Blondes Have More Fun, Eh?

Ann Turiano (aka Caroline) has a new haircut for Season Five.

And she's now blonde.

And she's getting hit on by guys on the street, now more than ever.

... And she's kind of offended.

To paraphrase her: Are men somehow wired to react to blondes differently?

Pittsburgh's Net Casts Wide

In today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Bill Toland writes of a "Pittsburgh Manifesto" co-authored by bloggers Mike Madison, Jim Russell and Jim Morris.

Their goal? To capitalize upon the emotional attachment most ex-burghers feel for the Steel City and convert that emotion into progressive change -- in effect, self-improvement from the (geographic) outside-in.

Toland seems skeptical, if not completely dismissive, of the idea. It's easy to see why: how many times in the past 20 years have we heard how Pittsburgh is "on the cusp" of becoming a major player on the national stage, only to watch it backslide into mediocrity?

But the manifesto, high-minded as it may be, addresses the issue from an untapped (to the best of my knowledge) angle -- the collective resources and knowledge of those who have ventured beyond the Golden Triangle, and who now feel the need to infuse those gifts back into their point of origin.

In a nutshell, the manifesto can be summed up in its third paragraph:

The principles are general. They are animated by a single, overarching idea. The future of Pittsburgh depends on the region’s recognition of its dependence on other cities – and regions – and countries. And it depends on their corresponding recognition of their connections with Pittsburgh. In the 21st century, connectivity is key and king, and in that connected world, Pittsburgh has a unique asset, which we call the Pittsburgh diaspora: the thousands of people who live around the world yet who still identify closely with the Steel City. They grew up in Pittsburgh, worked in Pittsburgh, or have family in Pittsburgh. By identifying with Pittsburgh they energize it emotionally. We believe that it is possible to translate that emotional energy into economic energy. Pittsburgh can, should, and must recapture and benefit from the intellectual, economic, and cultural capital associated with the Pittsburgh diaspora. That capital is distributed geographically, but it can be invested locally.

Here at STBD, we're well aware that a large number of our viewers are either current Pittsburghers or ex-Pittsburghers who need to reconnect with images of their former hometown. Something about this city creates lifelong "citizens," regardless of where they move. Perhaps it's the city's almost New York-like dissection of "neighborhoods," its history of blue collar labor, or its geographic proximity to pretty much everywhere else that helps foster that kinship.

Or, perhaps it's the notion that Pittsburgh is forever almost a first-tier city, nearly able to run with the big boys (like Philadelphia, our more successful cousin across the state). Pittsburgh has an underdog quality about it, and that sense of having to prove its worth to the country at large is a hard image to shake. It doesn't erode simply by moving away -- and that's what the manifesto is hoping to capitalize on:

No matter where you live, if you're from Pittsburgh, you still call Pittsburgh home.

So... how, exactly, do we DO that? I think I sense a PodCamp Pittsburgh session in the making...

Photo by i_r_e_n_e via Flickr.

What Makes Comedy Funny?

A woman's child dies. Tragic? Almost definitely.

A guy slips and falls down. Funny?

That depends on your entire life history.

Comedy Is Context

Drama tends to appeal to the human audience's broader sense of justice, of right and wrong, of tragedy vs. exultation. Deep down, we can say with certainty whether something is a positive or negative event. And, by and large, the bulk of humanity agrees with the typical evaluations: war, sickness and death are (usually) bad, and love, marriage and success are (usually) good.

Meanwhile, comedy appeals to a different part of the human condition: the intellect. In comedy, we don't require an emotional response for the laughs to be effective. Instead, we need a disconnect between the expected action and the actual action. That's the rift that causes surprise, which leads to amusement / hilarity.

But that rift is dependent upon what YOU expected to happen, and what YOU expected might not be what I expected to happen. That's because we all approach new information from different previous experiences, which determine whether something is confusing, surprising or offensive -- to US.

It also explains why one person might find the Three Stooges hilarious and someone else might find them unbearably idiotic.

What You Ate for Breakfast Determines Your Sense of Humor

Everything you've ever done, seen, heard or experienced influences your worldview today. The less you've done, the more easily you're surprised, and therefore the more likely you are to find something funny: your frame of reference is small enough that EVERYTHING is new / strange / different.

Thus, even if you don't laugh WITH someone, you're well-prepared to laugh AT someone (because they're different, and laughter is a safe form of self-defense.)

Meanwhile, if your life is more cosmopolitan -- if you have a wider basis of experience to draw from -- then you're less likely to be surprised by simple humor. You see the jokes coming. What 90% of the public finds surprising is second nature to you.

Congratulations: you're the kind of audience Hollywood hates.

YOU appreciate jokes that require lengthy set-ups and payoffs.

YOU enjoy witty turns of phrase and intellectual acrobatics.

YOU understand conflicts across multiple layers of characterization.

In short, you're an audience that requires more work from a storyteller in order to be surprised. This means you're in a rarefied niche. And you're incredibly hard to reach, because there are fewer artists with the tools necessary to surprise you.

This is why black comedies, satires and dialogue-driven comedies are in such short supply: their audiences are, by nature, much smaller. This means they're more work to make AND they're less-profitable.

And, meanwhile, the Scary Movie franchise keeps on chugging...

The Lost Art of Learning

I was reading in Business 2.0 about Jeff Hawkins, the gent who created the Palm Pilot and the Treo. His driving passion is apparently neuroscience, and his team is currently at work on an application called Numenta, which is basically a computer that's programmed to learn like a human.

Then, somewhere down the article, the author mentions that humans don't yet know exactly how the brain works, but if they did...

And then I realized: when did we, as a society, become so quick to proclaim that we DO know everything?

I think back to my gradeschool and high school textbooks, especially in science and social studies, which I now realize, only a decade or two later, were mostly hogwash or propaganda. Not only is the Civil War (and every other aspect of history) much more complex than most schools ever let on, but now we know basic fundamentals of science -- like Pluto being a planet -- are wrong.

And yet, to watch most TV commercials, read most books, see most films, you'd think we were living in the age of complete knowledge. I'm sure this has always been the case for humanity -- to act as though it knows absolutely everything about its world -- which explains the initial treatment of "heretics" like Galileo and the idealogical wars between Socrates and the sophists.

But to admit that we don't know how something works -- that's kind of a sobering statement, in the midst of all this knowledge, no?

It got me thinking... what else do we not know? And why not?

Somewhere along the way, the art of learning became passe and was replaced by the artlessness of knowing. Knowledge is useless in a vacuum, which means we, as a society, should be forever pushing forward to better understand ourselves and our surroundings, so that we may always be improving as both individuals AND a society. And yet, how many people are scorned or ridiculed for attempting to learn more about that which we, as a society, admit we know very little?

It's almost like a generalized conservative mentality, which mandates that we NOT ask questions or seek to know things beyond our immediate reach, has pervaded the status quo and caused us to see curiosity or individuality as a weakness and an idiosyncracy to be expunged, rather than a possible avenue to enlightenment which should be supported and celebrated.

Heady thoughts, I know, and not at all what you or I might expect to consider when reading a copy of Business 2.0... And it has nothing specifically to do with our web series... I'm just wondering...