Allan Duffin - Writer/Producer

Daily Monsters everywhere!

A shout-out to Stefan Bucher, friend and graphic designer extraordinaire, who appears in the current edition of L.A. Weekly. Stefan's ongoing blog and book, The Daily Monster, have garnered a huge following. The plot is simple: draw a monster a day, record its creation, give it a backstory. Here's a clip from Gendy Alimurung's feature on Stefan:

For the past year, Bucher has videotaped himself drawing monsters. The videos, 199 of them, are archived on his Web site, dailymonster.com. This new toucan-beaked critter, Monster 200, is the last of the “daily” monsters for a while. They’ll be going on hiatus while Bucher develops their cousins into an animated TV segment for 2009’s rebooted Electric Company on PBS. His work is also collected in the book 100 Days of Monsters.

Here's a video of Stefan drawing Monster #200:

(From the L.A. Weekly. Photo by Linda Abbott)

Get BarackRoll'd!

I bet Rick Astley never thought it would come to this. Barack Obama sings along to "Never Gonna Give You Up."

Are boys for yelling at?

It's a refrigerator magnet and a t-shirt. You'll also see it on people's MySpace and Facebook pages, and a lot of other places. It's a picture of a pissed-off girl yelling at a really confused guy.

Of course, this is also applicable in the opposite direction, but I can't find any refrigerator magnets that say "Girls are for yelling at." But then, I don't know any guys who would want a magnet like that. Come to think of it, I don't know any guys who collect refrigerator magnets. We're just happy if the light comes on when we open the refrigerator door, because it's easier to find the leftovers that way.

Some writers believe that items like these are harmful to male-female relations. Here's a chunk of an editorial piece titled "Purchasing feminism: Girl power gone haywire," from the McGill University Tribune.

Yay to breeding cynicism in children. The Trendy Wendy and Angry Little Girls clothing lines encourage girls to be self-absorbed and valourize cruelty with slogans like "That's queen bitch to you" and "Boys are for yelling at." For especially irate lasses, Jim Benton's Just Plain Mean line features a little girl kicking the crotch of any boy who dares approach her. And of course, the "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them"-themed clothing continues to foster positive girl/guy vibes.

Personally, I find things like "Boys are for yelling at" to be funny. Nothing deeper than a fun phrase, just something to laugh about as you go about your day. You can even get a lunchbox with Jim Benton's drawing of a girl nailing a dude in the nuts, ouch. (See photo to the right.) While I wouldn't recommend giving this item to your six-year-old as she heads off to school, it's definitely an interesting conversation piece.

In a way, these products are therapeutic: There are times when we wish we could knee somebody in the groin, or scream at them at the top of our lungs. But when we can't (or don't want to) do such a thing, we can look at our magnet, t-shirt or lunchbox and know that we've still expressed our thoughts in some fashion. And in being able to laugh about it, we make the world a little better for all of us.

"Staging the Perfect Performance" in DramaBiz Magazine

The July/August issue of DramaBiz Magazine features my article about staging equipment for the theatre. I'm always curious about the hardware that makes the magic, and wow is there a lot of available hardware:

A variety of choices are available depending on your theatre’s requirements and available budget. Vendors like StageRight, Inc., in Clare, Mich., create portable staging equipment like choral, band, and seating risers; pit fillers; orchestra enclosures; acoustical shells; and trap floor covers. According to Kathleen Meadowcroft, sales research specialist and trade show manager for the company, the firm benefits from having its manufacturing and distributing operations located under one roof. Similarly, Serapid, Inc., builds equipment like its LinkLift series of theatrical lifts at its facility in Sterling Heights, Mich., a suburb of Detroit.

Read the entire article here.

Farewell, Prof. Pausch

Sad news today from Carnegie Mellon University, my wife's alma mater. You might recall "The Last Lecture," given by Prof. Randy Pausch, who was suffering from pancreatic cancer. It was an inspiring, life-affirming lecture that you can still watch on YouTube. Here's today's press release in its entirety:

It is with great sadness that I inform you that our dear friend and colleague Randy Pausch passed away today, July 25, after a brave struggle against pancreatic cancer.

Randy captured the minds and hearts of millions worldwide with his Carnegie Mellon lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," and his book, "The Last Lecture."

Randy, who earned his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon in 1988, returned to the university in 1997 as an associate professor of human-computer interaction and computer science. Along with Carnegie Mellon Professor Don Marinelli, Randy was the co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a leading interactive multimedia education and entertainment center.

At Carnegie Mellon, Randy was also the director of the Alice software project, a revolutionary way to teach computer programming. The interactive Alice program teaches computer programming by having kids make animated movies and games. A fitting legacy to Randy's life and work, Alice may in the future help to reverse the dramatic drop in the number of students majoring in computer science at colleges and universities. Randy was also known as a pioneer in the development of virtual reality, and he created the popular Building Virtual Worlds class.

An award-winning teacher and researcher, Randy was also a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He used sabbatical leaves to work at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and he consulted with Google Inc. on user interface design. He is the author or co-author of five books and more than 70 articles.

Perhaps the greatest lesson, however, Randy taught us all was how to live, even in the face of great challenges, and how to follow our passion. While Randy's greatest passion was clearly his family, he did not shy from sharing his passion for his work as a professor, for his students, and for Carnegie Mellon. We will miss Randy, but we will carry the memory of him and all that he did to make Carnegie Mellon a better university and each of us who knew him a better person.

A memorial service for Randy will be scheduled at a later date. For more information, visit www.cmu.edu.

Sincerely,

Jared L. Cohon
President, Carnegie Mellon University

Thoughtful quotes on a Tuesday afternoon

Some thoughts about writing and reading:

The writing process: write, then rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite again.

Writing is, for most, laborious and slow. The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in his blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up. Like other gunners, he must cultivate patience; he may have to work many covers to bring down one partridge. —from Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

While I love technology, I also love holding a printed and bound book in my hand. So while I spend a lot of time reading documents on a computer screen, there's still something special about cracking open a new book and flipping through its pages.

It is very unlikely that the computer will displace the books, except in areas where we need information speedily—for police purposes or technological or scientific purposes. The book, with its intimacy, its forcibility, its accessibility, its freedom from outside energy sources, its ability to reach into tyrannic countries, and be hidden under mattresses, and be smuggled in the false bottoms of suitcases—all these are great advantages. —Daniel J. Boorstin, as quoted in the Reader's Quotation Book edited by Steven Gilbar (Penguin, 1990)

And finally, some numbers:

Number of items checked out of public libraries daily in the United States: 3 million

Percentage of Americans who describe "barbeque" as the aroma that best defines America: 39

Projected average rush-hour speed in Los Angeles in 2025: 15.4 mph

—Peter Strupp

Shatner/Hasselhoff '08

Oh yeah. You heard the rumors. You eagerly awaited the kickoff. Now it's here.

If the upcoming 2008 presidential election is confusing to you, check out the newest candidates: Shatner/Hasselhoff. They have the talent. They have the credits. And now they have a website.

I would comment further but I just watched the video below and am too busy laughing my ass off. Kudos to the brains behind this spectacular campaign.

(Via For Your Entertainment)

And don't forget this previously announced candidate:

Dying to work

A story that all workaholics would be wise to keep in mind:

A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in a string of such findings in a nation where extraordinarily long hours for some employees has long been the norm.

One of the things my beautiful wife does for me is to give me a polite nudge when I've been working all day, the skies are darkening, and I've forgotten to look at the clock. Ironic that I'm still, day by day, learning how to balance my life. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like the engineer in our story was given that opportunity:

The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife. ...

In the two months up to his death, the man averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month, according to Mizuno. He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006. The man's daughter found his body at their home the day before he was to leave for the United States.

A fast-paced life and a rough economy work against our need to take a breather every now and then, to step back and spend time by ourselves and with our families. How tragic that this man's dedication and the competitive pressures of his job led to his death, from heart disease, at such a young age.

(Source: Associated Press via CNN)

Where the hell is Matt?

Caught Matt Harding, the guy who dances on the Internet, on an MSNBC interview yesterday. Stride chewing gum sponsored him on a worldwide tour. The New York Times covered his adventures in an article published several days ago.

From his website:

Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is.

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do that dance. I'll record it." He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It's actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as "That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny."

(Photo credit: New York Times)

The World's Worst Airports

A friend noticed that Foreign Policy Magazine posted an article that featured information from a piece I wrote for Smithsonian/Air&Space Magazine about Baghdad International Airport. The Foreign Policy article, titled "The World's Worst Airports,"  spotlights five aerodromes where you can get shot, killed, injured, exhausted, jostled and/or robbed:

Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport (Dakar, Senegal): “There is only squalor, an unnerving sense of confinement, and to some extent danger.” —Patrick Smith, Salon.com, May 25, 2007

Indira Gandhi International Airport (New Delhi, India): “Of all the regional capital airports this one takes the cake … a piece of crap ... bring the bug spray.” —Anonymous commenter, The Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports, Dec 11, 2005

Mineralnye Vody Airport (Mineralnye Vody, Russia): “Mineralnye Vody airport is a lower circle of hell.” —The Economist, Dec. 19, 2006

Baghdad International Airport (Baghdad, Iraq): “Before jumping out of your seat to complain to the pilot, consider the good news: You’ve just avoided being shot down by a missile.” —Allan T. Duffin, Air & Space magazine, Oct./Nov. 2006

Charles de Gaulle International Airport (Paris, France): “Charles de Gaulle is a disgrace… it’s like a third-world airport.” —Michel-Yves Labbé, president of French travel company Directours, Aug. 14, 2007

It's always nice to be quoted — even if it's an unpleasant subject — so many thanks to Foreign Policy Magazine. The article also appeared in the Nepali Times, where the editors added a sixth entry: Tribhuban International Airport in Kathmandu:

Immigration is a minefield for Nepali passengers, mainly women, who are harassed until they pay up. The airport was designed for traffic 20 years ago and is hopelessly overcrowded. There is a parking problem and planes have to circle for hours waiting for a slot. X-ray machines and baggage carousels are often out of order and if you land at night it's dark and dingy because half the lights in the terminal don't work. And don't get us going about the dilapidated airport taxis and the touts outside. NTB (Nepal Tourism Board) should forget about promoting Nepal abroad and clean up the airport first.

Click to see the Foreign Policy article, and a reprinting on NowPublic.com.