ITDB
The chaps who invented IMDB.Com deserve a Nobel Prize. I’ll get to why in a moment.
The internet has now been around long enough for apocryphal
stories to grow up about it. I
don’t mean web pages that record camp fire stories or folk tales or any of that
nonsense, or eBay selling haunted crap, I don’t know much about the paranormal
but I do know that if there was an artefact that proved beyond doubt the
existence of the supernatural, it would not be on eBay. It would be in the cellar of the
Pentagon with all the alien stuff.
What I mean is stories about the internet that are only possible because
of the existence of the internet.
One such story is how IMDB revolutionised the dating scene
in LA. Prior to the existence of
IMDB, any asshole with a Porche an a wrap of coke could hit on a girl in a
club, tell her he’s a producer or something, and try to get her to sleep with
him in the expectation that she would get a guest spot on Magum P.I as ‘Pool
Girl 2’. Only afterwards would the
ugly truth emerge, that he works in a Porche dealership in Sacramento (should
such a thing even exist).
Thanks to IMDB.Com, girl goes back to her place, makes an
excuse to lock herself in the loo with her laptop and after a brief search,
finds out that ‘Gary Hairful’ has no production credits and so will not be
getting sex that night. He will,
however, get tasered in the nutsack while she films it on her ‘phone, or
whatever they do in Hollywood.
The International Movie Database, or IMDB, is an internet
success story the way that all success stores about tech should be success
stories. Apparently, IMDB was
started by a couple of blokes (disclaimer: women can be tech giants too),
probably in their bedrooms, that probably smelled of socks and Lynx, and was
basically a listing of who starred in what movie and who the best boy, key grip
and gaffer were. I have no idea
how they got this information but I really, really hope that one sat hunched
over a keyboard and the other one read the credits as they rolled on a TV
screen as a VHS tape played/paused/played/paused. The truth is probably less romantic and no doubt involved
less Pot Noodle than I imagine.
Fast forward and IMDB is now the definitive resource of who
did what on movies and television.
That’s why the inventors deserve a Nobel Prize. While others win the Prize for curing
disease, these guys have cured the awful suffering of recognising an actor, and
wondering where the hell you have seen them before. ‘The Bill’, it’s always ‘The Bill’.
So, IMDB, is a force for good.
So why not another definitive and comprehensive source of
useful information that could be used in social situations?
Why not an International Tattoo Database?
Just a few years ago, tattoos were a relatively scarce
commodity per square inch of human flesh.
Before blokes started getting Maori markings to show their tribal
allegiance to Oswestry and women started getting Cantonese symbols because they
liked Number 38 on the menu or whatever, you got a tat if you were in the
military, where part of a tribe, had been in prison or had been in a
concentration camp.
Before tattoos became fashionable, they used to mean
something.
Now, you’re in a bar, your hitting it off with a young woman
and you notice her shoulder tattoo.
Does she like mystical symbols, or hot and sour soup, is she a committed
lepidopterist of renown, or a sex worker, or is it a curiously shaped birthmark
and she is the rightful Queen of Wessex?
A discreet visit to the ITDB and you can decide whether the evening is
going to end with you already thinking about what to name your kids, or exiting
the venue now via the lavvy window.
Likewise a lady can establish whether that coat of arms on a
fella’s forearm is a distinguished regiment, C Block HMP Chelmsford, or even
worse, a minor public school.
ITDB, a force for good.
Labels: Culture, IMDB, Internet, ITDB, LA, Media, Movies, Nobel Prize, Tattoos, World Wide Web
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