In the March 26th edition of TIME magazine, there’s an article a couple of pages from the back, and it concerns a group named the Parents’ Television Council (PTC), who have railed variously against all the things you’d expect an organization that sees itself as the protector of “family values” to rail against.
You should also know that, according to wikipedia, the PTC is responsible for 99% of all complaints made to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
So I went to their website, and I read a little, looked at their studies, and I, too, was outraged. “How can this happen in America?“ I wondered; “What has gone so wrong with television that we need a group like this to protect our family values?”
Yes, on the front page is the grinning and over-tanned face of fifties crooner, Pat Boone, asking: “The TV networks think your family want to watch shows featuring EXPLICIT SEX, DIRTY LANGUAGE and SICK VIOLENCE. Are they right?” Well, thank God I joined Nielsen, at least they’re getting my viewing habits about right.
But my point is this: Pat Boone is a glorified Amway salesman, who defended Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant last year (even after Gibson apologized) and who labeled anyone who is anti-Iraq-War “unpatriotic”. This from a guy who lived through the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 50s.
He's a man who refused to act an on-screen kiss in the 60s because the leading lady was married in real life. To me that seems like he can't always tell that there's a line between “real” and “make believe”.
Maybe that’s why he’s mugging the front page for the PTC. Maybe he thinks that what’s on TV is real-life. I don’t know.
Anyhow, there’s a PTC best and worst TV shows for families. In the category “best” we have Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, NFL Football, Deal or No Deal, American Idol, Dancing With The Stars and the upcoming American Inventor.
In the category “worst” are Lost, House, The War At Home, Grey’s Anatomy, Prison Break, American Dad, Family Guy, Desperate Housewives and CSI.
Now, I’d have to admit that, yes, the “worst” shows often deal with death, crime, sex and politics (not just red and blue; sexual and emotional, too). But they also explore how to deal with those things, they set-up conversations about how we grieve, how we deal with betrayal and how we overcome personal flaws and move on.
How about those “best” shows? What makes them the best? Well, apparently they’re good at uniting families in front of the TV. But really, what is so good about being united in front of the TV? Why is that an honorable goal?
What I think I’d like to tell Pat Boone is this: I can decide what’s best for me, for my family, way better than you can. My family values might not be the same as yours. Clearly you’d like to see more Amway commercials in the 7 hours or so of advertising each network channel airs everyday. That, Mr. Boone, should worry you more.
In three hours of primetime viewing between 7pm and 10pm, viewers will be subjected to almost an hour of commercials including commercials for alcohol, prescription drugs and high-fat, low-nutrition fast foods. Not only that, the very images used to advertise these things glamorize “social” drinking, encourage you to question your doctor’s diagnoses if they don’t mention particular medications, and contribute to a consumerist society obsessed with the accumulation of “stuff”. And they do it all in front of your kids, while you watch with them.
We’re making the mistake of thinking that what our families need is bland voyeuristic television punctuated by eroticized sales of addiction and consumerism for the sake of consumerism.
And I’m sure that that’s not really what the PTC want, but when you take away the things that make us horrified, make us laugh, make our adrenal gland work a little overtime, what we are left with is television that doesn’t educate, doesn’t entertain, only flickers and makes noises to hypnotize us so we’re good and suggestible when the commercials come around.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Way Forward
There’s a company by the name TNS, and they’re in what’s called “market information”. I read one of their surveys recently, about job satisfaction, and it turns out that 25% of all workers are “just showing up to collect a paycheck” and that 40% of workers feel “disconnected” from their employers, and a humungous 53% of workers responded with “neutral” or “dissatisfied” (or worse) responses for how they felt about their job. And the dissatisfaction is worse the lower the income falls.
Work. What is it, really? It’s waking up way before you really want to and, voluntarily, commuting through traffic to a place where you don’t feel valued, and where you don’t want to be. And then doing it again and again.
If you add up all the time it’s really insane. And I’m going to be nice and give you three weeks off a year. But you’re still working 8 hours a day. Forty hours a week. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty hours a year (that’s 81 days working around the clock, every year), or, if you retire at 65 after 44 years of work, that’s three thousand five hundred and ninety-three days. Or, to break it down for you, nine years, ten months and one day of doing nothing but something unfulfilling, that you hate, that makes you feel like less of the person you know you can be.
Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen one on TV, and I’d say that spending the better part of ten years doing something that destroys your soul sounds an awful lot like most people’s version of Hell.
The worst thing is that more than half of us are voluntarily consigning one seventh of our expected time on the planet to activities that reduce the time we’re likely to have. How do I know this?
The University of Aberdeen in Scotland told me so. According to economists there, job satisfaction is the most critical factor for life satisfaction and well-being. And the consequences of poor well-being have an impact on your physical well-being (according to the National Institutes of Health) and poor physical well-being is the thing that leads to cardio-vascular disorders. Not only that, but poor life-satisfaction leads to depression and anxiety, which are leading attractors to drugs (according to Narconon).
The abuse of socially acceptable drugs (booze and cigarettes) is more prevalent in lower-paid workers (less than median income), while increased addiction/dependency behaviors develop at disproportionately high rates compared to those workers in higher income brackets.
So what have we learned today?
If you’re at the bottom of the payscale, you’re more likely to be dissatisfied with your job. Your dissatisfaction is more likely to lead to cigarettes and booze (which you can’t really afford); and while your job dissatisfaction makes you more depressed, the pounds you pile on by comfort eating and not being able to exercise because the cigarettes have taken away your lung capacity, cause you to develop serious medical conditions that will put you in an early grave.
Isn't that nice?
But there’s an answer.
Stop now. Quit. FTW. Get out of the cube before it eats you alive.
Go home.
Figure out what you want to do, that doesn’t sound like Hell on earth, and do that.
Work. What is it, really? It’s waking up way before you really want to and, voluntarily, commuting through traffic to a place where you don’t feel valued, and where you don’t want to be. And then doing it again and again.
If you add up all the time it’s really insane. And I’m going to be nice and give you three weeks off a year. But you’re still working 8 hours a day. Forty hours a week. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty hours a year (that’s 81 days working around the clock, every year), or, if you retire at 65 after 44 years of work, that’s three thousand five hundred and ninety-three days. Or, to break it down for you, nine years, ten months and one day of doing nothing but something unfulfilling, that you hate, that makes you feel like less of the person you know you can be.
Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen one on TV, and I’d say that spending the better part of ten years doing something that destroys your soul sounds an awful lot like most people’s version of Hell.
The worst thing is that more than half of us are voluntarily consigning one seventh of our expected time on the planet to activities that reduce the time we’re likely to have. How do I know this?
The University of Aberdeen in Scotland told me so. According to economists there, job satisfaction is the most critical factor for life satisfaction and well-being. And the consequences of poor well-being have an impact on your physical well-being (according to the National Institutes of Health) and poor physical well-being is the thing that leads to cardio-vascular disorders. Not only that, but poor life-satisfaction leads to depression and anxiety, which are leading attractors to drugs (according to Narconon).
The abuse of socially acceptable drugs (booze and cigarettes) is more prevalent in lower-paid workers (less than median income), while increased addiction/dependency behaviors develop at disproportionately high rates compared to those workers in higher income brackets.
So what have we learned today?
If you’re at the bottom of the payscale, you’re more likely to be dissatisfied with your job. Your dissatisfaction is more likely to lead to cigarettes and booze (which you can’t really afford); and while your job dissatisfaction makes you more depressed, the pounds you pile on by comfort eating and not being able to exercise because the cigarettes have taken away your lung capacity, cause you to develop serious medical conditions that will put you in an early grave.
Isn't that nice?
But there’s an answer.
Stop now. Quit. FTW. Get out of the cube before it eats you alive.
Go home.
Figure out what you want to do, that doesn’t sound like Hell on earth, and do that.
Monday, March 26, 2007
The Space Between
Nick Hornby said that there's a trick to making a truly great mix-tape. He's right, of course, but it doesn't lie entirely in the selection of the songs, nor in the pacing of each one compared to the songs that precede and follow each. No, it's in the way each song transitions into the next.
In Tibetan Buddhism, they have a word: bardo. It means "between states", and refers to the moment between living and dying, waking and sleeping, breathing in and breathing out. Any instant between two states can be a bardo, no matter how big or small, lengthy or temporary. These moments are sacred because, if we can see them and seize them, they are the opportunities to choose a new direction or to commit to continuing on a course of action.
The bardos between songs on a mix tape carry a similar weight, the right or wrong choice of action can make a huge difference to the final product.
For our wedding, Jen and I made a handful of mix CDs, without paying attention to the order of the songs since we just put them on shuffle. Every fall we put together another CD of songs that we'd have to think about putting on our wedding mix if we were getting married again. And each year we think we put together a pretty good bunch of songs.
It's not choosing the songs that's the tough part - usually we come up with 35-40 songs that we cut down to 19-22 by the time our anniversary comes around. Once we get about half of them picked out we begin the cull, and this is when it gets tricky, because you have to start paying attention to the mood of the gaps between the songs.
The thing is this: you have to know, more or less, what you want the finished product to sound like. So if you're in love with the new Snow Patrol and you absolutely have to have it on the CD, chances are you're not going to have Baker Street on there, too. At least not next to each other.
Mix CDs are a journey, and you want the journey to be smooth. You're not likely to encounter a beautiful park right next to an industrial area, or a honky-tonk bar in the middle of a high-end residential area. If you want to get to the honky-tonk bar you have to go through the right neighborhoods.
Our latest CD has John Lennon, Counting Crows, The (English) Beat, Van Morrison, and Gomez among others (right now). You can see that going from girlshapedlovedrug by Gomez to Watching the Wheels isn't going to run properly, so we need at least one track between them. That's the first trick. The second is that you have to be prepared to cut a truly great track if it doesn't work with the other songs. In the last two years we've cut, among others, Black-Eyed Peas "Mas Que Nada", "Barely Breathing" by Duncan Sheik and Raconteurs "Steady As She Goes".
So you make your list and keep moulding it and cutting it until what's left on the disk is, as Bono would say, all that you can't leave behind.
In Tibetan Buddhism, they have a word: bardo. It means "between states", and refers to the moment between living and dying, waking and sleeping, breathing in and breathing out. Any instant between two states can be a bardo, no matter how big or small, lengthy or temporary. These moments are sacred because, if we can see them and seize them, they are the opportunities to choose a new direction or to commit to continuing on a course of action.
The bardos between songs on a mix tape carry a similar weight, the right or wrong choice of action can make a huge difference to the final product.
For our wedding, Jen and I made a handful of mix CDs, without paying attention to the order of the songs since we just put them on shuffle. Every fall we put together another CD of songs that we'd have to think about putting on our wedding mix if we were getting married again. And each year we think we put together a pretty good bunch of songs.
It's not choosing the songs that's the tough part - usually we come up with 35-40 songs that we cut down to 19-22 by the time our anniversary comes around. Once we get about half of them picked out we begin the cull, and this is when it gets tricky, because you have to start paying attention to the mood of the gaps between the songs.
The thing is this: you have to know, more or less, what you want the finished product to sound like. So if you're in love with the new Snow Patrol and you absolutely have to have it on the CD, chances are you're not going to have Baker Street on there, too. At least not next to each other.
Mix CDs are a journey, and you want the journey to be smooth. You're not likely to encounter a beautiful park right next to an industrial area, or a honky-tonk bar in the middle of a high-end residential area. If you want to get to the honky-tonk bar you have to go through the right neighborhoods.
Our latest CD has John Lennon, Counting Crows, The (English) Beat, Van Morrison, and Gomez among others (right now). You can see that going from girlshapedlovedrug by Gomez to Watching the Wheels isn't going to run properly, so we need at least one track between them. That's the first trick. The second is that you have to be prepared to cut a truly great track if it doesn't work with the other songs. In the last two years we've cut, among others, Black-Eyed Peas "Mas Que Nada", "Barely Breathing" by Duncan Sheik and Raconteurs "Steady As She Goes".
So you make your list and keep moulding it and cutting it until what's left on the disk is, as Bono would say, all that you can't leave behind.
Friday, March 23, 2007
The real first day of spring
It's all very well to say that spring began earlier this week; but the truth is, for me, spring won't really begin until 7:35pm on April 6th.
Now, if you're wondering how I can be so precise, then you're probably not a fan of hardball.
Friday April 6th marks the home opener for the Atlanta Braves and it comes against perennial rivals, the New York Mets. This will be my sixth season of paying attention to the Bravos, and there have been some really great teams in that time, even if none of them have made it to the World Series.
So here is my tribute to three guys who've worn the jersey and made us proud to have them on the team - and who've gone elsewhere.
Tom Glavine.
Glavine left at the end of my first season, when I was just trying to figure out what was going on. He became the fifth picher to get to 2000 strike-outs with the same team - one of the others was team-mate, John Smoltz. When he went to the Mets, he was really on top of his game, but he's 33-41 since he got to New York which is a little deceptive: he's getting better, even at 41.
Marcus Giles.
I remember seeing Marcus for the first time in May 2003 - the year he became our every-game second base-man. He had this goofy grin and looked like a kid who was just having the best time anyone has ever had. In the 8th with the game tied at 1-1 and Rafael Furcal standing on first, Marcus fouls the first pitch away, but the second one he sends over the fence sending Furcal past home plate and giving the Braves a 3-1 lead which Smoltz defends in the sixten pitches of the final inning. Giles hails from San Diego, and this year he went back home where he'll be playing alongside his brother, Brian, at the Padres.
Rafael Furcal.
Rafy had these huge, Popeye-esque forearms, but that's not why I remember him. There's a feat in baseball that's even rarer than pitching a perfect game, and it's called an "unassisted triple play", which means that the same guy is responsible for three outs in the same play. And that's what Rafy did in the bottom of the fifth against the Cardinals on August 10th, 2003.
Busch Stadium, St. Louis, is beautiful - it looks a lot like Turner Field but with a lower terrace in the outfield. No matter, though, because you can see the Arc out past center field, and the outside looks like the Collosseum.
Mike Methany singles to center-field which brings Orlando Palmeiro to the plate.
Palmeiro bunts the second pitch back to Horacio Ramirez, and that's enough to get runners on first and second. Now, a bunt is a puzzling choice when it brings the pitcher up to bat.
Woody Williams hit the third pitch hard to short where, Furcal jumped, twisted and, amazingly, caught it. Methany and Palmeiro had both started their run for the next base, but Furcal killed the play and both runners had to tag up the bases they had come from. Methany was already at third and could never have made it back to second before Furcal stepped on the bag. Seeing that he had almost reached second and needed to tag up, Palmeiro began to sprint back to first.
But Rafy is one of the fastest in the game: he stole a base on his debut, and currently has 226 SBs in 976 games. He easily caught up with Palmeiro and showed us the first ever televised unassisted triple play. It didn't stop the Cards going on to win 3-2.
Then he headed West to play for the Dodgers.
Now, if you're wondering how I can be so precise, then you're probably not a fan of hardball.
Friday April 6th marks the home opener for the Atlanta Braves and it comes against perennial rivals, the New York Mets. This will be my sixth season of paying attention to the Bravos, and there have been some really great teams in that time, even if none of them have made it to the World Series.
So here is my tribute to three guys who've worn the jersey and made us proud to have them on the team - and who've gone elsewhere.
Tom Glavine.
Glavine left at the end of my first season, when I was just trying to figure out what was going on. He became the fifth picher to get to 2000 strike-outs with the same team - one of the others was team-mate, John Smoltz. When he went to the Mets, he was really on top of his game, but he's 33-41 since he got to New York which is a little deceptive: he's getting better, even at 41.
Marcus Giles.
I remember seeing Marcus for the first time in May 2003 - the year he became our every-game second base-man. He had this goofy grin and looked like a kid who was just having the best time anyone has ever had. In the 8th with the game tied at 1-1 and Rafael Furcal standing on first, Marcus fouls the first pitch away, but the second one he sends over the fence sending Furcal past home plate and giving the Braves a 3-1 lead which Smoltz defends in the sixten pitches of the final inning. Giles hails from San Diego, and this year he went back home where he'll be playing alongside his brother, Brian, at the Padres.
Rafael Furcal.
Rafy had these huge, Popeye-esque forearms, but that's not why I remember him. There's a feat in baseball that's even rarer than pitching a perfect game, and it's called an "unassisted triple play", which means that the same guy is responsible for three outs in the same play. And that's what Rafy did in the bottom of the fifth against the Cardinals on August 10th, 2003.
Busch Stadium, St. Louis, is beautiful - it looks a lot like Turner Field but with a lower terrace in the outfield. No matter, though, because you can see the Arc out past center field, and the outside looks like the Collosseum.
Mike Methany singles to center-field which brings Orlando Palmeiro to the plate.
Palmeiro bunts the second pitch back to Horacio Ramirez, and that's enough to get runners on first and second. Now, a bunt is a puzzling choice when it brings the pitcher up to bat.
Woody Williams hit the third pitch hard to short where, Furcal jumped, twisted and, amazingly, caught it. Methany and Palmeiro had both started their run for the next base, but Furcal killed the play and both runners had to tag up the bases they had come from. Methany was already at third and could never have made it back to second before Furcal stepped on the bag. Seeing that he had almost reached second and needed to tag up, Palmeiro began to sprint back to first.
But Rafy is one of the fastest in the game: he stole a base on his debut, and currently has 226 SBs in 976 games. He easily caught up with Palmeiro and showed us the first ever televised unassisted triple play. It didn't stop the Cards going on to win 3-2.
Then he headed West to play for the Dodgers.
What it is...
This is the depository for 500 words or more (but not less) posted five times each calendar week for at least three months. Any week that doesn't get five posts re-sets the calendar to day one.
Please feel free to leave critical feedback or, you know, positive comments.
Please feel free to leave critical feedback or, you know, positive comments.
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