View From the Phlipside - Juan Williams and NPR

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

There’s nothing quite as fascinating as when smart people do stupid things.  If you heard about the firing of news analyst Juan Williams by National Public Radio you got plenty of that.  Let’s take a look at what happened here.

First let’s clear away the nonsense.  This is NOT a First Amendment issue.  This is and was an employment issue.  I’m so tired of people screaming First Amendment for no good reason.  It’s not.  Move on.  Williams is free to express ill conceived opinions on his own time any time he wants.

Second let’s be clear about the roles being discussed here.  The news industry basically breaks down into three primary categories.  Reporter, Analyst and Commentator.  A reporter’s job is to gather the facts and present them in an understandable form.  An analyst puts those facts into context and helps us understand what they mean.  A commentator is someone who gives an opinion.  Since I’m a commentator I’ll give my opinion.  The news industry should be mostly reporters with a leavening of analysts with just a few commentators.  That ratio is rapidly sliding in the opposite direction sadly.

It’s also where Williams ran into trouble.  He was an analyst for NPR and a commentator for Fox News.  Both he and NPR should have known that this arrangement was going to be a problem.  Williams also should have known that comments like the ones made on Fox were going to create a furor.  Maybe he did know.  He also should have known that NPR would have to react.  Based on just this episode NPR’s decision to fire him may seem extreme.  I know that they have reported that this was simply the latest in a string of problems they’d had.  In the end I think NPR is the only one who takes a hit in all this.  Williams was signed to be a token liberal on Fox News virtually instantly.  Fox News gets lots of free publicity for their new commentator.  And NPR gets showboating politicians taking aim at their budget.

Oh there is one other group that loses in this mess.  That would be you and me and all the rest of our nation being underserved by reporters because everyone wants to a commentator.  But then that’s just my opinion.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Violent Entertainment

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

Last week saw a great furor break over the National Football League.  Since this isn’t a sports commentary I’ll skip over the question of whether the hits were legal and if the punishments fit the crimes.  It did lead me to think about something else that has always nagged at me.  The question of violence as entertainment.

Any even quick survey of the history of humanity shows that we have ALWAYS been entertained by some form of real or formalized violence.  To pretend that somehow it isn’t there in among the multitudinous other cultural skeletons is just fooling ourselves.  And real violence has had a place in our entertainment choices into the relatively recent past.  Wrestling was a major form of entertainment from the earliest days of the Republic and the level of physical mayhem that was considered acceptable is pretty appalling by modern standards.  Physically disfiguring your opponent was considered reasonable up to the 1800’s.  It was in the last century that we began to see some regulation to make the violence more formalized.  Don’t forget that in the early 20th Century football was so violent that 18 players died playing it that year.  And there were a LOT fewer people playing the sport back then.

Football controlled the violence.  So did boxing and wrestling.  Baseball was never a terribly violent game but over the years greater protections came even to that gentle sport.  In recent years I begin to wonder though if that trend is now headed the other way.

Professional wrestling offers the illusion of greater violence.  Boxing is being supplanted by the much more violent personal combat of Mixed Martial Arts.  Now football is arguing about the need to make devastating potentially disabling or fatal hits for the purity of the sport.  Even our most formalized entertainments, video games, have grown ever more violent in concept over the last decade.

The underlying concern is that we once again getting enjoyment from ever increasing levels of violence committed on the bodies of other people.  At some point there may be no discernible difference between our entertainments and the gladiatorial confrontations of ancient Rome.  It’s an historic path that I think we need to carefully consider before we travel too much farther down it.  The lack of respect for life in our entertainments has a nasty way of looping back on society itself.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

Teach Your Children Well...

Larger version      That's the boy!

View From the Phlipside - TV Parenthood

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside. 

 
In the past week two icons of parenthood on television passed away.   Barbara Billingsly played one of the prototypical ‘50’s moms as June Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver”.  Within days she was followed by one of the iconic ‘70’s TV dads who curiously played a dad from the ‘50’s, when Tom Bosley died.  Bosley of course was Howard Cunningham, Richie’s dad on the hit show “Happy Days”.  Both actors created roles that will carry their names and memory long into the future.  

For me it was a moment to consider the place of parents on TV.  As dad myself it interests me to see how parents have changed in many ways.  The dads from the early days of TV in the 1950’s bear very little resemblance to the dad’s of today for example.  Compare  Ward Cleaver and Jim Anderson from “Father Knows Best” to modern media dads like Homer Simpson or Red Forman from “That ‘70’s Show”.  There are some good and understanding dads out there but by and large dads take the hit on TV.  They are grumpy or silly or totally out of touch with reality.  Curiously Moms have fared somewhat better over the years.  They still have their Roseann Connors out there among the clan but on the whole I think Mom’s are still treated generally better than Dad’s.  And yes, it’s certainly possible that I’m biased on that score.

The question for is why did this happen?  In my lifetime our culture certainly has become much more youth oriented.  Since parents have traditionally been the enemy for young people that’s probably a large part of it.  And don’t kid yourself you’ll find the same kid versus parent story lines all through our culture.  Romeo and Juliet have much more in common with Bart Simpson than they do with Beaver Cleaver.

In the end I know that being a parent is hard enough without the culture assuring everyone that you’re a bumbler at best and out right irrational otherwise.  Remember that the next time you laugh at some TV parent’s foolishness.  Wouldn’t be bad to see a June Cleaver or Howard Cunningham now and then.

Barbara Billingsly  died at 94, Tom Bosley was 84.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

Watching and Reading - Books and Movies

Yes, I read this book because of the author's name. No other reason. And yes, he is part of THAT family. J.R.R. Tolkien's grandson.

The Inheritance by Simon Tolkien (2010) - This is Tolkien's second novel and is, all in all a pretty good effort.  The comparison on the cover to Grisham and Christie is not too bad.  This is an English courtroom thriller.  Within the standards of that genre he does a really nice job.  The characters are good, the mystery is interesting and he creates some skillful twists to keep you guessing.  The ending was a surprise although I think he uses a bit of cheat to get there.  You are blindsided with something that isn't even alluded to prior to the reveal.  So you have ZERO chance of figuring the mystery out prior to that moment.  I'm ambivalent on that count.  I prefer having a chance of matching wits with the characters.  On the other hand they didn't know the missing fact either.  Like I said I have mixed feelings about this.  But it's a minor irritation.
  What really annoyed me was the book rather promises that it'll be a bit of  a "Da Vinci Code" story with some piece of historical mystery tied in.  The problem is that Tolkien runs the idea of St. Peter's cross across your path just enough to get you interested but never fleshes it out.  In the end it's basically unneeded and unexplored.  That left me disappointed and took a good bit of the edge off my enjoyment of the book.

So forget the puny attempt at a subplot and just enjoy the rest.  I'll certainly take a look at his other book "Final Witness".

Added a classic to my lifetime list:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876) - I read the Classics Illustrated Comic for this book but had never read the story itself (or if I did it's so long ago I don't remember doing it!).  I really enjoyed it.  The first adjustment I had to make is to the difference in use of language from 125 years ago.  Twain has an authorial "voice" that is both quite casual and yet a bit "flowery" by modern standards.  It's a great look at life in a very small town in the Midwest in the middle of the 19th Century.  Once I got rolling with it I found myself really being drawn into the story.  I hope to add its companion piece "The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn".
Interesting to note that Tom Sawyer was banned back in 1907 because the children's librarian at Brooklyn College felt it (and Finn) were filled with "...coarseness, deceitfulness and mischievous practices" that were bad examples for children.

Movies

Sherlock Holmes  (2009)I will confess I was prepared to hate this movie.  I am a long time fan of the original stories and hate when people decide to mess about with classics.  So imagine my surprise when the movie actually does a pretty good job of staying faithful to and respecting the original character.  The Conan Doyle stories certainly give reason to believe that Holmes was not above mixing it up occasionally and they make clear that everything he does is guided by intelligence and reason.  Robert Downey Jr. is a quite acceptable Holmes and Jude Law rescues John Watson from the vacuous portrayal he sometimes gets.  Moriarty and "the woman" Irene Adler make their appearance.  If there's one thing to dislike it's that Downey's portrayal is a bit too high spirited and not quite the cold, calculating genius of the books.  For that you should look to Jeremy Brett's portrayal in the British TV series.  But a worthy addition to the canon I think.




The Third Man (1949) An interesting confluence of talents and story.  Story by Graham Greene in that world he loves so much post WWII Europe.  Cold War warriors sliding through the amoral shadows for God, Country and mostly self interest.  None of his characters is any more self interested than Harry Lime (played to a slimy perfection by Orson Welles), add in Joseph Cotton as Lime's dupe of a friend and Trevor Howard as a straight arrow English officer and you're off an running in Vienna.  Much of the movie was filmed there including a good portion of the sewer scenes (look for vapor clouds from the actors breathing.  Those are the Vienna scenes.  The rest were done in studio) and it's an amazing backdrop.  What really struck me is the soundtrack which is played on the zither.  It's a bizarre and effective addition to the rather other worldly feel of where Cotton's character finds himself.  Lime was up to something but his old school chum Holly Martins isn't sure what.  And the more he discovers the less he realizes he knows.  Enjoyed it. 
 

Football Pool

On the list of "Why do these things?" is playing a football pool.

It's not a betting pool because 1: I'm note very good and 2: I'm cheap.

So I play in a for fun pool sponsored by the St.Thomas Youth Group in Oshkosh WI.  It's fun and keeps me in touch with the NFL for reasons that I'm not quite sure I understand.  The Steelers make me happy, the Bills make me sad.  What more could I need?

So far this year I haven't been tearing up the pool.  My first three weeks were pretty good and I was staying in the top 20 (there are currently 79 of us in the pool).  The last three weeks have been pretty awful, with the week before last being especially so.

At the moment my picking percentage is only 52.3 versus the tops in the pool - 66.6%.  Curiously that person is in 27th place, 10 ahead of me.  The reason why he is in 27 while the first place person is only picking 61.12% is the other tricky part of the pool.

This is a straight win/lose pool, no point spread.  BUT!  You have to assign a point value to each pick.  This week as an example there are 14 games.  So you value your picks from 14 to 1.  Picks you're most confident in you give high values, low confidence low values.  And it's point total that that counts toward the winner.  To our current leader has 499 points to my 432.  Which means that she (all hail Mary Pfahlert!) is better at getting her high point games right.  Which is the winning strategy.

So here are my picks:
14 Baltimore over Buffalo
13 New Orleans over Cleveland
12 Kansas City over Jacksonville
11 Denver over Oakland
10 Pittsburgh over Miami
9  Seattle over Arizona
8  San Francisco over Carolina (SF has disappointed me all season long)
7  Atlanta over Cincinnati (Ditto the Bengals)
6  New England over San Diego
5  St. Louis over Tampa Bay (TB bad at home and against any kind of quality team, StL is a team on the rise)
4  Washington over Chicago
3  Philadelphia over Tennessee
2  Minnesota over Green Bay (GB too many injuries, Favre can ignore the "stuff" in his life on the field)
1  New York Giants over Dallas (Cowboys have to show me some discipline before I believe)

If my top two picks go bad I may stop watching football.  I'm a little nervous about # 12 & 8.  We'll see.  Needless to say 5, 4, 3, 2, & 1 I see as toss ups.

You don't even want to know my system.  It's some gut feeling, some checking with experts, some consideration of division game (bad), injuries, better quality QB and blind luck.  It might be interesting to just let the computer pick them at random (an option in our pool).

My goal each year in the pool is to stay in the top 20 and my hope is to finish in the top 10.  I've done the first a couple years (not last year) and never done the second for the season.  I've finished in the top 10 for a week a couple times, including week three of this year.  To do that I need 85 points or more.  100 points is always a good week.  This week I'd be happy if I could hit 90 or more.  To have any chance I've got to keep above 70 every week from here on out. Total possible this week I believe is 105.

View From the Phlipside - Early TV season check

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

I haven’t talked about TV much recently so I did a quick check at the TV ratings just to see what was going on.  At the moment there are no new shows that are really calling my name.  “Hawaii 5-0” looks interesting but that may be as much nostalgia on my part as anything else.

Looking at the Nielson ratings for the week ending on the 10th shows a couple interesting things.  First, none of the new shows is blowing the ratings apart.  Only “5-0”, Tom Selleck’s new cop show “Blue Bloods” and the comedy about two overweight folks falling in love, “Mike and Molly” make the top 25.  The Hawaiian retread is the top of the freshman class just edging out “Mike and Molly” at numbers 16 and 17.  “Bluebloods” patrols at 23.  Curiously at 24 is a show that I have never heard of, ever, despite the fact it’s in its third season apparently.  A nod therefore to “Castle” which is flying WAY under my radar.  The show is apparently about a mystery writer who follows a police detective around helping her solve crimes.  I had to look that up.  It was the only unfamiliar title on the list.

Not surprisingly at this time of the year the NFL shows up twice.  Which is a darn good thing because without those two Sunday Night Football slots NBC wouldn’t make the top 25 list AT ALL.  That’s right the Peacock network doesn’t have a single scripted or reality show in the top 25.  Ouch.

The top reality show also grabs two slots at #1 and #4.  That would be Dancing with the Stars.  Undercover Boss grabs the number two position in this category (#14 overall) ahead of “Survivor: Nicaragua” at 19 and “The Amazing Race” at #20.

Also thought it was interesting that only one CSI made the top 25 (the original surprisingly enough) while BOTH NCIS’s not only made the list the grabbed two spots in the Top 5.  The senior member of the group is clearly “60 Minutes” which after 42 years on the air still makes the Top 10.

So what does this tell us?  This year’s crop of new TV looks to be mid-season replacement bound, oldies can still be goodies, CBS is still the king of TV and NBC should be demanding that the NFL not stop at adding just two more games to the schedule.  A couple more months is probably closer to what they’d need.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

View From the Phlipside - Mega-cast Movies

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

There’s an interesting argument going on these days about whether or not the age of the “film star” is over.  What’s meant by that is the ability for a single actor to make a movie a hit just by being in it.  There’s evidence that it may be true.  Or not.  There’s a fine old tradition to deal with times like these however.  Don’t rely on just one star.  Get several.  And in case you think you’re still not covered, get a whole bunch more.

We’ve had two recent examples of this trend.  This past summer brought us “The Expendables” which starred just about every major action movie star of the last 20 years including Stallone, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and even had cameos from Bruce Willis and the Governator.   It may not have been a critical favorite and it’ll never make a Top 100 list but it did make almost a quarter of a billion dollars world wide.  Right now you can check out the movie “Red” which stars Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Richard Dreyfus, John Malkovic and a boatload of others (even Ernest Borgnine!).  The movie has only just opened so it’s hard to say how it will do.  Opening weekend wasn’t bad.  It earned just under half of it’s production costs in a single weekend.

The mega cast doesn’t always work out.  1963’s “Cleopatra” was a massive failure despite Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Roddy McDowell, Rex Harrison, Martin Landau and more.  Over the entire lifetime of the film it’s only barely made a profit.

What brings all this to mind is the latest rumor in Hollywood that a bunch of big name stars want to work together.  Martin Scorcese, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Robert DeNiro are talking about doing a, big surprise, mafia movie together.  

In the end a lot of these movies suffer from a simple problem.  When you’ve got that much star power and that many egos on the screen how do you keep them all happy?  In the end the movie gets run by screen time needs rather than story needs.

That of course is the real ticket to box office success more often than not.  A great cast can only do so much with a rotten script.  But a great script?  Well that’s what turns actors into stars.  I’ll take a “Mystic Pizza” or “Juno” over “Batman and Robin” or “Ishtar” any day.  Keep the stars, just don’t lose the story.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Google Cars

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

As with everything in this world folks usually have an opinion about just about everything.  In the media world for example you may love Apple or hate it.   Facebook, love it or hate it.  I hear from both sides of the fence on all the issues.  So let me be upfront and say that I really like Google.  I use a lot of Google services - Gmail, Reader, Documents, Calendar and more.  I also know that a lot of folks think that Google is trying to take over the world.  I always thought that concept was a little over the top.  Just a bit heavy on the hyperbole.

Now, well maybe I’m not so sure.  At the very least I wonder if Google is sticking it’s nose in where it doesn’t need to be.

As long as I’m being upfront then I need to be honest about something else for this story.  I love cars and driving.  Given that my everyday job covers the seven western counties of the state that’s a good thing.  I grew up in a car family.  My dad was a gear head from way back.  I had to be able to describe the workings of an internal combustion engine (among other things) before I was allowed to drive his cars.  Cars are a serious subject in my family.

Where do these two truths intersect?  Well it seems that Google is going to take the latest shot at creating...the self driving car.  The concept has been around for decades.  Remove that fallible human driver and replace it with an infallible computer.  Now I’ve seen the way some of you drive and I certainly think that some of you could be replaced for a great social benefit.

But I still hate this idea.  First because I’m not convinced that the system could be built to really deal with all the possibilities out there.  Second because even as much as I like Google it still screws up too often for me to turn my driving over to them.  I’ve seen the statistics on highway deaths and I’d love to bring them down.  When your solution is to take responsibility out of the hands of the users you’re basically saying they’re too stupid to get any better.  Want to save lives on the highways?  Make it harder to get a license, require re-testing periodically of ALL drivers.  Google has lots of good ideas but this is a bad one.

You want a good one?  Everyone ought to learn how to drive, not just operate a car.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Ganging up on Apple

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

This is America. And in America we are all about being number one, the top dog, the big cheese. Second place is first loser. Winning isn’t everything it’s the only thing. You get the drift. But what’s the downside of being at the top of the competitive food chain? That’s easy. All your competitors agree on one thing. They’re out to get you. That bullseye may be fitting a little tightly for the folks at Apple right now.

Of course it’s not the first time that folks have come gunning for Apple. People have been taking runs at the iPod for a while, the battle to conquer the iPhone is hot and heavy. But at the moment the size of the competition joining forces is a little bit more impressive. There are two moves afoot that may take a bite out of the Apple superiority.

First we have two of the most hated opponents talking. Word leaked out that Microsoft and Adobe have been having high level talks of late. Exactly why their two top execs are getting chummy isn’t clear but Apple certainly figures to be a major topic. Steve Jobs hasn’t had a lot to say positive about either of these two digital giants. Meanwhile he holds something of a stranglehold on the mobile phone market where both Microsoft and Adobe would like to be much bigger players. Rumors range widely on the talks including the possibility that Microsoft might buy Adobe. That could make a formidable opponent to Apple.

Meanwhile on the iPad front a group of major newspapers are banding together to throw their collective support behind the not yet available Google powered Samsung tablet computer. Apple has been playing its accustomed games in trying to control the what and how users can access things on their products and the newspapers are pushing back. It’s no small time cabal either. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today are planning on applications for the Samsung Galaxy tab computer. Those are products which draw a lot of eyes.

To be honest I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Apple. Most of this has been brought on by Apple’s decision to make their world as much of a walled garden as possible. Plus being everyone’s punching bag comes with the territory when you decide to go for the top in the big leagues.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Jamestown Writes 2

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

The Jamestown Writes project got off to a roaring start this past weekend.  In case you’re wondering if you’re going to hear about this EVERY week for the next two months I promise you’re about to get a break after this one.  I promise.

But I wanted to share with everyone what happened with our first meeting.  First I was really excited to see over 10 people who had called in in advance.  Not everyone could make the first meeting but we picked up at least one person whose name wasn’t on the list so that was pretty cool.  By the way if you missed the first meeting don’t worry.  Just show up when you can.

The second exciting thing for me was the diversity of the group.  We have poets and novelists and flash fiction writers.  We’ve got people that have been writing for years and some who are just getting started.  One member is currently editing a novel of more than 150 thousand words!  Another has had their words performed in public.  College students, farmers, school librarians and more.  Perhaps not so suprising a fair number of us have already taken a shot at the National Novel Writing Challenge before.  But not everyone.  So it’ll be an interesting group to work with over the next couple months.

We spent our first meeting just going over the concept of Jamestown Writes, introduced ourselves, talked about resources and software that are available.  We also spent some time talking about the question of time and space for writing.  And right off the bat we found the ways that we’re different.  I just plug in my iPod, hit shuffle and listen to whatever comes up (I do it while I write these programs as well.  I’ve just listened to The Weavers, James Taylor and Sarah Vaughn), meanwhile two other members need specific “soundtracks” for their project and one member said he needed complete silence!

Again Jamestown Writes is a project supported the Chautauqua County Council for the Arts.  The cost is free and if you’re interested, you’re invited.  Saturday mornings at 10 in the Wright Gallery at the Arts Council building on Third Street in Jamestown.  

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Coupons

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

There is an assumption that the digital world will inevitably win out over older competitors in every field. So it’s instructive to take a look at one area where it just isn’t happening. There’s an old line media that so far has held it’s own against the digital onslaught and in fact is doing quite well for itself right now. It’s called the coupon.

Yes, the simple coupon, which would seem to be easy pickings for the digital usurper in fact is doing very well for itself right now. Because of the slow economy people are looking for ways to cut costs and that’s always been prime time for the coupon industry. So common wisdom would say that now is the time for the digital versions to make their move. Lots of people looking to use the product and a general move towards doing more by computer anyway.

The statistics show a different story. 80% of people get coupons in their newspapers, 69% prefer to get theirs through the mail. That’s not to say that folks don’t use online coupons. 78% have printed out an online coupon at least once in their lives. And overall coupon use is up, from 24% two years ago to 28% in the latest survey. 43% of Americans note that they are using more coupons this year than last.

So why is the old fashioned coupon hanging on? Well the most common reason why folks don’t use online coupons is simply that they’ve never found one that interested them. The top reasons for using them seemed rather limp to me - they could be printed on demand and created less waste. On the other hand I think the reasons for using the old fashioned coupon were more energized - they’re “easy to use”, “ready to use right away” and “more convenient”.

The lesson I think is to be found right there. At any time but perhaps especially in tough times people don’t want to be made to work harder for a deal. Sure online coupons are high tech and state of the art and cutting edge. On the other hand if you’re cutting out your coupons all you need is a pair of scissors.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Comic History

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

I love the comics in the newspaper. In fact I love them so much I generally read the paper backwards. Funnies first, headlines last. One of the primary reasons why I will mourn the passing of the classic newspaper is reading the funny pages.

So the past week included an important series of landmarks for those of us who love the comics in all forms.

Let’s start with the senior most member of the clan. October 2marked the 60th anniversary of the characters in Charles Schulz’s comic “Peanuts”. Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Lucy and Linus are such standard part of our world today it’s hard to imagine a world where they didn’t exist. What’s also hard to imagine is a single artist telling a story for 50 years in over 17 thousand strips distributed to 26 hundred newspapers in 75 countries and 21 languages. What is most amazing is the depth of the intellectual content that Schulz managed to insert over that lifetime. Peanuts is arguably the greatest comic strip ever created.

Last week also marked the 50th anniversary of the Flintstones. Different from Peanuts in that it is an animated cartoon Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty have staked their own place in our popular culture. Again it’s easy to brush off the Flintstones’ place in media history but quite simply without the Flintstones there isn’t The Simpsons. This was a prime time cartoon and one that did social commentary albeit without the edge of Homer, Bart, Lisa and Marge. Yet it was still a top show for several years and achieved its place in history with only a 6 year original run.

Finally just this past Sunday the kid in this group, with a mere 36 years under its belt, called it quits. “Cathy” created by Cathy Guisewite ended with a Sunday full color cartoon where our heroine finally moves into the next phase of her life, as a mother herself. The comic strip provided its own brand of social commentary by gently chiding women about the “Four Basic Guilt Groups” - food, love, mom and work. Guisewite is the only one in this group that got to call her own shot on when things were over. Schulz continued working right up to his death, The Flintstones got canceled. Cathy Guisewite decided it was time. She called the decision agonizing but felt it was time to spend more time with her own family.

My thanks to them all for having made my world a little bit funnier.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Facebook Movie

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

While I talk about movies on this program I don’t do many movie reviews. But when a movie comes along that’s about social media it just seemed too obvious to pass up. Last week I went to see “The Social Network” better known to many folks simply as the Facebook movie.

The movie tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook. It’s an excellent movie and is being compared in some quarters to “Citizen Kane”. Certainly the story lines are similar. Aaron Sorkin, the brains behind the TV hit series “The West Wing”, wrote a brilliant script that does take some liberties with the facts. Zuckerberg calls the entire movie fiction.

But what really grabbed me beyond the acting and the script is how this movie is different from “Citizen Kane”. I never felt any sympathy for Kane. For the uber-nerd version of Zuckerberg presented in the movie I will admit to a fair bit of sympathy. I would certainly never do business with him without a dozen lawyers at my side but you could say the same about any big business man. Maybe it’s the nerd boy in my own history but I understand how Mark Zuckerberg ends up where he does. His character is totally socially inept, smarter than most people in the room and looked down on by the social elite. When he’s given money, power, the interest of beautiful women, the chance to dump on the jocks and the favor of his geek superhero(played superbly by Justin Timberlake) his character’s ethical compass is lost. That doesn’t excuse what he does but I have to admit I understand how he gets there.

The movie is one sided. It’s based mostly on the version of history from Zuckerberg’s former best friend and partner Eduardo Savarin. So approach the historical aspect with great caution. The whole girl friend motivation from the first scene is total fiction. Like Citizen Kane this is a magnificent examination of the effect of power on flawed personalities. Just don’t be surprised if you come away from the movie feeling more sorry towards Zuckerberg than angry.

It might not be a bad thing from Mark Zuckerberg to watch “Citizen Kane”. Here’s hoping that Mark finds the way to avoid his very own “Rosebud” moment.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Jamestown Writes

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

I had my daughter Rachel on the show last week to talk about a new project that we’re facilitating this year called Jamestown Writes. We talked a little about the how and a lot about the when but didn’t spend a lot of time talking about the why. So I thought I’d give it a shot.

Story telling is a fundamental part of the human being and all the societies we create. Most of what I talk about on this program every week is really nothing more than story telling. Books, movies, TV shows, all stories. Play video games? More stories. When you get together with friends what do you do? You tell stories. For me Jamestown Writes is about helping people to tell stories. To help people tell stories better.

Story telling is both a gift and a craft. There’s a scene in the movie “My Favorite Year” where two characters discover that you can teach the craft of story telling (it’s amazing how simple most of it is) but you can’t teach the art. I believe that a lot more people have that gift for the art than think they do. The great thing about writing your story is that you don’t have to worry about stage fright. Not everyone is as comfortable in front of an audience as I am. So writing, an essentially solitary endeavor, is a way that allows anyone to tell a tale.

If you’ve always wanted to write but can think of any number of reasons why you can’t come join us at Jamestown Writes. We’ll help you get past those obstacles you think are in your way. If you’re already a writer and you’re looking for community and support join us at Jamestown Writes. Come share with us how you approach the problems and the craft of writing.

Jamestown Writes will meet Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at the Wright Gallery at Arts Council building in Jamestown. There is no cost thanks to a grant from the Arts Council. You don’t have to make every meeting. On Saturday the 9th we’ll gather, introduce ourselves and see where we need to go, and what we want to do. Our hope is that folks will want to take a stab at the National Novel Writing Month but even that will be left up to you. We’ve scheduled meetings through December 4. Where we go from there is anyone’s guess.

If you’re interested call Len Barry at the Arts Council.

But first and foremost come tell your story.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

Just a fanboy at heart

Really nice mash up of Star Wars and Star Trek. And yes, I'd pay to see this movie. Over and over. h/t to Matthew McNutt, my fellow Star Wars/Star Trek geek.