Arts & Culture
SNL: Ashton Kutcher/Them Crooked Vultures
HOWARD MEGDAL: This one leaves me unimpressed. Pretty scattershot, and Gibbs wouldn’t appear on that panel, plus that isn’t remotely like Robert Gibbs. This one is overdone. Look, they show that Fox News is unbalanced. I already knew that. Even the Glenn Beck, by virtue of being material-free, wastes a good effort from Jason Sudeikis.
STEVE MURPHY: Not their worst… but not funny, either. Although I did enjoy looking at Abby Elliot.
ZOË RICE: The best thing about this open was Attractive Blonde Lady, which made me chuckle. Unfortunately the overall affect was slow, with a couple decent moments but not enough.
Tim Tebow Ad
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: The already-infamous ‘Tim Tebow Anti-Abortion’ Superbowl ad hasn’t even aired yet, but it’s already stirred up plenty of controversy.
JEFF MORROW: The Tebow ad sounds like a rare piece of abortion-related advocacy that earnestly tries to persuade. For a pro-life ad, that’s pretty pro-choice.
Bookstores: Independent, Used and Massive Chains
AKIE BERMISS: I love me some books. No I really do. When I walk into a bookstore, I expect to come back out significantly poorer than when I walked in. If there’s any one thing that I’m easily distracted by — its probably books. And, unlike many people, I’ll never enjoy buying them online. I don’t feel satisfaction when a graphic of a book goes into my “shopping-cart” and then a week later a box shows up in my mail. No joy.
I need to go to the store. I need to see them in their element. I need to pick them out. And I need to take them home with me.
HOWARD MEGDAL: Like Akie, I do acknowledge a love for the Big Box Bookstores. But to cast aside the many other ways to acquire books- yes, I share his obsession with all things bibliorific- is an astonishing limitation I simply do not share.
ZOË RICE: While I was away at college, Barnes & Noble opened its first Brooklyn store, four blocks from my parents’ house. Park Slope, Brooklyn, was decidedly not a chain store neighborhood–the Starbucks wouldn’t come until later, and no, I still haven’t recovered–and here was a massive store, two levels, popping up right in my backyard. We had independent stores: Community Bookstore (still living), Booklink (no longer with us) and Booklink II (the first to go). Park Slope was known for being quite literary, with loads of editors and artistic types. B&N would not do. But then I visited it. And I realized Park Slope needed a Barnes & Noble.
Whole Foods
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: No longer just a patronizing corporation with a moral-superiority complex, Whole Foods is showing that it cares enough about its employees to do what it can to lower its company healthcare costs.
JILLIAN LOVEJOY LOWERY: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey seems to have forgotten that people come in all shapes and sizes, that things like blood pressure and cholesterol are sometimes hereditary, and that even smokers might like to purchase their avocados at a greater discount.
Lost: Week 1 Review
ZOË RICE: So begins the final chapter. Lost might be the finest–or at the very least most compelling–example of episodic storytelling in my lifetime. And so its sixth and final season began with more anticipation than I can remember feeling for any TV premiere ever. How could LA X Parts 1 and 2 possibly live up to the expectation? And yet, I am satisfied. At least for now. I was riveted. (Spoilers ahead!)
TED BERG: Oh, Lost. They promised this season would be different. They said they were going to start wrapping things up, and answering questions right quick.
In Briefs: Writing in Books
AKIE BERMISS: When it comes to writing in books I’m at once a reverent love and a practical modernist. I feel like the sacred nature of books is a relic of ages past when a single book to quite some time to make. And getting a copy was pretty much impossible unless you were a person of great wealth or great importance. Nowadays, I can walking to a Barnes&Noble and buy four copies of Great Expectations faster than you could say “Who’s Charles Dickens?” So there’s really no need to be overly cautious about getting book marked up, or wet, or whatever.
ZOË RICE: I can’t say I understand treating a book like a revered object. In fact, I even marked up my own novel. I think I did so for my readings; I made notes and crossed out a passage or two that wouldn’t make sense without previous chapters. But I’ve always written in books. A note here and there about something I was thinking at the time, a star for a passage I particularly liked, perhaps a name of another book or a memory I recalled. And I love those notes. I love that I’ll be able to look back on them later in life and see what I was thinking years prior. The book is mine, and I’m certainly not erasing any part of it, so why not annotate here and there? Why not personalize?
HOWARD MEGDAL: I have now been through the process of publishing my own book. And let me tell you- it isn’t easy. You need to find an agent. You need to polish up a proposal. You need to find a publisher. You need to complete a manuscript in time. You need to go over edits, making certain that just because an editor didn’t know any vaguely Jewish terminology in a book about Jewish baseball players, that the entire point of the book isn’t obscured. You need to fight back against the idea that any joke that won’t be understood by a ten-year-old child should be excised from the book, reminding everyone involved that it is not, in fact, a children’s book.
Music Piracy
STEVE MURPHY: Record companies sue fans because record companies are stupid. That’s all I can think of. They have to be stupid. I could end this article right there, but I suppose I should explain why the RIAA is stupid.
DAVE TOMAR: Even before Napster and the lawsuits, the RIAA and the record companies had a serious problem on their hands. But it wasn’t just about changing technology. This was a problem of product. Let’s call it the Mouseketeer Syndrome.
SNL: Jon Hamm/Michael Bublé
ZOË RICE: I had been looking forward to what SNL would do with the State of the Union! Every time I see Biden and Pelosi behind the President, I immediately think of Sudeikis and Wiig, and here yet again they’re just funny there in the background, gesticulating. I thought it was a solid open, with good use of senator reaction shots to enhance the laughs. Of course the healthcare bit at the end was kind of depressing, but the Martha Coakley jokes and the gags about how the Bushes left the White House were chucklers.
STEVE MURPHY: I agree with Zoe, this was a “chuckler.” A couple little jokes, a couple funny reaction shots… but nothing got knocked out of the park in this sketch. I was ready for it to end long before it did.
HOWARD MEGDAL: Awfully scattershot. When Al Franken wrote SNL political sketches, they had clear targets and an underlying understanding of political realities. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to shake my fist at some children on my front lawn.
iPad
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I’m not sure about Apple’s claims that the iPad will change the way we experience the web, but maybe they meant that in a subtle way—kind of like how crazy straws have changed the way we drink juice.
AKIE BERMISS: The laptop is the home-computer now. Its flexible for any kind of living situation, takes up less space, and works well for typing up long items like term-papers, or business, proposals, or books. Its not the fun, young, hip and sexy girl at the prom anymore.
That’s the iPad.
Cruising Complications
AKIE BERMISS: I’ve never been on a cruise. Never in my life even set foot on a cruise boat. But every time I get a brochure from Princess Cruises in my mailbox I give it considerable thought. The thing is, to someone like me, cruises seem like a really extravagant affair. You pack your bag, you go to the docks, and you basically check in to a floating hotel room for a week. And all your food is paid for. You’re waited on hand and foot. You sail around where its beautiful and sunny and warm. I could be wrong about all this, of course, as my knowledge of cruises is pretty much informed by what I’ve seen in movies.
STEVE MURPHY: I have been on roughly 7 kabillion cruises. Or at least that’s what it feels like. I’ve been to just about every island in the Caribbean, some multiple times, plus a number of other exotic locales. Or, that’s what the cruise lines would have me believe.