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In this post I will be discussing elements of Mad Men's Season 4 opener. So if you are not yet caught up with our collective cultural zeitgeist you should probably move on.

Now that we have lost those troglodytes let's talk about this latest episode, shall we?

The episode opens with a journalist from Advertising Age asking Don the question that defines the series, "Who is Don Draper?". Of course he doesn't actually give an answer, because if there ever really was an answer to that question Don would probably be the last to know.

I will gloss over all the other great stuff that happens during the episode (the new office, a staged ham fight, Thanksgiving Dinner from hell, and Don's downward spiral into Slap Sex!) so we can talk about the ending. Don confronts Betty and Henry Francis about the house and his future with the kids. Things get tense but you get the feeling that Don is holding back a bit. Once back at the office (did you see those couches in Reception!), Don pitches his "daring" bikini ad campaign to the stuff-shirt prudes from Jantzens. When they don't buy into his idea Don attacks them with both barrels. He throws them out of the office with all the rage that he meant to direct at Betty and Henry. The episode ends with another interview, this time it is a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that wants to know who exactly is the real Don Draper. Don goes into full Public Relations mode and feeds the reporter exactly what he wants.

Then, as always happens on Mad Men, the song during the closing credits not only encapsulates the episode but gives us a possible glimpse into the future. It also gives us a possible to answer to that big question, 'Who is Don Draper?". It is the The Nashville Teens' version of Tobacco Road:

I was born in a trunk.

Mama died and my daddy got drunk.

Left me here to die alone

in the middle of Tobacco Road.

Growin' up rusty shack,

all I had was hangin' on my back.

Only you know how I loathe

this place called Tobacco Road.

But it's home, the only life I ever known.

Only you know how I loathe Tobacco Road.

Gonna leave, get a job

with the help and the grace from above.

Save some money, get rich and old,

bring it back to Tobacco Road.

But it's home, the only life I ever known.

Only you know how I loathe Tobacco Road.

Bring that dynamite and a crane,

blow it up, start all over again.

Build a town, be proud to show.

Gives the name Tobacco Road

Considering we also learn this episode that with the loss of the Jai Alai account Lucky Strike now represents 70% of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's business, Tobacco Road perhaps portends that Don will "bring that dynamite and a crane" to the company he just started. The act of smoking a cigarette is a perfect metaphor for Don Draper...nothing looks cooler than self-destruction.

Busted is my new guilty (get it) pleasure. When I ask the cashiers of the seedier establishments in Utah County they say they can't keep them on the shelf. Who wouldn't pay a dollar to look at page after page of mugshots. It is like I am on my very own episode of Law and Order SVU, and I didn't even have to witness a rape.

Time to finger the perp.

Once upon a time, wave after wave of aliens crossed into a foreign country seeking opportunity and asylum. Most of these people left their families and loved ones. Some fled wars, gangs of violent men and corrupt government officials. Others were just looking for jobs and the freedom to do as they please. They longed for a day when their descendants would know a world less harsh.

Some of these immigrants had documents, most did not. Some even came against their will. They entered this "new" land completely ignorant of the official language. They refused to assimilate into the local culture, even years after their entry they stubbornly spoke their native tongues.

They displaced the current inhabitants, they gobbled up resources, they multiplied at an incredible rate. They faced racism and bigotry. They took the jobs no else would do, and they worked in the the worst conditions imaginable. They fought for human rights, voting rights, and representation. They voted for people that would represent their needs.

Does any of this sound familiar? Unless you are a full-blooded Native American it should. It is the story of us all.

It is quite apropos that the recent focus on immigration issues in the state of Utah is happening on the same week that we celebrate the arrival of the first Mormon Pioneers into the Great Basin some 160+ years ago. It is the story of a ragtag group of undocumented aliens crossing into a foreign country (Mexico) uninvited. And again...it is the story of us all.

         

Click here to download:

Our_Long_History_as_Undocument.zip (6723 KB)

Recently danah boyd (not a typo...Ms. boyd is, shall we say, hooksian in her approach to capital letters), of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, tweeted the following question:

So I decided to do an informal survey of my collegiate Twitter followers, and was surprised to find that the majority of people who responded said Chrome was what they used. I recently started using Chrome as the primary browser on my media center. But for my laptop and my work computer I use Firefox almost exclusively. I like Chrome, but I don't yet see the real need to make a switch. Am I now relegated to the older generation of the Internet simply because I don't use the new browser like all the cool kids?

This worried me a bit so I asked my friend Anne, Utah Valley University's Director of Web Resources Services, to give me a breakdown of the browsers used to connect to the public portions of the UVU home page. Here are the results for the last 30 days:

1. Internet Explorer / Windows 365,962  44.36% 
2.  Firefox / Windows 217,124  26.32% 
3.  Safari / Macintosh 108,676  13.17% 
4.  Chrome / Windows 62,047  7.52% 
5.  Firefox / Macintosh 40,370  4.89% 
6.  Safari / iPhone 5,984  0.73% 
7.  Chrome / Macintosh 5,525  0.67% 
8.  Safari / Windows 4,741  0.57% 
9.  Safari / Android 2,924  0.35% 
10.  Firefox / Linux 2,776  0.34% 
11.  Safari / iPod 2,577  0.31% 
12.  Safari / iPad 2,310  0.28% 
13.  Mozilla / Windows 697  0.08% 
14.  Chrome / Linux 587  0.07% 
15.  Opera / Windows 434  0.05% 
16.  Mozilla / Linux 420  0.05% 
17.  Safari / (not set) 410  0.05% 
18.  Firefox / SunOS 216  0.03% 
19.  Mozilla Compatible Agent / iPhone 128  0.02% 
20.  BlackBerry9530 / BlackBerry  89  0.01%

The first thing that I was struck with right away was how many damn people still use Internet Explorer. No wonder there are so many complaints of worms and viruses on our network! Because so many employees use the uvu.edu website everyday it is hard to to tell exactly from these numbers how many students are using IE. But even so, close to 50% of UVU users are experiencing the internet on one of the lamest browsers known to man.

Now compare the UVU numbers to the overall browser market share numbers:

That means that everywhere else the numbers for the top two browsers are eerily inverse (IE in all its versions at 31%, and Firefox at 46.6%). Weird!

So getting back to the results of my informal Twitter survey (in which I simply asked "What Browser do you use?"), 71% of students who responded said they used Chrome. Since I generally regard my Twitter Friends as the most savvy of all my social media groups I can only conclude that Chrome is the new black and that soon the masses shall follow.

So which browser do you use? Why? And does it really matter?

The wife and I were sharing some cheese sticks at Iggy's yesterday when she looked at me and said, "You are a Connector". Errin is reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell right now, and I read it last week so I wasn't confused by her impromptu diagnosis. Gladwell sees Connectors as the folks that not only know people but also get their kicks connecting people. She is right...it seems my favorite sentence in the world is, "Well then you need to talk to this guy".

Right now I am reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith which explores the concept of Connectors within a social media context. While Trust Agents is not nearly as a elegant as Tipping Point it does have its moments. I am particularly intrigued by their notion that the open nature of the web has made it impossible to impersonate being a Connector. They argue that Connectors can only be effective (trusted) when they connect for pleasure and not for financial gain, but that money tends to follow the people who would connect for free anyway.

Tipping Point and Trust Agents make the case for a motivation that transcends dollars. Do you think your online activity is solely motivated by the need to connect? Do you make some connections with the hope that they will one day monetize?

     

Click here to download:

david-simon-the-god-of-great-tv-part-1-the-wire-EJIhGqDobhrCcqenpkIy.zip (149 KB)

Simon does two things better than anybody else I have seen. First, he writes characters with real voices and depth. And second, he ties these characters into a larger critique on systemic problems. Neither of these things are easy...not to write, not to portray, and certainly not to sell to an industry, and a viewing audience, that focuses on the exact opposites. To add to this amazing accomplishment his shows are entertaining, funny, gritty, and unpretentious. It is like eating something delicious and then looking at the label and saying "Holy shit...this is actually good for me!"

During the five season run of The Wire we are pulled through the intestinal tract of the City of Baltimore. To take a burned out genre like cops and robbers and use it to connect the audience to the core issues that create the problems of America's inner cities takes balls. And David Simon and his writing partner Ed Burns (a former Baltimore cop and teacher) have huge balls...and so does HBO for letting it air for five seasons even if it didn't draw a crowd like The Sopranos. HBO even stuck it with it when, despite critical acclaim, The Wire was routinely shutout on Emmy night.

One last thing I want to say about Simon's writing is that he expects a lot out of his audience. He will plop you down smack dab in the middle of a story. There is no "It is the first day on the job for the rookie so we will vicariously learn the ropes along with him" bullshit. No...minute one and you are drowning in it, and maybe three or four episodes down the road you might tease out a little more understanding. Characters are never formally introduced...hell half the time you don't know their names. The dialogue is always rife with slang and jargon and you are left standing there without your dictionary. You are forced to pay close attention and by the end of the season you are a veteran...you speak that language. Trusting an audience to take that journey goes against everything the last 50 years of TV has stood for. But David Simon shows that there can be a market for smart TV.

So are you going to be smart and watch The Wire? I hope so. If not, I am sure there is an episode of Two and Half Men on right now.

UPDATE:

I forgot to add these videos of David Simon talking to Bill Moyers about The Wire, so here they are:

I don't want to get into all the medical details but suffice it to say that the last 24 hours or so have been a rollercoaster. As many of you know Errin and I are expecting our first child later this summer (like in 5 weeks, which is coming SO fast), and as some of you know Errin's 3rd trimester has been one fun surprise after another. Again, I would rather not get into all the details. Basically she needs to take it easy until Evie is ready to make her big debut.

So last night she wasn't feeling great (actually all day yesterday, but particularly last night). She decided to go to the hospital for a non-stress test. For all you gestational neophytes (read: males) a non-stress test is a pretty simple procedure where they strap some big electronic ears to Mommy's belly and listen for the baby's heart rate for 20-30 minutes. Errin does these a couple of times a week, and Evie has passed every test so far.

It should be noted here that this child is textbook, by-the-numbers perfect and pretty much has been that way this entire pregnancy. It is just unfortunate that she gets all her good health by sucking the life force out of her mother (they tell me I can expect that she will eventually move on to sucking the life force out of my wallet once she is out).

So last night's test was no different...this girl's ticker is like metronome. But Errin was still feeling awful (upset stomach, lower back ache, and fever). The doctor on call decided to give her some antibiotics thinking that it might be a kidney infection. As of right now (24 hours later) all signs still point to this. Errin has been a trooper all day. She put up with IVs and a sonogram, and the general suckiness of being in a hospital bed, and was finally rewarded for all her hard work with some Demerol. The fever seems to be better...so is everything else. As I write this I am hearing the consistant 150 BPM heart beat of Evie on the monitor.

So while things suck (particularly for Errin), they are also OK. Thanks to everyone for their concern. We have a healthy baby, a sick momma, and a lot of great friends and family.

When you want a taste of Provo's unique local culture make sure and stop by one of Krispy Kreme's convenient locations.

It was June 30th, 1993...17 years ago today that I entered the Missionary Training Center of the LDS church in Provo, UT.

Most people who know me today might be surprised that I was, at one point, Mormon, let alone a missionary. It seems crazy to me too. But I swear it made sense at the time. People often talk about feeling pressure to go on a mission, but for me it was more like an absence of other choices...there was nothing else on the horizon at the age of 19. It wasn't even a decision...it just sort of happened.

Of course the rigor of the MTC brought my circumstances in stark relief. Suddenly 2 years (the time a male missionary is expected to serve) felt like a really long time.

I was in for maybe 24 hours (which honestly felt like 2 weeks) when I crafted my own hackey sack with a sock filled with popcorn kernels. One day in and I had already come to the realization that I was going to need a hobby if I was going to make it. Going home wasn't an option...I would just have to make the best of it.

After 48 hours I started constructing elaborate count down calendars. 24 boxes to represent the months, 104 boxes for the weeks, 730 boxes for the days. After a week I had pages and pages of grids representing hours. A sane person would have just thrown in the towel.

The weird thing was I didn't miss home at all. In fact I was actually having a pretty good time. I can't explain it. Nothing seemed real, least of all time.

A lot of people have asked me now that I no longer consider myself Mormon (and I haven't for about six years now) if I regretted my 2 years of hard time or if I resented the cultural upbringing that caused me to go in the first place. The short answer is no. I made the decision, I did my time, I actually had some amazing experiences, and I met a few folks that I will have a connection with for the rest of my life. I wish I would have served in another area perhaps (the entire state of Minnesota can eat a bag of dicks in my opinion).

I think more young people should get a chance to live a selfless life for a while, have some structure, and perhaps do some good. Does it need to have the whole god thing in order to be effective? Hell no. But I think I am a better person for going. So no regrets.

But man...I still hate me some Minnesota.