Posted on April 9th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Media, Performance.
Am I the only one* who thinks the Joshua-Bell-in-the-Metro experiment is not a sad commentary on our culture's anything, and that the main lesson is the obvious one that a train station at rush hour is not the best time to try to expose anyone to beautiful music?
I think I'll call people up at random, declaim Shakespeare at them, and see who stays on the line.
*This transparent rhetorical ploy brought to you by the makers of "I know this isn't a very popular thing to say but".
Posted on February 2nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Sports, Media.
ESPN is running a story about ex-New England Patriot linebacker Ted Johnson's concussion related health problems from a front page link with the headline "Ex-Pats linebacker blames Belichick for depression".
Within the story, we discover what "depression" means:
Ted Johnson said coach Bill Belichick subjected him to hard hits in practice while he was recovering from a concussion -- against the advice of the team's top trainer. [...] [A]fter sustaining additional concussions over the next three seasons, he now forgets people's names, misses appointments and suffers from depression and an addiction to amphetamines. [...] After returning to game action, the linebacker sustained more concussions of varying severity over the following three seasons, each of them exacerbating the next, according to his current neurologist, Dr. Robert Cantu. Cantu told the Times he was certain that Johnson's problems "are related to his previous head injuries, as they are all rather classic postconcussion symptoms." He added, "They are most likely permanent." Cantu, the chief of neurosurgery and director of sports medicine at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass., also said Johnson shows signs of early Alzheimer's disease. "The majority of those symptoms relentlessly progress over time," Cantu said. "It could be that at the time he's in his 50s, he could have severe Alzheimer's symptoms."
I wonder how many ESPN visitors see the link, roll their eyes at the idea of an ex-player blaming a coach for depression, and don't read the piece.
Posted on January 31st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff, Media.
I don't watch television if I can help it, especially serial drama, which is so calcified as a form -- even Joss Whedon, yes -- that exposure to its predictable plot arcs and hammy acting and stunted dialogue is like sandpaper on my brain. (I have tried over the years to not sound like a snot about this. Just for the record, I am not trying to pretend this is an objective judgment, or to say anything about anyone else's appreciation of televised serial drama. I just can't fucking stand it, and the less I see of it the worse it is when I see it.)
Even by the standards of my completely negative attitude toward the whole form, though, I was surprised last night, while watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent at the bar (a series of shows I gather has a good reputation, which confirms my feelings about the form, because it was cringingly badly written and its plot was simple-minded when it wasn't absurd) at what a laughably bad actor Vincent D'Onofrio is. He has William Shatner's vocal delivery, only even more parodically; there really is no syntactic or emotional sense to when he pauses in a phrase. But in addition, he is ludicrously physical, twitching, swaying, making pointless finger movements, again at seemingly random intervals, like he's reached into a grab bag of gestures and sprinkled them through his acting for extra flavor. The swaying in particular was making me crack up. He was a relief, so bad that he made the ordinary badness of the show almost bearable.
I suppose I'm going to find out he's an Emmy winner.
Posted on December 5th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Media, Comedy.
"After a lot of drink and passive-aggressive conversation, aided in no small part by biased counseling and stupid advice from so-called 'friends,' we have made the precipitous and petulant decision to break up our engagement, management partnership, and most of our furniture. We forget why we ever got involved with each other in the first place, and we ask that everyone respect our publicity and take care to place the blame where it belongs in this time of unparalleled tragedy."
Posted on May 30th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Media.
via Daniel Radosh: The New York Times discovers the sophisticated sailor. And rediscovers, and rediscovers...
Posted on May 5th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Media.
There's been a lot of eye-rolling about the Washington press corps' reaction to Stephen Colbert -- first pretending that it had never happened, and then saying they hadn't talked about it because it "wasn't funny". Now it goes without saying that the current Washington press corps are a gaggle of lackeys and lickspittles doing glorified propaganda work for the administration, with Helen Thomas seemingly remaining only to remind them of the standards of journalism the rest of them have betrayed. Colbert making fun of Bush to his face no doubt made them uncomfortable; mean daddy might hold them accountable for the sins of their distant cousin, after all.
But that's not why they pretended it didn't happen, and then pretended that it wasn't pointed and funny. Remember the religious leadeers denouncing The Life of Brian for making fun of Jesus? The movie, of course, made no fun of Jesus, but it had great fun at the expense of religious zealots. The religious leaders who denounced it with such anger did so because they were being mocked. They used Jesus to justify their anger, because no one looks more pathetic than the target of satire rising in wrath to cry "that's not funny!" while rubbing his wounded ass.
Here's why the Washington press corps said Colbert wasn't funny:
Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction.
Colbert wasn't unfunny because he was rude to Bush; Colbert was unfunny because he told the press corps, to their faces, how contemptible they were.
And he speaks for everyone in America disgusted with the press abandoning their reponsibilities to the nation, cravenly selling out their integrity for a few scraps dropped from the table of power.
Thank you, Stephen Colbert.
A: Any day I wake up and look at.
Q: What has been the most valuable thing in life to you?
A: Time.