Blog Day Afternoon
Sesame Street Unplugged!
DVDs of the early seasons of SESAME STREET come with a warning that they may not be appropriate for small children. Because Alistair Cookie smokes a pipe. And Oscar is too grouchy and overeats. And don’t forget the Bob and Linda sex tapes. They were all on the pot back then. Protect your children.
Arrrh!
AP, in Australia: “A Sydney man who uploaded the first known pirated copy of THE SIMPSONS MOVIE to the Internet after recording it on his cell phone was fined $888 by a magistrate Tuesday for breaching copyright.
“An international operation involving Australian Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.'s Fox movie studios, which own the rights to the blockbuster, tracked the unauthorized copy to the home of Jose Duarte, 21, who was arrested in August.
…
“Duarte's lawyer said Duarte tried twice to upload the movie July 26, the release date, several hours ahead of its appearance in most of the world. He thought he'd failed, said the lawyer, Ken Stewart.
"’It would appear that this young man had the sophistication of a dead fish,’ Stewart said.”
A unique defense, if ineffective.
The Future of Books?
From Anthony Grafton’s essay, “Digiitazation and Its Discontents, in the New Yorker: “Last year, Kevin Kelly, the self-styled ‘senior maverick’ of Wired, predicted, in a piece in the Times, that ‘all the books in the world’ would ‘become a single liquid fabric of interconnected words and ideas.’
Liquid fabric? Yuck.
And does a "senior maverick" have more clout than a "junior maverick?" How do they measure "maverickness" over there at Wired?
Later in Grafton’s essay, I learned that in the original telling of the Pandora story, she opened a jar, not a box. Same result though, I suspect.
Fake Brands Now Real!
NYT: “LastExitToNowhere.com specializes in designs relating to ‘some of the most memorable places, corporations and companies in 20th-century fiction.’ Other popular T-shirts on the site, which went up in June, include one for Tyrell (“More Human Than Human” is its motto), maker of genetic replicants in BLADE RUNNER, and Polymer Records, a music label in THIS IS SPINAL TAP.”
So now, in addition to buying tee-shirts that tout real products, we can buy tee-shirts that tout imaginary products. Oy. Bring me a Duff, will you?
Why they hate us, part XVII
From Slate: “Darkon is a LARP (live-action role-playing game) where normal people dress up in homemade armor and pretend to be inhabitants of a fantasy realm.” Not on my street, you don’t. I’ll bust a cap on your ass.
Stop shopping!
Forbes: “Suddenly, the advertising trade press is abuzz with a new concept: ‘shopper marketing.’ According to a draft study by Deloitte from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the investment in in-store advertising has doubled since 2004 and is on pace for compound annual growth of 21% through 2010.”
So the store wants to get you in the store to buy stuff, even when you’re actually IN the store buying stuff?
Slouching Towards Disneyland
I am still developing this show, dropping jokes, adding jokes, trying to stay on top of it all, and deliver a fabulous geek fest by the end of the run that I can use to conquer the world. In the course of my, um, research, my partner Joshua pointed me to a story that the Small World ride is shutting down for a year or so to re-design and re-build its boats. It seems that Americans have gained so much weight since the ride first began, that the boats bottom out and get stuck
Things I learned this week.
Rod Stewart is a model train enthusiast. Keith Richard was a boy soprano.
Can you see me now?
NYT: “Jeremy Fletcher and Alejandra Lillo, designers at Graft, an architecture and design firm based in Berlin, Beijing and Los Angeles, were working out a dialogue between voyeurism and exhibitionism, they said, when they designed the swooping, shiny white interiors of the W Downtown, a glass-walled condominium tower to be built in 2009 in Manhattan’s financial district.”
Let me get this straight. You want me to shell out close to a million bucks so people on the street can watch me brush my teeth? Throw in some curtains, pal, or I’m out of here.
DVDs of the early seasons of SESAME STREET come with a warning that they may not be appropriate for small children. Because Alistair Cookie smokes a pipe. And Oscar is too grouchy and overeats. And don’t forget the Bob and Linda sex tapes. They were all on the pot back then. Protect your children.
Arrrh!
AP, in Australia: “A Sydney man who uploaded the first known pirated copy of THE SIMPSONS MOVIE to the Internet after recording it on his cell phone was fined $888 by a magistrate Tuesday for breaching copyright.
“An international operation involving Australian Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.'s Fox movie studios, which own the rights to the blockbuster, tracked the unauthorized copy to the home of Jose Duarte, 21, who was arrested in August.
…
“Duarte's lawyer said Duarte tried twice to upload the movie July 26, the release date, several hours ahead of its appearance in most of the world. He thought he'd failed, said the lawyer, Ken Stewart.
"’It would appear that this young man had the sophistication of a dead fish,’ Stewart said.”
A unique defense, if ineffective.
The Future of Books?
From Anthony Grafton’s essay, “Digiitazation and Its Discontents, in the New Yorker: “Last year, Kevin Kelly, the self-styled ‘senior maverick’ of Wired, predicted, in a piece in the Times, that ‘all the books in the world’ would ‘become a single liquid fabric of interconnected words and ideas.’
Liquid fabric? Yuck.
And does a "senior maverick" have more clout than a "junior maverick?" How do they measure "maverickness" over there at Wired?
Later in Grafton’s essay, I learned that in the original telling of the Pandora story, she opened a jar, not a box. Same result though, I suspect.
Fake Brands Now Real!
NYT: “LastExitToNowhere.com specializes in designs relating to ‘some of the most memorable places, corporations and companies in 20th-century fiction.’ Other popular T-shirts on the site, which went up in June, include one for Tyrell (“More Human Than Human” is its motto), maker of genetic replicants in BLADE RUNNER, and Polymer Records, a music label in THIS IS SPINAL TAP.”
So now, in addition to buying tee-shirts that tout real products, we can buy tee-shirts that tout imaginary products. Oy. Bring me a Duff, will you?
Why they hate us, part XVII
From Slate: “Darkon is a LARP (live-action role-playing game) where normal people dress up in homemade armor and pretend to be inhabitants of a fantasy realm.” Not on my street, you don’t. I’ll bust a cap on your ass.
Stop shopping!
Forbes: “Suddenly, the advertising trade press is abuzz with a new concept: ‘shopper marketing.’ According to a draft study by Deloitte from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the investment in in-store advertising has doubled since 2004 and is on pace for compound annual growth of 21% through 2010.”
So the store wants to get you in the store to buy stuff, even when you’re actually IN the store buying stuff?
Slouching Towards Disneyland
I am still developing this show, dropping jokes, adding jokes, trying to stay on top of it all, and deliver a fabulous geek fest by the end of the run that I can use to conquer the world. In the course of my, um, research, my partner Joshua pointed me to a story that the Small World ride is shutting down for a year or so to re-design and re-build its boats. It seems that Americans have gained so much weight since the ride first began, that the boats bottom out and get stuck
Things I learned this week.
Rod Stewart is a model train enthusiast. Keith Richard was a boy soprano.
Can you see me now?
NYT: “Jeremy Fletcher and Alejandra Lillo, designers at Graft, an architecture and design firm based in Berlin, Beijing and Los Angeles, were working out a dialogue between voyeurism and exhibitionism, they said, when they designed the swooping, shiny white interiors of the W Downtown, a glass-walled condominium tower to be built in 2009 in Manhattan’s financial district.”
Let me get this straight. You want me to shell out close to a million bucks so people on the street can watch me brush my teeth? Throw in some curtains, pal, or I’m out of here.
posted by Merle Kessler at 11:51 AM
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