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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:
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Lazy Sunday Afternoon
Normally I wouldn't want to write a word about an Internet meme after it's gone wild enough for the New York Times to sit up and take notice. But the Saturday Night Live video known as Lazy Sunday -- and that is its proper title, I must insist in the spirit of agressive geekiness the skit embodies, not the "Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia Rap" -- offers such a rich seam of cultural commentary, I can't resist. Plus I was out of the country last week, when it exploded, which gives me a free pass to reference it without losing much cutting-edge cred.
My first thought was: wow, network comedy in the U.S. (and on Saturday Night Live in particular) must be in an even worse state than we thought. When a couple of guys who were making shorts on the Internet a scant few months ago can score a success of this size with their first SNL sketch, it highlights just how lazy and sanitized most TV humor writers have become.
But that sells Lazy Sunday short. The skit works so well because, like all the best memes, it plays on a loop in your head after a single viewing. The hip-hop pastiche is powerful enough that it stands up well even as pure audio (download the MP3 here.)
As for the lyrics, much has been made of their unabashed nerdiness, but that's not what's new here. Nobody who's been paying attention over the last five years can be much surprised that geek culture is on the rise (my former colleague Lev Grossman did a pretty decent essay on the topic in Time back in October).
No, what's new for a mass American audience is the acknowledgment, thinly disguised under a funky beat, of the essential crapness of modern life. We like to think we're so gangsta, but the most gangsta thing most of us ever do is sneak soda and candy into a movie theater. We like to think we're scary smart, but the most common way we prove that is through the medium of entertainment trivia. We like to think our speech is free, but heated political debate has largely given way to questions of whether, say, Google Maps is better than Mapquest. Our most tenaciously popular musical genre, rap, has completely sold out to consumer culture -- in this instance, advertising a movie more powerfully than any trailer. (In effect, the comedy duo got NBC to screen an ad for a film from Disney, parent company of rival ABC.)
So there you have it: the seeds of American self-awareness, sown in three minutes of viral satire. No doubt Parnell and Samberg will shortly sell out themselves; anything they pen after this will be vastly overhyped, and they'll start cropping up in intellectually tame gross-out summer comedies screening, ultimately and ironically, at a multiplex near you. Still, Sunday afternoon was fun while it lasted.
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