lovehatethings

There is nothing so special in society as the charismatic orator. For entertainment and education value, the orator can stand on the stage, on the soapbox, behind the mic, in front of the camera, and reach out to one mind or a million. The content appeal and most often the appeal of the orator is completely subjective, yet the quality of certain individuals isn't lost on masses.

The practice has melded from the ancient to the cutting edge. From Greeks standing in front assembled crowds to podcasts that receive tens of thousands of downloads a day, the orator has moved from the floors of democracy to the warm glow of an LCD screen. And in so much I enjoy podcasts of people interacting, discussing and dialoguing, I hold a fond affinity for the monologue, the rant, and the introspective narrative. From Garrison Keillor to Henry Rollins, from Stuart Mclean to Jello Biafra, from MLK to Bill Hicks, from John Kennedy to Lenny Bruce, the orator has developed and ex panded to suit the needs of audiences and the conventions of the times. (And I'll take the heat here for not including any female examples - my only excuse is for populist impact and general ignorance of comparable pop culture examples, which is a more of a social tragedy than an excuse.)

That the orators of today can hide in a basement behind a microphone may bastardize the centuries-old traditions of standing in front of a crowd and bellowing to assembled throngs, but the intents have not changed: inspire, motivate, educate, even manipulate. Orators try to inspire confidence with confidence, encourage fun by having fun, and move to action by using words as tools - and sometimes weapons.

While some would complain that oratory is a lost art, I often think that, instead, the audiences have lost oratory. For hundreds of millions of people oratory has been reduced to places of public worship - the preacher at the pulpit. The orator used to represent the closest thing to mass media that existed during a place and time. Our attentions have been drawn to flash and pomp and circumstance, yet there's nothing quite the same as a live venue with a passionate speaker, a message, and a desire to communicate. If the ability to experience a charismatic orator live has waned from our consciousness, perhaps some of us have turned to modern substitutes.

I'll be the first to admit that the crowd atmosphere, facial contortions, body language and electricity is difficult, near impossible, to reproduce over a microphone, but remains, noenetheless, enjoyable. Our minds have a boundless ability to fill the voids left without the live experience. The podcaster also has a great strength that is borne on a huge disadvantage. Let's face it; there's little social inhibition in not downloading or stopping and walking away from listening to a podcast. The buy-in on behalf of podcast listeners ensures their engagement and should encourage the content creators. While millions of people sit solemn in houses of worship, there is a stigma involved in getting up and walking out on a sermon.

The faceless orator of portable media devices is not so much the Big Brother or Supreme Sister of the future, but instead a voice of choice, an expert in semantic antics, expressing luminosity in verbosity... and the Earbud Orator shall reign forever... or at least until something cooler comes along... like holodecks.

I'm going autobiographical on one of the most embarrassing, yet most genuinely enjoyable aspects of my life. I don't expect people to understand, but maybe it's something that everyone can relate to - at least on some level.

1. Cheapovegas.com

Pretty self-explanatory. If you want to know everything the budget traveller could ever need, cheapovegas.com is an awesome site. Breaks down hotel/casinos by cheapest eats, sleep, gaming, attractions and other deals. It also has a pretty nice selection of maps that are directly linked back to the properties themselves.

2. Vegastodayandtomorrow.com

Although many of the changes in Las Vegas have slowed down due to the economy, there is still constant building down the strip. This site will allow you to view pics of the on-going status of all of the new mega-resorts going up (or blowing up) around the city. There is a fantastic color-coded map that's broken down by the umbrella resort companies. Again the map is all linked up and even shows all the proposed ideas for which proposals have been submitted. You can really see how Vegas will look in 10 years.

3. Vegastripping.com

When you want updated reviews of new and existing properties vegastripping.com is the place to go. Although the layout is busy, the category breakdown and tools (including RSS feeds for deals) give quick access to a ton of information. Even includes a section on how to play some of the most common games.

4. Ratevegas.com

For a bunch of quick-to-read updates on almost all of Vegas' hotels, restaurants, and shows, ratevegas.com has reviews going back to at least 2000. For most of the major properties there are several current reviews. They even boast an iPhone app that you can use to submit reviews while travelling up and down the strip... as though there wasn't anything better to do while in Vegas.

5. Fivehundybymidnight.com

For all of you Social Media types, fivehundybymidnight.com has now done over 200 weekly podcasts all about the changes going on in Vegas and takes great pleasure in ripping the websites of some of the big resorts. They also drop some knowledge on recent entertainment announcements of shows and other news concerning construction and everything else going on. A great on-going resource to listen to if, like me, you love the city and want to keep up on the changes through earbuds instead of tedious reading.

All of the following have been done by myself or with a group of people. Some of them were done to intentionally piss people off, some of them were only discovered annoying after the act was complete.

1. Ordered 6 pints of Guinness in a small bar in London with only one bartender and a slow tap.
2. Engaged in a competition with some friends to clear the bar of young'uns with obscure jukebox music. I won when I found the live version of Dazed and Confused from Zep's Song Remains the Same clocking in at over 26 minutes.
3. In the same vein, while playing in a classic rock cover band, once played a 45 minute version of Radar Love because the only table of drunks left in the dive bar kept yelling for "Skynyrd".
4. During the Blue Jays World Series years sang the "Okay, Blue Jays, Let's Play Ball" song 36 times over a span of 4 hours. The song still gets sung today although there hasn't been much call for cheering until this season again.
5. Had a peanut shell fight that turned into an all out peanut fight which the bartender kinda got into, but the regular cronies in the corner didn't appreciate... why do they give out free peanuts anyway?

On the Facebook Vanity Land Grab of aught nine. 16 reasons why you shouldn't smoke. And how the paradigms of the arts are echoed in our consumption of Social Media.

1. See ya soon, but probably not.
2. You are what it sounds like when lungs cry.
3. Nick O'Teen is the cancer leprechaun chasing a pot of tar at the end of the rainbow.
4. The filter is to protect the cigarette from your breath.
5. Smoke menthol. Like lacing your shit with mint.
6. You are Darwin's proof.
7. You can't spell "tobacco" without your lungs.
8. You know all those oldtime movie stars that made smoking sexy? All dead.
9. Worried about your teeth and fingers turning yellow? Your lungs are dreaming of yellow.
10. Stop kissing ass. Get the butt from your mouth.
11. Cancer's cool... if you're a zodiac symbol.
12. If they put cigarette package warnings on milk, would you pour it on your cereal?
13. Every cigarette shortens your life by ten minutes. Light up. I want your job.
14. Light up. You're in my dead pool.
15. How many roads must a man walk down? Don't worry, we've got oxygen masks.
16. When someone calls them Cancer Sticks, let's not argue over the semantics of them being "sticks". You don't have time to waste. I'd rather spend our remaining time basking in your asphyxiating musk.

In exploring the archetypes of any media (and especially entertainment media) I like to think that there are fairly common standards in which my emotions are tugged at for enjoyment's sake. Though the paradigm can be exercised in many ways, depending on the medium, I like to simplify the pattern by commonly calling it "Tension and Release".

In music, tension and release can occur in many ways. Sometimes it's a musician simply playing with volume. Think of the grunge standard of the quiet verse followed by the loud chorus ala Smells Like Teen Spirit or Creep. While these examples are very basic approaches to tension and release (T&R) volume, made effective by immediate contrast, slow builds culminating in auditory climaxes have been around from early drumming to classical to jazz to rock. But music also allows for T&R through harmony and dissonance, varying speeds, rhythmic complexity and simplicity, and varying tonal densities. How many people have had cerebral orgasms upon hearing the cutting single guitar bend that breaks through repetitive vamp of a chord progression?

The basic concepts of T&R extend to novels, films, poetry, visual arts, and basically any other sensory media. It's why the action film often inserts comic relief. 120 minutes of non-stop action eventually becomes wallpaper without contrast in the same way that thrash metal bands have to consider some sense of dynamics if they don't wish to become redundant.

So, I ask myself the question. If most (maybe all) of enjoyable entertainment consumption contains T&R, where does paradigm fit, if at all, with Social Media or Networking. While set pieces like songs, films, and novels have, at their core, a sense of time constraint that contributes to the anticipatory set that one comes to the medium with, what which set do we approach Social Media?

The problems that arise in applying such parameters (and I'll fully admit the marriage of this paradigm may seem forced with SM) lie in the multi-pronged creative approach to the content output. It's kind of like a freeform jazz odyssey with musicians from virtuoso's to drunken karaoke performers. But I think the tools have offered some parallels that help to form the T&R of Social Media.

Twitter is the noisy, fast, guitar solo full of notes that run the gamut of multi-octave scales. Facebook is the dissonant amalgam of everything we want and don't want at the same time. Seesmic is the sample ripped from another artist and dropped in to the pastiche of sound. Youtube is the brief respite leaving the cacophony of sound behind for a time... well, to be replaced by other sound anyway. And blogs are the deep sweeping textures and swaths of sound that allow us to escape for periods of time and consume by... reading. How can all of these content creators possibly orchestrate anything so intentional as an artisitic process like T&R? They don't - you do.

In the ultimate vindication of "reader response" theories, we inherently mix or consumption to achieve appropriate T&R. I could just use Twitter all day or watch Youtube clips or sift through pictures of people's kids in Facebook. I can, however, mix and match, often by instinct to achieve the ebb and flow that best suit my sensibility. Because like anything, there is an "artistic" component if you fly high enough or zoom in enough.

And if you haven't bought any of this, consider the experience of reading it nothing more than the the long sustained notes of a Klaus Schulze composition or the outer movements of Shine On You Crazy Diamond. You may now return to the metal solo.

Instead of going to the Apple Developer's Conference today, I went to the Dairy Food Expo, and, while nowhere near as chic or glamorous, the announcements about Cheese 2.0 and the new models of the iCheddar were something to behold.