William Reardon’s Blog

Today, I saw a homeless man, ragged shirt, jeans not just torn, but missing left leg fabric from the thigh down, crossing the street in front of my car, listening to an iPod.

When I completed my journey to Subway, a group of metalheads, clad in dark, demon-laden, metal shirts, sat at the table next to me debating & proposing new potential categories for Wheel of Fortune.

In other news, my car was broken into (again) this morning.

I was awoken by the landlord informing of the situation & asking me to check my car. As I drive a Jeep Wrangler, it looks more like it was a “unzipping” than a break-in. Luckily, as part of leaving for China, I stripped my car of various gadgets — notably my GPS — and had yet to put them back.

All-in-all, it looks like they rummaged through my backseat, stole some burned CDs & some loose change. Perhaps happy with their loot, they ignored my radio. Honestly, the biggest pain of it all was re-attaching the side & back window.

With similar rationale, I’m going to hit a CD store. I’ll stock up on a dozen or so $.99 CDs and leave them in the car. Hopefully, future thieves will be happy with a score they estimate at $100+, decide that’s enough & leave, leaving everything else alone.

Okay, in hindsight eating that much chicken wasn’t a good idea. My stomach is indicating there are clearly some consequences to be paid. Especially now that I have a 12 hour flight.

Hopefully the in-flight KA bathrooms are of better quality, than, say, the Chinese one in my first hotel room. (I’ll spare you the details — let’s just say I won.)

Should they prove not to be, you, dear reader, now know the cause of the crash of Korean Airlines flight 11.

Given the free sushi & what not at the Korean Airlines lounge at Incheon International Airport, I’m not sure how many people have left & comeback to get food out in the terminals, let alone KFC.

But whatever that prior total is, add 1 to it.

Sadly, this is neither photoshop’ed nor inaccurate.

With the Daily Show off the air, it looks like it’s replacement has already surfaced on youtube, under the name newsbusted. It’s a bit raw, like early Craig Kilborn days, no guests as of yet, and a different bias, but the foundation is there.

Which got me thinking about the writer’s strike.

I haven’t paid too much attention to it (I’m not a writer), but Khayman sent me a post about it, “Strike by Suicide“, from Marc Andreessen of all people.

Marc’s fundamental point seems to be, given the uncertainty of the “new media” — the Internet as entertainment, is this a good time for Old Media executives to pick a fight with the writers about Internet residuals?

It seems both parties are deathly scared of the Internet — it’s eating their existing source of revenue & everyone is now scrambling to get a proverbial piece of the new pie.

But here’s the thing — it’s not writers vs. Old Media. That’s because writers are part of the Old Media.

Hollywood writers are far from the starving-artist, slaving for their art form (and, btw, who the hell considers “Two and a Half Men” an art form?)

With $500,000+ salaries, the question really is: is this a good time for the bourgeoisie writers to revolt against the aristocrat producers?

The last writer strike helped accelerate things into the direction of unscripted television.

There’s already a trend shifting entertainment away from TV. World of Warcraft players find the 20+ average hours per week to spend on it, by simply watching 20+ hours less of television. Most people I know spend more time dorking around on YouTube, following blogs of choice, and so on, with the trend getting larger & broader.

Given the lack of programming, making TV less of an option, you have to wonder if the internal Old Media feuding will hasten people exploring online forms of entertainment, and only help feed the Internet beast they’re worried of destroying them.