Onkbers

I think I have a new favorite movie -- Willy Wonka! That's not the official title, but that's what I'm calling it, because I can never remember the real title. I saw it over the weekend, and it's amazing. When I first heard about it, I wasn't all about the whole Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka thing (I thought it should be Andy Dick), but it works. It's probably the coolest movie ever until the next coolest movie ever, so everone go out and see it.

Other weekend happenings: I went to see an interview of Martin Scorcese, which was cool, except for the fact that it was hard to hear what he and the interviewer were saying, since we were sitting on the upper level of the theater. The person who prepped the crowd before MS came on stage was Pick Boy, from some show on Nickelodeon that I've never seen. After the interview, I ate at Dojo with Emjee and then we went to this cream puff place in Astor Place. I think it's called Beard Papa. They have a machine there where they take these dough shells and inject them with cream. I totally wanted one. It would be great to have a dinner party where you make all the food with this injector and then give a recital on your theremin.

Wow, I thought I'd have more to say, but I guess I don't. Fish oil does not reverse grey hair.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

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Paris Hilton Is Not Cool

Paris Hilton is not the pinnacle of human evolution. And I'm not talking about her ugly face, either. (Yes, folks, she has an ugly face. I mean, look at that long nose with the dip in it. She's not a pretty girl. She's not ugly ugly, but she's not pretty. Money makes her seem kinda sorta pretty, and pretty at certain angles, but really, she's not pretty. She's very thin, and has no boobners, but she lacks pretty in the face. And isn't that where pretty is most important anyway?) I'm talking about a revelation I had the other day, and if I'd had my voice recorder with me at the time I might have recorded the thought in enough detail that I could impart it to you in all its glory. But since I didn't, and I only scratched out a few notes, as I was on the subway and about to switch trains, I have to give you the gist of it, whether it really makes sense or no:

Paris Hilton is not cool*. She's just rich. You see her in all these expensive clothes and expensive hair and it kinda fools you into thinking she's cool (kind of like it sometimes fools you into thinking she's pretty), but it's all flash and glam. Yes, she's glam, but she's not cool. Think about someone who's really cool, and then think what they would look like or be doing if they had been born with that much money and never had to worry about money. Would they do the celebrity, famous-for-being-famous thing that PH does? I doubt it. I don't know what they would do, but I can't see it being that. Maybe they'd do the whole adopt-a-bunch-of-underprivileged-babies Angelina Jolie thing or something, or maybe the whole make-weird-challenging-art thing.

Another point: look at what PH wears. Yes, it's all very expensive and looks good and what not, but is it cool? Not really. It's kinda bland, don't you think? If PH were really cool, wouldn't she look... I dunno... edgier? More interesting? And really, the whole blond hair/blue eye thing--not exactly original. Yes, she has great hair (and great extensions), but she's not exactly making a bold statement with it. I mean, look at Lindsay Lohan--she's arguably the queen of cool, but she didn't go and bleach her hair out. Oh, wait...

Lastly, where's the darkness in Paris Hilton? HOW old is she and with all that money, she's never had a drug problem or compulsive sex problem or crippling depression problem? That doesn't even make for an interesting celebrity.

Speaking of drugs, everyone listen to The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment this week. The theme is Drugs, and I have someone from way back in the day guesting. The show turned out really well, if I do say so myself. So everyone tune in! WFMU 91.1FM or wfmu.org. 6-7pm Friday. That's 6-7pm. It starts at 6pm. Not 7pm. 6pm! 1800 hours!

A final word about google: Yes, google can be a pain in the arse for certain web searches, and it certainly makes for screwy blog statistics when you see that so many referrers are landing there from google image searches, but thank cod for google, because thanks to it I was able to find someone who provided me with another piece to the Ron Odyssey puzzle. So now I have a little more background info. So I reiterate, thank cod for google. But I add: thank cod I know how to use google. And I add: yay me! Once again: Yay for me!

And that's the beep for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

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*Note : I am not cool either. I'm not even cool enough to listen to the White Stripes. So I guess that whole thought was just a moot point. But since we're both not cool, Paris, we should hang out. We'll have dinner & stuff. You're buying. But that goes without saying, right?

Ooberganoober Takes Flight

I discovered the bestest book store in the whole city over the weekend. Or, rather, I shouldn't say that I discovered it, but that I finally actually entered it after having passed it a gwillion times and thought, 'Hmm, that looks like a nice bookstore.' It's SOOOO nice, you have no idea. And to use and absolutely odious word, it's 'classy.' Around every bookshelf is---you really won't believe this---a CHAIR!!! A nice looking one with leather! And WOOD! (Not stainless steel or plastic with all that curvy sans-serif crap that's been in for seventy-hundred bazillion years) And the cafe section has charming rustic-looking wooden tables! And the downstairs is so cool (temperature and atmosphere), and really it's just the absolute best bookstore on the entire island. Maybe in the whole state. You may have even seen it or been in, and if you have, you totally know what I'm talking about, zoopgners. What's the name and location of this bookstore? What, I was born yesterday?!?! I'm going to tell you so you can bring all your homeless peeps and Jersey friends and finnuck the whole thing up? No thanks. Just forget I ever said ANY OF IT.

At one of my visits to this promised-land bookstore over the weekend, I flipped through the greatest li'l book by Jennifer Blowdryer, called Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages. Hmm, I should clarify: it's edited by Jennifer Blowdryer. Edited and written. Whatever. I don't even know what editing is, frankly--when I worked in an editing department I got the impression that it was just changing the position of hyphens within sentences before changing them back and then repeating ad nauseam. I used to say, "You can be the best writer in history, but if you don't have a good editor, you might use the wrong dash." My editor friend(!) added: "..and then no one will read it." Oh, wait! I just realized the use of an editor---I used to write "noone" until an editor at that same place pointed out that the word(s) is actually "no one." Of course. Well, I guess that's the function of editors. Cux no one would EVER understand if I wrote noone. ANYWAY, now that I've gotten ridiculously off-track, back to the book. It has chapters by Reverend Jen, James St. James, and of course Jennifer Blowdryer. Here are some of the things you can learn from the book: how to... live in debt, be an Art star, survive in prison, etc... It's pretty useful, and it's inspired me to finally get that bunny costume I've been coveting for so long. Well, to look into it, at any rate. Anyone out there a seamstress? Seamster? Whatever the word is?

Since I enjoyed the book so much and totally intend to see if Strand has the cheap copy of it, I googled Jennifer Blowdryer today to see how much google likes her. Because isn't that what you do when you find something you like--google it to see how much google likes it? The number of google hits was less than I'd expected, which confirms something I've suspected for some time: The number of hits your name retrieves from google has absolutely nothing to do with your real 'market value.' Let's look at the names:

Name: Google hits
Jennifer Blowdryer: 783
Ed Shepp: 3,960
Reverend Jen: 4,830
Mark Baratelli: 387
Stephen Guarino: 205
Britney Spears: 4,760,000
A third-rate drag queen in NYC: 7,030

What's wrong with these numbers? It looks like quite a bit. First of all, look at Jennifer Blowdryer's numbers vs. mine. She's important enough to publish a book, yet her google numbers are less than mine. How could that be? And a whole helluva lot more people know who Reverend Jen is than who I am, so why are my hits so much closer to hers than JBs? And look at Stephen Guarino's (a friend from Florida State): He's done a number of shows up here (was in Bway Bares) and has an improv group; his numbers should be higher than mine. I'm not really sure where Mark Baratelli's numbers should fall, but I wouldn't necessarily have thought they would fall above Stephen's. Britney Spears was used as a control, so her number is meaningless. She's not so much a person as a planet. Here's the real shocker, though: a third-rate drag queen in NYC scores numbers higher than any non-planet entity above. How's that? I'll tell you: when you click on her google search, you realize that you only go through 2 or so pages of real results; the rest are duplicates, and all from her site, which could be called thirdratedragqueeninnewyork.com if I hadn't reserved that today. This fact raises an interesting point about the other results: If you look at my results, you'll find a lot from my own sites, plus some radio links and a handful of links for different Ed Shepps. But if you look at, say, Guarino's and Blowdryer's, you find an arguably more substantial universe of links: reviews, press, etc. Baratelli also has his own site, whereas it appears that Guarino doesn't, so that may explain how he's getting better numbers than Guarino. So it appears that one needs to actually look into the search results as opposed to just the number that google gives you. Yeah, you're prolly all saying, 'duh,' but whatever; I'm not all that bright.*

*Neither are you, booyatches, so don't even pretend that you're ahead of me here.

So how are we to measure our worth if not through e-googling (still my favorite term for it)? What, by our virtue or lovingkindess to others?? Where the hell do you live, Nepal? Get off my blog, Pema! What we need is some kind of algorithm to sift through google's results on our names to get an idea of how important we REALLY are, so we don't get our hopes up with all these pie-in-the-sky numbers that google is giving us. Now, I would think this is something Technorati could be doing, but they seem to be doing pretty well with their business model of Let's-offer-something-that-you-can-do-through-google-anyway-and-pretend-it's-a-new-service, so I don't see them leading the pack. Who will step up and lead? WHO will step up and lead?? (I would do it, but between the radio show, this new bookstore and Being Bobby Brown I'm frankly overloaded as it is. But hey, if someone donates me a TiVo.... Shizz, is that the right spelling?!?! Editor, HELLOO???)

Well I think I've raised enough crucially important issues for today. So I won't even mention that book that got me all shook by declaring the end of civilization because of oil and climate change and what not. That's today's beep then.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

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Snannret

Sigh, what a Brit-pop day here in NYC. It's all raining and dreary... BUT the temperature is cool (high=68). Yes, cool. In July. In New York. And it's supposed to be cooler tomorrow, but then blistering again on Sunday. I'm a twankle blue, because I realized that right about not I should be stepping out of my flat in Itlay and riding my Vespa up the street to fetch a lemon from Clarizzia's lemon tree (that's right, I said both 'fetch' and 'clarizzia') and then returning to spend 4 hours stirring a pot of marinara and daydreaming about owning a giant oregano farm. But I'm just here at work. How depressing.

So if you're blue like me, tune in to tonight's Ed Shepp Radio Experiment, where I'm talking about Food with Tonya Townes.

And that's it.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

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