upperwestsidejournal.com

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All the new posts since Feb ’08…click above.

I do like wordpress a lot (especially tag surfer), but it’s less of a hassle (and free) to run new html, javascript and flash plugins on blogger.

Dear WP, as Sting says, if you love someone, Set them free …(free, free, set them free)

Tom

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Thou Shalt Not Vote

Thou Shalt Not Vote, without full information…Thou shalt think for youselves…but you can use some help getting yourself to the polls.

I’m protesting by not voting in the NY primary. You know why? Well, as I updated in my facebook status, I’m a dumbass, for thinking that I could wait until I got to work and then vote down here in Flatiron (or Rose Hill if you prefer)

I got a voicemail from Chris Rock at 8:40 pm last night “whether you vote in every election or you’ve never voted before this Tuesday vote for Barack Obama” because he was inspired. I was inspired too, I saw Chris Rock in person at the Apollo, Barack said he was the funniest person in comedy, which is true because Dave Chappelle took his hat out of the ring.

So here’s my reason for protest (which is completely unfair) Barack, is you went 90% of the way to being the tech president but that voicemail could have been even better. It could have linked me here actually no, it should have linked directly to a quick and easy Polling Locator website here… because I turned in early last night and didn’t have a chance to check my laptop before I left in morning (ok I don’t check my laptop in the morning unless all cell towers have stopped working). Barack and Co in Chicago – you didn’t even have to build a mobile site to do this Mobile.USA.gov did it for you already all you had to do was link to them!!! I talked about this on MLK day when I spoke at Mobile Monday in Philadelphia, if the US government that runs its elections completely on paper can figure out a mobile site, media brands have no excuse. I even have pictures of me saying it (just one photo of me in a RockYou slideshow) for proof!

Right, so what’s the real story? Ok, so I’m a dumbass, I forgot about the wisdom of the chads, I thought if 8 years pass and I wanted to go to vote from work I could do that rather than be forced to vote in my district.

But, I think I was put off guard a bit because I remember hillary trying to stop big caucases in casinos in Nevada which I thought was somehow extended to primaries in states that aren’t running caucuses as well. oh well. I could find the voting booth, but it was the wrong one and wasn’t able to get back uptown in time for the 9pm close due to priors….my bad. Had I only known where to go this morning, I might have planned a little better. Maybe lazy voters like me shouldn’t have a say in our electoral system? Or should busy people be rewarded for working hard and not having time enough to plan well ahead for voting?

BTW I like that Flatiron is courting the Chinese and Korean votes (I understand Korean vote because of the proximity to K-town) not really sure on the Chinese. I’m not complaining, it’s actually the first time I’ve seen the word Tou Piao (vote) in Chinese printed in simplified characters.

I’ve never had someone comment to my blog, but if someone doesn’t do so now I think that Feedreaders killed the Blogging star or I’m incapable of pissing people off! ;-)

Ok gotta go, Stephen Colbert just facebooked me a tune-in reminder about Super Tuesday

Inspiration for my title?
Nothing really, I just wanted an excuse to post this link to dan le sac vs. scroobius pip’s infectious anti-everything groove with lyrics that won’t leave my head such as “Thou Shalt Not judge a book by its cover, Thou Shalt Not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover….Thou Shalt Think for yourselves….”

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Frozen Grand Central

Frozen Grand Central is a social media advertisement for NYC – it highlights our innovation in improv comedy, the architectural prowess of grand central station, new yorkers’ curiosity in what’s happening around them and willingness to share experiences with strangers. Best of all I found this on Youtube, and it’s only 4 days old. So not only are New York minutes being better distributed but this makes me think there’s good reason to start using Youtube mobile more regularly – because I might see something locally relevant that I could experience immediately. I think the next step is to use mobile distribution to alert people of new content that is not tied to a regular show, like performance art events such as Frozen Grand Central by Improv Everywhere. (The same people who bring you the pants-less subway rides)

And…has anyone noticed that marketing live events via mobile will be easier now that the CBS Mobile hotspot in Midtown is up and running? I would say they were soft about the launch, I only saw subway advertisements like this one, but hopefully more people will realize there is free WiFi in NYC that should work. Has anyone tried the hotspot yet? Is the state of the signal strong to quite strong? Let me know

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iPhone, Starbucks’ Song of the Day and CTIA Parties!


So I did it, I bought an iPhone after all my cranky whining. I still think they should have ‘copy and paste’, but I didn’t feel like waiting until the new pressure sensitivity iPhone touchscreen patents that were recently filed proved ready for a 2nd gen phone with super copying powers. So I guess that makes me impatient as well as lazy :-) . Whatever the reason, I’m now part of the wave of high schoolers, college kids and timely adaptors who will jump on the bandwagon this coming holiday season.

I heard from a thoughtful client this week that Apple was running a Starbucks ‘Song of the Day’ promotion for the month of October, and that I should stop drinking dishwater coffee for a while so I can get songs from artists who may or may not be dead, like bob dylan, john fogerty and others who’ve barely existed for more than a few months. The John Legend song, ‘Show Me’ was the best of the bunch so far.

I walked in ready for my free T-MO hotspot service, so I set my wifi to pick up the signal. I ended up buying john legend because I saw him at the Advertising Week Yahoo! party at BB Kings and thought it would be good to hear why so many girls were going crazy about him. The song download worked immediately and it visually jumped from the storefront to my download area, which I thought was really a cool and useful effect for someone who is always wondering if what he’s doing is playing with is in fact working. I used to be one of those kids at the arcades who didn’t know that it was really impossible to play donkey kong without putting in a quarter. Later I moved on to scrambled playboy channel etc. But anyway, I put down my coffee and tried to download the song of the day, and that’s when all the trouble began.

So, first, the hotspot didn’t actually work – not sure what was going on, but only after calling T-MO and getting told to let them call me back (using a nice automated call back service) that the connection finally worked and the Starbucks logo showed up in my iTunes application. However, the real problem with the experience at Starbucks was that whole song of the day promotion didn’t go the extra mile and let you redeem the song on the iPhone. Why advertise iPhone access if you aren’t going to run the promotion for the iPhone? T-MO did it’s part, (although no one in their customer service had heard of the promotion) because they let me into their hotspot for free which made me want to talk about myself in the third person like Jimmy does when he’s in his hotspot.

However, Starbucks or iTunes were overselling the iPhone here, they’d let you buy for 0.99, but would not let you participate in the Song of the Day promotion until you got back to your laptop or desktop and used the card to send enter in your promotional code. It does not seem like a technological constraint, maybe the timing for upgrading the iTunes store to run promotions was too tight. I don’t know, but they did had enough time to print the POS material. I think the promotion is great, and probably no small feat to get three huge companies to agree legally to do what they are doing.

Starbucks does deserve some credit though, it’s staff very able people trying to figure it out, and if they can’t they just give you all sorts of crappy songs as a parting gift for not being able to solve the problem, which I think is great customer service….

Anyone going to CTIA in San Francisco? Here’s a mobile website to help you confine your wandering to safe industry sponsored events. If you have ideas for parties outside of the mobile ghetto near Moscone put them in a comment, maybe I’ll see you there this week.

CTIA Party List – Mobile Website

—————-
Now playing:
Chairmen of the Board – Pay to the Piper
via FoxyTunes

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Royksopp – Remind Me

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Special Characters

Before I left work Friday I learned of yet another mobile phone limitation, that some web links need to be translated so that ‘special characters’ do not kill redirects. That may sound like gibberish, but Special Characters in internet protocol basically means some (not all) of the characters reserved for typing swearwords like /#+@^ can’t be used in links. So I guess mobile phones have defaults like people do – default human behavior is to think the rest of the world is hostile to us, so don’t register what Special Characters say and you’ll be safe. This is street code of conduct in NYC anyway. But this made me think of how we try as hard as we can to Google our interpersonal risk away. Mobile is still uncharted, so for the most part you must do your homework on people before you leave your desk. Limitations in mobile like this are eroding all the time, but for now there are still moments for when you can’t access LinkedIn, Facebook or Wink or some other people sniffer and you will be out in the real world and you don’t have the slightest $+@^(&# idea who you are dealing with.

So let’s assume that for now, Special Characters kill your links in the real world. I thought that was an interesting metaphor if you think of how internet links are becoming currency for how we connect with people, and the more access people have to info the better those links need to be for proving that you are worthy of being invited into a group. We rely on links as proxies for the tried and true ability to judge people’s character. The less we practice character judgment the more our world becomes limited to our Five Faves. In fact if we take off those group filters like school (facebook) or work (linkedin), the rest of the world becomes Special Characters. So, how do Special Characters effectively translate who they are so that strangers like us will accept them?

Teen coming of age comedies like Superbad explore acceptance issues best. Teen Comedies are about suspending disbelief so Special Characters can play out their expressions in a world that would otherwise have shut them down. For example 20 years ago Weird Science gave two teens access to a computer girl creation program that used magazine clippings to set physical and behavioral preferences the likes Web 2.0 has not yet realized. The output of the program, Lisa, roamed around organizing parties for her creators while fending off their parents and nemeses with hotness and intrigue. Lisa would force Gary and Wyatt into situations where they had to show ‘inner strength and courage’, and therefore become worthy of being invited to parties. Weird Science is not completely far fetched, I mean at least Wyatt’s computer had bugs, one of which turned his kitchen blue. (I think the same bugs created the backdrop to last night’s deck party at the Lower East Side’s BLUE). The important thing is that Wyatt and Gary proved their character and worthiness to party while in front of people.

Fast forward to today’s comedy triumph, Superbad, which also gives Special Characters permission to party. Seth, Evan and Fogell need to learn how to socialize beyond their comfortable group of friends. Superbad is telling us that if we go out there and call ourselves McLovin (See Fogell and Nicola above) we will become McLovin to those around us. Being McLovin is such a strong image even cops Bill Hader and Seth Rogen agree to pull him into the back of their police car in front of a lawn-full of people so McLovin could look like a menace to society, mysterious and therefore a bad-ass. Lesser image enhancers like the Seth’s ability to procure booze are not as compelling as having cops to drive your image, but in the end all of the Special Characters won by just facing the people they wanted to connect with rather than hiding in the bathroom (common theme in both Weird Science and Superbad).

So it’s not about proving yourself virtually. No matter how many brands, schools and flair you add to your social networking profile, internet ego-building does not represent anything more than what you want to be and people won’t believe it until they see it. There’s actually lots of innovation in how to make your internet image less like yourself. Second Life lets you make ridiculous avatars, webcams can make your avatar into a cartoon character, and services that give you anonymous phone numbers like Jajah and Jaxtr all show the diminishing returns to how much time you invest interacting with people virtually. Googling people before dating was common practice 5 years ago, which gave you some bland info and minimal context, really only good for giant red flags. Now there are really powerful ways to check up on people all the time in places as commonplace as LinkedIn and Facebook, which give you better info on life chronology, tastes and buckets of photos. But many sites have experimented with ‘Who’s Viewed My Profile’ links so you can’t really check out people without triggering reports back that say you’ve been looking at them. So really, it’s still all about flirting and how you play it off, like Michael Cera pretending to stare off into space rather than staring Martha MacIsaac’s boobs. You aren’t going to find anything magical in a profile, it’s about how you interact.

People will get better at manipulating their profiles, sharing personal media more exclusively and judging how people interact with their profiles. What does that mean? It means that for coming generations, better social research tools will be as helpful as detergent bottles are for carrying beer – they do the job that you could have done with a beer bottle, only it freaks people out once you show them how you did it. It also means that movies that deal with how teens attempt to publicly interact in hopes of getting laid will never stop being funny.

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NYC MTA – the lounge act’s last hope?

The subway floods last week gave rise to an article in AM New York that I’ve been waiting for since I got back to NY – that mobile service in the NYC subways might become a reality soon. I’ve not heard anyone say that they want cellular service down there, and I’ll bet sexual chocolate to my right who was playing to welcome hamptons goers back to Penn Station last weekend doesn’t want it either.

However, New Yorkers seem to think personal safety ranks as a more important aspect of the social contract than annoying your neighbors, and having a working phone on you does make you feel safer. Seth Godin mentioned that it wasn’t the inconvenience of train service outages, but poor communication that pissed people off the most. People were in the dark and were not able to choose transportation alternatives because they didn’t get MTA advisories.

Maybe the NYC MTA could take a lesson from the Hampton Jitney (not instruct people to take buses) and set up WiFi. Hampton Jitney enabled WiFi because they needed a way to verify bum credit cards, and once they solved their on the spot payment processing problem they started selling WiFi service to passengers as an ancillary service, thus making them look cool when really all they were trying to do was bust you for using the Underhill’s credit card. So if the MTA skipped cellular service and went straight to blanketed WiFi – that would be fine with me, because I’m buying a WiFi phone soon, but it’s less ecumenical than Festivus and will be so until everyone has a wifi enabled device on their person.

Personally, I miss having cell service in the subway, I had it in aught 2 (’02) back in Shanghai, before carriers like Sprint even allowed text messages in the US. Maybe City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) has been to Shanghai and that is why he thinks the MTA can and should upgrade its IT systems. I say if Washington D.C. has it we should have it in NYC. I would be able to read AM NY on my phone, but I would still listen to sexual chocolate – they play so fine don’t you agree?

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myPhone

I used to be a phone evangelist, but it’s over now. Now it’s cooler to be the one with the worst phone. (See left, a Moto freebie and a smile) As of last Friday there are 500,000 plus handset evangelists out there because of the iPhone. Many of these people had crappy phones before. This means they have passed the genius bar, but may not know whether the features they are talking about… like click to call on google maps… are breakthrough rather than what everyone with an ok phone has been using for the past year. The iPhone is very cool, but I’ve noticed that some friends won’t walk with me outside of their wifi network. I feel the steepness of their investment is keeping them from dissing the iPhone. Since I have made no such investment I can dis’ with abandon.

But let me say this, I do want an iPhone. I like tabbed browsing, and I think the slow network is a great idea because it means an 8 hour battery life. And if Steve Jobs wants to play Santa I would like to request some very simple improvements. I’m not looking for 3g, I want ‘Select Mode’ so I can forward myself listings and put them in google maps etc., URL forwarding so I can share things, camera zoom (did they actually forget this?), and if possible Ramble IM (Ramble’s not a deal breaker but it’s a very nice to have) . Yes, these are all features available on bb’s, so I’m confessing to both working and enjoying having a bb.

Of course, I’m biased towards using made for mobile pages instead of big web-pages, because even with lightning speed (when you can find wifi) and multitouch, which enables what I call ‘Web Repelling’ (see below) I’m not ready to drop the cash because I’m still giving up lots of functionality found on the Pearl. I do love to pinch and spread with my fingers as much as the next man but it’s just a waste of time really.

Web Repelling is lots of fun once or twice (see!) but once you have a few smiling pictures of yourself doing this you can get on with yourself.

Lobby or start a company with Ad Supported wifi for NYC! I am considering writing Bloomberg or helping startups for an ad supported model for free wifi in NYC if that is faster than lobbying for muni-fi. The new Jajah application for international calls would be nice if I could use it out of the house, and if we had blanket wifi maybe my iPhone-having friends would venture out of their hotspots. That would be nice, because that’s what mobile phones were designed to let them do.

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The TV people are here…Sharing Comedy

The Upper West Side is slippery today because of a NorEaster. The winner of rainy days in my house is TV. Since it is raining, I have time to share some background on what ostensibly is a freakish need to explore the available Joost programming.

Cut to a scene when I’m back in college and I was raiding the Tufts music library for blues cd’s, standup comedy cd’s and films and you will understand a little better. You see, I thought place shifting media could be better incorporated into college life. That could have meant a roving soundtrack for night rambles in Somerville, MA or bringing clips from films to project on the wall to announce my presence, or just sharing the standup comedy or skits that I had seen that my friends hadn’t…having better technology to help explain what I had seen to others would have been cool.

At that time TV, the king of media distribution methods, was restrictive. When I spent hours in the library researching stuff I got to put out a paper, get a grade and continue partying for another semester. My exploration of media archives had no value at the time but to give me a reason to do iffy impressions of impersonators from SNL. I could not show off what I had found because I could not broadcast TV myself like Youtube now promises. In the famously overused 80′s phrase ‘what I really wanted to do was direct’…the clips to other people with some place shifting tool that hadn’t been invented yet. All we had were walkmen and the rabbit (remember those things that put cable in rooms that didn’t pay for cable?). There actually were mp3 players but no one had them and there wasn’t any tv on them.

Usually people say that porn is the first thing to spur media innovation – and it does, (until it leaves red marks) but porn is private. When it comes to media sharing, I say jokes are the bite-sized bits that can be shared like M&M’s. If it’s about sharing, Comedy is King.

Comedy Sharing throughout history:
People have always aped comedians. Americans are the biggest media consumers which means that we do it all the time. We do it at meals, between class and on coffee breaks, we can’t stop quoting movies or tv skits. I can remember European friends at dinners with mostly americans just didn’t understand what I would call ‘Media Recreation’ culture. It’s not retro…referencing 80′s movies is a recreation and it only really shows the freshness of your personal media library. We are reflecting that real life has recorded analogies, and we are re-creating to enjoy that life repeatedly imitates art (or we are saying the origins of the comedy we endorse is sound). I don’t consider this an affliction, it’s that we want to show off what we’ve found and share it with others.

3 forms of Television Comedy:

1) Standup – The purest form of comedy that can be found in comedy hours or specials. Best examples Eddie Murphy’s Raw, and Richard Pryor’s Live on the Sunset Strip if you haven’t seen these pause this blog, enter these films on your Netflix queue and return at your leisure.

In fact eddie murphy in either Raw or Delierious explained what happens when people who have discovered comedy without the necessary talent to share it actually can destroy comedy. (This is his how Eddie became known as the ‘Fuck you Man’). Thing is… I can’t actually which remember movie this was in and don’t care to search because services have not yet caught up. Blinkx and Veotag and others need to sell a service to search old films and tv for keywords. They can sell it either to the public (ad supported) or to media companies so video meta data can flourish out there and increase the power of a video maven. I think these firms are doing the lord’s work because I would benefit. Maybe GoogTubleClick can help here by sparing an algorithm or two. But that’s for another blog post.

2) Skit show, live or slightly canned – best examples are Saturday Night Live, SCTV and Chappelle’s Show Seasons 1 & 2. They are the reason for the Daily Show and Colbert Report, they are the reason why Dana Carvey will now be forever linked to Gerald Ford and Tom Brokaw on the internet.

3) Sitcom – in front of a studio audience or fully canned with only a few set places to film – Cheers, Seinfeld or the growing trend of filmed Sitcoms that follow characters everywhere and rely on dialog and facial expressions more than theater-esque blocking like Curb your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development.

Terry Gilliam, director of Monty Python said Americans lack the sense of irony and self-deprecation that the British do. I think this could be why our comedy sometimes lags behind theirs to the point where Sacha Baron Cohen can have a second career in the US as Ali G and Borat without Americans noticing, and why the Office is somehow hot in the US yet very few people think to watch the BBC version of The Office to see why they got it years earlier. Now the Brits are 5 hours ahead, so they should beat us to it right? Maybe its just more about distribution – our tastes might change to like more internationally programmed shows if we had better access to it and a long-tail / maven driven rating system were in place. Joost can do this if it wishes because content can come from anywhere, which means that if you are watching the Office with someone they can tell you about the BBC office and you can go and find it while you are still watching TV. For now we rely on HBO to scout out hot shows from across the pond and bring them here so their creators can make real money through syndication, which is why we get to see Extras.

All of these forms can be shared, and are shared inefficiently by people quoting them all the time.

Valiant efforts to allow better sharing, or free distribution of TV:

1) Youtube, Megite and many other video clip sites has allowed people to share SNL clips like Lazy Sunday which I would give you a link to but I’m not allowed to do that. Soon we will get a service from NBC/Newscorp that should probably be called MeToob since it won’t do anything new, just create a YouTube competitor with all the stuff from NBC late night and Fox animated shows that you’ve been watching on YouTube.

2) A twist on Youtube has been how Online TV channels are being created / incorporated into social networks like MySpace and Facebook by companies like Ziddio and KickApps through white label products sold to social networking companies and cable companies like Comcast.

3) Youtube, Zannel and others are trying to mobilize this experience either on carrier decks or on the Mobile internet – this has actually been promised but I don’t think people are using this yet because you don’t search through crap your phone – see Steve Smith’s mobile insider for more.

4) Wikipedia/IMDB – allows people to find the director, cast or what that character has been in. This works better on mobile than at home, because you can request info immediately when you are talking with someone, but it’s very academic and usually doesn’t translate into the experience, it’s mostly for winning arguments.

5) TiVo allows you to record funny shows so you can share them with people when they come over to your house. TiVo is failing because it wants to sell you TiVo machines instead of just the service through cable operators.

6) Sling Media got CBS to okay the sharing of clips from CBS if both you and your friend own a slingbox, which is proving to be the Lazer-Tag model. It’s not working because Lazer tag guns were expensive, (and the commerical said ‘the arena’ was sold separately) and no one is paying to share unless they already have the equipment to do so. Much like TiVo Sling needs to be incorporated into something we actually buy. But it’s a great idea if the product marketing were changed.

7) Joost I think that Joost has the chance to take all 3 forms of Television Comedy and amplify their distribution as well as allow us to be innovative in the way we enjoy them. With an ad-supported free distribution model Joost lets you ‘channel chat’ while you are watching with others who are not in the same room as you – much like chatting on Xbox. You can also take screen shots of shows and post them on your myspace, ning or other personalized pages.

Right now Joost’s channel chat sucks, hopefully it will get better. Joost’s link to gTalk IM service helps broadcast to people the title of what you are watching at any time. Broadcasting what you are watching is cool but scary because it is still tough to find content on Joost that is not embarrassing to tell people you are watching – thank you DiddyTV. I think that Joost should also include MSN messenger because most people outside of the states use MSN, and US chatters on Xbox will be likely targets for Joost anyway.

So what’s actually on Joost? Comedic Innovators. When the 0.8 build was pushed to us Comedy Central appeared with Stella. I knew the Stella trio from MTV’s ‘the State’, the only online artifact of the State can be found on eBay – the $100+ VHS – to me a stalwart ‘screw you’ to the media sharing community. Even David Wain who manages the ‘the State”s brand has thrown its hands up and asked fans to plead in writing to Viacom to rerun the old episodes – I’d say the best way to get people to love the State again is to write to MTV and get the State reruns on Joost – The State FAQ.

Joost also has Zach Galifianakis from Man Bites Dog. He’s also in the Sarah Silverman show and the Comedians of Comedy both not yet on Joost but programs which prove that Zach is one of the hardest working comedians out there. Like David Cross, Zach risks his reputation and like the late Chris Farley he risks body to push the boundaries of comedy.
TiVO is cool, white label DVR’s are cheaper, but recording services are still focused on private enjoyment, or ‘Programming your own TV’. When fans TiVo shows, the clips stay stuck in their TV (or DVR more specifically) which means that we haven’t evolved since 1982 when the best way to share in media was to have your daughter hook up with a Poltergeist. Well guess what? They’re HEEEre! (who’s here honey?) The TV People are here…

Since we are no longer going to be able to post the full video without copyright infringements on youtube or our own blogs Joost can help you share TV for free. TV is not yet searchable but when it is the possibilities will move laptop TV back to the realm of real TV watchers, people who like to watch professionally programmed TV, not cat’s licking themselves. That’s Bob Saget’s job remember? So if you didn’t know that it was Bill Hader doing Peter O’Toole in the SNL News skit, that’s ok. Just chat with your friends and maybe you’ll find out without having to flip to google and interupt your program.

8) Full mobile sharing of TV clips – TBD – A downloadable player like Joost or Mobile Web sites that can share video are in their early stages in the US. Veeker is a company that focuses on posting personal films from mobile to web. Sharing clips from real tv programs from phone to phone could proliferate more quickly in Japan and Korea where data connections are many times faster but if you buy my Comedy Sharing argument there is less of an archive of good, recorded comedy in those countries to warrant such a service over by der.

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Shakespeare in the Dark

‘Parkwifi,’ the elusive Central Park free wireless signal, (ready?) doesn’t work. I know it’s hard to see, but with a 1.3mp razr camera, under a black umbrella in today’s weather, this is what we get:


Now what? I may be the only person who didn’t know that parkwifi is about as accessible as the reservoir swimming area. Judging by the fact that I was the only one with a laptop out 250 yards from Delacorte Theater this morning at 9am it was either the grey skies or no one told me that was no wi and no fi, I’ll bet not even at 8:02:11am.

Why did I choose today? At 7:45 I was finishing up my morning run with a friend and I spotted the short line. We discussed that the park now had wifi access. As I looked down at my NikePlus badge of data collecting honor I thought why not just surf here, manage my runs here, be onlineonline? Surfing with a park backdrop sounded nice, and free tickets couldn’t hurt. I wasn’t worried about the rain, I had a golf-ready umbrella and a folded polyester promo blanket brought to me by Wishbone brand dressing which encouraged me to ‘ranch up my day’.

And someone’s already ranching it up. The Park Theater staff’person, I don’t know her name, but she wore a Brooklyn hat, no team affiliation, just location based pride and an internal megaphone. She explained that there was no way to fool the park theater staff by junior highish tricks of cutting, back-cutting or faux family reunions. You get here and you stay here until 1pm, which makes for an interesting experiment in NYC. Enter Rain, and Rain related Hawkers “Umbrellas, drinks, I’ve got umbrellas and drinks.” So I think to myself, ‘oh the heavy stuff shouldn’t be coming down for quite a while now.’

So I set up my umbrella to cover my laptop, and I’m proud of how I have not compromised my behavior due to the rain. But the setup did not last long

I did learn however that you do not need wifi to offer Location Based Services. To the left we have Jazz flute, free with advertising at the end, keeping it classy. I think you would call that an interstitial ad, no? Anyway then a lady talks over my nano about her new haircutting service on the upper westside, while one of the sherpas from Andy’s deli on 80th and Columbus is delivering black plastic bags to 3 people on line. Unfortunately the hair cutting service was ahead of the young lenny kravitzalike handing out artsy movie fliers. I was part of the real life internet that Dave Chappelle so brilliantly displayed in season II; mostly popups. Traditional is how I would characterize how people exploited us on-line. They offered food music and haircuts – maybe services can get abstract from there, Dylan Kidd maybe hires Roger Dodger alikes to stand next to a girl and point to some random guy in line and say thathe has something to tell her that will blow her mind, or Samuel L can bring a jake the snake bag and scare people into leaving for the movies. No that would be too much. The heavy stuff is in fact coming down now, from about 10:00am to 11:00 and I needed to think about something other than my soaking butt. Puddles were forming under me. Eventually I had to move up towards the ‘big rock’ which I am told is a landmark. At least Andy knew where it was, and with that and my name I was able to procure a roastbeef on a roll. As chappelle used to say, now that’s real, son.

So I’m at home now and have two tickets, the park theater kept to their word and pretty much everyone got their tickets by 1:15. Question is, should I go?

– I braved the rain to see the show, and Merryl Streep outdid huhself in Mother Courage. In fact I think the rain helped the scenery since it was a muddy war set. The show ends soon, so get thee to the park.

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