Have you ever heard of a “test” store? I hadn’t until yesterday (Aug. 25, 2010). Abercrombie & Fitch supposedly has one in downtown San Diego. Shopping there meant spending 20 percent more on a pair of sweatpants for my daughter than at another store a few miles away.
Five days ago, I quietly turned on commenting two months after turning it off. Comments are temporarily back at my personal website. Perhaps this second stage of experimentation will lead to my making comments a permanent fixture or instead giving John Gruber the apology I promised should the commenting feature be permanently removed. I’m still wondering if John’s approach might be right.
Before my mid-June post “Be a Man, John Gruber,” his blog had no commenting system, while mine offered Disqus. I insisted that “his no-comments approach is out of place in an era when so many Websites or services provide discussion tools and encourage readers/viewers to use them.” There was much more to the reasoning. Read the post to get it all.
This week I got PR email about new “True Blood” comics, and I received Rolling Stone issue 1112 with cast members from the HBO series on the cover. Suddenly, an idea came to me for a different, modern vampire drama. Here is the plotline of the story I’d tell:
In an interview published today in the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt lays out the next stage in his company’s ambitious plan to replace human agency with automated data processing, freeing us all […]
My cousin Dan emailed several old photos he recently obtained while vacationing in Maine. That’s me, probably age 11, but only a guess. The newspaper’s date isn’t visible. I don’t recall the photo or its taking but the shot must have been posed by either my father or uncle. I don’t read French. (Le Soleil was published out of Quebec City. This evening, a quick Web search left me wondering if the newspaper still exists.)
In March 2009, I asked “The China Question,” highlighting shocking parallels between the 1920s and `00s (the “Noughties”). Both decades similarly started off and ended, with boom and bust. Other parallels show how quickly an empire collapses—the Brits during early last century and quite possibly the yanks during this decade.
I resurface the post in context of incessant chatter about China’s increasing global economic dominance and America’s growing mountain of debt. Additionally, the United States is close to entering a double-dip recession, if it’s not there already. Recent economic indicators are disconcerting. China has largely exited the global recession fairly unscathed, while the United States is an economy divided: Public companies are reporting record profits, while the American public struggles to relieve record debt.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlXJR7O2rjI] My concluding “Kill Shakespeare” interview segment is suddenly existential. During San Diego Comic-Con 2010, I chatted with “Kill Shakespeare” artist/illustrator Andy Belanger and creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. Anthony and […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YuBaZ_DTsU] It’s a world exclusive. Act III of my interview with “Kill Shakespeare” artist/illustrator Andy Belanger and creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery introduces upcoming content. “Kill Shakespeare” is a comics/graphic novel […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBdpNx0QaiY] The second part of my San Diego Comic-Con 2010 interview with “Kill Shakespeare” creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery provides insight into the characters and to critics’ reaction. Surprising: Some Shakespeare […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FasEBYDkGw4]
Finally—and it took too long—I edited the 18-minute video interview with “Kill Shakespeare” artist/illustrator Andy Belanger and creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. We chatted during San Diego Comic-Con 2010. They reimage the Bard’s characters in a good versus evil hunt for Shakespeare. You’ll never think of Hamlet the same way again.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhtnpEuRqEg] Here is my third video interview from San Diego Comic-Con 2010 (but fourth recorded). I’ll finish editing and posting the other videos by end of week. Here, I speak with “Nemu Nemu” […]
At least my analysis is honest and public. Who are you but another anonymous commenter with crappy attitude? You want to be taken seriously—to engage in real discussion—start by crawling out from behind the rock […]