Yeehaw! 08 Roundup.

So I feel the need to share these stories, but rather than do a bunch of mini posts about how much I dislike Mittbot ver. 2.3, Hickabee, etc. I am going to do a roundup of the awkward clusterf*** this race has become!

Romney totally identifies with the black community, he understands their concepts of "bling bling" and letting dogs out of the places they should be and into places they shouldn't be - woof woof woof! Somebody did a BIOS upgrade on his system, but they accidentally set his internal clock to 1998.

EDIT: holy good god there's video! Just a bit out of touch there Guy Smiley.

Huckabee hates Darwin, duh, but Huckabee also hates Romney! He may be continuing down the campaign trail, in part, to spite Romney because as long as both of them are in the race they split the conservative vote and keep Romney in second place. This split may give McCain the edge and the nomination, according to this Politico article. If McCain and the Mayor of 9/11 don't cancel each other out with the moderate vote in Florida, McCain may be on track to take the cake. Oh and Fred Thompson likes butterflies, America, Sam Watterson and afternoon naps.

EDIT 2!: Fred's out. Now the only canidate still(?) in the race with a ridiculously hot wife is Kucinich.

This is a bit surreal

Whoppi + Kimya + Adam = kind of an odd fit, but great nonetheless. Kimya really loves Whoppi and was excited to meet her. The one song Moldy Peaches reunion was originally supposed to happen on Conan (which seems to make more sense than the harpie gabfest), but:

Well, we said yes initially because I didn't realize what the situation still was with the strike. Then John Darnielle emailed me and told me what the deal was with Conan being forced back on and when I realized that no agreement had been reached with the writers, I cancelled.

-Kimya via Gothamist, read the rest of the interview.

At any rate, this was adorable! I've had three people tell me that they really liked the music in Juno, specifically "Anyone Else But You." All three people were new to the Moldy Peaches, and probably would have never found out about them otherwise. Kudos to Ellen Page for getting the songs in the movie, and sorry to the poor hipsters who feel another shred of their indie cred slipping away into the mainstream! You'll have to find another ironic-cute song to add to your repertoire, or you'll have to spend a minute before or after each performance to specify that you knew the Peaches before George Michael Bluth and Kitty Pryde covered it.

Rich, Desperate and Lashing Out Like a Drunken Fratboy

"Do you want this primary season to be over? Or do you want this primary season to be hilarious?!"

It's video day. I do declare!

Garfield is a cat who says funny things!

Garfield hates Mondays!

Several of these showed up on YouTube yesterday. They are all comic gold.

- via Best Week Ever

I'm a Viral Marketing Whore.

There. I said it. Got a kickass movie or television you want me to be excited about? Throw some weird canon websites up there that tell a back story or give clues or expand the movie's narrative and I AM ALL OVER THAT SHIT.

No kidding.

Cloverfield comes out in just under two weeks and I could not be more excited, until after I see it and I count the days until The Dark Night in July. Both films have been doing the viral marketing tango on the internet the past few months and I've been following them both with gusto. THE JOKER SENT PEOPLE TO GET CAKES, REAL FRIGGIN CAKES!

In Cloverfield, the events in the movie presumably happen on January 18, 2008 (same day the film is released) so the events that lead to the monster attack on NYC would be happening right now. Over the weekend, news clips from all over the world (read: in different languages) started showing up to report on the destruction of the fictional Chuai station in the Atlantic Ocean. Here's the American entry:



Cloverfield News has them all if you'd like to see the above news in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Korean or Japanese. Multi-cultural!

Additionally, all the main characters in the movie have MySpace accounts and have been interacting with each other for a while now. Recently, "Rob" announced via his MySpace that he got a job with a Japanese company called Slusho . . . thus the going away party for him featured in the movie's trailer. Slusho also has a crazy online presence as well as it's parent company Tagruato. There is even a Tarugato-opposed group called TIDOwave involved in the story. Oh and then there's Jamie and Teddy, two more characters that have a website (password: jllovesth)on which Jamie can communicate with Teddy while he's gone. . . working at the Chuai station! There is actually a lot more to this online puzzle and if you're interested I would go to Cloverfield News and catch up.

I find this type of viral marketing fascinating. I have no idea how important the lot of this is to the film or if it will be even necessary to enjoy it, but it really shows us what we can do with story in the digital age. I am reminded of the 80s comic book series/graphic novel The Watchmen which was sooo much more than a comic book. Each chapter ended with an excerpt of a book, a magazine article, something that provided depth, back story, and motive to a character or situation that simply could not be expressed as well over a few pages of panels. I believe the internet allows us to expand on that type of storytelling. JJ Abrams seems to understand this very well, as he has been doing the same for Lost since the beginning (remember the weird ads for the Hanso foundation in 06?). Lost, by the way has some new websites to follow: Oceanic Airlines is back up and flying and Sam Thomas on Find 815 is looking for a lost girlfriend who was on the fateful flight.

So despite the title of this post, I am reluctant to simply call all this "viral marketing."The word "marketing" makes all of it seem really lame and I am smart enough to know I am being marketed to, but even without the online games I would still see Cloverfield and The Dark Night and I will certainly continue to watch Lost faithfully until the writer's strike takes its toll after eight episodes. I think this is more the artists in these mediums breaking the walls of the medium down and finding new and interesting ways to tell stories. You usually don't need to know all the back story to enjoy the final product, but it makes the world the writers have created become so much more dense and enjoyable. Just ask J.K. Rowling and her upcoming giant Harry Potter encyclopedia.

I'm not saying every movie needs these internet additions, surely we don't need to read the livejournal of Sandra Bullock's character before Keanu started sending her letters from the past (future? I never saw that one), but for a movie like Cloverfield or a series like Lost which breaks away from traditional narrative, it makes the overall experience that much more enjoyable.

How do I get in on this? I want in.

What I said about Conan last week?

Consider it officially taken back.



SOLID GOLD

Late Night Returns! It's Weird!

Conan said last night that people kept asking him "Whatchyou gonna do? Whatchyou gonna do?" (said in best Jersey guy voice you can muster in your head while reading hopefully).

Apparently the answer to that question is ring spinning, beard admiration, dancing, office tours and rock band in the style of Edith Bunker. . . oh and did I mention ring spinning? There was a lot of ring spinning. Clearly, late night is in no danger of running out of writer-less content any time soon! CLEARLY!

What I am more afraid for is next Monday's return of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Sure, the guys are funny, but their shows are basically 18 minutes of solid writing plus a 4 minute interview. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are bit-driven with a singular interview whereas the rest of late night shows are nearly the opposite plus a monologue. Leno, Kimmel and Conan could, in theory, just cut the bits at the top by 20% and spend more time with guests, or have more guests per show. I don't really see the Comedy Central shows having that option. Since they belong to the WGA, Stewart and Colbert aren't really even allowed to write the whole show themselves. Leno wrote and his own monologue last night, and he's being called out for it today. So what will Monday's shows be like? I am not sure, but the prospect of Stewart just showing clips of those wacky presidential nominees and then mugging for the camera seems a possibility.

Conan's beard is pretty awesome though. He should shellac it and try to spin rings on it. There's at least 3 minutes of content right there.