Author: Dan Brekke

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Circle of Friends

A former colleague of mine who went into freelance writing a few years ago has scored a significant career success: he has a new semi-weekly column in the Sunday New York Times business section. The general topic is technology and innovation. I admit to a twinge of envy: what a great gig. That’s small of me. My former colleague (MFC) has worked very hard to move from doing niche technology stuff and writing about things he didn’t have a lot of interest in to establish himself and then move beyond it to where he is now. Maybe I should just say “way to go” and shut up.

But that is not my way. Here’s something that MFC does in connection with his column that sort of annoys me: He spams me and I don’t know how many more of his acquaintances with an alert to each new column. The messages are more than, “Hey, everyone, check out my new article.” They’re written with a bit of a hook; this week’s, for instance, has the subject line, “My new NYT column is about … You.” Yeah, I’m vain enough that I looked just in case he had found some aspect of my life or career scary enough to serve as a cautionary tale for his readers. But no: That was just a come-on, and it ended with a nudge to spread the word about his column to others.

If this is a sin, it’s venial, not mortal. What bugs me, though, is that one, I didn’t choose to join this email list; two, getting off of the list requires me to do something that feels rude: “Hey, there, great to hear about your column, but please don’t send me any more email about it” (is writing a post about it less rude?); and three, MFC acts as though his circle of acquaintances is just another group of marketing targets.

Yes, sure: When I recently had my little Las Vegas article published, I broadcast that fact in a blog post and offered a link to the piece. I think the difference is that visiting this site and partaking of its sublime smorgasbord of observation and wit is a voluntary act; I’m not pushing anything out to anyone, and the only people subjected to my profundities are those who come looking for them.

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Powerful Sports Car

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Parked outside the main branch of the Berkeley Public Library: a Lamborghini Countach. Right out there on the street with all the Volvos and Nissans and VWs. But what got our attention was the fact the car was parked in the primo disabled parking spot in front of the library–parking is becoming very, very challenging in downtown Berkeley–with a disabled placard hanging from the rear-view mirror. In California, disabled plates or placards are available for drivers or passengers with serious mobility or sight issues. Now, I’m just guessing that you need to be pretty limber to get in an out of this car. which is built very close to the ground and doesn’t look like it has a luxurious amount of cockpit space for driver or passenger (sure–looks can be deceiving). And while I can imagine circumstances in which the driver or a regular passenger of this beast might have need of disabled parking dispensation, I find it easier to believe that this is a scam. I mean, if you’re able to climb out of this thing, you’re not impaired enough to require the best parking spot on the block. (Seeing this does make me wonder about the distribution of disabled plates and placards by vehicle, though; how many Lamborghini operators have them? How many high-step vehicles, like Hummers and big pickup trucks? )

[Update: On Monday (March 26), the Chronicle published a story on the increasing use of disabled placards throughout the state: According to the stats the paper published, the number of placards issued has doubled in the last decade, “with 1 issued for every 16 residents” statewide. With 36.5 million residents, that means almost 2.5 million placards are floating around out there (U.S. Census Bureau stats provide some interesting context: In 2005, the agency put the number of residents age 18 and over at 25 million, meaning about 1 in 10 people of driving age have disabled placards. The bureau estimated California’s over-65 population, the group that I’d expect to hold the most placards, to be about 3 million. One upshot of the Chron’s story, which is underwhelming in scope and detail, is that the widespread use of disabled placards, which exempts users from feeding parking meters, is cutting into local government revenues. I still want to know how many Lamborghini owners have disabled plates.]

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Powerful Vacuum Cleaner

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Left on the sidewalk out by Ohlone Park for the lucky passerby: a Hoover upright featuring so many little gizmos, features, slogans and claims it ought to be able to clean up Baghdad all by itself:

  • Self Propelled (note to Hoover: use the hyphen next time)
  • Premium
  • Wind Tunnel Technology (accompanied by image of cyclone for dramatic emphasis)
  • Bag Check Indicator
  • “Picks up more dirt than any other clean-air upright” (Hoover: that hypen’s a good one)
  • Green and red lights labeled “clean” and “dirty” respectively
  • “Carpet is Clean When Light Is Green”
  • Embedded Dirt FINDER
  • WindTunnel by Hoover
  • Mach 6.9
  • Patented Windtunnel

This machine looks like it’s survived a few IED attacks, or at least confrontations with pets that gnawed on its attachments. I like the accompanying Post-it note that explains: “Powerful Vacuum Cleaner/needs new belts & cleaning.”

This Berkeley habit of leaving spent vacuum cleaners out on the sidewalk–it’s starting to grow on me.

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Oh, the Prickles You’ll Prickle

So this morning, I remained curious as to the odd inaccessibility of the dylanhearsawho.com website. It’s not that the site was down when you tried to connect, it was that is was still up, with a message saying it was down. To me, that signaled the creator, reported to be a Kevin Ryan of Houston, had taken the site down, probably under duress. This morning, the site’s message changed. It now says, “At the request of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P., this site has been retired. Thanks for your interest.”

It’s easy to guess why: If you look at the record, the company bearing the late Dr. Seuss’s name is jealous of its intellectual property, and this is far from the first time it has pursued publishers large or small over parody and copyright. In 1997, Seuss went after Penguin Books U.S.A. and Dove audio to stop the release of “The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice,” a work comprised of “a rhyming summary of highlights from the O.J. Simpson double murder trial.” As a federal appeals court noted in upholding an injunction against Penguin and Dove, under the Copyright Act of 1976, “Seuss, as the owner of the Dr. Seuss copyrights, owns the exclusive rights (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work; (2) to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public; (4) to perform the work publicly; and (5) to display the copyrighted work publicly.”

Given all that, some little guy in Texas inspired to bring Dylan and Dr. Seuss together never stood a chance. One is tempted to say, “So much for the sense of fun in Seussville” and leave it at that, but I decided to try to find out what was going on. Maybe there’s a story in it.

So I called Dr. Seuss Enterprises in La Jolla, California. A woman answered the phone, and I stated my name and business; she told me that the company was “very aware” of the site and that its legal team–which I had determined is the San Diego office of DLA Piper–was “working on it.” When I asked whether she could direct me to one of the attorneys involved, she said no and that I should talk to someone at Seuss’s publisher, Random House, which handles media relations. When I asked to whom I should speak at Random House, she put me on hold.

In a minute, Susan Brandt, Seuss’s executive vice president for licensing and marketing, got on the phone. I went through my spiel again, saying that I had heard about the site through friends, looked at it, then noticed last night that it was inaccessible. I wanted to know whether the company or perhaps the Dylan people had demanded it be taken down.

“We’re not making any comment about this,” Brandt said. But, I told her, the unidentified person I had already spoken to had said the company’s lawyers were aware of the site. “We’re aware of everything that has to do with Dr. Seuss,” she said. Then she asked why I was asking questions about this and why I wanted to write a story about it. I told her that I simply thought it was an interesting, if minor, story on a site that had been instantly popular and might have been shut down under pressure from copyright owners. Brandt told me she had nothing more to say about the matter. When I asked her to spell her name and repeat her title, she refused, saying, “I’m not going to be quoted about any of this.” I told her she would in fact be quoted if I wrote about it, as I had identified myself, told her what I wanted and that her comments were on the record. Our conversation closed with:

“OK, Mr. … Brek …”

“It’s Brekke.”

“Good luck with your story, Mr. Brekke.” And then she hung up.

So much for the sense of fun in Seussville. And so much for the smooth handling of media relations (I wonder if I would have gotten the same welcome if I’d been calling from People Magazine, say, or the Wall Street Journal?).

[I’ve got calls and messages out to attorneys for Dylan and Seuss Enterprises, but so far they haven’t responded.]

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Today We Dribble …

… For tomorrow–who knows? Without further ado:

Dylan Hears a Who: This must have been blogged everywhere–BoingBoing had an item on March 8–and last night, in my semi-comatose post-ride condition, Kate pointed it out to me: A very good Bob Dylan soundalike with a “Bringing It All Back Home”-era backup band singing Dr. Seuss books. The one we listened to all the way through was “Green Eggs and Ham,” done with a “Subterranean Homesick Blues” feel. Inspired parody, right down to the artwork of Dylan, cigarette dangling from lip and wearing a “Cat in the Hat” chapeau. Right out of “Don’t Look Back.”

Looking for related stuff today, I see a blurb from Entertainment Weekly that says the person behind the Dylan/Seuss songs is Kevin Ryan, a music producer in Houston who is known for “Recording the Beatles,” an authoritative and exhaustive take on how the group created and recorded its sound. I note that Ryan’s “Dylan Hears a Who” site is down, as is a site that was reported to be mirroring MP3s of the Dylan/Seuss tracks. I wonder if the intellectual property cops–either Dylan’s or the Seuss estate’s–have gone after Ryan to shut him down.

In the meantime, here’s another Ryan parody, for Rad Monkey Cowbells–featuring the VLC800 digital cowbell. It could be the last cowbell you’ll ever buy.

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This Weekend’s Exercise

Too tired to talk about it much now, but it consisted of a 400-kilometer (250-mile) brevet from San Francisco to the small town of Hopland. As if these events aren’t tough enough in themselves, the start time for this one was set at noon Saturday to guarantee the everyone on the ride would need to ride through the night to finish in the maximum allowed time of 27 hour. Yeah, that’s a big extra challenge; the morning turned out cold in the Mendocino and Sonoma county locales we visited. That was another challenge. I got done at 9:30 in the morning, and need to sleep now. More later, when I can hold my head all the way up as I type.

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Smarter Than an Oxford Man

In a dark armpit of TV Land–13 minutes or so when we were done watching something we’d recorded and were waiting for our “news” fix–Kate and I happened upon “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?” Kate then went back and recorded a full show, which we just watched. Wow.

Not that the show is unsophisticated. The kids who serve as the “classroom” for the dim-bulb adult contestants are quick, winning and photogenic as heck. The host, Jeff Foxworthy, probably doesn’t grow tiresome until the third or fourth viewing. And the contestants–the grown-ups who struggle with questions like “Which state is farthest west: Alaska, California, or Nevada?”–are clearly carefully chosen: they’re attractive, witty, emotive, willing to play along and show no shame that they can’t name the ocean that covers the North Pole and have to lean on their 11-year-old playing partners to keep going in the game. Also, we saw a total of three contestants, and they’re all Gen Xers or later. The show’s looking for a young audience, and it’s drawing players from the target age group; a balding slack-gutted Boomer know-it-all would be the last thing that would fly on this show, not that I’m thinking of trying to get on.

But even allowing for the careful sifting of players to find the perfect combination of empty-headedness, glibness and charming good looks, it’s still surprising to me how little the people we saw knew or were confident of knowing. The one who made the strongest impression not only blew the questions above, he was stumped by the true/false proposition, “The Earth is more than 50 million miles from the sun” and flummoxed when asked to take a 12-inch-by-12-inch square and come up with half its area in square inches (his answer: 24; he’s supposedly a building contractor). But since the fifth-graders helping the guy were actually pretty bright, he still walked away with $50,000.

You wonder whether something going on here–the comic spectacle of the good-natured dunce guffawing at his mistakes without embarrassment, the portrayal of ignorance as harmless and fun–explains something bigger happening in the country. Watch Letterman every night, and you get to see Bush mocked for his latest idiotic utterance. Bush and his guys have watched that mockery for years and cried their way all the way to the Oval Office. They figured out ages ago that most people will laugh along with you if you don’t pretend you’re a smart guy with all the answers; they’ll keep laughing long after the joke’s not funny anymore; they’ll give you a break when you screw up because after all, who could’ve known?

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Schoolyard, Sky

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OK, I’m cheating. This was actually Wednesday night, up at King Middle School, walking the dog. It’s really warmed up here over the last week or two, and you sort of wonder the way the weather has been whether we’re just about done with our rain for the year. Anyway, I”m using a picture from last night because I’ve been busy trying to turn out a piece on the Stardust implosion in Las Vegas. You can read my draft after the jump. Comments, complaints and great thoughts welcome, as always.

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Continue reading “Schoolyard, Sky”

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C’est Las Vegas

To cut to the chase: The Stardust hotel tower came down on schedule last night–2:35 a.m. PDT by my watch. The demolition crew did its job well and the 32 stories of concrete and steel folded into itself and plunged to the desert floor. The blasts startled and deafened; the collapse roared; the ground shook when all that mass slammed into the ground. And the throng, such as it was–a smattering of Stardust fans and former employees scattered among a sparse, subdued crowd that had wandered up the Strip for the night’s best free show–scurried toward the bright lights nearby to get away from a roiling cloud of concrete dust that enveloped the neighborhood. In the quick exodus, I actually heard one person say, “It’s like 9/11.”

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