Just watch it – this is what the internet is for
Blog
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Cat on a hot mac keyboard
Now you know who actually writes this stuff
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Links
I’ve just thundered in with a coupla posts on The Aucklandista – Two short points on Auckland bookshops, and I want to ride it where I like. I reckon you should get over there and read ’em, it’s heaps better than this blog.
Are you too nice? Do you only say ‘no’ to questions like ‘you won’t mind me giving you a Chinese burn and nicking the last sticky bun, then?’. Check out this article. It seems the secret to success is finding your inner Donald Trump. And yes, I can see their point. Dick.
The best muppet-based heavy metal primer you’ll see on the intenet this week can be found here.
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Unplugged in Opito Bay
I went off the grid for a few days with my girl. As I left the office on Friday, I wrestled with my conscience – does the laptop come or stay? With my T3G card, I get reasonable connection pretty much anywhere – but that’s not really a holiday is it? It wound up staying.
So, apart from a couple moments of PDA email weakness, I was unplugged. And it was great. Spent quality time. Got loads of reading done. Ate well.
Learnings? NEVER check work email while you’re away, it’ll only stress you out – there’s not much you can do about it, is there? And what about returning to 500+ unread RSS items? Time for a good old trim, methinks, going through that seems too much like work.
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Get out of your lazy bed
What Now fans, get ready to be jealous, very jealous. Here I am with the witty and charming Michele A’Court.
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Gawker Media – sharpest keyboards on the interwebs
The Observer interviews Gawker Media’s Nick Denton
Nick Denton is the blogosphere’s Baron Silas Greenback, sitting pretty in his New York loft/lair, having figured out what EVERYONE wants to know – how to make money off this here blog thing.
I’ve loved Gawkers’ hilariously insulting beatdowns on the ‘internet famous’ for brief periods at a time. I pored over the original Gawker‘s missives from the Conde Naste cafeteria. I laughed at movie stars crashing their Mercs into each other on Defamer. I particularly enjoyed Valleywag while Nick Douglas was at the helm. They were cool, but as I didn’t technically LIVE in New York, LA or Silicon Valley, a lot of it flew over my head. And frankly, there’s too much of it. 12 posts a day is the editorial minimum and, mostly, I don’t have time to trawl through all that in any meaningful way. I see the RSS feeds offer ‘top stories’ only now – let’s see how that goes.
Gawker’s bloggers seem to live the dream, despite Denton’s miserly pay scale, and most, if not all, use it as a springboard to bigger and better things. For me, being a Gawker editor, bashing out snarky one-liners all day on a Powerbook, pausing only go out for pastrami on rye wearing a black turtle neck is total writerly rockstardom (see also: Joe Eszterhas bashing out Basic Instinct in the Hollywood hills fuelled by Jack Daniels, or Woodward and Bernstein having Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play them in the movie).
Bonus link : The Observer’s 50 most powerful blogs – get something new for your RSS reader
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Dungeonista
Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons, a rope from the rowboat of social interaction for young nerds the world over, died today. Here’s a long article by a guy who went to meet Gygax in his lair.
My own role-playing innocence was shattered when Mum arranged a playdate with a fellow D&Der. He had an amazing array of characters with mega ‘experience points’, the hard won currency of this murky little world. When I wondered about the amazing LOTR-style adventures he must have embarked upon to amass such bounty, he replied matter-of-factly “I cheat”.
Bastard. It never crossed my mind that in this game of fantasy, you could just make shit up. Kids, eh? I didn’t play so much after that.
Those 20 sided dice did come in handy years later for drinking games, though.
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Links
As children we all loved Garfield, only to grow up and realise his “cynical” take on the world appeals mainly to people who live alone with only a freezer full of ice cream for company. So, you’ll love Garfield minus Garfield. Do you think this would work with Wal and The Dog?
Portishead are back, and The Observer reckons they’re better than ever.
Spin The Black Circle is a very frustrating game. It reminds me of the games you used to get on fish and chip shop walls, kind of a cross between the golf and the ball pinging ones.
Popless is Onion AV Club’s Noel Murray documenting a year where he refuses to listen to any new music, instead documenting his (extensive) record collection. He’s a very experienced reviewer and great writer, which is lucky, ‘cos it’s almost March, and he’s only up to C.
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Cross post – Open your own 80s video shop
The original is on the Aucklandista site
Remember video shops? Rewinding, fixing the tracking, due back by 12? As a lad, I’d spend hours in the corner video shop trawling the likes of Joysticks and Brewsters’s Millions to find the perfect tape for that weekend’s slumber party (it was a more innocent time back then, team).
If you ever wondered what happened to the films on those clunky black tapes, and struggle finding them nowadays among 50 copies of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, you’re in luck. Turns out they’re all available on DVD in the Queen Street JB HiFi‘s bargain bin for seven dollars each.
Today’s perusal uncovered sub-Top Gun flick Iron Eagle, featuring Louis Gosset and a kick arse Queen theme tune, Steve Martin’s The Jerk, which was technically made in 1979, but remains a stalwart of ’80s video shops nonetheless, David Cronenberg’s weird-ass Videodrome, which bought James Woods and Debbie Harry together at last, and, um, Streets of Fire. Ahem.
This bin is AMAZING, and if I’m heading past I have to cross the street for fear of enthusiastically emptying my wallet all over it. I picked up Friday the 13th and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes on one particularly vulnerable day – I blame the “I’m Cheap, Buy Me!” stickers. The stock seems to turn over fairly regularly, and is fully worth a trawl if your self-control is any better than mine.
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Link: The Onion writers
If you find The Onion as screen-splatteringly funny as I do, you’ll want to check out this podcast of how they do it.
Turns out they write about 600 headlines a week, then battle in the writers’ room for which ones go in. There’s a whole lot of of intellectualising goes on, and while part of me thinks they’re over-analysing and should just get on with it, I guess that’s what you gotta do to create a long running, consistently hilarious paper / website.