Author: Aaron Weber

Terms Change: Words That We Dare Not Utter

When I was in college, “another round” always referred to beer. When I began to work in startups, it referred to venture capital. This happens to a lot of words and acronyms and such. Today’s example: The phrase “The N Word.”

It seems that to some people “the N word” refers not to the expected racial slur, but to “nationalization.” It’s still a dirty word in US politics, but it’s not yet used with enough frequency to warrant the euphemism, really. Still, we are hearing talk of federal bailouts with greater frequency, even among those who are otherwise inclined to natter on about small government policies.

Are we in a recession? Yes.
Did I tell you so? Yes.
Did wiser folk than I say the same? Yes.
Were we all roundly ignored? Yes.
Do the folks who didn’t see it coming insist that nobody saw it coming? Yes.
Is this just like the Iraq war? Yes.

Assorted Links I Am Loving

Photoshop Disasters: When commercial photo editing goes wrong.
Six word reviews of 763 demos from SXSW: This is a seriously dedicated blogger.
Blame It On The Voices: A blog of oddities… such as a magazine article about internal organ duplication… that is, a woman with two vaginas.
Art in the age of mechanical reproduction: A shirt store. Expensive, but pretty.
A bed that descends from the ceiling: How cool is that? Although I wonder what happens when the mechanism breaks and your bed falls and kills someone…

They Just Canned The Dove

Adm. Fallon, the guy in charge of the US military in the Middle East, Africa, and central Asia (that is, CENTCOM), just resigned. Crooks & Liars was pretty sure he was on the way out, although they’re somewhat surprised he left of his own volition.

The story is that he’s out because he’s stated the obvious fact that invading Iran would be a terrible idea.

This is not good news for anyone opposed to quagmire, empire, or bad ideas.

Gossip: Baby’s First Mugshot

Originally posted Feb 12, 2008 as “Baby’s First Mugshot” at Glitterati Gossip.

barronhiltonmugshot.png Looks like we’ll need a "Barron Hilton" category as well as a "Paris Hilton" category on the blog here, as the young man racks up his first mugshot at the tender age of 18, blowing a reported .14 BAC on the alcohol test.

TMZ has all the play-by-play details, of course, and managed to contact Barron’s father to ask for a comment before the police or Barron himself did. Now that’s newshound dedication!

TMZ might know what happens as it happens, but I can tell you what will happen next: From now until about noon tomorrow, gossip-mongers will make fun of the Hilton family, criticize their parenting, and make up increasingly violent misogynist insults for Paris and her mother (but not, for some reason, Nicky). The words "dumb slut" will be the starting point.

Then, tomorrow afternoon, everyone will begin a guilty self-examination period, wondering whether the combination of privilege and constant gossipy scrutiny have doomed celebutots to addiction and disaster, and to what extent they are to blame for the problems of their subjects.

At that point, Britney Spears will be mentioned, and the guilty self-examiners will recount all of the crazy things Britney did, one by one, trying to guess what part of the whole disaster was their fault. Then things will get all too meta, they’ll give up, drink themselves into an uneasy sleep, and start again on Thursday morning.

Baby Simulator

It makes sense that there would be a baby simulator for the Nintendo DS. I mean, it’s just like a virtual pet. Only it’s a baby! And you can customize the color and gender! There are challenges like changing and diaper rash. It’s the same as any other sim game. And yet… creepier!

At least it doesn’t include simulations of exhaustion, post-partum depression, colic, vomiting, or shaken-baby syndrome.

TV Criticism: “Quarterlife” Review

Originally posted in November 2007 as “Internet TV Won’t Make Money If It Sucks” over at TV With MeeVee.

Everybody’s been talking about the possibility of new shows getting started online instead of on TV, but few shows produced specifically for online delivery have had much success. That’s mostly because they suck. In general, online shows tend to be under 10 minutes per episode, but offer way less than half the entertainment of a 22-minute "full-length" show.

The MySpace TV show "Quarterlife" is a perfect example. It’s produced by the team behind successes like "Thirtysomething," "My So-Called Life" and "Once And Again," so you know there’s actual talent back there. But they don’t seem to be trying. I’m not the only one who thinks so- the New York Times agrees with me.

The show follows six artists in their twenties as they try to cope with the fact that earning a living involves compromise and hard work, that their talents are not immediately recognized and celebrated, and that employers aren’t as willing to give them a break as their college professors were. Above all, it’s about blogging and all the different ways it can get you into trouble.

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The problem isn’t just that "Quarterlife" is based on the concept of the "quarterlife crisis," which just might be the most irritating solipsism since the "quirkyalones" decided to start hanging out together. It’s not just that the show spends a lot of time pondering the way the characters have no privacy, as though "everybody is up in everyone else’s business" hadn’t been a sitcom setting for the past 50 years. Note to TV producers: The wacky neighbor doesn’t get funnier if he has a webcam. It’s that the characters aren’t fundamentally interesting people. JenniCam was a cool concept, but it wasn’t interesting when Jenni wasn’t doing something worth watching.

A good show is good no matter what the format, but "Quarterlife" is basically a second-rate show trying to claim that being online is some kind of an advantage. It’s not. It’s a sign of weakness.

The Hollywood Reporter points out that "Quarterlife" was originally developed three years ago as a pilot for ABC but got rejected, so the creators took it online as a backup. Now the word is that if the WGA strike drags on into February, we might be seeing "Quarterlife" hauled up from the bench. In other words, it’s a second-rate show and it’ll get on TV if the networks are desperate. Why would anyone, online or off, want to watch that?

The reason online shows are almost never as good or as popular as televised shows is the same reason straight-to-video movies and print-on-demand books tend to suck. The things most likely to grab the audience get put into the big leagues pretty quickly. Of course, there are exceptions for niche audiences: The best new animators end up online first, just like skateboard and horror films go straight to DVD and technical publications with small runs do print on demand.

But if you’re a well-known producer making a TV show aimed at a mainstream TV audience and you can’t get it on TV, don’t go online. Go back to the drawing board.

TV Criticism: Tim Heidecker And Eric Wareheim Interview

Originally published at TV With MeeVee as “Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job Season 2”

If the long self-parodic name doesn’t tip you off, "Tim And Eric’s Awesome Show Great Job" is the sort of weird comedy that the Cartoon Network’s late night Adult Swim block is known for. Like fellow Adult Swim productions "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," "Venture Brothers," and "Lucy, Daughter Of The Devil," it’s a 15-minute production packed with offbeat humor, pop-culture references, and ADHD pacing. Unlike its stablemates, it’s a live-action sketch comedy with production values reminiscent of cable access TV from the 1980s. Yes, live-action on the Cartoon Network. Bear with me.

The Tim and Eric of the "Awesome Show" are Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, and the pair have collaborated for years. They got their start doing sketch comedy they filmed and posted at timanderic.com before they were tapped by Cartoon Network for "Tom Goes To The Mayor."

I recently spoke by phone with Tim and Eric about their show, which kicks off a second season just after midnight on November 19th. I am impressed with the risks that shows in the Adult Swim programming block are able to take, so I asked whether they had any creative constraints imposed by the network at all. They said that aside from avoiding libel and obscenity laws, they tried to include at least one Christian message per episode. "Something Jesus would teach. It doesn’t have overtly out there, just a nice thought, like ‘do unto others.’"  As an example, Tim suggests the song ‘I smell my dad’s dirty socks,’ which is about the dangers of adultery.

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Tim and Eric claim that they included the Christian themes partly to appease Standards and Practices, who "look for four frown moments" in which a sin is frowned-upon in each episode, but mostly because they want their youthful audience to learn about righteous behavior. "I don’t know if you know any teenagers," Eric says, "but these kids are growing up to be whores, and we’re out there saying alright, let’s try and change that a little bit."

It was at that early point that I realized that the interview had gone entirely off the rails.

It turns out that talking to Tim and Eric is a lot like watching their show: A combination of confusion and laughter. I can’t tell if they’re being serious, or how serious they’re being. Am I going to laugh at their statements about helping children learn to respect marriage by having a married news team as recurring characters? Not without putting the phone on mute first.

Ten minutes later I’m on IM, asking my friends to look at the music video about sitting down to pee and tell me what kind of golden rule they’re talking about. They’re as baffled as I am, but can’t seem to stop watching. One favorite is the news team’s PSA about fruits and vegetables:

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For the rest of the interview, I tried to ask Tim and Eric questions with a straight face, and they revealed no strain at all in responding with totally deadpan, increasingly absurd answers. I did manage to get them to tell me that they are not WGA members and therefore not affected by the strike, and that they enjoy the 15-minute format partly because it gives the show a condensed feeling, but mostly because it’s way easier to produce a shorter show. That was about it for believable answers.

Towards the end of our conversation, Tim and Eric suggested I take a look at the book of John, Chapter 16, and after the interview, I did. It begins "These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended." I think that’s supposed to mean I got punked, but I shouldn’t take it personally.

The new season of "Tim And Eric’s Awesome Show Great Job" starts in the wee hours of Monday, November 19th on Cartoon Network. If you can’t stay up that late, you there are plenty of clips over at AdultSwim.com.

TV Criticism: Robots In “Terminator,” “Battlestar” And “Wall-E”

Originally posted at TV With MeeVee as ““Terminator” Brings The Hot Robot Love (And Doom)”

I mentioned yesterday that I really hope that "Terminator" gets a second season because I want to see Cameron (Summer Glau) go to the prom, but io9 is even more into the whole robosexual thing than I am. To be honest, I’m beginning to think that robot love is the sci-fi theme of the moment. Maybe it reveals a widespread cultural anxiety about technology, and maybe it’s just that robots are kind of sexy, I’m not sure. But bear with me here.

First we had the "Battlestar Galactica" Cylons and their spines glowing during hot Cylon sex. It’s inspired a lot of jokes, but they’re still drawing attention to the question of where to draw the line between where’s the line between humans and technology.

And now there’s John Connor developing an unwholesome attachment to Cameron. Is a tame Terminator more trustworthy than a wild human? Will his distrust of humans and his trust in robots eventually kill him? Plus, of course, his teenage lust and Cameron’s careful notes on seduction. As io9 says "The moment where John Connor cuts Summer Glau’s head open and lovingly rips out her cyber-brain was actually weirdly tender and sweet, and yet ridiculously sexual. (And then when Summer reboots, she catches John giving her the post-coital moon-eyes.)"

We’ve had this sort of pop-cultural moment before, of course, but it seems more and more possible than it did back in the 1980s, when the rapidly increasing power of computers helped to inspire Short Circuit and Electric Dreams. In this decade, we’ve seen plenty of trend pieces in which people worry about the opinions their technology has formed – the "my TiVo thinks I’m gay" moment. And don’t get me started about the way people tend to treat Roombas like pets instead of vacuum cleaners.

This summer, we’ll get family-friendly treatment of the same theme, with WALL-E, a movie about a robot who falls in love. No glowing spines or reproductive organs, sure, but look under the hood. It’s got the same basic circuitry as "Terminator:" Humans cause some kind of apocalypse through arrogance and stupidity, while robots become human and replace us.

Honesty Is For Jerks

NY Mag: “Encouraged to tell so many white lies and hearing so many others, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes, literally, a daily occurrence. They learn that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict. And while they don’t confuse white-lie situations with lying to cover their misdeeds, they bring this emotional groundwork from one circumstance to the other.”

Important lessons: Honesty is for jerks.