Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

weekly roundup

Random things that have caught my eye in the past week, but which didn’t get their own blog entries:

• Before documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald appeared on The Colbert Report on March 30, he asked his blog readers for advice on how to survive the show. I wasn’t all that impressed with his performance on the show — when a show’s host tells his guest “Do come again” at the end of the interview, I don’t think said guest should try to schedule their next appearance right then on the air — but in a follow-up blog entry, Greenwald sounds like he enjoyed the experience.
• The Post ran a story this past Tuesday about people keeping in touch via instant messenger away messages. I’ve read similar stories before, but it’s still an interesting phenomenon — one which I certainly participate in. For me, there’s an odd comfort in seeing folks every day on my IM contact list: If they’re online, they’re probably doing okay. And any information they might put in their away messages — from the relatively “gone home” to more revealing comments about what they’re up to — gives me some small clue about how they’re doing. On my contact list are a number of people I probably haven’t spoken to in months, yet “seeing” them online every day somehow lessens that distance.
• More fun with t-shirts: I love this “seventies sci-fi was all about hexagons” shirt from glarkware. Also amusing: The Alias-themed buttons for “Sydney’s Wig Outlet,” which poke fun at Syd’s many disguises. I think it’d be fun to be “Bleu” for a day.
• Keeping up with local development: I’ve been doing some reading lately about what’s going on with new construction and commercial development in the Clarendon and Courthouse neighborhoods. The Washington Business Journal had a story in late February about the plan for Clarendon Station, a half-block strip of now-empty storefronts on Wilson Blvd. across the street from the Clarendon Metro. And the Arlington Economic Development site has a regularly updated list of commercial developments (from recently-approved to recently-completed) throughout Arlington County. Meanwhile, in my old neighborhood in Alexandria, bicycling blog TheWashCycle writes about plans for re-doing the Monroe Avenue bridge to make it more pedestrian friendly (not to mention a bit safer for motorists) and allow for more commercial and park development in the area.
• I’ve started watching No Reservations, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s new show on the Travel Channel. So far, it’s been a fun, interesting, authentic-seeming culinary travelogue. Bourdain did a live discussion on washingtonpost.com not too long ago to promote the show.
• The New York Times has a nice piece today about Scrubs, one of my favorite shows on television.

  “This year we decided to stop obsessing about how we can bring new people to the show,” [series creator Bill Lawrence] continued. “We decided that this year, we’d just do what we wanted and hoped we would at least be proud of it, even if it never saw the light of day.”

  The result: Some of the best episodes of Scrubs in a long time … and modest growth in viewership.