Day: July 22, 2009

I’m sitting in an air-conditioned Super Shuttle van on Wilshire Blvd., and I can feel the inferno-like heat baking the sides of it. It’s like we’re cruising down 111 in Palm Springs or Palm Desert. You could fry a bloody egg on the sidewalk. Oh, yeah. Bloody hell. I’m sweatin’ here. Roastin’, bakin’, boilin’…and San Diego will probably be a tad hotter, I won’t arrive until midnight or thereabouts. Seeing Funny People first at the Arclight this evening.

Tina Brown‘s enormous media-changes thought #1, as passed along by the Chicago Tribune‘s Phil Rosenthal: “This particular wilderness that we’re in will change,” Brown says, “but it’s a very difficult time for people in old media.

“It’s most difficult, I think, for the people in their 50s who are part of a big media organization where they’ve spent most of their lives. They see it all changing around them and there isn’t time for them to make the adjustment, or they fear making it.”

And quote #2: “We’re in a transitional period that I think will only last another few years in which [journalists are] not paid the way they were. That’s the scary part. If you’re up to seeing the opportunity and recognize it as a transition, [and if] you have enough put away to ride this wave, it’s going to be fantastic. I think it’s a big liberation of every kind of talent.”

“What is cinema?,” writes Matt Zoller Seitz in a piece about a mesmerizing Michael Jackson tribute site called Eternal Moonwalk. “André Bazin published a book of essays that tried to answer that question. But if somebody asked me for the short answer, I’d advise them to visit EternalMoonwalk.com. Seriously.

“On first glance, the site seems little more than a poignant goof: a tribute to the late Michael Jackson that draws its inspiration from the John F. Kennedy memorial in Washington, D.C., with its eternal flame — but instead of a flame that never goes out, it’s a video loop featuring variations on the Gloved One’s signature move.

“But it’s more than that. In addition to being diabolically mesmerizing — between the array of clips and the faintly Billie Jean-like backbeat, one tends to lose track of time staring at the damned thing — Eternal Moonwalk is also an incidental tutorial in the basic properties of cinema. It returns motion pictures to their origin point, when the medium’s core appeal was the chance to watch strangers performing, their bodies moving from Point A to Point B, their familiar or amusing actions serving as an emotional connection point, a reminder that we’re members of the same species inhabiting the same small world.”

Tweeting about your arrival at LAX — hardly any kind of big deal — should suffice, but I may as well make it official by HE sights.

Delta flight to LAX was supposed to leave at 8:25 am, and we’re only just now pushing off. Delightful experience. Did I just hear something about wifi above 10,000 feet? HE’s six-hour dark period hereby begins.