Ben Barren - Confessions of a Mad Man » 2008

Monthly Archives: December 2008

the “plotless, joke-free, cringe-inducing, testosto-moronic half-hour cable tragicomedy.” TV sub_genre

Posted by Ben Barren on December 31, 2008 – 3:17 pm

Filed under TV

What a kewl, scathing not at all untrue piece by ex-Suck.com’stress Heather Havrilesky on Salon.com : “No offense to Alan Ball, but when an amusing but uneven first season of “True Blood” is nominated for a Golden Globe award for best TV drama, you know there’s something wrong with the state of the small screen.. Meanwhile, shows like Showtime’s “Californication,” HBO’s “Entourage” and “The Life and Times of Tim,” and FX’s “Testees” sallied forth clumsily like unholy zombies, defining a whole new subgenre: the plotless, joke-free, cringe-inducing, testosto-moronic half-hour cable tragicomedy.”

arrested-development

While I don’t totally or even 50% agree with her on Fringe, because I loved it, it’s great Suck.com like copy (Damn i wish there was a Suck.com 2.0/2.1/3.1/0.9!) : “This fall, Fox’s “Fringe” provided a highly visible demonstration of just how empty and aimless the serial formula can be when its creators are armed with little more than an arsenal of arbitrary symbols, half-baked conspiracies and pseudo-scientific dim-bulbery. In some ways, “Fringe” was a parody of the worst that the serial drama had to offer, an arbitrary conglomeration of popular elements pieced together like a clumsy, gimmick-laden Frankenstein: “Get me gorgeous lead characters with troubled pasts, procedural-like episodic plots, Smoking Man curveballs, and a season-long riddle to keep it all afloat!” network execs could almost be heard shouting to their underlings. Is it any wonder that the end result tended to play with all of the authenticity of an elaborate marketing scheme dreamed up by a gaggle of publicists with a taste for the funny pipe?”

Listening to : Living Dead in Dallas #2 Audio Book in True Blood.

Downloading : Vampires are the New Black, Låt den rätte komma in : 8.2/10 on IMDB : Leech it ere. I also have The Fountain on playlist to leech, so I’ve seen all of films, after seeing the wrestler (also did pi, requiem for a dream)

Undecided : What the hell to do tonite, other than watch the above. I could drive to Portsea and hang with old Sensis crew, but police will have Zero Tolerance… it was easier bein ca$hed up, in the city, near to…

renormalizing a denormalized new years eve day

Posted by Ben Barren on December 31, 2008 – 11:24 am

Filed under Australia

kfc1

So it’s New Years Eve, there is crew over in Portsea that I could visit. But with zero tolerance po-lice (been watching 2much The Wire) it could well be a vquite nite. I kinda miss the tear it up up life at these times, but in 24 hours I’ll be happy for the not tear it up ethos. Pity there is no Hulu Downunder Live New Years Eve streamz.

So I’m reading Mr Feld (aagh a Brightkite investor too, neat - along with gnip too : following his ‘Glue’ thesis) on “Normalised data“/RDD (’renormalizing denormalized data‘) or having teh smartz not to show duplicates when u post an item to brightkite/facebook/twitter etc- “Theoretically, Brightkite, Twitter, and Facebook should know enough about each other not to repost the same thing in cases 2.1, 2.3, and 3 (recursive). But I don’t think it’s going to do the right thing. Let’s try and see how many tweets we get! I’m guessing three. Nope – it only showed up once.”

Interesting read over on Jezebel around the Not Rape Epidemic (original essay here) by TatianaAnonymouseModel : “Most models start working in their early teens. The youngest girl I’ve ever lived with in a model’s apartment, a girl who went to the same grown-up job castings our agency gave me, was 12 years old. (We were working a fashion week in a secondary market, and her show list was easily twice as long as mine and our 16-year-old roommate’s. The clients just loved the 5′11″ middle schooler; she gave her age as 14.) My first real modeling job was a photo shoot for a major European magazine — and when I got to the studio that day, I was greeted by the sight of a 17-year-old Russian, posing topless, smoking a Marlboro. She told me in broken English that she’d been working full-time for three years. I think I’d gone a week in Paris before I met an Arkansan, also 17, who’d dumped her boyfriend of several years to sleep with with a man old enough to be her father who happened to be the director of her (major, well-regarded) agency.

ana beatriz

Extra Links :

Doc Martin Shoes by Raf Simons : Docs need reinvention but need a matte not patent version.

2010 Camaro : Prefer friend’s 68 Camaro but heck id take a Camaro, why cant we buy these cars for $20Kish like Yanks. I really want the 370z tho.

Polish Architecture : Arch Daily is a must read architecture blog.

$167M : $50m less than David Fincher needed to turn Brad Pitt into the 12 year old actor digitally rather than by casting different folks at different ages, for Benjamin Button.

byebye stringer S03E12

OK that would be cawfee time, watchin The wire till 530am (had to see end of Series 3 for 2nd time) Plan what to do on NYE and check the twittersphere.

byron mid-freds

“I ain’t no suit-wearin’ businessman like you..”

Posted by Ben Barren on December 30, 2008 – 11:23 pm

Filed under Entrepreneurship, TV

I’m watching Season 3 of The Wire (again, now i have .avi’s for every ep across 5 seasons) which u could rename The Decline of Avon Barksdale and the Ascent of Marlo Stanfield) A neat little post over at Signal:Noise, thats pretty true of many businesses (although i’d argue its not just the good stories u dont hear about, but the bad ones too:) David says that “many of the real stories are never told. The quiet successes by small teams who stand little if anything to gain by sharing their numbers and telling about their success. Lest they attract competitors or other unwanted interest. They’re just happy making millions quietly from happy customers. I’ve talked to so many of these entrepreneurs in private and have often been shocked by how well they’re doing. And I always think to myself: 1) why didn’t I know about this?, and 2) if only everyone else knew too.”

Avon Barksdale: I ain’t no suit-wearin’ businessman like you… you know I’m just a gangsta I suppose…

which newspaper goes all_digital 09?

Posted by Ben Barren on December 30, 2008 – 6:07 pm

Filed under Consumer_Internet, Newspapers

This prediction for 2009 by Mashable would certainly be interesting if it happened; “At Least One Big Newspaper Goes All Digital: The Christian Science Monitor already did it, and I expect more to follow in 2009. More specifically, I expect at least one large daily newspaper in the US to announce plans to eliminate a print edition. No more trucks and no more dead trees. And, while it might not happen until 2010, I expect them to have great success with it.”

Cant Wait for Damages to Start again January 7th. Hullo Rose Byrne

Could well be an alternative to bankruptcy. To be a real prediction though, it needs to specify which one, even if it’s a boxed trifecta of 3-4 horses, um, newspapers.

bit of dunes golf is always fun.

Posted by Ben Barren on December 30, 2008 – 5:12 pm

Filed under Australia, Sport

So our 4ball hit the Dunes today, myself, bro Jez, cuz Vanessa from Germany having her first on course hit (they teach it at school over there), and Salsa Wayne back from worldwide cruise ships. Twas a fun afternoon : Thx Benefactor Jezz. Flickr pix.

Vanessa Playing Her First Game.

To the 4ball in front who didnt let us play thru, or show any clue/respect for the etiquette of golf, that took 90 minutes to play first 4 holes on back nine, I hope u had a fatal crash on way back to Melbourne. And no, I dont want for my words back coz if they really did i would feel bad. I wouldnt. Golf karma is a bitch. I should know, same course i dislocated my patella kneecap on 5 years ago, waiting 4 hours for it to get pushed back into position:)

Links Golf at the Dunes.

Tonite we’ll be watching Sean Penn put in his Oscar vote in Milk for Best Actor. Great version torrent ere, minus the ironic homophobic torrent_uploader naming convention.

randy the ram, the wrestler.

Posted by Ben Barren on December 30, 2008 – 9:41 am

Filed under Film

The Wrestler was a gr8 little movie which I stayed up too late watching. Yer classic low budget indie, with the Mickey Rourke character being sad but compelling. Web stream ere, torrent ere.

There was actually alot of wrestling in the film, Mickey Rourke really had to get himself into shape.

Marisa Tomei’s character, an older stripper; Pam, whose obsolescence parallels Mickey’s The Ram. Both end up snapping, finding and not finding each other; and so on.

Ill Stay for One Beer. Click4Torrent.

There’s a major pissed off daughter story arc.

Dance with Ram yer Dad, Click to watch movie.

Kept reminding me of WWF as a kid and what is happening to those that arent Hulk Hogan.

I’m gonna have to see The Fountain now, the only film (ere is the torrent) of the directors 4 I havent seen.

Today I’ve off to The Dunes to play golf.

so i liked benjamin button, but….

Posted by Ben Barren on December 29, 2008 – 11:33 pm

Filed under Film

It’s long, knew that going in… but overall it was pretty much along my expectations.. Watch it ere if you cant wait.

Cate is amazing in it… but nothing new there.

Brad acts well, but well David Fincher is the real star, just to watch him direct, he could make a film called Eight as a sequel to Se7en or Fight Club 2 and I’d pay money, or even The Game Part 2 with Michael Douglas and Gary Oldman doing dialogue in a New York Platinum Club.

Anyway Benjamin Button, it looked amazing, and it wasn’t too boring, but get a torrent of it, and take a date to Slumdog Millionaire, it’s the money movie, although I’m about to watch The Wrestler so making this a quick post (more Benjamin Button pix over at my flickr), and Im pretty sure Doubt will be awesome.

2009 the fairfax inquisitr.

Posted by Ben Barren on December 29, 2008 – 7:38 pm

Filed under blogging

Duncan has some nice plans for Inquisitr in 2009 : “The Inquisitr will become Australia’s largest independent blog by traffic : Actually, it might already be close, hard to tell. News Ltd newspapers will threaten to sue us again, we’ll continue to not link to them, and if I’m really lucky, Fairfax (Australia’s second largest newspaper group) might take a stake, presuming they don’t fold in the mean time. That will give us access to AFP/ AP and Reuters content, and allow us to grow to 10 million page views. About mid year we’ll run topless photos of a celebrity and get blocked by the Australian Government’s Great Firewall of Australia, resulting in a large VPN bill for me to run the site….or we’ll relocate to New Zealand ”