I traveled back to my hometown of Pittsburgh this week for the first time in two years. I made the trip for my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party, so there was a lot of going through old family photos. I kept a few of the ones of — with apologies to all the humans I’ve known — the best friend I ever had until I met wife, my childhood dog Mindy.
Adam Yauch, AKA MCA of the Beastie Boys (right, above) has died from cancer at age 47. Adam lived a life of creativity, friendship, purpose, and betterment that we can all aspire to. He actively tried to expiate his publicly juvenile past by educating himself and others and trying to leave the world a better place than he found it. All while spending over 30 years making music with his best friends, the three of them always seeming happier than anyone else on the planet while doing it.
While I was out today not driving seven miles specifically to pile down 2400 calories of Crunchwrap Supremes, I stumbled upon an excellent NotFoolingAnybody.com candidate. Below on the left, 63-year-old California donut chain Winchell’s Donut House. On the right, Michelle’s Donut House on Santa Monica Blvd. and Heliotrope Dr. in Los Angeles.
My joy at this discovery was quickly tempered when I discovered that NotFoolingAnybody.com is tragically defunct.
A few weeks back I told you about University of Michigan researcher Morgan Gustison raising money to study gelada monkeys in Ethiopia. I’m pleased to say that, as of Monday, Morgan’s Petridish.org fundraising campaign met its goal. She even received a Young Explorer’s Grant from the National Geographic Society. Thanks to that cash, Morgan’s able not only to continue expanding our knowledge of the origins of language, but also to continue helping the local Ethiopian people by hiring the families of farmers and shepherds as research assistants.
By the way, Petridish.org (a Kickstarter for science projects) has some new campaigns up and running, all of which are worth exploring. You can help geologists map the history of the Earth’s supercontinents, or pay for geneticists to collect DNA samples of African dogs to trace the origins of the first domesticated canines. A $30 pledge to that one gets you a signed photograph of an African village dog. Did you know that African dogs can sign photographs? See, you learned something already.1 Go buy some science.
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From Goodreads.com:
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Warning: Here be spoilers
Since I’m just wrapping up a project of re-watching all the 007 films in order,1 I figured I’d try reading the books in order next. I first tackled Casino Royale 10 or 12 years ago, but I remembered almost nothing about it, which is surprising because on this re-read it’s really quite memorable — not just for being unusually enjoyable, but also for introducing a James Bond utterly different than the one we’ve come to know through the movies.
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My pal Tony Zito recently turned me on to the Descriptive Camera, a project by NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program student Matt Richardson. Since modern digital cameras attach to photos information about where, when, and how a picture was taken, Matt came up with a way to also add information about the content of the image. He hot-rodded a digital camera so that, when the photographer snaps a picture, the camera searches the Internet for somebody willing to write a quick description of the photo. Within a few minutes (usually) the Descriptive Camera spits out that description to the shooter.
The most fascinating piece of this to me isn’t the camera itself, but the fact that a digital, on-call odd-job network that makes it possible actually exists. The unfortunately named Mechanical Turk network sprang from Amazon, who calls it a “marketplace for Human Intelligence Tasks.”
Rounding out my series of self-portraits as characters in shows I’ve specced is Cartoon Network’s MAD. If you know an 8- to 14-year-old boy, chances are he watches this show when he’s not figuring out how to masturbate. It’s a great realization of the magazine and one of the last animation showcases on TV; every episode is made up of five to ten segments, each using a different animation style. MAD features beautifully hand-rendered and stop-motion stuff, including fantastic Spy vs. Spy pieces that look as if they’re created from corrugated cardboard.
Of the shows I’ve written specs for, MAD is special to me, because it was the only one that not only was done on request but also led to actual paid work. You can see some sketches of mine in season 3 of MAD later this year. They’re ridiculously stupid, which is of course the point.
From Goodreads.com:
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Someday Neal Stephenson will write my favorite novel. It’s inevitable. In fact, maybe he already has and I just haven’t gotten to it yet, since The Diamond Age is only the fourth of his books that I’ve read. It’s not my favorite novel, but it’s my favorite of Stephenson’s (so far).
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Fourth in my series of self portraits as the casts of shows I’ve written spec scripts for, here’s me as the leads in Better Off Ted.
A hugely under-appreciated show, Better Off Ted was a hilarious workplace comedy created by Victor Fresco that ran on ABC for a season and a half. I actually wrote my spec after it was canceled, out of pure love for the series. Alan Kirschenbaum, an excellent sitcom writer and teacher at UCLA who helped me significantly improve the script, declared, “This is the last Better Off Ted script that will ever be written, and it does the show proud.” Or something like that, probably with more swearing.
Do yourself a favor and watch Better Off Ted on Netflix, which has all the episodes available for streaming, including the last few that didn’t make it to air.
Lately I’ve gotten in the habit of turning myself into the entire cast of any show I write a spec script for. (You’ve seen me as everyone in New Girl and as the stars of Bored to Death.) So I figured I might as well go back and insert myself into the shows I’ve previously specced. It seems like a better use of my time than, say, writing more spec scripts.
So to start, here’s me as four characters from the first show I ever specced: Futurama. I wrote it the first month I came to LA, on a nine-inch netbook at a thrift-store kitchen table in a temporary apartment, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything. The script, “Dr. Zoidberg Wails in Despair,” is still one of my favorites.
