ISO 64, 1/125 s, f/7.1

Just finished watching the last hour of 2005 Dakar coverage on OLN, ten days after the race’s conclusion. First critique: get new commentators! Jerry Bernardo, who actually travelled with the rally was a New Yorker. Replace him with Nicky Grist. There’s something about having a British voice on the field that just makes the experience seem a little more refined. Jimmy Roberts, who did a little filming on American dunes (no, you’re not fooling me) and who, according to my suitemate Q, usually does golf, needs to go too. He was stiff, and his audible emotional detachment through the deaths of riders José Manuel Perez and Fabrizio Meoni made the memorials sound insincere.

The Dakar organizers always provide their affiliates with excellent cinematography, and this year was no exception. I liked the very hands-off stage coverage which let the terrain speak for itself, but the stories of each stage really did go untold, and a clear sense of the competitors’ strategies never emerged for the viewer. I think that OLN could have done a much better job of this, especially seeing that they decided to delay coverage until the race was completly over.

And that is my biggest complaint. Last year, Speed put on a half-hour of coverage, complete with British commentator, every night of the race. This year, that would have been a full eight hours of television time. OLN gave us only five, none of which was same-day. It was sad to see Meoni interviews in the first few episodes, knowing that he was already dead but the show making no mention of it despite the late air date.

I do have hope, however, based on my experience with OLN’s coverage of the Tour de France. In it’s first year, it had serious problems (though they did have same-day coverage), but every year thereafter it has been improving. As of last year, they got Sundays back from CBS, and it was their second year with live coverage of important mountain stages. I don’t want—or expect—live Dakar coverage, but a half-hour same day summary would be nice. Do a one-hour recap on the rest day and at the end of the rally, and show each of them the weekend which immediately follows. Get people who know things about racing. You need the Phil Liggett and Bob Roll of rally driving. Nicky Grist, with his WRC television experience will play the role of Phil, and I’m sure you could find an American race announcer who can handle rallies to be Bob.

Finally, Dakar is a race of almost certain tragedy. This year, two competitors died; many more were injured. The television coverage shouldn’t exploit the drama, but should make sure it is conveyed. I think that other than Jimmy Roberts’ tone and pacing, OLN handled this as well as could be expected.

They’ve got a six year contract. One down. Overall Score: Good enough, but needs improvement.

Commercial damn near brought me to tears. Watch it, spread it. (Courtesy INDC Journal)

UPDATE: “Saddam himself was a WMD for Iraq.” And, a Jewish Conspiracy theorist!

Searching MEMRI’s video clips section for “Iraqi elections” pulls up lots of good stuff.

UPDATE UPDATE: Seeing this clip brings me back to one of the first points I ever made (see third post down) on this blog: how come so many other nations (or religions or ethnic groups) seem to hold grudges against one another for hundreds of years? I’m with Josh on this one—it’s in everyone’s self-interest if both the Israelis and Palestinians stop trying to kill one another. Al-Qaradhawi, despite his highly inflammatory overall point, said it himself: there’s nothing fundamentally incompatible between the two religions. It’s just that they still hate each other for things that started hundreds of years ago.

And rather than forget about it, each side continues to do things that piss the other side off; both sides have an insatiable desire to completely own Jerusalem and they’re willing to go the extra kilometer and fight for it. The general xenophobia that seems to exist in that part of the world is certainly a contributing factor. Though Americans can certainly be guilty of xenophobia, it doesn’t seem to cause a civil war, at least not in recent memory.

No, I don’t have a solution. How long did it take the civil rights movement to make an effect on the American conciousness? And the wars that took place in the general chronological vicinity were far-away matters. In the middle of a war on your own soil, with two groups who are overall so hostile to one another, how can the moderates meet in the middle and start the nonviolent revolution of ideas that the region so sorely needs? It seems clear to me that whatever solution finally takes hold in the middle east, it’s something that’s going to have to come from within, and convince the people who can be convinced and marginalize the few that are left.

Damn, do these people take their cricket seriously.

One week ago, I had never heard of The Killers.

A few days ago, I found The Trader’s Den, a bootleg music trading site, and among the usual bootlegs—Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant—I found a The Killers concert from November of last year. I decided to give them a listen and so I jumped on the torrent. Music’s pretty good. But that’s not my story.

Today, I log into GMail and after seeing that I got no real mail, I scanned the spam trap to make sure nothing got missorted. I noticed two emails, both of which had subject lines mentioning The Killers. One announced a new single, and the other one said:

We just wanted to send out a big thanks to all you guys who bought Hot Fuss, we hope you’re all enjoying it! If you havent got it yet, now is the time – Hot Fuss has a chance to be number one in the charts this week, every copy bought now will make a difference!
Look forward to seeing you all out on the NME tour.

So this isn’t your typical spam. This is a semi-legitimate email, targeted to me. The only way I’ve associated my GMail account to The Killers is through my Trader’s Den forum registration. So it appears that a few different things are working here:

1. The Killers fail to discourage bootlegs of their live concerts, and by failing to discourage it, they implicitly support it.
2. Someone in the marketing department monitors the Trader’s Den forum, and somehow this person has access to the email database, since my email address is not set to public.
3. While the email I received was unsolicited, it was well-targeted, since I clearly expressed an interest in The Killers by downloading the concert.
4. GMail’s spam trap is really good, recognizing the two mails as spam without any hints or help from me.

I’m still not sure what to make of all this, but importantly, I think that this sort of marketing does not bother me as long as it doesn’t become repetitive. I think an email saying, “hey, we see you downloaded this, if you like us here’s our website and you can buy things,” is not out of line. Getting automatically added to their mailing list is. We’ll see just what happens over the next few weeks.

“Conservative Republicans That Sympathize With The Stone Cold Pimps But Don’t Quite Share All Of Their Values or Admittedly Questionable Musical or Aesthetic Taste”. I’m not going to try to explain, just click the link.