Toffee Bites

It’s been awhile since the last blog posting, but be patient while I
try to get my ass writing regularly about this stuff. Quite a bit of
news and events have since passed by, so I’ll start off with this
surprising winning candidate of the Magazine Publishers of America’s (MPA) recent announcement of its first-ever awards for magazine cover of the year. The choice for best celebrity cover went
to Harper’s Bazaar featuring Julianne Moore–and the surprise was that
it was green. Yep, the colour green has taken its fair share of
prejudice and neglect, after showing that it never sells magazine
covers.

"A cover," writes David Hepworth,
the head honcho of publishing company Developmental Hell, " must appeal
to a moron in a hurry, which is why none of the following works:
anything ‘intriguing’, green, anything illustrated, anything downbeat
apart from an obit, anything with the words ‘part two’."

Now, while it is true that Vanity Fair’s "Green Issue" was quite an
unattractive one, this Julianne Moore cover, on the other hand, is
different. Green suits her well, as you can see, and I’m glad that the
editor took the gutsy move to go all green for the cover, from the
masthead to the dress, down to her glorious green eyes.

It just goes to show that while there are some rules when applied to
the science of covers, there are always exceptions to the rules that we
cannot neglect. It takes a good editor with guts and instinct to know
when to make that exception.

Read more blog postings at my wordpress blog at johndotorgslashblog.wordpress.com.

Okay… I’ve finally built up the courage and dedication to hop onto a Wordpress blog and ditch this skinny-ass bitch of a blog. So hop on over to johndotorgslashblog.wordpress.com.

No prizes for who inspired that blog address. Ta, and see you folks then!

For those of you who thought that having a new Transformers Movie would be an awesome idea, you’re badly mistaken. A couple of days ago, Sci Fi Wire received some rather disturbing updates and snapshots of the movie’s production, and you know right from the start it’s gonna suck. It’s already bad that Bumblebee’s a Camaro, Optimus Prime is some pimped up Firetruck–but Megatron being a PLANE?! WTF is that all about, Bay? He(?)’s a gun, dammit–it doesn’t matter if he’s a 40-foot robot that can defy the universal laws of physics. Megatron being a plane makes no sense. In fact, all the robots look like they came right out from a screenshot of a Power Rangers episode; Bumblebee’s face looks like a monkey’s ass, and Megatron’s looks like a monkey’s ass about to take a crap. Where’s Pinkutron ("Chee-koo-kook-kook: Let’s go shopping!") when you need him? These robots need a major redesign.

This is not good, people.

Ah, football season has started once again with all its pain, but thankfully Everton got off to a winning start this season by beating Watford 2-1. For stats nuts, it’s only the second time in a decade that we’ve won on the opening day since Charlton in 2001, and it took us 9 matches last season to score the same amount of goals as last Saturday. It’s amazing what depths this team can go to.

Anyways, I’d thought I’d share with you this little tip on solving the world’s oldest sporting conundrum: how to explain the offside rule to your girlfriend, as found in GQ. If girls don’t get this, then god help you, because no one else can.

You’re in a shoe shop, second in the cue behind the till. Behind the shop assistant on the till is a pair of shoes which you have seen and which you must have.
The female shopper in front of you has also seen the shoes and has her eye on them.
Both of you have forgotten your purses.
It would be totally rude to push in front of the first woman if you had no money to pay for the shoes.
The shop assistant is waiting at the till.
Your friend is trying on another pair of shoes at the back of the shop and sees your dilemma.
She prepares to throw her purse at you.
If she does so, you can catch the purse, then walk around the other shopper and buy the pair of shoes.
At a pinch she could throw the purse ahead of the other shopper and, "while it is in flight," you could nip around the other shopper, catch the purse and buy the shoes.
Always remembering that until the purse "has actually been thrown," it would be plain wrong to be forward of the other shopper.

NOW DO YOU GET IT?!

After what has been a teriffic month of bumming around without a purpose in life other than to finish Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 on the PC for the second time, I’m firmly back at work. For those of you who don’t know where I’m at now since leaving chrome (and I doubt there are many, given my fantastically small friend base), I’m back at KLue, helping out in some feature writing and contributing to the company’s new music magazine, Junk. Exciting times ahead, I can guarantee you that, and will try to keep you loyal five (WoOOt!) readers out there updated with more news as the project moves along.

And talking about exciting times, there’s a whole lot of techie- and media-related news that’s been going on since the last time I blogged, so there’s a whole heapload for me to sort through. Among the most recent, eye-popping news is happening in the British publishing industry. The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures just came out a couple of days back, and there’s a stunning drop–almost 25%, to 420,688 copies–of the year-on-year circulation figures of FHM UK. While FHM UK is still regarded as the biggest-selling men’s magazine in the UK, you have to admit that this news paints an alarming danger and not just for the men’s magazine market, but for publishing in general. And the main reason for this decline? Yep, you guessed it: The Internet.

Already, such industry stalwarts like Smash Hits and J-17 (aka Just 17) have already folded and Elle Girl was put on ice last year. And last week, Emap’s new teen magazine Sneak, was suspended after four years in publication. Mark Frith, editor of Emap’s Heat magazine and a former editor of
Smash Hits, said the music mag had been caught out by the rise of
digital media. "Today’s teens want faster, deeper information
about music and can now satisfy their hunger by accessing information
on a whole range of new platforms including TV, the internet and
mobile," he said. In the light of these dark times, does the rebranding of the Malay Mail catered to the more tech-savvy, gossip hungry crowd make sense?

There’s clearly a struggle for "Old" media, as it were, trying to adapt itself to the rise of "New Media". I think the conundrum won’t be solved until the terminology of these two medias end;  Old vs. New, Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0–from the names, there’s a tense atmosphere of fear and hostility, particularly from the "old" media side, thinking that it’ll get replaced by "new" media. For years, newspapers have been scratching their heads of how to go about this internet thing, and some crazy ideas have come up, including that stupid idea of "We’ll-give-you-half-an-article-on-the-web -but-buy-the-paper-to-read-the-story". That’s fear speaking. The person who came up with that idea will struggle to hold on to a job now.

It shouldn’t be that way. Old Media isn’t old outdated, as its name suggests. Old Media will survive–news of its death are largely, largely exagerrated. And new media isn’t the future of media either. They’re just different forms of media, and different forms of media serve different purposes. The web is fast and up-to-date, but ephemeral, while print media is glossy and tangible, but slow. Until editors figure out how to complement the strengths and weaknesses of each media, it’s going to be a downhill slide for print and publishing. There is, however, some encouraging signs in the way some editors (not necessarily old) are thinking.

"The word we’re starting to hear a lot is ‘engagement’," writes David Hepworth, the editorial director of Developmental Hell, which publishes Word magazine. "In future
monthly magazines will have to work harder than ever to engage their
readers and advertisers in other kinds of interaction (particularly via
the web) and here they’re going to have to do more than most of them
have done in the past. Resources will come out of traditional editorial
and go into other ways of reaching readers. The web is a hard school
when it comes to sorting out what works from what doesn’t and
publishers should have learned by now that you get out what you put in."

Publishing is a juggernaut of tradition, and like juggernauts, it’s going to take time before it gets moving and thinking in the new direction. These are exciting times in media. Stay tuned. You don’t want to miss it.

There was a time when it was hard to find bad press about Google, but it’s getting easier now, more so since 2006 started. When Google rose to dominance, they could do no wrong, or "evil" as their motto says. Founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page became the poster boys in ushering this utopian concept of organising the world’s information for the good of mankind. The coloured balls-filled corridors of the Googleplex was the coolest place to work. Innovation–not marketshare dominance, competition, or fear of Microsoft–were the driving force behind the company.

Now Google, as it turns out, is capable of doing evil after all, at least according to Sergei Brin, who admitted that  they made a mistake in giving in to the Chinese government’s demand for censorship in exchange for permission to operate behind the Great Firewall of China. In the Sydney Morning Herald, a headline read: We Were Evil, Google Founder Admits.

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said in the article. "The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday that Google’s main website, http://www.google.com, was no longer accessible in most Chinese provinces due to censorship efforts, and that it was completely inaccessible throughout China on May 31.

Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company’s customers in China use the non-censored service."

Then came the news from The Times that Google’s efforts to expand beyond its core competency of being a search engine was taking a beating. "Google is undertaking the biggest landgrab the world has ever seen. We are seeing it exercise its market power, its cash and its brand," says Julie Meyer, chief executive of Ariadne Capital, a technology venture capital firm. But the land-grab, according to the report, seems to be failing: Mapping, news, e-mail, video are being trumped over by their competitors. Google suddenly is running scared, especially after George Reyes, the chief financial officer noted that growth in the search engine sector is going to taper off. Google ,it seems, doesn’t know what to do after they’ve won the search engine race.

You could say it all started with this curious thing happened early in the year, when Google splashed out $1 billion to buy a 5% stake of AOL from Time-Warner. This purchase was weird because it had nothing to do with Google as a search engine–it was essentially splashed out to block Microsoft from owning a piece of AOL. "No, Google has no real need for AOL," writes Douglas Rushkoff, a media guru and long-time Google admirer, in his op-ed.

Google, once so anti-corporate in its goal in "upending the zero-sum game of market competition, and replacing it with the abundance that results from collaboration, transparency, and open networks," is starting to think like a corporate business, with stockholders and profits to consider. Innovation? Pah, this is business. Let’s block Microsoft’s next move by outbidding them. Let’s acquire Writely.

"Now that it’s a part owner of the company that nearly brought Time-Warner into bankruptcy, Google will find its allegiance split. It is responsible to a group of shareholders with a very different set of expectations of a corporation from those that Google’s own shareholders might hold."

More worryingly he writes, is that "AOL’s fee-for-service and property concerns are also contradictory to some of the principles underlying Google’s open access and unbiased auctions for ad space… As Google expert John Battelle explained to the New York Times, now Google is saying "we will take some of our pawns and block the move to our queen by Microsoft."

Compromised core values. That’s a phrase that’ bandied around more often that I’d like to hear about the Big G. I guess it’s human nature to have a little evil in us after all, including Google.

So plugs do really work after all, John C. Dvorak.org/blog. After hearing the recent TWiT episode where just about everyone on the panel were shamelessly plugging in their pages, I decided to try out Doug Kaye’s website, ITconversations.com, and discovered a shitload of podcasts there. OK, so maybe they’re not all podcasts per se as much as they are recordings of seminars, but still, there are a few gems to be found here, including some by my favourite authors on society and new media such as Malcolm Gladwell, Douglas Rushkoff and Steven Johnson.

If you haven’t read any of their books, I highly recommend you download these podcasts now–they’re priceless (and free!). Gladwell’s podcast, "Human Nature", is a basic introduction to his best-selling book, Blink, which discusses the nature of human instincts and why we should trust them. Media guru and all-round cool dude, Doug Rushkoff talks about the New Renaissance–reforming our concepts of the capitalist economy structure, the self-authorship and collaborative nature of New Media, and why current economists should take a cue or two from the Open Source community–a hotly debated topic within the economic circles right now. It’s mind-blowing stuff and not as dry as it sounds.

Finally, there’s Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good For You. I’ve just read it and came away smiling–it’s an excellent take on why we shouldn’t deride pop-culture as degenerative and mind-rotting, as media experts often say today. After all, how many times have you come across articles saying how shitty Reality TV is, or why sitting infront of the PS2 rots your brain and social life? This guy makes you see why watching Survivor and America’s Next Top Model is good for you, and also tells us how playing Zelda, Resident Evil, and endless stupid get-the-bucket-to-put- out-fire-then-take-key -to-fit-into-stupid-key-hole-in- basement games actually increases cognitive and narrative skills. Okay, so he didn’t mention America’s Next Top Model at all in his book, but hell, when you have Kahlen Rondot (pic, girl) in it, I’ve just gotta plug her in somewhere in this post. She’s awesome. Mmm hmmm.

Oh, I’ve got no idea what Steven Johnson’s podcast talks about, but I doubt it’s got anything to do with what I’m thinking now. She should so have won it.

Anyone who has recently heard the Malay Mail’s radio advertisement has a right to be confused and disappointed. The ad featured three callers calling to the Malay Mail entertainment section to a dude named Zakaria. The first two sounded like the stereotypically gossip-loving women yapping on about Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Brangelina, and their new-born child, and the third was a guy calling in to report about his broken street lamps, to which Zakaria dodged the answer by saying in Mandarin that he doesn’t understand English. The gist of the ad was generally to say that the Malay Mail serves up the juiciest pop-culture gossip at the moment, and that it’s no more the paper that listens to the whines of the man on the street like it used to before the revamp.

It’s a bold approach to rebranding the paper as a more youthful publication, but it’s too brash and quick to dismiss the long-time followers of the paper who have seen it as "the paper that cares" (that tagline has been dumped from the masthead). It’s a slap in the face to those who have seen the paper as a socially oriented paper with sensationalist, breaking news that complements the NST, which has become increasingly dry and struggling to keep up with The Star.

In abandoning the traditional reader for the younger, more fickle youth group of 18-35 (who else would care about Brangelina or Taylor Hicks or Mawi? Certainly not my parents), the MM is playing a risky gamble here, and the prize isn’t all that great. Of course, the glittering promise of grabbing the affluent, high-disposable income demographic is hard to ignore, but I think it’s fool’s gold, not least because that age group has a notoriously short span for loyalty (they’re more likely to flip through the paper at the newsstand rather than buy/subscribe to it).

The MM’s recent switch is reflected in what’s happening now in the British press, which has also seen a trend in preferring celebrity-oriented page one headlines over actual news. MediaGuardian’s Cristina Odone makes a good assesment of this worrying trend: "For the papers, the elevation of showbiz makes sense: Closer has a
circulation of 578,337 and gained 14.7% year on year in the latest
ABCs; Heat has a circulation of 575,267 with an increase of 4.2% year
on year; and even the long-running Hello! has gained 2.2% year on year
to reach 390,622.

So while it looks a good gamble in making the switch, the newspaper runs the risk of ruining its credibility: "The Fourth
Estate cannot get on its high horse and talk about its mission being
the pursuit of truth when it peddles gossip about Davina or Denise. The
tittle tattle in its pages will dent a paper’s authority among
political, business and legislative circles. Editors also risk breaking
their readers’ habit of expecting to read real news in their papers; in
this way print journalism effectively concedes the whole field of
proper news to broadcasting and the internet."

The MM has placed its trust in news that has already circulated in the internet for hours and by the time it reaches print, it’s already old as the internet savvy readers it is targeting would’ve read it several times over. And besides, there’s not much celeb news to go around with in the first place: How many stories can one hash up about Brangelina, American Idol or AF anyhow? A recent Page One headline about a 2-minute blackout at the Akademi Fantasia is a shining example of how shallow that pit is.

Cristina ends the op-ed by saying how keeping up with gossip mags is "a dead
end game." There’s no point for newspapers to compete with Hot, Heat, or Hello! because they have better, exclusive pictures and a newspaper falls short in that department.

"The kind of celeb coverage readers want
doesn’t depend on instant publication like news and sport, and thus
eliminates the papers’ only advantage over mags. The savvy editor
should stick to first principles and deliver what the glossy
competition can’t - the unvarnished truth."

Let’s hope that the MM cares enough to focus back on the news that matters.

"What’re you writing about him for?" said one fellow Scottish footballer about Duncan Ferguson in Nicky Campbell’s tribute piece to Duncan Disorderly. For without all the blind passion of Everton fans, Duncan Ferguson’s retirement from football would surely have passed without the whisper of a prayer, and into that graveyard list of long-time Premiership veterans who have left without being missed: Chris Sutton, Keith Gillespie, Paul Ince.

But Duncan is a different sort of player, in many respects, least of which were the facts that he can’t run, dribble, tackle, or score goals. He is the rare player that evokes teary-eyed emotions of bravery, loyalty, and heart-on-sleeve passion that makes fans look past his flaws, and instead look to him as a Captain who would lead his troops into a suicide mission.

Technically speaking, to look for hope in someone who was sent to prison early in his career for headbutting his opponent, Raith Rovers’ John McStay, (alongside policemen, postmen, fishermen, and a thief) is a little nuts. But Duncan embodied the spirit of the 90s Everton team so well it was hard not to look to him as an inspirational figure. Throughout the Premiership era, Everton hardly ever displayed any skill of sort, preferring instead to always go for the Dogs of War approach that was as always, frustrating to watch. Brash, bereft of skill, and hardly scoring: this was not only an apt description of Dunc, but also every post-Kendall Everton team I can remember.

In a way, seeing Duncan Ferguson score that equaliser against West Brom in the final minute of his Everton career was typical of him in saving the day, gaining instant hero status, and making everyone so heady that they forget he hasn’t scored throughout the entire season before then.  He was once listed as the biggest money-waster, earning 40,000 pounds a week–that’s Andrew Johnson’s wage–while sitting in the treatment room for almost an entire season. In all , he has scored a paltry 73 goals in 272 matches.

"Icon, hooligan, man of principle, shameless mercenary, tender bird
lover, vicious thug, generous team-mate, waste of space - take your
pick," writes Campbell. Duncan is such a man of contradiction that I fear that there will never be another Duncan again modern football: How many players do you know who fits Joe Royle’s description of him as a "legend before becoming a  player"?

I remember being almost reduced to tears when he left for Newcastle in 1998 (at least we had the pleasure of beating them 1-0 before he left, thanks to a Michael Ball penalty earned by Don Hutchison, who was felled by Kenny Daglish’s son), and became elated when it was announced that he would return. But Duncan is no Fowler, and I knew that Duncan’s return would signify a return to the dark days of football–pumping the ball up to one man and nothing else–which had no place in today’s modern play. So if seeing him leave is also another indicator that the team is ready to move on, then so be it. In many ways, he held back the team, but in other ways, he inspired them–albeit in between bated breath–to the few precious points.

I think this line by Liverpool Echo’s David Prentice sums it up: "Inspiration or exasperation? World beater or a waster? Head man or head case?" The answer–and how many people can you say of this–is a resounding "all of the above". Goodbye Dunc. We knew ye a little too well.

Jeeezus. I’m not sure on how to treat the subject of resurrecting failed female counterparts of superheroes, but news that Batwoman is coming back to life since dying 27 years ago–as a lesbian no less–sounds like something that would appease the fan boy’s fantasy (why does she have to be a lesbian, and a hot one at that?).

I could be wrong though, and if anyone can break the stereotype of tokenism, it’s DC. Not sure what DC has in store for Kathy Kane (porn name: Katt Kane, Kandy Kane?), described as a "lesbian socialite by night and a crime fighter by later in the night," but DC nevertheless has a good history of recreating heroes, not least thanks to Alex Ross’s involvement in drawing Batwoman out. The retelling of Supergirl’s origin in the new Superman/Batman series was a great reminder of how sidekicks can turn from forgettable to essential, thanks to Michael Turner’s great work of drawing out a new image for Supergirl (pic). And then there’s also DC’s great Elseworld’s line, where superheroes are given a one-off treatment in alternate realities. I’ve recently gotten a hold of an old copy of Thrillkiller, where the writers reworked Batman in the psychadelic, Jack Kerouac 60s, and the Joker is a sexually ambiguous woman. Not great, but curious enough for me to plough through within one day.

But what DC Executive Editor Dan Didio says about Batwoman offers some promise that she’ll be more than just a stereotypically male-fantasy skewed lesbian: "If the character is gay, she might have had different levels of
challenges in her life," he says about the reasoning behind the character’s homosexuality. "The fact that she conceals her own sexuality to
some of the people around her and to her own family is going to be a
bit of a story, so there are going to be secrets within secrets. You’ll
also find more and more about who she is as the story is told, and see
how it plays against her lifestyle."

But still, I think this announcement smacks with publicity hype (It’s already been picked up by the New York Times and half the papers around the world) to get the fan boys interested for 52, the comic launched this month that will feature the return of Batwoman, alongside Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. 52 sure wouldn’t have gotten this much salivating publicity if DC had resurrected Dick Grayson as a gay Robin.

And besides, Catwoman and Batgirl offer enough twist already to Batman’s life without making it sound like an episode of The OC. There’s no need to resurrect characters whom no one missed because no
one knew she existed. And oh, speaking of Wonder Woman, I’ve purchased a mini-statue of her yesterday, just to make you kids a little jealous.