| |
|
Friday, August 08, 2003
|
|
Exalting the Dinosaur
Flash Mobs
Another Flash Mob happened today in New York. A Flash Mob is a kind of performance art, where a group of people will converge on a certain place and engage in non-sensical behavior for about a minute, and then disperse.
They are organized via email, and they go like this: A crowd of about 100 to 200 people will show up in a swank hotel lobby and just break into applause for 60 seconds, then leave. Or they might descend upon the headquarters of Daily Oklahoman newspaper and chant "news...news...news" for 60 seconds before dispersing.
Totally non-sequitor behavior that generally doesn't hurt anyone. Today's New York Flash Mob happened at the Times Square Toys R Us store, where 300 people stared at a large toy dinosaur in the store, then fell to the ground screaming and waving their hands in the air.
Fine. I would be in a Flash Mob once, if my mood and the actions struck me in the right way. But then I read a quote like this:
A man who seemed suspiciously like an organizer and gave an obviously false name said after the Toys "R" Us event: "Unfortunately, with all the media coverage, it's going to just destroy the cachet sooner or later.
"You can imagine that the next one or two ... people are not going think its cool, it's not really a happening, it's a media event," he said.
Dude, you lost me at "cache", and I became openly hostile at "happening".
I think we should go the other route, and have a Mob Flash, where we all just gather somewhere and flash each other. But you know, the media would probably be all over that too. Can't we just have a nice, private Mob anymore?
2:26:08 PM 
|
|
We Regret To Report...
Pipeline headquarters has actually received phone calls calling us out for listing California's deficit at $38 million, instead of $38 Billion, with a B. Pipeline regrets the error.
And Pipeline also regrets that it just read CNN's latest article on the Golden State Fiasco, which yielded these nuggets:
"The people are very smart. They know who is sincere, who is honest, who is a strong character, who can go up there (Sacramento) and change things, " Schwarzenegger said in an interview on CNN's "American Morning." His trademark phrase "hasta la vista" (Spanish for "see you later") comes from his "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" movie.
The people are very smart? It's funny, but almost all of the smart people I know disagree with that statement. Whether that means people aren't smart, or that I just rub elbows with a bunch of elitists is an open question. I suspect both are true.
I'll tell you who's not smart: CNN. "Hasta la vista" isn't from Terminator 2, you dipshits. It's from the original, the only truly great movie Ahnold has ever been in. (Editor's note: This just in...the line is from T2. I'm leaving my original statement in as a testament to my overwhelming stupidity and my dire need for a fact-checker and more administrative staff. But I still say CNN sucks. The Chick Hearn bit below is absolutely true, though...) Speaking of CNN, did anybody catch that a CNN reporter went to Lakers camp in Hawaii last week and asked for an interview with Chick Hearn? Yeah, you wait here and I'll go get John Edward. Remember when CNN was a decent news organization? Yeah, me neither. At least MTV news has a catchy jingle.
The field is getting crowded out there in Cali, with Arianna Huffington and Lt. Governor Busta Rhymes joining the field. Isn't it so typical of the Dems that they are infighting over whether to run someone other than Davis? They commit fratricide over the message and their strategic options, while the GOP goes guerrilla on the media outlets and inspirational nuggets like this:
When asked what he knows about the range of state issues, such as water policy and air pollution, Schwarzenegger said Davis "has sold himself as being the man of experience. Look what happened with all of his experience."
Uhh...way to directly address that question, Ahnold. Of course, since the people are very smart, I'm sure they'll see that Ahnold really has no experience at all.
But here's what I want to know: What the hell is Ahnold actually going to do? Read this quote:
"It is not the experience, it is leadership that counts. It is bringing people together. People have said to me this can't be done. You don't have the qualifications and all those kind of things. I've been the chairman of the president's Council on Fitness.
"I've been the chairman of the after-school programs of the inner-city games and I led the initiative Proposition 49 where people said you have no experience about it and don't do it and we won 57 percent of the votes." Proposition 49 created funding for after-school programs.
Schwarzenegger said children should be a first priority. "We need to build more schools and have more teachers."
"We have to go after this political system up there," Schwarzenegger said, referring to state government in Sacramento.
"We have a disastrous situation. It should be public's interest first. What they have is self-interest and special interest first and we have to change all of it around."
OK...More schools and teachers. Hey, who's not for that? But remember, you're in a state that's running a massive deficit. Are you going to raise taxes? How will you challenge the special interests that are allocating spending in an improper way? Is anybody even going to ask these questions? I'm sure they will, and I'm sure the very smart public is taking notes on all of it.
And regarding those special interests, Ahnold had this to say:
The popular actor said he is above reproach ethically because he is "rich enough" to be unaffected by special interests, enabling him to render decisions in the people's interests.
Of course he's above reproach! Rich people have always been the ethical standard-bearers in this country. It's the poor people in our world who are ethically challenged, because they have so much to gain from corruption. Enron? The liberal media likes to portray that as a white collar crime, but it was actually engineered by poor homeless Houston street bums and immigrant workers.
Too bad he's not "rich enough" to be above making several awful movies for a giant payday.
Finally, Ahnold left us with this gem, which Pipeline predicts you will hear approximately 38 billion more times:
"I can clean house up there and say hasta la vista to Gray Davis."
Maybe Ahnold is smarter than I think. He's just appealing to his movie persona and Spanish voters at the same.
1:21:52 PM
|
|
Lily sports the Ed Grimley look
Oh...Hello!
Having a second child is strange in ways it's hard to anticipate. My friend Jim warned me about this. He said when he had his daughter, Reeve, that the emotions were different. It wasn't that he didn't love Reeve, not at all. It's just that, compared to his older daughter, who was a walking, talking, interacting being, Reeve just seemed...I don't know what the right words are, exactly. I guess the only way to say it is that Reeve (and Lily) seemed like newborn babies.
Duh.
When you have your first kid, it doesn't matter how old they are, or if all they are doing is sleeping, eating and pooping. You are enthralled with all of it. The second time around, although I was pleased as punch to have a daughter and happy that she was healthy, I found it harder to get as excited about her as I did with Linus. I think it's because you just know that the real fun starts down the road, and that in the early days, there just isn't a lot I can do for her. It's a simple fact, really, that little babies need their mommas more than their daddies.
So, I would check in, hold her, burp her occasionally, talk to her, smile at her, make faces. I did all of that stuff, but when a baby can't even smile at you, it's hard to put quite as much into it, because you know she's just focusing on growing and eating and sleeping. She has no time for my shenanigans.
Look, I know that sounds bad. It's just the way it is.
Last night I was holding her while Jane got ready for bed. As we were laying there, I was talking to her in a funny voice. And she started moving her head back and forth very quickly, with a purpose. That's kind of a new thing, and I thought it was funny, so I laughed. And then she looked right at me, and smiled a huge smile with her tongue sticking out at me.
And it was like "Oh...There you are. Pleased to meet you." Making her laugh made me feel like we had just started our relationship last night. Not the "I'm your biological father and I helped bring you into this world and I love you and I will provide for you" relationship. The relationship where we make each other laugh and we think about each other and we look forward to time with each other. You know, the relationship that counts most.
It came sooner than I thought, and I wasn't prepared for how ready I was for it. Strange as it sounds, after seven weeks of the reality, it finally hit me that I have two kids, and that all the things I love (and get frustrated with) about Linus are going to happen all over again.
Then she spewed a giant glob of spit-up all over my arm, which the dog immediately started to lap up before I could do anything about it.
10:32:36 AM
|
|
Banana Republic
It's hard to know what to say about what's going on in California that hasn't or won't be said elsewhere. But these thoughts, original or not, come to mind:
What's the over/under on the number of registered voters in California who actually believe that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Terminator? I'm going to say...20. The question is, do they vote for him?
How will media fair access laws be followed in a race where the likely front-runner gets to announce his candidacy on Jay Leno? I seem to remember reading about when George Takei, who played Sulu on the original Star Trek, ran for office in California a few years ago. His opponent won the right to free air time because Takei was all over TV in the role of Sulu. But with upwards of dozens of candidates, including other "celebrities" like Gary Coleman and Gallagher, how to ensure fair time? I don't think you can, really. I think the only remedy is to show some of Schwarzenegger's truly bad movies, and there are more than a few to choose from, like...
As for Jay Leno, I haven't read whether he know what was going to happen on his show or not. He had to know. I lost any respect I had for Jay Leno a long time ago, but this just takes the cake. I mean, it's not bad enough that his show completely sucks, that he sold his comedy act down the drain. Now he's just a shill for Ah-nold.
If we're going to do this celebrity thing, let's at least have a fair fight. We'll line up Warren Beatty for the Dems, in a reprise of his role in Bulworth. Beatty would win going away.
As for the actual politics of it, I don't fully understand what the beef is with Gray Davis. Personally, I think his name is a problem. You aren't going anywhere in a place like Cali with a name like Gray. Slate, yes. Gray, no. What I hear most is that they are all up in arms over the fact that they have a $38 million deficit, and he had led people to believe it would be less than that. Give me a break. $38 mil is almost literally nothing for a state like California. They'll collect that in cover charges in Hollywood on one night. They spend that on catering for some of Arnold's movies!
No, the lesson for me is that if you have a group of people who are hard-core enough, who are willing to play hardball and seize on (and create) disaffection, then they can hijack the political process. The spiritual roots of this rebellion come from Florida, circa winter 2000.
In the end, what can you do but shrug and say "It's California"? Several years ago, I made a long and rambling drunken speech to a friend about how anything could happen in California. You name, you think of it, and if it's humanly possible it will happen there. Not one week after that, I turned on my TV to see OJ's White Bronco rolling down the freeway, and I felt supremely validated.
Only in California.
9:57:21 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Doug Hennessee.
Last update: 9/2/2003; 10:37:55 AM.
|
|
|
