internet ephemera
Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
My first encounters with journalism were the same as most American males: through the sports pages. Sometime in middle school I started picking up The New York Times on my parents’ dining table during breakfast and reading the Sports section to catch up on the Yankees and Knicks.
Right there on Page 40, in the “Munchies” section, nestled between “pretzels” and “twelve (12) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” is a parenthetical alert so adamant you can’t miss it: “M&M’s,” the text reads, “(WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES).”
This is the famed rider to Van Halen’s 1982 concert contract. In a sentence fragment that would define rock-star excess forevermore, the band demanded a bowl of M&M’s with the brown ones laboriously excluded. It was such a ridiculous, over- the-top demand, such an extreme example of superstar narcissism, that the contract passed almost instantly into rock lore.
It also wasn’t true.
I don’t mean that the M&M language didn’t appear in the contract, which really did call for a bowl of M&M’s — “NO BROWN ONES.” But the color of the candy was entirely beside the point.
“Van Halen was the first to take 850 par lamp lights — huge lights — around the country,” explained singer David Lee Roth. “At the time, it was the biggest production ever.” Many venues weren’t ready for this. Worse, they didn’t read the contract explaining how to manage it. The band’s trucks would roll up to the concert site, and the delays, mistakes and costs would begin piling up.
So Van Halen established the M&M test. “If I came backstage and I saw brown M&M’s on the catering table, it guaranteed the promoter had not read the contract rider, and we had to do a serious line check,” Roth explained.
When the main US federal emergency agency arrives at the scene of a disaster-hit area, one of the first places it turns to is the local Waffle House – and not just for its officials to grab a quick bite.
Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, came up with the idea of the “Waffle House index” as an informal way of measuring the impact of a disaster. The chain, which has a large number of branches in tornado-prone areas, has a robust emergency management plan.
The index has three levels. If the local Waffle House is up and running, serving a full menu, a disaster is classed as green. If it is running with an emergency generator and serving only a limited menu, it is a yellow. If it is closed, badly damaged or totally destroyed, as during hurricane Katrina, it is a red.
The first-ever legal pay-to-play online poker website in the United States is expected to launch this morning when Station Casinos-owned Ultimate Poker flips the switch on a new era in Nevada gaming.
The site, UltimatePoker .com, can be accessed only on computers or mobile devices located in Nevada.
State gaming authorities signed off of the company’s technology last week and allowed Ultimate Poker to move forward in what is considered a test period
There are so many products on the market these days that are supposed to be good for us — much of it based on zero evidence. Here are 11 commonly touted “health foods” that are actually quite harmful.
EA is doing away with its Online Pass program from this point forward, a decision the video game publisher says is partially based on player response.
“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”
Ana Montes has been locked up for a decade with some of the most frightening women in America. Once a highly decorated U.S. intelligence analyst with a two-bedroom co-op in Cleveland Park, Montes today lives in a two-bunk cell in the highest-security women’s prison in the nation. But hard time in the Lizzie Borden ward of a Texas prison hasn’t softened the former Defense Department wunderkind. Years after she was caught spying for Cuba, Montes remains defiant. “Prison is one of the last places I would have ever chosen to be in, but some things in life are worth going to prison for,” Montes writes in a 14-page handwritten letter to a relative. “Or worth doing and then killing yourself before you have to spend too much time in prison.”
JA former Cuban counterspy who successfully infiltrated the CIA during a decade-long run in the 1960s and ’70s died a decorated hero last week, according to the independent Havana Times.
Nicolas Alberto Sirgado Ross first penetrated the CIA in 1966 while in London with a Cuban mission, said the online newspaper, which bills itself as “open-minded writing from Cuba.”
You know Rob Delaney, or at least you’re familiar with his beefy, hairy midsection: He’s the outrageous, wildly popular Twitter presence (584,000 followers and counting) with the ridiculous avatar in the green Speedo. He’s got sex on the brain, and sometimes Mitt Romney.
Named the “Funniest Person on Twitter” at Comedy Central’s Comedy Awards in May, the Los Angeles-based Boston native recently signed a book deal with Random House. This week, Delaney joined the growing ranks of comedians – Louis C.K., Jim Gaffigan, Aziz Ansari – making their stand-up specials available as $5 downloads. The release of his Live at the Bowery Ballroom landed him on a memorable Conan appearance this week, followed by a 24-hour takeover of Team Coco’s Twitter account.
