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(02/19/14 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After a weekend frenzy I can only describe as metafictional and mostly desperate, I decided to write about what I devoted my weekend and skipped class time to — “House of Cards.” House of Cards has been incredibly lucrative for Netflix, despite the naysayers, and it proves we don’t need cable anymore.It cost Netflix $100 million dollars to produce both seasons, so it’s difficult to imagine the company being able to break even, let alone actually turn a noticeable profit. Well, fret no longer — Netflix is doing just fine. CNBC reports that the day before the show’s season two Valentine’s Day launch, Netflix’s stock climbed to an all-time high of $439.49 a share . Additionally, the CNBC article reports about 16 percent of Netflix users on one particular Internet service supplied by an unspecified U.S. cable operator watched at least one episode of the show on its launch date. Sixteen percent may not sound like a big number, but think of the huge selection Netflix has to offer. And out of that selection, about one of six Netflix watchers tuned into the same show — “House of Cards.”This is all fine and dandy, but what about users who binge and then cancel their subscription before their free trial is up? Subscribers for Netflix are also at an all-time high at 40 million, which means they have surpassed HBO. This is revolutionary. HBO has been around since 1972, while Netflix’s instant streaming service began in 2007. You do the math. Netflix is retaining its users at incredible rates. Television is changing. We can’t deny that any longer. People are cutting their cable cords — 1.8 million in the second quarter of 2013, according to Business Insider — and heading to the Internet TV route. And with the impending merger between the two tyrants of the cable industry, Time Warner and Comcast, expect these numbers to increase. My parents’ cable and Internet bill from TWC usually runs around $250 a month. Internet TV is making the cable part of that almost obsolete. Imagine how much money we could all save if we cut off the cable we don’t really use that much anymore.And with the success of Netflix original series like “House of Cards,” “Orange is the New Black” and the fourth season of “Arrested Development,” Netflix proved that we don’t need cable for quality original programming.Maybe the instant gratification of Netflix is a bad thing. But we’ve all known staring blankly at a screen for hours on end isn’t good for you for years now. So I don’t really see a problem with Netflix specifically. But what I do see a problem with is the expense of cable television. So, by all means, Netflix away. Unless you have, like, a class to go to.— zipperr@indiana.edu
(02/12/14 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>He’s here, he’s queer — get used to it, NFL.Missouri defensive end Michael Sam announced Sunday that he was gay. Which, provided he gets drafted in April as expected, would make him the first openly gay NFL player. Since the NFL is apparently run by 12-year-old boys who probably laugh at Dane Cook and the word “pianist,” Sam’s decision to publicly come out is causing some apprehension within the league. Last week — before Sam’s announcement, mind you — when asked his thoughts about gays in the league, New Orleans Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma quipped, “Imagine if he’s the guy next to me (in the locker room) and, you know, I get dressed, naked, taking a shower ... and it just so happens he looks at me. How am I supposed to respond?” This is the kind of talk I would expect to hear in, say, a middle school locker room. But this talk among fully-grown adults is downright laughable. When it comes to players’ acceptance of gays in the league, Vilma is in the minority. Many players are expressing support for Sam. But when it comes to NFL front offices, think GMs, team owners, coaches, etc., it’s a different story. One NFL assistant coach called Sam’s decision to go public “not a smart move ... (it) legitimately affects (his) potential earnings,” according to an article from the Atlantic. News on Monday revealed he fell 70 points on CBS’s draft prospect board overnight. What does a player’s sexuality have to do with his athletic prowess? A lot, says the NFL, apparently. But let’s be honest — this isn’t about athletic prowess. It’s about money. The NFL is worried that some of their most treasured and “manly” sponsors will pull their support if it features a gay athlete. Its also concerned it will lose fans, especially male fans, because watching a gay person play football on television obviously makes you gay. Less viewers and sponsors means less money for the league, which means less money for the coaches, GMs and owners. This sort of explains the teams’ front offices’ apprehension and the drop in Sam’s draft prospection. Word on the street is HBO’s working on a spin-off of its new gay dramedy series “Looking” based on Sam’s story, entitled “Looking ... at Football Players’ Butts in the Locker Room,” but this is just speculation. No official word on the premiere date.Regardless, Sam will get to the league because he is talented and deserves it. His sexuality has nothing to do with it.Oh and Michael, if you’re reading this ... call me? — ziperr@indiana.eduFollow columnist Riley Zipper
(01/29/14 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I, along with IU Bloomington’s other 40,000-plus students, received an email from the provost Monday evening.She informed us campus will maintain normal operation for Jan. 27, but we should take precautions because of the expected bitterly cold weather. I was not surprised or angered by this message, as cold weather alone is usually not enough to warrant the closing of an entire campus. But, upon opening my Twitter feed approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds after reading said message, I encountered tweet after tweet “criticizing” IU’s decision to keep campus open. Why did I put “criticizing” in quotes? Because it wasn’t criticism. It was whining. We live in the information generation, the era when virtually anything and everything we will ever want to know in a thousand lifetimes is available at our fingertips. And it’s turning us into complaining narcissists. We can learn about the Beat Generation of writers, the life of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman or the very short history of The NeXT Computer with just a Google search. Instead we choose — myself very much included — to Instagram a picture of our once-weekly healthy lunch or to tweet something vague and ambiguous directed at my cheating ex-boyfriend who doesn’t even follow me anymore. The thing about social networks is that 99 percent of the people that follow you, or are friends with you, don’t care about 99 percent of the stuff you talk about on said social network. We use social networks so much because it gives us the illusion of importance. The hope that we’ll get a couple favorites or likes or retweets to stroke our egos.It makes us feel better about ourselves for one fleeting moment out of an otherwise monotonous and soul-sucking day, and it is too scintillating to pass up. You see, social networks aren’t really about being “social.” Actually, they’re quite the opposite. They’re about the self. They don’t involve any kind of face-to-face social interaction. All they involve is a smartphone or a computer and our own agenda. That agenda is usually self-centered. It involves a complaint, something we think is funny or interesting, some inside joke involving a friend — usually meant as a bragging tool to imply to our followers that we have friends outside of the Internet — or a meaningless and unnecessary observation.Very rarely is anything we share over a social network actually beneficial to the greater good. And in many cases, even if what we share may be constituted as beneficial, the reasoning for our sharing of it is self-absorbed. An example would be a retweet from the Trevor Project to show how liberal and tolerant we are. I realize this is a very cynical interpretation of social networking. It probably speaks to my own narcissism. Which is, in fact, a delicious irony that I am very much aware of. Of course, calling this irony of myself “delicious” is even more narcissism on my part — thus beginning a vicious, never-ending cycle.The writer carries with him or her an inherent narcissism. We’re all writers, but social networking brings the writers in us to the foreground in ways past generations never would have imagined. In some ways, this is good. It’s good to have the ability to be creative and to instantly share it with others. But, I think I speak for most of us when I say I don’t care that you’re having a “much-needed chill night in with Netflix.”— zipperr@indiana.edu.Follow columnist Riley Zipper on Twitter @rileyezipper.
(01/22/14 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There’s a scene in the first episode of HBO’s new “gay” comedy-drama series “Looking” that you don’t have to be gay to relate to. It’s the main character Patrick, played by Jonathan Groff, staring into a broken mirror after encountering his ex-boyfriend Jason in the bathroom at his bachelor party.“What the hell am I doing here?” his expression says as he stares blankly at his reflection in the shattered glass. Nobody’s having sex in the stall next to him. Nobody’s snorting coke while Scissor Sisters plays at an inappropriately loud volume. It’s a normal bathroom at a gay club devoid of leather and phallic symbols hanging from the ceiling. Why is this important? Because “Looking” shows what gay life is really like, not what straight people think we do behind closed doors. “Will & Grace,” although funny — and without it, “Looking” probably wouldn’t exist — was ridiculous. “Queer as Folk” was a 50-minute soap opera of bad gay porn. “Looking” is revolutionary because you forget that you’re watching a series about gay characters, because it’s really not a gay series. It’s a drama series that happens to center around gay men. “Looking” follows Patrick and his two pals Agustín, played by Frankie J. Alvarez, and Dom, played by Murray Bartlett, as they look for love on the streets of San Francisco. The discourse between the three friends is nothing like the gay discourse we usually see in mainstream American cinema or television. Neither of them say the words “sassy” or “girlfriend,” nor does anyone make “Sex and the City” references. I think “Looking” is a symbol for the shift in mainstream American culture’s acceptance of homosexuality. We had nothing until the ’90s, when we got “Will & Grace,” which was a good start. Then we got “Queer as Folk,” which was better, but still not good enough. “Looking” finally hits the mark. It normalizes gay culture. It incorporates it into mainstream society. Gays have many of the same problems as straight people, and “Looking” finally gets that. Let’s return to that broken mirror. It can mean many things within the context of the premiere like the loss of personal identity that Patrick feels upon seeing his ex and former “love of his life,” possibly spending the rest of his life with this new guy. But what I think is more prophetic and most true is this — the shattered mirror is a metaphor for the broken prejudice that took a lot of years and a lot of lost lives to finally crack. And that’s something to really get excited about. — zipperr@indiana.eduFollow columnist Riley Zipper on Twitter @rileyzipper.