SilentTalkie » Dave Duncan

The Leno Top Ten

Dave Duncan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:00:51 +0000

The Top Ten list of things shorter than Jay Leno’s concession speech given that, despite everyone else knowing this the second they heard it was going to be on air, his primetime talkshow has been cancelled due to criminally low ratings:

10. “The Big Book of Careers for Graduates with a B.A. in History”

9. Andy Dick’s attention span.

8. John Baird’s attention span.

7. Any conversation between Andy Dick and John Baird.

6. The professional futures of the guys at NBC who greenlighted “Primetime with Jay Leno”

5. The amount of time I realize I’m watching Oprah, Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz before I quickly change the channel to anything else.

4. The amount of time I realize I’m watching John Baird before I quickly change the channel to anything else.

3. The amount of time I realize I’m watching Andy Dick in anything BUT “News Radio” before I quickly change the channel to anything else.

2. This sentence.

1. The period of time between when you knock something off the counter and still think you can catch it until it hits the floor in a big gooey, sloppy and/or sticky mess.

Writing Worth Reading: Web Edition I

Dave Duncan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:30:01 +0000

I don’t know about you, but my mind can work a lot like my stomach sometimes. Simply put, it gets hungry and demands to be fed, usually through reading. So, what follows is a list of snacks for your mind.

One Sentence
Sometimes serious, often humourous and always impressive. This site takes user-submitted stories consisting of just one sentence and one sentence only. I’m frequently surprised at how much story some people can cram into just a few words.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
SMBC is a web comic updated daily, and if you find that the internet can easily offend your delicate sensibilities, then this probably isn’t the site for you. Most of the content is rated R or higher, so keep the kids away. You can read it at work so long as no one is looking over your shoulder and they aren’t close enough to hear you erupting in laughter.

The Defective Yeti
I don’t even know how to begin describing this site. I guess it’s a blog, and it’s written by a very talented and witty guy. Just read it and you’ll be hooked.

The Sneeze
I’d put this site in the same category as Defective Yeti. No summary needed. Just read a few posts, and enjoy the audio clips as this guy tortures his kids with humour.

Now we move on to some sites that are less about the voyeurism that comes from looking into other people’s lives and minds. These sites are about creativity, problem-solving and DIY-ness. Even if you aren’t into soldering or building your own linux box, it’s inspiring to see what other people do with their free time, and can get ideas of your own off the ground.

Lifehacker
This site (updated frequently each day) does what it says; it hacks your life. Focusing on self-improvement through efficiency, each post varies from software-use tips to social advice. This site is best used with RSS to bypass posts that don’t interest you.

MakeZine’s MakeBlog
Although it’s targeted at the home-based d0-it-yourself enthusiast, even those of us with 10 thumbs and no drill press can enjoy seeing the fruits of other people’s labours. At the very least, watching other people work can get your own creative juices flowing.

MakeUseOf
This is sort of like MakeZine, but instead of hardware and PVC, it’s internet, software and web. I’ve installed at least a dozen apps after reading about them here and Iv’e never been disappointed. The best part is that I never even knew I needed them until reading about them here, in a well-written review. Like LifeHacker, this site is best used with RSS.

Surely you have some suggestions for sites that didn’t make this list. Submit them in the comments.

My Mind is No Longer My Own

Dave Duncan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:29:43 +0000

There was a time, once, way back in the past, when I needed to depend on my memory for things. It’s such a vague memory that it seems more like a dream than reality, but if I focus really hard, I can recall it.

It was in a time before the proliferation of the internet, and a time of unrest among friends and family, when disputes could only be settled with a combination of collective memories and fisticuffs. Many people died and many more were maimed, all in the name of righteousness. Marriages were torn asunder and lifelong friendships destroyed. It was a simpler time, a more noble time (some might say).

In our modern age of conveniences and machines, of gender and racial equality, of peace and understanding, I have been relieved of the burden of memory by the wonderful people at Internet Inc. (a subsiduary of SkyNet) and can now focus all mental energies elsewhere, namely arguing about the things I read on the internet.

And now, two simple examples of how the internet saved me from my own memory, from my own mind and having to actually learn.

Case Study, The First: The Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

Some of my favourite discussions and arguments from my childhood and adolescence came about from remembering (or trying to ) movie names, years of release, actors and characters. Those of you who share my seasoned vintage of 30 years may recall “Six Degrees of Bacon”, a ‘game’ (used in the loosest definition of the word) where one would try to connect two actors professionally through the works of Golden Globe-nominated actor Kevin Bacon.

A small piece of me died one day in 2000 when I found The Oracle of Bacon online and realized that the ‘fun’ (also used in the loosest definition of the word) of the game had been completely automated, thanks to a huge database of movie information.

Since that day, the answers to any of my questions related to film or TV are just 9 keystrokes away at IMDB.com (the extra stroke is for the ‘Enter’ key). Not only are my questions answered, but I read all sorts of seemingly useful information that entertains me for fleeting moments, and that I believe will enlighten me for years to come. Alas, it is an illusion, a house of cards, and the moment I steer off the page, it is all lost to me.

Case Study, The Second: Wikipedia

I don’t remember when it was that I first encountered Wikipedia, but I know it came up first in a long list of Google search results. It sounded foreign and dangerous, but I clicked on it anyways (so I was probably on someone else’s computer at the time).

I was immediately assaulted with data, and my senses were quickly overloaded. What’s more, it seemed every word in the article linked to its own article with yet more links to other articles, and so on. It felt as though I had access to every mind alive on the planet all at once.

Wikipedia quickly became my default stop for information on any topic, and if I couldn’t find it there, I knew it would be hard as hell to find anywhere. I also found myself spending hours clicking from topic to topic until I forgot why I event went there in the first place.

And yet, what I read there isn’t absorbed or learned after I use it to answer a specific question, satisfy a curiosity or merely to waste time. It is there for a moment, then it’s gone, like all fleeting things.

Conclusion

So is this knowledge at all? Why do I treat all this information as waste? I think the answer is two-fold:

there is so much information contained therein, that to even attempt to absorb it would be foolishness, especially considering that
all of these data are available for free, any time of day or night (where the internet is available, which is nearly everywhere) thus negating my need to absorb it for later retrieval.

It is as though my mind is now a smaller piece of a larger hive-mind and mine isn’t needed for data storage any longer but for processing; a machine to link these bits of stored data into meaningful connections.

That, my friends, is what is happening. While the internet is certainly making me remember FAR less, it’s certainly not making me any dumber. On the contrary, it is forcing me to find meaning and purpose for all this new-found raw information.

Sometimes that means settling a long-standing dispute, and others it means connecting two works by the same author, director or actor. Of course, sometimes it just lets me watch a video of a monkey drinking his own pee, so maybe we shouldn’t overthink it, eh?

The Voice on the Line

Dave Duncan — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:00:35 +0000

The phone is ringing and it’s not like I have anything better to do, but I know who’s calling and I don’t want to talk, so I let it ring. It takes forever to pass through all eight rings and then stops. Because I’m a neandrathal and have one of those old-style answering machines, there’s a long pause where my message is playing over the line and the machine comes to life with the caller’s voice. His message is banal and has no point. He speaks for minutes on end without saying anything at all, and I start to wonder if the machine will cut him off. As suddenly as his voice came to life, he says goodbye and the machine clicks and then beeps.

It’s reassuring to hear him on the line, and that’s all I need from his calls. It’s as though I’m saying to myself “Yup, he’s still alive” and I like to think that he gets as much from leaving a message on my machine as he gets when I actually answer and just grunt “uh huh” as he tells me the same stories time and time again.

One day, he will call with a real problem and I’ll hear the anxiety in his voice on the recording. I’ll probably feel guilty for not answering (well, more guilty than I already feel) and I’ll call him right back. I’ll lie and say that I was just coming into the house as we was leaving the message, and we’ll talk for hours. He’ll know I was lying, but he won’t care because he got to talk to me in the end. After all, the end justifies the means. I read that in a book he got me for Christmas a few years ago.

One day, I hope he will call with really good news and I won’t feel guilty at all. I’ll listen to the message over and over and over again until my machine is almost worn out, and then I’ll call him. I’ll tell him the machine is broken and act like I didn’t hear the message at all just to hear him share his good news all over again… fresh. He’ll know I was lying, but he won’t care because he got to talk to me in the end. That will be a very good day.

Today is not that day. A few minutes later, the phone rings again and his voice sounds shaky and upset through the hiss and static of the machine. Today (like most days) he has a problem and his problems are mine. In a few minutes, I’ll call him back and go through the routine of listening to him, offering some advice that he’ll ignore, and then listening to him again. He just needs someone to listen.

So, for the few minutes I have before I call him back, I will collect my thoughts, relax and prepare myself. This is never easy, but in the end I like that he needs me. After all, the end justifies the means, or so I’ve read.

WOLVERINES!!!

Dave Duncan — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:00:50 +0000

1984 was a pivotal year in the history of the world. Apple Computers marketed their first home PC and worldwide people were turning into snobby assholes, Michael Jackson was badly burned filming a Pepsi commercial and would spiral into a weirdness to whose depths no one could have predicted, and the USSR (and other Soviet nations) boycotted the Olympics resulting in a record number of medal wins for countries that didn’t have genetically modified athletes (I cite Rocky IV here as proof). Yes, it was the end of innocence for this planet earth.

And yet, in the midst of all this chaos there was a voice of reason; John Milius. Milius has numerous writing and directing credits to his name (Conan the Barbarian for one), but nothing would ever rival his finest work… his Spruce Goose… a film we know as Red Dawn .

If you were born after 1980, then the list of actors in Red Dawn may surprise you a little bit, but keep in mind that this movie was made in a time shortly before the world stopped making sense. This is when Patrick Swayze was a badass, Charlie Sheen wasn’t coked to the gills and Emilio Estevez wasn’t coaching junior hockey. Lea Thompson was (as she is now) a fox, and Jennifer Grey was… well… she was… a supporting character.

The film opens with a mid-western American high school teacher giving a history lesson and noticing hundreds of paratroopers falling from the sky. He goes outside to see what’s going on, and gets blown away. It seems that the Soviet nations have invaded the United States of America and the only ones who can save Mom, all her apple pie, and the rest of America are its youth. Just thinking about it makes me want to smoke a carton of Marlboros, eat 12 Big Macs and chug a 32 oz bottle of Jack Daniels. WOOO! U…S…A!!!!

Sorry, I digressed there. This slightly altered view of a possible future must have resonated with an early 80s audience (this is also before the days of Gorbachev and Perestroika, so the Russian bear was greatly feared… as should be ALL bears), so if it’s lost on any of young pups out there, just imagine they’re from somewhere in the Middle East… somewhere Jack Bauer wants to go and kick some ass.

Ignoring the poignant and cleverly woven tapestry of cultural commentary (and there’s A LOT… easily enough for a Grad paper or two), Red Dawn delivers on every other level. It’s got action sequences that will make your teeth hurt (from gritting them, or whatever), romance (albeit between the lovely Lea Thompson and some geezer), and High School Football. Like every 80s movie, the teen characters are broken up into their various social groups (a la ‘Sixteen Candles‘ and ‘The Breakfast Club‘) but with far more depth.

For me, Red Dawn is the film to which every other film must compete… it is a perfect 10. Disagree with me. I dare you. GO WOLVERINES!

Postcards From a Place You’ve Never Seen

Dave Duncan — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:00:58 +0000

She peeked around the doorway and clucked her tongue at what she saw in his bedroom. Clothes and books coated the hardwood floor, and his covers lay in a twisted heap on his bed (although his so-called ‘bed’ was simply a boxspring and mattress stacked on the floor). Two pizza boxes sat in the corner next to his desk which was buried under a mountain of jumbled papers, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to know that the boxes weren’t empty and were quite moldy.
More distressing, and immediately noticeable, were the scores of empty beer and whiskey bottles-the result of Finn’s newfound taste for boilermakers. He had become a poster boy for senseless self-destruction, and this room was his crowning glory—his badge of honour.
“How long has it been like this?” she asked, sweeping her hand over the room.
“The mess and food started after Kate went in for chemo..” Mark nudged an empty beer bottle with his toe. “… and this? It started around the time of her funeral. At first, he kept the bottles in his desk, but that didn’t last long.” Mark’s voice was weak. “It filled up pretty quickly.”
“My God.” she sighed under her breath. “That’s almost eight months. Does his family know? Has he been getting any treatment or counselling?”
“He doesn’t take any calls or visitors, and I think his family is waiting for him to get in touch with them. They’re really WASPy, so I’m pretty sure they don’t know.” Mark nudged the beer bottle with his toe again. “He calls this… ‘treatment’.”
They both stood staring into Finn’s room without looking at anything in particular until Mark turned to walk back down the hall. Jenn followed him, and then doubled back to close Finn’s door. She hoped that with his door tightly shut, his depression and self-destruction wouldn’t seep down the hall into Mark’s room.

Growing up, we all loved Crazy Uncle Phil. He was my dad’s younger brother and would come stay with us for holidays. He would tell outlandish stories, tell us dirty jokes and play dangerous games with us (games that our parents forbade). I was too young then to know that he lived in an institution and that calling him ‘crazy’ was as accurate as it was rude. Crazy Uncle Mark died when I was eleven. He had an adverse reaction to an experimental drug, fell into a coma and passed away.
Years later, my older brother and my dad were talking about something I never saw on those visits—something I was too young to see and was protected from. Apparently, Uncle Phil would unpredictably fly into violent rages—throwing punches, overturning furniture and screaming obscenities. My dad would try to hold him back, but a combination of drugs that induced over-eating and institutional lethargy meant that Uncle Phil was easily twice my dad’s size. When my brother Jeff was old enough, he’d jump in and he and my dad could hold Uncle Phil back until he calmed down.
In spite of the black eyes, bruised ribs and broken chairs, Uncle Phil was there for every holiday, and he never once hurt or yelled at one of us kids. My dad never spoke badly of him, showed frustration over having him there or showed any sign of regret. He loved having his brother in his home with his family, and when the holiday was over and Uncle Phil went back to his home, Dad would shuffle around the house in a funk for a few days.
In my whole life, I never saw my dad laugh so hard or have so much fun as when he used to thumbwrestle with my Uncle. I never saw my dad thumbwrestle with anyone else, but he could’ve gone pro. I can only assume that they used to do it as kids and just kept going, but they both loved it and wouldn’t let anyone else play. We’d all just sit there at the dinner table watching them battle after every meal.

Dave Duncan has added you as a friend in Facebook

Dave Duncan — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 14:00:40 +0000

It all began when emails slowly trickled into my inbox saying that close friends had joined a new ‘social utility’ and were inviting me to be their

‘friends’ in this brand new virtual world. I paid little attention, but then the invites came more frequently-from closer friends. So I did some reading about Facebook (after already having joined the miserable ‘Hi-5′, back in the day) to see if it would be more hassle than fun.

It seemed innocuous enough, and so I signed up and started adding my friends. At first, my good and close friends were in there and everything was right with the world. All the people who were close to me in real life were clustered around me in my virtual world-leaving notes on my wall and tagging me in photos. I was in. I was hooked.

Next, I started looking through my friends’ friends for people I knew, and I would add them to my friends list. Not acquaintances, but not close friends either. These people piled up until my friends list was full and long. My world was big and there was much choice in friends, and I was very happy with what I had done.

Then, it began. People from the deep dark recesses of my past began contacting me. People I hadn’t spoken to in five, ten, fifteen years. “How’s it going, man?” they would ask. Where do I begin? Suddenly, Facebook had become the equivalent of going to the grocery store in the town where you were raised, but haven’t lived in 20 years. You will invariably bump into your babysitter from when you were 6 who will recognize you and want to hear what’s happened in your life since. Sheer torture.

Darwin wrote a very famous book which very few people have actually read, but everyone thinks they know about. I have never read that book, but I’m about to use it to prove a point. Thank God this is the internet and not a scholarly paper. I’ve digressed. Darwin posed the idea of the survival of the fittest, where only creatures that can adapt to their environment will survive and all others will be cast to the fringes and left to die. Yup. That sounds about right.

Friendships are much the same way. There’s a natural progression to a friendship where people who have a lot in common become quite close. Over time, their tastes, interests or life circumstances will change and they will naturally drift apart. Through adaptation, we gravitate towards new friends with whom we have more in common, and the world continues to turn. This is the way mankind has been working since the beginning, and then Facebook comes along…

Now, we’re forced back into contact with people whom we lost contact with for sensible and viable reasons. [Of course I'm not referring to any of my Facebook friends here, I'm just running with an hypothesis] In defiance of the natural order of human interaction, I will have to interact with and respond to people whose lives run far from parallel with mine.

Some may argue that I should just be more selective about whom I add as a friend in Facebook, but as a narcissist, my priorities are clear. This is just something I will have to live with, and to which I will have to learn to adapt. In the meantime, feel free to add me a as friend in Facebook.

Why my monday night was more exciting than YOUR monday night

Dave Duncan — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:00:47 +0000

Why my monday night was more exciting than YOUR monday night.

1. Canada’s free healthcare system; where you can wait 5 hours to be told by an incompetent doctor that he has no idea what’s wrong with you.

2. That same healthcare system; where you can finally get the treatment you need from a competent doctor (when you find one).

3. Did I mention that it was free? Because it is. No charge. Well, not up front.

4. Flying squirrels. I know they can’t really fly, but they can glide for longer distances than I can. I know because I tried. Hence the intimate knowledge of Canada’s healthcare system.

5. Paramedics; for asking simple yet poignant questions like “How on earth did you end up here face-down?” and “Did you think you could fly like a flying squirrel? ‘Cause they don’t really fly – they glide.”

6. Alcohol; for leading me to believe that if a rodent as lowly as a squirrel can fly, then I can too, dammit.

7. My roomate Jared; for taking advantage of number 6 and egging me on.

8. Eggs. So tasty, so delicious, so nutritious. How dare they be so eggspensive. Ahem.

9. Head Trauma. It makes life adventurous because you forget the easiest things and see fun colours.

10. Canada’s free healthcare system; where you can wait 5 hours to be told by an incompetent doctor that he has no idea what’s wrong with you.

Whoa. Deja Vu.

Quality Photography is now Accessible to the Masses

Dave Duncan — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:00:33 +0000

Way back in the old-timey days, photographs were a very different beast than they are today. Images of light and dark were burned onto hard, silver-backed plates while human subjects were forced to sit for minutes on end; unmoving and unblinking. Photographers were part artist (using light and subject to create perfect pictures), part monk (thanks to the immense patience involved in taking a photo) and part chemist (using a cocktail of dangerous chemicals to process their images).

It could take days for the photographer to see the final result of his hard work, and that didn’t leave much room for error, experimentation or impatience. If the light was wrong, the subject moved or something went haywire with the camera, he was likely out quite a bit of money and would have to have re-shoot the pictures.

When George Eastman popularized chemical film cameras in the late 1800’s, the popularity of amateur and hobby photography was off the charts. Anyone with some disposable income could now take photos themselves, and with 100 exposures to fool around with, you could take a chance on wasting a few exposures in the hopes of getting something truly beautiful.

Well, that attitude has followed us into the digital age. Now anyone with a couple of hundred bucks can pick up a digital camera capable of taking hundreds of high-resolution images with any number of formerly ‘professional-only’ automatic settings. They can shoot to their heart’s content until they stumble upon the perfect photo (sometimes by sheer dumb luck), and whatever can’t be perfected by the camera, can be retouched in PhotoShop for any desired effect.

So why exactly do we think this is a bad thing? What about all of this causes an artist’s blood to start boiling? Why are the REAL photographers out there rolling their eyes as they read this (assuming they haven’t given up already)?

I’ve been over all of this for myself, and here are some arguments/counterarguments I’ve come up with in the last few months:

“Easy accessibility to more and more photos makes it increasingly difficult to discern the good from the bad.” This one is pretty easy. More photos give more perspective and context. If 1 in 5 pictures is good and 1 in 100 pictures is good, you’ll still be able to spot a good photo – it will probably stand out even more.
“More people can now get lucky taking a single great photograph.” True, but what artist hasn’t stumbled ass-backwards into a great piece of art without intending it? Raise your hands out there… That’s what I thought. Just like in any discipline, the people who get lucky once will be found out as having no skill (see ‘Pulling a Homer’ in your dictionary), whereas those who learn from moments of serendipity go on to greater things.
“Why am I so upset by this?” I’m guessing it’s because your world is becoming increasingly accessible to everyone and that’s threatening. You should seek professional counselling.

A Eulogy for Jennifer Keaton

Dave Duncan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:00:26 +0000

Tina Yothers (best known as Jennifer, the youngest Keaton on ‘Family Ties’) began her life on a cold May morning in 1973. The youngest of twelve children, her carny parents couldn’t afford to clothe (let alone feed) their growing clan, and she was sold to NBC for $350 and 12 game tickets (valid only on the midway, not in the games booths… which are crooked anyway).

NBC, having determined she had little to no acting talent at age 2, decided to put her to work in the studio canteen stirring chili. It was 4 years later, over a cauldron of boiling ground beef that a young Gary David Goldberg noticed her and immediately decided to cast her in his latest show.

Sadly, “Daddy Kisses Best” never caught on as a concept… but his back-up project, “Family Ties” did. For the next seven years, the Keatons were the only family she knew and loved (except Brian Bonsall, whom she despised and frequently tormented with sharp sticks and cigarette butts).

When the show was finally put to rest in 1989, Yothers was on her own for the first time in her life and quickly spiraled into a depressing spiral of spirally Spiro-graph addiction. Spiral. She would huddle for hours in dark L.A. alleys drawing complex images until her clothes were ratty and her once bright eyes were ashen and her chubby cheeks were hollowed.

In 1998, after nearly ten years on the streets, her family came to her rescue… they needed her to be there for a health crisis.

Yothers was devastated when she found out her brother had Parkinson’s disease. She was ever more devastated when she found out Michael J. Fox wasn’t even her real brother. There was a terrible scene at the hospital, and Yothers has been in court on and off since fighting NBC for backwages earned in the NBC canteen in the 70’s and 80’s.

Yothers currently resides in sunny Las Hamburguesas, California under the assumed name of Sexy LaRue. She has four cats, two dogs and a llama.

[Disclosure: SilentTalkie was paid by NBC to write this article ( but not well).]