There were 245 entries found with "sex":
thursday
I was thinking this morning about how I can remember exactly where I was the first time I saw Napster. (One of the IT guys at work showed it to me. It was mesmerizing.) This got me thinking about other online apps/phenomena that I can recall seeing for the first time with precise clarity. Here's my list of I Know Exactly Where I Was When I First Saw...
- Napster
- Google Maps
- Friendster
- Hot Or Not
- Wikipedia
- YouTube
- Dodgeball
- Foursquare
- Chatroulette
- 4chan
- Bro Icing
- Netscape browser
- The Paris Hilton Sex Video
- lonelygirl15
- Goatse.cx
- 2 Girls, 1 Cup
And for whatever reason, some things not on this list:
- Facebook
- MySpace
- eBay
- PayPal
- iPhone
- Gawker
- Digg
- AOL
- Flickr
- Firefox
- Chocolate Rain
- Rickrolling
- Any video with a cat
Yours?
friday
i have a whole thing about how HIMYM is the new SATC, but i haven't had enough coffee to explain it. however, i was at a party the other night and someone told me:
"It gets more right than Seinfeld, more right than Friends, more right than Sex & The City. It's awesome."
I could tell by the glint in his eye he was talking about Neil Patrick Harris.
but right now i just want to celebrate Jason Segal. he writes songs (probably the biggest reason girls crush on him). here's one for the Russell Brand character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. which was a funnier movie than i expected it to be, but has left Kristen Bell, who i loved as Veronica Mars, making crap like this, when she'd probably rather be making a crappy reunion movie. (yes! a nearly breathless run-on sentence!) -- FB
monday
Joss Whedon to maybe helm The Avengers movie. FOX to probably let him finish.
Seriously, is there a genre for behind-the-scenes fanfic yet? Because I kinda want someone to imagine the sexual tension (and its inevitable, completely bonkers resolution) between Joss & Robert Downey Jr. -- FB
monday
I didn't see much chatter about this New Yorker profile of Polyvore last week, but parts of it were pretty interesting, especially the bits about it being founded by the creator of Yahoo Pipes (!) and his rather unsexy reason for creating Polyvore:
I felt that it would be great to work on something that has a visual component. If you look at all the different types of visual media, images are the ones your brain processes the fastest.
Anyway, the whole data-invasion-of-the-fashion-world theme is an interesting recurring idea out there right now... Update: Lindsay thought the profile was dumb (she's right about cringing at that "usability testing" bit).
thursday
if gender roles reversed, there would be no sexual harassment.
wednesday
I thought Barbie's new job was going to be some sort of computer engineer? No? Now she's secretary Joan Holloway? Well, not much of an advancement in feminism, but you have to admit, waaaay more sexy. -- DG
monday
David Foster Wallace's papers are all going to the University of Texas, including some "juvenilia" like 200 books from his own library, poems, and college/graduate papers. Why Pomona didn't get these is sort of head-scratching, but UT is building up quite the collection. In case you wanted to hear what Chuck Klosterman thinks about this:
"He definitely is the writer I've ripped off the most," said Klosterman, author of "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," on Monday. "Wallace showed me that you could present ideas that were insightful and complex, but the presentation could still be as entertaining as any sort of writing whose sole purpose was to entertain. Considering how dense his work could be, it was almost never confusing."
Unlike say, having a quote from Chuck Klosterman in your article that has nothing to do with the subject matter of where DFW's materials are ending up. --DG
monday
Lights Camera Jackson is the only movie review site you should be reading. This 11-year old puts SexMan (who is now apparently Pruane2Forever?) to shame. Ex: He gave Alice in Wonderland, a movie ostensibly marketed to him (and Neil Gaiman fan-girls and 40-year old man-children who still think Burton puts out good work) a D+!
Yes, the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are involved in the story, but not that much. However, the one thing that is missing completely from this version of "Alice" is fun. Burton has made a serious film, that, at times, is even a bit depressing. And the movie gets off to a dreadfully slow start, as the first 20-minutes: Alice's life prior to falling into the hole, are completely unnecessary.
A+ review from someone who has never seen another Tim Burton film before he redid Willy Wonka! Are you legal yet? Call me! -- DG
thursday
Esquire asks Mary Louise Parker to give up sex for a month. She accepts. Then declines. Then writes about it. Sort of. Seems a bit staged but anything she does or doesn't do is completely forgivable.
See also: giving up the news ("I read novels during my daily commute. I straight-up ignored Chris Matthews. Bliss. Then things got weird") and drinking by Editor in Chief David Granger ("The other hardest thing about not drinking is eleven o'clock"). Smells like the first Esquire feature-turned-book I might even buy--giving up on things as a trend seems like a natural, compelling next step in our excessive "try everything" culture. --FD
wednesday
The cover for the upcoming "Sex" issue of Granta features a very pretty pink vagina purse. Subtle! --FD
thursday
Early detection, prevention is key: Are You Raising a Douchebag? --MM
sunday
I've often wondered why NYTBR doesn't do more contemplative, thematic essays like this: The Naked and the Conflicted. It's about how "the Great Male Novelists of the last century" portray sex.
monday
If perhaps you thought for a second that Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" wasn't absolutely everywhere, then you didn't see the Sex and the City 2 trailer yet. Sorry, everyone's ruining it for you. (See also, vaguely related, an LES lament: Together for Years, but I Just Don't Know You Anymore. [via])
saturday
So yeah, the End of the Year List of Lists is happening again. [Except this year, I have no time to manage it, so please email me if you'd like to either a) manage it for a small stipend, or b) sponsor it.] It's just starting out, but a few things already added: NYT's 100 Notable Books, Amazon's Best Books, Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction, S/FJ's Best Songs and Albums, Metacritic's Best Music, and Wired's Pop Culture Moments. Be sure to email me if you have more lists.
sunday
Belle de Jour, the anonymous sex blogger from London, never really became a huge phenom in America. (Most people don't even know that Secret Diary of a Call Girl, the ITV2 show about her, gets replayed on Showtime in the States.) Anyway, she has finally revealed her identity and the best part is that not only is she a she -- but she's a scientist! Dr. Brooke Magnanti, welcome to geekboy adoration.
monday
Because in this movie, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis have sex. Yeah. You read that right. And not just nice sweet innocent sex either. We're talking ecstasy-induced hungry aggressive angry sex.
Script Shadow reads the upcoming Black Swan script.
thursday
"The sexy son hypothesis is one of several possible explanations for the highly diverse and often astonishing ornaments of animals." Oh, science.
friday
What kids searched for this summer. Seeing "sex" and "porn" at #4 and #6 reminds me of how, from age 10 to 15, I looked up "fuck" every time I picked up a dictionary. Some terms you might also need to Google:
- "Webkinz" (#16)
- "Runescape" (#37)
- "Nigahiga" (#99)
- "Miniclip" (#18)
- "Poptropica" (#54)
- "Hoedown Throwdown" (#61)
- "naked girls" (#86)
monday
Slate's Choose Your Apocalypse. Zero results for the intersection of SEX and MONEY.
saturday
Klosterman's new book has a cover and release date: Eating the Dinosaur. The format will be similar to Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
friday
"Purple Rain really started hip-hop culture, whether the historians want to view it that way or not. You have Prince himself, a very unusual-looking figure, five feet tall -- pretty much anybody considered a musical genius in hip-hop has some sort of odd physical feature, i.e., Biggie's lazy eye. And then the whole idea of beefs -- Prince and Morris. Morris' whole pimp attitude, that was something you didn't hear since the blaxploitation films of the early '70s. Prince sang about sex and he worked with drum machines."
That's ?uestlove in this month's Spin cover story, which is an oral history on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Purple Rain.
sunday
Predix: Krysten Ritter is the next big something-or-other. She owned the second-best Gossip Girl epp, and just missed that almost-happened spin-off; she's recently had the best drug and sex scenes in Breaking Bad; she's the only thing saving the otherwise ignorable The Last International Playboy, BuzzKill, and How to Make Love to a Woman; girls loved her in Confessions of a Shopaholic; I loved her in Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls; and her band might be better than those three other Gossip Girl bands -- and probably able to catch some Bats For Lashes zeitgeist. Best part: like no one is following her on Twitter.
sunday
Esquire's Jezebel-bait: Where Have All the Loose Women Gone? "From Tina Fey's fake prude to Sarah Palin's real power play, here's why strong women just aren't that into having sex with you anymore."
tuesday
There's a Grigoriadis profile of Sasha Grey in the new Rolling Stone, which is of course not online, but there's a blog post. The lede of the story:
On an overcast Sunday in Los Angeles, Sasha Grey arrives at a set for the film The Fuck Junkie promptly at 9 a.m. This is not her real name, though it's a subtle one for a porn star, a mash-up of Sascha Konietzko, a founder of the German industrial band KMFDM, and the Kinsey scale of sexuality, which identifies sexual orientation as shades of gray.
Other things we learn:
+ Dave Navaro is her manager.
+ She's engaged.
+ She thinks the Suicide Girls look is now as trite as "the new blondes with bolt-ons."
+ She wants to go on Howard Stern with a Palestinian flag wrapped around her breasts.
tuesday
Conde Nast launches sexy-looking British edition of Wired.
monday
Your favorite Timberlake cameo for the next five minutes: "Love Sex Magic," Ciara.
sunday
n+1 interviews Astra Taylor about that documentary, Examined Life, mentioned here last week.
n+1: He's always billed as "Slavoj Zizek, Philosopher and Psychoanalyst." That made me wonder, is he really a psychoanalyst in the sense that I could be his patient?
AT: Absolutely not. And he's never successfully gone through analysis. He tells this story about how he lied his way through a few sessions with Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan's son-in-law. He would invent dreams, tell Miller he was having sexual fantasies that he was making up.
monday
Sexman returns to hallowed ground: 50 Cent. I love that he reads about Fiddy having a dildo molded of himself in the newspaper.
saturday
Leaked photos of the new Kindle. Looks sexy! (Release date: February 24.)
monday
Nussbaum is kicking it up with her new NY Mag television column, this week about United States of Tara: "Now it seems that the era of the outrageous outsider chick may be upon us, in her various manifestations as protofeminist rule-breaker and shit-stirring catalyst, with subcategories of sex-rebel, crazy lady, and artist."
wednesday
On today's I'm Just Sayin Show: watching sex scenes with your mom in the room. We've all been there.
tuesday
As 2009 encroaches, and "What are you doing for New Years Eve?" becomes the question you hear five times an hour, the list of 2008 lists is finally wrapping up. Here are some of the best recent additions: Merlin Mann's Top 10, The Copycat Effect's Top Ten Evil Clown Stories, NYT's Year in Pictures, PC Mag's 100 Favorite Blogs, Esquire's Best Bars, Fortune's 21 Dumbest Moments in Business, fourfour's 44+ Reasons To Love 2008, WSJ's Best And Worst Ads, Daily Beast's Top Ten Thinking Man's Sex Symbols, Wired's Vaporware Awards, Cracked's 12 Most Embarrassing Photos, This Recording's 13 Personalities That Mattered Most, DJ Earworm's Mashup of Billboard Top 25 Hits, and Howard Wolfson's favorite music (yep, that one).
monday
Today on the I'm Just Sayin' Show, the girls discuss sexist ads.
monday
Q&A with Joanne about sexy sci-fi. "I would love to see more hybrid sci-fi 'chick lit' -- and penned by women! -- like Bridget Jones's Diary only set 500 years in the future. What will we be wearing then? The Stepford Wives, although it was written by a man, is a good example. Philip K Dick wrote about a post-apocalyptic society with lives so wretched, the adults spend their days living out their memories using Barbie-inspired dolls and accessories. It shows how in desperate times we still seek out glamour and fantasy."
sunday
Lists are a constant stream right now. Some recent additions: NYT's Year in Buzzwords, Violet Blue's Top 10 Sexy Geeks, Archaeology Magazines's Top 10 Discoveries, The New Yorker's Ten Best Art Shows, Entertainment Weekly's Best and Worst, NYT's Year in Culture, and Pop Candy's Top 100 People.
wednesday
If you happen to be in New York and want to punish yourself, I am reading tomorrow night at "In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series: True Sex Confessions Night" (wow, gulp -- mouthful!). The event's organizer, Rachel Kramer Bussel, did a Top 10 Reasons you might want to come. I actually have no idea what I'm going to read yet, but it will likely end with crying.
thursday
Over on Tumblr (that locked box of inside jokes and sex talk, reminiscent of AOL in 1995 -- OMG, I'M SO KIDDING), a scandal is breaking out because someone named Tara Michelle (dead link now) faked an online identity that eventually led to an online boyfriend. The Tumblr gang is now having fun with the meme. [See previously: Plain Layne, Kaycee Nicole Swenson, etc.]
tuesday
My non-observation observation for the day: Sexy People is on Blogger, whereas Boner Party is on Tumblr.
monday
Esquire: What's with All the Ugly People Having Sex? "Pornography, like every other type of expression available in contemporary life, has been democratized. This is new." (Psst, no it's not.)
tuesday
If you walk into Starbucks today and tell them you voted, you get a free cup of coffee. If you walk into Ben & Jerry's today and tell them you voted, you get a free scoop of ice cream. If you walk into Krispy Kreme today and tell them you voted, you get a free donut. If you walk into Babeland today and tell them you voted, you get a free sex toy. So vote!
sunday
The Supreme Court's first indecency case in quite some time begins debate on Tuesday. FCC v. Fox Television will debate whether every permutation of the word fuck is sexual. (The examples include the time that Bono described his Golden Globe as "fucking brilliant" and Cher said of her critics "fuck 'em.") I've never been an advocate of broadcasting courtroom proceedings -- until now.
monday
I seem to have at least one conversation per day about Mad Men -- there's always at least one person in my life who wants to talk about Draper's lechery, Peggy's baby, or Joan's bosom. Lately, many of those conversations meander toward questioning the psychology of advertising, which is of course what Matthew Weiner wants us to be thinking about. Eventually the role of product placements comes up, which is the perfect manifestation of contemporary advertising's darkest psychoses: deception and desire.
Since the episode where Betty buys Heineken, I've been obsessed with the singular question of whether Heineken was an actual product placement. (This question nagged me more than what the fuck was going on with Peggy's baby.) Finally, New York has published a story that answers this question and several others about the product placement game: What Tina Fey Would Do for a SoyJoy?
Among other things, it reveals that Heineken was indeed an embedded advertisement. Doy, of course it was, just like Snapple in 30 Rock and Staples in The Office. The author, Emily Nussbaum, goes on to say that within the top 10 shows alone, there were 26,000 product placements on network television last year. The first half of her piece prepares us for the inevitable:
If two decades ago music fans raged when Nike co-opted the Beatles' "Revolution," these days the most "independent" musicians vie to be on Gossip Girl. James Bond drives a BMW, Carrie Bradshaw drinks Skyy vodka.
So just shut up, this is the future.
The second half lets you down with more examples to embarrass your heroes: that Ben & Jerry's bit with Colbert? Yep. That SoyJoy sketch on
30 Rock? Yep.
SoyJoy becomes the example to eventually make Nussbuam's ultimate point about how product placements might not actually be helping the product. She talks to Joss Whedon who confesses that he didn't know that SoyJoy was even a product, much less a placement. She concludes:
It occurs to me that the 30 Rock integration was a failed experiment. After all, the product looked to me (a woman 18 to 49!) like a punch line.
And so it is a return of the repressed --
Mad Men. The entire show is one big game of sublimated knowledge: Who knows what about who slept with whom? Lust and greed are the currency at the offices of Sterling Cooper. When mixing power and sex, desire and deception are the emotional outcomes. Advertising is merely the by-product of this formula applied to capitalism.
If there is one prevailing tone in
Mad Men, it's
the fraught tension of not knowing. This also happens to be the exact tension of product placements. And now that my curiosity has been satiated about Heineken, I must seek out a new victim to interrogate. Or to put it differently:
Are Utz better than nuts?
monday
My Black Book. Store your sexual partner histories and it provides trend analysis -- with pretty graphs! [via]
friday
Have a good weekend, internet. 50 Sexiest Music Videos of All Time. (Shocked that Prince isn't #1.)
friday
Finally, big media attends to it, with ABC getting there first: Edwards Admits Sexual Affair; Lied as Presidential Candidate. Update: my pal Chuck has video of her on the Edwards plane (and in the comments, reporters are trying to snag it). Update: looks like AP bought it.
friday
Just released: SXSW Panel Picker. Vote for my panel! We'll discuss oversharing, the dangers and benefits of posting your sex life, and the crushing collision between quasi-sex and micro-celebrity. The panelist list will be spectacular! (The panel was Melissa's idea.)
thursday
I've often wondered about the legal difference between prostitution and pornography.
It seems an obvious paradox that both acts are essentially the same: sex in exchange for money. However, there is of course one key difference: a camera.
Culturally speaking, this appears to be an extremely revealing detail of the modern psychology. Sex for money is legal only if it's recorded and distributed. The camera, it would seem, validates everything.
But it almost seems like a legal loophole that could be exploited. Imagine this scenario: The vice squad arrests some dude for picking up a hooker. "I wasn't soliciting sex," he claims. "I am making a porn movie." Does his claim to record and distribute the sexual act make it legal? Does he have a First Amendment case? It sounds like a glib question, but it's a legit case!
(Shhh, don't steal my idea, but I want to write a Law & Order script about this. I've already got a title: Get Off The Bang Bus.)
I've talked about this elsewhere, but the tricky part of the First Amendment in the coming years will be answering this question: what constitutes free speech in the age of personal media?
I've ranted about the slippery slope that Josh Wolf, for instance, created by essentially claiming that any act could be constituted as journalism, and hence protected by the First Amendment. If you think about the logical conclusions of that, the danger becomes clear. Would this include corporate security tapes or accidental photos? If journalism is simply saying it is, we're opening ourselves up to some slippery cases. (And don't mistake that remark as fear of actual so-called citizen journalism. That's what I want to make sure we protect!)
Anyway, back to porn... It turns out that the legalities are even more complicated [via]. The basics are this:
- There actually is no legal precedent for protecting the creation of pornography, except in California. (Keep in mind that creation and distribution are different.)
- Porn creation has never been legally tested in other states, so it might be illegal.
- This is why Cali is the porn capital.
The First Amendment will get some tricky questions thrown at it in the coming years, as one of these "personal media" cases eventually trickles its way up the Supreme Court. Given the current makeup of said body, I'm worried what the outcome will be. Sometimes, it may be better to not test the law.
friday
Didn't see this one coming... HBO has greenlighted a pilot based upon Jessica Cutler's Washingtonienne. It's a half-hour comedy; Sarah Jessica Parker is the EP; the internet will hate it.
monday
Plurk is Twitter on a timeline. Kinda sexy. See also, minimalism taken to its furthest logical conclusion: Adocu.
wednesday
Promise, last link about Emily's NYT Mag thing... The Observer, which probably felt it needed to say something, dissects the production of the cover photo, suggesting (and then unsuggesting) victimization and proposing that writers need to watch their image. Though it's never invoked, all of this now reminds me of Prozac Nation, with the same debates between sexuality vs. victimization, public vs. private, memoir vs. publicity.
tuesday
That was fast. HBO has already added six shows (The Wire, Flight of the Concords, Rome, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Deadwood) to iTunes. Most are only one season.
monday
From tonight's Gossip Girl:
Blair: "I had sex with him [Chuck] in the back of a limo."
Chuck: "Several times."
Nate: "I had sex with you [Serena] while I was her [Blair's] date. Once."
Chuck: "I'm Chuck Bass."
Chuck Bass is my hero.
UPDATE:
the clip on YouTube.
sunday
Fittingly, NYT drops its Grand Theft Auto IV coverage in the City section of the paper today. (The other appropriate section might have been Travel.) It's a long tour of the game's version of NYC, told from the perspective of a New Yorker (Dave Itzkoff, also known for covering sci-fi for the NYT Book Review) who wants the neighborhoods to resemble his version of the city. The conclusion is effectively a topographic take of the Uncanny Valley conundrum:
If I truly believed in Liberty City as a functioning community, how could I open fire on my fellow simulated citizens (even if they shot at me first)? How could I tread all over the social contract in a ripped-off truck full of bootleg prescription medication?
And then:
It's not the game's fault that it can't perfectly replicate the infinite variety of New York. But it sometimes comes so close to pulling off the illusion that it invites you to look for the imperfections.
I just bought the game and have only played a little. But the descriptions here and elsewhere sound like NYC run through the mosaic filter on Photoshop. This geographically-confused, post-catastrophe setting resembles Cloverfield more than anything else. (You know, that scene where they get in the subway at Spring St. and end up at 59th St.) Let's compare these two for a second: look how each toys with class, violence, geography, simulation, reproduction, terrorism, sex, and urban geography. This should be the only bar conversation we have for the next couple months.
But back to this desire to adhere to verisimilitude in game play. It's peculiar, especially given the history of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, notorious for its propagation of violence as the narrative of gaming. Yes, peculiar, but also understandable for anyone familiar with the city's grid. The question seems to be, how close of a representation do we actually want? There it is again, the Uncanny Valley, which even popped up on a recent episode of 30 Rock, in the form of Tracy Jordan (himself a refracted mirror of Tracy Morgan) trying to make the first successful porn video game.
Desire and play. I suspect this is what gets lost in the muddled debate about the interplay of reality and fiction in the super-simulation canon. The new cultural critics are "deciders," sprung from both the left (social realists) and the right (values pundits), both trying to impose "this is fiction" and "this is real" logic onto games and movies. But it's not just them -- it is we who, in various ways, all participate in this debate about reality and non-reality, seeking an answer to whether something is either too unrealistic or too realistic.
All this makes me wonder if the question of realism has been overplayed, or if in fact it is the only question, now and forever. All I really want to know is: what makes playing the game so much fun? And how much does "reality" have to do with the answer?
tuesday
An interview with the dude has a robot girlfriend. I don't even know which quote to pick. Let's try this one: "Just like gay people can get along fine with girls, I can get along fine with humans. Just not in a sexual way."
friday
Kottke rounds up the post-Spitzer intellectualizing of prostitution. My favorite part of this whole thing is seeing sex bloggers finally getting bylines in big publications!
thursday
An Interview with Adrian Holovaty
The first time you try to describe EveryBlock to someone, it can sound kinda boring. It aggregates piles of local information, like restaurant reviews and crime stats, which are then displayed block-by-block. Hm, that's interesting, but is it compelling?
If you give it some time, the answer is absolutely. Once you start playing with the site (and "playing" might be the best word to describe the meandering sensation of floating around in the data pools), your mind begins to wander with speculation: how did they get that? what does this say about my neighborhood? what else could be done with all this data? how can I add to this?
Those were just some of the many questions I had about EveryBlock, which launched a few weeks ago with the help of a $1.1 million Knight News Challenge grant. A few stories and interviews popped up when the site launched, but I noticed that the interviewers seldom asked the other questions that I had about the site. So I decided to ask site's founder, Adrian Holovaty, some questions directly. Here's our exchange:
Last year, New York City famously banned trans fats in restaurants. I found a page on EveryBlock that shows all the violations of this ban -- several every day! I love these little hidden narratives inside of EveryBlock. Do you have any favorites?
Great question. Here are a few interesting nuggets:
Also, more generally, it's fascinating to follow address-specific breaking news/events on our site. For example, a couple of weeks ago, a water main broke on the north side of Chicago. Afterward, on the relevant EveryBlock pages -- for example, Ravenswood or the 1800 block of W. Montrose -- you could see a bunch of assorted news items about the incident: newspaper articles from the Trib and Sun-Times, TV station reports and Flickr photos of the torn-up street that were taken by some people who happen to live nearby. Each of those "raw" chunks of information was displayed in the timeline of news for that block.
We've seen a similar thing happen with trendy new restaurants. First you see the business license, then (possibly) the liquor license application a few days later, then the restaurant inspection, then a Yelp review or two, then a writeup by the newspaper's dining critic. The story slowly unfolds over time.
One of our post-launch priorities is to clean up the fire-hose of raw information, to introduce concepts of priority and improved relevance -- but I do think there's a certain appeal to that raw dump of "here's everything that's happened around this address, in simple, reverse-chronological order." When significant events happen, they sort of "pop out" of the list.
Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing behind-the-scenes? Are you using Django as a framework?
Sure. The first layer is the army of scripts that compile data from all over the Web. This includes public APIs, private APIs, screen-scraping the "deep Web," crawling news sites, plus harvesting data from PDFs and other non-Web-friendly documents. Some data also comes to us manually, like in spreadsheets e-mailed to us on a weekly basis. For each bit of data, we determine geographic relevance and normalize it so that it fits into our system.
The second layer is the data storage layer, which we built in a way that can handle an arbitrary number of data types, each with arbitrary attributes. For example, a restaurant inspection has a violation (or multiple violations), whereas a crime has a crime type (e.g., homicide). Of course, we want to be able to query across that whole database to get a geographic "slice," so there's a strong geo focus baked into everything.
The next layer is the Web layer, which is standard Django. Oh, and I should mention that we use Python for everything, from the ground up.
What has been the hardest piece to accomplish so far?
I honestly can't decide what the hardest piece has been. A number of pieces were all hard to pull off in their own way.
The user interface was, and continues to be, a challenge. How do you display so many disparate pieces of data together, without overwhelming people? How do you account for the variety of distinct data types? (That's both a user-interface and a backend challenge.) How do you maintain visual interest when dealing with so much raw textual data? How do you make the block page feel like a geographic home page rather than a search result? Wilson, our designer, has done a great job within these constraints, but we all agree there's still much room for experimentation and gradual improvement.
Dealing with structured data is relatively easy, but attempting to determine structure from unstructured data is a challenge. The main example of unstructured data parsing is our geocoding of news articles. We do a pretty good job here, but we're not crawling all of the sources we want to crawl -- again, there's a lot of room to grow.
On a completely different note, it's been a challenge to acquire data from governments. We (namely Dan, our People Person) have been working since July to request formal data feeds from various agencies, and we've run into many roadblocks there, from the political to the technical. We expected that, of course, but the expectation doesn't make it any less of a challenge.
How much of your data aggregation is scraping html pages versus getting structured data?
At this point, we're doing more scraping than consuming formal APIs and data feeds, but I expect (and hope) the balance will shift over time. It's been tricky explaining our concept to data providers in government, but we're hoping that gets easier now that we have a public site that people can browse and understand.
Do you have any fears of scaling the system?
Yes and no. We knew from the start that EveryBlock isn't something that can be scaled overnight to every city in the world. There are too many special cases, too many relationships to build, too many local quirks to work out. There's no nationwide database of restaurant inspections or building permits that we can magically tap into; every city is different. Aggregating local information is a deep, difficult problem.
Some companies try to scale pieces of what we're doing -- like geocoding every news story in the U.S., or making maps of blog entries, or aggregating crime, or aggregating restaurant inspections -- but we're the first ones to do all of that. That's why we're taking a depth, not a breadth, approach: I'd much rather do three cities well than 1,000 cities poorly.
Rather than use Google Maps or Microsoft's Virtual Earth, you built your own mapping service application. Why?
That, along with "When will you bring EveryBlock to city XXX?", is by far the most frequently asked question we get. Paul, our developer in charge of maps, is working on an article explaining our reasoning, so I don't want to steal his thunder. I'll just say that the existing free maps APIs are optimized for driving directions and wayfinding, not for data visualization. And, besides, having non-clichéd maps is an easy way to set yourself apart. Google Maps is so 2005. ;-)
How hard was it to build?
We use an open-source library called Mapnik to render the maps, so that library does the heavy lifting for us. Paul is also working on a how-to article, in the spirit of giving back to the open-source community, that explains how to use Mapnik.
In many ways, what you're doing is taking a bunch of data sources and normalizing them for a single use case. Now that it's normalized, I imagine developers could do a ton of interesting things with this data. Are there plans to do an API?
Yes, I strongly suspect we'll have an API eventually -- it's one of the many things on our site wish list. We had to draw a line and call the thing "ready" at some point, so despite the fact that we're launched, we've got hundreds more features and data sources to add.
I was talking to someone recently about all the cool mashups you could do, and we decided that looking for patterns between Republicans and sex offenders would be the best!
Beyond the technical difficulties of creating parsers and algorithms for geotagging this data, have you had any political/legal obstacles? Is there data you'd like to get your hands on but can't for some reason?
Yes, and yes. I'd estimate we only have about 10% of the data we'd like in the long term, for Chicago, New York and San Francisco. As we expected, some government agencies haven't been able to provide us their public data, and the reasons vary. A common reason is a lack of resources. In other cases, we've simply been stymied by bureaucracy. But we're keeping at it.
An obvious example of data that's EveryBlocky (EveryBlockish? Um, location-specific?) but not yet on our site is the set of recent home sales -- lots of local relevance there. Of course, we're a news site, not a real-estate site, so it'll be interesting managing people's expectations about what real-estate data and features we offer.
I'd like to even out the three cities' data offerings, too. We publish building permits in San Francisco and New York, but not in Chicago. We publish filming locations in Chicago, but not in New York or San Francisco. We publish zoning agenda items in San Francisco, but not in the other two cities.
We're also working on improving the data we already have. An example is crime in San Francisco. After running into some problems having requested a formal data feed from them directly, we get the data by screen-scraping the SFPD's site -- but that site doesn't publish the location of each crime. In fact, the only location data the SFPD site publishes is implicit in the searches you do. The site lets you search for crimes by police district, ZIP code or neighborhood, so the best we can do is to deduce the police district, ZIP code and neighborhood that contain a particular crime. (If you search for ZIP code 94109, you can safely assume the resulting crimes are in that ZIP code.)
That's why San Francisco crime on EveryBlock, lamely, only geocodes crimes to the ZIP code level: because that's the only data we could get, and something is better than nothing. But, anyway, we're hoping the SFPD will release more granular locations in their crime data.
You've mentioned your hope that EveryBlock could introduce some standards for news organizations to do geotagging. I'm sure you've discovered wholes swaths of civic data that could use standardization. Can you talk a little bit about what you want to do in this area?
The standards we're thinking about are related to the geotagging of unstructured data -- namely, news articles. I guess there'd be some value in standardizing approaches to structured data (like, building a nationwide crime database), but we're more immediately interested in standardizing the geocoding of "blobs." The main premise is that locations in news articles should be defined in a machine-readable way. Look for something from us soon.
Everyblock lets me find everything in my neighborhood... except other people. Why is that? Do you have any plans to incorporate direct input of local voices into the site?
In time, Rex. In time. :-)
If we'd launched with awesome reader-contributed content features, that's all that people would be talking about. "EveryBlock: a user-generated news site!" People are very quick to make judgments about a Web site, pigeonholing it into some generic "user-generated" or "Web 2.0" bucket. I wanted to send the message that our focus is on providing a newspaper for your block. The tone was set. Any subsequent features that we add -- whether they involve local voices or not --
are in support of that core goal.
Besides, we already have the problem of offering so many interesting data sets and features that people can only focus on one or two of them. The classic example is that a lot of people haven't noticed that we rolled our own maps (your question above notwithstanding).
I know you constantly get asked the question about scaling the site to other local areas, but here's an idea: say I'm an enterprising small town citizen who's willing to plug in data from my city by matching data to similar fields that you are using. Possible?
Yes, that's possible -- we've built the system in a way that would allow that to happen. Again, as in my response to your reader-generated content question, it's just a matter of implementing it. We had to launch with something, and if we'd included every one of our ideas in the launch version, we'd be on target for a launch in mid 2017. :-)
One of the obligations of the Knight grant is to make all the source code available. Does that affect how you think about the site as an asset?
The open-source requirement affects both our technology and business decisions. We've engineered the thing so that it can be replicated in any area, with any data. I suppose we would've done that anyway, even without the open-source requirement, because it's just the Right Way to do it, but the open-source requirement certainly influenced us.
I'll paraphrase something really smart that Wilson, our designer, said recently: We've created a machine that's capable of publishing address-specific news, and our initial launch is a demonstration of its potential. Now that we're live, it's time to improve the machine and improve the demonstration.
On the business side, clearly we'll have to figure out how the site is going to sustain itself after our grant money is spent. I have a feeling some solution will make itself apparent at some point over the next year and a half. But even before that, we'll find out whether our idea is something that catches on with our audience -- this whole thing is an experiment, after all! For all we know, EveryBlock might be a novelty that doesn't sustain an audience in the long term. Being honest Chicago people, happily far away from the Silicon Valley BS, we have no delusions of grandeur.
I liked your answer to whether EveryBlock constitutes journalism in the OJR interview ("People can define 'journalism' however they'd like"). I'm curious, do you have traffic goals for the site? Or let me ask it a different way: how are you evaluating success?
This is cheesy, but I aim to help people, or improve the world in some way. The tricky thing is that there aren't many concrete ways of measuring that, aside from anecdotes. I suppose we could look at traffic numbers, but, no, we haven't set any traffic goals.
Okay, last question. It's a weird one. Your interest in gypsy jazz is well known. (The last time I saw you, it was in a Toronto bar that supposedly had a jazz scene, but was actually a frat bar. We were both gravely disappointed.) Do you ever think about the relationships between your musical interest and your programming/information interests? Is there anything -- structural, cognitive, performative, whatever -- that makes EveryBlock similar to Django Reinhardt?
Wow, a weird question indeed! Hmm. I guess that, in both music and programing, I strive for subtlety, for elegance.
And EveryBlock cannot be compared to Django Reinhardt. That's sacrilege.
Thanks, Adrian!
(Thanks to Ben, Matt, Robin, Andy, and Matt for suggesting questions for this interview.)
saturday
The founder of Clean Flix, the Utah-based company that "sanitized" and redistributed DVDs, was arrested for having sex with two 14-year-olds. Why are these stories so predictable?
monday
Unfortunately, the author of Love + Sex With Robots comes off as a boring academic on his Colbert appearance. I'm reading the book right now and will report back soon. [via]
wednesday
Opening SXSW Film will be 21 (starring Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, and Kevin Spacey), which mixes gambling, sex, and math genius -- so a sure hit. The trailer is here. [via]
thursday
Last year I decided to put on twist on my annual "best blogs" post [2002, 2003, 2004] by taking a turn toward the obscure. Because blogs now pervade the media landscape, it makes little sense to write a post arguing that Huffington Post is better or worse than DailyKos -- or Cute Overload.
It turned out that this change -- pointing to lesser-known sites like History of the Button, Buzzfeed, and Indexed -- was a rather auspicious. Within 24 hours of releasing the list, seven of the top ten links on Del.icio.us' typically-tech-centric hotlist were sites on my list. And so in the spirit of celebrating the lesser-known, it's time again to point toward the best blogs that might have flown under your radar. Here they are, the Best Blogs of 2007 that You Maybe Aren't Reading:
30) The Informed Reader
As mainstream media organizations continue to close their foreign bureaus out of cost-saving desperation, the less expensive version -- "the international news blog" -- has become a staple property on nearly all sites (nytimes.com, msnbc.com, cnn.com, newyorker.com, etc.). Though the foreign news consumer might be tricked into believing these will reveal new forms of international reporting, it actually means that none of these sites stick out above the rest -- except for the Wall Street Journal's The Informed Reader, which somehow kept my attention this year by finding the right balance between gathering links and providing context. (See also: Good Magazine.)
28) Paleo-Future
If the dictum "the future is now" has any veracity, then what do we do with the past? This blog chronicles how past generations envisioned what the future would look like. With an archive that goes back to the 1880s, Paleo-Future is an essential compendium of a new historical category: nostalgic futurism. (See also: Subtopia.)
27) TV In Japan
If ever there were a genre in need of aggregation, Japanese TV would be it. This site (from my friend Gavin Purcell, whose day job is running Attack of the Show on G4) is religious in its pursuit to bring you the best moments of televised weirdness from the Land of the Rising Sun. (See also: Neojaponisme and Ping Mag.)
26) BookForum
For those of us who have given up on the once-spectacular and oft-praised Arts & Letters Daily, the transformation of Book Forum to an aggregation blog has been nothing less than a savior. (See also: ArtsJournal.)
23) Metafilter Popular Favorites
Every year I sneak a reference to Metafilter onto this list. And every year a Metafilter post ridicules its inclusion -- can't wait to see this year's! My longstanding love-hate relationship with Metafilter (check the archives) tilted back toward the negative this year, which is why the Popular Favorites feature was almost a panacea for my frustration. More big sites are adding this "favoriting" feature (BoingBoing, Gothamist, etc.), which I initially appraised as a cheap way of avoiding depth, but now find the only way I can continue reading some sites. (See also: Ask.Metafilter.)
22) Drawn.ca
Drawn bills itself at "collaborative weblog for illustrators, artists, cartoonists, and anyone who likes to draw," but it acts more like a comprehensive guide to visual culture. (See also: Design Observer.)
21) FourFour
The overabundant jungle of pop culture blogging leaves little room for new voices to emerge. One can read only so many snarky reviews of every episode of every reality tv show on every network every night (I know!). As an antidote to Perez Hilton's pretty hate machine, FourFour's Rich Juzwiak (whose day job is blogging for VH1) has carved out something unique in the pop landscape by balancing critical insight with a celebration for the lovable. And what does FourFour love? For starters: Tyra, America's Next Top Model, Beyonce, Tyra, Project Runway, and... Tyra. (See also: Golden Fiddle and Best Week Ever.)
20) Reverse Cowgirl
Her: "Why don't more sex bloggers make your list?" Me: "Cuz they all talk about the same thing." Her: "Yes, but in many different ways." It's true, sex bloggers don't usually end up on this list, but Susannah Breslin's blog was one of the few sites in the genre to stay in the "to read" pile all year long.
19) Kanye West: Blog
Too much was made again this year about famous people getting blogs. Do you really want more insight into these people's opinions? Of course not -- you want to know their passions, their desires, their interest in dropping $7K on a bottle of cognac. Kanye's blog is more like a scrapbook of his id: some links (hey look, the new Lupe Fiasco vid), some photos (hey look, a Delorean), but surprisingly little ego.
16) Pussy Ranch
Several years ago I included Diablo on a "hot new blog!" list. Now she's super famous, and I'm still making this stupid list.
15) Serious Eats
Food blogging has always been a blind spot for me, but Serious Eats was the first site to find the right mix of editorial voice and community interaction.
14) Shorpy
The photoblog genre is easy to overlook, but this blog puts itself in a curatorial role by collecting photos up to 100 years old. (See also: The Triumph of Bullshit.)
11) The Daily Swarm
Looking for an alternative to Pitchfork? Who isn't! But Daily Swarm isn't exactly that -- it's a music news source that somehow seems to break news before anyone else. And it's not "press release" news that Pitchfork delivers, nor the salacious celeb news of TMZ, nor even the industry banter of Idolator; rather, The Daily Swarm's beat is a rare kind of -- dare I say -- investigative work that no one else is doing. (See also: Stereogum and Culture Bully.)
10) A Brief Message
Brevity seemed to only increase its role as the ruling doctrine this year (see: Snack Culture), and the designers hopped on board with their micro-manifestos on this site. (See also: Very Short List.)
8) emo+beer = busted career
When Earl Boykins mixed the infographic with a passion for Brooklyn indie music, he ended up with several pieces in the New York Times that could have passed for art installations. (See also: Infosthetics.)
7) Frolix-8: Philip K. Dick
What we once called "the news" is increasingly becoming different filters for perceiving reality. If you think about it, watching the news is just putting on someone else's reality goggles. Philip K. Dick would probably agree, and so this amazing site gives you today's headlines matched up next to which PKD novel the story corresponds with. If it seems that science fiction gets less fantastical every year, then this is the site for you. (See also: Cyber Punk Review.)
6) Snowclones
A snowclone -- says Wikipedia, cuz it oughta know -- is "a type of formula-based cliche that uses an old idiom in a new context." The best example is the rampant usage of "X is the new Y." But there are so many others, such as "Don't hate me because I'm X," "In X, no one can hear you Y," "No rest for the X," "To X or not to X," "Xgate," "Xcore," "Got X?" -- and many more. The site is so diligent in its pursuit of the cliche and the trite that you might fall stricken with a loss of words, gasping "This is not your daddy's snowclone." (See also: Language Hat and Away With Words.)
5) Jezebel
Gawker Media's modus operandi is to enter a content category (gadgets, politics, sports, music, etc.) by summarizing that industry with enough volume (in both senses of the word) to basically become the essential trade mag in that sector. This is why Jezebel represents the biggest coup in the empire's history. Rather than beguile its way into the women's magazine industry, Jezebel burst onto the scene in May by defining itself in oppositional terms. It isn't so much a thing as it is not those things. To be clear: it is not the celeb porn that Conde Nast and Hearst have been splooging on you from newsstands for decades. Whereas the average Idolator post would fit in just fine in Blender or Pitchfork, Jezebel was an entire take-down of Glamour, Cosmo, and the rest of the airbrushed crew. This is the holy grail of publishing: to find a voice that is completely unique while still appealing to a broad category. Nicely played, Mr. Denton. (Note: By the numbers, Jezebel probably doesn't qualify in the "overlooked" character of this list. But with as many dudes like me reading this "women's fashion" site every day...) (See also: Spout.)
3) Vulture
New York Magazine is a perplexing contradiction. It is probably the best magazine on the newsstand right now (Wired is the only competition), but it also has an editorial voice that is occasionally annoying in its sense of privilege and entitlement. On its worst days, I call this attitude "Aggressively SoHo" -- as in, it surpassed believing that NYC is the center of the world by declaring the epicenter somewhere south of 14th St. and north of Chambers St. When my bestest friend Melissa (disclaimer!) said she was co-launching this blog (she has since moved onto Rolling Stone), I was worried that this voice would ring through on its cultural coverage. But the opposite has happened -- Vulture has kept the best parts of New York Mag (the nuance, the design, the clever), while leaving the Aggressive SoHo Tude at the door. (See also: Wired's Blogs.)
1) Twitter and Tumblr
"Blog" has always been an elastic term, just barely surviving the stress of containing everything from Hot Chicks With Douchebags to DailyKos to your mom's Vox account. But this year the seams of the term finally burst, and out spilled some brand new words, tweets and tumbls, and these two new forms of quasi-blogging that are more personal, more immediate, and of course more annoying than anything online communication has rustled up so far. Twitter and Tumblr are the Rubik's Cube and the Tetris of the blogging world -- simple concepts that are immensely more complex and compelling than they logically should be. I've explained Twitter to a hundred people in a hundred different ways, each time not quite capturing why it's different, why it matters. "You just have to play it to understand," I eventually say, choosing the only verb that approaches the nuanced complexity. And yet, there's another very simple way to say it: Twitter and Tumblr made blogging fun again this year.
And finally, thanks to Taylor, Ben, Robin, Lindsay, Melissa, Scott, Alisa, Gavin, Jason, Peter, Matt, Choire, and Anil for their tips on this project. See ya next year.
tuesday
Hot for Words! Virginia thinks that Marina talks like a robot, but doesn't she sound more like the backwards-speak in Twin Peaks?
wednesday
If you haven't been paying attention, the temp editor at Kottke.org this week has been lonelysandwich15 -- haha, I mean lonelysandwich -- better known around these parts as the-jerk-who-is-trying-to-be-a-better-Twitterer-than-me (and winning). The best thing so far has been the bit on fictional products becoming real (also covered by Buzzfeed and Karina). Anyway, I'm secretly writing a book about fake things (which I'll probably never finish, so it's ultimately fake too), so I love this little meme and now find it everywhere -- like today when I saw Gothamist report that the fictional grilled fontina cheese sandwich with truffle oil that Serena van der Woodsen eats in Gossip Girl has become real. (Editor's note: If this post had tags, they would be kottke, twitter, defiction, gossipgirl, lonelysandwich, and cheesesandwich. I win.)
monday
Portfolio's story on YouPorn describes how none of the site's founders want to acknowledge their involvement with the site yet want to sell it for $20 million. See also: Proposed Law Could Be a Cold Shower for YouPorn.
thursday
My friends Matt and Margaret have relaunched Vita.MN (Matt's note). One year old as of today, Vita.MN is two things: a weekly publication from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and a website that publishes that content but adds in all sorts of social features -- lists, favoriting, friending, etc. For a daily paper, it's an amazing experiment. Oh, and here's Alexis' newest sex column.
monday
Radar's Hype Report, aka The Overrated 100 (only partially online). "Sex with virgins" was my favorite.
thursday
Whoa, missed this one. Cinematical a couple days ago reported that Wachowski brothers are no more -- that is, now one's a girl. Citing a post on Rated-M, the man formerly known as Larry Wachowski had apparently completed a full sex change -- and Larry was now Lana. But a Fox News story has the brothers disputing this. [via]
monday
A couple interesting counterpoints in the Larry Craig scandal: Dan Savage on what would happen if he got arrested and Christopher Hitchens on why gay men continue to have sex in public places.
friday
Perez has the new Britney single. It starts "It's Britney, Bitch." It doesn't quite suck, but it's also impossible to imagine this baby mama being sexy anymore.
thursday
Because I don't have time to write a legit record review, here are some quick notes on listening to Kala:
8) First, the politics. Maya's critics seem to present her songs as equivocally advocating various causes. This seems foolish. I suspect what MIA is actually doing is more like acting. And I don't mean just conveniently sampling subversive agitprop (she seems to legitimately understand the cultural issues). Rather, Maya uses songwriting to play out the roles of various third-world revolutionary characters. So when you hear her talking about the Tamil Tigers or Palestine, it's not exactly "her opinions" as much as the voice of people she's encountered. Critics insist on imposing autobiography on this album, but it seems more like contemporary historical fiction.
7) Someone could write an entire review of Kala's aggressive stance against being danceable.
6) It's difficult to come up with musical comparison points with MIA -- The Clash is probably the best lazy comparison right now. But do you know who Maya should really be compared to? Star architects. I'm totally serious -- they fly around the world, observe a society, pick up pieces local culture, and adapt it to their own style. MIA is a starchitect. She's more like Rem Koolhaas than Gwen Stefani.
5) Most confusing culture reference on the new album: "Price of living in a shanty town just seems very high / But we still like T.I."
4) Second place: "So I woke up with my Holy Koran / And found out I like Cadillac."
3) And yet: "Sex is cheap / I get it at the KFC."
2) The best song on the album is "Paper Planes," which also happens to be produced by the somewhat estranged Diplo. As Margaret said to the me the other day, there's never been a better song in which sound effects replace words. But beyond all that, the production of the song is so strange -- it has a reggae-light beat, but the sounds underneath are totally like nothing else.
1) This is the only album I can think of in which the remixes will likely be better than the album. And it's not because the songs are bad, but rather because there's something sorta raw about the tracks. It's like an album of source-material.
tuesday
Meme watching: get ready, the 10-year anniversary of the Monica Lewinsky scandal is nearly upon us, which is the only way to explain NY Mag's extensive profile of Matt Drudge. Undeniably better than L.A. Times similar attempt from a few weeks ago, this one paints Drudge as something of a modern-day Howard Hughes. It avoids banter about Drudge's sexuality until the end (dude's totally gay, and he'd probably flip politically if he could ever out himself). It's full of good material, but this is the money quote: "Amid her snarls about privacy, [Camille] Paglia offers the morsel that Drudge is 'deeply knowledgeable' about dance music." After that quote, I officially declare liberalism dead.
wednesday
The story in this month's Wired about sex and mistaken online identity starts off reading like something you might see in your daily paper... but it wraps up with a magnificent surprise ending. Recommended.
sunday
I see survey after survey declare that men have more sexual partners than women. And it annoys me every time, because this is of course statistically impossible. The New York Times finally takes up the issue. The answer? Men aren't more promiscuous -- they lie more. Or, perhaps, women lie by underestimating.
monday
When you start to think your life sucks, just remember you could be the guy who lives with 100 love dolls. (Btw, sex dolls cost 6K, but you could always go the DIY route.)
monday
Back at home, my ex/pal Alexis was harshly critiqued in the Star-Tribune's Sunday ombudsman column for a column about outdoor sex that she wrote for Vita.MN (a Strib entertainment weekly). Lex has fired back (and so has my favorite, Taylor). I'd like to laugh my way through this one (and I am!), but I guess we should point out this is a tension point (and probably an inevitability) when mainstream media tries to take on new audiences. Update: MNspeak goes bonkers over the incident.
monday
New Gawker blog just launched: Jezebel. It's pitching itself as the anti-women's-mag mag. From an email: "Jezebel's mission is to cover celebrity, sex, and fashion for women -- without airbrushing. Think of it as the sort of women's media property that could never see the light of day in traditional print because the big-name advertisers and the publishers who kowtow to them don't much like it when someone points out the vulgarity of a $2,000 handbag." Doy, the editors are hot.
thursday
The lawsuit against Wonkette from the Washingtonienne scandal has finally been dropped.
tuesday
Sarah Silverman is just about the only person you could put on the cover of Maxim's Hot 100 list that would cause me to link to it.
friday
In a four-part interview (1, 2, 3, 4) Michel Gondry interviews Charlotte Gainsbourg, in which they both speak English and it sounds ridiculously sexy. [via]
monday
10 of the Strangest (Non-Porn) Sex Scenes, including woman-on-duck (Howard the Duck), doll-on-doll (Bride of Chucky), everybody-on-everybody (Eyes Wide Shut), puppet-on-puppet (Team America), and more.
wednesday
Nick threw some of my quotes into his Valleywag post about the fall-out from last night's Justin.TV. I've been contending that the real protagonist of Justin.TV is not Justin -- it's actually the people of San Francisco. And when the camera went dark, it was like the inmates had taken over the asylum -- for a few hours, it was as though the audience was the show.
thursday
Wired.com redesigned. Pretty sexy.
saturday
Have I mentioned how weird it is to have your ex writing a sex column? Soon after I left Minneapolis, Alexis began writing Alexis on the Sexes for Vita.MN, the Strib's new alt-weekly tabloid/website (invented by Matt and Margaret, another ex, but now this is getting complicated). Lex's most recent column is on anal sex, which I'm just no-commenting myself away from by noting that this is rare fair for a medium-large daily. Savage love, indeed.
wednesday
As we get close to wrapping up lists 2006 (650+ lists and counting), here are the best lists of the past week: 100 most annoying things from Retrocrush, best of the web from Art Fag City, the art of science gallery from Princeton, the year in reality tv from Reality Blurred, the year in culture from Slate.com, top 12 online media stories from Cyberjournalist, top ad music from AdTunes, top sex toys from Fleshbot, top 5 lists from Comic Book Resources, top science stories from Discover, the year in games from Wired News, top 10 sex stories from San Francisco Chronicle, personalities of the year from Gawker, and a deluge of top 10s from Time.
friday
My mom sent me this article from home. I'll just give you the lede: "Prosecution of a case involving alleged sexual contact with a dead deer may hinge on the legal definition of the word 'animal'."
friday
Waxy on a Craigslist sex baiting prank and the the implications of privacy.
monday
Sorry about the Paris links, but I can't help myself: she now says she's had sex with two people in her life.
wednesday
"The sexual compatibility questionnaire is a way for you and your partner to discreetly and easily compare your sexual interests without any of the embarrassing chatter and looks that may come up by doing so in person."
wednesday
Paris Hilton is the new Morrissey! She's giving up sex for a year.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
ONLINE
The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.
The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.
TV
Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?
NEWS
Snakes on a plane! Snakes on a plane! (But real.)
FILM
Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.
Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.
Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.
Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.
T-SHIRTS
McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.
Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.
GAMES
So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.
BOOKS
Slate's JPod review.
MUSIC
Bjork in Street Fighter.
SPORTS
Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.
sunday
BOOKS
Finally, a follow-up to my very old Amazon list "College Friends Who Punched Me," I have created "My Year As..." in response to the spate of recent books in which people do something (strip, change genders, read the encyclopedia, etc.) for a year. Let me know what's missing from the list.
ONLINE
Amazon's Most-Edited Wikis.
NYT Biz: Making money with MySpace. (Onion: New MySpace Security Measures infographic.)
Onion: iTunes To Sell You Your Home Videos For $1.99 Each.
Be honest, you spent your Sunday reading the Google/China NYT Mag story too.
TV
NYT (Itzkoff again) on Robert Smigel's upcoming SNL retrospective.
Full-length video on IFCtv.com: Behind The Badge (SXSW), with by Ben Brown of Consumating as the interactive lead.
Just when I began to think we had no modern cultural heros left, the Wonder Showzen guys come along.
MUSIC
Love the new Air video.
"Once you hear my audio demo, you'll just be blazed!"
Blender (on AOL?): The 50 Worst Things To Ever Happen To Music.
Smashing Pumpkins. Despite all my rage...
T-SHIRTS
I Facebooked Your Mom.
Please put your sexual picture in your weblog.
sunday
TV
Did you skip the Olympics to see the last two hours of Arrested Development? Thank you, TiVo. (The show finished fifth in ratings for the night -- after the Olympics, Dancing with the Stars, WWE's Friday Night Smackdown, and a Ghost Whisperer re-run. Go America!)
It was pretty good, but it's also a mystery why the Pamela Anderson roast is being released on DVD.
Biz Week: Can MTV Stay Cool?
DATING/SEX
TiVo is holding a Wishlist Mixer in San Fran. Dammit, I'm moving to the wrong city.
The editor of Modern Love give his stake on the state of love in contemporary America. I seem to disagree with half of it.
Mike Figgis made a short film, Tied up at the Office [not safe for the office], for lingerie peddlers Agent Provocateur. I get it as much as I got Demon Lover.
Found on Amazon: Pierced Attachable Nipples. C'mon, for real?
DESIGN
Design Megadeth's new logo!
T-SHIRTS
That controversial Mohammed cartoon has been turned into a t-shirt.
Cheney gun t-shirts already.
BOOKS
There was actually a book (Nic Kelman's 2003 novel, Girls) that had blurbs on it written by both James Frey and JT Leroy.
FILM
Kottke on Ebert on "hyperlink movies."
ONLINE
The Huffington Post's Contagious Film Festival is out. Meh. I wonder if the Gawker one will be better.
Which internet company is the least willing to provide financial information about itself? Not Google -- it's Amazon.
NYT has does a quick story with examples of searches on the new Google.cn.
Google, cover of Time. Blah, blah.
ART
On made-to-order artwork for offices.
MUSIC VIDEOS
I don't care what you say, these last few Madonna vids have been good. Her new video for "Sorry" has more street dancing, this tine looking like crumping-meets-Barbarella-meets-Mad-Max.
Night! Of! Fire!
tuesday
Although I'll continue to add lists as they come in, it looks like List of Lists: 2005 is winding down. As a final punctuating coda to the year, here are my Top 20 Lists of 2005:
1) Mug Shots Of The Year from The Smoking Gun
2) Top 100 People from USA Today's Pop Candy
3) The Year In Ideas from New York Times Magazine
4) 100 Most Annoying Things from Retro Crush
5) The Best Links from Kottke.org
6) Top Viral Videos from iFilm
7) Top 20 Public Domain Files from Public Domain Torrents
8) Year In Review from Week In Review
9) 100 Most Annoying People from Am I Annoying
10) The Year In Swag from The Onion A/V Club
11) Top 50 Music Videos from DoCopenhagen
12) The Year In Corrections from Regret The Error
13) Top 10 Baby Names from Babycenter
14) 10 Sexiest Geeks from Wired News
15) Best Cast & Dogs from Dogster / Catster
16) Words of the Year from Merriam-Webster's
17) Banished Words from Lake Superior State University
18) Google Zeitgeist from Google
19) 10 Grossest Things We Saw On TV from Entertainment Weekly
20) Top Cryptozoology Stories from Loren Coleman
wednesday
FILM
The trailer to Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette looks almost like a parody music video.
TV
NYT Styles tries to convince you that men like Neanderthal TV.
Rocketboom is now available on TiVo. (Lookie, Amanda in the Times.)
Season Seven of The Simpsons came out on DVD yesterday. And so did Season Two of Miami Vice.
SEX
The teaser on the print edition of this NYT story was "Pamela Rogers Turner was 28; her lover, or victim, 13. Discuss." I've had about a dozen conversations recently about these cases.
ONLINE
Yeah, you know already: Yahoo bought del.icio.us.
Adam Penenberg used to write a column at Wired News, but has moved over the Slate where he's done a couple great piece on Apple/iTunes/iPod: Apple's Next Move | The Right Price for Digital Music.
GAMES
#1 sign you're already too late on buying an xBox 360.
sunday
For those of you who read this site via RSS, I've launched the 2005 List of Lists page. (Previously: 2004 | 2003 | 2001.) As usual, email me if I'm missing something.
DATING
Is it true that Match.com had its employees go on bogus dates just to keep people subscribed to the service? And do they post faux-profiles that present flirtatious intent? Yes, according to a lawsuit...
New York Magazine has six sex columnists compare notes.
BOOKS
Not sure what this rebranding is about, but print.google.com has become books.google.com.
GalleyCat has an excellent first-hand account of last week's New York Public Library debate between Google and publishers groups. (Also in NYT.)
I didn't even realize that NYT gave Marjane Satrapi (the author of Persepolis) a blog which apparently illustrates her experience growing up in Iran. I say "apparently" because it's behind Time Select.
MUSIC
The only good thing about reissues is getting to read contemporary rock critics on classics. Pitchfork, somewhat surprisingly, rolls out a 10.0 for Springsteen's Born To Run 30th Anniversary Edition.
CELEBRITY
Google Maps + Celebrity Addresses = Celebrity-Maps.com
PHILOSOPHY
Deborah Solomon calls up Jean Baudrillard for an interview in the Sunday Times Mag. Peculiar answers.
TV
Did you hear about this supposed reality show where contestants will be tricked into believing they're in outer space!? (via)
FILM
The trailer to some crazy ass shit that Tarantino produced.
tuesday
MUSIC
Panopticist has the first music video shot entirely using cell phones, from the Presidents of the United States of America.
New Boards of Canada out today.
TV
NYT Mag: Chuck watches too much tv.
Don't have Current.TV but you'd like to see that Google Current thing? Then Google "Google Current" on Google Video.
ONLINE
IMDB is 15 years old.
Fortune has a long profile of BitTorrent.
You know about this already, but I need to put it here for the archives: Yahoo Podcasts.
SEARCH
New blog search engine: Sphere.com.
New news search engine: Inform.com.
NEW BLOGS
Business Week has a new blog on media and advertising: Fine On Media.
Regina Lynn (the sex columnist at Wired News) has a blog.
Blogebrity relaunched.
PUBLISHING
The American Society of Magazine Editors chooses the top 40 covers of the past 40 years. Nice.
Congrats to Elizabeth on the book deal. Last week's Gawker drama was just too much.
TECH
NYT Mag's life hackers story does a good job of getting its arms around a complex topic, but I gotta believe that so much of this is still sci fi.
Time assembles a bunch of smart people to talk about technology.
monday
TV
The new Danny Bonaduce show coming to VH1 in September sounds like the best celeb reality tv breakdown ever. Although the details about binge drinking, vicodin, and steroids might be the most interesting to some, I'm most enamored with the story about how he married his wife, the co-star of the show: drunk, on their first date, because she wouldn't have sex with him unless they were married. Awesome.
The first season of Lost came out on DVD today.
The NYT Mag cover story on Les Moonves is okay, but for its length, it left out several things, such as his tepid public relationship with Letterman (those are the only good episodes Letterman does anymore) and any crafting of how splitting up Viacom will affect CBS. For instance, look at something like Rock Star: INXS, which started on VH1 but eventually migrated over to CBS -- that kind of, er, synergy won't happen in a split-Viacom world.
If you still somehow don't have a TiVo, just follow Haughey's instructions on how to get paid to own one.
If you're a fan of Lost, I suggest The Lost Master Plan.
EW's Fall TV Preview is out. Unlike last year (Lost, Desperate Housewives, Veronica Mars), nothing looks great, except for maybe Martha Stewart's Apprentice.
MUSIC VIDEOS
Waxy.org says exactly what I think about the state of music videos online (and I've even thought about starting a business around this gripe). With Feist videos!
FILM
New Atom Egoyan, starring Kevin Bacon: Where The Truth Lies.
MUSIC
Who will be the first to sample Kanye's "George Bush doesn't care about black people"? Here's the video.
ONLINE
Ballmer: "I'm going to fucking kill Google." Heh.
WORDS
NYTBR wonders what happens to letters in the age of email.
monday
MEDIA
Somehow Newsweek got ahold of the Cooper/Rove emails, and Isikoff says that Rove was the source but probably didn't knowingly reveal Plame's name. Dude, I've tried that excuse so many times, and she's never bought it....
On The Media has a decent piece (audio) starring Clay Shirky on Wikipedia's coverage of the London bombing.
Did you see who's replacing Howard Stern? The '80s are truly back.
The New York Observer redesigned their website, which needed it very badly.
ROOFTOPS
You know already these two things about me: 1) I hate New Yorkers who talk about their stupid rooftop parties (I even said so on Rocketboom), and 2) the Sunday NYT Styles section makes me reach for the revolver. Put those together and you get The High Life. That sound you hear is a growl.
BLOGS
PostSecret.com.
File under: blogs will eat themselves. The guy who started Gawkerist is now the new editor Gridskipper.
ONLINE
Can't Find On Google (dot-com).
Amazon.com is 10 years old. USA Today did an interview with Bezos, and NYT gave him a (mildly negative) full-length profile.
TV
Hooking Up, which is sort of reality-tv-meets-documentary look at online dating, premieres this Thursday on ABC. NYT has a quick interview with the director.
GAMES
NYT on the making of the Godfather videogame.
MUSIC
Mash-up: White Stripes + Jay-Z.
The Scotsman likes the new Franz Ferdinand tracks.
Sexy album covers.
MUSIC VIDEOS
Kayne West's new video looks like one of those a Flash intro screen for one of those "design your house" websites.
T-SHIRTS
"Hey, Aren't We Friends on My Space?"
CELEBS
Tom Cruise Is Nuts (dot-com).
sunday
ONLINE MEDIA
The L.A. Times has pulled down Wikitorial (announced here and touted and denounced in many places).
MSN is hiring bloggers.
In the past, you needed a RealOne subscription to watch video on CNN.com. Starting today, you no longer do.
MSNBC.com teases its redesign.
I have been ignoring the debate about whether Google is a media company (such absolutist categorical thinking -- similar to "are bloggers journalists?" -- bores me), but here's NYT mentioning it in their "What's Online" column, which is clearly struggling at this point.
MUSIC VIDS
Forget those wannabes, here's the real deal: Nancy Sinatra's "The Boots Were Made For Walking" (1966).
TECH
Microsoft is developing a BitTorrent alternative.
I have no idea why everyone is surprised that Google is developing a PayPal rival. The second that Google Video was announced, it was an obvious step (and Google Print will likely be next).
YouTube. It appears to be Flickr for video... and I think it's new. At the same time, Vimeo has moved out of beta.
SHOES & TEES
Custom M.I.A. Reeboks.
Gimme.
WORDS
Dave Eggers issues a "small correction" on Neal Pollack's strange essay in NYTBR.
AUDIO
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speach.
Sexy podcasts.
MUSIC
The Onion A.V. Club presents this mixlist of highlights from moments when gaming and music collide.
tuesday
WORDS
Awesome: List of fictional curse words.
Common Errors in English.
McSweeney's: Pickup Lines: The First Drafts.
Random House: Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers Contest.
ONLINE
Best CNN.com homepage ever.
Best TV promo ever.
First indication [?] of who's behind Blogebrity.
I haven't been following Podcasting on this site, but I found it odd that TV Guide is now podcasting.
MUSIC
That immensely annoying frog song is at the top of the British charts.
Kaleefa Sanneh sings the praises of the new White Stripes.
New releases today: A Bjork remix and covers album, a new Oasis (which is getting a surprising amount of attention), and a new Smog.
New Yorker: The Record Effect.
In Spin, Chuck dissects music genres. "IDM: This is an acronym for 'Intelligent Dance Music.' Really. No, really. I'm serious. This is what they call it. Really."
Nerve.com: Sex Advice from Accordion Players.
TV
The first and second seasons of Moonlighting came out on DVD today.
TVsquad interviews Kendra from The Apprentice, who will be heading down to Palm Beach to oversee construction of a new Trump mansion, and according to this Palm Beach Post story, taking a salary cut.
FILM
New Wallace & Gromit trailer.
A lucious six-flick Steve McQueen box set came out today. Makes me want to watch Bullitt right now.
Oliver Stone Arrested on Drug, DUI Charges.
MEDIA
Are you reading NYT's series on Class? Here's a fun interactive graphic showing how much class you have.
Kurt Andersen thinks Radar looks just a wee bit like another magazine from the '80s.
BOOKS
Bookforum: Pynchon From A to V.
NYT Styles this week looks at the glut of sex-themed books, which I won't say a thing about because I know at least two girls writing these.
I don't know if anyone is reading Umberto Eco's new book, but here's a profile of him in the Telegraph.
Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat.
monday
TV
Time catches up with David Chapelle in South Africa.
It would appear that Arrested Development did not get axed.
MTV: Pimp My Trailer.
NBC's upcoming summer shows. Meh.
MUSIC VIDEOS
New Hot Hot Heat, directed by DNA's Marc Webb.
CONSUMPTION
Levi's new campaign: metrosexuality + naked GI Joe's + opera.
ONLINE
In something you just don't expect to see in your Sunday Times, James Fallows writes about Ajax, Flash, and other asynchronous internet strategies.
After leaving San Jose Mercury News, Dan Gillmor has started his first project: Bayosphere.
MUSIC
Own the audio to the shows you saw last summer: Pixiesdiscs.com.
Look, Nobody Cares That You're a DJ.
LOCAL
Over on MNspeak, we track every local reference on the new Hold Steady album and connect the Blu Dots.
monday
Many of you have written to ask why I haven't said a word about Tina Fey's baby announcement. Yes, okay, I am a little upset that she didn't tell me first. Now that the humiliation is out there, let's check in with the scary & sexy nerds known as the blogosphere:
INTERNET/SEX
Nerve.com does Sex Advice From Bloggers. They never asked, but my answer to "What's the best way to get a blogger to go home with you?" would have been "tell him he looks hotter in real life than in that weird picture on the blog."
In Wired News, Regina Lynn take a look at HighJoy, a melding of dating, chat, and teledildonics.
FILM
New blog: Posterwire, a movie poster blog.
WORDS
They'll let anyone write a book nowadays... even fictional characters.
How Google is conquering TLS's Author Author quiz.
DESIGN
Amazon.com is trying to clean up the way they look -- no more infinite tabs.
MEDIA
File under: New York Post is doomed. Google is developing an algorithm for determining quality in news.
Unless you're in the creepy parts of the blogosphere, you don't see people linking to The Nation much anymore. But there's a decent story on the challenges that Al Gore's new network, Current, faces.
TV
Did anyone see the last episode of Wonder Showzen? The theme was patience, and until half-way through the show, the joke was that everything was going to be drawn out to stupidity. It was as funny as tedious gets. Then the second half of the show was the entire first half of the show played in reverse. There hasn't been anything this weird on tv since Andy Kaufman.
The TV News Drinking Game.
MUSIC
Video of New Order performing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on Jimmy Kimmel's show.
NPR interviews Ian MacKaye about his new band, The Evens, which sounds surprisingly like a lot of Twin Cities bands.
SHOES
New book: Sneakers: The Complete Collectors' Guide.
LOCAL
Over on MNspeak, we've got news about the only two world-famous Minnesota Jews: Tom Friedman and Al Franken. (I know, I know, Dylan is sometimes Jewish too. But he doesn't write or call home anymore.)
monday
TECH
Can you imagine getting a text from the Vatican saying the Pope died? TTYL.
The best part about this Google piece in Newsweek is where Google claims they just "forgot" to put ads on Google News. Uh-huh.
REALITY ENTERTAINMENT
I fell for Best Week Ever's joke on Friday. In the recurring segment "Who's having the best week ever?" they name-checked Frantina Dulee. I was Googling her name 30 seconds into the segment, but by the end it was obvious she's, duh, not a real person.
The interesting proposition in this Chicago Tribune piece is that while sports has become increasingly scripted, entertainment has become increasingly competitive.
MUSIC VIDEOS
Cool pop & lock video: Futureshock's "Late At Night".
Bloc Party did a second (and better) video for "Banquet."
The new Moby video is peculiarly Flaming Lipsish.
New Interpol video: "C'mere".
The new Weezer album isn't out until May, but here's a video for "Beverly Hills", filmed at the Playboy mansion.
FASHION
John Malkovich has started a clothing line. If it weren't $70, I might buy this tee.
DATING
TrueDater.com is a date-rating service. That's right, people who frequent date sites are reviewed as though they were Amazon.com books. I feel so violated. [Via a Wired News column.]
In a review of The Hookup Handbook, NYT Styles tries to explain girls who aren't into relationships and aren't into casual sex either. I don't know where the hell these girls live (New York, you say? Never heard of it), but it sure is nice to have an article lying around that provides a definition of hookup.
GAMES
NYT has a nice profile of New Games Journalism, which includes a link to the manifesto.
John Woo to direct and The Rock to star in the Katamari Demacy film. What the hell with this script look like? Like Super Mario Bros. minus the brothers? Stupid April 1.
DRINK
Moby released a book about tea and shit last week.
Google's April Fool's drink: Google Gulp.
Not a joke: Kabbalah Energy Drink.
ART
It seems odd that NYT Mag did a long Murakami profile without a news peg, but it's not bad at using otaku as a means to talk about Japan. (Previous profile in Wired.)
LOCAL
KSTP and Star-Tribune fell for an April Fool's gag claiming that a Three's Company remake was coming to St. Paul.
Lookie! A school for strippers, right in our backyard.
thursday
STRANGELY FAMOUS
I would do anything to make NY Press' 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers (which mentions the word "blog" 19 times -- hoorah!). Well, except move to New York.
Wikipedia's list of most sexually active popes. To make that list, I'd even move to New York.
FOOD
You see this new BK Enormous Omelet? 730 calories, 47 grams of fat -- more than a whopper. Delish, I'm sure.
GAMES
New Sony PSP advert featuring Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out."
MUSIC
As Greg said, Bjork and Matthew Barney are the last people on the planet you'd expect to live in New Jersey. And yet...
David Byrne's online radio station.
TV
No popup ads on my TiVo yet, but I'm ready to be pissed off too....
BOOKS
Cheney's daughter is writing a memoir.
BLOGGERS
This is the weirdest dot-com news we've seen in quite some time. Arianna Huffington is starting something called The Huffington Report, a culture and politics webzine that will have a group blog with a strange cast of characters: Larry David, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Vernon Jordan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tina Brown, and more.
FILM
Thank god Courtney Love is back. She will be playing Linda Lovelace in a biopic.
SCIENCE
This New Scientist article was a fun read: 13 Things that Do Not Make Sense. Includes the placebo effect, dark matter, and cold fusion.
Slate reviews Make, which I have to confess I had a very hard time reading, and I'm probably the market demo.
LOCAL
To coincide with the smoking ban, City Pages did a printable guide to the only remaining smoker bars in the Twin Cities (all in St. Paul, of course).
Wow, that Strib story on punk rock glasses sure was fun, eh? I'm not going to say anything more than that because I see all the people in this story around Uptown, and I don't want any of them to punch me and break my non-retro glasses.
CP's music writing sure ain't slowing down with Missy Miss flying the coop. First off, Julianne Shepherd calls Beck's newest album his best ever. Whoa there, cowboy! And then there are Bridgette's and Lindsey's nice SXSW accounts, parts of which I got to see with them.
wednesday
This Is Not Really A Review Of Soul Asylum's After The Flood. And While We're At It, Please Ignore Any Perceived Attempts To Compare A Natural Disaster To A Music Scene, Because That's Just Silly.
Even though we naturally resist reducing our lives to simple anecdotes, we all have had one momentous event happen to us that comes to completely summarize our life, typify our personality, or recapitulate the rest of our existence. You might try to deny this, but I'll call you a liar, because most of the time you are like me and resent that this event happened against your will.
My event was a flood, and then a fire.
You probably have a fleeting memory of the flood and fire that hit Grand Forks, ND, in 1997. Maybe you remember the famous picture of an apocalyptic downtown, or perhaps the "Come Hell And High Water" headline on the daily paper, or possibly President Bill Clinton coming to town and crying on live television (Monica notwithstanding, the only time that has ever happened).
For you, this is a scrap from the memory dustbin of natural disasters (although maybe a prominent one -- for two nights in a row, it was the lead story on all three networks' nightly news). For me, it completely changed my life in ways that I still feel I have no control of. Even as I type this, I'm resisting the urge to tell you the story -- I've told it so many times that it now seems like taking advantage of a community's tragedy. So let's modernize the story by reducing it to bullet points under the heading "Strange Things that Happened to Me Because of the Flood and Fire of 1997":
Near the geographical center of North America, a scary stat. The largest evacuation of an American city in the 20th century -- over 50,000 people -- was foisted upon this little town in the Midwest when a dike broke in the Spring of 1997 and flooded 90 percent of the town.
I was rescued from my apartment by the coast guard when a downtown building caught on fire in the middle of a flood. Firemen couldn't put out the fire because they couldn't get to it -- there was six feet of water in the street.
I watched my apartment burn down live on CNN. I was positioned about a half-mile away, so I could see the flames in real time, but I could also glance up at the tv that was beaming it to me from a helicopter that could be seen on the horizon.
Within hours, I was interviewed by Time, NPR, the New York Times, the Star-Tribune, and many of publications I've long forgotten. My story was resonant because I had stayed behind during the flood despite a city-wide decree of mandatory evacuation. There are now three books in print that contain parts of my narrative.
I won a Pulitzer prize. Actually, the Knight-Ridder-owned paper I worked at won the Pulitzer for community service, but I have a very nice certificate because the website that I managed was given "special notation" for using the internet in a unique way. (To this day, no other website has been mentioned in a Pulitzer award.) Even though the press burned down, they never missed an issue of the paper, which was printed out of the Pioneer Press plant.
I received $2,000 from the heiress to the McDonald's fortune. Joan Kroc donated money to the city that was divvied up into $2,000 endowments to nearly every resident.
I did two different video reenactment shows. Late at night on the Discovery channel, you can still occasionally see me recreating my escape from the fiery inferno -- easily the funniest re-enacted tragedy ever put on television.
Soul Asylum played the prom. Of all the strange events that happened, this somehow seemed the most otherworldly.
"Hi, welcome to, uh, the prom," were the first words Dave Pirner gave the teenagers that night almost eight years ago. I remember his intonation perfectly -- it was the line that began my live review for the local alt-weekly at the time.
+++++++++++++++++
This is where this story should end, and I should be banned from talking about any of this ever again. But then (you didn't see this coming?), completely by accident, while dumpster diving the used bin at Cheapo Records in Minneapolis, I happened upon After The Flood: Live From The Grand Forks Prom, June 28, 1997, which I instantly assumed was an obscure bootleg. But apparently Capital released the show earlier this year as a live album. It seems no one really noticed -- including me, and probably you.
There's Pirner again, sounding even more bemused than before: "Hi, welcome to, uh, the prom," just before launching into Alice Cooper's "School's Out," which has never made a group of kids more happy than it did that night at the Grand Forks Air Force Base (the school gymnasium -- and most of the city -- was still in post-flood disrepair). You see, we kids in the hinterlands probably never experienced Soul Asylum quite like you wise city folk. Even though they were beginning their descent from fame by this time, in our minds Soul Asylum was still the band the Village Voice dubbed "the best live band in America." We all knew and repeated this phrase all the time, even though we had nothing to compare this to, other than a guess that they sounded better than the Bad Company show at the Civic Center.
Soul Asylum plays the prom? It seemed an inconceivable fairy tail -- like a story about losing everything you ever owned in a fire that couldn't be extinguished because of too much water.
+++++++++++++++++
Although people like to say that music is best when it evokes certain memories from your life, it's a completely different scenario when a musician is literally attempting to elicit a specific memory out of you. After The Flood is packed with these moments, which is why it's nearly impossible for me to tell you whether this is a good album or not. It's just too strangely historical and personal, at the same time. When the line about "drama queens" in the hit "Misery" is changed to "prom queens," I'm not sure whether to grin or grimace. And in "Black Gold," the lines "This flat land used to be a town" and "This place just makes me feel sad inside" are intoned with such heart-felt anguish that I want to find somebody to shove.
But here's what I'll concede: the album perfectly captures that time and place, both in Grand Forks and where alternative culture was at the moment -- coming off a exhilarating and infuriating high that probably never should have been.
And what would a prom be without covers? There were strange ones: "Tracks Of My Tears" (the Smokey Robinson song about a dealing with a breakup) and "I Know" (the 1995 Dionne Farris hit that you instantly know when you hear it). Throw in Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now," and Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" -- you've got yourself the strangest cover set the prom has ever seen. All of them are on the album.
+++++++++++++++++
Here's the weird thing: this is the only Soul Asylum record I own now. Before the flood, I had all of them. For reasons that seem vaguely unjust, every Replacements record eventually made it back in to the collection after the flood. So did all those little Husker Du's. And you can't live 'round here without the Prince oeuvre.
But Soul Asylum is left as a sad memory of commercialization gone bad -- a big sparkly burst of popularity followed by dismissal and anonymity. Would it be trite for me to say that last sentence is also a fair description of both the entire '90s alt-rock scene and my little college town? Perhaps. But I know two communities who synchronously lived through a burst of fame, and at least one wasn't so sad to see it go.
+++++++++++++++++
Links:
Soul Asylum's After The Flood on Amazon.
Flood Stage And Rising on Amazon.
Red River Rising on Amazon.
Voices from the Flood on Amazon
Archive of the story on CNN.com.
Bill Clinton's Speech.
thursday
MUSIC
It seems Pazz & Jop comes out later every year. Everyone knew Kayne would win, but Brian Wilson and Loretta Lynn coming in next was a surprise. Plus Green Day and U2 in the top 10 makes this the most conservative P&J that I can remember. The ballots.
Lessig on Wilco.
Smoosh, a shockingly good indie rock band consisting of two sisters, ages 10 and 12. Album and samples on Amazon. [via Waxy]
MUSIC VIDEOS
Another Beck video: "Black Tambourine". Is he planning to do a video for every damn song on the new album?
ONLINE
Video from Vloggercon is now available.
Salon.com looks closely at 43 Things, which is funded by Amazon.
Friendster added a chatting service (one-to-one chat, like IM). I have no idea if this will save the company, but I suddenly have a bunch of friends using it.
IPOD
Sirius is trying (and failing) to hook up with the iPod.
GAMES
Alex Garland (28 Days Later) is pegged to do the movie version of Halo 2. Ridley Scott was rumored before. [via greg.org]
TV
Marcia Cross: not gay. And a good thread tracking the rumor.
Onion A/V: Interview with Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development. At the same time, bad news for the show.
Questions Frequently Asked About TiVo, Answered by Someone Who Loves TiVo Too Much. "Is TiVo male or female?"
NY Observer: The SNL Skit That Paris Hilton Wouldn't Do. What's she got against Joey Buttafuoco?
Cory at Lost Remote has some ideas on how to fix tv for our demographic. Includes ideas sampled from Fark, reality tv, and viral marketing.
WORDS
Neal Stephenson in Reason.
ART
A Yahoo Slideshow for a Lucien Freud painting (it's of a pregnant Kate Moss).
MEDIA
After its first profitable quarter ever, Dave Talbot is leaving Salon.
Paris Hilton is on the cover of Playboy, but her publicist says, "I don't even know where they got that photo." Is this a first for Playboy -- throwing a celeb on the cover without having pictures inside? The cover story -- "25 Sexiest Celebrites" -- seems like a shift toward a Maxim audience.
LOCAL
CityPages.com redesigned. What do I think? Well, let's just say I think they're under-playing what people want from a site like this: daily content. Too much "cover story think" for the wrong medium. Editor's note.
I guess MPLS Happy Hour wasn't enough -- we also got Thrifty Hipster.
Ross reports that The Current has started airing "Sounds Eclectic," the KCRW show which everyone cites as "what Minneapolis really needs."
Guess who's #1 on ESPN.com's Top 10 Overpaid Players? Spreeeeeeweelllll!
KARE11 did a long piece (5+ mins) on the power of blogs. They actually use the word "information superhighway" in the video.
tuesday
GOOGLE
Someone slow them down. Just launched: Google Maps.
Kottke noticed that Google switched their Dictionary.com link to an Answers.com link. (How does he always noticed things like this before anyone else?)
Wanna buy an internet company? About.com is for sale. Bidders include: Google, Yahoo, NYT, and AOL.
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
CNN just reported that Marcia Cross is a lesbian. She will come out in The Advocate, and apparently her character (Bree Van De Camp) will come out on the show.
The DVD version of Desperate Housewives will probably include some nudity and stuff.
SEX + VEGETARIANS
The PETA Super Bowl advert that was rejected.
Vegan Sex Shop (dot-com).
MUSIC
Banned 50 Cent video. I can't believe MTV won't air orgies.
FILM
Waxy's annual investigation into the Oscar-nominated films leaked onto the internet.
Wired News reviews the documentary 24 Hours on Craiglist (trailer), which chronicles the outcome of more than 80 craigslist postings from a single day.
ONLINE
Economist: The economics of sharing.
Interview with Stewart Butterfield on Flickr.
MARKETING
Business 2.0: MTV2's Two-Headed Dog Isn't Paper-Trained.
TV
If you missed Rumsfeld on Meet the Press last week, you missed quite a doozy. Lisa Rein has it.
LOCAL
Malcolm Gladwell is reading tonight at the Edina Barnes and Noble at 7:30.
wednesday
ONLINE
WaPo introduces new vlogging software called Vlog It. Looks interesting. (Sidenote: have we already reached a consensus to call it vlogging?)
New site: Mappr. Uses Flickr API to map out recently uploaded photos.
DESIGN
VillageVoice.com has redesigned. I like the colors, but not the double-horizontal subnav. It's unfortunate that the blog component got bumped over to the far-left rail.
TV
You watch Arrested Development, right? Of course you do, but did you know that Portia de Rossi is shacking with Ellen DeGeneres right now? Of course you did, but did you know that Will Arnett is married to Amy Poehler? Of course you did. Nevermind then.
Because of the timely intersection of three things -- new year's prognostications, last week's CES, and the ascendency of vlogging -- everyone is talking about The Future of Television. It's impossible to link to all the buzz-buzzing right now, but here are a couple: Buzzmachine has a post on how to explode your tv in four easy steps and The Long Tail has one about distribution models. And there's Steven Johnson reflecting on what he wrote in Emergence. As always, LostRemote has a constant flow or related links.
Diablo Cody writes about Project Runway, my current fave show. I love it when Heidi Klum pushes the losers off the stage with an Auf Wiedersehen that has twice the gravitas of Trump's You're Fired.
MUSIC
The sheet music to Super Mario Brothers.
Sasha in The New Yorker: When I'm Sixty-Four.
MEDIA
Letterman: Top Ten Proposed Changes At CBS News.
OJR has a good roundup of the business and legal complexities of the online distribution of the homemade tsunami video.
NYTimes.com sent out its most-viewed stories of 2004 via email. Here's the list:
- Magazine: The Girls Next Door (January 25)
- Magazine: Without a Doubt (October 17)
- Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad (August 20)
- Movie Review | 'Fahrenheit 9/11': Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, but Not a Lot (June 23)
- Frank Rich: On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide (November 14)
- Iraq Videotape Shows the Decapitation of an American (May 12)
- How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence (October 3)
- Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq (October 25)
- Editorial: John Kerry for President (October 17)
- How Scientists and Victims Watched Helplessly (December 31)
Interesting that two magazine stories top the list, and it includes one movie review and one editorial.
LOCAL
According to CP, TCF Bank pulled advertising from the Star Tribune after the Nick Coleman column that criticized the blog Power Line.
CP blurb on the Ron Jeremy appearance.
Add Mark Cuban to the people complaining about Randy Moss.
saturday
PaidContent.org asked people for 2005 digital media predictions, which caused me to write this futuristic sentence:
"We all have the regrettable responsibility to act like some weird hybrid of embedded reporter and reality TV star."
The responses are here, and what I wrote is below:
What's the most important development in digital media and entertainment that actually will occur in 2005?
1) Content will continue to unbundle itself.
I have no idea what night The Apprentice airs -- I'm not even sure which network it's on. All I know is that every Friday night this past year, my friends would gather around the TiVo and lovingly poke fun at Donald Trump's hair. Whether it was iTunes or RSS or TiVo, this was the digital media lesson of '04: content has no natural brand identity. Marketers try to force "brand" on it while journalists try to force "narrative" on it, but content will continue to shed these mucky add-ons and proceed toward its natural state: pure information.
2) The line between communication and publishing will continue to be less distinct.
In the world of nano-publishing, traditional concepts like communication (one-to-one) and publishing (one-to-many) become blurry propositions. All signs point to this breakdown of public and private: websites that aggregate and organize personal content into social threads (Flickr, Bloglines, del.icio.us), private moments becoming major entertainment experiences (reality TV, celeb sex tapes), communication technologies that make online relations both more personal and more anonymous at the same time (VoIP, LiveJournal), personal media devices creating global news events (Abu Ghraib prisoner photos taken with a cell phone, tsunami video recorded on handhelds bought at Best Buy), and the rise of blogger personalities who review digital media devices next to their dating problems (ahem). What does this mean for digital media? It means the content stars of 2005 will come from the least likely places. And we all have the regrettable responsibility to act like some weird hybrid of embedded reporter and reality TV star.
3) Media will continue to be manipulated.
This might have been the biggest lesson I learned from working on NBC's website for the summer Olympics this past year: media manipulation is the message. One single piece of video, for instance, could be use for infinite purposes: online streaming, still photos, audio slideshows, images distributed to cell phones, interactive Flash apps, redistribution to TiVos, repackaging as highlight reels... the list goes on and on. In digital entertainment, some of the most exciting events this year were media manipulations: Danger Mouse's Gray Album (which was Entertainment Weekly's album of the year), Strangerhood (machinima of The Sims characters), and MTV's Video Mods (video games plus rock stars). In 2005, media hybrids will become so normative you'll hardly even think to call them that.
What one thing that would make a difference in digital media or entertainment would you most want to see happen in 2005?
- Interoperability among digital music standards.
- At least one media outlet uses BitTorrent as a distribution model.
- At least one major company adapts Creative Commons instead of the increasingly archaic copyright laws now in places.
- Microsoft puts an RSS reader in Outlook or IE.
TV Industry predictions?
- CNN won't lose Tucker.
- Someone will buy TiVo, but it won't be Apple.
- Two or three citizen journalist sites will launch. Critical praise will be high; growth will be slow at first, but pick up by the end of the year.
- Apple won't make a video iPod. Portable Media Devices will struggle, but not die.
- Video search will surprise everyone and be a big success early in 2005.
- Michael Powell will torture a few more people, then retire.
- Netflix will either merge with TiVo, or be bought by Blockbuster.
thursday
CELEB
On Gawker today, I played Santa to the celebs of 2004.
TV
Found online: Desperate Housewives T-Shirts. Including I ♥ Bree and Sex in the Suburbs.
ONLINE
Waxy has gathered an amazing collection of first-person videos from the Asian tsunami.
Question posed on Ask.Metafilter: Have you ever dated a Suicide Girl?
Long L.A. Times story on Iraqi bloggers.
FUTURE OF MEDIA
Great Future Tense interview (RealAudio) with Matt Thompson about EPIC, a vision of a personlized media source that aggregates newspapers, blogs, and social networks.
Business Week on vlogs here and here. I think we'll see scads of new video bloggers in 2005, and maybe even a celebrity or two arise out of the movement. There's now also Vloggercon 2005.
Terry Heaton on 2005: A Year of Trouble for Broadcasters.
Business 2.0 predictions.
ACADEMIA
NYT tries to grapple with the age-old newspaper look at MLA by getting all meta about it: Eggheads' Naughty Word Games. Fave paper titles this year: "t.A.T.u. You! The Global Politics of Faux Lesbian Pop" and "'Dude! Your Dress Is So Cute!' Patterns of Semantic Widening in 'Dude'."
Count me (and apparently many others in the media) among those who had no idea Susan Sontag was shacking with Annie Leibovitz for many years.
MUSIC
My pals Ross [Pioneer Press] and Melissa [City Pages] did a great episode of MPR's Midmorning (RealAudio) where they discuss their favorite albums of the year.
Steve Perry Fan Fic. Scary.
LOCAL
This has all sorts of potential: Slanderous Minneapolis, which is basically a "Minneapolis Gawker." The author appears to be anonymous.
In one of those battles you wouldn't mind if everyone dies, Nick Coleman goes after the Power Line guys.
Over at 89.3, it looks like the new station will be doing artist interviews. Could this end up being our own little KCRW?
tuesday
Before anyone tries to talk you into uttering senseless historical inanities, let's just clear this up: 2004 was not "The Year of the Blog." This was not the year of Howard Dean's bold online campaign, nor was it the year of dismantling Trent Lott. It wasn't even the year of the Paris Hilton tape. That was all last year, and while we have plenty to celebrate about '04, it's best to approach the past 365 days wearing a new look: maturity. In other words, this was the year blogs grew up.
Don't mistake that assessment as a suggestion that blogs are slipping into a rheumatic slumber. To be sure, it was a good year, one in which we (may I use the royal first person?) booted a tiresome TV anchor, sparred with the FCC, pre-reported Ken Jennings' demise, and discovered an entire radical music movement. Excellent work, and that's not even counting the intrepid analysis of Tara Reid's nipple.
But this was a landmark year for independent publishers not so much because of Lewinsky-size scoops, but because the internet came into its own as a medium for experiencing news events. Think about it -- look how many events didn't necessarily happen first online, but seemed to exist because of the blogosphere. The moments that best defined culture in '04 -- the best political debate (Jon Stewart pouncing on Crossfire), the best sex media scandal (Bill O'Reilly raping a falafel), the best TV moment (Janet exposing a Super Bowl nipple), and the best music video (Ashlee Simpson lip synching on SNL) -- were all probably delivered to you via blogger keystrokes. These media events all somehow felt, if you will, "internety" -- somewhat like how Jon Stewart's Daily Show has that intangible quality that makes it feel like television's version of a blog.
In other words, 2004 was the year we became the medium that mattered.
Last year, while giving the numero uno slot to Howard Dean's Blog For America, I wrote a now-embarrassing blurb which said, "When Dean wins in November, Joe Trippi will take a post in the administration that completely alters the way communities and governments function." Mm-hm. In an attempt to correct that gaffe and atone for the mistakes of the past year (and to prove that blogs are more than a collection of celeb up-skirt shots), here are the Best Blogs of 2004:
1) Buzz Machine. It's almost a shame that Jeff Jarvis' blog had to become the most important read of the year. After Janet's nipple kicked off the revised culture wars in January, the tension seemed to build all year, right up to a foreboding red-blue November. All along the way, Jarvis was there warning us of what was coming. When the FCC started tossing around fines faster than Howard Stern's tongue can move, Jarvis (who was the creator of Entertainment Weekly and now heads Condé Nast's internet strategy) became suspicious of some claims and filed a Freedom of Information Act request (actual reporting! bloggers beware!), which revealed the number of complaints had been greatly exaggerated. One show (FOX's Married by America) turned out to have received considerably less than the 159 complaints that the FCC reported. "Considerably less," as in three. An indefatigable Jarvis went on to critique other FCC mistakes, all of which seemed like a prescient glimpse into the news that Howard Stern would move to Sirius radio. Deriding Michael Powell as the "National Nanny," Jarvis slipped onto the talk show circuit, regularly appearing on the cable news networks to denounce the direction American media control was headed. For being a spokesman against cultural censorship (and for helping spread the word into Iran and Iraq), Buzz Machine is my blog of the year.
2) Wonkette. Dear Wonkette, I am responding to your personal on Craigslist seeking a "submissive Jim McGreevey swallower willing to do an 'Anderson Cooper 360' on my puckered red-state ass." It took forever to write that faux-sentence, and it's not even funny. Wonkette could have spit out a better one faster than you can say "Joe Lockhart is drunk again." By the end of the year, our little foul-mouthed Dorothy-Parker-resurrect was appearing on Tina Brown's show, being invited to online news conventions, and getting handed a quarter-mill book advance -- yet Ana Marie Cox never shied from her role as Media Deprofessionalizer in Chief. For frisking the DC wonks, Wonkette is the #2 blog of the year.
3) DailyKos. Whereas Wonkette is one person's personality spread like mayo over the entire political scene, DailyKos is more like the perfect sandwich -- a whole community that is greater than the sum of its parts. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga didn't actually uncover too many political stories this year -- but he created a community that did. Just some of the little political stories created by DailyKos readers: 1) A famous Bush print ad containing additional military personnel Photoshopped into the background was discovered by DailyKos users, which led to a Bush administration apology. 2) During the vice-presidential debate, Dick Cheney claimed that he had never met his rival, John Edwards, but a DailyKos participant found TV footage to the contrary, which was eventually aired on cable news networks to much embarrassment to Cheney. 3) A boycott of Sinclair advertisers to protest the airing of an anti-Kerry documentary caused the broadcasting group's stock to tank, and forced the company to adjust the broadcast. Along the way, DailyKos also raised a half-million dollars for Democratic political candidates. For foreseeing how political campaigns will be run in the future, DailyKos is the #3 blog of the year.
4) Waxy.org. Waxy proves that in the blogosphere, discovery trumps invention any day. Way back in February, Andy Baio posted the first links to DJ/Producer Danger Mouse's notorious Gray Album, which consisted completely of music sampled from Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatles' White Album. Of course the cease-and-desist letters showed up immediately, but it was too late -- mirror sites popped up everywhere, Gray Tuesday was launched, and the word "mash-up" suddenly entered the lexicon of the Newsweek-reading crowd. Last year, Waxy.org discovered the Star Wars kid; this year his link to NickNolteDiary.com triggered a debate about the relationship of celebrity and blogging. Waxy for President! For forcing the nation to confront its archaic copyright laws, Waxy.org is the #4 blog of the year.
5) Power Line. Who the hell saw this one coming? Who could have predicted that a cadre of right-wing bloggers out in Apple Valley, MN, would drastically change the course of media history? It was so simple: download and analyze the documents that CBSNews.com posted to support the 60 Minutes piece on George Bush's military record. That little act (along with some assistance from other blogger sleuths such as LGF) changed Dan Rather's life forever, and landed Power Line Time's first Blog of the Year award. For showing that truth in reporting matters more than any political ethos, Power Line is the #5 blog of the year.
6) BoingBoing. The subtitle, "A Directory of Wonderful Things," pretty much sums up BoingBoing's run of hits in '04. From Jack Chick tracts to rogue taxidermists, Japanese fetish objects to "I fucked Alec Baldwin in the ass" stickers, Asimov to Zelda -- BoingBoing collected every piece of esoterica you missed. Cory Doctorow, who toils by day as a Creative Commons activist and science fiction author, also somehow got invited to Microsoft HQ to talk about Digital Rights Management -- perhaps the best (and, given the audience, most difficult to imagine) speech of the year. For reminding us the best parts of the internet are still uncommercial weird shit, BoingBoing is the #6 blog of the year.
7) Plain Layne. C'mon, admit it, you like being fooled. For three years, Plain Layne was the online girl you wanted to know. Sexy, smart, irreverent, and willing to talk about expensive dildos and cheap wine, Layne Johnson told you all the naughty details -- in e-mail, on AIM, or on her website. When she turned out to be the fictional work of Odin Soli, a thirty-something dot-commer with a penis, the investigative effort (chronicled here) became the real story. In hindsight, the salacious details should probably have tipped off more people, but, as everything from The Passion of Christ to the Red Sox showed in 2004, people really want to believe in myths. Plain Layne pre-dated a number of conspicuous fake celeb blogs in 2004, a trend which included Quentin Tarantino, Nick Nolte, Bill Clinton, Julian Casablancas, and Adam Nagourney. For two reasons -- forcing us to think again about online identity and accidentally personifying the investigative power of digital communities -- the defunct Plain Layne is the #7 blog of the year.
8) Metafilter. Grandpa Metafilter, you know I would never let you fall out of the Top 10. I wish your participants had done some of the same unique investigative work we found on places like DailyKos and Power Line this year (your community is certainly smarter than theirs), but you were always there with the context that made the story resonate. For staying above the fray, Metafilter is the #8 blog of the year.
9) Gawker. Frankly, I think Gawker Stalker is dull. I don't really care that you saw James Lipton at a train stop. But I do care about that Condé Nast cafeteria! If blogs could have clipped teaser critic quotes like movies, I'd give Jessica Coen this one: "Best media snark this side of Vincent Gallo's cock! Two thumbs up [the Olsen Twins]!!" For redefining NSFW in 2004, Gawker is the #9 blog of the year.
10) I Want Media and Romenesko. Sure, it's cheap to give them a tie, but they're inextricably linked. For finding the needles in that big fat media haystack, I Want Media and Romenesko are the #10 blogs of the year.
11) Kottke.org. Lucid, informed, reasoned, simple but never simplistic -- these are the qualities that make a good blogger, and Jason Kottke personifies all of them. Kottke's big scoop this year was reporting Ken Jennings' Jeopardy loss before anyone else, and he managed to do it in a completely internet-centric way (you had to highlight the text in your browser to see the spoiler). For keeping the bar high, Kottke.org is the #11 blog of the year.
12) Lost Remote. When Lost Remote held a tagline contest a couple months ago, one of the winners was "The future of media is stuck between the cushions of your couch." For chronicling in real time the shift of power to the user, Lost Remote is the #12 blogger of the year.
13) Whatevs. Uncle Grambo used to speak his own language, but now everyone else speaks it. The blogosphere is littered with good pop culture sites (Amy's Robot, Golden Fiddle, Lindsayism, Stereogum, Zulkey, Information Leafblower, Witz.org, Defamer and The Superficial -- to name just a few), but Whatevs won the most snark hearts by talking in some sort of futuristic jive-speak, inventing names for celebs like Brit Brit and The Thighmaster and Gawky Bird and M. Daytime Shamalamadingdong. This dude from Detroit probably doesn't even know that half the NYC mag publishing world is combing his site for lingo to steal. Whatevs. For grokking the epithet, Whatevs is the #13 blog of the year.
14) Engadget. In the mock-battle between Calacanis and Denton, I'm cheering for the guy who thinks less is more. But Peter Rojas at Engadget out-scooped his former digs, Gizmodo, on nearly every gadgety moment this year. For making us want more, Engadget is the #14 blog of the year.
15) PaidContent. Every morning, after the inbox got its cleansing and the Cocoa Puffs were finished, PaidContent.org was the first site that I visited. A bit of a misnomer, PaidContent actually covers everything you might call "digital media." For scouring a wide range of topics between business and technology, PaidContent is the #15 blog of the year.
16) Drudge Report. What did Drudge do this year? The only thing I really remember was hitting refresh constantly on election night (damn those exit polls!). For just being Drudge, Drudge Report is the #16 blog of the year.
17) Low Culture. As far as dichotomies go, "grave" and "shallow" pretty much cover all the ground. For eschewing the happy medium, Low Culture is the #17 blog of the year.
18) Largehearted Boy. I hear this MP3 Blog thing is quite the fad! A lot of press went to Fluxblog this year, but Largehearted Boy was the most comprehensive independent music blogger out there. For pre-dating podcasting, Largehearted Boy is the #18 blog of the year.
19) Bookslut. Choosing a favorite book blog is hard work (GalleyCat is the most recent addition to biblio blogs), but Bookslut seemed the most rapaciously slutty of them all. For reminding me to read more, Bookslut is the #19 blog of the year.
20) The Smoking Gun and Pitchfork. For defying the category blog, The Smoking Gun and Pitchfork are the #20 blogs of the year.
21) Blogumentary. For creating the first great celluloid (well, digi video) document of the blogosphere, Blogumentary is the #22 blog of the year.
22) I Love Music. For being the largest collection of music nerds ever assembled, ILM is the #22 blog of the year.
23) Best Week Ever. For finally doing a tv-blog combo, Best Week Ever is the #23 blog of the year.
24) Green Cine. For obsessing about every possible film-related link on the internet, Green Cine is the #24 blog of the year.
25) Dan Gillmor's eJournal. For publishing the book that defined citizen journalism in 2004, Dan Gillmor's eJournal is the #25 blog of the year.
26) Slashdot. Do I gotta? The discussions on Slashdot are as bulimic as an Olsen Twin -- lots to intake, lots of purging, a gross and skinny final product. You probably had a better chance getting juicy tech commentary on places like SearchEngineWatch and Many-To-Many and John Battelle. Nonetheless, the hatahs at Slashdot also seemed to reliably provide context to tech news events. For making you wish you could run more of your life from a command prompt, Slashdot is the #26 blog of the year.
See also:
A Small Selection of Blogs that I Read.
30 Best Blogs of 2003
23 Best Blogs of 2002
2004 Lists
sunday
It looks like we will wrap this up at around 350 lists, making '04 a record year for list making. Please email me if you find one that I'm missing.
Here are just a few of the lists to show up in the past week:
The Year In Bad Sex from Salon.
Year In Review from New York Magazine.
People of the Year from Rolling Stone.
Most Annoying People of 2004 from Star.
The Year in Swag from The Onion A/V Club.
Best Webcomics from Web Comics Review.
Ten Best And Worst Unseens Films from Film Threat.
20 Best Videos from Rolling Stone.
10 Best Albums You Didn't Hear from Spin.
Top 10 Albums from me.
Top 10 Albums from Melissa.
The Complete List.
sunday
MEDIA
Yipe. Tucker Carlson is quitting CNN and moving to MSNBC. (Note: The blog TVNewser gets the scoop first.)
Poynter.org has a New Media Timeline (from 1969 to 2004) that would have been much better if there were a single-page version that you could print.
ONLINE
NYT Mag on blogs, privacy, sex, journalism, and identity: Your Blog or Mine? The thesis: "In the age of blogs, all citizens, no matter how obscure, will have to adjust their behavior to the possibility that someone may be writing about them." Perhaps I'm too blithe about this topic, but I rather enjoy a world where everyone is a walking reality tv show.
Here's a story idea for one of you cute little intrepid journalists out there: What ever happened to Apple girl Ellen Feiss? Actually, you could do a whole series of former internet celebs, including Mahir and the Star Wars kid.
PEOPLE
Who's the Time Person of the Year? Not bloggers. Of course, plenty more "of the year" action in the constantly growing list.
Guilty pleasure of the week: pics of our favorite home video experts, Paris and Pam, out shopping.
TV
Ursula Le Guin: How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
FILM
Looks like Uma and Travolta do another dance scene somewhere in Be Cool (trailer).
MUSIC
PJ Harvey says she will never play live again. Me either.
Michael Jackson's "Thriller" done with Legos.
TECH
Apple is working on a cell phone that works with iTunes.
Days after donations to Mozilla fund a two-page ad in the Times, the biz section raves about Firefox.
LOCAL
Dave has posted the Maxim "story" on the Rogue Taxidermists show at Creative Electric.
The news all my friends were talking about this weekend: MPR is launching a new music radio station. Looks like it has all the potential in the world... or it could completely suck. Not sure what to make of this: "Our staff will be hanging out in clubs, searching the Internet, reading the music magazines and streaming music from around the globe to find the best music for you." They've also started a blog.
sunday
ONLINE
Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson did a 8-minute faux-documentary imagining online media in the year 2014. EPIC is a cool look at the future of personalized and robotic news. (MetaFilter thread takes some jabs at it.)
16-year-old girl murders her mother and blogs about it.
Nathalie Chicha (she of Cup of Chicha) is newest addition to the MediaBistro blogger set. GalleyCat covers books and publishing.
Spoof of SubservientChicken: Subservient Stickman
MEDIA
Embarrassingly obligatory Frank Rich column link. (This one's about Desperate Housewives and the FCC and such.)
COOL
The 2005 SXSW Conference has been announced. (Music: March 16-20; Film: March 11-19; Interactive: March 11-15.) Price to attend all: $650. Ouch, that's almost $200 more than last year.
House of Flying Daggers trailer.
ONLINE CONSUMPTION
Border's launched a viral personalized web gift-finder, GiftMixer 3000, which bases choice on five personality criteria: Romantic, Adventurous, Brainy, Imaginative and Funny.
Froogle has launched a wishlist feature.
Target.com starts its own strange quasi-film experiment: Wake-Up Call.
SEX
Call the FCC! Boobies on CSPAN.
L.A. Weekly is trying to make the case that the handjob is back. Silly kids, it never left the midwest.
Request a "realistic kidnapping" at ExtremeKidnapping.com.
Women from The Apprentice in Maxim.
SPORTS/ART
The Pistons/Pacers brawl reimagined as Picasso's Guernica.
MUSIC
Trapped in car for 8+ hours this weekend, I listened to the new Gwen Stefani album three times. It sucks, but I bet Kelefa Sanneh would try to convince me it's awesome. (Conclusion also reached in the car: Kelefa's anti-rockism screed reminds me of girls in high school who tried to convince me on the greatness of Richard Marx.)
FOOD
My high school girlfriend is the pastry chef at Django in Midtown Manhattan. New York Daily News asked her to do something cool with cranberries, so she did.
LOCAL
Okay, it's gonna take a second to get to the "LOCAL" angle of this one, but hang on.... Do you remember the rumor from last week that the Bush twins showed up at a downtown Manhattan restaurant and were told they couldn't get a table -- and that the restaurant would be booked for four more years. Har! For reasons that are a bit mystifying, NYT Styles profiles the restaurant's founder, Taavo Somer. If he looks familiar (he does to me), it turns out he was an architect in Minneapolis a few years ago. (He's also the guy behind the "Morally Bankrupt," "Emotionally Unavailable," and "Until Somebody Better Comes Along" t-shirts you may have seen.) In the profile, Somer cites the now-defunct Loring Cafe as his inspiration for the restaurant, Freeman's. "[The Loring] was a bohemian hangout where you had older people, young people, Eurotrash, everything. They had food, drinks and even a ballet company. It was the circus freak show of life." Over two-and-a-half years ago, I described the Loring as "the place in which all the not-quite-ethnic-yet-ethnic hotties converged." Let the Loring nostalgia commence.
Uptown Borders allowed to unionize.
friday
Sorry I've been gone for a few days. It was a busy week on the homefront. Interpol played a good show on Tuesday; I spoke at the MIMA Summit on Wednesday; the single best design-cum-politics event anywhere was on Thursday. Leaving aside my personal life speaking only about local events, this has been the best Fall. Every day has something cool going on. Bite me, New Yawkers.
We have a lot to get to today:
POLITICS
Bush & Kerry live together... as Sims.
Blood relatives of Bush unite for Kerry: Bush Relatives For Kerry Dot Com. (Back story.)
Reason collects answers to the question "Who's Getting Your Vote?" from a diverse set of people including John Perry Barlow, Drew Carey, Nat Hentoff, Penn Jillette, P.J. O'Rourke, Camille Paglia, Louis Rossetto, Glenn Reynolds, Jack Shafer, R.U. Sirius, Andrew Sullivan, Eugene Volokh, Matt Welch, and Robert Anton Wilson. Some surprising answers.
Results of the Nerve.com sexual/political poll, which answers such important questions as "There are two spots left in your hot tub: Do you invite the Bush twins or the Kerry daughters?"
TV
Mark Cuban's Benefactor was quietly cancelled (thank. fucking. god.). But Trump, who wrote Cuban a letter, ain't letting it disappear so easily.
MUSIC
Franz Ferdinand Ring Tones.
Three more music director videos are coming. The first directors were Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry. The second set will be Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer and Anton Corbijn.
A certain Klosterman fellow sorta reviews the new Wilco album in City Pages. (Wherein you learn Chuck and Jeffy Tweedy both like -- ugh -- Jet. Right, right, I don't like Jet because I'm a hipster.)
Now, this is rock 'n roll! A one-week cruise with Journey, Styx, and REO Speedwagon: RR Holiday Escape.
Pitchfork gives the new Le Tigre a 3.3 and EW dissed the "I'm So Excited" cover this week. This really disapoints me.
MEDIA
Boy-oh-boy, Tina Brown's new website is lame.
T-SHIRTS
I ♥ The Internets.
WORDS
The Book Spoiler Dot Com. "The ending to these books will be revealed!"
Neal Stephenson does the Slashdot interview. Good.
John Le Carre hates Bush.
FILM
Fleshbot Films has an Amazon storefront. Anyone wanna guess what future titles will be?
Gibson reports on his blog that Pattern Recognition might become a Peter Weir film.
BAD BOOKS
This turned up on my Amazon Associates list of things purchased through this site: The Complete A**hole's Guide to Handling Chicks. Is this my audience?
PUBLISHING
As noted here last month, O'Reilly is getting into magazine publishing with Make, but now there's a Wired News story.
MARKETING
Waxy on the highs and lows of viral marketing.
JON STEWART
Wal-Mart nixes the Daily Show book.
I looked everywhere in the Sunday Times for something about the Jon Stewart / Crossfire battle. It took them five days to finally get to it, though.
SCIENCE
One of those things you only know about me if you know me offline: I have no sense of smell. (It's a long tragi-comic story, but I lost it in an accident about six years ago.) I just noticed the Times Mag has a column by a woman who lost her smell, and the process by which she regained it. Looks like I have a winter project ahead of me.
DERRIDA
Terry Eagleton responds to the "bone-headed."
LOCAL
It's Melissa's fault that I've been watching America's Top Model, but I just found out that Nicole is from... Minot, ND. Impossibly, her bio lists herself as "former punk rocker." The kids who knew her (of which I am not one) are talking about her here.
Can you imagine writing this next sentence in 1994? Billy Corgan will be reading at The Loft today. (I wonder if I can get him to say "Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.")
If you live in Northeast (or visit that hidden NE Grumpy's), you've probably met Tom Taylor, the Green party candidate for that district's state house rep. CP profiles him.
Ever wonder why all your friends are leaving Uptown for Northeast. For reasons like this.
If you missed it, a few Pioneer Press reporters were suspended for going to a Springsteen concert. Weird.
Wired's Great River Road Tour is in Wisconsin now.
Just when you thought the film festivals were slowing down, here comes Get Real, City Pages' documentary festival.
monday
NON-POLITICS / NON-MEDIA
What if Donald Trump moderated a presidential debate...?
Falaphilia Dot Com.
Rumors On The Internets Dot Com
FILM
Nick Denton is getting into film? According to the New Yorker, he's releasing Ed Wood's Necromania under something called Fleshbot Films.
LIFESYTLE
WaPo Styles on The Life Of The Party.
NYT Styles on the success of He's Just Not That Into You.
TV
After three episodes, I still haven't decided if Desperate Housewives is a lame suburbanization of Sex and the City or a campy send up from the John Waters set. Anyway, it's crazy to hear the show is losing advertisers because of controversial content. (Best line from tonight's episode: "Rex cries after he ejaculates." I kid you not.) See also, in Variety: Get me some housewives, dammit!
Can Arrested Development save the sitcom?
Can TiVo save sports?
This could be good: Flow, a Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture.
MUSIC
Dude, this is rad. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as performed by GW Bush. Someone has sampled speeches so that he sings virtually every lyric from the U2 hit.
Alex Balk (of defunct TMFTLM) does the Times Playlist.
BLOGS
William Gibson is blogging again.
One of the great books blogs, MobyLives is back after a long hiatus.
Hpill is Gawker for the United Arab Emirates. Wow, the internet is cool.
Wrist Fashion is a web magazine that publishes the latest news, trends and products from the wristwatch industry.
DESIGN
Comparing the Bush Cheney and Kerry Edwards logos.
GAMING
I Love Bees game a Surprise Hit.
"Les Seules, a Swedish septuplet that doesn't play instruments. They play competitive video games." (AP story.)
Massive Inc., "the world's first video game advertising network."
DERRIDA
Post-Derrida, The Times drives the nail into the coffin of theory. I've been out of academia too long to be able to adequately respond, but here is my problem with this euology: it misses how Big-T Theory has really resituated itself as small-t theory, which is a conquest in its own right. In other words, didn't theory really just win the cultural war?
Various writers (from Richard Dawkins to JG Ballard to AS Byatt) respond to Derrida's death in The Guardian.
LOCAL
Looks like the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists have their own website. The Creative Electric show is pretty amazing.
In its profiles of swing states, Slate writes about Minnesota today: The only state to oppose Reagan flirts with conservatism.
wednesday
MEDIA
Bill O'Reilly hit with a whopper sexual harassment suit, replete with phone sex! Photo of the producer.
VLS takes on John Leland's history of hip.
MTV doesn't play political ads? Weird. And it's a controversy? Weirder.
Wonkette appeared at Columbia J-school event and Jschool105 blogged it. Funny.
POLITICS
Jessi Klein blogging the debates again for CNN.com.
LOCAL
In her Adventures Along The Great River Road for Wired News, Michelle Delio lands at the Mall of America.
The Creative Electric opening this weekend for the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists is gonna be killa.
I'll be at Met2004 tonight. Maybe I'll see some of you nerds there.
sunday
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
Nietzsche Will To Power bar.
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.
TV
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.
wednesday
TECH
Usually when the editor is writing for the magazine, it's a bad sign. But Chris Anderson writes an amazing piece on digital economics called The Long Tail for this month's Wired. (Rare case where Slashdot thread might be okay reading. UPDATE: maybe not.)
Excellent news for people who use Treo with Exchange (which is about 1% of you but 100% of me, and I win).
FILM
Not sure what to make of this one. Veep-candidate John Edwards is hosting Turner Classic Movies' showing of Dr. Strangelove tomorrow night.
The MPAA wants to give Team America an NC-17 rating because of a puppet sex scene. Someone please help me craft a pun with the word marionette.
DRINK
Best idea since beer itself: Budweiser Introduces Caffeinated Beer. Dammit, it's sweet though. And ginseng? Don't you understand I'm drink to forget?
MUSIC VIDS
New Michel Gondry video for Lacquer.
Britney's "My Perogative" video.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs "Y Control" video, directed by Karen O.'s new paramour, Spike Jonze. (So far, MTV isn't playing this. Write your Senator!) See also: Tell Me What Rockers to Swallow, an upcoming Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs DVD.
LOCAL
Got too drunk the other night at the 400 Bar watching Connor Oberst (who I really don't like), waiting for Bruce Springsteen to play. Yeah, there was a rumor The Boss was gonna make a suprise visit. He didn't, and I had to listen to Connor wail all night.
Anyone else notice they're building a Design Withing Reach in that old Elements spot in Uptown? I like DWR's work, but if the catalogue is any indication, the price of this shit ain't within reach. This could be a great opportunity for Uptown, or it could be the final sign of yuppification. I'm voting the latter right now.
Strib says there are three local bloggers blogging about the Twins.
Only in North Dakota: Enchanted Highway. [via]
sunday
So you want to start a topical blog that will be adored across the land, especially by the super-smart, media-hip blogosphere? I've got the perfect idea for a young journalist entrepreneur like youself: a blog all about Fake News. There's so much to feed on here, with everything from The Daily Show's crazy success to The Onion expanding the print edition across the country to whack characters like Ali G and Mo Rocca being taken seriously. In addition to everything that's happening in the Fake News Industry, your faux-media-blog could mix in all the quasi-news of the day being produced by Bill O'Reilly's screamfest and Al Gore's upcoming network. Add a dash of RatherGate and a pinch of PR Passing For News, and you could have yourself a hit. You could get ahead of the faker hegemony by posting the Top 10 Spoof-Ready Stories each day (probably snagged right off Fark, and appearing as Leno punchlines later that night -- especially that one about Kerry's fake tan). You could become the Romenesko of Fake News! This idea is dot-com bank. Nick Denton or MediaBistro would be knocking down your door within days. This is your moment of zen!
To get you started, I've even got some posts for you:
Tina Fey's new SNL sidekick on "Weekend Update" is.... Amy Poehler. Here's a transcript and a video of the season's first episode. Finally, a double-female fake news anchor team. A great day in fake news equality!
FoxNews.com wrote and published a fake news story about Kerry's metrosexuality, and retracted it citing "bad judgment." Here's a Times story on the whole thing, and here's the Lost Remote gang debating it. I ask you to forget about the ethics of this imbroglio -- instead ask yourself, does this signal the mainstream press's attempt to get into the Fake News business? Yes!
Drudge Exclusive! Did Kerry Have A Cheat Sheet? With video! What a faker!
William Shatner went to Riverside, Iowa saying he was going to make a movie. After hiring local actors and giving stories to newspapers, he recently revealed that the entire thing is a fake. Instead, Invasion Iowa is going to be a reality tv show. Shatner faked out a whole damn town!
Times Book Review on the new Daily Show book, which debuted at #1 on the Times Bestseller List. Serious review of fake book!
Howard Kurtz watches the network anchors circle the wagons in the Wash Post Mag. What a bunch of fakes!
BoingBoing reviews the new Matt Stone / Trey Parker puppet political parody, Team America: World Police. Puppets are fake people!
A college newspaper columnist says The Best News is Fake News. The kids have spoken, and they want fake news!
You Forgot Poland Dot Com. Funny fake websites!
The Borowitz Report reportedly gets 100,000 uniques per day. Fake do-it-yourself news!
Onion Headline of the Week: Documents Reveal Gaps In Bush's Service As President. Classic fake!
Jon Stewart on Fresh Air. Jon Stewart does a promo video for Amazon. Jon Stewart is everywhere -- what a fake!
Torrent link of post-debate Daily Show. More! Fake! News!
Sunday Times Styles surveys the whole fake news scene. Fake fakery!
Even the political parties are getting into this game. The DNC released a remix video with footage of Bush from the debates. Fake politicking!
Steal this fake blog idea before someone else cashes in!
monday
SEX/CULTURE
Alfred Kinsey: Liberator or Pervert? Includes many luridly details (he self-circumcised himself a year before he died) and a back-story of controversy (Dr. Laura Schlessinger and others tried to put an ad in Variety denouncing the film) surrounding the new Kinsey biopic.
Slate.com (Dahlia Lithwick): Why post-feminist women enjoy Trading Spouses and Wife Swap. I sorta hope this one becomes controversial.
Upcoming on VH1: When Stars Get Scammed.
The Gawker interview guys get recognized at the Hustler Club.
Library Journal: Porn Star(s) in the Library?
Confessional blog post on watching The Weather Channel: Am I Watching The Weather -- Or Porno?
Slate.com: Will male birth control ever become a reality?
Who was the gay Simpsons character? Nope, It Isn't Smithers. It also isn't Cynthia Nixon's lover.
POLITICS
Cool debate word frequency tool.
Saint Clinton Dot Com.
George Soros, blogger.
I missed this one. Jessi Klein of "Best Week Ever" (one of the best pop culture shows on tv) blogged the debate for CNN.com. And so did Douchbag Novak, which was quite possibly the worst blog ever.
PUBLISHING
So the "new" NY Times Book Review came out this week. Its new-ness is questionable, but there is the okay review of Web Sites for People Who Read, which includes some of my current fave blogs such as Bookslut and Maud Newton.
Speaking of new, I believe The Guide is part of the Sunday Times Arts section's attempt to stay ahead of New York and the weeklies. (The rest of the section is full of font changes this week, but I can't find anything else significantly different.) Choire Sicha is the byline, so it's not full of mainstream crap. It's the first thing I've seen in a while that made me want to live in NYC.
Nerve.com: Michaelangelo Matos interviews John Leland, author of the new book Hip: the History. Looks like the book will be good.
EW: Our Favorite Phillip Roth books.
GAMES
Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions ended last week with a Double Jeopardy category called "Blogs." The question to the $2000 answer was Margaret Cho. Other questions included Lawrence Lessig and Howard Dean.
Wired News playing catchup on Video Mods. (One important thing I didn't point out about the new Sims 2: it has the ability to record your gameplay into a video file. This has extraoridinary viral opportunity, such as allowing one to potentially create their own Video Mods. See next entry.)
The same people who made Red Vs. Blue, a machinima series using the Halo rendering engine, have recently started to release The Strangerhood, a new machinima using the Sims 2 engine. [via Slashdot]
DIGITAL MEDIA
Denton is launching three new sites today: Kotaku.com (gaming), Screenhead (entertainment), and Jalopnik (cars).
Smart CEO Alert! PaidContent is doing a series called Context Next, featuring guest blogs by leading industry thinkers. Jeremy Allaire's grabbed my interest, but Don Katz (CEO of Audible.com) has been the hidden diamond. Speaking tech execs, I saw Mark Cuban tell Howard Stern last week that he once slept with seven women at once. Take that Trump! (I feel pure midwestern guilt for saying this, but I like the cheesy gold-laced Trump more than the awwww-shucks Cuban. I have an entire essay in me about these two, but it's basically the dichotomy between camp and faux-earnestness.)
Wired News: Google News Ain't Makin Dough.
T-SHIRTS
You Are So Off My Buddy List.
My Frat Is Cooler Than Your Frat.
GILF.
MUSIC
This week, Subterranean on MTV2 was all about the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. Good stuff by TV on the Radio, Dizzee Rascal, The Streets, Wilco, Nellie McKay, Air, and more.
Times Mag profiles Nonesuch records, home of Wilco, Steve Reich, Emmylou Harris, Laurie Anderson, The Magnetic Fields, and Kronos Quartet.
Mark David Chapman is up for parole.
Dan The Automator to produce next Franz Ferdinand.
FILM
Let's just get it over with and call it the best film of the year. Days of Being Wild trailer is out.
ART
Does anyone read Art Forum anymore? New issue on Pop After Pop might be the first I buy in several years.
Tokion Magazine's Creativity Now conference looks like it would've been fun. Speakers included an eclectic cast like Brian Eno, Kim Gordon, Christopher Doyle, and Joe Trippi.
LOCAL
Yes, I'm glad we talked at Sound Unseen this weekend. You'll be at the rest of the events this week, right? Good. I'll see you there.
Margaret Cho on her appearance in Minneapolis last week.
Chuck is finishing up work on Blogumentary. I can't wait to see the final film, which seems like an impossible task to complete given the unstable nature of its topic.
tuesday
MUSIC
Next month's Wired will come bundled with a CD with 16 songs that can be freely copied, distributed, and remixed by other artists. It will include Beastie Boys, Le Tigre, David Byrne, My Morning Jacket, Paul Westerberg, Cornelius, Matmos, and others.
Last week, intrepid Waxy posted The Kleptones' A Night at the Hip-Hopera, a mashup of Queen and early rappers like Grandmaster Flash. You might have guessed it would get the same controversial attention as Danger Mouse's "Grey Album," and you might be right.
Streaming at VH1: Shatner's new album, with Ben Folds.
You Have Bad Taste In Music Dot Com. Funny vids.
WORDS
McSweeney's: Maxim Does The Classics. (See also, same place: David Brooks parody.)
Gothamist: Interview with a Scrabble Pro.
CELEBRITY
Will Olsen Twins t-shirts ever become passé? No! 'I Went Down on Mary-Kate'. 'I Fucked The Olsen Twins... Before They Were Famous'. Will they suffer a similar fate?
Dolly Parton wants breast reduction. You mean those were fake?
Fleshbot says there's another Paris Hilton video out there.
FILM
Trailer to Bridget Jones sequel.
Low Culture on making the heart for I ? Huckabees.
ONLINE
I guess I can't say for sure if someone stole my comment in the essay to the right about The Sims for this comic. But it surely seems close.
DearJonStewart.com.
Found on eBay: a 300GB harddrive. So? It has 273G of DVD porn. Maybe Best Buy could learn from this tactic.
MEDIA
Interview with James Walcott in Salon.
Some Wonkette party gossip in the Post.
Will The Post buy Slate.com?
LOCAL
Chuck Statler is pretty much the father of the modern rock video. He has worked with Devo, Prince, The Cars, Styx, Graham Parker, Stan Ridgway, and Elvis Costello. He lives in Minneapolis, and there's a retrospective of his work coming up at Sound Unseen. CP profiles him.
Grandpa Coleman gets all grumpy about blogs this week. "Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world."
monday
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.
monday
CELEBRITY JOURNOS
The blogosphere likely won't shut up about the Times Mag story featuring Wonkette for quite some time.
Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart seem to be competing for Ubiquitous Fake Journalist of the Year. 60 Minutes today saw Mike Wallace do a long profile of O'Reilly; Time did 10 Questions for Jon Stewart. Rolling Stone did an O'Reilly profile; Annenberg released a survey that indicates Daily Show viewers are more politically aware. Slate did How To Beat Bill O'Reilly; CBS MarketWatch suggests Jon Stewart should moderate a presidential debate. And on and on... or you can just see them head-to-head.
ONLINE PUBLISHING
I'm not sure why more people didn't point to Jim Romenesko's cool new blog Starbucks Gossip when it launched last month. The Times this week picks up on the "Should You Tip Your Barista?" thread.
Gawker's Russ Smith interview is surprisingly full of good observations about alt-weeklies, meta-media moguls, and a dead counter-culture press. See also: a short interview with Esquire's sex columnist (and Daily Show correspondent), Stacey Grenrock Woods.
Last year around this time, I was talking about how Wired magazine has nicely reinvented itself. I've been less happy with the mag this year, but WiredNews.com (the website) has made some excellent editorial decisions lately. Two new columns, Sex Drive and Media Hack, have been required digerati reading. The most recent Sex Drive talks about The Sinulator, a vibrator which connects to a USB port and can be controlled remotely.
Ultragrrrl reveals (or so it seems, but maybe it's a joke) that the person behind the recently defunct TMFML (which even got a NYtimes obit) is.... a hot scenester girl?
CONSUMPTION
Kobayashi (the hotdog-eating guy) to retire?
Malcolm Gladwell put his awesome analysis of ketchup (I kid you not) online. Previously printed in the New Yorker.
The Times follows up Slate.com's analysis of vodka (I love this series from Slate) with a look at Cîroc, the vodka that was "disqualified" from the Slate contest because of "trying to pass itself off as a vodka."
Elle Macpherson has a new line of lingerie called Intimates. The ads, airing in Australia and the UK and featuring a knife-fighting supermodel, are causing quite a controversy. Yeah, I know, you wanna see them.
James Poniewozik brilliantly looks at the niching of America in Time: The Age of iPod Politics.
DESIGN
Good Bruce Mau interview. (Deborah Solomon seems to have become America's best interviewer.)
FILM
When I saw a trailer link for White Noise, the movie, I freaked out and called everyone I know. Or at least I started to. Then I saw "Genre: Paranormal thriller," and thought you motherfuckers ruined my favorite book! Turns out, this movie is unrelated to the book. But there was a rumor a year ago that DeLillo's White Noise would be a movie. Anyone have the scoop? (IMDB has Barry Sonnenfeld as the director of a 2005 release.)
From the Wong Kar-Wai profile in the Times Mag: "The kind of person who might once have proclaimed Jules and Jim or Wings of Desire his or her favorite movie now rates Wong Kar-wai at the top of the list." Which stings a bit, cuz I used to call Wings of Desire my favorite movie, and now I usually say Chungking Express.
Times: What's Your Take on Cassavetes? The five-disc collection looks so luscious.
MUSIC
This is the year Le Tigre is gonna hit the mainstream. Stop it, I'm serious. There's an exciting profile in the new Spin and the word is finally out about Kathleen Hanna's relationship with a Beastie Boy. And Stereogum has an MP3 of Le Tigre's cover of the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited," which is gonna beat the Jazzercise knickers off Britney's "My Perogative." Best. Song. Of. 2004.
U2's new single, "Vertigo," from the forthcoming album is available here. (Good song.)
REM's entire new album streaming here.
Sinead O'Connor: "Stop making fun of me." Okay.
TECH
Last year, Business 2.0 infamously gave its "Hottest Technology" award to social networking software (Friendster, MySpace, Tribe.net, Orkut, etc.). This year, it goes to VoIP (Subscription Link). Runner-ups include Satellite Radio, Open-Source Databases, and Concept Mapping.
GAMES
Everyone is waiting to see what Steven Johnson says about Sims 2.
LOCAL
While in Fargo a few weeks ago, I got in a conversation with someone who was contributing to the creation of 100 North Dakota Books, a list of -- you guessed it -- 100 notable NoDak books. The person was trying to keep Chuck Klosterman off the list. Didn't happen.
If you missed it, RatherGate can be attributed to a local blogger, Powerlineblog.com, which is part of the Northern Alliance collective. Strib has a story.
The Frank Stone Gallery is doing some great work. The Poster Offensive exhibits were both good. (And the parties were fun too.)
monday
PUBLISHING/MEDIA
Hm. Found on Amazon: How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men.
Itzkoff reviews the new Burning Man book, This Is Burning Man.
Margo Jefferson is the new "avant-garde critic" at the Times.
I try to keep away from linking to Frank Rich columns (mostly because they're already such obvious talking points), but this week's has a lot of my friends talking.
Bryce Zabel, a former chairman and CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, does another one of those End of Television as We Know it stories.
MUSIC
Could the B-52's have their career revived a cover of "Paperback Writer" in a Buick advert?
OLYMPICS
The Voice takes on the Fetishizing Atheletes Question that has been a main talking point for this year's Olympics.
ONLINE
Google Answers on Geek Culture.
TECH/SEX
Wired News has started a new column called Sex Drive.
Sex Wiki.
FILM
I ♥ Huckabees faux-ads. Naomi Watts is brilliant. I'm gonna love this film.
RogerEbert.com launches. To include every review since 1967.
CELEBRITY
Have you been watching The Surreal Life on VH1? Brigitte Nielsen and Flavor Flav are hooking up. Though impossible, I wish the last sentence could have been written in 1990.
Edward Furlong: lobster activist or drunk? You decide.
TECH
This could be interesting to those of you into Flash development and/or online communication models: Central and AOL Instant Messaging. Central hasn't exactly taken off, but it still has potential.
LOCAL
Minnesota mysteriously finds itself on the Sunday Times Week In Review page.
The PiPress redesign has been an odd big topic of conversation lately. Poynter has an overview.
monday
CONSUMPTION
Nike shows restraint in not touching the Chuck Taylor All-Stars brand, wherein you hear Kurt Cobain was wearing Cons when he committed suicide. Rah, go Nike.
SCIENCE = LIFESTYLE
Slate: Inhalable alcohol? Finally, science is really producing products I can relate to.
Research from Nature: Your name increases your sex appeal. (Includes research performed via HotOrNot.com.) Hello, my name is Rex....
MEDIA
It was interesting to watch the Sunday morning news shows cover a couple stories that orgininated in the blogosphere. Both LittleGreenFootballs.com's analysis of typograpy (somewhat debunked by DailyKos) and Kottke.org's breaking the news that Ken Jennings lost in Jeopardy were both treated as "a website reported" on numerous instances. Even Reliable Sources glossed over the identity of those sites.
CELEBRITY
The best point in the Times Mag story on Trump is probably the point about him being a mysterious populist. False consciousness, indeed.
Britney in a "MILF IN TRAINING" t-shirt. This girl's got longevity written all over her.
WORDS
Amy's Robot has an MP3 of Dave Eggers interview on Conan last week.
Ana Marie Cox reviews the new Kristin Gore novel for the Times Book Review. We learn that Gore had writing gigs at SNL and Futurama. Which is impressive, but I saw her on Letterman last week, and she came off ditzy and clueless to irony or nuance. Ms. Cox delivers zingers though: "God knows, an astringent romantic satire is long overdue in a town where work is foreplay and the vibrating object in a couple's bed could easily be a two-way pager."
Locus: a bunch of sci-fi writers (Cory Doctorow, Pat Murphy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Norman Spinrad, Bruce Sterling and Ken Wharton) in a roundtable about the future.
TECH
Huh, it looks like Yahoo is going into consumer electronics. Sounds to me like a bad move.
MUSIC
R.E.M. has an audio stream of the first single from their next album, Around The Sun: "Leaving New York".
ONLINE
NYhotties.com: "I'm a twenty-something New York escort. I love Prada, Seven jeans, and Jimmy Choos." I really gotta make up an identity and cash in with a book deal.
LOCAL
Did you know there was a local version of Dodgeball.com (NPR story)? I may just try it out.
Apparently the PiPress is making some big structural changes, including something called "Speed Read" and a daily A&E section. By the way, my old friend Ross Raihala is the new music writer there. You can see his work popping up here.
wednesday
MEDIA/POLITICS
New York Mag: Dubya's nicknames for friends and enemies. Maureen Dowd is apparently "Cobra."
Text of the Bush Twins speech from the RNC last night. And I quote: "But, contrary to what you might read in the papers, our parents are actually kind of cool. They do know the difference between mono and Bono. When we tell them we're going to see Outkast, they know it's a band and not a bunch of misfits. And if we really beg them, they'll even shake it like a Polaroid picture." You couldn't make this shit up if you tried. And woe, woe, woe, I'm so confused: who is the Mono character and are you telling me Dubya listens to The Misfits?
The Best of Still Photojournalism 2004.
TV
Dang, whattup with fast food commercials getting edgy/fetishistic? Here's a Carl's Junior Advert (large wmv file) of a girl sticking her fist in her mouth.
ONLINE
I have purchased exactly one issue of Playboy in my entire life -- last month's issue with the Google guys interview. But this month might be my second, with Washingtonienne making an appearance. (Here's the safe-for-work interview link and here's an archived version of her blog and here's Wonkette's entire coverage.)
This is pretty cool. MoreGoogle seemlessly adds thumbnails to your Google searches.
Those dummies at Friendster fired one of their blogger employees for what appears to be trivial reasons.
FILM
NumberSlate and PeerFlix, two peer-to-peer DVD sharing companies. Interesting, but I suspect they go nowhere.
I missed this one: Sofia Coppola's next movie will be a biopic of Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst.
WORDS
Voice: A legendary editor at Harvard University Press asks, What good are books?
I never read Arthur Phillips' Prague, but I think nearly every one of my friends did. And I never really knew that much about him until a silly Entertainment Weekly piece (about his new book, The Egyptologist) told me he was a five-time Jeopardy champ. Other facts: born in Minneapolis, was a child actor, a failed entrepreneur, and jazz musician.
MUSIC
AC/DShe: all-girl AC/DC cover band. Mandonna: all-male Madonna cover band.
sunday
ONLINE
Bruce Sterling did a fashion photo series called Milan or Tehran?, which I guess is trying to say something about globalism, but I don't know what (hot chicks in scarfs are universal, perhaps?).
McSweeney's: Email Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying To Give Out Over The Phone.
I was interviewed by the NY Times a few weeks ago because of a article I wrote about the defunt scandal known as Plain Layne. The Times angle was mostly about fake celebrity bloggers. The whole topic came up again last week when the Quentin Tarantino blog surfaced, and then quickly sank. The next day, a secret weblog from Julian Casablancas' girlfriend rose, and then also died (screengrabs). It makes you wonder how much of a nano-celebrity you could be and have a fake blog made in your honor. ("No, I'm really Craig Kilborn's cousin!")
FILM
Somewhere in my mind is a top ten list of events that I'm sad not to have talked about here over the past six months, and Vincent Gallo is definitely not on it. The controversy seems to be wrapping up today with Roger Ebert telling "the whole truth" about Vince.
New movie trailer alert!:
Silver City. John Sayles political parody starring Chris Cooper.
Finding Neverland. Looks like Tim Burton meets Merchant & Ivory (ergo, bad) with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet.
Closer. Another entry in the hot genre of the moment -- let's call it the "romantic deceit thriller" (see also: We Don't Live Here Anymore). Starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen, but really starring cool Suzanne Vega and Damien Rice songs.
The Yes Men. More liberal-docu-essaying.
And did you see Hero this weekend? It's either the best movie or the worst movie of the year.
WORDS
Rumors on Bret Easton Ellis' new book (involving the return of Patrick Bateman). And here's the cast list for the upcoming film version of Glamorama.
David Foster Wallace on RateMyProfessor.com. ("Very neurotic and tends to chew tobacco and spit in a cup while lecturing.")
Neal Stephenson interview in Wired.
MUSIC
Shatner has a new album, produced by Ben Folds.
Somewhat funny parody of the director's commentary concept: Britney Spears on SNL. (Speaking of which, the new video of Britney covering "My Prerogative" reportedly cost $7.2 million "to market and promote" a "happening, rather than just a video." Apparently, she's taking cue from Axl and getting faux-married to her quasi-celeb mate in the video.)
Does anyone else suspect the only reason the MTV Video Awards were in Miami tonight was because the Republicans took over NYC? Best moment? I guess when Nick "Newlywed" Lachey and Paris "Simple World" Hilton appeared on the stage at the same time, and suddenly you had a vision of reality tv worlds colliding like a nuclear reaction. Yeah, boring awards this year. Blame the FCC.
OLYMPICS
Olympic Medal Count by population.
Get it before Fark does: titty twister polo.
SEX
Everything I ever learned about sex and porn I learned from the Sunday Times' story What Women Want To Watch. Shoes, eh? Yeah, me too. Totally.
KY Jelly: it'll fit.
MEDIA
Has anyone else been watching Maureen Dowd blah-blahing her new book on the talk show circuit? I'm not sure what it is, but something about her reminds me of Sofia Coppola -- demure but cunning, cute in a you-can't-be-seriously-be-that-coy kinda way.
New York Mag saucy feature on the Bush Twins.
MARKETING
The Apprentice cast on Friendster.
When Halo 2 finally comes out, will anyone think that ILoveBees.com was a viral success? Well, since Subservient Chicken did so well, who knows.
Speaking of... the same ad firm that did those BK ads tried to recently get Paris Hilton to become a BK spokesperson in a David LaChappelle spot (featuring her own music!). It didn't work out, but Paris Hilton is trying to trademark her own logo (a tiara).
SCI-FI
The Guardian asks scientists to pick their Top 10 Sci-Fi Authors and Top 10 Sci-Fi Films. C'mon, no Gattica?
LOCAL
Everyone's fave sexy local blogger, PussyRanch has hung up her blogging tassles and closed the ranch. She's a little oblique about what she'll actually be doing now, but her recent work at City Pages has been quite good (check out the piece on the new Gotti ("one tough biscotti") reality tv show).
Last week, The Times did a story about online fantasy leagues, which gave major mentions to Best Buy and Fanball (two local companies). This week, the Strib basically does the same story.
There goes the neighborhood. Strib gives a major feature to Psycho Suzi's.
Cool or uncool? Hot or not? Sen. Norm Coleman's wife, Laurie, has given the Post approval to post sexy lingerie pics of her.
monday
I officially apologize to the 2,325 of you who I tried to convince to go to SXSW this year. I can't go. Just not enough time (like you can't tell by the lack of updates here). Don't hate me, cuz I still luv you.
WORDS
ILM thread: Summarise a Novel in 25 Words. Anyone else notice that ILM is sorta like MetaFilter circa 2000? Yes, I mean it's good.
Neal Pollack lecture offered via Salon/MediaBistro: The Professional Satirist's Guide to the Perfect Orgasm.
Back home in academia, Naomi Wolf has outted Harold Bloom as "sexually encroaching" on her when she was a student at Yale.
We always knew Orson Scott Card was a conservative, but we never really cared. I mean, some of my best friends are... anyway, now he's writing nasty editorials on this blog. Mel Gibson, on the other hand... well, he's just a fascist.
Huh, The Times reviewed the new Jason Blair book.
MUSIC
Sex Advice From Liz Phair over at Nerve.com, wherein Eddie Murphy is quoted.
ONLINE
It's well known that journalists are pilfering bloggers 24-7, but particular funny case is the blogger Brian Storms writing a parody about an Amazon.com that the Chicago Tribune picked up by accident (correction).
POLITICS
That Urban Outfitters Voting Is For Old People t-shirt everyone is talking about. Well, sorta.
LOCAL
Mom sent me an article about North Dakota's shrinking population.
tuesday
FILM
Lost In Translation came out on DVD today.
DESIGN
U.S. State Department ditches Courier in favor of Times. Which means they'll adopt Verdana in 20 years.
TV
I kept hearing the Super Bowl streaker had a website written on his body, but could never find which one. Finally, a photo. Stupid gambling site which brags about it here.
Historical look at nudity on television.
POLITICS
Steven Johnson's post about Howard Dean's demise is one of those little succinct moments in the blogosphere where the right opinion is heard and the words echo in a way as important as a NYT op-ed. Or maybe that's the problem? Shirky has one too.
WORDS
Chuck interviewed at Gothamist. Best line of many: "I think the bars should stay open later, and I think there should be more people blogging about the media. Oh, and people should be generally crazier." (See previously, killing small people with Chuck.)
ONLINE
Brooke says Broken Saints is being turned into a DVD.
MUSIC
Li'l G n' R: First Ever Guns 'n Roses Kids Tribute Band. I hear Michael Jackson wants to play with Slash again. Rim-shot!
New Beastie Boys album in June.
Jeff Tweedy, poet.
That new Stereolab is album is getting their best reviews in years. Pitchfork even gave it a meteoric 7.6.
Britney little sister's blog is surprisingly like Billy Corgan's blog.
LOCAL
New "most popular articles today" link at CityPages.com.
Read the story about KSTP using Ed Asner as a pitch man? Funny.
saturday
Need a body double. Simple can't keep up. Who won Iowa and New Hampshire? Who, you say? Here's what we've got:
WORDS
Salon is serializing Dave Eggers new novel.
FILM
Gothamist reports on the casting to the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film, which includes Martin Freeman from The Office, Zooey Deschenal, and Mos Def. In other news, NBC is gonna try to adapt The Office. Ahem, no comment.
POLITICS
GQ profiles Joe Trippi.
PUBLISHING
Michael Wolff leaving New York, off to Vanity Fair, which sucks because now I'll have to start buying Vanity Fair.
WORDS
Another mainstream "theory is dead" story.
Huh, there's a Name of the Rose board game.
ONLINE
SXSW web awards finalists announced. I'm trying to get down there this year, but it's looking iffy.
I need a metaster too.
Busuiness 2.0's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business.
CONSUMPTION
I bought a red Danish couch named Opus today. Hello, modern world.
New cut-n-paste agitprop flick: The Corporation.
MUSIC
Res feature on Air that includes an excellent videoplayer. Go buy the new one, Talkie Walkie.
Slate.com: Why Is Airplane Music So Universally Bad? NYT: A Better Night's Sleep, Flat Out at 35,000 Feet.
A very large collection of insects in rock and roll cover art.
Billy Corgan (or his 15-year-old sister) is blogging.
TV
The Voice gives The L Word a rave. So far, so do I. And the Joan Jett wannabe is my fave.
CELEBERITY
Tallying the celebrity endorsements.
Alex Trebek, genius driver.
If you missed it, someone uploaded a quicktime video of the Paris Hilton appearance on SNL a few weeks back.
LOCAL
Have you been reading Melissa's new don't-call-it-sex-and-the-city-ish column at CP?
Fog of War finally opens here this week.
Shhh... don't tell anyone else about our entrepreneurial genius.
monday
Will. Not. Link. To. Dean. Parody.
Or. Outkast. Parody.
Will not.
Good boy.
We're back on the air, America.
FILM
Kill Bill Vol. 2 trailer is all meta.
TV
VH1 has a new show called Best Show Ever that's like The Daily Show. Or something. The blog is better.
WORDS
Amy Sedaris interviewed in Onion A/V Club.
Amy's Robot has audio of Thomas Pynchon's "appearance" on The Simpson's last night.
POLITICS
Totally old news, but gotta catch up from last week: Wonkette is to DC politics as Gawker is to NYC media. Ana Marie Cox is the editor, so it should be a good.
Amazon is doing presidential campaign contributions. NPR story. Includes contributions raised through the service: Dean, $3,042.25; Kerry, $6,560.00.
Times Mag finally addresses copyright.
From AOL/Time, one of those candidate matching tools.
TECH
Google enters social software scene with Orkut and MyYahoo adds an RSS aggregator.
The guy who pretty much invented Winamp, Shoutcast, and Gnutella oddly chooses Rolling Stone to finally accept an interview. (Update: It looks like he just quit AOL.)
LIFESTYLE
No wonder I like fucking.
HowWasShe.com. Exactly what you'd think. Let the controversy begin.
Neil Strauss must be slumming it. He's in the Times Style section talking about sleazy pickup artists.
If Ikea were a videogame.
MUSIC
Best. Thread. Ever. I like "Rough Guide to Italian Hip-Hop" and "Rough Guide to Harpsichord Pop."
A headline that seems like is should've been written about 2.8 zillion years ago: Steve Albini interviews Mission of Burma.
LOCAL
All the hanger-ons are now gonna be pestering us as Dara praised our favorite hang-out, Psycho Suzi's, last week.
thursday
CELEBRITY
Gotta love those Hilton sisters. Oops, I mean Olsen twins. Dangit, I really meant Bush twins. Speaking of which, I hear the Olsen twins are going to NYU this year. Wouldn't love to take this class with them?
Letterman: Top Ten Messages on Britney Spears' Answering Machine. 2. "It's Jessica Simpson. Thanks for making me look like a genius."
ONLINE
This just might be everything I like about the internet: NotFoolingAnybody.com is simply a slideshow of "bad conversions" of storefronts.
20 years later, Apple's revised 1984 commercial.
Gawker shocker.
New to the dating service scene, SocialGrid utilizes Google, grid computing, P2P, and file-sharing to help you hook up. Haven't tried it yet...
New blog: Lingerie101, the guide for men. "Each week lingerie101 posts an article on one certain kind of lingerie, so you know the difference between a teddy and a cami."
Discovered by Slashdot, Photoshop has a special feature that detects if an image is American currency.
FILM
Another new fave blog: Hacking Netflix.
I've been wondering what Joss Whedon has been doing post-Buffy: Firefly, the film.
The Fog of War site is pretty cool. The damn film still ain't playing here.
SPACE
Bush is gonna send people to Mars. See also in Slate: Is Mars Ours?
MUSIC
The highest-selling musician last year, 50 Cent, has signed up to do an "interactive sex DVD." They also offered Paris Hilton.
Ryan Adams responds to the MP3 from yesterday.
sunday
And the winner for most unique use of my Best Of The Year lists goes to: RocketJump, who took all the music lists, shoved them into a mathematical formula, and came up with a uber-list. Also cool: All-Consuming's 100 Most Frequently Mentioned Books By Blogs. I'm glad this is all over.
TV
Watching SNL the other night, I witnessed the "Atkin's Diet Safe" Subway commercial for the first time. At first, I wasn't sure if it was an SNL parody commercial, but it was real, and the Times says there are more to come.
Emily Nussbaum in the Times and Tom Shales in the Post on the final episodes of Sex and the City. Shales includes this tidbit: "Sometime during the year, HBO began imprinting each preview cassette sent out for review with the critic's initials in one corner of the screen, allegedly as an anti-piracy measure."
This one is a bit crazy. Universal Music (i.e., GE; i.e., NBC) is teaming up with DirecTV (i.e., NewsCorp; i.e., FOX), Vivid Entertainment Group (i.e., porn), and Shady Records (i.e., Eminem's label) to launch a music channel featuring porn videos.
MUSIC
Casey Kasem is leaving American Top 40. Tidbits about CK: he is the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo; his wife, Jean, was Loretta Tortelli on Cheers; he is vegan; he is of Lebanese decent; he will be replaced by the host of Amerian Idol; and he didn't know that Snuggles tape was leaked until 10 years after it happened.
Courtney Love has a "15 day trial version" (?!) of her new single, Mono," available on her site.
I Love Music thread: Worst Hypothetical Rapper Names.
Devo has a new DVD out. For a relatively cheap $13, you 17 videos and other stuff. Wash Post writes about it.
TECH
A couple decent pieces hypothesizing this year's technology advances: Robert X. Cringely's Predictions for 2003 and ExtremeTech's Predicting the Tech Flops of Tomorrow.
CULTURE
Recommended: this James Poniewozik essay, where Time shockingly gave him 3,000 words of space to talk about decline of mass culture and the ascendency of niche marketing. Full of somewhat obscure cultural reference points that prove his point.
Times: Cultural Theorists, Start Your Epitaphs. Question of the day: Is Eagleton losing it?
Slate: Should Students Be Allowed To Hookup With Profs? Answer of the day: Yes!
friday
It's more difficult to make a "best of" list for weblogs than for any other cultural catagory. Blogs are inherently meta -- they span the entire range of contemporary human existence and thought. Nonetheless, defiant in the face of cacophany,
here's my annual list of 30+ Best Blogs of 2003:
1) Blog For America -- I admit, I only occassionally checked in on Howard Dean's blog this year, but this thing simply changed politics, the media, and America in general like nothing since Drudge. When Dean wins in November, Joe Trippi will take a post in the administration that completely alters the way communities and governments function. Finally, a future to look forward to.
2) Metafilter -- The abridged four-year history of MeFi: first it was great, then good, then dull, then good again, then kinda sucky, surprisingly reactionary, suddenly progressive, good again, but just falling short of great, then bad for a while, but whoa that was a good month. And that one post was so good! And I want to throttle the guy who posted this thing again! If it happened in 2003... well, let's be honest, it did not happen first on Metafilter. But this is where it entered the market of ideas -- inflated or deflated on the rigorous balance sheet of comments calculus and trackback trig. And the franchise expanded this year with ask.metafilter.com, which is just plain awesome.
3) ABC's The Note -- This is the only item on this list that treacherously stretches the definition of blog, but I've gotta believe that this ridiculously popular beltway online journal is determining the stories that get told, the events that get attention, and the shape of democracy. Plus, it's one of the main reasons Trent Lott isn't pestering us anymore.
4) Buzz Machine -- Question: Is it odd that the founder of Entertainment Weekly is now America's biggest proponent of Iranian bloggers? Answer: Nope. Jeff's commentary on everything from Iraq to Howard Stern has been crucial reading this year. And one day someone will write a decent Persian translator that allows me to read all those Iranians.
5) Gizmodo -- Gimme!
6) Lessig Blog -- You read Lessig to remind yourself of all the issues you've guiltily not been paying attention to: internet security, digital rights, everything in the Creative Commons, etc. Lessig (who guest-starred on the blogs for Howard Dean and John Kerry this year) is there because you aren't.
7) Smart Mobs -- The most important industry-ish books I read this year were Salam Pax's The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi, Steven Johnson's Emergence, William J Mitchell's Me++, Michael Wolff's Autumn of the Moguls, David Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and Howard Rheingold Smart Mobs. The website for the latter was constantly attuned to Big Ideas -- where we're headed and how to avoid a collision-course with destruction.
8) Gawker -- It's probably not fair that Nick Denton has three sites on the list this year. Nah, scratch that, it's totally fair. It's too early to tell whether he's milking the meme or inventing a mini-publishing revolution, but he's doing something that all the rest of us are watching with a tinch of envy.
9) The Diary of Samuel Pepys -- The idea is simple: publish an entry from the renowned 17th-century London diarist every day. The outcome is infectious. If they make a website into a movie, it should be this one.
10) Daily Green Cine -- Oh, you like film? How quaint. These guys really like film. This offshoot of Netflix-competitor GreenCine is a master of its genre.
11) Anil Dash & Kottke.org -- They've become our avuncular stylists, haven't they? Similiar forms: Anil has the sideblog on the left with the occasional essay on the right. This year, Kottke experimented (unsuccessfully, I'd argue) with placing the remaindered links inside the blog. They helped invent the blog and they continue to redefine its potential. And they'd smirk at being described like that.
12) Book Slut, Maud Newton, Language Hat -- All those Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith and Elizabeth Wurtzel links? I probably found them at one of these places.
13) Low Culture -- This dual-columned blog -- baby blue (shallow) and soft orange (grave) -- seemed to just appear out of nowhere this year. This was the rookie of the year.
14) Amy's Robot -- Want snarky celebrity news before celebrities even know it happened? Check.
15) Romenesko and I Want Media & PaidContent.org -- I'd rather cut my toes off and feed them to the rabid offspring of Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly than imagine a world where this triumverate didn't arrive in my inbox every morning. I Want Media had juicy interviews and links, Paid Content was a feast of daily tech/content news, and Romenesko could be #1 any given year but that would be tiresome.
16) Gothamist & Lockhart Steele & NewYorish.com & The Morning News -- For quality of writing and diversity of links, these four NYC blogs deserve as much attention as Gawker, but they just happened to not get picked in the mini-publishing corporate draft. Which in some ways makes them more important.
17) Lost Remote -- The cool thing about Lost Remote is that it's a well-defined industry blog (succinctly, the future of tv) that always transcends its genre.
18) Babelogue -- I'm surprised this experiment hasn't gotten more attention. The local Voice-owned indie weekly boldly launched a staff weblog this year that mixed unique voices in the community. It's like a local blog central for anyone in the Twin Cites -- let's call it My Own Private Gawker.
19) Large-Hearted Boy & Catherine's Pita & S/FJ & Useful Noise & I Love Music & Neuma & Rocktober -- It's a bit unfair to group these diverse music-themed blogs under one heading, but these were the places where I discovered new bands, found off-beat MP3s, heard smart conversation, and truly missed writing and playing music.
20) Greg.org -- The Sofia interview and the Cremaster coverage alone made Greg de rigueur reading.
21) Blogumentary -- C'mon Chuck, finish the movie already!
22) LucJam & AdRants -- With reportage on everything from Paris to hip-hop brand success, Lucian somehow made marketing an undirty word in 2003. And AdRants made sure that advertising stayed dirty.
23) Magnetbox -- This local peronsal fave always makes my recommendation list because of shared interests: the interplay of technology and music distribution, online economies, social software applications, and generally rad stuff.
24) Waxy.org -- It felt like 1999 again when everyone was passing around links to goofy movies (except everyone had broadband at home this time). The Star Wars Kid movie had all the characteristcs needed to be labelled a phenom -- intrigue, parody, backlash, Times reportage, and free iPods.
25) J.D.'s New Media Musings & E-Media Tidbits -- The media is the message. These two blogs continued to preach the story that online news is changing the way we consume information.
26) Arts Journal -- Culture links galore. Leans a bit toward the high-brow, but since everyone in America is now middle-brow, that shouldn't matter.
27) The Map Room -- I love niche publishing, especially when it's a niche worth adoring. A site all about mapping? I'd probably pay for this.
28) Press Think -- No way in hell I could find the time to read all the words that spilled out of Jay Rosen's blog pad this year, but when you get an NYU j-school prof talking this much, there's usually something to hear.
29) Archinect -- Blog + Architecture = This.
30) Fleshbot -- Paris was the internet event of the year (followed closely by Friendster and Howard Dean), and you can attribute much of it to Fleshbot. Can't say I was into the Kariwanz Fetish Gallery or the Supreme Hentai, but nothing mainstreamed sex this year like the Paris video, which was chronicled here on the site's first week of existence.
There are days that I think this little cultural petri dish known as blogging has become a cesspool. But then I look over this list and realize it's a radically robust machine that we've created. And it's cool knowing that next year will be full of more surprises that I can't wait to link to.
Finally, it's my nature to take a few swipes. Disappointments of the past year: Where is Raed? (recently), Boing Boing, Arts & Letters Daily, Plastic, The Kicker (so far), The Nation, Idea A Day, and AndrewSullivan.com.
thursday
There's probably nothing funnier I could say in the NYTimes than "everyone thinks they can write about music" (second item). I'm gonna take a beating for that one. New in the big list: expanded art and architecture links, Google's Zeitgeist, Norman Solomon's annual P.U.-Litzers Prizes, Slate's Critics Critiqued, ESPN's Year in Sex and Sports, Car & Driver's 10 Best Cars, The Post Style section's In & Out, and, ya know, a whole lot more. Coalesce!
TECH
Even Wired is making lists now. 101 Ways to Save the Internet.
MUSIC
Elliott Smith's death might not have been a suicide.
CULTURAL STUDIES
Stumbled across the old Roland Barthes essay on The New Citroen (1957), which I haven't read in nearly a decade, but am stunned at how crisp it sounds. "I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object." How come no one wrote about the Mini like this?
sunday
That which can heretoforth be referred to simply as THE LIST has grown significantly over the weekend. That's where the action is. And then there are these:
WORDS
Gawker's list of words to outlaw in 2004. Yes, yes, and yes.
I spend vastly too much money on Taschen books, which predictably end up sitting around on coffee tables. The L.A. Weekly has a good profile of the book publisher.
The world's largest book is on Amazon.
The founders of Spy magazine will split $1 million four ways to write about the magazine's rise and fall.
Not only was he reading Dostoyevsky after the war, Saddam was writing his fourth novel while the troops surrounded Iraq.
ONLINE
Amazon Wishlist of ridiculously expensive stuff. Yes, please add that $283,500.00 necklace to my shopping cart. (Customer review: "The sacrifices I have made just to be able to afford this, selling my house, my car, and my children, all made up for it in the end.")
Match.com moves into Friendster.com territory.
LIFE
USA Today graphic: Do women want to date metrosexuals?
MUSIC
Walmart's $.88/song online store.
Heard a bit of Matt Groening on Fresh Air the other night. Apparently he edited this year's De Capo Best Music Writing anthology, but I didn't hear Terry Gross ask about it.
Gory pics of the singer Jack White beat up last week.
POLITICS
Up next, Frank Rich writes about Howard Dean's online campaign: Napster Runs for President in '04.
FILM
New trailer: Osama. In "selected" theaters Jan 30.
sunday
LIFESYLE
NYT Mag gives monster wordage (10 "Next" pages!) to online dating.
CONSUMPTION
Washlet. I want one. Bad. Very, very bad.
"Best Buy is the Clear Channel of electronics superstores."
L.A. Times is doing a series on The Wal-Mart Effect.
WORDS
Clinton releases list of his favorite books. Some oddities: "The Denial of Death," Ernest Becker; "Homage to Catalonia," George Orwell; "Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics," Reinhold Niebuhr; and "Living History," Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Douglas Coupland 1,000 Word Short Story Award.
COMEDY
Sarah Silverman roasting Hugh Hefner (video).
Terry Gross interviews Triumph The Insult Dog.
MEDIA/TECH
From last week (sorry, catching up), a good profile of Gawker Media. Nick's looking for travel and furniture bloggers.
Microsoft's answer to Google News: Newsbot.
I'm not a metrosexual, I'm a...
DESIGN
New stuff in Nike Lab.
MUSIC
What's big in Malta now? Check Music Charts All Over the World.
Peter Scholtes noticed that Har Mar Superstar and Karen O were in town the same day, so he had them interview each other. Golden. Karen: "I'm electronically mailing with Beck, and I told him that I was going to be out there recording with you, and he didn't write me back after that." Har Mar: "I saw him three days ago at a festival and he asked me to record with him, so maybe I'm totally cock-blocking you."
And then there's Thom Yorke and Howard Zinn hanging out.
CP and The Onion review the Spike Jones DVD retrospectives.
My fave part of this RZA interview is where he claims to love Bob Hope. But this is good too: "Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh, man, this nigga knew all my shit."
The Stranger: Courtney Love, A Remembrance.
Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time. Blah.
I hate CD inserts in magazines. The Post doesn't.
FILM
LynchPosters.com.
LOCAL
Peter Ritter at CP profiles Fate magazine.
I have no idea why this story about a drug bust was given such a strong narrative voice.
sunday
This site is up to about 3,500 visitors per day. Who are all you people? Please wipe your feet before entering. Linkage:
POP
This month's Wired has a gadget section with this quote from Paris Hilton (who the NYTimes said "looks like what you'd get if you crossed Uma Thurman, a borzoi and Robert Plant circa 1972") printed long before last week's tape scandal: "I can't live without my cell phone. It's the one with the big round dial, and it has a video camera on it." The mind reels with the potential sequels...
Variety.com has started a blog, Outside The Box, about swag -- promotional items for music, film, tv, etc. releases.
Margaret Cho: Courtney Love is the white Whitney Houston.
WORDS
Norman Mailer's 25-year-old son, who has no journalism experience other than writing one piece for Black Book, is the new executive editor of High Times. Profile.
FILM
Guardian: The World's 40 Best Directors. #1: David Lynch.
Cool. The Cameos of Alfred Hitchcock. (That is, the cameos in his own films. I've always wondered where he appears in Rope, and now I finally know.)
The author of The Simpsons and Philosophy and Woody Allen and Philosophy analyzes Tarantino. (Via Greencine.)
I'll call Body Song a cross between Koyaanisqatsi and Kronos Quartet. Cool site by Channel 4, cool music by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead.
"Why can't I preorder a DVD and receive it the day the film is released in theaters? Or buy it on my way out of the theater if I liked what I saw? One thing I learned from the Mavs is that you can watch the game on TV, but you'll still go to the game, because it's a different experience." -- Mark Cuban (the guy who sold Broadcast.com for billions and bought the Dallas Mavericks and -- more importantly -- Landmark Theatres), Wired, December 2003
ART
I'm dizzy. I just downloaded and listened to every track on the Andy Warhol tapes.
TV
All three hours of PBS's NOVA program The Elegant Universe is now available online (QuickTime and RealVideo).
The MPAA is putting out public service announcements on movie piracy. They take a semi-manipulative working class angle.
The Sex Museum in NYC has released a new advertising campaign.
GAMES
There are still Rubik's Cube competitions? And croquet?
LIVING
NYT Mag has a series of articles on smart homes. Here's James Gleick on smart houses, and the others are linked in the sidebar.
POLITICS
Excellent fundraiser maps of America.
DESIGN
Random prediction: David Carson makes a come-back in 2004. New interview.
ONLINE
Waxy has pics of some Japanese magazine, Bloggers.
My Tunes is a program that adds functionality to Apple's iTunes that lets you share mp3 files across a network. C|Net story.
LOCAL
Hey, I'm looking for a roommate. Pass it on.
monday
ART
Subversive Cross Stitch. Yes, it's exactly what I said.
Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl gets a whole website dedicated to it.
FILM
Matrix spoofs: The Helix Loaded | The Meatrix | The Matrix: Reheated.
Wurtzel is totally bummed about Prozac Nation (the film).
I was just thinking I wanted to spend my Sunday reading a Spielberg profile in the NYT Mag. Okay, no I wasn't. Good, at least there's an R.E.M. profile. Okay, no solace there either.
MUSIC
Somewhat surprising: Jobs says iTunes isn't making Apple any money. Most of your money goes two evil places: record labels and credit card companies.
ONLINE
Fleshbot is now live, and posts links to stills from the Paris Hilton sex tape.
I heart the Google Toolbar. See also: Tony Perkins wants to write a collaborative book on Google.
A couple blogs making the rounds: Belle de Jour (a dairy of a London call girl) and Pussy Ranch (a weblog from a local stripper).
Upcoming.org was praised in the Times.
LOCAL
Prince will be inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Strib does a top 10 list on who should do the induction speech.
tuesday
ONLINE
Dirty AOL buddy icons.
Wired is in the blogs biz. First up: Bruce Sterling.
ARCHITECTURE
Rem Koolhaus interview in Japan Times.
FILM
Matrix timeline.
TV
Since Pynchon will now be on The Simpsons, it's fair to wonder what other authors might be like on the show.
So I've been watching the stupid string theory special on Nova. Stupid because it's obviously made for sixth graders. How many different ways can you say that a "theory of everything" will require a coalescence of quantum theory and general relativity? Apparently, according to this show, many dozen tedious ways, and then many dozen more with animated graphics. Anyway, if you were disapointed like me, here's a slightly better interview with Brian Greene.
MUSIC
Wes Clark speaks out about Outkast.
MEDIA
When exactly did Vice become Brill's Content?
LOCAL
I predict: soon, the phrase "the best thing since sliced bread" will be replaced by "the best thing since caffeinated milk." Hyper Cow! And a launch party.
friday
My PDA/phone has two background desktop themes that I regularly shift between depending on my mood: The Olsen Twins and the Hilton Sisters. Same situation with my IM buddy icon. I like to think of them as the devil and the angel sitting on my opposing shoulders. Or maybe they're just the ying and the yang. Anyway, The Gaurdian profiles the angels and isn't afraid to love them. For the sake of equal time, I demand they also love the Hiltons.
LIFESTYLE
Technology meets Sex meets Politics. Thank you Howard Dean for making it all happen.
Grunge Is Back In Style. Which means it's not.
PETA takes a shot at Donatella Versace.
TV
Yet another cable network coming your way: The Horror Channel.
PUBLISHING
Great idea that just launched: Front Line Voices collects stories from soldiers who fought in Iraq. Expect controversy.
The Morning News interviews Malcolm Gladwell, a person I also like.
Coetzee wins the Nobel. (Official citation.)
Radosh captured a good misplaced ad on nytimes.com. And LostRemote caught one on ESPN.com.
New York Mag launched The Kicker, a blog from Elizabeth Spiers (formerly of Gawker.com, of course).
Guardian story on those online promos for books I've been linking to here. Coupland | Salam Pax | Life of Pi | Atwood.
Everyone seems to be backlashing the new breed of "cool magazines" we've recently seen. I dunno, I'd rather be reading Mass Appeal, The Fader, Tokion, Anthem, WYWS, and sometimes even Vice than whatever else that fucking newsstand throws at me. (Which isn't to say that The Antic Muse's critique shouldn't be shoved down all their throats so they understand their relevance.)
A long time ago, I had an idea to start a lit publication similar to Words Without Borders.
MUSIC
I have written recently about DJs taking over the restaurant scene in town, and it's good to see that New York is, er, finally catching up to this trend.
Tired: The Darkness. Wired: Bling Kong.
The influence of the music blogs.
FILM
I'd love to be in Hollywood and hear a producer pitch the idea of Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., and Penelope Cruz in something called Gothica.
ARCHITECTURE
The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune differ on their appraisals of the new Koolhaus Illinois Institute of Technology building.
TECH
NeoMedia got a little attention today for an application that ties together ISBN codes and Amazon. There are a number of similar devices out there, including the infamous CueCat and the iPilot. And IBM is working on a smart shopping cart that alerts you to deals.
Napster to return as a more boring iTunes.
Circuits this week: software that speeds up audio/video playback and the impact it has on cognition, a review of Microsoft's new media center, and analysis of Foresight Exchange.
mPulse this month: new mobile intiatives out of Hollywood, wireless betting in Hong Kong, and speaking to the father of the cell phone.
LOCAL
Hm, new record label in Minneapolis? They're hiring.
friday
I'm finally back, now with a brain chock full of simmering ideas. I met Ray Suarez, drank with Lost Remote, heard the people behind DeanForAmerica, and blabbed alot about the democracy in the age of participatory journalism. Not a bad week.
Looks like things are really heating up in the social software arena. Let's start there:
TECH
Guess who's on the cover of Spin this month. Well, sure Dave Fucking Matthews, but guess who else. Yep, everyone's favorte post-networking device, Friendster. Pst, there are rumors that Google wants to buy Friendster.
Andy has launched Upcoming.org, which I very lightly helped beta test. This wonderful little application allows you to create personal and city calendars of events (here's the Twin Cities and here's me, user #11 of what will be two million in six months). It's everything I like about social software: collaborative, bigger than the sum of it's parts, and real-world-reinforcing. Think of it as Meetup meets Friendster meets Craiglist. Plus if you ever want to know where I am at night, now you know where to go.
Macromedia has launched Central, another product I not-very-rigorously beta tested.
Red Herring mag is back, online only.
L.A. Times story on the web-savvy Howard Dean campaign. Hearing the people behind the online campaign speak was the best part of my trip to D.C.
Microsoft and Google are both playing with location-based searching. With Google's Search By Location, you enter a search term and a location, and it gives you a map with results. (Luckily I'm not found when you search my zip code for "fucker".) And with Microsoft's World Wide Media Exchange, photos are indexed by location.
Amazon has added some goofy Flash games to promote their new sporting goods store. There's also word that Amazon is working on a search engine.
Nokia just released a new line of "Imagewear" products, wearable and mini phones and camera and such. Gizmodo has the links.
ACADEMIA
Edward Said has died: Times | Guardian | BBC | Zmag.
FILM
Preview for new Gus Van Sant: Elephant.
This is a little old, but I'm still playing catch up: Lost in Translation Translated. And Greg has tracked down the original Kurosawa Suntory commericials.
MUSIC
New White Stripes video: Hardest Button To Button.
Good: Pitchfork's list of 50 Most Common Used CDs.
A drink with Bjork.
Beatbox.tv.
LOCAL
Caribou Coffee sued for same-sex sexual harrassment.
ETC
Culturata that came out this week that you need: Salam Pax's The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi, Outkast's Speakerboxx, and Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver (pst, Quicksilver wiki and Paul Boutin review).
friday
Due to a change in upper management that puts old media back into its rightful birthplace, this weblog will officially be dropping "AOL" from its name.
FILM
Still no trailer to link to, but Demonlover is making my friends giddy with anticipation.
TECHNOLOGY
TiVo therapy.
I wonder if someone could write a program that ports all the women at WomenBehindBars.com into Friendster.
It's been ages since The Times actually turned me onto something new. (That's the curse of being the Paper of Record: you're comprehensive and historical, but never really fresh and unique.) But today, it turned me onto ThisIsBroken.com. Good stuff.
Uh-oh, the party's over. Reuters story on Supernova.
MUSIC
Fifth-graders draw Radiohead.
GAME THEORY
Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly.
PUBLISHING
Good Nerve: The Unsexy List.
Sneak peak at what AOL News is turning into.
Salam Pax on Fresh Air.
The Top 100 Works of Journalism In the United States in the 20th Century. Debate.
COMICS
This is pretty neat in a geeky kind of way: RSS Comic Feeds.
LOCAL
Well, that sucks. The Walker is shutting down for a year. There goes the neighborhood.
Chuck gives some dish on the first day of Central Standard. See you at the Sound Unseen party tonight?
I've heard people shortening the name of our fair city's new favorite club to "The Rock." This will not do. It should, of course, be "The Triple." As in, "After the Triple, everyone went back to Rex's house again. That guy never sleeps." Do everything you can to make me right.
wednesday
Slow day.
SEX
Real Doll was disturbing; Real Doll Surgery, however, invigorating.
DESIGN/TECH
This futuristic cell phones page is amazing.
MEDIA
Salam Pax now on BBC and NPR.
INTERNET
The blog Connected Selves is almost exclusively digital social networks, with a focus on Friendster.
TV
Glamorous Q&A with Sarah Jessica Parker in Newsweek.
MUSIC
R.E.M. has a new single: "Bad Day" (audio).
LOCAL
Jim Walsh does his VH1 story.
tuesday
The ultimate internet ouroboros: I just saw a pop-up ad for a pop-up blocker. Lots o' links today:
LIFESTYLE
Need some perspective? The Global Rich List will tell you where your salary ranks you in the world. Even if you're making $15,000/year, you're still in the top 10 percent.
Un, nice t-shirt slideshow at the Times.
Apparently, Urban Outfitters was founded in Philly. Here's a story about the founders.
MEDIA
Not just another poor excuse to link to the Britney-Madonna kiss, check out the caption: "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution apologized Monday to readers for running a photo of the kiss on its front page the day after the awards."
There's a rumor that the MSNBC Jesse Ventura show has been completely scrapped.
Al-Jazeera's English website is back after hackers nuked it a half-year ago.
On eBay, all 64 issues of Spy. Current bid: $255.00.
1938 issue of Better Homes and Gardens featuring a spread on Hitler's home.
FILM
The Sophia Coppola NY Times Mag cover story kinda sucked, huh? For fun, compare it to the Chloe Sevigny profile.
Cremaster 8, 7, 6.
WORDS
Salam Pax's book comes out this month. Plasticbag.org got his hands on it.
The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll is out. Amazon's "customers who shopped for this item" list for this sucker probably says everything you need to know: The Hipster Handbook, the new Palahniuk, Traci Lords' new autobiography, and Chuck's new book. Here's an interview with the Vice gang.
Louise Gluck, the new U.S. Poet Laureate.
TECH
Looks like "Ask Gizmodo" will become a reality. I like to think I played a small part.
PTT (Push-To-Talk) sounds like a big step conference calling, but this guy compares it to IM.
MUSIC
All Tomorrow's Parties in L.A. (curated by Matt Groening) has been rescheduled. Line-up includes some faves: Har Mar Superstar, Mission of Burma, The Shins, Danielson Famile, Elliot Smith, Cat Bower, Built to Spill.
Emmanuelle has some dish about Beck being in an upcoming movie. In other Beck news, the man-boy is going back to the studio to record with the a dream-come-true production triumvirate of the Dust Brothers, Dan the Automator, and Timbaland.
It seems that Neal Pollack's VMA commentary is getting more attention than the VMAs.
I haven't even told you about seeing my experience seeing Liz Phair perform for a few hundred Target employees last week. Some other time... but here she is answering questions submitted by fans.
DESIGN
The Real Underground, an application playing with London's tube map.
Woody Allen typeface.
COMICS
Homage to Jack Kirby.
POLITICS
I think Brooke has my vote. Whaddya mean I can't vote?
Howard Dean is now doing goofy Flash ads.
LOCAL
I told you all the dangerous geeks lived here. His website is nuked, but here's a Google cache.
My new Papsea.com tee is on the webcam. CJ did a tv piece on the Papasea.com tees last week. Speaking of local t-shits, don't you want this one?
The perfect site for the perfect city: MplsHappyHour.com. Includes hundreds of bar listings, divided into categories (Downtown, Uptown, Nordeast, etc.) and even subcategory (Cedar, Dinkytown, Stadium Village, etc.). It's still a work in progress, but this could the ultimate site to bring up on your web-accessible pda or cell phone when your scurrying around a neighborhood looking for cheap drinks. It will even include maps.
friday
MUSIC
Sophia Coppola directs Kate Moss in the new White Stripes video. It's, uh, hot.
MTV, the magazine.
Guardian: Death of the DJ?
Rock stars and their parents.
WORDS
Kafka's Metamorphosis translated into Flash.... with violin-techno!
UrbanDictionary.com
New short stories from Eggers, Murakami, etc.
FILM
Matrix III (or whatever you wanna call it) trailer.
See now, this will suck, but it has Katie Holmes and Oliver Platt, so it won't.
School of Rock trailer (directed by Richard Linklater, starring Jack Black). The MPAA rating box says it all: "Some Rude Humor And Drug References."
INTERNET
Pretendster.
Looks like the Chicago Tribune is blogging.
I guess this is MTV's contribution to the blog world: VMA blog?
AmItheGovernorOrNot.com
ARCHITECTURE
Times on Gehry's Disney Concert Hall.
UBER
How famous people break up.
Remember the Sex and the City episodes where they go to L.A.? Gawker is there.
Gimme.
LOCAL
Jim Walsh's first column (well, first in a decade) at City Pages. It really is a quintessential "Minneapolis Music Criticism" piece -- full of personal experience and pathos. This line is supernaturally Twin Cities-ish: "I still believe in writing that talks about the conflicts and conquests of the heart." Looking forward to this one....
AP: Minneapolis Elf Has All the Right Answers.
Turns out the guy that does Buy-Me-A-Beer is also the guy who did Dancing Paul.
The Rake on Flash Mobs. Good line: "This particular secret society was so easy to get into, though, that we're wondering now how many journalists are dying to get off the Minneapolis Mob's listserv. This was punishment enough for infiltrating the group: Our inbox was flooded with the social theories of every johnny-come-lately mobster who wanted to argue that Minneapolis is just as cool as San Francisco or New York."
wednesday
MEDIA
Those crazies at Nerve.com are having an amateur photo contest: sexiest photo of someone reading The Wall Street Journal. I so want to enter.
It can't be a good sign that Paul Krassner's new column in the New York Press is better than Stephen King's new column in Entertainment Weekly (no link). Actually, no, that is a good sign.
ART
Connect the dots: NY Times analysis of David Byrne's PowerPoint universe, which is available through the book Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, a take-off of a classic by Tufte, who recently released The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint. In Wired, here's David Byrne and Edward Tufte talking about their projects.
INTERNET
I clicked on a banner ad! Something on the Wired Newsletter said "Technology Is Changing Sex" and clicking on it brough me to TechTV's Wired For Sex program page.
Post: FCC to Allow Video on AOL Messenger.
HISTORY
The Victorian Sex Cry Generator.
GAMES
Flash Pac-Man.
FILM
The Decalogue came out on DVD yesterday. So did Bowling for Columbine and Roger & Me.
So Tara Reid gets drunk and fucks around? How can this be news in Hollywood?
MUSIC
Gawker talks about Chuck's upcoming Esquire interview with Britney.
COMICS
'Edgy' Language Invading The Comics.
tuesday
Special treat today.
Chuck Klosterman and I met our first year of college, and we quickly developed the most dysfunctional friendship I've ever had. At the college newspaper, he was the sports columnist and I was the music columnist. At times, I hated him more than any girlfriend I've ever had. That's saying something.
His new book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, comes out later this month. One essay, which is also printed in the September issue of Spin, uses the tempestuous summer we lived together (1992) as a set up for a larger topic.
Here are the first few paragraphs, reprinted without permission from anyone, but it's my life so sue me. I've added some "footnotes" -- commentaries over the top of his analysis of the summer of '92. Watch out, kids, it's gory:
Even before Eric Nies came into my life, I was having a pretty good 1992.
I wasn't doing anything of consequence that summer, but -- at least retrospectively -- nothingness always seems to facilitate the best periods of my life. [Note 0.] I suppose I was going to summer school, sort of; I had signed up for three summer classes at the University of North Dakota in order to qualify for the maximum amount of financial aid, but then I dropped two of the classes the same day I got my check. I suppose I was also employed, sort of; I had a work-study job in the campus "geography library," which was really just a room with a high ceiling, filled with maps no one ever used. For some reason, it was my job to count these maps for three hours a day. [Note 1.] But most importantly, I was living in an apartment with a guy who spent all night locked in his bedroom writing a novel he was unironically titling Bits of Reality, [Note 2.] which maybe have been a modern retelling of Oedipus Rex. [Note 3.] He slept during the afternoon and often subsisted on raw hot dogs. [Note 4.] I think his girlfriend probably paid the rent for both of us. [Note 5.]
Now this dude who ate the hot dogs -- he was an excellent roommate. [Note 6.] He didn't care about anything remotely practical. [Note 7.] When two people live together, there's typically an unconscious Odd Couple relationship. There's always one fastidious guy who keeps life organized, and there's always one chaotic guy who makes life wacky and interesting. Somehow, me and the hot-dog eater both fit into the latter category. In our lives, there was no Tony Randall. We would sit in the living room, drink a case of Busch beer, and throw the empty cans into the kitchen for no reason whatsoever, beyond the fact that it was the most overtly irresponsible way for any two people to live. [Note 8.] We would choose to put out cigarettes on the carpet when ashtrays were readily available. We would vomit out the windows -- and this was a basement apartment.
Obviously, we rarely argued about the living conditions.
We did, however, argue about everything else. Constantly. [Note 9.] We'd argue about H. Ross Perot's chances in the upcoming presidential election, and we'd argue about whether there were fewer Jews in the NBA than logic should dictate. [Note 10.] We argued about the merits of dog racing, dogfighting, cockfighting, affirmative action, legalized prostitution, the properties of ice, chaos theory, and whether or not water had a discernible flavor. [Note 11.] We argued about how difficult it would be to ride a bear, assuming said bear was muzzled. We argued about partial-birth abortion, and we argued about the possibility of Trent Reznor committing suicide and/or being gay. We once got into a vicious argument over whether or not I had actually read all of an aggrandizing Guns N' Roses biography within the scope of a single day, an achievement my hot-dog-gorged roommate claimed was impossible (that particular argument extended for all of July). [Note 12.] Mostly we argued about which of us was a better at arguing and particularly about who had won the previous argument. [Note 13.]
Perhaps this is why we were both enraptured by that summer's debut of MTV's The Real World... [Note 14.]
0. This was the summer we discovered the movie "Slacker," which I still say is the single biggest cultural event of my life. It changed everything for me to realize one could make a movie about doing nothing that is this crazy and good.
1. My job that summer was mowing lawns on campus. But I got in big trouble for flirting with the University President's teenage daughter, who was always out frolicking on the grass like a Midwest Lolita.
2. The title of my book was, believe it or not, actually much worse: "Bits of Eternity." However, I later wrote Chuck a letter from Alaska joking that I should ride "The Real World" wave and call it "Bits of Reality." (I also like to think, with gritting teeth, that it was a precursor to Reality Bites [1994].) The novel, by the way, was wretched, and it was thankfully destroyed in a fire in 1997. I would describe it as a mix between Danielle Steele and Jack Kerouac. I was reading Hermann Hesse at the time, if that's any indication.
3. I was also reading Freud at the time, but there was no Oedipus complex.
4. Either this hot dot thing is a literary device or I should be more fat. What makes it double-weird is that I'm vegetarian now.
5. Lora was kind and giving and beautiful, but not that giving. Also of note here: she lived with us. That makes three of us in a very small one-bedroom. Chuck slept on the couch and always liked listening to us doing it at night. He doesn't think I know this.
6. True!
7. Very true! Sub-footnote: This will be painful to admit, but this was the summer I took to wearing a Malcolm X baseball cap. The 12-year-old neighbor kid chastised me because his mom (a psychology prof) said that Malcolm X was a racist. I almost capped that whitey.
8. It is mind-bogglingly surreal to see the boring Busch beer-drenched life you lived a decade ago retold in "Spin" magazine.
9. This is painfully true. I can remember almost every word of every fight of many of the things listed next. And I was right every damn time.
10. I was convinced there should be more Jewish NBA stars. Or any? I still believe there's a conspiracy.
11. This water one was a big deal. Water has no flavor. Period.
12. This truly was a vicious one. But my point was that he had skipped all the "philosophical" chapters. In retrospect, this is a monstrously hilarious accusation.
13. I would invite friends over to listen to us argue, and then force them to judge who the winner was. I remember our friend Lefty saying "well Rex, Chuck sometimes makes better points than you." I almost clocked him.
14. That's all just a set up to what follows: a thoughtful essay about watching "The Real World." It's a good book, go buy it.
wednesday
WORDS
A must-own: Kerouac bobblehead.
SOCIETY
Nerve: Sex in the age of the cellcam phone.
The Smoking Gun: Legal Document of the Year. Fucker, fucker and fucking fag.
Flocksmart steps smart/flash mobs up a notch.
The Onion: Area Man Knows All The Shortcut Keys.
POP
Good god, I could spend a week here: The A List. It's just a list of celebrity personality rumors, but it's magnificent.
GreenCine has a post with dish on Tarantino's Kill Bill and two Buffy-alum Fox shows coming this fall.
MUSIC
Half-hour BBC interview (audio link) with Morrisey that is very, very, very good. He's so articulate. Recommended.
TV
Sex and the City update: First Duchovny now Baryshnikov. (Secret message: Mr. Big, sorry for petty self-involvement.)
MEDIA
The New York tabloids are all over this. The Times' Bob Hope obit was written by someone who has been dead since 2000.
The Antic Muse: What magazine ads say about you.
LOCAL
Minneapolis is in Friendster.
One year ago today, McSweeney's released The Graffiti of Minneapolis.
tuesday
MEDIA
Howard Rheingold was on a good On The Media piece this weekend talking about smart mobs. Dan Gillmor was also on talking about "we journalism."
NPR's new show with Slate.com debuted yesterday: Day to Day.
Bride magazine has a same-sex article this month. Gasp!
MUSIC
One of my favorite sites for the past year has been the music community blog I Love Music. But I have been afraid to link to it because it's always heartbreaking to watch a good community go to hell when the freaks move in. Anyway, this thread killed me: Did you really feel "welcomed" to the jungle by axl rose, or do you think that was sort of just insincere, halfhearted graciousness?
TV
Futurama: dead.
STYLE
50 Cent is starting his own fashion line. I knew the bullet hole look would come back in.
Somewhat annoying Times piece about how Williamsburg has lost its cool.
LOCAL
I didn't make it to the new club opening this weekend on Block E. I still haven't been to Cosmos either, so maybe next weekend is a Block E weekend, dreadful as that sounds.
The new flash mob is set for Wednesday. If you want an invite, email me.
Go see Wattstax at St. Anthony Main. Pete's review and blog.
friday
WORDS
I saw Candace Bushnell read last week and haven't had time to write it up how annoying she was. But I have never, ever been to an event with so many hot, young, sex-driven single women in my life. Anyway, Gawker says Bushnell now claims she coined the word "metrosexual."
Nerve.com: Sexual innuendos found in the new Harry Potter.
MUSIC
Since I've linked to all the other ones, Rolling Stone's Liz Phair interview.
STYLE
Killer funny. Get a t-shirt with a random person's friendster profile. Or, if you prefer, some Sinn Fein tees.
Slate.com: Wine for Tightwads.
MEDIA
Batten Awards for interactive journalism.
Google adds an advanced news search.
INTERNET
Here kitty, kitty.
LOCAL
NY Times's Circuits talks about a font developed locally which changes based upon the weather.
One of my first bosses, Mike Maidenberg is leaving the Grand Forks Herald.
wednesday
On a scale of one to ten, I give today's links a 9.5. Get at it:
FILM
I heard this as a rumor first, but I guess it's really true. Tarantino's Kill Bill came into Miramax so long that they're cutting it into two movies. Double the Uma.
The L.A. Times disses UC Santa Barbara's film school for being contemporary.
U.S. News interviews Harry Knowles. Boring. (Why do I link to articles that I call "boring"? Cuz boring is the new black!)
Kiarostami is doing theater. Sounds radical and experimental.
INTERNET
Brooke has launched the final episode to Broken Saints. Great work, man, you're a superhero.
How many people emailed you Google's relations to the WMD 404 Page this week? I'm around a dozen. I linked to it three months ago, but none of my friends apparently noticed. Anyway, The Guardian has a story about the story of the page.
MEDIA
Michael Wolff reviews Steve Brill's new book.
I'm not sure why I bother with Slashdot threads anymore. This one about NYtimes vs. Google made me go insane. When did geeks become morons? Was it always like this? (Don't read it. Stupid is not the new black.)
Interview with Eric Umansky, the guy who does Today's Paper's for Slate.com.
MUSIC
The Sex Pistols want to play Baghdad. A few dozen punchlines come to mind here, but I'm resisting.
Judas Priest reuniting with Rob Halford. (On the right of that page are video links to "Breaking The Law" and "You've Got Another Thing Comin'." Rock out in your cubicle right now.)
Funny A.V. Club interview with Sir Mix-A-Lot. Includes crazy details, including the long-forgotten Metal Church song, the doubly-long-forgotten The Presidents Of The United States Of America song, and questions like "You were one of the first popular entertainers to talk about asses in a sexual way, whereas that happens all the time now. Do you feel validated by the current focus on asses?"
Alex Ross writes a lot about Pop Conference 2003 in The New Yorker, but I don't think he says anything. Or is that rock criticism?
I'm happy that The Washington Post profiled Punk Planet.
Greil on Liz Phair in CP: "it's like watching Barbies fucking."
I'm not sure why I'm linking to it, but here's the entire script to A Hard Day's Night.
WORDS
If for some reason you care, Traci Lords has a book coming out. Here's an interview and a book tour.
Erik Davis fake interviews Phillip K. Dick.
Eggers is the Samuel Richardson of today. (Applause if that reference makes any sense to you, and a million kudos if you actually read Clarissa.) He keeps "expanding" his last novel, now with additional downloadable chapters.
Today in Literature in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was published.
STYLE
Phew, I own nothing on Hipster Bingo.
TV
I'm a little pissed that the Carson Daly roast was almost a little funny. But mostly because of my growing crush on Sarah Silverman.
LOCAL
You already knew this (cuz everyone is talking about it at the water cooler), but Minneapolis is America's most literate city.
monday
All posts today have -- in one way or another -- a local angle, but that doesn't mean you foreigners will be out of place.
Covert weekend gossip item #1: BMW Films (which was masterminded by the mostly-Minneapolis-based Fallon) is considering branching the franchise into other arenas such as comic books.
Covert weekend gossip item #2: Elimidate is filming six episodes here this summer. Settings include Chino, Solera, Ground Zero...
It's a great week for authors in this city. On Tuesday, we have Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) reading and Douglas Coupland (Generation X) reading, and Friday we have Zadie Smith (White Teeth) reading and Candace Bushnell (Sex in the City) reading.
I have this new theory about the thrill of blogging: the strangest aspect is when the blog crosses over into your personal life in concrete, physical ways. Like as I was leaving Chino Latino on Thursday, I waved at Peter Scholtes hustling into the Uptown Theater with a girl on his arm. And in a blurb on his site about Winged Migration, he makes passing reference to "making out through most of the movie." And now I've connected the dots, and know something you don't -- the identity of the girl. Silly internet.
Riemenschneider's best local CDs of the year (so far).
Old friend Catherine has started a music series at Theatre de la Jeune Lune.
Old friend Chuck was a guest on this week's This American Life. His new book is out next month, and you'll see a sneak preview of it here soon.
If you're interested in the Minneapolis Flash Mob (Wired story), drop me a note and I'll dish.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at the Minneapolis theater scene, quoting a line that I always hear but could never verify: "More theaters per capita than anywhere outside New York."
My workplace gets mentioned in this Pioneer Press story about St. Paul Venture Capital: "Another Twin Cities firm backed by St. Paul Venture, Internet Broadcasting Systems, is flourishing. The company, now profitable, has 231 employees including 133 at its home office in Eagan."
The Blur show at First Ave last night was excellent. At first I was a little worried about Damon's, er, sobriety, but he pulled through just fine.
wednesday
Has anyone ever mapped the psychographics of the synchronous ascendency of weblogs and reality tv? I'm serious, these phenomena are totally connected.
MEDIA
Video of what got Michael Savage fired from MSNBC.
FASHION
I like these t-shirts at Lamosca.com, especially the ones that make vague references to The Velvet Underground and The Ramones.
FILM
Dish on new Cassavetes movie.
It seems the "Film" category gets the most "holy shit, I didn't know that was happening" links. Like, there is a new film based on Joyce's Ulysses recently completed? Holy shit, I didn't know that was happening. There's even a trailer.
ART
Wired News on the Illegal Art exhibit at SF MoMA.
No surprise, the Voice didn't like the the Venice Biennale.
INTERNET
Dear Abby takes a letter from a blogger.
If this linkblog had a sideblog (does that make any sense? could this be a new form?), it would point to Clay Shirky's A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, which is only for people interested in the theory of online communities, but is highly recommended for those people.
MUSIC
Will you hate me if I link to that "Britney not a virgin" story? Okay, good.
Sex Pistols lunch box.
As always, Onion A/V breaks the mold and interviews Evan Dando. Good questions, boring answers.
LOCAL
Blogumentary has a collection of Duluth/Minneapolis links today.
I tracked down an invite to the flash mob, but now that the Strib is talking about it, who knows how this could turn out. But I also saw a discussion about it on alt.law-enforcement, which maybe puts the thrill back in it.
saturday
TECH
Okay Guardian article on picture messaging. Contains a link to Celebs At Starbucks, a photoblog outta L.A. Also: Waxy has this idea to do a community celeb-photo/mob-blog, which is fine if you like in Cali or Gawker country. But out here in fly-over territory, I can only make so many jokes about Josh Hartnett, Prince, and Garrison Keiler (now wouldn't that be a party). So I'm still pondering the local scenester site, for which I have lots of ideas but feel unable to keep it updated myself. So if you're a localite interested in the concept, drop me a note, and try to talk me into it.
Comic book artist and theoretician Scott McCloud is experimenting with micropayments with his newest comic. He has talked about micropayments before.
COMMUNITY
Buzzmachine talks about being invited to see AOL's new blogging tool. The ability to blog via IM is impressive.
Gothamist has some Friendster protocol questions.
FASHION
Cool new girl stuff at Threadless. If I met that girl at Triple Rock...
I bought some Donald J Pliner shoes today. Did I just land on the set of Sex in the City?
TV
The Times Mag has an okay story about the rise and fall of baby names, but I point it out for this line: "Still, the effect is not as direct as it may seem. Buffy, despite a fanatic cult devotion to the vampire slayer, has not breached the Top 1,000 (although Willow has been climbing modestly since 1998)."
WORDS
MediaBistro interview with the guy who writes Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent for McSweeney's.
Michael Chabon, Jane Smiley and John Edgar Wideman on NPR's Morning Edition.
NEWS
CostOfWar.com.
Doonsbury on the dangers of internet communities.
That Japanese hotdog eater wins another match.
American apology t-shirt.
MUSIC
Snoop Dogg has decided he doesn't like "Girls Gone Wild" anymore. Because it's sleazy? No, because there aren't enough black women.
ART
Art Forum's Venice Biennale weblog.
LOCAL
I saw my first Segway in Minneapolis today. It was a middle-aged woman cruising around downtown in a long skirt. This seemed noteworthy.
thursday
MEDIA:
Al Gore is looking to get into the liberal media.
Two meta-media columns on bad writing: WashPost columnist writes about the scourge of The List. Meanwhile, MediaBistro attacks the scourge of The [fill in the blank] Nation.
Adbusters: Early Signs of Fascism.
MUSIC:
Salon.com has familiar-sounding speculation that iTunes could kill album-oriented music. Although I didn't write it, it feels like a condensed version of the last 15 music conversations I've had.
WORDS:
WashPost asks if Harry Potter fan fic is stealing. Answer: no.
Al Franken has a new book out: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. He's interviewed on AlterNet.
On this day in 1816, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley gathered on Lake Geneva to tell ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. (I just love TodayInLiterature.com.)
TV:
If you missed it, video of Hillary on Letterman.
FILM:
Premiere and Playboy both have lists of the best sex scenes. Not one repeat in the top 10. See also: The Guardian's Sex on the Screen Quiz.
Harrison Ford finger gallery.
LOCAL:
Todd has posted a Fargo Forum story saying that Kirby's Bar is shutting down and that Ralph's might be next. (The City of Moorhead is on a buying spree.) This is even worse than the news the First Ave. might be on the way out.
tuesday
SEX/INTERNET:
Reuters: Prostitute Diary Tops Iran Web Hit. Besides being a horrible headline, it's interesting that the tone of the article is to chastise the Iranian government, but it doesn't provide a URL for the blog.
McGraw-Hill Human Sexuality Image Bank.
BBC: Will Porn Kick-Start The Video Phone Revolution? Answer: no.
Odd. A site that reviews (NSFW) porn banner ads.
POLITICS:
New blog: WatchBlog, 2004 U.S. Election News & Opinion, broken into three nice categories. It's the creation of Cam from Camworld.
TV:
L.A. Times story about TV scholarship at MIT.
The only Hillary interview I've watched the past two weeks was the one on Letterman last night. Booooooooring.
MUSIC:
Good June Panic interview in the new Agricouture.
Metafilter told me the video for Electric 5's "Gay Bar" is big in Europe.
In Pitchfork: The 20 Worst Post-Breakup Debacles.
WORDS:
McSweeney's says that the first-name-only business isn't true.
friday
Los Angeles Magazine's Jack Chick profile.
William Gibson talks about yesterday's '60s hippie siting.
New trailer: Underworld. Looks like a cross between The Matrix, X-Men, and The Crow, which I realize sounds aweful, but it stars Kate Beckinsale.
Everyone saw this this week, but I waited until Friday to link to it: Bible Sex Stories.
thursday
The real deck o' cards: Iraq's Most Wanted Looted Treasures.
Beck has a blog. No shift key though.
June Panic started his tour here yesterday with a bunch of my college friends. In other music news, the White Stripes played Conan all damn week. And Playboy has a Sexiest Babe Of Indie Rock poll. Keep on rockin, geezers.
Hmmmm. Windows XP Creativity Fun Pack: Windows Media Player 9 Series Blogging Plug-in.
"The fact that dealing marijuana and controlled substances is illegal does not exempt it from taxation. Therefore drug dealers are required by law to purchase drug tax stamps." In Kansas.
It's no New York here, but I had another celebrity siting yesterday: Garrison Keillor outside the Lagoon Theater. He was wearing Birkestocks with outrageous red socks underneath. I think I've completely expired my Minnesota celebrities. (Well, except for Prince, of course.) See ya at the Josh Hartnett Meetup!
tuesday
Quite excellent special supplement on Baghdad culture in al-Ahram. Spend some time there.
But really, who needs culture when you have Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! And Pizza Hut and Burger King are setting up franchises!
Unknown photos from Blow-Up, my favorite '60s art film, suddenly discovered.
Real bought Listen.com for $36 million. I'm mystified.
Good Slate.com: Rating News Networks War Theme Songs.
More juicy info on those CNN.com obits. The funny thing is that the experimental site Lab404.com can claim indirect credit for the leaks. Semi-related: "classic" digital art on display in NYC.
The Post claims Pabst Blue Ribbon has staged a comeback "led by colleagues such as snowboarders and indie filmmakers." Whatevva.
I haven't talked about Chuck for a while. Because he refuses to get a blog, I'm licensed to say whatever I want about him. If you're new around here, Chuck is a college friend, now at Spin, who recorded his college and high school memories in this book, which I hated the first time I read, probably because he doesn't talk about me enough. He recently interviewed Radiohead in England, and had this to say about Thom Yorke: "He is very unshaven and does not appear to comb his hair; he was very nice, though, and quite interesting (not difficult at all)." You can read the rest in Spin next month. And Chuck's new book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (available for pre-order), is out in August. Over Christmas, while drunk, he said there's an essay in there about the summer we lived on University Avenue and discovered Slacker, which, well, changed everything for me. And, oh yeah, he's on my Amazon list of people who have punched me.
friday
Sony nabs video game rights to the phrase "Shock and Awe."
Did you see the story today about the Department of Defense making a deck of playing cards of "Wanted Iraqi Leaders" which are being distributed around Iraq? I made a slideshow of all 55 cards for work. The Eight of Spades will, of course, be the collector item du jour, but I suspect the Five of Hearts will be the gem for the "true fan" of despotism.
WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com crashed about 4 seconds after its release.
Salon: The Return of the Mustache.
Wired's piece on the fall of the MIT Media Lab.
Despite (or because of) how much damn media I've been forced to consume in the past month, I have become a late-comer fan of The Daily Show. Salon's Laura Miller has a new piece on Jon Stewart.
Donald Rumsfeld: poet or sex columnist?
Retrocrush's collection of Sexiest Album Covers.
TNR's review of the new DeLillo.
Ethics in Video Game Journalism.
I haven't heard this kind of crazy talk since AOL-TimeWarner. Apple might buy Universal Music, the biggest record label in the world. Ya know, I always knew that Apple wanted to be like Sony.
Two completely random predictions: 1) SNL this weekend has a bit on Saddam and Osama hanging out at a frat on the University of Wisconsin campus and 2) The U.S. invades Iran within three years. (We have troops on their west border and east border -- Iraq and Afghanistan. It's only a matter of time. I say this as someone who didn't think that Bush would be stupid enough to invade Iraq.)
wednesday
What a dull day. This is all I've got:
The Pioneer Press does a list of local bloggers. Guess which former Knight-Ridder employee is not a included. (Yes, I mean me.)
Webby Award Nominees.
Got Wi-Fi? Wired's Unwired issue.
Mediapost calls IBS (where I toil all day) an "esoteric online giant." I'll take that as a compliment.
I predict buzz: Soft Pink Truth's Do You Party.
It's the solo album from Drew Daneil of Matmos, which doesn't sound buzzworthy, but here's what the new Wired writes: "Daniel cuts up Yiddish comedy records, '70s public-service announcements, phone sex pranks, and other found material to produce and amazing, totally schizo album."
Roger Ebert was complaining the other day that no movie critic has won the Pulitizer for Criticism since he did in 1975. And then yesterday the Pulitzers were announced and Stephen Hunter from the Post won this year.
Semi-highbrow digital conference worth considering: Digital Genres: Semiotic Technologies this Side of the Millennium. And Berkeley is having another: Weblogs: Information & Society. If you're going to either one, let me know.
wednesday
Slate's Paul Boutin: How to watch Iraqi TV on the Web.
Heh, CNN.com Goes To Font Size 72. There's also Waxy's remixed decapitation version of CNN.com.
New York Press' 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. Includes easy ones like Carson Daly, Martha Stewart, Naomi Campbell, and Ann Coulter and lesser-thought-of's like Jonathan Franzen, Jeff Koons, Tina Brown, and John Negroponte.
Nerve interview with Thomas Laqueur, the author of Solitary Sex: A History of Masturbation.
Good J. Hoberman Voice piece on the history of the Oscars during times of war.
New Italo Calvino posthumous autobiographical collection: The Hermit in Paris.
MUSIC NOTES:
A collection of Protest Song MP3s, currated by Thurston Moore and Chris Habib.
Also, R.E.M. has their own protest MP3.
Internal memo from MTV Europe recommending videos not to air during war.
Photo: The Strokes hanging with Justin Timberlake.
monday
Tricky W? Everyone's talking about The Guardian's scoop of "dirty tricks" that the U.S. pulled on Security Council members.
Bill Clinton called up for jury duty.
Studio 360's episode on improvisation was good this week.
Looks like there's a new Linklater film in production starring Jack Black and Joan Cusack.
HootersAir.com
I can't believe I'm continuing this thread, but Fred Durst talks to Howard Stern about sex with Britney.
2003 World's Richest People from Forbes.
Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja arrested on alleged possession of child pornography.
More good Slate.com questions: Did Eminem Ruin 50 Cent? & Who Will Run Iraq After The War?
I was spotted at 2:43 p.m., Sunday, March 2, reading The Hipster Handbook at a local Barnes 'n Noble. Forgive my indiscretions.
tuesday
It'll never happen, but I like Saddam's proposition to "debate" Bush. That's reality tv I'd watch.
Guggenheim's Matthew Barney exhibit. (Here's some stuff for sale. Patches?) Why do I have no trips to NYC planned this Spring?
And here I thought NASCAR was a dumb activity for under-sexed southerners. In reality, it's a testing grounds for complexity theory, social network analysis, and game theory.
10 Ways in which Buffy has toyed with TV conventions.
Hey, Steve Malkmus has a new album out next month. The new issue of Spin gave it an "A" rating. Also the new Radiohead album is scheduled for June 10 release.
New interesting semantic web Daypop idea: Top Word Bursts.
The Economist asks: Is there really a market for a $20,000 mobile phone?
The Saddameter adds historical charts. Remember the days when it was around 50%? The Iraq Attack Pool says it will happen March 3.
My new t-shirt arrived. It rules.
monday
Now that's a monitor.
David Weinberger on NPR talking about the "not-very-distant future." See also: How the Protesters Mobilized in the Times.
I kept hearing a promo on CNN (or maybe MSNBC) tonight about an upcoming interview with the then-teenage girl that Roman Polanski had sex with a million years ago. Here she is coming out. She even has an editorial in the L.A. Times.
Everyone's asking why Google bought Blogger, but this is the best answer so far: we dunno.
Getting paid to blog is one thing, but getting paid to blog about Christina Ricci just isn't fair.
Occasionally, I come up with a good one.
tuesday
The new Wired (print) magazine showed up in the mail today. The cover is "Speed Freaks," and it looks like it went to print before they could stop this deck from appearing on the cover: "SURVIVING NASA'S INSANE 7G EXPERIMENT." Ha-ha, old media.
Woo-hoo! Gaming as a form of activism, says this AP story.
Microsoft bloggers.
Anderson Cooper Trivia. Son of Gloria Vanderbilt. Was almost Ricky Shroder. Hosted The Mole.
Worried about the repercussions of war? Consider buying your own hazmat suit from Yahoo Stores.
Taschen has a new book about the Jaybird naked revolution.
New Yorker Google cartoon.
For info-graphic geeks, the NYSE MarkeTrac from Asymptote has launched.
Times: Amazon.com gives up on tv ads.
Yet another William Gibson interview (Globe & Mail).
Coming to the Sci-Fi channel: Children of Dune.
From the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints: HotSaints.com. Amen.
If you ask me what my favorite movie is, you're likely to hear a different answer every time, but the Criterion Contempt DVD that I watched this weekend puts Godard back in the front. Brigitte Bardot, please come back and save the world.
monday
Buffy search engine: I Call It Mr. Pointy. Speaking of which, last night I downloaded Kazaa for the first time. Did a search for "Buffy" and found the un-aired pilot episode which starred a different Willow (a hefty brunette). File-sharing is so lush.
Hmmm, which to buy, the $185 Dante Encyclopedia or the $150 Beckett on Film DVD Set? Oh, who am I kidding, the next month is dedicated to SimCity4.
The company I work for runs 60+ tv websites across the nation, and not one meteorologist showed up in Playboy's Hottest Weather Girl survey.
Last year, Ween was hired to write a jingle for Pizza Hut, which of course was rejected. But you knew it would eventually show up online.
sunday
Odd? Norman Mailer in The American Conservative on "why he is a Left-Conservative."
We've tried everything else, so maybe porn can establish peace in the Middle East (don't worry, safe link).
Follow-up: Why I Turned Pepys' Diary Into a Weblog.
One of the geekiest things I've ever seen: Minneapolis Trekies have created an entire episode of Star Trek that looks remarkably like the original series.
Times: New York's Best Traffic Cop.
Advocate: Top 10 Gayest Moments on TV in 2002.
Metafilter has a post about Chuck's Times Mag piece comparing the deaths of Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby. I got plastered with Chuck three nights in a row last weekend and not once did we argue about the balance of populism and criticism, but he did say Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, his next book, a series of essays about junk culture, will be out this summer.
tuesday
Bookmuch has a "world exclusive" review of the new DeLillo novel, Cosmopolis, which isn't out until April.
In one of the worst pieces of speculative tech reportage I've seen in a while, The Register is predicting that Microsoft will buy Macromedia.
Decent photo-essaying: Lauren Greenfield's Girl Culture. My favorite is a Time essay with some girls from Edina.
Ask Snoop.
In college, "The State" was a big deal. It disappeared, but this site has every skit.
The Buffy Sex Chart.
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart play chess in the trailer to X-2.
Fouad Ajami is everywhere lately. Long Foreign Affairs piece on Iraq and the Arabs' Future.
Top SciTech Gifts 2002.
UrbanSimulation.com, a place for realtime visualizations community.
monday
I'm not working this week -- my first vacation since September 2001. What will I do with myself? Probably watch movies and play with FlashComm. Maybe buy an xBox. I'm such a nerd. But that also means it's a week of link crack:
A few weeks ago, I had dinner with Nathan Shedroff, one of the big voices behind the Experience Design movement (this interview is a good introduction). I enjoyed his book, but if I were to recommend one in the field, it would be Trains of Thought, which is a mix of cognitive psychology, structural thinking, and phenomenology. The experience designers have boldly attacked the field of information architecture, and a recent spat between Shedroff and a leading IA proponent is full of frisson. My take on this dispute is that it's exhilarating to finally witness something in this industry that actually gets people excited enough to use exclamation points.
This is cool. A Dutch film called Necrocam is available in entirety online. The website gives you the tone, but the Times article gives the context.
More on The Sims, this time from NY Times Mag. Same issue has a Steve Ballmer profile.
The new Tate Magazine has an interview with Matthew Barney.
Archive Your Life, brought to you by Microsoft.
I know, this is totally old news from last week, but I gotta get in the Ellen Fleiss interview somewhere. What a cool kid.
Nerve and Film Comment both have Parker Posey features this month. Nerve is more funny (Note: The word "indie" will not be used in the following introductory paragraphs about Parker Posey. When the word's usage cannot be avoided, a small picture of Jim Jarmusch will appear instead.) but Film Comment is more poignant (She played indie film itself in You've Got Mail and Scream 3. She was the pin puncturing the sentimental or idiotic, seemingly hell-bent on teaching those complacent big stars who surrounded her a thing or two about the value of irony.)
More dot.com destruction news. The once mighty Razorfish has been purchased by some design firm in Salt Lake City called SBI.
Finally, the Bush Twins can throw away their fake IDs.
Goodie. The Right is getting back into the cultural wars! Here's the Wall Street Journal's utterly petty attack on Kurt Cobain and here's The American Prospect's showing its contempt for Michael Moore.
If you're into chess, check out The Atlantic's recent article on Bobby Fisher's Endgame.
Terminator 3 site is up.
Darwin Mag has another Jeff Bezos interview.
Lou Reed's next album will consist entirely of Edgar Allan Poe's words.
The new Sonic Youth video for "The Empty Page" debuted on 120 Minutes tonight. I'm pretty sure the club scenes were filmed at the First Avenue show I was at a few months ago.
The lineup on the Discovery Channel tonight: 9:00, "Changing Sexes: Male to Female"; 10:00, "Big as Life: Obesity in America"; 11:00, "Dwarfs: Little People, Big Steps". Discover, fer sure.
friday
I saw They Might Be Giants last night. That's weird.
The first BMW film of the second season is out: Hostage, directed by John Woo.
Stereptypes.
Wow, ever wanted to know what Kabukicho (the sex district of Tokyo) was like? Well, here ya go. (As they say in the chat rooms: sorta not safe for work.)
I need a last-minute Halloween getup.
42 hours of Buckminster Fuller online video: Everything I Know.
Betamax videoboxes and shells.
Japanase kids are suffering from an isolated psychological disease -- modern hermits. Weird.
Buffy fans are all bubbly over the new Once More With Feeling CD. I'm not biting, but here's a medley if you're curious. While you're at it, rate the buffy look-alike.
Datecam is using the Flash Comm Server to interesting success.
Black People Love Us. Dot-com.
wednesday
Lots of smack for the minions today. In triplicate. Feast:
MOVIES:
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh. My. God. Kyra Sedgwick & Parker Posey & Fairuza Balik in the same movie?
Nerve interviews Brett Easton Ellis on the movie version of Rules of Attraction. "One of my only complaints about the movie was that it was so much colder and harsher than the book. It's like Kubrick directing a college film."
Protest: Tolkien Towers vs. Twin Towers.
INTERNET:
Republicans copy the Switch campaign. Also: some new Switch people: Gianni Jacklone | DJ Qbert | Fabiola Torres.
Interview: Marissa Mayer, Product Manager, Google.
I thought about going to PopTech this year, but didn't. WiredNews reviews it.
MUSIC:
Nick Hornby, the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, picks his 10 record tracks he could not imagine living without. It includes Teenage Fanclub, Springsteen, and Prince's "Sexy MF."
Music geeks use Lost in Translation to esoteric results.
Elephant 6 Is Dead.
TV:
ConspiracyChick.com was mentioned on this week's Alias, and a geocities site was faked for last week's Buffy.
Watching The Simpsons in Thailand.
Final episode of Push, Nevada airs this week. That million is so mine.
RADIO:
The excellent recent "Classifieds" episode of This American Life is available (audio).
Lynn Hirschberg of Rolling Stone hosts this week's Studio 360.
All Thing's Considered (NPR) had a 13-minute piece (audio link) on Minnesota's senatorial race between Paul Wellstone and Norm Coleman.
BOOKS:
A Canuck won the Booker Prize. (Three Canadians were nominated this year.)
Michel Houellebecq: innocent.
Penguin Classics is being redesigned.
wednesday
I think this is new. I'm not even sure. It looks like Amazon.com has "beta" categories for "Industrial Suppplies" and "Car Parts" and "Medical Supplies".
New benefit album featuring Black Flag covers is out. Includes Exene Cervenka, Ween, Mike Patton, Ice T, Slayer, Lemmy, Rancid, Chuck D, and of course lots of Henry Rollins.
New Voice Literary Supplement.
The Guardian investigates the radical Iranian underground.
Ben Katchor's comic strip in Metropolis magazine is one of my favorite obscure media delights. Here's the most recent. Also of architectural note: The New Yorker asks if this is the ugliest building in NYC. If this rattles your ionic columns, this is also worth a visit: The Architecture Hate Page.
Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle has never been played in entirety in one place. But if you live in Paris, you could witness the first time.
Slashdot thread on Alternative Media Art.
This is not The Onion: Punk fans set rock critic straight about their scene.
New trailers: Michael Moore attacks guns with bare fists in Bowling for Columbine, Salma Hayek goes monobrow in Frida, and Mike Leigh does his best Woody Allen impression with All Or Nothing.
The New Republic has a Guide to the Iraq Debate. The same issue also asks is Zadie Smith a pseudonym for Dave Eggers?
City Paper in Philly has a couple okay articles: Blue Books: talking with the 'sex worker literati' and Designer Labeled: a new book and exhibit ask 'What Is Design Today?'
Lit notes: Milan Kundera's new book, Ignorance, was released last week. And Umberto Eco's third novel, Baudolino, is out next week.
wednesday
Here's a obscure fact about me: I've never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I know that's not very interesting to most of you, but to those who know my geeky lit tendencies, that might seem odd. My friend Peter just gave me the original BBC radio show from 1978, and I'm half-way through the 10 hours. Anyway, it looks like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will be made into a movie too.
Warning: stay away from MTV2 this weekend.
Salon.com profiles Trent Reznor.
AgeOfConsent.com. Country-by-country and state-by-state breakdown. It's even bilingual -- of course, the other language is French.
Puffy's Fall Collection: SeanJean.com.
Evite to the War on Iraq.
The Onion: Bush Sends Troops To West Nile.
French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, on trial for Islam slurs.
Bubba's blondes. And in other gossip, are Jane and Ted back together?
Graphical map of sexual fetishes.
wednesday
At the Sonic Youth show last night, I kept wondering what 18-year-olds think of this band. Is it the same way I think of Springsteen and the Dead and the Sex Pistols or is it the same way as I think of Neil Young and Dylan and the Minutemen. (Know what I mean?) Anyway, I don't give a damn what Amy Phillips says (or, for that matter, what other say in response), Sonic Youth is still the best show I've seen this year.
Simon Peter says this is me.
wednesday
When did I become a technophile? I'm thinking about buying a ReplayTV 4500 just cuz I can hook it up to the internet (anything with a internet connection = good). But becuz I can hook it up to the internet, not only can I program it remotely, but I can go to PlanetReplay and download episodes of Sex and the City from other ReplayTV users. So there. I'm not a technophile -- it's really still about cultcha. Or, well, sex.
Excellent McSweeney's list: Lessons Learned from My Study of Literature.
Two new neat blogs: Don't Link To Us!, a blog about stupid linking policies. The Trademark Blog, about the world of trademark protection.
I wish I had the idea to make a music video that was really an infographic.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a pretty dull story about the shared history of punk and the academe.
Before you click, just think to yourself, "What would Adam Sandler's website look like?" Okay, now click.
Salon does its homework and collects some astoundingly bad domain names that were forged at the height of dot-com-stupidity. But of course the question is: how much longer until Salon.com joins 'em?
Pure geek: the new WC3 specs for XHTML 2.0 are out. As you were...
Some teases of next season's Buffy.
The Times and Herbert Muschamp are preparing their vision of the future of Ground Zero.
I refuse to link to any Bruce Springsteen reviews.
monday
Amazing. A bi-partisan think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has published a paper called Biological Welfare and the "Buffy Paradigm" (pdf file). Yes, that Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel the world has just tilted in some significant way. Either that, or there's a choice think tank job waiting for me somewhere.
James Hong, one of the guys behind HotOrNot, has replied to my two-line sarcastic comment about his site ("Wired or Tired"). Frankly, he's completely right about the site's potential as a communications medium. In fact, when I speak to online journalists under the topic "technologies journalists should learn from," HotOrNot always gets mentioned. And, hell, even I'm in there (at a measly 7.6). Sorry James, this damn internet can make the world inconveniently small at times -- especially for a snarky blogger weaned on a Entertainment Weekly culture. Glad to see you had fun at the party.
Of all the good sites out there that could become tv shows, ClassMates.com has to be the one?
Speaking of tv, Who Would You Kill On: Sex and the City | The Simpsons | Buffy | The A-Team | The X-Files | etc.
And speaking of dating, Amy "Long Island Lolita" Fisher has her own column in the New Long Island Ear. The first one is about her impersonating people on the internet to find a date, and subsequently meeting her fiancé through Match.com. Chilling.
In Europe, Nokia has released a new multimedia imaging phone, which this article suggests will lead to all sorts of subversive nastiness.
Would you want to have your email or web pages read to you through the phone? Apparently some people do, because AOL and Yahoo and Google all have features that integrate voice and internet functionality. I believe we have a meme -- can someone get CNET on the line?
Gimme. Frank Zappa's 1975 Rolls-Royce for sale on eBay.
Going to college in a buried midwestern shelter-belt, I devoured the international papers that poured into the university library. (That was right before they started showing up online.) The Guardian was my favorite, and at one time I dreamt they would let a snotty American kid become an intern there. Although my resume is surely bloody trash now, I still feel privileged to have the site recently link to me in its blog.
thursday
Theme Issue! Theme Issue! Theme Issue! Today, it's Women, Post-Feminism, And All-Things-Distaff (sorta):
Layne beat me to the discussion we had the other night about feminism and the startling books uncovered at Amazon.com: The Excellent Wife: A Biblical Perspective | Liberated Through Submission | The Surrendered Wife | Surrendering to Marriage. I'm totally creeped out. And she's creeped out that I'm creeped out.
Lizzy Borden -- not the one who axed mom or even the bad metal musicians -- is one bad lady. Her tasteless ultraviolent films, however, are just post-feminist enough for Salon.com to find a reason to profile her. Although I tend to enjoy reading about anything extreme (but just reading, cuz I'm a prude at heart), I really don't know what the point of all this is.
I'm not sure if I find the next item admirable or equally creepy, but it's a mighty fine collection of WomenHandsOnHips. Hundreds of pictures of famous women with... hands on their hips. If it weren't for the internet, would anyone ever gather such an important collection? And what does it all mean? Who cares! There's Sophia Loren in that pose. And, look, Jodie Foster! You mean there are only four of Charlize and Kirsten? But just look at all the others. The site creator reports: "I like strong and confident, but feminine and sensual women, and a woman with her hands on her hips somehow displays all those qualities perfectly."
How about those Swinging Chicks Of The '60s.
Did you catch Ann Coulter and Katie Couric bickering on MSNBC? Good stuff. Watch it.
I know, I know, I diss Maxim for being sexist, but then I link to things like this. Let's call it the paradox of the guilty liberal male.
If you live in Europe, I'm told you know T-Babe. She's apparently a virtual recording artist with a few hits. The site says: "She is multi-lingual speaking English, Italian, and German and is currently working on her Spanish and Japanese -- so if you have any hints on improving her fluency in either of these, please let her know." Uhhhhh-huh, that was a neat shtick in 1992.
Similarly, the new Pacino movie is from the creators of The Truman Show, and it shows. S1mone is another virtual chick who dudes pass off as real.
The Iconophile, on the other hand, is just a dude collecting "lesser, harder-to-find goddesses and saints of the celebrity pantheon." But no Tina Fey or Juliette Binoche.
friday
I have nothing to say today. However, I want to share the funniest piece of spam I have ever received:
-----Original Message-----
From: jennaz99@yahoo.com
Subject: Can you help me ?
Hello, my name is Jenna.
I love sex with animals. Yearstaday I have received an advertisemen t of new animal hardcore portal. 3 most popular sites at cost of 1.
I have purchased a subscription, but have a problem. All 5,000 videos are in MPG format. I can't pla y videos, because I don't know what program is needed for playing these files.
And now I forced to see only tons pictures, and read hundreds of stories.
Please sorry for inconvience.
www.zoo-3in1.com
What amuses me is that "Jenna" tries to trick you into her "animal hardcore portal" [Jenna!] by simply posing a simple tech problem: her computer won't play MPGs. How sad! Now poor Jenna is "forced" to only view the pictures and read the hundreds of stories. Please, someone help Jenna with the MPGs!
thursday
I just watched the trailer to CQ, a new film from Roman Coppola. It looks like Barbarella for the millennial set, which, well, sounds just like my kinda thing. And it has Dean Stockwell. The website has some crazy stuff, including a downloadable PDF book and something called Experience CQ. It's apparently in theaters already, but probably only on the coasts.
The Museum of Sex in Chelsea opened a while ago, but I didn't stumble across this exhibit until recently: NYC SEX: How New York City Transformed Sex In America. In the 1001 Nights In Manhattan people navigate to places on a map and leave stories about sexual escapades. Can you find mine?
"Lowercase Sound" has been floating around for a while, but it appears to be getting some media attention lately. The style emphasizes low volumes, silences, soundscapes, and found sound. There's even a label. Wired News has a story on the medium, with a bunch of sample MP3s.
I know a girl who used to babysit Anne Nicole Smith's kid. She had some crazy stories. But now we get to see the real thing on E!.
Ari Fleischer doesn't just spin -- he flat out lies.
Amazon.com has added a new category: Restaurants. Darn, one of my favorite resaurants, Millennium in San Fran, doesn't have a menu there yet.
IcelandCulture.com
thursday
What the hell? My favorite musician is having a baby with my favorite filmmaker? When did this happen? The New Yorker slips in the Bjork / Matthew Barney tryst in this piece about Cremaster 3.
There's a lot of buzz about the Apathy MP3s on the web (Apathy is the band of the kid accused of those pipe bomb attacks). When I downloaded them yesterday, I had the whole office rocking out like it was 1995. Parts of "Conformity" were on MSNBC today. You think a radio hit is in the future?
My adorable little niece loves Blue's Clues. Now Mr. Blue is making an album with The Flaming Lips. I knew me and that kid would find something in common to talk about soon.
Vanity Fair names Chelsea Clinton a sex symbol.
Still dwelling on architecture stuff: How to Build Skyscrapers, from City Journal.
If you haven't seen it yet, the Guerilla News Network is worth a peak. Radical politics served up as white Verdana on a black background. Hmmm....
If anyone knows anything about Vixen Highway, a Russ Meyers-ish flick filmed here in Minneapolis, please let me know. I'm so curious...
Stephen Ambrose finally responds to the plagiarism charges (after telling you he has cancer).
MediaBistro.com interviews Jeannette Walls.
There's a Britney Spears video game coming out for PlayStation. A photo of Britney's Dance Beat. Players audition to be backup singers in Britney's virtual concert tour by maneuvering one of six characters through a series of practices and auditions to perfect their dance moves.
Psst, psst. I think Tina Fey reads this blog. No, no, I'm so serious. I have evidence. Hi, Tina! Write some time, okay?
friday
PETA poll: Sexiest Vegetarians Alive. (And the winners are not Jude Law, Thora Birch, Mos Def, Don Imus, Gavin Rossdale, Pamela Anderson, Thom Yorke, Drew Barrymore, Moby, David Duchovny, Alec Baldwin, Chelsea Clinton, Fiona Apple, or Brigitte Bardot.)
McDonald's is changing its name to Man Foods in Egypt. How... manly.
Wow, Saddam is prolific. He has a second novel out: The Impregnable Fortress.
ReasonablyClever.com: make yourself in Legos.
This weeks winner of "Not An Onion Headline Because It's Real" headline: Monopoly Makers Accused Of Monopoly.
Is it a Qrime? Crazy digi-art that has something to do with violence, I think.
Our mayor (no, not our governor) is calling for a "hole-y war" against Krispy Kreme.
Looks like that in addition to NBC, other networks including CNN, BBC, and PBS all wanted Bill Clinton for a talk show. It doesn't look like he'll take any of the offers.
What am I doing this weekend? Probably reading The City Pages Best of 2002.
friday
Plug: the roomie's band has their CD release party tonight.
Friday time-wasters: Miniature Golf and Darts.
Yummy, this week's "This American Life" is about mapping.
I remember an atrocious Maxim article headlined "How To Trick Your Girlfriend Into Anal Sex." The operative word seemed to be "Trick." Ummmm? They keep up the hijinks with this piece about catching her cheating.
"The veil? It protects us from ugly women." --Jean-Marie Le Pen
Poor Woody Allen. I saw Hollywood Ending last night, and it was pathetically bad. All the characters were stereotypes of every Woody character. Sad.
Manson Denied 10th Parole Bid.
Umberto Eco explains why short forms of modern communication can be simply irresistible.
"Ask Kelly", the new advise column in YM from Kelly Osbourne.
Cancel that trip to Broadway. Saddam's romantic novel is hitting the stage.
Boards of Canada has a new website that's neato. Mouse-controlled video and sound fx.
Moby, Hendrix-style, surrounded by naked girls.
Rah, the season finales are coming.
thursday
Every time I think I might get meta about this medium (i.e., write about the structural language of blogs themselves), the episteme fails me. So I'll try to illustrate by example. Peter Maass is a writer at the New York Times Magazine who I enjoy reading. He has a blog. It's never great, and never bad, but it ususally gives me a clue into what the New York Times Magazine might be doing next. To people like me, that's interesting. Anyway. He's in Pakistan this week. He writes that he just had his first encounter with Brain Masala. He writes: "Quite popular in Karachi, and not at all bad; soft in texture and gentle in taste, much like tofu, though high in cholesterol, I'm told." That's it. That's why I like blogs. When whatever he's writing for the New York Times Magazine comes out, I will be thinking of Brain Masala.
The Replacements were going to reunite, but someone ruined it. Who? Axl-Fucking-Rose, that's who.
According to NME, The Smiths are the most influential band of that last 50 years, and the top eight are all from England. My personal poll: the best unregarded Smiths song: "Sweet and Tender Hooligan."
I spent last night stuffing my roommate's band's new CD in envelopes to be sent to radio stations. That's a plug.
Where's Osama? Your government thinks he escaped.
Forget the Mini, I'll wait for the new VW which gets 235 miles per gallon.
Woo-hoo! McDonald's is losing money!
Another good biomorphic Bjork video: "Pagan Poetry" (large load-time).
The "woodchipper house" from the movie Fargo is on sale at eBay.
Salon has a dumb column about women who wear glasses (which doesn't once make reference to Tina Fey or Ashleigh Banfield).
Movie rumor: David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room) to direct Mission Impossible 3. Poor guy is really slipping.
wednesday
A bunch of designers got together to create designer barf bags. I'm not convinced they're any better than the real things.
If I am a "Plushophile," what do I like? What tickles me if I'm a "Zootophile"? Apparently, I would have a fascination -- sometimes sexual -- with stuffed animals and dressing up as them. Of course there's a web page (and a web ring) for you, which includes The Fur Code. (Thanks, DL.)
The internet projects I like the most are ones that bring you back to reality in some concrete way. Go to PostCardX and send people on the list random stuff -- to their snail mail address. Add your address to the site, and come back later to talk about what people sent you.
But I also like projects that have absolutely no purpose, like Shit-Talker, "a program that lets you hold a conversation over the phone with someone by making your computer talk for you."
CBSNews.com has redesigned.
Maybe some things don't need to be interactive, like, perhaps, Interactive Dressing Rooms? (Thanks, Luckee.)
Ultra-Condensed Classic Books
friday
Countering yesterday's speculation, Dig-It is apparently real. Too bad, cuz it sounds like it will really suck.
This game makes me want to get drunk. And this one makes me want to have sex. It feels like high school again!
Whaddya know, Maxim has a book review section.
NYPost writes a pro-NYTimes column (about the new Times headquarters).
A website that randomly generates the language of a 13-year-old's instant messages: It's like, so rad.
Beautiful illustration of the power of Flash: Flora: An Experiment in Growing Plant-Life Forms. Select two plants to randomly grow. Then graft them. Unique combinations every time.
Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less.
Shift asks: Will The Newspaper Survive? I've been hearing this question since the days of being a webmaster at a Knight-Ridder newspaper in 1997, but the angle here is somehow still fresh.
My college mentor has a new book out, Walking With the Wind: Voices and Visions in Film, a translation of the poems of Abbas Kiarostami. Here's what The New Republic says in its weekly newsletter:
The name Abbas Kiarostami will be familiar to fans of Stanley Kauffmann, who has long been one of the Iranian director's most faithful advocates. "Kiarostami seems to look at film not as something to be made, but to be inhabited, as if it were there always, like the world, waiting to be stepped into, without fuss," Kauffmann has written. Kiarostami's films often follow a person on an unusual errand, showing how the most extraordinary events -- a man's attempt at suicide in Taste of Cherry, the filming of a death ritual in The Wind Will Carry Us -- grow from the quiet mundanities of daily life. This month the Harvard Film Archive will publish, in a beautiful English-Persian bilingual edition, a collection of Kiarostami's poetry called Walking with the Wind. The poems are as short and mysterious as haiku, and each focuses on an image that is both immediately visualizable and infinitely contemplatable: the watch on a blind man's hand, a raven rubbing its beak in the dust. Essential for Kiarostami devotees and anyone in search of a new mind-opener.
wednesday
I'm bummed because there's an XSLT training course going on at work this week and I don't have any time to attend.
I'm working on a journal website for my college mentor. A first draft of Edebiyât. Here's an interesting Muslim weblog that's making me reconsider everything: Zhikr.org.
Super, super awesome Bjork video that you simply must watch (and I guarantee you won't see it on MTV).
The annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll is out. Everyone's favorite Chuck was asked to vote this year. Shockingly, he was the only person to pick "The Blues" by Guns N' Roses. Yes, yes, Chuck, I'm sure it was great.
Page of William Gibson stuff, including audio of him reading.
British Telecom claims to invent the link. Here's the supposed patent and some video.
C'mon, I'd love to have sex with a diesel robot. No, no, not that diesel robot.
Interesting profile of Okwui Enwezor who will curate Documenta 11.
Futurama, cancelled.
Interview with Carl Hiassen.
How to drink sake, I think.
wednesday
Madonna and child.
This collection of bootlegs from 2001 has beaucoup whack MP3s on it. For instance, The Strokes meet Christina Aguilera and Nirvana and Destiny's Child.
The 50 Best Companies To Work For, according to Fortune, who I wouldn't trust with a $3 Enron retirement fund.
There's a rumor that Dan the Automator and Dr. Octagon will be doing the next Beck album. Woo-hoo!
Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. Poor boy, never got shot at.
WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC, but also somehow bold and funny: The Ultimate Breast Test. Playboy has put 36 playmate bare-chests online and asked a simple question for each pair: REAL or FAKE? I guess if you play it right, you can find out if any playmate has been, well, enhanced. I suppose the reason I'm fascinated by this (and it's not because it's erotic, cuz these decapitated heads really aren't, er, titillating) is that Playboy has gone so far as to actually gather and reveal this data. (Oh yeah, I got 30 out of 36.)
thursday
I'm so envious of this amazing collection at the Condiment Packet Museum. The lemon juice page is so inviting.
A surfeit of dot-com entertainment? On_Line The Movie ("a story about people watching people," premiering at Sundance) and Downloading Sex ("the TV incarnation of the website," a HBO/Nerve.com co-production) and e-Dreams ("a behind-the-scenes look at.Kozmo.com," now playing in NYC) and Dot Con ("investigates the financial forces behind the unprecedented rise and seemingly overnight fall of the Internet economy," from PBS).
When a new bar/restaurant named The News Room opened in downtown Minneapolis (in one of those nice areas on Nicollet levelled for skyscrapers), of course my friends and I had to investigate. It has accidentally become a regular hang-out, despite the fact we all hate it. (This is very common in the Midwest -- we love to hate more than anyone, I'm sure of it.) City Pages reviewed The News Room this week, and pretty much says all the things we've said. Dara calls the place "completely insane, but strangely inspiring," and the food is "without question the worst food I've had in a restaurant in at least three years."
Every year, I try to make it back to the UND Writer's Conference, which is probably the biggest cultural event in the Red River Valley. The event has given me the opportunity to hang out with some cool writers -- August Wilson, Tim O'Brien, Yusef Komunyakaa, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Skvorecky, Sherman Alexie -- and enjoy the company of college friends. The film festival associated with it is also quite an experience. I just found out that Stephen Ambrose was asked to attend this year's conference. The Grand Forks Herald has the story. (Thanks to Jaimee, who's gonna love that pic and wonder where it came from, for the link.)
In other literary North Dakota news, Dave Barry is paying a visit. (Here's GF trying to be funny.) Of course I have a corporate conspiracy for why Barry is visiting North Dakota: the Grand Forks Herald is Knight-Ridder owned, and Tony Ridder of course pays his checks at the Miami Herald. I'm sure backdoor connections set up this visit.
Wallace and Gromit to return online.
Enron stuff for sale on eBay. Yo-yos!
"America's first reality sitcom," The Osbournes, starring Ozzy Osbourne.
Bill Gates Is Dead.
The FlashForward2002 website has just launched. I went to last year's NYC conference, and haven't decided about this year's San Fran show.
Gimme, gimme, gimme: MiniUSA.
saturday
Did you know that Kandahar is the homosexual capital of south Asia?
A sad day for Minneapolis: The Museum of Questionable Medical Devises, which is one of the first places I take Twin Cities visitors, is closing. The collection is being handed over to the Science Museum of Minnesota. IanWhitney.com has pics.
What the West owes to the people of the Arab and Islamic world: A is for Arabs
I think Bush perjured himself, and had relations with that man.
Make your own joke: Bill Gates dresses up as Harry Potter.
From McSweeney's: On The Implausibility Of The Death Star's Trash Compactor.
Phil is holding Madonnaramma II (at Ralph's in Fargo on Valentine's Day).
What happens when Wittgenstein designs a house.
Google has ended an AIMsearch prank. Search here -- but you had better get to it by Monday, when it will disappear.
friday
Spin has named the 50 Greatest Bands, sure only to piss people off:
- The Beatles
- Ramones
- Led Zeppelin
- Bob Marley & The Wailers
- Nirvana
- Parliament/Funkadelic
- The Clash
- Public Enemy
- The Rolling Stones
- Beastie Boys
- The Velvet Underground
- Sly And The Family Stone
- U2
- Run-D.M.C.
- Radiohead
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience
- Sonic Youth
- AC/DC
- The Stooges
- Metallica
- The Smiths
- Patti Smith Group
- N.W.A.
- Kraftwerk
- The Sex Pistols
- Pearl Jam
- Grateful Dead
- R.E.M.
- Black Sabbath
- Pavement
- Fugazi
- Kiss
- Pretenders
- Rage Against The Machine
- Fela Kuti & Afrika 70/Egypt 80
- David Bowie And The Spiders From Mars
- Blondie
- Bad Brains
- The Who
- Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
- New Order
- Husker Du
- Guns N' Roses
- Outkast
- The Beach Boys
- Massive Attack
- Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Korn
- Pink Floyd
- Red Hot Chili Peppers
I think the biggest question is this: which of these will they regret in five years? They will be: Chili Peppers, New Order, Outkast, and Korn. I also think this means that
Spin is officially now as dull as
Rolling Stone.
tuesday
I refuse to link to the new iMac. I will not cave.
Pretty cool: American Mile Markers: One photograph for every mile across America. I think I should replicate this concept across North Dakota, with one twist: one photograph every yard.
Could the world become AOL/Time-Warner vs. Microsoft/Disney? Is this hell?
Odd. Ethan Coen is writing dirty limericks for Nerve.com.
Stephen Hawking turns 60 tomorrow.
The geeks who saved Usenet.
George W. Bush: Honky.
Is this sports?
Overly elaborate Guide To Lifeguarding.
If I like Vanilla Sky I'm gonna be so mad at myself. Damn, that soundtrack looks sweet though. (Could I own a CD with Tom Cruise on the cover and live with myself? Wait, lemme answer that one: nope.)
Metropolis mag has a feature about The Walker.
Todd is back. Phil ain't.
Dammit.
thursday
Why Is New York City Called The Big Apple?
Pft. According to this, last week's Buffy sex scene was trimmed because it was too explicit. WTF? That was the most sexually explicit piece of tv since.... since... since Buffy and Angel did it. (Tidbit: the author of this story was previously an intern at the place I work.)
Bloggus Caesari is a diary-blog written from the point of view of Caesar. It's funny, but I wish there was more insight on what Ceaser thought of RuPaul's new blog. (Tip from Helen's Loom.)
You're looking to get Rexie a Christmas present? Try the Groucho Marx Celebrity Duck at Celebriducks.com.
Leuschke.org turned me on to this: The World's Currencies. Certainly, the Antarctic Dollar is fetching. There must be hundreds of currency pictures here.
Yummy, pretty: GreyScale.net.
Designers know the grid for the web-safe color palate like chemists know the periodic table of elements. This version of it is much more fun though.
And here I was thinking Survivor III: Africa perpetuates insidious stereotypes about the "Dark Continent." Nope, it turns out it's perpetuating the stupid American stereotype.
Salon.com is offering some of its pay-content for free this week, in the hopes of getting you to subscribe. (A Barney Frank interview? Sign me up!)
Kid Dakota is a local musician who occasionally plays with my friends (genre: shoe-staring emo slow-core folk; boy, I'd hate it if someone called me that). Anyway, he has a new website.
Also of local note, everyone's been squawking about the Twins being potentially contracted from baseball. Frankly, I don't really care, but I do find it funny that City Pages is running a Pick Carl Pohlad's Epitaph contest. The running favorite tombstone script for the Twins owner is "If they build it, they have to come."
p.s. C'mon the new background gif isn't that bad, is it?
sunday
TV networks have repeatedly turned down advertisements from the Culture Jammers Media Network (a.k.a AdBusters). If you want to see why, this page has a good selection of "uncommercials". Finally, CNN Headline News has agreed to air one that promotes the biggest Culture Jammer effort, Buy Nothing Day. The 15-second spot will run Nov. 19 at 4:06 p.m. (EST) and Nov. 20 at 7:06 p.m. (EST), but here's the video if you want to see if beforehand.
Terror Sex? "On the one hand, September's events led to a spike in 'terror sex,' the much-reported need for sexual connection in times of heightened fear. But at the same time, the tanking economy has resulted in a marked drop in business, as clients -- just as the general public -- cut back on spending and struggle with post-traumatic anxiety. The competing dynamics make America's multi-million dollar prostitution industry look like a microcosm of the country at large -- confused, unpredictable and shaken, but resilient. And in some cases, booming."
In this week's NYTimes Magazine, Fouad Ajami writes "What The Muslim World Is Watching," a condemning report about the Al-Jazeera network: "Although Al Jazeera has sometimes been hailed in the West for being an autonomous Arabic news outlet, it would be a mistake to call it a fair or responsible one. Day in and day out, Al Jazeera deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage."
How the biohazard symbol came to be.
This picture of Afghan men in a bathhouse resonates with all sorts of interesting connotations.
The ideas behind Microsoft's Q-Video aren't that unique, but the implementation of some of the technology (face recognition and language processing) is. Here's a report on what might be the next generation of video search.
sunday
A few days ago, I mentioned a passage that suggested the term "al-Qu'aeda" might have come from Isaac Asimov. Fascinating conjecture, but here's a follow-up from an acquaintance, a Jordanian journalist, who offers her interpretation:
I also read something about Qaeda. They say that it started as a data base and I presume this is the way they got the name. Too simple, no fanciful story! By the way, I was familiar with the Arabic term "Qa'eda" because we covered the story of the trial of its members in Jordan, a long and high profile case. In fact, we used to translate the name as "base group." It's really strange how we forced the translated word on ourselves when in a year's time American officials and western media would begin use our Arabic term! Anyway, when Powell first used the word "Qaeda" I never related it to our Qa'eda because he pronounced it in a way that eliminated any possible resemblance. You should listen to a Jazeera reporter and hear how we pronounce it, and then I'm sure you won't blame me. Anyway, one day, I went like, "oh, it's the same word!" So, my version is that "Qaeda" means a base. And I think that Bin Laden is a pragmatic man who would use terms to serve his purpose. But I'll keep an eye for other interpretation of the word.
Remember back to this time two years ago, before Floridian folly culminated with a goofball landing in the White House. It was big news at the time, but everyone seems to have forgotten when George W. Bush was given a surprise foreign relations quiz. An intrepid reporter at WHDH in Boston asked Bush to name the leaders of four countries (at that time, hot-spots in conflict): Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. Bush was able to get one partially right: Taiwan. Now, I see Bush on the tele patting Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on the back like they were old pals. Late one recent night, I watched a full live press conference from Musharraf on CNN. It actually made me envious: he seemed a bold and proud leader, a man who understood conflict and admitted not knowing all the answers while sounding firm at the same time. Certainly, there are troubling parts of his history (despite promising an electoral process he still rose to power via dictatorship, and his previous backing of the Taliban seems puzzling), but he nonetheless seems like someone America could never produce. I never wrote the ode to Musharraf that I wanted, but Salon (who, in a somewhat Details/Cosmo-ish way, always seems to sexualize every topic) has My Crush On Musharraf.
Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It. [Note: this report isn't fully substantiated.]
VisualJournalism.com has put up a very good tour of WTC Infographics from publications around the world.
The New York Times Magazine devotes itself to "Beginnings: An Issue About The Next New York." Good pieces include Colson Whitehead on the new and the lost, Jacob Weisberg on the return of NYC, Terence Riley on what to build, John Tierney on traffic, and Lynn Hirschberg on WTC TV. Not to mention NYC songs by Lou Reed and Run D.M.C..
Tom Tomorrow was on the NPR program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" this weekend. He was very sarcastic -- in the best way. Listen.
tuesday
According to Howard Kurtz, 17 news organizations knew about the attacks on Afghanistan before they happened, but kept quiet about it.
Yesterday, I posted that weird Defense Department Anthrax site, and today you get the weird CIA Terrorist-Busters image.
Also yesterday, I mentioned Al-Jazeera, and said I would do some research. The website is all in Arabic (duh) and requires the translator plugin, but I thought you might want a peak at it anyway. (Here's a screenshot of what it looks like if you have the Arabic-decoder plugin.) NPR interviewed deputy editor, Ahmad Al-Sheikh, (I wish I had an icon to mark this interview as "highly recommended" -- four minutes of really good radio, particularly their points about the use of the word "terrorism.")
New FAA rules. I hate people who carry-on two bags anyway.
A post-mortem: Pauline Kael interview in the New Yorker. She says she wanted to write about Deep Throat, but Shawn wouldn't let her.
Good quote from another dead dot-com: "The story's over. You can't have a magazine about unemployed people."
I haven't seen anyone talk about the weirdness of the publisher of the tabloids the Globe, the Sun, and the National Enquirer being the location of this recent anthrax outbreak. The Miami Herald touches on it, by pointing out that one of those tabloids once published a story claiming that the reason Osama bin Laden hated America was that he was rejected by an American woman as an inadequate lover because he suffers from "underdeveloped sexual organs."
I apologize to those who have absolutely no interest in the interface design links I post here, but today I'm interested in the way that Amazon.com has redesigned their book pages: this example of the book I'm currently reading shows their new tabbing structure. (Also, I mentioned before that the way they put "Rex's Store" in a tab freaks me out.) And, I should point out this one: info architect Jeffrey Zeldmen is featured on Adobe this week. Oh, hell just one more: talking to infoarchitects about the future.
So, there's the company I work for that designed and manages this website: TheIndyChannel.com (one of many). Today, we found this website: FindIndy.com. Um, er, is the design a little suspicious? We launched a year before they did.
What does Rex do? Here is a good example. I designed the page, and all the things in the right column under the header of "INTERACTIVE" are things that I made. Those "interactive components" appear on sites all over the place.
tuesday
Well, maybe something good can come of this. The National Review cans Ann Coulter.
I knew I shouldn't have linked to that "bin Laden calls mom" story yesterday. It's already being debunked.
Uh-oh. Austere Google has added nav bars. There's also a preferences page now.
Usability expert Bruce Tognazzini chimes in on his feelings on how to make airports secure. Nothing new though.
Never trust anyone who says "Afghani" (like I've been doing in the things I produce). And, since I'm linking to Slate, I found this article on naming the "New New World Order" interesting.
Chuck listened to Nevermind recently, and here's a song-by-song analysis. Those "in the know" will be amused by this entry about "Lithium":
I knew an English education major who was obsessed with this song and what it was supposed to mean. In an attempt to impress her, I actually went to the medical school library to find out what lithium was used for, discovering that it was sometimes prescribed for multiple personalities. This seemed to answer all our questions, because Cobain sings about having friends "inside my head." It turns out Lithium is actually about a deeply religious family Kurt temporarily lived with after being kicked out of his house as a teen-ager. To be perfectly honest, I think my interpretation is more interesting than the actual reality, but the English major ended up having sex with some guy who fronted an alternative cover band called As If, so I guess I don't care anymore.
saturday
I went to a Dan "Savage Love" Savage reading a couple years ago. (He's the sex columnist who appears in the back of most alt-weeklies and is now editor of The Stranger.) He told a funny story about meeting a guy on a radio program that claimed to absolutely "love" his horse. Yes, in that way. Savage said that it got him thinking about how American society has shed most sexual taboos, but wondered if sex with animals would ever be culturally acceptable.
But the funny moment came when Savage asked the guy if his horse was a male or female.
There was a long pause. And then the philo-equestrian said very sternly "I AM NOT A HOMOSEXUAL."
I remembered this story when Kevin passed on a review by Peter Singer of a new book on bestiality.
(NOTE: I put a poll on here, grabbing the code from Freetools.com. I was hoping to have the ColdFusion done for my own polling mechanism done be now, but I'm hungover and lazy.)
