Instead, I’d like to take today’s post to make a major announcement: I am quitting french fries. No more! I no longer plan to put those delectable, crunchy, death sticks down my gullet. This isn’t part of some new fangled diet (i ain’t going paleo!), I just need to remove this poison from my repertoire, and here are three good reasons why:

1. Fries are a garbage food. Sure, they’re delicious, but what do you expect from deep fried starch laced with sodium. Fries are like wicked sirens, they call to us promising tender caresses and love. Instead, we get love handles, cholesterol, and blood sugar spikes. Homie don’t play that. I’m 26, Indian, and my family history includes heart disease. I refuse to let a tuber determine my expiration date.

2. I’m poor. Fries may not cost a whole lot at a micro level, (99 cents at the low end), but waitstaff the world over continually try to upsell me on fries. With dollar menus the norm at fast food joints, a 99C fry can easily add 25% to your order. In New York, anything that looks remotely like a sandwich can be served as a “platter” (i.e. w/fries) for an additional $2.50, and it starts to add up. Fries don’t make fiscal sense.

3. I can do better. I live in the Northeast. Between New Haven and NYC there is a corridor of gustatory delights. From Modern Apizza to Mamoun’s Fallafels to the Bouchon Bakery – I can find better food and save up my ducats for more delicious fare such as fresh sushi or a gourmet mac and cheese. Even in the least health/finance conscious case, I would rather trade in fries for a craft beer. Not to mention, fries serve mainly as a HFCS-laden ketchup delivery tool.

Will I miss sweet potato fries? Yes. Will it be hard to always say “no i don’t want to make it a ‘meal’”? You betcha. But fries are evil and they will kill your body, wallet, and epicuriosity.

Fries are bad. Sermon over.

Ha! These guys get it.

One week till spring break, and you know what that means: MIDTERMS! I have finance and marketing tests this week, as well as a take home final for my leadership class. After spending 8 hours writing the most ridiculous paper on Coca-Cola, I proudly bounded out of my room and loudly exclaimed to my roommates that I had finished principle bullshittery, or the rough cut. All it needs now is a quick edit before I send it in.

I felt quite amused with myself after uttering it. And for the second time in a row, this one is not in Urban Dictionary yet. I think it really sums up the paper writing process which, as any cinematographer will tell you, is an art form.

prin·ci·pal·bull·shit·a·ry [prin-suh-pahl-bool-shit-uh-ree]

-noun

1. The phase during which a paper is mostly written, usually including large amounts of fluff. The draft is then sent for final editing or ‘post’: Hey Nick, I just finished principal bullshittery on my take home final, one quick edit tomorrow and I’m turning it in.

[Origin: Loosely adapted from principal photography as used in the film industry. BTW This is another AudioShocker original]

Human Target – this show is a bonafide problem, so act like you know. Mark Valley’s boyscout character on Boston Legal was laughably dismissed as a ‘Ken Doll’ more than once. (James Spader was truly spot on with that observation) However, Valley is exactly the right person to play Christopher Chance. He’s a bodyguard for hire with a former cop partner and a witty/subversive/unabashed thief helper. I think it’s kind of daring to have a regular cast of three guys with no recurring female roles (s0 far). But, it works, and Jackie Earle Haley is finally getting his due as Guerrero.

Modern Family – Yup. It’s that good. It’s like some network/creative genius was like “what if we make a really funny show about a really diverse family situation” and then managed to execute that. And though I am a super late comer to the show, there is zero learning curve. There is like zero continuity between episodes.

Archer – I watch this garbage because there is swearing, H. Jon Benjamin and Aisha Tyler. That is pretty much it. It is like a weird combination of AdultSwim concepts like Home Movies, The Boondocks, and ATHF/Sealab/Frisky Dingo all rolled into animated shitshow. You probably won’t like it, but I kind of do.

Community – I slept on this show for a while too, but I find it significantly funnier/fresher than some of the other stuff (see below) on NBC right now. Perhaps it’s all about the Abed and Troy dynamic. That or Chevy Chase in his most phoned in role ever.

Things that no longer tickle my pickle include: The Simpsons, 75% of Seth MacFarlane’s stuff, The Office and most 30Rock episodes. I am just sorta done with those.

Better Off Ted, and the second coming of Scrubs (which is like having feelings for your ex-girlfriend who broke your heart three times) all are in my rotation but eh… only if Hulu puts them in my queue.

And that, is all she freaking wrote. Also, LAST CALL FOR MBA Media and Entertainment Conference Tickets (Friday, Feb 26th, all day at NYU)

A. I spent Saturday morning meeting noted writer Ved Mehta at his UES residence. I also met former PM of India, Inder Gujral’s son and grandson. BTW, the tea was great as was the coffeecake. It was like basking in the bright sunny rays of the Indian Diaspora. And what was casting those rays you might ask? Perhaps it was master painter M F Husain’s rendering of Mehta’s two daughters. (My mom and sister are big Husain fans, the dude is crazy awesome. They’d kill for a MFH original). It was a rather pleasant morning. I apologize for all the namedropping, but I am continually impressed by the company my dad keeps.

B. Speaking of writers, JD Salinger died last week. I find it hard to empathize with the Twittards though, because I *gasp* never read Catcher In The Rye, nor do I feel moved to do so now. I did however see Igby Goes Down, and I am comfortable with that experience and the funny joke Kieran Culkin makes about my alma mater, Choate Rosemary Hall.

C. Groundhog Day is tomorrow, and I’ll be damned if that little bastard isn’t going to crap all over us with another six weeks of winter. Obviously, I’m getting a little sick of Punxsutawney P. How come he can’t just pretend to not see it – or how about this: LOOK UP!? That furball has the most famous shadow ever to slank around Pennsylvania. Bill Murray should be furious that we’ve learned nothing from all this endless repetition. I mean come on, you KNOW he’s going to see his shadow and then we’ll all end up using it as an excuse for our seasonal depression.

D. There is a new ice cream spot near my place called Holey Cream, that serves a homemade donut ice cream sammich. Take a minute to comprehend that and then RUN to 9th Ave in Hell’s Kitchen for your own.

E. And most importantly, Nick and I decided that the AudioShocker is going to start running ads on the site (and potentially the feed) in the near future. I know I know I know. But here’s the thing, this website costs us money and we’d like to make a small fraction of that money back. We haven’t picked out a formal ad scheme yet, but we are working on a rate card and we’d love to have your business. Ads will likely run in the sidebar and will be as unobtrusive as possible. Additionally, we are accepting sponsorship offers for the main Tuesday podcast. If you are interested, please email neal, nick, or audio @audioshocker.com.

To the fans, I PROMISE, ads will never change what we are about: music, movies, comics. Why? Because, media is kind of our thing. Podcasts will always be recorded in verite. Pete’s columns will remain late, lame, and halfassed. Justique will continue to  put Nick in weird positions and make background noises. Nick will work even harder to find new JCVD movies. And I will never stop hating flash/vocoders.

Thanks and have a great week!

9. Angelina – Really, who walks out on an MTV reality show?
8. Vinny’s total milquetoastness and utter irrelevance to the show
7. Ron Ron Juice – or maybe not
6. JWOWW’s Battle dancing
5. GTL! GTL! GTL! – Because summer should revolve around gym, tanning, and laundry, right?
4. Snooki’s hottub antics – although, someone at MTV told me that Snookin for Love is all but greenlit
3. Creepin, grenades, and grenade launchers
2. THE SITUATION
1. The Snooki punch

Why the Top 9? Because 10 is too many and 9 is better. 3 X 3 > pants.

The conference brings together the nation’s top MBA students as well as media, entertainment, and related companies. The purpose is to foster informative dialogue about the film, print, music, television, sports, and publishing industries. Last year’s attendance reached a record 600 MBA students. The keynote speakers this year are Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom and Janet Robinson, CEO of the New York Times.

I am organizing a panel on business development / Creating sustainable franchises and have secured several heavyweight panelists. I’d tell you all about them, but you’ll just have to come to the panel. I can say that my panelists represent a certain popular TV show, a major player in comics, a giant in the live entertainment industry, and an extremely popular video game series.

And that is just mine. From venture capital to mobile media, talent management to corporate strategy, we are doing it all.

Want to know about the other 14 panels? Check it out the full list here with descriptions.

There is no press at the event, so the AS Crew won’t be representing. But, as one of the organizers from NYU, I am ordering all Tristate (hell, we have kids from France coming) students to attend. Registration opens on Thursday the 28th, and it will sell out.

Instead of the typical swill about music and other inane things, let’s focus on today’s holiday. I recently found out that someone fairly close to me is responsible for why Carnegie Mellon University does not give it’s students all of MLK day off (or at least when I attended they did not). Instead there is a half-day of ‘activities’ and other things planned, after AM classes. I’d apologize for this “transgression” against your party schedule, but really – how important is a day off from classes?

According the Wikipedia, labor unions proposed and championed MLK Day as a foil for another federal holiday. Bravo labor unions, way to totally use an awesome dude’s assassination for your personal profit. While on the outside an admirable cause, that is nearly as underhanded as the various Hallmark Holidays we are bombarded with daily.

Of course, it doesn’t matter how it got established, it is a day for us to remember Dr. King and his contributions. That’s all I’ve got people.

Oh look, the ‘user experience’ people are already gathering their riotous mob and marching up to my residence. Let’s get something straight, I am not saying that ‘Kubrick should be enough for anyone,’ (please tell me someone gets that reference). What I am saying, is that web design isn’t what it used to be, and what your website looks like is less important than you think it is.

Flash
It’s no secret that I have no love for Flash. What started as Macromedia’s incredible new low-bandwidth ad delivery medium has become a bandwidth heavy, inescapable, behemoth. Designers use it as a crutch, choosing it over the appropriate CSS/HTML for even the simplest navigation tasks. Most web jobs require a soft mallet; Flash is a sledgehammer. (And don’t get me started on the restaurant industry’s collective misuse of flash and ‘intro’ pages)

Most blogs depend on Flash, and it is mainly used for media embeds. After all, without cute video embeds, blogs would be pretty boring. Embedding is super easy, and HD video has made fullscreen viewing enjoyable. So, as long as the video works, is anyone paying attention to the rest of the blog? Do you even look at the sidebar or footer?

RSS
Prior to 2008, I used to launch about 15 individual sites every time I opened up Firefox/Phoenix/Firebird/IE/Netscape/Mosaic/whatever. There was so much crap to sort through, so many useless elements being loaded – and everytime I hit refresh I was hoping for a new story.

Today every website on earth has an RSS feed, and the benefits are seemingly endless. I can follow upwards of 50 websites, news feeds, blogs, and webcomics without missing a beat. I haven’t been to the slashdot/engadget/lifehacker front page in over two years – no more ad heavy pages or extraneous flash elements.

And let’s not start crying about lost ad revenue. Several sites have successfully included ad’s into their RSS feeds. I don’t have the conversion rates, but these ads are short, sweet, and unobtrusive.

Granted, RSS strips out some formatting, typography, special characters and royally screws with jump/more tags – but to those who believe in it, that is a negligible price for the the benefits of aggregation. And who even clicks on jumps anyway? If you don’t have a compelling first paragraph, you might as well not have written anything.

Mobile
Similiar to RSS, Smartphones have changed how we view the web. Phones have small screens and most don’t do flash (yet). All the sidebars, large header graphics, etc are just reducing the viewport more and more. The best mobile sites are streamlined and spartan.

Graphics
You know those ridiculous image maps/slices that people put together instead of using typographical elements? They look cool at first, but they are another crutch that bad designers use to cover up their inability to use html properly. If you are using images of text instead of regular text, you just made life harder for your readers, because you can’t easily index that text. The web is not some digital alley to be plastered with interactive movie posters. It is a medium for disseminating information effectively, cheaply, and quickly. Writing good html takes less time than making complicated graphics.

HTML 5 / CSS / whatever the kids are on about these days
I am a big CSS/HTML Nazi. I didn’t start out that way, but it has truly transformed my life and coincides with my beliefs in reusable code. Well formed CSS can make even the most minimal of sites look beautiful, and on multiple platforms. (cough nealshyam.com cough)

But again, with RSS and Flash making up such a large part of the blog experience these days, how important are pixel pushers like myself? Are people even paying attention to all the work I did to center my divs/floats and get them to clear properly? No one ever says “Neal, I really like the way you designed your blog’s main page.”

Themes
Part of why no one cares about your design, is because you likely had nothing to do with it. How many of us use premade or the default WP themes? Kubrick (and K2!) is remarkably clean and simple, but earth shattering it is not. Flickr feeds, twitter widgets, and your blogroll are just distractions. We include them on our webpages because every other blog/theme has them, but are they contributing to our page views? Conversions? Comments? I doubt it.

And there in lies my point, your blog is defined by it’s content, not by the pretty background and borders. If your blog is any good, the design is irrelevant!

The Reality
Content is king. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Even great blogs can look like crap. In fact, the savviest readers aren’t even looking at your masterpiece design. So, perhaps we should focus a little less on rounded corners and a little more on coherent journalism. Knowwhutimsayin?

(And yes, I know the AudioShocker uses embeds, header graphics, and we aren’t exactly build for mobile, but our writing is fantastic!)

Looks like I was wrong. Soldier of Love drops Feb 9, Act like you know.

you know. this actually reminds me of a phonecall that the Unlicensed Attorneys at Law had with Alicia a few years ago. Sadly for Ms. Keys, I don’t think this one went so well either. But, why don’t you judge for yourself: