Blogs Nosey Parker

Flipping The Bird To M.I.A.’s Finger

alan.parker - February 8th, 2012

I may be the only person in the world who didn’t see M.I.A. flip the bird to the Super Bowl multitudes.

Doesn’t bother me. I never heard of M.I.A. before and hopefully never will again now that’s she’s had her five seconds of fame.

What does bother me is that she somehow misappropriated a fine finger gesture with a noble heritage and used it for her own calculated, crass, publicity-seeking ends. Shame on you, M.I.A.

And shame on NBC and the NFL for apologizing about the gesture. They should apologize for giving M.I.A. a massive international platform on which to abuse the gesture. But “the finger” itself is blameless — honourable, in fact.

“Flipping the bird” or “giving the finger” has been recorded as an expression of rude derision since the time of the ancient Greeks and was probably in use long, long before that.

One might almost say it’s a primordial instinct.

I’m not going to get into the origins of the gesture (and the related British “two-finger salute”) because, frankly, no one knows for sure where or how it came into common usage. And it just doesn’t matter.

It’s one of those things that is so right and so righteous (when used properly, of course) that Moses may as well have brought it down from the mountain along with those tablets.

The key element that makes a bird properly flipped or a finger properly given is a sense of real, heartfelt outrage.

Sometimes it’s joyously obscene or just plain frivolous, but usually giving the finger is so far away from any sexual connotation as to be essentially unconnected.

At its best, the finger (or fingers, if you’re British) is a spontaneous gesture of such genuine and immediate sentiment that it cuts deeper than any word or weapon.

And it’s an underdog gesture. Flipping the bird is an expression of defiance, of resistance, of unbending, unwavering opposition to the target of the flippage.

It’s generally a gesture of the oppressed, not the oppressor, which is why it’s gotten an undeserved bad rap in “polite” (read “dominant”) society.

You’ll never see royalty or a president flip the bird.

Oh, never mind.

But the fact remains that for the finger to be effective, it should be from the heart and express a deep, personal antagonism. Not a flash of irritable pique from a spoiled celebrity.

Oh, never mind.

And you really can’t do rock ‘n’ roll in any of its forms without having at least one obligatory bird-flipping photo in your press kit.

Anybody (even a Godfather or a grandmother) can flip the bird — it’s the great equalizer (and it’s always at your fingertips when you need it).

Now I’m going to show you a few photos, many of which you will have seen before, of various people flipping the bird in an appropriate matter. In most cases, I’ll tell you a little story with each photo.

Most people know this photo: It’s an Internet classic. What you probably don’t know is where the photo was taken and who the kid is.

Reuters photog Jasper Juinen made the image at the 2002 UEFA Cup soccer/football final between Holland’s Feyenoord Rotterdam and Germany’s Borussia Dortmund in Feyenoord’s home stadium.

The kid is Mikey Wilson, then five years old, and he’s wearing a Feyenoord jersey so I think it’s safe to say Mikey’s flipping the bird to German fans on the other side of the stadium. Feyenoord won the match 3-2 over the favoured Germans, so maybe Mikey’s never-say-die attitude in the stands carried over on the pitch.

I just like this shot of Steve McQueen giving the British two-finger salute in the 1971 racing film Le Mans.

And I like this shot of actress Eva Mendes flipping a double eagle to someone in a restaurant. Actually I think the birds are meant for the photographer taking this picture and she’s just turning away from the camera. But it must have been interesting for the people (you can see one) sitting on the other side of glass to ponder why this beautiful angry stranger was gesticulating wildly at them.

Now let’s move on to fingers in the news.

Less than two weeks after the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster in 2001, New York City was again hit by terror attacks — this time in the form of bio-terrorism. Letters laced with deadly anthrax spores were mailed to newspapers and TV news organizations in New York and Florida.

A few weeks later, more anthrax letters were sent to the offices of U.S. congressmen. In all, 22 people were infected and five died.

This front-page photo from the New York Post shows editorial assistant Johanna Huden, the first person who contracted the skin form of anthrax on her finger when she opened the Post letter. It expressed the whole city’s defiance and determination in the face of repeated assaults by unknown, unseen terrorists.

(The FBI investigation eventually focused on a U.S. government scientist, who killed himself as a result. The case was closed and no further anthrax attacks occurred — but we’ll never know for sure if Bruce Edwards Ivins was the perp.)

In a way Johanna’s finger flexing showed the same spirit of “carry on” as Churchill’s V-for-victory wartime gesture.

And then there was the London Sun’s 1990 response to Jacques Delors when the then-president of the European Union suggested that one central EU government should supercede Britain’s Parliament and other national governments.

The front page was the subject of a number of complaints to Britain’s Press Council (mainly regarding the Sun’s perceived anti-French racism). But, as the BBC later said: “(T)he now defunct Press Council cleared the newspaper after (the Sun) said it reserved the right to use vulgar abuse whenever it felt it justified in the interests of the British people.”

Hear, hear. Three cheers for “vulgar abuse” in defence of the realm.

But my favourite bird-flipping photo is this spontaneous shot of Johnny Cash.

Here’s what I had to say about Johnny’s bird in an unrelated Nosey Parker blog post from last August:

“This iconic picture was taken in 1969 by rock photog Jim Marshall at one of Johnny’s San Quentin prison concerts. Marshall later said he told Cash ‘John, let’s do a shot for the warden’ and this is what he got.

“Cash used this photo for an ad in Billboard (below) a couple of decades later as a back-handed ‘thank you’ to the Nashville music establishment and country radio after he won the 1997 Best Country Album Grammy without their help or support.”

So no, M.I.A., you can’t have the bird. It’s not yours to claim and never will be.

On behalf of Johnny Cash, little Mikey Wilson and every other person who has flipped the bird and meant it, who has given the finger to tyranny or tedium and lived with the consequences, I reclaim the bird.

But now, on the count of three, we’re all giving the bird to you, M.I.A. Enjoy.

›››››››››››››››››››››››››››››››››››

Oh, what the heck — let’s look at some more photos of celebrities flipping the bird (some in fun, some in annoyance at the invasion of privacy, some simply because they have fingers) just to completely remove any modicum of chance that M.I.A. still comes to mind when you hear the phrase “flipping the bird.”

Joan Rivers

Madonna again (heck it was her show that M.I. A. stole, so I think she deserves extra space here)

Ashton Kutcher

Mickey Rourke

Queen Latifah

Avril Lavigne

Kristie Alley (really, she’s still a celeb)

Heidi Klum (long before she met Seal, so it’s not aimed at him)

Ozzy Osbourne

Rihanna

And finally Jodie Foster, just because she’s got the longest middle finger I’ve ever seen — a finger meant to flip a bird. Actually, I just noticed most of the women here have longer middle fingers than the men. But that’s a subject for another day.

Tags: bird, celebrities, finger, finger kid, flip the bird, give the finger, halftime show, Heidi Klum, Johnny Cash, Justin Bieber, Kurt Cobain, Lady Gaga, M.I.A., Madonna, Rihanna, rude gestures, Super Bowl
Categories: General | No comments

100th Anniversary Of A Very Bad Idea

alan.parker - February 6th, 2012

Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of a very important event in the life of Parisian tailor Franz Reichelt — his death.

You have to give Franz Reichelt credit for having the courage of his convictions.

But apart from that one has to think: “You should have used the dummy, dummy.”

As I said, this story is about Franz Reichelt’s death, so it’s not really funny.

In fact, it’s kind of sad and I do feel sympathy for the little tailor of Paris.

But the freaking stupidity of Reichelt’s grand exit is so huge as to take his death out of the realm of common human tragedy and thrust it, like a crazily malfunctioning rocket, into the stratosphere of Really Dumb Ideas — not worth the price of popcorn (let alone a human life) but awesome in its incandescent, singleminded lunacy.

Now Reichelt’s motivating idea — to design an effective, compact, wearable parachute for use by flyers when their rickety nouveau airplanes were in trouble — was not the Really Dumb Idea. I think we’d all agree that was a Good Idea.

(Of course, the Really Good part of the Idea wasn’t really Reichelt’s anyway — people had been tinkering around with the concept of parachutes for hundreds of years and had gotten really serious in the decade since airplanes had become a reality.)

No, Reichelt’s monumental, self-destructive stupidity lay in HOW he went about trying to implement the concept.

Reichelt decided to demonstrate the viability of his parachute suit by wearing it WHEN HE JUMPED OFF THE EIFFEL TOWER. I think you know how that turned out.

As I said before, Reichelt wasn’t much for original ideas: Almost a full year earlier, Gaston Hervieu had successfully demonstrated his much better parachute design in a public display at the Eiffel Tower. But Hervieu had used a dummy for his demonstration and Reichelt had his heart set on a little one-upsmanship.

Reichelt too had used dummies for his earlier tests of the parachute suit — with mixed results. And he had jumped himself from heights equivalent to three- and four-storey buildings — with generally disastrous results (two attempts leading to hospital stays and one disaster averted by the presence of a convenient haystack).

You would think at that point that Reichelt would understand that his parachute had inherent design flaws, but that isn’t the way Reichelt’s mind worked. No, Reichelt firmly believed that the silk canopy built into his suit simply had not had enough time to deploy properly: He needed more height and all would be well.

Reichelt, by the way, was trying to win the 10,000-franc prize put up by l’Aero-Club de France in 1911 for the best design of a lightweight, compact parachute that aviators could wear while flying their flimsy crates. The deadline for that competition was drawing near, so Reichelt needed to make a dramatic showing to grab the prize. Plus he was a bit of an egomaniac who wanted fame and adulation.

All of which led our little tailor to the base of la Tour Eiffel on that cold Sunday morning of Feb. 4, 1912.

After months of pestering, Reichelt had finally been granted permission a few days earlier by the Paris Prefecture of Police to conduct his parachute experiment — with a dummy.

At least that’s what Louis Lepine, the Prefect of Police, said later. Who knows.

The bottom line is that Franz Reichelt showed up at the Eiffel Tower about 7 a.m. wearing the parachute suit. He was accompanied by two friends (who later said they had expected the demo to be conducted with a dummy — but, guys, really … there was no dummy in the car and Franz was wearing the suit) and a horde of reporters and photographers who had been tipped to the jump by Reichelt the previous day.

Among the onlookers were two camera crews for the Gaumont and Pathe newsreel movie companies. So, yes, we do have film footage of Reichelt leap into the history books.

One camera was on the ground to get the overall view, while another camera was set up on the Eiffel Tower observation deck to get closeups of the preparations and eventual launch of Reichelt’s demonstration.

Here’s the most common version of the Reichelt’s fateful jump, primarily using Gaumont newsreel footage.

Sad, senseless and a little sordid — but done with quickly. And soon overshadowed by the much vaster stupidity and monstrous infliction of death of the First World War.

But this other film stock, the Pathe version of Reichelt’s jump, is much more poignant and much, much sadder because it puts us right there with Reichelt as he stands on a chair on a table at the railing of the Eiffel Tower’s restaurant preparing to fling himself to his fate.

The saddest thing by far as you watch this newsreel is to see Reichelt repeatedly try to make the jump and then pull himself back at the last millisecond. He knew this was a Really Bad Idea, he knew he had made a terrible mistake — but he just could not bring himself to step down from the chair and the table and face the jeers and derision of all those people he had called out to witness his great success.

So he jumped.

The stubborn, sad little tailor of Paris threw himself and his totally useless handmade silk parachute suit into the void of that Paris morning. And died three seconds later when his body, wrapped in its silk burial shroud, crashed into the frozen earth at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

So we have just passed the centenary mark of …what? A stupid and basically inconsequential death? There have been so many of those in the past 100 years. A vain and deluded fit of bravado? A case of an anti-Icarus hoist on his own petard of hubris?

Perhaps his death is just a lesson for the rest of us, especially when we’re young and more liable to do really stupid things. (I still remember flying backwards through the air from a third-floor balcony, thinking “I’m going to die or be paralyzed for life.” Conveniently situated bushes limited the damage to wounds that would heal.)

If you realize something is a Really Bad Idea, don’t do it! Much better to be laughed at as a living fool than to be pitied later as a dead fool.

Of course, people keep flinging themselves off the Eiffel Tower, despite Franz Reichelt’s bad example.

Some of them are illegal BASE jumpers (one died) and a few have been sanctioned stunts (such as the jump for the 1985 James Bond movie A View To A Kill). And then there’s professional inline skater Taig Khris who, in May 2010, who jumped from the same level of the tower from which Franz Reichelt jumped.

Of course, Khris only plunged 10 metres through the air (only 10 metres?) before hitting a 30-metre-high ramp and skidding into a giant air bag. Here’s a link to a TV news report on the stunt.

But stupid is stupid, so Taig Khris is the current holder of the Franz Reichelt Memorial Shoulda-Used-A-Dummy, Dummy Trophy.

Remember, kids: Don’t try this at home — or at the Eiffel Tower. It’s too beautiful. So is life.

Tags: 100th anniversary, Eiffel Tower, Franz Reichelt, parachute, Paris, stupid ways to die, Tour Eiffel
Categories: General | No comments

Crazy-Bad North Korea Goes All Soft And Cuddly

alan.parker - February 2nd, 2012

Whatever happened to armed and dangerous North Korea, The Rogue Nation Voted Most Likely To Nuke Somebody In The Next Five Minutes™?

Heck, only a month ago North Korea was topping the charts on the international scare-o-meter.

Oh, it’s still there.

Still spending more than a third of its GDP on its missiles, mini-subs and million-soldier Korean People’s Army while millions of other North Koreans teeter on the brink of famine.

Still controlled by a junta of stone-cold, steel-eyed generals with chunky, baby-faced Kim Jong-un (The Littlest Kim®) still acting as pseudo-dynastic front man.

But something’s different. Actually a lot of things are different.

Let’s start with The Littlest Kim®. He’s disappeared.

Not “disappeared” like his dad and granddad used to make people “disappear.” But he’s pretty much out of the public eye, withdrawn from circulation, since the big send-off for his dad, the Dear Departed Leader, a month ago.

Sure, he’s got to prep for the Really Big Show that Pyongyang is putting on in two weeks to mark the (supposed) 70th anniversary of the birth of Dear Departed Leader Kim Jong-il (who was actually born Yuri Irsenovich Kim in the Soviet Union a year before his supposed birth on a sacred Korean mountain, purported HQ of his father’s resistance movement against the occupying Japanese).

And, of course, The Littlest Kim® has to oversee all the details involved in the (non-political) prisoner amnesty taking place this month in honour of said 70th birthday bash.

But it’s fairly obvious the generals know Kim Jong-un’s debut as The Great Successor was laughably inadequate (pretty much a belly flop) and they’ve ordered a recall and total re-tooling of The Littlest Kim® 1.1.

Expect to see a somewhat harder, edgier Kim Jong-un when he re-emerges in public for the Feb. 16 birthday party. (The fast-diet drugs they’re force-feeding him at the moment also make the jaw jut and eyes crackle with crazy fire. Just keep the boy away from that red launch button. Only kidding. He’ll still be fat — but with more poise.)

There also seems to be some serious musical chairs going on behind the scenes (not unexpected, given the complexity of power shifting in the interregnum created by the sudden removal of a dictator).

But the end result is that all the major players — not just poster boy Kim Jong-un — have dropped out of sight for the past month.

Of course they’re busy plotting and backstabbing, but they also know a high profile is a very dangerous accessory to have at this particular time.

Which is why the guy delegated to meet the mighty Naguib Sawiris at the airport on Wednesday was an unnamed nobody, a flunky who is either expendable or not seen as a threat to anyone.

Sawiris, by the way, is the Egyptian mega-billionaire whose family controls the Orascom telecommunications conglomerate, which still has a passing interest — along with Russian technoligarchs — in Canada’s Wind wireless network.

Orascom has the contract to develop wireless telecommunications in North Korea (my guess is that it ends up being 6,000 mobile handsets for the elite with 14,000 state security personnel monitoring all on-air traffic). In the process of securing the high-risk/high-reward contract, Sawiris became best buds — and drinking pals — with Kim Sung-il and his oily gofer Jang Song-thaek, seen here enjoying each other’s company tremendously in January 2010.

Sawiris has shown up in Pyongyang this week to make sure his business interests are still safe (as safe as anything can be in North Korea) and to pay his respects to the Dear Departed Leader.

Not a single North Korean who merits being mention by name is to be seen with Sawiris, but at least the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) is still pumping out photos of his visit (with the briefest, most neutral, least committed and thus least dangerous captions) — so it appears Sawiris is in the new regime’s good books — for the time being.

The KCNA has just released video, supposedly made last week, that shows Kim Jong-un getting the star treatment from rapturous kids at an elite military school and hovering like a jovial balloon over pee-their-pants-scared airmen trying to eat some grey slop at KPA air force unit 1017.

As with most of the KCNA’s video and photo coverage of the leadership, there’s nothing to clearly denote when the images were made. So maybe it was last week (with Kim Jong-un — still looking fat — being taken out for a test drive) or maybe it wasn’t. I’m still waiting to see the model they unveil in two weeks.

In the meantime, the KCNA (not knowing who to suck up to) has to make do with things like …

A photo of the Ponghwa soap factory…

And a photo of the Kanggye knitted goods factory …

And stories like: “Pyongyang, February 1 (KCNA) — The U.S. is pushing ahead with its plan for starting a new war on the Korean Peninsula.”

And — my favourite — a photo of North Korean “figure skaters” looking at skates. No kidding. Here’s the official KCNA cutline: “Pyongyang, February 2 (KCNA) — Figure skaters are training hard after receiving figure skates, gifts of leader Kim Jong Il.”

Train harder! But don’t put on the skates — we have to return them to Canadian Tire after the photo shoot.

Extra! Extra! This just in: A North Korean with a name and title has finally met Naguib Sawiris. And the winner is … Kim Yong-nam, president of the presidium of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Supreme People’s Assembly. Things are looking up for the Egyptian telecommunications mogul. Or else they’re looking down for Kim Yong-nam. (And don’t you like his title, “president of the presidium?” That’s like being “king of the kingship.”)

And KCNA is even engaging in North Korea’s version of celebrity/pop culture journalism: A tribute to the memory of state opera singer Im Tok-sun, 67, who dropped dead of a heart attack or stroke on Dec. 30, perhaps in emulation of the Dear Departed Leader.

Here’s part of the story on Im Tok-sun:

“After joining the Korean People’s Army Song and Dance Ensemble in 1971, he played the part of a botanist in the revolutionary opera The Story of a Nurse, a winner of the People’s Prize…

“After the performance leader Kim Jong-il highly appreciated Im’s acting, saying the actor in his twenties performed well just like an old botanist.”

Really. You can’t make this stuff up.

What the heck, here’s the whole story, courtesy of your friendly North Korea propaganda team. Enjoy:

Singer Remaining in Memory of Korean People

Pyongyang, January 28 (KCNA) — After enjoying a music and dance performance “Let Us Uphold Our Supreme Commander Forever” at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang some time ago, the dear respected Kim Jong Un recollected Im Tok Su, 67, who was a singer of the State Merited Chorus.

Kim Jong Un said he felt sorry that Im died in harness after singing revolutionary songs for decades.

Born as a son of a mine worker, Im enlisted in the Korean People’s Army in Juche 52 (1963).

During his military service, he took part in servicepersons’ art festival.

After joining the Korean People’s Army Song and Dance Ensemble in 1971, he played the part of a botanist in the revolutionary opera “The Story of a Nurse”, a winner of the People’s Prize.

Under the guidance of Kim Jong Il, he successfully performed his part as a veteran member of the Workers’ Party of Korea in the opera.

In December that year the song and dance ensemble performed the opera in honor of President Kim Il Sung. After the performance leader Kim Jong Il highly appreciated Im’s acting, saying the actor in his twenties performed well just like an old botanist.

Since then, he took part in some 1 000 performances of the opera.

Afterwards, Im took the part of the hero in another revolutionary opera “Under the Bright Sun”.

After enjoying the opera, Kim Jong Il introduced Im to the President, saying he performed a feat as a botanist in the opera “The Story of a Nurse”.

Im was honored with the title of Merited Artiste in September 1978.

He visited many army units and industrial establishments to sing solo or in chorus. He also made performance tours of some Asian and European nations.

He was active as deputy head of the song and dance ensemble and a section chief of the State Merited Chorus, training a lot of singers.

He, honored again with the title of People’s Artiste, took part in more than 100 performances of the State Merited Chorus from the first one in December 1995.

He died of a sudden illness in December 30 last year while energetically conducting artistic activities for inspiring with strength and courage the Korean servicepersons and civilians who were overwhelmed with grief at the demise of leader Kim Jong Il.

Though he passed away, he still remains in the memory of the Korean people.

Tags: Kim Jong-un, North Korea
Categories: General | No comments

Hang The Pirates — But Start With The Movie Moguls And Record Execs

alan.parker - January 25th, 2012

Here’s the scene:

Law enforcement agents smash their way into a private building with sledgehammers and crowbars as part of a broad organized crackdown on “pirates” and “outlaws” who are brazenly flouting U.S. copyright and patent law, supposedly costing the legitimate copyright and patent holders a fortune in lost — “stolen” — revenue.

The legally mandated enforcers cause extensive, malicious damage and confiscate equipment, files, material and money that are the legal property of the building’s owner, who is charged with a variety of offences related to the alleged theft of intellectual property in the form of motion-picture films and technology.

Having shut down the business of the building without the necessity of a guilty verdict in court and having appropriated private property, again without a court finding of guilt, the enforcers leave the victim of their legally sanctioned invasion to pick up the broken pieces of his life.

Sounds a lot like Kim Dotcom (nee Schmitz), the Internet tycoon currently sitting in a New Zealand jail waiting for the U.S. government and its Hollywood backers to finally, slowly (the U.S. won’t actually produce documents for another month) get around to filing a formal extradition request on copyright infringement conspiracy charges.

But it’s not.

The victim could have been Carl Laemmle or William Fox or one of the dozen other independent producers who were later glorified as the founders of Hollywood. The legal enforcers were hired thugs representing Thomas Edison’s motion picture trust, a monopoly combine that controlled almost all aspects of movie technology, production and distribution in the U.S. before World War I. And the time was 1910 — more than 100 years ago.

Edison considered Laemmle and the other independent film producers and distributors to be “pirates” and filed almost 300 legal actions against Laemmle’s Independent Motion Picture (IMP) Company between 1909 and 1912.

The legal manoeuvrings were just the semi-civilized tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, Edison’s gangs of enforcers smashed independent film studios and theatres, stole cameras, projectors and film stock, threatened and beat up cast and crew members on independent productions and, in some cases, burned down buildings and entire city blocks housing the competition.

One hundred years ago, Carl Laemmle’s shoes were a very dicey place to be, just as Kim Dotcom’s are today.

But Laemmle ultimately prevailed.

He held out against Edison’s legal (and illegal) onslaught, he moved his film production activities to the friendlier and safer climes of California, and he was the one who had the last laugh when U.S. federal court, topped up with Teddy Roosevelt’s Trust Buster justices, declared Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company and General Film Company (distribution arm) to be an illegal monopoly and ordered the trust broken up.

Meanwhile, Laemmle and the other independents who invented Hollywood (like William Fox, Louis B. Mayer, Sam Goldfish/Goldwyn, Jesse Lansky, Adolph Zuker, Marcus Loew and the Warner boys) thrived, expanded and exerted increasing control over the motion picture “industry.”

COMPARE THESE TWO LISTS

The first list is the membership of Edison’s MPPC cross-licensing trust group: Biograph, American Vitagraph Company, Selig Polyscope Company, Lubin, American Star Films, American Pathe Pictures, Essanay Studios, and Kalem Company.

Those companies ruled the motion picture world 100 years ago. How many of them exist now? How many of their names even ring a bell except in some antique, ghostly corner of our brains?

Now here’s a list of the “pirate” film companies that were formed by the “outlaws” who fled to California to escape the legal constraints of Thomas Edison back in the eastern U.S.: 20th Century-Fox, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Studios (successor company to Laemmle’s IMP) and Warner Bros.

Those five (later joined by Columbia Pictures, United Artists and RKO Radio Pictures) became the undisputed masters of Hollywood’s Golden Age and are still the dominant (monopolistic, some might say) players in the film industry.

Don’t believe me about the “monopolistic” part? You think the current film bid-ness is too diversified and freewheeling to be dubbed a monopoly?

Consider this:

When the Edison Trust was broken up, the U.S. department of justice alleged that the eight corporations participating in the monopoly controlled between 70% and 80% of a $100-million industry.

Today, the North American film industry is a $10-BILLION BUSINESS and ONLY SIX CORPORATIONS CONTROL 81.6% OF IT.

(That $10 billion is just “domestic” North American box office. “Overseas” accounts for roughly two-thirds of Hollywood’s business every year.)

Here’s a rundown of studio share of the $10,174,000,000 North American box office (Canada is considered part of the U.S. domestic market) for 2011, according to industry scorekeeper boxofficemojo,com:

1. Paramount (Viacom) — 19.2% ($1.96 billion)

2. Warner Bros. (Time-Warner) — 17.9% ($1.83 billion)

3. Columbia (Sony) — 12.5% ($1.27 billion)

4. Buena Vista/Walt Disney (Walt Disney Co.) — 12.2% ($1.24 billion)

5. Universal (Comcast-GE) — 10.2% ($1.04 billion)

6. 20th Century-Fox (Murdoch’s News Corp.) — 9.6% ($978 million)

Everyone else in the world apart from these six companies shares the remaining 18.4%, compared to the 20-30% the independents had in the days of the Edison monopoly.

And those six studios have their own exclusive trade association, the Motion Picture Association of America, which looks after their interests — and their interests alone — in dealing with the world outside Hollywood.

It’s the MPAA which is currently driving the anti-piracy bus and which is howling the most with self-righteous indignation and which is using every ounce of its bought-and-paid-for political influence (and that’s a lot) in Washington to pursue Kim Dotcom and other perceived “pirates.”

Soooooooooooo … Fast-forward 100 years from the Edison Trust’s all-out war to crush the independents to the modern media wars of January 2012.

The film corporations that were spawned by the very pirates and outlaws who created a hole-in-the-wall getaway hideout in Hollywood are now leading the charge to eradicate uncontrolled Internet access to works and technology they say they hold copyright and patent title to.

And they even use much of the same hypocritical, moralistic language that the Edison Trust used to claim the high ground over the shabby, nasty little rats, weasels, thieves and cheats stealing from them.

And it is that high moral tone wrapped in a judicial gown of legalistic rectitude that I find most offensive about this whole war against Kim Dotcom’s MegaUpload, The Pirate Bay and other Internet independents that the movie studios (and record companies) say are stealing milk from their babies’ mouths.

Why?

Because it is just so much hypocritical bull. The major movie and record companies uphold the law only because in this particular set of circumstances it benefits them.

They would (in most if not all cases) gladly bend or circumvent the laws of the United States or any other nation on earth if it better served their purposes — and they could get away with it.

That sanctimonious, Bible-spouting predator Thomas Edison, by the way, was not above piracy when it suited him.

Here’s part of the Wikpedia entry on Edison:

“In 1902, agents of Thomas Edison bribed a theater owner in London for a copy of A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Edison then made hundreds of copies and showed them in New York City. Méliès received no compensation. He was counting on taking the film to the US and recapture its huge cost by showing it throughout the country when he realized it had already been shown there by Edison. This effectively bankrupted Méliès.”

Well, Edison’s piracy didn’t actually bankrupt Melies — that resulted from a later, poorly conceived business deal with the Pathe film folks in Europe, but the Edison rip-off sure didn’t help (even though Melies’ American Star Films was one of the corporate cogs in the Edison Trust monopoly.)

So there was certainly no evidence of “practise what you preach” in the behaviour of Thomas Edison or the movie-making kingpins who followed him.

FOR THE RECORD

I’ve focused primarily on the film industry in this piece and left the music business aside because, frankly, the major-label recording industry has committed too many sins against music, art, humanity and common sense to fit into the already bursting confines of this space.

And, despite the proliferation of independent record labels, the “industry” is still quite monolithic and monopolistic in its traditional distribution practices — thus the panic over the uncontrolled inroads the Internet is making.

In terms of control, the cabal of mainstream industry titans is becoming a smaller group every year and none of the current crop of cabalistas is worthy of licking the L.A. grime off Mo Ostin’s shoes.

At the end of the 1980s, the recording industry in North America was controlled by the Big Six (BMG, CBS, EMI, MCA, WEA and PolyGram, the last of which deserved to die because it wouldn’t become a three-letter acronym).

By the end of the ’90s, it was the Big Five after Sony bought CBS and PolyGram and MCA merged into Universal Music Group (UMG).

In 2004, it became the Big Four when Sony acquired BMG.

And now, after Universal’s acquisition last year of the struggling EMI Group, it is the Big Three: UMG, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Consider this list of SOME (only some) of the labels owned and controlled by the Universal Music Group (the largest of the Big Three), once a subsidiary of the Universal movie empire but now a force unto itself owned by the French media (and formerly sewer) conglomerate Vivendi:

A&M Records, Geffen Records, Island Records, Def Jam Recordings, Motown Records, Mercury Records, Verve Records, Impulse! Records, Roc-A-Fella Records, Decca Records, Interscope Records, GPR Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Polydor Records, London Records, MCA Nashville Records, Lost Highway Records, Casablanca Records, Fonovisa Records, Universal Music Classical, Universal Music Jazz, Universal Music Latino, Disa Records, Machete Music, Fontana International. And the list goes on.

Sony (second biggest of the B3) has a stable of labels that includes Columbia, Epic and RCA.

Warner Music Group is the un-biggest of the Big Three (and apparently suffering the most … And Then There Were Two?) but still controls more than 50 labels, from Asylum to Atlantic to Elektra and from Rhino to Rykodisc to Reprise.

So there are a lot of labels out there, but only three conglomerates control primary access to most of the recorded music that is today being purchased (or acquired without purchase, as the case may be).

The only thing I will say about the music recording industry and its war on piracy is this: Study after study has concluded that unpaid music downloads do not appear to be a significant factor in the continual decline of CD sales and the slower rise in “legitimate” digital sales.

(Don’t get into an argument with me about this: Argue with the smartypants who conducted the studies and came to the conclusions. And if you don’t know which studies I’m talking about, you have no business being in a discussion about the issue in the first place.)

Most of the blame is laid at the feet of the short-sighted, arrogant and ultimately self-defeating practices of the recording industry itself: As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

“If you want to stop piracy, the way to stop it is by competing with it.”

— Steve Jobs

PERSONAL ASIDE

I have never illegally downloaded any music or video from the Internet or willfully bought pirated CDs or DVDs on the street. I know plenty of people who do, but I don’t advocate the practice and, in fact, I find it philosophically objectionable.

I believe — strongly — that artists, performers and creators of every type should be properly rewarded for their efforts and unique contributions, which enrich us all.

I believe — strongly — that anyone who abuses the rights and intellectual property of those creators, who steals from them and denies them the full fruits of their labours is scum and should be reviled and punished.

I also believe — strongly — that major movie studios and record companies have been some of the worst offenders when it comes to abusing the rights of creative artists, when it comes to stealing from and lying to creative artists, and when it comes to disregarding the laws and moral principles that should protect those creative artists, their rights, and their works.

Just ask any artist, musician, composer, actor, director or screenwriter who has had serious business dealings with either the film or music industry. If they are being honest, few if any of those artists will say they have not been ripped off (to a lesser or greater degree) in the process.

So it’s either laughable or a crying shame that some of the worst offenders when it comes to the abuse of intellectual property rights of others are often the most fervent defenders of copyright laws when it suits their purposes — and only for as long as it suits their purposes.

ANOTHER THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

“If suing customers for consuming pirate copies becomes central to a company or industry’s business model, then the truth is that that company or industry no longer has a competitive business model.”

— Matt Mason, “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Re-inventing Capitalism”

LOOK BEHIND THE PROPAGANDA

Let’s get to Kim Dotcom for a moment, shall we?

I hate the guy.

He’s 6-foot-7, says he weighs 300 pounds (I know 300 pounds, baby, and this guy’s at least 350 — on a good day), and he’s got a high-pitched, annoying voice with a cartoon German accent.

Plus he legally changed his last name from Schmitz to Dotcom. What gall! Who does he think he is — Harry Warner (born Hirsch Wonskolaser) or David Bowie (born David Jones) or John Wayne (Marion Morrison) or even Uwe Blab (oh, sorry, that’s the former NBA player’s real name, unfortunately).

And he’s rich — filthy, stinking rich — and not even 40 yet. That really ticks off a poor old man like me.

He owns very expensive cars — a lot of them — and drives them all fast and crazy (although he’s apparently never had an accident or had his licence revoked). And he owns (or leases) a private helicopter, a jet and a yacht.

In short, Kim Dotcom is a greedy, arrogant A-hole.

But that’s not a crime.

If it was, then ALL of the heads of the major movie studios and record companies would be in jail. A majority of the CEOs of America’s top corporations would also be doing bunkies with Bubba. And I’d probably be convicted too.

But, as I’ve already said, none of those character flaws is a crime.

So why is Kim Dotcom sitting in a New Zealand jail right now and the rest of us greedy, arrogant A-holes aren’t?

Because the MPAA, through the auspices of the FBI and the U.S. government (abetted by the RCMP and the Canadian government and other governments), has ACCUSED Mr. Dotcom of engaging in a conspiracy to pirate the intellectual property of said MPAA members.

And Mr. Dotcom’s global Internet business — one of the largest Internet businesses in the world with millions of legitimate, lawful customers suddenly cut off from access to their legitimate, lawful personal data — has been shut down lock, stock and barrel while Mr. Dotcom sits in jail waiting to find out exactly what the details of the charges are and what the evidence is supporting those charges. So he can begin preparing a defence, first against extradition to the U.S. and secondly against the charges themselves in a U.S. court.

UPDATE (from The Wall Street Journal, 5:04 a.m. Jan. 26, 2012):

“WELLINGTON— A New Zealand judge granted bail to Megaupload.com executives Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato as they await possible extradition to the U.S. on charges including copyright infringement, after the judge decided they posed a minimum flight risk.

“Mr. Van der Kolk, 29 years old, and Mr. Batato, 38, were arrested (last) Thursday in Auckland along with Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom, 38, and Mathias Ortmann, 40, the chief technical officer, after they and four colleagues were named in a Federal Bureau of Investigation indictment.”

Kim Dotcom’s bail application was turned down Wednesday and Matthias Ortmann’s bail application is expected to be heard Friday, Feb. 3 (it has been postponed once).

Hmmm, which ones have cut the deal, I wonder?

And it will be interesting to see which company employee provided the insider e-mails that the U.S. government is using (selectively and out of context) to help make its case.

Just stop and think about your opinion of Kim Dotcom for a moment.

If your opinion is, like mine, a largely negative one, consider the source of the information on which we have based our views.

The general picture of Kim Dotcom is, in large part, the result of a co-ordinated, sustained negative PR campaign launched and directed by Dotcom’s enemies in the film and record industry.

Of course Dotcom has revelled in his bad boy image and hasn’t helped his cause by flaunting his obscene wealth and apparent disrespect for his elders.

But why is it that all of his actions are seen in the worst possible light instead of the best possible light or — even better — in a neutral, unbiased light? Because spin doctors are paid to put the worst possible valuation on Dotcom’s actions, appearance, attitudes and acquisitions. And he’s not even a GOP presidential candidate. Crikey.

Everybody seems to be buying into the propaganda and selling the same story when — if you consider the facts without the bias — it would be just as easy to put a less sinister (or even benevolent) spin on the Dotcom story.

When Dotcom appeared at a bail hearing in New Zealand on Monday, Crown attorney Anne Toohey even cited Dotcom’s alleged “lack of respect for authority” as one of the reasons why Dotcom posed an extreme flight risk.

The Edison Trust carried out a similar damning PR campaign against Carl Laemmle and other “pirates” a century ago, mocking Laemmle’s appearance (he was a wizened little five-foot-nothing gnome with a funny German accent and strange personal habits) and casting his actions in a sinister, conspiratorial, anti-American light.

Every story I see about Kim Dotcom’s arrest refers to the fleet of expensive cars he owns or leases.

And the crime in this is …? Quick, somebody — anybody — arrest Jay Leno. I think he owns more expensive cars than Kim Dotcom. And I don’t like the way he looks, either.

Speaking of which, many stories about Kim Dotcom refer to his Hollywood enemies calling him “Dr. Evil.” That’s just for home consumption. Actually, Dotcom is more often compared in Hollywood to another Austin Powers villain, also played by Mike Myers: Fat Bastard.

See what I mean? There’s no crime in how Kim Dotcom looks or acts, but it certainly helps his enemies if he is seen in the worst possible light. Hang the Fat Bastard!

His criminal record? Actually he has no criminal record. Really.

Kim Schmitz was convicted of computer hacking in Germany in 1998, fined and given a suspended sentence. In 2002, he was convicted of insider trading, fined and placed on probation.

He has never been convicted of a criminal act anywhere else in the world.

For the past decade, Kim Dotcom has kept his nose clean, as far as the courts are concerned. Under German law, with its clean slate provisions designed to help convicted felons re-integrate into society, that means Kim Dotcom’s criminal record has been expunged and he now, for all intents and purposes, has no criminal record.

I know that sounds like legalistic sleight of hand, but it does make you think a little differently about the man than the pre-packaged Fat Bastard storyline projects, doesn’t it?

“He has no criminal record, has never been convicted of a crime of violence, and has never been sent to jail for committing a crime.”

Not quite the same picture as the one we’ve been fed, is it?

That doesn’t make it right or true or good — and it certainly doesn’t make Kim Dotcom an innocent man — but it does take a little of the sting out of the “guilty by appearance” mudslinging campaign.

And why exactly did it take 60-70 New Zealand police officers in helicopters to raid Dotcom Mansion and arrest a man who would have shown up in a Crown attorney’s office with his lawyers if asked?

Who’s idea of a Wild West show was that?

As many helicopters and twice as many attackers to take down Fat Bastard as the U.S. used to take out Osama bin Laden?

Somebody’s been watching too many Hollywood movies — and has their law enforcement priorities seriously screwed up.

By the way, when was the last time you saw a story on Dotcom mention the number of cops involved in arresting him? I think a few people in New Zealand are a little embarrassed by the serious overkill and are trying to quietly disengage a bit.

How about the gun?

Here’s what Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald had to say about Monday’s bail hearing:

“(Crown attorney Anne) Toohey detailed how, during the police raid, Dotcom had run from police to a safe room, hiding behind a pillar and refusing to show his hands despite repeated pleas. A gun — believed to be a modified shotgun of a kind illegal in New Zealand — was found in an open safe just metres away.”

I am absolutely confident that no charges or criminal proceedings will ever be launched against Kim Dotcom regarding this weapon “believed to be a modified shotgun of a kind illegal in New Zealand.”

It suits the purposes of all Dotcom’s accusers much more to leave this vague, threatening image of a murderous, illegal gun floating around out there than it would to have the gun’s particulars examined in court and to examine exactly how the whole invasion of Dotcom Mansion went down.

It would probably turn out that the shotgun is perfectly legal and part of a standard New Zealand safe room protection/survival kit much like LOTR director-producer Peter Jackson probably has in the safe room in his New Zealand mansion.

These guys are fabulously wealthy and as such are subject to the constant possibility of violent home invasion and/or the kidnapping of themselves or their families.

(Kim Dotcom, by the way, has three adoring children and is married to a loyal, loving woman who is now pregnant with twins. They’re all living in New Zealand. The New Zealand government holds all their passports. And Kim Dotcom’s known assets have been frozen. Does this really sound like a man who is an extreme flight risk? Or does it sound like a man who is being put in a position where he looks bad and is least able to defend himself?)

Again, I’m not defending Kim Dotcom. He’s more than able to do that himself — if he’s given a fair, fighting chance. But that takes money and Dotcom’s attackers are doing their very best to deprive him of his own money with which he can mount the best possible defence.

The FBI and MPAA claim that Dotcom has made something like $175 million from his acts of piracy in the last couple of years. The MPAA represents a business group that made more than $8 billion in North America alone in the single year 2011. Even if Dotcom were allowed out of jail and allowed access to his own money, it’s not really a fair fight — but at least it would be a little fairer.

I do not like the way this whole thing has gone down. It stinks.

I don’t like the bully-boy tactics. I don’t like the idea that justice has to be bought. I don’t like the idea that crushing one man can become a government priority because he offends the commercial interests of a specific group of well-connected businessmen.

And I most definitely do not like the hypocritical, moralistic stance that these self-serving moneymen and their hired vassels adopt when they are, in fact, just trying to eliminate someone whom they perceive — rightly or wrongly, but so far without proving anything — as profiting from the usage of their property.

Like I said, they only get up on their high horses and proclaim the sanctity of copyright law and intellectual property rights when it is in their financial interests.

Consider this:

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was an international copyright agreement signed by most of the major countries in Europe in 1886 and 1887. Since then, roughly 150 other nations around the world have signed on.

Canada has been a member of the Berne Union since 1887 (under the auspices of Great Britain) and signed on itself in 1928 in the run-up to full self-government independent of the British Privy council.

The United States finally joined the Berne Convention in 1989, only a couple of years before Bill Clinton became president and more than 100 years after the original signatories.

Such beacons of artistic enlightenment and human rights as Burkina Faso, Libya and Zimbabwe and 100 other nations had all signed the Berne Convention before the U.S.

And before joining the Berne Union, the United States gave copyright protection only to works produced in the United States.

A book could be published in France or Japan or Canada and, if there was no deal with an American publisher, anyone in the United States could appropriate the contents of that intellectual property for their own purposes and the U.S. government had boo-all to say about it.

Same went for movies and music.

There were some individual cross-deals that muddied the water, of course, but the United States in general didn’t recognize the proprietary rights of foreign copyright holders.

ONE FINAL KICK AT THE KIM DOTCOM CAN

You’d think Kim Dotcom would have a fair shot at beating the (possibly) bogus extradition case since New Zealand is one of the fairest, most democratic countries in the world, but you would be wrong.

The film industry and related businesses (such as Weta Workshop and Peter Jackson’s CGI computer animation operations) form the fourth largest economic sector in New Zealand, after the service industry, agriculture and tourism. And most of that sector is directly tied to the Hollywood status quo represented by the MPAA.

So I am willing to bet that pragmatic power politics will play a strong enough role in the New Zealand judicial process to boot Kim Dotcom’s fat ass out of his erstwhile island paradise.

I hope I’m wrong — for New Zealand’s sake more than Dotcom’s — but my money, if I was a betting man, would back extradition.

I am willing to bet that Kim Dotcom will ultimately beat the pirating charges — much as Hollywood founder Carl Laemmle did 100 years ago — IF he has the money to pursue the court fight through the five years — at least — it will take to resolve.

That is why the MPAA (through the FBI and the U.S. government) has done everything it can to seize Dotcom’s assets around the world and shut down every source of income stream Dotcom has available.

They — the MPAA and its U.S. government agents — want to choke off Dotcom’s money supply so he can’t afford to pay for the massively expensive top-drawer legal defence that will be necessary to fight the massively expensive top-drawer prosecution being brought against him.

Again, my money is on Kim Dotcom.

When asked why he had the effrontery to suggest he would one day be richer than Bills Gates, Dotcom said: “Because I’m smarter than he is.”

I think Dotcom’s also smarter than the (other) greedy, arrogant A-holes who run Hollywood. So as long as Dotcom has enough money to pay for a level legal playing field, I think he will eventually win.

But in the meantime — based solely on accusations — Dotcom’s business, MegaUpload, has been shut down.

Why is this any different than the U.S. government seizing the property and assets of an accused Mafioso crime boss?

Because the shutdown of MegaUpload affects millions of people — honest, legitimate, law-abiding people around the world who have bought and paid for a legitimate hi-tech data storage and retrieval service.

The formal charges against Kim Dotcom — when they finally come — will not say that Dotcom stole anything from anyone; the charges will accuse Dotcom of participating in a conspiracy because the legitimate hi-tech business he created was used by a very small portion of his clientele to share possibly illegal pieces of data.

Every legitimate service provider in the world — outside of Hollywood — should pray that Dotcom is ultimately vindicated or else we’re all in danger of being victims of a witch hunt.

Consider this fictitious (but imaginable) scenario:

Suppose Bell Canada feels threatened by Rogers Communications. Because this fictional Bell Canada suspects that some Rogers customers are using the Rogers telecommunications network to carry out illegal activities and because Bell Canada can make up a convincing (if spurious) case that Rogers is aware of and profiting from the illegal activity, the Canadian government charges four or five senior Rogers executives with conspiracy — and shuts down the whole Rogers telecommunications network.

And closed-for-business the Rogers network remains until the whole nightmarish case can wind its way through the labyrinth of the Canadian judicial system, with the strong likelihood that Rogers will end up winning and be allowed to resume business — five or 10 years after it has been knocked out of the marketplace, its income cut off and its customers long gone.

And imagine the millions and millions of legitimate Rogers customers who suddenly found themselves denied the telecommunications service they had paid for and counted on. Their lives would be in chaos, their businesses immeasurably harmed, and important stored data lost forever in a technological lockdown.

For this evil, fictional Bell Canada, the process is a success. Rogers doesn’t have to be convicted of anything for make-believe bad Bell Canada to be a winner in that scenario. Just by killing Rogers’ business for five or 10 years, the fictional Bell Canada heavyweight comes out ahead.

In the short term, anyway. In the long term, fictional evil Bell Canada would probably go the way of the dinosaurs because somebody else was investing in innovation to take away their advantage instead of investing in retrograde, malicious litigation to sustain a fatally flawed business model.

That’s essentially what’s happening in the Dotcom-MegaUpload case.

I am not pre-supposing that Kim Dotcom is innocent of everything — or anything, for the matter. But is it really right that he be pre-supposed guilty of everything of which he is accused?

Hollywood has already won by the simple fact that MegaUpload has been shut down — at a tremendous cost to both a legal international business and millions of innocent-victim customers.

Not one damn thing has to be proved against Kim Dotcom and the other executives of MegaUpload for this attack on their business to be a complete success.

That scares me tremendously — and really makes me mad.

Should the full might of the American government, the Canadian government and several other governments around the world be brought to bear on a legitimate company that is (possibly) being used for (possible) illegal data sharing to mollify Hollywood?

Let’s take a look at what the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty, a 1996 sister agreement to the Berne Convention, has to say:

“It is understood that the mere provision of physical facilities for enabling or making a communication does not in itself amount to communication within the meaning of this Treaty or the Berne Convention.”

But that doesn’t matter.

Hollywood wants to take out the communications enabler — Kim Dotcom and his company, MegaUpload — rather than trying to catch the little fishes one by one.

I think we all suffer a far greater loss if this abuse of power and arbitrary authoritarianism is allowed to prevail than any loss we would suffer as free and law-abiding people if we make them actually prove the crimes before administering the punishment.

So I’m in Kim Dotcom’s corner because I tend to favour the underdog — even if he is a greedy, arrogant A-hole.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to a very informative (and quite short) analysis of the MegaUpload situation by Yochai Benkler, professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard Law School, from the Bloomberg business news agency. Interestingly, the clip is posted on YouTube, which Prof. Benkler points out could be charged with all of the same conspiracy trespasses the U.S. government is levelling at MegaUpload. The difference, Prof. Benkler says, is that YouTube is now too big and powerful for the U.S. Department of Justice to take on. Plus, the government (and film industry) tried to whack YouTube five or six years ago through civil litigation — and got its ass handed to it on a platter by YouTube.

Here’s part of what Prof. Benkler has to say:

“When a new technology comes along … and destabilizes the way the industries have always made money, the first gut response throughout the 20th century has been: Let’s shut down this technology…

“What’s chilling here is that a company can be served with a one-sided indictment that lists a whole set of quasi-legitimate and legitimate technological components that lots of other companies use…

“By the time it will be finished litigating whether that’s enough or not it is dead, because these procedures for forfeiture during the trial will kill the company.”

In other words, the status quo wins just by tying up the accused offender in court and shutting down the targeted business for the duration of the litigation process — which can be three, four, five, even 10 years.

Tags: CD, copyright, Edison, film, Hollywood, Internet, Kim Dotcom, MegaUpload, monopoly, movie, New Zealand, piracy, recording
Categories: General | 15 comments

Wiggles World Is A Dark And Dangerous Place

alan.parker - January 19th, 2012

I am now and will forever be deeply thankful that my daughter passed through her early childhood at a time when Wiggles did not roam the earth and that my son preferred his colour-coded human cartoons in the form of Power Rangers, not Wiggles.

For those of you who are blessedly free of small children, here’s a quick rundown so you know what you’ve been missing.

The Wiggles are the biggest thing in children’s entertainment since, oh, sliced bread or Barney the Dinosaur. Maybe bigger, since Barney only comes in purple and The Wiggles come in four colours: Purple (Jeff), Red (Murray), Blue (Anthony) and Yellow (Greg now but Sam for the previous five years).

The Wiggles may appear to be child’s play but they are very big business with a worldwide empire that includes a hit TV show, DVDs, music CDs, live tours and even franchised games and shows in amusement parks.

According to Business Review Week’s annual list of top-earning entertainers in Australia (did I mention The Wiggles are from Oz?), The Wiggles were the highest-paid performers Down Under in 2011, hauling in an estimated $28.2 million (it doesn’t matter which currency, since the Australian and Canadian dollars are pretty much at par).

That’s almost double what eternal showgirl Kylie Minogue made last year and three times as much as stalwart road warriors AC/DC earned in 2011.

Kylie_Minogue

I had to stick in a gratuitous picture of Kylie Minogue, otherwise this whole post would be full of photos of (shudder) old men in costumes who call themselves Wiggles.

Like I said, Big Business.

So don’t be fooled by those charmingly wrinkled grins (the Purple Wiggle is 58, for goodness sake) and the group’s Aussie-accented childish patter. When money is counted in the 10s of millions, the milk and cookies are pushed aside and the knives come out.

Such is the present state of affairs for The Wiggles. It’s a nasty little can of worms that is currently making headlines in their native Australia. Here are, in fact, some of today’s (and tomorrow’s, since it’s already Friday in Oz) headlines:

“Original Yellow Wiggle Greg Page gets his skivvy back”

“Tough exit for yellow Wiggle Sam Moran”

“Ex-Wiggle Sam Moran thrown under big red car”

“Unwanted Sam Moran was hung out to dry by The Wiggles”

“How ‘salaried’ Sam lost his Wiggle”

“How ‘salaried’ Sam was de-Wiggled”

“Sam Moran ‘just doing a job…” a hired hand’”

“The Wiggles deny rift over new line-up”

“Things Are Getting Heavy In The Wiggles’ Camp”

“Are The Wiggles Really A Bunch Of Cockroaches?”

“The Wiggles Screwed Over Sam Moran‎”

To understand what the fuss is all about, we have to go back to the group’s beginnings in Sydney, Australia, in 1991. Back then, the group wore multi-coloured shirts, but I’m going to use their current colour coding for simplicity’s sake (and because I don’t really feel like remembering their adult names — it’s not as if they’re the Backstreet Boys or NKOTB).

Blue, Red and Yellow met at university, where they were studying to become pre-school teachers. Blue and Purple had previously been together in an unsuccessful rock band called The Cockroaches (thus one of the above headlines). These four hooked up with a classically trained musician named Phillip Wilcher (who never had his own colour) to produce a pop-flavoured children’s album. After the album’s release, Wilcher either quit the band (the official Wiggles version) or was fired (Wilcher’s version.)

And Then There Were Four. And each one got his own colour. And The Wiggles became a worldwide kiddies sensation.

And then, in 2006, the Yellow Wiggle got Brian Wilson’s Disease. Actually his condition was diagnosed as something else (described as either orthostatic intolerance or dysautonomia) but it left him feeling weak and wobbly and unwilling/unable to perform at the group’s rigorous pace.

So Original Yellow Wiggle “retired” (reportedly with a $20 million payout) and one of the group’s backup singers was promoted to be Replacement Yellow Wiggle — at a salary of $200,000 a year (again, reportedly — but nobody has ever denied the figure).

That was back in 2006, so if your kids are under 10, the Replacement (heck, his name is Sam Moran, as if you didn’t already know) is probably the only Yellow Wiggle with whom they are familiar.

And then the sky caved in on the Replacement Yellow Wiggle.

This is what Sydney’s Daily Telegraph had to say about this week’s events in Wiggle World:

“Called into the office on his holidays, yellow Wiggle Sam Moran was relaxed and disarmed — unprepared.

“Sporting the kind of facial hair which usually scares the kiddies, Moran had no time or inclination to shave, dutifully answering the call to meet Wiggles’ managing director Mike Conway mid-morning on Tuesday.

“Half an hour later he was allegedly terminated from his job as lead singer and offered a payout of about $60,000: a little more than four months of his reported $200,000-a-year wage.

“As blue Wiggle Anthony Field dismissed him yesterday, Moran the ‘hired hand’ was hired no more.

“Despite the carefully worded pronouncements surrounding the return of original member Greg Page, Moran neither ‘graciously offered to step aside’ nor saw his end coming.

“For Field and his brother Paul, part of The Wiggles core management team, this was meant to be a swift business transaction — ‘a creative decision not a financial one’ — returning things to how they used to be.

“The ‘natural chemistry’ with Moran wasn’t right, we were told, with purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt revealing he had simply ‘really missed Greg’s voice.’

“it wasn’t about the money, or the power imbalance between the three originals who all bought into Wiggles Inc, keeping the lion’s share of the $28.2 million pocketed in 2011.

“Despite being a loyal servant for almost 10 years – five as the international face of the children’s super group – Moran was forced to accept less than 1% of the band’s reported annual earnings. It is understood his representations for greater compensation began early last year. He was consistently turned down.”

So the “hired hand” lead singer who asked the $28.2-million band for a raise from his $200,000 salary (after five years of good and faithful service — 10, if you count his years as a backup singer) gets the heave-ho.

And back comes aging original Yellow Wiggle, now apparently recovered from his mysterious ailment and reportedly millions of dollars lighter after losing, according to the Telegraph, “a large part of his Wiggles fortune in a bad property development deal.”

Handing over the yellow skivvy: Out with the old, left, and in with the new (and also really old), right.

How the worm wiggles.

So this is the sad and sordid reality of “children’s entertainment.” Where o where are the Friendly Giant and Mr. Rogers — those bastions of integrity and honour — in this desperate hour of need? Gone (to a better place than Wiggle World, hopefully) but not forgotten — and sadly missed.

I think we’ll give the final, cloying words to Replacement Yellow Wiggle Sam Moran in this official farewell posted on YouTube.

Look on the bright side, Sam: You may be out $200,000 a year— but at least you’re not a Wiggle anymore. Hold your head high, man.

Tags: AC/DC, Australia, Blue, children's TV, Kylie Minogue, Purple, Red, Retch, Wiggles, Yellow
Categories: General | 1 comment

Lilyhammer: Mafia Wiseguy Meets Manga Cake Norway

alan.parker - January 17th, 2012

UPDATE: Norway’s public TV broadcaster NRK finally aired the first episode of Lilyhammer on Wednesday, Jan. 25, after accepting a re-edited version of the series that eliminated product placements from the show. Lilyhammer got a 57% share of the 1.75 million Norwegians watching TV that night. To put it in a Canadian context , that’s roughly the same thing as if 6.5 million Canadians watched a show — three times the number who tune in to an average Saturday Hockey Night in Canada. All eight parts of the first season of the series are available in North America from Netflix on Feb. 6.

I was a big fan of The Sopranos in its first few seasons but, as with most long-running series, my interest waned in later years. But one character who always kept my attention was bouffant-haired consigliere Silvio Dante.

Sil was a droopy-eyed bassett hound flopping around the house who could suddenly turn into a terrifying werewolf.

It was hard to take your eyes off Steven Van Zandt (who played Silvio) when he was in a scene: You never knew exactly what he was going to do but you always knew there was going to be some interesting business in his performance.

So it’s good to have Sil back.

It’s not the “real” Silvio Dante, of course. That character remains in an intensive-care hospital bed, plugged full of bullets, where Sopranos creator David Chase left him when Chase sent the series to sleep with the fishes in 2007.

No, the name is different, the back story is different and the wig is different, but Steven Van Zandt is once again playing a middle-management gangster caught up in the deadly intrigues of Mafia office politics (in NYC, not New Jersey).

This time out Van Zandt is mobster Frank Tagliano who goes into the U.S. federal witness protection programme after testifying against his boss. Tagliano cuts a deal with the feds that lands him (with a new identity) in Lillehammer, Norway, site of the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Why Lillehammer?

“Didn’t you see the Olympics in ’94?” says sports fan Tagliano. “Clean air, fresh white snow and gorgeous broads. It was beautiful.”

Not an airtight alibi, but enough to move the big-city American gangster to the fish-out-of-water environs of small-town Lillehammer in the sub-Arctic middle of Norway.

Lillehammer? Lilyhammer?

The series gets its name from the way North Americans supposedly mispronounce the name of the Norwegian town, thanks to the down-home enunciation of American Olympic broadcasters a couple of decades ago: Lily-hammer.

Three cheers for anyone who actually gets the pronunciation right. I’m not sure even Norwegians are on the money half the time. I’ve seen “Lillehammer” phoneticized as “LIL-uh-hom-mer” but I’ve also heard a real, live Norwegian pronounce it more like “LEE-la-ham-mad.”

Go figure. You say potato, I say Lilyhammer.

Of course, it’s a comedy. Of course, it’s not The Sopranos. In fact it could be terrible. But I doubt it, simply because of the presence of Steven Van Zandt, who tends to become involved in interesting, unusual projects.

Van Zandt, as you probably know, was already famous as Bruce Springsteen’s right-hand man in the E Street Band (1975-84, 1999-present) long before getting his first acting job on The Sopranos.

Above, Van Zandt with Springsteen in 1975 (you can’t tell in B&W but his suit in the top pic is bright red) and again, below, with Springsteen in 2007 and 2009.

Van Zandt (born Steven Lento, AKA Little Steven and Miami Steve Van Zandt) has also had a thriving solo career, produced and written a lot of great music for other people, formed his own independent record label, and for a decade has hosted a syndicated weekly radio programme, Little Steven’s Underground Garage, heard throughout North America and Europe on terrestrial radio (Sunday 10 p.m.-midnight on Q107 in Toronto) and around the world on satellite radio.

When he was married on New Year’s Eve 1982 to Maureen Santoro (still married, BTW), the wedding ceremony was performed by Little Richard (Rev. Richard Penniman) and Percy Sledge sang “When A Man Loves A Woman” at the reception. How cool is that?

In the 1980s, Van Zandt was especially active in politics, opposing the Reagan Administration’s various big-stick policies in Latin America and supporting a number of anti-apartheid causes in South Africa. Van Zandt now says he is “retired” from political activism although he joined pal Bruce Springsteen in a number of shows supporting Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

So how does a guy who’s primarily a rock musician and stumbled into the acting gig by a fluke end up making a mafia comedy TV series in Norway?

I don’t know for sure but I think it’s tied in to Van Zandt’s radio show, which is very popular in Scandinavia. He’s done publicity in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland promoting Little Steven’s Underground Garage and been interviewed (in English) on Swedish and Norwegian TV talk shows. That, in turn, led to an appearance (as himself) on Hotel Caesar, Norway’s longest-running and most popular TV soap opera, in 2010.

So that’s the Norway connection, as far as I can tell. While there in 2010, Van Zandt was approached by veteran Norwegian TV scriptwriters Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin about the Lilyhammer project.

Anne Bjørnstad, right, with previous writing partner Alice Sommer

Initially intended to air on the Norwegian public broadcast network NRK, the series became a co-production of Norway’s Rubicon TV AS, the German distribution company SevenOne International and Netflix in North America.

Scheduled to premiere on NRK earlier this month, Lilyhammer’s appearance on Norwegian television is now up in the air because the show has half a dozen contractual product placements in it — a more and more common financing tool but one that is strictly prohibited on Norwegian public television, which NRK is.

Lillyhammer has been dubbed the first “Netflix original series” although the Internet streaming and DVD-by-mail business also has original productions in the works for a new season of cult comedy Arrested Development and House of Cards, based on the terrific BBC political thriller miniseries of the same title.

What’s interesting about Lillyhammer for me is that Netflix will release all eight episodes of the first season (a second season is guaranteed) simultaneously online on Feb. 6.

I much prefer to “binge view” several episodes of a TV series on DVD or online rather than wait a week between episodes on regular linear-time TV.

I’ve never used Netflix before, either in its mail-order form or online, never really felt the need for it — until now. I may still wait until I can pick up the series on DVD but I may actually try out this new-fangled streaming TV thingamabob. We’ll see.

As for the content of Lilyhammer, your guess is as good as mine.

Here’s a link to the official Lilyhammer trailer on YouTube, the only video of the production that seems to be out there at the moment.

The American actors (apart from Van Zandt) seem a little stilted, but that’s par for the course in Europe. It looks like there are some good, quirky performances by the Norwegian cast (in particular, the employment counsellor and the police chief, whose role owes at least a token nod to Frances McDormand in Fargo).

Above, actress Anne Krigsvol, who plays Lillehammer’s police chief, with Steven Van Zandt. Below, Norwegian stars Marian Saastad Ottesen, who plays Frank Tagliano’s language instructor and love interest, and Trond Fausa Aurvåg, who plays Frank’s local sidekick.

The Norwegian writers Bjørnstad and Skodvin are old hands at TV comedy (When was the last time you saw “Norwegian” and “comedy” in the same sentence?). The gimmick of a semi-retired mafioso as unemployed immigrant gives them a fresh take on Norge society.

The terrible massacre of last summer has darkened Norway’s facade, but the country is still a peaceful, bucolic, orderly (and boring, dare I say) society. So the culture clash of a brash, aggressive American with passive-aggressive Norway is ripe for the picking.

My biggest concern was how the American perspective on this different culture would be handled, but Van Zandt is credited as one of the writers along with Bjørnstad and Skodvin. You have to ask yourself: Who better to bring the viewpoint of an all-American mobster than the guy who lived in Silvio Dante’s skin for the better part of a decade and who is (in real life) one of the world’s foremost authorities on R’n'R and R&B?

I already like the concept of using the Lillehammer Olympic ski jump that made Eddie the Eagle famous to terrorize a Norwegian rival.

As we all know, there are no guarantees in life but (for me at least) Lilyhammer is worth a shot.

SECOND THOUGHTS: Whatever happened to the “real” Silvio Dante? At the time The Sopranos was nearing its end in 2007, there was serious talk that creator David Chase was going to keep Sil alive and move him down to Florida for a spin-off HBO series supposedly called “Miami Silvio” (as in “Miami Steve”). There were even cast names attached to the new series — Beverly D’Angelo as a nosey neighbour and Jason Biggs as her son. Nothing ever came of the talk, so until I talk to David Chase or Steven Van Zandt (or maybe Beverly D’Angelo) I won’t know for sure whether it was a real project that fell apart or just wishful thinking on the part of Soprano fans.

Tags: Bruce Springsteen, comedy, gangster, Lillehammer, Lilyhammer, Little Steven, mafia, Miami Steve, mobster, Netflix, Norway, Olympics, Silvio Dante, Sopranos, Steven Van Zandt, TV series
Categories: General | 1 comment

My Little Pony, North Korean Style

alan.parker - January 13th, 2012

Earlier this week another Toronto newspaper (one with national pretensions) ran a little piece that tried to poke fun at North Korea’s new “Supreme Leader” by running a few photos that cast him as a Vladimir Putin wannabe.

The key photo in the bit was a frame grab of Kim Jong-un on horseback taken from a propaganda film about the Great Successor that’s been running on North Korean TV for the past week.

Coupled with that was this photo of the once and future Russian president on horseback in Siberia in 2010.

Then they ran a couple of other combos of Kim Jong-un and Vlad Putin climbing in and out of tanks and looking at automatic weapons to suggest that young Kim (or at least his handlers) was (were) taking PR photo-op tips from the Russian dictator-in-all-but-name.

Granted, Putin does have a penchant for appearing in photos with horseflesh, often half-naked (Putin, I mean, since the horses are pretty much totally naked) and in strangely intimate poses. But none of the Action Man photos of Putin we know so well have even been seen by the North Korean general public.

The only time North Koreans see photos of Putin (or any other non-Korean dignitary for that matter) is shaking hands with one Dear Leader or another, like this.

No, propaganda art about The Leader as Hero was around long before Putin or Kim. They’re just following a dictatorial tradition.

As for the Kim on horseback, that image evokes memories of the Littlest Kim’s father and grandfather for the North Korean masses.

Here’s Kim Jong-un’s father, the late unlamented Dear Leader, in the classic horseback hero pose.

Now look at the frame grab of the Littlest Kim on horseback again. That’s the connection the North Korean propagandists are making.

And here’s a classic example of Prop(aganda) Art with the Littlest Kim’s dad (as a child) and granddad (Kim Il-sung) and grandmum (Kim Jong-suk) all on horseback.

So horses are a big power image for the Kims (and other dictators).

And so are guns. Here’s Granddad and Gradmum again, waging winter warfare with weapons and a babe in arms (little Kim Jong-il, of course).

All dictators like to be seen as handy with firearms.

Above, young(ish) Kim Jong-il in 1979. Below, old(ish) Stalin in the early 1950s.

Even non-dictators find gun-slinging a handy wartime image to cultivate.

Sometimes they’ll even kill living creatures to prove how good they are with guns.

And even if they don’t want to be seen waving a firearm around, they still like to cultivate that military image.

But the one thing a dictator (or anyone else) should never do is get into a tank. That’s the kiss of death, image-wise, because nobody except a real tanker looks good trying to enter or exit a tank. Just ask Mike Dukakis, who had a fair shot at winning the 1988 U.S. presidential election until he ended up looking like Alfred E. Neuman riding around in a goofy tank helmet.

Winston Churchill may have had a tank named after him but he was never dumb enough to actually get inside one. His photo was always taken standing beside or on top of the tank.

Really, nobody looks good in a tank.

(This is actually a submarine, but the concept is the same.)

But somebody obviously forgot to pass on this simple “no tanks” propaganda truth to Kim Jong-un. Witness:

A little help here — the Supreme Leader’s butt appears to be stuck in the hatch.

Kim Jong-un’s recent photo ops seem to be one goof-up after the other.

I’d bite that hand, except it’s the one that feeds me.

So you’re saying that if I fired the missile straight up it will just come straight down to the same place? We’d better move. Now.

But then his dad, Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader himself, had an obvious aptitude for goofy photos.

I guess the apple really doesn’t fall far from tree. And no one can blame Vlad Putin for that.

Tags: goofy photos, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, propaganda, Vladimir Putin
Categories: General | No comments

3.54 Metres Under Water

alan.parker - January 5th, 2012

The road where I live

I was a little shocked to discover yesterday that I am currently living 3.54 metres below sea level.

I mean I knew I was on low-lying land since Schleswig-Holstein (my primary residence for the winter) is really just a flat pancake of former seabed with a few hillocks to break up the monotony of the hour drive between the North Sea and the Baltic (or the two-hour drive between Hamburg and the Danish border).

What I did not know was that I live less than 2 km from the lowest point of land in all of Germany — and that point is 3.54 metres below the raging North Sea to the west and the more-placid-but-still-water-filled Baltic to the east.

Speaking of which, the Baltic is called the East Sea (Ostsee/Oostzee/Ostersjon) in this part of the world that also abuts the North Sea (Nordsee etc.). The locals don’t call it the Baltic until you get over to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia — those parts of the world where it’s the only sea.

But back to my starting point — which is this enormous depression (literally and figuratively) in which I live with two massive bodies of water towering over me (constantly, without cessation or interval), waiting to burst through whatever flimsy manmade constructions are holding them back and drown my hopes and dreams and poor pitiful physical being.

Do you have any concept what “3.54 metres” is in reality? That’s 11 feet, 7 inches.

That’s the height of Mike Strobel standing on Mark Bonokoski’s shoulders. Or waaaay more than Johnny Depp standing on Brad Pitt’s shoulders if you want real celebrities.

Brad Pitt and Mike Strobel: I can’t tell them apart

Or one and a half Yao Mings if sports analogies turn your crank.

Or, if crankshafts turn your crank, it’s almost as long as the wheelbase of a 1969 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.

1969 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham

And that’s how far under water I am right now. Or would be if the waters surrounding me at this very moment found their natural place in the universe (which would be, unfortunately, over my head).

In normal circumstances, that situation wouldn’t concern me too much. It’s sort of like “You could be killed by a meteorite at any moment” or “A school of piranhas could strip the flesh off your bones in 17.5 seconds.” A troublesome thought, in other words, but not one I’m actually going to lose sleep over.

But … and this is a big but …

Schleswig-Holstein has just gone through/is still going through the proverbial (or Noah’s Arkian, to be more precise) 40 days and 40 nights of rain.

Really, it rained every day in the last week of November, every day in December and every day so far in January. Not constantly, mind you (although there were days and days on end when it did), but there was downpour pouring down in every 24-hour period.

As a result the ground is like a giant sponge that has absorbed all the water it can take and not a drop more. There are lakes out in the pastures where no lakes exist — lakes deep enough for a horse to take a bath in.

Speaking of which, the horses hate tromping around in the flooded fields. The humans definitely hate it. Even the sheep hate it. The geese are the only ones who actually like it.

The drainage canals that crisscross Schleswig-Holstein, carrying excess water off to the surrounding seas (where it belongs) are full to the brim and overflowing.

See that foot bridge? There’s normally 1-2 metres of clearance under that bridge before you hit water. Oh, and there’s a road somewhere under the water on the other side of the foot bridge.

UPDATE, BELOW: This is the way the footbridge SHOULD look (and does as of Jan. 19, 2012) even with high water.

And now one of the giant pumps that push that water UP the 3.54 metres from the level where’s it’s sloshing around my feet to be dumped into the Kiel Canal a few kilometres away is BROKEN. The other pump can’t keep up with the volume of water.

So the water in the canal across the road (laneway, really) is getting higher and higher. In fact, the current is now going in reverse — backing up — moving away from the Kiel Canal and going back upstream from whence it came.

But there’s no place to go back there, so the level rises and rises. I’ve been treating this sort of lightly but some people are already being flooded out of their homes and neighbours hereabouts are keeping a very nervous watch.

The local volunteer fire brigade’s siren has gone off a couple of times this afternoon. I don’t know why but I suspect they’ve been called out to help staunch a really serious break or else flooding has started an electrical fire in someone’s barn.

To make matters worse, this area is up around the same latitude as James Bay, so it gets dark mid-afternoon at this time of year. As I write (about 5 p.m. my time), it’s pitch black outside with gale-force winds blowing and rain hammering on the windows.

I usually know where one of these diatribes is going to end up, but this time I have no idea.

One of three things could happen:

1. The rain stops for at least a week. (Unlikely)

2. They fix the canal pump and are able to push enough water out to keep the flooding from getting worse. (Possible but probably over-optimistic)

3. I find out what it’s like to be 3.54 metres under water. (Possible but likely an exaggeration)

Check back in a few days. I’ll let you know what happened.

P.S. About 10 minutes after I wrote this — and before I had a chance to post it online — the power went out. It’s back on now but who knows how long it will last.

Noah, start getting the animals on that ark.

UPDATE, THE NEXT DAY: It’s a beautiful morning, the sun is shining, the sky is blue — but all that can change in 10 minutes (and does frequently). Unfortunately everything is starting to ice over, and icy mud is a very slippery substance. The more important thing is that the water level is dropping (slightly) in the canals, which means they must have the broken pump working again. Noah, get those animals back in the barn — but keep the Ark handy.

UPDATE, TWO DAYS LATER: Rain again, canal water backing up and rising dangerously again. I’m not going to bore you with daily updates, but I just wanted to show how one beautiful day doesn’t mean a darn thing in the grand scheme of things (except that it was a beautiful day and it was great to be outside in the sunshine). I’ll do one more update next week just to wrap up — if the tide finally turns in one direction or another, so to speak.

Here are a couple of photos of Lubeck (above) and Hamburg (below), the two nearest cities to me. (Not my photos, by the way, but I’m sure the German news agencies DAPD and DPA won’t mind us looking at their work, just in a spirit of international friendship and understanding, etc. etc. Thank you, DAPD and DPA.)

FINAL UPDATE: The weather bounces back and forth between sun and rain; the only constant is the mud. Fortunately the big broken pump is in full working order again, sending 6,000 litres of unwanted water per minute from the drainage canals into the Kiel Canal. So, “Alles gut, alles in Ordnung” — the German equivalent of “Everything’s cool, babe.”

Tags: dikes, farm, flooding, glug glug, misery, more flooding, rain, Schleswig-Holstein, water
Categories: General | 3 comments

A Cold Virus Made Me Fat — Honest

alan.parker - January 2nd, 2012

I used to blame my excessive weight on eating too much junk food, drinking too much beer and wine and avoiding exercise like the bubonic plague.

Silly me.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at New Scientist magazine, I now know that I can blame at least some of my flab (ah, what the hell — I’m going to blame it all) on a bunch of guilt-free things like a common cold virus, not sleeping enough, being nagged by somebody else and breathing polluted city air.

Really. I’ll drink to that (and eat too).

If you want to be ambitious and read the whole article (big, scientific words and all), here’s a link to the New Scientist website.

But if you’re a bit lazy like me, stay here and I’ll give you a quick summary. I would recommend the latter course of (non)action, if only because the New Scientist article is entitled Eight Lazy Ways to Lose Weight.

The article’s author, Emma Young, also tells you what you can do to counter the fatty factors, but I’m not going there. We just want to know that external influences are to blame for our weight gain, right? If you want to get all ambitious on me you can read the whole article yourself (but you’ll only end up making yourself feel guilty when you don’t do the things the article tells you will reduce your exposure to fat-generating environments and behaviour).

Cold virus

Who knew, after all, that the common cold virus adenovirus-36 (Ad-36) not only increases the number of fat cells in our bodies but also makes those fat cells fatter? It turns out Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Louisiana did.

Dhurandhar first discovered the connection between the Ad-36 virus and obesity in chickens (now is a plump chicken really such a bad thing?). Then he figured out that obese people are three times more likely than people of the healthy-weight persuasion to test positive for Ad-36 antibodies floating around in their bloodstreams.

Another study found kids with Ad-36 antibodies weighed an average of 23 kilograms more than kids without them. (The New Scientist didn’t give the full details of the kids but I knew you would want to know so I looked into it for you: The 124 children in the study ranged between the ages of 8 and 18 with a median age of 13.6 years. Of those six-score-and-four kids, 46% were classified as non-obese and 54% were in the obese category. You’re welcome.)

I also learned (again, all on my own) that the Ad-36 virus causes obesity in mice, rats and monkeys as well as chickens. Who knew mice and monkeys got colds? Certainly not I.

(There are 52 identified human cold viruses skulking around out there — one for each week of the year — so, unfortunately, every cold we get isn’t necessarily an Ad-36 cold and can’t be automatically blamed for our love handles, jelly bellies and balloon butts.)

Don’t go on a New Year’s diet

Isn’t that good news? New Scientist says everyday stress is a known fat builder. A brain-scan study at the Yale Stress Center PROVES that stress causes your brain to crave higher-calorie foods. And some of the things that produce that fat-seeking level of stress are the psychological pressure of actually going on a diet and the nagging of relatives about your waistline.

Stay in bed

Too little sleep makes you fat — so roll over, pack in a few more zzzzzzz’s and just watch the weight fall off your lazy bones. One study found that people who became obese during a six-year observational period slept an average of 6.3 hours a night. Study partcipants who maintained a healthier weight slept an average of 7.2 hours a night. And (hallelujah!) the study found that low levels of physical activity didn’t affect the findings.

Don’t breathe

This really only applies if you live in a city. Breathing polluted air causes extra fat to pile on around your stomach and does other nasty things — at least in mice. But the scientists at Ohio State University who are conducting the study are sure the same thing is happening to humans. So if you can’t move to the country, just accept that breathing makes you fat.

Well, that’s four of the article’s eight hot points — and 50% is good enough for me. I want to get a bite to eat now, so you’ll have to excuse me.

Like I said before, you can always read the whole article yourself. But I bet you won’t, lazy bones.

Tags: air pollution, cold virus, diet, fat, health tips, humour, nagging, New Scientist, obesity, overweight, sleep, stress, weight loss
Categories: General | 3 comments

50 Fearless Predictions For 2012

alan.parker - December 27th, 2011

I’ve never bragged about it, but I have a real gift for seeing into the future.

Want proof? I haven’t invested in the U.S. real estate market or Greek government bonds in recent years and I have never flown on an airplane that has crashed (while I was on it).

I’ve decided to share my vision of the coming year with you; and I guarantee that just as many of my predictions will come true as those of many more famous psychics, seers and prophets.

Here’s a link to a psychic clearinghouse of 2012 predictions if you want to keep score.

I also guarantee that some of my predictions will be as outlandish and unbelievable as any predictions you might read in the supermarket magazines over the next week or two.

You may laugh (I actually hope you do, at least a few times) but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Here goes nothing.

I PREDICT:

1. The world will NOT end on Dec. 21, 2012, the date some kooks, charlatans and deluded dupes say the Mayan Long Count Calendar foretells as the end of time. (How can I miss on this one? If I’m wrong, no one will be around to point fingers.)

2. I predict, however, that the world WILL end in 2012 for doomsday forecaster Harold Camping. Not for the rest of the world, mind you — just for 90-year-old Harold. I know that sounds harsh and vindictive toward an old geezer but don’t forget crazy Harold claimed twice — twice! — in 2011 that the Apocalypse was knocking on heaven’s door and most of the rest of us were going to hell. (Harold blew both his shots at predicting the world’s end, so I get two shots at predicting Harold Camping’s end if I happen to have misinterpreted the timing of his demise on this first occasion.)

3. Jon Bon Jovi will NOT die in 2012 (or in 2011, for that matter).

4. A celebrity you thought was already dead WILL die.

5. Kim Jong-il will be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize — just for dying.

6. Kim Kardashian will be offered the dictatorship of North Korea but will turn the job down because it doesn’t pay as well as unreality TV. (Or maybe she’ll try it out for 72 days, then cancel. She’s certainly got the sunglasses thing — and the attitude — going on.)

7. People magazine will see the error of its ways and declare someone (anyone!) other than Bradley Cooper “Sexiest Man Alive.”

8. That person will NOT be George Clooney (in 2012, anyway).

9. Britney Spears will get married again in 2012, just to see if anyone cares. No one will except Jason Alexander. Whether or not this one lasts longer than 55 hours (the duration of her 2004 marriage to Jason Alexander) … well, does it really matter?

10. Ben & Jerry will unveil a new ice cream flavour. ( Hard to beat “Schweddy Balls’’ — their September 2011 tribute to Alec Baldwin.)

11. Charlie Sheen will officially become Last Year’s Flavour.

12. Ashton Kutcher will be, by general consensus, Last Year’s Non-Flavour.

13. Justin Bieber will secretly hope in 2012 that someone (anyone!) else claims he is capable of fathering a child.

14. More baby boys born in 2012 will be named Justin than Charlie and Ashton combined.

15. Madonna‘s biceps will calcify.

16. Someone on the payroll of the 2012 winning Super Bowl team will be named Bubba.

17. Commissioner Bud Selig will say or do something to embarrass Major League Baseball — but he probably won’t realize what he’s done.

18. The Toronto Maple Leafs will not win the Stanley Cup.

19. The Montreal Canadiens will not win the Stanley Cup.

20. The Ottawa Senators will not win the Stanley Cup.

21. The Winnipeg Jets will not win the Stanley Cup.

22. The Calgary Flames will not win the Stanley Cup.

23. The Edmonton Oilers will not win the Stanley Cup.

24. The Vancouver Canucks will … dang, crystal ball just went fuzzy … NOT win the Stanley Cup.

25. Barack Obama will be re-elected president of the United States.

26. The U.S. will not be a better place because Obama is re-elected.

27. The world will not be a better place because Obama is re-elected.

28. Neither the U.S. nor the world would be a better place if Obama’s Republican opponent were to be elected president.

29. Vladimir Putin will become president of Russia again in 2012 (note that I didn’t say “be elected”).

30. The world will be a worse place because Putin is re-presidented.

31. The names Gates, Buffett and Walton will appear on the 2012 list of richest people in the world.

32. Steve Jones will not be the host of X-Factor USA for the 2012 season.

33. Simon Cowell will cry like a baby on live TV.

(I’m probably batting .500 on #32 and #33. I’ll wait until next year’s predictions to tell you there will be no third season of X-Factor USA.)

34. The Vatican will begin the canonization process for the Higgs boson.

35. London, England, will be the #1 tourist destination in the world during the month of August.

36. Either China or the United States will win the most medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

37. At some point during 2012, more than 200 people in Toronto will realize that their city is hosting the 42nd Chess Olympiad in 2016.

38. Bob Dylan will tour in 2012. So will Lady Gaga.

39. Elvis will not (although his 1973 white jumpsuit WILL go on tour. Really).

40. Stephen Harper will improve his Dr. Evil impression in 2012.

41. Mike Myers will improve his Stephen Harper impression.

42. Dalton McGuinty will waste billions of taxpayer dollars in 2012 but you will still like him.

43. Stephen Harper will save billions of taxpayer dollars in 2012 but you will still dislike him.

44. Stephen King will publish a best-selling novel.

45. You and I will not (but we could if we really wanted to, right?)

46. Steven Spielberg will direct at least one movie that garners at least two Academy Award nominations.

47. You and I? Not a chance (no, not even a teensy one).

48. Rob Ford will forget his own name at least once during 2012. (Prove me wrong.)

49. The Beach Boys will reunite in 2012 for a new album and a 50-date world tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their first album. (Harold Camping will not be invited to attend, but Brian Wilson will still hear Harold’s voice in his head while singing “Run Devil Run.”)

50. To make up for all the bad things that are going to happen to us during 2012, we’re going to get a free extra day — just out of the blue. I predict this is going to happen in late February, possibly early March. (Even Harold Camping is going to get the bonus day as long as he promises not to predict Armageddon again before then.)

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Now here are five serious 2012 predictions you can take to the bank (unless you live in Greece or Italy — in which case you can stuff these predictions in your mattress or take them to a bank in Switzerland):

1. The Euro crisis will continue.

2. The price of oil will decline.

3. The price of wheat will increase.

4. China’s economy will slow down.

5. You and I will get older (if we’re lucky — or maybe unlucky, depending on how much of the world’s bad 2012 kharma rubs off on us).

Tags: 2012, Charlie Sheen, Elvis, forecast, Harold Camping, Higgs boson, humour, Jon Bon Jovi, Justin Bieber, Kim Jong Il, Kim Kardashian, leap year, Maple Leafs, NHL, Obama, Olympics, predictions, psychic, Putin, seer, X-Factor
Categories: General | 5 comments

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Veteran journalist Alan Parker will be going behind the red velvet rope and yellow police tape to find out what's really going on from the people who make, shape, spin, report and transform the news.

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