Search Results for: TV

Meeting the man behind Violentacrez, the Reddit persona responsible for forums filled with racist and pornographic content like “Creepshots” and “Jailbait”:

When I called Brutsch that Wednesday afternoon and told him I knew who he was, I was a little taken aback by how calm he remained during our intense but civil hour-long conversation. I had figured that a man whose hobby was saying horrible shit just to screw with people online would rise to some new horrible level when conditions on the ground actually called for it. Instead he pleaded with me in an affectless monotone not to reveal his name.

‘My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment,’ he said. ‘I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time.’

“Unmasking The Biggest Troll on the Web.” — Adrian Chen, Gawker

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Unmasking The Biggest Troll on the Web

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Meeting the man behind Violentacrez, the Reddit persona responsible for forums filled with racist and pornographic content like “Creepshots” and “Jailbait”:

“When I called Brutsch that Wednesday afternoon and told him I knew who he was, I was a little taken aback by how calm he remained during our intense but civil hour-long conversation. I had figured that a man whose hobby was saying horrible shit just to screw with people online would rise to some new horrible level when conditions on the ground actually called for it. Instead he pleaded with me in an affectless monotone not to reveal his name.

“‘My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment,’ he said. ‘I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time.'”

Source: Gawker
Published: Oct 12, 2012
Length: 18 minutes (4,746 words)

What it’s like for an actor to become a TV commercial megastar—forever associated with a brand, for better and worse:

On the day of the audition, roughly 30 actors showed up. When it was Olcott’s turn, he flashed his big, ecstatic smile. The director loved it, and Olcott got the job. In February, on a bare-bones budget of roughly $100,000, a first commercial was shot touting the herbal product Enzyte. It boiled down to 30 seconds of campy innuendo. Olcott was shown breezing through life flashing his blissed-out smile at breakfast, at work, and while waving happily to his neighbor, a guy holding a sagging hose. ‘This is Bob,’ went the voice-over. ‘Bob is doing well. Very well indeed. That’s because not long ago, with just a quick phone call, Bob realized that he could have something better in his life. And what did he get? Why, a big boost of confidence, a little more self-esteem, and a very happy Mrs. at home.’ Toward the end of the commercial, viewers were given a telephone number for Enzyte.

A couple months later, Olcott got a phone call from the advertising team in Los Angeles. The commercial was a huge hit in the U.S. The phones at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, the Cincinnati-based maker of Enzyte, were ringing like crazy. They wanted more ads, more Bob, more smiles. Spear rushed back to Vancouver. By the time they stopped shooting in 2005, Olcott had starred as Smiling Bob in 18 different Enzyte commercials. Ultimately, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals spent more than $125 million on airtime, the company’s founder would later tell GQ. Smiling Bob was famous.

“Branded for Life.” — Felix Gillette, Bloomberg Businessweek

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[Not single-page] An oral history of the TV show “Cheers”:

Danson: I’ll tell you about the worst day of my life. Shelley and Rhea were carrying that week’s episode, and the guys were just, ‘Let’s play hooky.’ We’d never done anything wrong before. John had a boat, so we met at Marina del Rey at 8 a.m. We all called in sick, and Jimmy caught on and was so pissed. Woody and I were already stoned, and Woody said, ‘You want to try some mushrooms?’ I’d never had them, so I’m handed this bag and I took a fistful. On our way to Catalina, we hit the tail end of a hurricane, and even people who were sober were getting sick. Woody and I thought we were going to die for three hours. I sat next to George, and every sixty seconds or so he’d poke me and go, ‘Breathe.’ [gasp] And I’d come back to life.

Harrelson: I was a little worried about him. It looked like his face was melting. I think I may have been freaking a little myself, but I had to be cool about it.

Wendt: We got into serious trouble for that. I think we thought Jimmy and Les and Glen would have more of a sense of humor about it. We did it because Ted was doing it. He’s sort of a reluctant leader. He didn’t try to flex his influence. He’s just eminently followable.

“‘The Best TV Show That’s Ever Been’.” — Brian Raftery, GQ

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Branded for Life

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What it’s like for an actor to become a TV commercial megastar—forever associated with a brand, for better and worse:

“On the day of the audition, roughly 30 actors showed up. When it was Olcott’s turn, he flashed his big, ecstatic smile. The director loved it, and Olcott got the job. In February, on a bare-bones budget of roughly $100,000, a first commercial was shot touting the herbal product Enzyte. It boiled down to 30 seconds of campy innuendo. Olcott was shown breezing through life flashing his blissed-out smile at breakfast, at work, and while waving happily to his neighbor, a guy holding a sagging hose. ‘This is Bob,’ went the voice-over. ‘Bob is doing well. Very well indeed. That’s because not long ago, with just a quick phone call, Bob realized that he could have something better in his life. And what did he get? Why, a big boost of confidence, a little more self-esteem, and a very happy Mrs. at home.’ Toward the end of the commercial, viewers were given a telephone number for Enzyte.

“A couple months later, Olcott got a phone call from the advertising team in Los Angeles. The commercial was a huge hit in the U.S. The phones at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, the Cincinnati-based maker of Enzyte, were ringing like crazy. They wanted more ads, more Bob, more smiles. Spear rushed back to Vancouver. By the time they stopped shooting in 2005, Olcott had starred as Smiling Bob in 18 different Enzyte commercials. Ultimately, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals spent more than $125 million on airtime, the company’s founder would later tell GQ. Smiling Bob was famous.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Sep 27, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,957 words)

Member Exclusive: Working the Room

Our latest Exclusive comes from the editors of Lapham’s Quarterly. They’ve been longtime contributors to the Longreads community, and this week we’re thrilled to present “Working the Room,” a new essay on humor and the presidency by Michael Phillips-Anderson, from their latest issue, “Politics.” (If you like this, you can subscribe to their print edition here):

In 1848, as a young representative from Illinois, Lincoln took the House floor in support of the Whig presidential candidate, Zachary Taylor. He mocked his Democratic opponents for not gathering behind a single candidate by telling a curious anecdote:

I have heard some things from New York, and if they are true, we might well say of your party there, as a drunken fellow once said when he heard the reading of an indictment for hog stealing. The clerk read on till he got to, and through the words, ‘did steal, take, and carry away, ten boars, ten sows, ten shoats, and ten pigs’ at which he exclaimed, ‘Well, by golly, that is the most equally divided gang of hogs I ever did hear of.’ If there is any gang of hogs more equally divided than the Democrats of New York are about this time, I have not heard of it.

When Lincoln finished with a remark, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘He looks up at you with a great satisfaction, and shows all his white teeth, and laughs.’

“Working the Room.” — Michael Phillips-Anderson, Lapham’s Quartly

Mindy Kaling has quickly progressed from a writer and cast member on NBC’s The Office to a best-selling author and star of her own new sitcom:

To people who know her, it makes perfect sense that she would now have her own sitcom. It was simply a matter of course, on par with how, at 30, she decided to write a book of memoirish essays and observations called ‘Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)’. What’s interesting is that the book exists at all. In the introduction, Kaling apologizes for its not being Tina Fey’s ‘Bossypants’, anticipating that the two will be compared, even though Fey published her book amid huge anticipation as the fortysomething lead and creator of ‘30 Rock’ who was also starring in movies and thriving off her Sarah Palin impersonation. Kaling wrote hers amid demand from herself and her publisher. One of the chapters is a detailed breakdown of just how famous she’d like to be, which is to say, famous enough that teenagers will copy her look and, when she’s old, she’ll be used as a sight gag on TV shows.

“The New New Girl.” — Jada Yuan, New York magazine

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The New New Girl

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Mindy Kaling has quickly progressed from a writer and cast member on NBC’s The Office to a best-selling author and star of her own new sitcom:

“To people who know her, it makes perfect sense that she would now have her own sitcom. It was simply a matter of course, on par with how, at 30, she decided to write a book of memoirish essays and observations called Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). What’s interesting is that the book exists at all. In the introduction, Kaling apologizes for its not being Tina Fey’s Bossypants, anticipating that the two will be compared, even though Fey published her book amid huge anticipation as the fortysomething lead and creator of 30 Rock who was also starring in movies and thriving off her Sarah Palin impersonation. Kaling wrote hers amid demand from herself and her publisher. One of the chapters is a detailed breakdown of just how famous she’d like to be, which is to say, famous enough that teenagers will copy her look and, when she’s old, she’ll be used as a sight gag on TV shows.”

Author: Jada Yuan
Published: Sep 10, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,779 words)

[Not singe-page] The rap superstar discusses his career and how he’s remained relevant:

In the years since his masterpiece ‘Reasonable Doubt,’ the rapper has often been accused of running on empty, too distant now from what once made him real. In ‘Decoded,’ he answers existentially: ‘How distant is the story of your own life ever going to be?’ In the lyrics, practically:

Life stories told through rap/Niggas actin’ like I sold you crack/Like I told you sell drugs, no, Hov’ did that/So hopefully you won’t have to go through that. But can’t a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite? Out hustlin’, same clothes for days/I’ll never change, I’m too stuck in my ways. Can’t he still rep his block? For Jay-Z, pride in the block has been essential and he recognized rap’s role in taking ‘that embarrassment off of you. The first time people were saying: I come from here — and it’s O.K.’ He quotes Mobb Deep: ‘No matter how much money I get, I’m staying in the projects!’ But here, too, he sees change: ‘Before, if you didn’t have that authenticity, your career could be over. Vanilla Ice said he got stabbed or something, they found out he was lying, he was finished.’ I suggested to him that many readers of this newspaper would find it bizarre that the reputation of the rapper Rick Ross was damaged when it was revealed a few years ago that he was, at one time, a prison guard. ‘But again,’ Jay says, ‘I think hip-hop has moved away from that place of everything has to be authentic. Kids are growing up very differently now.’

“The House that Hova Built.” — Zadie Smith, New York Times

What are your career options when you are seven feet tall? A tall writer meets a tall wrestler:

Paul Wight, bless him, seems to think of his massive size as a gift from God, not a devil’s bargain. There was a moment earlier this year when Wight was rumored to be fighting Shaq at this year’s Wrestlemania. If that had happened, it would’ve been the collision of the two most genially cartoonish giants in sports, the two guys who come off most like enormous eight-year-olds. I wanted to talk to Wight for this piece because, among the giants I’ve seen on TV, he seems the least tortured by his height. After all, he’s voluntarily spent the last 17 years in a grandly ridiculous, mortally dangerous line of work — strapping on his comic-book caveman singlet and pretending to fight hulking musclemen across the globe, risking crippling injury every time he lets one of them lift him.

There are plenty of reasons why I could never do what Wight does. Even though we’re nearly the same height, he weighs more than two of me. And the two afternoons I spent in a pro-wrestling training ring a decade ago taught me how much it hurts to wake up the morning after you’ve been learning to theatrically flop on canvas. But mostly, I’ve never been able to imagine performing my height. I’ve gotten used to people staring at me, but I’ve never learned to like it. I played basketball in high school, but I sucked at it, and hated sucking at it. I never bothered to learn how to play the game effectively beyond the obvious lumbering rebounds and shot-blocks. I fouled out of games on purpose if I was in a bad mood. I told myself that I wanted to do something with my brain and not my body, like that was even my choice to make, or like there was any real divide. So now I’m a writer, and I spend entire days living in my own house, only leaving to take my dog on walks or to take my kid to the park. Truthfully, I was too lazy and too self-conscious to ever do jack shit athletically. I’m a writer because it’s what I’ve always wanted to be, but god knows my height probably had something to do with that desire. Pro wrestling is pretty much the opposite of anything I could ever do. I am not like Paul Wight.

“Giant Size.” — Tom Breihan, The Classical

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