tom matrullo's possibly adjacent blog

I am interviewed by the Head Lemur, who is interviewed in turn on Brainshare.

Speaking of Brainshare, not the site but the concept:

The New York Times reports that TV networks are becoming more incestuous, developing new programming in-house. The Times sagely opines:

The causes are not hard to find. They include declining audiences, a flat advertising market, increasing difficulties selling shows abroad...

Some day the Times will discover the meaning of ''cause'' and ''effect,'' but that day evidently has yet to come. Consider this growth of incest more broadly, you get things very much like, in fact, the Times, which certainly prefers its home-grown dreams of life to those created by anyone else. Steve Bochco's unhappiness with TV Land seems appropriate to one's unhappiness with News Land:

"When you develop pilots in-house, they tend to reflect a very common sensibility, a very common denominator, which is the last thing television needs now. You're not getting passionate people bringing their babies to you."

The bias towards the intellectual property of one's own intellect (or of the intellects one owns) is substantial. This autogenesis is opposed to forms of creativity envisioned by folks like Situationist* Ralph Rumney, who apparently had to die to get into the Times. Rumney wanted to dye the canals of Venice. He also insisted that no art could be truly original:

''The greatest plagiarist of all-time was Picasso, who if he saw a good idea somewhere just took it and made it his own, in a flagrant manner...''