Yesterday at the barbershop, everybody in the room (seven people) was talking about bootleg movies. Based on the comments, I was the only one there who hasn't ever owned one.

It started because a military guy was in the chair talking with John (the lead barber) about American Gangster. They'd both seen it already: the guy in the chair saw it at the theater, John saw it three weeks ago on a Russian bootleg DVD. (Three weeks ago! The movie was released to theaters AFTER that!)

The military guy said he hasn't seen a bootleg of AG yet, but the guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan always have loads of movies with them, all bootleg and some of them pre-release like the AG that John had.

It would have turned into a swap-meet but for the fact that nobody had any with them. (And to be clear, I don't want one and the whole idea kind of bugs me: it's no different than software piracy.)

Earlier this year, another regular at the diner where Rich and I have breakfast every week offered me a copy of the latest Spider Man movie. I had it in my hands, then it occurred to me that the film had just come out in theaters. "What is this, a bootleg?" I asked out loud. He was very upset, told me to shush, and immediately put his movie away again. "How do you know none of these people are cops?" he whispered back.

(Note: This story about the Pirate Act on Ars Technica reminded me to write this.)

This kid really knows how to play the guitar.

I watched for signs of a fake. There are a couple of moments that seem off, but it could be the result of junky camera, or digitization, or something else.

He certainly seems to have all the right motions in both hands. I have some extremely musical friends around here... what do you think? Speak up!

(Thanks for the link, Dad!)

A couple more notes...

The reporter says that they're about 2/3 of the way through the riders. I don't know what time that was recorded, but I came in just after 10:00 and there's no way 2/3 of the riders were in already. I guess they recorded shots of some riders coming in and mixed it in with the interview with Billy Starr.

Steve says that he and Dave coming in, hands raised, was recorded also, but I guess it's not in that video. I haven't seen them yet.

Some people haven't recognized me, or think I'm someone else. I first appear at EXACTLY 2:05 (2 minutes and 5 seconds) into the video. I'm only there for two seconds, and pass to the right of the cameraman. I'm wearing mostly blue and jersey shorts, with some white and green.

New England Cable News has a video of some riders coming into the finish line at the Provincetown Inn.

Just after minute two, a rider comes through wearing a blue, green, and white "uniform." That rider would be me, wearing my Mystic Cycle uniform. :-D

Unfortunately, the quality of their online video is, uh... well, there is no quality. It's bad. (Update: it looks fine on Windows, using Media Player 9.) Still, Steve sent the link to me because he knew that was me.

Reading the first few paragraphs of Dave Winer's recent essay on blogging and podcasting, one has to wonder if he ever saw the movie whose reference so offended him:

Today we see good reasons why both Apple and Google should be blogging.

For Apple, there's quite a bit of confusion on the blogs after their announcement last night of a podcasting client to be built into iTunes. As the designer of the functionality they're adding, I say this is a good move.

But the blogs are also carrying Jobs's offensive and misguided charac- terization of podcasts as the "Wayne's World of radio." He got it backwards. Wayne's World is fiction, podcasting is real. Of course a baby boomer who owns a movie studio is likely to see it this way. We were brought up on television, our thinking is rooted in the centralized monoculture of the 20th century.

I would guess that anybody who saw the movie knows that Jobs was referring to the Wayne's World cable-access show within the movie, not the movie itself. It was a home-made television show, by the people and for the people. A nearly perfect way to describe podcasting.