America’s Next Top Best Friend

I know a lot of folks view reality shows in general as something of a guilty pleasure. Perhaps the guiltiest of all is America’s Next Top Model, which is sort of like watching a train just fail to wreck every week.

The premise sounds like a recipe for disaster — 13 young girls get taken under Tyra Banks’ wing and are guided through an audition and training/challenge process on their way to a contract with CoverGirl and Ford Models — but after a boring season or two (which Jenn watched alone), the show really found its way, and is pretty entertaining.

The girls are a mix of viable models who would have likely succeeded anyway (like this season’s runner-up Joanie) and lunatics who seem to be there as much for the reality show drama factor as anything else (like psycho know-it-all Jade, who insisted that she was a great undiscovered talent whom the industry had simply failed to notice, despite her living in New York City and trying to break in for almost a decade).

The lunatics, of course, are what make it really entertaining (OK, the lunatics and the girls flirting with lesbianism), and Jade gave me and Jenn our name for the show forevermore, when she explained it wasn’t necessary for her not to be a froth-at-the-mouth bitch, because the show was not called America’s Next Top Best Friend. Classic.

It’ll be a long summer without it.

(And yes, Jason, this is why I don’t watch the multiple Emmy award-winning Amazing Race. Sorry!)

Trackback spam

There’s a new spambot circulating that hits blog sites via trackbacks instead of comments, thus evading most spam-fighting systems. I’ve been hit several hundred times in the past 24 hours myself.

How I fixed it:

1. Long ago, I turned off allowing pings/trackbacks. In WordPress, you can find this under Options and then Discussions.
2. That only helps with new posts. I can’t recall when I started with that, so going back and editing hundreds of previous posts to turn off pings all at once is a bit daunting for the middle of the work week. Instead, each time I shove the spam over to the moderation queue or just hit SPAM and kill it, I also edit the original post, deactivating pings/trackbacks, which slowly closes the security hole.

Jonah’s been getting hit with it, too. Evil bastards. (Apparently, the spam is coming from spyware that’s botting multiple infected users’ machines. Please use virus/spyware protection, folks!)

Good luck, fellow bloggers.

Koboldnomicon publication news

The Koboldnomicon creeps through the dungeon towards its ultimate goal of publication. Julie Dawson at Bards & Sages just sent out an update to contributors, and the big news is that in addition to PDF versions available in all the usual places this summer, print versions will be available from major online booksellers soon after that, which is a first for me, and a thrill. Firm release dates when I know them.

Joe and Fred hit the medium time, Fred wins award

Well, Joe Rice, who previously self-published a book of his students’ work has his own self-published book now: Why Won’t She Call Me Back?

Meanwhile, F. Chong Rutherford has one of his Mobile Ditty videopodcasts up for an NYU film award.

(What have I done exciting recently? Uh … two weeks of Hesperia Star podcasts in a row?)

• Update: Fred took second place and won beaucoup film equipment as a result. Awesome!

SPJ Awards 2005: The High Desert winners list

Well, Peter and I just got back from tonight’s Society of Professional Journalists award dinner in Riverside. It’s always interesting seeing all the journalists in attendance, particularly what everyone feels is the dress code; there were folks there who looked like they were at prom, while there were others in jeans and ratty sweaters. (I split the difference, myself.)

The Daily Press, Desert Dispatch and Hesperia Star all had winners at this year’s awards in the circulation under 50,000 division:

Peter won third place in the News Photo division for his memorable “Pacific Storm” photo, of a flooded Rock Springs Road:

I picked up second place in Best Feature Story for They Ain’t Scared of No Ghost, second place in Best Law Enforcement/Legal Affairs Story for High-Flying in Hesperia and third place in Government/Political Story for Is Hesperia Casino Really Terminated?

This is my second award for a law enforcement story in two years, which I suspect will give a deceiving picture of what I was covering at the Hesperia Star in years to come. It’s also my second casino-related award, which is more indicative.

I didn’t bring my notebook with me to record what all the Daily Press and Desert Dispatch reporters won for, but fortunately, someone from the DP did: Local journalists bring home awards. (The staff reporter missed that Justin Boggs got both second and third place in the cultural/diversity writing category, though — he was at our table.)

Judges’ comments should be up on the official SPJ site next week, and I’ll link to them when they’re posted.