ted
April 03, 2006
Interview in Gwinnett Daily Post Article on Hollywood and 9/11
It's always weird being quoted in a newspaper article - you ramble on the phone for half an hour on a whole range of topics, then they take one or two random sound bites you may not even remember saying.
But I think this piece by reporter Shelley Mann came out pretty well. I was trying to drive home the argumnt that the claim that "it takes time to develop historical perspective on an event" can become a copout against taking a stand on political issues while they're still controversial and relevant. For all its clumsy didacticism, it took guts for Michael Moore to make and release Fahrenheit 911 in 2004, so soon into the Iraq War. We need to celebrate and reward those artists (Moore, George Clooney, Sean Penn) who have the courage to take stands on the most important issues of our day. They're the ones creating what will become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.
That said, I hadn't seen or read anything about the upcoming Oliver Stone 9/11 movie when the Gwinnett Post reporter called me up, so I hope I'm not completely off base. I'll be really disappointed if it turns out to be as dumb as, well, just about every movie Stone's made since Natural Born Killers. Nixon was just awful, and Any Given Sunday smothered Jamie Foxx's sizzling performance underneath Al Pacino's relentless yelling. Then came that feature-length documentary on Fidel Castro that soft-pedaled Cuba's human rights record. I couldn't bring myself to see Alexander, although I guess it might be worth a rental for camp value. I'd write Stone off, but Platoon, JFK, and especially Salvador remain three of the greatest political films ever made, matching a gonzo filmmaking sensibility to real moral seriousness. In fact, anybody who wants to know how the Bush junta cut their teeth should definitely rent Salvador.
Posted by tedf at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2006
My Friend Flickr
I've now scoured my iPhoto library and uploaded all of my faves to Flickr. They'll all randomly rotate in and out of the group of photos in the "Photocast" section of Tedlog, which is in the right-hand column under "About Ted." You can click on any one of the photos to go to a full-size version on the Flickr site. You can also browse through all the photos here, and watch them as a slideshow here.
Posted by tedf at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
Photocast
I've added a new feature to Tedlog: a "photocast" along the right-hand column, right below the section on Electric Dreams. It displays thumbnails of ten randomly selected photos from my Flickr account. Right now it's all shots from recent travels in Georgia. I'll be going through my whole iPhoto library over the next few days to post all my faves, then I'll start taking new photos with the photocast in mind.
If you click on any tumbnail in the Flickr "badge" in that right-hand column, you'll be taken to the full image in Flickr. From there, you can browse the rest of my images, view them in a slideshow, and even subscribe to an RSS feed of every photo I post. You can also go directly to my Flickr homepage by visiting http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedfriedman.
Posted by tedf at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
Welcome To The New Tedlog, Now With Tedcasting!
The Tedlog redesign is finished! Here's a quick overview of the changes:
- New header and color scheme, natch.
- Podcasting! I'll be regularly posting recorded lectures, audioblog entries, original music, and short video works to Tedcast. Several entries are already up, with more to follow very soon. To subscribe to Tedcast in iTunes, just click here. To subscribe using other podcast receivers, use this URL: feeds.feedburner.com/tedcast. Or, just download individual files from the entries on the Tedcast page.
- Several sections of the site have been folded into the new teaching area. From there, you can find class syllabi, comprehensive exam bibliographies, FAQs for grad students, the Calls for Papers database, and a collection of research links. The direct link to the CFP database is http://www.tedfriedman.com/cfps.
- The "picks" have been folded into the main blog. Look for the updated Ted Movie Database coming soon!
I'd love to hear your feedback on the new look for '06.
Posted by tedf at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
Pardon Our Dust . . .
We're in the midst of a redesign here, so you may run into the occasional glitch. In meantime, let us know what you think of the new logo!
Many thanks to Nate and KT for their ongoing help with the new look for the site, and to Susan McFarlane-Alvarez for discovering the original image used on the Electric Dreams cover.
Posted by tedf at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
Comments Are Back Up!
Feel free to join in on any post! To kill comment spam, I've set up a simple sign-up form through Movable Type's Typekey system. That way, you can prove you're human, and not an online-poker/viagra-selling robot.
Posted by tedf at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2006
Live Online Chat at WashingtonPost.com This Friday, Feb 10, 2-3 PM
I've never done one of these before, so everybody should feel free to log on and lob me some Jeff Gannon-style softballs. In fact, you can submit a question or comment any time between now and Friday.
Here's the URL, both for posting questions ahead of time and following the chat live on Friday:
Posted by tedf at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2005
Electric Dreams Is Now On the Amazon Shelves!
My first book, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, is now available for purchase by clicking here. It makes a great gift for Christmas, Channukah, and Kwanzaa, as well as birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, and all other festive occasions.
The combination of its broad scope, readability, and engagement with cultural theory also makes it an ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate classes on cyberculture, the history of technology, media studies, cultural studies, and American Studies. If you're considering the book for a course syllabus, you can find more information about NYU Press's examination copy policy here.
For more info on Electric Dreams, including excerpts, reviews, and updates, check out this page.
Posted by tedf at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
Other Electric Dreamers
I'm a member of a pretty motley crew.
I was looking to see who else online uses variations on the title Electric Dreams, the name of my upcoming book.
- Electricdreams.com appears to be a website for a seriously hardcore paintball group. At least I hope they're just using paint. The front page features a link to a streaming version of Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue."
- Electricdreams.org, on the other hand, is owned by The Electric Dreams Organization, which appears to be a very cool group promoting safe sex among gay clubgoers. They haven't put anything up at that URL yet, but there's a rundown of what they do at partysafe.org
- There's also a series of porn films titled Electric Dreams available from Amazon. Unsurprisingly, they show up well before my book if you type "electric dreams" into an Amazon search.
- Of course, you can also get the original 1984 film Electric Dreams from Amazon. I can't get too cranky about that one, since it inspired the title of my own book.
- Finally, it turns out a book published in 2004 is titled Electric Dreams: One Unlikely Team of Kids and The Race to Build the Car of the Future. I may not be able to overtake the porn or the Hollywood movie in the Amazon search listings, but maybe I can beat out the unlikely team of kids.
Posted by tedf at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2005
Back Up and Running
Well, the blog took a summer vacation, while I finished the final edits on my book, taught a really fun class about classic Hollywood movies, and switched over from PC to Mac. (Re: the latter - all the Mac addicts are right and I was wrong to hold off switching for so long. When I switched from Mac to Windows in the mid-90s, Microsoft had closed the interace gap, and lots of cool software was Windows-only. But now, OS X is a quantum leap above WIn XP, and Apple designs better core apps than anybody else. Much more on that to follow in future posts.)
There's still some more maintenance to come - I'll be switching to the new Movable Type 3.2, which will hopefully fix the brutal comment spam attacks. And once the book's out, I'll be posting regular updates on cyberculture topics, to cover stuff that's happened since the book went to press.
In the meantime, hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting random comments on music, TV, etc. Blogging can be a real time-suck, but it's just too fun to bail on. I'll be back!
Posted by tedf at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2005
My First Book Cover
Here it is!
Posted by tedf at 01:05 AM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2005
Contest #2: Pick Tedlog's Logo
OK, it's time to get another contest rolling. Here's the challenge this time: to design the "favicon" for Tedlog. A favicon is the tiny icon that shows up to the left of the URL in an address bar and to the left of the page title in a bookmarks list. IE 5.0 and most other modern browsers support favicons. For now, I've designed a functional red block with a white "T" in the middle, but I'm sure the collective intelligence of Tedlog can do better than that.
I've found a convenient free site for designing a favicon online. You can also just build a 16x16 bitmap image in any Paint program. Email your entry to me at ted@tedfriedman.com, and I'll post all the entries online. Once I've collected the entries, we'll take a vote via Comments for the winner. The winner will receive a copy of Naomi Klein's No Logo.
For a nice selection of favicon examples, check out MpP Favicon Gallery. For more examples of icon design, check out the perfect coffee table book for geeks, Icon Design.
Posted by tedf at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2005
And the Winner of the Pick Ted's Hair Contest Is . . .
Jere, with her description of haircut #7 as "relaxed, friendly, and approachable."
Here's the winning look:
Jere wins a 6-month subscription to thehairstyler.com. Second place goes to Jack the cat, who suggested short hair all over my body, as well as moving my ears to the top of my head.
To catch up on the original contest announcement and all the entries, click here.) And look out soon for Tedlog Contest #2.
Posted by tedf at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2005
Pick Ted's Haircut Contest
OK, I think it's time for the first contest at Tedlog.
I haven't changed my haircut in about 15 years. I wear my hair as long as I can grow it, in a ponytail. Once every year or two, I get the split ends trimmed. Simple, economical, efficient in expressing a leftish alternavibe. But probably never really the most flattering way to frame my face.
So, now that I've got a book coming out and I'm going up for tenure, I've decided it's time to shake things up and create the new Ted. I've already started by growing a beard, which I'm surprisingly happy with:
The next step is the hair. Kate found an amazing site, thehairstyler.com. You can upload a picture, and they'll paste a bunch of different haircuts on it. We sorted through hundreds of options, and came up with these dozen nominees:
(You can click on the above picture for a bigger view.)
The sources of the celebrity hairstyles, by the way, include Christian Bale, Keanu Reeves, Russell Crowe (twice), and some guy who used to be on Party of Five.
So, I'm leaving it up to you, the assembled readers of this fledgling blog. Which hair to wear? (You can identify your choice by number. The top row, left to right, is #1-5. The second row is #6-10, the third #11 and 12.)
Oh - I almost forgot. Whoever makes the most compelling case for a specific haircut wins a six-month account with thehairstyler.com, courtesy of me.
Posted by tedf at 02:44 AM | Comments (21)
March 09, 2005
Electric Dreams on Amazon!
Check it out! I'm famous!
The book won't actually come out until the fall, which is why it's "not currently available." Man - if I'm already checking out the Amazon page now, just think how often I'll be neurotically clicking on this link once it has a sales rank number.
Amazon.com: Books: Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture
Posted by tedf at 12:56 AM | Comments (1)