Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Viewing activity on TheBroth.com is sort of like watching a bunch of ants moving grains of sand… are they intelligent ants who will next create a Tibetan sand painting? Check it out and see what they are up to. The site appears to be new as of around May 2006, so you can get involved and make an early impact. I just “wasted” about 30 minutes there… must get away!

Later that day…

I remember checking out Amanda Congdon and those clever daily online videos on Rocketboom, but I’m a busy dude, and I just kinda forgot about all that cleverness going on with them. The blogs are buzzing today that Amanda is departing from New York to pursue new opportunities in Los Angeles. Hey, if Stuttering John from the old Howard Stern FM radio show can become Jay Leno’s Ed McMahon announcer, then it’s just a no brainer, the next logical step.

True, Rocketboom can be seen as a “bellweather for homebrew media success.” Back in my days of making public access cable television shows in Madcity, we would have loved to have the distribution reach of today’s Internet, and yes, perhaps we too would have become little stars, and then big stars. Actually, I learned that I needed a better acting coach, and we needed better writers and directors.

Rocketboom’s main page message is bound to change, so for archival purposes germane to this story, here is what it states:

ROCKETBOOM ANNOUNCEMENT:

Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.

We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.

Rocketboom goes on.

Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.

While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.

After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.

Stay tuned for Amanda’s replacement.  To learn more, go ask a ninja.

Don’t blame the American media for all the bad press about Iraq. Apparently the word is leaking out, even as far as down in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Latuff is a Brazilian artist who chronicles the horrors of the war in Iraq in his well crafted comic book style blog. These are even more realistic and depressing than the real life comic tales of American Splendor Harvey Pekar who is alive and well in Cleveland and blogging no less.

On November 8, 2004 Fallujah, there was an attack on the city of Fallujah, Iraq which has been documented and available on DVD (see below). The video and subject matter is a disturbing history lesson.

There has been considerable blog buzz that current military operations in the Iraq city of Ramadi is a redux of the destruction and collateral damage done in Fallujah.

Additional video from Iraq can be seen at Alive In Baghdad.

P.S. Related video clip distributed on Google Video:

The Hidden Massacre of Fallujah

Description: This is the terrible testimony given by Jeff Englehart, veteran of the war in Iraq. “I have seen women and children burnt bodies – the former U.S. soldier added – phosphorus explodes and it creates a cloud. Whoever is within 150 mt is dead.” Some witnesses have seen a rainfall of burning substances of different colors that were burning people when hit and even those who were not hit had problems breathing”, told us Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, director of the center for human rights studies in Fallujah.

More videos, go to video.google.com

One of the best things about The Da Vinci Code book and now movie, is that it stirs up a lot of thought and talk, and not necessarily both.

Here are my favorite weekend reviews from the blogosphere:

“Not the worst movie that I have ever seen, but it’s no Deuce Bigalo either! I would give it amybe a 4 or 5out of 10 rating.” – blog of kenny on MySpace.com

“The movie’s going too fast….Teabing skipped the part about the knife and that extra hand.” – blog of Liyana at MySpace.com.

“Was doing fine with it ’til i showed up at church today and guess what the sermon was over???? i almost walked out.. that’s my rant for now.” – Myspace blog of Steven

“The Da Vinci Code (subtitled “A Carpenter Humped a Prostitute)…seriously, is everyone stuck on this crap or what? This movie is gonna become the Napoleon Dynamite of paranoid God fearing types…” – MySpace blog of Jason

“Went to see the Da Vinci code with amy and had breakfast at ihop. Breakfast was awesome, the movie, not so much.” – MySpace blog of Clyde,

These entries were all found by running a tag search on Technorati, so it is really a surprise to see the heavy rankings of so many Myspace.com blogs. This is a new disruption within the blogosphere!

Beware of Captain Spamheart’s jabbering beefcakes, the shiny beasts of thought! They’re out there. Little Captain Beefheart Trekkie types who discuss WWBD… What Would Beefheart Do?

It’s all at Fireparty, the next best thing to spam, a Beefheart e-mail list server.

Important topics such as whether or not The Beatles and Rolling Stones are up to Beefheartian snuff, music that Beefheart fans like, and does Beefheart give a shit? are all discussed. As Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) said, “Someone’s had too much to think!”

Some interesting news does get disseminated, such as bootlegs and a recent Swedish TV interview and performances by Frank Zappa band member Denny Walley and Magic Band members Drumbo, Rockette Morton and Gary Lucas.

Listener sponsored radio is one of the few mass media outlets remaining that resembles democracy in America. Corporate advertising driven TV, radio and newspapers are full of fluff and omissions and are products of professional entertainers, posers and profiteers. Let us not forget our basic freedoms of speech and the press, unless we lose them.

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to a number of outstanding public radio stations that are frequently in need of support, listed below. Please do what you can, and preserve human sanity. Thank you.

KPFA 94.1 FM: Founded in 1949 by Lewis Hill, a pacifist, poet, and journalist, KPFA was the first community supported radio station in the USA. Much of KPFA’s programming is local, original and eclectic, with a well produced mix of news and in depth public affairs, an ongoing drama, literature and performance series, interviews, and reviews. My personal favorite programs are Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Sunday Salon with Larry Bensky, and Flashpoints with Dennis BernStein.

KQED Public Radio: NPR and local programming, such as Forum with Michael Krasny.

KCSM The Bay Area’s Jazz Station. KCSM Jazz 91 FM houses one of the USA’s largest collections of jazz recordings, and plays a wide variety of commercially uninterupted jazz music. This station is a great treasure with a lot of heart and soul.

KXPR 90.9 FM is part of Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio and plays a steady stream of fine classical music.

Today’s SF Chronicle is running an article about the growth and diversity of Internet video content. They include a list, and here are some of the hyperlinks to the sites. See the democratization of television on the march.

• YouTube – looks like flickr for videos
• Current TV – an ambitious user created video content network offering payment for your uploaded video projects.
• vMix – videos submitted and ranked from around the world
• vidiLife – yet another way to share videos with your friends
• Ourmedia – this one appears to have a socially conscious edge
• Break.com – kind of sleazy and commercial brand of site
• FireAnt – pioneering videoblogging
• Veoh – invitation to submit your videos. Clips from copyrighted films such as Coppola’s Dementia 13.
• GorillaMask.net – slick, sexy, commercial regurgitation of primarily professional mass media
• Grouper – a place to upload and share your videos from
• GUBA – enables images and video through good old Usenet
• Podzinger – an index of audio and video for podcasting