Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Dunking Hannity's head and holding it underwater 6 times a day, every day for a month

Just feel the urge to share this little gem with y'all ...


I think it speaks for itself.

On a side note, once upon a time, in a land far, far away and sometimes known as New York, I met Sean Hannity. I was working in the book biz and was managing a signing event. The man I met is not the same bombastic idiot who hosts the FOX program and the syndicated radio show. Basically -- act surprised -- it is basically an act. Sort of like I imagine Howard Stern to be.

Hannity was actually very gracious and relatively charming in person.

Go figure.

I guess, though, that he must believe the drivel that comes out of his mouth at least a little bit.

FYI, I'm not especially an Olbermann fan either. I kind of think he is Hannity in some weird alternate universe.

Monday, April 20, 2009

10th anniversary of one of our saddest national tragedies



Miniature crosses are displayed to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings at Clement Park April 20, 2009 in Littleton, Colorado. Columbine was the site of the then deadliest school shooting in modern United States history. (Marc Piscotty, Getty Images)






It’s been ten full years since Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire and murdered 12 students and one teacher and injured 23 more people before taking their own lives.

Ten years and it feels like yesterday.

Ten years and it feels like a lifetime ago.

It’s weird. I still remember that day so clearly. My sister and I were transfixed by the television coverage. It seems like the coverage went on for weeks. Nothing but death, destruction, analysis, experts, victims, rinse, repeat.

The massacre happened, experts said in the weeks that followed April 20, 1999, because the boys were obsessed with violent movies like Natural Born Killers. It happened because the boys played Grand Theft Auto. It happened because the boys had absentee parents, parents so wrapped up in their own lives that they had no idea their boys were collecting guns and ammunition and building bombs in the garage. It happened because the boys were bullied for years and years on end. It happened because the boys, one, maybe both, were crazy, crazy and depressed and suicidal, undiagnosed, overmedicated, under-medicated. They probably listened to Nine Inch Nails. Or maybe Marilyn Manson made them do it.

Every few years the case would hit the news and my senses, my memories of that day would be reawakened.

So naturally I’m kind of surprised I was caught as off guard as I was Monday morning when the deluge of new information, revelations and opinions hit the airwaves, the newspapers and the blogosphere. I had no idea there was a major anniversary coming up.

Ultimately, what’s especially unnerving to me today is that despite the new round of analysis, the new search for reason and meaning, there is nothing new. It seems that many out there are still trying to answer the why, still trying to make sense of it. Many of the old theories have been abandoned, and people are left to blame that most intangible but faithful cause for all the bad things that happen in the world: evil.

Leonard Pitts, for example, is one of those people.

In his column he says there is no reason for the massacre other than the evil of the killers. Klebold and Harris, Pitts says, “unleashed hell … a firestorm.”

Pitts goes on, in essence to say that what Klebold and Harris did was so heinous, the two boys so devoid of any redemptive value, that evil is all that is left.

“I will not begrudge you if you seek the rhyme or reason in what those boys did, but as for me, I will give them not an hour of my one and only life trying to comprehend their incomprehensible deed,” Pitts said.

He uses evil as an excuse to dismiss any discussion that might lead to understanding, that might help us all to help someone else so as to avoid another Columbine.

I know, naïve, right? In light of what happened at Virginia Tech, that one-room school house in Pennsylvania, the immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y. and every other act of seemingly inexplicable violence to have occurred since Columbine and those that have yet to occur but certainly will, it must sound quaint of me.

I’m just not willing to accept that a little red man with horns and a tail and who lives among fire and brimstone made anyone do anything. While I believe there are plenty of acts that are evil, I’m not sure I believe that people are born innately evil.

That, apparently, is what Pitts believes.

To me, intellectually, that doesn't make sense.

But I still need an explanation. I need to know that these people are damaged beyond belief, that they are crazy, out of their minds with depression, pain, mental illness coursing through their veins.

I need for there to be a diagnosis.

I'll even concede that just because we can put a name on it doesn’t mean that we can cure it. And don't get me wrong: It certainly doesn't excuse any behavior.

It just is what it is. And it deserves more of our time, not less.

Monday, April 13, 2009

100 movies to see before you die ...

So I just checked out Yahoo's recent list of 100 movies to see before you die.

Yeah, not my usual style for this blog - no taxes, no gloom and doom economy stories. I thought I'd lighten it up a little bit.

Now, I like to consider myself a movie connoisseur, and I like to think I watch more movies than the average person. I also know that I have very specific tastes when it comes to movies. For example, I don't do war or violence, I find most dramas to be *yawn* boring, and I love low-brow comedies (I went into reviewing the list not expecting to find Old School included - drats).

But lately, I've been more open to watching movies I'd normally judge to be outside of my comfort zone - thanks largely to Professor Enrique Giordano and his excellent class on Latin American Film, I have two new favorites to add to my own personal best films list, Machuca, and Amores Perros.

So here goes. I'm highlighting many of the films Yahoo included on the list, and I'm dividing them into groups.

MOVIES I'VE SEEN

Do the Right Thing




I saw Do the Right Thing on the list and gasped; it's one of my all time favorites. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and make it a point. Best viewed on a swelteringly hot day.

Other "I've seen it" highlights:

Blue Velvet
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Die Hard
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Shawshank Redemption
The Usual Suspects
The Wizard of Oz

In total, of the 100, I've only seen ... 28.

MOVIES MOST PEOPLE HAVE SEEN ... BUT NOT ME

Pulp Fiction




Nope, never saw it, not all the way through. I tried several times and fell asleep every single time.

Others I think most people have seen, at least most movie fans:

Alien
Blade Runner
The Godfather (Parts I and II)
Lord of the Rings
Raging Bull
Titanic

MOVIES ON MY LIST TO SEE

All About Eve




I'll try to check these out as soon as I have tons and tons of free time, like when I'm laid up at home or unemployed (maybe sooner than I think if I don't find a job shortly after graduation).

All About Eve is on the list because I have a thing for Bette Davis. The queen of movie mean, no one does it quite like Bette did.

Have you seen any of these?

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
Casablanca
Chinatown
Nosferatu
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

MOVIES I'VE NEVER HEARD OF

Blow-Up




Looks campy, looks like fun. But I've never heard of it.

I've also never heard of:

400 Blows
Grand Illusion
Wild Strawberries
Wings of Desire
The World of Apu

MOVIES I HAVE ZERO INTEREST IN EVER SEEING

Annie Hall




With the exception of Match Point, I HATE Woody Allen movies. Just don't get them, don't find them to be even remotely entertaining.

Many of the other movies in this category are very old, some are movies I don't think will translate well in 2009, some I can't for the life of me figure out why they're on the list, and some just aren't my bag, baby:

Bringing Up Baby
Duck Soup
Gold Finger
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Some Like it Hot
(I LOVE Jack Lemmon, but I love him best with Walter Matthau.)
Terminator 2 (2? Why 2?)

And yeah, I think they missed a few, but we'll save that matter for another time.

What about you? Like the list? Abhor it? Where do you weigh in on the titles included? How about those that failed to make the cut?

Sunday, April 5, 2009

I have seen the future of newspapers ...

Okay, so this weekend I went to the Region 4 Society of Professional Journalists Conference in Columbus, OH. (My paper, The News Record, won second place, all-around best non-daily college paper, btw; make sure you check it out here http://www.newsrecord.org/ if you haven't already.) Obviously, there were tons of newspaper people there and talk of the future of newspapers was the constant buzz.

Now, lots of people have lots of ideas. Some think print newspapers will be extinct within 10 years. Some think the government should bail out the industry. Some are working furiously to find just the right formula to satiate both readers and advertisers. But aside from cutting sections or shifting focus, aside from changing formats or emphasizing interactivity, aside from pie-in-the sky (or are they?) print-at-home concepts, not much has changed as far as innovation goes.

But then the managing editor of The Detroit News, Walter Middlebrook, spoke about the changes his paper, along with joint operating agreement partner The Detroit Free Press had just implemented earlier in the week.

You see, those two papers made significant changes to their subscription delivery program by reducing home delivery to just three days a week (I think The Detroit News is delivering, if I remember correctly, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; it is a six-day-a-week publication). The two are the first major metro papers to make such a move.

David Hunke, publisher of the Free Press and CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership, told CNN in December 2008 that the action was in response to the ailing economy and the changing tastes of tech-savvy consumers. He expected the newspapers would face about a 9 percent reduction in their workforces under the plan, but stressed that no layoffs were planned for newsroom staffs.

Basically, readers of these two dailies will have four options on non-delivery days:
  • Skip the day's newspaper
  • Buy a copy off newsstands
  • Get news from the papers' free Web sites
  • Or, perhaps most intriguingly, subscribe to the e-edition

The e-edition is the new (ish?) wrinkle in all of this. Guaranteed to be in your email box no later than 5:30 a.m., the e-edition is your daily paper in electronic form. It is an assemblance of click and drag PDFs. You can turn the pages using your mouse, and if you want to zoom in and read a particular article, you just roll over it. It is like the very pages my staff and I prepare three nights a week. But instead of sending them to press, they are posted directly online, utilizing a few more bells and whistles intended to improve readability and, presumably, online experience.

As I said, this just launched last week. It's much too early to judge success or failure, but it is fascinating. Will this quell those who can't stand the idea of losing the form of the traditional newspaper? How about those who find many newspaper Web sites to be non-navigable or non-intuitive? You still can't take an e-edition into the bathroom with you, and coffee and the newspaper in bed in the morning won't feel quite the same either.

There is one other option Middlebrook said The News is considering. An device known as the Plastic Logic e-Reader is being bandied about as a potential light-weight, portable, electronic delivery method.

The popular Kindle has been mentioned as a possibility by other newspaper publishers, and sure the field will surely only continue to grow.

I think the idea of the essentially all PDF e-edition is one of the better options I've heard. I'm a purist: I like to hold the paper in in my hands and fold it as I see fit. There is a great amount of intimacy in my personal history with newspapers, dating back all those years ago when I traded sections with my dad over the breakfast table. But I'm in the business and being a part of this business is bigger to me than the paper it is printed on.

Newspapers must adapt. And so must their fans.

What do you think? Will you miss all that paper and ink when it's gone? Would you prefer newspaper get a bailout before GM? Are you happy to see them both go the way of the dodo bird? Are you already online only? What feedback do you want to share with the industry? I'd love to know your thoughts on the matter.