Sheep and Goats

Category: Popular Culchure

  • Prince Plays the Superbowl

    When NFL planners billed the eccentric artist formerly known as Prince and more recently known by an unpronounceable and indecipherable symbol and presently known once again as Prince for the Superbowl halftime show, they thought they were in for clear sailing. Ever since Janet Jackson bared her breast, they’ve been looking for entertainment more family friendly, yet not so family friendly that viewers switch the channel to check out other offerings. Since Paul McCartney never gave Ed Sullivan any trouble, and the Rolling Stones only gave him a little, they were booked for two successive years, to general satisfaction. But with Prince…..well, how could they miss? He is electrifying, young but not so young as to turn off the old boy beer and chips base, and best of all…..no worries about anything inappropriate since he became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses a few years back!

    Well…..um….uh…..ahem….it didn’t exactly turn out that way. I mean, the performance was riveting and all….easily besting the shows of those old guys mentioned above, but there was a controversy. Did he not, for one brief segment, use his electric guitar as a giant phallic symbol?! That’s the charge that was made, with regard to a backlit scene in which his profile was projected onto a screen!

    As expert in all things JW, people flooded me with requests for an opinion, or at least you never know when they may start. Did he or didn’t he, Tom Sheepandgoats, hmm? So I diligently reviewed the tape, just like referees review close calls on the field.

    Actually, I didn’t review the tapes. I didn’t have to. I haven’t seen a Superbowl in years, but I did see this one. And I didn’t see it just because our guy was playing. I didn’t know he was playing until halftime. No, some friends had invited us over for the game. And…..trust me on this….they didn’t know Prince was playing either. In fact, I’m a little surprised they knew the Superbowl was playing.

    So I saw the performance live. And, uh…..hmm….well….it’s like….that is….um, it did kinda look that way. But maybe I’m just a prurient pig with a gutter way of seeing things.

    Because not everyone agreed. Even rock music potheads who would love it that way conceded it might have been accidental. There’s a reason those 24 elders in Revelation chapter 5 are playing harps and not electric guitars! The way you strap on and hold an electric guitar always subjects you to the risk of seeming risqué, if viewed from a certain angle, especially via projected shadow.

    "If people want to be hypersensitive, they can be hypersensitive," says Rolling Stone’s Gavin Edwards. "Those trombones are phallic, too. What are you going to do?"

    I didn’t know that about trombones. I promptly threw mine in the trash.

    Many blog comments mirrored that of Scott Cohen, a self-described religious guy (Jewish) who tours with a band, and who ranks Prince concerts among his top favorites, and who has a music degree from Syracuse, and who is fed up with the phallic accusation with all its prudish and holier-than-thou implications. "Prince dedicates every show to Jesus Christ and anyone who knows about his current beliefs knows that he will no longer swear or perform songs like "Darling Nikki"…etc…..I thought the Superbowl performance was terrific…and didn’t notice any phallic nothing…" So there!

    Among the tunes Prince morphed into his show was Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower in which he ignored the early verses to instead chime in with "all along the watchtower, Princes kept the view." Was he making a sly plug for his spiritual views in front of 90 million people, someone wanted to know?

    The most vehement criticism came from that subset of religious folk who can’t stand Jehovah’s Witnesses! I mean, a lot of folks don’t really care for them…..after all, we wake them when they’re sleeping in late. I’m not talking about these people. I’m talking about the smaller bunch who positively loathe Jehovah’s Witnesses, some of them ex-Witnesses themselves who went sour, guys like Barfendogs. Their comments took the form of "gotchas" and they gloatingly anticipated seeing Prince disfellowshipped [!] and if he wasn’t…. well, that would just prove (to them) JW hypocrisy. But you can’t pay these soreheads any attention. These are the same people who lambaste Witnesses for being mind control cultists who forbid personal expression.

    Say what you want about Prince, with or without the phallic tempest. He certainly did express himself, didn’t he?

    Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise— why destroy yourself?    Ecclesiastes 7:16  NIV

  • Spinning Cars and Words into the Drink

    Some kids were driving on frozen Irondequoit Bay, spinning round and round the way we all love to do in wintertime Rochester, [BTW, nearby Redfield NY has 11 feet of snow, all in the last 2 weeks!] when they discovered the bay was not so frozen as they had thought. Near shore, the ice gave way and down went the car! Of course, this was top news for the Democrat and Chronicle, whose lead story showed the car’s top poking up from the bay along with this gem: "It’s likely to cost thousands of dollars to retrieve, said one towing expert."

    It was true. Neighbors and cops and ice fishermen and bay officials converged on the scene and debated what the final price tag would be. Would it be $1? Or $10? Or maybe that figure was too low. Maybe it would be a million dollars! Nobody had any idea, but then they called a "towing expert" who opined it was likely to cost "thousands of dollars." Blown away by his confidence, they gave him the job and….sure enough….when he hauled the thing out, he charged thousands of dollars!

    They tried to be gentle at first, but in the end they salvaged little more than scrap metal, just like that engine repair you did where you started with the screwdriver and box wrench, then escalated to the vicegrips and crowbar, then escalated again to the jackhammer and cutting torch, then gave up and bought a new car. The drama took three days to unfold, and each day the dunked car was front page news, trumping Bush, Iraq, Hillary, Spitzer, everything.

    No wonder nobody knows anything! They’re dumbing our papers down and we can’t do a thing about it. The D&C is practically a comic book now, and if you have any doubt, go to the library and check out some issues from decades back. They are scholarly tomes by comparison. Ditto for the newsmagazines. Ditto for all kinds of popular press as they follow reading skills to unheard of depths, desperately trying to keep readers who hate to read. Even my beloved Watchtower is right there riding the trend, just like Slim Pickens astraddle the falling bomb. What choice do they have if they want to reach people? Since trends like this are usually too gradual to notice, the fact that we can notice it is depressing.

    In 1990, documentary producer Ken Burns presented The Civil War on PBS. For nine evenings PBS stood toe to toe with the big networks. People didn’t watch the usual tripe, they watched The Civil War. The series won 40+ film and television awards. Burns panned through thousands of archived photos, narrated scores of personal stories, diary entries and letters from great men and plowboys alike. And you cannot sit through the program without being struck by how literate they all were back then. Not just the educated people. No, but also the bumpkins, the plowboys, the commoners. Not only did they narrate facts clearly but, more remarkably, they expressed emotion gracefully and without embarrassment.

    But that was then. Now is now. Several years ago Watchtower released the brochure What Does God Require of You? The writing is extremely simple, perhaps (just guessing here) 3rd grade level, so that you run the risk of offending people when offering it, in case they are scholars reading at the 4th or 5th grade level. But you must have a tool for everyone and the brochure’s plus is that it offers a complete overview of God’s purpose, along with what we must do to fit in with it. It’s no good to write everything like the New York Times and thus miss 80% of the population. Anyway, simple people respond more readily to the Kingdom message than do educated ones. It’s not the education that messes people up. It’s the pompous and full-of-themselves baggage they tend to pick up along the way. God despises pride.

    For Jehovah is high, and yet the humble one he sees;
    But the lofty one he knows only from a distance                     Psalm 138:6

    And….

    For you behold his calling of you, brothers, that not many wise in a fleshly way were called, not many powerful, not many of noble birth; but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put the wise men to shame; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put the strong things to shame; and God chose the ignoble things of the world and the things looked down upon, the things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that are….
                                                                                                 1 Cor 3:26-28

    So if I offer that brochure and I’m not sure about reading level, I avert trouble by saying up front that it’s written very, very, very, very simply. Think of it as an outline. We could make it big as a phone book if we wanted, but we’ve deliberately written only enough words to glue the scriptures together, to bridge from one to the next. That way the Bible stays front and center, not our own pontificating.

  • Conscience, Movies and the MPAA Ratings

    Noah (theonlyNoahyouknow) was in town and I spoke to him about movies and he ranted how silly was the American MPAA rating system. In Germany, he said, there was no such thing.

    In astonishment, I gasped: How, then, do you know what you can watch?

    They read movie reviews.

    If you’re a moviegoer, you want to shield yourself and family from filthy, gory or sicko films, but how do you do it? How do you avoid grossout scenes before you know they exist?

    Because the American movie rating system is so easy to access, a fair number of our people have, in effect, made it their conscience. They will be safe, they feel, if they just avoid R rated films. Trouble is, the technique doesn’t work too well.

    For one thing, if R’s represent the line in the sand, then anything higher on the scale must be okay. But as any moviegoer knows, a PG-13 movie can easily be more filthy than an R. Directors long ago learned to sidestep ‘R‘ triggers, even while loading their films up to the limit with stuff you don‘t want to see. And sometimes R films are so rated for relatively innocuous reasons: one too many f-bombs, for example. (a PG-13 is allowed one, which is a guarantee that one will appear, usually in the most in-your-face manner imaginable!) Of course, nobody likes f-bombs, but if you work or school in an environment where hundreds of such bombs are raining right and left, you may not even notice 3 or 4 in a movie.

    Of course, R’s at their worst are nastier than PG-13’s at the worst, so if you don’t read reviews, it might be best to avoid both categories. Don’t just go see them at random, not if you care about avoiding sordid stuff. You might as well play Russian Roulette.

    A lot of reviews don’t really tell you too much about what will make you gag, but some do. On the internet, kids-in-mind, and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops both serve pretty well. To be sure,  the mental image of a room packed with Catholic Bishops eagerly watching Freddy Krueger so as to slap it with a thumbs down rating (presumably) always makes me smile.

    Now….all this searching and reading and screening is a lot of work just for the sake of movies. Are movies essential to life? No, they are not. “I’ll just avoid them all, unless I hear on sure testimony that this or that film is okay.”

    That is a valid position, which some of our people take. For others, however, there are reviews.

    Here are the two sites mentioned, both set for the film Cars: (which carries the Sheepandgoats endorsement)

    http://www.kids-in-mind.com/c/cars.htm
    http://www.usccb.org/movies/c/cars.shtml

  • Dick Van Dyke at 81

    Sometimes an old friend who you haven’t thought of in years pops up. This morning the clock radio, which was only doing its wake-up job, was within milliseconds of being smashed into scrap metal, when the quick-thinking radio guy said….here’s Dick Van Dyke come to visit. Dick Van Dyke? Is he still around?

    I swear when I was a kid I thought he was the funniest man alive. Rob and Laura Petrie put me in stitches every time. Dick won three Emmys in a five year run, and I was steamed when his TV wife, Mary Tyler Moore, busted up the show so that she could explore other roles. Was not her sole purpose in life to entertain me?

    “What do you think of today’s comedy? How has it changed in 40 years?” asked the quirky host Bob Lonsberry? Well, Dick recalled, he and his TV wife slept in separate beds….that seems prudish. But today he fears that we “offend the world” with our comedy, with its “moral anarchy.” (Sheepandgoats has made this point before, even using the show’s separate beds as supporting evidence!)      

    As the media would have it, the world’s view of America is shaped by U. S. military policy, Iraq in particular. To be sure, Iraq earns the U.S. a substantial reputation, especially among government, wonk, and policy types. But average individuals, worldwide, aren’t much affected by Iraq. They do have satellite TV, however, and when they watch American programming, can we really expect them to conclude that Americans are anything other than ho’s, tramps, and sadistic perverts? And don’t you think the Middle East avengers point to such programming as “Exhibit A” when they’re pumping the hordes for America-hating? As Dick said, agree with Muslims or not, they are deeply religious people.

    Yeah, but…yeah, but…..Americans aren’t like that…we‘re not all sickos, not most of us. Agreed…..but you’d never know it from television.

    Thank you, Mr Van Dyke. It is as you say. TV is America’s most visible export and producers offend the world with its raunchy and violent content. Good to hear from you. And forgive me for wondering if you were still kicking! Turns out you are, very much so, cooking up stuff in computer animation, and giving of yourself through the Midnight Mission. How active will I be at 81?

  • Super Columbine Massacre Game and the Last Refuge for Scoundrels

    Don’t think it was easy to pry Tom Fishandchips’ fingers off the joystick of his Super Columbine Massacre video game. Doing so was almost as rough as pulling the game’s antagonists’ (protagonists?) fingers off their assault weapons. After all, Fishandchips had scientific research, which he displayed powerpoint style* (see below) all around his work area, that declared violent entertainment did not produce violent people. Science said he was in the clear to blow away sim students all day long, which was well, because that’s what he wanted to do in the first place.

    *Violent media not to blame for violent people
    Scientific evidence does not show that watching violence desensitizes people to it .              [University of Toronto study: Dec 2000, displayed prominently by Fishandchips]

    Nor was he quick to change his tune when other Institute members, guys like Sheepandgoats, Wheatandweeds and Weedsandwheat, pointed out to him that the studies he had cited were most likely dogs, and that 99% of all studies on media and violence had concluded there was a relationship. No, said Fishandchips, might does not make right, the majority is usually wrong, what about tiny David going up against mighty Goliath, etc, etc, etc.

    What finally broke Fishandchips’ pigheadedness was the revelation of who had paid for his study….a study so obviously favorable to the makers of violent entertainment. It was the Motion Pictures Association! Now, I guess that doesn’t mean for sure that their resulting study is so much horse manure, but it sure does raise suspicions that the MPA simply fished around till they found someone who would tell them what they wanted to hear. Their violence-is-golden conclusion would have been easier to accept had it been reached by the Presbyterian Church, or the Girl Scouts, or the Ghostbuster’s Association, or the Evolutionists of America Club.

    Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, declared Samuel Adams in 1775. But here we can modify that statement to science is the last refuge. Note how the MPA’s contract researchers wrap themselves in the scientific method every bit as much as a rabid nationalist wraps himself in the flag. On the other hand, the 99% other studies which conclude that violent entertainment isn’t great for public moral health, are not said specifically to employ the scientific method, but “many investigative methods.” That’s not to suggest those methods were mere new-age fluff. Doubtless they were rooted in logic and made use of scientific reasoning. But they may not have restricted themselves to the narrow scientific method, which insists on finding causality and is never satisfied were mere correlation.

    VIP commenter Mr. Crowe (VIP because he does comment, which I appreciate and endeavor to return the favor wherever I can) smelled a rat with regard to my last post on this subject. Was I not taking a shot across the bows of science? Why am I anti-science? Isn’t religion also the last refuge of scoundrels, even more so than science or patriotism?

    Actually, religion may be the first refuge of scoundrels. But everybody knows that. The opium of the people, and so forth. We all know how cynical power brokers use religion to stir up the masses. But science enjoys a purer, more rarefied reputation, as if it is above and immune to manipulation by scoundrels. That reputation is not entirely deserved.

    Nevertheless, running down science was not the point of my previous post, though alas, it was not worded skillfully enough to avoid that interpretation. Science is good. Science is useful. We find out a lot of things though the scientific method. What science is not, however, is the be-all and end-all, the uncontradictable one true means of discovering things so that, if science comes up with no answer, then there is no answer.

  • Columbine and the Scientific Method

    The Carriertom Into-wishen Research Institute is only about two inches from concluding that the scientific method is just a device for opinionated people to screen out evidence which points to conclusions they don’t want to hear about. For example:

    Violent movies and television programs do not create violent viewers, says a University of Toronto professor who has just completed [Dec 2000] a comprehensive review of all of the research on the subject. "The scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people or desensitizes them to it."  [italics mine]

    When junior Institute staff member Tom Fishandchips read those words, his heart sang. He ran down to the store and bought the Super Columbine Massacre video game. He’d long had his eye on it, but he was afraid to buy it lest people think he was violent. He loaded the game on his work computer and started spending all his off-time blowing sim-students to Kingdom Come, splattering blood and guts everywhere.

    A blog reader might be repulsed at this point. Isn’t this post obscene, since real school shoot-em-ups are quickly becoming an American growth industry?

    Get over it. There’s no proof, says the U of T report, citing scientific evidence. You got something against science?

    Fishandchips’ continual playing soon got on the nerves of the other Institute members….guys like Sheepandgoats, Wheatandweeds, and Weedsandwheat. I mean, if you’re trying to write about God, it doesn’t help to hear assault weapons, sirens and SWAT team noise in the background. Driven to distraction, these eminent theologians also checked the research and came up with different studies, much to Fishandchips’ chagrin.

    From the American Pediatric Association:

    An APA spokesman testified before Congress in 2000: “Since the l950s, more than 3,500 research studies in the United States and around the world using many investigative methods have examined whether there is an association between exposure to media violence and subsequent violent behavior. All but 18 have shown a positive correlation between media exposure and violent behavior.” [italics mine]

    The U of T study, upon which Fishandchips based his Columbine purchase, was one of the 18 clunkers! How could that be?

    Note that the 3500 studies used many investigative methods. The U of T study used the scientific method. Could it be that the 17 other clunkers also used the scientific method? Could the scientific method be the least reliable when it comes to measuring people?

    It‘s worth asking. If you practice the scientific method, you’re looking for cause and effect relationships. You think up experiments to test for such relationships. The experiments should be repeatable. Factors that would screw up the results, but are not what you are testing for, should be screened out.

    These goals you can achieve in a laboratory. But it’s not so easy to do in real society. There are too many influences that go into making people what they are. Time, places, and circumstances might not be repeatable. And many relationships are like the chicken and the egg; they influence (and reinforce) each other. Fat chance you’re going to find out which came first, but unless you can do just that, the scientific method isn’t interested.

    Sometimes with people, you must settle for correlations. Here are a few correlations we’re familiar with:

    There is a correlation between condom non-use and sexually transmitted HIV.

    There is a correlation between lead exposure and lower I.Q.

    Between passive tobacco smoke and lung cancer.

    Between calcium intake and bone mass.

    Pediatricians accept all these relationships as fact, and practice preventative medicine based upon them. Yet, the correlation between exposure to media violence and aggressive behavior is stronger than any of the above relationships!

    If we use the scientific method as a tool with which to investigate, fine. But God help us if we use the scientific method as the One True Tool….the only way in which we can know anything. In that case, there’s a lot of knowable things that we’ll never know.

    Crestfallen, Fishandchips went back to the store to return Super Columbine Massacre. But he was too embarrassed to go in. He didn’t want them to think he was a violent person.

    ……………………

    “Violent entertainment is aimed at children because it is profitable. Questions of right or wrong, beneficial or harmful, are not considered. The only question is ‘Will it sell?’”            Dr. David Walsh, author of Selling out America’s Children.

    ……………………….

    The LORD examines the righteous,
    but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.       Ps 11:5 NIV

    ………………………

    To Sheepandgoats’ surprise, the Super Columbine Massacre game is not a corporate creation for the purpose of raking in big bucks. It was created by an aspiring filmaker, who distributed it free and calls it an indictment of our times. "The game does not glorify school shootings," [it’s creator] told The Washington Post. "If you make it far enough into the game, you see very graphic photos of Eric and Dylan lying dead. I can’t think of a more effective way to confront their actions and the consequences those actions had."

    A modern day Alfred Nobel – dynamite story, perhaps?

  • Rolling Stones Play China

    The Rolling Stones played a concert in Shanghai this past April. Before 8000 in a small arena. Leery Chinese officials were opening the door to rock n roll, but they weren’t opening it very wide. Perhaps imagining they could spare themselves the West’s moral rot, they banned several Stones songs, among them Let’s Spend the Night Together, Beast of Burden, and Brown Sugar. Thus, Mick Jagger was forced to dig into his repertoire of wholesome songs.

    He led off with Bitch.

    He also tried to put nervous officials at ease with this comment:

    I am pleased the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of expatriate bankers and their girlfriends. [only they could afford the ticket prices]

    Two lessons can be drawn here.

    1.  There goes the neighborhood

    2.  Big as he is, don’t you think Mick could think of something gracious to say, something that just might result in his being invited back again, or some other rock n roll group?

    Sheepandgoats is especially agrieved by this development, since he kinda likes the Stones’ music. Too bad the Chinese will never hear it again.

    On the other hand, the Stones could have just rolled over as did Google, agreeing to anything  so as to get their foot in the door. Maybe Mick deserves some credit after all.

    ……………………………..

    The NBC censors also had problems with Let’s Spend the Night Together. Thus when the Stones played The Ed Sullivan show in 1967, they were told it had to be Let’s Spend Some Time Together. The versatile Mr. Jagger, unwilling to comply but also unwilling to cave, sang "let’s spend smnxc ndtmmd" together, slurring words at the critical moment as any self-respecting rocker can do.

    Jim Morrison of The Doors was less accomodating. He not only wouldn’t change his lyrics (girl, we couldn’t get much higher), but lobbed an f-bomb at Sullivan personnel! (not on the air) F-bombs are common as raindrops today, but it was not so then.

    The Beatles presented no such problems for Ed Sullivan or NBC. Their most provacative lyric "I want to hold your hand" was deemed acceptable to the 1964 viewing audience. The most-watched TV show ever up to that point, and still pretty hefty, was the Beatles’ first American appearance on The Ed Sullivan show. They didn’t hurl any f-bombs at all, they reportedly got along well with Sullivan, and the latter introduced the group one year later when they played Shea Stadium.

  • The Socially Adept Sheepandgoats

    The local newspaper highlights the top 5’s in singles, albums, DVD’s, movies, TV shows…all the neat categories. On top is the byline "Just so you know….in case it comes up."

    I went to a party a while back, and it did come up. Fool that I am, I had not read the lists.

    Partygoer 1: Hey, look who’s here! Tom Sheepandgoats!
    Partygoer 2: Tom, what’s happening?
    Tom Sheepandgoats: Hey.
    Partygoer 1: How about that new #1 song. Tom Sheepandgoats? What do ya think?
    Tom Sheepandgoats: Yeah….(gulp) ….it‘s….nice.
    I stuffed pretzels in my mouth to buy time.
    Partygoers 1 and 2: Nice?! Tom, you’re a beaut! C’mon, what did you really think?
    Tom Sheepandgoats: Uh…it was….way cool. I so liked it.   [better change the subject]   By the way, what do you think George Bush is…..
    Partygoer 3: Who cares? What about the song, Tom Sheepandgoats? What do you like about it?

    Since we were talking issues, quite a few had begun to gather.

    Partygoers 1-12, at intervals: Yeah, Tom Sheepandgoats, yeah. Tell us, what did you like about it?

    Tom Sheepandgoats: Well…I…uh….like the….uh….harmony.
    Partygoers 1-20: On a rap song???

    Partygoer on the other side of room: Hey, how ‘bout that Scarlet Johansen from that new hit movie? Is she one hot babe, or what?
    As one person, partygoers 1-20 abandoned me for the new light.

    It only worsened. Here and there I ventured a remark about personal fulfillment, family, or spirituality. But my party mates just rolled their eyes. I didn’t know the lists, and they knew I didn’t know. Was it my imagination, or did I hear the host and hostess bickering over just whose bright idea it was to invite me anyhow?

    I understand their disappointment. After all, if one does not know the top 5’s, what…..and let us not mince words here….what good is he?

    I won’t repeat the blunder. When I fetch the paper now, I read the lists straightaway. It may….it certainly will….come up again. But no one has invited me anywhere since.

  • Prophesy and Reality TV

    Pity the poor TV producer of just a few years back. Put yourself in his place.

    Imagine that you want to produce a TV show. First, you have to hire some actors. They’re all prima donnas and most suffer from high self-esteem. They’ll cost you an arm and a leg. Not to mention aggravation. As soon as you turn your back, they go on talk shows to promote their nutty religious views, or they say mean things about psychiatrists, whom we all know are the indispensable good guys in white hats today.

    Then you must build a city. Or clear traffic in a real city, so as to stage your show. People get mad when they’re late for work because they had to detour because you closed their city because you wanted to film your TV show. They send you hate mail. But some of them don’t get mad. They come and appear in your show as extras……the folks just passing by, street traffic. But you must pay them as well, otherwise they gawk at the camera and wave ‘hi’ to Mom.

    Of course, you can’t even get this far unless you have a story to film. You must hire writers. They aren’t cheap either. You will pay substantially for them to write scripts about psychos, perverts, misfits, oddballs, exhibitionists and dysfunctional people, which is all anyone wants to watch today.

    These seemingly insurmountable problems would no doubt have derailed the entire television industry, but for a staggering discovery.

    The audience of “30-somethings weaned on The Real World and Cops….doesn’t judge reality programs any differently than scripted drama.” (Rosenbaum)

    To the TV producer, this statement is as profound as is the pledge of allegiance to the patriot or the Lord’s prayer to the devout person. It is the television equivalent of this verse:

    You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.   John 8:32

    The elusive Rosenbaum, who is on the staff of the Carriertom Into-Wishen Research Institute, or will be as soon as we can track him down, single-handedly saved television!

    Why write shows about psychos, perverts, misfits, oddballs, exhibitionists and dysfunctional people when you can just as easily, and for a fraction of the cost, go out and film real psychos, perverts, misfits, oddballs, exhibitionists and dysfunctional people! They don’t mind at all! They crave the attention. And the rest of us, who are mere wannabe psychos, perverts, misfits, oddballs, exhibitionists and dysfunctional people, love to watch their antics. We can’t get enough of it. Thus, the astounding success of reality TV!

    ………………………………..

    Released 30 years ago, the movie Network was billed as outrageous satire. But each year brings it closer to dead-on reality.

    The film begins with the anchorman for a floundering 4th network announcing the cancellation of the evening news due to poor ratings. Since he’s getting on in years and has no real prospects, he tells his viewers that he will blow his brains out on his final broadcast, and encourages them to watch.

    Friends rally, concerned about his mental health. But the ratings inch up.

    He persuades his network to let him broadcast one last time, so he can apologize for his bizarre behavior under stress, so he won’t be remembered as a loony. Alas, he really has gone nuts, and on his supposed-to-be final night he launches into an endless rant on how all life is B.S!

    Ratings shoot through the stratosphere!

    Some ambitious executives run the network. They rebuild the network around their new “mad prophet of the airwaves!” They surround him with likeminded nutcakes, who spin off into their own programs. They merge the news division with the entertainment division. (Sound familiar?) And when our hero’s ratings start to slip, they….well….I really shouldn’t give that away. But read it here if you must know.

    Of course, rated R (mostly for language, which is substantial, the kind of stuff you hear at work or school), how can the film be a Sheepandgoats recommendation? It cannot be. But it is prophetic.

    In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The movie depicted the concept of reality television a generation before it actually came into being.

    ……………………………………

    Can’t understand this sayin going round says
    Put more on with lessons and less on for morons   –       D Loftus

  • Ask Your Doctor if Reading is Right for You!

    People don’t read like they used to and that’s not good for the Democrat and Chronicle. They want to boost circulation, not cut it. So they fired the clods that had been handling their publicity and entrusted their entire advertising budget to the Carriertom Into-Wishen Research Institute. True, Carriertom has no experience in that sort of thing but, as Tom persuasively argued to the D&C, you have to start somewhere.

    It was a wise move. The Institute realized right off that the trick was to make people read the paper. And who has more authority today than one’s own doctor?

     

    Ask your doctor if daily newspaper reading is right for you.

    Ccf07162006_00005_1 I always wanted to be an intellectual but I didn’t know much.

    Ccf07162006_00008_1 I only knew a few really big words for conversation, like rhinoceros.
           "So, whatdya think of those Rochester Rhinoceroses?"

    Cci00000_1

    Whenever I agreed with something I would say yeppur!

    I know what I want, and I don’t want to be dumb! So I asked my doctor if daily newspaper reading could help.

    Ccf07162006_00003_1 And he said yes!

    How about you? Why not ask your doctor if daily newspaper reading is right for you!


    Daily newspaper reading is not for everyone. Blind or unconscious persons may experience impaired results. Editorials may cause busted guts due to anger or laughter. Pigheaded and pinheaded editorial writers may induce high blood pressure. Do not attempt to read while showering, sleeping, or water-skiing. Sourpusses should avoid comics. Do not attempt to follow all columnest advice, especially not that of Dr Ruth. In some cases, severe reactions can occur when you read that your mutual fund is going down the toilet. Ditto with the Buffalo Bills. (though you should be immune to that by now) Those over 110 years of age are at elevated risk of death within one year of reading a paper. Newspaper reading should not be used to avoid communication with one’s spouse or significant other. Unread newspapers should not be used to housebreak puppies. Speak with your linguist before beginning a reading program.

    Daily newspaper reading is not for everyone. But maybe it’s right for you.
    Ccf07162006_00006_1

    Ya, know, I really am kinda stupid. What should I do?

     

     

          Ask your doctor if daily newspaper reading is right for you!

     

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    Tom Irregardless and Me                No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash