taestell

theatlantic:

SNL Needs to Get Over Television

Mick Jagger hosted the finale of Saturday Night Live last weekend, and despite the offbeat paths the show could have followed—maybe an Exile on Main Street parody set in a puke-stained mansion along the French Riviera?—it stuck mostly to satirizing this season’s preferred target: television.

Of the 152 live sketches aired this season, a whopping 58 percent (88 sketches) were television parodies of some sort, whether political debates, game shows, or fake newscasts. Of course, SNLhas skewered television since its inception. As “Baba Wawa,” Gilda Radner gleefully lampooned the popular broadcast journalist’s speech impediment; Dana Carvey’s Church Lady hosted aTonight Show for the devout; Wayne’s World poked fun at amateurish cable access fodder; and even dimwitted Hans and Franz somehow landed an exercise show in which they mainly flexed and chastised their girlie-man viewers. But the world has changed since the days of Baba Wawa, and SNL’s present-day devotion to mocking its own medium feels anachronistic, a lazy holdover that prevents the show from fully satirizing society as it exists today.

Read more. [Image: NBC]

Bring back more original characters. Fewer political parodies.

This episode of This American Life put many of the thoughts I’ve been having, but couldn’t figure out how to express, into words.

So many Americans are currently stuck in the mentality of yelling and screaming “smaller government!” without thinking about what that actually means. Like in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where citizens voted down a tax increase, and as a result, the city had to make drastic cuts, like laying off firemen, turning off street lights, and closing down parks. Some citizens were willing to spend their own money to turn street lights back on, even though they were paying significantly more for these services than they would have paid in taxes.

Councilwoman Jan Martin:

He had just written a check to the city for $300 to turn all the street lights back on in his neighborhood. And I did remind him that for $200 if he had supported the tax initiative, we could have had not only streetlights, but parks and firemen and swimming pools and community centers. That by combining our resources, we as a community can actually accomplish more than we as individuals.

I understand that people get frustrated when they feel like they aren’t getting anything in return for their tax dollars. But, as this example shows, that’s not the case. People are getting mad because… I don’t know, because the government exists, I guess? If that’s the case, here’s a list of places where you might want to consider moving.

Stop for a second and thing about the big picture. What kind of country do we really want?

Gina Gartner of Downtown Cincinnati, Inc.:

In addition, the growing residential community, from The Banks to Over-the-Rhine, is actively engaged in making downtown a great place to live.

This is the key. Everyone I know who has moved to Downtown or OTR loves those neighborhoods, loves the positive changes that continue to take place, and is involved in activities that help the city keep moving forward.

A lot of people in my generation grew up in places where there was not really a “neighborhood”. And now they’re discovering how awesome it is to feel like you’re part of a real community, have lots of friends nearby, have fun things to do within walking distance, and be surrounded by great architecture and history every day.

City haters are going to keep on hating, but they can’t change the facts.

It’s extremely hard to find apartments for rent downtown. The 300 units at The Banks filled up as soon as they opened. And I don’t see any reason why new units won’t continue to fill up as they become available. Mercer Commons will bring 155 more residental units to OTR. Future phases of The Banks and other 3CDC projects will keep the number growing. And there are several buildings downtown that could be converted to apartments or condos when the demand gets to that point.

We’re even starting to get to the point where the mainstream media is taking notice. Of course, they often follow it up with a sensationalist anti-city story, but we’re headed in the right direction. They’re realizing that you can’t write off the city any longer. And that you can’t have a strong region without a strong urban core.

oldfilmsflicker:

Happy Birthday Mark Allen Mothersbaugh (born May 18, 1950) 

A great Ohioan.

I support any song that manages to use the theremin, melodica, and stylophone.

(via areasofmyexpertise)

Some media outlets are so afraid of looking biased that they don’t fact-check politicians’ claims and simply report both sites as equal arguments. Unfortunately, this mentality is also creeping into coverage of scientific issues.

Author Seth Mnookin tells NPR’s On The Media:

I think you see that a lot in science coverage and medicine. You have someone making an outrageous claim, and even if everyone in that field lines up on the other side, it’s presented as scientists’ debate.

Mnookin blames the media for giving credit to the theory that the MMR vaccine causes autism. The scientific paper that is often cited to back up this theory was published in 1998 but publicly retracted in 2010, after it was found to be flawed and fraudulent. As a result of more parents refusing to vaccinate their children, measles infections have hit a 15-year high. (On the bright side, some pediatricians are ‘firing’ families that refuse to have their children vaccinated.)

Fortunately, there is at least one field where journalists have not sunk to the all-arguments-are-equal level:

You don’t see it in business. If someone came along and said, “Hey everyone, my company is actually as valuable as Apple,” no business reporter would write a piece saying, “John Doe, who just started this company, claims that his company is as valuable as Apple. Apple Computer says, actually, it has more cash than any other company in the world,” because it would be ridiculous. But you do get that in science and medicine and in politics.

An ICE spokesman tells me that the two screens will “come up after the previews, once you hit the main movie/play button on the DVD. At which point the movie rating comes up, followed by the IPR Center screen shot for 10 secs and then the FBI/HSI anti-piracy warning for 10 secs as well. Neither can be skipped/fast forwarded through.”

As John Gruber put it:

So to encourage people not to engage in piracy, they’re going to force everyone to watch yet another annoying, time-wasting, gratification-delaying warning screen that can only be avoided by engaging in piracy. They’re purposefully making the movie-playing experience worse for honest paying customers.

[HBO Co-President Eric] Kessler is undaunted, saying HBO regards cord cutting as a temporary phenomenon that will go away once the larger economy improves.

False.

Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

A sad reflection on our nation’s grasp of basic scientific knowledge.

visualamor:

Did you know the scale of Africa on most maps is misleading? Africa is massive son.

Robert Krulwich for NPR:

Until cars became the dominant mode of personal transport, there was no architectural reason to take your hat off between home and office. With Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system came cars, and cars made hats inconvenient, and for the first time men, crunched by the low ceilings in their automobiles, experimented with hat-removal, and got to like it.

After taking a break from podcasting, we’ve now started up The UrbanCincy Podcast, which will be a bi-weekly talk show from the team behind UrbanCincy.com. If you’re interested in Cincinnati’s urban core and enjoy the types of things we post on UrbanCincy, you should subscribe.

We’ve also got a few more changes rolling out, including the new UrbanCincy Tumblr, where we’ll be sharing news stories, photos, and more.

And, people tend to have a more… optimistic viewpoint of their future selves. That is, they may be willing to rent, say, an “artsy” movie that won’t show up for a few days, feeling that they’ll be in the mood to watch it a few days (weeks?) in the future, knowing they’re not in the mood immediately. But when the choice is immediate, they deal with their present selves, and that choice can be quite different.

This is a fascinating phenomena, and it happens in many other contexts, not just our movie watching habits. Even if we wouldn’t make the “better choice” today, we tend to have faith that our future self would make the better choice.

An 18-year-old Keith Richards writes:

Beside that Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don’t mean maybe. I play guitar (electric) Chuck style we got us a bass player and drummer and rhythm-guitar and we practice 2 or 3 nights a week. SWINGIN’.

This weekend, several few people started complaining about the Tidy Cats bilboard pictured above, located in Clifton Heights. The bilboard reads, “You’re so over Over-The-Rhine,” and contains the hashtag #lifestinks and the URL nomorepu.com.

I wasn’t even sure what the bilboard was trying to imply at first — not a good sign for an advertising campaign. Some quick searching found similar ads in other cities, many with the simple slogan, “Life stinks? We can help.” Others included more localized slogans. An ad in the New York City subway read, “That cute girl across from you is wearing a Boston cap.”

So, Tidy Cats is trying to mock things that “stink”. Like used cat litter. But instead of sticking to the friendly bashing of opposing sports teams, they took it a step too far: the decided to bash a neighborhood in the city of Cincinnati. A neighborhood where people live, people work, and people spend time.

It would be interesting to know who came up with this particular bilboard. Was it someone in Cincinnati, playing off of stereotypes and clueless about the OTR of today? Or was it someone in another city, trying to find a Cincinnati neighborhood that it would be “safe” to bash?

Just for the record: The Over-the-Rhine of today is a safe place with a number of thriving small businesses, restaurants, entertainment options, an arts community, and a diverse mix of residents. A beautiful new 8 acre park is about to open. It’s experienced such a revitalization that there are virtually no apartments available for rent in the neighborhood. As food blogger Julie Niesen Gosdin put it, a more accurate bilboard would have read, “I’m over the 2-hour waits for a table at a restaurant in OTR.”

Fortunately, Tidy Cats saw the error in their ways and went into damage control mode. They claim they will take “swift action to correct this”, presumably taking the bilboard down.

What should advertisers take away from this? It’s not okay to bash any neighborhood in your advertising, be it Over-the-Rhine, Oakley, Sharonville, or Milford. It’s not okay to buy in to decade-old stereotypes that no longer hold true. And, please, stop trying to be so “edgy” when you are selling a basic product like cat litter — it’s not worth the chance that you’ll isolate a portion of your potential customers.

Update: The Enquirer quoted me in their coverage of the billboard.

(Photo credit: wtfcincy.)

An update to a previous post:

Although they’re still a bit buggy, it looks like the watercolor maps using OpenStreetMap data are now available for much of Cincinnati. Click the photo for an interactive version you can move and zoom.

Pho Lang Thang at Findlay Market.

Les Moonves to Steve Jobs:

You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business.

The question Moonves needs to be asking is, “what is the television business?” Because if he thinks it only involves people sitting in their living room watching a big screen, he’s mistaken.

Unlike NBC, ABC, and Fox, CBS’s shows are not even available on Hulu.