Know-vember: Dana Gravesen

The days are just packed, to steal a phrase from Calvin and Hobbes! No sooner does Dana compliment me on the fun to be had in Know-vember than I strong-arm him into answering my devious questions. And now they're up -- BAM. Serves him right! I first knew Dana as a snot-nosed thirteen-year-old on the Horror in Film and Literature List. He's now a doctoral student. How awesome is that? Damn. From New York City to Iowa no less, but he's one of those folks who bloom wherever they're planted. Well done, you! We need to drink more martinis together, young man.

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

Nicely ask Alley (my cat) to stop chewing on my hair. [Ed: Kipper chews my hair too! I miss him :-( waah!] Then I hit the snooze button 10 times. Then panic about what day it is and what needs to be done. Then I hit the snooze button 5 times. Then I put coffee on to percolate while I smoke 2 cigarettes outside.

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to?

There are so very many. But dancing for me usually requires a bit of “lubrication.” The excellent thing is that I can dance to Slayer and Rihanna on the same evening at the local gay bar. “Rude Boy” is my favorite.

3. Where in the world do you live?

Iowa City, Iowa USA. It's a town dominated by the University of Iowa, but it has a few charming elements like good restaurants, the Pioneer Food Co-op, and shirtless jock neighbors who like to leave their blinds open 24/7.

4. What's a great night out for you?

A couple of good friends at a restaurant or tavern. I'm more of a stay-at-home kind of gal and usually get irritable or quickly exhausted with late nights out.

5. What's a great night in?

Alley on my lap, the couch, boxed wine, and Roseanne.

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?
 
Hong Kong. I'm a huge fan of Hong Kong cinema and I absolutely love exploring super-metropolises. Plus I have a lot of friends who grew up in Hong Kong and could show me the ropes. My second and third choices would be Copenhagen (I'm part Danish) or to return to Belize.

7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

Any of Maupin's first six in the Tales of the City series. [Ed: Love those! In my novel Owl Stretching, the dead cat is named Mr Tolliver]

8. What movie makes you cry?

A couple of years ago my answer to this would be the following Simpsons quote: “This is where the tears would be if I could cry! But I can't. Botched facelift.” I never used to cry at films. But the first film to ever make me cry was The Bridges of Madison County. I threw the book across the room but thoroughly enjoy the film (Go Iowa!). Truth be told, the first movie to ever make me cry was Bird on a Wire with Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn. I was 8 years-old when it was released and I forced my mother to take me to the lobby during the final “zoo” sequence because I didn't want to see any animals get hurt.

9. What makes you laugh?

Witty friends and drag queens.

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

No, but there are often fairies smoking with me on my stoop.

Thank you, you're beautiful!

BitchBuzz: Facebook's New Timeline

Prepare yourself for more bitching and moaning on Facebook as there's another change on the way. Looks like they're rolling it out more slowly and still tweaking it as they go along. Here you go:

Facebook's Timeline: What it's All About

By K. A. Laity

Not long after it introduced the friend ticker on the right hand side of your screen, Facebook began to roll out another innovation, albeit in a much slower wave: the Timeline. While clever clogs using Chrome and Firefox figured out that you can block the ticker, most people still have not been given the option for Timeline, although they should be able to access the demo.

The new Timeline offers a way to give more of a stable identity to your Facebook profile. Their tag line embodies the vision they have for this newest innovation (or irritating new feature, as it will inevitably be called): "Tell your life story with a new kind of profile."

That statement demonstrates that Facebook has begun to look at the long term. I'm not necessarily saying it will be successful to do so (and Google+ has grown at least in new members if not in actual activities), but it shows a development avenue that counters the nervous tick of the ticker: a desire for continuity...

As always, read the rest over at BBHQ.

Blogger's making changes, too -- eep! And don't get me started on my web page difficulties (argh). The days are just packed, even when I'm not standing around waiting in queues. I've got my first visitors today! That means I have some cleaning, tidying and preparing to do. But another cuppa first...

The Galway Project

Yes, I've dug out my Learning Irish book and tapes (yes, tapes O_o) and will endeavour to master what I can.

I probably should have thought of it before, but thanks to Karen Hayes for asking on Facebook if I would share a description of the project I'll be working on in Galway (assuming all the massive paperwork and permissions and whatnot go through :-). Here's a little snippet, but if you want to read the whole thing, it's on Google Docs. The proposal begins with the pitch for the undergrad seminar for the fall:

Writers in Motion: Romanticism and Reality in Lives of 21st Century Writers

The "Writers in Motion" project aims to bring together popular portrayals of writers on film with the realities of being a writer in the 21st century. Films offer us a romantic view of writers' lives. Forget hard graft: according to movies, writers live, love and drink to excess, then occasionally transcribe their adventures in a brief montage. Success, naturally, ensues. We will spend some of our time interrogating romanticized representations of writers in a variety of modern films, while contrasting those portrayals with the realities of writers' lives both in the past and in the present. We will explore the benefits inherent in the complicated gap between reality and representation: why is Hollywood selling us this vision of the writer? Just as historians seek to recover past writers in the context of the social conditions of their time, de-mystifying the distorted perceptions fostered by Hollywood's commoditization of a romanticized past that obscures social realities, we will try to glimpse the realities beneath the representations modern writers confront.

Technology is changing the writer's life with the new surge in publication of ebooks and the instant access to writers and books provided by the internet. Writing was once a solitary profession, but now writers can collaborate and communicate with each other and with their readers. How are instantaneous communication and elastic textual formats changing the ways we write and read? What does it mean to be a writer in the 21st century? Will the traditional print hierarchy and genre structure dissolve or will new categories develop? Are traditional publishers still necessary? The recent end-run around publishers by the Wylie Agency, when super agent Andrew Wylie sold his clients' ebook rights directly to Amazon's Kindle store, has inflamed already tense relations between traditional print publishers and ebook sellers—not to mention authors, agents and readers.

What new categories are emerging that may supersede the traditional forms of publishing? How should writers approach these new opportunities? With greater access afforded to publication by the web, does this model, made possible by new and revolutionary technologies, lead to more democratic forms of producing and disseminating ideas and knowledge? Or does it reinforce and exacerbate existing hierarchies among writers and the value of what they produce? Does equal access to publication in digital media enhance the range of alternative ideas and democratize knowledge by expanding access to readers hitherto excluded? Or does it further reduce its value by flooding cyberspace with reams of otherwise unpublishable dreck? [continued...]

And the job description: Teach one undergraduate seminar to a maximum of fifteen students in digital humanities in the fall semester, for two hours per week for eleven weeks. Advise fifteen to twenty graduate students and liaise and cooperate with faculty in related fields for a maximum of 15 hours. Collaborate with the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies and its key academic staff on the following key research activities: 1) Texts, Contexts, Cultures 2) TEXTE: Transfer of Expertise in Technologies of Editing, 3) Thomas Moore Hypermedia Archive.

Converting Monks into Friars in Iowa

So, the trip to Iowa included an unscheduled night in Chicago. A bit irritating to spend all those hours in O'Hare, but the truth is the seasoned traveler needs to be prepared for this kind of inconvenience. I had books to read, things to write and social media at my fingertips where I could complain to my friends. I'd have rather been in Iowa having dinner with folks as planned, but there are worse things than the quiet solitude of an anonymous hotel room. I love hotels. I think it would be terrific to live in a hotel in London with room service and the whole city before me.

More later, but here's the Powerpoint slides from my talk.Consider them an attempt to intrigue you. Forthcoming: the paper with these images embedded and a video of the images with the narration recorded there (assuming it sounds okay). Time's tight: I'm off to PCA in San Antonio on Wednesday. Much to do, so I'm writing this while my students are watching a film. Multi-tasking is the word du jour.

Converting Monks into Friars

Powerpoint is Evil

I used Tufte's piece in my own PPT presentation, which as folks on Twitter know, has almost 80 slides. I've described it as being sort of like "The Word" on The Colbert Report. Will this work? Who knows. Still tweaking. But I printed my boarding passes. If you're on Facebook, I'm now having a contest to guess how many gratuitous pop culture references I make in the forty minute speech. Go on, have a guess.

Euro Punks Exhibit

Wednesday already?! Eek! Madness -- this entire week has been, will be, is. Yesterday after the Glass Ceiling talk organized by the Women's Initiative, I jumped in the car and headed down to Kingston for a reading of a new play at the Arts Society of Kingston. The play was on the life of Margaret Fuller and has a lot of potential: the audience offered a lot of good feedback. I hope I'll get a lot of the same on my play.

Two panic moments after the play: first, being horrified to find that my car was missing, afraid it had been towed. No, I had simply walked two blocks past where it was. Can we say distracted? Driving to Bertie's for dinner I had an owl fly right over my hood on the backroads, which initially made me gasp in alarm and then think, "wow, how cool was that?" Great dinner (of course) and then back home again (after midnight).

Finishing the slides for the talk; tomorrow is polishing both. Out with friends Thursday night, on my way to Iowa Friday. Phew! And then next week is PCA. I can relax for a day on the 25th. >_< At last, here's the photos from the Euro Punks Exhibit at the Villa Medici in Rome. A lot of them are awful, but I was snapping away hastily, having fun. At least you get a flavour of the exhibit. If you want to see better pictures, take a look at the catalogue. I know a certain punk rock DJ who might let you take a look at his copy...

BitchBuzz: Exploding on the Internet

So, yeah -- it's a bit late. The column I usually send in on Wednesday to appear on Thursday was there, unsent, Thursday late. I would say I can't believe I did that, but it's all too believable with the hectic way things are. I take it as a reminder to slow down and pay attention. Never a bad idea.

Rebecca Black, Fame, & Exploding in Public

By K.A. Laity

"Fame is a bee. / It has a song / It has a sting / Ah, too, it has a wing." - Emily Dickinson

There have been a couple of instructive internet memes this past week: Rebecca Black and The Greek Seaman. The former is a 13-year-old with well-to-do parents who paid for a professionally recorded music video, the latter a novice writer who attacked a reviewer who did not like her book. The two are seemingly unrelated but for the internet sensation they became, but if we dig a little further we will find some unsettling parallels.

You may count yourself lucky if you didn't get a friend on Facebook linking to "The Worst Music Video Ever" and asking for you to watch it and agree. First, it's not the worst ever (there is so much competition, but a rough internet agreement seems to have settled on Armi &Danni's "I Wanna Love you Tender"). Further, it's surely not any more (or less) annoying that Justin Bieber or a host of other teen sensations. I quizzed my students on why they thought Black was so much worse than any other but they simply shrugged and put it down to fatigue with Autotuned pop music. A valid point, but I think that's a tipping point we reached some time ago...

Read the rest at BBHQ.

Ironic

Today in the New Media class, we're talking about blogging. I, however, have nothing to blog. Instead I already have a bunch of grading to do, teaching to prepare, schedules to finish working out for the rest of the semester (now incorporating visits by prospective new faculty -- hurrah!), a proposal to get sent off (also hurrah!), a website to update, a meeting to schedule, and a mind to recover in the process (ha!).

And though I thought it was over, there are a few more hours to vote for my voodoo zombie western "High Plains Lazarus" in the P&E poll. Short stories are not the most lucrative market, so this may be the most I 'earn' from this one until I can turn it into a novel (it's in the queue, but the queue gets ever longer).

So I leave you with a link to a story in The Saint Rose Chronicle by one of my students from last spring's version of the New Media course. Good to see she continues to pursue her interests. I take credit for nothing.

The word "ironic" still makes me think of that song. You know the one -- the one that's not actually ironic.

BitchBuzz: Technology and Temperance + Jane Quiet

My column today springs from my annoyance with paternalistic colleagues who keep giving people the impression that academics are stuffy know-it-alls who pontificate from their position of privilege. I realise I can also be a bit unreasonable about it: on President's Day a colleague in the midst of his "technology: bad" talk (thank goodness there was also a "technology: good" talk by the fabulous Kim Middleton) made several references to The Matrix which made me want to break something.

The Matrix?! This is your idea of technology: a twelve year old film? Made when almost NONE of the tech things we're talking about existed as more than an idea? Academics who would never have the chutzpah to offer public opinions on other disciplines have no trouble at all pontificating about things in popular culture that they have at most heard of--they've certainly never participated. It irritates me. But enough bile--I have things to do:

Does Tech Actually Distract from Real Life?

By K.A. Laity

We could all use a little time away from technology, right?

Colleagues of mine forwarded a link on Facebook today to a piece by William Major at the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Thoreau's Cellphone Experiment." In it Major tells of offering an extra credit project to his students: giving up their cell phones to him for five whole days, the better to reach a more "real" experience of life, unencumbered by the "distractions" of their palm-sized technology.

Setting aside the privileged and paternalistic tone of the piece for a moment and setting aside the dubiousness of Thoreau's withdrawal to the "wilderness" of Walden Pond (which did not keep him from frequent, almost daily visits to the village of Concord, or from getting female family members to feed him and do his laundry), the whole aim of this article misunderstands the role of technology in our lives...

Read the rest at BBHQ: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/does-social-media-actually-distract-from-real.html#ixzz1Bai2nins

In more pleasant news JANE QUIET! Have you been reading the prologue? Do you like Elena's new style? What amazing color, eh? Tomorrow the big re-launch: Jane Quiet 2.0 -- yes, there will be prizes!

It Begins

FORGOT! Happy 20th Anniversary, Boojums and happy birthday, Mr. Poe!

The semester, that is. Actually it began yesterday, but I teach Mondays and Wednesdays so I all I had to do was, well -- get ready to teach today. And deal with all the administrative things I had ignored over the break.

Allons-y!

I'm teaching the freshman medieval course, Writing for New Media and Masculinities & Medieval Film (probably for the last time for a while). I always know when it's starting, yet every time the term creeps upon me without me feeling prepared. So, no time to be witty today (assuming that is possible on other days) and before you even ask, Bertie -- no, I will not make my students stand on their desks.




If you need something to do, please consider voting for my novelette "High Plains Lazarus" in the Predators & Editors Best of 2010 poll over at Critters.

Review: The Social Network

Why not spend a couple of hours with really unpleasant people? No? Well, I did so you don't have to do so. Yes, intrepid movie pal Peg and I headed over to the Spectrum, fortified by a good lunch at the Fountain. As many of you know, I am a happy user of "The Facebook" and have written about it once or twice -- or maybe a lot. So I had to see if for professional reasons.

Sigh.

There are all kinds of problems with this film; I'll get to a few of them in a moment, but let me start with the most irksome because it's a problem bigger than this picture. Sorkin's screenplay paints Zuckerberg as a pathetic misogynist whose empire is based on rejection by one woman. No, I don't have a problem with that portrayal, it looks to jibe with the facts as known. It rings a little hollow, however, coming from the same misogynist Hollywood system that cannot conceive of women as anything but sexual trophies or emotional security blankets. This is film is yet another example of the dread Movie Without Women.

Yeah, there are female actors in the film, but not a one is a character. They're just props: one to make him angry, others as trophies to demonstrate success, one to cross examine him, one to offer an emotional pat on the head. There's even a "crazy girlfriend out of left field" to ramp up the tension pointlessly -- and then immediately abandoned.

The opening scene is painful -- as intended. We need to see what a schmuck Zuckerberg is and Jesse Eisenberg makes him completely unsympathetic (while looking like Michael Cera's older cousin). But it creates problems for an audience looking for someone to connect with -- and will look in vain. The nearest we come is Andrew Garfield's Eduardo Saverin, but he becomes a character far too late in the film. Attempts to set up the Winklevoss twins as the opposition fail, too; Syracuse-grad Sorkin's loathing for the privileged Harvard elite is palpable, but ineffective (and I've dealt with the Harvard snootiness on a first hand basis while working there).

It's only with the arrival of Justin Timberlake as Napster creator Sean Parker that the film sparks a little. I admit to having never thought much of Timberlake until his stellar turn on SNL, but he did a lot with a part that was not up to much. A very flawed character, he's nonetheless compelling to watch -- and that's what's missing with Zuckerberg's character. Perhaps it's a flaw of the original model, but this ain't a documentary.

The screenplay is the biggest problem: in addition to the above problems, it also attempts to juggle two lawsuits with the unfolding historical narrative. The lawsuits however are not equal in importance, but set up as if they are. The whole Winklevoss storyline seems to focus primarily on sneering at the old money wealth and privilege (while nonetheless glamorizing it). And so clunky! As soon as Larry Summer's admin talks to the twins about how old the building is and how they need to be careful, you just count the minutes until they break something. Later, when Zuckerberg uncharacteristically asks Eduardo how his girlfriend is and he says she's acting crazy and scaring him, you count the minutes until -- shock! -- she's acting crazy for the first time.

They seem to be using Wall Street greed as a model, when that's not what this story is about; they do realise that Zuckerberg is not motivated by money, but it's clear that while they know what Facebook looks like and they know what the trajectory of the network is -- there's a pointless "dramatic" interweaving of coding at one point as if it were somehow like explaining the Dow Jones ticker -- it's clear none of the key people involved in the film have used Facebook or social media or have the slightest understanding of its significance.

I suppose this is no different than most Hollywood attempts to capitalize on a popular phenomenon. But their contempt for the public and the fact that money seems to be their only motivation blinds them to what's really going on.

To get the taste of this out of our mouths, we headed off to the Filament fest at EMPAC. Oh, how I love this space! But it will get a separate review to avoid the taint of this film. Random words to intrigue you: crows, giant panda, R. Buckminster Fuller, nations, installations, performance, studios, cheese. Intrigued? :-)

BitchBuzz: The Whiteboard Meme

My latest column on this week's internet wildfire:

Why the "White Board Girl" Meme Was So Popular

By K.A. Laity

The link that launched a million laughs has, perhaps predictably, been exposed as a hoax. The Gawker gleefully "exposed" the pranksters and a lot of #HOPA tweets were predictably misogynist in their tone as they slapped down a woman who was presumably too ready to declare herself attractive (how dare she!).

This focus on the pranking and suckering misses the point: why it spread like wildfire across the world. It spread so fast that traditional social media trend watchers were way behind the dozens of women (repeated globally) who all sent it to each other...

Read the rest: http://news.bitchbuzz.com/why-the-white-board-girl-meme-was-so-popular.html#ixzz0wQKXyKNm

I'm off to North Carolina tomorrow morning for some r-n-r with Susan and Mildred -- and Ron and Birdie and all the kitties. Well, not quite all the kitties: Susan lost Chelsea this week. She was nearly nineteen. Her health had just became too frail. I think many of you know the pain of losing these little friends who are such a big part of our lives. I will miss her. My heart goes out to Susan.

eBooks: No longer the future

They're the PRESENT!

Yeah, Mashable has a story about how Kindle books are outselling hardcovers on Amazon and the L. A. Times has a long article on how ebooks are transforming the reading experience. Even most authors are prepared for the need to push the various electronic editions, but we're still figuring out the best ways to do that -- how do you promote without a physical object? That intangibility gives a lot of people discomfort.

I was supposed to be interviewed on the topic today, but the video interview became a telephone interview because of "breaking news" (I was relieved: haven't had a haircut since leaving for England) and now it seems to have been put off at least until tomorrow if not indefinitely. So I'll share my idea for a good quote:  I'm sure when Gutenberg printed his first bibles, there were doubtless people who said, "Well that's interesting, but I'm never going to give up my vellum.  It's painstakingly created by monks over months and sometimes year, with great attention to detail. Each one is individually written in the hand of the scribe and decorated with charming marginalia."

True enough, Gutenberg probably said. However, you can have this one right away. All of you. And for much less money.

Sure, there will continue to be printed books for a very long time. There will even continue to be handmade books for a long time. The digital revolution, though, has already happened. Jump on the wave to ride it or let it wash over you for now. But the wave is here. Like digital downloads of music, kids already born will consider it the norm. That's change.

UPDATE: I talked to the reporter today, although the story had already been recorded (which aired today; it's the second video that cycles up).  We chatted for a bit and she was intrigued by a number of things I brought up about my experiences teaching New Media and having both print and ebooks to promote. My BitchBuzz column this week is an expansion of this topic.

My Students: Full of Awesome

Two grad students who are doing independent studies with me also made music videos to go with their projects. I don't think I can link to Kira's video on Facebook (a mash-up of Tipping the Velvet and the Brandi Carlile song "I Was Made for You"), but I can link to Caitlin's video for Lady Gaga's "Teeth" that encapsulates the argument for her paper on the appeal of much-maligned series like Twilight and Flowers in the Attic for young female readers.



They inspired another student to make a fan vid (go, Annie!). Now I'm itching to make a book trailer for me! I've made some for a friend, but haven't got around to my own yet.

BitchBuzz: The Worth of Women's Words

My latest column for BitchBuzz was inspired by a random confluence of things -- or, if you don't believe in coincidence, a surprising (to me) confluence of wyrd. Love the image from the Gagosian exhibit on J.G. Ballard's Crash, Douglas Gordon's Self-Portrait of You and Me (Jayne Mansfield) from 2007:

Somehow a weird collision of events sparked a realisation for me - or really it was a reaffirmation, I suppose.

When you add together the narrow escape from tragedy dramatised in Lone Sherfing's An Education, the inescapable tragedy that was the University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting and the head-scratching success story of mixmaster/plagiarist Helene Hegemann - "There’s no such thing as originality anyway, there’s only authenticity" - with the news that social media supposedly means big opportunities for women, you get an equation with a solution so convoluted that Schrödinger's cat just hid in the litter box.

The internet -- and not coincidentally, social media -- are supposed to take away the stigma of gender assumptions by allowing us to relate immediately without that bow in the hair or tie around the neck.

Read the rest at BBHQ as always -- help spread the word by sharing it on Facebook or Twitter or with links on your own blog.

If you're in Albany, the last showing of An Education is today: I recommend you go see it. Yeah, sure -- it will depress you, but you'll have a greater appreciation for the power of education particularly if you are a woman. Not that it doesn't slam the bland world of standardised education, too. When Emma Thompson's headmistress tells Jenny that there are alternatives for her future, "It doesn't have to be teaching. There's always the Civil Service," you do share her dumbfounded outrage.

I have a potentially unpleasant meeting this afternoon. Wish me luck. I will either come away with less work to do or with a renewed level of support. So win-win once I get there, I think. Still trying to catch up from being sick; much to do before spring break which is coming up in a week (for me).

New Media and My Life

The big announcement today was Apple's new tablet computer. I suspect there were no women on the design team, or else it wouldn't have ended up with the name iPad (on a related note, a trending topic on Twitter: iTampon). I was teaching at the time of the announcement and joked with my students about how hard it was not to just pop open a window on the computer to see how the press conference was going. So one of them came up and the end and showed me the news story on his iPhone. Gotta love it.

I'm teaching the Writing for New Media course. We do a lot of our assignments on line, so if you want to follow along, bookmark our blog. I'm hoping to learn a lot from them about their interactions with new media. My focus has been on what they actually do and not on what they think they ought to do when in class. For example, one student asked about using Wikipedia. I have colleagues who ban any reference to Wikipedia, but let's be realistic: students are going to use it. Why not teach them how to use it thoughtfully? For example, examine the results at different times to see whether -- and how -- the entry changes, determine what sort of sources have been used to establish the information, and whether there are controversies made explicit in the entry.

In the end, it's not about the information: it's about having the intellectual tools to critically examine it.

BitchBuzz: Hoax News

My latest BitchBuzz column manages to slip in a Fast Show reference before turning to its topic of the lack of critical reading skills by seemingly everyone on the 'net. Part of the phenomenon comes from the universal lack of time and also the ease of forwarding what looks like an interesting/amusing/incendiary headline without actually reading what it says -- or from whom it comes:

Isn't the internet brilliant?

You can talk to friends around the world instantaneously. You can send files to your editor with the click of a button. You can watch videos of shows you can't be arsed to watch in real time—or at least the highlights because there's far too much filler in most programs (doubly or trebly so if we're talking about awards shows).

But it's not all frivolity.

Twittering during news events has become the norm: the first high profile was perhaps the Mumbai hotel hostage situation, but all too many emergencies and natural disasters have proved the usefulness and immediacy of Twitter coverage whether it's wildfires in Australia or election protests in Iran.

Other outlets, too, have been used to keep those in power slightly more honest, e.g. this week's embarrassing moment when intrepid investigative reporter comedian Jon Stewart demonstrated the faked footage in Sean Hannity's use of old footage of supposed protests against health-care. We're on to you, people in the public eye, and we're not idiots. We're here for the little guy!

As always, read the rest at BB HQ and forward the link -- LOL, if you agree with it and after you have read it!

BitchBuzz: Social Media Disenchantment

My latest column for BitchBuzz, about the disenchantment toward social media by some people who had hoped it would make them rich. I'm particularly pleased that Cate used the picture from All About Eve, that I suggested. Love that film!

There's a great passage in Marilyn French's The Women's Room where her character Val captures the rhapsodic joy of falling in love, then just as devastatingly describes the discovery of your beloved's clay feet—and the sinking feeling that accompanies that discovery. It seems like a lot of people are experiencing that crushing loss of rhapsodic love for social media.

Or at least that's what people keep forwarding to me. The other day a friend tweeted a forwarded link for Svetlana Gladkova's post, "Blog Day Today: What Real Bloggers Never Tell the World Truth about". Gladkova has something she wants to get off her chest: "And since I am not really a professional full-time blogger but still happen to know the industry after working in it for 3 years, I wanted to share with you some things that no real blogger will ever tell you the truth about."

Read the rest at BitchBuzz!

Social Media Breakfast--Tech Valley

Yesterday morning, much too early, I headed downtown to the Capital Rep Theatre, host of that morning's Social Media Breakfast for the Tech Valley region. The lovely picture is from the CapRep stage: they're currently deep into Shear Madness. Great set, eh?

The featured speaker was Justin R. Levy, a PR/social media maven, who live-tweeted his own wedding. While his experiences were centered in business, there was a lot of useful info for everyone, including the most useful aspects of different social media -- e.g. how building relationships on Twitter is different from doing so on Facebook, but also how you need to use a mix of media not only to cast the widest net, but also to deal with glitches like the recent takedown of Twitter.

And yes, we're back to that sticky issue of branding, again. If you want to make the most of SEO, then you need to know what the search terms are that will lead to your virtual door. Once again I'm stymied by shoehorning my work into some kind of catch phrase. Perhaps one will come to me.

You can see a stream of the event (featuring the back of my head). The lovely Amy Mengel was our hostess and organizer (who's so on the ball she tweeted to tell me there was tea along with the coffee and bagels when I complained on Twitter that there was no tea). While I hold to Wilde's edict about breakfast and brilliance, it was worth getting up early to be there.

BitchBuzz: Repetition

My latest piece for BitchBuzz is all about repetition, i.e. our addiction to sequelitis. I manage to name check the Fall, Clive Barker and Doug Bradley. Pretty good record for this vicinity:

"This is the three Rs, the three Rs," Mark E. Smith sang back in the late seventies, "Repetition, repetition, repetition."

I think that's become the theme of the naughties.

Of course it was already a trend ingrained in the minds of Hollywood moguls (if I can be forgiven for using the word "mind" in that context). Whether television or film, the sure-fire fall-back position has been repeat what worked before. Someone bought the straight to DVD Hellraiser: Hellworld (presumably), the eighth in a series which began in the late '80s and is about to be rebooted again.

Saw VI. Live Free or Die Hard. Star Wars III. Ernest Goes to Camp (Jail, Africa).

We dig repetition, apparently.

Read the rest and use the handy link below to share it on Facebook, Twitter (now that it's working again) and so forth.