Smooth Criminal

The recent guilty verdict of Dr. Conrad Murray has given me reason to pause... Not so much the verdict itself (which was and is just), but the public reaction to it.

Seemingly getting lost in the mix is Jackson's own culpability in his untimely demise.  Yes Murray was a well-paid and willing accomplice, but Jackson knew what he was doing, he knew it was wrong, and despite paying a doctor to assist him in his rather posh drug habit, he did bring it upon himself.  Murray, while guilty, was an accomplice and not the murderer that many Jackson fans paint him to be.

What bothers me about the reaction is the perpetuation of the buck-passing, "it's always someone else's fault" mentality.  In the end no one "won" this case and the unfortunate biggest loser in this case was any semblance of personal accountability.

Jackson was largely martyred in his passing for the immense talent he showed in life.  The voices condemning his actions, his own hand in his demise were muted if not silenced by the voices that lifted his legend onto pedestals at the expense of any semblance of Jackson's accountability for the actions that led to his death.

And now those same voices are cheering his "murderer"... While it's good that Murray is being held accountable for his role Jackson's passing, referring to him as a "murderer" is an insult to personal accountability.  Jackson was his own murderer... Murray just provided the means and "supervision" that allowed MJ to commit his crime.

i'M sick of the iPhone and it's not even available yet!

One of my net-chums, Dantallion, recently pontificated on the fact that people are waiting outside in 90 degree plus weather for DAYS in advance for the release of the iPhone (click on his name to read his profound ponderings on this subject).

Now don't get me wrong, it is a nifty little gadget. You can do a lot with it-- listen to music, check your email, surf the web, etc. etc. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if in a year or two a blade attachment were made available for you to be able to mow your lawn with it as well (those of you who have lawns).

But what gets me, at the core of it all, is... IT'S A CELL PHONE!! Why do we need cell phones that can also play music, surf the internet, check email, vote for their favorite singer on American Idol and send text messages (among a myriad of other options)?

Have we reached a point of self-absorbtion where the thought of playing with a high tech toy is preferable to actually reaching out and getting to know other people?

And the service provider for the iPhone is AT&T whose slogan at one point was "Reach out and touch someone." Kind of ironic that they're providing a service that allows people to make themselves far more accessible to total strangers around the world than to the people they come in contact with on a daily basis. The phone is a social tool that is supposed to promote social interaction, but with all these added features that keep getting added to cell phones, these phones are becoming devices that increasingly and alarmingly promote rather anti-social behavior.

The iPhone and other phones like it are social masturbation toys-- plain and simple. And while masturbation may be fun and feel really good sometimes it's not substitute for the real thing. So what are we doing to ourselves in the process? In the grand scheme of things, is it really worth it to close ourselves off from the rest of the world to become totally engrossed in a high priced portable toy?

And Steve Jobs, don't move, I'll go get you a tissue!

Bearded Seals

So today in my RSS feed I stumbled upon the following headline:

Bearded Seals have regional accents

It left me scratching my head... does this mean that clean-shaven seals have generic midwestern non-accent accents? What kind of facial hair do seals from my hometown have? And what do THEY sound like?:

Seal 1: Jeet jet?
Seal 2: Not jet, ju?

They probably also wear trucker hats, and flannel shirts which are left open to reveal their t-shirts usually with some crass or vulgar ode to the lowest common denominator of American "culture" and their blood type is Genesee Beer.

And if I were in Canada, the seals would be talking "aboot" last night's Maple Leafs game at their local Tim Horton's.

I see a sitcom in the making! It's not really that preposterous, is it? I mean I read that the Cavemen from the Geico commercials have been green-lighted for a pilot. If they can get a pilot, certainly bearded seals with regional accents are sitcom-worthy? Aren't they? And ABC is going to need SOMETHING to replace Lost with in a couple of years when that show finally wraps up.

Monday Madness/Loco Lunes

Happy Monday... Moonday/Lunes. Here's a bit of new randomness for this week as my brain isn't able to collate and organize ideas with any success or efficiency whatsoever lately (but it's not going to stop me from trying):

1) My wife subscribes to Marie Claire. This weekend in one of my pilgrimages to the porccelain throne I noticed it sitting face down on the back of said throne-- a heavenly vision on the back cover. It's an ad for Nexxus Shampoo. The woman in the picture is absolutely captivating. She has a classic beauty about her not seen since Liz Taylor in her prime (Liz Taylor in her prime = Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and/or A Place In the Sun).

2) This past summer, after 9 seasons with the Red Wings my then-favorite player, Brendan Shanahan fled for the Big Apple. I bet he wishes he'd stayed in Detroit now. Detroit is only 1 point behind Nashville in the Western Conference and (barring an historic and cataclysmic slump) are assured of a playoff spot and Shanahan's NY Rangers will be lucky if they sneak into the playoffs and even if they manage to sneak in, they'll likely be dispatched within the first round. Naysayers in the off-season were saying the Wings dominance in the Western Conference was likely to be ending as a result of Shanahan's departure and the retirement of the Captain (Stevie Y, 20 years, longest serving captain of any pro sports team in any sport in any league in the world). These guys have proven the naysayers wrong... Go Wings!

3) I've been a Pittsburgh Penguins fan since about 1999 when Jaromir Jagr (now with NY), Martin Straka (also in NY now), Robert Lang (Now in Detroit), Darius Kasparitis (playing in the minors for the Rangers farm team), Alexei Kovalev (now with Montreal), and Tom Barasso (retired) were still on the team and Herb Brooks (the very same Herb Brooks who led Team USA to upset the Russians in the 1980 Olympics) was their coach. The past 6 years have not been good to the Penguins or their fans. By mid-January this year's Penguins had already won more games than they'd won ALL last season and are already playing playoff calibre hockey. Go Penguins! Hopefully the Penguins will be able to stay in Pittsburgh! I'd hate to see them move to Kansas City.... KANSAS CITY?!?!?!

4) Tasteless sports joke of the day: It's too bad A-Rod wasn't on the plane with the late NY Yankees pitcher, Cory Lidle... Then the plane wouldn't have hit anything.

5) Last week I received a $25 gift certificate for Amazon.com. My wife and I each picked 1 item to order. She picked the 2007 Grammy Award Nominees CD, I picked Hunters & Collectors Juggernaut CD which I'm waiting for with baited breath. As one of Australia's best kept secrets, I've come to love these guys and I have to respect them for how they "retired." They went into the studio knowing this was going to be their last album. So they just went in and had a blast, putting an exclamation mark on their careers-- burning out rather than fading away. I'll be sure to write a review of Juggernaut for my other blog.

Thursday Randomness

To extrapolate on yesterday's weirdness:

1) Lately I've found myself spontaneously doing the Macarena. I'll be talking to my wife about the weather or her day at work and my body just starts doing the Macarena for no apparent reason. I get particularly odd looks when complaining about how cold it is while doing the hip-sway part of the dance. "It's only negative six fahrenHEEEEEY MACARENA!!!" I s'pose it could be worse... at least it's not the Electric Slide, Watermelon Crawl, YMCA, or the ever so classic "Bartman"

2) I'm still waiting for Christopher Walken to thank Jason Mraz who in 2003 discovered another cure for Walken's fever (up to that point the only known cure had been "more cowbell"). Mraz recorded The Remedy in response to said fever thus giving the world a reprieve from cowbells everywhere.

3) Thinking that Mraz's The Remedy might also cure my Macarenitis, I listened to it this morning on the way to work to no avail... So I believe THIS fever may need an extra strength dose of MORE COWBELL!

4) Something tells me there's a YouTube video somewhere in this story. But I don't have the proper wires to hook my video camera up to the computer to record this rare affliction and share it with the world so I guess y'all will just have to be a bit old fashioned and use your imagination.

The products of my hyperactive (or possibly hyper-reactive) imagination...

I've got the curse of a wandering mind and sometimes the products of this wandering mind scare even me. The two most recent products and musings of said imagination:

A men's intimate apparel retail chain -- J. Edgar's Secret

A true crime/travelogue by OJ Simpson detailing his 12 year (and counting) search for the "real killer" throughout Florida's many golf courses (the chapter on how to rent a White Bronco from Hertz is a real page turner)

You've been invited as the "guest of honor" to a "dinner" party hosted by the Donners, do you attend or risk insulting the hosts by skipping it?

Did Pavlov have a doorbell? If so was it a good idea to use it, or would he have advised knocking instead? (and I bet he really hated drunken teenagers playing "DingDong Ditch"!)

If the unabomber submitted his manifesto for publication via mail, who was the unlucky intern who ended up opening that parcel?

Are we becoming TOO connected?

Previously upon reading the article linked to below, I was pondering-- "are we perhaps becoming too connected?" Does the possibility of being able to "connect" while in your car appeal to you? Or has the sublime reached the point of ridiculousness?

Isn't there anywhere whence we can escape this madness? I like being connected as much as the next bloke or sheila-- but sometimes I like to get away from it all.

I'm truly looking forward to my trip up to the Adirondacks this summer-- to a campground surrounded by mountains with such a high iron content that it's near impossible to get a cell phone signal... A place where truly you CAN escape the pull of technology, that is if you really want to (and you don't have to try THAT hard to do so) and really want, where "logging on" truly DOES mean tossing another log on the campfire, and the only real access to the outside world is a phone booth near the main gate where you enter and exit the campground. It's a place where the soundtrack is provided by the assorted wildlife who inhabit that particular stretch of wilderness not by an iPod, Zune, or any other digital music devices... And the lights aren't those of a city or metropolitan area-- they're the lights of the night sky. The full moon can act as a spotlight for midnight canoeing and there are more stars visible than you could ever imagine seeing in the city or the 'burbs.

Aren't there times or places where you'd really prefer not to be so easily reached? Or has our technological proclivicty reached such a fever pitch that much like an infant with a pacifier, we "need" to be connected as much as possible? Is this constant "need" for connection a help or a hindrance? A panacea or a problem?

At any rate here's the article: Wi-Fi Is Hitting the Road in Cars From Avis, but Technical and Legal Bumps Lie Ahead

Discuss amongst yourselves...

We Need Another Hero

I'm a comic book geek. I relish the recent spike in comic-related movies and TV series and the announcements of those yet to come. A few months back I read an interesting editorial column stating that maybe the popularity of these super hero movies is due to the circumstances in which we live.

A war that fewer and fewer people support with each passing day, school shootings, suicide bombings—there's a whole plethora of circumstances beyond our control that can/could make the idea of superheroes that much more appealing. We don't really have the "heroes" that previous generations did. Prior to the recent glut of super hero movies, the last time such movies were anywhere near as popular was the late seventies with the Superman movies, live action Spiderman and Sha-zam/Captain Marvel TV series, the Super Friends cartoon… All of that came about during or almost immediately following the Vietnam War and later the hostage crisis in Iran.

And if you look at the super-hero movies of the eighties (of which there really weren't too many) they either were incredibly campy or dated today. Supernman III and IV were abysmal, the original Batman movie while enjoyable in the eighties has not aged well at all and seems/feels incredibly dated. The short-lived Flash TV series from the early nineties is similarly campy and falls flat when viewed through a 21^st century lens.

So what do those original Superman
films and the current glut of super-hero films and TV series have in common? Maybe it's a quiet desperation, a wish for someone to come and put a giant band-aid on the world's problems because, God knows, our governments are far too corrupt to be capable of solving those problems for us. Our elected leaders are more interested in serving themselves, their careers, their legacies and their bank accounts than in serving their "bosses"—we the people who elected them into the very stations which allow them to rape, pillage, plunder, and steal from our bank accounts to pad their own.

With this lack of tangible heroes, we turn to the fiction of the pulp converted to the silver screen. Strong men and women in leotards or tights kicking the living snot out of those who would do us wrong, bringing justice to a world that is altogether lacking in it. And as unusual as it may seem, there is something delightfully and quirkily heroic about a billionaire dressed as a bat using his billionaire toys to solve crimes, about a man from another planet who can fly around the Earth so quickly he can reverse its rotation and turn back time, an Amazon woman with questionable fashion sense (those wrist gauntlets may have worked in the seventies, but I don't know how they're going to pull them off in the 21^st century without giggles from the audience) an invisible jet and a magic lasso (a Wonder Woman movie has been announced), or about a man who takes a bit of a chemical bath in a thunderstorm and emerges able to run faster than the speed of sound (a Flash movie has been announced for 2008 or 2009, a script has been written, and casting rumors abound).

Maybe the appeal of these fictional heroes is that in the power they're given or the power they take, they use it for good. They aren't self-serving, there's altruism behind their actions. Whereas the reality, the elected officials whom we give power during every election cycle, no matter how noble their intentions may initially be, become corrupted by the very system they try to reform… They become self-serving and forget the very people who put them in their positions of power.

Once upon a time we had a sense of hope... maybe that hope was merely an illusion, but it was there. It was better than what we have now, films about men in tights with special powers they use to fight crime. But until that hope is restored, until we get another real life "hero", I guess the men in tights will have to do.

Regarding Mel...

Is it just me or is way too big a deal being made out of Mel Gibson's drunken outburst. The focus is being placed on what he said in the drunken outburst, not on the fact that he was driving while intoxicated.

Now maybe it's just me, but any of us who have ever been inebriated, haven't we all said things we didn't really mean or agree with while under the influence? Did our friends or relatives hold us responsible for the things they heard us say in our state of inebriation?

I'm not saying we give Mel Gibson a free pass on driving while intoxicated. He should be punished the same as any Tom, Dick, or Harry. But it seems that we, as a culture, don't want celebrities treated the same as us-- we want them treated HARSHER than us. We want them judged on a much harsher scale. Why, when we wouldn't expect to be held accountable for the foolish things we say in a state of inebriation, are we as a society holding Mel Gibson accountable for his drunken rantings and ravings?

If the following sins have been forgiven and/or excused, why can't we forgive Mel for his drunken ramblings? He's even taken the time and effort to apologize which is more than can be said for some of the following:

1. Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was caught on tape snorting cocaine. After serving his sentence he once again ran for mayor and was actually elected by the people of D.C.
2. Director Roman Polanski is a convicted rapist. If he sets foot on U.S. soil he WILL go to prison. Despite this, he not only won an Oscar for directing The Pianist, he was given a standing ovation in absentia for winning the Oscar.
   
3. Woody Allen married his own stepdaughter! Not illegal, but certainly not moral. He did wait until she was legal before doing so. But people still go to his movies. He's essentially been forgiven.
4. Jesse Jackson once referred to NY City as "Hymietown" and has been known to use the K-word ("kike" for those unfamilar), but we don't see him getting raked over the coals for his remarks-- and he was sober when he was saying those things! To my knowledge he's never apologized for his remarks either

Maybe it's just me, but I felt actions spoke louder than words. If Hollywood is so willing to forgive a convicted rapist living in exile and give him an Oscar to boot, the city of D.C. is willing to re-elect a coke addict, and Jesse Jackson isn't held accountable for disparaging the Jews while sober-- why is there so much fuss over Mel Gibson's drunken comments and remarks?

He was drunk, he's apologized. Forgive and forget already. And why not focus on the real issue-- not the remarks he made, but the fact he was driving when he really shouldn't have been. Is it just me or does Hollywood and the news media kind of have their priorities out of whack on this one?

Current Music: Billy Joel - Captain Jack (live) (this song is fantastic, it's always been my fave of Billy's)