Gratuitous disgustingness? Maybe

It takes only a few minutes to see that there is a clear working thesis for the documentary Super Size Me (2004). Whether Morgan Spurlock began his project with a mind as open as his mouth does not really matter: Ultimately, this film is a big slam against fast food and our culture that loves to eat it.

So much time, so little news

The local television news is not my primary source of information. I subscribe to the Pioneer Press, and if I want local news, that's mostly where I will look. And yet I find myself watching the nightly KARE 11 news quite regularly, mostly for the weather report.

Interestingly, the weather report comprises a plurality of all locally produced content on the show, or at least it did on Wednesday night. Including the 10-second update at the end of the newscast, Belinda Jensen spent 5 minutes, 10 seconds talking about the weather. That's 3 more seconds than Randy Shaver spent on sports and 27 more seconds than Mike and Julie spent on local news (admittedly, I separated state news from local news, the reasons for which I will discuss later).

A premonition from 1983

Good morning, all. I intended to post this last week but forgot to grab its source, and since that source was a 1983 textbook on Mass Communication from my parents' house, I could not rip it from a website. It's amazing the world even turned before the internet.

Anyhow, the segment I wish to quote is from the section about newspapers of tomorrow. Its representation of our present media is uncannily accurate:

"It is only a matter of time before the newspaper industry, cognizant of readers' tendencies to read only what appeals to them, ceases distributing the same mass-oriented product to everyone. Futurists looking toward tomorrow's newspaper see homes equipped with receiving units (modified teletype machines similar to today's VDT's) that offer electronic scans of the news and hard-copy printouts. Users will exercise almost limitless control over content.

"By checking the daily news index, they will call up, in as much detail as it takes to satisfy them, those stories of greatest interest to them. In the process they will be free to overlook whatever disinterests them, thereby voluntarily missing out on entire chunks of important daily events and ideas. This disturbs many socially responsible editors who know that readers in pursuing their self-interests will find it easier to overlook substantial information and in the process become less responsible citizens.

"We could, as Merrill and Lowenstein suggest, build political, social and educational cocoons around ourselves, and our society could become divided into highly polarized, and probably, unempathetic, segments. Considering how far Knight-Ridder and Dow Jones have already come in their experimental electronic newspapers, that future may already be upon us."

Again, that was written in 1983 (the book is Introduction to Mass Communication, by Jay Black and Frederick C. Whitney: Wm. C. Brown Company Publishers in Iowa). I am sure Ed Murrow would have agreed (and he may have said something similar in his lifetime). It's a shame.

The Heist - so much to love

Greetings, all! It has been some time now since I posted thoughtfully (some might say I have never done that) and so I have returned to offer my humble insight into what makes a Heist film a, well, a Heist film.

First off, I want to affirm what Dane Cook has already suggested, that every man wants to, at some point in his life, take part in a heist. This is definitely true. (And be warned: Cook does not filter for the family listening at home.)

Perhaps that is what drives some people to make heist films. (By the way, try to type the word heist. Go ahead and do it. I guarantee you will start to type a different word, which will be revealed at the bottom of this post. Let no one say I can't offer cliffhangers to my readers.) And so I offer you four of them, in the hopes that you have seen at least one: Confidence (2003), The Italian Job (2003), Matchstick Men (2003), and Ocean's Eleven (2001).