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Welcome to Enterbrainment!

Is our society going to hell in a shopping cart?

Headlines are screaming about the death of books and the rise of "reality" television. "Independent" film is being coopted by big studios, fiction writers by the gaming industry, and everybody else by YouTube and MySpace. Trash seems to be winning against treasure.

I'm one of those screaming the loudest about this, even while I spend my reading hours online, watching The Pussycat Dolls Present Girlicious and blogging my heartbreak over the decline of Battlestar Galactica.

At the heart of this ongoing kerfuffle are two dichotomies: the one between high art and low art, and the one between public and private.

The terms "art" and "entertainment" are often used to divide "high art" (classical and modern dance, music, theater, art film, literature, and visual arts) and "low art" (commercial pop music, anything hip hop, television, gaming, anything internet-based, and industrial design). As if commercial arts didn't require high levels of skill and creative sensibility ... as if high art wasn't supposed to be entertaining.

A lot of critics and artists have been busy defeating the high/low dichotomy in this generation (there's always a high/low dichotomy), but more interesting is the breakdown of public and private space.

Because right now, "entertainment" coverage in the media definitely has a different focus. If you look up R. Kelly in "arts," you'll find reviews of his almost yearly album releases, but if you look him up in "entertainment," you'll get up-to-the-minute reports on the progress of his child pornography trial.

That's because "entertainment" is a category of focus that does double duty. The first is "arts" review and discussion for genres too low-brow to interest the artsy-fartsies (mainly television, gaming, and social networking celebrities). The second is news about the personalities that make the "arts and entertainment" happen: not just artists and producers, but also high-profile hangers-on. Not just Brit-brit's custody battle, but also Adnan's stabbing drama.

So entertainment coverage is actually a public battle between publicists and paparazzi for control of celebrity stories. Which is to say, celebrity coverage is itself an art form: storytelling using real lives as material.

So, who gets to tell the story? And what story are they telling?

Well, thanks to the power of the internet, who cares who's telling it, because I'm spinning it. And let me take this opportunity to declare myself beyond caring about "high" and "low" art. Poot. (public and private, as far as celebrities are concerned, are inextricably mashed up, at least for now. We'll check in on that issue again, though, believe me.)

I want to talk about TV and YouTube and World of Warcraft as if they were high art. Let me dish dirt about MoMA's latest show stoppers or which National Book Critics Circle Award winner is having an affair. Let me engage your minds and intellects on behalf of Brit-brit and Kelly ... and Flav, and Clay, and Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Let me bring you whatever the hell we can find that is artistic and entertaining and trashy and true.

Welcome to EnterBrainment.

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All About Me

I'm a freelance writer and editor in Oakland, California.

I love independent media, both on and offline, and have spent most of my adulthood in the arts and in my Asian American and mixed-race communities, helping folks find and develop their voices. In my world, a media presence and representation in popular culture ARE political issues essential to the uplift of every race, class, and marginalized group.

I co-founded and was a senior editor and development director at Hyphen magazine, and I've been a contributing editor at Other magazine as well. I also worked for ten years in nonprofit administration in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly arts in the Asian American community. Check out Kearny Street Workshop and its annual arts festival APAture if you're in the Bay Area in the fall.

I currently serve on the Board of the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit supporting writers of color who work with speculative genres. (That's right, we're sci-fi geeks!) We offer two scholarships to develop writers of color professionally, we give out two annual literary awards, and maintain a number of other programs to promote PoC in speculative fiction.

I have an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University, and, as one does when one has an MFA, I've taught writing at SFSU, Kearny Street Workshop, and San Francisco's School of the Arts.

You can see my writing in McSweeney's issue #14, and a forthcoming issue of The Encyclopedia Project. Yeah, I'm still working on the being published thing. You can hear me reading a short story here.

I keep two personal blogs, SeeLight (about writing and books and politics and other stuff) and atlas(t) (about mapping, urbanism, landscape, and geography), and also post reviews at the Bay Area NPR affiliate KQED's arts and culture website. I also blog at Hyphen magazine's blog. You can see feeds of all of these blogs to the right.

KQED: Arts & Culture

KQED Arts & Culture

Updated: 20 Nov 20:23

Gallery Crawl: Sparrow Lane -- November 2009, Pt. 1

20 Nov 14:00

View the Gallery Crawl interview with photographer Holly Andres. Her Sparrow Lane series, on view at SF's Robert Koch Gallery through December 24, depicts a mysterious narrative about the transitional space between girlhood and womanhood.

Pop Culture: Video of the Week: Clean It Up

19 Nov 20:00

Every Thursday, the KQED Arts blog features a new Video of the Week to help you forget that it isn't Friday yet. Chicago-based street artist Goons uses paper and stop-motion to create a one minute clip for all the clean-freaks and germaphobes out there.

The Writers' Block: Beautiful

19 Nov 14:00

Amy Reed reads a passage from her debut novel, Beautiful, about a young girl who trades her good-girl existence for a swift downward spiral tinged with drugs and abuse.

Carl Brandon Society blog

Weblog of the Carl Brandon Society, dedicated to improving the visibility of people of colour in the speculative genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, etc. (moderated jointly by CBS Steering Committee members).

Updated: 21 Oct 19:11

SF in SF fundraiser for the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship

08 Oct 03:45

Color Me SF: The Science Fiction Worlds of Octavia Butler and Carl Brandon

Fundraiser for the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship

Saturday is Litquake Day in San Francisco, and SF in SF has a very special event for you....

Special guest readers for the event will be Jewelle Gomez and Claire Light. There will also be a discussion on Butler and Brandon, with Q and A moderated by Terry Bisson. Books will be for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books; and there's a special raffle at $1 a ticket!!! All proceeds to the scholarship!

SF in SF will be asking for $5 at the door, with all of the money going to the Octavia Butler Scholarship. Bar proceeds for the night will also go to the Scholarship. Tips, as usual, will go to Variety.

The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship enables writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops, where Octavia got her start. It helps to cement Octavia's legacy by providing the same experience/opportunity that Octavia had to future generations of new writers of color.

Cash bar and doors open at 6:00 PM - first come, first seated. We will have the lounge area miked as well, so all who come are welcome to stay and listen.

Event begins at 7:00PM - podcasting by Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column & NPR

The Variety Preview Room Theatre

The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor - entrance is between Citibank and Quiznos

582 Market St. @ Montgomery & 2nd

Please contact Rina Weisman with any questions.

SF in SF - Science Fiction. San Francisco. A Perfect Fit

Tachyon Publications - "Saving the world, one good book at a time"

Variety Children's Charity of Northern California