september 1

today:
we all want to be beautiful too

now that i've graduated swarthmore and i'm living in san francisco, i'm amidst the web world and there's opportunities to observe my peers (the young web professional ones)

each of them has something - maggy's giving a full on presentation at the digital storytelling festival, carl's writing books and columns, rebecca's got tons of columns and even clothes

what do i have? a nice girlfriend and stomach twisting memories self published online. occasional speaking gigs. a tv show! kidding (kinda), hah hah hah.

but then one day a few weeks ago, i was admiring carl's breadth of venues, and he said, "yeah but you've got a tv show!" and i realized that everyone's busy admiring everyone else's gig and no one's happy and it makes me so satisfied in a way to see that everyone is equal before envy! (or maybe i'm just projecting to justify my petty jealousies) and it makes me wish to find myself and maybe some other folks who don't give a rat's ass. i would say maybe rob bottorf, but i have a feeling he might wish for same south park nights himself.

"the trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." lily thomlin

san francisco is a great cultural draw, for swatties or folks otherwise out of the way, and then you get here and you have to get a job and a place to live and being at the top of the technoculture heap is so sketchy and intangible and difficult. there's so few people making themselves known making web pages but they still manage to dislike each other! some of them.

i must admit i have some visceral prejudices against the kinda straight-lacing and effete clique of web design slicksters but when i meet them all individually they're just people and maybe geeks and some even idealists! who maybe don't even know they belong to this club that i've lumped them into and assumed that they're insidiously enjoying all the priviledges membership afffords! and they're envious or intangibly resentful of me too and maybe they too feel neglected by the group and can't we all just get along?

but i guess not liking things is part of community. it's how we identify ourselves. does anyone feel like they belong to anything?

i guess like i don't feel like i have a posse. the people i know are culled from a few different scenes of their own design and they often don't like each other. amy's friends are neater, they're in college together still. but they have their grievances too! there are certain people who don't show up so often. or who leave early when another fellow shows.

i feel like my friends are so smart and funny why can't they get along? but in groups it's too much to handle i guess. or when one of them owes you some money you think but they don't. or one is a chauvenist. every one is just suffering uniquely! and maybe every one feels like they're out of a group and now it's just professional allegiances and i should let go of my middle school anchored depressive fantasies of disinclusion?

i think that's what i was shooting for, and excited by realizing that everyone has their moments of feeling behind or left out. just rest assured that the person you admire probably feels that way too. even the buddah wasn't happy until he was enlightened! why couldn't he just chill? chilling is hard long term.

so here's the news bulletin today, pettiness continues on into the technology era, it's probably built in to the browsers, and it's an intimate if unseen part of your media experience. maybe it's a beautiful thing! like body odor!.

alternative portal to crapland

turns out calling bud.com a "portal to crapland" makes me a "alternative portal expert" for pbs's internet cafe.

so i had to do some quick research.

and then i went to "cybersmith" in palo alto, and stood about lusting after video games as a marketing guy at wired and i got made up and tried to make chit chat while saving all our best stuff for 3 minutes 50 seconds on camera.

he was a pleasant fellow, trying to be in touch with himself, but he kept interrupting me and asking me leading questions. it's fine to stay on topic but i didn't think he was listening to me. that was frustrating, and i don't think i'm quite tuned up to defy that. the easiest way would be to project so much personality that it wouldn't matter what he asks, you just act in that way. but that's a box. that's what madonna did on dave letterman.

another way to handle it is how howard recommended, prepare yourself. think of the three things you must say and turn every question into your question. but his questions were so useless sometimes. so bud.com published a debunking of the disney email chain letter. what was the story with that anyways? why have me on the show to tell you about the goddamn disney-user fuck up? i shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place.

i would have just chalked it up as a lesson and not remembered it so acridly had it not entailed two and a half hours of driving with an hour break between. all for unpaid self-promotion! the sorrow and the pity!

today:

zdtv me

on my brother's recommendation, and some intuition on my own part i got digital directTV satellite and installed it myself on the roof this weekend with jon wilner and so now i can watch a lot of zdtv and pitch my suggestions and content and critiques more knowledgably.

i'm supposed to start being a guest on another show, "call for help" the newbie show, which has a new producer who seems open eared. the last producer was nice, she found a denim-looking but actually polyester suit for 75¢ and bought it for me. the new one and i meet tomorrow.

today i watched a little bit of zdtv, and i remembered all the things i'd thought about it over a few weeks, and i came up with some programming suggestions/comments.

i tried to keep them kind-spirited, and slightly light, but i've got an edgy feeling in my gut like there's so much they could do that they just aren't. but they're doing their own thing right? why do i care to influence that? because i'm working for them. because i have to appear on these shows! because i want to want to watch it! because i want to make tv!

pant pant pant

yesserday: august 25