Category Archives: Popular culture

Where do kids listen to their pop music today? (All I know is, it better not be on my lawn…)

Spotify informs me that Darla Moore has subscribed to “my” playlist, “NPR Songs of Summer.” Of course, it’s not “my” playlist. It’s NPR’s.

For a moment I thought I’d discovered what Darla had been up to since Nikki bumped her from the USC board of trustees — listening to Adele, LMFAO, Taio Cruz, Gnarls Barkley, Simon and Garfunkel and the Stones. But then I realized it was another Darla Moore altogether — but one, it should be said, with pretty good taste, who also listens to Emeli Sandé, Kate Bush, R.E.M., Loudon Wainwright III, Beck, the Velvet Underground and the Psychedelic Furs, among many others, according to her public profile.

Which is aside from my point. The point is, I have a confession to share.

After having played them over a bunch more times, I realize I was wrong about some of those songs on the NPR list. Some of the recent songs I rated really low on my zero-to-five-stars scale are a lot better than I thought they were when I first rated them.

For instance… I wake up in the morning with LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” which has really grown on me, in my head.

And more dramatically, I originally rated Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” at two stars, which was ridiculous. I now consider it to be worth at least four, if not five. It’s amazing. I didn’t come to this decision because of seeing two of my older (male, amazingly enough) cousins dancing to it with abandon at a wedding a couple of weeks back — doing something that looked very like an Indian rain or war dance, which the song’s driving rhythm tends to abet.

No, I’ve come to that conclusion from listening to it over and over. And eventually going, wow. You know how I posed the question of what, exactly, makes Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” so mysteriously stirring? What, I asked, is the music doing to the ear, the brain, the soul in that part that “goes like this, the fourth, the fifth/ The minor fall and the major lift…?”

Well, something comparably awesome happens, building irresistibly, and then exploding, every time, when Adele sings this part:

The scars of your love remind me of us
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling

We could have had it ALLLLLLL…

It’s just amazing.

But it took time for me to fully realize it.

And it occurs to me that that is a large part of the difference, in terms of my appreciation, between recent songs and something like, for instance, “Honky Tonk Women,” with which I was saturated during the summer of 1969. (When I hear it, it brings one particular memory specifically to mind… driving down Highway 17 between Myrtle Beach and Surfside, passing by right where Tad’s used to be, telling my Uncle Woody — who’s just a little older than I am, and therefore sort of like an older brother — that that was just the best driving song ever. This was possibly influenced by the fact that I had just started driving.)

It’s not that I’m an old fogy — although I’m sure some of you will have your own opinions as to that. The thing is, I react to music much the same as I did in my youth. I certainly feel the same inside when I hear it.

But back in the day, we heard the songs so often, and they had a much better chance of growing on us. On TV, on the radio, walking down the street, coming from a juke box. Music was so common, and shared, and unavoidable. Grownups were able to mock The Beatles’ “yeah, yeah, yeah” because they heard it, everywhere.

There was one Top 40, and everybody was exposed to it. Now… music is more diverse, and specialized, and broken down. And I have the sense that you have to go out and seek it more than you do today. Even if it’s only clicking on a link from a friend via social media, you sort of have to seek it out.

Yeah, maybe it’s just because I’m not invited to those kinds of parties, but music just doesn’t seem as public and as ubiquitous as it once did. Is that a misperception? I don’t know.

I do know that music took a shift toward the private and esoteric and fragmented in the 70s, as we all became “album-oriented.” But then it came back together, became more democratic, in the 80s with MTV, to where most of us have a shared soundtrack for that era.

Now, just as people can choose highly specialized TV channels to watch — rather than having to be satisfied with three networks — they are more empowered to choose a specific musical direction, and have it be private, through their ear buds. Yes, it’s shared, but more person-to-person, rather than communally.

Or so it seems. As I say, I don’t go to parties where current pop music is being played, assuming such parties still exist. But then, I was a pretty antisocial kid, and didn’t go to all that many parties.

So what’s different? How do y’all see, or rather hear, the music scene today?

The music used to be so public, and unavoidable.

The alleged Top Ten best films of all time

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There are things that run through my mind when I see Kim Novak. "Great actress" isn't one of them.

Roger Ebert brings my attention to this report by Alexander Hull on this decade’s Sight & Sound Top 10 Greatest Movies of all Time. Hull starts out:

The recent unveiling of Sight & Sound‘s 2012 list of the Top 10 Greatest Movies of all Time brings with it the inevitable chatter that accompanies most lists taking authoritative stabs at qualifying the best of, well, anything. Cinephiles scan for snubs, ranking quirks, and whatever consistencies and trends they can glean from the list. Released every ten years since 1952 and voted upon by hundreds of critics and industry professionals, Sight & Sound has long been seen as a definitive voice in cinema-culture consensus. This time around, though, there’s one gleaming omission from the Sight & Sound list: modern films. The top 10 doesn’t include any movie made in the last 44 years, and the Top 50 only features 13 films since the 1970s (only six since the 1980s)….

To be sure, there’s something obviously preposterous about saying that the decades after the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 have produced no films worthy of inclusion in the top 10. If a movie is a masterpiece, it should be ranked as a classic, regardless of how old or young it is—right? Since 1968 (or the 1970s if you’re looking at the Top-50 list) cinema has offered countless great, widely acclaimed films. The critical question, as voiced by New Statesman‘s Ryan Gilbey: “Are those who voted paralysed by history or are the finest films really located in the distant past?”

But I’d argue that the voters are not as paralyzed as some might suspect. The new Sight & Sound list actually does represent a move—a small move—towards the modern. Citizen Kane lost its top spot to Vertigo, a movie 17 years its junior. And compared to the 2002 version, this year’s top-50 breakdown features fewer works from the years between 1920 and 1950 and more from the years between 1960 and today. These incremental shifts towards the new (well, newer) certainly suggest change is happening and that modern films are becoming canonized. It just also suggests that the canonization process is very, very slow.

Personally, I’d suggest that the methodology of this survey is lacking. This comes across like the consensus opinions, reflecting a discernment process lasting centuries, of the Old Ones in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. (And by the way, why hasn’t that been made into a movie yet?)

Other reports have noted the fact that “Citizen Kane” has been toppled from the No. 1 spot. Which would be fine with me — I find the constant ranking of that admittedly excellent film on the tops of such lists rather monotonous — if only it were replaced by something awesome.

But instead, it’s replaced by Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” — a film that, to be honest, I can’t remember whether I’ve seen. Film buffs aren’t supposed to admit things like this, but frankly, some of Hitchcock’s films run together in my mind. Of course, if it’s the best movie of all time, certainly I haven’t seen it, or I’d remember, right?

But then, my tastes are seldom those of the kinds of people who assemble these lists. For instance, there’s the overabundance of foreign films, which too few Americans are regularly exposed to. Yes, there’s Netflix now, and I do order foreign DVDs (how else could I have been exposed to the wonderful “The Lives of Others?” But it’s not like I’ve seen it 10 times in theaters, starting when I was young — which I suspect is the case with New York or Los Angeles-based critics. Because those are the kinds of movies they seem to be into — ones that prove themselves over and over. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well. But I’ve often thought that maybe if I were exposed to “Citizen Kane” more often, I’d realize how awesome it is. But I haven’t been, and I don’t.

Here’s what I think of the films in this new list:

“Vertigo” — OK, so I’ll put it on my Netflix list to make sure I’ve seen it. I’ll only pass on something my wife said last night. “Pal Joey” was on the tube while we were getting ready to have dinner, and she said something like, “What made anyone put ‘Kim Novak’ and ‘acting’ together?” I couldn’t answer her.
“Citizen Kane” — Again, maybe if I watch it over and over I’ll get hypnotized into thinking it’s awesome, but it might be too late. It’s been the butt of too many jokes playing on elements of the film that have become cliches. But it did produce some awesome b/w stills, I’ll say that.
“Tokyo Story” — Since the article doesn’t tell me, I don’t even know what it is about.
“La Règle du jeu” — Ditto. Another one for the Netflix queue, I guess.
“Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” — Same deal. This is getting monotonous.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” — A masterpiece, all right, although not one of my faves. I do happen to own it on Blu-Ray — it’s one of the first I went out and got when I first got a Blu-Ray player — and watched it again recently. The cinematography in the early scenes of the Pan-Am flight to the moon are great — the ballet of the spheres, and so forth — as are the scenes between Dave and Hal, as the quiet tension builds. But something struck me, as happens sometimes with pre-MTV films — I’m struck at how slow the pace is, and while I’m impressed with all the majesty, I get a little antsy.
“The Searchers” — Another I’ll have to see again, and try, try to understand why so many critics rate it above “Stagecoach” or “My Darling Clementine,” or “High Noon.” Probably something esoteric.
“Man with a Movie Camera” — As Soviet films go, I’ve at least heard of “Battleship Potemkin.” This, no.
“The Passion of Joan of Arc” — Yeahhh… that’s one of those I kind of knew I should probably see sometime, but haven’t quite gotten around to…
“8 1/2” — OK, now this one I think I started to watch once, out of a sense of duty, but I didn’t finish it. Guess I should try again.

Basically, I think those who contributed to this list have achieved their goal: They’ve made me feel like an uncultured boob.

Now, for a regular ol’ unpretentious, red-blooded, All-American, pure vanilla Top Ten list. I’ll give my reasons for the my picks some other day:

“It’s a Wonderful Life“
“The Godfather“
“Casablanca“
“The Graduate“
“High Noon“
“Saving Private Ryan“
“The Natural“
“Hoosiers”
“His Girl Friday“
“Mean Streets“

And as a bonus, here are five more to chew on:

Alla you foreign film buffs, get offa my lawn!

Shawarma: The lunch of superheroes

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The above sign, spotted today at Al Amir on Main St., got me to thinking of “The Avengers.”

Tony Stark: You ever try shawarma?

SPOILER ALERT! OK, not really, because it reveals nothing about the plot, although it will ruin a tiny little fun surprise. It’s just one of those little lagniappe things at the end of the credits. Although, come to think of it, this does tell you that all the heroes survive the movie, so SPOILER ALERT!

At the end of the climactic battle, as he’s lying dazed among the rubble, Robert Downey Jr., who as Iron Man has 90 percent of the movie’s good lines, reassures his comrades that he is alive by saying offhandedly, “You ever try shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it.”

Then, the fun part: After all the credits — apparently, Joss Whedon needed the help of about 3.7 million people to make this flick — you see the exhausted heroes lounging, disheveled, around a table in the shawarma joint, slowly munching away in complete silence. This continues for more than 30 seconds, as a restaurant employee sweeps up in the background.

This sort of backhanded, non-branded little product placement has apparently launched a bit of a shawarma craze:

Those of you still reading will likely recall Tony Stark’s fascination with shawarma toward the end of the film. During the climactic battle, Stark suggests the team adjourn to a nearby restaurant to try the dish, which Wikipedia describes as “a pita bread sandwich or wrap” filled with spit-roasted meat (commonly lamb, goat, chicken or a mixture of various meats). At the very, very end of the film, after the credits have rolled, we witness the superhero team sitting at a table, silently eating their shawarma for a surprisingly long amount of time.

Now, based on that short in-joke, TMZ claims that the Los Angeles shawarma industry has seen a massive spike in popularity since the release of the film. “At Ro Ro’s Chicken — a famed Lebanese joint in Hollywood — the manager says shawarma sales jumped 80% in the days after the movie opened,” the gossip site claims, while saying that a number of other Lebanese restaurants offered similar results…

That’s fine. Just as long as they don’t start rebranding it the Super-Gyro…

Eerie coincidence: Critic wrote of death threats related to “Dark Knight” BEFORE the shootings

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Publicity still from the official website.

This is downright eerie.

Joe Morgenstern wrote this postscript to his review of “The Dark Knight Rises” in the edition of The Wall Street Journal that was delivered to my home this morning — meaning it went to press well before the mass murder in Colorado:

A note about the perils of being a movie critic in the age of polarized fandom.

I may have saved my life without realizing it by liking “The Dark Knight Rises” sufficiently—or disliking it with sufficient restraint—to have my review categorized as “ripe” rather than “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes, a popular website that aggregates movie and DVD reviews. For those of us who write about movies to provoke discussion, these reductive categories are awfully silly, but they’re also symptoms of the love/hate, either/or ethos of contemporary discourse. In the realm of the Internet, as well as talk-radio and politics, that discourse has been growing ever more poisonous, and now the poison has contaminated Rotten Tomatoes. Earlier this week the website was forced to shut down its user comments on “The Dark Knight Rises” when negative reviews—officially adjudged “rotten”—by two of my colleagues, Christy Lemire and Marshall Fine, provoked floods of vile responses that included death threats.

Batman movies may be a bit of a special case, what with fanatical fanboys trolling the Internet to root out negative opinions of their supersolemn hero. But the Dark Knight’s acolytes don’t have a monopoly on intolerance of dissent. They’re part of a rising tide that threatens to drown Internet discussion in shrill opinion. The editors of Rotten Tomatoes have the right to excise such clearly intolerable comments, and the responsibility to improve procedures for screening out new ones. Once that’s done, however, the comments function should be fully restored. Free speech for the many shouldn’t fall victim to abuse by the few.

Write to Joe Morgenstern at [email protected]

Wow. If the shootings had NOT happened last night, I would simply have agreed with him about the decline of discourse, particularly on the Web.

As things happened, this is particularly startling.

By the way, the way I learned of this horror was particularly unsettling. I mentioned earlier today having trouble sleeping last night, worrying because my daughter was ill in a faraway country. What sleep I got was punctuated by the sound of my iPhone receiving bulletins about the shootings. The first bulletins confused me — how could there have been a shooting at a mall in the wee hours of the morning? It was only later — 5 a.m. or so — that the more complete bulletins mentioned the midnight showing of this film, so that I understood. To the extent that you can understand anything like this.

Fifty years of summertime pop, rated

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The sleeve of my "Honky Tonk Women" single.

Last week, I called into question the value of recent pop music. I was moved to do so by this feature on NPR, regarding “The Songs Of The Summer, 1962-2012,” which ran the gamut “from surf rock in the early 1960s through British then American rock ‘n’ roll, disco, power ballads, R&B, boy bands and hip-hop.”

I thought it particularly meaningful that it counted from what Gene Sculatti’s The Catalog of Cool described as “The Last Good Year.”

I listened to the Spotify mix that the story linked to (there’s also a version provided by NPR itself, but you don’t get to pick where you jump in — it’ more like conventional radio that way).

The list confirms me in my belief, that there hasn’t been a summer like that of 1966 since. As I said before:

Puts me in mind of the summer of ’66. I came back from the beach determined to go out and buy three singles: “Green Grass” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, “I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel, and “Little Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs.

OK, so sue me. I was 12. At least “I Am a Rock” was cool.

But look at what else came out that summer:
PAPERBACK WRITER – The Beatles
WILD THING – The Troggs
PAINT IT, BLACK – The Rolling Stones (still my favorite Stones song)
SUMMER IN THE CITY – The Lovin’ Spoonful
HANKY PANKY – Tommy James & The Shondells
STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT – Frank Sinatra
MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER – The Rolling Stones
AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BEG – The Temptations
DIRTY WATER – The Standells
WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN – Percy Sledge
SUNSHINE SUPERMAN – Donovan
MONDAY, MONDAY – The Mamas & The Papas

Not to mention these forgettable items that I loved at the time:
RED RUBBER BALL – The Cyrkle
SWEET PEA – Tommy Roe
THEY’RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY, HA-HAAA! – Napoleon XIV

That was all just one summer.

Come on — what will today’s 12-year-olds have to look back to in the future?

The answer to that question doesn’t appear to be very encouraging.

Gradually, over the past week, I listened to that mix while doing a lot of other things. Here’s how I rated what I heard, on a scale from zero stars to five:

2012: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”

2011: Adele, “Rolling In The Deep”

2011: LMFAO, “Party Rock Anthem”

2011: Nicki Minaj, “Super Bass”

2010: Eminem featuring Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie”

2010: Katy Perry, “California Gurls”

2010: Taio Cruz, “Dynamite”

2009: Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling”

2009: Taylor Swift, “You Belong With Me”

2008: Coldplay, “Viva La Vida”

2008: Katy Perry, “I Kissed A Girl”

2008: Lil Wayne featuring Static Major, “Lollipop” – Only gets a 1 because, if you only hear a second of it, it’s catchy. After 2 seconds, you hate it

0 2007: Rihanna featuring Jay-Z, “Umbrella”

0 2007: T-Pain featuring Yung Joc, “Buy U A Drank”

2006: Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”

0 2006: Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland, “Promiscuous”

2006: Shakira, “Hips Don’t Lie”

0 2005: Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”

0 2005: The Pussycat Dolls featuring Busta Rhymes, “Don’t Cha”

0 2004: Juvenile featuring Soulja Slim, “Slow Motion”

2004: Usher, “Confessions Part II”

2003: Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, “Crazy In Love”

2003: Chingy, “Right Thurr”

2003: Sean Paul, “Get Busy” – This would get a 2, but for the monotony.

2002: Avril Lavigne, “Complicated” – Almost it to a three in the middle part, but not quite.

2002: Jimmy Eat World, “The Middle”

0 2002: Eminem, “Without Me”

0 2002: Nelly, “Hot In Herre”

0 2001: Destiny’s Child, “Bootylicious” – What did this in from the start was the ripped-off sample from Stevie Nicks’ highly irritating “Just Like the White-Winged Dove.” It only got worse from there.

2001: Eve featuring Gwen Stefani, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”

1999: Christina Aguilera, “Genie In A Bottle”

1999: Jennifer Lopez, “If You Had My Love”

0 1999: Len, “Steal My Sunshine”

1999: Smash Mouth, “All Star”

0 1998: Next, “Too Close”

0 1998: Vengaboys, “We Like To Party”

1998: The Backstreet Boys, “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”

1997: Hanson, “MMMBop” – Bubblegum, but not bad bubblegum. The chorus almost raises it to 3.

1997: Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy & Ma$e, “Mo Money Mo Problems”

1997: Puff Daddy featuring Faith Evans & 112, “I’ll Be Missing You” – How much credit should a sample get? Because without that, this is nothing.

1996: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, “Tha Crossroads”

1996: Los Del Rio, “Macarena” – Yes, the craze became a joke, but at least it has some musicality.

1996: Mariah Carey, “Always Be My Baby”

1995: Seal, “Kiss From A Rose”

1995: TLC, “Waterfalls”

1994: Ace of Base, “Don’t Turn Around”

1994: All-4-One, “I Swear”

1994: Lisa Loeb, “Stay” – Keeps threatening to sound good, but doesn’t get there.

1994: Warren G & Nate Dogg, “Regulate”

1993: Tag Team, “Whoomp! (There It Is)”

1993: UB40, “Can’t Help Falling In Love” – Too bad Elvis never heard this version.

1992: Boys II Men, “End of the Road”

1992: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Under the Bridge”

1992: Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Baby Got Back” – I agree with the sentiment, at least.

1991: Bryan Adams, “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” – Not his best effort.

1991: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, “Summertime”

1991: EMF, “Unbelievable”

1990: Mariah Carey, “Vision Of Love”

1990: New Kids on the Block, “Step By Step”

1989: Martika, “Toy Soldiers”

1989: Richard Marx, “Right Here Waiting” – Syrupy.

1988: Cheap Trick, “The Flame”

1988: Steve Winwood, “Roll With It” – Not as good as his work with Blind Faith, not by a long shot. But it’s catchy.

1987: Heart, “Alone”

1987: U2, “With Or Without You” – Perhaps their best song.

1987: Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” – Excellent example of the genre, but I’m not a big fan of the genre.

1986: Madonna, “Papa Don’t Preach”

1986: Peter Cetera, “Glory Of Love”

1985: Huey Lewis & The News, “The Power of Love”

1985: Tears For Fears, “Shout” – One of the best of the 80s.

1984: Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time” – Not as good as “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

1984: Prince & The Revolution, “When Doves Cry” – Not as good as “1999”

1983: The Police, “Every Breath You Take”

1983: Irene Cara, “Flashdance…What a Feeling”

1982: Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder, “Ebony & Ivory” – Just chock full of good intentions, though.

1982: Human League, “Don’t You Want Me”

1982: Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”

1981: Rick Springfield, “Jessie’s Girl”

1981: Kim Carnes, “Bette Davis Eyes”

1980: Lipps, Inc., “Funkytown”

1980: Billy Joel, “It’s Still Rock & Roll to Me”

1979: Donna Summer, “Bad Girls” – It would be a 1, but I don’t want Bud to hate me.

1979: Anita Ward, “Ring My Bell”

1978: Andy Gibb, “Shadow Dancing”

1978: Frankie Valli, “Grease” – Sorry, Frankie, but there were better songs in that show.

1977: Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams”

1976: Starland Vocal Band, “Afternoon Delight” – An oddball little hit.

1976: Elton John & Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”

1976: Wings, “Silly Love Songs”

1975: The Captain & Tennille, “Love Will Keep Us Together” – Perhaps a better song, done by someone else.

1974: Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods, “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero”

1974: George McCrae, “Rock Your Baby”

1973: Diana Ross, “Touch Me In The Morning”

1973: Jim Croce, “Bad Bad Leroy Brown”

1972: Bill Withers, “Lean On Me” – This just gets better and better.

1972: Sammy Davis, Jr., “The Candy Man” – How did this get in there?

1971: Bee Gees, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?” – I’m throwing the Bee Gees a bone here.

1971: Carole King, “It’s Too Late”

1970: The Carpenters, “(They Long To Be) Close To You”

1970: The Jackson 5, “The Love You Save”

1970: Edwin Starr, “War” – Good song, though it overstates its case (“absolutely nothing”).

1969: The Beatles, “Get Back”

1969: The Rolling Stones, “Honky Tonk Woman” – Not only a superlative summer song, it’s a great driving song, too.

1968: Simon & Garfunkel, “Mrs. Robinson”

1968: The Rascals, “People Got To Be Free”

1967: Aretha Franklin, “Respect” – Give her some.

1967: The Doors, “Light My Fire” – I probably would have rated this higher at the time.

1966: Tommy James & The Shondells, “Hanky Panky”

1966: The Troggs, “Wild Thing” — Elemental, proto-punk, garage band purity.

1966: The Lovin’ Spoonful, “Summer In The City”

1965: The Byrds, “Mr. Tambourine Man” — I’d have given the Dylan original another star.

1965: The Beatles, “Help!” — I feel bad that I didn’t give the Beatles five stars on anything, but none of their best songs were listed.

1965: The Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

1965: Sonny & Cher, “I Got You Babe”

1964: Dean Martin, “Everybody Loves Somebody”

1964: The Animals, “House of the Rising Sun”

1964: The Beach Boys, “I Get Around”

1963: Lesley Gore, “It’s My Party”

1963: Jan & Dean, “Surf City”

1962: Ray Charles, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”

1962: Neil Sedaka, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

1962: Little Eva, “The Loco-Motion” – Had trouble deciding on this one; may only be a 3.

Binge TV watching: “You don’t want to know”

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Never mind that noise. It's just a bunch of walkers...

The “walker” down in the well was making that characteristic noise they make — the half-strangled, wheezy, snuffling snarl — as the survivors debated what to do about getting it out of there. And I guess I had it turned up a little louder than usual.

My wife called from another part of the house, “What is that noise?”

I hesitated.

Then, I said, “You don’t want to know.”

She laughed, and dropped it. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to answer further, which would have embarrassed me. I was deep into a “Walking Dead” binge. And I knew that my wife had the exact attitude toward the series that I did before I got hooked on it — I couldn’t imagine wasting my time watching something that gross.

I had recorded the entire second season when they showed it in marathon form a weekend or two back, and was well into it now. This was to prepare me for the premiere of the third season, which is in… October! How’m I going to wait that long? Especially if this season leaves things hanging the way it almost certainly will, with this unresolved conflict between Rick and Shane, and Herschel likely to throw everybody off the farm any minute? And of course, walkers all over the place, and ammunition in finite supply.

At the back of my mind lingers another worry — my DVR is running out of space. Do I go ahead and erase this when I’ve watched them all? And what about the most recent seasons of “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men,” which aren’t on Netflix yet? OK, I can erase “Breaking Bad” Sunday, when the Season 5 premieres and Season 4 does go up on Netflix, but what about the rest? It’s a tough call.

So it is that I could identify with this piece in The Wall Street Journal this morning, headlined, “Binge Viewing: TV’s Lost Weekends,” which is all about how, “Using streaming and DVRs, TV viewers are increasingly gobbling up entire seasons of shows in marathon sessions: How that’s changing the game for media companies, advertisers and show creators.”

An excerpt:

With the new season of “Breaking Bad” starting Sunday night, Chad Rohrbacher plopped down on his couch recently to catch up on some past episodes of the show about a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin. Twenty-two hours passed before he clicked off the set. Pausing only for bathroom breaks, sandwiches and occasional comments of disbelief from his wife, he watched two entire seasons in one go. “It just kind of snowballed,” the 40-year-old novelist and college professor recalls.

When last season ended with a showdown between the bespectacled antihero and his drug boss, Mr. Rohrbacher watched the climax alone in his Greensboro, N.C., living room at 4 a.m. “I could barely see,” he says. The next day, “he was there in body, not in mind,” says his wife, Melanie, who did not participate. “I have a house and kids to take care of.”…

I feel for you, Chad. Been there.

Used to be, I had Netflix — and my DVR — just for the movies. In fact, that was pretty much the only reason I had a TV. But now, that’s changed. And AMC has played a big role in making that happen. They seem the best at making must-keep-watching, high-quality TV shows. And now, you can watch them all at once.

So you’re saying that you’re a grownup, and you have your head on straight and a solid set of priorities, so this doesn’t affect you. Well, yes it does, if you watch TV at all — because it’s altering what’s being offered. Writers are having to write differently for this kind of audience. And it’s changing the whole business:

The industry ramifications are bigger than the occasional weekend lost to “Lost.” Bingeing breaks habits that have long supported the TV business, built on advertising and syndicated reruns. TV executives are torn by the development: gratified that people are gorging on their product, frustrated because it’s a TV party that all-important advertisers aren’t invited to. For middlemen like Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus and Netflix, it’s a godsend, boosting their quest to attract and retain subscribers. Writers and producers are just starting to confront the challenges of creating TV for an audience that may digest an entire season in one sitting.

Vince Gilligan, the creator of “Breaking Bad,” got his start in the writers room for “The X-Files.” There, he was schooled by creator Chris Carter in building cliffhangers to lure the audience through commercial breaks and into the next episode. Now, besides unspooling a narrative week by week, year by year, writers must also keep in mind fans who take the story “in a giant inhalation,” says Mr. Gilligan.

He describes his show as “hyper-serialized,” in the way writers try to close the loop on every character and plot point. A homemade poison that methamphetamine whiz Walter White (Bryan Cranston) tried to use on a drug dealer in season two ended up driving a big plot twist in season four. “We use every bit of the buffalo,” says Mr. Gilligan. He now believes fans who devour multiple seasons in short order are “more rewarded” because their memories of all the story threads are fresher. (Others disagree: TV critics are arguing about whether serialized TV is better when savored between episodes.)

Of course, the good news is, if I’m caught up on all three of the AMC series I watch (there would be four, if they hadn’t cancelled “Rubicon“), and I haven’t gone off on another tangent, like that period several months ago when I was plunging through all six seasons of “Lost,” I’m relatively free to live my life — interact with actual humans, or even read a book.

But when I’m in the middle of a season, it can be bad. The WSJ piece warns, “Brain chemistry plays a role in bingeing. ‘We get into something akin to a trance with great storytelling,’ says psychiatrist Norman Doidge, author of ‘The Brain That Changes Itself.’ Viewers identify with characters on screen and subconsciously begin to mimic their emotions—be it sadness or triumph or anxiety—and each emotional state triggers different brain chemicals, which linger.”

No kidding. I remember, in the first couple of seasons of “Breaking Bad,” when I’d stayed up long after my wife had gone to bed, I’d hesitate to go in and hit the sack, because I felt guilty. She might wake up and ask questions. No, I hadn’t personally been running a mobile meth lab and killing off competitors and keeping it a secret from my wife. That was Walter White. But I’d been so wrapped up in his tension, trying to keep it from his wife, that my nerves were on edge. I felt like an accomplice. I felt like I was descending into the sordid depths as surely as he was.

This feeling eased up in the most recent season, as Walter became more ruthless and started agonizing less over his actions. So… does that mean I’m as bad as he is now? Aye, there’s the rub.

But there’s always the fallback. If there are any questions, I’ll just say, “You don’t want to know.”

Nothing, dear! I'm just cooking up a batch of... stuff...

Onion gets the scoop on The Daily Planet

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This was a mildly amusing piece in The Onion yesterday:

NEW YORK—Frustrated fans of the Superman comic book said Monday the continued financial stability and cultural relevance of the series’ Daily Planet newspaper is now the most unrealistic part of its universe and an annoying distraction that has ruined their reading experience.

While they acknowledged that enjoying the adventures of a superhero who can fly, lift a bus over his head, and shoot beams of intense heat from his eyes requires some suspension of disbelief, longtime fans told reporters they simply could not accept a daily metropolitan newspaper still thriving in the media landscape of 2012.

“I can play along with Superman using a steel girder to swat someone into outer space, but I just can’t get past the idea that The Daily Planet still occupies one of the largest skyscrapers in all of Metropolis and is totally impervious to newsroom layoffs or dwindling home subscriptions,” said comics blogger Marc Daigle, adding that it was impossible for him to even look at Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, without immediately thinking he would have been replaced long ago by a freelancer who gets paid nine cents a word and receives no health benefits. “Every time The Daily Planetshows up, I just get taken out of the story completely. I usually flip ahead to Superman freezing a volcano with his breath or something.”…

I say “mildly” because the idea of a health Daily Planet was sufficiently absurd that it was hard to make fun of effectively.

One last excerpt:

“The least they could do is have [Daily Planet editor-in-chief] Perry White be forced into retirement by an MBA 25 years his junior,” Taft continued. “It’d be a start.”

See? Too real, too true, too matter-of-fact to be funny.

Perry! Great Caesar’s Ghost!

The side of Andy we don’t choose to remember

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I just thought I’d put this up to remind everyone what Andy Griffith was actually capable of as an actor.

This was the only time he showed this kind of scary depth. And I suppose the reason for that is, people preferred his lighter, friendlier side. People didn’t want to be frightened by Andy Griffith. If I had been his agent, I confess, I’d have recommended he keep on being Andy Taylor, so I can’t blame anyone that he never developed a Robert De Niro/Edward Norton kind of rep. His being typecast made the world a warmer place.

But he had this talent, so it should be acknowledged.

God rest you, Andy Griffith

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Well, I reckon it had to happen someday, but I declare I wish it wasn’t so:

Beloved actor Andy Griffith died this morning.

Former UNC President Bill Friday says The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock actor died at his home in Dare County, North Carolina around 7 a.m.

Friday, who is a close friend of the actor, confirmed the news to WITN News.

Some will think back on ol’ Andy and remember such irrelevancies as “Matlock,” which I never took any interest in. That image is apparently indelible, though. On Saturday, I was sitting out in the 108-degree sun at a wedding, and the guy in front of me commented on someone up ahead wearing a seersucker jacket, and said something like, “Somebody went with the Matlock look.” (If he’d turned around, he’d have seen someone wearing a full seersucker suit, which of course was the only thing to wear. This guy was in black, if you can believe it.)

But that’s not the impression Andy left on me, or on most people, I suspect.

To me, he’s the character of his youth. He’s the enthusiastic innocent of “No Time for Sergeants.” He’s the really scary, dark side of that character in “A Face in the Crowd” (in an awe-inspiring performance that I never saw him equal since — although few would want to remember him for that).

But mostly, he’s Andy Taylor, the Sheriff Without A Gun. And I mean the early Sheriff Taylor, in black and white, with Barney Fife, before he got jaded and bored with the character (his portrayal is unrecognizable in the later episodes, after Opie stopped being cute).

For the Andy Taylor I know, there’s a perfect heaven. It’s on the front porch of his house in Mayberry, just a-settin’ there rockin’ with Barney after one of Aunt Bea’s Mmmm-mmmm! dinners. Maybe he’s strumming the guitar a bit, but not too energetically. And he’s engaged in this sort of conversation:

Andy: You know what would be a good idea? If we all went up town and got a bottle of pop…
Barney: That’s a good idea, if we all went up town to get a bottle of pop.
Andy: You think Mr. Tucker would like to go?
Barney: Why don’t we ask him… if he’d like to go uptown to get a bottle of pop?
Andy: Mr. Tucker?
(No response from Mr. Tucker)
Andy: You wanna lets me and you go?
Barney: Where?
Andy: Uptown to get a bottle of pop?

That’s the sort of peace most anyone would like to rest in…

Remembering (or not) the creative act

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This morning on NPR, Nora Ephron was remembered. Here are the opening lines of that report:

Nora Ephron brought us two of the most indelible scenes in contemporary cinema — and they’re startlingly different.

There’s the infamous “Silkwood shower,” from the 1983 movie, with Meryl Streep as a terrified worker at a nuclear power plant, being frantically scrubbed after exposure to radiation.

Then there’s the scene in which Meg Ryan drives home a point to Billy Crystal at Katz’s Deli, in 1989’s When Harry Met Sally. You know — the one that ends with “I’ll have what she’s having.”…

But here’s the thing. On the same radio station over the weekend, I heard Rob Reiner being interviewed on “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” He directed “When Harry Met Sally,” and he said this about it:

GROSZ: You know, so many of your movies specifically have very quotable lines. From “I’ll have what she’s having,” or, you know, “turn it up to 11,” or, you know, how many times do you ask a waiter for something and he turns to you and he says “as you wish?”

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: I mean there’s so many lines from your movies that are quotable. Do you go for that? Do you grab the script and scream at the writer?

REINER: No, no, you know, you just make a movie and you put these things in. And you never know what’s going to – you know, “I’ll have what she’s having” was a line that Billy Crystal came up with in that scene. We didn’t – my mother, you know, is the one who delivered that line…

So which was it? If she were alive, would Ms. Ephron agree with Mr. Reiner’s memory? I guess when a lot of creative people get together and collaborate on something that works and is remembered, it’s sometimes tough to remember who did what.

I know I sometimes have trouble remembering, from my career, whether I came up with a particular idea — or even whether I wrote a particular editorial — because all I know for sure was that I was heavily involved in the discussion.

It’s funny the things you can’t remember, years later. For instance, when I mentioned the other day meeting Barack Obama, it got me to thinking about others I had met. And I remembered the first presidential candidate I covered. It was Jimmy Carter. I remember being excited to be there, not only because it was an exciting thing to be covering an aspect of a presidential election (it was a routine reception in Memphis), but because I really liked Jimmy, and was excited about his 1976 candidacy. I remember a number of details about the event — such as the Secret Service requiring me to take a telephoto lens I’d brought with me out of its cylindrical case, to make sure it wasn’t a weapon — but I realized I couldn’t remember whether I shook hands with Gov. Carter or interacted with him in any way.

Odd that I have no idea about that. Memory is a funny thing.

I was struck by this when I interviewed the late Ted Sorensen, JFK’s legendary speechwriter. In the video below, you’ll see him be unsure about who came up with a certain line, but generously and loyally giving the credit to President Kennedy…

The Guys gird themselves for battle. Or something.

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You ever watch people in a public place doing something fairly ordinary, but there’s something about it that makes it interesting, and you’d like to ask them what’s up, but the normal social threshold for doing so just isn’t quite there, and you’d sound sort of loony asking? You know, people you see and without being able to help yourself, starting making up a story about, for no particular reason?

It happens to me a lot. But I’m easily distracted.

One recent morning, I was coming down the steps in the city garage behind the Capitol Center (yep, I’d been to breakfast at Cap City), and as I passed one of those glassless windows in the concrete — between the 2nd and 1st floors, it was — I saw five guys standing lined up with their backs to me in the median of Assembly. They were in dress shirts and pants, but no coats yet. They were standing alongside two SUVs, standing so close to the tinted windows that their noses couldn’t be a foot away. All in the same attitude. It was like a drill team or something, and this was their routine. I half expected each of them to hold an arm out to the side to dress the line.

I kept descending the steps, and by the time I passed the next window, I realized they were putting on, or adjusting, ties. They were making quite a production of it. I was next put in mind of a group of commandos in an action thriller — you know, the guys who, after they’ve slipped in past security, reach into their duffels and, all together, in practiced motions, pull out black coveralls and automatic weapons. (Forgive me; I’ve recently watched the whole “Die Hard” series while working out at home. There’s a scene like that in every one of those. See the video below.)

By the time I’d reached the street, they were pulling on suit coats, very deliberately and seriously. In all this process, there had been nothing of preening; they were too sober about it. Deadly serious. They were girding themselves, preparing for… I don’t know what. Something they had trained for, seemingly. The two younger guys closest to me looked like athletes. And the older, beefier guys could have been ex-athletes. Or soldiers. Or cops. Putting on suits didn’t look like an everyday thing to them, although when they were done they were the essence of business propriety.

I didn’t notice any of them talking to each other as they started walking together along the median. They were just… moving out. Again, like they’d rehearsed this.

Sorry that I hadn’t taken a picture from the stairwell when I’d first noticed them lined up, looking at themselves in the SUV windows (if you’d seen that, you’d know why they seemed out of the ordinary), I shot a picture of them crossing Assembly after I stopped at the light there. I had to stop again at the light at Main and Gervais. By that time, they were crossing the street in front of me, headed for the State House.

All that time, they had walked down the street with the air of the Earps and Doc Holliday heading for the O.K. Corral. Not talking at all, that I could see.

Initially I had thought they were headed for some serious business meeting in the Capitol Center (the old AT&T building), maybe at the state Commerce Department, or one of the law firms in the building. “Business” in the sense that Beaver Cleaver used it: They were gonna give somebody “the business.” Lay down the law, as Dad did when Wally or the Beav got out of hand.

But when I saw them headed for the State House, I decided they were either representing a police association that was lobbying lawmakers about some kind of law enforcement legislation, or one or more of them (or maybe a fallen comrade) was about to be honored by a resolution of the General Assembly.

But really, I have no idea. I just knew there was some kind of Serious Guy Business going down. And these guys had dressed for the occasion, right there on the street, in unison.

An unpardonable insult to Jack Kerouac

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I’m reeling here. I’m stunned. I’m looking about for some hope for the world.

In connection with a comment I was responding to today, I went looking for when I’d written about repealing the 17th Amendment not being such a crazy idea, and there I found a link to a Christopher Hitchens piece from early 2011, which I followed for nostalgic reasons, and noted there a link to the cover of the current edition of Vanity Fair, and there I saw the thing that shocked me.

What I saw (accompanied by a photo in which she demonstrated that, however much money you spend on a glamour shoot, there are some people you can’t MAKE glamorous, because their facial expression will drag the whole thing down) was a mention of Kristen Stewart — she’s the notably underwhelming star of the “Twilight” movies — in the same breath as Jack Kerouac. I saw her name in connection with a coming movie adaptation of On the Road. In a connection that was crafted as though she were starring in it or something:

As the Twilight-series finale approaches, Kristen Stewart is also starring in this month’s Snow White & the Huntsman,followed by an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Ingrid Sischy finds her on the run, in Paris. Photographs by Mario Testino.

See? They even used the actual word, starring! Well, first, I had to think, so is she Dean Moriarty or Sal Paradise? Or Carlo Marx? And if so, how does that work? OK, so she’s Marylou. Well, I have to admit I don’t have as clear an image in my mind of Marylou as I do the others, except for this: I can’t imagine the wild jailkid Dean, the quintessential Mad One who burns, burns, burns across the American landscape, going for anyone remotely like Kristen Stewart. There is no way you envision her as a character produced by a brain writing on a continuous roll of butcher paper under the influence of benzedrine. (OK, so she’s based on a real-life person, but you know what I mean.)

Now, I’ve seen other people say less than kind things about this actress, and I was like, Aw, leave the kid alone, but when you start talking about putting her anywhere near the centerpiece of anything as iconic as On the Road, well you’ve gone to messin’. Near as I can tell, there’s a reason why she was the star of the Twilight movies. It’s because she was so painfully ordinary and unremarkable that teenage girls everywhere could project themselves onto her, and identify.

That’s not a quality I connect with Kerouac.

Also… one expects a Kerouac project to have a bit of an alternative feel to it, and not be cast according to mundane box office considerations.

OK, that’s about all I’m going to say, except to say that this is a little bit personal for me. Kerouac introduced me to my wife. OK, not personally, because he was dead at the time. What I mean to say is, we met at this party she threw for a mutual friend, and she was reading a Kerouac biography at the time, and I was reading On the Road for the first time, and we realized it and started talking about that, and connected in a powerful way, and started dating seriously about a week later, and were married a year after that.

So, you know… it seems like whoever was in charge of casting would have checked with me or something…

J. Jonah Jameson was right! (Of course he was — he was the editor!)

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"I'll prove that wall-crawler's a menace if it's the last thing I ever do!"

Forgot to post this yesterday when I saw the news:

Peter Parker isn’t the only man trying to hide his identity by donning a Spider-Man mask.

A robber wearing the web slinger’s mask was spotted in two robberies June 11 in the Midlands.

In the first incident, the masked man and an accomplice swung into Computer MD in the 4400 block of St. Andrews Road, swiped four laptops and ran out the front door, Lexington County deputies say.

The store’s owner tried to chase them but couldn’t catch the men before they made off for the woods…

This, of course, vindicates J. Jonah Jameson, who’s been telling the world that webhead is a crook for years.

We editor types always know what’s really going on.

Post-newspaper retail environment born in 1962

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This morning was one of those moments when several threads came together for me, providing a small insight into the shape of the world in which we live.

It’s related to a moment of revelation I experienced in about 1996. I was attending one of a series of monthly meetings that our then-new publisher, Fred Mott, had instituted to brief employees in general about the state of the business side of the newspaper. I was probably sitting there trying not to let my eyes glaze over too obviously when he said something that cut through. Something that should have been obvious, but was not until that moment.

He observed — I forget exactly how he said it, but this was what I got out of it — that Walmart had shifted the ground upon which the business model of newspapers had been built. The key element was “everyday low prices.” Everyone knew that Walmart was the place to get the lowest prices available locally on anything they sold. And they sold everything. If everyone knows that you have low prices every day — and not now and then, in the form of sales events — you have nothing to communicate, on a regular basis, through advertising.

To show how that affected but one of the newspaper industry’s key advertising constituencies… people were used to reading about all the grocery stores’ specials — which changed if not day to day, then at least week to week — in the newspaper. But what’s the point in that if you can get all those same groceries — same brands and everything — cheaper at Walmart? And every day. So beyond some general branding, which it does mainly through television, reminding people of said everyday low prices, what does Walmart have to communicate? There is no news to pass on. That gives it yet another competitive advantage over those regular advertisers, because it saves the ad costs. To try to compete, those advertisers cut back on their ad budgets, and so forth.

And since Walmart sells practically everything a mass market wants, there is no retailing area unaffected. Department stores, appliance stores, clothing stores — everybody is competing against an adversary that doesn’t have to advertise to the extent that they traditionally had done.

That was just a piece of what was strangling newspapers, but a significant piece. Hence the expense cutbacks and hiring freezes that were already a monotonous part of newspaper life. The next year, Fred made me his editorial page editor, and shortly thereafter, as a measure of his confidence in me and his perception of the importance of the editorial mission, I was able to grow my department by one FTE. That was it. From then on, every budget year was an exercise in doing it with less. And less. And less. Until, two publishers later, it was decided to do without me.

But where did Walmart come from?

I got to thinking about that this morning. I was reading, in the WSJ, an oped piece about Eugene Ferkauf, who recently died at the age of 91.

In the postwar years, he pioneered discounting through his chain of stores called E.J. Korvette. This required challenging the “fair trade” price-fixing laws then in place in many states:

Retail price-fixing in the United States—often packaged for popular consumption as “fair-trade” laws—was a Depression-era concoction. Launched in California in 1931, it was quickly copied by state legislatures across the country. These statutes were premised on the idea that manufacturers retain a legal interest in the price of their products even after actual ownership has moved downstream to retailers. The laws were written so that once a single retailer in a fair-trade state agreed to observe the manufacturer’s proposed retail price list, it would in effect impose those prices on all other retailers in the state.

Conceived as a means of protecting small, independent merchants against predatory chains, fair-trade laws were pushed through state houses by legislators beholden to the influential retail chambers of commerce. The big manufacturers, especially appliance makers like GE, Westinghouse, RCA and Motorola, usually lent tacit support. It was easier for them to deal with a multitude of small customers through their wholesalers than to directly confront retailers big enough to muscle them for price concessions and promotional allowances…

I had never heard of E.J. Korvette stores, but I got to thinking, when was the first time I experienced discount store shopping? I realized that it was when we moved to New Orleans in 1965, after having lived in South America since late 1962. One of the elements of modern American culture that made an impression on me that year was the local Woolco store, a short drive from my home.

Anybody remember Woolco? They went out of business for good in the 80s, but this one was thriving in 1965.

I looked it up on Wiki, and found that Woolco was founded in 1962. This made me curious, and I looked to see when Kmart was founded. 1962. When did the first Walmart open? As it happens, 1962.

Then there was this passage in the oped piece this morning about Ferkauf:

In the end, the demise of fair-trade laws didn’t help E.J. Korvette. Ventures into high-end audio, home furnishings, soft goods and even supermarkets made E.J. Korvette considerably bigger but also shakier financially. In July 1962, Ferkauf was on the cover of Time magazine, hailed as the PiedPiper of the new consumer-centered retailing. Four years later he was ejected from his company, which by 1980 went into final bankruptcy. Ferkauf’s legacy, though, was secure. He had finally killed off legally protected price fixing.

Something about that year. A cusp of sorts. A changing of the guard, as retailing pivoted.

In his awesome book The Catalog of Cool (and if you can lay hands on a copy, you should buy it — although you may want to go the used route, since Amazon prices new copies at $127 and more), Gene Sculatti published an essay titled “The Last Good Year.” An excerpt:

Sixty-two seems, in retrospect, a year when the singular naivete of the spanking new decade was at its guileless height, with only the vaguest, most indistinct hints of the agonies and ecstasies to come marring the fresh-scrubbed, if slightly sallow complexion of the times. On the first day of that year, the Federal Reserve raised the maximum interest on savings accounts to 4 percent while “The Twist” was sweeping the nation. A month later “Duke of Earl” was topping the charts, and John Glenn was orbiting the good, green globe. That spring Wilt Chamberlain set the NBA record by scoring 100 points in a single game and West Side Story won the Oscar for Best Picture. The Seattle World’s Fair opened, followed five weeks later by the deployment of five thousand U.S. troops in Thailand. Dick Van Dyke and The Defenders won Emmys, and Adolph Eichman got his neck stretched. By that summer, the Supreme Court had banned prayer in public school, Algeria went indy, and Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose…

No mention of a major shift in retailing, though, as I recall.

One last tidbit, which you may consider to be unrelated…

Recently, I picked up several old paperbacks for 50 cents each at Heroes and Dragons on Bush River Road. One of them was The Ipcress File, which is what originally turned me on to spy fiction. You may recall the 1965 film, with Michael Caine — who expressed the cooler, hipper side of the 60s, as opposed to the mass-production James Bond.

In it is a passage in which the protagonist has a conversation with an American Army general who points out that the essential difference between the United States and Europe was this: A European develops a ballpoint pen, and sells it for a couple of quid and makes a modest living from it. An American, he said, invents the same thing and sells it for 5 cents a pop and becomes a millionaire.

Where am I going with this? Well, The Ipcress File was first published in 1962.

Apparently, war really IS hell…

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Found myself back at Barnes & Noble again today, and remembered something else I took a picture of last week when I was there.

Above is a shot of one of the “New in History” shelves. OK, it’s slightly doctored. Hell in the Pacific was actually on a lower shelf and I moved it up to take this, but they were all in the same category.

Sometimes it seems that the only time “history” was happening was from 1939-45, the bookstore shelves are so dominated by that period. Or maybe it’s just because Father’s Day was coming up. In any case, it seemed that about 50 percent of all history books were about WWII, and another 40 percent was about other wars in which the United States was involved.

And I say that as a big fan of military history, and particularly the WWII period. But still, let’s have SOME perspective, people.

The least you could do is provide some variety in the titles. Does no one at the publishing house notice when it’s getting monotonous?

That is all, men. Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em. This is my rifle; this is my gun. Off yer dead asses and on yer dyin’ feet. And other cliches of the era…

The upside is that you NEVER lose an argument

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Or if you do, you have a whole other set of problems…

Anderson Cooper brings our attention (blast him) to the following:

Daytime Exclusive: Woman Marries Herself in Ceremony

Nadine, 36, joins Anderson to explain why she married herself after getting a divorce. Nadine had a ceremony to celebrate the event and invited 40 guests. She even received wedding gifts.

Her unusual event made headlines, but Nadine says she wasn’t in it for the publicity. She says she decided to go through with the self-marriage because “it was about really committing to changing my life. I feel very empowered, very happy, very joyous. I want to share that with people, and also the people that were in attendance, it’s a form of accountability.”

Nadine experienced a painful divorce and says it was rough after learning her two kids wanted to live with their father. “Six years ago I would’ve handled a problem by going out and drinking. I smoked, I was 50 pounds overweight… this is just celebrating how far I’ve come in my life.”

Since the split, Nadine enjoys spending time with herself, going out on date nights, buying treats and gifts for herself, and says she’s no longer waiting for “someone to complete her.”

What are we going to call this? “Same-self marriage?” Will it catch on?

I hope not. The whole thing worries me. It’s just so easy for self-love to turn to self-abuse…

Malkovich learns meaning of life from Siri

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This blog over at the WashPost liked this ad. So do I. (Although, truth be told, I liked him better in “In the Line of Fire.”)

Just 10 more months until my iPhone is due for an upgrade; then I can do stuff like this.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Popular culture

The alleged Top Ten best films of all time

Shawarma: The lunch of superheroes

Eerie coincidence: Critic wrote of death threats related to “Dark Knight” BEFORE the shootings

Fifty years of summertime pop, rated

Binge TV watching: “You don’t want to know”

Onion gets the scoop on The Daily Planet

The side of Andy we don’t choose to remember

God rest you, Andy Griffith

Remembering (or not) the creative act

The Guys gird themselves for battle. Or something.

An unpardonable insult to Jack Kerouac

J. Jonah Jameson was right! (Of course he was — he was the editor!)

Post-newspaper retail environment born in 1962

Apparently, war really IS hell…

The upside is that you NEVER lose an argument

Daytime Exclusive: Woman Marries Herself in Ceremony

Malkovich learns meaning of life from Siri