In the vast wasteland known as television, the gap between the Olympian heights of shows such as The Wire and the subterranean depths of reality TV and that ode to puerility, 24, is occasionally filled by brief flashes of inspiration (usually accidental): The Practice, Grey’s Anatomy, The Closer, and
To commemorate the Jan. 21 birthday of Thomas Paine (Common Sense, The Rights of Man), the Center for Inquiry annually hosts the Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture. Paine has languished outside the pantheon of American demigods and the reverential and hagiographic biblio-avalanche that celebrates the white men known as the Founding
Elizabeth Gilbert summons the spirit of the creativity genie, getting a rare standing ovation after her talk at the TED conference. Gilbert tries to bottle the essence of the creative process, being especially smart explaining the moments when we lose that bottle--the British idiom "losing your bottle" being
Mayan apocalyptic events are scheduled for 2012, giving Democrats another four years on the carousel of fear, just as the hell-ride slowed. Documentarians Joao Amorim and Daniel Pinchbeck don't think 2012 will be the end, preferring to tug at its symbolic potential, aligning their vision with a word
Werner Herzog continues his quest for ecstatic truth in Encounters at The End of the World. The Academy Award nominated documentary shares the lives of people shaken down to Antarctica, interviews matched with choral-led underwater photography. Herzog's voice and narrative echoes through the film; colorful characters can'
Spending $3,000 on a Lego Star Wars diarama is considered obsession. Not having watched and understood the entire Star Wars series is heretical and exile-worthy. Hearing these Heretics recount the 380 minute trilogy, having watched parts of the story but never evangelicised its holiness, is much more entertaining than
Starship Troopers, in the year it came out, was one of most profound moviegoing disappointments of my life. I was 13, and a little idiot. I sat there blinking up at the screen, feeling dull and confused. But it wasn't Neil Patrick Harris dressed up in Nazi SS
This vs That. Lobsters vs Godfather II. In this video, some architects, as part of their work with the Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America, ask us to think about the relative advantages of McDonalds, seahorses, English people. They contend that thing-literacy is important to designing the places we live
As much as I like video-games, it's always better to be outside. This trailer for video game CUBE offers the technology that "makes calculators look like the cotton gin." It makes a compelling case to avoid the computer, and instead, as I do, try to beat
Until climate change becomes climate changed, until the ice surrounds us, freezes the waves, the surfers, and the sharks in place until spring, we'll have urban wakeboarding. Badly designed and function-less moats tried to dull the shock of aging concrete towers, but now they provide an impressive location
As an almost lifelong observer of presidential politics--which I have come to view as the American quadrennial carnival of democracy--I sadly assert that the once energizing and redemptive spectacle of Americans choosing their president has become a pallid, limpid specter of democracy. This observation began with the Adlai Stevenson-Dwight Eisenhower
A human rights PSA delivered in a quasi High School Musical fashion is strangely compelling. There are no colorful songs about the status quo--it's a boring gray reality of in-school cops, and CCTV--but we can enjoy the same ratio of school-yard hunk to out-cast girl to feelgoodness, and
Intimate relationships with computers can get a little too much, even for your most progressive electro band. Chromeo, below, take part in a strangely familiar reality show, complicating matters. P-Thugg and Dave 1 share their experiences, as the digital Juliet gets between them. "I'm just in love
In the 1840 presidential campaign, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler of the Whig party ran against Democratic party founder and President Martin Van Buren (our first president born a U.S. citizen, and the only one--thus far!--speaking English as a second language). An Ohioan jeweler named Alexander Coffman
First lady of France Carla Bruni and Nouvelle Star 2007 winner Julien Doré sang the Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else But You," a.k.a. the ultimate love song for the socially awkward. Coming from French Elle's Sexiest Man of 2007 and the world's
I think about the bailout and imagine a Wall Street investor flailing about in a kids' splasher pool crying 'cause the big-boys pushed him in. The latter-termed Rescue Package makes me imagine a coast guard descending from a helicopter regretting the stupidity of those stranded in sea of
Bono is blogging about bureaucracy, manga comics, and celeb spooting, tag-teaming Jeffrey Sachs, beating world poverty and global injustice with a steel-chair on a blog for The Financial Times. At the same time 'Lil Wayne is blogging about sports for ESPN. After a decade with the internet, the cognitive
Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is my favorite congressional representative. He's intelligent and thoughtful, he's vegan, and he doesn't seem to have ever compromised his integrity during all his years in politics. Furthermore, the answers he's always demanding from the Federal government are the
On June 13, My Bloody Valentine played their first public performance in 13 years at the ICA in London. The reformation arrived stateside this past weekend, with their first performance in the U.S. in 16 years at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, which the band helped curate.
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
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
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)
In the large, inchoate expanse of critical terrain best characterized by the question of “What were they thinking?” one must relegate the newest effort, Raising the Bar, by veteran TV producer Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and N.Y.P.D. Blue). The bombardment of promotion on
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
The economic outlook’s been pretty bleak this year, what with the tanking housing market and the mess it made on Wall Street, and ordinary Americans are losing their jobs. Worse, even extraordinary Americans are being forced out on the street, with not so much as a cardboard box to
Perhaps inspired by TMN’s Matthew Baldwin’sSesame Street-themed muxtape, or the birth of my boyfriend’s nephew, I’ve been thinking a lot about kids. Babies specifically, though still in that “maybe I’d rather adopt a puppy” sort of way; my maternal instincts remain sufficiently vague for the
When I was a crazy teenager, my mom read my journals to try to find out “what was really going on” (just like Rufus Humphrey did to Jenny on Gossip Girl). When my parents thought my brother was a teenage pothead, they searched his room, too (just like Lily van
I hear April was a good month for viral video. Having spent the majority of it in New Zealand, I missed all the good stuff, or so it seems. This week, a roundup of the more popular videos of the past few weeks. Superstar Erykah Badu gives some (unsolicited?) advice
Ever since I saw The Five Obstructions a couple years ago, I’ve been a fan of Jørgen Leth’s short film The Perfect Human. Perhaps more than a fan. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched it, maybe a dozen. Not that there’s much story:
Well, hello! And welcome to the world of Ms. Brenda Dickson. You may know her from her tenure on The Young and the Restless, where she played Jill Foster Abbott from the program’s inception in 1973 to 1980, then reprised the role from 1983 to 1987, when she outshone
This year’s Olympic Games are scheduled to be held in Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China. Hello, controversy! The Chinese government, with its significant involvement in the Darfur crisis, its noted history of free speech and human rights violations, its oppression of the Tibetan government, and its
My goodness, but we’ve had some interesting political scandals this year. Juicy ones, too, with extramarital sex and misuse of public funds. Now, when I think about sex scandals, I assume the politician is a national one, a U.S. representative or senator, certainly presidents or perhaps a governor.
CNN doesn’t like to give up its news crawler—you can’t escape it by watching videos on its web site. That’s how I learned in “a recent poll,” some very high percentage of “polled Americans” believe “the economy is in a recession.” It’s a national mantra
Office culture doesn’t differ much country to country. People send each other videos, and we watch those videos when we think no one’s looking. In France, the videos are sometimes a bit steamier than you’d expect from Jane in accounting, but more often they’re cute rather
Since today marks the first round of the 2008 Tournament of Books, we figured we’d have a literary discussion about movies. All us hardcore readers know the book is always better. It’s an unquestionable fact. Except, of course, when the movie reinterprets the book so well that a
I would like to dedicate this digest to a colleague, whose fascination with Cuba began with his “first sight of Fidel Castro and his bearded cohort during the early and triumphant moments of the Cuban revolution.” I think I understand now. El Comandante en Jefe has been in power since
Occasionally we invite guests to edit the weekly Digests. This week, we’re happy to be visited by Jad Abumrad, host and producer of perhaps the most innovative show on radio these days, Radio Lab on WNYC. Radio Lab is the winner of the 2007 National Academy of Sciences Communications
The Writers Guild of America strike is over! Hooray! I’m looking forward to an as-yet-unspecified day in April when Gossip Girl will return to the iTunes store and my TV-watching schedule returns to normal. Throughout January and the first part of February, I heard that there were some weird
We had a lovely Super Tuesday in San Francisco, thank you. I agonized over my choice of presidential candidate for days, but ultimately I’m happy with my decision. That immediate post-voting relief was just what I needed to forget the stress from the media saturation insanity of Tuesday morning.
President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia invited Alex James, the bassist for Blur, to learn about the troubles in Colombia caused by the cocaine business; the president was inspired by James’s speculation in his autobiography that he’d spent “around a million pounds” on champagne and cocaine during his time
Fellow citizens, January’s staggering to an end, and you know what that means: it’s time for the State of the Union! This year our 43rd president will deliver his final State of the Union Address, and o how I am looking forward to it. To optimize your enjoyment
Lately, it’s become serious punishment to follow presidential politics in the U.S. Why? Misogyny. Hillary Clinton’s big, bold run for president, and her nerve to be successful at it, has made it OK for jerks of all stripes to unleash their latent woman-hating. Allow me to indulge
Only 11 days into it and I’m already tired of the presidential hopefuls. Maybe it felt different living in Iowa or New Hampshire, being wooed by each candidate personally, correcting the hordes of reporters who kept calling you a voter—“I’m going to caucus right now, yes.” Sounds
[ note: technical difficulties with some of these videos. all, however, run fine if push the play button.—ed. ] If there’s one thing that I identify with the holiday season, it’s that sense of malaise of long car rides to visit family, only to sit down in cozy sweaters
Q. If a candidate appears on stage, but never gets any face time, is he still running for president? A. Apparently so. There are eight Democratic and eight Republican candidates vying for their respective parties’ nominations—not that the casual observer would know it. I threw a small fit the
I managed to watch this week’s CNN-YouTube Republican debates and I don’t want to be a jerk, but HDTV was not kind to the candidates. Fred Thompson is all crags and jowls, Giuliani’s already enormous choppers tripled in size, and it turns out Mitt Romney’s hairstyle
Last weekend, during an Ibero-American conference, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar a fascist. Why? It wasn’t quite clear. Current Spanish PM José Zapatero did his dignified best to defend his compatriot, and boy did Chávez give him a bad time—heckling and
Looking back on advertising, it is easier to unearth the hidden messages marketers embed in otherwise clear and plain copywriting. For example, look at what they are really saying in these old cigarette ads. You too can be Queen Elizabeth on the couch, a cuban plantation owner, a lazy furniture
In high school, I spent a lot of time in the AV department. It was where the geeks, gays, weirdoes, and Goths hung out—plus the theater types, straight-edgers, pot-smoking jocks, Kids-era ravers, and a few normals—all because a librarian named Magoo let us sit at her desk, store
My best Halloween costume was in grade school. I must have been eight or nine, and my dad helped me turn a cardboard box into a television set. With aluminum-foil rabbit-ear antennae on a headband and a pillowcase for candy, I was good to go. Halloween in these suburban United
Just over 30 years ago, followinginauspiciousbeginnings, a relative unknown starred in a film he’d written about a scrappy boxer with big dreams who miraculously both beats the champ in a title match and turns “yo” into a catchphrase. Equally miraculously, the film went on to win three Academy Awards
Hey, climbing. Another thing that paralyzes me with fear. My boyfriend has been climbing at a gym for a while now, and he loves it, so because I love him, I’ve tried it, but it didn’t take. It’s the looking-down that always ruins it; you’re close
A Parisian reader emailed me after my Video Digest about the latest hip-hop dances. Was I aware, she wanted to know, of Paris’s own Techtonik craze? I was, though nowhere as well as I am now. You’ve heard about dances sweeping a city. Well, Paris, she’s full
Like revenge fantasies, anti-drug videos are a creative bonanza for those visionaries who know how to exploit both sides of an issue; righteous indignation at the social ills while simultaneously indulging in their lurid details ills. There’s a treasure trove of anti-LSD educational films out there that depend on
Coming home from work the other day, I saw a couple on a bicycle, speeding down 24th Street. Not the steepest of hills, but 24th heading out of Noe Valley towards the Mission is a street pedestrians try to avoid. These two looked fearless. The teenage girl was sitting on
No U.S. Open coverage was complete without pointing fans toward YouTube, where up-and-coming Federer replacement Novak Djokovic was caught impersonating his peers in the locker room. With good reason: There was nothing else to talk about. Sports with levity, now there’s a story. Djokovic’s good, but only
My wife loves to dance and so do I, but Paris, where we live right now, isn’t much of a dancing town, especially if you like R&B. Paris is a techno city. Occasionally a bar or club will have a hip-hop night, but mostly hip-hop is relegated,
When Miss South Carolina expressed her concerns about American teens’ lack of geographical knowledge, and the Iraq, I’d like to know exactly how many people were truly surprised. Yes, her answer was shockingly hilarious, but who expects beauty pageant contestants to be eloquent? Not that I hold it against
There I was the other night, lying on the couch, flipping through channels, when I came across it: the blooper show. No, seriously. They still have these things? I felt as though I’d tripped across a Betamax. Apparently people still watch these things, and I had to question who
I don’t know that I ever want to write a book, but I certainly wouldn’t mind going on a book tour. The work’s already done, now you get to go to city after city to be lauded for being a genius. Sure I’m romanticizing it; nonetheless,
Not until somebody gets a drumstick through the throat, will drum aficionados cease debating who’s the superior stickman: Neal Peart or Phil Collins. But one argument is still unexplored: Is Peart’s favoring of do-rags an attempt to mimic Collins’s hairless pate? Doubtful, but drummers are unpredictable—as
&tI work in an office building. My “office” is a cube in the center of the room, affording me little privacy and no view. Some of my coworkers are truly strange people. We all get frustrated by incomprehensible corporate policies that seem only designed to punish us. Just like
When my editor asked me to write about Ms. Alexyss K. Tylor for this week’s Video Digest, my prudish side was shocked. Does he know what she talks about, I wondered? Does he know about her vocabulary? My grandparents read this! The woman does have some captivating video clips
Like many of you, I’m a Nova kid. I remember sitting in the classroom, blinds closed against the Friday afternoon sun, staring transfixed at volcanoes exploding, crocodiles jumping for monkeys, a tiny unmanned submarine traveling the unexplored depths of the Marianas Trench. To this day, hearing Richard Attenborough’s
The other day I saw a woman wobbling down the street in high heels, texting someone as she walked. You see these people every so often in New York, weaving around like a Kennedy after a July 4th celebration, when really they’re hunting for the backspace button. So this
About two years ago I wrote an article for this magazine about Battle of the Network Stars. It was an attempt to defend the 70s and 80s kitsch show—as an early example of reality television and, thanks to some clever soul at VH1, what has become known as celebreality
My favorite breakfast as a kid was iHOP’s chocolate-chip pancakes. The kind with the whipped-cream smile? Blech. These days, I’d just as soon pour Nutella in my morning coffee. Wait, that sounds delicious. How about: I’d just as soon eat pancakes made from human blood? Argh. Well,
I cannot separate the songs I loved as a child from their videos. “Rio?” That’s a song about sailing the Caribbean and pouring melted pink ice cream on yourself. “Billie Jean?” Requires light-up tile floors. “Hello” is about some blind chick in Lionel Richie’s acting class (a video
As a kid, I loved candy cigarettes. I was obsessed with Hollywood glamour, with being an adult even as I was just learning the wobbly letters of my first name. It was a powerful feeling to slip that sweet, chalky stick between my lips and puff away. If you sucked
Living in San Francisco means constant reminders that the Big One could come at any time. This year marked the 101st anniversary of the Great Quake, when a 7.8 exploded along the San Andreas Fault, leveling the city and igniting a massive fire when the shaking stopped. Many of
With the endless malapropisms, spoonerisms, and eggcorns spilling out of the mouth of our president, we’ve been spoiled for political humor. Back when I was a wee girl, it wasn’t so easy. Yes, Michael Dukakis rode on a tank, and George Bush, Sr., choked on broccoli, vomited on
I’ve never been a big fan of House, the television show. I find it painfully contrived, annoyingly outlandish. I’m a kid who grew up on St. Elsewhere and General Hospital; if a medical drama strikes me as unrealistic, then we know things are bad. That said, I’ve
Rosie O’Donnell is leaving The View. Shh, shh, little bear, it’s going to be OK. I know what you’re wondering. You’re wondering: What will my day be like without a kneejerk, vaguely incoherent lesbian to organize my day? Watch this video. Why? Because it would piss
I spent my college years working at a daycare with four- and five-year-olds who screamed a lot, hurt themselves easily, and sometimes wet the bed. They reminded me a lot of my friends at the time. Turn on loud music, blow some atmospheric bubbles, and the only difference between my
Each week, as I sift through online videos for this column, I kick one of my ballet slippers up onto my studio barre, bust out a few pliés, and and try to find an overarching theme to unite the week’s digest. Usually these themes come to me immediately, even
I used to think I would die from some relatively ordinary cause: heart attack, cancer, falling down the stairs in platform heels. It has now become clear that the icy fingers of death will be more like furry paws. Death by adorable animal video? It could happen. But which is
The top Google result for the term “instructional videos” is this site. It contains such classics as “Good Dog Massage” and “Sharpening Simplified.” Somebody needs more Bob Ross in their lives. I was Googling instructional videos because, let’s face it: They’re funny, and I’m bored. These may
If you haven’t seen the video clips of Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell having respective meltdowns on the set of I Heart Huckabees, you owe it to yourself to watch. Consider it your spa day, your mental health vacation, except instead of soothing it’s traumatic and shriekish,
What I’m about to show you may scare you. What I’m about to show you may hurt you in a place that strangers shouldn’t touch. Are you sitting down? Do you have supportive friends nearby? Are you at least drinking a diet soda? Don’t say you
When I lived in Austin, one of the best storefronts was a place on South Congress Avenue called Just Guns. How Texan is that? It not only explains what’s for sale, but does so with an ounce of humility. Or is that authority? “Aww, it’s just guns.” vs.
Last week, Video Digest brought you classic regional commercials of the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was a smorgasbord of egg-laying eagles, rapping spokespeople, and beautiful Mount Airy Lodge. A few of you sent in gems from your own traumatized childhood, and I’d love to see more. Please send any
No matter where you grew up, if you watched television, there was always that one commercial: the commercial that annoyed you so profoundly that at some crucial juncture, annoyance swerved into fascination—perhaps for some tic, some incongruity, or for the very fact of the commercial’s existence. Somebody—somewhere—
Last year, I predicted that American Idol had peaked. I did this over a plate of cheese enchiladas, laying out the reasons why the phenomenon had undoubtedly run out of steam, including but not limited to: Abdul’s obvious drug abuse, the inclusion of “rockers,” and the cultural triumph of
What better way to start out our Valentine’s Video Digest than with an ode to the old ticker itself. Spanish-language comic singers Hard ‘N’ Phirm offer up an anatomically correct power ballad that can teach all of us a thing or two about the ground zero of relationship angst.
My favorite piñata story—yes, I have one; you don’t?—involves a particularly murderous season on Days of Our Lives. It was Thanksgiving in Salem, and there was a Thanksgiving piñata—because along with turkey and stuffing, the traditional piñata is one of the most heartwarming American traditions. So
I love that there was a moment in time when we all watched The Golden Girls. Four single senior citizens, living and loving in Miami: I’m in! Obviously one of the coolest of the GGs—if not the coolest—was sparkplug Estelle Getty, who made a workout video to
If you just don’t get Napolean Dynamite, there’s nothing much for you to see in “Peluca,” the eight-minute short that inspired the movie. It has the same oddball tempo as it follows Seth (played by Jon Heder) on an afternoon’s quest for a fanny pack. Made for
In the summer of 1979, my older brother and I, along with my three cousins, decided to remake Star Wars on our family’s Super 8. Actually, they decided and I tagged along, because at five years old, I apparently had nothing better to do than to absorb petty insults
Like many people with a soft spot for NPR, I learned about The Beaver Trilogy through a 2002 piece on This American Life, in an episode called “Reruns.” Produced by Starlee Kine, it’s a Russian nesting doll of a story: a television cameraman films a documentary about a kid
Best Videos of the Year There was a stretch this summer when I watched OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” every morning. It was like my personal inspirational video, Tony Robbins with treadmills and Prada pants. A few weeks later, it changed to “Little Superstar,” and even now, hearing
“Us nerds are the oppressed and downtrodden,” raps one MC in following trailer for Nerdcore for Life. But these days, it’s kind of hard to feel bad for nerds. They’re everywhere. Nerds have traded in the swirlies for the spotlight and, most likely, a sweet new Wii. Nerd
As if VH1 weren’t bad enough, YouTube has turned us into nostalgia-grubbing monsters, willing to sink hours tracking down some vaguely remembered scrap of childhood fun. And I, for one, love it. What’s funny is that I enjoy things now that I couldn’t have cared less about
Every parent thinks their kids are the best, the cutest, the brightest. So when you click on a link called “Best Baby Breakdancer in the World,” you think—feh, no way. There’s gotta be a million babies breakdancing out there, undiscovered, crying in the shadows for a crumb of
The clip of the week—and maybe the year—was this corporate Bank of America serenade using U2’s “One” as a blueprint on which to rhyme fierce couplets about specialty themed checks and core values. The compelling question, aside from which site could host the video longer than a
In eighth grade, at one of those slumber parties where you try to make each other levitate but only make a gallon of ice cream disappear, someone asked who was the best-looking guy I’d ever seen. I had an answer and, to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t Johnny
