The River

Rest in peace Ann Richards, a leader that made me feel proud, and more at home, in my Republican-dominated native Texas.

I can’t believe I care enough about this LonelyGirl15 unmasking that I keep hitting refresh despite a Problem loading page error (generated by site overload?). I’m too much of a Webhead to be any indication of popular sentiment, but the spawning of these YouTube “celebrities” really does seem to be happening with some regularity nowadays.

One thing we’ve learned from LonelyGirl15… production values and scripting and everything that goes along with a Hollywood production do matter. Even if some of the artifice in this case went to making it all seem like a home production job… the quirky narrative, the fast-motion photography, the editing and the music all added up to what we viewed as entertainment. Then again, home-grown editing and media creation tools are almost at the level to where this seemed plausible to a lot of people. But not quite.

UPDATE: The LA Times story on the unmasking. Turns out it was a $150 Webcam.

Checking out the blogosphere this morning, I see a lot of people are posting their memories of that day, five years ago, when the unbelievable became reality. I’ve been dreading this anniversary in some ways, partly because coverage still makes me cry — the way I shed tears in Union Square (NYC) reading “Missing” flyers in the days after the tragedy.

I lived and worked in New York City on September 11, 2001. My office was on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. It was far away from the downtown events, but, because of the towers’ height and the geographical lay-out of the city, we could, and did, step outside our doors to look down Fifth Avenue and see the fatally damaged towers, while they stood, and the sickening black smoke after they fell.

Some other memories:

• Despite just being a couple miles away, I found out about the WTC attack via instant messenger. We had an editor working from home that day, and he’d seen footage on CNN. He IMed those of us in the office and kept us updated regularly. We didn’t have a TV in the office, and the Internet (being totally clogged with traffic) was next-to-useless.
  
• After doing what we could at the office, I walked home, straight down Fifth Avenue. Along the way, people were actually snatching up postcards of the WTC from tourist-oriented shops.
  
• Restaurants started running out of food in the days after the attacks, as Manhattan is an island, after all, and shipments of fresh food and produce weren’t exempt from security restrictions that kept everyone out.
  
• My brother reached me by phone after the first plane hit, but before the second one did, so he was able to relay news to my family that I was nowhere near the buildings. My then-boyfriend, now husband, still living in the UK, didn’t find out I was OK until he got to a place where he could IM me.
  

May add more as I get more time today.

When my husband first moved to the U.S. and we got married, one of our first family inside jokes involved poking fun at direct response TV. When one of these spots aired, we’d each take a guess on the final cost (”just $19.99″ or “the low low price of $29.95″) and predict the moment when the full product line had actually been laid out — when there were no “but wait, there’s more…” lines left to say. These DR techniques are an integral part of American popular culture.

The WSJ today has an obituary for Arthur Schiff (reg req), the DR genius who came up with the “but wait, there’s more…” technique and marketed the legendary Ginzu knife set. (”In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife. But this method doesn’t work with a tomato.”)

Schiff died a couple of weeks ago from lung cancer in Florida. (The SF Chronicle obit.)

Funny piece by Lore Sjöberg in Wired News titled “The Ultimate Blog Post”.

One great graf: “Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you’re about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to laugh derisively and hit the Delete button.”

The article goes on to lay out “ultimate” posts for a number of blogs, including Boing Boing, FARK, Slashdot, Kottke, Make, and Digg. Good stuff.

My how things have changed. We’ve gone from MSM’s utter dismissal of blogging as a phenomenon to a WSJ story (reg. req.) whose sub-head is “Bloggers Struggle With What to Do About Vacation”.

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.