Daily Grind

You know how when some artists get old they completely lose their edge and become mere shadows of their former selves? Well, not our Mr. Lynch. The acclaimed director is now selling coffee, and it is #&@!% surreal:

David Lynch Signature Cup Coffee from David Lynch on Vimeo.

Hat tip Laughing Squid

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

PC World magazine senior associate editor Liana Cassavoy checks in with LA freelancer Derek Jech and others across the country to itemize the recommended do’s and don’ts of a Starbucks home office worker.

Since the chain switched to free Wi-Fi, the laptop brigades have taken a firmer hold of each and every store location. Other than plating over or removing select electrical outlets, there’s really nothing Starbucks can do to discourage these all-day patrons. Or is there?:

“We are convinced the baristas try to freeze us out by jacking up the air conditioning at certain points of the day,” says Tandaleya Wilder, a publicist and founder of She Got Game Media, who often works out of a Starbucks in Miami’s South Beach. Also, she notes that the baristas sometimes “purposely play the worse rotation of songs imaginable to get us out of there.”

Read more

Therapist Barry Michels specializes in creative types, and has built a client list out of top Hollywood talent. According to a profile in the New Yorker, Michels helped one blocked writer hash out an academy award-winning script. Now, most of us poor scribes can’t afford Michels’ rates, but we have been afforded a glimpse how treatment works:

By far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels’s practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung’s Father archetype. “They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write,” he says. “Often I explain to the patient that there is an authority figure he’s answerable to, but it’s not human. It’s Time itself that’s passing inexorably. That’s why they call it Father Time. Every time you procrastinate or waste time, you’re defying this authority figure.”
Read more

Finally, the AP Stylebook has changed the style guidelines for the word email. Until today, they were demanding a hyphen, making it “e-mail”. Very 1990s.

Other changes include:

• Cellphone is now one word, not two.
• The Indian city Calcutta is now Kolkata.
• Smartphone also gets to be a single word, and is defined as ” an advanced cellphone that allows for email, Web browsing and downloadable applications.”

Many Southern California bastions of journalism, movie making and other media fields rely heavily on the blood, sweat and – yes, sometimes – tears of interns. But 24-year-old West Hollywood entrepreneur Talan Torriero (pictured) is hoping to speed the progress of a 21st century free labor twist: the virtual intern.

His brand new site CyberInterns.com has initial employer listing fees ranging from $49.00 to $87.00 and he is about to start officially approaching area colleges and universities. Job seekers are not charged, and Torriero adds that if an employer reading this article wants to give the operation a whirl, they can enter the code “FishbowlLA” for a free 30-day trial.

“In the last four years, I have had the opportunity to intern at some pretty incredible places, from Warner Bros. Records to Akiva Goldsman‘s production company,” Torriero tells FishbowlLA via email. “After that, I got the social media bug and decided to switch gears career-wise. I enrolled online at the University of San Francisco and got an internship at Lunch.com.”

Read more

Squid Ink‘s Elina Shatkin reports a rather bizarre story about LA’s Flying Pig food truck and its battle with porn company Cal Vista Pictures–who’s using the truck as a backdrop for a Ron Jeremy film. According to Shatkin, truck owner Joe Kim is mulling legal action against the company, not because the truck is featured in the backdrop, but because the title of the film is “The Flying Pink Pig.” Not exactly the type of thing a food truck wants popping up on Google searches after just being featured on Oprah. The crew is also in the process of opening a restaurant in Little Tokyo.

Said Kim: “I think these guys really wanted to take advantage of us. Not really telling us but really taking advantage of our name.”

Kim is trying to get Cal Vista to remove the Flying Pig imagery before the film is released later this month.

Meanwhile, Kim tells Eater LA he never spoke producers of the film before the shooting, but he was lead to believe by a former employee that truck was being used for a “romantic film.”

At this point, what’s left to say? The recent news, via Ad Age, that Barry Diller majority-owned IAC has joined the content farm fray with something called The Writers Network is just one more reason for Southern California scribes to wave the tattered, bed sheet white flag.

Read more

But if it keeps the SPAMbots at bay, then it’s worth the trouble.

From the contact page of the Guy Abbott‘s website Geee.

Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal has chronicled the most egregious of email sins. All guaranteed to lose you friends and IT department support, so cut it out.

Freelancers know better than anyone that as liberating as working from home can, things can turn ugly quick. Web designer Matthew Inman has done enough freelancing to demonstrate the highs and lows in this comic from his website TheOatmeal.com:

Read more