybody out there is thinking about it, I'm telling you that you should sacrifice the bedroom door and find yourself a great shoebox and make it your own.

Tess Lynch is the contributing editor to This Recording. She lives in Los Angeles. Her highly influential and important blog is here. Her tumblr is here.

portrait of the author looking pouty

CHERRY BLOSSOM GIRL

"Playground Love" (vocals by Gordon Tracks) – Air (mp3)

"Clouds Up" – Air (mp3)

"Bathroom Girl" – Air (mp3)

"The Word 'Hurricane'" – Air (mp3)

"Highschool Lover" (theme from The Virgin Suicides) – Air (mp3)

"Ghost Song" – Air (mp3)

"Empty House" – Air (mp3)

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

Cheney got wicked mad.

Dan Murray and Hotel Chevalier.

A win is a win.