Monday, February 19, 2007

You Know You're in Orange County When...

[FYI, I'm in Southern California this week and I'll be working from our Irvine office several days]

This is nothing new for me, but I can't help but make a mental list every time I'm down here. Keep in mind that I grew up in SoCal so I have special fun making light of this. Without further ado...a mix of good, bad, and funny things from my first 24 hours back....

You Know You're in Orange County When...
- You see more BMW 6 series coupes than Toyota Corolla's
- The corner mini mall with lunch eateries has lunchtime valet parking
- Otherwise normal looking men walk around with "Man Purses"
- The adults look like they belong on a daytime soap, the kids look like they belong on MTV. Take that for both the good and the bad :)
- Besides the guys behind the counter, I'm the only non-white person in Quiznos
- Besides my wife, I haven't seen another Indian person all day
- Going with the flow of non-rush hour traffic, my speedometer says 80 instead of 50. Yay!

Web 2.0 - Do you GET it?

You may have already seen this video. As of this posting, 1.2 million other people have already seen it.



Just a great visual representation of the potential Web 2.0. I'm not totally sold on the utility of video for most purposes, but in this case, a 4 min 31 sec video goes MUCH farther in explaining this than most text ever could. Obviously a much better use of video than stupid human tricks.



Thursday, February 15, 2007

Abhishwarya

That's the cheesy celeb couple nickname for Abhishek Bachchan & Aishwarya Rai. And if you've followed either of those links, you'll notice that people are gaga over their recent engagement. If you haven't bothered to follow the links here's the summary: Abhishek is the Prodigal Son of Bollywood, son of Amitabh Bachchan, who is the hands-down fave Bollywood actor of all time. Aishwarya is apparently TMBWITW (The Most Beautiful Woman in the World) who is at or near the top of the heap of Bollywood actresses.

I was just emailing with a friend yesterday on this topic and an interesting sub-text to this engagement. Before the official engagement, Indian news was filled with daily updates of their rumored pairing. Whereas US celeb news is filled with grainy photos of the couple running around on the beach or shopping together, the Indian news was filled with photos of the couple and the Bachchan family (or their cars) entering or leaving temple.

Huh?!

Temple?

That's right, the most telling news to confirm that these two were together was that they were going to temple for specific prayers. And the newscaster informed us that the prayers were specifically for Aishwarya.

Why?

Well, she's a working girl. No not a prostitute. But she works. For a living. And the Bachchan family apparently wasn't very happy with this situation and needed to address the situation before marriage so that the gods (and their forefather and all of India apparently) would be pleased.

So here's the interesting thing...Aish is obviously strong woman. She's gotten pretty far in her young life. Sure, she's a really bad actress and immensely annoying in interviews, especially in English, but heck, she started off as a wannabe model and is now a top actress earning millions. That's nothing to sneeze at.

But it is apparently something to spit at if you're a traditionally minded, conservative Indian. And that sort of surprised me. Even one of my cousins who I consider to be pretty liberal (she's divorced, remarried, and living in Bombay) had bad things to say about Aish and her working status.

What gives?

It could just be that people are tired of her. Or that they're jealous.

But after thinking about it some more I saw a true dichtomy (as with everything related to India, there's a dichtomy going on). In this case, it's basically two ways of thought on Aish's status and her actions. And I realized this situation is really an easy way of determining how liberated & emancipated an Indian is. Just ask what they're most annoyed about in this situation:

A) The fact that Aish would put herself through this religious nonsense just to marry Abhishek.

B) The fact that Aish is a working girl who doesn't plan to quit acting once she's married.

If you answered A, you're truly liberated and can't stand the thought of subjugating your very soul. Even though Aish talked the talk, she clearly can't walk the talk. Fuck her and this was her last chance. She's just another traditional Indian girl.

If you answered B, you're truly traditional and it just makes sense that Aish would agree to these religious things since it'll lead to a happier life. Hopefully she eventually realizes that her continued acting will look bad on the Bachchan family and she'll quit the biz. The interesting backstory to this is that when Amitabh got married to Jaya Badhuri, she quit acting, presumably to be a good housewife (and look on as her husband had a years-long affair with Rekha)

My friend? She's clearly in the A camp. This was Aish's last chance and she blew it.

Me? Well, I'm just a narrator, telling the story :) And I found it really interesting that the reaction to a single coupling could tell you all you need to know about an Indian...

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

On the iPod, DRM, and His Steve-ness

[This post started off as a comment on my friend's blog, but it got so long, I just decided to make it a post here rather than a long-ass comment over there]

I too have wondered about Jobs' DRM thoughts; mainly why he wrote it other than to seem like he's leading the charge for a DRM-less world, rather than the biggest purveyor of DRMed content (music, video, games). In a way, it's good that Jobs states the obvious since it seems like if anyone can make this happen, it would be him. The record companies have clearly been blind and/or wrong since digital music began. They've dug themselves a hole which is hard to get out of.

Here's an interesting point to note: 90%+ of music sold is DRM-free. Just about every CD we buy has no form of DRM. And CDs continue to be sold left and right. Of course that model is on its way out, but I think it's silly of any exec to pretend that the music biz would collapse without DRM. In fact, it's quite healthy. Even when people can easily download pirated music.

Spin Mag has a short piece on what record companies should do to keep the industry going. Some of them are obvious like letting us decide which player & software app to use and not worry about interchangeability (I still worry about this simply because I've got 3 different computers where I might want to play one of my purchased iTunes songs!) Unfortunately, the piece isn't online, but it's just such obvious stuff.

On that note, it's just idiotic for Jobs to pretend like he's onto something here and that he's trying to convince the record companies of this. We've known this for a long time and nobody should feign ignorance here.

On the note about people buying more iPods vs perhaps buying phone/player combos, I can't help but think of the walkman. Sony revolutionized the usage of music. The iPod and other high capacity MP3 players evolved this by allowing up to carry most (or all) of our collections in our pocket. But what happened with the walkman? Why didn't people keep buying them left and right?

Well, partially, I'm sure because walkmans seeemed to work FOREVER. I had one for 5+ yrs!. But more importantly, the newness just wore off and people realized that they really didn't need a walkman every moment of their lives. They were happy enough with little radios to use while at the gym or [ARGH!] a moment of silence!

Similarly, I think people are beginning to realize that they don't really need every song at every moment of every day. What's more important is having something conveniently avaiable. So when the old iPod dies, rather than immediately replacing it with another iPod, a lot of people are more logical with their choice and buy something that works, but doesn't necessarily have the panache or storage of an iPod. Sure, it's nice to have the coolness, but if $250 can be spent to get BOTH a phone and a player, why not? It may not be perfect, but it works.

Of course, this all comes from someone who has had a quite capable PDA phone that can play music but still went out and bought his first iPod a few months ago. :)

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Rehab Party

Rehab used to be a serious thing where the person was in seriously bad shape and really just needed to get away and concentrate on healing their addiction. The person would be gone for months and you'd even forget that the person went into rehab since they've been there for so long.

But now? Well, it's the in thing.

You heard about Lindsay Lohan go into rehab after she finally admitted that she had an alcohol problem. Then there was the Miss America who got exposed with some photos of her partying and after about a week she entered rehab. Well, both of these woman seemingly healed themselves in a matter a days! Heck, Miss America is already going interviews about it.

Doesn't getting over an addiction or a serious problem actually take more than a week or two? Nowadays these people check themselves in and are better all of sudden and can't help talking about how much they've changed. Heck, the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, just said he's going to go into alcohol rehab. Is he gonna be done with that by the end of the week?

So here's the possible explanations for this quick turnaround rehab deal:
1) These highly stressed out people are really teetering on the edge and all it takes is a quick sanity check to get them back on track. Checking into rehab gives them a few moments to think things through and the healing is fast and furious just like they say.

2) The relaxing environment and the assistance of trained professionals puts these people back on track and once the pros recognize a certain level has been reached, they check them out of rehab. The rest is up to the individual to completely heal. When these celebs get out, the healing they're talking about is still underway, but they're so happy with the progress they've made that they can't help but gush about it.

3) It's just the in thing to do. A nice way to have a couple of weeks of vacation. These people never really get anything out of rehab, but they're in the public eye so they've gotta talk about the healing they've gone through. In reality, they're still druggies or hard partying alcoholics.

You know which one I think it is.....since when do celebs buck the trend? They're all sheep. They'll smear shit on their torsos if some fitness guru convinces a few of them that it'll keep them tones and "centered"

I call bullshit on this rehab phenomenom. Let's not allow these idiots to pretend like they're doing any healing. They'll say what they want to say, but in the end, they're still doing what they want to do. Whether that's snorting lines of coke, cheating on their wives, or just partying like rockstars, don't for a second believe that a week in a rehab spa makes them the next Gandhi.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Deja Vu

Okay, we lots of love to harp on Bush and his seeming love for war. The jokes about invading Iran began even before we got into Iraq. Remember those "he just got one letter wrong" jokes about why Bush went into Iraq instead of Iran?

Anyways, comments about action against Iran used to be pretty hush hush and very speculative in the mainstream. Now, however, it's a daily topic. In fact, the admin doesn't shy away from saying that actions will be taken against any Iranian supported terrorist activities inside Iraq. Bush said that just the other day during his NPR interview.

Of course this is all eerily similar. Crooks and Liars even has a post about it with video comparisons.

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if we start bombing or even invading Iran before Bush is out of office. I'm scared about that possibility, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised.

But I've been thinking about this from the angle of the admin saving its ass. Beginning in late 2006, we keep hearing from the admin about how Iraq and Maliki need to stand up since it's their responsibility to get things back on track and stop the violence. No doubt, it's, in the end, their responsibility since it's their country. But nary a word is said about the details of the US's involvement in cleaning up the mess. We're obviously involved up to our eyeballs, but the way the admin makes it sound is that we're just tagging along.

My guess is that these conjectures are made because if things go wrong (which they likely will before they go right), the admin can say it's not our fault. It's the the Iraqis fault. Why? Well, because it's their responsibility! And we tried to help them! So if things aren't working out, well, heck we did our best, but they blew it!

As usual, the admin will twist situations around to suit their purposes.

So why am I alluding to this in reference to Iran? Because I get the feeling that th admin is setting up the pieces to add a "blame Iran" corollary to the "blame Iraq" thesis. So assuming Iraq isn't the safe haven of Arab democracy that Bush claimed he wanted to create, it's all the fault of the Iraqis themselves along with the Iranian thugs. None of it is the fault of the admin, since well, they were just trying to help the whole time. They can't help it if the crazy Arabs keeping spitting in the batter before it's baked.

Look, we may not invade Iran, but it's just a matter of time before there are a couple of airstrikes inside Iranian borders. And we're already getting the hint of the "blame Iran" strategy.

We want a strategy for getting out of Iraq. Apparently, the admin already has a strategy for covering their sorry asses.