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Send caffeine.

I just looked at my cal­en­dar for this week and groaned, although not entirely with mis­ery. Any week with a to-do list includ­ing “build props for zom­bie movie” and “escort French jour­nal­ists through bad neigh­bor­hoods” can be many things, but not bor­ing. One of the things I wanted when I left Indi­ana was a more inter­est­ing life, and it looks as though I got it, at least this week.

On the other hand, I’m glad I stocked up on cof­fee last week.

My per­am­bu­la­tions this week took me far from my east-side nest, which is always inter­est­ing. In any city that sprawls the way this one does, peo­ple tend to get a lit­tle dug in. Yes­ter­day I went to War­ren. Among the bumper-sticker descrip­tions of War­ren: Second-most cor­rupt city in Michi­gan and Home­town of Eminem. I found myself in a dol­lar store, when three or four Eminem clones walked in: Elab­o­rately carved but badly main­tained facial hair (those multi-prong goa­tees), tat­toos that climb up the neck, cocked ball caps, baggy every­thing.

One had a girl with him, who was appar­ently lead­ing the shop­ping expe­di­tion. She wasn’t in a good mood, and it was easy to see why: Her boyfriend, one of the Em-ulators, liked to swat her with ran­dom objects. Not like he was seri­ously try­ing to hurt her, but not friendly, either. He’d pick up, say, a roll of wrap­ping paper and slap at her legs with it. “Whad­daya think of this? (slap) Huh? (slap) Huh?” She’s ignor­ing this, but with the pressed lips employed by par­ents try­ing to remem­ber the baby-book advice on how to deal with tod­dler tem­per tantrums. I’m watch­ing this, think­ing, I don’t care what kind of union job that guy has, I don’t care what he does in bed, I don’t care if he has a nice car. You can do bet­ter.

What hap­pened to young men? It’s like women got a lit­tle auton­omy and they fell to pieces. I’m reminded of George Clinton’s com­ments, which I quoted here before but bear repeat­ing:

Though he’s pop­u­lar with rap­pers, Clin­ton says he doesn’t com­pletely under­stand the hip-hop cul­ture. “I can’t get used to [rap­pers] say­ing the things they say to girls and then expect­ing them to make love to that,” he laughs. “One guy was curs­ing this one girl out and I said, ‘Man, don’t talk like that to that girl,’ and she said, ‘Oh, here comes Cap­tain Save-a-Ho.’”

Any­way, that was War­ren. Dollar-store War­ren, granted, but still.

Just got an e-mail from a reader:

Looks like the Chicago Tri­bune has redesigned its way into irrel­e­vancy as unveiled today by Pub­lisher Tony Hunter and Edi­tor Ger­ould Kern. We’ve seen it all before: So many over-sized graphic ele­ments that there is no room for the news, bul­let points, “con­sumer” sto­ries, Hol­ly­wood gos­sip, sto­ries reduced to charts, graphs and other ele­ments (except, of course, copy), etc. etc.

The “new” Trib’s take on one of the biggest sto­ries of the decade, the bail-out plan ham­mered out by Con­gress? Well, you won’t find it on the front page (no space, what with the top half of Page 1 taken up by the two-line name plate, reefers and giant photo). No–this major story only mer­its Page 4. And after dis­count­ing the big photo, break­out box of bul­let points, head and tagline (“News Focus”) you get — not much infor­ma­tion, that’s for sure. The story is paired with a piece by the paper’s “On Money” colum­nist opin­ing on how the Wall Street deba­cle will impact the nest eggs of soon-to-be-retirees. So much for actu­ally inform­ing the pub­lic.

It’s the sec­ond para­graph I want to dis­cuss. I’ve had it up to here with redesigns, and did long before this. Every top man­age­ment change I’ve wit­nessed seems to be accom­pa­nied by a sweep­ing redesign of the paper, and it took me years to fig­ure out why: Because it’s easy. It’s easy for the peo­ple who order them, any­way. (It’s hell on the peo­ple who actu­ally have to do the work and live with the result.) For the first year of the new team’s tenure, they get to spend large chunks of time doing what they like best: Going to meet­ings and mark­ing up page proofs. It’s not that expen­sive, and then they get to write a big Page One col­umn talk­ing about how won­der­ful and reader-friendly the new design is, before col­lect­ing their MBO bonus.

I count graphic design­ers among my best friends, but many are not jour­nal­ists, and some­one needs to ride them with a curb bit, lest they claim one-third of the front page with a great sprawl­ing promo for “Spider-Man 3,” and yes I’ve seen it.

Any­way, it’s the part about the bailout pack­age being buried inside that inter­ests me. It seems news­pa­pers are truly in a no-win sit­u­a­tion with some of this stuff. At my old paper, we used to make fun of our com­pe­ti­tion, which was edited as though every reader had one source for news — the com­pe­ti­tion. When the first space shut­tle exploded, it hap­pened at 11:30 a.m. Our lit­tle after­noon daily was able to get some­thing in the home edi­tion, but it was badly out­dated by 5 p.m., when not only did every­one know, but had been watch­ing sat­u­ra­tion cov­er­age of the tragedy on TV all after­noon. The cov­er­age con­tin­ued all night, too If ever a story called for a second-day head­line on a morn­ing daily, it was that one. And yet, their head was? Yes: Space shut­tle explodes. Duh.

Today it’s a whole new ball­game, and not only are read­ers look­ing for imme­di­acy, they’re look­ing for exper­tise. I haven’t even glanced at the bailout sto­ries in today’s Detroit News, because I’m read­ing the NYT and WSJ for my pri­mary source. If there’s a ter­ror­ist bomb­ing in Lon­don, I’m not rely­ing on the AP to keep me posted — I’m going to the Lon­don dailies. And so on.

Granted, I’m an early adopter, and prob­a­bly one of the savvier read­ers in the cir­cu­la­tion base for a local daily. I have fast web access, and time to spend read­ing it. Oth­ers don’t, and what they read in the Detroit News or Chicago Tri­bune will be the bulk of what they know about the sit­u­a­tion. The chal­lenge for edi­tors plan­ning a news bud­get for today is, how do you edit for both groups? This has always been the chal­lenge, but it’s much more pro­found now.

There are also staff-development issues. Ambi­tious busi­ness reporters dream of land­ing at the Jour­nal or at the busi­ness desk of a national daily, but those jobs are scarce. Some very good ones are at large met­ros or regional dailies, doing a very good job, and think this is a story they should be cov­er­ing. For all this talk you hear at jour­nal­ism con­fer­ences — we stopped cov­er­ing earth­quakes in Tokyo, and now print all soc­cer team pic­tures sub­mit­ted by read­ers, and it’s a huge suc­cess! — you have to ask what sort of reporter wants to spend their career writ­ing cut­lines for soc­cer team pic­tures. Answer: Not bloody many.

So I’m not so bugged by the bailout being inside — as long as a movie promo isn’t out­side — but I’d be inter­ested in see­ing how good the story is. And I want to know what oth­ers think.

Mean­while, I have to get to work. Per­haps you’re ask­ing your­self: But Nance! Did you make a pie this week­end? Why yes, yes I did:

That’s apple, with a crumb top­ping. Dee-lish.

Arm­chair media crit­ics wel­come. Get crackin’.

Posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 10:35 am in Current events, Detroit life. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


65 responses to
“Send caffeine.”

  1. MichaelG said on September 29th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I have a news­pa­per ques­tion. Is it com­mon for the local writer to get a byline on a sim­ple rewrite of a wire ser­vice story?

  2. Jeff Borden said on September 29th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    The Tribune’s redesign man­ages to be hec­tic yet banal, gar­ish but unex­cit­ing, loud and inar­tic­u­late. It is a mess. I have been lis­ten­ing for the rum­ble of tens of thou­sands of young peo­ple bewitched and seduced by the big pic­tures and new type­face stam­ped­ing to the new­stands to buy a Trib. So far, dead silence. On the other hand, I’m waver­ing on whether to can­cel my sub­scrip­tion and opt for seven-day deliv­ery of the New York Times. I already pre­fer the Chicago Sun-Times for local news. If the Trib wants to abro­gate its respon­si­bil­i­ties in favor of lots of pho­tos, what choice do I have?

  3. Julie Robinson said on September 29th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    Ah yes, the old curse: may you live in inter­est­ing times.

    This week­end our Net­flix queue popped up “Recount”. Noth­ing I didn’t already know but a chance to be enraged all over again. And to indulge in just a moment of fan­tasy about the state of today’s world with Gore in the White House rather than W.

    The kicker is that my inside Palm Beach County source, AKA big sis, says that Florida has not solved their prob­lems. A pri­mary from August was just cer­ti­fied, but had the teeny-tiny prob­lem of 3,500 lost votes. It seems they had switched to touch screens but they were unwork­able so reverted to paper bal­lots. They didn’t have enough offi­cial boxes, so some got put in black plas­tic garbage bags, and well, you can guess what they think hap­pened. She says Florida will be all over the news again.

  4. Dorothy said on September 29th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    I made that pie’s twin last week­end. Just fin­ished up the last piece of it on Fri­day night. Yu-umm. I’m glad your crust looks like mine did. I’m not into frilly crusts.

  5. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    We sub­scribe to our local paper (Pasadena Star-News) and The WSJ. Noth­ing in between, includ­ing the usu­ally very good LA Times (but who has time?). The local paper is pretty good on things like the school dis­trict, local arts & cul­ture and well, they pub­lished a pic­ture of my Brownie troop’s ser­vice project last Christ­mas, which buys my loy­alty for at least another year. They are relent­lessly, proudly local.

    But I think there’s a mid­dle ground — the local impact of the national cri­sis — that can be very inter­est­ing with­out being an obnox­ious stretch to find the local angle. Nancy, your ques­tion last week re: how does a credit crunch affect every­day peo­ple was a great one. A good edi­tor might have asked that of their reporters, and got­ten a num­ber of inter­est­ing local, tan­gi­ble sto­ries. The sto­ries in the responses were fas­ci­nat­ing — I espe­cially remem­ber Jolene’s brother’s farm. I guess the key word here is “story.” Tell me a story, prefer­ably about some­one or some­thing I know a lit­tle bit. Amuse me first, inform me sec­ond. Make it per­sonal. It’s what we do here (with­out graph­ics, charts or speech bub­bles, I might add) — why not in the paper?

  6. alex said on September 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    I haven’t sub­scribed to a daily paper for prob­a­bly the last five or ten years now. As the old say­ing goes, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

  7. moe99 said on September 29th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    I hand­wrote post­cards for the Obama cam­paign on Sun­day. It took 2 hours to write 15 post­cards.

    My neigh­bor who hosted it had an inter­est­ing story involv­ing her mom, who was the dis­charge nurse on duty when Mrs. Cindy McCain checked out of the hos­pi­tal with her baby. She said it was the worst expe­ri­ence on dis­charge because the dad was such a boor–didn’t want to stick around to lis­ten to the dis­charge instruc­tions, was abu­sive to staff. Hmm…….

  8. MichaelG said on September 29th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    For open­ers here in Sacra­mento there are some­thing like eight car deal­er­ships that have closed in the last cou­ple of months. There are two big holes in the ground where high rise projects died. Houses are sell­ing (those that are sell­ing) for pen­nies on the dol­lar.

    The Bee has redesigned itself and looks like crap. Which is what we will be get­ting since they’ve canned half of their staff. Etc., etc. Life is good.

  9. whitebeard said on September 29th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    I see that my paper, The Hart­ford Courant, also a Tri­bune news­pa­per, came out with its redesign on Sun­day, huge photo on the front cov­ers Sun­day and today, fewer week­day sec­tions; I haven’t checked the reader com­ments yet, but they have been very nasty in gen­eral lately after reporter buy­outs.
    Sunday’s cover was an incred­i­ble trib­ute to Paul New­man, who lived in Con­necti­cut; Monday’s cover was a big well-written and well-researched piece on Connecticut’s big player in the fed­eral buy­out, Sen­a­tor Chris Dodd. and dona­tions from the finan­cial indus­try.

  10. Snarkworth said on September 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    MichaelG, in my expe­ri­ence a typ­i­cal “rewrite” would con­sist of a few local quotes woven into the wire piece, with a tagline at the end say­ing “Daily Prat­tle Reporter Biff Whip­snade con­tributed to this story.”

  11. nancy said on September 29th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    The whether-to-credit deci­sion is inter­est­ing in some news­rooms. I was raised ol’-skool, where you earned a byline by con­tribut­ing real report­ing, and if you did a rewrite/localization of some wire stuff, it would be an editor’s call as to whether the AP got the byline and you got a con­trib line, or vice versa.

    In later years a new model emerged, in which reporters were told to sub­mit their copy with the byline already on it. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was that this would make writ­ers “feel own­er­ship” of their sto­ries, and hence work harder on them.

    It made lit­tle sense to me, too.

    But when edi­tors had the genius idea of count­ing bylines — thanks, search­able data­bases — and includ­ing the num­bers in your per­for­mance review, I stopped car­ing. They made that stu­pid bed, let ‘em lie in it.

  12. LAMary said on September 29th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Dontcha love met­rics? We now live or die by them, and although I have access to exactly the same data as the guy who runs the met­rics, I can never come up with the same num­bers. Not just on my per­for­mance, but on every­one else’s too. I fig­ure that since my boss either hates or is intim­i­dated by me, he shaves 20% off the top of my num­bers and adds it to the dolt he brought with him from his pre­vi­ous job.

  13. Elaine said on September 29th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Inter­est­ing points about the place­ment of the bail-out story, Nancy.

    My rea­sons for favor­ing front-page place­ment is that I used to find my local paper’s cov­er­age of big sto­ries more cred­i­ble and more in-depth than what the talk­ing heads were offer­ing and more con­ve­nient than bend­ing over my lap­top to read it on-line. That isn’t to say I don’t turn to the inter­net for news–I do–but I also like the tac­tile expe­ri­ence of hold­ing a paper in my hands and, thus, go through a lot of paper print­ing out com­plex on-line sto­ries.

    I find it ironic that the Trib redesign is more gar­ish and less sub­stan­tive than the paper’s inter­net ver­sion. Go fig­ure.

    As one of my read­ers observed: “If I want some­thing that looks like the inter­net, I can just go to the inter­net.”

    Appar­ently the Trib mas­ter­minds missed that point entirely.

  14. whitebeard said on September 29th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    CNN just gave me a Break­ing News e-mail that ”– Dow indus­tri­als fall more than 600 on fears bailout pack­age vote will fail.” and I don’t have enough Tums left to cope.

  15. John said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Is any­one watch­ing the vote on C-Span? I don’t have a tv nor stream­ing video at the office.

    EDIT: I have found the infor­ma­tion and now watch­ing the Nas­daq free fall.

    Dou­ble Edit: I dropped an “r”. My bad! Do you have some steam­ing video of Palin some­where?

  16. brian stouder said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    I think we are wit­ness­ing the demo­li­tion of the mod­ern Repub­li­can coali­tion.

    Either Uncle Rush Lim­baugh has lost his mind entirely, and is soon to spi­ral into obscu­rity – or – if he actu­ally espouses what the House Repub­li­cans opposed to the bailout are think­ing – then this IS the end. (TEOTWAWKI)

    Lim­baugh is play­ing out-of-context bits and pieces of audio from con­gres­sional debates of 10 years ago, mixed with oth­ers from 4 years ago, and from days ago, try­ing to patch together a crazy-quilt con­spir­acy the­ory, wherein one party (the Democ­rats, of course!) and one social­ist atti­tude (embod­ied by Obama the com­mie) has moved to “STEAL THE COUNTRY FROM US” (his words)

    Just as the Whigs dis­in­te­grated over slav­ery, so too might the Repub­li­cans dis­in­te­grate, over this insu­per­a­ble “I got mine – you can go to hell” (“and to hell with the coun­try, too!” they might well add; we don’t seem to be good enough for them, any­more) mind­set that we hear enun­ci­ated by their opin­ion lead­ers.

    One thing I am thank­ful for is that Obama isn’t yet pres­i­dent, and the revi­sion­ists and liars there­fore will have a much harder time blam­ing all this on him, instead of the “RIGHT­ful own­ers” (lit­er­ally)

  17. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    Steam­ing video, indeed. Sarah Palin is speak­ing right now on C-SPAN.

    Cindy looks embarassed. Wil­low looks like she’s gonna hurl. Maybe I’m pro­ject­ing. Mut­ing now.

  18. LAMary said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    This is why I’m star­ing at the ceil­ing at 3 am, try­ing to fall back to sleep.

    Twenty eight years of dereg­u­la­tion and tax cut­ting. No one with the balls or the juice to oppose it. The rich get­ting a whole lot richer by con­vinc­ing those who aren’t rich that they can live like rich folks, and now it all starts crash­ing in. The very ass­holes who started it are oppos­ing any­thing that would keep poor schleps from loos­ing every­thing.

    I need some sleep AND some Tums.

  19. Bill said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    Here’s a link to the Trib’s video hard sell of the new for­mat. http://​www​.chicagotri​bune​.com/​c​h​i​-​t​r​i​b​u​n​e​-​r​e​d​e​s​i​g​n​-​h​t​m​l​p​a​g​e​,​0​,​7​0​9​0​7​2​9​.​h​t​mlpage

  20. whitebeard said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    I am reminded of the famous line in a gang­ster movie “The blood will run in the streets, Joey” and I am think­ing of Wall Street in par­tic­u­lar. Tums can’t help on this one, LAmary

  21. nancy said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    “…an excit­ing refer to one of our sto­ries.” — the design edi­tor.

    That’s the prob­lem in a nut­shell. Design edi­tors find refers (pro­mos, in Eng­lish) excit­ing. No one else does.

  22. LAMary said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    I think the dynam­ics between Cindy and John McCain are some­where way out of the range of nor­mal, and I have a huge range of nor­mal.

  23. brian stouder said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    And hey – if the liars from Min­neapo­lis really and truly believe their “Coun­try First” line, then they’re more nihilis­tic than the ter­ror­ists who struck NYC and DC and PA in 2001.

    First they’ll destroy the country’s finan­cial sec­tor (which in fact WAS also Sammy bin Laden’s idea, when they tar­geted the World Trade Cen­ter in NYC), and THEN..,..what?

    Back to the cul­ture wars, and reasser­tion of the ancient fan­tasy of racial and social supe­ri­or­ity, for the few?

    These folks are like the guy at the party with the lamp­shade on their head. Go home already, for God’s sake

  24. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    What’s wrong with a world in which I can watch C-SPAN live on my com­puter, but I can’t find a watch­able clip of the SNL Palin/Couric inter­view?

  25. Jeff Borden said on September 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Omigod. The Tri­bune video about the redesign is price­less. Love the knuck­le­head to extols the “you are here” graph run­ning across the top of the page so you know where you are as you read. Damn, I thought that’s what page num­bers were for, but I’m sooooooo 20th cen­tury.

  26. alex said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Cather­ine, try the huff­in­g­ton post for the Palin inter­views, both CBS and SNL.

  27. coozledad said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Can this really get any more bat­shit? I fully expect that by the end of the day John McCain is going to yank his upper plate out and beat the liv­ing hell out of Boehner with it.
    It’s just as well, they obvi­ously weren’t “debate teeth” any­way, all that whistling and driz­zling. You’d think he could afford a bet­ter set, or a case or two of Fixo­dent to trowel them in bet­ter.
    It pains me to see a man try and speak and hold his teeth in with his tongue at the same time. But that just shows he’s got it all over his run­ning mate in terms of mul­ti­task­ing.

  28. Julie Robinson said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    Catherine–here’s the link: http://​www​.nbc​.com/​S​a​t​u​r​d​a​y​_​N​i​g​h​t​_​L​i​v​e​/​v​i​d​e​o​/​c​l​i​p​s​/​c​o​u​r​i​c​-​p​a​l​i​n​-​o​p​e​n​/​7​04042/

  29. Jeff Borden said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    Query for NN.C read­ers.

    My wife and I are host­ing a vice-presidential debate party Thurs­day. Aside from salmon and baked alaska, any­one have any clever ideas for food that might be con­sid­ered Alaskan? We can usu­ally find buf­falo or ostrich meat around here, but moose? No way.

  30. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

    Thanks guys, I watched the SNL slip and I feel bet­ter for the laugh!

  31. brian stouder said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    You need a ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ dessert (has to be suit­ably irre­sistable, so that a per­son can say they refused it, before they con­sumed it!)

  32. Jolene said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    You might be out of luck, Jeff. Accord­ing to Wikipedia, there isn’t much food pro­duced in Alaska. But there was this one sug­ges­tion: An exam­ple of a tra­di­tional native food is Aku­taq, the Eskimo ice cream, which can con­sist of rein­deer fat, seal oil, dried fish meat and local berries.

  33. Bill said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Re: dessert. Baked Alaska comes to mind.

  34. nancy said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    You’re over­think­ing it. Two words:

    Klondike Bars

  35. LAMary said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    Here’s the no thanks dessert:

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​Akutaq

  36. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    Jeff, how about Cari­bou Cof­fee? Snow­cones? Idi­tarod dog chow? any­thing with blue­ber­ries or black­ber­ries (but only for 1/12th of the party)? There’s got to be an Alaska craft-brewed beer? I think Mr. Boston has an Alaska cock­tail… here we go, it’s 2 dashes orange bit­ters, 1 1/2 oz gin & 3/4 house char­treuse, stirred with ice and strained… gonna need some gin to fully expe­ri­ence this debate, I think.

  37. whitebeard said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    My sides are hurt­ing from watch­ing the SNL Palin Couric video and I think we need some gal­lows humor based on Alaska’s prox­im­ity to Rus­sia.
    To wit; I think Alaska will be the bat­tle­ground state with thou­sand of Russ­ian troops and war vehi­cles fueled by vodka (both troops and vehi­cles) gath­er­ing near the Bering Strait on one bor­der and a Cana­dian Armed Forces brigade on the other bor­der with the gen­eral say­ing: “we need to help pro­tect Alaskans, they speak almost the same lan­guage as we do, eh? And we like hockey also.”
    To under­score the seri­ous­ness, Canada has also sent all six of its tanks to Alaska and is try­ing to jump­start both of its sub­marines, which it bought from a used-sub sales­man in Britain.

  38. LAMary said on September 29th, 2008 at 3:47 pm

    Alaskan King Crab?

  39. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Alaskan Beauty Queen Crab?

  40. Kirk said on September 29th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    Blub­ber.

  41. Jean S said on September 29th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    the biggest damned veg­eta­bles you can find. A friend of mine lives in Gird­wood (about 30 miles S of Anchor­age) and says the veg­gies get truly huge dur­ing the grow­ing sea­son.

  42. Gasman said on September 29th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    If you’ve got Repub­li­cans com­ing to the party, I was think­ing a big steam­ing pile of B.S.. They seem to have an insa­tiable appetite for the stuff when it comes from McCain and Palin.

  43. LAMary said on September 29th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Jean, it’s the 24 hour sun­light that makes the veg­eta­bles so big. The Alaskan I used to know told me about giant cab­bages and scary pump­kins.

  44. Jolene said on September 29th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    Eskimo Pies

  45. KarenNM said on September 29th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    Jeff -
    Harry & David’s sells Moose Munch – I’ve seen it at Tar­get, so you may be able to find some with­out too much fuss.

    http://​www​.har​ryand​david​.com/​g​i​f​t​s​/​s​t​o​r​e​/​g​i​f​t​_​_​_​_​g​o​u​r​m​e​t​-​p​o​p​c​o​r​n​-​m​o​o​s​e​-​m​u​n​c​h​-gifts

  46. moe99 said on September 29th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

    who’s gonna watch the addi­tional out­takes from the Couric Palin inter­view at 6:30 EDT tonight? I under­stand it gets worser and worser…..

  47. MichaelG said on September 29th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

    I clicked on that ChiTrib thing long enough to see a guy billed as the “Asso­ciate Edi­tor for Pre­sen­ta­tion” fol­lowed closely by another dweeb billed as “Inno­va­tion Direc­tor”. That was enough. I also saw that they nar­rowed the page and made the thing look like USA Today which I think is totally unread­able. When a paper starts can­ning reporters and replac­ing them with guys like this they’ve lost their way. Col. McCor­mack must be rolling in his grave. Don’t laugh Mary and Cather­ine. These peo­ple own the LAT.

    What’s the deal with mak­ing the paper nar­rower? Bet­ter slic­ing out of the roll? Spac­ing on the presses? What? I know the Bee told us it was to make the paper bet­ter for us. Uh huh. It looks and feels unnat­ural.

  48. caliban said on September 29th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    Not Motown, Stax via Jerry Wexler. This + caf­feine can part the Wide Sar­gasso Sea speed you through the Horse Lat­i­tudes:

    http://​www​.damn​fine​day​.com/​?​p​=​1​4​8​1​&​a​m​p​;​c​m​p​i​d​=​D​F​D​n​e​w​s​2​&​a​m​p​;ref=2

    In all of the Paul New­man hagiog­ra­phy, where’s a dis­cus­sion of the fas­ci­nat­ing ‘com­pe­ti­tion with Steve McQueen? Mar­lon Brando was another planet, and odius com­par­isons prob­a­bly existed only in the mind of Josh Ran­dall (on TV, Mcqueen ruled), but this was a celebrity meme in the good old days before before memes were invented.

    The same thing could have hap­pened with MM and Liz Tay­lor (and, believe it or not, Shel­ley Win­ters, who I once saw launch her­self naked and plowed into a HoJo’s pool in Athens, GA dur­ing shoot­ing of the cult clas­sic Poor Pretty Eddy, and Joan “British Open” Collins, the more tal­ented writer of the Collins sib­lings). Is it pos­si­ble that ‘girl’ roles were con­sid­ered inter­change­able? Could Tay­lor have played Cher­rie, Mon­roe Mag­gie the Cat? (Could either have been so good in “Come Back, Lit­tle Sheba”?)

    New­man and McQueen made made duel­ing movies. “Secret War of Harry Frigg” and “Sol­dier in the Rain” pro­vided one degree of sep­a­ra­tion from Jackie Glea­son, and both are superb. “LeMans” and “Win­ning”, Neman’s per­for­mance a tad bet­ter, McQueen’s movie con­sid­er­ably. There’s a long list of parts for which both must have been con­sid­ered, and dum­b­ass, clue­less self-styled film his­to­ri­ans like Leonard Maltin would have it that McQueen got sloppy sec­onds.

    Myth­i­cally (if there’s a dif­fer­ence from truth other than human fil­ters, ask Joseph Cam­bell or Sig­mund Freud), McQ was sup­posed to be in Butch Cas­sidy“:

    http://​www​.guardian​.co​.uk/​t​h​e​o​b​s​e​r​v​e​r​/​2​0​0​2​/​o​c​t​/​1​3​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​r​e​v​i​e​w​.​r​eview1

    Paul New­man got the bet­ter movies, maybe, but maybe not the bet­ter parts. Inter­est­ing but dumb debate. In the end, sig­na­ture roles in com­pa­ra­ble films–Cool Hand Luke and Pap­pi­lon pro­vided breath­tak­ing, heart­break­ing, soul-shaking per­for­mances. Boys Repub­lic and the Marines vs. Shaker Heights and Yale. Both made the Mil­hous ene­mies list. New­man earned it the old-fashioned way. McQueen was a polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive, so appar­ently he was just the sort of per­son with val­ues and an icon­o­clas­tic streak the venge­ful Quaker couldn’t abide.

    Shared scenes in Tow­er­ing Inferno were strik­ing (and why it’s the only dis­as­ter movie ever worth watch­ing.) On the roof, ready to blow the water tower? Two ulti­mate cool heroes that should have had more self-preserving smarts than to get them­selves into such a fine mess (and dis­tinctly like the Butch and Sun­dance ‘the fall will kill you’ and the final charge scene).

    Paul New­man great movies miss­ing from the obits:

    Hom­bre: Prover­bial coiled spring.

    Hun­sucker Proxy: Dia­bol­li­cally funny vis­cer­at­ing of every­thing he hated about cor­po­rate cul­ture.

    Judge Roy Bean: What he thought of runa­muck politi­cians.

    Mr. and Mrs. Bridge: American’s get quiet des­per­a­tion as well as the First World.

    Some­times a Great Notion (best of best), and directed by Hank Stam­per aka Paul New­man:

    I don’t know any­body that ever saw this movie before it was butchered for TV and renamed “Never Give an Inch”, other than me, my ex-wife, and my par­ents. Made from Ken Kesey’s novel that was bet­ter than “Cuckoo’s Nest” . An Epic of the Amer­i­can West. To my mind, it’s a ter­rific adap­ta­tion of a very good novel that comes close to the pin­point scin­til­la­tion of Wal­lace Steg­ner.

    This movie is a lot like Cool Hand Luke, with its famous set-pieces: eggs, bro­ken avi­a­tor shades and hard-boiled eggs, which scene ends with Luke cru­ci­fied like Jesus and Sgt. Elias Grodin (the one nobody talks about is the psy­cho­log­i­cal bru­tal­ity of the wash­ing the car scene. In Some­times a Great Notion, the Movie­goer gets:

    Hank try­ing to save his brother from drown­ing when a chain­saw acci­dent pins him against a creek bank with the creek ris­ing. It’s Paul New­man, Breath of Life has to work, but it doesn’t.

    Hank revving up the biggest chain­saw God ever wrought to saw a desk in half in front of a weasel union man wor­ried his balls were inline. Might seem play­ing against polit­i­cal type, but by this point the unions were a branch of the Repub­li­can polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment (“Blue Col­lar” is per­ti­nent).

    Stam­pers float sev­eral acres of logs to mar­ket. On the top of the tugboat’s cabin is the patriarch’s sev­ered arm and hand, mid­dle fin­ger extended.

    If you like Paul New­man and lit­er­ate movies, this is a good one. Sprawl­ing scenes of a Great North­west ass­holes are try­ing to oblit­er­ate, in spec­tac­u­lar splen­dour (the raft­ing scenes) mixed with claus­tro­pho­bic fam­ily head-butting.

    Repub­li­cans tried to make reg­u­la­tion of log­ging a wedge issue in the last sev­eral decades by talk­ing about shut­ting sawmills down. Abject lying. The logs were being rafted and sent to Japan. They were never being milled in the USA.

    Mean­time, if this isn’t a McCain pho­to­shoot, what is:

    http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.daviesgeneralstore.com/ebay/Slimer.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.daviesgeneralstore.com/slimer.html&h=420&w=700&sz=36&tbnid=IFz1bWiyISQJ::&tbnh=84&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dslimer&usg=__KoUvElemnGbp5C3dbqtt3nXUrIc=&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=2&ct=image&cd=1

    Finally. I’d like to ask a ques­tion. Ms. Palin is Sally Field with­out the intel­li­gence or act­ing chops. Shouldn’t she go on SNL and say ‘ever mind’?

    And McCain? I’d like for this to be about the fact he’s not got a clue. Racism inter­venes. How is it pos­si­ble with all the tubes and the sev­eral inter­nets nobody has iden­ti­fied McCain with that Ghost­busters’ neme­sis Slimer? Iden­ti­cal. Every­thing they say and every­thing they said. Repub­li­can can­di­dates will dam­age Amer­ica.

    Next debate ques­tion: What does McCain think about Bobby Kennedy? Before we lost track, Bobby was the gold stan­dard. Who do American’s beleve is bet­ter for them”

    In a time warp, I’d take Bobby. We’re sup­posed to think that the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­duces the best for the Com­mon­weal, the best for every­body that signed on. Bpth a
    chris­t­ian and a Mus­lim point of view. Actu­ally, is that pOS jok­ing? He japped on Kerry so many times in the Sen­ate and claimed credit, it’s enough to make you puke.

    McCain has taken some sort of credit for the BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion. He impeded the inves­ti­ga­tion. He will say any­thing

    The idea there are MIAs? Kerru proved this was wrong. McCain made a bunch of shit up. He went out of his way to hang Kerry with himk with him because he didn’t believe Mc’Caain was a lying scumbag.out to dry whan he knew he was just lying his ass off. Kerry stuc

  49. WhiteBeard said on September 29th, 2008 at 7:01 pm

    A nar­rower roll of newsprint costs less to pur­chase, very basic eco­nom­ics and i think fewer sep­a­rate sec­tions means they can get by with fewer press units run­ning to put out a daily news­aper

  50. caliban said on September 29th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Stu­pider than Spiro, and that’s say­ing a lot.

    Some repub­li­can ass­hole is going to try to make it out like she was ambushed. She is a nit. She’s so dumb it’ hard to think what McCain might have been think­ing.

  51. Judith said on September 29th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    My Con­gress­man, Mark Stouder, (R) Indi­ana, voted FOR the “bailout” bill! I applaud his putting our econ­omy ahead of his polit­i­cal inter­ests. I guess I’ll have to vote for him, and I never thought I’d say that.

    Of course Souder’s oppo­nent is run­ning ads mak­ing him sound like a R who should have faced Souder in the Pri­mary elec­tion, not now.

  52. Catherine said on September 29th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

    A bridge to nowhere made of eskimo pies and klondike bars. Now that sounds like food, enter­tain­ment, dec­o­ra­tion and polit­i­cal com­men­tary, all rolled into one. Bet­ter than ice sculp­ture.

  53. caliban said on September 29th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    nobody can be this stu­pid. She’s an idiot. Some­body want to say she isn’t? Dumber than Katie Couric.

    Ever­ty­hing ia a crock.

  54. deb said on September 29th, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    I’m hav­ing a Palin melt­down party, and I’m serv­ing chili. Get it? And it wasn’t even inten­tional! I kill me.

    As for what McCain was think­ing, it’s sim­ple: She’s a looker, he can spin her as a mav­er­ick, and she’s a she. Because, really, we’re all absolutely inter­change­able.

  55. Dexter said on September 29th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    On my brother’s last ven­ture to Alaska he brought back a real treat for me: a bag of moose poop. Prob­a­bly some of you have got­ten the same gag gift. I kept mine for years wait­ing for a chance to show some­one who might get a laugh from see­ing it, but just before Palin accepted the veep slot, I threw it away.
    Oh well. http://​farm2​.sta​tic​.flickr​.com/​1​1​8​5​/​8​3​0​6​9​8​2​8​4​_​9​7​6​8​e​0​0​1​f​7​.​j​pg?v=0

  56. Joe Kobiela said on September 29th, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    When is SNL going to make fun at Bidens expense??
    Thought FDR was on TV in 1929,
    Told a par­a­lyzed man to stand up,
    Thinks it is patri­otic to pay taxes.
    How can this guy be a heart beat away from the pres­i­dency???
    or are only Dem’s allowed to poke fun???
    Joe K

  57. Gasman said on September 30th, 2008 at 12:55 am

    Joe,
    If you think your jabs at Biden even come close to the comic fod­der directly from Palin’s mouth:

    Couric: You’ve cited Alaska’s prox­im­ity to Rus­sia as part of your for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence. What did you mean by that?

    Sarah Palin: That Alaska has a very nar­row mar­itime bor­der between a for­eign coun­try, Rus­sia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a com­ment like that was kinda made to … I don’t know, you know … reporters.

    Couric: Mocked?

    Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.

    Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy cre­den­tials.

    Palin: Well, it cer­tainly does, because our, our next-door neigh­bors are for­eign coun­tries, there in the state that I am the exec­u­tive of. And there…

    Couric: Have you ever been involved in any nego­ti­a­tions, for exam­ple, with the Rus­sians?

    Palin: We have trade mis­sions back and forth, we do. It’s very impor­tant when you con­sider even national secu­rity issues with Rus­sia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of Amer­ica, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the bor­der. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very pow­er­ful nation, Rus­sia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

    You think she’s ready to lead the U.S.A.? Do you think that if she’s put in charge that she is capa­ble of elim­i­nat­ing the deficit? Hell, she couldn’t even spell deficit let alone pro­vide any lead­er­ship to deal with it. She is a men­tal pygmy who was picked for her looks and her extrem­ist con­ser­v­a­tive views. After read­ing the above tran­script are you seri­ously con­tend­ing that Palin should not be made fun of?

  58. Dexter said on September 30th, 2008 at 12:58 am

    speak­ing of coffee…I also ran out and went shop­ping for any bar­gain I could find, and I found whole beans, French roast, Star­bucks , for seven bucks a bag. I stocked up. I’ll never see it that low-priced again. Too bad I am so far from a Trader Joe’s…their cof­fee beans are cheap and excel­lent.
    I also dis­cov­ered Silk Road Teas on the web. Can’t wait for my ship­ment.

  59. moe99 said on September 30th, 2008 at 1:36 am

    Joe, when Biden real­ized his gaffe involv­ing the fel­low he asked to stand up and be rec­og­nized, he repaired it quickly by ask­ing the audi­ence to stand and rec­og­nize him. The audi­ence quickly and cheer­fully obliged. Haven’t seen any recog­ni­tion on Palin’s or McCain’s part of their many gaffes.

    McCain’s spokesman today blasted Obama for being at fault on the bailout melt­down. Then when McCain took the air­waves, he tried to be mag­nan­i­mous and say there should be no fin­ger point­ing. Well, it’s a lit­tle too late, Mr. for­merly straight talk but now just a gas­bag.

    Oh, and there’s a wed­ding gift reg­istry for Bris­tol and Levi at JCPenney’s:
    http://​tinyurl​.com/​3zh2hx

  60. brian stouder said on September 30th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    Moe- THAT reg­istry was funny!

    The ‘camo’ dia­per bag made me laugh out loud!

  61. Jolene said on September 30th, 2008 at 8:43 am

    There’s also a site where you can pose ques­tions for Sarah Palin to answer.

    http://​inter​view​palin​.com/

  62. Gasman said on September 30th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    I sin­cerely hope that Biden shows no quar­ter to Palin this Thurs­day. This WaPo arti­cle is just another log on the fire:

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​9​/​2​9​/​A​R​2​0​0​8​0​9​2​9​0​2​6​6​1​.​h​t​m​l​?​w​p​i​s​r​c​=​n​e​w​s​letter

    What the hell was McCain think­ing?

  63. LAMary said on September 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Cal­iban! I saw Some­times a Great Notion before it was renamed. It was won­der­ful. I liked the book so much I went out of my way to catch the movie as soon as it came out. Paul New­man was excel­lent in that movie.

  64. LAMary said on September 30th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    JoeK,
    Biden has been ridiculed on plenty of times. I’m bet­ting you don’t watch The Daily Show or SNL. Trust me, he has not been spared.

  65. bryan said on September 30th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    Nance,

    I miss those days of com­pe­ti­tion in the Fort. At least folks still cared about the news then, and hav­ing both papers made for some inter­est­ing news cycles. I remem­ber when the first gulf war hap­pened — I was get­ting din­ner at the McDonald’s down­town. The JG was able to have the first-day head­line because it hap­pened on our cycle, while the NS had to ban­ner “Bombs still fall” for the after­noon edi­tion. I also remem­ber, thanks to Mike Dooley’s con­nec­tions, break­ing an NS polit­i­cal poll the morn­ing before it was was to be printed in the after­noon. Those were the days when edi­tors still cared about firsts and didn’t try to repack­age every­thing into eas­ily digested bites.

    I agree on redesigns — no mat­ter how much cer­tain over­paid con­sul­tants might agrue. Sure, things look pretty now in Chicago because it’s all hands on deck to pitch in and make sure this pig has the best lip­stick avail­able. But wait a few weeks. Then the high sher­iffs will tire of work­ing week­ends and decide that the new, labor-intensive pack­ag­ing can be done with just a cou­ple of design­ers and a Mac­Book Pro.

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