duh

I riffed on this before, and not it creeps up again. What the fuck is wrong with this country lately?

First it was the exposure of Bear Gryllis (who I still kind of like) and his show. And now I’m seeing reports of “creative editing” on Deadliest Catch. What’s up with that? I mean, this network used to be the leader in cool outdoor adventure programming, now every time I watch something there I wonder if it’s true or not. I’m really starting to worry about the erosion of truth in America (see : George W. Bush, etc.). It seems that there isn’t enough outrage. The media was supposed to be our check against lies. It was supposed to be the one looking out for us. Now as the world becomes more complex and interconnected and the media is so expanded, it seems that we don’t have a source of truth anymore, just a bunch of opinions on who to trust. BBC anyone?

I was listening to a Tool song called “Message To Harry Manback” which I have loved for about 10 years now and I finally decided to look up the reference (ie. who is this Harry Manback character). I googled it and found the explanation on a site called songmeanings.net. You know, it’s pretty sad how little I pay attention to the lyrics in music. I love music so much and listen so much, but the words are just like another instrument. I almost never gleen any meaning from them, nor do I try.

So an hour later, I’m still on songmeanings, looking up song meanings (and lyrics) for most of the Tool catalog and you know what? I love this band even more now. They have brilliant lyrics, filled with double meanings and metaphors and all.. duh to me..

Oh and songmenaings.net is a great site.. check it out..

I know it and you know it but yet nobody seems to do anything about it. At least I complain to my friends, post here, and pretty much get 0% of my news from (non-bbc) television but still I’m just a small percentage of the potential voters in america. Perhaps if we had a media machine focused on the candidates and what they are all about people would be more interested in voting. Perhaps someone like Dennis Kucinich or Bill Richardson would actually be doing better in the polls if the media stopped focusing on “the front runners”.

Here is a piece in Ars Techica that highlights a very interesting report from The Project for Excellence in Journalism which discusses this very issue. It’s a great read and it should inspire us to demand more from our media.. Will it?

I don’t have the time to make these posts as verbose and link filled as I’d like but I do have time to express how pissed I am about 2 issues today.

The first is local. There was this cop here in the city who was shot in the head and killed the other day. This city is up in arms about this. There is a huge reward for his killer, we had a moment of silence at the Eagles game yesterday, there are news stories all over the place, etc. etc. From the looks of it, this is the biggest tragedy of the year. Let me tell you why I’m bothered by this. Why is it that the shooting death of one cop is 100 times more important to the city than the shooting death of 300 or so young black kids in N. Philly? Seriously? What the fuck is up with this? I mean I don’t want to see anyone shot and killed, and every death is tragic, but what is wrong with our society here that one death is more important that another? Why is this shooting so much more important to everyone?

The second. Do I even need to mention this? Pakistan. On Saturday, which you may or may not know, President Musharraf (citing terrorism) declared a national emergency fired the Chief Justice of his supreme court and pretty much instituted martial law. First off, this sounds eerily like what I was talking about a couple of days ago, but that’s not why I’m angry today. I’m angry because despite the fact that this is a nuclear nation and despite the fact that our country considers the stability of Pakistan to be paramount in our fight against terrorism and despite the fact that OBL and his crew are based there, our national and local media seem to have had on Saturday no interest in this story. It wasn’t the lead anywhere. It wasn’t even the second or third story on the local news. I had to work hard on Saturday (bless the BBC) to find it being talked about with any depth at all. Why is this?

.. and I’m totally happy about it. In 9 days one of my favourite bands is going to release their next album. For Free. Yup.. Indeed it is true. Radiohead is releasing “In Rainbows” for “whatever you’d like to pay for it”. Since they aren’t tied to a record label, they can do this and guess what? It’s going to work swimmingly for them.

And I’ll tell you why with 2 quick items.

The first is the fact that a girl was almost blown to bits by overzealous asshole cops a couple of days ago. Of course I’m talking about Star Simpson at Logan airport. I just came across a blog post on salon that pretty much sums up how I feel so I’ll just let you read that first. What’s sad is that we Americans instead of being upset at how the cops overreacted and almost killed someone for having an unidentified electronic device at an airport (my lord what will we do?) we do one of two things. We shrug it off as just another odd story in this crazy county of ours or we say something along the lines of “well, she should have known better”. Really? Should Cartoon Network have known better when they put up the mooninites? Why should we as American citizens have to spend brain cycles all the time checking all of our public actions to make sure that we don’t look or seem like “evil terrorists bent on destruction”?? I mean really. Let me tell you something. If someone wanted to blow up an airport or someone wanted to attack and kill a bunch of Americans they would do it and we wouldn’t be able to stop them because anyone should know that a determined attacker will not walk into an airport with a bomb strapped to the outside of their sweatshirt. I for one believe that they would probably hide it in some way. Ugh.. I’m done but I could go on.. I don’t think I need to though.. those of you who read here all pretty much agree with me anyway.. who am I convincing?

The second item is not directly related but it still shows us how sad we’ve become. For 3 years now I have been enjoying “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” on BBC America. This show was a simple, genuine and interesting look at how to turn around a failing restaurant. Gordon Ramsay, a very successful and opinionated chef would visit a failing restaurant, figure out what was wrong with it and then work with the owners to make it better again. He would come back a month or so later to check up on it. The show was great because a) the people were genuinely trying to run their establishment, b) Ramsay knew what he was doing, c) he really wanted to help fix the place up and d) occasionally he would encounter friction with the owners or their chef, etc.

I was looking forward to the American version of the show (it debuted on fox last week). Boy was I surprised. The concept was similar, the chef the same, but wow did the show suck! In typical Fox/American TV fashion, the owners of the restaurant were so over the top I was convinced the whole thing was staged and they were actors. Instead of actually implementing ideas and getting deep into the restaurant business, Ramsay (or Fox, its unclear) bought them a new kitchen and generally acted as a host and simply walked around acting surprised and the zainy owners behavior. In addition, the restaurant was completely overlit to the point of looking like a set. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that all the people had to wear makeup. In short, the show now had no soul or depth and was simply sensationalized crap that I still think was fake. But the funny thing is that I agree with what Fox did with it. The BBC version would last one episode here. American viewers would hate it because it would be too complex to understand and probably would seem quite boring. And that is what is so sad. We Americans need to be fed simple, shocking, bright doses of entertainment. We will accept nothing less. Why is this? What is the matter with us? Are we really that shallow?

Let me tell you something you already know… Advertising as we know it is getting quite annoying.. it’s everywhere and it sucks.. is it any wonder we try to screen it out at every turn? Anyway, I just came across an ad for the PS3 that was simply riveting.. I literally could not take my eyes off of it.. It was better than most movies I’ve seen recently.. While it has some nudity and sexual suggestivity, I still think that it was artful enough to have been broadcast on network TV. I applaud Sony for not only making it but releasing it into the public.. simply beautiful work…

The ad (and another one.. not as good, but still pretty cool) is here.

In addition, I urge you to check out the website tied to the ads (thisisliving.tv)

The media has let us down.. I know we have a system of checks and balances in the three branches of govt. but what we need these days is a check on the govt. entirely by the media. We need a tv network/channel that is non-partisan and non-corporate that uses investigative journalism that aims to expose the other side of whatever is happening in the govt.  Maybe they get really smart people from the Left to debate our right leaning politicians and the same in the other direction. It seems to me that the parties have both strayed away from debate and moved to name calling and most people in America don’t seem to care.. Perhaps this network should be funded by the government. Perhaps this network should also be the only place for political television ads (provided for free of course). I don’t know, I’m not feeling very wordy today so I’m sorry this sounds so confused and non-coherent..

NYT Supports Hoaxer, NOT Real Victims by Michael Gaynor