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All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:41:09 GMT Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:41:09 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {ENTERTAINMENT > PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA} - Weird Al: Forefather of the YouTube Spoof http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/weird-al-forefather-of-the-youtube-spoof-20081029111.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/weird-al-forefather-of-the-youtube-spoof-20081029111.htm Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:33:00 GMT When "Weird Al" Yankovic packs for the road, he brings the following items: One red leather Michael Jackson jacket, one foam-rubber double chin, one Segway, one garden hoe, one silver dress suit, five Amish beards, five Jedi robes, and two accordions. That's actually just a partial inventory, as Yankovic employs so many costumes and hairpieces during his shows that a makeshift dressing room must be set up directly behind the stage—a sort of musical-parody triage unit. His performances usually last two and a half hours, and between each song he slips back to this space, where a wardrobe assistant affixes whatever wig or fake appendage he needs for the next number. When he reemerges, he'll have morphed into one of his countless music-video personas: There's Yankovic as the bearded laborer from "Amish Paradise" (a riff on Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise"), as the marble-mouthed grunge singer from "Smells Like Nirvana" (a satire of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), and as the diet-obsessed nag from "Eat It" (a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It"). At some point, Yankovic will switch into an old bowling shirt or thick, aviator-style glasses, his standard uniform in the '80s and '90s: Yankovic has been imitating others for so long that nowadays he occasionally has to imitate himself. Weird Al Yankovich "Hey Ricky" This year marks the 25th anniversary of Yankovic's first music video, "Ricky," in which he reimagined Toni Basil's "Mickey" as an ode to I Love Lucy. The clip introduced the world to an accordion-playing spaz with a coif like Rick James and a voice like an urgent goose. Though many people at the time considered Yankovic to be thoroughly disposable—just another Reagan- era fad, like parachute pants or the Contras—he never went away. In fact, Yankovic had his biggest hit just two years ago, when he reworked Chamillionaire's rap hit "Ridin'" as the geek-pride anthem "White & Nerdy" ("X-Men comics, you know I collect 'em / The pens in my pocket, I must protect 'em"). The song was Yankovic's first track to break the Billboard Top 10. But Yankovic isn't just popular. He is also the unlikely forefather of the infectious, hyperlinked, quasi-referential comedy that's become the lingua franca of the Web. Yankovic's influence can be seen in the slow-jam pinings of Obama Girl, the cross-cultural pairings that turn Yoda and SpongeBob SquarePants into hardcore rappers, and in the nimble hands of that couch potato who farts out "Bohemian Rhapsody" with his palms (1.8 million YouTube views and counting). You can even detect traces of his style in the perfectly metered wordplay of "Lazy Sunday," the 2005 Saturday Night Live short that earned YouTube—and viral humor—its first barrage of mainstream attention. "Ever since I was old enough to listen to music, I've been listening to Weird Al," says 30-year-old "Sunday" cocreator Andy Samberg. "For my generation, he's a huge influence." Star Wars Gangsta Rap 2 Much like the big-name artists he once so expertly spoofed, Yankovic now inspires not just imitators but also competitors. He'll soon commence work on his 13th studio album, which will have to compete against his own singsongy progeny—the amateur satirists who can devise, record, and edit their own parodies in days, if not hours. To make matters more complicated, whereas Yankovic could once mine such inexhaustible icons as Jackson and Nirvana for laughs, he now has to contend with the likes of Jessica Simpson or Kevin Federline—celebrities who are more or less already self-parodies. Being a music satirist in 2008 is a bit like being a political cartoonist after the Harding administration: too many easy targets, too few sacred idols. "Back in the '80s, 'Purple Rain' would be number one for half a year," Yankovic says. "You still have Top 40 radio now, but it's 40 different stations. There aren't many hits that everybody knows, and there aren't many real superstars. That makes it more difficult for me." Weird Al's 10 Greatest Hits Go and ahead and fire up YouTube. We'll wait. But if there's any wisdom to be divined from Yankovic's success, it's that nothing—not critical slags nor commercial slumps nor a middling creative economy—can quash an ingeniously crafted spoof. "When he struck gold with 'Nerdy,' I thought that was the coolest thing," says musician Ben Folds, who played piano on a cut on Yankovic's album Poodle Hat. "The music-business ship is going down, and Weird Al is standing on the bow, rockin' out." Yankovic lives in Los Angeles,in a house with a pool in the front and a view of Ricardo Montalban's estate in the back. On a midsummer afternoon, he greets me wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and a pair of Crocs and promptly gives me a tour of his home. Previous tenants include marijuana advocate Jack Margolis and, later, corpulent rapper Heavy D, who left behind a plus-size shower and an industrial-grade oven. Yankovic has heard a rumor that the property was once used as an adult-film set. "That's the history of this place," he says. "Drugs, rap, porn, and the Yankovics." Yankovic turns 49 in October and remains lithe enough to execute high kicks and back bends during his performances. His hair, graying only slightly, is absolutely volcanic: two long sheaths of curls that are parted down the middle and hang to his shoulders. (He still occasionally grows out his mustache, but in his live act he impersonates Eminem and Taylor Hicks—excess facial hair screws with the verisimilitude.) Most first-time guests are encouraged to ride the Segway used in the "White & Nerdy" video, but alas, it has already been packed away for an upcoming tour. Still, there's no shortage of Yankovic memorabilia, including a closet lined with Hawaiian-print shirts and rows of out-of-production Vans sneakers. At one point, I turn a corner in a hallway and spot a full-size promotional cardboard cutout depicting Yankovic from his mid-'80s period. This is the Al I all but deified back when he was opening his concerts with a gurney and a chain saw (for "Like a Surgeon"), when albums like "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D were stone-cold fourth-grade classics, and when no other performer was so adept at embracing popular culture while simultaneously mocking it. Near the kitchen there's a life-size Yoda, a leftover from the Star Wars-themed birthday party that Yankovic recently threw for his 5-year-old daughter, Nina. He's been married since 2001 to Suzanne Krajewski, a former film and TV executive he met through Bill Mumy, the Lost in Space child star who's also a part-time novelty musician. "We had this relationship where we talked over the phone for weeks," Yankovic says. "Going to meet her for our first date, I was like, 'I hope she's cute, 'cause I just might marry her.'" Yankovic says this with an abrupt giggle—in fact, he says just about everything with an abrupt giggle and often follows up even the slightest introspective remark with a self-deprecating jab. Before meeting Yankovic, I half-feared he would turn out to be one of those childhood heroes who ages into a twisted, bitter dick. But rest assured: Weird Al is thoroughly, comfortingly awesome. Weird Al Yankovic "Another One Rides The Bus" Raised in the LA suburb of Lynwood, Yankovic's first moment of onstage asininity was the high school valedictory speech he delivered in 1976. "I went into a rant about how the polar ice caps are going to melt and drown us all," he remembers. "It was this crazed Howard Beale kind of thing. People were freaked out." Throughout high school, Yankovic had been recording comedy songs and submitting his cassette demos to Dr. Demento, the novelty-record radio host whose weekly broadcast helped popularize such one-offs as "The Purple People Eater" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Demento listened to Yankovic's early tracks, not knowing quite what to make of the fog-thick whir of accordion. "At the time, the accordion was about as unhip as you could get," says Demento, aka Barret Eugene Hansen. Early Yankovic singles like "Another One Rides the Bus" and "My Bologna" were recorded with minimal orchestration—sometimes just a drumbeat backing Yankovic's playing (today "Bus" sounds like a gypsy-punk number). But because he was cracking wise about junk food and public transportation, the songs were funny even to people who didn't care for the original versions. "Bologna" earned enough national attention to warrant him a onetime deal with Capitol Records for the single. But he struggled to get an album contract. Weird Al Yankovic "My Bologna" "Song parodies are considered the lowest form of comedy," Yankovic says. "At the time, labels figured that novelty artists sell singles, not albums, and the record industry wasn't in the business of selling singles." He eventually signed with Scotti Brothers, an independent label distributed by CBS and also home to Survivor and James Brown. Beginning in 1983, Yankovic recorded and released five albums on Scotti, including "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D (featuring the song "Eat It," which earned him a Grammy at the age of 25), Dare to Be Stupid, and his much-heralded response to Michael Jackson's Bad, dubbed Even Worse. All three were a mix of parodies and genre-spoofing original compositions, and all three went platinum. Apparently, plenty of people could relate to Yankovic, even in era when Dagobah jokes were considered a sign of weakness. "I took a lot of shit in school for having a strange sense of humor," says Seth Green, 34, cocreator of Robot Chicken. "Then this guy comes out who's named Weird, and people are loving him. All of a sudden, I can point to someone and say, 'Hey, I'm not the only one who thinks and feels this way.'" Indeed, Yankovic quickly became an outcast hero, and by the late '80s a good portion of the country's weekly allowance was being spent on the likes of Even Worse. "For a number of years, I was a cash cow for Scotti Brothers," Yankovic says, "which put me in an uncomfortable situation: If they weren't having a good year, it was like, 'Where's the next Weird Al record?'" Occasionally, Yankovic would be coerced into lampooning a particular song, and as a result, his back catalog is not without its share of regrets: "'Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch,'" he sighs, "was parody done under duress." Weird Al Yankovic "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch" Yankovic's most fertile targets were global stars—mega-artists like Jackson and Madonna who had distinctive musical and visual styles that Yankovic could exaggerate for effect. "Everybody was watching the same videos," he says of the pre-Laguna Beach era on MTV, when the network functioned as a sort of national radio station. "Viewers memorized every detail, every nuance, which made my job so much easier: If you've got those images ingrained in your head, all you have to do is tweak them a little bit and it's comedy gold." It might seem ludicrous to treat musical parody as an art form, but in fact there are a few subtle distinctions between Yankovic's material and the countless wacky wake-up-show spoofs that followed in his wake. (Yankovic inspired so many imitators that one fan created the Not Al Page, a fight-the-rip-offs Web site that lists years' worth of misattributed songs.) Consider a tune like 1986's "Living With a Hernia," a send-up of James Brown's "Living in America." Like all Yankovic tracks, it's the result of thorough research. "Before I even begin thinking of jokes, I bombard myself with information," he says. "I could probably still name three or four of the top 10 hernias." By the end of "Hernia," Yankovic is giving ailment-specific shout-outs like "Epigastric!" and "Richter's hernia!" He has also made a point of avoiding topicality, and so, two decades after the release of "Hernia," there's nothing that dates its humor (except for the era of the original, of course). This is the kind of obsessive dedication that gives his songs an indefinite lifespan. "Ninety percent of all parody songs are terrible," says Paul Scheer, a member of the comedy troupe Human Giant. "But whereas a lot of people just rhyme things and push out words because they sound familiar, Al creates funny juxtapositions and social satire. There's something timeless in the sentiment of the songs. He's kind of like Aerosmith—he'll always have a new group of kids discovering him." In 1989, Yankovic tried to expand his multimedia lampoonery to film, cowriting and starring in UHF, the story of a low-wattage, lowbrow TV station that broadcasts such gonzo shows as Conan the Librarian and Wheel of Fish. "I had my hopes built up a bit because the movie tested extremely well," he says. "The studio thought, 'Oh, this is going to be our big summer movie.' It tanked and got terrible reviews." Much like Office Space, UHF needed a few years to gestate before it found its audience. "It's so committed to being ridiculous," SNL's Samberg says. "Yankovic is a good example of a comedian who does really smart-slash-stupid stuff, which a lot of people dismiss as stupid-stupid. I always wished Weird Al had made more movies." Today, UHF's smash-and-grab tactic of jumbling together as many television, film, and music references as possible presages modern viral-video consumption habits; watching it now is a bit like watching YouTube: The Movie. After UHF flopped, Yankovic waited three years before releasing a new album, by which point perennial marks like Jackson and Madonna were funny enough on their own, turning white and releasing S&M coffee table books. So Yankovic shifted his attention to the frowny denizens of hip hop and alt-rock, which he mined for such hits as "Amish Paradise" and "Smells Like Nirvana." The former song inspired a Behind the Music segment about Yankovic's feud with Coolio—exaggerated, Yankovic says—while the latter prompted a mash note from its victim. "Yankovic," Kurt Cobain wrote in a journal entry from the early '90s, "is America's modern pop-rock genius." ("I don't know if he was being facetious or what," Yankovic says now.) He has always made it a policy to be sure the original artists sign off on his parodies, and by the '90s, most musicians had come to view being spoofed by Yankovic as a career milestone. The songs are also a source of further profit—Yankovic splits his royalties with the songwriters. But Yankovic's 2003 album, Poodle Hat, was crippled when Eminem refused to authorize a video for a "Lose Yourself" parody called "Couch Potato." Yankovic had already secured permission for the song, but Eminem nixed the video at the last minute. "I didn't have a direct line to him," Yankovic says. "I couldn't pick up the phone and say, 'Hey man, what's your problem?'" Poodle Hat would be Yankovic's lowest-selling effort in almost two decades, and though he could still book months-long tours, it seemed that Yankovic was becoming a nostalgia act. Weird Al Yankovic "Couch Potato" Then, in the middle of this commercial lull, his parents died from carbon monoxide poisoning, the result of a closed fireplace flue. Yankovic got the news while he was on tour—he had a show scheduled for that evening in Appleton, Wisconsin. He went onstage anyway, continuing the tour for nearly seventy tour dates. "It wound up being a good thing for me to continue working through it," he says. "Because if I didn't have anything to distract me, I probably would have spiraled into an even deeper depression. For a couple of hours each night, I could go onstage and put on a big fake smile and pretend like everything was just OK." A few days after my visit to Yankovic's house, we're in the Las Vegas airport, where he has arrived to begin a 47-stop summer tour. As he walks through baggage claim, he points to a casino advertisement featuring the grinning visage of Carrot Top. "Remember how I told you that music parody was the lowest form of comedy?" he says. "I forgot about prop comics." The next day, we're at the Henderson Pavilion, a 6,000-person concert hall about 13 miles from the Strip. Yankovic heads to his dressing room to get ready; meanwhile, I wait in the Pavilion hallway. A group of stormtroopers loiter nearby, helmets in hand. He enlisted members of the 501st Legion—"the world's definitive Imperial Costuming Organization"—to perform a kick line during "The Saga Begins," his 1999 Lucasfilm homage, and the troopers are going over their cues. Darth Vader is here, too, but just as we're talking about Yankovic's exalted stature within the Star Wars community, the Sith Lord is interrupted by a cell phone call. Shortly after 8 pm, Yankovic walks to the front of the stage, accordion in hand and one eyebrow raised deviously. For the most part, he'll play recent material, along with a few early hits like "Eat It" and "Yoda." But the highlight of the evening is when Yankovic dons a red doo-rag, Segways onto the stage, and proceeds to rap "White & Nerdy." The audience members—most of whom fit the song's titular demographic—let out a cheer and start head-bobbing awkwardly to the music. Just when he needed it, "Nerdy" gave Yankovic a pan-generational hit—a song that not only appealed to younger listeners but also reminded first-wave fans that they hadn't outgrown a well-placed Star Trek joke. When the song was released in 2006, more than seven years had elapsed since Yankovic's last big single, a pre-Poodle Hat spoof of Puff Daddy's " It's All About the Benjamins," dubbed "It's All About the Pentiums." Like that song, "Nerdy" intertwined the languages of both hip hop and the Web, two entities that barely existed when Yankovic started his career but that have since replaced pop music and television as his favorite muses. Indeed, while Yankovic released "Pentiums" primarily through traditional channels like MTV and VH1, "Nerdy" debuted on the Internet. His video for the single was a bombardment of geek lifestyle jokes (making edits to Wikipedia, pointing to the rims on his Prius), and it went viral instantly. It remains a fixture among YouTube's most-viewed clips. But that's just the problem: The Internet celebrates his dorky inclinations and his videos—just as it celebrates anyone with a song gag and a webcam. Today on YouTube you can find homemade parodies of everything from Usher's "Love in This Club" ("Scrub in the Tub," "Lunch in This Pub") to Rihanna's "Umbrella" ("My Nutella"). This situation is complicated by the demise of the megastar: Hit songs are now heard by fewer people, and they come and go much more quickly. Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" may have been a chart-topper—but only for a matter of weeks, not months. "Nerdy" succeeded anyway, and to understand why, it helps to look at the zip file that Yankovic forwarded me before we got to the Henderson. It contained hundreds of pages of lyrics, notes, and various working drafts of the songs on his latest album, Straight Outta Lynwood. In the final version of "White & Nerdy," Yankovic sings that he's "Got people beggin' for my top eight spaces / I know pi to a thousand places." Earlier versions include: "Got people killin' for my top eight spaces," "Gotta lotta Hobbits in my top eight spaces," "Got Stephen Hawking in my top eight spaces." All told, there are more than 200 unused lines for "White & Nerdy." By the time he was finished, he'd reclaimed Chamillionaire's original so thoroughly, listeners didn't even need to know "Ridin'" to appreciate "Nerdy." But diligence and high-production videos take time, and the industry that once spurned him as a singles artist has itself shifted toward quick-hit singles. Yankovic's years-long lag between albums now seems like an eternity, especially when compared with the first responders on the Web, who can work up a spoof—even if it's bad—before the flavor of the month has come and gone. "If anybody writes a bad review," Yankovic says, "the first thing they say is, 'He's doing Pussycat Dolls songs? Are they still relevant?'" Toward the end of the Henderson show, Yankovic slips into the changing area and an assistant pulls out his final, most daunting costume of the night: the "Fat" suit. For those who have never seen Yankovic's Grammy-winning "Fat" video, the "Fat" suit is a pear-shaped wonder, a black ensemble adorned with excess buckles and zippers. The finishing touch is a grotesque prosthetic triple chin. Once transformed, Yankovic looks a bit like Tweedledee—if Tweedledee landed a job at a biker bar. As the song's vamping bass line starts, Yankovic waddles his way through the curtain and executes a series of groin-grabs choreographed to cartoon sound effects. By this point in the evening, he's been running around in the hot desert air for almost two hours, but here he is, flailing about under layers of foam rubber, a roly-poly monument to comedic dedication. A few days after the show, I search for a clip of the "Fat" performance on YouTube. Instead, I find a video of two teens in their living room, lip-syncing the song while wearing suspiciously puffy-looking sweatshirts. There are dozens of "Fat" reenacters on the Web, few old enough to remember the derision that used to greet Yankovic and his purposefully goofy parodies. As strange as it may seem, Yankovic is now an icon, and these kids are his pun-loving progeny: They will eagerly stuff a few pillows under their clothes, dance around the room, film it, then upload the results to YouTube for the rest of the world to see. Like Weird Al, they dare to be stupid. Brian Raftery (brianraftery@gmail.com) wrote about ROFLcon, the gathering of viral Web celebrities, in issue 16.07. Wired.Com Weird Al: Forefather of the YouTube Spoof {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - When "Weird Al" Yankovic packs for the road, he brings the following items: One red leather Michael Jackson jacket, one foam-rubber double chin, one Segway, one garden hoe, one silver dress suit, five Amish beards, five Jedi robes, and two accordions. That's actually just a partial inventory, as Yankovic employs so many costumes and hairpieces during his shows that a makeshift dressing room must be set up directly behind the stage—a sort of musical-parody triage unit. His performances usually last two and a half hours, and between each song he slips back to this space, where a wardrobe assistant affixes whatever wig or fake appendage he needs for the next number. When he reemerges, he'll have morphed into one of his countless music-video personas: There's Yankovic as the bearded laborer from "Amish Paradise" (a riff on Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise"), as the marble-mouthed grunge singer from "Smells Like Nirvana" (a satire of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), and as the diet-obsessed nag from "Eat It" (a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It"). At some point, Yankovic will switch into an old bowling shirt or thick, aviator-style glasses, his standard uniform in the '80s and '90s: Yankovic has been imitating others for so long that nowadays he occasionally has to imitate himself. Weird Al Yankovich "Hey Ricky" This year marks the 25th anniversary of Yankovic's first music video, "Ricky," in which he reimagined Toni Basil's "Mickey" as an ode to I Love Lucy. The clip introduced the world to an accordion-playing spaz with a coif like Rick James and a voice like an urgent goose. Though many people at the time considered Yankovic to be thoroughly disposable—just another Reagan- era fad, like parachute pants or the Contras—he never went away. In fact, Yankovic had his biggest hit just two years ago, when he reworked Chamillionaire's rap hit "Ridin'" as the geek-pride anthem "White & Nerdy" ("X-Men comics, you know I collect 'em / The pens in my pocket, I must protect 'em"). The song was Yankovic's first track to break the Billboard Top 10. But Yankovic isn't just popular. He is also the unlikely forefather of the infectious, hyperlinked, quasi-referential comedy that's become the lingua franca of the Web. Yankovic's influence can be seen in the slow-jam pinings of Obama Girl, the cross-cultural pairings that turn Yoda and SpongeBob SquarePants into hardcore rappers, and in the nimble hands of that couch potato who farts out "Bohemian Rhapsody" with his palms (1.8 million YouTube views and counting). You can even detect traces of his style in the perfectly metered wordplay of "Lazy Sunday," the 2005 Saturday Night Live short that earned YouTube—and viral humor—its first barrage of mainstream attention. "Ever since I was old enough to listen to music, I've been listening to Weird Al," says 30-year-old "Sunday" cocreator Andy Samberg. "For my generation, he's a huge influence." Star Wars Gangsta Rap 2 Much like the big-name artists he once so expertly spoofed, Yankovic now inspires not just imitators but also competitors. He'll soon commence work on his 13th studio album, which will have to compete against his own singsongy progeny—the amateur satirists who can devise, record, and edit their own parodies in days, if not hours. To make matters more complicated, whereas Yankovic could once mine such inexhaustible icons as Jackson and Nirvana for laughs, he now has to contend with the likes of Jessica Simpson or Kevin Federline—celebrities who are more or less already self-parodies. Being a music satirist in 2008 is a bit like being a political cartoonist after the Harding administration: too many easy targets, too few sacred idols. "Back in the '80s, 'Purple Rain' would be number one for half a year," Yankovic says. "You still have Top 40 radio now, but it's 40 different stations. There aren't many hits that everybody knows, and there aren't many real superstars. That makes it more difficult for me." Weird Al's 10 Greatest Hits Go and ahead and fire up YouTube. We'll wait. But if there's any wisdom to be divined from Yankovic's success, it's that nothing—not critical slags nor commercial slumps nor a middling creative economy—can quash an ingeniously crafted spoof. "When he struck gold with 'Nerdy,' I thought that was the coolest thing," says musician Ben Folds, who played piano on a cut on Yankovic's album Poodle Hat. "The music-business ship is going down, and Weird Al is standing on the bow, rockin' out." Yankovic lives in Los Angeles,in a house with a pool in the front and a view of Ricardo Montalban's estate in the back. On a midsummer afternoon, he greets me wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and a pair of Crocs and promptly gives me a tour of his home. Previous tenants include marijuana advocate Jack Margolis and, later, corpulent rapper Heavy D, who left behind a plus-size shower and an industrial-grade oven. Yankovic has heard a rumor that the property was once used as an adult-film set. "That's the history of this place," he says. "Drugs, rap, porn, and the Yankovics." Yankovic turns 49 in October and remains lithe enough to execute high kicks and back bends during his performances. His hair, graying only slightly, is absolutely volcanic: two long sheaths of curls that are parted down the middle and hang to his shoulders. (He still occasionally grows out his mustache, but in his live act he impersonates Eminem and Taylor Hicks—excess facial hair screws with the verisimilitude.) Most first-time guests are encouraged to ride the Segway used in the "White & Nerdy" video, but alas, it has already been packed away for an upcoming tour. Still, there's no shortage of Yankovic memorabilia, including a closet lined with Hawaiian-print shirts and rows of out-of-production Vans sneakers. At one point, I turn a corner in a hallway and spot a full-size promotional cardboard cutout depicting Yankovic from his mid-'80s period. This is the Al I all but deified back when he was opening his concerts with a gurney and a chain saw (for "Like a Surgeon"), when albums like "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D were stone-cold fourth-grade classics, and when no other performer was so adept at embracing popular culture while simultaneously mocking it. Near the kitchen there's a life-size Yoda, a leftover from the Star Wars-themed birthday party that Yankovic recently threw for his 5-year-old daughter, Nina. He's been married since 2001 to Suzanne Krajewski, a former film and TV executive he met through Bill Mumy, the Lost in Space child star who's also a part-time novelty musician. "We had this relationship where we talked over the phone for weeks," Yankovic says. "Going to meet her for our first date, I was like, 'I hope she's cute, 'cause I just might marry her.'" Yankovic says this with an abrupt giggle—in fact, he says just about everything with an abrupt giggle and often follows up even the slightest introspective remark with a self-deprecating jab. Before meeting Yankovic, I half-feared he would turn out to be one of those childhood heroes who ages into a twisted, bitter dick. But rest assured: Weird Al is thoroughly, comfortingly awesome. Weird Al Yankovic "Another One Rides The Bus" Raised in the LA suburb of Lynwood, Yankovic's first moment of onstage asininity was the high school valedictory speech he delivered in 1976. "I went into a rant about how the polar ice caps are going to melt and drown us all," he remembers. "It was this crazed Howard Beale kind of thing. People were freaked out." Throughout high school, Yankovic had been recording comedy songs and submitting his cassette demos to Dr. Demento, the novelty-record radio host whose weekly broadcast helped popularize such one-offs as "The Purple People Eater" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Demento listened to Yankovic's early tracks, not knowing quite what to make of the fog-thick whir of accordion. "At the time, the accordion was about as unhip as you could get," says Demento, aka Barret Eugene Hansen. Early Yankovic singles like "Another One Rides the Bus" and "My Bologna" were recorded with minimal orchestration—sometimes just a drumbeat backing Yankovic's playing (today "Bus" sounds like a gypsy-punk number). But because he was cracking wise about junk food and public transportation, the songs were funny even to people who didn't care for the original versions. "Bologna" earned enough national attention to warrant him a onetime deal with Capitol Records for the single. But he struggled to get an album contract. Weird Al Yankovic "My Bologna" "Song parodies are considered the lowest form of comedy," Yankovic says. "At the time, labels figured that novelty artists sell singles, not albums, and the record industry wasn't in the business of selling singles." He eventually signed with Scotti Brothers, an independent label distributed by CBS and also home to Survivor and James Brown. Beginning in 1983, Yankovic recorded and released five albums on Scotti, including "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D (featuring the song "Eat It," which earned him a Grammy at the age of 25), Dare to Be Stupid, and his much-heralded response to Michael Jackson's Bad, dubbed Even Worse. All three were a mix of parodies and genre-spoofing original compositions, and all three went platinum. Apparently, plenty of people could relate to Yankovic, even in era when Dagobah jokes were considered a sign of weakness. "I took a lot of shit in school for having a strange sense of humor," says Seth Green, 34, cocreator of Robot Chicken. "Then this guy comes out who's named Weird, and people are loving him. All of a sudden, I can point to someone and say, 'Hey, I'm not the only one who thinks and feels this way.'" Indeed, Yankovic quickly became an outcast hero, and by the late '80s a good portion of the country's weekly allowance was being spent on the likes of Even Worse. "For a number of years, I was a cash cow for Scotti Brothers," Yankovic says, "which put me in an uncomfortable situation: If they weren't having a good year, it was like, 'Where's the next Weird Al record?'" Occasionally, Yankovic would be coerced into lampooning a particular song, and as a result, his back catalog is not without its share of regrets: "'Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch,'" he sighs, "was parody done under duress." Weird Al Yankovic "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch" Yankovic's most fertile targets were global stars—mega-artists like Jackson and Madonna who had distinctive musical and visual styles that Yankovic could exaggerate for effect. "Everybody was watching the same videos," he says of the pre-Laguna Beach era on MTV, when the network functioned as a sort of national radio station. "Viewers memorized every detail, every nuance, which made my job so much easier: If you've got those images ingrained in your head, all you have to do is tweak them a little bit and it's comedy gold." It might seem ludicrous to treat musical parody as an art form, but in fact there are a few subtle distinctions between Yankovic's material and the countless wacky wake-up-show spoofs that followed in his wake. (Yankovic inspired so many imitators that one fan created the Not Al Page, a fight-the-rip-offs Web site that lists years' worth of misattributed songs.) Consider a tune like 1986's "Living With a Hernia," a send-up of James Brown's "Living in America." Like all Yankovic tracks, it's the result of thorough research. "Before I even begin thinking of jokes, I bombard myself with information," he says. "I could probably still name three or four of the top 10 hernias." By the end of "Hernia," Yankovic is giving ailment-specific shout-outs like "Epigastric!" and "Richter's hernia!" He has also made a point of avoiding topicality, and so, two decades after the release of "Hernia," there's nothing that dates its humor (except for the era of the original, of course). This is the kind of obsessive dedication that gives his songs an indefinite lifespan. "Ninety percent of all parody songs are terrible," says Paul Scheer, a member of the comedy troupe Human Giant. "But whereas a lot of people just rhyme things and push out words because they sound familiar, Al creates funny juxtapositions and social satire. There's something timeless in the sentiment of the songs. He's kind of like Aerosmith—he'll always have a new group of kids discovering him." In 1989, Yankovic tried to expand his multimedia lampoonery to film, cowriting and starring in UHF, the story of a low-wattage, lowbrow TV station that broadcasts such gonzo shows as Conan the Librarian and Wheel of Fish. "I had my hopes built up a bit because the movie tested extremely well," he says. "The studio thought, 'Oh, this is going to be our big summer movie.' It tanked and got terrible reviews." Much like Office Space, UHF needed a few years to gestate before it found its audience. "It's so committed to being ridiculous," SNL's Samberg says. "Yankovic is a good example of a comedian who does really smart-slash-stupid stuff, which a lot of people dismiss as stupid-stupid. I always wished Weird Al had made more movies." Today, UHF's smash-and-grab tactic of jumbling together as many television, film, and music references as possible presages modern viral-video consumption habits; watching it now is a bit like watching YouTube: The Movie. After UHF flopped, Yankovic waited three years before releasing a new album, by which point perennial marks like Jackson and Madonna were funny enough on their own, turning white and releasing S&M coffee table books. So Yankovic shifted his attention to the frowny denizens of hip hop and alt-rock, which he mined for such hits as "Amish Paradise" and "Smells Like Nirvana." The former song inspired a Behind the Music segment about Yankovic's feud with Coolio—exaggerated, Yankovic says—while the latter prompted a mash note from its victim. "Yankovic," Kurt Cobain wrote in a journal entry from the early '90s, "is America's modern pop-rock genius." ("I don't know if he was being facetious or what," Yankovic says now.) He has always made it a policy to be sure the original artists sign off on his parodies, and by the '90s, most musicians had come to view being spoofed by Yankovic as a career milestone. The songs are also a source of further profit—Yankovic splits his royalties with the songwriters. But Yankovic's 2003 album, Poodle Hat, was crippled when Eminem refused to authorize a video for a "Lose Yourself" parody called "Couch Potato." Yankovic had already secured permission for the song, but Eminem nixed the video at the last minute. "I didn't have a direct line to him," Yankovic says. "I couldn't pick up the phone and say, 'Hey man, what's your problem?'" Poodle Hat would be Yankovic's lowest-selling effort in almost two decades, and though he could still book months-long tours, it seemed that Yankovic was becoming a nostalgia act. Weird Al Yankovic "Couch Potato" Then, in the middle of this commercial lull, his parents died from carbon monoxide poisoning, the result of a closed fireplace flue. Yankovic got the news while he was on tour—he had a show scheduled for that evening in Appleton, Wisconsin. He went onstage anyway, continuing the tour for nearly seventy tour dates. "It wound up being a good thing for me to continue working through it," he says. "Because if I didn't have anything to distract me, I probably would have spiraled into an even deeper depression. For a couple of hours each night, I could go onstage and put on a big fake smile and pretend like everything was just OK." A few days after my visit to Yankovic's house, we're in the Las Vegas airport, where he has arrived to begin a 47-stop summer tour. As he walks through baggage claim, he points to a casino advertisement featuring the grinning visage of Carrot Top. "Remember how I told you that music parody was the lowest form of comedy?" he says. "I forgot about prop comics." The next day, we're at the Henderson Pavilion, a 6,000-person concert hall about 13 miles from the Strip. Yankovic heads to his dressing room to get ready; meanwhile, I wait in the Pavilion hallway. A group of stormtroopers loiter nearby, helmets in hand. He enlisted members of the 501st Legion—"the world's definitive Imperial Costuming Organization"—to perform a kick line during "The Saga Begins," his 1999 Lucasfilm homage, and the troopers are going over their cues. Darth Vader is here, too, but just as we're talking about Yankovic's exalted stature within the Star Wars community, the Sith Lord is interrupted by a cell phone call. Shortly after 8 pm, Yankovic walks to the front of the stage, accordion in hand and one eyebrow raised deviously. For the most part, he'll play recent material, along with a few early hits like "Eat It" and "Yoda." But the highlight of the evening is when Yankovic dons a red doo-rag, Segways onto the stage, and proceeds to rap "White & Nerdy." The audience members—most of whom fit the song's titular demographic—let out a cheer and start head-bobbing awkwardly to the music. Just when he needed it, "Nerdy" gave Yankovic a pan-generational hit—a song that not only appealed to younger listeners but also reminded first-wave fans that they hadn't outgrown a well-placed Star Trek joke. When the song was released in 2006, more than seven years had elapsed since Yankovic's last big single, a pre-Poodle Hat spoof of Puff Daddy's " It's All About the Benjamins," dubbed "It's All About the Pentiums." Like that song, "Nerdy" intertwined the languages of both hip hop and the Web, two entities that barely existed when Yankovic started his career but that have since replaced pop music and television as his favorite muses. Indeed, while Yankovic released "Pentiums" primarily through traditional channels like MTV and VH1, "Nerdy" debuted on the Internet. His video for the single was a bombardment of geek lifestyle jokes (making edits to Wikipedia, pointing to the rims on his Prius), and it went viral instantly. It remains a fixture among YouTube's most-viewed clips. But that's just the problem: The Internet celebrates his dorky inclinations and his videos—just as it celebrates anyone with a song gag and a webcam. Today on YouTube you can find homemade parodies of everything from Usher's "Love in This Club" ("Scrub in the Tub," "Lunch in This Pub") to Rihanna's "Umbrella" ("My Nutella"). This situation is complicated by the demise of the megastar: Hit songs are now heard by fewer people, and they come and go much more quickly. Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" may have been a chart-topper—but only for a matter of weeks, not months. "Nerdy" succeeded anyway, and to understand why, it helps to look at the zip file that Yankovic forwarded me before we got to the Henderson. It contained hundreds of pages of lyrics, notes, and various working drafts of the songs on his latest album, Straight Outta Lynwood. In the final version of "White & Nerdy," Yankovic sings that he's "Got people beggin' for my top eight spaces / I know pi to a thousand places." Earlier versions include: "Got people killin' for my top eight spaces," "Gotta lotta Hobbits in my top eight spaces," "Got Stephen Hawking in my top eight spaces." All told, there are more than 200 unused lines for "White & Nerdy." By the time he was finished, he'd reclaimed Chamillionaire's original so thoroughly, listeners didn't even need to know "Ridin'" to appreciate "Nerdy." But diligence and high-production videos take time, and the industry that once spurned him as a singles artist has itself shifted toward quick-hit singles. Yankovic's years-long lag between albums now seems like an eternity, especially when compared with the first responders on the Web, who can work up a spoof—even if it's bad—before the flavor of the month has come and gone. "If anybody writes a bad review," Yankovic says, "the first thing they say is, 'He's doing Pussycat Dolls songs? Are they still relevant?'" Toward the end of the Henderson show, Yankovic slips into the changing area and an assistant pulls out his final, most daunting costume of the night: the "Fat" suit. For those who have never seen Yankovic's Grammy-winning "Fat" video, the "Fat" suit is a pear-shaped wonder, a black ensemble adorned with excess buckles and zippers. The finishing touch is a grotesque prosthetic triple chin. Once transformed, Yankovic looks a bit like Tweedledee—if Tweedledee landed a job at a biker bar. As the song's vamping bass line starts, Yankovic waddles his way through the curtain and executes a series of groin-grabs choreographed to cartoon sound effects. By this point in the evening, he's been running around in the hot desert air for almost two hours, but here he is, flailing about under layers of foam rubber, a roly-poly monument to comedic dedication. A few days after the show, I search for a clip of the "Fat" performance on YouTube. Instead, I find a video of two teens in their living room, lip-syncing the song while wearing suspiciously puffy-looking sweatshirts. There are dozens of "Fat" reenacters on the Web, few old enough to remember the derision that used to greet Yankovic and his purposefully goofy parodies. As strange as it may seem, Yankovic is now an icon, and these kids are his pun-loving progeny: They will eagerly stuff a few pillows under their clothes, dance around the room, film it, then upload the results to YouTube for the rest of the world to see. Like Weird Al, they dare to be stupid. Brian Raftery (brianraftery@gmail.com) wrote about ROFLcon, the gathering of viral Web celebrities, in issue 16.07.
Read about the latest Entertainment News on Wired.com, including art, technology, films, animation, music, web video, tv, podcasts, and blogs. {...}
Published: October 5, 2008, 6:33 pm - Indexed: October 9, 2008, 12:55 pm - Page Size: 51KB
Category: Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media

]]> Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media {NORTH AMERICA > RENTALS} - Well furnished STUDIO for short term rental (berkeley north / hills) $1450 http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/well-furnished-studio-for-short-term-rental-berkeley-2008105566.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/well-furnished-studio-for-short-term-rental-berkeley-2008105566.htm Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:55:02 GMT Location: Northside, Gourmet Ghetto Location: 4 blocks to UCB Location: 2 blocks to shops, PO, banks, pharmacy, bookstore, cafes, bakeries +++ Well designed and art filled studio available for short term rental. Suitable for visiting scholars, road warriors, and others seeking location and comfort. Freshly painted walls, refinished oak floors, new and well maintained furniture and fixtures. Natural light and reading lamps. Full-size bed with memory foam topper and new linens, writing desk, large tv, lounge chair, side tables, and window seat. Kitchenette: refrigerator, microwave, toaster, coffee/tea maker, glasses, plates, flatware, and other useful utensils. Closets: one large walk-in with built-in shelving, and one small coat closet. Bathroom: dual head shower, 6-drawer vanity with full-height mirror, venting fan and large window. Monthly rent includes: wireless internet access, basic cable, monthy Netflix DVD, utilities (electricity, water, garbage service), daily newspaper, and weekly cleaning/ linen service. PS: Weekly Organic Farmer's Market around the corner! Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Well furnished STUDIO for short term rental (berkeley north / hills) $1450 {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Location: Northside, Gourmet Ghetto Location: 4 blocks to UCB Location: 2 blocks to shops, PO, banks, pharmacy, bookstore, cafes, bakeries +++ Well designed and art filled studio available for short term rental. Suitable for visiting scholars, road warriors, and others seeking location and comfort. Freshly painted walls, refinished oak floors, new and well maintained furniture and fixtures. Natural light and reading lamps. Full-size bed with memory foam topper and new linens, writing desk, large tv, lounge chair, side tables, and window seat. Kitchenette: refrigerator, microwave, toaster, coffee/tea maker, glasses, plates, flatware, and other useful utensils. Closets: one large walk-in with built-in shelving, and one small coat closet. Bathroom: dual head shower, 6-drawer vanity with full-height mirror, venting fan and large window. Monthly rent includes: wireless internet access, basic cable, monthy Netflix DVD, utilities (electricity, water, garbage service), daily newspaper, and weekly cleaning/ linen service. PS: Weekly Organic Farmer's Market around the corner!
Well furnished STUDIO for short term rental {...}
Published: October 3, 2008, 12:55 am - Indexed: October 3, 2008, 10:52 am - Page Size: 5KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Free, Legal and Online: Why Hulu Is the New Way to Watch TV http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/free-legal-and-online-why-hulu-is-the-new-way-to-watch-20080941032.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/free-legal-and-online-why-hulu-is-the-new-way-to-watch-20080941032.htm Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT What's a hulu? In August 2007, this question ricocheted through the blogosphere to a chorus of derisive laughter. Fox and NBC were going to make the Internet safe for television! They were building a "YouTube killer"! And they were calling it Hulu! It was almost too perfect—an absurdist topper to the idea that two major broadcast networks could devise an Internet video service people would actually use. The name was even more delicious than the venture's placeholder moniker, NewCo., which the online world had changed to Clown Co. And now Hulu? It means "snoring" in Chinese, one blogger declared. "'Cease' and 'desist' in Swahili," Michael Arrington reported on TechCrunch. "Perhaps they should have just stuck with Clown Co.," he added. Jason Kilar read these posts and winced. A 36-year-old ex-Amazon.com executive newly relocated to Los Angeles, Kilar had followed—even admired—many of these bloggers for years. Now he was Hulu's CEO, and their ridicule wasn't so funny. What's a Hulu? Kilar had gotten the same question from Jeff Zucker, chief of NBC Universal, and Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation, Fox's corporate parent. In English it means nothing. In Mandarin, when pronounced another way, it means not snoring but "bottle gourd," which, in an old Chinese proverb, stands for a "holder of precious things." If you say so, they responded. Even Kilar was starting to wonder whether he could make this thing work. Along with the new name, he had just announced that Hulu, which he had been running for only seven weeks, would launch in beta in two months—much later than expected but far too soon for a team that had barely gotten started. He was heading an operation of 20 people holed up in an office suite in West LA. To meet the deadline, he had turned the place into a bunker: Newspapers covered every window. People were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor. Half-eaten pizzas littered the empty cubicles. Fruit flies were the only visitors. But Kilar would make it work. He and his crew would emerge from their dismal cave with the sleekest, easiest-to-use, most professional video site on the Internet. Not only would it deliver shows and movies from Fox and NBC Universal, it would take you to programs from every other major network and studio. Full-length episodes. Entire seasons. For free. Within months of that late-August announcement, Hulu would be among the top 10 US video sites in number of clips streamed. Om Malik, one of the bloggers who had ridiculed it from the start, would pronounce it "brilliant." TechCrunch readers would vote it best video startup of 2007. "Game Over. Hulu Wins," Arrington would declare in a conciliatory post. How did that happen? On a summer evening in Santa Monica, Kilar is sitting in a cafè9 near his house, reminiscing about the vintage anime series Speed Racer. As a kid, he was one of the millions who used to rush home from school every day to watch the hero's Mach 5 blow by Racer X. "It came on at 3:30," Kilar says, "and if I was late, I missed it." Tall and loose-limbed, with rosy cheeks and an eager smile, Kilar looks more like an oversize Boy Scout than the man who would finally usher the television networks into the Internet age. But his earnestness and enthusiasm have served him well among entertainment execs. He has won their support by explaining the obvious: In a world of limitless choice, 10-year-olds are no longer going to race home to catch a TV show. Admitting that fact means surrendering the scheduling power the networks have always enjoyed and putting a lot of their profits at risk. But Kilar focuses on the opportunity. If you were a network exec, he says, playing with his cheese-and-veggie scramble, "and I told you here was a tool that enabled your content to be shared, to be forwarded, to make your audience your most powerful marketing vehicle—it would be music to your ears, right? This is a tectonic shift, and what it does is allow network heads to find the audience they always should have had but couldn't reach." Like a lot of other people, Kilar read about the News Corp.-NBC Universal venture when it was announced in March 2007 and thought, "Huh—I wonder how this will turn out." Not well, if earlier digital efforts by media giants were any indication. The classic example was Movielink, a Hollywood download service that never took off because the studios loaded it with restrictions. And on the music side there was Sony Connect, a stillborn Web store that had the same problem. 2 million people went to the Hulu site in July, and here are the shows they streamed. At the time, the business that Fox and NBC Universal had in mind was still poorly defined. "It started out of frustration that other people were using our video online and creating a business," Zucker says. A year earlier, NBC had forced YouTube to pull clips of Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday" skit, even though it was sparking new interest in the show. YouTube complied; pirate sites didn't bother. The networks needed to find some way to keep others from grabbing their shows—and their profits. But the companies were too accustomed to competing with one another to form a common strategy. Disney, corporate parent of ABC, joined talks for a while but opted to focus on its own Web business rather than join forces. CBS and Viacom (which owns MTV and Comedy Central) decided to invest in Joost, an online-TV startup from the Net-savvy guys behind Skype and Kazaa, and Viacom hit Google, which had just bought YouTube, with a $1 billion lawsuit for good measure. That left Fox and NBC Universal to team up on some sort of Web video service. Chernin and Zucker were still trying to figure out what it would be when news of their plans leaked out, forcing them to make a hasty announcement. Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Providence Equity Partners, read the same story as Kilar. Head of a $21 billion private-equity fund focused on media and telecommunications, Nelson was set to go heli-skiing in Greenland with Chernin. Now he called his buddy and offered to invest in the startup. We don't need any money, Chernin replied. Maybe not, Nelson countered, but you do need validation. Bringing in an outside partner would make the thing look less like a Fox-NBC Universal promo vehicle and perhaps make competing networks more interested in joining. Nelson had a point, and as the two sides hammered out the terms of the investment, he and Al Dobron, head of Providence's Internet practice, joined the discussions about what the new company would become. As Dobron describes it, the initial business plan was all too predictable: "It was like, you're watching TV, you turn to the left and look at a computer screen, and you watch the same thing you were watching on TV in the same way." AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and MySpace had been enlisted as distribution partners, but at first, Fox and NBC Universal were planning to contribute just a few shows each and, in most cases, only recent episodes at that. Anything more would jeopardize the networks' existing businesses—especially syndication and DVD sales. If they were going to make this thing work, Nelson and Dobron realized, they needed somebody with no TV experience—"somebody who was going to say, 'This is not television on the Internet; this is the Internet.'" Chernin was thinking the same thing. Kilar quickly surfaced as a likely candidate. At Amazon, he had helped expand the company beyond books and into home video; then he had led the teams that built such apps as 1-Click checkout and the Amazon Prime premium shipping service. Kilar was understandably skeptical when the headhunter approached him. Were Fox and NBC really ready to entrust their most valuable assets, their programming, to an outsider? But the more he thought about it, the more he was drawn to what Chernin and Zucker were proposing. He had always loved TV and movies. And though the music industry had blown its chance to stay ahead of digital culture, he saw a brief window of opportunity for Hollywood. More than 60 million Americans now had broadband, but most hadn't yet gotten into the habit of using BitTorrent to download sitcoms. What if he could help show business make the transition that the music industry had flubbed? In late June, Kilar agreed to take the job. He already had his pick for CTO: Eric Feng, a 28-year-old engineer he had known in Seattle. Feng had gone to Beijing for Microsoft and ended up launching his own company there. His startup, Mojiti, was one of the first sites to enable users to put text comments on a Web video, but what had been leading-edge a year earlier was quickly becoming commonplace. Feng had seven young developers who knew a great deal about Web video—even if most of them spoke only Mandarin. So eight days after accepting the position, Kilar flew to China and persuaded the entire team to join him. Feng would return to the US; the others would stay in Beijing and build the service. The following Monday morning, Kilar showed up for work in LA to find his offices already teeming with people. Fox and NBC Universal had provided a couple of dozen employees on loan and brought in 40-odd consultants from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Avenue A/Razorfish. The plan was to outsource both the site design and the underlying computer code. Kilar was aghast. "Technology is the source of our competitive advantage," he explains—the key to a service that would provide a high-quality videostream and support an ever-growing number of users and shows. "For us to design the company to last, we had to write every line of code ourselves." He sent the network people back to their old jobs and told the consultants they were out. Then he affixed whiteboard to three of the walls in his office and wrote out a mission statement and some basic design principles. The top Internet services—Google, Flickr, YouTube—thrive because they are simple. Kilar wanted a clean, uncluttered look. He wanted a service that worked inside your browser, not one that required you to download a player—an obstacle that has kept Joost from taking off. And he wanted it to be so easy to use that his 62-year-old mom could have it working within 15 seconds. Plus, of course, he wanted a lot of shows. Shortly before he arrived, Kilar had gotten a list of all the programs the new service would have. "It was one piece of paper," he says. "I wished it was a phone book." He went to Dan Fawcett, head of digital media at Fox, and to J. B. Perrette, head of digital distribution at NBC Universal, and told them this wouldn't work. To compete with BitTorrent sites, Hulu needed every movie they had ever made and every TV show they had ever aired—and not just four or five episodes but all of them. Fawcett and Perrette were taken aback. Not only was the task of clearing the legal rights daunting, but Fox and NBC Universal, like all entertainment conglomerates, make millions selling their movies and television shows to cable channels and other outlets in a series of distribution windows. "We have to respect those windows," Fawcett says. Yet he and Perrette worked overtime to clear everything that wasn't already spoken for. Kilar's next test came in New York on August 15, at the new company's first board meeting. The Providence Equity investment hadn't closed yet, so the board consisted of just Kilar and six network people—three each from Fox and NBC Universal, led by Chernin and Zucker. Kilar announced a couple of jaw-droppers: His team was going to provide embed codes so users could post Hulu's programming on their own Web sites, and they were building a search engine that would direct people to every movie and TV show online, even if it was on a competitor's site. The normal response would have been "Is this guy nuts?" But as Kilar made his case, first Chernin and then Zucker swung to his side. The embed codes would enable their videos to go viral, and the search function solved the problem of how to provide a full offering with only two networks. The plans were approved. For the next 10 weeks, as Feng and his team raced to build the service, Kilar focused on getting more shows. He kept a color-coded spreadsheet—green for yes, yellow for maybe, red for no—that listed every property Fox and NBC Universal controlled, with details about every remaining legal hurdle: Are the rights owned by the network, the producer, or a third party? Can we clear all the music? Each new green was celebrated. One by one, they picked up cult favorites like 30 Rock, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Battlestar Galactica. Almost the last to go green before Hulu's beta launch at the end of October was one of the shows they had focused on most: Arrested Development, which Fox had canceled due to poor ratings despite multiple Emmys and heaps of critical acclaim. In March 2008, Hulu officially opened for business with more than 250 TV shows and 100 movies—not only from Fox, NBC, Universal, and their affiliated cable channels, but from new partners like the indie film studio Lionsgate and the television arm of Warner Bros., which makes shows for all the networks. Visitors were delighted to discover that they could quickly find and watch full-length programs and movies, even ones that weren't hosted by Hulu. Two months later, Hulu edged ahead of ESPN.com to become one of comScore's top 10 US video sites. Its growing popularity led Viacom to offer recent episodes of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, two of Comedy Central's most popular programs. Meanwhile, the accolades were pouring in. Users and critics alike praised its straightforward design and even the way it implemented ads. Entertainment Weekly called it "some kind of TV addict's fever dream." "This is the entertainment we've all been looking for," one user wrote in to the company. Another declared simply, "You have done something great." Hulu had gotten online TV right. So much for Clown Co. The big question now is, can Hulu turn a profit? Hulu isn't releasing any numbers, though Dobron says its revenue will "dramatically exceed initial forecasts." The only credible outside guess seems to come from Michael Learmonth at Silicon Alley Insider, who estimates that Hulu will generate between $45 million and $90 million in advertising in the year following its launch. Since he estimates that 70 percent of that money goes to content providers, this doesn't leave much for operating costs. And while Hulu gets two to three times the ad rate that the broadcast networks command, that's on a cost-per-thousand-viewers basis. Hulu says its highest-rated shows get "millions of streams" per month, but a popular show like CSI will draw 16 million viewers on TV in a single night. Worse yet, from a financial perspective, part of Hulu's bargain with users is fewer ads: While broadcasters cram eight minutes of advertising into a half-hour show, Hulu sells only two. "So what?" Chernin says. "You can't protect old business models artificially." This is a truth the tech community knows well, but it's not what you expect to hear from a media baron like Chernin. What he and Zucker have come to understand is that the media companies no longer have a choice: If they don't put their shows online, someone else will. "The best way to combat piracy is to make your content available," Zucker says. "We don't know for sure what the impact is going to be on our established businesses. But we want to make sure consumers know they don't need to steal our content. That's really what Hulu is about." In the meantime, Hulu provides a tantalizing glimpse of the future of television. Unlike the networks, which have always been carefully programmed by their executives, Hulu is programmed by user choices and recommendation software. Schedules don't matter; popularity alone will bubble a show to the top. The results can be startling. One of Hulu's top five shows is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, an FX series starring Danny DeVito that has never gotten much attention on TV. Another is Arrested Development. Hulu isn't saying exactly how many people watch a given show, but the numbers are high enough that Kilar is becoming a must-see guy for producers. Joss Whedon, who created such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, popped in to talk about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, his three-part video—which Hulu got as a Web exclusive. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane met with Kilar over the summer to chat about how well his show has been doing. As usage grows, Kilar can expect many more such tèAte-è0-tèAtes. "The world has turned completely upside down," Kilar says, mopping up the last of his scramble as dusk settles outside the little Santa Monica restaurant. "I find that very inspiring. Others might be scared out of their wits. But to me, this is the way media always should have been." He allows himself a slight chuckle. As he speaks, Hulu is weeks away from unveiling a tool that lets users embed the Hulu service itself into their Web site. Soon you'd be able to stick all of online television into your blog. Finally, after decades of dictating what we can watch and when, the networks would be reduced to a Web widget, functioning at the user's whim. Just as it should be. Contributing editor Frank Rose (frank_rose@wired.com) wrote about a new Web video series, Gemini Division, in issue 16.08. Wired.Com Free, Legal and Online: Why Hulu Is the New Way to Watch TV {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - What's a hulu? In August 2007, this question ricocheted through the blogosphere to a chorus of derisive laughter. Fox and NBC were going to make the Internet safe for television! They were building a "YouTube killer"! And they were calling it Hulu! It was almost too perfect—an absurdist topper to the idea that two major broadcast networks could devise an Internet video service people would actually use. The name was even more delicious than the venture's placeholder moniker, NewCo., which the online world had changed to Clown Co. And now Hulu? It means "snoring" in Chinese, one blogger declared. "'Cease' and 'desist' in Swahili," Michael Arrington reported on TechCrunch. "Perhaps they should have just stuck with Clown Co.," he added. Jason Kilar read these posts and winced. A 36-year-old ex-Amazon.com executive newly relocated to Los Angeles, Kilar had followed—even admired—many of these bloggers for years. Now he was Hulu's CEO, and their ridicule wasn't so funny. What's a Hulu? Kilar had gotten the same question from Jeff Zucker, chief of NBC Universal, and Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation, Fox's corporate parent. In English it means nothing. In Mandarin, when pronounced another way, it means not snoring but "bottle gourd," which, in an old Chinese proverb, stands for a "holder of precious things." If you say so, they responded. Even Kilar was starting to wonder whether he could make this thing work. Along with the new name, he had just announced that Hulu, which he had been running for only seven weeks, would launch in beta in two months—much later than expected but far too soon for a team that had barely gotten started. He was heading an operation of 20 people holed up in an office suite in West LA. To meet the deadline, he had turned the place into a bunker: Newspapers covered every window. People were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor. Half-eaten pizzas littered the empty cubicles. Fruit flies were the only visitors. But Kilar would make it work. He and his crew would emerge from their dismal cave with the sleekest, easiest-to-use, most professional video site on the Internet. Not only would it deliver shows and movies from Fox and NBC Universal, it would take you to programs from every other major network and studio. Full-length episodes. Entire seasons. For free. Within months of that late-August announcement, Hulu would be among the top 10 US video sites in number of clips streamed. Om Malik, one of the bloggers who had ridiculed it from the start, would pronounce it "brilliant." TechCrunch readers would vote it best video startup of 2007. "Game Over. Hulu Wins," Arrington would declare in a conciliatory post. How did that happen? On a summer evening in Santa Monica, Kilar is sitting in a cafè9 near his house, reminiscing about the vintage anime series Speed Racer. As a kid, he was one of the millions who used to rush home from school every day to watch the hero's Mach 5 blow by Racer X. "It came on at 3:30," Kilar says, "and if I was late, I missed it." Tall and loose-limbed, with rosy cheeks and an eager smile, Kilar looks more like an oversize Boy Scout than the man who would finally usher the television networks into the Internet age. But his earnestness and enthusiasm have served him well among entertainment execs. He has won their support by explaining the obvious: In a world of limitless choice, 10-year-olds are no longer going to race home to catch a TV show. Admitting that fact means surrendering the scheduling power the networks have always enjoyed and putting a lot of their profits at risk. But Kilar focuses on the opportunity. If you were a network exec, he says, playing with his cheese-and-veggie scramble, "and I told you here was a tool that enabled your content to be shared, to be forwarded, to make your audience your most powerful marketing vehicle—it would be music to your ears, right? This is a tectonic shift, and what it does is allow network heads to find the audience they always should have had but couldn't reach." Like a lot of other people, Kilar read about the News Corp.-NBC Universal venture when it was announced in March 2007 and thought, "Huh—I wonder how this will turn out." Not well, if earlier digital efforts by media giants were any indication. The classic example was Movielink, a Hollywood download service that never took off because the studios loaded it with restrictions. And on the music side there was Sony Connect, a stillborn Web store that had the same problem. 2 million people went to the Hulu site in July, and here are the shows they streamed. At the time, the business that Fox and NBC Universal had in mind was still poorly defined. "It started out of frustration that other people were using our video online and creating a business," Zucker says. A year earlier, NBC had forced YouTube to pull clips of Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday" skit, even though it was sparking new interest in the show. YouTube complied; pirate sites didn't bother. The networks needed to find some way to keep others from grabbing their shows—and their profits. But the companies were too accustomed to competing with one another to form a common strategy. Disney, corporate parent of ABC, joined talks for a while but opted to focus on its own Web business rather than join forces. CBS and Viacom (which owns MTV and Comedy Central) decided to invest in Joost, an online-TV startup from the Net-savvy guys behind Skype and Kazaa, and Viacom hit Google, which had just bought YouTube, with a $1 billion lawsuit for good measure. That left Fox and NBC Universal to team up on some sort of Web video service. Chernin and Zucker were still trying to figure out what it would be when news of their plans leaked out, forcing them to make a hasty announcement. Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Providence Equity Partners, read the same story as Kilar. Head of a $21 billion private-equity fund focused on media and telecommunications, Nelson was set to go heli-skiing in Greenland with Chernin. Now he called his buddy and offered to invest in the startup. We don't need any money, Chernin replied. Maybe not, Nelson countered, but you do need validation. Bringing in an outside partner would make the thing look less like a Fox-NBC Universal promo vehicle and perhaps make competing networks more interested in joining. Nelson had a point, and as the two sides hammered out the terms of the investment, he and Al Dobron, head of Providence's Internet practice, joined the discussions about what the new company would become. As Dobron describes it, the initial business plan was all too predictable: "It was like, you're watching TV, you turn to the left and look at a computer screen, and you watch the same thing you were watching on TV in the same way." AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and MySpace had been enlisted as distribution partners, but at first, Fox and NBC Universal were planning to contribute just a few shows each and, in most cases, only recent episodes at that. Anything more would jeopardize the networks' existing businesses—especially syndication and DVD sales. If they were going to make this thing work, Nelson and Dobron realized, they needed somebody with no TV experience—"somebody who was going to say, 'This is not television on the Internet; this is the Internet.'" Chernin was thinking the same thing. Kilar quickly surfaced as a likely candidate. At Amazon, he had helped expand the company beyond books and into home video; then he had led the teams that built such apps as 1-Click checkout and the Amazon Prime premium shipping service. Kilar was understandably skeptical when the headhunter approached him. Were Fox and NBC really ready to entrust their most valuable assets, their programming, to an outsider? But the more he thought about it, the more he was drawn to what Chernin and Zucker were proposing. He had always loved TV and movies. And though the music industry had blown its chance to stay ahead of digital culture, he saw a brief window of opportunity for Hollywood. More than 60 million Americans now had broadband, but most hadn't yet gotten into the habit of using BitTorrent to download sitcoms. What if he could help show business make the transition that the music industry had flubbed? In late June, Kilar agreed to take the job. He already had his pick for CTO: Eric Feng, a 28-year-old engineer he had known in Seattle. Feng had gone to Beijing for Microsoft and ended up launching his own company there. His startup, Mojiti, was one of the first sites to enable users to put text comments on a Web video, but what had been leading-edge a year earlier was quickly becoming commonplace. Feng had seven young developers who knew a great deal about Web video—even if most of them spoke only Mandarin. So eight days after accepting the position, Kilar flew to China and persuaded the entire team to join him. Feng would return to the US; the others would stay in Beijing and build the service. The following Monday morning, Kilar showed up for work in LA to find his offices already teeming with people. Fox and NBC Universal had provided a couple of dozen employees on loan and brought in 40-odd consultants from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Avenue A/Razorfish. The plan was to outsource both the site design and the underlying computer code. Kilar was aghast. "Technology is the source of our competitive advantage," he explains—the key to a service that would provide a high-quality videostream and support an ever-growing number of users and shows. "For us to design the company to last, we had to write every line of code ourselves." He sent the network people back to their old jobs and told the consultants they were out. Then he affixed whiteboard to three of the walls in his office and wrote out a mission statement and some basic design principles. The top Internet services—Google, Flickr, YouTube—thrive because they are simple. Kilar wanted a clean, uncluttered look. He wanted a service that worked inside your browser, not one that required you to download a player—an obstacle that has kept Joost from taking off. And he wanted it to be so easy to use that his 62-year-old mom could have it working within 15 seconds. Plus, of course, he wanted a lot of shows. Shortly before he arrived, Kilar had gotten a list of all the programs the new service would have. "It was one piece of paper," he says. "I wished it was a phone book." He went to Dan Fawcett, head of digital media at Fox, and to J. B. Perrette, head of digital distribution at NBC Universal, and told them this wouldn't work. To compete with BitTorrent sites, Hulu needed every movie they had ever made and every TV show they had ever aired—and not just four or five episodes but all of them. Fawcett and Perrette were taken aback. Not only was the task of clearing the legal rights daunting, but Fox and NBC Universal, like all entertainment conglomerates, make millions selling their movies and television shows to cable channels and other outlets in a series of distribution windows. "We have to respect those windows," Fawcett says. Yet he and Perrette worked overtime to clear everything that wasn't already spoken for. Kilar's next test came in New York on August 15, at the new company's first board meeting. The Providence Equity investment hadn't closed yet, so the board consisted of just Kilar and six network people—three each from Fox and NBC Universal, led by Chernin and Zucker. Kilar announced a couple of jaw-droppers: His team was going to provide embed codes so users could post Hulu's programming on their own Web sites, and they were building a search engine that would direct people to every movie and TV show online, even if it was on a competitor's site. The normal response would have been "Is this guy nuts?" But as Kilar made his case, first Chernin and then Zucker swung to his side. The embed codes would enable their videos to go viral, and the search function solved the problem of how to provide a full offering with only two networks. The plans were approved. For the next 10 weeks, as Feng and his team raced to build the service, Kilar focused on getting more shows. He kept a color-coded spreadsheet—green for yes, yellow for maybe, red for no—that listed every property Fox and NBC Universal controlled, with details about every remaining legal hurdle: Are the rights owned by the network, the producer, or a third party? Can we clear all the music? Each new green was celebrated. One by one, they picked up cult favorites like 30 Rock, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Battlestar Galactica. Almost the last to go green before Hulu's beta launch at the end of October was one of the shows they had focused on most: Arrested Development, which Fox had canceled due to poor ratings despite multiple Emmys and heaps of critical acclaim. In March 2008, Hulu officially opened for business with more than 250 TV shows and 100 movies—not only from Fox, NBC, Universal, and their affiliated cable channels, but from new partners like the indie film studio Lionsgate and the television arm of Warner Bros., which makes shows for all the networks. Visitors were delighted to discover that they could quickly find and watch full-length programs and movies, even ones that weren't hosted by Hulu. Two months later, Hulu edged ahead of ESPN.com to become one of comScore's top 10 US video sites. Its growing popularity led Viacom to offer recent episodes of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, two of Comedy Central's most popular programs. Meanwhile, the accolades were pouring in. Users and critics alike praised its straightforward design and even the way it implemented ads. Entertainment Weekly called it "some kind of TV addict's fever dream." "This is the entertainment we've all been looking for," one user wrote in to the company. Another declared simply, "You have done something great." Hulu had gotten online TV right. So much for Clown Co. The big question now is, can Hulu turn a profit? Hulu isn't releasing any numbers, though Dobron says its revenue will "dramatically exceed initial forecasts." The only credible outside guess seems to come from Michael Learmonth at Silicon Alley Insider, who estimates that Hulu will generate between $45 million and $90 million in advertising in the year following its launch. Since he estimates that 70 percent of that money goes to content providers, this doesn't leave much for operating costs. And while Hulu gets two to three times the ad rate that the broadcast networks command, that's on a cost-per-thousand-viewers basis. Hulu says its highest-rated shows get "millions of streams" per month, but a popular show like CSI will draw 16 million viewers on TV in a single night. Worse yet, from a financial perspective, part of Hulu's bargain with users is fewer ads: While broadcasters cram eight minutes of advertising into a half-hour show, Hulu sells only two. "So what?" Chernin says. "You can't protect old business models artificially." This is a truth the tech community knows well, but it's not what you expect to hear from a media baron like Chernin. What he and Zucker have come to understand is that the media companies no longer have a choice: If they don't put their shows online, someone else will. "The best way to combat piracy is to make your content available," Zucker says. "We don't know for sure what the impact is going to be on our established businesses. But we want to make sure consumers know they don't need to steal our content. That's really what Hulu is about." In the meantime, Hulu provides a tantalizing glimpse of the future of television. Unlike the networks, which have always been carefully programmed by their executives, Hulu is programmed by user choices and recommendation software. Schedules don't matter; popularity alone will bubble a show to the top. The results can be startling. One of Hulu's top five shows is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, an FX series starring Danny DeVito that has never gotten much attention on TV. Another is Arrested Development. Hulu isn't saying exactly how many people watch a given show, but the numbers are high enough that Kilar is becoming a must-see guy for producers. Joss Whedon, who created such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, popped in to talk about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, his three-part video—which Hulu got as a Web exclusive. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane met with Kilar over the summer to chat about how well his show has been doing. As usage grows, Kilar can expect many more such tèAte-è0-tèAtes. "The world has turned completely upside down," Kilar says, mopping up the last of his scramble as dusk settles outside the little Santa Monica restaurant. "I find that very inspiring. Others might be scared out of their wits. But to me, this is the way media always should have been." He allows himself a slight chuckle. As he speaks, Hulu is weeks away from unveiling a tool that lets users embed the Hulu service itself into their Web site. Soon you'd be able to stick all of online television into your blog. Finally, after decades of dictating what we can watch and when, the networks would be reduced to a Web widget, functioning at the user's whim. Just as it should be. Contributing editor Frank Rose (frank_rose@wired.com) wrote about a new Web video series, Gemini Division, in issue 16.08.
Read about the latest Entertainment News on Wired.com, including art, technology, films, animation, music, web video, tv, podcasts, and blogs. {...}
Published: September 24, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: September 24, 2008, 1:14 pm - Page Size: 51KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat (Tahoe Donner) http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/chalet-sierra-is-the-perfect-all-season-retreat-20080929435.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/chalet-sierra-is-the-perfect-all-season-retreat-20080929435.htm Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:12:34 GMT Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat - View our website at: http://www.onlinevacationrentals.com/homedetail.php?home=1036 You have been searching for Chalet Sierra. Our mountain home is luxurious, spacious and immaculate, yet wonderfully cozy and warm. Chalet Sierra, built in 2002, is incredibly well-equipped and lovingly maintained. Chalet Sierra is a 2200 sf, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home in the beautiful, quiet community of Tahoe Donner. Discover the great room, filled with natural light, vaulted pine ceilings and an impressive river rock natural gas fireplace. The kitchen has slab granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, bar seating for four, and every accessory that you will need. Located near the kitchen is a full laundry room and a tiled half bath. Relax on the soft leather sofas in the living room and enjoy the entertainment center with cable TV, DVD/VCR and a stereo. The pine dining room table seats eight comfortably and leads though a sliding glass door to the generous back deck. On the deck is a wooden dining table with seating for eight, a market umbrella and a gas grill (in season). You will be surrounded by tall, peaceful pines protected by greenbelt. On the same level, you will find the master bedroom with its vaulted pine ceilings, king bed, ceiling fan, oversized, jetted tub, and twin sinks with slab granite countertops. A sliding glass door leads from the master bedroom to a delightful deck. Just outside of the master bedroom is a quiet office area with a built-in desk and wireless internet access. Downstairs, there is a spacious queen bedroom and a charming kids room with two sets of bunk beds (a total of four twins). The fourth bedroom has a queen sofa bed (with a thick mattress and a memory foam topper) and can also be used (and is set up) as a welcoming den with cable TV and a DVD/VCR. This level has a lovely, tiled full bath. The stairs in the home, including the back deck, are equipped with baby gates (which fold against the wall when not in use) and the house is well-stocked with videos, DVDs, games, sleds, beach and water toys. The home has a slate airlock and an attached two-car garage with additional parking in the level driveway. A portable crib and a high chair are available for your use. Tahoe Donner is a members-only resort community that provides excellent amenities for its members and guests (for a nominal fee using passes provided), including: Championship golf course and driving range; Private beach club with boat launch, boat rentals, and snack bar; Recreation center, 3 heated swimming pools (one open year-round) and play areas; Exceptional gym with hot tubs, steam room and sauna; Tennis center with 11 courts; Equestrian center with horse and pony rides; Extensive hiking trails; Downhill and cross country ski areas; Sledding and snow play area; and Archery range. Tahoe Donner is approximately 15 minutes from Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, Alpine Meadows, Northstar and all of the area’s other world-class ski resorts. Almost any shop or restaurant that you will need is located within 1 mile of the entrance to Tahoe Donner. Charming old town Truckee with its many fine restaurants, boutiques, and galleries is just 4 miles away. Lake Tahoe is just 15 miles away and Reno is just 30 miles away. Tahoe Donner is also located in close proximity to many exciting activities including: hiking, sailing, wind surfing, water skiing, fishing, white water rafting, kayaking, historical sites, national forest, auto rental, bike rental, a variety of site seeing tours, movie theater, ice skating, snow mobiling, skate boarding, and miniature golf. Chalet Sierra is the perfect all-season retreat for both tranquility and adventure. Includes beds made with luxury linens, luxury bath towels and beach towels (and laundering). Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat (Tahoe Donner) {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat - View our website at: http://www.onlinevacationrentals.com/homedetail.php?home=1036 You have been searching for Chalet Sierra. Our mountain home is luxurious, spacious and immaculate, yet wonderfully cozy and warm. Chalet Sierra, built in 2002, is incredibly well-equipped and lovingly maintained. Chalet Sierra is a 2200 sf, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home in the beautiful, quiet community of Tahoe Donner. Discover the great room, filled with natural light, vaulted pine ceilings and an impressive river rock natural gas fireplace. The kitchen has slab granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, bar seating for four, and every accessory that you will need. Located near the kitchen is a full laundry room and a tiled half bath. Relax on the soft leather sofas in the living room and enjoy the entertainment center with cable TV, DVD/VCR and a stereo. The pine dining room table seats eight comfortably and leads though a sliding glass door to the generous back deck. On the deck is a wooden dining table with seating for eight, a market umbrella and a gas grill (in season). You will be surrounded by tall, peaceful pines protected by greenbelt. On the same level, you will find the master bedroom with its vaulted pine ceilings, king bed, ceiling fan, oversized, jetted tub, and twin sinks with slab granite countertops. A sliding glass door leads from the master bedroom to a delightful deck. Just outside of the master bedroom is a quiet office area with a built-in desk and wireless internet access. Downstairs, there is a spacious queen bedroom and a charming kids room with two sets of bunk beds (a total of four twins). The fourth bedroom has a queen sofa bed (with a thick mattress and a memory foam topper) and can also be used (and is set up) as a welcoming den with cable TV and a DVD/VCR. This level has a lovely, tiled full bath. The stairs in the home, including the back deck, are equipped with baby gates (which fold against the wall when not in use) and the house is well-stocked with videos, DVDs, games, sleds, beach and water toys. The home has a slate airlock and an attached two-car garage with additional parking in the level driveway. A portable crib and a high chair are available for your use. Tahoe Donner is a members-only resort community that provides excellent amenities for its members and guests (for a nominal fee using passes provided), including: Championship golf course and driving range; Private beach club with boat launch, boat rentals, and snack bar; Recreation center, 3 heated swimming pools (one open year-round) and play areas; Exceptional gym with hot tubs, steam room and sauna; Tennis center with 11 courts; Equestrian center with horse and pony rides; Extensive hiking trails; Downhill and cross country ski areas; Sledding and snow play area; and Archery range. Tahoe Donner is approximately 15 minutes from Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, Alpine Meadows, Northstar and all of the area’s other world-class ski resorts. Almost any shop or restaurant that you will need is located within 1 mile of the entrance to Tahoe Donner. Charming old town Truckee with its many fine restaurants, boutiques, and galleries is just 4 miles away. Lake Tahoe is just 15 miles away and Reno is just 30 miles away. Tahoe Donner is also located in close proximity to many exciting activities including: hiking, sailing, wind surfing, water skiing, fishing, white water rafting, kayaking, historical sites, national forest, auto rental, bike rental, a variety of site seeing tours, movie theater, ice skating, snow mobiling, skate boarding, and miniature golf. Chalet Sierra is the perfect all-season retreat for both tranquility and adventure. Includes beds made with luxury linens, luxury bath towels and beach towels (and laundering).
Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat {...}
Published: September 23, 2008, 9:12 pm - Indexed: September 23, 2008, 10:59 pm - Page Size: 7KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat (Tahoe Donner) 4bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/chalet-sierra-is-the-perfect-all-season-retreat-20080855329.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/chalet-sierra-is-the-perfect-all-season-retreat-20080855329.htm Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:06:27 GMT Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat - View our website at: You have been searching for Chalet Sierra. Our mountain home is luxurious, spacious and immaculate, yet wonderfully cozy and warm. Chalet Sierra, built in 2002, is incredibly well-equipped and lovingly maintained. Chalet Sierra is a 2200 sf, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home in the beautiful, quiet community of Tahoe Donner. Discover the great room, filled with natural light, vaulted pine ceilings and an impressive river rock natural gas fireplace. The kitchen has slab granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, bar seating for four, and every accessory that you will need. Located near the kitchen is a full laundry room and a tiled half bath. Relax on the soft leather sofas in the living room and enjoy the entertainment center with cable TV, DVD/VCR and a stereo. The pine dining room table seats eight comfortably and leads though a sliding glass door to the generous back deck. On the deck is a wooden dining table with seating for eight, a market umbrella and a gas grill (in season). You will be surrounded by tall, peaceful pines protected by greenbelt. On the same level, you will find the master bedroom with its vaulted pine ceilings, king bed, ceiling fan, oversized, jetted tub, and twin sinks with slab granite countertops. A sliding glass door leads from the master bedroom to a delightful deck. Just outside of the master bedroom is a quiet office area with a built-in desk and wireless internet access. Downstairs, there is a spacious queen bedroom and a charming kids room with two sets of bunk beds (a total of four twins). The fourth bedroom has a queen sofa bed (with a thick mattress and a memory foam topper) and can also be used (and is set up) as a welcoming den with cable TV and a DVD/VCR. This level has a lovely, tiled full bath. The stairs in the home, including the back deck, are equipped with baby gates (which fold against the wall when not in use) and the house is well-stocked with videos, DVDs, games, sleds, beach and water toys. The home has a slate airlock and an attached two-car garage with additional parking in the level driveway. A portable crib and a high chair are available for your use. Tahoe Donner is a members-only resort community that provides excellent amenities for its members and guests (for a nominal fee using passes provided), including: Championship golf course and driving range; Private beach club with boat launch, boat rentals, and snack bar; Recreation center, 3 heated swimming pools (one open year-round) and play areas; Exceptional gym with hot tubs, steam room and sauna; Tennis center with 11 courts; Equestrian center with horse and pony rides; Extensive hiking trails; Downhill and cross country ski areas; Sledding and snow play area; and Archery range. Tahoe Donner is approximately 15 minutes from Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, Alpine Meadows, Northstar and all of the area’s other world-class ski resorts. Almost any shop or restaurant that you will need is located within 1 mile of the entrance to Tahoe Donner. Charming old town Truckee with its many fine restaurants, boutiques, and galleries is just 4 miles away. Lake Tahoe is just 15 miles away and Reno is just 30 miles away. Tahoe Donner is also located in close proximity to many exciting activities including: hiking, sailing, wind surfing, water skiing, fishing, white water rafting, kayaking, historical sites, national forest, auto rental, bike rental, a variety of site seeing tours, movie theater, ice skating, snow mobiling, skate boarding, and miniature golf. Chalet Sierra is the perfect all-season retreat for both tranquility and adventure. Includes beds made with luxury linens, luxury bath towels and beach towels (and laundering). Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat (Tahoe Donner) 4bd {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat - View our website at: You have been searching for Chalet Sierra. Our mountain home is luxurious, spacious and immaculate, yet wonderfully cozy and warm. Chalet Sierra, built in 2002, is incredibly well-equipped and lovingly maintained. Chalet Sierra is a 2200 sf, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home in the beautiful, quiet community of Tahoe Donner. Discover the great room, filled with natural light, vaulted pine ceilings and an impressive river rock natural gas fireplace. The kitchen has slab granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, bar seating for four, and every accessory that you will need. Located near the kitchen is a full laundry room and a tiled half bath. Relax on the soft leather sofas in the living room and enjoy the entertainment center with cable TV, DVD/VCR and a stereo. The pine dining room table seats eight comfortably and leads though a sliding glass door to the generous back deck. On the deck is a wooden dining table with seating for eight, a market umbrella and a gas grill (in season). You will be surrounded by tall, peaceful pines protected by greenbelt. On the same level, you will find the master bedroom with its vaulted pine ceilings, king bed, ceiling fan, oversized, jetted tub, and twin sinks with slab granite countertops. A sliding glass door leads from the master bedroom to a delightful deck. Just outside of the master bedroom is a quiet office area with a built-in desk and wireless internet access. Downstairs, there is a spacious queen bedroom and a charming kids room with two sets of bunk beds (a total of four twins). The fourth bedroom has a queen sofa bed (with a thick mattress and a memory foam topper) and can also be used (and is set up) as a welcoming den with cable TV and a DVD/VCR. This level has a lovely, tiled full bath. The stairs in the home, including the back deck, are equipped with baby gates (which fold against the wall when not in use) and the house is well-stocked with videos, DVDs, games, sleds, beach and water toys. The home has a slate airlock and an attached two-car garage with additional parking in the level driveway. A portable crib and a high chair are available for your use. Tahoe Donner is a members-only resort community that provides excellent amenities for its members and guests (for a nominal fee using passes provided), including: Championship golf course and driving range; Private beach club with boat launch, boat rentals, and snack bar; Recreation center, 3 heated swimming pools (one open year-round) and play areas; Exceptional gym with hot tubs, steam room and sauna; Tennis center with 11 courts; Equestrian center with horse and pony rides; Extensive hiking trails; Downhill and cross country ski areas; Sledding and snow play area; and Archery range. Tahoe Donner is approximately 15 minutes from Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, Alpine Meadows, Northstar and all of the area’s other world-class ski resorts. Almost any shop or restaurant that you will need is located within 1 mile of the entrance to Tahoe Donner. Charming old town Truckee with its many fine restaurants, boutiques, and galleries is just 4 miles away. Lake Tahoe is just 15 miles away and Reno is just 30 miles away. Tahoe Donner is also located in close proximity to many exciting activities including: hiking, sailing, wind surfing, water skiing, fishing, white water rafting, kayaking, historical sites, national forest, auto rental, bike rental, a variety of site seeing tours, movie theater, ice skating, snow mobiling, skate boarding, and miniature golf. Chalet Sierra is the perfect all-season retreat for both tranquility and adventure. Includes beds made with luxury linens, luxury bath towels and beach towels (and laundering).
Chalet Sierra is the Perfect All-Season Retreat {...}
Published: August 29, 2008, 4:06 am - Indexed: August 29, 2008, 1:44 pm - Page Size: 7KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - Mill Valley Downtown Rental (mill valley) $179 1bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/mill-valley-downtown-rental-mill-valley-179-1bd-20080879221.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/mill-valley-downtown-rental-mill-valley-179-1bd-20080879221.htm Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:39:32 GMT Mill Valley Downtown Rental See http://MillValleyDowntownRental.com for availability calendar, location, 12 photographs, floor plan, rates for weekly, monthly and multiple months. Please call 415-999-5593 for additional information. Located in the lower level of a three-story 1919 Late Victorian cottage, with a separate gated entry court yard garden, this furnished charming, spacious one-bedroom rental is 745 SF-almost three times as large as a typical hotel room-and can sleep 4-6. It is less than a two minute walk to the Mill Valley Plaza and Depot, Sequoia Theatre/Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club and Sweetwater Saloon, less than a three minute walk to City Hall, Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, three coffee houses, twenty restaurants and popular Mill Valley Market (Grocery, Produce and Meat Departments, Delicatessen, Wine and Spirits and Ready-to-Eat Foods) and easy walking distance to 142 Throckmorton Theatre, the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival and Mill Valley Library. The Rental unit location is ideally suited for: 1. Vacations; 2. Family or guest holiday visits; 3. Business travel; 4. Extended stays due to re-location or house-hunting; 5. Temporary housing due to home construction, alterations or additions and 6. Close proximity for receptions or party preparation at Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club. General: Architecturally designed and completely altered in 2005, new kitchen, wood windows, French entry door, entire unit has 12x 12 red quarry tile floors with area rugs, new furniture, curtains plus complementary utilities, DirecTV with HBO and High-Speed Wireless Internet access for your laptop or you can use the provided Apple iMac with printer, desk and chair, Rental is the lower floor of a three-story duplex with owner-occupied upper levels; Court Yard: Entry court garden with fountain and sitting area; Living/Dining: Large 29’ x 13’; Living/Dining area with sunny exposure, dining table seats 6 and expands for 8, serving table, 23” flat-screen television in cabinet above fireplace, gas fireplace with black granite hearth, queen size sofa bed with 1-1/2” thick plush topper and desk. Floor area is available for a platform-high queen size Aero bed, with provided sheets and blankets - available for $10 a night - so the Rental can sleep up to 6 for short-term stays; Sleeping: Large 14’ x 11’ bedroom with California King-size bed, night tables, dresser with mirror; Bath, Dressing and Laundry: Tile bath/shower glass enclosure, 6’ closet (8 LF for clothes) with 2’ closet shelf unit, 5’x 5’ Laundry Room (complementary Washer/Dryer included) with additional closet poles or storage; Kitchen: Stainless steel appliances (gas range, hood, dishwasher, refrigerator, disposer), black granite counters, coffee maker/bean grinder, popcorn maker, juicer, toaster, microwave, mixer painted wood cabinets with full height pantry stocked with basic condiments and spices, kitchen includes all cooking utensils and place settings for 8; complementary popcorn and Peet's coffee during stay, plus a Wilford Wong 88 Pt+ rated bottle of Napa or Sonoma Valley wine upon arrival; Green Construction: 92% efficient forced-air gas heating with setback thermostat plus supplemental fireplace heater; High-efficiency hot water on demand, thermal and acoustical insulation upgrades, quarry tile floor heat sink; Safety: Seismic improvements (including new foundations) meet latest building codes, including fire protection (sprinklers); Public Transportation: Golden Gate Transit and Ferry: Two bus stops within two blocks: No. 4 (to San Francisco), No. 17 (San Rafael and Marin City Transit Centers) and No. 19 (San Rafael Transit Center) and Marin Airporter [SFO to Marin and Marin to SFO]; Parking: Although the Rental is in a residential district, due to the close proximity of downtown, street parking in front of the Rental has a 4-hour maximum restricted Residential Parking policy between 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM Monday through Saturday. If you intend to stay in the Rental during the day, cars must be moved once between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM to avoid a $15 fine. No street parking is allowed in the designated Employee Permit section across from the Rental between 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM Monday through Saturday, but available at other times and all day Sunday and Holidays. Adequate street parking is generally available directly in front of (or in close proximity) to the Rental. NO parking meters are in front of the Rental. Unlimited street parking beyond signage restricting parking is available approximately one-half block east down Sunnyside Avenue. To completely avoid parking restrictions, off-street parking is available for $10 a night - up to four tandem driveway spaces; Noise: The Rental is located in a residential district close to town and there is typical minor ambient noise generated by neighbors, distance 'village' traffic and activity; ironically the loudest noise [caah-caah-caah] can come from crows-most notably in the mornings, but the Rental is well insulated thermally and acoustically. During the night the Rental is very quiet and restful. However, if you are looking for an absolutely quiet environment, another Rental in the hills or canyons is more appropriate, not in the ‘flatland’ area; the trade off is the convenience and ability to walk to parks, schools and downtown and enjoy all its ‘village’ amenities; Baby Sitting: Certified (CPR, etc.) babysitting maybe available with advance notice. Baby Crib: A JPMA Certified baby crib, complete with mattress and waterproof pad, bumpers, sheet and blanket, is available with advance notice; there is a rental charge of $10 per night. Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Mill Valley Downtown Rental (mill valley) $179 1bd {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Mill Valley Downtown Rental See http://MillValleyDowntownRental.com for availability calendar, location, 12 photographs, floor plan, rates for weekly, monthly and multiple months. Please call 415-999-5593 for additional information. Located in the lower level of a three-story 1919 Late Victorian cottage, with a separate gated entry court yard garden, this furnished charming, spacious one-bedroom rental is 745 SF-almost three times as large as a typical hotel room-and can sleep 4-6. It is less than a two minute walk to the Mill Valley Plaza and Depot, Sequoia Theatre/Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club and Sweetwater Saloon, less than a three minute walk to City Hall, Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, three coffee houses, twenty restaurants and popular Mill Valley Market (Grocery, Produce and Meat Departments, Delicatessen, Wine and Spirits and Ready-to-Eat Foods) and easy walking distance to 142 Throckmorton Theatre, the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival and Mill Valley Library. The Rental unit location is ideally suited for: 1. Vacations; 2. Family or guest holiday visits; 3. Business travel; 4. Extended stays due to re-location or house-hunting; 5. Temporary housing due to home construction, alterations or additions and 6. Close proximity for receptions or party preparation at Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club. General: Architecturally designed and completely altered in 2005, new kitchen, wood windows, French entry door, entire unit has 12x 12 red quarry tile floors with area rugs, new furniture, curtains plus complementary utilities, DirecTV with HBO and High-Speed Wireless Internet access for your laptop or you can use the provided Apple iMac with printer, desk and chair, Rental is the lower floor of a three-story duplex with owner-occupied upper levels; Court Yard: Entry court garden with fountain and sitting area; Living/Dining: Large 29’ x 13’; Living/Dining area with sunny exposure, dining table seats 6 and expands for 8, serving table, 23” flat-screen television in cabinet above fireplace, gas fireplace with black granite hearth, queen size sofa bed with 1-1/2” thick plush topper and desk. Floor area is available for a platform-high queen size Aero bed, with provided sheets and blankets - available for $10 a night - so the Rental can sleep up to 6 for short-term stays; Sleeping: Large 14’ x 11’ bedroom with California King-size bed, night tables, dresser with mirror; Bath, Dressing and Laundry: Tile bath/shower glass enclosure, 6’ closet (8 LF for clothes) with 2’ closet shelf unit, 5’x 5’ Laundry Room (complementary Washer/Dryer included) with additional closet poles or storage; Kitchen: Stainless steel appliances (gas range, hood, dishwasher, refrigerator, disposer), black granite counters, coffee maker/bean grinder, popcorn maker, juicer, toaster, microwave, mixer painted wood cabinets with full height pantry stocked with basic condiments and spices, kitchen includes all cooking utensils and place settings for 8; complementary popcorn and Peet's coffee during stay, plus a Wilford Wong 88 Pt+ rated bottle of Napa or Sonoma Valley wine upon arrival; Green Construction: 92% efficient forced-air gas heating with setback thermostat plus supplemental fireplace heater; High-efficiency hot water on demand, thermal and acoustical insulation upgrades, quarry tile floor heat sink; Safety: Seismic improvements (including new foundations) meet latest building codes, including fire protection (sprinklers); Public Transportation: Golden Gate Transit and Ferry: Two bus stops within two blocks: No. 4 (to San Francisco), No. 17 (San Rafael and Marin City Transit Centers) and No. 19 (San Rafael Transit Center) and Marin Airporter [SFO to Marin and Marin to SFO]; Parking: Although the Rental is in a residential district, due to the close proximity of downtown, street parking in front of the Rental has a 4-hour maximum restricted Residential Parking policy between 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM Monday through Saturday. If you intend to stay in the Rental during the day, cars must be moved once between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM to avoid a $15 fine. No street parking is allowed in the designated Employee Permit section across from the Rental between 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM Monday through Saturday, but available at other times and all day Sunday and Holidays. Adequate street parking is generally available directly in front of (or in close proximity) to the Rental. NO parking meters are in front of the Rental. Unlimited street parking beyond signage restricting parking is available approximately one-half block east down Sunnyside Avenue. To completely avoid parking restrictions, off-street parking is available for $10 a night - up to four tandem driveway spaces; Noise: The Rental is located in a residential district close to town and there is typical minor ambient noise generated by neighbors, distance 'village' traffic and activity; ironically the loudest noise [caah-caah-caah] can come from crows-most notably in the mornings, but the Rental is well insulated thermally and acoustically. During the night the Rental is very quiet and restful. However, if you are looking for an absolutely quiet environment, another Rental in the hills or canyons is more appropriate, not in the ‘flatland’ area; the trade off is the convenience and ability to walk to parks, schools and downtown and enjoy all its ‘village’ amenities; Baby Sitting: Certified (CPR, etc.) babysitting maybe available with advance notice. Baby Crib: A JPMA Certified baby crib, complete with mattress and waterproof pad, bumpers, sheet and blanket, is available with advance notice; there is a rental charge of $10 per night.
Mill Valley Downtown Rental {...}
Published: August 17, 2008, 2:39 am - Indexed: August 17, 2008, 9:41 am - Page Size: 10KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - Mill Valley Downtown Rental (mill valley) $179 1bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/mill-valley-downtown-rental-mill-valley-179-1bd-2008085117.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/mill-valley-downtown-rental-mill-valley-179-1bd-2008085117.htm Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:39:52 GMT Mill Valley Downtown Rental See http://MillValleyDowntownRental.com for availability calendar, location, 12 photographs, floor plan, rates for weekly, monthly and multiple months. Please call 415-999-5593 for additional information. Located in the lower level of a three-story 1919 Late Victorian cottage, with a separate gated entry court yard garden, this furnished charming, spacious one-bedroom rental is 745 SF-almost three times as large as a typical hotel room-and can sleep 4-6. It is less than a two minute walk to the Mill Valley Plaza and Depot, Sequoia Theatre/Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club and Sweetwater Saloon, less than a three minute walk to City Hall, Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, three coffee houses, twenty restaurants and popular Mill Valley Market (Grocery, Produce and Meat Departments, Delicatessen, Wine and Spirits and Ready-to-Eat Foods) and easy walking distance to 142 Throckmorton Theatre, the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival and Mill Valley Library. The Rental unit location is ideally suited for: 1. Vacations; 2. Family or guest holiday visits; 3. Business travel; 4. Extended stays due to re-location or house-hunting; 5. Temporary housing due to home construction, alterations or additions and 6. Close proximity for receptions or party preparation at Mill Valley Outdoor Art Club. General: Architecturally designed and completely altered in 2005, new kitchen, wood windows, French entry door, entire unit has 12x 12 red quarry tile floors with area rugs, new furniture, curtains plus complementary utilities, DirecTV with HBO and High-Speed Wireless Intern