Archive for November, 2005

25 November, 2005 | No comments

Ready Set OK Go FUNNY music video

Happy Thanksgiving.

Now your full of family and turkey and pie and watching television AND now maybe you’ve decided to web surf home for the holidays to your favorite media literacy website N1L… kisses and hugs all around… I’ve decided to follow the shortsitting tradition here at N1L on Turkey day to put up a funny great hilarious wonderful video from the band OK Go check out their video “A Million Ways” Dance it is hilarious. makes me laugh even when i’m stuffed with stuffing

22 November, 2005 | 8 comments

Wow Strep Throat makes me loopy

I have strep and am wrapped in layers of blankets and cats… and then I find out N1L gets Boing Boinged and I thought to myself, “Self you better put up a new blog to promote the rename Lawrence Lessig contest… ” His middle name also starts with an L by the way… just when you thought you knew everything about the prof his little sis sent me an email saying she is LLL initials too. There’s a little knowledge to drop at your next part-hey.

Also, I think my first blog explained what we here at N1L are doing or attempting to do pretty well… basically get people talking about the media. Sadly, we talk about media as related to politics and sometimes technology, but there’s lots more to be talked about… like Sponge Bob (I’m not kidding that lil cartoon was the highest grossing celeb on tv and the parasocial relationships we develop with celebrities are strongest with the kiddies and parents like to make kiddies happy and therefore Sponge Bob Square Pants and I need to Square off and discuss how he is influencing the economy… a parasocial relationship is a one way mediated relationship so we “feel” like we know Jon Stewart but we don’t it’s one way… he don’t know us… waaaaa waaaaa waaaaa but I love him and yet my love is unrequited)

AND if anybody is reading this and you have show ideas or suggestions or questions or money (I thought I’d just slip that in and see if I had any takers er um rather givers) then please shoot me an email.

The show two Friday’s from now with Noam is going to be called “Noam’s Listening” We are taking this Friday to show our Thanks for being proud American’s and spend the day shopping somewhere… anywhere… everywhere we can shop…

19 November, 2005 | No comments

Girls For A Change Conference

My mentor and friend the founder of the coolest Bay Area media program for teens Just Think invited me to participate in the annual Girls For A Change conference. Over 1300 Bay Area teens attended the conference and took various classes to empower them to create social change. It was so amazing, the girls were broken up into smaller groups of twenty or thirty and took various classes taught by other Bay Area women activists and artists.

Together Elana and I taught three sessions about body image and the media. I asked the girls about their favorite reality shows and they mentioned “Miss Seventeen” and “America’s Top Model” or MTV’s new hit “Laguna Beach.” First, question I asked was why do you think they chose Laguna Beach over any other city in the US… And their answer was “because the people are so pretty.” I explained to them it has much more to do with product placement, because in a wealthy town the products are already in the hands, on the bodies, or driven by member’s of the “cast.”

I then asked for an outgoing volunteer to be a model. To pretend she was modeling for her audition on “Miss Seventeen” or “America’s Next Top Model” I handed her the scarf and she strutted her stuff. Then I asked the other girls to help her out and give her directions. One yelled, “take your coat off” and I quipped, “an ideal way to model a scarf.”

I then asked for another volunteer to model a tape, a mini DV. The girl sat back down “I can’t model that, that’s not fair.” I asked for another volunteer “OK what about this and showed them the video camera.” I asked how many knew how to use a video camera, and in a class of thirty about three rose their hands. I then said how many of you could edit a piece, no hands were raised.

Elana and I then had the opportunity to say listen you are learning things from the media, you are learning what to look like, what a model should be, what pretty is… but you are not learning the tools to become the media. It was an incredible day, especially because the event was a few days after Halloween. I asked the girls what the costumes were like that other girls were wearing on Halloween. Everyone started shouting and a debate errupted about appropriate attire, and whether Halloween is just an “excuse” to dress like a “slut.” And one girl pointed out, “well, it’s the one day I can dress how I want and no one will call me a name. I can be sexy and look hot without being attacked and called a ‘whore’ and who doesn’t like the attention.” Elana Rosen, the amazing woman that she is, said there is no right or wrong answer to this because we want to feel sexy and pretty sometimes and that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but it’s about embracing the debate and showing all the layers and understanding the history of what brought us to this debate.

It’s very hard to actually point to any one aspect of media or our society and say that is why teenage girls dress like this on Halloween. It is, however, important to discuss the media and the images these teens are getting bombarded with, because teens are not little adults. The are developing minds and what they know of the media is what they get from the media, but there is more to the story… and if we really want to empower the young women of tomorrow maybe it’s not about giving them the right outfit or teaching them the right make up tricks, it’s about giving them a skill for their minds and a hobby for their soul. They are media literate, make no mistake, they know more about what is in and what is not then we do, because that is what teenage years are - it’s “me” verus “the world” and I have a zit but in magazines “they” don’t and on TV she is getting “hit on” but in school “I’m not.” It’s an insecure time for most, which is why it’s even more important to remind them they are right, in our society beauty may “feel” skin deep, but intelligence and creativity radiates from their mind and that is really what sexy is about… the many ways they move and shake their mind.

17 November, 2005 | No comments

NoOneslizzeling getting PRESS

I thought we were just pressed for time. I thought we were pressed for cash. I thought we pressed buttons (well Chris does most of that… I’m covered in invisible lil buttons… no he presses the buttons on the mixing board)… But we are getting real press. In a newspaper. Two sunday’s from now we will be featured in the Pink Section of The SF Chronicle… And by the Ben Fong-Torres.

Now I’ve gotten some mean haterade remarks about having interviewed the Clear Channel folks on the last show… but interviewing them is a terrific way to find out what the truth/or myths or whatever is out there… and it would be one thing if I avoided the controversial questions or issues but I did not and there was not one question which Kim Bryant Regional VP or Bob Agnew avioded or wouldn’t answer… they dealt with everything question and if you haven’t listened to the show listen before you comment because KQKE (one of the liberal stations here in SF) is owned and operated by CC and they started a new show called The Queer Channel which is progressive and cool.

The Koit interview was great but I listened all day for them to play Neil Diamond and nothing… nodda… zilch… no love for the Neil Diamond lover’s amongst us… they are the station that does all Xmas songs all the time and I want you to know… I love Christmas songs and I love them starting in the summer and I wish they would play all year although then maybe they would lose their sparkeling new ornament glow therefore I love KOIT

Ok and the funniest interview was with Jack Swanson from KGO (like the number one station in SF for 22 years or something and since he’s the program director he must be doing a few things right) who basically didn’t even bother to say No to my interview he simply hung up on me, and then I kept haunting him until he said Yes… and he did… and he busts on me the whole interview but that’s ok because he’s a busy guy and I think he was just running me through the mud to see if I could keep walking… I could not, but luckily the mud did not effect my voice quality…

15 November, 2005 | No comments

Chris the Reducer

Author Jesse Walker recently blogged on his site about a phenomenon that occurs occasionally on No One’s Listening. This typically happens when Irene is left to her own devices, unsupervised, to conduct an interview. She’ll engage the subject in a discussion that can go on for 45 minutes or more, knowing full well that we have space to air 10-15 minutes on our show. Then I am left with the unenviable task of chopping and slashing down to the desired length. She is also recording the interview from home, and her voice comes out 10 times louder than the interviewee, and distorted.

So, what’s a poor producer to do, at 10 PM before the show airs the following morning? Usually the guest gives enough great information for 2 or 3 segments. Plus, Irene sounds like a backup vocalist at a Laibach concert. A lot of times it means that Irene winds up on the cutting room floor! I figure the whole point of the interview is to pick the brain of our guest, so I like to let them talk. This reduces Irene to the role of occasionally interjecting a few distorted, monosyllabic affirmations. We discussed this briefly (mp3) during an interview that we conducted today for this Friday’s show. And we laughed about her non-role in Jesse’s interview on the M train all the way from State to downtown.

So, I take full responsibility for the steamroller effect, with minor apologies. But any opportunity to have a laugh at Irene’s expense is OK by me.

10 November, 2005 | No comments

Radi -set - ello? Ham it up Radio style

I want to get certified as a NERT person that is like a disaster trained person so if the big one ever hit (no not Stephen hitting me on the RW) the other big one hit I would be all ready and if you take the course they give you a hard hat with a light on it… NERT stands for national emergency response team I don’t know what they sit for though… i’m here all blog ladies and germaphobes so get comfy

HAM RADIO - Not your average pink hand held strawberry shortcake boom box

We are going to have a ham radio guy on the air… I did not know what ham radio was I thought it was someone that made a radio using a ham… like a science experiment sound can travel through a dead pig… but no ham radio is CB radio stuff… I want one.. breaker breaker this is N1L

Did you know they were the ONLY people that could communicate during the Katrina disaster and over 1000 ham radioster people went down to New Orleans… pretty rad.. so N1L in a long tradition of no tradition have decided to create tofurkey radio for all the vegans/vegitarians out there that would like help during a disaster we will come rescue you in our boats made of slim tofurkey Jim

This radio show is going to be about radio. Do you know what mediated reality existed before radio? What? I’m sorry… I can’t hear you with all this SILENCE… that’s right that’s the answer to the question before radio if a tree fell in the woods and no one was there not only would it not make a noise but nothing would… not even a mouse and you know how wild and chit chatty loud those mice can be…

i like… the dot dot dot thing… i sort of finish a thought… sort of move on…

2 November, 2005 | No comments

The Show Must Go On… Eventually

We’re off the air this week, but fortunately it’s for strictly great reasons! Irene is speaking in San Jose at the Girls for a Change annual summit. Not to be outdone, Skye and I are packing up and heading for the Channel Islands (which is where? anyone?) to participate in the Media Arts Festival.
Regardless, we’ll be back in town with plenty of time to put together next week’s show. Well, unless Skye wins a festival award, changes her name, disowns us and starts sipping Pellegrino through a diamond-encrusted straw. Even if that happens, the rest of us will somehow find a ride home. And you know we’ll have the recorders handy and ready to capture anything funy, interesting or bizarre to include in next week’s show.
Wish us luck!