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Category Archives: Media & Culture
It’s ringing
We’ve all had this experience but it’s less common with mobile phones. You’re in your office and your “desk phone” rings. You can’t answer it for some reason. You’re talking on your mobile or you have someone in your office, but you didn’t set the phone to go to voice mail so it keeps ringing until the caller gives up.
This happened to someone being interviewed on a podcast I listen to and the phone rang 20 or 30 times. Still ringing when the interview ended. So here’s my question: what’s going on in the caller’s head?
He obviously believes the person he’s calling is ‘there’ or he’d just hang up. So. He’s there but not answering the phone. Why?
a) He’s in a coma
b) His office is being robbed and he’s duct taped to his chair
c) He’s doing something that prevents him from answering THE MOTHER FUCKING PHONE!
Am I missing something obvious here? I do that. As horrible as it is to contemplate, I always suspected the caller was thinking, “If I let it ring long enough, if that becomes annoying enough, he will stop what he’s doing and answer my call. Passive-Aggressive that I am (was?) I would usually just pick up and immediately hang up the phone.
I don’t get a lot of calls these days and I don’t miss ‘em.
“Forcing my life into slow-motion”
Jonathan Safran Foer had an idea for Chipotle so it shared it with their CEO.
They had nothing on their bags. So I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to just put some interesting stuff on it? Get really high-quality writers of different kinds, creating texts of different kinds that you just give to your customers as a service.’
In the Vanity Fair piece below they give a few samples. One by Michael Lewis (The Two-Minute Minute) resonated for me.
“Recording the quotidian details of my day seems to add hours a day to my life: I’m not sure why. Another trick is to focus on some ordinary thing—the faintly geological strata of the insides of a burrito, for instance—and try to describe what I see. Another: pick a task I’d normally do quickly and thoughtlessly–writing words for the side of a cup, say–and do it as slowly as possible. Forcing my life into slow-motion, I notice a lot that I miss at game speed. The one thing I don’t notice is the passage of time.”
The slowing of my life over the past two years has been one of the best and most interesting parts of not having a job. I still notice the passage of time but it’s moving more slowly.
Barb rubs elbows with celebs
If you write a nice check (for a good cause) you get your picture taken with the celebrities. (Barb 2nd from the left; the lady in the middle is Pam, a high school friend).
The artists appearing with Sheryl Crow were pretty much unknown to me. I knew their fathers but haven’t followed their careers. And they play country music. “Redneck Country” in the case of Noll Billings, singer for Blackjack Billy. Looks like David Nail had a #1 song in 2012. They all have wikipedia pages if you’re curious. Blackjack Billy; Trent Tomlinson; David Nail
I assume it’s damned hard to make it in the music business so it does seem noteworthy that four kids from a small (10,000) town in southeast Missouri managed to do so well.
I am so, so sorry
“A Fox News guest has been forced to apologize for suggesting Britain’s second biggest city was off-limits to non-Muslims.”
This story got me thinking about apologies. “I’m sorry” must be one of the first phrases learned by American children. Say you’re sorry.
Like everyone, I’ve done plenty of things to “be sorry” about but it sure feels like a meaningless expression. Even if you are sincerely contrite, so what? Does saying you sorry mean anything? Does it make a difference? It must because when someone fucks up, demands for a public apology are loud. But for the life of me I can’t see how it makes any difference. Certainly doesn’t unring the bell and more often than not it’s a half-assed apology (“I’m sorry if anyone was offended by seeing my johnson on Twitter. It was an error in judgement. My penis misspoke.”)
Let’s make it more personal. Your husband/wife gets caught sneak-fuckin’ and hopes to repair the damage with an apology. Is it somehow important to the injured party that the offender regrets his/her actions? (“Well, as long as you feel badly about what you did, okay.”) No. Not okay.
Maybe an apology is more about forgiveness than contrition. You won’t forgive me until I say I’m sorry. It just seem like bullshit to me. Maybe if I had kids I’ve have a better handle on this. They need to feel bad when they do something wrong. Is there no way to get there without an apology (genuine or half-assed)? And, honestly, I don’t have an alternative.
Reporter: The video shows you knocking the snot out of your girlfriend in that elevator. Are you sorry you did that?
Me: I wish I hadn’t done it but I did. Wish I had a do-over but I don’t.
Reporter: So, are you sorry or not?
Me: What difference would it make if I was. Wouldn’t change the fact I knocked crap out of her.
Maybe what I’m struggling with is after enough apologies, they become meaningless. A meaningless noise we’re expected to make. If I’m a dick, I’m still a dick no matter how many times I say I’m sorry.
Poor Person Baton
There’s a sad little woman
with a cardboard sign
standing by the off-ramp
pretty much rain or shine.
The sign says “god bless you”
but I never look too close.
She wears those long dresses
that say I’m a child of god,
you can forget about my legs.
When I miss the light
and have to stop
I hold up a bill and she trots over
“God bless you, god bless you”…
Whoosh I’m gone.
When the light is green
I go sailing by, “next time” say my eyes.
Or we try a daring hand-off move
like passing the poor person baton.
Chris Rock on race and comedy
A long, but interesting, interview with Chris Rock in New York magazine. A few excerpts to wet your whistle:
If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.
When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.
There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.
Serial
I kept reading glowing reviews of this podcast and finally listened to the first episode. And the second. And… I was hooked. Now I’m rationing my listening. Once upon a time I would have described this as “good radio” but it no longer feels like radio to me. And it’s far superior to any podcast I’ve heard before. The people behind this podcast have close ties to This American Life.
Serial is a new podcast from the creators of This American Life, hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial (follows) one story – a true story – over the course of a whole season. We follow the plot and characters wherever they take us and we won’t know what happens at the end of the story until we get there, not long before you get there with us.
The episodes I’ve listened to so far (five?) have been sponsored (MailChimp) but they also accept donations (I had no trouble kicking in $20) and they’ve received enough support to commit to a second season.
Each episode is anywhere from half an hour to forty-five minutes but are so well written and produced they seem much shorter.
Radio, podcasting, great story telling… whatever you call this, it’s compelling.
Going to a movie in the afternoon
I don’t find seeing movies in a theater a very pleasant experience these days. But we still go once in a while. Being able to go in the middle of the afternoon is one of the benefits of not having a job. Barb and I watched Nightcrawler yesterday and found it entertaining.
Why Twitter and Facebook users don’t get Google+
In this Computerworld article, Mike Elgan explains why Twitter and Facebook users don’t get Google+.
In general, Twitter is dominated by news, celebrities, pundits, professionals and narcissists. Facebook is mostly about family and friends. And narcissists. And each social network draws people who are seeking the type of engagement a particular network specializes in. That’s why Twitter and Facebook people don’t get Google+.
They’ve tried it. The Twitter people come to Google+ looking for Twitter type engagement, but they don’t find it. Likewise, the Facebook people come looking for Facebook-like engagement (family and friends) and don’t find it.
It’s like a Chinese tourist going to France looking for Chinese food and concluding that the food in France is terrible. Or a Hawaiian surfer bringing her surfboard to New York City and, finding no waves, concluding that there’s nothing to do in Manhattan.
I’m an active Twitter user but I don’t expect (or need) any engagement there. It’s a source for news. Don’t do Facebook because I don’t have much in common with “friends and family” other than they are friends and family. Most of my online time is now spent on Google+. I post here mostly for archival reasons.