Author: Dan Dickinson

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Best Of Enjoyed Narrated

Last Train To Astroland

One of my favorite pieces of writing is David Foster Wallace’s collection of short pieces called A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. There’s a piece inside it called Getting Away From Already Pretty Much Being Away From It All, a piece that “takes on the vulgarities and excesses of the Illinois State Fair”, if you’re the type to believe Wikipedia. It’s very reflective of the big-city-to-state-fair experience, but there’s one abstract paragraph that I love:

One of the few things I still miss from my Midwest childhood was this weird, deluded but unshakable conviction that everything around me existed all and only For Me. Am I the only one who had this queer deep sense as a kid? — that everything exterior to me existed only insofar as it affected me somehow? — that all things were somehow, via some occult adult activity, specially arranged for my benefit? Does anybody else identify with this memory? The child leaves a room, and now everything in that room, once he’s no longer there to see it, melts away into some void of potential or else (my personal childhood theory) is trundled away by occult adults and stored until the child’s reentry into the room recalls it all back into animate service. Was this nuts? It was radically self-centered, of course, this conviction, and more than a little paranoid. Plus the responsibility it conferred: if the whole of the world dissolved and resolved each time I blinked, what if my eyes didn’t open?

Astroland

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Debated

Fact Checking A Call To Fact Check

There was a brief hullabaloo after the iPhone price drop where some strangle Google ads appeared when you search for “iphone price drop”.

> This is like salt in the wound for the early adopter while I was initially bummed by the price cut news, this makes it infuriating! I’m a big boy and made the choice to stand in line and have fun with the rest of the faithful on iPhone day. I can handle a price change or even a new product, but for the price to be cut so drastically so quickly and then to have it rubbed in my face like this by Apple is just wrong.

Today, Cory O’Brien over at Didn’t You Hear came clean and admitted to placing the ad allegedly from Apple. Which would have been fine if he didn’t try to pass the buck to the blogs who covered it for “misreporting” and failing to “fact check”:

> See how their address is apple.com/store, and mine was store.apple.com? Also, see where their ad is placed? That’s usually a pretty good clue about the source of an ad. Fortunately, some of the various blogs’ commenters picked up on the fact that this was an affiliate ad, and not one placed by Apple, and called it out as such. Unfortunately, many of the blogs themselves did not. Fact checking would have saved me quite a bit of worry in this situation, so my plea to the big boy blogs is this: Keep those journalistic integrities intact, and Check That Fact!

Of course, had Cory done a little more research, he would’ve realized his own “facts” are wrong.

Also, the yellow box that sometimes appears at the top of the page? It has nothing to do with the source of the ad.

> While there isn’t a way to ensure top placement, there are certainly some best practices that may well help your ads rise to the top. Really, there are no secrets: these are the same best practices that affect the positioning (or ranking) of your AdWords ads wherever they appear, and they also happen to be the same best practices we wrote about just a few days ago.

Never let the facts stop a badly planned joke.

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Recommended

Paley Center Fall Schedule

I hold three museum memberships within the city; the one I hold most dearly is my membership to the Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television and Radio. They just announced their fall schedule, and the events are worth looking at.

(Ticket prices are listed with member prices first, and non-member prices second. Ticket on-sale dates differ depending on a few factors, so check the website if you’re interested.)

NYC

Media as News & Views

Includes three seminars: Beyond the Anchor Desk: The Rise of Citizen Journalism , Extraordinary Work: A Conversation with the IWMF Courage in Journalism Honorees, and Truth and the Iraq War: Frank Rich Converses with Television Journalists. Notable panelists and guests include Andrea Mitchell and Dan Rather. Series is $35/60, individual events are $15/25. [link]

Media as Entertainment 1

Includes four seminars: An Evening with Mary Tyler Moore, An Evening with Glenn Close, An Evening with Angela Lansbury, and An Evening with Kyra Sedgwick and The Closer. I don’t think I need to tell you who the guests are. Series is $85/100, individual tickets are $25/35. [link]

Media as Entertainment 2

Includes three seminars: Upright Citizens Brigade, Fun Facts, Top Tens, and Stupid Humans: The Writers of Late Show with David Letterman, and Scrubs: The Farewell Tour. Guests include all four members of the UCB and seemingly all major cast members of Scrubs. Tickets are a steal: $35/60 for series, $15/25 individual. [link]

Docfest

This year’s docfest includes some notables: To Die In Jerusalem, Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone (Larry Flynt appearing for Q&A), and Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who, where Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are scheduled to attend the event. Many ticket configurations are available, so check the site. [link]

LA

(Yeah, I don’t live in LA, but I always get jealous at their festival schedule.)

Latino Media

Two events: Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna & Pablo Cruz on Cinema, Politics, and Mexico’s New World View, and Raising Cane: Behind the Scenes. Prices are $25/43 for the series, or $15/25 individually. [link]

Media as Entertainment 1

The most mainstream of the four Entertainment schedules: Two and a Half Men: 100th Episode Celebration , American Masters Premiere: Carol Burnett, Inside the Creative Process: Tom Selleck on Jesse Stone, and ER Celebrates the Big 300!. Series is $50/85, individual tickets are $15/25. [link]

Media as Entertainment 2

Here comes my jealousy: Inside Robot Chicken (Seth and Matt and others to appear), Lovin’ Las Vegas, A Night in Hell’s Kitchen (Gordon Ramsay appearing), and the duality of Scrubs: The Farewell Tour. Series for $50/85, individuals for $15/25. [link]

The Subject Is Media

Just two, and not what I had anticipated: Smoke and Sympathy: A Toast to Mad Men, and Back in Circulation: A Lou Grant Reunion. Can’t go wrong with Ed Asner. $25/43 for both, or $15/25 individually. [link]