Twitter is so Early 2009 — Have You Tried Phoneme?

Why, it takes nearly an entire minute to write a single coherent thought.

Who has that kind of time?

That’s why I’m now using Phoneme to keep all my friends up to date.

Phoneme allows me to send a single grunt, moan, or schwa sound to hundreds of followers all over the world, instantly. In turn, they can gasp, tongue-click, or glottal-stop their followers, and so on.

It’s great, and a real timesaver.

Or, as I just "phonemed" my followers: Ð!

Eight Interesting Facts about Slumdog Millionaire

In the wake of its eight Oscars including Best Picture, eight interesting facts about Slumdog Millionaire:

1. Slumdog, a film with no A-list stars, was almost never released in American theaters. Time Warner decided in 2008 to shut down its indy division, which owned the rights, and the movie would have been dumped directly to DVD if Fox Searchlight hadn’t decided to step in and release the $15 million film.

2. Worried that his Hollywood backers would never consent to a film with substantial amounts of dialogue in Hindi, director Danny Boyle simply fibbed about how much Hindi was involved.

3. Dev Patel, who had never lived in India prior to filming, only won the lead role after the original actor was considered too good-looking.

4. Q & A, the novel on which the film is based, is centered around a fictional game show; Slumdog, however, moved into the realm of the real Millionaire show once Celador, the owner of Millionaire, signed on as one of the film’s producers.

5. The first host of the Indian Millionaire was Amitabh Bachchan — the real-life actor whose autograph is sought in the film. Anil Kapoor, who plays the host in the movie, was once a celebrity contestant on the real-life show.

6. The word “slumdog” isn’t Hindi slang, but the screenwriter’s invention, unrecognizable to most actual Indians. The invention of “slumdog” has led to a defamation lawsuit and numerous protests. That said, the Indian media and Mumbai itself are generally thrilled with the film’s Oscar success.

7. Surprisingly, Slumdog is arguably not 2008’s best-reviewed film, although it was the best-reviewed of the five nominees. According to both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, the nation’s critics generally gave Wall-E, Man on Wire, and Waltz With Bashir higher praise, albeit in genres (animation, documentary, animation again) generally considered only in their own categories.

8. Ten-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who played the role of Salim as a boy, and nine-year-old Rubina Ali, who played Latika as a young girl, were only brought to the awards when their parents agreed to allowed them to travel at the last minute. Despite the Slumdog director’s and producers’ presumably sincere interest in assuring their long-term welfare, Ismail and Ali are still living in squalor — Ismail under a tarpaulin he shares with his family, Ali in a shack next to an open sewer. Now that the awards have been handed out, both will presumably now return to the slum.

Eight Interesting Facts about Slumdog Millionaire

In the wake of its eight Oscars including Best Picture, eight interesting facts about Slumdog Millionaire:

1. Slumdog, a film with no A-list stars, was almost never released in American theaters. Time Warner decided in 2008 to shut down its indy division, which owned the rights, and the movie would have been dumped directly to DVD if Fox Searchlight hadn’t decided to step in and release the $15 million film.

2. Worried that his Hollywood backers would never consent to a film with substantial amounts of dialogue in Hindi, director Danny Boyle simply fibbed about how much Hindi was involved.

3. Dev Patel, who had never lived in India prior to filming, only won the lead role after the original actor was considered too good-looking.

4. Q & A, the novel on which the film is based, is centered around a fictional game show; Slumdog, however, moved into the realm of the real Millionaire show once Celador, the owner of Millionaire, signed on as one of the film’s producers.

5. The first host of the Indian Millionaire was Amitabh Bachchan — the real-life actor whose autograph is sought in the film. Anil Kapoor, who plays the host in the movie, was once a celebrity contestant on the real-life show.

6. The word “slumdog” isn’t Hindi slang, but the screenwriter’s invention, unrecognizable to most actual Indians. The invention of “slumdog” has led to a defamation lawsuit and numerous protests. That said, the Indian media and Mumbai itself are generally thrilled with the film’s Oscar success.

7. Surprisingly, Slumdog is arguably not 2008’s best-reviewed film, although it was the best-reviewed of the five nominees. According to both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, the nation’s critics generally gave Wall-E, Man on Wire, and Waltz With Bashir higher praise, albeit in genres (animation, documentary, animation again) generally considered only in their own categories.

8. Ten-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who played the role of Salim as a boy, and nine-year-old Rubina Ali, who played Latika as a young girl, were only brought to the awards when their parents agreed to allowed them to travel at the last minute. Despite the Slumdog director’s and producers’ presumably sincere interest in assuring their long-term welfare, Ismail and Ali are still living in squalor — Ismail under a tarpaulin he shares with his family, Ali in a shack next to an open sewer. Now that the awards have been handed out, both will presumably now return to the slum.

The Day Wall Street Exploded

No, not any of the crashing and gnashing we’ve seen of late.

Referring here to an unsolved bombing on Wall Street at the outset of the Roaring Twenties, a time of great labor unrest often overlooked in pop history.

My friend Beverly Gage has written a terrific new book on the incident, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror.  The parallels to the present are striking.

Got a great write-up in this past Sunday’s New York Times. Totally worth a read.

Get These Motherf***ing Geese Off This Motherf***ing Plane

Using tracking data from Flightaware.com and Google Maps, a Flickr user has plotted the exact course of the USAir flight that landed in the Hudson today.  (Click here or on the map for full size.)

Sample Image

This isn’t a commercial pilot. This isn’t just a regular hero. This is John McClane at the end of a Die Hard movie, pulling off a ludicrous, insanely impossible move that people in the real world wouldn’t even dream up, much less accomplish.

The audience in a test screening would never believe it.  They’d be looking for the CGI work and knowingly listening for the Wilhelm Screams in the soundtrack.

Wow.  Hats off. Unreal.

If the pilot is being interviewed, and Alan Rickman suddenly shows up trying to take one last shot before he finally dies… don’t say I didn’t warn you.

PS — I was on an Avianca plane once that had serious mechanical problems shortly after takeoff from Bogotá.  (I never found out what they were.) The pilot banked that 737 around like it was a sprint car on a dirt track and got us back down in what was probably thirty minutes but felt like thirty years.

Not saying I know what it was like for these folks. But I do know that I have been (a) in some awe of pilots in general, and (b) a bit more white-knuckled about flying ever since.

We had to spend the night in Bogotá, so the airline gave everybody free round-trip tickets anywhere they fly, good for a year.  I know their safety record is actually pretty good, I actually loved Colombia and every place I visited in South America, and the free ticket could have gotten me all the way to Buenos Aires again. But somehow… I just never quite got around to using it.