Bemusings

30 Day Music Challenge (in One Day)

2011-09-06T01:08:00.001-04:00

For those who like lists, here are my answers to the 30 Day Music Challenge, in one post.

1. Your favorite song:
"Pilgrim" by Enya

Always, always, this song speaks to me. "In your heart you wonder, which of these is true: the road that leads that leads to nowhere, to road that leads to you. Will you find the answer in all you say and do? Will you find the answer in you?"

2. Your least favorite song:
"How You Remind Me" by Nickleback

I change the channel whenever this song comes on the radio. I dislike the Rihanna's and Ke$ha's of the world, but, I can understand their value in our culture and where they fit in. Nickleback, I don't know how they fit in, because to give their music any thought or brainpower would be giving them too much credit. Honestly, putting them on this list pretty much tops out my tolerance for them.

3. A song that makes you happy:
"We No Speak Americano" by Yolanda Be Cool & D Cup

This one is actually a two-fer: The song itself is happy and bouncy. Then there's this music video, where they got some people who do basically Riverdance with their hands, and... it's just amazing. Sure, I speak American, but this song can always at least bring a smirk to my face.

4. A song that makes you sad:
"I Don't Want To Waste Your Time" by Over The Rhine

I love this song. It's amazing. It's poignant. It's beautiful. It's also kind of a downer. It's a mournful plead to a lover, and, it's almost heart-breaking. In spite of that, it is still one of my all-time-favorites.

5. A song that reminds you of someone:
"Undying Love" by Two Steps from Hell

"A song that reminds you of someone." Someone fictional? If so, then, this song. Listen to it. Get through the first minute. It's pretty much the most beautiful music ever, right? It's so sweeping, so moving, so... pure. So, in one of my stories that I'll never fully write that will exist in my head for all eternity, this piece plays out when two characters who have had an on-off romance for seasons (this is a TV show) finally decide to declare their love for each other and kiss. With this music, it can't be anything but a Princess Bride-type Top 5 passionate kiss, right? It's just incredible.

Or maybe I'll just play this at my wedding when it's time for the kiss. It'll be memorable for everyone!

6. A song that reminds you of somewhere:
"Round About Midnight" by Gotan Project ft. Chet Baker

I enjoy taking walks. Sometimes, five-to-six-mile walks. So, one needs plenty of music. There's one trail that I walk, alongside a creek, that I usually don't get to after a few miles, so, I'm already in that head-space that one gets to while exercising (*cough*high*cough*). On a sunny day, walking alongside the woods and water with this piece on, is so relaxing and so rewarding. It's a beautiful time on the walk to slow down a bit and just enjoy the surroundings. If I'm near this piece on my playlist when approaching the trail, I always skip towards it. It's my trail buddy.

7. A song that reminds you of a certain event:
"To America We Go" by Ahsley MacIsaac & Mary Jane Lamond

For a few years I would host some "Tiki Parties" at our house. The first year was actually done by my oldest sister, and she wanted some world music to spice up the event. The second year I took over, and, I spent a lot of money buying songs. Just cruising through iTunes, through different world music sections, and buying this, that, and everything. So, whenever I hear one of the songs I bought from the "binge," I think a bit about those parties. I'm grateful to have had the parties -- and to have the music!! (PLUS: This is a unusual, but very neat song.)

8. A song that you know all the words to:
"Those Were The Days" by Mary Hopkins

Not that it's necessarily a complicated song to remember. Those were the days, oh yes those were the days...

9. A song that you can dance to:
"The Casper Cha-Cha" by Casper

Is this cheating? Because they give the directions in the song? In fact, the song is a tutorial. This is like saying my favorite video game is "Help." Oh well. I get down with it much funkier than in this music video. I also have fond memories of "dancing" to "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. I like to dance, I just... can't dance. Not that it stops me! I just hope that if I smile every now and then, people are okay with it.

10. A song that makes you fall asleep:
"The Battle" by Hans Zimmer

I used to pop in "The Gladiator" soundtrack when I couldn't get to sleep, and I could usually fall to sleep during this track. I tried to imagine a battle, an army of hundreds approaching a band of dozens. In a desert. Very hilly, making for some great combat action. Then mostly everyone does, except, the army keeps one person alive, to warn everyone else about them. Then it gets sad, and mournful, and kind of.. overly dramatic. I'm usually asleep by then, so, there's not much more story fleshed out beyond that battle.

11. A song from your favorite band:
"Hang on Little Tomato" by Pink Martini

Pink Martini is, by virtue of how many albums I own, my favorite band. They are classy, classical, word-infused musicians. You can tango to their music, clean, sleep... they have so much variety, and it all still fits their style, I love them so much. This song in particular gets bonus points, because the first few notes sound a little bit like music from NBC's "30 Rock." Put it back on in the beginning, picture an establishing shot of Rockefeller Center, then Liz walking into Jack's office... it works, doesn't it?

12. A song from a band you hate:
"How You Remind Me" by Nickleback

They're really terrible.

13. A song that is a guilty pleasure:
"I Don't Feel Like Dancing" by Scissor Sisters

The song, not the video. The video is... if you ever have friends who are showing you "the most trippy music video ever," you just have to show them this video to win the conversation. It's a trump card in weirdness. The song, though, is fun and catchy. My favorite line: "You've got so many colors / make a blind man so confused."

14. A song that no one would expect you to love:
"The Animals Are Behind Bars" by Circus Contraption

Unless you expected me to love a song about drunk animals from a band whose music is meant to sound like a demented circus? Although, honestly... there's a section of you who would not be surprised by this. At all. (Circus Contraption is great, but... some of their stuff is a little *too* dark. Venture carefully!)

15. A song that describes you:
"You're So Vain" by Carly Simon

Who makes a list of 30 songs that describe oneself, puts it on a personal blog, and then links to it from their Facebook account? Vain people, that's who.

16. A song that you used to love but now hate:
"Amazing Grace" on bagpipes

Yes, bagpipes can be soul-piercing. Yes, few songs are as meaningful to us as "Amazing Grace" is. I understand combining the two. I remember once standing in awe as I watched a bagpiper play "Amazing Grace." It was incredible. Absolutely incredible. Little did I know at the time, that bagpipes were invented solely to play "Amazing Grace." Take advice from the swift-boaters and Move On, bagpipers. Move on.

17. A song that you hear often on the radio:
"Rolling In The Deep" by Adele

This is kind of "my song." I loved Adele's first album, "19," and was looking forward to hearing her follow up. She was only moderately successful, so, I didn't expect her to become a bit hit. I mean, every single year there's a "singer vs. sensation" battle, and the sensation always wins, right? So, when I saw this video late 2010/early 2011, I was in awe. Absolutely in awe, of the song and the video. This was before it even had a million views... now it has what, 120 million views?! I know it's overexposed and most people are tired of this song. But, as an Adele fan, I am still glad every single time I hear this song.

18. A song that you wish you heard on the radio:
"Poison and Wine" by The Civil Wars

In fairness, they may be on the radio somewhere, on some easy listening channel. So, it may more reflect my radio choices than this song. Nevertheless, the emotions and honesty of this song makes it an incredible listening experience. These people, they have amazing talent. Plus, you can just pretend the one singer is Johnny Depp.

19. A song from your favorite album:
"Pompeii" by E.S. Posthumus

I enjoy soundtracks and orchestral music. I am also a big fan of "movie trailer music," which is becoming it's own sub-genre of soundtracks, which, I love. Arguably, "Unearthed" is the album that launched this tiny trend. With epic, trailer-like music (which has been used in many trailers and commercials since), it's a great listen. "Pompeii" is a blood-pumping-good-time. It's pretty energizing!

20. A song that you listen to when you’re angry:
"Study War" by Moby

I'm kind of cheating with this song and the next two, because it's not like I get angry, and I go "I HAVE TO LISTEN TO MOBY or else I'll go INSANE." I'm not like that. Usually I listen to my most recently purchased music. But, I guess "Study War" is a song I do come back to, in times of downwards emotions.

21. A song that you listen to when you’re happy:
"Fundamental Things" by Melinda Doolittle

An old-timey-type song from an "American Idol" contestant who *should have* won. She was better than Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis! This song shows off her range, too. Musically, she sounds like an early Tina Turner. This song in particular is fun, bouncy, and a throwback to when songs were more fun.

22. A song that you listen to when you’re sad:
"Hey Jude" by Joe Anderson

The song was written for a sad child, so, this isn't too far off, right? I don't know, there's something soothing about this arrangement... you can loose yourself in it, and get your mind back to a more calm, reasonable state. More Vulcan-like. If not, then, usually the screaming irritates me, and, then my focus is changed to that. Problem still solved!

23. A song that you want to play at your wedding:
"I'll Never Stop Loving You" by Doris Day

Because I don't think "Wipe Out" would be allowed. I'd actually like the Melinda Doolittle cover version to be played, but, the internet doesn't seem to have that one readily available. Not that Doris Day is a slouch by any means.

24. A song that you want to play at your funeral:
"Jerusalem the Golden" by Bernard of Cluny and John Mason Neale

Just not this video. I couldn't fine a better version of this song, in this tune, sung. Teardrop. Why this song? A) It's probably my favorite hymn ever. B) The words are amazing, appropriate for occasions to mark life or death, C) "Up from the Grave He Arose" may be deemed inappropriate for a funeral.

25. A song that makes you laugh:
"Bananaphone" by Raffi

Just listen to it. It's amazing, right? Ring ring ring bananaphone! Ring ring ring ring ring bananaphone! Also, it's also funnier if you've seen this web short (warning: f-words!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ4j-MBnLQo.

26. A song that you can play on an instrument:
"Ode to Joy" by Ludwig Beethoven

Granted, it's a piano version made for beginners... but still! I can play Ode to Joy on a piano. I can also do the "Star Wars" theme from memory, and sometimes Zelda's Lullaby. I could never really get the hang of playing the left hand on piano (which is funny, since I'm left-handed), and I didn't like practicing, so, I gave up lessons. But I'm still glad that I can play a few songs whenever I sit down at a piano.

27. A song that you wish you could play:
"If I Ain't Got You" by Alicia Keys

I've never really thought about "a song that you wish you could play" before. But! I tried learning piano. I like Alicia Keys. Alicia Keys plays the piano. So... I guess any Alicia Keys song? This one's my favorite, so, Occam's Razor! I guess it's this one. I guess.

28. A song that makes you feel guilty:
"Tired of Being Sorry" by Ringside

Not that I can related to the implied infidelity in this song, but, I think everyone can related to being tired of feeling sorry. So, well done, song! NOTE: I like this video, shown above. NOT the Enrique Iglesias version. That cover is just... horrific, coming off of the Ringside version.

29. A song from your childhood:
"Fish Don't Stink" from "Bobby's World"

"Bobby's World"was a fantastic show to watch growing up. It was funny, well-written, and it produced a memorable song. Growing up, I still sing "under the water the fish don't stink."

30. Your favorite song at this time last year:
"Dog Days Are Over" by Florence + The Machine

So last year, Florence + The Machine was the "voice" in the annual "voice vs. sensation" battle. She lost, badly. But this Welch singer still has lungs and talent and songs to match. Plus: A weird music video.

IN CONCLUSION:
What a completely arbitrary list. I still don't feel like I've shared a lot of my favorite songs with you. Oh wells. So it goes, I suppose!

# # #

Life Changes Coming

2010-11-13T15:35:00.000-05:00

.... more details later.

In the meantime, here's a picture I need readily accessible for a class assignment. Pretty nice of me to take up your RSS reader for my school needs, right?

Tiramisu Cheesecake Bars

2010-06-10T21:52:00.001-04:00

Have you ever had Tiramisu Cheesecake Bars? They are the most rich bars you will ever feast on. Absolutely amazing taste, and a tiny little bite will last you an entire day. I got the recipe from Betty Crocker, but, having made these a few times, I've modified what I do.... here is the Charles Jurries+Betty Crocker recipe for Tiramisu Cheesecake Bars:

GROCERY LIST:
- One tube sugar cookie dough
- 2 packages (8 oz. each) cream cheese
- 1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)
- Instant coffee granules or crystals
- 1 package (2 cups, approx. worth) of chocolate chips
- 1 can of cream cheese frosting
- 2 eggs
- Vanilla

STEP ONE: Cookie Crust
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cut open sugar cookie dough tube, spread dough over a greased 9x13" pan. This will create a cookie crust for the rest of the desert.
3. Once dough is spread and pressed down all over the pan, stick in the oven for 15 to 18 minutes, or until it's a nice light golden brown. Let cool for at least 15 minutes.
Trivia: The original recipe calls for making sugar cookie dough from a mix. I'm too lazy. I just get some pre-made. Why have another bowl to wash?

STEP TWO: The filling
1. Keep that oven on at 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, beat the 2 packages of softened cream cheese with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth.
3. Add the sweetened condensed milk. Beat again until well blended.
4. Add 1 tablespoon coffee crystals. (Or 2. I usually do two.)
5. Add 2 eggs.
6. Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla.
7. Beat everything until well blended.
8. STIR IN (don't mix) one cup -- about half a bag -- of chocolate chips.
9. Pour over the cookie base.
10. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until it's set.

STEP THREE: Finishing it!
Then let it cool down for an hour or so, then stick it in the refrigerator for at least another hour. Once it's cool enough, take that can of frosting and spread it all over the top of it. Once the frosting is on, sprinkle the rest of the chocolate chips from that bag (assuming you haven't eaten them all!!!) for a nice chocolate topping.
Trivia: The recipe calls for making a cream cheese frosting from scratch.... I've never gotten that recipe to work right for me. Kudos if you can, but, again, why have another bowl to wash if you can just plop some good canned frosting on top?

STEP FOUR: Eat and enjoy! Please, take small pieces... this is an incredibly rich dessert. You may feel like you can eat half a pan, but, a hour or two later, you WILL regret it if you eat more than a couple pieces... it'll feel like a rock in your stomach, it's so rich! However, eating it in moderation, this is an incredibly AWESOME desert, and, I thank Betty Crocker for bringing it into my life. :)

Link: Original Recipe: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/tiramisu-cheesecake-bars/44c1827a-2dc9-4a2a-b430-def6d31f9106

#LOST: The End

2010-05-24T03:13:00.000-04:00

The following is a recap of the LOST series finale, entitled "The End." Elements of this article carry spoilers for the entire series. DO NOT READ if you intend on watching any of LOST, or if you have yet to finish the show.

So. That happened.

After all this time. All this fighting. All the flashbacks to horribly boring lives. It turned out to be all... connected.

During the first season, the flashbacks showed us who the show's characters were before they crash-landed on the island, and why they were in Australia. For seasons two and three, the flashbacks delved more into how miserable all of their lives were. One just assumed this was their narrative gimmick, and there was not a whole lot else to show for it. Once the narrative got shaken up for season four, the flashbacks' importance was never questioned again.

Until now.

Following Jacob's recent revelation that the reason why "the candidates" were summoned to Craphole Island was because their lives were so miserable beforehand, it would seem that the characters needed to do more to redeem themselves of a wasted life than what the island gave them.

To course-correct this, a new life was set in motion. A "sideways" look at how our character's lives may have been. If they had someone to love. If their jobs were better. If they were respected. Yet, there was still something missing from all of our character's lives. For many, it was their one true love. For others, such as Locke, they had already found true love, and needed to overcome another obstacle (physical disability) in order to move on in life.

Move on in life. What does that mean? For this show, it's about forgiveness. About letting go. About using what has happened to shape your future. Letting go is also depending upon other people. In a contemporary society where individualism is still rampant, LOST taught us to depend upon a community, a family, to get through life.

Life lived alone is worthless. Life without purpose is worthless. The show perhaps hinted at this as early as season two, where it gave us a episode showing how madly in love Rose and Bernard are, how dependent they are upon each other... and not much else other than that. They found what they were looking for. They are complete. They didn't need candidacy, an island, the Orchid station, DHARMA, or anything else. They had love. Love was all they needed.

Love was all anybody needed. Did you see how many happy couples there were at the Saint Eloise of the Lamp Post church? They learned to let go and be happy for one another. Jack learned to let go of his dad and anger issues he had towards him. Locke learned to let go of the wheelchair and be happy in everything. Everyone found their something.

With their profound happiness, they were able to move on to the great beyond. The afterlife. Purgatory was done. Their sins had been atoned for. Their lives reached their peak potential. They found each others constants. With no baggage weighing them down, they could pass to the next life.

But, the biggest shock of the entire season was, the Sideways plot didn't occur immediately after the bomb went off. In fact, it exists apart from time and space. Everyone was there, yet, in the 'real world,' they had all died at different times in different places. They all seemed to have some knowledge of their deaths, of what transpired, and yet were immensely happy at their lives. Happy for what they had become, for the different choices they had made.

Do we know exactly where and how the Sideways plot was generated? No, not exactly. We don't need to, either. Maybe the bomb did work, and it helped to create it. Maybe it didn't. What it did, though, was give us tremendous closure for our characters. We have seen them at their lowest, we now have seen them at their happiest. After spending many miserable months and years together, the main characters at some point decided they would share their happiness with one another before passing on.

BEFORE THE ISLAND... the characters lived separate lives.
ON THE ISLAND... they tried to work together, but, with mixed success.
AFTER THE ISLAND... they went back (mainly) to separate lives... and were miserable again.
BACK ON THE ISLAND... they realized that perhaps there was something else living for beyond themselves. They had to live for each other, for a greater good.
IN THE AFTERLIFE... they were able to correct all the wrongs that had come before. By getting their memories back in the end, they could see how far they have come, and see that with true love, there is nothing else on the planet more worthwhile.

When Christian Shepherd opened the doors, and the bright light engulfed everyone, their stories ended. The only thing that awaited them was the afterlife. Everyone in the church was ready for it. They found their purpose. They found their love. They turned their lives around. Now they were ready for the end.

Except for Benjamin Linus. Having hurt a lot of people, Ben felt he needed plenty of forgiveness before moving to the great white beyond. Although, having Locke's forgiveness and Hurley's friendship, seemed to be of tremendous aid and support for him on his new quest. A quest of apologizing and atoning. Perhaps even doing some "witnessing" as Desmond had done to the characters who weren't in the finale, such as Nikki, Paulo, Eko, Frogurt, and so forth.

The great thing about the finale is, it helps paint the entire series in a different light than before, but, by no means diminishes what it once was. I can still re-watch key episodes from early seasons and enjoy them as is, even knowing how they fit into the endgame. Yet, for the fans who have watched every episode at least once (...), seeing the final piece of the puzzle helps to put the entire series into perspective.

It wasn't about figuring out a magic box. (Which, could easily be a long con deception by Ben... with Mikhail surveillance everyone, they could have gotten John Cooper easily, knowing that Locke would want to show up sooner or later.)

It wasn't about polar bears... which was answered in season three, guys... seriously. DHARMA observed different animals on the island, studying how they related to it's unique properties. DHARMA got purged, animals remained. Bears kept in cool, dark caves to stay alive.

It wasn't about the history of the island, and all it's previous inhabitants. People are drawn to the island, and different people need to protect it. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Los Angelinos... anyone and everyone seemed to leave their mark on the island throughout the course of time.

It was about the characters. Learning to live together. It is that simple. It was repeatedly frequently on the show. Yet, it took until the last episode of the series to finally realize it in it's simplest, purest form.

There are many mysteries that would have been nice to get an answer to (Why Walt, Hurley and Miles are special). However? I can live without these answers. What we saw, was fulfilling and satisfying. Even weird plots, like the Sayid infection, were indirectly addressed in the sideways plot, when Hurley tells Sayid that he doesn't have to be whoever anyone tells him to be. If you are told you are evil, does that mean you ARE evil? Sayid this season seemed to struggle with that intensely. In the end, he was a "good person" by sacrificing himself for his friends. In that way, Sayid's weird infection plotline hinted at problems with self-identification, and how we see ourselves based completely on how others view us.

Speaking of viewing ourselves... I loved that in every sideways episode this season, a character looked into a mirror, but the most prominent mirror scene tonight was a broken mirror -- signaling the end of the sideways narrative.

I'm suspecting that my thoughts are becoming less cohesive as I keep typing, so, I'll end it around here for now. The more I think about the ending, and the ultimate purpose of the sideways narrative... the more I am okay with it. I expected universes to collide with each other (which I know from FRINGE is a horrible idea!), but instead, the universes complimented each other and barely crossed over.

And Desmond and Penny may get a happy ending after all. Aw, yay!

Now, if you'll excuse me, it is late. Time to close my eyes...

What Happened to Twitter?

2009-12-18T02:31:00.001-05:00

A few hours ago, Twitter's homepage was redirected to a splash image, saying the site had been hacked by a group calling themselves the "Iranian Cyber Army." Not much is known about the attack yet (because, it just happened), but here's what can be shared:

- Here's a cached image of Twitter while it was "under attack": http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/12/17/twitter-is-down-is-the-iranian-cyber-army-responsible/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29
- The same image apparently is found on other web sites, but most notably on Mowjcamp, a Iranian Green Wave web site. (www.mowjcamp.com) (news source)
- TechCrunch commenters theorizing this is a DNS-attack-and-re-direct. Meaning? The hackers may not have touched the databases, rather, they took the virtual address and sent it elsewhere. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/17/twitter-reportedly-hacked-by-iranian-cyber-army/)

UPDATE ONE:
2:45 a.m. EST - Twitter released this statement:

We are working to recovery from an unplanned downtime and will update more as we learn the cause of this outage.
Update (11:28p): Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

http://status.twitter.com/post/288586541/working-on-site-outage

_________________________________________________
That's what *I* know right now. But I'm about to go to sleep. You'll probably know more than me, really soon.

Blogs, Memes and Fails: Web sites you should be following

2009-11-23T02:11:00.001-05:00

Those blogs. The ones you see linked, e-mailed to you, funny posts printed off around the office. These are those blogs that you will want to know about for the watercooler talk:

**UPDATE** The following blogs are user suggestions, sent in via Twitter and that old dinosaur, e-mail:

Oddee - http://oddee.com/
A blog on the oddest, bizarre things around. Think of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, but with less Dean Cain.

haha.nu - http://haha.nu/
It's kind of like a Lifehacker type-magazine, but, more blog-y. It's got some cool, unique content, well worth checking out. (Thanks, @namtrok, for these suggestions!)

RandomCreepyGuy - http://www.randomcreepyguy.com/
A blog dedicated to those terrible, creepy photobombers, the random creepy guy who winds up being the central focus of your photographed. (Thanks to the blog's founder for the suggestion)
________________________________

FAIL Blog - http://failblog.org/
One of the most recognizable blogs out there, this web site is full of failures and disappointments that will make you smile.

Probably Bad News - http://probablybadnews.com/
Whether it's a sloppy copy editor's mistake or trying to fill a newspaper with enough news to send off to the printers, the information industry makes mistakes. Big, big mistakes. If you bookmark this site, you can go to bed before Jay Leno does his "Headlines" skit. (And who doesn't want to go to bed at 10 p.m.?)

People of Wal-Mart - http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
Since this blog has started, there have been 'concerns' that people are dressing up intentionally like the most un-self-aware people around. If so, that makes this site even more sad, that people would do all their shopping dressed like they've never seen another human before.

My Parents Were Awesome - http://myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com/
It's funny now, but someday, we'll be laughing about what we wore in 2009.

Overheard in the Newsroom - http://overheardinthenewsroom.com/
More or less like the title says, this blog is a collection of quotes submitted anonymously from newsrooms across the nation.

Angry people in local newspapers - http://apiln.blogspot.com/
Posed photos never look natural. Why get upset over a puddle on the road? To make a photo more dynamic, of course. This blog collects the best of the worst of the staged news photos.

Picture is Unrelated - http://pictureisunrelated.com/
Not necessarily FAIL-worthy, but, random and unnerving.

Oddly Specific - http://oddlyspecific.com/
Sometimes, you need to be specific when posting a sign. However, there are times when you need to tone back your exact language. Else, you wind up on this blog.

Judge a Book by its Cover - http://judgeabook.blogspot.com/
Occasionally pushing the SWF limits.... This site mocks horrible book artwork. Oh, there is some truly bad stuff out there, particularly in fantasy and romance.

Awkward Family Photos - http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
And you thought your Christmas card was bad.

Cake Wrecks - http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
Ever pick up a cake from the bakery and discover it's not quite what you wanted it to be? The worse, the better, for this blog-turned-book-turned-superblog.

texts from last night - http://textsfromlastnight.com/
Another kinda-not-SFW site... the title is brilliantly explanatory.

Others? Let me know in the comments, or @ reply to me on Twitter, @charlesjurries

Obama, Twitter and the Tech Guru Who Never Used Technology

2009-11-16T01:51:00.000-05:00

(Read TechCrunch article here)

Tonight there is some mild curiosity on Twitter surrounding @BarackObama, considering the President's recent claim that he has "never used" the microblogging service. Here's my stance:

- The only "sin" committed is not saying on the profile's description that the @BarackObama account is tweets from his staff. Otherwise, yes, it looks like the tweets COULD be from him directly, and then there's some credibility issues at stake.
HOWEVER... who really thought he was sending out some tweets? On the campaign, I could see it, but once you are in the Oval Office, your every minute is planned and controlled, and the very words you say are written out for you... it's a terribly hectic life, and I'd doubt that even if he had time, that he would be allowed by his time to Tweet. (It's far easier to fire a staffer for a mis-tweet, than it is deal with a Presidential scandal.)

Introvert Seeking Job As Extrovert

2009-11-15T23:31:00.001-05:00

I like to plan. Yet I'm going into a profession that has not much plans, and, you spend more time doing, than planning. It's like I'm a character in a work of fiction, you know, like how there's the classic psychiatrist whose own life is in shambles? Or the matchmaker who is single and lonely? Yes. That's me and journalism. A classic mismatch, made in love. Should be a fun life, or, at least, a fun book to write in 60 years.

College Stuff

2009-10-04T01:11:00.001-04:00

I recently found out that, if classes fall into the right places for winter and spring semesters, I could have my undergrad degrees by the end of summer. Scary.

Sept. 11, 2001 timeline

2009-09-11T01:04:00.002-04:00

A unofficial complete timeline of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, re-posted from the now-defunct The Delta Institute Newsblog. Originally posted Sept. 10, 2005.

File Under: Timeline
September 11, 2001 changed the course of American history, politics, military, economy, resolve, EVERYTHING, forever. On the first night of the rest of our lives, I decided to begin jotting down notes and information about 9/11. That turned into a more comprehensive news summary, and eventually, I was writing up a "mini-newspaper" every day.

I had no blog as an outlet back then. It was soley for personal reference. And I learned alot back when I had lots of time and energy to devote to the Threat Con. Delta report. It fizzled out after I started working, but the legacy of Delta continues to this day, even through this blog.

As we look back on the anniversary, here is a timeline compiled by Threat Con. Delta, from the archives, un-edited, raw, and real:

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

The day was like any other. No national holiday, nothing. Just another day of school, another day to go to work. Many people walked into World Trade Center 1 & 2, the New York landmark "Twin Towers". 9/11 was declared an International Day of Peace by the United Nations. It was a very peaceful day in lower Manhattan, with "severe" blue skies, when the United States was ultimately plunged into a war like no others. The following is a time-line of the events that have happened. Most events are right on time, though some you might find a one or two minute difference, due to different clocks.(All times: EDT)

5:45 AM - Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari pass through a security check in Portland, Me., preparing to board a flight that will take them to Boston.

6:00 AM - President George W. Bush awakes at the Colony, a tennis resort in Longboat Key, Florida.

6:00 AM - Primary Day election polls for mayor and other positions open in New York. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani cannot run again, owing to term limits.

6:32 AM - The sun rises over New York City, with blue skies, and slight wind. The temperature was about 66 degrees, and would stay there from pretty much the rest of the day.

8:14 AM - United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 departs from Boston to Los Angeles, with 56 passengers, 2 pilots, and 7 flight attendants. It will fly west-south-west into Connecticut then south towards Washington, D.C.

8:00 AM - American Airlines Flight 11 departs from Boston to Los Angeles with 81 passengers aboard, with 2 pilots, and 9 flight attendants aboard. It will fly west out of Massachusetts and north-west into New York, in the direction of Albany.

8:13 AM - Boston Control Center makes radio contact with American Flight 11:
BCC: “AAL11 turn 20 degrees right.”
AAL11: “20 right AAL11.”
BCC: “AAL11 now climb, maintain FL350[35,000 feet].”
BCC: “AAL11 climb, maintain FL350.”
BCC: “AAL11 Boston.”’

8:14 AM - Boston Control Center: Controller A: “AAL11, ah, the American on the frequency, how do you hear me?”
Controller B: “This is, uh, Athens.”
A: “This is Boston. I turned American 20 left and I was going to climb him. He will not respond to me now at all.”
B: “Looks like he’s turning right.”
A: “Yea, I turned him right.”
B: “Oh, O.K.”
A: “And he’s only going to, um, I think 29.”
B: “Sure, that’s fine.”
A: “Eh, but I’m not talking to him.”
B: “He won’t answer you. He’s nordo[no radio] roger. Thanks.”

8:20 AM - American Airlines Flight 77 departs Washington's Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, with 58 passengers, 2 pilots, with 4 flight attendants aboard.

8:24 AM - Boston Control Center is contacted by the hijackers who took over American Flight 11: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be O.K. We are returning to the airport. Nobody move, everything will be O.K. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

8:25 AM - The control tower notifies several air traffic control centers that a hijacking is in progress.

8:25 AM - American Flight 77 is instructed to climb to 27,000 feet.

8:28 AM - American Airlines flight 11 takes a sudden turn south of Albany. This is probably the point were the hijackers took over control of the plane.

8:31 AM - United Flight 175 makes contact with Boston control center.

8:33 AM - Hijackers voices on Flight 11: “Nobody move please, we are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”

8:35 AM - The Federal Aviation Administration alerts NORAD that American Flight 11 has been hijacked after taking off from Boston.

8:37 AM - A flight controller ask pilots to look for a lost American Airlines plane: “Do you have traffic? Look at, uh, your 12 to 1 o’clock at about, uh, 10 miles southbound to see if you can see an American seventy sixty seven out there please.”
United Airlines 175: “Affirmative. We have him, uh, he looks, uh, about 20, yeah, about 29, 28,000.”
Controller: “United 175, turn 5 turn 30 degrees to the right. I [want to] keep you away from this traffic.”

8:37 AM - American Flight 77 is instructed to climb to 39,000 feet, but the pilot request and is granted a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.

8:39 AM - Two F-16fighter jets are scrambled from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Though they are airborne by 8.39 they had only six minutes before impact - not enough to intercept the kamikaze aircraft piloted by John Ogonowski, 50, a Vietnam veteran, and Captain of Airlines Flight 11.

They scramble because Captain Ogonowski had the ability to activate a "push-to-talk" button intermittently so that the authorities on the ground can listen to the horrific events unfolding on board.

8:41 AM - UA175: “We figured we’d wait to go to your center. We heard a suspicious transmission on our departure out of Boston. Someone keyed the mike and said, ‘Everyone stay in your seats.’ Did you copy that?” The airplane turns toward the southwest, with clearance from air traffic control.

8:42 AM - 41 minutes late, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, with 38 passengers, 2 pilots, and 5 flight attendants aboard leave Newark, New Jersey, for San Frisico, and is hijacked right after takeoff. It will reach Cleveland, Ohio, before turning around and heading toward Washington D.C.

8:43 AM - The FAA notifies NORAD that United Flight 175 from Boston to L.A. has also been hijacked.

8:46:26 AM - American Airlines Flight 11, with 92 people aboard, heading from Boston to L.A. plummeted into the North World Trade Center tower, one of the famous Twin Towers which loomed over New York City. A loud explosion was heard, but not seen by too many. Smoke poured out in an instant, and speculation was just a distracted pilot, who might of been busy looking at the sights around, rather than looking ahead of him.
- Comments: My Mom called me and my brother, John, down. We were getting ready for our home-school, for it was the second day of the new school year for us. Actually, I was waiting to brush my teeth, and was ready to scream because I couldn't stand my breath. Mom had the Fox News Channel on, and live images were just put up of the damage done to the skyscraper. Actually, going down the steps I figured it was just another car chase. I guess I was wrong, eh? There was an analyst on, saying that this might just be an accident. Right when he was talking about it, something happened...

8:50 AM - President George W. Bush arrives at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida.

8:50 AM - Last contact with American Flight 77.

8:53 AM - Controller, referring to UA175: “We may have a hijack. We have some problems over here right now.” 15 planes, including Flight 93 are informed that there has been a cockpit intrusion on another United flight.

9:00 AM - White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispers word to the President of the First Plane Crash

9:00 AM - Last radar reading for United Airlines Flight 175 observed an altitude of 18,000 feet as the flight is descending at a ground speed of 550 miles per hour.

9:02 AM - On a second call to American Airlines, concerning Flight 77, the controller says, “We, uh, we lost track of the guy. He’s in coast track but we haven’t - we don’t know really where his target[radar location] is, and we can’t get a hold of him. Um, you guys tried him and no response ... Yeah, we have no radar contact and, uh, no communications with him, so if you guys can try again.”
Dispatcher: “We’re doing it.”
Controller: “All right. Thanks a lot.”

9:02:54 AM - United Airlines Flight 175, with 65 people aboard flew right through the South Twin Tower, World Trade Center 2, right on live television. Yes, right through. The nose was clearly visible right before flames engulfed it, in a horrific explosion. This explosion was caught by essentially every camera in New York City, trained on Tower 1.
- Comments: I saw the plane coming up on the tower, and I thought "Oh no, it's another one". And then I knew this was intentional, and I knew this would escalate into something bigger. Now, I know this sounds horrible, but the reaction at Fox News was just a "O...kay.....", almost like "That wasn't in the script...". And that analyst quickly changed his mind, quickly declaring this a deliberate attack on the Twin Towers. After a few minutes, Mom led us kids in a moment of prayer for all those who have already died, and will die, due to smoke inhalation.

9:06 AM - Controllers talks about AAF77: “You guys never been able to raise him at all.”
Another controller: “No, we called company. They can’t even get a hold of him. So there’s no, no radar, uh, no radio communications and no radar.”

9:05 AM - The President is sitting in with a second-grade class when Andrew Card whispers to him that yet another airplane has struck the Twin Towers.

9:08-9:11 AM - Departures for planes heading toward New York City are stopped.

9:09 AM - Mayor Giuliani is racing downtown in his limousine, having received words moments after the first attack. He checks in at a fire command post in the World Trade Center. Giuliani and aides then make their perilous way a block north to set up a communications center at 75 Barclay Street, but debris cascading from the ceiling forces them to seek another location.

9:12 AM - Bush leaves the school and is in touch with New York officials as well as Vice President Dick Cheney.

9:17 AM - FAA shuts down all New York City airports, in fear of other plane crashes.

9:20 AM - The FBI announces that reports of planes being hijacked are under investigation, including one that American Airlines Flight 767 has been hijacked.

9:21 AM - All bridges and tunnels leading in and out of New York City are closed by Port Authority officials.

9:21 AM - The FAA stops takeoffs nationwide, an historic move that has never before been done.

9:24 AM - The FAA notifies NORAD that a third jet, American Airlines Flight 77, has been hijacked.

9:22 AM - American Airlines acknowledges one of its flights, Flight 11, crashed into the World Trade Center.

9:25 AM - The New York Stock Exchange delays all trading.

9:25 AM - An controller observes American Flight 77 moving towards Washington.

9:27 AM - New York City airports are shut down.

9:28 AM - First audible sign of problems are heard in background cockpit noise of Flight 93.

9:29 AM - First reports of casualties indicate that at least six people are dead and 1,000 injured.

9:30 AM - President Bush is briefed by National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.

9:31 AM - President Bush, in Sarasota, Fl, says this:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America. I, unfortunately, will be going back to Washington after my remarks. Secretary Rod Paige and the Lt. Governor will take the podium and discuss education. I do want to thank the folks here at Booker Elementary School for their hospitality.
Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.
Terrorism against our nation will not stand.
And now if you would join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America. Thank you very much.

9:30 AM and following - Several phone calls are made on Flight 93, informing loved ones of what is going on.

9:32 AM - The New York Stock Exchange is closed, along with all financial markets in the U.S.

9:33 AM - A flight controller informs Operational Supervisor, who in turn informs the Secret Service about Flight 77. The aircraft is observed completing a right 360-degree turn, just south of the Pentagon.

9:35 AM - Manhattan is sealed off, as a total evacuation of the World Trade Center area is underway.

9:35 AM - NORAD launches two F-16 fighters from Langley Air Force Base to intercept Flight 77.

9:35 AM - Flight 93 begins an unauthorized climbs, raising concerns that it may have been hijacked.

9:36 AM - National Airport instructs a military C-130 that had just departed Andrews Air Force Base to intercept and identify Flight 77. The C-130 reports that it is a Boeing 767, moving low and very fast.

9:38 AM - American Airlines Flight 77, with 64 people aboard, en route Washington DC to L.A. was headed toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when it suddenly changed course, and circled D.C, before slamming into the newly renovated West Side of the Pentagon.
- Comments: When the report came in that the Pentagon was hit, I knew for sure that these were oversea terrorist. I had time to think about it in-between plane attack, and my older brother, "M.J." was very ticked off. He wanted to strike back right then and there.

9:40 AM - FAA grounds all US Air Traffic. All planes were ordered to land at the nearest airport. This is the first time in FAA history in which they have grounded all planes in the United States of America.

9:43 AM - Abu Dhabi TV reports a call from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine claiming responsibility for directing two planes into the WTC. However, officials of that group later deny making that claim.

9:45 AM - The White House is evacuated.

9:45 AM - The FAA orders all aircraft to land as soon as possible.

9:48 AM - The U.S. Capitol is evacuated after bomb threats. Other federal building in D.C. close.

9:55 AM - Scrambled fighter jets reach D.C. area.

9:57 AM - President Bush departs from Florida. He calls Vice-president Dick Cheney and puts America’s military on high alert.

9:58 AM - An emergency dispatcher in Pennsylvania receives a call from a passenger on United Flight 93 out of Newark who says, “We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!”

10:00 AM - A controller observes Flight 93 is at or around 7,500 feet.

10:00 AM - Aboard Air Force One en route to Louisiana, Bush calls Vice President Cheney and puts America’s military on high-alert status. The President sifts through updates from his staff, including an erroneous report that a car bomb has been detonated at the State Department.

9:59:04 AM - In the midst of confusion, something awful occurred. One of the World Trade Center Towers, one of the Twin Towers, a landmark in New York City, crumbled to the ground in an impressive display of smoke and soot.
- Comments: I was in shock when that happened. I was just starting to acknowledge the existence of something other than the television, when I noticed the smoke. M.J., John, and I were all in shock. I quickly called Mom, like I did after the 2nd plane hit, and everybody in America was in complete shock. A 110 story building had just crumbled into nothing more than smoke and debris.

10:03 AM - Unconfirmed rumor of State Department fire in Washington, which is later proved false.

10:08 AM - Secret Service agents armed with automatic rifles are deployed to Lafayette Park located across from the White House.

10:05 - Witnesses see United Airlines Flight 93 coming in low.

10:06 AM - United Airlines Flight 93, with 95 people aboard went down in Pennsylvania. All that remained was a crater, and small pieces of debris. It was once thought to have blown up mid-air, thought I am not certain of that. It is thought to have gone down there, instead of slamming into Camp David, the White House, or possibly even a follow-up to the Pentagon by what is believed to be heroism aboard the plane, destroying the plane in the middle of nothing, instead of killing more people.

10:10 AM - A portion of the Pentagon caves in.

10:10 AM - FBI headquarters evacuated.

10:10 AM - FAA orders all planes to land at nearest airports.

10:12 AM - UK Prime Minister Tony Blair describes the attacks in the United States as "the most terrible shocking event".

10:13 AM - United Nations evacuated.

10:17 AM - Reports of explosion at Capitol Hill denied.

10:20 AM - Financial Markets shut down, including the Stock Market.

10:20 AM - All Subway systems shut down.

10:22 AM - State & Justice departments evacuated, along with the World Bank.

10:24 AM - FAA diverts transatlantic flights to Canada.

10:25 AM - A car bomb is said to have gone off outside the State Department. Also false.

10:28:31 AM - Caught up in the smoke of the fallen WTC. tower, people screamed and ran for cover as the remaining tower, which carried the main television antennae for New York City, imploded, falling to the ground, resulting in impressive video camera footage of people running, and the very high clouds of smoke, dust, and soot rounded corners, and seemingly chased people through the streets. With both towers collapse, women ditched their high heels in the streets, in order to run faster.
- Comments: Fox News was talking to people on the streets, when they suddenly said "Look!", and the ground camera quickly looked up, and they cut to a roof-top view, where it almost looked like they were re-playing the footage of the first tower again. Dead silence, and it was very clear that both towers were gone. The clouds of smoke covered the shoreline, as the Statue of Liberty sat in the distance, a midget compared to the smoke that rose above the city.

10:30 AM - New York Governor George E. Pataki declares a state of emergency.

10:30 AM - The United States Capitol evacuated.

10:41 AM - The President, aboard Air Force One, which is headed toward Jacksonville, with join up with jets to provide air cover. On the phone from a protected area of the White House, President Cheney presses Bush not to return quickly to Washington.

10:45 AM - All federal buildings in DC evacuated.

- Comments: It was around this time that my older brother John and I left for a little while, to deliver "The Advance", the weekly community newspaper. It gave me a little while to sink in the reality of the situation, an advantage many did not have for a long while. I only saw one person while delivering the papers, which is around typical, but for some reason he was busy building a wooden rail for his steps outdoors, but he didn't seem to have his radio on, yet he was fully aware of all that was going on. But whatever, it doesn't matter, does it?

10:46 AM - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell cuts short his trip to Latin America to return to the United States of America.

10:47 AM - Trading in Toronto and London halted.

10:48 AM - Police confirm a plane crash in Pennsylvania.

10:50 AM - Reports come in of a second Pentagon attack.

10:53 AM - Fighter jets scramble to intercept the so-called “second attack”, which is later proved false.

10:50 AM - All DC Museums and monuments shut down.

10:53 AM - NYC’s primary elections, scheduled for today, are postponed.

10:54 AM - Israel evacuates all diplomatic missions.

10:55 AM - More reports come in of plane crash in Pennsylvania.

10:57 AM - NY Governor George Pataki says all state government offices are closed.

11:00 AM - New York Hospitals receiving hundreds of patients.

11:00 AM - United Airlines confirms loss of second 767.

11:00 AM - Yasser Arafat condems attacks.

11:00 AM - New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani calls for evacuation of lower Manhattan, talks of "horrendous" loss of life.
11:02 AM - New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay at home and orders an evacuation of the area south of Canal Street.
11:08 AM - Canada shuts down all airports.
11:16 AM - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is preparing emergency-response teams in a precautionary move.
11:18 AM - American Airlines reports it has lost two aircraft. American Flight 11, a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles, had 81 passengers and 11 crew aboard. Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from Washington's Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, had 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
11:27 AM - American Airlines confirms loss of 2 airplanes.
11:29 AM - United Airlines confirms 2nd plane crashed at unknown location.
11:45 AM - With the U.S. Military on nuclear alert, the President arrives at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Reporters are asked to keep their cell phones off, to conceal. his location. From a conference room, Bush calls, among others, Cheney, Rumsfeld and New York Senator Charles Schumer.
11:59 AM - United Airlines confirms that Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles, has crashed with 56 passengers and nine crew members aboard. It hit the World Trade Center's south tower.
12:04 PM - Los Angeles International Airport, the destination of three of the crashed airplanes, is evacuated.
12:15 PM - San Francisco International Airport is evacuated and shut down. The airport was the destination of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
12:15 PM - The Immigration and Naturalization Service says U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico are on the highest state of alert, but no decision has been made about closing borders.
12:30 PM - The FAA says 50 flights are in U.S. airspace, but none are reporting any problems.
12:55 PM - Taliban officials, speaking from Afghanistan, deny any responsibility for the attacks. “What happened in the United States was not a job of ordinary people. It could have been the work of governments,” says Taliban spokesperson Abdul Hai Mutmaen.

1:00 PM - Rescue workers are finally able to enter the impact area of the Pentagon.
1:04 PM - President George W. Bush speaks to the nation:
I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are
working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no
mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.

I've been in regular contact with the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the national
security team and my Cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions to protect
the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status, and we
have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.

We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that
we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans.

I ask the American people to join me in saying a thanks for all the folks who have been fighting
hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their
families.

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake: We will show the world
that we will pass this test. God bless.
- Comments: Everybody was home for lunch at that point, and we were all in Mom and Dad's room and watched the president talk to the nation.

1:15 PM - Bush departs for Air Force One in a camouflaged Humvee. While en route to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, he talks to Cheney again and schedules a four p.m. meeting of his national security staff. He also talks to Giuliani and Pataki. “I know your heart is broken and your city is strained, and anything we can do, let me know,” Bush says.
1:27 PM - A state of emergency is declared in Washington, D.C.
1:44 PM - The Pentagon says five warships and two aircraft carriers will leave the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, to protect the East Coast from further attack and to reduce the number of ships in port. The two carriers, the USS George Washington and the USS John F. Kennedy, are headed for the New York coast. The other ships headed to sea are frigates and guided missile destroyers capable of shooting down aircraft.
1:48 PM - Bush leaves Barksdale Air Force Base aboard Air Force One and flies to an Air Force base in Nebraska.
2:30 PM - The FAA announces there will be no U.S. commercial air traffic until noon EDT Wednesday at the earliest.
2:49 PM - At a news conference, Giuliani says that subway and bus service are partially restored in New York City. Asked about the number of people killed, Giuliani says, "I don't think we want to speculate about that -- more than any of us can bear."
3:07 PM - President Bush arrives at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where he descends into a cinder-block bunker. There, he teleconferences with the eight-member National Security Council. Vice President Cheney - who had suggested Bush go to Offutt - and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are connected from a secure facility at the White House. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has remained at the Pentagon.
2:51 PM - The navy dispatches missile destroyers to New York City.
3:55 PM - Giuliani now says the number of critically injured in New York City is up to 200 with 2,100 total injuries reported.
4:00 PM - U.S. officials say there are “good indications” based on “new and specific” information that Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, suspected of coordinating the U.S. embassy bombings in 1998 and the USS Cole bombing in 2000, is involved in the latest attacks.
4:06 PM - California Gov. Gray Davis dispatches urban search-and-rescue teams to New York.
4:10 PM - Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex is reported on fire.
4:20 PM - U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he was "not surprised there was an attack (but) was surprised at the specificity." He says he was "shocked at what actually happened -- the extent of it."
4:25 PM - The American Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange say they will remain closed Wednesday.
4:36 PM - The president leaves Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska aboard Air Force One to return to Washington.
5:25 PM - World Trade Center Building #7 collapses. This building caught on fire, and was burning all day long. Nobody was inside.
6:00 PM - Explosions are heard in Kabul, Afghanistan, hours after terrorist attacks targeted financial and military centers in the United States. The attacks occurred at 2:30 a.m. local time. Afghanistan is believed to be where bin Laden, who U.S. officials say is possibly behind Tuesday's deadly attacks, is located. U.S. officials say later that the United States had no involvement in the incident whatsoever. The attack is credited to the Northern Alliance, a group fighting the Taliban in the country's ongoing civil war.
6:10 PM - Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay home Wednesday if they can.
6:40 PM - Rumsfeld, the U.S. defense secretary, holds a news conference in the Pentagon, noting the building is operational. "It will be in business tomorrow," he says.
6:54 PM - Bush arrives back at the White House aboard Marine One and is scheduled to address the nation at 8:30 p.m. The president earlier landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with a three-fighter jet escort. Laura Bush arrived earlier by motorcade from a "secure location."
7:00 PM - A cool breeze floated into Manhattan from the Atlantic ocean. It is the first breath of fresh air all day.
7:02 PM - The Marriott Hotel near the World Trade Center is on the verge of collapse, and some New York bridges are now open to outbound traffic.
7:09 PM - The sun sets on New York City, signaling the near-end of a most horrible day.
7:17 PM - U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft says the FBI is setting up a Web site for tips on the attacks: www.ifccfbi.gov. He also says family and friends of possible victims can leave contact information at 800-331-0075.
7:23 PM - NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin ordered all centers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to close in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in the United States.

7:45 PM - The New York Police Department says that at least 78 officers are missing. The city also says that as many as half of the first 400 firefighters on the scene were killed.
8:30 PM - President Bush addresses the nation, saying:
Good evening.

Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

The victims were in airplanes or in their offices -- secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors.
Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.

The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.

These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.

Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America, with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it’s prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C., to help with local rescue efforts.

Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks.

The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow.

Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well.

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources for our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.

America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world and we stand together to win the war against terrorism.

Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me."

This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time.

None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

Thank you. Good night and God bless America.
- - - Comments: It was around this time that I was coming back from a prayer vigil, and my older sister was getting more gas. However, everybody was expecting a war on the middle-east, so they were stocking up. Worse yet, the price of gas had been jacked up waaay high. Some places were caught with over $3.00 per gallon!
8:35 PM - Bush attends a security meeting.
9:22 PM - The Pentagon is still on fire. It is considered contained but not controlled.
9:57 PM - Giuliani says New York City schools will be closed Wednesday and no more volunteers are needed for Tuesday evening's rescue efforts. He says there is hope that there are still people alive in rubble. He also says that power is out on the Westside of Manhattan and that health department tests show there are no airborne chemical agents about which to worry.
10:21 PM - Bush calls and end to the security meeting. Secret Service radios carry the news that the President has gone home to bed: “Trailblazer. Second floor of the residence.”

10:30 PM - NYC Mayor Giuliani says people may still be trapped alive inside the rubble of the Twin Towers.

- War Notes:
The Pentagon was on Threat Condition: Delta. That is the highest level of alert.

This has been compared to Pearl Harbor, and pretty much declared worse, namely with the dead count. America will never be the same again, as this ushers in a new generation, which depending on the bravery, just may be a greater generation than the ones who survived W.W.II. War is coming, though we do not know yet when it will happen, but just about everyone is ready for it, or ready to accept the declaration.

On 9-11-01, the Emmy's were postponed, same with sporting events. The Sears tower shut down on 9/11, same with Disney's theme parks, and other major theme parks across the nation. Local malls shut down, and not much business was done that day.

Phone Numbers Nationally Televised:

NYPD Special Ops Division (718) 677-8238
NYC Firefighter Info Hotline (718) 999-2541
NYC Victim Info Hotline (312) 560-2730
Blood Donor Hotline 800-HELP-NOW
Japanese Family Hotline 800-527-2611

The following are sentences that rotated on the Fox News bar:

US Military is on highest alert
Top Defense Officials are okay
"This is the second Pearl Harbor" Senator Hagel
Flags lowered at White House at half staff
266 people aboard planes on board the four planes
Hijackers armed with Knives, or knife-like objects
Call: Hijackers took over cockpit
100-800 dead at Pentagon
Est. 50,000 people worked at WTC
Tens of thousand visit Twin Towers daily
More than 10,000 rescuers rushed to WTC
Hundreds of firefighters and police feared dead
Victims may still be trapped alive in DC/WTC
NYC & DC Hospitals asking for Blood Donors
A(cossiated)P(ress): Trapped survivors making cell phone calls
NYC Fire Chief, Deputy Chief & Chaplain killed in WTC blast
More than 1,000 hospitalized
300+ Firefighters Missing
Executive Prod. of (TV show)"Frasier" killed in plane crash
EST 400 Firefighters may be dead
FBI to search areas in Breward/Daytona Beach, FL
Police: "Looking for 32 or 33 Officers"
NYC Mayor: "A Lot of People Missing"
FL Area to be searched Linked to bin Laden
33 NYC Police Officers Missing
Twin Towers in Malaysia Shut Down
Victim Calls: Hijackers Armed With Knives
Victim Calls: Hijackers Stabbed Flight Crew
Victim Calls: Hijackers took over cockpit

As of 9-13-2001, at 11:53 AM, I have no clue exactly what this will escalate too. I know that this will be a war like to other, in which we will have to take down terrorist, who must be eliminated now before they can access chemical and nuclear weapons. Whatever happens, it is all in God's plan, and nothing happens apart from what he wants, though we may never know what that is.

The Rules Change Now

2009-07-23T01:39:00.000-04:00

Rules are more like guidelines. Similar words were crudely spoken by some Pirates of the Caribbean, and yet, their fictional roots have more than enough staying power where we live, especially when it comes to journalism. Or, to clarify, new media journalism.

(To be perfectly clear: I'm not talking about issues of ethics, the "will I print this or will I can it?"-type issues.)

I'm talking about how the internet operates. It operates fast. Very fast. There is no way you can demonstrate how we operated on the internet in 2009 is the same as it existed in 1999. Whereas TV news looks similar in that ten-year span, newspapers as well (although admitingly, 1999's newspapers probably were a bit thicker.)

In journalism school, you learn from textbooks preaching the same principles and methods about how to work with that medium that have been passed down from generation to generation. That used to be comforting. Now, its scary. Why? The rules don't fit. Our society has shifted so much, that seeing an Associated Press story on a breaking news situation seems outdated, when we've been following the situation with many more details, on Twitter. We can send an SMS to anyone we want and share the news with anybody and publish it anywhere, and it doesn't have to be a news outlet anymore. Sources don't have to be heard through a news channel, they can start up their own web site.

A few years ago, news web sites realized that people enjoy commenting on anything on the internet, whether they deserved to or not. News sites were not the first to adapt the technologies, but, they eventually got on board. These comment systems may make you register through their own company, or perhaps make you just fill in your name, e-mail and web site every time you make a comment. Fine, right?

Except now its 2009, not 2006. In 2009, you are expected to be able to connect using your Facebook account, Twitter account, or whatever accounts you so choose. As of this posting, this is not the norm amongst news sites. Instead of being ahead of the curve, they are waiting to be on it, or behind.

The internet is proving to us that we may never know what the rules are. As frustrating as this may be to those who have been used to having a stable medium for decades straight, this allows us new opportunities we never appreciated before. The internet forces everyone to find out how the rest of us consume content, constantly.

As journalists go forward into the new world, the digital world, this will be their challenge: to continue to figure out what their audience wants, instead of deciding what their readers would like. To communicate with people, not too them. All done while conveying a sense of authority on the topic(s) of discussion. We no longer look for the voice of god from our news. We just look for a voice who knows what the heck is going on. Be that voice. Talk to people, talk with them, and listen. The modern audience may reward you for doing so, by giving you something that newspapers and radio long for: an audience.

Don't Fight the Sleep

2009-07-12T02:05:00.000-04:00

Why do I try to stay awake?

What a loaded sentence. Let me give you some context. Its Saturday afternoon. I have window fans going, but its still hot and humid. I'm tired still from the night before, I have some relaxing music going, and I have my homework notes in front of me, in preparation for a test. A perfect recipe for a lazy Saturday nap, right? Yes. However, I resisted that urge.

But why did I try to stay awake? I knew I had homework to do. Other things could've been accomplished. And yet, I probably spent more time trying to stay awake, rather than just lying down for an hour and getting a few quick z's.

At the time, this does not seem to make sense. It is Saturday afternoon. There is stuff to do. It is not time for a nap. I have not done anything deserving of a nap, I tell myself. A nap is a reward. (Unless its Sunday, then, its a right.) So I spend a couple hours, dozing in and out of consciousness at my desk, telling myself that I shouldn't nap. I'm telling myself that I should not waste time. In that process, I end up wasting more time.

The next time I feel the urge to fall asleep at home, perhaps I should just do so. Its lazy, but apparently, less lazy than the alternative.

Entertain me, news monkey

2009-07-08T22:21:00.003-04:00

As fickle as I am, I'm terribly laid back. However, lately I've been starting to sit up a little more. I've been content with the way news web sites have been laid out for years. After all, why expect anything different? That's how they've always been, that's how they will be, so what's the big deal? The "big deal" is that news sites seem content to be among the worst-designed sites in Internet existence to-date. The more I think about this, the more I'm not fine with this happening. I'm not okay with it, because the Internet, thought to be the newspaper killer, will be killed itself by the next new medium unless it forces a change upon itself.

The death of newspapers, exaggerated though it may be, has become a great example for contemporary forward-thinking journalists to see how a lack of innovation breeds contempt, and if you want a product people want, you need a product that people will want. (Shocking, isn't it? Despite reporting on the entire world, sometimes the journalism world doesn't quite grasp how people work.) Television has been fortunate enough to have the unfortunate problem of needing constant innovation to hold on to people's attention spans. Over the past few decades, the entire news lineup has changed, from Block A being US/Intl, Block B being local, to now leading with local for both blocks and using outside stories when absolutely warranted.

The popular Internet, though, is still a little bit new. For me, personally, "the Internet" really started in full force after Matt Drudge posted a canned Newsweek piece by Michael Isikoff outlining an affair then-President Clinton had with a intern. That was 1998. This is 2009. So if the popular Internet is 11 years old, how much can we know about life cycles and how often we need to change things up to keep people interested?

So far, we don't know. Not quite. With the Internet ever evolving, thanks in part to blogs and social media networks, the life cycle of the Internet can be hypothesized, but has yet to be concretely proven. We know it moves fast. Real fast. A web site needs to be re-designed every 1-2 years to keep from getting stale, we know that. (A concept that The Drudge Report has never listened to, and insists on providing its tabloid links in the most 1992-way possible.)

We know the Internet evolves, and that news needs to change, you are thinking. But what does this have to do with news on the web dying? What it means is that over the past few years, news sites have not changed that much. Look at industry leader CNN.com, for example, in the year 2000. The layout, the boxes, the labels, everything looks like a template that could and probably is being used today. Is that, in itself, a bad thing? No... However, if you look at news web sites in multiple markets (like I do), there's not a whole lot of difference. In content, in layout, and not a whole lot of difference between the year 2000 and now. The corners are cleaner, there's the ability to comment on stories. Has the medium fundamentally changed? I'd argue that it hasn't.

And yet, we use the news on the Internet. Because it is the best medium we have... for now. Until it becomes obsolete and irrelevant, like radio, or at least, half as relevant as it once was, like newspapers. Is there hope? I'm not sure. All the creative types have fled the "regular" web to work on applications for mobile devices. There is some true innovation in how news is displayed on these challenging pocket devices. But on a larger canvas, like a 800x600 monitor? Innovation has long stalled.

I've long lamented that most newspaper front pages look the same. More editors are concerned with cookie-cutter designs that their copy editors can quickly throw together, rather than creating a display that is actually engaging and interesting. Newspaper design has become a science, rather than an art. Same thing, I fear, is happening to the web. If Newseum were to archive the front pages of all news web pages, I'm sure we would easily see how similar they are all to each other as well. It would be easier to see how the cookie cutter has started to destroy the innovation, the displays that the Internet can so easily provide.

This may make me a cranky, hypocritical curmudgeon, but I'll still continue to go to news web sites, if only because they are a fast and efficient method. The difference between them and the rest of the web is, I like visiting other web sites, I feel a need to visit news sites. I'm looking forward to a day when the innovators come back to the main Internet and put their heads together to create a new system of disseminating news. To paraphrase the Black Eyed Peas (see? There's some keyword search optimization going on there.), sites like Facebook and Twitter are so 3008, news web sites are so 2000 and late.

--- If you happen to see a visually compelling news web site, one that isn't a cookie-cutter of an existing web page (or decade), please let me know, either in the comments, or Twitter me a mention: @charlesjurries. Thanks.

Make use of your space

2009-06-29T14:55:00.003-04:00

Web sites are being redrawn. For mobile applications, Blackberry and iPhone users can now enjoy content in a new type of web site that best utilizes the screen and design of their device. However, what does the desktop user get?

A web optimized for the smallest screen possible.

I realize the web isn't quite ready to go widescreen yet. It wasn't until this spring that I upgraded from my old CRT to a flat panel display, at 1440x900. While my desktop wallpaper looks amazing in widescreen, and I can watch HD shows that fill up my monitor nicely, the rest of the internet is not a particularly incredible experience. I can get used to viewing content on the left hand side of my monitor just fine. In fact, most times, I don't think twice about that.

That doesn't mean it should be fine.

If we can optimize the web experience for a tiny phone, web developers, how about the "regular" internet? I know technologies exist that'll add or subtract widgets based on the detected monitor resolution. Why isn't this become more commonplace? I have all this real estate available on my screen. Shoot, this text editor I'm using to write this blog post only covers about half the width of my screen.

This is my hope for the future of web: That web sites will become smart enough that they will have a fixed site size (for the smallest of small monitors, the ones that they cater to today), but then, based on browser and window size, widgets (added content) will be added (or subtracted). I have this nice widescreen monitor. I'd like the internet to be able to do something with it.

EDIT: Yes, I understand the irony, considering how small my blog's width is.

What a news organization should have

2009-06-11T02:19:00.000-04:00

I understand that adopting a currently existing news organization into a full-fledged digital operation takes lots of effort from people, a change in ideology, and can be like turning a cruise ship around: it goes very slowly. I'm not going to talk about that.

Instead, if I were hired to start a brand new news organization, one that had been given enough money for a nice web site (already we know we are dealing in fantasy, don't we?), here is a list of what I would try to include:

The ability to Like, Comment, and Share a story. The up and coming generations do not consume news, they share it. They live with it and pass it around. Make these buttons visible and prominent. Do not bury them.
Unafraid to link to an original press release. This is perhaps the most controversial claim, as re-wording a press release has often been the tradition between the writers and the PR world for decades. In a land where releases go online as soon as they are faxed around, there is no need for a news organization to pretend they have original information. Link to the release. This shows transparency, and a level of trust with readers. Chances are, you are still re-wording the release to fit your style. This will help your audience to see that they can view source information, but can still see the original information for themselves.
Geo-tag EVERYTHING. And then do something with that information. Make an interactive map. Sell your map to real estate web sites. Give people a chance to experience the news in new ways, and with a good archive system, you can show them stories from years past.
Archive everything. Have fund-raisers for the servers if need be. Keep everything on record. News is news, and we'll want to see it years down the line.
As far as the reporting goes... be serious when you need to be serious. Words mean things, and formality still works well when it comes to meatier issues.
Let me export your news. Give me RSS, Atom, XML and any other feed the evil internet geniuses can come up with. Shoot, let me create a custom RSS feed by selecting which sections and authors I want to keep up with.
Commit to having a clutter-free front page. (Reminder: this is fantasy.) No one likes seeing ads above and below every widget.
For pete's sake, make the web site looks like it's been design in at least the last decade.
Don't just toss up a bunch of text on the screen. Design the site in a way that guides me along the text. And makes me feel like I'm guiding myself along.
News sites have failed miserably in creating social networks to connect with the audience. So, imbrace whatever is out there. Is it 2001? Then embrace MySpace. 2006? Facebook. 2009? Twitter.
If on Twitter: Do NOT just promote your product. Create a value out of yourself.
If this is a web site for a newspaper, television station or a radio station, post a story BEFORE your next product. I know this can be very difficult for a reporter to do, since she/he will need to be creating a broadcast script and a print script no matter what medium they are working with. Nevertheless, if I see a story being teased by someone somewhere, I should be able to go to the web site and see the story.
If making a webcast, make it interesting. And don't call it a webcast. That's about as cringe-inducing as putting the letters "Tw" in front of anything to make it sounds Twinteresting (Twitter = Tw). The word webcast sounds foreign, and cold. And, often unprofessional. Find a different description.
Everyone on the staff has a way to tell a story. Utilize them, in whatever big or small way that they aren't being used currently. (Yes, that's a pretty broad statement to make... describing anything specific would risk ruining finding the creativity in people.)
Let your staff go on social networks, with either no leash or a really long one. Unless they are publicly bashing the company, most statements will be okay. People understand that individuals have opinions. And opinions do not often agree with "the company." Let people be human, and other humans will find that much more interesting.
Don't stand in the way of getting me to the news. Don't give me a box that cycles through top stories. Don't make me click on a headline that just makes that story the highlight on the box. Don't hide headlines on another page. I go to a news site for news. Make that the king of value, and never forget that.
Mobile sites, apps, SMS alerts... These are terrific things. Let creative people work on these, make them valuable, make them special. The crowd who will use these are looking for something new, something to fascinate them. Meet and surpass their expectations.
Encourage "citizen reporting." Don't hide it, spotlight it.
On the other hand, also highlight your own reporters. People care less about a brand. A brand is just a portal to engaging with others. Make your reporters the stars, and let the reporters build a brand about themselves. And if this requires making the web site look more like a Facebook, Twitter or Myspace versus a 'traditional' news web site, so be it.
If you can talk about an issue for hours, do so. Set up a webcam on Skype for all I care. Get some live video going.
Make your tag cloud visible. Let me see how stories are being organized internally. Plus, anything to help people filter down how they are searching, anything, can help.
Stalk your reporters, and let the public stalk them. Online, of course! (I'm scaring a lot of you right now, aren't I?) Whether its a story or a SMS update, let people know where the reporter is. Wondering where a photo was taken? I believe technology will soon catch up (3, 5 years? 10 at the latest) where we can get GPS information automatically in our cameras, and with SD cards already able to transmit to a web site automatically, the audience will be able to know exactly where a reporter is getting their information. We all ask each other "where were you?" at an event. This will help answer that question before it is even asked.
No pre-roll ad to exceed :30 seconds, preferably :15 maximum. (I'll be slightly realistic here.)
If it isn't broke, don't try to fix it. Always keep this rule in mind when tinkering with the site.
Also, remember: Users will always use Occam's Razor. That is, if faced with a complicated choice and the less-complex choice, less-complex always wins. Make sure its your web site, and not your competitors, that uses Occam's Razor -- the users will be thankful for it.
Experiment. Have the resources to go a nature show? (Podcast, video podcast, weekly blog series...) Do it.

That's enough for now. Leave additional suggestions in the comments, or re-tweet me at @charlesjurries.

Creating subscription walls for all news sites

2009-05-31T00:49:00.000-04:00

With all due respect to a potential future employer, I'm not completely in agreeing with business legend Rupert Murdoch. He recently said that he believes that news sites will eventually have pay walls, to the point where you don't even get some content for free, you get no content for free. Newspaper executives have, of course, been the only ones really concerned about squeezing out more money on the internet beyond ads. (They've long been getting money from ads and subscriptions, and making some large amounts of money off of it.) I'm sorry, but if all newspaper web sites go behind a pay wall, I'll just find a web site without a pay wall. And they will exist. And if they sell ads, and get a large audience, guess what? They'll get some good money.

If I have to pay to go to a newspaper web site, I'll go to a web-only news web site, or a TV station's news site. Most of those places have original reporting and some wire services feeds. Or, if push comes to shove, I'll get news from a radio news site. But man, those sites suck. Please, newspaper executives, don't hide behind pay walls: I'd rather get news from web sites that are at least halfway attractive to look at.

Micropayments: Trying to hold on to old models

2009-05-25T01:14:00.001-04:00

During the weekly What's New in News podcasts, the issue of micropayments comes up fairly frequently. Long after we've dismissed it, after we've had a reputable guest dismiss it, the journalism community is still fascinated with the concept of charging you to get the information you need.

Here's the issue: We don't get news from a web site for free. Beyond the fact that ISP's are usually expensive as it is, news web sites come with ads. Lots of ads. Interactive ads, ads that can expand to take up the entire screen, display ads, box ads, text ads, and any other form of advertising. The cost to click on a web site has already, in some small part, been paid. And now you want to take some money from me, too?

Newspapers once made a questionably ethical practice of charging for subscriptions and display advertising, making a large profit margin that many other industries did not see. Now on the internet, most web sites do not charge for subscriptions. Ads still exist. Just like they have on radio and TV, which did not charge for subscriptions but still existed more or less okay.

Are micropayments a way to generate revenue? That's certainly the idea. Is it fair? I'd argue no. It's not like iTunes, where I'll listen to a track over and over again. A news article has little repeat value. There was a house fire? I'll read it once, maybe twice, and then its done, over. I'm not going to sit down at the beach with a news article I paid for three years ago to relax. Its not entertainment, its knowing what goes on in the world around me.

I hope news organizations try micropayments. And I hope they fail miserably. Then we can stop this silly argument once and for all.

In Defense Of Twitter

2009-04-19T02:02:00.002-04:00

Have you been to a news web site, read a newspaper or a magazine within the past six months? If so, you have no doubt heard about Twitter, a popular microblogging service. And yet, some of those stories don't get the point of the service at all.

Take for instance, this column from LATimes.com. The fiery columnist -- who, to be fair and throw a compliment her way, is an excellent writer and writes a compelling column -- says this about the program in her conclusion: ". . . along with "what am I doing right now?" maybe it's time to ask "what the hell are we doing"?" Her take on the system is that the tweets bring people down to an idiotic, superficial level, full of uninteresting details on the mundane events of every persons right.

Before we go any further, I must disclose this: I tweet. A lot. So much so that I know what a hash tag is, I @ reply someone, I know what a DM is, along with a RT. My screenname is @charlesjurries.

What these columnists, who no doubt need to find a ax to grind to meet deadline, fail to miss is that the "mundane" aspects of a persons life are what makes a person a person. Does everybody care that I was walking around downtown Grand Rapids? No. But some do. Maybe they haven't been in a while. Maybe they're expecting some pictures from that afternoon (sorry, the answer is "no"). Maybe someone didn't take me to be the person to spend an afternoon down in GR.

Its those kinds of simple details that make us a complete person. Imagine if your random thoughts on your niches, and your life details, were each a piece of straw. Over time, your Twitter feed would give your followers a more complete scarecrow, a sense not only what this person does, but how they think.

Does Twitter have some superficial people on it, full of just mind-numbing boring tweets? Yes. You don't have to follow them. You follow who you want, at your pleasure. If you find them interesting, if they give you a unique insight into their world, into others, that's why you'll go to them. People don't want to be bored. So they won't allow themselves to be.

Another advantage Twitter has over traditional blog posts: It cuts right to the chase. While you can say a lot in 140 characters (their limit), it also limits you to creatively say what you want in a concise sentence or two. No bloating. No filibustering. You have to say what you mean, the first time. This amazingly forced clarity helps to improve communication (surprising, right?) and the exchange of ideas.

Another thing... Twitter can be a conversation starter. By tweeting those fleeting - but momentarily important - thoughts, instead of forgetting them, you could (and I have) wind up talking about more conversation points than before.

Does Twitter and the world of microblogging have a ways to go? Yes. In future years, Twitter could turn out to be the Xanga of this genre, the early adaptor that is improved upon by a better service. For what we have right now, though, its pretty good. And its good to know what's on your mind right now. Because it makes you more of a whole person. It allows me to pick what's on your mind. And you on mine.

Go ahead and let the doubters doubt. They've picked on the negatives and refuse to see any positives, and chances are, will not allow themselves to. They've created Twitter to be this sort of terrible ideal, many times without columnists giving it a fair chance. (At times, I wonder if some writers have even signed up for the service at all, and instead are reading Ashton Kutcher's feed and coming to their own conclusions.)

* Sorry if this post seemed a little disjointed. I was just writing down what was on my mind. (Oh, writer's snap!)

News print need to morph to stay relevant

2009-03-16T01:25:00.000-04:00

Newspapers are morphing.

No, you read that correctly. It says “morphing,” not “dying.” And here’s why.

Newspapers are still an attractive medium for consumers. Its easily portable, easy to share, you can tuck in a coat pocket, you don’t need batteries or a stable internet connection to enjoy the content and it comes back in a day or two with new content.

Except… that content isn’t new. You’ve seen it before on the web.

As part of my duties preparing the podcast What’s New in News, I cruise through a lot of articles on the news industry. Every week there are articles demeaning the death of newspapers, how with newspapers we will see the death of journalism, and how American civilization will effectively cease without paying a buck for the print edition of a news group’s product? Please. Newspapers are unattractive to people because they don’t have anything in them that attracts people to them.

Think about it. The news section has what? Stories about what happened yesterday. Forget radio and TV news scooping those stories earlier, you can now read about those stories as the reporters are figuring it out, thanks to technologies such as blogs, Twitter and live webcasts.

What about sports? You can get that content online as well. How about Arts & Entertainment? Again, online. TV listings can now be interactive, with you selecting your favorite channels for listings online, and being able to set your DVR to record them, right over the internet. Can’t do that in print. You can read the funnies online, and get a wider range of them as well. (Mary Worth and Pearls Before Swine would make strange bedfellows in print, but read together seamlessly online.)

So how can I say newspapers are not dying? I didn’t. I said they are morphing. There is a slight difference.

When television became popular decades ago, radio went through a violent shift in content. No longer did people want to listen to Burns & Allen, they wanted to see them. News has since left the radio dial as well, with dedicated radio newsrooms being about as rare as a working telegraph. (When was the last time you met a dozen or more radio journalists?) Radio went from being a place for escapism and news to transforming into a triple threat of talk radio, sports, and music.

Radio went through a very tough transformation. It still exists. Being readily available in cars, homes, offices, MP3 players and clock radios, many people still listen to the radio. Megalith corporations and their fiscal mismanagement have endangered many of these stations. Currently, I think that is more of the business end’s problem than the consumer’s.

So how do we translate this into a survival tale for newspapers? To be honest, I’m not quite sure. Is it dropping all national content and becoming a community newspaper? Is it that, plus all state content from a shared co-op wire service? Could be. Could not be. The future of newspapers may be something we have yet to see enter the mainstream.

But as long as newspapers charge for money, people will demand content that is worth their dollar. It will take some true innovators and some really brave publishers to make that happen. Until then, newspapers may continue to see operations fold all across the nation, blaming the internet for their failure to innovate and stay relevant.

Video Mystery Shops

2009-02-12T00:52:00.002-05:00

I was cruising through my local craigslist, seeing what was happening, when I came across an ad for a "Video Mystery Shopper." The job would have one entering a place of business with a tiny concealed camera and secretly videotaping an employee using customer service techniques. The employee's superiors would then use that videotape to show the employee how to improve their job performance.

While I'm sure this is hardly a new occurrence, it freaks me out a little. Who would go out of their way to conceal a camera on themselves to secretly record a conversation, knowing full well it will go towards a tedious review? No matter what employers have you sign when you get hired, that kind of practice just freaks me out a little.

I'm sure later I'll look at this post and be like, "man, I just didn't get it then," but, for right now, that seems really tricky and devious.

Summing up my profession

2009-01-25T20:39:00.003-05:00

"When people are at war of their house is burned down, they may not be in the mood [to be interviewed] either, but its my job as a journalist to be insensitive for entertainment purposes." - Kim, character from U.S. television series Kath & Kim

Screenshot of the Day

2009-01-15T13:52:00.000-05:00

'Welcome.

3 reasons to like 24 again

2009-01-14T13:40:00.001-05:00

FOX's political thriller 24 returned to airwaves again. After many hit-and-miss seasons, the show revamped itself once again, moving from Los Angeles to the nation's capitol. CTU is, in effect, gone. The FBI is now the government agency in focus now. The fictional U.S. government -- already having had two African-American presidents -- has now had elected its first female president. A growing overseas genocide is eclipsing her term, one full of political intrigue, spies and moles.

With the new landscape, new locations and new political term comes an almost entirely new cast of characters. Here are the top three most interesting characters to be seen in this new season:

President Allison Taylor (portrayed by Cherry Jones)

Presumably, Taylor will be given a larger role in the show in future hours, because she is essentially just there on the show to look pretty. And yet, Cherry Jones makes the most out of the scenes she gets, playing a POTUS who is not quite power-hungry, not yet beaten down by the demands of the office. She brings a serious presence to the office. Jones plays Taylor as a thinking woman, a smart intellectual, one who does not make uninformed decisions. (Which, to clarify, is rare in the 24verse.) Taylor is more a contemporary of David Palmer than any of the show's other dozen presidents.

Janis Gold (portrayed by Janeane Garofalo)

Much ado has been made out of the fact that Garofalo is playing a neurotic computer whiz, similar to the show's resident computer nerd, Chloe. However, if you needed an example of how these two are different: Janis Gold uses a PC, Chloe O'Brian uses a Mac. Garofalo gives an incredibly restrained performance of a neurotic, slightly paranoid and very emotional computer programmer. She doesn't give the biting insults to her co-workers like Chloe. Instead, she either reminds them to do their job, or, tries to help them out. The writing, and Garofalo's performance, makes me intrigued to see more of Janis, to figure out what makes her tick.

Agent Renee Walker (portrayed by Annie Wersching)

It would be very easy to portray a tough-as-nails FBI agent as an emotionless robot. So often the tough women are portrayed as empty inside, without a care in the world except their careers. Wersching took her character and made her human. She has a job to do, but, like Bauer, she cares more about doing what's right than going by the rules. While there is yet not much depth to her character (perhaps a romantic entanglement with a boss?), Agent Walker may prove to be one of the most valuable additions to the show in recent seasons.

Media Prediction: Magazines buying ads for content

2009-01-03T13:48:00.003-05:00

On the most recent episode of What's New in News, I was thrown a curve ball when asked for my prediction for what will happen in 2009. Thankfully, the human brain moves at a much faster pace than we speak, so by the time it was my turn to answer, I had something to say. Here it is:

News magazines (as in, Time, Newsweek, those kinds of magazines that have news in them) will see a very difficult year. To help offset costs and to strengthen the cross-branding among media companies, news magazines will buy ad pages from other magazines in which to insert content. You may pick up a copy of People magazine and inside will be two pages of news from Time magazine, bought and paid for.

With high recognition but a decreasing print product, magazines will try to promote themselves with their content, not just a terrific display ad, but terrifically displayed ads showing news and information from the magazines themselves.

You can take this model further. What if your news organization could buy ads for your town's magazine? You could put in the most talked-about news since the past circulation, relevant news, more than just "this is where you can catch us" and "fun weather facts." Do deeper. Do more. Put (more of) your content out there.

Can it boost sales and/or page views? Maybe. Its untested, as far as I know. There is the danger that media companies would just turn their magazines into "samplers" for their online brands, where there is little content but lots of previews for what they own online (or maybe even still in the store). And yet, I think that if you can buy the ad space and its approved, it could be a very creative way of promoting yourself in a engaging and creative medium.

What is that widget at the top of my blog?

2008-12-20T16:28:00.002-05:00

If you are reading this post in a newsreader/aggregater, this post still applies to you.

There is now an audio player for a podcast called What's New in News located just above my recent blog posts. It does not long for you to understand that I am part of this podcast. The podcast, about journalism issues, is a weekly series, with new episodes every weekend.

More will be said about the show in the coming months; we're rolling out with a "soft launch" right now, with 'full court press' coming later.

In the meantime, enjoy our podcast! For anyone interested in what's going on with news and industry issues, it is a perfect discussion for you. (Better yet, it is a call-in show, too. More on that, later on.)

3 more semesters?

2008-12-09T14:52:00.002-05:00

I am looking over my transcript of what I need to do in order to graduate from Grand Valley State University, and it is looking like its a possibility that I may have three semesters left; Winter 2009, Fall 2009 and Winter 2010. There's still a possibility that I may have one or two odd classes to take (such as, if my advisor feels I need more electives, or if Spanish doesn't go well and I have to retake), or if there's a whole other section of needed classes that I'm not seeing.

Where'd the jobs go?

2008-12-05T01:14:00.003-05:00

The American media is not so quick to make itself the focus of attention. While most people know that getting a job in, say, the auto industry is a tough decision currently, many do not know that it is even tougher to get a media job.

And that forecast is not necessarily looking to get any better.

One of my classes this semester was held seminar-style, where students researched issues in journalism and reported them to the class in 2-5 minute bits. (There is, of course, dry irony with students complaining about how the media does not go in-depth, when in fact, their information bringing last about as long as a TV news piece.)

One topic that was brought up over and over again was jobs. No matter what medium was discussed, job cuts and mass layoffs were brought up. With the economy in a recession for about a year now, media companies have been feeling increasing pressure to do more with less money. Losing the automakers -- who have been a stable source of income for decades -- does not necessarily help.

We heard from someone in the local media game who is in a position to hire people, and she told us that people have to be willing to take on multiple tasks. You cannot be "just" one thing anymore to be successful.

We have also heard that the "old timers" who refuse to adapt -- and who come with a pricier salary -- are being replaced by younger folks like myself who know more technologies and skill sets and can do two or three people's jobs. How many available jobs out there are a direct result of downsizing? That is a humbling thought.

Jobs for most fields go through rough phases. Media for years used to be considered more stable. After all, everyone "needs" news and they need people to produce the news, right? Well, the industry is finding out just how many people it really needs.

By the time I graduate, will the job market have changed? Sure. Probably. Will it be better? That's unclear. I hope that I can continue to gain skills and sharpen existing sets to land that elusive job, whatever it may be, wherever I can find it.

Everything you need to know about Mary Worth in one panel

2008-11-23T15:51:00.003-05:00

"No, Mary! Let it go."

"I can't... I won't."

That about sums up the Mary Worth universe perfectly.

James Wilson as Hulk?

2008-11-21T02:37:00.003-05:00

Robert Sean Leanord... Hulk-in-progress.

Planning my career AND school?

2008-11-16T22:56:00.003-05:00

I am in a unique life position.

Whereas most people take serious worry over their careers once they have graduated and have an established reputation, I am starting to wonder what I should do now, before I've graduated, before my name is well-known.

For the 2007-2008 academic year, I was a reporter and Web Design Editor for the Collegiate, the college newspaper serving Grand Rapids Community College. I won an award for my reporting from the Michigan Press Association. My work on CollegiateLive.com won first place awards from the MPA and the Michigan Community College Press Association.

During the summer, I sent out my resumes to a few media professionals. One group bit, interviewed me, and now I am completing an internship at the still-unnamed Media Group. (Blog manners say it is polite not to mention your present company. You can still figure it out.)

With one chapter in my life about to close, I'm trying to figure out what the next one will be about. I may talk to the people at the Lanthorn, the college newspaper serving Grand Valley State University, and seeing if they need any help in any capacity. (Having some background in photography, writing, web and limited graphic design, I am sure there's something I could do.)

Another option to explore, I feel, may come up during one of my winter classes. Among the classes I am slated to take is Broadcast News I, which the college describes as:

News writing for radio and television. Projects include writing and producing newscasts and interviews.

Production, in the TV sense of the term, is not something I have had really any experience with. That would be another nice tool to add to my skill set. Might I even work with the Grand Valley TV station?

Why not just kick back and enjoy a couple semesters of just school? Well, journalism jobs are not terribly abundant. Some jobs that exist are there because media companies fire the old fogies who don't want to adapt to new media, so they hire one new spunky kid to do 2-3 people's job. The appearance of jobs does not mean that everyone gets jobs. There are more graduates than available jobs. And I've been "scoping out" some competition, and the issue is not that I'm qualified - I definitely am, to toot my own horn - it is that other people are as qualified, if not more so.

To prove that I can be a worthy performer is more than just saying "I can" in a job interview. Everyone will say that to get a job. The interviewer doesn't know your true capacity. They are trying to. But people give lip service in interviews. To prove that you can do what you say you do, you need examples. Portfolio pieces. And current ones at that. I won't be able to use a piece that I wrote in May, 2008 for a job interview in Nov., 2019. That's five years old. It's dated. Old. Stale. (Not to mention media companies have no money, and will be having even less in the years ahead, so whoever they hire has to be worth it.)

By having an "easy semester," with only fifteen credits and my part-time job, I could be open to a gap in my resume and not many skills gained. Is it unfair? Maybe. College offers a lot of theoretics and analyzing, which is terrific, but there is often more talking than doing. And journalism is an industry about doing.

Hopefully, at the very least, the broadcasting class will allow an opportunity to do. And maybe I should start thinking about another internship in the summer.

Infrared Speed Oven

2008-11-13T23:32:00.005-05:00

According to the endlessly informative but hopelessly confusing Google Analytics, the top source of traffic to this blog has been my post on ShamWOW!. A post written a week in advance and auto-posted while I went on a camping trip. To that end, do people want to hear my bemusings on TV products? Mmmmno. But that will not stop me.

Why?

I saw the most amazing infomercial over the weekend.

The Black & Decker Infra Wave Speed Oven is a revolutionary new oven. You know how some food takes too long in a regular oven, waiting for it to preheat? And how some foods - like nachos and pizza - don't taste the same when reheated in the microwave? Well, then the Speed Oven is for you!

What's that? It's just a regular toaster oven? No, no.

It is a toaster oven with Infrared technology.

And presets, just like a microwave!

The commercial shows frozen food being cook to perfection in 20 minutes, no need for thawing. The InfraRed senses the food and it's computer gizmo's calculate how best to cook the food. They say it's technology used by the "best" upscale restaurants. And now it can be in your kitchen!

If you have any time this weekend, find a poor cable channel that fills their airtime with infomercials and try to catch one for this. I know it's tough, since most infomercials are for Gunthy Renker products changed my life, because, lipstick will do that.

It is tough to talk about a ~~toaster oven~~ Speed Oven without video or demonstrations, so please, take my word for it: it is amazing.

Sharing my homework

2008-11-12T01:38:00.002-05:00

It is not all that often I share my homework with other people. Especially when some parts are a little "messy." Nevertheless, this is "Web 2.0," the day and age of sharing. To that end, I here have my Nonverbal Communication class final project, presented to you in three 5-page Scribd documents for your enjoyment.

Final Part 1

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:

Final Part 2

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:

Final Part 3

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:

Brothers & Sisters and a Bad Robot

2008-11-10T18:48:00.003-05:00

During last night's episode of Brothers & Sisters, sharp-eyed viewers such as myself may have noticed that the robot drawing by the "geeky magician" may have looked a little familiar. Did it ring a bell? Take another look:

Fans of a fair portion of modern television will recognize that drawing as the infamous "Bad Robot" production's signature Bad Robot.
See the resemblance? It's too uncanny to just be a coincidence, right? So what gives? Brothers & Sisters is not a J.J. Abrams/Bad Robot production. What's the connection?

To start, both Ron Rifkin and Balthazar Getty previously worked on Alias, a Bad Robot program. Patricia Wettig guest starred in the same show. Wettig's real-life husband, Ken Olin, is a producer for Brothers & Sisters and a guest star, and was previously a producer on Alias.

The J.J. Abrams connection continues. Sarah Caplan is also a producer for Brothers & Sisters, having previously worked on Felicity, Alias and Lost, all projects J.J. has been involved in.

Flipping through channels, Part 2

2008-11-09T19:03:00.004-05:00

Why English is confusing, example #4,790

2008-11-01T03:04:00.004-04:00

HEADLINE: "Obama seeks landslide victory; McCain says he's far left"

I know news organizations are scraping the bottom of the political barrel before election day as far as story ideas go. However, I doubt very much McCain would say that about himself. (Also, what candidate wouldn't seek a landslide victory?)

Reporter survives zombie attack

2008-10-30T23:17:00.008-04:00

On Oct. 30, 2008, Rob Bliss continued his mass social experiments in downtown Grand Rapids by staging an attempt to beat the world record for the largest zombie walk.

The event itself was fun, if not disturbing to see large masses of 'zombies.' Many of whom were very much decked out as the "realistic," kind of scary zombies. It was not for those lacking any imagination or a sense of humor. (For those who had both, it was still unsettling.)

Now, I don't necessarily want to make this news report a big deal. (Those who know me, and news channels, and my internship at Unnamed Media Company, know why) However, I felt terrible for reporter Elizabeth Erwin. Watch the video. Blog continues after.

Did you see that at the end of the video? They fade out as the creepy happens. Look again:

A ZOMBIE WAS PAWING AT HER HAIR.

A ZOMBIE WAS PAWING THROUGH HER HAIR.

I was there as she was reporting and briefly spoke to her afterwards. She laughed a little about the live shot, how unique and different it was, and how it's nice to be able to cover something not tragic once in a while.

That said, I certainly have not been trained for this kind of thing in journalism school. And I don't think you can be.

About "24: Redemption"

2008-10-29T23:13:00.002-04:00

And you thought a half-hour commercial was bad.

Have you seen the commercials on FOX Broadcast for 24: Redemption? It's a two-hour TV movie that is nothing more than an elaborate set-up/commercial for the new season. No, seriously. The movie was made after the first few episodes were filmed, in order to "tie things together." How great is Episode 1 if you have to make Episode 0?

Mary Lynn Rasjkub won't be in the prequel as feisty computer genuis Chloe O'Brian. Then, why bother?

Well, Powers Boothe makes a cameo as Daniels, the power-hungry Vice-President from last season. Peter MacNicol returns also. Cherry Jones makes her long-awaited debut as the shows first female president. Jones will also be in the new season, playing the same character. (Hey, odder things have happened. This is 24 we are talking about.)

Jon Voight is in this movie also. Although, without hearing any spoilers, I'm sure he will only make a "surprise" cameo as a twist ending before commercials. It will probably go something like this:

MOVIE VILLAIN: Mission success.

(figure emerges from shadows. It's Jon Voight, he's playing a villain)

VOIGHT: GOOD. Proceed with the plan as scheduled.

(zoom up on Voight's face. The orchestra goes crazy with suspense. Cut to black.)

Sprague Grayden will be in this movie as well, but IMDb doesn't have her down for the season. That probably means her character dies. She's a very capable actress. Sadly, 24 isn't known for bringing out the best acting in people. Even the versatile Keifer Sutherland occasionally drones on like an automatic action robot. But the acting is not why most people watch the show anyways.

24: Redemption airs Nov. 23 on FOX. I'll watch it, because it is much healthier for me to hate a television show than anything else. Plus, I can watch 24 and Heroes and play the fun weekly game, "which lowered the bar for television quality this week?" It's a tough game.

It's 2008 when... a newspaper makes online documentary

2008-10-22T23:35:00.003-04:00

The Star-Ledger has made a 13-minute online documentary.

Whether or not this is the first time a newspaper has done such a long-form video project for the web, I don't know. I can't imagine it can be the first, yet, I don't know who would be.

13 minutes is pretty long for a web video. However, that rule usually applies for entertainment programs. The rules have not yet been written for Internet news videos.

It's a very interesting project. With more training - and maybe an extra night in Avid - the documentary could have been a little slicker, sharper and faster. But it's a terrific first effort. And I love how the reporter doesn't tell you the story: the people are so talkative, they talk you through the story. Then it becomes more than just a normal news magazine report. It becomes something a little more real.

http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/a-mystery-in-the-desert/

LOST PREVIEW THANK YOU ABC THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

2008-10-22T21:12:00.003-04:00

The trailer ends a little week, but, the first half gave me goosebumps. I cannot wait for this show to come back. Also, the 80 second trailer nicely summarizes events from Lost, which I never thought was possible to do in such a small time limit. Even the slowest of episodes take at least four minutes to re-tell to someone else!

Check out the amazing video here:

PHOTOS: Flipping Through Channels

2008-10-20T01:16:00.003-04:00

Nope, nothing good on.

Toupee? Touché!

2008-10-13T02:06:00.001-04:00

I don't actually have a blog post right now. I just wanted to share that headline.

Sorry.

A mouse in my shoe

2008-10-11T13:19:00.002-04:00

Men's shoes are not shaped like men's feet.

This is very important to remember.

Friday morning I was getting ready to go to work. I live about a mile and a half from my place of establishment. (This too is very important.) And I was not in a terribly big hurry, although I was cutting the clock a little close. I put my shoes on - which are about two weeks old, and I am still not completely used to the feel of them.

I left and got in my minivan. (Yes, I drive a minivan. It drives very nice!) After about half a mile, I felt something in my shoe. It felt like any kind of random object that gets in the shoe: a small stone, a twig, or a piece of cat food. It moved around a little bit, but it didn't bother me that badly.

Once I got to work, I decided that I should take the stone out of my shoe before I start working, just so I'm not distracted. So I untied my shoe. And thinking that I'd be dumping whatever was in my shoe on the ground anyways, I got out of my van and put my foot on the ground. I lifted my food out of my shoe....

...when a small mouse ran out of my shoe.

It seems that in the extra space in the "nose" of the shoe, the mouse had curled up before I put my foot in the shoe, and it didn't have any real room to move around. I try not to think about what I felt, which in all reality, was probably it's tail. Gross.

Scary bedtime story

2008-10-08T00:47:00.002-04:00

Well, this post may not have any pictures in it, but, it is a video that made me laugh. Ergo, it will make you laugh also.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a television show set in a Terminator universe. In this episode, Sarah Connor (Lena Headly) had to kidnap a small child in order to save him from mistaken-identity-death-by-a-Terminator. The younger woman, Cameron (Summer Glau), is a 'good' Terminator, sent back from the future to protect the Connors. The show explores somewhat this Cameron, being a robot, trying to act human-like. Sort of a drama-version of 3rd Rock from the Sun. And the results are often awkward and inappropriate. Take a look:

It's official: Lifetime is in on the joke

2008-10-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

Have you ever seen a commercial for a Lifetime Original Movie? Or ever heard of one? They are usually a few edits away from being great. And the acting, writing and production sometimes leaves a little something to be desired.

While watching a rerun of Frasier on Lifetime, I saw a commercial for an upcoming original movie. And seeing how many seconds of a 0:30 spot are devoted to Harry Connick Jr. "running" down a hallway in a comical, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace-type way, I just cannot believe that Lifetime does not try to feed into it's own stereotype.

The first time I saw this commercial, with the hallway running, I bursted out laughing.

A living room

2008-10-04T13:00:00.001-04:00

Here is some homework I will make public.

With no explanation.

Com135 Room

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Grand Rapids Singles

2008-10-04T12:24:00.001-04:00

Did you know Grand Rapids supposedly has an almost equal amount of single men and women? Just a 1% difference (more men) between the two. The more you know!

Cheating at the checkout

2008-09-28T20:42:00.000-04:00

Okay, so it is not cheating. But this tip is needlessly handy.

For people living in some Great Lakes states, they will know the hypermarket known as Meijer. At the self-checkout, I use my debit card. When I press the button to pay, it will ask me on the swipe pad to swipe, chose debit, cash back, all that stuff. And on the Meijer touch screen, similar questions will be asked.

Lo and behold, my breakthrough: You only have to use the swipe pad.

Once you are done scanning all items, just hit the "proceed to checkout" button and then just ignore the pay options. Swipe your card and follow the instructions there. You do not have to mess with giving double the information. And the receipt prints out just the same.

I still have a life, am living it

2008-09-27T17:09:00.002-04:00

As warned, blogging has been cut down quite a bit since school has started. I am still alive, however. So that is good news.

I am taking 12 credits worth of classes, working about 12 hours a week, and spending time with my internship at Unnamed Media Company (UMC). And I do not feel that stressed out... yet. Any deviation from my schedule might do just that, however.

Tuesday nights this summer were spent bowling with some friends. I have decided to keep that up over this semester, to ensure that I make at least some effort to socialize. Some semesters I bury myself in homework and barely see any friends - apart from the ones I work with - so that has been great for me as well. Except since the semester started, the stress has obviously kicked in and affected by bowling game, bringing me down from scoring 100+ a game to being fortunate to get 70 points. I think I need to use the bumpers.

I have two discussion classes this semester. These 400-level classes are spent with students doing reading and talking about what was read, while the teacher facilitates what goes on. This works great for one class where it is just four people talking.

I have more or less adjusted to the Grand Valley State University Allendale campus. I know where my buildings are, and I think I know where all the other classes are. I can get from building to building in just a few minutes. Most buildings are not too big, either. Except for Mackinaw Hall, where one can expecting to find a shopping mall hidden inside that labyrinth.

Grandpa J. had a small stroke. He's fine. He lost half his vision. That's about all I can say in a nutshell about that.

I assume the rest of the family is doing okay. I barely see them.

The new television season is starting to come back. I have never missed 24 less.

Heroes decided that "villains" means having some generic no-good-doers look menacing while everyone else becomes morally ambiguous. The Office decided that after receiving harsh criticism for their hour-long episodes last season to open this season with another hour-long installment. Smart!

Bones has not yet found a replacement for Zach in the lab. This past week's episode seems to hint that we're just a season away from the serial-killer-apprentice being reinstated to the land of the squints. House remains as comfortable has it always has. If only they would update the theme song with the other half of their cast. Ugly Betty remains the brightest thing I ever did see. Now that the show is filmed in New York City, I can try to identify places they are filming at that I recognize. So far: Times Square, and maybe that sprawling graveyard, which were all over the ride from LaGuardia to Manhattan.

I'm looking forward to the return of 30 Rock, Pushing Daisies and Private Practice. And Chuck, but, they debuted it one week prior to television broadcast, so it's already kind of come back for me.

Work is going fine at the Family Dining Establishment. People start, people leave, it's the perpetual revolving door. I get sad when people cut back on their hours. Then I remember I did the same this semester. It feels more wrong when others do that, though.

The internship at UMC is going good. A little... (complicated?) at times. But I am very fortunate to be working with some very nice people. I was afraid it would be a "stereotypical" newsroom with angry, egotistical people, but, I also have not met everyone. Those I have, do not fit the mold. Unless I am one of those people and I just don't recognize others like me.

I will probably be getting some more free time in a few weeks. The ratings for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles have been hemorrhaging lately. If that gets cancelled, I'll gain an hour on Monday nights. Until Samantha Who? comes back, that is.

"Someday a real rain will come"

2008-09-25T20:52:00.001-04:00

(Retail, Sept. 25, 2008)

Jesus Is My Friend

2008-09-12T18:21:00.002-04:00

Words cannot explain how spiritually confused I got when I started to laugh at this terribly dated video. (It's a somewhat catchy song, though. Be warned.)

The rest of Fringe

2008-09-11T23:33:00.003-04:00

FOX's newest show Fringe is okay. It was a good enough pilot, setting up some character dynamics.
However, I still don't know how a normal episode will play out.

There were elements in Fringe that were supposed to be scary, but were not. Do robotic arms freak you out? Then Fringe might scare you. Does brain wave manipulation enhanced by LSD to communicate telepathically freak you out? (It's a common nightmare, I know!) Then this episode may not have been for you.

I thought the show would be helmed by Joshua Jackson. It wasn't. He is just a supporting character. J.J. Abram's latest find, Anna Torv, is the main character. And that's fine. It's just not what I thought. (And that's my bad, I suppose.) Her character does not have the warmness of Keri Russel's Felicity, the range of Jennifer Garner's Sydney Bristow, or the helplessness of Evangeline Lilly's Kate Austen. The character was a little too "tough female detective," which not so much a slam against Anna Torv (who did well enough with her material), as it is against the direction of the character. I'll do better when I have my own shows, right?

The writers need to give the Joshua Jackson character A) something about him for us to like, B) less snarky remarks. We get that he's supposed to be the "audience's voice," but, he was too snarky. He made about ten too many snide remarks. Once they (the writers, producers, directors, and actor) find the character's voice, I'm sure it'll get better.

The veteran actor John Noble is going to be the breakout star of this show. The brilliant but confused fringe science expert that he plays brings the screen to a energetic life. Not to mention that he is one of the funnier, more unique comic relief characters that J.J. Abram's & co. have come up with.

With a few more episodes to find their footing, I think Fringe could be good. I don't think it's a show that, time-wise, I can make a weekly priority. But if it's on and I'm home, yeah, I might watch it. It looks like it'll be a good enough mystery program.

Jaw on the ground

2008-09-10T23:38:00.005-04:00

I just sat down to watch FOX's new show Fringe. I've just hit pause at the 2:47 mark. Not because it is bad. In those 167 seconds, it established drama, fear, terror and sheer horror.

Fringe has been compared to The X-Files, which I hope is unfair, because Mulder and Scully, while iconic, where never that "fun" to watch. But the X-Files had some nasty episodes. The house episode with the inbreds? Nastiest hour of television I've seen. The guy who can swallow other people and regurgitate them fully healed of their diseases? That was gross. But, there was something that was on screen for about half a second that completely grossed me out.

As in, I had to take a break, because it was nasty.

I'm going to continue to watch Fringe. I hope it's good. It's got Lance Reddick, who plays a maybe-supervillian on Lost. And J.J.'s sci-fi shows have always been very well cast, so I'm sure the characters will be very alive and engaging.

But... After a long day of work, with a growing pile of homework, this was perhaps the last thing I needed to see. Oh man... My jaw!

EDIT: Added the title card. It's neat.

Fall TV Preview

2008-09-09T13:00:00.000-04:00

Here it is... the shows I will watch, and the shows that I think are good. (They are not always one and the same.)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - This show took a few episodes to pick up in it's inaugural season, but by the end it had come into it's own as a compelling character drama. I have yet to see a Terminator movie, and the television series is not quite canon with the movies themselves (nor are the movies 'canon' with themselves, either), which may make it more accessible to folks like me. Summer Glau shines as the female terminator sent to protect mankind. And Lena Headly (playing the weary, weathered mom of the future hope for mankind) can take sub-par material and make it sublime. The show is dark, it's gritty, but it's compelling. It cares about the human drama. For a show with robots, that's really something.
This season will deal with Skynet. The world will end, EVENTUALLY!!!

Pushing Daisies - This hour-long dramedy is like a grown-up version of a Saturday morning kid's cartoon. It is colorful, fun, usually harmless and one big fun ride. (Same can be said for ABC Family's The Middleman, but according to Nielsen, you guys never watched it, so how would you know?) *ahem* The show, whose premise is very high-concept, is completely approachable. It is a show that will eventually be used to describe something else. As in, you can only say "Pushing Daisies is like a mix between a Rode Dahl book and a Tim Burton movie," someday you'll be saying "this is a little like Pushing Daisies." It's colorful, charming, sometimes over-the-top, but always funny and always entertaining. The feeling it leaves you with is like eating a piece of your favorite pie - and going back for seconds. Except you don't have to break out the Tums afterwards.

Bones - This show already returned, but it is still one worth checking out. It's a crime procedural that focuses more time on the dynamic and 'tension' (Moonlighting-type tension) between the two leads. And then time is spent with relationships with the people in the lab. And while they will show you completely gross human remains, I will laugh more at the humor in an episode of Bones than will laugh during an hour-long episode of The Office. It may not be sophisticated, but the show is very comfortable with itself and what it is. And that's entertainment.

House - I love/hate this show. When the show breaks out of it's mold, it can be something incredibly special. The two-part finale (the bus accident) was some of TV's finest hours. When Dr. House had to help out that lady stranded in the ice shelter? Compelling and - pardon the pun - chilling. But when it sticks to it's default formula (almost kill the patient three times then get the right diagnosis), it is tedius and often unamusing. In those cases, it's usually just the rare sparring between House and his comedic foil Wilson that keep the energy of the show afloat. But the show is worth watching, especially for when you stumble upon those rare gems of episodes. They are truely something to behold.
This upcoming season will look into the all-too-common question of, how can I rebuild my friendship with you when I kind of killed your girlfriend?

Heroes - The show that is described by many - very unfairly - as the anti-Lost. Except it is as complicated. And has by now probably more characters than Lost ever will. But enough about who Ali Larter plays on the show! (The actress plays a character with multiple personalities.) The show runners promised to fix their mistakes in the second half of season one for a terrific season two. Well, season two sucked. Big time. So now they are promising to fix the mistakes again. And part of that includes adding villians, which is a novel idea for a good vs. evil-type show. This show was good in season one. But then there was Hiro and the cherry blossoms. Claire became more like a character from The Hills than the Claire we saw before. And Parkman still did not do much at all.
I have seen spoilers for this season. And I hear the premiere is excellent. But I am very cautious about the storylines I have heard about. VERY cautious.

Chuck - This show is about a tech-support worker who accidentally gets a top-secret government database inside his brain. One of the main jokes on the show is that the main character, Chuck, is so geeky that he is a loser, and that's why it's amazing a stunning woman is sent to protect him. Except, the actor, Zachary Levi, is not exactly underperforming in the look's department. And Chuck's personality is, well, just lovable, not that geeky. But in this type of show, it doesn't matter! Because it is the characters and their interactions that carry the show through. This is the type of show that may not even care much about consistency in later seasons. And it wouldn't matter. As long as they keep up the fun energy and the engaging relationships, it will remain one of my favorite shows.

Brothers & Sisters - I watch this show. I don't recommend it. It has some of the best acting on television, to date. But really, I can't - in good conscience - recommend this show. (But until the soap opera plots become too much to handle, I'll still make it my guilty pleasure.) The show is about the Walker family. Kitty and Tommy are Republicans, the rest are Democrats. Kitty is married to a Republican Senator who just pulled out of a Presidential bid. Tommy cheated on his wife, which was probably easy material for actor Balthazzar Getty. Said wife lost one of her babies and suffered depression. Kevin is gay, and can't keep a solid relationship for more than half a season. (But he got married in the season finale, so, we'll see.) Sarah is divorced, lost her kids in the settlement and is now managing her father's business, which may be crumbling underneath her. Justin is a recovering alcoholic and a war veteran. Rebecca was thought to be a long-lost sibling, but isn't, which means she and Justin can hook up, which is WEIRD. Uncle Saul, about 65 now, just decided to come out of the closet. And the patriarch, Nora (Sally Field), does better at keeping her own family in line than her own life. Although she has dated Danny Glover and Chevy Chase, so, she's not doing that terribly.
And the whole thing is complicated by the late patriarch's mistress, who holds a considerable interest in the family company. Awkward.
Again, as you can see, it is really not a show for everybody.

Private Practice - The show I am looking forward to the most. And here's why: it is an hour of entertainment. You don't have to think. You don't have to wonder, worry, or have any expectations. It's not a show for kids (much like, well, the rest of primetime), but it is definately a guilty-fun hour to watch.

Preview of fall TV preview

2008-09-05T23:25:00.002-04:00

I'll soon give some quick thoughts on what I'll be watching on television this fall. I think I just realized what show I missed the most, and it kind of surprised me. And it will probably surprise you, too.

Mad about what?

2008-09-01T15:07:00.002-04:00

I watched about seven minutes of Mad Men last night. Mad Men, a show about sexist, racist, egotists Madison Avenue ad executives a few decades ago, is heralded as one of the best contemporary television shows around, by almost every television critic.

I don't know why.

After the commercial break, I had no incentive to tune back. Granted, it was in the middle of an episode. That did not help me to immerse myself at all.

But there seemed to be pauses so long they could almost be passed off as being a vintage episode of The Hills. And "vintage" is a great way to describe the production values. It felt like watching a decades-old episode of Masterpiece Theater, produced on a BBC budget smaller than an episode of Doctor Who.

And I saw two scenes with one character, which, it was tough to say without having seeing the other episodes of the series, but I didn't feel like I was watching a story progress. I was watching someone's very boring day.

I know the character of Don Draper is supposedly this new iconic television character. And maybe he is, I didn't get to see much of him. But the seven minutes I saw of Mad Men was maddeningly boring. And this is coming from someone who can watch episodes of Masterpiece Theater and Mystery!.

Maybe I need to see a full episode. But I can't imagine wanting to.

I also recently tried watching an episode of Saving Grace on TNT. I could only make it through the opening act. It involved Grace, a bartender, giving drinks to her customers. Then there was some dancing on top of the bar. Someone got naked. Maya Gallo was there, and the joke seemed to be that she was a bad waitress because she couldn't flaunt her stuff as well as the others. Ha? And... that was about it. And then the weird, trippy theme song. I totally did not get it.

But I understand Lost. And I watch 24, Heroes, Chuck and Pushing Daisies. So it's not like I don't get the avant-garde television shows on today. But those shows? Uh-uh.

Quick update

2008-08-30T22:51:00.002-04:00

I have started school this week. I am now a Grand Valley State University student. Their sports team is the Lakers, but, I think I will always be one of the Grand Rapids Community College Raiders at heart.

One interesting thing about GVSU is, I pay more money for less instruction. For every credit you take at GRCC, you get one hour of instruction. So a 3 credit class would meet for a total of 3 hours, every week. And the teachers don't like to get our early, because you paid for three hours/week, you should get your moneys worth for these three credits. Well, at GVSU, a 3 credit class meets for 2 and a half hours a week. I am not yet quite sure why this is. It's kind of nice, spending less time in class. (Which is the worst part of collegiate education, next to homework.) But it's an interesting shift, one that I'm not yet sure how to respond to.

I cut back on hours at Unnamed Family-Oriented Tourist-Trap Restaurant, to do an internship at Unnamed Media Organization. So I will be juggling a full credit load of classes, work hours, plus an internship. If I blog less this fall, you now know why.

In other news, the new television season starts up again very soon. I still have to figure out which shows I'll watch on the same night as they air, which shows I'll catch up on over the weekend, and which shows I'll save for summer. I am a little bit of a television nerd, so, this is a very important decision for me to make. Monumental, even.

That's the short and sweet of it. More posts to (hopefully) come later.

"over 90,000 audience are turned on at the same time"

2008-08-24T22:31:00.000-04:00

The 2008 Beijing Olympics ended with a magnificent ceremony on Sunday night. Due to the time difference between America and China, and the fact that NBC showed the ceremony on tape-delay many hours after the ceremony happened, that allowed for almost an entire day to transpire in which I could look up "spoilers" for what happened during the show. This brought me to an official Olympic web site, whose synopsis for the closing ceremonies brought humor and light joy to English native speakers whose language speak. Bless their hearts, they tried. And all things considered, they did a pretty good job of writing in English. But there are some things that, being a native English speaker, just strike me as plain funny. Here are some choice excerpts:

"Guided by volunteers, all audience count down from 10 together. Both Arabic numerals and numbers written in Chinese characters appear on the screen with typical patterns of minority ethnic groups as the background."
Chuck's Comment: "Typical patterns of minority ethnic groups"? I feel like I'm back in Cultural Anthropology class again.

"With 60 light wheels shuttling, 200 bouncing and flying men run and roll over."

"A women's percussion band for welcoming performance and two children percussion players play cheerful music, and the whole stadium is in raptures."

"The torch lights in the hands of the marshals and over 90,000 audience are turned on at the same time, implying that the holy flame will be in our hearts forever."

"When the singing performance reaches the climax, the "memory tower" performers on the tree of friendship descend rapidly." (Chuck's comment: does this mean the "memory tower" really does not like the song?)

"50 male dancers holding Fuwa lucky cloud yarn strips and paper flower launchers and 120 other dancers dance on the Main Stage in tune with the rhythm of the song." (Chuck's comment: Are the 120 other dancers female? Cross-dressers? Who are these "other dancers"?)

Aggregators: The way to save newspapers?

2008-08-21T00:15:00.003-04:00

This post is for all the J-types out there. If you have been keeping up with the industry for a while, or visited LostRemote once, you will know that newspapers are dying, and dying fast. People are now getting their content from online providers. And it may not just be from one source. It may be from multiple.

(Bear with me, this will take more set-up to get to the main point.) Over at CNN.com, they are now linking to and posting interesting local stories that may grab attention for a national audience. They use different outlets as content providers.

So why not - and this is my main point here - do the same thing for newspapers? I'm not just talking about using the Associated Press and Reuters and AFP. I'm talking about striking alliances and profit sharing from different news outlets. Get TV stations to provide you stories. Get local magazines to strike content partnerships.

Many egos get put aside for Hulu.com, an online video web site where FOX, NBC Universal and a few other companies put their content into one site, free for the user. We're talking about News Corporation and NBC Universal working together and sharing revenue from a single content provider. If it can work on a national scale, can't it work - on some level - in a local context?

The paper can also use freelancers, bloggers and the "citizen journalist" to provide content, assuming they opt-in. Independent editors, not associated with any content provider, would pick and choose which stories get selected, and where.

I have no idea how profits would work, that I really cannot say. I know that this magical newspaper's web site would be more likely to make the venture profitable, ironically. But the way newspapers are going now, they are just going to continue to lose circulation numbers. And it's going to take bold new ideas to shake them up and make the daily newspaper interesting - and worthwhile - to readers again. Does this idea do it? Maybe. Maybe not. You know, maybe making a localized "Hulu-type" newspaper would accelerate the death. But maybe the Localized Associated Press is the way to go! My point is, no matter how nicely you re-design your newspaper (shout out to the Sun Sentinel), it's the content that really matters. And if the same type of content brings your numbers down, you have to change the content to bring them back up.

Keep it to yourself

2008-08-20T16:13:00.002-04:00

You know what I don't like? When I explain how I'm feeling, and people tell me I have no right to feel what I'm feeling. I might say, "I've been working for ten hours, I'm kind of tired right now!" and then someone will say "Well, I've been working for twelve hours, so you have no right to complain!"

Guess what?

I do.

Just because you feel tired also does not make me magically not tired. It does not negate what I am feeling.

Even better is my personal favorite, "stop acting like that." Not only does it make it sound like they are treating me like a three-year-old, it also assumes they have some sort of power or dominion over me. And it usually just amplifies whatever I'm feeling at the time. Not too long ago, I had a very bad day at work. My mind was scattered with all sorts of stressful stuff, I did not want to be there, I had very little sleep, I had a headache, and all other sorts of complain-able stuff. I had a bad day, okay? Everyone has them. Except for me, apparently, because everybody told me to snap out of it and be in a good mood. Although my friends were very well-intentioned, it does not work like that. Genuine attitudes are a shift, they are not turned on and off at will. And it just makes me upset that people have decided how I can and cannot feel, and apparently I cannot deviate from their will.

You can ask me how I'm feeling, or why I'm upset. But please, oh please, do not think that I will suddenly feel better because you are having a bad day as well. And please do not tell me to just snap into a new attitude, because, really, if I could, wouldn't I?

Why I'm watching the Beijing Olympics

2008-08-19T16:13:00.002-04:00

Vloggers Beth and Val (Who are terribly funny, but in a PG-13 kind of a way) talked about the Olympics and why they found it so compelling this year. This video is actually safe (G? PG?), so I posted it here. Take a look.

A "Middle" discussion

2008-08-18T18:33:00.004-04:00

Alan Sepinwall, of The Star-Ledger, had the opportunity last week to interview Javier Grillo-Marxuach, one of the great television writers of our time. JG-M has written for Jake 2.0, Charmed, Lost, Medium and now The Middleman. (And yes, he wrote for Charmed AND I still consider him a great writer.) He is also a master producer and and all-around imaginative genius. (I'll take my $20 now, Javier.)

The Middleman is a throwback to campy spy shows. It's everything you thought the movie Get Smart with Steve Carrell could be, but with more fast talk and pop culture references than The Gilmore Girls and Psych put together. The show also creates many imaginative villains and one-episode characters and gives them enough funny lines to say that it feels like an episode of Arrested Development. (It even uses the familiar tonal "beep" and black square to block swear words, which, like on AD, are used for comedic relief, without even needing to hear the words said.)

The problem with this show is this: No one is watching. Or, at least, not enough people. Which is saddening. If you took the best parts of Batman, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Arrested Development, Gilmore Girls, Psych, and Men in Black, you would start to see The Middleman emerge. It's no-nonsense attitude is never condescending, always accessible and the characters go through meaningful, life-learning lessons that never feel like an after-school special. In other words, real characters learn real lessons and it makes for good TV. Javier, being the show's creator, has the best words to talk about the show:

I know that everybody in TV says this, but the characters come first, and I have a very specific attitude about how these characters should behave towards each other. They're not cool, they're unabashed about being themselves, and they don't have an internal censor. I feel it's important that these characters not be losers, they can communicate with each other and solve their problems in constructive ways. A lot of popular culture thrives on a lot of meanness. This is a show that's aggressively anti-mean. The way that the characters resolve problems has a positivity to it. When you see all of the villains in our show, they're all tremendously misguided. They didn't start out trying to be bad.
In a way, all of the characters in the show are evolving into the adult state of being kind. That's what the show is about, which is why the show's take on evil isn't the same as everyone else's take, where evil is a metaphor for the darkness each of us carries deep within ourselves. On our show, evil is the product of people who refuse to become better.

I know, that's pretty heady stuff for a show that has a woman fighting a flying fish.

So what if the show gets cancelled? After all, the show is nowhere near as popular as other ABC Family offerings, such as Greek, Lincoln Heights, or the newcomer The Secret Life of the American Teenager. ("Secret Life..." now pulls in equal-to-or-better numbers than The CW's Gossip Girl, which is considered to be a smash hit, an almost unthinkable feat for the basic cable network.) Javi remains upbeat about the possibility of cancellation:

I'm infinitely optimistic. The word I have from ABC Family is they are interested in finding some way to continue the show. After what happened with "Jericho," with "Firefly," a guy in my position can't not be optimistic. If there isn't a life for it at ABC Family, maybe another network, and if it doesn't work on another network, maybe on DVD. Plus, I have the right to do the comic book at any time I choose.

As far as my personal involvement with the Middleman, I waited 11 years to put the show on the air my way, I can wait to get it to another place, and if I don't, honestly, I have no regrets. It has been 12 episodes made lovingly, hand-crafted, by people who truly believe in the product. If at the end of the day, I have to walk away from it, I won't walk away from it crying in my beer about how I didn't get to tell my story.

I'm happy that Javi would be satisfied with just twelve episodes of this show. I would not be. This is one of those rare gems of a TV show, like Lost or Pushing Daisies, that is very unique in it's execution and remains a summer favorite of mine.

The Middleman airs Monday nights at 10 P.M. ET on ABC Family.

The Grand Rapids Reader

2008-08-18T15:25:00.003-04:00

I made a logo. I like the logo. I have no clue what I'm going to do with the logo. (Well, I have some clues, but I don't want to give anything away.)

And I have nothing else to share, except that logo, which I am very fond of.

What's a "Doctor Zhivago"?

2008-08-18T01:48:00.004-04:00

According to BoxOfficeMojo's adjusted-for-inflation list of all-time domestic best-sellers, the 8th most popular film in domestic history is Doctor Zhivago. Released in 1965, this political thriller was surrounded by strong controversy. But I refuse to believe that this film could have ever been that popular, because up until today, I had never heard of Doctor Zhivago!

According to IMDb, the plot is as follows:

Set just before and in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the filme follows the life of Zhivago as he marries, raises a family, has his life totally disrupted by first World War One, and then by the Revolution. Shown against the Epic of a world turned on its head, his life and freedom are torn from him as the new society makes demands.

That sounds like a good movie, no? Good enough to be 8th overall in an adjusted-for-inflation all-time domestic best-sellers list? I don't know. Because I've never heard of this film.

It even stars Omar Sharif and Alec Guinness! And Julie Christie, who I've never really seen much of her in, but she's got a familiar name, so, I must of seen her in a film before.

To get myself more acquainted with this apparent masterpiece and crown jewel of American cinema, I watched a trailer for the film on, where else, YouTube:

Well, who knew? I just learned about an extremely popular film today. Me learning about Doctor Zhivago today will be like, in forty years, having someone just hear about The Dark Knight.

That'll be odd.

Flash mob

2008-08-16T22:16:00.002-04:00

This video was taken at a mall that is about a five minute drive from my house. It would have been terribly funny to be there when "they" did this:

Soap

2008-08-14T01:01:00.002-04:00

TV superwoman Jane Espenson took a time out from her busy schedule as a writer/consultant/producer to delve into the world of daily television soap operas. As she explains in her post, producing five fresh hours of dramatic content every week means that making a daily soap is a very different beast from a prime time product. She explains:

"The production aspects are insane-- the show I visited doesn't shoot, as you might assume, an hour's world of material each and ev'ry blessed day. No. They do FIVE shows in FOUR days. So it's more than one standard episode every working day. With no hiatus, of course. Year 'round, I'm sayin'. Holy cats. A single actor might be in seven, nine, eleven scenes in one day. I was told of one case in which and actor, trying to clear their schedule so they could take a week of... that one actor shot over twenty scenes in one day."

Holy cats indeed! Can you imagine being on a writing staff, having to come up with five hours worth of material each and every week? Being an actor and having to memorize all those lines every day, in an instant, and act on them immediately, many times in just one take? Or being the directors, having to set everything up ahead of time just to cut down on valuable time?

If you have time, Espenson's post is a valuable look into this "foreign" land of continual drama.

The trouble with "LIVE"

2008-08-13T14:52:00.002-04:00

NBC Universal is under some scrutiny for their Olympic coverage. Namely, it's use of the "LIVE" bug on screen. For the east coast feed, NBC slaps the word "LIVE" on-screen. And for the Mountain and Pacific time zone repeats, NBC keeps the word "LIVE" on-screen, even though it is not live.

NBC says there is nothing they can do to remove the word "LIVE" from the screen. Which, with all due respect to those in Master Control, but two of their networks, CNBC and MSNBC, have "LIVE" bugs for some programs, but can remove them with ease for later repeats. CNN and FOX News can do that, too.

So how come NBC does not do that for the Olympics, especially when they have the technology? I have nothing against the Rockefeller-based network. I really don't. But I, along with many others, find this absolutely baffling.

Before They Were Famous: Henry Winkler

2008-08-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

I have been watching some older television shows. It kind of came as a result of the WGA-strike, with not having much on the television to watch. And it has been completely addicting. Shows like The Bob Newhart Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show are packed with such timeless humor that can stand the test of time. (Which makes one wonder if a show that tackles topical humor, like 30 Rock, can age well, but that's another post.)

And one great thing about watching these shows it seeing now-known actors and actresses, playing guest stars without any fanfare at all. I was watching an episode of The Bob Newhart Show, and there was this one character who looked very familiar, but I could not quite place him. It turns out that it was the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler. Except this was before he was on Happy Days, and two years before he would even play the Fonz on Laverne & Shirley. This episode, embedded below, truly shows Henry Winkler before he became famous.

Party in a Bird's Nest

2008-08-09T08:00:00.001-04:00

The 2008 Summer Olympic games opening in Beijing, China yesterday. And it was one of the coolest ceremonies I have ever witnessed in my (short-ish) life.

The ceremonies weren't just about people doing artsy interpretations of their nation's culture and heritage. These ceremonies were about telling a story, not showing performances. And if it was a little avant garde, the announcers made sure to tell you what was going on. The only time I needed that was when millions of LED and stage lights were flashing all over the stage in a performance designed to show that we must not waste the earth's resources. (Starting right after that performance, I'm sure.)

Speaking of LED, that "magic carpet" was sure incredible, wasn't it? With it's magical touch screen in the middle, it had some resemblance to an oversized Nintendo DS. While I'm sure it did nothing to save the earth, it was an incredible performance piece and added to the overall awe and mystery of the night.

The ceremonies had an amazing dignity and openness about them. I realize this is by design. After all, the Chinese want to try their hardest to make more nations like them, and not remember some of the crappier things they do. (Every nation does this when they host the Olympics, but China had to do even more, it feels like.) But these ceremonies were safe, familiar and entertaining. They did not scare me like the Nagano games. (I was only 11, but still, I remember the little devils skating all around, scaring up a storm. Creepy.) They were memorable, which is better than Sydney. (And much better than Turin, which I cannot remember, and that was two years ago!) And they were not even delightfully campy, like the terrific Salt Lake City ceremonies. This was like a great magician's act, full of technological wonders while making sure that you leave entertained and exit in good spirits.

I'm sure it could have taken "more chances" and been "edgier," but I don't think they had to. Not this year. The simple dignity was more than enough to give the games a terrific start.

Michael Emerson is creepily funny

2008-08-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

I think I'm just going to be on a bit of an entertainment kick on this blog for a little while. My apologies if you are waiting for my are newspapers dying? yes, but they can be saved by following my ideas and by the way they can't be saved post, then I apologize.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Best Week Ever, who is about as appropriate as Television Without Pity, which is to say, they aren't. Which makes it a terrible thing that I read both sites, it really is. But I am addicted to snarky, irreverent humor. Which is why I am slightly disturbed to realize that I missed a interview with Lost's best maybe-villain portray-er, Michael Emerson. Emerson, who plays the mass-murderer with a heart maybe made of gold, Ben "Henry Gale" Linus. It is funny. You don't even have to have watched an episode of Lost to appreciate the humor, but, it certianly adds a lot more if you have.

BWE Sneak Peek: With Ben from Lost

"What polar bear?"

"The truth ain't like puppies"

2008-08-07T00:05:00.003-04:00

I was watching an episode of Pushing Daisies at ABC.com, and I heard one of those lines that you forget about, but once you remember you realize that you absolutely love it. I would embed the clip, but, ABC's player has yet to have a Hulu-like "embed what you want!" function. ABC is overhauling their video player late this year, so perhaps it will be available then. Until then, you'll have to do without Chi McBride's amazing delivery and settle for my dry transcript:

"The truth ain't like puppies, a bunch of them running around, you pick your favorite. One truth."

Extended Vacation

2008-08-04T00:49:00.002-04:00

I'm back from my camping trip at Brower Park. I'll have a post about that coming soon. But until then, this blog will take, in theory, one more vacation day.

ShamWOW!

2008-08-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

Greetings from the RoboPost! I'm still camping. And there may not be a Monday post. We'll see. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Have you seen the commercials for ShamWOW!^TM? It features this guy with a very active voice, talking about the virtues of this super sponge-like towel. At one point during the commercial, he says "are you following me, camera guy?" I know that may be part of a script the actor was given, but nevertheless, I kind of want to inflict physical harm whenever I hear that line. (I never would, don't worry. I hate killing spiders! I could never physically harm someone.) The camera guy has a job, and he is doing it, and doing it well. And you have a job, you do it well. Does the camera guy say, "are you following me, on-screen talent guy?" NO. There is no need to belittle the camera person. It does not make you relatable, unless you want to relate to a bunch of overbearing jerks.

The towels apparently leave behind streaks, too. ShamWOW!^TM? Just a sham, sadly.

Manhattaphoto

2008-08-02T08:00:00.001-04:00

I may be camping at an undisclosed location right now, but, that does not mean I can't give you a half-hearted robot post. Here are some photos I took in NYC, modified in Adobe Photoshop.

Trailers & Previews: The Watchmen

2008-08-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

Trailers & Previews is a irregularly occurring feature on Bemusings, where I watch a trailer or preview for something, usually a movie, and comment on it. I don't set out to hate or like everything. I try to watch previews with a "blank slate" and then draw my impressions based on that. And these are my impressions.

The Watchmen. Who are they? Watch this trailer for the upcoming movie. And this post is "interactive," in so much as you need to watch the trailer for this post to make sense:

At first, the trailer tells is that "In 2009, everything we know will change." This happens as a guy gets shocked with electricity and the hair on his arms stand up. DUUUUDDEE! Then I'm thinking that the new Hulk movie already came out, so, what's up? Then we get this music playing that is weird, even for me (and I love weird music), this kind of maybe Arabian, maybe Bohemian, maybe crap kind of music. And we dwell on this submarine spaceship, which, WHY? And then we get flashes of generic superheros and somewhat insultingly gratuitous female superhero costumes. The flames. A mob? Then the blue guy floats in the air, someone kisses, Die Fledermaus gets angry, someone promises not to save the world (jerk), and then we spend twelve seconds on this thing, a wheel-like spaceship? I HAVE NO CLUE. THEN we get the title (Watchmen), then it fades out, then fades in AGAIN, but this time with the movie web site address. Honestly, for half a second, I was mad, because I just saw the title of the movie, I don't need to see it again.

So what's the movie about? Blue Hulk and Die Fledermaus fight? And others kiss? And there are weird, freaky aircraft that appear outside of any imaginable context? It was a two minute trailer. It was even called a trailer. Not a teaser, not a 60-second "we have a movie coming out soon, details later" kind of a trailer. No, this was a full two minutes of random crap, made beautiful by terrific editors.

The movie looks generically beautiful. There's nothing wrong with the style, the muted colors, the obvious computer generated effects, the annoying slow-motion. (So help me if I ever make a movie and the studio wants lots of slow-motion, I will strangle someone to keep it out of my project.) But I have no clue what the movie is about!

I have not read the graphic novels. I have not even heard of them. (Don't laugh. Have you heard of Gilbert and Sullivan? Didn't think so.) And I knew there was a lot of hype surrounding the release of this trailer. So I wanted to know what the fuss was about. After watching the trailer, I still do not know.

I may still see the movie, if I ever see a trailer that gives some little details, like who the characters are and what the movie is about. But until then, I'll just have to be unsatisfied with what I've seen.

P.S. Some research shows that The Watchmen was big because it first showed superheroes as "real people with real flaws." It was pretty revolutionary two decades ago. But does that mean that The Watchmen will just be Daredevil with prettier visuals? Time will tell.

Lite posting

2008-07-30T23:50:00.002-04:00

I'm getting ready for a camping trip and have a few other items to attend to, so blogging will be lite for the rest of the week. I'll be doing a post at some point about the new comic book-to-movie, The Watchmen. (Don't ask me what the movie is about, that's half my post.)

In the meantime, I've been taking some sports photography this summer. Check it out the team blog I post on, Russ' Softball.

Overheard on set

2008-07-30T00:36:00.003-04:00

Sometime this year, I was a background actor for a movie. (Until I know for sure that shooting is done, I won't mention the name on this blog. It's a silly policy I have.) But I can share this unique observation.

The scene had a boyfriend and his girlfriend interacting with each other. In-between scenes, all the talent was sent away so the crew could work with the set. I overheard the actor playing the boyfriend talking to one of the stagehands about what porn sites each other goes to. And a couple minutes later, one of the crew is talking to the actress playing the girlfriend, talking about what church she went to that previous week.

How random.

The popularity of names

2008-07-29T08:00:00.001-04:00

Have you ever wondered how popular a name has been throughout the past century or so? There is a web site out there that will show you a handy-dandy chart of any name you put into the program. The NameVoyager, from the Baby Name Wizard, tracks the popularity of names throughout the ages. If you put in my name, Charles, you'll see that decades ago it was very, very popular, but it has all but steadily declined since the 1930's. Go ahead and try your own name. See how popular it was, and is!

Acting the role

2008-07-28T08:00:00.000-04:00

Actors bring energy. They make a performance come to life. But each one brings something different to the table. Something unmistakable, something unique. After all the characters are created, it is up to casting to employ actors and actresses and have them embody these roles. And with so many talented people out there, each with a unique specialty, isn't it interesting to think of how movies and television would be different had there simply been one different actor or actress?

The 2005 summer blockbuster Mr. & Mrs. Smith famously starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, bringing the two of them together, leaving them inseparable (at least as of summer, 2008). But did you know that the original cast was to have Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman face off as the bickering couple? And that Will Smith and Catherine Zeta-Jones were also considered for the roles? Pitt can play a straight face, Depp can bring an air of mystery and Smith can bring great comedic timing (not to mention the last name). Jolie plays the vixen well, whereas Kidman would definitely been great at playing up the "up tightness" of the character, as well as the comedy aspects. And Zeta-Jones, well, I saw Zorro 2 and I still like her, so, there's nothing she can't do well, in my opinion.

But see how everyone would have brought something very different to the table? That's what I'm talking about.

It is always fun to watch an entertainment program with an excellent ensemble. The Ocean's Eleven series features a dozen or so high-profile, impressive resume-wielding powerhouse thespians. And those movies have the perfect casts. The television show Lost features a bunch of actors and actresses, most of whom were not well-known before appearing on the show. And every role is seemingly cast perfectly. It is hard to imagine any other actor or actress playing the leads in either program. Imagine how much different the energy on Lost would be if George Clooney were the main character! How much moodier Ocean's Eleven would be if Matthew Fox played the ringleader.

Actors and actresses, each of them, are very unique and talented. And they all bring something incredibly different to the table. So when you are watching a project with the "perfect cast," thank the producers, directors, studios, and casting services, on a job well done.

The Dark Knight: A Dark Review

2008-07-27T08:00:00.004-04:00

Last night I saw The Dark Night, the second installment in the Christian Bale series of Batman movies. This series of movies makes the criminals and heroes as realistic as possible, creating a dark and eerie atmosphere for them to work in. Instead of "Pow!" boxes, you might have moments where you jump out of your seat. These movies are more like the comics, rather than the live-action TV series, much less the other movies made. The Dark Night, whose fortunes know no limit at the box office, may be making a profit illegitimately, because: it just is not great.

The movie is good, mind you. Don't get me wrong here. I thought the story was mostly great, the characters believable and the audio and camerawork phenomenal. So why am I so serious?

For starters, the movie was too long. It tried to develop many characters: Bruce Wayne, Rachel Dawson, Harvey Dent, The Joker, Lucius Fox, Gordon, and a mob lord. All in two and a half hours. Even the television show Lost, with it's insanely ridiculously large cast, focuses on about half those characters for a season. To try to give these characters a self-contained, fulfilling arc takes a long time. And while the movie handled it well, keeping the focus smaller and neater always works wonders. And that applies to villains, too. If the Joker is a menacing creature, show us him being a menacing creature, don't flank him with more villains. Show us just how evil he can be.

In relation to the paragraph above, the movie kind of pulled a Spider-Man 3. It tried to give us too many bad guys to feel scared about. When the movie started, we saw how devious and tricky the Joker could be. But then we were introduced to another section of the mob. (They were boring in Batman Begins and are still boring here.) Then we meet another villain, this guy being as big and menacing as the Joker himself. And that was kind of the problem. It took the spotlight off the real big villain and turned it onto this "newcomer," if only because of symbolism. The film took us many places, with many people. And with one or two less places and people, the film could have been excellent. It could have still been very emotionally satisfying, for both the characters and the audience.

Another complaint I have with the film is not the film's fault, but the hype surrounding the film. The film was not a non-stop roller coaster of intensity. There were many stops. You had time to walk around and get a soda between rides. There was also much talk about the late Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker as being "Oscar-worthy." While he personified a great character, and certainly took what he had and turned it into something very special, I don't know that I would find it to be an outstanding achievement in acting. Shoot, I feel like the city of Chicago added as much character and atmosphere to the movie as Ledger, if not more so. (The city was filmed beautifully.)

However, the movie was good. The movie tackled the question of vigilante heroes: good or bad? And it was not in a simplistic, Spider-Man kind of a "they're bad but he's cool so he can stay"-kind of a way. Even people who believed in Batman had to question if he deserved to be there or not. There were terrific character dynamics, especially the love triangle between Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawson. And there is one scene early on in the film where the Joker establishes himself as absolutely 100% terrifying. (When he first explains how he got his scars.) And, the first five minutes of the movie (bank robbery) is perhaps the best five minutes of cinema to happen in a long, long time.

I would probably give this movie an 8 out of 10. It's still good, and I'm glad I saw it. But it is not the type of movie I would necessarily see again, nor buy the DVD for.

SOUTH DAKOTA!!!

2008-07-26T16:52:00.004-04:00

It has been a while since I have snarked on the daily comics. I generally rely on someone else to do that. However, a few particular comic strips stood out today.

Mary Worth

I enjoy watching The Golden Girls, even when I should not. And those times come when the "girls" spend their time talking about their "pursuits" with men. And I generally do not feel that uncomfortable when they talk about it, even though part of the joke is that these ladies are all senior citizens and talking about stuff normally only teenagers gab about. So I don't think that this Mary Worth comic makes me uncomfortable because these are older characters talking about love "and stuff." I think it makes me uncomfortable because Mary Worth and her boyfriend Jeff are quite clearly not talking about playing on the Charterstone Condominiums Orchestra.

Slylock Fox for Kids

Meanwhile, this kids comic is completely horrifying in it's own right.

Apartment 3-G

Apartment 3-G, for those who are not familiar, takes place in New York City. Luann, the blonde, is excited because she gets to leave Manhattan to visit very sensitive grasslands in SOUTH DAKOTA!!! And no, Luann would not be joking. She has no "humor" capacity. She is completely, seriously excited about visiting rural wetlands in SOUTH DAKOTA!!! No offense to the SD, but, SOUTH DAKOTA!!! is just not that exciting.

Intere-scent-ing opinion

2008-07-26T00:35:00.002-04:00

I cannot have you experience what I am smelling now. Nor what I smelled in that nice Dutch bakery in town. Or what it smelled like in Central Park. I can show you pictures, I can show you video, I can take audio clips, I can bring home grass clippings, stones, or other sensory objects so you know what it feels like. But I cannot capture scent. And isn't that funny?

We live in a day and age of unbridled technological advancement. We have the most clarity in motion capture that we have ever seen before. Even high-definition is getting high-definition upgrades. We can communicate with friends and family all over the globe, just as much as if they were by us face-to-face. And as consumers, we can take pictures to capture sight. We can use audio recorders to capture sound. We can taste. We can touch. But smell? There is no way we can share smell. At all.

The closest way is smelling scents, whether in candles, perfume or air fresheners. These manufactured smells help to share an array of scents, like vanilla, cinnamon, or "skin renewal," whatever that smells like. (That's actually the title of my after shave. I bought it because I thought it smelled nice.) (More parenthesis: Olfaction is the technical term referring to the sense of smell.) We can buy these scents, made diligently in hard-working labs across the globe. But can the average consumer bottle a scent? Can we capture the smell of homemade pizza sauce cooking on the stove? No. There is no real way the average person can share smell. It just is not done.

Now, if someone young enterprising man or woman came out with a "camera for smells," would it be popular, apart from prank-loving teenagers who would abuse it to it's full potential? I don't know. Have there been studies done? Is there a market for smell capturing? It seems to me like there's a market for everything. Surely there must be for this.

Shows I am cautiously pessimistic about

2008-07-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

This fall-winter television season will see many television series returning to continue telling their story. While every show runner is now touting the WGA-imposed strike as a "good thing" in order to think about stories (they said no such thing during the strike, I might add), telling us that this will be the best season EVER, there are a few shows whom I cannot help but feel uneasy about.

24 - A show that can be really good when it's good, but is too often too terrible. A terrible season three led the show to "reset" itself for season four. Jump ahead to season seven, and the show needs to "reset" itself once again. Not a good sign for a show. The show loves to recycle storylines and plots from it's first three seasons, and there has been nothing to indicate that this will cease to continue.
Reasons why it may not suck: Instead of Los Angeles, the nation will now be threatened in Washington, D.C., a much more "believable" location for acts of mass terrorism. Instead of CTU, Jack Bauer will now work with the FBI. So instead of having people come in from "District," I guess they just have higher-ups come downstairs to set them straight. And, everybody seems to acknowledge that season six absolutely sucked. Big time.

Heroes - This show was amazing for the first half of season one. Intensely incredible. But then the show got picked up, and the storylines had to continue. And into a second season. We suddenly had characters doing a bunch of nothing for weeks at a time (Hiro and the Cherry Blossom Tree! Claire and West sneak in kissing time!), while the iconic villian Sylar no longer had a purpose (kill the cheerleader, kill the world), but rather, just killed because he could. When the villian has no motivation, that is a bad sign. Not to mention the introduction of the Honduras twins, one of which is still alive, in spite of everybody reacting negatively to the character and story arc in general. The characters had too much angst and not enough story to juxtapose against.

(And I've seen spoilers, and the one character who should not be getting any angstier is, and the one actress who should be let go so she can show her talents on a television show show that will give her a good character, is sadly going to be with the show for a while longer.)

Why it may not suck: The showrunner honestly acknowledged season two's Numerous (that is numerous with a capital N) mistakes. There will be more Sylar, and since the storyline is named "Villians," I'm assuming he'll have some grander purpose to serve other than "that guy who trims the cast occassionaly." Jack Coleman will still be playing "Horn-Rimmed Glasses," and Mama Petrelli is supposed to have more of a storyline this time around.

Television newscast "ads" product placement

2008-07-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

KVVU in Las Vegas has been doing something different with their morning newscast: product placement. On the set are what look like two McDonald's Iced Coffees, ready for the anchor to enjoy. They are not real iced coffees, of course, but look-alike props. But it's not the fact the anchors still have to drink in-studio coffee that's making journalist cringe. It's the fact that there is product placement on the television in the first place.

Product placement is having a product from an advertiser visible inside your product, whether it is a video game, movie or television program. The advertiser pays money to get their product seen, preferably in a "realistic" environment where people can relate to the product better. Product placement is often met with criticism, accusing media companies of "selling out" to advertisers, for giving up editorial control of content in exchange for a few bucks. Even the Miami Herald's TV critic half-jokingly accused KVVU of prostitution for this promotional stunt.

Holly Steuart, vice president and general manager at KVVU, told Broadcasting & Cable that there have been no complaints since the introduction of McDonald's to the set two weeks ago. “Sponsorships have been part of news for a long, long time,” Steurart told B&C. “People need to give viewers a little more credit.”

Indeed. Newspapers for years now have run ads on the front page. You can rarely find a single page that does not have an ad, in any metro market newspaper. News radio stations have more commercials per hour than actual news. (Or so it feels like sometimes.) And news web sites will contain ads from sponsors inside the news article itself. So why should the appearance of a few low-key ads, which air during a mixed news/entertainment program, raise any eyebrows? For the same reason that television and movie people fear product placement: infringement on editorial control.

Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), told B&C that KVVU has not violated any guidelines because the advertiser has no influence over the news content. But she said that the RTNDA is "rethinking the guidelines in light of the growth of product placement generally." No one wants to lose control, especially news directors. And when you get advertisers involved in your show, not just in your commercial breaks, you run the risk of advertisers making demands, expecting more placement, and perhaps assuming that they can get some editorial control.

Is that an alarmist point of view? Perhaps. That rarely happens in newspapers, the Internet or radio. But seeing ads with the news on television is a mysteriously new and untested land. And until we know how people can react to it, and how advertisers and directors can deal with it, product placement in newscasts will remain a touchy subject for some time to come.

Veteran actor speaks out against large paychecks

2008-07-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Hollywood is not glamorous. Sure, there are a few dozen people whom the tabloids love to photograph. Those people who grace the grocery store lanes every week. But what about the millions of other people who work in the industry? They rarely get any recognition. They do not get magazine covers, endorsement deals, And most struggle to meet the rent. Including actors and actresses. If you can land on a successful television show, for example, then you maybe get five years of financial stability before being jobless and in financial trouble once again. And once you've gotten one recognizable job, there is no guarantee you can get another one ever again.

It is to that end that I break one of my personal blogging rules and encourage you to read this very lengthy letter, by actor Peter Coyote, about actors and pay. The actor, whose IMDb I'm sure has at least one project that you've seen or heard him in, wants leading actors to use their power to leverage more pay for the acting professional. In his essay, he writes:

Also, let’s relate to the non-celluloid world for a moment. Once an actor reaches the six or ten million dollar mark for several months work, they are financially secure for life unless they are morons or have extremely bad habits. By the time they’re earning 15-20 million, some measurable percentage of those earnings is meaningless.

I cannot speak from personal experience on this matter, since I have not been a starving, penniless actor waiting tables while waiting for my big break (which is so true of most of the Los Angeles serving community), I've certainly heard enough and read enough to be sympathetic to their plight, and be slightly envious of the huge price tags given to the A+-list.

To clarify (my favorite phrase to say on this blog), I'm not saying that we need to set a price standard or make mandatory cap off salaries. But when you get people like Brad Pitt, who can make $20 million in just one year (see Forbes), you have to wonder exactly why these talented actors are being paid for as much as they are. They do a great job, the fair lot of them. But $20 million for one year? That is way too much money. As Coyote said, once you've hit six million, you are set for life. (I'd say for less even, but, L.A. is expensive to live in, so I'll give him that.)

Do you know what the main difference between a "star" and an "acting professional" is? A star will work for large sums of money. An acting professional will work because it is work. Just like most Americans will work for the sake of just having a job to carry out. The acting professional can relate to the gaffer, the grip, the lighting person, the electrician, the stage manager, and every one else who works on a production and makes just enough money to get by. They rarely make enough "cushion" money. They have no $20 million to fall back on. They have to pay rent, mortgage bills, student loans and the like. It takes dozens and dozens of people to make just show work. Have you ever sat through the credits for a TV show? Or how about a movie? You know how the credits for a film are about six minutes long? Every single person plays a vital role in making that movie. Without them, there would be no movie, just like without the actors there would be no movie.

And while the actor is the most visible and high-profile element of a project, that does not change the fact that there are people who work as hard, sometimes harder, and get paid a disparaging amount.

Most of the time, it is not the actor's "fault" that they get the paycheck that they do, it is their agent. But I think the agents and the movie studios, the people who bankroll any project, can help share the wealth, with at least the other actors on film.

Tomorrow: Product placement in television newscasts: crude, inevitable or both?

Short blog post

2008-07-21T02:08:00.001-04:00

Life goes on, but so must this blog.
Expect a full post tomorrow.

The song that doesn't end

2008-07-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

The YouTube has everything on it!

Resolution

2008-07-19T00:17:00.002-04:00

I will now be a Communications major.

I still have to do the paperwork, but, this is what I have decided. Under this track, I should be able to finish school in two years. ("The best laid plans. . .") The Communications degree offers a few different areas of study (apart from the core classes), one of which is Journalism. So the classes I have already taken, and will take, will count towards this degree. And I can dip into some other areas, too, like Film / Video, Broadcasting, Photography, Theater, Advertising and Public Relations.

It may not be as "specific" as the Journalism degree (which is kind of broad enough as it is), but, it is still a degree. And it is one of those "trainable" degrees, like Psychology. Many employers will look for people with degrees in humanities, and then will train them for the specific tasks. They want to make sure that they can get someone who can relate to people well and interact well. I even heard of an accounting firm who was taking in people without finance degrees, with something like Psychology, and then training them for the tasks. They want a good person. So that is how I will also have to further market myself. As a nice person.

I will still take some "extra" Journalism classes, when I can. I still hope to work in media in some way, shape or form. I think I am drawn to that area. But a Journalism degree? In this day and age where most other professions require Master's and Doctorate degrees to be considered employable, the value of a Bachelor-level J-degree is still being debated. That is how incredibly awesome journalism is. It is not about education, it is about doing. If you can tell a factual and accurate story and tell it well, you are in. Just a degree alone will not necessarily get a foot in the door. And that's why I want to continue with those classes, so I can keep writing and keep having more and more recent writing samples.

The main difference between the Communications degree and the J-degree is that for Comm. majors, they have to do a Senior Project / Thesis. J-majors need an internship. So for my senior year, if I become a complete recluse while working on my thesis or special project, you'll know why.

So that is the status of my college career right now.

Complete and utter confusion

2008-07-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

The following is Chuck breaking his promise not to vent about school anymore.

If you saw my Facebook status, you would know that I am still confused about school issues. I really should go talk to my counselor and get his take on my school education. You know that spreadsheet comparing the two degrees I am interested in? I shaded all the classes I will have completed by May, 2009, and guess what? One of the two degrees will only have five classes left to take. 5. Five. Cinco. Normal amount of fingers on a hand. THAT many. The other? 8. Or, depending on which track I take, 10.

My choice is between taking 5 more courses to satisfy requirements for one degree, or taking 10 more courses (these all being, of course, after this upcoming academic year) to satisfy another degree. The easier degree to obtain is Communications (of course), the less prestigious but still employable degree, whereas the tougher of the two is Journalism, which carries more weight around it, at least, in my opinion. But you need either one of the two degrees to get a job in media, so it does not matter so much in that regard. And a fair chunk of employers just care that you have a degree, and it does not matter what it is in. (Not all employers, but, a good amount are like that.)

And it still kind of does not matter since I need a lot more credits anyways to graduate from Grand Valley. I know why the University doesn't want me to just transfer in right away and get a degree from them shortly thereafter; they want to make sure that I have been educated for a good while according to "Grand Valley standards," and then I can be truly counted as a "Grand Valley Student." I get that. I really do. But it still stinks that I have to spend time taking courses, courses that don't even matter, to get my degree.

In the fall, I'm currently scheduled for 12 credits. In the winter, 16. (I know!) That makes for a total of 28 credits. (See my mad math skills at work there?) That leaves 30 credits left to qualify for graduation at GVSU. The remaining classes for the Communications degree fills up about half of that. Meaning I have a "wasted" semester. Which, I can fill up with Journalism classes, A/V production, cross-stitching, or what have you.

But then there's another terrible option. There aren't many sections available for the classes I'll have remaining in the second year. Which means if I can't sign up instantly, I may have to take extra classes and wait for another semester to get the classes I want. This would be horrible. The reason being I want to be done with school yesterday. I spent the summer applying to jobs I had no business applying to, hoping that I could become employed and then start my career, rather than finish getting my 'training' for it at college.

And then there's the finances.... !!!!

If I go for the Bachelor's in Communications, I can conceivably be in and out of the college in two years. Which is what I said about the community college, and I stayed there for three. Of course, then I started as a Photography major, so, being decisive about that degree is probably not my specialty.

5 years

2008-07-17T01:32:00.003-04:00

I have now officially been working for Family Dining Tourist Destination Restaurant for five years. And while blog manners say it is polite not to mention the name of your employer on your own blog, I will say that it has been a good five years. And considering how many unwanted credits I will still have to take as part of my college education, I will probably be there for a little while longer until I can get my Bachelor's degree.

Speaking of which, the classes I will have this year will make a dent towards getting an overall degree, but not many classes relating to my major, which is a bummer. That is just as well, as it gives me more wiggle room to decide if I want to major in Journalism or in Communications. The difference in classes can be seen below... but you need some explanation.

Classes in GREEN are completed. Classes in BLUE are ones I completed at GRCC. And for the Journalism degree, I must decided between A or B, not take them both.

College classes - Upload a Document to Scribd

As you can see, for either degree, it would not take terribly long to "eat up" the requirements. I would then have all the training needed for my particular craft. But would I have those 58 credits needed to graduate? No. So I need to "waste" time to get those credits, so I can graduate. (Seriously, the GVSU handbook says that "A minimum of 58 semester hours must be earned at a senior institution.") And the last 30 hours must be a GVSU, which, that's fair. But I want to start a job, start a career. I don't want to stay and pay the college money when it's not needed.

Sorry to rant on you like this. You come here to the blog for my take on journalism and entertainment, among other things, and I give you documents, college data and nonsensical rants. But I wanted to get it out there in a public forum. And I needed a blog post for today.
Mission accomplished.

I love counting to 4

2008-07-16T00:29:00.002-04:00

Not to cheapen your day by posting a video instead of a blog post, but I am currently really tired and unable to write coherent paragraphs. So instead, here is the music group Feist doing a cover of their hit 1 2 3 4 on Sesame Street. It is so terribly cute.

Owned!

2008-07-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

I am sure I am not the first person ever to write a blog post about the Facebook application Owned!. Nor will I be the last. The reason that so many people can write about this application is that it is very, very creepy.

The premise of Owned! is that your friends bid on you, you can bid on them, and then it is some sort of cute market where you see how much everyone thinks you are worth, how much you think your friends are worth, and so forth. However, Owned! is not just for a circle of friends. It is for everybody on Facebook. Meaning? Anybody can buy anybody.

I have had people I do not know big on me. Someone from Iceland. Someone from Serbia. As of this last blog posting, someone in San Diego, CA "owns" me. Someone I have never even met. Someone with no mutual friends or anything. In this game, a complete and total stranger "owns" me.

That creeps me out.

Worse yet, once you "own" people, you can give them away as "human gifts." You can even select wrapping paper for your gift. Now, perhaps there is an element of humor that I am missing to all of this. But I am pretty certain that this is just not cool!

In the settings, there is not even an option to be traded amongst just friends. If they had that, this would be a very different blog post. However, anyone in the world can come along and "own" me, or give me away as a gift. I do not know if that actually invades any Facebook privacy laws or not, but I happen to think that it is very creepy. And it is an application that I will shortly hereafter be getting rid of.

"I'm a little irregular today"

2008-07-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

Did you know that eating some yogurt for at least two weeks can keep you regular? Forget bran muffins, television commercials are now trying to tell us just how much fun life can be once your digestive system is in tip-top shape again. And that is, I'm sure, no easy task for the writers of the commercial. And sometimes, I don't think they necessarily succeed.

Say a producer comes up to you and says that he wants two women discussing irregularity in a natural, believable context. After the what has my life come to? thoughts clear up, you jot down numerous ideas for this commercial. And your final idea, which gets approved, is two women lounging around a pool, discussing their digestive systems. One woman asks the other to go for a little swim. The other person responds:

"I'm a little irregular today."

And the commercial gets made. With very high production values, a celebrity endorser (Jamie Lee Curtis) and expensive graphics.

I understand that commercials often have to resort to stereotypes, or even hyper-stereotypes, to quickly get their point across. And they used the "women will talk about anything!" stereotype. But there is something so terribly blunt about the "I'm a little irregular today" revelation that strikes me as somewhat startling, if not teetering on the brink of hilarious. The commercials casual seriousness betrays the awkward and forced dialogue.

I should add a paragraph of clarification: I think it is fine to talk about irregularity. I hold nothing against this product. I still think Jamie Lee Curtis is terrific in her own way. But I think that the bluntness of that dialogue, and the sheer weirdness of that dialogue, makes this commercial very, very weird.

I think we've just lost the sun

2008-07-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

I was looking at my desktop weather widget the other night and saw this:
I am hoping that means there is no moon. Otherwise, I think the sun may have died out, or is about to. Or at night we just get this nice shiny marble in the sky.

Mr. Clock Radio

2008-07-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

Be thankful for what you have and what you do not have. And please be thankful you do not have this alarm clock:

(via BWE.tv)

I might be a visionary

2008-07-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

I had the strangest form of Deja Vu the other day. I was on set at a movie, as an extra. While in the holding room, they were telling which extras would be needed in a scene, and which ones would not. Then, being seated, I saw how everything looked in the room, and I recalled the dialogue and it felt like a dream I had years ago.

That is to say, that afternoon felt like the realization of a dream I had years and years ago.

How's that for a way to kickoff your weekend?

Picture This!

2008-07-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

While watching The Middleman on ABC Family (whose best line this week was "it's like o'dark thirty in the morning"), I saw a commercial for a direct-to-DVD movie the network is airing. Understanding that the network's primary target age is teenagers and young adults, I can understand why they would take a "underdog at a new high school" movie. I do not fault them for that one bit. However, I do fault them for a bad combination of dialogue and casting.

The dialogue in question: "I don't have to be the most beautiful. I just like to be somebody... to you." Romantic, sappy and honorable, right? It is not anything I would say, but a doey-eyed high schooler in love? Sure, I can buy that. Especially the "I don't have to be the most beautiful" part. Unless those lines are delivered by...

Ashely Tisdale.

Yes, that smiling, gorgeous woman to the right. In this telecast, she is telling the love of her lift that she does not care if she is not the most beautiful woman in the world. I am sorry, Ashley, but if he does not think you are beautiful, you are better off without him.

Worse yet, the guy she is falling in love with appears to be some horrendous stalker who take photos from a distance, like he is a paparazzo and she's Britney Spears. And then he frames his favorite pictures of her. Guys, I am very serious about this.

Do you guys think I am joking about this movie? I am so not.

See? They give Tisdale glasses and supposedly she is not beautiful. The swimming king is also a megaton creep. And, honestly, would an Ashley Tisdale character be singing for a crowd if she were not beautiful? Would she be on Disney's payroll? They force America Ferrera into makeup to become Ugly Betty, but Ferrera herself is very pretty. She may not be Jennifer Garner (nor is miss Tisdale), but they are both very pretty people.

Another complaint: the outsiders try to beat the in-crowd by becoming popular. Hence they become the in-crowd, and then there are outsiders. Nothing is solved. We just switch roles. If the in-crowd is horrible, then it is horrible. It does not suddenly become fine, as long as it's the main character in the in-crowd. No. Not at all. They just become the enemy they thought they were fighting against.

Having this film to try to sell us on the fact that Tisdale's character wants to become more beautiful to impress the stalker photographer is, well, insulting. Now, I know I'm not really the target audience for this film. Nor did I ever have plans on watching it. But the fact that they have that line of dialogue, spoken by that pretty of a lady, just kind of offends me.

Top 5: Current TV openers

2008-07-09T08:00:00.001-04:00

Television shows have long changed their stance on theme songs. Instead of a full minute of a catchy song, networks now prefer two-second title cards, in order to squeeze in another commercial. Now, unlike some TV romantics, I am okay with the title card. Many times having a song can be, in my mind, in the way of the rest of the show. But there are still some openers from shows on today that I enjoy quite a bit. Here they are, in no particular order:

ABC Family's The Middleman
A mix between something modern and a Bond throwback = genuis.

USA's Psych
The only actual song on my list. It's short, it's catchy and it is fun.

NBC's 30 Rock
Smart, unique and entertaining, just like the show itself.

NBC's Chuck
The stylish graphics blend perfectly with the light-hearted music.

ABC's The Mole
The narration kills it a little bit, but the music is still terrific

Choosing the right role

2008-07-08T08:00:00.001-04:00

Last semester, I took an introduction to acting class at school. It was one of the most unique, relaxing, fun classes I have ever taken. We would start the session off with warm-ups (stretches, yoga, all that good stuff), then have some lecture, usually do some "improv" acting on the spot, rehearse our acting scenes, discuss how to break down a scene, and more. It was refreshing and a terrific class to take. And it was an excellent follow-up to a public speaking class. This class had public speaking, but it also had you with no notes, doing physical movements, impacting your scene partner, and dividing your attention. No easy feat. And if I took away one thing, other than more public confidence, is to choose your role carefully.

During the course of the class, I played Henry II from a scene in The Lion in Winter, and Polonius from Hamlet. Both were terrific roles, full of subtext, danger, intrigue, and hidden meanings. They also had very "ye olde English"-style dialogues. And the prose of Shakespeare - it was terrible to memorize! Both roles wound up being too much to chew off, especially for an intro to acting class. It is not that I did terrible. There were many elements that the class told me were good. But I would forget lines. Because they were tough. Very tough. And the characters were not exactly like me. I am not a spiteful old king, manipulating his estranged wife. I am not a conniving court jester hoping to wreak havoc. Having to step into those shoes further added to the troubles.

For our last scene, our teacher suggested that we get into groups. Everybody had to think of actors and actresses that inspire them, and why. What did they do? What makes them compelling? Why do we like them? Then we had to think of the types of character we would like to play. For our last scene, we would be doing monologues without a scene partner, so there was more flexibility in finding a role that was more suited for us. Finally, we had to tell our group partners what kind of character we thought they should play, and why. I was told that I seemed like the kind who would play an honest type who would be put upon a lot. Kind of a "Ray from Everybody Loves Raymond," someone who tried to keep things under control but things got out of control from underneath him. I left class that day, reflecting on those exercises and what that could mean for my acting roll.

As I was dwelling on those thoughts, I was flipping through monologue books at the school library. Many of the scenes were either too long (we had a time limit), or too boring. Too uninspired. Too controversial. Too unlike me. I picked up another book, opened it up and found it: my perfect role. The role I would do wonders with in class. The role that fit my criteria, that fit others criteria, the role that would be absolutely perfect for me:

Charlie Brown.

He is shy. Socially stunted. Afraid to try new things. He feels his life is terrible, unaware that he is the one making his life so burdened. It is a terrific character, full of irony and subtext, and had many entry points to which I could relate. I read over the role and it was perfect for me.

Performance day comes and I play my short scene as Charlie Brown. I am very nervous, which plays great into the character, who is made up of nothing but nervousness and worry. I can tell that the whole class is studying me, watching me. Which is great, because if they were looking away, I would know I was not giving a great performance. I get a couple laughs where I was supposed to, which is an amazing rush. It is the same rush you get from public speaking, only slightly more so. Seconds later, the performance ends. I get applause. And I get mostly terrific feedback. I got a couple compliments on choosing a terrific role, one that fit me well.

Life is kind of like that. We go through life, we try different things and hope to figure out what we do well at. We might bite off more than we can chew, absolutely. But through some patience, wisdom and guidance, we just might figure out what role we were meant to play after all. I don't think I quite know what that role is for me yet. All I know is that I'm pretty sure I'm looking in the right section. And I've had advice from people on what careers they think I'd be good at. And I've taken dozens of "what career is best for you" job placer tests and personality quizzes. Unless everybody and every quiz robot gave me bad advice, I'm on the right track. But I just have to find that right role. That perfect job, which may not get me as much applause as playing Charlie Brown did, but will give me an equal amount of satisfaction.

My hate has made me powerful

2008-07-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

(Click on the image to enlarge. That will probably make it easier to read.)

Working at Unnamed Family Dining Restaurant, I have the privilege to talk to customers on a frequent basis through the drive-thru. And while most of them are nice and friendly, there can be some oddballs that come through. Like the person who drove up and asked for a "Mr. Fabulous," a burger belonging to a joint that closed about ten years ago. Of course we would know what a Mr. Fabulous is! Or the people who will ask you to recite your 13 different pies, then recite your soups, your salads, and will order only a cheeseburger.

More innocent is the common mistake of ordering the food "to go." At a drive-thru, that is standard. But, considering at the movie ticket counter, when the attendant says "enjoy the show," I will reply "thanks, you too," I may not have the most right to criticize this.

What I love about that cartoon is that, although the daily comic strip is set in retail, as the name suggests, there are plenty of ideas and ideas that will cross over into other job situations. (Like Dilbert.) And the idea of having an explosion of frustration on a customer, like the one in the strip, can be very enticing after a hard day's night.

It could never happen, of course. The frustrated customer would talk to another manager, probably a district manager, I'd get a few "talking's to," reprimanded and something written on my permanent record. But I absolutely love the cashier's retorts. Almost Catbert-like.

And for those few times I get really frustrated at work, I prefer the term "channeling my energy into something productive," but I do like the alternative phrasing: "My hate has made me powerful." Enchanting.

To Live or Die an Extra

2008-07-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

I had the opportunity and privilege to be a background actor for the Grand Valley State University film project, To Live or Die in Dixie. The film is based on true events surrounding a murder at Dixie State University and the woman who tried to bring the accused murderer to justice.

The film crew, being college students, had the good sensibility to put out a casting call for extras on craigslist. After responding to the ad, I was contacted by the crew and given a time to show up to be in the film. The day was long, at least six hours, most of it standing around. This is common for movies. Television also, but less so. Movies move at a legendary slow pace, with everybody having to be patient as the directors, cameramen, sound people, engineers, electricians, lighting department, casting, producers, and everybody else figures out the next shot. Then you have to do a few practice shots, to make sure everything looks and sounds right. Then you do a few takes for the scene. And the scenes have to be reviewed before the director decides to end filming. It looks terrific on camera, but making a movie is perhaps the least glamerous experience you could ever embark on.

The above picture is a still from the movie. Grand Valley student will recognize that as being part of the lobby inside the fieldhouse. If you don't know me, that's me in the red striped polo, shaking the hand of the man in the yellow shirt. (Man in the yellow shirt is the accused murderer in the movie.)

That's me in the movie, again. I'm in the background, in the same shirt. In this shot, I was barely visible for just a second. The person I'm talking to, in the blue shirt, worked on the film. We came up with an elaborate story to tell each other for each take, as we mouthed "watermelon, oranges." As the story went on, we would start laughing. And I think at this point in the movie, we are just about to start laughing. A pity that the scene was missed.

I had the fortune to be called back for another scene in the film. This time I was a dignitary at a ribbon cutting ceremony, filmed on the Gilette Bridge in downtown Grand Rapids, MI. This scene took a few hours to set up and film, and was only in the movie for thirty seconds. (Again, that's how the business works.) You can see me in the shot, between the characters hugging in the foreground and the American flag waving in the background. We were asked to be happy and jubilant, and I tried. I really, really did. But when it was over 90 degrees outside, and you are wearing long pants, long sleeves and have been sitting in a warm holding room for hours, being happy was far from anybody's mind. The crew handled it like pros, though, and they made sure that everybody (including extras) had plenty of water to drink. We joked that the muggy weather was actually good, as it would be more "Dixie-like."

Grace and I were called in for another scene, set in the film's whites-only church. However, the camera angles did not include us in the frame. Again, that is also like the business; you may spend multiple days on a few scenes, only to have the director and editors cut those scenes out entirely.

All in all, it was a great experience and I was very glad to have been a small part of it, and to see a little bit of how a movie is made. I'll have another oppertunity to be a background actor in the future, but, that will be another blog post for another time.