So Unfair...

Kurt Vonnegut died this year. Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman died within the same week this year as well.

In my local newspaper, these men got honored with blurbs. A certain professional football coach (who shall remain nameless), upon death, received a full front page article and an entire sports section devoted just to him.

Think about that one, a full front page. Not a blurb in the front page. The whole front page. Plus, several pages devoted to him in the sports section. All for a man who coached football. Not to knock his accomplishments (which were many) but isn't that overkill?

Three men whose cultural accomplishments spanned the whole world get less ink than a man who coaches a sport that only this country takes seriously.

So it goes...

The Future Sucks Again

Remember back in the day when consumer electronic companies were putting digital clocks in every single product?

Coffeemaker? Needs a clock.
Fridge? Needs a clock.
Phones? They need a clock.
Stereos? How can I play music without a clock?

Nowadays playing MP3's is the new digital clock.

Your phone can play music. Your TV. Your PDA. Pretty soon, for the hell of it, they'll come up with a digital wrist watch that plays MP3's.

Do we really need refrigerators that play MP3's?

"Granddad, how come you're still alive?"
"Cause Granddad's pacemaker plays songs by Shakira."

Sometimes I Can't Help But See the Strings

What's so hard about getting a group of people together for a print ad? Every time I see an ad with a crowd shot I can't help but see how all those people were photoshopped individually to form a crowd. None of those people were in a room together!

Same thing with movie posters. If the stars appear together, it just looks like they took separate pictures of them and slapped them together via computer.

Maybe I look to deep into these things.

Maybe it's just more cost effective to do it that way. Maybe getting a group of people together to take one picture is less effort than scheduling hundreds of individual pictures. Maybe they get pictures of people wholesale.

"Hey, I need a hundred engineers. Do you have any?"
"Hell I have pictures of 1,000 different people crying over spilt milk. I think I can swing some engineers."

Sometimes I can't help but see how staged everything is, not just advertising. Like everything in life has to be presented as something else or else we won't accept it.

A Rant

Bear with me for a minute...

I hate movie titles, not all of them, obviously. Just the ones with no imagination.

The Culprits (in no particular order)

#1 Teen Movie Titles:

Bad Titles-
Whatever it Takes, Drive Me Crazy, Get Over It
One word, GENERIC. These titles could be anything. They're all teen movies, but I'd be hardpressed to tell you which one's which or even what the difference is between them.

Better Title-
Mean Girls
Why? Because the movie is about mean girls.

Even Better Title-
Heathers
The movie Heathers is about a group of mean girls, all named Heather.

#2 Those #^&$ing -ING titles.

Bad Titles-
Being Julia, Leaving Las Vegas, Finding Nemo, Finding Neverland, Finding Forrester, Owning Mahowny...or any title with an -ING VERB + WHATEVER.
These bother me far more than they should but for some unexplainable, guttural reason, they irk me like no other. They just feel lazy. Take any title, change it to an -ING + WHATEVER title and see what I mean. Casablanca = Leaving Casablanca, Citizen Kane = Explaining Kane, Vertigo = Getting Dizzy on High Ledges.

Better Title-
Being John Malkovich
Simply because To Be John Malkovich sounds odd.

Even Better Title-
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, The Killing Fields, The Howling
In the first and third, it's a noun. In the second, it's an adjetive. Don't ever use it as a VERB then.

#3 The Overly Poetic/Vauge Titles
Ask the Dust, Advice from a Catterpillar, The Science of Sleep, Requiem for a Dream
It pains me to put Requiem for a Dream with these, especially since it gets its name from the book, but life's tough and this title is vague. Seriously though, Ask the Dust? The second is an Alice in Wonderland reference, but that is still one clunky title. The Science of Sleep? What is this, a lecture?

Better Title-
A Beautiful Mind
Marginally, marginally better. Only by a little bit and that's only because it has to do with the story.

Even Better Title-
Snow Falling on Cedars, Smilla's Sense of Snow
Snow's makers made a good choice sticking with the book's title. Poetic, and a beautiful image. Smilla's Sense of Snow is clunky and odd, but Smilla, raised in the snow, can pick up more by looking at it than you and me. So therefore it's apt. Ask the Dust?

#4 Mouth Mumblers and Sentence Confusers
Saw
These are harder to define. The best example:
"Dude, I just saw Saw."
"You saw what now?"
"Saw!"
"Yes, what did you see?"
"Not see, Saw!"
"See saw? That doesn't sound like a cool movie to me."