Archive for January, 2008
No, Lloyd Dobler, not kickboxing.
I have this theory about sports. They are built, and ultimately popularized, by the dominant media of their age. Baseball was built for the radio. Somebody can describe to you, in real time, everything important that’s happening in a baseball game. Even the some of the things most associated with baseball are auditory - “the crack of the bat,” “the roar of the crowd,” even that old 7th inning stretch classic, “take Me Out To The Ballgame.”
Football, on the other hand, is really a creature of television. Sweet heavens, the sport even has built in commercial breaks! But as we get sick of commercials, and our media outlets move online and on demand, I suspect non-stop games like hockey, basketball, and soccer (aka “football”) will gain dominance.
The inevitable death of television as we know it will, I think, finally usher Soccer in America into the dominant place it already holds worldwide. Until, of course, Rollerball.
And because I love Lloyd Dobler…
So current scuttlebutt is that the Writer’s Stirke is almost over, but it seems hard to think that TV will ever be the same. There’s just too much competition out there, and even this relatively short strike may have permanently lost some TV viewership (to the web, ironically enough). And then I saw that TiVo is doing this.
Veracifier is a vodcast designed for the internet, but available as a subscription on your TiVo. That makes it a bit like having AppleTV, but without those pesky networks in the way. The second TiVo, or any competing service, can grab all the content you want, and maybe make additional recs and let you surf a little, what exactly is the point of having networks at all? From a consumer standpoint its just a bunch of hassle - commericals, shows I dont want to watch, and the shows I do want to watch only on at specific times. For sudios and production companies, its somebody else making money off my product. To be fair, the Net is also sharing some (most) of the risk, and they may convince content creators to stick around for a while.
Give it 10 years, maybe less, and the big TV Networks could look like outdated middlemen. If they don’t want to end up like the record industry, fighting a losing battle against the unstoppable tide of technological progress, they really need to shape up. or start buying shares of TiVo.
I know it’s only January, but is it even possible that someone will come up with a more-needed, better-executed, brilliantly-inspired device in 2008 than the iPhone Camera Lens? Check it out!
It’s a 6x optical zoom for those of you who are sick of the crappy digital zoom on your camera phone! It’s also larger and harder to carry than a wide variety of cameras that would offer you vastly superior performance in all categories! It’s only $15, which certainly doesn’t make me ask any questions about the quality of the optics!
But… for $15, it probably makes a pretty good gag gift. Also available for RAZR, KRZR, and… well, who cares!
The great Errol Morris, Wieden+Kennedy, and Matt Scott bring us this fine message as we kick off this year.
Nike - “No Excuses”
As for why this blog hasn’t been updated in two weeks – no, no excuses. No excuses indeed.
We’ve been working on some new reels over here… here’s the first one off the assembly line!
Enjoy!
I was thinking about making this post a sort of meta-reflection on the human condition in virtual space, but in the end I wanted to kick my own ass for even thinking such pseudo-intellectualist nonsense. So instead, this important piece of news:
Linden Lab has just stepped in to ban virtual banking inside their Second Life simulation.
This just blows my mind. And here’s why: (more…)
Graffiti. Open Source. Lasers. Combine all three and you’ve got a special blend of Viagra for anyone who works at Wired magazine. You’ve got something pretty damn cool. You’ve got Laser Tag, and you’ve got it for free.
According to this 2008 tax info I just got from the City of Los Angeles, the city has majorly consolidated business activity classifications, so now Psychic Bunny’s operations lie under the category of “Child Care Provider, Multimedia, Telephone Services, and Tugboat and Barge Operators.”
Our parody trailer “P2” now has more than twice as many views on YouTube as the actual trailer for the film “p2″ (109,908 and 39,593, respectively). I think this means that if we made a feature film of OUR version then its safe to say that it would gross at least $3 million its opening weekend, and not have the most abysmal wide release of all time.