04.4.2008 | 10:34 pm | Pop Culture
I recently added StumbleUpon to my browser. You tell it what kinds of things you’re interested in, and when you’re bored you click the icon on your taskbar and it brings to to a semi-random site that they think will interest you. You can then rate it thumbs up or thumbs down with a mouse click, and comment on it if you’re so inclined.
It’s OK, but not great. They repeat too many sites, including ones I’ve thumbed down. But they also hit some great sites from time to time, ones I probably wouldn’t have found on my own.
One thing it’s taught me, though, is just how many horribly bad comics are on the tubes. Stupid, poorly drawn, just plain bad comics. And the worst of all are the stick figure comics. There are hundreds of them.
You don’t have to be Da Vinci to draw a comic. No one is expecting brilliant artwork. But if the best you can do is stick figures: don’t bother! Stick figure comics are stupid and ridiculous. If you’re stupid and ridiculous you might want to avoid advertising that to the world.
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03.27.2008 | 9:57 pm | Pop Culture
A couple of years ago I started the Podcast Peer Awards. I was tired of top ten lists that always featured the same shows. I was unhappy that the only other podcast award was structured so that the only winners would be those with huge audiances. I wanted a contest where other podcasters would select the best, a contest the public could trust to recommend the best shows anywhere.
No one else was doing it, so I did. Since then over 500 podcasters have signed up as judges.
Winners can be especially proud of their trophies, because winning a Podcast Peer Award is tough. A show can’t win by having a bunch of friends and listeners swamp some voting site. The first step, getting nominated, is easy, but then a show has to get enough votes to qualify for the finals. Since judges can vote for or against a show, only about a third of the nominees score high enough to qualify. Qualifying is no guarantee, though - only the top five qualifiers become finalists. Then the real difficulty begins. Finalists are competing with the very best shows in their category. At this stage the most common comment among judges is how difficult it is to select the best show.
The judges are five hundred of the best, most prolific podcasters in the world. They are not easily impressed. They only vote for the most entertaining, most informative, and best produced shows.
So a hearty “Congratulations!” to all the winners. There are tens of thousands of awards in the arts. Very few are as hard to win as a Podcast Peer Award. The winners should be extremely proud of their accomplishment.
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03.6.2008 | 2:17 pm | Pop Culture
A Starbucks employee has volunteered to give one of her customers a kidney.
Now that’s customer service!
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01.28.2008 | 12:31 am | Pop Culture, Religion
The internet is abuzz with the tales of Anon/Anonymous, a group of hackers who promise to drive Scientology from the internet. They’ve been going after Xenu’s sites with Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, and in the process managed to take a site belonging to a Dutch school.
There’s a lot of conversation in lots of forums debating the morality of their approach. Most discussions include tiresome dictionary arguments about whether Scientology is a cult or not.
Let me answer the last question first. It is. If you don’t think so, then you’re too damn stupid to appreciate this blog, so go away.
Is it right or wrong for some to fight the science fiction religion with illegal, underhanded, sneaky, vigilante-style attacks? I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I pondered it for at least ten minutes (well, maybe eight) before forming my opinion. A few points I considered:
The government has had a very long time to deal with Scientology, and has failed miserably, mostly because they’ve ignored the problem. Given Scientology’s published polices and their history of using civil litigation for the sole purpose of harassment, they should have been ruled as Vexatious Litigants decades ago, and bared from bringing lawsuits without special permission. When the government refuses to hand out justice the job falls to the citizens.
The best way to deal with a bully, the only way to deal with a bully, is to fight back. For the best results, beat the shit out of him. If that’s not possible, just fighting back will usually do the trick.
In the game “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” the best strategy is tit for tat: Do unto others what they did unto you the last time. It doesn’t matter if your opponent is aggressive, passive, friendly, nasty or random - over time tit for tat always gets the most favorable results.
I disagree with Voltaire. I may not believe what you way, but will defend to the death your right to say it, unless you are trying to silence me. In that case I’ll sit back and smile while you get what you deserve.
Considering the violent and filthy history of these evil people, they deserve not only be driven from the internet, but destroyed in the real world as well. They deserve to be harassed and spit at and derided and attacked, but for phase one, driving them from the internet would be a good start.
But if these vigilantes really want to have an effect, they’ve got to do more than flood their web sites with DoS attacks. That will annoy them and piss them off, but it won’t cripple them. Anon needs to do some real damage. They need to hit them where it matters - in their wallets. Shutting down their web sites is briefly satisfying and somewhat entertaining. Emptying their bank accounts would be a real accomplishment.
A good start would be to hack their servers and gather all their financial information. Then they should remove all the money they can find in every one of their bank accounts. Let the Xenu lovers suffer the bankruptcy they’ve visited on so many of their followers.
The next step would be to extend this courtesy to anyone promoting them. “Sorry, Mr. Cruse, your credit card has been declined.” “Sorry Miss Alley, you’ll have to pay cash.” “Mr. Hayes, management has requested that I your money before serving your dinner.” I’d leave Travolta alone, at first, became I haven’t seen him shilling for them except for a blurb on their site. But the moment he says anything about them that could be construed as a plug, bankrupt him. Imagine the headlines. Imagine the sense of accomplishment.
L. Ron Hubbard said, “The purpose of [a lawsuit] is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.”
His organization deserves no better. Best wishes, Anonymous, whoever you are. I very much doubt you’ll succeed, (at the moment, Scientology’s primary site is up and operating fine) but I applaud your noble cause.
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12.4.2007 | 7:14 pm | Pop Culture, Religion
It’s becoming more and more difficult to write satire in this increasingly bizarre world. As an example, how can you possibly make this headline any funnier:
Catholic coloring book warns US kids of pedophile priests
At least, someone on Fark noted, it’s not a pop-up book.
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11.23.2007 | 10:51 pm | Political Correctness, Pop Culture, Nanny Nation
When my kids were little I watched Sesame Street with them, and some of the jokes were obivously aimed at adults. I remember Cookie Monster, sitting in a big leather chair in a library, smoking a pipe and announcing, “This Is Alastair Cookie, bringing you Monster Piece Theater.” My kids didn’t know why I was laughing - that joke wasn’t in there for them.
Some of the original shows have been released on DVDs, but according to this article (sent to me by Michael Tighe of thecheapstudent.com) they carry a warning: ““These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
Cookie Monsters pipe was too offensive. According to Carol-Lynn Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.” Oscar was too grouchy. Parente said, ““We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.
And the pussification of America continues. . .
Of course, it’s not limited to America. In Australia, Santas are being told to say “ha ha ha” instead of ‘ho, ho, ho” because someone might misunderstand and think he’s calling someone a whore. I’m sorry, if you’re that easily offended, if your brain is so poorly developed that you find that offensive, rest assured that we’re far more offended at your stupidity than you are at this innocuous phrase. And you’re probably a ho too.
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11.15.2007 | 1:25 pm | Poker, Pop Culture, Nanny Nation, Politics
Yesterday, Annie Duke testified to the House Committee on the Judiciary about playing poker on line: Why it should be legal, why the whining nannies lament about compulsive gambling is ridiculous, why the “for the chillllllllllldreeeeen” bleat is sensless, how poker is a game of skill, not luck, and quite a few other related issues. Here are a few excerpts:
“Of course, opponents of gaming will cite the incidence of compulsive gambling and the possible exposure of minors as reasons to prohibit it. With respect to compulsive gambling, this committee has received expert testimony confirming what most academic studies on compulsive gambling have found: that the incidence of problem gambling in the population of adults who engage in gambling activity is less than 1%. From a similar study in the United Kingdom, we know that the availability of betting over the Internet does not increase it over time. Furthermore, even if one’s primary concern were the very small incidence of compulsive gambling, then licensing and regulation offer more effective and less intrusive means to combat it.”
“Of course, prohibitionists point to the possibility of children betting online as the other justification for prohibiting it. In fact, most people who seek to restrict individual freedom invoke protection of children as their motivation. I suspect they find that that argument has more resonance than what is often their real motivation — to treat adults like children, and manage their choices for them.”
“To reiterate: if your concern in this matter is about children, there are solutions available. If, instead your interest is in treating adults like children, then there are not.”
“The vast majority of Internet poker players are doing so for recreation and entertainment. On average, a person spends $10 a week playing online poker. 10 dollars! You can’t even get a movie ticket for that price where I live!”
“In the proposed rule issued by the Department of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the regulators come right out and say that they cannot and will not tell the regulated community what constitutes an unlawful Internet wager. Let me emphasize — the posture of the Federal government is, “We are going to create a new federal crime, but we will not tell you what it is.” In the proposed rule, the regulators explain their refusal to resolve this by saying that to do so would require them to examine the laws of the federal government and all 50 states with respect to every gaming modality, and that this would be unduly burdensome. Yet that is exactly what they are requiring the general counsel of every bank in the country to do.”
Read the entire transcript here.
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10.7.2007 | 11:27 pm | Pop Culture
Out of the 60,000+ podcasts out there somehow yours caught my eye. It looked interesting enough for me to add it to my podcatcher and download a few shows. Unfortunately, I’ve removed it from my subscription list, for one or more of the following reasons.
Your show is too long. I don’t have as much time as I’d like for podcasts, and I’m just not willing to listen to you for the hour and a half I could spend listening to six fifteen minute podcasts. I think there is a much shorter, much better show in there struggling to get out. As an experiment, try doing one episode that’s 1/3 the length to see if it makes it better.
You talk in a monotone. If you’re not excited about the subject, why should I be?
You laugh at your own jokes. A lot. As a solo show, an occasional laugh is fine, but you bellow at your own cleverness every single time you say anything you think is even slightly amusing. I hate laugh tracks.
Your production sucks. The days of great content allowing you to get away with lousy production are over. There’s more well-produced good content out there than anyone has time to listen too. Your whistling Ss sound like fingernails on a blackboard, your popping Ps are pathetic, and your three dollar microphone just doesn’t cut it any more. If your show were brand new I’d be a little more forgiving, but you’ve been doing this for a while now and if you don’t care enough about it to learn the technical end of your craft I don’t care enough to listen.
Your volume is all over the place. The first time I dived for the volume knob I was annoyed. The third time I skipped the rest of your show and deleted it from my podcatcher.
You use too many word whiskers. A few ums and aws are fine, but your show is so full of them I couldn’t pay attention to anything else. Your excessive use of “like” and “you know” makes you sound like a Valley Girl. (Last year I tried a podcast on Film Noir which was hosted by two people. One of them said “And, Uh,” in front of every sentence. I loved the subject enough to give it one more try a few shows later to see if they had improved. They hadn’t. The End, roll credits.)
You didn’t get to the point. You told me your show was about X, but you rambled on and on about all kinds of supporting crap until I got bored and moved on. (Point of Inquiry is a good example. They spend a good five minutes telling you about their organization, what the show is about, blah blah blah, and then they often play a promo! And it’s the same shtick every damn time. When they finally get to the content it’s a great show, but why does it take them so long to get to the point (of inquiry)?)
You didn’t get to the point II. You told me your show was about X, but you rambled on and on about your cat or your kid or your operation and I just lost interest before you got anywhere near the subject matter.
You put your own show down. Actually, I never subscribed because of this. Your show description said “Just a couple of guys hanging out. We’re not that good, but its fun.” If you tell me your show sucks I’m just going to agree with you without trying it.
You put your closing comments first. Sharing phone calls and e-mails is the best way to encourage more phone calls and e-mails. It’s an interesting part of the show for some people, but others find it dull. If you put it at the end of the show, where it belongs, people who aren’t interested can skip it easily after enjoying the meat of your message. But you put it at the beginning, so I just skipped to the next show on my list.
Looking for a podcast that avoids these errors? Try The Quick Hitts Podcast, the perfect complement to this blog.
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09.9.2007 | 8:28 pm | Pop Culture
DragonCon is a conglomeration of every science fiction, fantasy, fan, and uber geek conference in Atlanta. I attended for the first time last week to present the Podcast Peer Awards.
There were about 60,000 people there. A little less than half were in costume. These were not cheap simple costumes, but richly elaborate, detailed clothing and props. There were characters from Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Serenity/Firefly, various video games, The Watchmen, The Crow, V for Vendetta, The Incredibles, Steamboy, Stargate SG1, Battlestar Galactica, Kiss, DC comics heros (lots of Superman, Supergirl and Batman comics), Marvel comics (surprisingly few X-men, though), The 300, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ghostbusters, and lots and lots of Fairies and Zombies.
The convention was spread across three hotels. There were dozens of tracks - writing, costuming, fighting robots, skeptics, science, the EFF, and podcasting, to name a few. Each track offered 6-8 hour long panels, shows, or meetings per day. There was no way to see more than a small percentage of what looked interesting.
I was able to meet a lot of friends I hadn’t met before (which makes no sense to people who don’t spend much time online, perfect sense to those who do) and make some new ones. I spent most of my time in the podcasting and skeptics tracks, but hit several of the others as well.
I came back tired and rejuvenated, with a camera full of pictures. I figured I’d put them up here and share the excitement and feel of the convention with you. I loaded them up, browsed through them and . . . .
They’re just pictures of people in costumes. They can’t convey the feeling, the vibe and the buzz of being there. But they’re fun, so here are a few of them. Time permitting I’ll add more later.
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07.17.2007 | 10:04 pm | Pop Culture
You’ve probably seen the commercial for Live Free or Die Hard. It shows a car spinning through the air toward Bruce, who ducks between two other cars while it smashes down just inches from his head. This is followed by a shot of another car flying through the air and smashing into a hovering helicopter.
Both of those scenes are in the beginning of the movie. The slow part. It picks up from there.
I seldom go to the movies, because I think they’re way overpriced, but some flicks just have to be seen on the big screen. This is one of them. There is a bit of a story in there somewhere, but fortunately it doesn’t interfere with the chase scenes, vehicles smashing into each other, gun fights, acrobatics, martial arts, smart ass jokes, and lots and lots of stuff blowed up.
I love Stuff Blowed Up movies, and haven’t seen a good one in quite a while. This one explodes cars, trucks, helicopters, kittens, planes, rooms, buildings power plants and just about anything else that’s not locked down.
Just kidding about the kittens. Bruce would never hurt a kitten.
If you’re looking for some mindless fun and lots of action, see this one on the big screen while you still can.
I used to do movie reviews regularly. You can find them here.
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07.11.2007 | 12:23 pm | QH Podcasts, Pop Culture, Bad Business, Politics
As promised there is now a Quick Hitts podcast that provides an extensive review of Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” It’s the Moore Nonsense” episode (#56) and you can find it here.
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07.4.2007 | 11:28 am | Pop Culture, Nanny Nation, Big Brother
America no longer exists, but the United States is still a pretty cool place, so the Fourth is still worth celebrating.
Big fireworks displays are great fun, but they’re still a passive experience, and Lee Greenwood sucks. So be sure to blow off some of your own fireworks. Make some noise. Blow stuff up. It’s against Big Brother’s nanny laws, so it’s the most American thing you can do.
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07.2.2007 | 8:03 am | Pop Culture, Politics
There is much to despise in Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Like all MM films it features a plethora of half truths and misleading numbers, a few outright lies, and it completely ignores many very important facts. Sometime in the next few days I’ll have an extensive review of it, along with a podcast. But I couldn’t wait to point out what I thought was the most disgusting thing in the film.
After his staged visit to one of the few good Cuban hospitals, he waxes rhapsodic about enemies helping each other, and then proceeds to tell us how wonderful he is:
“That’s when I heard that the man who runs the biggest anti Michael Moore web site on the internet was going to have to shut it down. He could no longer afford to keep it up because his wife was ill and they couldn’t afford to pay for her health insurance. He was faced with a choice of either keep attacking me or pay for his wife’s health. Fortunately, he chose is wife. But something seemed wrong about being forced into such a decision. Why, in a free country, shouldn’t he be able to have health insurance, and exercise his first amendment right to run me into the ground? So I wrote a check for the twelve thousand dollars he needed to keep his wife insured and in treatment and sent it to him anonymously. His wife got better and his web site is still going strong.”
“I sent it to him anonymously” is an interesting sentence. It can be true right up to the moment you say it out loud - then it becomes a lie. Moore didn’t make an anonymous contribution - he made an unidentified one, while he was filming his movie. It’s fair to assume he did it with the full intention of bragging about it in a futile attempt to make himself look good.
If it had been truly anonymous, it would have been a fine and noble thing. But broadcasting it to the entire world makes him a first class schmuck.
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06.11.2007 | 7:00 pm | Pop Culture
I received a very sad e-mail a few weeks ago. Archie McPhee, who sells some of the most fun and useless stuff on the planet, informed everyone on their mailing list that the original plastic pink flamingos, the epitome of tastelessness and kitsch, were going out of production. The company that made them was closing down, and they had bought the last of them.
The birds have been around since the 50s, when pink was a popular color and Florida was a popular state. They’ve come to symbolize. . . well, whatever you want them to symbolize. They can be a statement to the world that you have no taste. Or that you’re making fun of bad taste. Or that you’re a John Waters fan. They’ve even been used for protesting. Residents of the Disney planned community “Celebration,” which has rules for everything, right down to the color of window curtains, protested by decorating their property with the garish creatures. The birds migrated from property to property in the middle of the night, and then, magically learned how to reproduce on the impeccably manicured lawns.
Like any successful product, the birds spawned plenty of cheap imitations. But they’re crap. They don’t come in the classic pose (one standing, one bending down) and are missing the signature of the sculptor, Don Featherstone, on their ass. The originals are a cheap imitation of real birds. A cheap imitation of a cheap imitation is just wrong.
But just as it all seemed hopeless, just as we were about to lament the demise of an American institution and watch the few remaining real fake birds fade in the sun while their wire legs rusted, HMC International, a company in Westmoreland, New York, announced that they had bought the original molds and all the rights to produce them. They’ll be authentic right down to the Featherstone signature.
Tacky comes and tacky goes, but it’s oddly comforting to know that at least one piece of tackiness, perhaps the tackiest of them all, simply refuses to die.
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06.9.2007 | 7:31 pm | Pop Culture
I’ve been a Weird Al fan since he did “Another One Rides The Bus” in the early 80’s. Most novelty acts do one or two songs and then fade away. Some make a fortune with one holiday song like “The Monster Mash” or “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” and call it a career. You can count the number of acts with long careers on your fingers, but with the exception of The Smothers Brothers, no one has lasted longer than Al. And while Tommy and Dick are just paying the rent playing their old stuff, Al keeps coming out with fresh, funny songs on a regular basis.
I’ve never seen him on concert, though, until last week, when he kicked off his Straight Outta Linwood tour at Albany’s Palace Theater.
The back of the stage will filled with large video screens. The show started with clips of Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, Dave Lettermen, and a dozen other talk show hosts saying “Please Welcome Weird Al Yankovic.” He took to the stage and blasted into one of his pop song polka Medleys. I’ve never been a big fan of these, but his energy was infectious and got things off to a good start.
Then the stage went dark and the screens played one of his Al TV fake interviews. It seemed to go on a little longer then necessary, but then the reason for it became obvious. Al was using the time for a costume change. And not just Al - the entire band came out in new costumes every couple of songs.
He did White and Nerdy early on, dancing around the stage like he was twenty years younger than he is. During “Your Pitiful” he did a slow strip tease, pealing off layer after layer of tee shirts, each one becoming a bit more pitiful.
The sound was decent - not perfect, but clear enough to hear most of the lyrics, even “Smells Like Nirvana.” The volume was just right - loud enough to know you were at a concert, but not loud enough to obscure the music. My only technical complaint was one effect that was way overused - extremely bright strobe-like lights that were flashed directly into the eyes of the audience. Al, when we’re sitting there in a dark theater with our eyes wide open and focused directly on the stage, those lights are almost physical painful. Please, Al, knock it off. You should know better.
“Yoda” is one of my favorite W. A. songs (”I know Darth Vader’s really got you annoyed, but remember if you kill him then you’ll be unemployed”) and I was hoping it would be in the line up. It was. It started with a costume change, of course, and he did the “The Saga Begins” in it’s entirety. Then the keyboardist did a quick, fast thirty second rendition of The Maple Leaf Rag (strange choice, but it worked) and they blasted into a version of “Yoda” that would have made Ray Davies proud.
He didn’t skimp on the costumes. There were probably a dozen costume changes during the show. He (and the band) were fully Amish for “Amish Paradise” and for “Fat” he not only wore the fat suit, but the double chin facial prosthetics.
I was hoping he’d play “Don’t Download This Song” for his encore, but instead he did “Albuquerque,” which I hadn’t heard before, but the kids behind me knew word for word.
The tour has just started, and the tickets are pretty reasonably priced, so if you get a chance treat yourself and your friends to a night of Weird. Hell, you can take grandma and the kids. Although I’m used to seeing a wide range of ages at concerts these days, the spread was really huge at this one. There were old farts like me, farts even older than me, twenty somethings, thirty somethings, teenagers and adolescents. I had never thought about it before, because he doesn’t make a big deal of it, but he does a clean show. As much as I enjoy good raunchy comedy, I but have an extra dollop of respect for someone who can be clean and funny, because it’s considerably harder to do.
A while back, while YouTubeing, I came across a Weird Al video I hadn’t seen before, but like most of his videos you’ll appreciate it more if you watch the original first.
The video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues (actually a movie clip) is one of the first rock videos that was more than a recording of a concert. Embedding Youtube videos in Wordpress is far more painful and complex than it should be, so you can view it by clicking here.
And here’s Al’s Version.
If you didn’t like this concert review you probably won’t enjoy this review of a Warren Zevon show or this one of the Toronto SARS concert.
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