Everybody wants to hang out with the XKCD guy

[pseydtonne]

I have stories but I'm feeling weird today. Not bad, not unproductive, just... like I'm recovering from a monster crap and waiting for another one.

I totally didn't reach my 7-10k word writing goal for the month. 3k maybe. I keep getting distracted, then pissed at myself, then guilty for no good reason, and then I play solitaire.

I read the book Live From New York. I saw it on Kibo's floor and couldn't help but pick it up. Then I spent several hours each night reading it. I started with the interregnum years (1980-1985), skipped the last chapter, started from the beginning and then read the last chapter (which is all about Lorne Michaels). I could not put it down because I got so hung up on cool it would be to bounce ideas off other funny people.

Then I started feeling bummed out because I wasn't a professional writer. Instead I work all day and can't concentrate at night. Then I read the parts about Jon Lovitz being still pissed at Michaels,

When I returned the book to my roomie, we got into another discussion of SNL. Both of us wanted to be writers for SNL but not work for Lorne Michaels. Kibo has the advantage of having produced a TV show so he already knows what would suck.

I've wanted to be a talk show host since I was four. It's my deepest desire. I love computers but I really like the idea of sitting in a studio every night getting people that made cool shit comfortable to talk.

Kibo made two important counterpoints:

1. You have to get in the Writers' Union to get into television and the usual way is to submit a script into a slush pile. Why? Cuz you can't just join the Union. You have to be hired to join... and the cycle barely opens.
   
   
2. People are watching fewer hours of television each year. It's far more rewarding to blow an evening surfing the Web than it is to figure out whether there will be anything on the tube worth watching. Anything good on TV will also be available from BitTorrent.

Then I got to thinking that the thing I could do instead of a TV show may not have been invented yet. People are still coming up with formats of entertainment for the internet. I may wind up crafting or perfecting one because it's a lot cheaper than trying to make it on an obsolete 480i box.

Think about XKCD, the comic people started quoting like crazy in the last month. Here's some guy claiming to be in either Boston or Virginia Beach (depending on whether you believe his comic content or look up his domain registration address) and making all of us go "that's me!" over and over. There is enough energy out there to make something really big based on just being a very focused version of a dude.

What would it take for me to be that dude?

-lemme sleep and maybe someone will have an answer, Dante

Comments

[tckma.livejournal.com]

I am told by lapinguina that the guy who draws XKCD is an MIT student who lives down the hall from her in the dorm. I am not sure whether or not to believe her, but she has never yet lied to me, so I have no reason not to.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html

[chaggalagirl.livejournal.com]

having read the entire (albeit rather small) archive of that comic, i've realized that i am totally in love with himd, in a mostly non-romantic sense. kinda. and i want to go to that meet up in september like whoa.

and you'll figure something out. you always do. your brain never Ever stops working. you'll use it to your advantage. ^_^