by Chris Barrus
Attention world: now hear this!
Gasoline prices are high not because of a shortage of oil, but because of a shortage in refinery capacity. Oil companies want to reduce inventory and maximize profits, and in the long run it’s more cost effective for them to have higher gas prices and reduced expenses from shutting down refineries.
Case in point: Shell Oil is shutting down a Bakersfield refinery that supplies 2% of California’s gasoline. Why? Because they can…
Full disclosure: I haven’t eaten anything from McDonalds in well over ten years and frown upon fast food in general, so you would think that I’d be championing Super Size Me. Guy-at-large notices a plague of golden arches everywhere, the increase in obesity-related health issues, puts two and two together and faster than you can say “Michael Moore” you’ve got a snarky anti-corporate film that sticks it to the man.
I just wish that Morgan Spurlock wasn’t the one to make it though. Spurlock was the creator and host of the MTV gross-out show “I Bet You Will” where he got people to eat cockroaches and embarrass themselves for money and his crass attitude to people carries on here. Spurlock constantly elbow-jabs you with lingering shots of fat people (especially ones who are front-line McDonalds workers) and constantly points out the rise of obesity in the fly-over states. Super Size Me does have some good moments – a scene at a high-risk school that jettisoned it’s traditional school lunch program for a similarly-priced one based on low fat, organic food is particularly powerful, but the movie doesn’t veer too much from his initial conclusion of fat-junkie Americans and a fast food industry who is all too happy to be the pusher.
Surprisingly, the movie makes no mention f the the McSpotlight trial which comprehensively brought to light McDonald’s practices not just on nutrition, but on advertising, environmental effects, treatment of animals, employment practices, and effect as a global cultural force (the McSpotlight documentary is much more informative). Arguably, that would have made for a longer movie, but Spurlock could have easily have deleted the scenes of him puking, complaining, and waiting on doctors as his McDonald’s diet, which is basically just a scaled up version of one of his MTV stunts. At the very least, the movie should have included a sociologist along with it’s parade of doctors. Evil fast food isn’t the sole reason why Americans are fat, it’s the entire American lifestyle of sedentary work and home conditions, hurried eating, oversized portions, and overall lack of nutritional awareness. And sadly, that lifestyle is being exported to the rest of the world.
Ultimately, the film’s finger-wagging is just that and it’s conclusion of “living an unhealthy lifestyle is bad for you” is ridiculously obvious. Then again, Super Size Me is implicitly marketed at healthy people anyway so the point is rather moot.
And lastly, can anyone explain this? That McDonald’s campaign seems way offensive.
If swank “event” restaurant eating in the 1950s was delineated by exotic Polynesian themes and decors that modern hipsters would murder for, the 1960s was the era of the jet-age revolving restaurant. Put your Pan-Am flight bag down and read Metropolis‘ short history on the revolving restaurant.
To begin to understand their appeal, one must now look to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where the revolving restaurant is still seen as a sign of progress–an emblem of prosperity, not kitsch. Indeed, they have become more indicators of economic development than adornments to the skyline. During the 1990s, a new wave of revolving restaurants swept around the world, from Lebanon to Jakarta to Cairo; often, their openings occasioned visits by heads of state and much adulatory press. (The restaurant atop the 674-foot Saddam Tower in Baghdad may be the only one actually named for a head of state.) When the Forte Grand Hotel opened in Abu Dhabi in 1993, Gulf Construction magazine enthused that “the crowning glory of the hotel is the rooftop revolving restaurant, a masterpiece of modern technology.”
WFMU’s Kenny G broadcasted the entire last episode of Friends (including the commercials) stretched out to fill his entire three hour show. The end result is strangely compelling in a Negativlandic head-shaking way.
Years ago I used to work at one of the major talent agencies and not surprisingly the old-old-school agents were the coolest and most interesting to be around. Phil Gersh’s obituary in the LA Times today is a mini Hollywood history lesson and just a fantastically good read with a touch of the hard-boiled.
LiveJournal user Passenger86 has been running a series of great interviews done in the late 1990s. Eliot Easton of The Cars and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo have been up for a little while now, the new ones are with snark-heroes Negativland and Man… Or Astroman.
An article in the Best Crime Writing of 2003 anthology called “My Undertaker, My Pimp” is about a Portland mortician who packed up and moved to Nevada to run a brothel. The whole article is online and is better than all the episodes of Six Feet Under put together.
Just got back home after flying up to the northwest to crawl around Portland and Seattle to consume mass quantities of coffee, records, and food, culminating in the Kraftwerk show at the Paramount in Seattle. For a music genre that demands constant rejection of the “same old stuff”, Kraftwerk in 2004 really hasn’t changed much in twenty years. Presumably the software on their otherwise featureless laptops has been updated, but their show is even more retro-futuristic with all the Tron-level graphics intact and the robots once again dusted off. I haven’t ever seen them before, but I imagine it’s like going on an old, beloved Disneyland ride: there might be a fresh coat of paint and some minor adjustments here and there, but you expect a certain amount of familiarity to remain. The show was terrific, and I’d go see it again without thinking twice. Sort of like racing out of the exit and running back in line to get on the ride again?
The defining moment of the show came during the break in between encores when the cheering audience held up their lighted cell phones in lieu of cigarette lighters. Totally classic.
The US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer remarked that “The French have never forgiven us for liberating them.” What’s the story behind that comment? For the majority of the war, the United States had intended that France be part of a post-war American protectorate without national sovereignty once the Germans were defeated. The United States went as far as to begin negotiations with the pro-Nazi Vichy government before reversing it’s intentions and officially recognizing De Gaulle as head of the French government in October 1944. Read on…
Is this thing on?
Still in the middle of moving everything over to the setup at John Companies. I haven’t had to deal with Red Hat since version 3 or so and I’m still fumbling my way around here. I still wish I had a place to park my G4, but what are you going to do?