Letters of Note
Bill Murray. Nothing more or less
Bill Murray on Ghostbusters 3, Get Low, Ron Howard, Kung Fu Hustle: Celebrities: GQ:
Last question. I have to know, because I love this story and want it to be true. There have been stories about you sneaking up behind people in New York City, covering their eyes with your hands, and saying: Guess who. And when they turn around, they see Bill Murray and hear the words “No one will ever believe you.”
[long pause] I know. I know, I know, I know. I’ve heard about that from a lot of people. A lot of people. I don’t know what to say. There’s probably a really appropriate thing to say. Something exactly and just perfectly right. [long beat, and then he breaks into a huge grin] But by God, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Just so crazy and unlikely and unusual?
Friday 19 July 1667 (Pepys’ Diary)
Friday 19 July 1667 (Pepys’ Diary):
The Dutch fleete are in great squadrons everywhere still about Harwich, and were lately at Portsmouth; and the last letters say at Plymouth, and now gone to Dartmouth to destroy our Streights’ fleete lately got in thither; but God knows whether they can do it any hurt, or no, but it was pretty news come the other day so fast, of the Dutch fleets being in so many places, that Sir W. Batten at table cried, “By God,” says he, “I think the Devil shits Dutchmen.”
Media as performance
Robin Sloan nails some important truths about “new writing” by applying the logic of the Old Spice campaign which was everywhere this week:
The Old Spice videos weren’t one-liners. They actually pretty quickly established running themes and in-jokes. Taken all together, they mapped out a coherent world—a very small, weird world, populated by one man and one towel, but still: a world.
Now imagine for a moment that this hadn’t been the brain-child of some smart ad guys. Imagine instead that it was the opus of some young Lucas.
Imagine that all the parameters were the same: One actor. One scene. Simple, rich cinematography. Live production stretched over a couple of days. Lots of audience interaction. But the story he’s telling—the world he’s creating—is much more interesting. Maybe the scene is the cockpit of a spaceship; maybe it’s a cramped room in an interstellar hotel.
What would the Old Spice campaign look like if it was directed by Joss Whedon?
(Via Snarkmarket.)
Why I’m not giving up on finding an agent
Still no luck in securing an agent for my book. Every now and again I get another rejection and the day is temporarily ruined. But then this:
I’m afraid I thought this one as dire as its title:
“In May of 1974, after reading through a pilot script written by John Cleese and his then-wife, Connie Booth, a clearly unimpressed ‘comedy script editor’ by the name of Ian Main sent the following memo to BBC Television‘s Head of Comedy and Light Entertainment. Luckily for the general population, and thanks in no small part to the persistence of Cleese and Booth, Main’s opinion was ultimately ignored by his superiors and a year later the script had evolved into a programme which to this day is considered one of the funniest ever to grace our screens. The show was Fawlty Towers.
Speaking in 2009, John Cleese said of this very memo, ‘It just shows you people have no idea what they are doing.’
(Via Letters of Note.)
From what I’ve heard of BBC script editors, this doesn’t surprise me.
Firefly goodness
Some Firefly goodness courtesy of Sizemore: Starship Class… Firefly | @sizemore:
The problem with crowdsourcing
An interesting little post on what happens when algorithm (aka, the crowd) takes over from an elite:
How to Have Culture in an Algorithmic Age — The Late Age of Print:
In the old cultural paradigm, you could question authorities about their reasons for selecting particular cultural artifacts as worthy, while dismissing or neglecting others. Not so with algorithmic culture, which wraps abstraction inside of secrecy and sells it back to you as, “the people have spoken.”
The London Sound Survey
Welcome to the London Sound Survey, a growing collection of Creative Commons-licensed sound recordings of places, events and wildlife in the capital. Historical references too are gathered to find out how London sounds have changed.
Make Hope Powell England manager
When Fabio goes, of course. Hope is a proper modern English great. And she bought brand new strips for my wife’s school team. This is the best column I’ve read on team dynamics in, like, well, ever:
As a coach you know when the team are going to play badly. I knew it last Saturday. In the warm-up I had to pull them back in and have a word because there was no sense of urgency. At half-time I gave them a very harsh talking to. I said: “If we do not get a result here you will not be going to a World Cup. Simple as that. And if that isnt a big enough motivator then you shouldnt be in the team.” It took going behind by two goals for us to realise it, though, and we came back to draw 2-2.
Why England were so awful
I went to bed an angry man, angry with a bunch of overpaid lazy wankers, but then I read this brilliant piece and now I’m not so sure: it’s a super psychological unpicking of the team’s state of mind:
Cast your minds back to the qualification games for the 2000 European Championships. Glenn Hoddle had made an excellent start as England manager. A side built around Adams, Ince and Shearer had come home early from the World Cup, but on the back of the best all-round set of performances since 1970. The young Manchester United midfield were bedding in, Michael Owen had arrived, and the future looked bright. But, a couple of lacklustre games into Euro 200o qualifying, Hoddle rowed with Alan Shearer, saying “Tell me why you are producing performances like this.”
Shearer replied: “Have you ever thought the problem might be you?”
It’s not pressure. It’s not nerves. It’s not fear. It’s a message to Capello, and it reads f*** off.
via England v Algeria: Not Fear, But F*** Off – More Than Mind Games.
British Isles for American chart geeks
I Love Charts – “I use this when my UK friends bitch about….
To be honest, it’s so complicated I’m not even sure this is 100% correct. Faeroes?
Bring back boredom
Watching my own children growing up I've concluded that young people are rarely bored in the way I used to be bored at their age. This is because there's generally a button they can push that will provide something they can look at, listen to or play with, something that will stave off that boredom long before it sets in. This is good in some ways. In other ways it can result in a fidgety state of permanent distraction, an inability to just stare out of the window or go for a walk. In the near future this may become a social problem ever bit as alarming as drugs and drink.
via And Another Thing: The iPad and our craving for distraction.
Fry says what we’ve all been thinking
During a question and answer session after his speech, Fry told the audience: “If I wanted to be angry … I would say infantilism’s the problem.
“The number of times I turn on the television and I think ‘Gosh, children’s television’s gone on, that’s a really good art documentary … Oh my God, it’s nine o’clock in the evening. This is for grown-ups’ It’s just shocking.
“The only drama the BBC will boast about are Merlin and Doctor Who, which are fine, but they’re children’s programmes. They’re not for adults.
“And they’re very good children’s programmes, don’t get me wrong, they’re wonderfully written … but they are not for adults.
Fry said he was not arguing that all television should be pompous, academic or intellectual.
“But they ought to surprise and to astonish and to make us feel perhaps the possibility there is a world outside that we know nothing of to provoke us, to provoke in the best sense of the word, sometimes in the worst sense,” he said.
via Stephen Fry: Doctor Who is a children’s programme | Media | The Guardian.
Underneath the Hudson
I can read stuff like this all day: what’s beneath the surface of the Hudson (including a dead giraffe, what’s left of Coney Island, and alligators, though not the reptilian kind):
In the bad old high-crime days, a virtual fleet of auto carcasses ended up in the East River, near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. One police diver has said that he would tell his partner, “Go to the Chevy, make a left, and if you come to the Dodge you’ve gone too far.” Most were carted away during a cleanup in the eighties, but a number are still down there. Speregen says that the last time he dived nearby, “to be honest, I thought I saw a cement mixer.”
via Uncovering the Secrets Beneath the Surface of the New York Harbor — New York Magazine.
HT LinkMachineGo.
BBC brain-training experiment makes it to Nature
From Nature, some science brought to you by BBC Lab-UK. Congrats to the team:
‘Brain training’, or the goal of improved cognitive function through the regular use of computerized tests, is a multimillion-pound industry1, yet in our view scientific evidence to support its efficacy is lacking. Modest effects have been reported in some studies of older individuals2, 3 and preschool children4, and video-game players outperform non-players on some tests of visual attention5. However, the widely held belief that commercially available computerized brain-training programs improve general cognitive function in the wider population in our opinion lacks empirical support. The central question is not whether performance on cognitive tests can be improved by training, but rather, whether those benefits transfer to other untrained tasks or lead to any general improvement in the level of cognitive functioning. Here we report the results of a six-week online study in which 11,430 participants trained several times each week on cognitive tasks designed to improve reasoning, memory, planning, visuospatial skills and attention. Although improvements were observed in every one of the cognitive tasks that were trained, no evidence was found for transfer effects to untrained tasks, even when those tasks were cognitively closely related.
- How can DRM be good?
- Web publishing: now officially ridiculously easy
- Messing about with local information
- Leaving the BBC
- 50 users v 1 editor
- It is a lovely book
- Let’s hear it for Newport
- Bill Murray. Nothing more or less
- Friday 19 July 1667 (Pepys’ Diary)
- Media as performance
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