Category: Culture and Media

One of these days I’m going to talk about Garlic and Sapphires, a memoir by a former restaurant critic for the New York Times. Until then, check out this AP article about Inquirer critic Craig LaBan, whose photo on the philly.com web site obscures his face behind a number of large rolls. (Anonymity is key for a restaurant critic.) Turns out he had to be deposed on camera for a libel suit a restaurant owner filed against him – which, if you read the article, seems to hinge on whether LaBan ate a strip steak or a ribeye. Talk about your high steaks, I mean stakes.

Reports are coming in from the first two of R.E.M.’s live rehearsals in Dublin. The band is playing through ten completely new songs, plus a song that debuted on the Around the Sun tour called “I’m Gonna DJ.” They’re also throwing in songs from their catalog that are said to be similar in tone to the new material. Reviews of the two shows have been strong, with Rolling Stone saying the songs have the potential to make up the “most bold R.E.M. release in years.” The old songs that have been played include some of my favorites, like “These Days” from Lifes Rich Pageant and “New Test Leper” from New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I’m even hearing that Mike Mills’ backing vocals are more prominent these days.

If they spend the next year and a half fiddling with the material and sucking all the energy out of it, I’m gonna go curl up in the fetal position with a copy of the aforementioned New Adventures.

I am probably in a minority, but I absolutely love the fact that Philadelphia mayor John Street camped out in line to get an iPhone today. As we all learned during the wiretap scandal four years ago, the man lives on his BlackBerry, and I think it’s great that he’s demonstrating that he can use the city’s wireless network to stay connected and do his job out in the field. Plus it gave citizens a chance to speak their mind – which many did, criticizing him for being in line when the city’s murder rate is so high and so forth.

I admit, I don’t get the criticism. If Street were in his office making phone calls and sending e-mails, would that somehow be better? Did Philadelphians think their mayor was patrolling the city himself? And for crying out loud, we have a governor who comes back from Harrisburg to Philadelphia for every Eagles game and then spends several hours on camera as a post-game analyst. These elected officials are allowed to have lives, so until someone points out a bit of city business that didn’t get done today, I don’t have a problem.

What I do have a problem with is the Inquirer’s headline. “Mayor on line to buy iPhone.” As my brother and I have said on many occasions – you don’t wait on a line, you wait in a line. Unless someone’s painted a line on the ground and told you to stay there, anyway. I’m willing to excuse this as a pun based on the iPhone’s net connectivity since the writers got it right within the article, but c’mon people. We have a linguistic heritage to stick with here.

One aspect of the whole wedding get together proceedings is that you have the chance to discuss how We’re Getting Old with your friends. As part of that discussion last night, I mentioned they were making a new Indiana Jones movie, which caused several of my friends to stare at me in disbelief. So I offer this link to a recently-released publicity photo of Harrison Ford back in costume.

Once upon a time I imagined that there should be an award for things that seemed like a good idea at the time, which I dubbed the Julio-Willie in honor of the Iglesias-Nelson duet. I just hope that next year I’m not renaming it the Harrison.

Having just watched the series finale of Stargate SG-1 a few hours ago, I have a request for science fiction show writers: please do not write any more finales that involve the use of time travel. The paradoxes and inconsistencies you inevitable create make my head hurt and distract from the warm fuzzy feelings I would like to have at your accomplishment. I first discovered this phenomenon with the finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and rediscovered it when SG-1 used a time travel story to wrap up Richard Dean Anderson’s run on the show two years ago. And tonight wasn’t any better.

Oh man, I just remembered, one of the SG-1 DVD movies is an alternate reality story. I better stock up on the Excedrin now.

I gotta admit, this story is gonna be in the back of my head once football season rolls around. Autopsies have shown that a handful of NFL veterans suffered from a brain disorder that often leads to dementia and depression. One of the players in question was a member of the Philadelphia Eagles back in the 90s, who shot himself last year.

I’m wondering if there have been similar problems reported in hockey, given the number of concussions those players seem to get. Regardless, I hope the major sports leagues make some efforts to improve the equipment and safety of their games, in hopes that those improvements will trickle down to other levels.

Still fighting the lag time a bit here, but you can check out my review of the don’t-drop-it-on-your-foot new Making of Star Wars book over at theLogBook.

So Crowded House’s new single “Don’t Stop Now” is now available on iTunes, and the band was on Conan O’Brien last night. So the hype is off to at least a mild start here in the U.S. Now, something about this single has rubbed me the wrong way from the start – something about Neil Finn’s vocals almost sounds like he’s trying to sing it in a way that sounds “wrong” to me. But I’ll be damned if I can get the song out of my head, so I can’t really fault it as a choice for a single, can I? And now I’m looking forward to seeing it live, so all’s well with the world.

The post title’s a line from the song, and I figured it was particularly apropos. You can go check it out for yourself at the band’s official site.

You know, I probably could have stuck this under philosophy of language, but what the heck. McDonald’s and other service companies are lobbying the Oxford English Dictionary to change the definition of McJob to be less negative.

There’s a socioeconomic point to be made about how McDonald’s has lowered standards for many things in the name of profits, but I’m gonna put that to the side for a minute.

Lobbying a dictionary to change the definition of a word? For crying out loud, why not just buy your own dictionary company and start making up your own new language?

You know, I’ve been keeping my enthusiasm in check for the most part. But when I saw the trailer for the upcoming Babylon 5 direct-to-DVD story at the revamped official site, I decided to be optimistic about the whole thing. In large part I credit that to hearing Christopher Franke’s theme music again.

There are also more behind the scenes videos available at ISN News. I found the clips from Bruce Boxleitner interesting, as he acknowledges that he felt pretty frustrated when the series wrapped up. Not really news to anyone who followed the behind the scenes stuff, or listened to the DVD commentaries, but still worth a look.