Public Address - Cracker (Home)

Poke Me, Bite Me, Add Me | Jul 13, 2007 15:54

I don't know exactly what's happened, but a number of people I've spoken to have noticed it as well – Facebook has gone postal.

After a nondescript childhood as the poorer, but better-looking cousin of MySpace and the unmemorable sibling of Bebo, LinkedIn, Tagged et al, in the last week Facebook simply exploded.

I generally refuse email invitations of the "someone has added you as their friend, if only you'd sign up there's bound to be more virtual friends for you…" variety. For a start, I don't think any of these sites have my best interests at heart. And when they ask me to enter my Gmail address and password so they can trawl through my contacts and invite everyone I've ever emailed to join – with me as their reference, I run faster than from a Scientologist offering me a free IQ test on Queen Street.

Maybe I'm no longer the young, urban 'early adopter' I once was. I might have been rocking a Mickey Mouse digital watch way back in 1982, before any of you muthaf**ckers, but these days I can't work my dishwasher. Point being that it took any number of emails and general harassment from colleagues and friends before I clicked that Facebook was really taking off.

So I signed up on Monday and since then I've been poked more than a [I had various tries at not trying to break the PG rating with this metaphor and eventually gave up. Suffice to say most of them involved fourth form and the back of the bike sheds - Ed]

Anyway, so now I'm in there. I've been bitten and turned into a Zombie, had unflattering photos tagged, and re-established contact with old friends, ex-girlfriends and Ones that Got Away.

I still don't really see the point of it though. You message someone, then a message goes to your email saying you have a message so you log in and check the message and then respond to it, in turn sending a message to that person's email to check their messages.

Doesn't that take the absolute simplicity of the concept of email, and make it only slightly less arduous than writing your message down on paper, walking to the post office for a 45c stamp and posting it?

Facebook is also interesting (and different from MySpace at least) in that you get updated with what your friends are doing. Things like their 'status': Simon is flat-hunting, Aaron is listening to music in his room, Jen is researching how to cook meth in her garage; Heath has been bitten and turned into a Ginge. There's also photos they've added recently, groups they've joined – even changes in their relationship status.

Such as this morning. Now I'm hoping it was just my colleague correcting an administrative oversight, or filling in a detail she hadn't previously bothered to enter – in the same way as I received an update about another friend yesterday, informing me he is "now in a relationship". No doubt this will come as news to his wife of ten years.

But my colleague's little broken heart icon suggests so much more. At quarter to seven this morning, a young woman known and loved by us all rose from her bed.

Yes, she had work to go to, but that could wait. So could the shower and the brushing of the teeth. Breakfast was definitely the furthest thing from her mind – how could she eat at a time like this? And it was with tears streaming down her face and the dawn light beginning to seep through the window, she knew what needed to be done before anything else.

She logged on to Facebook, and updated her status.

_______________________

[EDIT: While we're at it, I'd like to take suggestions:

As I'm all for neologisms, can anyone tell me whether the process of going through your friend's friends to see if they know anyone hot is called?

My, er, friend wants to know.

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Psst... buddy... got any BZP? | Jun 29, 2007 09:10

I can't remember if I'd told this story before, but if I can't remember telling it, you probably can't remember reading it, so we're sweet. And it's timely enough to bear repeating.

I was in a taxi from Auckland airport to TVNZ's Death Star on Hobson Street. The taxi driver was an older (say late 50s, early 60s), gentleman driving for a very respectable firm.

As we got into the CBD, we drove past a big billboard for some BZP packed preparation.

"So…" he starts up, "…these 'party pills'…"

"Yyyyyes?" I answer hesitantly.

"What are they like?"

So I launch into a description of sorts, struggling to put it in terms the old fella will understand. "Well – apparently – they make your heart race, keep you awake, umm… give you energy, can make you feel a bit warm and fuzzy… umm…"

"Right…" he says, mulling over what I've told him. "….so are they anything like E? Because those are great!"

I have a hard time believing Matt Bowden, the man with the vested interest from the snake-oil salesman sounding 'Social Tonics' Association. ("Care for a Refreshing Social Tonic ma'am? It cures what ails ya!") I have a hard time believing him full stop, but even more so when he claims that banning party pills will only drive them underground. Unless he's planning on doing it himself, that is.

(If it's any consolation, I should point out I also don't believe the authorities when they tell us people have started injecting party pills... and it's even less credible when the MSM reporting this 'alarming new trend' continue to refer to them as 'herbal highs').

Party pills are already quite pricey for what they are. If the BZP black market operates like any other black market in existence, ever, the product will be sold at a higher price than it was if it was being sold legitimately. Presuming that the street price of Ecstasy remains static, won't users prefer to go for the real thing rather than the now-illegal fake version of the thing they only bought because it was slightly cheaper and easier to find (but in most other respects inferior) than the thing that it was a simulacrum of?

I don't think banning every product necessarily creates a black market for that product. That product has to continue to be desirable now it's illegal, and also has to be more desirable than the other illegal alternatives out there.

I don't see people loitering around carparks to buy asbestos for their ceilings, or looking shifty in alleyways searching for thalidomide for their morning sickness, nor I suspect, will they keep buying cattle drench in capsule form for their Saturday night's fever once the shops go. But I reserve the right to be completely wrong, who can tell with kids these days?

Me, I'm back on the whiskey. And I've decided to stop arguing against the prohibition of various substances on the basis that it's hypocritical compared with the fact alcohol does so much harm to so many. Because one day Jim might listen, and take my bottle away from me too.

PS: My first ever article for Metro is out in this month's issue, and I'm quite chuffed with it, if I say so myself, but also thanks to the great photos they commissioned for it. It's called 'Capital Punishment' and it details my (often not flattering) JAFA thoughts on this past year spent as an exile on Cuba Street. Please read.

Oh, and check out this entry for the 48 hours. It's not mine, but it's by a bunch of my friends down here, it made the Wellington final, and hey, it's a way to waste some time on a Friday.

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Any questions? | Jun 15, 2007 12:11

One of the aspects I most enjoy about working in the media, particularly live on radio, is interviewing people.

Some days it's grilling politicians and bureaucrats that gives me a kick, although they've all become noticeably slipperier in the decade or so I've been doing this job. I blame all the underpaid journos who have over the years sold their souls to the dark side and taken up comms jobs as media advisors.

Other times it's talking to musicians, actors, novelists and the like, seeing if you can ask them a question they haven't heard a million times before.

Sometimes you just click with someone. They know when you're making a joke and just run with it. Legendary Detroit DJ Derek May for instance, when I thanked him for playing at my birthday drinks the night before (he hadn't), began talking my party up on the radio, saying what a great time he'd had. For weeks I was the envy of the friends who hadn't made it along and even most of those who had (it was Auckland clubland in the late 90s, most people's brains weren't that sharp…)

Around the same time, I also had the privilege of one of my interviewees –house producer Ian Pooley– deciding to include our chat as a hidden track on the end of his very successful Since Then album. I'm not exactly sure how many copies there are in the world of a young Cracker talking to a young German, but I dare say it must be in the six figures by now. Simon?

(Apparently that interview confused a number of people, who'd hear the interview at the end of the CD, forget they were listening to a CD, and think "Oh, Ian Pooley is playing at Calibre tonight", and head to their local record store demanding tickets… as I say, Auckland clubland, late 90s…). It even confused my ex-girlfriend on the other side of the world.

Other times an interviewee rubs you up the wrong way. Take for example a certain expat NZ musician who didn't bother answering my questions, and instead did nothing but rattle off a long list of his recent achievements, wank on about what he was doing next, and then handed me his album and told me which track to play. I was later told he was having a hard time having been unable to procure in NZ the heroin he was used to overseas, but just in case he actually is that much of a self-centred prick, I've always refused to interview him since.

There are the people you want to propose to after talking to them for ten minutes *cough*Anita McNaught*cough*.

There are the scrappers – I remember the first time I interviewed Winston Peters on the radio, thinking I could take him on. After all, he'd clearly said something that was demonstrably incorrect. How hard could it be to get him to admit that? Ahh, so young, so naïve.

And then there are guys like this. Every interviewer's nightmare. So utterly watchable, but for all the wrong reasons.*

So just for today, spare a thought for the interviewers.

*hat-tip, Deep Thought Yourself

EDIT: I'm told that Ana had this up at Spareroom last week too. That girl, she so fast. Ah Fuck it, it's Friday.

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See More on 3 | Jun 08, 2007 12:15

As I've said before, I generally keep pretty quiet about TV matters, because of the whole glass houses thing, but it's hard not to be just a teensy bit cynical about a story I saw on TV3 news last night, so I feel justified in throwing it open for discussion.

The story was introduced thus:

The makers of a new TV game show are defending it in the face of allegations it is sexist and old-fashioned.

The complaints have been flying since last night's episode of 'Deal or No Deal' on TV3…

As Tony Field reports, what upset them were low-cut dresses worn by models on the show.

We then have a 90 second report about TV3's "Hot New Game Show" (their words) 'Deal or No Deal' focusing almost entirely on – you guessed it – models wearing low-cut dresses.

TV shows get complaints all the time. One of the perks of my first job at TVNZ was being able to read the phone logs – the ones made fabulously famous by Havoc & Newsboy (and of course not forgetting Mr "Hello TVNZ" himself, TVNZ's long-standing telephonist Don.)

The call logs make for great reading and are a real peek into the psyche of Joe and Jane Complainant. "I don't like Judy Bailey's hair tonight", or "Don't you know the weather presenter's arse is blocking the Chatham Islands?" and other items of great import. Compliments too, but needless to say, most people only call to offer brickbats rather than bouquets.

But as a general rule, such complaints do not make news. When is it ever in the broadcaster's interest to run a news story about how a given programme has been getting complaints?

Answer: When the complaints relate to gratuitious cleavage.

If the broadcaster were being a leedle more honest, the news story would have gone like this:

Did ya see all the tits on that new game show of ours last night?! Did ya? No? Well here's a taste of what you'll get if you tune in next week. Pretty choice eh!

In case you missed it. That's Deal or No Deal, Wednesday, 8.30 on 3. Tony Field, 3 News.

(For those with a real passion for news and current affairs, also listed on the TV3 video homepage, under the "Best of 3" headline: Extended Footage of the Boobs on Bikes Parade and Kiwi Naturists Passionate about being Nude in Public)

***Update***Regan at Throng has it on good authority that TV3 only received 7 complaints about the offensive boobies...

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