Seven Days Blogs: 802 Online

On vacation

I'm technically on vacation for a week, starting today, though I expect I'll be checking in and posting from time to time while I'm "away." Don't mess things up too much in my absence.

True Star Wars fans hate Star Wars

Or so Andrey Summers writes in this excellent essay from JIVEmagazine.com, entitled The Complete and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars fandom:

My girlfriend doesn’t understand what I see in Star Wars. We’ve had several soul-crushing arguments about what exactly makes this series so important to me, and every time I have found it more and more difficult to argue my case. As the maddening years have wound on, I think I finally understand the reason for this crippling handicap.

There is a diabolical twist to Star Wars fandom, you see, that defies comprehension, and yet is the life-blood of all Star Wars fans. It is this:

Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. 

If you run into somebody who tells you they thought the franchise was quite enjoyable, and they very-much liked the originals as well as the prequels, and even own everything on DVD, and a few of the books, these imposters are not Star Wars Fans.

What's to hate? Naturally, he elaborates:

Star Wars fans also hate the original Star Wars trilogy. We think Mark Hamill’s acting was whiny, the pacing was flawed, and Empire was better than Jedi, making the end of the series a let-down. We hate the way Boba Fett died, and we hate the cantankerous, arthritic duel between Vader and Obi-wan. We don’t understand why the storm-troopers can’t shoot worth a damn, and we don’t get why “an entire legion of [the Emperor’s] best troops”(ROTJ, Palpatine) can be overpowered by a tribal society of midget teddy-bears armed largely with rocks and twigs. Star Wars fans hate omnipotent war-machines that get their legs tangled in strings, or slip on logs. They hate Darth Vader’s face and that stupid harmonica thing he was playing. Star Wars fans hate the original Star Wars trilogy.

I should probably be embarrassed by how much I connect with this essay, but I'm not. As a true Star Wars fan, I, too, hate Star Wars in the same way.

Thank you, Bill.

Vermont YouTube of the Day

I know, I know, you've grown tired of yet another story about those 802 rapper kids. Or at least, I've grown tired.

But hey, guess what, they made a new video, and it's definitely worth watching. It's cleverly called the "CO2 Music Video," and it's about global warming.

Let's see if the governor is "down with it." Ha! The kids call on legislators to override Douglas' veto on the energy bill, H.520. Not often you see kids rapping about needing a 2/3 vote.

Colin Arisman, one of the X10 crew, is an intern at VPIRG.

Vermont YouTube strawberry follow-up

Last week, I posted a video in which a guy named Paul announces that he's found the World's Biggest Strawberry.

Seven Days food writer Suzanne Podhaizer interviewed him this week as part of her story, Ruby Fruit Jungle. Turns out he's Paul Reynolds of Montpelier, a violist who teaches at Middlebury and plays in the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.

From the interview:

SEVEN DAYS: Do you plan to preserve the strawberry for posterity? Maybe you could varnish it or something.
PAUL REYNOLDS: My plan was to preserve it . . . I thought about selling it on eBay, and I told my wife about that. But we agreed that, in transit, it probably wouldn't last.

SD: What did you ultimately decide? Did you carve it up like a Thanksgiving turkey?
PR: My 2-year-old daughter's eyes were so big when she saw it that I couldn't resist giving it to her . . . she ate the whole thing.

SD: That must have taken a while.
PR: About 20 minutes. She had it all over her face and she just kept saying how good it was.

200th Vermont blog

Hey, I just added the 200th Vermont blog to my blogroll. Congratulations, Vermont 251 Club! Sadly, there are no prizes involved.

I will definitely be categorizing the blogs soon. I'm on vacation next week, so it probably won't happen until mid-July.

Keep sending the blogs my way!

In lieu of the iPhone...

The iPhone debuts this Friday, but you can't buy one in Vermont (unless you have friends or family in other states who will order one for you and send it up).

We don't have AT&T wireless here, and though you can supposedly use the iPhone here, you can't actually purchase it here (this is according to the sales guy I talked with at Small Dog).

In lieu of writing about the iPhone, I interviewed Burlington designer Jerry Manock on Friday. He lead the Industrial Design Team that produced the original Mac.

I've known of Jerry Manock for years. Until March, his consulting business was located in the office next to Seven Days in the Indepedent Block on South Champlain Street. In March, he moved out, and our office expanded into his old space. Plus, his talented daughter Abby has long been a 7D illustrator.

But I didn't know anything about Manock's Mac connections until Meghan D. forwarded me an email about a talk he gave earlier this month.

Luckily he was in town and agreed to a hastily scheduled interview.

We talked for over an hour, and I had to cut our talk down to just 1800 words or so. Sadly I had to leave out the story he told about Joan Baez visiting the top-secret Mac offices. But you can find it here.

Here's my story, with a PC or Mac poll. (Photo by Matthew Thorsen). 

City Mouse, Country Mouse

There's always a certain adjustment when you leave Vermont and travel to a more urban environment. Jessamyn West sums up the disconnect nicely in this post from yesterday.

She writes:

The longer I stay in Vermont, the more I'm a gawking slack-jawed tourist when I'm in the city. Look at these PEOPLE. Look how TALL that BUILDING is. I got to do a lot of late night subway riding. Look how LATE these people are AWAKE. I had tacos out in Redhook while watching a soccer game. OMG how TASTY is this food?! I paid equal amounts for a taxi ride and a fancy cocktail. Twelve DOLLARS. I got to hang out with ten friends at once and it wasn't even a holiday. It sure was fun.

Then I got in my (unlocked all weekend — you know how this part goes) car to drive home from the train station. When I was just a few miles from home, driving along a road (yes it's called notown, I know I know) that is bordered on one side by a river and one side by a pretty steep hill. I saw what I thought was a horse in the road and slammed on the brakes, skidded a little and came to a stop next to a moose. We regarded each other for a while in the light of my headlights on the totally-abandoned-at-10-pm route 107 and then he trundled off. I've never been that close to a moose in my life.

Good thing she was able to stop. We wouldn't want to lose our internet folk-hero.

Vermont YouTube of the Day

The other day, we got a phone call about a military counter-recruitment protest at Algebars, the video gaming center on Church Street. The call came after the fact, so there wasn't much we could do about it.

But just now I was looking around on YouTube, and I think I found a video of the action.

This clip shows an Army recruiter demonstrating how to play a military video game. Looks like his audience is a bunch of teenage boys. Things start to get interesting when the protestors show up about six and a half minutes in.

They only appear for a couple minutes, but they seem to cause quite a stir. The owner definitely gets worked up.

After the protestors get kicked out, (minus the cameraperson, who must have been a plant), the recruiter calmly tells the kids not to get riled up about the disruption. "I deal with stuff like that on a daily basis," he says. "I come down to Church Street, I get called a murderer every other week."

He tells the kids that it's the protestors' right to object to his presentation, and that they can do it because people like him fight for their rights. Which sounds really magnanimous, and makes you feel for the guy.

But then he says... "Could I probably have taken them out? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows."

Wait, what?

Here's another interesting bit of dialogue. These guys are standing in a darkened room, diagrams of a machine gun, a human target silhoutte, and a soldier crouching to shoot displaying on the wall. They're listening to an Army recruiter tell them how to fire a gun.

One of the protestors says, "What do you guys think you're going to get by going to Iraq and killing people?"

The guy who responds, you can almost hear the "well duh," in his voice. He says, "We're not going to Iraq man, we're playing a game."

Here's the write-up of the event, from the Algebars website:

Vermont's Staff Sergeant Philip Thomas will be introducing the America's Army game as well as provide a realistic shooting experience with the America's Army Laser Shot system this Friday, June 22, from 7pm to approximately midnight. He'll teach participants how to fire an M4 Carbine and a 9mm pistol (obviously without ammunition) like a real soldier (NOTE: must be 16 years and older to handle the weapons).

Vermont Blog Roundup

I found some new blogs recently. Let's start there.

• Clamzilla's Fabulous Adventures in the  Dark: Reviews of movies that show at the Essex Outlet Cinemas. By Clam Who? Says her bio:

I'm a child of the 70s who actually believed we would all grow up to embrace a Utopian society in which all the races, genders, political parties, and religions of the world would embrace a respectful, equal and supportive attitude towards one another. Boy, was I naive. Now I'm a beleagered middle-aged cynic who rarely leaves the darkness of a movie theater except to watch "my stories" each day and feed my cats, who I like a whole lot more than most people.

• My Graphics About Murray Bookchin, by Janet Biehl. The late social ecologist Murray Bookchin's editor and companion is creating comics about him and publishing them on her blog. It's worth your time to have a look.

• My Himalayan cat "Goma" blog: Cute cat blogging.

•  Record Store Guy: a blog from Pure Pop in Burlington.

•  The Waterfall Hunter: a photo blog by Sam.

• Roger's World: a blog by the Vermont soldier who used to have a blog about his service in Iraq.

• Elaine Young: A Champlain Professor: She teaches online marketing at Champlain College.

• Montpelier Pillow Fight: The name says it all.

• Just Thinkin': This dude's in Vermont:

I’m an ex-Cold War submariner in my late forties who spent most of his life in computers, peripherals, R&D and anything else technical that they could throw at me. The rest of the time was spent writing, working my own small, mobile sound production studio and riding around on Harley Davidsons.

Other items of interest:

• Boingo's new flat-rate wireless plan is a huge threat to mobile operators, says Tom Evslin of Stowe.

• Summer travel horror story from UVM's Richard Parent.

• An Ubuntu update from Jessamyn, Vermont's own Internet folk hero.

• Morgan Brown is on the move again.

Win Sicko tix

Yes, it's Monday, and my blog is one big freaking house ad for Seven Days because I'm actually writing a story this week and don't have time to blog.

Here's something you might have missed — you can win a pair of tickets to see Michael Moore's new movie Sicko at Merrill's Roxy by sharing your own medical horror story. Deadline to get tickets is Wednesday at noon.

Last chance to vote!

If you haven't voted for your favorite Vermont blog in our annual Seven Daysies survey, better do it now — the deadline's at 5 p.m. today!

Notes On (my) Weekend

Spent the weekend camping with family and friends at Lake Carmi. It was lovely. But cold. Poor Graham had to wear his mittens on Saturday morning.

Mittens! At the end of June!

Maybe I'll post a picture, if I ever remember to download the photos from my camera.

Speaking of weekends... if you haven't signed up for Notes on the Weekend (NOW), the Seven Days email newsletter, you should. I write it and compile it and send it out each week on Thursday afternoon. It's free, it's often got good coupons in it, and I'm proud of it. All reasons for you to subscribe. Here's last week's NOW.

Vermont YouTube of the Day

Oh, 802 Music Video, what have you spawned?

Here's a video called "Stowe Rappers," starring two teenage boys, rapping in a basement.

Word.

Listen closely for these gems:

"My name is Nick _____ / the chicks just can't get enough of me / I dominate when I ski / I show no mer-er-cy."

"You gotta listen up, stop and yield / we're colder than an eskimo on Mount Mansfield."

"We aren't rappers? We are so rappers. If a girl says we're not than we're goin' to slap her."

"We aren't fags, we got Playboy mag."

At the end, Nick points a (toy?) gun at the camera.

I bet their parents are so glad that YouTube has enabled their kids to share this little ditty with the world.

UPDATE: I deleted Nick's last name from this post because I was beginning to feel bad about linking this lame video to his name forevermore on Google. He's just a kid, after all. Not taking the video down, though.

The Burlington Free Press Dad Ghetto

Did anybody see the big cover story the Free Press ran on Sunday about stay-at-home dads?

Mariana Lamaison Sears profiles two stay-at-home dads. She writes that the US Census estimates there were about 159,000 stay-at-home dads nationwide in 2006. There are no numbers for Vermont, but Sears says their numbers are increasing:

With dad as orchestra director, the Barrons of Burlington are one of what seems to be a growing number of families who choose a nontraditional arrangement when it comes to raising the children and providing for the family. While Barron, 33, stays at home with Milo and Linus, 2, his wife, Carrie, works full time as a lab technician at the University of Vermont.

I saw this story when I walked into the office this morning. I also happened to see an item in this morning's paper touting the Freep's new GreenMountainMoms site, and its blog, Moms Blog Best.

"If you're a mom, you need to be a part of www.greenmountainmoms.com," reads the little advertorial on the front of today's Living section. "It's a social networking site for local moms — a place for them to connect, share information and news. It's informal, and the Free Press is simply facilitating the discussion by providing the forum — the content is the mothers themselves."

What do the moms talk about on the site? Says the Freep: "Best playgrounds, preschool recommendations, where to pick strawberries, using cloth diapers, Mom's funny secrets."

So let's review: the Free Press ran a big, front-page story about how more fathers are staying at home with their kids, but when it comes to their parenting website, they think only moms will be interested in preschool recommendations. Does anybody else see a disconnect here?

Apparently someone does — I was just reading the reader comments on the site, and came across this one, from tickedoffdad, who titles his message, "This website is insulting to modern parents."

Tickedoffdad also saw the cover story on Sunday. He writes,

For such a progressive state/country, the Free Press has insulted dads and reinforced the typical gender stereotypes that plague modern America.

This is even more ironic since the Free Press had an article on Fathers day about stay at home dads? Where is the forum for them?

I am the proud parent of a 1 year old girl. I have done everything for my daughter that her Mom has, with the exception of breastfeeding and childbirth and even those two topics I contributed to the decision making process.

I change diapers, have opinions on her childcare and feeding, etc, etc, etc. Where is my website?

The Free Press has been going down the toilet for years and this conservative traditional motherhood nonsense that they are reinforcing is insulting to many woman and many men.

Tickedoffdad didn't bother to change the generic avatar that GreenMountainMoms gives to all of its commentors. Which means that, ironically, the avatar displayed on his post shows a woman cradling a baby!

One of the site administrators responded with a message entitled, "Dad, you can join the conversation, too." She explains that she's created a "special spot" on the site for dads to comment, though I couldn't find it to add a link here.

I told that to one of my co-workers, who called it "The Dad Ghetto."

Here's an observation about how I suspect this site came into being: a few months ago, I attended a seminar sponsored by Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project. It was an interesting day of presentations about how newspapers can create systems within their companies that encourage innovation.

At one point during the day, the consultant who spoke to us offered us a couple of case studies of people who are not currently using newspapers. One of those case studies featured a generic, 36-year-old mom with two kids who doesn't have time to read the paper. The consultant basically recommended that newspapers create social networking sites where mothers can reach out to each other.

There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that this website is a product of the Newspaper Next process.

Which is not to say that the idea behind it is necessarily bad. I like the concept.

I just find it puzzling that the Free Press is choosing to frame the conversation in this old-fashioned, outmoded way, especially in this particular market. Do the people at Gannett know who lives in Burlington?

I guess their market studies told them this was a good idea, but it's definitely not pitched at the parents I know.

Vermont YouTube of the Day — World's Largest Strawberry?

This guy says he bought a 5-inch long, 3-inch wide strawberry at a market in Vermont. He's challenging YOU to find a bigger one. It is a pretty big berry...

Best Vermont Blog -- Don't Forget to Vote

The polls close in a week for this year's Seven Days Daysie Reader's Choice awards. Don't forget to vote for your favorite Vermont blogs, both political and non-political.

I've seen a few bloggers campaigning for votes, which I encourage — aslong as there's no overt bribery involved. You can find examples of self-promotional strategies at Candleblog, Green Mountain Daily, and Vermont Daily Briefiing.   

You can also campaign on behalf of someone else, as Haik Bedrosian of BurlingtonPol does here. He recommends you vote for Steve Benen's Carpetbagger Report. Says Haik,

If I'd have thought faster and/or been a bigger person, I would have voted for the Carpetbagger Report instead of BurlingtonPol.com in the 'best political blog' category. Maybe it's not too late for you to make a better choice.

 

So go vote. And remember:

1) The Best Vermont Blog categories are just two of 80 categories. You must vote in at least 23 categories for your vote to be counted. So don't just vote for the blogs.

2) You must include the correct URL of the blogs you're choosing. Just cut and paste the URL, to be sure you get it right.

3) You can only vote once.

4) Voting ends Monday June 25, at 5 p.m.

What are you waiting for? Go vote!

Convention Report and Audio Slideshow Tutorial

I'm in Chicago, at O'Hare Airport. It's 7:30 a.m., an hour earlier than it is back home in Vermont. I'm totally sleep-deprived as I'm writing this — our 8-person Seven Days crew left Portland, Oregon at about midnight last night. I slept a bit on the flight, though I also watched most of Shooter, the in-flight movie, which was bad, but not worthless. I like Marky Mark as an actor way more than I ever thought I would.

We were in Portland for the annual Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention. Last year we were in Little Rock, where the guest speakers included Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark. This year's speakers weren't quite so illustrious, though we got a heartening pep talk from Jim Hightower, which was cool.

I mentioned in my last post that my Bomb's Away audio slideshow was a finalist for the "web content feature" award (for papers with circulation under 60,000 — 7D circulates 32,000 copies in print each week). I was pleasantly surprised when it won first place. That was cool. I've never won one of the national awards before.

Of course, this is the first year they've given this award at AAN, and I suspect there weren't many entrants in that category. But it was still nice to win.

I think a lot of alternative weeklies haven't quite figured out how to do audio slideshows and multimedia content yet. I started producing slideshows after the AAN convention last year, when I went to a workshop called "Flash for Print Journalists," with R. Scott Horn.

Inspired by the memory of that workshop — and by Jessamyn's Ubuntu video — I whipped up an audio slideshow tutorial while I was at the convention. I did it in a few hours, starting early Saturday morning, when I woke up around 5:15 a.m. and couldn't sleep.

If you've ever been curious about how these slideshows get made, watch this 4-minute slideshow and learn.