James Baldwin, 1924-1987: “I can’t be a pessimist, because I’m alive”
James Baldwin, the finest 20th-century writer about race and America and one of the greatest essayists this country ever produced, died 20 years ago today: November 30, 1987. In this clip, taken from an early 1960s TV interview, he talks about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the civil rights movement that was then breaking onto the national stage. (Unfortunately, the synching of image and sound are off. Doesn’t really matter.)
Open Thread: New (/Old) Movies Opening This Week
What Would Jesus Buy?, Awake, Blade Runner: The Final Cut
Click on any of the links above to see descriptions and trailers from Movies.com. Going out to see any of them? Come back and let us know what you think.
Next week at Pop Media, a very special mini-course from the Department of B-movie Studies
Course title: “This is the Part Where I Get Mad: The Cinema of Patrick Swayze”
Description: The American B-movie is a storied, dying art form. By examining the career of the last great B-movie icon, Patrick Swayze, the course will seek to distill the essence of the genre. Through viewing, readings, and discussion, students will acquire an appreciation of the nuances that make B-movie viewing an experience unmatched by other approaches to film aesthetics.
Required viewing: Road House, Next of Kin, Black Dog (pictured), Ghost, Point Break, Donnie Darko, 11:14, and the first 10 minutes of either Waking Up in Reno, Forever Lulu, or To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.
B Movies Black Dog Daily Mole homework Donnie Darko Ghost Movies Next of Kin Patrick Swayze Point Break Road House Swayze Studies Open Thread: 50 Smartest People…in Hollywood
According to Entertainment Weekly, Judd Apatow is the smartest. Diablo Cody is the 38th smartest. And Ben Affleck is the 50th. Let’s make it easy: Who are the 5 smartest (people)…in the Twin Cities, in comic books, on television, in your world?
More racial tensions at MPD after another black cop is demoted
More racial tensions at MPD after another black cop is demoted
Twin Cities: Tay Zonday is no one-YouTube-hit wonder… Sucky newspaper revenues get suckier… Words of holiday cheer from Overheard in Minneapolis… Dude Weather: Dutch’s driving advisory for this weekend’s snowstorm… Pop Media: Public service gore from Canada… How do you make a viral video? Hire a marketing team… YouPorn has pro pornographers in a tizzy… Talk: It’s Festivus Friday: Air your grievances from the week gone by…
Racial tensions in and around MPD ratchet up following another demotion of high-ranking black officer
Doug Grow at MinnPost and David Chanen and Terry Collins at the Strib pull back the cover on an important local story touched on previously at the Mole: the growing animus of the local black community, and of African-American cops, toward Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan. Relations headed further south on Wednesday when Dolan demoted Charlie Adams, a 22-year veteran and the most visible black officer in the department, for “insubordination” toward his Homicide unit commander, Lt. Amelia Huffman.
Minneapolis City Council member Ralph Remington is quoted thus in the Strib: “I’m weighing my options. I want to see if there’s a political will to do it and if there’s enough concern to see if there is systemic racism within the police department in terms of hiring and firing procedures.”
“We’re back to the 1950s,” Spike Moss tells Grow. “Everything that [former MPD Chief Bill] McManus did has now been undone.”
It begins to seem like that was part of the point.
More: Local commentator and Police/Community Relations Council co-chair Ron Edwards talked about the racial tensions at the MPD in our October 29 Molecast, when he said, “[Morale among black officers] is the lowest that I’ve ever seen it, and I have been involved with this part of social action and advocacy since 1959.”
Free cell phone game features presidential candidates poking each other in the kisser
Also via Techcrunch, there is now a free presidential boxing game for your phone. The Mobile Ring (get it? Ring?) lets you stage bouts between the likes of John Edwards and John McCain, or Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (shown here). The Mole thinks it would be a much more popular game if it allowed user-avatars to punch the candidates instead.
The business of marketing “viral” video
Last week at Techcrunch, a web-marketing savant named Dan Ackerman Greenberg authored a fascinating post about how his company and others rack up page views for clients who want their video message to be seen everywhere. Viral, schmiral, he writes: “There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how ‘viral’ you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it.”
Greenberg goes on to enumerate nine secrets of the video-promo trade, including these notes on content:
Here are some guidelines we follow:
- Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
- Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others.
- Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing.
- Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further.
- Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!”
- Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video.
Local web star Tay Zonday is no one-YouTube-hit wonder: “Cherry Chocolate Rain”
It’s new (posted Wednesday), it’s a hit (over 566,000 views so far), it’s weird (it’s Tay Zonday)… and it’s actually very funny: “Cherry Chocolate Rain.”
Workplace safety ad campaign: Is David Cronenberg in charge here?
It’s a little hard to believe, but the public service spot below, which shows a woman boiling herself in oil after a slip in a restaurant kitchen, is apparently part of a real workplace safety campaign in Canada. It’s from Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, whose website also hosts this beyond-bizarre safety animation for teenage workers. Very, very stoned teenager workers, presumably. [Via Dutch]
Media: Newspaper revenue decline steepens
Mole reader Pete B pointed us to this chart (via Techcrunch), from Silicon Valley-ite Alan Mutter’s Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, tracing the arc of newspaper advertising revenues over the past 10 years. Mutter writes, “If you subtract this year’s likely $42.7 billion in print-ad revenues from the constant-dollar value of the sales a decade ago, the difference of approximately $10 billion means that today’s revenues are nearly 20 percent lower than they were in 1997.”
Gossip Morning
Top paid actresses in Hollywood according to Hollywood Reporter:
1. Reese Witherspoon: $15-$20 million
2. Angelina Jolie: $15-$20 million
3. Cameron Diaz: $15 million, but she was paid $30 million for the third installment of Shrek this year.
4. Nicole Kidman: $10-$15 million
5. Renée Zellweger: $10-$15 million
6. Sandra Bullock: $10-$15 million
7. Julia Roberts: $10-$15 million
8. Drew Barrymore: $10-$12 million
9. Jodie Foster: $10- $12 million
10. Halle Berry: $10 million.
In other news, There’s a Spice Girls epidemic. On the eve of their comeback tour, chickenpox hits the Spice babies.
Dude Weather: Dutch’s driving advisory for this weekend’s snowstorm
Dude Weather: Dutch’s driving advisory for this weekend’s snowstorm
Twin Cities: Words of holiday cheer from Overheard in Minneapolis… Hackers have their way with Minneapolis Park Board website… An English teacher grades Kathy Kersten’s writing… Pop Media: YouPorn has pro pornographers in a tizzy… The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary… Yesterday’s Molecast: Political consultant Steve Cobble says shortened primary season increases role of money in races–and adds volatility… Talk: It’s Festivus Friday: Air your grievances from the week gone by…
Festivus Friday at the Mole: Time for the airing of grievances
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by. Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
YouPorn has professional smut peddlers in a panic
As YouTube bedevils TV executives, so too does YouPorn keep porn industry producers up at night. Via Ken Doctor’s Content Bridges, the November issue of Portfolio magazine features an article about the hottest commodity in web porn. Claire Hoffman writes,
“As its name suggests, YouPorn lets users upload and watch a virtually unlimited selection of hardcore sex videos for free. The user-generated clips on YouPorn—like those on YouTube, the site it mimics—range from the grainiest amateur footage to the slickest professional product. Also, like YouTube, the site has far more traffic than income. Just nine months after going live, in September 2006, YouPorn was on pace to log about 15 million unique visitors in May, Jones told the Vivid executives, and its audience was growing at a rate of 37.5 percent a month. Today, YouPorn is the No. 1 adult site in the world; Vivid.com, a pay site, is ranked 5,061. According to Alexa, a website-ranking company, YouPorn’s overall rank is higher than CNN.com (84), About.com (114), and Weather.com (195). (Those numbers are averages for the three-month period from mid-June to mid-September.)”
Those Alexa numbers should be taken advisedly–Alexa is notoriously unreliable these days, and Compete.com takes a more jaundiced view of YouPorn’s traffic.
From assmosis to zerotasking: The workplace jargon dictionary
Assmosis [n.] The apparent absorption of success that comes from sucking up.
Deja moo [exp.] The nagging feeling that you’ve heard this B.S. before.
Generica [n.] The parts of America that are so overrun with national franchises that it’s impossible to tell one city from another.
Keepage [n.] The opposite of garbage.
Stakeholder management [n.] The art of acquiring enough opinions from people, groups, or leaders within a company to deflect blame if a project doesn’t meet expectations and/or outright fails.
Zerotasking [v.] Doing nothing.
The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary is here.
OIM: The most wonderful time of the year
From the Daily Mole’s cheer-spreading partner site, Overheard in Minneapolis:
And If You’re Naughty, Santa Pierces Your Nose
5 year old boy looking devastated at 20 something’s tongue ring while drinking his 3rd root beer: Where did you get that?
20 something guy: That’s what happens when you have too much sugar; the dentist pierces your tongue.
Family gathering in uptown park
Overheard by satisfied passerby.
Oh, It’s Only 4 Out Of 5 Toys
Fortyish man, to his young daughter looking at toys: Let me see if it’s painted, with poison.
CVS Midway
Overheard by Nathan.
The Holiday Spirit Has Finally Arrived
Cook #1: I can’t wait to go see Alien Versus Predator II on Christmas!
Cook #2: Why would you go to see AVP 2 on Christmas?
Cook #1: Dude! The blood is red and green!
Delano Pizza Ranch/ In the kitchen
Overheard by D.R.B.
So No Christmas Cards For The Coworkers This Year?
Coworker #1: So, why do you have a headache today?
Coworker #2: Because I woke up with a hangover and I didn’t even drink last night! I got the headache because I had to come into this shit-fucking-hole today.
225 S. 6th St, Minneapolis, 12th floor
Overheard by Damn Straight.
Site hack: Russians invade Minneapolis Park Board!
This is weird: Mole reader and media/public affairs sleuth Chris Steller, who recently caught the Star Tribune doctoring NYT wire copy, writes to say that someone has hacked the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board website. As of this morning, visitors to the site are being redirected to a Russian domain (screen shot).
Steller writes: “What about the Minneapolis 2008 parks budget doesn’t Vladimir Putin want us to know? Does Putin so desperately need to ensure his foregone electoral victory this Sunday that he has sent his dark forces to the shores of the Upper Mississippi? Will we wake Friday to find signs at our city parks now spelled in Cyrillic?
“And perhaps the most intriguing question of all: Has Minneapolis Parks Superintendent Jon Gurban–himself installed under mysterious circumstances, notorious for calling out his police to curtail free speech, and having critics of his regime silenced, finally met his match?
“OK, I joke, but this apparent hack of the MPRB website is real.”
TC Morning Roundup: Old people’s money is a terrible thing to waste
Two alarming stories about the treatment of Minnesota’s senior citizens this morning: In the Pi Press, Julie Forster writes that Attorney General Lori Swanson is suing yet another insurance company that allegedly sold elderly Minnesotans annuities on a fraudulent basis. Swanson says Midland National Life Insurance charged clients fees of up to 25 percent to withdraw their money. Midland is the third insurance company Swanson has sued this year, following Allianz (settled) and American Equity Investment Life Insurance (pending).
In the Star Tribune, Warren Wolfe reports that two Minnesota nursing homes, including the metro-area Golden Valley Rehabilitation and Care Center, are on a federal list of the US’s 54 worst-performing nursing facilities. The Golden Valley home was cited for 31 inspections violations this year; another local business, the Crystal Care Center, turned up on a longer list of 128 “special focus facilities” that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are watching.
Another transportation SNAFU: KSTP reports that Minnesota could lose up to $22 million in federal highway funds if it doesn’t start complying with federal rules on how the state polices commercial truck driving licenses…. A district court judge has ruled that the Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben law firm, which represents numerous plaintiffs in the 35W bridge collapse, cannot have access to state investigators’ records about the collapse, or to the pieces of the bridge that investigators are in the process of reconstructing…
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who is being investigated for a campaign-related impropriety (earlier Mole post here), will not step aside and let someone else administer a January 3 special election to replace Tom Neuville, a state senator who was recently appointed to a judgeship, as a couple of Republican state senators had suggested… The AFL-CIO has endorsed former MnDOT commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg, who’s running for the Sixth District Congressional seat currently held by Michele Bachmann…
Jenny Jones, a local film historian who works at Walker Art Center, has written The Annotated Godfather: The Complete Screenplay, a book produced with the cooperation of Paramount and Francis Ford Coppola…
The Pioneer Press’s one-man Minneapolis bureau, David Hanners, has some first-rate advice for local drunk drivers, so we’ll cede the “learning from the mistakes of others” department to him today:
“If you’ve crashed your car into a pole, it doesn’t look good if the cops find you walking back to the car with a 12-pack of ale in your arms.”
“If you’re driving down the street in a car without a left front tire and don’t realize the tire is missing, it might be best to pull over.”
Dude Weather 11/30
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