Chaotic Convergence

Trailer for a Real Movie, Headed to Sundance

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:12:24 GMT

The Global Pool of Money

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:02:21 GMT

I realize that haven't posted for more than a year and maybe this will signal an end to my silence, plus maybe prompt me to post some kind of explanation, but I thought the following links were too good not to share.

As you've probably noticed, the whole world is in a state of turmoil because to quote John McCain, "the economy is about to crater".

I've seen a few folks on my friendlist wonder about this and/or offer their opinions over the past couple of weeks, so when I learned about an easy-to-understand explanation of the problem which was put together for NPR's "This American Life", back in May, I thought it was too important not to pass along.

Streaming Audio
Transcript

ETA: The audio version is 59 minutes and the transcript is 20 pages, so if you're one of those on-the-go kind of folks, there's also a paid download available on the program's archive. (#355, May '08)

Self-Pimp

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:35:49 GMT

Charlie Rose is playing the other room and it's his repeat of Friday's tribute to New York Socialite Brooke Astor, who died last week. As I'm listening, I was initially reminded of my post from last January about her family and thus far, I haven't heard much of anything about the controversy which was such a large part of her final years and my blog entry, so I thought I'd offer a link.

PS) If anyone decides to visit Mr. Rose's site and if they're feeling particularly geeky or fearful, his recent hour about preparing for and protecting ourselves against a global pandemic is pretty dry, yet incredibly interesting.

Another Quick Music Post

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:05:29 GMT

We've been cleaning the house, so I flipped on WERU out of Blue Hill, Maine for the tailend of their world music show and their Sunday afternoon, music and commentary program called "Women's Voices.

One of the songs jumped out at me, so I moved over to the computer, when the DJ was going through the playlist of songs that we had just heard. Unfortunately, I can't find a full-length copy of Christine Lavin's "Happydance", the title track from her new album "Happy Dance of the Xenophobe", but I did find that it may have been previously called "Quit Your Sobbing - She's an Idiot".

Nonetheless, if you've got a couple of minutes and would like a taste of this song and the other fun, bouncy tunes on her new album, I suggest playing through its Amazon Sampler and perhaps viewing a live, festival performance of what may be an older song, "Sensitive New Age Guys".

Pop Tarts

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 10:08:43 GMT

If you go to the supermarket, you can't miss the many stories about Britney Spears and her custody battle with Kevin Federline.

I don't know the facts of her life, but if you look around the headlines and actually look at the photographs, you see what appears to be a fairly normal family. And, if you bother to read the stories (click the mags), you'll find that a lot of the accusations are that she prefers for the nannies to change the kid's diapers and to see them to bed; she's sometimes naked in front of the kids; some of the staff, whom she considers to be her friends have seen her undressed; she drinks and takes a prescription medication.

None of those things are really outlandish and other than the time, when she nudged a car in a parking garage recently, almost all of the stories are coming from unnamed sources and they always appear in an article surrounded by quotes from his lawyer.

Well, we all know how unnamed sources or senior White House officials sometimes go.

I don't know if she's a normal, single mother, who is worth about $120m and isolated from society by the paparazzi or a trainwreck, nor do I know if she's going to keep living in the limelight or eventually head back to Louisiana. All I know is what I see and among those things that I have seen over the years have been stories about the occasional millionaire's ex-spouse collecting tens of thousands in monthly child support, so I have to take all of the Britney character assassination with a grain of salt.

Jeff Bezos Should Take Another Cross-Country Drive

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 07:20:11 GMT

The founder and CEO of blogsearch Technorati has announced that he's stepping down from his executive position and installing a team of the company's Vice Presidents to serve as President. In his post explaining the move, Mr. Sifrey notes that their search for a replacement CEO has taken longer than anticipated, while others have noted that Technorati has benefited from several influxes of cash and may be headed toward oblivion because latecomer Google has been eating their shorts with a less functional tool.

I've long held that from the outside, Technorati looks like a good acquisition target for Yahoo! because it matches a lot of the criteria they've used in the past and a simple implementation of contextual advertising could be what the doctor ordered. Though I can speak only for myself, but I'd say that one of the big reasons that Technorati's widgets don't litter the web is because there's no back end from the results. Sure, Google hasn't offered an embeddable blogsearch and you're just left with their plain vanilla service, but if you use it or their "search within this site" functionality, the possibility does exist for you to monetize the results with AdSense.

Of course, Yahoo! is also in the business of contextual ads, plus their blogsearch tool was only available for a while and then it disappeared, or at least I can no longer find it. Nonetheless, it wouldn't take much for them to marry advertising to the Technorati widgets, but they have their own problems at this time and though I still think they should consider the purchase, if somebody were to ask me the solution to Yahoo!'s woes, the acquisition of Technorati would be the somewhere around third on my list.

It's still a good idea and the price is obviously ticking down, but since Mr. Sifrey made his announcement another scenario has popped into my head and because they aren't plagued by an infernal internal memo, it may actually be a more realistic option.

Tim Faulkner of Valleywag recently illustrated via a simple chart that Amazon has gotten over their shock from the bubble burst and that they've restarted making acquisitions over the past couple of years.

At first glance, Technorati may not look like a good purchase for Amazon, but if you stop and think about it for a while, it could make sense. Most people blog about things that are sold via the Amazon site or which could be easily tied to a product line.

The Technorati results served on their own pages could have advertising for Amazon products alongside. Say you search on the tag "Obama", they could easily put a selection of books about the presidential candidate and politics on the results page. The same can be done for music, appliances, psychological problems, etc. and because Amazon already has the ability to match products to keywords through their Omakase Links, it wouldn't take much to tweak the software to service all of the pages within Technorati.

Also, when one "claims their blog" within Technorati, they could easily be offered registration as an Amazon Associate and beyond the normal tools which we all think of in relation to advertising Amazon products, their inline product previews are really simple to install and can be set so that Amazon decides which words get the double underline, if one chooses. All it'd take from the blogger's side is a single reference to an external javascript. Nothing could be simpler and because most people already link to Amazon anyway, by actively recruiting associates, automating links and drawing attention to their services, Amazon would benefit.

Of course very few people actually make a living from being an Amazon Associate, but with or without Technorati, the opportunity is there. What an acquisition would do for Mr. Bezos and his corporation is that it would dramatically increase their footprint in the blogosphere and though the bloggers themselves may not make the majority of sales, Amazon benefits because it would increase awareness of their many product lines and sales could still happen the conventional way, or after the cookie has timed-out.

I'd say that it'd be dependent on price and Yahoo! may look like the more logical partner, but if Amazon is looking to make additional purchases in this calendar year, I'd suggest that they take a look at Technorati. As a blogger and as someone who reads a lot of blogs, I consider Technorati unparalleled when everything is working correctly. It'd be a shame for it to simply disappear, or for yet another sector to simply be ceded to Google and their growing dominance of the web.

This in Not Becoming a Video Blog

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:48:44 GMT

The following was uploaded to YouTube with the simple title "Women in Film", but for the purposes of this post, I'm going to retitle it "The Face of Beauty?". (question mark intended and it looks great fullscreen)

(via Jezebel)

Job Description: Make Believiologist

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:50:46 GMT

I was fishing through Fox News the other evening, when I ran across a video titled "Post Porn Effect" and because it obviously discusses one of the topics that I've blogged about in the past, I clicked to view.

If pressed, I can say that I may agree with some of the stuff spouted by "Sexologist" Yvonne Fulbright, but I don't believe all or possibly most of it by any means and the following quotes jumped out at me, as being worthy of note;

Up until today, we've seen people with a warped sense of their sexuality because a Puritanical background. Twenty years from now, it'll be because we're a porn-obsessed culture that really is perverse in the way that we're handling what it means to be sexually healthy.

And a few seconds later, Ms. Fulbright declares;

Women especially have such a warped sense of what it means to be sexually liberated and empowered; they're disconnected from their bodies and they're not really sure what true sexual pleasuring means in this day and age.

Apparently, if you're a "sexologist", you're also qualified to be a "futurologist" and to speak for all women, plus if you watch the thing through to its conclusion, she presents herself as an expert on the value of social networking.

Warning: The 3:36 clip uses thirty seconds from a Girls Gone Wild infomercial as b-roll.

Video: Japanese Sex Toys - WTF?

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 02:35:47 GMT

Please Note: I have no idea about some of these things and some scare me, but the expo does appear equal opportunity.
Obviously, this video (which trails-off toward the end) is not safe for work.

One for the Newsers

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:27:47 GMT

Earlier, I made mention of a new "feature" from Google which would allow whomever they decide is the subject of a news story to post a response, which would be hosted by Google and posted alongside their link to the original story.

The context of my post was that it was another example of Google releasing a "feature" which has no revenue stream, but then during the afternoon, I ran across a post on TechCrunch highlighting that Google News does not allow spiders to crawl their site and that they own the rights to everything which isn't from another news source.

So, in effect, the NYTimes can write a piece, Google can scrape it from the NYTimes site, one of the subjects can write a response which Google will host and nobody, including the Times will be allowed to reprint it or make a derivative work.

Googlicious?

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:50:47 GMT

When Yahoo! hit the IPO jackpot, they invested a lot of the extra cashflow into other standalone, web startups and as a result, they took a big hit when the bubble burst. The Google IPO has created a lot more liquidity for the younger search company, but they seem to be putting an inordinate amount of their money and effort into questionable in-house ventures which appear to only enhance the brand and which do not provide obvious income opportunities.

Over the past week, two such endeavors have come to light;

Yesterday, Google announced that the subjects of a news story may now submit a written response and after the author's authenticity is verified, the response will be posted alongside the original story using AJAX, so a new pageview would not be required and no additional advertising would be displayed.

An example of this setup can be found in relation to a story about McDonalds.

On Monday, Google announced that they'll be recruiting "Business Referral Representatives", who will be independent contractors that will be paid per verified listing for going to local businesses to collect data like phone number and hours of operation, plus take a photo of the business so that this information could be added to Google Maps.

While in contact with these businesses, the contractors, who could be anyone and anywhere are encouraged to talk-up the functionality of Google Maps and Adwords. Though, none of their pay is tied to the contracting for these services. The only way Google would make a return for this effort is if the business were to purchase Adwords and in my opinion, they may get some sales in markets larger than a hundred thousand, but in the smaller cities of this country, Adwords doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for the average brick and mortar business.

For example, if you punch the name of my town, the postal abbreviation for the state and the word "hardware" into Google, the first three listings are from Google: Local. All three of these businesses belong to a national buying cooperative and their phone number and map position are already displayed.

There's the "Ace", the "True Value" and a "Do It Best"; Two of the three do have freestanding websites which lists the kind of data that Google will be collecting, but they're already linked from the initial listing and an additional link to such a limited site would just be redundant. For shopping, specials or price comparisons, all of the businesses redirect to the national chains where the catalog is more extensive and the database is easier to maintain.

If I were the owner of any of these businesses, I don't see how I could justify buying an Adword. My listing already appears at the top of the Google results and though a geographically-targeted Adword would put another link on the page, I don't see how it would benefit me. There's three hardware stores in this town, much like there's three auto parts stores and two laundries. This situation and these numbers are fairly typical for the smaller markets, so why should Google pay somebody up to ten dollars to collect their phone numbers, which are already in Google anyway because of their lookup service?

As a user, I may get some benefit from these efforts, but the hosted responses to news articles raises legal, ethical and competitive questions. I pretty much know what my local hardware stores look like and where they're located, so since the phone numbers are already listed and their hours are a click away, I can't see any value in the second effort for anyone in a small to mid-sized market.

If I were an investor in Google, it may be time to start questioning the reasoning for these and other ventures because I see only limited return, beyond a simple and non-revenue-producing enhancement of the brand.

Though, if I were unemployed and in need of an income, I'd totally bank some of Google's misguided funds.

(Valleywag and Lost Remote contributed links to this post)

From the Massachusetts General Statutes

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:56:15 GMT

Chapter 207: Section 1. Marriage of man to certain relatives: No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, stepmother, grandfather's wife, grandson's wife, wife's mother, wife's grandmother, wife's daughter, wife's granddaughter, brother's daughter, sister's daughter, father's sister or mother's sister.
Chapter 207: Section 2. Marriage of woman to certain relatives: No woman shall marry her father, grandfather, son, grandson, brother, stepfather, grandmother's husband, daughter's husband, granddaughter's husband, husband's grandfather, husband's son, husband's grandson, brother's son, sister's son, father's brother or mother's brother.
Chapter 207: Section 3. Application of Secs. 1 and 2: The prohibition of the two preceding sections shall continue notwithstanding the dissolution, by death or divorce, of the marriage by which the affinity was created, unless the divorce was granted because such marriage was originally unlawful or void.

At first glance, one might wonder why such an explicit list and why they didn't use common titles like "Aunt" and "Uncle". Though, once you delve beneath the surface and load the lists into a spreadsheet to make sure: You're left asking why a man can marry his son's wife and a woman can marry her husband's father, but a similar union is forbidden, the other way around?

Citation

Quickie

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:59:07 GMT

As a parent, I realize that there are things a lot worse than the "Raspberry Beret" costume from Lillian Vernon, but for the life of me, I can't understand why the hat is black.

An Andy Rooneyism

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:04:40 GMT

What's the deal with young women wearing spaghetti straps and two bras? Are the visible tri-colors the style? Do they need the extra padding or is their "best" bra wore out, so they put another one underneath? Sure, it might be understandable, if you could see their layered undergarments from the front, but the best I can tell, they're doing it for the straps.

What ever happened to burning the things? In the 1970s, they passed a law in NC making it illegal for women to ride motorcycles topless. Will so many girls wearing two, completely makeup for all those who went without? Are they purposefully trying to counteract their ancestors? Why must you look through a tangled weave of elastic to admire a lovely set of shoulders, nowadays?

Pointless Post about Nothing in Particular

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 07:57:02 GMT

I'm sure that I've hinted about it before, but there was a time that I'd tell receptionists or someone whom I didn't think really needed my name that I was either Peter Fonda, Phillip Michael Thomas or Anwar Sadat depending on my mood. Now as I've gotten older, my son's favorite movie for the past couple of months has been Thomas and the Magic Railroad with Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda.

Of course there's nothing wrong with the flick, but we have so much Thomas and part of me wishes that he'd occasionally want to see something from one of the disks narrated by George Carlin or Ringo Starr. Carlin's work is pretty straight, so I just long for it to have something different in the background, while Ringo apparently did the first season, when "Mr. Conductor" was called "The Fat Conductor" and according to my daughter, there's a storyline in which one of the engines narrowly escapes "sudden death".

IOW: It's after 1AM and my boy is showing no sign of going to sleep. Right now, he's got a couple of chairs lined-up and he's climbing back and forth from me to the other end, while Mr. Fonda is letting "Lady" loose in the other room.

Oh, and "Baby Elmo" is getting carried along, so he keeps whining and asking for a bottle.

÷÷÷
I'm not going to name him up-top because he would find it via a Google Blogsearch and then I'd be outed, but lately I've taken an inordinate amount of pleasure in teasing a Bubble 2.0 figure on his own blog. I don't know why. I've never met the guy and have nothing against him. In fact there's nothing really wrong with him making a living through writing and webcasting, it's just that something inside of me takes pleasure in publicly questioning the validity of his messages.

Though, now that others have joined-in and the chorus is getting louder, the exercise is beginning to lose some of its appeal.

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Earlier this evening, I flashed over to the website for Craig Ferguson's show because I couldn't remember the name of the musical act and her voice was still in my head. If you haven't heard Nellie McKay, I can certainly suggest that you watch somebody's copyright infringement of her Friday night appearance before it's jerked from YouTube.

Of course, she's that whole jazzy piano, retro sound that has been among my faves for a while and I'd say from this one performance, I'd compare her to Rickie Lee Jones. Though after I submit this post, I'm going to flip through some of her other YouTubes, so I'll have a better idea and I might possibly try to find a legal copy to burn for our car ride tomorrow.

BTW: While you're there, you may notice that CBS uploads portions of Craig's monologue-type things. If you go to his main website, you'll find that they produced a montage of Tom Snyder clips from when he hosted the show and because I missed it the first time, I'll also recommend that you watch Craig's "Show & Tell" from July 30th because as usual, he was hilarious.

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Because a lot of this post has been me repeating myself, I thought I'd point-out that American Express has now uploaded their "Members Project" commercial and another video featuring "Tim from the office next door". Now that I've seen both and have done some side-by-side comparisons, I'm pretty sure that my initial instinct was right and as I posted the other day, he's being played by David Alan Basche, whom I recognized from a crappy sitcom which I mostly watched due to Peter Bonerz's involvement.

÷÷÷
And finally; About once a month, I turn on the local country station and for some reason, the last couple of times, a novelty ballad has played during my short drive and though you may want to go back and wash your mind out with the Nellie McKay video or her newest Amazon Sampler afterward, the Good-Ole-Boy in me still gets a kick from the words to Billy Currington's song.

Because a lot of LJ is at DefCon

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:38:46 GMT

NBC muckraker outed at Defcon: Related: Dateline NBC undercover reporter outed

via TVNewser

LinkTie: Minneapolis Bridge & Los Alamos

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:49:22 GMT

As I'm headed to bed, there's a featured story on Yahoo! about a bridge sensor system under development at Los Alamos which could help alert to problems with a bridge. Obviously, the folks at LA and UC-San Diego had some kind of press availability because not only is their solution on the AP wire, but at least one of the Albuquerque stations had video which they ran at ten.

Since, the wire story doesn't have many pictures, I thought I'd tie the two stories together for anyone who may be interested.

I'm not an Engineer, but a Political Scientist

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:03:54 GMT

Up until 6pm Central, yesterday afternoon, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota had been frequently mentioned as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate in 2008. There were several factors which put his name on the table; He had balanced the budget using spending cuts; His friendship with John McCain; Minnesota's position in the midwest, coupled with the fact that the Republican Convention will be in St. Paul were also at play.

I didn't note the time and it looks like at least one Minneapolis-based ISP is offline at this moment because I can't get to the local blogpost, I was monitoring last night, but the finger-pointing actually started fairly early and as I'm listening to this newest press conference, it hasn't gone away.

I don't know what, if anything Tim Pawlenty would've brought to the Republican ticket, but I'm sure that day has passed. And, though it may be ghoulish to say or to think, but perhaps it will be fortuitous for the RNC to be in MN and the delegates' travels to be disrupted because it may help highlight the need for infrastructure care. Right now, I'm not thinking that the recent budget cuts had any bearing on this situation, whatsoever, but obviously, we need to pay attention to our needs and this tragedy is visible, if nothing else.

NewsBlips

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:54:52 GMT

This morning, media blog "Lost Remote" linked to an AP story about the popularity of news bloopers on sites like YouTube. Of course, the Cynthia Izaguirre thing, where she called the blind mountain climber gay was included, but what's prompted me to post was the byproduct of a comment someone made pointing to a "blooper" from an old outspoken anchor.

After watching the suggested video, I clicked through the sidebar and watched some of the Detroit anchor's other clips and his tone and delivery did somewhat remind me of Albuquerque anchor Dick Knipfing, primarily because of the "editorializing" that seemed to be done with tone, delivery and word choice. But then, I found the following "interview" Bill Bonds did with Sen. Orrin Hatch and I don't think even Dick Knipfing has anything like that in him, but it did strike me as something worth sharing, nonetheless.

In Memoriam: Tom Snyder

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:52:57 GMT

The AP is reporting that Tom Snyder lost his battle with cancer yesterday.

Mr. Snyder's Tomorrow Show was an important connection between myself and the avant garde during my formative years and after Tomorrow was cancelled, I followed him onto the radio, CNBC and CBS. I've mentioned him before on this blog and though I don't think all my links are coming-up via my misspelling, I remain a fan. Unfortunately, he hasn't been on television for a number of years and he deleted his blog in 2005, so there are those who may not know the man and that may be their loss.

I'm sure sometime over the next few days, MSNBC will put together a package of highlights, but in the meantime, I culled the following from YouTube and am offering it in one of their new-fangled players* because I've been looking for an excuse to use one.

Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air.

*There are 12 videos (77 mins) in this collection. Once you click to activate,
you can play them in the order listed, scroll through using the handles
or run your mouse over the bottom of the screen to pick and choose.

With Apologies to my New York Friends

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:10:50 GMT

As I noted in a previous post, the media has tried to save us the trouble of voting and they've anointed "front-runners" for the primaries which don't even begin before January. Sure, a few candidates poll higher than others, but at this point in the game, it's almost all name-recognition and because the media has decided to overweight these polls by concentrating on a handful of candidates, they've unknowingly tried to develop a self-fulfilling prophesy.

One thing that has struck me about their arrogance is the idea that come November 2008, they think we'll be choosing between the former Mayor of New York and the Senator from the NYC suburbs, not to mention that they keep trying to draw the current Mayor of New York into the race. Yes, one of the New York candidates may squeak through, but there's no way the country would stand for only getting to choose between New Yorkers and though Sen. Clinton has some well-known weaknesses, I'd say that if only one candidate were to be left behind, it'd be Mr Giuliani because he has no base and Fred Thompson looms on the horizon.

Another example of their stupidity is the constant refrain that Bill Richardson is running for Vice-President.

In my opinion, they should get real and quit smelling each other's farts.

As I've noted in the past, Gov. Richardson is one of the most popular politicians among his constituents in the history of the republic. He was re-elected with 69% of the vote and that was with full knowledge that he'd be running for President and according to the Albuquerque Journal, 32% of his Presidential campaign contributions have come from his home state. While by the same token, Hillary Clinton collected 22% of her largess from her constituents and Barack Obama only received 14% of his monies from Illinois.

Needless to say, I'm not ready for Mr Richardson to concede by any means and hopefully I'll be posting some additional primary-by-primary analysis over the next few days, but for those "in the know" to think that he's running for VP shows that they haven't studied the question. Once again, as I've pointed out in the past; Sen. Domenici is facing re-election next year and if they were familiar with New Mexico politics, they'd realize that only Bill Richardson has a better than average chance of beating him.

Why would he even consider VP, if he has pretty good shot at a lifetime term in the Senate?
After all, if I'm reading the law correctly, he has until February 12th to decide.

Another Shallow Post

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:33:48 GMT

I watched all eight episodes of VH1's I Hate My 30s over the weekend on Joost and though I could review the show (The Rod Serling bit seemed to lose some of its punch in the middle before coming back toward the end and for one sitting, there may have been too much singing and dancing, but it'd be all right spread over a season), I just couldn't help thinking every time Liam Kyle Sullivan came on the screen, how much he reminded me of David Dean Bottrell.

David Dean Bottrell

Liam Kyle Sullivan

Back before the Emmy® nominations came out, I made a few comments around the web saying that I thought Mr. Bottrell was worthy of a guest star nomination for his portrayal of Lincoln Meyer on Boston Legal. Oftentimes, you can spot the name actors going for a late career nod and I had hoped that the unknown Mr. Bottrell's brilliant work would not be overlooked.

I don't know if anybody submitted his name for consideration, "Hands" got the guest star nom for Boston Legal and he won last year, so I wouldn't hold out hope. And, it seems David E. Kelley submitted the New Orleans episode for the Best Drama category, which of course, it was successful. (If you ask me, I'd say that out of all the New Orleans episodes television did last year, Boston Legal's was among the best, but the producers may have submitted it, hoping to do some variation of James Spader's closing in their speech.)

Suffice it to say, I was disappointed that David Dean Bottrell's name did not go through, but now that we've found someone who could possibly play his long-lost son, perhaps if Mr Kelley reads this, he'll get another chance.

Trailer & Trash

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 01:11:53 GMT

It's about two weeks until my daughter goes back to school and then most likely, my blogging/commenting/replying will not be coming in such fits and starts because my summer of entertaining/separating/caring for the children will be coming to an end.

With that said and my apologies extended: If you can suspend belief long enough to accept the far-fetched idea that Dane Cook might actually be able to love someone other than himself, the following might make for some non-deep, easy laughs.

Best of all, if you watch this not-entirely-worksafe trailer for his upcoming film, you won't have to see the movie*.

(* except maybe on cable @ 3AM and then mostly for Jessica Alba or the simple jokes)

Useless Knowledge

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 08:42:12 GMT

Usually when I'm making a mid-evening run to the grocery store, I quickly flip through my radio presets for something to hear.

Sometimes, I'll land on Alice Cooper's show (brought to you by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America); Sometimes it's Dr. Drew and because it's only a two minute drive to anywhere, I occasionally land on a syndicated program called "The Tom Leykis Show" which is sort of a chauvinistic, male-centric advice program. (Sample quote from this evening: "When you look at Victoria Beckham, don't think that all girls in England look like her. For every Victoria Beckham, there's a hundred fat girls with bad teeth")

For years, whenever I've heard Tom Leykis, I'd wonder if he really was Jay Thomas doing a show under a different name because the voice sounds very similar to me. Not to mention the fact that the Leykis program is distributed by CBS Radio and is broadcast from the Paramount lot, which is where, I believe they did Mr Thomas' last couple of television shows.

Tonight, I took a couple of minutes to look-up Mr. Leykis and found on his Wikipedia page that he's quite likely a real person, who has been in radio since the '70s. After I was fully satisfied about the person to whom I've been listening, I flipped over to read Jay Thomas' entry and though I knew he still has as good of a film career as he's ever had, I also discovered that he's on Sirius Satellite Radio and he moonlights as a licensed real estate broker, working with a Coldwell Banker office in Santa Barbara.

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Another entertainment-based thing that has been bothering me, I was unable to solve and for my quest you may need a map, but it might actually be worth it in the end. Though, I guess that'd be up to the individual.

I'm sure everyone has seen the commercial for the American Express' "Membership Project".

I unsuccessfully tried to find an video online, but if you have a television, you know the one; It stars the snowboarder, Sheryl Crow, some young pop singer, one or two other people and of course, Ellen DeGeneres. They're all wearing dark clothes and are artistically posed on chairs delivering lines, when some fellow wearing a light blue oxford walks onto the scene and says something about saving Lake Winnesoki or some such place. This interruption brings Martin Scorsese out from behind the camera, then the young man explains what he means, everyone agrees and Scorsese says that he can stay in the shot.

Well, though the fellow identifies himself as being "Todd" from the office next door, I recognize him as an actor, whom I can see leaning on a sink and talking to his blond sitcom wife, the ditzy star of the show, but I really couldn't place exactly which sitcom, I was seeing in my head. This misrepresentation kind of bothered me because everyone else in the commercial are playing themselves and they're hawking a charitable work, so why make this one guy lie?

Thus, began my search.

Initially and going only from memory, I thought it was David Alan Basche, whom I had to look up in IMDB because I only knew him as the guy in that sisters show, Peter Bonerz directed and played the father.

I still can't swear that it's not David Basche, but because I can't see the commercial at this very moment and my gut says that it's probably not him, I thought that I'd look around for another suspect and decided to set my sights onto the blonde.

As you might imagine, less-than-organized, blonde, sitcom wives on short-lived television shows are a dime a dozen. So, I decided to give up, but since I was in IMDB and because she has a similar body type, I decided to lookup Michelle Pfieffer's younger sister, the one a lot of us first noticed playing the oldest daughter on Ms Shepherd's Cybill.

Since I couldn't remember her first name off the top of my head, I jumped to Michelle's profile, where her sister was linked via the inaccurate information, she was no longer in show business. For someone who supposedly "dabbled in acting" but decided not to make it her life's work, Dedee Pfieffer sure has had a lot of guest roles over the past couple of years.

OK - So, I probably didn't find the actor in the American Express commercial and I ended-up just looking at pictures of a pretty girl; What could possibly make this worth mentioning in a post? You might ask.

Well, way down in the forum section of the younger Ms Pfieffer's IMDB listing, I spotted a questionable post and when I widened it out to show all posts from that particular user, I found that they've only commented to this one actress' board and that three of the four comments are so strange, they're almost scary stalkerish in nature.

÷÷÷

And finally, possibly as a reward for anyone who actually stuck through this entire post: Cindy Adams reported on Wednesday that Natalie Portman is seeking backers to fund a "lifecast", featuring herself. Basically, Ms Portman is wanting to set herself up an "Ed TV", where cameras will follow her around all day and her life will be broadcast on the web.

Hopefully it'll be ad-supported because though I'd certainly watch from time to time, I couldn't justify buying a ticket.

This is a Non-Partisan Issue

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:42:29 GMT

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post was on Tuesday's Newshour commenting on the CNN/YouTube debate, when he told Gwen Ifil;

You know, I actually think that, as I've watched these debates -- and this is the fourth Democratic one we've had already -- as I've watched them, the margin between the best performance and the worst performance gets smaller and smaller.

I felt like last night -- you know, I do a winners and losers column at WashingtonPost.com -- I had trouble picking losers, just because I thought everybody did pretty well. But the problem for people like Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd is that they really need a breakthrough, a big moment. And these debates haven't given them that yet.

I thought Dennis Kucinich did quite well last night. I thought Joe Biden did quite well. I thought Bill Richardson was better than he had been. And I thought Chris Dodd did well. But the problem is, what did we learn or see last night that fundamentally alters the dynamic, which is Clinton, Obama and possibly Edwards? I don't think we saw all that much that is going to make people who are watching think about this race in a different way.

Well, Mr Cillizza: How can one expect the media-defined second tier to have a breaktrough moment or alter the dynamic, when the supposed first tier gets almost twice as many opportunities to speak?

Unequal distribution of time has been a problem with most of the debates this primary season and it exists on both sides of the aisle. This is unfair and it does not provide the citizenry a chance to not only take an equal measure of all the candidates, but it also prevents their ideas from reaching the largest possible audience and our democracy is not being served.

Granted, there is no legal recourse to force the networks, sponsors, political parties and organizing committees to provide equal time to all qualified candidates, but there is the court of public opinion and that is why I urge everyone reading this post to sign this virtual petition and spread its address, far and wide.

Censorship can take many forms and among them is limiting the debate.

(x-posted)