The Weekly Hat – Number Fourteen
Hi there.
As Sunday morning dawns, the Weekly Hat looms over the horizon. We have some thrilling digital news this week, as well as an alarmingly up-to-date movie review and some MURDER! All very exciting, I hope.
This is probably the place to warn ye that next week’s Hat could potentially be late, as I am moving house on the Saturday. It depends how much material I get done in advance and whether my computer gives me any trouble when I try to connect it to the internet. Oh, and I should probably start packing soon.
And this week…
- Digital books – They don’t exist: A brave look at emerging media! (not really)
- Murder, I write: Somewhat of a rant/moan, fuelled by the trouble I had finding a news story for this week that didn’t involve teenagers killing one another.
- Media and stuff: Comments upon the movie Funny People, the purchase of Marvel by Disney, Mad Men, other things…
- Behatted Photo Of The Week: One of the stars of this week’s movie pick takes a Behatting.
Digital books – They don’t exist
I’ve been following with interest the various developments in digital technology which have apparently been revolutionising the way we read books. As someone who has recently started reading novels again after a brief gap (of ten or twenty years), and a huge nerd, I’d be more than interested in some crazy digital books initiative as long as it was convenient.
So, what I’m really saying is, I see pictures of Americans fiddling with their Amazon Kindle things, I read the obsessive articles about them in Wired and I burn with jealousy. Because they rely on some wireless technology we apparently don’t have, we can’t yet have them. (Although rumours that the day is coming fly around, combined with mutterings that the problem is less tech-based and more related to the tedious web of mobile operators we have here, all of whom have to be negotiated with individually.)
And, meanwhile, competitors start dishing up their products, such as the Sony Reader, and no doubt they hope to be able to leap into the European market before Amazon can get themselves in there and scoop up that eager audience. (Which… probably won’t include me as I’m far too cheap to pay whatever ridiculous price they’ll probably want when it first comes out.)
Whilst that’s all happening, it isn’t why the digitisation of literature has been in the news this week. This week’s story has been the continuing legal troubles of the Google Books programme, in which the cuddliest evil empire ever try to get every book in the history of the planet scanned and available online. (Except for the ones whose authors won’t let them.)
Some people claim that Google having control of this massive store of information isn’t a good idea simply because of the massive monopoly on information they will have. Between their huge indexing operation to power their search engine, their recording our preferences for advertising, storing our emails, the websites we visit and apparently screening our telephone calls for us (only in the US, sadly), they more or less know anything. I’m not convinced even the terrifying Big Brothers in the security services have that much raw data on tap.
Of course, quite aside from the information privacy issue, there’s the argument that monopolies are bad, which they almost certainly are. Having all books everywhere digitised and controlled by one company has a few obvious downsides from a pure intellectual standpoint. More details in this BBC story, including the inevitable (yet still hilarious) detail that most of the people who oppose this coming to fruition are those who would probably like to get their own competing system out there, including the afore-mentioned Amazon.
Personally, I’m just excited about all this stuff, as I think the digital revolution will come for other media, just as it has come for music, television and movies, and I’m curious to see how. I am, however, willing to give them time to get it right. And on that fairly mundane note, we move on.
Murder, I write
Okay, I was going to use this as my lead, but it was just too bloody depressing. Basically, whilst looking for a news story to put at the head of the Hat this week, I had great trouble finding something which didn’t involve murder. There’s a lot of murder isn’t there? Teenagers shooting one another, stabbing and so forth? And the ones who aren’t doing the shooting or stabbing are luring others to be shot or stabbed with their feminine wiles.
Now, I don’t generally get too annoyed by this. Hell, I’ve made many a horrific joke about it in my time. (Earlier today, in fact.) But come on. Cut that shit out. It’s just bloody miserable. Who could forget the exciting story of a woman calling her boyfriend to a supermarket to “deal with” some bloke who accused her of queue-jumping, only for him to punch the accuser so hard that he hit his head and subsequently died. Oh, and he punched the wrong bloke anyway.
Fucking lovely. I’m also a bit annoyed by how many of these stories have the phrase “in South London” in their opening sentence. I live in Nunhead, an area adjoining Peckham blessed with slightly less depressing crime statistics, and mostly avoid it myself, but it’s often nearby. I mean, I read about someone getting shot up the arse on my bus route a while back, and I almost didn’t find it funny. That’s how bad this has gotten.
Come on, teenagers of South London. Stop killing one another, in the name of keeping my good mood up and stopping the Weekly Hat from being this downbeat every week. You can do it. We believe in you.
Media and stuff
- I saw Funny People, a new movie written and directed by Judd Apatow, earlier this week, and found it to be to my liking. This came as a mild shock to me, as I’ve found Adam Sandler infuriating in every film I’ve ever seen him in, but people had correctly declared this to be a rare mature and well-rounded performance from him. He’s playing a famous comedian who keeps starring in unfunny movies despite his genuine talent, satirising either himself or Eddie Murphy in the process, with a bunch of wannabe comics surrounding him, headed by Seth Rogen. And although it’s a bit of an indulgent saga, continuing for 150 minutes and going on an odd tangent in the final hour, it swept me along well enough. This is definitely more of a drama with jokes than a comedy, but it’s a fine, affecting one.
- In reasonably big media news this week, Disney have bought Marvel Entertainment Group, including Marvel Comics. I did consider doing a whole long piece on this, until I stepped back, took a look at the facts and realised that all we really knew was… well, the first sentence of this paragraph. Many other words have been typed about it, but they’re mostly speculation. Hopefully the comics will continue to exist in some form, although some changes are probably inevitable. DC Comics, Marvel’s main rival, has been owned by the enormous Warner Brothers corporation for decades, but still manages to function as a normal comics publisher, so everything may not be lost. We’ll have to wait and see.
- I’ve now reached the halfway point in my Mad Men season one DVD set. In fact, I’ve gone one episode over it. This drama about New York ad men in the sixties has emerged over the last year or two as the latest American show that I “simply have to watch”. Previous holders of the title include The Wire, West Wing and Dexter, and it’s hard to argue with the point as they now number among my favourite shows. It does, however, lead to high expectations when I start a new one.
And Mad Men is… well, it’s a slow burner, certainly becoming more interesting as it goes along, although for pure entertainment value, I’d probably rather watch the others. But as I go through episodes, slowly peeling back the characters, I feel compelled to find out what happens next. It’s like a soap opera, only well written and acted and stuff. And beautifully shot, it has to be said. Some have commented that Mad Men is a triumph of style over substance, prioritising attractive camera work and period details over plot momentum, and although I think there is sufficient interesting plot in there, there’s a hell of a lot of the other two as well. - Release notes: The Brendan Benson album I reviewed a few weeks back based on an early stream is now in shops, and can be heard on Spotify as well. It’s pretty good fun for those who like that kind of poppyness. Spotify users can also hear the new Internet Leaks EP by “Weird Al” Yankovic, containing the new songs I covered previously, and some others. Both of those do come recommended.
Behatted Photo Of The Week
To celebrate his creation of a movie I don’t hate, this week’s victim is Adam Sandler (human), accompanied by Skate (hat). If you view the original photo, you may note he was originally wearing a more mundane hat, but I hacked it out with Photoshop to stop the picture looking (too) ridiculous.
The Print Of Squint: Original photo obtained from brendoman on Flickr. Both the original and the above abomination are covered by the same Creative Commons Licence.
August 24th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
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