R.I.P. Laugh

Introduce Yourself

One thing I hate about Kerry's recent reactions
I may end up voting for John Kerry in November, but one thing I can't stand about his responses to the recent media questioning over the "throwing the medals away" controversy is how he dismisses it as a Republican smear.

An interviewer will bring up the issue, trying to clear up the matter, and he just dismisses it as a Republican Party attack and then goes on to accuse the Republicans of hypocracy for not serving like he did.

Well, forget the Republicans. Whoever came up with the footage from 1971, where he said something different than what he's been saying since, shouldn't he try to simply explain the apparent contradiction rather than dismissing it?

I'm not a Republican. Dismissing the issue as simply a Republican smear does nothing to ease my own concerns about his ability to level with the American people. This makes me wonder if, in the future, he is ever caught in an apparent contradiction whether he will dismiss any objection as a mere partisan attack. I don't see how that stubbornness and arrogance is any better than Bush's own.

Of course it's smart to turn it back on to the Republicans, blowing any attack back on to them. But it seems to me that first you have to convince the listener that you are telling the truth and that the criticism being leveled against you is indeed unworthy of further discussion. That involves addressing the issue, explaining it to the satisfaction of a fair-minded observer, and then moving on from there to blame the Republicans for raising such a dumb matter. But you can't just skip ahead to blaming the Republicans without addressing the questions, without trying to ease the concerns of some people that wonder whether you are trying to hide something or lying. Skipping ahead to blaming the Republicans doesn't solve the problem; the questions need to be answered first.

Dave Sim's alternative to funding Indian reservations
In the latest issue of Cerebus (#291, which I bought last week), Dave Sim mentions his alternative to the Canadian government's problem of financially supporting Indian reservations. He says that "In a country whose annual military budget is $11 billion, we are spending $7 billion a year subsidizing life on Indian reserves. That works out to approximately $70,000 a year per reserve-resident household."

He goes on to quote a May 9th National Post editorial which states, "But because many Indian reserves are geographically isolated, bereft of significant economic activity, mismanaged and corrupt, this massive investment does little to improve the lives of ordinary Indians. Meanwhile, the only option that will lead to progress in the long term -- a policy that encourages Indians to leave reserves and integrate into urban Canadian society -- is rejected out of hand as culturally insensitive."

Sim proposes the following solution to the problem:

"I think the only sensible approach to the problem is to offer each individual of the native population a choice: a) he or she can join Canadian society, such as it is, and start working his or her butt off like the rest of us to make ends meet or b) he or she can move onto a vast tract of primordial wilderness (of which this country has no shortage whatsoever) which will be left in its pristine original form which it had hundreds and hundreds of years ago before Europeans came to this country and he or she can return to living just the way his or her ancestors did five hundred years ago. BY LAW no modern convenience of any kind will be allowed to sully the immaculate perfection of the eco-balance of that pristine wilderness. BY LAW no hunting rifle, ammunition, fishing rod and/or tackle, toilet paper, Coleman stove, cigarette, packaged or canned food, tampon, Kleenex, television set, electricity, toilet (chemical or standard), telephone, penicillin, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, knife, fork, spoon, plate, pan, bottle, thermos, knapsack, blanket (electric or standard), radio, walkman, VCR, DVD player, satellite dish, beer, wine, spirits nor any other modern convenience with which we Europeans have been steadily eroding the exalted standard of life on this continent for, lo, these many centuries will be permitted AT ANY TIME anywhere in, on or near Firstnationsland. The citizens of Firstnationsland would, of course, be entitled to hunt and fish and farm in whatever proportions they chose to do so and to make any and all of what they deem for themselves to be their basic human necessities out of birch bark, beaver guts and moose antlers. It is my considered opinion that, were such an offer to (be) made, it is very likely that each aboriginal individual electing to choose option b) could probably be given something in excess of five or ten thousand acres to call his or her own since I can't imagine more than ten or twenty people would actually go for it and not one of them would survive the first snowfall anyway."

Would Bush victory in Iraq discredit his critics?
The loud volume of voices critical to Bush's policies toward regime change in Iraq means that there is a lot at stake here. The people who are against Bush's plans for removal of Saddam are putting their reputations on the line by taking that stand. Bush is putting his own political career on the line.

So, the outcome of events in Iraq, the way history judges these times, will reveal who was right and who was wrong. If Bush's plan succeeds and regime change in Iraq leads to democracy there and a more friendly Middle East, will Bush's current critics admit that they were terribly wrong about his plan? If Bush wins this war and achieves this goal, won't his stature only rise as a result, assuring his re-election and making his critics look like frightened fools?

Or, is it more likely that even if Bush wins, his critics will then find something else to complain about, and (since memories are short) the public will forget that Bush's critics were wrong about Iraq?

I think there should be consequences for one's stand.

If Bush is wrong on Iraq and things end up as bad as his critics warn they will, then he should not be re-elected. If he ends up starting WW3 in the gulf, he ought to be impeached and removed from office. (They could impeach and remove Dick Cheney, too, so we're not stuck with him as President, which would be even worse.)

However, if Bush's plan goes ahead as he predicts, and it turns out to be a beneficial thing, then there ought to be consequences for those people who said he shouldn't do it. They should be forced to acknowledge that they were wrong, and so then people will remember next time they open their mouths to protest something.

For the record, I'm against going to war in Iraq, but I have a hunch that Bush's plan, risky as it sounds, could result in a democratic Iraq (without Saddam around) and ultimately be a better situation than the one we've had for the past ten years, particularly for the suffering Iraqi people. And if that's what Bush achieves, then I'll admit that I was wrong about opposing the war. But I get the feeling that a lot of his critics won't similarly own up to being wrong if they turn out to have been on the wrong side in the end.

I bought my first DVD on Wednesday...
...and I don't even own a DVD player. But they were too cheap to pass up.

Actually I bought two DVDs, not just one.

I had noticed on Tuesday that the local K-Mart store had some DVDs priced at $2.50, including two from an apparent "Golden Years of Classic Television" series. One of them was "The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, Vol. 1" starring William Russell (whom Doctor Who fans may remember as the first male companion of the good Doctor, back in the early 1960s). The other was "The Adventures of Kit Carson," a western series. Both were from the 1950s and both DVDs contained 4 episodes each. The company is listed prominently as "Cascadia Entertainment," but no other info is given (like an address), other than "Made in Canada."

Anyway, a couple months ago, I had been lamenting the fact that I hadn't been running across videotapes of old TV shows and stuff like that lately at stores. For example, in the past, I'd run across a cheap videotape containing two episodes of the 1950s "Captain Midnight" TV series among the kiddie tapes at a drugstore, and another time I'd found a Green Hornet movie serial for real cheap at a store, simply by chance. Where were the cool, neat discoveries now?

So, this was the first cool discovery I'd made at a store in a long while. I hope that I run across more of such obscure TV shows on DVD for dirt-cheap. The only other $2.50 DVD that looked intriguing to me at the K-Mart was one that contained two Red Ryder western B-movies on it. I may end up getting that one if these ones look OK. (I haven't watched them yet. I'll have to use my nephew's DVD player for the nonce to check them out, and right now he's got me in the middle of watching the extended 4-disc version of "Fellowship of the Ring.")

Who knows, maybe these $2.50 Sir Lancelot and Kit Carson DVDs are available at stores in your area. Check 'em out, and let me know if you see any other cool ones like 'em there.

Black and White and Read All Over
Happened to stop at a local used record store today and noticed they had around 4 or 5 boxes of comics and other magazines, with a sign saying "Buy 1, Get 1 Free." Most of the stuff was 99 cents each. They had some oddball stuff in there, like issues of "Battlestar Galactica" and "The Krofft Supershow."

I ended up getting 4 mags (one of them a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly for 99 cents), the comics-related ones being:

 

DOC SAVAGE #3 (Marvel; Jan. 1976 B&W magazine) = 50 cents

SPACE:1999 #4 (Charlton; May 1976 B&W magazine) = 50 cents

THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Mystery Magazine #1 (Myron Fass; Dec. 1977 B&W magazine) = 99 cents

So, the 4 mags together cost me only $1.49. Pretty cool, huh?

The Sherlock Holmes mag is not a comic, but a text magazine with lots of illustrations, many of them by Luis Dominguez who did many horror covers for DC in the 1970s (often signing them with his initials). There are 8 full color, full page illustrations (paintings?) by Luis (including the front & back cover), and 4 full page B&W illustrations, accompanying a new Sherlock Holmes prose adventure in the issue. It also reprints some items from The Strand Magazine from 1892.

It seems to me that these type of B&W magazines are often overlooked by fandom simply because of their different format. Also, it seems to me that they were a good way to reach beyond the regular comics-reading audience, perhaps to an older audience who was embarrassed to be seen reading a color comicbook. They also avoided the (supposed) stigma of the comics spinner, since they would be placed next to regular magazines on the magazine shelf, not next to the superhero & Archie comics. A publication like the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes mag is nearly like a modern-day (or 1970s, anyway) equivalent of an old pulp magazine like The Shadow.

I wonder why companies (or anyone) no longer publish magazines like this today. The last B&W comics magazine I remember seeing on the magazine shelves was DC's "100% Weird" which contained reprinted "strange but true" short stories from their "Big Book of..." trade paperbacks. There must be some reason that the format is no longer being done because even Love & Rockets, which was revived last year, is now the size of a comic instead of a magazine as it used to be.

Of course, MAD and Cracked magazine are still being published, although both titles now use a lot more color pages than before. Cracked was on hiatus the past several months, but a new issue finally appeared on the magazine shelves this week. (For background on Cracked's problems, click here.) The current issue of MAD contains a Spider-Man parody, with a Mort Drucker illustration of Alfred E. Newman as Spidey on the cover.

A Beginning
As you can see, I'm doing a complete overhaul of my website. Taking stuff down and putting stuff up. Trying to make it simpler, easier to figure out, and maybe a little more stylish than it has been. Also, I'm going to try and make it easier for me to keep a journal of sorts (probably a lot shorter entries than I normally write) right here on the main page, in the style of Andrew Sullivan's website (which I check out a few times per week). Check in later tonight for some more writing by me.

My Latest Rant about Christian Music
I posted two posts today on a Christian music board and thought I'd share them here because I felt like it...

I started off responding to a comment that a Christian music exec had made in an article appearing in Christianity Today about the CCM (contemporary Christian music) biz. He had been quoted as saying, "The dirty little secret is [the corporate parent] could [not] care less what your content is -- if it's a hit, they could [not] care less. Whether you're talking about Christ or Satan, doesn't matter to them. Does it sell, and not just does it sell -- does it make the [PNL] number? Making the number is the only guiding force in corporate Christian music making today."

My response:

Well, my answer to that would be -- that's in the Christian music industry. Of course they don't care how Christian artists talk to Christian audiences in the Christian market. The more they sing about Christ the better. That's probably how the secular parent company looks at it, since they see the Christian label which they own as serving a certain niche market. Just like if a magazine publisher bought up a line of skin mags, they'd want the skin mags to continue showing lots of skin.

But I think the gatekeepers of mainstream culture DO care if it comes to allowing Christian artists access to the wider culture. I recall hearing or reading where a mainstream source said that they never would have accepted Sixpence None the Richer if they had known from the start that they were CCM. John Cooper of Skillet has talked about playing showcases for secular labels and finding resistance to getting signed. dc Talk has talked about some secular stations being unwilling to play their songs, telling them "we don't play Christian music." So, I'd say there is definitely resistance if a CCM artist wants to impact the wider culture. But within the CCM market itself, secular companies don't care what is being said, as long as it sells good in that market.

As I said in another thread here, in the mainstream market, it's more than just good sales that get you coverage, there's also the "cool" factor to be considered. I don't think that "coolness" is a factor in the CCM industry, so that's why sales are the main concern. But in the secular mainstream industry, MTV, Spin, Rolling Stone, etc. would rather give coverage to an artist who seems cool, hip, or buzzworthy even if that artist sells less than a CCM artist does. (For example, see the coverage that bands like Phantom Planet and The White Stripes are getting currently.) Why? Probably because it makes MTV, Spin, Rolling Stone, etc. look cool and hip if they are always talking about these cool and hip artists. If they covered easy listening, country, or CCM, that might go against their attempts to be seen as hipper than thou.

Unfortunately for CCM, the cooler artists in CCM don't usually sell as much as the duller CCM artists do. So, high-selling CCM artists who would deserve mainstream coverage because of their high sales are often too unhip to be covered (e.g., MWS, SCC, Point of Grace, Avalon, etc.) and lower-selling CCM artists like Skillet, and even RSJ in my opinion, are cool but don't have enough sales action to make mainstream coverage inevitable at some point. And it's a Catch-22: the more coverage you get, the better sales often get. That's why so many CCM albums do well the first week but then drop off, because there's no coverage by the secular mainstream that would educate a potential buyer who the artist is, what their music is like, etc. which would sustain sales better as new customers find out about the artist.

By the way, has anyone else noticed how well MercyMe's album is doing on the Billboard top album charts? It's actually moving up the charts instead of down. It's at like #67 or something this week -- a little higher than Jars of Clay's new album (only in its 2nd week, too), I think! The funny thing is that I'm a fan of Christian music, but I've never even heard that band. (I don't listen much to Christian radio at all. I pay attention to Christian videos on TV, but haven't seen one by them yet.) I would guess that most of their sales are probably from the Christian marketplace, which must be slowly learning about the group and driving them up the chart. Now if only the secular gatekeepers will notice this and actually do a profile of them. But will they? If not, why not?


In response to my post, another poster said that if I agree that CCM is denied mainstream exposure, "would it not follow that the "Christian" music label and ghetto/subculture actually IS a hinderance to artists who want to make an impact in the world at large?" Evidently he was implying that Christian artists should abandon the CCM genre if they want to be heard on secular radio. Problem solved, right?

My response:

Yes the "Christian" label is a hindrance, but why? Only because of the prejudice that the world at large has for the Christian music label. So, I think we ought to fight that prejudice not surrender to it.

If you ever want to know my opinion about anything in CCM, just compare it to my favorite medium, comicbooks. Comics writers would get a lot more respect if they wrote novels instead of comics and reach a wider audience as well. Does it then naturally follow that they should leave comics and write novels instead? Not if they want to help comics. Rather they should continue creating literate comics and hope that eventually the stigma against comics will erode, as it has been doing considering that publications like Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com have reviewed new comics on occasion. (Probably more than they review CCM...)

I had mentioned mainstream coverage of The White Stripes in my previous post. I picked them out of the air as an example because I'd happened to see their video on MTV, had seen a profile of them in an alternative rock music mag a couple days ago, and had noticed that they hadn't yet broken into Billboard's Top 100 albums list. In other words, I was being exposed to this band without even trying to be, whereas I hadn't even heard a song by a much better-selling CCM band (MercyMe) and I'm actually a Christian music fan. Sounds a bit odd, huh? Maybe that's why I'd like more CCM exposure in the mainstream -- not just so non-fans can be exposed to it, but so CCM fans like MYSELF can get more exposure to CCM! (Religious outlets don't do a good job of this.)

Anyway, I decided to do a search on Yahoo to see if I was being unfair to secular bands like The White Stripes. Were they really getting a lot of exposure despite their low sales, compared to the lack of exposure that better-selling CCM artists were getting?

Yahoo results for The White Stripes include pages about them at the websites of the BBC, MTV, Time magazine, New Musical Express, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, etc. The Time article notes that the band has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone. MTV's site has an A to Z list of many artists, and their page for The White Stripes is at
http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/white_stripes/artist.jhtml
where you can see a photo of the band, download their song and video, read their bio, and read MTV news items about them. The most recent news item was from yesterday, in MTV's overview of this week's Billboard album chart. MTV's overview doesn't mention any of the CCM albums that charted well this week, such as the albums of Kirk Franklin (#21 both this week & last week), MercyMe (#67 this week, #75 last week), Jars of Clay (#70 this week, debuted at #28 last week), Michael W. Smith (#73 this week, #67 last week), or Plus One (#86 this week, #62 last week, debuted at #29 three weeks ago).

But MTV's overview DOES note, "The White Stripes will spend their second week on the chart 28 spots higher than their first, with [their album] White Blood Cells coming in at #157 with almost 8,500 more copies sold." You can read their slanted overview yourself at
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1452989/20020320/story.jhtml

Most Christian artists do not have their own entry in the A to Z band list at MTV's site. Kirk Franklin isn't even listed there (though Aretha Franklin is). Plus One are not listed. Jars of Clay are listed, but the only thing on MTV's page for them is a single news item from 1997. Third Day have a page on MTV's site, too, but the only thing on it is a news item about them beating P.O.D. in the Dove Awards last year. Meanwhile, secular bands which have yet to enter Billboard's top 100 albums chart, like The White Stripes and Phantom Planet, ARE included on MTV's band list however.

I wonder where the Newsboys' new album will chart when it comes out next week. (It will appear on the Billboard chart that comes out April 4th.) Why bother caring, if even great sales won't garner mainstream coverage?

The other poster had offered as a reason why MercyMe would not garner secular coverage the following: "Again, relevance. Mercy Me has nothing of value to say to a person who is not a believer (and musically they are not a risk-taking group, either). Their music is all mostly vertical -- man to God. Most non-Christians aren't going to be interested in that and, unlike other 'spiritual' type music, the Christian message largely will get ignored because it is deemed more exclusive and 'judgemental.'"

But we keep hearing about how groups like P.O.D. and Lifehouse and Creed are really giving the same message as Christian music, and yet they are accepted by the mainstream. Aren't the lyrics to "Hanging by a Moment" and "Alive" vertical? And yet nobody ever accused them of having lyrics which weren't relevant to a mainstream audience. It seems to me that the only difference is the Christian record label. If it's considered Christian music, the mainstream gatekeepers don't give it coverage for the most part, even if it sells well. That's not right, and we should criticize injustice, not accept it as normal or acceptable.

Should parents let their kids play in the (Arab) street?
I found this paragraph in a Yahoo news story about the latest Israeli-Palestinian clashes.

"Elsewhere, Israeli troops met with resistance, especially in the adjacent Tulkarem refugee camp to which many gunmen had fled. Tanks had difficulty entering some of the camp's alleys and groups of children followed the gunmen around as they fired at armored vehicles."

(Emphasis mine.)

Why are these children allowed to follow gunmen around while they are shooting their weapons? Would you allow your child to mill around in the street while it is being attacked? I question whether some of the parents of these kids care about their children's safety.

If the parents don't care about keeping their kids off the street when gunfire is being exchanged, then maybe the soldiers ought to take the kids into custody, just like children would be removed from a home if they were being abused by their parents.

I suspect that these children are being allowed to be in harms way to make the Israeli soldiers' job more difficult, so they have to worry about accidentally hurting a child. (And if they do, then they look like the villains. Never mind that their parents let the kid follow the pursued gunmen around, getting in the Israeli soldiers' way, etc.) If the parents are letting their children roam freely through a warzone with no supervision, then they don't have the child's best interests at heart.

Agree or disagree? What do you think? Are these kids being used by their parents in a bad way?