I watched the unfolding of the Mike Daisey story yesterday with some amusement and some shaking of my head and some outright complete bemusement.

In case you don’t know what happened with Mike Daisey, you can read the story here (or here, or here, or…). Basically, it comes down to this: Mike Daisey has a show he calls The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, in which he gives a monologue about how he went to China and discovering the conditions in which Chinese factory workers operate under subhuman conditions and never use the products they make.

You can read the monologue here. The popularity of his monologue was one of the factors in increasing questions about and investigations into how Chinese factories make electronic devices. And he was interviewed for a number of pieces on the subject — by the New York Times, and by This American Life on PRI. It turned out that Daisey had not interviewed the workers he said he did, he hadn’t experienced the things he said he had, and sometimes he relied on other journalists’ work and sometimes he just made shit up.

Given how many times I’ve seen people quote things Daisey said as gospel truth, this is somewhat problematic.

As Theater

Fuck you, naysayers. You can do anything in theater. Rock on with your monologue, Mike Daisey.

You want to present a theater piece saying the Trilateral Commission is behind everything that happens on the planet? Awesome. Make it thrilling and entertaining and I am there. Want to present a dramatic recreation of how George W. Bush instigated the Iraq War in order to steal the budget surplus and hand out billions to his supporters? Do it do it do it. An eighteen-hour multi-play cycle depicting what life is going to be like after we run out of oil? If you keep down the costs of stage effects and keep speaking roles to a minimum, some theater somewhere will stage that puppy.

If audience members turn out to be getting all of their facts about the world at large from the theater, that’s not the theater’s problem. That’s your problem, for being an ill-informed moron.

As News

Unfortunately, because Daisey presented his monologue as his real-life experiences and he never hedged on that line — he told everyone, “This is what I did” — he set himself up as an authority. And when it turned out that he lied, his reputation — as a truth teller, where it should have, and as a theatrical monologuist, where it should not have — became the story. When in fact the story is our journalists suck.

The biggest problem here is how many reputed journalists took Daisey’s stories at face value without apparently doing their own legwork. Reporters said, “Hey, I’ve stood outside of Foxconn and never run into workers saying crap like this…oh well, guess I just talked to the wrong workers. He must be right!”

According to Bloomberg, the reporter for Marketplace, Rob Schmitz, who discovered that yeah, Daisey overstepped (or outright lied) on a number of issues found the translator Daisey worked with by typing “Cathy translator Shenzhen” into Google. Which no one else had done. There’s some real investigative journalism right there, people.

I could go off on a rant about this whole topic (Quick! Name all the electronics manufacturers who have revealed not only their supply chain but specifically what they’re doing to improve conditions! Okay, I’ll make it easier! You only have to name more than one!) but I won’t. I’ve enjoyed making fun of Daisey over the past day only because he got so much attention for being an authority on a subject he wasn’t.

But his theatrical monologue? He isn’t the evening news, people. We don’t want to hear endless stories of “Well, I heard…” or “I read in a paper…” or “You know what it might be?” No, we want to hear what people have done. And that is how Daisey presented it.

Jason Grote, a playwright whose work I’ve never seen but whose Twitter feed I enjoy (and whose blog I enjoyed, before he discontinued it), had four really cogent tweets on the subject yesterday:

There are different levels to truth crimes:

And most especially, let’s keep a little perspective:

In case you don’t know who Trayvon Martin is, you can read about his death (and the racism that clearly caused it and lets his murderer go free) here.

I’m still of two minds. Anything that gets people thinking and connects with them emotionally (as Daisey clearly did, and as 97% of our entertainment so clearly doesn’t) is awesome. People clearly want what he said to be the gospel truth.

A good question is: WHY?

Remember back a million years ago when I was all about keeping a journal? I had pages about journals, I wrote Why Web Journals Suck, I maintained the Going and Going page?

(In case you don’t remember Going and Going…for a few years I actually maintained by hand via BBEdit a list of people who kept an online journal going for a year. There were no blogs yet. I know, right? And I checked every single entrant by hand…until I came to my senses said, I am so not doing this any more. I’m sure there are automated ways of doing that now, but I wasn’t aware of any of those then, and doing that kind of thing now….muahahahaha, no.)

My journal keeping over the past decade has been…spotty, let’s say. At a time when I probably should have been keeping a much more detailed diary (my kids growing up), I’ve had a blank book here, a book there… My handwriting, which used to be so gorgeous, has gone to pot. It’s hard to write by hand when you haven’t been. I actually still prefer writing a journal by hand, because I think using your hand to move across a page physically produces a different relationship with your brain than typing does. Yes, typing goes faster, but faster isn’t always better. Sometimes faster gets you stuck on “Oh, let me rewrite this over and over again” or retype this or whatever. Sometimes faster is just more shoveling of bullshit.

But keeping a diary on the computer can be useful, because I can type faster — much faster — than I can write by hand these days. Also useful: a diary on my phone. I kept a diary of all of the hair products I was using, in what combinations and in what amounts, to see what kind of hair day I got out of them. I’ll be out somewhere and want to write about something that’s definitely journal-like, and what do I have on me? I have my iPhone.

So, the three types of journals I keep at the moment: Paper, Computer, and iPhone.

My friend Nina is always waxing rhapsodic about Barefoot Coffee, which is near her house and which has baristas whose sole job in life it is to make coffee. (And they take that responsibility Very Seriously.) Recently a franchise outlet of Barefoot opened near me, so I decided to go check it out as a possible writing spot (upside: very comfy, many wall outlets; downside: farther away than other cafes near my house).

More important than what I thought of their coffee, however, was the sweet treat I discovered there: chocolate sea salt cookies. I munched on one and thought, “Wow, this is an awesome cookie.” Then I read the ingredients and I thought, “WOW, THIS IS A TOTALLY AWESOME COOKIE.”

Because in addition to being a great balance between chewy and crispy, in addition to being just chocolatey enough, and in addition to being 4 small cookies in a resealable package (making portion control easier)…it was vegan.

The kindest way I can put it is this: the vast majority of vegan baked goods I’ve had, both that I’ve made and that I’ve bought commercially, have sucked. Big time. There’s a company that has their products in the checkout aisle of Whole Foods that look delicious and taste like cardboard. So generally it’s a big turnoff for me. These, however, were awesome.

Which made me try many other of this company’s treats. And they were all really, really good.

I met Nina for a writing date one day at the Barefoot near her house and I discovered the cookies were there too. I bought a pack and stuck one in Nina’s mouth. “Try this,” I said, after the fact.

“Dfaj fajgapto.” Then she nodded.

“What?”

After a quick drink of coffee, she said, “That’s a good cookie.”

I was so enamored of the products by this company I tried I contacted the baker via her email and asked if I could talk to her about her business. And maybe I could get that chocolate sea salt cookie recipe from her. We met at Barefoot in Santa Clara. Nina showed up too, because she wanted to meet the baker too.

Hway-ling met us and immediately offered us samples of the products she was working on: a vanilla shortbread cookie made without wheat flour, and a pistachio shortbread. One of these was vegan too, which I thought was a neat trick with shortbread, but I honestly couldn’t tell it was. After she finished dropping off her wares and leaving a few samples of new products for the cafe manager, she sat down with us.

She is very friendly and funny and chatty. I loved talking to her. She didn’t want her picture taken (I tried, but pictures of hands over a face are not exciting), so sadly I don’t have that to share.

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A lot of us have “fans” of our baking, but very few of us decide to make a business out of our baking. How did you decide to go into business? 

No one ever actually said that to me.

After my youngest didn’t need me at home any more, I thought, What would I like to do? I decided to start this business.

(Hway-ling told us that she was a lawyer for many years, both before and after having kids, but she was done with the whole legal thing after the last left her nest. Nina is also a lawyer, and she is always interested in hearing about what other lawyers do after they finish with that.)

What does it take to start a small baked-goods business? I assume there’s more to it than just baking a lot of stuff in your kitchen and putting it into plastic bags. 

You have to get a Food Safety Certificate. Take a class, take a test, get a certification, get a license. There’s the Environmental Health Certificate, $750/yr. Pay a business tax to city of San Jose. If you form a business as an limited liability corporation (LLC) through Nolo, every year there’s a $800 tax, Before you can rent space, you have to have insurance. The agent said to me, “You have no track record and you have no experience.”

And there are things like: Who do I sell to? What do I package in? What are the labeling requirements? I didn’t know about any of that.

There are lots of barriers to entry. There’s lots of requirements but it’s not always clear whose requirements they are.

Do you bake in your kitchen? If so, did you have to get it certified somehow? If you make your stuff somewhere else, what place do you use and how did you find it?

You have to have a business license. You have to cook in a commercial kitchen that’s licensed. I use a rent by the hour commercial kitchen used by caterers, hot dog vendors, all sorts of people. I met a family cooking for their daughter’s shower or some big event.  You could do a sitcom set in one of these commercial kitchens.

In New York, where I used to live, you can get your own kitchen checked out and certified. But not here.

I also saw in that SF Weekly article that you began with recipes and techniques you found on the internet, but you’ve branched out from there. What do you do to create recipes? 

At the kitchen where I rent there were two guys with a food truck. So I asked them, do you need a dessert? They asked for three things I didn’t know how to make. Peanut brittle, pralines, and something else. I got some recipes, I practiced, I gave it to them and they said, “Yeah, we can use this.” From the peanut brittle I experimented with other things.  The stoves at the kitchen are gas and have no marks. You have to eyeball the flame. You have to use different kinds of pots. You have to be aware of the ambient air temperature. In the winter the kitchen can be 50 and in the summers…  To go into a larger production requires more, bigger equipment.

(She makes a ton of different kinds of brittle now, some of which she sells through Ourtisan.com. In case you’re wondering about the packaging there, the company name was Snapdragon and is now Sweetdragon.)

One of the things I love about these cookies is that they’re vegan. Was this important to you when you started or just came about as part of the recipe you used?

I think vegans are hungry.  No, I wasn’t intended to make them vegan. I started with a sandy sable cookie. I didn’t like the texture so I changed it to a soft cookie. Then I said it has no eggs, maybe I could take the butter out. So I experimented with different oils. For these I ended up with coconut oil.

What ingredients do you use? I assume you’re not going to Lunardi’s and buying King Arthur Flour from there.

I shop everywhere. I get a lot of things from Whole Foods. If you buy a case of something there, you get 10% discount. I shop at Cash and Carry. I order online.

How did you pick where to sell?

I read about BF in the paper years ago as a high-quality local cafe. I stopped by the Roaster, near my house. I made a note to myself to go by every week with a sample…then I forgot. I made some candy and took it by, and they were ready tobuy. Now I’ve gotten calls from some local places, like a cafe in San Jose and some shops in SF, like Park & Pond — they only sell local vendors within 100 miles. There’s a new candy store in Bernal Heights — Rock Candy Snack Shop.

How do you find out about things like shelf life?

I test it all myself. Put it in a bag, mark it, put it on a shelf…I put things in the freezer to see what happens. We’re always finding things in the freezer.

I also try something of every batch of products I make, just to make sure I didn’t substitute salt for sugar.

Do you do all of your baking and experimenting in the test kitchen?

I still bake at home. I experiment and my family gets to eat the experiments. I also volunteer at Martha’s Kitchen. There are lots of volunteers there Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and they’re often my guinea pigs.

Is there any chance I could get the recipe for your chocolate sea salt cookies?

No.

Arrietty is 14 and about to go on her first “borrowing”: accompanying her father as they go spelunking through the house they live under “borrowing” items such as sugar and tissue. Arrietty and her parents are Borrowers, who are little tiny people who live right underneath the noses of “beans” — the humans who live in the world above.

Shawn is a sickly teenaged human boy who needs to rest up before his big heart operation, and he comes to stay in the house Arietty and her family live under — and the second he arrives he notices tiny Arietty. And the cardinal rule of the Borrowers, of course is “Don’t get noticed.”

The Secret World of Arrietty comes from Studio Ghibli, which has produced Totoro (still the best…in fact, I could go watch this right now), Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo… The movie was written and produced by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (as I said to Darin, I knew it couldn’t be Miyazaki directing, because the story was too focused and coherent), and it’s really quite good: there’s a lot of tension about what’s going to happen, and there are a lot of very exciting scenes. Trust me, knowing there could be giant rats around any corner waiting to pounce: very, very exciting. The movie’s gorgeous in the typical Ghibli style.

Both kids said they enjoyed it, and Darin and I were both entertained. It was Arrietty or The Lorax and we were both deeply thrilled when the kids chose Arrietty.

Edited to add: Mike in the comments points out that the movie is based on the Borrowers book series by Mary Norton.

We watched the pilot of Awake last night. (Free download on iTunes!) I follow a number of TV critics on Twitter and all of them have been waxing rhapsodic about this show, so I definitely had to check it out.

Having watched it, I know why they really like it. And unless something changes drastically in the next episode — not even the next couple of episodes, but the next episode; welcome to the reality of TV these days — I can also tell you why it’s doomed.

Awake is the story of Michael Britten, a homicide detective who was in a car accident with his wife and son. Since the accident, his life has split: he spends one day in a world where his wife lived and his son died; then he goes to sleep at night and wakes up in a world where his son lived and his wife died. You can tell which world he’s in because everything is either tinted very slightly green or very slightly red. There’s no mention of what happens if he takes a nap.

That, right there, is why this show is doomed.

While watching the show Darin said, “I got it. It’s Life On Mars meets Traffic. And the main character’s the one who actually died, right?”

I said, “That’s the most popular theory.” I’m not ruining anything for you there; if you look at Alan Sepinwall’s blog or Ken Tucker’s blog, everyone’s guessing that Michael Britten is the one who died in the car crash. It’s kind of like the trailer for The Sixth Sense: the kid says “I see dead people” as he’s staring at Bruce Willis.

“I hope they’ve come up with something better than that then,” Darin said.

The viewing audience has seen more hours of narrative storytelling than were available in the entire history of the world up until a few decades ago. If you present the audience with a puzzle, they’re going to try to figure it out, and they’ve had lots of practice. If you make the solution an easy and obvious puzzle, they’re going to say, “Seriously, that’s all it is?” Because one viewer might be stupid, but collectively they’re pretty damn smart.

So, at the very least, you have to give them a fun ride until you get to the conclusion.

The two most obvious shows to compare this to are Life On Mars and Lost. Both of which dealt with fairly heavy issues (c’mon, a plane crash! these people’s lives were complete messes! how were they gonna survive!) — as I joked when I watched it a number of years ago, Life On Mars really did have the most feel-good ending ever! — and they had puzzling situations that may or may not have resolved to viewers’s satisfaction.

But. But.

Both of them also had a sense of humor.

Which Awake sure as hell did not during the pilot. Oh my God, it was so somber and dreary. Everything was so serious. It was like an entire symphony played in a minor scale. Newsflash: Nobody wants to tune into a show that’s a damn downer in every way every week.

I kept thinking about the scene in Lost where things go terribly wrong with the dynamite, and it’s both shocking and sad, because a character we liked got killed. Later, when Hurley says, “You’ve got some Arzt on you,” it’s both tragic and hilarious. We’re not happy the guy is dead, for crying out loud, but that line was funny.

A guy sitting in not one but two therapists’ offices (newsflash: therapy sessions are a lot less interesting than writers want everyone to believe) being somber and upset about the fact that he’s either a)living in two universes or b)deeply schizoid without acknowledging the humor of the situation is just a turn-off. There’s got to be something else on TV to watch, and what do you know: the entire oeuvre of drama ever is available to us now.

The pilot does give us one intriguing question — both therapists mention something about the accident that Britten knows wholeheartedly is false. So that makes the ride a little more fun. Depending on how we get through the rest of the TV we’ve got stored up, we might watch the second episode.

But if it doesn’t give us some emotional tone other than “Wow, complete bummer” and it doesn’t deal with (and dismiss) the idea that maybe the solution is simply that Michael’s dead (because your audience is smart, dammit), I’m not coming back.