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  • February 19, 2010
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Actor with Downs burns Palin. NYTimes successfully edits out joke.

“My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.”

-Andrea Fay Friedman, the actor who played the character with Downs in recent Family Guy episode responds to Palin criticism. You can read most of the interview here 

While they edited out the “show” part, the Times certainly did “tell.” Friedman:

I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line “I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska” was very funny. I think the word is “sarcasm.” In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life.

Makes me wonder what other great bits they’ve edited out. Would love to read a Remainder Blog with them.

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  • February 17, 2010
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from my Valentine

I like the kale touch. My sweetie loves kale.

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  • February 15, 2010
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Stephen Fry eloquently and forcefully calls out the Catholic Church


 

And he does so right to the face of emissaries from the Church. We don’t get to see truth spoken to power very often. We see it done beautifully even less so.

Thank you Stephen Fry, with all my heart.

HT: sturtle an adorable man himself. 

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  • February 12, 2010
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Adam Savage, Roger McGuinn and I iPhone on stage

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  • February 9, 2010
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Baby Book 2.0: My Long Talk with Leo LaPorte

I had a lovely time guesting on This Week In Google recently and afterwards Leo and I chatted. It turned into a kind of spontaneous broadcasting marathon with about 8,000 folks tuning in live. I had just inseminated for the first time that morning and we talk about that and all the tech and absurdity involved. If I am pregnant (fingers crossed) then this would be a heck of a way to start the baby book memories.

Leo and I talked about a lot of things, among them: his years in radio, people he’s interviewed like Jimmy Stewart and Adam West, his weekend with Steve Jobs, comedy, why talk radio is so emotionally melodramatic and how to do independent content online and make it work financially.

It’s been said many times but I’ll say it again: Leo is a total mensch and maybe one of the nicest people in broadcasting. You know how Conan said work hard and be kind to people and good things will happen? Leo deserves to receive an endless supply of good things.

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  • February 8, 2010
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All About Eve, er Sarah Palin contd.

Michael Wolff has one thing right about some of the performance meaning of Palin’s speech the other night: politicians will show more and more emotion. Palin is a clear first in this department in terms of Presidential politics and Wolff is right that it is a huge part of her appeal. 

It doesn’t matter if she only runs the gamut of emotions from A to B as Dorothy Parker once said of Katherine Hepburn. Up till now, as Wolff points out, Presidential candidates have never left A. Until now.

Palin looked like Eve Harrington to me from minute one back in September 08. She has Eve’s weaknesses but also her strengths.

I think the general public trend toward emotion is a good one but only when coupled with transparency and reason and interaction. Many people do not feel heard through intellectual measures only. Many people are not sequential thinkers. The fact that people other than white men tend to actually show emotion more often (I think mostly by nurture) has been used against them in politics for a long time. 

When our culture supports a mix of reason and emotion together in our Presidential politics (think Martin Luther King or Sojourner Truth) that will be a wonderful day. 

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  • February 6, 2010
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This is How the Machine Works

The basic idea is to take a thesis that’s ambiguous between the trivially true (some women would do well to be somewhat less picky about the men they date) to the sweeping and offensive (feminists are blinding you ladies to the fact that you need to marry the first halfway decent man you can find before your ovaries shrivel!!!!) precisely because pushing the envelop beyond what’s defensible will create more “buzz.”

-Matthew Yglesias on Lori Gottlieb’s ridiculous (and debunked) book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough based on an earlier Atlantic article by Gottlieb.

He could have been talking about the entry of Palin into our politics as well.

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The lightest bestest minimal backpack for carrying a laptop around.

 

This is the geekiest blog post I’ve ever written about an item but this backpack has made a real difference for me.
It’s made by a British company named Rapha that makes insanely expensively, beautifully designed bicycling clothes and accessories.

 

I used to have a big problem with Repetitive Stress Injury or RSI. I learned how to make it go away.
I learned to minimize weight on my shoulders. After a bad injury to my nerve in an accident I learned how important it is
to evenly distribute that weight. A bike messenger style bag is no longer an option for me.
I searched for the best possible backpack I could find and found what I was looking for on the BART one day when a
bicyclist came into the train car with his fixie. He was kind enough to let me try on the backpack and I was sold.

 

I do not bike every day. I don’t even own a fixie (though that may change).

 

Here’s the best detailed review of this backpack (with photos) I could find on the excellent Velodramatic, comparing it thoroughly to the slightly larger version. Velodramatic points out all the biking nuances.

 

Even if I never get on a bicycle or my beloved motorcycle again, here’s why it works for me:

 

• This backpack puts the weight on your shoulders very high and evenly distributes the weight.
• I travel a lot. I’m on planes a lot. This thing will always fit where you need it to go.
• My MacBook Pro fits well and is padded. I do not feel anything hard on my back, just the nice padding on the outside of the backpack.
• there are two internal compartments and 3 zippered external pockets for all peripherals. One is very soft (for sunglasses) but it works well for glass covered smartphones.
• I can reach everything in the side external pockets without fully taking off the backpack.
• It’s waterproof. You can be drenched but the laptop stays dry.
• It doesn’t look like a computer bag.
• There’s an opening for  a headphone cable that I never use, but you could.
• Everything about the design is lovely but Velodramatic does a great job of methodically outlining the details.
• There are 2 version but I got the smaller one. I’m trying to minimize and make things lighter. It makes me pack less.
• I once did a 3 day trip (to the Meet in the Middle for Equality Rally post Prop8) with nothing but this backpack.

 

This bag is quite expensive, you can buy it in the US here.  For me it has been worth it.

 

To badly paraphrase my favourite writer: I find it harder and harder everyday to live up to my backpack.

 

 

 

 

post inspired by @jensimmons in need of a backpack
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • January 22, 2010
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Join us for tHGS@SFSketchfest: Comedians on Sex tomorrow night.

7×7 gives tomorrow night’s Heather Gold Show some nice coverage: Sexual Democracy http://bit.ly/7NYF6E

Here’s more about the show w the hilarious Sara Benincasa from NY what with the Sarah Palin Vlogs and MTV and bathtub interview show and the Kevin Avery up from LA often doing the funny before Dave Chappelle and with tHGS fave W Kamau Bell on Live 105 and then there’s, you know, everyone’s favourite Gay Porn expert and Sister of Perpetual Indulgence: Sister Roma.

Here’s where you get tickets. What are you waiting for? Go. 

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To become a better judge of character…

Congratulations. This means you’ve decided to change you instead of pretending others will change. You have no control over others.
1. Listen to what you’ve noticed and add a delay to your major decisions about people. This will *not* feel natural. It will feel intellectual and not like a gut choice. You might feel guilty. You might feel like you have to resist something you feel you want to do. That’s good because you’ve already decided that you are not a great judge of character. You’re changing that.

2. Make sure you spend some time away from the person you’re making the decision about while you make the decision.

3. Watch your cynicism. Never trusting isn’t any more accurate or worthwhile than overtrusting. Just take more time.

4. Notice peoples’ actions. Do they walk their talk? Do they follow through? Do they at least verbally acknowledge responsibility and mistakes when they were unable to follow through?

5. If someone’s talking smack about others to you, they’re probably doing the same to you.

6. If someone’s cheating on someone else with you, the odds are higher they’ll cheat on you (this one never ceases to amaze me).

7. Is the relationship mutually beneficial?

8. Practice telling someone directly what you need from them or what your concern is if you have one. They might not be able to meet your need but should be able to handle relaxed, direct communication. If they can’t handle direct eye contact that’s worth trying to understand.

9. Are you a bad judge of character or are your expectations based on your own needs and not on the reality of what this person can or has committed to deliver?

10. Watch someone in action: playing a sport, under pressure or in some other flow activity. It’s easier to see more of what they’re really about.

11. Notice how people treat their friends, co-workers, family and especially how they treat people in different “status” positions and people who are of no apparent “use” to them. Does their behaviour change?

12. If you expect relationships (personal, work or otherwise) to always fail or be unreliable then you might have learned to read your dysfunctional family experience as a truth about everyone. There’s plenty of self-help literature, 12 step groups like Al Anon and counseling to help deal with this.

13. Believe what you see.

As with anything I know in my bones, I learned all this through experience.

Inspired by a @ryanomics tweet.

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