I received a formal letter from Metallica licensing people a couple of days ago. They granted me permission to use everything I had requested, from lyric excerpts, to musical transcriptions, to video stills. That was certainly a relief, but guess how much they wanted?

$0.00

That's right. Nothing. Free. Not even a complimentary copy of the book. And I have no idea why they don't want in on the massive musicological action that will be my book. I mean, it's gonna sell huge, bro! Seriously, I think their gesture is somewhere between "respect" and "not caring." A couple of people have suggested that they might just have been flattered by the fact of someone writing such a book about them, and so wanted to help in whatever small way they could. I'm not sure about that, since they never struck me as being too concerned about a legacy and it's not like they haven't been "honored" with documentaries and other books before. In a sense, I'm a late-comer to whatever flattery party is being thrown. Not that I'm part of a flattery party per se, but I wouldn't expect them to really care about the difference. On some level their participation in or ascent to the flattery party is a business decision. My book is certainly also something of a business practice, in the sense of it interacting in commercial culture. And so, I would have expected to pony up something for the right to at least reprint some lyrics. Perhaps, though, there was indeed a component of respect involved, and they were willing to let things go for a scholarly purpose. Whether it's good scholarship or bad fanboy writing disguised as scholarship will be decided by the voters...er, readers.

In the end, it is a huge relief and I will say that, for all the theorizing above, no gift horses will have their mouths looked into. The book has now moved into production while I secure the last two bits of permissions (Hendrix and Venom). 

I've used the Mozilla-based Camino web browser since it was at version 0.4 and called Chimera, and I've always enjoyed coming back to it after using other browsers for a while. I am definitely one of those people who switches default browsers constantly. Most recently (today in fact) I reset my default browser to Camino after a couple of months using Safari. Camino is this close to its first non-beta release, with version 1.0a1 released this week (1.0 will be the first official non-beta version, and the "a1" part is the first alpha version of the 1.0 release. Yes, betas within betas...).

Anyhoo, the point of this is to note with great satisfaction the details of the Camino print screen, particularly the Camino option in the options drop down menu.

 

click to enlarge...  

The thing that caught my eye was the enhancement to the header/footer print controls. In most browsers you get the option to turn on the printing of the header/footer information or turn it off. As you can see, in Camino you get the ability to choose pretty much which header/footer information you want printed as well as choose how it's basically placed on the page. Moreover, you get separate controls for both the header and footer. Marvelously cool, and that's all I wanted to say. :) 

 

The 2005 season of the Stockton Ports finished yesterday. The team had a very good second half of the season, finishing in first place and now begins the California League playoffs against the fearsome Modesto Nuts. If anything, you gotta love the team names in the minor leagues. The California League is also a Class A league, which means they not only get the youngest, most inexperienced players but also the lamest team names...

The big news for the Ports was the inauguration of their new downtown ballpark, known unofficially as Banner Island Ballpark, though the "Island" part is apparently a historical reference to the time when the location actually was an island. The park is on the downtown waterfront though, right next to the almost-finished downtown sports arena and the soon-be-started fancy hotel. The new ballpark is very much a part of the trend in recent years to combine nostalgia for ye olde baseballe days with nostalgia for ye olde Maine Streete, but with a modernized and slightly sanitized look and feel. The new park is, however, a mammoth upgrade from the team's old park, which was not much more than a glorified community diamond. The "BIB" adopts many of the by-now standard elements of the baseball redesign craze, including more low-angle seating closer to the field and wacky outfield wall configurations (including what they call a "mini monster" in left field -- a reference to the famous left field monster at Fenway Park in Boston).

R3 and I had a mini-season ticket plan this year comprised of six Saturday night games (about once a month). From the inside the park is as spiffy and new as you would expect. It really does try to miniaturize the major league experience, from concessions to box seats, to the look of the field. In some ways though, it was too good, too perfect, too much like a major league game. The quality of play and fan interaction gimmicks of course reminded us that this was minor league baseball, but the perfect green grass and light brown dirt seemed somehow out of place when you think of minor league baseball. Dare I say it, the experience is almost uncomfortably "corporate." I have no problem with advertising throughout the stadium, and greatly enjoy the hokey product placement/tie-ins that come up during the game (broken bats are "sponsored" by a lumber dealer, foul balls that go into the parking lot are "sponsored" by the local autoglass repair shop, etc.), but there's some line somewhere that got crossed ever so slightly I think.

Our seats were the same each time, and we also shared the section with many other season ticket holders. The family in the row in front of us were very nice and had two young kids who were cute without being annoying. Their mother turned out to be a bit of a Ports fanatic and the family (or portions of it) apparently attended almost every home game. She even bought the college jersey worn by one of the Ports top players, Luke Appert, off eBay for him to sign before one game. She was also quite good at getting her or her kids involved in one of the many wacky between-innings contests.

So, do I miss having a pro team in town for my baseball fix? Not really. For better or worse, minor league games are a bit more exciting than major league games, the baseball less refined and a combined 15-20 runs per game isn't unusual. The smaller crowds also help the overall experience. It's been a fun season and the "effort" of attending regularly had a lot to do with that. So, yea, I'm looking forward to next season. 

Been quite a while since my last update on the book. This morning I sent the manuscript off to Routledge via FedEx. Two hard copies plus a few assorted bits, and a CD. Five chapters plus introduction and epilogue, 311 pages of prose at 98,459 words. $60 to have it arrive Tuesday morning in New York.

I'd essentially finished the prose in the last month or so, but wasn't sure whether the press would want the manuscript until the permissions had been absolutely finalized, licenses in hand. Initial permissions letters went out July 20 and two of the five entities have "settled" so far, though not yet Metallica. I'd also been holding back on sending the manuscript until I was also sure there wouldn't be any disastrous problems with the Metallica folks over permissions, either in terms of price or simple refusals of some form or other. I figured that I'd prefer to still have full possession of the manuscript in case I felt it necessary to pull out of the Routledge contract completely rather than gut the prose to accommodate whatever reaction they might have to hypothetical outrageous demands on the part of Metallica's management. The worst case scenario would have been to pull out of the contract at that point (repaying the advance) and distribute the manuscript freely online under a Creative Commons license. Obviously the reach of my meager publicity/distribution efforts would pale in comparison to Routledge's capabilities, but I remain very concerned about the permissions issue as one of intellectual freedom. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I'd rather be prepared for as many contingencies as possible than blindly submit to whatever compromises might be demanded.

In the end, Routledge contacted me earlier this week wondering when they would get the manuscript (I'm a couple of months late) and I hurriedly made a list of what needed to be spit-polished. I was informed that I didn't really need to wait until the permissions were completely finalized and that it would be good to get the editorial production started while the permissions finish (hopefully without problems!). Over the last couple of days I fine-tuned everything, tracked down or dealt with straggling footnotes and citations, finished the Author Questionnaire, designed a mock-up of my ideal cover (which will entail yet another round of permissions, though I'm not sure who's responsible for that one -- me or Routledge), and then spent most of yesterday actually printing the darn thing twice. My poor five-year-old (?) Lexmark laser printer was really creaking by the end! Still, it got the job done and I must admit I enjoyed revisiting the feeling of accomplishment I had after printing out the final version of the dissertation -- it's pretty cool to look at two stacks of manuscript in all of their finality.

Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the content, and I've yet to have any of those significant "d'oh!" moments where I remember that I've now forgotten to address some issue or other, or expand this, footnote that, etc. There are a few minor things that I know of in that regard, and I was adding small things up until this last weekend, but there will always be those things when you live with a project of this scope for so long. In fact my decision to actually send the manuscript was in part due to the need to finally stop fiddling and consider it "done."

So now I wait for Routledge's reaction, and continue hounding people about permissions.