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annakovsky) wrote2007-03-15 10:21 pm
annakovsky) wrote2007-03-15 10:21 pm
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So I'm an early bird, and I have worms.
So this was random: BJ Novak's dad, William Novak, edited "The Big Book of Jewish Humor", and was giving a book reading tonight at the book store down the street from my apartment. I don't know about you, but "I saw BJ Novak's dad read from The Big Book of Jewish Humor" is not a sentence I'm willing to pass up, so ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
la_cspan and I went to hear him. There were maaaaybe 20 people there, tops, and let me tell you, BJ looks JUST like his dad. It was kind of creepy, actually, like I'd taken a time machine 30 years into the future, when Ryan Howard will still be working at Dunder-Mifflin, married to Kelly with five kids he didn't exactly plan on, but mostly likes in spite of himself. Hee. Anyway, BJ's dad seemed really nice and funny and adorable, and has ghost-written books for a buttload of celebrities, and it was really interesting. Plus, right before he started, the ladies sitting in front of me, whom he seemed to know, were talking about how one of their sons, Ben, used to read from The Big Book of Jewish Humor all the time as a kid, and BJ's dad came up at the end of the story and was like, "Wait, Ben? My Ben?" Which I think would be BJ. <3 <3 <3 My heart, you guys.
moireach is in California, so missed the whole experience. When she heard that BJ's dad was going to be reading, she got all outraged and said, "You get to see everyone good!" Hahaha, what? Apparently "everyone good" meant "Amy Sedaris" and "BJ Novak's dad" - which, you do have to admit that I live a star-studded life. (This is my sarcastic voice.)
This is the first time I've been here while she's been out of town since we got this apartment, so it's been weird and quiet. I spent the first weekend while she was gone being all, I WILL NOT PICK UP ANY OF MY BELONGINGS WOOHOO, but that got old fast, and then I kind of just cleaned a lot? And vacuumed? It doesn't really make sense to me either.
In fandom news, corporations are ruining everything, geez. A month ago or so, Viacom made Youtube take, like, all their Daily Show/Colbert Report/Strangers With Candy/Exit 57 clips off in the Great Purge of '07, which made me furious - STOP INFRINGING ON THE LIFESTYLE TO WHICH I HAVE BECOME ACCUSTOMED. I really think that I should be able to sit down at 2 on a Sunday afternoon, and keep clicking on youtube clips until I realize I'm strangely hungry, and that this is because 8 hours have gone by without me noticing. But whatever, I'd adjusted - but this week, Viacom sued Youtube for not taking down enough. Which, on the one hand, I understand them being pissy about Youtube making money off their intellectual property, blah blah. HOWEVER, and this is where it gets retarded, many of those clips are not available anywhere else. If they had a site with the clips I wanted to see available, in a well-organized way so that I could find things, I would be more than happy to watch the same Fed-Ex commercial 10 times a day on their site (cf. The Office, deleted scenes of). But they DON'T. Even Stevphen clips from the Daily Show, for instance, are not available on DVD or on the Comedy Central site, or anywhere else. Same goes for Exit 57, and many, many other clips. This strikes me as another incidence of mainstream media being generally retarded about the internet -- because realistically, they can't stop the signal, and there's always a fandom underground railroad of clips in these situations. Suing isn't going to get rid of video piracy - they need to find a way to work with the technology, and either adapt or go under, because that's the situation they're facing. I mean, your standard commercial advertising is on the edge of being outdated anyway, due to TiVo, etc. You can bitch about it all you want, and sue youtube all you want, but I still have every Even Stevphen clip saved to my hard drive, so. Good luck rooting all that out.
(As an aside on the subject of fanvids, which also got taken off youtube, why do corporations want to get rid of fanvids? It doesn't make sense. This was brought home to me even more clearly lately, because NBC has started making Office promos that look exactly like fanvids, and putting them up on Youtube themselves. Which is pretty bright of them - but for real, with vids, you basically have fans making promos for TV shows FOR FREE, and other fans watching them BECAUSE THEY ENJOY THEM, and recruiting people to the shows through them. Corporations should WISH they had commercials that good - why would they want to put a stop to that? [These questions are rhetorical.])
Ugh, also, TWoP got bought by NBC - which. Well. The Office is on NBC. And the fic thread on TWoP, for better or for worse, is a major center of the fandom -- and, incidentally, like the second or third most popular thread in the forum overall. How is NBC going to deal with that? Isn't it hard to benignly neglect its existence when you own the site that it's all over? Auuuugh.
la_cspan and I went to hear him. There were maaaaybe 20 people there, tops, and let me tell you, BJ looks JUST like his dad. It was kind of creepy, actually, like I'd taken a time machine 30 years into the future, when Ryan Howard will still be working at Dunder-Mifflin, married to Kelly with five kids he didn't exactly plan on, but mostly likes in spite of himself. Hee. Anyway, BJ's dad seemed really nice and funny and adorable, and has ghost-written books for a buttload of celebrities, and it was really interesting. Plus, right before he started, the ladies sitting in front of me, whom he seemed to know, were talking about how one of their sons, Ben, used to read from The Big Book of Jewish Humor all the time as a kid, and BJ's dad came up at the end of the story and was like, "Wait, Ben? My Ben?" Which I think would be BJ. <3 <3 <3 My heart, you guys. moireach is in California, so missed the whole experience. When she heard that BJ's dad was going to be reading, she got all outraged and said, "You get to see everyone good!" Hahaha, what? Apparently "everyone good" meant "Amy Sedaris" and "BJ Novak's dad" - which, you do have to admit that I live a star-studded life. (This is my sarcastic voice.) This is the first time I've been here while she's been out of town since we got this apartment, so it's been weird and quiet. I spent the first weekend while she was gone being all, I WILL NOT PICK UP ANY OF MY BELONGINGS WOOHOO, but that got old fast, and then I kind of just cleaned a lot? And vacuumed? It doesn't really make sense to me either.
In fandom news, corporations are ruining everything, geez. A month ago or so, Viacom made Youtube take, like, all their Daily Show/Colbert Report/Strangers With Candy/Exit 57 clips off in the Great Purge of '07, which made me furious - STOP INFRINGING ON THE LIFESTYLE TO WHICH I HAVE BECOME ACCUSTOMED. I really think that I should be able to sit down at 2 on a Sunday afternoon, and keep clicking on youtube clips until I realize I'm strangely hungry, and that this is because 8 hours have gone by without me noticing. But whatever, I'd adjusted - but this week, Viacom sued Youtube for not taking down enough. Which, on the one hand, I understand them being pissy about Youtube making money off their intellectual property, blah blah. HOWEVER, and this is where it gets retarded, many of those clips are not available anywhere else. If they had a site with the clips I wanted to see available, in a well-organized way so that I could find things, I would be more than happy to watch the same Fed-Ex commercial 10 times a day on their site (cf. The Office, deleted scenes of). But they DON'T. Even Stevphen clips from the Daily Show, for instance, are not available on DVD or on the Comedy Central site, or anywhere else. Same goes for Exit 57, and many, many other clips. This strikes me as another incidence of mainstream media being generally retarded about the internet -- because realistically, they can't stop the signal, and there's always a fandom underground railroad of clips in these situations. Suing isn't going to get rid of video piracy - they need to find a way to work with the technology, and either adapt or go under, because that's the situation they're facing. I mean, your standard commercial advertising is on the edge of being outdated anyway, due to TiVo, etc. You can bitch about it all you want, and sue youtube all you want, but I still have every Even Stevphen clip saved to my hard drive, so. Good luck rooting all that out.
(As an aside on the subject of fanvids, which also got taken off youtube, why do corporations want to get rid of fanvids? It doesn't make sense. This was brought home to me even more clearly lately, because NBC has started making Office promos that look exactly like fanvids, and putting them up on Youtube themselves. Which is pretty bright of them - but for real, with vids, you basically have fans making promos for TV shows FOR FREE, and other fans watching them BECAUSE THEY ENJOY THEM, and recruiting people to the shows through them. Corporations should WISH they had commercials that good - why would they want to put a stop to that? [These questions are rhetorical.])
Ugh, also, TWoP got bought by NBC - which. Well. The Office is on NBC. And the fic thread on TWoP, for better or for worse, is a major center of the fandom -- and, incidentally, like the second or third most popular thread in the forum overall. How is NBC going to deal with that? Isn't it hard to benignly neglect its existence when you own the site that it's all over? Auuuugh.