It’s what we’ve been waiting for: a major band with an anticipated album to step up and completely bypass the entire major label mechanism and self-release their next record.
And that’s not even the best part: the best part is if you want it as a purely digital release, you can pay whatever you want for it.
In a sense, Radiohead is playing for tips.
The song “Sweet Home Alabama” is many many things: one of the greatest political songs ever written; the song that put Lynyrd Skynyrd on the musical map; the catalyst for Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zant’s friendship.
What it wouldn’t seem to be, however, is a song that would make people go, “gee, I need to spend my tourist dollars on Alabama. Let’s go!!”
However, the good people who run Alabama’s tourism agency disagree with me: in 2008 the theme by which they will try to encourage people to go visit Alabama will indeed be “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I am all for crossovers. Convergence, whatever you want to call it. I love things like the Heroes Comic books, or well-written blogs in the voice my favorite TV and movie characters. I love it that I can watch Rocketboom on my TiVo, or listen to Tim Goodman’s latest podcast when I’m running.
But sometimes, the crossover is so heinous, the crossoverer (crossoveree?) is so obviously slumming (in his or her mind, since Blogging is a noble calling), so desperately clinging to some kind of relevance, that I don’t want any part of it.
For example, Joan Rivers blogging the Emmy Red Carpet.
I don’t have the juice to go in-depth about anything this week, so I thought that I’d take a few swipes at some things:
Download Service Explosion — With Nokia’s recent announcement announcement of their download service on the heels of CD Baby and Wal-Mart’s services, it looks like we are in another round of download service offerings. Add these to the DRM-free service that Universal announced last month, and the long-rumoured Amazon download stores, and consumers will have every type of choice.
It has been a sad week around here at ‘Loper HQ. One of our totemic icons — or is that iconic totems? — The Weekly World News, is soon going to become an ex-tabloid.
While it is still going to live on as a website, no more will its headlines about regegade apes and aliens for Bush (clearly his final stronghold of support) scream at me from the Supermarket check-out line. This sucks.
Reading the coverage about the closing, I think that I’m not the only one who feels that way. Mainstream outlets from The Washington Post to Wired have been giving it a fond obituary.
While some might sneer that this just shows How Low Things Have Sunk, I think that the worldwide outpouring of grief for the Weekly World News is a good thing. These people are simply recognizing a pioneer in the field of fake news, a clear progenitor to our current most popular practitioners of the made-up news story: The Onion, Jon Stewart and FOX News.
And besides, like Elvis or Andy Kaufman, the Weekly World News doesn’t have to die. It can be saved.
It’s no secret that people who write these types of online journal thingies pay attention to our traffic. And occasionally an old post that we figured was long dead and buried rises out of the morass and gets a lot of traffic. In the last month, a post I wrote back on February 3 called “Harry Potter and The Gynormous Spoiler” has become our third most-visited page.
Because the piece itself is pretty much a trifle — it’s essentially me whinging about how I’m sure to be spoiled on Harry’s fate prior to actually finishing the book, poor me! — I’m surprised that it got any traffic at all. But I think that it just reflects the public’s appetite for and anticipation of the ending of these books, an appetite that has suddenly ramped up, and is just about to explode.
An Open Letter to Joel Surnow and Kiefer Sutherland,
Joel and Kiefer,
As you probably know, a lot formerly loyal viewers of your show chose this year to get off of the bus. And as you probably also know, it probably wasn’t just because the concept of Heroes seemed more realistic that what you putting out there.
I’d like to help: I think that part of the problem is that you have to find a crisis that can start and be stopped within the space of the 24 hour timeframe that’s the concept of your show. Well, I’ve come up with one: a perfect combination of ripped-from-the-headlines international intrigue and Jack’s relationship with his family as he has to recover a stolen object within — you guessed it — 24 hours. But not just any stolen object, but one of the most revered objects in all of sports: The Stanley Cup.
It goes a little something like this . . .
I don’t really have anything coherent to write about, so instead, here are a few random thoughts that I was too lazy to make into full posts.
The FCC Gets Its Ass Handed To It
It’s big big news that the FCC got smacked down by a Federal Appeals court for their kowtowing to groups like the PTC and slapping fines on every broadcaster who had somebody let loose a stray “fuck” on their airwaves.
OK, sure, everybody is all anticipatory for Apple’s upcoming iPhone, which is set to conquer the world in a few short weeks. And why not? It’s essentially got everything: web, email, text, music, and it runs fracking OS X, to boot. And yet, it’s not even out yet and Nokia has gone and potentially trumped it.
Because Nokia is adding a true killer app to one of their upcoming phones: the Lightning Detector!
A lot of hay was made yesterday about a wide-reaching survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. For example, one of the things that got serious play was that about half of the people out there still don’t live their lives around high-tech products.
Instead, I guess, they are living their lives around such mundane things as their jobs, their churches, their families and so forth. Then the survey broke down the actual users into sub-groups, and explained various things about the sub-groups. It was all very interesting and informative, and then I got to the very end . . .
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If you're lucky, you learn something every single godsdammed day of your life. In this case, I learned that the extra level of hilarity to that classic skit was that parrots weren't supposed to be indigenous to Norway. Bet that it had lovely plumage.
Expect a marked increase in product placement.
Unless, of course, you choose to control your data by not joining any of these sites. But, by now, you should know that the first rule of privacy on the web is that there is no privacy on the web. It's kind of like walking out of your house every morning.
Because sometimes you need inexpensive, build-it-yourself furniture in your virtual world.
And kids (plus more than a few adults) rejoice.
While there was much love for Billie Piper's Rose around the 'loper household that distributes the Dr. Who DVDs to the rest of the other households, we also kinda love Freema Agyeman's Martha Jones, who even made Torchwood kick up a notch. Also? Sigh.
Net neutrality now! What more proof do you need than the beginning of this official statement: "Cox allows the use of file-sharing and peer-to-peer services..." That word "allows" speaks volumes.
Still need to get around to reading this.
All we can ask (get it?) is that they don't somehow ruin the ease of dictionary.com, a site we use on what seems like at least a daily basis.
As a happily married heterosexual 'loper, I say "Whoo hoo!" and assure the world that the sanctity of my marriage is not affected in any way by this ruling.
We quote from the lead: “Give the customers what they want” was the message at Digital Book 2008, the annual conference sponsored by the International Digital Publishing Forum, held yesterday at the McGraw-Hill auditorium in Manhattan.
This week, CBS is all about the crazy new media deals.
Interesting, especially in light of other studies that suggest the numbers of legal downloads are rising. Of course, it doesn't help when some labels continue to make the process hard and cumbersome.
Wait, it gets better. They're called "crazy rasberry ants". The only known cure seems to be upgrading to Windows Vista -- they won't go near it.
Thank god that there is nothing else wrong with the country that a United States Senator can call for a massive investigation because the Patriots may have done his football teams wrong. Amazingly enough, he's not up for re-election, because this is just that shameless.
Awwwww, how cute! Cootchie-coo, Baby Supernova, cootchie-coo! Ma and Pa Supernova must be so proud of you, following in their footsteps at such a young age.
As rumored, but now there's actual film footage. It's nice to see Woody Allen using his powers for good instead of evil.
IO 9 posted a trailer for noted hack David E. Kelley's remake of "Life on Mars." Oh no. Oh gods no.
Wow, where to start? Good programming, not gaming the TiVo by starting and ending at quirky times, shorter hiatus periods, and so much more.
Obviously it didn't succeed.
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