Acting Lessons

All of Rear Window’s exteriors composited on a single long...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:42:47 -0500

All of Rear Window’s exteriors composited on a single long shot.

What people accomplished by your age.

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 23:20:33 -0500

What people accomplished by your age.

A letter to Keith Olbermann

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:22:11 -0500

Mr. Olbermann,

I’m sorry to hear that you have been forced to leave your post on Current TV. Unfortunately I haven’t been a viewer of yours for some time. Shortly after you left MSNBC I canceled my cable subscription in lieu of subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, and other similar services.

I write to ask that, in this time of transition, you consider leading the news and opinion world into a new age. Actually, I beg that you drag the rest of the industry kicking and screaming away from what’s comfortable and into an on-demand subscription model that is painfully overdue, and where you will thrive.

I would have gladly continued to follow your show via iPad or a subscription service, but Current had no such capability. I made the decision to cut cable for many reasons, most of all because I could not justify the cost of the fraction of content i cared about against what was available elsewhere.

I listen to NPR on my iPad for one to two hours every morning. I come home to watch Nightly News with Brian Williams on my iPad at night, usually an hour after it airs. I subscribe to the NYT digitally for computer and mobile use. I am willing and eager to pay for what I want and what I believe in. I cannot speak for everyone in my generation or my demographic, but I believe that I am not alone in my habits.

I humbly ask that you consider pursuing a new venture where you would speak directly to subscribers—subscribers to you alone or a team of voices and reporters that you assemble.

I remember the excitement that came with rumors (substantiated or not) of Conan O’Brien considering signing with Microsoft to distribute his show exclusively through the XBox360 console. Whether or not that would have been a better choice than TBS is debatable, but at least someone out there was considering reaching out to his audience through a medium that is begging for content and packed with free-spending young professionals.

These mediums have been shrugged off as additives, perks, and places to further capture the same cable demographic. HBO’s web, mobile, and direct to television service HBO GO has the promise of liberating the company from the entertainment monopolies, yet it stays married to the cable box. This decision is surely one in consideration of contract obligations and their desire to continue taking huge financial risks, but there’s no way that it’s a decision based on lack of public demand.

And I freely admit that there are problems with this model. By placing too much much power in subscriber’s hands, you risk longterm stability, and the costs of running a daily news show with talent such as yours must be astronomical compared to any other subscription periodical. But if the numbers could work, if it’s simply a fear that the interest isn’t there that’s holding you back, I plead that you consider otherwise because this has never been tried before. Not with an opinion and a voice so in demand.

My demographic is screaming for content. The technology and the habits are there. Cable isn’t dead, but it has every reason to be.

We live in an on-demand society, and we are demanding voices like ours, news that we care about, and entertainment that we want without that which we don’t care for.

Drop these networks and cable shows and be one of the first to embrace a direct link to the people. Who needs these middlemen when you can be employed directly by your viewer-base?

I would pay. I believe others would pay with me. Give us the chance.

Sincerely,

Alex Wayman
Chicago, IL

Photo

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:30:07 -0600

Photo

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:30:08 -0600

nevver: I’ve got a job to do

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:31:07 -0600

nevver:

I’ve got a job to do

Photo

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:30:06 -0600

"It’s amazing how far an attractive avatar can take you today’s world."

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:30:07 -0600

“It’s amazing how far an attractive avatar can take you today’s world.”

- Magnificent Ruin (via nevver)

"When it came to predicting the likelihood of an outcome, the vast majority [of experts and..."

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 17:30:00 -0600

“When it came to predicting the likelihood of an outcome, the vast majority [of experts and specialists used by news outlets] performed worse than random chance. In other words, they would have done better picking their answers blindly out of a hat. Liberals, moderates and conservatives were all equally ineffective. Although 96% of the subjects had post-graduate training, Mr. Tetlock found, the fancy degrees were mostly useless when it came to forecasting.”

- Jonah Lehrer’s Head Case Column on Punditry - WSJ.com, ayjay, philk

lostateminor: Andy Denzler’s paintings look like the moments of...

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:30:00 -0600

lostateminor: Andy Denzler’s paintings look like the moments of static and distortion when VHS tracking goes off, making for really evocative, mysterious, and voyeuristic images. Original Article

Stop being so fucking polite, writer.

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:30:00 -0600

Stop being so fucking polite, writer.:

“Femi-nazi rantings or an appeal to basic manners”

There is no reason why a writer that has put together such a reasoned essay should feel obligated to ask the reader if it represents “femi-nazi rantings or an appeal to basic manners”.

Why must such a simple, basic request, reinforced by a disgusting personal event, need to be so delicately handled, so as to not upset its audience.

Get angry, author. Get very fucking angry. Your society is letting you down and you don’t even feel like everyone will agree that you’re a victim. Fuck that. Fuck all of that. You need to care less about those sensitive conservative misogynists and start respecting yourself and your beliefs.

ilovecharts: by a 7 year old male.

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:30:00 -0600

ilovecharts: by a 7 year old male.

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Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:30:07 -0600

pinkindiaink: Harry Potter cast members struggling to say...

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:30:07 -0600

pinkindiaink:

Harry Potter cast members struggling to say “Olive Garden”, “Glenn Beck”, and “Twilight sucks” with American accents. Adorable.

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Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:30:07 -0600

A young Timothy Treadwell’s fate is sealed. urhajos: (by...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:30:06 -0600

A young Timothy Treadwell’s fate is sealed.

urhajos: (by Sarolta Bán)

You can backup your Facebook and Tumblr accounts

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:30:07 -0600

Facebook collects all of your info, photos, etc. into a lovely zip file.

Go to Facebook —> Account —> Account Settings —> Download Your Information

Tumblr has an application in beta for Mac users to download a basic copy of their blog.

Get it HERE. (Note: I haven’t gotten it to work yet on my work Mac.)

ilovecharts, mightyku

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:30:00 -0600

ilovecharts, mightyku

redesignrelated: Bruce Mau Design redesigns the Facebook...

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:30:06 -0600

redesignrelated:

Bruce Mau Design redesigns the Facebook profile page

“We invited Bruce Mau Design, a firm famous for its conceptual ambition, to reimagine what a Facebook page might be. To signal that they were aiming at more than a cosmetic redo, BMD’s design director Paddy Harrington and his team left many of Facebook’s graphic details intact…” —via The Washington Post

laphamsquarterly: In 1820 a little-known architect named Thomas...

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:30:00 -0600

laphamsquarterly: In 1820 a little-known architect named Thomas Wilson proposed a plan for “a metropolitan cemetery on a scale commensurate with the necessities of the largest city in the world, embracing prospectively the demands of centuries, sufficiently capacious to receive five million of the dead, where they may repose in perfect security, without interfering with the comfort, the health, the business, the property, or the pursuits of the living.”