Navigating “The Kid Thing”

Posted by Bill Cammack On October - 7 - 2007

If you go out with the same chick for more than one week, the odds begin to increase exponentially that she’ll want to have a kid with you.

Biologically, that’s how women are built. If you consistently hang around them, they start to see you as a viable protector/provider for your pending family.

Meanwhile, the guy’s just happy to have a cute chick to look at and to ‘get on’ whenever he feels like it.

Sooner or later, she’s going to start testing you with questions about the future. SOONER is the time to act, rather than later, once you realize what’s going on. If that whole “family thing” wasn’t in your playbook, and you don’t want to break up with her ASAP and start over with a different chick that doesn’t like you as much (meaning you have more time until “the kid thing” rolls around again), there’s only ONE thing to do…..

Buy her a dog. :D Read the rest of this entry »

Do guys really care how chicks look?

Posted by Bill Cammack On June - 4 - 2007

Roxanne writes:

I’ve heard both. “Guys go for the pretty girls.” But I’ve also heard that guys think girls fuss way too much over their appearance. Like makeup for example. Most guys really don’t care that much about it? What’s up with this big disconnect?

Wow, Rox… That’s a REALLY good question, which unfortunately calls for a complex answer. The first question is “what is makeup doing on women’s faces in the first place?”…….

In the animal kingdom, dogs, for instance, can tell when other dogs are receptive to sex by perceived cues. It might be a smell… It might be a behavior that coincides with being in the fertile phase of the cycle… It might be how the other dog’s skin looks… I’ve heard of something called “flagging”, but I’m no dog-breeding expert.

Anyway… Humans have bypassed these natural cues by utilizing items such as CLOTHES and DEODORANT. In most cases, whatever one’s natural emissions are are completely masked now. This is why people get compliments on their cologne or whatever it is they used in their hair, because all other smells have been suppressed.

This is where makeup comes in. Makeup FAKES certain skin conditions and basically cheats the guy, biologically, into feeling more attracted to her. For instance, you’ve seen someone become embarrassed, and their face turns red (blushing). Some people have naturally rosy cheeks. Others do not. All they have to do to fake rosy cheeks is paint their cheeks red. Same deal for enhancing lips and eyes and essentially coloring shadows onto a woman’s face to make it appear that her face has curves it really doesn’t have. Same thing with plucking eyebrows. HAHAHAHA I can imagine how many guys had kids with women that they THOUGHT had slim eyebrows, and then the kid came out with some kind of bushy unibrow, hehehe :D but I digress……

Now that we know where the makeup came from, we can look at what guys consider to be “pretty girls”. Obviously, that’s subjective. Everyone has their own idea of what’s attractive and what isn’t. Even though I’ve seen makeup do ABSOLUTE WONDERS for some women….. I’m not a makeup fan. Applied stylishly, it can give a girl a HOT look, except the only time you’re going to see her like that is when she makes herself up like that. The rest of the time, she’s going to look like Plain Jane, and you’d better hope you like her that way. We’ve also seen on television when women go to sleep on their “face” and wake up looking like The Joker after he got caught out in the rain without his umbrella. :/ no good. Having said that, there are some guys that won’t be seen with a woman AT ALL unless she has makeup on and her clothes and hair are proper and she looks ‘right’.

So… Do guys go for the pretty girls? Yes. Definitely! :D However, the path to “pretty” doesn’t go through makeupville. Attractive is Attractive. She could look good in a professional suit-skirt. She could look good in sweats and sneakers after playing frisbee for three hours in Central Park. She could look good with glasses on. She could look good with contacts in. She could look good in a box. She could look good with a fox. She could look tasty like green eggs & ham! ;p~~~~~ um… what point was I making? :/

Anyway… the “too much fuss over appearance” thing is that there isn’t much difference for the guy in whether she wears the green shirt or the red shirt. Whether she wears the Manolo boots or the Payless boots. Whether she wears the skirt 3″ above her knee or 5″ above her knee… what belt she puts on… yadda yadda yadda. If the guy’s into whatever her natural beauty is, all extra preparation she’s doing is useless to him and a waste of time. That can include makeup. So, yes… Guys like pretty girls… Pretty does NOT equal Painted…. and women need to give themselves a break and take a guy’s word for it when he says “you look great… let’s go”. :)

That doesn’t mean to show up all disheveled and looking like a BUM! :/ Just figure out “when to say when”. :D

DatingGenius

one of these kids…

Posted by Bill Cammack On April - 11 - 2007


brogan freaks out, originally uploaded by roadieshow.

Chris Brogan gets his ice-grill on! :D

The Lab – Episode 02: Response To Randolfe

Posted by Bill Cammack On March - 25 - 2007

In response to The Lab Episode 02: American Pimp Randolfe wrote:

Now, this was really entertaining and very cool. I’ve always been fascinated by the world of prostitution.

Thanks. :)

Initially, I didn’t think the world of prostitution was interesting at all. It’s just not sporting… paying someone to have sex with you. It’s like how when you were a kid, in order to get candy that you liked, you had to wait for your parents to buy it for you and then you got it in the rations they allowed. Later in life, you have your own money, so you can afford to buy as much of that same candy as you want, whenever you want. The candy’s just as good, but there’s… I suppose “wonder” missing from the situation. It’s not a surprise that you’re getting it. You planned it, you went out and bought it. Same thing as buying chicks. *yawn*

Another problem with prostitution is that it takes YOU out of the game. If anybody can pay this chick do do what she does, you’ve accomplished nothing by paying her except guaranteeing that you get whatever service(s) she provides. That’s completely lame compared to getting out there and seeing what you can do. Same thing with strip clubs. Lame. Why go to a location where you can give the girls money, but not (legally) mess with them… instead of going to a regular bar or something and meeting a girl that you can do whatever you want with for free? I know the draw of the strip club is that the women are supposed to have fantastic bodies, but if you live somewhere like NYC, it’s just a numbers game. There’ll be another fantastic body coming down the street in about five minutes, depending on where you’re standing or what establishment you entered.

What became interesting to me about the situation was the “why” involved. I wanted to know WHY a chick would give her money to a pimp. I mean, I know WHY chicks “ho”… because they can make more money than they could with whatever skills they learned in school, or by NOT going to school. As long as she’s having sex with random guys anyway, she may as well get paid for it. What I didn’t understand was what was in it for the ho to give her money to a pimp, who seems to be doing nothing but shopping for himself, or misappropriating the funds to his benefit, as Brainy so properly explains. The pivotal statement about that is the part where the guy says “doctors need nurses, so hoes need pimps”. Once you realize that the pimp isn’t the leader, but rather the assistant… things start making perfect sense.

Personally, I have an unusual resume in this area. I believe I am one of the few men alive who has been a prostitute, a john and a madam at different times in my life.

That appears to me to be a relatively unique collection of titles, being that they require different motivations. It’s not tough to be a john, though. Just about everybody’s a john at one point or another, purely by definition. Everybody that’s ever bought a chick a drink with the intention of having sex with her is a john. He’s paid for sex, whether he got it or not. Everybody that took chicks out or spent any money or resources on them with the intention of eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) having sex with them is a john. Everybody that married a woman in order to (attempt to) lock her down from having sex with other guys is a john.

It’s tough to be a pimp (madam, as you describe it) for most guys, because nobody wants to go out with a ho. Nobody wants to date a ho. They want them around when it’s time to have sex, but that’s about it. In order to be a pimp, you’d have to accept that your girlfriend is going to be having sex with other guys….. which completely defeats the purpose of calling her your girlfriend in the first place, so cognitive dissonance usually screws that one up.

I traveled the world for four decades, off and on, with a Woodrow Wilson Scholar who spoke seven languages, was brilliant and a chronic alcoholic. We spent an inordinate amount of time drinking in Red Light Districts.

He was exclusively homosexual but loved talking to the girls, barmen, cab-drivers and patrons about their lives. I was a “situational bisexual” who’d setlle for a real girl if a feminine male couldn’t be found.

YIKES! hahaha You remind me of the discussions where people like to claim that men that have sex (intentionally) with men in jail aren’t homosexuals… BECAUSE… there weren’t any women around! HAHAHAHAHA

You understand how women came to be deemed “property” when a woman in Brazil gives you a card with her home address on it and asks you to come visit her in the afternoon (after you’ve screwed for money) because she is looking for “any man” to support her and rescue her from the life.

Well, I mean, it wasn’t until August, 1920, according to that women were allowed to vote in all states of the USA. , Page 4, “Most states adopted the English common law system which provided that a husband and wife were one person, and the one was the husband. All personal property owned or acquired by the wife became the property of the husband, and he had the absolute right to control all real property owned by the wife”. There’s tons more stuff that I don’t feel like finding right now that indicate that seeing women as NOT property in patriarchal societies such as ours is a relatively new concept.

The point being that without the ability to vote and make laws that would benefit them and without the ability to get jobs that guys just wouldn’t let them have, there’s no way a woman could own property. If she can’t own property, the only way she’s going to get it is if she marries someone, and then he leaves it to her in his will. Even under those circumstances, if she got married again, by law, her husband would have absorbed whatever she had gained from the previous marriage. There was no way for a woman to ‘get ahead’ at the time, so renting herself out permanently to a marriage or temporarily in order to make ends meet isn’t much of a stretch… and I’m talking about America, hahaha FORGET about Brazil! :D

I’d hesitate to even call women in the condition you describe “property”, since they can be had for so few $USD. There are enough sites that I’m not going to link to that have endless descriptions of what you can get in whatever country with some ridicuolus economy. You can have women all night and all the next day for what you might spend out with your friends for a night having drinks in Manhattan.

What’s so amazing about “pimping” (from my point of view) is that a pimp turns the normal straight world upside down. He has these women going out and slaving away to give him all their earnings. Meanwhile, the traditional husband goes out and slaves all day to turn all his earnings over to his wife & kids.

Well, that’s exactly what it is, a reversal. Like I mentioned earlier, it makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of the woman as the pivotal character. It’s not so much that pimps are CREATING hoes, as I originally thought. It’s more that the women are hoes ALREADY, and as such, require or look for a certain type of man to involve themselves with. The pimp appears to the ho as someone who’s worth paying for in order to procure their time and/or attention. The pimp likes the money more than the ho, and the ho likes the pimp more than the money, so it’s a fair exchange. She gets to hang out with the pimp, and he gets to go shopping with the money she makes on the corner.

In a traditional husband situation, the value is in the female. She represents his opportunity to have sex at the drop of a hat instead of going out in the street and trying to find and convince a chick to have sex with him. She also represents the opportunity for him to procreate, as well as someone to raise the kids while he’s at work. This starts all the way back at dating, like I mentioned before. The guy gets used to buying her drinks and paying for her to eat or go to the movies, and it’s only a natural continuation that he continues to go to work to ‘bring home the bacon’.

The potential consequence for NOT utilizing money to maintain the relationship is infidelity, which could lead to his ONE girlfriend or wife or whatever leaving him (thus taking the immediate availability of sex with her), or much worse than that….. He might end up on the Maury show with seven other guys who might be the father of “his” new baby. :O

The way prostitutes toss around money when they have it is puzzling. Some believe it is an “easy-come and easy-go” mentality. Several prostitutes, male and female, have told me that they will go out clubbing and blow most of all their night’s earnings on partying and drugs “because you have to do something to relax after all that you’ve gone through to make the money”.

That’s interesting. I have nothing to add to that because I don’t know any actual hoes. I mean, I know “easy” chicks, but not actual professional get-paid-to-have-sex chicks. The easy chicks either have sex just because they enjoy having sex or because they feel it’s an indication that SOMEBODY likes them. Either way, since they don’t make any money from that, I’ve never heard of what you just mentioned.

I always tell people that “working Hollywood Blvd for one summer in the late 1950s” was the best 3-months of life education I ever received. Indeed, it enabled me to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job for the rest of my life with no regrets.

Another concept I don’t have an educated opinion on, due to no experience whatsoever with prostitutes. I would guess however that the randomness and potential danger of the situation would point out how easy it is to get on a subway every morning, spend all of one’s daylight hours in a job, having regurgitated conversations at the water cooler, then coming home, eating dinner, watching some completely biased news and then some form of find-the-criminals-by-science show and then going to sleep only to wake up and do the exact same thing again when you wake up. It’s like even though you’re only making minimum wage, at least you’re guaranteed a certain amount of money at the end of a two-week period. Fringe benefits being stuff like it’s incredibly unlikely that someone’s going to toss you out of a moving car while you’re working “fries” at the fast food restaurant.

Actually, the pimps profiled in the clips here remind me of “pitch men” of sorts. I think their ’sharp’ manner of talking and ‘being operators’ resembled Bill’s persona. Now, I’m not advising Bill to become a pimp (if given the opportunity). Nor am I advising him to decline the opportunity should it arise :-).

hahaha Nope! Not my style. Too much work. :) The ROI is incredibly low. Not only that, but the fact of the matter is that you’re depending on someone else (or several chicks) to give you money. If something happens to that chick, you’re DONE! :D It’s like gambling… like trying to make a living playing the lottery every week. Besides that, I’d be skeeved out that some chick was messing with several guys all day, then wanted to come hang out with ME! hahaha YEESH! :) Pimping is for guys that like money more than chicks…. I’m not one of those guys.

Having said that, I’m not advocating spending money ON chicks. That’s trickin’, like I mentioned before. I’m just saying… Given the option between wasting 8 hours doing some job to get money and hanging out all day with a chick I enjoy… you’ll find me in Belmar sipping Maragaritas. :D

For sure, he’d be perfect to play the role of a “slick pimp” in some future blockbuster movie. However, he’ll probably do just as well pimping some new “techie thing” instead of some new “titty thing” :-).

I rarely receive such intelligent (and somewhat flattering) responses to my thoughtful postings on vlogs. But I felt my insights were greatly appreciated last time around so I thought I’d chance sharing them once more.

Obviously, you have some unique viewpoints. You might need to start your own “street life” blog. :)

Bill, here’s looking forward to seeing you at the Oscars! :-)

I’ll let you know when someone offers me a project that I think might go. ;)

French Constitutional Council vs. Citizen Journalism

Posted by Bill Cammack On March - 7 - 2007

How backwards is this?


France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

Law could lead to imprisonment of amateur videographers and Web site operators who publish their images

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

March 06, 2007

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday in the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

This is an amazing scenario. :/ According to the rest of the article, “the law targets the practice of ‘happy slapping,’ in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker’s friends.” In that case…… Why not target the practice of happy slapping? :/

Apparently they think that crime and bullying is dependent upon the ability to videotape said activities. People were getting attacked before videotape was created, and CERTAINLY before cell phones had the ability to record images and sound. There is going to be less effect on kids involved in happy slapping and more effect on people that just happen to be in the right place at the right time to record something that happened to someone.

Similar to the presence of police, the fact that “citizen journalists” have the ability to record something going on right here right now is a potential deterrent to crime. Making it so that anyone other than “professional journalists” might be prosecuted for taping something is making it EASIER for criminals to do what they do instead of tougher. Sometimes, it’s just AMAZING what people thing is a good idea. :/ You have to wonder if they’re thinking about their community or their own agendas.

Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack

Monetizing Digital Video

Posted by Bill Cammack On February - 13 - 2007

A lot of people video blog just because they feel like it. What IS a video blog? or a videoblog or a vlog or…. don’t ask! :D There are as many definitions for a video blog as there are _names_ for video blogs. Some people consider any video that’s placed on the internet eligible for the title “video blog”. Most simply, Steve Garfield would say “A video blog is video on a blog”. :D So expand your idea of what a blog is to include a video… ANY video, and there you have it.

Does that make someone that has a blog with videos on it a videoblogger? Again, don’t ask! There’s the issue of what kind of videos are on the blog. Is it video of kids falling off of skateboards? A cat playing with a ball of string? A scripted, weekly comedy show? Citizen journalism from the streets? Someone sitting alone in their room talking to their iSight as if it were a real person they were having a conversation with? Is it made by individuals? Is it made by companies that were formed and funded with the sole object of delivering video content on the internet? is it made by a television studio as an afterthought or addition to their actual television shows? Do all of those count equally as “video blogs”, assuming they meet the base qualification of being “video on a blog”?

What about production values? Does the audio have to be good? Does the video have to be steady? Does the editing (if there is any) have to be decent? Does the video have to show something about you or your environment? Does it have to mean something to anyone? Who’s watching it? Friends? Family? People you don’t know that live in other cities, states or countries? What’s your responsibility to your viewers? Do you make videos with the viewer in mind or only yourself, and if they don’t want to watch, they can “change the channel” by clicking on a different link?

See what I mean? :) Don’t ask. Let’s just assume that there’s something called a video blog, and lets assume that it’s “video on a blog” like Steve said.

Now, lets assume that someone has this video blog and they want to make some money from it. They have a few options. They could get sponsored by some group, in which case they are paid to put their show on regardless of how many views/hits/clicks/whatever they get. They could sell advertising themselves and include the ad in their actual video. They could have advertising on their web page and not on the video at all. They could place their video on a hosting site that features revenue-sharing.

If you post video to a revenue-sharing host, the basic deal is that the host makes arrangements with advertisers to pay them to place ads on their site or on their videos. The “sharing” part comes in when the host offers content creators (the people actually uploading the videos) a percentage of the money that the host gets from the advertisers which happened to be generated by a video that that creator uploaded. There are wikis on the technical aspects of this, including “cost per impression” (cpi), “cost per action” (cpa) and “cost per click” (cpc). You might get paid if the advertiser’s ad is seen. You might only get paid if the ad is clicked on by whomever views your video. You _might_ only get paid if someone clicks through AND buys something from the advertiser. Even then, “getting paid” depends on you getting enough credits to get over a certain amount of currency, say $20, because it doesn’t make sense for companies to send out individual checks for 15 cents each to thousands of people.

Once you’ve decided on a host, you need to decide (assuming you GET to decide) how ads are run on your videos. There are several options for this, the basic ones being pre-roll, post-roll and mid-roll.

Pre-roll means that the advertisement comes on before your video plays. You will hope that this video is really short, because people are going to tune out if they decide they aren’t willing to wait through advertisements they didn’t ask to see when they clicked on your video. Then again, that might not matter if you get paid just for showing their ad. Since it’s in the front of the video, the viewer already saw it, so you get paid, right? Well… maybe. It depends on what the host considers a “view”. If “view” means that someone started your video, then you’re good. If “view” means someone COMPLETED your video, and they tuned out because of your pre-roll ad, you lose. :)

Post-roll means the ad comes on after your video has played all the way through. The risk there is that the viewer won’t watch all the way through. Once they get to the end, either you get paid when the ad shows up, or you get paid if they click through or you get paid if they click through and buy something.

Mid-roll means the advertisement comes on while your video is still playing. Mid-roll can be absolutely ridiculous, depending on how it’s implemented. I saw a mid-roll ad that took up the whole screen of the video AND replaced the audio like a regular commercial that comes on television. When the ad came back, the video had been running the whole time, and whatever was said during the time was completely lost. It happened to be on an interview show where the accomplishements of the interviewee were being listed. That kind of mid-roll doesn’t work, because they just throw the ad in anywhere. If you don’t care about your content, however, it doesn’t matter. If you weren’t telling a story anyway, and it doesn’t matter to you when sections of your piece are obscured, then it’s fine. As an editor, I can tell you that A LOT OF ATTENTION is paid to where we go to commercial, how many times we go to commercial, how we go to commercial and how we come back to the program from commercial. Throwing up full-video-sized advertisements just anywhere is completely horrible and ruins immersion.

There are other forms of advertising while your video’s being played. There might be visual advertisements that don’t take up the whole screen and don’t obscure audio at all. There might be ads that don’t run on your video but next to your video the whole time it’s playing. These ads might be animated or change every few seconds. I find these types of ads REALLY annoying, because the motion pulls your eye from the video content and ruins immersion. Once again, this choice is good for people that don’t really care if someone’s watching their video or not. If they’re using the video to get your eyes on their advertisements… mission accomplished.

Personally, I’m a sponsorship fan. There’s too much business involved with monetizing video for it to be worth ANY of my time to deal with it. The more time you spend trying to advertise your videos, the less time you spend MAKING those videos. :) I’d rather leave it to the hosting site, set it and forget it. Also, unless you know A LOT of kids that fall off of A LOT of skateboards, you’re not going to be creating consistent viral video…. well… unless you’re one of these video thieves that steal other people’s content and re-post it… but that’s another issue entirely.

Bill Cammack | New York City | Freelance Video Editor | alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack

Women: Career vs. Kids vs. tick tick tick

Posted by Bill Cammack On December - 30 - 2006

Penelope Trunk: “For example, sixty percent of women with MBAs are working at home, and an epidemic number of women are leaving corporate life when their children come. Women approaching age thirty face these statistics.”

Children are incredibly influential on women… biologically… This was used a lot in passing over women for promotions because the company didn’t want to lose a manager to maternity leave. That’s probably been changed now, by law, but there’s a tremendous effect on women simply when they realize that they’re pregnant. Their focus and priorities change immediately, as they well should. I think a lot of women underestimate their ability to handle the situation differently from men. Obviously, since men don’t get pregnant, there are no internal biological changes tugging their lives in a different direction than “career”.

Work and Family by 30 is a pretty lofty goal to begin with. Work should be pretty easy, since the average person who doesn’t get left back in school graduates @ 21, that leaves nine years to get it together….. assuming that the person is content NOW with the career they have because of what they took in college, which they decided on when they were 17 years old. Family, on its own, is easy as well by 30… at least getting INTO family is. I don’t know about age/divorce correlation, so I’m not aware of how many couples married before 30 are still married by 40.

Doing both together is a longshot unless the woman knows ahead of time what her plan is and is able to focus on and be effective in starting/maintaining a satisfying, progressive career while looking for and corralling “Mr. Right”, who happens to A) want to get married to her and B) have kids with her. This is why it makes sense that women would leave the workforce entirely or work at home, because it’s much tougher to work on Family after 35. They can get back to Career when their family life stabilizes….

… hehe assuming they’re not already pregnant again. :)



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