And if you have watched this train-wreck courtesy of FX, I feel your pain.

Its soul-crushing…in a “we’re in a recession but there’s money enough for these guys?” kind of way.

[Full disclosure: I only sat through the first 30 minutes of the hour-long pilot episode. While I'm the first to point a finger at the critic's uninformed opinion, I will stand by these words until the day this show is cancelled.]

[That day cannot come soon enough.]

The stilted, painful direction of this show is second only to the cast’s collective lack of talent.

Starring:

Katey Sagal: She might be trying the hardest here, you can tell she’s really gunning for that Emmy nod. And why shouldn’t she? She’s been in the business for a long time; my first Sagal experience was Married with Children. But after watching her hack her way through this slop, I realize her greatest asset (besides her gigantic boobs) is her voice. I don’t know what it says for an actress when her most memorable work is doing voiceovers on Futurama. Her attempt at, well, whatever it is she is attempting, is mesmerizingly dull.

Charlie Hunnam: The British freshman ‘heart-throb’ of the dorms in Judd Apatow’s outstanding and short-lived series Undeclared. I don’t think he’s been in much else and, though I am a fan of Undeclared, its not as if I ever thought, “Gosh, what’s that Charlie Hunnam going to achieve as an artist (besides looking like the poor man’s Heath Ledger)?”

Drea de Matteo: That chick from the Sopranos. Yeah, she’s great in the Sopranos (who isn’t) and I was tempted to not mention her as she appeared the least in the first half hour, but then the hospital visit came to mind. This is me referencing one of the moments in the show: when Charlie Hunnam, young top dawg of the motorcycle-riding-drug-and-gun-running gang Sons of Anarchy, visits ex-wife de Matteo in the hospital. See, she’s addicted to crank, and the rival drug dealer in town has been selling it to her on the sly. Why should Charlie care about his ex? Well, see, she’s pregnant with his son, see, that’s why. And she shot up and passed out and delivered the baby premature. And now their kid has half a stomach or something. And so he visits her in the hospital and oh how the tears did flow. It was like watching someone who studied acting at the Full House School of Drama. Like when Bob Saget would catch Mary Kate (or was it Ashley) doing something she thought was the right thing but he sternly, and with such heart, informs her that she was being selfish and the camera closes in on Mary Kate (or is it Ashley) and she is pouting and the audience farts out a collective “Awwww”. She’s that good.

BONUS! If you really want to see the finest lack of motivation between two people in a room ever, scripted or unscripted, then watch the scene with Hunnam and Sagal where Sagal just can’t stop cleaning. Ellen Burstyn, eat your heart out.

And those are the top dogs in this buttfield of mediocrity.

But the biggest kicker is this: Ron Perlman. Wha? Yeah. Ron Perlman plays the co-founder and current leader of Sons of Anarchy. And he’s great. I mean, I love Ron Perlman, I’m a Ron Perlman junkie. How can you not love Ron Perlman? He’s Ron Perlman. And I bet you’re waiting for me to tear him down, to roll over this dead dog…but I can’t. I mean, genuinely, Ron Perlman is great in this show. How can he not be? He’s Ron Perlman! And I had every intention of sticking through the whole pilot just to keep watching Ron Perlman’s work. But I just couldn’t do it. Not even Ron Perlman can make this show watchable. Though I highly recommend watching a scene, I think its in the first five or ten minutes of the episode, between Perlman and this one dude. They’re sitting on a park bench. You know, in a park. Now, for a moment, take Ron Perlman out of the equation, and this one dude, this one dude acting on this one park bench in this one park, this dude is the worst actor on the show; no easy feat. Now put Ron Perlman back on that bench and let him act with this one dude, and watch in amazement as this one dude’s acting prowess is savagely raped by Ron Perlman’s mere existence on that bench. (Its not that I think Ron Perlman is the greatest actor in the world, its simply that he’s Ron Perlman, and, in my book, Ron Perlman always wins.)

Someone has got to put a stop to this.

The polling place opened at 7am, I got there at 6:15. There were 50 or 60 people in front of me, people brought chairs. Within ten minutes, there were twenty people lined up behind me. Fifteen minutes after that, I couldn’t keep count. At 7am, the doors opened and we started filing in. A head count was made and I heard the tally: there were over 200 of us waiting to vote, and that didn’t include those who joined the line after the doors opened. I have never seen anything like it. This is November 3rd and this many people turn out at the crack of dawn?!

I can’t even imagine what today will be like, but I urge everyone to get to your polling place at least two hours early. Don’t mess this up. Get your vote in and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. No matter who you are voting for, this is an undeniably extraordinary election.

As I cast my vote onto the electronic voting booth, it printed the ballot onto ink and paper. For a moment, I realized that this was right, here I can see my vote; no one can claim it was “lost in the mail.” And when I saw my vote print out, my voice, I felt a surge of emotion that I still can’t quite explain. It was overwhelming and real.

U.S. PRESIDENT: BARACK OBAMA

My first presidential election was only eight years ago: an election that told me, in so many perversions, that my vote was a joke. I’m not counting chickens. I’m also not jumping on the old lefty bandwagon of leaving the country if it doesn’t go my way. No matter how f’ed we are, we aren’t stoning 13-year-old rape victims to death in front of a salivating audience. So, if this election ends in McCain/Palin…well then…get angry. Get furious — enough with the collective apathy.

But, please, let’s not let it come to that. Just get off your ass and vote.

Ok, it’s out – we have a new concept. We always had a new concept… just remember Geri Reig, Sad Pop, New Embarrassment (Neue Peinlichkeit), Heavy Listening, Exotica… now it’s Final Listening. We are still trying to find out ourselves, what exactly it is, but we have definitely come to the point with this. It is a conclusion of millions of singular observations finally baking together into a term. All the music we had been listening to in our lives, all the music that has been existing for ages and is now rediscovered, remade, remodeled by young enthusiastic bands… all the attempts to get control over so many files, CDs, records, cassettes, the collecting, the accumulating, the buying, copying, stealing, the filing and storing… when all you gotta do is give yourself trustfully into the hands of an expert of your confidence, who simply streams exactly the music that you love and need into your home, your car, your ears, on a 24/7 basis forever and always… we decided to call this Final Listening, and it’s all we ever do now and we have to live with it, explain it to others, or rather never explain, never complain…

-blog posting on Der Plan’s myspace page

Founded by Moritz Reichelt (aka Moritz R®) in 1978, Der Plan took a cue from fellow provocateurs Kraftwerk and The Residents to produce an unholy melding of synth and subversity that has kept the band relevant for three decades. Der Plan self-produced their debut single (selling 1,500 units) and established their own label Warning Records (now known as Ata Tak). The most recent Der Plan album, Die Verschwörung (The Conspiracy) was released in 2004. Moritz R® took a break from his current role as a designer and programmer of Second Life (where he is designing the virtual platform of Universal Records) to provide more insight into the concept of Final Listening for IGT readers.

As a lead-in to the concept, tell me a bit about when and why Der Plan first formed: was it strictly about the music, did you see a need for a new sound in the industry?

MORITZ REICHELT: In 1978, Frank [Fenstermacher] and I were running an art gallery called “Art Attack” in Wuppertal, when we met Kurt [Dahlke] (later: Pyrolator), who had a Korg MS20 that we borrowed (and he was a musician, unlike the rest of us, which didn’t stop us from toying around with music: recording stuff we played on a Mickey Mouse organ and the likes, over-dubbing with quotes we ripped from the works of German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel — and even performing such live on stage). It was only after we had moved to Düsseldorf that we joined with Kurt, who played with DAF at the time, and built up our studio together. This is when we seriously started recording, resulting in our first single and album. Since we hated guitars and couldn’t play Rock ‘n Roll, we had to develop our own kind of music. That’s how it sounds when complete ignorants [sic] start recording before they even learn how to play music (which — on the other hand — made it sort of unique). So, we thought, this is OK. Why do something that dozens of others do already? The hobby really caught on after we had published our first 45 single; to our greatest surprise it sold all copies really quickly and without a record company. We didn’t even promote it. Apparently we had hit a nerve of the Zeitgeist of those days. So, we thought, continuing Der Plan could be fun.

Have you ever had issues with the media in response to your music and/or artwork?

MR®: Not to the degree that others had, thinking of Negativland et al. Our second single “Da vorne steht ne Ampel” was about suggesting pedestrians to cross the street at a red light or stop sign — sublime message to disobey. Some months later, the major of Düsseldorf started a poster campaign that would call people to NOT cross the street at a red light, titled “Düsseldorfer gehen nicht bei Rot!” That was ridiculous and kind of funny. Somehow I like to think it was really us who inspired him to that.

What’s the story behind the three towers cover art in Die Verschwörung?

MR®: At the time, Achim [Treu] and I were photoshopping all kinds of serious and unserious images of Der Plan. Often simply pictures with three things alike: like three dogs, three clowns, three sexy Japanese girls and so on; swapping them in chat. On the internet, hundreds of images varying the twin tower and 9-11 theme were circulating, so we were pretty much inspired by that. Why were we focusing on 9-11? Well, we were waiting for the day when this horrible terrorist-act-inside-job would be unmasked. But it didn’t happen. So one day Achim came up with this image, and I thought, wow, why not take this for the album cover. It was brilliant. I guess the best ideas often come when you don’t even think of publishing them.

Because this image appeared on the inside of the CD cover and since you could find all kinds of twin tower jokes in the internet anyway, we thought no one would really care much. But many people referred to it and mentioned it as hilarious. To this very day. Just recently we were asked by an art festival for next year, if they could use it and display it house-sized on the front of the museum right at the Brandenburg Gate in the center of Berlin.

I believe the way the triple tower image works is by irritating people, yet, after the initial shock, being quite harmless. So you can laugh, although the first thing you have been trained to think is that you must not make fun of this horrible tragedy! Which is completely true on one hand and I full-heartedly agree. But the best way to serve and honor the victims and their families and friends would be to bring those responsible for this crime to justice. The same people who use these images of the burning twin towers to keep us in a state of fear to cover up their own crime. The truth is out there for everybody to see, and millions already see it, but it is not getting official. There is still this other official truth, which isn’t the truth. So what our picture of the triple towers really shows is a truth that is not true. And that’s the message.

What is Final Listening all about? Where did it begin and where will it go? What does it mean for the business of music (and, for that matter, what does the business of music mean to you)?

MR®: I hope I will not be too disappointing pointing out that we don’t mean it as serious as your question may suggest. We have always put some strange and funny labels on our music, often in a humoresque and provocative manner, to show that we want to go into new directions instead of fitting into existing categories (and give people something to think and muse about). We’ve been calling our music Synthi Pop, New Embarrassment or Sad Pop; later it was Heavy Listening, or “Easy Listening for the hard of hearing” and other such labels. As far as I remember we even used the term “techno music” before it actually became a public category, only that we didn’t mean to describe a particular music style, but how music was beginning to be made at the time: entirely with machines. We are so used to the concept of music executed by computers today that many forget how it was thirty years ago, when instruments like the Korg MS20 or the Emulator were just entering the market, let alone programmable midi-equipment, that would change the path music history would go. Our first album was called “Geri Reig” which was supposed to be yet another term for a new type of music, derived from the American word “to jerry-rig” and referring to our use of toy instruments and self-made equipment from kitchen tools and objets trouvées from the street and junkyards. It perfectly blended into the hip Zeitgeist movement to the “Ingenious Dilettantes” that was inevitably imposed on Der Plan as well.

Now with “Final Listening” it’s a bit different. We look back not only on a recent history of music styles or ways to produce music, but also on new ways to acquire and consume music: internet, downloading, access to files and radio stations from all over the world. These things not only challenge the production side of music with its open questions of “illegal” distribution and copyright issues, but also change and incredibly increase the degree of information today’s music listener can enjoy. We are literally talking about the access of everything by everyone, which also means everything ever recorded in music competes with everything else, no matter what place and time of origin. The total cross-over, what will it lead to? Will there be a new style, a final merge out of everything we know so far? You may call this possible future style Final Listening. Final because from then on no new-found sources from “outside” will influence music history anymore…unless extraterrestrial aliens approach the scene that is.

But there is yet another aspect of it; the new possibilities to get access to music have led to numerous ways to possess it, distribute it, store it and make it available for listening. As being people who have enthusiastically gone through the various developments of the internet ourselves over the years, we have built up several collections of recorded music media in addition to what once was a pure vinyl record collection. There are still magnetic reel-tapes, later replaced by compact cassettes. Next came recordable CD, then DVDs, distributed via snail mail, later file-sharing. Today hard discs and memory sticks are the choices of the time. And they will most likely not be the end of the progression. We can now easily own more music than we could possibly listen to till the end of our lives.

I just bought an old car still equipped with a cassette player, and resisted to replace it with something newer. Instead I decided to rediscover my cassette collection, which I had not been listening to for ten years or so. It was amazing. At this point I became aware of a certain madness that I had unconsciously been falling victim to: insane accumulating (not to be mixed up with collecting). A desire to avoid all this copying, downloading, stealing, recording, accumulating, filing and compiling of music took hold of me. I found out that I could be completely happy only with listening to the internet radio of my choice, which happened to be an obscure station from Oakley, California, called “Shirley & Spinoza”. Yep! That’s it: my personal final listening (at least for the moment, ). 24/7, just exactly my kind of music, compiled by people who are better in compiling than I am myself. Professionals who please my music-demands. I feel very relaxed now, like finally entering the port. It couldn’t be better.

As for the future of music business/music industry: whatever your point of view about it is, we must not forget that the initial vital reason for mankind making music was not to sell it. When the first human beings started banging with sticks on wood they did it to please, join, dance and spend a special, ecstatic time together. No one was excluded, no one paid, and no one was paid for. And there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with that.

Visit Moritz R®’s studio.

Visit Der Plan’s official website.

Buy the book: Popkatalog Vol. 1. (23 years of paintings by Moritz R. 1975-1998)

“Best as I can recall, the first time I ever even saw a web site was in 1995, when I was visiting my friend Ed Borges’s Manhattan apartment. He had a laptop and a dial-up connection, which made things crawl. But I remember being absolutely stunned/excited by what I was looking at.

At that point I was a staff writer at The Village Voice in New York (I almost exclusively covered organized crime, with a little political corruption tossed in). I didn’t have an e-mail account and was, obviously, not tech savvy. I can remember, years earlier, discovering that there was a fax machine hidden in the Voice’s Xerox room (complete with those old rolls of thermal paper). Anyway, after figuring out how to use it, I remember thinking there would never be any better way to transmit documents, information, etc.

It wasn’t long after watching Ed bounce from site to site on his laptop that I thought it might be fun to have a web site of my own. Just something that would amount to a side project to my regular reporting gig, not something that would compete with my Voice work (I needed to keep my job, of course). If I had decided a few years earlier to do such a side project, I probably would have started a ‘zine.

It took more than a year of planning before we got The Smoking Gun online in April 1997 (“we” being myself, my friend Danny Green, an NYC reporter, and my wife Barbara Glauber, a graphic designer). At the time, we had no idea whatsoever that the site would end up getting fairly big, that it would be the vehicle through which all my journalism is delivered, or that our little site-which was headquartered for years in the Bastone/Glauber living room-would regularly break all kinds of newsy, funny, bizarre stories.

Frankly, I’m still a little shocked as we close in on our 11th birthday.

I’m no visionary, so I’d be lying if I said that I anticipated the impact that the Internet would have on journalism-or the speed with which it would radically alter the industry. But I will say that I got an inkling of the net’s reach within the first 24 hours our site went live (April 17, 1997). At the Voice, I could work three months on an investigative piece and if it generated some reader calls and a few letters to the editor (and I mean letters, the ones with stamps), I’d think that was pretty decent. Well, the e-mails that immediately started flowing into TSG were amazing-people offered up suggestions, kudos, requests, some criticism, etc. That conversation-which has never ceased–was revelatory and incredibly welcome.

We ran the site for three years when companies began approaching us to see if we’d consider selling it (we never had a business plan, didn’t try to sell advertising, and paid costs out of our own pocket). It was an idea we embraced because a) it’s always nice getting paid, and b) we would finally have the chance to run the site full time (I was still at the Voice) and see what it could turn into.

As for why online vs. print, well, I’m not going to surprise anyone here: for a site that aims to break news on various topics (celebrity, politics, crime, sports, etc.), the immediacy and reach is unmatched. And I jumped at the opportunity to do everything online because, at the time, not a lot of journalists were doing it, so it seemed like a good chance to jump in and try and get a foothold, establish a rep as a place that delivers original, interesting reporting, a place that doesn’t just run AP stories or riff on the work of others. And for someone who spent the early part of his career working for a publication with a weekly deadline, it has been incredibly exciting to be part of an online scrum where-for us, at least-being second really doesn’t cut it.”

For me, it was with a little thing called Summoner Geeks (originally known as Dungeons & Dragons).  Dan Harmon wrote the script back in 1995 when we recorded it with our comedy troupe Dead Alewives.  It was a shockingly accurate depiction of what it’s like playing Dungeons & Dragons where we had guys in a room playing an intense battle and then you hear a guy off in the kitchen yelling “Where’s the Mountain Dew? Where’re the Cheetos?”  Really nerdy and funny.  It got a lot of airplay on the Dr. Demento Show, which, for me, you know, I grew up listening to Dr. Demento.  When Dr. Demento released the sketch on a “best of” compilation that year, that was my first “Now we’ve made it!” moment.

Summoner was a first person shooter, and our sketch was later released as an easter egg on the game.  It was animated with characters from the video game acting out our sketch with our voices.  It got leaked to ifilms.com (now known as spike.com) and that was our first internet success, our first viral thing.  Since then you can find it on YouTube.  The interesting thing about it today is that there are a huge amount of people reenacting that sketch.  Type in “summoner geeks” and you’ll find video after video after video.  I watched them as they were posted but I gave up after awhile, there were just so many videos related to it.  Its kind of funny because we did that thing back in ’95 and it still resonates.

In 1998, we were selling Scud books through a website, that was back toward the end of the run.  After that we did Heat Vision & Jack (right after Summoner Geeks went viral; once it became easy for people to upload stuff online and pass videos around).  Then I did this short called Robot Bastard!, which turned into another viral video.  It was this sci-fi space opera where everything is made out of cardboard, painted bright colors, with robots shooting zombies.  Silly and stupid.  Aintitcool.com reviewed it and it blew out of the water from there. Around that time, right after Heat Vision & Jack went nowhere, Dan and I were writing screenplays, trying to get TV shows off the ground and we were really frustrated with the business.  We were creating property, coming up with scripts and doing a pretty good job.  We had some good ideas, you know?  But whoever you’re working for, jobs shift, all of a sudden the person up top who was championing for you is replaced with someone new and your idea that you worked and slaved for goes on the shelf.  This happened again and again and again, ideas that never got shown.

This is when Final Cut and DV cameras become affordable and Dan and I started shooting these little movies just to make each other laugh.  And we’d have challenges: “Don’t spend time or money and we watch them tonight!”  And everyone would run around all over town and make cardboard space helmets and wrap up in tin foil and then we’d meet up and show it to each other.  It started as five people in my living room, then expanded to thirty people in my living room, then we rented space and a projector for a hundred people, then we started showing it at Cinespace, where we get sometimes 400 people on a Sunday night to watch these shows.  It was Harmon’s idea that if we’re going to do this, we should get serious and have a website.  Our idea was that everybody’s doing DV film festivals, you know, these little “Show your video! Show your sketch!” but we wanted to do something different.  Instead of this being a film festival, lets run it like a network.  We don’t want shorts; we want series…we want properties with series potential.  So you pitch it to the audience and the audience votes if they want to see more.  That was basically the idea and it really kind of took off: audience participation with control, the excitement of competition with friends, everyone trying to outdo one another (not only in terms of craftsmanship but in comedy, in storytelling, in editing).  When living in LA, and its really hard to get anywhere with your idea, come to us!  Yeah, its not big and expensive looking, but at least it exists somewhere.  There’s no money involved, you’re doing it for the joy of doing it.  A lot of careers have started because of Channel101.

It’s all about creating your own luck because people are very narrow-viewed in this industry.  If you’re a writer, it’s impossible to be a director.  If you’re an actor, then the assumption is you can’t be a writer.  You have to show them what you can do.  And that’s what was great for me because I was a screenwriter for ten years constantly wanting to direct but all of a sudden it was like “Screw it! I’ll grab a camera and let them come to me.”  That’s why I’m directing on The Sarah Silverman Program, it’s because of what I did on Channel 101.  Channel 101 was the best film school I could ever have because I learned from doing.  It was probably the most important thing I did for my career.  (And it got a lot of my friends active.  They started showing themselves on camera, proving they can…and now they’ve got agents and deals and they’re getting shows.)

In the beginning, though, the only thing I was seeing the internet for was emails. I was so technophobic at the time. The idea of actually putting together a website was so daunting for me, I just figured that’s never going to be in my world.  Now positing a video is so easy, its on the internet and anyone in the world can look at it.

I go to the Channel 101 screenings every month, I star in a couple episodes, but as far as shooting and writing, I haven’t been able to in a while.  I’m directing on Sarah’s show, doing the comic book and trying to get a feature career moving…its sad because with Channel 101 you just do whatever you want.  You find out whether it’s working or not by doing it, instead of having so many people saying “No” to you.  To me, I’m just like, “Just let me do it. Let me grab the camera and let me do it.”  But because of this industry and all the money involved, there are still people that need to know without a shadow of a doubt exactly what you’re doing.  With Channel 101 you pick up the camera and simply say “Let’s shoot something today.”

I’ve merged what I learned from the internet with how I work on television.  I just got out of a meeting for The Sarah Silverman Program and there’re certain things I’m doing on the show going “Look, I’m just going to do it on the weekend, I’ll grab a camera and do it myself.”  I don’t want it on the schedule because its just going to screw everything up.  I need to be able to be in that Channel 101 mode and I say that, that’s my word: Channel 101 mode.  It simply means just grabbing the camera and doing it.  Its got to have that look and if we get everybody else involved it’ll look too slick.  Sometimes it needs to be a little rough.  Though it is a blurred line. As far as what I prefer, of course I prefer not being told what to do but at the same time when you get boundaries it forces you to not necessarily use your first idea.  Sometimes when first ideas are shot down you think harder and then you think even harder and come up with a better idea.  Though it can be the same way with low budget: we can’t afford the scope of what you’re thinking and you have to be more creative.

I don’t think we’re at a point where internet shows can compete with TV.  Right now, the reason Channel 101 exists is to showcase people who are not getting a platform to show off what they can do.  We’ve got some people from Wisconsin who did Chad Vader.  Its big, the first short got something like five million hits.  Its probably the biggest thing that’s come out of Channel 101.  And these guys live in Madison, they shoot videos, send them our way to show at the screenings, they get put up on the net and they go viral.  And people are asking if they’re going to move out here, to LA.  But these guys ask “Why? We live at home. Its cheaper here, we live here and do what we want.” and that’s totally possible in today’s world.  I think that’s great, that’s really cool.  The only downside I see is you’re working super hard to get noticed and you’re not getting paid.  But you can parlay that exposure into something else.  Justin Roiland, who did House of Cosbys, he got two network deals with Fox and Cartoon Network.  Now he’s a hot guy in town. Andy Samberg is from the group Lonely Island.  They were making The’Bu, one of our longest running shows, and had to stop because [Samberg] got picked by Saturday Night Live.  And J.D. Ryznar (creator of Yacht Rock) is working on a film with Jason Lee.  In a lot of ways we’re like the new Groundlings, the new Second City.  Come to us for the new hot talent: actors, directors, screenwriters, you name it.

Eventually your desktop will be in the living room and you’ll be watching stuff like YouTube and Channel 101 as easily as anything on cable.  I would love it if Channel 101 could become the anti-viral video clip site.  There’s a lot of viral stuff but its pretty much one-joke premises: a cat sounds like its speaking or a guy with nunchucks hitting himself in the head.  What we offer is stories and characters and little mini shows that hopefully can one day compete with storytelling in TV networks and cable.  That’s the hope, the dream.

Visit Channel 101: watch new episodes, catch up on old favorites, or submit your own.

The final two installments of Scud: The Disposable Assassin are coming out in April and May, and keep an eye out in June for the complete collection from Image Comics.

The Sarah Silverman Program returns to Comedy Central this October.

To find out what Rob Schrab is up to next, visit him here.

For the third installment of The Origins of Our Communication, John Kricfalusi discusses the first time the “world wide web” came into his life and how his vision for Flash animation revolutionized the industry, for better and for worse:
It was right after Ren and Stimpy. Jenny Lerew was telling me about these Ren and Stimpy Newsgroups and I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. She invited me over and she printed out these old IBM computer sheets and tore them off for me to read. I was stunned.

Soon after, AOL called me and asked if I would make some content for them. This was around 1993. They gave me an account so I could get used to the net.

Shortly after that, Michelle Klein Haas started talking to me about “The World Wide Web” and I was getting mad. How many names are there for this internet crap? Then she showed me websites with images and stuff and it dawned on me that this would be the place to make cartoons without a network involved.

From Bj ]]> http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/03/origins-of-our-communication-john-kricfalusi/feed/ 1 http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/02/origins-of-our-communication-mr-quickly-amazon-epicurean/ http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/02/origins-of-our-communication-mr-quickly-amazon-epicurean/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:23:10 +0000 G.M. Levinson http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/02/06/origins-of-our-communication-mr-quickly-amazon-epicurean/ Since March of 2002, Mister Quickly has been posting concise, authoritative, and singular reviews of products sold on Amazon.com. His satirical and oftentimes hilarious work has earned him an unwieldy Internet cult status (Mister Quickly is cited in countless blogs, most recently Metafilter has opened discussion on this technocratic epicurean). At the time of this publication, he has posted only 79 reviews that range from the Ableware Anus Stimulator (“a true rarity in this vulgar functionalist age of uninspiring anus stimulators”) to Bonnie Gross’ Caring for Your Miniature Donkey: Second Edition (“I’m only thankful that this wonderful edition has helped me prolong the life expectancy of my current miniature donkey, Gerhardt.”). What makes this cosmopolitan so discerning within the global marketplace? “I select what to review the same way I choose whether or not I will wear my Etruscan cape: margaritomancy,” he explains. “I take a pearl and place it in a bowl of macadamia oil. I spend a few moments listening to Bruce Hornsby or Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and thus relaxed the pearl begins to broadcast essential truths from Shakti, or as I call her, My Lady Soul. When it’s over I will retrieve the pearl by sucking it out with a straw. If anyone is uncomfortable with this method – and you will swallow the first 5 or 6 until you perfect it, or choose thinner straws – I recommend drinking the oil, then picking up the pearl. Do not pinch it too energetically, or it will greasily project across the room and chip your porcelains.” Though he has declined several honorary degrees, Mister Quickly holds a BA in Egyptology from the Asia Theological Association and an MA in Rhetoric from the Distance Learning Council of Europe. He now divides his time between hotels across North America while periodically returning to the family home in Victoria, BC Canada “to cook and relax.” In this special installment of The Origins of Our Communication, Mister Quickly took time from his quest for “the perfect flavour to firmly establish the luscious hydrozoa’s clumsy hold in the culinary world” to talk to us about the Internet and the remarkable relationship that brought him here: I was first introduced to the internet as a penpal of actor James Coburn. We were acquainted through a service that coordinated penpals by interest. I signed up based upon my love of porcelain as an unexplored artistic medium, eager to find soulmates who were as inspired by its potential. I was assigned James Coburn, and a heartfelt correspondence quickly luxuriated. Each letter James wrote would be signed in elegant calligraphic curls “Cobu”, accompanied by five mustard seeds, a sliver of licorice root, and a dried butterfly wing. Often he would send me carvings he had made in soapstone of his spirit animal, the otter. He had immaculate style. After some time our correspondence had moved from porcelain onto film. Cobu, as close friends would call him, told me he was interested in adapting one of the classic board games for film. Adept at recognizing talent, Cobu knew I had the lyricism and intelligence to guide such a transformation, from board game to cinematic marvel. We began with Snakes and Ladders, for which I developed a treatment involving a richly imagined fantasy world not unlike Willow, but with ladders. Stirred by its artistry, Cobu asked me what I could come up with for other board games. He added the cryptic line “Do you have ICQ? We should continue over ICQ.” I was in the process of envisioning a treatment for Connect Four, with a sort of Logan’s Run meets Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict feel, but in a world where everything is stacked vertically, including sidewalks and strip malls, yet I was distracted by this statement. I assumed ICQ referred to International Comet Quarterly, a periodical I had read only 6 times. I sent two letters, one to International Comet Quarterly and the second to James Coburn. Because each letter was written with homemade cochineal ink, my forearms ached. I had manned the beetle-press all morning to extract enough writing fluid. The next letter I received, sent in March of 2002, was written in very clumsy blank verse that regularly broke metre. Ordinarily bad metre causes me to sweat and dwell upon whether or not the subsequent itching is caused by scalp mites, but in this case I was too fascinated with the letter’s paradigm shifting content. James Coburn was describing the internet[1]. Within the next two weeks I rapidly acquainted myself with this technology, becoming as fluent in it as I am in Sanskrit. The most immediate change in life was the ability to transpose my reviews from recreation centre bulletin boards onto internet ones, though I do miss being able to scent my reviews with bergamot. But with the internet I was also able to order vast quantities of delicious lavender seeds. It felt only a matter of time before I became editor of Vanity Fair or Atlantic Monthly, positions I have since declined in spirit in order to focus on my paradoxical novel, Transparent Opacity: The Daytime of Afternoon Night[2]. [1] The internet and its ability to send scanned photographs strengthened my relation with James, but the million dollar question is whether or not the internet itself had a positive or negative influence on the actor. Most believe the internet weakened James, as he died in November 2002. I still believe it could have strengthened him had he ordered from Ebay an orgone pyramid sooner than he did. I’m glad he found peace though, a final security against the shadow men he feared. I made sure when buried he was shrouded beneath his moon cape, clenching a shadow knife. [2] Transparent Opacity explores a concept so difficult to explain without using hand gestures I may be unable to write the book. And by the conventional, inaccurate means of recording time, I have been composing TO for three weeks. Yet, this could really be as many as 24 months, or as few as 3 hours. The disorienting reality revealed to us by the Phantom Time Hypothesis is chilling. Will I ever finish the book? An unfinished book is a companion. Giving him a form feels exactly the same as giving an affable but misshapen friend too many muscle relaxants. He becomes unnaturally flexible and I fold him away inside a trunk and padlock it. I have 32 other books I’m currently writing to suspend completion of Transparent Opacity. A few selections include; “Letters to Sree Albatap”; a biography of Bonar Law written in Grenadian Creole; a book of sonnets based upon Pink Floyd’s Division Bell; and a scathing polemic warning the EU against banning Brazilian beef, written from the point of view of a lake. They will all be completed in May 2008. To read Mister Quickly’s reviews, click here. Previously in The Origins of Our Communication series. ]]> http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/02/origins-of-our-communication-mr-quickly-amazon-epicurean/feed/ 1 http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/01/the-origins-of-our-communication-bibliodysseys-paul-k/ http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/01/the-origins-of-our-communication-bibliodysseys-paul-k/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:15:22 +0000 G.M. Levinson http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/01/21/the-origins-of-our-communication-bibliodysseys-paul-k/ It is the technology that arguably defines modern society. It has revolutionized our media and our culture. Many people are in a constant struggle to adapt to it, while many more have embraced it for its limitless potential. Four decades ago, it was incarnated as a means of military communiqué (ARPANET) and since that time it has become a center of influence on our world. To a new generation, life without it is unimaginable In this exclusive Is > Than series, we have asked those behind some of our favorite websites to share their stories of when and how the Internet first came into their lives. In September of 2005, Metafilter member Paul K. (or PK) of Sydney, Australia, began BibliOdyssey a blogger account of visual materia obscura. “I most enjoyed finding primary source material that had significance in terms of history,” PK explains. “I would track exhibitions and announcements about repository holdings and I suppose I got to the stage where I thought that I may as well corral all this info in one spot.” Finding his material in “off-the-beaten-path digital cloisters,” PK’s proclivity towards research is the backbone of the BibliOdyssey gallery, where his summaries provide the often fascinating and rich histories behind the astounding illustrations. Illustrations are “a kind of bait to learning,” he tells Is > Than. “[I have] belief in the web as having great educational opportunities.” For the first installment of The Origins of Our Communication, PK traces the roots of an odyssey that, for him, began over twenty years ago: Note: There are three significant episodes of connectivity that stand out in my mind. The first is about 1986/7 when I was working in a hospital emergency department and the newest toy at the time was a dumb terminal that connected to the pathology lab. It meant that we got the blood tests automagically on a computer screen in real time which also removed the risk of mistakes that come from playing phone tag and listening/writing under pressure. We could print the results out and add them to the patient charts. This was a big thing both for the work quality at the hospital but I remember thinking at the time that it was only the start of something, although I didn’t know what. In the early 90s I finished a medical science degree and because I lived opposite the university, I was able to go and spend a couple of weeks on their computers which I had neglected during my studies. It was the internet, if only an early version – I don’t remember too much about the content; I do remember reading a lot of plain text. I was blown away, even then, by the amount of information that you could find – I do remember Lycos search portal was the place of pace back then. There was also the manic chatting on telnet bulletin board services (bbs). In 1998/9 I moved into an apartment with a Russian computer programmer who had his own website and spent hours and hours at home on the internet. I couldn’t ask him enough questions and he wasn’t prepared to let me use his computer as often as I wanted so naturally I got my own pc (433 MHz chip I think) and learned to touch-type playing trivia games on mirc. I’ve been wired and addicted ever since. Visit BibliOdyssey. For more on the evolution of BibliOdyssey, read Elatia Harris’ in-depth interview with PK on 3QuarksDaily. To purchase the BibliOdyssey book, click here. ]]> http://isgreaterthan.net/2008/01/the-origins-of-our-communication-bibliodysseys-paul-k/feed/ 1