The Angry Dictator (PJ Doland) has abandoned his WMD program and now dispenses written commentary on all things technological and cultural. Mostly he writes about his descent into the world of classic animation.
I came across an interesting passage today, from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol:
What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
I don’t necessarily agree that this is an American “tradition” per se, but I do think it’s fascinating that there are certain established brands that don’t need to concern themselves with selling elitism and exclusivity.
While re-watching The Incredibles this evening with my family, I couldn’t help but fixate on the communication device Mirage sends to Robert Parr (Mr. Incredible) so she can make initial contact to offer him a job disabling the Omnidroid. It’s shocking just how much the device resembles an Apple iPad:
Despite the resemblance, I think it’s probably safe to assume that the next version of Apple’s iPad will not include a 3D display, facial recognition, 360° location scanning, or a self-destruct capability.
I enjoy watching Dinosaur Train every morning with my son. At first, I found the premise of the show to be thoroughly preposterous. Over time, however, I came to recognize the brilliance of your fine program. So much so, that I’ve decided to pursue a new career in childrens’ television programming. I’ve written a number of Dinosaur Train story treatments, which I would like to pitch to your producers:
The pteranodon family accidentally travels through the wrong time tunnel and beholds the horror of their own impending extinction.
Buddy learns a valuable lesson about rail-yard safety when he loses his tail in a train coupling accident.
Tiny, Don, and Buddy learn about the hobo code when they encounter a hobosaurus riding the rails by boxcar.
The pteranodon family travels back in time six-thousand years to witness God’s six-day creation of the earth.
The pteranodon family travels forward in time to witness the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit as the Transcontinental Railroad is completed on May 10, 1868 AD. Buddy eats Leland Stanford.
Please let me know if you are interested in developing any of these treatments.
Sincerely,
PJ Doland
P.S. I also have a series of stories that involve mammoths traveling via cable car, if you’re looking for a new direction.
For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn’t be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple’s customers can’t take their “iContent” with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can’t sell on their own terms.
I really like the Phosphor UI convention that’s used about 3’00” into this video, but I’m afraid it’s not “intuitive” enough to ever be widely embraced.
Back in the days of black radio stations and white radio stations (i.e. segregation), if a black act had a hot record the white kids would find out and want to hear it on “their” radio station. This would prompt the record company to bring a white act into the recording studio and cut an exact, but white, version of the song to give to the white radio stations to play and thus keep the black act where it belonged, on black radio. A “cover” version of a song is a racist tool. Many examples can be found from “Sha Boom” to “Good Lovin’” It is NOT a term intended to be used to describe a valid interpretation of an old song. In that case every pop singer is nothing more than a cover artist (a derogatory description if ever there was one). I am not a “cover” artist and I do not do “covers”. The Crewcuts were cover artists.
