One of my favorite tv commercials ever. Done by Ogilvy & Mather, from the late 90s. The music is “Female of the Species,” by Space, from their album Spiders.
“Responsibility,” my teenaged son opined recently, “means being the person everyone yells at.”
Illustration by mitopencourseware
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, which recently celebrated its 1-year anniversary, continues to impress me with its no-b.s., conversational, audience-participation format. Writer / actor / comedian / Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson sat down with Pollak on June 20.
The resulting 90 minutes must surely be Ferguson’s most personal, frank, revealing interview ever. Sure, he talks about Shark Week and The Drew Carey Show and his own late night show – but he also talks about sobriety, fear of flying, his mother and WWII, and much more. If you’re a fan (I am, obviously) – it’s riveting stuff.
From the KPCS site, you can use the pull-down menu on the right to access any of the other shows from Pollak’s 4-dozen-plus episode archive. He interviews actors, writers, musicians, executives, poker players, with no project-plugging in sight. Previous guests include Hank Azaria, Craig Bierko, Felicia Day, Annie Duke, Eddie Izzard, Liza Loeb, Curt Smith, and Titus Welliver. You can also get the show in podcast form from iTunes and on TiVo (if your setup permits).
Those following this blog for some time know that my husband and I try to follow a predominantly animal-free diet. We do this for health reasons. We occasionally and selectively enjoy cheese, ice cream, and very occasionally some seafood, poultry or meat. But our preference is for fruit, veggies, legumes and grains.
Our college-student son, however, is pretty firmly ensconced in the “I’ll have a milkshake and a burger” camp. And since he only spends a few months out of the year with us, we try to find eateries that will let all of us dine according to our preference. That’s not always easy. But today we found a great option that’s been under our noses all along: Swingers.
Sure, it has all the diner ‘tude and all the diner staples: shakes, fries, BLTs, pancakes, chilis. But it also has a multitude of tasty vegan and veggie options, including wraps, salads, even vegan pancakes. You can check out their menu online if you’re interested.
Swingers has two locations: one in Santa Monica (Lincoln & Broadway) and another on Beverly about midway between the Beverly Center and The Grove. We’ll be back!
… when you and your spouse are trying to remember the name of an obscure place in New York, but can’t, so you give up. And hours later, one of you remembers the name, calls out just one word across the house, and the other answers, “right!”
Everyone has his or her own policy about following people on Twitter. Here’s mine: I follow accounts that speak to my personal and/or professional interests. They can be news feeds; fellow entertainment and media types; punsters; those who share my hobbies and passions; public figures I admire; friends of friends. But there’s always a specific reason and intent that I follow. I don’t automatically follow back everyone who follows me, for a number of reasons:
Interests are asynchronous. Just because I’m interested in what you have to tweet doesn’t mean you’re interested in what I tweet. The reverse holds true. We’re all grownups (or should be). I do generally reply to people who @ me even if I’m not following them. The reverse often holds true. It’s not a matter of hurting feelings. It’s just life.
Many of the accounts that (attempt to) follow me are spammers or bots. It’s easy enough to determine this; on the email notification about the follow, they have few to no followers, few to no tweets, and are following hundreds of people. Not only don’t they get a follow back, they get an automatic block.
The best tools in the world won’t help you sip from a fire hose. Unless you’re spending all day on Twitter (and I know some do), it’s just not possible to follow the tweets of several thousand – or tens of thousands – of people. You could decide to pay attention only to the ones who mention you, of course, but you can do that without following them. You can separate them into groups in a 3rd-party app like TweetDeck- but you could do the same thing by creating a list and checking it periodically. And you don’t need to be following someone to add them to a list.
Indiscriminate following leads to spams and auto-DMs. Most of the people I see complaining about spams and DMs are people who follow everyone who follows them, or who follow accounts without regard to the “quality” of the account.
Privacy. Anyone you follow can send you a DM. My preference is to limit that channel of communication to the extent possible.
Should everyone practice this philosophy? Not necessarily. Anyone using Twitter as a customer service tool shouldn’t, for example. Many customers prefer to communicate via direct message – and many companies would prefer that grievances be aired through private channels.
However, this is the way I currently manage my twitter feed with respect to follows. What’s yours?
One of my favorite cartoons, ever:
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Wzzy's World by Arlene Wszalek is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
