Venus Vignettes

I’m considering using a talking avatar for my website www.1ecare.com.  According to experts, one only has 3 to 4 seconds to grab the visitor, lure him in, and make him stay and read.  I’ve incorporated a flash widget to catch attention, now a nice lure would be a talking, shows expression avatar representative of myself.  Sitepal.com (for a fee) offers use of  their avatars and voices, or you can upload a pic of yourself and voice blurb to create your own look alike, sound alike, avatar.  I couldn’t help but play around with it – my five minute limit turned into an hour sigh.  Now trouble is, since my new company is on a strict budget, I can’t find a free version of an avatar which will do anything similar.  That’s what happens when you look at Caddies before Kia’s.

Anybody see Adrian Grenier’s HBO special, “Teenage Paparazzo?”  The film dealt with the question of why the world seems so transfixed by celebrity.  Much of Grenier’s limelight has come from playing Vincent on the HBO show, “Entourage.”  In the series, he plays a celebrity  who gets loads of attention from adoring fans.  Grenier is puzzled that because he plays that character, in real life he also enjoys that same attention and adoration.  While he doesn’t eschew the fame, he does note that the adoration is “insidious.”   My take on that is that attention from fans is probably like the best high, and  like a recreational drug, it’s still craved when it’s absent.

Grenier tries to get his answers from the inside out; he focused on a thirteen year old boy Austin, who is a kid  paparazzo, and sprinkled in philosophies from professional educators, and reflections from other mega stars.  The idea I liked best was from Henry Jenkins, Professor of Media Studies , MIT.  Ages ago we lived in small towns and villages where everyone knew everyone.  Gossip was about the town drunk or the village harlot.  Because we have become so global, we can’t talk about the crackhead next door or the idiot down the street because the other person doesn’t know them, so we discuss celebrities.  Essentially it’s not so much about the celebrity,  it’s about coming together to discuss something we have in common.  It’s really about modern day socializing.  Family and friends are no longer nuclear – we live all over the country and the world.   Celebrities are what we have in common; they bring us together.  As Jenkins says, “It’s a vehicle to share values.”

It’s a very intelligent and entertaining exploration – see it if you can.  Let me know what you think.

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Went to a class downtown held by SBA this morning; my gps defaulted to West Peachtree instead of Peachtree NE so I lost a few minutes, and was running late.  (I’ll tell you about the class in another post – it was for 8(a) certification.)  Rather than driving around Ralph Abernathy, Peachtree Center, and Peachtree seeking a rare open parking space, I pulled into Eagle Parking Lot.  All I could see was $8 in bold black for daily parking.  I asked the attendant was that a flat price…he looked a little confused.  I clarified that I “thought” I only needed two hours.  Two hours would be $5 he volunteered.  Geeze, a breakthrough.  He waved me to park near the front, and I duly offered up my credit card to the automated pay machine, punched in my 336 lot number, punched 2 for the hours needed, and retrieved the thin white ticket which spat out.

I returned to Eagle about fifteen minutes after the two hours lapse.  Something red and colorful was attached to both tires on the driver side…what!?  I had seen the attendant when I approached the lot, but he mysteriously disappeared.  A big black car stopped near me and asked me about the price and parking location.  Did I look like the attendant?  He eventually mentioned that the attendant was in a car at the end of the lot.  I wandered around to the back; all the cars were unoccupied save one with tinted windows that was pulling out of the space.  Was that the attendant man hiding from me?  I knocked on the window and he braked, rolled down the window. 

“There’s a boot on my car.”  Silence.

“How do I get the boot off my car?  How do I pay for the extra fifteen minutes I used?”  Silence.    “Do I give the money to you, or have to go to the machine again?  How does the boot get removed from my car?”  Silence.  I’m getting really exasperated by this time.   He finally dials a number on his phone and talks to “Mike.”   He offers, “Mike will be here in a few minutes.”

“And?  How do I pay for the extra minutes?”

“Talk to Mike,” and he gave me a royal nod to go back from whence I came.  In retrospect I now know that he was trying to avoid confrontation.  When I got to my car, “Mike” was there in a small truck.  I leaned down and instantly got suspicious when he pointed a camera on the dash toward my face.  What?!

 “It’s $75 to get the boot off your car.”  After a few well articulated phrases, whinging, getting a little loud, enlisting the help of others at the automated machine, more questions, I came to the conclusion there would be no reasoning with Mike.  Mike repeated with a little resignation it seemed, “It’s $75 to get the boot off your car.  And $75 each day until it’s paid.”  Now I’m silent.  I look at him, the man from the big black car, the ladies at the automated machine.  I still have no words.  I sigh and hand over my brand new debit card for my company Elite Care LLC.  I was downtown for company business so I’m charging the company.  Somehow I felt a little better but then remembered that the company funding came from me.  I’m going to call the city and complain.

9/26 Update: After gooogling boot complaints in Atlanta, found many complaints for the boot company EPS.  I reported this incident to Dot.gov/atlanta and received a case number.  Anxious to see what type of response I’ll get.