Layoff badness …

It wasn’t me this time, but it still sucks. We’ve lost some incredibly talented people in the last year and our awesome videographer is among them. My only hope is that if I’m ever terminated, I can handle it with as much grace.

Giant Bomb – “Apply directly to the forehead”

Long time, no post! I have to post this video, from a gaming Web site called Giant Bomb. It’s a parody of TV ads, and they made it as a viral video to promo their new iPhone app for their site. Really, this has nothing to do with games – if you watch TV you’ll find this funny.

Heeeeeere’s Conan!

I had kind of a surreal life moment last week, and it came about because of a TV show. Last Monday night Mo and I sat down to watch Conan O’Brien’s debut as host of the Tonight Show. Like pretty much everybody, I grew up watching the Tonight Show. When I was a young kid, it was always a treat to stay up late and watch Johnny Carson at my grandma and grandpa Oaks’ house. They always watched Johnny. He was their guy.

In time, I had a late night guy, too — Conan. I distinctly remember staying up on the weekends and in the summer time to watch Conan when he first came on the air in 1993. I was just entering high school. In the summers especially, when I would stay at my neighbor and best friend Brian’s place about 6 nights out of the week (seriously), we always made sure we tuned into Late Nite to watch Conan and Andy and laugh our asses off. If you read anything about the early days of Conan’s show, you can’t miss the fact that he was universally panned by critics and NBC kept him on 13-week contracts for several years before the show picked up steam and they signed him long-term.

It’s weird, but I don’t remember it like that. I dug Conan from the beginning. His weirdo, non-sequitor humor clicked with me. Turns out that’s pretty much how us late Gen X/Gen Y folks process humor. (Watch Adult Swim sometime. Chances are if you’re over 40 you’re going to be bewildered.)

In a lot of ways Conan represents us. He’s a complete dork, for one thing. Over the last few years, it’s become cool to be a geek. Gaming has gone mainstream. Comic book heroes, Tolkien and sci-fi rule the box office. Silicon Valley is driving American innovation. And we’ve got an articulate, cerebral thinker in the White House. For another thing, take a look at who Conan’s big musical guests have been: Radiohead was on the first show, the White Stripes closed out the last show. That pretty much says it all, right there. Irony ruled supreme on Conan’s show, too. Mr. T and Abe Vigoda were regular guests. Why? Well, why the hell not?

So there we were at home, watching Conan take over the venerable Tonight Show — an American tradition. I couldn’t help but think about how this is happening as we’re turning 30 — Mo this week, me in September. Will Ferrell was the guest. Pearl Jam was the musicial guest. Again, right on the mark for Gen X’ers (though I reeeeeally don’t like Will Ferrell much at all). As I turn 30, I feel like I’m coming into my own. A 6′6″ geek taking over a TV show may not seem like much, but from my vantage point on the couch, it felt like a generational shift happening right in sync with my own personal timeline. I have to say that as I stare down 30 I don’t feel old, but rather, right on time.

You can’t touch this flash mob

Ever hear of a flash mob? Bascially, it’s when a bunch of people on the Internet decided they are going to quickly invade a real-world space en masse to do something crazy or interesting. Check out this video of hundreds of people doing the Hammer Dance in gold pants at an LA store! They’re crazy choreographed.

Whirlwind night on TV

There’s been a lot of discussion on social networks and blogs today and yesterday about TV weather coverage. Lost and American Idol finales were last night, just as a huge line of thunderstorms were rolling in. The storms were pretty serious business. The system killed three people in Kirksville and caused damage across the Midwest. Some were defending the local coverage, which IMO can be annoying in presentation regardless of the severity of the situation.

I’m a huge Lost fan. I’m also a BIG weather geek who’s glued to the radar when the storms hit. Hell, I watch the Weather Channel all the time just because it’s the only truly up-to-the-minute channel on TV.

I agree that life-threatening situations vs. TV time is not really a debate. But here’s my beef:

1) It’s usually not life-threatening. They get over-hyped and break in for almost anything. Pea-sized hail doesn’t pass the test.

2) I’m sick of being talked down to like a three year old. “Go to your shelter right now! Don’t come out until we tell you to!” That’s one reason why transplants to the Ozarks get so scared about tornadoes. We make too big a deal out of this stuff sometimes. If you’re not from here and you happened to be in Springfield during a night of severe weather while watching local TV, you’d think a tsunami carrying swine flu pathogens was about to sweep through.

3) People say you can just watch the TV show online, because everyone has the Web. Correct. It’s why I have the local radar bookmarked. I’ve lived here long enough to be able to look at the radar and make a reasonably well-informed judgment about whether I should duck into a closet. I know not everyone can or wants to do this, but it’s just as viable as watching the show on the Web. I live in central Springfield and really didn’t even consider getting in my shelter. There was really no reason to.

4) A small nit-pick: even the crawls can be annoying because it turns my gorgeous 16:9 HD picture into 4:3 SD. Hey, if you’re going to make such a big deal about going to digital transmission, invest in some graphics upgrades.

Finally — MAJOR KUDOS to the KSPR team. They did everything that was appropriate. If life-threatening weather had actually been in the Springfield area during Lost, then I would have been just fine with missing the show for the weather. But as it was, the storms were pretty average until about 10:15 and cutting in for just a few minutes during COMMERCIALS and streaming the rest online was totally appropriate. On top of that, Kevin Lighty struck the proper tone of concern without being alarmist. All of that (combined with superior radar tech) has now turned me into a loyal KSPR viewer for severe weather.

Springtime in the Ozarks

We woke up on Friday morning to dark skies. It felt more like 5 or 6 a.m. rather than the actual time of 7:30. The rain had just started, but eventually began pounding and pouring. Then, at about the time the tornado sirens started going off, the clouds took on that nice slate green color. I was out of the shower but Mo was taking hers.

“You’d better make it quick,” I said. “We might have to duck here in minute.”

We grabbed the weather radio (powered by a crank if your batteries die!) and prepared to “duck” in Mo’s little walk-in closet. It didn’t come to that, thankfully, but all over southwest and southern Missouri, the damage was widespread. Two weird things about Friday’s weather: the system took on the characteristics of an inland tropical storm after a swirling low pressure system took shape in the center, and after it passed we had an absolutely gorgeous day. At 8 a.m., we had probably the worst non-winter weather day of 2009. By noon, it was probably the nicest day we’ve had all year. Go figure, but we’re pretty used to that here.

The NL has pics from inside Springfield, and around the area. Also, I’m quoted in this story. (And that’s about all the linkage Gannett’s getting out of me for a while…)

What the sub?

Can anyone tell me why Quizno’s has become Q-Sub? Do they think we are all so stupid that we need sub shops to actually have the word “sub” in the title? Maybe they have market research that says this? Re-branding something that’s already good (in my opinion, at least) is just dumb. Then again, I’m not six-figure salary advertising manager, either…

WTF? (What the Fox) again

A couple of things to keep  in mind before watching this.

1) Video montages are easy to spin/twist.

2) Consider the source: CurrentTV was co-founded by Al Gore.

3) Many of the clips are “just questions” – ie, a journalist can get away with saying anything so long as it’s in the form of a question, and not a statement.

But STILL. Come on. There are at least five or six outright nutso statements in here from both the staff and contributors alike. It’s just like all this flu business. “Let’s just drum it up and drum it up and scare people because it’s just so easy, and keeps people on edge so they’ll keep tuning in and we can keep drumming it up! Flu! Flu! Flu!”

Fox is doing the same thing here with the word “socialism.” You could  swap the two words and you’re still getting the same level of naked hysteria.

SJ reporter who was shot is laid off

The Suburban Journals reporter who was shot while covering the killings at the Kirkwood City Council last year has been laid of by Lee Enterprises, which owns the Journals and the Post-Dispatch. And, the guy was the Web editor. So he’s working in new media and took a bullet during a crazy breaking news situation … and he still gets laid off.

From an RFT story:

Smith was the online editor for the West County and South County editions. “I thought I was OK since the Internet and the website are the future, and performance-wise I was doing fine. My family is obviously really not happy that I took a bullet for a business. But I guess in these economic times that isn’t enough to save you.”

Smith was a metro reporter covering Webster Groves and Kirkwood at the time of the February, 2008, Kirkwood shootings and went to Kirkwood City Hall to cover what he thought would be a regular City Council meeting. It was the night that Cookie Thornton stormed in with a .44-caliber Magnum and in a mere one minute and 32 seconds killed five people — two council members, the city’s public works director and two police officers — before turning the gun on himself.

Smith took one of Thornton’s bullets in the right hand. He immediately pulled out his cell phone with his left hand to call the Journals. “I said they’d need to send somebody else, because I’d been shot in the hand.”

Smith spent several days in the hospital and has since undergone two surgeries to repair his shattered hand. He has been interviewed by numerous news outlets, including NBC Nightly News and other national news outlets — generating headlines for the Journals.

Crazy. It’s just not safe to be working in media right now.

Close proximity

I love that there’s a library branch so close to our place that I can return a book while I’m out for a short jog. Good way to kill two birds with one run. The book drop-off box is right inside the door, too, so I never even had to really stop moving.