Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Speilberg, Harrison Ford, and Karen Allen Do Q&A on Seesmic

Well, this is certainly interesting. Steven Speilberg, Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, and others promoting the new Indiana Jones flick were doing the celebrity interview thing, this time with a Seesmic twist. Turns out they were taking questions via Seesmic. That should certainly be an eye-opener, and most likely a boost for Loic Le Meur's video social network. It will be interesting to see how this rolls out (or not) in the future as we all know Hollywood PR types love to play follow the leader. You can check some of the Q&A on pda: the digital content blog, which is a good thing, since finding it on Seesmic is not that easy. I'm not sure if this was open to all comers or not.

Twitter as a Performing Arts Tool

Raj Dash says he hasn't searched much and hasn't turned up many performing artists on Twitter. In his post he offers tips for why performers and entertainers should use Twitter to build brand and a following. Makes sense, just like it does in any other of life's many pursuits. By the way, Raj, I can be found on Twitter here and I tweet quite a bit about my professional theatre exploits, among many other things.

David Byrne Turns a Building Into a Musical Instrument

This just looks like it would be cool. The head Talking Head, David Byrne, who is always a bit on the edge, cutting or not, of experimenting around with music is up to some fun. He’s turned the Battery Maritime Building in NYC into a musical instrument that anyone can play. Called ‘Playing the Building’ this exhibition allows anyone to make a little building music with parts of the building’s structure connected to an organ. I may have to go see this.

Technorati Tags: Playing the Building,David Byrne

Crazy, Crazy Day

On a day where everyone went crazy over John Edwards endorsing Barack Obama and the Chicago City Council rescinded the law that banned foie gras from restaurants and Twitter hiccupped again, and AT&T limited iPhone sales to one per customer, and Comcast bought Plaxo, and the US listed polar bears as endangered, I watched the first three episodes of Slings and Arrows and felt like I was looking in a cracked mirror.

How could I have not seen this until now?

Vatican Says It Is Ok To Believe In Aliens

Whew. I wonder if Reverend Hagee will be glad to hear this one. The Vatican chief astronomer says that believing in aliens shouldn't contradict one's faith in God. According to the chief astronomer aliens would still be God's creatures. The headline of the article in which this was reported is "The Extraterrestrial is My Brother." I think the Vatican is planning on extending its ministry.

Via MSBNC

Twitter: A Passion Play

I'm not sure if the title of this post should be Twitter: A Passion Play or The Passion of Twitter. In either case the music should be written by Stephen Sondheim. Whatever the case, for a communications medium that incorporates messages no longer than 140 characters, Twitter is sure getting quite a few words written about it lately, and with quite a bit of passion behind them. More to the point, a debate over whether or not Twitter needs to be decentralized and/or how to scale it is spilling out with enough passion

Most of what I'm reading and listening to seems to be of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" persuasion, and I happen to find myself thinking that myself. If you want to do some reading about this far beyond the 140 character limit here's a a quick list (provide your own Sondheim music as background):

Cliff Gerrish: A Venezuelan Moment?: The Gillmor Gang Considers Nationalizing Twitter

Steve Gillmor: The Blood Brain Barrier

Karoli: Twitter, Techcrunch and Tornadoes

Alex Iskold: Twitter and the Architectural Challenges of Life Streaming Applications

I'm not sure Sondheim could do much with that last one, but maybe. I'm sure he would have fun with Cliff's use of the words rhizomatic and arborescent though.

And if reading isn't your thing, you can listen to a three parter of the Gillmor Gang on the topic. I wouldn't use background music here at all.

I think, but don't know for sure, that Dave Winer started the decentralization discussion, over the point that, "We all trust the owners of Twitter, but they're human, even with the best intent, we all are taking a risk that the network could disappear at any time. And unlike the Internet which has huge amounts of redundancy built-in, if there's any redundancy in Twitter, none of us outside the company know about it." That came after yet another Twitter failure, if I'm not mistaken.

Twitter is becoming a lot of things to a lot of people and as chaotic as it may seem at times, it is quickly becoming very Sondheim-like in its complexity. At times the constant ebb and flow, (strike that; there is no ebb, just flow, unless you turn it off), runs at you with a melange of thoughts, ideas, conversations, pitches, questions, and comments that all blend together in what may at first bang on the senses is a cacophonous waterfall, but after some self surrender begins to make terrible sense, to at least a few senses.

Twitter, like Sondheim, still seems to be an acquired taste, with or without Johnny Depp. More to the point it is like Sondheim's Fosca, horrendously ugly in both appearance and attitude,  but at the same moment beautifully and seductively entrancing in an odd and life changing way. The off center is attractive.

Happy Mothers Day

If you can't visit, at least make a call and spend some time with your mother on Mothers Day. I'm visiting my mother for the day and we're enjoying the day.

And here's some interesting history on Mothers Day. Did you know the "founder" of Mothers Day strongly rebelled against its commercialization?

Technorati Tags: Mothers Day

Egg Art

The J-Walk Blog links to this interesting bit of street art by called Art Eggcident.

That Old Happy Birthday Copyright Thing

TechDirt digs up some of the best stuff on the ongoing saga of Intellectual Property and copyright issues. One of the wackiest stories in the IP struggles surrounds the copyright on the song, "Happy Birthday." TechDirt links to a great paper by Robert Brauneis that calls the original copyright into question. Apparently the original owners may have composed the original melody by it looks like they didn't pen the lyrics. There's even evidence that the melody wasn't original. By the way, did you know that the copyright on this song generates over $2 million a year and accounts for over 1% of the money that ASCAP distributes to songwriters. Fascinating.

Technorati Tags: copyright,Happy Birthday,ASCAP

Don't Watch This If You're Easily Offended or a Clinton Supporter

Oh. My. Goodness. There is so much wrong about this, and yet, there is so much funny about this, and I'm afraid there is probably a smidgen of truth as well. Foul language galore, so you've been warned.

via Fake Steve Jobs

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton