Douglas Coupland was a speaker here today. He's one of the most interesting and weird people I've ever seen at an event like this. Just a few quotes:
"I cut my teeth on disaster."
"I can’t believe I get to make shit up for a living. Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah, people talk!"
RE: YouTube: "I think it’s great that all these people who are at home doing nothing are at home making marshmallow animations."
"I’m just waiting for some asshole in California to invent whatever it is that replaces the book.
Books are the one uncopiable medium. There is still no one satisfying replacement for paper."
"Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. Everytime a cell phone goes off in an auditorium, God takes an angel, rips his wings off, and chucks the bloody body down on the ground." Then he talked about a phone ringing while he was speaking, and how he stopped, and made everyone call themselves, so they could hear the sounds of all the phones in the room ringing, in a "Cellphone Sonata." This is the greatest things I've heard all day.
When asked by an audience member what he'd do if he ever took a "pot vacation." "I would rent a kayak, a big red kayak...Just get close to water, anything that involves water."
He kept saying, "Oh no, is this going to go on YouTube? You can't relax at these things anymore because you don't know what's being recorded and what'll show up on YouTube." So true. So weird. It was great. I think I need to read his books now. If you're equally in the mood for some weirdly divine comedy, here's his website. Check out his self-penned biography - no press release here. It's funny.
Now I just sat through a half hour of the just gross Tucker Max because I forgot who he was until he started talking and then I just thought I'd hear what and now a very sweet, earnest man who teaches a class on arts entrepreneurship. His premise seems to have something to do with Lord of the Rings (Frodo, in particular), Joseph Campbell's bliss theory, the Matrix and its application to Jesus Christ, Star Wars and the "rescue from without" as a correlate to Steve Jobs saving Apple, the apotheosis of becoming the ideal (??!!??), a "showdown ordeal", Van Halen ending up two million dollars in debt after their first tour, and the web. It's making my headache way worse, and I've never seen so many confused geeks staring up at a screen in my life. He just asked for questions, and no one has any, because it's not polite even in these circles to go, "Oh, umm, yeah. What the fuck?" So now he's showing us a music video that he directed for a song called "Ready to Rise" by Vaughan Penn. Appeared on Laguna Beach, I think? Hmm.
I'd have rather sat for two more hours and just watched Coupland eat and also narrate his lunch. I think that would have been way more interesting.
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