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We're Not Who You Think We Are

Archives for May 2007

The Daily Loper – May 23, 2007

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The Precipice of an Enormous Crossroads Edition

Todays links of interest:

They Wanna Bite The Hand That Feeds Them

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nobody hates the music industry more than the music industry. At every turn over the past decade (perhaps the past century), the powers that be have made wrong choices. Proprietary formats versus MP3? Proprietary. Protect the album versus promote the single? Protect the album. Tell the people what they want versus give the people what they want?

You know the answer to that one.

But this about changing the rule that radio stations shouldn’t pay royalties on the music they play. Historically, radio stations have received a pass when it comes to performance royalties. The logic is that playing songs leads to increased sales. At least that’s how it has worked historically. You hear a song on the radio, you buy the album or single or tape or eight-track or CD or download or whatever. Radio has essentially served as the music industry’s promotional tool.
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The Daily Loper – May 22, 2007

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Call Me Noah Edition

Todays links of interest:

Mike Gravel Meets The Metaverse

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Mike Gravel 2008 Campaign Headquarters In Second Life It’s no secret that social media will significantly impact the 2008 US presidential race. The leading candidates are already using every social network to reach as many voters as possible. You can be Hillary Clinton’s friend on MySpace, follow John Edwards’s personal goals on 43Things, and have Barack Obama’s tweets delivered directly to your mobile phone.

Collectively the candidates are leaving almost no new media stone unturned. But until last week, none of the campaigns had an authorized presence in a virtual world. That all changed on Friday when Mike Gravel’s campaign unveiled its new headquarters in Second Life.

Following a spirited performance in the Democratic debates and a whirlwind media tour afterward, Gravel is shaping to be the ultimate maverick candidate. By comparison, former maverick John McCain looks like an absolute impostor.

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A Small Piece of Advice For NBC Re: The “Friday Night Lights” DVD

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One of the more pleasant surprises about the fall schedule that NBC announced last week was that they had renewed the little-watched but critically-acclaimed show, Friday Night Lights. I will ignore the fact that they moved it to 9:00PM on Friday nights, which is when the people whom the show might appeal the most to — lovers of high school football — are at actual high school football games.

I’ve never seen Friday Night Lights, but I’d like to. We were totally overwhelmed with all of the new and returning shows last season, and the pilot didn’t grab us, so we didn’t follow through. That also happened with Ugly Betty, The Nine, The Knights of Prosperity, and er, um Heroes.

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The Weekly ‘Loper – May 20, 2007

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While you were flocking to Sacramento to see the whales (so many things wrong with that scenario), this is what we were doing:

The Daily Loper – May 18, 2007

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Look Away Now Edition

Todays links of interest:

That’s What I Like: Rare Book Clubs

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Considering this site has a decidedly technophile bent, it may strike some (well, not Kassia) as odd that I am so preternaturally focused on the oh-so-very-old-school world of books. Perhaps it’s because I have spent my entire adult life working in libraries (full disclosure: I am not a librarian, thank goodness).

Just_a_rare_book

So this week I attended my first rare book club meeting, where sad to say, the median age of the other attendees was “dead.” I think a few permanently left our golden orb somewhere between the departure of the salad and the arrival of the soup at the French restaurant near downtown Los Angeles where the thirty-five odd (and I mean “odd”) people gathered.

Not to get all ageist on my gentle readers, but this is a preface to saying that being thirtysomething, I look around and see my fellow Gen-Xers just don’t seem to be all that interested in collecting fascinating, if musty, tomes anymore. It used to be great sport back in the day to have succesfully collected, for instance, every volume of the sacred Zamorano 80 books on Californiana (no, that’s not a misspelling). You were lifted to the ranks of bibliophilic Valhalla, feted by your brethren-in-arms every bit as much as Audie Murphy in a New York ticket tape parade.

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No Crying for The Death of Veronica Mars

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Just after the turn of the century the old WB was one of the favorite networks in our household. Loads of shows that seemed bogus & cheesy on paper (vampire slayers, mother-daughter best friends, brain surgeon opening a family practice) ended up working amazingly well on the screen. Probably because they were writer-driven shows that had interesting points of view and created fun places to inhabit.

Veronica Mars was one of those type of shows, and it wasn’t even a WB show, but somehow made it on to UPN, which was only ever on our radar so that we could curse the perenially underperforming Enterprise. But Rob Thomas had an specific universe that he wanted his teenage girl detective (see how cheesy those words sound?) to inhabit, and Kristen Bell led a cast that played that world out to a T, which was why it really felt like a WB show. And was a natural to go to the WB’s postdecessor (new word!), The CW.

So Veronica had an all-time-great first season, a not-as-great second season, and a pretty good third season. But nobody could get past the premise and it never caught on beyond its cult. And, today, it was finally and officially canceled.

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