MISCmedia for 4/24/01
Turn On TV Week

EVEN THOUGH I'M NOT, and am not even related to, the guy who still writes "I Love Television," I still defend the medium from its more strident and less thoughtful bashers.

Among those are the promoters of something called "Turn Off TV Week," going on now.

I am just so darned tired of these decades-old (and oversimplified even then) arguments that Reading Is Always Good and Viewing Is Always Bad.

There's nothing intrinsically empowering or progressive or even truthful about The Book. Mein Kampf was a book. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a book. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon was a book. Heck, even some of the most horrid movies ever made (Donovan's Brain, Forrest Gump) were originally books.

And in the supposed Golden Age Before Television, what were some of America's favorite mass entertainments? Adventure pulp magazines (lurid covers, bland formulaic insides). Sensationalistic Hearst newspapers. Underground "Tijuana bible" mini-comics. I happen to adore all of these ephemera, despite (or at least partly because of) their classic-showbiz energy and their lack of intellectual pretension.

Meanwhile, the audiovisual medium all conformist hippies and rote radicals obediently hate has recently given us endless numbing hours of impeachment, Elian, and celeb divorces (not to mention the Fox News Channel's nattering ninnies); but also such quite smarty fare as Malcolm in the Middle, The Big Guy and Rusty, (the original) Law and Order, The Awful Truth, The Drew Carey Show, BBC America's world news, BET On Jazz's Live from the Knitting Factory, etc. etc. etc.

Heck, even PBS has something smart on every once in a while.

Smartness and/or dumbness can be found most anywhere, in most any medium. (Though the smartness half of the equation is increasingly hard to find at chain-owned radio stations, but that's a rant for another time.)

NEXT: On a similar note, a eulogy for a Net radio favorite.

IN OTHER NEWS: I've continued to delay the transformation of this site's main page to the increasingly popular "welbog" format. Still haven't figured out how to replicate all the page's features in one of those scripted weblog programs.

ELSEWHERE:

• A Columbia U. grad student ponders the idea of websites as works of art....
• The alleged Next Big Thing in collectibles: paint-by-numbers works and kits!...

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• The real problem with delivery dot-coms.
• The Bush regime compared with the novel Underworld.
• A Chant, re: the art of Art Chantry.
• Joey Ramone reaches the ultimate sedation.
• John Keister gets canceled again, apparently.
• Tulipomania redux.
• Parts one, two, three, four, and five of a tour through every home I've lived in.
• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's reminiscences of beer, basements, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.
• Mulling still more potential changes to the site.
• Memories of the radio station formerly known as KCMU.
• Thanks to the Net, some folks are writing more. That's supposed to be a bad thing?
• Remember rain?
• In defense of DIY publishing.
• A special offer on slightly-hurt Losers.
• Parts one and two of Boeing becoming just another global corporation.
• Could you be turning into a hippie without even knowing it?
• Is it time to privatize welfare customer-service?
• Tell me a story.
• A TV critic faces cancer.
• Music to accompany the mattress mambo.
• Goodbyes to film critic John Hartl, the outre-music zine The Tentacle, and some cool stores.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate)
• The origin and future of MISCmedia