Ben Barren - Confessions of a Mad Man

Tag Archives: gossipgirl

#Fringe has Massive Dynamics; #Dollhouse The Rossum Corporation + #Chuck: Fulcrum +Sarah +Orion

Posted by Ben Barren on April 22, 2009 – 9:38 am

Filed under TV

Chuck series 1 thought was a cute post OC piece merging nerdworld with yer classic catch bad guys formula… but :

The second half of Chuck S2 is the much better part (just as with Fringe’ Massive Dynamics meta-plot (parent company details ere) and The transnational beyond escorting Dollhouse Rossum Corporation conspiracy - more interesting background ere), is the larger Fulcrum Conspiracy.

It’s just kept escalating in a good way, the show, with Chuck finding out his Dad is Orion, who planted The Intersect in his head, and that father/son are the major chess pieces in the world’s survival.

Anyway, Chuck has been raising the roof, and also like many other series, the penultimate series episode is the one with all the reveals, drama etc as the last one is often used as a setup/bridge for episode 1 of the next series +/or to clean things up with characters…

Or even worse, create new total changes, and leave cliffhangers for next time - If there is a next time with Chuck. Could this be the end ?

Let’s hope not, firstly that they save the show and it isn’t cancelled, even if Chuck does have to put the Intersect back in his head… why would Sarah stay with him if he wasn’t the Intersect, and how do u make a TV show out of it : “Hi Dear, how was your day ?”

Anyway once u have watched chuck S2E20 well this is what I do, I read Sepinwall’s review which really is, as it is every week fn excellent. His commenters are fantastic too. Why I read them at 230am when trying to sleep I’m not sure of the Freudian analysis there… or just watch Gossip/Girl and Castle together to get an East Coast establishment hit.

Alternatively again, read New York Magazine’s Rage of the Rich : “Everyone on Wall Street is prepared to lose money. Bankers have expressions for disastrous losses: clusterfuck, Chernobyl, blowing up … But no one was prepared to lose money this way. This felt like getting mugged.”

So you can read this gr8 rant over at theawl : “Sherman’s piece is generously bedecked with self-pitying anonymous quotes from indignant traders and bankers to bear out this clinical view. (They are also, one surmises, the link bait that has made Sherman’s story the most frequently emailed on the magazine’s site; it turns out that the preppy magazine class, no less than “canny politicians” can make with the strategically leveraged “populist rage.”) But really, these clueless whingeing sentiments are the pulpy B-roll footage here; yes, these are hypocrites who seem to have forgotten that their “industry” owes its continued existence to a titanic government bailout; yes, it’s easy to hate on the going-Galt rhetoric of Sherman’s nameless Spartacuses of the are-not revolt (“JP Morgan and all these guys should go on strike,” one fumes, “see what happens to the country without Wall Street”; “The government wants me to be a slave,” another laments, contemplating the horror of the return of Clinton-era tax rates).”

Irony-free zone + ditto4 sly disingenuous manipulative pseudo-sincerity.

Posted by Ben Barren on February 4, 2009 – 11:56 am

Filed under Entrepreneurship

The Dentistry Business Model Scam

Just to get it out of the way but I’m totally with Shrinking Kitty that Dentists have the business model of the century; $195 for 15 minutes, they want from her, $615 from me and not less than $240 tomorrow for the first do any work type of visit. And to think the internet dissecting media types are getting Wall Street Journal to discuss why freemium is better than free. As A VC says R-C=P. I just hope NewTeeVee are right and copyright will be obsolete by 2010. It’s just a pity dentists dont think they could up more equity value and a higher multiple by increasing the amount of inlocation targeted placement advertising, and umturn the $195/$615 into something closer to $20 or $50; Keep the change (Dentist, Mornington Peninsula) Dr Churcher of Balnarring, lets see if u run any type of Yield Build blog’ere (now they know how to make money doing the meta aggregation of small business ad campaigns) Google alerts on your name. You dont mess with Blair on latest Gossip Girl S2E17 torrent’ere.

If you arent already, subscribe to Dating a Banker, Anonymous.

Laney: “Larry, what’s going with our sundaes? The joke is only funny if they arrive before the food.”

Larry: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The kitchen is working on it. I’m just not used to it being this busy.”

Megan: “Larry, do you know what you’re looking at right now?”

Larry: “Uh, no.”

Megan: “You are looking at a table full of beautiful, intelligent women who all believe in you. So what we need right now is for Larry to start believing in Larry, AND TO GET THOSE SUNDAES ON THE TABLE, STAT. Now go, Larry, go!”

LOTS MORE OF STORY, ABOUT 1000 WORDS CLIPPED. Read Full Story ere.

BHG: “So where do you live?”

Girl #5: “New York.”

BHG hesitantly: “Ah, where in New York?”

Girl #5: “West Village.”

BHG: “You live on Christopher Street, you have a cat. Chrissy, right?”

Chrissy, with an otherwise forgettable memory of a tolerable night slowly surfacing: “1 Oak. Halloween.You left your scarf.”

“… Our search for L.A. media boys had gone awry, low and behold, the guys were all from New York. And of course, they all worked in finance. The collective morale in the hot tub nosedived. Turns out the boys had also been hoping to meet less-high strung (i.e., fake breasted) Los Angelites…”

Being Erica Grown up Gossip Girl with a Conscience. Click for S1E5 Torrent

Irony + Pseudo Sincerity-Free Zone

So from Ohio teachers hooking up with Lonely boy students (who in real life look like a very similar age hehe) to NY Bankette hookups in Sundance, I’ll highlight an eerily interchangeable ‘pseudo-sincerity‘ communication tone for blogs and 12 Step Meetings whether they be AA/NA/Internet Addiction/Bloggers Anonymous meeting : Taken from my favourite Infinite Jest #1 book ever taken thanks to a diligently prepared list by Casnocha who on his 3rd attempt refuses rightly to be beaten by the most rewarding 1000 pages + incl famous footnotes. By David Foster Wallace (who may in 100 years be remembered for Infinite Jest, Writing about tennis/cruise ships/fairs and possibly most remembered for his revolution in use of ‘embedded’ footnotes, which preceeded embedding films (which DFW did with film scripts in footnotes btw and a whole other range of media hehe): “The thing is it has to be the truth to really go over, here. It can’t be a calculated crowd-pleaser, and it has to be the truth unslanted, unfortified. And maximally unironic. An ironist in a Boston AA meeting is a witch in church. Irony-free zone. Same with sly disingenuous manipulative pseudo-sincerity. Sincerity with an ulterior motive is something these tough ravaged people know and fear, all of them trained to remember the coyly sincere, ironic, self-presenting fortifications they’d had to construct in order to carry on Out There, under the ceaseless neon bottle.”

Kiss Kiss and more Student Teacher Lonely Boy Ohio Constance Gossip Girl

While we’re on Pseudo Sincerity - I thought I’d go to the source material when it came to NonSociety and their re_bloggers. I checked out the Davos session ‘Telling Stories’ (”The panelist share their personal approach to storytelling via blogging, film, video mesaging or design. Being the oldest form of communication, the internet revolutionises the way we tell stories today.”) - they were flew over for, well Julia Allison was talking on. It was one of those embarassing 1.0 sessions especially because the host (poss English wasnt his first language, as were some of panel) asked the opposite of same questions. They had a film producer on who had worked with Spike Lee and especially that crazy Abel Ferrara.. who did Harvey Keitel classics like Bad Lieutenant. But did we get any insight into that or working with and rumoured breaking of Madonna in that Abel movie, Dangerous Game was it called ? No every1 played their portfolio CV/reel, Loic talked how seesmic was better than Facebook which was just text, um yeh ok there isnt a terabyte of photos there Loic. (altho i luv how he goes anti american when in europe, awesome, really!) Julia talked NonSociety and the Abel/Spike producer guy got asked what goes into “Telling a Story” as that was the topic and he answered along lines of “It has to be a good story.“ Got it. Heart. Arc. Characters. Wow they pay to go to Davos for this.. what a waste… but decide for yourself, and there are prob a some other links there for other sessions that are watchable.

So it’s taken ages to blog on this powerpc, even inserting links is slow, it took 2 hours to get torrents working as it didnt like the old port 6881 is blacklisted etc.. which 3 years later I now realise was an Azureus older version error not my computer, no wonder i was so late to torrents.. Anyway I dont have Polyvore fashion urban items clip this working yet so i will cutnpaste the links, maybe u can afford items for yourself, and I can live vicariously. As u’d expect fashion bloggers have no idea who i am, and tech fashion is well so khaki/blue chambray shirt. Today I’d go the Shofolk Andre shoe (did i mention i’ve worn my supras every single day since xmas, im like that with new kix i luv) Or the really expensive really hightop kix are the new Diet Butcher, Maad. If I wanted to buy any of this stuff I’d have to change industry and job titles… there was that Bus Dev Director position at Friendster in Singapore, but I’d rather go stickup.

This is a stick-up, everybody get face-down
Ren, gag their mouths so they can’t make a sound
Tie em up for the fact that I’m kickin ass
I got my hand on my gat, and I’m tempted to blast
My name is Eazy, but I go the hard way out
This ain’t personal, but now I’m about
to commit a crime and go thru with it
You know what, no need for shakin, because I’m used to it
Take out the security guard with a slap of my hand
Yeah, he’s wearin’ a badge, but he’s a ol ass man
Pump his ass in the head, and take his gun
so me and the punk can go one on one
Cover the lens on the TV screen
you know, so me and my gang just can’t be seen
Lock the doors, and throw away the key
Close the blinds, so no motherfuckers can see
and smile, you know, cause I’m controllin the shit
and no sucker ass ni@@a’s gonna stop the hit
Wardrobes and locs, and a Ruthless shirt
That means I’m ready to work, and rush a fool to the dirt, so

(”Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt”)

SHOFOLK ANDRE VS DIET BUTCHER

Damn if i was a cashed up billionaire, id be totally kanye’ing not wearing the gap/banana republic drivin a tesla. Ick, luckily the oldest cliche in the book “money does not buy taste“, nor am i saying i have any + groucho marxnclubs n all that im down with. Being Erica (latest ep S1E5 torrent) gets into all these thirty something friends married/having kids debate, so what now. Cawfee. And the future. Dentists, and computer fix, with an armed robbery on the way.

Charlotte Mann Installation, Click to Read on the Fabrik Project, well look unless u speak the language.

(Alright, anybody move and I’ll blow your fuckin head off)

Allright…
Empty your pockets, but do it slow
Take everything you got and lay it on the fuckin floor
Don’t make me have to set an example today
and blow one of you crazy motherfuckers away
I’m in a bank, and it’s a little bit funny
takin all you stupid motherfuckers’ money
Peepin at a bitch cause my dick’s on hard
Laughin at the dumb ass security guard
who’s tied up for the moment, not sayin’ a word
I should have known it before, the motherfucker’s a nerd
But back to the bitches I’m peepin
and then untie the hoe, so I can start creepin
Took her to the backroom, about to jack
Cold trailed the bitch, with a gun in the back
I said: “Lay down, and unbutton your bra!”
There was the biggest titties that a ni@@a ever saw
I said: “Damn”, then the air got thinner
Only thought in my mind, was goin’ up in her
The suspense was makin’ me sick
She took her panties down and the bitch had a dick!
I said: “Damn”, dropped the gat from my hand
(What I thought was a b**ch, was nothing but a man)
Put the gat to his legs, all the way up his skirt
because this is one fa**ot that I had to hurt..

Eazy E did die of Aids after all eh…

“i need to wait for my moment, then im going black ops; off the radar. no accountability. i swear im goin win.”

Posted by Ben Barren on January 21, 2009 – 12:33 pm

Filed under Consumer_Internet, Film

Well4non B-List onscreen/denton-nonsociety_bloggers/daughter of hollywood royalty/(real-aspirant)indie filmmaker’ or those lacking the connection smarts to get to Sundance, Karina Longworth is the blogger to follow for vicarious filmic festival insights; 4starters it’s 2 female made movies Karina has her wordpress aimed at (sad such classifications still needed but mo fem made mo better); You Won’t Miss Me, the “story of Shelly Brown (Schnabel), a 23-year-old aspiring actress who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Set mainly in a disappearing downtown New York of divey flats and druggy marginality, the film follows Shelly from the endless parties where she drifts between uneasy role-playing to outright social defiance, to a number of auditions for directors who seem to see the world through as oblique a lens as our damaged heroine. Employing five different shooting formats from Flip video to Super 8 film, and strung together with Schnabel’s extraordinarily intimate voiceover confessional, Miss Me trades traditional narrative structure for something more akin to a visual diary.”

Anti-Apatow Mike Leigh School of Filmmaking

The next anti-Judd Apatow Zac-Miri Porno film (the third to be sold this Sundance) is the “bros will be bros” “not too mumblecoreish.” Humpday here’s a bangin_para from Karina - “This scenario may sound like prime grist for the Judd Apatow factory, and as far as it’s hilariously raunchy and also sincere and bittersweet, it is. But there are two things that set Humpday apart. Shelton shot the film without a formal script, putting her actors through extensive character work and improvisation, and finding her narrative documentary-style in the editing room. And unlike Knocked Up, which teaches that any dude who doesn’t willingly, totally submit to domestication is both a moron and a cad, Humpday treats adult relationships as the complex beasts that they are, and asks open-ended questions about the extent to which we can and/or should give up all the things we are in order to be with the person we want to be with. Humpday is as much about the realities of maintaining a relationship past the initial romance as it is about the reignited bromance.”

While on 2009 gender polemic, last nite I checked out HBO’s Big Love season 3 premiere, and it was dark enough in parts to be a creeper I’ll prob keep watching, via Vulture : “The swinging dick isn’t cloaked behind some intricately patterned loin cloth of brilliant dialogue or digs at patriarchy: It’s free ballin’. But it’s balanced, too, by time lavished on the women’s concerns at home. (It’s all those children, thankfully, whose perspectives we’re spared.) With this premiere, we dive deep into season three, and even deeper into this gender-polarized world, from Anna, whom “we want to formally date,” to matriarch Barb, secretly confronting cancer. Naturally, though, the dicks keep swinging.” Or if u want more trashy, follow east coast Whitney on latest ep of The City, which is much better than The Hills all said.

Click to watch Toast eating Headband Wearing Whitney in The City

While on Season Premieres : OMG there is a new Fringe episode out (ere reg’req’d), plus Lost is back tomorrow, supposed to be a gr8 ep, NY-Mag’s Vulture ave the ‘what internet obsessives are saying’ links, and TV squad have the juice : “The island moved back in time. Most reports say in the 70s, due to on-set reports where we see Dharma at its beginning: Othersville is in full bloom, there is a processing center to welcome new recruits, etc + Jack and Ben try to reunite the Oceanic 6 in order to return to the island. They will make it to the island but will have to return in separate groups because of some complications. It looks like they will try to blend in with the fresh Dharma folks, as some people spotted Jack and Hurley wearing Dharma tan jumpsuits. When the O6 return to the island, they will be reunited with at least some of the people who were left behind, as set reports claim to have seen Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Kate, Sawyer and Jin in scenes together.”

Watching Tonite : Doubt, which some have said is best film of year, well after Slumdog, but many also havent, so we’ll see. For more Trash Value click link to watch Nick + Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Classic line of TV for this week : Gossip Girl S2E16 - Goes to Blair Waldorf after principal puts on her Yale acceptance;

Blair’s Cleaner : “Is it war miss blair ?”

Blair : “Yes. but this one will be different. i need to wait for my moment, then im going black ops; off the radar. no accountability. i swear im goin win.”

platform for the cloud engine yard.

Posted by Ben Barren on January 14, 2009 – 1:22 pm

Filed under Venture Capital

So it’s not all films + TV, there is “the cloud” after all, which is the new black. Every1 needs a xmpp cloud; So Birkin. And Amazon’s cloud is as interesting as anybodies, so when they invest in a ‘platform for the cloud‘ player being Engine Yard, that’s interesting via Cloud Computing Journal : “It describes it as a “platform for the cloud” aimed at programmers and system administrations who want to write scalable, manageable applications for the cloud and says it can be used to automate the cloud as well as for writing distributed real-time apps. Engine Yard claims it can “embrace the difference of many clouds” and automate processes and application management. Features include a standard XMPP infrastructure; a security and discovery agent to manage security policy; a process automation agent to orchestrate operational tasks involving both machines and people; a system provisioning registry so applications can be self-organizing; a federated design so apps can operate seamlessly and securely - sorta like e-mail; distributed auditing/logging; and distributed job control for operational awareness.”

I'm 3 of 8 True Blood AudioBooks down now onto Book 4 Dead to the World where Sookie + Eric Click y'all

On the other hand, if u r not into the Cloud, then maybe u’d prefer a bit of fangbanging or shapeshifting. If u want to cossie up to the half dead then The Costumer has the list required for a Sookie Stackhouse outfit, maybe for yer next Vampire party:

Sookie Stackhouse Waitress Costume

Merlotte’s shirt
Short black shorts
Green apron
Waitress notepad
Natural makeup
White sneakers
Louisiana accent, excellent manners, Southern charm
Vampire bite prosthetic (optional)

Gossip Girl S02_E15 Grab it ere. The King is Dead. Long Live the King.

Watch : New Zealand’s greatest Lord of The Ringsesque - fantasy + fighting : The Latest Legend of the Seeker episode S01E08

Listening to : Dead to the World, True Blood audiobook 4 (guess that will be on TV in 2011), these are awesome to run and drive to, mixed up with music and podcasts on the shuffle, thx again4that!

Chuck Bass : Well he stuffs it up again, Gossip Girl S02-E15′ere. And this is a good little riffin off and around Chuck Bass, blog.