traffic – Torg

My sister Anne and I talk about her move to LA, looking for work, and Dave Kerpen’s book, Likeable Social Media. Anne will also meet up with me next week in Shreveport, Louisiana for the Phenom Film Festival. We talk pitching projects in Hollywood, and we consider Dave Kerpen’s book, Likeable Social Media. Oh yeah, there’s a funny bacon video from one of my favorite comedians.

function fbs_click() {u=location.href;t=document.title;window.open(‘http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=’+encodeURIComponent(u)+’&t=’+encodeURIComponent(t),’sharer’,’toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436′);return false;} html .fb_share_link { padding:2px 0 0 20px; height:16px; background:url(http://static.ak.facebook.com/images/share/facebook_share_icon.gif?6:26981) no-repeat top left; }Share on Facebook

When Anne tells me she’s not sure her personality is suited to the pitch projects in L.A., I remember the time when I completed an Outdoor Wilderness course through Outward Bound and they talked about people’s comfort zone, stretch zone, and panic zone. The idea was that if you could live in your stretch zone and make it your comfort zone, you could gradually face situations which cause you to be fearful. Back then, we were talking about sleeping outside without a tent and scaling rock walls, but I think it’s a notion that can be applied to public speaking and trying to meet new people. My sister is a lady who has jumped out of airplanes. I think she can meet people interested in projects such as Love on the Big Screen.

Listen to the podcast by clicking on the play button below:

http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2048745/height/325/width/325/autoplay/no/autonext/no/direction/forward/thumbnail/yes

You can also listen to the podcast through iTunes. Go to the store and type in “Prof. Torg Read, Write, and Teach Digital Book Club.” It would help us if you’d rate the podcast or even leave a comment.

Relevant Links:

Chris Sparling, screenwriter. We talk about Chris’s writing of Buried as a low-budget script he could star in himself.
Hollywood Best List of Unproduced Films
Next time, my sister Anne and I will discuss Edward Jay Epstein’s book, The Hollywood Economist

Questions for you, oh wise reader:

Do you ever consult social media to make purchasing decisions?
What sorts of pages have you “liked”?
Do you use Four Square, Yelp, or other kinds of social media beyond Facebook?

Love to hear your answers via a comment.

And now for your funny “bacon” themed video:

Ready to Merge on I 95 After Filling Up the Tank

Whether I’m reading the latest news in the New York Times about the BP oil spill or watching a documentary such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, it doesn’t take me long to feel about as angry as I can get at the big oil companies. It’s another sledgehammer blow to Louisiana and her neighbors, where the environment is getting shellacked as if it’s a chocolate covered raison and families’ livelihoods are drowning in the murky brown sludge. In the NY Times, Jill Abramson quotes a fisherman who says, “I’d rather have another hurricane than this.”

Just as I start to get good and worked up imagining all the ways these companies can be prosecuted, I think of something about my own life that reveals my hypocrisy: three days a week when courses are in session at St. John’s University where I teach, I drive 124 miles round trip back and forth to work. Don’t I do about as much as one individual human being can do to use oil? Just before the days that gas went from around $2 a gallon up to over $5, I stopped renting, and bought a house up Interstate 95 from Queens. Up in Connecticut was the only place—and this was with extra help from a relative—where my family could afford to purchase a home.

People are asking me why I don’t take the train. I did once: the Metro North to Grand Central, a short walk to the “F” train in Manhattan, out to Central Queens, and another half mile walk up the hill to campus. Door to door it took me three hours one way to get to my office. I don’t see me extending my two and a half hours a day on the road in my car to six hours on trains. I’ve put my house up for sale, in part, so that I might move closer to where I work. This would save me money and by buying less gas, I suppose I would lesson one little pin prickle of the thirst this country has for oil. But considering that plan now, it feels like a pretty measly step on my part that doesn’t cause me to feel like any less of a hypocrite.