July 15, 2008
You, 120 x 120
How to handle a web head shot:
[Y]ou, Internet person, are left with two options: Just pick a photo and go for it, or go the arty/ironic route. It's not as if you can stay hidden forever. Eventually someone will upload you to Flickr or tag you in a wedding pic wearing an unflattering, unchosen color. My own half-solution: I took a photo and ran it through something called the Face Transformer that created a manga version of myself. It's me, but it's not really me. That's kind of how it feels to be online.
"Get a new head shot" has been on my list of things to do for, oh, about two years now. The idea of having one iconic image of yourself seems so forced to me. I'm tempted to go to Glamor Shots and get a truly ridiculous photo done -- something where I'm all made up, the focus is entirely too soft, and I'm smiling lovingly at the camera.
design, social networks, social technologies
May 7, 2008
Michael Lewis on What Fame Means in New Orleans
From a interview with Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and other great books, on New Orleans' particular sort of celebrity:
I have always thought New Orleans is a useful dramatic counterpoint to the rest of the country. It has a different value system. It's not a money culture. It's a family--it's almost more European. It's, "who's your mama? Who's your granddaddy?" I had a moment--this is a very New Orleans moment. Liar's Poker came out. I was whoring for publicity and was sent out to be on every TV show. I was on the Letterman show. And after I was on the Letterman show, people stopped me on the street routinely because they recognized me from TV. And the tour, a week after that, took me through New Orleans. And I went there and I was staying with my parents, doing local media. I went over to the grocery store to pick up something for my mother. And I was walking down the aisle with a grocery cart and a little old lady was coming the other way. And she starts to point her crooked finger at me.
...
And I'm thinking, "I know you, you were on the Letterman show." But she gets closer and she says, "I know you, you're Malcolm Monroe's grandson." I said, "How'd you know that?" "I can tell by your face." And everybody is a celebrity in New Orleans because everybody knows you.
Emphasis added. My mom's family is from that part of the country, and I can attest that "who's your granddaddy?" is indeed a normal topic of conversation.
Michael Lewis, New Orleans, social networks
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