stevengharms

The BigHoeSmacka and I were discussing why it is that the average on the ‘rate the girls’ feature of AOL instant messenger comes out so much lower than the average rating on sites like hotornot.com.

For those of you unfamiliar, it works like this. Picture of ratee pops up, you click on rating 1-10, average presented on the next picture.

An attractive girl on AOL comes out on 7.0 on average whereas an attractive girl on hotornot.com comes out near the 10 mark. So what’s going on here? The fodder on both sites comes out roughly the same, amateur photography, non-professional lighting — the culprit has to be something psychological in the raters.

I think we’re seeing an interesting kick of the statistical self-selection bias - people go to hotornot.com who mentally have already decided that they WANT to see hot people. They consciously typed in ‘hotornot.com’ in their browser.

In efforts to make what they see match what they’ve mentally decided, they tend to rate higher.

Most people who see the rate a buddy want to do something else — namely use their IM client. The presentation of potential hotties or notties is something they feel neutral to lukewarm about. Further the sample size on AOL is larger.

Taken these together - and the size of the AIM population, I think the AOL rating is truer. That said, if a girl scores a 7 on AIM she should feel very flattered indeed.

If i had a dining room table in this apartment …

…and i could choose famous TV people to come over ….

I would have…

• Jesse L. Martin - Dt. Green from Law and Order. Jesse was great on his guest role on the Xfiles. He can come over.

• Lauren Graham - She and Jesse could rap about the biz. I’d just serve more Pad Thai

• Chuck Lorre - He’s a producer, but he’s still cool

• David Duchovny - He totally bailed out when he was major famous. That’s pretty good…and I loved X-Files 94-97

• Jamie Gertz - Because she’s Jamie Gertz

• Alicia Witt (Ok she’s not on TV anymore, but she’s real bright and a good indie actress).

  And that’s my dinner for six — WHAT’S YOURS??

(and no boring crap like my kids or my family - like…six hair metal icons for dinner … or … ska icons or something like that)

I fondly recall “Let’s Dance”, “Ashes to Ashes” and “Chinal Doll” — the music that made the Thin White Duke.

There is now a site commemorating this era.

Visit Here

I mentioned how much I liked Chuck Lorre’s vanity cards. In line with my recent commentary on the FCC I thought I would repost this card from his site:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #133

There was a scene in this episode which was drastically cut down in order to appease the censors. Their problem with it was the length of time we spent on the nude back of an attractive young woman. My problem is knowing that I work in an industry, or perhaps I should say a culture, that is more comfortable showing a dead naked body than a live one. A glimpse at any of the prime-time police procedural shows reveals that the powers that be, both in Hollywood and Washington, are perfectly at ease with graphically detailed autopsy scenes that show female corpses being carved up in order to reveal the titillating (pun intended) cause of death, or, if it’s during sweeps, examined for traces of semen. Now I don’t for one second believe that this little vanity card vent of mine will accomplish anything. I even strongly doubt that, despite living in a country that espouses “free speech”, it will even be broadcast. I just needed to get it off my very alive, and very sexual chest. (p.s. If I get away with this card, I’ll write one about how television networks love erection-producing drugs and yet fear erections.)

I’ve resisted answering this because I thought it was kinda stupid, but as I’m in a situation where I have time to kill…

What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

Well point one is that these files are not actually on my computer, I have them on a Network Attached storage device + USB hard-drive set up. I ran a recursive find out of an Xterm with

find . -name “*mp3” | wc -l

Came up with 13,345 files. I consider that about right given that I have about 4 disc notebooks full of discs. It’s all ancillary to the life of petty hedonism I live.

What is the last CD you bought?

While Dedman is sure to think that I with all my hipster talent will say something like “So So Many White White Tigers” or “Teagan and Sarah” I actually have acquired the rather pedestrian CDs listed below. Being that I acquired them all at the same time (this being the last time I bought physical, actual CDs v. iTunes Music Store) I’d be hard-pressed to identify last, so I shall give all three.

• Fiddy Cent - The Massacre Say the name with her voice - it’s funnier
• The Postal Service - Give Up
• Keane - Hopes and Fears

What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?

Interpol’s “Leif Eriksen” from their album “Turn on the Bright Lights”.

I love Interpol and I especially loved this first record. It reminds me of winter on Potrero Hill - it’s so moody, dark and beautiful. I’m not such a particular fan of this song per se, but this album as a whole is amazing.

Write down five songs you often listen to, or that mean a lot to you

1. Heather Nova, “Maybe an Angel”, Live at the Melkweg.

The Melkweg is this great live music venue in Amsterdam (I saw The Squirrel Nut Zippers there, what a hoot) right on the water near the Museumplein. Heather belts out this number with her fragile and wounded voice. She moves from these keening wails to near silent whispers with impunity. It also seems to surface on the iPod at perfect moments - coming off the Golden Gate and winding through the Marina - landing in Barcelona - always perfect timing.

Something I feel / You are an angel, or maybe you could?ve been / Something out here / You are an angel or maybe you could?ve been /

She really peaks out on the words ‘feel’ and ‘here’.

1. “I’m Set Free”, the Velvet Underground

I’m not sure if this was written because Lou had kicked something or because Lou had just shot up a something but either way, it’s nice to feel like you have possibilities.

It’s definitely a bit of a twist message - you can be liberated, but liberated only to find a new illusion to be a slave to — and even then, that’s a type of liberation too.

Very Buddhist, really.

1. “Marian”, The Sisters of Mercy

I hear you calling Marian / Across the water, across the wave / I hear you calling Marian / Can you hear me calling you to / Save me, save me, save me… /

The whole water metaphor pervades this song and the second verse is in German. It’s steely and haunting - most SOM music is like that.

1. “Smile Like You Mean It” - The Killers

I think this is the top new band of the last year. This song plus their other hits “Mr. Brightside” and “Somebody told me” should entice you to get their record “The Hot Fuss”.

1. “Cease2xist” - Ladytron

I love the dark synth work. I like their visual element as well.

Who will you pass this to?

No one. I didn’t like this meme from the get-go.

I’m not a big fan of the “decency” standards. On the first level, I’ve not found anyone that could really define what is indecent and what is not.

I guess I spent long enough in Europe and Australia to realize that showing breasts or saying bad words don’t really seem undermine society.

I grant that there should be zones of family content (Superbowls, through the early parts of prime time) but after a certain time adults should feel free to watch and hear adults express themselves as adults express themselves. If the adults don’t like that type of content they can always change the channel.

Recently Frontline (on PBS) did a program called “Company of Soliders” which tracked a company in South Baghdad. In the unflinching camera’s eye soldiers exploded “fuck” and “shit” on occasion and frankly, if you can see the car in front of you take an RPG to the windshield and not at least conceieve that such is a reasonable utterance (and should you not be able to conceive such, what, pray tell, would you suggest it be replaced with?) then you are of a steely mettle indeed.

When this film was released to the PBS network there was a caveat attached: We won’t help you defend yourself in case the Puritannical judges of decency at the FCC come after you.

War is a dirty business and has a dirty vernacular to go with it. Whitewashing the nature of the conflict and whitewashing the vocabulary is absolutely absurd.

This fear of being fined by the FCC (“This plege drive is to help us pay off our fines, won’t you help?”) encouraged several affiliates to not air this stirring episode.

Absurd.

Urban ruins are fascinating to look upon — and remind me of the creepy video game series “Silent Hill”.

Check out these pics: HERE

I think there’s been a fair amount of buzz around the just released film “Sin City” based off the graphic novels by Frank Miller. I’m no comics afficionado (unlike The League) but I know good drawings when i see them.

Ripped from the pages of gritty, hard-boiled, noir cop and corruption graphic novels, the scenes from the film present the readers clips or perfect stills with which our minds race to fill in the blanks in time and story. The magic of the comic form is that it shows the verbs at their most explosive intensity and the reader weaves the transitions on his own.

Realizing this is to the credit of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. It is notable that the Director’s guild forced Rodriguez to give up his membership in order to co-direct with Miller. Hey DGA, you all progress when good art is made and you’re fighting a turf battle over how the credits roll? Maybe a little less ego and a little more attention to craft would help spare us monstrosities like the upcoming “Adam Sandler goes to prison and teaches inmates to play football” (no, really, it’s really going to happen) disaster in the pipe, or anything that Michael Bay produced.

Back to “Sin City” though.

The story is rough, the blood flows in spurting white (it’s a B&W film with artistic splashes of color) and both the good and bad guys share a predatorial post-morality. The dames are scantily clad ladies of easy virtue or curvy Tex Avery ahh-woo-gaah Mickey Spillane cover art filling out nightgowns like pendulums of sequins, satin, skin, and sin. The men are hard-boiled, grizzled hulks of muscle, menace, meat, and melancholy. Against the dark nihilist night they each ply their destiny bullet by bullet, trick by trick, and blow by blow.

The film thrills in letting the audience take this visual trip to the realm of pulp and noir and never flinches from its seedy underbelly. There are no happy endings in Sin City - only momentary reprieves that are book-ended by the omniscient soliloquy of a hit-man.