I’ve been carrying a cell phone for 11 years.
Ok, technically, I didn’t carry it around with me for the first few years. It was one of those huge, foot tall, half a foot deep, 3 inches wide things that weighed a ton and sported a super cool 5-inch black antenna. Do a search - they're actually called "The Brick". We use it as a doorstop now. Literally. I mean, it’s a joke that we do…but we do, cause it’s big and heavy enough that it works.
In Hawaii, you can get your driver’s permit at 15 ½ and your license at 16. I did. At which point my parents required I have a phone in the car with me anytime I drove. So I’ve had a phone for forever.
Now that in-network calls and long-distance come free, I use my cell a bunch more. But it was intended as safety device, and that’s still it’s most important use. I’ve never wanted a phone to take pictures, or play music…I need it to make phone calls and that’s it. Every phone I’ve ever had has been just that: a little phone that works.
Now, with this job, I have a Treo. And I admit – the ability to check email, at home or on the road or in a meeting, is hugely helpful. I still have used the camera less than 5 times, but it’s been nifty to have it a couple times.
But if, heaven forbid, I ever leave Current, and have to return the phone? I’d go back to just a plain old phone. If they still make such a thing. I recall having a hard time finding one the last time I needed a replacement.
After watching today’s driver buzz, apparently some people have embraced their camera-phones much more than I. Then again, I didn’t really watch TV til I was 20, and now I work at a TV station. Maybe 10 years from now, I’ll be a camera-phone videographer too!
I’ve mentioned my fiancé a few times…but now you get to meet him! And I promise, we had a good reason for filming him. A reason beyond the fact that he’s a total cutie, I mean.
Over the summer, we Buzzards were working hard plotting and planning the verticals, what we’re going to do for them, all that stuff. We spent the time shooting evergreen pieces – we wanted to build up a pipeline, but it had to be stuff that was non-time-sensitive: nothing that would be old news by the time we aired it this fall. A cool car stays cool. No contests or event results. Stuff that keeps.
At about the same time, Dave, my then-boyfriend, was doing his own plotting and planning. He got into Kellogg, Northwestern's business school, in the spring. He had always wanted to do a cross-country bike trip. Now that he was moving cross-country, why not combine the two, and ride his bike there?!
Actually, most people can think of a LOT of reasons why not to do that. But Dave’s not one of them. And since he was going to do it, we figured why not film him?!
I had to wait a while before starting the edit. Right after he left, it made me teary to watch the footage. But lately - I'd stay late to work on it, not even noticing when everyone else left. I don't get to do creative stuff in my current role, and I really miss it, so I loved doing it.
Today’s traveler piece is about the first few pedal strokes of his adventure. As soon as I have the time, I'll edit part 2, so you’ll have to check back to see how it all turns out.
A few weeks ago, we got a feedback email from a guy named Michael which said, “You are the only thing worth watching on TV... well... save for Battlestar Galactica.”
Never was there a feedback email more appropriate to inspire a blog entry about the Online Studio team.
Here’s a true story: When I was interviewing with Current, I got asked a lot of tough questions, but none so nervewracking as when sforte asked if I was a Battlestar Galactica (BSG) fan. At the time, I had a dozen episodes sitting on my Tivo, but my husband was the one watching, not me. When it turned out I got the job, I buckled down and watched two full seasons in three weeks, so that I would be able to attend the season three premiere party, attended by pretty much the entire OS team. (There was actually a COMPETING party, so the group was somewhat splintered.)
In my time here (six weeks and counting) I’ve learned a lot about the way my co-workers think, but even more about how much they love BSG. It’s not just our team. It bleeds over into marketing and programming and the Yahoo! Current team.
There are newbies – people trying to get through S1 and S2 DVDs so that they can participate in our conversations – and there are the hardcore fans among us who occasionally end our meetings with a hearty “so say we all!” (Which makes sense if you’re a fan, trust me.)
The Monday after a new episode (Fridays on SciFi at 10PM), pretty much all meetings get sidetracked by BSG discussions, and more often than not it goes something like, “best.episode.ever!” So you can imagine how excited we all were to learn that Jamie Bamber, who plays Lee “Apollo” Adama, was going to be in the L.A. studio recently.
Chapin will post about Jamie's trip to the Chemosphere soon, and I'll bet this is the rare instance during which we will unmute the television in our area. Battlestar Galactica is our version of team-building.
Probably shouldn’t blog about this, since it is a work blog…but I’m going to anyway!
There are 2 games that have been distracting the Buzzards lately. The first one, I haven’t ever played, but I did spend about 3 minutes watching Brett today.
Brett sits right behind me. He’s great. I call him Little Buddy. He does stuff for the Current Buzz, or as we call it, the Big Buzz. He did the bridge jumping piece, and the white dudes dunking piece. But my favorite piece of all of his is coming out tomorrow. Be sure to check it out. It’s AWESOME.
Anyway, today he was playing this game – I think its called orbit. You basically get to shoot this little orange ball of light, and it has to orbit around without crashing into one of the other blue orb things, that I can only assume are planets, until the timer runs out. Then you move to the next level that has more blue orb things. He was having a hard time with level 11 when I was watching.
The other game is line rider. It is great. A couple days ago, the editor for the non-buzz part of the action channel sent the link around. I couldn’t get it to open…I think that’s cause everyone else in the basement was playing. Today’s Action piece is all about it. So of course I had to go to the site today. This time, it did open. Perfect thing to do when you’re sitting waiting for a video to compress, like right now…
One of these days, I’m probably going to have to buy a new car. My 20-year-old Camry has less than 100,000 miles on it, which I know is hard to believe, but it’s true. My grandmom basically bought the car, drove it to Carolina when she moved there from Marin, and then gave it to me. I drove it between school and DC a couple times, and then I drove it out here. Now, driving it between my house and Costco is a good week.
So, mileage wise, there’s some years left in him. But in terms of safety, they weren’t down with airbags in the ’80’s. And at some point, I expect I’m going to want to say goodbye to the dents that bought me my radio gear (when I opted for the insurance check rather than the repairs). I might want a car that looks more befitting of my age and professional stature (ha!).
Dave and I are pretty much greenies at heart. We both intend for the next car we buy (probably together, fun!) to be a hybrid. But I’m not-so-secretly pining for an SUV, and we’re both fans of Jeeps – I like the Cherokee Sport, while he votes for a Wrangler.
I drove a Chevy Blazer in high school. It was awesome. I loved that car. We bought it used, but the dude who owned it was a car detailer, so it looked brand-spanking new. Better than, with the detailing on it.
No one else in my family would drive it willingly. The driver’s seat did kind of lean back a little. But I was totally used to it and comfortable in it. And sometimes it would stall if you had to brake through a left hand turn. The freeway on-ramp we use is a downhill left hand turn… Again, freaked out my Mom, but I would just pop in to neutral and restart the car. No biggie.
I keep hoping that they’ll get the hybrid SUVs to have real hybrid mileage. Right now, they’re about on par with a good normal car. What would be really sweet is if the Toyota FJ Cruiser that Kinga got to drive in today’s driver piece was a hybrid. That would be fun – that car is awesome.
Growing up in Hawaii, it’d be easy to have a skewed perspective of the world. To avoid my four sisters and I never knowing anything outside of paradise, my parents made a point of taking a trip every year.
Each summer, the fam would travel for 2 weeks. The east coast from North Carolina to Maine a couple times. All of the west coast and into Canada a couple times. The four corner states.
Tickets for 7 to the mainland weren’t cheap, so when money was tight, it was the outer islands. But still, it was something. As a result, I learned to really value and enjoy traveling.
My fiancé Dave’s got the travel bug bad too. We’ve made a point to take a big trip about once a year. A Road trip through Mexico. Argentina. Bolivia. We rented bicycles and rode through Maine.
All that traveling, and I’ve never seen any of the 7 wonders of the world. To be honest, it hasn’t been a huge priority. But according to today’s travel piece, now there are going to be 7 more? Man, I’m starting to feel really behind now. Maybe it’s time for a vaca!
P.S. – I talked it up so big yesterday, I had to include a link to Brett’s most awesomest pod ever today. Enjoy.
Current TV hosts Crystal Fambrini, Nzinga Blake, Jael De Pardo, and Angela Sun arrive at the North American premiere of AMERICAN VISA during AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi, November 8. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
Current folks have been out and about at AFIFEST since the beginning - was it only just eight short days ago? - and now we're surfacing on the Red Carpet. Fancy!
(I walked down the red carpet at the Serenity premiere and was blinded by flashbulbs. I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to take a picture of me. Turns out, a friend of a friend had brought Colin Ferguson, and they were walking along beside me. Colin also showed up in The Chemosphere earlier this year, as a guest host. Small world.)
AFIFEST ends on Sunday, but if you're in LA, there's still a lot of amazing films you can check out.
Growing up in Hawaii, I haven’t spent much time in the snow. I did get up to Tahoe 2 winters ago. I decided to try snowboarding. People assured me that since I surf, I’d have no problem snowboarding. Same thing, they all said.
They all lied. Surfing, you have your weight on your back foot, and you move your front foot around to steer. Snowboarding starts with locking your feet in. Fine. However, you have to put your weight on your front foot. But when I’d start moving fast, I’d get scared, the surfing instincts would kick in, and I’d put my weight on my back foot. Which on a snowboard just seemed to make me stop and fall over. Put your weight on your front foot while surfing, and you’ll nose dive. Very confusing. Didn't translate that well after all.
The next winter, headed to Aspen with Dave and his family, I decided to go with skiing. That actually went fairly well. I’ve now heard that snowboarding is harder to learn but easier to master, and that skiing is the opposite: easier to learn but harder to get really good at. I believe it.
The guys in the new snowboarding dvd’s they show in today’s action piece clearly got over the “hard to learn” part of snowboarding and moved into the mastering stage. Somehow I’m not in there. Guess they weren’t filming on the bunny slopes that day.
Today's Current Buzz is all about BABIES. Babies laughing, babies dancing,
babies drooling... Little tykes are HUGE on the internet, and parents love sharing all of junior's precious (and plenty of not so precious) moments with the world.
My family has just started to scan some of our old photos. My dad sent me this one, which I thought was appropriate. Baby Conor, blogging one letter at a time.
When I graduated from Duke, my oldest sister came out to help me pack up and move from North Carolina to California. I shipped most of my stuff by train, we filled the back seat of my car with the valuable/breakable stuff, and headed out.
We made a point to take as much of Route 66 as we could. Anywhere we saw a sign for it, we’d hop off the big interstate that parallels it, and take the little old road. It doesn’t go all the way through anymore, but there’s still a lot of it, and the pictures we took are awesome.
Starting in Carolina means we didn’t get to do the whole thing, but we picked it up in Oklahoma. Most of the rest of the stuff Kinga mentions in today’s travel piece, we saw, including the detour to the Grand Canyon.
We took about 9 days to do the whole thing. 9 days can be a long time with just two people and a long empty road. I can’t remember what state we were in, but somewhere out on old Route 66 is the restaurant where my sister accused me of staring at her, and I spent the rest of the meal deliberately examining the old pictures on the walls and the frills on the curtains to avoid looking her way. Fortunately, by the end of the meal we were laughing hysterically about the whole thing. Could’ve just as easily gone the other way!... Gotta love road trips.
It’s been an exciting few days over here at Yahoo! Current Traveler. As anyone who follows the fortunes of the fledgling Yahoo! Current Network might know…we love being featured on Yahoo’s Home Page. That’s when you feel really special.
Well, this week, one of the Traveler pieces…a little piece we call Sushi Challenge! was featured on yahoo.com. And let me tell you…over a half a million people watched it. Fantastic! This piece was Uploaded to our Web site by producer PoCoLoCo313. And it’s hilarious!
So, point being, you need to upload your videos too! Send us more videos! Get them on Yahoo!’s Home Page! And while you’re at it…you’ll be entered into this pretty great contest we’re running. You could win a whole new HDV camera package. (And then make more pieces that would get featured on Yahoo!’s Home Page)!
From 8th through 10th grades, I kinda went through a religious phase. My friend Marci was always trying to get me to go to youth group with her. Carla and I finally agreed. But only I kept going back – Carla was obviously less swayed by the cute boys than I. First it was Matt, then my first boyfriend Maka, and then it was John…what cuties!
Eventually though, I phased out of that phase (and Carla got way into it - she went on a mission and everything!). I wasn’t comfortable with trying to convert people. It started to seem close-minded to me, which just felt weird. And I always thought religion should be a personal thing.
Stephen Baldwin doesn’t feel the same way I do, apparently. Check out his efforts in today’s action buzz.
Our efforts were focused on getting that pod to you. Pieces on “sensitive” issues are “red-flagged” to ensure they’re not offensive and are fair. This one went all the way to the top: our CEO Joel actually signed off for us. A bit nerve-wracking, but, all’s well that ends well.
When I was in high school, my friends and I would do stupid things like drive around listening to Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday" 300 times in a row, lining up pickled pig's feet on an ex-boyfriend's dashboard on a hot Missouri summer day, or having Wayne's World day at the dollar movie where we tried to sit through every showing of the film (but ended up giving up after two times and sat through The Cutting Edge for the rest of the day instead).
One of the theaters in our town was run by the Wehrenberg chain, and they had this theme song that was the most embarassing thing I've ever heard. What you can't hear in that online version is that at the end someone whispered "Wehrenberg... Wehrenberg... Wehrenberg..." over and over in a creepy way. Hearing it caused a tingling sensation in my chest, all the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up, and tears to well in my eyes. We could be a hundred miles from the theater, and someone singing this song would cause me to react in the exact same way.
The only other thing I can compare the feeling to is that scene in Pretty in Pink when Andie (Molly Ringwald) accuses Blane (Andrew McCarthy) of not wanting to go to the prom with her because she's from the wrong side of the tracks - which wouldn't have been an issue if it weren't for Steff (James Spader) - and Andrew McCarthy gets that terrible eyes-bugging-out-of-his-face look he does so well, and you just feel so embarassed for him that you want to crawl under your seat.
We called it "The Wehrenberg Syndrome."
Well, today's Yahoo! Current Buzz has brought back that old familiar feeling. It isn't just me. Exclamations of "I can't watch!" and "it's too embarrassing!" rippled through the Online Studio team this morning. Of course we all hopped over to Yahoo! to see what all the buzz (har har) was about. And let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've been Wehrenberged by a bank employee ripping off U2.
Growing up, my brother and I were occasionally able to convince our mom to play Nintendo.
It was a spectacle we found consistently hilarious. She was AWFUL, and would do things like run AWAY from the mushroom ('I thought it was going to hurt my little plumber man!'). We got the most enjoyment out of seeing her violently yank the controller around in attempts to make Mario move. No matter how much we explained the properties of the 'A' and 'B' buttons, when she wanted Mario to jump, she yanked towards the sky.
Perhaps Mom was a gamer ahead of her time. The controller for the new Nintendo Wii is designed so that your herky-jerky movements actually DO control your characters.
I want one. So far the closest I've come is this current buzz.
I’m not big into video games. I didn’t get to play them as a kid, which is probably why I never got into them.
But whenever we do find ourselves at Dave & Busters, or with time to kill before a flick at one of the mega-movie-plex places, I’m all about the racing games. I think I’ve only beaten Dave once, which is annoying: I’m pretty competitive and get pissed when I lose. But, it’s still fun.
But who needs video game racing when you can do it for real? Or at least in a go-cart, like Kinga did in today’s driver buzz. Looks awesome. As did she. I mean, I’m totally into boys, but you gotta admit, she looks pretty hot in that fire-suit.
Dave and I spent a bunch of time this weekend talking about the future. When the wedding is going to be, when/if I might move to Chicago (so far, it’s been ok being apart, but it’d be way better to be in the same place…), what I would do if I did move (which really means “designing some sort of job so that I can keep working for Current if I move to Chicago”), that kind of stuff.
One of the things that came up was cars. Dave isn’t too sure that Toyo would make it all the way to Chicago if I tried to drive it. I have more faith in Toyo than that. But, since he’s got his 10-year-younger and much cooler Ford Mustang there already, we wouldn’t really need mine.
It’d be sad to say goodbye to Toyo. But, I knew the day would come eventually. And since Dave and I are such greenies, whenever we do need a second car, the plan is to get some sort of hybrid, which would be cool.
But what might work out even better – the guy in today’s driver piece says his electric truck will be publicly available for 45G next year. That’d be awesome. I’ve always wanted a truck!
Flying back to San Francisco from Hawaii once, ATA lost my bag. Or, I guess they didn’t really lose it, but it didn’t make the connection (I had a stop on Maui). It was kind of annoying, but not that bad – I was in my own apartment, so I had clothes and shoes and a toothbrush, and they brought it to my house the next day, so whatever.
When I went to Mexico to translate for Kinga on a travel shoot this past summer, they actually stole 2 pairs of shoes from my bag. That was more annoying. I had the pair I was wearing, but I was training for a marathon at the time, so I couldn’t run the whole trip, which sucked, and I really liked the heels they took. Apparently, you shouldn’t pack anything you’d be bummed to lose in an outside pocket of your suitcase when you’re flying to Mexico City.
But after watching today’s travel piece – man, I guess I’ve gotten lucky. Nothing of mine in Scottsboro, AL. At least not yet. Keeping my fingers crossed, and kinda glad not to be traveling for Thanksgiving!
For the last several years, my house has become the way station for friends who cannot make it home for Thanksgiving or who, like me, think that traveling over the holidays is the last possible thing one would want to do with an extra day or two off work.
We set the bar pretty high from the very beginning. The first year, we undertook a kitchen remodel, which included three different paint colors, 17 trips to Home Depot, the purchase of a ginormous table, and removing about a bazillion layers of paint from the back of our front door. There were power sanders involved, and the food was pretty good, too.
The next couple of years were spent perfecting the turkey - always cooked in a smoker, and carefully researched on the Internet - as well as the stuffing, made with fresh sage and homemade buttermilk cornbread, which is probably better named "dressing" because it's not actually stuffed in anything. Each year I've poured over magazines - preferring Gourmet to Bon Appetit and Cooking Light over Food and Wine - and harassed my friends for their favorite recipes. I've subjected my spouse and my co-workers to taste tests.
This past weekend, for the first time in my life, it required TWO grocery carts to haul my bounty out of the store. It also took some hefty rearranging to get everything in the cabinets/refrigerator when we got home. I'm going to start cooking tonight, starting with a cranberry-pear sauce and dough for cheddar crisps, and there's a well-orchestrated plan from now until dessert is served.
But.
Even after all the prep work, each year the meal is basically the same. Tradition (and my friends) demands it. There's got to be cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and dressing and pumpkin pie. It's all got to be slathered in gravy - maybe not the pie - and at the end of the day there must be the customary "I can't believe we ate SO MUCH" grousing on the couch.
Because whether we're with each other or back home with family, the holidays just feel more comfy when there's some routine, whether it's whipping up my Grandma Shirley's pumpkin pie (the best) or arguing with my husband over which is better - white meat or dark. (White, if you were wondering.)
Back in the summer of 2005, before Current was on air, there were a series of 'brand building' meetings. Most of the company would gather together in the hall conference room (back when that was physically possible) and brainstorm what the network was supposed to represent.
At one point, the consultant leading the meeting asked everyone to mention a few magazines, books, tv shows, or movies that they personally enjoyed - a list was then written up on a dry erase board. I'm pretty sure the idea was that, looking at that list, we would start to get an idea of the type of vibe that Current should emulate.
I still remember Laura Ling's response, mostly because it was so specific. She mentioned that she really liked 'Harper's Index,' a regular, statistics-based feature in Harper's magazine. It was the first time I had ever heard of it.
I was in LA last night and needed to kill some time before a movie, and so I stopped in Barnes and Noble to buy a magazine. I saw Harper's on the shelf - over a year later, I had still never read an issue, but, remembering that conversation, I decided to check it out.
Of course, the first thing I do is flip to that index that I recall Laura liking so much. And, WTF, Current's Vanguard Journalism Team IS CITED AT THE TOP OF THE INDEX.
Not a particularly exciting press mention, outside of the fact that it made my head explode.
Anyone who knows me is aware of my extreme pop-culture nerditude. I pretty much stopped trying to hide it several years ago when some friends of mine instituted a race to be the first to read the latest installment in a series of young-adult novels based on a TV show we liked. It took too much energy to use the “kid sister” excuse every time I bought one.
The sad part is that I forget everyone isn’t quite as nerdy as me. For instance…
Last night I was going to dinner with my husband and a friend of ours. I was telling the story of how I totally tripped in front of the Current CEO Joel Hyatt, spilling half a Diet Dr Pepper in the lobby. “It was my ‘I carried a watermelon’ moment,” I said to them.
And I got blank stares.
I had just assumed that anyone born in time to have caught the theatrical debut of Dirty Dancing would understand this reference. I mean, COME ON! “I carried a watermelon” is CLASSIC.
For those of you who have not watched this movie 367 times – probably many of the males in our audience – “I carried a watermelon” is what Jennifer Grey’s character, Baby, says the first time she’s introduced to the “dirty dancing” moves of the title, and more specifically, to the Patrick Swayze character, Johnny. It’s a deliberate show of how naïve Baby is, so that when she puts on a sassy dress and makeup later in the movie, you realize she’s not a “baby” anymore. But in pop culture reference terms, it's sort of the equavalent of the better-known phrase, "open mouth, insert foot."
I often think of this while watching the shenanigans featured on the Yahoo! Current Buzz segments. How do people survive the humiliation? After almost literally running into the always-charming Conor Knighton in the hall yesterday, I told him that I love the Buzz because they always manage to find the "worst of the worst." And though I meant it as a GOOD thing, as he was continuing on his way, I totally knew I had carried the proverbial watermelon. Sorry, Conor.
Man, it is starting to get cooo-old in San Francisco (or at least cold by a Hawaii girl’s standards). But you won’t hear me complaining. I actually really love the change in seasons. It feels like fall, you know? My roomie finally turned on the heaters in our house over the weekend. Still not warm enough for me, but I have no problem tossing on a robe when I get home.
Summer or fall, I’m always freezing in the office. But I have this black Man Made Music hoodie that Brian from the music deparment loaned me months ago. It’s become my standard attire…
But, there’s potential competition for Brian’s hoodie. Or maybe not competition, but an accessory to complement it that will keep my legs as warm as my upper body already is: the cabin cuddler. Check out today’s traveler buzz, and get cozy!
Hello World.
Editor Tom at your service.
When I joined Current back in July, I was stoked to be part of the team.
Now in addition to cuttin’ it up in E1 for SFO, I’m joining the blog conversation online.
If you haven’t heard, the creators of the new film Four Eyed Monsters have also made an open sourced documentary about net neutrality.
Don’t know what exactly net neutrality is? Watch the original edit.
The makers of the documentary also started this wiki site with Final Cut Project files that you can download. The whole idea is watch, form an opinion, re-edit, and repost your edited version. Does anyone else smell a pod?
First things first - Last night in Los Angeles, Lucas Krost was awarded top honors in the Seeds of Tolerance competition for his film "One Nation Under Guard," which highlights the racial injustice of the US prison system and the intolerance shown to ex-prisoners once they have served their time. Lucas took home $100K (plus another $15K for charity), a Sony HD Handycam, and a snazzy trophy.
Finalists Joe Wilson ("We Belong") and Dave Halliday ("Ghost Tribes") each received a hefty $10,000.
Later, I'll post the Fun Stuff stories from the event, but for now it's best to just SHOW you. Check out the below videos from the ceremony and the Red Carpet (keep an eye out for celebs like Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gossling, Arielle Kebbel, Pauley Perrette, and our very own Al Gore). And if you want even more footage, a little birdie told me that you can tune into Entertainment Tonight this evening for their coverage.
One of my very good friends is a high school English teacher. She’s one of those people with boundless enthusiasm, and is the only person I’ve ever met who thinks high school freshmen are cute. This past weekend, her students participated in a special science fair of sorts, called Energy Alternatives, and she asked me and my husband to be judges.
(I’ll just C&P the press release, for ease of explanation: “The event features student-created engineering, experimentation, public opinion and research projects on alternative energy. Students will be on hand to demonstrate what they’ve learned through their displays, presentations and a television news broadcast. Some students chose to build model vehicles, others demonstrated the effectiveness of solar power, while a few investigated the downsides of alternative energy sources.”)
The mister and I were pretty loosely qualified to be judges. Because of the television news segment each team had to produce, each panel of judges included someone from the media. My husband is a newspaper photographer (and a closet science geek), and you know, I work here. But our co-judges were super intimidating. On my team were a research graduate student from UC Berkeley and a woman who was a walking alternative energy encyclopedia and former employee of PG&E. They asked smart, insightful questions of the students, while I stewed about the sad state of the modern-day bibliography.
While there was definitely some too-cool-for-science-fairness about some of the students, several of them were genuinely enthusiastic about their projects. One team built a wooden model of a farmhouse, to be powered by Lincoln Log and PVC-pipe turbines. Another student told showed us the scars he received trying to make steam power. As school assignments go, I can’t think of many more worthwhile. And as you can imagine, Current is pretty alt-energy friendly.
Our friends over at Grist have been running a special series on biofuels, which would have been an awesome resource for some of these kids. The series is ridiculously thorough, and has prepared this particular little camper with some quality fodder for cocktail time discussion.
Current is so quiet today that the loudest thing in the office is the heating vent situated directly above my desk. It’s the perfect way to ease back into things after the holidays which were – I freely admit – dominated by the killing of zombies on our new Xbox 360. Yes, it’s true. The Z household has joined the ranks of the Xbox addicted, and Dead Rising has been eating up a lot of our time. So far my specialty seems to be getting eaten, but when my husband takes over the controls and I take over looking for clues and shouting – “Behind you! To the left! Your other left! Get the chainsaw!” – things go pretty well.
Because the Xbox 360 was our holiday gift to ourselves, I was pretty strict about imposing a no-play-until-December 25th rule. So while we waited for the clock to strike midnight on that fateful day, we focused on our other obsession: Getting another dog.
Back in August, we adopted a little pitbull rescue from The Milo Foundation, a non-profit no-kill animal shelter in the Bay Area. We did not set out to adopt a pitbull. In fact, after perusing PetFinder and seeing just how many of them there were up for adoption, we almost gave up on finding a puppy to bring home. Cooper, as he is now known, caught our eye the second we walked in the door. Of all the other dogs he was the most THERE, the most alert, the most engaged. Plus, he was super cute.
You've probably heard about RSS feeds -- streams of news, blog posts, photos, or any other kind of information, all described in a common format so you can bundle them together any way you like.
They are simultaneously the best and worst thing ever.
Best: My bundler of choice is a web app called Bloglines. I have a lot of feeds -- around 400 -- snagged from all corners of the internet. It's everything I'm interested in, from the Boston Globe's snooty 'Ideas' section to Urban Dictionary's newest definitions. (Somewhere between those two on the scale of seriousness you will find, of course, this blog's feed.)
Basically, you get to roll your own media. It can be one-third friends' blogs, one-third pro reporting, and one-third weird stuff that nobody but you likes.
I know nerd-ware like this is a hassle to set up. And you definitely have to force yourself into new habits. But I tell you, it is worth it. Bloglines has become a fountain of news -- ranging from the personal to the geopolitical -- that never runs dry.
Worst: It's a fountain of news that never runs dry. I am totally battling Bloglines addiction. It's just so tempting to click that Bloglines bookmark -- I check it far more often than my email -- because I know I'm going to find ten things, or a hundred, that are interesting.
So I guess that's a good question: Where do you draw the line? In a world of infinite fascination, when do you decide to stop paying attention?
If you are planning on going to Park City next week, make time to check out Red Without Blue at Slamdance. It is one of the most intimate films I have seen in a long time, and it’s directed by Current editor Brooke Siebold.
If you can’t make it to Park City, check out a movie that was at Sundance last year. The Tribe is a short film about the history of the Barbie doll and the Jewish people, all wrapped up in under 20 minutes. It won numerous awards in 2006, was directed by Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain, edited by Current Radar Editor Dalan McNabola and animated by yours truly.
If you wanna see a short video about mullets, rock and roll, and the 2003 San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival click here.
On a closing note... Do you remember the television show Empty Nest? I do.
I've been active on the web since college, and as my friends have gotten married and taken new jobs and moved to new cities, the web has become the primary way I keep in touch with many of them.
There's a group of people I keep track of through LiveJournal, a smaller group I've found again through MySpace, old co-workers I track through Linked-In, about two people I only get updates on through Friendster, and a handful of folks I speak with a couple of times a week on Instant Messenger. Then, of course, there are the new people I'm meeting here on the Current site, and we're still working out how much we want to open up to each other and how we want to keep in touch outside of the message boards and regular email.
Keeping in touch like this certainly is convenient, but it also has at least one major downfall - I keep forgetting what I've told people and what I haven't, and I feel like I'm repeating myself All. The. Time.
For instance, I've been pretty excited about the impending launch of the new homepage. The online group has been working fiendishly around the clock, and since I don't write code or design anything, I took it upon myself to tell every single person I ever knew online about the redesign, and pestered them all to come and answer the Current Question on day one. Apparently, I got to be pretty annoying, because as I clustered friends for emails and posted in various forums, some people were getting the message lots and lots of times. Oops.
Also, last month I posted in this blog and in my LiveJournal that I was thinking about adopting another dog. It ended up not working out, and I was so heartbroken that I never said anything. But I keep getting nice comments, sweet remarks about the cute new puppy, and then I have to untangle all that's happened between now and then, which wouldn't be the case if I'd just get everyone together and go out for drinks now and then. At any rate, in case you were one of those kind people wishing me luck on the puppy adoption...we didn't get the puppy we set out to adopt, but we got the puppy we were meant to have. His name is Huck.
One of my goals for 2007 is to get out from behind my computer and hang out with people again. I think the convenience of being able to talk with people online in the two minutes before a meeting on IM, or to send an email right before bed knowing I won't have to respond again until the morning has made me lazy in my friendships. Just because my job is the web, doesn't mean the web is my life, right?
There's a video game in the works called Spore. It's from the people behind SimCity, and it's kinda like SimEverything: You start the game as a microbe and end it as a tricked-out UFO bent on galactic colonization. (Lots of pictures here.)
The real genius of Spore, though, is that almost everything in the game is procedurally generated. That means plants, animals, buildings, even whole planets are created on the fly by code -- not designed and animated ahead of time by people.
Of course, people write that code in the first place, and tweak it to make sure everything looks good. So instead of building specific things, they’re building generic tools: paintbrushes instead of paintings.
So what else might we generate with code?
There’s a neat experiment over at Northwestern called News at Seven. They use 3D characters to present a computer-edited digest of the day’s news. Instead of shooting and editing a single newscast, the Northwestern team has built a tool to make an unlimited number of them.
Okay, so, it's not a great newscast. That little video game character isn't going to give Conor a run for his money anytime soon. (Although I suspect she might be better with a shotgun.)
But the real potential is to think beyond this particular incarnation. Imagine that the News at Seven software is a tool anyone can use. You import your own set and characters and queue up your own source material. You make up segments and choose camera moves. And then it gets generated for you every day -- or every hour.
What would your newscast look like?
(For the record, mine would feature a 3D pirate on a rad 3D pirate ship. There would be a sea battle raging in the background. It would be called the BootyCast and it would be a digest of DealBook mergers and acquisitions stories.)
Oh, man. Today is an amazing day.
It is my pleasure to announce that as of this morning Current TV can now be seen on channel 196 on Echostar's DISH Network as part of its "America's Top 200" package. This means that Current is in over 38 million households. 38 million!
Thanks a million (38 million!) to everyone who wrote to us requesting carriage on DISH - your nudging is always important.
Some fun facts:
+ We've more than doubled our domestic carriage in the last year, making Current TV the fastest growing new network.
+ We're now available to customers of the four largest distribution platforms in the US - DirecTV, Echostar's Dish, Comcast and Time Warner.
+ When you add in British Sky Broadcasting in the UK and Ireland, on which we'll launch in March, Current is available on the top five distributors worldwide.
Today, DISH. Tomorrow? The world!
Every year about 10,000 music suits meet up in the beautiful and expensive city of Cannes for MIDEM. This isn't like other music events like SXSW -- this has all the top brass in the publishing world with the mission to leave with signed deals. Alex Simmons, Douglas Caballero, Andy Struse
and myself all embarked on the city to catch up with bands and bypass doing any serious deals.
We met up with Taiwanese metal band Chthonic who took Douglas under their wing and made him one of their own:
This was the first trip to Europe for them and they definitely shocked the audience with songs like "Black Water Ditch" and "Quasi Putrefaction". All very intelligent and very thoughtful, at the core of Chthonic is a good time -- despite all the death and sorrow. Thanks for the pizza, by the way.
Speaking of pizza we definitely ate a lot of it:
And we did a lot of this:
Amidst all the shooting we did happen to catch a couple performances, the highlights being Amy Winehouse (who seems to be keeping up with her reputation) and one of the best live bands around, Mando Diao. If you don't know this band, go buy their CD, bury it in your backyard, and in a year dig it up because this band will be everywhere. And on Current TV in the very near future!
Last week saw the release of Joe Gets Stunted, the 21st episode in the Joe Gets series, and you know what that means: The franchise is finally old enough to buy its own alcohol! No more getting it from the Google Current and SuperNews franchises, which charged increasingly high “buyer’s fees.”
I figure awkward personification is as good a tactic as any to start off my first blog entry, since my pods are often full of awkward moments. And it’s hard for things not to be awkward working with the talented stuntmen at Asylum Stunts. Even if you chained them to anvils, they would beat me in every physical contest imaginable. However, if it came down to a bout of stupid questions, I think I’d have the upper hand.
The majority of the pod was filmed in mid-December. Want to guess which parts were filmed a full month later? No? Nobody? Well, I’m going to tell you anyway! The intro and the fire burn scene. Rick, the fire burn guy, wasn’t available until mid-January, and the scene was definitely worth the wait.
If you look closely, you can tell my hair is longer. But if you’re actually looking that closely, that’s creepy. So creepy you probably want me to send you locks of my hair, and I can’t do that. All the locks of my hair go directly to Hassan. Maybe you can work something out with him, but from what I understand, he’s using them to weave pajamas, and is only half-done.
Anyway…this week I’m editing two new pieces: Joe Gets Manners and What’s Wrong With Smoking? Keep an eye out for them in the future and check out Joe Gets Stunted!
Unless you happened to catch Tori's blog post last week, you'd never know that the Google Current team is now in an entirely different city. On TV, the transition has been pretty seamless.
Since we shoot the show on a green screen, we could theoretically do it anywhere - our move from Current HQ in San Francisco to our new office in Los Angeles had nothing to do with any sweet new set that was being built, and was more the result of various space/logistical/creative decisions.
Naturally, those were some BIG decisions - several people completely uprooted their lives for the move. Some didn't move with us.
So, for the last month, in addition to the challenge of making several GC segments a day, there have been a lot of people stressing about security deposits, U-haul rentals, car purchases, soon to be long-distance relationships... Lots of folks (myself included) are still figuring out housing stuff. And, of course, on a technical level, it's been a huge effort - we arrived in LA last Wednesday amazed at how quickly the existing staff down here was able to build out our new space.
Of course, we're still working out some kinks. The printer is temperamental. The A/C hasn't worked for two days. Voicemail remains a mystery.
And, for our first few segments, I was orange.
Oompa, loompa, doopity doo...
I did NOT, despite how it may seem, arrive in LA and, to fit in, immediately get a spray-on tan.
We're working with all new equipment, and so we've been making several adjustments to match the same lighting/camera/color-correction set-up we had in SF. First day... not so much.
Anyway, I'm kind of glad it looked a little off - if you watched on Thursday, you probably at least noticed that something was different.
Of course, lots of things are. And, now that we've settled in, expect to see lots of new, different, exciting things from the GC squad.
So, on the recommendation of a Current colleague, I went to see a guy named Dosh play here in San Francisco on Saturday night. Here he is:
Dosh is a live looper: one of those musicians who uses real-time sampling to build a multi-track song on the fly. He plays drums, piano, some kind of glockenspiel, lots of synthesizers, and even drops vocal samples into the mix. It’s fantastic: a mix of artistic and technological virtuosity.
Another live looper -- and a San Francisco favorite -- is Kid Beyond. In place of a mini-orchestra, he uses… his mouth. You can see him in a pod about the San Francisco beatboxing scene by Mark Rinehart. (That's ideal because the point is really to see Kid Beyond in action, not just hear his music.)
Now, what about translating this technique into video?
The closest I've seen are Lasse Gjertsen’s crazy super-spliced music videos on YouTube: one with piano and drums, one with his mouth, both astounding. They aren't quite the same thing, but definitely have a similar spirit. (And, to be fair, they both owe a bit to Michel Gondry.)
I'd still love to see looping applied to live video, just as Dosh and Kid Beyond apply it to live music. I guess it's entirely probable that video DJs are totally doing that... somewhere... in some underground club too cool for me to know about. Any leads? Or YouTube examples?
A few observations from our recent journey to England:
1. Fish and Chips are a popular dish, often served with mashed peas and a pint of ale. Haddock is the most commonly used fish.
2. The winters can be harsh and if you are not dressed appropriately you will look like a rube.
3. In England The Shins have an additional member for security reasons.
4. It is a complex place with social mores unlike America.
A few months ago blogger Catherine Martin wrote
about how Newsweek was not publishing the same stories in its magazines.
Last September Newsweek, which is owned and operated by MSNBC published a
story that got front page in Latin America, Europe, and Asia about the U.S.
losing the war in Afghanistan.
In the United States however, that story was nowhere to be found. Instead,
the U.S. Newsweek cover story was about Annie Liebovitz's heartache over
Susan Sontag.
And that wasn't the only time.
This week Newsweek's cover story is on the party life of Britney Spears and Paris Hitlon, and in other countries, on inexpensive computer technology
and the decline of church worship in Europe
Seeing this bombardment of tabloids instead of real news stories from a
supposed news network re-affirms why I love working at Current TV.
We just don't play it like that.
As I write this, Zsa Zsa Gabor is the top gaining search on Google. Not exactly something I saw coming.
Her husband may or may not be the father of Anna Nicole's baby.
People are OBSESSED with this story.
And, studying the most recent search log, it looks like NOBODY knows how to spell Zsa Zsa's name.
Zha Zha Gabor
Jaja Gabor (my favorite)
Zaza Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor
...are all in the top 300 gaining searches on Google.
That’s a line from an old Gang Starr song, and in my case it happens to be true. However, I don’t mean props in the sense of “respect” (unless you consider people saying “Wow, that’s a creepy-looking albino” respect). No, I mean literal props. You see, over the past year, I have amassed a formidable supply of ridiculous items, all for the sake of art.
Here they are all spread out of the box. As you can see, it’s enough to send the most levelheaded person running for the hills.
There’s a Yoda mask, dog collars, a money boa, a chef costume, a doctor costume, a priest costume, a ninja costume, male wigs, female wigs, bald caps, facepaint, spraypaint, a gasoline can, a stroller, a fake knife, a megaphone, Pokemon cards, poker chips, a pimp cup – you name it, it’s probably there. There are so many items that U.N. inspectors have stopped by four times looking for weapons of mass destruction. They found three.
So, why do I have all of this stuff? Mostly because of the What’s Wrong With series. While it’s a lot of fun to make those satirical skits, it’s also a lot of work to get everything together. I’m often scrambling around the city the day before a shoot, trying to track down the last few items. Down at Chicago Costume in Lincoln Park, they know me on a first name basis. Is that really cool or really lame? You be the judge!
If you see an item that hasn’t popped up in a pod yet, that means it was for a top-secret music video project Hassan and I made back in December. I can’t say anything about it right now, but here’s a hint in the form of an anagram: avoid livers. Keep an eye out for that one, as well as Joe Gets Manners and What’s Wrong With Smoking? Additionally, watch for these props to re-appear in future pieces. I want to get my money’s worth out of them, just like Conan does.
Google didn't exist in 1990, but, when I looked at the top rising searches this morning, I wondered if I was seeing results from 17 years ago.
Right now, the world (much like my 2nd grade class) is obsessed with Scottie Pippen and Milli Vanilli.
Pippen might be coming back to the NBA. A Milli Vanilli biopic will be coming to theaters soon.
Written by the same guy who wrote Catch Me If You Can. Weird.
As you know, I'm addicted to RSS feeds.
Well, Yahoo! released a new service last week called Pipes -- it's an RSS feed remixer.
I know that sounds sort of intimidating. And I know the application looks pretty intense:
But really, it's simple: You start with an RSS feed at the top, and then connect it to filters and even other feeds... and you get something new at the bottom.
Concrete example: Let's say you love the Current blog but only want to subscribe to the Vanguard Journalism posts. No problem; in fact, that filter in the picture up there selects out the posts by Laura and crew. (I leave the 'Robin only' pipe as an exercise to the reader.)
Here's an example of something slightly more complicated:
Pitchfork's feed of new music reviews is cool, but often I find myself googling the bands in question to actually hear their music. Shortcut: I bring Pitchfork's feed into Pipes and cross-reference it with MySpace. The result: a feed of links to the reviewed bands' pages, where the music flows freely.
That's still pretty simple, but it gives you a sense of how you might begin to mix and match feeds to accomplish interesting things.
Any dream feeds out there? Info you'd like to be able to track but can't today? Let me know and I will see if I can monkey something together in Pipes -- it's sort of my new hobby.
1. In February 2005, my parents sent me a check for my birthday. I used all of this money to rent a dominatrix dungeon for two hours to make "Joe Gets Dominated."
2. Hassan and I spent a long Sunday editing "Joe Gets Paranormal," only to have a bizarre Final Cut glitch erase all of our work, forcing us to do it all over from scratch. But we don’t think it was a glitch. We think Neil Tobin cursed us.
3. When I was getting my Wu-Tang “W” tattoo in "Joe Gets Inked," the staff at Tatu Tattoo played Wu-Tang Clan songs to relax me. Nothing soothes my soul more than "Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin Ta F’Wit."
4. For "Joe Gets Arrested," I called over 10 police departments in the Chicago area before finally finding one that would let us do the shoot. It was kind of like fishing, except without the drinking.
5. I didn’t need to buy a nerd costume for my performance in "Joe Gets Naked." I wore those clothes for my senior pictures in high school. What can I say? They’re timeless.
6. "Joe Gets Female" is the only episode to be shot with two cameras. Like Howard Hughes, I originally wanted 24.
7. The barbershop featured in "Joe Gets Cut" isn’t a stranger to publicity. It was featured in the book Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought.
8. In "Joe Gets Drafted," the “I…got…drafted” shot was picked up weeks later, in a parking lot outside my apartment. Sorry if that ruins the magic. I suppose this isn’t a good time to tell you that "Joe Gets Medieval" was all on green screen.
9. For each pod, the only thing written beforehand is the intro. Everything else is improvised, except for when I get stuck. Then I put an earpiece in and am told what to say by 20 writers in Los Angeles.
10. The longest shoot took five hours (Female), the shortest shoot took 45 minutes (Culinary) and there’s only one person still reading this (my mom).
If you are looking for a unique place to get away for President’s Day Weekend next year I recommend Portland, OR. Aside from the great microbrews, fresh seafood and stocked bookstores, the city is full of talented indie bands who not only make amazing music but are more than willing to show visitors around. In our case the city of commerce hooked us up with The Blow and The Thermals.
The Blow are DYI laptop wizards who make “an irresistibly catchy mix of contemporary R&B, hip-hop and classic ’60s doo-wop that’s the backdrop for tales of heartbreak and true love.” [Thanks Steven] They also know how to make papier-mâché walrus and seagull head hats.
The Thermals have been making great and simple punk music for a few years now but their latest album goes a little deeper. This time they are exploring the marriage of Christian fundamentalism and political totalitarianism [they are mostly against it.]
Both bands are heading out on massive tours right now so check their schedules and find a string for your remembering finger.
When I first moved to LA, I did several odds and ends to pay the bills. For a month or so, I worked for one of the big test-prep companies, tutoring high school kids in the wily ways of the SAT.
The dinosaurs :: extinct as that job :: completely blew.
After a few short weeks, I had had enough of analogies. Politicians, apparently, love them.
(This piece also features one of my favorite graphics in a while – we requested ‘analogies attacking a city.’ A strange request, and yet our kick-ass graphics department completely delivered.)
So this weekend I was reading about Silicon Valley in the ‘70s and ‘80s. My favorite find was Folklore.org, a site that collects tales of life at Apple Computer in the early days. It’s run by Andy Hertzfeld, one of the designers of the original Macintosh.
Hold that thought.
Today, an interview with Alan Kay showed up in Bloglines (yeah). Kay is a hugely influential computer scientist, which is why you should maybe take him seriously when he makes a broad critique of, er, computer science:
The things that are wrong with the Web today are due to this lack of curiosity in the computing profession. And it's very characteristic of a pop culture. Pop culture lives in the present; it doesn't really live in the future or want to know about great ideas from the past. I'm saying there's a lot of useful knowledge and wisdom out there for anybody who is curious, and who takes the time to do something other than just executing on some current plan. Cicero said, "Who knows only his own generation remains always a child." People who live in the present often wind up exploiting the present to an extent that it starts removing the possibility of having a future.
It’s no surprise Kay likes that Cicero quote. It’s the perfect corollary to his most famous saying, which happens to be printed on my most well-worn Current t-shirt: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Kay also said: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." That seems like such a powerful -- and generalizable -- concept to me. If you're trying to do something new, don't just stay on the surface: Identify the underlying systems and change those too, whether they're technological, economic, social, or whatever.
Back to the beginning: I just googled "alan kay serious about software," and it turns out the best collection of Kay quotes is on that Folklore.org site. If you've got a minute, check out this document. It's still an inspiring read, 25 years later.
In case you didn't know, Andy Warhol died 20 years ago today. If you never got the chance to meet him personally, you can now do the next best thing, which is reading his journal online. This guy fi5e, AKA Evan, started it up a while ago and he could use your support.
If that leaves you wanting more Warhol check out this Japanese commercial featuring Andy, some home-movie footage from 1966 and this clip from the groundbreaking '70s reality show An American Family, in which Lance Loud visits a Warhol exhibit.
The Andy Warhol Museum has a cool online time capsule featuring receipts, photos, magazines and other interesting items from the artist's vast collection.
If you do not like Andy Warhol, then click on this. It's cool and everybody thinks it's funny.
If you didn't think that was funny and you do not like Warhol, then click on this. It's gross.
Typically, our show reflects what's going on in the world. World news, popular culture, the latest internet meme to go viral...
And then, every once in a while (well, once), it's about Coins.
I never get tired of watching Eric in this clip. When he's not busy loving coins or writing for the show, he has his own sketch comedy troupe - check out 'The B-Squad' here.
I’ve never been a part of sports fandom. In high school, I avoided going to games so I could spend more time with my best friend, Nintendo 64. And the college I attended, the University of Chicago, was one of those silly schools that focused on “academics.” The chatter about sports was mostly limited to “We have a sports team? Really? Where?”
However, my curiosity was piqued by the Chief Illiniwek controversy. The Chief, who was UIUC’s mascot/symbol for 80 years, was forced to retire last Wednesday. While Native American nomenclature isn’t exactly new to sports, the Chief’s presence had created a divisive atmosphere on campus. Also, it didn’t help that the NCAA had banned UIUC from hosting postseason games until the Chief was jettisoned.
To me, this is one of those gray issues with valid points on both sides. The Chief’s supporters are certainly trying to honor Native American heritage, but if Native Americans are offended, how does it honor them?
So, we decided to make fun of everybody. Last Wednesday David Seman and I spent a long 17 hours making “What’s Wrong With Chief Illiniwek?” Unfortunately, this didn’t include seeing the Chief’s final performance, because they wouldn’t give us press credentials.
See how depressed we were? Luckily, we were able to get our hands on a copy of the footage. Otherwise, who knows, we might’ve driven the car into a tree, screaming, “This is for you, Chief! This is for youuuuuu!”
On Thursday, we shot some skits for that pod, as well as a whole new pod altogether: Joe Gets Checked, in which I get some professional training in ice hockey from the guys at Johnny’s Ice House. And guess what? I still have all my teeth!
I plan to finish editing these pods by early next week. In the meantime, check out Joe Gets Manners, which was directed by Hassan a few weeks ago. A certain reporter from Kazakhstan covered similar subject matter back in 2003, but we thought our angle was sufficiently different. Namely, I wasn’t about to walk into The Etiquette School of Northern Illinois holding a bag of my own feces. That would have been rude. Plus, we use those bags to pay Hassan for his directorial services, and we really don’t have any to spare.
P.S. It was my birthday yesterday. Please celebrate by watching all my pods in one sitting, Clockwork Orange-style.
This Saturday, it's supposed to be 75 and sunny in Los Angeles. I might go to the beach.
However, I know that, in plenty of other cities across America, people will be making SNOW ANGELS.
I guess I just didn't realize how MANY people will be doing it. Thank you internet.
Have you ever heard of the demoscene?
It's a subculture of programmers that sprung up around Atari and Amiga computers back in the day and is still around. The core objective in the demoscene is to eke every ounce of graphics potential out of a computer with a "demo," a program that renders an amazing animated sequence on the fly.
Like a lot of programming-related subcultures, it's sort of a cross between a strongman competition and a poetry review: It's about pushing as many pixels as you can -- but with the most compact, elegant code possible. There are usually stringent limits on the size of the demos: 64 kilobytes, or even just four.
The best demo I've come across recently is "Chaos Theory" by the Hungarian demo group called Conspiracy. Here it is (it starts slow, but give it a minute):
Keep in mind as you're watching: This thing is generated by a program 64 kilobytes big.
As it unfolds and the music plays and it gets more complicated, keep telling yourself: 64K.
Pretty amazing.
One of the best anecdotes I have for growing up in Moscow, Idaho, is what I remember from the TV news coverage on election night. Being a small college town, Moscow is generally a pretty liberal place. The rest of Idaho, on the other hand, tends to lean a bit more to the right.
On election night, my parents and I would pay attention to the TV reports as the votes were collected and counted. Periodically the color-coded map of Idaho would flash on the screen and we would notice how quickly the county lines were filled in with red. Meanwhile, Moscow (Latah County), would remain a lonely blue polygon on the Washington border. That dichotomy represents Moscow pretty well: traditional farming community and liberal college town wrapped into one.
Songwriter Josh Ritter grew up in Moscow with me. Part of what makes him such a unique artist is his balance between those two extremes. While his songs are rooted in Americana (water towers, freight trains and Hank Williams) they just as easily reference ancient canticles, chemistry and international politics.
Recently, I asked Josh to answer three short questions. Here is what he had to say for himself:
Whether it's a love song or a protest song your lyrics are full of nuance and subtlety. What is it about the literal you shy away from?
I've always had a problem with truth as it pertains to songs. A song that recounts well-established facts might as well be a magazine article for all its romance. And songs that take a specific and unwavering political position might as well be television commercials. A song, like a short story, is beautiful in its ability to introduce us to the possibility of a multiplicity of ways to think about the world.
If you were to take a road trip with one historical figure from Idaho, who would it be and what intrigues you about that person?
Without a doubt it would be former Idaho senator Frank Church. Church was a man who not only spoke, but also acted, with great conviction. In so doing he brought attention to that line that separates salary politicians from true leaders.
Any secrets you want to share about the next album?
The next record is pretty exciting. It’s rough and tumble. I think it's something of a bathing beauty.
---Josh did some rough and tumble "Backstage Recordings" on his solo tour, they are worth a listen, check them out here---
I go to Second City class on Sunday nights, so I forgot all about the Oscars last week. When I got home, I tried to recreate the experience of watching it by reading the list of winners so slowly it took four hours. It just wasn’t the same, though. I missed out on all those compelling red carpet interviews about what people were wearing. You might remember that I tried to fit in with the Oscars crowd last year. Since I wasn’t invited back, you can imagine how well that went!
It’s a cute picture, but Paris snubbed me afterwards. Her grizzled octogenarian handler wrangled her away before I could ask my question: Is religion just something man made up to cope with death? In retrospect, this was for the best. She’s so overexposed the Associated Press recently instituted a ban on writing about her. Of course, they broke this ban in two days. Then they wrote an article about the whole ordeal. How deliciously symmetrical!
If you combine this with the ubiquitous news coverage about Britney’s baldness, you might be upset that the mainstream media is acting like Star Magazine. I’m not. In fact, I’m thrilled. If our most respected journalists are covering foofaraws, than there must not be any other news. We’re no longer at war! There’s no climate crisis! Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to give up crazy dictator-ing and join an all-male acapella group! Hooray!
And the good news keeps coming! I have four pieces working their way through the pipeline to air – a top-secret music video, What’s Wrong With Smoking?, Joe Gets Checked and What’s Wrong With Chief Illiniwek? Here’s a sneak peek at Smoking: It’s the return of Jimmy and Kimmy!
Since our show isn't live, we occasionally will run into problems where a segment we've taped becomes out of date while it's still running on the network.
A politician will drop out of a race, a hurricane will switch course, a missing girl will be found...
Usually, to keep Current looking current, we either pull the dated segment from air or, if possible, I'll come into the studio and record a fix.
'Hiccup girl' - aka Jennifer Mee - had been hiccuping for FIVE WEEKS STRAIGHT when we taped our piece on her. And of course, she decided to stop about five hours after we had sent our segment into scheduling.
I know I should be happy she's better, but I found myself cursing poor Jennifer Mee when we heard the news. Which is terrible, but I've found that TV makes you do that sometimes.
Anyway, it was a simple fix - we ended up tacking on a post-script to the segment...
If you are headed to South By Southwest next week you are probably saying to yourself, "Hey self, what am I to do, there are 1400+ bands all playing multiple times in the span of five days, how am I ever going to be able to decide who to see?" It's a good question really and I don't have all the answers for you save one....Mando Diao.
Why Mando Diao?
They are Swedish. They are one of the best live acts in the world. They employ "gang vocals" alla The Clash, except they call it "hockey choir." They sing about retired NHL players. Finally, they play 43 times in 5 days so there are lots of chances to see them in Austin.
We actually just hung out in France with them while shooting a Current Fix pod. Here is a bonus clip for you on how they got their name.
We will be blogging daily from SXSW next week so start holding your breath, right, now.
“What’s Wrong With Smoking?” was released this week, and contains a revelation about second-hand smoke that is sure to shake the American Lung Association to its core: Second-hand smoke isn’t just inconsequential; it’s beneficial, and can cure headaches, earaches and colds. Maybe if we threw out all that junk science about smoking being a health risk, we’d discover it could also cure cancer. This means smokers could offset the risk of lung cancer simply by taking a second-hand puff after every first-hand puff. Look into it, doctors.
You’ll notice that the pod features another 1950’s educational video, with Chicago actress Kate Berry reprising her role as Kimmy. In this installment, Jimmy and Kimmy meet Smoky the Cigarette Sprite, who was inspired by the notorious Spring Fever and Mr. B Natural shorts on MST3K.
Current’s talented graphics department created Smoky, and this isn’t the first time they’ve lent their expertise to a “WWW” pod. In “WWW Soccer,” they set me on fire.
In “WWW Intelligent Design,” they created a decidedly gangsta CD cover for Charles Darwin.
And, then there’s my personal favorite: the evil rainbow in “WWW The Gay Agenda.”
While “Joe Gets” pods are normally
