At this point, between Cracked, Fark, Google, and the IMDb links?  I’m pretty much bigger than Jesus.

I hate doing anything to the back end of websites.  If I have to go in and start messing around with code and plug-ins, and anything not related to dirt simple coding and writing, then I fall into a state of gibbering panic.  Why?  Well, for the most part, I’m afraid of making some simple mistake and ruining everything.  Here’s an example:

I’ve been messing around with the PopFi back end.  There’s not a lot of RSS subscribers, maybe 70 or so, but just in case the site ever explodes with serious, dedicated readers, I’d like to go ahead and have a feed set up that allows me to publicize with ads, and I’d also like to know more about what people are reading and whatnot.  So I figured I’d set up Feed Burner.  Now, PopFi already has an RSS feed with subscribers, so I wanted a way to move them all over to click through FeedBurner without being big and public about resubscribing to the new feed so I can gouge them for advertising pennies.

Fortunately, as the Apple ads say, there’s an app for that.  Technically, it’s a plug-in, but whatever.  Same difference.  And, fortunately, it was already installed in PopFi’s back end; I guess Adams put it in there and never used it.  Either way, I activate it and hopefully set it up.  Does it work?  I have no idea.  Will I ever know if it works?  Probably not.

Either way, the new PopFi feed is here (http://feeds.feedburner.com/PopularFidelity) and if you would like to resubscribe, I will be most grateful.  If you don’t, then I’m not worried about that either because hopefully I’ve redirected things the right way and it shouldn’t matter.  I also changed the Subscribe to Popfi chiclet at the top of the website, updated the copyright information, and next I’ll be changing the contact form to point it to the actual Popfi admin Gmail account (whenever I remember what it is).

If you have any problems with it, just let me know.  Cheers!

Author’s note:  To give you an idea of how paranoid I am about these changes, I made them one at a time (yes, even the one where I added -2010 next to 2007 by the copyright notification), then refreshed both PopFi and the PopFi RSS feed a dozen times to make sure it was working.  I’m not sure if the ads are running yet; I guess I’ll find that out tomorrow/Monday/whenever I post next.  So long as the main site stays up, I could not care less about the RSS feed (provided the one everyone subscribes to still works; I didn’t remove it so technically it should be there).

For the most part, my list seems to get approval.  Some people don’t like the inclusion of B movies like Machete and The Expendables; that’s fine.  They’re mostly respectful.  Some people are angry that I left off movies that come out in 2011.  That’s fine too; it’s not my fault you can’t read or do simple Google-based reasearch.  Some people think my selection of an 11th movie, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, is stupid.  I guess they didn’t read the part where I talked about how excited I am by the chance to slag off yet another Turdlight film.  That’s fine, I can’t force people to get sarcasm, and DoG hasn’t paid up to buy the Sarcasm Mark yet.

However, one common thread is that people are livid about two movies:  Alice in Wonderland and Robin Hood.

When it comes to Alice, I kind of understand.  People (geeks) are sick of Johnny Depp prancing around in an incredibly gay costume.  I get that.  People are also sick of Tim Burton selling them a bill of goods, then delivering another half-baked shit brownie of a movie.  I get that, too.  But the outright hate is kind of mystifying.  Doesn’t he still have moments of occasional brilliance, even in his lowest moments?  Well, not Planet of the Apes low, but Sweeny Todd wasn’t all bad and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had its moments!  Hell, I threw the caveat right there in the description!  “Despite being burned by Burton’s last few films, it’s hard not to be taken in by the chance that this sequel to Alice In Wonderland recaptures the laudanum dreamscape of Burton’s classic films.“  Plus, the script is out of his hands and is in the hands of someone who has won a Best Picture (Linda Woolverton), so hopefully it’ll be better than his normal product.

And the other object of hate?  Robin Hood has been done to death; I get that.  People are letting Russell Crowe’s personal life and temper detract from their enjoyment of his acting work; I get that too.  But are people really not familiar with Ridley Scott?  I mean, does the fact that he made Alien make a difference?  OR that Gladiator was actually a really good movie in spite of the hype?  Blade Runner?  Legend?  Am I wrong in saying this could be the best version of Robin Hood’s tired story since the Disney cartoon?  I threw a caveat on this one too, saying its quality would depend largely on Brian Helgeland’s script (he did both LA Confidential and The Postman, so it’s a crapshoot [literally]).

But no, I don’t want to see them remake Clash of the Titans and ruin it with computers when they’re doing better stop motion now than they ever have.  No, I don’t give a crap about Prince of Persia.  And no, I’m not terribly excited by Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, if only because I’m kind of sick of Michael Cera and am totally unfamilar with the source material.  I can’t even get credit for the 8 good movies I did pick versus the toss-ups I included and the exercise in masochism I added.

But hey, fuck me for having some uncharacteristic optimism, right?

Connelly: I never would have thought that magazines… newspapers too, but magazines would be in such dire straits as we head into 2010.  That’s the saddest thing for me, you know?  We grew up loving magazines, reading magazines, dreaming of writing for them, imagining the life we would lead if we were around a bunch of guys… I mean, that’s what I grew up thinking about and I was lucky enough to get to do it and I-I can’t believe now that it’s going to be so hard for the next generation to do something like that.  I think it’s great that there’s all this multiplicity of voices, the explosion of the first person singular on the web and stuff, but the difference is that those guys who wrote the sports sections in newspapers and those people who wrote our entertainment magazines and stuff–because of their jobs, they got to buy homes.  They got to have families.  They got to send their kids to college.  I don’t feel like the people who are doing that on the web now are going to be able to do that in the same way.  They’re not going to be able to have full lives doing that the way the other guys did.  I would never have expected that, in this boom of information that we experienced, that those things would be the casualties.

Simmons:  I’m with ya on magazines.  I thought it was going to happen to newspapers, and in fact, you know, the last part of the last decade, I was convinced that it was gonna happen.  I just thought the Web was going to win.  I just thought that…

Connelly:  Your podcast with John Walsh, actually.  You went into that in some fascinating degree also.

Simmons:  Yeah.  I knew it was going to win, but magazines, I always thought… you know, it’s 12 times a year or once a week or whatever, and you’re gonna be able to hire the best writers and all that stuff.  It just seemed like they were infallible.

Connelly:  Yeah, you’re gonna hold it in your hand, it’s always gonna be fun, you’re gonna look at the pictures, you know?  So the idea that those have… those are fighting for their lives right now… is very disconcerting and–maybe naively–I never saw it coming.

It raised all sorts of interesting thoughts in my own head.  I mean, I write every day.  I write anywhere from 45-50 posts a week.  Most of them are in the neighborhood of 150-250 words, but I do hit out 500 and 700 and 1000 word pieces when I have to do a review or write up something article-like for Den of Geek.  Conservatively, I write 10,000 words a week, not counting weekends and stuff like this that I don’t get paid for.  If all goes well, I’ll make (not clear) a nickle a word.  More often than not, it’s more like 3 cents a word.

If I were writing some 20 years ago, would I be in a magazine or newspaper?  Probably.  Would I be getting paid better?  Definitely.  However, if I wasn’t doing this by myself and for myself, would I be getting paid at all?  Would I even be writing?  Probably not.  Yes, writing would have been a legitimate job then, and maybe it’s still possible to cobble together a job as a freelance writer, but it’s a lot more work for a lot less return these days.  Why hire more than a few staff writers and have to pay all those benefits when you can just pay grateful freelancers a quarter a word?

Is Bill Simmons a writer?  Yes.  Does he work for a magazine?  No.  He works for a company: ESPN.  He writes for their magazine, he hosts a podcast, he writes for ESPN Page 2, he appears on TV… he makes a whole lot of money every year and most of what he does isn’t actually writing.

The writer is dead.

This is the era of the generalist… the dabbler, if you will.  Simmons dabbles in writing magazine articles, online articles, blog posts, Tweets, podcast hosting, TV appearances, producing, etc.  My friend Sarah, when she worked in the publishing industry, didn’t just write for Micro Mart or Wired or wherever; she wrote for the magazine and for their various online blogs and websites.  TV talking heads have blogs; newspaper reporters take viral videos; bloggers do podcasts and make viral videos.  If you’re a one-trick pony, you’re on your way out.  That’s why magazines are struggling.

Example:  Playboy Enterprises is turning a small profit, but it’s struggling.  Why?  Because the magazine is losing money.  It’s one of the most popular men’s magazines in the world, but they can’t turn a profit.  The magazine is worth significantly less than all the other Playboy holdings even though it makes the most revenue because the magazine market has changed and the company can’t adapt the flagship.  They got used to doing one thing well, and now that one thing is dragging them down.

The solution is out there for proprietary companies (i.e., the Wall Street Journal model), but for writers who want to make a living off their words?  The only solution is to kill yourself for less money and/or get a day job if you’re not one of the lucky 1% who can latch onto an old media salary for a few years.

But maybe I’m just saying that because I’m cranky that, between my day job and my side gigs, I’m lucky to get 5 hours of sleep a night.  Killing Yourself To Live isn’t just the title of a Klosterman book these days, campers.

V Episode 3

V Episode 4

18 Foreign Language Films You Really Should See

I’m very surprised at the passionate responses to the 18 Foreign Language Films piece.  I went for something I thought people wouldn’t watch, but apparently they’re all mad the list doesn’t feature your standard foreign language gold, like Amelie, Kurosawa, City of God, Zatoichi, etc.  Can’t please everyone.

Nope, Deadspin picked up on a PopFi post I did about Elizabeth Lambert, two-fisted soccer girl and yanker of Mormon hair.  Of course, I think they took offense at my statement about being surprised about the violence in women’s soccer as some sort of sexist thing, when it was really amazement at soccer being violent in general.  Especially, women’s college soccer devolving into some sort of WWE-style smackdown, complete with flying elbow smashes and whatnot.

Meh, hits is hits.  I’ll take it.  Let’s just hope they click on some ads and stuff while they’re pooh-poohing my Neanderthalic nature or whatever it is they’re doing.

(Realizing, of course, that I can paint whatever picture of myself I want on here, but that’s beside the point, wink wink.)

That kind of rolled around in my brain at the time like a lost marble, but it wasn’t until Surrogates that it kind of sunk in for me.  Not to spoil anything, but most of the Surries look like their real-life counterparts (Bruce WIllis is Bruce Willis, but with awful hair; Rosamund Pike looks like herself but with big hair and better skin; Ving Rhames looks like himself but with a glorious beard and Bob Marley dreads, etc.) Now I know that it’s probably a question of cheapness on the part of the filmmakers.  Plus why would you cast name actors and not have them look like themselves; but aside from two or three background figures, all the rest of the Surrogates looked like real people too.  Just slightly cleaned up, smoothed out real people without blemishes or scars or body fat.

It’s the best version of whoever that actor is.

Really, that’s what we all do.  Sure we don’t have robot wigs, but I think that deep down everyone does their best to put their best foot forward because most of us believe that deep down, there’s something good about ourselves.  Sure we might want to shave off a few pounds or not have to worry about shaving every 6 hours to keep a smooth face  or would like to thicken up the ol’ head of hair and other things that aren’t talking about my personal issues exclusively, but for the most part, we think we’re all right.  Or that we have the potential, at our core, to be something attractive to others. We might not feel that way, and we definitely exaggerate our own flaws more so than others would, but we all want to think we’re redeemable.  And, for the most part, we are.  Or we could be.  That’s why people play Second Life.

That’s kind of what blogging is, in a way.  We’re putting out some version of ourselves, be it overly positive, overly critical, or just exaggerated in some way, for the consumption of others.  Our words (well, my words) are my Surrogate to you, the uninterested reader who has long since branded this a teal deer and moved on to something with a punchline.

This is how I present myself to the world, at least in this location.  I take on other tones at other places, share different pieces of myself in different areas, but it’s not the full picture.  To put everything out there is to take on too much risk.  Somebody might see something or read something and be offended or confused or whatever.  That’s what Surrogates are good for in the movie, and that’s what Surrogates are good for in the blogodecahedron.  That’s why all those social media things have privacy functions.  We need to keep some folks out and let other folks in.

We’re all one step away from a dentist chair, a robot in a wig that looks like Perfect Us, and no reason to change out of our pajamas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can you really think of anything more pompous?  I sure can’t, and I was the asshole who was giving out his card to someone who was just trying to make an honest day’s living making cups of coffee for nurses, old people, and douchebags in flip-flops.  I even gave the official “This is where I write and these are the ones I own,” speech that I’ve given pretty much every time I’ve given out the card.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind giving out the card, I just feel spectacularly goofy that I’m giving out a card I had made for free off the internet.  I also feel kind of goofy giving out a card that trumpets my credibility as a blogger and freelance writer, and not like a CEO of my own fake internet company.  To me, cards belong to CEOs and obnoxious salespeople, and while I might be obnoxious, I’ve got nothing to sell except my ability to write overly-long sentences full of clauses that I could probably cut out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I whip that card out and press it into someone’s palm, it feels like they’re instantly judging me.  (Of course, people judge you from the moment you put yourself in front of them, so that in and of itself isn’t unusual.)  Maybe I need to re-up and get myself the professional model of card if I’m going to be giving them out willy-nilly.  Then again, it’s totally not like me to put down money on something people are just going to flip in the trash weeks after they’ve forgotten meeting me.

“Hey Ron, are you ever going to post something for Feel Good Friday that isn’t ska?”

No, and fuck you for asking, dicktard.  Ska is the best music for feeling good that has ever been invented.  It’s the musical equivalent of Prozac.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Pandora.  The other day I turned it to Reel Big Fish radio and was instantly subsumed by a mess of delicious late 90′s third-wave ska.  It was like flashbacks to high school all over again. Then I realized in a few weeks I’ll be at my 10-year high school reunion and suddenly wanted to hurl myself at the closest speeding train.

I read an article the other day mentioning that Facebook/MySpace/social networking sites might be ruining the high school reunion business because you don’t actually have to make any special effort to keep in touch with everyone you used to know.  However, it does take a special effort to avoid the people from high school you have no desire to ever see again (and, wouldn’t you know it, they’re the ones who are the first to bomb you with friend requests).  Mayhaps my generation will be the last generation to which the high school reunion is a noteworthy event.

Honestly?  I don’t want to go to this fucking thing.  At all.  I had like four friends in high school, and I’m not sure if any of them are actually going to be there.  It’s one of those things I feel like I have to do because society tells me I have to, and that if I don’t go then I might regret it despite the fact it costs way too much and I didn’t like most/all of those people in the first place.  But here I am, tickets ordered, no dress clothes or anyone to go with, scheduled to attend an event I’m not thrilled about and forced to give up my birthday weekend for it.

Too late now.  I paid for it; I may as well go.

The fact that it’s taken me like four hours to get this post this far should tell you just how little I feel like blogging these days.  I mean, I have the urge to write the post, to go into great detail about the hows and whys of why I’m so damn tired lately, but when I sit down to do it, I conveniently distract myself with bad movies on TV or whatever.  Any excuse is a good one, I guess; even though I’ve seen Demolition Man probably 50 times by now.

I know what the answer is going to be.  Everyone says, “Take a break!  It’s okay.”  Well, I could try that, but I just took a week off from the day job and all it did was give me the chance to get my days and nights confused while catching up on stuff I normally neglect.

I’m not complaining.  I’m lucky to have a couple of things to keep me busy that actually pay me.  Hell, I’m lucky to have a day job that pays me these days.  The whole purpose of this post was mostly to show that I’m alive and that I can still mash my face against the keyboard with accuracy enough to compose words and sentences.  I still have the Feel Good Friday posts for that too (even though I’m one of the few that still does them), but I figure why not at least put forward a pathetic excuse as to a dearth of content for ye olde blogge?