Displaying post 1 to 13 of 13
from
mefi
The One where the Writers Totally Got Themselves Uninvited from Any Parties at Courtney Cox or Jennifer Aniston's House.
In the midst of all the dry-as-kindling "Friends" stories being published, there's been one spark: Amaani Lyle's
sexual harassment suit against the show's writers. While it's easy to be distracted by the actual meat of her complaint — making Joey a serial rapist (
#74), a fill-in-the-genitals coloring book (
#56-#58), the importance of spelling "penis" (
#59-#60), the twigs in Courtney Cox's uterus (
#91), a missed opportunity to bugger Jennifer Aniston (
#88-#90) — their defense is even more interesting: Such talk is a necessary creative element of their job.
Writes Joanna Grossman:
The defendants admitted that many of Lyle's allegations were true. They testified in deposition that they did many of the things she complained of, but argued that the conduct was justified by "creative necessity." The writers' job, defendants argued, was to come up with story lines, dialogue, and jokes for a sitcom with adult sexual themes. To do this, they needed to have "frank sexual discussions and tell colorful jokes and stories (and even make expressive gestures) as part of the creative process." An interesting new permutation in how we classify inappropriate workplace behavior with major ramifications for the creative class, or a big ol' weaselly dodge?
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 3:07 PM on May 5, 2004
(75 comments)
Paging
adrianhon ... Everyone's favorite soulless cubicle farm,
Metacortex, now has a web presence. You can also visit their strategic ally
Underscore Hosting, and even see a currently functionless homepage for their forthcoming
Metadex product. In fact, you can even check the status of their Greek fabricated-island resort
Aquapolis. Should you need to contact Metacortex or Underscore, their websites offer both e-mail and telephone numbers, both valid.
If the name Metacortex only rings a vague bell, it might help to recall their most, ah, celebrated ex-employee,
Thomas Anderson. (more inside)
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 7:29 PM on October 2, 2003
(9 comments)
The Valentine's Day EP.
A quick pointer to some free-'n-legal mp3s with which to construct a mini-opera of lovin'. Alejandro Escovedo,
Rosalie -- Aching song about distance and longing. Hem,
Valentine's Day -- beautiful cover of the Springsteen tune. (Amazon, reg. req'd.) Soltero,
Communist Love Song -- "If you're ever less than certain, I will be your Iron Curtain." This is a sentimental, downtempo set, but there's plenty out there for a heartbreak EP (or 50) as well. No doubt someone will post it -- and lots more free mp3s -- inside.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 9:27 AM on February 14, 2003
(3 comments)
Puzzle that makes you weep softly and twitch.
Cryptic crosswords are mostly unappreciated on US shores, but those who have
learned to seek them out have struck upon perhaps the
best wordplay puzzles ever. Instead of rewarding a solver's grasp of trivia,
cryptics are truly a battle of wits in which each clue is a riddle that plays by
a few simple rules. Part of the riddle is a straight definition of the final word; the rest is subtly disguised wordplay. It's hard to know just why these haven't caught on — it may be that the most readily available ones, such as those in Harper's or
The Atlantic, are extra-tricky affairs that cater toward expert solvers. But online, there are plenty of puzzles suitable for those interested in giving cryptics a whirl, including this
gem, written for a 12-year-old audience.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 2:18 PM on January 27, 2003
(37 comments)
The Game of 1000 Blank White Cards.
Yesterday's talk about
Game Neverending and Nomic reminded me of this outside-the-box game that was first brought to my attention by an article in GAMES Magazine earlier this year. The game is quite simple: Before you play, you have to think up and create the cards. Create them how? What goes on them? How do you play? Anything goes. [more inside, including excerpts and more links]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 9:54 AM on October 25, 2002
(32 comments)
BobCrane.com
is a pay-pr0n site (don't worry; the first page, at least, is work-safe) that collects the explicit photos, films, etc. that "Hogan's Heroes" star
Bob Crane took of himself and a ceaseless stream of female companions in his off-hours. What makes the site unusual is that it's run by Bob's son, Scotty, who takes particular pride in defending his dad's sexual prowess and mental health. This defense is necessary because Crane is being biopic'd in a new film by
Paul Schrader which, according to
a recent NYT article, imagines Crane as the archetypal sex addict, culminating in a still-unsolved murder. [reg. req'd: metafilter41, metafilter; much more inside.]
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 10:37 AM on September 30, 2002
(16 comments)
Robots vs. bunnies!
Dust bunnies, that is. Roboticist
Rodney Brooks, who you should know because you should have seen
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, co-founded
iRobot, which is releasing its first consumer model this week:
Roomba, the vacuuming robot. Even once you've seen it in action (which, of course, I haven't), it's probably not going to convince that the future has arrived or get you thinking about
the moral rights of robots, but every consumer tech movement has its watershed, and maybe this will turn out to have been a Big Step for getting robots in our daily lives. The author notes that iRobot "hopes that one day Roomba will do for vacuuming what dishwashers did for dishwashing."
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 2:10 PM on September 16, 2002
(18 comments)
Jeb Bush delivers Florida ... to Janet Reno's opponent in the primary.
Not a repost of the
trouble-at-the-polls brouhaha. Carl Hiaasen looks at the Bush team's "stupendous" backfire in targeting a second-tier candidate, eventual winner Bill McBride, in an apparently incessant string of TV ads that moved McBride from anonymity to a fearsome candidate. "Why else would the GOP buy so much TV time to slam him?" asks Hiaasen, and indeed, McBride's follow-up ads capitalized on this notoriety. By carrying the primary, the race against Bush gets more interesting: "Reno is a known quantity about whom most voters already feel strongly one way or the other," notes Hiaasen. "McBride is a fresh face with no Clinton baggage and a Bronze Star from the Vietnam War."
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 12:37 PM on September 12, 2002
(11 comments)
From the jawdropping-stupidity-in-advertising dept:
Target
recently pulled its "eight eight" line of clothing upon learning of its neo-Nazi undertones. At the same time, British sneaker pimp Umbro got spanked for naming a new line of kicks "Zyklons" — which may seem like a meaningless Decepticon-esque fake word unless you happen to remember that the Nazis used Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid) in their death chambers. But, OK, still, some marketing twerp that doesn't know his world history, working for Umbro — fine. Pull the sneakers, no harm, no foul.
But Umbro is not the only manufacturer trying to get some play out of the Zyklon name. Turns out that Siemens — a
German manufacturer — wanted to have
a new, Zyklon-branded line of appliances. Among the to-be-branded Zyklon products?
Gas ovens.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 9:43 AM on September 6, 2002
(34 comments)
Slate presents its "Real War on Terrorism."
Robert Wright's "The Earthling" column for Slate is taking a thoughtful look on how to deal with terrorism, and for foreign policy laymen like myself, it's pretty interesting. He's writing a
piece a day for two weeks, outlining his propositions and prescriptions one by one and asking for the Fray folk (Slate's message board) to try to dismantle the logic of his arguments.
His propositions so far:
Al-Qaida and radical Islam are not the problem. For the foreseeable future, smaller and smaller groups of intensely motivated people will have the ability to kill larger and larger numbers of people. The number of intensely aggrieved groups will almost certainly grow in the coming decades of rapid technological, and hence social, change. The amount of discontent in the world is becoming a highly significant national-security variable. His prescriptions:
Take your bitter medicine early. The substance of policies should be subjected to a new kind of appraisal, one that explicitly accounts for the discontent and hatred the policies arouse. The ultimate target is memes; killing or arresting people is useful only to the extent that it leads to a net reduction in terrorism memes. In a war on terrorism, applying force inconspicuously
makes sense more often than in regular wars.
(I know, I know, what could be more Plasticky than a Slate link, but it's good reading and good discussion fodder.)
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 9:39 AM on September 5, 2002
(20 comments)
SatireWire is closing up shop.
Andrew Marlatt, the multi-trick pony behind the site, is citing "creative differences" with himself and is opting to walk away from one of the better-known bastions of Web humor, as well as one of those rare free content sites that, according to Marlatt, is profitable:
The site actually makes money — through advertising, through the book "Economy of Errors," and (primarily) through selling pieces from the site to publications like, say, the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the National Post in Canada. Nice little setup, actually. I've been very lucky. But the bottom line is, it has ceased to be fun. My heart is not in it. My head is not in it.
But just because Marlatt has chosen a different route to the dead pool that those sites that gave up the ghost because they were broke doesn't make this story much more discussion-worthy than any other croaked dotcom. In proper obit style, let's instead remember the great stuff we got from the site; if you've never
been, you'll find
all sorts of treasures.
posted to MetaFilter by blueshammer
at 11:43 AM on August 27, 2002
(15 comments)
