Things to do before Tuesday night

Early Tuesday night, we will all undergo a transformation. We will no longer be victims of our government; we will be winners. So prepare yourselves. Prepare your homes.

Here's my personal to do list:
shower, shave, brush teeth, cut nails, do laundry, do dishes, clean desk, sweep floor, pay bills

I don't really know what happens when we win. It is possible that when Jim Lehrer cuts to Barack Obama's acceptance speech, a transcendent moment will occur. My television might do something it's never done before. It may broadcast more than sound and picture. The spirit of Barack Obama and millions of other American's may manifest in my apartment. And if so, I want to present myself with respect, in order to give my respect for the moment meaning and value.

I also want to give the manifestation as many portals to enter my home as possible. The TV is a magic box, don't get me wrong. But I want the fragrance of victory in every corner of my home. So if I finish my list early, or if for some strange reason, the night drags on past ten, I plan on doing something constructive with my time. Like making a victory sculture out of things around the house, or painting a victory O on the back of a cereal box, or making a Barack Bust out of mashed potatoes. Really, as many entry points for potential visitations as possible. Maybe I'll write a victory song.

I know I'll be listening to lot's of the Staple Singers and Andrew W.K.

Our eight year long lesson in defeat is ending.

I can't believe it. I want to turn this into a music blog for the next few weeks. Victory rocks.

Put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day

Anti-Obama madness over at the McLaughlin Group is reaching a fever pitch as the election nears. Last Friday's episode represents a culmination of terror which Obama has been inspiring, for the past two years, among the more paranoid conservatives. Three of the show's most regular members have close ties to Richard Nixon: John McLaughlin, Pat Buchannan, Monica Crowley.

So really it is the go to place to find out what Nixon would think about present day politics. And as bearers of his legacy, they are driven by the fear that someone will out Nixon Nixon. Obama's speech on Race, which nullified the Reverend Wright issue, was as good as Nixon's Checkers Speech, which nullified the slime issue, for a few years anyway.

Robert MacNeil wrote in his memoir that Richard Nixon had a sort of charisma in color television that was lacking in black and white. With the Checkers speech it was a charisma which was conveyed by his voice. The radio helped humanized him, while black and white television, while providing more information, lowered his charisma. Obama has the political gifts of Nixon, and the comfort with each present and emerging technology which presents him to the public with his charisma intact. As Richard Nixon's head in a jar says on Futurama, "Nixon with charisma? My God, I could rule the universe!"

So you can appreciate this mad episode of McLaughlin Group now. OR put it on your pocket, save it for a rainy day sometime after November 4th. I have a feeling it will seem even funnier then.

Rainy Day Laughs with the McLaughlin Group

If it happens Pat...

Apparently, I'm not the only person who thinks this is the best show on television right now. But I am the last person to learn about this awesome song.

Georgia Bulletin

Or was he just doing an Alec Baldwin impression?

Stoned, foreign, and famous

From the McCain Ad, Celeb:

That's the sum up at the end, what the evidence prior was building too: this glass-eyed and oily foreign famous guy looks down on you like all celebs do. And this ad seems like it's been very successful in tapping into a deep seeded resentment. The public feels slighted that the people on TV aren't actually our friends. This is why we hire tabloids to whack them. But we also want to believe that some famous people are good people and by virtue of our own goodness - distant friends.

So is Barack your friend? The words on the screen tell us he's higher and more foreign than most of your friends. And they haven't even said his full name yet. Every ad John McCain releases will be the set up: Barack Hussein Obama the punchline.

Monica Crowley, Classy Lady

The McLaughlin Group is really like the best show on TV. John McLaughlin is convinced Obama is America's Adolf, uniting the people behind empty slogans. And though Dr. McLaughlin sometimes says things that sound racist, he is not actually a racist motherfucker. The same can not be said for some of the other guests. The show isn't released onto the RSS feed until almost a week after it has aired. But this just makes it seem more old fashioned, like something I should be watching on archive.org. Anyway from last Friday's transcript:

MS. CROWLEY: Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, which is somebody that Eleanor predicted that he might look at.

Look, I agree with Michelle. John McCain is vanilla ice cream. He needs a scoop of rocky road to run with, okay? Barack Obama is the exact opposite. Obama's rocky road. He needs more vanilla ice cream. And I think the economic issues are the prevailing force on McCain as he looks at a VP. That makes Romney and, I think, Michael Bloomberg, who on Friday of this week said that he is going to start touting John McCain, not formally endorsing him but touting him. And it may be that they are trying to sort of triangulate this, because Bloomberg is very liberal on the social issues and it may cause some difficulties with the conservatives.

And Dr. McLaughlin reminds us John McCain is not so far removed from Richard Nixon:

MS. CLIFT: And the images of Barack Obama on this trip and John McCain in a golf cart with the former President Bush and strolling the cheese aisle in a local supermarket --

DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, we don't need -- you don't need a burlesk of John McCain. I mean, it's all there for you anyway.

John McCain Protects Dictionaries, Not People

"In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity."
-- ABE LINCOLN

Buchanan Rebutts

Don't Drink the Water

It's too late to protect your POE. Your water is poisoned. It's another super-villain strike against us in the real world, the place once thought safe from their antics. Now the drugs used by some in the city, are taken by all. So it stands to reason that soon people living in different cities will begin to mutate in different directions. It's not something Dr. Charles Xavier ever wrote about, but maybe mutants will be regional and clannish. We'll see, and as long as we have humor like Tom Lehrer's even nuclear Armageddon seems manageable.

TVTVTV!

If your looking to put the zap on your waking mind, there's really nothing like television. And if you want to see a collection of Youtube finds, I just updated my four playlists on my Youtube Channel. Cartoons, music, politics, and craziness, are the four pillars of my Church of Youtube.

But if you'd rather use TV to learn about the outside world then I can not recommend Louis Theroux enough. You can watch his show on the youtube and alluc.org. I want to get the DVDs eventually. If you'd like glimpses into the hidden corners of the world, you really need a guide like Louis. Watching him alternately disarm and arm a situation, and watching the characters he meets as they're essences are completely revealed before the camera, well it's quite a show.

If you'd rather not drift into the weird world of Louis, then maybe you'd be more comfortable with his less friendly, but equally lovable BBC counterpart, Charlie Brooker. His show about television and cultural decay is called Screen Wipe and can also be found on the youtube and alluc.org. If you want to know just how great Charlie Brooker is then just watch this:

Vid Lists

I've decided to start making video playlists on youtube. Making playlists with iTunes really has changed how I listen to music, so I'm excited to see how this new medium and application feel when squished like clay against my head and hands. I'm anticipating the limitations. So far I've made 4 playlists, and I'm planning to stick with these for awhile and try to grow them.

MY VIDEO PLAYLISTS

Is the Space Pope reptilian?

Of course I couldn't be happier with the return of Futurama. In the spring of 1999, when Futurama first aired, the Simpsons had already begun to show they would no longer as relevant or sharp in the years 2000. But Futurama still feels fresh to me. Futurama is a throwback. Like the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Black Dossier, Futurama cast a wide net, trying to capture the sum of human thought since inception. With significance drifting back and forth between the past and the future. Like what the scientists tell us about God.
So I thought I thought I'd share some wiki research on Futurama:

* There is a strange racially charged history which the supremely diverse Futurama universe rests on. Evidence: the title of this new Futurama DVD is a play on Shaft's Big Score, the robots are often portrayed as robo-americans, and Nibbler is based on Minstrel cartoon character Bosko. Not everyone's from the Neutral Planet.

* Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth gets his name from Philo Farnsworth inventor of the television. Professor Farnsworth has invented these things, and Mr. Farnsworth invented these things.

* List of recurring alien characters from Futurama

ContentDumps

Here is a collection of links which should each be considered worthy appendices of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA:

The INTERNET Archive

Library of Congress, American Memory AUDIO Collections

Library of Congress, American Memory MOVIE Collections

Library of Congress, American Memory IMAGE Collections

Wellcome IMAGE Collection

TEXT, AUDIO, MOVIE Poetry Collections at ubu.com

TEXT Collection of 522 Poets

Because these links are so laden with content, I will try to conduct semi regular explorations of each. And report back my findings here. Unfortunately all these sites have interfaces which impair your use. I'll also add new Internet Media Collections, or ContentDumps, as I find them.

Here are a few selected collections:
By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
Early Animated Films, 1900-1921
Vintage Animated Cartoons, 1930s-1940s

Mr. Rogers talks to the US senate

I posted this video before watching it through. Since then I've gone searching for more Fred Rogers on the Internet and beyond. Today I tried to find his book, You Are Special, in my local bookstores to no avail. I'm going to try the Amherst stores soon.

His PBS website gives a taste of his book and some of his song lyrics with sheet music.

His wikipedia entry is not bad and contains this excerpt from Esquire Magazine's coverage of the 1997 Daytime Emmy's, written by Tom Junod:

Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence."[5]

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, 'I'll watch the time." There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly, "May God be with you," to all his vanquished children.

The entry also covers his advocacy of the VCR:

Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it ... I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been "You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions." Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

This testimony was quoted in a footnote of the Supreme Court's decision to allow VCRs. I'm sure he'd want more than just as few clips like this one, to be on youtube.

If Ever a Wiz There Was

So Mr. Wizard died... yesterday... I guess - summer days are futzing me up. I used to watch his show when I was younger. If you havn't seen the show, he'd do an often-impressive demonstration of some basic science, then explain it, while doing a pretty good job of engaging his audience - to my knowledge, this was the first show of its kind (wikipedia tells me his first version of the show started in the 50s).

As someone effectively fed and raised by television, this was a formative morning staple, and deserves a degree of credit for injecting a sense of curiosity into my squishy child-brain.


*links*
boingboing
his website
l.a. times obituary

Peter Sellers interview 1974 PART 4

The end of a pretty good interview with Peter Sellers. And the reason I want this:

Vote Like Your Whole World Depended on It

I've been taking some more time to explore the Living Room Candidate. And it is really great. A treasure trove of presidential campaign commercials. The site seems a little buggy, but selecting "Play in External Player" seems to fix that. Here's the text which accompanies the first Nixon advertisement of 1968.

The centerpiece of the Nixon advertising campaign was a superbly crafted series of spots by filmmaker Eugene Jones. With carefully orchestrated montages of still photographs accompanied by jarring, dissonant music, his ads created an image of a country out of control, with crime on the rise, violence in the streets, and an unwinnable war raging overseas. The ads implicitly linked these problems to the Democratic administration, of which Humphrey was a part.

The most controversial of Jones’s ads, "Convention", juxtaposed unflattering still photographs of a smiling Humphrey with images of Vietnam and the chaos of the Democratic convention, all to the ironic accompaniment of the Dixieland song "Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." The ad implied that Humphrey either had caused these problems or didn’t care about them. NBC considered it unfair, but federal regulations prohibited the censorship of any political commercial and the ad ran during a broadcast of Laugh-In. However, Democratic protest led the Republicans to pull it after a single showing.

Nixon’s ad campaign was part of a carefully managed television effort that was detailed in Joe McGinnis’s The Selling of the President 1968. The book made the public aware for the first time of the critical role of consultants and advertising executives in creating a candidate’s image. The campaign designed a strategy by which Nixon appeared only in controlled situations. He limited his public appearances and press conferences, and refused to debate Humphrey. Instead, he appeared in a series of hour-long programs, produced by Roger Ailes, in which he was interviewed live by panels of carefully selected citizens. Nixon occasionally faced tough questions, but the discussions took place in front of partisan audiences from which the press was barred.

Jack Valenti is dead.

How will you cover it old media?

Mostly, filmmakers complain that they must work against muddled or moving boundaries. And parents’ groups grouse about “ratings creep,” a perceived tendency for a category like PG-13 to permit ever more violence, sex and profanity over the years to reach impressionable youth. Yet it was Mr. Valenti’s genius to have devised an apparatus that is not bound by precedent, changes its definitions at will and, ultimately, serves the motion picture industry by becoming, at any given moment, as permissive or restrictive as the prevailing climate seems to demand.

[The Ratings System, Built to Endure]

Super. But what was that documentary I read about on boingboing? Oh yeah, "This Film is Not Yet Rated."

The MPAA's excuse for this is that it's an alternative to government censorship of films, but as director Kirby Dick shows, it's wildly implausible that such censorship would be found constitutional. The MPAA system treats independents as second-class citizens, issuing gnomic pronouncements about a film's suitability, while treating the big studios that own the MPAA with more solicitude, lavishing editorial suggestions on directors who've come under the thumb of the big six.

This Film is Not Yet Rated makes a compelling case for MPAA ratings system as a form of institutionalized, homophobic puritanism. The ratings board is quite relaxed about violence, especially extreme, gory violence, but takes a dim view of sex, and won't tolerate sex out of the missionary position, nor gay sex of any kind, nor any suggestion of women getting real pleasure out of sex. It's an eye-opening look at America's hidden values, where you can take your kids to see bad guys gunned down by James Bond, but not a lightweight teen-comedy about lesbian girls sent away to anti-gay brainwashing camp.

Oh, and what's the logo for the Motion Picture Association of America?
That's the sort of symbol that just screams, "America!" Doesn't it?

So if your feeling like honoring Jack Valenti, you could either write an article about his 'genius,' or watch him in a pirated episode of Freakazoid. It's the episode called "The Chip." Enjoy!

Shiny Futurism

The Future on TV:

2057: Hyperspace author and string field theory co-founder, Michio Kaku hosts this 3 part Discovery Channel documentary, with complimentary website

End Day: Five different 'when not if' scenarios presented by the BBC

Five Ways to Save the World: BBC's law of fives, says this show should be good, even though I haven't watched it yet. I guess End Day needed a flip side.

Take a Chance

The two episode pilot of Space Above and Beyond is now on TV Links, along with four scattered episodes of the shows first and only season. These episodes give good feel for what the world is like in 2063. The show has really great story arcs and I recommend watching the whole thing through, on DVD, or perhaps TV Links in a few days.
Watch Space Above and Beyond

read about the 1990s

I hadn't thought of this before, but wikipedia tells me that 2063 is the year, in Star Trek, when humans made contact with their first extraterrestrials, the Vulcans. But the first contact in Space Above and Beyond is more Heinleinian than that socialist clap trap.