Thursday, December 30, 2010

Blogournalism: Knee-Slapper



I don't think this is funny and not because I live in Brooklyn. I do appreciate it as a response to JoeScough (the idea of the iPad being the biggest media story of 2010 illustrates the distance some media figures have from important things - though I guess I am glad to hear that media figures' lives are changing).

I have some questions. Is Brian Williams jabbing just the NYT or media in general? Is he poking young culture's interpretation of capitalism? Did he have this written out before-hand? Why is JoeScough laughing so hard? Does Brian Williams think he can write a real piece of journalism about changes in the economy? Does his pronunciation of "borough" and "artisanal" reflect any form of classicism? When was the last time any of these people were not in a controlled climate? Are there hints of jealousy and insecurity in his longing to primitively sit and build a fire? Is it meta for him to sarcastically talk about people ironically wearing glasses? Why Marrakesh?

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas

As many of you know I'm somewhat a sucker for the 90's. Now that it is almost 2011 it is time to reminisce, so decided to collect images and songs on a new Tumblr blog I started, THE LAST GREAT DECADE. This is your Christmas present, enjoy!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Return of the Lincoln: A Net Neutrality Parable



This is a PSA promoting net neutrality for the Writer's Guild. My job was to move the action figures ever so slightly while my buddy, Axel, would snap a pictures to later pull together creating "animation." Novel! I think it turned out pretty damn well. To see more of Axel's production work check out www.ag-bk.com.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Thank You Milton

A couple of months ago, I was talking with a colleague and friend of mine about the complexities of combining work and play; takin' your job home, bringin' your passions to work, etc. We began to talk about the Etsy Blog and she was telling me about a series called Saved from the Fire. She was personally unsure about what she would keep and we began to talk inversely about getting rid of things.

I've collected and gotten rid of many things since graduating high school. The majority of them have been clothes, media and various family heirlooms. She led on that she was thinking of starting her own series called Into the Great Beyond and asked if I'd like to participate.

After some thinking, I came to this.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

I tweeted and now my Tumbie huwts

READ ME

If you hadn't noticed, Tumblr has had some site outages. So I couldn't look at a blog for a day or two. I was pretty devastated. No nudie pics. No ironic messages. No waxing anything.

This is just why I posted the Chuck Klosterman article. I think there's something to be said for the type of expectations present in Ehrenberg's argument. Ok, so I understand that he's a VC that taps the blogging world as his podium. Good for him. However, this logic of "public" humiliation seems trivial, no? I'm referring to:

"I tell my Twitter followers and Facebook friends about the new post, and watch (and participate) in the conversation over the ensuing hours. Unfortunately, when people can’t read the post, it is hard to have a timely conversation about the post."

I think truly this type of situation exploits our perception of time & the expectations we're building regarding our individual voice. The immediacy of conversation and subsequent desire to garner a reaction is a very interesting possibility in today's world (with the technology we all have available to us). To me though, these types of posts are one in the same with any other posts, albethem(?) disguised as thoughtful perception pieces as opposed to bits of whining. There's a hidden devaluation in general. It's not really about an individual post, but rather an individual blog, wall, page, etc and it's ability to maintain a popular conversation. The frustration to remain timely on a micro level is a symptom of the macro environment of blogging.

"the President of the Company, in my Twitter stream, informed me that my musings about switching platforms in the wake of the outage was “reactionary.” Reactionary? Really? Is it reactionary if you are in an information vacuum for an entire day? Is it reactionary if your social contract is broken? I don’t think so."

It's interesting that Ehrenberg goes against the very nature of the thing that so inspires him to conceptualize text.

"I appreciated that my friend @bijan informed me that he, as a Board member, was involved and engaged in, problem resolution."

And here we truly see the separation between "church" and "state."

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Blogspective: Chuck On the Snowballing Weight of Technology

Great article from Chuck Klosterman in the NYT. Though I've never felt like I see eye to eye with Chuck (he's a bit older), I do deeply appreciate this perspective and metaphor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html

I was really intrigued by this phrase:

“It’s hard not to think ‘death drive’ every time I go on the Internet. Opening Safari is an actively destructive decision. I am asking that consciousness be taken away from me.” - Alice Gregory

It also kind of puts this soundtrack in my head: