Chris' Internet Circle of Fun #1
Here's a new blog feature-- it's called Chris' Internet Circle of Fun. (Ignore the "#1" designation in the title for now. I've numbered it to encourage myself to revisit the concept, which I find particularly promising, in future posts.) ICOF is a collection of web links-- each one leading to the next, by theme or design, and ending right where we left off.
Please feel free to consume the various links (articles and video clips-- heavy on the clips) in part or in whole-- either according to my specific design (by which they appear) or in any perverse order you choose. But be mindful, you're doing the latter at your own peril. It may not be so easy to get them to link at the end.
If you're still confused by the concept, it will start to make sense as we go...
Link #1: Septuagenarian film critic Rex Reed bashes "Cop Out" in the New York Observer. "Cop Out" is the new buddy-cop film starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. While labeling the movie both "pollution from the celluloid dumpster" and "miserable dreck," Reed also works into his review an indictment of the condition of modern film criticism.
Link #2: Tracy Morgan appears on "The Daily Show" Wednesday. Tracy is his usual bizarre self, delighting Jon Stewart and threatening unprotected sex with his female fans.
Link #3: Christopher Cross singing "Sailing" in 1980. Clad in that Houston Oilers (Earl Campbell) football jersey, this is the clip to which Tracy was referring.
Link #4: Christopher Cross and Dudley Moore performing on "Night of 100 Stars" from 1982. Still at the peak of his powers, Cross delivers "'Arthur's Theme" with the film's leading man as accompaniment.
Link #5: Peter Allen on stage. Cross co-composed "'Arthur's Theme" with Australian musician Peter Allen. Allen, incidentally, was Liza Minnelli's first husband. In this clip, he sings his tune "Love Crazy."
Link #6: A Peter Allen song on "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder." Tom was a professed Peter Allen fanatic, and he chose an Allen tune to run over the montage of his favorite guests as he wrapped his talk show in 1999. This clip has had so few views on YouTube, you might think I uploaded it myself to complete the Circle of Fun. But I didn't. I don't even know how to do that.
Link #7: Chevy Chase criticizes Rex Reed during the final episode of Snyder's previous late night program, "The Tomorrow Show". Chase works in an indictment of the condition of modern film criticism.
See how this works?
Texting on the road
The Iowa House followed the lead of 19 other states yesterday in voting to
ban the act of cell phone texting while driving. The bill is a good legislative compromise as nobody seems happy with the results. Safety advocates say that it doesn't go far enough-- only limiting the sending of texts, not the reading of texts received, and they argue that the bill was written so weak that the state's federal highway monies may be jeopardized if a nationwide anti-texting measure is adopted by Congress. Others expressed opposition to the bill based on the infringement of individual liberties.
Label me opposed for a separate reason. The law is unenforceable, and as a result, does nothing more than arm dirty cops with another outlet for malfeasance. The safety argument is moot. We already have laws in place against reckless driving. There aren't individual statutes against eating, drinking, shaping one's hair, applying makeup, fiddling with the GPS, reading billboards, churning butter, or any of the other myriad of things people can do that have been tested or are presumably unsafe while driving. If you're in a culturally-targeted minority, however, here's now another reason you can be pulled over for virtually no cause while on the road. Let's not pretend that these targeted groups don't exist-- African-Americans,
for sure, but also young people. The particular act of texting is most-specific to young people, and the simple fact that the Minority Leader in the House introduced a (defeated) amendment to limit the texting prohibition to drivers 18 and under reveals that the population was considered in segments with this legislation.
The law is a burden for good police, a license for misconduct for the bad, and because it's impossible to enforce, it will create new disrespect and disregard for our laws in general.
Pops
I just finished reading "Pops," Terry Teachout's new memoir of the great Louis Armstrong. I'm not sure if it's the definitive biography of the music giant-- it adds little to a recent library selection of mine, James Lincoln Collier's and 1985's "Louis Armstrong: An American Genius"-- but it's detailed and colorful, and the subject matter is irresistible.
Armstrong is the great musical artist of this nation, the central figure of the most significant musical evolution in its history. Enjoy
this recording of his Hot Five's 1928 classic "West End Blues," with the culturally transformative opening trumpet solo by old Dippermouth himself-- guaranteed hot enough to melt up to 70 inches of snow. Also, check out
this rather poignant, early 1970s video clip of what was possibly Satchmo's last appearance on television. He's underweight, nine months from his death, but still cookin' up that red beans and rice with his horn.
Pitchers and catchers '10
Ah, the happiest of days has arrived. Pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training today as fans in the North still dig themselves out from a winter of recession, discontent, and record-breaking snow accumulations.
If the day's simple arrival is not enough to whet your appetite for baseball and the approaching summer,
here's some video of Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina working out this morning beneath the palm trees of Florida.
All reports indicate a solid first day of Cardinals camp in Jupiter, where "pitchers and catchers report" means the appearance of the reigning National League All-Star backstop and two of the three top finishers in the circuit's Cy Young voting.
New hitting coach Mark McGwire arrived early in the day, led some hitting drills in the outdoor batting cages, and answered reporters' mostly-steroid-related questions for roughly 17 minutes, forcing his media detractors to dig up a new angle on how he hasn't done enough to come clean. Three television cameras, a half-dozen photographers, and more than a dozen reporters crammed inside barricades near the cages to assist McGwire in his evaluation of the batting swings of Skip Schumaker, David Freese, Joe Mather, and others.
Manager Tony LaRussa recited these stirring words, "Any year that you’re involved with Major League Baseball, your excitement level is very high, but when you believe that your club — our club — has a legitimate chance to play in October, the excitement, at its highest, goes to another level. I think we’ve got a shot."
What fun to dream-- during winter-- of an 11th Cards Championship coming later this year.
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2010 promises to be an intriguing year in baseball. One mystery to be unraveled this year: What uniform numbers will now be worn by batboys and batgirls? They have to wear numbers that other players aren't wearing. For decades, batkids have been able to wear the number of the current year. From the '70s through the '90s, the numbered year has been almost always available as the high numbers are uncommonly distributed to, or chosen by, players. During the last decade, the 'aughts, zeroes were added to the single digits (creating a difference, for example, between #7 and #07). If the Cardinals' batboy wears the numbered year this season, he'll be confused for his manager. I guess they'll have to go with the old "BB" on the unifrom back.
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The top 400 income-earners in the U.S. paid
a record-low tax rate in 2007 even as those incomes skyrocketed. They paid a lower rate than those with an income in the low six-figures, an amount each of them earned during the first three hours of the year. Since 1992, earners in the top 400 have seen their incomes rise by 399%, compared with a 13% increase for the bottom 90%. This is all great news for that bottom 90% as that money should start trickling down any time now.
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Last night's brilliant episode of "Lost" left me scurrying to find a Bible. Turns out I don't have one. Oh well, Wikipedia is easier to read.
The absence of the mop cops
This subject comes from out left field way tonight, but what's the deal with cops and their hair? I've been on high observance for the fuzz of late as I'm only about one-fourth of the way through my one-year speeding ticket probation, and I'm curious: Are they mandated by statute or police procedure to all have really short haircuts or are they all just walking in "lock of hair lockstep" voluntarily? If somebody knows the answer to his, please let me know.
If it's the latter, it doesn't say much for the collective self-esteem or individual courage of the officers. If it's the former, which I suspect it is, I take special exception as a citizen. Somewhere along the way-- and this surely started in the military-- a commander, or group of commanders, determined that all officers of the sort should have matching haircuts. How they (presumably) came to take the giant leap from behavioral discipline by the company to the surrendering of all rights to the self-determination of hair design is beyond my ability to grasp.
Uniform shirt and pants make sense insofar as armed individuals like to know whom not to shoot, but many officers of the law are not even uniformed, and as I'm able to best hypothesize, an edict to institute a homogeneous haircut among male patrolmen only serves to perpetuate the "us vs. them" mentality on the streets that they should be trying heartily to avoid. If a buzzcut conveys respect for the law, institutionally, then what, pray tell, does
long hair convey? The incongruity of style has to effect a judgment of hostility at some point for the cop on the beat.
I'd be thrilled to see any of the following on a police officer in my city: ponytail, afro, bangs, dreadlocks, bowl cut, or cornrows. Any one of the six would be a first, to my observance.
This is what's been on my mind lately. Can you believe it? My 999th post on this blog right here tonight, and I'm still hot on topics.
Does it hold up?
Superblogger Ken Levine nibbled off a good one yesterday. He posted
a classic clip from "The Honeymooners," circa 1955, and asked his readers to determine whether or not they found the clip to be funny. Many respondents also posted their age, which added another layer of pseudo-science to the equation. Is it funny? Does it hold up over time? Is the person seeing it for the first time with young eyes, or for the umpteenth time with old ones?
Put me in the "finds it funny" category. I rarely laugh out loud when I watch these old shows, but then I rarely laugh out loud when I watch anything by myself. Laughing, like sex, is best when it's done in a group. At the same time, I can't watch an old Gleason or a Jack Benny without my lips curled up at the end in satisfaction. To enjoy them this many years later, it may the case that you have to be, like me, really enamored with the comedic structure. For me, enjoying this clip has as much to do with recognizing the unique dynamic between the two performers and appreciating it in the knowledge that its popularity has endured than it does with the landing of the gags. The clip is primitive television, to be sure, but for what it's worth, it's also primitive "Honeymooners"-- just episode #3 of the "Classic 39" from 1955 and 1956, so the interplay that's often regarded as some of TV's all-time best is far from its most finely-tuned.
A relatively small collection of moving picture artists trotted out 39 of these half-hours in less than 10 months time, and I think it's that "on-the-fly" energy that gives the show its lift. The episodes were also recorded in one take, and many episodes contain evident line flubs for all-time, but the trade-off was that we still get to hear the live audience busting up to beat the band. I don't think the show would hold up nearly as well without the audience's rapt participation, which is part of why the dramatic TV programs of the 1950s, produced in empty sound studios, have become almost completely lost to time. Live audiences have fallen out of favor in this era of the one-camera sitcom, like "30 Rock" and "The Office," but I wonder if time won't be crueler to these shows when, years from now, we won't have that recorded audience along for the ride to help us place the references and humor into the context of the time.
Clearly, a false comparison is against the great comedy shows of today, and that's to take nothing away from the greats of either era. A program nearly half a century old shouldn't be held responsible for all the imitators it spawned. It wasn't cliche when Gleason and Carney put this blend of physical humor and sight gag on television for the first time. Ruth wasn't the greatest because his single-season home run mark stood as the Everest of the sport for 34 years, although the fact is noteworthy. He was the greatest because he hit his 60 in a year in which entire
teams failed to hit 60.
"The Honeymooners" finished 3rd on the CM Blog Top 50 TV countdown last year, and it wasn't because it's funnier than a "Seinfeld" or a "30 Rock," but because it was so much funnier than its contemporary TV comedies during the '50s, and if you can still name more than a couple of those others today, I'd be terribly surprised.
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Huh? In a
CBS News/New York Times poll, 59% of Americans support "homosexuals" serving openly in the military, but an overwhelming 70% favor "gay men and lesbians" serving openly. Among self-identified Democrats, the gap in support, based on that change in wording, was 43% to 79%.
This week, I've given you a baseball quiz and a link to Ken Levine's comedy exercise, now sort this.
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The St. Louis Rams have been sold, and not to Rush Limbaugh (mercifully), but to Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American from Champaign/Urbana, Illinois, president of auto-parts manufacturer Flex-n-Gate, and a major booster at the University of Illinois. He's also going to have
the greatest sports mustache in St. Louis since Whitey traded
Keith Hernandez in 1983.
Jeers and cheers
January's Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission removed all federal restrictions on election spending by corporations. The decision has been widely criticized for its endorsement of "corporate personhood," the idea that corporations are entitled to the same free speech rights as individuals. Rightly so, but equally-as-misguided and less-discussed is the court's implicit approbation in this case that money equals speech.
Sign the petition to draft a Constitutional Amendment overturning this decision at
Movetoamend.org.
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Three cheers for Iowa State Senator Tom Courtney of Burlington, who's
going to the mat for workers in Iowa with a proposal that would guarantee at least a small amount of paid sick time for part-time and full-time employees in the state. Standing up to the business lobbyists at the Statehouse, particularly in the wake of Citizens United, takes backbone.
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Three more cheers for the decision by an acting VP at the University of Iowa to
cancel this weekend's midnight screenings of a classic pornographic film, "Disco Dolls in Hot Skin," at the student-run Bijou Theater. The film was previously screened before a packed house at the venue three years ago, and the theater is funded by ticket sales and student activity fees, not tax dollars, but independent thought is liable to break out unexpectedly if such events are not curtailed. As a CR Gazette reader pointed out online, a good tax-funded and state-approved film to substitute would be
"Triumph of the Will".
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A quiz:
Match the figure who has admitted his culpability during baseball's steroid era with the resulting fate.
1) Jason Giambi
2) Andy Pettitte
3) Alex Rodriguez
4) Bud Selig
5) Mark McGwire
a) Media-beloved member of New York Yankees/Colorado Rockies post-season teams 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009. Recorded final hit at historic Yankee Stadium.
b) Media-beloved member of 2009 World Champion New York Yankees, winner of ALCS-clinching Game 6, World Series Game 3, and World Series-clinching Game 6. Re-signed with Yankees December 9th for one-year, $11.75 million.
c) 6 home runs and 18 RBIS in 2009 postseason, first World Championship in '09, 500th home run ball just sold at auction for $103,579.
d) Announcement last week that a statue with his likeness is being erected in Milwaukee.
e) Media purgatory
Saints take down Colts... and the 4077th
"M*A*S*H's" great record stands no more. For 27 years, the final episode of the CBS comedy stood as the most-watched television event in U.S. history, but last night's Super Bowl contest between New Orleans and Indianapolis has just become the new standard, according to overnight Nielson ratings. The industry's accepted ratings barometer estimated that 106.5 million people watched the game, besting the old mark of 105.97 million.
This is a remarkable accomplishment for the NFL. I guess I just assumed that Super Bowl ratings had leveled off in recent years, along with the ratings of everything else, but it's actually been spiking in recent years. Many thought that the M*A*S*H record had come to be unbeatable as audiences splintered off in the age of cable. Certainly there were M*A*S*H parties for the show's 251st and final episode in 1983, but there couldn't have been as many that night as there would be for any typical Super Bowl, where communal viewing typically works to hold down the numbers of total TV sets in use, if not percentage of sets.
I was partially among the record-breaking masses. I watched the game until halftime, but then left the house to see a movie. The Baseball TV Festival was held in Kansas City this weekend (thanks again, Dave), and I was a little TV'd out by 7 o'clock on Sunday night. Naturally, I decided it was time for a movie instead!
There was a steady snowfall as I made my way to the Fleur Cinema, yet I should have known something was up. There were only seven cars in the theater parking lot, nobody else at my particular screening (an Oscar finalist for Best Picture), and the streets were empty but for the pizza delivery vehicles.
The NFL had some things fall in their favor. The game was televised on the top-watched network (CBS). They had beautiful weather in South Florida for the game and a blizzard across the Northeast, trapping everybody there inside their homes. (The top-rated market in the country for Super Bowl viewing-- aside from New Orleans-- was Washington D.C.) New Orleans was a feel-good story for the ages, and Peyton Manning, the league's highest-profile quarterback, opposed them. There was some advance hype regarding controversial advertisements, and many were thought to have tuned in to see if anybody in the halftime show band-- The Who-- dropped dead on stage. Also, I think the competing Lingerie Bowl went out of business after last year.
Still, it's hard not to give the NFL its just due. Better than any other professional sports league in the U.S., the NFL promotes its teams evenly. There's no favoritism between clubs, and this has a wide-ranging impact. World Series ratings could never match that of a one-time event like the Super Bowl, but can you even imagine a
baseball-ratings record for a championship series between a city the size of New Orleans and a city the size of Indianapolis? "Dear God, we need the Yankees!" the corporate partners plead.
"If the 'M*A*S*H' audience was eclipsed, it was probably due in large part to the fact that the whole country is rooting for New Orleans to triumph in every way possible, said Alan Alda, star of the series, on Monday. "I am, too, and I couldn't be happier for them. I love that city."
But even if the final numbers are confirmed, M*A*S*H is sitting pretty. There are more TV sets now (114.9 million) than there were in 1983 (83.3 million), meaning that the sitcom can still claim a larger
share of an audience-- 77 percent to the Super Bowl's 68. Also, I don't think we're going to still be watching reruns of this Super Bowl three decades from now.
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As I said, I only watched the first half of the game, but to me, the most exciting-- and historically-significant 15 seconds of the evening was
this commercial. Here's
the story behind it.
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I've had it with winter. I vow that I have brushed and scraped my car for the last time as of today. From now on, I'm just drivin'...
The Tim Tebow/CBS agenda
Former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow has every right to speak out passionately and publicly about his political and cultural beliefs, but the CBS television network is engaged in the worst kind of double-standard by allowing the right-wing hate group Focus on the Family advertising time during the Super Bowl to present Tebow as an opponent of women's reproductive rights.
If CBS's standard policy was to allow issue-advertising during this event, I would have no qualms about allowing the organization to purchase the ad, but that has not and still is not CBS's standard policy. In just the last week, executives rejected an advertisement by a gay dating site that featured (in a humorous presentation) two men watching a football game and kissing each other on the couch after their hands meet inadvertently over the snack bowl. This ad features physical action that millions and millions of Americans no longer find either offensive or controversial, and it is advertising for a commercial enterprise that deserves equal access to the broadcast airwaves, as heterosexual dating sites, such as EHarmony.com, are commonplace.
In addition to a standing network policy against issue-oriented advertising, CBS, as recently as 2004, rejected a Super Bowl ad by the United Church of Christ (
those bastards!) that depicted a church door being opened for a gay couple to enter. PETA and MoveOn.org are among the other "left-wing" organizations that have been denied ad slots by CBS even as Focus on the Family, a radical right-wing group that has publicly advocated for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and whose founder and leader has described gay marriage as the "end of Western civilization" is allowed to get airtime inconsistent with the policy.
If the network doesn't take out Focus on the Family and Tim Tebow, then perhaps the Federal Trade Commission will. A petition
has now been filed with the FTC calling the particular ad 'misleading,' questioning the truthfulness of the information presented. Tebow and his mother claim during the 30-second spot to air Sunday that the Heisman Trophy-winner was born in the Philippines to his missionary mother after doctors had advised the pregnant woman, suffering from a tropical illness, to have an abortion for her own safety.
But oops! Not so fast. Turns out abortion has been very illegal in the prodominately-Catholic Philippines dating back to 1930, it's punishable by a 2 to 6-year jail sentence, and there are
no exceptions under the law for rape, incest, or yes, even the health of the mother.
Yet we're expected to believe that, despite this, and despite the threat of medical license(s) being suspended or revoked, and despite widespread reports of a culture in which healthcare workers threaten to and are encouraged to report such activity, a married, pregnant American woman in the Philippines in 1987 was counseled at a hospital to illegally abort the child. And even if this unlikely scenario were true, we then have to take the additional leap to presume that Pam Tebow's decision was based, not on the presumable lack of access to such a procedure, but on her devout religious beliefs. And then CBS breaks it's long-standing policy against airing issue-based advertisements to make an exception in
this of all cases.
It's pretty clear that CBS is displaying some enormous favoritism here to a right-wing hate group, presenting its highly dubious message to the largest television audience in the world this year, and without equal time. It's sickening.
Treme is coming
A new HBO series may require a cable upgrade. It promises to become perhaps the greatest television show of any kind since Johnny Fever first cranked up Ted Nugent on his Ohio Valley turntable.
"Treme" is a product of David Simon, creator of "The Wire," also on HBO, a penetrating and sprawling portrait of his hometown, Baltimore, Maryland-- a city "that falls down beautifully," according to Simon. Now he's back with a series that casts a post-Katrina New Orleans as its set location and its subject.
The title of the series is drawn from the Mid-City Crescent City neighborhood (pronounced Treh-MAY') that borders the French Quarter to the west-- "back of town" in local chatter, and is equal to Vieux Carre in historic significance. Also known as Faubourg Treme, the neighborhood is considered the oldest predominately-black neighborhood in the United States, and was home to the largest community of free black people in the Deep South during slavery and an early political center for the abolition movement.
At Congo Square, carved once upon a time out of the edge of today's Treme neighborhood, slaves of the colonial 18th century were allowed to gather on Sundays and perform their native music. At the beginning of the 20th century, jazz music was first popularized in the red-light district of Storyville, covering the upper-part of Treme, with local musical cleverists building upon the traditions of "call-and-response" blues, gospel hymns, and African-rooted syncopation by "swinging" the sound of the brass instruments heard in the local military bands of this southern Navy port.
It would seem that Simon's got a sharp eye for regionalism, anyway, but this corner of the world is ground zero for local color and the exploration of regional peculiarities. He's recruited "Wire" vets Wendell Pierce (who played Det. "Bunk" Moreland) and Clarke Peters (Det. Lester Freamon) to lead the new cast. Steve Zahn is there, along with "Newsradio"'s Khandi Alexander and "Deadwood"'s Kim Dickens, and now you can add John Goodman, a St. Louis native and an Emmy award-nominated actor who has adopted New Orleans as his hometown. It's a CM Top 50 TV Shows of all-time All-Star team!
Simon found roles for other New Orleans residents as well (Pierce is a native). Tom Piazza, the author of a book on my shelf called "Why New Orleans Matters," is a script writer, as is Lolis Erick Elie, a reporter for the local Times-Picayune. Phyllis Montana LeBlanc is a New Orleans resident who was cast here after she appeared as herself, quite memorably, on Spike Lee's Katrina requiem "When the Levees Broke," there's music in the series from Trombone Shorty, Kermit Ruffins, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Galactic, and the Rebirth Brass Band, and Simon has hired local chef Susan Spicer (that name is made up, right?) as a consultant.
The 10-episode first season begins on April 11th. Here's a
promo.
