Month: October 2013

A reader provides some great professional insight to the thread:

After reading the Dish for a couple of years and subscribing this year, I was pretty excited to see a thread that I had some knowledge of. One of the reasons that I read the blog is the seemingly endless reader expertise on almost any subject.  Even though expertise is not something that I would claim, I have worked in this field my entire adult life.

The clip of “The Big Bang Theory” that you embedded to is not a clip with no laugh track added; it is a clip with laughs removed.  You can hear the laughter briefly when it overlaps a line of dialogue. The clip is a great example of an actor’s technique of “waiting on the laughs”. They briefly delay their next line so that the audience laughter doesn’t make the next line difficult to hear. Done with skill and expertise, a cast can create a rhythm that enhances the comedic timing of a show. In this clip when they removed the laughs the pauses between the line deliveries destroys the timing and causes the actors and the scene to appear awkward and unfunny.

I have been involved in sit-coms for over 30 years and currently have several friends and a nephew who work on “Big Bang”. This is a funny show that has a live audience which genuinely laughs at the jokes. Even if it is edited to be a bit louder or quieter, or even if the laughs from the first take of a scene are applied to a different take, the laughter is real and drives the actor’s performances.

In the ’90s I worked on the HBO series “Dream On”.

At the time there were no single-camera sit-coms being made other than ours.  There were no sit-coms without laugh tracks other than ours. Despite the lack of laughs, we were a critical and audience hit. At some point FOX bought the rights to the network airing of “Dream On” but they were uncomfortable with a sit-com with no laugh track. They added one and it was a total debacle. The actors were not waiting for laughs, the timing was destroyed the jokes made un-funny and the show was quickly cancelled.

In the last few months I have worked a few days on “Anger Management,” which is shot with multiple cameras and made to look like a show before a live audience. There is no audience other than a couple dozen writers and producers who watch the filming and laugh at their own jokes. This option for filming a “live audience” sit-com is problematic because there are no independent judges as to whether or not a joke will make a non-involved audience laugh. The writers have a vested interest in their jokes inciting laughter and even if their laughter is actually recorded it tends to sound forced and fake. Most of the laughs are applied by an editor.

Bolonik reviews two new sit-coms; she doesn’t like one and likes the other. She notices less the laugh track in the one she likes and suggests that all laugh tracks be done away with because she notices more the laugh track in the un-funny show. It seems that she is objecting to the quality of the show not if it has a laugh track added. The actual problem with sit-coms is that comedy is very hard to write. Every week Hollywood employs somewhere around two thousand writers and on any day there aren’t more than maybe a hundred good writers in the entire country. Trying to pin her dislike for a show on the laugh track misses the point. It is just a bad show.

Meghan Neal records their rise:

Any self-respecting vaper has a PV (personal vaporizer), or Mod (personalized, or “modified” piece.) From there, you can customize basically every aspect of your vaping experience—the refillable cartridge or “tank,” atomizer or wick, nicotine level (samples at the Vaporium range from zero to 24 mg—the equivalent of a heavy smoker), mAhs (Milliamp per hour, an indicator of battery life), and the intensity of the TH (throat hit) when inhaling.

Then there’s the plethora of flavors of liquid, variously known as e-liquid, juice, e-juice, nic-juice, or ass juice if it tastes real nasty. You can vape a straight tobacco flavor, cotton candy, chocolate, or more stonerific varieties like “Hoops” and “The Dude.” Or DIY vapers will mix their own liquid recipes.

This is where vape shops come in. At first, these were places to sample flavors and try out equipment, then they brought couches and foosball tables and flatscreen TVs into the shops so you could vape in the comfort while perusing their products. Next came vape lounges with bars, cafe-style tables, juices, and snacks. And now, retail boutiques.

Economists are taking notice:

Goldman Sachs earlier this year pegged e-cigarettes as one of eight industry disruptions to watch in the coming years (others included 3-D printing and cancer immunotherapy). Goldman estimates that e-cigarette retail sales already totaled $1 billion last year and could reach $10 billion by 2020; by then it estimates e-cigarettes could account for 16 percent of the US tobacco industry’s profits. …

If e-cigs continue to grow in popularity, it could hasten the demise of traditional cigarettes. But e-cigs also promise fatter profit margins, because they are not taxed as aggressively as traditional cigarettes, nor do they have to fund legal settlements, Goldman says. Moreover, because e-cigarette devices are rechargeable, they can be sold in much the way that companies such as Gillette sell razor blades – subsidize the cost of the basic device but make a healthy profit on the cartridges. As a result, Goldman estimates that e-cig businesses could eventually achieve profit margins in excess of 50 percent, compared to 30 percent for traditional cigarette businesses currently.

Sullum fears that high taxes in Washington state will limit the market for legal marijuana and keep the state’s illicit market in business:

According to calculations by BOTEC, [Mark] Kleiman’s consulting firm, these taxes will make the retail cost of cannabis 58 percent higher than it would otherwise be, accounting for 37 percent of the price paid by consumers. One BOTEC projection, based on a production cost of $2 per gram, indicates the after-tax retail price will be $17 per gram, or $482 per ounce. Another projection, based on a production cost of $3 per gram, puts the retail price at $25.50 per gram, or $723 per ounce.

That’s a lot more than pot smokers in Washington currently pay. According to the website Price of Weed, which collects reports from marijuana consumers across the country, the average price for high-quality cannabis in Washington is $239 per ounce.

In another post, Sullum considers the fate of Washington’s medical marijuana dispensaries, which are untaxed:

The state-licensed outlets will face competition not only from ordinary pot dealers but from medical marijuana dispensaries, which are not explicitly authorized by state law but are run as cooperatives by patients and their designated providers. There are something like 200 dispensaries in Seattle, where the liquor control board plans to allow just 21 state-licensed pot shops. A.P. notes that “the City Council has passed zoning regulations for pot businesses that would require medical marijuana dispensaries to obtain a state license [which is not currently available for dispensaries] or stop doing business by 2015.” Despite assurances by supporters of I-502, Washington’s legalization initiative, that it would not affect dispensaries, it looks like the writing is on the wall. How long will state and local governments eager for marijuana tax revenue allow these untaxed, unregulated outlets to compete with government-licensed stores selling cannabis of similar quality at higher prices?

A reader writes:

The bestselling children’s book and the overall top seller on Amazon right now is The House of Hades by Rick Riordan. There is a male character in the story who is forced to admit he has … a same-sex crush. When someone else finds out the secret, he is completely sympathetic and understanding. He even says, “I’ve seen a lot of brave things. But what you just did? That was maybe the bravest.”

That’s nice to see in a kids’ book series that has sold over 20 million copies.

Blogger Nevillegirl calls herself “one impressed fan”:

That is why we need LGBTQ+ representation in books – not just YA, but middle-grade and children’s books as well. We need these books earlier rather than later because there’s no set age one has to be before one realizes that one is different.