theMediaman.com

While bathroom graffiti is usually of some entertainment, it has become rare to find anything of note.  Although my first interest is often sparked by the inexplicable concept that someone went to the bathroom with a pen-in-hand, most of this modern philosophy has been reduced to three words or less.

When was the last time you saw a paragraph (ie. more than one sentence) composed on the toilet stall? For me it’s been a while. It occurs to me that with the proliferation of Web 2.0, everyone in the blogosphere is simultaneously getting their fifteen minutes of fame. Instead of this resulting in the celebrity of a singular “You”, it instead results in the celebrity of the collective “You” as observed by the Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year for 2006.

We have a louder voice, but our thoughts are more anonymous than ever.

The bathroom walls are more barren than they once were. Perhaps people are carrying fewer pens than they did in the 90’s? Instead of searching for the longest restroom comprehensive effort, I find myself instead looking for the ones written in Sharpie instead of ballpoint.

I figure that someone who brings a Sharpie with them to the washroom must have a piece of momentary universal clarity that could be lost before he reaches an Internet connection, allowing it to fade back into the cosmic ether from which it spawned.

Unfortunately, since I usually only frequent pubs and sports bars, that ‘clarity’ is often nothing more than “HABS SUK BAWLS”

Following a difficult search for last year’s Die Hard movie at the Blockbuster, I just dug it off the “Previously Viewed” shelf and paid the $6.99 to take it home. It wasn’t until later that I realized I was searching the shelves in the “D” section, while the full name of the movie catalogs it under “L”, “Live Free or Die Hard”.

This leads to yet another observation on movie nominclature, and how casual films that start with letters early in the alphabet probably do better than those in the latter part.

Where the theory fails is movies with star power. Just one week after an article asking “Who Killed The Movie Star?“, Will Smith’s poorly reviewed Hancock had a 100-plus million dollar opening weekend (al beit “extended” and “holiday” weekend). In these circumstances people are going to the theatre, already set on seeing Hancock.

Where the theory has legs is when your movie has a little star power, but is more likely to fall in the field of, “I feel like a movie, what’s playing?” For example, I was surprised to find that “Don’t Mess With The Zohan” is actually named “YOU Don’t Mess With The Zohan“. I’m confident that there would have been more casual movie viewers had the title placed it in the front half of the movie listings. Placement BEFORE instead of AFTER “Iron Man” could mean the difference between life and death in the first few months of this year’s summer movie season. No doubt there were many conversations this May/June as such:

“Do you want to see a movie?”

“Sure. Get the movie listings. What’s playing?”

“Umm… Chronicles of Narnia, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Harold & Kumar, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, Sex and the City, and You Don’t Mess With The Zohan.”

Movie theatres list showtimes alphabetically by movie name. However, I doubt that any Hollywood producers have caught on yet, or else all movies would be named like in the Yellow Pages; once you get past the advertising, everyone will call “A1 Plumbers” because they’re first in the book.

“Zohan’s Plumbing” won’t do very well at all, and “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan’s Plumbing” won’t fare much better.

A bad pun I had to create a posting for just to use it.

The company Syl’s working for, Dynacon, is putting a Micro-satellite into orbit with help from the CSA. Very cool. I’ve never worked for a company Slashdot-worthy.

I kind of pictured a “Micro-satellite” as something that looks like the Hubble Space Telescope but about the size of my thumbnail… like a scale model or something that got caught in a shrink ray.

Instead, ‘NEOSSat will be the size of a large suitcase‘. Com’on! This thing tracks killer asteroids! Get more imaginative! At least put some bumper stickers on it.

Either way, it’s pretty cool whenever something you’ve worked on gets applied to the real world space.

Edit July 2, 2008: Updated to correct nomenclature and past/future tense.

Following the dismissal of Peter Silverman and the final nail in the coffin of Speakers Corner, it’s been announced that Ed The Sock is also leaving the recently purchased station.

While it’s reasonable to think that Silverman can relax in a belated retirement his services have been invaluable to many “small guys” around the city, even helping out Simone’s parents at one point.

Speakers Corner has been absent for a year or two while the Queen and John corner has been undergoing renovations (although it turns out the episodes are still airing) The outright cancellation isn’t too shocking. However, they’ll soon move into the busiest pedestrian corner in this part of Canada. Why announce that they want to chop it?

Steve Kerzner (aka. Ed The Sock) is accepting it graciously, and I think in the ten years since I hosted the most popular site on the web dedicated to him (including his own, official site), I imagine he’s become tired of the role. What he could do with the character peaked years ago and has sort of lived on in spite of that.

An additional irony is the fact that Ed got his start on the Rogers community channel.

If they were replacing it with good material, then I could understand. Instead, Rogers is just positioning the cross-Canada CityTV stations with American syndicated shows that were rejected by Global and CTV. Pretty much the entire CityTV line-up is crappy Reality TV (not even “good” Reality TV).

My brother, John, hypothisized that the next thing that established CityTV as a unique broadcaster of niche content, Baby Blue movies, might be the next thing to go.

With my cable already cancelled, how could I further protest if such a horror were to come to pass?!?

Playing with the random entry link, I found this post I made a while ago. I’ve noticed that my last several posts have numbered between two and three billion words each (or so it feels if you’re reading them), and postitioned once every week or two. So I’m going to try to return to making more innane comments on stuff I see around me… more frequently and under 100 words or so.

Damn. I think I’m already closing in on 100… well, here’s my comment then:

Edward Norton is a good actor, but thoroughly unconvincing as a “smart guy“.