Sharing: Thomas Friedman

Posted on October 5, 2008

The city of Tianjin, China, is home to many of China’s big automakers, and in September 2007, I was invited to speak at the China Green Car Congress there. Yes, China, which has been steadily improving its own auto mileage and pollution standards now holds a conference to talk about the latest in green-car technologies. Who knew? The venue was the Marriott in Tianjin and the audience was mostly Chinese auto industry executives—some pretty tough-looking car guys—who listened to my remarks, via translation on headphones. I thought hard and long beforehand about what to say to this group that might stimulate their thinking and give them a perspective they hadn’t heard before. In the end, I decided to go for the jugular. The basic thrust of my talk is as follows:

“Every year I come to China and young Chinese tell me, ‘Mr. Friedman, you Americans got to grow dirty for 150 years, you got to have your Industrial Revolution based on coal and oil, now it is our turn.’ Well, on behalf of all Americans, I am here today to tell you that you’re right. It’s your turn. Please, take your time, grow as dirty as you like for as long as you like. Take your time! Please! Because I think my country needs only five years to invent all the clean power and energy efficiency tools that you, China, will need to avoid choking on pollution and then we are going to come over and sell them all to you. We will get at least a five-year jump on you in the next great global industry: clean power and energy efficiency. We will totally dominate you in those industries. So please, don’t rush, grow as dirty as you like for as long as you want. If you want to do it for five more years, that’s great. If you want to give us a ten-year lead on the next great global industry, that would be even better. Please, take your time.”

At first, I could see a lot of these grizzled Chinese car guys adjusting their earpieces to make sure that they were hearing me right: “What the hell did he just say? America is going to clean our clock in the next great global industry? What industry is that?” But as I went on, I could also see some heads nodding and some wry smiles of recognition from those who got my point: Clean power is going to be the global standard over the next decade, and clean power tools are going to be the next great global industry, and the countries who make more of them, and sell more of them, will have a competitive advantage. Those countries will have both the cleanest air and the fastest-growing business—not a bad combination.

That is the point I was trying to drive home in Tianjin, by making it into a competitive issue: The longer China focuses on getting its share from a world that no longer exists—a world in which people could use dirty fuels with impunity—and the longer it postpones imposing the policies, prices, and regulations on itself that will stimulate a clean power industry at scale, the happier I am as an American. Read more

Osaka Nights

Posted on October 3, 2008

VictoryPhoto by Aileen Nishimura

State of Play

Posted on September 30, 2008

By Christopher Foss

A year of this

and that, and before we know it,

lines streak our faces.

Telling the artfully arranged

mask from the real thing

is no longer the game it once was

for us sojourners veering now

so close to the road’s edge

at every turn. And as we drive on,

the scenery on either side –

forests of recrimination, plains

of derring-do, pre-glacial remnants

of hope – grows opaque, as our attention

is drawn to the vanishing point ahead

Read more

Art Underground: David Phillips

Posted on September 27, 2008

CathedralBy David Phillipswww.wino-strut.com

Walkabout Jones wants to feature artists of all kinds. Submit your paintings, graphic art, photography and drawings to “Art Underground” at walkaboutjones@gmail.com

How Green M&M Got Sassy

Posted on September 23, 2008

It sounds straight out of Mad Men. Some enterprising creative director billed the Mars Company thousands to ogle old Playboy videos, and then, and this is the best part, itemized it as research. Where could I apply? I imagined a latter-day Don Draper equating a customer’s lust for milk chocolate with far more fundamental yearnings. Candy as porn, that was the concept, and all of the proper aesthetics were assembled: the backlit windows, glossy floors, the temptress in virginal white spiked heels strutting full-frontal toward the camera.

The temptress was a giant green candy with legs. But wait, it gets better.

Soon, she’s draped across a chaise, long leg dangling from the side as rose petals rain down. While bouncing on a satin bed, the accompanying music is best described as synthesizer porn. It ends with Green splayed on the floor, chocolate bosom heaving out, legs stretching up towards heaven.

“Are we good?” she asks a leering crew. Only after we cut away does she reach for a bleezy and shot of Jack Daniels. All of which begs the question: How did Miss Green M&M become a candy porn star?

In the 1980’s, M&M’s were a wholesome brand. They were the candy who took you on sleigh rides at Christmas. They melted in your mouth, not in your hand. In other words, not even eating them was dirty. Their jingle was sung by a children’s choir.

But things changed in 1984, when Jesus’ chocolate rainbow of goodness became an arrow in sin’s arsenal. The devil came dressed as a little league commercial, two boys playing candy baseball: Brown is a single, yellow is a double, orange is a triple, and green, you guessed it, is a homerun.

Eat green M&M’s and score, that was the lesson being imparted to boys approaching junior high. The thought of our carnal destiny realized thanks to the mojo of little green capsules filled us with anticipation. It was like we had discovered Viagra! The rules of the schoolyard were quietly known. Give green M&M’s to a girl if you wanted to hook up with her. If she ate them, she got horny. Read more

Rendezvous at Sunset

Posted on September 22, 2008

Honolulu High RisePhoto by Cherie

Now on MyTunes

Posted on September 21, 2008

Skinny Love – Bon Iver
Empty – Ray Lamontagne
Travelin Thru – Dolly Parton
Suavemente – Elvis Crespo
Night Rider – Dick Dale
Bad News – Jack Johnson
Patience – Guns N’ Roses
Them There Eyes – Billie Holiday
Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto
Heart of the Matter – India.Arie
Bukowski – Modest Mouse
Daydream – The Lovin Spoonfool
More Than Words – Extreme
Ain’t That a Kick in the Head – Dean Martin
Cocktail – Dinah Washington
Hotel California – The Gypsy Kings
Boum – Charles Trenet

Dig our playlist? How many sites offer a mix of Cab Calloway and Temple of the Dog? Jim Croce and State Radio? Kenny Rogers, Etta James, Sam Cooke and Johnny Cash? Now it’s your turn to play music savant. Send us your top ten licks, and we’ll start adding your choices to the site. Whether it’s old, new, country, folk, jazz, rock, or straight-up funk, what matters is that it’s musical nirvana from the very first note. So dust off your records, maximize your music files, and send us your picks of legendary licks. Mail them to “myTunes” at walkaboutjones@gmail.com

Sharing: David Foster Wallace

Posted on September 14, 2008

I don’t think it’s an accident that luxury cruises appeal mostly to older people. I don’t mean decrepitly old, but like fiftyish people for whom their own mortality is something more than an abstraction. Most of the exposed bodies to be seen all over the ship were in various stages of disintegration. And the ocean itself turns out to be one enormous engine of decay. Seawater corrodes vessels with amazing speed—rusts them, exfoliates paint, strips varnish, dulls shine, coats ships’ hulls with barnacles and kelp and a vague and ubiquitous nautical snot that seems like death incarnate. We saw some real horrors in port, local boats that looked as if they had been dipped in a mixture of acid and shit, scabbed with rust and goo, ravaged by what they float in.

Not so the megalines. It’s no accident they’re so white and clean, for they’re clearly meant to represent the Calvinist triumph of capital and industry over the primal decayaction of the sea. Our ship, The Nadir, seemed to have a whole battalion of wiry little third world guys who went around the ship in navy-blue jumpsuits scanning for decay to overcome. Eventually, toward the end of the trip, I found a capstan, a type of nautical hoist (like a pulley on steroids!) with a half-dollar-sized patch of rust on the side facing the sea. My delight in this tiny flaw was interrupted by the arrival, even as I stood there, of a crewman with a roller and a bucket of white paint. I watched as he gave the entire capstan a fresh coat and walked away with a nod.

Here’s the thing: A vacation is a respite from unpleasantness, and since consciousness of death and decay are unpleasant, it may seem weird that the ultimate American fantasy vacation involves being plunked down in an enormous primordial stew of death and decay. But on a luxury cruise, we are skillfully enabled in the construction of various fantasies of triumph over just this death and decay. One way to “triumph” is via the rigors of self-improvement (diet, exercise, cosmetic surgery, Franklin Quest time-management seminars), to which the crew’s amphetaminic upkeep of the Nadir is an unsubtle analogue.

But there’s another way out, too: not titivation but titillation; not hard work but hard play. See in this regard the ship’s constant activities, festivities, gaiety, song; the adrenaline, the stimulation. It makes you feel vibrant, alive. It makes your existence seem non-contingent. The hard-play option promises not a transcendence of death-dread so much as just drowning it out. Read more

Art Underground: André Neves de Sa

Posted on September 11, 2008

New YorkBy André Neves de Sa

Walkabout Jones wants to feature artists of all kinds. Submit your paintings, graphic art, photography and drawings to “Art Underground” at walkaboutjones@gmail.com

Oops, My Bad

Posted on September 8, 2008

By Katrina Elder

I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. Flavio, one of a handful of approved Apple technicians in the area, is very impressed with my two-year-old laptop and reveals to Felipe, my boyfriend, how he looks forward to working on it. He rarely gets the opportunity to work on a MacBook Pro, he says. They chitchat some more in singsong Brazilian Portuguese, then Felipe translates their five minute, very cordial conversation into broken English, which I’ll sum up for you here: Flavio needs to open it up to find out what’s causing the annoying, possibly disastrous, buzzing sound. And, if he needs to order any parts, they’ll likely take three days to arrive from Rio de Janeiro.

I do the math. Best-case scenario, Flavio is excited enough to get to work on my laptop right away. He quickly sorts out which parts need to be replaced, calls Rio on Friday, and everything is placed into an envelope and shipped out to Belo Horizonte on Monday—for an on-time arrival Thursday morning. Flavio replaces the part right away and calls Felipe for a next day pick-up. All told, it’s a one-week turnaround. Hmm…

In a land I like to call Brazil, it would go more like this: Flavio opens my laptop sometime late Friday afternoon. He checks it out as he text-flirts with a ficha he met last night at one of the city’s 12,000 butecos. He looks at his watch. “Shit, it’s Skol time.” He closes up shop for the weekend and heads out to meet his crew. Flavio is in his early twenties, so we all know what that means.

Sometime during the groggy Monday after, he remembers my laptop. He pokes around inside for a while, but realizes he can’t do anything productive through the haze. Around Wednesday, he gets back to it, sorting out the possibly disastrous, but really-she-could-have-waited-to-get-back-to-the-States problem. A parts order is placed. Unfortunately, the only guy who knows anything about MacBook Pros has gone home for the day. Flavio hangs-up, notices he has finally recovered from the weekend, and dials-up his crew to see if they want to get a beer later. Need I go on?

Flippantly, to Felipe, I say “I don’t want to be without my computer for that long. I’ve got work to do, work that requires my computer.” Felipe translates, again. They smile and laugh, and I can tell Felipe has translated the words sans the sentiment. He’s protecting me from my very-American, very-impatient self. Good thing, too, because before I’ve agreed to anything, Flavio has walked out of the computer repair shop and is jaywalking across four lanes of rush hour traffic with my MacBook Pro tucked under his arm like it’s a Trapper Keeper. Read more

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