Hellbox

The Season for Walking Away

2007-05-30T18:40:00.000-05:00

It's been a hell of a week for liberal war-hating women in the media.

First, Rosie walked away after a blowout on The View. I don't watch TV, and certainly am not at home to watch this during the day. So when I pulled up the show on YouTube I was pretty shocked.

Joy took after Bush. Finally. But then everything broke down between Rosie and Hasselbeck. I wondered why they didn't just call the show Catfight.

I looked up Rosie's blog after that. I wanted to see what she was about, and I was surprised. I think she's very authentic. She hates the war. She supports her causes. She get love mail and hate mail and posts both, answering both.

Her hate mail really resonated with me... given that I get a nasty now and then on the McIntosh blog. I think someone last week told me I was full of B.S. And then, of course, I was amused by the person who put a toot, toot under the post about 10K hits. I'm hardly tooting my own horn. In the scheme of the Internet, 10K hits ain't nothing. Relative to tiny McIntosh though, it is.

So, Rosie walked away from the View. One less brave voice of reason calling out what people don't want to hear. Or so, one might think. But when you look at her blog, she's still out there. I sent in a question today to her video blog and at 5 p.m. when the questions hadn't been on all day, she had more than 10,000 questions.

See what I mean? Ten thousand hits on the Mirror really isn't horn tooting.

Then, I saw in the headlines that Cindy Sheehan is walking away, too.

I read an editorial by Mike Spinney on Spot-On.com about the real reason why Sheehan is walking away is not that her cause wasn't just, it was that the people she was standing up to support didn't back her up.

We expect politicians to cave, but when apathy creeps so deeply into our fabric, when the likes of Hasselbeck compare a war to a football game like a Republican cheerleader... Like I said, tough week.

Then, I got an e-mail from the Indigo Girls MySpace blog pointing me in the direction of their new video channel on YouTube.

I'm a huge Indigo Girls fan - have been for more than 20 years. I try to see them every time they come with a reasonable distance of Gainesville.

They've never supported Bush. So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise after their single with Pink "Dear Mr. President" that they've got a video making some strong political statements. This one is to "Last Tears" all dressed up like, well,
Barbara Bush, or maybe Laura. That in itself is a hell of a statement. I heard Emily Sailers in an interview once talk about how she hated wearing dresses as a kid.

I always saw this ballad as a love song, or a post-break-up walking away song. In the context of this video, though, Rosie, or Sheehan could be singing this.

I'm not sure what to make of this season of walking away. Like Spinney, I'm worried for the idealists of the world. I wonder what's next. Our country needs people who aren't afraid to shake up the decision-makers... the deciders.

Barack Obama's campaign's stand on new media, blogs, threatens free speech

2007-05-09T20:11:00.000-05:00

Below is my correspondence with the Barack Obama campaign from my MySpace.com account. I saw a story on CNN about how Obama took over Joe Anthony's Obama MySpace page. Initially, it was a move so that the candidate could control the information posted. As CNN reported it, the two parties couldn't agree on compensating Anthony for his work and the campaign officially took over the site.

I've got some GRAVE concerns about this move and Freedom of Speech.

******

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: CHER Cher
Date: May 3, 2007 9:42 AM

You know, I actually considered voting for Obama.

But I saw the story on CNN about how this campaign bogarted the time, effort and work of Joe Anthony.

Frankly, I have GRAVE doubts about anyone running for high office who treats freedom of information (and speech) so callously. That scares me, actually.

I saw in that story that he lost Anthony's vote. Well, you can tell Barack Obama he lost my vote, too.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Barack Obama
Date: May 9, 2007 5:04 PM

Thanks for writing us with your concern about the confusion over our official Myspace profile. Simply put, there has been a lot bouncing around throughout the internet on this one. Nonetheless, we think Joe Anthony did a great job in organizing on MySpace and worked with him toward the profile becoming official. Unfortunately, after working together for the last two months, we did not achieve an agreement on how to move forward together and therefore started our new official profile with the official url being www.myspace.com/barackobama. Joe worked hard to build the community and is running his own unique profile. We hope our official MySpace community can work together with Joe as well as the rest of the unofficial Myspace communities in the days ahead.

Lindsay @ Obama HQ
www.barackobama.com

---------------
From: CHER to the Obama Campaign
Date: May 9, 2007

Thanks for the reply.

But I got my information from the mainstream media and a reputable news organization -- CNN -- not what was "bouncing around the Internet." I'm a Journalism grad student who studies online media, specifically blogs and citizen news movements. And given my area of study, this move by Obama and his campaign concerns me.

But it doesn't take someone incredibly informed to see Obama stepped on First Amendment Rights here. He didn't tread close to it. He stomped on the First Amendment with this move.

By taking over Joe Anthony's blog, Obama took over another person's freedom of speech so he could control the content. It would be one thing if Obama's campaign agreed to compensate Anthony for his work. If you think Joe Anthony did just a great job, how come you weren't willing to pay him for it?

Further, there are a number of legal issues that will have to be resolved in the future dealing with blogs and free speech. Were you aware a blogger in California spent more than 200 days in jail because he would not turn over his reporting (a video)? There's a building controversy over who should have protections from a shield law... should bloggers be included in that?

When I look at those issues and the high-handed act here by Obama, I have some very grave concerns about voting for the man and what kind of policy he would promote in a situation like the shield law I mentioned above. If stepping in, taking over, and controlling information by calling it "official" is Obama's way of managing new media and the press, that's just freaking scary.

****

AP story: Obama takes MySpace page from backer

Obama MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/barackobama

Joe Anthony's MySpace page: http://myspace.com/skyscrapernationalpark

Maybe Imus can land a gig on Star Trek?

2007-04-13T01:51:00.000-05:00

Has anyone ever noticed how much Don Imus looks like a Klingon?

Not that I have an opinion either way about his employability... after so many years in the business, he should know what's appropriate and what's insulting.

But maybe he can get a gig as a Klingon extra in the next carnation of Star Trek, whenever that might be. As long as they either give him no lines, or ensure everything he says is in the native Klingon tongue, he might actually stand to keep a the job. After all, there's a only a small segment of the Trekkie population who would be able to understand him. But what am I thinking? Some Trekkie would only translate anything subject to scrutiny and launch it virally through blogs and YouTube until the mainstream media picked up on it.

Where are all "The Wrong Stuff" headlines?

2007-02-08T11:16:00.001-05:00

It seems like the perfect hed to me.

The Wrong Stuff: Astronaut wears diaper to drive 900 miles with kidnap/murder kit.

OK, it's a little long and maybe a teeney bit in bad taste... but still. Why does it seem like on Day Three of the Astronaut Media Blitz are the media holding back on this story, or going to lengths they don't normally go to in order to paint Lisa Nowak as a victim?

This NASA love triangle, or square if you count that Nowak's husband also works for NASA's Mission Control, is a freaking incredible story. There's a ton of underlying questions. Is NASA really this messed up? What the hell was Nowak gonna do with all that rubber tubing?

I was first surprised to see how carefully the family's requests were tucked into the end of the AP stories on the Day One this story broke. Apparently, when NASA asks, the newspapers listen. I had to wonder if they are afraid they won't get good seats, or worse be left uninvited, to the next shuttle launch.

I did a Google News search this morning, and the compassion for Nowak in the headlines is kind of shocking:

Arrested astronaut was under stress at work and home before arrest ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Astronaut Suffered 'Mental Anguish'
CBS News, NY

'Mental anguish' of love triangle astronaut
ic Wales, UK

Psychological tests need reviewing - Nasa
Independent Online, South Africa

Observers: Astronaut Lisa Nowak Suffered 'Mental Anguish' Over ...
FOX News

Dude, she freaking had 3-4 feet of rubber tubing, a BB gun, a knife, pepper spray and garbage bags. She drove across the southern US. If some schmoe working at the local 7-Eleven was caught after macing a woman, do you think they'd let him out wearing a GPS device so the media could print compassionate headlines? (Everybody at home, raise your hand if you thought at least once, she'd pull a CSI-trick and pry that GPS device off and plant it on the dog?)

It was the Gainesville Sun's headline this morning that tipped me over the edge: A mug shot is not your best picture.

What is the hidden message of this story splashed across the front page of the Sun?
The message is so obvious, they didn't even hide it: See, she only kinda looks like a scary strung-out stalker on a possibly a murder-rampage in her mug shot, but that's just a bad picture.

Gee, she was maligned in the press by a bad picture. I am sure that's exactly what Colleen Shipman is thinking after she saw it... well, after her eyes stopped stinging from the pepper spray.

There is hope for Day Four, even through the flack. Time magazine's hed: "Houston, She's Got Some Problems?"

Lolly, lolly, get your Schoolhouse Rock here.

2006-12-17T22:02:00.000-05:00

Anyone remember these?
I made an observation that the Schoolhouse Rock commercials they played during Saturday morning cartoons that I remember the words for tend to be subjects I am still into as a grown-up.

Conjunction Junction

Interjections:

And, of course, that annoying song "Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here."

I'm Just a Bill:

Sufferin' Till Sufferage:

I couldn't find the Preamble or the Boston Tea Party one...

The Dark Crystal

2006-12-17T21:50:00.000-05:00

I'm not normally a fan of remakes, but I think that it's way past time for someone to remake the "Dark Crystal."

This is on YouTube. Whatcha wanna bet we see this movie again one day?

The Tookie train and who told on Kenny, again?

2006-02-10T09:07:00.000-05:00

My god, today is a wet dream in local newsland.

Let's start with Custom Copies and Kenny Roberts being sued *again* for copyright infringement. Come on, I don't know that I know anyone who didn't see this one coming from a mile away. The last line in the Sun's story was interesting to me: the point isn't about the money but instead about the quote from the Allen Ryan, director of intellectual property for the publishing house suing Roberts. "But the point we're trying to make is more than just a loss to the publishers. It undercuts (copy shops) who are trying to do things right."

Tell me, because I wonder, isn't it just possible that other copy shops in town who consistently follow copyright law and thereby have a good relationship with Ryan's business for that reason, could it be that maybe there's a little bit more behind this than meets the eye?

Just a thought. And for the record, I am dissappointed that neither the Sun nor the Alligator addressed why Kenny changed the name of Custom Copies to OBT - Orange and Blue Textbooks.

Otherwise.. The Tookie train dragging behind it cars labeled "no more capital punishment" and "Florida's inhuman lethal injection" is going to collide with Danny Rolling and spatter all over Jeb's desk blotter.

I know few things for certain but this is one: Florida will find a humane way of killing prisoners post haste. There is no way this state is going to allow Danny Rolling to live out the rest of his life in a prison in Bradford County.

Rolling is the poster child for why states have death penalities. No one is Tookie enough to challenge that, not even Tookie.

Baby bites dog

2006-02-09T17:56:00.000-05:00

Not for the first time in my life, I've wondered about the news in other countries.

I'm the first one to admit I'm a cornfed white girl from the midwest and that creeps out in my naivette and a lack of worldliness. Maybe everyone feels that way and it's not just an Indiana thing.

But what the holy crap is up with Rueters wire from odd countries on the other side of the world?

"Baby feeds on dogs milk"

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - A Tanzanian mother went into hysterics when she found her six month-old baby suckling dog's milk, a local daily reported Thursday.

The mother left her son on a mat while she went to hang clothes in the yard of her Dar Es Salaam home, Uhuru newspaper said. When she came back to find him suckling on the dog, she screamed and rushed to her brother's house to seek advice.

But the brother managed to convince her dog's milk was harmless. "Since that day the baby is doing well and hasn't had diarrhea or any signs of illness," he was quoted as saying.

Another relative, who witnessed the incident Monday, was also unperturbed. "The baby was satisfied, since his belly was full and his lips had traces of milk," he told Uhuru.

OK, I read the story because it's almost as close as you can get to the "man bites dog" case of newsworthiness. But honestly newsworthiness really seems to be a bit of a stretch here; there are no names attributed and it's she said, he said.

Nothing to see here.

2006-02-09T12:25:00.000-05:00

I used to give Michael Brown the benefit of a doubt.

He might have been a mid-level pencil pushing politico who got a little lucky and landed himself a government position further up the foodchain than he deserved. Hey, it happens all the time. We train the those kinds of politico has-beens of tomorrow in our student governments every day. I wondered if he could have been more a scapegoat than incompetent.

But I am taking back my doubt right now.

Brown is an ass and an idiot.

You can not say you have a legitimate interest in making records known, or a truth known, and then turn around and use it for personal leverage against the president to guarantee your own legal defense.

My friends, they call it extortion. If you have information the public needs to know, be honorable enough to hand that info over forthwith.

And my first glance at the new headline of CNN shows that Bush seems unruffled. The news headline, Bush: US thwarted al Qaeda attack on LA.

Geez, the cop on South Park is less obvious when he says, "OK people, move along, Nothing to see here, you looky-loos."

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

2006-02-08T20:49:00.000-05:00

Apparently I am going to have to go and get my roots done damned quick because my white trash is showing.

Another hour of my life was sucked from me as I sat through the Historic Planning board meeting in McIntosh tonight. Honestly, I love a public meeting. I have to admit that and these are rife with arguments and anger. They're better than TV news and worse than Jerry Springer.

Every time a person's roof came up for discussion tonight, one woman -- we'll call her Red Sweater -- turned one way and then the next as if to see who she could rile up, to see who might be as outraged as she was at the prospect of someone having a gray tin roof in her historic district. You know, she said McIntosh is like Savannah and Charleston. Those people just accept if they want to live there, they will have to paint their shutters Savannah green.

So out came the chorus of, "They NEVER would have done it like that."

"They" are the mysterious people of yester-year.

One couple wanted to close in their laundry room. He'd spent a great amount of time scanning and drawing in the wall and doors he would install. The board ohhh'ed and ahhh'ed over his handiwork. And you could hear it building from Red Sweater in the middle room... feel it building in the room...

"They never would have done it like that."

It's the kiss of death, living in the shadow of the ghosts of McIntosh. You could sense the couple's initial hope shift to fear, despair. And then came the questions. The image didn't show enough dimension to show how far away the doors were from each other.

"They never would have had it this close together."

Because people in the 1890's had architectural software for designs like this.

Pictures were passed around. A laundry room stood out in the open. Washing machine, etc. They were closing that in and building a wall with french doors.

One woman showed me, "Do you want to see it? See?" See... see? As if I would see in items on their porch the outrage of such an abomination as a wall as opposed to their lives out for all to see. Whose business is it?

Someone else began suggesting, describing in detail what they could do instead and how nice it would look, how well it would fit in. The woman asking for the wall had her jaw set and she asked, "Oh, you mean like your house is?"

Oh, shades of Stepford ... do you think "they" would have done it like that? You know, "they" never would have had an electric washing machine.

All-in-all, they seem like good people. Good people but for Red Sweater.

No one here has a proper agenda or approaches boards in any kind of fashion resembling that of proper municipal government. I was invited out of a public meeting of the school board last night. I demurred. I went. I hated it. It took more out of me than you can imagine. I held in the words, "Show me the exemption."

Because I am not writing an expose of the town. I am writing a profile. I am here to watch. I am remembering that and reminding myself...

Even with that, I needed to know Red Sweater's name. I moved toward her after the meeting, "You seem to know a lot of about this."

I'm not afraid to look stupid. I can be completely stupid. She demanded to know who I am. A student, a journalist. Student journalist, freelance. I'm writing a profile, it's for a class.

We have cotton moccasins that come out of the lake with friendlier eyes than her's. She then moved to the other question they always ask, "Where do you live?"

I knew where this was going and answered her honestly, giving the name of the Cove. I live in the fish camp. I live on the poor side of town, where historic is circa 1970 and perhaps not as much to be proud of as say cracker house two blocks away ... most of the time, I don't care.

It's interesting. The people are nice. They're retirees who most of them had homes and lives up north and some have been here 20 years. They are from another time and care about each other in a way that you don't see anymore. They watch out for each other. Not like in the "real" historic part of town. Well, not so you could tell from their meeting, anyway.

So, I give her my answer and I watch something happen that's never happened to me.

Red Sweater's pit-viper eyes traveled the length of me and came back to my eyes, "Yes, I figured."

I called my mother and told on the woman. I grew up in a nice neighborhood. I was preppy at all the right times. I secretly knew I didn't really fit in that scene but hey - I had the right address if I wanted to push the issue. Add to that, I could hardly look like I am from the Cove when most of everyone who lives here is in AARP.

There's a sign in front of the playground and outside the Civic Center here in McIntosh. It says, "Play at your own Risk." I've looked at it wondering what the hell that means.

Now I know.

Blogfodder: Dark lords of the universe.

2006-02-04T05:30:00.001-05:00

BC-Church Abuse, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0617
Judge approves settlement of up to $85 million in church sex abuse case
Eds: Adds details.

With BC-Church Abuse-List

By BRETT BARROUQUERE

Associated Press Writer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A judge approved a settlement of up to $85 million Tuesday between sexual abuse victims and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington, one of the largest deals the church has reached with U.S. parishioners who were molested by clergy.

The settlement covers 361 victims who claim they were abused over a period of 50 years by priests in a diocese that once included 57 counties across a large swath of Kentucky. Special
Judge John Potter said a desire by the Covington Diocese to make reparations to the victims contributed to the settlement.

The diocese had originally agreed to pay up to $120 million to abuse victims, saying it would pay out $40 million and its insurance companies would pay up to $80 million, which would have made it the largest church sex abuse settlement in the country...

Eds: ADDS Covington, Ky. settlement

With BC-Church Abuse

By The Associated Press

Sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church more than $1 billion since 1950. Here are some of the largest known payouts to victims since the crisis intensified in 2002 with revelations that a molester priest was moved among parishes in the Boston Archdiocese without alerting parents or police:

- Diocese of Orange, Calif., 2004, $100 million for 90 abuse claims.

- Diocese of Covington, Ky., 2006, up to $85 million for 361 people.

- Archdiocese of Boston, 2003, $85 million for 552 claims.

- Diocese of Oakland, Calif., 2005, $56 million to 56 people.

- Archdiocese of Louisville, Ky., 2003, $25.7 million to 243 victims.

- Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., 2005, agrees to fund a settlement trust worth about $22 million for more than 50 victims as part of a plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

- Diocese of Providence, R.I., 2002, $13.5 million to settle 36 claims.

AP-ES-01-31-06 1658EST

I had a reaction to this story I didn't expect.
Previous settlement stories against the Catholic Church left me thinking along the lines, "Good, they deserve it. All of them. The Church for their curruption and the people for being victimized. For shame -- to fuck with someone's spirituality..."

My grandmother's death last month changed that feeling, I think. Tempered it might be a better word...

She told me once that she had two life choices growing up: become a nun or marry. She said she got a job, instead, and did risque things like play tennis in a tennis dress -- said that was how she met my grandfather.

On her deathbed, I fell into a situation where I ended up praying the rosary with a couple of my aunts and a cousin. Grandma was coherent enough to try to say the words. There was poignance and sisterhood the ritual -- five women bound by blood in a mediation circle. The Hail Mary prayer is a very feminine prayer. Because of how meaningful this was to her, I think the funeral Mass later was more of a comfort to me than the usual torture it's always been.

Mass has been historically intolerable to me. I remember them as endless as a kid. I never knew what was going on or how much longer it lasted. I never quite understood why we had to go when we did. Add to that, my church clothes were itchy. Sometimes I'd see kids from school there in jeans. My brother and I were never confirmed so being forced into Catholic Church was just another way of feeling caught on the outside, looking in and never quite being part of the game. I hated it. I always felt like a party crasher. I never knew when to kneel, stand, sit or what to sing. But I've come to understand there's a value there. A key part of a journalist's personal history is the alienation factor. For some reason, the best journalists are the ones who were shaped by being outsiders in some way. When they finally do fit in they turn to the dark side and become agents of the dark lord of P.R.

My spiritual path is somewhere other than the Catholic Church. My grandma's death helped me to understand the spiritual side of her faith and appreciate it.

So, I was pretty stunned to find out that cash settlements for molestation have cost the church more than $1 billion. It hit me that money came from people like my grandparents who were truly poor for many years. And it royally pissed me off to see a part of their spirituality come to that end. I suppose when I read this, I saw a much wider pool of victims.

The other thing that hit me about this story was the line that the church's insurance company was going to take on a chuck of the payout. How does a church get molestation insurance??? Insurance companies in the U.S. are pulling out of states like Florida. Ours dropped us because of the hurricanes. And yet they are representing the church in molestation cases??

Insurance companies are the other agents of the dark lords of the universe.

Blogfodder: Not Tookie enough

2006-02-04T05:30:00.000-05:00

Thursday night the thunder worked like a drug holding me down in my bed, out cold. This morning I'm up at 4:30 a.m. listening to it rattle the walls. I swear to god that's the same map on weather underground that was there when I looked 8 hours ago. My yard is a lake.

I collected stories off the wire for blogfodder the other night while Steve gave the AP quiz and lectured the lab. They're old now but they resonated with me. Acquiring a taste for reading news straight from the wire is like the difference between pure and processed.

URGENT

Supreme Court blocks Florida execution

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the

execution of a man who drowned a woman in her bathtub a decade ago,

granting a stay to a Florida death row inmate for the second time

in a week.

The court, acting without its newest member, ordered Florida to

stop the evening execution of Arthur Rutherford, who claims that

the state's lethal injection procedure is cruel and unusual

punishment.

AP-ES-01-31-06 1814EST

I didn't see this story play as prominently on the local front as I expected. Maybe because he wasn't Tookie-esque enough a character ... or because Florida really isn't the new California yet. We're getting there. Seems like few state stories go national that don't include freaks and storms.
I read a story describing Rutherford's family's uncontained joy and I felt for them. Nothing good can come from the state's decision making powers being sucked up into the hands of the federalistas -- even if it is the SC making the call.

I don't think this is over; Florida is just going to find another way of offing him. Delaying his death only drags out a painful situation for the family.
Not to mention, I am sure the woman he drowned in her bathtub some years back probably thought her death was cruel and unsual. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a believer in an eye-for-an-eye or much of a proponent of capital punishment.
Around 7th grade, I read a story in my dad's Time magazine with a lede that described exactly what happened to the human body in an electric chair. I think this was one of the first time I understood how words can impact and change a person's point of view. I also remember being younger and seeing a story in Time on the Jonestown murders -- all the bloated bodies out in the sun. No one took it away from me. No one explained it. I read the captions. I got it.

So, I think I'm gonna break up blogfodders by story. I tend to write longer than blogs are supposed to be ...

******************

I posted this this morning but this e blogger sucks ass and ate my last three entries and didn't work have the day. Not to mention, it keeps dumping my design changes.

CSI: bullet holes in the plot

2006-01-29T08:46:00.000-05:00

OK. So, I don't watch TV but I do download CSI every week. I discovered that on Google video. Oh sure, one day Google and Walmart are going to own our souls. (I notice Googlezon isn't listed among the fun clips from Google video.) But while Google is buying my soul for the price of allowing me endless free searching, free e-mail, a blog and letting me see CSI every week without having to commit to the brain melt of cable, I don't seem to mind.

CSI is the only reason I really miss TV. Well, I get a jones for the local news periodically but mostly CSI. The rest of TV programming is generally vapid. I used to wait and watch CSI on DVDs when they came out. I don't watch the "how we did it" voice-overs. I dig CSI so much I don't want to see behind the curtain.

But sometimes, the writers leave the curtains open and it pisses me off. Since I've been watching 'em online, I've started noticing inconsistencies -- which supports my theory that the moment you look to a small screen across your living room your reason leaves your mind. Usually, I think the writing is tight. But this last episode... "Kiss-Kiss, Bye-Bye" bothered me. The holes got to me -- the ones in the plot left by stray bullets.

Basically, a waiter, Vincent Pullone - aka Tim Duke, is found dead in the closet of Lois O'Neill, an aging Vegas showgirl with mob connections. Pullone was shot in both the the heart and the head. The head shot was a "through and through" according to David at the scene. Over the autopsy table, Grissom fingered the bullet hole in his brain -- commenting there was no blood in the wound track. Doc Robbins said the shot to the head happened 10 mintutes after the shot through the heart.

OK. Great.
But when Sara and Greg take to Lois' closet collecting evidence, Sara finds a bullet hole in the floor about 5 feet away from blood spots on the nice white carpet -- which means this bullet hole would not be from the through and through to the waiter's head. And the bullet from the waiter's heart was found lodged in his spinal column. Personlly, I think the purpose of this hole was to allow Sara and Greg to use Hawkeye -- a gadget that looks like a plumbers snake with a camera on the end --- to discover $1 million under the floor. A nice plot point but where did the bullet hole come from they were probing?? There was no blood around it and nothing in the plotline ever explained it.

Further, when they wrapped up the "whodunit" for the waiter, they don't explain the trho shot. The head shot is supposed to connect the mob to the hit. Are we supposed to assume Louis or her assistant came back and shot a man who was already dead, as well as shoot another errant hole through the floor into a million dollars which they both know is there? I suppose that's viable but the second shot Sara and Greg find doesn't make sense.

Then, there are the plane tickets.
Nick and Archie pull images from the survelliance tapes to find that Pullone and his girlfriend were taking off to Sarajevo but the waiter missed the plane. The problem here is that the tickets were purchased by Lois' company but Nick didn't figure that out until much later in the episode. But early in the episode, when Warrick and Sophia interview Lois' assistant Eve, they know the tickets came from the someone in the house. Now that information just wasn't apparent at that point in the plot -- nothing disclosed that information at that point. They don't figure that out until they find Lois dead in her bedroom later. That information comes out a few minutes from the end of the show when Grissom reports over Lois' dead body that "Nick just found out" the tickets were purchased by someone from Lois' company. The official recap on CBS's website even corroborates that point.

Somebody fucked up in the editing room.

Don't get me wrong, it was a nice piece. The intro cameos of old footage of Dean Martin and Joe DiMaggio at a fight are a nice stylistic visual tying together the mob, the history and touching on the fact that Pullone was supposed to be a fighter. Overall, the theme touched on sentimentality and it was a lovely way of bringing Sam Braun back into the picture, dating Catherine's mother again. An interesting vignette in the closing seems to suggest that Braun actually loves Catherine. Very well acted on his part. Marg Helgenberger gets on my nerves for some reason -- I think it's because her character rocks between stringent ethics and bending them. And, even dressed to the nines like she was at the end of this episode, she looks a little cheap. She's believable as a former stripper.

Best lines:
When pop star Lil' Cherry, whose alibi was going down on her bodyguard as a birthday present, asks Brass what she can do to get him to believe her story, he replies, "I already had my birthday."

Sara tells Hodges gray hair can be very attractive, visbily unsettling Grissom for the second week in a row. Is Bill Peterson looking old around the eyes lately, or what?

Joining in the Frey.

2006-01-28T20:58:00.000-05:00

I don't watch TV; I don't even have cable.
Normally, I'm proud of this. I think it keeps my mind from going completely to Playdoh. But I have these moments when I miss it. After seeing a segment of Oprah tearing into James Frey on CNN.com, I'm dying here from trying to find the transcripts of that episode. If I'd seen it, I could join in the fray -- and not of Frey but of his publisher, Nan Talese.

I've read the op-ed pieces from the NYT and the Washington Post and the LA Times ... and am I the only person in America who notices and see's the irony in the fact that Nan Talese is married to Gay Talese? Maybe I am just the only person gracesless enough to bring it up and say, "Ms. Talese, you knew better." Not she *should* have known, but she knew. There's just no way she didn't know better.

Maybe I'm this graceless because I'm not married. I'll allow that point straight-up. But I've had relationships. I couldn't carry a note if it came with it's own designer bag but my ex-boyfriend was a musician in Atlanta. I hung out at enough gigs to pick up a few thing about the his job. When you share a life with someone, you learn the ropes of your partner's occupation. Doesn't matter what it is. Office politics come up at the dinner table. Some details just ooze into you like osmosis when you share a bed with someone. When that someone does something as personal and creative as writing, you dig in and see even more of the inner-workings of the profession.

Tom Wolf points to Talese and says (figuratively), "It was his fault, he did it first" when it comes to narrative nonfiction. Gay Talese is adamant about his facts and his accuracy. He even fessed up to affairs and his penchant for massage parlor hand jobs at the end of "Thy Neighbor's Wife" in the spirit of full and truthful disclosure. (You would think from that book alone, Nan would have a quite thorough understanding of what truth in nonfiction.)

I keep seeing journlists note that Talese is famous for her imprint. Why is that imprint famous, do you think? One writer noted her represented authors include George Plimpton. Yes, Gay wrote a story on him in the '60's for Esquire. One that Plimpton did not initially agree with even though Gay stood by it writing him lengthy letters. You think that's not the kind of thing you take home with you and chat about over meatloaf with the wife? Come on, she may not have a practice of fact-checking but she KNOWS the ethics and meaning in labeling nonfiction as nonfiction.

A memior just isn't that far a leap from literary journalism. Instead of someone else writing it about you, you write it yourself. Seems pretty simple to me. Nan Talese knows better.