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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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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.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
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.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
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"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, November 24, 2004
I Do Like Mondays (Like This)
It's not many mornings you get woken up by a call that tells you your story has landed on the front cover of Time. Precious few times in your life is that news also going to hit on your birthday. Rarer still is a day when even better news arrives just hours later. But that's what happened to me on Monday. I've been in such glee about it all, I've barely had a chance to sit down and write to you, dear reader. Well, that and the hefty copy of the Complete New Yorker cartoons P gave me which I've been steadily gorging through ever since.
The Time story was my piece on SpaceShipOne, which we pronounced the Best Invention of 2004. I knew it was in line for the cover, but forgot all about it until the PR department called -- on New York time -- early Monday morning. The photo shoot that became the cover almost didn't happen; it was set to take place the day after the election, and on election day -- while walking the desolate outer precincts of Reno -- I got a call from my editor saying our photographers had run into a snag. Burt Rutan wasn't going to let us take SpaceShipOne out of its hangar, or attach it to the carrier plane White Knight. It would take hours, Scaled Composites (Rutan's company) had said. It was out of the question.
Scaled Composites is a Mojave-based operation far removed from media-hungry civilization. It has no PR staff. I'd interviewed Rutan the previous week on his cellphone in Alabama while he paced up and down in front of a restaurant containing some fellow devotees of Werner Von Braun -- there was, he said gruffly when I offered to call back later, no better time. He later told me that I might as well "go Google all the articles" that had ever been written about him, because I wasn't asking him anything new. In short, I found him to be -- how shall I put this? -- something of a cantankerous old bastard. Now, in the middle of a sweaty desert afternoon spent persuading lazy but registered Democrats to get out and vote, I had to persuade this difficult genius to roll out his space plane baby for our cameras.
I can't remember how I did it, exactly. All I remember is that I was polite and calm, and gently reminded Rutan that we were talking about the cover of an internationally respected magazine with 24 million readers. I could understand why he didn't want to hook up White Knight, but could we at least take SpaceShipOne for a short roll into the sunshine? We'd reimburse him for any time, trouble and effort taken. Oh, well, I'll certainly see what I can do, he said. Next I know, right by my story in the Time system there's this great image of Rutan and his pilots beaming happily on a reflective wet runway in front of the reunited White Knight and SpaceShipOne.
So yes, the cover was a doubly nice treat. But what blew it out of the water was news that my cousin Julie -- the only one of four kids in my immediate family to not have been born on November 22 -- had just had a baby girl, Imogen. A baby girl born on November 22. I can't describe how immensely happy this made me. About as happy as I was that night at Benihana, where 14 freaks and I had a delightful cocktail-soaked evening watching chefs juggle knives. I'm easily amused.
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