Extras, the new show from Ricky Gervais, premiered on BBC2 last Thursday, and pirated versions of the first episode have already landed online. The series will eventually be broadcast on HBO, but you can watch the premiere right now by BitTorrenting the file. There are two different .torrents of the Extras premiere on this page. The one called “Extras.S01E01.PDTV.XviD-mVzTV.avi” played fine on my G5 iMac, but the other one, “Extras-S01-E01.avi,” appeared not to have an audio track. For whatever that’s worth.

If you’ve never BitTorrented something before, just do this: (1) Download a BitTorrent application. I use Azureus, which has versions for Mac OS X, Windows, and various other operating systems. (2) Go to the page linked above and download the .torrent. A .torrent is a tiny file that points your BitTorrent application to the much bigger file that you want to download. (3) Open the .torrent in Azureus or some other BitTorrent application. (4) Wait several hours while the 250-megabyte file pours itself onto your hard drive. More info about BitTorrent is here.

Anyway, onto the show itself. It’s pretty good—better than most shows—but so far it’s no Office. Not that I really expected Gervais to match the world-historical genius of that show. Gervais stars as the aspiring actor Andy Millman, a chunky middle-aged hanger-on who has never risen above the occasional gig playing an extra. He’s desperate to land a speaking part, even if it’s only a few lines. Millman has more than a little bit in common with David Brent—the questionable motives, the thwarted ambition, the tendency to say exactly the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time—but Millman is more self-aware and less solipsistic than Brent was. He’s also easier to like. Millman even has a friend and ally, a cute fellow extra played by Ashley Jensen, whom I like a lot so far. It’s weird to see a David Brent-ish Ricky Gervais interacting normally with another human being.

Extras is going to feature appearances by various major stars. In the premiere, Ben Stiller plays an exaggerated version of himself: a humorless, megalomaniacal comedy star who is directing a serious war picture. It’s the same old Stiller shtick: the self-absorbed asshole who can barely contain his rage. The shtick has gotten really old at this point. Does anyone still find it funny?

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categories: TV and Video

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So Jane Pratt is stepping down as editor in chief of Jane. Before founding Jane, Pratt was the editor of a certain influential magazine that inspired cultish devotion in people like Daniel Radosh and Erin Edmison. I didn’t really become aware of the cult of Sassy until after the magazine’s unfortunate takeover by corporate goons. But I do own one issue from Sassy’s prime—and the cover is an all-time classic, so I’ll post it here:

This issue was given to me a few years ago by Mary Schmidtberger, who, as I’ve said before, is the coolest and funniest person ever.

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categories: Magazines

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In 1985, when I was a sophomore at Bloomington High School South in Bloomington, Indiana, my English teacher gave us one of those assignments that all students dread: an oral report. I was 16 then, with long, Allman Brothers-style hair and a potentially tinnitus-causing obsession with playing loud rock guitar. Sometimes I’d drive home at lunch, five minutes each way, just to play my guitar at bone-crushing volume for 15 minutes before heading back to my boring classes.

My English teacher’s assignment was an oral report on a book of our choice. I had no trouble selecting a book, because I had just read the definitive work on one of my favorite topics: Led Zeppelin. Stephen Davis’s cheesy Led Zep biography, Hammer of the Gods, had just been published, and I probably read it front to back the day it came out. (I still have my copy, and it’s a first edition!)

To make my report more entertaining—and, possibly, to deflect some of my anxiety about having to speak in front of my classmates, when I might accidentally get, I don’t know, a boner or something—I showed up to school that day with a boombox and a cassette of Led Zeppelin II cued to the first track. When it was my turn to stand before the class, I walked to the front of the room, pressed play on the boombox, and delivered my report to the sounds of “Whole Lotta Love.” I even paused my reading during the guitar solo so everyone could listen to it. Was I a dork? Yes, yes, I was. Did I like to get the Led out? Yes I said yes I did Yes.

My report was a big hit with the class. I still have my hard copy of it, all creased and faded and dog-eared. A couple of times in the last few years I’ve re-created that English-class performance in front of audiences here in New York, complete with the “Whole Lotta Love” accompaniment. The first performance was at one of the great John Hodgman’s Little Gray Book Lectures; the second was at Lindsay Robertson’s inaugural Ritalin Reading in March 2004.

I’ll post the text of the report after the jump.

The picture below was taken in late 1986, during auditions for my school’s battle of the bands. My group was a power trio, and I was the singer and guitarist. We did three songs at that battle of the bands: “Scuttle Buttin’” and “Lovestruck Baby” by Stevie Ray Vaughan (my hero) and “Red House” by Jimi Hendrix. Guess what: We won the damn thing, and there was actually some decent competition. I have this performance on videotape, and it is fun to watch. Don’t ask me to tell you the name of that band, because I won’t tell you. It’s too embarrassing. Anyway, don’t I look like a ROCK STAR? Check out the Led Zep shirt I’m wearing.

A few friends who’ve seen this picture tell me that my haircut is a mullet, but I have to disagree. The sides aren’t short enough for it to qualify as a mullet. Am I right, people? I am so right.

(Here is what I look like now, and here is what some of my guitar playing sounds like now.)

[Continue reading "Jimmy Page Was My Co-Pilot"...]

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categories: Books, Music and Audio

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…is a rough estimate of the average elapsed time between posts here the last few weeks. (Sorry about that—I’ve been super-busy.) But 7 Days was also the name of a beloved New York weekly that existed for about a hundred issues from 1988 to 1990. The magazine is remembered these days partly because it had an unusually impressive stable of writers and editors, many of whom went on to prominent gigs in Manhattan’s magazine-industrial complex. The editor of 7 Days was Adam Moss, who later edited The New York Times Magazine and now edits New York. This 2002 Greg Lindsay piece from Folio magazine is a capsule history of the genesis, short life, and demise of 7 Days.

I attended college here in New York from 1987 to 1991, and I have vague memories of seeing 7 Days on the newsstand. But I didn’t really become a magazine geek until after graduation, so I’ve known of it only through its reputation. I’ve tried to find copies a handful of times over the years, but they’re surprisingly scarce now. The amazing subterranean magazine store Gallagher’s on East 12th Street stocks thousands of classic magazines from decades past; in its cavernlike rooms you can find stacks of Vogues from the ’50s, Esquires from the ’60s, New Yorks from the ’70s, and Spys from the ’80s. But the last time I went there, a few months ago, they didn’t have any copies of 7 Days on the premises, and I got the sense that they rarely, if ever, have any in stock.

So I was stoked a week or two ago when a friend told me she owned a few issues of 7 Days and would be happy to lend them to me. When I got my hands on them—they’re dated January 10 and January 17, 1990—the first thing that struck me was how big they are: 11 inches by 14 inches, or more or less the same size as an unopened New York Times. I had always thought that 7 Days was a variation on the Time Out model: listings, reviews, short features, little else. But these two issues seem more like a cross between a nonsnarky New York Observer and a budget-strapped New York. According to the Greg Lindsay article linked above, 7 Days became more and more like a conventional magazine as its run progressed. I’d be curious to see what the earliest issues were like.

I’d love to own a few copies of 7 Days, so if you have an issue or two you’d be willing to part with, drop me a line at hearst [at] nyc.rr.com. Thanks.

Here are the two covers; I’ll post the editorial masthead after the jump.

And now, the masthead from the January 17, 1990, issue:

[Continue reading "7 Days..."...]

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categories: Magazines

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There’s no real current hook for this. I just want to share some innovative and challenging music with those of you who might not be familiar with it. This offering fits nicely into one of the enduring themes here at Panopticist: the twisting and contorting of media to serve alternate, and more interesting, purposes.

Akufen is the nom de disc of Marc Leclair, a Montreal-based computer freak who creates incredibly kinetic, and utterly digital, electronic music by splicing together tiny snippets of audio that he records randomly off the radio. Many of his tracks start out with a cascade of seemingly haphazard split-second bursts of found sound; if you’re not paying close attention, it can sometimes sound like nothing more than a scratched and battered LP. As each track evolves, however, it becomes clear that there’s something really complex going on.

Akufen is best known for his track “Deck the House,” a six-minute extravaganza of house beats, funky synth bass, and slice-and-dice digital audio techniques. It’s a perfect encapsulation of his sound and methods. You can listen to it here.

The track opens with about half a minute of Akufen’s trademark microedited radio snippets. At around the 30-second mark, snippets begin to repeat at regular intervals, and the growing sense of order is reinforced by the introduction of a simple 4/4 percussion pattern. Then, about 1:20 in, Akufen adds a four-on-the-floor kickdrum beat, and then a funky synth bass line, and the track is propelled into dance-beat heaven. It’s totally catchy, and it’s a really cool mix of avant-garde electronic music techniques and simple, genre-based dance music. Give it a listen.

“Deck the House” is on Akufen’s 2002 disc, My Way, which you can buy here.

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categories: Music and Audio

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At a joint press conference yesterday at 666 Broadway, Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs and Harper’s editor Lewis H. Lapham announced a historic collaboration between their two companies: the iPod Harper’s Special Edition.

“This merging of two iconic designs is exactly the sort of innovation that has made Steve Jobs the most dynamic businessman of his generation,” said Lapham. “From the tasteful use of the Goudy Old Style typeface to the reproduction of my signature on the back, this gadget perfectly captures the essence of the Harper’s brand—and the sound quality is nothing short of Brahms-worthy. I am thrilled to lend the magazine’s name to this ingenious device.”

“The iPod Harper’s Special Edition is a perfect combination of form, function, literary merit, and antiplutocratic politics,” said Jobs. “The massive hard drive and crisp full-color screen are ideal for storing and displaying photographs, and each unit comes preloaded with high-resolution photos of every writer whose work has appeared in the magazine during Lewis’s long tenure: Thomas Frank, Barbara Ehrenreich, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen—even Christopher Hitchens, though you can easily delete that one if you want to.”

“Total storage space on the iPod Harper’s Special Edition, in gigabytes: 60,” said Lapham. “Amount each one will cost: $399.”

“Number of media legends who came together to create this exciting new Apple product: 2,” said Jobs. “Chance that literary-minded American consumers will find this new iPod impossible to resist: 1 in 1.”

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categories: Best Of, Magazines, Music and Audio, The Magazine Covers

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The latest batch of five-minute shows is up at Channel 101, the L.A.-based “untelevised TV network” founded by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, two goofballs who are best known for having sprung Heat Vision and Jack on an indifferent world (and, more specifically, on indifferent Fox executives). Anyone can submit a five-minute pilot to Channel 101; the least sucky submissions are then shown at the next live monthly screening, where the next “primetime lineup” is determined by audience vote. The primetime shows are placed online, as is the occasional “failed pilot.” Most of the shows are fond parodies of bad TV. Some of them are pretty atriocious—productionwise, actingwise, scriptwise—but many are hilarious, and sometimes it’s the atrociousness that makes them so hilarious. A lot of them are the work of underemployed actor/comedians and pop-culture geeks who like to fuck around with cheap video cameras.

You should check out at least two of Channel 101’s shows this month. First and funniest is the premiere episode of Yacht Rock, a show devoted to exploring a little-understood rock genre that flourished from the mid-’70s to the early ’80s. The show’s debut is a fictionalized retelling of the story behind Michael McDonald’s Doobie Brothers hit “What a Fool Believes,” which, honest to god, for real, was co-written by Kenny Loggins. Who knew that Kenny Loggins co-wrote that song? I did not know this; I had to go to Google to confirm that it’s actually true. Nor did I really want to know this information, because I eventually could have used that part of my brain to store something useful. But Yacht Rock is really funny, complete with a drunk and depressed Jim Messina, a scarily accurate Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, and a belligerent John Oates, who hurls the epithet “California vagina sailors” at McDonald and his bandmates. Check it out:

Second, the cheesy, very low budget sci-fi show The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations stars Dan Harmon, House of Cosbys creator Justin Roiland, and Sarah Silverman as stoner space cowboys who do bong hits before strapping themselves into their fighters to go off on their missions. It’s cool that Silverman is game for such sophomoric shenanigans.

Some people in New York have started a similar project called Channel 102; the next Channel 102 screening is on Monday, July 25, at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

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categories: Best Of, TV and Video

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On Slate today, a brief slide-show history of the vibrator (some images not safe for work):

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categories: Science and Technology

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There are some cool design-geek T-shirts over at Typotheque, and I’m so going to order this one. Strč prst skrz krk is a famously vowel-less Czech tongue twister that translates, more or less, as “Stick your finger down your throat”:

Also available on the site: the designer Johanna Balušíková’s seven-shirt Colour of the Day collection:

According to Typotheque, the shirt collection was the result of “an investigation into colour associations and their relationships to specific days of the week”:

A survey was conducted where the following question was posed to 75 creative field workers from 20 different countries: what colour do you associate with each day of the week? The result is a series of t-shirts, one for each day of the week, the colour of each having been selected by majority vote. The shirts could either be worn according to the calendar days, or more intuitively, according to the actual mood of the wearer.

I don’t associate specific colors with specific days. But I’d love to wear each of these shirts on the appropriate day for a solid week, just to freak people out. It would be like labeling one’s underwear, only much more public.

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categories: Art and Design

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Your browser isn’t playing tricks on you: I’ve juggled some page elements, added a few new graphics, and tweaked some other things to make the site’s design a little more attractive and versatile. I had been feeling limited by the original design, in which the main column was flanked by two thinner sidebars. This new format, with the main column on the left and the two thinner columns on the right, will free up some page space for me to highlight older posts and call attention to various other things. The old design also wasn’t very conducive to quick, short posts; now, in the right-hand column, there’s a box called “Five Quick Links” that I’ll update regularly with one-line links to cool stuff I find.

I’m not totally done with the overhaul; I’ll still be adding a few little features here and there. But most of the elements are in place. If anything seems totally out of whack, you might drop me a line—I’ve checked everything in Safari, Explorer, Firefox, and Omniweb (all for the Mac), and everything seems groovy…

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categories: Miscellany

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