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Las Vegas is LosAngeles
November 6, 2009
So why did I read The Movable Buffet so religiously? Because having gone there at least once a year since 1988 for the Consumer Electronics Show (and for the late, unlamented COMDEX) I&;ve come to love Las Vegas, although my wallet and sinuses could probably not handle it for more than a week at a time. Like the ice caps melting, I&;ve watched the casino gaming pits where I play blackjack shrink, with the real estate taken over by an army of slot machines for a generation of Americans who prefer to interact with screens rather than a boisterous table of degenerate gamblers.
Las Vegas was built on millions of people from Los Angeles coming to gamble in the desert, whether they stayed at the palaces on the strip or did a Las Vegas turn around, gambling all night and driving back without sleeping. (The first time I drove to Las Vegas I saw five dead bodies on the side of the I-15 from two separate accidents where the drivers fell asleep).
Las Vegas and Los Angeles share a lot, including thousands of former Angelenos &;native&; Las Vegans are always begging to go home. Meanwhile the &;What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas&; encourages tourists to treat the city as their toilet, although it contributes to some surprising local industries.
Las Vegas and Los Angeles share a temperate to boiling climate and a sprawling aesthetic, but with magnificient parks just a few minutes away. Then there&;s In &;n Out Burger, minimalls, a love of bling and money, a sprouting of magnificent cities out of nothing, jammed freeways but troubled real estate markets, entertainment stars and wanna-bes, luxury and poverty almost side-by-side, gangbangers and pointless violent crime killing the best of our youth (here here, there there), insane people, and both Bugsy Siegel and O.J. Simpson!
Las Vegas holds up a mirror to Los Angeles. But it&;s not a funhouse mirror anymore.
Tags:CES, COMDEX, gambling, Las Vegas, Los-Angeles, Movable-Buffet, O.J.-Simpson Posted in Las Vegas, Los-Angeles, Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;
2012: Sick withCGI
October 7, 2009
The Mayans are coming! The Mayans are coming!
Or at least the supposed Mayan prophesy about the end of the world in 2012. As the website for the movie 2012 states, &;With the Mayan calendar ending in 2012, a large group of people must deal with natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, typhoons and glaciers.&;
Personally I&;m more concerned with the Iranians getting the H-bomb, but then I&;m not trying to sell a movie overstuffed with computer-generated imagery (CGI) and Hollywood hooey.
Saw the 2012 trailer before Zombieland last night, and was repelled by the overuse of CGI.
Fake cars falling off the fake freeway.
Santa Monica&;s palisades crumbling into the sea.
Fake meteorites hitting the fake highway where John Cusack is driving his RV.
The arms falling off the Brazilian statue of Jesus.
Michelangelo&;s Last Supper, cracking.
St. Paul&;s Basilica, topping over.
Fake floods toppling a fake monastery.
Planes flying over a digitally crumbling city.
Cusack, usually a great actor, trying to scream on the green screen.
&;Find out the truth. Search 2012.&;
The truth is that 2012 may make Armageddon look like a classic. CGI is becoming so horribly overused in action movies that only the exceptions stand out. District 9 looks so impressively/depressingly &;real&; that the audience is happy to accept people in &;prawn&; suits.
And Gladiator won the 2001 Visual Effects Oscar, even though it had only 90 special effects shots, as opposed to the 350 in the favored Perfect Storm with its monstrous tidal waves.
Unfortunately, filmmakers have not learned from Ridley Scott&;s judicious use of CGI in Gladiator, which he used to enhance the Colisseum and even bring Alan Bates (Proximo), who died during filming, back to life.
When will filmmakers learn that with CGI, less is more?
John Cusack in 2012
Tags:2012-The-Movie, John-Cusack, overuse-of-CGI, Ridley-Scott Posted in Hollywood, Hollywood Follies, Hollywood-turkeys, Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;
The Decline of Style in theNBA
July 20, 2009
I&;m a big time pro basketball fan and I coach basketball to children at my local recreation center. I love the Lakers, even though I can no longer afford to go to the games and think Kobe is a terrible role model to youth.
As a coach, I preach the team game, particularly defense. Nonetheless, I enjoy the style of the game, which is sadly declining. From Kevin Porter (the &;Little Drum Major&;) to Darryl Dawkins (&;Dr. Dunkenstein&;), who named his dunks, to the incomparable Dr. J and Clyde &;The Glide&; Drexler, players played with style in the past. Even Earvin Johnson got his nickname Magic for the things he could do with a basketball, like no-look passes.
Before he was Earl the Pearl, people watching the young Earl Monroe at Philadelphia playground games chanted &;Black Jesus&; as Monroe pulled off one of his signature moves. In high school, teammates called Monroe &;Thomas Edison&; because of the many moves he invented.
Now, it&;s just about effectiveness, not entertainment; Kobe Bryant is celebrated as the killer &;Black Mamba&; while LeBron James is the king of power. Style hardly appears in the All-Star game or even in the slam-dunk contest. Dwight Howard showed some style last year, style he failed to show against the Lakers in the Finals.
But this time, they let the little guy win.
Today&;s race to have the most tattoos, or the fastest car, (driven by a gawky Polish center) is hardly about style.
So does style equal selfishness? Perhaps&;but Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier, two of the most stylish guards ever to play together, combined for a pair of NBA Championships 35 years ago.
Tags:Darryl-Dawkins, Dwight-Howard, Earl-Monroe, Magic Johnson, NBA, NBA-loss-of-style Posted in Lakers, NBA, Sports, Uncategorized | 2 Comments &;
Copy Editing Error of theDay
July 6, 2009
ABC News: Ethics Riots in China Leave 156 Dead
Ethics, ethnics, (they&;re talking about Moslem Uighurs, an ethnic minority) who cares as long as it passes the spellcheck?
Tags:death-of-copyediting Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;
ForeclosurePorn
June 26, 2009
&;Bank owned home!&; screamed the sign. I turned the Mustang up the street and joined dozens of other lookie-loos staring at the (mostly) empty Studio City house.
The search for a REO has become the new status symbol. It&;s also pornographic in the voyeuristic allure of going through a very recently vacated home and staring at the left behind possessions of the former owners, while fantasizing about their lives and what brought them to this. Sometimes its pretty clear; the Tarzana house I looked at last week turned out to have a $596,000 mortgage&;and a $251,000 second! The banks were still fighting over what they would recover while the moving truck came.
The Studio City house (at least with REOs realtors dispense with calling them &;homes&;) seemed to not only satisfy people&;s pornographic fantasies of the absolute lowest price, but may have belonged to porn people as well, judging (and I&;m not judging) by the framed 8&;10 theatre cards of &;Desire&; and the like, showing a pair getting down. (Perhaps the home&;s female owner?)
At least they managed to break out of the Canoga Park/Van Nuys porn ghetto, before they crashed back down to earth.
I found a Guess watch in the yard and thought of putting it in my pocket. My son said, &;I wouldn&;t touch anything here.&; He&;s smarter than me, and it also seemed like bad karma to swipe abandoned foreclosed possessions, so I left the watch, the porno placards and a burned copy of The Joy of Sex sitting there.
Tags:foreclosures, losing-houses Posted in Los Angeles in the Movies, Los-Angeles, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Technology Lifestyle MagsDisappearing
May 4, 2009
And a good thing, too. I have before me a copy of CE Lifestyles, the February 2005 issue. The cover photo is a bodacious babe smiling a come-hither smile at her digital-camera wielding boyfriend. To further convince the fickle consumer, the cover price reads $5.99 $1.99. Now apparently called First Glimpse, you can subscribe for just $29 a year.
For years, publishers thought the combination of fetishized cool consumer electronics and hot cover babe would turn people men onto the so-called &;CE Lifestyle.&;
Why do these publications never take off? Now, of course, advertising is a memory, as are freelance, photo and model budgets. But that&;s not the real reason.
A long time ago I went to a presentation by some of the editors of Entertainment Weekly. EW itself is in trouble now, but not because it didn&;t follow the editors advice. In terms of coverage, he said, &;Movies are best, then music and television. Then sports. Last is technology.&;
Tags:Consumer Electronics, death-of-magazines, technology-journalism Posted in 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, CES, technology-journalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Roseanne Barr ApplaudsSuicide
April 23, 2009
Why I don&;t usually listen to KPFK or Pacifica radio: Roseanne Barr at 5:08PM PST 4/22 applauded the suicide of Peter Kellermann, CFO of Freddie Mac.
Tags:death-of-journalism, Roseanne-Barr Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
The End of Tolerance forBS
April 16, 2009
Things are rough for a lot of people, including me and Sam Zell, facing the publishing precipice. But if there&;s a silver lining, America may have reached the end of its tolerance for bullshit.
Consider:
Instead of placating the pirates of Somalia, the Navy shot them on President Obama&;s order. And few weep for the tragically early demise of these teenagers.
Although they love illusionists, they&;re not big on bullshit in Nevada. That&;s why OJ Simpson was convicted of robbery and kidnapping in Las Vegas and immediately remanded to prison, where he is serving what could be a 15-year sentence.
Texas legislators are getting sick of creationism in the public schools.
Despite his millions (billions?), Bernard Madoff was immediately put in jail after he pleaded guilty. He remains there today, even though his lawyers argued he should remain free before sentence is pronounced in June.
Even celebrity Phil Spector was found guilty by an LA jury of murdering Lana Clarkson and, again, sent immediately to jail while awaiting sentencing. This jury didn&;t buy that Clarkson killed herself on her first date with Spector.
Tags:bullshit, O.J.-Simpson, penn-and-teller, Phil-Spector, Somalia-pirates Posted in celebrity-justice, end-of-illusions, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Reggie the Alligator Post
March 2, 2009
My brother! My brother! Oh, you were lost and now are found!
If only someone had pointed you in the right direction, towards the canals! There you could have lived a life of contented anonymity among the movie stars and the tattoed, snacking on the diseased ducks and the fish and the unwary poodle.
Yes, you would have fit in. Instead, they caught you, put you in a trash can and turned you over to the herpetologists.
I just hope this isn&;t you.
Tags:lost-in-the-city, Reggie-the-alligator, Venice, Venice-canals Posted in Reggie-the-alligator, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
James Cramer Swears OffStocks
February 27, 2009
So the king of the pump and dumpers (not to mention multiple possible conflicts of interest) has sworn off stocks.
&;I say, patiently, and endlessly, and I&;m on record on this, that if you need money for anything important, take it the heck out of the stock market.&;
Thanks Jim. Where were you 6000 Dow points ago? He should have written Soviet history; massive ongoing revisions without shame.
CNBC likes to say his show is for entertainment value. Perhaps we should think of him as Proximo, the rotund gladiator keeper and showman in Gladiator.
Proximo: I know that you are a man of your word, General. I know that you would die for honor, for Rome, for the memory of your ancestors. But as for me? I&;m an entertainer.
Maximus: Do you remember what it was to have trust, Proximo?
Proximo: [unfamiliarly] Trust?
There&;s always a bull market somewhere.
Are you not entertained?
Tags:business-journalism, Jim-Cramer, pump-and-dump Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
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