Monday, March 26, 2007

Nancy Grace Will Never Run Out of Material

I had hoped that when the Anna Nicole Smith autopsy report came out that this sorry saga of "investigative journalism" by Nancy Grace on CNN Headline News would come to an end. I had hoped that by then the real, loving, caring father for her baby would have been determined and it would be proved that his paternity battle was based upon love for the innocent victim of this farce and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars she stands to collect from Anna Nicole's earlier "true love."

But it dawned on me today that the coroner has done nothing but give Nancy Grace a whole aresenal of hypotentical, unanswerable questions that she can thrust at "experts" from all over the country for literally hundreds and hundreds of shows to come.

"Accidental" Overdose? Tell me the truth, Doctor, aren't we looking at a potential homicide?

Shouldn't her doctors be held accountable for prescribing eight potentially deadly medications?

You don't know her state of mind. Couldn't this be suicide?

How many of these "legal" drugs have been passed along to the baby?

You see the possibilities. I'm sure Nancy Grace does too. How could this woman of such impressive credentials and obvious desire to make a positive difference in the world have stooped to such gossip mongering and yellow journalism? I'm sure it was much more stressful, but she should have stayed a prosecutor in order to do some good in this world. All she does now is feed the celebrity frenzy of America's anti-intellectual majority.

Good ratings, CNNHN! Keep making Anna Nicole Smith the top story for as long as you can!

And, oh yeah, she's sill dead!

Thursday, March 22, 2007

That Damn Apostrophe - Again!

There is a really nice war memorial in the park where I like to walk most every day. It consists of an attractive monument at the base of three flagpoles and several benches arranged in a circle. There are a number of bricks in the ground that carry the names of corporate sponsors, individual donors or soldiers who never came back from one of America's foreign wars.

The benches are done in a very expensive-looking material that resembles marble. Each one is beautifully engraved with the name of a major conflict (World War II, World War I, Vietnam, Korea, etc.) and a message to that war's prisoners and those missing in action that they will never be forgotten. It's done very professionally and obviously with great reverence.

Except all of the people who specified what to put on the benches, all of the people who read the message, the engravers and everyone who approved the final job are totally clueless about the difference between a possessive and a plural.


It's a total shame that something this beautiful is spoiled by well intentioned but ignorant and illiterate people.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

CNN Headline News Cancels Nancy Grace

One day - maybe not tomorrow - but one day they are going to determine who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby. The coroner is going to report her official cause of death. Everything that can be said about her life will have been said and every ridiculous, irrelevant, hypothetical question will have been asked. Some TV network will make a biopic that will end up being released on DVD. And a copy of the issue of Playboy that features her original pictorial spread will sell on eBay for $10,000.

CNN Headline News will then have no other option but to cancel Nancy Grace. She will no longer have any purpose, and she will find it impossible to approach any other meaningless, superficial story with the same dramatic intensity. She will have burned herself out and the public will finally tire of her absurd "no nonsense" glare into the camera.

No more Anna Nicole - no more Nancy Grace.

Good riddance!

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Dead Squirrel

One of the things I'm enjoying about having my own personal blog - especially since no one ever reads anything I post - is that I can do just about anything I want, no matter how crude, pointless or distasteful.


Like posting a picture of a dead squirrel I saw while I was walking in the park the other day. See?


Wednesday, March 7, 2007

CNN Headline News Really Sucks?

Have you noticed the disturbing trend in television "journalism" lately where almost everything they display on the screen has a question mark after it? Have the people who run CNN Headline and FOX News forgotten everything they ever learned about reporting? (Did they EVER know anything about reporting?)

Anna Nicole Drug Overdose?

Obama Black Enough?

Pardon for Libby?

More Snow for Northeast?

See what I mean?

Why do you think they do this? Don't they know we want them to ask the questions before they report to us? Why do they put up a question instead of a fact? Could it be because they are totally afraid of making a mistake and are gutless cowards? In this age of no credibility, could it be they are more concerned with having an excuse for an erroneous report than they are in actually reporting the truth?

Do you think maybe these "news" operations consider themselves in the entertainment business and don't know the first thing about journalism? Could be, huh?

Monday, March 5, 2007

Beavis is Real

You gotta love The Smoking Gun. They are showing a mug shot of one of the most unattractive human beings I have ever seen. Not only is his face a mess, supposedly from an encounter with a briar patch, but he looks exactly like the cartoon characer, Beavis from the Beavis and Butthead show!

Absolutely incredible - and hilarious! Check out the details on The Smoking Gun's website here.

Meet Chris Kemp of Gresham, Oregon. Hehehehehe...cool!

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Marketers Can Be Geniuses


For as much bad marketing as there is out there in the world, it is incredibly refreshing to see a new concept well executed. Billboards are a lost art and most marketers try to cram as many words as possible into them - or create an ad that is so obtuse nobody has a clue what it's for.

The folks at Mars (and I'm sure their agency should be credited with the kudos too) have scored big with this amazing billboard. Impossible to ignore; impossible to forget. A wonderful, effective concept that I hope sells a heck of a lot of candy bars.

Marketers Are Idiots - Toys R Us Edition

I got an e-mail from Toys R Us today. I'm not quite sure why I'm on their mailing list, but believe me, there are much worse e-mails that show up in my inbox.

What struck me is now incredibly stupid the "offer" is in this e-mail. Why in the world do they think I would want to view a newspaper "ad" (it's actually their insert) online? To me that's kind of equivalent to listening to a radio commercial on my television. They are completely different media and trying to put a newspaper circular into my electronic inbox is just lame.

But I was curious. So I clicked on the ad and was taken to a site that loaded very, very slowly. It looked like this:


Several things bother me about this whole concept.

First of all, I'm not convinced people really want to view catalogs or newspaper inserts online. There are a lot of companies out there offer this service, but I think the idea of creating a virtual catalog - even if it does have animated page turns - is a very poor use of interactive media.

One of the companies at the forefront of doing this type of conversion is called RichFX. They're actually pretty cool and have a lot of very exciting, high-tech capabilities for online retailers. They are obviously who Toys R Us hired to put their newspaper ad online. Look at the URL. They didn't even make an attempt to disguise what is going on. If you look at the browser's header you see Rich Catalog without even a mention of Toys R Us. I know for a fact that RichFX can integrate the online catalog so that it appears to come directly from the retailer, but I guess Toys R Us didn't feel this was necessary. From a simple branding standpoint, this is just stupid.

So I can only conclude that the marketers at Toys R Us are idiots. Or they just don't care. Maybe a little of both.