Queueing and grokking with Chuck

Last night I punched out at work, then stood in the long queue of fellow digerati at the Oak Street Theatre to catch the world premiere of Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary. And what a magical event it was. Chuck deserves eternal gratitude for redeeming a cursed week and sending us pajama kids off into the night with wide grins on our faces.

The line was buzzing with rumors of a seemingly bad omen -- something having to do with a broken sound system -- which delayed the start of the film for about forty minutes. But this turned into a sublime coincidence, as I got to stand outside the Oak Street and chat for a while -- grousing about politics, discussing child care, school selection, and Wishbone, learning about classical music and anti-prog rock, figuring how to write a novel in a month, meeting the Space Waitress's mom (the hipple). All the while Chuck was smiling and chatting it up in his satanic bright-red suit with Playboy pin. The queue itself became a fertile ground for significant nonsense and loud activism, just like blogs!

And so the Blogumentary began: a roller coaster ride of Pepys, laughs, contemplated suicides, bittersweet memories, gory injuries, Chuck's gigantic face, Sharyn's Little Man's even more gigantic face, fraudulent identities, thrusts, parrys, bald dudes, cats. My favorite moment was when the whole crowd laughed uproariously as one of the PowerLine dudes sorta sneers and cocks his head briefly after an extravagant put-down of the New York Times. My least favorite moment was the tedious bickering between Heather Champ and hubby Derek Powazek, mostly because their unresolved argument (about gender and race) was circling around a central concern of mine (class) which definitely impacts and shapes the blogging world in significant ways.

Fair and unbalanced, Chuck gives equal time to the right-wing dudes who bum-rushed their way up to Dan Rather's office. But best of all, he has a talent for undercutting all the serious moments with hilarious jump-cuts and lounge-music factoids. He opted for loose-limbed mirth as the overall tone, and that fits the blogosphere perfectly (if you discount trolls and flamethrowers).

There is a lengthy quixotic segment about blogging the Howard Dean campaign, which affected me immensely. Tell the truth, I was never much of a Dean supporter (anti-war I dig, but Dean's fiscal austerity struck me as an ominously Clintonian trait, and I never got over that creepy-ass smile). Yet I still wonder whether his wax wings melted more because of the smallish nature of a digerati support group than because of his scream. Movements always seem bigger and more powerful when you're inside them. Despite my prole misgivings, I was impressed that Chuck portrayed the lefty blogosphere as activists and sturdy campaigners, while the right-wing pajama-boyz mostly fire quills at the New York Times and force Dan Rather to apologize to the world. In other words, the liberals are creators, and the conservatives of destroyers. I relayed this epiphany to Chris Dykstra during the post-film crowd-spill, but then I realized that Chuck did include a bit about how Josh Marshall took down Trent Lott. So my theory is still a bit ragged, but probably right.

Since the Blogumentary is a work in progress, here's my wish list for future topics:

• Music! Blogging has seriously altered the nature of music appreciation, with MP3 blogs and wonky music critics (such as myself) spouting off in instantly published rants which would have been crumpled into Lester Bangs's garbage can back in the seventies.
  
• Communal blogs. Communities of dispersed college and high school friends are forming entertaining little communal blogs which keep themselves tethered to each other digitally. My own high school pals (who would remain in darkness otherwise) are congregated at Triptych Cryptic, and though I don't know what community forms the D3 Powerhouse, I do know it makes me nostalgic for those lost years of taping, typing, and chilling.
  
• Site stats. The Blogumentary does mention commenting as a resonant source for connection, but there is no mention of site stats and referral logs, which for some of us can be a much larger focus for community-building.
  
• Class, race, gender. Leaving aside the Champ-Powazek debate, there was no indication that class, race, and gender might be gatekeepers to access, audience, and community formation in blogland. Photoblogging, for example, seems primarily the province of people with means (or large credit card debts), and Chuck himself did encounter a racially-potent incident at SXSW, which I think should be mentioned in future Blogumentary edits.
  
• Form and content. As blogging has evolved, the way a site looks often supercedes the nature and quality of its content. People who use Blogger templates (like me!) can be marginalized in favor of those with snazzy indiviualistic designs. There's modernity for you, and it would be cool to see this as a contrast to the Pepys-Paine-pamphleteering precursors of blogging.
  
• Instant gratification. For freelance writers, especially. Publishing in the pre-blog era used to be a lengthy, nailbiting process: sometimes you'd wait months to read your own radically altered submission to some shady zine. Now, you press the button, and you're out there, plus you get to see your audience as they read! This is something like a revolution for both scribblers and publishers.
  

Crap, I think there's more stuff on my wishlist, but I'm just still so elated from last night I can't think it through. The most potent thought that sank into me as I rode the bus home is that nearly everybody there I had met via the local blogosphere. Only connect.

Thanks Chuck.