In this unexpectedly lyrical piece, Ben Shattuck tries to figure out if anyone in human history has ever been swallowed by a whale, then emerged days later in one piece to tell about it.
I’d like to believe in swallowings, but it’s tough. There is no air in the stomach, for one. There are acids. And if we are talking about sperm whales, which we are most of the time, there is the deadly passage through the 30-foot jaws lined with 8-inch teeth.
Still, you’d like to think it’s possible. You want to believe in an animal that can fit you inside them — that you might be consumed not piece-by-piece, mouthful-by-mouthful as sharks and bears would eat you, but wholly; to be encased as your full self, womb-like.
I recently launched a new experiment to get into TV podcasting: a show based on the FX series Justified. The goal is to assemble some of the best television writers on the internet to do weekly recaps/reviews of each episode. Justified is so rich in its writing and so well-directed that I doubt we’ll ever lack in terms of topics to discuss.
Below you’ll find links to subscribe to the show. If this show performs well (in terms of subscribers and reviews in iTunes), then I’ll almost definitely do more shows down the line that are dedicated to specific TV shows. So please, rate it! Subscribe to it! Spread the word! Enjoy!
I watched Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy this evening, and I still don’t know quite what to make of it. The film plays with the viewer’s perception of time and reality in ways that are unexpected, jarring and confusing. Several different interpretations have sprung up to explain the events of the film. All I know is that it’s a film that is well-acted, gorgeously shot, and demanding of your attention. I took to the internet to try to make heads or tails of it.
I hope to share more thoughts on this later, whether here or on the /Filmcast. [Update: here’s our review!] In the meantime, here are a bunch of links that I found valuable in helping me to think through the film.
On Jan. 31, Portland officials will christen the city’s fifth loo, at NW Couch St. and 8th Ave., with an inaugural flush. With inspirational artwork furnished by students at the nearby Emerson elementary school, it could be the most popular yet. But how did these sleek compartments of metal and plastic, which may smell slightly of urine, become a cult hit among Portland’s bathroom aficionados?
Simple: They’re not as crappy as other cities’ toilets.
The above photo means a lot to me. Let me explain why.
This photo, taken on a hill overlooking the Seattle skyline, shows me, Stephen Tobolowsky, Stephen’s wife Ann, and Jeff Hansen, Program Director at KUOW (the public radio station in Seattle).
We were about a year into The Tobolowsky Files when Jeff approached me to put the show on the air in Seattle, WA. Jeff took a massive chance on us. It was a chance that few other Program Directors would have taken, but one that paid off handsomely for all the parties involved. The Tobolowsky Files is now doing quite well on KUOW, well enough that we were able to sell out an audience of 850 people at Seattle’s Neptune Theatre.
This photograph was taken on the morning that Stephen and I performed The Tobolowsky Files live at the Neptune. Here, you can hear the audio of my intro that evening:
So why the importance of the photo? Because to me, it shows the power of an idea. It shows that with a few committed people, you can put together something of value, something that enriches people’s lives, something that brings them joy and intellectual stimulation. With the perfect confluence of the creative abilities of only a few individuals, wonderful things can happen.
Each of us played a role in this enterprise. This photo was the first time we were all together in one place. I treasure the photo for the moment it captures, but also for the promise that it implies.
Its lesson to me: don’t stop dreaming. You never know what is possible.
It was a thrill to interview Errol Morris recently, who is truly one of my heroes. Morris was incredibly generous with his time, and he was also the first guest I ever interviewed that yelled at me during the interview(!). His secretary eyed me through the glass wall a few times during the interview, wondering if I was disturbing the peace. Fortunately, it was merely a lively discussion on the nature of truth.
I wrote up some highlights of our conversation over at /Film, but the real meat is in the hour-plus long conversation I’ve preserved in audio form. Give it a download and check it out, will ya?
Today, it was breathtaking to see tech giants like Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Boing Boing black out their site in protest over SOPA/PIPA. Silicon Valley and Hollywood haven’t had much occasion to clash, but it’s now obvious that when they do, the results are far-reaching and devastating. Jonathan Wiseman and Jenna Wortham at the NYTimes have decent summaries of the different interests at play in this unprecedented online protest (Also, for funsies, check out this cool visualization of SOPA chatter on Twitter).
What infuriates me through all of this is not the near-reality of the bill itself (that’s more depressing than anything else). No, what really grinds my gears is the MPAA’s response to this entire ordeal. Dan Seitz has the only appropriate response to this abomination: a scathing takedown of everything the MPAA had to say:
What the MPAA wants to do is stop private citizens from ripping their DVDs and sharing those copies for free on the Internet, and they already have laws on the books making owning the tools to break DVD encryption illegal. But since suing individual citizens in court hasn’t worked, now they want to shut off websites at will.
In other words, MPAA, you are exploiting actual human suffering to acquire tools you don’t need to solve a problem you don’t have. And now you’re whining that other people are informing the American people of what you’re trying to do. How in God’s name do you sleep at night? Do you even understand how sickening that is to a normal human being?
