One of last week’s web sensations was People of Wal-Mart, a photo-blog featuring candid, mocking, in-store pictures of unusual Wal-Mart customers. The site is up and down thanks to its instant popularity, but think torn wife-beater shirts, mullets and the morbidly overweight. Here’s a nice quote from Associated Content:
What? No. Can’t be. Too simple. No way. Someone came up with a blog theme that 1) makes me laugh, 2) doesn’t cost me anything, and 3) raises my self-esteem, self-worth, and feelings of superiority over my fellow human beings (term used loosely)? “People of WalMart” is simply genius. Or cruel. Or genius.
Julie pointed out that the blog isn’t really “People of Wal-Mart”, it’s “People of America”. The photos on the blog depict the country’s underbelly, not just the store’s.
Crisis Communications, Redneck Style
I tweeted about the site last week. In response, Patrickasked:
What would you do if you were Wal-Mart? Ignore/Encourage/Sic the hounds on these guys?
It’s a good question. The site is getting a lot of attention–reportedly “250,000 hits per hour”–and Time magazine covered it on their site. Siccing the legal team on a blog is rarely a good idea, so I’d wouldn’t take that approach. I certainly wouldn’t encourage the blog, either, as it’s clearly ridiculing Wal-Mart’s customers.
What other avenues do they have? Strike back with a ‘The Customers We Love’ blog on their own site? That seems like protesting too much. How about inviting some of these funny-looking punters to a media event? Not wise, as these people are certainly outliers, and you wouldn’t want to intimidate the more, shall we say, average customers.
When you get media inquiries, I think you reply with a statement about “being proud of all our customers”. Besides that, though, I’d go with “ignore, and hope it goes away”. That’s not really a winning strategy, but I can’t think of a better option. What would you do?
Yesterday I saw Inglourious Basterds [sic], Quentin Tarantino’s latest project. It’s an epic tale of World War II intrigue, assassination attempts and gory Jewish revenge fantasy. In style, it was typical Tarantino. The film began with a long, talky scene fraught with tension, and moved through the series of long set pieces we’ve come to expect from the director of Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction.
While I enjoyed Tarantino’s latest project, it left me feeling a little hollow inside. It really feels like the writer/director has utterly failed to develop as an artist. He’s technically astute, and has an incredible repertoire of film history in his head on which to draw. This seems to make him an incredible writer and director of individual scenes and set pieces. Inglourious Basterds, for example, begins with a fay Nazi officer interrogating a French farmer about some Jews he may or may not be concealing. Depending on how you feel, it’s an homage to or highly derivative of the work of Sergio Leone.
It’s a riveting scene, but, much like Kill Bill, it’s preceded by a title card that explains that this is ‘Chapter One’. Other title cards follow. See, Tarantino can’t seem to resist reminding us that we’re watching a film. And not just any film–one of his films. Hence the title cards, the self-aware performances his actors give, the conspicuous song choices, the film-within-a-film in this movie and so forth. They’re all post-modern tricks that felt very hip in 1994.
Today, his films feel like sweet confections with hollow centers. There’s nothing wrong with plain old entertainment, but I really wish Tarantino would explore some themes beyond ‘how cool is retro?’, ‘the world is full of sudden violence’ and ‘I am a master film aesthete’. Here’s a quote from Cannes that kind of sums up my frustration with Tarantino-as-egotist-auteur. It’s in response to a question about the title’s mispelling:
Here’s the thing: I’m never going to explain that. You do an artistic flourish like that, and to describe it, to explain it, would just take the piss out of it and invalidate the whole stroke in the first place. Basquiat takes a letter ‘L’ from a hotel room door and sticks it on his painting. If he describes why he did it, he might as well not have done it at all. That’s my answer!”
Guess what, dude: you’re not Basquiat. I don’t actually mind his misspelling the title. It’s just that his films seem to reflect a kind of aesthetic snobbishness which I find frustrating.
I recently mentioned my ongoing efforts to discover new music. I continue to have the musicaltaste of a female college freshman at Brown, but what’re you going to do?
I thought I’d share five songs that I’ve recently come to really dig. I make no hipsteresque claims to newness, obscurity or coolness. If you’re any kind of music fan, I expect you’ve heard most or all of these. These songs are just new to me, and I like them
1. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” by Vampire Weekend - A jangly Afropop tune by four white kids from New York. The song mentions Peter Gabriel, and he’s actually done a cover version. Honourable mention: “Oxford Comma” by the same band. I, too, don’t care for the Oxford comma.
2. “People Got a Lotta Nerve” by Neko Case - How can you not like a song which includes the lyric “you know, they call them killer whales”. Ms. Case’s voice is in excellent form, and you can always count on her to write a catchy song in about two and half minutes. Honourable Mention: Ms. Case’s “This Tornado Loves You”, live on Letterman.
3. “Cartoons and Forever Plans” by Maria Taylor - A simple, hummable song and straight forward lyrics about love never dying. The backup singer sounds decidedly like Michael Stipe. The video seems to be cynically trading on the current popularity of crafting, but I’m in a forgiving mood. Honourable mention: hmm…how about that charming Lisa Hannigan song I mentioned on this site a couple of months back.
4. “This God Damn House” - The Low Anthem - Band geeks, certainly, but I saw them at SXSW and really liked them. They’re not quite to the video stage yet, I guess, as this is a live recording. If you watch to the end, you’ll see the lead singer whistle through a couple of cell phones. Honourable mention: “Scavenger Bird”, which is a terrific song by the same band. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a playable copy of it online.
5. “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” by Sophie Milman - A lovely jazz cover of the song from “Fiddler”. I’m not a huge fan of vocal jazz, but I quite dig Ms. Milman. Maybe it’s that she was borne in Russia, raised in Israel and now lives in Canada. Honourable mention: “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”, a cover of the Paul Simon song, off of her latest album.
Blog Action Day is a single day–October 15–when bloggers write about a particular topic in order to raise awareness. Last year’s topic was poverty, and these were the results:
12,800 Bloggers
14,053 Blog Posts
13,498,280 Readers
17 Top 100 Blogs
I urge you to spare 26 seconds to complete the survey and choose ‘climate change’ as the topic of choice. Why?
October 24 is an International Day of Climate Action, so having the Blog Action Day on October 15 seems like a nice coincidence.
This December world leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to negotiate the sequel to the Kyoto agreement, so it’s a critical time for the issue.
In my estimation, climate change is the most urgent issue facing our planet. It’s already allegedly responsible for 300,000 deaths a year, and has far-reaching impacts through extreme weather, political destabilization, famine and so forth.
It’s a topic near and dear to my heart. Capulet is currently working on the TckTckTck campaign, a global climate change movement–more on that later.
This weekend we were in Seattle. I watched a little American TV in the hotel room, and caught some of ESPN’s Sports Center. Among the other highlights, I saw footage from Women’s National Basketball Association or WNBA.
While I like hockey and soccer, I’m not much of a basketball fan. I could name a half-dozen current NBA players, but couldn’t tell you who the top five teams are. I know even less–well, nothing–about the WNBA. I don’t think that’s a gender bias–I watch women’s international soccer, for example. It’s more just a symptom of the leagues’ relative visibility.
Watching the WNBA highlights, I started wondering about a bunch of things: how many teams are there? How much do the players get paid? Is the league on solid financial footing? Who are the league’s superstars? Does the WNBA have a television contract?
Join me then, on my little tour of discovery regarding the WNBA. Most of this information comes from the WNBA’s website and Wikipedia entry.
When did the league start?
The first game was 12 years ago, on June 21, 1997. The Los Angeles Sparks beat the New York Liberty, 67-57. It wasn’t the first women’s basketball league. That distinction belongs to the short-lived WBL. The league launched with eight teams. The Eastern conference had the Charlotte Sting, Cleveland Rockers, Houston Comets and New York Liberty while the Western Conference was comprised of the Los Angeles Sparks, Phoenix Mercury, Sacramento Monarchs and Utah Starzz. The ‘Starzz’ may be the worst team name in the history of sports.
How many teams are there today?
Thirteen. Eight teams have folded or moved over the years, including four of the originals: Charlotte, Cleveland, Houston and Utah (cursed, no doubt, by their awful name). New teams have emerged, and there’s the possibility of future teams in Tulsa, Toronto, Baltimore and Nashville.
How many players are on a roster?
Eleven, and all are active. This means, I gather, that they can all play in a given game. The NBA has a 12-man active roster, and teams can keep three players on the inactive list.
How much do players earn in the WNBA?
The 2009 salary cap is $803,000. If you divide it evenly among the thirteen players–though it’s probably weighted toward four to six starters–you get about $60,000 a year. The average rookie salary is reportedly $36,500, and the maximum salary is $95,000. That’s obviously minor-league money, and reasonably similar to what the average CFL player makes (though the quarterbacks and other star players make a lot more). That said, the season only runs from training camps in May to the finals in late September. Apparently a lot of women spend the winter playing in Europe.
How many people attend an average game?
Average attendance is about 8000 people a game, with the Los Angeles Sparks and the (ahem) Washington Mystics being the most well-attended franchises. I couldn’t find any really reliable information about fan demographics, but this page reports that the audience is 78% female. According to this site (which features the phrase “I call on all my Sapphic sisters”) and USA Today, gay women are, statistically, over-represented. This Flickr search seems to reinforce the fact of a predominantly female audience.
Who is the WNBA’s star player?
It looks like that’s probably Tina Thompson, who’s the second all-time leading scorer behind Lisa Leslie, who just retired. Apparently an alliterative name is important to WNBA success.
This might be the first in an infrequent series of “Darren learns about” stuff. What do you think?
Sometimes I forget that the ‘rent a movie’ functionality in the average hotel is just a customized web browser, and the remote control has just replaced the keyboard:
This photo is only marginally amusing. But if you ask me, all of the humour derives from the fact that the fail message appears over a swishy Zac Efron.
As I get older, I find I have to work harder to discover new music that I like. When you combine this with the balkanization of the music industry and the rise in popularity of music genres I don’t particularly like (rap, hip hop and so forth), it can be downright tricky to come across new bands.
New tools like iTunes and Pandora help, certainly, but I still find that I have to work at the process.
D.J. Palladino is working harder than I am at it. He’s written a long article (found via Waxy) about his indie rock education. In particular, I like how he correlates today’s music to the rock and roll he grew up with:
Much of my pleasure came from the surprising connection this new music had to the stuff I loved when I was a kid. Most of my friends are stuck in the 1960s, their formative years, but who can blame them? The long feedback howling in songs like “Omaha” by Moby Grape were screams against our parents’ bland lives; they gave us hope that music could reorder the world. When that music died, many of my generation failed to find the same spirit even in the simplistic delights of punk rebellion. All I can say is my musical tastes are much like my working habits, which might charitably be considered ADHD.
I was pleased to recognize the names of about half the bands he references in the article. My favourites among those he lists aren’t particularly obscure: Rilo Kiley, New Pornographers, M. Ward and The Shins.
If this is entirely new territory to you, there’s a handy infographic primer at the end of the piece that’s worth a look.
For the fifth time, I’ve been at Gnomedex this weekend. It’s the usual melange of fascinating speakers, good friends and general nerdiness. Derek aptly described it as “a web society annual family reunion”.
I’ve been collecting a few of the better quotes I’ve heard over the past two days, and thought I’d share:
Phil Plait: “You know what you call alternative medicine when it works? Medicine.”
Phil Plait: “Your lips say 0, but your eyes say 1″.
Todd Friesen: “Pay Per Click = PPC = ‘Pills, Porn, and Casinos’”
Chris Brogan: “Twitter is a good way to tell the world what you’re thinking, before you think about it.”
Jim Ray: “Are there any Django or Python hackers in the room? Well we got the guy who invented Django. So [with a certain gangster pose], what?”
Jim Ray: “Every journalist in the country discovered Twitter on January 15 of this year.”
Chris Pirillo: “Does anybody still use Second Life? [A very quiet room] One person?”
Last week Julie and I spent a couple of days working from a cabin on one of the islands off the Sunshine Coast. There’s no cable or landline phone service to the cabin, so the only way we could manage this feat was by using the Internet Tethering feature on our iPhone.
For those outside the Cult of Mac, tethering transforms your iPhone into a modem for your computer. You use the phone’s 3G signal to access the web at slow but manageable speeds. You’re not going to play World of Warcraft, but it’s good enough for email or work-related web surfing.
This is kind of a game-changer for us. It means that we can work anywhere there’s 3G cell service. How much of BC is that? Not very much, but it’s a good start and I suspect that it’ll get better. Still, the promise of working remotely more–as well as always being able to access the web on my laptop in the city–is excellent news.
Canada Line, Ho!
When we’re in Vancouver, we usually stay near Cambie and Broadway. So we’ve been anticipating the opening of the new SkyTrain line for months. Since it opened last Monday, I’ve taken it like, 17 times. Okay, maybe more like six times, but it’s fairly awesome.
The trains are frequent and spacious, and it takes only 25 minutes to get all the way out to Richmond Centre. It’s a joy to ride the Canada Line right now, because it’s entirely advertising-free. All of the poster frames are empty, and the video advertising screens are off.
My only criticism of the Canada Line is that the subterranean platforms are aesthetically banal. Having ridden subways in a bunch of other cities around the world, I’ve always enjoyed it when individual stations have distinct designs. The Canada Line platforms look pretty much identical. Maybe this is due to time or budget restrictions, and there are plans to individualize the platforms down the road.
On a vaguely related note, we went out to Richmond Centre for a meeting on Wednesday morning. We walked through the mall–I don’t think I’d ever been before–before the stores were open. We passed several hundred Chinese seniors doing calisthenics to the music of, oddly, the Counting Crows. It was, I must say, a little Maoist. There was also a smaller group doing Tai Chi. I’d heard of seniors doing mall walking, but the scope of these exercising oldies was truly impressive.
