Eric and Neil crash ‘The Tonight Show’

Eric Ulken on July 15, 2004

My friend Neil and I managed to see a taping of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” at NBC studios in Burbank. Jay’s guests were actor Mark Wahlberg, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and one of my all-time favorite musicians, Sarah McLachlan.

This is something I suppose everyone who lives in L.A. should do at least once, and it’s been on my to-do list for a while. What surprised me is that it’s not all that difficult to get tickets — if you have lots of time to spare. I had figured it would be nearly impossible to get tickets on the day of the show, but Neil wanted to give it a shot, and his persistence paid off.

We arrived at NBC at 8 a.m. to stand in line for tickets. Because there were already enough people ahead of us to take all the confirmed tickets, we ended up with standby tickets, which required that we show up at 3:30 p.m. and wait in another line to get into the studio. We ended up with about the last seats in the house — a few people were turned away — but nearly everybody who showed up was seated.

On stage tonight: Strict Scrutiny and the Chilling Effects

Eric Ulken on June 30, 2004

I was sitting in my communication law class the other night, trying to make sense of all the legalese, and I got to thinking: Some of these terms would look great on a theater marquee or the cover of an album.

So, I give you five (potentially) great band names inspired by comm law terms:

  • Clear and Present Danger
  • Incitement to Riot
  • Spectrum Scarcity
  • The Prurient Interests
  • Strict Scrutiny and the Chilling Effects

Yeah, this might be funnier to law students. Or it might just not be funny at all. OK, this is dumb. Nevermind.

(Note, however: If you do end up using one of these names and your band makes it big, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.)

Syndicate this site

Eric Ulken on June 4, 2004

One of the hats I wear is that of production geek for Online Journalism Review, which this week leads with an interesting piece by Staci Kramer on the evolution of RSS (aka Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) in the online news world. For those who don’t know what RSS is, put simply, it’s a way to quickly retrieve headlines from dozens of sites for easy perusal on your computer.

I take pride in being ahead of the curve on new communication technologies, but I hadn’t given RSS much thought until this week, as I was working on Staci’s story. So I downloaded NetNewsWire, an RSS newsreader for the Mac. (Thanks to Travis Smith for the suggestion.) It’s too early to say whether I’ll use this technology a whole lot, but I can definitely see its appeal.

Anyway, I have finally gotten in step with the times and added an RSS feed to my site. Yeah, I’m sure you are one of the thousands of people who have been waiting patiently for this crucial feature. 🙂

For those wondering how to make use of RSS, another OJR article gives some background and surveys popular newsreader software.

We made it through ‘Making it in L.A.’

Eric Ulken on May 7, 2004

Today my colleagues in the multimedia reporting class and I presented our final project, a website called “Making it in L.A.” I think we’re all pretty happy with how it turned out. Let us know what you think by signing the guest book on the site.

Here’s a nice photo of me and my awesome teammates after the presentation.

That’s Eugene Lee, photographer extraordinaire; Janna Braun, our copy chief and resource person; Matt Myerhoff, stats editor and double-duty reporter; Heather Somers, issues editor; me (I was the design and big-picture person); Elizabeth Osder, our instructor; and Paritosh Bansal, profiles editor and production guru (or, as he put it, “outsourcing guy”).

End-of-semester frenzy

Eric Ulken on April 28, 2004

Well, I’m closing in fast on the end of my first semester at USC. I can tell you that it’s been (and continues to be) a lot of work, but I’m really happy with how things are going here. I am looking forward, though, to a little more down time this summer.

If you want to have a sneak peek at what’s taking up most of my time right now, look here. This is the class project for my multimedia journalism course, an in-depth report on the challenges of getting by on a small income in L.A. (which could apply to me, but our subjects are in somewhat more dire straits). This is still a work in progress, but it has to be finished by this time next week, because we’re presenting it to faculty and other interested parties next Thursday.

Hopefully I’ll have a little more time to blog once the semester’s over. Stay tuned…

Beware the dreaded moir

Eric Ulken on April 14, 2004

The reaction to President Bush’s first prime-time press conference in more than a year? Muted. What people really felt strongly about? His tie.

Yes, as E! Online reports, the president’s dressers apparently failed to heed the advice I was given in my first broadcast news class: Avoid ties with small, high-contrast patterns, or your viewers will fall victim to the hypnotic moiré effect. It’s a distracting appearance of movement as the image of the tie’s pattern gets filtered through the pixels on your television screen. (I’m sure there’s a better way to explain this, but you get the point.)

According to a tongue-in-cheek Knight Ridder story, rumors that “Bush’s tie shut down the electric grid in Ohio and hypnotized Americans into forming a cult that worships presidential adviser Karen Hughes” are likely untrue.

Still, will heads roll in the West Wing over tiegate?

Why I’ll never be famous

Eric Ulken on April 11, 2004

Watching Ben Affleck painfully mug his way through Jersey Girl (Kevin Smith fans, save your money), I figured out why I’ll never be a celebrity: I don’t want to work that hard.

Seriously, you’ve got to work hard to be famous — because generally you have to earn the spotlight by being good at something. Or, in Affleck’s case, you have to act studly and hang out with Matt Damon (and even that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth).

This isn’t to say that I don’t work hard occasionally. But the things I work at just aren’t spotlight material. You won’t hear, for example, people exclaiming, “Boy, that Eric Ulken sure is talented… He can code HTML and catch dangling participles with the best of them!”

If you’re lucky, you might land a break — like American Idol reject William Hung did. I’ve never watched a single episode of Idol, but even I have heard his hilariously bad rendition of Ricky Martin‘s already lousy song. (And all you people who laughed: Really, could you do any better?)

Thing is, even accidental stars have to make some effort to get noticed. I don’t really see myself performing bad pop songs in front of television cameras just so the passive masses can get a quick chuckle at my expense.

So, Hollywood, I won’t burden you with my aspirations of stardom. I see now that fame calls for far more toil and sacrifice than I can muster, and I salute your people for carrying that heavy load. You’re off the hook, at least until headline-writing becomes a celebrity occupation.

But in the meantime, can you get me a date with Jennifer Garner?

The non-entry

Eric Ulken on March 31, 2004

See? I knew this blogging thing would never work out. I’m just too busy (or lazy, or easily distracted) to post regularly. I would be asleep now, but they’re filming this elaborate car chase sequence across the street (no kidding), and the squealing tires and gunfire sounds are keeping me awake.

I brought home the first actual grade of my graduate school career today — an A–/A on a midterm exam. My seemingly conflicted professor points out that an A–/A is closer to an A– than an A (where an A/A– would have been closer to an A). I’m not sure I understand all that, but anyway… I scored somewhere between an A and an A–, which is just peachy by me.

Anyway, this post is just to let you all know that I am alive. Thanks for checking in. 🙂