No Comments | Posted: August 26th, 2010 | Filed under: "Funny", Think About It Won't You | Tags: facebook, flickr, linkedin, social media, twitter
To: Sheridan, Tom
From: Brodavich, Kyle
Tom:
I’m writing this with no small amount of egg on my face. It appears that you and the rest of the management team have become aware of some statements I made online that reflect poorly on our company.
Right off the bat, I’d like to say that I’m very, very sorry that I reviewed our workplace as “hell on Earth” on Foursquare. I should realize that while social media allows us to communicate with our friends more easily, a great deal of what we say is available to the world at large and that means that clients, coworkers and prospective hires are likely to see our statements without context. They wouldn’t know that our air conditioning was on the fritz at exactly the same time that the Donelson lawsuit went down, so they might view my commentary as more than a bit of spur-of-the-moment venting that should have stayed under my breath.
It was highly unprofessional and you can rest assured that it won’t happen again.
I’d also like to personally apologize for calling you and the rest of the executive staff “a clique of raging fucktard douchebags with delusions of Hitlerian grandeur” on Twitter, which was then automatically posted to my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. It was an unforgivable slip of the tongue born out of my frustration with our current deadlines and how project management seems to be slipping across the board. It’s a holistic issue that impacts every aspect of the company and I should have taken steps to address it before allowing my feelings to take over.
I should not have taken it out on you, Devin, Gary or Stephanie. You have all proven to be consistently good managers and executives, capable of guiding and inspiring our team even when beset with issues such as our continuing timeline slippage. I vented my feelings at you when you are not the problem – I am.
Finally, I should be much more careful about what photos I post to my Flickr account and the company’s pool and how they are tagged. There is no reason at all that Sally in account services should be tagged with “fat,” “chubby,” “BBW,” or “Blubbo the She-Whale.” It was hurtful and I have taken steps to remove any personal insults from the many iPhone photos taken and uploaded directly from the summer picnic.
However, that thing about the Irish office? No way am I taking that shit back. Those potato-humping, bog-dwelling, indecipherable mick fucks know what they fucking did.
13 Comments | Posted: February 16th, 2010 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
GEEK TO CHIC
Unleash Your Inner Geek at the Boston Center for Adult Education
Glasses, headgear, pants that looked like you were waiting for a flood- sound too familiar? Yea, yea, yea, we know that you’ve grown out of that phase. You’ve moved to Boston, gotten a kick butt tech job and may have even found a little arm candy. No one remembers that you went dateless to your senior prom, anyway.
This spring take your comic book collection out from underneath your bed and unleash your inner geek at the Boston Center for Adult Education’s (BCAE) “Comic Book: Heroes & Monsters” drawing class.
At the BCAE learn how to develop your supernatural fantasy into a character, story and professional comic book! Artist John Cafferty will teach students how to transition from creating composition, formulating a design and adding lettering, to the final step of inking- just like the comic book pros!
The “Heroes & Monsters” drawing class will be taught over the course of 5 sessions beginning Wednesday, March 17, 2010. This class is perfect for anyone who has an interest in animation, drawing, art, and of course, comic books! Capes, Spandex, Superwomen, and even headgear are welcome!
Edited To Add: Wait, you know what? I’ve got one comment.
Fuck you guys.
3 Comments | Posted: August 4th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You, Wacky Out Of Context Panels
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.” – Albert Einstein
“What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.” – Sigmund Freud
“There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.” – Don Herold
“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” – Socrates
30 Comments | Posted: February 2nd, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You | Tags: the wire
Dr K wasn’t kidding when he told me
The Wire was the best TV show America had produced so far. Since getting the DVD set from Amazon, I’ve watched at least seven episodes a week, and even thought I’m not finished with it yet (and I will personally hunt down and murder the families of anyone who even fucking
thinks about putting a spoiler in my comments,) I wanted to put down some thoughts on why the show works so well for me.
1.
The Wire creates a living, breathing chunk of Baltimore for the viewer by removing cinematic artifice almost entirely. The camera is deliberately neutral, only sparingly used in a way that frames a shot in a dramatic manner, allowing viewers to focus on the content of the scene. It’s an interesting hybrid of documentary filmmaking and the way most procedural programs are shot. In an era where more and more televisions shows (
24,
Lost, and
Battlestar Galactica, to name three of the most popular) are using techniques borrowed from the movies, it’s a fascinating choice on the part of original series cinematographer Uta Briesewitz and his successors.
2.
The visual aesthetic is just part of the way the series builds its world, and the most obvious. Sound plays a huge part in creating a living, breathing world for the viewer, and Jennifer Ralston, Andrew Kris and their team manage to subtly place the audience in the middle of the action without resorting to 5.1 effects and dramatic musical cues. In fact, outside of the very rare montages (I believe the second season had one, the first had two) any music used in the show is playing on a radio, bumping through a club’s soundsystem, or coming out of an identifiable source. The show’s spiritual and creative predecessor,
Homicide, had only a few weaknesses in its first few seasons and its too-frequent montages and the use of sound effects to catch the viewer’s attentions were chief among them. Sonically,
The Wire is a show that revels in the real world’s sounds and silences, the awkward conversational pauses and blaring of sirens on their way to a crime scene.
3.
Both of the above aspects, when combined with the low key on-screen performances from the cast and scripts that allow everyone on the show to behave like
real people, pull the viewer into what’s happening and engages them in a way that no other television show manages. While I greatly enjoy
Deadwood and
Battlestar Galactica, there are distinct moments when it’s obvious that they want you to know that
acting and drama are happening. With
The Wire, the moments hang on Stringer Bell’s offhand comment to a street hustler or a terse order from Lt Daniels. It’s only in Omar that the theatrical comes out and that’s an organic part of his character and how he inhabits the world.
4.
Speaking of characters – in the first season, there’s around twenty speaking parts of real importance and when the second season begins, they add an additional fifteen or so, without losing track of the original cast. Yes, some are given more focus than others, but that’s still really ambitious for a show that covers as much storytelling ground as
The Wire, with a surfeit of personal issues that never feel cheap or exploitative, just part of real life. Again, it’s those matter-of-fact performances that sell the details much more than tight zooms and barked dialogue. I also have to note that I absolutely love the easy, matter-of-fact chemistry between Sonja Sohn’s Kima Greggs and Jimmy McNulty, played by Dominic West. The way they both use the job to bury their respective personal problems is one of those delicious, writerly touches that I can bring up with someone and they just smile and nod.
5.
There are moments where I wished every show’s producers and creators treated their audience with as much respect as Simon and Burns do, and I actually get sort of
angry at how TV in this country is handled. Writers for the networks have to compete with A) forced act breaks where the audience (even if they’re using a DVR) get yanked out of the story for moments at a time because of advertisements and B) a near-constant bombardment of on-screen advertisements
during their show while at the same time their media model that is losing its relevancy
because of A and B. Each season of
The Wire (at least I assume so, unless they go horribly wrong somewhere, which everyone assures me they do not) is a true novel for television with individual episodes serving as chapters, not as discrete pieces of story on their own. I know that
Lost (which I have not watched because of my high-school level reaction to so many people describing the show as incredible, mindblowing, and incredibly mindblowing, but will likely get around to it one day) and
Battlestar Galactica both follow similar models, but even when watching
Galactica on DVD, the commercial-induced breaks (even when they last just a couple of seconds) are jarring and remind me that I’m watching a TV show, not
enjoying a story.
6.
No matter how I’m engaged with a work, story (not plot –
story) always comes first, and
The Wire has been one of the greatest story experiences I’ve had in any medium. How events impact characters and vice versa and how those moments elevate the way the series serves as an elegy for a city that’s deeply broken is nothing short of masterful.
38 Comments | Posted: January 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You
What’d I miss? Nobody killed Batman or anything, right?
Oh, they did? Let me take a look at this.
Oh, hey, there’s no reason at all people would flip out and scream bloody murder over his final actions, because he explained how he was breaking the one rule he would never break before and the situation demanded it, is there? I mean, he addresses the elephant in the room before even pulling out the gun.
Oh, they did? And they’re still?
…
Wow.
OK, but I mean, it’s Batman. He made them like ten crudzillion dollars last year with that movie. Morrison put an out for the situation in the first four pages of that comic, to be used by the one character who could be trusted with that sort of power, you know? Surely comic book readers have to…
Oh, really?
Damn, people.
Damn.
