It certainly seems like it.   After all, Borders is freshly in the grave and old standbys like Cole's and B. Dalton are long since gone.  Filling the void left by these former institutions, upwards of 5 million people opened up a shiny new e-reader this December.

But the same, “Death of …” question has already been asked of every media outlet recently upstaged by its digital counterpart. Newspapers are disappearing. CD’s have joined VHS tapes and cassettes in the Virgin Megastore in the sky. But books? Not books…

Books are more than words. They’re notebooks, doorstops, decorations and weapons. They even-out table legs and squash spiders. And the act of reading a “real” book is such a tactile experience there’s no way a Kindle could compete, right?

Then my mother bought one.

She’s 75-years-old and has been an avid reader her entire life. She tells of being scolded for reading constantly (even at the dinner table) and of checking-out an entire bag of books from the library every week.

So I asked her, how does she feel about the transition from paper page to digital screen?

Mom:

The Kindle is my library and it doesn’t close.

I can download a book in 60 seconds without leaving the house.

It’s easier to press a sidebar than turn a page.

I don’t have to dog-ear pages because it remembers exactly where I left off.

I can take notes with the keyboard and look at other people’s notes.

I can look up words in the dictionary without switching screens or losing my place.

I can enlarge the type. (I am 75 you know.)

I think it’s fun.

As a recent e-book adopter I couldn’t agree more. Now excuse me while I go play Ziggy Stardust on vinyl.

*For one possible answer to the headline check out Isthebookdead.com

75% of all chefs nationwide are male. But three of the best in the Triangle aren’t.

Ashley Christensen of Poole’s Diner in Raleigh.

Andrea Reusing of the Lantern in Chapel Hill. 

Amy Tornquist of Watts Grocery in Durham.

Two are self-taught (Christensen and Reusing). Two are working moms (Reusing and Tornquist). And all three are getting national attention.

Andrea Reusing just received the much-coveted James Beard Award as the Best Chef in the Southeast. According to Time Magazine, that’s the Oscars of the food world.

Amy Tornquist is a Bon Apétit noted chef whose dishes have been featured there, in Food & Wine, and in Southern Living magazines. Her specialty, appropriately, is updated Southern cuisine.

I can only imagine the confusion between her and my Boston mom if they got together to dish about food.

Tornquist:    Steamer? That ‘s a ship not a clam.

Mom:           Pig’s Feet? Seriously?

Tornquist:    Jimmie is a guy, not an ice cream topping.

Mom:           Yeah, well I bet you’ve never even had a whoopee pie!

It would be a sight.

While that probably won't happen, Mom can watch Ashley Christensen battle renowned grill-meister Bobby Flay July 24^th on Food Network’s Iron Chef America. And there will be blood. Or at least strange ingredients and oxidized cookware. Don’t miss it.  

TV aside, if a woman’s place is in the kitchen, why don’t more of women have top jobs in the finest ones? Working the line is physical, grueling, competitive, dirty and intense. But so is being female. Or perhaps it’s that the culinary world’s been a boy’s club for so long, that it takes a place like the Triangle that’s not so set in its ways for a gal to make it to the top of the line.

Go Ashley!

Catch Ashley Christensen on Iron Chef America, July 24^th at 10 pm

What’s guerrilla artist and 'Barrel Monster' creator, Joseph Carnevale, doing these days?

Rebelling against society’s “sanitized bastardization of original independent spirit” on his website, No Promise of Safety?

Growing the barrel monster family with other traffic cone cohorts?

Going to the library?

Yes, yes and yes.

I discovered one of his creations, ‘Street Knight,’ guarding the second floor of the Cameron Village Library. Turns out it was constructed on the shopping center grounds in 2010 as part of a ‘Scrap to Sculpture’ contest- the knight is made from old street signs.

If you’re in Raleigh, stop on over, grab a good book and check ‘em both out.

Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Palestine, Libya...

The Social Network didn’t win the Oscar, but Zuckerberg’s Website is the platform of choice for millions of activists worldwide. That’s not sloppy seconds.

To be clear, Facebook doesn’t support a specific group, they just make freedom of assembly a lot easier for everyone. Facebook is Paul Revere’s horse. Or Martin Luther’s printing press. It’s a means to an end, in this case of authoritarian leaders like Mubarak and Gadhafi.

Great! I’m thrilled that social networking is being used for social change. But now my page is feeling a little cause-deficient.

Sure, I like Planned Parenthood and Amnesty International. I even shared SPENT, a game you play for the Urban Ministries of Durham to see how far a meager income gets you. But those small inklings of social activism are countered by Boo the dog, Eli’s Dirty Jokes and Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology.

Wait, I’m deeper than this! You can find inspirational things on my wall. Really. Just yesterday the Dalai Lama told me I have the keys to happiness. (Knowing me, I probably lost them.) And this EAS guy did 30 sports in 30 days. If he can do that, I can make it to a dance class!

PS

Afraid your “friends” look at your page and think you’re an opinion-less sap? “Causes” can help you find something to care about, be it children with blood disorders or animal cruelty in Romania. With 22, 870,074 users, it’s the 7th most popular app on Facebook.

A silent nod when you enter.

Hand-sharpied CD shelf dividers.

Record store smell. It’s like a library, only cooler.

Playlists compiled by the original artist.

CD’s you can scour through for hours, in cases, with artwork.

Used bins!

 Anything by AC/DC. Also, Garth Brooks, Kid Rock, Tool, portions of the Black Sabbath and Def Leppard catalogues, Bob Seger, Frank Zappa, Jay-Z’s American Gangster album and the Smiths.

Listening stations and the occasional live show. (“Preview” just doesn’t compete.)

Recommendations you can trust.

Plans for Friday night.

Rock art covering every inch of wall and shelf space. 

Schoolkids, 2114 Hillsborough St. Raleigh

“Drummer/guitarist/singer/keyboardist/-wanted” ads you consider answering.

An afternoon well spent. 

Places where you can find the items above:

 Schoolkids Records

Chaz’s Bull City Records

CD Alley

 Offbeat Music

And don’t forget to support 5^th Annual Record Store Day, April 16, 2011

Some days you lose your work, an earring, your sanity or all three. And it takes a lot to look at things in perspective—and to laugh.

It takes Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

Image courtesy of Fashion Rules.com

For those unfamiliar with the show, it features contestants vying to be ”America’s Next Drag Superstar.” The queens battle it out with a mini-challenge and a main stage event, resulting in the bottom two queens “lip-synching for their lives.”

The Lady-to-Tramp RuPaul Doll Mini-Challenge

For these 60 minutes, I feel fabulous. If anything rears its ugly head in my head (or in yours), this show probably has the answer.

What I've learned in drag therapy.

Body Image Disorder: There’s nothing the right undergarment can’t tuck, flatten, boost, lift, squeeze or augment.

Schizophrenia: If you think you’re Cleopatra, then buy a wig and be Cleopatra.

Social Anxiety: People judge you more on how you carry yourself than what you look like.

Anal-Retentiveness: Sometime’s the wig is just going to come off, no matter what you do.

Lonliness: You're never alone if your friends always want to borrow your makeup.

Stuttering: Can't speak? Write it in lipstick!

Exhibitionism: What? That's not a disorder, it's an attribute.

Depression: Do WHATEVER makes you happy.

Personality Disorder: Most of us change our identities daily. Only some of us do it with false eyelashes, padding and tucking panties.

Low Self-Esteem: In the words that RuPaul uses to close each show, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love anybody else?  Can I get an amen?”

Amen, Ru. Amen.

What would Shane MacGowan, the infamous carouser formerly of the Pogues, send out as a Christmas card? How ‘bout a good, old-fashioned holiday tune banged out with beer bottles, kegs, pint glasses and cans? Yep, that sounds about right.

While he didn’t record such a greeting, thankfully someone did. Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready to stomp your feet and clap your hands with “The Jingler,” a site created by McKinney for the Big Boss microbrewery in Raleigh. And yes, Virginia, it’s that cool.

Musical ability is about as necessary as it is in a pub after a few pints.  Just choose your tune from classic brews like Jingle Bells, O Tannenbaum and Deck the Halls. Or compose your own on a Qwerty keyboard.  Then adjust the speed and add beats with bottle-banging video clips recorded on Big Boss’ finest.

You can share your jingle with friends on Facebook or Twitter and learn more about the ales, er, musical instruments you’ve been playing on the Big Boss site. As the News and Observer wrote in their article on the Jingler, “it’s a fun way to share your love of craft beer AND Christmas.”

Update: Right after this article was posted, Mashable wrote about the do-good uses of social media – and gave McKinney props for our efforts. "We’re excited to see that companies, such as McKinney are coming up with clever ideas that use location-based services to get consumers thinking about issues." Read it here.

*

It’s almost painfully funny. Mark checked in to a dumpster on Main St. Valerie is the mayor of an overpass on I-147. But beneath the absurdity is the stark reality of life as a homeless person.

On behalf on the Urban Ministries of Durham, McKinney just launched an innovative effort using Foursquare to raise awareness of homelessness in the city.

Users can “check-in” to such eye-opening locations as "tent under the overpass, "old construction site" and "dumpster in the alley." The write-up of each destination includes UMD’s mission and their site’s URL, urbanministries.com. The tips section, here for Dumpster in the Alley, is particularly poignant with the site’s example tip to ‘Order the burger and ask for the secret sauce.’
Foursquare couldn’t have hit home harder if they tried.

It’s all about awareness.
The reality of homelessness isn’t on everyone’s daily radar. But let’s say you login to Foursquare and see that a friend was last seen sleeping at a construction site. That would catch your attention, right? Exactly.

I drive by my awareness five days a week, at the corner of Jackie Robison Drive and S. Roxboro St. It’s usually the same guy, mid-40’s with crazy eyes, or a slightly older woman. They always say, “God Bless.”

I don’t know their back-story. But I know I should do more. I will do more.
---
If you haven’t seen it, 2009’s Invisible campaign for the Urban Ministries is simply amazing. Based on the simple premise that, “Ignoring homelessness won’t make it go away.” The TV spots use stop-motion animation to show what we don’t see right in front of us. The spots won an O’Toole award for Regional Pro Bono Advertising, and helped raise $37,000 in new donations – and get 400 new volunteers – for the Urban Ministries of Durham.
See the spots here.

Walkman, Sony
July 1, 1979 – October 25, 2010
 
“We’ll miss you Mega Bass.”

Born July 1, 1979 to audio engineer Nobutoshi Kihara and Sony Chairman Akio Morita. Walkman started life as a metal-cased blue-and-silver TPS-L2, the first personal, portable stereo cassette player.

Walkman was an instant hit, selling out within a month of his release in Japan. He enjoyed similar success in the West, easing the shoulder pain of boom box carrying urban trendsetters before making his way to the hips of Middle America.

Powered by two AA-batteries and aerobics-crazed neon-colored coolness, Walkman gave people their first taste of musical freedom. It is generally agreed that occasionally having one’s tapes thrown up in a jumble of black spaghetti was a small price to pay.

He was father to Discman and great-uncle to MP3 Player, iPod and Shuffle. Beyond his own progeny, Walkman initiated countless other matches between young lovers through the exchange of personalized mix tapes.

Faithful purveyor of one-hit-wonders and classic artists, Walkman made everyone “Say you. Say me. Say it together. Naturally.”* But by the late 1990’s, he went into semi-retirement when his relatives CD-Player, DAT and Minidisc replaced the aging patriarch in backpacks and briefcases alike.

By 2000, Walkman fell into complete obscurity. He passed his days watching marathon’s of VH1’s “I love the 80’s” while drinking Tabb and eating Pop Rocks.

Walkman rewound his last on October 25, 2010 at his home office in Japan. 

In lieu of a memorial, his family asks that people raise their lighters or cell phones in his honor the next time they hear “Don’t You Forget About Me” by the Simple Minds.

*Technically, Lionel Ritchie said this first.

What: Father & Son Antiques

When: Mon - Sat 11 - 6, Sun 12 - 5, Closed Wed.

Where: 107 W. Hargett St. Raleigh, NC 27601

Why: It’s a deceptively large, 3-floor treasure hunt through 20th century Americana. Clothes for guys, gals and tots, toys, furniture, music, and tchotchke mix with art so fresh the paint’s still wet.

Here’s just a taste of what you’ll find.

X marks 10,000 square feet filled to the brim.

Satisfy your cravings for both monkeys and art!

Depictions of nature.

Let’s go upstairs, shall we?

Someone got a little lost in the vintage denim.

Hand me my parasol, will you darling?

The woman in the mirror say’s hello.

Vinyl heaven…

Oh, Jackie O, where do I begin?

“It’s an art gallery, honey!”

Peeking out from the most unexpected places are over twenty paintings, like this one, by former Raleigh resident and current LA artist David K. Rose. Here’s a link to his site.

Stay tuned for the next "Go There Now" destination.