As recently as earlier this year I was an interactive designer/developer for PBS. Specifically, I was doing rapid production of code & video for FRONTLINE/World companion websites. We put together one major site a month for the hour-long television broadcast, and anywhere from 2 to 4 new web-only documentary features each week. Every day would have some production deadline looming like a dark cloud and, if missed, would be noticed by thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of Internet and television viewers. Not exactly relaxing, but the kind of work that tends to make folks take a minute every day to decide just how stressed out its worth getting over things that are completely out of one’s control.

Overall, a really good experience working with a team of very dedicated video and print journalists & producers…but totally sucked by the end.

We got to do the odd story here and there about reindeer herders or politcal rappers & pornstars. But mostly my head got fucked up from watching way too much raw footage of exhumed mass graves, mine-wounded children and secret videos of ethnic cleansing campaigns ranging from the jungles of Burma to the deserts of Iraq to cold, hard Bosnian winter soil.

I would’ve told you before going into that job that I was a pretty tough guy, purported to seeing a lot of shit over the years. But now and forever I have the utmost respect for Jackie, Steve, David, Shannon, Sachi, Samantha and the rest of crew at FLW for taking that constant exposure to gloom, doom and gore and unflinchingly & unfailingly carving from those morbid slabs articulate documentaries on some of the most important international stories of our time. I’ll never be cut out to be a war or investigative journalist. I only experienced things on video that some members of the team had actually seen up close, in person…and I still have nightmares.

Anyway…point is someone just pointed out that my name is in the Internet Movie Database as a result of my time with FLW. Which is cool, confusing and funny. To me.

Anyone remember this guy and the fear that country was able to cast upon the U.S. and our allies just a few short decades ago through their combination of diety-like leader worship and ability to hobble our economy by choking access to our primary source of oil?

Yes, Viriginia. It’s the Ayotollah. A cat only slightly more fear-worth and a sliver less armed than the current nuke-toting leader of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Remember the early 80’s six o’clock network news hours spent watching Shatner-esque TV anchor Frank Reynolds scare the shit out of us narrating footage of the daily million Muslim marches? Well, I do.

And with Iran’s present leadership openly dismissing the Holocaust as a “myth” used to justify the creation of Israel, their media holding Holocaust cartoon contests to make a point about a level of freedom of press they don’t tolerate on their own soil, and their recent organization without irony of a ‘international world summit’ around revisionist examinations of the Holocaust with workshops including examinations of whether the gas chambers were real or not, and whether the Jews made the whole thing up…yea, I’m feeling more and more like my scared ten year old self all over again, damp Underoos and all. Even if President Ahmadinejad is all talk, intentionally swinging his anti-semetic sentiment for the sole purpose of stirring up both “necessary” American reaction and reactionary anti-American allies in his region…well, that’s the sort of political saavy that would scare me even more than if he’s just plain nuts.

Holy war or oil war, it’ll boil down to the same shit storm, as its threatened to in many prequels before.

My more selfish prespective: after most likely descending from the same bloodlines and experiencing a few millenium of minimal international friction, India’s actions in the interest of maintaining relations with the U.S. have caused Iran to publicly let the world know that they got it out for the Indus Valley browns, so I got two strike against me now. Be nice if being Indian America didn’t double fuck my travel plans for the next, oh, 10 years…which is what’ll happen if we decide to directly go to war with them. Kinda wanted to to be able to leave the country before I turned 40 without getting rubber gloved by every airport security guy in the world for either being too brown, too American or not brown enough.

So, hey, George? Do me a favor? Watch a little History Channel, read a book or two. Hell, I’m sure the Gipper’s private video collection’s gotta have some footage of Ollie North’s mumblings in front of the senate a few years back. Pay a little attention to history and the present and think twice before twitching your big stick into the hornet’s nest of a nation of Muslims who have the potential to make Al Queda look as tough as Al Green? They actually have a history of making us very, very, very nervous…and maybe we don’t need to be so very hurried revisit our Reagan-era plans of the Iran-Iraq area as a launch pad for a takeover of the mideast region.

Electric car anyone?! Please?!

Thanks, Tex.

Just because its a corporate viral marketing campaign doesn’t make recreating yourself as a dancing holiday imp any less funny.

What’s amazing is that this little candy cane striped tights digi-Kei is eerily close to most of my real dance moves. Not too far a stretch fashion-wise either. I’ve been wearing green felt out the clubs for years. Told y’all it come back in style!

The Internet is Magic.

Amon Tobin, arguably one of the finest modern era composers of digital sound, has officially turned into a corporate whore. His wonderfully nuanced and dangerously playful “Chocolate Lovely” is now the background music for a car commercial. Albeit a pretty cool car commerical, but a goddamn car commerical nonetheless.

Far less cool but of a magnitude greater in whoreishness is the cut mighty Mos Def did a while back for GMC. I cried when I saw this. Dude, you’re already loaded. How much must they have paid you to lend your image and original lyrics to a gas guzzling planet eating SUV, of all things?!

Must all my heroes bitch out for cash?

Then again…I’d probably do the same if someone walked at me with the suitcase full of cash these 2 must’ve got to help advertise something as trite as the automotive industry.

I’ve collected a long list of crimes committed and love unrequitted from my years in Philadelphia. One of the latter was and is Beth Mann. Talented, refined and drop dead gorgeous there’s not many things I wouldn’t do to for the Duchess of Brooklyn.

She’s also got a penchant for dating drug addicts, getting smashed around mosh pits wearing polka dot dresses and having flatmates who date rabbit fur cap’d hookers named Lutwella. All of which make for well-written online runminations on her life, the universe and everything.

Check out her latest tales from the (real) city over at Black Holes White Lines.