Watching • A School Daze Refresher

Lessons start again this month across schools in the Western world, whilst Lehman Brother’s and AIG got schooled in the pitfalls of unregulated capitalism. Election year guarantees we will learn a lot about the people wanting to to run the country for a few years. Who knew that people hunted wolves from helicopters a few months ago? And we should consider ourselves blessed that the internet informed us that Obama is not muslin (sic.). We learn, we forget, and as This American Life taught us recently, with all this new-found knowledge, or lack of, we have become Modern Jackasses: knowing just a bit too little, sharing it, pretending it’s really big.

The gimmickry of combining Star Wars and Pythagoreanism would never work in the school, but the internet has no limits on the possible lessons you can learn and there are millions begging for these sorts of diversions. Even if it is Darth Vader standing in front of a webcam declaring, “The hypotenuse is the long side of the triangle … I prefer to think of it as the Dark Side.”

Our Dark Lord strives for something cute and offbeat; it’s noteworthy due to the juxtaposition but if I were to test you now, would you remember it? It’s perhaps best then, when dishing out advice, to make light of a complicated situation, not to trick us into learning something we forget long ago. Coudal provides a few useful tips of surviving the economic depression in the series, “Now that the banks have collapsed and the world has falling into chaos.” Trash bag fashion for a time when you can’t afford to throw anything away.

The TED talks continue to make me feel optimistic that the smart people have my back. It’s not all new-tech revelling from an altogether distant astral plane; some are those deep memorable lessons, stories of humanity and individuals. “How to Read Africa” is delivered by “the gangster rapper at the Bar-Mitzvah”, Chris Abani. He discusses narrative and creating sense of self through the agents of imagination, or more simply, you can’t tell the story of a whole continent.

That is the sort of nuance you’ll struggle to find on the internet, but we are all aware of its flaws—why it may not be so smart to try to learn about any subject, let alone Africa, from Professor Wikipedia … “In 1908 he was award the Nobel Prize for … moustache.”



Since it’s the end of a long week, let’s remember a time when you did little else but wonder, when Sesame Street taught the sort of simple and colourful messages that all the above would do well to take notes from. Let’s all sit quietly and enjoy the classic, “How Crayons Are Made.” You’ll wish all textbooks came with such warming, strangely hip, and charming music.
 —Mike Smith, Sep. 26, 2008

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Watching • Do the Swiss Dream of Post-Apocalyptic Rap Battles?

You shouldn’t be disappointed that the one in 50 million chance of apocalypse didn’t happen this week; you should be pretty damn happy that nothing exciting happened to reward those watching the live web-feed at CERN, the particle accelerator in Switzerland.

Friends and I are sure that it’s not when they turn the thing on, but when it really starts stretching its legs that the world will play the ultimate lottery. It doesn’t help that benevolent Greek hackers are breaking into the system. We definitely don’t want computer geeks the Greek Security Team trying to over-clock a Black-Hole-Machine.

Exactly what is happening in Switzerland and what the Greeks have against particle physics is unclear. There is one surefire way to help all nations understand what is happening: the universal language of Rap.



Other things need explanation too—like rap battles. Here is one, translated for your enjoyment, including these very watered-down and no-fun lines: “The alleged facts you have uncovered in regards to me are unfounded and without merit. My birthplace is not only vastly inferior to yours, but my neighbors are much more resilient.”



Yet another election year demographic, No Values Voters, will be providing a lot of support for the apocalypse this year. The Onion suggests Citizens for a Bleaker America will be trying to swing the election toward hell sometime in November. And what else is bleaker than the end of the world? Post-apocalypse apocalypse, we can only assume. There’s nothing but mere chance stopping a meteor-hit world being swallowed into a black-hole—we’d probably consider ourselves lucky.



If anything is going to blow a hole through the earth, it’s CERN. When it does, here’s what will happen when you dive into the rabbit hole.

When the apocalypse does come—if you don’t go all Alice in Wonderland on us—what will you be doing? And why aren’t you doing it now? The following sort of recklessness seems like the sort of risk end-worlders will be enjoying. Fun until the sea starts to boil.



 —Mike Smith, Sep. 16, 2008

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Watching • Getting Literacy Dun, the Rendition of Bamboozled Pandas With Chinese Accents

Ed Rondthaler, 103, a typographist since the age of five, tells us why spelling is D-U-M, championing simplified spelling in a very smart video from House Industries. He reminds thousands of webcam-empowered YouTube ranters that when you’ve got something to say you should be subtle, familiar (not creepy), delivering something high-quality, and rich. His tips don’t stop at improving literacy, if you want to live longer “good genes, and regular cold showers” will help, he told CNN.

Mr. Rondthaler thinks that smarter spelling will deal a significant blow to illiteracy. But there may be a few hurdles ahead as English takes on a Chinese accent; experts say only 15 percent of those with English skills will be native speakers in 2020. Now is a good time to remember the first advert to offend one billion people, the stereotypically Chinese Super Bowl panda.


The CEO of the company making that mistake reminds us, “The pandas are Chinese…they don’t speak German.” Well if these Pandas are fluent in Chinese, and what with panda diplomacy being all the rage, we might finally find out what its like to be locked up in China as a Chinese subject. The following very sad panda is not enjoying his diplomatic leave at a Berlin zoo post-rendition.

It really outweighs a dozen cute animal videos, doesn’t it? That bamboozled panda should talk to Berlin’s famous polar bear, Knut. He seems to always enjoy himself—especially when fishing carp out of his moat.

An American digital graffiti artist, James Powderly, did give us some suggestion of the harshness of being detained in China as the following interview indicates. He was arrested after he helped Tibet activists conduct a laser-stencil-based protest and was subsequently tortured last month in Beijing.

Six days of torture in China, or a being sent on loan to central Europe and experiencing a few years of camera flashes from behind the glass at Berlin zoo? You decide. —Mike Smith, Sep. 8, 2008

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Watching • SnagFilms

SnagFilms provides a wonderful service: it is “a web site where you can watch full-length documentary films for free.” The site hosts big famous docs, like Super Size Me, and lesser-knowns like Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars. Personally, I go for uglier histories like Girl 27 and the Medici trilogy from PBS, but that’s another point in SnagFilms’s favor: It adds films in different genres every day. Trust, this is not all wars and This American Life-style misfits. Make sure you remember to do a little work in between Peter Jennings Reports and Heavy Metal in Baghdad, because it’s easy to lose several hours to all the content here. Oh, right, and you can also post entire films to external sites; SnagFilms knows that free, high-quality content sharing is what the internet is all about. Web 2.0, I love you. —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 13, 2008

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Watching • Mexican Breakfast

About a year ago, a clip of Gwen Verdon, star of stage and screen, dancing Bob Fosse’s three-and-a-half-minute “Mexican Breakfast” routine to the tune of Unk’s “Walk It Out” appeared on YouTube. Today that clip has been viewed nearly one million times, and inspired a number of imitators. Now Ms. Verdon’s smooth kicking and hip-shaking has been synced to M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It,” and one of my favorites, “Supermodel (You Better Work)” by RuPaul. —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 12, 2008

» Watch more Gwen Verdon dance remixes at You Go Gwen

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Watching • Target: Women

Do you watch Current.com’s media-mocking show, Infomania? You could call it The Daily Show’s younger sibling: The humor is goofier, the tone is lighter, and the subjects are less serious—really, a nice complement to the relentless laughing-at-horrible-news from Jon Stewart.

The best part of the half-hour show is Sarah Haskins’s “Target: Women” segment, in which she examines “the often-ridiculous way the media reaches out to women.” I know, I know: how many MST3K-style mockery of dumbass commercials can there be until we reach saturation? My friends, I give you the latest Target: Women: Birth Control. (Check out the other Target: Women videos for Sarah’s opinions on Botox, wedding TV shows, and yogurt commercials. The yogurt segment comes highly recommended by just about every woman who’s seen it, especially me.) —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 11, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: June 27, 2008

June is the gayest time of the year, thanks to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (L.G.B.T.) pride celebrations happening throughout the month. This June is extra-special because same-sex marriage was just legalized in California; just last night as I was standing on Castro Street, a car stopped at the intersection and the man in the passenger seat yelled, “I just got married!” The whole block applauded.

In honor of Pride Month, let’s digest some videos of parades and parties past. We’ll start with a double whammy: Bearforce1, the “world’s first true ‘bear band,’” on a float in the 2007 Amsterdam pride parade. These four gentlemen are not the smooth-chested boys of gay stereotype; they are hairy and proud and unstoppable, and must be seen to be fully appreciated.



In Washington, D.C., they have dancing “cowboys.” My father, an excellent dancer, has always maintained that “real cowboys don’t do triplets.” Well, neither do cowboys in hot pants; the real fakers are in musicals like Oklahoma, truly the height of ridiculousness. These guys here are serious dancers with serious moves, no joke.



As a refreshing break from all those big, burly chests, let’s see what the ladies have been up to. Atlanta, where all the streets are called Peach Tree, shows off its Dykes on Bikes organization. Often the Dykes on Bikes lead the Dyke March, a lesbian-centric parade that happens before the big Sunday bash. Incidentally, this isn’t novelty, although costumes are sometimes involved. Dykes on Bikes mean business.



Tel Aviv held its pride parade earlier this month, complete with giant pandas, blindingly silver hot pants (again with the hot pants), and an Israeli-Jewish-Gay dance floor anthem with unexpectedly serious lyrics. Mostly serious, anyway.



Getting progressively freakier, put on your tiny pants and enormous (faux) feathered headdress and shake it at the Sao Paulo parade. Around 3.5 million people came out, so to speak, to celebrate pride in 2007, including one quite benevolent pope impersonator. Might the actual pope take lessons in loving one’s neighbor from his Brazilian friends?



The lesbians and friends of San Francisco gather in Dolores Park on the last Saturday of June for the annual Dyke March. The all-day event is long on gathering and short on marching, but when surrounded by a strong lesbian community in a collectively great mood, who wants it to end? When I attended a Dyke March one year I learned that sexual orientation has nothing to do with a woman’s desire to go topless. This makes the march much more rewarding people-watching than other nudity-friendly events, which tend to draw more older gentlemen in nothing but a hat and shoes—and I don’t know anyone who would rather see their grandpa naked than a joyfully topless lady.



Guten Tag, it’s pride parade in Berlin! The Germans call their celebration Christopher Street Day, after the June 27, 1969 Stonewall Riots on Christopher Street in New York City. That date is why June is L.G.B.T. pride month, and why the serious festivities traditionally take place on the last weekend of the month. Check out Mr. Gay Europe 2007 at 1:12—his name is Jackson Netto, and he concurrently held the Mr. Gay Germany and Mr. Gay Swimwear titles before winning the big title. He is also my new imaginary boyfriend.



Although the super-sculpted, smooth-bodied, square-jawed physique of the ideal (gay) man is as ugly a stereotype as the fashion-model-body of the ideal woman, there is something irresistible about the Mr. Gay International “competition” (read: beauty pageant). Especially the swimsuit portion, where the hot pants are shortened into teeny tiny swim trunks. It’s kind of exploitative and could give a person seriously low self-esteem, true; on the other hand, are you going to not watch a bunch of really, really good-looking guys pose and prance in teeny tiny swim trunks? We’re human, after all. Besides, there are several men of color competing, and Mr. Argentina, your 2008 Mr. Gay International, doesn’t shave his chest. This is the greatest beauty pageant ever; I can’t wait until 2009.



 —Meave Gallagher, Jun. 27, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: June 13, 2008

When the need arises to indulge in the felicity of unbounded domesticity, not everyone is up to the task. Some of us weren’t raised by kings and/or queens of their castles; others were, but perhaps failed to learn such skills as home horticulture and grilling the perfect tomato. Would you pass this 1939 good wife test? Even granting myself half-points for things I do sometimes, and counting “has meals on time” as “comes to meals on time,” I scored a -3.5. In contrast, my partner scored a 9.5.

Low scorers, do not despair! In the interest of public service, we’ve assembled the following tutorial in the ways of housekeeping. Watch carefully, listen closely, and soon you too will be a domestic deity.

Lesson 1: Keep a clean kitchen. You will never experience true domestic bliss with a dirty oven, so at least take a sponge to it once in a while. It may seem like cheating to wipe down only the visibly dirty areas, but unless you’re performing an exorcism de cuisine, hardcore scrubbing isn’t necessary.





Lesson 2: Wear an apron. Whether you are cooking, cleaning, or feeling kitschy, an apron is essential to being a model house-spouse. Without my apron, I would regularly end up a flour-and-dishwater-covered mess. The secret no one tells you is to never wash it. That way you always look like you’ve been houseworking up a storm, even if all you really made were cocktails.





Lesson 3: Know how to remove stains. Adult bibs are not outdoor-wear, nor are cloth napkins to be used as ersatz bibs by tucking them into your top, no matter how much messy eaters would like to. All domestic artists should be able to scrub out a spot of red wine—you have budgets to stick to, after all, and nice clothes don’t make themselves!





Lesson 4: Make use of children. Before they know chores aren’t supposed to be fun, children believe that cleaning is more fun stuff that people bigger than them get to do. Should you acquire a child, strongly encourage this misconception for as long as possible.





Lesson 5: Place settings matter. To the more casual diner, more than one type of any utensil may be redundant, but good hosts and hostesses understand that impressing their guests means lots of silverware. In multigenerational families, setting the table is usually fobbed off on the children (age regardless), though that does not excuse the non-reproducing from observing table etiquette.





Lesson 6: Throw at least one party. This means that you provide all the comestibles, and in return your guests wear nice clothes, arrive on time, and lavish compliments on you and your abode. Hiding ugly feelings behind a veneer of politeness is called good manners, and we weren’t raised by wolves, were we?





Lesson 7: The outside counts, too. This means gardening, and as long as you have a window in your home, you can have some greenery. The environmentally aware homeowner in particular must pay attention to landscaping: lawns are out and edible gardens are in.





Lesson 8: Advance techniques: Reupholster the furniture. A new cover on your chairs or couch can change the entire room, and if you’re using the chairs you got free off Craigslist four years ago, they could probably do with some nice new seats. It’s much easier than it sounds, too, which is good for subtle bragging—the only appropriate form of bragging for the domestic artist.





Lesson 9: None of this is mandatory. Some of us have neither drive nor talent for cooking, decorating, or any home improvements besides occasionally turning on the Roomba. In this modern age, good housekeeping is a choice, and no one can force you to arrange flowers or make your own coffee table against your will. Taking pride in the home you make is the most important part of domestic deism, anyway.





 —Meave Gallagher, Jun. 13, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: June 6, 2008

Identity theft has become a crime epidemic—so how is it that 10 years ago, the phrase had yet to be coined? The internet and the rise of online banking are why: an easily exploitable, easily anonymizable window into the lives, and particularly the banking habits, of others.




Especially timely is the story of Jocelyn Kirsch and Edward Anderton, “the Bonnie and Clyde of identity theft,” the most scandalous news from Philadelphia since… well, it is extremely scandalous. It’s the story of a terribly attractive young couple fulfilling their dreams of luxury clothing and exotic vacations and life in the society pages. The problem was that they were funding it with credit cards taken out in their neighbors’ names, bank cards stolen from friends and strangers, fake checks from nonexistent accounts, and lies, countless lies. Jocelyn and Edward were finally caught in December of 2007 after a solid year of living the life of the rich and fraudulent.




Phishing is such a common concern that PayPal is threatening to ban Apple’s Safari, one of the top three most popular web browsers, due to its lack of phishing notification. But this is shortsighted—phishing is fundamentally a social engineering exploit. Wait, wait, social engineering? Well, yes. Facebook is full of security holes, and chances are you aren’t taking half the measures you can to protect yourself there.




Technological browser enhancements may make things a bit better, but the only real solution is education. Sadly, the financial institutions whose data is most often phished are as ignorant as their customers. As numerous reluctant press releases in the last few years have shown, financial institutions are unwilling even to acknowledge the problem, let alone address it.




Granted, Nigerians did mastermind that operation, but even the local news knows that you don’t need to have intelligence, cunning, or even a computer to perpetuate credit card fraud: all you’ve got to do is have someone else’s credit card.




Remember, “Identity” doesn’t have to mean bank account and/or social security numbers. What happens when someone is pretending to be you?




But seriously, you don’t have to be smart at all to pull off a little credit card fraud.




The ease with which goons worldwide succeed in invading our lives through our computers is enough to drive a person crazy. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as The Strongman ably demonstrates.




In sum, identity theft: totally scary.




 —Meave Gallagher, Jun. 6, 2008

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