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The elections must be an exciting time for the news networks because they get to trot out all manner of gadgets and broadcast wizardry that they’ll probably never get to use again. It’s like they got to go shopping at Skymall for just one day! Fox News had Bill Hemmer’s Minority Report-like touchscreen board, and NBC showcased a “virtual studio” wherein poor Anne Curry stood in a green room while some producer whipped stats around her. But the neatest–and most useless–of these studio tricks was CNN’s hologram projections, wherein reporters and others were given the Princess Leia treatment.
One of those people who popped out of CNN’s R2D2 was “Yes I Can” composer will.i.am, who now has some measure of newsworthiness because of that damned song. A good portion of the interview was talking about the “Oh, cool!” factor of being beamed via hologram. The rest was devoted to Will.i.am’s “political” “thoughts,” which have been given unfortunate credibility by his viral video. I shudder to think about that celebrity-ridden pile of self-aggrandizement being shown in politics classes for years to come as an example of “successful” political discourse. Ugh.
But, yeah, the hologram? Pretty cool. Totally useless. And not just because it was Will.i.am that was beamed aboard.
The hologram was one special effect too far. If anything illustrated the ridiculous overload of useless information in this election cycle, there it was.
Yeah, I was a little mystified. You roll out this cool technology, and the first guy you feature with it is the composer of “Let’s Get Retarded”?
@Audif Jackson Winters III: New advances in humps can’t be far behind.
@Audif Jackson Winters III: There was another one before will.i.am. At around 7:30 ET they featured a reporter in Chicago as a “hologram.” Wolf Blitzer couldn’t stop talking about it for about 5 minutes.
but on the plus side, the Bosstones are releasing a new album and their cover of “Impossible Dream” is up on their myspace
I love how Anderson Cooper had to “interview” the hologram. On the plus side — way more interesting than the floating pie charts!
They should’ve stuck Will.i.am into one of those escape pods and jettisoned him off to Tatooine so he could be beaten senseless by the Tusken Raiders.
For sucking.
I was glued to MSNBC. I thought the floating 3-D Map of America Chuck Todd was working with was something proper, but then my roommate convinced me to switch over to CNN to catch Will.i.am getting his hologram on. Saw it, gawked at it, turned away. That’s all the time you’re getting from me CNN. I don’t care how many Jedi Mind tricks you pull out.
@Audif Jackson Winters III:
You know, people like to knock this song in passing, but time and time again I’m at some party [See Halloween] and this song comes on and people go damn near apeshit and/or know most if not all of the words. But then again, not that hard to do so when in a costume, intoxicated, and getting retar-, ahem, acting a fool. Yes. Acting a fool. Not sure if that works well as a hook for a song though.
@Tauwan: I just think we are passed the point in our society where using the word “retarded” should be even remotely acceptable, and I’m not Capt. PC in the house.
@Lucas Jensen: That would be “past” not “passed.” I am terrible about that.