The Informavore

Both Prince Zuko and Aang realize M. Night Shyamalan should have quit while he was ahead.

With Elliott on the way, I’ve had a lot of friends ask me if I wonder what it’s like to be Stephanie right now.  Seeing her belly wobble and having my hand occasionally kicked, I can honestly say I would not like to know what it’s like to have “a people” inside of me.  Steph recently put it to me this way: Imagine your stomach is a burlap sack filled with kittens.

Adorable? Terrifying? Both.

After getting back from a late lunch this afternoon, I can certainly tell you what it’s like to have a “food baby” inside my tum-tum.  Looping around campus, we crossed a speedbump.  The abrupt rocking sensation combined with the food baby made me want to yak.  In short, I realized the miracle of life is best left to the ladyfolk who endure with patience and kindness.

It’s odd when the shoe is on the other foot.  In addition to the trials and tribulations of carrying life, Steph has had to suffer through my rants regarding adaptations of comic books into television shows and movies.  She kindly listens as I rant about changes in continuity, missing story beats, and blatant misuse and abuse of engaging characters and series.  With that said, I should have picked up on her hesitation about seeing The Last Airbender movie.   When we began dating, Steph tried to introduce me to the Nickelodeon cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix members can watch the entire series on demand!).  Given it’s scope, mythology, and overall sense of awesomeness, I should have clicked with it immediately.

From time to time, Stephanie would remind me about the series and how good it was.  With the film adaptation premiering, I pull the Book One (season one) DVDs off the shelf and started watching the series last week.  It was as good as Stephanie promised.  The series was smart and sophisticated while maintaining the fun and whimsy one would expect of a Nickelodeon program.  It made sense why Stephanie loved the show so much.  I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t suggesting we go see the midnight screening in town.  Well, the 8% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes had something to do with it.  The attacks about the movie’s white-washing of the cast (better known as “racebending“) probably had something to do with it as well.

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Yale University certainly needs very little help in getting students to apply. The prestigious Ivy League school is one of the nation’s most difficult schools to get into, after all.

That doesn’t mean their admissions office doesn’t know how to have fun. Hitting the internet over the past few days has been a 17-minute musical titled “That’s Why I Chose Yale.” The student-produced film has almost 118,000 at the time of posting.

Current students applying to college have grown up accustomed to individuals breaking into song and dance for no reason whatsoever. Think about it: High School Musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and the TV series Glee all rely heavily on bits of the old song and dance.

What’s particularly fun for forensicators is that the star of Yale’s YouTube sensation is Kobi Libii, a 2003 NFL National Finalist in Original Oratory. Check out Yale’s official YouTube channel to see the viral hit, or hop on over to NFLtv to see his final round speech titled “Spin Cycle.”

p.s. Don’t miss the cameo from NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams at the 6:50 mark.

President Obama is a alien lizard from outer space.

It’s not the claim of opponents of the President’s healthcare reform efforts. Instead, it seems to be the allegorical underpinning of ABC’s reimagining of the early 1980s television miniseries V.

Anyone who has sat through an honors high school English class where they read George Orwell’s Animal Farm can attest to the power of achieving political commentary through the use of allegory. As it turns out, a pig is not always just a pig nor is a horse always just a horse. In the case of V, a story about an alien invasion is not just a sci-fi yarn about visitors from another planet.

An article from Slate this week poses the question “Is V a political allegory?”:

More than a few journalists and bloggers have remarked that it’s possible to read V as an allegory hostile to President Obama and sympathetic with the birthers and other nutcases who believe him to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The charismatic Visitors load up their “bandwagon” by “spreading hope.” In using their sophisticated iguana technology to provide free medical services, they promise “universal health care.” Indeed, if the show is to have the symbolic import that we expect from a science-fiction story, this is the only possible way to read V as a coherent text.

The original miniseries, which aired in 1983-84, did not seem to hide its message. The Visitors from the series were painted as Nazis, building upon a generation still very familiar with the ramifications of WWII and the Nazi occupation of Europe. Still entrenched in the Cold War, it had a resonate message for American audiences.

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The black and white television in the spare bedroom of my grandmother’s house had a twice-daily appointment during my childhood: Sesame Street. Shortly after consumption of a bowl of cereal in the mornings and somewhere just beyond nap-time and reruns of the A-Team in the afternoons came my daily childhood instruction.

Over the years, our furry friends from that fictional New York borough have built quite the pedigree (122 Emmy wins and broadcasts in 140 countries worldwide). In addition to being woven into the very fabric of American culture, the folks at the Workshop have another milestone to celebrate next week: 40 years of television history. Since it’s inception four decades ago, Sesame Street has made a lasting impression on countless children who are now well into adulthood. When the show began, the landscape of both television and culture were very different.

The New York Daily News sums it up nicely:

The groundbreaking show, produced by the Children’s Television Workshop and a staple of public broadcasting, was years ahead of its time in promoting values that are now taken for granted in many places – accepting and appreciating diversity, not making assumptions based on gender, and being sensitive to cultural and economic differences, are all ideas the show emphasized before it was fashionable to do so.

The show has changed over the years in many ways. What was once a program intended to supplement learning for inner city children has become a cultural mainstay.

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As a lover of all things internet, I just wanted to direct more attention to Boing Boing’s post about the Ada Lovelace Day pledge that’s going on for March 24th this year. Put yo’ bloggin’ pants on and git to goin’!

From the pledge via BoingBoing

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Over 300 people have already signed a pledge to publish a blog post, video blog or podcast episode about a woman they admire on 24th March 2009. We need 700 more people for the pledge to be successful.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. But in the tech world women’s contributions often go unacknowledged and role models are hard to find. Ada Lovelace Day is a chance for us to sing the praises of the women who make tech tick: entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants… The list of tech-related careers is almost endless and we want to see examples from all of them!

Say what you will about the erratic history of Saturday Night Live…they have been knocking it out of the park this year. Yeahyeahyeah – everyone has been talking about Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin and with good reason – she was dead on. But the consistency of the show’s skits from weekend to weekend this season have been greatly improving. From Anne Hathaway’s Mary Poppins and Lawrence Welk Show to Bobby Moynahan’s Snagglepuss – they’ve been having a string of unexpected hits.

However.

The one unexpected lesson that I’ve learned from SNL this season is this: Justin Timberlake is an untapped natural resource.

The Huffington Post makes a compelling argument today for Timberlake becoming a full-time cast member. Specifically, Exhibit A from the Huffington Post:

I realize that with two parties involved, there are two hurdles to overcome here. The first question is for Saturday Night Live. Would they benefit from having someone this ubiquitous as a regular player? The second issue belongs to Justin Timberlake. Why would an eminently talented music superstar and film actor want to limit himself to television? Let’s deal with SNL first.

Saturday Night Live has a complicated history with hiring people who are already famous. Without rehashing “The Stars Come Out”: 1980-1985″ chapter from Tom Shales’ must-read work, Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels does not like to hire already well known people. This type of casting is associated with a different era of SNL, an era run by Dick Ebersol, at a time where SNL was assumed to be having its final hurrah. In fact, Lorne Michaels’ return to the show basically ended that approach to cast members.

Notwithstanding, couldn’t Lorne Michaels change his policy here? For one thing, we are not talking about hiring an entire cast of celebrities; this would be only one famous cast member. It’s also important to consider how good Justin Timberlake has been on the show and that it seems the cast likes and fits in well with him. Saturday Night Live has been good enough on its own merits to hire Justin Timberlake without it coming off as a cheap publicity ploy.

As far as Justin Timberlake himself, at first glance it seems that he wouldn’t need this gig. Logically, he shouldn’t take a job to appear on SNL. By all means, he has music, he has movies, he has Jessica Biel, and he has no compelling reason to become a cast member. Except for one thing: I think he wants it. Anyone who has seen him perform with the cast can tell that on a level of pure enjoyment and fulfillment, a part of Justin Timberlake wants to be performing in comedy sketches. I think Justin Timberlake yearns to be a cast member on Saturday Night Live.

Don’t think so?
Exhibit B from SNL’s site – Weekend Update: Justin Timberlake hosts in 2 minutes:

You can even find tiny cameos of his in the Digital Shorts.

Seriously? Seriously. Why has this not happened yet?

I love me some Good. If you haven’t been to the website for the magazine – go. The magazine sells subscriptions based on a “Pay what you think its worth” system – and publishes the weekly Good Sheets you may see at Starbucks. Their website offers great blog entries, information on advocacy and campaigns and some wonderful videos – particularly their transparencies that are “video explorations of the data that surround us.” I’ve always found their transparency videos to be wonderfully produced and easily accessible for folks to become more familiar with statistics and information on a variety of subjects.

Here are a few – but seriously – if you like the videos, then visit their site.

Internet Censorship

Water

Jailbirds

Internet Porn – Mildly NSFW. No nudity or language – but some suggestive images.

Business of Death

Chances are – if you’ve been online in the past few weeks – you’ve bore witness to one of the countless, ab-rippled fan tributes to Beyonce’s Single Ladies. Such as:

However – BestWeekEver via OMGblog has brought a new contender to the scene with the young man I shall forever refer to as Shower Boy – doing his thing to Britney’s “Circus”. You may say to yourself – “Eh, I’ve seen this before.” But no – wait for the last 10 seconds and it will be well worth your 3 1/2 minutes.

Thank you – Shower Boy – for making this cold December day a bit more entertaining.