Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
anti-press ezine 1999 07 16
ANTI-PRESS EZINE #08
"We're Positive About The Negative"
A July E-dition
(C) Copyright 1999 Anti-Press
Unless indicated otherwise, all articles by Anti-Press.
Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Reality Center. We're presently entrapped
in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern New York State, USA. (For
your own good: STAY THE FUG AWAY!)
=============================================================
KILLER CROC-- WHAT A CROCK!
Here in the Reality Center we have been tracking the controversy
swirling around the new movie, _Lake Placid_, and the nearby community
of Lake Placid, NY (Home of the 1980 Winter Olympics and Prohibition
Hang-Out for Bootlegging Gangsters). The Village is trying to keep its
distance from the Movie, fearing the average citizen might believe a
monster lurks in its eponymous lake.
On TV, radio, and in newsprint the concerned officials of the Village of
Lake Placid are getting the word out that they're proud of their
community and no movie is going to besmirch its grand history (grand if
you overlook the Prohibition hijinks). Recently a Village politico
stated to the media that no crazed creature-feature lives in the lake,
that there is nothing to fear.
When ads first appeared for the Movie, Village officials were
considering legal action against the film company. But the events in
the Movie take place in the wilds of Maine, not the Adirondack
Mountains. The film stars a giant crocodile-- or alligator or moody
manatee, whatever the critter is-- that devours people-- and even a
cow-- without warning. (Snap! Krunch!) The Village found that legally
there was nothing they could do, even though they thought they would
garner some money from a lawsuit or a licensing agreement. Let's see--
the name of the Movie is not the name of the lake depicted in the film,
it takes place in another state, and apparently the Village of Lake
Placid has no copyright or trademark on its name. Yup, that's a strong
case.
So now the public relations ploy is to make the public aware of the
non-connection between the Village and the Movie. Hhmmmm, a mayor
telling the media that everything is OK, no carnivorous behemoth is
snacking on people. Sounds familiar. Wait-a-minute-- that's from the
movie _Jaws_, the cover-up scheme to save the tourist season! If life
is imitating art...
Quick! Get the word out! Stay away from the beaches! There is a
monster crocodile in a feeding frenzy in Lake Placid, NY!
=============================================================
LIVE ON THE SCENE OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
By Viki Reed
(LOS ANGELES) If the local news covers Charlton Heston's "All Right,
I'm Gay!" Press-Conference, I'll tune-in. I can't be the only Angeleno
who watches all the news from the whacky AM teams to the somber Late
Night Reports who is overcome with a desire to buy a gun, show up at
KKTV Channel Eleven and make the news.
When I moved to California I had to analyze the situation. For some
time I assumed that because of the time zone difference that the real
news-- the news that I was used to seeing in New York-- must be three
hours behind. So I thought, "I'll wait". But the news never came.
While I was waiting for the local stations to tell me some real news,
_A Current Affair_, _Hard Copy_, _Entertainment Tonight_ and _Access
Hollywood_ blipped through my cable box. CNN seemed forever stuck on
the weather and a loop of bloody international headlines . I couldn't
tell when one celebrity stopped posing and talking and the next UPI clip
began. There wasn't any apparent journalism involved in the programs I
saw. There was no evidence of reportage. Just video with voice-overs
(and closed captioning where available). My eyes were too tired to skim
through all the Los Angeles rags for an accurate accounting of what was
happening in my new city, so I went to bed knowing that Vendela still
looked young enough to proof at a liquor store.
Every day I'd wake up and think, "It was just a slow news day
yesterday." Driving through Los Angeles I noticed terrible things that
shouted out for discovery and change but no reporters heard the cry.
How could they? The News Choppers were hovering low, preoccupied with
their pursuit of a moron in a stolen car. Channel Nine _News-At-Noon_
recapped the previous day's stories of babies born on the freeway,
babies left in trash-cans, and babies shot in gang wars, all sprinkled
with the morning's updates, then they proudly trumpeted: TOFU! EVERYONE
KNOWS IT'S GOOD FOR YOU, BUT NOT EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT TO DO WITH IT!
Tofu? I thought maybe Tofu was a new feature on the local news and
what to do with Tofu was a good place to start. But I watched the
credits scroll by after the broadcast, and sure enough, there was no
Tofu Desk or Department listed so this must be a hot story. Or as Local
Channel Nine, KCAL News at Nine describes it:
"Live, Local, and Late-Breaking!"
After the Tofu report I half-expect to hear this headline: "ORANGE
COUNTY WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN OWN HOME; SUSPECTED CAUSE OF DEATH: WIPING
BACK-TO-FRONT! We take you now LIVE to the BATHROOM..."
Followed by a LIVE broadcast of yellow-police-tape flickering LIVE just
beyond the crime-scene, at a place LOCAL to me, where the victim was
once ALIVE... It is LIVE, at eleven p.m., so of course it's really
DARK, and you can't SEE anything, and everyone connected with the crime
is ASLEEP right NOW, and of course the flunkie stringer's teeth are
CHATTERING while he's trying to keep his ear-piece from blowing-away or
fusing to his frozen ear wax in the LIVE WIND.
Nothing's happening, no one's there, but we will be here LIVE with every
bowel movement of every stray-cat in the neighborhood, LIVE from the
SCENE OF THE CRIME. We are live on the scene but the local news desks
are confused as to what the crime is. But then the perps never cop to
it, do they?
Is it too much to ask that local news programming actually should be
compelled to demand real journalists and an assessment of relevancy in
their editorial process? Isn't it true that I can find out what it's
really like to be Jim Carrey... anywhere?! How do these local stations
sleep at night knowing that their main story was only moments before the
star of the Network's Movie-of-the-Week?
I can't blame the news-hounds, or can I? They're just hired journalists
with degrees that they never get to use because the news is a business
first and a place of information second, right? Oh, so that's why Jane
Velez Mitchell opened the afternoon report with this goofus line: "Today
at the U.N. a convoy of envoys..." She actually slowed down as she read
this off her Teleprompter. The news is not a country and western ditty;
it's not supposed to rhyme or otherwise alliterate. Her co-anchor (Dave
Hernandez) introduced his first headline that day, "Misery is cloaked
with mystery as..."
Another local grunt assigned coverage of the Presidency In Crisis (well,
that's what the Graphics said) described the President waiting for his
attorneys to agree upon some terminology with his interrogators as
"passively listening".
How do you passively do anything? Is this what I missed by not going to
college? Pray for us all because that fellow was one of an entire
reporting group, amongst a fellowship of other groups of trained
writers who don't understand common usage of the language they speak.
Paul Moyers, a wunderkind to watch when drunk and in the company of
friends, recently described a house fire as "a pretty good-sized fire".
Isn't that the valuable kind of estimation you would expect from a
homeless, toothless man standing on the sidewalk watching the fire?
Pretty good sized? What's an ugly bad-shaped fire? What's just a
good-sized fire? Just don't let Moyers near fire as he'll probably hurt
someone other than himself. The whacky morning crew on the same network
actually host a brilliant "Paul Moyers Quote of the Day" segment. It's
a sad day when the morning news can lambaste the evening news and have
tape to back it up.
So many middle-aged men should have to dye their hair and tuck their
faces just so they can read off of a prompter...slowly with a fake
understanding... with absolutely nothing in their heads except how
mighty lucky they are to be pulling down the change they are. My
headline tonight? You do notice when someone is using Grecian formula.
To the local news-affiliates: You can cry economics when you stop
bludgeoning me with commercials about microwave meals fulfilling for the
whole family every four minutes.
To the same people: You tell me to shut-up until I've tried to produce a
news-program; I say: ditto. Hey, maybe you could even work on beating
"The Star" Magazine for accuracy in reporting since you have the time to
produce segments about "Ostrich-Meat: The Low Fat Wonder Food for the
Nineties"!!!
Being fair, the locals aren't the only highly paid air heads around.
Watching MSNBC is more boring than watching a screen-saver. Guessing
how many jelly beans in a fish bowl is easier than guessing how many
times the MSNBC profiles on Seinfeld, Phil Hartman, and the entire cast
of Saturday Night Live were rerun. Their show Time & Again should be
pronounced "Time and...Again?!" Why again, for crap's sake? Again with
the clips from A&E's biography mixed with clips of the Blues Brothers?
It's unfortunate that the most respectable journalists working are stuck
on Sixty Minutes where they fight for a mini time slot to do a story
that likely warrants the whole hour. Why did it take so long for
everyone to realize how fascinating Bryant Gumbel is? (As fascinating
as drying gesso.) Didn't think it possible to screw up an Emmy Awards
Show? How hard could it be to distract you from the packed gowns and
famous clowns? No one knows as well as Bryant. You could see him
mouthing, "Fine, thanks, and you, Katie?" all night in search of
creature comfort.
So Dateline really needs to be seen more than once a week. Is that why
every story is milked dry and stretched thin with little effort towards
writing, finding a compelling angle, or fact finding? Who told NBC that
horrible two camera interviews (will someone explain to NBC News that
the reporter/investigator's reaction is NOT the point of a question and
answer session) with the depth of a bowl of Cheerios does NOT an
investigation make. Was Diane Sawyer as high as I would have to be in
order to avoid asking Michael Jackson: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU AND WHAT
HAPPENED TO YOU WHEN YOU WERE A KID THAT WE ALL MISSED? DON'T YOU SEE
THAT LISA MARIE MARRIED YOU TO ALIGN YOUR MONEY WITH THE CHURCH OF
SCIENTOLOGY? DON'T YOU THINK YOU APPEAR A BIT FREAKISH, MIKEY?"
Doesn't real old pro Hugh Downs get squirrely in the stomach sitting
next to wooden news decoy Barbra Walters, being forced into post story
quips like, "Yes, well, that's awful, we can certainly hope someone does
something about that...just awful, yes..." Can't we just banish Babs
to _The View_ forever since that is truly her speed. So you dated
Kissinger, does that make you a world power or a powerful intelligent
woman? Did having Donald Trump's kid turn Marla Maples into Meryl
Streep?
The news is not supposed to be a fashion show for The First Lady or a
free infomercial for a Hard-Rock Cafe opening on Mars. The news was
never intended to be a promotional campaign for Tofu. Not that I don't
know better than ever what to do with Tofu if I ever see a Channel Nine
News Producer in person.
Hey, I'm not Stephen Hawking with tits. I didn't pass geography in
school. That's why I would watch the news, you see? Disturbing is the
timbre in the air when a wealth of investigative information was never
more available or more important. The local Fox News Anchors couldn't
tell you what borders Zaire any more than I could if it came up during
Trivial Pursuit.
Dear Local-News shows: please stop insulting even my intelligence,
wasting hours of programming time that would be better used by
broadcasting movies from the roaring twenties, and regularly lowering
the standards and expectations of the better part of the general public.
This generation of local news shows is not the first to make banal,
slanted, shallow, abbreviated presentation the Theme of the Hour. But
isn't it scary that you do it better than anyone at any time?
Until the general public is disallowed from getting what they want (like
hours long car chases covered live and bobcats stuck in back yard tennis
courts), I have some suggestions:
1. Make Paul Moyers wear a squeaky, red, clown-nose and his co-anchor
has to impetuously tweak it throughout the news-hour.
2. Film MacNeil and Lehrer watching the local news-broadcasters, making
fun of them, much like "Beavis and Butthead" ridiculing the red-leather
pants worn by Whitesnake's lead singer.
3. Stop sending Asian reporters to Korea Town for ethnic-associated
stories and the white reporters to Washington for image-oriented
stories.
4. Act out the headline news items like a game of charades.
5. Cut away from Jim Lampley and Bree Walker when they don't have copy
to read... you can hear them thinking and it's pretty awkward, indeed.
6. Perhaps hire Barney the Dinosaur as a new anchor. You treat Los
Angeles adults like they're five anyway. Besides, Barney can sing the
news: "Hillary...Hillary...wears nice clothes for a First Lady..."
7. Make Gene Shalit, and all of the Hollywood On the Scene Gossip and
Movie 'reporters' broadcast from the real Hollywood Blvd., where they
can be confronted by the Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson and Madonna
impersonators-for-hire. They can be yelled at by tourists trying to be
photographed next to Bruce Lee or The Duke's Feet. They can be bothered
by panhandlers like Antennae Man. They can see REAL Hollywood actors
doing what real show-biz people do: begging, schmoozing, and making fun
of Gene Shalit.
8. Have Tony Randall sit in as a drop-in anchor. He always perks-up
Conan O'Brien's or Dave Letterman's show. I'd watch him talk about
Air-Bag Regulation.
9. Why not broadcast the news live from Spring Break in Daytona or live
from the Funny Car Championships at the Whiskey Pete Casino and Resort
in Stateline, Nevada?
10. Why not broadcast all news as to how it affects Arnold
Schwarzennaggar and Bill Gates? After all, they're the real men with
power in this country-- maybe the world.
Hell, why not broadcast news?
***Viki Reed on Viki Reed: "I've worked in entertainment full-time since
1986. I've worked below and above the line-- that's no pun, it's the
truth... As a stand-up comedian, my idols begin and end with Carlin,
Bruce, Odenkirk, Cross, Rivers, Rickles, Kauffman, Kineson, Brooks,
Newhart, and Hicks. I perform in Los Angeles in venues as diverse as
The Comedy Store and Little Frieda's Coffee Shop of West Hollywood."
Her work can be read online currently at www.explode.com and
www.subbrilliant.com.***
=============================================================
NICE GIRLS QUASI-SHILL FOR STRIP CLUB
Here deep within the bowels of the Reality Center we are simultaneously
tracking a multitude of media: print, TeeVee, radio, even channelling
the Beyond (we'll talk some other time about our conversations with
Walter Winchell and what he thinks of that punk, Matt Drudge). Despite
our jaded eye, we are sometimes shocked by what we notice.
Years ago there was a TeeVee series called _Sweet Valley High_, based
upon the books by Francine Pascal. The lead characters were twin girls
in high school and the two stars of the TeeVee show were nice, well-bred
young ladies. The series is no longer shown in our locality but the
legacy of its winsome stars lives on-- albeit in a form we find
questionable, both in the areas of taste and copyright. We tried to
contact Francine Pascal via email but so far no reply. Here's what we
wrote to her (twice):
<askfrancine@randomhouse.com>
Mon, 7 Jun 1999
Ms. Pascal:
We did a quick search of the Net and we found this email address. We
don't know if we should be trying elsewhere but we thought we would
start here.
We were wondering how much control you had over the images of your Sweet
Valley characters, especially those related to the SV High TV show. A
local television station has been using parts of the promo clip for the
SVH show for a topless bar commercial. For example, in the original
promo the two lead actresses say something like "You'll never know what
will happen!". This pops up during the topless bar ad as if both girls
work at this local nightclub.
My daughter is offended by this and as a father I am also very upset.
Why do you let this happen? We think this ad has been on at least for a
couple of years.>
When we received no reply, we tried another email address for Francine
Pascal but that one was no go. So we re-emailed the above letter to the
first address with an offer to provide additional details. No response.
The silence has been deafening.
It bothers us that the wholesome, delightful twins from Sweet Valley
High have been exploited to promote a tittie bar. So if you happen to
see the actresses Brittany and Cynthia, the Daniel twins, ask them if
they like rubbing elbows (and possibly other body parts) with "the best
girls from Penthouse!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submitted works must be ready for publication (edited and proofread).
Word Limit: 1000 words. No sci-fi, poetry, sci-fi poetry, poetic sci-fi,
etc. Do some research and read a couple of issues to find what we want.
Submissions and readers' comments should be sent to Antipress1@aol.com.
Anti-Press Ezine and its sporadically published issues are available at:
http://www.disobey.com/text/
Copyright 1998-2000 Anti-Press
Publication by Disobey.
http://www.disobey.com/
TO SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe APE
TO UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe APE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
