Tag: commerce

Edie Sedgwick, slight return

The Los Angeles Times Magazine has been in decline at least since 1986.

They have tried to recast themselves as the New York Times Magazine, as a Southern California Lifestyle Thing like Sunset Magazine, as maybe four other things. Nothing works.

This week they managed to hit a new low with a feature article on a young woman named Cory Kennedy.

Cory has been internet famous since she was 15, which was in 2005. Someone took pictures of her and posted them, and the phenomenon grew as those things can. She is a pretty girl, and her prettiness is of the gamine waif variety. She will look 15 until she’s 25.

The Times Magazine article is the typical deploring/promoting titillation piece. They at once portray her as the “grew up too fast” pop culture victim and as a high-flying teen hottie. They play this game very well. They also made sure to post forty-four pictures of her to accompany the article on the Net.

Ephebophilic disasters like this aren’t new. The current crop probably started with the Guess? ads in the 1980s. The “new” men’s magazines are all over it. It’s creepy. The way this article presented it was particularly damaging, though. She’s presented as someone who did this of her own initiative and was in charge all along. It started when she was 15. This appears to confirm predators’ belief that their young victims are behaving as adults and not being manipulated.

Edie Sedgwick died in her 20s. I wonder how long Cory will make it?

Samy

I’ve known Samy a long time, maybe eight years. He’s a computer genius. At age 15 he was running the L.A. Perl Users Group. I got a conference room for him at my job and he ran the whole thing, even though his mom had to drop him off there. He finished high school early and got emancipated. At 16 or 17 he was living in his own apartment, making good money at a technology job. I didn’t see him often, but it was always a pleasure. Unlike a few other computer geniuses I’ve known, he was personable and sociable, even charming. And Samy is an idea factory. He would pop up, say hi, and show me something he’d done. It was almost always a “holy shit” moment of surprise and admiration for me. More than once he’d figured something out that was potentially Very Big, but he never sold his hacks and to my knowledge he never did any harm.

In October, 2005 someone gave me a link to Samy’s website. On that page, a surprised and a bit frightened Samy recounted his adventures with Myspace. With his usual flair for amusing and instructive hacks, Samy had created a software worm that caused anyone who visited his myspace to have “Samy is my hero” put in their profile. And anyone who viewed their site got the same thing. Exponential growth occurred. Five hours later a million profiles were infected. Six hours later Myspace.com was down.

At the time I was working for Myspace’s parent company. We joked about the hero hack, and we figured they’d probably either fix the hole and hire him, or pretend it didn’t happen.

They did neither of those things. They filed a civil suit, and pressed criminal charges. This week it was announced that Samy had pled out and been sentenced to three years probation, an undisclosed sum of “restitution” to myspace, and restrictions on his use of computers and the internet (employment purposes only) for an undisclosed period.

I think Samy got a raw deal. I’m sure that Myspace and the prosecutor turned the downtime into a cash figure from lost ad revenue, because in my experience the D.A.’s are not interested in computer “crimes” unless they involved large sums of money or national security. It’s my opinion that Myspace needed a security success to offset their more lurid and frightening image as a haunt of murderers and sexual predators. Samy is neither. He’s just a smart kid who made the classic Robert Tappan Morris worm mistake.

I hope they don’t find a way to nail him during his probation.

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Twitching Arm

Shoulder somewhat better but still fucked up. I have a very odd sensation in there, almost an itch, and I’m all spasmy. I’d make a great deformed murderer from an old movie right now, a la Peter Lorre.

I see a physical therapist on Friday. Per hensatc‘s recommendation I am going to a place where all the clinical staff are also certified athletic trainers: Prosport Physical Therapy. I hope they’ll forgive me for being very unathletic.

Since I mostly buy stuff on the internet now, I get the Joy of Package Delivery often. I really like getting a parcel and opening it. Today I got two Pendleton shirts and some geekbooks I need for work.

If I haven’t read and commented on you lately, it’s not ’cause I hate you, it’s ’cause I am reserving my limited typing endurance for work.

A final goodbye to Apollo Books

http://www.dailypilot.com/articles/2007/01/15/features/dpt-closed15.txt

They held on a few months after they announced their retirement, but now it’s gone for good. The Apollo, in its original location at 18th & Newport, was a big part of my education. Others had the same experience; we found entirely new worlds in stacks of dusty paperbacks.

If I win the lottery I’m going to run a bookstore until I’m poor again.

Ow my globalization: Chinese Dodge

Summary from Automotive Digest:

Situation

  • Chrysler Group to import small Dodge car from China’s Chery automaker, beginning in 2008
  • Deal confirmed by DC, 1st such pact w/ Chinese automaker by any major Western producer
  • Tentatively named Dodge Hornet, ‘B-car’ subcompact will be smaller than Dodge Caliber
  • Chrysler turns to China because cost of building domestic B-car all but wipes out profit
  • Deal pressures UAW on carmaking costs
  • Holding prospect of small SUVs, compacts also farmed out to China

Significance

  • Chery already exports cars to about 20 countries in SE Asia, Africa, Middle East
  • Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda praises Chery’s manufacturing record
  • Says it’s “good fit” w/ domestic automaker’s engineering, design staffs
  • Chery deal still to be ratified by DC supervisory board, UAW chief Ron Gettelfinger is member
  • Chery-Chrysler liaison began after Chinese automaker broke off agreement w/ US dealer group working w/ Malcolm Bricklin

Detroit Freep news article has more

WOTD: “Princesstute”

The reliably informative Exploding Aardvark has a roundup of 581% inappropriate toys for girls. If I had a 9 year old she would not get any of this shit.

Major points for the phrase “girl power index” and the sentence “Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest.”

Yet another example of the Women Now Empowered By Everything Women Does phenomenon. I support giving 9 year old girls zip guns and dropping them off at Disney headquarters.

Deus Ex Miller Faucher and Cafferty L.L.P.

Just as I was running out of money (temporarily) because the government thingy was being slow and bureaucratic and dumb, something happens that never, ever happens. I was part of the class in a class action suit against SmithKline Beecham about Paxil. They lied about withdrawal symptoms, essentially.

Based on the (large) amount of money I spent on Paxil over the years, I just got a check for $477.08.

Suck it, Smith and Kline and Beecham. That withdrawal was worth more than $477.08 in pain to me, but I’m glad to have it right now.