The kids in the hall

Tomorrow I’m going to the Riverside Theater to watch the sketch comedy of “The kids in the hall.” For those of you that don’t know the show, it was a revolutionary sketch comedy show that aired for five seasons on HBO. Very similar to the comedy of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, with a quirky, nonsensical, and at times outlandish style. All of the original five members will surely be doing some of their most famous sketches like the chicken lady and the guy who’s crushing your head, but will also probably do a lot of improv and new material. I feel that sketch comedy is such an important part of our media culture, because it has the ability to point out and mock reality and the everyday issues and entertainment we deal with. I remember going to see The Dead Alewives in Milwaukee and how they were very uncensored and raw, plus they always featured local music between their set breaks. It seems that SNL, madtv and sketch comedy as a whole isn’t what it used to be and we need another sketch comedy show that pushes the cultural boundaries like “The Kids in the hall” did, but for the next generation

Violence in Media

Well I thought it was pretty interesting in class when we were discussing violence in the media today (yesterday?). I browsed around on youtube and found a pretty cool video. Well I just tried to link it directly but that didn't work. Here is the BACKUP PLAN . The video has a bunch of clips of violence in the media before 2006ish. A youtube search of this topic brings up countless videos about it. I liked this one because a lot of the things posted in the comments section is similar to what was said in class. Now, it is youtube... some comments are made by pricks, but good luck stopping them.

In the comments, examples are given about other countries. I don't really have no confirmation on what they say, but it is interesting to say the least. Try searching for videos similar to the other one. Some videos are actually made by kids for like class projects. I dunno... the topic of media violence is really complex and very mysterious. Like we said in class, it's pretty hard to pin point the proper blame to one thing when it is influenced by many. I suggest watching some of the videos if you got time. They all are slightly different and have many different examples/ points of view.

The world's first pregnant "man"

Just when you thought the movie "Junior" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was far fetched, Oprah is planning to unveil the world's first pregnant "man" on her show tomorrow.  No joke.  Thomas Beatie was born a woman but underwent a legal sex change to become a man.  His breasts were removed but he decided to keep his female sex organs in hopes of one day having a child.  Now this hope has become a reality.  Beatie, who is due around the first week in July, was artificially inseminated by his wife Nancy after the couple found out she was unable to have children.  Beatie has been off testosterone for two years in hopes of being able to conceive.  The couple hopes of having a normal and healthy family life once their daughter is born.  I think this is a very interesting story.  This will be the first case of a transgendered person giving birth.  As soon as this story hits the airwaves on Oprah tomorrow, there will be a ton of ethical questions raised by people all over the planet.  Some people will be totally against it, while others will see Beatie as a trend-setter.  As Beatie sees it, "It's my biological right to have a child."  The world just keeps on getting more captivating every day.  Check out the full story here.

Blog on

As someone who has never blogged before this class, i find it increasingly difficult to find topics to rant or rave about in a blog. My brain just does'nt register the little "talking heads", "sound bites"& and quotations taken out of context. I do not care about last weeks episode of American Idol, I care even less bout Britney Spears, or J-Lo's Baby. I consider my self a "free thinking intellectual" and as such cannot reasonably articulate my thought, veiws, & opinions in a blog. Do people even read these things? I for one do not. Maybe i should, however the need to do so would have to be empiracally proven to me. The so called war in Irag continues, Obama & Hilary carry on and on. Here's food for thought...let's watch McCain. Let's throw conventional wisdom out the door, and pay attention to history. Does anyone actually beleive a woman or a black man could be President. History has taught us the obvious answer. We are being distracted people!! Pay attention. I eagerly await to eat my words as much as i eagerly await to tell everyone " I told you so". Contradictory..Yes. And so what? After all, us Americans are the most contradictory, hypocritical society i can imagine by far. And oh...if this is too serious a topic for you can always google Naomi Cambell and read about how she allegedly spit on a police officer at London's Heathrow Airport today. Do i have your attention again?

TomKat

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have constantly been noticed throughout the media for their bizarre behaviors. Everyone was shocked when their relationship started and how it started. I assume everyone remembers the time when Cruise was on Oprah and performed acrobatics on the stage as he announced how in love he was with Holmes. This wasn't so shocking as we all know how nuts Tom Cruise is, but it was an interesting start to their relationship going public. Cruise and his beliefs in the religion of scientology have brought up many questions throughout the media about their marrigae. When Holmes became pregnant pictures were constantly being leaked throughout the tabloids. In a picture one week Holmes appears to be VERY pregnant, but the following week she appears only about three months into her pregnancy. With all the craziness with Cruise and his religion people believed that this pregnancy may be fake. When Holmes had the baby they kept her in the house for months on end which also kept people wondering. In addition to this odd behavior Holmes has appeared on many talk shows appearing to be in a trance and almost looking stoned. Many have suggested that strange things happen behind the scenes in this marriage and that perhaps Holmes has been hypnotized. Its all just very bizzare.

dexter on cbs

so the show Dexter, which originated on Showtime, recently began showing on CBS, and was greeted by all sorts of hubbub from the Parents Television Council.The reason for the complaints was that the show centers around Dexter Morgan (played by the AMAZING Michael Anthony Hall), who is a vigilante serial killer. The group thinks that the idea of the audience sympathizing with a serial killer is somehow morally compromising.
They sort of have a point, but are failing to understand that the point of the show is not to sympathize with the character, but more to understand the character. This show is arguably the best program on TV, and I feel that if advocacy groups are worried about anything compromising the morals of the nation, that there are a lot of worse things on TV than Dexter. As far as program quality, this show trumps most if not everything airing on primetime TV. It is all ready airing in an edited version, with most of the overly disturbing material toned down.
I feel that this show is not that accessible to the casual viewer, because of the subject matter and the very intense atmosphere that it sets. In addition, the show does not in any way glorify the fact that he's a serial killer, it is more of a case study into a highly disturbed individual, with the audience trying to understand why someone would end up like he did. The show simply a highly original concept turned into a very engaging and entertaining piece of television.. It's like watching Silence of the Lambs with Hannibal Lecter as the narrator. I think that the PTC's issue with the show is that it does not have a normal, accessible protagonist. It's on CBS on Sundays at 9:00.

StumbleUpon

This is the new way to procrastinate online. You need Mozilla Firefox to download it (which is free) and you can access it anytime from your Firefox toolbar. Basically, you just select your interests and when you feel like killing some time click the "Stumble!" icon and it takes you to a random website based on what you like. Interest include: science, religion, arts, hobbies, history, and lots more. They even have a a cat lover selection (which I'm soo in). The websites StumbleUpon automatically directs you to can be anything ranging from random Youtube videos, sales at online stores, inspirational quotes, news stories, flash animations, to interactive media and games. If you like something you can write a review for it, and if you don't you can just stumble to another page!
I think that this has the potential to be good for online businesses because it is increasing traffic on a lot of lesser known sites (especially some of the shopping and news sites.) I have yet to try it, but StumbleUpon even has a social network section. You can make friends and see the pages that each of you liked and disliked. You can even send each other messages and, I think, you can contribute content to different categories. To download, just search StumbleUpon in a Firefox search engine.

"Gay Day" @ Action Mountain

Since we've been focusing on representation in the media, I found the sitcom "Grounded for Life" to be a great example of a show that takes of sexual identity, and they don't seem to hold back. In one particular episode, the family takes a trip to Action Mountain on what just-s0-happens to be "Gay Day", a day in which once a year the gay community gets together at the amusement park. Henry, the youngest boy, is unaware of what it means to be gay, so when he sees two men holding hands he shouts, "Whoa! That ride must be really scary, those men are holding hands!" Sean, who plays the father, begins feeling uncomfortable as he looks around and notices that his outfit happens to match the outfit of every gay man at the park, a white t-shirt and jeans. Not only does Sean match the outfits of the gay community, but becomes really uncomfortable when he runs into his coworker, who he was unaware was gay. When Sean accidentally tells other people at work that their coworker is gay, he feels bad and invites the man over for dinner to confess. Even at dinner, the family cooks up coos coos, because they feel that coos coos is a "gay man's dish". At the end of the episode, the gay man grows upset when Sean tries to convince him to come out of the closet. After coming to a truce they beg the man to at least stay for dinner, which he accepts and says, "Well...I do love coos coos!" The show gives its viewers the idea of heteronormativity...the characters just assume that their friends and coworkers are straight and their reactions to those that aren't are that it is not normal.

Ethical question

A recent news story brings up somewhat of an ethical question in my opinion. A body was found, supposedly being that of a mother who has been missing for weeks. It has been all over the news. Over the last 2 days since this body was discovered, the main question that news channels are headlining have been "Was the body found without a head?" What is this all about? I believe they are asking this question to grab the attention of viewers, when they should really be talking about other issues. They should address the issues of the family, the crime that was committed, and the suspects and overall situation. Why do we need to know if the body had a head or not?! I think news channels ask these questions because they think that people like gore or something...Or they just try to grasp our attention. This is messed up. Who wants to turn on the news and be forced to picture a body without a head in their minds? I'd rather know the families reaction to the crime and what they are doing to find the murderer of the woman.

Blogging

This should be a pretty relevant topic, right?

As is the case with many new and popular things, blogging is misunderstood. It's even misunderstood by some people who have advanced knowledge of the media, or even those that blog themselves.

With the advent of the same blogger platform we are all using on this blog for this class, anyone can blog about anything they want, and for free. This has been really empowering for the serious citizen journalist, while also providing a forum for the unintelligent and uncreative. Many focus on the latter, trashing blogs as inherently something less than a newspaper, or a magazine.

We must realize however (and with respected online newspapers and websites increasingly employing professional bloggers serving as a witness) that blogs are not inherently something less. True, they are much more inclusive and so there is a lot of bad to go with the good, but arguably there is a lot of bad in mainstream media too. Consider newspapers, websites, magazines, and television. There is a lot of good, and a lot of bad. Magazines aren't good by virtue of being traditional bound in a physical sense with letters that form words and words that form sentences, right? Some are good thanks to good writing and editing and creativity. In the same sense, blogging isn't bad by virtue of it taking place online and being more easily updated. Some blogs are good because of good writing and editing and creativity.

If the same person writes for a print newspaper and a blog, is the newspaper writing good but the blog writing bad? That's the illogic conclusion some people oddly come to.

Jamie Mottram at Mr. Irrelevant (a blog) does a good job of trying to educate the confused.

Quoting Michael Wilbon: “There are differences between reporting and blogging.”

Jamie Mottram: Right. Reporting is a discipline, blogging is a medium and the latter is an efficient way to do the former. This is why most sports reporters at The Washington Post have blogs and use them to report.

Quoting Michael Wilbon: “Blogging is just having an opinion. Just sitting at the crib, back in the cut, as we used to say, and just regurgitating anything you want.”

Jamie Mottram: That’s exactly how I’d describe what Wilbon has been doing at the Post and on ESPN for many years now.

Quoting Michael Wilbon: “I don’t care.”

Jamie Mottram: Obviously.

Opening Day is coming, how are you going to watch it?

So a few weeks ago we talked about the NCAA tournament being broadcast for free on CBS.sportsline.com. Well that made me think of a similar service that MLB.com offers. My favorite (American) sport to watch is baseball, there's just something about the history and tradition of it mixed with the level of detail required to fully appreciate the sport that I love.

For the past 4 years I've used MLB.com's "MLB gameday audio" and "MLB.tv". MLB has worked out deals with every Television and Radio station that has the local broadcasting rights to each team in MLB so they can broadcast them over the Internet. MLB Gameday Audio puts the radio broadcast on the net, and MLB.tv puts the Television broadcast on.

The reason I bring this up now (apart from the majority of baseball opening day starting on Sunday), is that I realized that MLB.com has been ahead of the curve on this. CBS Sportsline has been broadcasting the NCAA tournament online for the past three years, MLB has had "MLB Gameday Audio" for over 9 years (MLB.TV has been operational since 2003). Now, they're not giving this away for free, MLB Gameday Audio is $14.95 for the season for every radio broadcast in the league. and there are two tiers of MLB.tv. the regular version is $80 a year and the premium is $120.

If you're a baseball fan, like me, this is a great service, especially if your team is out of state/market, (while I do like the Brewers and have covered them for work in the past, I'm from Chi-town...my team is the Cubs). So if you didn't know about it yet, go check it out.

Oprah's 'Give Big'

Oprah has a history of giving away lots of expensive things (cars for example) and large amounts of money on her show. But now she’s made a competitive reality show called “Oprah’s Big Give” to have other people do that for her. The show started March 2^nd and there will be eight episodes in total playing on the ABC network. Oprah makes the contestants work their hardest using their creativity and resources to create the best giveaway. And of course, whoever doesn’t do the best job, gets sent home. Oprah makes appearances as well as celebrities John Travolta and Jennifer Aniston. I watched a few clips on abc.com and so far, it looks like it could have somewhat of a steady following for it’s season. It appears to me that Oprah wants to jump on the reality TV bandwagon and finally catch up with those who already have. Who can argue against giving away money to organizations and people who need it? Well it turns out she isn’t getting all good reviews for this innovative idea. I did a search to find out what critics are saying about the show, and Hollywood Reporter gave me a good idea. It turns out a lot of critics have a hard time with all of the product placement that Oprah allows in the show. Also, many aren’t impressed with the genuine giving feeling that the show tries to put off, arguing that these contestants aren’t giving away their own money – it’s all Oprah’s. Also, it’s down 24% from it’s debut rating which drew 11.83 million showing that perhaps viewers are feeling the same way about Oprah’s “Giving Big”. After hearing the reviews, it doesn’t sound like people are impressed and perhaps this won’t be a big hit for Oprah despite her track record of dominating talk show television. I guess we will just have to see.

Hillary and the media...

While I will be the first to admit that I don't know as much as I should about our current presidential candidates, I do know something about Hillary Clinton. I don't know about her campaign, but I know about her personal life. This seems rather odd to me. My point is that the media has created a biased campaign; they have focused more on Hillary's personal life than her goals as a potential President. I think that a large part of this problem is affected by Clinton's gender. Women and men are obviously portrayed differently in the media, and I believe that this is creating an unfair advantage for the male candidates. I think that Hilary has been emotionalized and even penalized for the fact that she is a woman, contrary to men. Candidates like Obama seem to be valued for their strength and ability to seem powerful; Clinton does not.

This form of sexism and stereotyping happens in other forms of media as well. For example, it was widely accepted and even applauded when Brett Favre cried at his retirement press conference. Contrarily, Clinton was made to seem weak when she cried at an event at the Yale Child Study Center in early February. In a country that is supposed to be advanced, we are still operating on gender stereotypes build solely by social constructs. In turn, we may be robbing ourselves of talented and intelligent people.

*Just a note: this is not a reflection of my political association, just my observations of the media!

$6 million dollar babies

How much is too much to pay for baby photos? Is this even right? J Lo and Marc Anthony were paid $6 million dollars for photos with their newborn twins Max and Emme. People magazine jumped at the opportunity to be the first to have pictures of the couple and the twins. No price could stop them from getting these photos. People magazine wanted an exclusive photo shoot of the family's home, an interview with the new parents and to capture the lavish lifestyle these parents have made for their "newborn" babies. Not only have the babies cashed in on the big bucks in America, but its expected that J Lo will also receive an undisclosed amount sum from OK! for international rights.

Its funny how stars can collect money on their newborn babies. Don't you already have enough money, why do you have to collect on the kids. Some stars are even thinking about having more children just to cash in on the profit. In recent news its expected that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are expected to get $10 million dollars if rumored Jolie will have twins.

You Know What's...

There are lots of interesting posts this week, so I hate to ruin the streak with mindless youtube videos, but I just watched a ton of them with friends, so they're fresh in my mind. We've been finding a ton of news bloopers, and some of them are really hilarious. There's tons of stuff like in this set, where various things go wrong for the anchors. Then there's this compilation where the anchors totally screw up with how they word their sentences.

We also found this series called "You Know What's Bullsh*t." The episodes are super short, but amusing to watch. The guy behind them picks random things in life that you may find mildly annoying (but don't otherwise think much about) and picks them apart. You know those stickers they put all around DVD cases that take forever to peel off? Or did you notice the crazy amount of penguin movies that have been released recently? He rants about that sort of thing. My favorite episode has to be the one about the lack of pens at the post office compared to the bank. It's so random, but at the same time, so true:



Apparently, one of the episodes (a rant about the uselessness of pennies) made it as a news story on CNN. I've been noticing the trend of youtube videos as news stories lately. It reminded me of the discussion where the news is more concerned with entertainment than actual news, and I also think it's interesting that the news, in a way, has to compete with online venues like youtube.

Wonders of the internet....

I was bummin on the internet today and found the most random, off topic thing of all history... http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0308/506664.html Go there and enjoy. I personally laughed pretty hard just by reading the title. Very off topic, but it reminds of just how diverse and random the internet is. Countless times have I found something on the internet that just amazed me. Whether it be disgusting, funny, crazy, etc... it was on the internet. There really isn't much you can't find if you actually look for it. Even for something like this article I posted above, chances are that it wouldn't be on a local television channel in Wisconsin.

The internet really does a great job of bringing together many things that occur throughout the world. Even "the wire" of a news station is an internet subscription that picks up feeds from across the globe. Personally, I think it can only get better. The technology that is comming out has a ton of potential to increase the internet experience for users. Video was very hard to find on the internet a couple years ago. Streaming video was unheard of. With high speed internet, downloads seem almost instant. The world would go into a state of panic if we all had to go back to dial up connections. Things like Youtube.com would never be possible. I really have a great appreciation with the internet and all of it's uses... well everything except the "To Catch a Predator" type crap. That I would consider the dark side.

I think the best part of the internet is it's randomness and diversity. The fact that it is made up by a lot of users makes the whole thing more enjoyable for everyone. For this reason, I usually spend my time on the internet and not sitting infront of my television watching shows that I care little about. The internet is an amazing thing..god bless the internet...

Megabus

Have you heard of megabus?
It's a bus company that costs very cheap from $1 to $8 maximum
They have been providing the bus service from Chicago to Milwaukee and Chicago to Indiana etc..
Maybe some of you have already taken the megabus, it is as same as coach bus.
I think there is no sense spending $25 for one way ticket if you can travel with the cheaper cost at a same level of service.
However, this bus does not provide airport service, if you plan to travel downtown Chicago or Milwaukee, it is a great bus service at an affordable cost.

They announced that bus service is now available from Toronto to New York City at the cost of $1. The cost may be a little higher as you make reservation late. They have also announced that the bus system is affordable for everyone compare to other transportation. More specifically, they said they will provide a type of entertainment just like flights, or trains for a long trip, but at a cheaper cost.

Even though they are not so famous yet compare to other bus companies such as, couch or greyhound, but I think they are now making the company bigger.
The big bus company, such as, greyhound is putting their advertisement on their website to promote give 60% discounts the expense of the income passenger below the $35,000 per year. Since megabus is prodviding the service way cheaper than them, they are trying to compete with them with different stratigies to interest their customers.

If you plan to go to Chicago this weekend, try the megabus.
You can go to Chicago at the lowest cost you have ever paid for transportation.

Here is the website
http://www.megabus.com/us/

Higher Tech = Better?

Technology, and the media, is changing fast. It has been for a while now. I really like new technology, such as computers, especially the internet. We have the MP3, GPS, and DVD. This has all made life really easy and convenient.

Sometimes though, I think about what it must have been like without all the amazing new technologies. Boring? Slow? That might make sense, but I'm not so sure.

These days, new cutting-edge cell phones come out all the time, and if you don't have one of the latest, it's almost like you're out of the loop. Then there are gaming systems. I've never been very much into video games, but the new systems come out, and you must have them. In music, CD's days seem numbered, and DVD's aren't likely the future either. And so we will need to get duplicates, just as people before us replaced their cassette tapes and VHS's. We can even consider school. Thanks to technology, we get to take quizzes and tests online. And we print notes off our printer. But it's not as though we aren't anymore paying hundreds of dollars for textbooks. Or taking real tests, or going to class.

Sometimes it's just too much, and too fast.

I love the technology. I love the internet that I can cruise for five straight hours and consume new, interesting, well-written stories, watch entertaining videos, and learn new things, without ever being bored. But it is also kind of ridiculous when I step back for a moment to think about it.

I guess we just live in a really fast-paced, always-changing culture. And while I wouldn't want to trade it away, sometimes I'd like to just, you know,
sllllooowwww it dowwwwnnnn
and chill it out for a minute.

Major Sports Overseas

In case some people didn't know already, the 2008 Major League Baseball Season officially began this past Tuesday, March 25. The game was between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics. Now normally this would be all fine and dandy and not be all that relevant to anyone. But this game wasn't played in Boston. It wasn't played in Oakland either. It was played in Japan. This was the third instance now in which the MLB has opened the regular season in Japan. Which begs the question, will all major sports be played overseas if there are enough fans and these leagues continue to see increased revenues?

As an avid baseball, football and basketball fan I am selfish. I want every game in every sport that is from America, to be played in America. I don't care whether or not the major sports in our country see financial benefits and their fan bases increase if they go overseas. I don't want that. But that is not the way the these major sports leagues view it. They are corporate run companies with corporate interests like we talked about in class. All they want is money and they want as much of it as they can get their greedy hands on while maintaining and increasing their fan bases.

Just last year the NFL played their first regular game overseas between the Giants and Dolphins at Whembley Stadium in England. Again, I am not a fan of these changes and I wish that every game in every sport every year, could be played in our country, where these sports were founded. But with globalization in full force the sports that we know and love could some day be stripped from right underneath us. As far-fetched as that may sound now, it could happen one day. I hope it doesn't, but it could.

Campus Safety

I read a very interesting article in the Journal Sentinel the other day regarding guns on college campuses.  Eric Thompson, a gun dealer from Green Bay, suggested that college students should start carrying concealed weapons to class to avert any chance of a killing spree.  Thompson, like many other gun retailers, runs his business via the Internet.  As I am sure most of you have heard by now, Thompson sold weapons online to the shooters at both Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech universities.  Although he feels grief for the situations that unfolded, Thompson is still an advocate for this idea.  Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group founded after the Virginia Tech shootings, has grown from a relatively small group to 22,000 students across 14 states.  To me, the idea of making it legal for college students to carry a concealed weapon is kind of scary.  Arming students would make it much easier for would-be shooters to bring guns on campus.  There was a statistic in the article which stated even trained police officers only hit their target 20% of the time.  That, to me, is pretty sad.  I'm not saying an average Joe college student could do any better, but maybe it could actually save lives.  The truth of the matter is, unfortunately, we will never know until another campus shooting takes place and the idea is brought to light again.  What do you guys think?  Should college students be allowed to carry weapons to prevent future massacres?  I think it's a topic up for serious debate.