Last month, seven U.S. soldiers wrote an op-ed piece for the NY Times which gave lie to the sunny sunshine glowing the past two days from General David Petraeus’s ass.
Today, we read in the Times that two of those men have been killed in Iraq…in a truck accident.
Senseless.
He didn’t exactly fall on his sword, but you gotta like Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for resigning because his popularity had fallen to Bush-like levels.
The NY Times put it like this: “Mr. Abe, deeply unpopular, had already been written off by Japan’s political establishment and news media, his political future measured in months.”
And, according to the Times, a Japanese political science professor put it like this: “the way Abe resigned suggests he lacked the qualifications to be prime minister in the first place.”
Why can’t the United States have a leader with self knowledge like that?
In a moment of moral weakness I paused in my surfing from the end of the Twins game last night to Letterman to The Colbert Report. What caught my eye was Harvey Levin, the guru of TMZ.com, being fed “story ideas” by his, uh, staff of twenty-something “news” hounds.
With journalism winding down in print and starting over on-line and elsewhere, the idea of a story meeting for TMZ.com, the ultra-popular , celebrities-as-people-and-usually-at-their-worst paparazzi website was irresistible. Okay, so what’s a story, kids?
Well, there was one with video of a drunk starlet being tailed out of a New York club being asked if she ate ice cream and her replying, “No. Milk makes me fart.” Cool! Harvey loved it. Then there was a still of Madonna leading her hub, Guy Ritchie, the movie director, through the door of a swank London restaurant carrying a box with a new “strap-on” in … a transparent bag. (Of course the poor career provocateur had NO IDEA the awaiting paparazzi would be able to see through the bag. None.)
“Strap-on”, you ask? Please. Haven’t you ever been in a newsroom?
Eventually I realized this was the much-awaited (by others) TV debut week of TMZ: The TV Show, with local air provided by Fox9 (big shock) KMSP-TV. (Fox 9 by the way, has hands down the worst voice mail set-up of any local media operation. I dare you to sit through the two or three levels of anchor-promo introductions and/or connect with anyone in the building. I tried “Programming” — which is about 11 levels down the voice-mail command chain — and still got a recording, and no one call back. That’s good business.)
Anyway, TMZ (i.e. “Thirty Mile Zone”, an inside-LA reference implying that nothing really matters outside that tight perimeter — unless you’ve got video of Madonna or a drunken starlet), is now a 10:30 pm option for all of you suffering celebrity information deprivation here in the Twin Cities.
Having … very … limited tolerance for anymore anything involving Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Madonna or whatever wildly dysfunctional, self-aggrandizing blonde is currently being chased around LA, I don’t know that I’ll be missing too much Colbert over this. But I have to give Levin — who busted his move for shameless, exploitative prominence during the OJ Simpson trial — credit for moving well-past the $20 whoring of the “Entertainment Tonight” and “Access Hollywood” shticks.
The brilliance of TMZ: The Business Model — and Joel Kramer’s editor/filters should keep this in mind as they produce the front pages of MinnPost.com — is in having their cake and eating it too.
Levin is shameless (that word, again) about exploiting every bimbette and arrogant hunk-du jour for all they’re worth AND blowing past the publicity machinery protecting them on “Entertainment Tonight” for the mundane encounters out of make-up at airport baggage carousels and as they’re puking up their Hennessey on a TriBeCa sidewalk. Never mind if some of this stuff looks like it was shot with a cellphone, TMZ sees their mission in reducing the vain and nit-witted to their rightful states of cultural scorn. I like that.
On the other hand, they’ve got time for George Clooney to wander out of a Manhattan restaurant and chat up their “correspondent” and even talk tech about the guy’s camera. Clooney — talk about smooth.
Best though, was a “Jay-Walking” bit TMZ did last night, on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The man/party twit-on-the-street question was pretty simple: What year did the 9-11 attacks take place?
Thankfully for TMZ’s cameras, the 5-watt party bulbs they put the question to were pretty simple, too. WAY … pretty simple. Ditz after ditz after ditz couldn’t quite place what year that thingie thing happened. They COULD however, right off the tops of their boney little heads, instantly recite the names of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s children. (The 75% blonde factor didn’t exactly help defuse that cruel stereotype.)
I’m not going to go so far as to say Harvey Levin is bravely holding a mirror up to modern vanity and stupidity … but he’ll make another fortune by slapping it on TV.
SPECIAL EVENTS
Happy Rosh Hashanah!
Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown today, so Happy Jewish New Year. Jewish or not, this might be a good time to take stock of the year’s mistakes and reflect upon the changes you need to make in your life. This isn’t about false resolutions, folks. Think about realistic things you can do to better your life, and then just follow through (simple as that). If you are Jewish, you might want to consider an evening service at the U of MN’s Hillel Jewish center, followed by dinner. If you’re lucky, you’ll get some honey-dipped apples or bread. I believe it’s also common practice to cast your sins into a river on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. Just make sure you don’t have anything too valuable in your pockets before you start emptying them.
6 p.m., Hillel: The Jewish Student Center, 1521 University Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-379-4026; $20, students free. Make reservations by phone or by email.
BOOKS & AUTHORS
Invisible Forces and Spirits
Shamanism revolves around a central belief that our world is largely affected by an invisible spirit world with which we can communicate. These spirits, which are both good and bad, play an important role in our lives, and can be instrumental in healing, as well as in hurting. Few people you’ll meet understand this better than Christina Pratt, director of the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing, and author of An Encyclopedia of Shamanism. Whether you actually meet her this afternoon is up to you — and your boss, probably. Pratt will be discussing her book at 2 p.m., followed by a book signing, so do what you can to get there. Whether you prescribe to the belief or not, it’ll be valuable knowledge. An Encyclopedia of Shamanism describes the major practices and beliefs of shamanism, as well as historical and cultural perspectives of the shaman and the shaman’s world.
2 p.m., U of MN Bookstore, Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-626-0559; free.
FILM
God Is a Spider
Time for the next film in the Oak Street Cinema’s Bergman Tribute series. Through A Glass Darkly is the first film in Bergman’s trilogy of faith — followed by Winter Light and The Silence. See, even back in 1961, Bergman already knew that all good things come in threes. I told you the man was a genius. The film earned him his second Academy Award, only a year after his first (for The Virgin Spring). And all of this achieved with only four characters, in a sort of chamber play, sprinkled with emotional and mental instability, family issues, hallucinations, and a most famous interaction with a spider-like god. Beautiful! Watch the trailer.
7:30 p.m., Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; $8 (seniors $6, members/students $5).
THEATER & PERFORMANCE
A Preview of the Mad Woman in the Attic
Jane Eyre already started at the Guthrie, but the official opening is Friday night. Expect a write-up next week, as soon as I’ve seen the production. I’m so looking forward to this interpretation of Brontë’s gothic romance classic. “Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
7:30 p.m., Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224; $24-$44.
Measure for Measure
Also opening this evening is Nightpath Theatre’s production of Measure for Measure. Although this Shakespeare play was originally classified as a comedy, it’s actually considered one of his “problem plays” because it’s difficult to classify. And in beautiful Shakespeare fashion, the main plot revolves around a brother’s indiscretions. That’s right — fornication, my friends. Fornication. What strikes me about tonight’s performance, however, is the one-sentence description: “Shakespeare’s Problem Play, envisioned as a Gunsmoke Radio show.” Woo-hoo! Imagine that. A Gunsmoke radio show, eh? “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” BAM. BAM. Sure, why not? It sounds like Wyatt Earp to me — or any old Dodge City character. Besides, there’s generally a lot of “reckoning” in both Shakespeare and westerns.
8 p.m., Czech-Slovak Center, above the Glockenspiel restaurant, 383 Michigan Ave., St. Paul; 651-646-1764; $10.
MUSIC
Trading in One Sexy Chanteuse for Another
Bebel Gilberto was scheduled to play at Trocaderos this evening, but she no longer appears on their calendar, so I’m assuming it has been canceled. (What’s up with all the Trocadero shows that never come to fruition?) Fortunately, there’s another sexy singer ready to deliver. She’s hot. She’s hip. She’s gloriously talented. Katie Gearty serves up some lovely jazz, blues, and pop classics with a true jazz sensibility. That’s right — jazz is alive and well in Brooklyn Park, only it sports a nose ring there.
8 p.m., Rossi’s Blue Star, 80 South 9th St., Minneapolis; 612-312-2828.
Hardcore punk-rockers might enjoy Modern Life Is War at the Triple Rock Social Club this evening. The $10 show starts at 5 p.m., and apparently, Free Bacon Night begins at 9 p.m. Scary!
They might look innocent (and stylish) enough. But hear ye the simple story of how I came to know – the hard way – of my new running tights‘ nasty, little secret. (The culprit is as right.) Upon first inspection, the Adidas Response running Capri had all the features I sought of my autumn running gear: coverage, Coolmax, and spiff – thanks to Adidas’s fashionable triple racing stripes. Without second thought (and without trying them on, as a matter of fact) I tossed off my credit card and walked away happy with my purchase. It wasn’t until after that first run in my new pants, when I was doing butterfly stretches along with other members of my running group, that I noticed the “anatomical mesh insert” at the crotch. Come to think of it, I had caught a spectacular wind around Lake Harriet that day.
Here, I demonstrate the see-through crotch by holding the pants to a red lamp in my living room:
It’s nothing that can’t be solved by black undies. But I couldn’t help but wonder: How far will the establishment will go in keeping women’s thighs locked together. I mean, skirts and dresses are one thing. But must our exercise apparel, too, be so precarious?
This old video shows Britney Spears chatting with Kevin Ferderline during her down time. It’s quite sad, really — the perverse mutation of innocence.
In case you missed Britney Spears’s wretchedly uninspired performance at the VMA Awards, suffer through it now.
C riders can rejoice. (e.d. I mean to say that Mercedes is going back to showing their face–i.e. the grill.)
While I am not one to make predictions (only bad businesspeople do that, stupid foo’ businesspeople) I will offer an observation.
I think the new Merc C class looks really “hot” in silver. That may mean (while I am not one to make predictions) that you may soon see alot of them on the road. In fact, I am so dumbfounded by how cool this car looks that adjectives fail me.
I have to admit that I did not always feel this way about the new C. The first time I saw one it was done up in a dark blue hue that made me ask Mercedes “now see what you have done.” I mean, it looked a little bit like a 3-series. And all things being equal, I would rather have a 3-series than a C class.
Till I saw this new C-class in silver. That is when I realized that Mercedes has done something different with this new car. The design is better resolved than the BMW. It also handles like the BMW while preserving a torque curve that’s about as flat as Gwen Stefani (nothing over developed, which is nice). Best of all, it costs about the same as as that milky white rice cake called the Toyota Avalon.
And I don’t see any Road Rake reader, or rider, in that kinda car.
Southside Pride reports on a statue of Emiliano Zapata presented to the city on behalf of the State of Morelos. Will we have a new statue in Powderhorn Park?