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If you subscribe to the L.A. Times- and who doesn't?- I want you to go check out Sunday's Calendar section and look at the capsule comments in the "Fall Sneaks" movie roundup. I want you to note that each, after noting title, genre, distributor, cast, director, and storyline, includes a line headed "So?:", which ostensibly gives you the paper's opinion on how good the movie is or why you should care about it, things like "Lavish but superficial" or "Less than the sum of its parts." Okay. But then there are a ton of entries that, well, here's a sample entry:

Reconstruction
Drama
Palm Pictures
With: Maria Bonnevie, Nikolaj Lie Kaas
The idea: A young Danish photographer's fling with an alluring Swede renders him a stranger to those he thought he knew.
Writer-director: Christoffer Boe & Mogens Rukov
So? The wages of adultery

The wages of adultery what?

Or:

Wimbledon
Comedy
Universal
With: Kirsten Dunst, Paul Bettany, Sam Neill, Jon Favreau
The idea: A lowly Brit tennis player finds his way into the world-famous All-England tournament and falls for U.S. star.
Writers: Adam Brooks and Jennifer Flackett & Mark Levin
Director: Richard Loncraine
So? Courtiers

"Courtiers"?!? Courtiers what?

This kind of thing goes on throughout the piece, and it's the same every time they do these roundups: "Identity crisis," "The joke is afoot," "Seeking light after cruel darkness," "Moral conflict." WHAT DO THEY MEAN? WHAT'S THE POINT? DID SOMEONE ACTUALLY GET PAID FOR THIS?

My LORD. If I have nothing to say, at least I don't get PAID for it.

The end of the piece claims that these witticisms were written by something called "Kevin Crust." It must be nice to get paid by the word even when you just hand in randomly chosen verbiage.

And, suddenly, Entertainment Weekly seems like the New York Review of Books.

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I had one letter to send, certified mail, return receipt requested. One letter. That's all. No packages, no special orders. All forms were filled out. I pulled into the post office garage, parked, walked in, got in the queue- about 5 people in front of me- and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And while I waited, I noticed what was going on. Everybody in front of me except for one- a gentleman with an express mail envelope ready to go- had several packages or envelopes, all to be sent with some sort of insurance or confirmation, but none of them- NONE of them- had filled out any forms at all. So the customers were slowly, painstakingly filling out forms- 15 or 20 each- and the clerks, rather than having them step aside while they filled out the forms so that other patrons could go through, just... watched. And watched. And the queue began to build behind me, 10, 15 people, the line stretching right out of the room and down the lobby hall, and the clerks just... watched.

I've been using this post office for about 10 years now. I have a P.O. Box there, the clerks all know me, and they're very, very nice people. Too nice. And way, way too slow. What should have taken me 5 minutes, at most, ended up taking a half hour. And when I loudly complained- I was wearing an Eagles jersey, so I was feeling aggressive- the clerks and manager agreed and said their policy was indeed to have the slowpokes step aside.

SO WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT?

If there really was competition- if you could send letters, non-overnight letters, by a private carrier the way you can FedEx or UPS something, maybe the service would be better and the prices more reasonable. I know that because of FedEx and UPS, you can now use a self-service kiosk to avoid lines. Unfortunately, if you need to send something and get a receipt back, or insure something, the kiosk is useless. And that's how you end up with a half-hour wait at 2:30 pm on a non-busy day. It's hardly April 15, or Christmas time. (The lines and the wait at those times are mind-boggling) This shouldn't happen on September 13, even with quarterly taxes due on the 15th (I appeared to be the only one on line sending off a tax payment- everyone else had packages). This shouldn't happen, period. But that's the service I get, and if I don't like it, my alternative is to... well, I don't have one.

Here's what I want- I want the right to kick the ass of anyone who isn't ready with completed forms when he or she reaches the counter. I want a line set aside for people with 5 or more packages, so that the people like me with one or two items don't have to wait forever. I want the clerks to be a little less chatty and a lot faster. And I want to be able to get the hell out of there in a reasonable time.

Is that too much to ask?

Probably.

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The blog world- I'm going to declare the word "blogosphere" off limits only because I'm sick of it- is learning now what talk radio knew years ago, because the condescension directed at bloggers isn't all that different from what I was hearing about talk radio over a decade ago when I was at New Jersey 101.5 and we were involved in the kind of emperor-has-no-clothes action that the blogs are directing at CBS.

Back in the early '90s, New Jersey was in the throes of a long romance with liberal politicians who returned the love with heavy taxation. Actually, that's still the way it is there, but for a brief, shining moment, and for the first time in the state's history, there was a media outlet that wasn't afraid to point out that a) the Governor, Jim Florio, had promised to hold the line on taxes, but b) had instead used threats and backroom politicking to ram the largest tax hike in the state's history through the shockingly compliant legislature. And it happened like this:

1. Postal worker calls John and Ken show to complain about high taxes.
2. John asks postal worker why, if he's so upset, he doesn't DO something about it.
3. Postal worker says, hey, I think I WILL do something about it.
4. Grass roots campaign forms, station jumps aboard, rallies held.

And then, the critical part:

5. Newark Star-Ledger, Asbury Park Press, Trenton Times, Bergen Record attack station and tax revolt, denigrate postal worker as just a postal worker, denigrate hosts as screaming right-wing wackos.
6. Governor thrown out of office by angry voters, with difference coming by margin of voters in counties covered by station.

Here's the funny part- the station was OWNED BY A NEWSPAPER, the Asbury Park Press. When we started to make noise, the paper refused to mention us, even when it was an integral part of the story (they resorted to calling us a "Trenton-based radio station"). Then, the editor, loath to assign one of his own reporters to cover what was happening, decided instead to print a hatchet job on the station that had appeared in the Chicago Tribune, an article that got many of the facts wrong. The editorial staff was so fearful that the radio station was gaining popularity and prestige that they felt the need to trash us, but didn't have the balls to do the job themselves.

And blogs, in many ways, are just like talk radio- an alternative, fact-checkers, keeping the mainstream media honest, ripping them when they aren't honest. You can tell by the reaction, the anger apparent in Dan Rather's increasingly desperate attempts to hold back the tidal wave, the aggression in CBS' passes at debunking the growing blog-generated pile of evidence against it. It's deja vu for me- it's the early 90's and talk radio all over again, only this time, it's open to anyone with a computer. That's a good thing.

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Which is a more valuable and worthy news organization: CBS, the National Enquirer, or the Weekly World News?

Compare and contrast:

ACCURACY

CBS: Lead story this week: Memos. Now everyone knows the word "kerning." (0 points)
National Enquirer: Lead story this week: "Hollywood's CHEATERS & most dangerous relationships." Hollywood stars cheating? Sounds accurate to me. (10 points)
Weekly Word News: Lead story this week: "NOV. ELECTION CANCELED! Nation's voting machines are made in Florida- AND THEY WON'T WORK!" Haven't heard about the cancellation yet, but it does have wonderful pictures of a slackjawed Kerry and a simian Bush, so gotta give 'em at least some credit. (5 points)

SELF-PROMOTION:

CBS: Dan Rather in the New York Observer. Andy Heyward's zero-news release after a whole day of stalling. (0 points)
National Enquirer: Self-congratulation: "DOUBLE BACHELORS! You read it here first" Perhaps that's true, but did anyone want to know that, or see the list of the 15 girls making the cut on "The Bachelor"? (5 points)
Weekly World News: "NASA scientists stunned: WEEKLY WORLD NEWS FOUND ON MARS!" (10 points)

FEATURES

CBS: Web site features columns by Robert Scheer. (0 points)
National Enquirer: "Hollywood BEATERS & CHEATERS" feature includes pictures of Farrah Fawcett's bruises, Brett Butler's bloody mugshot, Vanessa Williams looking like someone just goosed her with a cattle prod, Dr. Phjil's first wedding photo; a feature notes that Teresa Heinz Kerry and Dustin Hoffman in drag for "Tootsie" appear to have been separated at birth; contest for "America's Cutest Cat." (5 points)
Weekly World News: Free pullout Alien Abduction special investigation, including a section on how "EXTRATERRESTRIAL SEX IS OUT OF THIS WORLD" (no mention of anal probes, though); Ed Anger demanding that Tug-of-War be made an Olympic sport; a "Be the Next Superman" contest; yet another weekly feature story on "Bat Boy," in which "the world's greatest plastic surgeon" offers to alter said deformed child's face into "a normal-looking teenager- free of charge!"; a Peter Bagge comic strip about Bat Boy; a story about NASA building a "DOUBLE-WIDE SHUTTLE" to launch fat Americans into space "...and you could be one of them!"'; a story about a car that runs on toe jam; how to get ahead in business by dressing like Courtney Love. (10 points)

NUMBER OF MY FORMER EMPLOYEES WHO ADVERTISE THEIR OWN 900 NUMBER PSYCHIC LINES THERE

CBS: Zero. (0 points)
National Enquirer: One. (10 points)
Weekly World News: One. (10 points) (same employee)

RESULTS:

CBS: 0 points.
National Enquirer: 25 points.
Weekly World News: 35 points.

This is despite the WWN's evolution from a straight-faced outrage picking up where the sister Enquirer left off when it moved towards actual reporting and accuracy. Now that the WWN KNOWS it's funny and plays that up, where can we turn for falsehoods presented with utmost sincerity and lack of self-awareness? Which news organization will consistently make up stories and be surprised when the public figures out it's all a fake? Who...

Oh, OK, it's an obvious one. Sorry. But I swear, these days, if it's a choice between CBS and "SIMON COWELL CAUGHT- This is NOT his girlfriend!" and "My dead mom keeps calling on my cell phone!", I know which I'll take.

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Why is anybody surprised that Borders employees are discussing ways to hide, lie, or whatever else they feel they need to do to prevent people from buying the Swifties' book? (Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the link to the Google cache of the bulletin board) Sure, I mentioned this to Fran when my local Borders put up a sign telling patrons they could order the book but it wasn't in and even wrote about it someplace (here, All Access, someplace else, I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up), but why is anyone surprised? You can only be surprised if you'd never shopped at a book store before.

Or a record store. Or some clothing stores. I've always felt judged by the clerks at stores, but especially at book and record stores. There's always an attitude, and I know when I plop my stack of intended purchases on the counter that they're sizing me up. See, I don't look "cool." I have no piercings or tats. I look... ordinary. Suburban. Wonder Bread white. And if I'm buying something of which the pierced/tattooed hipster behind the register wouldn't approve, I get that feeling I get at nightclubs or radio conventions- I don't belong here.

But why? Why should I care what a retail clerk thinks? Am I uncool because a minimum-wage slacker with unnaturally colored hair and a sneer thinks that I'm some suburban cipher in a Land's End shirt buying a "Get Fuzzy" book and a crossword magazine? Am I uncool for buying a Fodor's travel guide and an Orange County Register? Am I uncool because I'm not buying a CD by the latest undeserving "next big thing" played only on KXLU? Maybe, but I'm not low-wage, low-self-esteem, bookstore-clerk uncool.

So why does it bother me? Why do I find myself entertaining the thought- just a thought- that I have to add, say, McSweeney's or a tasteful Taschen book to appear more with-it to the clerk? Why do I hesitate to buy something dorky that I want- Baseball America, or a book that isn't exactly "liberal"- to save myself the dirty looks and hostile undercurrent of the clerk? Well, I don't do it as much anymore. I still go to bookstores and record stores and video stores, but now I save the stuff I really want for Amazon and Overstock and Deep Discount DVD and other online stores. First, they're way cheaper, and second, there are no clerks. This works for me; if some data entry person or shipping clerk half a country away puts a "Green Acres" DVD or "Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man" in a cardboard container, slaps my address on it, and thinks "what a dork," I'll never know and never care. I don't have to explain to a clerk with raised eyebrows that the Flintstones collection is a gift (when it isn't). I just buy, with no human interaction- perfect.

That's something I'm surprised the bookstore chains and music chains don't address. If I managed one of those places, I'd tell the clerks to drop the attitude, fast. Customers are customers, not, as one of the commenters at the Borders union bulletin board says, "neanderthals" to be scorned and pitied. Our unapproved purchases pay for their salaries, their tats and piercings and lattes and drugs and employee-discounted "cool" books and CDs. If Borders doesn't understand this- if they don't realize how much money this particular "neanderthal" has spent at Borders stores in the past decade- then they don't deserve my business.

But they probably won't miss me, anyway. I may have spent thousands of dollars there, but I'm SO uncool.

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Step one: someone releases a study claiming liberal media bias.

Step two: the media claims, en masse, that the study's illegitimate because the people doing the study are- gasp!- conservative.

Step three: the media do things that prove the study's correct.

Step four: nothing changes.

Here's how this played out yet again, and it has nothing to do with Rathergate: a study came out in which a study of headlines attached to stories about the economy showed that the headlines were significantly more upbeat when Clinton was President than they are for identical news under Bush. The study was greeted with attacks on the guys who did the study from people like the Baltimore Sun's radio/TV reporter David Folkenflik, who called the study "replete with regression points and dummy variables" and scored the survey for a) analyzing headlines rather than full stories (although the study was specifically designed to analyze the headline spin, because the headlines are all many people ever see), and b) being written by conservatives, who obviously had a dog in this race.

Okay, fine, except here's the headline on an AP story, as it appeared on the New York Times website today:

Consumer Prices Climb; Jobless Claims Up

Consumer prices climb? Here's the article itself:

Consumer prices barely budged in August, suggesting that inflation isn't currently a problem for the economy and Federal Reserve policy-makers can stick with a gradual approach to raising interest rates.

The government's closely watched inflation barometer, the Consumer Price Index, rose by just 0.1 percent in August from the previous month, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Falling prices for clothes, cars and airfares helped to temper rising prices for medical care, education and some food items.

How does a statistically insignificant 0.1% rise- one the article itself characterizes as "barely budged"- constitute a "climb"?

And then there's the part about jobless claims being up, which conjures up images of the unemployment line- the soup kitchen line- getting ever longer:

New claims for unemployment benefits rose last week by a seasonally adjusted 16,000 to 333,000, the Labor Department said. The pace of layoffs, however, has slowed over the last year. A year ago, new filings were at 401,000.

"Seasonally adjusted"- summer jobs are over and some people are newly eligible for unemployment benefits. Otherwise, the news is that the pace of layoffs is slowing. Is that in the headline? Neither is this nugget:

U.S. households saw their net worth in the second quarter of this year rise to a record $45.91 trillion, reflecting in part higher home and other real-estate values. The second quarter's figure surpassed the previous all-time high registered in the first quarter of this year.

Net worth's up, layoffs are slowing, consumer prices are flat despite high fuel prices (which dipped in July and August), food prices are up just 0.1%, clothing prices are down 0.2%, new car prices are dropping, airfares dipped 3.7% (largest drop since June 1999), medical costs were up 0.2% and education rose 0.6%. The consumer price rise is mostly from the high price of oil.

So how did the headline writer get this:

Consumer Prices Climb; Jobless Claims Up

out of this?:

Consumer prices steady despite energy costs, net worth rises

Ask David Folkenflik.

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The Yankees and Red Sox were in a rain delay, and I'd been kinda absent lately- working here, or at the stadium- and so I found myself agreeing to take Fran to the movies, her choice. And that's how we ended up at "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." Actually, that was the choice because it started a half-hour before "Wimbledon." Whatever. "Sky Captain" it was.

It's an interesting movie (there's the blurb: "'Interesting!'- P.M. Simon, pmsimon.com"), but not wholly successful. I'm not even sure it's a whole movie- it's more of a concept stretched out to feature length. To be sure, it's a pretty cool concept: what Tomorrow was imagined to be like at the 1939 World's Fair, only with giant marauding robots and Jude Law and stuff. The look of the thing is cool (I'm sure Lileks will want to see this one- it's right up his alley), and it's amusing enough, even though the plot's stupid, characters appear and disappear and plot elements drift away (warning to Angelina Jolie fans: she's barely in this one, and comes in very late, at that), and there's entirely too much winking at the camera, "Indiana Jones" as remade by the writing staff of "According to Jim," hamhanded and way too self-aware. But there's one thing that stands out above all:

Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow can't act.

(Gwyneth, if you're prone to Googling your own name and came across this, I'm sorry, but it's true, and someone has to say it. You're wooden, bland, unexpressive, and oddly plain, even with the Veronica Lake 'do and the crimson lips. Sure, I'll give you points for having to react to CGI elements- it can't be easy- but there was not a single appealing note to your performance. I kept rooting for Jude Law to deck you, and, sure enough... but that's giving something away. Plus, you named your kid "Apple." Unforgiveable.)

There's more- the Hindenburg shows up for a few minutes and doesn't go kaboom, it's set in 1939 but there are no Nazis (just Sir Laurence Olivier as a German mad scientist ("Totenkopf"- deadhead! Ha ha!) in the form of CGI-altered clips), Giovanni Ribisi co-stars as a comic-book-reading dork who makes both Jude Law and Angelina Jolie go weak-kneed for no apparent reason, Michael Gambon and Omid Djalili come in, appear to be important to the story, then disappear as if they never existed... I have to hand it to writer/director Kerry Conran for convincing a major studio to drop a huge budget and big-name cast on a script that appears never to have been completed.

But it looks cool.

That's all that matters, right?

(sigh)

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Got no time, so here's a picture of Fernando Valenzuela being swamped by fans as he emerged from the press box last week:

They still love the guy. He's still an icon for the Mexican community. Must be strange to be mobbed wherever you go.

Relevance? None. Maybe he's signing documents for CBS.

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