ribble's

Internet Time Waste #44: Fortune Cookie Chronicles

2011-02-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Tonight's internet time waste: Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.

Fortune Cookie Chronicles is one of those classic modern ideas - take something all Americans have some kind of relationship with (American Chinese food) pursue the idea to the ends of the Earth and then smear it across a plethora of mediums (book, blog, and upcoming documentary) like so much garlic sauce on so much stir-fried chicken.

Great, now I'm hungry.

Internet Time Waste #43: Photoshop Disasters

2011-02-15T16:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Today's internet time waste: Photoshop Disasters.

Here's their best of 2010.

Once you get used to these, you start looking for them everywhere. Reminds me of Jesse Epstein's "Wet Dreams and False Images."

Internet Time Waste #42: This is Why You're Fat

2011-02-15T08:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Today's internet time waste: This is Why You're Fat.

Funny story: since I started reading This is Why You're Fat, I've lost 15 pounds.

Internet Time Waste #41: Mental Floss Magazine

2011-02-15T00:01:00.003-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Tonight's internet time waste: Mental Floss Magazine, "Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix."

Internet Time Waste #40: The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

2011-02-14T16:01:00.004-05:00

Finally, a new and unique way to waste your precious time on the internet.

Today's internet time waste: the various videos, spinoffs, Facebook pages and Wikipedia entries of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.

These guys are just a tiny bit harder to blog about then the motley bullshit I've been posting lately. They're a family of musicians (husband, wife, daughter) who mostly write songs about boxes of slides they pick up at garage sales and such like, then play along with the slideshow.

Now, in my big, secret list of personal time wasters from which I'm getting my big, public amalgamation of time wasters for you, I just have this link to the video for the Trachtenburg Family song"Mountain Trip to Old Japan" (it's even a bit higher quality than the embed below.)

Where did I find this thing? Who knows?

Now, I'd say this is a pretty representative video, but of course I started poking around. Predictable, as a kinda cute, kinda indie established mid-level act, the TFSP have a wide and diverse internet presence.

So then the question becomes, just how much do you want to know about this family? I mean, daughter Rachel has been an active musician since she was six years old. Of COURSE you're going to be able to find video of her ragging on Bloomberg in a public hearing. I'm not linking to it, though, because we are here to waste your time - not to watch other people waste theirs.

Then the issue is, what do I link to? I say, let's keep things simple. Let's Go On Tour With Kate (i.e. Nash) is my favorite TFSP song so far, so here ya go:

Internet Time Waste #39: Tane

2011-02-14T08:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new, if inexplicable, way to waste your time on the internet.

This morning's internet time waste: Tane.

(Put on those headphones for this, boy.)

Internet Time Waste #38: Greatest Movie Murders

2011-02-14T00:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Tonight's internet time waste: cartoonist Stephen Notley's brother Paul's list of the 100 Greatest Movie Murders

Internet Time Waste #37: Dozens of Interviews with Nathan Fillion

2011-02-13T16:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Today's internet time waste: dozens of interviews with Nathan Fillion.

Internet Time Waste #36: Sawbuck Gamer

2011-02-13T08:01:00.003-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

This morning's time sink: the collected Sawbuck Gamer, gathering years of AV Club columns about cheap games.

I know Sawbuck through Teti. Ages ago, Teti wrote a blog called [Blank] of the Day, which he's since largely taken down. With a lot of dedication, you can read through the archives, post by post, by following this link to a post Teti wrote where he explains why he isn't apologizing for not posting the day before and clicking the links below.

Know how I said I was here to waste your time, not mine? Well, I've read through those archives twice. Quick summary: funny.

Internet Time Waste #35: The Longest Poem in the World

2011-02-13T00:01:00.002-05:00

Yes, this is it at long last: a new way to waste your time on the internet.

Tonight's internet time waste: The Longest Poem in the World

From the about page:

"
"The Longest Poem in the World" is composed by aggregating real-time
public twitter updates and selecting those that rhyme.

It is constantly growing at ~4000 verses / day.
"

Internet Time Waste #34: The Michael Showalter Showalter

2011-02-12T16:01:00.003-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

This afternoon's time waste: The Michael Showalter Showalter.

I saw this guy in a coffee shop in Cobble Hill very, very early one morning and freaked him out by staring at him.

ribble: the picture of class.

Internet Time Waste #33: Angry Zen Master & Monkeys for Helping

2011-02-12T08:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a special and unique way to fritter away lonely hours online.

This morning's internet time waster: Angry Zen Master

Angry Zen Master is a nerd entertainment aggregator blog. It kinda reminded me of Monkeys for Helping, which I've linked to before but not in this context. So I went and checked MfH again and, low and behold, both linked to this extraordinary Bollywood terminator derivative:

Enjoy.

Internet Time Waste #32: Freakonomics Blog

2011-02-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste your time on the internet.

This internet time waste is The Freakonomics blog hosted by the New York Times.

Internet Time Waste #31: Eliza Skinner

2011-02-11T12:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a unique way to waste time online.

Today's internet time waste: the fucked-up mind of Eliza Skinner.

We showed one of Eliza's videos at Iron Mule back in the day. I picked up the DVD from her and I was all implying she should be all excited to see her short in front of an audience and she was all "yeah, I did that motherfucker on STAGE, BITCH!!"

(I'm, uh, paraphrasing.)

And then she quit her day job and went pro, so, BOY. Egg on MY face, I tells ya.

At time of writing, Eliza's latest project is Nasty Cute, in which she writes inappropriate stream-of-consciousness captions for photos of animals, from the animals' perspectives.

Here's that particular short in that I may pique your curiosity:

Internet Time Waste #30: Ukulele Lessons

2011-02-11T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to kill some time on the internet.

Tonight's time waste: Learn to Play the Ukulele.

Internet Time Waste #29: The Unshelved Book Club

2011-02-10T12:01:00.000-05:00

At long last, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's electronic time sink: The Unshelved Book Club.

Unshelved is a webcomic about librarians. For a long time, I thought all the book reviews were written by the author of Unshelved, Gene Ambaum. Turns out there's a whole crew.

Internet Time Waste #28: La Pulcina Piccola

2011-02-10T00:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a novel manner in which to fritter away your hours on the internet.

Tonight's installment: The Secret Diaries of La Pulcina Piccola (Chicken Little.)

La Pulcina is the star of an extended opera (in miniature.) You can hear the story of the opera in This American Life's 2007 Poultry Slam.

Internet Time Waste #27: Randy Cohen on McSweeney's

2011-02-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, this, the wonderment of a way to use your internet connection in order that you may waste your own time.

Today's internet time waste: Randy Cohen week on McSweeney's.

I know Cohen from his podcast, The Ethicist, which you can find at the New York Times website.

Internet Time Waste #26: The Regret Index

2011-02-09T00:01:00.003-05:00

Finally, the once-in-a-lifetime novelty of a new place to waste time on the internet.

Tonight's time sink: the Regret Index.

Internet Time Waste #25: The Book of Ratings

2011-02-08T12:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, you can waste time on the internet with little research or prelude.

This afternoon's internet time waste: The Book of Ratings. These are one man's ratings of everything, with a particular focus on pop culture minutiae.

I found the Book through the TV Tropes page on The Scrappy, which refers to this page in the book of ratings.

I am ballparking now and anticipating somewhere north of 100 of these posts, BTW. With my new, two-a-day pace that's, what? Another month and a half of content?

That sounds about right.

Internet Time Waste #24: Videojug

2011-02-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, you as well as others can waste time on the internet.

This post's internet time waste: Videojug, a collection of How-To videos.

First video I watched here: How to avoid trapped arm whilst cuddling in bed. I've tried a few of these techniques since, and I believe the key is to show the other person this video beforehand so they are unconsciously compliant once the time comes.

Also: charmingly British.

Internet Time Waste #23: Stand for Christmas

2011-02-07T12:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, something something time waste something.

Today's internet time waste: Stand for Christmas?

Finally (as of 2009), a site that dares to ask (and even rank) the Christmas-friendliness of retailers.

Internet Time Waste #22: Google Search Stories

2011-02-07T00:01:00.004-05:00

Finally another of many ways to waste your own time on this, the internet.

Tonight's internet time waste: Google's surprisingly moving Search Stories.

I started this project because I had a folder full of internet time wasters and nothing to do with them. For some reason (possibly because as I write this in late January, I have been reading a lot of Homestuck), I decided to post the links in this folder reverse chronologically, with the sites I bookmarked most recently at the beginning and the sites I bookmarked the longest time ago in our distant future.

At this point, I'm posting something that even I remember getting overshared back when the first one came out. This is by no means a new way to waste your time on the internet - I'm actually slowly getting in to older and older ways.

It turns out, though, that most of these time wasting sites I bookmarked oh so long ago have aged pretty well. Like this, for example: Search Stories turned out to be pretty moving despite the fact that we are talking about basically a giant ad (maybe because this is a new medium for our modern age? Or something about a missing narrator? I dunno whatever not the point.)

The nice thing about posting a bunch of bookmarks that were no use to anybody, on this blog that I certainly wasn't using for anything for the last year or so, to an audience of nobody under headlines that already profess that everything contained therein is a waste of time: I am setting the notability bar pretty low.

Of course, I reserve the right to give up at any time.

Internet Time Waste #21: Metafilter

2011-02-06T12:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to go about beginning to waste your time on the internet. A way, that is, which is new for you.

Metafilter is a crowd-sourced blog. Results: of interest.

Internet Time Waste #20: Robot Unicorn Attack

2011-02-06T00:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, another way to waste time on the internet.

Tonight's internet time waste: [adult swim]'s Robot Unicorn Attack.

Enjoy trying to get that theme music out of your pretty little brain.

Internet Time Waste #19: Mahjong

2011-02-05T12:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's internet time waste: free online Mahjong.

Internet Time Waste #18: Ritchie Wilson

2011-02-05T00:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Ritchie Wilson's movies are pretty funny.

Internet Time Waste #17: Kevan Davis

2011-02-04T12:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

This afternoon, the various inventions and endeavors of Kevan Davis, a freelance developer.

I am thinking of changing the tagline for this feature, which I think may be overstating my case. Are these really NEW ways to waste time on the internet?

Internet Time Waste #16: Fast Pass TV

2011-02-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

Fast Pass TV links to places you can download or stream TV and movies for free, even new releases.

Illegal? Illegal is such a dirty word. But yes you are stealing and will burn in hell.

Internet Time Waste #15: UbuWeb

2011-02-03T00:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

So you know that feeling like you've wandered in to someone else's online universe and you just don't know where to begin or where the exits are? Welcome to UbuWeb.

UbuWeb is some sort of avant-garde art link clearing house, I don't know. This stuff is complicated. I couldn't even make it through their Wikipedia entry. I'd feel a little guilty linking to something I didn't fully understand if I thought anyone was reading this.

I think I only discovered UbuWeb because of something a friend said. I had thought I only wandered on there because Kevin Maher linked to the Sun Ra film Space Is the Place in one of his show emails, but actually it turned out Kevin had linked to the Sun Ra Batman Concept Album, which, trust me, makes much more sense. Which I'm now realizing means that I book marked Space Is The Place on my own, then never watched it.

Just because I have not fully grasped UbuWeb doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. I'm just here to waste your time rather than my own. For some, UbuWeb is serious business.

Such is the pull of UbuWeb that I mentioned to a friend that another friend recommended UbuWeb to me, and now literally EVERY TIME I mention the second friend to the first friend, the first friend says "oh, yeah. That's the friend of yours who likes UbuWeb."

You have been warned.

Internet Time Waste #14: A House In California

2011-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's internet time waster: a free-to-download point-and-click art game called "A House in California."

Internet Time Waste #13: Dumb as a Blog

2011-02-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today: Dumb as a Blog: "a Daily Digest of the Dumbest Stuff People Do."

Sample headline: Beard Waxing Isn't Just for Ladies.

Internet Time Waste #12: Anne Kadet's Myspace

2011-01-31T00:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's internet time waster: Anne Kadet's Myspace.

I found out about Anne from Kevin Maher when I asked him who wrote the theme music for his monthly show (I believe it's titled "The Kevin Geeks Out Haunting Theme.")

I had a dream last night that I had to make a video and I needed to figure out who I knew that would let me use their music royalty-free. Luckily, I have, in real life, already made a iTunes playlist of that music.

Internet Time Waste #11: Aaron Diaz's art blog

2011-01-30T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's internet time waster: the blog of Aaron Diaz, author of the webcomic Dresden Codak.

I'm making a point of flying through these things, but with Diaz I want to point out a few things just because they each took me a while to figure out:

1) This webcomics process blog is not just useful to artists, but also will change the way you read comics. After reading Diaz's post explaining silhouette and comic, I often find myself checking the silhouette of the characters in the panels of the comics I read. I've found myself appreciating good design more and noticing when artists get it wrong.

2) When I need to explain to people that Diaz is a genius, this is the individual comic I'm most often thinking about.

3) Aaron is also a member of a video tribe that did the most compelling fan-made video ever shot in a basement with a single camera angle.

4) He invented a "pretend to be a time traveler" day (video here.

Internet Time Wasters #10: Videogames Reviewed by a Nine-Year-Old

2011-01-29T00:01:00.001-05:00

This game reviewer is nine years old & very talented.

After intense thought and study, I've decided the user name "horible game reviewer" is not misspelled and self-effacing, but simply misspelled and a misplaced modifier.

You can skip the Chase Utley tribute video if you like, although I think the editing shows real promise.

Internet Time Waster #9: Surprising Sex Terms

2011-01-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's internet time sinkhole: a surprisingly broad list of technical and slang terms for sexual acts, fetishes and devices. The best thing about reading this list is stumbling across things that obviously make sense to somebody, but you've just never thought of. Sample:

angry dragon
slang for when sperm shoots out of one’s nose after giving a blow job

forniphilia
fetish for turning humans into furniture, through elaborate bondage, etc.

TENS unit
electrical stimulis device originally intended for us by chiropractors for muscle work; used in electrical play by Tops on bottoms to cause involuntary muscle spasms

Internet Time Waste #8: Muscle Milk from Hot Sugar

2011-01-26T12:01:00.002-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's internet time waster: the awaited Muscle Milk EP from Hot Sugar.

Hot Sugar is this kid Nick Koenig, a talented director whose first short film I produced in what was (I'm a bit ashamed to say) the most successful creative project I've ever pulled off.

The EP is free to download from Bandcamp with an email address. The trailer gives you a good impression of the Nick Koenig Aesthetic:

Hot Sugar - Muscle Milk EP (comes out 1-26-11) from Hot Sugar on Vimeo.

I'm writing this a bit in advance of the 1/26 release date, and I have to say the early-release tracks are tremendous.

Hot Sugar! Muscle Milk EP! Do it!

That is all.

Internet Time Waste #7: The 2010 Kickstarter Awards

2011-01-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's time waste: The 2010 Kickstarter Awards.

Internet Time Waste #6: The Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project

2011-01-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's time waster: someone has taken the time to map everywhere the characters in the Jack Aubrey / Stephen Maturin novels rode around on their little boats.

(Below: Desolation Island)

Internet Time Waste #5: Int'l Gaming Awards Something Something

2011-01-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Today's time waster: the international MObile Gaming Awards announces its nominees for best iPhone and iPad games in six time-wasting categories.

Internet Time Waste #4: Drinking Bird Explained

2011-01-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet every day for at least a week.

Today, the Drinking Bird explained.

Gov. Jan Brewer (R) AZ Totally Looks Like Petunia from Futurama

2010-04-24T09:08:00.007-04:00

You heard it hear first: Gov. Jan Brewer (R) AZ Totally Looks Like Petunia from Futurama.

[Thanks to The Infosphere for Petunia image.]

Last-Minute Food and Drink For Your Oscar Party

2010-03-07T20:20:00.004-05:00

By request...

Drinks
Coco Before Chanel Coco Bean Matinis
Giant Blue Avatar Punch
Red Bull and Vodka "Up" Pick-Me-Me-Ups
Steve Martin Martinis
Tarantino Hitler Killer Ningronis
French Roast with The Milk of Sorrow
Up in the Air Travel Lite Beer

Seafood
Inglorious Basterds Spicy Gefilte Fish
District 9 Prawn Cocktails
Miracle Fish

Entrees
The Cove Dolphin-Free Tuna Melts
Rabbit a la Berlin
Anji Brick-Oven Pizza, although I guarantee no one will get that.

Side Dishes
Blind Side Black Eyed Peas
Hurt Locker Insurrection Hummus
(Side note: Likely Animated Short Oscar Winner "A Matter of Loaf and Death" is a Wallace & Gromit cartoon that's 95% about bread)
Up In The Air First Class Honey-Roasted Peanuts

Dessert
Up In The Air Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

In the end, my friend was asked to bring non-alcoholic drinks. Final list:

Coco Before Chanel Vitacoco Coconut Water
Fantastic Mr. Fox Mr. Bean's Sparkling Apple Cider
Quentin Tarantino Quinine Tonictino

Recommended Snowpocalypse Viewing

2010-02-10T16:42:00.001-05:00

There are two viewing philosphies for winter: either it sets an ideal stage for viewing cold-related movies, or it should be combatted with warmth-related movies. Here's a short list of films for both philosophies. Feel free to post your suggestions in the comments.

Cold:
Batman and Robin
Goodfellas (for the freezer scene)
March of the Penguins
The Ice Storm
Mystic, Alaska
Happy Feet
Titanic
Television: Northern Exposure

Warm:
Do the Right Thing
Barton Fink
Whispers of the Heart (you could also include Our Neighbor Totoro and Porco Rosso - Miazaki clearly has a thing for summer.)
The first act of Sleepers
Backdraft
12 Angry Men
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Cool Hand Luke
Television: Burn Notice
Miami Vice, Hawaii 5-Oh, &c.
There's also an episode in the first season of Dream On where Martin starts sleeping with his Super after she fixes the air conditioning in his apartment, but I may be out-obscure-referencing even myself here.

Obama Can Relax Some Time in 2016

2009-12-02T22:24:00.001-05:00

So a few days ago I was still thinking how I hope Obama can finally get health care passed so he can move on to other stuff, because there's a lot of it: energy, the environment, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the 2012 election, the 2010 election, education, South America, financial regulations, the economy, jobs, Guantanemo, Mars, senior positions, Africa, federal court appointments, corporate compensation, reengagement abroad, race, the U.S. intelligence apparatus, Asia, drug policy, immigration, gays in the military, Europe and Antarctica (Australia can suck it.)

Please do not email me to tell me what I have left off this list.

J/k no one every reads this shit.

Then yesterday happened. My first thought was about my opinion of the whole plan which is not terribly interesting and no one cares about. My second thought was about how the Senate would react (in case you missed it) and about what in general the consensus or narrative on this thing was going to be (which I think is still emerging but may be "Repubs. favor, Dems. oppose.") My third thought was "okay, obviously this is all anyone on any news channel will be talking about for a while. What's happening with health care?" (answer: amendments, etc.)

But just now I had my FOURTH thought, which was "Obama is never, ever going to take care of everything on that list."

When I saw Obama in the last week or so of the election, I thought "laugh it up, Fuzzball." He looked soooo confident and soooo relaxed. It was sort of inspiring. Obama had seen all the numbers I was watching obsessively and decided that he was going to win.

Thing is, I knew that the minute a president takes office is the minute he loses control of his agenda. I could literally count the days until Obama was no longer master of his own destiny. It wasn't his fault - there's just too much that a president has to contend with for him to focus on his ideal priorities whenever he wants. I mean, people actively trying to foil you at every turn is just ONE of your problems. Imagine if you had to deal with that in YOUR job.

This is why I was pulling for Obama to front-load - stuff is always going to happen that throws the president off, but early on is when he has the most momentum, political capital, control of his agenda and ability to govern.

All of which was going fine until health care. There's no shame in it. Health care has been foiling politicians in this country since at least 1906 (fun fact: the first time, it was shot down as "Prussianization.")

So I have been waiting health care out. It was touch and go for a bit (4:38), but I was confident health care would pass eventually and if maybe we lost the public option, whatever (Act Three or point two of a National Review summary here.)

I had hoped that once we had taken care of health care, Obama could maybe take on some easy stuff, some one-acts. Fixing gays in the military is just a matter of signing an executive order, calling everyone who doesn't like it unpatriotic, starting a more interesting news cycle and then six months later letting everyone know how many lives our new Arabic translators have saved, thanks to you. It's like a political appetizer.

But here was Obama piling one major and controversial life-or-death political issue on top of another major and controversial life-or-death political issue. It's not that he wants to - it's just that he doesn't have a choice. Afghanistan needed announcing and health care is coming along but it just wasn't done yet. What are you going to do?

And so I must now kiss goodbye to my imaginary hypothetical breather for Obama. This is simply the highest level of difficulty for a presidency since FDR. I mean, Obama was getting grey hairs back in March (they come and go.) Pass or fail - and this plan is going to be make or break for his legacy - Obama still has his work cut out for him. This guy is not going to get to rest until he's done with the whole damn game and napping on the porch of his coming-soon political library in Honolulu, I am guessing somewhere by the beach.

Until then, good luck to him and all of us.

Can the Internet Answer Wildchild's "Wonder Years" Questions?

2009-10-29T00:41:00.000-04:00

Fall Is Not a Time for Dan Brown

2009-10-23T01:12:00.002-04:00

Fall reading spotted on the Brooklyn-bound F train: Meditations of Mind and Body, The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett, Introduction to Scholastic Process. (I myself am listening to a Yale Intro. Psychology courses courtesy iTunes U.) Conclusion: Fall is when our brains go back to school (if not necessarily our bodies.)

Q and W

2009-10-15T00:13:00.000-04:00

Some shockingly typical Questions I have seriously considered just in the last 12 hours, and the reasons Why I'm Asking them (it's a Q & W).

Q: Can the past truly be said to exist if it no longer exists in the present?

W: Hearing this iTunes U lecture, in which a charmingly-accented biographer, Richard Carwardine, reminds us that Abraham Lincoln is the most biographied man to ever live. Then wondering if anyone can really be said to be right about Lincoln.

Q: What happens if the villain succeeds in Act 1?

W: Re-reading Mell's strangely gratifying first attempt at world domination in Narbonic: Director's Cut. (*spoiler:* Mell does okay, but later admits that she made some crucial mistakes.)

If the villain fails in Act 3, that's normal. If he succeeds, that's a tragedy. Plenty of villains are foiled in Act 1 only to make a better go of it in Act 3. But what if the villain succeeds in Act 1, and so thoroughly that there's no hope of beating him back?

Thing is, in the real world, villains succeed all the time. Stalin died sleeping in his own bed. People like Alexander the Great even occasionally conquer the world.

However, unless someone is particularly bad off or goes about seeking out people who are, we don't usually think of this as a world created by villains. We tend to accept the world as it is presented to us early on.

Maybe that's because the run of history is where a traditional story act structure breaks down. It's like Malcolm says in Jurassic Park (page 369 of the paperback, or you can search for "destroy the world") - we may be in peril, but "the world" is not. Maybe it's not about good or evil, only change.

Maybe I should change my blog's motto to "making the case for relativism." Or is that too subjective?

ribbles on Taliban on Nobel Committee on Obama

2009-10-09T11:55:00.003-04:00

The Taliban is apparently immune to both aerial bombardment and irony:

"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

(via Reuters)

Outbreak Theory

2009-09-27T19:58:00.000-04:00

Just finished reading a very comprehensive New Yorker article [log-in required] on the events leading up to the collapse of Lehman and, by extension, the world economic crisis.

The article's conclusion is that despite the extensive (and arguably justified) critism of the bailout, the feeling that at least some comprehensive plan was in place prevented the worldwide financial panic we feared in the nervous months after Lehman.

This reminded me of two things. First, an article in Wired about virus theory wherein researchers ran thousands of computer simulations to predict the spread of world-threatening viruses if they found their way in to the population. The other, a practical guide to removing stains.

In both cases, the conclusions were the same. I doesn't so much matter what you do as long as you DO SOMETHING. Close the schools, quarantine, stop interstate travel, rub with soap and warm water - any preventative measure is better than nothing and, generally speaking, enough to stop a crisis.

First Draft Complete, Cue Soul Searching

2009-09-21T14:34:00.005-04:00

This weekend, I biked out to the end of an isolated pier in Red Hook and read the first draft of my script, out loud, to myself.

This was a big moment for me. Just like it says in the book, there are things I thought were there that weren't there, and things that are there that I had never expected. The most unexpected of the latter: what I have seems to be a completed story. It's a script. It's a first draft, with big chunks missing and other chunks that will need to be completely reimagined and rewritten, but it is a whole script, heavy, made of paper, physically indistinguishable from, say, Good Will Hunting or Poltergeist 2, except for the words on the page.

This is a HUGE relief.

I had gotten so focused on each individual part of the script that I didn't quite understand that by the end I would have a whole thing, a coherent work that I had written, an object made of words.

Right now, I am sitting in the lower 60s section of Riverside Park, reading my reference book, and thinking about what comes next. I am trying to figure out what the biggest changes will need to be so as to make them first. Giving my main character more of a role in the main action of the story seems to be my greatest initial challenge. There will be many others.

In the book it says that once you finish your first draft, you're a writer. I don't know if that's true exactly. But when I was working on the first draft I found that the best time to stop writing was when I started wondering if maybe I was doing absolutely everthing wrong - something I wondered literally every day that I wrote. I assumed that once I'd finished a first draft, I'd spend the next week as drunk as physically possible. Instead, I find myself thinking, anticipating, and hoping just to make it through the second draft.

Wish me luck.

And Waitresses Learn to Hate Food

2009-08-30T23:12:00.000-04:00

It's always tricky watching a movie when you're writing a movie. Good example of the worst case scenario: I was watching Empire Strikes Back with a friend last night just after she read the first draft of my script, and she decided to illustrate a point about a central conflict for the main character by saying "See - your movie should be more like that."

No movie should ever be compared to Empire because Empire is (arguably) the best movie ever, and my shitty first draft of a script should even more never be compared to Empire when I know there's a problem with the scenes with the dad character and I'm working on it, thank you. It's like if I tried to pick up chicks at the Cattyshack — it's a losing man's game.

Then there's the TV Tropes effect where you spend so much time thinking about media that you just spend the whole movie waiting for the act break, the page 45 analogy, the part on page 75 where the hero almost give up, blah blah blah.

But - sometimes! - you watch a movie and say "Aha! That part of that movie is great in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as a similar part in my movie will be great!"

This just happened to me.

I am watching Sneakers, an old favorite of mine. Like my movie, Sneakers has a team of people working on a single thing. And it's a heist movie, so it's a team of quirky character actors. Oh, and the cast is fucking brilliant - like, Pres. Roslin, Sundance Kid and Ghandi brilliant.

Anyway, some of the greatest moments in this movie are when everybody these brilliant character actors get to just turn and react to something. There first time Robert Redford casually mentions Mary McDonnell, everyone just turns and looks at him.

It's a fucking genius moment. And, the best thing about this moment - super easy to write. I can watch this moment and think "Aha! I'll bet my movie will have a ton of moments where everyone turns around and looks at one of the other people! I can in some way be as good as Sneakers, one of my favorite movies!"

Now, if I can just work in some light saber battles ...

Action Action

2009-08-27T14:33:00.002-04:00

Ugh. Action scenes are hard to write, but it's a sports movie so I have to end with one. I just want to finish this draft so I can get on with my life / start drinking.

In The Loop and Dario Fo

2009-08-19T01:36:00.000-04:00

I saw In The Loop and, one quick Google search later, I was very surprised that no one is comparing it to Dario Fo.

Maybe this is because In The Loop is still in limited release (spoilers ahead, by the way). Maybe it's because not too many people are still thinking about Dario Fo (if they even know who he is in the first place).

But In The Loop accomplishes very neatly what Accidental Death of an Anarchist did in its original context - get audiences laughing uproariously until they realize that the absurdities they're watching are very, very real.

Life Pilot, Pilot Light

2009-08-16T14:11:00.003-04:00

Watching the first season of Life in bed with the fan on because it is too hot in New York to do a goddamn thing.

Season 2 ended in April and I'd forgotten how noticeable the light is in Life. Life is set in L.A. (I often refer to it as my novelty murder show) and the light is somehow very L.A. Bright, contrasty - almost blown out by default.

I started thinking about light this Summer because my fun, light, Spies shooting at each other Gabrielle-Anwar-with-no-bra-on Summer show is Burn Notice, which is set in Miami. Miami also has a very distinct light - I talked about it a bit here, or maybe that was Hawaii, same dif.

Now, USA put on a new show to follow Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and on the surface it seems like a good follow up. It's a Summer show, except instead of spy in Miami it's a doctor in the Hamptons. But it's a bit like a methadone dose - it's technically a substitute, but ultimately it just leaves you jonesing for the real thing.

I'm sure the creators of Royal Pains are sick of the comparisons, but it's hard not to make them and find RP has trouble stacking up. The biggest advantage Burn Notice takes is that its characters are more flawed and interesting.

But the contrast that always strikes me straight away is the light. The light in the Hamptons seems weak, diffused - less harsh, but less interesting. Where Burn Notice / Miami light is brutal, exotic, uncompromising, Hamptons light is doing the best it can with limited resources. It's like a Summer day in Oslo.

Writing Fail?

2009-08-15T14:31:00.002-04:00

When you start thinking "maybe I am doing everything wrong," that's when it's a good time to stop writing for the day.

No good can come from taking that thought to any logical conclusion.

More Writing

2009-08-14T00:12:00.002-04:00

I opened Final Draft and then got distracted by internet and then went back to Final Draft, and I saw a blank page and panicked.

What was really happening was that Final Draft had opened a blank document and I was looking at a blank document and not at my sports movie that I am writing. I figured this out and opened my sports movie (I am on page 66 of maybe 120.)

What happened before I had time to figure out what was happening was that I saw a blank page. A blank page is just very scary when you are writing something.

The Rise of Randy

2009-07-28T01:36:00.005-04:00

I saw comedian Aziz Ansari doing a character, Randy, in a Comedy Central special that showed standup routines Judd Apatow taped for his new movie, Funny People.

So I did a search for Aziz Randy on YouTube. What's interesting is that Ansari only wrote a few bits for his Randy character, but he tried them out in a bunch of different places. Watching the same bits over and over, you can really see how Ansari perfected these bits and the character.

Randy in Athens, GA Dec. 11, 2008
Randy in NYC Jan. 1, '09
Randy at Bonnaroo June '09 (you can also see him doing some of the same bits more or less out of character for contrast.)
Randy in two bits that showed in the Comedy Central special last week: Jacuzzi and CVS. (This one was maybe a little dirty for cable.)
Ansari discusses his process in character here.

Here is how I know I am going to end up in grad school: even when I am fucking around on the internet late at night, I am still basically doing research.

The Sims

2009-07-25T09:19:00.002-04:00

ribbles: I only ever made one Sim. I worked quite hard on getting her life together. After awhile, I realized I was putting a lot of work in to micromanaging the life of a fake woman who would never know I existed. I still think of her from time to time (via The Regret Index, a very handy window in to your soul.)

Writing

2009-07-08T23:48:00.003-04:00

I finally started writing this script again after nearly three weeks off for research and getting the rest of my life out of the way (I also took an additional week off because it was scary to start again).

So far, I think my sports movie has at least one good joke in it. That's a good enough day's work for me.

Sport Movie References

2009-06-13T02:25:00.002-04:00

So I'm writing a sports movie, and one of the fun things about it is that I've gotten to run down all these great movie references while trying to figure out this movie. It's so gratifying to be putting my favorite things about movies in the world of my movie. It's like I get to experience my favorite movies for real.

Like there's a scene where a character has to start everybody on their training by giving a rousing speech, and I got to think a lot about the rousing speech Sean Connery gives in The Man Who Would Be King - the one that begins "We're going to teach you soldiering. The world's noblest profession. When we're done with you, you'll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men." I've always wanted to start a speech by saying "I'm going to teach you how to be PAs - the world's noblest profession."

Or I decided that I was going to spend my first act introducing a bunch of characters because I needed a bunch of characters on my sports team. So I've watched the first 30 minutes of favored ribbles movie Ocean's 11 like four times (and taken notes.) I have come up with like a dozen new reasons this movie is genius (example: each character gets an appropriate individual version of the theme music in their introductory scene.)

Another interesting phenomenon: because I am trying to write pretty close to formula for the first draft of this film, thinking about bad sports movies has been just if not more useful than thinking about good sports movies. Enough so that I can no longer figure out which category Cool Runnings falls in to.

Ooh! And because it's a woman's team, I get to name everyone after my ex-girlfriends.

Our Common Origin Porn

2009-03-28T13:22:00.004-04:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Ready for the dorkiest story of all time? I was taking a What D&D Character Am I? survey that I stumbled on while looking through the Erfworld forums. Turns out I'm human, but I was almost a gnome. I wasn't super-clear on what a gnome was, I Googled, and I found an intriguing description at DnD wiki.

Then I went back to my survey results (Neutral Good Human Wizard 4th Level) and I saw that "Humans are the most adaptable of the common races," which I liked, and then (and this is where I am getting to the nut graf here) I thought "What does the WikiVerse think of humanity?"

Human at Wikipedia
Ugh. Who has time to read 26 screens on the one thing we all ought to know something about? I like that we are classified under "Ape-related articles."

Human at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki
What distinguishes humanity? They don't have any "dominant or noticeable bony ridges around their face."

Human at Wookiepedia
"The galaxy's most numerous and politically dominant sentient species with millions of major and minor colonies galaxywide."
Whoo humanity! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! That's how we do, son! None of this evolving second on our planet after some throw-away reptilians shit.

Human at Simple Wikipedia
Is it weird that I feel kind of condescended to by Simple Wiki?

Human at WikiFur
"This item may not be appropriate for WikiFur." Heh. It's weird how that Pioneer 11 plaque seems a bit more sinister in this context. Lots about conflict and being a persecuted minority.

Human at Guild Wars Wiki
I don't know what Guild Wars is, and reading this isn't helping.

Human at Encyclopedia Dramatica
"People are a species of smooth, smelly creatures who populate the earth and the internets." AE consistently entertains me more than anything else in the Wikiverse. It's like listening to a bunch of 12-year-old boys who are smart but everyone says they don't apply themselves, no one likes them and maybe you don't want your kids hanging out with them either because you're pretty sure they're anti-semites.

Human at Uncyclopedia
I think the problem with Uncyclopedia is the fundamental conflict of building consensus and being funny.

Human at Transformers Wiki (if you don't understand how there can be such a thing as a Transformers Wiki, read some Shortpacked!)
It's a little strange being compared unfavorably to a transformer. If being able to transform yourself in to a car is the norm, how can we possibly measure up?

Human at DnD, the Dungeon & Dragons Wiki
We are adaptable, ambitious and diverse. Also, we die off fast compared to everyone else, so stuff changes faster for humanity.

Human at WoWWiki
We are aggressive, inquisitive and resilient. My eyes always seem to start glazing over once I get to our origins, history and important individuals in whatever made-up war you've got there.

Human at TinWiki ("the first online encyclopedia dedicated exclusively to all the topics that inspire the authors to consider tin foil hats.")
TinWiki treats evolution and creationism with the same skepticism as it does intervention from extraterrestrials and migration to Earth from other planets.

Human at Conservapedia ("The Trustworthy Encyclopedia")
The shortest entry on this list. Talk a lot about God, mention some social sciences for good measure, and you're done.

Human at RationalWiki
Nevermind, SimpleWiki. This is definitely the most condescending Human entry in the Wikiverse.

ribble's Brief Foray in to the News Cycle

2009-03-20T14:28:00.000-04:00

Everyone's accusing the Obama administration of being distracted (or trying to distract us) - by AIG bonuses (iTunes link), by Rush Limbaugh.

Can an entire administration BE distracted? I know those guys are short handed, but I'd like to think that there's one part of the administration that's working on AIG's $165M in bonuses and some different guys working on the $170,000M bailout.

Or, to address the other issue I mentioned, take a look at the transcript of Gibbs's March 2 White House Press Briefing. Gibbs answers maybe five questions on Limbaugh, but it's one of many issues that he addresses, most having to do with the economy.

Now, Gibbs has seen Frost/Nixon same as the rest of us. He understands that of the things he says in a daily briefing, maybe 20 seconds will get endless play on cable news.

But does that mean Gibbs is distracted? Or that he's distracting us? Or should we blame the media?

Is it that this is the most interesting thing that Gibbs said that day? Or is it simply what got the most attention - maybe some sort of media path dependence at work.

Obama / Leno

2009-03-20T00:51:00.003-04:00

Stayed up late to watch Obama on Leno.

After watching hours of Sunday talk shows and like every episode of Planet Money, I kind of get the feeling that Leno's reaaally dumbing it down for me.

I mean, Obama's dumbing it down, too, but he's just doing it for Leno's audience.

Basically I am saying Jay Leno is dumb.

MSNBC report here.

Three One-Sided Rivalries

2009-03-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

There's nothing wrong with a healthy rivalry, but when one side is an adversarial relationship that the other side doesn't even know about, that's not a rivalry — it's just dumb.

Dartmouth v. Harvard

My friend the Harvard guy tells this story: Dartmouth kids and Harvard kids camp across from each other in the woods on their respective Freshman trips. Dartmouth upperclassmen spend hours loudly teaching their 'shmen anti-Harvard fight songs. Harvard finally sends a freshman representative to the Dartmouth camp. "We're sorry, but all our songs are about Yale."

New Mex-Mex v. Tex-Mex

For the record, New Mex-Mex is very good, and certainly distinct from Tex-Mex (their enchiladas are flat, for goodness sake). It's just that Tex-Mex's real rivalry is with Mexican food. Or "Mex-Mex."

Brooklyn-Manhattan

BROOKLYN SAYS: Manhattan is for tools.
MANHATTAN SAYS: And where is Cobble Hill again?

Bush's Cheney Impression

2009-03-15T11:43:00.002-04:00

Watching Cheney on "State of the Union," thinking about this quote from David Brooks on NewsHour:

"And then the final thing I would say is, I think, in the last couple years, Bush understood the weaknesses of that and I think distanced himself from Cheney. You know, Bush does an impersonation of Cheney. And that began to surface a little more in the last couple years."

I would love (LOVE) to see Bush's Cheney impression. I'm running in to too much Google flack to do a proper search. Anyone who can help my search?

Republican Self-Destruction Watch

2009-03-15T00:01:00.006-04:00

(Alternate title: GOP 2012 Where Are They Now?)

It is very easy for a president to be re-elected. His main advantage, as Bill Clinton famously put it (in a different context) before he handily defeated well-meaning erectile dysfunction sufferer Bob Dole: "The President is relevant." The President can command the global stage simply by opening his mouth. Tough to compete with that.

Like watching the Spurs win an easy game, there's a certain satisfaction to watching this play out. Specifically, there's something very enjoyable about watching the other team's potential candidates self-destruct.

The most satisfying Republican presidential candidate self-destructions so far:

Bobby Jindal
Rudy Giuliani (pull quote: "The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him.")
George Allen

(I am sure I'll be updating this list.)

[June Update: Ensign
Sanford]
[July Update: Palin
Keep it coming, guys! Best party ever!]

The hardest self-destruction to watch is always the guy who wins the nomination. With the arguable exception of Gore, every general election loser hasn't been so much outmaneuvered as outmatched.

Sorry, other guy.

Information I Can Never Retain

2009-03-14T16:00:00.000-04:00

Information I can never retain, no matter how many times I've tried to learn it.

Dance steps

The difference between whiskey, Scotch and Bourbon.

Your birthday.

The full Windsor.

Unit conversion of any kind.

Cramer-Stewart

2009-03-13T12:18:00.003-04:00

I just watched the Jon Stewart - Jim Cramer interview, but I have not yet switched on CNN, so don't yet know the sound bites that will come to define this night of television. For what it's worth, then, here are what I think are the most damning sound bites for Cramer.

ONE
Cramer: I'm a commentator (...) I'm a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch.

TWO
Cramer: I think that... that, your goal should always be to expose the fact that there is no easy money. I wish I'd found Madoff. I wish that...
Stewart: But there's literally shows called "Fast Money."
Cramer: I think there's people... there's a market for it and you give it to them...
Stewart: There's a market for cocaine and hookers!

THREE
Possibly a montage of Cramer saying "We were wrong."

After watching parts of the interview again I'm guessing it's going to be Stewart's quotes that get the most play. Stewart gave an unrelenting, articulate and (given that this is Jon Stewart) surprisingly mature indictment of CNBC last night, but what was most striking was his righteous anger. If you watch closely at the very end of the interview as it played on television, you can see that he's STILL angry.

UPDATE:
CNN report here. News reports seem to be generally focusing on Stewart saying "I know you're trying to be entertaining, but it's not a fucking game" and the inevitable Cramer apology montage.

Inside Baseball Infighting

2009-03-11T20:11:00.002-04:00

Listening to a NewsHour report on Obama's anti-earmark policies and thinking about Clinton's first two years in office. Then, having a president and a congress from the same party did not lend itself to the sorts of legislative striving you may expect.

I think it fundamentally comes down to the fact that the President will always be in a fight with whomever is in charge of congress - it is in the nature of our lovely power-seperated multi-branch governmental system.

Things That Make Me Angry

2009-03-04T00:01:00.002-05:00

Inspired by this post slash years of counseling.
Fox News in general
Former McCain campaign aids in particular
People who clip their nails on the subway
The drunk guy who stands behind you at the concert and narrates the whole thing to his girlfriend
People who bring children to movies and won't leave once the kid inevitably starts crying
Family
Short films from L.A.
Eye boogers

Last updated 3/6/09

How Liberals Watch Fox

2009-03-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

The thing about Fox News is, nine out of ten things on it are just regular news - this happened, that happened. But the other one in ten things will be so infuriating that I simply will not be able to watch the other 90%.

The last time I watched Fox News was election night, and I wanted to call them out on something then, but I couldn't find it again until I saw Jon Stewart calling out Michelle Malkin for calling out Joe Biden.

Election night, Malkin was talking about this video of a visibly moved African-American woman, Peggy Joseph, talking to a reporter after an Obama rally in Florida.

Malkin's case, which you can read here if you're in to that sort of thing, was that this woman was saying that if Obama were elected, he would buy her gas and pay for her mortgage. Therefore liberals were all stealing commies, black people will take your money, etc.

But even in the brief clip Malkin showed, it was clear to me that Joseph was saying that if Obama were elected, he would help fix the country so Joseph would have the money to take care of these things herself.

Malkin was calling her "Peggy the Moocher." That's the sort of Fox News shit that really pisses me off.

BAM DELIVERS

2009-03-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about how Obama's first few months in office will compare to Bush's.

I remember before September of 2001 when it started to become clear that George Bush was going to govern like a very typical conservative despite the "compassionate conservative" rhetoric of his campaign. I'm talking about stuff like missile defense, "un-signing" treaties, ignoring the conflict in Israel like any true isolationist, social conservative stuff like gay marriage legislation - you know, the usual.

I'm not sure if anyone was surprised when this started, but I wasn't. If it weren't for 9/11, we would have seen plenty more of it.

Now, it's hard to hear the Midwest from Brooklyn over all the cheering, but I'm wondering if conservative are looking at the stuff Obama is doing and saying the same things I was saying when Bush started. Fact is, Obama is doing some of the things any liberal president would do - expanding climate control legislation, for example.

But if you missed the one news cycle when, say, Obama repealed the ban of federal funding for family planning organizations abroad, you can forgive yourself. Because most of the typical liberal stuff is being overshadowed by the huge, world-shifting stuff that Obama is also doing.

I would like to suggest a New York Post headline: BAM DELIVERS. Succeed or fail (and I'm sure we'll get some of each), Obama is making the big changes he promised. I think it's good news that he'll be judged on that, and not on the small stuff that this crisis has forced to the wayside.

Fear of Zombie Attack

2009-03-01T14:59:00.004-05:00

I had to stop playing Fallout 3 because my zombie dreams were getting a lot worse than normal.

Now it's a lazy Sunday afternoon and I'm thinking about playing again. Having nightmares about a game is a good sign that I should stop playing.

My question is, what is the sign that is a good idea to start playing again?

Is it just that you don't think about zombies as much? Is it when you find yourself looking around your neighborhood picking out your post-apocalyptic sniper positions? Or is it like I'm saying "what's a good sign that you should start smoking again?"

Two Quick Notes on the Presidency

2009-03-01T03:11:00.005-05:00

Obama also made a sort of off hand remark with Lehrer: that this was a time of great peril and great possibility, and naturally that's when you want to be president, but it would be nice if it weren't that every crisis was coming at him at once.

As I mentioned before, a president is really most effective in his first few years in office. Right now, big crises are letting Obama focus his agenda on the things that really matter, and the fact that they are all happening at once lets him move forward aggressively with a complete agenda.

I just want everyone to be prepared for Obama's second term when it seems like his main job is protecting his legacy from congressional meddling.

This is normal.

Note #2: I saw ribble's all-time favorite band They Might Be Giants live tonight. It reminded me of reading about Pres. Clinton's 50th, when Hillary got Bill's favorite band to do a concert for him at the White House.

Ever since I read that, I've wanted to be president just so I could get They Might Be Giants to do a private concert for me at the White House. This would have the advantage of my being the first person in like 30 years to request a song successfully during a TMBG set (they use a set list) and, second, my really freaking out the people who elected me with some new and surprising depths to my own dorkiness.

A Small and Obscure Point About Something No One is Talking or Thinking About Any More

2009-02-28T11:24:00.001-05:00

Is it possible the Joe the Plumber thing, and specifically the video of Joe speaking with then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, actually helped Obama to win the presidency?

I was thinking about this while watching David Brooks on last night's NewsHour. Brooks was talking about Obama's interview with Lehrer following Obama's S. Carolina announcement of a new troop drawdown in Iraq.

Brooks was talking about how Obama comes off, "as usual," as someone who takes his responsibilities seriously, someone you can have confidence in. It reminded me of how, at its heart, the full YouTube video of the Joe the Plumber encounter is an eloquent defense of Obama's tax plan made by Obama itself.

McCain was basically directing both voters who favored him and those who favored Obama towards a 6-minute video of Obama standing off stage and talking patiently, eloquently and frankly with a voter who obviously disagreed with him.

Lesson (for politicians): always be prepared to behave as if you are on camera in front of the entire nation because these days, you always are.

Lesson (for opposing politicians): if you're going to try to call your opponent out on something he said, try to make it a moment when he doesn't look so goddamn presidential.

Lesson (for the media): now you've got a new angle for the next time Joe Wurzelbacher makes the news.

State of the Union-ish

2009-02-24T22:59:00.003-05:00

Know how they say in Summer camp the days are long but the weeks are short? Well, like a pre-teen with an accelerated activity schedule, Obama has chosen to live life faster than the rest of us.

Case in point: Obama decided to move what looked a whole lot like his first state of the union address to tonight.

It's kinda a genius move. A president is always most effective in his first year in office (first two years if you're lucky). Besides, he's got friendly majorities in the House and Senate now; who knows how it will look in two years. He's already done in a month what most presidents would do in a year. Why not cram what should by all rights be four years of governing in to the next twelve months?

One thing he won't be doing is wasting time. Obama is helped here by so far having only problems that are so big and awful that they've been pounding us since before the end of the campaign. That means that a lot of the things he said tonight sounded like familiar promises from his campaign.

Unlike, say, the Clinton administration, which was very much a reactionary administration, and the Bush administration, which lead the federal government where it wanted to go despite what the actual problems were that the country needed to address, Obama here is both actively pushing forward on his agenda and addressing problems that the nation needs to deal with.

Someone on CNN is punditing now: "Look, if he's able to achieve even half of what he said, a lot of folks will pleased."

Yes, Obama is ambitious. Yes he's confident. We knew that when we hired him. So what we've got now is a smart, focused, ambitious guy who learns wicked fast and is pointing this country in exactly the direction it needs to go, just like he's always said he would.

It's perhaps a sign of how bad things have gotten, how challenging the obstacles that Obama will have to deal with, that my main thought is "let's wait and see how he'll do." We should be a lot more excited than this. But, for now, Obama is everything we could hope for.

Memo to Department Heads

2009-02-20T21:05:00.003-05:00

Do to a change in technological circumstance and the diligent work of volunteers, I am now not only watching television in HD but also sitting much closer to my TV.

Quick heads up for HD TV show makeup departments: we can see the makeup now. You'd better either dial it down, or starts putting your guys on some sort of Kino-Flo-type innovation that accomplishes your all-important smoothing and blemish concealment without making it look like there's someone standing just behind the camera with a tray of powder and a pad.

Disinhibition Porn

2009-02-20T14:20:00.002-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: reviews of personal lubricants on drugstore.com.

Sample quote: "Feels ok once you get past the burning sensation."

PS: One more post about new ways to waste time on the internet, and I've got a series.

How You Can Make $200 From the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

2009-02-18T08:27:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, President Obama signed in to law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the full text of which you can read here.

It is very long.

Now, I want my piece of the government's money same as anyone. However, I just bought some new novels, and my docket is a bit full at the moment. Plus, 900 page resolutions are just not suitable subway reading.

Here's what I propose: first person out there to read H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - the whole thing - and tell me how I, Richard, can make money off it: $200 dollar reward.

Bam! Two hundred smackers, in cash, right there in an envelope of your choice delivered to an address of your choosing. It's my little investment in our future.

Now, I am no stickler for protocol, but let me make clear on some ground rules. First, although you must read the whole bill, skimming is allowed. It's also ok if you've read H.R. 1 for some other enterprise (like you work in a senator's office) as long as it is the final version of the bill that you've read and not some previous incarnation.

However, for my $200 I am expecting some advice that is tailored to me. We'll talk it over as I verify that you've read the whole bill, but if you want a little guidance as you work your way through this thing, you should know these money making-relevant things about me:

First, I am not above starting my own business although I'm a bit lazy about running one. I would not be putting a world-changing amount of money in to this theoretical enterprise, but I do have what people refer to as "life savings."

Finally, I have only the mildest form of business training and only a few marketable skills (making movies, writing unreadably long essays about pop culture minutiae, etc.), none of which would qualify me to, say, build a new national power grid. However, you can assume that I am a clever and able-bodied American in the classic tradition.

Please leave your submissions in the comments section of this post. First to read the bill and sell me on how it can make me money is the winner!

Notice to the Daily Show Re: Michael Steele

2009-02-08T10:55:00.000-05:00

Guys,

I have just finished watching newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele's first This Week interview, and I am ready to say that it is time to stop making fun of Michael Steele for being a black Republican and time to start making fun of him for some of the stupid shit he has said.

Steele spent several excruciating minutes explaining why creating "work" had nothing to do with creating "jobs." The distinction being that "work" created by the government only lasted until the end of a contract, whereas "jobs" created by small businesses, like the millions lost so far: "When they go - they've gone away before, and they come back."

If that makes sense to you, you are either thinking too hard or not hard enough.

Steele then went on to slam Pell grant allocations as having no effect on the job you lose today. When George Stephanopoulos asked him if he Steele would agree that a school construction component of the bill would create jobs, Steele said Sure, short term construction jobs, if that's all you're after.

If he's interested in creating a stronger economy in the long term, why not help train the American work force to create them? And if he's interested in short-term jobs, why not let small businesses have a few government contracts until banks start lending again?

It's funny that America's historically most racist major party elected a black man their chair [at 1:36] two weeks after the Obama took office, but, trust me - listen to this Steele guy. What he's saying is a lot funnier than the color of his skin.

Sincerely,
ribble's

Post-Anticipation Post-Bush

2009-01-24T10:39:00.000-05:00

Just before the inauguration, everybody on every television news show was giving his analysis of the failings of the Bush administration. Everybody, even hard-core Republicans, was able to come up with something, but most people had a very long list. Of course, it would take a book-length treatise to detail all the failings of the Bush administration, and several have already been published.

Now we've got this new guy, and there's been a shift in tone. Where previous reports tried to list the failings of the Bush administration, the news since the inauguration has been much more effective by characterizing it. The results have been bone-chilling.

For the record, then, if you want to understand the true legacy of the Bush administration without wading through Fiasco and Scott McClellan, take a look at Clinton's liberation of our foreign policy apparatus (beginning at 2:41), this New York Times article about American science's Bush hangover, and This American Life's podcast entitled The Audacity of Government (it's from 2008, but you'll see what I mean.)

Real News Disorientation Syndrome

2009-01-24T10:09:00.000-05:00

I watch the NewsHour on Fridays, and it's always a little disorienting to do that after a cable news-heavy week like this one.

Unlike most American news programs, when the NewsHour plays a clip of a politician speaking, they play a full clip. Most American television news programs play less than a single sentence - a sound bite.

The shift always leaves me a little mixed up - I keep anticipating the end of a clip, but the politician always ends up talking longer than I anticipate.

It's Times Like This I Really Miss Peter Jennings

2009-01-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

If there is a heaven and I am lucky enough to be able to go, the first guy I am looking up is Peter Jennings.

Watching this occasion from here in media market #1 has really made me miss his straight-forwardness, his ability to contextualize a story, and his good reporting in the old school where the facts came before the spin, if the spin was even allowed to make an appearance at all.

I don't just want to see Peter Jennings in heaven because I miss seeing him on TV. I feel like Peter Jennings is the kind of guy who would know a lot about heaven and would have no problem filling me in - how it works, what the important institutions are, what kind of controversies God has involved with lately, and where to go for the best stories, food and cigarettes.

I hope that Peter is up there right now with Ed Murrow, just clownin' on Tom Brokaw.

Shimon Peres on Gaza

2009-01-04T00:56:00.000-05:00

I just started watching George Stephanopoulos interviewing Israeli President Simon Peres on This Week.

Usually I half-watch this show until the roundtable in a lazy Sunday sort of way, but Peres is an engaging interview, and by engaging, I mean bone-chilling.

The nice thing about American press interviews with foreign leaders versus, say, American press interviews with ranking Senate Republicans is that foreign leaders do not have the same level of constant, institutional preparation for the American media, and so are less likely to be rehearsed, carefully-crafted talking points aimed at an American constituency.

It's always a little jarring at first. You can see the same thing in Roger and Me, when Michael Moore is interviewing GM managers about plant closings. These guys talk about capitalism in some pretty stark terms - their message is basically "yeah, we're costing Michigan tens of thousands of jobs, it's in our own self-interest to do that and so you can't hold it against us."

This is back in 1989, before Moore was a genre, and, from a modern perspective, these stuffed shirts don't seem cruel so much as naive. I'm sure the people making the decision about American plant closings are thinking about them in pretty much the same way now as then - but they sure aren't talking about it like that.

By modern standards, Peres gives us a pretty sharp look in to his soul.

Peres's main point on This Week is "we're not going to stop shooting at them until they stop shooting at us," which may sound reasonable until you realize that if the other guys are thinking the same way, then, logically, the shooting will never stop.

But it's not so much what he says as how he says it. Know how I said Indians and Pakistanis were basically the same people and would probably get along if they just stopped with all the posturing and brinksmanship? Not so much with Israelis and Palestinians.

That's why you can see something in Peres that no media-savvy American leader would allow himself on T.V. (unless he thought he only needed to talk to his base) - you can see hate. And that's why there won't be peace in the Middle East in His lifetime.

From the Archives #4

2008-12-28T00:34:00.001-05:00

12/23
"Guilt is when you do something and feel bad about it. Shame is when you do something that proves you're the kind of person you hate."

From the Archives #3

2008-12-28T00:23:00.002-05:00

Another idea for a story:

12/24/2000
"A modern man goes back to the past, but finds the only thing he can safely predict is what will happen in tv shows."

From the Archives #2

2008-12-27T23:24:00.001-05:00

Can you tell I was in college when I wrote this?

11/29/2000
'I am in stage 3 tired, “fucking exhausted.” Very difficult to describe stage 3 tired — language skills go.'

From the Archives #1

2008-12-27T23:20:00.004-05:00

Further proof my best years are behind me: "From the Archives" is a new feature where I type up things I wrote in my notebooks over the last 15 years or so.

11/11/2000
"A character who has six different jobs, none of which he has to do any work for. He runs around all day punching time cards, moving huge stacks of documents from his in box to his out box, ... and following up want ads.

What does he do with the money? (Spends it on evading income tax!)"

Viewers Like You

2008-12-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

I TiVo The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer every Friday because of this episode of The West Wing.

At the end of each "enhanced sponsorship," The NewsHour thanks "Viewers Like You." In the background of this message are images of seven of these viewers in silhouette, each engaged in a different silhouetted activity:

* A man who is sitting on a chair with skinny legs and is pointing a remote screen right.
* A woman bending down with a large still camera, pointing it screen left.
* A man in khakis holding a treat above a small dog who is standing on his hind legs (side note - in freeze frame you can tell the dog is a male)
* A woman with her hair in a bun turning clockwise with her mouth wide open and her arms up as if dancing.
* A man with a shaved head hunched over while playing a very small brass musical instrument.
* Two women with long hair crossing the screen in the foreground and background.

My question is, what demographic do these people represent?

First, I should concede that each of these people at least vaguely represents a different form of the arts - photography, dance, jazz, animal husbandry, TV watching, walking across a screen, standing on hind legs, &tc.

There's also a taste of the amateur or the domestic about the montage - the dog and the remote, but also the hesitancy in the turning woman, who does not turn like a professional dancer, and the woman with the camera, who seems to stop as she bends down to glance at the back of her camera, as if she is not sure she has the settings on the camera right.

But mainly I think we are looking at Yuppies.

Maybe it's the clearly identifiable khakis - in fact, on repeat viewing, I think almost all the men are wearing button down shirts. It could also be the chair the man with the remote is sitting in, which is more of a modern chair than a blue-collar lounge chair like you'd find in a non-yuppie living room.

Or maybe I suspect that those pictured are yuppies because they are enjoying the arts as a leisure activity, which I think of as a very yuppy thing to do.

As is, I suppose, watching PBS.

Travel Porn

2008-12-13T13:01:00.001-05:00

Finally, a new way to waste time on the internet.

I discovered that my Zipcar membership also works in the U.K. and immediately starting looking up cars and locations.

Most fun so far: reading the surprisingly detailed descriptions of how to access various car parks around London, like this one for an underground car park near Tower Bridge.

Scariest thing so far: all the Minis are manual transmission.

Three Porn Movie Titles That Parody Popular Political Movements

2008-11-30T13:37:00.002-05:00

Cum-Passionate Cunt-servatives

Third Way Three Ways

Morning in America's Vagina

If somebody out there wants to whip up some graphics for a DVD box cover, I think we could make a fortune.

On Becoming Older

2008-11-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

Due to unlikely and shameful circumstances over which I will temporarily throw a veil, I found myself on an early-morning LIRR train from the Flatbush Ave. station in Brooklyn to the untamed wilds of central Long Island.

I rode in predictable silence on the sparsely populated 3:00 a.m. to Jamaica Center, where I was to connect to a Ronkonkoma-bound train coming from Penn Station in Manhattan. But when we pulled in to Jamaica, who should I find awaiting my train but hundreds - HUNDREDS - of drunken teenagers.

My first thought was, "what the fuck?" My next thought was, "is this a threat to my safety?," which it wasn't (cops by the door, many kids already passed out, my generally inconspicuous appearance, etc.) Then I settled in to my seat and got down to the serious and inevitable business of passing judgement on others.

Here were the facts I had to work with: this was the last train from Manhattan to Long Island for a few hours before or after. It was the night before Thanksgiving, which, in America, is traditionally when we as a people go home to our families, become desperate for a way to avoid them, and go out to get drunk with all our other friends who also live out of town and are also desperate for a way to avoid their families.

Between these two bits of information, I could conclude these were Long Island kids out for the night, inexplicably travelling together 600 at a time. Harmless fun, right?

Thing is, these 1) kids seemed too young for college, 2) they had that sort of over-privileged, white-bred look, clothes and nature that bugged me (example: the one Latino kid seemed to know everybody, which I'm guessing was at least partly because he was the only Latino in the school.) and 3), and this is the part that really bothered me, the couple across the aisle from me each did a bump of coke about half an hour outside of Jamaica.

Now I'll talk later about why, but my initial reaction was that this just made me furious. Then I went through a bunch of possible courses of action (take their photo and post it here? Tell the cops? Confiscate it?) before settling on my standard New Yorker response of sitting quietly and not saying anything.

Then I went through a run of second-guessing - would they really do that with the cops three rows away? Could this just be some sort of nose-administered decongestant? Could I really dissaprove this strongly of a little coke and give the obviously stoned kids that filled up maybe every third seat on the rest of the train?

Finally I let myself accept the fact that I had definitely seen these kids doing some coke, I certainly disapproved of it, and I absolutely felt that I was within my rights to do so.

Here's my problem with coke versus, say, pot: it's dangerously addictive. Here's my problem with these kids: they were way too young to be fucking with this shit. What's more, this was clearly not a one-time thing for them. You don't casually do a bump on a train in more or less the middle of a nap with cops five feet away unless snorting coke has become ritualized and routine.

But we're not here to talk about over-privileged kids from Long Island. We're here to talk about me. And my thing is, there was a time - indeed, a time in recent memory, when I would have seen these kids - or maybe the non-coke-sniffing versions of these kids - as peers.

Well, almost as peers - not enough to expect casual drug use, but enough that I could see them as distant, Yankee version of my own friends.

Instead I was looking at this half-dressed high school senior and future frat boy and just trying to figure out how I could keep my future kids from ending up like that.

Beware, Internet!

2008-11-25T01:14:00.000-05:00

The internet is going through a Twilight fan fiction phase:

The Non-Adventures of Wonderella
Sore Thumbs
Shortpacked! (continues here, then click the forward arrow to keep reading.)

Ugh, is this another thing I'm going to have to learn about just because people are making jokes about it, like how I had to watch Titanic after I read this in the New Yorker?

Or will the internet be back to its usual stuff once the Christmas movies sweep the fall leftovers out and people start making jokes about how much Four Christmases is going to suck?

Must ... read ... socially-aware New York Times article about vacuous pop phenomenon ... must ... acknowledge ... popular tween entertainment choices ... must ... not be ... prejudicial ... NOOOOOOO!

WALL-E as Outlier

2008-11-23T22:51:00.006-05:00

My Hungarian friend has a habit of asking me questions that make me feel like a genius when I answer them. The other afternoon we were watching WALL-E and she asked me why WALL-E survived when everyone else had disappeared. The answer is that this WALL-E must have had something wrong with him.

We can see other WALL-E units in the movie that have run out of juice right in the middle of their programming. However, we know our WALL-E is self-repairing. What's more, there's a lot of things about WALL-E that just wouldn't make sense to put in trash-compacting robot, like his proclivity for "Hello, Dolly"-slash-ability to fall in love.

If this unit survived, it must be because something was different about it that led to some other behaviors that lent it to survival in such a hostile environment.

It makes sense - make a million units of something, and ten are probably going to have something wrong. With a thousand units with various defects, one might be an improvement. It's the same way we understand mutation in evolution (yes, Americans - that evolution.)

Why I Like Superjail

2008-11-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

Animating is boring. You have to draw the same scene hundreds of times for a single minute of screen time.

The modern American solution to this problem is to mail the thing to Korea and get them to do it, or to animate on a computer, or to do both.

Regardless of their actual methods, Adult Swim's new show, Superjail, feels like the product of bored animators who do their own animating by hand and are trying to keep themselves entertained.

When animators get bored, which is often, they draw inappropriate things. Violence, pink elephants with substance abuse problems and naked Jessica Rabbits are the well-earned province of the bored-slash-hard-working animator.

Superjail shows many signs of animators doing things for themselves, like how each of the main characters has a particular style of moving through a scene that seems well thought-out and connected to their personality.

The Warden, for example, seems to move in great looping sweeps, like a splash of paint or a well-practiced signature. The Warden is divorced from reality in personality, and in appearance he tends to change shape and size without feeling any need to acknowledge the laws of physics.

In another sign of a dedicated group of animators, Superjail is very, very violent.

Let me talk a little about the violence.

One of my pet peeves is when people describe a movie as "violent" when there are very few actual moments of violence in that movie.

Perfect example: Pulp Fiction. Some guys get shot, one dude gets raped, there's some blood and guts, but mostly Pulp Fiction is just people talking. Sure, bad shit happens to people, but in terms of screen time, you'll find a lot more violence in an average Gov. Schwarzenegger film. Tarantino movies just feels more violent to people because there's a constant threat of violence and the violence that is represented seems more visceral than in a popcorn action flick.

That said, Superjail really is violent. People get sliced in half, they get their skin ripped off, they get forks plunged through their eyes. I just chose a clip at random from their website and there was a throat-slitting, a beheading, and a fatal stabbing in the space of 30 seconds.

Your kids should not be watching this cartoon, but you know what? You should. Just like the rest of the show, the violence is animated, surreal and actually pretty entertaining.

I have a few rules of thumb that I use to judge almost any piece of media. First, you can only take something as seriously as it takes itself. If a movie knows it's a silly movie, I won't hold its silliness against it. It's why I like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle better than I like, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Second, I prefer that people make art for a reason, and that they're honest about what that reason is.

If you're making a James Bond movie, you know and I know that I came for boat chases, amoral villains and beautiful, ethnically ambiguous women. Because we both know it, I'm not going to provide any objection to your providing for my needs.

But if you're doing something serious, and you want me to take it seriously, you'd better be in it for the right reasons. If your art has a message, it better be a message you believe in. Audiences know Oscar bait when we see it.

Thing is, when I watch Jackknife getting sodomized by an armful of broken bottles in Superjail, I feel like it isn't in there for me - it's in there because the guys who draw Superjail really wanted to draw Jackknife getting sodomized by an armful of broken bottles.

And, you know, more power to them. If someone feels either compelled or bored enough to take the trouble to do really funny violence, I'm going to take the trouble to enjoy it.

A Very Short History of Me and Woody Allen

2008-11-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

So I started watching Everyone Says I Love You Thursday night in the belief that I haven't seen it before, but it turns out that I have. I think I actually saw it when it first came out, 1996, which would make me around 15.

There is really no way to explain how important Woody Allen is to Jews from New York who are not in New York except to say that if you are a Jew from New York who is not in New York, you know what I'm talking about, and if you know what I'm talking about and you're not a Jew from New York, then either Judaism, New York or both are probably in your future.

I was born in the Bronx and lived for five years in Scarsdale before moving with my family to San Antonio, Tx. at age five. Now, I am not one of those people who thinks that everything developmentally significant that can happen to you happens by age five. But I do know that for the next eight years, from five to 13, I was really pissed off that we had moved out of New York.

Thing is, I didn't actually know anything about New York. I mean - I was five when we left! And what's more, I wasn't from New York City, I was from Scarsdale - the suburbs!

However, and I've mentioned this before, New York is one of two places I'm going to say ever that you can come to some sort of understanding of just by watching T.V. and going to the movies.

Just like Mad About You can teach you about true love, Woody Allen can teach you about being a New York Jew.

I loved Woody Allen growing up. I wore glasses because Woody Allen wore glasses. I cheated on girlfriends because Woody Allen cheated on girlfriends. I even played Woody Allen in a Woody Allen play. And first thing when I got of college? Moved to Brooklyn.

Okay, here's my final proof: I am visiting our New York-branch-of-the-family cousins in London in 1998 when Deconstructing Harry comes out (I remember it was Deconstructing Harry because of the snappy music in the opening credits) . We go to a movie theater. Suddenly I realize: every ex-pat New Yorker living in London in 1998 is in this theater.

Don't believe me? Go to a sort of arty theater in London next year the weekend Whatever Works comes out. You'll see.

Three Neglected Political Issues

2008-11-21T00:01:00.001-05:00

India-Pakistan Peace
My odd and obscure high school in Wales was founded on the principal that if you brought future leaders of the world together in one place, they would meet people from other countries and later be much less likely to bomb those countries.

The most important thing I found out at school was that people from all over the world are pretty much the same. The people you went to high school with are the same as the people someone living on the other side of the world went to high school with.

One group of people at my school were "Subconties," i.e. of subcontinental Asia, i.e. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshies.

For

those not attuned to foreign affairs, let me give you a quick version of 60-odd years of history: India and Pakistan fight a lot. They both claim ownership of Kashmir, both countries' politicians blame everything on the other country's politicians, blah blah blah, they fight.

Thing is, we are talking about two groups of people who are basically the same group of people. I would be talking to subconties hanging out together in the dorm, conversation would turn to the 60-odd years of fighting thing, and they would say "Yeah. We're the same." Once you take out the politicians on both sides saying "they started it and we'll make them pay," you get two peoples who really ought to be getting along.

Know what that is? An opportunity for peace. A GOOD opportunity for peace. I'd go so far as to say there's a better chance of India and Pakistan working out their differences than of Israel and Palestine working out their differences. Get some of those Israel / Palestine people in there, they'll have a Subconties' Cricket League organized within a year.

Tariffs on Imported Sugar
I think all my information here is based on a single article in The New Yorker, but here goes:

Ethanol is a fuel supplement not made from dinosaur bones. In the States, most ethanol is made from corn because Iowa, an important early voting state in Presidential elections, grows a lot of corn and has made ethanol a litmus test for presidential candidates.

Thing is, you could make ethanol a lot more efficiently by using sugar instead of corn. However, most sugar is grown outside the United Staes, and the small-big problem is that sugar from outside the country is heavily tariffed.

Get rid of the tariffs and you're one step closer to a green economy. Problem is it takes a lot of balls to stand up to a highly motivated lobby like the one aiming to keep sugar tariffs in place.

Amtrak
Amtrak is perpetually kept alive by federal subsidies, but, outside of D.C. to New York, it sucks. Why is there only one train a day to Vermont? Why does the train from New Mexico to L.A. have three hours of "padding" in the schedule between the penultimate and final stop? Why is Amtrak always slow, expensive and uncomfortable?

I can't quite decide if Amtrak sucks because it's grown lazy due to federal subsidies and a lack of competition, or if it just doesn't have the resources to do better, but I am HEAVILY leaning towards "lazy."

What, is America the only country IN THE WORLD that can't figure out how to have proper passenger rail system? Europe does it. India does it. Japan does it. Shit, they've got trains in SIBERIA. We can't do better than Siberia?!

I see functioning train systems running out of New York - Metro-North, Acela (the functioning part of Amtrak), etc. Why can't the national Amtrak system get its act together and become a serious alternative transport for traveling the country?

I know Biden is a big Acela guy, but I'm hoping it'll be a Nixon in China thing - no one could accuse Dick of being a commie, so he had the leeway to open up relations with the mainland. Biden is an Acela guy - he'd be in a perfect position to get Amtrak to stop sucking on threat of an end of subsidies.

The One Question I'm Really Stuck On

2008-11-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

If there's one question I could pursue for the rest of my life, it is "How do references in media work?"

What I am looking for is some explanation of how one piece of media refers to another piece of media that is as comprehensive as, say, an explanation of how molecules bond chemically to one another.

Here are some of my unresolved questions about references:

What makes a specific moment or scene in a movie or T.V. show likely to be referred to by other media?

How does being referred to often correspond with the quality of a work?

How does it correspond to the significance of that work? For example, is being referred to often what defines a piece of media as important?

Here's why I think references in media are a big deal. (Note that this is not necessarily why I think you should think this is big deal.)

In college, I had access to a big media library, and I spent a lot of time tracking down the works that I heard referred to the most often and watching them. It was how I decided what to watch. As T.V. watching strategies go, it was pretty successful. I watched a lot of good stuff and figured out what people were talking about. Call this the beta version of a true reference sorter.

Second, references are what are currently driving the internet. Google, arguably the lasting achievement of mankind for this decade, is based on an algorithm that places the things people refer to front and center in any search.

Third, it is only a matter of time before all of television is catalogued, and all references are searchable. If you want an idea of what I'm talking about, look here. The referenced by page of an imdb entry is basically a primitive first draft of what will be a comprehensive database of when anything is cited by anything else.

Searchable video may be a ways off, but Google has already made images searchable and books are next - at some point, it will move past YouTube and start cataloging all the television that's ever been shown.

Fourth, references are both central to American dialogue and our one best shot at understanding the future of the world.

Fifth, ???, Profit! If you can figure out, and I mean prove scientifically and not just "have an instinct for," what will capture the world's attention and be referenced in the future, you have a shot at building it before anyone else. Bam, the ever-elusive corporate-produced viral video. Or maybe a way to get a message of art, hope or love out. You know - whatever.

I am especially interested in the idea of creating new systems of references that cross cultures. I know a fair amount about U.S. T.V. and next to nothing about T.V. from everywhere else. If we can rank all television in importance based on how often it's referred to in other work, I can watch the ten things everyone in Argentina has already seen and be able to carry on an insider conversation with someone there without doing three years of groundwork.

Or I could try to understand what people in Nebraska are watching. Or people in 1978.

You know.

Whatever.

Three Things About Atlantic City

2008-11-19T00:01:00.003-05:00

ONE
I like that the best bet at a Casino is to not play. It gives me a good reason to sit around my hotel room in my underwear, writing.

Know who else gets a lot of writing done in casinos? Woody Allen.

Know who else compares me to Woody Allen? My mom.

TWO
I have a habit of finding one place where I like to eat and then never eating anywhere else ever again. In Atlantic City, that place is the Asian fusion restaurant in Caesar's, which is called KWI.

The first time I was in Atlantic City, I went on a tour of casinos because I'd read in a book that doing this was cheaper than gambling.

When I went through Caesar's, this place smelled amazing. I promised myself that if I won enough money to afford it, I would come back and have a meal. That night, I got exTREMEly lucky on the river, and so the next day I had lunch at the place.

It. Was. Amazing. I ate with a bunch of Asian-New Jerseyite high rollers and one of them shared his snow pea tips with me. The - Best Korean barbeque. Some other thing that wasn't on the menu that I don't remember that was delicious. Fuck. Ing. Amazing.

Last weekend, I took my second trip to Atlantic City, and I didn't waste any time. I think I ate three meals there in three days, and the portions were so big that I pretty much just ate that and breakfast.

The food there was so good that I actually had to start eating better food once I got back to New York. I remember the first time I ate a sausage bagel breakfast sandwich after I got back from AC. I was disturbed that one of my usual New York meals seemed bland and flavorless, but I was more disturbed that maybe it had always been that way and I just had never noticed it before.

That's the problem with affected luxury - you can get used to it.

PostScript: After writing this, I realized that after a single night being bumped up to a Trump Taj Mahal luxury suite, I finally rented a new apartment.

THREE
Despite my best efforts and self-awareness that I was a living cliche, staying at an Atlantic City casino reminded me of the following bits of media:

Ocean's 11
Ocean's 13
Rounders
The Apprentice
This episode of Cowboy Bebop, particularly the scene where they're standing in the futuristic elevator and it lists all the games you can play at the casino and what floors they're on.