Thursday, July 12, 2001

SHOCK TREATMENT: VH1's list of the "100 Most Shocking Moments In Rock & Roll" didn't include anything involving Buddy Holly, Bobby Fuller, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton's racist remarks, Ronald Reagan pretending to have heard of Bruce Springsteen, $200 concert tickets, or the use of Janis Joplin's Mercedez-Benz song in an awful real Mercedes commercial. (Cobain's death was ranked #4 on the list.)

ELSEWHERE:

A story about White House plumbing that has nothing to do with Watergate.

Whatever happenned to UFO sightings? (found by Fark)

posted by clark 11:55 PM

SQUARE-TO-BE-HIP DEPT.: Spyder Games is, beyond a doubt, the weirdest series MTV has ever aired--for the mere reason that MTV is airing it.

To wit (or, in this case, witless): If the 130-part youth-appeal soap opera had been on some other cable channel (such as Oxygen or Lifetime) or in broadcast-channel syndication, it would clearly be nothing more or less than the poorly-written, poorly-acted, shot-on-video mediocrity it is.

But by being on MTV, where everything's allegedly so slick and quick and hot, the show's wooden acting and cardboard sets take on a nearly surrealistic tone. It's as if the channel's top brass had finally realized that 20 years of incessant, aggressive programming (not to mention five years of hyping awful boy bands and all-white gangsta rappers) have made it a spent force among wide swaths of its target audience--a Dawson's Creek generation with little interest in a Beavis and Butt-head aesthetic.

So Spyder Games doesn't try to be hip--or rather, whenever it tries to be hip it fails miserably, making its fundamental squareness even more apparent. The rock band some of the characters have is relentlessly average. The costumes are off-the-shelf mall-chain recreations of the worst '80s-style homeliness. The dialogue makes no discernable attempt at contempo slang. The storylines are supposedly about hidden family secrets, but in detail are nearly incomprehensible to first-time viewers.

In other words, it's a standard regular-issue daytime soap, differentiated from the network fare only in that (1) it's more incompenetly made, and (2) it will end after 26 weeks, like a Mexican telenovela.

To compare and contrast, MTV's running the second season of its Undressed serial after some showings of Spyder Games. Undressed features perky college kids, stripped to their glamorous undies as often as possible, chattering on about sex and relationships. (In keeping with today's reversed double standards, the gals are usually the ones obsessed with sex while the guys want to pontificate about relationships.) Everybody's "beautiful" and stylish, and the show uses that muddy digital process to make video supposedly look like film.

Neither show is very good, or very entertaining. But despite (or because of) its incessant hotness, Undressed already seems more dated than last year's Victoria's Secret catalog; while Spyder Games, invoking 50 years of TV soap opera histrionics, is a relative evergreen.

(This article's permanent link.)

posted by clark 3:52 PM

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

EXHIBITION-ISM: The All-Star Game was a game that didn't count in any standings, but was a nearly flawless example of what a great baseball game can be. Ichiro battled the Big Unit and won; Seattle pitchers got the win and the save; and fan-favorite Cal RIpken got the MVP trophy. All it lacked was 2001-Mariners style clutch hit-and-run play.

However, one piece of KCPQ's postgame hype show struck me--the part where the pretty-girl and pretty-boy anchorbots lavished praise on the event as the civic-pride booster Seattle's needed ever since WTO, Mardi Gras, and the bopping of a megaphone into the mayor's forehead. Yeah, like anybody was expecting a riot at an exhibition game that charged hundreds for standing-room tix.

ELSEWHERE:

Great '60s and '70s View-Master disc covers.

A recent emigrant from here to there offers "An American's Guide to Canada" (found by Pop Culture Junk Mail).

posted by clark 9:48 AM

Monday, July 09, 2001

PAST ITS PULL DATE: Webvan.com, which bought out the Kirkland-based HomeGrocer.com, is calling it quits. Like a lot of venture-capital-chompin' dot-coms, it tried to "get big fast" by spending heavily on high-profile operations and advertising. Unlike other dot-coms, it had to also spend tons on warehouses, trucks, and merchandise in a notoriously low-margin industry.

The consumer-level "Internet revolution," meanwhile, crawled as high-speed home connections remained costly and sparse. (Ever try to access HomeGrocer or Webvan on a 56K modem? Not pretty.) But Webvan couldn't wait for the bugs to be worked out of the process. With its truckers and its conveyer belts in a half-dozen big metro areas, it had to immediately hit it big and stay there.

Why, many are now asking, did anybody (especially in the investment community) think that was sure to happen?

One possible answer: A mistaken comparison between the early WWW and the early cable TV.

Today's 206-channel cable landscape is still largely dominated by the channels launched in the business's 1976-84 infancy--CNN, ESPN, Nickelodeon, HBO, MTV, Discovery--and their latter-day subsidiary channels. But that's because channel capacity was so limited all those years; would-be competitors couldn't get on enough cable systems. In contrast, anybody can put up a web server, and anybody with an ad budget can get it promoted. Potential profitability in consumer e-commerce, if it comes, will come not from early "mind space" domination but by buildiing a service people want to use, offering products people want to buy.

In short, from doing the boring stuff and doing it properly.

A lesson the entirety of e-commerce should have learned from the pre-Webvan grocery business.

(This article's permanent link.)

posted by clark 9:23 AM

Sunday, July 08, 2001

THE GOOD NEWS: Mike Daisey, the comic actor and monologuist who became the conscience of Seattle E-business with his show 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, has signed a (reputed six-figure) deal to turn it into a book.

The bad news: Daisey's taking the money to finance a move to NYC. Don't leave us, Mike! We need you!

ELSEWHERE:

Odd recipes including "Tofu Sex Aids" and "Liquid Meat" (found by Robot Wisdom).

Recalling the once-thrilling attractions of America's defunct amusement parks.

posted by clark 10:50 AM

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