From election coverage to hurricane warnings, we try to make sense of the lunacy.
Could it be that NYU is on the cusp of a potentially booming Web Series industry? It certainly seems that way.
This past Tuesday night Craig DiFolco, the creative mind behind iChannel, came and spoke to my Producing Essentials class about new media. He told us about the best web series and about the emerging web series industry that is slowly but surely becoming profitable.
Here are some of the best web shows, many of which have NYUers involved.
1. iChannel is a web series that was posted on YouTube in November 2006. The cult hit is described as “a guy wakes up in his apartment to realize his life is being filmed across the world wide web.” Michael Izquierdo, the main actor who plays “I,” is a NYU acting alum. Craig describes it as “The Truman Show” for the web.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:55 - by Natan EdelsburgGhost Bikes in NYC from Kaela Rae Jensen on Vimeo.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:14 - by Kaela Rae Jensen
If you want to be a part of something publicized and demeaning, and reality shows just aren’t your bag, perhaps a pageant is perfect for you. Anyone who lives in Brooklyn or has ever even heard of it knows of the G train, and there’s a new title to win–”Miss G Train.”
The G train is a disgrace. It runs erratically, it runs only in Brooklyn and part of Queens, it only has four cars. But it’s the only way to get from Williamsburg to Park Slope or from Red Hook to Greenpoint, so like the town bicycle, Brooklynites are required to ride it at least once in their lives. If you would like to be the beauty who represents this miracle of public transportation, you can send a sexylicious photograph and a 200-word essay to missgtrain@cityreliquary.org. Oh, and this isn’t your promiscuous grandmother’s pageant, it’s open to all ages–and all genders. Get in touch with your ambiguous side–and do the G train proud.
Don’t forget, FreeWilliamsburg is looking for a contestant on the inside if you’re into that sort of thing. So kinky.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:12 - by Kaela Rae JensenIt’s been a rough week for the NYU community, so let’s attempt to remember the lovelier side of life with a little G rated Presidential pornography. The White House Flickr stream hosts an epic collection of photos of our outrageously photogenic First Family, and it never fails to leave me swooning. Below is a gallery of some of the most “awwww!”-inducing photos. Babies and puppies!
We all get confused with technology sometimes. For some of us, this means trying to upload photos to Facebook and not understanding the “server error” that pops up every third album or so. For others, it’s starting their own blog, switching to iPhones, or cross-dressing in front of poorly-rendered iChat backdrops. But the New York Times knows that one group of people just, heh, doesn’t understand!
See, we all think that old people only care about technology if it involves “medical monitoring and protection against falls.” I assume this is what the Times means. But old people actually share technological motivation with another often overlooked by Silicon Valley: babies. The Times recommends downloading software to simplify desktops, since “Changes like fewer buttons, color-coded commands and larger type ease the Windows experience.” Also, if you cut their American-cheese-and-ketchup sandwiches into funny shapes, they’ll gobble them up! Oh, you olds. What else can you surprise me with?
Thursday, November 5, 2009 10:00 - by Josh BeckerJosh and Kenny have already noted the passage of Prop 1 in Maine and Bloomberg’s narrow victory earlier this week, but there were some other noteworthy races going on. Let’s see how they shook out.
New Jersey Gubernatorial: The above video is, of course, the loathsome Chris Christie declaring victory over the also pretty loathsome Democratic incumbent, John Corzine. The polls had been neck and neck therefor a while, but Christie eked out a victory in the end, demonstrating that all the money and fat jokes in the world can’t help an unpopular incumbent during a poor economy. This must have been a disappointment for the White House, which put a lot behind the campaign.
Virginia Gubernatorial: Another Republican victory here, and by a significantly larger margin. But the conventional wisdom is that Democratic candidate R. Creigh Deeds never had a prayer in the first place (VA’s not a blue stronghold yet), and the grassroots weren’t terribly enthused about him, so no biggie.
Continue…
Disclaimer: we admit that this week’s City Calendar post is lacking in actually worthwhile events. Don’t blame us, blame New York or your own high expectations.
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
In an effort to drum up publicity for their joint-film venture The People Speak, Matt Damon and Howard Zinn are coming to speak at NYU on November 12th at 2pm at the Cooper Union Great Hall. The film is a dramatic and musical reenactment of historical US documents and speeches of “Americans who spoke up for social change throughout US history,” and is based on Zinn’s widely-acclaimed The People’s History of the United States (a book a high school history teacher of mine once deemed “too liberal” to include on a source list). For US history nerds, it’s a dream come true, but for those of you who didn’t spend your junior year in grueling study sessions striving for a 5 on the APUSH exam, several celebrities (aside from Damon) are also affiliated with the project–Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Josh Brolin, to name a few. The event will consist of live performances, audience discussions and preview clips of the film. Registration is free, but you have to RSVP here, so make sure you do it soon since space is limited. The People Speak premieres on The History Channel on December 13th at 8pm.
In light of last night’s off-year elections, it seems an appropriate time to zoom back to the Halcyon days of the 2008 election cycle. Remember all that excitement during the campaign? All the hope? All the classic Sarah Palin videos? When John McCain said, “The fundamentals of the economy are sound?”
Ah, good times.
Anyway, I got to feeling curious about which of our fine professors and administrators decided to put their money where their mouth was and donated money to the Presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle. The results are pretty epic.
Using the Huffington Post’s FundRace tool, which aggregates the Federal Election Committee’s list of $200+ donations to single Presidential candidates, I searched for those people listing either “New York University” or “NYU” as their employer.
Of 312 donors (giving at least $200), 306 of them gave to Democratic candidates. That means that only 1.9% of the donors gave to Republicans. Donor list after the jump.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 16:19 - by Charlie Eisenhood
Well, here we are: 0 for 31. That’s gay marriage’s track record when put up for statewide referendum in this country, which is to say, in 31 states that have put the issue of same-sex marriage up for vote, it’s been voted into illegality every single time. Maine was supposed to be different. So was California.
Some people are claiming this as a sign, as a resounding referendum on this nation’s views of same-sex marriage. You know what? It’s hard to argue with that. Gay marriage isn’t gay rights; it’s the thorniest splinter of the thorniest national social issue this side of abortion.
That’s an important distinction. Those who worry about the “silent majority” of gay rights opponents, the people you rarely meet in the city but see in the news holding signs and public prayers, have little to fear. America does not oppose gay rights. Or, to be more specific, a majority of this country does not oppose ensuring that queer citizens receive the same rights as anyone else. That’s a fact, yes.
I was really sad about Maine; in a way, sadder than California, because Cali was such a national moment, where God’s children screamed at San Francisco loud enough to bring fear back to the state. Coming on the heels of Barack Obama’s election, nobody really had time to feel sad about California. Sure, some of us were disgusted and appalled by the results, so disappointed to see California vote to deny its gay citizens the right to marry. But it was the dawn of a new day! Obama would walk into the White House, so many of us believed, and with a wave of that magic wand he used to rocket himself to victory in the election, he’d make this country understand that gays and lesbians were alright.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 12:03 - by Josh Becker
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