why network neutrality matters, and is worth fighting for


Save the Internet: Click here

For weeks, I’ve been trying to write about why Network Neutrality is so important, and why everyone who spends even three minutes a day online should be writing, calling, and faxing their representatives in Congress relentlessly until the so-called First Amendment of the Internet is guaranteed and becomes law. But whenever I start, I end up angry and depressed and frustrated, and the words just won’t come.

Today, Adam Green has a brilliant post at HuffPo that puts into simple language exactly why Network Neutrality is so important:

As the New York Times editorialized today:

 

"Net neutrality" is a concept that is still unfamiliar
to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. … One of the
Internet’s great strengths is that a single blogger or a small
political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as
accessible to the world as Microsoft’s home page. But this democratic
Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet
service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would
be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access
and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they
do not like.

If Net Neutrality is gutted, Google, eBay, and YouTube
either pay protection money to companies like AT&T or risk that
their sites process slowly on your computer. Comcast could
intentionally slow access to iTunes, steering Internet customers its
own music service. And the little guy with the next big idea would be muscled out of the marketplace, relegated to the "slow lane" of the information superhighway.

This isn’t just speculation — it’s already happened in places without Net Neutrality. Heck, AT&T’s CEO blatantly announced, "The Internet can’t be free."

That’s why an Internet revolt has begun–a revolt that [Telecom spokesman Mike] McCurry belittles. Folks as diverse as Craig from Craigslist, MoveOn, Gun Owners of America,  Google, eBay, and Amazon are all fighting back. 350,000 people signed a petition demanding Congress preserve Internet freedom, over 2,000 blogs have rallied the public, and even some celebrities are chiming in.

Craig Fields from Gun Owners of America hit the target right-on when he said

"Whenever you see people on the far left and far right
joining together about something Congress is getting ready to do, it’s
been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is
basically un-American."

(Emphasis mine)

There’s much more to his post, including a smackdown of Mike McCurry, who has become and outright lying shill for powerful telecom interests like AT&T who want to force a fundamental change to the way the Internet operates. Please read it. I think it’s the most important thing you’ll read today, and should help everyone who’s heard about this issue (but doesn’t know exactly what it is — which includes a lot of people, including myself until about last week) understand why it’s so important.

On a personal note: without the Internet, I’d be just another failed actor struggling to make ends meet. Because I had the same ability to put together a website and reach an audience as anyone else, I was able to put my words on your screens, and eventually into a book that got into many of your hands. If AT&T or some other big telecom decided that regular guys like me had to pay some sort of protection money to have the same ability to reach you as Google or MSN does, I never would have been able to get WWdN off the ground, much less found Monolith Press, publish Dancing Barefoot, and start an entirely new career as a writer.

We’ve all taken for granted that we’ll have equal access to the Internet, both as consumers and as creators of content. Right now, very powerful, very greedy, and very un-democratic businesses are trying very hard to take that away from us. They must be stopped.

Again, Adam Green:

The only way to protect Net Neutrality is for Congress to take
action now, as it re-writes our nation’s telecom laws. Senators Olympia
Snowe (R-ME) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Representative Ed Markey
(D-MA) have introduced legislation to do this. Mike McCurry and his
clients like AT&T are fighting it tooth and nail.

If you are outraged, don’t just sit there . . .  take these steps:

1. SIGN a Net Neutrality petition to Congress:

2. CALL Congress now:

3. BLOG about this issue, or put our "Save the Internet" logo on your Web site:

4. MYSPACE: Add "Save the Internet" as a friend:

5. WRITE A LETTER to Congress:

6. VISIT our coalition Web site for more information, SavetheInternet.com

it’s cosmic, man

I was very spoiled by Teen Titans. It was a fantastically talented group of actors, writers, and animators, lead by passionate producers and one of the best directors I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I was crushed when the show was cancelled not only because it meant I wouldn’t have the job, but because it meant that I wouldn’t get to work with this incredible group of people several times a year any more.

When I found out that I would be working on Legion of Super Heroes, I was excited, but I kept my expectations in check . . . what were the odds of lightning striking twice?

Well, it turns out that those odds were 1:1. I had an absolute blast on Friday. The entire cast accepted me right away, and welcomed me into their show (they’ve been working together for eleven episodes, already) and made me feel like I was part of their team who had been there from the start. The producers, writers, and the director were just hawesome, and I can’t wait to go back and work with them all again this week . . . because I’m a recurring character!

Oh yeah, baby. Recurring character. Sweet.

I know that Warner Brothers is very touchy about revealing too many details before they are announced (Marv Wolfman and I got our wrists slapped when we both mentioned something about Aqualad on our blogs when we worked together on Deep Six) but I got an okay from a highly-placed source to at least reveal that I am playing the part of Cosmic Boy, one of the founders of the Legion.

Finding Cosmic Boy’s voice was fun: my instinct said that I should stand for him (he’s sort of an arms-across-the-chest kind of guy) but with my damn hip hurting, I ended up sitting . . . big mistake. I struggled for the first act, until I could get the engineer to reset my mic so I could stand up. It’s amazing what a huge difference a little thing like sitting vs. standing makes; it’s the difference between playing outfield with or without a glove, or running with shoes that don’t quite fit.

Standing up and settling into him let me bring Cosmic Boy to life, and really find his point of view about himself and his relationship with the other Legionaries. Once I knew who he was, and once he lived in me, I was able to do some really cool stuff. At one point in the last act, I felt so confident that I knew him, I even asked for a second take on a line where I thought I could play a more interesting beat than I did in the first take, which everyone on the other side of the glass was very happy with. I rarely ask for additional takes because if an actor is going to ask for a second pass he’d better have something really great to do, to justify the extra time and expense, and until recently I just haven’t had the level of confidence as a voice actor necessary to pull that off.

I can’t say exactly what dialogue or scene was, but you Meisner actors will probably grok this: there are three beats in the line. The first time I did it, I set him straight, enlightened him, and went one better. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that enlightening him and going one better were essentially the same beat, so I asked for another take where I set him straight, enlightened him, and shared bad news, which sort of went one better but was more specific and "shaded" differently and was more interesting. I felt an emotional connection to the words and the scene after the second take, and I guess the other actors did, too. One of them said, "Oh, I really liked that," and another said, "Dude, you’re not Cosmic Boy; you’re Actor Boy!" To which I replied (in a Ted Knight voice), "Yes, Actor Boy . . . who, in his disguise as Waiter Boy, keeps the city safe from doooom."  And there was much rejoicing.

I wish I could show or discuss the character models I saw while I was there, but I think that’s a one-way ticket to unemployment . . . but they are really, really cool. I’m back again on Friday, and if Warner Brothers doesn’t give me the cockpunch for what I’ve written here today, maybe I can get some permission to release a few more details. Now, I think I’m going to walk around my house and talk like Ted Knight.

"Meanwhile, in Wil’s office, Ferris and Riley sleep on the floor, unaware that a mysterious stranger lurks just outside the wall. Can Actor Boy arrive in time to save them from doooooom? Only Monroe and Spaulding know for sure!"

consoles and strife

So a whole bunch of Nintendo nerds are paralyzed with outrage that Nintendo changed the name of the Revolution to Wii. Some of them, I’ve heard, are even considering having their tattoos of Link, Mario, and Kirby removed (but not Samus and Pikachu; those stay. Even pissed off nerds have their limits, you know.)[1]

Nintendo says,

"Wii sounds like ‘we,’ which emphasizes that the console is for
everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no
matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate.
Just Wii.

Wikipedia adds,

Nintendo spells "Wii" with two "i"s to create an image of players
gathering together to play. The spelling also is intended to invoke the
controllers the Wii uses. 

I actually think that logic is extremely cool, very non-linear, and surprisingly poetic for a video game company. And guess what? Nintendo now has people who are not Nintendo fanboys talking and thinking about the Wii. Brilliant.

Why are so many Nintendo fanboys taking it so personally? I wonder why the name of a gaming console is such a big deal? Isn’t it the catalogue of games and how well they play what really matters?

There wasn’t this much outrage from Trekkies when Rick Berman destroyed the Enterprise D, and that was worth some serious tattoo removal.

 

[1] Okay, I made that up, but the point stands.

kyle + rosemary

Picture_2_1
I‘m always careful not to post too many details about auditions, or the content of things I’ve worked on, because it usually freaks out the people who hired me, who want to maintain some mystery about their project, control the publicity, or reserve the right to keep the whole damn thing a secret until they are good and ready to share it with the world.

With that in mind, I haven’t talked too specifically about the project that I booked yesterday. In fact, I figured I’d wait until I went to work, so I could ask the director (who is also the writer and creator) if it was cool to put out a few details, and maybe even a character model or two.

Well, I think it’s okay to talk about the show a bit more now, because Jun, the director, e-mailed me this morning with a link to her blog all about the show!

The show is called Kyle + Rosemary, and I am Kyle. (That’s Kyle on the right there, and Rosemary is down a bit on the left, for those of you who like reading obvious things that are put into parentheses and then become the subject of much meta-commentary by the writer, who feels the need to talk about himself in the third person, when the smart thing to do all along was just to delete the damn parenthetical statement and trust that his reader wouldn’t need it anyway. But then the writer, who is really amusing himself by now, is all excited that he got to use the fifty-cent word "parenthetical" within a parenthetical, which is almost as good as having an intalicized footnote.[1])

Yesterday, I wrote "I felt such a connection with the character, and had so much fun
looking at his character model and creating the voice and character it
inspired . . ." so here’s a little bit on how that works for me. Follow along with Kyle (who is on the right over there. See previous parenthetical statement, kthnx.)

When I go into the booth to do a character, I do different things with my body to make him come out of me. Aqualad is a little haughty, because he’s a prince, so to create his voice and character, I sit straight up, with my back off the chair, put my hands on my knees (Ensign Ro-style) and hold my chin up when I talk. I don’t know how all that comes together to create him, but I know that it works.

For Kyle, my initial voice was way too nerdy and cartoony. Once Jun showed me this drawing, I grokked him. I walked into the booth, let my shoulders slump a little bit, put my hands in my pockets, and sighed right before they rolled tape. She guided me, and Kyle came right out of me, like I’d known him for much longer than the five minutes I’d had his image in my mind.

Jun said some cool things about me on her blog

So, having completed voice casting, after much painful deliberation (there were many great candidates) I decided on Wil Wheaton
for the voice of Kyle. I’d call this an inspired casting choice; for
one thing, Wil is a self-proclaimed geek, and for another, he runs his
own hawesome weblog, in which he professes his geek-ness several times a week.

[. . .]

[W]e as directors and creators go through the casting process with often
rarely a thought to the multiple lines of actors and actresses trooping
through, hoping to get parts on our shows based on the quickest of
auditions – auditions where they have to drive across town for just a
few minutes in front of a microphone, saying the same lines that
everyone else says and hoping to stand out. They are just as excited to
get a part as we are when we sell a show. It’s really nice to have a
little insight into their lives once in a while. Thanks for sharing,
Wil!

Picture_3_1
See? I knew there was a reason I liked her so much. She cares about story, she cares about actors, and she’s a geek blogger (I love the posts in her blog where her mom comments and says how proud she is. That rules.) So if a singularity shows up in Burbank next week, you totally know where to pin the blame (or at least start the investigation, though we’ll be watching you from our newly-discovered higher plane of pure-energy existance, and totally screwing with you through the power of mental thinking.)

I still don’t think it’s cool to gve up too many details about the show, but I think it’s safe to disclose that Kyle and Rosemary meet in a MMORPG, and the show takes place both in the game, where I will get to voice Kyle’s alter ego, Sir Horace, and in the real world, where Kyle and Rosemary can’t hang out, because she is a goth and he is a geek. There are some storyboards of their in-game alter-egos on Jun’s blog, if you want to see them. Oh, and when I voice Sir Horace? I totally stand tall, push out my chest, and put my hands on my hips. When I speak, I take one hand and stab at the air with it, because he is so totally heroic. And the transition from Sir Horace back into Kyle? Way too much fun.

Now I’m off to Shane’s house to pick up my nerd cape. And don’t even ask how it got there, because I’m not telling (though you can probably get Annie to tell you if you ask her nicely enough, and bribe her with coffee.)

[1] Yeah, it’s still good.

the one about the guy who was a jerk in the airport

From Seth Godin’s blog:

A long line at the American Airlines counter. Finally, a particularly well-dressed man gets to the front, loudly announcing that he wants to check in for first class.

The harried agent does her best, but there’s no room. He starts getting louder and more angry. He’s blathering about his power and authority.

She tries to placate him, but to no avail.

Finally, he yells, “Do you know who I am?”

Without missing a beat, the gate agent grabs the microphone. “Attention in the gate area. We have a medical emergency. The man at gate 11 has just suffered a serious bout of amnesia. If anyone recognizes him, can they please come forward and help him?”

When I was younger, and I grudgingly played the celebrity game (with the screenings and the photo shoots and all that stupid crap), I encountered my fair share of other Big Deal Celebrities. I was often equally amused and horrified by some of the big attitudes many of them displayed, like they really believed that they were better than everyone else because they’d been in six episodes of a mid-season replacement. Even when I was in the middle of my 18 year-old idiocy (which had less to do with capital-F Fame and everything to do with capital-I Insecurity), I never treated people like they were beneath me, and I never pulled the “don’t you know who I am?” bullshit because 1) it’s totally lame, and 2) the person you’re hoping to intimidate simply has to say, “No. Next.” and you’re done.

Several years ago, I was at the airport in Las Vegas, on my way to the taxi line (this was before it took longer to get a cab than it does to fly there from Burbank). I paused near the rental car counter for some reason, and overheard a businessman talking to the agent.

She gave him some shit about turning in the car fifteen minutes late or something like that, and said he’d be charged for another day.

He very calmly said, “I was delayed in traffic. If you’ll look at my rental history, you’ll probably want to let me have that fifteen minutes, so you can keep me as a customer.”

I can see this next moment like I’m watching it on HDTV: she smirks at him, like she’s really excited to tell him to get bent — like it’s seriously going to make her day. Then looks down at the monitor. Her whole face goes slack, then her eyes widen, and she says, “I’m so sorry, sir. We’ll waive the fee. Thank you for using Budget.” He smiles, nods his head, and says, “Thank you.”

I don’t know what was on that monitor, (maybe it was an endless string of 4 8 15 16 23 42) but it really got her attention. I remember thinking that the guy could have been a huge dick, because he was obviously an important customer, but he didn’t need to be a dick (actually, nobody ever really needs to be a dick, and there’s a difference between being a dick and being assertive, but that’s a whole different post), because he knew the company would want to keep his business, and it wasn’t worth one day’s rental fee or penalty or whatever to lose it.

From that experience, and also from a bit of my personal experience, I drew the conclusion that, most of the time, when someone is being a big, loud, “don’t you know who I am?” asshole, it’s because they’re insecure. It’s as much about them making themselves feel important, as it is about intimidating someone else and getting their way. It’s a classic Mike Caro poker tell: strong means weak, and weak means strong.