It's What They Do

It's What They Do -- One of my top 10 5 favorite movies has been in heavy rotation recently on IFC. That's a good thing, since it's not on DVD (when, oh when?) and tough to get even on VHS. The movie is Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, starring Tim Roth, Gary Oldham in the title roles and Richard Dreyfuss as "The Player." Based on the Tom Stoppard play, it follows the two minor characters from Hamlet and is based on the idea that every exit is and entrance to somewhere else. R&G and The Player interact with each other outside Shakespeare's Hamlet universe. Watching it the other day, one exchange in particular caught me in this current election season. R (or G -- it's never made clear who is who) asks The Player if he and his troupe perform the classic plays of antiquity, to which he responds...

The Player: We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three, concurrent or consecutive, but we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. We're all blood, you see.

R (or G): Is that what people want?

The Player: It's what we do.

The connection to the election is the mainstream radio and TV's obsession with the "blood" -- with the polls, the gotchas, the soundbites, the snipings, and the 30-year-old irrelevancies on both sides. There is so little out there about the issues that relates and redacts either or both sides' agendas and claims. (An exception is a recent series on NPR -- RealAudio required -- that I caught this week during the commercial breaks on Stern.) What we the people what (and need) is information useful to understanding why we're voting for or against someone.

But that's what we want. That's not what they do.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. -- From boingboing: It ain't just bike locks...

A couple of weeks ago, Mark posted about a guy who picked his Kryptonite bike lock with a ball point pen. Apparently, the story worried another man who recognized that the design of the bike lock was similar to the one on his Stack-On Products gun cabinet. He called Stack-On and was assured that his arsenal was safe from a pen pick. He proved them wrong.

more....

The Daily Stern Returns

The Daily Stern Returns -- Now that I'm commuting again, my morning hour in the car is filled by Howard, Robin, Artie and the gang. Jeff Jarvis is also listening...

The Daily Stern is about to rise again. Congress is about to send its indecent indecency bill to Bush's desk. So if you are on TV and say 'F Bush,' you could be bankrupted. Well, let me get this in while I can: F Congress.

On Howard Stern yesterday, they recounted a Dr. Phil show in which the quack put a 9-year-old boy on, showing him smearing feces on a wall, and said he had most of the warning signs that said this kid was going to be a serial killer. Now I call that obscene (and irresponsible and inhuman). But Congress -- and, apparently, the American psychiatric governing body -- won't go after that. But Congress and the FCC will rule that a four-letter word and a breast are obscene.

I heard that Stern show as well and was equally repulsed by the description of the child abuse perpetrated by the bad doctor. Yeah, protect the children from breasts that they recently fed from and harmless utterances, but go ahead and parade them like freaks in "Dr." Phil's tent-show.

But back to specific recent FCCilliness...

How about a CBS defense fund?

Wouldn't it send a message if the big corporate component of Viacom was supported by 110,000 people donating $5 apiece (or, dare I dream... 1,100,000 sending in 50 cents) to show the silliness of the recent fine for Mr. Timberlake's (remember him? how come he skates free?) liberation of Ms Jackson's breast.