View From the Phlipside - Jack Lalanne

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.
You know it was easy to over look Jack Lalanne.  It seemed like it had always been there.  I remember as a kid back in the '60s seeing him on TV.  There he was in his almost skin tight coverall urging everyone to get up and do some exercises.  He was talking about eating right and working out decades before most of us started paying attention.  Most of us would say the getting healthy craze in the media began in the '80s with things like aerobics and Jane Fonda workouts.  And we would be so very, very wrong.

Jack Lalanne opened one of the first fitness gyms in the United States at age 21 which means it was 1936 when he did it.  The self proclaimed sugar junkie was dedicated to get the country in better shape.  And Jack led the way.

Let me make a confession here.  I never took Lalanne seriously.  He was some goofy old dude who wanted housewives to exercise in their living rooms.  His show looked cheesy to me even by the much less sophisticated standards of '60s middle America.  What I didn't know was that Jack swam from Alcatraz to the San Francisco shore several times, after he turned 40 and handcuffed each time, when he did it at AGE 60 he pulled a thousand pounds of dead weight.  At age 42 he set the world's record with 1,033 pushups in 23 minutes.  I'm not sure I've done that many in my lifetime.  And he kept on doing these kinds of physical feats into his 70s.  In fact Jack kept on working out and working to get us all into shape virtually until his death last week.  His workouts in his 90s were still 2 hours a day which included walking, swimming and lifting weights.  Quite simply Jack believed that getting the country into better shape was a vital ingredient in the success of the United States as a nation.  He invented new workout machines, produced TV shows and videos, urged the elderly and disabled to continue exercising and sold juice makers.

For Jack exercise was king and nutrition was queen.  With the two of them working properly you could live a long and healthy life.  As it turns out as the years have gone by we've discovered an awful lot of what Jack kept teaching back on those cheesy TV shows was right.  Maybe I ought to start paying a little more attention to those ideas.

Jack Lalanne was 96 when he died last week.


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 - Roger Ebert

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 past week saw the debut of a new television program that isn't going to change the world, it's not particularly ground breaking or innovative.  But it's still important enough in both human terms and personal terms that I want to spend this roughly two and a half minutes of our lives talking about it.

Last Friday saw the return of movie critic Roger Ebert to the TV airwaves.  His new show is "Ebert Presents At The Movies".  The show airs on PBS and is the standard two critics reviewing movies format.  Roger's contribution is in a short segment called "Roger's Office" where he weighs in with his own particular brand of commentary on some current movie.  Pretty ho hum.  Until you remember all of Roger Ebert's story.

The quick version says Ebert was the long time movie critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and with Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel he hosted several movie review shows for 23 years.  They perfected the format actually discussing and often disagreeing on the movies before delivering their thumbs up or down.  When Siskel died in 1999 Ebert continued on with another critic for almost 7 more years.  Then thyroid cancer robbed him of his voice and his lower jawbone.  In the new show his Roger's Office pieces will be delivered by either a Stephen Hawking style computer voice or be read by guests from the industry.

That's a great story in and of itself but I also mentioned there was a personal angle to the story.  That's easy.  Siskel and Ebert were the folks who took me from just being a movie fan to being a student of the movies.  Here were two guys, neither of them with the usual TV looks, actually caring enough about the movies to argue about them.  They talked about history and technique and made me understand how much more there could be to the movies.  My love affair with the movies has its roots in those Siskel and Ebert programs, first Sneak Previews and then At the Movies.  They dealt with the movies as stories, as a unique entertainment medium and paid no particular attention to the star power of the cast.  It was a revelation for a young acting student.

So it feels really good to know that Roger is back at what he loves so much.  And I offer this note of appreciation for leading me into that same love affair.  I give the new show two thumbs up.

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

Movies and Books

Been trying to get a few things processed here:

Movies

Wild Hogs - (2007)  This is one of those movies that looks like it might be a lot of fun but you're afraid it's going to be just awful.  Tim Allen, John Travolta, William H. Macy, Martin Lawrence, Ray Liotta, Marisa Tomei, even Jill Hennessy in a small role.  Those are talented people.  In a movie about a group of middle aged guys who like to ride motorcycles and decide to go on a road trip together.  Like I said, could go either way.  In the end this was much more to the good than I feared.  Early on I don't think they trusted the material and went for some cheap, lame sight gags but as they went on it got better.  In the "Additional Material" section the director admits that the script became more of a guideline as the actors just had fun with the roles.  Not a great movie but a lot of fun and an excellent laugh quotient.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - (2008) This one has been on my list for a while.  At almost 3 hours long this was something of a tough sell to watch streamed on my computer.  It's about a man whose body ages in reverse to his life.  The movie felt like it lasted a lifetime to me.  Beyond that Brad Pitt's character Benjamin keeps talking about taking advantage and living the life but never seems to rise above being a rather passive observer of his life.  His love affair with Cate Blanchett's character Daisy is interesting as their physical ages flow past each other in opposite directions.  I disliked their final meeting, it just rang as selfish on Benjamin's part to me and the whole wraparound narration was fine except - what on earth was the point of including Hurricane Katrina?  It was totally unnecessary.  So I kinda liked this one.  But expecting more from it (rather than the lower expectations of Wild Hogs) it scored lower than the decidedly lesser comedy.

Books

Been doing some reading on my Nook Color so these are e-books although several of them are also available IRL.

Deadish - Naomi Kramer - A fun, very short book about a girl who is murdered by her boyfriend and haunts him to try and figure out what he did with her body.  It's quite funny and a quick read but with a real let down at the end.  The ending comes out of no where and makes no sense.  Really too bad, otherwise quite good.

The Key to the Da Vinci Code - Stewart Ferris -  I enjoy Dan Brown's books without taking them particularly seriously as either history or theology.  He writes a good story that's fun to read.  But there is history behind it and I hoped to delve a little deeper into with this book.  My advice?  Don't bother.  What a total waste of time.  The key to Mr. Ferris is that he doesn't like the church and he thinks the Bible is total propaganda.  He starts off talking like an objective historian but quickly slides into the assumption that of course the Holy Grail is the blood lineage of Jesus.  Without offering the tiniest smattering of support.  Rubbish.

Shakespeare in an Hour- Christopher Baker - What a great book(part of a series on playwrights) that introduces you to the person behind the plays.  Some time is spent looking at the work but it's mostly getting to know Shakespeare as best we are able in his context.  An excellent read, I was honestly sorry it was done.

Syndrome - Thomas Hoover - This is a nookbook, in other words, FREE!  Full length novel in the manner of Michael Crichton.  It's about stem cell research and the nefarious uses that an evil corporation might put it to.  Not badly written and I enjoyed it immensely.  I have another of his books in my queue to read.  This one displayed a problem I've run into with a couple e-books.  The font changes from a serif to a non-serif font for no apparent reason.  Plus sentences get broken peculiarly resulting in strange
settings on the
page.  Just like this one.  Weird.

Blackout - Connie Willis - First e-book that I borrowed from the local library.  The story of time traveling historians who go back to the period of the Second World War and discover that they might just be stuck.  Ran into some of the same kinds of e-book weirdness I mention above but another good story.  The characters sometimes irritate me because they're rather easily panicked at times but I think it's believable because they see time travel as so every day and predictable that when it goes wrong they're not prepared to deal with it.  What I wasn't prepared to deal with was the publisher's decision to tear this book in half for no apparent reason.  There was no indication prior to the last page when you suddenly discover "The exciting end of Blackout is in Connie Willis's next book "All Clear" "  Really ticked me off.  Plus the library currently own a copy of the ebook or the physical book!  Argh.

That's pretty much it so far.  Added another Dick Francis title to my list.  You may simply assume that I love all Dick Francis novels.

Peace

View From the Phlipside - Ricky Gervais

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's Golden Globes award program ended pretty much exactly as anyone paying attention should have it expected it to end.  And yet we've had to endure a week of people weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth over the antics of show host Ricky Gervais.  Color me unsympathetic.

Gervais was rude and insulting to pretty much anyone he could be rude and insulting to, including his supposed employers the Hollywood Foreign Press Association who award the Golden Globes.  So let's review just a little bit.

This was Ricky's second year as host.  There was some mild flap last year especially around the fact that Ricky appeared to do a lot of the show with an alcoholic drink in one hand.  His routine was decidedly more restrained last year but still Ricky Gervais.

That may be the most important factor in all this - we are talking about Ricky Gervais.  A stand up comedian who made his bones by being, well, rude, mean, and inappropriate.  His most famous character is David Brent in the original UK version of "The Office".  The same character is called Michael Scott in the American version but they both maintain Gervais' original persona.  One that is rude and inappropriate.

Then add in a couple more factors.  For this year's broadcast Ricky made sure that he wouldn't have to work from a script.  Now that's just a sound idea since most hosts make it sound like they are in fact reading from a script.  But it also means that Ricky can just be Ricky.  See previous points.  Finally in at least one pre-show interview Gervais said, mostly tongue in cheek I think, that he wanted to do the show in such a way so that he'd never be invited back again.

In the end I guess my question is just what exactly did they expect?  Should we really be all solicitous over the bent feelings of a few Hollywood stars?  He did what good comedy does, points out the flaws of those too likely to take themselves too seriously.  Was some of it uncomfortable?  Absolutely.  In questionable taste?  By some standards sure.  But then Hollywood rarely worries about good taste when it comes to making money or generating a little sizzle.

And that's something Ricky Gervais did very, very well.  He took a second tier awards show and got it some major attention.  The Foreign Press Association should do so well with their hosts EVERY year.  Instead some members are threatening to ban any future movie of his from consideration for the awards.  I'm sure Ricky is crushed.

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 - Nook Color

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.
Two weeks ago I took the plunge into a new realm of media.  One that I wasn't sure I was ever going to be ready for or want to make a part of my life.  But I pulled together some Christmas money and few extra bucks and decided to jump in.  I bought an e-book reader.

I love books.  I love the feel of them, I love exploring the stacks at the library searching for an author I've never read before.  There's a wonderful tactile experience that goes along with the experience of the reading itself.  When I first saw the e-readers I couldn't imagine that they could ever offer the same experience.

On the other hand like my father before me I love gadgets.  Technology is just fun as far as I'm concerned.  I enjoy the challenge of learning to use new technology and finding ways to use it in my life.

The two loves collided in my new Nook Color.  The first thing you need to deal with when you move into this new world is the borderline fanaticism engendered by the various models.  At the top of the heap is the Kindle from Amazon.  The Nook is from Barnes and Noble.  The Borders chains, including Walden books, have their own the Kobo, then there's the Sony versions as well.  Prices start below $100 and go beyond $300.  Each have their fans and it can be as parochial as the old days of PC vs Mac.

I did a lot of research and decided on the Nook Color because it offered more options as far as magazine and newspaper reading.  The biggest factor was that it works very well with e-books from our local library.  The Kindle falls down in that area quite badly.  And yes our local library, the Prendergast Library, does indeed offer a growing collection of electronic books.  I'm telling you, we have a REALLY GOOD local library.

So how's it going?  I must admit mostly quite well.  The experience of reading hasn't been effected at all.  I added a leather cover to the Nook and now it rather looks and feels like a real book.  The range of books available for free is pretty impressive and I've checked out several books from the library as well.  The process you have to through to get your library book onto your e-reader is a few more steps than I wish but it's not hard.  And that's not the libraries problem but the system required by the publishers.  I'm still just feeling my way along.  I'll check back in a couple months and let you know how it's going.

Still lots of reading to do, both virtually and in real life.

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

The View From the Phlipside - Apple Daddy

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 have mentioned before that I have a difficulty with Apple Corporations rather paternalistic attitude toward those of us who buy their product.  Once upon a time Apple was the fiesty little renegade against the big, bad corporate monster over at Microsoft.  Now that Apple has become one of the, if not THE primary force in popular digital hardware it seems like they have decided to exercise their big corporate muscles.

Steve Jobs has made no bones about the fact that he and his company get to decide what their users get to use on Apple products.  Steve doesn't like Flash so you can't use flash.  Apple gets to decide what kind of apps you'll have access to for your iPhone.  If they decide that you don't need access to that kind of information or those kinds of services then you just can't go there.  Somewhere the idea that I'm an adult capable of making my own decisions has gotten shuffled off to the side.  

It may have finally come to a head now with Apple not only trying to dictate to their users what they can do but telling other companies how they can run their businesses.  Apple has now informed several European newspapers that they will not be permitted to offer free electronic versions on the iPad.  Two Dutch newspapers (and I'll spare you my attempt at saying the Dutch names) were offering their print subscribers free subscriptions to the electronic iPad version.  Not any more says Apple.  The reason is pretty obvious.  Apple wants their cut.  Currently Apple gets about a third of the payment for any subscription or purchase made through the Apple store.  Well if the newspapers are giving the electronic subscription away there's no profit for Apple.  So they simply inform other companies how they will run their businesses on the iPad.  Other publishers including American magazines and newspapers are having similar problems with Apple's determination to control every aspect of the experience and the business models of iPad services.

From the users point of view someone wants to give us something for free and Apple is deciding we can't have it.  And to be honest I'm getting sick and tired of it.  I love my iPod and I like my iPhone.  At the moment they are the last Apple products I'm likely to buy.  Because for all their faults it appears that the big bad corporate types over at Microsoft have more respect for me than Apple does.  And I'll remember that.

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

The View From the Phlipside - A Social Revolution

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.

It's very easy to sit back and make fun of the social networks phenomenon and the people who are deeply involved in it.  It's a kind of current cheap and easy superiority.  At least it was easy until you heard the news out of Tunisia last week.

In case you missed it Tunisia, a country on the northern edge of the continent of Africa, changed government in the most fundamental way.  The former president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who had held absolute power in the country for 23 years was driven out by massive demonstrations by the Tunisian people.  Now that's a real nice feel good kind of a story.  If you take a look at the details you realize that it's a rather amazing media story along the way.  Think about it, one of the advantages of being the ruler of a third world country is that it is very easy to control people's access to information.  For most of the last century you just needed control of three things - TV, Radio and the press.  The first thing most autocratic regimes do is make sure that TV and Radio are in control of the state.  Nationwide type broadcasting requires big, expensive equipment and permanent locations so they're hard for the opposition to create on their own.  Printing is a little easier but you still are tied down to your printing presses.  Just keep hunting down the printing press and you can put the alternative newspaper/magazine/pamphlets out of business.  The system has worked for dictators for decades now.

Well there's some bad news on the horizon.  Early word out of Tunisia is that much of the organization of the massive demonstrations was done by way of social media.  That's right a national government was brought down by things like Facebook and Twitter.  The government did everything it could to keep people's access to these kinds of sites but on the side of the opposition was an entire generation of young adults with considerable computer skills.  They hacked the firewalls and kept the information flowing.  The very nature of the web worked to the advantage of the opposition and the detriment of the previous regime.  I think we can rely on the fact that other dictators the world over are taking very close notice of this new concept.  That people can freely communicate, that videos can be shared showing what's really going on whether the government likes it or not.

Think about that the next time you sign in to your Facebook account.

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

The View From the Phlipside - One Space or Two?

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.
When it comes to communications media we find the spoken word at the very beginning of it all.  And for someone who's made his living in radio and the like that's probably a very good thing.  After that is probably graphic communication in the form of drawings and art work.  The first real communication technology would be the written word.  And that technology has been around a very long time.  The earliest forms show up starting about 4,000 BC in the Middle East.  So you might think that we've pretty much gotten the technology perfected.  It appears that such an assumption is wrong.

First let's jump back to the dawn of the typewriter.  While it's a quaint, old school technology now once upon a time it was every bit as revolutionary as the personal computer.  Standardized printing of personal or professional messages could be done in just a few minutes by people with only a minimal amount of training.  They did have one small problem at the time.  The early typewriters used what is called  mono-spaced type where every letter and punctuation was given the exact same space on the page.  So a capital D was given the same space on the line as the period.  And it's that period that is causing the problem today.

Today we have proportional spacing of our fonts.  In simplest terms the fat letters get more room than the skinny ones.  Under the old system it was difficult to pick out the end of the sentence because of the mono-spacing.  So at the end of a sentence you placed TWO spaces to make the break clearer.  And that's the argument that has suddenly popped up everywhere it seems.  The question of one space or two at the end of sentence.  Now I'm old enough that I was taught to hit the space bar twice.  But the current argument is that it's no longer necessary because of proportional spacing.  I've experimented and decided that it may be true.

I'm just not sure why anyone cares.  And they care enough that you'll find dueling essays on the subject at the Slate website and the one for The Atlantic.  Really, does it matter?  The first person who tries to convince me that dropping the second space will save them time over the course of their lives I just might do physical violence to.  Maybe this is a sign of just how mature this technology is that we are reduced to arguing about such trivial points.

Or maybe it really is just trivial.

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 - Future of TV

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 was talking last week about the ongoing demise of the daily newspaper in America.  I'm interested to note the very different approach being taken by another old line media whose obituary seems to appear every year these days, television.

It's kind of funny to think about TV as an old line media.  The reality is that for most Americans TV has only been a presence in our homes for slightly over 50 years. 

While newspapers seem resigned to the end Television apparently has decided not to go down without a fight.  The National Association of Broadcasters just ramped up a new campaign to show that TV can still be part of the media future.  The campaign includes a website called thefutureofTV.org (the future of TV is not long on creativity apparently but scores points for being to the point) and is backing it up with ads on both radio and, well big surprise, TV.

Looking out at the landscape of TV technology you'll see plenty of activity too.  HD TV is almost old hat at this point.  While there are still plenty of households to gain for the newer technology I don't think we can call it cutting edge.  I will admit that I thought it was over-hyped till I actually saw some HD broadcasts.  Yes, it really is that much clearer.  Of course the next big thing is supposed to be 3D TV.  My lingering reservations about the whole 3D thing remain.  I'm willing to be convinced but haven't been so far.  Sales of the first round of 3D TVs has been lackluster at best.  You still have to wear those dumb glasses (although its opened up a whole new industry - designer 3D glasses.  I kid you not).  The other thing holding back sales of 3 D TVs, other than the hefty price tag, is the promise that we might be seeing 3D TVs that don't require the glasses as early as this year.  While I sure that manufacturers would love to see their product move into the disposable product category as long as the price tags are in the multiple thousands of dollars category I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Why is all of this of any interest?  Curiously TV viewership is on the rise.  So maybe there's life in the old media yet.  At least enough to make a fight of it.  Nice to see for a change.
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 - Mark Twain

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.

My first reaction to the current Mark Twain controversy was as a book lover and writer.  And that was outrage.  Twain is the first great American novelist, one who wrote from a truly American point of view and with an American voice.  You simply don't mess with the works of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, which was Twain's real name.

The controversy is about a new combined publishing of the books "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer".  To avoid controversy the editor has replaced racially sensitive language like the "N" word with the word "slave".

I hate the N word.  I don't use it and I dislike hearing other people use it.  So part of me agrees that the world might be a better place without the 200 some usages in the books.  But then the writer rears his head again.  Twain chose THAT word and any writer can tell the importance of using the right word in the right place.

And so I looped round and round and round.  Here are the conclusions I've come to:

The publisher is doing this NOT out of any great sense of justice.  They're doing it because they'll be able to sell more books this way.  No judgment there I just want to make sure we're clear on motive.

The real problem here is NOT the word.  The word is a problem, don't get me wrong. But the real problem is that taking on this word, or any other like it, in this fashion is a complete failure in education.  What needs to be done is for teachers to take the time to teach this book in context.  The social context of the time, the background on Twain and his beliefs.  Sadly teachers have less and less time to do this kind of quality, in-depth teaching.  Because they have to "teach to the test" in depth teaching is often the first thing that goes over the side.  To place a 21st century voice in a 19th century mouth is wrong.  To try and paper over the the deep psychic wound of the American soul that is racism and slavery should be anathema to any educator or educated person.  As parents we should demand that our children be taught beyond platitudes and rote formulae.  The ability to understand and analyze complex situations that are outside our common experience should be at the center of our teaching of literature.

Our children, our nation and our future deserve and require that Mark Twain be allowed to be Mark Twain.
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 - Sports Media and Women's Sports

(This is a script from the end of 2010 and that didn't get published to the blog.  Please excuse its tardiness)

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.

Well just to wrap up the year in the proper fashion I have one last story about sports and the media.  For a change it's the media behaving badly instead of the sporting types.

You may have heard last week that the University of Connecticut's womens basketball team set a record for most consecutive wins with 89.  This eclipsed the previous all time win streak held by the great UCLA teams of the 1970's.  And that is where the trouble starts.  You see John Wooden, the head coach at UCLA during those glory years, is also one of the most revered names in the sport of basketball.  And with good reason.  Wooden was everything you want in the ideal coach, dedicated, concerned as much about the quality of the young men he produced as the quality of the basketball players.  And of course he won.  A lot.

When the Lady Huskies tied the record at 88 UConn head coach Geno Auriemma proceeded to blast the sports media in general for what he saw as disrespect for his teams achievement.  The reason for the disrespect in his opinion?  Easy.  Gender.  Because these were "girls" their record didn't really count.  And the sports world went nuts.

They were quick to point out that they had given this team and its record LOTS of coverage, which was true.  The sports media world remains male dominated and dominated by folks who really only care about football, baseball and basketball.  NASCAR, hockey and the Olympics come in the second tier of their attention and women's sports somewhere below that.  And whether they like it or not that bias shone through again.

Because they would praise the UConn women but immediately follow it up with phrases like "Of course it's not the same as the UCLA record".  And my favorite "It's not the same game".  What twaddle.

There are differences but we're not talking the difference between baseball and softball.  It's a round (if slightly smaller) ball and a round hoop and you gotta dribble, pass and shoot.  And 89 straight wins is an astounding feat.  UConn is dominating women's basketball just the way Wooden's Bruins dominated men's.  That should be all that needs to be said other than praising one of the great teams and coachs of our time.  If you're of the "they're only girls" mind set then you should be even MORE impressed when the ladies match the standards set by the men.

Sadly  sports writers still maintain a bias against women's sports just as they maintain a bias against sports they didn't play as children or understand.  The sports world's treatment of women in general continues to be abysmal and they should be ashamed of it.  We need more folks like Geno who are willing to look the old boys network in the eye and tell it like it is.

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 - Net Neutrality

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 last big news story of the year for the world wide web will no doubt be the first big news story of next year as well so let's get ourselves ready for it.  That means dipping our commentary toe into the subject of net neutrality once again.

Net neutrality is the idea that the world wide web should be a level playing ground for everyone.  You should be able to get the same access as General Motors and Google and the New York Times.  In other words the situation has it has been for the last decade.  All of that changed on December 21 when the FCC handed down their latest rules on the subject.

I've noted before that I have serious doubts about the FCC's ability to deal with 21st century media.  Based on a court ruling this past April the courts seem to agree with me.  The Commission was created as part of a sweeping attempt to control the airwaves back in the early 1930's.   The FCC was set up to watch over what was deemed to be the "public airwaves" but today they are dealing with a network of privately and corporately owned computer networks that make up the actual web.  It creates a whole new set of challenges.

Their latest answer to this is to pass their first ever internet access rules.  There is a huge debate over the rules that will probably end up in court sometime in 2011.  In simplest terms the FCC has left open the door that service providers can create a "fast lane" on the web.  That means a higher speed service for people who can pay more.  It also leaves open the ability for the service providers to censor what goes out over the web.

Now my first reaction to the fast lane concept was somewhat ambivalent.  I mean isn't it the American way, if you can pay more you can get more?  Not everyone in the world gets to drive a Bugatti Veyron, the fastest production car in the world.  Upon further reflection I realized its not the same thing.  The concern is that the loopholes will allow large corporations to suppress the ability of small start ups to develop new services because they'll be stuck in the "slow lane".  And as selling "fast lane" access becomes more profitable how much less money and development will spent on the part of the web where the regular user resides?

Net neutrality may seem like some arcane bit of regulation that has nothing to do with you and your web surfing experience.  In the best of all possible worlds with the best of all possible FCCs that might be true.  But then we know better than that, don't we?

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 - Movie Sequels

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've discovered the perfect way to watch a movie sequel.  Go with someone who never saw the original.  That may sound like the most annoying way to see a movie sequel but it has its advantages.  Which I'll explain.

First by movie sequel I don't mean another movie in a movie serial.  A movie serial is one that is telling basically the same story over several movies, like Lord of the Rings or maybe Harry Potter.  A sequel is designed to be able for the most part to stand on its own.  Note that I say "for the most part".  It still requires some basic background along with it that is essential to understanding what's going on.  So we got the ground rules established?  Good.  I just saw a sequel that screwed that simple formula up.

When "Tron" came out in 1982 I was johnny on the spot to see it.  As a long time science fiction fan I am always interested to see what was next.  Tron did an impressive job bringing us a great new look to what was a pretty standard story line.  But it all took place inside a computer program!  Loved it, flaws and all.   Lo these many years later along comes "Tron-Legacy" and I definitely want to take my computer and movie loving daughter to see it.  Logically I figure we'll rent the original and see it first.  Turns out you can't get a copy of the original from Netflix so she'll see the sequel cold.

Visually the movie is once again generally stunning.  The process used to "turn back the clock" on Jeff Bridges results in some astoundingly wooden visuals for his digital twin Clu.  But the real problem was for my daughter.  Tron-Legacy does such a rotten job of bringing us back into the time and place of the story that she never really understood what all the fuss was about.  There was so little attempt to remind us what went before that when the title character makes a supreme sacrifice I have to admit even I didn't care all that much.  I assume that they were counting on past movie fans and fans of the games, comics and TV show to know all this.  I've never seen anything except the movie.  No mention of Master Control Program or the other baddies.  A garbled back story for the original hero's son, a vague swipe at what happened to Tron (who, given that the movie bears his name, REALLY gets the short end of the stick in this sequel) and, standard for an action flicks, several long chase/fight scenes that could have been several minutes shorter.

Then they could have used those minutes to do something radical, like tell 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

Books - 3 Mysteries

I've been on a bit of a mystery roll right now.  This forms an interesting trio of books.  Three mysteries, two about kidnapping, all about mind games, one a private eye story, one a police procedural, and one something a little different..  Two are very good and one, well...

The Danger - Dick Francis - I read my first Dick Francis this past summer and really enjoyed it.  The joy continued with this one.  Francis tells the story of a man who specializes in dealing with high end kidnapping.  As always with Francis it takes place around the horse racing track.  What really got me was the glimpse inside the process of a kidnapping.  Most of the basics were obvious or already known to me.  But it's the approach to the victim that fascinated me.  The lingering pain and shame that can cling to the kidnapped after they've been returned home.  The story was compelling and sucked me right in.  The writing is excellent with an easy, seemingly casual tempo to the action that in fact belies a tightly written story.

U is for Undertow - Sue Grafton - I didn't realize that I'd read quite this many Kinsey Milhone stories, lol!  The California female private eye lives her life her own way and likes it that way.  An old kidnapping case lands her lap and Kinsey can't quite get herself to let go.  In the meantime the prickly subject of family is forced on her one more time.  This time things have to change.  If you're a Milhone/Grafton fan you won't want to miss this one.  Sue Grafton has a really firm grip on the character and the world she lives in and you'll appreciate that mastery.  It's a good story told well.  But if we're at U does that mean there are only four more stories left for Kinsey?  That would be very sad.

Coyote's Wife - Aimee and David Thurlo - With the death of Tony Hillerman two years ago I thought I'd had my last chance for a mystery novel set in the Navajo reservation.  When I spotted these novels on the shelf I was excited.  The Thurlo's have written a whole series featuring Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah.  It was a  funny feeling like I was re-visiting my old stomping grounds as Clah journeys through the same area as Jim Chee had done before.  The story focuses on the clash between traditional and modern Navajo culture as a new cell phone service is proposed for the Rez.  One man gets the "gaslight" treatment and Clah has to figure out who is behind it all.  The story is quite interesting but the writing kept getting in the way.  At times the Thurlos do a nice job but periodically it descends into the kind of writing that got sent back to me in my high school writing classes with the words "Try again".  The phrasing is awkward and overly formal.  The sentence structure is cumbersome.  To be honest even with a great character and good stories I'm amazed that the writing is till this stilted 13 books into the series.  I will probably try another simply because I like the characters but the writing may be a real stumbling block.  Too bad.

Working on another Dick Francis right now while I await the next BIG THING, my new Nook Color WiFi.

View From the Phlipside - Social Networking Worries

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.

You can't turn around without running into social media any more.  We've got movies about it, Time magazine made its most successful promoter its Man of the Year this year.  I saw a letter in Dear Abby the other day where a son told his mother the only way he would be giving her any details about the grandkid was if she joined a social network.  No profile, no photos or stories to share at bridge club Grandma.

I'll admit that I kind of like some of the social media.  Oh all right I'll admit, I enjoy Facebook.  It's one of the first things I check in the morning, I have the app for it on my iPhone and I check it before I call it a day.  And that grossly underestimates the number of times I check it during the day.  At the same it makes me feel a bit uneasy sometimes.  If you haven't drunk the Kool-Aid yet and are wondering if it's just you here's some reassurance.

It's not just you.

Late last year late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel declared a "National De-Friend Day" because he realized that social networks like Facebook put an emphasis on things that aren't really important.  And creates "friends" out of people that are just acquaintances or sometimes even people you just really don't like.  Maybe we do need to treat the concept of friend with a little more respect.

Beyond Kimmel you'll find the real inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee,  is also no fan of social networks.  He sees the Facebook approach of walling in information as a threat to the very essence of what he had created.  A closed network goes against the very ideas that were behind creating the web in the first place.  It was to be wide open, a vast shared resource where our information would be ours to control. 

  I worry about folks who think they have privacy on the web.  I also worry about people who think that people you only know on Facebook constitute "family".  While technology has raced ahead in our ability to connect to one another the basic human method of creating community hasn't changed.  We need to be careful about the level of emotional investment we place on our online relationships.  While those relationships can be profound, they are also much more complicated and diverse.  That means they need their own emotional ranking system.

Digital communication has the ability to isolate and alienate.  Now it's attempting to fill that void with relationships that may not offer the depth we expect.  Handled carefully the social network can be a great addition to our lives.  Handled with less care and we may find greater problems lurk just below the surface.
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 - The Future for Newspapers

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 steady tolling of the death knell for the newspaper as we know it continues.  The question has always been what happens next and a possible answer to that may be cresting the hill even as we speak.

The latest bad news for the current newspaper industry is that advertising sales online will surpass newspaper ads for the first time ever.  That's even if you include both print and online advertising of the newspapers together.  More advertising buyers are shifting their dollars to where they believe the eyeballs are and that's online.  The projection for 2011 is that online ads will generate just north of 28 billion dollars while total advertising, print and digital, for the newspaper industry will be only slightly more than 21 billion dollars.  2010 saw an almost 14 per cent increase in digital and just over an 8 percent drop in newspaper ads.  The weak economy seemed to hurry some advertisers out the door into the digital age and the economic upturn isn't seen as being all that kind to newspapers either.  None of this is much of a surprise to anyone it may simply be that we've passed the tipping point finally.

Which leaves the question of "What's next?".  A possible answer to that seems to be ready to debut on January 17 when News Corp.'s iPad newspaper "The Daily" debuts.    Of course it was supposed to debut last month so you may not want to hold your breath.  What exactly will "The Daily" bring us?  It will be a daily electronic newspaper that will cost you 99 cents a week to get.  It will make use of video and lots of other multi media stuff (as yet undefined) and maybe even some 3D effects.  I have no doubt that old time newspaper folk all over the country are turning up their noses.  At least those who still have jobs, for the moment.  It's not the way it used to be done, even if you define "the way it used to be done" as recently as the last decade.  The same pooh poohing was heard when USA Today arrived.  Since 1982 McNewspaper, as it was sneeringly named by its critics, has become the print newspaper with the widest circulation in the U.S.  There may be a lesson to be learned there.

I believe that the kind of journalism that the daily newspaper has been home to for several centuries is a vital part of the democratic process.  So while I have certain reservations about "The Daily" (namely it's parent corporation and the fact that it's chained to the iPad) I think it is a vital development in journalism and the news.

Journalists generally hate BEING the news.  Never the less this may be the most important day and story in journalism in any of our lifetimes.  It's not just a business story but has a profound effect on all our basic freedoms.

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

Theological Thoughts - On Michael Vick

I've been hearing another round of uproar about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick.  There are many dog lovers for whom Vick, convicted in 2007 on charges of running a dog fighting kennel and executing some of those dogs with great cruelty, will be forever outside the pale.  Recently Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson said that he believed, as a Christian no less, that Vick should have been executed for those crimes.  Vick served 23 months in federal prison in Leavenworth Kansas.  That's not a "country club" minimum security facility.

He accepted responsibility for his actions.  He plead guilty to the charges and served his time.  He's acknowledged that what he did was wrong and is attempting to make amends.  To the best of my knowledge he hasn't gone back to his old ways.

But for some people what he did is unforgivable.

Unforgivable.

That's a tough word.  And even tougher if, like the self professed person of faith Tucker Carlson, you are a Christian.

Because that word has no place in our theological vocabulary.

I'm aware of only one unforgivable sin - blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  The intentional rejection of God's grace and mercy.  Not that you don't believe in them but rather you just reject them out of hand.  It's a hardness of heart issue.  That's it.  The only one that is unforgivable.

Somehow I think Michael Vick comes up short on that basis.

So why are so many people adamant about what's "unforgivable"?  Well first note that my argument only applies to faithful Christians.  Other faiths may have other attitudes and folks outside the life of faith are always able to make their own rules as they go.  As Christians we have no standing what so ever to hold this point of view.  First because we know it's not our job to pass this kind of judgement (not that it stops us).  Second because we know that we too have sinned and need to be forgiven.  In fact we lay out the standards for our own forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer - forgive us as we forgive others.  No forgiveness for Michael Vick?  Under the terms of your verbal contract with the Big Guy you can be denied forgiveness yourself.

Ouch.  Hey Tucker, want to re-think that comment?

Forgiveness is at the center of our faith.  It is the very heart of what it is to be a follower of Christ.  Look at the crucifix (no fair cheating with a cross that does not bear the likeness of the body of the savior.  Crucifix only, please) and decide that you are prepared or even fit to deny another human being forgiveness.  Repeat the words of the Lord's Prayer, and then say that Michael Vick is unforgivable.

He's done what is required.
You don't have to like him.
But you do have to forgive him.

Because to not do so is a sin.

Peace