Extra. Extra. You there, sonny, have ya heard the news? Detroit is sinking faster than the Titanic, destined to follow Atlantis into the sea. Won’t be long now. The unemployment rate is ninety-seven percent. Impoverished parents are shipping their children off to seek their fortunes abroad in economic utopias like Brazil, Jakarta and the West Bank. Henry Ford VIII has sought refuge in an underground bunker with Kid Rock and Barry Sanders. Sadness and discontent have malaised their way through the streets. Nope, it won’t be long now. Detroit shall be ransacked by Barbarians, Canadians, the Minnesota Vikings. Call on God—but row away from the rocks, fine citizens of Detroit. Do not go gently into the good night. And remember: always follow Charlie Steiner to freedom.

Is anyone else more than just mildly perturbed by the media and pop culture’s obsession with treating Detroit like a wounded manatee separated from its mother? Like some two-bit, one stop light West Virginia mining town after the coal dried up? Things have gotten bad, really bad, but Detroit, Michigan isn’t that kid with autism who made all those three-pointers. It doesn’t need to be patted on the back, given the cushy parking space or made out with because it looks lonely. The people of Detroit are better than that. I should know; I’m from Chicago and all I want is the freedom to once again say Detroit is a shithole.

A few months back, the Michigan State Spartans made the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four. Practically every lead-up article written was about how welcome and refreshing the team’s success was to a poor, down on its luck city of Detroit. Now, the Red Wings beaten my beloved Chicago Blackhawks in a semi-final match-up, and we’re being bombarded by the same aww-shucks-the-motor-city-sucks nonsense. A fucking get it, man. Detroit doesn’t rock like Cleveland. It doesn’t set souls on fire like Vegas. It’s doesn’t have the ATL-style like Atlanta or Dwight Schrute Bucks like Scranton. But it’s still a worthy enough opponent to punch in the face. And that’s what I intend to do–punch Detroit in the fucking face. Because it sucks. And because it’s not some AIDS patient charity case. And because, if Chicago was down, that goddamn cesspool of a town wouldn’t hesitate to blacken an eye.

Here are 25 reasons why Detroit is still the shittiest city in America. Go ahead. Read ‘em and try and tell me it isn’t a regrettable sinkhole I’d gladly let the British take back… (more…)

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I’m over 30 and thus culturally irrelevant, but I’m not so old that I don’t remember the days when I was under 18 and still a vital target for desperate, MTV marketers. I’m also not so old that I don’t remember riding around with my friends who, like most teenagers, drove like idiots.

Teenagers drive recklessly and stupidly. They don’t know better. There’s no escaping this fact. Whether out of willful disregard for the law or inexperience, most of them drive like shit. I drove like this when I was that age, and when I have kids they will too. In response to this fact, the Ad Council has generated a series of PSA’s, suggesting a way to stop this. If you’re in the back seat and your friends are driving like maniacs, tell them to stop! Take a look:

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Will you goddamn people shut the hell up about Bear Stearns for like ten minutes? You dither on and on about corporate greed and sub-prime lending but none of it directly affects you. Sure, you might pay a few thousand more in taxes which will undoubtedly end up in various toilets in and around the New York Stock Exchange, a few thousand more in taxes you could have used to shoe the Mastercard collectors out of your ass, but to bitch and bicker about such frivolous, unimportant expenditures would be to ignore the villainous, life-altering dilemma mocking all of us. Handicapped parking stickers.

Something stinks and the shady governmental organization which doles these cut-in-line cards out like Fun Size Snickers’ Bars should be held accountable, not to mention the millions of not-so-impaired moochers with no qualms about sliding their jalopies right up next to the door. I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy before, not to mention had brief superficial conversations with a cat scan machine’s full of doctors in my day, and I know how these sketchy operators think. Non-confrontation by nature and above-the-law by society’s pathological indifference, they’ll trade handicapped stickers straight up for a friendly smile and a little approval. And you, the goddamn, sleazy bastard taking up the sweetest, juiciest parking space in the whole lot will sleep well at night knowing you really deserved your fucking bailout because you have ADHD or a goiter or restless leg syndrome. Well, fuck you and the Doogie Howser M.D. who gave his stamp of approval. (more…)

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The average person may not be willing to take a handshake in liu of a signed contract anymore, but to a certain degree, a name and its reputation still mean something. You don’t fuck with Keyser Soze. The real Santa Clause is always at Macy’s. And you can’t just ignore written agreements and hope individuals and businesses will still negotiate with you. AIG just doled out one hundred and sixty-five million dollars worth of taxpayer money to rich white guys. The public is irate; the President is beyond pissed. One member of Congress even suggested the executives who received the compensation should either publicly resign or kill themselves. But what’s the alternative? Should AIG really default on promises they’ve made to investors to quell the public’s squeamishness? Hell no. They should pay every last cent.

Look: I’m not in favor of bailing out anyone. If a company bites off more than it can chew with millions of high-risk, stupid loans, it should collapse amidst its own ignorance. That’s the Libertarian way. No handouts. No living off the prosperity of others. But my President and the Legislative Branch which represents me have decided to take the F.D.R. way out and spread around money we don’t have to try and prevent a Depression. Whether that was/ is the right course of action can be debated until we’re all blue in the face, but it happened and there’s no point in praying Hoover‘s corpse will reanimate to save Capitalism by doing nothing. We’ve given our money to AIG, and now, it’s AIG’s money. And to quote the incorrigible Lester Burnham, “Gotta spend money to make money.”
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye. - Miss Piggy

Politics used to be the last refuge for the old and wealthy white man, a blissful utopia of big beards and bigger cigars where money flowed like the Mississippi and Affirmative Action was systematically denied by the bouncer. Not so much anymore. The Boys Club has been infiltrated, and there’s no turning back. Some might blame Hillary Clinton. Some might blame Barack Obama. Some might blame Geraldine Ferraro. Well, some people are idiots. There’s only one culprit to point the finger at for destroying this glass ceiling, and his name is John F. Kennedy.

Decades before Justin Timberlake, John F. Kennedy brought sexy back. He flirted with Marilyn Monroe, got your mother wet, and made your father wish he had a New England accent. JFK was a stud, a dashing forty-something with movie star good looks and socially-sophisticated DNA. Wide-eyed idealists bitterly defended him in bars. Some of the most beautiful women in the world threw themselves at his feet. He wielded his unlimited power with a certain flare, an irreverent, aww shucks charm which delicately obscured the hardened, battle-tested core within. Winded West Virginian coal miners saw through the facade and into that core; so, they respected him with the same reverence they gave to fallen World War II soldiers. He was John, Paul, George, and Ringo in one package, one sleek and sexy envelope. I’m no fan of his policies, but God do I miss what he represented. (more…)

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Ron Paul isn’t right about everything, but at least he’s about something. The one candidate who has absolutely no hope of winning the presidency, but who is also the only one with anything substantial to say about the presidency, went on CNN recently and gave the first interview we’ve had in a long time in which a candidate actually spoke about the real issues facing America. In particular, he hit hard on the economy. Watch the video:
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Last summer, my friend Handles and I found a Slip-N-Slide on sale at Target. We each threw down twelve bucks and carted the monstrosity home, briefly forgetting about it for the rest of the day. Ten shots and about fifteen people at our house later, Handles stumbled upon the childhood throwback and set it up in our front yard. For the next hour and a half, we pounded cheap whiskey straight from the bottle and cajoled other party-goers into ripping off their clothes and joining us for some naked nonsense.

In less than one month, Handles is shipping off to Iraq. He’s going to carry around a gun and try to shoot other human beings until blood squirts out of them and they never wake up. The same guy I bought a Slip-N-Slide with. The same guy I saw eat out some floozy on top of a washing machine. The same guy who cried over girls, helped me look for the remote, and blasted Tegan And Sara’s “Where Did The Good Go?”–at full volume–for no particular reason–at five-fifteen in the morning. The tomfoolery is over, replaced with grown-up eyes and fearful shivers.
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Tags: bowling, facebook, growing up, iraq, peter pan, pizza, savage garden, slip-n-slide, target — society // Add Comment »

Hillary Clinton won tonight’s debate. I don’t think there’s any question. She had a little help though from ABC, whose moderators decided to dedicate the first 40 minutes of their 2 hour broadcast to asking Hillary questions which basically boiled down to “Ms. Clinton why do you think Barack Obama is a racist?” or “Barack Obama is obviously an elitist, what do you think of that?”

We’ve seen a lot of crummy debates throughout this campaign, when Hillary complained she was getting asked the first question, maybe she was right, but that had nothing on this. ABC’s moderators didn’t even bother to raise the specter of actual policy issues until 45 minutes in. By then, Barack had been beaten into submission by a series of tabloid-like questions designed to distract Americans from the issues and get them to start thinking of Barack Obama as a Secret Muslim!

So yes, Hillary Clinton won tonight’s debate. If by win you mean she was given the opportunity to slander her opponent on national television while basically getting a free pass herself courtesy of ABC, a network which has, apparently, decided to endorse her campaign. Well done ABC! And give Hillary a little credit, ABC threw her a slow pitch, and she hit it out of the park.

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On December 16th, 2007, I did something I’d promised myself I’d never do. I donated money to a Presidential Candidate. One hundred dollars was transferred from my bank account and into the outstretched arms of the Ron Paul campaign. Realistically, my drop-in-the-bucket-donation did nothing. It probably didn’t even sway one more voter to cast his ballot for the aging Congressman from Texas, but my hundred dollars was meaningful, if to no one else other than myself.

If throwing your money toward a third party candidate (or a brash outsider, in this case) is a complete waste, then I am proud to squander my hard-earned dollars. I am proud to burn up Benjamin Franklin and toss him down a rat hole. And damnit, I’ll be proud to fork that currency into the garbage again.
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I love the internet. I work on the internet, I live on the internet, I breathe on the internet. My life is nothing without the internet. But it’s far from perfect and while everyone is busy screaming about bandwidth problems and piracy issues as this medium continues its search for an identity, the world seems to be overlooking the real problem with our world wide web: It rewards mediocrity. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it rewards mediocrity and quality equally, at least where content providers are concerned. And content, as you may have heard, is king.

Let me illustrate the problem by comparing two similar websites, competitors in the movies and entertainment content field: Moviehole.net and TheMovieBlog.com. On the surface, fairly similar sites. Both sites have been around about 5 years. TMB stuffs more text on their front page, but both sites basically run the same layout, with a front page which contains all of their stories ordered by date. They’re also run by and written by primarily middle-aged men, and cater to basically the same 20 -30 year old, geek demographic. A quick look at their headlines will also tell you they cover the same basic stories and run approximately the same number of stories every day. They do reviews, and also take stories from sources like Variety, and then talk about them, offering their own opinions on them. Moviehole seems to carry more exclusive content, but breaking news stories on their own is not the primary business of either site.

The real, glaring difference between these sites is not what they’re reporting on, but how they report on it.
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Tags: internet, media, media watch — media // 3 Comments »