The Daily Loper – December 23, 2008

No Fucking Tiny Fucking Tim For Me Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Four Tops, Dean Martin among Grammy honorees
  Quick, name what year we’re in.
• The awkward charm of NBC’s NewsRadio
  An ode to one of our all-time favorite secretly great sitcoms.
• The April Fools Joke That Keeps On Giving
  That’s the thing about a really really good April Fools Joke: some people never quite understand that it is a joke.
• Watch Flight of the Conchords Sneak Preview
  Christmas just came early. Flight of the Conchords season 2 premier is online now. And it’s not a bootleg.
• Aimee Mann’s Christmas Carol (starring Michael Cera, John C. Reilly, and more)
  Need we say more?
• Gavin & Stacey will return for third series, creators Ruth Jones and James Corden reveal
  Good news for the G&S fans in the ‘loper realm
• Recording labels and websites in a music video tussle
  Once upon a time, these videos were promotional, now they’re revenue streams. Of course, as we like to note, they only make money if they’re seen.
• SAG delays strike authorization vote
  Guessing someone finally figured out that, uh, putting more people out of work at this time was a bad idea.
• Interview with Clay Shirky, Part I : CJR:
  We quote: "One of the things that I?ve noticed with criticisms of the Internet is that very often they?re displaced criticisms of television. That there are a lot of people, Nick Carr especially is a recent addition to the canon, wringing their hands over the end of literary reading. And they?re laying that at the foot of the Internet. It seems to me, in fact, from the historical record, that the idea of literary reading as a sort of broad and normal activity was done in by television, and it was done in forty years ago."
• The least essential albums of 2008
  Essential reading.
• Confusion in Transition to Digital TV
  The FCC is sponsoring a NASCAR vehicle to raise awareness about the upcoming digital TV transition. So far it’s crashed twice. And that’s the good news.
• Steampunk Subculture Looks Poised To Move Above Ground
  Welcome, MTV!
• Warner withdraws music videos from YouTube following collapse of content-sharing talks
  Tis better to take all your toys and go home than it is to do something?
• VHS era is winding down
  VHS was one of those weird anomalies that occasionally come along: an absolutely transformational technology that is wildly popular, numbers-wise, but everybody kinda hates at the same time.