History Wonk Band Names

... too bad I have zero musical abilities

1. Robert Capa’s Mexican Suitcase
2. The Defenestration of Prague
3. Jeremy and the Benthamites
4. Tycho Brahe’s Metal Nose
5. The XYZ Affair
6. Triumph and the Wills

The End Times: Is News Fit To Print?, Part 1

In a weirdly incestuous newspaper cycle, I just got not one, but two emails from my WaPo breaking news alerts heralding the demise of The Boston Globe by the hand of the weakening Grey Lady. The Post is reporting that Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and Co. have filed 60 day notice of closure with federal authorities in the wake of failed union negotiations. Speculation is that this may just be a particularly hard-line bargaining measure to break writers, mailers, and printers down further, but it is certainly not without a whiff of industry demise. To threaten such extreme measures, whether or not they are empty, exposes the rotting financial state of America's newspapers to the public. There isn't much mystery left...

I can't help but think of one of the hundred great lines from Paul Simon's Graceland: "Everybody sees you're blown apart,
Everybody sees the wind blow." This is almost unforgivably bad, I will be the first to admit, but I'm a print media sentimentalist. The front-page photos marking the shuttering of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer were heartrending when I happened to pick up the times a few weeks ago, and I really don't know what I'll do if the Times-Picayune closes; no one could ever match that for names.

Seeing the best and brightest of the golden age of objectivity so vulnerable is sad and slightly terrifying not just because its the kind of industry I might once have hoped to work in; not just because, to paraphrase the Guardian, people are facing a world without reliable news for the first time since the Enlightenment (the Enlightenment!). It is also because I love doing the crossword puzzle; because in the fifth grade, when I wasn't allowed to see Titanic, I saved the Arts and Entertainment section with a half-page photo of Leonardo DiCaprio during filming; because my grandmother used to ship me comics sections from the Omaha World-Herald by the box because in that department at least, the Times had nothing on it; because everyone I grew up with got their name - or picture - in our local paper at least once, and sent a copy to all their relatives; because my list of life goals includes worming my way into the Vows section; because my father has the front page from when the Berlin Wall fell; because I remember the first day that the Times printed in color - it was sometime during Lewinskygate; because I used to pull the blue newspaper sleeves over my shoes on rainy days to puddle jump.

Don't get me wrong. The internet, or hearsay, or whatever it is we've chosen to replace this can do some pretty great stuff too, I'm sure. But without real media, new media won't have anything to reblog, or mock, or debunk. Without real live papers you miss out on wedding announcements for scrapbooks, or clippings for your grandparents, or historical records for your kids. Newspapers make stuff real. Meta-news just doesn't make for great rainboots.

Gov't 2.0

I just discovered that No. 10 Downing St. (the White House with a British Accent) has its own Twitter! I'm not certain that this is legitimate, but it seems like it might be. It certainly seems like a great way for the executive to get their news stories out there, and just imagine, if Kim Jong Il or Castro had a twitters, we'd never have to worry about them falling off the radar. The real question, however, is this: Barack Obama did a great job of mobilizing social media during the campaign (including twitter), but will he be able to keep this up when he's in office? As has been widely reported, he's already being forced to give up his Blackberry and email, but might the UK's example prove that its okay for government to have a presence - if an extremely filtered and controlled presence - on social media sites and web 2.0 in general?

Its a Small Small World

Woah. Now that Google Reader has had its very own Tina-Fey-like makeover, where the greatness of content remains largely unchanged as the outer shell is streamlined, it is also picking up and recommending Tumblr feeds. Is this the sign that all the matter in the internet universe is collapsing inward into a black hole? I'll let you (or someone, anyone, really) be the judge of that.

Macy's Thanksgiving

In spite of all my objections to Macy's (see: buyout of Marshall Fields, terrible dressing room lighting) I'm pretty won over by their new commercial, and a total softy for the Parade.


I got to go once or twice when I was little, but my favorite Thanksgiving tradition has been rolling out of bed and down the street to Linda's house to be awed by the Rockettes and disgusted by the Mike Miller dancers (as I am even as I type) while she makes green bean casserole. Linda has had a slightly more sophisticated Thanksgiving in Paris this year and last, so I'm twittering the Parade instead, and I've got to say, this is the best in quite some time.

exhibit a: actual talent is performing - James Taylor, Miley Cyrus, Idina Menzel, Kristen Chenoweth
exhibit b: the Rockettes looked surprisingly cute
exhibit c: the surprise Rick Astley performance/rickrolling reference gained them some coolness cred
exhibit d: the Keith Haring balloon piloted by his dad (who looks just like him) was touching and arty
exhibit e: a bizarrely funny moment with a briefcase drill team seemed biting and ironic given the current state of the businessman

Shocker: AOL Hometown Folds

I was never really an AOL nut, so I can say that I know what their Hometown Service is, but I ran across a message announcing that today - Oct. 31, 2008 - their operations would be shutting down. I'm mostly just frustrated because I can't get the result for my google image search of "Monica Lewinsky Cigar Aficionado Cover," but for any of you still living in the AOLUniverse perhaps this is a sad day.

But hey, at least the site with the announcement has a nice Halloweeny color scheme:

Name Dropping

A few days ago, a post popped up on everyone's (and by this I mean my) favorite femiladyism site Jezebel about Juicy Campus. Jezebel blogger Dodai faulted the Gossip-Girl-gone-horribly-wrong, rumor-mongering site for a business model which essentially "involves humiliating women". To a large extent, I think this is well merited criticism, but to be fair, this is exactly the sort of reaction you would expect Jezebel to have, both on behalf of and as a function of their readership. Juicy Campus is gross, but its equally gross for men and women pilloried on the site. To be frank though, sticking up for the guys trashed on Juicy Campus was only my second instinct. My first went a bit more like this: "Georgetown!!!"

I love it when Georgetown gets name-dropped in the pop-culture world. I loved going to a midnight showing of Syriana at the Georgetown AMC and cheering along with everyone else when the Saudi prince talked about his degree. I loved it when the Gossip Girls debated about the Duke's alma mater. I feel like place-pride is pretty important to me, in general. A survey of some sort claimed that Chicagoans love Chicago more than any other city's residents love theirs. This certainly seemed to be evident in Grant Park last night with the crowd's deep feeling that Barack Obama was their man, and I think i take that with me too.