Your Future Doctor, Sponsored by Cialis
So it is official - I can’t get off this subject. Maybe I’ve just had my head in the sand up to this point, but the Pharmaceutical Machine disturbs me to the core. Sure, the third most profitable industry in the world has to promote their “products” somehow. Nonetheless, we are not talking about Coke sponsoring the Olympics or Dick Vitale shilling for Hooters (how surreal is that?). These are decisions being made by professionals who have your life in their hands. They should not be influenced by anything but objective clinical studies - that is the bottom line. However, the August 11 issue of BusinessWeek knows this is not true.
Now it is bad enough that doctors are getting propaganda and eating dinner with pharma salespeople. What if your doctor was practically raised by Pfizer from the first day he or she stepped into medical school? OK I exaggerate a little. Here’s what happens in a nutshell: Big Pharma hires marketing middlemen to produce educational courses for physicians. Many of these courses are actually required for obtaining and/or retaining their licenses!
There are hundreds of these companies working with Big Pharma to design ad campaigns and hire doctors to influence classrooms - it is a $1.2billion industry. There are of course transparency issues, which is common in what is basically an unregulated niche of a huge industrial complex. Big Pharma and the middlemen say they they support a revised system, and Pfizer specifically is staking steps. That is to their credit.
It is interesting that the companies involved seemed shocked that this could be perceived as bias. Wow, that’s either flat-out lying or insane obliviousness. One example: a med student noticed that a multiple-choice question, one selection for treating schizophrenia was “prescribe paliperidone”. This chemical is best known by its brand name Invega, which is owned by Johnson and Johnson. Guess who was sponsoring the course?
Orangina - Balls of Steel, Brains of Mush
I like it when marketing departments take chances - I really do. If they bomb, then at least they went down swinging. Holy cripes, this ad goes down in FLAMES. Warning - this could haunt you.
All Things Considered.
On my way to the office every morning I enjoy a cup of coffee and National Public Radio(NPR). I have always enjoyed NPR as they seem to put the least amount of spin on their news stories - which I appreciate. Furthermore NPR is normally good at avoiding stupid news stories, like what Paris Hilton had for dinner, choosing to focus more on what I like think is real news. The catch is lately real news is all about the political race for the President of the United States between Barrack Obama and John McCain. Oddly enough, I have been paying some attention to the musings of the radio on this topic as in most instances I have to if I still want to listen to my beloved NPR.
On to my problem. The Media in the United States of America, be it crooked or honest, still can only report on what information is out there. What I mean by this is that manufacturing news is bad for business thus they need to wait for a story to break. Yes a news station can break a story with their own flair added to, with their chosen light if you will, but at the root of it all there still must be a story. This is where the problem is for me on the Political Conventions. There is no story.
Let me fill you in. The Democratic Convention happened last night in Denver. Barrack Obama, the Democratic Candidate, wasn’t even there. He was in my town, Kansas City, at some friend’s house. He did appear at the Convention via satellite for a bit, but the only part that could be directly linked to him that was at the convention was his wife, who gave her first speech, which apparently included loads of statements about how great Hillary Clinto is - still trying to mend that tear in the Democratic Party I see. Beyond that we here Obama saying the same things over and over again - “We need Change. McCain and I are different, I swear! I am just like all of you.” Problem with the last bit is this - a person cannot be like everyone, unless of course he is referring to how he is a human, in which case, bravo sir, you are correct.
How about McCain? The big news on McCain these days, which to me is hysterical, is that he owns so many houses that he lost count. Seriously. A guy who is trying to connect with the people, and blue collar workers are a big deal when it comes to elections, has so much money that he owns so many houses that he lost count. How can a candidate possibly connect with anyone who has a hard time with their only mortgage when he can’t even remember how many houses he owns outright? Much akin to his opponent McCain wants us to know that he is different, well, different from El Presidente Bush that is. Seems his camp figured out that most people look at him as Bush Light. Or Bush 3 The sequal to a dead series.
There are other sparks of news - like both candidates have selected their running partners. Oh wait! No they haven’t! Only Barrack Obama has in the form of Senator Joe Biden. It seems that McCain’s party is having a difficult time figuring out who he should choose. At one point a few stations were talking about how he doesn’t even agree with his handlers, er, staff. He threw some names out there and some of them grimaced, others coughed, one even guffawed!
I guess my only reason for writing this article is this: we really don’t hear about the important things anymore - the ISSUES. We hear about where these guys go, who the eat with, who they meet with, we hear loads of slander of which neither party appears to be above, although the Republicans seem to be better at it. We hear about running mates, and potentials and hopefuls. We hear about conflicts abroad - the ones that have a media impact anyway. We hear about the Olympics and how George Bush was there, and his lovely speech where he made up even more words. We hear about Obama being some blue collar kid who grew up borderline poor and how McCain is a war hero, again and again and again. What kills me though is this: we never hear about what anyone actually stands for. We gets hints here and there, but not the precise information.
I wish someone would release a listing on their beliefs, maybe a website somewhere has that information. You read about both candidates, their beliefs side by side in column format. You could go zipping down the listing to the issues that are important to you and actually see what they believe in. Crazy thoughts!
Hardest Working Dude in Hollywood
I am a fan of very few things, and never fawn over anyone. Over the years however I have gained respect for one guy who appears to never sleep - Seth Green. I was just talking to GlazednConfused the other day about him and we noticed a few things.
- The dude is funny.
- The dude doesn’t seem to age, at all. In fact in this picture he looks like a 12 year old wearing a stage beard.
- He apparently wasn’t the biggest hit in the world on the big screen so he took his comical wit off stage to work behind the scenes and now does voice overs for like 12 godrillion cartoon characters.
- He co-created and writes for Robot Chicken, which is one of the funniest and most demented shows ever made. Period
- He is the voice for Chris on The Family Guy. If you hate The Family Guy please close your browser, go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself.
- He made this video.
- Seth has been in 99 movies, videos, and god knows what else according to IMDB.
- Seth has a ton more money that either GlazednConfused or Me. Bastard.
- He helped make this episode of Robot Chicken, which to me is one of the funniest, if not the funniest, episodes ever. “So I threw the whole Senate at him.”
- The most important reason that Seth Green is cool - The women he has dated that you never knew about.
My hat is off to buddy. Forever the 12 year old, comical nit wit who has apparently done the hip romp with Meg Ryan.
Natural Born President
A friend called me up out of the blue yesterday and asked me “Isn’t Oliver Stone the worst director in Hollywood?” - and I had to think for a second. My friend is not a reader of this site, because I believe him to be some variation of a blog snob. So he wasn’t disputing Stone’s exclusion from my Hollywood Legion of Doom. The actual reason I didn’t include him is because of his history - the man has made some incredible movies. Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July - the Eighties were very good for Olly. But my friend raised a valid question, and the short answer is yes. Oliver Stone is currently the worst director working in Hollywood, based on his talent, cast, budget, and results. I will try to pinpoint the exact time he lost his gawddamned mind.
I saw Natural Born Killers in the theater, and I’d have to say I was impressed. It was violent, pulled no punches, with a great cast and some kind of vague message about the media. It is undoubtedly creative, as Stone apparently was on drugs the entire time. OK, this is the movie’s Wikipedia page talking, but if you’ve seen NBK it would explain a lot. Drastic color palette changes, random film stocks, animation sequences - all it was missing was Rodney Dangerfield as a white-trash child-molesting father. Oh, right. So as soon as it came out on video, I picked up the Director’s Cut edition. Two VHS tapes! Unrated! Mucho extras! Then I sat down and watched it again, and had a different view of it. I’ve heard some movie pundits say that they don’t think that director’s cuts should exist, because you the viewer are not seeing it in its “original form”. However, I believe that Director’s Cut should be the complete vision of the director, sans all the forces that can change a movie during the process - the MPAA, the studio bigwigs, etc. If that’s true, then holy shit Oliver Stone was a walking ’shroom PSA. You talk about merciless violence, and this is coming from someone who enjoys a regular diet of Miike. But it wasn’t the heads on pikes or prolonged hooker-strangling that got to me. Matter-of-fact, I’m pretty sure that latter scene contained autobiographical content (Sizemore, Stone and/or Tarantino). It was the overall tone of the movie - one of screaming “YOU AND YOUR WORLD SUCKS ASS!” right in your face over and over for two hours. Stone has never been known for subtlety, but NBK’s laundry list of metaphors reads like it was dreamed up by a junior college creative writer “who drinks too much booze, eats too few fresh vegetables.” What truly pushed me over the edge were the deleted scenes - words do not do them justice. Woody viciously stabs Ashley Judd with a pencil while “cross-examining” her at his trial. This is after she describes how he brutally murdered her brother. Let’s not forget Denis Leary’s schtick or the Barbarian Brothers getting their legs chainsawed off - yet still respecting the killers. Sadistic and pointless, I’m convinced Oliver Stone has no soul, and/or cares not a whit about his audience. Although, I give him credit for a nice soundtrack - from L7’s “Shitlist” to Cowboy Junkies’ better-than-the-original “Sweet Jane”, it’s nice.
After Natural Born Killers, Stone’s disdain for you and I continued unheeded. Nixon was three hours on yet another subject that could be described as interesting yet not really entertaining. U-Turn was supposed to be Stone’s non-serious movie by a dead-serious director - his After Hours. Instead it was over-stylized, with a pointless incest plot twist that was right up his alley of sadism. Any Given Sunday is the first movie that comes to mind when asked to name a bad sports movie. Why hard sell a sport that’s already exciting? Friday Night Lights was the football movie sweet spot - shaky camera, turn up the impact noises, and keep the dick dangling to a minimal. Next up was Alexander, which was yet another 3 hours of what the hell? Or at least that was the theatrical version - Stone has released several versions on DVD, the recent and longest being the 214 minute yawn-inducing “Why Bother?” cut. $155million pissed, $34million in domestic business. You’d think that was the nail in the coffin, but nay. I have yet to see World Trade Center, so I cannot comment. It’s my understanding that Stone went out of his way to make a “non-Stone” movie, and it got a 70% on the Tomatometer. That should probably tell him something.
Perhaps you’ve seen the trailer for his latest, one of his classic pseudo-documentaries - this one on our current president Dubya. Stone practically invented the genre, because he can extrapolate or just make shit up and pass it off as “fiction”. He knows that many of the people that watch it will accept it as fact, and he loves pulling the strings. I’m not saying Mr. President doesn’t deserve the Stone treatment - he certainly does. Also, Look at that cast - Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney is an especially nice touch. However, let’s say you worked for Enron, and you were one of the many that got laid off and lost all their life savings. Would you spend 2+ hours of your time watching a documentary of Kenneth Lay’s life, no matter how entertaining or unsympathetic? No, you’d probably want to take a shotgun to his tires as he drove down the freeway. After that, unless he shows up at your door with a big check, you don’t give a shit. My point is, the entire country is Enron - and when Dubya is finally gone, there’s not a lot of people that will pay to spend 2+ hours with him again. Morbid curiosity can only take a movie so far when you’ve lost your house or your son was killed in Iraq. Does the top 1% even go to the movies?
Why didnt we come up with these?
While reading through my hundreds of RSS feeds I ran across these two rather profound greeting cards. I thought I would share them with you.
Who can be as sarcastic as we are, but have artistic talent to boot and then turn it into greeting cards? The folks over at Someecards.com pure brilliance I tell you. There are hundreds of these cards to send to your friends family members, and enemies.
DOH! another awesome idea that I cant come up with.
Until I have my brilliant Idea I will continue to take over the world one blog post at a time. O and I will be sending someecards.
Thanks is all.
New Site Page
I have added a new site page, one I have been thinking about for quite some time now: The Daily Spam. The premise is simple: Each day I receive between 25 to 50 spam emails in my spam folder in gmail (Google is still the devil). I will read these messages and post the one that I feel is the best. I am considering adding commentary with my usual snarky flavoring salt, we’ll see. Either way enjoy!
Legos and Interfaces
Two topics that have nothing to do with one another, but will provide you with quite a bit of entertainment today. The first is a complete recreation of the Olympics with Legos! The second is much cooler than the first, in my opinion, but will take some time to watch. If you want your mind blown watch the entire video of Fez on there. That game is the kind of thing I could easily watch someone else play and be riveted. Just me, a soda, and someone good at thinking outside the box. The thought that struck me while watching Fez was this: How amazing is the level designer?
Angry Alien Productions
Sometimes I like to share the amazing work of others. if you are not familiar with Angry Alien Productions then, well, you should be. Angry Alien was started by this lady with way too much time on her hands whereby she used that extra time to re-enact famous movies through the power of Flash technonolgy and cartoon bunnies. She had done zillions of these and they are all amazing, and incredibly accurate. Enjoy.
A Thousand Years of Automotive Engineering Has Come to This
I’m sure you’ve heard the gloom and doom by now. Ford has its worst quarter ever. GM is hemorrhaging cash with one foot in the grave. Chrysler is this close from outsourcing all its manufacturing and becoming merely a shiny brand they attach to any car they can get their greasy mitts on. There’s one side of me, fairly strong, that is saddened and wants them all to survive. One of the oldest and proudest American industries down the crapper in a mere 10-15 years. Remember the movie Gung-ho? The Japanese make cars like this, while fat American Midwesterners like Norm from “Cheers” make cars like that. Ha HA - A time of innocence.
Ok so that was a bad example. Little did we know it wasn’t so much HOW they built the cars. Sure, the quality was there and the reputation continues, even if it is more of a myth now. More important is WHAT they built - actual cars. Sure, Honda wasn’t making insane margins from Civics - maybe they were a little jealous of Ford and the obscene prices we paid for their glorified work trucks. But they resisted because they saw the big picture. Think about the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, one of my all-time favorite documentaries (a member of my “Big Three”, with The Corporation and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). GM basically killed their electric car because it wasn’t making money, after investing a whopping $1billion in it (according to their own blog). Wow - one whole billion. They lose that now in just a couple weeks. That’s what happens when you have old-school stiffs, stock market hyenas, and penny-pinching accountants run your company - no vision, just stacks of cash going into executives’ pockets. “Are we still in the Fortune 10? Check. Are we still making 50% from every Escalade we sell? Check. Golf time”. A few more billion and some true foresight could have lead to millions of little Insights already on the road, each one a gleaming symbol of American ingenuity - a modern version of the original Ford Model T.
Instead, we’ve come to this - the Chevrolet Aveo. This is currently the only subcompact car from an “American” manufacturer. Almost a thousand years of American automotive engineering has been reduced to an anemic, ugly jellybean that still only gets 28mpg. Oh, and it’s made in Korea. As for the compacts, don’t get me started on the Dodge Caliber or Chevy Cobalt - they regularly get dressed down by industry experts. The Ford Focus is relatively competitive, but considering it’s long history, Ford should be more than just keeping pace by now. The bottom-line is this: the only reason anyone buys an American car is two reasons: (1) They have a history with the brand, (which is becoming less and less common) and (2) they are comparably cheap. The second reason is a vicious circle - the less American manufacturers charge for their cars, the less they make, and the less they can invest in better future products. The result is the Aveo.