Miscellaneous

More Links I Want To Post Before I Close My Browser

By jeremyblachman

Bhutan had its first elections the other day.  I saw a 60 Minutes piece about Bhutan a whole bunch of years ago and decided it seemed like a cool place.  The government is big into Gross National Happiness instead of GNP.  They only introduced television in 1999.  And then they started seeing gangs and crime start up for the first time.  Awesome.  Anyway, a few interesting articles about the election there, from The Economist, the Times (London), the Telegraph, and Smithsonian.

A long article from the Washington Post about Ryan Seacrest that I thought was pretty interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the blog Stuff White People Like, and said I imagined a book deal would be coming soon.  And it did.  Interesting articles about blogs-turned-books, and that blog in particular, here, here, and here.  My thoughts on this, obviously influenced by my own experience: Hey, I think the blog is funny, so I'm happy for the guy.  And I think there is a book there, although I'm not sure it's one that will end up reaching beyond the humor section of the bookstore.  And I would imagine that part of the allure for the publisher is that if it is a success, there's franchise potential with the "Stuff [ ] People Like" idea -- and I don't really mean doing it for different racial or ethnic groups so much as things like, "Stuff Republican People Like" or "Stuff Girls Like" or "Stuff Old People Like".  It's a gamble -- it's a lot of money for the publisher to earn back, and past results (mine included) do not necessarily support the theory that people who read a blog for free are going to spend money on a book in numbers even approaching the blog readership numbers, but that doesn't mean it can't be a hit, and all books are gambles for the publisher anyway, and at least there is a base to build on here, with the blog.  Anyway, I'd much rather see something like this succeed than something I think sucks, so, cool, good for him.

Chuck Lorre's censored-by-CBS end-of-show vanity card from last night's episode of The Big Bang Theory over here.  Lorre puts up a card at the end of all of his episodes, which you can only read if you pause the TV, in place of the usual production company logo, and then archives them on his website.  The Big Bang Theory is growing on me.

And a slightly-un-fun Variety article about TV writing post-strike.

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).