November 2006 Archives

We are reading VERBATIM (word of the day, possibly mispelled) from angry message board posts.

i also modern dance in this. Take that bennington dancers. Mediate this Scgorboti

If we could add one of those Voight-Kampff comment challenge tests to the site, would that be ok?

Like that but sexier?

Note: quoted verbatim
CALENDAR OF EXTREME CULTURE
11/30/06

Caution: contents may be hot.

From Billy...

thanks adam

This thing looks crazy. Link to story on SEE IN IN.

I'm getting roughly 45 comment spams a day, in violent waves of 15 at a time. Anyone else?

I live in New York, on a busy day going through Chinatown, Union Square, or any other series of busy places, I no doubt set eyes upon 10,000 individuals. Well, one of these 10,000 is not like the others. One of them is a mirror copy. 1 in 10,000 people have what is know as Situs Inversus, a condition in which your entire internal system is reversed. All of your internal organs, your blood vessels, nerves, lymphatics and the intestines are all reversed. Most people with this do not even realize they have a problem until the doctor realizes it's not a mislabeled x-ray (If this isn't a House medical mystery in the making I don't know what is).

A more unfortunate situation is one of Situs Ambiguus, where the organs are scattered willy nilly about the thorax and abdomen, and it does not bode well for the sufferers. It is linked to a numer of factors, one being the use of cocaine during pregnancy. So you know... don't do that. I urge you, the next time you walk around in a large crowd, look around, for there is a chance you may be starring into a mirror image of your own organs.

I was preparing to put together some past / present pictures of Lindsay Lohan for an entry about that crazy robot.

I figured that WireImage would be a place for me to get nice clean images to use for the entry. I was going to pay for the use and everything until I read their user agreement, which contains this passage:

CUSTOMER SHALL NOT AND AGREES THAT HE/SHE WILL NOT (i) SAVE, PRINT, COPY OR REPRODUCE THE CONTENT AND/OR IMAGES RECEIVED THROUGH WWW.WIREIMAGE.COM

Does that mean that simply using a modern web browser - which saves images to my hard drive as part of the cache - instantly violates the user agreement?

Yikes!

I guess it's back to taking my chances with google image.

A collection of Wii-related accidents, Wii Have a Problem is a great reiteration for the reminder before each Wii game to put on the wrist strap and tighten it good and tight like, and don't stand near anything while you play. Images of cracked TV and computer screens abound. Looks like bowling is the biggest culprit. These crazy kids are just letting go of the remote like it's the ball. I blame these people who don't like videogames, but like the wii (because no one is immune to the wii). They just don't know how to control themselves. Also, some of the straps are just breaking, so there's that too. The swiit thing about most of these accidents, is while the TV screens shatter, the Wii remote usually works just fine. Built like a rock.

That said, has anyone played any sweet Wii games besides Red Steel, which isn't sweet at all, but rather a most mundane of first person shooters? I'm sure wii're all looking forward to Touched's release in January. And can wii all agree that golf is by far the best of the sports games?

Well, you know, um, I mean. She did. Tonight. On our guitar hero guitars. She did the uh. Tutorial? And then the uh. Whatsit? The uh.

I don't remember the first song she played.

But AFTER that she played War Pigs. And she totally rocked out and it was fun and funny. And I don't have pictures or video because I thought it would be weird and kinda creepy to even introduce myself, so when I set her up with the guitar and Karen taught her how to play, I mostly just pretended like I didn't know who she was. And I think it worked, because she didn't recognize me as the editor who was editing stuff she hasn't even seen yet.

I worry, I think, a little bit too much about on-or-near-the-job celebrity interaction. But I have a hard and fast rule that I have yet to have a good reason to break: totally pretend like you have no idea who they are. Which does not mean walk up to them, introduce yourself, and ask for their name. Treat them like you treat any other stranger in the room. Only talk to them if you have a really, really good reason.

What do you do when you're driving down an interstate highway at 1:00am the Sunday following Thanksgiving while you are the only car on the road and deer stand on the shoulders threatening to dart out without warning?

Why, the speed limit of course!

Which is what I was doing when I got pulled over by Connecticut State Policeman Deslaides (or something - his handwriting is unreadable), badge number 440 (or 448, 441, or possibly 446 - again, illegible handwriting).

As per usual, I had my license and registration (in this case, rental agreement) out and ready for him when he approached my vehicle.

"Good evening."

"Good evening, sir."

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know how fast you were going back there?"

"Yes, sir. Sixty-five miles an hour."

"I clocked you back there at speeds ranging between 75 and 85 miles an hour."

"I find that pretty hard to believe, sir, as my cruise control was engaged and set to 65 miles an hour and plus with the deer I was being pretty careful with the speedometer."

"Well. My. Radar gun is calibrated. Your speedometer must be wrong. I'll be right back."

Fifteen minutes later he returns with a ticket for $213.

Anybody know how on earth I'm supposed to fight this? I know I can bring up all sorts of issues about calibration, etc. etc. if I actually WAS speeding, but since I was going the limit, I mean... What the fuck? I can't just say he was lying, can I?

Oh, and by the way, in case you haven't seen this already, I've got a nice little video here of our troops - camouflaged policemen, as far as I'm concerned - taking care of business.

And if this is what these armed, immune motherfuckers get up to when public television is following them around with a camera crew, I wonder what they do when no one is watching?

Maybe they rape little girls and murder entire families? Nah, of course not, that's something only a terrorist would do.

On the subway tonight, Karen asked me about the origins of leet (or 1337). This sent my mind wandering back all the way to the days of BBSs.

In my mind, the origin of l33t (a shortening and transmutation of 'elite') comes from Elite BBSs, where pirated software, plus tips and manuals on hacking and phreaking, were distributed. Back in those days, just as JPEG compression was emerging, people wanted bitchin' color graphics, but didn't have the bandwidth to include photo-quality images as part of the BBS interface (though many BBSs had jpeg libraries that you could search and download pictures from). Even a 640x480 jpeg could take more than a minute to download.

But we all still wanted sweet graphics! That's where ansi came in.

ANSI had an extended character set, including straight lines, corners, and blocks of different shadings. It allowed people to create relatively complex color graphics while still only using simple character sets that could be transmitted quickly between modems.

Aside from splash screens and the occasional menu on BBSs, ANSI art was often included with pirated software as a header for the release group's .NFO file describing what was in the .ZIP file, who the members of the group are, trash talking on other groups who didn't release the cracked game as fast, etc, which you still see sometimes today.

Many of the artists (and the users) adopted the look and feel of ANSI art and incorporated it into their handles (aka usernames) and signatures. Commonly this included substitutions of ph for f (and vice versa), numbers for letters, plus sign for a lowercase T, etc.

Anyway, on the internets of today, there are archives of much of that great ANSI art from back in the day, and a lot of the work is pretty impressive.

Go check 'em out to see how much the artists did with so little.

There will never be enough time.

Although it is generally acknowledged that the once interesting and insightful Wired Magazine has become gadget porn, I did read the new cover article entitled The Crusade Against Religion by Gary Wolf, based on the recent publications of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. It provides an overview of the current hyper-polarized religious world in which we live, mostly centering on the so-called New Atheism movement. I was expecting a Rah Rah science article, but instead discovered that I have Atheist guilt.

It will arrive on or before the 27th of this month.

Please post comments re: your availability for a screening.

This one has become a cult classic though. When i first moved to LA you could see the director/star/producer/screenwriter driving around burbank in his car which had a big "the room" banner on it. Look for typos in the trailer and unaccreddited quotes!

When Karen and I went to see The Science of Sleep at the Angelika Film Center, there was a man outside selling DVDs of his movie, Imperfect Strangers. He told us that he wrote, directed, and starred in it and that it was a great movie. I know how hard it is to make an independant movie, so I bought a copy. I had no idea what I had just purchased.

Bennington Alum and ex-Jonathan Mann, Game Jew, sang one of his Wii songs to the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communication at Nintendo, George Harrison.

We love you Jonathan!

The New York Times reported today that box office receipts are up 6.5% from last year, and attendance is up nearly 5%.

Despite the MPAA's failed attempt to bring down one of the world's largest bittorrent trackers, The Pirate Bay, this year, the industry is experiencing growth.

The MPAA, meanwhile, attributes the lack of an additional $18.2 billion dollars in their pockets last year to piracy. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they came up with that figure, so I dug a little deeper. The MPAA's 2005 U.S. Piracy "Fact" (quotes mine) Sheet offers only this nugget in reference to the statistic: "Piracy loss calculations are based on the number of legitimate movies - movie tickets and legitimate DVDs - consumers would have purchased if pirated versions were not available."

So, okay, get this: to calculate their "losses" figure in anti-piracy press, the MPAA includes every illegal copy made, every bootleg sold, and every movie illegally downloaded as a lost sale. Not only that, but the MPAA couldn't possibly have reliable statistics for illegal copies, bootlegs, and illegal downloads. Why? Because such statistics don't exist and would be incredibly difficult to compile.

That's like estimating the number of blowjobs that happened in the United States last year by counting the married couples and multiplying by five.

To put the figure in perspective, Exhibitor Relations is projecting over $9 billion domestic box-office total. So, above and beyond the strange mathematics they used to calculate their "loss" figure, the MPAA estimates that the loss from piracy actually amounts to 200% of their annual domestic box-office gross *on a growth year*.

Oh, and MPAA, if you're listening, I borrowed my friend Eric's legitimate Old School DVD because I couldn't bring myself to see it in the theatre, buy the DVD, or rent the darn thing. It just looked too bad. But I watched it. And didn't pay for it. So add another $20 to that loss figure. Or $10, if you thought I'd see it at the theatre. Or $3.50 if you thought I would rent it.

In other news, Viacom's revenues up 7% in the third quarter, Microsoft's first quarter revenues up 11%, and Warner Music's revenue up 11% this past quarter.

So, there is this phenomenon. Where, you know, people... not, like, anyone I know or would talk to on purpose but. You know. PEOPLE. You've talked to them before. Who tend to compare people, organizations, or groups that they, the people making the comparison, view as unfavorable or generally 'not good,' these comparison-making people like to compare those 'not good' people, organizations, or groups to a certain historical figure or his, you know, historical nation-sized entourage.

Apparently, there is a name for this phenomenon. It is called 'Godwin's Law.' It has a wikipedia entry and everything. Go on over and read it. I don't want to ruin the surprise.

a movie so good
its worth survived worst film fate:
hollywood ending

1982, was the year of my birth, the birth of the first computer virus ("Elk Cloner") , and the beginning of what would become the...uhhgg...Yuppies, or as they were first called YUPS. This term was first coined in 1981 but was made popular in the Chicago Reader's reprinting of Alice Kahn's East Bay Express Article.

Along with this newfound scourge, 1982 brought a particular Yuppiesq theory to the fore: "The Broken Window Theory". "Broken Windows" was written by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling for the Atlantic in March of 1982. The theory can be summed up in a quote from the original article:

"Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." From here the article argues it is a slippery slope to more serious crime. The article starts out with a reasonable premise but quickly veers into a sort of Social Darwinism.

Apparently, I still blog. I didn't post about the Spider-Man 3 trailer because it was was kind of a gimme. Anyway, the international Ghost Rider trailer just debuted. No matter what haircut you give him, Nicholas Cage still looks like an 80-year old carrot. Enjoy.

P.S. Maybe they will make a Flaming Carrot movie based on the outtakes.

Where was Ryan when this photo was taken?

a) playboy mansion party
two) nagoya japan
cantaloop flip fantasia) detroit michigan

disclaimer: lots of bad photographs to follow

Last week, Dylan, Katie and I set down our Guitar Hero controllers for a few hours and headed out to one of only four days of The Theater of Science. We didn't know anything about it, hearing only that it was being compared to the Victorian "tradition in which audiences attended the theatre to see scientific demonstrations as entertainment." And it was just that. Only a little over an hour long, the show came over to us from England, with an experimental psychologist and former professional magician, Professor Richard Wiseman, and physicist and popular science author, Dr. Simon Singh (author of 'Fermat's Enigma' and 'Big Bang') as our Mc's. There was also an English contortionist who gave a demonstration of her bendy spine, her short show ending in stuffing herself into a small box (truthfully, I saw a better body-in-box-stuffing act while waiting in line for the Circle Line ferry that takes tourists to the Statue of Liberty...in fact, I saw all sorts of fantastic acts while in the line for 2.5 hours).

But besides the contortionist, who really wasn't all that bad, the show was a lot of fun. It felt a lot like Bill Nye the Science Guy for grownups. They electrocuted a pickle. There was slight of hand and card tricks. There were optical illusions and quick comedic science lessons. Both Wiseman and Singh had the audience laughing the whole time, and were great at keeping us involved and interested. Most of the show was about what a person can convince himself is true, and being able to only see that, tricking your mind. It was fascinating, and it was fun.

DS Guitar M-06

I didn't write this one, but I endorse it.

...(BEGIN DORK-OUT)...

...Guitar Hero 2 is WICKED! (I shall be using some more ou of use synomyms for awesome, because our current words are too overused to express the RADICALNESS of Guitar Hero 2).
Their song selection is soooo Smart and PRIME this time around, even the repetitive songs are fun because they're BITCHIN, like Heart Shaped Box. I never thought I'd see the day when I was playing and singing along to Heart Shaped Box. I need to get some flannels and thermals post haste. I have to say, putting aside the SICK set list for a moment, I think the GNARLIEST part about GH2 is the cooperative. It is so MAGIC to play a song with someone else, and not just be trading back and forth the same part. With one person playing lead, and the other playing bass or rythym guitar, it's a step closer to feeling like you're actually making music and not just mashing plastic buttons when the tv tells you to. SO LEET.

...(END DORK-OUT)...

Haiku review to come.
Thank you Dan @ Harmonix! And plus Everyone Else @ Harmonix!

Radness! I'd like to hear everyone's initial impressions of That's Plenty's most eagerly awaited game! Please leave comments on what you think!

There is a nice big profile of Will Wright in this week's New Yorker which, true to the style of the magazine, is also a brief history of video games and a peek at the industry at large.

Also contained in the article is this little piece of trivia:

In the spring of 1981, Wright answered an ad in a car magazine: Richard Doherty, a rally enthusiast, was looking participants to compete in a point-to-point race between Farmingdale, Long Island, and Redondo Beach, California. Wright had a Mazda RX-7, which he and Doherty modified with a larger fuel tank and a roll cage. They wore night-vision goggles so that they could drive fast in the dark without headlights and avoid the cops. “Will said we should take the southern route, even though it was longer, because if we got stopped he’d be able to talk to the cops,” Doherty told me. “We did get stopped in Georgia. We were doing a hundred and twenty, with no headlights, but it didn’t take Will more than a couple of minutes to make the officer see why he had to let us go without a ticket.” They won the race, establishing a new record of thirty-four hours and nine minutes.

... I cut and pasted that from their online version of the article, though I had a hard time finding it because the print version of the article says "In the summer of 1980..." versus the online version's claim that it happened "In the spring of 1981..." (I was searching for "summer".)

Anyway, you can read the whole damn thing without paying for it, but I suspect it'll be gone next week when the new issue comes out, so step to it.

If you needed another sign that the power structure of the music industry is shifting then look no further than CMJ. The long running annual music event at one point was viewed as something akin to an independent music festival. However, along with SXSW and Cochella it has slowly turned into a trade show; a week long junket for the New Industry Insiders made of the Pitchfork-led blogosphere.

You know that feeling, the feeling you had as a kid in a science museum, that feeling I still get in the Natural History Museum, where you are compleatly transported to another place, where you feel encompassed by a kind of magical awe. Well, it can be a tough feeling to come by, so I thought I would post about some of the most magical places I know about. Place Number One:

THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK

This might be the most magical place I have ever been. Built originally as a fuck you to Frank Lloyd Wright it is a massive endless sort of lowbrow museum. From Wikipedia "Both of Jordan's biographers relate a story told by Sid Boyum, which places the inspiration for the house in an meeting between Alex Jordan Sr. and Frank Lloyd Wright, at some unspecified time apparently between 1914 and 1923. Jordan Sr. drove with Boyum to Taliesin to show Wright the plans for a building, the Villa Maria in Madison, which Jordan had designed. Jordan worshipped the famous architect and hoped for his approval. Wright looked at the plans and told Jordan "I wouldn't hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop. You're not capable." Fuming, on the drive back on Highway 23, Jordan pointed to a spire of rock and told Boyum "I'm going to put up a Japanese house on one of those pinnacle rocks and advertise it." Nothing is better then revenge building.

To describe the magnificance of the house is near impossible. First off you know that now infamous Squid and Whale fighting in the Natural History Museum? The House on the rock has that but 200 feet long. It also has the world's largest working carousel, in addition to a pricless collection of automated music machines. You can easily spend 8 hours wandering around in the sprawling house and not see everything and not want to stop. Thats why its at the top of my most magical places I have ever been. If for any reason, you are ever anywhere in Wisconsin, it is absolutly worth the trip.