super duper tuesday

once again its been a while since i've posted. starting to sound like a broken record. here's my column from last week, at any rate.

CARPE DIEM 02-08-08

Ah, Super-Duper-Cali-Fragilisitic Tuesday. Watching the coverage makes me want to give myself a lobotomy with an ice pick and a ball-peen hammer, but I just can’t tear myself away.

There’s no shortage of whack-a-doo stories out there as pundits scramble to make sense of a completely mad day in a completely mad year for American politics. But even as the heavy-hitter media elites attempt to sift through the voluminous mounds of spin that the campaigns and their lackeys have left in steaming piles, they are also working hard to cover their own bets [read: asses] especially after the media debacle following the last round of primaries, when Clinton’s campaign was declared dead in the water.

Here are a few of the more off-the-map nutty storylines:

• Even though Obama raked in 562 delegates and 13 states Tuesday night, compared to Clinton’s 582 delegates and 8 states, the media declared the night a “disappointment” for the junior senator from Illinois. It seems that many pundits are scrambling to distance themselves from their love affair with Obama by now setting course 180 degrees away from him. Now it’s Obama who’s finished, washed-up, kaput. Here’s a headline from Wednesday’s Washington Post: “Obama Wave Wanes.”

It’s all over.

Only, it’s not.

Of course, given the recent hype surrounding his candidacy reaching epic, Kennedy-esque proportions—literally, in the sense that Ted Kennedy came out in support of him—any primary result not including a total and complete humiliation of Clinton at the polls could seem like a poor showing. The establishment hates that it’s not decided yet—and, really, hates that it’s not decided in favor of Clinton—because that means more days and weeks of uncomfortable questions about that very establishment, and what direction voters want the next president to take the country.

• Speaking of which, here’s a good one: Clinton advisor Mark Penn was quoted on the Talking Points Memo blog as claiming that Obama has become the “establishment candidate.” Apparently Penn reached that conclusion because of recent endorsements Obama has gotten, and is now attempting to both spin Clinton as an underdog, and undermine Obama’s outsider cachet. I guess Hillary’s eight years in the White House, seven years in the Senate after carpet-bagging to New York to get elected, K Street lobbyist connections, votes for more-stringent bankruptcy laws that favor credit card companies, supporting the Patriot Act, and, oh yeah, authorizing the Iraq war and all get wiped away the moment a nearly irrelevant Kennedy supports Obama.

• On the Republican side, John McCain won convincingly, putting away 511 delegates, compared with Romney’s 176 and Huckabee’s 147. Funny thing is, the Republicans don’t want him.

Huh? Well, lots of them anyway.

Even with that kind of widespread support for a war-hero Senator who—inexplicably—continues to speak of Iraq as if it were an overseas province of Empire America that we will occupy—inexplicably—for at least a century, many in the social conservative wing of the Republican big tent are denouncing McCain. Colorado’s own James Dobson stamped his little feet and said that he wouldn’t vote for McCain, because he’s “...convinced Senator McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are.”

He’s a closet librul, folks. Watch out he doesn’t give your daughters abortions or your sons The Gay.

What this apparently means is that the religious wing of right wing, which has enjoyed the fawning flirtations of every Republican nominee in recent memory, is finding itself without a suitor—and prom night is coming up soon.

It’s only going to get nuttier from here, folks. Strap in tight, and keep your hands inside the car at all times.

***

carpe diem

hey--it's been a while since i posted, but here's my column from saturday. will get some more stuff up here today, i hope.

not that anyone's reading, lol.

CARPE DIEM 1-18-08

Americans are completely schizophrenic. Reading about two unrelated political incidents this past week, it occurs to me that when we look for entertainment, only so-called “reality” will do. But when it comes to the real world, we devour the cheesiest, most transparent of fakery and come running back for more.

Consider the Bush Administration’s bungled attempt to sell a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident with five Iranian speedboats last week. After initial reports claiming that U.S. warships received a radio transmission warning “I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes,” Pentagon officials are now backtracking, saying they never claimed the radio message originated on the speedboats. Experts have said that the heavily accented voice did not have an Iranian inflection. And recently released Iranian video footage depicts a very different exchange between the vessels.

Of course, it’s hard to believe these guys would attempt to manipulate the press and the public with an overblown, phony incident. Just ask Colin Powell.

Next up we get Mitt Romney, winner of the Michigan primary. Last week it was revealed that a down-home, aw-shucks meeting between the Mittster and an unemployed, single mother was actually with the mother of one of his staff workers.

Repeated inquiries were made to the offices of Jesus, but as of deadline He had no comment on whether Romney’s magical Mormon underwear protects him from the sin of bearing false witness.

But on the entertainment side of things there is a definite tug in the direction of relying on real people for amusement. You can’t turn on the television without seeing some new dipwad “reality” show featuring mom’s basement-dwelling troglodytes who own video cameras but lack pride, and who are willing to maim themselves, eat any sort of disgusting concoction involving maggots or testicles or both, or even more horrible and retch-inducing, date Tila Tequila.

But wait! There’s more! American Gladiators is back, proving that steroids, lycra and mullets never really go out of style. And Bret Michaels, former Poison front man—and apparent recipient of some bizarre, experimental facial surgery involving, let’s say, epoxy, shark cartilage, and formaldehyde—is on Rock of Love 2, in which he attempts to narrow a field of 20 airhead bimbos down to one lucky skank. Of course, American Idol has also returned, certain to provide face time for a whole new crop of self-deluded lunatics to begin the process of mental dissolution under the nurturing eye of a national TV audience.

Couple this tiny sampling of “reality” with the perverse, voyeuristic delight we take in peering into and judging the lives of stars we adored as recently as five minutes ago—epitomized by the utterly loathsome TMZ, but repeated ad nauseum all across the airwaves—and what you’ve got is a strange sort of sickness. At the heart of our obsession with witnessing the real breakdowns and faux pas of famous people is a slimy, shameful need to bring them down to our own imagined level.

When we like them we lovingly scream, “You’re better than us!”

When we don’t like them anymore we spitefully scream, “You’re no better than us!”

The bottom line is this: if we are unable to believe anything we see on TV--aside from real people doing inane, idiotic things--if we are so over the whole scripted entertainment thing, which uses talented actors, writers and directors, why are we so helpless to see through the decidedly low-rent, B-movie garbage that our leaders and would-be leaders throw at us every day?

What the hell is wrong with us?

###

dancing with the primaries

bill kristol digging for the truth.

here's my column from saturday. :)

Carpe Diem: Primaries as Entertainment

Kurt Brighton

1:05 a.m. MT Jan 12, 2008

OK, there is a lot happening in the world of entertainment this week.

First, the biggest entertainment story has to be that of the new “American Idol” contest.

Er, I mean the New Hampshire primaries. Since the national press and the candidates insist on treating this ridiculous process like it’s a grand-scale “American Idol” or “Dancing With the Stars”—only with slightly more talented performers—we should look at it that way too. What’s the difference between the deep and probing analysis we get of Hilary’s tears versus the examination of Marie Osmond’s “faint” on “Dancing With the Stars?”

You enjoy endless blather about Sanjaya’s hair? Hey, how about that Obama guy! He’s got a funny name too! Plus, it turns out that Obama is really Jesus, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy all rolled into one, crushing his cowering opponents with a calm, reassuring smile, preparing to lead an unstoppable, inevitable juggernaut, an inexorable movement that will forever change the face of...

What?

Oh. Turns out he didn’t actually win New Hampshire.

Nonetheless, some of the greatest entertainment value coming out of this outdated, hokey, and endlessly spinning process has been watching major media players crack their vertebrae trying desperately to backpedal on their premature announcement of Hilary’s passing into irrelevance. Polls had given Obama an 8- to 10-point edge going into Tuesday, and there was speculation that Hilary might be forced to drop out of the race. The Boston Herald even ran the headline “She’s So Yesterday.” Whoops.

Even more entertaining has been listening to the wise old grayheads of the D.C. establishment try to explain how they—er, actually, all the OTHER wise old grayheads—could have gotten it so wrong.

Apparently, it’s a chick thing. Bill Kristol, the smiling leader of the neo-conservative loon movement—who also managed to get everything about Iraq spectacularly wrong—summed up the general consensus among Terribly Smart People when he said, “It’s the tears. She pretended to cry, the women felt sorry for her, and she won.”

Ah. Well, no wonder all the serious-minded men had no idea what was going to happen. Those kooky wimmen with their emotions and all. You get them involved and the next thing you know, you’re crocheting doilies, holding hands and singing Kum-Bye-Yah or some damn thing.

This is just getting good, and I’m not talking about the candidates themselves. The fun is going to be watching the media attempt to dust themselves off and reclaim their self-appointed mantle of Wisdom once again. Of course, it’s hard to sound wise when you’re burping around a heapin’ helping of crow.

---

And with the accidental hilarity of the real news, it’s truly a shame that the Writer’s Guild of America strike is still going on—the fake news would have a field day with this. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have returned to the airwaves, but without their writers the humor they are squeezing out of what are essentially 23-minute, off-the-cuff monologues is decidedly thin.

But each of them is making a go of it, skirting the Guild’s rules by not even preparing a monologue for themselves. And, as each of them made crystal clear, their sympathies have not changed. In his typically self-deprecating style, Stewart announced that while the show may be back, during the time the strike carries on it will not be “The Daily Show” we have come to know and love, but rather “A Daily Show.”

For his part, Colbert’s blowhard character made light of the situation by insisting that the way the teleprompter worked was by reading his thoughts and putting the words in the little box so he could say them. When he was told that the words were actually written by his missing team of writers, he said, “You mean those guys on the fourth floor smoking opium bongs and playing Guitar Hero? I find that a stretch.”

Here’s hoping they’ll be back soon—their bongs await.

###

dora for president!!

separated at birth?

here's my latest column from saturday. :) read the original here.

Carpe Diem: Dora For President

By Kurt Brighton

If you have yet to experience firsthand the joy of owning your very own child, a test drive will quickly reveal to you the short yet complex list of their wants and needs.

While visiting family for the holidays, I got to take my nephew for a spin one afternoon and I have to say, I don't see what's so hard about this whole parenting thing.

I'm not serious of course. Like puppies and Jehovah’s Witnesses, children are great entertainment—as long as someone else is eventually going to claim them. Keeping one around the house on a permanent basis would surely get messy.

I caught John Alex—who is nearly 3 although he has the lung capacity of a veteran Broadway performer—on a particularly good afternoon. He was enthralled with his brand-new Dora the Explorer DVD, and I was able to sit on the couch and read, just tossing in the occasional over-enthusiastic response to what I surmised he might be saying. I could half-watch him as he squirmed around on the floor watching the TV, playing with his farm animal toy set and occasionally performing a grinning somersault at the sheer joy Dora and Diego bring him.

But as the DVD played on, and then for a second time, and I struggled to shut out the brutally repetitious, often moronic statements Dora would make (um, the bear is on the freakin' TALL MOUNTAIN, Dora. You just SAID so!) I found myself struck by a sad and unfortunate parallel:

The way this show is presented has an awful lot in common with the way we do politics in this country.

Nothing against the makers of the Dora show. I'm sure that clear, unambiguous repetition of simple ideas is exactly what the diffuse, near-feral brains of pre-school-aged kids need in order to begin learning, and more importantly, to begin thinking for themselves in logical steps.

But listening to the simplistic choices the characters asked and then immediately answered (“Is it the green one? Or the red one? It's the green one!”) I began hearing the cadences and stilted nature of politico-speak in their phrasing, and also in the limited palette of answers necessitated by the way the questions are put.

Rudy Guiliani with his 9/11 Tourette's Syndrome: “On 9/11, I personally 9/11'ed, and then freedom flag America 9/11 this great country 9/11.”

Hilary Clinton with the most stiff, awkward delivery style since, well, the last two serious Democratic candidates: “I am leader. I lead. In the Senate, I led. I will lead. Experience. Leader. One who will lead.”

Mike Huckabee's rote bible-thumping: “Jesus, yes. Dinosaurs, no. God—good. Me, like God. Me, God. Like you. Jesus. Worship. Values.”

These people, like Dora and Diego, don't really speak in complete thoughts at all. They repeat words and phrases that are meant to reinforce the words and phrases they've already spoken, planting not-at-all subliminal benchmarks that we are meant to latch onto without benefit of our critical minds. We are supposed to associate them with certain images, and they hope that these images will evoke certain feelings in us.

In a way, we're being trained. Trained to hit the right button, pull the right lever, picture the right image as we cast our vote for a candidate the reality of whom has little to do with those images.

Again, for a 3 year old, that might be fine, and even productive. For adults meant to
critically assess the relative views and potential for leadership that candidates may possess, it's ridiculous. But this is the only “dialogue” available to us as we approach the brutal stretch of primaries that will determine who will become our next leader.
We the public are not without blame, of course. Simple equals good. Us no like think too hard.

But the press and the candidates themselves are culpable in a much more concrete way, as both groups prefer to couch everything in a simple, yet dramatic framework that lends itself to endless speculation without any critical look at the underlying issues that are really important.

Speculation about pantsuits, haircuts and divorces.

At least Dora and Diego eventually get to where they're going. For us, I'm afraid we're already there. Welcome to modern politics, “Access Hollywood” style.

fcc ruling

hey all--
here's my column from saturday. i'm out of town starting xmas day, so it might be a while before i post again. busy with all this christmas shite. does anyone else absolutely HATE shopping? i mean, i hate it in general, let alone when everybody else in the entire fucking world is also shopping.
in fact, i'm stalling right now, avoiding going out into all that.
oh well. read and enjoy, and please scroll down to the end to get the link to sign the protest letter to congress re: the fcc ruling.
peace,
kjb

Carpe Diem: FCC Threatens Free Speech Again

Kurt Brighton
December 22, 2007

Did you ever wonder why you can turn on a radio in Peoria, Ill., and hear virtually the same classic rock line-up as you hear on a station in Petaluma, Calif.? Or in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.?

Did you ever stop to ask why virtually every television network and chain newspaper not only went along with the run-up to the Iraq invasion, but in some cases actually led the cheerleading—despite the Bush Administration’s demonstrably fact-challenged rationale, which was leaking out even then?

Your answer lies in a bill that was signed into law not by some heartless Republican business tycoon, but by Our Boy from Arkansas, Smilin’ Bill hisself: the Telecommunications Act of 1996. And now the Federal Communications Commission has just ruled in favor of degrading media ownership restrictions even further, voting 3-2 to allow companies that own newspapers in the nation’s top 20 markets to also own television stations in the same market. Some observers say that a close reading of the proposed policy shift would allow this cross-ownership in any market, regardless of size.

The rule change would open the floodgates for conglomerates like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Gannett and the Tribune Company to further constrict their chokehold on what news is worth reporting. It’s even more chilling to think that these half-dozen or so CEOs would have even more dominance in defining what constitutes news in the first place.

Hope you’re a big fan of the type of “news” offered up by Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck and John Gibson.

All of this means it’s a good time to assess what has come to be our new media reality as a result of the Telecom Bill of 1996, since the same type of high-minded sounding rhetoric about “deregulation” and “competition” was employed to dampen the public’s fears back then. Since 1996:

• Cable television rates have risen nearly three times the rate of the Consumer Price Index.

• Radio conglomerates like Jacor/Clear Channel have gobbled up stations nationwide, control concert venues, and reap massive billboard advertising revenues, among other holdings.

• Minority ownership of television and radio stations has dropped to 3 percent and 8 percent respectively.

• Finding it easier and cheaper to produce content at a handful of “news factories” scattered across the nation, local content has diminished precipitously on stations and in newspapers owned by these conglomerates.

All told, we the people blew it in 1996 when we allowed the muscle of the conglomerates—aided and abetted by the fealty of congress members to their corporate overlords—to shove this anti-competitive, anti-free speech, anti-American bill down our throats.

We should not stand idly by and let the same interests pull the same trick.

This time around it looks like there is at least more awareness of the inherent problems: at a series of six public hearings staged by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, 99 percent of public comments were against the rule change. In some cases, the comment period lasted well into the night, as people lined up for hours to have their two-minute say on the matter.

Also, a group of 25 senators has threatened to override the FCC’s recommendations, and prominent House members are voicing similar threats.

But it’s not over. The problem is that without congressional action, the vote-pushed through by Bush-appointee Martin over the objections of, well, nearly everybody—will stand. To make your voice heard, go here and sign StopBigMedia.com’s letter to congress asking them to overturn the ruling.

###

mad about madd

here's my latest column from the paper. if you want more info on MADD and DUI law, i suggest these sites.

peace,

k

Carpe Diem: Drinking Becomes MADDening

Kurt Brighton

4:05 p.m. MT Dec 14, 2007

All right Fort Collins, you’re not trying hard enough.

Men’s Health magazine recently released its list of America’s “most dangerously drunk” cities, which was topped by the No. 1 drunkest city, Denver, with Colorado Springs coming in at a respectable third. Even Aurora made the top 100. But Fort Collins didn’t even make the list.

Excuse me?

I guess the editors have never been out in Old Town on a weekend, when one can witness our flourishing Idiocracy convening for its weekly meetings.
In all seriousness, the criteria with which the editors selected cities for this dubious honor are somewhat dubious themselves.

Some things make sense: They started with each city’s numbers on alcohol-related liver disease, and the Department of Transportation’s statistics on alcohol-related fatal car crashes. Keep in mind that DOT counts any alcohol involved in any way in an accident as “alcohol-related.” In other words, if you are dead-cold sober and you strike a wasted pedestrian attempting to cross Interstate 25 during rush hour, that gets counted as an “alcohol-related accident.” Who was actually drunk in the collision—or if they were even over the legal threshold for DUI—doesn’t matter. But we’ll let that one go.

Here’s where the criteria begin to get even fuzzier. Next up, the editors compared each city’s “number of binge drinkers,” data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control. A binge drinker is defined by the CDC as someone who has five or more drinks in one sitting.

Or as the staff of the Fort Collins Now calls it, lunch.

Seriously, though, how did the CDC come by this information—a telephone survey? Did they send observers into various bars in each city and count the number of drinks each person had on a given night? And what if those five drinks happened on one night, but not for the rest of the month? Is that person still a “binge drinker?”

Another factor in the rankings that employed questionable use of statistics is the number of DUI arrests in each city. The higher the number, the higher a city’s ranking.
Question: If more drunks are being pulled off the streets, doesn’t that make a city safer? If Barney Fife is napping in his squad car in Dustville, Kan., while drunks weave past him on their way to the next bar, isn’t that more dangerous?

Finally, the last factor entered into the data was a Mothers Against Drunk Driving “report card” in which the organization assesses the efforts each city is putting into reducing drunk driving. This organization has been so corrupted by a growing ultra-conservative puritanism and the power and money that flow their way—as long as they keep the nation in a constant state of low-level panic about drunken drivers—that any statistics or studies they produce should be questioned. And then jettisoned immediately.

While MADD may have started out with the best intentions, these are the same people who are pushing to have interlock devices installed on all new vehicles—devices which are used to prevent habitual DUI offenders from starting their cars after blowing into an on-board breathalyzer. If a driver shows any alcohol in their systems, the vehicle won’t start—fine for someone who has racked up DUIs in the double digits. But what if you or I have a glass of wine with dinner? Or, God forbid, even two?

MADD made nearly $4 million in 2005 alone just from its Victim’s Impact Panels, a court-ordered re-education technique used in Colorado and other states for those convicted of DUI. And the nonprofit socked away almost $13 million in taxpayer funds in 2004 alone.

For years now, the organization’s agenda has been sliding down a slippery slope from preventing dangerous drunken drivers from hurting people to preventing anyone from drinking any amount and then operating a vehicle. Or maybe from drinking at all. There’s a difference between being impaired by alcohol and having alcohol in your system, and MADD has successfully blurred that line—and it is reaping the financial benefits.

Understand, this column is not meant to advocate drunken driving, or even drunken stupidity on foot. It’s to suggest that instead of swallowing whole the fear-mongering and incremental suspension of liberties that accompany the DUI issue, we should question any organization that finds its power and funding enhanced as a result of it.

And that includes the police.

###

carpe diem 12.1 - black friday

doesn't that look like fun?

here's my column from 12.1, re: black friday. i will never understand this day. i hate shopping so much, even normal, everyday shopping that i won't even go to the grocery store at 5:00, when everyone is getting off work. my ex knows i would rather eat lead paint and chase it with roofing nails rather than go to home depot on a sunday afternoon, and you'd have to sedate me to get me in a walmart pretty much anytime during the day.

i would absolutely freak out and go into a claustrophobia- and stupidity-induced coma if i were in one of the above pictured scenes. but anyway...

thanks to everyone who came and saw noises off--we had a great time doing such a silly show, and i will miss it--eventually. right now i'm still in recovery, although i've already started reading the next play i'm doing, 'the harvey project,' at openstage etc. will write more about that later.

also thanks to everyone who took the time to read my first theatre review in the denver post, on white christmas.

anyway. column from sat. happy shopping, everyone!

--kjb


CARPE DIEM 12-1-07

The political primary cycle has long been known in certain circles as “the silly season,” and with good reason. We get endless recycling of stories about Barak Obama’s alleged drug use and what that might mean if he were elected. We get stories about Hillary Clinton’s “waitress-gate,” when she was alleged to have not left a tip for an Iowa waitress. And now there’s theories about the meaning of Mitt Romney’s underwear—a set of words that should never, ever have been strung together except in the Romney bedroom, and maybe not even there.

“Silly” hardly seems a strong enough word to cover this endless filling of empty space in print and on 24-hour news cycles.

What, then shall we call this most odd time of year, the period that has expanded to encompass the time between Halloween and December 26, a period when many Americans seem to go completely bat-shit insane?

I think we should call it “the schizophrenic season,” since all the tenets that Christmas is supposed to stand for go out the window entirely. For instance:

Black Friday: ‘Tis the season to witness grown men and women in malls bashing each other to the ground like chubby hockey players who happen to be wielding credit cards instead of sticks in order to get…a television? A vacuum cleaner? A game system?

Really?

We’re not talking about people struggling to survive, not fighting for food, or shelter, or to spare their offspring from the path of a speeding train, mind you. We’re talking about saving $50 on an X-Box 360 in order to spare poor Johnny and Susie from…boredom. For a little while anyway.

Welcome to the spirit of “giving.” But of course, when you think about it, this shopping madness isn’t about the giving. It isn’t about the people for whom the presents are being bought—it’s about the bargains the shoppers perceive themselves getting, and their sense of victory in feeling that they have pulled one over on the stores. It’s about buying something for someone else—or yourself—and getting the cheapest possible price. At least until December 26 when all the prices drop anyway.

So, at the heart of it, Black Friday, the kick-off to the so-called “season of giving” is actually about greed on the part of shoppers, and it’s about greed on the part of the stores, which, (shh! don’t tell anyone!) make money anyway.

But back to our collective schizophrenia.

The War on Christmas: This lovely little hateful canard gets thrown into the mix earlier and earlier every year too. This year Fort Collins had the dubious honor of having Bill O’Reilly, in his blinkered and stubbornly uncomprehending way accuse the mayor of killing Christmas by suggesting that holiday lights and decorations that aren’t blatantly Christian might be nice for people of different faiths.

So, let’s get this straight: every year, around the time when supposed Christians celebrate the supposed birth of The Prince of Peace, we get these vicious little trolls coming out of the woodwork screeching about how someone, somewhere is trying to kill Christmas because the lights on College Avenue are white instead of green and red? Or because the clerk in Target said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?”

And we are meant to believe that poor, downtrodden Christians—a group which, according to a 2002 Pew poll, are a tiny minority making up 82 percent of Americans—are under siege. We’re told that there’s a chance that the big bad atheists or non-denominational non-believers—or God forbid, Jews and Muslims—might be involved in an insidious plot to wipe Christmas from the face of the earth.

Why must a time of year when we are purportedly celebrating love, peace, hope and renewal be so tarred with hatred, vitriol, anger and greed?

And if it’s going to be that way, we should just call it what it is: The Schizophrenic Season.

Words of wisdom spoken to reporters by the waitress who supposedly got stiffed by the Clinton staff (but who actually got a portion of a $100 tip on a $157 check):

“You people are really nuts.”

***

carpe diem 11-24

here's my column from saturday.
hope everyone had a good thanksgiving!

CARPE DIEM 11-24

I’ve been flogging the subject of the writers’ strike in this space for the past couple of weeks, so rather than rant about it yet again, I thought I might take a look at some alternatives that are available for those who are starting to feel deprived as original scripts for their favorite shows dry up.

· read a book. Of course, this is probably pure fantasy, the most unlikely alternative to television in a society where people feel the need to have streaming video with them at all times on their iPhones, but it’s worth a shot. I’ve been re-reading some of my ancient favorites: “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller resonates more than ever in today’s lunatic-led, war-like environment, and I went on a Vonnegut spree recently. Also, a friend introduced me to Terry Pratchett a while back, and I ripped through half a dozen of his books in a few weeks’ time. Pratchett is a hilarious and sharp-witted writer able to skewer human ignorance and hope through casts of fantastical creatures like trolls, dwarves and vampires. Sort of a Douglas Adams (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) of fantasy.

· catch up on movies. Apart from being able to drink beer and hit pause while you’re watching DVDs at home, another advantage is the extras available on most discs. I’ve long been interested in the actor’s process of creating characters, as well as the nuts and bolts of making a film, and many DVDs provide enticing glimpses into that world. Some of my favorite bits are outtakes where actors helplessly crack up: any recent Will Farrell movie is bound to have these; start with “Anchorman.” Judd Apatow, who produced that film, added a hilarious bit to the extras of the recently released “Knocked Up,” which he wrote and directed. In a five-minute pseudo-doc called “Directing the Director,” director Bennet Miller of “Capote” fame is depicted as having been brought in by the studio to earnestly help “shepherd” Apatow along, providing him tips on “his craft.” He offers on-set advice, giving notes to Apatow’s puzzled actress-wife Leslie Mann, and asks her if their marriage is “serious.” Another favorite is the extras on “Inside Man,” which actually has clips of the very first table-read the cast did.

· web videos rule. While the networks and the writers’ union squabble over who gets what portion of the revenue from online video, people are still putting new material out there. Comedy Central is touting the fact that every episode of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are now online at www.comedycentral.com. (For a hilarious segment featuring Stephen Colbert simultaneously trying to report, eat a banana, and not crack up, search for “colbert prince charles” on “The Daily Show” site.) Also, the striking writers have a blog at www.writers-strike.blogspot.com. Another site with tons of funny material is www.funnyordie.com, a site started by Will Farrell and Adam McKay, where Farrell’s infamous “Landlord” videos debuted. Check out John C. Reilly’s “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” a pseudo-commercial for a chain restaurant named “Pepperbee’s” where the manager really enjoys giving good customer service. No, he really enjoys it.

On a more serious note, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has a new video available at http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/ called “Apathy Kills,” in which he outlines in gruesome terms just how the media distract from the real and very dangerous problems we face. Backed with a strong beat and understated vocals (for Reznor, anyway) the four-minute clip uses footage of the World Trade Center towers falling, photos of Bush administration cronies cozying up with dictators, statistics and graphic pictures of those wounded and killed in our self-proclaimed war on terror. Juxtaposed with clips of Paris, Britney, and all the other starlet/train wrecks you can imagine, on whom we concentrate so much more attention than we do on fellow Americans who are dying every day, the video is damning indeed.

It’s a stirring call-to-arms, demanding that we arm ourselves not with guns, but with the knowledge that these heinous acts are being perpetrated in our name, yet benefit only a very few. It’s also a reminder that perhaps the only thing scarier than the Bush administration being in charge for the next year is the mess they are going to leave behind.

###

carpe diem 11-17

here's another carpe diem column, from saturday. more ranting about the writers strike. there are tons of great videos about all of this, starting with this, this, and this.

CARPE DIEM 11-17

As the screenwriters’ strike gains momentum, and the public begins to notice that their favorite shows may indeed be in jeopardy without someone to actually create the, you know, words that people say on screen, the battle has thus far gone in favor of the creative class, not the moneyed class. There are dozens of articles published each day in print newspapers as well as online dissecting the real issues surrounding the strike and laying out for television viewers just what is at stake, and the storyline thus far seems to favor the striking writers.

Not only are we approaching a time when “Law & Order” and “CSI” will run out of scripts, as have topical late-night shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” we’re also beginning to witness what the networks have in mind to replace these shows: reruns and “reality” programming. After all, can you ever have enough “Dancing With The Stars?”

But as creative people, the writers have not shied away from using their gifts since their days have been reduced to hauling around picket signs and inquiring about the status of their 401k accounts.

In fact, in a delicious bit of irony, the writers and their supporters are using the very medium that has caused so much consternation in negotiations between their union and the studios—the internet—to mercilessly flog their corporate masters over what exactly is wrong with the deal the studios are proposing. There is a new crop of videos out there that not only showcases the picket lines, but also uses humor to illustrate the writers’ side in a way that the studio heads cannot express themselves—at least not without their striking creative teams.

One of the most ingenious and clever videos that have been created in support of the striking writers does little more than let the studio bosses use their very own words to hang themselves. In this short clip, which can be seen here, Fox’s Rupert Murdoch, CBS’ Les Moonves, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone and others are shown in interviews extolling the new revenue streams that broadband distribution of their shows will bring in. Of course, in negotiations with the writers, these same boasters have pled poverty, claiming that there is no more money, that the pie has already been divided and, so sorry, writers just don’t get a slice. In one especially telling bit, CBS’ Les Moonves lists all the people who will benefit from the new media distribution of their shows: “Wherever say, CSI is shown, we as the network, as the studio, as the production company, as the producers—we are going to get paid for it.”

Whoops. Forgot someone, there.

Again, let’s put this in perspective: for each DVD sold of say, “Cold Case,” the writer who put the words in the mouths of those fine actors you love so much gets around three cents. That’s out of a price tag of $20 or so. And studios are suggesting that it is reasonable that writers get exactly zero percent of digital revenue.

And here’s why this issue is so important: not only does the sudden halt in new programming illustrate how important a writer’s job really is, the strike also lays out in stark terms the dichotomy between those who create and those who just have money. While scripts for “Two and A Half Men” may not exactly be Pulitzer Prize-winning material, the studios can’t create it without a writer at the heart of it. Les Moonves can’t sit down at his typewriter and bang out an episode when times get tight. Could you? Could I?

The answer is no. And for networks to say on one hand that they are on the verge of reaping billions of dollars in ad revenue from the internet and other digital media, and on the other, that this redistribution of material that writers created is essentially worthless smacks of greed and dishonesty.

***

carpe diem 11-03

here's my column from saturday.

CARPE DIEM 11-03

A few years ago, a retired philosophy professor named Harry Frankfurt wrote an essay entitled “On Bullshit.” It quickly spread on the internet and was later published as a book.

It is a short book, only because what it lays out is one of those ideas that is stunningly apparent, but only after the fact: much of what we are surrounded with is bullshit. We know this to be true, but until Frankfurt’s paper came out, it was never defined and dissected so succinctly.

The book is an invaluable tract to anyone who would like to have a better grip on the unreality that has become our reality today. The way Frankfurt defines it, “bullshit” isn’t a synonym for a “lie,” but rather: “It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit.

In other words, if you are lying, you are at least aware of the truth, if only in terms of saying the opposite of what it is. If you are “bullshitting,” in Frankfurt’s view, you are completely removed from the concept of truth versus lie.

And I would take the idea a step further and say that we have finally gone round the bend, passed a magic threshold, accumulated a critical mass of bullshit to the point where it has in fact become our reality.

Hannah Montana started as a fictional pop star who sells millions of records, and is played by actress Miley Cyrus on the Disney Channel show of the same name. Now, Miley Cyrus playing Miley Cyrus playing Hannah Montana sells millions of records and sells out arenas like the Pepsi Center in a matter of minutes.

Fox News Channel is still called Fox “News” for some reason, despite the company’s lawyers fighting and winning a battle in a Florida courtroom, proving to the satisfaction of a judge that there is “no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.

And of course there are people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, doing what they actually call “fake news.” Sadly enough, there is more truth, more slicing away of the layers of bullshit on their comedy shows than there is on the “real” news, where “real” reporters dutifully relay talking points just as they were instructed to.

Which brings us to the poorly-thought out FEMA “news conference” last week in Southern California, wherein FEMA employees were the only attendees—er, “reporters” who asked any questions of FEMA’s spokesman. Actual reporters were notified of the news conference, but only 15 minutes prior to it starting. And as anyone who has ever lived in, visited, or even heard about Southern California knows, 15 minutes isn’t enough time to even get to the freeway, let alone get anywhere on it.

The department’s chicanery was duly exposed—FEMA spokespeople apologized, Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff gave the hoax’s authors a public tongue-lashing. And the whole thing made for great entertainment, and fodder for late-night talk show hosts.

But really, why not stage fake news conferences? In this era where public relations, image, and spin are always going to trump truth anyway, why not indeed? What the hell, we’re not going to hear anything remotely close to the truth from these people—we might as well get a good show out of it.

And if we’re all a little dumber for it, well…you get what you pay for. That’s your government hard at work, twisting and pirouetting and twirling around the truth till you can’t tell what it is anymore. And it’s easier to keep the populace in line when they not only don’t ask questions, but are actually so ignorant they don’t even know what questions to ask.

That's entertainment.

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no joy in rockville

here's my column from yesterday.
so sad.

CARPE DIEM 10-27

There was no joy in Rockville today.

Well, there was joy for a few, but there were a lot more potential Rockies World Series ticket buyers who were joyless. Not only joyless, but disappointed, upset, furious, frustrated, livid, enraged, infuriated and incensed.

For not one but two days, people trying to score a ticket to see the Rocks play in their first World Series sat in front of computers that gave them the message that is burned into thousands of pairs of eyeballs across the state: “Our servers are experiencing extremely heavy loads right now. Do not refresh this page or you will be dropped to the end of the line.” The main difference between Monday’s aborted ticket sale and Tuesday’s was that the countdown timer on that screen was changed from 60 seconds to 120.

And according to tech experts, the message that screen bore was untrue; a University of Denver computer science professor told the Denver Post that the javascript code used on the page is unable to keep track of when an individual computer first attempted to log in. It was a ruse to discourage people from re-attempting to connect with the Rockies’ servers over and over.

Of course, there’s no real good way to sell the 17,000 to 18,000 tickets that were available for each game to a potential pool of millions of buyers. Systems like lotteries, or standing in line for days favor those who live close to the stadium—and don’t have anything better to do for a couple of days. These old-fashioned systems are also easily gamed by scalpers and ticket brokers.

So computers are the answer, right? Not that I or anyone else should really have assumed that it would be easy to get tickets—although news reports are filled with photos of sad-eyed, disappointed fans who seemed to be working under the delusion that just because they wanted tickets they should have been able to get them.

The real problem was in the Rockies’ computer system allowing potential buyers a glimmer of hope, then washing those dreams away in the form of a frozen web page.

I’m one of what sounds like many would-be World Series attendees who somehow, miraculously got past the “sit there and wait, you putz” screen and onto the actual ticket sales server at one point. I actually had four tickets selected for Sunday’s game, right field lower level, and had all my information entered into the system. I imagine myself telling the seeming tall tale in bars as I edge into my senile years, spouting off to anyone who will listen about the day I nearly scored World Series tickets:

“The computer even called me by name! I tell you, it’s true! The screen said, ‘Welcome, Kurt Brighton!’ with a little exclamation point and everything, as if to say, ‘Oh happy day for you! For you are one of the elect—you are one of us, part of Rockies Nation. Welcome!’ Imagine my elation…”

Welcome indeed.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. Once I got past entering my credit card information, a screen—a painfully, brutally slow screen came up asking me to confirm the info—and promptly locked up before it actually finished loading. So, I’m looking at a screen that says to confirm, but the buttons that allow you to confirm never loaded.

Confirm?? How?!? What do I do? Yell at the screen? (I did.) Punch the screen? (I almost did.) And since the computer geniuses who set up the Rockies’ system arranged it so that buyers timed out after five minutes to prevent—what, exactly?—it was all over by then anyway. The Post reported on a Denver attorney who was so angry about a similar situation that he made screen captures of the seats he “had” and faxed them to the Rockies ticket office, claiming they had a legal contract. He may sue the organization.

I do wish him luck. And I understand where he is coming from. To be that close, thinking it was a done deal, and then be denied—well.

I’ll be the weird old guy at the end of the bar if you ever want to hear the story.

The Mighty K has struck out.

###

radiohead

i write for the fort collins now newspaper (formerly the fort collins weekly) and they seem to be having trouble getting my Carpe Diem columns posted onto their website. so as i am able to, i 'm going to start posting them here.

to read the rest of the paper, including other a&e articles i write each week, go to www.fortcollinsnow.com

this is my column on radiohead's new album 'in rainbows' from the paper coming out tomorrow.

--kjb

CARPE DIEM 10.13.07

The headlines this week were awash with a pair of unrelated stories that, when taken together, nicely illustrate where the music business is going and where it’s been, a perfectly-crystallized moment in time in which we can see the bold future colliding with the craven past.

First the future: Radiohead, already one of the most musically innovative and forward-thinking bands to emerge in a long time, has applied that creativity to the methods by which they are getting their music out to people. The band, no longer under contract, has announced that it is offering its new album In Rainbows for sale in MP3 format for whatever price people choose to pay. Fans are directed to a website where they can enter an amount in British pounds, plus a 45p credit card handling fee. Beginning October 10 buyers were emailed an access code allowing them to download the record. Even amid fears of the band’s website crashing, or other cyber-snafus hindering the plan, I received my unique code Wednesday morning, (I paid around $10; the money is going to the artists after all, not the suits) and downloaded the zip file with no hassles. Minutes later, I was listening to the album at a reasonable bitrate of 160kbps. For comparison, Apple offers its iTunes at 128kbps.

The band is also offering an actual disc for sale, due to come out in a couple of months, along with a deluxe box set including the disc, two vinyl albums, artwork and extra tracks. The web has been buzzing with discussion of the move, and while the band’s management won’t say how much people are choosing to pay for the digital version of the record, they are pleased with the response, and have said that more people are paying than not.

The entire experiment can rightly be viewed as a warning shot aimed squarely at record companies, not only in terms of the “pay-what-you-will” scheme, but also because the MP3 tracks for In Rainbows were released without what the industry calls digital rights management, programming restrictions which variously prevents users from copying music to another device or platform, or listening to it on certain MP3 players.

Of course, having sold upwards of 20 million records, Radiohead is in a position to reach millions of fans without the publicity machine of an established record company, something most up-and-coming bands can’t easily do. But by taking the record companies biggest fear—that a digital version of an album will be leaked prior to release of the hard copy—and brazenly promoting it, the band has managed to turn established industry “principles” on their head. And, according to what many fans are writing on blogs around the world, owning a digital copy of the record now isn’t going to stop them from buying a hard copy in a couple of months, thus discrediting another canard the record companies like to throw out.

Now for the past of the music industry: the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing companies that control about 90 percent of record sales in this country recently won a lawsuit against a Minnesota woman who was found by a jury to have illegally made 1700 music file available for download.

Read that again: she wasn’t found guilty of downloading songs; she had 1700 songs on her computer that were made available to peer-to-peer file-sharers. For each of the 24 songs the RIAA focused on, the woman was ordered to pay over $9,000 in damages. The single mom with an annual income of $36,000 plans to appeal.

Casting themselves squarely in the bogeyman role, the record companies’ hatchet men have once again demonstrated that hunting for mosquitoes with dynamite can indeed be effective, but has the potential for bit of blowback. Desperate to retain the control over music that they enjoyed for decades—and not incidentally, the freedom to pick the pockets of consumers and artists alike—the RIAA has done nothing but hasten their own demise.

To order a digital copy of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, go to www.inrainbows.com .

###

and now for something...

...completely the same.

my column from the fort collins now of 10.6 on spamalot.

Spam.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Try saying it aloud a few times—it’s fun!

But silly name aside, who would ever have thought that this odd, gelatinous, pink, spongy, meatish product, this humble, peculiarly American invention would one day be immortalized by a pack of too-educated, loopy Brits with a penchant for wearing women’s clothing and walking funnily? Somehow, an absurdist sketch on an obscure early 70s BBC program (or is that “programme”?) that no one thought would last beyond season one has spawned a multi-million dollar live theatre extravaganza called “Spamalot.” And it is a riotously funny and successful show—it’s still running on Broadway, and in London, Las Vegas and Melbourne.

The aforementioned loopy Brits are of course the troupe called Monty Python. And “Spamalot” is a triumph based loosely on their film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” but also borrows freely from other Python sketches and films, and includes new bits and songs penned by Python member Eric Idle. I was privileged to shell out way too much money to see the touring production of the show at the Temple Buell Theater last weekend, and highly recommend that you beg, borrow, steal, or sell body parts if need be in order to get tickets to see it before it leaves town on the 7^th.

The original cast starred such luminaries as Tim Curry (of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” fame) David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria, and Sara Ramirez, and the show has continued to sell out houses all over the country. Original Pythonites (we call ourselves OPs; there are support groups, meetings, gang colors and whatnot--but we don’t get a lot done) were enthusiastic of course. But what was amazing was that the bizarre and deeply disturbed sense of humor that is the signature of the Pythons has translated so well to a broader audience.

There are kneeless knights, ravenous rabbits, flatulent Frenchmen, and not-quite-passed-on plague victims reluctant to be carted off, all of which won gales of laughter from the audience. But then it potentially gets a bit more touchy for some: there are monks referring to the bible’s little-known Book of Armaments, a bitchy God (voiced by John Cleese), and a song titled “You Won’t Succeed On Broadway If You Don’t Have Any Jews,” featuring snippets of various traditional Jewish songs and dances, and culminating with a giant, neon Star of David descending from the rigging.

And then there’s Sir Lancelot, who, through the ministrations of his new friend Herbert, discovers that he is a “different kind of guy” in the course of a massive disco song and dance number featuring bits of “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People.

In other words, the show pokes fun at just about everybody, and the audience seemed to understand that there was nothing malicious about it—although I wouldn’t necessarily recommend inviting your fundamentalist Uncle Fred to see it.

What’s most incredible though, is that in the course of offending nearly everyone, the musical also has written into it plenty of jokes aimed at musical theatre. Some critics have been harumphing that this ongoing cynical wink toward the ridiculous excesses of musical theatre is unnecessary and too precious. But swelling, over-the-top treacle like “This Is The Song That Goes Like This,” a dead-on parody of any song from any Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is exactly what musical theatre needs. The song features an earnest couple singing lines like, “I’ll sing it in your face/While we both embrace/And then we’ll change the key…”and thus points out that, indeed, musical theatre is an absurd artifice that takes itself far too seriously—exactly the type of thing the Pythons have always mocked.

For musical theatre snobs to be seriously offended by this gentle ridicule—and for there to even be such a thing as “musical theatre snobs”—is frankly hilarious in itself. It’s a show for everyone, that makes fun of everyone, including its writers and performers, and thus it’s universal.

Oh, and one last thing:

Spam.