The Economy, and How to Laugh at It

Roommate, friend, and hot shot movie extra Oscar and I got into a lively discussion a couple days ago about the world and our role in it. Our discussion mainly consisted of me posing hypothetical acting roles for organizations that Oscar may not like, and seeing if he would accept them (e.g. “would you appear in a Blockbuster commercial?” “Would you take a part in a McCain Campaign ad?” and so forth). His answers, as I’m sure he well knows, frustrated me by their neutrality towards all moral compass. He’d either take the gig or take the gig “as a joke.” My pleas of “Wouldn’t you be helping the enemy here?!” were met with “Wouldn’t it be hysterical?” There was no making a stand or sticking to your personal guns in light of monetary gain.

This speaks to how he and I view the world quite differently. At heart, I always feel like a feisty little world-changer, and I consider my actions important signals of my feelings. I’ll pay a little extra to buy something at a local store instead of going to Wal*Mart, as if my dollar is going to make the Walton family turn their heads. I boycott. I protest. I write letters. I get a little outspoken at times. I try to lead to the world as an example, knowing that if everyone did the same we’d be in a much better place. I know full well the world isn’t watching me, but I don’t care. Oscar, on the other hand, laughs at the world as it goes by. He takes the discount where he can get it, jokes and ridicules political absurdity rather than getting up-in-arms about it, and lives mainly for his own gain. I wouldn’t ever say he is any less of a world participant than I, or he is “wrong” while I am “right.” He’s a brilliant man and a wonderful influence on me and the world around him. At heart, he and I just play a different game. He threw a Horace Walpole line at me in our debate that’s been sticking with me since: “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

I think Oscar could learn a lot from me, but I probably could learn even more from him. I’ve been snarking more at the world recently, though I still try and stay the feisty advocate. It’s been a complicated balance, but I think it is working. This morning I found a piece on Crooks and Liars that the advocate in me would be all upset about, but I’m beginning to appreciate as an observer. The Washington Post ran this piece by Dana Milbank, which is pretty good as a read, but really captures its alma as a video. Enjoy.

(Edit: For some reason the player is being a little finicky. See the original post here.)

Now, from an economic standpoint, we’re hurting. This has been a terrible year for many of us, in our industry and in our lives. There’s an active role we can take in considering the economics of the candidates and lobbying for better care taken in the assessment and treatment of our economy.

But it does feel kinda good to laugh about the situation, doesn’t it?

I’m beginning to think so.

First Four Words

As I mentioned last week, along with Public Knowledge, Digital Media Insider, and BoingBoing, the Associated Press created incredibly strange, highly unwanted, and potentially superseded by law “quotation licenses” for their content, as a way to make money off of what should simply be a case of fair use. Worse than that, they reserve the right to revoke the licenses if they don’t approve of the use, creating a horrible chilling effect on the free press that Nielsen Hayden illustrates quite well. This week we’ve also seen it come out that the group the AP claimed (and New York Times repeated) to have been negotiating with on behalf of the blogosphere, the Media Bloggers Association, has not met with the AP, nor do they claim to represent the entire blogging world.

My supreme disappointment with an organization I used to hold fairly dear has already manifested itself in a couple rants here. Last night I decided to do something a little more snarky about it:

Announcing The First Four Words, a website which will give you the first four words off of the top AP story once or twice a day. I would give you the full headline, naturally, but that would cost me $12.50, and I’d rather spend that money on some used records and a slice of pizza.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Snark

As a followup to what I wrote about the The War of the Fist Bump over the weekend, E.D. Hill has issued the following meek apology:

Oh, and also: her show got canceled.

(thanks to Talking Points Memo)

The War of the Fist Bump

Here’s a strange one from Media Matters, via Crooks and Liars:

“What it really says?” It says a lot, but not about the interaction between Barack and Michelle. It says a lot about how Fox does business. Here are my lingering questions:

• There are body language experts?
• You’re being serious?
• Who calls it a “fist bump”?
• Is there really this little going on in the world, E.D.?
• Do we really need to trouble a distinguished Senator or the President of the United States (dubious a commander as he is) to ask them why they chest pounded or gave a wife the respect knuckles?
• Who in the effing world calls that a “terrorist fist jab”? If you’re going to use a news organization for vile and revolting political maneuvers, you can’t even mask it a little? A little? An effing ounce?

Ignoring the ludicrous, offensive, blatantly political, possibly racist, and flat out useless nature of this discussion, let’s talk about information relevance. My dear friend (and recently married man) Webster and I were having a great discussion two nights ago about the Internet, TV and radio, and the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast. For those unfamiliar with Orson Welles’ amazing broadcast and the subsequent hysteria, take the time to read up or listen away.

We talked about how this world would probably not see an event like this again, partly due to the variety of information sources available to cross-check. He mentioned, and I agreed, that often Wikipedia is the best source of information during a major news event, simply because all of the article and related discussion is presented for you to explore any way you like. Rather than being fed information in one stream through a TV station, the information surrounds you, which beats being delivered information in both quantity and quality.

I suppose my major question for E.D. Hill and Fox would be: If you only have one stream, one shot at delivering information and making it relevant, why on earth would you spend valuable time and resources to deliver utter bilge that means nothing? It’s little wonder ratings are slipping.

The R. Kelly Slate-talk Express

Working as an entertainment industry person has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, I do get to meet a lot of amazing people, some of whom I have known and respected since I developed a taste for music. Through my adventures I’ve been to almost all of the lower 48 states and several countries. I’ve been wined and dined in New York, San Francisco, and on the Vineyard, and had the chance to touch Pete Townshend’s guitar, the artist walkway at Red Rocks, the hole Sid Vicious punched in at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, and wrangle Phish’s vacuum cleaner. I’ve worked with some of the most influential and outstanding artists of the past 60 years, and the crews who make putting on 200 shows a year look like child’s play. In my own small way, I’ve contributed to their successes. All in all, I’ve been pretty lucky.

The downside of all of this, of course, is that I must forever be vigilant in keeping up with relevant industry news. This may not seem so bad in most cases, as I don’t mind hearing about mergers and acquisitions and sales figures and new online strategies. But then you have your Ashlee Simpsons fiascos, your Janet Jackson Wardrobegates, and the new scandal du jour:

The R. Kelly Trial.

Somehow these keep coming up in conversations, and to not know is to look ignorant, which is to look weak, which is bad for business in a field that operates like a little tank of piranhas.

Luckily, I have a defense, and it’s doing much better than the one R.’s got. Slate magazine’s Josh Levin.

Levin manages to take a facts-driven delivery on the trial and add the level of snark only fitting this bizarre circumstance. While many sites can flame away for hours on R. Kelly, his urination habits, and his (to put it crassly) underdeveloped taste in dating, Levin seems to also get that these are serious crimes, and warrant a degree of factual presentation. The mixture gives you something that tastes like this:

Levin:

Grant Fredericks, the prosecution’s forensic video analyst, testified last Thursday that to do a convincing job of morphing a 27-minute, 100,000-frame video—tweaking the shadows, matching the eye blinks—would take 44 years of steady work. Since Kelly is 41 years old, the architects of such a cut-and-paste job would have needed incredible foresight, or access to a flux capacitor. Fredericks also matched knots in the wood of Kelly’s log cabin to those seen in the sex tape’s log cabin. And despite the defense’s contention that Kelly’s distinctive mole could not be seen on the tape, the video analyst pointed out a quite comparable dark spot on Sex Tape Man’s back. Unless Kelly’s attorneys can conjure a forensic dermatologist, a forensic lumberjack, and a forensic Wayans brother, I’d say the tape is looking pretty unassailable.

His coverage from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Day 5 can all be found in those links. If you don’t need to keep abreast of the developments in the trial – bless your heart. Go watch a movie. Read a book. Play some video games. Go write something. If you do need to keep informed, it might be time to bookmark Slate.

A Study in Nu-Metal

Premise: nu metal was a bad time in America’s music history.

Hypothesis: original, quality hip-hop songs remixed with nu-metal sounding background underneath do a better job at nu metal than all nu metal, substandard a title as that may be.

Evidence: Care of So Much Silence, DJ Z-Trip’s heavy-handed remix of LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out“

Thank you, and enjoy the holiday. I’m off to play some wiffleball.

(side note – did you know that “Wiffle Ball” is a registered trademark? Talk about a dilution case. I’m putting that up there with Kleenex, Xerox, and Band-Aid as brands that will probably be gone in my lifetime)

Small Piece of Journalistic Commentary

In a tale that could only be thought up in some form of twisted fan fiction, four blogging heavyweights met for lunch today: Ryan of OhRyanKelley, Taylor from Know Better, EvRock from Let’s Get Tight, and yours truly. We discussed the finer points of Mr. Show episodes and other merry diversions over sandwiches and soups at the local Panera. On the way out, though, I saw this headline in today’s USA Today:

Now, this may very incredibly naïve of me, but if I were reporting on a poll, I would put the majority response in the large typeface and then have the “few say otherwise” line follow. To have the “FEW SAY OUTRAGEOUS THING (but majority say the thing that makes total sense)” headline is misleading to an almost insulting degree. But then again, I’m not trying to sell papers.

The Brookline Stairway Liberation Front

(edit: Hey, thanks Universal Hub! Welcome, all you new readers.)

“Remember, Remember, the 26th of April.” Or something.

Tuesday is Close! Hang in there, guys!

Ryan just showed me how to massage the pictures off of my horribly locked phone. So I can finally start posting some snark with a side of photo. To start with, here is a picture of a sign that hung from Coolidge Corner’s dearly departed Taqueria Mexico. I wonder if anyone ever told them about their slight spelling mishap. I know I never would.

Men don’t write subjects

(this post is in response to today’s challenge in the blogagauntlet)

Men keep it short.