Dear Lazyweb,

When you go to the DNA Lounge Webcasts page and click on the "Video Webcast" link, it pops up a chromeless window with the Justin.TV Flash embed in it.

I'd like to make it so that when you resize that window, the embed resizes with it.

This is what I tried. It works great in Safari, but in Firefox, the embed is always 100% wide and 1 pixel tall; and in Opera, it's always 100% wide but about 200 pixels tall.

Ideas?

"Sixth Sense," my interview with NPR's On the Media, talking about augmented reality, went live this weekend. Here's the audio:

(MP3 download also available.)

Summarize your sex life with a Star Wars quote

Also: instantchewbacca.com (contrast with instantrimshot.com).

• I am so jealous! RT @waffles: Just bought tickets to see Magnetic Fields in March. So happy! #
• Thrill of the day: learning one of Fellini's first writing gigs was the Italian script for the Flash Gordon comic strip. [He did what I do.] #
• Traffic problems on the way to dinner; traffic problems on the way home. At least dinner was fun. (Ate too much, though.) #
• Oh, and let it be known that on this date my son made fun of me for the first time. (He imitated me shivering in the cold.) #
• Is going to take HL with me Christmas shopping today. Pray for me us. #
• HL wants to know, "Where is Christmas?" #
• NetNewsWire, I keep pruning and cleaning up the aggregator on my dsktp, then when I close & reopen, you sync to something older. STOP IT. #

Saying the world can seem both very large and very small is hackneyed; however, I believe we've entered a period of time when those two conditions are interdependent.

This is a discussion we have in new media all the time -- who is famous, and what use is fame now? Paul F. Tomkins (thanks Wil) is a fine comic and well-known, but I wouldn't call him famous. And yet, he manages to get enough people in major cities to pledge to see his shows that he can make a living travelling from fan-cluster to fan-cluster across North America, summoned by people's need to see him perform. He has the respect and appreciation of a large enough group of people to fill his perceptual horizon. Does anyone need more? Is it even possible to rationaly understand what more is? Is that why famous people go mad?

I'm getting to the movie, I promise.

So we have Steve Weibe, an average guy who takes to practicing Donkey Kong after he's laid off. Anyone who's spent any time hacking away at video games can understand the impetus -- you spend time, you attain a goal, and the goals come at intervals short enough to reinforce the adrenal hit. I've occassionally floated outside myself while playing a video game at 4am, asking "what are you doing?", and getting the answer "Not failing to solve that Act Two problem."

Weibe gets good enough to consider going for the world record. He needs a damn win, in a way that we all understand.

That's when we go down the rabbit hole. That's when we meet Billy Mitchell, the reigning champion of that particular 80's arcade game (among others). While Weibe comes across as a somewhat obsessed hobbyist, a character all we geeks count among our friends, Mitchell has parlayed mastery --

-- I want to back up and take a run at this. Mitchell has parlayed mastery of an thirty-year old arcade game into a business empire that has nothing to do with that arcade game. A small empire, but one that fills his perceptual horizon. He has used that arcade game world record to fuel his own confidence, his own drive, his own success. That record may only be acknowledged by a small world, but its power within that world gives Billy Mitchell the lodestone he needs to survive and thrive in a big world where others become lost. Every morning, he wakes up "Billy Mitchell, world record holder in Donkey Kong", and that sustains him with a fierce power that would shame the faith of a Jesuit priest. In a world of losers, the lost and the damned, Billy Mitchell is a winner.

And Steve FUCKING Weibe is not going to take that from him.

You know what that is? That is the recipe for great. goddam. drama.

The relentless grind of small indignities. The cumulative blessings of small victories. Honor, cheating, ego, sacrifice, suspense ... The King of Kong is available for your Netflix Streaming enjoyment even as we speak.

This one goes out to Nadya, Zo, and especially Courtney Riot, our beloved creative director. Hang in there, babies.

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Post tags: Coilhouse, Serious Business

Well hello there!

Do you lack healthy boundaries? Are you guilty of the compulsive overshare? All-too-eager to share gory, palpating details with complete strangers that no one besides your own mother and/or proctologist would ever want to know?

Non-consensual rape anecdote-telling. Tactical uterus hurling in lieu of real intimate contact. The “I wasn’t breast fed enough so now I need to publicly air my personal anguish to feel properly nurtured and validated” power point presentation. “Cry For Help” cutting (across the street, not down the road). Cloaking references to life-shattering trauma in Obfuscating Yet Ominous Faerie Singsong? (a Tori Amos patent).  “Fuck You Daddy, I’m a Suicide Girl Now!” blog posts. Spontaneous primal scream therapy in the supermarket. If you have ever attempted one or more of these maneuvers, chance are, you’re a TMI Avenger.

Relax. You’re among friends. And you’re gonna loooove Body Memories. A squirm-inducing, low budget film directed by the same fella who brought us one of the most fabulous independent documentaries of the decade, Body Memories is…

…one man’s journey inward to find meaning in his life. He becomes an archeologist of the soul, digging through the layers of his past. Evocative images blend with a riveting performance that uncovers family secrets and buried traumas.

Enjoy.

(More clips under the cut.)

Read the rest of “I’m bad… I’m a man… I HATE my penis.”

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Post tags: Crackpot Visionary, Culture, Film, Gender, Sexuality, Silly-looking types, Surreal, Testing your faith

Every time an issue of the magazine goes to print, things somehow turn Highly Inappropriate here at Coilhouse. This is apparent to anyone who was there on Twitter during the hours of our final revision deadline last night. And it’s only going to get worse before Issue 04’s out. So to celebrate, a video of Miss Piggy singing “Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches. It’s that kind of day.

[via Shannon]

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Post tags: Madness, Music, Puppetry

claytoncubitt:

Will Blanche, ?The Newly Constructed Towers of the World Trade Center Seen From the South Side on West Street, May, 1973? (via These Americans)

See also: Mitch Epstein, ?West Side Highway, New York City? [looking towards World Trade Center] 1977

Seriously, if I were 12, this would have melted my brain. I love this trailer.