Hollywood and television have mastered the coming-attraction gig. Their screens explode in color and volume as they assault our senses with extraordinary images of extraordinary people, plots and products.
As for the people....the screens feature everyone from Tom Cruise scaling tall buildings to Mitt Romney drinking small town coffee to Law & Order cops swooping in for the arrest in helicopters. The folks who shoot these coming attractions are cinematic masters at editing say 90 minutes of raw footage down to the precise 30 seconds they want you to see.. I mean, when's the last time you actually saw anyone rappelling the Sears Tower, any pol once elected coming back to your corner cafe, or any actual police helicopters dropping off so many beautiful cops?
As for the plots...Hollywood remains the master magician with their coming attractions bursting in theatres in digitalized promises of: Greatest, grandest, glorious, gratifying. Promises that afterwards simply don't fit the 120 minutes you just drowsed through.
As for the products...well, I ask you, how many of those advertised cars you bought actually swept you up rugged canyon trails, roaring across steaming deserts, or screeching up to Vegas hotels to be greeted by gasping models staring at your strut?
By and large we all live lives of quiet desperation. And so it is that coming attractions -- that promise us some of the power and glamor we gave up expecting after selling our last comic book collection -- can act like the promised Balm in Gilead. Somehow, somewhere, something out there offers us something better. Just when we needed it!
Most of these coming attractions are not so much mirages. More likely they are mirrors. Mirrors held up to our deepest desires and highest hopes in an otherwise modest existence. The glass is so polished, the images so glittering, we find it hard not to respond. The thing we have to remember is that all that glitters is not gold, all the desires that beckon in our lives are not necessarily desirable.
The optimists have the right to tell us that life is a fat piece of juicy fruit just waiting to be bitten. The pessimists have the right to quote pessimists like Bertolt Brecht: "He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news." And you and I...? We have right to choose.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
THE TWO DEATHS ON TV HARDEST TO WATCH
To watch television is to witness thousands of deaths each year. On the streets, on the battlefronts, on the highways. However, the two most horrific deaths you'll witness tonight are the slow but inexorable deaths of Democracy and Domesticity.
Each death is a ghoulish yet subtle dance whose steps at first seem altogether familiar and innocent. Once something becomes innocent, it's harder to detect its ghoulishness.
Take Democracy....We were taught in school that its cherished liberties depend upon an active and informed citizenry. Active is easy, informed is not! Watch the day-and-nightly ways in which the citizenry out there is wowed and wooed by the latest slash-ad campaigns...big-name endorsements...smartly orchestrated rallies...especially prime-time camera-time carefully allocated by the media. Watch carefully, because what we're watching is well funded marketing of human products in the name of Democracy.
Take Domesticity...We have grown up with the assumption it-takes-a-family to make up a neighborhood, then a community, and ultimately a country. I mean, there's all that home-is-where-the-heart-is stuff from our movies and Mothers Day cards, right? Wrong! Over the years, the home is often where the family occasionally meet for dinner, in between school, jobs, games, and exotic finding-myself-experiences. Homes, such as they are in today's fast mobile culture, look more like sleeping quarters than their traditional image of character builders. Where few mothers any longer feel secure or fulfilled.
No doubt you've have heard the eloquent evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, speak of "memes." Something like the genes in biology, memes are said to be the ideas floating around in a culture like living organisms. The vector of their transmission from one person to another is language by which they leap from brain to brain.
Each death is a ghoulish yet subtle dance whose steps at first seem altogether familiar and innocent. Once something becomes innocent, it's harder to detect its ghoulishness.
Take Democracy....We were taught in school that its cherished liberties depend upon an active and informed citizenry. Active is easy, informed is not! Watch the day-and-nightly ways in which the citizenry out there is wowed and wooed by the latest slash-ad campaigns...big-name endorsements...smartly orchestrated rallies...especially prime-time camera-time carefully allocated by the media. Watch carefully, because what we're watching is well funded marketing of human products in the name of Democracy.
Take Domesticity...We have grown up with the assumption it-takes-a-family to make up a neighborhood, then a community, and ultimately a country. I mean, there's all that home-is-where-the-heart-is stuff from our movies and Mothers Day cards, right? Wrong! Over the years, the home is often where the family occasionally meet for dinner, in between school, jobs, games, and exotic finding-myself-experiences. Homes, such as they are in today's fast mobile culture, look more like sleeping quarters than their traditional image of character builders. Where few mothers any longer feel secure or fulfilled.
No doubt you've have heard the eloquent evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, speak of "memes." Something like the genes in biology, memes are said to be the ideas floating around in a culture like living organisms. The vector of their transmission from one person to another is language by which they leap from brain to brain.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
DAVINCE CODE AT LAST DECODED
Dan Brown's blockbuster book/movie raised some old yet fascinating charges about the Vatican. Just recently, Leonardo DaVinci scholars raised some old yet fascinating charges about the restoration work being conducted on his masterpieces. Is there more here than meets the eye?
I think you'll think so too.
The scholars are arguing about the smallest of details to the delicate restoration process. Rather like political scholars are with the smallest of the Iowa caucus votes. But there's a big difference! The votes in tiny Iowa are but a tiny fragment of a tiny story that will be here today and gone tomorrow. In sharp contrast, the tiny story to the squabble over these masterpieces is not only here today, but it was here yesterday and will continue to be tomorrow.
The difference...? It's between the timely and the timeless.
In our 24/7 electronic whoosh of reportage, it's easy to get caught up in what's new and what's happening. People by the millions now rush through the day with earphones plugged into their heads so they can't miss a beat or a byte. However, as you read about the devoted scholars lovingly hunched over a 500 year painting, you have the feeling the every-hour-on-the-hour reporting outside seems a bit silly in the presence of something so immortal inside.
The works of masters -- DaVinci and Rembrandt, Bach and Mozart, Shakespeare and Emerson -- have stood the test of time. Reminding us that what-has-been is often of greater importance to humanity's heart and soul than what-is-now. Just maybe the nattering crowds that spill into our streets and malls and conference rooms each day are far too concerned with the glittering tyranny of impermanence.
I think you'll think so too.
The scholars are arguing about the smallest of details to the delicate restoration process. Rather like political scholars are with the smallest of the Iowa caucus votes. But there's a big difference! The votes in tiny Iowa are but a tiny fragment of a tiny story that will be here today and gone tomorrow. In sharp contrast, the tiny story to the squabble over these masterpieces is not only here today, but it was here yesterday and will continue to be tomorrow.
The difference...? It's between the timely and the timeless.
In our 24/7 electronic whoosh of reportage, it's easy to get caught up in what's new and what's happening. People by the millions now rush through the day with earphones plugged into their heads so they can't miss a beat or a byte. However, as you read about the devoted scholars lovingly hunched over a 500 year painting, you have the feeling the every-hour-on-the-hour reporting outside seems a bit silly in the presence of something so immortal inside.
The works of masters -- DaVinci and Rembrandt, Bach and Mozart, Shakespeare and Emerson -- have stood the test of time. Reminding us that what-has-been is often of greater importance to humanity's heart and soul than what-is-now. Just maybe the nattering crowds that spill into our streets and malls and conference rooms each day are far too concerned with the glittering tyranny of impermanence.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
THE NEW CLOUD IN YOUR LIFE NAMES ZETTABYTE
All kinds of clouds in our life. Storm clouds, cumulus clouds, clouds-of-dust-and-a-hearty-hi-o-Silver.
The one that now counts the most is the one you and I understand the least. That invisible global accumulation of humanity's everyday data. Data from think tanks and basement bloggers...from our billion-dollar military complexes to our secret band of hackers...from the local college campus and medical center to the international Hadron Collider in Switzerland to the IMF in Washington.
It's been estimated that the accumulated knowledge of humanity first doubled by about 1800. That mass doubled by 1900. That mass by 1950. Well, you get the staggering exponentiality of it...! By the year 2020, some of these cloud-makers estimate this permanently stored leviathan of digital information at our disposal will be 35 zettabytes.
What in God's name is a zettabyte?
Funny you should ask. A zettabyte is a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Now let me put that into a very simplistic example. When you and I hear the traffic report on our station, the rapid-fire reporter sounds something like this: "Traffic from the Loop interchange to 53 south is 40...from the Ike to I94 28... Edens at Peterson 13 to the Willow cutoff now backed up 45 from 295...reverse lanes in all directions currently closed."
What???
Not sure about you, but when that's read in 7 seconds while I'm maneuvering on the Rockford cutoff behind ten semi's, frankly I don't understand what the hell she just told me! And that, my confused computerized colleagues, is the tiniest fraction of an example of how it is beginning to feel in a world where there now exists a billion billion more clouds of information than the human brain can effectively gather... sift...interpret...understand...and [the real crunch-point] use.
Does that mean we turn off the Cloud...? We can't. Turn off our minds...? We shouldn't. Start eating our lunch everyday lazily staring up at the real clouds...? That last one has a nice feel to it. Only...!
The one that now counts the most is the one you and I understand the least. That invisible global accumulation of humanity's everyday data. Data from think tanks and basement bloggers...from our billion-dollar military complexes to our secret band of hackers...from the local college campus and medical center to the international Hadron Collider in Switzerland to the IMF in Washington.
It's been estimated that the accumulated knowledge of humanity first doubled by about 1800. That mass doubled by 1900. That mass by 1950. Well, you get the staggering exponentiality of it...! By the year 2020, some of these cloud-makers estimate this permanently stored leviathan of digital information at our disposal will be 35 zettabytes.
What in God's name is a zettabyte?
Funny you should ask. A zettabyte is a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Now let me put that into a very simplistic example. When you and I hear the traffic report on our station, the rapid-fire reporter sounds something like this: "Traffic from the Loop interchange to 53 south is 40...from the Ike to I94 28... Edens at Peterson 13 to the Willow cutoff now backed up 45 from 295...reverse lanes in all directions currently closed."
What???
Not sure about you, but when that's read in 7 seconds while I'm maneuvering on the Rockford cutoff behind ten semi's, frankly I don't understand what the hell she just told me! And that, my confused computerized colleagues, is the tiniest fraction of an example of how it is beginning to feel in a world where there now exists a billion billion more clouds of information than the human brain can effectively gather... sift...interpret...understand...and [the real crunch-point] use.
Does that mean we turn off the Cloud...? We can't. Turn off our minds...? We shouldn't. Start eating our lunch everyday lazily staring up at the real clouds...? That last one has a nice feel to it. Only...!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
AT LAST WE DISCOVER THE MAN BEHIND THAT CURTAIN
Look, we all know there are many curtains behind which stand many surprises. Perhaps the biggest surprise -- and here I'm beating the NEW YORK TIMES to a scoop! -- is a small circle of executives who rent a locked conference room in the Plaza Hotel [room212]. These 14 men and women meet six times a year to strategize most of what 330 million Americans are feeling.
Feelings...? That's right. Feelings are the agenda; fortunes are the goal. Here's how it works.
These are the power-brokers in the feeling-business. The nationwide ventures which package, promote and project what most Americans are feeling about their lives...their jobs...their leaders...their future. Two from network television; two from the cable channels; two from Hollywood; two from the printed media; two from the blogging community; two from the theatre community; two from the sports community.
I've never attended the secret conferences, but if I told you who these 14 are, it would be easy for you to understand just how they seize and stir our deepest feelings. About our heroes & villains; dreams & fears; passions & purposes. And as go a nation's feelings, so go their votes! their purchases! their beliefs! their devotions!
We live in an age which speaks to the power of the human mind, but at the end of the day we all discover it's been our heart not our head that rules. Which is why the 14 cast ballots to determine who and what will get the next multi-million-dollar treatment. In television (hit series, news coverage, Sunday Morning interviews, guest shots on Dave & Jay)....in films (the stars and scripts) ...in headline coverage (from front page to op-eds)...on the stage (whose plays and music get financed).
The next time you support a candidate, cheer a team, love a movie, fantasize about the latest hunk and heroine... do you actually think YOU'VE discovered them? Come on, folks! They and what they represent in your life have been carefully discovered and planned months ago. In life there are no coincidences.
But, hey, that's OK. If you want to believe your feelings are authentically yours, fine. And if you want to believe my secret society is authentic, that's fine too. Take your choice....
Feelings...? That's right. Feelings are the agenda; fortunes are the goal. Here's how it works.
These are the power-brokers in the feeling-business. The nationwide ventures which package, promote and project what most Americans are feeling about their lives...their jobs...their leaders...their future. Two from network television; two from the cable channels; two from Hollywood; two from the printed media; two from the blogging community; two from the theatre community; two from the sports community.
I've never attended the secret conferences, but if I told you who these 14 are, it would be easy for you to understand just how they seize and stir our deepest feelings. About our heroes & villains; dreams & fears; passions & purposes. And as go a nation's feelings, so go their votes! their purchases! their beliefs! their devotions!
We live in an age which speaks to the power of the human mind, but at the end of the day we all discover it's been our heart not our head that rules. Which is why the 14 cast ballots to determine who and what will get the next multi-million-dollar treatment. In television (hit series, news coverage, Sunday Morning interviews, guest shots on Dave & Jay)....in films (the stars and scripts) ...in headline coverage (from front page to op-eds)...on the stage (whose plays and music get financed).
The next time you support a candidate, cheer a team, love a movie, fantasize about the latest hunk and heroine... do you actually think YOU'VE discovered them? Come on, folks! They and what they represent in your life have been carefully discovered and planned months ago. In life there are no coincidences.
But, hey, that's OK. If you want to believe your feelings are authentically yours, fine. And if you want to believe my secret society is authentic, that's fine too. Take your choice....
Monday, January 2, 2012
DON'T THROW AWAY THAT 2011 CALENDAR. NOT JUST YET
Time is a fragile thing. Poets, painters and physicists each try to define it. You and I get to live it. But what should we do when it's over? As in that old calendar you just took down from the kitchen wall?
The pragmatists and environmentalists among us will simply say: Dispose it. I say: Study it. Take a little sliver of 2012 time to reconsider what you and I didn't do with 2011 time. It's something like the difference between the tea drinker who throws away the brewed leaves and the one who studies them.
Here's what I see in my 2011 calendar. The days that were used for tasks, appointments, deadlines, family dinners, parties, weddings and funerals. The everyday rhythms of my life that were scheduled and most times kept. But there are other dates! I see them scattered among those now expired hours, never to be regained or re-lived again:
* The days I spent dreading the bad weather that never came
* The days I hated going to a job that now I wish I still had
* The days I canceled attending an event that I now regret missing
* The days I never got around to calling my old friend who never made it to the end of the year
* The days I failed to experience such delicious cliches as: Health is wealth
* The days I didn't have time to look at the lawns and birds and kids just outside my window
* The days I forgot to kiss the ones I love
* The days I forgot to notice how I was aging into someone not just older but different
Well now. Your 2011 calendar will have other days to it. Gone now. Never to be lived again. But this little exercise is not meant to bury your Caesars. Nor to praise them. Simply to hold them up to the light of your best reflections. Some of them may draw a smile, some a tear, many a shrug.
But if held to the light just right...2011 could very well be your very best map for traveling your 2012
The pragmatists and environmentalists among us will simply say: Dispose it. I say: Study it. Take a little sliver of 2012 time to reconsider what you and I didn't do with 2011 time. It's something like the difference between the tea drinker who throws away the brewed leaves and the one who studies them.
Here's what I see in my 2011 calendar. The days that were used for tasks, appointments, deadlines, family dinners, parties, weddings and funerals. The everyday rhythms of my life that were scheduled and most times kept. But there are other dates! I see them scattered among those now expired hours, never to be regained or re-lived again:
* The days I spent dreading the bad weather that never came
* The days I hated going to a job that now I wish I still had
* The days I canceled attending an event that I now regret missing
* The days I never got around to calling my old friend who never made it to the end of the year
* The days I failed to experience such delicious cliches as: Health is wealth
* The days I didn't have time to look at the lawns and birds and kids just outside my window
* The days I forgot to kiss the ones I love
* The days I forgot to notice how I was aging into someone not just older but different
Well now. Your 2011 calendar will have other days to it. Gone now. Never to be lived again. But this little exercise is not meant to bury your Caesars. Nor to praise them. Simply to hold them up to the light of your best reflections. Some of them may draw a smile, some a tear, many a shrug.
But if held to the light just right...2011 could very well be your very best map for traveling your 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
I LOVE HUMANITY...IT'S THE PEOPLE I CAN'T STANDYou know how every beauty queen stands up there, fixing her crown and holding back the tears. What's th
You know how every beauty queen stands up there, fixing her crown and holding back the tears. What's the first thing she wishes for? That's right: "world peace." Dumb as she makes that sound, it's really the mother of all wishes.
Which is how I feel when I look out at my world from a long shot. The sweeping fields of lush green and yellow ripening in the spring...the cobble-stone streets rambling through country hamlets...the sky-seeking towers of our great cities...throngs of happy families giggling through Disney World...caring teachers happily herding their kids through recess...little ones building sand castles...congregations praying in the pews... crowds standing with their hands on their heart at flag-led parades and games.
People en masse can be people at their best. Because you're experiencing them like a Currier & Ives or Norman Rockwell painting. Humanity! The pinnacle of the Creator's [or if you insist, Evolution's] handiwork down the eons. The one strain of planetary life which has grown and conquered all in its way.
Now here's the problem.
I can't speak for you, but when the long shot tightens, and you find yourself shoulder-and-sweat next to them, something happens to humanity. The nobility gets grainy. Standing behind humanity in an growly checkout line, I seem always to get the shopper who waits till then to take out her coupons... driving behind a serpentine stretch of rush-hour traffic, I always find the hesitant first-time driver... on planes, I wonder why the passenger next to me is without exception the largest, latest most luggaged one on board...and as for the theatre, I can bet my life that 15 minutes after it starts, the usher will be jabbing a flashlight in my face to guide the entire party of late-comers to the very damn middle of my aisle!
I want to love my fellow man; and woman too. I believe in world peace, Santa Claus, and all the Rockwell calendars in my house. I really really do. But why, why, are people so different than humanity....?
Which is how I feel when I look out at my world from a long shot. The sweeping fields of lush green and yellow ripening in the spring...the cobble-stone streets rambling through country hamlets...the sky-seeking towers of our great cities...throngs of happy families giggling through Disney World...caring teachers happily herding their kids through recess...little ones building sand castles...congregations praying in the pews... crowds standing with their hands on their heart at flag-led parades and games.
People en masse can be people at their best. Because you're experiencing them like a Currier & Ives or Norman Rockwell painting. Humanity! The pinnacle of the Creator's [or if you insist, Evolution's] handiwork down the eons. The one strain of planetary life which has grown and conquered all in its way.
Now here's the problem.
I can't speak for you, but when the long shot tightens, and you find yourself shoulder-and-sweat next to them, something happens to humanity. The nobility gets grainy. Standing behind humanity in an growly checkout line, I seem always to get the shopper who waits till then to take out her coupons... driving behind a serpentine stretch of rush-hour traffic, I always find the hesitant first-time driver... on planes, I wonder why the passenger next to me is without exception the largest, latest most luggaged one on board...and as for the theatre, I can bet my life that 15 minutes after it starts, the usher will be jabbing a flashlight in my face to guide the entire party of late-comers to the very damn middle of my aisle!
I want to love my fellow man; and woman too. I believe in world peace, Santa Claus, and all the Rockwell calendars in my house. I really really do. But why, why, are people so different than humanity....?
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