Category Archives: Technology

Podcast Reviews update

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I have some cool stuff this time. One of the best things about the way that I listen to podcasts (which is, if I like something, I like to listen from the very first show) is that you have the benefit of history to know how things evolved (further than the people talking know at the time). For example, I started listening to TWIT (in the middle, at Ep. 173) and realized that I hadn’t listened to it from the beginning. It’s one of the few that I just listen here or there. So, I decided to start listening from the beginning (they are close to Ep. 400 now, SIGH). (Also, they list it on their website as 2004, but I think it’s 2005, so that’s what I’m writing in the notes.)

Very funny because Kevin Rose is a regular contributor, and it’s before he even created Diggnation. (Which I’ve already been reviewing from the beginning.)

So, here are some updates to what I’ve been listening to. BTW, I only comment/list/give show notes to stuff that I find interesting. There are whole tons of stuff (especially on TWIT) that I’m not going to even mention, but there is also gold in these hills. Hopefully I mined a bit of it for you to get motivated to check out the episode.

So, here you go.

THE NERDIST

11. Eugene Mirman Part 1. Eugene Mirman. How comics have a hard time getting on TV anymore. Mirman talks about wanting to go on Kimmel. Chris: “To TV, minorities are, by default, characters.” How the “mouth breathers” off of Hollywood Blvd. “don’t know where to focus.” Hard and Phirm had a hard time getting them to focus when they were on Kimmel. Chris: “I feel like there are Mermanites all over the place.” About the dangers of performing in clubs with bands. Opening for Cake, people were just chanting “Cake, Cake, Cake.” About dealing with network censors with comedy. About being Russian. About writing a book in Amherst, Mass. The “pussy comic.” “Amherst: A Place Some Find Dull, Others Adore.” (found on the billboard) Not wanting to offend Dave Matthews (don’t listen, Dave!).

…& God’s Pottery Part 2. God’s Pottery. (First, are these guys for real? I couldn’t tell through the whole thing.) “We take a drug called sunshine in the morning.” Discussing slide whistles. Two Christian comics. Chris asks them if they are a couple. “We are a couple of fun guys.” Chris: “Your T-shirt does say ‘Virginity Rocks.'” They chastise Chris because he said “tit.” They talk about wearing sandals, as a “nod to the big man, J-Dog.” He talks about how falling on his head is what caused him to see Jesus. “Similarly, that’s how time travel was invented.” They perform songs. “Mexicans are the leading exporters of smiles.” “CongratuLatinos.” They talk about girls/women. “We really support them in their cause.” Chris: “What is their cause?” “It goes back to the original Adam and Eve. Eve took the first risk, and kinda messed things up a little bit.” “The title is ‘Women Are People Too.'” Chris: “They’ll be thrilled to know that.” “What a nice nod to the glass ceiling.” Chris: “Do you have groupies?” “Hey, hugging’s good, but hey, you gotta be careful. Sometimes it’s a gateway hug.” Chris: “Is it not OK to masturbate?” “IT IS NOT OK.” “We’re on Tweeter. God’s Pottery is the handle.” “How do you guys feel about poking on Facebook?” “It’s a slippery slope. You start with one poke, and then you’ve got a super poke.” “We support urban music.” “His blackness is not a big deal.” “We don’t see color, except for rainbows.” “We often play a game, ‘Who Loves Jesus More?’; that can get a little heated.”

12. OK Go! “Transvestites are a lot like Netflix’s subgenres. It just gets very very detailed for no apparent reason.” “Is Real Sports like Real Sex?” “Less titties.” Chris: “I think it’s cool….You never know what people are going to respond to on Twitter.” “There’s two ways to look at the dissolution of the music industry… the structures people got paid by are all shrinking or disappearing or imploding… there’s no set way to go about doing it… There’s a way up the ladder. Now, there isn’t that system. The good thing about that, with the dissolution of the mode of distribution, you also have the dissolution of all the creative barriers that were built into it. Or, the types of creativity that grew to flourish in that system. Music videos in 1985 were advertisements. They were paid for by record labels to sell CDs…. in 1994, the artist in that video was akin to a Toyota in a Toyota commercial. The reason they had to be so specific… MTV played 50 or 100, 200 things a year. It was a very tight playlist. If that was your only outlet… There’s an arms race to be the most demographically suitable. If you don’t keep eyes glued to the screen that will then go out and buy skating sneakers, you’re off.” Chris: “I hosted a show on MTV in the 90s, and…we’d get complaints from people… no one watches video shows anymore. They’re the lowest rated shows on television. That’s why they put programming on.” “When the distribution system falls apart, you don’t have those rules anymore. You make something that’s interesting, other people like it, and you’re done…There’s these new creative spaces that open up, because you don’t have those rules anymore.” Chris: “There was always shitty art. It just didn’t survive cause it was shitty.” Ghostbusters vs. I Want a New Drug. Weird Al Yankovic. “He’s paying more attention to what’s going on in the world than anyone I know.” About the treadmill video. “The video cost about $5000. The biggest cost was buying treadmills and returning them, they wouldn’t buy them back at full cost…. There’s really no reason to have a temporary treadmill in your life.” USC vs. UCLA. The TEDX conference. “Wonder is a good drug.” Treadmill video got 50 million views. Chris: “If you can’t see something on the Internet… we get really mad.” “Whose Tube?” The paint thing. Praise for the guy who did the Steadicam work on the Rube Goldberg video. “The fairy tale with the chick who sleeps on the pea?… I was gonna say Rapunzel, but she’s the one with the sweet hair.” SYYN Labs. I thought that it would take one or two people two or three months. It was two and a half months of design, and three months of building. It went from 10 people on average, to about 60.” Chris: “That’s the best thing about nerd sourcing. They will work for free, just so they can work on this special thing.” “I’ve never seen another Rube Goldberg thing that hits beats like that….” Someone admits they’ve never seen The Matrix or Avatar. (Take away his Nerdist card.) About building stuff out of Leggos. A huge discussion about the Muppets. Chris brags about getting the Muppets videos first. Chris talks about the DVD extras on the Muppet movie, with Jim Henson and Frank Oz scouting locations for the Muppets. About SNL. “Do you interview a lot of people who don’t love what they do?” “Now the community we can have with our fans is so much more robust, and so much more interesting.” RE: 8-bit porn “I can’t masturbate to that more than six times, and then, you’re done.” “You see Chun Li’s baloney muffin?” “There’s nothing about being first to use technology anymore.” Chris: “Your videos are all good analog achievements.” “You could do a whole separate podcast about puns.” “We broke away from EMI two and a half weeks ago… It’s great for us in so many ways. We don’t focus on selling records, we focus on making stuff. They are in the business of selling records… We obviously think in a very different way than that… They sort of have to figure out a new way to do business…” Chris: “I think of the record industry like a guy who was really hot in the 70s.” “It’s not a metaphor. It’s like two dozen of those guys.” FOUR STARS

This Week in Tech

0. TWIT, the Pilot (Jan. 17, 2005) Leo and Dave Prager at MacWorld 2005. Kevin Rose can’t hear. Roger Chang. Patrick Norton and his wife Sarah. About buying a Mac Mini. KR: “Did you see the keynote, Leo? That Sony might acquire Apple?” (Steve Jobs) Leo: “Jobs didn’t drop that hint for nothing. There’s definitely something going on.” Leo: “We have a big announcement to make. We have some sort of alliance of former Tech TV people.” Prager… “How would you like to be the VP of marketing?” KR: “We’re all going on different paths, doing different things… there is certain content we just can’t air on G4 anymore… we’re geeks, though… I wanna do more of that…. What I enjoy most is that we were actually teaching people something about technology. It’s so nice to get the emails from people, ‘I learned so much from you guys.’ ” Leo: “(People saying): ‘We want Tech TV back.’ ” Norton could be the “naughty Andy Rooney (online.” Leo: “We wanna get Patrick. We wanna get Yoshi online. Prager, you’re gonna get a website. Roger… he’s at CNET now… Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this podcast. Have a wonderful evening.”

1. TWIT, Episode 1 Is Online. (April 17, 2005) (“Revenge of the Screensavers”/bleeped out) Kevin Rose. Robert Heron. Patrick Norton. Patrick drove from San Francisco to Denver, Colorado. Driving in the dust. “The only person who’s gainfully employed in television here is Kevin Rose.” Leo is too, but “only” in Canada. “Screensavers is no longer. It’s now called ‘Attack of the Show.’ ” Leo: “Kevin is also working on his own vanity project, his own offline TV show.” Kevin: “Systm is an old kickback to the old Screensavers, where I focus on one particular subject per episode… 15-20 minutes per episode.” KR: “This is kinda the grown-up Broken. More mainstream.” They talk about displaying beer during the TV show. KR: “We wanna keep it also online… We can go really geeky, really take our time, and not have to worry about dumbing it down.” Leo to Robert (about Tech TV): “Do you miss it?” Robert: “After seeing firsthand how TV is really just about numbers in Los Angeles, it makes me realize how special that whole environment was we had in San Francisco at that time.” Leo: “Yeah, we were ignorant.” KR: “It’s a completely different environment down here than it was in San Francisco…. Our owners enjoyed tech. We were constantly having to trim a lot of that out. You weren’t even getting enough information to make it worthwhile… What they want me to focus on Attack of the Show is some of the dark tip stuff….” Leo talks about how Edison developed the first electric chair. He thought it would be a more humane way to die.  Leo: “As it turns out, unless you think have flames spurting from your ears humane, it’s not the most humane way to execute people.” Leo: “I don’t know exactly what this show, this “Revenge of the Screensavers” is going to be. It’s fun to just sit around and talk. Right now, we’re using Skype to do it. We’ve got four people. The quality is good.” Leo: “Certain privileges accrue to the person that owns the mixer.” Leo showed his son a payphone in Paris. “This is history.” They discuss cell phone carriers. They all prefer Verizon. “Where’s the Joni Mitchell?” Leo: “I make sure I don’t take any dirty pictures. Or I delete them right away.” KR: “Thanks for sharing.”  Leo: “Isn’t this walkie-talkie thing stupid?” Leo: “Who wants to sit with loud-mouthed boring people for six hours?” About people talking loud on cell phones. Leo: “What’s your favorite gadget right now, Kevin Rose?” KR: “A miniature camcorder.” Leo: “Is it secret that you do Digg?” KR: “No, people pretty much know.” Leo: “I love it… It’s one better than Slashdot. It’s become really better and better. I use it as part of my news beat check, cause I get stuff that doesn’t show up anywhere else. What’s your plans with that? You gonna grow it?” KR: “All my nights and weekends, I spend working on it. We’re in the process of redesigning little portions of it. It’ll create dynamic RSS feeds for your friends. Just what your friends are digging throughout the day.” Leo: “That’s the future, isn’t it?” Leo mentions wanting to do video at some point with the show. “Better audio.” Leo: “Frankly, I don’t think video adds anything at this point… but maybe down the road.” Leo: “I have nothing against G4 or Charles Hirshhorn…. I don’t think those of us who were involved in it have the same feelings those who watched it did… I don’t think Tech TV is ever gonna come back. That’s long gone.”

2. TWIT, Episode 2 Is Online. (April 24, 2005) They are still calling it Revenge of the Screensavers. Patrick Norton: “At least one of our former coworkers is making a fair amount of money.” Leo: “I know which one… This is the thing that bugs me. Wall Street Journal outed (tech guys) for saying they’d been paid for appearances… Remember Gadget Girl? We found out that her flights were being paid for by one of the companies, and we said, ‘Sorry, you can’t come back.’ ” Napoleon Dynamite? KR: “Not a big fan.” They talk about Tiger and BitTorrent. I got a Cease and Desist letter from G4, saying, “You can’t use the name.” They decide to throw it to the users, to come up with a name. They offer prizes for a good name. Leo: “People are very happy with this podcast. God knows why. Gotta come up with something good every week now.” Leo: “On the set, we’d do LAN parties…. People don’t realize, this was starting to be a problem on the Screensavers set… We’d all be playing Halo 1 (or Halo 2). The TV show was getting in the way.” Leo: “I want to put some content, so it’s not just some guys sitting around talking.” So they talk about some tech. “There’s all these great radio stations coming across Nevada.” Leo: “I just use a little cassette adapter.” Leo: “That’s one of the things about podcasts. It’s for commutes.” Leo asks Kevin about Systm. Revenge of the <BLEEP>…

And then, to really mess everything up…

174. A 10-Ferret Night  Leo is speaking with John Hodgman. Hodgman sent Leo a picture of a ferret. Ferrets are “a good way to warm oneself on a winter night.” Leo: “A 10 ferret night.” They discuss all going to Yale. (Jonathan Coulton has been added to the convo.) The dorms they lived in. John and Jonathan are in Brooklyn. Leo asks if they still play stickball. They say no. They discuss eggnog, as it’s the holidays. Leo thinks it all tastes alcoholic. John says, “The trick is to use alcoholic eggs.” They discuss the gift that John has sent Leo. It’s a bacon scarf. “Do not eat.” They decide to not talk about tech, just celebrate the holidays. “Just tell the truth, and usually, it’s hilarious.” Hodgman continues to describe the origin of the word “noggin.” They continue to explore the origin of the word “piggyback.” Hodgman talks about the word “pygg.” They lose Hodgman on Skype. This progresses to chat about crystal skulls. And then crystal skull vodka. How it’s available in LA, but not NY yet. They speak of Hodgman’s books. “That period in the 90s when we did not speak to each other because I grew a better beard.” “It’s a time when people come together and put aside old arguments and old fake beards schemes, and remind themselves why they like one another.” Leo: “A special holiday edition of TWIT.” “One of them was signed by its creator, Dan Ackroyd. I could not accept such a gift.” Hodgman was a literary agent, and Jonathan was a programmer. Hodgman’s first “job” after being a literary agent was to write an article for Men’s Journal. Leo: “Are you pleased that absinthe has returned to the marketplace?” Hodgman: “It’s the same reason red M&Ms were banned.” Leo: “We’ve got a closet numismatist in our midst. Try saying that fast.” Hodgman: “Some gifts become a kind of burden.” Jonathan: “Holiday Lesson No. 3.” Leo: “Have you seen the video of President Bush dodging the shoe?” Hodgman: “Shoe ducking is a big sport in Texas.”  Jonathan: “Isn’t it duck shoeing?” Leo: “You can’t shoe a duck.” Jonathan: “That’s why it’s a sport.” Leo: “I don’t even like it when they hit him with a pie.” Leo: “If ever I were to field a dodgeball team of former presidents, he would be my first pick.” Leo: (RE the Secret Service) “If they’re fast enough to take a bullet, why can’t they be fast enough to take a shoe?” Jonathan: “They’re not there to jump in front of shoes.” Leo: “I’m told by our chat room that in fact in Iraq it is considered a great insult to throw your shoes.”  Hodgman: “My fans are much more civilized than Jonathan’s.” Leo: “You’re very well-known for The Daily Show, but  probably best known for the Apple switch ads. Do people… Is there a catch phrase? do they say, ‘Hey PC’?” Leo’s advice from his dad: “Rummies have no wind, so don’t worry, you can outrun them…. Never catch the eye of a hobo.” Leo: “What do you call ’em nowadays? Bums?” Hodgman: “Hobo is a very specific subculture…” Leo: “Not all bums are hoboes.” Hodgman:  “In my book..they self-identified as hoboes, and chose a life of wandering and drinking, and wearing the same pants all the time. I’m not talking about the contemporary urban homeless.” Hodgman: “It’s extremely dangerous, actually… There was a hobo serial killer… I don’t advise that to anyone. That’s my holiday gift to the youth.” Leo: “CNN is explaining why the Secret Service did not, in fact, block the shoe. ‘They were in the back room.’ ” Jonathan: “You, unlike a rummy, have plenty of wind.” They argue about the states of New England, and which is better. Jonathan: “I know I should like Bob Dylan. He’s never really excited me.” They talk about Hodgman’s theme song on YouTube. They discuss other boring stuff. “Beat Box Chops is actually the name of his style of beard.” “I thought it was Adam Curry making a mess of things.” “I wasn’t famous enough to get even podcasters to mess with me.” Doing a Podsafe Christmas song.  “Adam… Adam… Adam!” THREE STARS

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Podcast Reviews

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Updating some podcasts that I’ve listened to since I last posted Podcast Reviews.

DIGGNATION

176. Sexy Couch Hologram

Sitting on Kevin’s “sexy couch” in SF. Examining polls. Kevin and Alex talk politics. Barack Obama just got elected. Kevin’s family is all Republicans. He’s the “black sheep.” CA gets a bullet train, from SF to SD. YAY! Kevin talks about taking the Chunnel bullet train. Alex is not into it. Kevin talks about being underwater for half an hour, but is more worried about the BART in SF, which also goes underwater. Alex is claustrophobic. They talked about the early days of the Internet. Being network admins on Novell. Searching for porn on FTP. “Computers aren’t special anymore,” Alex. Whether or not fixing computers is, as Kevin says, “an old person thing.” They want to build robots. Heidi Klum doing an ad for Guitar Hero. It would be better if she actually knew the words. CNN uses a hologram for its political reporting for the election. Kevin just got “Memento.” Some girl pours beer on her breasts to get her nipples hard. Ain’t it great to be a podcaster?

 177. Multiview Diggnation Remix!

Kevin gets glasses. When is the proper time to hit back if a girl’s hitting you. Kevin jokes about snipping off a girl’s nipple. Kevin saw a lot of fights in Vegas. Tyson Foods’ use of antibiotics in chicken. Finding money in a wall in a house. Kevin advises people to keep money that they find, don’t tell anyone. :-0 The “nutsac mode” on your camera. Kevin and Alex are officially geeks. Kevin: “I think spammers are worse than a drug dealer.” Kevin recommends a documentary about the font Helvetica. How to really enjoy cacao nibs. The art of crossbows.

View the remixed version at: www.revision3.com/remix

 178. TikiNation

They are at Alex’s house in LA, and Kevin rips into Alex about “losing his manhood” because his fiancee has placed potpourri there. People from TikiBar are here. Dr. Tiki smiles perfectly for the camera, when the Diggnation boys think he’s going to the bathroom. About having a good chair for your ass when you’re a gamer. A woman gets scammed for $400,000 from one of those email chain letters. Alex likes the Mountain themes in Gmail. Dr. Tiki starts manning the camera. (And he’s good.) Alex’s dog is really cute. So’s Lala, whom Dr. Tiki just panned to. Kevin and Alex both love Golden Girls. They talk about guys who “idolize Ron Jeremy.” Kevin thinks he’s “nasty.” Hanna Montana’s “gummy cocks.” “Midget kick boxing.” “LetMeGoogleThatForYou.” Dot com. First ever: “Technical Difficulties.” Glen is not there today… *sigh* Cool on location sponsors. Kevin and Glen are driving back to San Francisco from LA. Great segment. “Why do I wanna fuck that cat? It better be a girl cat.” –Alex How does one ask a girl out? Men and women have very different opinions. “Do you wanna play Oui?” “All of a sudden, it’s like… zip…” Then, a dream about monkeys crawling over someone. “How could you have that relationship? They’d throw poo at you.” –Alex

 179. Hangovers

Brought to you by “Uno Equis. When Dos Equis is a little too much beer.” Alex and his dog are both hungover. Kevin is, but less so. PC magazine shutting down its print edition. Which magazines Kevin and Alex read. Wired is very popular. They give a secret Twitter account and say they wanna do an episode about their favorite Twitter accounts. Alex’s dog is passed out next to him. They talk about the car company bailouts. Kevin wants cool tech in his car that updates automatically via Bluetooth. They have to leave early because, you know, Alex needs to throw up.

KEVIN POLLAK’S CHAT SHOW 

27, part 2. Paul F. Tompkins Kevin gives Guy Kawasaki some shit at BlogWorld, apparently. Kevin loves the Blogess. About his beginnings in comedy. Another guy wearing black. Sigh. I hate the now “Oprah, Paris or Demi” game. Horrible, all these interruptions from the crew. About watching TV shows on DVD. TWO STARS

THE NERDIST

8. Jim Gaffigan. The Nerdist crew is talking a lot in this one. How doing TV doesn’t sell a ticket (to a comedy show) anymore. The Encyclopedia Britannica of comedy. How Gaffigan writes with his wife. I’m biased by the fact that Jim Gaffigan bores the crap outta me, so sorry, I’m zoning out now. TWO STARS

 9. Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park. Chris breaks out the Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. Upping the ante on the OK Go video. How much cooler it would’ve been to be a rock star in the 70s. Do we have to do everything? Having a bowling father vs. a rocket scientist father. Is it essential to have a marketing background to be in a band? Mike was really late joining Twitter. Comparing blogs. How MSM (and band management) doesn’t understand YouTube. Warner Brothers deleted 5MILLION views on YouTube. Which can’t be gotten back. Mike “needs a little bit of privacy” (regarding Twitter). Chris: “We’ve become a culture of aggregators.” Linkin Park has its own social network. Whether it’s better to have millions of half-baked fans or 10,000 really passionate ones. Chris: “Apple is like the hot cheerleader who won’t fuck you, but you’ll carry her books anyway.” Chris would join Linkin Park if he could play melodica. Dealing with Pandora and the music genome thing. Holding onto fans when the band changes direction. The story of Smashing Pumpkins. “I’ve been on TV a decade longer” (than Joel McHale). They talk about productivity and the “4-Hour Work Week.” They talk about how they maintain their schedules (iCal and Evernote). How labels hide the way they take money from artists. Mike explains Kickstarter. Chris’ band called Sniper. musicforrelief.org for a free download. THREE STARS

10. LIVE  Blech. Don’t review live shows. Wait, there is this. Chris: “Vegas to me is a lot like a stripper pole. From far away, it looks all shiny. When you get up close, it smells like poop and sadness.” Gotta get this down. RE: Abercromie & Fitch’s new look. “You really expect to see people doing rails of coke off the folding tables, while vampires are feeding on Asian schoolgirls, while the ghost of Oscar Wilde is blowing the ghost of Andy Warhol, on the back of a unicorn with a dick for a horn, shooting rainbows onto a Project: Runway marathon.” Brilliant.

THIS WEEK IN PHOTO

001. Live from MacWorld

All of the panelists introduce themselves. About how beautiful Africa is. Alex’s Africa project. Photography “is a storytelling medium.” “Make sure when you take a photograph, that you tell a story.” “Is there a story I want to tell? Is there a memory I want to protect?” “When you have a special moment, never let it go. Follow it through to the very end, and then let it go.” “There are very few of those magic, special moments.” Alex Lindsay talks about being at LucasFilm. “Buy a lot of film, take a lot of photos.” “An amateur photographer takes A snapshot. A professional photographer takes 20.” EDFAT. Entire, Details, Focal Length, Angle and Time. An establishing shot or two. Let’s go to details. Then I’ll vary all those shots with different focal lengths. And boy, you’ve got a different story. “I’ll also play with fast and slow shutter speeds.” “It’s like a dance.” If you shoot 14 frames and you have 14 to choose from… “Look at the stuff that’s most visually rich, and concentrate on that.” “Eventually, you find yourself in a photographic place that you couldn’t have predicted.” “Once you get those diamond images, it gives you a goal to work harder.”

 002. The Future of DSLRs

Alex Lindsay in studio with Scott Bourne and Alex’s brother. A discussion of the new SLRs. “We’re getting to a point where we’re almost plateauing. What do the next generation of cameras need to have?” Regarding which camera to buy. “Any camera you spend $400-500.. is gonna do things that the top-of-the-line Nikkon couldn’t do 20 years ago.” “All megapixels are not created equal.” A discussion of bokeh, a Japanese word. “The soft background, the out-of-focus areas, produced by a camera lens.” “It’ll all sort of blur so that you can’t see really anything.” “It gets very complicated… it’s not perfect circles.” LensBaby. Whether it’s better to do it “in camera” or in Photoshop. “We’re gonna see the end of CF cards.” “We will see bigger cards, and bigger brighter viewfinders.” “…and all this stuff will just continue to get cheaper and cheaper…” “The CCD is pretty much dead. I think in the future, we’ll see more C-Moss sensors.” Nikkon vs. Canon. Being able to make a lot of photo corrections in iPhoto.

WTF with Marc Maron

118. Maz Jobrani Maron contemplates “normalcy.” Contemplating “hoarding” vs. “being nostalgic.” He’s “done with the hoarding.” He’s digging “Breaking Bad.” Being on “fart lockdown.” Guys on TV eating themselves into a stupor on reality TV. “I’m happy to help people masturbate.” The distinction between Persian and Iranian. All about the shah. Zorastrian or Muslim? The perception of Iran compared to the reality of it. “The Axis of Evil” comics. THREE STARS

119. Adam McKay FOUR STARS

 120. LIVE in Austin I hate the live shows. So there was this. One guy who was miffed that Marc didn’t remember him. One chick who makes bad jokes about her cat, who died. Fun. One stupid comic. Then a cruel comic. Then another one, talks about his parents. Marc calls this “the deepest (live show)” he’s ever encountered. (Scary.) “I like to drink.” Museum jokes. ONE STAR

121. Ken Jeong Ken talks about being a doctor as well as a comedian, the making of Hangover, and how he still has his medical license, in case this comedy thing doesn’t work out. THREE STARS

122. Jessi Klein Jessi worked at Comedy Central back in its early days and has really enlightening things to say about that, and about temping in NYC. THREE STARS

123. The Creation Museum Marc is skeptical about these creationists and this museum they’ve created to honor their beliefs. But once he smuggles a microphone in, he’s amazed at the nice package they put together. Almost has him convinced. THREE STARS

124. Paul Scheer  Marc has visited Detroit and actually liked it. Marc talks about air travel and harassing a Virgin America rep on Twitter to get a better seat. Marc and Paul discuss the wonders of TV Guide back in the day. Marc was once a clue in a TV Guide crossword puzzle. On how programming a VCR foreshadowed TiVos and DVRs. “Celebrities can only hang out with celebrities. So you find them in weird groupings sometimes.” About doing a bar mitzvah in someone’s house. About meeting Aziz Ansari and Human Giant. About working at MTV and dealing with censors. Big dad fights. Leaving an abusive relationship. Surviving divorce. THREE STARS

125. LIVE Charles Fleischer et al I hate live shows. Blech. This one’s dreadful. Burn immediately. ZERO STARS

126. A.D. Miles/Bobby Tisdale Marc talks about his gratitude on Thanksgiving. How if he didn’t create this podcast, he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. How he’s dreading participating in the family Thanksgiving thing. How AD Miles knew Marc. How he got the job at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. They talk about the Fallon show, and how he seems like he’s enjoying himself. How one never sleeps. The jokes Jimmy won’t do. How working in late night teaches you to not linger agonizing over jokes forever. How he met Zach Galifinakis. “I guess I’ve always been a ham or whatever.” THREE STARS

127. Aziz Ansari Marc recaps his fun at Thanksgiving. That’s what Thanksgiving’s for: “to say in your mind, ‘I’m not going to be like that.'” Aziz is allergic to cats. The craft services truck on Parks and Rec. He has a phone addiction. Marc talks about Aziz’s Indian background, and why he doesn’t use it in his comedy. Aziz is a master of the whole Google affiliate scene. Being on Rolling Stone’s Hot List. Passing out fliers for comedy shows. “Everyone passing you hates you.” The club HA, and how it took advantage of comics. “Do you want to stand in the worst part of New York, and have people hate you for a couple hours?” How working on new material puts you at the same spot as anyone else (open mics in LA). THREE STARS

128. Mike Schmidt Mike has problems parking. Marc thinks he could do half an hour on that. Mike wants advice. Marc tells him to get a director. Mike sees his peers getting much more success than he has. The “Disappointing the Fans” tour. “I’ve been on that for fucking twenty years,” Mike Schmidt. They talk about his one-man show. The wondrous Lily Von Schtupp is his producer. Maron: “I know that people relate to my neurosis.” Schmidt: “The people who listen to me root for me.” They talk about podcasting. A Quentin Tarantino burlesque. About weighing 500 lbs. and scaling back. About how with food addictions, you can’t just give up eating. Mike’s family history. Maron: “Is there a race going on?” “We get comfortable in even the worst of our patterns.” Being attacked by a possum. Fighting zombies. Who would I fuck at the bank? “Everyone’s sucking cock and getting work done.” In Chicago. Mike goes after a group of people who keep talking at a show. Marc talks about doing the “Jerusalem Syndrome.” Maron: “I gotta go to therapy.” Schmidt: “I just finished mine.” TWO AND A HALF STARS

129. Janeane Garafolo Marc talks about lighting some twisted Hanukkah candles. Janeane gets lost getting to Marc’s house. They discuss Air America. Marc: “People have pigeonholed you because of the politics, and I got that too.” Janeane: “…being pigeonholed, it does affect your career… A lot of times females who are vocal, suddenly find themselves less able to work.…. People of color and women are not afforded the same latitude and leeway of their behavior in the workplace as white males are.” “It’s not an agenda. This is our lives.” Talk about the Tea Party, and how speaking about it kept her from jobs. Janeane: “The right wingers don’t ultimately win, otherwise we’d still own slaves and I wouldn’t be voting.” Marc: “You have a certain amount of hope that good will prevail.” Janeane: “Time marches on. It just happens. We have a black president.”  J: “There will always be… small groups of people who will wield a tremendous amount of power, and do a lot of damage.” Janeane mentions Matt Taibi, Rachel Maddow, people online doing their thing. “They are citizens first. They are serving the citizens. They don’t serve their corporate masters. Their consciousness as humans overrides their workplace environment.” Marc: “I don’t think people know anymore what objective reporting is.” J: “I don’t need the news to be entertaining.” M: “Well, people do.” J: “I don’t take things at face value…. I’m going down swinging. I refuse to be bullied by a system.” M: “Let’s talk about the pursuit of happiness.” M: “Do you have any regrets?” J: “It’s much better to live in your truth than to worry about a stupid job on TV.” Janeane seems to pin her lack of work now on Air America. M: “It certainly means you have personal priorities that transcend a lot of bullshit.”  FOUR STARS

 

“Social Network” prism as multifaceted as Zuckerberg himself

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Two things are the most fascinating after watching “The Social Network,” easily the most fascinating movie of this year. One: most of the people involved with making this movie don’t have a Facebook page themselves.

Two: People can see the exact same movie and come away with totally different viewpoints on who did what. Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter, wasn’t kidding when he likened this movie to “Rashomon.” It is an incredible script, one that is sure to garner Sorkin a long-overdue Oscar. It is as easy to understand if you are a longtime Facebook user, or never even looked at Facebook in your life.

It is a machination of plot, spinning around the transcripts of real court cases. Friend against friend, classmate against classmate. And yet, it speaks to the quintessential question of our techie age: how can we create a cool app/product/website that everyone is going to love and use and make us rich in the process?

What a strange dichotomy that someone who seems to have such difficulty making friends creates the most social product out there.

My friend viewed this movie and came away with an image of Mark Zuckerberg as a “manipulative asshole.” I saw the same movie and saw, finally, the whole story laid in front of me. Saw how Zuckerberg pretty much had to do what he did. I don’t fault him at all, and I was rooting for him. In fact, in finally paying the amounts in question, he did right by his friends. Saverin is back on the Facebook masthead. All is now right with the world.

And just to be safe, he donated to some New Jersey schools on the day the movie opened. No, I see Zuckerberg as a good guy here.

Incredible director David Fincher also excels. The movie is stunningly shot. Harvard has never looked so good. Jesse Eisenberg, in the lead, does a fantastic job of walking us through the story. His best friend, Eduardo Saverin, played by the new Spiderman, Andrew Garfield, really makes you feel the pain he’s going through. Justin Timberlake is just perfect as Sean Parker, creator of Napster.

It’s like a multi-faceted prism. You can see each side clearly, as well as how they are all battling to be most beautiful, or in this case, most right. Wars of class and culture come into play. And out of all this morass, we have the incredible Facebook.

If there is anything faulting this movie it is Sorkin’s lack of knowledge about Facebook. And the fact that really, its key battle: the privacy wars, was completely neglected in this story. Maybe they are saving that for “Social Network 2: Privacy.” I can only hope they have someone who really knows the Internet writing about it this time.

Cause here’s the thing. Nora Ephron got it wrong too, when she wrote the almost instantly dated, “You’ve Got Mail.” It’s different when you live here. When you live on Facebook, online, on Twitter. There are nuances and details that it’s obvious this writer, though brilliant, missed though he combed through mounds of testimony and facts, and got an incredible story fashioned out of it. He missed the heartbeat of Facebook.

This is Facebook basically from the genesis of the idea until it starts branching out into other countries. Then the storyline drops the Facebook part, and focuses on Zuckerberg battling the court cases. By which time, he’s already a billionaire. You’re just not really sure why, if you aren’t already on Facebook.

I can just imagine the Twitter movie. Sigh. I heard Craig Ferguson (who used to mock Twitter himself until he actually got on it and used it) talking to two celebrities this week (on the same show). Both celebrities used the tired old canards: “why would anyone care that I’m getting a haircut? or eating a sandwich? or blah blah blah…” Obviously, they don’t get it. It’s like that with this Facebook movie too.

And, I’m sad to say, that’s what keeps it, for me, anyway, from being one of the best movies ever. It’s like Sorkin was so busy making all the partners dance that he kinda forgot what the party was there for. I’ll bet, if you asked him right now, he couldn’t even explain why Facebook’s growth was so incredible (and continues) and MySpace got huge and stopped growing. That’s pretty key to this story, and would’ve served him well as a screenwriter.

So much of the story is built around the “college campuses” idea, it doesn’t even really branch out into when other people besides colleges started using it. Or why. Why moms and grandmoms are suddenly on it. There is really a deep rich story there, too.

But for now, if we want the Facebook genesis story, this is it. I think it’s a wonderful film. I think it’s going to win the Best Picture Oscar and an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Aaron Sorkin, and it’s deserved. Go see it!