by The Cranky Media Guy

So Many Screens, So Little Interest

The nation's movie theater chains are boo-hooing over the fact that there are too many screens and too few people looking at them.  Seems they went on a five-year building binge and it's caught up with them.

What would you do if you were faced with this situation?  Lower prices, perhaps?  Well, that just shows that you don't think like a modern business owner.  They're raising prices!  In some places, like New York City, ticket prices are up to $9.50 and they are projected to hit $10. by Christmas.  The average ticket price nationwide is $5.08, the first time it's gone above $5.

Anyone want to explain to me the logic of bitching about running films to half--or completely--empty houses followed by increasing the price?  Is there any way that that tactic won't further decrease the size of the audience?  "People don't like what we're selling.  I've got it, let's raise the price!"??  It's not the audience's fault the business geniuses went on a construction spree.  I guess Field of Dreams was wrong: if you build it, they won't necessarily come.

Maybe the movies just suck.  It's taken for granted nowadays that the gross for a movie will fall off precipitously after its opening weekend.  Believe it or not, it didn't used to be that way.  Once upon a time, it was common for movies to increase their box office take after opening week, when those who saw them early told their friends to go, too.  Today, word of mouth seems to work in the opposite way: we tell our friends how much the movie sucks so they won't waste their money.   Suddenly, those googleplexes in the suburbs aren't looking like such a great investment, huh?

What Is This, The  CIA?

Kozmo.com is one of those "new economy" businesses that the smart money says will fall on its over-funded, ill-thought-out ass by this time next year.  The deal is, you place an order through their website (assuming you live in a city and neighborhood that Kozmo serves) and stuff like snack food, video tapes and books is delivered to your door within an hour, with no service charge and no minimum order required.

My fourteen-year-old daughter could figure out the problem with this plan: the labor cost involved in paying messengers to scoot around the city will eat up any possible profit.  Especially when a customer can literally order a single bag of M&M's and not be charged more than a regular "brick and mortar" store would.

Anyhow, for reasons that escape everyone but their upper management, Kozmo suddenly announced that all their employees had to sign a consent form that authorizes the company to perform credit and personal-background checks on them.  Kozmo wants the right to examine workers' credit histories, debts, "general reputation", "personal characteristics" and "mode of living".  Huh?  They need all this information to let you work for them as a crummy bike messenger?  Los Alamos Labs didn't require this much personal info, for Chrissakes.

It's been reported that, at least in Seattle, a lot of Kozmo's employees are objecting to the sudden intrusion into their private lives and are refusing to sign the consent form.  I'm waiting to see if the company fires them all or not.  Since the company's business plan makes no sense that I can see and they've indefinitely postponed their planned IPO, it occurs to me that this might be a way of shutting down the operation and blaming it on the recalcitrant employees.  "We tried really hard, but we couldn't get any cooperation from the employees."  Just a theory.

The Senator From The Twilight Zone

Recently, a Senator asked the Legislative Counsel, the in-house lawyers for the Senate, to write-up legislation that revamps the process for extending patents.  Which Senator?  Nobody knows.  There was no name attached to the legislation and no public record of who asked for it.  Oddly enough, according to the rules of the Senate, that's fine.

Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says, "The only conceivable motivation is that they would find it embarrassing to be publicly recognized."  Some on the Hill suspect that the "American Inventor Equitable Relief Act" is intended to help Schering-Plough, the giant pharmaceutical company, get an extension on the patent for their popular and expensive allergy medicine, Claritin.

Weasel of the Week Robert Torricelli of New Jersey is the main suspect in this little shell game; he pushed for similar legislation last year.  (Schering-Plough is headquartered in New Jersey).  He dropped his efforts after ABC News and other news organizations ran stories about his little scam.  Torricelli's spokesman denies that he is the Mystery Senator this time around, though.

Some think that the chickenshit legislator is trying to attach the provision to a totally unrelated bill about military construction.  House and Senate negotiators will soon work out a final version of the appropriations bill.  Once they do, Senators and Representatives will vote on the bill without any debate and it may go through without anyone realizing it.

"It will effectively have been legislated without any legislators other than the anonymous sponsor being fully aware of it, or its implications," said Mann.   Still wonder why most people don't vote anymore?

How about "Historical Revisionist Jane?"

Poor widdle Jane Fonda.  Now that she hobnobs with the rich and famous, she'd really, really like for everyone to just pretty please forget that she used to hang with her homies, the Viet Cong.  Referring to a picture of herself with North Vietnamese soldiers from 1972, she says, "I will go to my grave regretting that photograph.  It galvanized such hostility.  It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done.  It was just thoughtless."  The photo gave her the nickname "Hanoi Jane". 

Wait, this just in:  the quote above was not about her picture with Viet Cong soldiers.  She was referring to the production still from Barbarella of her wearing the plastic see-through bra.

Midwest suffers from gas attack

Gasoline prices are at historic levels in America and the Midwest is getting socked the worst.  Chicago is creeping toward the $2.50 per gallon mark.  As usual in a time of crisis, Congress sprang into action.  The Democrats blamed the gas companies and the Republicans blamed the Democrats.  What would we do without such fearless leaders?  Why, we'd have to do our own finger-pointing!  I shudder to think about that.

So, feeling pressure from pissed-off constituents to "do something", the Boys on the Hill scheduled some hearings.  Hearings are a joke, but they look like something, right?  Interestingly, as soon as Congress announced that they were going to investigate gas prices, the wholesale price dropped by something like 20 cents a gallon.  Must just be a coincidence. Right? Right?  Hey, I'm asking you a question; stop laughing, okay?

Um, point of order here...since Republicans claim to believe in a totally free market, shouldn't they be telling their constituents to just grin and bear it?  They couldn't possibly call for any governmental restraints on prices without looking like total hypocrites and God knows politicians are never guilty of that.  "Sorry you can't afford to drive to church, Grandma.  It's just the inexorable forces of the free market at work.  Go read some Ayn Rand and shut up."

Let's Bid A Fond E-loha To:

Flake.com (a website entirely devoted to breakfast cereal!  Gee, how did that fail?)
      EverythingDecor.com
      AirfiltersPlus.com

Lemme See If I Understand This

This week, L.A. Lakers fans rioted after their team won the NBA Championship.  Fires were set, a police car and two TV trucks were destroyed.  Damage was estimated to be at least a million dollars.  The police responded slowly to stop the rioting despite the fact that they should have been prepared since this sort of thing has happened in other cities following championship wins.

About two weeks ago, following the Puerto Rico Day parade in New York City, dozens of women were sexually assaulted by microcephalic sociopaths in Central Park.  When the women complained to police, the response from some officers was to shrug it off.  One woman says a cop told her to stop by the precinct house the next day after she had "calmed down".

The Republican convention will be held in Philadelphia next month.  In preparation, the City of Brotherly Love attempted to sneak through an amendment to the law that would "prohibit concealed identities in certain instances."  This would permit the police to arrest anyone wearing a ski mask, hooded sweatshirt or scarf or acting in a suspicious manner (whatever the fuck that means).

Hey, I'm just an average Joe, you know?  I'm just trying to understand the world around me.  Stop me if I'm wrong here.  If I understand correctly, if you pull a woman's top off in public, squirt water on her and generally scare the living shit out of her, that's okay.  If you riot because your basketball team won and destroy property in the process, the police will get involved slowly and half-heartedly at best.

If, however, you plan on peacefully protesting the policies of one of the two major political parties and you want to wear some kind of costume while doing so to make your point, the cops will be authorized, under the new law, to haul your ass off to the pokey (and maybe beat the shit out of you in the process).  Is that about it?   Like I say, I'm just an average Joe and I'm trying to understand here. 

Here's a thought:  if you plan on going to the Republican convention to protest, wear a Phillies uniform.  When the cops come, say you weren't really protesting George W. Bush, you were just cheering on your favorite baseball team.  It's worth a shot, right?

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Say, here's a swell idea: if you have a federal agency that needs a new member, why not appoint a guy who advocates the elimination of it altogether?  The Federal Election Commission, which has been rendered essentially toothless by corrupt politicians and their crafty exploitation of loopholes in the law, is about to get a new member. 

This walking sack of shit's name is Bradley Smith.  He's a law professor from Ohio who has called for the repeal of the federal election law and its contribution limits.  In simple terms, this dickhead wants to insure that Big Business can contribute however much it wants to whichever miserable SOB will pick up the soap for them the fastest.  (I hope I'm not throwing you with all these technical terms.)

As Michael Malbin, a political scientist said, "What we are headed toward--if not in 2000, then in 2002--is a system that looks like what was there from 1790 until 1972, which would be pretty free-wheeling."  That's the high-falutin' way of saying that the politicians will be even more corrupt than they are now, if you can imagine that.  You think you've seen mergers recently?  When Big Business can freely throw as much money as they want at whatever incubii they currently own, the shit they'll pull will make your head spin.  "Competition?  What a quaint old concept.  Tell me more, Grandpa."

"You're In The Navy?  I Thought You Were In The Village People."

Navy investigators are routinely sending informants and undercover agents into Washington, D.C. area gay bars.  They attempt to identify military personnel in the bars and catch them in drug trafficking.  Seems like a bad way to pick up guys, if you ask me. 

Under questioning by a defense attorney in the case of a Navy petty officer who was facing a court martial for drug dealing, John Patrick O'Connor Jr., a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, could not cite any heterosexual establishments that were targets of NCIS surveillance.  Since, even in the Navy, there is a much higher percentage of heterosexuals than homosexuals, someone with a suspicious mind might think that this is really just a nasty way to hassle gay sailors.  Uh, I guess I would be that "someone". 

Even if you're the kind of loser who sends money to support godhatesfags.com, what's the logic of staking out gay bars to catch people selling drugs?  Since straights comprise about 95% of the population, wouldn't you be far more productive if you ran your little "sting" operation in non-gay bars?  I mean, law of averages and all.  Hey, maybe this is the Navy's subtle way of telling us that all those jokes about it being a floating leather bar are actually true.  Maybe we've all misunderstood the term "Rear Admiral" all along?

It Takes Balls To Be John Rocker

Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker, the current whipping boy of major league sport, is back in the news.  Not a moment too soon, I say.

"The first day I get to New York, I'm getting on the 7 train.  I'm taking it to Shea Stadium.  I won't be in a cab.  I won't be on the bus.  I'll be on that train.  And I'm looking forward to it," said Rocker.

You probably expect me to say Rocker is a schmuck or something, right?  Sorry to disappoint you, but I have to admit, I admire the guy's balls.  That may be because I have an unorthodox theory about why he made the infamous comments about New York and the 7 train that got him into trouble last season.

What everyone seems to have forgotten about Rocker is that, before he made his comments about New York, foreigners and "20-year-old moms with four kids" who ride the 7 train to Flushing, it was reported that he was a big fan of professional wrestling.   Even as recently as the other day, I saw him wearing a Goldberg t-shirt in the Braves locker room.

My theory is that when Rocker made his comments about New York, he was basically playing a "heel" role--being a bad guy wrestler, in other words.  Those kind of comments are made in wrestling all the time, of course; just this past Monday, former Olympian-turned WWF Superstar Kurt Angle made fun of the Nashville crowd he was performing in front of, calling them "rednecks". 

What Rocker didn't take into account, though, is that in wrestling there is an opposing force, the "good guy", to whomp the shit out of the jerk who dares to insult the home crowd.  Unlike wrestling, baseball doesn't style itself as "sports entertainment".  Baseball is supposed to be "real".

Like I said, I really admire Rocker's balls to ride the train with the New York public after all the shit he's taken since last year.  I wish I could be on the 7 along with him on the 29th so I could ask Rocker about my theory.  Anyone want to pay my way to the Big Apple so I can find out?