GIS Game

The pictures are a little small, but nonetheless...

Play Guess-the-Google.

My first attempt - 228. Let's fight.

Frank Lies for a Living

I've wanted to write a detailed and vicious attack on this guy for a long time, but the more I look into him, the more I realize it would take an entire book. Frank Luntz is regarded as a republican whiz kid for his "profound" ability to find out what people want to hear, and then apply those words to products and politics. At best his language softens harsh policies; at worst his language is a straight-up lie (think of the "Clean Air Initiative").

I invite you to read an interview PBS's Frontline conducted with him for the show The Persuaders. It simply makes me furious, and I believe that Luntz and shits like him are the only reason for the neo-cons' success in recent years. Here's a sample to tempt your contempt:

Frontline: Talk to me about the Healthy Forests Initiative of President Bush. Isn't calling it "Healthy Forests" obfuscating the fact that it entails keeping the forests healthy with widespread logging?


Luntz: Yes, the Bush administration benefited from the phrase "healthy forest." But what do we know as a fact? If you allow this underbrush to subsume the forest, to get so thick that you can't walk through it, you can't get through it, if you don't touch a twig or a tree and you say, "Oh, let Mother Nature deal with it," then you get these catastrophic forest fires that we saw in Arizona, Colorado and in California. The Native Americans, they know how to thin a forest, and yes, they do take trees out, and what happens? A fire burns, and it stops right where that thinning process took place. But thanks to environmentalists who are extreme and radical in their approach, who say that we must not touch anything at any time in any way, we lose thousands, thousands, hundreds of thousands of acres of forests and all the wildlife that was inside it. And they don't come back again. It takes generations for it to regenerate. So don't tell me about language, because "healthy forests" actually is what it means. And you have to understand the policy, and you've got to understand the product if you want to be able to communicate it. You can't just approach it naively.

You should really read the entire interview.

Just in case you're swayed by his thoughts on forest fires, you should know that it's a century's worth of total fire suppression that makes forests so susceptible to the dangerous monster fires. Think about it: Luntz is not only suggesting that the Native American’s kept all of America’s forests safe from fire, but that environmentalists are now to blame for them.

Finally, for those of you more in touch with your inner cable viewer, The Daily Show took a really, really nice stab at Luntz. CLICK HERE! (Real Media).

Late Night Tuna

Everybody loves sandwiches!



PLUS: He may have learned a lesson in why it's dangerous to give people with drinks in their hands surprise bear hugs (despite what it may look like).

Music: Richter's Agenda

A guy I know asked me to score his video that he intended to submit to an online competition. The video was originally done as a part of a twenty-four hour festival, but they recut it for this thing, and the deadline was Tuesday. After he had worked out all of his technical difficulties, I got a copy of it late last Thursday, essentially giving me the weekend to crank it out.

And I did crank it out. I spent all of last weekend doing this (with some help doing twitchy sound effects from my friend, Robert). It's pretty much all atmosphere, so maybe you’ll find a use for it at Halloween or something.

Richter’s Agenda 4.11MB, 128kbit mp3
[Not mastered, though probably finished]

The kicker is that he let me know yesterday that they waited till the last minute to upload the finished thing, and the servers were overloaded (naturally), so they missed the deadline. In any case, I hope to eventually post a copy of the movie to my website.

Incidentally, this was a non-exclusive deal with them, so if you really want some creepy atmosphere for your film, you know where to reach me.

Emote

I remember a crappy hotel in Palm Springs almost a year ago. My friend Robert and I were staying on the first floor of the building, so instead of a balcony, we had an extremely small patio facing a wall that was about 5 feet high. Looking over the wall in the late hours of the night, we could see the parking lot of a neighboring hotel. It was brightly lit and totally empty. The medians in the lot were overflowing with grass and bushes.

Remember, this is Palm Springs. If it weren't for my fascination with these kinds of places, I’d have no choice but to call it a disgusting waste of resources. It’s the desert – the following day it would be 105 degrees. As you drive down the long and extremely wide boulevards you pass resort after resort, and every one of them seems to use water as a come-on. Extravagant displays of green landscaping and towering palms line the borders of these huge resorts. The few people you see walking down the enormous blocks are desert rats – the rich kind, but just as sun-fried and leathery as their trailer-living cousins.

But back to that parking lot by our hotel room, lit up at night. I tried to explain to Robert how amazing it looked to me. It was totally artificial and excessive. Lights beamed down on the empty spaces all night long. I don’t mean to make it sound uncommon, in fact that’s why I thought it was so amazing – it was totally common. These are public places, but also very private because there’s no one there.

Part of this comes from the fact that I’ve been living in substantial cities for the last 11 years. Space is precious to me (especially when I’m looking for a parking spot). Wide open suburban spaces tend to spook me a little now.

I also feel like these spaces are a little haunted. How many people have been through them? And now there’s nothing.

An extra little thrill hits me when I think about potential – like it’s haunted by things that have yet to happen, sizzling with static. When I looked out at that lot in Palm Springs, I got goosebumps. No kidding.

I get this feeling in a lot of places. I remember driving around the vacant roads of the San Fernando Valley doing midnight deliveries as a Production Assistant, empty movie theaters in the middle of the day, parking garages in the middle of the night that would be full by 9 the next morning, amusement parks right before they close, casinos in the wee hours...

This emotion, which I’ve done a pretty crappy job of explaining, is often one of things I try to get into my music. Sometimes it’s the only thing. You probably have the same expression Robert had on his face when I told him about it.

Say what?

What the hell is THIS?

VGTV

The television industry has been trying for a while to capitalize on the massive video game industry. I imagine it's a matter of time before a dramatic series spins-off some game (if it hasn't already), but on the non-fiction side of TV the usual rules apply: they want to make it cheap and in a proven format.

The results are often tame at best – reviews, interviews... etc.

There are a couple of snags to why video games do not make good television.

The industry is too slow. Of course there's tons of new games all the time, the problem is that most of them suck. The TV-worthy blockbusters (Halo, GTA, Half Life, Sims) put the regular games to shame. Even most gamers don't care about the dozens of small-time games making the trip from the new arrival shelves to the discount bins, and besides, the TV industry is interested in appealing to a much larger audience than gamers.

I thought they were tired clichés even before I worked in TV, but I still (tangentially) hear stupid adjectives like "urban" coming down from network execs. I think a lot of executives think video games will have a similar impact that hip-hop had a decade or two before. They may be right about that, but what they're failing to grasp is that it won't be the SAME impact. Video games are not a product of a new and unexploited culture (in fact, there isn't much culture many gamers can even share).

Just for the record, I really, really hate thinking in these terms. Media companies seem to think innovation is a composite of buzzwords and commercial meme-crap. I also don't like the concept of memes, but that may be another post.

So if there's no fashion, music, or slang to appropriate, what else can they get? Well, there is a little star power. More and more celebrities are doing voices in video games, but there's still not enough to fuel an Entertainment Tonight-style video game show. For that matter, ET-style shows have no problems covering that kind of material, so why try to compete. Hmm, compete.

Competitions? Unlike watching... let's say snowboarding, watching people play video games is not interesting, even to die-hards.

Video games offer a level of emersion that does not compare to sports or films, and strangely, they feel very personal (or at least they do when the game is good).


You can't expect game clips to give you a sense of the challenge. You can't go behind the scenes, because "behind the scenes" is a bland office with overworked computer geeks. You can’t offer cheats and tips because the internet has better info. The internet also has better sneak peeks and reviews.

So, any ideas for a video game show?
I wish I had one - I’d be pitching it.

Excuse me, Ted

I could say an awful lot about the Terri Schiavo scenario, and I'd like to rail on her parents and the lawyers for being indecent media floozies, but for now I’ll limit myself to the following:

Nightline Closing Thought
By TED KOPPEL
WASHINGTON, March 31, 2005

What bothers me is when politics and ideology get in the way of logic and consistency.

For example, it's probably fair to say that most opponents of the death penalty tend to be more liberal than conservative. Not all, but many of them would eliminate the death penalty rather than run the risk of executing even one innocent person. It's a compelling argument; but one that doesn't seem to carry much weight among social conservatives. Even though many of them would argue that you have to maintain the life of someone in Terri Schiavo's condition because there is always the chance - no matter how remote - that brain function may be restored. You would think that this could be fertile common ground.

After all, both conservatives and liberals are drawn to the argument that favors the protection of innocent life - regardless of the odds. But often, it seems, this is true only when it suits a preconceived political position.

I typically like the way Ted Koppel tries to corner and call out bullshitters, so I feel someone should call him out. Firstly, he’s missed that the logical and consistent aspects to the liberal argument are compassion and a basic understanding of what life is. Secondly, every time I read this, I get hung up on the right-appropriated phase "innocent life.” Finally, I love the classic we’d-compromise-if-the-liberals-would-but-they-wont argument implied here.

Also, in case you missed it this past week, apparently one comatose white woman is more important than ten Indian kids.