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Slate has a wonderful visualization of the race for the GOP presidential nomination, created using polling data over time. The most interesting thing from my perspective: Romney’s remarkable stability over time. It shows that he’s not going away, but that Republicans still, after many, many months, haven’t mustered the ability to fully embrace the guy yet. Poor Mitt.
Also, I appreciated Matt Bai’s in-depth look at the current state of the GOP establishment. Illuminating.
It’s been a bit quiet here this past week. That’s because I’ve been busy putting together the following:
The Tobolowsky Files will have three LIVE performances in Boston during November (11th, 12th, and 13th)! Then, in January, we’ll be heading to Seattle for a performance at the historic Neptune Theater. It will be epic! Buy your tickets now!
I am beyond excited about this. There is nothing quite like seeing Stephen perform his stories live; I’ve seen it happen and the results are moving, powerful, even transformative.
More importantly, I can’t escape the thought: this is how it begins. With a few, jam-packed shows at a cozy, intimate venue. If these go well, not only will it do much to spread the word of Stephen and of the show, but it will also demonstrate that we have a viable business model on our hands. Perhaps even viable enough for me to seriously consider a career change…
Stephen recently did a live interview for a packed house for Seattle public radio. Our show is apparently quite popular there. It is not popular in Boston, where pretty much nobody knows that it exists. In my mind, this presents a number of interesting challenges and questions for us:
– From state to state, how big is the podcast’s reach? And how many of our listeners in each state are big enough fans that they are willing to spend money to see Stephen live?
– Given a situation where most people are not aware of the podcast, is Stephen’s existing popularity as an actor sufficient enough such that people will come see his show even with no knowledge whatsoever of his storytelling abilities?
– Suppose people don’t know about the podcast NOR do they know any of Stephen’s work. What are ways to entice them to come?
Stephen already has a Facebook and Twitter page, and I’ve created a Facebook event for the live showing in Boston. In the weeks to come, we’ll be playing around with some ways of selling the show that I hope will be effective. I look forward to sharing them with you.
I hope you’ll join us in Boston or in Seattle. And if we sell out (or come close to selling out) both locations, you can expect there to be many more performances down the line.
Matt Mullenwegg has some interesting thoughts about where Apple is heading. The one industry that I could not have possibly guessed? Cars:
Walk down the car stereo aisle in Best Buy and see what $800 gets you, or a $300 GPS from Garmin, vs an iPad or iPhone. The screens feel like a TI-92 calculator. The typography makes my eyes bleed. I find it morally reprehensible how bad these products are because it’s one of the areas of technology where a bad interface is most directly tied to injuries and deaths. Car folks are making their iPhone/iPod integrations better and better, which may be a glass of ice water in hell, but they’ll never make the jump to providing a beautiful marriage of media, search, and navigation that a great in-car experience needs.
To quote Dennis Reynolds, “That is some long-term shit.”
The song bove was featured in the fourth season finale of Breaking Bad last night. And even though it feels heavily inspired by a few of Rodrigo y Gabriela’s pieces, it’s still incredible to see two people so young with the ability to jam like this.
Last night’s finale of Breaking Bad capped off a remarkable fourth season, which cemented Breaking Bad’s place among the pantheon of the greatest television shows in history. Many of the episodes this year could have stood alone as their own short films, with countless cinematic moments that gave me goosebumps for how carefully considered and executed they were.
My weekly ritual has been to read the recaps of Alan Sepinwall, James Poniewozik, Myles McNutt, and Matt Zoller Seitz, and I’d strongly recommend all of them this time around as well. Also, check out Sepinwall’s extensive interview with series creator Vince Gilligan, as well as the NYTimes interview with Gilligan.
We’ll be doing our own /Filmcast season review this week. Look forward to it.
Man, this knocked the wind out of me in a way I did not anticipate. The world has lost a visionary. And I can’t help but think back to that story about how Jobs helped to bring hope to a secular world.
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. You changed the world in ways that will last for generations.
After today’s eagerly anticipated announcements, I’m particularly impressed by the Siri integration. At this point, Siri is still in “beta” and you can tell the way Phil Schiller says it that the tech is not quite to the state of perfection that they’d like it to be at. But it’s what Siri represents that’s so thrilling: a future where we can interact with our computers using natural language.
We’re not there yet, but we will be one day. And as Apple is fond of doing, today it gave us a glimpse into the future.
I enjoyed Sam Harris’s musings on the future of the publishing industry. But I do wish contemporary authors sounding the death knell of the printed word would pay more homage to the fact that it was traditional publishing that propelled them to digital stardom. Traditional publishing’s death may be painful, but it will also be relatively slow (at least, in internet years).