My favorite part is how the Canadian paper made sure to get “America” into the headline as an ever-so-subtle dig at our fatness. Yeah, we’re fat as hell, but what are you going to do about it? Try and fail to buy back an NHL team from our ice-free desert?
The other day I was thinking of famous people, so then I thought I might as well put together all the ones I’ve seen in person into a comprehensive but shameless post. So here you go.
Trent Reznor: Saw him at the Pittsburgh airport. (He grew up about an hour north, in Meadville.) He got his own bags. Short dude, but cool hair.
Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier: Driving an SUV and heading to a fried-seafood restaurant with a really skinny girlfriend, respectively. For some reason that trip to L.A. became the “see people from Entourage” trip. I also saw Mrs. Ari Gold on the trip before that one.
Whoopi Goldberg: She was walking up Sixth Avenue. That’s pretty much it.
Jim Lehrer: At a book-launch party in D.C. at Ben Bradlee‘s house. (I met him too, but that’s an interesting anecdote for another time.) Lehrer = super nice and introduced himself as if the rest of us would have no idea who he is. (“Hi, Jim Lehrer, nice to meet you.”)
L.L. Cool J: Walking through O’Hare airport. The woman ringing up my gum bailed in the middle of our transaction to go stare at him.
Dennis Kucinich: Strangely, in 2.5 years in D.C., and even having lived on Capitol Hill, Dennis Kucinich was the only recognizable politician I encountered. (Presidential motorcades don’t count.) I was out on a run and the Rep from Ohio was walking with some staff. Seriously short dude.
Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour: I met them at the CNN 25th anniversary party in Atlanta. Wolf is pretty short, and Christiane drinks Miller Lite.
Bill Cobbs: I didn’t know his name either, but I just now learned it when I looked up the guy from Night at the Museum that I saw waiting for a car in NYC.
Joey Porter: Saw him in NYC when the gate agent called for “Passenger Porter, Joey.” He flew coach. I told him “Nice game” and he said “Thanks.” It was craziness!
Joe Biden: Getting on a plane to D.C. in LaGuardia. Since I saw him in NYC, he doesn’t count for D.C. politician sightings. Tall, and mo old.
Chris Noth: Eating lunch with some homeless-looking guy in the same Hell’s Kitchen restaurant as me and two female friends. The two friends completely flipped out. Chicks.
Blair Underwood: He was waiting to cross the street in NYC, then I think he got on a bus. But why would Blair Underwood ride the bus? So I’m only 90 percent sure it was him, rather than 100 percent. But if it was Underwood, I would say he has, in fact, gotten on a bus.
Don Cheadle: On the five-hours-later-than-scheduled flight I finally caught to D.C. on the same day as the Biden sighting. A coworker on the flight, sitting directly behind Cheadle, completely missed him even with all the people mysteriously hanging around his seat. Short dude.
Michael Stipe, Christina Ricci, Mike Tyson and Heather Graham: All seen at a Guggenheim benefit party in NYC that I attended thanks to a helpful friend who worked there. Unfortunately I was a bit out of place: me and Mike Tyson were the only people not in suits, and I’m pretty sure that he’s the one of the two of us who could pull that off. Whoops. But I did make eye contact with Heather Graham. She and Mike Tyson later went on to star together in The Hangover. Coincidence?!??!?!
Updated Omissions 8/19:
Michael Phelps: A recent addition; I was watching the first Presidential debate with some UMich sectionmates at The Blue Leprechaun bar, then Phelps rolled in with an entourage of 15 college-age party types and the bar owner kicked us out of our spot. When we left 10 minutes later, there was a line around the block to get in.
Ted Turner: He was down the hall at one of the TIME conferences. I also saw Bill Clinton and Bill Gates at this thing, but they were scheduled speakers, which would be cheating to include.
Bob Novak: I’m surprised I forgot him, since he just died yesterday. Saw him at the restaurant where I was eating dinner with some coworkers. No CIA secrets were revealed to me.
Yesterday I made it to Day 3 of Lollapalooza 2009. I had a great time reliving 1993 with Jane’s Addiction and Snoop — Lady of Rage even made an appearance — though the organizers did throw in some solid bands from 2009, too. Ranking the bands that I saw or mostly heard:
1. Jane’s Addiction (probably a given, being that it’s my list, but very exciting. Also, Eric Avery really looks like Dennis Quaid)
2. The Raveonettes (the surf-guitar thing works great live)
3. Snoop (great show and he was smart to get a live backing band)
4. Cold War Kids (haven’t heard much of their stuff but liked it)
5. Kaiser Chiefs (like them a lot but they missed a few songs I like)
6. Silversun Pickups (good stuff)
7. Vampire Weekend (not a very exciting show)
See the Grooveshark widget down below if you want to hear some tunes from each.
Big ups to my favorite NFL player from back in the day, Rod Woodson, who was inducted yesterday into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Which is, as Tom Landry used to inexplicably say in the commercials, in “Canton, Ho-i-oh”.)
When I was 10 or so, I used to mail off baseball/football/hockey cards and player photos now and then in hopes that one would come back with an autograph. I have to wonder if kids still do this, but I hope so, because it’s a lot more successful than standing outside the players’ entryway in a giant cluster and waiting for someone to walk by. I sent a team photo of the 1989 Steelers to Rod, and lucky me, a few weeks later it showed back up at my house signed “Rod Woodson #26″. It was tacked to my wall for many years, so in my mind, Rod Woodson has always been a chill dude. That was true even though the nachos at Woodson’s All-Star Grille were nothing to write home about — I’d say he was more cut out for interceptions than the restaurateur life.
In America, this could work to an extent, because News Corp.’s two big properties here are the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both outlets with a dedicated (read: rabid) readership that turns there for a specific take on things that really speak to them. But outside the U.S. and for most of the company, I think this is a really bad idea: I don’t see anybody paying to access Sky News online, or junk tabloids like The Sun or New York Post (American, but more reminiscent of a British or Australian News Corp. publication).
I don’t think the blanket approach is a good way to go, and this type of drastic change should have been evaluated on a per-publication basis. (Maybe it was and they went with this anyway, but that would be puzzling.) TIME.com tried this when I was there, and it was a big failure — TIME is going for such a wide volume of readers that they don’t create a really targeted, “I need my fix” demand, and Sky News isn’t exactly media crack, either. Even the NY Times couldn’t pull this off with their opinion section, and that’s at least at the heroin-level of punditry.
I read an opinion piece in the Washington Post criticizing the Obama-as-Joker poster, in which the author argues that the poster is playing on racial fears and says that this poster isn’t as effective as the “Hope” one from the election.
That seems wrong on two counts. First, even the article itself takes a way long rhetorical path before it can make a connection between the Joker and racial fear. The Joker has always been a white guy, except on the ’60s Batman TV show, when you could possibly say he was sorta-Latino thanks to Cesar Romero. This article just doesn’t convince me that there’s anything about the Joker that links to blackness at all — if you want to break this Joker dude down racially, Heath Ledger clearly depicted him as a source of random violence, a.k.a. terrorism, and I’d say there’s a defined ethnic group that has a clear monopoly on being considered terrorists. Also, the Joker is a sociopathic serial murderer, and “weird middle-aged white guy” is the depiction that immediately springs to mind with that term.
Second, the Joker poster is totally blunt, but that’s not really ineffective: the great bulk of people are going to think, “Joker bad and socialism bad, so Obama bad”. I’m already seeing it as online avatars, so clearly it’s blunt enough to work on some level. You could get into the fact that probably 70% of people who dislike socialism have any knowledge of the topic besides negative word association, but the point is the poster ties the president pretty effectively to two things Americans dislike. Fair or not, it’s effective, and it’s not racist.
The Chicago Tribune launched a redesign today. I’m struck first off how much the top navigation looks like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette site. (Check out the two local-newspages, which for the Trib is the one I read the most.) But they did do a good job of cleaning it up a bit, particularly the headlines toward the bottom of the local-news page that used to get lost with no context, a.k.a. subhead, and the fact that the flyout links under the top navigation bar seem to be pretty flexible for spotlighting new stuff.
My pick for Michael Vick’s ultimate destination: the Oakland Raiders. Here’s why:
Back in my TIME.com days, I developed a serious music-at-work habit that kept on going all the way through Slate. Fortunately for me, my summer workplace at Kaplan Higher Ed is also cool with employees listening to headphones during the day, so I haven’t had to spend my time here sans face-melting shredfests.
Even more fortunate for me in the wake of my busted iPod, a coworker from Slate (props to Ellen) pointed me in the direction of Grooveshark, a startup music site that lets you search for any tune you want and stream it. It has similar functionality to Pandora, as you can click on a song and get a list of related songs, but with the instant playability there’s no need to wait to see what gets played next. Not only that, but mugs with a free profile can create and save playlists, mark songs as favorites, send out URLs for individual songs, and create exportable widgets like the one I have down below in the right column. (Though I’m a little disappointed at the lack of volume control on the individual-song widget. How are you supposed to go to 11?)
I’m hella confused as to how this site is allowed to exist, but Grooveshark’s DMCA-infringement policy and the fact that all of the music is uploaded by users would seem to put the legality onus on the general webgoing public. I can imagine record companies and Apple’s iTunes division wouldn’t think this is such a big deal right now because the songs aren’t downloadable to a hard drive or music player, but once everyone’s got high-quality web access on their cell phones and less of a need for hard copies of music files, record companies better check themselves before they wreck themselves. (That reminds me to go listen to that Das EFX song, particularly for Ice Cube’s ability to rhyme “knife, ho” with “rifle”.)
But for real, Grooveshark = mad good. Give it a visit.
Also, I updated some site CSS this weekend, so I wanted to point everyone to the style chooser up top. You get your choice of red, blue, green, black, or old-school viewing.
Minneapolis is running a corporate 1-mile tonight. One mile? 8 hours ago
This shelf is all Irish whiskies. The Local is the best bar EVER. @ The Local http://t.co/YBEz7cDl10 hours ago
RT @grossdm: To: corporate america. If you've got a big trading loss, environmental disaster, or just want to fire your ceo - do it tomo ... 12 hours ago
Trent Reznor: Saw him at the Pittsburgh airport. (He grew up about an hour north, in Meadville.) He got his own bags. Short dude, but cool hair.
Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier: Driving an SUV and heading to a fried-seafood restaurant with a really skinny girlfriend, respectively. For some reason that trip to L.A. became the “see people from Entourage” trip. I also saw Mrs. Ari Gold on the trip before that one.
Whoopi Goldberg: She was walking up Sixth Avenue. That’s pretty much it.
Jim Lehrer: At a book-launch party in D.C. at Ben Bradlee‘s house. (I met him too, but that’s an interesting anecdote for another time.) Lehrer = super nice and introduced himself as if the rest of us would have no idea who he is. (“Hi, Jim Lehrer, nice to meet you.”)
L.L. Cool J: Walking through O’Hare airport. The woman ringing up my gum bailed in the middle of our transaction to go stare at him.
Dennis Kucinich: Strangely, in 2.5 years in D.C., and even having lived on Capitol Hill, Dennis Kucinich was the only recognizable politician I encountered. (Presidential motorcades don’t count.) I was out on a run and the Rep from Ohio was walking with some staff. Seriously short dude.
Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour: I met them at the CNN 25th anniversary party in Atlanta. Wolf is pretty short, and Christiane drinks Miller Lite.
Bill Cobbs: I didn’t know his name either, but I just now learned it when I looked up the guy from Night at the Museum that I saw waiting for a car in NYC.
Joey Porter: Saw him in NYC when the gate agent called for “Passenger Porter, Joey.” He flew coach. I told him “Nice game” and he said “Thanks.” It was craziness!
Joe Biden: Getting on a plane to D.C. in LaGuardia. Since I saw him in NYC, he doesn’t count for D.C. politician sightings. Tall, and mo old.
Chris Noth: Eating lunch with some homeless-looking guy in the same Hell’s Kitchen restaurant as me and two female friends. The two friends completely flipped out. Chicks.
Blair Underwood: He was waiting to cross the street in NYC, then I think he got on a bus. But why would Blair Underwood ride the bus? So I’m only 90 percent sure it was him, rather than 100 percent. But if it was Underwood, I would say he has, in fact, gotten on a bus.
Don Cheadle: On the five-hours-later-than-scheduled flight I finally caught to D.C. on the same day as the Biden sighting. A coworker on the flight, sitting directly behind Cheadle, completely missed him even with all the people mysteriously hanging around his seat. Short dude.
Michael Stipe, Christina Ricci, Mike Tyson and Heather Graham: All seen at a Guggenheim benefit party in NYC that I attended thanks to a helpful friend who worked there. Unfortunately I was a bit out of place: me and Mike Tyson were the only people not in suits, and I’m pretty sure that he’s the one of the two of us who could pull that off. Whoops. But I did make eye contact with Heather Graham. She and Mike Tyson later 
Michael Phelps: A recent addition; I was watching the first Presidential debate with some UMich sectionmates at The Blue Leprechaun bar, then Phelps rolled in with an entourage of 15 college-age party types and the bar owner kicked us out of our spot. When we left 10 minutes later, there was a line around the block to get in.
Ted Turner: He was down the hall at one of the TIME conferences. I also saw Bill Clinton and Bill Gates at this thing, but they were scheduled speakers, which would be cheating to include.
Bob Novak: I’m surprised I forgot him, since he just died yesterday. Saw him at the restaurant where I was eating dinner with some coworkers. No CIA secrets were revealed to me.
