Screenshot from the new promo for the latest cultural nadir from ABC,
the "I'm Embarrassed To Be An American" game-show "Wipeout." How ironic
and appropriate that the mud the show is apparently flinging on the
network logo looks instead like an impenetrable layer of shit rapidly
coating it. I couldn't agree more, ABC. I couldn't agree more.
I was reminded randomly tonight of a movie I haven't thought of in a long, long time: The absolutely terrifying 1980 Disney film The Watcher in the Woods, the first of their trilogy of early-'80s experiments into darker, more adult territory (along with the much better-known The Black Hole and Tron), this one in particular for some reason apparently swallowed whole by the black pit of history, never to be remembered nor referred to by overeducated hipsters again. And sure enough, all it took was a simple search at YouTube to even find the exact freaking 1980 TV commercial that used to scare the living piss out of me when I was eleven years old, linked to above for your creepy-ass pleasure. What a movie just begging for a newfound re-discovery and cult appreciation, I'm telling you.
I've talked about this before at the blog for my arts organization, but I had an experience recently that reminded me again of how much my little 1-gig iPod Shuffle is much like a commercial radio station these days, as far as what kind of music is on it and how quickly that music gets replaced. I'll explain...
This all started with a challenge to myself at the end of 2007, to as quickly as possible get all my crappy old grandpa '80s and '90s indie-rock music off my Shuffle, because I had grown so tired of it and so disgusted at my middle-aged self, and replaced with brand-new contemporary indie-rock as quickly as possible (oh, and all music I liked, not just going out and grabbing big handfuls of random music and throwing it on my Shuffle). And for those who don't know, once you partition some space on a 1-gig Shuffle for several hours of podcasts, you're left with the ability to hold around 150 pop songs, or roughly eight hours' worth, which then makes the $79 thing provide nearly the same exact thing as a commercial adult-contemporary radio station; that is, if I worked at an office, I could take my Shuffle with me, plug it into the speakers in my cubicle, and be presented with an entire work day's worth of music without ever repeating a song, even served up in a different random order each day like an actual radio station, simply without DJ banter or commercials, and of course with me being the one-man programming director answering only to a one-man audience. (For those who don't know, I wrote all year about this challenge in 2008, and eventually published a free eBook collecting all the essays, for those who would like to read a lot more.)
But it's not just the total amount of music that makes the experience much like a radio station, nor that Shuffles are literally named after their random-play "shuffle" abilities; in my particular case, my iPod just happens to be loaded as well with radio-friendly singles by a whole plethora of bands, instead of me just dumping entire CDs on it at once. And that's because I get 95 percent of my music from free online legal sources, a total now of something like 15 music blogs and "song of the day" podcasts; and how that works is that I simply let all the music stack up during the week, then on a Saturday afternoon sort through it all at once, while also checking out bands' websites and YouTube videos, etc etc, making the whole thing an exercise in play instead of so-called work (but more on this in last year's book). And this just happens to work out when all is said and done to around 5 to 15 new songs each week that I keep, roughly a CD's worth, after spending that Saturday afternoon sampling the hundred or so new songs that have come in that week, which means that every Saturday I also remove 5 to 15 older songs on the Shuffle, to make room for these new ones; and so not only is my iPod loaded with brand-new radio-style singles just like a radio station, but about an hour's worth is being removed from "heavy rotation" every single week and an hour's worth of new music is being added.
And as you can imagine, the older a song gets, the more tempting it becomes to remove it from the Shuffle, which is what actually led me to the accidental realization recently that reminded me of all this again. Because this being Sunday, just yesterday I got done going through this entire afternoon ritual again, a real highlight of my week where I get to sit around doing nothing but fun stuff (checking out music, checking out videos, reading book reviews, reviewing new Flickr group photos); and adding up how much music was now on there after the latest weekly changeover, the numbers just happened to break down in the following way by month:
March 2009: 51 songs
February 2009: 26 songs
January 2009: 14 songs
Older: ~50 songs
Total: Around 140 songs, or eight hours' worth
And I thought, how interesting, that just by accident I have just about half as many songs still on there from two months ago as I do from last month, and then half again when you go back three months; and that these three months added together just happen to neatly total two-thirds of all the music on the Shuffle altogether, with the last third being basically ideosyncratic choices from my back library, based on my mood that particular month. How weird that these ratios too just happen to mirror very closely how most programming directors approach their own 150 songs currently in heavy rotation, and how without me even meaning to I had reached these levels just based on personal interest in any particular song.
Anyway, just a random thought I had this weekend, so thought I'd jot it down. Toodle-ooh!
This all started with a challenge to myself at the end of 2007, to as quickly as possible get all my crappy old grandpa '80s and '90s indie-rock music off my Shuffle, because I had grown so tired of it and so disgusted at my middle-aged self, and replaced with brand-new contemporary indie-rock as quickly as possible (oh, and all music I liked, not just going out and grabbing big handfuls of random music and throwing it on my Shuffle). And for those who don't know, once you partition some space on a 1-gig Shuffle for several hours of podcasts, you're left with the ability to hold around 150 pop songs, or roughly eight hours' worth, which then makes the $79 thing provide nearly the same exact thing as a commercial adult-contemporary radio station; that is, if I worked at an office, I could take my Shuffle with me, plug it into the speakers in my cubicle, and be presented with an entire work day's worth of music without ever repeating a song, even served up in a different random order each day like an actual radio station, simply without DJ banter or commercials, and of course with me being the one-man programming director answering only to a one-man audience. (For those who don't know, I wrote all year about this challenge in 2008, and eventually published a free eBook collecting all the essays, for those who would like to read a lot more.)
But it's not just the total amount of music that makes the experience much like a radio station, nor that Shuffles are literally named after their random-play "shuffle" abilities; in my particular case, my iPod just happens to be loaded as well with radio-friendly singles by a whole plethora of bands, instead of me just dumping entire CDs on it at once. And that's because I get 95 percent of my music from free online legal sources, a total now of something like 15 music blogs and "song of the day" podcasts; and how that works is that I simply let all the music stack up during the week, then on a Saturday afternoon sort through it all at once, while also checking out bands' websites and YouTube videos, etc etc, making the whole thing an exercise in play instead of so-called work (but more on this in last year's book). And this just happens to work out when all is said and done to around 5 to 15 new songs each week that I keep, roughly a CD's worth, after spending that Saturday afternoon sampling the hundred or so new songs that have come in that week, which means that every Saturday I also remove 5 to 15 older songs on the Shuffle, to make room for these new ones; and so not only is my iPod loaded with brand-new radio-style singles just like a radio station, but about an hour's worth is being removed from "heavy rotation" every single week and an hour's worth of new music is being added.
And as you can imagine, the older a song gets, the more tempting it becomes to remove it from the Shuffle, which is what actually led me to the accidental realization recently that reminded me of all this again. Because this being Sunday, just yesterday I got done going through this entire afternoon ritual again, a real highlight of my week where I get to sit around doing nothing but fun stuff (checking out music, checking out videos, reading book reviews, reviewing new Flickr group photos); and adding up how much music was now on there after the latest weekly changeover, the numbers just happened to break down in the following way by month:
March 2009: 51 songs
February 2009: 26 songs
January 2009: 14 songs
Older: ~50 songs
Total: Around 140 songs, or eight hours' worth
And I thought, how interesting, that just by accident I have just about half as many songs still on there from two months ago as I do from last month, and then half again when you go back three months; and that these three months added together just happen to neatly total two-thirds of all the music on the Shuffle altogether, with the last third being basically ideosyncratic choices from my back library, based on my mood that particular month. How weird that these ratios too just happen to mirror very closely how most programming directors approach their own 150 songs currently in heavy rotation, and how without me even meaning to I had reached these levels just based on personal interest in any particular song.
Anyway, just a random thought I had this weekend, so thought I'd jot it down. Toodle-ooh!
