Collected Thoughts 07-21-09

• I promise I'm almost out of collected thoughts on The Mae Shi. How many CGT readers still care? 50%? 40%? Baring significant new developments, this is about the last of it.
  

• Jacob Safari gave a statement to Exclaim.ca about The Mae Shi's split.
  
  At the end of the day it all sounds like most other band splits: a combination of everyone's issues with themselves and each other, some misunderstandings, numerous small mistakes with disproportionately large consequences, etc. The split is perfectly ordinary in this respect and the blogs and twitters I've seen have over-dramatized all of it. Neither the Byron nor Safari statements sound "ugly" or "nasty" to me. I believe all the parties are sincere in saying they wish each other well.
  
  Of course, CGT can take its share of the blame since we were the first to report anything after the press release. The legacy of The Mae Shi deserved more than a press release, though. The legacy of The Mae Shi deserves more than a post on this little blog, for that matter.
  
  I know both parties are holding back the most personal details in the interest of being respectful to each other, and I think that illustrates a mutual love beneath the hurt feelings. Every single person I've heard from who is close to the events has expressed having friends on both sides of the split, and I think that's probably the most telling characteristic of it all.
  
  My guess is that in a year we'll have a kickass Mae Shi band and Signals making lots of people happy all over town.
  

• I should have sought comment from the exiting members before posting, though. That's a point worth noting on its own line. File under "I'm no journalist".

• Blogging is weird. These kinds of stories are what simultaneously draws me to and repels me from blogging. It's a deeply personal form of writing, it is virtually never objective, it is a constant broadcast, and it is very freeing to do. It's gonzo journalism without most of the journalism part.
  
  The subjects of blogs, be them politicians or restaurant owners or musicians, will ask "Who the hell is this guy and why can he just go write about what I do?" I don't yet have a satisfactory answer to that. It has something to do with tearing-down old media institutions and finally having a broadcast medium whose message is as subjective as life itself. It sounds glorious but for the caveat: there are no qualifications.
  
  (Kevin Bronson's ability to have the best of both worlds is why his blog is one of the best. I bow in reverence.)
  
  In ten (maybe even five) years the ethics of blogging will be more clear. We're past the Revolution, beyond the Lousiana Purchase, and into the Civil War. The Greatest Generation has yet to come.

ANYWAYS....

• The Airborne Toxic Event is planning an Echo Park / Silverlake tribute spectacular at the LA Disney Concert Hall. I'm not making that up. I've always stood by TATE as sincere in their love of the music scene we here at CGT cover. It'd be hard to come up with a cynical interpretation of this.
  

• New No Age soon! Squee!

• An update on the DC Comics film slate.
  

• This helps confirm what I believe, that mankind's capacity for knowledge and intellectual thought is our defining trait.
  

• These are the robots that we will be living side-by-side with in the next decade.

• Still not convinced?
  

• The end of human existence will not be brought upon by global warming, nuclear war, or a holy armagheddon. Well before any of those things happen an enormous piece of space-rock, black and invisible to our primitive lenses, will kill us all. We're all fucked.