The Other Paper: "Journalistic Fluff"

Whenever I'm feeling tired and uninspired and don't know what to write about, I secretly thank whatever cruel and demented power created our imperfect universe for the existence of The Other Paper, for all I have to do is open this worhtless wasted of ink to any page in order to read some outrageous crime against good journalism.

Others apparently do not share my low opinion of TOP and instead have chosen to delude themselves into believing that TOP is actually a serious journalistic exercise rather than an exercise in sophomoric snarkiness unworthy of even the drunkest college frat boys. One such benighted soul, a certain Brian Carnahan, went so far as to write a letter, printed in this week's issue, criticizing their choice of subject matter for the February 22 cover story. Carnahan claims that he was "amazed that such a piece of journalistic fluff had made its way on to the cover of the The Other Paper." This statement led me to wonder if Carnahan has been reading the same Other Paper that I have. What he terms "journalistic fluff" seems to me to be all, in fact, that ever makes its way on to TOP's front page. This is, after all, the same publication that several years ago saw fit to devote that prime editorial real estate to a story about local ABC affiliate WSYX (Channel 6) choosing to air syndicated repeats of Seinfeld in prime time in place of whatever forgettable lump of excrement their network was shoveling out at the time. Not only is this not front page news, it's not worthy of even mentioning in any even halfway respectable newspaper. The story's only purpose seemed to be to allow the inexplicably Seinfeld-obscessed editors of TOP to slap a picture of the show's cast on the cover next to the "article."

This is also the same "newspaper" that just a few weeks ago gave over its lead-off spot to a snarky critique of local TV coverage of the winter weather, an article in which, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, the writer could not be bothered to fact check such simple details as what channel the soap opera All My Children airs on.

If it weren't for "journalistic fluff," Mr. Carnahan, there would be no Other Paper, which, as you can probably deduce from the tone of what I've written thus far today, would not, from my perspective, be such a bad thing after all.

"The Other Paper" Lapses Briefly into Respectability

So, after months of telling my readers how The Other Paper is not fit even for the wrapping of fish, I would be as surprised as any one to find myself writing something that could be construed in any way as a defense of TOP, but that is precisely what you're about to read.

This week's paper included a letter from one Terry Holub. Holub decries the hubbub over the recent staff walkouts at Clintonville movie theater Studio 35, questioning "why is so much time being spent and page space wasted" on the issue.

Well, needless to say, I disagree completely with that point of view, or else I wouldn't bother writing this.

I think that the Studio 35 situation is precisely the type of story that TOP should be covering. They bill themselves as "Columbus' News and Entertainment Newspaper", and, as local entertainment news stories go, this one is fairly significant. The departure of a good chunk of Studio 35's workforce in a dispute with the new management has implications for the future of one of Columbus' oldest and most beloved entertainment venues. This is a story worth reporting and following up on and one that I haven't seen any other local media outlet covering.

In this case, I actually have to commend The Other Paper for doing a good job.

I promise not to make a habit of it.

Oops! TOP Did It Again!!

My God, they must have brass ones over at The Other Paper. (For my readers outside of Columbus, TOP is our leading "alternative" newsweekly.) I mean, they have got chutzpah coming out their freakin' ears.

In this week's Media Morsels column, the unnamed writer mocks the Ohio State University student paper, The Lantern, for declaring in an article: "When the temperature is below 20 degrees Celsius, that is when officials will decide if classes should be cancelled." The Media Morsels author points out that 20 Celsius is equivalent to 68 Fahrenheit, and smarmily suggests that OSU might be back in session by March, if there's a warm spell.

I do not believe that TOP would dare to ridicule another publication for a minor mistake when an average issue of their worthless rag is riddled with stupid errors. Some months ago, I cited their reference to the "Dutch" cartoons of Mohammed, when anybody who paid even cursory attention to the news twelve months ago knew that the controversial drawings appeared in a Danish newspaper. Then there's the review of The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie, in which the reviewer cited The Lizzie Maguire Movie and Recess among films made from Nickelodeon shows, when the shows that inspired those two wastes of celluloid aired on The Disney Channel. Just last week, in a pointless cover story mocking local TV station's coverage of the recent snow emergency, writer Dan Williamson reported: "Channel 4 intruded upon All My Children so Marshall McPeek could conduct an interview with Robert Crockett of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency."

Wow! That must have been some interview if Channel 4 felt the need to pre-empt another station's programming. You see, Channel 4 is an NBC affilliate, and All My Children, an ABC soap, airs locally on Channel 6.

I considered writing about that boo-boo last week right after I read it, but decided that it wasn't really that big a deal, just the latest in a seeming endless string of stupid mistakes that make it into print with alarming regularity. At least it wasn't a big deal until TOP had the temerity to take another newspaper to task for a goof that really wasn't such a big deal either. Apparently, the stone throwers at The Other Paper don't realize just what their own house is constructed of.

Tales From The Fridge

I was reading an article in the latest issue of PLAYBOY (Yes, I said "reading an article." Some people do actually do that. Stop snickering.) where I came across the following odd but interesting statistic: "Researchers...have found that the average American opens the refrigerator door 22 times a day."
This provides me with further proof, though no more was truly needed, that I am not average. I have never in my life, definitely not in all the years I've been living on my own, opened my refrigerator door 22 times in one day. In fact, I can often go for days at a time without opening it at all.
I suppose that would change if I actually kept food in there rather than simply using it to hide the dirty dishes and stash empty pizza boxes.

To the Columbus Dispatch: A Call For a New Comics Page!!

The Other Paper also reports this week that The Columbus Dispatch will be cutting staff and cutting some syndicated features, which, Dispatch associate publisher Mike Curtin explains, are readily available right here on the Interweb, in favor of more locally oriented features. Specific examples sited are the stock listings and the Op-Ed page.

What about the comics page? All of the comics the Dispatch carries, from Pearls Before Swine to Peanuts, are available on-line. Not only that, but this city is home to a plethora of highly talented and unfortunately unknown cartoonists, myself included, who would jump at the chance to be seen in the town's largest daily paper. The Dispatch could ditch its generic, cookie cutter comics page that looks like that of every other daily paper in every other city in America in favor of something truly one of a kind with a distinctly local flavor. And if it succeeds, soon papers across the country will be spotlighting local cartoonists and the Dispatch will be hailed for leading newspaper comics into the new century.

Mr. Curtin, I urge you to have the vision and courage to do this. Be a man and print my comics!!

"Made-Up" Holidays

I'm not sure if I should include this post under the category of "The Other Paper Sucks" since what I'm railing against is not so much the stupidity of TOP but something stupid that somebody unconnected with the rag is quoted as saying in the cover story. Then again, TOP's "reporter" did opt to use the stupid quote in the piece, and the editor apparently thought that a Valentine's Day puff piece on why whiny pathetic losers are still single was worthy of the cover spot. (Probably the same moron who thought that a lame article about Channel 6 airing Seinfeld repeats in prime time was front page material. Fortunately, TOP's obscession with Seinfeld seems to have waned, though it continued several years past the show's cancellation.)

The article in question ends thusly:

"I don't know what's wrong with the men in this city," said 25 year old hair stylist Stephanie Ernst. "But I do know Valentine's Day is a made-up holiday, so who cares?"

Of course it is! All holidays are "made-up" by someone. They do not just occur naturally, nor are they handed down by God (not even Christmas and Easter). We have holidays because somebody or a group of somebodys or a government or religious group thought that a particular person, cause or event was worthy of commemorating annually and set aside a day to do it. And frankly, Valentine's Day has more of a claim to being a "real" holiday, simply by virtue of having been around longer, than such Johnny Come Latelies as Kwanzaa, Martin Luthor King Day and President's Day.

Frankly, I don't bother with most holidays, "made-up" or not. Except Christmas, but that's only because of my nieces. Really. I do it for the kids.

Super Bowl Love

A teaser headline on the front page of today's Columbus Dispatch made me laugh like a deranged monkey when I read it. Ok, it was about the show that CBS chose to give a ratings boost by slapping on after Sunday's big game, but you've got to admit that "'Criminals Minds' gets Super Bowl love" sounds just slightly wrong.

After I stopped my hyenal impersonation, though, I was upset. I thought, "Hey! I want some Super Bowl love? Where's my Super Bowl love? How come Mandy Patinkin gets all the Super Bowl love and there's none left for me?"

Life is just not fair.

Fox Goes After YouTube Usurper

20th Century Fox demands YouTube expose user from PhysOrg.com

YouTube has said it received a subpoena from Twentieth Century Fox demanding it reveal who posted unaired episodes of "24" and "The Simpsons" on the video-sharing website.

[...]

You may remember, if you read the Word on Friday night, that I had posted some American Idol vid from YouTube. I deleted the post on Saturday after I tried to play the videos featuring Sean Michel and was told that they were "no longer available. Checking into YouTube, I found that all the Idol clips from that user had been removed, as well as those of another YouTuber who I'd been using as a source for Idol clips. This leaves me wondering, therefore, if this is related to the YouTube/Fox flap described in the article above, and if so, how long until the other Idol clips I've thrown up on the site become unavailable.
Fox, of course, has every right to demand that copyrighted material be taken down off of YouTube or any other video sight. I guess you might just have to depend on my descriptive powers after all.

Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Engagement Confirmed (What the Heck?)

This comes to us direct from the Columbus Dispatch, whose editors apparently think their readers give a crap about this.

Bollywood Stars to Marry Later This Year

The article states that: "Bollywood movie stars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai are engaged and will marry later this year, the former Miss World's manager confirmed Monday, ending months of speculation about their relationship."

I am glad that has been cleared up, because the "months of speculation" were driving me crazy. Why, everywhere I turned throughout Columbus people were talking about Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai and the status of their relationship. Not to mention all the buzz on the Internet. Hell, thinking about it was keeping me up at night.

Seriously, though, does anybody in the Western hemisphere, much less the capital of Ohio, give a crap about this. I certainly don't. So why is the Dispatch wasting space in its paper and on its web-site with this crap when there are really important issues they could be covering, like the fact that the new season of American Idol starts tomorrow.

"Wired" magazine Champions Web-Based Comic Books

Okay, I know I'm about eight months late here, but I just got aroung to reading the very interesting article on digital distribution of comic books in the May 2006 issue of Wired magazine, and I wanted to pass it on to my readers. (I know I have one or two left somewhere out there.) There's definitely much in the article for comics publishers to think about, although they appear to be going to some lengths to avoid doing so, according to author Mark McClusky .

You know, given that the topic of this article is very similar to what Scott McCloud was going on and on about in Reinventing Comics, I'm surprised that he was not quoted or asked to comment. It's not as if Wired has never heard of him. When I looked for this piece on their site by entering "comic books" into the search field, several of the articles that came up in the results either mentioned or were about McCloud.

Speaking of McCloud, by the way, someday I'm gonna have to get around to reviewing his latest book, Making Comics.

More Mindless "Other Paper" Bashing

To be perfectly honest, I've got nothing earth shattering or interesting to say today, so I'll fall back on one of my favorite subjects: Bitching about The Other Paper, Columbus, Ohio's leading "alternative" weekly.

Have any of the writers at TOP ever had an original thought. It's not bad enough that Karen Graves, in her review of Taylor Hicks' eponymous CD, chooses to parrot someone else's ideas, but the least she could do is acknowledge it. At the beginning of the review, she says of Hicks, "In fact, he's more like America's embarassing uncle--the one who would cause a mortifying scene at a wedding reception." That should sound familiar to anyone who remember the last season of American Idol, because, although Graves does slightly reword it, Simon Cowell said that to Hicks himself on an episode of Idol. Did she think no one would notice her presenting someone else's thought, especially when it was originally spoken on the country's most watched television program.

Yeah...that was pointless, but maybe I'll actually have something worthwhile to write about...and even if I don't, I'll probably write about it anyway.

Columbus Dispatch Debuts Lame New Comic Strip

This is what you get when you let people vote: George W. Bush's second term and horribly unfunny, crudely drawn crap like Pearls Before Swine replacing Fox Trot in the daily comics section of the Columbus Dispatch beginning this past Monday. And, for the love of God, do NOT even get me started on the People's Choice Awards.

Of course, it didn't help that in the cases of the new Dispatch strip and the 2004 election, the alternatives from which the voters had to chose were fairly lame. Apparently, there just aren't any funny or well drawn daily comic strips, or Democrats qualified to be President of the United States, out there any more.

According to the article that accompanied Swine's debut, Dilbert "cartoonist" Scott Adams is a fan of the strip and endorsed it on his web-site. I can understand that, as Swine creator Steven Pastis' childish doodles make Adams' own mindless scribbles look like Rembrandt by comparison.

Pearls Before Swine is further proof, if any were needed, that the American newspaper comic strip is an artform that is on its last legs and, furthermore, that the Dispatch editors, and apparently a plurality of its readers, wouldn't know a good comic strip if it bit them on the ass.

X-Pres Gerald Ford Now Eligible to Appear on Money

Had Gerald Rudolph Ford's life taken the path that I imagine he probably thought it would, I would not be writing this piece today, for the death of a fairly obscure and relatively undistinguished former Congressional Minority Leader from Michigan would garner no special notice from the world's media. But Fate, Destiny, or Kismet, whatever you wish to call if you believe in such forces, had other plans for the Hon. Mr. Ford. The term "Accidental President" has been used to describe Vice-Presidents who ascend to the presidency when the President is unable to finish his term, usually because he has died, ever since John Tyler, the first to do so, assumed the office following the death of William Henry Harrison, but in Ford's case the term is particularly apt, for no presidency was more accidental than his. Named to replace disgraced former Vice-President Spiro Agnew in 1973, Ford found himself sitting in the Oval Office following President Richard Nixon's resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974.

While Ford was not exactly a great President, nor was he the buffoon that his occassional public clumsiness and the infamous WIN buttons led comics to portray him as. He was a gentle, honest, and soft-spoken man pulled by the tide of history into waters that were way above his head, but he managed to avoid drowning and emerged as one of America's most respected ex-Presidents and elder statesmen.

True, his was, for the most part, a "placeholder" presidency, and he was really just keeping the seat warm until the next "real" President showed up, but after the "long national nightmare" of Watergate, not to mention Vietnam and pretty much the entire preceding decade, that's probably precisely what this country needed in order to begin the long process of recovering.

These days, in the post-Watergate era, it seems as if the highest praise you can pay a former Chief Executive is that he did nothing to disgrace the office of the President of the United States or himself. By that yardstick, Gerald R. Ford may, in fact, be one of the great Presidents of my lifetime.

Bechdel's FUN HOME Name "Best Book of '06" by TIME

Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home has been named by TIME magazine, in its Person of the Year double issue, as the best book of 2006.

While this should certainly be seen as encouraging by those, myself included, who have long advocated the potential of the sequential art, or comic book, medium, the writers of the list, Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, treat Fun Home as some sort of fluke, calling it "The most unlikely literary success of 2006..." They write, "Oh, and it's a comic book," as if before reading Bechdel's work they'd never considered that such a lowly, degenerated medium could be capable of conveying anything beyond the endless fight scenes of super-hero comics or the lame, warmed over daily gags of most newspaper strips, and even now don't quite believe it.

Nonetheless, Fun Home's perch atop a list that includes volumes by Cormac McCarthy and Dave Eggers is quite a public relations coup for this least respected of art forms, and, together with the article earlier this in PLAYBOY on the rise of the graphic novel, represents a great leap forward in the graphic novel's slow march to respectability.

Welcome To The 21st Century

It is ironic that in the article "Clash of the Time Lords" in the December edition of HARPER'S magazine, which concerns a conflict among scientists over methods of recording and measuring time, writer Michelle Stacey doesn't seem to know what year it is. Stacey actually makes a present tense reference to "the Soviets": "GPS was inaugurated in 1978; now the Soviets have their own satellite..."

There have been no Soviets for nearly a decade and half; since the collapse of the USSR, the federation of nations held together by the tyranny of the Communist Party. I'm sure Stacey means the Russians, but the two terms are not perfectly synonymous. Russia was the dominant state in the Soviet Union, but not the only one; all Russians were Soviets, but not all Soviets were Russians.

Though the article is otherwise fascinating, informative and entertaining, its author's seeming ignorance of certain basic current geopolitical realities calls the veracity of the whole piece into question.

TIME Names 2006 Person of the Year and it's ME!!!

TIME magazine began its annual tradition of naming a "Person (nee "Man") of the Year" in December of 1927, when, as recounted in Isaiah Wilner's The Man Time Forgot (p. 199), the editors found themselves confronted by a slow news week and stuck for an idea for a cover story. The first person recognized was Charles Lindbergh, who had become a national hero and media darling following his celebrated and groundbreaking trans-Atlantic flight earlier that year, yet had not previously graced TIME's cover.

From its perhaps inauspicious beginning as simply a way to fill space in the magazine, Person of the Year has grown into an institution that has endured for eighty years. Many have come to think of Person of the Year as an accolade, but the basic idea was, and remains, to "highlight...the individual who most influenced events in the past year"(Wilner, p. 199) whether for good or ill. With that mandate, past Persons of the Year have included such villains as the Ayatollah Khomeini, Adolph Hitler and the Personal Computer.

TIME's 2006 Person of the Year, as revealed in their December 25 cover-dated issue, is: You. You and me and everyone we know, for, as the cover copy declares: "You Control The Information Age."

Specifically, TIME means the millions of us who post videos to You Tube, spend hours on MySpace, and blog, contributing to what is termed Web 2.0 and changing the way we get news and information, interact with others and view the world around us.

Therefore, as a blogger of absolutely no note, I--Ray Tomczak--am a Person of the Year. With that accomplishment under my belt, if I could get the editors of PEOPLE magazine to stop passing me over for "Sexiest Man Alive" year after year, I'd be a truly happy man. (C'mon, look at that pic over there on the right side of the screen. That, my friends, is a photograph of a very sexy, sexy man if ever there was one.)

Him? "Cool?" You're Joking, Right?

While reading the cover story of Comic Shop News this week, I came across this quote from Brian Reed, the co-writer, with Brian Michael Bendis, of the soon to be released Marvel Comics limited series New Avengers: the Illuminati, concerning his and Bendis' plans for upcoming issues: "...(W)e're walking into one of the biggest challenges in the Marvel Universe: making the Beyonder cool again."

Hello? Again? Did I read that right? Did he say "again?"

When, I must ask you, Mr. Reed, just exactly when was the Beyonder ever "cool?" I've read both Secret Wars limited series (Oh My God!! I'm having a Secret Wars II flashback!! The HORROR!! The HORROR!!!) and I can unequivocally proclaim that the answer to my query is, unfortunately: NEVER. At no time. Not once, not even for a second.

Of course, if any one currently writing for Marvel could make the Beyonder cool--for the very first time--it would be Reed's partner, Brian Bendis.

The Other Paper Regrets The Error (But Not So Much)

Nearly every Thursday, you can open up The Other Paper, Columbus, Ohio's leading alternative newsweekly, and find, in a little gray box at the bottom of page 3, a correction. These aren't usually trivial little boo-boos like spelling errors, either, but major omissions or misstatements of basic facts that affect the very meaning of the story, often slanting it toward the paper's official editorial viewpoint on the issue being covered.

This week, for example, The Other Paper points out that there are indeed five members of the Downtown Streetcar Working Group with previous experience in matters of public transportation, rather than, as reported in last week's front page story, none. This "error," combined with the overall tone of the piece, served to leave readers with the impression that a streetcar line in downtown Columbus is an impractical pipedream doomed to fail and waste millions of municipal dollars in the process.

It appears that The Other Paper's writers (one hesitates to call them journalists) aren't about to let little things like facts or truth interfere with their predetermined notions.

In This Week's TV Guide....

Reactions to a couple of things in the latest issue of TV Guide:

First, in her "Is It Just Me?" column, Rochell Thomas chides frequent Oprah! guest for Dr. Mehmet Oz for appearing on the show in scrubs rather than a suit, going so far as to refer to Winfrey's show as "...the Church of O."

Get real, lady. Oprah Winfrey's set is no church, nor is it the Oval Office, and Winfrey is not the President and she sure as hell ain't God. It's just television, and a talk show, one of the lowest forms of television, at that and Oprah's just another talk show host, no different really from Jerry Springer.

Elsewhere, the Guide gives a Cheer "...to 30 Rock for improving..." and a Jeer "...to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip for completely falling apart..." after what TV Guide called their "promising" pilots. I, as you must suspect, disagree. I didn't finc either pilot all that rich in promise, especially considering each show's impressive creative pedigree. However, 30 Rock has remained unimpressive to me, while Studio 60 has been somewhat neven in quality but most episodes have been quite good and much better than the pilot.

The "Pop-Culturization" of Modern Life

Another insight occurred to me while thinking on the story of TIME magazine founder Briton Hadden as related in Isaiah Wilner's book The Man Time Forgot. In reviving this blog as The Word From On High earlier this year, I took as my self-appointed mission to cover and comment upon Pop Culture. However, as you can tell from my tagline, "All Culture Is Pop Culture," I define the term quite broadly, if not loosely. It has long been my contention that in the age of information overload and fierce competition for even a tiny share of the world's ever dwindling attention span, all media content, including politics and the news, must be packaged and presented in as entertaining and attention grabbing manner as possible in order to appeal to the widest possible audience.

It seems to me that the first tentative steps along this road began with Hadden and his creation of TIME in 1923. Hadden had as his stated mission in founding the magazine to make the news accessible and understandable to a mass audience. He did this with a light, breezy, personality oriented style of prose that came to be known as TIMEstyle, that entertained even as it informed and was soon widely imitated.

Thus, it seems to me that credit--or blame, depending on just how you feel about the matter--for the "Pop-Culturization" of modern society can be laid squarely at the feet of TIME magazine and Briton Hadden.