Michael Mechanic

Senior Editor

Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. Father of two mostly charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps (okay, not the father), he lives in Oakland, California, where he raises four chickens, plays his guitar, and is lately attempting to teach himself fiddle and mandolin.

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Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. He set out to be a scientist, and as an undergrad spent a year in an organic chemistry lab at UC Berkeley trying to synthesize natural poisons found in the skin of certain tropical frogs. He later earned a masters degree in cellular and developmental biology, and another in journalism. In 2009, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for public service, as one of five writers in MoJo's "Torture Hits Home" package. The father of two usually charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps, Michael lives in Oakland, California, where, after years of classical piano and raucous punk-rock drumming (and putting out more than a dozen CDs on his former DIY label, Bad Monkey Records), he has retired to old-time and traditional American music, blues-guitar fingerpicking, and lately, teaching himself to play fiddle and mandolin. His family's chickens are named Lucia, Podge, Cat, and Weed-Whacker. The goldfish have no names, because the family plans to eat them someday.

Blocking the Violence Virus

Author Alex Kotlowitz and Hoop Dreams director Steve James on their documentary, The Interrupters.

—By Michael Mechanic

| July/August 2011 Issue

What if inner-city violence spread like a disease—literally? Could you then tackle outbreaks of violence the way an epidemiologist might—by intervening at the point of transmission? In their new film, The Interrupters—which hit theaters in July (and airs on Frontline on Feb. 14)—Hoop Dreams director Steve James and author Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) take us to the streets of Chicago, where an upstart organization called CeaseFire is testing that very strategy. Their intense and inspiring verité-style doc follows Cobe, Eddie, and Ameena—former badass felons turned professional "violence interrupters." Their job is to break the cycle of retaliation by putting themselves in the middle of high-octane street feuds and convincing, say, a young gangbanger not to come back on the guy who shot his homie. As the filmmakers prepared for their big rollout, we got on the phone to talk about the roots of violence, ruffling a gang leader's feathers, and how their subjects killed at Sundance.

Mother Jones: Alex, you first wrote about CeaseFire in 2008 for the New York Times Magazine. What attracted you to this story?

Alex Kotlowitz: Steve and I have had to deal with the violence on a very personal level. Of the kids that I met working on There Are No Children Here—one has since been killed, another four are serving time for murder, and two of the individuals in Hoop Dreams have since been murdered. It's been somewhat perplexing. Other things change, but the one constant is the violence, and I've just been paralyzed by it. What really intrigued me about what CeaseFire was doing was that it offered a different way to think about it: the idea that violence mimics the transmission of infectious disease. And what particularly excited me was it took the morality out of the equation. It wasn't a question of good and bad people; it was really about behavior. And then I met the interrupters, and you spend time with any of those men and women and you come away in awe. From the get go, they inspired me and incredibly intrigued me.

[Read the full article]

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Film Review: "The Elephant in the Living Room"

—By Michael Mechanic

| Mon Jun. 20, 2011 5:51 PM PDT

The Elephant in the Living Room

NIGHTFLY ENTERTAINMENT

95 minutes

Don't be misled: The only animals you'll see in a living room in this doc are a cougar and a Burmese python. (The runaway—slitheraway?— Gabon viper is nabbed in a garage.) Director Michael Webber's fast-moving, bittersweet film reveals a world of dangerous and entirely unregulated pets (lions, tigers, bears) raised behind closed doors. Much of the action takes place in suburban Ohio, a state that rivals parts of Florida for nuisance alligators. Hidden cameras rolling, we attend a reptile show where dads cart off snakes that could devour their offspring. But the real drama lies in the interplay between a passionate cop who moonlights as an exotic-animal rescuer and a sympathetic sadsack who can't bear to part with his full-grown African lions. The cat owner's tear-jerking travails drive home the filmmaker's point better than any finger-wagging activist ever could.

The 10 Craziest Job Perks

With bennies like these, why would any worker want to, you know, go home?

—By Michael Mechanic

| Fri Jun. 17, 2011 11:57 AM PDT

Searching for Food
Around campus, they call it the "Google 15." That's how many pounds newbies allegedly put on from all those free chef-prepared meals, drinks, and snacks. In 2008, one blogger whipped out a napkin and estimated that Google spent some $72 million a year on worker grub. And if Larry's minions should get a bad oyster, no biggie—they can simply book a free appointment with one of the Googleplex physicians.

How Much is that Doggie in the Windows?
Microsoft's West Campus has its own mall, with stores, banking, 14 restaurants, a pub, and a soccer field. "The Commons has a lot of features to help people get things done," a company real-estate manager told the Seattle Times, "whether that's banking or eating or shopping or taking care of their cellphone connectivity, getting exercise, connecting with people socially—without having to get off campus."

Location-Based Loyalty
Powerset, a startup Microsoft purchased in 2008 for $100 million-plus, tried paying employees extra to live within a mile of work, and got "way more value each month than the $1,500 per person we paid," raves founder Steve Newcomb in a widely read blog post entitled "Cult Creation." People worked longer hours "because they knew they could always just run home."

[Read the full article]

Sondre Lerche: An Auditory Antidote

—By Michael Mechanic

| Mon Jun. 6, 2011 3:30 AM PDT

Sondre Lerche
Self-titled
Mona

God knows there are too many damned singer-songwriters about. Or, rather, too many who try to make a go of it beyond the open-mic circuit. So whenever someone truly outstanding comes along, it's like, Thank You! As it happens, two singer-songwriters very much worth your while are releasing new albums tomorrow.

Exhibit A is the new self-titled CD by Sondre Lerche, a Norwegian-born Brooklynite with an impressive vocal range, whose earnest, intelligent lyrics and mellifluous voice feel like an antidote to our jaded and skeptical culture.

This young gent has been putting out music for some time. This is his sixth album to date, and he features prominently on the soundtrack for the 2007 Steve Carell film, Dan in Real Life. He's performed on Letterman (see below). He collaborates with members of Animal Collective and Spoon, and the likes of Regina Spektor (who collaborates with a wide variety of people, but still).

Lerche has a keen melodic sense and is careful to avoid clichés—or perhaps he just does it without thinking. Classically trained and schooled in Bossa Nova (among other things) he varies his rhythyms and instrumentation (guitar, strings, piano, percussion, vocal choruses) between songs and within, always keeping things interesting. His sound, alternately upbeat and brooding on this album, is nonetheless suffused with his happy-go-lucky Beatles-y vibe, and psychedelic hints of, say, a band like Sunny Day Real Estate.

The new songs are, as we say in Oakland, hella catchy—like "Private Caller," whose opening evokes early REM, and the uber-poppy "Go Right Ahead." Other standouts include "Domino" and "Living Dangerously." But there are numerous others. This is an album I will listen to over and over.

I'll leave you now with this 2007 clip of Lerche playing the Letterman show. Don't forget to check out Exhibit B: England Keep My Bones, by the talented young Brit, Frank Turner.

Click here for more music features from Mother Jones.

Intriguing Subject: Frank Turner

—By Michael Mechanic

| Mon Jun. 6, 2011 3:30 AM PDT

Frank Turner
England Keep My Bones
Epitaph

England Keep My Bones is Frank Turner's fourth album, and I'm surprised he's escaped my attention this long. Then again, it can take some time—even for a talented, fast-rising European artist—to catch on in the States. Turner, like the British rock icon PJ Harvey (Let England Shake), has recently turned his thoughts to his homeland. The result is an introspective-yet-accessible body of work obsessed with the country's landscape, history, and meaning as a backdrop for modern life.

Call him the love child of Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, and the hard-rocker of your choosing: Turner has been kicking ass across the pond, recently vying for a "best solo artist" NME award. But who cares about all that stuff, when what you really want to know is whether his album rocks. Yes, it does. Unequivocally.

In "One Foot Before the Other," which showcases Turner's punk-rock past as front man for early-aughts hardcore band Million Dead, he fantasizes that his ashes get poured into the water supply and enter the bodies of seven million Londoners. "Rivers" is an ode to the country's waterways and their connectedness with the people. In "I Am Disappeared" (parts of which strongly reminded me of Harvey's latest) Turner sings "We are blood cells alive in the beating heart of the country." Then there's "England's Curse," his a cappella recounting of King William's dark deeds.

The Billy Bragg comparison is apt so far as it goes, particularly in folk-laden numbers like "If I Ever Stray," "Wessex Boy," and the hopeful "I Still Believe," but Turner pushes the envelope rather harder on the rock-and-roll front. He had me hooked from the very first track, "Eulogy," a short, simple, heartfelt anthem that, beyond hinting at the populist vibe and dynamic range of what's to come, made me thirsty for a pint. In short, this is music you want to share with old friends—music to drink to, think to, and feel to.

I'll leave you with the video for "I Still Believe."