Well, not quite. Right now, I am in the midst of my big move from Boston to Los Angeles. As you are reading this, my house is being over-run by movers who are packing up all of my best loved things -- my comics collection, my big screen tv, my books, my DVD library, and all of the other things which make for a well lived life -- and are loading them onto a truck. On July 1, my wife and I will get on an airplane and fly out to the west coast to begin our new life there. We've found a cool new loft in downtown Los Angeles in a classic art deco building and are ready for a total change in orientation and life style. Everyone who used to be far away will now be close.
By September, I will be fully immersed in my new position as Provost's Professor of Communications, Journalism, and Cinematic Art. I will be teaching two classes, a graduate course on New Media Literacies and an undergraduate class on Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment. I will be flying back and forth for the next year to make sure my current students at MIT are able to complete their thesis and to finish off some of the research projects we have been running through the Comparative Media Studies Program.
I've done my best to keep the blog entries flowing through this past year of dramatic transitions. I am going to take a few weeks now to focus on the move but expect to be back before July is over. I've got lots of interesting interviews, a backlog of ideas to spell out, and some other big plans for the blog in the months ahead. So don't go away. I just need some time to make my big move.
MIT 1989-2009 IHTFP
]]>Mike
www.asthedustsettles.com
As you are living in such a historic neighborhood, might I suggest some interesting information about 'the real' historical LA?
All of these are part of the work of the LA Time’s Larry Harnisch, columnist on Los Angeles history. First the 1947 project, which is, at http://www.1947project.com/. And their equally amazing follow-up sites: The Bunker Hill project (a lost downtown neighborhood much like Boston's West End) at http://www.onbunkerhill.org/. Their new one is about lost lore of LA’s historic core athttp://www.insroland.org/. These are not only fascinating invocations of Raymond Chandler and LA noir, but also examples of the use of the web to recall and refocus those of us in the present upon the flickering past.
I think you will find California’s history fascinating, as well as perverse. So if you haven’t yet, please read the classic “Material Dreams – Southern California Through the 1920s†by Kevin Starr. And, of course, that inspiration for “Chinatown,†“Southern California, An Island on the Land.†They both add a lot of context to understanding LA and Southern Cali.
Enjoy!
Glad this chat is finally happening on the air.
Wish KPFK had a medium for me to comment live.
Best to you.
Edward
]]>