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Dear Jon Stewart,

I love your show, but what's with that McCain interview? (Watch: Part 1 | Part 2). You sounded a little like Bill O'Reilly there, Jon. Remember him? He's the man you love to make fun of for doing . . . exactly what you just did. I was a tad embarrassed. You seem to be forgetting your own mantra: that The Daily Show is a comedy show. You are on Comedy Central, Jon. Not Fox. The Stewart Factor, featuring Jon the political pundit - who talks over his guests - is a different show, a slightly disturbing one, and one I don't care to watch, regardless of whether or not I agree with you.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Media  Politics 

Can you imagine if this happened in the states? After the maelstrom of Janet's boob, methinks we'd probably be on the brink of civil war.

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Time has really embraced new media and blogging over the last several years, recruiting a-list bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and Ana Marie Cox to write editorials for the magazine, and incorporating The Daily Dish into Time.com. Now, they've promoted AMC to Time.com's Washington Editor. Congratulations, Time for being that smart. And congratulations AMC for being that good.

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A new name for Gen Y is being adopted by certain media establishments: Echo Boomers. I kind of like this name, actually. It kind of reflects the fact that a lot of this generation were Baby Boomer's 'Echo' children, third or fourth in line, conceived during the Boomer's comfortable mid-life (and potentially during the Boomer's third or fourth marriages.) Link via MPPS

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Hey, meet me over at the Starbucks library, then we can head over to the MBNA Cafeteria for a bite to eat before gym class . . . Can you believe I made out with Jennifer Scott in the MacDonald's Staircase? The future of school branding.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Advertising  Media 

Oh man. How to get this out. How to say this thing I'm thinking. I'm all spit and babble tonight. Slobbering all over myself.

Oh well, here goes . . .

It's 2006 and all over the Web people are contemplative. Well, either that or hungover. For the most part, people are making new beginnings. They are coming up with new business strategies. Many are quitting smoking - go Kim, go Catherine! Some people are looking at the digital culture we find ourselves in and realizing we're on the verge of something big when it comes to education, and the only way to not get left behind is to jump in.

I think it's happening . . . there's a wave of change occurring, and it's not just because of the new year. There's a breakdown in our culture on the way, some kind of collective collapse. It's going to involve a dramatic re-organizing of the old media. Records, books, film. Television, print, radio. It's all due for an overhaul. As people become more empowered to publish their own content in the form of blogs, podcasts, photos, film, there's less of a need for the old infrastructure of record labels, publishers, and movie houses. This is no new revelation, and I'm not pretending to be some kind of prophet, but I think the difference now - in 2006 - is that we're actually beginning to see some tangible signs of this change. It's here. It's all around us. It's not just abstract notions any more. And thank God, you know? We needed it. We were beginning to feel that burning jones for something different. We needed a revolution, damnit. Spirit. Passion. It's been too long. Why should the hippies keep having all the fun and glory?

Social bookmarking - sites like del.icio.us - or other online tools that allow the democratic masses to create content and share that content with others - ie, flickr, upcoming , wikipedia - have become huge and the use of these sites is leading to this profound change in how we all relate to each other. Add to that technologies like Skype, where phone calls across the world are free, and the conversations we have can be recorded and published . . . and now we're beginning to see a small glimpse of the kind of information-sharing that is to come.

And amidst this revolution in culture, I continue to be plagued by a chronic impatience, a side-effect perhaps of the new media.

I no longer listen to 'an album.' I put my entire music library on shuffle. For new music, I listen to a podcast. When I'm in a particular mood, I listen to that one perfect song. I have complete control over the programming. I can fast-forward or skip if I don't like something. I don't have to listen to NPR at a certain time, I can listen to a podcast while I'm doing the dishes. Radio as we know it is not 'dying.' It is dead. And rigor mortis is setting in. And that includes you too, Sirius. Howard isn't enough.

The same goes for TV. I watch television on my own clock, not NBC's or ABC's. I TiVo. I skip commercials.

Then there are books. Today when I sit down to read, I wind up reading online. It's not from a lack of interest in print - I still manage to get at least one book in every other month or so - but shit, it's just not the same if I can't bookmark it or link to it. I start reading something on paper and I immediately want to find it's context online, want to see what others think of it. I become frustrated when there is no immediate sharing of ideas. No conversation. I can't help but wonder: Will authors write 'books' in 2020, or something else altogether? Maybe something more 'collaborative.' Is 'modern lit' still something that is going to be bound by paper - landlocked from comments, tags, the chatter of voices. Many, many, voices.

So resolutions . . . it is a time for resolutions, right?

If you know me, you know that in my daily life, I'm a creature of habit. I like my days to follow a routine. Cereal, coffee, swimming, dinner, up late, rise early. But a consistency in daily habits is not the same as consistency in overarching interests and life goals. Here I have a problem.

Often I have the uneasy feeling that if I slow down for one second, if I spend too much time on any one thing, that I will miss something else. So far, this sense of urgency and restlessness has served to keep my pen in a lot of different wells which I used to think was good. But I've begun to realize that all these different interests add up to a lot of things left undone.

So here's how it boils down for me in 2006: I've made changes - 2004 and 2005 were both years full of big changes - but now I need to focus. I need to narrow my goals. The time has come to realize that I will not be an Olympic swimmer, for instance. That is one goal I can safely take off the table. And maybe I won't be a real-estate mogul. (I'm really not sure why I ever thought that might be a good idea.) But I still have plenty of attainable goals, ones that involve music for instance. But it's going to continue to be difficult if I try to go after all of them.

So my new year's resolution is two-fold: narrow my focus and take on a little less responsibility. I will try to establish some kind of consistency with my larger goals, try to not change for a little while and see where that takes things.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Writing  Music  Media  Chewing 

After several years of resistance, Cath and I finally broke down and bought a TiVo. I say 'bought' but we practically got it for free, which made the decision easy. Amazon had it on sale for $179.99 and then there was a $150 rebate on top of that, which brought it down to $19.99. Additionally, I had a gift certificate for $25, so I actually made $5 on the transaction (which I applied towards a book).

I set the TiVo up this weekend. There is a rather long setup process which entails activating the service subscription, physically setting up the TiVo, and then letting TiVo download schedules and configure itself. It took a little time, but it went off without a glitch. By that evening, we were pausing live action in the Broncos vs. Ravens game. It felt strange at first. At one point, we realized we had missed an interesting play.

"What just happened?"

"I'm not sure. I missed it."

"Well! Let's just back it up and find out!"

"Yes. Let's!"

It takes some getting used to, this kind of freedom. It almost seems like you're cheating at first, like you're somehow defying the laws of time.

For a moment, an uneasy guilt rushed over me.
Wait! We can't do this! I thought. It isn't right!

Especially for a live event like a football game, where the action goes on without you as you rewind, there's something unnatural about backing up. It makes you feel a little 'behind' or 'out of sync' with the here and now. At least at first. But you quickly get over it as you begin to get comfortable with the new-found carte blanche you have over programming, over time itself. I'm getting in the habit of watching things a little after they actually air, so I can skip through commercials.

My worst fears about owning a TiVo (that I would watch more TV) have not come true, so far. Rather, I'm able to watch stuff I normally wouldn't have because of the scheduling. And when I watch those things, I can do it in less time, without commercials. So I'm a little late to the TiVo party, but I think I'm here to stay.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Media 

I spent a good part of this past Sunday watching coverage of hurricane Katrina. In the early part of the week, I had been avoiding it, largely because I can't stand the way CNN becomes 'Hurricane Headquarters' during hurricane season. It's yet another example of how the news turns dramatic events into huge marketing campaigns, hyping their own name and waiting with baited breath for something horrible to happen. I hate it. But as the reports came in on Tuesday, and I realized how bad things really were, that it wasn't all hype, I couldn't help but watch and, like the rest of the world, feel terrible for all those people who have been displaced, hurt, or killed by this.

The weird thing about all this, to me, is that before the hurricane struck, I had read some really scary articles describing how the levees in New Orleans could break or be overrun in a category 5 hurricane and how, if this happened, the city could basically be destroyed. Unfortunately, with the way the news media likes to over-dramatize every. single. thing. that happens these days, I was left with the not-uncommon feeling I get after watching or reading the news that this is probably something that theoretically could happen, and therefore the news had latched on to it, in the absense of an actual story, and made a story out of that possibility. Here is a blurb from one CNN article on Sunday, August 28th:

In worst-case scenarios, most of New Orleans would end up under 15 feet of water, without electricity, clean water and sewage for as long as six months. Even pumping the water out could take as long as four months to get started because the massive pumps that would do the job would be underwater.

And here's another one from Monday morning:

Flooding from Hurricane Katrina's Monday landfall could wreak catastrophe on New Orleans, overwhelming the city's water and sewage systems and leaving survivors in a bowl of toxic soup, a top hurricane expert said.

Now I read these things, along with thousands of other people I bet, and thought, "Man, that would be horrible. But could this really happen, or is that the media overhyping a situation again?" I think it's hyperbolic phrases like 'toxic soup' that immediately set off alarms in my head and make me 'tune out.' But if we had all read, Drowning New Orleans, by Mark Fischetti in 2001, we might have said, "Hell yes, that could happen!" Likewise, if we had been a part of Coast 2050, we might have said, "You're not kiddin' toxic soup!" But a good many of us did not read or take part in those things, including probably a good majority of our existing government. (By the way, there's a good NY Times article about the history of this issue, also by Mark Fishetti. Also, Google found a site called 'coast2050.gov,' but it won't seem to come up for me today.)

So I think on Monday as the hurricane made landfall many of us began to anticipate the headlines: "New Orleans Dodges Bullet." I think even the media half expected to run that headline. And perhaps there was a collective, National pause as we all waited for it. Only that's not what happened. This time, the worst DID happen, and I think everybody, including the news media took a moment before realizing that was the case. This might partially explain the delayed response by the federal government, but certainly doesn't excuse it. All I can say is I know I've been much more suspicious of the news media in the past several years, waiting for the next cry of 'wolf!' and the whole hurricane Katrina coverage was no exception.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to be an apologist for the federal government here by calling attention to our chicken-little news culture. I definitely think people in our government fucked up. Many people. And that does make me a bit aggravated. But the fact is that it's not just the response to the actual disaster that was botched. This entire situation has been botched at least as far back as 1998 and probably further. So before people go pointing fingers here and there we should all do a 360-degree turn and realize just how many directions we could point.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  News  Media  Chewing 

Well it's a strange day in the mainstream TV news. I mean, yesterday was one of the best Super Bowl games I've seen in a while, but nobody talked about the game, the talented quarterbacks on both teams, and the high-scoring volley that made up the fourth quarter. Instead, the bulk of the news was about Janet Jackson's right boob. I have to admit, it was a pretty interesting part of the evening. Believe me, I'm never one to make light of a boob, especially when it's Janet's. When it happened, I looked at the guy next to me at the Childe Harold, my eyebrows raised. "Did you see that?" I said, just to confirm that my over-active imagination hadn't fabricated Janet's boob (which it's fully capable of doing.) "Yeah." Okay so I wasn't crazy. There had been a little 'pasty' on her tit so as not to be too vulgar - a nice touch. But other than that, it was pretty much Janet Jackson's boob. Cool. After the initial wow factor, I put it behind me. I had actually forgotten all about it until I found this morning that it was overshadowing all discussions of the actual game and was raising all kinds of controversies . . . . it's just a boob, America. Get over it. We see these every time we turn on the news, though they usually go by names like 'George' and 'Donald.' What's funny (and a little heartbreaking) is that on all the replays of the dreaded incident, Janet's boob is blotted out by the censors. I knew there was a reason I should have got Tivo.

One thing you probably didn't hear about today was that a student was shot and killed at Ballou Senior High in Southeast Washington DC. Now if this had been a suburban, predominately white school somewhere in Colorado, or maybe if Janet Jackson had NOT bared her right boob yesterday. You may have actually heard about this one on CNN, or your local news. But this one happened in Southeast Washington DC. I guess that don't make for good TV . . .

There was also a lot about Dean and Kerry, and Bush's budget proposals . . . and man, did anybody see Dean on Meet the Press yesterday? Dean did a nice job of holding his own, despite a few low blows slung at him by Tim Russert, who normally does a pretty good job of keeping things fair. Doesn't Tim know that the whole 'I have a scream' thing has been overdone, that Dean only seemed to be screaming because he was speaking loudly into a microphone that was filtering out background noise? These things happen and the press did a poor job covering this one, overall. Anyway, back to Meet the Press, Dean's no-nonsense in-your-face remarks - do I dare say his honesty (gasp, and am I really that innocent to believe that honesty is a word that has any place whatsoever in a political race?) - may not win him votes, but I like it. Count me in for Dean. I'm proud to say DC nominated him by 43% majority vote. Kerry and Edwards weren't even a part of the top three here. Take that Iowa!

link to this | comments (1) | File:  Media