Roger Catlin | TV Eye

New Names from Zimbabwe

Elections in Zimbabwe this week have inspired a bunch of new baby names apparently. Among the ones forwarded to me are:

        Rigging Hamadziripi
        Electoral Commission Ndlovu
        Foreign Observer Chimunda
        Neck Toneck Nyamadzawo
        Sadhaki Sibanda
        Heavy Weight Utaunashe
        Fiftythree Percentage Ndlondlo
        Released Results Matongo
        Meticulous verification chinengundu
        Free and fair Pazvakawambwa
        Rerun Mombeshora
        Rural Stronghold Khaliyathi
        Constituency Madison
        Polling Station Nhamoinesu
        Ballotbox & Ballotpaper Kunonga (Twins)

Buy Out or Burn Out?

I’ve been working really hard for quite a while now, thinking in the back of my mind it would lead to something.

Maybe a breakthrough in terms of work or some sort of realization. And failing that, at least an eventual professional recognition for the consistent effort.

Then one day, there it was: A very special envelope from my company awaiting me at my doorstep, FedExed the four miles from office to home.

Tearing it open, I quickly learned it was not some certificate of achievement. Rather, it was a form letter an stack of legalese essentially asserting that the best thing I could do for the Hartford Courant was to leave.

It’s the same old story you know: Newspapers losing revenue, costs going up, circulation shrinking to nothing, the need to unload a raft of people.

Hey, wasn’t that all supposed to change when we got out of the business of slavishly following the unrealistically greedy goal of faceless stockholders? Now that we employees supposedly own the Tribune company ourselves, under the direction of motorcycle-riding, foul-mouthed, business whiz and possible leprechaun Sam Zell, this can’t happen to us now can it?

 
New owner or not, it is part of the same sad march to downsizing we’ve been on for a decade. We’ve seen it before: with the best people (and those still marketable enough to get jobs elsewhere) taking off, leaving behind a lesser paper, empty desks, and the rest of us slugs to work even more to take up their duties.

Maybe I should be heartened: This is the recognition I’ve long sought from my superiors. I’m good enough to let go.

But no. It’s just that I’ve made the mistake of providing company loyalty: I’m so old and been here so long, I’m also theoretically earning more than they afford, simply by being present when the minuscule annual raises were doled out (Cheaper to get those kids at Metromix to text-message in their prose, you can apparently pay them in beers and shots). (Or, in the case of movies, don’t write about them at all any more and rely on wire service reviews in the tradition of third-rate papers everywhere).

I shouldn’t take this personally.

Among TV writers with whom I’m associated, after all, this is not an uncommon thing. After decades of service and knowledge more vast than most network executives, they are laid off, outright fired or sent back to the tiny town bureaus where they began their careers – there are, after all, fires and car thefts to cover.

If I were still a rock critic, I’d put it terms of The Clash: "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

But in the season of bad reality shows, I’m thinking of it in terms of a bad new  prime time game shows: "Buy Out or Sell Out?"

Better Than Big Screen

So let me tell you about my vacation. I wasn’t watching “American Idol” or any television at all Wednesday because I was out in a kayak in the middle of a bay on the island of Vieques, off of Puerto Rico.

The must thing to do was to see the bioluminescent bay there, I’d been told. But because it happened to be a full moon, there weren’t the usual nightly tours. Its brightness would obscure the remarkable lighting effects in the water just as it obscures the stars.

Lucky thing though: the last full lunar eclipse for the decade, on the last night there.

So there we were, about 30 of us tourists, out in kayaks following a guy named Jorge into the magical bay where any movement in the water at night causes an odd glow. I thought it was something to do with plants or the kind of built-in illumination claimed by some fish. Instead, it’s micro-organisms that flourish in the unique conditions in Mosquito Bay that cause light to flicker briefly with every movement – of an oar, of a crest at the bow of the kayak, or your hand in the water. It’s like light trails that people on drugs have described. The effect lasts as long as the motion does, so they disappear fast.

But it’s kind of wild to see. And what else would bring you out into the warm waters of a pond this late at night? Well, maybe the stars above, galaxies looming above, shining brighter as the eclipse progressed, turning the intensely shining full moon into a dim red ball. Even more unique, according to Jorge, was the very brief rain that fell while we were out there. With every drop on the surface came another brief burst of light – pinpoints of light below complementing the pinpoints of light above. Even with the advances of HD and big screen TV this was an all encompassing interactive experience that was certainly worth turning off the tube for the week.

Groundhog Report

So the designated Punxsutawney Phil was lifted into the Pennsylvania air this morning and saw its shadow, indicating six more weeks of winter.

Actually pictures from the event make it look like it was held before sunrise, with an inky black sky above. Maybe he was seeing his shadow from the TV lights and camera flashbulbs. Darn paparazzi.

At a time of Super Doppler, Pinpoint Weather and Other Weather Gimmicks, a lot of people put more stock in this lowly rodent than they do in, say, scientists warning about global warming for a decade or more. And of course it's different locally than it is in Pennsylvania: the counterintuitive rules go, if it's cloudy, the critter is not afraid of its shadow and doesn't retreat back into its hole for further hibernation. And it was cloudy here this morning. Woo-hoo.

The groundhog's event wasn't getting much time on the cable news this morning (Punxsutawney should have renamed its event Super Groundhog Saturdady to have a fighting chance). And I'm surprised nobody thought to program the Bill Murray movie on today to mark the occasion. But as the theme of "Groundhog Day" indicates, it will all roll around again.

Incredible Shrinking Profession

Heard news this week about two more TV critics leaving newspapers, not to be replaced.

Doug Elfman was quite a character at the Chicago Sun-Times, the one to ask the most twisted questions on press tour and was an early supporter of “Heroes,” was laid off in the middle of another staff reduction.

He’ll go back to the Las Vegas Review-Journal as an entertainment writer, from whence he came. He apparently won’t be replaced.

Also leaving the paper – voluntarily in her case – is Melanie McFaralane, TV critic at the Seattle Post Intelligencer who was highly regarded in the field though, like me, she’d been only there for five years, is taking a post as TV editor on the Internet Movie Data Base (did you know imdb.com needed a TV editor?).

Anyway, she wrote in her final column that TV writing in the paper would be taken over by bloggers, readers and items from TV Guide.com. Yikes.

Worst of all is the news from Palm Beach, Fla., where reporter Mark Schwed was found dead this week apparently of natural causes. A well regarded reporter and likable fellow, he was friendly enough to me when I met him early in my TV writer days, out on press tour. Before he joined the Palm Beach Post as a feature writer he worked for TV Guide for 11 years. He was exactly my age.

Live at the AFC Championship

Still thawing out from a day at Foxboro, watching the New England Patriots continue their undefeated season, clinching another AFC championship and a ticket to the Super Bowl.

Even from two rows from the  top, it looked pretty great. But with the temperature at about 18 degrees with a breeze, it was unbelievably cold (though not quite as cold as Green Bay, where the football action, we heard on the radio on the way back from Massachusetts, was even hotter, going overtime before the Giants won).

The game itself might have been bearable, but the entire experience had to do with the elaborate pasttime pastime of tailgating -- that with all its equipment, tents, raging bonfires, coolers, portable chairs, Patriot flags and sideline fresh air urination -- resembled a kind of urban camping (albeit a daytime version). Fun, but still kind of cold.

But wait, there was more. After a couple of hours of pregame tailgating, and three hours plus at the game (and the ceremony that followed), there would be another hour or so of post-game tailgating, if only to wait until the traffic died down a little. So the grill was fired up once more, remaining items to be cooked thrown on, and drinking a lot of cold beer didn't seem any the more enticing.

Most of my Boston sports bundling up has come at early season Red Sox game. It was fun to see how things worked at the other end of the sports spectrum, deep at the end of the season of another sport, at the last home game of a team that has already made history by refusing to be beaten.

Fashion Update: Slippers to School

In the realm of inappropriate footwear for school, fuzzy slippers have replaced flip-flops, at least for the cold weather season.

We're not talking about the pink bunny kind with ears, but mostly L.L. Bean's sheepskin variation, a pillowy moccasin overflowing with fleece that seem named by Jimmy Fallon: Wicked Good Moc Boots.

A mainstay in the rumpus room, the Outdura sole is still, despite its name,  unsubstantial enough to make you think twice about using them to step out to the drive way, or down the sidewalk to fetch the newspaper if there's snow on the ground.

And yet, it seems this year there's no compunction to wear these things to the bus and into school. In a way, they're an outgrowth of the comfort wear that's been part of high school for years, a trend that has included hoodies and the occasional flannel print pajama pant. They're more seasonable than the dopey year-round shorts and, yes, January flip flops. But they seem to be a throwback to those special slipper days from elementary school.

And I can attest they are the cause for morning quarrels about appropriate school attire before the bus comes. (Ruining $49.95 slippers by wearing them out all day chief among parental arguments). But such fuss will only make them more desirable to wear, of course.

Christmas in the Comics

If the after-Christmas ads were a little skimpy this year, the holiday greetings in the comics certainly weren't.

Nearly every strip had something to do with Christmas. Strips that were serials stopped cold to give their greetings, as Gil Thorpe jarringly does annually. Both Rex Morgan and Judge Parker suspended their narratives today for remarkably similar one panel drawings of soldiers at Christmastime. Four gather to sing "Peace on Earth" in Judge Parker. In rex Morgan, two just stand in a bunker where the grafitti behind them notes the years going by since they've been at war.

The strip that does feature soldiers every day -- Beetle Bailiey -- paused for one of those one panel full cast drawings that sometimes appear (another one covered civilian life in BLondie, featuring some characters that aren't seen for months at a time, such as the teenage kids.

The posthumous Peanuts strangely wasn't one that mentioned Christmas. But Pears Before Swine, oddly, paid tribute to Linus reciting the Bible in "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

At the Omaha Mall

I'm at the Westroads Mall, site of the worst mass murder in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather 50 years ago.

I'm looking out at a makeshift memorial to the dead, a memorial that's become so big, Santa's been displaced to another corner of the mall. Around the reindeer festooned platform where his throne would have been, has come the unaccountably colorful folkart of thousands of paper snowflakes, written messages, stuffed animals and flowers.

When an addled kid took an AK-47 and killed eight people before killing himself he cast a pall on traditionally the cheeriest season at the mall.

I remember the Westroads when growing up here, a big stretch of double decker hallways connecting a Sears to a Penneys. When a multiplex opened here in 1968 (six screens then 12) it was the first around.

My first real job was here -- morning janitor at McCrory's. I had a love hate relation with the place as most teenagers too. It represented the commercial culture. But we hung out there nonetheless.

Today, nearly everything is different. The Sears is gone. The Kilpatrick's was turned to Younkers and put on the other side of the mall, an extension was built for a food court and Von Maur, the department store where the killings took place Dec. 5.

I hadn't been here for a while until I stopped here last summer, looking for a Panera Bread to plug into and blog. It was a pleasant enough place to do such work. I remember a shoeshine guy right outside the place who didn't ask if I wanted a shoeshine but seemed to sense I needed one. But he also realized I was in a rush. "Come back and see me," he said.

I meant to. And today I'm back, under odd circumstances. The reporter in me wanted to see the aftermath of the place, what the mood was like. The mall itself was closed for a couple of days after the tragedy; Von Maur remains closed. Odd that its Christmas lights blaze on the facade but the windows are blacked out by cloth; there's a printed sign on some wreaths that are half funeral and half of the season. They talk about healing and praying for the families, but won't indicate until later that the store will reopen Dec. 19, to get a semblance of a holiday selling season.

But now, on the locked doors, outside and in, came the snowflakes and tributes. Those piled up outside took on an eerie sense outside as four new inches of snow covered the bouquets. People wiped away some signs so they could be read; others in runny magic marker were already illegible.

There was a big sign on a pedestal that said Thou Shall Not Kill - Return the 10 Commandments to the Schools. (As if that would have stopped the kid). There were some of those phrases that popped up after 9/11 as well. We will never forget, several said. God Bless America, said others. Some referred to the date Dec. 5, as if 12/5 would become its trademark.

But many others referred to the dead people -- mostly workers at the department store, the people who wrapped presents up in the customer service department -- by name, as friends, aunts, uncles. Big chunks of the memorial were given up to grade schools who sent their support as class project. But there were tables up for people to make their own snowflakes and write tributes if they wanted. Fliers are out on how to deal with such tragedies, from the American Psychological Association, American Red Cross, and Salvation Army.

There are a couple of tables where people can sit and write in guest books "thoughts for the families." Pens are provided, as is a box of tissues.

There aren't obvious tears, though. But people are respectfully silent as they take in the display. And elsewhere in the mall, the only odd thing amid the usual Christmas shopping and Saturday night hanging out is that there is just the slightest unease of people as they look at you. Mortality is on the mind of the people at the mall, with the realization they could have been in the department store in this mall the moment a mind snapped and the gun went off.

But 10 days after the shooting, and another 10 before Christmas, life goes on.

The shoeshine's chairs are still here, I just noticed, buzzed up with caffeine to justify my Panera free wifi. But the shoe shine guy himself is gone.

Thanksgiving: The Ads

It used to be that Thanksgiving was the biggest paper of the year. By now, it’s just an average sized (or smaller) Thursday edition, weighed down with an inch of preprint slick fliers.

And what are in the fliers? The long-promised price drop for bigscreen TVs, chiefly. A  42” inch LCD at Wal-Mart for $798; a 50-inch DLP rear projection for $799 at Circuit City; a 32-inch LCD at Staples (Staples?) for $499, a 32-inch LCD at Best Buy for $449..

Some of this involves getting up early – 5 a.m. at Wal Mart and Circuit City Friday; those slackers at Staples wait until 6 a.m. JC Penney opens so early – 4 a.m – you’d be tempted to stay up all night if it weren’t for the day’s overdose of tryptophan.

Other than TVs, the big items this year seem to be digital cameras, less than $80 at Sears (video cameras must have been last year’s hot item). The bottom has fallen out on MP3 players that aren’t iPods – down to about $10 (iPods won’t budge from their list price anywhere; the best any stores can do is throw in an iTunes gift card).

Handheld GPS gizmos are priced lower than ever at $129 (at Radio Shack) but I can’t imagine them ever replacing actual maps.

There are good DVD deals – whole seasons of "The Office" and "House" for $14.99 at Best Buy; new movies like "Shrek the Third" and "Ratatouille" for $14 at Target.

But it’s sad to see that CDs are doing what looks to be their final lap as a commodity. Offering apparently whole stocks as low as $7.99 (at F.y.e.) and $5 (at Wal-Mart) seems to herald the beginning of the end of the format, a clearing-out to accommodate a new generation to whom recorded music has become an entirely online phenomenon.