I Wonder What I Would Have Said if, Seven Years Ago, You Would Have Told Me That I'd Be Reading Classic Henry Copeland Metaphors About Blogging in my Hometown Paper: Or that I'd be working there. Budapest Business Journal forever!

03/17/2007 11:44 PM  | 

New Column From Me -- "Ease up on the Insecure Boosterism, L.A.: Yes, our apocalyptic phase went way too far, but the pendulum has swung dangerously toward petty boosterism": Excerpt:

Instead of enjoying and grappling with criticism and fictions for what they're worth, we're now treating ZIP Codes like war medals and issuing the dreariest of literary jaywalking tickets, especially when the perpetrator has the bad manners to pine for bagels or thin-crust pizza.

So, former New York Times correspondent Charlie LeDuff gets criticized for doing a kayaking-down-the-L.A.-River story because, like, that's totally been done before (he also failed to properly credit his predecessors, but that was a separate issue). Roderick, over at his valuable LA Observed website, busts the campaign staff of Barack Obama for misstating the nickname of Occidental College as "Occi" instead of "Oxy." The Times' Michael Newman (my boss, incidentally) pens an account of how the new L.A. Marathon route through downtown warehouses and freeway underpasses led him to conclude that "much of Los Angeles isn't very pretty," and the Daily News' Mariel Garza goes ballistic about the "mid-level editors at the Times from Away who are so keen to tell Angelenos how crappy their city is."

But much of the city is on the ugly side, my fellow L.A. patriots!

03/17/2007 11:44 PM  |  Comment (1)

OK, You Star Wars Fanatics, Riddle Me This: So, last weekend they had all the Star Warses on all the HBOs, so I flipped through and watched the last 45 minutes or so each of the crucial three: Empire, Ewoks, and Sithy-sith. ("Crucial" here refers to the plot-development, not quality, though Empire still kicks it pretty good.)

Anyhoo, it struck me as odd that:
A) The whole goddamned cycle depends on two dramatic events -- Anakin becoming Darth, and Darth remembering his inner Skywalker by chucking the Emperor over the ledge; and
B) Those two events are perhaps the least explicable, least convincing bits in the whole dupla-trilogy.

Seriously, George Lucas had nearly 40 years to come up with a convincing reason & depiction of why and how Anakin got all dark, and the best he could do is make him totally worried about his wife, and the next thing you know the guy's slaughtering a room full of five-year-olds. Huh?

And the thing that struck me about the Return of the Jedi day-new-mont was what the hell was the Emperor's game plan here? He really wanted to set a trap for Luke, bring him in alive along with Daddy Darth, then flip him to the Dark side; I get that. But what was Plan B? Uh, well, he didn't break after the first 10 minutes, so I'll just zap him to death with my blue rays in front of his biological father? Surely there were other options. (Like, I dunno, lock him up until he changes his mind?)

Please advise.

03/16/2007 10:27 PM  |  Comment (5)

Hey, Check Out Our Dust-up Debate on Steroids & Gary Matthews & Such Over at the LAT: It just concluded. It featured Mat "Rev. Halofan" Gleason, who you know; and the New York Sun's Tim Marchman, who you might not but definitely should. Wish we had more baseball writers like him around these parts.

03/16/2007 10:27 PM  |  Comment (1)

Hi! What are you doing down here?