I just checked my web traffic statistics for this blog (those are fun to look at; if I cared more about the amount of people reading this blog, they'd be depressing, but I mostly just find them mildly interesting) and guess what!!
I don't remember ever seeing anything of note in the past under the traffic sources tab regarding search engines... I kind of doubt that many people are searching for things that answers can be found to on my blog. But imagine this! Today, I looked at the web traffic sources and it seems that someone came to my blog from a bing search about... "what brand of pencil does goren use" (the character from Law and Order portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio, which I haven't really mentioned much here recently, but I do still like that show) were the keywords. I guess I'm glad to know that someone was able to find the answer to their question on my blog. I'll keep at it, blogging about all the various miscellanea like such that comes to mind..
I wonder what compelled whoever it was that searched that to wonder about it. Presumably they were watching Law and Order and the thought came to mind? If you search those keywords in Bing, my blog post on the topic is the third result! Wow!
If/when I become a famous (or at least mildly notable) journalist, I'll disclose my preferred pens/pencils so people can follow my lead, if they wish, in choice of writing utensils (what kinds of writing utensils does David Fahrenthold prefer? A rhetorical question). Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Peter Sarsgaard and Stephen Glass, what else?
Some news (I use the term somewhat broadly) about a couple things that have been mentioned copiously on this blog in the past. As you may be aware, yours truly is quite the Peter Sarsgaard enthusiast, as well as a... it's hard to think of the proper word here, but let's just say I'm always up for reading about Stephen Glass, Patron Saint of Fabrication.
So, I happened across this one NPR interview with Stephen Glass about a particular article he had written/fabricated. There's another interview floating around on youtube on the same topic, but it's a different one than this NPR one. This NPR one I actually hadn't come across in the past (can you believe it?), but it was interesting to hear. They even have a transcript with the disclaimer "Below is the transcript of the interview. It is here because we did not want to erase history and because it provides insights into Glass, not because we believe he spoke truthfully," but it's interesting to hear him talking so I recommend actually listening to the interview. I also found this about Shattered Glass, which I don't think I had read before, but I honestly can't completely remember, as I've read so, so much about Stephen Glass and all.
Tying these topics together, the Washington Post recently published a list of the 10 best journalism movies. I'll stick to the more notable ones, in my mind, all three of which were mentioned and which I've seen (in fact, they're really the only journalism movies I've seen to date). All the President's Men (no surprises there; that's probably the most famous one of all), Spotlight (fairly recent, and starring Mark Ruffalo, who actually bears a fairly close resemblance to the actual person he portrayed in the movie -- I became aware of this because there was a picture of the actual person in an exhibit in the Newseum, and I realized that hey, that's the guy who got portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in the movie Spotlight!), and.... Shattered Glass (starring Peter Sarsgaard as the editor, and Hayden Christensen as the eponymous Glass. Chloe Sevigny is even is this movie too, as one of Glass' coworkers.)
Each movie has some commentary about it by a journalist; the relevant ones had commentary from the people portrayed in them: All the President's Men had commentary from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Spotlight had commentary from Marty Baron, who was the editor at the Boston Globe at the time of the events portrayed in the movie (they got the casting pretty accurate for his character as well, as far as physical resemblance goes). I seem to remember reading about Spotlight somewhere that the costume design for the journalists' clothes had them dressing somewhat more snazzily than they actually did in real life. Which is sort of interesting to think about, if you're me; I love to know about those little background details. For All the President's Men, they were very meticulous about making the Post's newsroom look as it actually did at the time of the events.
Anyways, onto the main event here.... Shattered Glass (which I wouldn't mind rewatching, yet again). Chuck Lane gives commentary about this one; he, as I'm certainly very well aware, was played by Peter Sarsgaard in the movie. Some of the notable bits (honestly, that was most of it): he was ashamed that Stephen Glass had been able to fool him and the fabrications were published, instead of being proud of uncovering the fabrications. Apparently, the movie was pretty visually accurate (which is nice to know): "'Shattered Glass' nails that era's TNR office culture, right down to Glass's trademark blue Oxford shirt and khakis." (and how he didn't wear shoes in the office, just socks) Towards the end of the commentary, Lane draws some comparisons between Stephen Glass' use of stereotypes and playing to people's biases and the current political/cultural climate, which is something I've sort of touched on somewhere in the past on this blog, I think.
I had also lately been thinking about about the idea of a play (or movie) based on recent events in my own life. I guess it could sort of be considered a journalism play/movie, or at least somewhat related to/involving that topic. I had even decided theoretically who could play a couple of the characters (based on real people!)... Peter Sarsgaard as one of them (one of the protagonists, a journalism/English professor) and Wolf Blitzer as the main antagonist (also a professor, but not particularly adept at his job). Which is a bit of a theoretical disservice to Wolf, since he seems like a nice and decent person, and in my theoretical play/movie, he would play the role of an unsavory and nasty character... but as far as physical resemblance goes, I think it's fairly close. As for the other people/characters, I don't know who would theoretically play them, but I have given some thought to the costume design and the set decoration/locations/visual stuff. It would be interesting to be a film director and/or to write a play, and actually have the play performed...
As far as Peter Sarsgaard goes, the new Netflix documentary series he's in has FINALLY been released. Finally!! So I'm hopefully going to get around to watching that sooner or later, so perhaps expect a review if I'm not too lazy. I've realized that I've gotten to the point where I've seen most of the more interesting looking movies in the filmographies of my favorite actors, so now some of the ones that are left are the ones that seem like they'll be boring and/or bad... which means I can either watch and suffer through those, or find some new favorite actors and start exploring their filmographies... I have to watch Requiem for a Dream again sometime before the end of the month before it leaves Netflix, so I just need to wait until I'm in the right mood for that. It's a great movie, but it's fairly heavy and depressing.
Apologies for neglecting the blog; I've been busy (and sort of lazy) lately... but with the winter break, I hopefully should be having more time to think of (and write) things for this humble blog that no one really reads. If you do read this blog (for whatever reason), I hope you find it interesting.
So, I happened across this one NPR interview with Stephen Glass about a particular article he had written/fabricated. There's another interview floating around on youtube on the same topic, but it's a different one than this NPR one. This NPR one I actually hadn't come across in the past (can you believe it?), but it was interesting to hear. They even have a transcript with the disclaimer "Below is the transcript of the interview. It is here because we did not want to erase history and because it provides insights into Glass, not because we believe he spoke truthfully," but it's interesting to hear him talking so I recommend actually listening to the interview. I also found this about Shattered Glass, which I don't think I had read before, but I honestly can't completely remember, as I've read so, so much about Stephen Glass and all.
Tying these topics together, the Washington Post recently published a list of the 10 best journalism movies. I'll stick to the more notable ones, in my mind, all three of which were mentioned and which I've seen (in fact, they're really the only journalism movies I've seen to date). All the President's Men (no surprises there; that's probably the most famous one of all), Spotlight (fairly recent, and starring Mark Ruffalo, who actually bears a fairly close resemblance to the actual person he portrayed in the movie -- I became aware of this because there was a picture of the actual person in an exhibit in the Newseum, and I realized that hey, that's the guy who got portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in the movie Spotlight!), and.... Shattered Glass (starring Peter Sarsgaard as the editor, and Hayden Christensen as the eponymous Glass. Chloe Sevigny is even is this movie too, as one of Glass' coworkers.)
Each movie has some commentary about it by a journalist; the relevant ones had commentary from the people portrayed in them: All the President's Men had commentary from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Spotlight had commentary from Marty Baron, who was the editor at the Boston Globe at the time of the events portrayed in the movie (they got the casting pretty accurate for his character as well, as far as physical resemblance goes). I seem to remember reading about Spotlight somewhere that the costume design for the journalists' clothes had them dressing somewhat more snazzily than they actually did in real life. Which is sort of interesting to think about, if you're me; I love to know about those little background details. For All the President's Men, they were very meticulous about making the Post's newsroom look as it actually did at the time of the events.
Anyways, onto the main event here.... Shattered Glass (which I wouldn't mind rewatching, yet again). Chuck Lane gives commentary about this one; he, as I'm certainly very well aware, was played by Peter Sarsgaard in the movie. Some of the notable bits (honestly, that was most of it): he was ashamed that Stephen Glass had been able to fool him and the fabrications were published, instead of being proud of uncovering the fabrications. Apparently, the movie was pretty visually accurate (which is nice to know): "'Shattered Glass' nails that era's TNR office culture, right down to Glass's trademark blue Oxford shirt and khakis." (and how he didn't wear shoes in the office, just socks) Towards the end of the commentary, Lane draws some comparisons between Stephen Glass' use of stereotypes and playing to people's biases and the current political/cultural climate, which is something I've sort of touched on somewhere in the past on this blog, I think.
I had also lately been thinking about about the idea of a play (or movie) based on recent events in my own life. I guess it could sort of be considered a journalism play/movie, or at least somewhat related to/involving that topic. I had even decided theoretically who could play a couple of the characters (based on real people!)... Peter Sarsgaard as one of them (one of the protagonists, a journalism/English professor) and Wolf Blitzer as the main antagonist (also a professor, but not particularly adept at his job). Which is a bit of a theoretical disservice to Wolf, since he seems like a nice and decent person, and in my theoretical play/movie, he would play the role of an unsavory and nasty character... but as far as physical resemblance goes, I think it's fairly close. As for the other people/characters, I don't know who would theoretically play them, but I have given some thought to the costume design and the set decoration/locations/visual stuff. It would be interesting to be a film director and/or to write a play, and actually have the play performed...
As far as Peter Sarsgaard goes, the new Netflix documentary series he's in has FINALLY been released. Finally!! So I'm hopefully going to get around to watching that sooner or later, so perhaps expect a review if I'm not too lazy. I've realized that I've gotten to the point where I've seen most of the more interesting looking movies in the filmographies of my favorite actors, so now some of the ones that are left are the ones that seem like they'll be boring and/or bad... which means I can either watch and suffer through those, or find some new favorite actors and start exploring their filmographies... I have to watch Requiem for a Dream again sometime before the end of the month before it leaves Netflix, so I just need to wait until I'm in the right mood for that. It's a great movie, but it's fairly heavy and depressing.
Apologies for neglecting the blog; I've been busy (and sort of lazy) lately... but with the winter break, I hopefully should be having more time to think of (and write) things for this humble blog that no one really reads. If you do read this blog (for whatever reason), I hope you find it interesting.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
Plants
Whoa, I haven't blogged for nearly a whole month. Yikes. If I actually had more of an audience I'd be more ashamed about it, but... life goes on. I haven't gotten much written of my own doing for the newspaper either, but I'll blame that (again) on some ongoing internal issues/conflicts/exasperation with the whole beast. I love and hate it at the same time. (or more specifically, there are some parts of it I love, and other aspects that are driving me batty and make me want to scream. Take your guesses at what those might be!)
Lately, I have been thinking about plants (among other things; the other things I've thought about include stuff like how I've neglected this blog, and Glenn Thrush, but we'll get to that later). The thought came about because I was pondering about what might make a good gift for a certain someone who I regard highly and who deserves a nice holiday/end of semester present from myself and some other people who the present can collectively be from.
I considered the idea of a plant, but then I started thinking about how not everyone is really a plant person. Not everyone's idea of a good gift is a plant. Not that I think a plant would be a really horrible gift in this situation; it's perfectly decent, just maybe not the exact best choice for the recipient in mind.
By the time I'm getting around to finishing this post, I've sort of decided on a fitting present (that's not a plant) and have downloaded an app where you grow your own virtual plants, since I don't have a real physical plant at the moment. The virtual plants are... cute and nice, and the app has pleasant ambient music (sometimes I listen to Swedish radio when I'm trying to work on something and feel like hearing something but not necessarily any specific music -- it's pleasant background noise but not too distracting since I don't understand enough Swedish to know what they're saying). Although, I do wish the plants maybe needed a little more attention than they do. That they were a bit more interactive. Or something like that. But until I can get an actual plant, this is just going to have to do.
At the moment, I sort of feel a bit like a plant myself, the kind that has those long skinny leaves sprouting out the top of it since that's sort of what it's been feeling like to have my hair as long as it currently is. I kind of wonder how badly it'd turn out if I tried to cut my own hair.
Also, I saw a picture of lettuce today and it looked pretty, so it would be interesting to grow my own lettuce. And/or decorative cabbages. A citrus fruit tree might be interesting as well, even though they probably wouldn't do so well in this climate unless they grew in a greenhouse or something.
So there's a little post, finally. It's not particularly spectacular, but at least it's something. Quite soon it'll be winter break so I should have a lot more time to do whatever I want, which could include dedicating more time to the blog than I have been lately. There were a few other things I'm planning/hoping to get done over the break as well, so we'll just have to wait and see if I actually get them done or not! (among them: potentially, dates... if any of the online dating people seem sufficiently interesting enough for me to actually want to take a chance on and go to the effort of spending time with them in person. I decided that in the event it's a restaurant date, I'll pay for my own food if I liked the person/date enough to want to go on another date, but if not and I found the person boring and the date to be a waste of time, I'll leave them to pay... I think that's fair. Naturally, while online dating/going on dates is hit or miss, I think watching Peter Sarsgaard movies is more likely to be satisfying/fulfilling to me. So there are a number of those I should probably try to watch over the coming weeks.)
Lately, I have been thinking about plants (among other things; the other things I've thought about include stuff like how I've neglected this blog, and Glenn Thrush, but we'll get to that later). The thought came about because I was pondering about what might make a good gift for a certain someone who I regard highly and who deserves a nice holiday/end of semester present from myself and some other people who the present can collectively be from.
I considered the idea of a plant, but then I started thinking about how not everyone is really a plant person. Not everyone's idea of a good gift is a plant. Not that I think a plant would be a really horrible gift in this situation; it's perfectly decent, just maybe not the exact best choice for the recipient in mind.
By the time I'm getting around to finishing this post, I've sort of decided on a fitting present (that's not a plant) and have downloaded an app where you grow your own virtual plants, since I don't have a real physical plant at the moment. The virtual plants are... cute and nice, and the app has pleasant ambient music (sometimes I listen to Swedish radio when I'm trying to work on something and feel like hearing something but not necessarily any specific music -- it's pleasant background noise but not too distracting since I don't understand enough Swedish to know what they're saying). Although, I do wish the plants maybe needed a little more attention than they do. That they were a bit more interactive. Or something like that. But until I can get an actual plant, this is just going to have to do.
At the moment, I sort of feel a bit like a plant myself, the kind that has those long skinny leaves sprouting out the top of it since that's sort of what it's been feeling like to have my hair as long as it currently is. I kind of wonder how badly it'd turn out if I tried to cut my own hair.
Also, I saw a picture of lettuce today and it looked pretty, so it would be interesting to grow my own lettuce. And/or decorative cabbages. A citrus fruit tree might be interesting as well, even though they probably wouldn't do so well in this climate unless they grew in a greenhouse or something.
So there's a little post, finally. It's not particularly spectacular, but at least it's something. Quite soon it'll be winter break so I should have a lot more time to do whatever I want, which could include dedicating more time to the blog than I have been lately. There were a few other things I'm planning/hoping to get done over the break as well, so we'll just have to wait and see if I actually get them done or not! (among them: potentially, dates... if any of the online dating people seem sufficiently interesting enough for me to actually want to take a chance on and go to the effort of spending time with them in person. I decided that in the event it's a restaurant date, I'll pay for my own food if I liked the person/date enough to want to go on another date, but if not and I found the person boring and the date to be a waste of time, I'll leave them to pay... I think that's fair. Naturally, while online dating/going on dates is hit or miss, I think watching Peter Sarsgaard movies is more likely to be satisfying/fulfilling to me. So there are a number of those I should probably try to watch over the coming weeks.)
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