Did We Just Get Played by Clear Channel?

Clear Channel is a corporate media behemoth that recently bought out an alternative rock radio station in my area and converted it into yet another hit music spot, just so you'll have less of a chance to miss out on any of today's popular songs and giving you the heaven-sent opportunity to listen each and every one of them twenty times a day. They also strive to excel in the internet music business and are actively pushing something called iHeart Radio. They even put together an event called the iHeart Radio Music Festival, so that more people would know about it, though I wouldn't have heard or cared about it, if it weren't for Billie Jo Armstrong's passionate expletive-laden tirade of anger and disbelief.

The issue was that Billie Joe and his band Green Day were originally given only 45 minutes to play at the festival, somewhere between Usher and Rihanna, much less stage time than their usual.

Well, the managers at the festival noted that Usher ran his set an extra 25 minutes, and didn't think it was a good idea to keep Rihanna waiting, and maybe they thought Green Day would be good sports and cut their set to... say... 30 minutes? One report says that Green Day was “asked” to make this accommodation. Another report stated that the band had no idea of this drastic duration change until the words “1 minute” appeared on a jumbo screen facing the band as they were performing one of their most popular tunes.

Billie Joe saw this, quickly interrupted the song, and went ballistic. At one point, he even proclaimed that they were no Justin Bieber and had been around since the late '80s, and they're being given only one more minute? (Yes, Justin Bieber didn't play at the festival and anyone who thought Billie Joe brought Justin up just to diss him probably didn't get his point.) The band then smashed their guitars on the stage, and Billie Joe belted out a few more choice words on the mike and left. The video clip is actually much better than how I've described it.

Some have painted Billie Joe as a petulant middle-aged child, but I believe he was understandably angry at having been shortchanged and, due to his having checked himself into rehab for substance abuse shortly thereafter, probably under the influence. He ended up issuing a public statement, apologizing for being offensive. Fair enough, but he needn't have apologized to me.

So, what we have now is another viral video of the moment, and it's a good one. Billie Joe's rage was certainly palpable. Very much so. I ended up watching it several times. What a performance!

Well, I had just stepped away from the computer, convinced that Billie Joe made a valid point succinctly and clearly. But then something else occurred to me.

Who the hell was running the main control board? You know, the point where all the sound and video from the stage get passed through and out to the rest of the world? I mean, think about it. If you've watched the video, you may recall that no less than 90 seconds elapsed from the point where Billie Jo stops the music to the point where he walks off the stage. 90 seconds! And throughout all that time, his mike was left full on! What's up with that?

Weren't the boys and girls of Clear Channel biting their nails and getting all agitated? Weren't they the least bit concerned about what Billie Joe would do or say in front of all those people? Were they not in control of their own festival?

Of course they were!  They could have shut him down easily, but he's no Jim Morrison and this is not 1968, TMZ-style coverage is now in full effect and Billie Joe is the one who becomes the American idiot.

And Clear Channel is now reaping the benefits.  They didn't have to pay one cent for all that additional publicity, and Green Day were their seemingly unwitting accomplices. And that's how I and millions of others now know about this thing called "iHeart Radio"!

Ugh.  I feel so f@#$ing used.

Razorfish's Website

I was recently looking over the state of technology firms in New England and decided to check out what's going on over at Razorfish. Their mission goal, as stated in a Yahoo! search for "Razorfish", was "Helping companies build great brands and engaging experiences for consumers anywhere in the digital world."

Opening the Razorfish website was an experience to engage in... not. I was first treated to flashing dots and a huge word - "WORKING" - sliced through with fleeting swaths of blackness as if I were still watching analog TV with poor reception. (Why?) Eventually, some other words like "company" and "careers" and "news" started showing up and flashing. I wasn't sure if clicking on any of them would bring up any useful information. Eventually - and I'm guessing this won't be the last time I use the word "eventually" in this post - a mini-panel quietly did an excruciatingly slow flip, a common routine in overblown Flash presentations, and showed something about employment. My computer seemed to have trouble keeping up with my cursor, which leads me to believe that, yes, this website really is an overblown Flash presentation, masterminded by someone with a souped-up PC that most people realistically could not afford without a three-year loan. It was painful, like watching a frightened pufferfish trying to survive while crammed into a shot glass.

Eventually (see?), I determined that the company is still hiring everywhere else but the Boston area, which is a shame, 'cause I could've showed them some things about building great brands and engaging experiences for companies anywhere in the digital world, especially those companies that want to look at their website.

I didn't stay with their website longer than one minute, because I really wanted to conserve the aspirin. I don't feel compelled to return to it in the near future. Good luck to them in their future endeavors.

However, I did allow myself some time to chuckle at some verbiage from their "Ideas" section.

"What does it mean to be a leader in the Web 2.0 world?..." Well, I don't know about being a leader in this virtual world of Web 2.0, but don't leaders lead without having to dress up in one hundred pounds of sequins?

"... It means inventing our own technology breakthroughs,..." Yeah, you really broke through for me today. God... The Segway... that was a technology breakthrough!

"... rethinking consumer insight,..." May be time for you to rethink from the bottom up after reading this post.

"... making radical leaps into the future of design..." If what I've just seen is the future of design, I'm cancelling my internet access.

"... and challenging the definition of 'impossible'." As in, "impossible to read"?

"... Then, share it with the world. Come and get it..." I'm sharing with the world right now, and I'm not using Flash to do it. And my share is easier to come and get than your share. So there.

OK, so that's my opinion. I had to post it because I just couldn't believe the mess that just hit my eyes and from where it came.

Stupid Poll Questions, Part 1

This one from PollDaddy.com

Should a proposal to build a mosque and Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan go forward?

- Yes
- No

My take: Someone forgot to add a third choice... "Why ask?" or "What's your point?" or, better yet, "What are you insinuating, Mr. McVeigh?"

Is there some controversy brewing over the two-block proximity of said mosque? Did someone complain? Would they rather have it be three blocks? Four blocks? 500 miles? In a city that continues to build office space vertically and is host to many groups, organizations, and companies, you're going to have a problem with a building with Muslims in it? Is this now New Arizona?

(And don't get me started with Arizona. Despite all the denials of officials in that state, it has definitely become a hotbed of hate. The news articles detailing solid proof are popping up fast and furious nowadays. Very disturbing. They're actually whitening brown faces on school murals because some racists screamed and complained, goaded on by a town official hosting a radio program. I kid you not.)

This poll appeared in a regional news site, front page.

Interesting thing about the Chase Fraud Detector program

About one month ago, my spouse and I received new credit cards from Chase, because our current ones were about to expire. The new ones have the stickers on them to remind you to call this number to get them activated.

So I called the number, because I really, really want to get them activated. Let's face it: who wants the embarrassment of walking into a shop, picking up some stuff, and trying to pay for the stuff with an unactivated card?

To activate. That was all I really wanted to do when I called the number.

Most times, when one calls to activate a credit card, you get this automated system which prompts for certain bits of numerical information that only the cardholder should know, you press your answers in the keypad, and eventually the computer with the female-sounding voice lets you know that you're good to go.

I didn't get any of that when I called to activate the new Chase credit cards.

What I did get was this live guy, probably somewhere in a land well outside the U.S. borders and probably not within any of the U.S. occupied territories such as Guam, with a thick accent. Difficult to understand. And he's the one who is going to activate my account. He also thinks it's a great idea for me to enroll in the Chase Fraud Detector program. After all, it's only $7.99 a month. See? That's $4 for you, $4 for your wife. What a bargain! I declined this useless service twice with this guy. "Oh, but you see, you can try out this service and if you're not satisfied you can cancel and get your money back..." And he said some other things, much of it indecipherable, and quickly spoken. At this point, I'm wondering whether our cards will not be activated if I continue to decline this service with this gentleman, if he is indeed a gentleman.

So I said, "Yeah, whatever, sign me up!"

It was only after I gave the confirmation that this fellow was seemingly able to move beyond this stalemate and activate the cards. At that point, I just didn't want to be on the phone with him anymore. I mean, I didn't want to be on the phone with him in the first place, but now I really, really wanted to get the activation done and hang up.

Well, needless to say, I have intended to cancel that service from that day. After talking to my better half, I've also decided to cancel the Chase card once its balance is paid off and no other charges are forthcoming.

But first, the matter of the Chase Fraud Detector program. I called the Fraud Detector hotline and pressed 3 to end the service, which automatically put me through, very rapidly, to a service rep. She asked why I was calling, and I replied that I wanted to end this Fraud Detector thing. I gave her the member-specific information so she could pull up my account.

She was nice, asked how the weather was where I'm at. I told her it's very cold, unseasonably so.

Then she asked my name. I gave it.

She said, "Hmmmm. It seems you're not the primary account holder. Is the primary account holder available to speak to?"

I said, "No, she's working. Why?"

She replied, "Unfortunately, only the primary account holder is allowed to discontinue this service."

I said, "Oh, really? So, I can start this thing even though I'm not the primary account holder, but she is the only one who can stop it?"

Very interesting. I have referred this matter to my wife, who I hope will have the time to deal with another of these little messes I have made.

Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD: Stop the madness!

I'm not sure who's winning or whether a draw has been declared in the battle between the two high-definition DVD formats Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. In fact, I don't care. At all. Just two highly-publicized formats, specked out by jousting technological corporate behemoths, even while a staggering number of compatibility problems still exist between standard DVDs and the DVD players on which they are supposed to be able to be read. Mo' storage, mo' sound clarity, higher video resolution... mo' problems!

Look, if the next hot thing after not-always-readable, scratchable, spinning discs is supposed to be more not-always-readable, scratchable, spinning discs, count me right the eff out.

This is ridiculous. I'm waiting for the durable, non-scratchable, non-spinning movies on modified read-only thumb drives. Yeah, like those things you stick into a USB port on your PC. Haven't these tech geniuses figured out that this would be a much better idea? Maybe they already did, and they're waiting for millions of Americans to re-buy all their favorite movies on the clunky high-definition discs, before they go to battle again with their respective movie-on-a-thumb-drive formats.

It's inevitable, so I'll just wait. You heard it here first.

Hollywood blows.

Wheaties in the Renaissance

In one of just the few virtual worlds where I can be found, the one in which I own wheat fields and do carpentry, I'm occasionally given badges from other players... called "trust points". The more of these trust points you get, the more likely you can advance in your "kingdom". That's basically it. I recently exchanged trust points with another player, who thanked me in an e-mail message. She asked how I was doing in my part of the kingdom. This was my reply:

"Likewise, kind madam. My life here in this part of the kingdom is full of wheat. Much, much wheat. There is so much wheat here that some days I wonder whither our Creator will enclose me and mine own belongings in a narrow box of rectangular shape, complete with a facade bearing the visage of a familiar handsome athletic figure. I sincerely hope this will not be so, for what would surely follow is the highest crescendo of my nightmares: a fat, pink hand of a giant child, ripping open the box above, and reaching inward... down, down... until it grabs significant quantities of that which requires several days of my patience and others' hard labour, and tossing all into a vat of milk from a Divine Cow. The horror... oh, the horror of it all....."

Imagine if I were given the option to harvest Lucky Charms... much, much Lucky Charms. My character's anxiety would be much more palpable, given my son's fondness for the marshmallow-laden breakfast treat.

Das Leben der Anderen

I was just reading a new blog from my good friend Suzanne, called Wading In, in which she is beginning to detail her journey through classes at the Episcopal Divinity School. Her first post is very good and I think the subsequent posts will also be very enlightening. She is only the second of my friends and acquaintances who I happen to know are blogging actively. (The first one is Dave over at It's Not a Lecture.)

So, anyway, I got to thinking about going back to my blog and typing something, and here it is.

I'm signed up for an intro to screenwriting, starting this week. I had thought about making a film over several years, or recording a CD, but I often preferred the works of other people. I still have some ideas... well, they're not ideas. More like scenes or images, and they don't really add up to a story, but I think they're moving enough on their own to justify having a story, or not having a story but just a timeline of connected events.

It's like this movie I saw recently, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). It's a great movie, and it sheds some light on the warrantless wiretapping that was going on in East Germany, back before the wall fell. Some actors had actually lived in East Germany at that time, and they provided a great deal of input, so a lot of the detail in the film was pretty accurate, according to them.

Anyway, the surveillance, though a large part of the film's story, was not the central theme for me. And it wasn't the eroticism as the marketing "geniuses" at Sony would have you believe from reading the back of the DVD case. (Not the reason I watched the film, either. I'm no teenager.) For me, it was the journey of this one guy in the film. I don't want to give any details, but it all came down to the end of the film. Many times, in the films I recall most often, the end is the most important part.

I didn't know at what point I started bawling. Maybe it was the last line of the film. The last frozen image before the fade-out. Maybe the music as the credits began to roll. Maybe it was the combination of all three. But everything that happened in that film must have contributed to that point. If you just watched the ending without the rest of the film... watched the transaction, heard those three small words... it would be just nothing. But I watched from beginning to end, and I became a wreck. I couldn't believe it. I just could not believe it, my reaction to this.

So I got this screenwriting thing. We'll see how far I get.