Salon.com > Jon Carroll

A sense of Well being

Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

"The world's
most influential online community:" That's how Wired magazine described the Well in a cover story two years ago. And that's, of course, in perfect keeping with the original goals of Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand and software entrepreneur Larry Brilliant, who started the seminal community 15 years ago -- on April 1, 1985. The two, inspired by existing bulletin board services
(BBSs), figured they could create something kind of cool if they set up their own BBS and invited exceptionally interesting people to participate.

Soon a gaggle of writers, artists, scientists and thinkers struggled with the arcane posting software and began conversing online, developing "virtual" relationships and roughing-out guidelines for acceptable behavior
in a text-based community. After a few years, some "Wellbeings," as they called themselves, expressed consternation that the group had grown so big
and prolific that people could no longer read all the new posts in a day. But they didn't give up -- in fact, it seems they just wrote more; these days, it's not unusual to find 90,000 words of new posts to the public "conferences" or topic areas in a day.

[--BESTSELLER HELL--]

Wed, 24 Dec 1997 20:00:00 +0000

The first thing to do when reading a book like
"Babyhood" by Paul Reiser is to find out who actually wrote
it. Paul Reiser did not write it, because he is a millionaire
TV actor and he doesn't have to write a book in order to
write a book.

Celebrities have been refraining from writing their own
books for over half a century. There's nothing shameful
about it or, if there is, we've all gotten over it.
Sometimes, the actual author's name appears on the cover,
usually "as told to" or "with," but not often. More
frequently, the actual author is mentioned as though he or
she had just been hanging around the house during the time
when the celebrity was bent over his word processing device
-- in the case of "Babyhood," like this: "A huge thank you
to my friend Brad 'Zippy' Kesden, whose smart, funny brains
and invaluable input helped me make this book a lot better
than I was planning to."

And then a line space, letting you know that Zippy
Kesden is the sole author and the next person mentioned
really is a personal assistant.

Media Circus: How not to get your head blown off

Thu, 25 Sep 1997 19:00:00 +0000

I really wanted not to like this book. I was reading it during the aftermath of the death of Princess Di, and there was Gavin de Becker all over the television offering up 12-second sound bites of wisdom on security matters. He was always identified as the author of "The Gift of Fear," so I understood that this volume was part of the marketing of Gavin de Becker, who wanted to move from little-known high-priced security consultant to well-known high-priced media expert.

It's not an uncommon ambition; I suspect many children growing up today would like to be media experts. Right now, an expert actually has to have done something -- journalism, lawyering, government work -- for a few years, but it can be reliably predicted that within a few years that step will be eliminated. Experts will spring full-blown from graduate schools, complete with suitable wardrobes, aphorisms and statistics. They will debate other experts from other graduate schools, and in the fullness of time they will set up their own graduate schools, so that within 50 years we will have a parallel academic system, geared entirely to the lucrative business of presenting facts and opinions in less than 30 seconds.

All of Me

Fri, 21 Mar 1997 19:28:00 +0000

there are at least a dozen mainstream American comedies made over the last 15 years that rank among the best movies ever. A few have gained some recognition ("Tootsie," "My Cousin Vinnie," "Broadcast News"), but a whole lot more ("Soap Dish," "My Blue Heaven," "Gremlins 2," "Get Shorty") have languished in some nether world of cinematic reputation, not quirky enough to be cult classics and not loud enough to be gigantic popular successes.

And yet they wear well. Unlike the "great" Oscar-grabbing movies of the time ("Gandhi," say, or "Amadeus" or "Kiss of the Spider Woman" or "Places in the Heart"), they reward repeated viewings. They're funny and smart; even more remarkable, they each emerged from the big studio sausage factory that was at the same time producing some of the lamest glossy movies ever created.

"All of Me" may not be the best of these comedies (I suspect "Tootsie" is, although with a whole lot less Charles Durning it would have been even better) but it has the funniest 10 minutes of screen time since the movies started talking.