01/23/2004

Dean Yeeargh Aftermath

Well, I made the Howard Dean clip just to amuse the small group of folks who read this blog and then I started getting calls (Tuesday night). First was ABC news, then Newsweek, then the Wall Street Journal, then VH1, MTV, NY Times, E!, etc. then they used the song on MSNBC, various other regional shows, etc. Rolling Stone is doing an article on GarageBand and the interesting confluence of the Dean spoofs and its availability. I'm also told it was in other places - USA Today, etc. If you saved clippings, feel free to let me know; I'm thinking of doing an essay about the experience and it would be nice to see what the coverage was like and the different perspectives used in the press analysis.

I'm still trying to figure out how to feel about all this, much less what to think about it. Of course, when you get your 15 minutes of fame (and ironically the clip is essentially 15 seconds long and took 15 minutes to create), you like to envision that it will be for writing the great American novel or because you're the next Paul Westerberg (who, incidentally, makes *real* music in his basement), or because you wrote a hit song or cured cancer or AIDS or something. A political spoof wasn't really high on my list of achievements in life, but I can't help but enjoy it a little. I think decent people really don't crave fame - what they crave is for the things they create to receive praise. There's a big difference, there, and that's why this is just a little less than thrilling given the nature of what is being praised. I'm just amazed at how things have changed now that the tools for making every kind of media are in the hands of pretty much everyone. It won't ensure a glut of quality material, but it won't rule out a lot of quality either - a lot of people are capable of creating great things but lack the time or tools. Apple, in my case, just provided a quick way to realize the kind of thing that was running through my head the minute I realized that I could download a raw clip of Dean's actual speech. Robert Smigel has been doing this for years on SNL with his brilliant "Fun with Real Audio" cartoons, yet he has a budget.

For those who have asked, I made the clip in Garage Band. I sampled the crowd noise and had that going anywhere there would have been silence. I clipped out the 'yeaaargh' and inserted it several times into the course of the 15 second song, the last three times with an echo effect. Other than that, I ran the rest of his speech without interruption along with the music - that's why MSBNC was able to synch it up perfectly with the video of Dean's remarks. Clever move on their part, really. Besides GarageBand, I also used the tool made by Felt Tip Software - Sound Studio - to compress the song and then normalize to 100% of volume so it would sound good in lower quality files.

Anyway, I've received a lot of nice letters - both from Dean supporters and detractors - and it has been an interesting experience. I've realized that most behind-the-scenes reporters are very hard working folks who face constant deadlines - they work late and do their best to get the story straight. The Newsweek article did quote me as saying that Dean's sleeve-rolling "cheesed me up" when I actually said "cheesed me out", but that's a minor thing. I had to consult on a job site all day Thursday which made me miss emails from about five or six reporters. I thought of just ignoring their requests for my time, but then I thought that in a very real way, when you create something you also create some responsibilities for yourself (within reason) and so I've tried my best not to make the clip completely unavailable (it's being hosted over at Apple's servers now and on various other folks' sites) or myself unavailable.

My favorite part of the whole experience was telling my dad that VH1 is going to use the clip on Friday night and his response was "What is VH1?".

When Andy Warhol said that in the future everyone would have 15 minutes of fame, it was a prescient remark by someone who didn't know about the internet. Yet it is hard to fathom how that prediction could come true without the internet.

One thing I was really hoping would come out of this was some of those fun job offers you hear of people getting. It would be great to have a more tangible option to work in a creative industry for the rest of my life (not that religious history - the field of my Ph.D. work - can't be a creative career, I'm just referring to media-related industries).

Anyway, this post is a feeble attempt to update you on what has been happening as a result of this funny little experiment. Perhaps I'll have something more meaningful to say after more reflection on what has been a very tiring and strange week (for Dean and for me!).

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Updates:

- See the clip on Vh1's new news program that premieres tonight: Best Week Ever. Here's their blog entry about my Dad's comment.

- Just received this link for coverage from the BBC

- E! Online Article I apologize in advance for my subject/verb agreement in that one - obviously it is common in spoken English, but it looks kind of bad in print.

- Here's a nice article in the Mac Daily News.