The Daily News
So...Jimmy Carl Black walks into a bar...
special thanks to Goof for the news.
Jimmy didn't want anyone to be sad.
1 I just read this hysterical article on AOL about some drunk lady who had to be duct taped to a seat on an airlplane because she was outta control.
2 She had been obnoxious and later jumped on some blind lady's head, screaming and going crazy.
3 They had to land the plane she was going so berserk, but before they did, the flight attendants were forced to break out some rolls of duct tape and tape her to her seat.
4 You gotta love a story like that.
5 I gotta respect her rowdiness. Not only did she land on some poor lady's head, she had to be constrained and taken down with duct tape.
6 When did it all come down to this?
7 Moving on, Maybe: "If you're not making someone else's life better, then you're just wasting time."--Will Smith
8 I watched a little Oprah last night at around 1:30 a.m. Will Smith came on and was his usual charming and enlightening self.
9 I'm a Will Smith fan. Not a HUGE Will Smith fan, just a basic Will Smith fan. I always thought he was a guy who is famous because he actually has talent as well as a good work ethic.
10 I think I bring this up because of things like the duct-tape lady.
11 The contrast of an article about some goofball drunk lady and an Oprah interview with Will Smith, while trite, is also pretty revealing about where we are headed, or perhaps about what we have become.
12 What passes for entertainment nowadays is a part of it all. But really, the absolute idiocy of the mass media in 2008 is also part of it.
13 Gossip and celebrity have certainly replaced any form of news nowadays. Even the recent election seems more a contrived race for ratings rather than anything remotely resembling substance.
14 I say all this in part because of the duct-tape lady AND of the sincerity of Will Smith. There was something that drew me in about both, and I'm not quite sure what.
15 A lady getting duct-taped to an airline seat seemed perfect fodder for the DN. The initial image alone was funny, not only because of the image proper, but also because of the very concept that a fully grown adult had to be taped to a seat. Maybe it was because the airlines didn't have an alternate plan for obnoxious "guests". I don't know. I just loved that duct tape was the ultimate solution, as it is the ultimate solution for so many of our emergencies in life.
16 In between the AOL story and the Oprah moments with Smith, I found myself watching a litte teevee, as always. My teevee is perpetually on, even though I rarely watch anything for more than a few glances an hour. It's replaced the lava lamp for giving glow to a room
17 Hey, some people have fish tanks. Some have fireplaces. Some still have lava lamps, although I fancy they may be sitting on somebody's work bench in their garage. I have the teevee.
18 Anyway, I also stumble upon complete and unadulterated idiocy on teevee. You don't have to go far to find that. Last night I stumbled upon this horrid show called TMZ, which stands for "Thirty-Minute Zone".
19 It is a papparazzi smorgasboard of celebrities falling down, of people slurring words, of others unbottoned, or anything else that seems to pass for news these days. I couldn't believe what I was watching: just these mean guys who make their cheap livings chasing around celebrities who aren't wearing make-up, or who are drunk, or who trip down stairs.
20 And here I always thought the DN was full of boushit.
21 I just remember back to the days of typewriters and real newspapers and journalism when sensationalism and "yellow" journalism were considered raunchy and cheap. These days, whatever sells becomes news, and often the news reporters are also the newsmakers.
22 TMZ is arguably the worst of the lot. It makes Entertainment Tonight and other tabloid teevee look like the New Yorker.
23 And what REALLY makes it absurd is that the show is sponsored by AOL/Time Warner.
24 That's Time, as in Time Magazine, and Warner as in Warner Bros.
25 Makes the DN look like it's in line for a Pulitzer.
26 The "thirty-minute zone", btw is the area within Hollywood where you don't have to pay any extra money for your people to travel. So in a sense this trashy show prides itself in it's own cheapness.
27 btw. That's AOL-ese for "by the way".
28 Thank goodness Smith appeared on Oprah just afterwards. He brought a bit of class to the entire celebrity thing by championing people going out and helping others and contributing something of substance to society.
30 Moving on, Part the Next: It's already Veteran's Day eve, at least in the teaching circles. We go in today and don't return until next Wednesday, all because of Veteran's Day, which is to say, Armistice Day, all of which I've rambled about each November 11.
31 You could probably hit some old DN and find all my rants about Armistice Day and its true meaning, which was originally the moment when World War 1 stopped and there was a sudden silence that Kurt Vonnegut reported soldiers telling him was "the Voice of God".
32 It was on the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month that peace moved all through the planet. It was that moment that all of the madness stopped. A war completely stopped, in a minute.
33 It was called the Armistice.
34 That very important element seems to have disappeared, and in its place a nifty four-day holiday so that Macy's and Sears could sell their stuff.
35 Fair enough, I suppose. It also means we won't have a DN until next Wednesday, so I just wanna wish you all a nice few days in which you could rake leaves, enjoy the Fall, and catch a little football.
36 Keep world peace somewhere in the back of your heads, and think of what that moment must have meant to mankind at one time, and to the soldiers on the field who may still remember the day that they heard the Voice of God.
37 Yours in duct-tape.
38 So long Jimmy. You passed on at 11. Howdja know?
39 Peace.
~H~
Recent Comments