Filed by Lance at 2:45 pm under General, Pop Culture, The Arts, The Media
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Here’s a clip of the most recent episode of The Cleveland Show. The point here is not the relative merits of Family Guy or American Dad! versus this MacFarlane project, but this clip is a classic rule of three with a nice button at the end.
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Filed by Bil at 8:01 pm under Love, Pop Culture, Religion, Shameless Plugs, The Media
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I’m gonna say it up front: I have no idea who this blog’s audience is. It is entirely possible that we have NO audience, and that the hit counter is just making shit up so that we don’t fire it.

That being said, I still take it as bad news that teenagers and pre-teens are reading fewer and fewer blogs these days:

Teens Spurn Blogs, Twitter

In light of the fact that it’s going to get harder instead of easier to pull an audience, I think it’s time to ask myself: what do I want from this blog?
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Filed by Bil at 8:08 pm under Fightin' Words, Shameless Plugs, The Media
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First things first:

Click to help bring an independent film to theatres!

I want to say right now that I don’t know any of these people. I have only a vague idea of what the movie is about, and I have absolutely no idea at all if the film is any good. However, this is just such an ingenious marketing idea that I want to see it succeed. If nothing else, it’s an interesting experiment in the usefulness of social media and internet marketing.

Building off of that, I want to turn your attention now to an earlier blog post from this same blog:

Must Filmmakers be Businessmen?
One of the ideas that drives me to marry entrepreneurism with my creative interests is the observation that studios are becoming so risk adverse, that the rewards of producing original content will soon be exclusively in the hands of individuals with the vision and the cajones to take the risk on themselves.
According to this article in the Hollywood Reporter, the same is becoming true in the distribution market - even for wide releases!
This process will only continue, as shareholders drive the studios into more and more conservative investments and social media changes the marketing landscape. What we’re seeing now is only the beginning.

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Filed by Bil at 10:20 pm under Fightin' Words, Homophobia, Politics, The Media
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Well this is just incredible:

For 5 days, 5 Journalists will only source news from Twitter and Facebook to test quality of news.

This is bound to be a fascinating little experiment, and I am eager to read the results.

>> Update: you can follow the journalists here.

Speaking of breaking news via Twitter, I’ve been sitting at my computer for like half an hour now just watching the real-time tweet feed come in on the Prop 8 trial in California. For all of you on Twitter, just search #prop8 (or click this link) and sit still for ten seconds. You’ll see. They won’t stop coming.
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Filed by Bil at 10:19 am under Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media
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Nothing flavors a meal quite like your waitress delivering your food to your table, checking to see if you need anything else, then making a beeline for the bathroom while muttering a little too loudly to herself that she’s going to weigh three pounds less by the time she comes out of there.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Start the year right for us, Little Dragon:

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Filed by Bil at 12:54 pm under General, The Media
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When we were children, our toys were just small-scale models of our cars. Now we are men, and our cars are just large-scale models of our toys.

Check out the fun and functional concepts unveiled at the recent Tokyo Auto Show:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/10/tokyo-auto-show/

Filed by Bil at 11:13 am under Pop Culture, Social Issues, The Media
3 Comments

Note of contention: I have been trying to post this article for over a week now, but something was wrong with our Word Press editor software. Yes. Technical problems with the website prevented me from posting an article titled “Websites are the future”…anyway, here it is, in all last week’s glory…

I’m going to write this article with three points that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, starting with:

1) Pay for what you get.

If you don’t give money to Chicago Public Radio, here’s what you have to look forward to. Or, if you don’t listen to Chicago Public Radio, it’s what you have to look forward to hearing me talk about.

You don’t want that, do you?

Give $20 at WBEZ.org

Speaking of websites being the future…

2) Make the most of a dire situation.
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Filed by Lance at 11:55 pm under General, Love, Pop Culture, Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media
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It’s been a crazy two weeks. Here’s what the program looked like:

1. 4/20, Act I: The Game of Contact and a workshopped performance of The Meaning of Anthology
2. 4/25, Act II: Directing for Theatre of Women IV at Dream Theatre
3. 4/26, Act III: Directing a staged reading of a new play called To Grandfather’s House by Nancy Schaefer at Chicago Dramatists
4. Relaxing Denouement (Be be be be be beep, be be be be be beep.)

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Filed by Bil at 10:55 pm under Pop Culture, The Media
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I heard the news today that Ricardo Montalban has died, and with him my dream of shouting KHAAAAAAAN into his face at a Star Trek convention. He would have liked that.
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Filed by Bil at 10:22 am under Politics, The Media
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It’s only Tuesday, and look what’s happened:

- Tribune Company files for bankruptcy protection.
- IL Gov. Rod Blagojevich arrested on federal corruption charges.

If you are awake in Chicago, neither one of these is particularly surprising. Something else that’s not surprising: it was a lot easier to find a story about the Tribune Company bankruptcy filing on the Boston Globe’s website than on the Chicago Tribune’s. Hmm…

I don’t really have anything especially interesting to say at this point in time, but I will certainly be following both these stories as they develop. Blagojevich’s arrest will probably be good for the state in many ways, but the immediate and long-term effects are uncertain. I’m not sure who will replace him as governor, and I have a feeling this will be a hot topic in the next gubernatorial election. (Luckily, the Green Party is automatically on the ballot, so resources can be better used toward actual campaigning. Seriously, people, vote Green in local elections. Seriously.)

As for the Tribune filing Chapter 11…well, I do love the Cubs and I have no idea what this means for old Wrigley Field. My own day job company is partly owned by the Tribune, but we have been assured by our CEO that our company is actually a source of income for the Tribune, not a drain, so there won’t be any effects on our operations. Still, though, you can never be certain.

More to come as these unfold.