Michael Ventura is retiring from writing his Letters at 3 a.m. column. I can’t begin to express how sorry I am to hear it.
http://austinchronicle.com/columns/2014-10-03/letters at 3am-a-long-goodbye
MICHAEL VENTURA — CONNECTIVITY/VULNERABITY: Pt. 2
A pleasant surprise to find myself quoted within a column written by someone for whom i have had the highest respect for the 30 years since i first discovered his work.
LETTERS AT 3AM –
Austin Chronicle – August 22, 2014
A 19-year-old shot an archduke.
That happened on June 28, 1914, in a country that was then called Austria-Hungary and is now called Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Almost instantly, many dots collided and connected. As usual, most leaders expected a quick, predictable war. As usual, that was nonsense.
Continue reading MICHAEL VENTURA — CONNECTIVITY/VULNERABITY: Pt. 2
MICHAEL VENTURA – VULNERABILITY/CONNECTIVITY – Pt. 1
There is a Will Smith movie called “I, Robot” in which the cop says to the computer guru, in exasperation, “you’re the dumbest smart person I know.” That’s us.
Michael Ventura’s latest “LETTERS AT 3AM” column:
VULNERABILITY/CONNECTIVITY – Pt. 1
Austin Chronicle – August 8, 2014
Dark Angel premiered October 3, 2000. Created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, the Fox series pilot opened with eerily crew-cut children in their jammies fleeing in the snow and getting shot. Cut to Jessica Alba on a motorcycle in a dilapidated Seattle with drones patrolling overhead.
Alba narrated: “They used to say one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day. It was sort of a joke until the June morning when those terrorist bozos whacked us with an electromagnetic pulse from 80 miles up. You always hear people yapping about how it was all different before the Pulse – land of milk and honey, blah, blah, blah, blah – with plenty of food and jobs, and things actually worked. … Americans really thought they had it dialed in, money hanging out the butt. But it was all just a bunch of ones and zeros on a computer someplace. So when that bomb went klabooey, and the electromagnetic pulse turned all the ones and zeros into plain old zeros, everyone was like, ‘No way!’ America’s just another broke ex-superpower looking for a hand-out and wondering why.”
Continue reading MICHAEL VENTURA – VULNERABILITY/CONNECTIVITY – Pt. 1
Michael Ventura – Hitting the Street
MICHAEL VENTURA
LETTERS AT 3AM –
HITTING THE STREET
Austin Chronicle – May 30, 2014
A street kid – I was a street kid. (No. There is no “was” to the street. Still a street kid, down deep.)
If “street kid” conjures in your mind a tough, svelte, hip urchin – well, street kids like that exist, but they’re the ones the street kills first. For every movie-worthy street kid, there were dozens of us hanging out in the background, alert as cats – fire escape kids, rooftop kids, alley kids who knew how to blend right into the bricks and survive.
“Street sense” is not like in the movies – it’s not digging the score about every badness on the block. Street sense is knowing any shadow might hurt you. Street sense is respect for those shadows, with the knack to spot capital-C Crazy from across the street, and even from around the corner. Knowing how to go from here to there without getting your ass handed to you.
MICHAEL VENTURA — Screenworld
For some reason this remembered column has been on my mind, so I thought I’d share it once again.
Letters at 3AM
Screenworld
By Michael Ventura
Friday, February 27, 2009
Screens, screens, screens – everywhere, screens. Right in front of me, in arm’s reach, are three: the three computers accessible from this chair (often I work on two at once). Another screen’s across the room – the TV. My cell phone, also in arm’s reach, has a screen, even though I bought the simplest device possible – it cost 10 bucks, but it can take and transmit photos and movies. You see screens at checkout counters, restaurants, laundromats, waiting rooms, and on the dashboards of cars. Millions preen for screens on YouTube and Facebook, marketing their images like politicians or starlets. What with BlackBerrys, iPhones, and my 10-buck cell, few Americans go anywhere anymore without a handy screen that connects to every other screen in some way or another, linking to any event, broadcast, or data source anywhere, including satellite photos of every address you know. The screens disconnect, as well: I work where I live, so, theoretically, I need never leave my apartment – I can order shoes, pet food, people food, parts for my car, and lingerie for my girlfriend right here on this screen, to be delivered right to my door. Now that I think of it, it seems half the people I know met their present significant others via the screen.
The power of these interconnected screens is such that a virtually unknown woman can step before the media on a Friday and by the following Wednesday be a superstar nominated for the vice presidency of the United States. Conversely, a man touted as a promising presidential candidate uses the obscure racial slur “macaca,” someone videos the event with a cell phone, within hours every news outlet replays the video, and the viability of a presidential hopeful evaporates into Cyberspace.
Ventura/3 a.m.: Toast on a Park Bench
MICHAEL VENTURA
LETTERS AT 3AM –
TO SIT ON A PARK BENCH
Austin Chronicle – April 4, 2014
Every generation is like a ship casting off under sealed orders, on a mission fraught with dangers, and only the captain knows the truth: There will be no survivors.
That’s the thing about getting old: One day you look around at your contemporaries and it dawns on you that there were will be no survivors. One by one, you’re all going down.
Michael Ventura – What you believe in your bones
I find particularly compelling these lines: “I was green, but had enough sense to know that opinion is not belief and that it can be hard to learn what you believe. Not what you want to believe, or think you believe, or feel you’re supposed to believe, but what, in your bones, you really believe – believe without even knowing you believe.”
MICHAEL VENTURA
LETTERS AT 3AM –
ARTICLES OF FAITH
I was 18, about to be 19, and learning the meaning of necessity. My task was to contribute to the support of my mother, my siblings, and myself. We’d rented a one-bedroom in the Bronx, but I wanted to work in Manhattan. I’d ride the Woodlawn line to Grand Central Station and read the want ads at a funky diner there, nursing a cup of coffee purchased for a dime (no refills).
I’d been a Times Square counter man on the night shift. That hadn’t worked out. But I knew I’d find a day-shift job because I could type. Back then, if you were presentable and typed 100 words a minute, there was always work, so it didn’t take long before I secured a position suitable to my skill set: $70 per week take-home, no sick days, no benefits, but, in that era, and for how we lived, $70-per would just do.
Continue reading Michael Ventura – What you believe in your bones