Celebrity Cola

Mini Book Review: 'Autobiography of Red'

2010-12-12T19:07:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's the tale of a little gay dragon-monster discovering his purpose in life, falling in and out of love, traveling to South America, growing as an artist (photographer), and . . . Well, it's hard to explain. And the fact that it's told in the form of an epic poem may make many readers worry that the book is going to be a homework-like chore to read. But, really, it's not homework at all -- after a few pages you'll get into the rhythm of the writing and discover a funny, fast, moving, disturbing, exciting, and totally unexpected story of the highest caliber.

So don't feel daunted when you hear that the "Autobiography of Red" is an experimental and intellectual book that is, as Wikipedia puts it, "a verse novel by Anne Carson, based loosely on the myth of Geryon and the Tenth Labor of Herakles, especially on surviving fragments of the lyric poet Stesichorus' poem Geryonis." True, it's that as well, but it's also a contemporary, genre-bending, fantasy-laced, oddly relatable, and very enjoyable weekend-read that you'll remember for a long time to come.

Search Amazon.com for Anne Carson

Mini Book Review: 'Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991'

2010-12-12T18:41:00.000-05:00

"Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991" is one of the top rock books I've read -- funny, inspiring, well researched, and insightful all at once. Since there are already tons of reviews out there on the Internetziz that go into plenty of critical and general detail, I figured I'd just give a quick summary of what's featured in the book:

The main bands profiled: Black Flag, The Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat (Fugazi), Husker Du, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr.

Secondary subjects: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Henry Rollins, Sebadoh, Steve Albini, SST Records, K Records, Sub Pop Records, the birth of punk and hardcore and straight-edge, various `zines, underground and indie scenes, and producers, musicians, influences, etc...

Quite humorous and harrowing, with awesome insider-interviews and wacky anecdotes, including a drunken cameo by Alex Chilton (of Chris Bell, Box Tops, and Big Star fame). Put this one on your bookshelf for some serious indie cred.

Search Amazon.com for more books related to Our Band Could Be Your Life

Album Review: 'Skull Ring' - Iggy's POPular comeback - running rings around modern punk

2010-12-12T18:17:00.005-05:00

Overall, this album may not be as raw, visceral, and fresh as Iggy Pop's early work -- and some of it seems a bit forced and a few of the collaborations border on sell-out territory or the completely forgettable (I'm thinking of the Sum 41 duet especially, but that ended up being one of the album's biggest hits, so when even the cheesiest track is a hit, you know the other stuff will rock) -- but in the end it's a helluva lot a fun, rocks like crazy, and brings back a power and energy lacking from Pop's more low-key solo work of recent years.

And the Stooges are back on some tracks! Such a longed for reunion mixed with cool guest stars and lots of energy. Overall, an exciting little album. Still, where Mr. Pop still rules is LIVE ... if you ever get a chance to see him perform at a stadium, club, or outdoor show, RUN, don't walk. It'll be worth every penny, even if you've never loved his live or studio albums... watching this man onstage, even in 2004, is like a fever dream of power and vitality.

After seeing some of the "Skull Ring" tracks performed live by the reunited Iggy & the Stooges (and, lately, with the great Mike "Minutemen" Watt on bass), it becomes clear that "Skull Ring" actually fits in perfectly with Iggy's seminal punk from the early '70s... somehow, this aging dude is still knocking out new material that cuts as deeply as the old... And at it's best, "Skull Ring" stands with the classics.

For your enjoyment, here's the breakdown of Iggy Pop's "Skull Ring" collaborations. If I've left anyone out, leave a note. (Also, check out the "FatherFu****" album by Peaches for another good Iggy Pop-Peaches duet):

Little Electric Chair (with The Stooges)

Perverts In The Sun (with The Trolls)

Skull Rings (with The Stooges) {alternate title: "Skull Ring"}

Super babe (with The Trolls)

Loser (with The Stooges)

Private Hell (with Green Day)

Little Know It All (with Sum 41)

Whatever (with The Trolls)

Dead Rock Star (with The Stooges)

Rock Show (with Peaches)

Here Comes The Summer (with The Trolls)

Motor Inn (with Peaches)

Inferiority Complex (with The Trolls)

Supermarket (with Green Day)

Till Wrong Feels Right {Iggy Pop solo}

Blood On My Cool (with The Trolls)

Nervous Exhaustion (with The Trolls) {hidden bonus track}

Audio CD:

MP3 Digital Download:

Search Amazon.com for Iggy Pop

Eastdown and Bound

2009-03-12T15:23:00.002-04:00

"Eastbound and Down" is not yet the greatest show in the world, but it’s worth checking out. It’s got a weird tone – partly wacky redneck stuff; partly absurdest stuff that you’d expect from the FunnyOrDie and "Foot Fist Way" guys; partly dark, depressing Tennessee Williams Southern-Gothic drama; and "George Washington" realism mixed in with drug humor and social satire. All packed into under 30 minutes.

It’s weird when someone like Will Ferrell shows up as a guest star on the show, because the character he plays is a totally hammy FunnyOrDie type (e.g., SNL-style Comedy Acting + Over-the-Top Vulgarity) that is at once both awesome and entirely not fitting within the context of half the other plotlines, which involve the main character having problems with drugs, alcohol, steroids, and an inability to emotionally connect to people, a flat-lined career, etc. One moment you see the lead guy getting crushed by life; and the next moment you see him doing wacky cracker shtick opposite other purposely over-the-top actor-comedians. The show bounces around like this constantly.

The one-sentence pitch: It's like “Rosanne” meets “The Glass Menagerie” meets FunnyOrDie’s “The Landlord” meets "North Dallas Forty" meets “My Name is Earl,” if “My Name is Earl” was an R-rated movie by Kevin Smith instead of a Scientology-karma network sitcom.

It makes it hard to judge whether or not the show is good or bad. After four or five episodes I’m still not even sure if I like, love, or hate it. But I’ve gotta admit: It’s different, and it sometimes zigs in a different direction when you expect it zag somewhere else; not just plot-wise, but on an emotional and thematic level. And that makes it exciting for a sitcom.

I’m curious to see whether or not the show gets better or worse. Seems like it could be improved upon (balancing the comedy/drama and reality/absurdity better, working on the pacing, expanding the cast), but the current Redneck Man-Child Learns to Become a Real Man and Regains His High School Sweetheart routines will wear thin pretty quick if the show doesn’t figure out what arc to take the characters on next.

That said, after “Lost,” “Fringe,” “Flight of the Conchords,” “30 Rock,” “Underbelly,” “Damages,” and “The Office,” I’d have to say that “Eastbound and Down" is one of the best shows currently on TV, at least until "Ashes to Ashes" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" bring forth their new seasons.

Caffeinated Contents & Luscious Links

2008-09-21T21:56:00.055-04:00

For years I'd been carefully organizing the best Celebrity Cola links into a slick CSS/Java/HTML-styled table-of-contents. On the front end, it was just a cool, fast, elegant-looking interface. On the backend, the code was based on the work of Nick Rigby, the Drupal "Nice Menu" project, and others, and I'd layered in some little Easter Eggs of my own.

The menu boiled down hundreds of external and internal links into a little 12-item box that didn't look like much until you hovered over one of the main categories -- at which point the little category arrow would bounce and a whole new list of sub-categories would zoom onto the screen, with sub-sub categories folding out from there. Alright, so maybe that sounds lame. But, no, seriously, it was pretty awesome, as far as text-heavy drop-down/pop-out menus go ;|)

However, it was a pain to update. So I'm finally switching over to the built-in organization and navigation options offered by Blogger (collapsible archive lists, labels/tags, link-lists, news-feeds, etc.).

As a memorandum, I figured I'd drop the latest, greatest, and final version of the old "nice menu" table of contents code into a blog post. However, it's playing absolute havoc with a few of the new Blogger widgets I just added, and various style sheet conflicts are popping up, so I'm throwing in the towel. Instead, here's a really craptacular ol' ol' skool version of the previous Celebrity Cola Table of Contents & Related Hyperlinks:

You Can Put Lipstick On a Frog, But You Can't Make an Amphibian Balance the Budget

2008-09-11T03:05:00.011-04:00

Yeah, that's right, I haven't posted anything new here in an eon.... Wanted to, just haven't had the time. But for better or worse, for at least this one post I am so back, tootsie.

Check it out:

YouCanPutLipstickOnAPig.com

A new low for bad comedy? Yowza.

Blame the Brachish.

Luckily, Margery Eagan has a far more intelligent and informative (but still rather witty) take on the "Lipstick" fiasco than I -- read her Boston Herald article, "GOP draws line in the sand in lipstick" after you check out my (s)wine-induced porker of an Election 2008 lark.

Conservative Presidents Always Tell the Truth (A Guide to Irony)

2006-05-13T12:08:00.000-04:00

Word o' da month:

Courtesy of Guardian Unlimited, IRONY is nicely and humorously (if perhaps mostly unironically) explained by Zoe Williams, who aptly notes that one form of irony "states the lie in order to expose the lie," meaning that irony is "a route to truth." The Wikipedia guide to irony ain't too shabby neither. (Note to self: Double-negative sentence constructions are not necessarily ironic, even when intentional). Don't expect a simple "Synonymous with dry, wry, sardonic, ironical, or humorously sarcastic and mocking" definition. Oh no. This is the real deal. It goes for the juggling jugulars of all those that have maligned and misunderstood the true word.

And after you've read all of that, you'll probably want to go back to using "ironic" in the same way you always have, because, heck, the true in-depth definitions of irony are bloody tedious and confusing -- or at least near-impossible to juggle accurately within the personal lexicon of everyday parlance. For instance, if people don't say "irony" (because 98% of people are using it incorrectly) then they'll have to say something like "cynically humorous" or "an inauthentic statement meant for sarcastic effect" or "intrinsically and hyperbolically hypocritical or paradoxical" or "a form of cosmically post-modern cosmic irony" or "negatively-serendipitous and incongruously coincidental compared to what one might expect" instead -- all of which are mighty cumbersome.

So forget irony.... just so long as people use the word "literally" correctly, I'm happy. Because that's a misused word that really drives me soup-to-nuts. Literally. (Well, maybe not literally; but it's more irritating than listening to a Chipmunks musical version of "Mein Kampf.")

***

Key quotes from Zoe Williams' 2003 Guardian article, "The Final Irony," linked above:

In regards to the so-called "ironic" viewpoint of most lad mags, much of reality TV, celeb gossip rags, and the like: "[They're saying] 'I'm not saying what you think I'm saying, but I'm not saying its opposite, either. In fact, I'm not saying anything at all. But I get to keep the tits.' ... So, we're not the first age to use irony (as some insist), but we are the first to use it in this vacuous, agenda-free and often highly amusing way." On the other hand, it's not all fun and games, as Williams goes on to note that in the more traditional sense of the word, "America having funded al-Qaida is ironic; America raining bombs and peanut butter on Afghanistan is ironic." Ouch. Those Pommy Brits know how to rub it in....

***

(For pointing out an important typo in this post, shout-outs go to Zennist.)

One State Two State, Red State Blue State

2006-01-21T01:55:00.002-05:00

Poetry and limericks were replaced in popular culture by television, music lyrics, and cultural consumerism long ago. But just as modern-day poets keep fightin' the good fight and Anne Carson successfully reinvigorated the epic poetic form with Autobiography of Red, scribes such as Don Davis are struggling to bring back the art of rhyming satire.

Thus, Davis' One State Two State, Red State Blue State: A Satirical Guide to the Political and Culture Wars is a bold attempt to render contemporary American society in rib-tickling verse. But how receptive, really, will today's society be?

To quote the ever-present Sex and the City, wherein lead character Carrie Bradshaw's erudite suitor tries to turn her on to the finer aspects of metric verse:

Carrie: How about I read you a little bit of my favorite poetry?

Aleksandr: Please.

Carrie [Reading from a Vogue magazine]: "Cocktails at Tiffany's calls for classic charm. Oscar de la Renta, sleeveless silk full-skirted dress with black patent leather bow belt." Now that is pure poetry.

Ah, yes: products and fashion. That is poetry to many. Or should I say, "too many"? Red State Blue State, then, may be a change of pace that not everyone can appreciate. But for those willing to plunge into the depths of Davis' old-school comedy stylings, many chuckles await, with chapter headings along the lines of "Was Jesus Red or Blue?," "Can There Be a Culture War Without Any Culture?," "The Age of A-queer-ius," "Iraqnaphobia," and "Desperate Democrats" signaling the many topics being wittily marinated, skewered, and barbequed.

If Red State Blue State has a weakness, it namely lies within its timeliness: Jokes about Bill Clinton and Al Gore are already growing dreadfully stale, pop-culture references quickly lose bite, and John Kerry is barely a memory. Once George W. Bush and the current crop of congressmen leave office, Red State Blue State will likely lose its relevance.

And yet it's hard to fault the writer for this failing since it's the same trap that snares most of-the-moment cultural and political writing—becoming timeless while staying timely is near impossible. The book is funny because it's timely, but that timeliness is also what marginalizes the material since you have to understand its social and historical context and it's many little news references in order to get the jokes.

On the other hand, if Hilary Clinton and/or Jeb Bush run for the presidency within the next decade and the Iraq War and Al Qaeda terrorist conflicts remain unresolved—all of which seem likely—then Bush, Clinton, and Mid East gags will automatically become relevant all over again, so Red State Blue State may be able to keep some of it's edge for a few years to come.

That said, the best time to read the book is now, while it's still fresh. And when you're done flipping through it, it'll make a perfect little gift for your hard-to-shop-for political-fanatic compadres. One caveat: Although Red State Blue State heckles both the left- and right-wings of society, the book saves it's sharpest and most frequent jabs for the conservative right (the author is a New York Blue Stater). For me, that's perfect. For namby-pamby Republicans, it might be a problem.

Political affiliations aside, it's of interest to remember that Red State Blue State has antecedents in the works of famed wordsmiths like Shel Silverstein and Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), who wrote rhymes for children that appealed across generations, but also worked in the realms of social and political satire. In turn, this makes me wonder if Davis should have taken a cue from those esteemed men and laced his verse with inventive drawings.

Clever illustrations would make Red State Blue State a superior gift and worthy coffee table piece. The most memorable Silverstein and Geisel works, editorial cartoons, Joel Andreas' hilarious and frightening Addicted to War graphic novel, and illuminate biblical scriptures all benefit from artistic renderings juxtaposing against text, and the lack of detailed, risible art is what makes the numerous pages of Red State look more imposing and less entertaining than its lighthearted contents actually are.

I'll close this review by stealing the inscription from the opening of Red State Blue State: "You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it." – Art Buchwald

Like Red State Blue State, that quip is witty, sad, and awfully, wryly, kinda true.

Excerpts:

Hardball, Crossfire, The McLaughlin Group
All yelling at the top of their lungs
Would the national dialogue be better served
If we simply cut out their tongues?
But on second thought, all this white noise
Really does serve the nation
After all, man can't live by smut alone
He also needs mental masturbation...

...The media's coverage of politics
Is usually like a horserace
Who's up, who's down, who's leading the pack
Who's falling down on their face
But if an ambitious reporter attempted
To boil down a candidate's views
She'd find herself off the network
Covering cooking on the local news...

...But for those truly worried
About the Red/Blue Divide
It's not quite time
For National Suicide
With erectile dysfunction
And wardrobe malfunction
This whole country may be obscene
But one thing is clear
What we all hold dear
Is not Red or Blue, but the GREEN.

***

Related:

Check out "Dr. Seuss Went to War" (political cartoons) and "The Advertising Work of Dr. Seuss," both curtesy of the Mandeville Special Collections Library's Dr. Seuss Collection.

Also, many of Shel Silverstein's adult works were stored at Banned-Width.com (regrettably this website disappeared at the end of 2006, but most of the site's content can still be found via the web.archive.org Internet Archive Wayback Machine), while info on his magical children's books can be found at ShelSilverstein.com.

And author-lawyer Don Davis has a new blog up and running, The Satirical Political Report: An Offbeat Look at the Hot-Button Issues of the Day.

***

Note: The review portion of this post will be mirrored at Blogcritics.org and Amazon.com.

Et tu, Coulter? (Repub Nutters Have Bush's Back)

2006-01-01T04:59:00.000-05:00

Our story thus far: The politically right-wing, so-called-conservative Republican Party has obtained unprecedented power in the United States of America, having gobbled up top spots in courts across the land and both houses of congress, in addition to landing George W. Bush a second term as president of the country.

Now, secure in their supremacy, Republicans with so much as even an ounce of ethical morality and/or half a brain feel confident that occasionally they can speak the truth about the hypocrisy and financial absurdity rife within the Bush/Cheney Administration. However, not all True Believers of the supposedly God-loving, "normal guy" Bush are ready to hear any remarks of ill repute concerning their Beloved Leader. Thus, many conservative commentators have taken to sugarcoating their Bush jabs with left-wing/liberal jokes to help the medicine go down:

Alright, so I just read the updated version of "Kwanzaa: A Holiday From the FBI," an anti-liberal and anti-Kwanzaa screed by Ann Coulter, author of How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) and other grandiose wackiness loved by Repubs and loathed by Dems. Her unraveling of the possible truth behind Kwanzaa was originally written back in 2001, I believe, but the article gets passed around maniacally every year during the holiday season, and thus it's back once more. (Originally the column began by referencing President Clinton's Kwanzaa greeting; now it references Bush's nearly identical greeting) .

Good ol' Coulter is a funny writer. Witty. And she can be so lambastic, I often wonder if she's not a liberal secret agent determined to make the right look bad by proclaiming herself conservative while acting like a nut. (A brief aside: I was hoping that I'd just coined the term "lambastic" -- a combination of bombastic and lambast -- but it looks like this word is used frequently all over the Internet. Everywhere but in dictionaries, that is.)

For instance, I'm a far-left liberal. A socialist with certain libertarian leanings and a Green-party voting record. I live in NYC and work in the media and arts. And I don't have anything to do with Kwanzaa on a regular basis. So why does Coulter say this is "a holiday for white liberals, not blacks"? Who are these mythical liberals that the wide-eyed Republicans are always blathering on about?

Look, I'll admit this: The facts the author presents are little known by many, and thus should be discussed; she compiles the information nicely; and I love a good FBI conspiracy theory as much as Ann Coulter does.

But here's the rub: Although I'm not anti-Kwanzaa and I'm on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Coulter, I coulda written this very same article and would have had many of the same things to say (if I was in a cynical, paranoid, conspiracy-minded, "the FBI and CIA are behind everything" mood, which isn't rare, exactly).

The only difference in how I'd have written the piece is that I wouldn't have kept haphazardly throwing the blame on so-called liberals every three paragraphs. But I guess that's why Ann Coulter makes the big bucks: she can twist any topic into a liberal vs. conservative showdown. It's like butter on steak: it may not be healthy, but it just tastes so much better.

But wait.... Coulter keeps mentioning George W. Bush over and over again. She never says anything bad about him. And yet, I do believe she's implying he's part of the liberal conspiracy, isn't she? I quote: "Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes 'unity' and 'faith.' Faith in what? Liberals' unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?"

Yeah, that's right, she just took a statement made by Ye Conservative Republican Christian Leader G.W. Bush and, without taking a breath or a pause, twisted his words into a slap down of liberals, with the undeniable implication that Bush is the liberal getting slapped. Did you notice? What about when she called Bush's own words "patently absurd." Can she talk about a president like that?

Let's break it down and look at the actual Kwanzaa statement by Bush (an annual bromide that has been more or less the same for years now), and then put Coulter 's reply in context. Pretend this is a dialogue (the quotes are all real, but edited):

Bush: "I send greetings to those observing Kwanzaa.... The seven days of this celebration emphasize the seven principles of Nguzo Saba -- unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. As families and friends gather for Kwanzaa, Americans remember the many contributions African Americans have made to our country's character and celebrate the diversity that makes our Nation strong. May your commitment to family, faith, and community thrive during this holiday season and throughout the coming year. Laura and I send our best wishes for a happy Kwanzaa."

Coulter: "With his Kwanzaa greetings, [the president] is saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane -- all with the FBI as their covert ally.... Faith in what? Liberals' unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?"

Brachish: "Now, Ann, that wasn't a liberal that just gave his blessing to Kwanzaa. That wasn't a Kennedy or a Clinton. That was George W. Bush a.k.a. Bush Jr. a.k.a. Bush II a.k.a. Nixon-Reagan-Lite. Be polite to yer captain, lady. You're not mad just because you heard that George's brother -- Gov. Jeb, the Republican hoped-for heir to the 2012 presidency -- believes in evolution, are ya?"

Anyway, it's good to know that Ann Coulter and her conservative Republican talk-show ilk are up in arms about a little-respected, marginalized holiday that was invented in the time of tie-dye.

For a while there I was worried that they might be getting bored with the nearly 25 years of Executive Branch power the Republicans have held since the 1970s -- so bored that they might start worrying about the massive deficit the Republicans have dug our country into, the unimpressive stock market, the stumbling U.S. businesses, the corrupt corporate leaders ("conservatives" one and all), or the war that's brought us neither safety nor profit (well, if you happen to have connections to the Texas oil industry you're up to your armpits in high-priced domestic oil money, thanks to our Mid East wars driving up Texas oil prices just like they always have and always will; but that's another story, one that certainly has nothing to do with Bush and Cheney's many domestic oil friends).

But no, there's no reason to worry about those things. Not when we can still bash the liberals for, uh, threatening to bring health care to both the rich and poor. Damn liberals. They so crazy.

Geeking Out on Graphic Art, Sidling Up to Sci-Fi

2005-12-07T16:28:00.000-05:00

I just stumbled across MonkStyle.net, the website of Aaron Booth, a Sydney, Australia-based web designer that was trained as an illustrator at Joe Kubert's renowned World of Cartooning (NYC). In addition to the expected ranting and comic book musings, his blog contains links to his eye-catching drawings and photographs.

Some of the art is suprisingly amateurish considering his training (not bad, just a little flat) -- but a great deal of the newer material is staggeringly good, especially his Flash/Illustrator work that transforms mundane photogaphs into vector images that rival the best comic book artistry I've ever seen (and I've seen oodles, let me tell ya).

Booth (aka Dr. Snafu) is particularly apt at capturing a sense of emotion in the silent pauses and glimmering eyes of his portraits. If he can sustain this level of quality over the course of sequential panels and action sequences -- and mix in some delicious backgrounds -- then illustration wunderkinds such as Josh Middleton and John Cassaday will have a run for their pencils. Do yourself a favor and visit his site for more sumptuous visuals. Or go directly to his Flickr gallery.

(The images above are copyright Dr. Snafu; the other images on this page are copyright their respective owners.)

***

As recently hyped by Wired magazine, Star Trek: New Voyages will be releasing a new Star Trek episode soon. This one staring Walter Koenig, the original Lt. Pavel Chekov. It's amateur fan-boy TV-show freak-out time, as the New Voyage kids finally have one of the real Star Trek actors acting alongside their hazy facsimile versions of Kirk, Spock, and crew.

***

I finally got around to reading the first volume of Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, which was excellent.

Jason Lute's sublime Jar of Fools: A Picture Story and Dan "Ghost World" Clowes' suprising, twisting David Boring were also mind-blowingly superb. And Kyle Baker's Plastic Man: On the Lam! was a wacky, Plaztastic, double-entendre filled surprise.

However, Rick Veitch's Maximortal and Brat Pack graphic novels (the first two volumes of the as yet uncompleted King Hell Heroica five-part series) were not as mesmerizing as I'd hoped. Interesting, provocative, gross-out funny, and weird, yes. But not the best revisionist superhero epic in the galaxy (Veitch has had his hand in quite a few classics over the years, notably as an artist, but his solo works never quite reach the pinnacle of such superhero reimaginings as Planetary, the Invisibles, Watchmen, X-Statix, Miracle Man, Sandman, the best of Frank Miller and Alan Moore, even such oddities as American Flagg, Nexus, Zot!, Madman, Concrete, etcetera, etcetera). Brat Pack does offer lush black-white-and-grey artwork, the creepiest interpretation of Batman & Robin you'll ever read, the iconic/archetypal Doctor Blasphemy (one of the most memorable-looking comic creations ever), and the catchy tagline, "Live fast, love hard, die with your mask on."

And storywise Maximortal and Brat Pack tie together nicely while also seemingly forming the backdrop for exciting things to come. But overall the scripting can feel a bit hamhanded and rushed, wallowing in its own dirty jokes and contrivances while never living up to the best ideas and images presented. Maximortal, especially, substitues too much philosophy and psychedelia for action and plot. Perhaps Veitch will pull it all together if he ever gets around to completing his Heroica cycle, but in it's current shape it's a rough (but often rousing) beast best suited only for the hardcore comics fan.

***

Designer Mark Wasserman is Plinko. Plinko is cool. And funny.

Also worth a look is X-Ray Spex, the blog of comics writer/newspaper man Will Pfeifer, "Promising penetrating insight, delivering cheap cardboard glasses"

***

The Sci Fi Channel's online Seeing Ear Theatre has some great new radio-style audio dramas up, like Bebe Neuwirth reading the part of the Queen in Neil "Sandman" Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples.

And 4ColorHeroes offers a ton of links to free, super-rare Alan "Watchmen" Moore online goodies, including lost comics, scripts, MP3s, interviews, prose, and essays.

Reprogramming Science

2005-12-06T01:17:00.000-05:00

Rather brilliant Pommy scientist Stephen Wolfram published A New Kind of Science (NKS) back in 2002 to much controversy and acclaim (the text is available online for free). The book shows how simple programs (i.e., sets of instructions underlying biological, computer, physical, and social systems) can produce complex results, and suggests that programs, therefore, can answer questions that traditional mathematics and science cannot.

The concepts can be hard to digest all in one swallow, but the gist is this: math and science wonks like to tackle a particular part of a problem and then reduce it to a very specific formula (say, E=mc²); while computer programmers tend to write very complicated code so that their programs can do relatively simple but specific tasks (like the thousands of lines of coding needed to create a word processing program so you can type up a sentence like this one). But if you write a very simple and general piece of code that doesn't create something very specific, but instead is designed to generate a lot of variations, then the results can be astoundingly complex. This in turn raises the argument that a simple program is a more powerful tool than a simple formula in terms of reducing the math and science of life to its fundamental roots.

The need for traditional mathematics and science still exists, and conventional formulas might be used within the programs themselves, but what is radical about Wolfram’s thinking is that neither creating a super-complex program or searching for the ultimate, compact mathematical formula is going to solve every problem. Instead, thinking in terms of simple programs and the complex results that can result from running those programs over a long period of time might lead to answers otherwise unattainable.

So while biological scientists have been able to figure out that the make up of all forms of known life can be traced back to what is currently called DNA, and the scientists continue to crack the puzzle of various DNA combinations, in the end no simple formula may ever explain how all of the possible DNA combinations relate to each other; but a program, using known DNA code as it’s base variables, could be written that would generate all DNA combinations, and thus help show us the likelihood of, say, a human developing from the muck instead of a dolphin.

For instance, a formula like E=mc² alone will never explain how a turtle evolved from a microbe, but a program could (theoretically) be written to trace the evolutionary development of the turtle's DNA while also generating the thousands of other possibilities of organisms that might have developed under different circumstances.

Anti-evolutionists that have evolved from simple creationist dogma on to Intelligent Design theory hold forth that Darwin's theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of the creatures that now exist (especially man), so therefore a "watchmaker" (God) must have designed the basic templates. Wolfram's concept, however, shows that very simple programming code could generate all manner of results. Combine Wolfram's concepts with modern DNA studies and Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest and a more defendable view of evolution begins to emerge.

Wolfram sees his theories as being the “new math”—a math that may one day be used to explain the underlying processes that drive biological, social, and physical systems. Life, the universe, the stock market, music, art, sex, cellphone ringtones, etc.: All traceable back to the results derived from instructions (a.k.a. programs) generating all variations of repeatable processes and formulas under a confined set of conditions.

Of course, that’s just my own, highly inflammable, arguably off-the-mark interpretation of his theories. Look into it for yourself and discover the controversy and insight of Wolfram and his contemporaries (and try not to get distracted by all the claims of plagiarism and "I discovered that first" battles flying back and forth between all these modern thinkers, including Wolfram, that are ready to claim a seat of glory next to Einstein, Aristotle, Newton, et al.)

***

Related Post: "The Apocalyptic Battle Between Science, Religion, Republicans, the Environment, and Those Dreaded Neo-Hippies"

Not Related Post: Brian M. Palmer likes indie music, comics, comedy, and Arrested Development (AD). Thus, he is a good guy. Check out his exclusive and amusing interviews with various AD cast members.

Use It: David Harper recommends TheSage, a stupendous Dictionary-Thesaurus freeware program that trumps most related software I've seen, including some of the better dictionary websites and expensive stand-alone programs. Looking at the results, examples, and cross-references TheSage generates, the word "exhaustive" comes to mind -- although it's certainly not exhausting to use.

I also like the more simplistic, fast-loading WordWeb shareware program-- a powerful, international Dictionary-Thesaurus that you can set up to always run in the background (it doesn't use up much of your computer's resources): Highlight any word in any program and then click ctrl-W and boom!, WordWeb pops up with the definition, correct spelling, related words, etc. I use WordWeb all the time, at home and at work.

Corporate Governance

2005-10-30T17:26:00.000-05:00

Most of both houses of Congress, and possibly a majority of high-level politicians these days (especially G.W. Bush and Co.), all seem to operate American affairs the way executives operate global businesses. Which isn't surprising, since so many politicians come from business and law backgrounds, scores having worked as CEOs or for corporate lobbyists and the like. The problem, though, is that modern business has become extremely top-heavy, eagerly rewarding everyone of the executive class regardless of how much work they're doing on a daily basis or how much they're truly contributing to the company overall. And thus that same attitude has crept into government thinking.

Yes, good management can do great things for a company, as can a CEO with vision and passion. But real day-to-day operations are successful based on good middle -management and the quality of the staff beneath them. While executive-level management spends 90% of their time taking meetings where ideas are discussed but nothing is accomplished, and then they all give themselves raises.

Sound familiar? Think it’s just an urban myth? Well, that's the U.S. government for you. And it's Halliburton, GM, and every other corporate business and big-city bureaucracy in the country.

Case in point:

When Delphi Corp. started considering bankruptcy as part of it's efforts to slash auto-worker pay in half and remove benefits from retired employees, they immediately commenced a flurry of meetings, in which the executives decided that, well, all of the executives in the company weren't getting paid enough. Also, if any executives were fired, it was reasonable to assume that they should be healthily compensated with at least six months of pay and a partial bonus. So for the sake of staying competitive in the market place, maintaining quality, and retaining the best workforce possible, the day-to-day laborers and bottom-level management types would have their salaries drastically reduced, while the executives would have theirs raised. What kind of logic is that?

Of course, many people cried foul and Delphi Corp. had to backpedal some. But the fact remains that even after all of the corporate greed and corruption uncovered in the aftermath of the entire 1980s and then, more recently, Enron and its spiritual brethren, companies such as Delphi Corp. will still happily, publicly, boldly, blatantly try to pull off schemes such this where the money of the masses is transferred to the pockets of few.

’Tis not surprising then, that Congress continues to give itself raises and increased health and retirement benefits while also turning down opportunities to bring better health, retirement, and education benefits to the general public. Will a senator or representative a give themselves a raise? Sure. And more power too ’em. But will they raise the minium wage by a buck? Nahhhhhhh....

***

Word of the day: Manichaeism, a philosophy that centers around the concept of dualism (good vs. evil, light vs. dark, yin vs. yang). The ancient religious form of Manichaeism combines Zoroastrian, Christian, and Gnostic beliefs and elements with Babylonian folklore and Buddhist ethics. Also see: Manichaean. Wild stuff.

Comic creator of the hour: Chester Brown, writer-artist of "The Playboy," "I Never Liked You," "Ed the Happy Clown," "Underwater," "Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography," etc.

Site of the minute: Dogsbody, TCJ reviews of art/indie comics, including archived reviews by good ol' NYC-Florida writer Daniel Holloway.

Ms. Hollywood Science, I'd Like You to Meet Mr. Government Bureaucracy...

2005-10-17T14:05:00.000-04:00

I just read a blurb in Premiere magazine noting that the U.S. government is offering screenwriting grants to scientists, in the hopes of sexing up the science industry and recruiting today’s youth into such disciplines as nuclear physics, genetic modification, and other serious realms of scientific study that videogame playing, reality-TV watching, celeb-mag reading Americans are running away from in droves.

But after searching the Grants.gov and U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science grant databases, I was unable to unearth greater details or a grant application. However, a Google search did yield “Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts,” a related New York Times article by David M. Halbfinger:

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 3, 2005 - Tucked away in the Hollywood hills, an elite group of scientists from across the country and from a grab bag of disciplines - rocket science, nanotechnology, genetics, even veterinary medicine - has gathered this week to plot a solution to what officials call one of the nation's most vexing long-term national security problems.

Their work is being financed by the Air Force and the Army, but the Manhattan Project it ain't: the 15 scientists are being taught how to write and sell screenplays ... Exactly how the national defense could be bolstered by setting a few more people loose in Los Angeles with screenplays to peddle may be a bit of a brainteaser. But officials at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research spell out a straightforward syllogism:

Fewer and fewer students are pursuing science and engineering. While immigrants are taking up the slack in many areas, defense laboratories and industries generally require American citizenship or permanent residency. So a crisis is looming, unless careers in science and engineering suddenly become hugely popular, said Robert J. Barker, an Air Force program manager who approved the grant. And what better way to get a lot of young people interested in science than by producing movies and television shows that depict scientists in flattering ways?

... Teaching screenwriting to scientists was the brainstorm of Martin Gundersen, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and sometime Hollywood technical adviser, whose biggest brush with stardom was bringing a little verisimilitude to Val Kilmer's lasers in the 1985 comedy "Real Genius."

More recently, he was asked to review screenplays by the Sloan Foundation, which awards prizes for scientific accuracy, and found most to be "pretty dismal," as he put it. "My thought was, since scientists have to write so much, for technical journals and papers, why not consider them as a creative source?" Dr. Gundersen said.... The Air Force is providing $100,000 annually for three years; the Army Research Office has added $50,000 this year....

Dr. Gundersen, meanwhile, offered Valerie Weiss, a participant in the 2004 workshop, as a potential success story. A film buff at Harvard while she was getting her Ph.D. in biophysics, Ms. Weiss switched careers to film four years ago and is now trying to sell a comedy built around a Bridget Jones-like biochemist who applies the scientific method to her hunt for a mate.

She said she hoped her background would give her film the kind of personal touch that Nia Vardalos brought to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" as a Greek-American. "To write a film that is going to have impact like that, it needs to be from somebody that has direct experience," she said.

Ms. Weiss said Dr. Gundersen's notion that scientists could make good screenwriters stood the test of reason.

"They're inherently creative, and willing to take more risks than other people," she said. "They're searching for the unknown, they're compensated very minimally, they're going on blind faith that what they're searching for is going to pay off. And filmmaking is exactly the same way."

I’d like to argue that a good screenwriter—or a good writer of any sort—can write a great story without having the “direct experience” that Valerie Weiss claims is required. Also, Nia Vardalos’ "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," although highly profitable and occasionally funny and touching, is not a masterwork example of impact-laden cinema. It’s a goofy little comedy.

Writers need to do their homework: reading, research, interviews, and endless imagining. But you don’t have to be a female Harvard science PhD to write a dating comedy about a female science PhD. The education, skills, and experiences of a writer will likely culminate in a better story than a “direct experience” person throwing ideas down on paper. “Direct experience” does pay off with memoir writing, but for romantic comedies and action thrillers? Not so much.

Novelists such as John Le Carré (aka David Cornwell) are the rare exception. Le Carré, a former spy that writes spy thrillers (“The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” etc.), is probably a better fiction scribe than actual espionage mastermind. And there are others in this vein. Scientists, soldiers, construction workers—great writers come from a variety of backgrounds and day jobs. But the work of a great writer is not limited by his or her past.

The U.S. government should try offering grants to all writers—not just scientists—encouraging them to write exciting, scientifically accurate science-themed screenplays. And more importantly, programs such as this should help writers find scientists that they can rely on for fact checking and research. Maybe even co-writing.

Imagine that: The federal government hooking up writers and scientists to work together on new projects. Scientists helping writers flesh out their screenplays while writers help recruit today’s kids into the world of hard science. Scientists correcting writers when they lose track of facts, and writers smoothing out the story arcs and dialogue of the microscope gazers and number crunchers.

That would be a worthy program. But ignoring writers while funding scientists to take a break from science so they can learn how to write? That’s nothing more than a study in entropy and thanatology. We might as well start paying screenwriters to design cloning technology in their spare time...

***

Speaking of Scientists: "Life is an anti-climax for some but for most of us it adds up to 16 hours of orgasmic pleasure. Researchers in Germany have calculated that is the number of hours that the average person spends enjoying orgasms during his or her lifetime.... and people spend six weeks doing nothing but playing during childhood, will watch television for a staggering five-and-a-half years ... spend seven years doing nothing but working ... [and] 24 years and four months in the land of nod." -- Allan Hall, "You've got it coming: all 16 hours of it," The Age (Victoria, Australia).

Talkin' 'bout Filmmakers: writer-producer-director Judd Apatow gets focused in an all-out interview conducted by Mike Russell. (Apatow's one of the the new comedy masterminds behind “The Ben Stiller Show,” “Freaks and Geeks,” “Undeclared,” “The Larry Sanders Show,” “The Cable Guy,” “Anchorman,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Fun with Dick and Jane.”) Read on...

What's PR Got to Do With It?

2005-10-07T18:15:00.000-04:00

"PR" can mean a number things.

Typically, a PR (press release) is any news item that’s distributed by a company, concerned party, or publicist and is not actually written by, originated by, or researched by a real reporter and editor. Some companies keep their PR (public relations) division in house, but for bigger events they usually hire a big PR firm. The publicists and marketing geniuses (spawns of Satan) then try to get the word out about the company/event to the public. The PR (public relations) people do this by sending out PR (press releases) to everyone and their mother, with special emphasis on hounding the media.

In the normal media world, three things happen when a magazine/newspaper/TV reporter or news editor receives a piece of PR: (1) If they are wise, they throw it in the trash; (2) If they are not too lazy, they try to figure out whether or not there is actually anything newsworthy buried inside the flack-written fluff that is the basis of every PR; (3) If they are a regular, good ol' jurno hack, they try to figure out if they will be able to get any cool interviews or free electronics or movie/concert tickets or stock options or sex out of the publicist if they cover the “news” found in the PR; (4) The reporter/editor will research and verify (or contest) the info in the PR and then begin writing a story based upon the PR, bringing in outside research and doing interviews with people and trying to find the truth, unless they're FOX News or very drunk, in which case they'll just report the PR as fact or plagiarize it verbatim.

However, in the world of stocks, PRs are released directly onto newswires and are then avidly devoured by the public without ever being touched by reporters or editors, so anyone following the stock PR wires needs to do their own extensive DD (due diligence) to figure out what is really relevant and what is bullshit. With many PR wires, the company that wants to issue a news release just has to pay the wire service a fee, and then, bingo-presto, it’s posted online.

At the same time, the company in question and their publicity team may not actually be behind the PRs you see -- it could be the MMs (market makers) that have hired a PR team to release publicity items to help make the stock go up or down. Typically, stock-related PR found on the legitimate news wires will not be lies, per se, since people could get in trouble for distributing completely false information, but the info will likely be manipulated to the furthest extent the law allows, to help whatever party is releasing or paying for the PR.

But since the general media doesn't pay much attention to all the penny stocks out there, penny traders have to rely on PR to a great degree. And the PR, in turn, affects what the stock media reports on, what the stock bulletin boards talk about, and what the stock gurus recommend. And many of the stock-news services that release info on the wires and distribute info through newsletters and websites and spam are glorified PR firms in their own right – they’re paid (with money and/or stock) to recommend the stock they’re flaunting. Nonetheless, even when PR is mostly BS, it can still affect the PPS (price per share) or P/S (market cap divided by revenues, or stock price divided by sales price per share) and is rarely bad new (which is kept strictly on the QT). But you can use PR to your advantage if you’re on top of the news.

Penny Stocks Part 2: Bollinger is Not a Rock Band

2005-10-05T17:25:00.000-04:00

Question: Swing trades, day trades, long-term investments. Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX, Pink sheets, and Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTC BB) trades. Is it business or gambling? Can the small guy ever really win, or is the system rigged against the masses?

As part of my continuing attempt to find unique and insightful stock-market trading advice -- especially in the volatile world of penny stocks and micro-penny stocks -- I now present to you another post from the mighty Ric at the discussion thread “So how do I make money then?” at the Allstocks.com’s Bulletin Board.

Things you need to know

By Ric.

Best two pieces of advice for pennies:

1) Don't let people convince you that a penny is a long hold. You will get burnt. Buy low, sell high, and never look back.

2) Due Diligence.

Two things that you must learn about charts immediately are RSI (the relative strength index) and Bollinger Bands. They are so important. Now there is so much you can learn in charts that will help you make choices but I consider the above the most important things to learn for any investors. RSI will let you know if there is buying pressure or selling pressure. It will also confirm a run. Bollinger Bands also show price pressures and are used to support other indicators. There are links below under TA for education on understanding charts.

Relative Strength Index

Definition:

Relative Strength Index (RSI), an oscillator introduced by J. Welles Wilder, Jr., could be more appropriately called the internal strength index, for it compares the price of a security relative to itself. The RSI is based upon the difference between the average of the closing price on up days vs. the average closing price on the down days over a given period, and is plotted on a vertical scale of 0 to 100. An oscillator refers to a momentum or rate-of-change indicator that is usually valued from -1 to +1 or 0% to %100.

Wilder advocated a 14-day RSI, although shorter and longer periods have gained popularity when the market exhibits certain characteristics. Generally, RSI is measured in a period between 5 and 25.

Interpretation:

There are several possible interpretations for the Relative Strength Index, any of which can be very powerful depending on the market conditions and trading/investment approach: One interpretation is that buy signals are triggered when RSI is in oversold (20-30) area, potentially meaning that the stock is about to reach its low for this trend, and sell signals are triggered when RSI is in overbought (70-80) area, potentially signaling a market top.

A second mode of interpretation is to look for support and resistance lines or common chart formations such as head and shoulders in the RSI itself, indicating potential reversals that the stock chart may not.

A third mode of interpretation is to recognize divergences in the RSI, such as when the price is moving up when the RSI is moving down or vice versa. This can mean that the price is going to "correct" and move in the direction of the RSI.

A fourth mode of interpretation for the RSI is to view it as a bullish or bearish signal when it crosses 50. When the RSI crosses above 50 it can be considered bullish, and when it crosses below 50 it can be considered bearish.

Bollinger Bands

Definition:

Investors use trading bands, lines drawn above and below the moving average, to isolate a range of prices for a given security, based on the concept that a stock generally trades within a predictable range on either side of the moving average. When a stock is near the upper or lower limits of the trading bands is when an investor should pay closest attention, according to conventional wisdom.

Bollinger Bands are considered some of the most useful bands in technical analysis, for they vary in distance from the moving average of a security's price based on the security's volatility. During periods of increased fluctuation, the bands widen to take this into account, and when the fluctuation decreases, the bands are tapered for a narrower focus to the price range. The upper band is the standard deviation multiplied by a given factor above the simple moving average, and the lower band is the standard deviation multiplied by the same given factor below the simple moving average.

Interpretation:

The standard interpretation is that Bollinger Bands do not give absolute buy and sell signals, but instead indicate whether the price is relatively high or low, allowing for more informed confirmation with other technical indicators.

Bollinger Bands are typically drawn two standard deviations from a twenty day simple moving average for intermediate-term analysis, ten day for short term with 1.5 standard deviations, and fifty for long-term studies with 2.5 standard deviations. According to John Bollinger, for the most accurate average "choose one that provides support to the correction of the first move up off a bottom. If the average is penetrated by the correction, then the average is too short. If, in turn, the correction falls short of the average, then the average is too long. An average that is correctly chosen will provide support far more often than it is broken."

Mr. Bollinger also contends that:

Sharp moves tend to occur after the bands tighten to the average, when a stock is less volatile. The greater the period of less volatility, the higher the propensity for a price breakout.

When the price hits the upper or lower bands, it is suggested to confirm with other indicators whether that price movement shows strength or weakness, respectively, which could indicate a continuation. If indicators do not confirm this movement, it can suggest a reversal.

Tops or bottoms made outside the bands, followed by the same inside the bands, indicate a trend reversal.

A move originating at one band tends to go to the other band.

Resources for IQCharts & DD for otcbb and pinksheets

Try these two DD tools to be quick and good with your facts. At pinksheets in a matter of seconds under Company Info I can give you o/s, any r/s, company name changes, or planned changes and more. Quotetracker is a program you install on your computer. I wouldn't survive without it in a quick paced market. Tons of TA and FA with dd. Shoot pinksheets is my homepage on Firefox browser for quick reference. This is the first two places I go for fast due diligence.

www.pinksheets.com {Company Info tab is loaded with information} {SEC Filing Tab - wow} {News Tab - Pr's at your finger tips}

www.quotetracker.com - after you set it up add a symbol quickly then charts, news, research, and raw data at your finger tips. Great charts.

DD is mainly knowing where to go.

FA – Fundamental Analysis

www.pinksheets.com - first place to look!!!! Go to Company info for o/s. r/s, name changes, and many other facts. Go to SEC tab to look for filings. News tabs for latest news that may not show up through normal wire service.

www2.barchart.com - after you enter stock symbol select opinion to see trend spotter

www.otcbbtrader.com – otcbb loser/winner by volume, price, shares, transaction, and more

www.otcbbtrader.com/portal/n_letter/ gen/Microcap_Recap_Report.html - otcbb market recap on otcbb and pinksheet market for the day

tinyurl.com/9s2wr - DD site that is great.

www.otcbb.com – otcbb news

www.boardcentral.com/ index.php?view=Main – most popular stock search

www.smallcapcenter.com – otcbb resources

smallcapcenter.com/ tools_QuickSearch.asp?page=QUICKSEARCH.ASP - free filter

www.stockfetcher.com - stock filter

knobias.10kwizard.com - SEC Edgar filings

TA – Technical Analysis

www.stockcharts.com – charting web site

bigcharts.marketwatch.com – charting web site

www.iqcharts.com/education - TA, candlesticks, chart patterns education

www.stockcharts.com/education/ChartAnalysis - teaches chart analysis

www.transitionstrading.com/Chart_Studies.htm - teaching about charts

General DD (Due Diligence/Research/Fact-Checking)

www.allstocks.com/edu/index.html - Research links

www.quotemedia.com/results.php - Free level II (not pink)/Delayed

www.nasdaqtrader.com/aspx/regsho.aspx - “Sho” list

www.nasdaq.com – Tons of information (insider trading/IPO’s/Most active/much more)

www.tradetrek.com/online.asp - General but with 5 day and 6 month forecasts

www.secform4.com – Free real time insider trader monitor

www.otcbbtrader.com/portal/goto.dll - Market Data

www.stockmarketyellowpages.com – search tool

www.rookiedaytrader.com – Some good advise here

www.epubsinc.com/ index.php?pageName=formtypes – Edgar form types and descriptions

www.shellstockreview.com/ssrShellsBySym.htm - Shell companies

www.daytradingcoach.com/index2.htm - trading tips, education, quotes and charts

www.investopedia.com/ - dictionary of stock terms, tutorials

www.stockcharts.com/education/ MarketAnalysis/dowtheory1.html - theory of market movement

www.stockcharts.com/education/ TradingStrategies - well known trading strategies

our-street.com/home.htm - list of scam companies

www.sec.gov – latest filings, litigations, proceedings, or suspensions

————————————————————

Secretary of States (Protect Yourself!)

Alabama - arc-sos.state.al.us/CGI/ SOSCRP02.MBR/INPUT
Alaska - www.gov.state.ak.us/ltgov
Arizona -www.azsos.gov
Arkansas - www.sosweb.state.ar.us
California - kepler.ss.ca.gov/list.html
Colorado - www.sos.state.co.us
Connecticut - www.sots.state.ct.us
Deleware - www.state.de.us/sos/default.shtml
Florida - www.dos.state.fl.us
Georgia - www.sos.state.ga.us/default800.asp
Hawaii - www.ehawaii.gov/dcca/ bizsearch/exe/bizsearch.cgi
Idaho - www.idsos.state.id.us
Illinois - www.sos.state.il.us
Indiana - www.in.gov/sos
Iowa - www.sos.state.ia.us
Kansas - www.kssos.org/main.htm
Kentucky - sos.ky.gov
Louisana - www.sec.state.la.us
Maine - www.state.me.us/sos
Maryland - www.sos.state.md.us
Massachusetts - www.sec.state.ma.us
Michigan - www.michigan.gov/sos
Minnesota - www.state.mn.us/ebranch/sos
Mississippi - www.sos.state.ms.us
Missouri - www.sos.mo.gov
Montana - sos.state.mt.us/css/index.asp
Nebraska - www.sos.state.ne.us
Nevada - esos.state.nv.us/SOSServices/ AnonymousAccess/CorpSearch/CorpSearch.aspx
New Hampshire -www.sos.nh.gov/index.html
New Jersey - www.state.nj.us/state
New Mexico - www.sos.state.nm.us
New York - www.dos.state.ny.us
North Carolina - www.secretary.state.nc.us/ corporations
North Dakota - www.knowx.com/northdakota/ northdakota-corporate-records.jsp
Ohio - www.sos.state.oh.us
Oklahoma - www.sos.state.ok.us
Oregon - www.sos.state.or.us
Pennsylvania - www.dos.state.pa.us/dos/site/default.asp
Rhode Island - www.state.ri.us
South Carolina - www.scsos.com
South Dakota - www.sdsos.gov/index.htm
Tennessee - www.state.tn.us/sos
Texas - www.sos.state.tx.us
Utah - www.utah.gov/ltgovernor
Vermont - www.sec.state.vt.us
Virginia - www.soc.state.va.us
Washington - www.secstate.wa.gov/corps
West Virginia - www.wvsos.com
Wisconsin - www.sos.state.wi.us
Wyoming - soswy.state.wy.us/corporat/ corporat.htm

Phone Numbers provided by HitMe101

Knight Equity Markets, L.P.
NASDAQ TRADING
800-222-4910

NASDAQ TRADING
888-515-0031

BULLETIN BOARD
800-232-3684

DELISTING/BANKRUPTCY
212-336-8656

DELISTING/BANKRUPTCY
212-336-8791

DELISTING/BANKRUPTCY
212-336-8792

INTERNATIONAL
800-762-0271

BROKER/DEALER DESK
888-302-9197

INSTITUTIONAL DESK
800-222-4895

FOREIGN BULLETIN BD
212-336-8841

HELP DESK
888-931-HELP

NITE UBS Capital Markets L.P.
JERSEY CITY, NJ
N/A

DOMESTIC TRADING
212-514-5140

FOREIGN/ADR TRADING
212-804-3354

OTC BB/PINK TRADING
800-631-3094

DEALER/SALES TRADING
800-213-2923

TD Waterhouse Capital Markets, Inc.
OTC TRADING
201-369-8830

BULLETIN BOARD
201-369-8889

BULLETIN BOARD
800-500-3905

DEALER/INST SALES
201-369-1000

DEALER/INST SALES
800-369-5775

JEFFERIES & COMPANY, INC.
BULLETIN BOARD TRDG
212-336-7007

BROKER DEALER
877-350-2855

NASDAQ TRADING
972-701-3100

DALLAS TX
800-527-6816

AGENCY TRADING
972-701-3250

DALLAS TX
877-273-9728

LOS ANGELES
310-914-1163

STAMFORD CT.
203-708-5910

866-682-2398

INTL TRADING
203-708-5890

800-525-8620

877-350-BULL

LISTED TRADING
973-912-2790

CONVERTIBLES
203-708-5868

BROKER/DEALER DESK
212-336-7007

JEFF Tradition Asiel Securities Inc.
NASDAQ
212-791-4770

OTCBB
212-791-5335

VANDHAM SECURITIES CORP.
NEW YORK NY
212-223-7510

CloseVNDM 07:30
0.015 50 Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.
NEW YORK, NY
212-422-7813

CONVERTIBLE BONDS
212-668-5764

800-682-5381

NASDAQ/OTCBB TRADING
212-422-7813

LISTED DESK
212-668-8033

INSTITUTIONAL DEPT
212-943-9055
Hudson Securities, Inc.
JERSEY CITY, NJ
201-216-9100

JERSEY CITY, NJ
800-624-0050

JERSEY CITY, NJ
212-227-7733

INSTITUTIONAL SALES
800-419-9187

201-216-0375

COLORADO
888-576-1828

BOCA RATON, FL
800-898-2777

INTERNATIONAL
888-306-1998

561-361-0951

CANADIAN ARB
201-216-1475

WM. V. FRANKEL & CO., INCORPORATED
JERSEY CITY, NJ
201-434-5005

NEW YORK, NY
212-943-6633

NEW YORK, NY
800-631-3091

SEABOARD SECURITIES, INC.
NASDAQ/OTCBB
973-514-1699

FLORHAM PK, NJ
973-514-1500

AGENCY DESK
973-514-1678

JUNO BEACH FL.
561-630-6170

Hill Thompson Magid and Co., Inc.
JERSEY CITY, NJ
201-434-8100

JERSEY CITY, NJ
212-233-2200

NASDAQ TRADING
800-631-3083

ADR TRADING
800-879-9842

CANADIAN EQUITIES
866-235-7016

BANK STOCKS
866-291-6316

CHICAGO, IL
800-999-8073

CHICAGO, IL
312-372-3828

Maxim Group LLC
NEW YORK, NY
212-895-3680

800-261-0498

OTCBB
212-895-3874

FOREIGN TRADING
212-895-3897

INTL Trading, Inc.
ORLANDO FL
407-741-5399

800-541-1977

OTCBB DESK
800-327-5703

OTCBB DESK
407-741-5394

NEW YORK, NY
212-485-3545

Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
NEW YORK NY
212-272-4810

OTCBB/PINK SHEETS
212-272-4975

NASDAQ TRADING
800-247-7882

EMERGING MARKETS
212-272-9297

INTERNATIONAL
212-272-4580

ARBITRAGE
212-272-4506

PREFERRED
212-272-5104

PREFERRED
800-231-8892

CONVERTIBLES
212-272-4484

HIGH YIELD DEPT
212-272-5100

OTCBB/PINK SHEETS
212-272-4975

VFINANCE INVESTMENTS, INC
OTCBB/PINK SHEETS
800-487-0577

OTCBB/PINK SHEETS
561-981-1314

NEW JERSEY
908-782-4469

NEW YORK
908-782-4469

PHILADELPHIA
856-234-2900

PERSHING TRADING COMPANY, L.P.
JERSEY CITY NJ
201-413-3531

NASDAQ TRADING
800-305-0161

BULLETIN BOARD
201-413-2700

DEALER DESK
201-413-2465

866-880-9410

Fulcrum Global Partners LLC
OTCBB DESK
212-803-7046

OTCBB BROKER/DEALER
212-803-7070

CANADIAN/FOREIGN DSK
212-803-9026

Sterne Agee Capital Markets, Inc.
BOCA RATON, FL
561-368-8373

BOCA RATON, FL
800-930-3536

DEALER SALES, FRANK
800-979-4568

DOMESTIC SECURITIES, INC.
EDISON, NJ - OTC
732-661-0300

MONTVALE, NJ OTC
201-782-0009

MONTVALE, NJ HQ
201-782-0888

BILTMORE INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION
TRADING DESK
732-791-4000

ALTERNATE
732-287-6535

—————————————————————————

Recovering a Loss

Loss vs. Gain-Needed-to-Recover-the-Loss

10% - 11.1%
20% - 25.0%
30% - 42.9%
40% - 66.7%
50% - 100.0%
60% - 150.0%
75% - 300.0%
90% - 1000.0%

Timing your entry and exit from the market is critical to making money and controlling losses.

MM Signals

100 > I need shares
200 > I need shares badly but don’t take it down to get them.
300 > Take the price down to get shares......
400 > Trade it sideways based on Supply and Demand
500 > Gap one-way or the other, usually to the direction of the 500 trade. Sometimes -if in the middle -keep the price right where it is.

Invest with your brain not with your heart. — Ric

****

Check out the Spam Stock Tracker project. -- L.B.

Penny Stocks Part 1: Psychological Trappings

2005-10-04T21:44:00.000-04:00

Despite the dire risk of boring many readers, I've decided to blog up some investment advice.

The following is taken from a post by the mighty Ric at "So how do I make money then?," a recent discussion thread at Allstocks.com’s Bulletin Board.

PRICE IS CONTROLLED BY THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAPPINGS OF THE MARKET.

By realityinc21/Diana

Stage 1 - Accumulation. Stock is quiet, trading sideways and without a lot of volatility. Most everyone ignores the stock because it has no sizzle. Insiders hold large blocks of stock and quietly gear up for the distribution.

Stage 2 - Breakout. Volume jumps up, psychological barriers are broken. Insiders begin to tell their friends of upcoming significant fundamental change. Pros take notice and buy the stock on the coat tails of the well informed. The public ignores it because they have not read about the company in the paper yet. It must be a scam.

Stage 3 - Uptrend. As a larger audience learns of the company and its promise, more buying comes in to the stock and it begins to climb. Pros begin to sell, but slowly. Average investor begins to buy.

Stage 4 - Pullback. The stock has gone up too fast, and some profit taking arrives. The jumpy investor who got the entry timing right but lacks confidence in his or her decision sells the stock with a small profit, and smiles in the mirror. The Pro holds on, Average Investor looks through the newspaper to find justification for ownership of the shares.

Stage 5 - Resumption of the Uptrend. The pull back is short lived, and the stock bounces and continues higher. The wannabe regrets the sell, but provides self counsel on the merit of making a profit, albeit a small one. The Pro might sell a little bit more, but still holds the majority of the original position. The Average Investor is getting excited now, and thinks about what could have been if only he had bought when he first noticed the stock.

Stage 6 - Exhaustion of the Uptrend. The media takes notice, and communicates the company's merits to the masses. The masses buy the stock, and it goes up sharply with strong volume. The Pros sell with enthusiasm. The Average Investor owns it now, and is telling everyone who will listen. The wannabe Pro jumps back on, after all, he was smart enough to buy it when the trend started, so he knows the stock well. Will hope make it go higher?

Stage 7 - Gravity Works. Pro selling begins to weigh on the uptrend, and the stock fails to go higher despite high volumes. The stock starts to go down instead of up, and the Pro is almost sold out. The Average Investor continues to cheer lead, hoping to rally support. The wannabe ignores what the market is telling him, taking a loss is too painful to consider. The company is featured on the cover of a magazine.

Stage 8 - The Second Guess. The stock bounces and starts to go back up. The wannabe Pro averages down while the Average Investor gets back to advising friends of his stock picking acumen. Pros sell their remaining holdings and begin to look for another deal to play, or perhaps start short selling the stock.

Stage 9 - Out of Gas. The bounce is a fake out, and the stock moves lower again. The public owns this stock, and they have no more power to buy. The Pro are making money on the short sales now, but are despised by the masses. The Average Investor makes calls for short selling to be made illegal—after all, the short sellers are the demons causing the sell off.

Stage 10 - Dead Cat Bounce. The Average Investor and the wannabe Pro have no pain tolerance left, and finally sell for a big loss. The short selling Pros are the only buyers to take the share off their hands, and provide the needed liquidity. The stock bounces, and some short-term traders make a quick profit. The Average Investor either swears to never buy a stock again, or tells lively stories over drinks about the one that could have been.

Stage 11 - Post Mortem. Pros have forgot about the stock and are considering carpet samples for their new home in Florida. Average Investor continues to follow the company and buys loads of cheap stock to try and overcome the regrettable loss.

The stock market is mean. You can be a good analyst, but if you can't overcome the psychological traps of trading, you will do what the crowd does. To be successful, you have be one step ahead of the crowd, and trade with unemotional discipline. There are strategies to take advantage of each stage of the market cycle that can be applied just by looking at a stock chart. They just require a bit of knowledge.

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Everyday for the next 30 days, read this 10 times a day.

Ask yourself 10 times a day "what kind of trader am I going to be??" Am I going to be a crying whining little bitch or am I going to shake it off?? Am I going to buy to high because I do not know how to read a chart or am I going to f**cking learn how to read a chart?? Am I going to be the entertainment for this board or am I going to go the library and check out all the books that I can read on day trading and investing and stock charting. Am I going to learn how to do my own due diligence or am I going to buy on the recommendation of people from this board?? (It is pretty obvious that is what happened) they were great recommendations but you were about 5 steps behind. It looks like by the time you were buying everyone else was selling. Am I going to take this laying down or am I going to get my Goddamn money back. No one can make those choices for you!!

May seem like I am being a cold hearted bitch but this the real world baby. The question you have to address right this minute is… am I going learn on the fly or am I going to back it up and learn about what the f**ck I am doing?? You dove in headfirst now you have to learn how to swim. If you are not willing to learn how to swim—bail and take your loss. Day trading is time consuming. I would venture to say that most of the people on this board spend 5 to 10 hours a day researching-charting-reading sec filings-going over financials—reading news releases—communicating with other traders on strategies—then finally buying—then the same process begins for the exit. It may not seem like it right now but I am trying to help you. As will others. Sugarcoating the facts will not help you. You need a good dose of reality and I just gave it to you!! I.e. reality incorporated....

The only consolation that I can give you is: I have been in your shoes. After over 20 years of dealing with the market I still was not prepared for the depth of day trading. I learn new things everyday and make mistakes everyday. After 4 years of making at least 5 trades a day I am a newbie just like you. It is a process. Welcome to day trading and good luck with your choices. Reality incorporated Establish a set of trading rules that work for you. These are my rules. You have a adapt your own. Maybe this will give you some guidelines to go by.

----------------------------------

MY PENNY STOCK RULES:

1. I never buy on impulse or get emotionally attached to a penny stock—think LOGIC—I buy it, I sell it, I make money and I rarely look back.

2. I never buy a stock JUST because I like it or worse someone else likes it.

3. I rarely buy a micro penny stock trading under a volume of 50,000 mil—80 to 100 mil is better (always remember there has to be buyer for every stock you buy)...

4. I rarely hold a micro penny stock over night.... My definition of micro penny is under .10 cents ...Rarely over a weekend...NOTICE I SAID RARELY. THERE ARE SOME STOCKS THAT HAVE A BUILD UP AND IF THE VOLUME IS GOOD AND I FEEL CONFIDENT ABOUT MY DD I WILL HOLD IT FOR THE RUN. At $7.00 to $10.00 a trade I can buy and sell it every day on news or hype or earning whatever. .(THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED DAY TRADING)

5. I never buy a penny stock on the way up. IE CHASING I watch the pre market trading and set a buy price and a sell price and stick to it (missed out on NEOM by sticking to my rules—I noticed it at .11 and refused to buy to high) UPSIDE IS I DO NOT HOLD 500,000 SHARES OF NEOM AT.43 CENTS—-DOWNSIDE I DID NOT MAKE 50,000 DOLLARS. I DID MAKE A COUPLE OF GRAND BY PLAYING THE GAP AFTER THE RUN. IF YOU MISS THE RUN PLAY THE GAP. LIKE THE MAN SAID—THERE IS ANOTHER STOCK JUST WAITING TO BE BOUGHT.

6. I never think about GETTING RICH OR RETIRING on penny stocks...My goal is to make $200.00 a day and not lose my original investment. Most often I exceed my goal. (When I lose money it is usually because I have not followed my own rules)

7. I never ride a stock down—I will sell it and re-buy it. EXAMPLE: BOUGHT CTKH AT .002 AND .0022. SOLD HALF AT .0046. SOLD HALF OF THAT HALF AT .0069. IT STARTED GOING DOWN AND I BAILED OUT AT .006. BOUGHT AGAIN TODAY AT .0032. LOGIC-DO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE MUTUAL FUND MANAGERS WOULD HAVE HELD ONTO IBM IF IT DROPPED 50%?????—(WELL SOME WOULD) LOL I THINK NOT...RIDING A STOCK DOWN IS LIKE THROWING 50% OF YOUR MONEY OUT OF A CAR WINDOW AT 75 MILES AN HOUR AND HOPING IT FLIES BACK TO YOU. OR BETTER YET "IF YOU LOVE IT LET IT GO—IF IT LOVES YOU IT WILL COME BACK TO YOU". THAT’S BULL****—IF IT LOVED YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE IT NEVER WOULD HAVE LEFT... I have actually bought and sold the same stock 3 times in one day. ATNG WAS A RECENT 3 TIME BUY AND SELL. BOUGHT AND SOLD IBZT 3 TIMES ONE DAY. (not usually but it does happen).

8. I never insult or bash another fellow trader...I respect other people's trading methods. I LEARN FROM THEM. What the hell—It's not my money.... ( It's not like they are setting on third base at a black jack table and take a hit on 15 and the dealer has a 6 showing and I have $500.00 dollars riding on that hand). I DO LISTEN AND LEARN AND BENEFIT FROM THEM.

9. I never trade with MONEY that I am not willing to lose.

10. I follow the market and market trends (not just the stocks)

11. I never buy a stock without reviewing, analyzing and understanding the charts. I learned how to read charts and believe in them....They do not lie...I MAY NOT KNOW WHAT THEY MAKE OR PRODUCE OR SELL WHEN I BUY IT BUT I DO REVIEW THE CHARTS ON THE FLY AND PUT IN A BUY ORDER FOR SMALL AMOUNT TO GET IN THE DOOR. MOST TRADERS KNOW WHEN A RUN IS COMING AND HAVE ALREADY DONE THE DUE.

12. I never get gambling and investing confused. I INVEST IN REAL ESTATE.... MY BUSINESS....SMALL, MEDIUM AND LARGE CAP STOCKS WITH A HISTORY-MANAGEMENT TEAM-FINANCIALS—ASSETS—CASH—ETC...30 YEARS+ GROWTH AND INCOME MUTUAL FUNDS WITH 12% OVERALL GAIN IN GOOD AND BAD TIMES (THEY ARE PROFESSIONALS AND THAT IS THEIR JOB). I GAMBLE WITH PENNIES... MY DEFINITION OF PENNIES IS ANYTHING UNDER $5.00.

13. I always take 50% of earning from each week and e-transfer into INTEREST BEARING TAX account. THEN I LEARNED HOW TO INVEST THAT MONEY IN REAL ESTATE TO MINIMIZE TAXES. INCORPORATE, PROTECT AND SHELTER.

14. I ALWAYS TAKE MY ORIGINAL INVESTMENT OUT OF THE EQUATION WHEN IT IS FEASIBLE TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY ON THE TRADE TO MAKE IT WORTHWHILE .IE...WHEN THE STOCK IS ON A RUN UP SELL PORTIONS AT TIME TO RECOUP ORIGINAL INVESTMENT. IF IT IS A STOCK I PLAN TO KEEP LIKE TFSM—I BOUGHT AT 1.06. AT 2.12 I WILL SELL HALF AND RECOUP INVESTMENT AND KEEP 5000 SHARES FOR FREE. HOPEFULLY THAT WILL BE THIS WEEK.

15. I ALWAYS HAVE FUN.........ACTUALLY I HAVE A BLAST....

16. I LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY....

17. I CAN'T SPELL, TYPE WELL OR USE PROPER GRAMMAR—AND I SWEAR LIKE A SAILOR...BUT IF YOU PUT A DOLLAR SIGN IN FRONT OF IT—-I WILL FIGURE IT OUT..........THAT CERTAINLY DOES NOT MAKE ME STUPID...IT MAKES ME SMART BY RECOGNIZING MY LIMITATIONS. LEARN YOURS.

18. I ALWAYS MAKE MY OWN DECISIONS AND TAKE ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY ACTIONS.

19. I LAUGH EVERYDAY...MOSTLY AT MYSELF AND SOMETIMES AT OTHERS....

20. LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT—THE MARKET HAS A RHYTHM—EACH STOCK HAS A RHYTHM—LIKE GREAT SEX—A RHYTHM...FIGURE OUT YOUR OWN RHYTHM WITH THE MARKET AND DUE YOUR OWN DD... LEARN THE RHYTHM OF THE CHARTS. IT IS CALLED "HARD WORK". THE REST WILL FOLLOW. TAKE THE TIME TO PASS ON YOUR GOOD FORTUNE TO OTHERS. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND AND YOU CAN TAKE THAT TO THE BANK.

-- realityinc21/Diana

***

Some other reliable gurus I've run across at Allstocks.com’s Bulletin Board are FatherOfTwo and QuestSolver, but there are a lot of talented folks on this forum and on other sites online. No matter how highly or lowly rated anyone is, however, your best bet is to track their advice for a while -- and look at their old recommendations -- to see how often they're right and wrong.

Once you've found someone who can find the winners, also think about whether or not their advice and trading style fit your needs and your own style and attitude. This vetting process will help you figure out whose picks you should follow in the future, which in turn will speed up your own ability to make money on the fly. -- L.B.

Creating Indie Cinema: A Guide to Making Low-Budget Films

2005-10-01T02:00:00.000-04:00

By LTC

(Originally published in BackStage; but re-posted here for educational purposes)

The rationales for making films are manifold: an undying passion to tell a particular story, a chance at making millions of dollars, or the hope of creating a “calling card” flick that will result in more work. An actor unhappy with the roles he’s been getting (or not getting) might decide to take his career into his own hands by producing a vehicle for himself. A writer unable to sell her screenplays (or tired of seeing her work destroyed by others) may finally direct her own project.

Still, making a film can seem daunting—the camera, lights, crew, cast, editing systems, and other peripherals often scaring potential filmmakers off before they’ve even started. But take a long and careful look into the abyss and the realities come into focus: The technology, distribution options, and costs have all reached a point where making a film and reaching an audience is easier (and cheaper) than ever before.

Of course, before investing copious time and money, aspiring filmmakers need to objectively examine why they’re making the film, what they’re really capable of doing, and what their intentions for the final product are. Here’s an overview of the whole process, from the concept to distribution.

All Story, All the Time

The most important aspect of any film is the story. Some filmmakers already have a special tale in mind—a saga they’re passionate about and will do anything to tell—but others are more interested in creating a project that will gain them attention and lead to paying gigs. Either way, if the story isn’t compelling, the film just won’t work.

There are plenty of books available describing plot structure, dramatic arcs, and screenplay formatting rules, but, again, filmmakers must first find a narrative they find compelling. That doesn’t mean directors or actor-producers have to write the project themselves, of course. Placing a “writer wanted” ad in any entertainment trade magazine or online message board will elicit dozens of responses from authors eager to show off their work or hungry to write something new. And websites like Kevin Spacey’s TriggerStreet.com allow members to browse through hundreds of new screenplays, nicely categorized by genre, and contact the writers via email.

“People just need to practice. I’ve been making films for over 20 years and I feel like I’m still just a beginner just learning how to do it.”—filmmaker Caveh Zahedi

Other possibilities include adapting classic plays or novels that are currently in the public domain (anyone can steal from Shakespeare). And some living playwrights, novelists, and short-story writers will allow filmmakers to adapt their work for the screen in exchange for nonexclusive rights, screen credit, and/or the possibility of profit sharing.

If a director does decide to also double as a scribe, or an actor feels capable of writing a zinger of a role for himself, then there are a number of screenplay software applications that can help speed up the process—everything from free word-processing templates to semi-expensive (but enormously useful) programs like Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter.

Once written, the real work begins: rewriting, fine-tuning, and preparing for production. “I would urge a filmmaker to workshop his screenplay…in order to get more feedback before shooting,” says Tamara Straus, editor in chief of Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, and a screenplay development executive at Coppola’s production company, American Zoetrope. Screenwriting classes, workshops, and staged readings—as well as comments from friends—can help iron out problems in a script before shooting begins. Two online resources, Zoetrope’s Virtual Studio (located at Zoetrope.com) and the aforementioned TriggerStreet.com, provide free online writing workshops where writers can post screenplays and receive valuable feedback from other writers (in exchange for critiquing a set number of automatically assigned scripts).

“Film is expensive,” Straus notes in an email to Back Stage, “and smart, honest critiques are hard to find. One of the advantages of the Virtual Studio’s review process is that it’s impersonal; thus, a screenwriter stands to get less-biased and watered-down feedback than in a workshop or from a friend or colleague.”

TriggerStreet specializes in showcasing unproduced feature-length screenplays and finished short films, with members posting short reviews that affect the work’s overall ranking in the system. Zoetrope, on the other hand, focuses on a wider variety of writing—everything from poetry to short screenplays to features—and encourages its users to post long, thoughtful dissections instead of simplistic reviews. Both websites boast the tantalizing fact that the production companies financing the sites might buy outstanding screenplays for development.

Already, says Straus, “two screenplays have been optioned through the site and are in development with American Zoetrope. For now, no Virtual Studio scripts have become films; perhaps within the next two years. It is very likely scripts workshopped through the site have been optioned by other studios, though we have not kept track of these stories.” And many screenwriters have gone on to win awards after using the Virtual Studio to polish their scripts.

The Zoetrope Virtual Studio also provides tools and forums for directors, artists, musicians, and others. “The site was conceived by Francis Ford Coppola to bring these kinds of professions together,” she says, “to essentially bypass middlemen, so that filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, and even producers and set designers could meet and trade information and insights online and decide whether or how to collaborate.”

The Long and Short of It

Beginning filmmakers should try their hands at making short films before they progress to feature-length narratives, allowing the director, cast, and crew to learn the ropes.

There are also a bevy of websites and film festivals where short films can be showcased and reviewed, and shorts can provide material for reels or act as a calling card that can be sent to producers and agents. Shorts are also more likely to be passed along through the industry, since they don’t consume much of the viewer’s time. A pitfall, however, is that shorts typically work best only as comedies—they don’t provide enough time for audiences to connect to dramatic material. Another rule of thumb: The shorter a short film is, the better. And the story should be simple: Trying to pack a feature’s worth of material into 10 minutes sinks most shorts.

Once the new auteur becomes comfortable with the process of filmmaking by experimenting with shorts, it’s time to make a feature. The odds of the film becoming successful aren’t grand, but there are countless tales of directors launching thriving careers after completing their first (or second or third) indie feature. And actors, too, have found great success in spearheading their own projects.

An example: Action star Vin Diesel, the Sylvester Stallone of the new millennium (for better or worse), took a page from Stallone’s playbook by writing a vehicle for himself, a short entitled “Multi-Facial.” After directing the short in 1994 and entering it into various festivals, Diesel spent a couple of years saving up for his first feature, “Strays.” Meanwhile, his short made its way to the Cannes Film Festival, was seen by Steven Spielberg, and soon enough a muscle-bound movie star was born. (Historical note: Stallone opted not to direct his first big break, “Rocky,” but he landed Academy Award nominations for both acting and writing.)

“It’s the beast of necessity—if you have a story you have to tell, and you can only get $10,000 for it, then you should find a way to tell that story, and just do it.”—producer Jake Abraham

And the list goes on: Jon Favreau wrote and co-produced the indie sensation “Swingers” to kick-start a new phase not only in his career, but in the careers of his friends (most notably, co-stars Vince Vaughn and Ron Livingston). Edward Burns—after making a couple of short films—wrote, directed, and starred in “The Brothers McMullen,” a 16mm feature film that reportedly cost only $25,000 and took just 22 days to shoot (the shooting days were spread out over eight months). Burns’ movie was a hit and he’s since starred in a dozen more pictures, directed five more, and, despite receiving mixed reviews for most of his post-”McMullen” work, still has no trouble raising funds for his own projects. Stage actresses Heather Juergensen and Jennifer Westfeldt co-wrote and co-produced “Kissing Jessica Stein.” Although their film careers have not advanced, Westfeldt was recently cast in the Broadway production of “Wonderful Town,” was subsequently nominated for a Tony Award, and is now prepping for a new network television show.

“I think actors, especially, would be well-advised to make their own movies,” says award-winning filmmaker Caveh Zahedi. “There’s nothing more painful than waiting around, dependent on someone else to cast you.”

The Digital Revolution

George Lucas and James Cameron have famously jumped on the digital video (DV) bandwagon, and more and more Hollywood directors are following suit. However, the budgets for Hollywood films have not dropped, and films still take months to shoot. The reason is that for big-budget filmmakers, the type of camera being used is really just one cog in a giant machine: For a film to have the Hollywood sheen that audiences expect, enormous amounts of time and money have to be poured into complex lighting and sound setups, grand locations, killer special effects, wind machines, rain generators, and on and on.

Shooting on 35mm will at least give an independent film an immediate professional gloss, but it’s costly. The same goes for using the DV cameras preferred by the likes of Lucas and Cameron—high-end, expensive high-definition digital video (HDDV) camcorders, usually utilizing digital 24-frame progressive scan technology (“24p,” for short), ultraluxurious film-style lenses, and enhanced variable-frame-rate capabilities.

For filmmakers working with a budget that precludes any of the above, “prosumer” DV cameras are a good alternative, so long as the film’s intended aesthetic fits within the strengths of the format—DV tends to work best with smaller, intimate stories. (“Prosumer” refers to equipment that is of higher quality than that used by the typical consumer: A low-end DV camera may only offer quality comparable to old-school VHS or Hi-8 home camcorders, while prosumer cameras provide professional levels of quality at a relatively modest price.)

Lars von Trier’s vérité-influenced Dogme 95 film collective helped show the world just how powerful and captivating DV films could be. Working with low budgets, small handheld cameras, natural lighting, and no special effects, the Dogme filmmakers made it clear that the versatility of DV, when used effectively, was a force to be reckoned with.

In turn, the Dogme movement inspired the formation of Independent Digital Entertainment (InDigEnt), a New York City-based production company founded in 1999. In an attempt to foster the nascent craft of digital filmmaking, InDigEnt teamed with the Independent Film Channel (IFC). Its original goal was to create 10 films a year at $100,000 per film, but “the truth is, they cost more than that,” notes producer Jake Abraham, InDigEnt’s head of production and operations. “Established filmmakers are accustomed to a certain type of crew with a certain level of experience…and a certain level of postproduction,” so in order to attract established talent, the budgets had to be raised. InDigEnt (www.indigent.net) is now trying to make at least three films a year for around $300,000 per film, with each film’s entire cast and crew sharing in the revenue generated.

“But I wouldn’t say anyone going out there needs to spend this much money,” says Abraham. “It’s the beast of necessity—if you can get a million dollars to make your film, then you should do it. But if you have a story you have to tell, and you can only get $10,000 for it, then you should find a way to tell that story, and just do it.”

InDigEnt is dedicated to Mini-DV and “prosumer cameras that can be palm-held,” says Abraham. “As soon as you go to the shoulder style—Beta or DigiBeta or high-definition—you’re kinda headed back toward that film world. But with Mini-DV, it can be an amazing experience for the actors because they can do a lot of creative work in front of the camera because they’re not waiting for the film to be reloaded or the lighting to be reset or any of the number of things that are often done in a film-style production.

“These palm-held cameras are very sensitive to light and easy to use and completely unobtrusive. And the tape stock is really cheap, so you can run a 10-minute take without the director pulling his hair out.” (A 35mm film mag usually runs out every 12 minutes, with every foot of film raising production and processing costs, but a single DV tape typically lasts for an hour or more.)

InDigEnt’s creative atmosphere, profit sharing, and quick shooting schedules have attracted big-name talent, with all actors working for scale on a SAG Modified Low-Budget contract. More impressively, despite being shot on digital video and having relatively small budgets, InDigEnt’s movies have consistently found theatrical distribution and critical accolades—not an easy feat in a market awash with independent films that can’t find distributors. Past projects include Richard Linklater’s “Tape” (starring Ethan Hawke), Gary Winick’s “Tadpole” (starring Sigourney Weaver), and Peter Hedges’ “Pieces of April” (starring Katie Holmes), as well as movies by lesser-known filmmakers and theatre veterans.

And thanks to InDigEnt’s partnership with IFC, all of their films are guaranteed at least some distribution. “In return for financing the films, IFC takes third-tier basic cable,” says Abraham. “So all of the films at some point air on IFC,” after theatrical, video, and first-tier television distribution.

An Argument for Film

Although DV is the most cost-effective option for low-budget filmmakers, there are still plenty of benefits to shooting film. The golden ring for most indie stalwarts is 35mm and 70mm, which provide color depth and picture resolution beyond the capabilities of (arguably) any digital medium. And many music-video directors still prefer 16mm, while shooting on Super 16 (a high-quality, wide-screen version of normal 16mm) is a price-conscious way of approximating 35mm, although it possesses a rugged aesthetic beauty all its own.

Director Mike Figgis, for instance, shot “Leaving Las Vegas” on Super 16mm because he preferred the gritty/soft look of 16mm and cherished how new high-speed film stocks were able to shoot in extremely low-light situations. (DV doesn’t have the same flexibility in postproduction when it comes to pushing and pulling an image—adjusting the exposure and contrast—that film stock provides.) Also, film is a better medium for shooting fast and slow motion.

And with new, high-tech 16mm cameras like the Aaton A-Minima Super 16, filmmakers can have the lightweight, handheld advantages of a DV camera while still shooting on film. Another consideration: Compared to standard DV, film and HDDV look much better blown up on the big screen.

Raising Cash, Raising Cain

It’s a brisk, sunny September day as a crowd of aspiring filmmakers line up outside the Puck Building in Soho, casually networking between events at the Independent Feature Project (IFP) Market.

The throng is made up mostly of young unknowns, including Tennessee-based actor-musician Jeremy Luno and Philadelphia-based director Matthew Manahan, who have arrived in New York in the hopes of finding funding for their feature film, “The Book of Caleb.” Like many of the out-of-town filmmakers attending this event, they’re staying in a cramped hotel room (their troop includes two producers and a cinematographer), they’re short on cash, they have a limited amount of time to pitch their film, and their optimism is unbounded.

“Our budget right now is at $1.5 million, which is actually our fat budget,” says Manahan. “If we get a name actor or use SAG, we’ll need that. Otherwise, we can get it in the can for $800,000. We’ve raised about $200,000 so far, between cash and in-kind donations.”

Luno notes that IFP officials have warned attendees not to expect a quick fix: Although important movie industry folks scour the market, it’s rare for deals to be made on the spot. Instead, the event is intended to help create links between filmmakers and the industry that will eventually lead to financing, distribution, or even just some good advice. So Manahan’s hope of raising another $1.3 million might seem far-fetched, but he’s going about it in the right way: setting up a business plan, launching a sleek website for casting and promotional purposes (www.thebookofcaleb.com), getting his project accepted into the IFP Market as part of its popular work-in-progress showcase, competing for a spot in the prestigious Sundance Film Lab, looking into public and private grants and partnerships, and networking tirelessly.

“We’ve set up an escrow account to protect the investors, so we can’t legally touch any of the money until we reach at least $800,000. That’s part of the business plan,” says Manahan. “If the time comes to shoot and we don’t have the money, we’ll talk to the investors. Right now, our locations are all going to be free, and our production design is really simple, so our biggest cost will be the camera, the film, and the lights. But our costs will be much higher if we use SAG talent, so we’re still considering that.”

Manahan hasn’t started full negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild yet, but filmmakers shouldn’t be scared about working with the actors’ union. In recent years, SAG has become far friendlier to independent productions, introducing new guidelines and levels to its contracts that allow filmmakers to use SAG performers without paying full scale wages up front. The SAG Experimental Film Agreement and various SAG Modified Low-Budget contracts are available to directors for the express purpose of making it easier to keep costs down. And SAG has even set up a website, SagIndie.org, to help directors navigate through the complicated seas of making a SAG-signatory film.

“I mean, if you’ve only got a VHS camcorder or an old 8mm film camera, go for it. You’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.”—filmmaker Matthew Langdon Weiss

The Directors Guild of America (www.dga.org) and the Writers Guild of America (www.wga.org) also have low-budget agreements available. But filmmakers should look over all union contracts carefully, because in some cases distribution beyond the film festival circuit can be held up if union participants want to stop the film’s release for some reason. Any contract details that can be negotiated before shooting begins should be worked out in as much detail as possible.

Says Manahan: “I don’t think you can be taken seriously with a first-time feature unless you’re shooting 35mm. I’d rather just take the time—even if it takes two or three years to secure the financing—to do it right. It comes down to what kind of story it is. If it’s a story that clicks [stylistically] with DV, then you can shoot DV, but our story is a 35mm type of story” because it has epic qualities that won’t work as well on DV.

Manahan’s feelings are echoed by David Gordon Green, the director of the critically acclaimed films “George Washington” and “All the Real Girls.” In an indieWIRE.com interview, he says, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any money… You can make a film that takes advantage of natural light and natural landscapes. You can get equipment donated and make friends in the right places…which aren’t necessarily the heads of studios—they can be the guy who adjusts the lenses at the camera house.”

Bucking the DV trend, Green shot his first low-budget feature on 35mm anamorphic CinemaScope, a process usually reserved for expensive Hollywood epics—a gamble that paid off, since the film’s exquisite cinematography immediately set it apart from its competitors, garnering ravishing reviews from the likes of The New York Times.

Bargain-Basement Cinema 101

“I’d love to shoot on 16mm, 35mm, HD 24p, or even DigiBeta—if I had the time and budget. But I’m all about working within your means and not being beholden to the equipment,” says Matthew Langdon Weiss, who’s had experience as an editor, cameraman, and assistant director on a number of indie projects and is an associate producer of the upcoming indie feature “Wang Dang,” directed by Tom Noonan (co-star of Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” and writer-director-star of the award-winning “What Happened Was...”). “I mean, if you’ve only got a VHS camcorder or an old 8mm film camera, go for it. You’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.”

After taking acting and improv classes as a way of honing his ability to direct actors, Weiss stumbled into professional acting and can currently be seen as a recurring character in Trio’s new comedy miniseries “Pilot Season,” directed by Sam Seder and co-starring, among others, Sarah Silverman (“School of Rock”) and David Cross (“Arrested Development”). To pay his bills between gigs, Weiss founded Langdon-Boom Productions, a “script-to-screen” Mini-DV filmmaking facility that he runs out of his New York apartment. Weiss’ goal is to help other indie filmmakers complete their projects on a low budget.

“I shoot on a Mini-DV three-chip Canon GL1 and a tiny one-chip camera, and I edit on a Mac G4 with a dual processor and Final Cut Pro,” he says. “For sound design, Final Cut has enough rough-and-ready audio stuff so long as you’re not mixing a Dolby Digital movie with symphonic fidelity and a ton of sound effects.”

Sound is an often overlooked element by first-time filmmakers—and bad sound can instantly make an indie film seem amateurish. To save on postproduction expenses, it’s important to capture good audio on set. Weiss and most other professionals prefer using boom-mounted Sennheiser microphones when possible, and wireless lavalier radio mikes when necessary.

If the budget is available, then on-set mixing and noise-reduction equipment can improve sound quality enormously. And during postproduction, picture-editing software such as Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere provide basic sound-design tools, but power users will want a pricey stand-alone program like Pro Tools to fine-tune the audio. (An older version of Pro Tools is available for free, for Mac OS 9 and Windows 98/ME operating systems only, at www.digidesign.com/ptfree.)

When a filmmaker comes to Langdon-Boom Productions, says Weiss, “I’ll look at the script and break it down and tell them what they’ll need and how much it’ll cost, and then I’ll bring in extra crew members or rent equipment as necessary.” If the filmmaker can get equipment donated and recruit volunteer actors and crew members—and if the locations are simple—then the costs of the film will plummet.

At this point, a director should be able to shoot a film for next to nothing, by Weiss’ estimation. Or, for $1,000-$3,000, a small company like Langdon-Boom could provide a cameraman, sound person, and Mini-DV camera for a few days—and edit the film in less than a week at no additional charge. When longer shooting and editing times and larger equipment packages are needed, costs go up accordingly.

Hired Guns

With a borrowed DV camera and a couple of volunteers, a film can be shot for nothing more than $10 in tape stock. If an aspiring filmmaker can then track down a friend with editing software, she’s all set.

For more ambitious indie filmmakers, though, more cash will be required. Small outfits like Weiss’ Langdon-Boom can bring a film in on a modest budget, but what if a bigger crew and higher-quality equipment are required?

For crew members, ads can be posted in the trade papers and jobs can be listed on free message boards online. Usually, it’s not too difficult to round up a semi-experienced team of recent film-school graduates and fellow aspiring filmmakers who are willing to work for free or in exchange for helping them on their own projects. Here’s the catch: The more money a filmmaker is putting into a project—and the greater the quality of the equipment being used—the easier it will be to find an enthusiastic volunteer crew, because a well-organized and well-financed production will be a better experience for everyone involved and will give the impression of being bound for success.

For a film student’s final school project—a thesis film—budgets typically range from $2,000 to $30,000, depending on the medium being used and the length and scale of the production. The final film is usually somewhere between seven and 27 minutes long. These are decent ballpark figures that a filmmaker can use to base a budget around if he’s planning on seriously competing against other short films.

So what can a filmmaker get for, say, $10,000? If shooting a feature is the goal, then a Mini-DV camera and a tiny volunteer cast and crew would be the best way to go (remember, some of the budget needs to be reserved for postproduction, and the crew has to be fed).

However, for 15 grand, a filmmaker could try shooting on 35mm. A professional cinematographer and soundman could even be hired—complete with minimal camera and sound packages—for around $2,000 or $3,000 per day (film stock and processing not included).

Another option would be to use a professional television crew. Not local news guys, but DV crews that have worked for top-shelf national news and entertainment shows. A filmmaker won’t get a traditional film look from a TV crew, but they’ll be able to use DV specialists accustomed to working quickly and on their feet, obtaining quality images with minimal lighting packages.

Atlantic Television (www.atlantictv.com), a national production services company, for instance, hires out cameramen who have shot for “60 Minutes,” the Olympics, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” the BBC, and numerous PBS documentaries. Catherine Counihan, Atlantic TV’s production manager, says that, on average, “a complete package—an experienced cameraman, soundman, a pro-level camera, a boom mike, two wireless mikes, a mixer, and a very basic lighting kit—would cost between $1,250 to $2,250 per day, with crew members working no more than a 10-hour day without overtime. The price is dependent on the type of camera used. A crew with a PAL DigiBeta or NTSC DigiBeta goes for about $1,650. A BetaSP crew’s standard rate is $1,450. A two-person crew with a three-chip Mini-DV—usually a Sony PD150, or a similar camera, like a Canon XL1—would be $1,250. And the standard rate for a high-definition crew is about $2,250 per day.”

A Continuing Education

“I don’t think people need training. I went to film school, but I don’t think I learned that much there,” cautions San Francisco-based underground filmmaker Caveh Zahedi (“A Little Stiff”). “People just need to practice. I’ve been making films for over 20 years and I feel like I’m still just a beginner just learning how to do it. It’s a difficult and long road, but I think once you start—it’s like if you want to play guitar, you pick up a guitar and start trying things. You’re not going to start playing great music right away, but you just need to start doing it.”

Most people in the mainstream haven’t heard of Zahedi, but for those in the know, he’s considered one of the most interesting and dynamic creative forces working today. His films, filled with raw, naturalistic performances, bring to mind the work of indie film pioneer John Cassavetes and innovator Jean-Luc Godard. There’s also a touch of classic Woody Allen in the witty, neurotic humor that runs through his work. And yet every Zahedi film—whether he be directing, acting, or editing—is infused with staggering originality and attention to detail and form.

“I had this LSD experience where I had an insight that beauty is all around us,” he says. “And there’s no need to look elsewhere for anything. Everything is right in front of us. I decided at that moment that I would make a film about my own life. And I’ve been doing that ever since. But it’s not the only thing that I’m interested in. I have a bunch of things I’d like to do, but it really depends on financial considerations, and what I need to do to make a living.”

Zahedi has notoriously had problems finding funding for his projects, but he’s learned from his experiences: “I spent five years of my life trying to raise a million dollars for a movie, and I did nothing for those five years except knock on doors, and at the end of it I hadn’t even made a single movie. I think people should just make movies at the budget they can afford, and if the films are good, then they’ll eventually get the attention that they’ll need to organically make films at higher budgets.”

However, he says, “I don’t believe in the calling-card idea. It takes so much energy to make a film, you might as well make something that you believe in and care about, that stands on its own.”

While working on the completion of his feature films, Zahedi has kept busy making documentaries, video diaries, and experimental shorts—including a newly completed 30-minute project entitled “Tripping With Caveh,” featuring iconoclastic singer Will Oldham. He’s also dabbled in acting—starring in his own projects and making appearances in indie classics like Alexander Payne’s “Citizen Ruth,” Greg Watkins’ “A Sign From God,” and Richard Linklater’s animated “Waking Life”—but he doesn’t have an acting agent and he’s even turned down roles.

When acting in his own films, he says, “I try to monitor the other actors’ performances while I’m performing, which is hard and tends to make my performances less in the moment. I also find myself mouthing all the other characters’ lines.” To help alleviate this problem, Zahedi often uses a co-director, such as his frequent filmmaking partner (and cinematographer) Greg Watkins. Still, he admits, “I’d love to be able to just direct, and not have to do both. So right now my fantasy is to not have to act.”

That should be an easy enough fantasy to fulfill, were it not hard to imagine a Zahedi film not starring the very inimitable Zahedi. And suitable actors, he says, are hard to come by: “There are really great actors in the world, and then there’s a lot of mediocre actors, and then there are nonactors. For someone like me, I generally find that the nonactors are better actors than the mediocre actors. They’re just more real. A lot of acting-school people come across as very theatrical and phony. I’ve had bad experiences with so-called actors, and I’m sure that’s because I haven’t had many good ones. But I occasionally have, and I’ve been very impressed.”

When the performances in a Zahedi narrative are working in synchronicity, the effect can be breathtaking realism. Conversely, his documentaries and video diaries (such as “In the Bathtub of the World”) are rife with situations where everyone on screen is noticeably aware of the camera. With Zahedi staring into the camera’s lens or a girlfriend shunning the spotlight, it’s as if his narrative works have been turned inside out, exposing the artifice of reality and the truth of fiction.

“Some people make a distinction between performing and not performing,” Zahedi muses. “But I think that distinction is a little false. People are always performing in some way, and they’re always not performing in some way. I’m just being myself, but what is ‘myself’? It’s a construct on some level. I’m not trying to fake anything, but I’m definitely engaged in a relation with someone else whose gaze I’m aware of, and I’m acting accordingly.”

Having shot on both DV and 16mm, Zahedi is also eager to shoot on 35mm and HD 24p. Given the opportunity, he promises the projects would be very different from what he’s done before. But in the meantime, he’s happy to make films that work aesthetically with his current artillery—a small Sony one-chip camera, a three-chip Sony PD150, a few lights, mikes, and a Mac G5 with Final Cut Pro. It’s all a person needs to make a film, he says, although he wouldn’t turn down a chance to work with a bigger budget.

With his current feature, “I Am a Sex Addict,” almost complete, Zahedi is already thinking about the future. “I hope the film makes its money back and I can get the money to make another one. But mostly,” he says, “I just hope that people are moved by it.”

Exhibiting and Distributing

The film is completed. Done. In the can. So what does a filmmaker do next? Well, spend more money, of course.

The motion picture has to be submitted to festivals. Promotional materials and DVD copies of the film must be sent out to distributors, agents, and studios. Rejection must be faced, stared in the eyes, and overcome.

“First-time filmmakers shouldn’t be discouraged if they can’t get into Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Berlin,” or any of the other major festivals, says Paola Freccero, the senior vice president of film programming at the Sundance Channel. Lots of indie filmmakers and at least a few small-time distributors, cable networks, and scouts from other film festivals can be found attending the medium-sized festivals. And the people behind even minor festivals often have industry contacts that can benefit filmmakers in one way or another.

“If a filmmaker can get into a local festival,” notes Freccero, they should take advantage of the opportunity and “develop a relationship with the people who are there and ask the people who have championed their work to champion it more.” She also stresses that networking, even at film-fest cocktail parties, is vastly important.

“It’s very, very, very hard for a typical film to break even,” she says. “It may break even after years—once you’re done with theatrical distribution and all the TV plays and video sales. It is possible that in the end it might work out okay, but certainly not until after quite some time. If you’re a filmmaker that has made a film for less than $500,000, and you’re really lucky and the film is really accomplished, and some distributor thinks that it has the possibility of breaking out of its low-budget home, then there is a good chance that you can find yourself made whole, at least on the production costs. But what most filmmakers don’t factor in is ‘How do I live when I’m promoting the movie?’ and the insurance costs and the travel to film festivals and stuff like that. But if you’re in the $500,000 to $5 million range, that’s a really tough range to be in unless you have a hit on your hands. Unfortunately,” warns Freccero, “it is kind of a losing proposition.

“If you’re doing it to come out whole [not lose any money], I’d say turn back now. If you’re doing it because this is what you want your career to be and you really want your work to be seen, then great—but don’t have unrealistic expectations about rolling in money.” Ten years ago, it was easy for quality independent films to virtually disappear after a run around the festival circuit. Today, thankfully, indie films have new distribution outlets, mostly due to the Internet: boutique video stores offering wares online, megasites like Amazon.com allowing indie sales, DVD rentals from subscription services like NetFlix.com and the über-indie GreenCine.com, and even filmmakers selling their own movies from their personal websites. What’s really changed the indie scene, though, is cable TV: The Independent Film Channel and the Sundance Channel are broadcasting indie films into households all across America, all day, every day.

“The number of films that get theatrical distribution of any kind—be it tiny or a big deal—is still very small,” Freccero says. “That miracle success story of being in a film festival and then being bought by Miramax is really, really rare. But what has changed over the last few years is that television has become a place where filmmakers can, first of all, actually get some money for their film, and they can make sure that the film gets a very sizable audience. We have 21 million subscribers. So even on a slow day at the Sundance Channel, that’s still more people that are going to see a filmmaker’s film than they would if it had had a small art-house release. We’ve become a very valid alternative to a more traditional distribution opportunity.”

The popularity of the indie cable stations has allowed IFC and Sundance to expand into the home video market, placing indie DVD titles in major rental outlets. So the potential audience for indie cinema keeps widening every day, and opportunities for creative film artists widen along with it. It’s just a matter of having the drive and tenacity to actually stand up, shake off the dust, and make a film.

“I think the most important thing if you’re an aspiring filmmaker is to get rid of the ‘aspiring.’ How do you do that? You make a film,” Academy Award-winning director James Cameron told The Guardian. “I don’t care if it’s two minutes long and shot on Super 8 or DV or whatever. You shoot it, you put your name on it, you’re a filmmaker. Everything after that, you’re just negotiating your budget.”

***

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Shooting for Success -- An Actor’s Guide to the Student-Filmmaking Experience

The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz Frank Miller

2005-09-25T08:16:00.000-04:00

Although expertly plotted and paced, the original "Sin City" graphic novels never told the most original stories, but instead happily existed in a world of spiced-up homage. The plots were fun and twisty, if thin, but the dialogue often seemed pointedly campy -- the running joke being that everything in "Sin City" was an exaggerated version of old-school hardboiled crime/noir novels and movies.

The stories worked best when a sense of reality seeped in, most notably in the earliest storylines featuring Marv. Frank Miller later got carried away, allowing more fanciful and fetishistic superhero-type characters (ninja hookers, bright-yellow bad guys) to overtake the simulated veracity of his noir world.

But telling wholly original tales was never the point of "Sin City." Instead, Miller seemed to be looking for a strong vehicle to showcase the breathtaking new black-and-white drawing style he'd developed. His relief work -- pitch-black backgrounds splashed and splattered with abstract white patterns that upon closer inspection coalesce into recognizable characters momentarily suspended in time -- is especially stunning.

The stories in "Sin City" are thrilling enough, however, to inspire a number of movies or a serialized TV show. A subtle writer and a director with realistic-tendencies could have developed the plots and characters into fully realized forms onscreen, while the escapist plots and snarky dialogue would surely have pleased a large audience.

Robert Rodriguez is not a man of subtlety or realism, but he showed great courage and a lack of ego in allowing Frank Miller the opportunity to write and direct alongside him. With that in mind, one cannot deny the brilliance with which Miller and Rodriguez played up their strengths in adapting "Sin City" into a feature film.

Re-creating the ineffable "Sin City" artwork is impossible, but the close visual approximation that Rodriguez was able to maintain through cinemagraphic and FX acumen is astounding. Regrettably, "Sin City" the movie also serves to highlight all the weaknesses and flaws found in the often two-dimensional, sometimes cheesy (but always sinfully lovable) "Sin City" comic books, but it's successful attempt at being absolutely true to its source material is a triumph.

Yes, a more mature and nuanced filmmaker-writer team might have created a better film from the "Sin City" comics (but perhaps nothing as visually and pedantically loyal to its source); and one can certainly argue that movies should aspire to be more than adaptations of comic books or regurgitations of old crime/detective/noir story ideas (or revamps of old movies, foreign movies, and expired TV shows, for that matter); and comic-book purists such as Alan Moore would say that stories told as sequential art should stay in print and not be abused as movie fodder.

And Rodriguez -- a brilliant cinematographer (even when shooting DV) and an expert at creating fast-paced adventure -- has a tone-deaf writing style and a lackluster ability for pulling believable performances from actors. "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" suffered from the same flaws and highlights as "Sin City": flashes of brilliance and eccentricity and excitement tempered absurdity, plot holes, and groan-worthy camp; extreme violence with no emotional heft or impact; daring experimentation undercut by a complete ridiculousness.

Then again, no other filmmaker alive today is as capable of consistently and regularly bringing their entirely realized and uncompromised cinematic vision to the screen, reaching a large audience, and making money while not bowing to studio pressure, union pressure, or a politically conservative society. And no other filmmaker is making films that look or feel like Rodriguez’s films. He is an iconoclast, and in this day and age of constant remakes and sequels and church-marketed, product-tested, megaconglomerate cinema, that has to be appreciated and applauded -- even if his films do fall far short of perfection, even if they do too often immerse themselves in a juvenile mentality, even if they aren’t everything we hope for from the new vanguard of Hollywood.

Plus, as a longtime reader of “Sin City,” I can’t help but marvel at the perfection of the film’s casting—I’d long dreamed of bringing Mickey Rourke back from the depths and casting him as Marv in a “Sin City” film, so Rodriguez read my mind in that regard. And it was nice to see that Rodriguez didn’t shy away from violence and nudity, happily accepting an R rating despite the studios’ current loathing of anything that will keep kids from being able to buy tickets. With “Sin City,” Rodriguez shows Hollywood that audiences will still queue up for a bit of T&A and blood, just like in the good ol’ days of Roger Corman and Adrian Lyne. Perhaps this will open a door for better films from other filmmakers that have found themselves trapped in studio-mandated PG13 hell.

My only complaint with the T&A in “Sin City” is Jessica Alba being cast to play a stripper even though she doesn’t do nude scenes. Like lovely Natalie Portman in Mike Nichols’ “Closer” and Salma Hayek in Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn,” Alba gives strippers everywhere a bad name with her chaste and clothed portrayal an exotic dancer. Having a no-nudity clause is respectable, and having a nude-free movie is fine, but don’t play a stripper if you refuse to show the goods, I say.

All in all, “Sin City” functions incredibly well for what it is, but until Rodriguez begins working with a more grounded writer, pays more attention to the performances of his actors, and tones down the theatrics just a tad, he’ll never become the Sam Peckinpah he has the potential to be.

****

Frank Miller’s Greatest Hits: “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” (and the rest of Miller’s Batman work), the Martha Washington sci-fi series (starting with “Give Me Liberty,” drawn by Dave “Watchmen” Gibbons), “Ronin” (one of my personal favorites), “300” (a historical epic), various Daredevil and Elektra tales, and “Hard Boiled” and “Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot” (both with art by the incomparable Geoff Darrow). For more, visit The Complete Works of Frank Miller.

****

If you liked "Sin City," don't miss maestro David Cronenberg's celluloid adaptation of the lesser-known graphic novel "A History of Violence." (The comic was written by John Wagner and drawn by Vince Locke.)

***

Sinful Art: Not at all safe for work, but a pretty funny and damn near mesmerizing look at what's underneath it all .... Scroll over the ladies to see the goods and click on the figures to see their back sides ... This is naked art, people, not porn -- Mise à nu (2005, Reynald Drouhin). From those fine folks at Incident.net.

Founding Fathers' Formulations Faked to Further Church in State -- Find Out Far More Below, Folks!

2005-09-24T01:08:00.000-04:00

An intelligent and politically conservative acquaintance of mine mass-emailed the following to everyone he could think of:

“James Madison, the fourth president, known as ‘The Father of Our Constitution’ made the following statement: ‘We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.’”

The above quote isn’t very shocking—politicians have evoked the Bible for centuries, and the Founding Fathers of the young U.S. of A. were as likely as anyone to drop the word God into a conversation, axiom, or pronouncement. After all, the Western culture of that time period was even more totally entrenched in Judeo-Christian beliefs than it is today, and there was little concern for being politically correct toward religious cultures that barely existed within the geographic, social, or political sphere of Americans or Europeans. And many of the founders of America were deeply religious men.

However, it’s important to take a historic perspective on such statements. One has to ask, Would James Madison or any of the Founding Fathers make such overt references to the Ten Commandments and Judeo-Christian beliefs as being cornerstones of our government if they lived the more diversified and global culture of the 21st Century? And also, did James Madison mean to imply that the United States of America is a wholly Christian nation, as my politically conservative, mass-email loving friend seemed to be hinting? And if so, how much importance should we stake on the single statement of one man who lived a couple hundred years ago?

If we see the Founding Fathers as sacred, then can we honestly cherry pick only a handful of these men to steal quotations from? And even if we only concentrate our efforts on Madison, we can’t ignore the direct responses Madison’s views received from such fellow Founding Fathers as President Thomas Jefferson or the great American thinker Benjamin Franklin. Call me old-fashioned, but I do believe that the words of the Founding Fathers are important.

Their views and ideas were instrumental in forming the U.S. and keeping it strong well after their own lives had worn away, and, tangentially, shaping the entire world we live in today. But winning the argument that Christianity is an integral part of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. courts, U.S. schools, and so on needs more than a single quote from a single man. Especially when that quote is a lie.

Yes, that’s right. This Ten Commandment quote—which rightly or wrongly could be interpreted as implying that Judeo-Christian religious law is the basis of the U.S. Constitution and political system—is nothing more than a widely circulated piece of right-wing revisionist history. An archconservative propaganda advertising-campaign turned Internet “fact” turned endlessly forwarded email.

It’s quite a controversial quote, in point of fact: It’s been printed in hundreds of places but its true origin is unknown. According to some reports it’s a complete fabrication, although a few experts believe that the statement may simply be attributed to the wrong person, or perhaps the words were misinterpreted, although the correct version and/or attribution for the quote has not been found as far as my research has been able to uncover.

The following exposé excerpts are from a left-leaning website, so conservatives will certainly find bias afoot when the article partially blames Pat Robertson knowingly spread this false quotation amongst the populace. However, the verified and genuine Madison quotes below are edifying and undeniable. If you want to swear by the Founding Fathers, then you’d do well to first learn their true words. (And remember, compared to Jefferson and Franklin, Madison was often seen as being a right-wing chap—but these quotes show that even a conservative, religious man like Madison could make many modern-day neoconservatives seem like madmen).

National Magazine Ad For TV Preacher's Graduate School Recruits Donations With Bogus James Madison.

... The inaccurate Madison Ten Commandments quote was circulated among the Religious Right chiefly by David Barton, a Texas man who peddles a revisionist history arguing that the United States was founded as a ‘Christian nation.’ In 1996, Barton admitted that the quote is bogus and recommended that people stop using it.

In 1993, the curators of the Madison Papers at the University of Virginia were asked if they could verify the quote. They replied that they could not. Wrote Curators John Stagg and David Mattern, ‘We did not find anything in our files remotely like the sentiment expressed in the extract you sent us. In addition, the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, views which he expressed time and time again in public and in private.’

[Madison] opposed tax funding of religion, publicly funded chaplains in the Congress and the military and even expressed regret for issuing proclamations declaring official days of prayer during his presidency. [Note] that in an 1819 letter to a friend, Madison wrote, ‘[T]he number, the industry and the morality of the Priesthood & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State.’... ”

-- By Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Madison also said: “The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.”

And he said: “Ye States of America, which retain in your Constitution or Codes, any aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to revise & purify your systems, and make the example of your Country as pure & compleat, in what relates to the freedom of the mind and its allegiance to its maker, as in what belongs to the legitimate objects of political & civil institutions. Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt. in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”

And he said: “Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease.”

More relevant quotes can be found at AU.org's post, "What God Has Put Asunder: James Madison Quotes On Church And State."

Also, I highly recommend the Snopes.com "National Capital" urban legends article, which references the much passed-around (most-likely fake) Madison Ten Commandments quote as well as expertly showing how to spot false info of this nature, including other instances of Ten Commandment and U.S. Law fact-twisting found in a popular chain emails and right-wing propaganda.

And Christian journalist James Watkins' objective, balanced, and entertaining "One Nation Under the Supreme Being of Your Choice" is required reading for Christians, Deists, Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindoos, et al., with even the slightest interest in the men behind the founding of the United States of America. Watkins takes powerful shots at both "the 'revisionist left' [that] would like to make [the founding fathers] secular and the 'religious right' [that] would like to make them saintly," juxtaposing some startling quotes from Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, and more.

What Makes Brachish Run?

2005-09-15T02:19:00.000-04:00

Scattered points of interest slapped down on the page like a fictional hooker slapped down by her pimp...

Yes, it's true—I haven't posted on this blog for a long time (regrettably) and I won’t have time to post much in the near future.

I’ve been too busy with work crap (one day I might have to rant here about how ridiculously low-paying the publishing industry can be, and how outrageous it is that the media world can get away with screwing so many people out of overtime pay), I'm constantly noodling with a screenplay in my spare time, and I’ve been spending inordinate amounts of time losing money by investing what little capital I have in companies like the following: AMRE, DWCH, KNOS, ICMH, NNOS, and WDAM (all of which have serious, exponential growth potential—if they don’t go of out of business first—and are currently available at knock-on-wood “rock-bottom” prices, meaning they’re highly speculative penny stocks and could very well ruin me if they don’t kick it in gear soon. These are mostly cutting-edge technology companies with ideas that caught my eye first, my imagination second, and my wallet last).

I've linked some of my favorite stock-research websites on the sidebar of Celebrity Cola, so have a look if you have a thirst for high-stakes gambling.

Anyway, lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Brendan Benson, New Pornographers, Matisyahu (the Hassidic-convert reggae rapper-singer), the new Gorillaz album (not as catchy as the first album, but a good record nonetheless), and Aussies like The Waifs and Missy Higgins. I’ve also rediscovered the joys of old Missy Elliot, and I finally got a copy of “Without Earth and the Moon” by The Moon and “Resurrection” by the Aerovons (both very good, if not as mind-blowing as I’d hoped considering the high-pedigrees and/or amazing origin stories behind these almost-lost masterworks).

I’ve fallen behind when it comes to seeing current films, but on the comic-book front I finally got around to reading some of the graphic novels collecting the work of Peter Milligan (writer), Mike Allred (primary artist), and Laura Allred (colorist) on the 2000-2004 X-Force/X-Statix run. Others have said it before, but I’ll reiterate: Stupendous art; cynical but emotionally and socially relevant story; unarguably violent, sexy, smart, and funny. This is unlike any X-Men-related comic you’ll ever read, it’s a limited commitment of your time (since it has a clear beginning and end), and it’s just a beautifully done piece all in all. Don’t miss it. Wait till you see what happens to the rambunctious Edie Sawyer/U-Go Girl. You'll cry like a baby. Great news: the X-Statix (aka, X-Statics) are being brought back in small doses with X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl and Mike Allred has a few cool projects in the works, including his groovy issue of DC's Solo (out now!).

***

I came across this Warhol-inspired piece of pop art by an artist named Euria, and since it’s related in name and theme (in a way) to this Celebrity Cola blog, I thought I’d share the image here:

Celeb-Cola (pop art by Euria)

***

This month’s Shout-Outs go to: Wendy (Tales From the Dorkside and Film Geeks 2.0), Eric Berlin (Dumpster Bust), Sequential Tart, my old pal Susan, and the new Google Blog Search.

And Will Brady recommends CronyJobs.com.

Now please go and visit the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which notes the important fact that "global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s." It's the truth!

***

This makes me blush: "... Several months ago, one of the most talented and creative members of the blogging community had featured Alexa's site in a posting. Lucas Brachish is the pseudonym used by a magazine editor and well-known, published writer, living in New York city...." -- David Harper, SpaceCoastWeb (Sunday, October 9, 2005)

Nice, right? But even better yet, this quote is from another fine and informative SpaceCoastWeb blog article, "A nod to link exchange schemes." Disclosure: I lived in Florida for many, many years, and I love checking out Mr. Harper's SpaceCoastWeb for news on my old state, as well as insightful and literary posts involving everything under the sun of the ol' planet Earth. (For instance, SpaceCoastWeb turned me on to the Eggcorn Database, another site worthy of multiple visits.)

Hotel Lights: Whatever happened to the rest of Ben Folds Five and whatever and amen

2005-08-14T04:53:00.000-04:00

Ben Folds Five. Now there was a good band. Like Cold Play but with more sweat and vigor. Like Elton John without the funny clothes and cutesy ballads.

But ol' Folds married an Aussie and moved Down Under (they grow the best women down there, don'tcha know), leaving his band and country behind. He continued to pump out great material -- a couple of solo albums, a live album, various online-only EPs, singles, experiments, and weirdness (the Three Bens, anyone?) -- but seemingly avoids the nonstop full-on glare that the global media has to offer. No über-popstar status for Folds, not when he can stay indie, quirky, and relevant without totally giving up on the cash that a major label has to offer. Famous-but-not-too-famous seems right up his alley.

Which is fine by me, although I would like to see him do a follow up to his "Fear of Pop, Volume 1" brilliant space oddity album that featured your favorite actor and mine, William Shatner.

(Actually, Ben Folds produced and played on William Shatner's crowning musical achievement, Has Been in 2004, so let's not stress, eh? And while I'm on the subject, I should say, in all earnestness, that Has Been is staggering. Grand. Magnifico. Just listen to the first track -- a Shatner duet with pop-punk icon Joe Jackson, covering Pulp's "Common People" -- and try not to dance like a madman, even if you loath Star Trek. It's that damn good. Listen to it with headphones for pure stereophonic bliss. Even the Pitchfork snobs are in awe.)

Still, I sometimes wonder what happens to the less famous members of eponymous bands when their fearless front men go off on their own. What happened to the Stooges in those years without Iggy Pop? Where went the Attractions and the Revolution without Elvis Costello and Prince? And what happened to the two men who weren't Ben Folds that helped make up the Ben Folds Five trio?

That last question I can kinda answer: bassist Robert Sledge moved back to North Carolina where he's supposedly playing with a couple of different bands and helping produce local acts; at one point he belonged to Nut Magnet with ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher; later he joined International Orange as a bassist-songwriter (alongside musicians Snuzz, Django Haskins, and Jason Fagg), but that band broke up in 2004. Drummer Darren Jessee has formed a smooth new band of his own, the Hotel Lights: the band is obscure right now, but their songs are kinda catchy. If you like Ben Folds and mellow indie guitar pop, then you'll dig the Hotel Lights.

I've written the following Hotel Lights article with a friend of mine. We plan on posting it to Wikipedia later, and Wikipedia can claim all rights to it... but you, dear readers, get the first look:

Hotel Lights

Indie pop band Hotel Lights was founded by Darren Jessee in 2003 (approximately) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina -- the city where, not coincidentally, Ben Folds Five originally formed in 1994 as a trio consisting of Jessee, songwriter-pianist Ben Folds, and bassist Robert Sledge, along with various songwriting partners.

Jessee, the drummer and one of the principal songwriters for Ben Folds Five, initially pursued a solo career as a singer-songwriter in New York City after BFF broke up in 2000. However, seeking to flesh out the material that he'd been developing on his own, he then decided to create a full-fledged band, Remover, which was quickly renamed Hotel Lights.

On the band's website, Jessee obliquely describes the concept behind the band's name by saying, "...when you see hotel lights in the distance you feel like 'yeah, I'm almost there', but when you stand in the bathroom and turn on the hotel lights, they are fluorescent and you see every scar."

The band's original lineup consisted of Jessee on lead vocals and guitar, former Archers of Loaf drummer Mark Price on drums, Roger Gupton on bass and vocals, and Chris Badger playing keyboards and guitar. Sound engineer Alan Weatherhead (The Comas, Sparklehorse, Camper Van Beethoven, Mary Timony) recorded the band's first album and their follow-up EP; he also performs pedal steel and guitar with Hotel Lights on occasion. Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and others have also made sonic contributions.

As of 2005, the band had not been signed by a major label and was distributing their albums primarily through indie music retailer CD Baby, which files the band under the heading of "alt pop songs, acoustic guitar, lush keyboards." The official band website draws comparisons between Hotel Lights and Nick Drake, Court and Spark, and The Band.

Hotel Lights had its first full-length release in the autumn of 2004. The self-titled album -- recorded at Sound of Music studios in Richmond, VA -- contained the following tracks (all copyrighted by Hair Sucker Songs):

1. You Come and I Go
2. A.m. Slow Golden Hit
3. Miles Behind Me
4. I Am a Train
5. Small Town Shit
6. What You Meant
7. Follow Through
8. Stumblin' Home Winter Blues
9. Marvelous Truth
10. The Mumbling Years
11. Anatole
12. Motionless
13. Love to Try

Related Links:

Official Hotel Lights band page

CD Baby Hotel Lights band page

Chris Parker's Independent Weekly "Homebrew" album review

Jason Warburg's Daily Vault album review

Darren Jessee's home page

Kitchen Mastering studios discusses the mastering of the 2005 Hotel Lights EP

Darren Jessee info is revealed in "Joey's Guide to Ben Folds Five B-Sides and Rarities"

Done Waiting's Darren Jessee update, "What's Up, Darren Jessee, Former Drummer of Ben Folds Five?"

Info on the lost Ben Folds/Darren Jessee collaboration, "Wandering," now part of the Ben Folds Speed Graphic EP.

Writing the Hand That Feeds You

2005-07-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

A list of resources for fiction writers, journalists, and other media mavens....

When I’m looking for work, I always visit these sites first:

Ed2010 (for magazine/newspaper advice, jobs, and gossip)
Mandy.com (for film and TV work)
MediaBistro (for an inside look at the publishing trenches. And lots of jobs.)

Now, to find the best media jobs, it’s handy if you’re:

(a) Married to a hotshot movie producer, media executive, magazine/book editor, or publisher.
(b) The offspring of someone rich or famous.
(c) The graduate of a high-profile school with a good alumni network. (Think: Harvard).
(d) The friend of someone in the industry.

If not, it’s time to put your nose to the grindstone and start setting up search agents at the major job banks, like Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs, which will deliver career opportunities to your inbox on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

The problem: When you apply for a job through one of these sites, you need to submit your resume within milliseconds of it being posted or you’ll get lost in a deluge of 10,000 other resumes. Applying directly through a company’s own corporate job board is the best way to go, and diligently visiting the niche media job sites is another intelligent choice. Of course, without a recommendation from someone inside the company, your prospects won’t be amazing, and the competition is fierce even on the smallest of job boards. But if you’re smart and persistent about the way you find and apply for jobs, eventually you’ll land something of merit.

(Remember, most media companies prefer to hire people they already know, people they drink with, people their brother-in-law recommended to them, or their best interns. All businesses are like this to a certain degree, but in an industry where nonobjective taste applies—“Is this person a good writer, editor, or director?”—the whimsy of the bosses reigns.)

The following are my favorite media job spots online. The emphasis is on writing and editing, but many of these sites are handy for all sorts of film, TV, advertising, public relations, and Internet media work.

The California Journalism Job Bank has lots of jobs for journalists in California.

Craigslist always has writing and film jobs available in it’s various regions and categories, although most of these jobs tend to be of the no- or low-pay variety.

Editor & Publisher Magazine.

College-level students should visit the Institute for Humane Studies for internship, scholarship, and career building tips. The IHS is a very writer-friendly site, with a lot essay contests and the like.

I Want Media (jobs).

In addition to top-notch independent film reporting, indieWire.com has an extensive list of film work in its classifieds section, including screenwriting gigs (much of the work is volunteer-based, so don’t expect riches here).

The IRE Job Center (provided by the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization).

Job Bank USA.

JournalismJobs.com.

Listing the “Nifty Fifty”—the 50 top online job boards for journalists (including the job boards for Knight Ridder and the Associated Press)—as well as other resources for writers, the Detroit Free Press’ Jobs Page is a must visit.

Lit.org (see the Writer’s Wanted category).

The NAA (Newspaper Association of America) sponsors the Newspaper CareerBank.

The National Diversity Newspaper Job Bank (news & media jobs).

SunOasis features a few jobs and lots of tips, links, and resources for writers.

The Society for Professional Journalists (the Careers List requires paid membership).

The Time Warner job board includes the inside scoop on job offers at Time Inc., HBO, New Line Cinema, DC Comics, AOL, etc. (If anyone can get me a job writing and/or editing comic books, I'll give 'em a cookie. A really big cookie. And whiskey. And $20. Thanks.)

The Write Jobs, part of the Writer’s Write network, is a staple of every writer’s job hunt.

And there are a number of websites out there specifically oriented toward film/TV jobs (like the excellent Mandy.com, as well as Crew-Net.com and The Hollywood Creative Directory’s job board), acting jobs (BackStage.com, ActorsAccess.com), and media jobs in general (EntertainmentCareers.net, ShowbizData.com, VarietyCareers.com, and the NY-centric EITC newsletter). Some of the more specialized sites charge membership fees for full access to their classified job ads, but with so many free sites out there, joining a pay site isn’t usually necessary.

Also, try and get your hands on the UTA Job List email, a much-coveted inventory of entertainment jobs and celebrity assistant gigs (mostly in Los Angeles, with a smattering of jobs in NYC and elsewhere). This clandestine list’s origin is supposedly the United Talent Agency, but if you contact UTA directly they’ll say you’re crazy; you have to find a friend who gets the list and have them forward it to you every week (Jesse Albert is noted as the list administrator in the copyright notice at the bottom of the email). This list is the bread and butter of the jet-setting HollywoodMomentum.com professional ass-kisser crowd, and there’s no other way in, unless you’re sleeping with someone at UTA.

When all else fails, cold-call the company you love the most. Pursue your dream like a rabid dog (but don’t be scary or annoying). Find out the names of the people in charge. Track down every detail you can about their likes and dislikes and work habits. Then send in artful letters asking for advice. Submit your resume directly to the top dogs and the human resource department. It may not get you a job, but letters of inquiry and unsolicited resumes rarely hurt.

And forget thee not: The importance of writing a good cover letter should not be underestimated. Be engaging, make yourself sound interesting and intelligent but don’t be an egomaniac, summarize your skills and experiences and show how much you know about the company you’re applying to. And watch those typos. They can cost you the job.

***

Related articles:

"Extra! Extra! Newspaper Jobs in NYC," by Ken Liebeskind for The New York Job Source.

"Industry Newsletter Web Sites Grow With Online Job Searches," by Megan Ballinger for The Wall Street Journal Online.

***

Writers Wanted: Every un-agented fiction scribe should check out Maud Newton's excellent article regarding the process of submitting unsolicited fiction to magazines in this flailing, inbred world of modern literary publishing we readers and writers have to contend with these days. The primary interview is dated, considering editor Brigid Hughes has left the Paris Review, but it's still an insightful look into the belly of a beast I love. And Maud's other editor interviews are not to be missed.

Personal aside: I spotted Paris Review founder George Plimpton on the street once, and after briefly making eye contact I followed him into a bookstore where I was lucky enough to see him speak as part of a panel on the dour state of contemporary lit publishing. Every editor and publisher in attendance expressed concern that they received far more in the way of submissions than subscriptions; we're living in a world of a few hundred thousand aspiring writers but only a handful of readers.

In the midst of all the bad news, Plimpton's playful, sardonic wit and gallows humor, mixed with a lively dose of optimism and historical perspective, was mesmerizing, and his death a couple of years later struck me with a sharp pang. Would the much-heralded death of serious, inventive short fiction die with him? Plenty are trying to keep up the good fight, but are the readers out there... and has professional writing become strictly a well-connected Ivy League sport?

And now I hear Kurt Vonnegut Jr., another of my literary heroes, is wandering around the East Village, but I've yet to see him, despite both of us being in NYC for years. I must track him down. But stalking is not my strong point; I'm too lazy.

Gawd Dash It All: MS Word Shortcuts Made Easy

2005-07-03T04:54:00.000-04:00

I'm always amazed by how poorly people actually understand the programs they work with every day. Even in newsrooms filled with professional journalists, at the desks of overworked office assistants, and at the computers of recent college grads, I've seen otherwise intelligent individuals blunder away at their word processing software, blissfully unaware that they could double their processing speed if they only understood some of simplest functions beyond the standard changing-of-the-font, typing, saving, printing routine.

(And don't get me started on how many highly paid executives I've met that are proud of their inability to check their own email, type up a memo, or wipe their own ass without the aid of three assistants, four staff members, and two executive committee meetings.)

In a highly readable, shockingly funny article (for a very boring tech piece, that is), Herb Tyson explains how you can have the Microsoft Word "Paste Special Unformatted Text" option always "at your fingertips."

Not only does he give you a handy macro for quickly executing the "Paste Special Unformatted Text" command, but this is also a wonderful overview of macros, shortcuts, and cutting and pasting in general. You’ll be making new macros of your own in no time, Alt/Tab(bing) like a pro (this is the easiest way to switch between active program screens), pasting with the best of them, and creating nifty toolbar shortcuts for your macro and shortcut-key challenged coworkers. All tech articles should be this easy, helpful, and enjoyable to read.

Also, be kind and at least teach your Neanderthal friends the easy-to-remember MS Word keyboard shortcut basics, many of which actually work across numerous programs and platforms and all of which will keep them writing/typing fast: ctrl-a selects all, ctrl-x cuts (while copying), ctrl-c copies (without cutting), ctrl-v pastes, ctrl-b bolds, ctrl-i italicizes, ctrl-u underlines, ctrl-z will undo, ctrl-y to redo, shift-F3 changes the capitalization (I love that one), F4 repeats the last executed command, shift-F4 repeats the last Find/Search, shift-F5 jumps you to your last edit point(s), and shift-F8 brings up the macros.

More cool shortcuts can be found at the MS Word MVP FAQ, which also explains some nifty tricks, like how to copy and paste a text’s style & formatting without copying the text itself (ctrl-shift-c & ctrl-shift-v), how ctrl-space removes character formatting from selected text, how the paragraph markers contain all the paragraph formatting data (which can be copied and pasted as well), etcetera, etcetera.

And while we’re on the subject of MS Word: I wish I’d known how to turn my “invisibles” on (a visual representation of space and paragraph marks that improves your ability to proofread) and use the Format Painter tool earlier in life (the little broom icon on your Word toolbar that is also accessed with ctrl-shift-c). Oh, and hold down the Ctrl key while using the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out in Word and many other appilcations.

And using the following on your numeric keypad will give you an en dash (–) and em dash (—), respectively, for those times when Word hasn’t autocorrected them into your sentence for you: ctrl-minus and ctrl-alt-minus. See the Wikipedia article on dashes for more info on the proper use of the en and em dash.

Oh, and for accents, use any of the following (as needed) and then type the letter you want to accent:

For an Acute (e.g., é): ctrl-' (apostrophe)
Grave (À): ctrl-` (the apostrophe under the tilde "~")
Tilde (ñ) ctrl-shift + ~ (tilde)
Circumflex (î) ctrl-shift + ^
Dieresis (ÿ) ctrl-shift + : (colon)

Also see: Celebrity Cola's MS Word Macro for Preserving Formatting When Posting Documents Online.

***

In other news:

* Dumpster Bust asks, "Is the Halliburton-Bush-Cheney connection all on the up and up, or is there even more to all of this than meets the eye?"

* Rolling Stone squawks as PBS and NPR are overun by the right: "Muzzling the Muppets: The Bush administration wants to force public broadcasting to toe the Republican line."

A Movie Review Bonanza (June 2005)

2005-06-05T06:37:00.000-04:00

The following is a roundup of new Celebrity Cola film reviews. All of the movies listed are coming out (or being reissued) on DVD in 2004-05. Most of the flicks were released theatrically in 2004, but a few are classics.

After The Sunset (2004)
Director Brett Ratner brings his expertise in creating clichés to the forefront of this silly, pointless, annoying flick. The only highlights are Woody Harrelson's engaging, cartoon-like performance and Naomie Harris' fresh, likable take on a one-note character. The sexy Salma Hayek and square-jawed Pierce Brosnan have zero chemistry and sleepwalk through the unspeakable plot.

The Aviator (2004)
Director Martin Scorsese can't make this bird fly faster than a standard biopic, leaving innovation at the airport. But the soaring visuals and eager performances add lift to an intriguing true story.

Alfie (2004)
Stripped of the grit and reality of the original, this too-pretty remake is much like its lothario protagonist: beautiful, smooth talking, sexy, and ultimately confused and hollow. As forgetful as the most vacant one-night-stand you've ever had, a gorgeous and talented cast is wasted in one well-shot scene after the next.

The Anniversary Party (2001)
A small film with big stars and a modest payoff. One could easily accuse the celebs participating in (and making) this movie of supreme navel-gazing and self-reflexiveness, but the plot pats no one on the back. Instead, it’s a stark and blistering look at Hollywood life. The plot meanders, but the crisp characterizations are not easily forgotten.

The Brown Bunny (2004)
Egomaniac wunderkind Vincent Gallo creates a rabbit story where the Watership doesn't go Down but daring indie starlet Chloë Sevigny infamously does. The hopping-mad scandal and backlash surrounding the film obscure the fact that emotional truth is leaping through this artistic briar patch.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)
Director Beeban Kidron misses the edge and falls off the building. Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are at their sardonic best, but the script is messier than Bridget Jones’ dieting habits, plot points from the original film being tossed through a spin cycle like dirty panties best thrown out. Leaving viewers with a bad-movie-binge hangover, Renée Zellweger tarnishes her skyrocketing career by turning her previously plucky portrayal of Jones into a running fat-dumb-clueless-blonde joke. A better title would have been “Four Bad Jokes and a Funeral for a Femme Franchise.”

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Shaken, stirred, and best served cold, “The Bourne Supremacy” is the best spy thriller of the year. Like spymaster John Le Carré on an amphetamine revelry, Robert Ludlum's novels create a world as thrilling as James Bond's but laced with intriguing blasts of reality and clandestine doses of philosophy. Where modern secret-agent flicks have mostly become routine exercises in beating the bad guys with cool gadgets, Matt Damon’s interpretation of Bourne gives new meaning to the phrase “intelligence community,” with the Bourne franchise’s real intellect, scorching thrills, and emotional relevance fighting the good fight against Hollywood’s current cold war against new ideas and common sense. Director Doug Liman got smart (again) and deftly incited a mini-revolution with “The Bourne Identity”; new helmer Paul Greengrass vigorously builds on Liman’s work while continuing his mission of assassinating spy movie clichés. The supporting cast is superb: Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Chris Cooper, et al infiltrate life into even their smallest moments onscreen. Julia Stiles’ character seemed too young and ultimately unnecessary in the first flick, but here she begins to shine. Franka Potente’s shocking early exit from the proceedings smuggles the sexual tension out of the plot, but the loss of her character is needed to fuel Bourne’s unhidden rage. We can only hope more directors with a license-to-greenlight will cast this first-class actress in scads of films without subterfuge or delay.

Claire's Knee (Le Genou de Claire, 1970)
Eric Rohmer’s movies attract viewers with erotic posters and tantalizing story fixations. But it’s all a ruse: Alternatingly thoughtful, philosophical, mumbled, lingering, lackadaisical, intellectual, quotidian, feverish, solipsistic, and seemingly never-ending dialogue rules the day. Watching a Rohmer flick is like reading a good essay while simultaneously eavesdropping on a couple in a café. Revealing, engaging, sometimes boring, often a little dirty—adjectives pop to mind, but breathtaking images do not. “Claire's Knee” is classic Rohmer and as affecting as his films come. If you’re up for “Claire,” the reward will be a film that slips into your subconscious and subtly arouses your imagination, if only you can stay awake.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Like a typical SNL sketch, moments of absolute hilarity are mixed with abject stupidity and the joke is stretched out way too long. Quotable scenes are plentiful, the cast is solid and inventive, and audiences who have seen too many movies like this before are left feeling like they just ate a bowl of junk food.

Donnie Darko (2001)
Teen angst hasn’t been this cool since Christian Slater and Winona Ryder obliterated the screen in “Heathers.” Enchanting, ambitious, haunting, and only a little ridiculous, “Donnie Darko” announces writer-director Richard Kelly as a massive talent, actor Jake Gyllenhaal as a complex performer, and faded star Patrick Swayze as someone we shouldn’t forget. Skip the competent theatrical version and go straight to the masterful director’s cut. The philosophical side of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction has always been largely ignored in the adaptations of his films, but here Kelly captures the rarified mindset of Dick without having to plunder any of his writing. Instead, the director creates a brand new world that mystifies and captivates. For both good and ill, “Darko” leaves a thousand ideas and hundreds of unanswered questions in the viewer’s brain—a feeling that’s aggravating, exciting, and undeniably different.

Faces (1968)
A hallmark of ultra-low-budget indie cinema, “Faces” remains avant-garde after nearly 40 years. Ignoring the gutted production values, one can appreciate the fierce performances and innovative directorial techniques of John Cassavetes.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Despite the pro-socialist/anti-Republican bent, Michael Moore’s film hits too many targets of every political stripe to truly be called pure propaganda. “Fahrenheit” collects crucial news snippets, contrasts divergent factoids, presents overlooked data, and raises plausible conspiracies in a deceptively humorous, easy-to-digest, time-capsule-like filmic journey through modern American politics. A must-watch film for anyone interested in the State of the Union—even viewers who disagree with the filmmaker’s vantage should give “Fahrenheit” a chance, lest they miss important talking points that will continue to affect the evolution of society.

Garden State (2004)
The ghost of iconoclast director Hal Ashby permeates writer-director-star Zach Braff’s aesthetic even more than it informs auteur Wes Anderson. This is not a bad thing. Ashby is an oft-forgotten genius, and Braff builds on his techniques to establish himself as more than a mere sitcom actor, elevating his status to that of a sensitive leading man and documenter of elusive details and ignored lives. Exquisite imagery, delightful cinematography, and skillful gags are artfully deployed in this gentle, unassuming love story. Peter Sarsgaard gives the potentially typical funny-slacker-pothead character layers of depth and sad appeal; Natalie Portman sparkles in a way she hasn’t since she was an astonishing child in “Léon: The Professional”; Ian Holm is pitch-perfect, as usual.

The Great Gatsby (1974)
An all-star cast and crew—including Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, and Sam Waterston acting, Francis Ford Coppola writing, Jack Clayton directing, and legendary Douglas “Indiana Jones Trilogy” Slocombe shooting—somehow manage to turn F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Great American Novel into a turgid, stultifying experience. The dazzling stars, cinematography, and set/costume design should be captivating, but poor Clayton and in-his-prime Coppola dig “Gatsby” a deep grave in the cemetery of boredom just the same. Although the movie is technically loyal to the novel, watching the film is so numbing you’ll never want to read the book, which is a dirt-dog dirty shame. Rumor has it that Coppola only had three weeks to write the screenplay after Truman Capote’s draft was rejected, and the “Patton” scribe/“Godfather” director was not yet enough of a moviemaking titan to demand more time or a shot at directing the flick himself; very regrettable. The film’s critical and financial drubbing left Clayton in a funk that kept him from directing for nine years. “Gatsby” is a bold undertaking, to be sure, but unmistakably a resounding, somnambulating failure on all fronts.

Hud (1963)
Paul Newman was never as good of an action star as his mega-cool rival Steve McQueen, but he consistently beat McQueen at the game of artistic triumph. Nor have the principal heirs to Newman’s status as an artistically accomplished, bankable, über-manly pretty-boy superstar—namely, Robert Redford and Tom Cruise, and, somewhat less successfully, Keanu Reeves, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, the fallen Kevin Costner, and wannabes Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, etc.—ever eclipsed his ability to balance big budget popcorn successes with numerous nuanced performances in commendable, unforgettable films. “Hud” is one such film. Based on Larry McMurtry’s novel “Horseman, Pass By,” and sometimes described as a rethinking of “Rebel Without a Cause” set in a 1960s update of the Old West, this revisionist modern Western is also reminiscent of the McMurtry scribed “The Last Picture Show” and Newman’s later performance in “Nobody's Fool.” In its detailed depiction of quiet desperation, small-town misery, loner rebellion, interfamily strife, and coming of age in changing times—rife with societal subtext that’s still relevant today—“Hud” stands tall, drinking viewers under the table with poetic depression.

I Heart Huckabees (2004)
Whimsical, daring, stupefying. A bizarre comedy about philosophical and metaphysical questions. Naomi Watts? Delicious. Dustin Hoffman? He’s back from the Void of Forgettable Roles. Lily Tomlin? Shows she should be in more films. Isabelle Huppert? Dead-on. Jude Law’s American accent is a dud, but he’s winning just the same, even while playing an unlikable character. Mark Wahlberg, horrific in nearly everything (with “Three Kings” and “Boogie Nights” being strong exceptions), shines. Jason Schwartzman proves he’s got something to offer other than just being the guy from the top-draw “Rushmore,” being the guy related to famous people, and being the guy who plays drums in a so-so, danceable band. David O. Russell—seemingly blacklisted from Hollywood for being an egocentric prick that picks on actors, extras, and crewmembers and battled George Clooney in a very public display of dislike—proves why he deserves not just a comeback but also a new film deal every year. No one makes movies like Russell, and he continues to surprise.

I, Robot (2004)
A disappointing paint-by-numbers action flick from director Alex Proyas, the mind behind the astounding “Dark City” (and, admittedly, some not-so-astounding other films). Isaac Asimov’s seminal science fiction and Proyas’ research into modern robotics and futurist theory should have resulted in a mind-bending exploration of the near future and the possibilities for mankind. There’s a computer science term called GIGO, which stands for “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” meaning that a computer can only output quality if quality is first entered. All signs pointed toward quality being entered into this film, so why the garbage result? Sure, laser-gun battles and action-film set pieces are expected in a big-budget extravaganza such as this, but did it all have to be so mindless and typical? Will Smith—a professed sci-fi geek and a Hollywood powerhouse—could’ve helped protect the visions of Asimov and Proyas (assuming he had a vision), but instead he seems content to shout and squint through this mildly entertaining shoot ’em up. It’s smarter than your typical Hollywood summer-action crap and has some great special effects, but opportunities are missed at every turn of the gear.

Knife in the Water (Nóz w wodzie, 1963)
Roman Polanski skillfully manifests early Hitchcock-level tension in this low-budget thriller. A good example of how an intense film can be made with limited funds and a small cast. It’s not Polanski’s best by a mile, but he later set the bar high for himself with “Cul-de-sac,” “Repulsion,” “Chinatown,” “Rosemary's Baby,” “Frantic,” “The Pianist,” etc., so comparing this early work to his better-financed successes may not be fair.

The Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de motocicleta, 2004)
Beautiful, inspiring, and races right along. The portrait of the revolutionary (Ché Guevara) when he still thought he could heal the people of the world without murdering his enemies. Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo De la Serna are glorious as the best friends seeking adventure. Walter Salles turns the memoirs of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and Alberto Granado into a cinematic delight. You’ll forget you’re reading subtitles and find yourself transported into a different time and culture. A magnificent achievement: true-life stories are rarely this well told.

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Writer-Director Wes Anderson has only made four feature films, none of them blockbusters, but his style is already affecting a new generation of filmmakers. Writer-director Jared Hess, a decade younger than Anderson’s mere 36 years, instantly jumped to the forefront of Anderson acolytes with “Napoleon Dynamite.” Warping Anderson’s penchant for J.D. Salinger-like too-smart-for-their-own-good extended-family dynamics and Hal Ashby-inspired deadpan comedy reaped from heightened realism of the eccentrically ordinary, Hess balloons Anderson’s loving set-and-costume-design-as-running-gags modus operandi into an anachronistic smorgasbord, drops the IQ levels of his eccentric protagonists, inserts sketch-routine type jests and absurd-but-comedy-rich situations, stirs in some Alexander Payne circa “Election” teen hijinks, and lets his inordinately inspired cast steal the show, all while retaining the Anderson-like sub-themes of sadness, loneliness, and rebellious iconoclasm. The result doesn’t work as powerfully or on as many levels of consciousness as Anderson’s films, but its freewheeling nature provides pleasures that Anderson’s increasingly controlled comedic universes sometimes miss.

North Dallas Forty (1979)
Easily one of the top 50 greatest sports films ever made, and probably the best about professional U.S. football. It’s got the dog-eared grit, testosterone vitality, and anti-establishment forward drive of writer-director Oliver Stone’s masterpieces (“Platoon,” “Wall Street,” etc.), but Stone’s own longwinded take on football, “Any Given Sunday,” doesn’t hold a candle to this stadium rouser from director Ted Kotcheff and writer Peter Gent. Back when pro football had first really come into it’s own as a major U.S. pastime, but before it became as corporate and mass-produced as it is today, in a time when a lot of shaggy white guys dominated the sport, when performance-enhancing drugs, painkillers, and steroids where growing in popularity, when rebellion was in the air and sports salaries were skyrocketing, in an era when the jailhouse football yarn “The Longest Yard” was a smash hit, this was the time of the troubled North Dallas football team (a fictionalized account of the 1970s Dallas Cowboys). Conventional sport-film plot twists are replaced with realistic drama and gallows humor, and Nick Nolte is in top Method acting, Brando- invigorated form as an aging, decrepit player.

The Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Sidney Poitier, young and charismatic, dominates scene after scene in director Daniel Petrie’s powerful film version of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play. The supporting cast is grand, and the tale’s dueling themes of motherhood, manhood, racism, family values, love, anger, and redemption intertwine with emotionally shattering results. The movie cannot shake its theatre roots and modest budget—it’s obviously a play, grounded in one location, not cinematic (the camera placement and editing are uninspired), with performances walking a razor’s edge between realism and sharpened theatricality—but the small, confined apartment set radiates a sense of home and claustrophobia that eventually enhances the dynamics of the conviction-filled ensemble, benefiting the tightly written, rhythmic script and immersing viewers into the lives of the Younger family.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
A cute film about a spunky kid grows creepier and creepier as Alfred Hitchcock pulls strands of suspense from out of the darkness that lurks in every mind and every room. The acting and pacing are dated, and the visuals are not as finely finessed as in later Hitchcock efforts, but do not doubt this flick’s ability to summon nightmares.

Shark Tale (2004)
A good film for little kids, “Shark Tale” can’t stand up to adult scrutiny nor live up to the smash hit it’s desperately trying to capitalize on, Pixar’s “Finding Nemo.” DreamWorks drowns by substituting a whale-sized laundry list of celebrity names for true voice-over talent, fresh jokes, and a captivating story, leaving this peppy tale smelling like two-week old tuna sitting in the sun. Leads Will Smith and Renée Zellweger gamely swim through sappy dialogue; Jack Black (the friendly shark) is the only celeb who bothers creating an original voice and emotional undertone (undertow?) for his character; Angelina Jolie is hooked into a cliché; Ziggy Marley, Doug E. Doug, Michael Imperioli, and Vincent Pastore are given one-dimensional canned characters; Peter Falk and Katie Couric are wasted on quick-fry gags. Fast-forward to the Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese scenes for some undercooked fun. Call it “Finding Nada.”

Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Drop-dead funny. Even if you hate horror films, you’ll still find yourself laughing at this shtick-fest. And if you love horror movies, a thousand inside jokes await you. Lively, piquant characters romp through relevant relationship humor, pub jokes, and day-in-the-life farce before getting chased down by zombies that are both comical and terrifying. The genre transitions are smooth (not an easy feat), the comedic timing excellent. Think “The Office” meets “Monty Python” meets “28 Days Later...” and, obviously, “Dawn of the Dead.” Most shocking of all: It’s a great date movie.

Sideways (2004)
Can director Alexander Payne do no wrong? He strikes vintage in film after film. “Sideways” isn’t as laugh-out-loud and dazzlingly mean-spirited as “Election” or as heart wrenching as “About Schmidt,” but within its European art-film rhythms is an excellence that’s hard to describe. Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh, and Marylouise Burke breath four-dimensional life (length, width, depth, and time) into fully realized characterizations. “Sideways” was overhyped as both a knee-slapping comedy and mind-blowing drama—what makes the film remarkable is not the laughs or tears, which are sparse, but instead the fact that you go away feeling you know the characters as well as any friend you’ve ever had. They lodge into your mind like good times almost forgotten, their melancholy-mirthful story becoming part of the fabric of your memory. “Sideways” calls to mind Woody Allen when the Woodman is operating with a full glass, although it doesn’t quite match the very best bottles of vintage Woody. Give Payne some time: His skills are aging nicely.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Looks good . . . tastes bland. Riffing on 1940s science-hero movie serials, monster movies, film noir, old-school sci-fi, World War II propaganda films and newsreels, “His Girl Friday,” and the 1950s “Adventures of Superman” TV show, writer-director Kerry Conran seems possessed by an abundance of swell ideas. Combine cool concepts with crazy-good computer FX skills and a talented cast (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Gambon, Ling Bai, Omid Djalili, and a reanimated Laurence Olivier) and you get a supa dupa copasetic movie, right? Well, sure, as long as the acting isn’t stiff, the pacing dull, the emotional arcs nonexistent, the plot points predictable, the dialogue laughable. . . . The moral of the story: Directorial auteurs and computer guys can have great ideas, but they need to honestly assess their skills and consider hiring a writer and strong-willed editor when it comes to crafting the screenplay and piecing together the final product. Conran even makes George Lucas’ half-assed but potential-filled “Star Wars” prequel scripts seem accomplished. In other words, this movie is a beautiful, witty, talented damsel in distress, and a superhero needs to fly in and save it from choking on its own nonsense.

The Stepford Wives (2004)
Why remake an okay suspense film that was an of-its-time metaphor for women’s liberation (based on a novel that was a good satiric thriller) into a meaningless, heartless, unfunny comedy with shiny stars and a once-good director? Because Hollywood has run out of ideas, that’s why. Remakes and rehashes, no matter how bad, have become de rigueur. This pedantic “Stepford” is proof positive that the moneymen backing movies these days are all soulless robots.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971)
An intimate and well-crafted look at a man, a woman, and their shared male lover. Innovative in its time for it’s unflinching portrayal of unmarried sex and homosexuality, the film is far less scandalous now but still edgier than anything currently being shown on broadcast TV. The performances are strong and director John Schlesinger keeps a firm grip on the material, but over time it’s become a slowly paced artifact of a particular era, and does not continue to astound in the same way as Schlesinger’s trippy and daring “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), always fresh “Darling” (1965), and striking “Billy Liar” (1963).

The Terminal (2004)
From a story credited to Andrew Niccol (the writer-director of the underrated “Gattaca”) and a guy named Sacha Gervasi comes a screenplay by Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson. A screenplay that sucks. A screenplay that crash-lands all over the screen. A screenplay best described by one of the standard dictionary definitions of the word “terminal” itself: “Causing or ending in or approaching death.” Tom Hanks wastes a good accent and a lot of charisma playing a kindly foreign man stuck in an airport because of bureaucratic B.S. Partially based on a true story? Partially pulled out of a feces encrusted Pan Am lavatory, if you ask me. Telling the story of the real man and the real bureaucracy might have been interesting. Putting Tom hanks in a good movie would have been even better. But instead director Steven Spielberg does neither, opting for a flight plan that drags viewers through sickeningly sweet and ham-handed plot points, kindergarten-level dialogue, wooden acting courtesy of the gorgeous Catherine Zeta-Jones, one-note good guys, a two-note bad guy (Stanley Tucci valiantly, if briefly, tries to insert some complexity and sympathy into a character designed to make the actor look like an evil fool), zero chemistry between the majority of the leads, and nothing else. The one redeeming feature: frequent Wes Anderson star Kumar Pallana plays Gupta Rajan, the airport’s janitor. Pallana has a natural pizzazz that lights up the screen and “The Terminal” gives him a chance to grow as an actor, but, sadly, he’s trapped in the same bad movie as everyone else. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, having lost their minds at some point in a distant galaxy, long long ago, have now hired Jeff Nathanson—the writer behind such bad-movie classics as “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” “Rush Hour 2,” and “The Terminal”—to write a new draft of “Indiana Jones IV.” They keep mentioning that he did a good job on Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can.” Maybe, but I keep picking up the following radio signal in my false tooth: “Air Traffic Control to Flight Indiana Jones—you’re going down. Repeat. Prepare for a crash landing.”

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Remember when James Cameron would make more than one feature film per decade? Back when he was the master of new special effects and the top action director in the biz? A sci-fi badass? Those were good times. Fourteen years after “Terminator 2” debuted in theatres and the FX and story still work like a charm, putting all the cheap knock-offs and new videogame-inspired sci-fi action flicks to shame (see: “Aliens Vs. Predator,” et al). The only film in the last decade even in the running for the “T2” crown of best balls-out shoot-to-kill action and FX extravaganza with science-smarts is Paul Verhoeven’s secretly brilliant “Starship Troopers” (1997). “Pitch Black” might get a consolation prize. That’s it. So keep watching “T2” while the world waits for Cameron and Verhoeven to strike again.

True Romance (1993)
Forgive the exclamation points, cursing, and capitalization that’s about to come, but it’s warranted: When Christian Slater is on, the man is fuckin’ on. And here he is ON, goddammit. Toe-stomping turns by Patricia Arquette (dangerous and sexy!), Dennis Hopper (has never been better!), Val Kilmer (as a freakin’ ELVIS ghost/hallucination), Gary Oldman (at his scary/funny/crazy best), Brad Pitt (goddamn hilarious as a pothead loser), Christopher Walken (holy shit he’s evil!), Bronson Pinchot (a sick, brilliant turn as a sycophant cokehead), Samuel L. Jackson (blink and you’ll miss the Main Man doing his thing), Michael Rapaport (good stuff), and James Gandolfini (in an early role). Director Tony Scott doesn’t lose track of the story in the midst of the all the dazzling images and shattering cuts, as he often does with his Hollywood blockbusters. He really seems to cherish the material here, and it shows. Quentin Tarantino wrote the acerbic, violent, gut-laugh-funny screenplay with an uncredited assist by “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary. Keen and obscure pop culture references, movie tributes, comic-book shout-outs, and frequent “Badlands” references pepper this truly spicy dish.

Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Great, raw, naturalistic performances, but John Cassavetes (in writer-director mode) is definitely an acquired taste. Bits of plot have to be carefully deciphered from the cascading dialogue and hyperrealism that reigns supreme. Actors Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands, and company are hypnotizing, but if you’re sleepy at all you’ll be so hypnotized you’ll pass out, so have some coffee and pay attention to the detailed work of acting maestros in their element.

The Woodsman (2004)
Superb acting keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout this sad, twisted tale of a man battling his desires and tainted past.

(Disclaimer: All Celebrity Cola reviews are also posted on BlogCritics.org, and I’m also submitting these reviews to the Zagat Movie Guide for consideration. If Zagat chooses any snippets from the reviews for inclusion in the Guide, then I think the fine print of the deal says Zagat will own the copyright to said words, which is fine. However, until that comes to pass, Celebrity Cola retains the right to publish all of the above content, so fear not, paranoid reader.)

The Free Blogging Freeway

2005-05-26T00:33:00.000-04:00

There have been murmurings for a while that the Google-owned Blogger/Blogspot company cannot continue operating for much longer without a profit model.

The latest harbinger of blog-death is Injinuity over at Unadulterated Arrogance. In a short article entitled “Why blogger shall die,” he says:

I am neither Nostradamus nor am I a gypsy with a crystal ball, but this is what I foresee: A year down the line blogger.com will either cease to exist or metamorphose into a paid-only avatar, and both the outcomes . . . are bleak for the blogosphere.

Granted, I am not renown for my powers of clairvoyance yet I still paint this picture of doom with certainty and I do this on account of my understanding of economics. At present I don’t see a valid revenue model when it comes to blogger.com. I don’t see any sources of income for a service of this magnitude . . . I am highly skeptical of this practice in the long run. . . . the inflow of funds is minimal or non existent.

Injinuity and others like him are right: a company cannot exist on kindness alone. The disastrous profit plans proposed by 95% of the Website businesses introduced in the 1990s are what lead to the eventual collapse of the Internet boom times and the infamous stock-market bubble burst. But the Blogger/Blogspot service was once ad-supported, with Blogger Pro memberships allowing ad-free and enhanced usage. Google gobbled up Blogger, graciously removed all mandatory ads, made all services free (with no storage-size limitations), regrettably removed FTP access, and innovatively added slick new design templates. I don’t think they did this by mistake or for purely altruistic reasons. There is excogitation at work. A plan.

I added Google ads to my site in a vain hope that if enough Blogger users use the Adwords service, Blogger might remain free. Otherwise, Google will at some point have to force ads onto the blogs. My fear is that they’ll put the ads at the top of the page, making the blogs look ugly (like so many other free website hosting spots). By placing the Google ads near the bottom-right of my pages, they’re not a big problem. Hopefully Google will allow users to continue controlling where the ads go if they do force ads back onto the sites. Allowing users to continue profit sharing if they’re Adword members would also be nice (not that I’ve ever gotten a single dime from the ads I’ve had running on my blog, mind you).

At the same time, I could see Google bringing back Blogger Pro -- if they have income coming in from a pro service, they could afford to add some of the many blogging features that Blogger currently lacks (most of these features would only be available to Pro users, at least when they’re first rolled out, I presume, because otherwise there wouldn’t be as much incentive to turn pro). Blogger Pro might still be cheaper than the other Blogging services, but it would be ad free (assuming Google will eventually force ads onto the free Blogger), have a few extra features, and would allow FTP access (for greater HTML control) and/or a full export function so blogs could be properly backed up.

Another option would be to introduce a super-low-cost alternative . . . . Google could start charging a very small fee (say, $10 a year or $20 for five years, etc.) to use Blogger; a million users paying Google $20 for their little blog on the web would, cumulatively, generate a lot of capital. A modest enough price would be hard to pass up, especially for people who already have a Blogspot up and running. Simultaneously, it would drive away a lot of these fake blogs that have hijacked Blogger (the link farms, auto-generated product-hyping blogs, scam blogs with a million links leading back to an overseas pharmacy scam, etc.). If the fee is extremely reasonable and Blogger promises to do away with the fake Blogs, it’d be a good deal for everyone (there are so many fake/commercial/ad/scam/spam blogs on Blogger right now that clicking on the Blogger’s “Next Blog” button has become practically useless).

Also, Google’s purchases of Picasa, Hello, and Blogger and their invention of Gmail all seem strategic in nature -- each product alone is nothing to wet your pants about, perhaps, but taken together, coupled with Adwords and Google and Google News, you can see a well-crafted nexus forming. While companies like Yahoo crowd their homepages with a lot of useless junk and services that don’t belong together, Google is slowly gathering and inventing products that can both elegantly stand alone and work together to form a useful, powerful suite of tools. Expect much more integration of all these products in the coming years, along with a powerful IM tool that might just tie it all together.

And what if Google makes a move to allow an open-source browser/email combo like Firefox/Thunderbird to be fully integrated with Blogger, Google, Gmail, et al? What if they didn't just allow it, but financed it? Then Microsoft’s Explorer/OutlookExpress/Hotmail combo would be seriously walloped. Example: What if ThunderBird could access Gmail without having to POP all the messages down, so the storage space stayed on the Google servers, but you’d have the full power of a designated email program to boot, and maybe you could also post from the program to your blog, etc.? Google already appears to be dancing around ideas of this nature.

I think taking on the big, soulless corporate guys like Microsoft and Yahoo is a semi-open goal at Google. And Blogger is one piece of that puzzle. So don’t expect it to die, despite all the slowdowns, bugs, outages, old technology, and limitations currently plaguing the service. A service that, by the by, is extremely easy to use, making it the best service out there for beginners; is great for lazy people like me who don’t want to worry about fussing with programming, paying, and designing more than necessary; and is amazingly cost free and ad free and has beautiful, simple little templates (I managed to muck the template up on my own Blogspot, but hey, now it feels more like home).

Google has done nicely with Blogger, despite the minor quibbles we may have. Quibble: the recent posts/total posts/total words info on my user profile page hasn’t updated in like 8 months. And occasionaly a bug erases half of my post while I'm in the middle of typing. A real downer. Oh well. I still love Google, Gmail, and Blogger. It’s not just a corporate slogan: They really have made the web a better place. Maybe they'll turn evil and super-corporate one day, but for now they're still the good guys in my book.

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Related Post: Blogging About Blogs That Sometimes Blog About Blogs.

Death Threats and Flowers (or, How I Dialed Murder for Love)

2005-05-09T02:24:00.000-04:00

Am I being wildly ethnocentric, or is this a strange way of trying to seduce girls: “I kill your boyfriend for you, yes? And then we eat.”

I’ve run across incidents like this before, but what reminds me of my own story is something I read recently at Patreesha.com, where a happenin’ Asian-American college student reports her daily trials and tribulations. In an entry entitled, “When Things Go Quickly From Bad to Worse,” she tells the tale of a New York City cab ride gone weird:

It's midnight on a Friday night, and I'm in a cab with a friend Harry going home from some terrible, ritzy club in Chelsea.... Harry got out of the cab before I did, leaving me alone and very visibly drunk with a young male Egyptian cab driver. Shortly after Harry exited and the cab door slammed behind him, I heard the small, throaty, mucus-filled sound of the driver clearing his throat: "AH-CHALAAHMM"

It gave me a short, quick, nervous chill down my spine, similar to the effect of when Hispanic construction workers bellow chittering animal noises at me from the sidewalk (this happened Wednesday); or when wrinkly-faced, very obviously single old Chinese immigrant men (whilst eating dinner in the same restaurant in which they work as short-order chefs) start talking in a dialect that sounds like shattering glass (jing! jong! xiang!) while slyly pointing at me with their chopsticks as fried rice comes flying out from their gaping mouths (this happened today); or when old white guys with their remaining thinning hair shaped carefully into a mullet follow me down the street in their vans with their headlights off in the middle of the night (this happened last night); or when an old dirty Mexican man with acid-wash, elastic leg jeans and a matching denim elasticated cap grabs my ass going down the steps to the subway station and runs away cackling (this happened Friday). I digress, however -- The cab driver locked eyes with mine in the reflection in the rearview mirror and began to speak:

"Hallo I am Mohammed. What is your name?"
"Trisha."
"Your boyfriend is very lucky man."
"Oh, that's not my boyfriend. He's just some stupid asshole."
"Oh really? Lady you are most beautiful woman in world. I see you when you get in cab with your friend and I say to myself, 'Wow. Wowie. She is beautiful woman in world. I am lucky to have her in cab even though some asshole greasy young man with her. I am lucky.' -- That is what I think to myself."
"Ha ha, thank you --"
"And I say to myself, 'For that kind of woman, wow, I would kill a boyfriend like that man for her. For you I mean. I would kill with my own hands because you so beautiful.'"
"-- Uuuuuhhhh..."
"Oh do not be afraid. That is not my way. I am kind man. Okay? You like Egyptian food? You call me anytime, I take break from work since I get off 5am, we get Egyptian food to eat, together. We will do that? Let me give you phone number."

Patreesha’s story goes on in hilarious fashion, forcing me to recall when I was bartending part-time at a NYC restaurant a few years back. I was living with a waitress and a coat-check girl from the same restaurant, and they were both cute, cool chicks and thus were hit on a lot, but it was the Spanish (mostly Mexican) and Middle Eastern (mostly Bangladeshi) busboys and kitchen-staff guys who were really pushy about it. Actually, the Spanish guys were usually very copasetic, and would just drop the occasional perv comment or bad pick-up line that any guy might after being stuck changing in the co-ed dressing room with the hot waitresses and coat-check girls for the 100th time; the white waiters and kitchen guys were just as likely to attempt a game of grab-ass as anyone.

Perhaps it was the more open chauvinism of the foreign fellows that was really notable, and not their flirtatious advances. (Two of the classy French waiters were the skeeviest of them all, but that’s another story; involving, I kid you not, talk of killing goats in the context of an orgy proposition.) But man, the Middle Eastern guys, especially some of the Bangladeshi guys, were the only ones who brought up murder on a regular basis.

This was pre-9/11, mind you. Mid-2000. The strange thing was that I got along great with all these guys, but then my coat-check-girl roommate told them that I was her boyfriend, hoping to get them off her back, because they were always much worse with the single women. And my waitress roommate told them that a friend of mine was her boyfriend. The next thing the girls know, they're being told by a small group of the Bangladeshi guys that they're so beautiful they're worth killing for, and would they like to have their boyfriends killed? And if my friend and I ever treated the girls badly, the Bangladeshi guys told the waitress and coat check, they would kill us in seconds. And where did we all live, by the way?

A few weeks later, while working, one of the Bangladeshi guys casually mentioned to me that he had "just happened to find your address. I know your neighborhood well. You live on the first floor with the girls? Would you like a biscuit from the kitchen?" And he stood there waiting for me to finish eating the biscuit ("Eat! Eat!") as I kept thinking "Is this poisoned?" But it was a good biscuit and we had a nice chat.

The next day he brought the coat-check girl a flower and gave it to her while I wasn't around. He once again offered to kill me, but she said she didn't need me killed at the moment.... It was very odd. The sly seduction of the coat-check girl and the feeding me of biscuits routine went on for at least a few weeks, until the drama slowly tapered off.

Now, I’ve met a lot of awesome Middle Eastern people and some hyper-cool Bangladeshis, so don’t get me wrong: this was an isolated incident involving a select few individuals. And at the time I took it as being mostly a joke, since I got along with the guys pretty well, although they were extremely, umm, intense gentlemen (the biscuits, flowers, and murder offering busboy who wouldn't give up on the coat-check girl was often referred to as "wild eyed," but he was also a chess champion and very kind, so go figure).

However, when I hear stories like Patreesha’s, with the Egyptian cabdriver offering to kill her boyfriend (or at least the guy he thinks might be her boyfriend), forcing his phone number upon her, figuring out how to get her phone number without her permission, calling her numerous times, knowing where she lives (because he dropped her off at her apartment) ... the hairs on my disgustingly hirsute back stand on end. It’s crazy. Especially in this post-9/11 atmosphere where people are much more likely to take threats like this seriously, where a single complaint of this nature could cost a cabdriver his license, where tensions toward accented Middle Easterners are still on edge. What was the cabdriver thinking? What were the busboys thinking?

Well, they were probably cerebrating the same flustered, overheated, hormonally charged thoughts all men think when confronted with an attractive female. But they really need to get the “I will kill your boyfriend” routine out of their systems and go straight to the “Do you like Middle Eastern food” bit. Yes, Middle Eastern food is delightful. Death threats? Not so much.

The Mayor of Diversity

2005-04-28T14:41:00.000-04:00

And now a word from the honorable Bruno “Paca” Dicermelt:

Hello, Mr. Brachish. As my spokesman informed you, I’d like to tell your readers a bit about myself and how my political innovations are setting new trends for the future of the world.

I’m the mayor of Caramie, a small town whose population is comprised of individuals ranging in “identity” from wealthy African-Americans, middleclass intellectual lesbians, working-class white males, aging Chicanos and every other racial, ethnic, and sexual combination imaginable. My job is to maintain a harmonious atmosphere amidst all this diversity, so I’ve developed a few ideas to encourage tolerance and the respect of differences in such a multicultural environment.

My first construct addressed the issues of gender and sexuality—for the sake of survival and equality I’ve assumed the responsibility of equalizing the entire population of my city. Forthwith, I ordered up the mass castration of all males.

No longer do we heterosexual men have to summon up an ugly mental image of male-on-male anal sex every time we see a gay man, because males in our society are no longer capable of using their penises for anything other than urination. (This also solves the bulk of rape crimes; damn I'm good.) All impregnation is done through artificial insemination, and the sperm used is scientifically manufactured based on permutations of my own personal sperm. (Thus everyone receives a taste of my greatness in their children, while the genetic permutations engineered by skilled lab technicians prevent the drawbacks of inbreeding that would normally occur from continually using one man’s sperm to fertilize an entire society). It’s a comforting thought knowing that even after my death my spermatozoon will continuously be manufactured and used to conceive countless children.

I’ve also implemented a historic mandatory Health Law that guarantees free healthcare (free to the extent that it’s paid for with peoples’ taxes). The healthcare system has one catch: it demands cosmetic surgery for one and all, lessening the pessimistic effect ugly people have on themselves and others. The law also enforces rigorous self-care (healthy diet, daily exercise, balanced vitamin intake) and punishes those who disobey. Obviously, these laws not only make for a healthier society, but a more beautiful one as well.

I’m mad, you say? I think not. My laws are all based on the core belief of equalization. Let me reiterate for the simple minded: If everyone looks beautiful and healthy, no one will be discriminated against for being unattractive or sickly. Some people argue that race, sex, and gender are at the root of discrimination, but any gimp with half a brain knows it’s really the ugly and lame that have been pissed on throughout the history of time. Also, it’s much easier to accept minorities as equals when they’re ass-smackingly gorgeous.

There are no class issues in Caramie. I put an end to them years ago with an idea now referred to as The Class Equalization Equalization Enactment (CEEE). In the speech I gave introducing the plan I accidentally said the word “Equalization” twice, and the mindless horde that call themselves “journalists” misunderstood and began reporting the project as The Class Equalization Equalization Enactment, instead of just The Class Equalization Enactment. My advisors think this actually aided in the vast embracement of the idea because the community found it too grandiose-sounding to understand, and narcissistic news anchors enjoyed rolling the phrase off their well-paid tongues.

Basically, the CEEE taxed the rich and gave to the poor. The rich who complained were called in to receive a refund and instead received my patented Blasto © treatment (a chemical brain injection that causes migraines but solves all tax complaints). Soon the poor were middleclass, the rich were middleclass, and the middleclass were middleclass (and I had plenty of tax money to fund my health plan).

Mass beautification, mass-beatification, mass taxation, and mass castration—it all goes together like creamy white sauce on biscuits. The beautification portion of my health plan, as previously explained, alleviates the issue of race because now people are not “black” or “white” or “Hispanic” or “Republican” or “Jewish” so much as “Just Damn Good Looking,” solving cultural problems that continue to pop up in other diverse towns like poison ivy in unkempt woods.

My castration initiative plays into this as well: No longer do members of any race or creed have to instinctively/subconsciously/ethnocentrically fear that members of other ethnicities will breed within their social circle, because men can no longer breed at all. Sexual competition, as everyone knows, is at the core of most hostility—solve the fear of your wife/daughter/mother getting interbred with somebody of a different race, and you solve 70% of war, crime, and hate itself. No ligers, tigons, mules, or mutts in Caramie. No. Just hot-ass kids with my brains and their mother’s surgically enhanced good looks.

But wait! I’ve been struck by another brilliant concept. I’ll prosaically call it Diversity Month, for now. Diversity Month will force citizens of Caramie to have new and diverse multicultural experiences that will open up minds and solidify social understanding. During Diversity Month everyone in Caramie over the age of 16 must have at least four sexual relationships with people outside of their race and sexuality. At least two of these encounters will be homosexual in nature, and at least two more will be with a member of another race. At least one of these four liaisons must involve both of the above factors at once. During Diversity Month I also plan to enact Diversity Day, a keystone of Diversity Month during which the entire town will be whipped into a frenzy of untamed orgiastic delights and undaunted debauchery. Diversity Day will bring all aspects of our community together for 24 hours of sexual thanksgiving.

I know what you’re thinking: “How can males have sex during Diversity Month when they’ve all had their balls lopped off like bad little doggies?” Well, sex with the penis is not the only form sex, my friends. You have to let your imagination run wild to experience the joys of sex in Caramie. Yes! That is correct! Another benefit of the Castration Constitution in the Health Laws is that it actually stimulates imagination in the minds of Caramiens—minds that until now were stagnant, wiped clean by television, the mass media, and other forms of corporate-produced mind washing. Ah! But from my ideas hope springs eternal and benefits abound!

Religion? It’s been difficult, but slowly people are agreeing to my request for everyone to join the Baptist church. We chose the Baptist form of Christianity as our town faith by picking a card out of a bingo machine filled with religions. My reasoning was this: If there is a God, he’ll make sure we pick the right card out of the machine. If God is a Muslim, he’ll guide our hand to the Muslim card, etc. As it turns out, God is a Baptist. But even if he’s not, at least we no longer have to deal with people of one religious stripe thinking that people of all other religions are going to hell, etc., because we’re all Baptists and that’s that. I’m also considering the destruction of all science books, because science keeps leading back to evolution and that just gets Baptists worked up like all hell.

Problems? Where there are problems I see only solutions. My town is diverse, beautiful, healthy, imaginative, open-minded, inventive, equal, and soon to be filled with hundreds of my children… The only thing we have to fear is the jealous national governments of this sordid, wonderful world of ours. Governments hoping to crack Caramie open like a can of cherished smoked oysters. But these too will be overcome, even if I have to Blasto © them all myself.

File under: Satire

The King of Booze: Abel Ferrara

2005-04-17T02:21:00.000-04:00

Iconoclastic filmmaker Abel Ferrara—director of the Christopher Walken classic “King of New York” and Harvey Keitel’s viscerally devastating performance in “Bad Lieutenant”—is regarded as a cult legend as much for his hard-livin’ lifestyle as his raw, disturbed take on cinema.

We call him from NYC at 4 a.m., Rome time. He’s been hiding out in an Italian hotel for two months, where he’s rumored to be developing a new film with some mysterious confreres. It’s unclear what exactly he’s been doing, but whatever it is involves alcohol.

Ready and Abel.

How’s it going, Abel?
“It’s alright…So what do you wanna talk about?”

Would you be comfortable talking about your favorite beer?
“Budweiser all the way! I mean, call ’em up and tell ’em like, you know, ‘Nobody pushes it like us.’ There’s no beer like the King of Beers. There’s nothing like it, you know what I mean? Believe me, I’ve drank thousand-dollar bottles of wine. They don’t come close to a... a Jersey Bud.”

Now are you talking about a can or in a bottle?
“Only in a bottle. But only twenty-twos. It’s a bitch to get them over here man. It’s no easy matter.”

What’s the drinking situation in Italy like?
“Um, yeah, I’m breaking them into Budweiser.”

The imports, right?
“Naw, they make ‘em here. Budweiser European. You know, we actually went to the source. We were in Czechoslovakia where they actually... where the original formula is.”

What’s it called? Budvar?
“Bood-vice-er.” [Phonetically, like a lisping Dracula]

What’s the best city for drinking?
“Czechoslovakia man. What was the city? Bratislava.”

Oh yeah, that’s the spa town.
“Yeah, that’s the joint, bro.”

What’s so good about it?
“Every bar has its own beer. You know what I mean? Like Budweiser, it’s like all they drink in that bar. Then you go to another bar, and then it’s like.... If you’re into beer, ya know what I’m saying.”

You’re a movie person, so you’ve got to be around fancy people drinking girly drinks.
“Yeah, fancy champagne, we [movie people] drink. You know what we drink here.... Bellinis, Prosecco. You know what I’m saying?”

Does that just whet your appetite, or does that get you going?
“What gets me going is Budweiser, homes! You know, a Jersey Bud. Twenty-two ounce. Double-D. The Double-Deuce of the D.”

Last I saw you, you were talking about Asia Argento.
“Yeah, fuck Asia Argento.”

How do you find these ingénues? Like what do you look for?
“They look for us, you know what I’m saying? You got no choice. I mean, Asia Argento shows up, what are you going to say? You know what I mean? Have you got the nerve to say ‘No’? What was that joke.... ‘You ain’t going to throw them out of bed for eating crackers.’ ” [He laughs, mumbles, passes the phone to his friend, who we speak with for a while, and then the international connection is lost....]

The above interview was conducted in 2004 and was intended for publication in a magazine I was co-editing. The article was written by Byron Karl, but it never saw print, so Celebrity Cola is printing it here for the sake of bettering mankind—or something.

Note: Celebrity Cola prefers local breweries to Budweiser, because Budweiser is The Man. Unless the Bud is free. Or really cheap. And we’re short on cash. Then we’ll drink anything. We can be really sad and desperate like that, on occasion. Is this the most heartwarming and edifying story you’ve ever read, or what?

***

Better Than Beer: There's no need for alcohol when you can boil your mind with the idiocy of frivolous lawsuits. Visit Overlawyered.com for frequent updates on who's suing whom, and why. Hangover guaranteed.

Definitely Not Sober: the Donnie Darko FAQ at StainlessSteelRat explicates many of the mysteries of Richard Kelly’s film/tonal thriller but doesn't delve much into the superior, confusing director’s cut. The “Donnie Darko: Fishing for Meaning” discussion at Arts & Faith is also insightful, although no one has adequately solved the conundrum of why the psychiatrist was secretly giving Donnie a placebo or why she and Drew Barrymore seem to know more about the plot than they’re letting on...

Jedi Theocracy

2005-04-10T14:05:00.000-04:00

What if priests and monks could physically manifest their connection with God through the use of telekinesis? What if the Pope was a little green man and the Vatican Council promoted the use of laser swords for settling religious and political debates?

Well, we’d be living in the universe of George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” of course, where the only alternative to strict religious rule and mind-numbing political bureaucracy is an evil, democratically empowered despot of pure evil who patriotically promises to protect his followers from terrorist-like attacks from infidels.

Yoda Pope (image courtesy of tribal_tiger).

At the F13.net forums, a chap named Litigator clarifies the subconscious feelings of Jedi-haters everywhere:

Here’s the thing about Star Wars: the Jedis were never cool. Han Solo is cool. That’s why Han got the girl and Luke got his hand cut off. If you saw Star Wars and wanted to be a Jedi, you are a fucking loser.

The whole new trilogy sucks by definition because there is no Han. Fictional galactic politics is stupid, especially since Lucas’s conclusion is that society is best left in the hands of a bunch of religious fanatics who wave around huge glowing phallic symbols. Harrison Ford cruising around in a space hot-rod with a giant gerbil sidekick shooting stuff and shagging babes with weird hairstyles is cool. Without him, Star Wars takes itself too seriously.

You can’t even blame George Lucas. He had a pretty good idea of the thing to start out with, and it’s been ruined because it’s now taken too seriously. I blame the fans for this. The problem was that a lot of dorks decided they wanted to be Jedis, and started pretending that they were. They created a huge demand for more star wars stuff, and, of course, it all had to be internally consistent because their fantasy lives inhabited the star wars universe, and anything that jeopardized their suspension of disbelief might cause somebody to have an asthma attack.

Star Wars was great when it was about a midget in a trash can, a giant in a monkey suit, and Harrison Ford being cool and spouting off cool one-liners. The [original] trilogy, including the Jedi [storyline], is some of the best entertainment ever laid on film. Now that it’s dork-porn for people who hate their lives, nobody can enjoy it anymore. The fan community is the reason the new trilogy sucks, and is probably also responsible for George Lucas’s chin receding into his neck.

My big beef with Lucas is that he is altering the original films to be more consistent with the wretched masturbatory nerd fantasy that the Star Wars franchise has evolved into. He’s been seduced by the Dork Side. And he gave the nerds exactly what they wanted in the new trilogy, but they can’t realize it because nothing would satisfy them. They’ve merely adopted the observation by film lovers, who are kind of geeky, but not nearly as pathetic, that the new trilogy are poor movies.

Actually, as a kid I wanted to be a Jedi. But then again, I was also on the chess team. Reexamining the situation, I'd have to agree that Han Solo is cooler than any conservative Jedi celibate. But damn, those lightsabers are copacetic...

Another F13.net user notes what many a sci-fi cinephile has repeated endlessly since seeing the dreck that was “Star Wars, Episode I: Battle of Whiny Kid and the Silly Robots.” Says Riggswolfe: “My perfect prequel trilogy would have had Anakin at Luke’s age or a little older. Episode 1 would have been what is currently Episode 2 with maybe a 15-minute flashback showing young Anakin. Episode 2 would have covered what we only have in cartoons currently, ‘The Clone Wars.’ And Episode 3 would be... well...Episode 3.”

Well said. Besides Jar Jar Binks being one of the most cloying, one-note characters in film history—and the often yawn-worthy political-debate sequences, the badly handled Immaculate Conception concept, the stultifying performance by the usually competent Natalie Portman, and the ham-handed plotting—it was the choice of turning Episode I into a fart-joke lovin’ little kids film about a pratfall-prone hovercraft hotrod prodigy that really destroyed the potential of the “Star Wars” prequels.

Instead of mucking about with digitally adding new, unnecessary sequences to the original trilogy (and stopping Han Solo from shooting Greedo first!), Lucas should go back and completely re-edit Episodes I and II. Chop down the bits that seem like videogame commercials. Give it some edge. Flesh out the bad guys. Add a love triangle between Obi-Wan, Princess Amidala, and Anakin. Replace Jar Jar with Chewbacca, Han Solo, and/or Lando Calrissian-type characters.

Wait... Like the chaps at F13.net and the hundreds of other Star Wars fansites out there, I’m revealing more dorkiness to the nth degree. Let’s just say this: Despite the failures of Eps I and II, the final installment of the prequel tril will certainly clean the bank. Because unlike the political and religious realities of our world, the universe of “Star Wars” has a beginning, middle, and end. And everyone loves closure. It’s irresistible. With the tale’s conclusion, we can take solace in the completion of a myth, even if theocracy is its twisted final theme.

Of course, the religion of Star Wars is also one of self-empowerment and intuition, and not just doctrinaire theology. So remember: I am “Star Wars,” hear me roar.

***

See also:

“The Apocalyptic Cosmology of Star Wars” (as a religious text; and technology versus the natural human).

“Star Wars and the Goals of Mankind” (how Christians can become corrupted when they learn to achieve personal satisfaction through the teachings of Star Wars).

“Religious Themes in the Star Wars Saga” (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity in the S.W. universe).

“The Naming of Jedi” (Muslim, Buddhist, Chi, and Joseph Campbell influences on Jedi naming conventions).

“Star Wars Religion Doesn't Make Census” (Australian, English, and New Zealand believers in the Jedi).

“Religion in Science Fiction” (links and resources).

***

Kevin Smith discusses the secrets of "Revenge of the Sith" in a spoiler-filled, sweat-soaked memo. (Anakin wouldn't really do that to the Jedi toddlers, would he? Amazing...)

Blogging About Blogs That Sometimes Blog About Blogs

2005-03-30T14:25:00.000-05:00

In the beginning, weblogs were little more than personal journals. With that in mind, the blog ballyhoo was terribly misleading: The mainstream press kept banging away at the idea of blogs being an exciting, mysterious, newfangled contraption that finally allowed plebeians to have an opinion online. Simultaneously, blogs were treated in a condescending fashion, promoted as cute little diaries that sometimes exposed a flub or flaw in corporate management, politics, or news coverage. Mostly, newspeople just liked saying the word "blog" because it was a fresh catchphrase.

Blogs were hyped as The Next Big Thing, but also winked at as nothing more than a lark, like miniskirts and Rubik's Cubes. In truth, blogs—Internet journals, website logs, or what have you—were really nothing new. Online diaries had existed for years, and a plethora of private websites had long tackled the establishment with personalized rants and raves.

The real revolution online was the implementation of unique technology shaken and stirred with an invigorated sense of community. With little or no knowledge of HTML, without expensive WYSIWYG software (like DreamWeaver), without a need to create an entire website structure/wire-frame from scratch, anyone can now hop online and create a basic website that’s easy to update and looks at least semi-professional. This was (and is) Part 1 of the blog revolution.

Part 2: By automatically integrating the ability to leave comments on any post, the blogging software changes the landscape of personal websites. No longer is this one person shouting at a wall, occasionally receiving a congratulatory or argumentative email. No longer is the sloppy Guest Book or disjointed Discussion Forum needed—the public now comments directly on the story, for all to see. And within the comments, links to related articles can be posted, arguments and discussions can erupt, and the original article, rant, or link evolves into a richer page of content and disparate opinion.

Also, because blogs typically post new content at the top of the page, with old content automatically falling back into dated archives, there’s a sense of immediacy that many personal websites lacked in the past. It’s this aspect—along with the simplicity of the medium—that prompted blogs to become not just journals but sources of true news and inside-the-belly-of-the-beast commentary.

Google’s acquisition of Blogger/Blogspot hastened the revolution by providing easy blog software, free hosting, excellent templates, no bandwidth or storage limits, and, remarkably, no banner or pop-up ads (along with built-in Google search integration).

Of course, the simplicity of blogging has increased the already lopsided good-website vs. bad-website balance. For every great blog, there are a 1,000 mediocre and 10,000 horrible ones. Blogs full of unreadable ramblings, illiterate mumblings, and fake blogs chockablock with spam. Blogs of unoriginal content or absolute navel-gazing worth only a passing look. Or blogs like Celebrity Cola, with truly unique content but very infrequent updates.

The best blogs update several times a day, combining original content with relevant links and leaving the public-comment option on. But to keep the content flowing day in and day out, all year long, multiple website editors are usually needed, or a financial backer is a must. Thus, the corporate-sponsored pro-blog has risen among us, infiltrating the ranks of the amateurs (and shouldering in on the terrain of pro and semi-pro writers operating for zero dollars under a pen name because they can’t get their most inflammatory rants published elsewhere).

All the while, the line between blogs, traditional websites, online diaries, and corporate/political mouthpieces continues to bleed, and everyone with a computer is prepared to jump on the bandwagon. Will the form survive? Can amateur bloggers compete with the corporate hacks when money and proofreaders are lacking? We’ll see...

***

The following is a ragtag compilation of blogs that are influencing the mass media and the way we surf the ’net. These aren’t just personal journals and link compilations—instead, I’m listing the big guns of the nascent new media. Look and learn, pops.

A Historical Overview of Blogging:

Weblogs: A History And Perspective

Blog Platform Analysis:

MovableType vs TypePad vs Blogger vs b2evolution vs WordPress

Blogs of Note:

Andrew Sullivan: a well-known political blog from the controversial gay conservative journalist.

Arianna Online: High-profile liberal pundit Arianna Huffington was among the first of the famous to latch onto the blogdom. Her realm expanded with the recent foundation of The Huffington Report, an online 'zine featuring a group blog written by some of the brightest celebrity names the left-wing has to offer (like semi-retired actor-director Warren Beatty and hardnosed ol' magazine editor Tina Brown).

BlogCritics.org: Hundreds of bloggers present their best critiques in one big megablog organized by category, topic, and date.

Blog Sisters: A coven of female writers up the estrogen count of the blogosphere. For more girl-power bloggin', Infomaniac recommends Ms. Musings (among others), while WitNit has made his own list of BabeWits.

Bloggerman: MSNBC's "Countdown" anchor Keith Olbermann writes and writes and writes...

Boing Boing: “A Directory of Wonderful Things.”

The Daily Kos: An influential political blog with multiple writers.

Dan Gillmor: A sharp blog about blogging, grassroots journalism, and the new media.

Dave Barry’s Blog: Other than snappy headlines leading into the links, this blog doesn’t showcase much in the way of the famed humorist’s writing. Instead, it’s proof that the bestselling author spends a LOT of time surfing the ’net.

Dean's World: "Defending the liberal tradition in history, politics, science, and philosophy."

The Drudge Report: This conservative tabloid doesn't exist in print, it's certainly not the mainstream media (MSM), and it's run by one dynamic personality. So even though it doesn't look the part—it must be a blog!

enGadget: a popular gadget blog.

evhead: A blog from one of the most visible creators of Google’s Blogger (which was invented by Pyra Labs).

The Gothamist: A frequently updated blog about NYC.

Instapundit: The classic news/politics/law blog by Glenn Reynolds.

James Wolcott: An award-winning, veteran magazine columnist blogs with the best of 'em.

JK on the Run: A mobile-device blog.

Media Matters for America: An excellent, blog-style news site operated by a nonprofit organization that seeks to expose “conservative misinformation” in the popular media.

Neil Gaiman: The beloved fiction writer ("Sandman," etc.) keeps a journal about, well, himself--where he responds to inquiries and fan letters and, when the inspiration arises, vents about random topics. (Another good blog by a comicbook scribe is WarrenEllis.com.)

Outside the Beltway: A news & politics blog written by multiple editors. Although mainly interested in prosaic mainstream conservative issues, OTB is surprisingly balanced and good-humored -- they even link to a funny story about President Bush's daughter Jenna caught doing the "butt dance." OTB isn't as consistently entertaining as the conservative-but-witty Wizbang, but it's good enough to make you wish there were more liberal blogs out there as accomplished as this...

PressThink: A serious, academic look at journalism and the news. A must read.

The Truth Laid Bear: An influential blog about politics, computers, and bloggers.

Vodkapundit: "All the news that's fit to drink."

Wil Wheaton Dot Net: Star Trek's young Ensign Wesley Crusher discovered a new creative outlet in the world of blogging after his acting career went belly-up. As one of the first bloggers to achieve national recognition, Wheaton helped carve the path for bloggers everywhere, even though his acting career is still trapped in a reverse warp-drive wormhole.

ZuDfunck: An entertaining overview of thousands of blogs and the good bits of the World Wide Web.

A few of Gawker Media’s very popular, irreverent sites:

Defamer: A roundup of L.A. entertainment gossip. Take no substitutes.

Fleshbot: A gossip column for the porn industry. And if you’re curious about the latest celebrity sex tape or you’d like to get your grubby paws on up-to-the-minute pics of whatever starlet has most recently fallen out of her dress, then Fleshbot—and the non-Gawker sites

DeansPlanet, The Superficial, Big-boys, UselessJunk.com, and DrunkenStepFather—is the place to be.

Gawker: A superb blog about the media industry and NYC gossip.

GizModo: A gadget blog.

Life Hacker: A technology and software blog sponsored by Sony.

Screenhead: 12 posts a day about funny and weird things online.

Sploid: Tabloid news with a bite.

Wonkette: A political blog with a gut full of D.C. gossip.

Note: Gawker Media’s blog editors are paid to work on a single blog full-time and the company reportedly makes a lot of money through ad sales and corporate sponsorships—both approaches that revolutionized the industry.

According to Wired Magazine, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton's “move to professionalize blogs bestowed instant credibility on an unknown single-writer Web site. When Gawker launched, it was still unusual for a regular media site to reference the personal blog of some savant wordsmith, but it was well within bounds to discuss the well-hired hand of a new media publisher - and even write stories about her. Denton hadn't merely created a blog, he'd created a brand. In almost no time, Gawker not only won an audience but was chosen as one of Time's 50 Best Web sites and made Entertainment Weekly's IT list.” Source: "How Can I Sex Up This Blog Business?"

Upstanding Blogspots:

Arizona Perspective & Junk: Topical news and views from Arizona.

Baghdad Burning: A girl records her true adventures inside Iraq.

Catoptrophobe Nightmare: A New York law-student’s personal journal.

Don't Touch the Feet: Inimitable television views from Toronto.

Dumpster Bust: “Manufacturing Miracles from Mind Trash” in California. Now featuring DB Radio, a regular MP3 audiocast of indie music, band interviews, cultural news, and more.

Elkboy: Raised by elks, this young man has finally discovered civilization. Quite hilarious.

Film Geeks: Musings from some lovable film dorks.

Flaming Duck: Conservative politics, news, and rants, served with panache.

I'm Not Crunchy! A blog about the environment and everything else.

Itly Pongal Vadai Sambar: Life in India (conveniently written in English).

Jesus' General: A left-wing blog pretending to be a right-wing blog, wherein important info is disguised in a thick layer of glorious satire, courtesy of Patriotboy.

Johnny Nobody: Links and short rants from a left-wing guy who devours “right-wing noise like a fat kid eats cake.”

Made Out Of Mouth: Good reviews of bad—and/or obscure—films. And well-thought thoughts about whatever other cinema these dudes stumble across.

Money-Crushing Machine: A solid example of an online diary, written by an expatriate living in France.

My Meandering Thoughts: Thoughts and opinions from India and the U.S.A.

Slipshod and Simple: Quick hits from a fellow frustrated NY writer.

The Sorest Loser: Exceedingly well-written political rants.

Universal Acid: Tracking the intersection of biology, science, technology, and society.

A Blogger's Delight:

All About My Vagina: TMI (too much information)? MTYWTK (more than you wanted to know)? Perhaps. But very nicely done.

Big Botched Blog: Silly, rude, and very funny. A combination of the diary-blog and news-blog formats, with useful info skillfully mixed in with drunken exploits.

The Daily Meme: Spreads ideas, concepts, and words throughout the blogoverse. (A meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another, like a idea virus. Source: The American Heritage Dictionary.)

David’s Medienkritik: The watchdog of the German press.

Fistful of Fortnights: Hyper-intelligent commentary from the land known as Oklahoma. The site's author, Sadie, provides a swell collection of links, and FoF has led me to such endearing ledgers as New Zealand's AwesomeGirl blog, Freudian Slippers.

Hacking Netflix: DVD rental news and analysis.

Maddox, a.k.a. "The Best Page...": Insane blogging from one of the old-school masters.

A New York Escorts Confessions: For my views of this odd site, see my article entitled To Possess or Not to Possess, That is the Grammatical (and poltergeistical) Question.

Red Between the Lines: Left-wing Canadian politics.

Space Coast Weblog: Covering Florida and the world in blog-like form before “blog” was even a term. There’s always something new at the Space Coast blog, and the site's editor also maintains a variety of useful reference links.

TechNudge: Frequent, incisive tech and gadget updates. Do visit the Nudge!

Twitch: Film news and reviews centered around dark, strange, unusual, cult, action, and sci-fi films of the foreign and domestic varieties.

Venture Chronicles: A first-class venture-capitalist, investment, and software/tech news blog. Also see: VentureBlog.

A Yobbo's View: Australian lads making rude jokes (that's a good thing, mate) and having reactionary political opinions (maybe not so good).

Zinovate Weblog: A nice tech/design site, although, sadly, the Zinoblog rarely updates.

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Related Posts:

The New Blog Carnival Showcase Extravaganza

Preserving Formatting When Posting Documents Online

Weblog Directories, Blog Tools, RSS aggregators, Search Engine Notes, etc.

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Germane Notes:

As a reaction to one of his readers saying his blog was "all over the place," blogger Will Brady explains why he writes about the topics he does, noting "I could be producing one of those [so-called-blogs] that endedlessly repeats, spamlike, key words about specific subjects, like 'health care or 'Student Loans.' (You know, the ones that have no profile or email attached.) I could be writing endless self-absorbed adolescent prattle about what CD's I just got or how boring history class was yesterday... or about my cats. But I don't."

Agreed: If I read one more blog about the cute eating and pooing habits of kittens I'll chew off my left foot. And these spam blogs need to be eliminated immediately; free services like Blogger need to lay down some ground rules about blog spammers. First blogs were attacked with comment/trackback spam and now entire fake blogs ("link farms") are being used to corrupt search engine results by endlessly linking to business sites.

Also: At the PoliBlog, Dr. Steven Taylor explains the the motivation of professionals who blog for free in their spare time. He then admits in his article's comments section that "Indeed, part of what stops some from being bloggers is their work schedule. One of the clear advantages to the professoriate is flexibility."

And: Eric Berlin chews on some celebrity blogs, spits out the dirty aftertaste, and finds comfort in the word "webzine." He also leads us to an excellent Wil Wheaton post where the former Trek-teen discusses the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of blogging.

Variety: 31 Flavors of Blog asks, “What is a blog?” The answer, it turns out, is less than definitive.

Finally: Micro Persuasion is the preeminent news blog that chronicles blogs, bloggin’, how the blogworld affects the real world, and other issues relevant to blogpeople. Inbred little universe this blogging thing can be, eh?

Cheap Music for the Masses

2005-03-07T11:06:00.000-05:00

Finding quality music online can require a lot of work. I recommend first finding a nice, quiet office job (or maybe some steady temp work) that has a bangin’ high-speed internet connection. That way, you’ll get paid on an hourly basis to download music.

I've spent many happy months of my life being paid $15 an hour by nameless corporations to scour the internet for MP3s, which I then spend hours labeling, tagging, and listening to with J. River's Media Center/Jukebox (the latest version of which makes it extremely easy to listen to podcasts and Internet radio, as well as your typical CD and DVD viewing, filing, and ripping options).

You’re employer will think they’re paying you to shuffle papers, make photocopies, collect invoices, coordinate with FedEx, and answer voicemail, but your bosses are suckers—it’s all about collecting tunes that you’ll eventually take home using your portable hard drive, iPod, or CD burner.

The following is an evolving list that reviews websites, tools, and tricks for facilitating the downloading of cheap and free (and often even legal) music online:

And Now For the Gratis Tunage:

AllofMP3: Super-cheap access to mainstream U.S., European, and Russian music (less than 10 cents a song, depending on the quality you want; even the dirt-cheap “low quality” files are superbly encoded). They’ve even got a high-quality bootleg version of the Beach Boy’s lost Smile album. And bunches of the Beatles’ albums (not available online anywhere else). And rare imports. And some indie music. And lots of Bjork. And, and, and . . . And it’s all kinda sorta legal thanks to sketchy Russian copyright/royalty laws held over from the Soviet Union days. There are other reliable Russian music sites running similar gambits (notably, MP3Search.Ru and MusicMp3.ru), but this is the biggest, oldest, most trustworthy, most quickly updated, and easiest to use... All-in-all, AllofMP3 is quite possibly the greatest music-download website ever known to man (for standard-issue U.S. and Euro pop/rock/dance tunes, anyway) . Gotta love commies cum capitalists.

Always the Volume: Contains dozens of free demos, b-sides, interviews, and live tracks from the gorgeous and talented twin sisters Tegan and Sara. Listen to their tunes because they’re incredible artists with nice lyrics and a super-group indie backing band, not just because they’re alterna-chick lesbian sex kittens. (Yes, they are. Oh, lord, they ARE! Meeeeow. Especially catchy: the Interruptvector stompin' dance remix of T&S's acoustic Hello. "Until I've done all that I can...")

Amazon.com's Free Music Downloads: Normally I'm a big Amazon fan, but this slick-looking area of the Virago empire is an emperor without any clothes -- exclusive MP3 files are often nothing more than streaming or copy-protected files with a fake MP3 extension, meaning you can't burn the track to a disk, or the ability to play the track expires, or it just doesn't play at all. Other Amazon download offerings turn out to be nothing more than 30-second or one-minute long samples. There are a few good tracks here and there, however, if you have the patience to sift through the crap.

AntiFolk.net: Doesn't host any music files, but it links to a plethora of hep, off-the-beaten-path bands that usually have MP3s posted on their own sites. For instance, AntiFolk will lead you directly to one of my favorite new NYC bands, the Ben Folds meets honky tonk piano-backed Creaky Boards, where MP3s are always around.

BannedMusic.org: A free-speech rioting site featuring such modern classics as the awe-inspiring The Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse, The Double Black Album by Cheap Cologne, and the Illegal Art Compilation by Stay Free Magazine ("A compilation of songs that have been the subject of lawsuits, primarily for unauthorized sampling. Includes music by Negativland, Biz Markie, The Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, and De La Soul").

betterPropaganda: a "music discovery" site that aims to help users find new music that will fit their tastes. Concentrates on edgy electronic, rock, and hip hop, including the more interesting indie fringes of those genres. Features podcasts, streaming music, music videos, mini-reviews, and -- most importantly -- free MP3s of new singles from a wide variety of artists. No username, password, or fees required. They'd like you to buy the complete CDs, but there's no pressure. The number of tracks offered is limited in scope, but fresh tracks are very frequently cycled into the free queue.

BitTorrent and the nifty BitTorrent client known as Azureus: Okay, most people know about BitTorrent, and I personally only use it for downloading TV shows, but it’s undeniably great for quickly grabbing entire albums all at once. (Umm, I mean, if I were going to illegally download TV shows in a widescreen and commercial-free format, then this would be the program I’d use, but I’d never do anything, uh, illegal). Once you've installed your BitTorrent client, begin your search for files at the BitTorrent Search, ISO Hunt, Torinium (aka HyperTorrent), NewNova.org (from the ashes of SuprNova.org), and Link2U.tk pages.

Bleep: Falling somewhere between the worlds of eMusic and iTunes, there lurks Bleep.com. On the one hand, buying an album on Bleep is more expensive than buying from eMusic (nearly $10 an album instead of approximately 25 cents a track) -- but on the other hand, Bleep provides many hip "major indie label" and British/Euro rock-pop albums that eMusic hasn't got the rights to include in its digital indie-tune database. Like iTunes, Bleep is a la carte; eMusic requires a modest monthly subscription fee and charges you that fee even if you don't download anything, so Bleep is a safer bet for the casual downloader that doesn't need a monthly fix. Unlike iTunes, Bleep delivers high-quality MP3 files instead of the proprietary DRM file-types most legal music services now force upon users. In that sense, Bleep and eMusic are kindred spirits, both providing completely safe, legal MP3 tunes for a decent price and paying close attention to the indie rock/pop scene.

Bluetack Internet Security Solutions: If you think you might be downloading music that you, well, perhaps legally should not be downloading, then you'll want to make sure you supplement your firewall and/or router with some hardcore protection like Bluetack's free Blocklist Manager (BLM) and Protowall, or good ol' PeerGuardian. It'll help keep out the bad guys and music cops. (I also use the free versions of Kerio and AntiVir as my basic firewall and antivirus software, respectively. And once a month I run Spybot, Ad-Aware, CWShredder, and CCleaner to clean out any problems that may have snuck in with my surfing. All of these costless programs are safely available at Download.com.)

Bootleg Browser: A frequently updated list of bootlegged concerts from every genre, era, and style. The Bootleg Browser will lead you to a small hoard of free, fresh, and piping-hot new MP3 sites, whether your taste ranges from Tom Waits to the Barenaked Ladies to XTC to, um, a live Avril Lavigne concert to Iranian/Middle Eastern tunes you can't understand one iota of 'cause they're in Farsi... it's time to boot up!

CCC Mash-Ups Galore: mashmeister CCC mixes together classic tracks, forming entirely new sounds. His big project in 2004 was Revolved, a complete reworking of the Beatles' Revolver album -- not bad. Keep this guy on your radar.

Classic Cat: A directory of no-cost classical music. Nearly 2,000 files were available the last time I checked, from Karl Friedrich Abel to Carl Zeller, with plenty of Puccini, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Beethoven in the mix.

CNET's Music.Download.com: In the wake of the old (better) version of MP3.com closing down, there weren't many good places for unsigned bands to gather together, promote their music, and give away free MP3s. But then along came Music.Download, and the melodies flowed freely once again. The problem with unsigned bands, obviously, is that 98% of it is worse than athlete's foot. But since it's free, there's no harm in digging around for buried treasure, which the CNET editors' reviews and users' ratings help with. Music.Download spices the dish by throwing in some tracks from big-name acts like R.E.M., Snoop Dogg, Postal Service (a fave of mine), and Ani DiFranco, and hipster comedians like David Cross. They even have a handful of tracks from my overly talented old classmate Sam "Iron & Wine" Beam.

Coverville: A very smooth, 30-minute music podcast featuring top-notch cover songs. Licensed with ASCAP and BMI (i.e., it's supererogatory legal!).

Dailysonic: A daily radio show/mp3zine/podcast "for the hipclectic crowd." It's one big, free download (usually about 35 minutes long and 28 megabytes in size) and includes alternative news and music.

DVD Tools: Rip, copy, save, play, and burn music and video from even copy-protected and region-locked DVDs with the software, hacks, and advice found on the Doom9, DVD Decrypter, Clone AD, and MPEGX websites.

eMusic: The best MP3 service for indie, alternative, and world-music MP3s. This site is 100% legal and chock full of useful info, the artists and labels get paid, and it's pretty cheap -- less than 25 cents a song, on average, depending on how much you pay into your monthly subscription (unlike other subscription-based sites, eMusic downloads are real MP3 files, so they don't expire when you cancel your subscription and they'll work on any music player). Compared to services like iTunes and Napster that charge you an outrageous buck a song, eMusic is a steal, and many of its excellent albums simply cannot be found on mainstream sites (like rarities from the K Records label). But hey! It's not just indie music. Styles include: Alternative/Punk, Blues, Classical, Country/Folk, Electronic, Inspirational, Jazz, New Age, Rock/Pop, Urban/Hip-Hop, World/Reggae, and Soundtracks/Other. They've even got some Ray Charles, Del the Funky Homosapien, and the White Stripes.

Epitonic: An exhaustive source of indie info and bios, with free MP3 (and WMA) files provided for almost every artist profiled. Translation: thousands of superb songs for zero dollars, if you hunt around the site long enough.

Firefox: If you're browsing with the Fox -- and you should be, punk, since it's the free open-sourced wonder browser and there are all sorts of audio/video media-, music- and MP3-based extensions you can add to make it your perfect multimedia browser, too -- just install the nifty Firefox extension DownThemAll (DTA) and you'll be able to easily download all MP3 files from every page of most websites with a simple right-click of your mouse. No more hunting and pecking on hundreds of MP3 links or trying to figure out how to download the file instead of listening to it -- let DownThemAll do the grunt work for ya! Although there are similar plugins for other browsers (and for FireFox itself), this one has no spyware attached and is soooo sweet, mate. Note: As of this writing, the default downloading filters on Firefox's DownThemAll are only for “all files,” archives, images, and videos.... To enable one-click music downloading, click on Preferences/Advanced Options, choose the Filters tab, and then quickly set up a new filter by entering “Music” as the “caption” (this will be your new filter button) and then typing .mp3 (and/or .wma, .wmv, .ogg, .acc, etc.) in the “filtered extensions” box. Once it’s set up, grabbing music off the web couldn’t be easier.

GarageBand: Independent musicians load their music onto GB, users rate and review the tracks, all the tunes get ranked by popularity and categorized by genre, and everyone gets to download boatloads of free MP3s. Find: Incredible music by NYC's famed subway troubadour Theo Eastwind, melodies by talented Ohio songsmith Peter Adams, and lots of terrible music hidden among troves of gems. If you like what you hear, you can email the musicians, join their mailing lists, or order their CDs. The downside: although it's all free, finding and grabbing good music can take a long while--and GB only lets users download one MP3 at a time.

Geek Dreams: This site's owner infrequently posts music files, but when he does it's of hard-to-find material like the original, unreleased version of Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine" (a fantabulous album that Apple's record company, Sony, shelved for over two years until sites like Geek Dreams began distributing leaked copies, forcing Sony to finally release a highly revised version of the CD in late 2005) and live bootlegs of the Pixies and Radiohead performing at the 2004 Coachella festival, etc. If you enjoy Geek Dreams, I'd also recommend the music archives at the Achtung Baby! blog.

Glorious Noise: a stalwart alternative music mag that always posts a bundle of "free legit MP3s."

The Hype Machine: An oft-updated archive of links to the audio files posted on the most popular MP3 blogs. No matter if you're an oddball looking for a bootleg of Ben Gibbard covering April Lavigne or you're just a song junkie seeking every hot, strange, new and weird track getting passed around the music zine circuit, you'll find it here. (Recommended by the The Rawk Blog.)

The Indie MP3 Blog: a UK-based site that posts music news along with a couple of really good new MP3s every day or two (alongside the main site, www.indie-mp3.co.uk, which frequently hosts some lovely Brit pop). Basically, the editor of the site finds smashingly kosher indie music files online (like legal MP3s from The Besties), and then shares the love. Nothin' wrong with that! Also, check out the Indie MP3 Blog's infrequent-but-superb mixtape-like podcast.

InSound MP3s: Also super-indie and super-free. Again, it's a limited selection (they want you to sample some tracks before buying full albums), but it's updated regularly and it's good, hard-to-find stuff (includes tracks by Lou Barlow, Cat Power, Airborn Audio, Eluvium, and Marianne Faithfull).

iPodder.org: Lists new podcasting websites every day and upkeeps a directory of thousands of online audio sources. If you're not running the free iPodder software, this site won't be as easy to use as it should be, but the music section of its podcast directory will still give you the names of hundreds of music websites that offer complimentary MP3s in the form individual song downloads and massive podcasts (online radio shows converted to a savable—usually MP3—format). A similiar site -- which is actually easier to use -- is Podcast Alley, a careful organization and ranking of hundreds of MP3 audiocasts.

iRATE radio is a free, open-source music downloading client (for Windows, Linux, and the latest Mac OS) with access to over 50,000 files (and growing). Full downloading access to a selection of fine Creative Commons-based music websites, combined with open-minded artists and record labels trying to promote their latest singles, allows iRATE to find music, which it then sends to you, the user. As you rate the tunes, it automatically finds more music that you'll like -- and filters out music it thinks you'll hate --by comparing your opinions to the ratings of other users on the system that have similar tastes. And unlike similar services, iRATE is free, legal, and adware/spyware free.

Kazaa Lite Resurrection (KLR): A safer, spyware-free, RIAA fightin’, possibly illegal version of the popular file-downloading Kazaa Media Desktop. Created by some badass hacker types at FileSharingPlace.com -- home to the legendary and free K-Lite Mega Codec Pack that includes QuickTime Alternative, Real Alternative, Media Player Classic, and tons of tools and codecs that will let you play every type of file known to man without having to use programs that are controlled by The Man -- KLR is the among the safest and easiest ways to fileshare. But make sure you only download programs like KLR and K-Lite (Kazaa Lite) from FileSharingPlace, lest you end up with a fake version laden with adware. While there, check out the classic Soulseek and the hot new windows P2P (peer-to-peer) client eXeem. A comprehensive list of other P2P applications and P2P in general can be found at Wikipedia's Peer-to-Peer page, including links to the popular eDonkey/ed2k and Morpheus filesharing clients. Note: For Mac users, Acquisition is a good choice, and LimeWire will work for everyone. If you need a second opinion before using a new P2P client, try searching the FileSharingPlace forums or read the user reviews of all the mainstream "Mp3 Search Tools" at Download.com.

Keeping It Peel: Thousands of radio broadcasts from the late, legendary BBC radio host John Peel, who specialized in bringing bands in for interviews and then coaxing them into incredible live performances. The radio studio recordings of the performances are known as the Peel Sessions, and they're really, really, really worth checking out, especially since the BBC now has them available online for free. Regrettably, the BBC has chosen to code these Peel offerings as RealMedia files; as everyone knows, RealOne/RealMedia/RealPlayer is evil and their files are not playable on iPods, etc.

KnobTweakers: A blog full of carefully selected and totally free indie-label and no-label electronica music. Since only promotional tracks are used, these downloads are legal. (This site was previously entitled simply "Free Music Downloads," which has gotta tell ya somethin'.)

The Live Music Archive: Thousands of absolutely free and legal live music bootleg recordings from hundreds of "trade-friendly" bands, such as Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Billy Bragg, Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Jump, Little Children. The donation-dependant Live Music Archive works in association with those lovable LosslessEncoding freaks over at Etree.org, an organization that also happens to host the bt.etree.org Community Bittorrent Tracker, where I've found mind-blowing live performances by Wilco, Yo La Tengo, Rachael Yamagata, etc... (By the way -- you haven't truly heard the scorching soulfulness of the post-Bumpus, ultra-femme-fatale Yamagata until you've heard her live. Preferably, live and with a head cold, because the hoarser her voice, the better the groove.)

Magnatune: Allows you to stream albums from hand-selected, micro-label bands (of varying genres) for free. Of course there are plenty of other websites and programs that let you stream music and radio stations on the cheap—even mainstream stuff—so the real benefit of Magnatune is that it’ll let you listen to entire CDs, and then, if you dig 'em, download disks for only $5 a pop. Good news: The artists get half the cash.

Media Search Engines: SingingFish and Altavista Audio are both good and, according to Tech-Recipes.com, the following search command will use Google to “find open directories with MP3 files with Pearl Jam [or whoever]. Obviously you can change the band name or file type to better define your search”... -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "pearl jam". If that’s too much work for you, you can just use WebJay to grab music directly from playlists compiled by users that scour the web for MP3s to stream (and download) from the WebJay on-site player.

The Mobius Mixdown: Every week, Dan "Mobius" Sieradski airs a groovy mix on Israel & Palestine radio station 107.2FM, Radio All For Peace. Then, the entire set (usually 15 songs), is released online as a single MP3. The eclectic shows have have included music by Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sparklehorse, Van Morrison, DJ Dangermouse, Funki Porcini, Ladytron, Kimya Dawson, Ween, and more. See the Mixdown section of the OrthodoxAnarchist website for full set-lists and MP3 files of each and every show.

Mocking Music: Euphonic album links and song downloads are used to spike the punch of this blog's rummy, satiric discourse.

MP3Dimension: A search engine and user-updated database of free (but not always legal) MP3 files located online. The site has some bugs and incorrectly labeled files, but otherwise it seems to be legit.

Multi-Source P2P Proggies: A trusty commentator on my site has heartily recommended TrustyFiles, a slightly bulky but useful program that combines the power of the Gnutella (Bearshare/Limewire) and FastTrack (Kazaa) networks with a BitTorrent client. However, the Yodas at FileSharingPlace.com have recommended using KCeasy instead, because TrustyFiles, while dependable, is associated with the P2P-regulating DCIA. KCeasy, by comparison, is committed to battling the darkside. Just add the giFT-FastTrack plugin to KCeasy and you'll be able to scour the Gnutella, OpenFT, and FastTrack networks all at once. Personally, I'm lovin' every minute I spend on KCeasy. A similar option is the in-progress proggie giFTwin32. For your Apple Mac, check out The Poisoned Project.

Negativebeats.com: Is reportedly riddled with spyware and evil cookies. The same goes for Positivebeats.com and most other free music sites that force you to download software or a browser plugin in order to download music. Stay away. I'm not even gonna link 'em here, even though they appear to have a lot of music available--'cause they're bad news.

NellieMckay.net: Serves up a healthy serving of live tracks from the bubbly, idiosyncratic songstress Nellie McKay.

NME: Blistering British music news and the occasional free MP3 (and some streaming albums and concerts).

Pandora: Alright, so Pandora won't help you add to you MP3 collection, but it's an amazing website nonetheless. After landing on the homepage of this deceptively simple webspot, you merely type in the name of a band you like, and Pandora, accessing the knowledge of the Music Genome Project (MGP) and it's own database of legal-to-stream tunes, finds either a song from the band you're looking for or a track from a sonically like-minded act. While it streams the track to your headphones, it begins compiling a list of other songs that MGP thinks you'll like, and then plays the tunes in the form of a personalized radio station. In TiVo-like fashion, you can rate each of the songs being played, which further informs Pandora about your likes and dislikes. And you can add more band names to your list. Very quickly, Pandora has nailed your musical tastes; from then on, every time you log in you'll be confronted by an individualized radio station that not only plays most of your favorite bands, it plays tracks that you'll love even though you've never, ever even heard of half the acts. It makes mistakes, to be sure, but the more songs you rate and the more bands you add, the more accurate Pandora becomes. Creepily so: It often knows what you like before you know what you like. Sound quality? High. Cost? Free (for now). Ease of use? Superb. (Similar music-streaming services include AccuRadio and Last FM -- but AccuRadio didn't behave very well with my FireFox browser or my firewall, and Last FM charges a subscription fee).

Pearsall's Tunes: Dance/techno mixer Pearsall Helms stays on top of the mix-master world in his music blog, posting some MP3s and advocating for other club/rave/techno blogs like Autonomic for the People, Bassnation, Blackdown, Chantelle Fiddy's World of Grime, Drumz of the South, Freaky Trigger, Ghetto Postage, Gutter Breakz, Kode 9, Love Ecstasy Crime, Silver Dollar Circle, and hip-hop blogs Can't Stop Won't Stop, Government Names, Houston So Real, and We Eat So Many Shrimp.

Pitchfork: Informed, intelligent, and irreverent indie music news, reviews, and, yes, free tracks.

Podtropolis: Legal and illegal torrent files, including video podcasts, audio podcasts, TV shows, and films.

PopMatters: How very indie. And how very, very free. This dependable online culture zine -- in association with Filter Magazine -- coughs up a small new handful of cherry-picked MP3s, videos, trailers, streaming media, and media links once or twice a week on their PopMatters Music Downloads page.

Pure Volume: You have to join PV before getting access to the tunes and forums, but once you sign up (it's free, yo) it's non-stop fun, boys and girls! Run by Unborn Media, the site's mission is to provide an online venue for unsigned bands and small indie labels -- currently, over 100,000 tracks are ready for download. Pure Volume is like a slick version of the old-school, buggy Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA).

Radio Podcasts: Lots of radio stations are now offering quality podcasts (radio-type or mixtape-style broadcasts packaged into single MP3 files) -- download the shows to your PC, put 'em on your ipod, keep, delete 'em, whatever. It's hot. And usually free. Check out, for instance, KCRW Podcasts, BBC Radio, and Australia's ABC and Triple J (JJJ), the latter featuring the brilliantly funny and insightful Sunday Night Safran ("Religion, Politics, and Hoochies" with John Safran and Father Bob). For groundbreaking new music, the two top dogs in the U.S. are probably KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic (MBE) and NPR's All Songs Considered. KCRW also keeps delivering the goods with the Music Exchange podcast, which teams MBE host Nic Harcourt with BBC Radio's Steve Lamacq (the new John Peel, some might say). Many other web-based shows abound, including Whole Wheat Radio's streaming ultra-indie broadcasts and "audio magazine" downloads. Or visit Odeo to search podcasts by topic.

Sonic Sunset: A weekly streaming radio broadcast also available as MP3 files, Sonic Sunset features funk-house-electro DJ mixes built upon "a wide variety of funky futuristic records from all styles and years, inspired by Detroit's seminal open-minded radio DJs."

Songzilla's Digital M4 Music Blog: In addition to unique music news and analysis, Songzilla presents an MP3 tool that aggregates "promotional Internet releases for the shared benefit of the listener and artist." Translation: free MP3s. (The last time I checked, the music aggregator drop-down menus were not working very well, especially with Firefox. But when it works it's muy nifty.)

Stylus Magazine: Subtitled "The Needle and the Damage Done," Stylus features a couple of MP3 links in it's daily styPod blog.

Sub Pop Records: The fabled independent record label unleashes fistfuls of free MP3s to everyone they can.

Superburst Mixtapes: Comic-book legend Warren Ellis curates exquisite sets of tunes.

Take Your Medicine: A great new music blog providing sizzlin' indie and Brit pop/rock tracks, including MP3s from Kate Bush, Badly Drawn Boy, Bell And Sebastian, Ash, et al.

Various BitTorrent Sites: File Soup features BitTorrent info, forums, and advice; isoHunt is a dynamite torrent search engine; Torrent Reactor provides links to thousands of torrents; LiteZone.com ranks and categorizes other BitTorrent websites; and Hypertorrent is another decent torrent search engine. Also good: Mininova.org, MyBittorrent, #BT on EFnet, TorrentSpy, and TorrentBox. Note, however, that due to server overload and legal problems, many of these sites appear and disappear regularly.

VicChesnutt.com presents a healthy smattering of tracks from the inimitable Vic, who's worked with eccentric legends like Van Dyke Parks, covered eccentric legends like Daniel Johnston, and been lauded by R.E.M. legends like Michael Stipe.

Weezer Tunes: WeezerNation has more rare =W= tracks than a cow has tits (demos, B-sides, covers, promos, oh my! Just click on "media" and then "audio"); the Weezer Bootleg Archive has hundreds of live tracks (although the site is known to disappear now and again); Weezer 101 provides lots of band-related news along with links to other websites that have media files from the Weez; Weezer Riff-Raff at Weezed.com has a sparkling collection of =W= rarities in its A/V section, where you can check out Weezer singer-songwriter-god Rivers Cuomo's acoustic crush-tribute to my good friend Ann Poonkasem, a.k.a. the Annie/Ann Tapes, a.k.a. the banned Rivers MySpace.com Posts (Note: Weezer Riff-Raff cycles through offered songs and does not always have downloads available); finally, visit the BitTorrent forums at WeezerForum.com. Also, if you dig the Weez, you must also adore Matt Sharp and the Rentals, so check out the Rental's rare tracks at Citizen Lowell and Seven More Minutes, nick a couple of solo promo tracks at In Music We Trust Records, and visit MattSharp.net in case the former Weezer bassist-songwriter is feeling generous in his "downloads" section.

The Wikipedia MP3 Blog Page: Lists off lots blogs that supply the world with free MP3s, including FluxBlog.org (formerly the newflux.blogspot), which doles out rock and pop; Aurgasm, an "eclectic menagerie of aural pleasures"; Cocaine Blunts & Hip-Hop Tapes, which smokes out some hip-hop files; Scissorkick, featuring "moody sounds for headphones and dance floors"; Soul Sides, "music for rhythm addicts"; Tofu Hut, which attempts to give forgotten music "resurrection and due recognition"; music (for robots), which is just too cool for words; Teaching the Indie Kids To Dance Again, the best-named music blog on the planet; No Frontin', "a music, politics, and culture blog"; and various audioblogs, podcasting sites, and music webzines. More audio blogs can be found at the MP3Blogs Aggregator.

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Related: GoingWare's Legal Music Downloads article, featuring hundreds of links, tips, and ideas for grabbing tunes online.

More TK (that means "more to come," for you non-publishing-industry folk out there). Drop a comment below if I'm missing any good MP3 info, and I'll add it to the list.

Hi-Tech/Lo-Tech: Surviving the End of Times (When the shit hits the fan, Armageddon it on!)

2005-03-02T22:11:00.000-05:00

Listen, I’ve been to a Solider of Fortune convention before and it’s a bunch of chain-smoking deadbeat dads with dark circles under their eyes and a belief that a limited-edition 12-inch blade (and officially licensed movie merchandise) will save their truck from getting snapped up by the repo man. And that Patriots Guide to Survival handbook you got from Aunt Sandy? Well, as much as I like duck tape, you’ve just gotta realize you’ll need a little more to survive in the future. Will Cosmo Girl save you? Naw—when the shit goes down and Johnny and Luther Htoo are trying to run a "Rambo II" reenactment on your scalp, only Celebrity Cola will leave you prepared.

[Note: Celebrity Cola is not actually suggesting that you buy into any of the products, organizations, or ideas listed below. This piece was originally written for a counter-culture music/lifestyle magazine, but the publication got canceled before this issue ever went to press. The article’s concept was to poke fun at the usual “cool new products that you must buy” section that’s so often found at the beginning of most magazines. You know, that front-of-book part of glossies where the editors plug their sponsors under the guise of an article called “Makeup you can’t live without!” or “Cool New Gadgets Men Love!” That being said, the following list does contain some gobsmacking cool shit.]

Hi-tech:

Bow-Lingual: Remember how in “A Boy and His Dog” good ol’ Don Johnson’s only reliable sidekick is his telepathic talking-dog, Blood, who helps him scout out food and women? Well now your dog can help you scout out the post-apocalyptic landscape as well. With Bow-Lingual the only friend you have left will be able hold a rudimentary converstaion. At least you’ll know what he thinks of your plan to rig a radio transmitter to the water tower...

Yumemi Koubou: Japanese for “Dream Viewing Workshop,” this handy little multi-sensory device will help you sleep peacefully even after all hell has broken loose. Plus, if used properly, you’ll be able to program yourself and you’re your friends in great Manchurian Candidate style, insuring you don’t all go insane.

No-Contact Jacket: stylish, chic, and wired with 80,000 volts of low-amperage electric current. Put this puppy on and you can dance all night at the club without boys grabbing at your hoo-ha’s.

Neoterik’s Np2131k Gas Mask: anyone in a gas mask is vaguely sexy in an end-of-the-Earth kind of way. And whether the Russians are coming or your roommate’s just eaten too much chili, having this baby around could be mighty helpful. Plus, it’s specially designed to allow you to keep talking without the normal gas-mask annoyance of a muffled voice.

SOLAR SCOTTeVEST: When the power goes out all your shit can still be powered. This jacket has thin solar panels sewn into the fabric that allow you to connect and recharge all your gadgets. You can even tear off the sleeves and rock it “Invasion USA” style. But if you need more power, check out the portable, lightweight SolarRoll at www.brunton.com.

Garmin GPS Rino 130: When you can’t trust anyone to give you directions, you can count on satellite readings to help you out. The Rino 130 includes an electronic compass, barometric sensor, a weather receiver for seven NOAA weather channels, and a detailed map of North and South America. Oh, and did I mention it’s a walkie-talkie? You can communicate with the other radio holder up to two miles away.

Steri-Pen: This “Pocket-Sized, Ultraviolet Water Disinfection System” is a portable water purifier that will destroy all those pesky viruses and bacterium the enemy may have slipped into our water system. Plus, if you’re in Mexico, it’ll keep you from getting the runs. UV sterilization is used by hospitals around the world to disinfect water and contaminated instruments, while the U.S. military sometimes prefers the MIOX Purifier, which uses salt instead of UV light.

Z-Medica’s QuikClot: Used by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, Z-Medica's blood-clotting powder only costs about $20 a dose. Good for serious skateboarding accidents, knife wounds, and Zombie bites, although there’s no guarantee you won’t turn into a zombie if infected.

HUMMER Shake Flashlight: specially designed to capitalize on the growing strength of your wank wrist. Jostle it back and forth to charge.

Low-Tech:

The Zombie Survival Guide: Most hokey survival books take the perspective of someone out in the woods alone. Chances are, when the end comes, you’ll be trapped in a city and everyone is hungry and desperate. At this point, most people will be behaving like crazed zombies. Or perhaps mutant viruses and radiation exposure will actually spawn flesh-hungry zombies. Author Max Brooks (son of Mel) teaches you how to cope.

Ted Nugent’s Gonzo Meat Biltong: The worst part about being vegan is having to deal with all the patchouli and hair braids every time you go shopping for food at the co-op. That and knowing a delicious cheeseburger would be really good for your hangover. As your chances of obtaining tofurky dwindles, you might want to consider Ted Nugget’s D.I.Y. ethos of “If you kill it, you can eat it.” Even Ian Mackay can respect this. What’s the problem? Yeah, like you’re more punk than Ian Mackay? In the meantime, stuff some of the Nuge’s special-recipe beef jerky down your throat. (We're sorry to announce that this product has been discontinued, but we figure there must be a warehouse of unsold Gonzo Meat Biltong out there somewhere. We’re not sure where you buy this stuff, but we want it—bad.)

Nuclear War Survival Skills, by Cresson H. Kearny, is a practical guide for the nuclear-paranoid that shows you how to quickly and simply build such useful things as fallout shelters and radiation meters using mostly household items. So if a warhead hits the mainland before you’ve built your own underground lair, you better have this book in your bedroom or your skin is going to get so nasty even Botox won’t help. Fpr extra credit, read The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, Gonzo Gizmos: Projects and Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek, and Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things to learn how to turn a penny into a radio or use lemons to make a battery.

Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS): For 14 days you’ll hike across rugged mountains in deserts in southern Utah, with no food or water except for what you find. The emphasis is on knowledge and low-tech techniques for survival. Added bonus: Hikers often lose up to 20 pounds from their fat asses.

GSI Vortex Blender: Electricity gone? Black clouds of doom keeping your solar panels from working? Don’t fret! The GSI Vortex will keep the frozen daiquiris coming, since this hand-cranked beauty easily spins it’s stainless steel blade at 7,000 rpm. Now if only you can find some ice and booze...

PB-V3/PB-207 Blue Flame Pocket Micro Torch: An old-fashioned lighter with the heat turned up a notch. Light your ciggies in high-wind conditions, start a campfire in the rain, solder together a make-shift radio, melt a lead pipe into a spear, and heat your soup with this hand-held 1,300 degree Celsius flame. Fits in your pocket, as does the similarly ultra-hot Mini-Bunsen Burner. Try not to burn your lips off. (Or see ThinkGeek.com for a lighter that doesn’t light shit but does take digital pix)

Cold Steel’s Special Forces Shovel: modeled after the original Soviet Spetznaz army shovels, this combat spade will enable you to dig a bomb shelter lickety-split. The edges are axe-grade and can chop through tough roots and enemy necks. The heat-treated carbon steel can be sharpened for extra slicing power. Plus, it makes for a nice frying pan. (More combat shovels can be found at www.bynoon.com/survive.html)

Kurt Saxon: A former Nazi, Satanist, UFO cultist, Scientologist, and spiritualist (among other pursuits), Saxon is now a octogenarian that believes he’s transcended racism, religion, and politics. He sees himself as a modern-day Buddha and Survivalist, although he hints that Muslims might be Martians and still harbors some extremist views. But then again, he’ll also tell you how to turn corn or cheap wine into 90-proof alcohol (great drinking and good fuel!) using a pressure-cooker or turkey-fryer as a moonshine still. Check out his books and CDs for useful survival info and weird-ass ramblings.

Gore-Tex & Wind Stopper Outerwear: Ugg boots offer sheepskin/wool simplicity that elicits a saucy caveman vibe, but outside of Aussie footwear it seems surprisingly difficult to find decent prehistoric-style attire. Come to think of it, it’s hard to find sheep-based products at all in the U.S. The last time I was Down Under every decent restaurant and dirty hole-in-the-wall offered up lamb, and sheep’s brains were the delicacy de résistance. That’s true troglodyte chic, and Australian clothing is desperately needed for this whole modern-primate esprit de corps. But until the fashion world realizes that we all want to dress like Crocodile Dundee in a snowstorm, the miraculously waterproof products utilizing Gore-Tex and Wind Stopper technology will at least keep us dry, warm, and looking rugged.

—by Lucas Brachish & Byron Karl

New Blog Carnival Showcase Extravaganza No. 2

2005-02-21T17:33:00.000-05:00

The following are all brand-new blogs -- except for a few that aren't really brand new, but are still kinda new, so I've included them in this showcase anyway, 'cause I like 'em.

Please, check these sites out; be kind and give a couple of them a link or blogroll 'em; and email them some comments and suggestions while they're still young and impressionable.

(Hint: If you'd rather not leave Celebrity Cola while looking at the various blogs in the showcase, simply hold down on the SHIFT key on your keyboard while clicking on any of the links below. That way, the blogs will open up in a new window.)

And now, let the showcase begin! This is all good stuff:

Arizona Perspective and Junk covers news and events, uniquely Arizona info, and other interesting things (such as science, culture, cooking, and the arts).

Bobo Blogger rants about a lot of stuff, including the recent suit filed on behalf of Tsunami victims.

Catoptrophobe Nightmare is the online journal of a NYC law student, with the usual roundup of news and rants.

Circadiana is a blog dedicated to the study of biological timing, including circadian (and other) rhythms and clocks, as well as the biology of sleep.

Don't Touch the Feet is a mixture of personal rants, musings on celebrity culture, and "things about my friends that make me laugh" -- all sprinkled with appropriate doses of outrage and humor, and tended to "with the care of an orchid gardener."

Flaming Duck is the home of a Virginia-based, Republican, ex-navy nuclear submarine sailor, who is now working in local government. The blog comments on global, national, and local news and politics, while explaining why the U.S. political system is better than anyone else's.

At Haiku 4 You, Mr. Haiku writes a new poem every day (in the epigrammatic Japanese verse form of three short lines, of course). The haikus document everything from personal events to the death of Hunter S. Thompson, with useful links embedded in the verse.

HerWryness attempts to find "fulfillment and the forbearance of faith while living with Fibromyalgia, Fatigue and Arthritis." Also, discover why she is "tired to death of the word journey."

Hill Country Views is composed of ramblings from the Texas hill country, from a self-proclaimed "liberal conservative." Read his article on the "Surprising and Unreported Trend In Family Size."

Komputa Muso (The Musings on a Theme of "Sod Themes" Sorta Theme) is from some funny Irish bloke who does go on about anything and everything... including the urination habits of men in public bathrooms.

Liberty Cadre is a United Kingdom-based libertarian site that offers positive, practical suggestions on how to help the U.K. Libertarian cause, as well as focusing on liberty issues in
Europe and the world beyond.

Lockjaw's Lair writes about politics and current events, including the difference between the "Mainstream Media (MSM) and the Blogosphere."

Maggie's Farm is an eccentric, idiosyncratic blog concerning news and politics, written from the perspective of "skeptical, politically centrist" humans and animals.

My Meandering Thoughts explores love, politics, and personal musings in an attempt to "start a dialogue with people from other countries and cultures."

Non-religious.com covers topics important to atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists ("the world's fourth largest belief system with 850 million people") in a format that seems to be part blog and part traditional website resource.

Dean Abbott's Notes and Meditations is devoted to pop culture, travel, science, religion, technology, the arts, and history -- but Dean also gives a thorough analysis of what Debbie Gibson appearing in Playboy really means.

Pratie Place doesn't "write about Iraq or kitties," opting instead to cover such diverse topics as religion in Transylvania, strange verbs in England, and the demolishing of the Great Wall of China.

Quid Nimis ("something in excess") is a political blog with a dash of humor. For instance, the site wonders if a woman wearing a short skirt can really be called "torture."

Slipshod and Simple chronicles the whims and opinions of a frustrated writer living in East Hampton, NY. With a bit o' wit, he drops info on everything from TV to technology.

The Sorest Loser answers questions such as "Should Steroids be Illegal?" and "Is Our Military Targeting Journalists?" with thoughtful, original essays.

Stupid Beautiful Lies is the "outlet for a twenty-something musician hidden deep in the nation of Canada," tracking such diverse topics as a scientist finding God (this story appears to be a fake, hoax, or misleading meme) and why Mediocrity Sells.

Technudge is an "irreverent smack at technology with sprinklings of puns and humor" from the former writer of the old Hard Edge column at Computer Shopper (as well as being the Bill at aliceandbill.com, which was written with Alice Hill from Real Tech News).

Universal Acid is about biology and politics and covers such topics as the non-existent link between the MMR vaccine and autism, the reasons one might have for opposing reproductive cloning, and the Larry Summers "innate gender differences" and science controversy.

Witnit takes "humorous analysis of relatively inconsequential things to a hyperbolic extreme."

And, finally, WuzzaDem keeps a close and satiric eye on the world of politics and the political media, with posts such as "Eason Jordan's Checkered Past."

***

New Blog Carnival Showcase Extravaganzas have been or will be hosted by the following blogs in 2005:

Feb 14 - Simon World
Feb 21 - Lucas Brachish
Feb 28 - Karin
Mar 7 - Sadie
Mar 14 - Josh Cohen
Mar 21- Snooze Button Dreams
Mar 28 - Mookie
April 4 - Disintegrator
Apr 11 - Ogre's View
Apr 18 - Nerf Coated World
May 9 - Baboon Pirates

For updates to this list, or to sign up to host a future showcase, visit Munuviana's showcase headquarters. To enter your new blog into the showcase, choose the week you'd like to be featured, and then visit that week's host for more details.

Related Post: The New Blog Showcase entry rules (for the Celebrity Cola edition of the above showcase) and a proposed “slightly older blogs that people need to read” showcase.

When Sitcoms Make You Weep

2005-02-18T13:57:00.000-05:00

I just received a strange and poignant email from a close friend of mine who’s known in certain circles as Johnny K. Thunder. He has never, ever sent me a chain letter or a mass-email or asked me to commit to a pyramid scheme. But now, after a decade of friendly, personal emails, he has discovered a New Lord Almighty. And so he’s deemed it necessary to share the faith:

Greetings everyone,

I don’t usually do the mass email thing, but I’m asking for a simple favor—a sad, mournful plea—please take some time every Sunday night and watch the Fox show “Arrested Development.” I know there are more important things out there in the world, but when it comes to Television, quality is eroding more and more each season. It’s getting to the point that you have to turn to premium cable to find good television, such as HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Sopranos,” but last season we were given a gift on Sundays and that gift was “Arrested Development.”

This show became the Great New Sitcom and it couldn’t have come at a better time. When we’re not being bombarded with low-rent reality shows, we have to deal with hackneyed sitcoms that star has-been comedians or shows that have an overweight slob married to some gorgeous woman who in real life would be way out of his league. We know everybody loves Raymond, we live in the world according to Jim, we accept that Damon Wayans has a wife and kids. Been there done that— but then along comes a thing of beauty floating through our screens on Sunday nights.

If you haven’t seen “Arrested Development,” it’s simple: It’s brilliant. It gives you everything: highbrow lowbrow, lowbrow highbrow, and lowbrow done in highbrow style. It’s not hard to pick up the deceptively simple storyline (they explain it in the opening credits), but you’re rewarded if you continue to watch additional episodes, with clever references to past episodes hidden snuggly away in every new script.

After a few weeks, you’ll pick up on the thousands of little jokes—and each episode is worth repeated viewing because you discover a cornucopia of subtle inside jokes you missed the first time. All this, and yet each episode stands on its own.

But now, in its second season, it’s threatened with cancellation once again.

I like the “The Simpsons” and all, but it’s the sitcom of the 20th century. “Arrested” is the 21st century sitcom. “Arrested” is new, different, better. Tell all of your friends about the show, and force them to watch it (at gunpoint, if necessary) because in order to save it, we need viewers. You can also go to the Fox website and petition them to keep the show, but I recommend you do it after watching a few episodes—that way, your message will be more heartfelt.

Also, rent or buy the first season DVD collection. Trust me: You won’t be disappointed. The DVDs are real cheap compared to most DVD sets, and the show works even better without commercial breaks. Get it in widescreen digital if you can find it. And with your purchase you’ll send a message to the suits out there in TV land. A memorandum that we’re tired of seeing has-been celebrities living in a house and trying to figure out the grocery bills, we’re tired of karaoke singers trying to get multimillion dollar music deals, we’re tired of hunks building houses for kids with no bones. We’re tired of rich debutantes mocking us simple folk. We’re also tired of Ryan Seacrest. Wait; maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the one tired of Ryan Seacrest.

“Arrested” might get cancelled, but we can at least try to save it. Let’s do it! You and me, together. Like old war buddies, reliving the glory days. Even if you're downloading this show commercial-free via illegal BitTorrent sharing, make sure you spread the Good Word of the "Arrested" Gospel. And if you're part of Nielsen Media Research's worldwide lab-rat TV sample team, leave your damn remote firmly pointed at this show, and this show only.

This crazy little sitcom makes me forget I live in a trailer with a three-legged, one-eye dog with the cutest eye patch you’ve ever seen. There I said it. Please, I beg you: Don’t abandon me with bad TV.

Thanks,

Johnny K. Thunder

An awkward moment for Will Arnett as
George Oscar 'Gob' Bluth II, in banana costume.
In the air. With crane.
(You had to be there. It was funny.
I swear: It was, it was.)

***

Now, trip down memory lane with Mitchell Hurwitz as he discusses the down-and-dirty details of working on sitcoms— including his creation of the absolutely staggeringly brilliant "Arrested Development"—with The Onion A.V. Club.

***

GetArrested.com
SaveOurBluths.com