Leap Day Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Vladimir Putin urges Russians to vote
  And by "vote," he means "vote for the guy I tell you to vote for. Or else."
• Microsoft slashes Windows Vista retail price in surprise move
  Please upgrade from our stable older OS to our newer, crappier one. Please?
• ITunes takes bigger slice of music pie
  Second largest retailer for music. Naturally this means that the music industry will continue to do everything they can to undo this proven success.

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This special Leap Day podcast features another vintage interview from the Medialoper vaults. Recorded in 1987, this is one of the more unusual Jonathan Richman interviews you will ever hear.

How unusal? Well, I think it’s safe to say that this is probably the first and only time that Jonathan Richman was ever interviewed by a janitor. Of course, these days we call them maintenance engineers, but back in the Reagan era things weren’t quite so politically correct.

The janitor in question is one Big Jim Hunsicker. Big Jim was head custodian in the Speech Arts building at CSU Fresno — home of KFSR FM.

Back in the early 80’s the college radio revolution was just taking off, and running a station that played only your favorite bands was every music geek’s dream come true.

There was just one problem. While we were happy to have complete control over our little slice of the airwaves, we couldn’t always be relied on to wake up at 6 am to turn the transmitter on. Fortunately, Big Jim was watching over us. Whenever the morning DJ would oversleep (which happened A LOT), Big Jim would put down his broom, turn on the transmitter, read the official station sign-on, and cue up Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man (that was the official Big Jim theme song).

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Make that love.

We had some friends over for dinner recently and the discussion, as is common, turned to movies. Everyone’s opinion on what makes a good movie may differ, but there is one fundamental thing a movie needs: movement. For example, my friend Dave said that while he liked “Cloverfield,” he had a problem with the monster itself. It didn’t seem to have a purpose and its movements were random. Now Godzilla, on the other hand, was always on the go. He moved and did it with purpose. He was on his way somewhere. I had to agree. I too liked “Cloverfield,” but the monster’s intent was like its shape, amorphous and random. So what could have been a new, genre-defining monster movie was merely an engaging and likable affair that featured a bit of credibility stretching by using a hand-held camera POV for its duration. There is a world of difference between “like” and “love.”

This year, two movies in particular were competing for Best Picture at the Oscars. One was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” loosely based on “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair, and the other was (eventual winner) Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men,” based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. Both movies feature sadistic central characters and have a theme of “the times they are a changin’”; the first due to unabated oil development around the turn of the last century and the other to a rising tide of drug running and criminality along the Texas border in 1980. But there’s a key difference to what separates the first movie from merely being an attractive, if long-winded exercise in greed and megalomania, to a thought provoking, riveting, and accomplished feat of storytelling in the latter: movement.
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Omar! Omar’s Coming! Edition

Todays links of interest:

• FCC Considers Hearing Do-Over in Light of Comcast Seat Hogging Charges
  Nothing like a company accused of blocking web traffic blocking public access to the hearing about them blocking web traffic.
• RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue
  Apparently the RIAA spent all the settlement money on hookers, booze, and lawyers.
• Creator disses ‘quarterlife’ move to NBC
  The spirit of Ian Faith lives on in Marshall Herskovitz, who calls "quarterlife" too specific for the networks. In other words, its not that the audience is shrinking, but rather the appeal of "quarterlife" is becoming more selective.

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quarterlife, the much-hyped new series from the creators of such shows as thirtysomething, Once and Again and the eternal My So-Called Life, debuted a couple of nights ago to what some are calling “the worst ratings in 20 years.”

I don’t think that this was what NBC had in mind when they announced that they had picked it up from, er, MySpace amidst a busload of hype. Given the fact that it had a pretty high profile and was debuted during a time where there is very little serious drama being broadcast, their expectations must have been that it would at least hold its own.

And yet it failed, miserably. Why? The flip answer is that it sucked, but that’s only part of it. The full answer is a bit more complicated.

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Sitting Here In My Safe California Home Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Killer robots … friend or foe?
  Foe. Killer robots are *always* foes. Have we learned nothing?
• The life and times of America’s greatest hoaxer
  BTW, it would make Kirk’s entire year if someone ever called him "America’s greatest hoaxer."
• garfield minus garfield
  This is indescribably great. The "Garfield" comic strip hacked into something actually funny. A perfect example of found art created by subtraction and rudimentary Photoshop skillz.

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The Sophisticated Palette of the Moronic Edition

Todays links of interest:

• 80th annual Oscars draw record low TV ratings
  Part of this is the mix of nominees, but part of it is also awards fatigue. Who can keep them all straight anymore?
• Pakistan Blocks YouTube, Puts Blinders On The World
  What happened to that whole "the internet sees censorship as damage, and routes around it" meme?
• Amazon price cuts Xbox 360 HD DVD Player to .99
  The HD bargains just keep on coming.

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For those of us who make a habit of predicting the future, the recent demise of HD-DVD was an inevitability. Press reports indicated that a mere 600,000 standalone units had been sold to consumers. My notes from last year’s SXSW festival indicate that half a million total HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players were in the market — obviously, sales didn’t skyrocket. After all the fanfare and hype, the consumer shrugged.

Of course, the consumer — or that portion of consumers who invested in HD-DVD technology — lost. This does not bode well for the motion picture industry, and you’ve got to wonder who will be fired for failing to gauge the mood of the DVD-purchasing public. Just as many people predicted the disaster of the Iraq war, many of us saw how this made-up DVD format war would end.
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Gaydolf Titler Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Home is "best-looking multiplayer world"
  Sony to Linden: All your avatars are belong to us.
• The iPhone SDK Will Be Late
  Waiting for the official Apple spin on this one. I’m sure it will be "totally revolutionary" when it finally arrives.
• Digital downloads will be Blu-ray’s downfall
  Absolutely. The days of physical media as a means of distribution are rapidly coming to an end. And that’s exactly why the WGA went on strike.

Comic Book Guy’s Bar Edition

Todays links of interest:

• From West Wing to the real thing
  We were actually just thinking about that: how much "Campaign 2008" seemed to be matching the final — underrated — season of "The West Wing." Let’s hope that it continues to play out the way it did on the TV show.
• David Simon on the end of ‘The Wire’
  One of the more fascinating off-air subplots surrounding the final season of the still-awesome "The Wire," — which has caused a civil war among its small but rabid fanbase with a pair of major storylines based around a lying reporter and a lying cop — is David Simon’s seeming willingness to defend every aspect of this season in every possible forum.
• Hollywood trade paper Variety put on auction block
  Here’s hoping the new owners don’t cut the headline-writing scribes.

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