Yesterday's Tomorrow, Today!

I can't stop watching archival film footage from archive

Look: It's the 1964 world's fair--specifically, Bell Labs promo film in which the whitest people on earth marvel over early-60s high-technology.
The office of "Century 21" includes a brick-size "Bell Boy" pager and a punchcard-based automatic dialer, but more importantly, hope for the future. As if technology would save us.

Bell was proud of calling attention to their system's "Central Office" which would handle all switching and other features (like call-forwarding). It didn't occur to them that the name/concept is authoritarian and spooky. "One day you will be able to call home and turn off the oven!" the friendly but adult-sounding narrator says, promising a world full of computers (or "artificial brains") useful to women only in that they would help them cook.

Companies in the business of providing you with high-tech telephone service wanted you to be awed at the wonder and possibilities of the modern age, and the idea that you might be like, "Yeah, I don't really buy it." doesn't seem to have occurred to them. "You will like this future in which machines will solve your problems, and suffering will be eliminated," corporate America seemed to say. "It's a wonderful age on a beautiful stage demonstrated for you, been created for you" goes the film's theme song.

Maybe trying to categorize people's attitudes based on corporate shill movies isn't a very accurate read of popular opinion, but just the fact that Bell chose to call attention to technological progress without even an ironic, distancing device speaks volumes. Today you'd have John Cleese playing a bumbling stooge who could still manage to work the new computer, and the company would poke fun at itself by showing its own executives as sort of clueless. Like, "Hey, we're not a faceless, brutal organization bent on efficient accrual of capital at the expense of all humanity; we're fun!

It's hard to reconcile the idea of the hopeful innocence of early 60s, World's Fair America with things like McCarthyism and WWII. Like, how is it possible that "The Greatest Generation," less than 20 years distant from the Holocaust, had such boundless faith in a future provided by automation and technology?

It might have been fun to believe in the promise of a better tomorrow though. And people used to dress cool back then, too.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 11:27 AM ] |

These are the people in your neighborhood

1) Death Bringer says, "Fuck you, buddy!"

2) Bobby Doggerson AKA The Brunswick Boy has a hair fetish, and is having trouble finding an internet message board that will accept him. (link not safe for work)

3) Dee is counting on "immunics" to cure her of herpes, but not just from her physical body. Her astral and etheric bodies will be cured as well.

4) Riotstar's blog promises: "My Life in Pictures," and yet all of the pictures are of the inside of her room.

5) Tyler Ulmer is on his fifth day of being a cowboy...and he loves it.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 2:05 PM ] |

I don't have ADD, unless it stands for "another drink, damn you." I changed my template because I wanted to have a links section and I didn't want to have the same blog template as a bunch of other people.

That's terrifically boring, I realize, but everything isn't always exciting.

Basically, I'm only posting in order to point you to The Great Robyn Simms, who wants wants to give you an inside look at how the puppets from Crank Yankers are made. Her blog is great and funny and interesting, etc. I'm not just saying that because she makes me omelettes and encouraged my recent decisions to purchase both an Xbox and Satellite TV with Tivo.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 1:13 PM ] |

What People Were Searching For on Google When they Came to My Page

Someone searching google for the following phrase ended up at my page:

"cleavage breasts -sex -bukkake -augmentation -penis -mature -nu"

Huh?

Also, this search string was entered:

"Stephen Johnson shit"

Hey!

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 9:56 AM ] |

Master of Puppets!

Fun: I went to the Crank Yankers wrap party on Friday, and it was the only Hollywood party I have ever attended that didn't suck. I didn't want to murder too many people who were there, and I got to play blackjack with fake money and eat meat on a skewer.

Also, I met the woman who played "Chair-y" on Pee Wee's Playhouse. That's my favorite star sighting. I was speechless. I wanted to tell her of my admiration for her work and how much I loved Chair-y and ask her all kinds of questions about the show, but I didn't.

Anyway, Robyn got drunk and we played pool with other people who make TV puppets for a living.


In keeping with the puppet theme of the weekend, on Saturday night, I went to the Puppet Slam at Zen Sushi in Silver Lake. There's a whole puppet community in L.A. They have their own puppet agent (who was also at the CY party), and their own puppet social scene. Puppet Slam is the puppet-world's yearly gathering where they show off the material they've been working on to others in the puppet industry. It's all unspeakably weird, I promise.

I appreciated the artistry, but the evening was a little too "insider-y" for my taste. I don't know anything about puppets, so many of the jokes concerning the peccadilloes of specific puppeteers and material about how annoying it when marionette strings get all tangled-up were over my head.

We didn't stay for Paul Zelum's (TV's Beakman) act. It was too hot and too full of people and the drinks weren't free. So we left and went to House of Pies. For the pie-curious: Robyn ate Lemon meringue, Alicia had, I think, some kind of chocolate pie, and I enjoyed a mushroom omelet.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 3:55 PM ] |

Subway Funny


So I was riding the Blue Line Subway the other day, right, because I figure if you ever can ride the L.A. subway for any practical purpose, you really should. It's a lovely subway. Clean, cheap, never crowded, always efficient, etc.

Anyway, this day, a mass of people get off at my stop. I'm slow, so I'm last in line. Just as I'm about to exit, the pneumatic door closes in my face, and the subway begins ever so slowly inching forward.

This is an elevated section of the track, right, so there should be no problem stopping and letting me out.

"Excuse me," I say into the little intercom thingy placed in each car for just such an occassion, "Please stop the car and let me out."

No response. I look out the window; the MTA guy in the next train is sleeping. Full-on sleeping on the job. I try it a little louder:

"Um... Excuse me?" I say into the intercom while tapping on the glass.

An older woman walks over. "No, try it this way," she says before hitting the Intercom button. "Hey, Asshole, open the fucking doors."

Still no response.

I try again, "Hey, sleeping beauty, Wanna wake up and do your goddamn job?" I say, banging on the glass.

She steps up to the mic: "There's people who need to get off, assface!"

"Yeah, fucker," I chime in. "They don't pay you to sit around and dream."

So me and the old lady are cracking each other up, But it's all for naught. The guy never wakes up.

I take the subway to the next stop and every single person getting off passes by the sleeping train-guy and laughs or clicks there tongue disapprovingly. Everyone hates a slacker, I guess. But he did look very peaceful there in his little subway car bed. Maybe he was dead.

I used the emergency phone to report my trouble at the next stop. It's not really an emergency in the classic help-im-being-raped sense, but it was an emergency to me. No answer. I leaned on the emergency button for like 20 minutes, expecting a SWAT team to show up, and got nothing but silence.

Thanks, MTA! You're a fantastic Mass Transit Whatever.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 1:26 PM ] |

Pie at E3

Many people ask me about pie at E3.

The only pie I saw at E3 was pizza pie, and I'm not sure if that even counts.

Many of the attendees looked as if they were fans of pie, however.

Also: There WAS a Crazy Climber machine at E3. You don't lose your skills at Crazy Climber, even after many years. I got to the fourth building, bitch.

Plus: For a second today I thought: "I think I'll get my picture taken in front of the General Lee with those two women dressed as Daisy Duke. That'd be funny."

But a second later I thought: "No it wouldn't."

Robyn and I are going to the Crank Yankers wrap party tonight. I hope there are many socially unacceptable puppets and free drinks.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 8:13 PM ] |

E3 Shenanigans...

I just got home from this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo at the L.A. Convention center.

I enjoyed the hoopla and the loud noises and the booth girls and the nerds and the bright colors and the happy buzzing combination of Capitalism, time-wasting and carpal-tunnel-syndrome. I looked at and played many, many video games that have yet to hit stores.

There were a lot of sequels, a lot of Blood-Rain 2's and FistBlood 3's. Everything is all about first person shooters these days. Whether you prefer first-person-shooting zombies, other people or vampire cowboys, you're in luck. The popular ones all seem to boast that you can play 'Net or Xbox Live. I never play FPS online. I'm old, and some 12-year-old will kill my ass in like 2 seconds, then make fun of me. Fuck that.

I was appalled by a first person shooter set in Vietnam called ShellShock. It's an offensive title to 'Nam vets like me. I didn't spend 2 years killing babies so some pasty nerds could name a damn videogame after my post traumatic stress disorder.

The real army was there--commando guys parked an army helicopter in front of the Staples Center and were hanging around in their uniforms recruiting videogame fans to join the coast guard or whatever. I talked to Sgt. Spillman (Army Special Forces! I swear!) and asked what videogames he preferred. He told me he dug Splinter Cell. That's weird, if you ask me. The guy fights in wars for a living and then plays games about fighting in wars to relax. You'd think he'd enjoy a golf game or The Sims. It's not like I come home from my job and play games about washing cars, you know?

Sgt. Spillman (or "Sarge" as the boys in the fighting forty-second call him) asked if I wanted a copy of America's Army, the First Person Shooter our military is using to trick idiots into acting as cannon fodder for our bloated plutocracy. I wanted to tell Sarge I would only play his war videogame if I could sit behind a desk and earn a scholarship towards a college videogame, or ask him if I'd get a power-up for torturing prisoners, but I was chicken he'd shoot me or something.

I tried the new Nintendo handheld, which is pretty cool, I guess. The games are controlled with a stylus, like a PDA, and they're wireless compatible. Some of the games seem fun, I guess, but really, when would I use such a toy? Never. I'm busy. Get that shit away from me.

Why can't I get Crazy Climber for my Xbox? I think I need a new aerial.

The only game I saw that I must have is a hip-hop game called Get on 'da Mic. With the help of a my Xbox and a USB microphone, I'll finally be able to bust freestyle rhymes and take out sucka MCs.

Anyone who knows me knows what a problem I have with sucka MCs.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 6:35 PM ] |

A Drink With Wil Wheaton

A few months ago, I had a drink with Wil Wheaton.

It was after an improv show he did with a friend's comedy troupe at the Acme theater.

Stereotypically enough, Wil Wheaton and I discussed computers and drank microbrews.

As you have probably read, Wil Wheaton is a nice guy.

I told him I was "a big fan" which is a stupid thing to say, and isn't really all that true. I like Star Trek TNG and all, but I was never a big fan of ensign Crusher. I like him better than Whoopi Goldberg, but not nearly as much as Data. I didn't like any episode where he had to pilot the Enterprise, but I did like how he dropped out of Starfleet to become a sort of Intergalactic Hippy/do-gooder. At least, I think that's what happened.

Wil Wheaton is good at doing improv. His personal hygiene is impeccable. As far as I know, Wil Wheaton has never been convicted of a crime.

There was nothing remarkable about having a drink with Wil Wheaton, except the way his fame was like another person at the bar.

I was not mentioned on Wil Wheaton's blog the next day, as apparently I hadn't made enough of an impression on him to warrant inclusion.

Now I'm reviewing Wil Wheaton's new book, Dancing Barefoot, for a magazine. It's a nice book full of short, true anecdotes from the life of a teen-idol turned has-been turned Internet superstar. Don't worry, my drink with Wil Wheaton will not play into my review. I will be fair and honest.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 4:34 PM ] |

Sometimes the important demands of my go-go lifestyle take precedence over keeping up with this dumb blog thinger.

By this I mean I bought an Xbox.

The Xbox is superior to the Playstation 2, but only marginally. Both machines are vastly superior to cleaning cat-litter pans and getting punched in the neck. That's why you don't see a realistic neck-punch-simulator selling many copies.

Also: I'm going to the E3 convention later this week to look at videogames. This is because I am a geek.


ALSO: Note the fantastic impact of my new template. I'm not enough of a geek to have a custom template, of course. I'll just use a factory one, thanks.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 2:30 PM ] |

What kids think about when they think about Nietzsche

Culled from the Comments section of Fred Durst's Blog. (which is either the genuine journal of Limp Bizkit's frontman or the funniest joke in the history of the Internet.)


* Fred I love Nietzsche....that fuck was the more inhislistic motherfucker of all time!! check out my xanga page!

* Nietzsche is all about overcoming, but it all means nothing in the end if there is not some idea, some good, some absolute to which you strive. Nietzche doesn't believe in love, or beauty or anything beyond the anarchic struggle of the Will to Power. What is Being? "Will to power" answers Nietzsche. Now, this might be hip for rappers and metal heads, but it is kind of immature to someone who has been in love. --ronmwangaguhunga


* Ah yes, nietzsche. Good read, although he errs in the dismissal of all religion. You like philosophy, then? Good for you, it is a dying art.
--BlindPOD86

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 8:10 PM ] |

I'm sure you're curious what I thought of The Blow Show, a sketch comedy show I took in this weekend. Here's my review on ComedyLA.com.

I hope the cast and/or crew of The Blow Show doesn't want to beat me up. At this point in my life, I don't need any more beat ups.

That's all I got.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 11:29 AM ] |

I like drinking.

I spent Friday night getting pleasantly soused at Tom Bergin's, a venerable LA drinking establishment. My venerable Boston pal Steve Spezzano was in town for the Coachella Festival. I haven't spoken to Steve since college, 10 years ago, and I was heartened by his continuing committment to a lifestyle of smoking pot and playing videogames.

"If it isn't broke, why fix it?" Steve asks us.

Also: Hangovers are so much worse when you're not in college. The next day was Derby Day, and the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports were all but ruined as I sat listlessly on Marty's couch and couldn't even choke down a single drink Mint Julep.

   [ POSTED BY Steve Johnson @ 8:22 AM ] |