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Showing posts with label Entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Entertainment. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Monday, November 7, 2016
The media giveaway helped Trump
The media grabbed profits, gave Trump
$2 billion of free air time, and gave up any pretense of presenting objective
news as a public service.
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Monday, October 31, 2016
Friday, October 21, 2016
I still don’t know who shot J. R.
It was 36 years ago.
More than 3 out of 4
American households—and half of the adults in this great land—tuned in to
“Dallas” to finally learn who shot J. R.
Around the world, 350
million people watched the first episode of the third season of the blockbuster
primetime “drama” to get the lowdown on the lowdown skulker who did the deed.
Some people didn’t watch
the show. Like me. You can read all about it here. I’ll be honest, I skimmed
the story on History.com and I still don’t know the name of the shooter.
Ignorance shall be my
penalty.
I’m gonna guess that the
number of folks in the U. S. who know that name is larger than the number of
folks who know when the Constitution was ratified, and larger than the number
of folks who know what “arsenal of democracy” means.
Go figure.
Copyright © Richard Carl
Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Pricetag on bigotry
What does bigotry cost? Well, for
starters, in North Carolina, it costs more than $200 million.
You remember this: the
Republican-dominated legislature in North Carolina passed H.B.2 earlier this
year, to prevent transgender people from using the public bathroom of their
choice.
So far, that hateful act has cost the
state and its business community and its citizens hundreds of jobs and more
than $200 million in taxes and business revenues.
Why? One high-profile answer is: the
NCAA canceled seven big sports events—including the NBA All Star
game—that were scheduled in North Carolina this year. Another answer: Bruce
Springsteen canceled a concert. Other businesses, organizations and musicians
canceled performances, conventions and building projects.
Bigotry hurts. In many ways.
p.s. Really stupid bigotry hurts just
as much as the other kind. This bathroom law was always unenforceable—no one
ever thought the police would order sports fans in Bank of America Stadium in
Charlotte to drop their pants for inspection before using the toilet.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Friday, August 26, 2016
Chautauqua, revisited
The 19th century successes
of the Chautauqua Institution of New York have always appealed to me. I believe
I would have been thrilled to attend the profoundly educational lectures of the
itinerant speakers who followed the Chautauqua circuit. For some Americans—and for
many middle-class women—the Chautauqua offerings were the closest thing they
could get to a higher education.
The Chautauqua Institution was founded
in 1874 as a teaching camp for Sunday school teachers. The concept spread through
the United States. At its peak in the 1920s the movement offered a broad range
of lectures and music on both religious and nondenominational topics, in more
than 10,000 communities.
In the late 19th century,
the notion of family vacations was becoming popular, partly as a result of
increasing affluence and the expansion of rail travel. In a recent issue of The Massachusetts Historical Review,
Anita C. Danker wrote:
“…a
significant number of largely middle-class Americans chose to make constructive
use of their increased leisure time, a by-product of industrialization, in ways
consistent with their values and religious beliefs.”
The
Chautauqua centers were attractive destinations. One such place was the New
England Chautauqua Sunday School Assembly at Mount Wayte in Framingham, MA.
From 1880-1918 it offered a steadily diversifying assortment of lectures and
performances, drawing a dedicated audience from the area that would become
MetroWest Boston. Those folks wanted to vacation in comfort and style, and they
also were committed to a high-quality experience. Rail service to Mount Wayte
was busy.
Danker
explains:
“One
form of vacation consistent with middle-class values and the moral climate of
the New England region was the religious retreat…A critical mass of ordinary
Americans displayed another powerful need, compatible with the ideal of a
Christian vacation: the purposeful employment of leisure time for education and
individual self-improvement.”
A
reliable corps of attendees was “middle-class women, whose access to higher
education was restricted by tradition and circumstance […they] formed the
bedrock of the institution.”
Think
of TED Talks without the clip-on microphone.
Source:
Anita
C. Danker, “Redeeming the Time: Learning Vacations at the New England
Chautauqua Assembly,” The Massachusetts Historical
Review, Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 17, 2015, 67-97.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Mindless media hype
Who watched the TV broadcasts of the
Republican and Democratic conventions?
The short answer is: not too many
people
More than 85% of adults in America
didn’t bother to watch either of the nominees giving the big acceptance speech.
Fox News had the biggest average
audience for all eight nights of the Republican and Democratic conventions—but,
hold on, only 1.8% of adults were watching Fox on a given night.
Possibly we’re having the most
emotionally charged presidential election of all time—Tom Jefferson and Andy
Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt didn’t have television to deal with. It’s scarcely
credible, but nevertheless, most Americans didn’t give a hoot about watching
those big speeches. Obviously, most Americans didn’t learn anything much from
them.
For the seeming endless hours of
convention coverage by the broadcast and cable channels, much of the time only
a tiny minority of Americans was watching, regardless of the pompous blather of
Wolf and Rachel and Megyn and all the others.
While I’m on this topic, I’ll give a
thumbs down to TheHill.com, which blasted this headline on its website
yesterday: “Trump tops Clinton on speech ratings” and to TheHill writer Joe
Concha, who started his story with “Donald Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton…”
The underlying details tell a much less provocative story.
Here’s the detail: Trump had a reported
audience of 34.9 million people, and Clinton’s audience was 33.3 million. The
audience ratings are reported from a survey sample of about 5,000 viewers. I
have long experience in the design of surveys, and I feel real comfortable
guessing that the margin of error in this audience report makes it ludicrous to
say one candidate “tops” another, or one candidate “has defeated” another. The
viewing audience for Trump and Clinton was close to being the same, probably no
significant difference between them.
In their convention coverage, the media
generally didn’t take any opportunity to minimize the hype or the preposterous
emphasis on discord.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Monday, June 27, 2016
The women who helped create electronic music
Electronic music doesn’t talk to me in
a real loud voice, but this piece from OpenCulture.com rings a few bells.
It’s intriguing because it mentions the
not too surprising fact that women were involved in the earliest incarnations
of electronic music, back in the 1950s and even earlier.
Didja ever hear of Daphne Oram, Laurie
Spiegel, Éliane Radigue or Pauline Oliveros?
I think it’s a good bet I can say “Of
course you didn’t.”
OpenCulture explains that these women “represent a small sampling of too-often-overlooked electronic
composers, musicians, engineers, and theorists whose work deserves wider
appreciation, not because it’s made by women, but because it’s innovative,
technically brilliant, and beautiful music made by people who happen to be
women.”
 |
| Laurie Spiegel |
Amen, sister.
I’m sticking with Odetta and Joan Baez (her early work),
but this was a tantalizing interlude.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Gee willikers, six miles an hour!
Roller coasters have been a hit since
the early 1800s in France.
The first roller coaster in America
opened in 1884 on Coney Island in Brooklyn.
Hold that thought.
 |
| First roller coaster - Coney Island |
LaMarcus Thompson built that wooden wonder and called it the “Switchback Railway.” Basically, the cars started at
one end of a slightly elevated track, rolled 600 feet to the other end, and
then rolled back to the starting point. The ticket price was a nickel. That
baby traveled at 6 mph. Ladies, beware!
Nevertheless, it was a big hit and by
1900 there were hundreds of bigger and faster coasters in operation around the
country.
Today, the highest roller coaster in
the U. S. is Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. It’s 456
feet high and top speed is 128 mph. Gee willikers.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Ways to watch the circus
No. 1
Buy a ticket and sit in a seat inside
the Big Top. This way you can buy and eat popcorn.
No. 2
Get together with your pals to crawl
under the side of the tent far enough so you can see what’s going on, and hear
the music, and smell the popcorn and stuff.
Try to do this after the bobby has
passed by, otherwise you’re going to be answering some difficult questions….
p.s. The coppers in Britain are called “bobbies”
and sometimes “peelers,” in reference to Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, who
introduced an act in Parliament in 1829 to create an official police force in
London. They do not routinely carry a gun.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
“…somewhere hot…”
Book review: A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Jimmy Buffett (b. 1946)
Ballantine Books, New York, 1998
Full disclosure: I’m not a Parrothead,
but I’m related by blood and marriage to gen-you-wine Buffett fans, so I take
the liberty of using familiar language, even though “the king of somewhere hot”
has never seen me and isn’t likely to in this earthly paradise….
A
Pirate Looks at Fifty is a
memoir-ish book by Himself, written almost 20 years ago, I spotted it in the
local library’s discarded book sale bin and I did the right thing.
Seems to me, for starters, no one
should ever discard a book full of Jimmy Buffett stuff, he’s just so much in
love with life and he is a magnet for vicarious attention, I dare you to read Pirate without getting at least a
fleeting urge to head for the islands and see the world through Jimmy’s eyes.
You don’t even have to read the whole
book (I confess, I didn’t), just read as much as gets the juices flowing and
then get on with your regular life, and you can dip into it again any time you
want. Buffett’s music and Buffett’s style are a buffet—grab what you want, anytime,
sing along as the spirit moves, and go back for more whenever….
You don’t even have to like margaritas to get the full, slobbering, belly laugh, hijinksed, hot damn but mucho mellow effect when you sing along with Jimmy about the Mexican cutie and the lost shaker of salt.
I dare you not to sing a couple verses and the refrain right now, you have to, really….
Copyright © Richard Carl
Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
Monday, May 16, 2016
They don’t make movies like this one anymore
Action!
Aerial daredevilry! Romance! Intrigue!
You
wanna see how the heat builds when two American flyboys head to France to give
their all in World War I, and leave behind the gal that both of them ardently
desire?
You
gotta watch Wings, the $2 million
extravaganza that pulled in the crowds and grabbed the first Oscar for Best
Picture—in 1929.
Wings also
won the first Academy Award for Best Engineering Effects. I imagine that was
for the stunningly obvious jerky "dogfighting" of crude model planes dangling
around each other in front of a not-too-convincing “sky” backdrop.
You
probably want to know these names: Richard Arlen and Charles “Buddy” Rogers
played the two air aces, and Clara Bow was the lady in question—she was in love
with Arlen, but, sadly, committed to Rogers. These things happen in war.
You
have to watch the movie to find out which one of the sky jockeys went down in
flames.
So.
About 250 people turned out for the awards ceremony. The winners were announced
prior to the event (the sealed envelope surprises didn’t start until 1942). Of
course, it wasn’t televised, because television hadn’t arrived yet. There was
no standup comedian emcee, and I’m just guessing that there was no Beyoncé-style
entertainment, and probably not too many daring necklines….
Oh
yeah, one other thing: Wings is a
silent movie. The Jazz Singer, one of
the first “talkies,” had already made its debut, but “talkies” weren’t allowed
in the 1929 Oscar competition.
You
make your own decision about whether all this was the good old days.
p.s.
Gary Cooper appeared in Wings as Cadet White, it was one of his early films
Copyright © Richard Carl
Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Movie review: Hard Times
Movie review: Hard Times
1975
PG 94 minutes
Cast: Charles Bronson,
James Coburn, Jill Ireland, Strother Martin
Director: Walter Hill
I watch this Bronson movie
every few years or so, because it’s a heroic story, because it’s complete unto
itself, because it generously invites the viewer to imagine the details that
aren't specified, and because it's all about true grit. (I like that
movie, too).
Think you've got what it
takes? If you're like me, you've never really had any "hard times." Chaney
(Bronson) shows what it's like to be down to your last six bucks with nothing
else to lose, and still manage to be courageous, honest, affectionate,
high-principled, strong-minded, and in charge of your life. In the final scene Speed
(Coburn) looks at Chaney walking away in the darkness and says "He sure
was somethin'." He sure was.
They don’t make movies like
this anymore. Really.
Copyright © Richard Carl
Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
If there had been a Super
Bowl in 1912, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” probably would have been the biggie in
the halftime show.
This old favorite by
Irving Berlin was the top tune of 1911, selling many millions of copies of….the
sheet music. Most people heard the song when someone in the family sat down at
the piano to tickle the ivories. The iconic Victrola phonograph was just
starting to get up some steam in the consumer market, and radio didn’t go
commercial until 1920.
 |
| Scott Joplin |
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
is a simple version of ragtime—Scott Joplin could have played it with one hand
tied behind his back, more or less. So more or less anybody could easily learn
it and play it when it was a new release before World War I.
Here's a link to a 1911
recording made a few months after the song hit the market….and here's a link to
The Andrews Sisters (their career spanned 1925-1967) doing their version.
You can sing along too,
you already know some of the words:
“Come on and hear, come
on and hear
Alexander’s Ragtime Band…
The best band in the land
They can play a bugle
call
Like you never heard
before…”
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Lest we forget….
Maybe it was mentioned
in the “too white” Oscar flub-a-dub, but I’ll just rack ‘em up one more time
for Hattie McDaniel.
If you’re asking
“Who’s Hattie McDaniel?” you’re not a Gone
With The Wind fan.
Hattie McDaniel
(1895-1957) was “Mammy” in that remarkably durable romantic swashbuckler.
She also was the first
black thespian to earn an Oscar. She took Best Supporting Actress in 1940, one
of the eight Oscars awarded to Gone With
The Wind.
Hattie had many
talents. She sang in traveling minstrel groups as a teenager, and was one of
the first black women to be a radio singer in the U. S. She started doing films
in 1932, and played the roles of maids and cooks in almost 40 films in the
1930s, capping that run with her memorable role as a house slave, opposite Clark
Gable and Vivien Leigh.
Hattie’s portrayal of
stereotypical black servants was criticized in some quarters, but she shrugged
that off, saying she’d rather play a maid than be one.
Too bad it’s too late
to say “You go, girl!”
p.s. my trusted personal advisor notes
that Hattie—the only black person who was sitting down at the Oscar awards
ceremony—wasn’t seated at one of the banquet tables with the white folks, she
sat with her escort at a small round table near the kitchen door. Oh yeah,
another thing: Clark Gable had intended to escort Hattie to the premiere of Gone With The Wind in Atlanta, but he
was waved off—neither Hattie nor any other black person was allowed to attend
the film showing.
Homework....think again....
Homework....think again....
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Full circle….
I was born
before the debut of commercial television. There was no TV on the wall in the
maternity ward.
Of
course, I’ve had a TV (and later, several TVs) in my home since I can remember.
For better or worse….
I
wouldn’t say I’ve been a TV junkie in my time, but yeah, sure, I watched my
favorite shows for close to 60 years.
A few
years back, for my taste, the “better” stopped happening and the “worse”
started kicking in.
I just
said “No,” cold turkey, seven years ago today. Stopped watching the boob tube. Stopped
wondering what the heck was the appeal of reality TV. Stopped getting angry
enough to yell at the screen during news broadcasts. Stopped wishing TV news
would get sensible and meaningful.
So I
don’t turn the TV on now. OK, I make exceptions for the Super Bowl and the
State of the Union address and election returns in early November and maybe,
every other year or so, an old movie I can’t find on one of the streaming
sources.
I’m
bound to say I don’t think I’m missing much.
The
news media industry, particularly TV, has become a beast with no scruples. I
think it is deranging our society.
Copyright © Richard Carl
Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
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