heard that sound

quote

"I don’t think I got this upset from Joey Ramone, Joe Strummer, and my cat dying combined."

Adam LaRue from Queerpunks.com on the histrionics of Chris Crocker

quote

Ok, I expect snarky headlines from Variety or Entertainment Weekly. So maybe this bit from the (usually) straight-laced L.A. Times was unintentionally funny:

Angelyne seeks enhanced deal: The Hollywood icon wants developers to shell out more for forcing her to relocate an office. They say her figures are inflated.

Don't know who Angelyne is? Click here.

quote

"I met Cypress Hill. We realized we grew up within a mile of each other. They were saying, 'Shit, man, we thought you were from England or something.' " --Beck

Rolling Stone, April 17, 1997

quote

"Anybody in a punk-rock band, because you didn't have to have talent. All you had to do was be skinny."

--John Waters, when asked what musician he'd most like to trade places with. Spin, March 2007

The economics of the Long Tail

I'm obsessed by finding new stuff. And I'm fascinated by all the websites, automated recommendations, and search algorithms that help me find these new songs, movies and books. I don't mean to get all Internet-giddy on you here, but we're not living in a world anymore where you're stuck with whatever Blockbuster (typical store inventory: 3,000 DVDs) or Barnes & Noble (typical store inventory: 130,000 books) serves up. Amazon has 2.3 million books. Netflix carries 50,000 titles.

Retail shelf space is expensive, so it only makes sense that they'd stock the most popular, mainstream titles. But what happens when the web makes it possible to stock everything? When the stuff that nobody found it worthwhile to sell in the past all the sudden becomes as lucrative as the mainstream stuff? Wonderful things. Wired editor Chris Anderson does a fantastic job looking at the economics of it in "The Long Tail."  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

favorite magazines & newspapers

L.A. Times
Wall Street Journal
PC Magazine
Wired
Entertainment Weekly
Rolling Stone
Spin
Dwell
Details

R.I.P. - Yahoo Internet Life

quote

"I think I'd rather have a list of someone's search terms for the past 30 days than a list of the books they've read for a year."

Daniel Brandt, operator of Google Watch, a site that's critical of Google
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67062,00.html

quote

"I meet with students, who think they own the campus. I meet with their parents, and they think they own the campus. Legislators think they own the campus. I meet with regents, and they are pretty sure they own the campus. And I meet with faculty members, and they're damned sure they own the campus."

Ralph J. Cicerone, chancellor of UC Irvine
L.A. Times

quote

"The hysteria's stopped surrounding you. You're not doing as many interviews. Instead of two bottles of vodka, there's only one. And it's Smirnoff."

Mark McGrath on Sugar Ray's downward spiral in popularity.
Entertainment Weekly #812 March 25, 2005

WSJ

"I've never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view. "

A Greenpeace protester, talking about how he was greeted with kicks, punches and verbal assaults when he and his colleagues disrupted the trading floor at the International Petroleum Exchange in London. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110869511107858650,00.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal