Precious Cargo

An Insider's Account of Film School

2012-02-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | True Story

I'll be on SiriusXM Channel 108 Jan. 30, 10:15 a.m. Pacific Time

2012-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

I’ll be a guest on Frank DeCaro’s talk show on SiriusXM satellite radio Channel 108 on Monday, Jan. 30. at 10:15 a.m. Pacific Time.

His Name Is James Bond

2012-01-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

When Mitt Romney Came to Town

2012-01-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

Farewell to Independent Bookstores

2011-12-17T11:12:00.000-08:00

Farewell to Independent Bookstores: pFascinating discussion of independent bookstores yesterday at Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds started things off by linking to a Slate article by Farhad Manjoo, which characterized independent booksellers as “the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find.” Reynolds’s readers piled on, describing indies as “unwelcoming” and “elitist,” with an inventory of [...]/p

How Christopher Hitchens Robbed Hunter S. Thompson’s Grave - By Ramon Glazov - The eXiled

2011-12-17T10:35:00.000-08:00

How Christopher Hitchens Robbed Hunter S. Thompson’s Grave - By Ramon Glazov - The eXiled

What stinks in D.C.

2011-12-14T14:53:00.000-08:00

What stinks in D.C.

Bert Schneider dies at 78; 'Easy Rider' producer

2011-12-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

Bert Schneider dies at 78; 'Easy Rider' producer

30 MOSTLY OBSCURE 60s TV THEME INTROS

2011-12-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

Obama: The “Trust-Buster” Who Never Busted a Trust

2011-12-11T21:42:00.000-08:00

Obama: The “Trust-Buster” Who Never Busted a Trust

Amazon Backlash

2011-12-11T17:01:00.000-08:00

Amazon Backlash

The free-lance writer

2011-12-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

The free-lance writer

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing

2011-12-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing

Recognition: Do You Want To Write Or Do You Want To Be A Writer?

2011-12-09T18:19:00.001-08:00

Yeah, you wan't to be inconspicuous, so you write for HuffPo, one of the most highly trafficed sites on the internet. You're so full of yourself I'm amazed you haven't burst years ago.

http://dennishopperbook.tumblr.com/
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011-2012: A List

2011-12-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011-2012: A List

Dennis Hopper Biographer Rides Wave of LA Times Publicity - FishbowlLA

2011-12-05T14:50:00.000-08:00

Dennis Hopper Biographer Rides Wave of LA Times Publicity - FishbowlLA

Personal handwritten letters by James Dean to be auctioned at Christie's for the first time

2011-12-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

Personal handwritten letters by James Dean to be auctioned at Christie's for the first time

A disabled writer's book unfolds a tap at a time

2011-12-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

A disabled writer's book unfolds a tap at a time

London Evening Standard Praises "Dennis Hopper" Book

2011-12-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

The London Evening Standard chose Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel as one of the best film books of the year. Reviewer Nick Curtis writes, "This is a fluent recapitulation of the drink and the drugs and the womanising, the yearning for high art and the years slumming it in trash."

A Lousy Writing Course

2011-11-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

The get-rich-quick template applied to writing. Doomed to failure, of course.

Alan Moore's advice for Young Artists

2011-11-18T10:42:00.000-08:00

This is just about the best advice to artists I've encountered and it certainly resonates with me, given my last year or so's experience in writing Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel and what has happened–or, to be more precise, hasn't happened–since its publication.

Come to My Book Signing on Nov. 12 in Hollywood

2011-11-03T03:44:00.000-07:00

New Dennis Hopper Book Coming in August

2011-07-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

One of America's most intriguing show-business luminaries and true rebels, Dennis Hopper's amazing life was a roller-coaster series of triumphs and failures. Always intent on proving his genius and leaving a legacy, the Emmy and Oscar-nominated Hopper acted in more than 115 movies and four TV series, directed seven films, and passionately pursued an artist's life as a photographer and creator and collector of modern art, embracing the work of artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein before the label “pop art” was even coined. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel explores Hopper's life from his lonely childhood in Kansas, where he became determined to win the affection of others by becoming a great artist, to his often drug-fueled days and nights in Hollywood and his spiritual home in Taos, New Mexico.

Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel unsparingly documents Hopper's journey from a self-destructive bad boy to a reformed member of the Hollywood establishment and iconic survivor of the counterculture, providing a revealing look at his early days in Hollywood, when he had an affair with sixteen-year-old Natalie Wood and took acting lessons from James Dean, the making of Easy Rider, the crushing failure of The Last Movie and his lost years in Taos, and his recovery and political right turn in the late 1980s. The book also delves into Hopper's tumultuous personal life, including his dramatic attempt to divorce his wife while he battled terminal cancer.

This is the first book to cover the entire life and career of the man who hung out with James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Jack Nicholson, costarred in and directed Easy Rider, and came back big in Blue Velvet, overcoming years of alcoholism and drug addiction. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel is a must-read for Hopper's fans, film buffs, and readers hooked on celebrity scandals.

Peter L. Winkler is a respected film historian who has written for a variety of publications, including CineFan, crimemagazine.com, Filmfax, popmatters.com, and Playboy. He resides in North Hollywood, California.

Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel will be published by Barricade Books on August 16, 2011. The book can be pre-ordered now from Amazon.com and other booksellers.

Duelling Michael Caines

2010-11-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

Two Brits do impressions of Michael Caine, and they're both good, they're complementary.

2010-04-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

Here's James Dean before he made his three major films. Elia Kazan, who cast Dean in East of Eden, wrote in his autobiography that he disliked Dean. He also said Dean was a purely instinctive actor with no technique. This excerpt from one of Dean's TV roles clearly disproves Kazan's contention. Dean responds with anguish twice in this show, exactly as he does when he throws his arms round Raymond Massey in East of Eden, then crying and running out of the house.

Tea Partiers

2010-02-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

The single defining characteristic of the tea partiers is stupidity. They paid $5oo for entree to a convention whose organizer paid Sarah Palin $100,000 to spout her usual blend of inane, shopworn conservative bromides. The men in the audience will probably crowd the bathrooms immediately after her speech hoping for a discreet opportunity to jack off. The tea partiers enthusiastically applauded former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo's blatantly racist bon mot that President Barack Obama was elected because, "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

These are stupid, ignorant, paranoid rubes born to be taken. The first couple of tea bagger events were spontaneous. These people are so unworldly that they didn't even realize the sexual meaning of tea bagging until commentators like Rachel Maddow ridiculed them. Then the professional astro turfing groups moved in to herd the rubes and use them to do the health care insurers' bidding by disrupting town hall meetings with legislators. Now the rubes are beeing fleeced for $500 a pop to hear demagogues like Tancredo and opportunists like Palin take advantage of their genuine frustration. But the tea partiers are so stupid that they direct their rage, not at the corporate plutocracy that rapes them, but imaginary threats of secret commie-pinko takeovers led by that furriner niggah Obama.

The tea baggers might unwittingly help a few faux populist Republicans get elected, but will have no real effect on anything. As soon as the media turn off the spotlight, the tea partiers will disperse and disappear, like most angry mobs bereft of cohesive ideas or leadership. Few, if any, will ever realize how they were taken advantage of or by whom.

Will Amazon.com Destroy Bookstores, Publishers and Writers?

2009-12-31T23:57:00.000-08:00

There's a lively little comment thread going over at Ed Gorman's blog reacting to his post about how many of the best selling books for the Kindle are free. Crime fiction writer Dave Zeltserman commented, “Didn't mean to delete my comment, which was about Matt's reasonable anger towards where the kindle will be taking us--death of bookstores, death of publishers, and eventually the death books, at least those written by professional authors (since there will be no way to make money with novels).”

I'm amazed at the apocalyptic alarmism about the imminent death of bookstores, publishing and professional writers caused by the introduction of the Kindle and other reading gadgets.

If the Kindle et al are selling as well as their proponents are claiming, it means that there are a surprisingly large number of people so enthusiastic about reading that they are willing to invest $200+ just to read books.

Where there are enthusiastic readers there is a robust market for books. Where there is a market for books, in any format, there are commercial opportunities to exploit textual content.

If walk-in bookstores are slowly supplanted by electronic only books, so what? Books will still be read, only in different ways.

Although Kindle owners might like all books to be free, it won't happen. Writing is a time intensive occupation that most people can't pursue if they aren't able to generate at least a subsistence income. There will always be a lot of cheap or even free ebooks from frustrated writers unable to interest reputable publishers in their books who utilized vanity presses and POD in the past. Most readers will ignore those books, as they do now.

With the flood of available content, there will remain a need for some system readers can rely upon to sift the dross from the gold. Right now, agents, publishers and the admittedly declining venues for reviews serve that function. The need for qualitative ratings will remain. Some system will arise to satisfy it.

I'm not scared about Amazon's prospects for world domination. It remains to be seen whether the Kindle, with its proprietary software, will conquer the ereader category. There are already alternatives to Amazon, like Sribd.com, where writers can make texts available in a variety of formats and set their own price. More such sites are likely to spring up. But, assuming that Amazon eventually becomes the sole publisher of books, they can only make a profit charging for them, and the talented writer will still have a publisher seeking to purchase their writing.

The Death of Hope and Change

2009-12-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

At Ruthless.com, Matt Cale delivers an angry eulogy for the death of Obama's Presidency.

Instead of, say, staking his entire presidency on the most pressing issue of our time, he has been content to hide under the couch until the gutless slobs in the Senate spew mediocrity from their Big Pharma-carved colons. Obama has failed to communicate a single idea related to health reform, and has assumed that mere change, or the repetition of the buzzword, would be enough to win the ball game. He lost control of the story quickly, almost without challenge, and hasn’t done a thing to bring it back to his side. Instead of grabbing lapels and poking his finger in assorted chests until the bastards relent, Obama has made it priority one to stall, hem, and hopelessly haw. As the nation’s primary messenger, he’s abdicated the throne without a shot being fired, and will spend the remainder of his single term in utter confusion. Even a Carter-like cabinet purge won’t erase the stink. His base is clearing the room, his reluctant supporters long ago defected, and his haters are more determined than ever. And as vile as the Republican agenda is, at least it’s a stance. One they’ll most assuredly fight for.

Inglourious Basterds Review

2009-12-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

I loved Quentin Tarentino's debut film Reservoir Dogs. His subsequent films have all been increasingly disappointing. I was once trying to find something on satellite TV to watch at 3 AM, and saw that Jackie Brown was about to start, so, being the only alternative to nothing, I gave it a try. I terminated it after about 30 minutes. Kill Bill was devoid of entertainment value unless you're an arrested adolescent addicted to chop shlocky films. Death Proof was shockingly bad, just pointless and stupid. Even the physical action was unexciting.

Due to the mixed reviews for Inglourious Basterds and my personal history with Tarantino's oeuvre, I had no expectations for Basterds. To my surprise, I was engrossed by the film, or at least portions of it, until the scene in the basement beer hall. That exempified the best things about the film, how Tarentino built tension through dialogue in cat-and-mouse situations. But when the scene ended up in a shoot out reminiscent of the end of Reservoir Dogs, the picture started running off the rails. It becomes increasingly absurd and molests plausibility, culminating in the idiotic plot turn where Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who is portrayed as a dedicated Nazi who relishes his task of ferreting out Jews hiding in Nazi-occupied France, does a 180, striking a deal to allow Hitler and the rest of Germany's leadership to be killed in French movie theater while watching a German propaganda film about a German sniper who killed 300 Americans in Italy, in exchange for post-war immunity from prosecution and various rewards, including a Congressional medal of honor. The movie theater massacre is a rip-off of the finale of the Dirty Dozen (a coarse, ugly, dreary film that has an undeserved classic status) and watching the Germans in attendance being machine gunned while fleeing the burning theater induced revulsion in me, not any sense of villains getting their just desserts. I flinched at the spectacle of trapped people being massacered. I felt nothing while watching two of history's greatest villains, Goebbels and Hitler (unconvincingly portrayed by an actor with no resemblance to Hitler in appearance or demeanor), being shredded by machine gun fire. This is capped by a gratuitous, repulsive scene where Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) carves a swastika into a screaming Landa's forehead, then proclaims, "That might just be my masterpiece." In Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino didn't show Michael Madsen sawing the cop's ear off. He didn't have to. It was a shocking revelation of the psychosis of Madsen's Mr. Blonde. When Raine mutilates Landa, even after we've been exposed to Landa's sadistic inhumanity, we don't enjoy the comeuppance he gets, we merely feel sick. Such is Tarantino's artistic and ethical regression.

Steven Santos ably sums up more of my feelings about the film.

"I almost tempted to call the film a tedious build-up to nothingness, although I will admit that the film is not completely pointless, but its ultimate theme is completely superficial to me and somewhat self-serving on Tarantino's part. 'Basterds' is not even worthy of the controversy surrounding its portrayal of Jews, as well as its rewriting of history. It is an exploitation movie operating on the belief that it is art, while never fully committing to being either. It is a movie that believes that it is clever, when it is shockingly dull. So, how's that working out for you?"

Daniel Carlson's and David Denby's reviews are also notable.

The Happy Warrior

2009-12-10T09:04:00.001-08:00

Hilarious Commercial for Condoms

2009-11-19T00:09:00.001-08:00

I'm Temporarily Blogging at Open Salon.

2009-11-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

I'm currently trying out blogging at Open Salon. I'm hoping that some of my longer, well-crafted posts will receive more attention than merely vanishing into the ether, as they do here. So far, the response has been encouraging.

This Blog Is a Palin-Free Zone

2009-11-17T01:49:00.000-08:00

9/11 "Mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Set For Kangaroo Court

2009-11-13T16:19:00.000-08:00

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and four alleged conspirators would be tried in criminal court in New York.

Blogger Burkeman1 turned up a revealing quote from an AP reporter, who asked President Obama this question, which speaks volumes:

Q. President Obama, how can you assure the American people that a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now that your administration has now decided will take place in a civilian court in New York, will be safe and secure, but also not result in an innocent verdict for him?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Here's the thing that I will say. I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured on March 1, 2003, held in a black prison until being transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006. He was waterboarded 183 times. KSH confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks and several other actual or attempted terrorist acts in March 2007.

In any court in America, let alone the rest of the Western industrialized world, any other defendant whose confession was obtained through the coercion of unremitting torture would have been released years ago, such a confession being inadmissable. The case would never go to trial if the defendant had competent counsel. But this is the post-G. W. Bush era, now being smoothly continued by Obama.

Culture Zohn Off the C(H)uff: Roger Corman and His Oscar

2009-11-13T00:56:00.001-08:00

Corman has always been a shrewd opportunist. He employed people like Coppola and Scorcese because he was getting nascent talent at bargain basement prices. He was not the initial distributor of the films of Fellini, Kurosawa, Truffaut, et al. He picked up the American distribution rights to their films in the '70s after some of their previous films had been commercial failures in the U.S. He got the rights cheaply when other art house distributors weren't buying, distributed them and made a handy profit.

Apart from The Intruder, which coarsely exploits the then topical issue of racial integration and isn't a very good film, none of Corman's other films has much to say about politics, including The Wild Angels and The Trip.

I've enjoyed some of Corman's films and consider him to be an intelligent fimmaker with a modicm of taste and talent, but let's not perpetuate the myth of Corman that has been created by overly fannish writers since the '70s.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I'm Sick And Tired Of... (An Open-ended List)

2009-10-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

I listen to far too much radio, including talk radio, which for me means 1150 AM or KPFK, KCRW or KPCC.

I just had to turn the radio off and stream clasical music from KCSN's web site. I was faced with hearing the author of a book about either Sam Walton or Wal-Mart on KPFK or Ron Reagan discussing health care reform.

At this particular moment, I can safely say I don't ever want to hear another word about Afghanistan, Glenn Beck, Joe Lieberman, FOX News, health care, Rush Limbaugh or Wal-Mart.

How Is An Air Conditioner Like A Computer?

2009-10-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

They both work well until you open windows.

Richard Schickel Slams Robert Altman's Oeuvre

2009-10-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Richard Schickel slams Altman's films and Mitchell Zuckoff's oral biography of the director in his book review in the Los Angeles Times.

His films do not transcend their times; even the best of them remain trapped within those times.

This book provides massive evidence that people had lots of fun making them, but none whatsoever that they will survive as anything more than historical curiosities.

Well, it's about time, too. I never understood why Altman was such a critic's darling. I remember seeing "MASH" with my parents and sister when I was 13 years old, and I recall enjoying it, probably because its mildly transgressive language, sexual content and anti-authoritarian humor amused me. I also liked "Brewster McCloud," for the same reasons, and for the plausible-looking human ornithopter apparatus Bud Cort uses to fly at the film's end. I later discovered Altman's "Countdown," which is his most conventional film and also his best. I saw quite a few of Altman's subsequent films, including his putative masterpieces, "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Nashville," and just didn't find them entertaining. The unending praise of Altman as an American artist remains inexplicable to me.

Celebrity Books

2009-10-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

How many times do we have to read the same hand-wringing screed about how celebrity books are destroying good literature and perverting the nobler instincts of publishers?

I must confess that when I heard, in 2007, that Katie Price’s debut novel had sold more copies that the entire Booker shortlist that year, I did smile. Publishers have to make a profit, and novels by celebrities sell. Indeed, they might shift around 100,000 in hardback, compared with less than 1,000 for the average hardback literary novel. And, in theory, for every celebrity book that makes money, the publisher is given the chance to take a risk on a dozen literary novels which deserve publication, but which may well make a loss.

In some ways, I felt sorry for the assembled publishers having to sit through Lynda La Plante’s tirade. Most of them are highly educated with a passion for literature, and they became publishers in the hope of finding the next Vladimir Nabokov, not the next Martine McCutcheon. They must find this trend pretty dispiriting, too. Last Christmas, the entire top 10 for non-fiction was taken up with celebrity autobiographies, all written by ghostwriters. This year, it looks like the entire fiction list will be taken up with celebrity novels, again all written by ghostwriters.

Publishers will put anything between covers that they think will sell. I'm surprised that their lists contain any books that aren't by celebrities or the latest self-help or diet bullcon. Publishers are not interested in finding and nurturing the latest great writer and they aren't dispirited by publishing celebrity books, otherwise they wouldn't do it. It's that simple.

People buy "lowbrow" celebrity novels because they like easily-digested, plot-driven novels, the same kind which are written by most popular authors writing under their own names.

Most of the books that are sold are purchased by casual readers who are attracted by the latest hyped diet, self-help, scandal, demagogic political screed by some radio or TV blowhard or whatever Oprah recommends. Everything else is marginal. Literary novels and serious nonfiction books have low sales because the erudite, discriminating reader is a statistical freak, if not actually a ghost. Ezra Pound was once asked why there wasn't more great poetry. Because, Pound said, there aren't more great audiences.

Were Parents Who Purchased Baby Einstein Videos Merely Naive?

2009-10-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

Chez Pazienza mocks the Federal Trade Commission's decision to force Disney to issue refunds to purchasers of its Baby Einstein videos and derides parents who he concludes shouldn't have been so naive as to think these videos would transform their little tykes into nascent geniuses. The latter argument is simply a straw man. The packaging and marketing strongly suggest that the videos are educational, which is a much more modest and superficially plausible claim than that they will turn your child into a genius.

The videos have no educational value, so are falsely advertised. The FTC's action is perfectly justified.

People should always exercise skepticism in purchasing products, but since it is possible for a video to have some educational value, parents who purchased them relying on that assumption, which was created by Disney, weren't necessarily being gullible.

It's a shame that the FTC, since Reagan, has been underfunded and politically hobbled. There are many other companies that are deserving of similar action.

Frida Mexican Cuisine

2009-10-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

The worst restaurant experience I've suffered in twenty years occurred earlier tonight at Frida Mexican Cuisine at the Americana mall in Glendale, California. My sister's best friend chose this place for her birthday because she's a fool for celebrities and she's distantly related to Salma Hayek, the restaurant's owner. The birthday girl brought her brother, father, my sister and invited me as well. The birthday girl's father loves mixed driks and ordered a margarita. The first was weak on liquor, but he choked it down. The second tasted metallic. His shrimp tasted rubbery and flavorless. Birthday girl's soup tasted bad. A Mexican-style Waldorf salad was drenched in a nauseatingly sweet dressing and was lacking enough grapes and walnuts, let alone apples. I ordered the New York steak. After an hour it still hadn't arrived. After petitioning the waiter, our entrees finally arrived. My steak tasted like calve's liver. It came with french fries, even though I asked for rice and beans. I'm diabetic and ate minimally earlier in the day to keep a sharp appetite because I anticipated eating heartily. I sent the steak back. I couldn't force myself to eat it, despite my hunger. Everyone was unhappy and even after summoning the manager, they had the temerity to present us with the bill.

Lesson learned. Never go to a restaurant best known for its celebrity owner, celebrity chef or celebrity clientele. I never liked Salma Hayek anyway.

Why Windows 7 is Inferior to Snow Leopard

2009-10-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Farhad Manjoo, at Slate gives a rave review to Windows 7, even proclaiming it superior to Apple's operating system, Snow Leopard. Mr. Manjoo conveniently omits the one feature where Windows fails dismally compared to Mac OS X - security and vulnerablity to malware.

This weekend, the Windows XP Pro partition on my MacBook Pro, which I maintain for another family member's use, got infected with a trojan that infected exe and dll files and couldn't be removed. I finally had to delete the Boot Camp partition and create a new one, reinstall Windows, various application programs and 54 Windows updates. Total time spent was about three hours.

I'll happily stick to OS X.

BTW, I actually considered upgrading the Windows partition from Windows XP to Windows 7, until I went to Amazon.com and saw that the cheapest version of Windows 7 cost's $199.95!

You can buy a MacBook for $999, and get a machine that outperforms my MacBook Pro, which cost $2,000 in 2007. And Apple includes the operating system disks, while many PCs that come with Windows preinstalled don't.

Book Reviews Are Rewritten Press Releases

2009-10-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

Book reviews are increasingly becoming litle more than regurgitated publishers' press releases. The "review" summarizes the book's high points and then ends with a bland, generic recommendation to buy. It's a barely-disguised ad.

Desperate Writers

2009-10-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Today, I read Jonathan Field's PuffPo post, "Why Book Trailers Don't Go Viral," in which he seems to honestly assess how ineffective book videos are as a promotional tool:

One, those who tell you "you need to make something that's gonna go viral" don't know what the hell they're talking about. There is no magic formula, no button you get to push and nobody you pay to get there. You have control over what you create, but the world has control over how far and how fast your creation travels. And, two, the more you make something with the express purpose of "going viral," the less likely it'll be to happen.

Unfortunately, he then goes on to tell you his secrets to creating book videos that can become viral sensations, with inane bromides like, "I'm going to let you in on the real secret to making yourself instantly viral.

Be insane...

* Insanely creative
* Insanely valuable
* Insanely funny
* Insanely offbeat
* Insanely provocative..."

What hath Steve Jobs wrought? Field's advice is like telling a fledgling painter seeking the secret to success, "Well, that's easy, be Picasso, be Edward Hopper, be Rembrandt, be Dali, be ..."

And then I read the comments to Field's post. Now, let me briefly digress. Yesterday, I read Robert McCrum's column in the Guardian, whose title and subtitle tell you all you need to know: "Stop the bean-counters ruling the fiction roost. How can good new writers be published when the industry is ruled by people who aren't interested in originality?"

Boh Field's and McCrum's pieces share two commonalities. 1. They offer no useful information for writers. Fields' is an insipid exercise in self-promotion. McCrum acts as if he just discovered publishers' bottom-line sensibility. 2. Both articles are bait for desperate writers to pile on with their comments, which helps build circulation for publishers of these articles.

What I found most interesting about the comments to these articles is how they always come from three types of writers.

1. Writers who've been traditionally published who use their comment to promote themselves.

2. Writers who love to recount their stories about how they almost had a book deal until they lost it through various circumstances, usually the fault of the excessively commercial publishers' marketing department's interference. These make up the preponderance of the comments to McCrum's article.

3. Clueless incompetents like the writer at PuffPo who writes, "I started a fiction novel over a year ago, and am about 350 pages into so far."

The burden on writers today is crushing. It's not enough to write an engrossing book. You're also expected to be a promotional genius. No wonder writers are so desperate.

Sisyphus Also Worked For Free

2009-10-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

There's a libertarian blogger who's posts I've followed for several years. Some time ago, he posted that his writing would be appearing at Examiner.com.

Examiner.com is a new business model in aggregating user-generated content. And, as we shall see, that's not a good development. Examiner is a big web site with lots of writers who each specialize in a certain subject with a supposedly regional orienation. So, for example, the writer whose work I follow is listed as the "Boston Libertarian Examiner."

Examiner is always looking for writers, which is a danger sign. They offer no quantifiable rates of payment upon acceptance or publication. They promise you some exposure and down the line, some money in your PayPal account. In return, you have to write four articles per week.

I've considered applying at Examiner.com several times, but never did. I consider myself a critic at large and didn't see how I could shoehorn myself into a subject- specific niche.

I recently took a comment about e-books that I left at J.A. Konrath's blog and easily spun it into a 1,300-word article. I submitted it to 13 paying markets (that includes submissions to several section editors at Salon.com) and got zero response. So I thought I might use it as my first entry if Examiner.com accepted me.

Before applying there, I Googled them and came up with two definitive articles that confirmed my misgivings about Examiner.com.

WritersWeekly solicited writers who've written for Examiner.com to share their experiences and tell them how much they earned. The average for the nine participating examiners was - hold on to your hats - $1.46 per article!

Examiner.com is a click-for-pay revolving door for desperate writers. They'll accept anyone who breathes. The Huffington Post, founded by that champion of social justice, Arianna Huffington, doesn't pay anything. At least people read HuffPo. This is the literary equivalent of the guy on a barstool telling the girl he wants to lay how much he's going to do for her acting career with his showbiz contacts.

My little investigation into the reality of Examiner.com confirmed an epiphany I had earlier today while sitting on the toilet.

WINKLER'S RULE

Any medium with no barrier to entry offers no benefits.

Andrew Keen Disproves Himself

2009-10-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

Andrew Keen is a the author of the book The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values, published in 1997.

One of Keen's contentions is that we need gatekeepers to prevent amateurs from supplanting the high-quality products of cultural professionals with inferior goods. Keen's book launched him as a controversialist and pundit. On September 29, 2009, Keen wrote the following on his blog at The Telegraph.

Wow. Sounds uncannily like the old Newton personal digital assistant to me. In Silicon Valley, failure is always considered the most meretricious badge of success. Next year, in what might be his final act, Steve Jobs will overwrite his own past. He’ll rehabilitate his most notorious failure, the Newton, by introducing the most important digital product since he introduced the first personal computer, the Apple Macintosh, back in January 1984.

In two short paragraphs (I've condensed the quotation above from two paragraphs), Keen gets the history of Apple and its co-founder wrong and proves himself a maladroit writer.

1. The Apple Macintosh was not remotely the first personal computer.

2. Steve Jobs had nothing to do with the development of the Newton. The Newton was championed by John Sculley during his tenure as CEO of Apple and was introduced in 1993. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 and didn't return to running Apple until 1997. One of Jobs' first decisions after returning to Apple was to discontinue the Newton.

3. Steve Jobs' greatest professional mistake was producing and marketing the NeXT Computer in 1998.

4. Steve Jobs has never publically expressed interest in a tablet computer.

5. Tablet computers have been around for years, but Keen acts as if Jobs just thought of the idea.

6. The word meretricious means showy but insincere. Doesn't Keen mean meritorious?

So here we have Keen, who presents himself as superior in ability and expertise to hordes of allegedly slapdash amateurs producing an error-ridden, worthless column, abetted by those fine gatekeepers of the professional press. What a fatuous spectacle.

Guns Are Your Best Defense

2009-10-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

Gun-toting soccer mom is shot dead
By Steve Farley
October 08, 2009, 12:00AM

Meleanie Hain, the pistol-carrying Lebanon mom who received national attention for taking a loaded gun to her daughter’s soccer game, was shot to death Wednesday night with her husband in an apparent murder-suicide, police said.

"there are simply no meaningful 'peace' accomplishment in his record"

2009-10-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

We're currently occupying and waging wars in two separate Muslim countries and making clear we reserve the "right" to attack a third. Someone who made meaningful changes to those realities would truly be a man of peace. It's unreasonable to expect that Obama would magically transform all of this in nine months, and he certainly hasn't. Instead, he presides over it and is continuing much of it. One can reasonably debate how much blame he merits for all of that, but there are simply no meaningful "peace" accomplishment in his record -- at least not yet -- and there's plenty of the opposite. That's what makes this Prize so painfully and self-evidently ludicrous.

Who wrote this?

Glenn Greenwald in today's edition of Salon.com.

"Some Guys Are Lucky and Some Just Ain't"

2009-10-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

Chez Pazienza's reaction to the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to Obama is typical of an unimaginative reflexive partisan liberal who's idea of edgy posts is to take a preemptive swipe at the expected criticism of the award from those on the right. As if the only voices saying Obama is undeserving of his prize originate exclusively from the right and their automatic dislike of anything Obama.

Go look at Salon.com's and Slate.com's front pages. What do they say? That Barack Obama is undeserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. This comes from the two leading online news and opinion daily publications, both staunchly liberal to left in their editorial bias.

And they're correct. Barack Obama has done practically nothing significant, either in domestic or foreign policy, since his election. Apart from reversing Bush's ruling on federal funding of stem cell research, Obama's policies are nearly a ruler-straight extension of Bush's.

Obama's foreign policy is no different from Bush's. Obama talks peace while we continue to kill Afghan and Pakistani civilians left and right because some supposed Al-Qaida bigwig is in some village that we then level to the ground.

It makes a mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Criticizing the right for criticizing Obama is just a lazy exercise in shooting fish in a barrel.

John Wyndham: The Invisible Man of Science Fiction Part 6

2009-10-07T16:08:00.001-07:00

Woody Allen and Roman Polanski Aren't Alike

2009-10-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of the snickering about Woody Allen's signature on the statement signed by various Hollywood directors favoring leniency for Roman Polanski. "Well, gee, he would defend Polanski, wouldn't he," snicker snicker.

Woody Allen never raped anyone and never engaged in sexual misconduct. Sun-Yi Previn was, as anyone with eyes can see, not remotely his biological daughter, so any suggestion of incest is just foolish. To my knowledge, she was at or above the age of consent when their relationship began, it was mutually consensual, and they apparently have been happily married since 1997.

Here's a pertinent comment I found online: “Your judgements against Woody Allen are based on sensationalistic misinformation. As mentioned above, Soon-Yi is not his stepdaughter. He and Mia Farrow were never married and, in fact, never even lived together. I believe it is highly unlikely he ever had a father/daughter bond with Soon-Yi. And she was 21, an adult, when the relationship began.”

I don't agree with the rationale behind the statement from the Hollywood directors but that should not be construed as a defense of rape. None of the signatories has said that they're cool with rape, but that's the way their statement has been construed in the public's mind.

Why I Don't Vote

2009-09-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

"Politico reports that New York Sen. Chuck Schumer raised $1.65 million in contributions from the financial services industry -- nearly twice the amount of any other senator.

Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that despite scaling back contributions after last year's financial collapse, Wall Street firms are still investing in the Senate. Of the $10.6 million the industry gave to sitting senators this year, more than $7.7 million has gone to Democrats, defying the traditional notion that Republicans benefit most from Wall Street contributions."

Roman Polanski

2009-09-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Here, from an article at Salon.com:

Why, then, did she file a formal request in 1997 for Los Angeles prosecutors to drop the charges against him, saying, “I have survived, indeed prevailed, against whatever harm Mr. Polanski may have caused me as a child. I got over it a long time ago"?

It’s hard enough to be a 13-year-old girl who was drugged and sodomized. How much more is that violation compounded when, 30 years later, you’re a 45-year-old mother of three and still being portrayed as an aspiring model “seduced” by a successful older man? No wonder she says, “Every time this case is brought to the attention of the Court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case."

I have no empathy for Polanski, but what purposes are served by prosecuting a criminal? Deterrence is one. Revenge for the victim's satisfaction is the other.

Polanski has never repeated the crime. He is not a serial offender. The victim of his crime has clearly stated, 11 years ago already, that she does not wish to see this prosecution continue. To do so will only hurt her, not help her.

Indicting and trying Polanski is utterly pointless, except that it satisfies some feelings of envy and resentment on the part of some people who think that celebrities are undeserving of their success and deserve some comeuppance for it, no matter what the reason.

Do Americans Deserve The Government They Suffer From?

2009-09-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

In his review of Michael Moore's new film, Edward Champion finally resigns himself to blaming Americans for our economic woes, quoting a statement supposedly made by Thomas Jefferson, that Americans get the government they deserve. Jefferson’s statement that people get the government they deserve hasn’t applied for decades, because our electoral process has been fundamentally corrupted by the influence of private money in campaign financing, which has become a euphemism for legal bribery.

People can only be blamed for the consequences of their political decisions when they have a genuine choice as to who they elect. When candidates from both parties have their pockets stuffed with cash by big banking, big pharma, etc., it’s no surprise that our domestic and foreign policy follows nearly a straight line continuity from one president to another, even when the electoral majority party in power switches from Republican, under Bush to Democrat now. Yet, public policy remains unchanged.

As Clint Eastwood's character in Unforgiven says, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

Why Josh Olson (and John Scalzi) Can't Say No Politely And Leave It At That

2009-09-16T00:51:00.000-07:00

Josh Olson recently wrote an ostensibly humorous article for the Village Voice explaining why he no longer wishes to read and provide free critiques of the screenwriting strangers foist upon him.

Now, science fiction writer John Scalzi has weighed in. I haven't commented on this before because it didn't raise my hackles sufficiently to warrant a comment, but reading a portion of Scalzi's piece posted at Lee Goldberg's blog prompts me to comment.

Olson is simply trading on his reputation to sell a short piece to a national publication. He turned a pet peeve into a writing opportunity. Olson's piece was meant to be funny, but many readers missed the humor and felt insulted.

Scalzi's piece is, I think, worse than Olson's. It is dishonest and arrogant. Scalzi writes:

1. The job of a writer is to write. So, I’m looking at one of my book contracts. It says that I need to write a certain type of book (science fiction) of a certain length (100,000 words) by a certain time (er… Hmmm). In return, I get paid a certain amount of money.

Here’s what’s not in the contract:

4. That I do any damn thing, in fact, other than write the book I’ve agreed to write.

The job of a writer is to write.

So? Everyone except children, the disabled and retirees work hard to fulfil their job obligations, sometimes for more than one job. We all have time pressures to contend with. Does that leave no free time for anything else?

Whether one helps someone else by giving them the benefit of one's expertise depends on a variety of circumstances.

Some people will contribute their time to others without expecting anything in return except, one hopes, gratitude. That's the essence of volunteerism.

If you don't want to do it, don't. You have no obligation. But save me the excuses - I can't spare an iota of my time, otherwise I won't fulfil my contract and I'll end up homeless. As long as you fulfil your contract, you're free to do anything else you want to.

Does Scalzi do nothing but write 16 hours a day? Everyone has some leisure time. You can give some up, if you want to. And I'm tired of the slippery slope argument, i.e. if I give someone a little solicited advice, they'll expect me to sell their novel, etc.

So say no, gently. It is the established author in this relationship who has the power and draws the boundaries, and they can decline any request any time they want.

It just so happens that I received an email today from the press representative for a well known film producer, who is still very active, asking me when I would like him to call me to conduct an interview about an actor he once cast in one of his films whose life I am researching.

This producer could buy and sell Scalzi. Yet, he is willing to take the time to speak with me.

Really, what both Olson's and Scalzi's pieces reveal is how self-important some writers feel.

Here's a nice antidote to Olson and Scalzi. Robert Elisberg pays tribute to the late Larry Gelbart by relating his story about how Gelbart went out of his way to make a relative stranger's wish come true.

How the Left Behaves Like the Right

2009-09-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

When Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You Lie!" in response to Barack Obama's assurance that illegal aliens would not receive federal heath care benefits, conservatives rushed to Wilson's defense.

When Glenn Beck revealed that Obama's green jobs advisor Van Jones had signed a petition for a new investigation into the events of 9/11 which contained language implicating the Bush adminisration in the attacks, Jones was forced to resign. What did the left do? They rushed to Jones' defense.

Joe Wilson demonstrated his discourtesy and stupidity, since he should know that the current draft of the health care bill already contains a clause preventing the federal government from giving illegals health care benefits.

Van Jones is also stupid, since he is evidently in sympathy with the conspiracy kooks collectively called the 9/11 Truthers.

But the left have made Jones a political martyr, dragging out their favorite old fetish object, McCarthyism. The analogy to McCarthy's red baiting is invalid. Unlike the targets of McCarthy's false accusations, Van Jones is guilty as charged of believing that the government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, despite a complete lack of supporting evidence.

All week long I've heard Jones defended by radio talk show hosts Brad Friedman and Richard Green and their callers. Quite a few of the people defending Jones probably sincerely believe in some 9/11 conspiracy. Others know better, but believe that not to defend Jones is giving up ground to Beck and his ilk. Either way, it's intellectually dishonest and sad.

The Best Way to Remember 9/11

2009-09-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

I spoke with a friend of mine shortly after the 9/11 attacks. He is a congenital conservative and self-confessed "dittohead." We spoke shortly after President Bush announced that the US would invade Afghanistan or after our troops were already there in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden.

Pat, my friend, was all for it. I was against it, for pragmatic reasons. I suspected that Bin Laden and his cabal had already fled Afghanistan, or if he was still there, we would somehow fail to get him. I felt that George Bush's tough rhetoric - dead or alive and all that - was risibly juvenile, and his statement that we wouldn't rest until we defeated evil eveywhere was just monumentally unrealistic and foolish. The invasion of Afhanistan was, I told my friend, an impotent gesture of vengeance that catered to the public's need to see someone punished for the attacks on 9/11. Our discussion was actually brief, concluding when my friend said, "Let's see what happens six moths from now."

U.S. military action in Afghanistan officially commenced on October 7, 2001. Since then, an estimated 10-30,000 civiians have been killed.

Osama Bin Laden continues to evade capture.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, falsely premised on Sadam Hussein's connection to Al-Qaeda and 9/11, resulted in tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

The best memorial to 9/11 is continued oppositon to President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan and our continuing war of occupation in Iraq.

Health Care Reform

2009-08-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Please view Keith Olbermann's Special Comment where he showed various Representatives from both political parties and the amounts of money they received from health insurance companies. If so, you know why the health care bill will be stripped of the public option and why a single-payer plan was never even entered into discussion.

The Democrats have enough of a majority to pass a bill without a single Republican vote. The objections of Republicans and conservative pundits are irrelevant. As usual, the corrupting influence of private money contributed to public officials' election coffers has already determined the dismal outcome.

Whenever Congress passes a bill with he word reform in it's title, you can safely assume it is nohing more than a mechanism to transfer money from the have nots upward to the haves. By the time the health care reform bill reaches Obama's desk, it will be lttle more than a mandate requiring the uninsured to purchase health insurance, generating even more revenue for insurance ompanies.

See also, Donald Sutherland's piece on Max "Moneybags" Baucus

The Surge Didn't Work

2009-08-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole writes, "A series of coordinated truck bombings targeted Iraqi government ministries and other facilities on Wednesday morning, killing nearly 100 persons and wounding some 500. Poorly equipped and staffed emergency rooms in the capital were overwhelmed.

These bombings targeted government buildings and symbols of opulence and normality -- the al-Rashid area and Kifah Street. They were intended to inform the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the guerrilla opposition has not been defeated, and that the prospects of his establishing a stable government that runs roughshod over other groups are low."

President Bush's and Gen. Petraeus's surge didn't work. Iraq is as dangerous as ever. Though al-Qaida will be blamed - they get blamed if soeone stubs their toe in the Middle East - the underlying sectarian conflicts that were uncorked by our invasion that have never been resolved are to blame.

James Ellroy, Perpetuum Mobile

2009-08-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

The LA Times has a puff piece on James Ellroy, occasioned by a four-part memoir that's being published in Playboy, about - yet again - his mother's unsolved murder and its distorting influence on his relationships with women. I just finished the third part, and it's not very good. Ellroy began his career as a competent, somewhat skillfull writer of hard-boiled crime novels, but his style and sensibiity have long ago imploded into an alliterative, rat-tat-tat minimalism that is totally wrong for autobiographical nonfiction. Frankly, I don't think Ellroy can create convincing characters, including his presentation of himself in the Playboy series. His first memoir, My Dark Places, was an unsatisfying book, basically a padded magazine article. His Joe Friday recreation of the police investigation of his mother's death was a bust. The only interesting portion was his account of his ill spent adolescence and adulthood. He's revisited this period a couple of times for articles published in GC and he's mined his past thoroughly by now. He keeps going back to the well, but it's dried out. Ellroy has an amazing personal story that makes him a publicist's dream. It's ironic that his literary exploitation of it have been so disappointing.

Wonderful Surrealism

2009-08-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

Muzorama from Muzorama Team on Vimeo.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth Harlan Ellison

2009-08-12T20:14:00.001-07:00

Director Erik Nelson's documentary of Harlan Ellison, Dreams With Sharp Teeth, is Nelson's labor of love.

And that's precisely the problem. Nelson documents most of the major events of Ellison's life, often through Ellison's on-camera commentary. Unfortunately, Nelson doesn't ask the questions of Ellison that curious viewers such as myself would like to put to him.

I'll cite one instance. Ellison's one feature film screenplay that was produced was for the infamously bad film The Oscar (1966), adapted from Richard Sales' novel. Ellison acknowledges the fact that the film's badness killed his screenwriting career, but he doesn't explore why. He says he wrote it with Steve McQueen and Peter Falk in mind, but the studio cast Stephen Boyd and Tony Bennett instead.

I've seen The Oscar not long ago. The film is terrible for many reasons, including Boyd and Bennett, but if I replay the film in my mind's eye, cast with McQueen and Falk, it's still no good. Later in the documentary, Ellison takes the late director John Frankenheimer to task for proclaiming that directors really create a film, not screenwriters. Ellison says you can't make a good film from a bad script, but you can make a bad film from a good script. Is that an unconscious rationale for The Oscar's failure?

I would have asked Ellison if he thought his screenplay was good. Elsewhere, years ago, I recall Elison saying that one of the few lines of his script that stayed in the film was Tony Bennett's "When you lie down with pigs, you wake up smelling like garbage." Yet, I'm inclined to blame the screenplay for the film's failure. Since Ellison shared screen credit with Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, I can't say he's solely responsible, but it bears more discussion, considering the importance of this episode in his life.

I also wish Nelson would have asked Ellison how he manages to stay afloat financially, espcially since Ellison makes the pregnant observation that it's not hard to write, but to stay a writer. Ellison admits that he won't put up with the strictures required to write for movies and TV, though I wonder who's asked him lately? His literary productivity seems to have diminished significantly since the '80s, and as he admitted to me recently in a phone call, he's scrambling for opportunities. So, another unasked queston.

This is by no means a bad documentary, but it strikes me as too much of an exercise in nostalgia for both Ellison and his fans.

Here's one reviewer who concurs with me.

What Did John Bolton Do To Free Euna Lee and Laura Ling?

2009-08-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

Former UN ambassador and bellicose neocon John Bolton criticized Bill Clinton's successful effort to break Euna Lee and Laura Ling out of a North Korean prison.

This is the typical gesture of the reactionary right. It is one of the reasons I despise them. What did John Bolton do to help Lee and Ling? If it was up to him, they'd die in a North Korean prison.

MobileFun.de

2009-07-18T21:01:00.000-07:00

Not that long ago, cell phones, or mobile phones, as they are called in Europe, didn't exist, or were the kind of luxury appurtenance that you might see Cary Grant suavely using to phone ahead to tell his major-domo to make arrangements for his candle lit dinner with his amour in a fluffy romantic film. Everybody today, even kids, seem to have cell phones. Of course, no ubiquitous electronic device can exist today without generating a seemingly inexhaustible, ever growing aftermarket of accessories. About the only accessory you get with a cell phone is an AC adapter.

What if you want more? If you're in Europe and sprechen sie Deutsch, then MobileFun.de is a site that might be for you. MobileFun.de is a one-stop, online store for a constellation of Handyzubehör, or mobile accessories to you or me.

Broadly speaking, MobileFun.de offers two types of accessories. The first category is what I'd call purely functional or operational accessories. The aforementioned AC adapter, for example. You need it to charge the phone's batteries to use the phone. Or batteries themselves. Then there's a crossover category, what you might call functional options. Extra batteries, extra AC adapters, and other power sources, like the the WildCharger™. The WildCharger™ is a flat, thin pad that uses magnetic induction or some such wizardry to charge devices placed on its surface. Of course, the WildCharger™ itself has to be plugged in. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Then there's the fun part, if you're idea of fun is making your mobile phone look like an explosion in a tutti-frutti factory and sound like a jukebox. It's the sort of thing you'll like if you like that sort of thing. MobileFun.de is very well designed, with the expected but still welcome navigation menus. Every product category can be navigated by brand, manufacturer, and type of accessory. If you don't know what you're looking for, you can easily browse by category. Or you can look for accessories to augment a specific brand. Then you can just zero in on Nokia Zubehör (Nokia accessories) or Blackberry Zubehör (BlackBerry Accessories). There are sections devoted just to iPod and iPhone stuff. It's hard to say what they don't have here, as long as it's mobile and can fit in a pocket, purse or pouch. Lacking the right thing to put your phone in, examine the Handytaschen (Mobile Phone Cases). They have mobile phones, too. This place is a gadget maniac's cornucopia. They have accessories for popular gaming platforms, electronics like headphones and MP3 players and a selection of gadgets, with everything from a tiny RC helicopter to a pocket size, dedicated web browser. About the only thing lacking is a link to a rich benefactor.

MobileFun.de promises delivery within the European Union in 2-3 days from purchase. A nice feature is that you can use PayPal for payment. There's a companion site for English only speakers, MobileFun.co.uk. Go, have fun. Go for broke. You just might, too.

Google Chrome OS

2009-07-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Pro: Douglas Rushkoff.

Con: Farhad Manjoo.

Someone Finally Told the Truth About Michael Jackson

2009-07-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

Someone has finally told the truth about Michael Jackson, an honest assessment that applies to many over-praised celebrities of minimal talent. And looking at the comments following this article, it looks like few people value hearing the truth.

Guess Who We're Invading Next?

2009-06-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

In this first-ever one-on-one interview by any US president to the Pakistani media, Mr Obama assured the Pakistani nation that he has no desire to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons or send US troops inside the country.

‘But I will tell you that we have no intention of sending US troops into Pakistan. Pakistan and its military are dealing with their security issues.’

It Doesn't Get Better Than This, Or Worse

2009-06-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

$106-billion war bill passed on to Obama

Congress sent President Obama a massive spending bill aimed at ensuring that the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan won't run out of money in the coming months.

The Senate approved the measure 91 to 5, despite complaints from several senators about the add-ons that pushed the total more than $20 billion above Obama's funding request. The House approved it Tuesday, 226 to 202.

Voting against the bill were Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Russ Feingold, D-Wis.; and Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.

I can't find a transcript of Senate majority leader Sen. Harry Reid's statement supporting continued funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but this comes from his official web site:

America's Armed Forces are unequaled in strength, unrivaled in professionalism, and unprecedented in success. As our troops defend our nation in Iraq, and Afghanistan we must ensure that our military stays the strongest fighting force in the world. As Nevada's soldiers and premier military facilities make valuable contributions to America's defense, I remain committed to ensuring that Nevada's military personnel and their families have the necessary resources and support. America's security must come first.

Here's Reid's statement on March 27, 2009, when Democrats tried to pass a supplemental funding bill with timelines:

"The American people spoke on November 7th saying the direction of the war was wrong, and that we as a Democratic Congress should do something about it and we have. The ball is now in the President's court. We need to redeploy those troops, and we need, by the year 2008, the 1st of April to have our troops home."

"If the President is unwilling to recognize that there is a separate branch of government that is equal under our constitution to the executive branch of government, then it's too bad for him. He has to sit down and negotiate with us. He should do that, otherwise he's going to have to veto this, and he's the reason that the troops won't have the supplies that they need."

"President Bush has to understand there's a new Congress. For six years, he's ignored Congress. The Republican-dominated House and Senate gave President Bush everything he wanted, and look at the fix we're in as a country. We have 3,300 dead Americans in Iraq, we have 25,000 wounded, we have a President who didn't take care of the necessities so that these men and women coming back to America after fighting in Iraq would have proper training to get them well. It simply has been a mismatch from the very beginning.

So I say to President Bush: Understand that this Congress has done what the American people asked us to do. You listen to the American people for a change."

The dishonesty, hypocrisy and partisan opportunism is nauseating. This is yet another proof that there's no fundamental difference between the two political parties.

Eternal War for Eternal Peace

2009-06-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

In a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats, on Tuesday the House voted to approve another $106 billion dollars for the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and increasingly Pakistan). To put a fine point on the interconnection of the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of free market neoliberal economics, the bill included a massive initiative to give the International Monetary Fund billions more in U.S. taxpayer funds.

What once Democrats could argue was "Bush's war," they now officially own. That means that only 30 out of 256 Democrats are willing to stand up to the war and the current president presiding over it.

Two other Democrats, not expected to vote against the war funding, joined the anti-war Democrats. Brad Sherman and Pete Stark brought the total number of Democratic votes against the supplemental to 32.

Print is Dead, Unless it's Not

2009-06-12T17:02:00.000-07:00

Obama: Cooler Than Coolidge

2009-06-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

In his obituary of Calvin Coolidge, H.L. Mencken wrote, "He had no ideas, but was not a nuisance."

Redscott, a commenter elsewhere, wrote:

Greenwald calls this phenomenon all the time. Obama says nice things about Gitmo, civil liberties, dumb wars, economic relief, and an even-handed foreign policy, but he never actually does anything significant that would advance those righteous objectives. It's about as empty as empty can get. Call me when he does something.

This is Obama's strategy. If you don't do anything, you can't do anything wrong. Obama surfs the wave of history, hoping to ride the leading edge of the wave and not slip back to the trailing edge. Giving forward sounding speeches gives the appearance of activity wthout the risks associated with actual activism.

Obama is the most conservative president since Coolidge.

Dennis Prager, Stuck on Stupid

2009-06-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, Dennis Prager reacted to Obama's speech before Obama even gave it. In his response, Prager said that Muslims should be grateful that the United States removed Saddam Hussein, who tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his own Muslim people and a million Muslims in the Iran-Iraq war. So Obama has no business apologizing to Muslims.

1. The rationale given for invading Iraq and removing Hussein was not to liberate Muslims from his persecution. It was his supposed threat to us.

2. Saddam Hussein persecuted certain Iraqis because they opposed his power, not because they were Muslim.

3. The United States supported Hussein's invasion of Iran, so, by Prager's peculiar logic, we contributed to Hussein's victimization of Muslims.

4. Our invasion of Iraq directly contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims and drove millions more from their own country. It left the remainder of them living in a country with a devastated infrastructure that remains rife with sectarian violence.

Yes indeed, we've really helped so many Muslims who we never set out to help in the first place.

My mind vomits.

What Consumes Our Fantasies

2009-05-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

Underneath all that passes for “daily life,” there is another life, another time. It is the life of people who are either excluded from or have escaped from the demands most Americans share and feel they must conform to. It is the life of many artists, musicians, criminals and those who have dropped out. It’s been called “the night life.” These are people who reject (or can’t cope with) “daylight savings time” for what’s been called “night time losing time.” They function mainly at night, don’t take “day jobs” seriously, don’t pursue careers in the commonly accepted sense, and neither plan their futures nor weigh today’s actions against a secure old age.

Without romanticizing this way of life – for it is often seedy, greedy, drug-infested and violent – it is important for a discussion of time and therapy because fantasies about it constitute much of the television, movies and music – that is “entertainment” – for those who accept, or at least accede to, society’s time limits. Any evening’s channel-surfing is enough to prove that our society has taken these fantasies to extraordinary extremes. People who, depending on what numbers you believe, have roughly 40 hours a week of “leisure time” (a phrase unknown until this century because it was unnecessary), spend roughly 40 percent of those hours in front of the television. If they go out for the evening, it’s usually to a movie. In short, demographically average Americans spend a great deal of “discretionary time” (another phrase previous eras never needed) watching people who don’t have to live as they live, nor obey the rules they obey.

THE AGE OF INTERRUPTION
by Michael Ventura
Psychotherapy Networker January/February 1995

Your Daily Debunkery: 2012 and UFO Hunters

2009-05-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

First, we have Ron Rosenbaum on the 2012 Mayan calendar apocalypse bullcon:

2012: Tsunami of Stupidity

In addition to 2012 the date, 2012 as a concept has its harmonic convergence (or maybe cataclysmic convergence) with an ever-widening spectrum of New Age idiocies. It's like a magnet for mindlessness.

Then, Michael Murray at Pajiba hits the TV show UFO Hunters:

“UFO Hunters” is really just a piece of fiction scripted for children and zealots. It’s kind of fun and campy the first time you see it, but by the second time, the obsessive manipulations and evident delusions of the crew begin to feel more like mental illness than the spirited efforts of inquiring minds.

Keith Olbermann's Finest Moment

2009-05-21T23:23:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Despite the formulaic sillines and smugness often on display on his show, Keith Olbermann occasionally justifies his show's existence with one of his special comments. Today's special comment was Olbermann's finest moment to date.

The way the network news broadcasts covered the speeches of Cheney and Obama was dispiriting, if unsurprising. I watched the ABC Evening News, which showed clips from the speeches in a parallel fashion, lending them a false equivalency. Instead of pointing out Cheney's repeated falsehoods, Charlie Gibson threw the ball to George Stephanopolous, who repeated Cheney's assertions as if they were proven fact.

Scandal, Scandal, Go Away, Come Again Some Other Day

2009-05-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

You know a scandal over abusive govermental practices has reached the end of its life when the only government corrective is to open a toothless Congressional investigation. Hearings will be held, a report will be issued, and the whole thing will be consigned to the same dusty archives where all the other reports reside. Rinse, lather, repeat.

The debate over torture actually ended weeks ago, when President Obama said we will look forward, not backward, euphemistically expressing his decision to refrain from punishing the torturers and those who auhorized it. Obama won't even allow additional photos of torture at Abu Ghraib to be published. Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby.

No one will be prosecuted, because Barack Obama has decided that, when it comes to high government officials, we are going to look to the future, not the past. To quote Oliver Stone, these people walk between the raindrops. They don't get touched. They are above the law.

Obama is just another politician, albeit a smooth, crafty strategist. He's all for enforcing the law, except where it may impede his ability to stay in office.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's torture tour keeps on truckin'. Cheney's not doing this out of fear he'll be prosecuted. He's laying the groundwork for the neocons to return to power if and when there's another terrorist attack against Americans.

What Liberal Media?

2009-05-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

On MSNBC Tuesday morning, "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough justified former Vice President Dick Cheney's quickness to attack the new president. "[Obama] dismantled this program on his second day in there ...I knew by the second day that America was less safe," Scarborough said, "if you believe like I believe and 50% of Americans believe, that this program actually made America safer."

We don't base government policy on what people believe. We base it on evidence. What possible evidence could Scarborough have collected in two days to convince him we were unsafe? None, of course. He's talking out of his ass.

Carrie Prejean is a ridiculous, opportunistic whore in waiting

2009-05-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

Carrie Prejean has two career moves left. Spread 'em for Playboy and spread 'em for a rich husband.

Riddle Me This

2009-05-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

If the media is really and truly liberal and in the tank for President Obama, why has Dick Cheney been given an open microphone to broadcast his fraudulent views on torture and national security and his criticism of Obama on CNN, CBS and NBC?

Because, of course, the media isn't liberal at all. Why is it that the only person I've ever seen on a mainstream media outlet who called Cheney what he is, a coward, is Jesse Ventura, who is widely considered a figure of ridicule, from the desk of Larry King, a lightweight infotainment host who no one takes seriously?

Worst Writer of the Day: Armond White

2009-05-08T17:23:00.000-07:00

Or it’s television—like Gene Roddenberry’s now-legendary 1966-1969 television series Star Trek, which uncannily simulated pop culture conformity. Rigid sets, contrived futurism and made-up aliens offered a cast that was “multi-culti” avant la lettre, while domesticating the sci-fi genre.

Rigid sets? As opposed to flexible sets, I presume. Made-up aliens? What other kind is there? Did Armond White expect Gene Roddenberry to find actual ETs to play the aliens? What the hell is White talking about? And the use of "avant la lettre" is just a pretentious way of saying trendy.

Why people are going to see the new Star Trek film

2009-05-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

Any TV program, by virtue of its repetition, partakes of ritual. Quiz-show and sit-
com, newscast and episodic drama, talk-show and sports show, each establishes a format
and rhythm, enhanced by repetitive theme music, which creates a particular signature. A
prime pleasure of television viewing is to sync in with the ritualistic repetitions of each
favored program, surrendering to the (usually narrow) spectrum of responses that the
program dependably, predictably elicits. A successful program achieves its own defined
space, which it repeats and repeats and repeats. Thus each program is, in an archetypal
sense, a kind of Mass, with its own particular and peculiar Communion. You know
what’s going to happen before you get there, though you don’t exactly know--and this
knowing-but-not-quite-knowing sustains both the comfort level and the interest.

Michael Ventura

Star Trek: The Conversation

2009-05-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

I dare say we've already established that the six original Star Trek films couldn't have left any real cinematic mark, since there's very little that's actually "cinematic" about them in the first place, except in the most superficial sense of the term. They're all shot on film and shown in cinemas, yes, but is there anything aesthetically cinematic about their style, their cinematography, their approach to this material? If anything, these films helped to bring indifferent television aesthetics to the big screen, treating film and TV as interchangeable media. These films are ultimately little more than really long TV shows; sometimes enjoyable, sometimes not, but rarely all that interesting as films.

A surprisingly engrossing discussion of the first six Star Trek films by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard. I only stumbled upon this discussion because it was linked at this site, which I discovered while searching for information about B-movie producer Burt Topper.

Marlon Brando Interview 1965 part 1

2009-04-28T17:18:00.001-07:00

Return of the Jedi Star Wars Nightline Discussion

2009-04-28T17:13:00.001-07:00

CityLights interview with Pauline Kael part 1

2009-04-28T16:30:00.001-07:00

Isn't YouTube terrific for becoming the repository of interviews like this?

Dubious Self-Publishing Advice, Yours for Only $29.95

2009-04-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I came across a web site authored by John T. Reed where he destroyed financial self-help guru Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. From time to time, I revisit certain sites to see what, if anything new, the author has published on a subject.

So I visited Reed's web site today only to discover he's hawking a guide to self-publishing that you can buy for only $29.95.

Sadly, Reed is now engaging in selling some of the same kind of advice that he so justifiably criticized Robert Kiyosaki for.

Here is just some of the wisdom from one page of Reed's site promoting his book:

"* Self-publish—Do NOT. I repeat, do NOT ever let a “real” publisher publish your book.

* Stay out of the book stores—The main reason to avoid agents, publishers, distributors, and book stores is they each take a cut. Boy, do they take a cut! Matter of fact, if you are not careful, they will take all of the profits from your hard labor. To put it another way, you are cutting out all the many middlemen in an industry where the middlemen are especially evil and greedy.

* Your Web site—Your Web site is key.

You will get orders typically within hours of creating your Web site. Very simply, people type into a search engine the subject of your book (hopefully) and find your site. Then they visit, like what they see, and order."

Isn't it amazing that Dan Brown, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, John Grisham (a lawyer) and Stephen King are all such dummies that they are willing to be robbed of millions of dollars by all the evil, greedy middlemen in publishing?

Reed devotes a page on his web site to the James Frey affair. Why? First, because it's likely to show up on internet searches about Frey and phoney memoirs and lead people to Reed's book. Second, it's supposed to lead people to distrust traditional publishers and drive them into Reed's trap.

Once There Were Giants: Pauline Kael

2009-04-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a remarkable late 60s lecture-performance by Pauline Kael, who shows that she was as much an insightful media critic as a film critic.

Does Anybody Care If Mia Farrow Starves Herself to Death?

2009-04-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Mia Farrow is on a hunger strike to call attention to the suffering of the victims of the Darfur conflict. It is estimated that 450,000 people have died there since 2003. Implicit in Mia Farrow's gesture is her overweening sense of self-importance. She evidently thinks her continued existence is so important to so many people that her threat of extinction will move them more than the documented suffering of the victims of Darfur. The temporary suffering of one over-privileged actress outweighs the suffering of millions.

Night of the Living Republicans

2009-04-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

Obama's electoral victory has occasioned lots of blather about how the Republicans were not only defeated in 2008, but that the Democrats' victory signals the death of the Republican party and the conservative principals they espouse.

Don't bet on it.

In recent weeks and days, Dick Cheney, who was all but invisible during the last few years, has popped up here, there and everywhere he could get a microphone to undermine Obama and, specifically, to criticize Obama'a decision to close Gitmo and release the Bush-Cheney administration's DOJ's torture memos.

Though Cheney and the usual cabal of neocon TV shills - Ari Fleischer, John Bolton, ad nausea (and stir gently) - have been hammering at a number of points, it basically boils down to these:

1. Waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques fall short of torture.

2. But if it was torture, it produced "actionable intelligence" that prevented another 9/11 attack and kept us safe.

3. Obama is a weak sister who wants to "try weakness, like Jimmy Carter did" (I believe Newt Gingrich said that).

These assertions have all been discredited before, but, like the zombies in George Romero's classic film, they just keep marching forward, unrelentingly.

Between 1980 and 2008, Republicans occupied the White House for 20 out of 28 years. And one reason they are so successfull and resilient is that they have a playbook of political talking points and strategic techniques which they never retire from active service, no matter how many times they've been discredited.

Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan, hasn't withdrawn one soldier from Iraq or any other foreign base, won't prosecute CIA torturers, and has authorized the biggest Pentagon budget yet, but conservatives call him a weak appeaser.

Dick Cheney and the Republicans are dreaming that the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" should appear over an American city - just not one where they reside - so that they can rush forward and shout, in unison, "You see, we told you so!" and springboard their way back to power.

The Republicans are far from finished. If Obama's teflon finally wears off and things get bad enough, they'll stage their comeback. I'd bet on it, because it's the cyclical nature of American politics.

Mary Walters' "Agents are destroying literature" Logic Fail

2009-04-21T01:22:00.000-07:00

Mary Walters is yet another rejected writer who has extrapolated an illogical critique of agents and publishers from her personal experiences. Walters believes that agents won't represent literary fiction because it doesn't sell as well in the short term as junky genre fiction and therefore won't generate big advances that in turn generate big commissions for agents. Therefore, publishers never even get to consider literary fiction they might otherwise love and publish. So publishers should hire interns to read slush and ignore agents and everything will be sunshine and roses in book land.

If only.

1. Literary fiction gets published all the time, otherwise we wouldn't be using the term in a discussion of publishing today.

2. Most writers are represented by agents, including those who write literary fiction.

3. Decades ago, publishers had in-house readers to read unsolicited manuscripts. They rarely discovered good manuscripts and their salaries cost the publishers real money. When publishers discovered that agents would read unsolicited submissions for free, they phased out their readers.

4. Agents supply what they know from experience publishers demand. If publishers wanted more lit fic, agents would give it to them.

The rest is pretty well covered in these comments to Walters' essay. Note how she ignores or cannot understand Nathan Bransford's point.

Nathan Bransford // April 17, 2009 at 9:46 am | Reply
“Nathan, I am suggesting, as I did in my blog post, that these books are likely to sell — very likely to sell — just not to attract an advance because they are more likely to sell slowly and steadily, providing the kind of support for overhead long-time that can help keep publishers in business.”

But the major publishers aren’t offering “no advance” deals for books that have a trickle of sales over the course of many years. There are many small presses that do, and they don’t require that an agent submit to them. As you know well.

What you seem to want is to be taken on by a major publisher for a book that has a steady trickle of sales. And you know what? I wish they took on more books like that too. But those types of books are not particularly profitable, if at all, and publishers are strained. They’re consolidating around the books that they think are better bets.

But what I don’t understand is why you blame agents for this. Agents aren’t the ones telling publishers to consolidate their lists and drop many of our midlist and literary clients.

Mary W. Walters // April 17, 2009 at 9:55 am | Reply
Well, how can I blame the editors? They never see our stuff because you don’t show it to them, and they won’t look at ms not submitted by agents, so how can they make an informed decision about our manuscripts? Excuse me if I’ve come full circle here.

Brian Dolton // April 20, 2009 at 1:36 pm | Reply
Agents decide what to push to editors based on what they think editors want to buy, and their decisions are based on what editors have bought (and refused to buy) in the past.

If the editors have been interested in product X, then agents will send them things that are like product X. If editors have not been interested in product Y, then agents will not be willing to send them more product Y.
There is no conspiracy among agents.

Nathan Bransford // April 17, 2009 at 10:08 am | Reply

They may not be seeing your work per se, but they are seeing work like yours. They’re seeing books that are longer, books that are shorter, books that are more literary, books that are more commercial, books that are louder, books that are quieter. They’re seeing the entire spectrum. And what you see on the bookshelf are the ones that editors have chosen.

But more importantly, you yourself have characterized your book as one that will sell a steady trickle and may not even attract an advance. Publishers are quickly dropping anyone who even vaguely meets this description. I get lots of queries from authors whose books have been published by mainstream publishers to glowing reviews and okay sales. I can’t even do much for these people.

Everyone wants to believe that THEIR work is the one that will change things and if it could just get to editors, literary acclaim can’t be far behind. I hear from 15,000 people who believe this every year. This is why there’s a funnel in the first place. I understand that it’s not fun to be winnowed out, but it seems to me that you want major publisher attention and sales for a book that has a potential audience that even you characterize as small. Particularly in this climate, that’s just not realistic.

If Only Everybody Carried a Gun

2009-04-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

GRAHAM, Wash. — Investigators believe a man fatally shot his five children in their home and killed himself after he found out his wife was leaving him for another man, a sheriff's spokesman said Sunday.

Further proof that conservatives suffer from a dissociative disorder is their response to the recent epidemic in mass shootings. If only more people could carry concealed guns, then maybe somebody who just happened to wear their gun during every waking hour and who was an expert marksman and was perfectly composed under stress might shoot the gunman before the police arrived, but obviously after the gunman had already shot one or more victims. This is absurd on its face.

The Trouble with Twitter

2009-04-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

David Icke

2009-03-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

Icke is too paranoid and scatterbrained to be a Nazi, though. The reptilians probably consider him a 40th-tier threat. In the realm of mainstream politics, Icke would fall somewhere between a radical libertarian and a schizophrenic anarchist. In appealing to kooks across a spectrum ranging from neo-Nazi to wave-field stoner, he exposes his theories as devoid of tangible content. He hates the establishment, and that’s about it. Anyone else who hates the establishment can sympathize. There is no point in pegging him. He defies all conventions of reasonable discourse.

Bobby Jindal Repudiates the War in Iraq

2009-03-26T00:50:00.000-07:00

Bobby Jindal spoke Tuesday night at the $2,500-a-plate National Republican Congressional Committee dinner, which said it raised more than $6 million at the event.

During his speech, he said Obama's proposed budget exceeds the cost of the war in Iraq. Since Jindal thinks Obama's budget is a very, very bad thing, he just unintentionally repudiated the value of what George W. Bush and most other Republicans still believe to be a magnificent achievement.

Pondering the nauseating spectacle of a bunch of people spending $2,500 to hear Jindal's claptrap, it occured to me how much better spent the hundreds of millions of dollars that financed the 2008 election would be if it were apportioned and given to every impoverished adult. Both parties are always mouthing platitudes about helping the underprivileged, but they are only interested in attaining and maintaining the power of elected office.

British Comediam Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Toilet Books: Dan Brown, Celebrity Books

2009-03-24T01:04:00.001-07:00

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Part 2

2009-03-24T01:03:00.001-07:00

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - Part 3

2009-03-24T00:42:00.003-07:00

A Witty Takedown of Ann Coulter's Latest Book

2009-03-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

Reading Ann Coulter’s latest book, Guilty: Liberal Victims and their Assault on America, one almost feels sorry for her. It’s painfully clear she has crossed the threshold of her half life. Her mantra that liberals are pitiable, conniving, traitorous losers and that conservatives are valorous, patriotic administrative geniuses plays poorly against the backdrop of the hand-over from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Imagine penning a panegyric to dirigible travel while crossing the Atlantic on the Hindenburg.

The core of Coulter’s thesis is that liberals get what they want by existing in a permanent state of victimhood. This is a rich theory for a woman who lives in that bizarre parallel universe where conservatives are eternally bedeviled and contained by that unholy trinity of the liberal media, academia and judiciary.

Phony Republican Rationale for Tax Cuts

2009-03-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

There is a mistaken assumption that the wealthy recipients of tax cuts are typically business owners with a payroll who will respond to a reduction in their taxes by hiring more workers. There are many wealthy people who employ few, if, any workers. Tom Cruise or Stepen King, for example. Yes, they have agents, personal assistants, publicists, etc. And if they get a tax cut, they won't hire any additional help. My orthopedic surgeon has an office with a staff. Give him more money. He won't hire more staff. They'd be redundant and cost him his tax cut without increasing his income.

Let's say you own a greeting card store, a company that manufactures fancy door knobs, or a restaurant. Business owners hire more workers to respond to increased demand. They only increase their workforce to increase their productivity.

My Own Private Jim Cramer

2009-03-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

In Cramer We Trust

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

I have a personal experience about the wisdom of stockbrokers that ties in nicely with the Stewart-Cramer tete a tete.

After Star Wars was released and became a financial phenomenon, a writer, possibly Harlan Ellison, was on Hour 25, the late, lamented radio show about science fiction broadcast from KPFK in Universal City. Anyway, Ellison was praising the smarts of sf writer Robert Silverberg, who he said was prescient enough to buy 20th Century Fox stock before Star Wars was released. Silverberg made a killing on the stock when it's value doubled.

Thanks to my subscription to the magazine Cinefantastique and my then avid interest in sf films, I knew when Columbia Picures would release Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Guessing that it would repeat the Star Wars phenomenon, including the jump in the studio's stock value, I persuaded my father to give my sister and myself some money to buy shares in Columbia Pictures. We went to the local office of now defunct brokerage E.F. Hutton, where we were presented to a broker I'll call Jerry Broker. He looked up the current value of the stock and we opened an account and bought shares. We may have put as much as $1,000 into it.

Shortly thereafter, studio boss David Begelman became embroiled in a scandal for forging actor Ciff Robertson's name on a check and other improprieties. So, we got a call one morning around 7 AM from Jerry telling us that Columbia's shares had gone down in value in response to the scandal and might go lower. This threw a scare into us. Young, naive and pathologically risk avers, we sold our stock and lost money. Then Begelman resigned and Close Encounters was released. Columbia's stock never doubled, but it recovered from the scandal and went up several points more than where it stood when we purchased it.

I don't recall how we learned this, but we later discovered that Jerry Broker returned to New York very shortly after calling us. In the broker parlance of John C. McGinley's character Marve in Oliver Stone's film, Wall Street, Jerry had churned and burned us.

Jim Cramer is nothing more than Jerry Broker writ large.