Author Archives: Mike Del Rosso

Pedro will make your wildest dreams come true.
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Why won’t Tina eat her food, Napoleon Dynamite?

@mmcfly8 Tina, eat your food! youtu.be/-etc9fC0oE8

Napoleon Dynamite attempts to feed Tina the llama in vain.

“Your name is Napoleon?” one of Pedro’s cousins asked the eponymous lead role over the phone, in 2004’s instant cinematic classic “Napoleon Dynamite.”

 

As a liger—part lion, part tiger, all magic—advocate with superior bow-staff skills, but no luck with the nunchakus, Napoleon Dynamite marched to the beat of his own drummer in rural Preston, Idaho.

“I’ll do what I want,” Dynamite said, while stringing a He-Man action figure out the back of the bus en route to school.

His 32-year-old brother Kip was training to be a cage fighter, while awaiting his love LaFawnduh. The unlikely couple had grown quite fond of each other over a series of two-hour, chat-room sessions. I’m not sure how long Kip and LaFawnduh maintained a virtual relationship until she finally took a Greyhound to Idaho, but the dial-up Internet connection damn near drove Grandma Dynamite’s phone bill through the brick ranch’s roof. Kip’s lucky Uncle Rico didn’t throw him out the window.

When he wasn’t hunting wolverines in Alaska with a 12-gauge, Dynamite listened to his heart, which told him to perform D-Qwon’s Dance Grooves to the tune of “Canned Heat” by Jamiroquai, after Pedro’s campaign speech for class president landed flat on the auditorium’s teen audience.

May Ser Court Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance himself! summon the help of Scotland’s local wizards to cast a protective spell over Napoleon Dynamite, Glamour Shots by Deb, Tina the Llama, the Rex Quon Do dojo, and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally, the Loch Ness Monster.

Actually wrote a screenplay myself. You can read it here.

< Back to “get weird.“

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awkward

Surfing the Twittersphere

I once heard of this guy who’d wait till like 1 a.m. on a weekend and then run searches for #TacoBell. He’d retweet everyone that had just ordered the fastfood Tex-Mex and were now proliferating the Twitter-sphere with their 140-character puke stories.

What a nose for news, I thought… and spews.

This social media guru had dropped into the zeitgeist wave of those who chose to dine poorly. And I wondered: what other swells of the collective unconscious were cresting out there, just waiting for the listening surfer to ride?

“ Ninety-nine percent of twitter consists of soliloquy, substance, and nonsense.”

Like any good businessman, I had already developed a “bulletproof” marketing scheme for my Twitter handle, @DelODell. The idea came from watching an episode of MTV’s Rob & Big, starring skateboard legend and “relentless” entrepreneur @robdyrdek and Christopher @BigBlack Boykin. Ever the opportunist, Dyrdek was tagging prominently public landmarks and road signs up and down the LA streets, with customized bumper stickers that brandished his logo. He called the grassroots promotional tactic guerrilla marketing.

It would cost about $3 a pop to print my Twitter handle on each bumper sticker. So I settled for a screenprinted hooded sweatshirt that ran side-to-side in the front and up-and-down on the back: @DELODELL. If politicians on the campaign trail could kiss babies, I could get out to the public in person and rally some followers.

Next I would need to establish a unique identity. That meant not tweeting the normal bullshit. Now I’m no mathematician, but it seemed that 99 percent of Twitter consisted of soliloquy, substance, and nonsense. I would need to identify these unspoken rules of the popular social medium in order to eventually break them.

Soliloquy

Soliloquy are those self-realizing statements people publish to sound profound or, at the very least, observant.
“What’s the deal with… ”

“I hate when… ” or
“[This just happened.]”

Comic @robdelaney has mastered the shocking side of soliloquy:

Substance

You’ll see substantitive tweets on any website that outputs high volumes of content. News sites are good examples: @nytimes; @NESN; or for fake news, @TheOnion. All good. Their tweets are designed to route followers back to the website, where readers can digest content the news site is broadcasting over channel Twitter. I say substance because the tweet merely acts as a beacon harking back to a more substantial media: a video, a news story, some byte-sized bit of information that’s useful. The text of a tweet itself can be substantial, if it’s something like advice from a reliable source or it just plain makes sense and you benefit from it.

I say you benefit from it because everything’s relative. And that’s why I think many tweets to many people are substantial, making Twitter the half-billion strong powerhouse that it is today.

Nonsense

The rest of Twitter is primarily just nonsense. People who haven’t quite figured out the #hashtag. Angry, biggotted or trolling rants by people letting their emotions do the typing, rather than common sense and decency. Generally, just noise. If Twitter was a radio, nonsensical tweets would be the static in between stations.

I had tweeted my fair share of the 99 percent.

The soliloquy…

The substance…

And the nonsense…

These tweets were the 99 percent and I strove for the one. In fact, these tweets were the wave that I wished to ride. To surf the Twittersphere, I’d need to separate myself from this vast ocean of social information and stand upright, distinctly, carving a new path in my Twitter handle’s wake.

Next time I see a wave, I’ll drop in.

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Top 10 Lists

Fun with Twitter

I have a thought, an inspiring idea, and I need other people to read it. If I can articulate the notion in 140 characters or less, then my medium will be Twitter.

The original purpose of Twitter—a microblogging cacaphony of 340 million daily updates with more than 500 million registered users as of 2012—was to allow an SMS (or Short Message Service) user to communicate with a small group. With over a half billion registered accounts across the globe, this brings new meaning to the term “small world,” I suppose.

Twitter is what you make of it.

When I first joined, back in 2008, I didn’t initially follow anybody. I felt like a person alone in a silent room, but then I began to invite people in. And suddenly the room became interesting. Friends began to join and the aspect of conversation entered the mix. Up to that point, I had been tweeting celebrities, but it felt like I was talking to myself.

Now, in 2013, the limits of this heightened online mode of communication seem endless. I now give you seven ways to capitalize on Twitter.

1. Twitter got me a job.

This was a life-changing tweet. The instant nature of Twitter allowed me to respond to the job inquiry within minutes of its posting. And, luckily, my website has a short URL (but then again any URL is short with abbreviating alias websites like Bit.ly). Read more about this fateful Internet exchange at Occupy Peace of Mind.

2. Hashtags connect people

In the article Beer Die across the nation, we see this phenomenon unfold. I tweeted in conversation with a friend and @juaners80 chimed in.

Juan Rodriquez hailed from Corpus Christi, Texas; without Twitter, we never would have met or exchanged our ideas on the drinking sport known as Beer Die.

3. Conducted and instantly transcribed an interview

Along the vein of this mysterious drinking sport known only as Beer Die, I conducted an interview remotely with the 2009 champion of Brownie’s Beer Die Open.

The whole thing took about 15 minutes.

4. Challenged my parking rights

5. The @TownOfBrookline kept me on top of the Great Blizzard of ’13

These last two Twitter entries illustrate essentially what this entire blog post is about: Twitter is instant content for your blog.

6. Became a comedian for an hour or so

Comic Hannibal Buress tweeted this:

This gem inspired me to write Almost Funny, a crash course in comedy that flashed in the pan, but was fun while it lasted.

7. Late Night Inspiration

When Conan O’Brien completed his “The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television” tour in mid-2010, he had time for reflection.


As the lanky, late-night locutor looked inward, I decided to capitalize on this rare opportunity. From his two tweets, I drafted the Top 10 Things I’d Ask Conan O’Brien en rout to TBS.

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Thanks for listing my phone number to 421 “Friends,” Facebook

movierain
Don’t ask what possessed me to start scrolling through the ‘Profile’ section on my Facebook mobile app. Lo and behold I see my phone number listed right under the multiple choice combo box specifying whether I prefer Women, Men, Both or Neither. Anyway, I deleted it. I swear to God. So many married women are changing their names after marriage. Honestly, I have no idea who’s posting every third or fourth update down the News Feed…

read at mikedelrosso.com…

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short stories

Almost Funny

I love the Internet. If the Moon landing was “one giant leap,” then the World Wide Web is warp drive for mankind.

There are drawbacks. Social media, for instance. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook are killing our attention spans. It’s like fastfood information digesting into empty calories on our overactive “mental”-bolisms.

Many of my ideas grow from this byte-sized sustenance. They don’t burn like light bulbs; they flash in the pan and fizzle.

Comedian for an hour

One such idea possessed me to pursue standup. Hannibal Buress had tweeted a link to a recent morning show appearance. Before long, I was YouTubing every clip I could find of his standup.

 

 

Things that I know about comedy: A lot of comedians usually sculpt their act over a period of time. They perform in many clubs, in front of diverse crowds, until they’ve perfected their jokes. Then, when they have a solid six minutes or so (and if they’re lucky) they’ll get the chance to appear on television—a popular late-night show, for example.

As I was watching several of Hannibal’s sets, I started to get the rhythm and delivery down. I marveled at the way his material unfolded. I recognized recurring jokes and how he developed them. He is truly a master of his craft. After about 40 minutes or so of watching 5-to-10-minute clips, I decided to end the YouTube session with his first appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. After his 6-minute set, which he had perfected over the various clips I had just watched him perform, I thought, “Great execution. He’s made it.”

Good enough for me.

To this day, I have no idea what it feels like to tell a joke in front of a crowd. I realize that’s a copout. To launch my own standup career just seemed too rigorous for my flabby mind.

And now nagging thoughts distract me… I wonder what people are doing on Facebook…

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awkward

Brookline “Parking”

The Town of Brookline’s parking restrictions are ridiculous. So much so, that its own law enforcement can’t keep up with the regulations. I pay $300 every quarter to park my car in a designated lot, “Lot 1,” which runs along the C-Line on Beacon Street. Despite my timely and sufficient funding of this space, between Washington Square and Coolidge Corner, I have received two parking tickets in said spot within the window which I am allowed to park—8 p.m. to 9 a.m. on weekdays and Saturday, all day Sunday.

Now I don’t really know whom to blame for this obvious incompetency. Is it the police officer who is ignorant of his own jurisdiction’s parking policies? Just this morning I caught one such Johnny Law issuing me an undeserved ticket. He claimed he couldn’t decipher the mysterious markings of my parking permit firmly fastened to the inside of the car’s back window, which clearly read “Overnight Parking” and “Lot 1”. Is it the town’s transporation department, who can’t seem to keep law enforcement abreast of developments within the intricate inner workings of its complex parking legislation? Is it the woman at the parking office in the Brookline Police Department, with whom I’ve spoken twice now on the phone (I’m assuming it’s been the same woman both times, unless there are two females who speak in the very same tone and cadence of broken English) who insists that I must leave my spot by 8 a.m. every morning, despite the fact that a sign in front of every designated space clearly displays “9 a.m.”?

Frankly, I just don’t know. Fortunately, the Town of Brookline Department of Transportation has a Twitter account…

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Profiles, Verse

Ever have deja vu?

Billy Murray and Andie MacDowell

Didn’t you just say that?

It’s amazing what you can do with the Internet nowadays. Many networks are engaging in convergent entertainment, which simulcast their varying modalities of mass communication online and on television. One such species of this information evolution has mutated into the form of pop-up video—what the long-running series LOST referred to has “enhanced” viewing and originally made relevant by the pop-culture, music-video phenomenon, aptly named VH1’s “Pop Up Video.” In the case of American Movie Classics (AMC), the spontaneous updates occasionally invite viewers of this network’s regular programming to visit AMCTV.com, for background on their current viewing interest.

I was watching Groundog Day on AMCHD recently, during one such dynamic broadcast.

The epiphanous caption read ‘Bill Murray spoke to his wife in her sleep on their wedding night.’ It popped up while Murray spoke to Andie MacDowell on the screen, as she sleep acted. That’s kind of an intimate fact about Murray’s life though, isn’t it? Where’d they verify that? Who were their fact checkers? I noticed they didn’t get a direct quote from the smooth-talking Ghostbuster himself.

They did, however, quote him in saying that Groundhog Day was a turning point in his career. It was the movie, premiering Feb. 2, 1993, about which the New York Times reported “Mr. Murray is back in top form with a clever, varied role that draws upon the full range of his talents.”

That’s why, when people ask, “What About Bob?” I always say, ‘Don’t forget Groundhog Day.’

Just before the credits scrolled up AMC’s ultra-crisp, high-definition display, one of the last popups quoted the Co-writer and Director of Groundhog Day Harold Ramis in saying that the movie received a positive response from people of all creeds, religions and philosophies.

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Top 10 Lists

Top 10 Reasons why the iPhone is not the answer to everything (I’d rather rock the BlackBerry and iPod)

“Ohhh! The humanity!”

#10. You can avoid the “all your eggs in one basket” phenonemon. If I lose my BlackBerry, or it breaks, I still have my iPod and vice versa. Not so with the iPhone. You lose that and you’re out of luck.

 #9. Both the BlackBerry and iPod are more tactile than the touchscreen iPhone. I can operate an iPod without even looking at it. The BlackBerry’s physical keyboard has no equal in the smartphone arena.

  #8. Twice the battery power (both the BlackBerry and iPod have their own separate power source).

  #7. This may just be personal preference, but operating two separate devices simultaneously seems to make more sense. For instance, as I type this message into my BlackBerry, the earbuds’ wire hooked into my iPod hangs clear away from the keyboard. No need for a cord to get in the way while I hunt and peck like Jack Kerouac.

  #6. It feels nice, refreshing even, to go against the flow of iPhone clones who drank the Kool-Aid and are now sailing behind Comet Hale-Bopp with Marshall Applewhite, Steve Jobs and the rest of the deceased cult leaders, all of whom will undoubtedly careen right through Heaven’s Gate and into oblivion.

  #5. Don’t have to worry when Siri becomes self-aware and automatically forwards all of those seething unsent emails to your ex, because the smartphone A.I. gets jealous of her master’s extracurricular relationships, with… you know… people.

  #4. I’m sure thieves would much rather steal a shiny new iPhone than some “shabby” BlackBerry and an old iPod.

  #3. BTW, the newest BlackBerry BOLD 9900 has the same signature sleek physical keyboard AND a touch screen. This tandem coupled with an overhaul of the mobile browser allow for at least as rich a surfing experience as the iPhone. And I’ll race good old tactile QWERTY against anyone on the on-screen keyboard any day.I’ve since tested this theory. Met a girl, with an iPhone, in a bar. She smoked me not once, but twice. I’m sure the Apple autocorrect aided her greatly. And the second time, she could have just cut&pasted the test sentence. Either way, when it came to The quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dogs, this fox was not quick enough.

  #2. The BlackBerry is an instrument of communication; the iPhone… a toy. Eat Life cereal, if you want to get in touch with the kid in you. The adult in me says ‘Do it. If you know what’s good for ya.’

  #1. And the No. 1 reason why I’d rather rock the BlackBerry/iPod and not a run-of-the-mill iPhone…

“BlackBerry” just sounds better.

… Wow. I really need a girlfriend.

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Verse

“No thank you. I don’t Facebook. I’m on the patch.”

Here’s the problem with Facebook: it’s an opiate of the people. It’s working its tendrils into every sector of the Web and, when it inevitably collapses, all of those sites whose sustenance were entirely dependent on the lifeblood delivered to them from the decaying Facebook circulatory system, will die. And Facebook is setting up shop at every Mom & Pop site through a harmless sounding enough (in actuality) Trojan Horse. They call it “Open Graph.” Without getting into too much techno babble (of which I know little), let me just illustrate this supposed beneficial societal concept…

Facebook vs. Twitter

People sometimes ask me What’s the difference between Twitter and Facebook? I often lose them about 30 seconds into my failed attempt at describing the similarities between Facebook’s News Feed and Twitter’s entire platform. Guess which one came first. Anyway, I’m developing a webpage for a local charity (Deb & Jackie’s Jolly Jump). The page contains multiple profiles of some of the JJ’s jumpers. If people like what they see/read, I want them to be able to share it. When I went to the Twitter Developer website, I simply generated, copied and pasted the necessary code within five minutes. I then strew the two or so customizable lines throughout my page’s code. Now people can personally tweet out their favorite jumpers. Period.

When I wanted to allow similar functionality for exclusively Facebook users, they first wanted me to develop a Facebook app. Then, they wanted me to insert “Open Graph” code into the core of the webpage. This code, mind you, has changed several times since its initial inception. Code that’s likely to change again. So even if I had figured this “Open Graph” out, I’m sure I would have had to change it within six months. Nothing like tampering with fairly sensitive areas of your website on a regular basis. Not to mention, Facebook can siphon information from your Open Graphed site to feed its insatiable desire for information. About an hour into researching the dregs of specific Facebook code, I decided to throw in the towel and write this blog post instead.

If someone ever asks you What’s wrong with Facebook?, just point them to this story. And tell them it took me five minutes to do in Twitter what it took me over an hour to realize wouldn’t even be worth doing on Facebook.

If you agree, just click the share button below and send to…  [sigh]  Facebook.

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short stories, Verse

The Whole of Milk

whole milk

I buy whole milk for three reasons.

#1. It tastes good.
#2. I don’t drink milk a lot (so I don’t really have to worry about the additional fat), which leads me to…
#3. It takes the longest to go bad.

If you’re an avid milk drinker, then skim may be the way to go. 1% and 2% seem like something invented by the dairy farmers trying to output more product. You can put cream in your coffee.

mikedelrosso.com

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