An audience of one

Odd thing happened today. The usual light traffic through here was lighter than normal - partly attributable to pre-weekend dropoff for sure, but it stood out to me as being particularly slow. Even some of my regular visitors hadn't come by in the morning. That was before lunch. Afterwards, my traffic increased to a few hundred percent above normal.

I'd been linked from Neil Gaiman's blog. (By the way, for those who might wonder which generates more traffic - a link from Gaiman or a link from Ken Levine - Morpheus wins the kewpie doll.) What I found especially odd about the link from Gaiman (odd, but nonetheless gratifying to my ego) was that in the post in question I'd done little more than quote Gaiman!!!

Sure, I'd juxtaposed an anecdote of his about infixing "fucking" with another post that appeared only a few days later doing the same, but I'd really brought nothing new to the table. It was all very strange to me. But it led me to think a little about one of the aspects about the new media paradigm that I've never seen anyone mention before.

Frequently (*still*, shockingly) wags will discuss the power in the hands of ordinary citizens to make their voices heard through the "power of the Internet". A lone underwear-clad blogger, his fingers stained permanently orange from Cheetos - like Will Leitch¹ - can challenge the authority, reputation, hegemony, and market reach of one of the most powerful media companies in history. Josh Marshall can build a new model for a media company in the flower district that regularly scoops and out-analyzes The Times, The Post, and the Weekly World News.² Limitless distribution is available to anyone with a connection to the Internet with a price that approaches zero. It's clear the old push model has to compete mightily and only retains its built-in advantage of authority.

However, that's not why I'm writing this.

Did I mention that Neil Gaiman linked to my lil piece o' crap site? Who the hell am I?

While I'm thrilled by the fleeting uptick in readership (pretty much all those people came and went without staying around, thereby missing anything funny, profound, or interesting I might have to say³) it doesn't mean nearly as much to me as this: Neil Gaiman linked to my site. Which means he read at least one post on my site, probably more (after all, he'd want to make sure I'm not completely bat-shit before sending his readers here.) This ranks up there with Levine making two distinct compliments about our team's quality of humor after our scene was performed at the Sitcom Room and telling me he was enjoying reading my blog posts from that weekend.

Yes, I'm that needy.

But it's a little more than that in this case. The paradigmatic change I'm talking about isn't that one person can be heard by many, but that a nobody like me⁴ can be read by some of his idols. Honestly, at this point you get Harlan Ellison to curse me out for ripping him off and I can die happy.

I suppose the sensation I have today must be the happy inverse to the one all the sports bloggers feel every time their hard work gets stolen by the WWL. The opposite feeling political bloggers feel when the MSM fails to properly credit their sources. A man I've been reading for over twenty years read something I wrote⁵. The key isn't that I can publish my thoughts for everyone to see; rather, it's that those thoughts might be seen by anyone. Even a giant in his field.

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¹ I am, of course, kidding. I'm sure Will Leitch does his best work commando, with Dorito-stained fingers.
² Again, kidding. TPM may have broken the USA firing scandal, but they've never beaten the WWN to the punch on a Bat Boy story.
³ If nothing else, it's funny for me to imply I'm ever interesting, interesting for me to imply I'm profound, and profoundly arrogant for me to imply I'm funny.
⁴ Bwahahahaha! Sorry. Me playing the humility card...now that's funny!
⁵ Yes, I've not forgotten it was just a post of two block quotes and some connective tissue.

Ken Levine's Comedy Conference Call

Ken Levine cracks me up. I'm sitting on his conference call right now and he's killing. I honestly can't believe the amount he does for aspiring writers.

Right now he's discussing a valuable comedy lesson he and partner David Isaacs learned early in their career. They'd written a series of one-act comedies in different styles, including a farce. On the opening Friday, the audience laughed uproariously throughout most of the play, but near the end just stopped. Concerned, they tried to figure out what might have been the cause but couldn't find anything. During Saturday night's performance, the crowd laughed all the way through. Ken and David decided it was a fluke.

The following Friday, it happened again. Apparently, audiences are just too tired after a full week's work. So, when they reached the point in their careers where they had enough juice to demand it, they insisted on Tuesday tapings before studio audiences. Remember that: you want a fresh audience, especially if you're showing farce.

I'll leave it to others to discuss the difficult actors Ken's worked with. I will say that he said Shelly Long was not difficult at all, but that her process was time-consuming.

Sepinwall on the Sitcom Room

Image stolen with little to no regard from Sepinwall

Well, I've joined good company. Like that other bald, heavy, huggable sociopath above, I've shown up in the Jersey mob's paper of record, the Star-Ledger. Dismember a few weeks back (oops, sorry, that should be "remember"...I've got to get Tony outta my head), I spent a glorious weekend at the fabulous LAX Hilton at Ken Levine's Sitcom Room? My favorite TV critic's written about it here.¹

After the all-nighter we pulled in our writers' room and my quick nap/workout/shower/shoveled breakfast, I headed up to the main conference room for the "Sitcon Room" and the performance of all our re-written scenes. I heard my team leader Liz say hi to Alan Sepinwall and figured I'd walk on over and say howdy. I've been reading him just about as long as he's been blogging and about six months ago realized he'd edged ahead of the SacBee's Rick Kushman as my go-to TV critic. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or maybe the mega-dose of MSG from the Chinese "food" Dan O'Day brought us on Saturday night, but I was as pleased to meet Alan as I was to meet Ken and all the amazing writers on Sunday afternoon's panel. (Just kidding, Alan. It wasn't the exhaustion or the flavor enhancement.)

Alan had taken a side trip over from the TCA summer press tour because he's a big fan of Ken's (and I suspect he wanted a break from some of this year's more contentious sessions). He probably thought this would be a fun lark for a few hours. I can only guess how excited Alan was when he witnessed the obvious quality of our output. I mean, here's a guy whose vocation and avocation is writing about television, witnessing the emergence of the next generation of great comedy writers from the womb of the airport Hilton. Being the smart guy he is, he grabbed a few of us and practically begged us to be interviewed. We tossed the guy a bone and a few of us gave him our email addresses. I mean hell, it's not the last time he'll need to interview us.²

In case you're wondering, the A-Team joke really is funny, but Jesse's right...it's a "sitcom joke". Trust me though, it's not the joke I feel bad about. Be careful what you say in a writers' room late at night. It might end up in the script against even your own better judgment. Especially if everyone belly-laughs for a half-hour.

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¹ Be careful with this one. I'm blogging about an article in which I am interviewed, written by someone who will also blog about writing the article, and possibly refer to the blogs of those of us he interviewed. When you unwind this recursion, be sure you end up where you started, Achilles.
² Unless Sam Simon's right. Then we're all fucked. Or if we're untalented hacks. I shouldn't discount that possibility, as remote as it may be.