Another Coffee Cup

Pre-Recorded Disco Olympiad

Like most people lately, I've been keeping my eyes peeled towards the Winter Olympics currently being held in Torino, Italy. So far, it's been a pretty good show. The compettion's been great, the scenery beautiful, the Italians have been generous hosts.

But it's the coverage that stinks.

NBC admittingly is doing a far, far better job than CBS ever did when it covered the Winter games back in the 1990s (when the only things the Columbia network seemed to cover were "Challenging Olympian Life Story!" or "More Figure Skating!"). So far they've kept those hideously annoying life stories to a minimum, and the skating far more toned down than last time around in Salt Lake City. Plus Bob Costas is still his old sarcastic self, as demonstrated by his jabs at the seemingly random disco soundtrack during the Parade of Nations.

By the way, what was up with that? I know the Europeans love their dance music, but why play only American and British acts from that period during an international event? And some really, really campy songs at that? I'm sorry, but intoducing countries with Van Halen, Donna Summer and the Village People? Ummm...I don't get it.

Anyways, back to NBC. The Peacock can still do a hell of a better job than this. Perhaps more live events should be in order. I know there's a time difference, but it doesn't hurt if you try, plus you can always tape them and play them all over again when the schedule of daily events is over in Torino.

Also, can NBC please quit with the editing for time? Last night I watched the women's ski jumping. The network focused on the American players for a bit, then on the Norwegians, then on a Canadian, and then some Swedes. But that was it. Never mind the Japanese jumpers or some other European entries. They might have been on the TV score board. But if you hadn't seen that, would you've even known that they even tried? Nope. They were edited out. Sorry!

NBC, please learn from the CBC or the BBC: show the games live; don't heavily edit them; avoid at all costs heavy commercial interuption; and for the love of God, please don't show any more "Challenging Life Stories." The public isn't interested.   

Nancy Grace is a taint on the face of the Earth that needs to be removed

If there's one thing I really hate about CNN Headline News, it's Nancy Grace. Airing right around dinner time, Nancy Grace's show primarily centers itself on missing people, interviewing the families of those missing, speaking to people involved in the justice system, and passing off theories over who could be responsible for the crime. 

What's so irritating about Nancy Grace is the utter lack of objectivity in her journalism. Instead of remaining apart from her guests or subject matter, Grace instead becomes a part of it, too much a part of it. Week after week after week, Grace's show can remain on the same crime, interviewing the same people again and again, and then pass judgment--even gleeful judgement--over who she believes committed the crime. A brief viewing of her show turns quickly into ad nauseam, both for her utter lack of serious journalistic skills, and the sheer brutish capitalization of her name and fame on the deaths and disappearances of others. All of this adds up to Grace epitomizing everything that is wrong with American journalism in the first half of the 21st century.

Take Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teen who went missing in Aruba last year. Grace, along with Greta Van Susteren, aired week after week after week of coverage of the missing teen to the point where media coverage had reached exhaustion. In all due respect of the Holloway family, of all the thousands of missing Americans in those many weeks of coverage, blonde, attractive and white Natalee was more important than everyone else. Of the two thousand-plus Americans and tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died in the war, Natalee was more important than everyone else. It was the triumph of missing white woman syndrome.

Nancy Grace would have been an English professor had not her fiancé been violently murdered in 1980. It changed her direction to become a prosecutor, and a very successful one at that. However, the Georgia Supreme Court has twice cited Grace of exceeding the limits of closing arguments, as well as illegal conduct during a trial in the 1990s. Last year, the Federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said the Grace "played fast and loose" with facts in a trial 15 years before.

And now here she is as a media personality, droning night after night on the misfortune of others, sucking tragic events dry like a feasting vampire for her own fame, and passing guilt with a black-and-white worldview that would make Donald Rumsfeld blush. For a person who worked in the criminal justice system for over a decade, one should expect a former lawyer to follow that simple line innocent until proven guilty. But not Grace. Using her own personal tragedy as a pretext, Grace revels in passing staunch judgement on suspects--a primetime lynch mob followed by a very public national crucifixion--even if she's wrong, which she has been.

Do what any reasonable human being should do: turn Nancy Grace off.  To use Stephen Colbert's "truthiness," Grace has little to offer there.

A Clockwork Orange

A few nights ago, my friend Yoshi and I went to one of the local theater's where they're currently having a classic film festival and saw A Clockwork Orange. I've never seen it on the big screen before, but after viewing it, I realized just how much of an amazing of a movie it is, and how much of a freakin' genius Stanley Kubrick was.

Even if the movie is nearly 35 years old, the idea of its premise still gives the chills. Set in a future Britain where civil society is on the brink of total collapse, young Alex and his gang of droogs nightly roam the city--presumably London--beating people up with no reason, raping devotchkas (women), killing, and then calling it a night. The British government, desperate to restore some semblance of order, snatch Alex after a botched murder and launch him onto a scientific scheme promising total reform. The reform, in reality, is psychological torture, subjecting Alex to endless films of rape, murder, more rape, and finally Nazi rallies and aggression. Alex comes away brainwashed, reformed scientifically but not internally. It later drums into questions regarding morality, and the tools that higher powers will use to coerce power.

What I love about A Clockwork Organge is Kubrick's attention to detail. Being a lover of anything historical, Kubrick had a knack for placing historical items into the most routine of things. Alex's gang, for instance, wear 19th century bowler hats, white shirts, suspenders and trousers that wouldn't have been far removed a hundred years ago if not for the sinister eye mascara, ridiculous cod pieces, and combat boots. Other gangs wear Napoleonic bearskin hats, German military caps and Nazi-era Stahlhelm helmets. The past is never removed, even from an undated dystopian future.

Another thing which struck me was how Kubrick used art to show just how far society had aesthetically gone in the undated year of Clockwork. From the beginning of the film, when we're introduced to Alex and his droogs in the Korova Milk Bar, a slew of dismembered over-sexualized mannequins surround the gang, often crouching down in their giant wigs to show their large breasts or sitting down to spread their legs to form tables (a gang member has his feet comfortably propped up on one as he sips his drugged milk).

Paintings throughout the movie often resemble the mannequins in the Korova. In Alex's room, a painting of a woman joyfully spreading her legs hangs above his bed. In other scenes, paintings in the background depict horrid facial disfigurement and breasts getting cut off. In the future of Clockwork, modern art has transformed into a highly psychosexual form, aesthetically pleasing and widely accepted without any real thought of what it really means perhaps due to the ultra violence surrounding all of society.

Then there's the music. Alex adores all things Beethoven--especially the Ninth Symphony--which we hear throughout the movie. One part which struck me was the haunting synthy opening song, again at the first scene where we meet Alex and co. at the Korova. I later researched that it was hardly a new song, but rather over 300 years old, called "Funeral Music for Queen Mary." Is it really supposed to be thinly disguised funeral music for England? Hmmm...

From the Cockney-Russian slang, to the costumes, to the haunting music, to the politics, A Clockwork Orange is still a violent, shocking, and deeply disturbing film after all these years. And as horrible as it sounds, it's still a feast for movie lovers. It doesn't get old. Even if some of the film screams "that's so Seventies!" it holds its age very well, and still entertains in a strange dark, dark humor sort of way.

What a horrorshow flick.