hegemony rules

Given my current preoccupation with death (not by choice, but I'm leaving for my grandfather's memorial service tomorrow - um, later today), it's only fitting that I stumbled across Bert & Bud's Vintage Coffins via memepool.com. Bert and Bud will create a customized coffin or urn, or you can order your own simple pine box kit to decorate yourself. Interestingly enough, there's also a company that sells biodegradable cardboard caskets. While I'm all for earth-friendly products, their woodgrain coffin reminds me a bit too much of a banker's cardboard file box. I appreciate the effort the funeral business (and yes, there is a funeralbiz.com) is making to commemorate the hobbies and pastimes of those newly passed, however, the dolphin and sailboat urns some folks are peddling are downright scary.

Posted by Adrienne at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's to my wonderful grandfather, Karl Massanari, who passed away this evening amidst family and friends. I'm going to miss his kind and generous spirit.

Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
- Raymond Carver

Posted by Adrienne at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Newsy

• Comedian Lenny Bruce finally received a pardon from NY state Gov. Pataki - a mere 37 years after his death.
  
• They've just discovered the first possible case of Mad Cow disease in the US - right here in Washington state. "'This incident is not terrorist-related,' [Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman] said. 'I cannot stress this point strongly enough.'"

• Just in time for last-minute gift wrapping - beautiful paper boxes from the good folks at Kaliber 1000 (via Christina Wodtke's most excellent weblog, Gleanings).
  
• More paper-y goodness - lovely paper models of animals and motorcycles courtesy of Yamaha (!!) Motors.
  
• For you IA/user design lovers, here's a plethora of Web widgets and a bunch of interaction design patterns (thanks, xBlog), and some absolutely gorgeous typography. Oh, how I wish I were an actual designer.

• Pitchfork Media has published their annual review of the top 50 albums and the top 50 singles of 2003. As one of my friends pointed out, the review for the #1 song, Outkast's Hey Ya! is brilliant: "You can approach pop music as cynically as your indieness mandates, but 'Hey Ya' is a monument to the idea that a really fucking great song will blow up because it's really fucking great. Mind-blowing, then, when the track sounds very much like a home recording by a guy with a couple guitars and keyboards." Well played.
  
• While you're gathered 'round the Yule log, check out the newest release from 8bitpeoples - Christmas songs created using the music from classic video games.
  
• Harold von Braunhut, creator of Sea Monkeys and X-Ray specs, died on Sunday (via Boing Boing).

Posted by Adrienne at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw 21 Grams last night. After it was over, the first thing I said to my friend was, "Wow. I just feel like I've been run over by a truck." I wasn't trying to be clever or anything - I just was overwhelmed. We spent the next two hours drinking stiff greyhounds and gin and tonics in a seedy Chinese restaurant in Wallingford. It took at least two drinks before we regained the ability to say anything much more coherant than, "Dude, that was rough." Still, the film is great, despite its few flaws.

I might have to have another drink now....

Posted by Adrienne at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't wait to get listed on this site - ProfQuotes.com. One of my favorites:

"When I say that I have an interesting point, I mean that it's interesting to me. You probably don't give a damn."

Posted by Adrienne at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Think what you will of Michael Moore - but I personally was incredibly moved by some of the letters he's received from military personnel in Iraq.

From: ________________
To: mike@michaelmoore.com
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 12:33 AM
Subject: re: thanks, from Ft. ______

wow, 130,000 troops on the ground, nearly 500 deaths and over a billion dollars a day, but they caught a guy living in a hole. am i supposed to be dazzled?

SPC _____________, US Army

Posted by Adrienne at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, one of my friends has a great idea for a new musical: Fiddler on the Roof starring the Muppets. He's worked out most of the cast, but needs help in a few areas. We were discussing it Wednesday night over dinner, and we both got stuck on the lead role (Tevya) who, in traditional Muppet movie fashion, would be played by a human. Here's the cast listing so far (with my own additions):

• Golde, the wife - Sam the Eagle
  
• Tzeitel, the oldest daughter - Miss Piggy
  
• Motel, the tailor - Kermit
  
• Yente, the matchmaker - Grover
  
• Perchik, the revolutionary - Gonzo
  
• Hodel, the second daugher - Camilla (but can she really talk? or just cluck?)
  
• Fyedka, a Russian youth - Fonzie Bear
  
• Chava, the rebellious daughter - Janice
  
• Lazar Wolf, the butcher - The Swedish Chef
  
• Rabbi - Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
  
• Rabbi's son - Beaker
  
• The Fiddler - Rolf the Dog
  
• Tevya - not sure...Dom DeLuise? John Rhys-Davies? Mel Brooks? Emeril (haha)? My friend suggested Tony Shalhoub, but I'm not convinced. Tevya has to convey a certain joie de vivre, which a lot of actors can't pull off very well.
  

(Side note: In one episode of the short-lived Muppets Tonight series where Garth Brooks played Tevya for a few minutes in a sketch. Weird.)

(Another side note, or "Why is Adrienne qualified to talk about Muppets and musical theater?": I actually performed as Shprintze - one of the other daughters - in a really mediocre dinner theater version of Fiddler. Also, I had a subscription for a while to Muppet magazine - long enough to remember the Ricky Schroder cover, but not so long that I received the famed Don Johnson cover.)

Posted by Adrienne at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear QE Guys,
I watched tonight's QE in rapt attention, since I thought the premise of a reunion show was interesting. But the holiday party sucked - do we really need to watch a bunch of the same yahoos drink Eco Domani (shudder) and replay/revisit 1/3 of each show over again? I mean, you've only been on the air for, what, a season-and-a-half - do we really need a retrospective at this point? Is my memory so bad that I can't remember George Katsigiannis who was just featured in August 2003?

You kept up this congratulatory craziness during your "Making the Video" episode. Can you please explain to me why the ONLY song you played during this ENTIRE show was "Things Just Keep Getting Better"? Yes, yes, I know that it was supposed to document how you made the video, but, let's be honest, there's not a whole hell of a lot of reasons to listen to the song over and over again. It's not like on the sixteenth listen you're suddenly going to discover that the song is actually talking about new theory of evolution, a cure for cancer, or the solution to the Middle East crisis. And I love how your video only features the actual vocalist for about five seconds - um, didn't she, like, sing the song and stuff?

Special memo to Jai:

Please don't chew gum on camera for any reason. Also, please keep your Ben and J. Lo fantasies to yourself. Quick question: WTF was up with your hairstyle and sweater choice during the closing moments of this week's episode? I could barely pay attention to the valuable information about culture/Broadway shows/MCing/facilitating taxidermists' fantasies that you were generously offering, because you looked like you'd just jumped out of the pages of the Sears catalog! I really need to know how to improve my life, but your "holiday" sweater was so distracting that I couldn't focus on your life changing advice.

Seriously, I love QEftSG, but you're dangerously close to becoming overexposed. Maybe you should start including Michael Ian Black aka Pets.com-sock-puppet-voiceover-guy on your shows. You could be the Fab Five + 1.

Sincerely,
Adrienne

P.S. The makeover you did for Saddam H. was awesome, though. Congrats!
---
Update: Check out Jossip's excellent review of the QE music video show. "While you may think 'making the video' specials include actual scenes of the video being made, a la MTV's Making The Video, you would be sorely disappointed with Queer Eye's take. Instead, this half-hour diatribe consisted of Carson, Thom, Jai, Tom and Kyan talking about the success of the show and it being able to 'cross boundaries' -- which is true, if the boundary is between the hamper and the washing machine."

Posted by Adrienne at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't really have anything intelligent to say today, but I did find a few random links that I found interesting:

• The townspeople are taking action against city bears. 328 bears were killed in New Jersey over the last six days.

• In other animal-related news, conservationists in Britian are using mobile phone technology to promote awareness of the plight of endangered species. Vodafone Live! and Flora and Fauna International have teamed up with Masabi to create a cell phone game revolving around the life of a baby silverback gorilla. The game is not only fun but educational; as Masabi's CEO eloquently notes: "The preconception people have about gorillas is that they sit around eating bananas. So we have one eating a bananas, and a pop up bubble comes up to say that they actually don't eat them, they eat mostly leaves instead." Maybe somebody should create a cell phone game that raises awareness about the fate of black bears in New Jersey.

• AeroSite has a bunch of airline logos to peruse. I especially like the old school TWA logo from the 1930s - who knew that TWA used to stand for "Trans Continental & Western Air"? Ok, that's not really that interesting...but I guess I'm easily amused.

• Here's another infographic-y link: a map-based analysis of the California gubernatorial election results by county. (Side note: I just found out that "gubernator" is actually a word that - not surprisingly - means governor or ruler. There's probably some lame Schwarzenegger joke I could make, but I'll refrain.)

Posted by Adrienne at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a great forum happening on Monday at Columbia University in NYC about media consolidation. If you're going to be in the area, I highly recommend checking out the debate between staffers from The Nation and The Economist. John Nichols and Jenny Toomey will take on Ben Edwards and the FCC's W. Kenneth Ferree. More information about the event is available at ActNow!

Just in case you need another reason to be concerned about this stuff, check out these media consolidation chart - all of them are somewhat out-of-date, but bear in mind that things have only gotten worse in the last few years - from Media Channel, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and Frontline. Lots more information can be had on FAIR's telecommunications policy pages. And if you're still pining for more, check out Ben Bagdikian's book, The Media Monopoly. (I do realize that it's only slightly ironic that I'm linking to Amazon.com when mentioning books on my site. Here's the link to Powells if you'd prefer to buy it there.)

Posted by Adrienne at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night’s QE was just ok. Not the worst, but certainly not the best. The whole military thing made for some nice jokes, but it wasn’t enough to redeem the SG’s almost complete lack of personality. His girlfriend wasn’t much better – all of the Guys kept making fun of the proliferation of the word “awesome” peppering her speech. I had to agree.

Best line (Carson, natch): “My mom says only whores and children wear red shoes."

Posted by Adrienne at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

More thoughts on weblogging from Gothamist. I'm particularly fascinated by guideline #1:

Blogs are made up of posts that have "links + commentary." Commentary, not Joyce-ian stream-of-consciousness.

Pick a real subject or series of subjects and stick to it – if you have to use the word "I" more than once a week, you are doing something very, very wrong. No one cares about you or the things you do (unless you are Paris Hilton, Bazima, or Bennifer – don't believe the weary, B.Lo, keep it comin' strong!), keep it to yourself.

Posted by Adrienne at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

There's a group of Welsh academics conducting a survey on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm probably the only person I know who isn't totally geeked about the whole phenomenon. Actually, after I saw the first LOTR movie, I said to myself, "Self, that movie was almost as bad as Magnolia." Remember Magnolia? P.T. Anderson's overly long, overly dramatic, and thoroughly underwhelming follow up to Boogie Nights (a great movie) that involved me shifting in my seat for three hours wondering when the hurting was going to stop. That's how I felt about LOTR. Except LOTR had Hobbits whereas Magnolia had frogs...

Posted by Adrienne at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about disclosure on individuals’ weblogs and Web sites. I’m curious to know how people negotiate the delicate balance between expressing their thoughts, feelings, and experiences (and creating a distinct authorial voice that stands out from the gazillion of other people who write blogs) and providing too much information about themselves. I’m all for pushing the boundaries of self-expression, but when you do so online, it’s just a Google search and a link away. Suddenly, (potentially) millions of your new best friends can easily access anything you disclose.

I am highly sensitized to the fact that what I may or may not say on my blog might become an “issue” in any number of ways. For example, in future job interviews for academic positions, I might be questioned as to why I chose to reveal certain information about myself. Or, some members of my family might stumble onto my blog and take issue with my political views. How do I serve my need to disclose (which I find both cathartic and worthwhile) and my need to preserve parts of myself that aren’t fit for others’ (at least, not anonymous others’) consumption?

This isn’t a purely academic interest. I recently read that one of my exes has moved in with his new girlfriend and another has gotten engaged. It’s weird. I’m certainly not invested in their lives, nor am I particularly upset. However, it’s strange that they would disclose such information to complete strangers (one of them has a blog on LiveJournal, and could restrict the people that see his postings, but has chosen not to) – and I have to wonder if (especially in one particular case) this was posted just because he knows that I probably read his blog.

You might wonder, of course, why I’m even interested in reading their Web sites, if I’m so “not interested” in their lives in the first place. I don’t honestly know. It’s kind of like a car accident – you want to look away, because it’s so awful, but you… just…can’t. For me, checking in from time to time on those that had been oh-so-important to me in the past is absolutely necessary. It gives me some perspective; it reminds me of the person I was and how glad I am to have finished that chapter of my life.

I return, therefore, to the first question I posed: how do we walk the fine line between healthy self-disclosure and too much information? Or, I could ask it another way: when does self-expression become egomania? And how does technology mediate this experience? Why is it that I feel so much freer to express my true feelings via my weblog and, yet, so much more painfully aware of the potential consequences of doing so?

Posted by Adrienne at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I'm a sucker for infographics and maps. Here are few that have caught my eye recently:

• I'm currently TAing for one of our COM survey courses, and we've spent a lot of time talking about characteristics of language and culture. I think that dialects and word choice are tremendously interesting. Harvard's Dialect Survey overlays individual responses over a map of the US. (Oh, and I pronouce "crayon" "cran" just in case you're wondering.)

• Ever since I moved to the Pacific NW five years ago, I've been irritated by the near-constant use of the word "pop." The Pop vs. Soda site maps the use of these two terms.

• A few years ago, I contemplated enlarging a map of Seattle and marking my daily travels on it with a pen. I figured that there would be certain areas of the city that I visited quite frequently and routes that I drove, bussed, ran or walked regularly. I imagined that some areas of this map would become almost illegible as I traced the same routes again and again - so much so, that the map might fall apart where my pen had worn the paper down. Once again, one of my unrealized ideas has been executed by someone else. Matt Volla, a musician and visual artist from California, charted the paths of those who rode with him as he commuted from Oakland to San Francisco on BART every day. His drawings can be seen in the Summer 2003 issue of Kitchen Sink magazine.

  While I find his drawings incredibly compelling (probably because they remind me of what I imagined my own map looking like), Volla takes it one step further. As the article notes, "With these drawings he composes musical scores for string and horn duets. Imagine looking down into a BART train from above. The length of a car is the length of the music staff, the seats are the bars within the staff. The physical structure of the train becomes the musical structure for sounds. When people sit or stand, enter or leave, they unwittingly add or remove themselves from the score" (126).

• More infographic goodness: Richard Saul Wurman's Understanding USA and Paul Nixon's infographic weblog.

Oh, and why am I posting anything to my blog on a Friday evening? I have no idea.

Posted by Adrienne at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beth Kolko, a researcher at UW's Department of Technical Communication, is doing a bunch of cool research on Internet use in Central Asia. Right now she's looking at the popularity of computer gaming in Uzbekistan. Her work raises a lot of interesting issues about the potential for gaming to introduce technical skills into societies that traditionally have had little access to computers and the Web.

Game playing could, she argues, be a basis for innovation which could be exploited to produce future economic and social rewards.

"We see internet cafe after internet cafe full of young people playing computer games," she says.

"If games get people interested in using technology, they may also motivate them to eventually become involved in other ways.

"Suddenly, they go from being consumers of information to producers of information. They become programmers, developers, designers, not just passive players."

Read more: BBC NEWS | Uzbek gamers pick up computer skills.

Posted by Adrienne at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a quote from some pathologist's Web site :

"If you are in Missouri, and need an autopsy, phone 816-283-2208 anytime. I'm glad to help those who can afford my standard fee, and those who cannot. I can usually be with you within a few hours at the most."

Um, if I actually need an autopsy, I'm thinking that calling a pathologist is going to be a little hard.

His site also features a cool applet that estimates the time of death based on a bunch of characteristics (body temperature, type of clothing, outside temperature, etc.) At least, you might find it cool assuming you're a CSI nerd like I am.

Posted by Adrienne at 08:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

• I can no longer use the word "bunk" with impunity, as it negatively refers to Buncombe County, NC. Since my parents live in Asheville (home of Thomas Wolfe and the Biltmore Estate), I feel a little bad about using it as a derogatory term.

• Tonight's QE was lame (or BUNK!), and to be honest, I'm a little concerned. Jai was pretty worthless (second episode in a row that he's just sat around and gotten tickets for some Broadway show), and Ted's food advice consisted of teaching the straight guy how to make a smoothie. Worst of all, this Steven guy works as a vj for some crappy music station - so you'd think he'd already have access to hair/fashion advice. Best line (Carson): "Aside from that mean gothic girl, everyone loved the makeover...." Worst line (some random IMX vj): "I thought he'd come back looking all gay, but he looks ok...." Oh, and the Fuse TV Web site doesn't use enough plugins.

• Google returns 436,000 search results for hegemony, and only 368,000 hits for procrastination. Hmm....
  

Posted by Adrienne at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There was a great Frontline report a few years ago called "The Merchants of Cool" that invariably comes up in every conversation I have with others about a) media conglomeration and/or b) trend watching.

I have this love/hate relationship with cool hunters - I openly mock their work, but I secretly wish I were one. It's how I felt in high school - I viewed the popular "in" crowd with derision and scorn, but had they ever offered me the opportunity to enter their mysterious world, I probably would have jumped at the chance.

So today's article in the NYT filled me with many of the same feelings of scorn, bemusement, genuine interest and secret envy.

Q. ...Could you detail some of the trends you have been tracking recently for clients?

Mr. Welch: There's "anticool," for those who think cool has been democratized, and the mainstream has access to it because of InStyle, MTV.

Ms. Lazarus: It's a defensive strategy by the leading-edge culture against the mainstream appropriation of cool.

Mr. Welch: There's a reappraisal of things traditionally deemed uncool: trucker hats, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life beers, heavy-metal music.

Ms. Lazarus: It's the whole "white trash" culture, which has been the antithesis of designer culture. In the U.K., the coolest places to hang out are plain old pubs.

We've seen a resurgence in what we call ironic pastimes: camping, lawn bowling, knitting.

Um...yeah. I want to be cool, therefore I mock marketing efforts that openly cater to my desires. I look instead to my "cool" friends and neighbors (all of who sport mustaches, star tattoos, and regularly throw around words like "pomo") and emulate them. Of course, these people are the ones who are being approached by "cool hunters"...so, in the end, I'm being marketed to anyway. But only indirectly, so I guess that's ok.

I'm growing weary of irony. I still want to be a cool hunter - but only if I can be an ironic cool hunter.

Posted by Adrienne at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)