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February 22, 2006

600 SXSW Wristbands Sold Tonight Via SMS

More here.

Posted by timothompson at 08:27 PM

February 20, 2006

Holy Rick Rubin!

Is there any group that Rick Rubin won't produce? Mr. Midas Touch has recently been enlisted on LPs by the Dixie Chicks, Metallica, Linkin Park, Justin Timberlake, the Red Hot Chili Peppers...and he's going to work on a TV series with Kanye West. Does the bearded guru ever take a vacation?

Posted by timothompson at 04:52 PM

February 18, 2006

Dwight Schrute Bobblehead Redux

"Angela Martin" (Angela Kinsey) answers our prayers: "Where can I get a Dwight Bobblehead??? I spoke to the folks at NBC and they said they are working on it and hope to have them available soon."

Posted by timothompson at 12:59 PM

February 17, 2006

U.S. Olympic Committee Cracks Down On HotOlympians.com

Earlier this week, I emailed Will Leitch of DeadSpin a tip about HotOlympians.com. He ran a post about the site, and since that time (probably not due to that), the site has gotten a lot of press. Today, I visited the site and found the U.S. Olympic committee had told the site that it can't operate because its advertising jeopardizes the amateur status of U.S. Olympic athletes and due to trademark issues (see below):

February 17, 2006

We were contacted today by the U.S. Olympic Committee about two issues:

1. The domain name hotolympians.com is infringing on federal trademarks. When I registered the domain name, I did some research on olympic trademarks and came to understand (via this document and others) that "olympic" was trademarked and "olympians" was not. I was wrong. And thus we will continue publishing under a new domain name which will be up shortly.

2. According to USOC's representative I spoke with on the phone, the main issue for their call was our featuring athletes in conjunction with selling advertising space, making us a commercial site and not a journalistic endeavor.

From an email sent by USOC:

Rule 41 specifically forbids Olympic athletes to appear in any advertisement, even if it is just a mention of the athlete’s name or image, during the 17-day period of the Olympic Games unless the athlete has obtained a written waiver of the rule. As a general rule, the granting of waivers is limited to entities that are current Olympic sponsors. To this date, there is no Rule 41 waiver on file that would enable this domain to feature Olympic athletes to promote the abovementioned web sites, services or products. Therefore, utilizing any advertisement in connection with Olympic athletes that are scheduled to compete during the Olympic Games could jeopardize her eligibility to participate in the Games.

When asked why a local newspaper could publish a feature of an athlete right next to an advertisement, I was told that we weren't a news operation. I was told that hotolympians.com jeapordized American athlete's right to participate in the games:

Please contact me immediately to discuss what corrective measures can be taken to disable this web site and ensure that the eligibility to participate in the Winter Olympic Games of current U.S. Olympic athletes such as Seth Wescott , Jeremy Bloom , Cassie and Jamie Johnson , Courtny Zablocki , Apolo Ohno , Gretchen Bleiler , Bode Miller , Allison Baver , as well as Olympic athletes from other countries is not compromised.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter in order to keep our country's most accomplished athletes eligible for participation in the Olympic Games.

I was unable to convince their representative that these athletes had no connection with my website.

This strikes at the same issues many bloggers have dealt with in not having the same rights as journalists. I disagree with USOC's position, but it's a battle for another day. I don't have the time, nor the resources, to fight the big lawyers.

In the meantime, we're working on re-launching the site at a new domain name without advertisements. Please check back here later today or tomorrow for the re-launch. We'll still pick out the hot athletes from Torino, we'll just be, in the words of USOC representative, "a fan site."

If you have any questions, please contact me directly at aaron@aaronbailey.com.

Thank you for your patience,

Aaron Bailey Publisher

Update: The site is back up (sans advertisements) as Hot Athletes.

Posted by timothompson at 02:56 PM

February 13, 2006

Sixth Annual Porchlight Pop Fest

Our friends at Tight Spot Records will be holding their Sixth Annual Porchlight Pop Fest day party at Mother Egan's Pub on Saturday, March 18th, from Noon to 11ish. You can see some artists who will be performing there on their MySpace page.

Posted by timothompson at 07:35 PM

February 10, 2006

Sister Jack and the Love Boat

Thanks to Austinist's Elizabeth for picking me as the random local blog of the week. What a birthday gift. Since she asked me to post more, I'll share this item I posted to the Spoon list.

I was watching Spoon's Sister Jack video this morning, and later I started writing this great song on my geetar. Unfortunately, I discovered I was writing Sister Jack.

But still later I discovered something even weirder. You can sing the Love Boat theme (a tv show way before many of you kiddies' time) over the chords to Sister Jack.

love...................exciting and new
always on the outside, always looking in

come aboard................we're expecting you
i was in a drop d metal band we called requiem

Posted by timothompson at 01:09 PM

You Say It's Your Birthday...

Happy birthday, Flickr.

It's my birthday, too! So where's my web site present, Chan Marshall?

Posted by timothompson at 12:05 PM

Dwight Schrute Bobblehead

They better be selling the Dwight Schrute Bobblehead from last night's "The Office" (these people agree). That is all.

Postscript: As an adjunct to my post about there being no Hooters in Scranton, I have now discovered there are no Chili's in Scranton either. What kind of Godforsaken place is that? If there weren't an Applebee's, I don't know how anyone could live there.

Update: A petition drive has been initiated.

Update: The company that created the Dwight bobblehead [via].

Posted by timothompson at 10:47 AM

February 09, 2006

Tagging SXSW Bands

I met with from Austin blogger Prentiss Riddle and David Kivel from Austin startup Pluck for lunch yesterday to talk about a new initiative they have going. They run a Del.icio.us-like bookmarking application called Shadows, and their goals are to 1) make a more usable and ungeekified Del.icio.us (one that your Mom could use) and 2) to apply human filtering to search so that people can find what they want without SEO (search engine optimization) specialists fouling up the search results with their trickery.

Since they're from Austin, they've decided to focus their efforts on SXSW as a pet project. They've been courting bloggers who post about SXSW (like me) to get the word out about what they're doing. For the first part of this project, they've analyzed tags that people are using on sites like Flickr, Del.icio.us and Technorati and tried to to analyze the phrases most people are using and standardize the way SXSW 2006 bands are tagged.

They set up this page with their results that they call the "Official" (but I don't think this is SXSW-endorsed) Tags for SXSW 2006.

For example, these guys are adamant that we not tag SXSW with "sxsw" only. You must use "sxsw2006." They're sticklers, I tell ya. For a right-brained, rule-despising person like me, doing these things is great in theory but difficult in practice.

The long-assed unwieldy names of Austin bands are perfect for this kind of project. Take a band like (...And You Will Know Us By The) Trail of Dead. What do most people tag 'em with? According to the Pluck guys, it's "trailofdead."

Here's some other examples of superlong SXSW band names and the suggested tag equivalents:

Their next effort, which I'll be helping them with, is to find and tag the official band site and/or the MySpace site, any fansites, pages of Flickr photos, record label pages, and in-depth concert or album reviews, etc. for each of the SXSW 2006 bands (i.e. Aberfeldy). They're hoping that their pages become an additional third-party, human-filtered resource for people searching for SXSW information.

Posted by timothompson at 01:21 PM

February 08, 2006

SXSW News

Here's an info dump on some SXSW-related events (x-posted to the Unofficial SXSW List).

SXSW: Beggars Showcase and Too Pure Party Announcements

Update your iCals right now for the super fantastic Beggars showcase and Too Pure Records day party at SXSW 2006.

The Beggars showcase is happening on Thursday at Club DeVille and the line-up is hot like so many Taco Shack timales:

Then on Friday afternoon, we've got your hangover cure with the Too Pure / Ba Da Bing Party at Ruta Maya out on South Congress (which for any SXSW novices, is where the cool kids hang during the day). Seriously good times with:

And, to ring in the good times, we'll be giving away Rogers Sisters ringtones before the party with the help of our friends at Total Mass.

Annual Pop Culture Press SXSW Week Day Party

(no line up announced yet)
Saturday March 18 from 12 pm - 7pm at the Dog & Duck Pub

Solid PR Fest taking place on March 16th @ the SXSW marathon in Austin, TX.

March 16th @ The Velvet Spade (2 stages)

Thursday March 16th [via]

DAY PARTY noon-6pm @ Flamingo Cantina

Nighttime Showcase

8pm - 2am @ Emo's Annex 600 Red River

Saturday, March 18th

The Free Agency / Shotclock Management SXSW Blowout @ Barcelona

1-6 PM // Free // Drink specials all day!

Posted by timothompson at 10:53 AM

February 04, 2006

Ray Davies Planning Porn Musical

File under bizarre: "THE KINKS star RAY DAVIES is brushing up on his pornography knowledge for a new stage musical based on his 1970s hit LOLA. The WATERLOO SUNSET singer fears he doesn't know enough about the world of porn movies to make a start on the provocative stage show, and so he's planning to research the genre thoroughly. He explains, 'I'm going to write a porn musical called Lola... I'm not a porn actor, so I have to do a bit of research, but I believe that society is so graphic that it's going to be my first Broadway hit.'"

Posted by timothompson at 09:29 AM

February 01, 2006

Super Bowl Predictions

Madden or some guy's formula? Can we just play the freakin' game already? Ugh.

Posted by timothompson at 02:25 PM