Digital Ink Los Angeles

Forget about all that freeway traffic — there ‘s a new way to commute to your job. No more waiting in long lines for airline flights. Wanna take that Tahitian vacation but don’t have time for a cross-Pacific flight? Well, fret no more. We’ve got a new way to travel!

Scientists at the Helsinki Universita have discovered a method of deconstructing and reconstructing atom structures and their first tests have proven their theories.

In a February 25th experiment, their tests were able to teleport a fully grown, healthy male student from the bio-physics lab to a temporary facility set up on the opposite end of the campus.

When interviewed, the mysterious Professor of Physics, Dante Inflagrato, said, “We have engaged with a new phase of internet hyper-transfer protocols. By unraveling the DNA strand and re-assembling the atomized structures, the student disappeared and re-appeared on a place not too far away.”

When asked about any problems with the particle- or atom re-assimilator, Dr. Inflagrato said, “The student did experience some period of vertigo-induced nausea and a profound urge to fly, but we’ve been able to calm his systems and functions.” The male student — a volunteer in the pay-for-school work-study program — has not been made available for interviews.

Professor Inflagrato is also in need of volunteers for his time-travel machine and an experiment in invisibility.

On a side note, APRIL FOOL’S!!!

“All that I care to know is that a man is a human being–that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
~~ Mark Twain, in Harper’s Magazine, September 1899

Mark Twain is a man of American letters who spoke to the profound paradox of man — at once a brave beast, divine and brutal, with ugly virtue and graceful depravity.

There’s a video circulating the internet with naked images of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, taken surreptitiously by a voyeuristic video-maker with access to Erin Andrews’ hotel-room peep-hole.

All dorm-room humor aside, and after the initial lure to search “Erin Andrews Naked Video” for the best-quality posting on the internet, there arises a moment of pause…

What kind of sick freak has the audacity to put his video camera to a door’s peep-hole and video a young woman in the privacy of her hotel? Not casting any stones, just wondering what this person does for fun? Is there an extreme likelihood that this voyeuristic freak wouldn’t know what to do with Erin Andrews if she invitingly opened her door and offered her uninvited guest to come in for a nitecap?

Quite simply, Erin Andrews is a beautiful woman living in an ugly world. She deserves better. Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and Colin Farrell somehow found their sex videos on the internet because they had intentions from the beginning to capture these compromising images.

Maybe Erin Andrews can call up some of her NFL buddies with gangster friends and criminal histories — Michael Vick, Pacman Jones, Ray Lewis, Travis Henry, and Steve Smith — to exact some violent justice on this peep-hole pervert? That would be a nice professional courtesy, considering the way Erin Andrews has always been an absolutely professional and courteous reporter since she began with ESPN in 2004.

According to Wikipedia legend, Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, invented the one-loaf bread-slicing machine, thusly creating mass-produced sliced bread.

The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, producing their first slices on July 7, 1928, 81 years ago today. Their product, “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread“, as is well known, was a substantial success.

What’s the next big thing? What will become of the technological epoch in this era of financial ruin? Stem cell research? Universal healthcare? Electric cars? Wind energy? Twitter? World Peace? Sarah Palin? Blogs? Digital Ink Los Angeles?

What’s your favorite sliced-bread sandwich?
Maybe the “Ben Franklin Quadruple-Decker,” hold the mayo?

Facebook is an interesting phenomena because it calls into question the dilemma of “Who was I then? Who am I now? Are they the same people?“

What would someone like Dick Cheney present to a potential Facebook buddy from years gone by? “Hey there! Long time no speak. Wanna go quail hunting sometime?”

Or, how about the ever-so-humbling experience of requesting a “friend” on Facebook, only to have them “ignore” your cordial advances. How could they? Don’t they know who I am? The horror and humility…

Or the Facebook gurus who seem to somehow track your every movement through posts and photos — the all-encompassing “Mobile Uploads” feature of Facebook, which allows the user to share every digitally captured moment with their Facebook “friends.”

Then, there’s a notion that Facebook is a manner of self-expression, a way of assessing one’s self-identity and letting the world know who you really are — safely ensconced in your home or apartment, bent over a keyboard, squinting at a computer screen, clicking on things like, “What Wild Animal Are You?“

Oh, the wonders of the Digital Age. We live. We learn. We Facebook. Wanna be my friend?

(cartoon by Dave Walker)

Allison Anders‘ 1993 film, Mi Vida Loca, tells the story of two girls growing up as best friends, living the gang life in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. One of many films to speak of the Vida Loca, or “Crazy Life.”

The 2009 Webby Awards has selected “The Ten Commandments of La Vida Loca” as Best Drama Series. The series is produced by Filmaka, a new online conglomerate of creative web denizens looking to make their mark in the motion-picture industry of the 21st Century.

You can see all of Filmaka’s goodness at their website.

Making it happen online and offline.

LMFAO are special and good. The name supposedly stands for Laughing My Fucking Ass Off, among other things.

These guys bring something to the table that big studios and record companies can’t compete with — Do It Yourself moxie and creative energy. Their current kicking dance-floor track is “I’m in Miami, Bitch,” which seems poised for pop-funk heavy-rotation for Summer 2009.

This is the new-media, Web 2.0 generation at their finest, making it happen, getting crazy, toasting to the good times, using the Internet to promote and expand their “Rock Party” universe, and it’s working.

Check out their YES! video right here. This was their Summer 2008 hit. These guys make Hollywood proud, and Interscope Records and Universal Distribution are getting paid without even really knowing how it all works: Twitter, Facebook, Skype, MySpace, and YouTube domination, that’s how.

They make their own music on drum-machines, they film their own videos, they promote these videos as viral content, they promote their own shows, they Twitter their fans, they link to fans in Facebook, they Skype their live antics, they host audio samples on MySpace, and they handle the “Rock Party” vibe with real thunder and infectious GOODness. That’s DIY that every punk-rocker and guerrilla filmmaker can be proud of.

Keep workin’ it LMFAO, and make the people proud to party!

Been following a “new media” online/offline entity called GOOD, and I really like quite a bit of what they’re doing.

They have a notion for re-imagining the world we live in, really getting into the creative processes and examining the possibilities.

Some of their recent posts are:

Transparency: How Much Water Do You Use?

Beam Me Up Or Not

Family Farming for the 21st Century

and

Preserving Our “Freedom”

Cool blog, interesting topics, enlightened souls, and a visionary standard that draws upon New American, populist idealism, not standard polemic garbage that rehashes old principles with candy-colored imagery.

Tomorrow, John Fante‘s 100th Birthday…