Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

More Links I Want To Post Before I Close My Browser

Bhutan had its first elections the other day.  I saw a 60 Minutes piece about Bhutan a whole bunch of years ago and decided it seemed like a cool place.  The government is big into Gross National Happiness instead of GNP.  They only introduced television in 1999.  And then they started seeing gangs and crime start up for the first time.  Awesome.  Anyway, a few interesting articles about the election there, from The Economist, the Times (London), the Telegraph, and Smithsonian.

A long article from the Washington Post about Ryan Seacrest that I thought was pretty interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the blog Stuff White People Like, and said I imagined a book deal would be coming soon.  And it did.  Interesting articles about blogs-turned-books, and that blog in particular, here, here, and here.  My thoughts on this, obviously influenced by my own experience: Hey, I think the blog is funny, so I'm happy for the guy.  And I think there is a book there, although I'm not sure it's one that will end up reaching beyond the humor section of the bookstore.  And I would imagine that part of the allure for the publisher is that if it is a success, there's franchise potential with the "Stuff [ ] People Like" idea -- and I don't really mean doing it for different racial or ethnic groups so much as things like, "Stuff Republican People Like" or "Stuff Girls Like" or "Stuff Old People Like".  It's a gamble -- it's a lot of money for the publisher to earn back, and past results (mine included) do not necessarily support the theory that people who read a blog for free are going to spend money on a book in numbers even approaching the blog readership numbers, but that doesn't mean it can't be a hit, and all books are gambles for the publisher anyway, and at least there is a base to build on here, with the blog.  Anyway, I'd much rather see something like this succeed than something I think sucks, so, cool, good for him.

Chuck Lorre's censored-by-CBS end-of-show vanity card from last night's episode of The Big Bang Theory over here.  Lorre puts up a card at the end of all of his episodes, which you can only read if you pause the TV, in place of the usual production company logo, and then archives them on his website.  The Big Bang Theory is growing on me.

And a slightly-un-fun Variety article about TV writing post-strike.

My Grandma Reviews: "Drillbit Taylor"

"I know I say this a lot, but it's really one of the worst things I ever saw.  It's alright for children, I guess.  It's certainly not the kind of picture I want to see.  My friend picked it again.  I know I keep saying we won't let her pick, but she always insists.  And she'll never admit she doesn't like the movie.  "I see it, I enjoy it, " she says.  I asked a few people in the theater, they said they enjoyed it.  I didn't."

"What was it about?"

"There are three kids who are abused and this man is supposed to take care of them.  The one who wrote this -- and there was a lot to it, there was a lot of story going on -- I think the one who wrote this piece, he must have had a very, very horrible childhood.  It's supposed to be a comedy, but I didn't think it was funny.  I just didn't enjoy watching it.  The kids are always getting into trouble, and this guy is supposed to defend them.  The idea of the picture, I guess, you're supposed to get a lesson out of it, never let people take advantage of you, you have to fight back.  He tries to teach them how to fight back.  I don't know.  I don't think it proved a lesson to me.  I don't agree with this movie that kids should just fight, fight fight.  To have kids fight back with their arms and legs, punching and kicking, that didn't seem like a very good lesson.  I think the writer must be very disturbed and peculiar, he was probably picked on during his childhood and never really recovered from it.  I feel bad for him.  And yet they call this a comedy."

Theory

Cats are like law firm partners.

Dogs are like law firm associates.

Think about it.

Cats only want you around when they need something.  They're moody, unpredictable, and will sometimes scratch you for no reason.  They're mean.  And just like law firm partners, they like to rub up against things that are powerless to stop them, like scratching posts, or paralegals.

Dogs love you.  They follow you around and beg for attention.  They want to be noticed.  They want to be your favorite dog in the entire firm.  They don't always know what they're doing, but they usually give it their best shot, although sometimes ask too many questions.  No matter how many times you throw the frisbee, they always come back for more.  They love table scraps, and meaningless praise.  And just like law firm associates, they sometimes like to eat their own poop.

I stand by this post.

Browser Windows I Want To Close

Some links:

A funny parody of the Juno movie trailer called Jewno.

An article about a minor league baseball team planning an Eliot Spitzer theme night.

An interview with Michael Schur, writer for The Office and baseball blogger at Fire Joe Morgan.

Interesting video of a talk by a brain scientist who suffered a stroke.  Totally worth watching.

A really long preview of the Royals pitching staff.

A long review of some books about happiness that makes my eyes glaze over every time I look at it, so if anyone actually does read it, tell me what it says.  I feel like I open all these New York Review of Books articles but then I never ever ever end up reading them because they're long and I think the font is somehow crossing wires in my brain with the wire for "fall asleep immediately" so that whenever I open the window, my eyes have to close and an hour later I wake up and discover my iTunes is playing Kenny Loggins and I'm losing a game of Scrabulous and magic terrible writing elves have totally screwed up the second act of whatever script I'm playing around with.  These elves also eat all my food.  Oops.

Top Chef

I love Top Chef.  Just watched the season premiere of Top Chef: Chicago.  I don't think I've missed an episode of Top Chef in all four seasons, and this one's got me hooked again.  They have a formula, it doesn't change, but it totally works.  And somehow, even though you'd think that a competition show about food would be a disaster when there are so many contestants that you can't really get to know any of them all that well, you get only the tiniest of back stories, and, of course, you can't taste the dishes.  And they totally foreshadow everything -- you know as soon as someone is shown saying anything with any confidence at all, they're going to lose, and the person who's worried, nervous, scared is going to win.  But even with all of that, it's such good television, season after season.

I'm going to go out on a completely uninformed limb and say that Dale is going to win.  He wasn't featured much tonight, wasn't in the top four, but he was in a bunch of the clips at the end -- "coming up on this season of Top Chef..." -- and he seemed to be getting the kind of edit that made him seem competent and confident without trying to stir up trouble.  So that's my pick.  Not sure why.

Also, while I'm picking reality show winners, my pick to win American Idol is David Cook, and I swear I would have said that even before his last two stand-out weeks.  He seems smarter than the other contestants, and even though that doesn't have anything to do with how well or poorly he sings, I think it helps make smart song choices.  So he's my pick for American Idol.

And just to prove that I do more than watch TV... I finished reading a terrific novel this afternoon -- "Who Stole The Funny," by actor/singer/director Robby Benson.  It's about a TV director dealing with crazy showrunners, actors, and a liar of an agent.  Maybe you have to be doing this kind of stuff to appreciate it, but I thought it was really funny and a super-quick and enjoyable read.  It will likely end up on my year's 10 best list.

Sleep

I hate to bump my Spitzer post down on the page, but I suppose I would have to eventually.  Anyway -- there's an article in the Washington Post about sleep, and how Americans may not be as sleep deprived as initially thought.  It says we get an average of 8.5 hours a night.  Which, I expect, is significantly more than most people think the average person gets.  And the article points out that unemployed people skew the number higher, because they have more time to sleep, and the elderly too, and that there's a whole lot of people getting six hours of sleep or less....

I like sleep.  A lot.  I think I'm still making up for a sleep debt incurred in high school, when I had to get up at a quarter to six and ride on a bus for two hours to get to school.  I'd sleep a little more on the bus, but not terribly restful sleep, and I'd be tired in class, and I'd be tired on the way home, and then on the weekends my body was so used to getting up early that I couldn't really sleep past 7 or 7:30... it was pretty terrible.  I think I tried to get to sleep by 10:30 or so, but even that only gave me 7 hours.  I appreciate -- now -- the education I got in high school, but at the time it sucked to have to commute so much, and even though it all worked out super well with getting into a good college and feeling well prepared for it and all of that, if I had a child in the same situation, I'd try to find a better solution.  I was really happy when I got to college and realized that even for an "early" class, I could wake up almost three hours later than I was waking up for high school.  And that the "commute" shrunk from two hours on a bus to a ten minute walk.

It wasn't really until college, and being able to better control how many hours I'd sleep, that I realized I absolutely feel so much better with more sleep.  My mood is different, I'm happier, I notice I'm much more patient... I'm actually not sure I'm more productive, but it may just be that when I need to be productive, I end up getting less sleep, so the variables are interacting with each other.  When I summered for the law firm, I lived at home and had about a 90 minute commute each way.  And with some of the summer associate events, I wouldn't get home until late and there were days I would be going on 6 and a half or 7 hours of sleep.  I could absolutely feel the difference.

At this point I'm definitely spoiled because of my schedule, and probably average about 9 hours of sleep, which is awesome.  I'm sort of worried that when I do find myself in a more structured existence (and hopefully I will before too long), it'll be harder to get those 9 hours.  But I feel like at this point my body has grown to like and appreciate sleep so much that I'll fight for those 9 hours even if it means sacrificing some TV or reading or whatever relatively pointless things I'd otherwise be doing with myself.  I think my body is starting to think I'm training for the sleep olympics or something, because it's building up a tolerance.  9 hours feels like 8 hours used to, and to really feel awesome, I sometimes feel like I need to push it to 9 and a half or ten.  On Saturday I went to bed at 9:45 and got eleven hours of sleep.  And wrote fourteen pages of script on Sunday.  So maybe there really is a correlation.  OK, I should go to sleep so I can write fourteen more pages tomorrow.  Eleven hours would put me awake at... way later than I'm going to wake up...

It's totally bizarre to me how some people can get by on five hours of sleep or something like that.  I've never, ever been able to do that, not even for one night.  I think I would just fall asleep doing whatever it was I was doing, I guess.  I mean, I'm tired with 8 hours, so 5 would just make me cry. 

My Grandma Reviews: Governor Spitzer

"So did you hear about Governor Spitzer?"

"Yeah, Jeremy, I did, but I want you to explain something to me.  What exactly did he do?"

"I'm not totally sure of the details, but they're saying he was involved in a prostitution ring.  So, he used some company -- I don't know if you'd even call it a company -- organized crime, some sort of group of people who charged money for people to use their prostitutes.  And he called them and arranged to have sex with one of their prostitutes."

"So all he did was use a prostitute for sex?"

"Um, yeah, I think... but, like, as part of a bigger thing, so, different from, I don't know, someone finding a prostitute on the street, which would obviously also be a scandalous thing, but, yeah, I guess."

"He wasn't making money from other people using the prostitutes?  Was he involved with the financial matters of this prostitution ring?"

"I don't think so, no, I don't think he was *running* a prostitution ring, no."

"So what's the big deal?"

"Well, it's illegal.  Besides being disgusting and completely at odds with what he's always claimed to stand for in his public life, and completely terrible for his wife and kids, and, um, really illegal.  He's being indicted."

"For just using a prostitute for sex?  You mean to tell me that's illegal?"

"Yes."

"So, wait, let me get this straight.  If a man goes to a prostitute, he can be arrested."

"Yes."

"Well, what about the prostitute?  How can she--"

"That's illegal too."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"But what about the hundreds and hundreds of prostitutes you see?"

"What?  Where do you see prostitutes?  In the senior center?"

"In the movies, there's always prostitutes."

"At the theater?"

"Well, no.  But in the movies."

"It's illegal!"

"I didn't think that was illegal!  I just thought it was something, you know, not good, but the kind of thing people sort of turned a blind eye to.  Everyone goes to prostitutes!  How long has it been illegal?"

"I don't know... but I assume for your entire life..."

"That can't be.  In my day, everyone went to prostitutes."

"What are you talking about?  Who goes to prostitutes?"

"Oh, come on, when I was young, my father had a bunch of men over to the house every week to play cards, and I would hear what they would talk about, and they would always be very blase about it, they would say that when their sons got to a certain age, and they started getting sexual urges, they would just send them to a prostitute in the neighborhood and they could deal with those urges.  And the men would talk about going themselves too.  As long as you knew the woman and she was in the neighborhood, it all seemed perfectly normal."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You mean to tell me none of your friends go to prostitutes?"

"Not as far as I'm aware, no."

"Well, that's why I never got the feeling you could go to jail just for going to a prostitute.  How did they catch Spitzer anyway?"

"The government was tapping the phones of this prostitution ring, and he was one of the people on the line."

"So they just heard his voice?"

"I'm not sure of the details."

"Well, that's certainly unlucky!"

"I'd use a different word, but, sure."

"Oh, then I think this will hurt his reputation."

"Yeah, he's going to resign."

"Over a prostitute.  Imagine."

"Grandma, I seriously don't believe this conversation."

"You just live in a different generation, that's all.  And how much did he pay?"

"Like $5,000."

"Oh, that's ridiculous.  You can get one for a lot less than that!"

Huffington Post

A friend told me to read this Jon Robin Baitz piece on the Huffington Post, about Samantha Power's resignation.  It's fine, except when I thought it was just getting started, it turned out that was the entire piece.  I don't know.  I don't usually read the Huffington Post.  It seems like it's turned into exactly the opposite of what it intended to be.  When it started, I feel like it was supposed to be a place where you could go to read important people's opinions about things, one place to aggregate a whole bunch of interesting thinkers, all content and no filler.  Instead, it's a garbage dump of what seem like hundreds of bloggers, posting mostly-useless posts about mostly nothing at all.  And instead of a gourmet restaurant where each dish is worthwhile, it's like a bin at a 99-cent store where, maybe, if you're lucky, you'll find a new comb.  Jon Robin Baitz had a brilliant set of posts about being forced out of Brothers & Sisters, and his experiences in LA and the TV business more generally.  Those were really interesting, but I only found them by accident, after they were mentioned on some other message board.  The Huffington Post is the opposite of a destination site for me: it's a place I never go unless someone insists I should.  I have no idea if there's anything worthwhile there, because even if there is, I can't find it and have no interest in looking.

Contrast this with Drudge, which I guess seems like it should be a garbage dump, but is actually great because from the 4 word headline, you know right away if you want to click on something, important stuff is at the top, it takes three seconds to scan the page and see if there's anything there, and then you're off.  Easy.  Not that I love Drudge, but at least it works.

I have no real point here.  I don't read the Huffington Post.  That's all.

Be A Lawyer in Brazil

An 8-year-old boy passed the law school entrance exam in Brazil, the school enrolled him, and then turned him away when he showed up and they realized how old he was.  This is causing some concern about the admissions standards to get into Brazilian law schools.  Interesting article.

Two Links You've Perhaps Already Seen

Two things I found yesterday that have already gotten tons of media attention and I'm late to discovering:

1. A professor at Carnegie Mellon who's unfortunately dying of pancreatic cancer gave a lecture about time management that's really interesting and readable, PDF here.  As well as a lecture called "The Last Lecture" where he talks about lessons learned in his life, PDF here.  Apparently six million people have watched this online, and he's got a book coming out, written with a Wall Street Journal reporter.  I find reading a PDF transcript infinitely preferable to watching an hour-long video of a lecture, but you can find the video and a bunch more stuff on his website.

2. A blog called "Stuff White People Like," started by Internet copywriter Christian Lander about 6 weeks ago (it's poking fun at over-educated young people more than anything else -- for something that very well sounds like it could be offensive, I don't think it is, but since I'm in the target group, maybe I'm just blind to it), that somehow immediately went insane and got tons of readers, article in the LA Times, segment on NPR.  It's solid, I was surprised how much I responded to it -- a friend sent me the link and I clicked expecting garbage and my first thought was, "oh, there's something interesting here," and then I googled it and realized I'm a couple weeks late and it's already all over the place.  The surprising part to me is how quickly it went viral.  I'd think that with so many blogs out there by now, it'd be that much harder to break through than it was a few years ago, but maybe it indeed is a lot harder, but if something's going to, it does so orders of magnitude more quickly.  In any case, I would be surprised if this thing doesn't turn into a book somewhere, because it's a really easy and straightforward book concept I can see in the humor section at Barnes & Noble or wherever.  Six weeks from nothing to something.  There's a nice motivational story for you.  Or something to make you cry.  Depending on your point of view.

Wizards of Waverly Place

I have a friend who wrote this Sunday night's episode of "Wizards of Waverly Place" airing on the Disney Channel at 8:30pm.  The episode's called "Little Sister."  I'm sure it will be awesome.  Check it out.  I've never seen the show, so I have no idea what it's about, but the episode's already set up to record and I'm excited to watch it.

Obama and Clinton

Just a pragmatic thought for the Democrats that I haven't heard or read anywhere, although it seems pretty obvious to me.  It's fairly clear that, whatever anyone thinks of Hillary Clinton, her campaign has been run pretty poorly.  Lots of articles about fighting between Mark Penn and her other advisers, and a pretty good sense that she was supposed to win the nomination without much trouble but somehow bungled it, made a bunch of strategic blunders, isn't spending her money efficiently, lost huge leads in a whole bunch of states, and has had to rely on a bunch of unexpected close calls to even still be in the race.  On the other hand, Obama wasn't really expected to be a factor, but his campaign seems to have hardly made any mistakes at all, he's certainly outperformed original expectations, and doesn't seem to be any negative media at all about infighting among his advisers, or anything like that.  If you take it as a given that whoever wins the nomination will probably stick with their team, or at least with a lot of their team, then, in a vacuum, could there be anyone who thinks that Hillary Clinton's team is showing themselves to be more capable than Obama's team?  Especially after 2000 and 2004, when much of the post-mortem election analysis blamed the poor campaigns run by Gore and Kerry, I would think the Democrats would be very scared of Hillary Clinton's team running the general election campaign, given their performance to date.

Okay, some flaws in my reasoning -- (1) I have no idea how good or bad the two campaign teams actually are, I'm only relying on what I've read in the media, and what I assume given that Clinton was seen as the front-runner for so long.  (2) Much of the failure of Clinton's "team" or success of Obama's "team" can probably be attributed to the candidate himself or herself, so none of this actually matters.  (3) If Clinton is the nominee, maybe she retools her staff completely, and then none of this matters.  (4) Maybe it doesn't matter how they got there, but if Clinton is able to pull this one out, that's proof enough that despite a bad start, her team is able to make it work when it counts, and the result matters more than the process.

But it's just a thought I had.

Scrabulous

The New York Times, on Scrabulous, the addictive Facebook game.  I hate how it takes people with jobs so long to take their turns sometimes.  :)

I feel like Scrabulous, in a small way, makes slightly more interesting that fuzzy ground on Facebook between friend and professional acquaintance.  Not because it would be weird to play online Scrabble with, say, your boss, because maybe it wouldn't be.  But because your Scrabulous statistics show up on your profile, if you're Facebook friends with your boss, and you're also terrible at Scrabulous, do you really want your boss to know that?  Because even though it might be unfair for them to judge you for it -- what is it really a good measure of anyway -- wouldn't it be upsetting to find out that your boss is telling her boss friends about her employee who can't possibly be management material because she can't even win a game of Scrabble on the computer.  I offer this thought as a public service.  This problem is highlighted even further by the Facebook application "IQ Test," which really exists, and the potential Facebook applications, "Things I Hate About My Boss," "Diseases I Have That Can Be Transmitted Through Casual Contact in the Workplace," and "Countdown Clock Until I Tell My Unsuspecting Colleagues That I'm Quitting This Stupid Job."  So if you install those, you might want to hide them from your work friends.  Just saying.

My Grandma (Briefly) Reviews: "The Other Boleyn Girl"

"I don't know if it's based on a real true story."

"It's based on a novel, which was based on a true story.  It's like a fictionalized account of something vaguely true, to whatever degree we can even know if details about something from the 16th century are true or not."

"[My friend] said she thought it was going to be like a documentary.  But it didn't feel true at all.  You know, if it's just based on a novel, eh, I can take it or leave it.  I can't say I felt all that much watching it.  It's about a king and all of his indiscretions.  I didn't think that much of it.  If it's a true story, it's a piece of history, you look at it differently.  But if most of it is just imaginary or fictionalized, big deal.  He has an indiscretion, sexually, and they were very strict when you were married back then.  Not like the world now.  Now people have mistresses and it seems like everyone looks the other way.  Anyway, I didn't think much of this picture."