- Tonight, I’ll be attending a live taping of The Sound of Young America. It’s streaming live at 8 PM Eastern, if you’d like to watch too. I expect part, or all, of the show will eventually find its way into the radio show and/or podcast.
- So how is the World, Dubai’s string of man-made paradise islands for the über-wealthy and famous, doing? Not too surprisingly, not too well. [via]
- Are Twitter users “well on their way to becoming violent, idiotic vagabonds hell-bent on destroying the world”? We can only hope! Every time I read a story like this, or one bemoaning the rise of social networking sites in general, I really don’t know how to respond, since their fears almost never match up with how I (or, I think, most people) use these things. [via] As Noel Murray writes:
This is a common critique of Twitter: “I don’t need to know what a bunch of strangers had for lunch.†And yet that’s so far removed from the way I use the service that I’m unsure where to begin refuting it. Personally, I only follow a small group of people on Twitter, and I have a limited circle of friends of Facebook. Most of these are people I know—or at least know of. We’re talking to each other about things we’re presumably all interested in; we’re sharing quick thoughts on movies, TV, kids, and the petty annoyances and subtle joys of a passing day. The other day one of my Twitter-followers—someone I don’t follow, I hasten to note—complained that he didn’t like me having a six-or-seven-Tweet exchange with a friend and thereby “cluttering up his feed.†And all I could think was, “Dude, following me is not compulsory.†I think that’s what critics of Twitter often fail to understand. Though some may use Twitter and Facebook as one big “look at me,†the majority are just trying to stay connected with friends, old and new.
- A live-action Scooby-Doo prequel? And here I was, thinking nothing could make me nostalgic for the Matthew Lillard/Freddie Prinze, Jr. versions… I don’t have a problem with the movie in theory — it would be ridiculous to think Scooby-Doo has any kind of canon that needs protecting, and I remember genuinely liking A Pup Named Scooby-Doo — but in practice, this looks pretty dire.
- And finally, there’s got to be an easier way to avoid ads in Gmail… [via]
Tuesday various
- Is the future of Twitter in code? Orangeman? [via]
- Though I don’t like it, I’m not diametrically opposed to five-day-only mail delivery. But I’d be screwed if the post office shut down all services on Saturday. That’s the only chance I get to check my post office box, and usually my only chance to mail anything like issues of Kaleidotrope. (Act now if you want a copy then?!) [via]
- Ah literary ice creams… If only.
- Homeless Offered Free Airfare To Leave NYC. I’m not really sure what to think about this. On the one hand, it’s an effort to reunite the homeless — many of whom I’m sure are teenage runaways — with family members, who may be better equiped to care for them. On the other hand, it’s shipping the homeless problem out of state to save some money and make them somebody else’s problem.
- But on a somewhat happier note… It’s not often you read the phrase “aerospace engineer turned composer,” but I enjoyed reading about these failed London musicals [via]:
A common complaint in the reviews for Too Close to the Sun is that the show doesn’t even fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category – that rarefied realm which made Gone With the Wind and Imagine This instant classics of a sort. Crucial to such flops is a sense of failed grand ambitions, which is why the burning of Atlanta in the first was as hilariously inept as the evocation of life in the Warsaw ghetto in the second. To enter the annals of true awfulness, you need to stake a greater claim on the imagination than was ever going to be proffered by a chamber musical about the waning hours of an American novelist. It would have still been a hard sell on the West End if Elton John had written it. (That, by the way, is not a suggestion.)