Mahna Mahna

A buddy of mine is doing a documentary on PBS and Sesame Street. It made me think of this clip (from The Muppet Show), which he showed me last time he visited. I hadn’t thought about it in years.

Captain America: The First Avenger

When I first saw the previews for Captain America I could help but exude excitement – a super hero period piece? Hell yes! However, two and a half hours and one bag of popcorn later I can’t say the excitement has transferred. Captain America is a thoroughly mediocre piece of cinema, relying on computer generated action, sappy storytelling, and the weight of Marvel’s reputation to carry it. That doesn’t mean there weren’t a few decent moments or I was bored throughout the entire screening but overall I couldn’t help but find Captain America pedestrian and actually a little bit vulgar and offensive.

The Future of Television

In a nutshell, part of the budget reduction plans going through the American government right now involve auctioning off some of the airwaves used by local television stations. According to the website thefutureoftv.org around 1/6^th of Americans get their television through free means (which means the other 250 million or so pay for it (like me – a huge schmuck)). Last time I checked the FCC’s job isn’t to sell the public airwaves to private companies so we can lose our access to them; their job is to lease these signals to various companies so they can provide us with entertainment and information – information necessary for a functioning democracy (or republic if you want to get technical).