Tuesday July 01, 2008
Adult Education (And So Can You!)
Thanks to Church Tucker for preparing this nicely edited and embeddable version of my February Adult Education “lecture” on metatourism.
If that looks like fun—and believe me, it was—note that I will be curating the Adult Education series in September, October, and November. So if you have an obsession or an arcane sphere of knowledge about which you’d like to present a 10 to 12 minute slideshow, let me know. You can watch other examples of past performances—plus sign up for the Adult Ed mailing list, etc.—right here.
Posted by jim at 10:31 AM ||
Tuesday June 17, 2008
Technology Catches Up
I’ve been experimenting with Scribd, which is frequently described as a “YouTube for documents.” It looks like it might be useful for managing my portfolio of print clips, in particular, since it’s easier to view a document in Scribd than it is to download it as a clunky pdf. It’s also good for presenting longer form documents. One of the first things I ever blogged about here was the Nielsen TV Ratings Activity Book, a coloring book Nielsen put out to teach toddlers how to register their TV viewing habits with the company’s proprietary People Meters. At the time, I just posted a few pages. Here it is in all its unabridged glory.
Posted by jim at 05:38 PM ||
Tuesday May 06, 2008
Memento
I visited The Daily Show yesterday for a story I’m working on. Even the security wristband was amusing.
Posted by jim at 09:24 AM ||
Monday April 28, 2008
Hot Off the Presses
On Saturday, we went to the release party for Spelt-Rite Comics #1, by friend, copy editor, and fellow Modern Humorist (R.I.P.) contributor Martha Keavney. Martha has been drawing comics for years under the Badly-Drawn Comics moniker (lots of samples here), but this is her first book in more than five years. It is clever, impeccably edited, and Martha’s comics haven’t actually been badly drawn in a long, long time. The panels inside tackle topics like time travel, trademarks, and (of course) spelling. If you want a copy, you can order one from Lulu. Check here for Badly-Drawn back issues.
Posted by jim at 02:47 PM ||
Friday April 18, 2008
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
Ben forwarded me this grab from the Times’ site. At least there was a good turnout. Those victims are nothing if not loyal. I checked in later and the picture had changed, although it still sent the wrong message.
Posted by jim at 11:12 AM ||
Thursday April 17, 2008
They Have a Plan
And they do mean every frakin’ corner.
Posted by jim at 11:20 AM ||
Wednesday April 16, 2008
Welcome to Booklyn. Seriously.
I stopped and chatted this morning with Vic Fortezza, who was hawking his self-published novel—Close to the Edge—out on the sidewalk, just up the street from the Barnes & Noble in Park Slope. After assuring him that I was not easily offended, he sold me a copy and signed it. He also noted that it was the 250th copy he’s unloaded (all-time, not just today), which I’m pretty sure makes it a bigger hit than the last book I was in.
Posted by jim at 05:49 PM ||
Wednesday April 02, 2008
Quote of the Day
“The advertising agencies are not villains whose sole purpose is to destroy the artistic integrity of a dramatic script. But, by definition, they are concerned with selling their clients’ products, and the twenty-two or fifty-three minutes of drama that go between the commercials are considered an essential part of the sales talk. The agency is most concerned with neither offending nor disturbing possible customers, a policy that stringently limits the scope of the television drama.” –Paddy Chayefsky, 1955. Brought to mind by the ad column in today’s Times.
Posted by jim at 10:04 AM ||
Tuesday April 01, 2008
Say Hello to My Little Friend
I cracked the screen on my Samsung Blackjack last week, and after begging AT&T for an early upgrade, I traded up. Way up. The AT&T Tilt—aka the HTC Kaiser—is a lot of phone. Maybe even too much. (Who needs to open tiny Excel files on the F train?) But it has a 3 megapixel camera, wi-fi, and a keyboard the size of an IBM Selectric, so I’m keeping it.
Posted by jim at 06:13 PM ||
Sunday March 30, 2008
Thoroughly Modern
Modernista’s new “siteless” website is really pretty cool. It consists of nothing more than a small menu that helps you navigate through information about the agency elsewhere on the web—from Wikipedia to Google News.
Posted by jim at 11:08 AM ||
Friday March 28, 2008
Quote of the Week
“This ain’t no game. This is Flavor of Love 3.”
Posted by jim at 08:46 AM ||
Thursday March 27, 2008
If You Subscribed to My Feed Via Email …
And you’d still like to receive blog updates in your inbox, please submit your email address here. The service I was using went south on me. It was unreliable and I think some subscribers stopped receiving updates altogether. This one should work better. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for reading.
Posted by jim at 11:13 AM ||
Department of (Cosmic) Justice
Aside from the Invasion of Foreign Countries lobby and the Election Stealing lobby, the National Association of Broadcasters might be the most powerful lobbying group in Washington. The XM-Sirius merger passed Department of Justice muster earlier this week, although it took more than a year, and the deal still needs FCC approval. What I find incredible about the NAB’s opposition to the merger, however, is that this is the same group that spent the last half of the ’90s arguing that a radio monopoly was basically impossible.
When Clear Channel was rolling up markets like Memphis—where I was reporting on media consolidation—the NAB argued that there was nothing to fear. Radio represented such a small slice of ad revenue (about 10 percent, as I recall) that even if you rolled up all of it, you wouldn’t be able to set prices. The DOJ ended up deciding that it was okay for a company to control 40 percent of a single market’s radio revenue, with the result that most city’s radio stations fell into the hands of just three companies. Using the same logic, Clear Channel was also able to gobble up most of Memphis’ billboard faces and two of its TV stations as well. But that was okay, because—according to the NAB’s logic—you have to judge competition by looking, not at a single medium, but at the entire media landscape.
Now, however, terrestrial broadcasters are singing a different tune, objecting to a potential “satellite radio monolopy”— a non sequitur according to its own logic. It’s a classic case of corporations lobbying against regulations while they’re rolling up a market and then arguing for regulations once they’ve rolled it up and want to keep competitors out. So, ten years later, I have to admit that the NAB was right. There wasn’t anything to fear from the rampant consolidation of the 1990s since it led terrestrial radio to become so sluggish and lame that a new competitor was—per the perpetual dialectic of capitalism—bound to emerge. Now that’s what I call justice.
Posted by jim at 10:47 AM ||
I Know Kung Fu
I’ve been dreaming of the Storm Botnet. Thanks, Pat.
Posted by jim at 09:23 AM ||
Wednesday March 26, 2008
Party Poop
Daniel Radosh’s Rapture Ready! book party—last night at Hotel QT—smelled like the luke warm lap pools of my youth. The Observer was on the scene.
Posted by jim at 06:26 PM ||
Crocs on the Rocks?
When we were in Florida last week, I noted a decline in the prevalence of Crocs. And, as you can see, the stock isn’t looking so hot, either. Fad over?
Posted by jim at 06:10 PM ||
Wednesday February 13, 2008
Dogs Gone Wild
Friend and photographer Michael Crouser—he took a break from his artistic pursuits to shoot our wedding—has a great book coming out this fall called Dog Run. The premise: Michael hung out at dog parks in New York and Minneapolis and captured shots of domesticated dogs hard at play, looking their wildest. The results, like the picture above, are jarring and somewhat eerie. William Wegman calls them “unfettered and luminous.” You can see many more examples at dogrunbook.com.
Posted by jim at 09:52 AM ||
Thursday January 17, 2008
Mr. Bubble
A feature I wrote about Web 1.0 character Josh “Pseudo” Harris for the February issue of Radar is now online. I spent time tracking Harris this fall as he tried to get his latest venture, Operator 11, off the ground. As a bonus, Radar has posted the concept trailer for We Live in Public, a documentary-in-progress by filmmaker Ondi Timoner (she made the rock-doc DiG!), which she has been working on since Harris hired her to film his massive millennium party, Quiet. The trailer, which is about 12 minutes long, includes lots of great footage of the party-cum-social-experiment and various interviews with Harris, including his famous proclamation—on 60 Minutes II—that he hoped to put CBS out of business. It’s a reminder for those who survived the last boom and a cautionary tale to those who hope to weather this one.
We live in public trailer from RADAR on Vimeo.
Posted by jim at 08:51 AM ||
Tuesday January 08, 2008
It’s Educational!
Two weeks from today, our friend Carrie McLaren will launch Adult Education, a monthly lecture series at Park Slope bocce mecca Union Hall. The idea is to have people give pithy A/V presentations on ephemeral topics ranging from obscure trade magazines to the history of personal hygiene ads—any topic about which the presenter has become unusually informed. At the first installment, I will discuss meta-tourism, a topic close to my heart. The evening’s co-presenters will include Liz Clayton, Paul Lukas, Heidi Cody, and film archivist Russell Scholl. Should be fun. Come by. 8 pm, Tues., January 22 at Union Hall.
Posted by jim at 11:16 AM ||
Friday January 04, 2008
Bull Hockey
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Kaye on set |
I have decided to get out more. Unfortunately, this resolution went into effect yesterday—the coldest day in anyone’s recent memory—when I decided to loiter around Madison Square Garden and watch eccentric British director Tony Kaye shoot a promotional film for Ford and its sponsorship of the Professional Bull Riders tour, which is in Manhattan this weekend.
You might remember Kaye as the director of American History X, although he was so unhappy with the final edit that he tried to force New Line to change his credit to “Humpty Dumpty.” He was also working a performance art shtick a few years ago that saw him appearing—in person and in short films—dressed as Osama Bin Laden. But nevermind. By all accounts Kaye has been on good behavior lately, and his new documentary about America’s abortion divide, Lake of Fire, is generating Oscar buzz. (You can inspect the trailer here.) It was fun to watch him interview a handful of fresh-faced cowpokes, punctuating each chat with the obligatory Anglo throwaway, “Brilliant!” It’s a toss-up who found who stranger.
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Bull on Ice |
The bulls, like me, seemed impatient with the cold. Their blood appeared to run thick as they sluggishly stampeded up and down a makeshift chute on 33rd Street, chased by two men on horseback. I ducked back into the subway once I lost feeling in my hands, but unfortunately wasn’t able to take any of them with me.
Posted by jim at 02:33 PM ||
