Living Above the Fold

You can’t visit Iceland without going to the Icelandic Penis Museum.

The rest of the country is nice too—pristine volcanic tundra, stunning iceberg seas, boiling thermal hotpots—but the real reason tourists come, even when they won’t admit it, is to giggle and titter at this basement gallery, where every variety of animal phallus is on display, neatly jarred and labeled like fruit preserves. So when I spent the holidays with family in the capital of Reykjavik in 2002, I knew that I had to see it for myself.

Members Only (The East Bay Monthly, June 2008)

Public-access television is a sometimes bizarre world where anyone with the time and inclination can appear on television. It’s where you find the rants of Colombus, Ohio, goth Damon Zex and the strange instructional videos of Let’s Paint TV, where Los Angeles host John Kilduff taught viewers how to paint and make blended drinks all while exercising on a treadmill. Then there’s my personal favorite What’s Your Problem?, the story of a man having a hard time eating a fish.

You’ll notice that all those videos are now available online.

In an age when it’s increasingly easy for amateur filmmakers, citizen journalists, and the general public to distribute videos online, is there any point in having a public-access cable channel?

Public Access TV Fights for Relevance in the YouTube Age (PBS Mediashift, December 17, 2008)

Some improv comedians from the world-famous Second City group in Chicago visited Chico for a performance, and I had a chance to talk to one of their number for this preview.  This was an education for me, because I hadn’t known going in just how much preparation goes into making improv look spontaneous.

The Art of Saying Yes (Synthesis, January 28, 2009)

I’d been hearing a lot about how businesses could use Twitter to boost their branding and sales.  But I hadn’t heard much about how charities and non-profits could use the same technology to help raise funds for worthy causes.  On April 14, actor Hugh Jackman pledged to give AUS $100,000 to the charity that could best convince him, via Twitter, that it was deserving of the award.  He later announced that, unable to decide, he had chosen two winners to split the prize: Operation of Hope, a medical foundation that donates surgical procedures to children in developing countries born with facial deformities, and Charity: Water, a non-profit dedicated to providing safe drinking water in developing countries. That led me to look at some ways that non-profits could use Twitter to draw attention to world problems and help work toward solutions.

How Charities Harness Social Media to Raise Awareness, Money (PBS Mediashift, April 28, 2009)