by The Cranky Media Guy!

Fri. Sept. 29

Hoist By Their Own Petard (Or Something Like That)

The City Council of Lodi, CA is doing one of those stupid things that city councils do when they attempt to run people's lives for them.  They're threatening to pass a law requiring background checks on owners and employees of adult-oriented businesses.  What that would accomplish, other than hassling the people in question, is arguable.

Anyway, Tim Kruppe, who owns the only two businesses in town that would affected by the proposed law, isn't taking the threat quietly.

"There's been a couple of city council members that really need to observe their morals and their, so to speak, their privacy.  You might say they've been patrons in my store," Kruppe says.  He says if the council passes the law, he just might have to go public with the names of the council members who have patronized his business.

While this story got some play from the wire services, they have a tendency not to follow up on stuff like this.  Too bad, 'cause I would really like to find out what happens if and when the phony moralists on the Lodi city council pass their useless law.

Two years ago, I was working at a radio station in Easton, PA (long story).  I made the acquaintance of the owner of The Boxcar, a strip club directly across the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, NJ (where I lived for several years).  He told me how hard it was to make it in a business frequently under attack from politicians trying to score points with the voters. 

I had the perfect solution, I told him.  All he had to do was declare that his operation was not a strip club at all, but a church.  A church that celebrated the beauty of the human body.  A suggested "donation" would be collected at the door and the show would be replaced by a "service".  Not only would this confound the local blue noses, I said, but it would generate national publicity.  He laughed a lot and said that it was a great idea, but he apparently didn't have the guts to try it.  Too bad.  I really wanted to be there for the first "service".

God Help Us All!

Al Gore allegedly had a mole in the Bush campaign, reporting everything Dubya had planned back to Nashville.  Now it comes out that the Bush people were deliberately delaying mail sent to the reporters on their campaign trail by the Gore campaign.  Am I the only one amazed that, in less than six weeks, one of these two losers is going to be elected President of the United States?  Seriously, is this really the best we can do?

This Is Gonna Make Wrestling Look Like Opera

The daily fisticuffs got too much criticism, so Jerry Springer has to go in another direction for the new TV season.  The show is set to unveil a new "industrial" set, a new logo, fewer stories per show and lots of remote segments.  OK, go ahead...guess where many of the remotes are going to be shot.  Did you say "trailer parks"?  If so, give yourself 10 points.

Yup, Jerry is going to enter the belly of the beast and take his cameras right into the (mobile) homes of his core audience. 

One upcoming show concerns a wife who accused her husband of sleeping with his cousin.

"In this case, the people lived in a trailer park.  The cousin lived two trailers over, and we showed up with the camera, and the wife confronted the husband, who admitted it.  We have the confrontation that would have happened on stage, but it happened at the trailer park instead," says Springer producer Richard Dominick.  Sleaze verite.

A Reader Letter

To the Cranky Media Guy:

You are art.

Congratulations on your new opportunity.

Hope this doesn't mean your internet fans are to be abandoned.

You are still planning on keeping up CrankyMediaGuy.com, yes?

GailP

Dear Gail:

Thanks for the congratulations.  I don't have the job yet, so I hope they aren't premature.

Yeah, even if I get the gig, I'm going to keep working on the CMG site.  I think I'd miss it if we stopped doing it.  We get a fair number of hits every day on it, so I guess people like it or something.  Go figure.

CMG

In case you missed my previous babblings about this, I'm flying to a (for now) secret location Friday.  I'm supposed to come home on Sunday night (unless they decide that they can't live another minute without me on the air and keep me there for a bit).  Either way, there should be a lot to say about this next week and I promise to fill you in on the details.

Thurs. Sept. 28

It's His Turn To Have It Next Weekend

"We do more than just sing and dance.  We've got a brain, too."

Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson

Too Bad His Name Wasn't Ronald Congressman

A guy named Ronald Gay was sitting in a restaurant in Roanoke, Virginia the other night. He asked some fellow patrons where he could find a gay bar, as he wanted to "waste some faggots".  Workers at the restaurant thought he was kidding, then called the police after he displayed a gun.

Soon, this homicidal halfwit walked into the Backstreet Cafe, ordered a beer and shot up the place.  He killed patron Danny Overstreet and wounded six other people.  After his arrest, he told police he did it because he was tired of people kidding him about his last name.  You just can't argue with logic like that, can you?

Their E-ship has E-sailed

DomainAuction.com

Gazoontite.com

Baleo

Lies, Damned Lies and Government Statistics

Jeepers, isn't the economy just dandy?  I mean, unemployment is so nice and low.  Of course, as we pointed out months ago, the feds determine the official unemployment figures by leaving out a few states, like New York and Michigan.  Well, okay, so they fudge those numbers a little bit; at least inflation's really low.

Well, not quite as low as they've been saying.  According to the Washington Post, the consumer price index for the past year has actually been slightly higher than officially reported, because of a "calculating glitch" at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The revised number, which may be out by the time you read this, is likely to say that inflation was actually .1 to .3 percentage points higher for the past 12 months.  No, it's not a huge difference, but it kind of screws everything up since interest rates, among other things, are calculated based on the rate of inflation.  By the way, isn't it amazing (and statistically unlikely) that these wee li'l "glitches" always seem to happen in a way that makes the government look better?  Gee, what are the odds?

"How Much Is It?"  "Uh, Where Do You Live?"

One of the nasty little things enabled by the Web is "dynamic pricing".  Those surveys a lot of shopping sites make you fill out give the retailer a lot of information about you.  Depending on the marketing strategy of the company in question, your zip code and other information you provided may mean that you pay more for an item than another customer.

It was recently discovered that Amazon, the big, money-losing web site was charging different customers different prices for DVD's.  Understandably, the people who paid more for them were a wee bit pissed. 

Amazon's official response is that they have it all wrong.  Said Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezon, "We've never tested and we never will test prices based on customer demographics.  What we did was a random price test, and even that was a mistake because it created uncertainty for customers rather than simplifying their lives."  Got that?  If you paid more than another customer for a DVD, it wasn't because of where you live or how much money you have.  You were just chosen at random for a screwing.  Feel better now?

There'll be a bunch more tomorrow, including a reader letter or two. Then, it's off in the Big Silver Bird for Cranky Media Guy.  I'm heading off for that radio job interview I talked about in last week's Commentary.