In a remix culture, why not? 

The kids and I have been watching Sports Night on DVD. It's Aaron Sorkin's sitcom about a Sports Center-like show, and predates The West Wing. I'd never even heard of it (I don't pay much attention to sitcoms), but I'd seen it discussed in connection with Studio 60 and had to check it out. It's funny. The stats geek -- played by the guy who played Will Bailey on WW -- is perfect.

The only thing that keeps me from running right back to it is the laugh track. The broadcast networks made shows put them in if they were half-hour comedies and were not taped live. Probably still the case, I don't know. Imagine Entourage with a laugh track. Yuck. Seems to me that, in this culture of remixing, and with Sorkin's stature, there ought to be a version released on DVD without the track, and maybe even without the little musical stinger going out to the non-existent commercial. Both embellishments seem to cheapen it.

I think I'll put Jeremy the stats geek and some other great TV and movie geeks in my story. Can you suggest some good ones? All I can come up with so far are two Jeff Goldblum characters --Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park and the guy he played in Independence Day -- and Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters. I may have to make up my own woman geek, or make my heroine into more of one.

Pod tours: such a good idea 

Found this via Christine.net: Geogad, fledgling personalized audio tour site. I was thinking about this myself a while back, and still think there's a place for tours designed for car or train travel. Maybe this site has those, in addition to walking tours, haven't listened to them all.

Hierarchies - Chapter 4 

(Continued from Chapter 3 | Archive)

Am I in the mood to be embarrassed by Brian, Meg wondered as she made the turn on to Ventura Boulevard.

She had tried not to think much about yesterday's long strange trip to the Other Building -- and the shorter, stranger trip into some alternate internet. Maybe she would try to explain it to Brian, a former co-worker. She was on her way to meet him for dinner at Casa Vega.

No, wait a second, Meg brought herself up short, I know I'm going to tell him about it. Why else would I have called him after not talking to him for weeks? He's an internet geek and one of the only people I know very well who is odder than I am.

It was one particular manifestation of Brian's oddness that had Meg wondering if she was up for embarrassment. He always carried a little audio player device with him that played one tune over its speaker: the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars. Thinking it was funny -- actually it was -- Brian flipped on the dirge when he entered any room, no matter how public or inappropriate. He thought of it as his entrance music, his own personal "Hail to the Chief." Good grief.

Brian was anything but menacing, a wiry, spectacled, late-twenties programmer whose grooming and dress lived up to all the stereotypes. That's what makes his Vader gag funny, Meg considered as she pulled in to the parking lot.

I'd trade his physique for mine right now, she thought, checking her look in the rear view mirror before going into the restaurant. She didn't look a tenth as bad as she thought: Meg was a little taller than average height, with wavy reddish brown shoulder-length hair, and a decidedly female shape. Her problem with herself was the shape. Ten years ago she seemed to be all angles, with wide but fine-boned shoulders and narrow hips. These days she was more rounded, all over, and she didn't like the effect.

Entering the restaurant, she spotted her friend in a booth. Oh good, she thought, he's already here, no entrance. Meg giggled as she made her way across the floor, knowing that his musical entrance had been made earlier for everyone else in the room. She giggled again as she waved to him, wondering if the restaurant patrons would be expecting her, as an acquaintance of Darth, to come in with her own theme music.

There was Brian -- ratty backpack at his side, his nose three inches from his little Nokia tablet. He was pouting.

"Hey buddy," Meg said, swinging her bag on to the seat and sliding into the half-circle booth.

"Meg," he grunted, not looking up.

"Have you ordered?"

"Huh?" he answered, still concentrating on his display. "No."

Meg leaned over to see what was competing for his attention, and saw a photo of an orange sofa, with reversed-out type spelling "Scripting News."

"I'd have thought you would read Dave Winer's feed instead of going to the web page," Meg wondered.

She and Brian, who made their livings by keeping up with the internet, both read the blog every day, but Brian was an addict.

Brian sighed and switched off the device. He looked heavenward, looked at Meg, and sighed again.

"What," Meg said.

"He's going to stop blogging. He's already slowing down," Brian explained. Winer, a celebrity programmer, had announced earlier in the year that he would cease publication of his blog by the end of the year, and the end was just a few weeks away.

"Oh, right," Meg said. "That's going to be tough on you, isn't it?"

"Yeah…" he said in such a dreamy, hangdog way that Meg had to laugh.

"Look, maybe it will be healthier for you to shake this," Meg proposed. "I mean. You watch every TV show he mentions."

"No!" Brian countered. "Only the ones he says he loves."

She pressed on. "You bought the same HD rig he has with all the same accessories and connectors, which you couldn't afford!"

"I got a gig on deck, I'll handle it. He makes you want things."

Meg frowned. That was all true. "Admit that it's not good for you. You probably wanted to buy firewood the other day when he was looking for some. Even though you don't have a fireplace."

"No." Brian said. "Well… I might have wanted a fireplace. Look, Meg. It'll be intervention time when I buy the firewood and make a campfire in the middle of my living room. Anyway, it'll all be over soon. Except it sounds like he'll still have websites that aren't blogs." His face brightened a little at this thought, then fell into a pout again. "But it probably won't be something you can check all throughout the day. Not like a blog."

Poor thing. He really was feeling a loss. She gave his arm a soft little punch in sympathy.