This video, "Diary," was posted by photojournalist and documentarian Tim Hetherington three months ago. His description reads: "'Diary' is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It's a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media."
As my final post, I thought I'd leave you with something you could actually use: a visual glossary of some of the most essential people, places, and things from the expansive Defamer universe. Enjoy.
Tomorrow, the old Defamer guard—whose heartfelt, semi-coherent ramblings you've warmly welcomed into your homes, office cubicles, and Unabomber shacks for nearly five years now—will bid you all a fond adieu. But this story ends happily.
We have exciting year-end news for anyone tired of Gawker Media's steady encroachment upon your Defamer-savoring experience: We're breaking free from the mothership!
Greetings, Defamer readers. If you've been with us for a long time, you may have noticed a slow and steady bloat encroach upon what was once a tidy and compact visual read.
We apologize for the interruption in your regularly scheduled Defaming-of-beloved-scifi-icon services. Apparently one of the rodents who powers our servers got a foot caught in his wheel, sending him flying into the circuitry.
We Know How She Feels. We must bid a sad farewell, ladies and gentleman, to the mastermind behind A Call to the Bullpen, Douglas Reinhardt. Today was his last day. As you all know, Doug's talent for pairing celebrity photos with hilarious headlines and vividly imagined scenarios from a slightly askew imagination made for some classic moments on Defamer. There were many, but we'll always have a place in our heart for this one. We wish him the best of luck, and invite you to browse through his archives by clicking here. [A Call To The Bullpen]
We interrupt the regular schedule to offer this important announcement: You may have noticed yet another intriguing feature added to our ever-evolving commenting boards: collapsed comments. Understandly, some of you have expressed dismay that your comments have been reduced to the first few words, their remainder shoved away into a digital drawer by some clutter-averse Type-A in Defamer's Feedback Development Sciences department. There's a handy loophole to the feature, however:If you follow other commenters by clicking the heart beneath their user name, turning it red, all their comments will appear in their full, singeingly witty glory. (We can also solve the problem by awarding you star status, which also gives you top priority; we promise to do more of that around here, just as soon as we receive the cupcake gift baskets you have undoubtedly already called in for delivery.) Also, if you haven't yet discovered the exciting "Feedback" link at the bottom of our homepage, we invite you to do so immediately. Simply inputting your Defamer-related frustration or suggestion will whisk it off via pneumatic intertube to HQ, whereupon one of our 24-hour service hedgehogs will instantly leap into action to address it. That is all! Carry on.
We apologize for the unscheduled break in your daily Defamer procrastination-enabling services, but apparently the Gawker Media server had been accidentally let go in the flurry of downsizings to recently befall our company. An intern has been dispatched to beg the large device to return to HQ, with a $0.07-an-hour raise thrown in to sweeten the pot. Hopefully, by the time you read this all the necessary paperwork will have been signed, and we'll get back to churning out the news you need to know with the frequency to which you've become accustomed. HAAY-yah, editors! *Whipcrack!*
We apologize for any dead-air you may have experienced when trying to access the site over the past hour or so, as a minor technical malfunction led to a teensy weensy network-wide outage among your favorite Gawker Media blogspots. Everything seems to be functioning now, however, and we should get back up to speed in no time, filling your heads with the regular stream of nonsense you've come to rely on during the long, cubicle-bound hours.
[Mood: Unsettling mix of trouser-soiling fear and misguided hope. Song: "The One Where Everyone On 'Six Feet Under' Dies" by Sia]
[SFX: a PHONE RINGING at Defamer HQ]
Of the 9 or 10,000 posts I've done since we started this site, this one is the hardest to write. After almost four years here at Defamer, I've decided it's finally time to move on. In an effort to keep this short and sweet, I'll be climbing out of the blogging hamster-wheel this Friday, and though I wish I had exciting news about where my next paycheck will be coming from (or some great story about why I'm leaving other than "it's time"), I'll probably just be taking a little hiatus to figure out what's next and work on some projects I haven't had the time or energy for since, oh, mid 2004: writing that might not involve typing in a tiny box in a browser window, eating the occasional lunch, spending lazy afternoons standing in front of the Chinese Theater in a loose-fitting Power Ranger costume, shaking down tourists for money. You know, how everyone in L.A. spends their idle hours.
Today marks the launch of io9, our brand-spanking-new Gawker Media sister site (the first work day of the new year is a busy one back at our corporate mothership) that seeks to sate the appetite of sci-fi fans who think nothing of following up a 24-hour Battlestar Galactica marathon by inserting toothpicks under their weary eyelids and sitting back down for another straight day of vintage V episodes. (An unhealthy viewing orgy that may, of course, result in hallucinations that one can now unhinge one's jaw and swallow a tasty rodent whole like a ravenous Visitor.) Of particular geek interest among today's posts is this potential six-pointed blasphemy detailing why Star Trek, which has "become a microcosm of everything that's wrong with science fiction," should have been allowed to stay dead, a rallying cry for anyone who feels that it's cruel that a greedy studio insists on trying to pump life back into the original James T. Kirk's bloated corpse. Drop by and say hello to editor Annalee Newitz and her crew, then stick around to learn how semen is being used to control women's sexual urges, or some Doctor Who infoporn.
Happy 2008! Though we're still trying to pry off the confetti stubbornly cemented to various body parts by dried champagne (please, don't press us for details on the exact places we're having a hard time de-spangling), we're ready for whatever Hollywood nonsense the new year holds. But first, we have an announcement to make: Our Defamer family is expanding, as we've brought aboard an old friend to be our first Managing Editor. Please welcome Mark Graham to the fold, who'll be dealing with the administration of the site, spearheading the expansion of some features (photos and videos and what-have-you), and handling all the fun responsibilities that go along with growing our little part of the Gawker Media Worldwide Blogging Concern. Mark's a recent refugee from VH1's online operations, the proprietor of the seminal blogspot Whatevs, and, amazingly, still fascinated with at least one half of the post-conjoined Olsen twins. Please direct all well wishes and gift baskets (hint: he's a red-velvet cupcake guy) here.
As some readers complained that last year's holiday greeting caused their usual Christmas bedtime visions of dancing sugar-plums to be replaced by nightmares starring a certain mysteriously infantilized—if still festively attired—superproducer, we've decided to soften this year's offering a bit. Who could possibly be troubled by the delightful image of Santa Grazer atop a plush unicorn? Not us, at least. Please accept our warmest wishes and heartfelt thanks for helping us survive another 12 months of largely the same nonsense we all lived through the previous year. We'll be back on Monday for a half-day, off Tuesday for the holiday, then back to a more-or-less regular schedule Wednesday for the always action-packed week before the New Year. (Or, more accurately, Seth will be here—he always puts a vacation until January 2nd under my Christmas tree. And all I got him for a late Hanukkah present was a regifted set of "I Am Legend/I'm With Legend" t-shirts Warner Bros. sent in!) See you in 2008! —Mark
We know that the last thing anyone wants to hear about is our technical problems (and yet here we go anyway!), but one of those internet outages that our service provider occasionally likes to surprise us with to keep us on our toes has forced us out in the world to find a connection. We should be up shortly, though things may be running at half-speed for a little while. As always, thank you for bearing with us during these incredibly difficult times.
