Brian Sawyer

Updates from January, 2004 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Brian Sawyer 3:30 pm on January 30, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Dear [President of The Olive Press]: 

  I can see why you might not like my site to use the same name as yours, but frankly, I really don’t see much of a conflict. My site is simply a personal site, where I post personal projects, thoughts, reading lists, etc. The fact that I have not once discussed olive oil anywhere on the site should make it clear that no one would confuse my site as in any way related to yours. In fact, as described in my “About” page, the name is taken from a quote by Aristotle, and I think it’s pretty clear that the relationship with olive oil production is only metaphorical.

  I’m reminded of the recent court cases involving Fox News vs. Al Franken (over the use of the phrase “fair and balanced”) and Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft.com. Though I’m far from an expert in the law, my understanding was that if there was no realistic confusion between two distinct entities (and certainly no intent to cause confusion), then the use of a common phrase should be acceptable. Certainly “The Olive Press” falls into the category of a fairly common phrase that can be used in a variety of contexts without causing confusion regarding who the name represents on a given web site.

  That said, I am sensitive to the concerns of a business to protect its copyright claim. If it were as simple as simply changing the name of my site, I wouldn’t hesitate to do so, but I’ve actually invested a lot of time and energy in this site, and though I don’t flatter myself to think that my readership is anywhere near large enough to affect your business in the slightest, changing the site name and domain name would make it difficult to maintain the limited readership I actually have.

  I would like to resolve this conflict without having to rename my site and move it to a new domain. Would it be acceptable to you if I inserted a link to your site somewhere in my sidebar, perhaps with a note to the effect of: “Looking for The Olive Press, makers and purveyors of award-winning olive oil? Go here.”

  Again, I do apologize for any confusion. If my suggestion does not satisfy you, please let me know via email. If we really must discuss this matter on the phone, I will make time.

  Regards,
  Brian
   

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  Brian Sawyer 3:54 pm on January 28, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Another Everything 

  On the heels of my recent failure with one nonfiction book with Everything in the title, I’ve now turned to another: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.

  So far, it’s much easier to understand, even if its subject is just as dry. Based on the first hundred pages or so, I’d say that the audience for this book is die-hard lexiconophilists only. Luckily for me, I happen to fit nicely into this category. Even associating yourself with such an odd audience is better than feeling alienated by a more interesting one.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 3:23 pm on January 28, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Everything Proved to Be Too Much 

  If you’ve taken a gander at my reading list during the past few months, you’ll know that I’ve been reading David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity for quite some time. If you’ve stopped by in the last few days, you’ll have noticed that, though this book has been removed from the “Currently” section of my reading list, it never did make it to the “Recently” section.

  Where did it go? I reserve “Recently” for books that I actually finish. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I did not finish this book by one of my favorite authors. Though I’m interested in math as an abstract system, and though I thought my intellectual curiosity would be enough to get me through a book that was supposedly written for the lay person, I just couldn’t slog through the pages and pages of equations, proofs, et cetera. Math 101 (a.k.a. Math for Plants at my liberal arts college) did not prepare me for the math, and not even my training in logic could supply me with a sufficient foundation.

  In short, I failed. I can’t even offer a review of the book, unless this failure can be read as review enough. Humbled, I hang my head in shame.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 11:57 am on January 28, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Eggers’ New Novel, Serialized 

  Thanks to Maud for this news:

  As reported several weeks ago, Salon is serializing Dave Eggers’ novel-in-progress, which apparently skewers American politics. The first two episodes are posted. I haven’t read them yet.

  I haven’t read it yet either, and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it (I’m still reeling from my deep disappointment with You Shall Know Our Velocity), especially since the topic is politics–a topic on which I’m not sure I need to hear from Eggers. Still, I love the idea of a good old-fashioned serial novel being published online.

  Update
  Return of the Reluctant has the goods on Eggers’ rough draft for the first installment of the serial.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 3:33 am on January 27, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Hot Damn, It’s the Soggy Bottom Boys! 

  First, Alison Krauss & Union Station: Live is everything you would expect from the first live album from such a fine band. Recorded in Kentucky, the birthplace of Bluegrass, the album alternates slow ballads–featuring Alison Krauss’s distinctive, beautiful voice–with rollicking, foot-stomping, quick-pickin’ bluegrass numbers. It’s a real treat, all the way through the 25-song collection. It’s also very reasonably priced for an album of that length, and it includes most of the band’s “hits.” So, if you’re interested in getting a first album by Alison Krauss & Union Station, this should be one of your top choices.

  Now, for the fun surprise of the album (at least for me). In the Coen brothers’ filmed tribute to southern roots music, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Alison Krauss’s haunting voice is immediately recognizable as one of the tempting sirens (Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris are the other two) in “Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby,” as one half of the vocals (Gillian Welch is the other half) in “I’ll Fly Away,” and as the lead vocal on the beautiful rendition of “Down in the River to Pray.”

  Less recognizable in that film, however, are the mysterious voices and musicians that make up the Soggy Bottom Boys, whose “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” serves as leitmotif for the whole movie. Anyway, a few tracks into disc 2 of Alison Krauss & Union Station: Live, I felt the thrilling surprise of the yokel in O Brother who exclaims “Hot damn, it’s the Soggy Bottom Boys!” as they launch into their hit single to thunderous applause. Sure enough, the mouthpiece for George Clooney is none other than Dan Tyminski, guitarist and vocalist for Union Station, and their live rendition of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” is clearly a Soggy Bottom Boys performance. Nice.

  Incidentally, for all you O Brother fans, “Down to the River to Pray” is also on the album.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 3:57 pm on January 23, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Non Sequitur or New Tagline? 

  Though I haven’t quite figured out the meaning behind Return of the Reluctant‘s brief description of this site (scroll over “Olive Press” in the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” section of the sidebar), I’m actually considering using it as my new tagline:
  

  gloriously febrile; brian even knits!

  If anyone who understands this seeming non sequitur actually interprets it as an insult, please inform me before I do something stupid, such as embrace the description entirely without irony.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 3:36 pm on January 22, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Caption This, Please 

  
   
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  Brian Sawyer 11:54 am on January 21, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  State of the Union Highlight 

  I don’t have the patience or sufficient masochism to listen to Bush for more than a few minutes at a stretch, so I missed most of his blathering last night. Since I rely on blogs to highlight the important points, I was happy to find this snippet posted at Boing Boing:
  

  GW Bush: “Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.”

  Audience: [Applause]

  GW: [Frowny face]

  As the lowlights of the speech come trickling in, I prefer to hang on to this priceless little piece.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 11:45 am on January 21, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  DeLillo Parody 

  “Don DeLillo, Stadium Vendor,” over at McSweeney’s (via Maud, Return of the Reluctant):

  Hot dogs who wants hot dogs. Hot dogs cloaked in foil wrappers. Who wants. Hot dogs with mustard and relish and sauerkraut and ketchup all steamed and fissured and revealed in a languorous process of unwrapping. You want these hot dogs, America.Cold beer right here. Overcompensate for the absence of individuation as you adopt the vocabulary of the crowd. The stinging stresses of hurled epithets, lubricated, emboldened. The counterclockwise twistings of caps from plastic containers. MGD and Coors Lite and Miller High Life. Cold beer.
   
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  Brian Sawyer 3:55 pm on January 19, 2004 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

  Stitchin’ & Bitchin’ 

  In the blog devoted to her new book, Stitch ‘N Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook, Debbie Stoller mentions “Rock-and-Roll Knitters,” an article in this week’s Newsweek:

  When Debbie Stoller, the feminist author and cofounder of Bust magazine, became obsessed with knitting in 1999, friends and even strangers responded with disbelief and occasionally disdain. “If I had been learning karate, they would have said, ‘You go, girl, that’s so feminist of you,” says Stoller, 41. She realized that “the only reason knitting had such a bad rap was because it had traditionally been done by women.”So Stoller, determined to “take back the knit,” founded a weekly “Stitch ‘N Bitch” club in her Manhattan neighborhood, drawing women who want to knit like a granny but without the orthopedic shoes. Soon spinoff groups formed in Chicago and Los Angeles. “The only knitting group I could find before was called the Windy City Knitting Guild, and they meet in a library,” says Brenda Janish, a Web designer from Chicago’s North Side. “I’m sure they’re great women but they weren’t really the people I wanted to hang out with.”

  Inspired by the righteous chicks with sticks who came to her meetings, Stoller compiled “Stitch ‘N Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook” (Workman Publishing), a step-by-step guide for making a cell-phone cozy or a punk-rock backpack. Already in its fifth printing, the book is organized around playful chapter headings like “Pointers: What You Need to Know About Needles,” and supplies funky patterns for a skull-and-crossbones sweater and a Wonder Woman bikini. (There is also a pattern for an heirloom-quality “big bad baby blanket,” which would go nicely with the “umbilical-cord hat.”)

  New Stitch ‘N Bitch clubs are cropping up wherever women yearn for a menage a trois–Stoller’s name for the vital three-needle bind-off technique. Last week at an East Village cafe called Knit New York, the Stitch ‘N Bitchers knitted and purled to the beat of synthetic punk music and traded multicolored hanks of angora, alpaca, mohair and even possum yarn. “When I learned to knit, yarns were just rough,” said Carrie Brenner, a 31-year-old who works on Wall Street. “They weren’t sexy and urban and hip.” Stoller, surrounded by young women using the tools of the past to create new forms of self-expression, wore a fire-engine red scarf of silk and mohair, streaked with fuchsia. “Crafting is the new rock and roll, baby,” Stoller says. And this time the girls are leading the band.

  Okay, so the girls are leading the band. But what about the men? Can we play too? My next project, this sweater, is from Stoller’s book: