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Tweet, Twit, What?

Robert Scott Lawrence — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:24:54 +0000

Superstar: Is this thing on? So, yeah, like I was saying, I listen to this song on YouTube somebody sent me, like it, and hit the “share” button, and then the tune goes out to my 20 million Facebook followers and my 29 million Twitter followers, and then the artist gets a record deal with Sony or Geffen’s new company or somebody big, and they send me an email thanking me for the shout out and FedEx me a couple tickets to their show at the Hollywood Bowl.

Me: Pretty cool.

SS: I felt like Oprah doing the whole ‘Book Club’ rhumba or something.

Me: Yeah, but you’re skinnier.

SS: That’s true. But then I had this idea, see? I was dating this hot young singer, and she cut this smokin’ new single and I thought, you know, if the Beaver could be an overnight sensation with a gazillion preteens running barefoot after his limo breaking through barricades just to be next to a kid whose voice hasn’t even broken yet then what would happen if I got a few friends to tweet out her new song along with me?

Me: I thought you were too famous to have friends.

SS: That’s funny. So I rounded up all the Kardashians, Kobe, Charlie Sheen, that Claudio Whatshisname from Barcelona, and together we had at least 50 million fans, and we pre-tweeted . . .

Me: Is that a word?

SS: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we pre-tweeted that we were going to tweet this song the night after, and then Gaga said she’d tweet it too if we told her who it was, and then Sting said he’d tweet it to Elvis Costello who tweeted it to Amy Mann and somehow Sean Penn got involved and then Clooney and Pitt got sucked in along with Angelina Jolie and Gwen Paltrow said she wanted to sing it – and we said “No” – and then we had like 111 million people waiting for this thing so we decided we’d just do it live. I had this little handheld digital recorder and I went over to my girl’s house and said “Hey, baby, could you sing me that new single?” and she said “Sure.”

Me: So she sang it right there barefoot in the living room and didn’t know it was going out to 100 million people?

SS: Absolutely.

Me: She had no idea?

SS: Right. Isn’t that totally epic?

Me: Totally. Isn’t she suing you for 100 million dollars now? For copyright infringement and invasion of privacy?

SS: Yeah.

Me: Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. That’s definitely the most expensive tweet in history.

Superman Grows Old

Robert Scott Lawrence — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 04:24:44 +0000

I have come, belatedly, to realize that I am not Superman. I cannot fix things with super strength, I cannot mend them with laser vision, I cannot fly away from my problems or leap over tall buildings to avoid dealing with trifling annoyances. I must admit that I find it humbling to realize that I am incapable of finding a brown 21″ waxed shoelace to replace the one that I snapped with a bit of mere mortal strength. And that I find it quite impossible to drag myself to the BMW dealer to pay $300 to replace my car key because the remote locking function went Ka-blooey! when it encountered some immovable object (likely a 9 iron). Similarly, I find it increasingly difficult to get up at 5:55 to go for what used to be a jaunty 6 miler over hill and dale. My appetite is off, my hair is brittle, the bloom is off the rose. If that doesn’t suggest to you that I have been exposed to kryptonite, then let me add that I find it virtually impossible to get up at all on Saturdays, even with the scent of bacon in the air. My back hurts. I am no longer bulletproof.

The question of what happens to Superman as he ages was never dealt with, you know. Does he age at all if left on Sol to operate by solar power? Do his powers fade with time? Does he achieve a sort of “super” senescence that is like the hip vibe of the World’s Most Interesting Man, but lasts forever? Is that why he ducked out on Lois Lane? Did he have a premonition a la Highlander that Lois would age and die while he mulled over man’s fate forever like The Thinker stuck atop Mt. Doom?

In my own case, I suspect that I’m simply tired of the cape and the tights. Catwoman’s gone, Linda Blair has disappeared, I Dream of Jeannie re-runs have grown increasingly scarce, and hardly anyone knows who Chet Baker is. My own little Supergirls, in the indestructibility of youth, don’t understand Bogart and Bacall, are confused by poverty, and blithely inform me that they want Tesla roadsters for their birthdays. Some days I feel like I’m in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, bemoaning the arrogance of youth whilst proclaiming my own tired superiority for having survived the rigors of living in a shoe and eating gravel for breakfast before walking twenty miles to school — barefoot, uphill, through a blizzard.

I forget, of course, that I once was Superman, and flew high and far and fast before I came back down to earth. I forget that I chose to stay on earth, and chose to let gravity and time have their way with me. I forget that I let joy slip though my fingers like grains of sand spilling from a broken hourglass.

When we moved south last month to the land of the hunt, I came across a book of poetry I had purloined from my father’s shelves in my own arrogant youth, and it fell open to a poem I loved when I was an egotist of twenty and was prematurely jaded by life’s vicissitudes. With the permission of the generous copyright holder and his heirs, I give you Superman’s lament:

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Think Superman after the Daily Herald has burned down and Clark Kent is no more. Superman after he realizes that he’s stuck playing Dorian Gray forever. Superman when he understands that it all goes on and on and he can’t quit because–being invincible–no one can plunge a knife into his steely chest and stop the steady metronome of his heart.

All things considered, Superman is a tough role to play. Tiring, really, and bit of a downer. Being human is complicated enough without having to be super as well.

“Men” Down in Case Down Under

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:21:18 +0000

The 80′s Australian pop-rock band Men at Work, whose vegemite-themed hit “Down Under” vaulted them into superstardom — winning them a Grammy for Best New Artist, and earning them a place in rock history as the only Aussie band to have ever concurrently had a No. 1 album and single in the U.S. – has been found liable for infringing the copyright of the 1935 children’s campfire tune “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.” An Australian court ruled today that the band had copied substantial portions of ‘Kookaburra,’ specifically finding that the flute riff in “Down Under” replicated a material section of the earlier work. The band was ordered to pay some 27 years of royalties earned by their hit song.

Attorneys for the company which owns the rights to ‘Kookaburra’ stated out of court that they may seek up to 60 percent of the royalties earned by “Down Under” since its release. Considering that the song has sold more than 20 million copies since its release, the anticipated damages could force the aging rockers into yet another round of reunion concerts.

Baidu Beats Piracy Charges

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:16:12 +0000

A Chinese court found no wrongdoing by Baidu in a copyright infringement case launched against the largest search engine in China some two years ago by Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong. The Beijing court ruled that the search engine had not broken the law by linking downloads that infringe copyright.

The IFPI expressed disappointment with the ruling, which left them contemplating their next steps in the face of yet another adverse ruling against the music companies by Chinese courts. In the view of IFPI, the verdict did not comport with their belief that Baidu had created its music search businesses “on the basis of facilitating mass copyright infringement, to the detriment of artists, producers and all those involved in China’s legitimate music market.” Given that Baidu now has a music partnership with seven labels (including EMI) that allows it to legally stream music, this may be the end of their legal woes with the recording industry.

McDonald’s sues teen over use of “McFest”

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:34:53 +0000

A Chicago teenager suddenly finds herself embroiled in a trademark dispute with McDonald’s Corp. over her use of the name McFest for an annual charity concert featuring high school and college bands. Although the concert, which raises money for the Special Olympics, has been promoted under the McFest name since 2007, and the teen’s surname is McClusky, apparently the corporate giant fears that use of the McFest mark will diminish the power of its own mark. Given that McDonald’s has trademarked as many words beginning with “Mc” as the USPTO has been willing to hand out (e.g., Mc$ave, McButton, McRule, McFree and just plain Mc), it’s really not surprising, but one has to wonder where it will stop. Just out of curiosity I wrote down all the last names starting with Mc that I could think of, and was still going strong after I’d reached 50. Can McDonald’s really prevent everyone with a surname starting with Mc from opening their own McBusinesses?

The Busy Executive’s Guide to Self-Defense (Against Hackers)

Robert Scott Lawrence — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:35:23 +0000

In her new guide for corporate management, Enterprise Security for the Executive: Setting the Tone From The Top, Jennifer Bayuk, former head of information security for Bear Stearns, contends that assaults on corporate security over the Internet continue to put valuable corporate assets at risk, and offers guidance for measuring, managing and minimizing those risks. As long as people stand to make money by accessing your data, you can be sure that someone out there is tap-tap-tapping at your firewall, hoping that you’ve stopped paying attention momentarily. One possible solution? Follow the footsteps of the FBI and hire a former hacker to make your site impenetrable.

Who Is Your Lawyer? » Popular

Tweet, Twit, What?

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