R ex S orgatz

He was impervious to my flirtations until I grabbed his crotch and showed him my tramp stamp.

-- The Fucking Word of the Day, your new favorite site for the next five minutes.

sex

Your new favorite Wikipedia entry for the next five minutes: Catullus 16. It's a 1st century BC poem, the first line of which is translated, "I'm gonna fuck you guys up the ass and shove my cock down your throats." [via]

videos

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck, "Heaven Can Wait." (The comments on Antville are getting better. I like: "This video looks too random, like the director spent too much time looking through his FFFFOUND folder.")

tshirts

Your favorite new t-shirts for the next five minutes: Novel-T. I like Prynne and Poe.

Your favorite new hippie band for the next five minutes: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, on Letterman.

tshirts

Your favorite tshirt for the next five minutes: Oxygen 65%, Carbon 18%, Hydrogen 10%, Nitrogen 3%, Calcium 1.5%, Phosphorus 1%, Potassium .25%, Sulfur .25%, Sodium .15%, Chlorine .15%, Magnesium .05%, Iron .006%, Flourine .0037%, Silicon .002%, Rubidium .00046%, etc. Guess who?

design

Your favorite Tumblr for the next five minutes: The Impossible Cool.

Even if there are no more albums, your favorite new Radiohead song for the next five minutes: "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)"

Your favorite Katy Perry cover for the next five minutes: "Hot and Cold."

Your favorite new Bat For Lashes video for the next five minutes: "Sleep Alone."

Your favorite new video for the next five minutes: N.A.S.A.'s Whachadoin?", which features every hipster on the block: M.I.A., Spank Rock, Santogold, Nick Zinner....

comedy

Your favorite blog for the next five minutes: Vintage Stand-Up Comedy. "Out of print, spoken word stand-up comedy from the 1930s through the 1990s."

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Treat Me Like Your Mother," the Dead Weather. (With musical references to Budgie, Mountain, Rage, and Jon Spencer!)

5 comments

Your least favorite video for the next five minutes: "Alcohol," Millionaires. "Every time I'm at the bar / You wanna pay / Go ahead and buy me a drink / You won't get laid." Oh, you kids.

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "No One Sleeps When I'm Awake," The Sounds. [via]

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Heavy Cross," The Gossip. The video uses Kenneth Anger images and the song is produced by Rick Rubin.

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Be By Myself," Asher Roth. Cee-Lo is pretty great in this.

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: Passion Pit, "The Reeling". And another contender for song of the summer.

film

Your favorite Sasha Grey link on this site for the next five minutes: The Girlfriend Experience trailer. If this movie isn't good, I will go on a murderous rampage against high-end hookers.

Definitely not your favorite Britney cover for the next five minutes: "Womanizer," Franz Ferdinand.

Your favorite Robert Longo-inspired video for the next five minutes: "Dancers," Circlesquare. My pal Colin turned me onto Circlesquare just as I was writing my top albums of '08 post, which they should have made. He recently interviewed them in Prefix.

Your favorite brat pack mashup for the next five minutes: "Lisztomania," Phoenix. [via]

Your favorite media-saturated fashion-damaged song for the next five minutes: The Nylon Anthem. It's actual letters from Nylon magazine.

Your favorite band for the next five minutes: School of Seven Bells. No really, watch the My Bloody Valentine-ish video for "Half Asleep" and then watch this interview with the twins and then say "dream pop" three times while clicking your ruby converse. Then go do a Google Image Search for "Deheza sisters" on your own. Just remember me when this replaces your sicko Taylor Swift / Miley Cyrus fantasy left over from the Grammys.

Your favorite Timberlake cameo for the next five minutes: "Love Sex Magic," Ciara.

food

Your favorite Tumblr for the next five minutes: Scanwiches. More yummy details at Gizmodo. [via]

Your favorite music video for the next five minutes: "I'm Not Alone", Calvin Harris. (What shall we call this? How about emo disco?)

Your favorite Yeah Yeah Yeahs video for the next five minutes: "Zero."

Your favorite upcoming youtube star doing girl-on-hipster hate for the next five minutes: Hipster Bitch.

Your favorite new Lil Wayne video for the next five minutes: "Prom Queen." In other news, Charlie Gibson and Lil Wayne playing Scrabble.

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: Royksopp's "Happy Up Here."

videos

Your favorite new Kanye video for the next five minutes: "Welcome To Heartbreak". Interesting use of compression artifacts as the visual. Update: Hipster Runoff's take. Update update: Oh, I guess Kottke got to it too. I'm behind this week.

Your favorite supergroup for the next five minutes: former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, middle Hanson bro Taylor Hanson, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos, and Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger. Tinted Windows.

food

Your favorite new Tumblr for the next five minutes: This Is Why You Are Fat.

Your favorite mashup for the next five minutes: "Paperback HeYa". (Eclectic Method is playing the NYC Twestival next week.)

Your favorite new Lykke Li video for the next five minutes: "Tonight."

Your favorite new video for the next five minutes: Ting Tings, "That's Not My Name."

Your favorite nine-girl Korean pop group for the next five minutes: Girls' Generation's "Gee." UPDATE: From the comments, something even more inexplicably wonderful.

Your favorite blog for the next five minutes: Cute Things Falling Asleep.

sex

Your favorite Tumblr for the next five minutes: Disgusting People I Have Made Out With.

film

Your favorite random video clip for the next five minutes: Andy Warhol interviews a stoned Steven Spielberg. And Bianca Jagger is there too. Wild.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," remixed by Flying Lotus.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: "Beggin'", Frankie Valli /The Four Seasons (Pilooski re-edit) (or the original). [via]

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: b4-4's "Get Down". [via]

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: MIA & Blaqstarr cover Tom Waits' "Way Down In The Hole." Love.

videos

Your favorite new Christina Aguilera video for the next five minutes: "Keeps Gettin' Better."

5 comments

Your favorite remix for the next five minutes: Kanye West vs. Radiohead - Reckoner Lockdown. Update from the comments: there's a video too.

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Rich Girls," The Virgins.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: "10 Things Not To Say To A DJ," Andre Harris. (Actually, you will like this one for a whole day!)

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Breaking It Up," Lykke Li. [via]

Your favorite video featuring Kanye West for the next five minutes: "Put On," Young Jeezy. [via]

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "I Kissed A Girl," Katy Perry.

Your favorite video that aspires to be raunchier than American Apparel b-roll for the next five minutes: "Stalker," Louis XIV.

online

You favorite Tumblr for the next five minutes: One Person Trend Stories. (It's media criticism, fiction, humor, and decent writing, all wrapped in one.)

You favorite live performance for the next five minutes: "Honey," Erykah Badu. [via]

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Creator," Santogold.

7 comments

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Oh My God," Ida Maria. [via]

Your favorite music vid for the next five minutes: "Jerk It," Thunderheist. [via]

Your favorite music vid for the next five minutes: "Blind," Hercules & Love Affair.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: "Little Bit," Lykke Li. [via]

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: "Just Dance," Lady GaGa. [via]

Not your favorite song for the next five minutes: Soulja Boy's new single, "iDance," sounds like a botched clone job of "Crank That." Superman dat horror.

msp

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Santogold's "Your Voice", a reggae-tinged (as if punk, electro, hip-hop, and dancehall weren't enough) extra track not found on the album. (Psst, watch RCRD LBL for more upcoming Santogold tracks.)

24 comments

Fuck it, it's Friday... your favorite early-80s synth pop remembrance for the next five minutes: "Don't You Want Me," Human League. (This song was playing during my last hair cut. I couldn't stop moving in the chair. I completely forgot the awesomeness of the class battle in the opening verse. And then that second verse!)

All you music bloggers should just hand over the keys, cuz Kanye is crushing you. May Day, May Day, he just dropped an exclusive... your favorite video for the next five minutes: Justice's "Stress".

sex

Your new favorite hookup site for the next five minutes: Divorce360.com (beta). Tagline: "If it's over, what's next?"

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Smell Yo Dick," Riskay. Update: You know what? I'm upgrading this to "your favorite video for the next week" status. See also: Isley Brothers' "Busted," featuring R. Kelly.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Weezer's "Pork and Beans." [via]

Your favorite video for the next five minutes: "Haterz Everywhere".

Your favorite '80s throwback synth pop manifesto for the next five minutes: M83's "Graveyard Girlfriend." Their new album, Saturdays=Youth, which Onion A/V gave an A and Pitchfork gave an 8.5, drops today.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: The Carps' "Veronica Belmont." Whoa, wha? V. explains. (Update: RCRD LBL has it available for download.)

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Yelle's "Je Veux Te Voir". [via]

7 comments

Your favorite late-night talk show musical appearance for the next five minutes: Liam Finn on Letterman. It starts out hm'kay, and then about two-thirds of the way through it EXPLODES. [via]

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Annie's "Girlfriend."

Your favorite remix for the next five minutes: XXXChange's remix of Santogold's "L.E.S. Artistes". Update: looks like Santogold's much-anticipated debut album has a release date of April 22.

Your favorite cheesy dance song for the next five minutes: Little Boots' "Stuck on Repeat."

Your favorite band for the next five minutes: Tokio Hotel.

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Teyana Taylor's "Google Me."

Your favorite song for the next five minutes: Tinie Tempah's "Hood Economics." See also: "Wifey" and "Perfect Girl." Is grime back?

Your favorite band for the next five minutes: The Teenagers, "Homecoming".

I stumbled across this video on MTV (I KNOW, RIGHT?) last night: Yacht's "Women of the World." It is my new favorite thing for the next five minutes.

New favorite song for the next five minutes: Katy Perry's "Ur So Gay." Update: Buzzfeed picks it up too.

Favorite new band for the next five minutes: Kid Sister. (With Kanye cameo!)

Favorite new band for the next five minutes: Foals.

My favorite band for the next five minutes: Electrovamp.

Favorite new musician for the next five minutes: Riskay. I nominate "Smell Yo Dick" for single of the year.

And now we return to the series "favorite musician for the next five minutes": Santogold. [via, thnx Nav]

Remember that "favorite new band for the next five minutes" feature that I promised? Here it is: Plasticines.

I'm starting a new feature here called "My Favorite New Band for the Next Five Minutes." Today we have Hearts of Palm UK, which I would call lofi-electro-club-folk if I didn't feel silly saying that.

Ok, it's Friday, and I'm off to a party at Newsvine HQ (aka MSNBC West). I leave you with my new favorite group for the next five minutes: The Real Heat. London club girls should rule the world. [via]

FILM

New Line Cinema picked up Klosterman's new book (not out until July) for a potential film. I'm a "character" in the book again, and am demanding to be played by someone no less handsome than Giovanni Ribisi (which I'm sure means Steve Buscemi will be Rex Sorgatz). I'll do some kind of review of the book here in a couple months, but if you're curious, it's Chuck's modern-relationship-cum-dead-rock-star opus. (Previously: Rex Rock City.)

Pedro's house in Napoleon Dynamite is up for sale.

Everyone's talking about Old Boy (trailer), which won Cannes this year.

War of the Worlds trailer. Starring Tom Cruise; directed by Steven Speilberg.

Finally a Joss Whedon comeback? He will direct the next Wonder Woman movie. Radosh predicts the lead.

Woody Allen interviewed in... SuicideGirls.com? Huh.

ONLINE/TECH

Yahoo bought Flickr. A great move for Yahoo, which is kicking Google's ass in the user-generated content arena.

And Ask Jeeves is being bought by Barry Diller.... for $1.9 billion. Jeesh, Jeeves.

Somebody please stop Christine Rosen from publishing this story again. First in The New Atlantis, she wrote about how cell phones and TiVos are ruining our lives. Now she's done it again in a NYT Mag essay.

Agence France Presse is suing Google News. Although I'm sure this will quickly get settled out of court, this raises an interesting spectre around Google News, which makes no money because there are no ads -- and this almost gaurantees it never will.

The upcoming Microsoft typefaces for the next version of Windows.

SHOES

Pimp my shoe! NYT Mag story on shoe customizers who will turn a pair of Nikes into $500 collector's items.

Adidas' computerized sneaker.

Converse's "Spin The Bottle" commercial.

Reebok's controversial 50 Cent spot.

Someone is aggregating all the Daily Show video links on one page. Sweet.

The video of the Lessig on West Wing episode.

Firefox advert or Franz Ferdinand video? You decide.

Everyone who wasn't talking about Flickr/Yahoo rumors at SXSW Interactive last week was talking about the Tivo/Comcast deal. Here's a good follow-up interview with the CEO of Comcast, which clears up some of the questions. [Via LostRemote.]

GAMES

For those who don't think Vice City is gritty enough, here's a preview to the new 50 Cent game, Bulletproof.

MUSIC

Tom Waits lists his top 20 albums.

Pitchfork gives the new Moby album a 2.4.

SXSW

Why can't it be SXSW every day? Here's a small selection of people that I had the great pleasure of speaking with for somewhere between 5 minutes and 8 hours in Austin last week: Malcolm Gladwell (author: Blink, Tipping Point), Chuck Olsen (blogger & filmmaker: Blogumentary), Rex Hammock (blogger: Rex Blog), Rob Davis (marketing maverick: Mozilla Foundation), Tara Hacker (blogger: HumminaHummina.com), John Vars and Ted Rheingold (web guys: Dogster), David Hudson (blogger: Green Cine Daily), Andrew Krukoff (blogger: Krucoff.com), Amanda Congdon & Andrew Barron (videobloggers: Rocketboom), Michaelangelo Matos (writer: The Seattle Weekly), Molly Steenson (blogger: Girl Wonder), Chuck Klosterman (author: lots of stuff), Lockhart Steele (editor: Gawker Media), Jason Kottke (blogger: Kottke.org), Jake Dobkin (publisher: Gothamist), Jason Calacanis (founder: Weblogs Inc.), Ricky Engelberg (digital guy: Nike), Ross Raihala (writer: Pioneer Press), Melissa Maerz (editor: Spin), Jennifer Maerz (editor: The Stranger), Matthew Haughey (web community guru: Metafilter & PVR Blog), Lindsey Thomas (editor: City Pages), Craig Finn (rocker: The Hold Steady), Bridgette Reinsmoen (editor: City Pages), Dave Campbell (publicist: 2024 Records), Alex Pappademas (editor: Spin), Anna Lee (fashionista: Voltage), Keith Harris (writer: freelance writer), and that one coke dealer. And how come no one told me Tony Pierce was in the house? Here are a few pics.

LOCAL

They love us! Both Newsweek and the Sunday New York Times wrote about our new museum expansion this week. In Newsweek, The Walker is called "probably the leading American venue for cutting-edge artists (both visual and performing)." Description: "The tour de force of their building is the silvery five-story cube, with its daredevil cantilevered corner hovering over the entrance -- anchored by hidden tons of steel and concrete -- and the whole shebang wrapped in shimmering aluminum-mesh panels that look as light and luscious as crumpled silk." In NYT, The Walker is dubbed "a place that prefers artful provocation to blockbuster entertainment, privileges the obscure and experimental over the tried-and-true, and cultivates a willful insouciance about the forces that govern most big museum establishment." And many arty lavishes are dished on our fair city.

It's sad that the problems that The Varsity Theater is having sound like something out of Kafka. The only good (if selfish) news is that the TC ElectroPunk Show might be rescheduled to a date that I'm in town.

Nietzsche Will To Power bar.

Quote of the year: "I hear rumors on the Internets..." -G.W.B. C'mon now, 48% of you want this guy to be president again?

WORDS

He changed it all. Jacques Derrida (Wikipedia) died Friday. The obit that landed on the front page of the Times this morning is good at describing the cultural shift that Derrida created (or documented), but it obsesses on defining deconstruction. Google News has more, and if you know French, you might try Le Monde's obit. Look for heavy eulogizing from the remnants of old guard of academia this week.

DATING / SEX

My pal Melissa has a theory that the best way for a boy to get a girl to like him is to have it known that other girls like him. I don't like when she talks like this, because I fear it will reveal too much strategy. Anyway, the best thing in NYT Styles this week is the piece about Wingwomen.com, a site where a guy hires a girl to act as their social liason to other desirable girls.

NSFW: Move over machinima, here's Real Doll Theater.

NSFW: Hentai dictionary. Wow, I'm a prude.

DIGITAL MEDIA

Ana Marie Cox was on Topic A With Tina Brown this week, and everyone seems to have just ignored how Wonkette eviscerated Tina on numerous occasions. Is this a sign that Wonkette is becoming so much a part of the mainstream as to be ineffectual?

LostRemote reports that Keith Olbermann will launch a blog on msnbc.com next week.

FOOD

What I like about Brendan Koerner's weekly Sunday Times column "The Goods" is not so much how he introduces us to the marketing of a unique product every week (althought that's good too), but more than that, I like how he bolsters his picks by quoting obscure industry dot-coms. This week, you could be cruising along reading the analysis of cheese pizza when it throws out at you the industry site PizzaMarketplace.com. It can hardly be surprising to find out there's a pizza industry publication, yet that it's so accessible is one the great things about the internet.

BBC: Flashmob - The Opera.

You can't find a more indicting example of celebrity culture than the Times story about how people are making careers out of becoming repeat reality tv stars. Coral Smith has been in five reality shows now.

DIGITAL LIFE

New: Ask.PRVblog.com.

DIY Video: IM Fight.

FILM

On NPR, Xeni Jardin talks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone about Team America. They're also in Newsweek. In related news, Sean Penn sends an angry memo to the boys.

Buzz alert. Primer looks promising.

MUSIC

Hm, Christgau gives Smile an A+.

Lindsey Lohan's new music vid.

TRAVEL

My email pal Jeff Gralnick pens a travel essay about his climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

LOCAL

More from Riemenschneider on the First Ave. debacle. Here's the TCPunk message board debating the issues.

A Strib roundup of three different Minnesota women who have recently had some reality tv fame, including Jamie Foss, who is pretty much a parody of every reality tv start alive.

Today, I want to touch on a few topics related to game culture -- and how it intersects with movies, music, and digital communication. I know, that intro sentence sounds about as fun as an a capella Bjork album (oh wait!). So instead of getting pedantic, let's look at the gaming landscape by pointing out new phenomena in digital entertainment, with a focus on how gaming is influencing all media. This isn't necessarily a cohesive essay with a single objective, but I hope it's more than another "Synergy of The Matrix" piece. Let's just call this a Scrappy Collection of Thoughts About Various Gaming Trends that have been of recent fascination to me:

VIDEO MODS

I won't try to convince you that the mashup of a teen-goth BloodRayne 2 video game and a teen-goth Evanescence music video belongs in the canon of required cultural material for our time. In other words, don't sigh if your TiVo missed Video Mods, a new series on MTV2 in which video game characters and landscapes are used to create music videos. I guess the worst thing that one could say about Video Mods is that Viacom is blatantly ripping off Machinima to attract video game advertising to television.

Even if that's true, it's also much more.

But first: a part of me wants to tell you that the convergence of these mediums is the perfect metaphor for the current state of the music industry. This cynical critique would go something like this: little pac men (consumers) run around a contested maze (Virgin Records) gobbling up indistinguishable dots (songs/albums) and ghosts (musicians). It's a sociological Flatland out there, in which demographics are empty ciphers with unlimited purchasing power -- the same goddamn person buys (or downloads) Outkast, Evanescence, and Creed. À la carte pop culture icons are sculpted with the same care that goes into creating Sims characters -- complete with readymade identities that become obsolete faster than you can blurt "Friendster." Identity is the currency of the music industry, and it's a free market economy of Pokemon cards: I'll trade you a "Britney Reinvented #24" for a "Cleaned Up Christina #9." Virtual video game characters taking over the role of musician is nothing more than the next step in the MilliVanilling of the music industry.

But, like I said, I don't really buy that mojo. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in cynically looking at pop culture icons, but I think it ultimately misses a key point in understanding the attraction of Video Mods. For evidence, take a look at The Sims 2 video mod of the Fountains of Wayne song "Stacy's Mom."

The Sims is the top dog of this medium so far. Not only is it the highest-selling series of all time, but it has come to represent a watershed creative moment in the industry. So why, one might ask, would "Stacy's Mom" score the grand prize of The Sims mod?

I honestly have no idea. But I think you'll see a clue by looking at the storyline behind "Stacy's Mom." You might say the Fountains of Wayne song is just a MILF romp imagined by a horny adolescent. But in reality, it's not even that -- it's actually sung by thirty-somethings who are themselves projecting a tweener dream. Basically, it's a wish fulfillment nostalgia fantasy from guys old enough to be Stacy's Dad.

So now, what is The Sims? That's more complex, but one could say it is an interactive world where players bring to life characters outside their normal demographic makeup. In other words, it's a giant role-playing fantasy.

Starting to see a trend here? Let's move on....

PLAYBOY

In the age of Suicide Girls, it's amazing that Playboy is still around. And it's amazing that I bother to mention the publication in a video game rant. But even as I say this, I realize that for the first time in my life, I bought an issue of Playboy last month, simply because the magazine has done a remarkable job of staying relevant in a digital age. For instance, the Google guys interview and the Washingtonienne spread reminded me that the magazine could still be relevant.

Or maybe these are just the last gasps of breath of a dying Boomer ideology. I'd entertain that argument too.

Anyway, when Playboy announced they would be doing a photo spread of characters from video games, you could instantly picture a digital historian somewhere writing this event into a timeline of important virtual character events (chronologically right after reality TV and right before the holodeck). Hackers modding Lara Croft into a pinup is one thing, but the mainstream culture industry getting sly with virtual sexuality says a lot more about where we are. This single layout might actually become the best indicator of the mainstreaming of a number of (previously) fringe activities and concepts: virtual sexuality, video game culture, user-modified content, reality blurring. And a new video game, Playboy: The Mansion, a Sims-like romp through Hef's mansion, will take this even further.

WAR GAMING

Forget sex, war is where it's at.

A lot has been said recently about the relationship between the industrial war complex and video games (such as in articles in The New York Times and Wired). When the Army created the game America's Army to recruit soldiers, it seemed that Ender's Game truly was going to happen. I'm working on an article for publication about this theme, so let's breeze past this topic for the moment.

SIMS 2

Every night over the last week, I've sat in a room with a computer and TV, playing the recently-released The Sims 2 and watching late night talk shows. Something important changed last night: I turned off the TV and started watching the show that my Sim character was watching on his television.

I don't think I can even articulate how hyper-real this is.

REALITY GAMING

The spurt of ironic glee about Flash Mobs last summer was more than a hipster punchline. It illustrated how gaming was leaking from the pores of society. The products of this spillage have included Big Urban Game (Minneapolis) and PacManhattan (NYC). And the glut of competition-based reality shows (Survivor, The Apprentice, Fear Factor, etc.) are all just extreme versions of reality gaming. (One could also argue that these Reality Games are a sort of tame suburban version of more serious planned events like the Seattle WTO Protests. That's for a different essay though.)

THE VIDEOGAME REVOLUTION

Anyone who has played even five minutes of Zelda will find PBS's new two-hour special The Video Game Revolution a bit tedious. I suppose it serves a valid purpose -- to provide a historical framework of popular video games. Too bad it's as engaging as a two-hour Pong match.

But what interests me is what this documentary represents in this moment in time. It seems we have reached a period in gaming where we can reflect on the past equipped with the gear found in the toolbelt of historical analysis: summary, bricolage, and nostalgia. The Video Game Revolution implicitly declares video games as a real object of pop culture study. Of course, this should not be surprising given the rise of academic programs designed to study gaming. Something about this evolution reminds me of 1990s-era Camille Paglia promoting the notion that universities should start rock music programs. I have mixed feelings about whether turning an academic eye to rock really does anything for musicians or fans or society, but I do worry an accidental effect of academizing a discipline in the past couple decades: studying it is synonymous with taming it. (I know many people in academia who are studying game and play, and they all get sour-faced when I suggest this possibility.)

WATCHING TV AT WORK

Many companies have planned events on Fridays that provides employees a break from work. But what our workplace does is truly unique. The idea started innocently: let's use our in-house online video streaming technology to deliver a movie to employees on Friday.

Thus was born The Friday Matinee.

Here's how it works: every Wednesday, an email goes out to a dist list of programmers, designers, engineers, and editors. It contains a list of movies, and the community votes on which one it will watch. On Friday at 2:00, the intranet streaming servers are fired up and the 'play' button is pushed on the DVD player. This is where it gets interesting.

If you walk around through the darkened cubicles at this time, you will see dozens of programmers donning headphones and staring at their computer monitors. They are simultaneously performing a number of tasks: writing code, watching The Friday Matinee, and IM-ing their colleagues about both. In other words, people are working, being entertained, and communicating all at the same time. There's something about this collapse of mediums and lifestyles that suggests a complicated future of media and entertainment.

CONCLUDING

This last example has nothing explicitly to do with gaming, but it illustrates something that's happening in our times: people are hacking mediums together for their own purposes. The provocative questions are just starting to come out: what happens if you mix film with instant messenger? what would a music/game hybrid look like? how could role-playing influence traditional one-way entertainment?

In an average day, I perform numerous activities which have nothing to do with gaming explicitly, but which feel somehow game-like. These include blogging, creating a playlist for my iPod, programming my TiVo, Googling girls on my cellphone at bars, and learning the hacks behind Yahoo Internet Messenger. If there's one point from all these examples, it's that "gaming" might become so pervasive as to become invisible.

Game on.

Perhaps now, as the leaves turn orange and we've almost forgotten what Michael Phelps even looks like, enough time has passed that you'd be willing to hear me talk about the Summer Olympics. Please, dear reader, don't reach for the gag button in the back of your throat, because, as I'm about to outline, if there's one thing I've learned about the Olympics, this is one topic that the American media loves to hate.

Caveats & background: I worked on NBCOlympics.com for nearly a year. However, the opinions below are mine and only mine. Even though I've had many conversations about the production, delivery, and business and of the games, what follows is not the opinion of NBC or IBS or the IOC or capitalism or athleticism or This Great Country or whatever else gets tossed into the ring every four years. Also, I have very little to say about what you saw on television. I'm talking internet today. I've already talked about it in other places (such as Wired News and LostRemote), but this is a collection of some final thoughts.

In some ways, this is an essay responding to my friends and colleagues, many of whom were out in full force critiquing the olympic games -- or perhaps more accurately, the media's creation of the games.

It probably started when Chuck K. wrote a column for Esquire titled "Boycott the Olympics, Save America". It showed up in my mailbox the exact day he was in town to visit. At some boozy point in the dark hours of the night, I dismissed his point by telling Chuck that someone writes that column every four years. Or, more precisely, every four years since the end of the Cold War, which was about the time that hating the Olympics become a national past time for the ironic class. I can't remember what happened next, but in the morning we saw some heroic gibbons swinging from branches at the Minnesota Zoo, which gave both of us much pleasure.

All apologies to Chuck...

And then Matt H. did some analysis on PVRblog, which pointed out some notable concerns with the site. I disagreed with some the legal/business parts of his analysis. We'll get to this later, but the short version is: it's going to be a while before we figure out how digital rights management will make a reality of the dreams we have for personal media. I highly doubt that everyone will ever be satisfied with video delivery via the internet for events like this -- at least not in any Marshall-McLuhan-cum-Phillip-Dick media vision thang that my mind can concoct. We might see some non-streaming (i.e., downloadable or exchangable) video asset management technology by 2008. With all the technical and legal decisions that need to be made in that area for this to happen, I'm not sure if I'm "optimistic" or even "hopeful" about what it will look like though. I am positive that it will not satisfy everyone.

All apologies to Matt...

Later on, Andy B. followed up the video-download issue by pointing out clips that were available on Usenet. Like a Slashdot flamethrower, there's a lot of "we told you so" when it comes to filesharing video, but ultimately, you're gonna have a very hard time convincing me that more than a dozen people in America had the tolerance to watch more than five minutes of video with this delivery method. And don't even get me started on BitTorrent.

All apologies to Andy...

Which brings us to Staci K.'s critique in OJR. Let's just get this out of the way: I agree with some of Staci's points. The world never moves fast enough for those of us in this industry. And we have the right -- perhaps even the obligation -- to act indignantly when it doesn't.

Nonetheless, there's something that bothers me about this I-want-more-more-more-video angle, which manifests itself with clockwork predictability. When we first started talking about how NBCOlympics.com would be one of the seven platforms for presenting the games, the first thing I said was "no matter what we do, video will be criticized."

When deciding on a strategy for what we provide to an online audience, we asked a simple question: "What will people want?" If all you read about NBCOlympics.com was OJR, you'd get the sense that people are demanding a 24/7 online Olympics video channel -- despite the fact NBC was already providing six television channels with 1200 hours of video. When you think about this for even more than a second, you realize immediately how you use an Olympics website: to complement television. You want stats and scores, you want biographies, you want context, you want analysis, you want stuff the tv doesn't give, you want storytelling done right, you want a medium that extends the story. And maybe you want a little bit of video. Actually, you want the tv schedule about 100 times more than you want video. Only a few of you are going to watch sketchy online video all day at the office (which is what a vast majority of our viewers are). I find being called an "early adopter" denigrating too, but let's face it...

I understand why a journalist would choose video when writing about the site. Heck, if I were doing industry writing about the site, I might talk about video too. The problem with this is that it ignores 95% of what our audience is expecting. Where was the story about our massive real-time results feed, which has failed repeatedly in the past? How about some analysis on the how the affiliates have used Ozone? And how about the multimedia context that TV can't provide? How about the writing and analysis? Or how about this simple angle: how the internet deserves a bit more respect than being a shovelware medium for a broadcast product.

It's not that I expect an unctuous, rosy hue to shine over the coverage -- I expect to be challenged to do better. But I also expect some sense of what people are actually doing online to come through. The rare person who did watch video online probably watched the "Who's Carly Crushin' On?" clip. Welcome back, ironic class.

All apologies to Staci...

And finally, that brings us to Nancy F., the one writer here who I'm not familiar with. Here's what she wrote in the New Yorker

The Internet is partly what caused people to become impatient with the Sydney Games. We already know what happened, the whining went. It was on the Web. But this time around the Web, which is now as integral to our lives as our television sets, served as a well-stocked convenience store for viewers who couldnt spend seventy hours a day in front of the TV. NBCs site supplied a full array of results, athlete bios, detailed schedules, fun facts, and archived stories (and, of course, stuff for sale). While watching the gymnastics, I kept waiting for one of the announcers to explain what the story was behind the strange-looking new vaulting equipment, but I had to go to the Web site to find the answer.

Right on, someone who approached the site from the perspective of an actual user experience. Sorry Nancy, no apologies to you.