Mass Media

I’ve never been a fan of big summer movies, except for on those horrible 90+ degree days when the air conditioning is worth the cost of admission. Oh, I’m hearing how great Pirates of the Caribbean is supposed to be. I don’t get the pirate love, and the explanations of the appeal mostly come out as: “But Amanda…. ‘Arrrrr’!” Ah well, the local independent theaters have actually been running some really good stuff lately. Spellbound, the documentary about eight contestants in the national spelling bee, was really good. They were very respectful of the children, which I appreciated. And tonight … Continue reading But….Arrr!

I told a friend I’d link to 80’s Movies Rewind, an archive of 80’s movies with photos and trivia. I like that the reviews point out the links between a lot of the movies. If I had an infinite amount of money, I could use their movie listing as a shopping list…[via PCJM]

I think weather.com came up with this new icon, representing “Light Drizzle”, just for Ithaca. Note the lack of actual clouds such as are present in the icons for “Showers”, “AM Showers”, or “Light Rain”. What we have here is an attempt to portray the constant background grey of spring weather around here. I’m honestly impressed.

From the “Please, I’m not that gullible” files, a converstion from earlier this evening: Them: Did you hear it was announced that the Indiana Jones trilogy will be released on DVD this fall? Me: No – cool! Them: Yeah, but they remastered the whip as a cell phone…

I was sent this today under the cover “I’m ashamed to be a guy”, and I’m still not 100% convinced that it’s real, even though it is at CNN.com: TNN changing its name to Spike. They want to appeal to male viewers more, drawing off their lineup of WWE, Star Trek: TNG and “Slamball” and their 66% male audience. When did Spike become “a guy’s name” anyway? My association is with the Buffy villain, and while I love that character, I’m not sure he’s the image of manhood for the WWE and Slamball. What makes me find this particularly sad, … Continue reading TNN Goes Macho

A discussion of what good movies were supposed to be coming out this year led to short-term excitement that a new Kevin Smith movie should be released until an IMDB search revealed that the new Kevin Smith movie is a J-Lo movie, promptly negating all enthusiasm for it. It’s just wrong.

Because the media seems to be attempting equal parts overwhelming war coverage and overwhelming distraction from war coverage, I doubt anyone missed the insane hype for the “immortal” WWE Hulk Hogan/Vince McMahon match. As a public service to all of my raised-in-the-eighties readers who are fighting their involuntary curiosity over whether Hulkamania will be declared dead, I’ve done the web search so that you don’t have to, and Hogan won. Excuse me while I now go dunk my browser in rubbing alcohol….

Wooooooooo! Not that you would know it from watching television, but basketball isn’t the only sport with NCAA finals going on, and Cornell just won its way into the NCAA ice hockey Frozen Four, with a beautiful double-overtime goal shot from pratically behind the goal line. The entire post-season has been exciting this year. My enjoyment of the games, though, hasn’t been helped by Time Warner Cable. Cornell’s got their first chance to do well in the tournament in decades, and at least Time Warner Cable decided to air it on their local station, but they haven’t actually followed through … Continue reading Victorious Cornell

I spent the past few days on a mini-vacation involving a lot of time in the car listening to music, and I got to listen to TMBG’s “Particle Man” for the first time in many years. It’s a cute song, but after a few repeats and the general boredom of a long ride, I started wondering what it meant. Being a good liberal-arts alum, I was of course able to come up with a semi-plausible interpretation wherein Particle Man, as the fundamental unit of matter, clearly represents the physical world and Triangle Man alludes to Christianity’s trinity and refers to … Continue reading Deconstructing Particle Man

The Simpsons had a hilarious parody of Fox News, with news-ticker jokes and an election “debate” in which their general biases were reflected by a drawn-in halo over Krusty the Republican candidate and upside-down devil-horned footage of the opposing Democrat. It is unfortunate for Fox News that an hour after that episode aired the front page of their website tag-lined their article on Clinton and Dole’s 60 Minutes debate with the label “Bubba vs. Dole, Round One”. [via JRE]