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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Look Around You
I’ve just been belly-laughing my way through a DVD containing probably one of the funniest, certainly the most bizarre British comedy I’ve seen in the last year. (And yes, that includes The Office. By the way, I’m not sure how many Office fans in the U.S. are aware that the BBC broadcast two new and final episodes over Christmas; all I will say is that if you thought David Brent had reached his nadir at the end of series two, you are sadly mistaken.) Anyway, the comedy in question is called Look Around You, and it’s a pitch-perfect pastiche of every educational program the Beeb used to put on in the 1970’s. Full disclosure: I was avidly watching such shows before I was old enough to understand them, simply because there tended to be nothing on TV at 6am in 1977 other than the Open University.
The opening sets the tone wonderfully. To the sounds of a chirpy Moog synthesizer, on grainy color film, we see someone typing out the world’s cheapest computer-generated special effect on an antique PC:
>10 PRINT ‘LOOK AROUND YOU’
>20 GOTO 10
>RUN
Then we’re off to the races, as the exquisitely patronizing voice-over serves up endless tidbits of cod-knowledge (“the world’s largest number is 45,000,000,000, but scientists believe larger numbers may exist”) while crappy captions flash up on the screen (“45,000,000,001?”). There are plenty of faded pictures of scientists in sideburns conducting ethically unsound experiments and constant instructions to “note that down in your copybook.” The retro novelty of which would fade pretty quickly if it were not married to some of the finest surrealism since Monty Python. Thus we are shown ants building igloos, a free-floating brain being forced to count nuts in a jar and a pile of sulphur that inexplicably gives test subjects laser-like heat vision. All narrated, of course, in the most delightfully boring deadpan.
Will the Beeb ever have the balls to screen this show in the States? I hope so. Many of its more subtle references (the countdown clock!) may be inaccessible to 70’s kids on this side of the pond, but true comedy travels well. After all, who would have ever thought a mock documentary about paper merchants in Slough would sweep the Golden Globes?
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