Bit by bit (torrent)
With the music industry’s Napster-related shitfit of a few years ago and the billion-dollar movie industry’s ongoing campaign against downloading (though we haven’t seen those commercials lately, the ones where the prop guy is like “You’re stealing from me,” which, sorry anyone working in the movie industry, you’re doing better than us any day of the damn week so shut it) we’re surprised that there hasn’t been the same level of apoplectic lawsuit-hurling against torrents. High-definition television and DVRs have been a blessing and a curse for the TV industry, especially — sell us new equipment and new channels, then watch us plug straight into our computers and make it free for download minutes after the show airs. Ha ha, suckers!
And colour us SHOCKED that the first publication to do an in-depth piece on our beloved BitTorrent is Giant, a low-grade laddie mag featuring low-grade cover stars like Mischa Barton, Jennifer Love Hewitt and January’s Denise Richards. Good show, boys. Keep sleeping, MPAA!
Defamer of characters
We don’t have much use for Los Angeles magazine. But because LA is the epicentre of entertainment, its local stories are of more interest to us than, say, the local stories of Cincinatti magazine would be. We’ve read very excellent pieces on lead Gilmore Girl Lauren Graham and our favourite new television show since Season 1 OC, Grey’s Anatomy. (If you know not of which we speak, get thee on the Dr. McDreamy train, STAT!)
December’s issue, available at the odd newsstand near you, features a very large profile on our internet boyfriend Mark Lisanti, AKA Defamer, whose prose style we bite big chunks out of for this column. Though writer Steve Ockey (and a number of on- and off-record sources) erroneously insist on calling both Lisanti and the site “the Defamer” throughout “The Big Mocker,” Ockey spins the enterprise into an eloquent existence:
“Like much of what’s on the Web, Lisanti’s voice is offhand and pithy, yet there’s something more. Populated by well-known recurring characters, fixated on status, laced with interlocking narratives and located in a fabulously familiar playground, the Defamer is an ongoing nonfiction novel. The place is Hollywood, the time is now, and the ambition — to turn Truman Capote’s maxim on its head — is to make all gossip literature.”
Send all gossipy literature to Anablog c/o The Coast5435 Portland Place, Halifax, B3K 6R7.
