It is springtime here in the city. For a week or so, my cat and I have been fascinated by the periodic choruses of peeping from the highest boughs of our spruce tree. His interest was dietetic, mine just aesthetic. This morning, the peeping dispersed. From inside my kitchen, I…
What are we to make of this latest flap over a teen icon revealing herself as a potentially sexual being?
I was only dimly aware of Hannah Montana till the Vanity Fair scandal (if scandal is the word). Now it seems I can’t get away from her, which is, of course, the goal of marketing—to make something inescapable for the general public. There are elements of the incident that require less froth and more examination. The accusations of “whose idea was it in the first place and how was Mylie Cyrus manipulated?” are loud and in many ways naive.
First off, Hannah Montana is a Disney product. I don’t think we’re yet quite comfortable with the idea of a person—even a fictional one—being a “product” like a box of soap or a car, but this is indeed what the character is. Designed, engineered, and road tested, Hannah Montana is a money-making machine for Disney and the various participants in the show and franchise.
Pause for a moment and consider: Disney.
It is difficult to imagine a marketing machine that is better at what it does. Which means the chances of something being done with one of its properties that it (a) doesn’t know about and (b) doesn’t approve are next to zero. Especially when you add to that:
Vanity Fair.
Big magazine, famous magazine, a magazine people in show business lust to get into. In the vernacular, Lot A Bank there.
So we’re talking about two major corporate entities, …
I previously wrote that I bought a little camera that I try to take everywhere. Having that camera nearby forces me to look more carefully at the startling sights that are everywhere. Many of those sights are the postures and expressions of people, but privacy concerns keep me from freely photographing or sharing the photos of strangers (I haven’t given up somehow accomplishing this!). To this point, I’ve focused on taking photos of nature and architecture. This morning, my wife Anne and I took a walk in Forest Park (in St. Louis, Missouri). In the morning light, we came upon some startling bursts of color, causing me to take out my little camera.
When I look at biological wonders, I sometimes imagine standing with Charles Darwin and learning from him. That’s how I felt a few weeks ago at an orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Even before Darwin published his findings there were various levels at which one could appreciate nature (it’s beautiful, it’s functional, it inspires poetry). Darwin added an explosive new level, however. Such was his impressive legacy. Before I appreciated Darwin’s contributions, my attention to plants was limited. But now I see functionality embedded in the beauty–there is now so much more to behold [I was also inspired last year when I viewed David Attenborough’s Private Life of Plants and Life in the Undergrowth (focuses on bugs). These are both spell-binding must-watch collections].
There are life and death wars going on out there …
I have been anticipating the FCC switch from analog to digital for several years. The original plan was to have the final demise of NTSC (“analog”) broadcast in 2006. Now, it will really happen. The change that they averted when they went to color is finally here. Everyone needs a new TV.
Unless you have cable or satellite. Then you can wait until your old box dies. But I use rabbit ears in my multipath hell of a location in the city. On good days, I can get 7 channels of regular interest, plus 4 explicitly Christian channels (24, 26, 49, 51. The 700 Club shares 11). Sometimes I cannot get ABC-30 or CW-11 clear enough to record or avoid watering eyes. Other times Fox-2 and My-46 are too bad to watch, too. So I really only have 3 reliable channels in analog.
Enter digital clarity. Yesterday I got my gummint subsidized converter box and hooked it up. Now I get perfectly clear (in numerical order) Fox-2.1, CBS-4.1, NBC-5.1, local weather 5.2, and PBS 9.1-9.4. That’s it.
Television Leads Us. Angel Boligan, Cagle Cartoons, El Universal, Mexico City Who's Bitter? Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons TV or not TV Angel Boligan, Cagle Cartoons, El Universal, Mexico City Interior televisivo Alen Lauzan Falcon, Caglecartoons.com Olle Johansson, Sweden TV Osmani Simanca, A Tarde, Brazil