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So the “Capital City Gazette” had the following two front page stories in the paper today:

The first: New Grads Arrested On School Roof.

Two recent grads of the local highschool were caught breaking into the middle school. One of them apparently urinated in one of the classrooms.  The other stole a flag. Both had apparently been drinking.

The second, situated right next to the first one:  Wall St. Execs Face Charges in Credit Crisis, Two from Bear Sterns Handcuffed, Arrested.

I think that’s pretty self explanitory. Two hedge fund managers are being charged, criminally, with fraud in relation to the funds they managed that collapsed in the wake of the subprime mortgage fiasco.  They misled investors, saying everything was rosey, when they knew otherwise. They even made sure to pull their own money out of the funds before the collapse.

Somewhere in my deviously peverted mind, I found this amusing. Two schmucks who probably barely squeaked by to graduate are off to a great start in life. Meanwhile, two schmucks who probably barely squeaked out their own money from those hedge funds before they collapsed are off to a great finish in life.  In a sense, the two Wall St. execs pee’d on the other investors and stole their flag too.

Congratulations fellas.

Either that or I just went overboard with the things in my previous post about Robert Culp. Think it was too much? Can’t understand why that woulda been too much…

Anyway, I’ve pulled the clips out of that post (and the Hawaii Five-0 one as well) but left the direct links in and I’m probably just going to do it that way from now on if I post anymore clips from YouTube. Or…I’ll just post one embedded clip instead of, um, five to ten. What was happening was it was taking forever for my blog to load because of all the clips. And this is with a broadband connection.

So, if I expect to have folks reading my blog I can’t have them waiting until the cows come home for the thing to load. And frankly, dealing with the code for the clips was a pain too, as half the time the clips didn’t show or the code would get hosed when I published the post and there’d be nothing there but a blank box.

So that’s enough of that. I’ll stick with screen caps and smarmy commentary from now on.

Such as the following…

That’s .65 cents per gallon for gas! Oh to be back in those days eh? I’m thinking the Dukes would go broke now just trying to keep the General filled up with fuel…at $3.19 (or more) a gallon. Cue up the old Jerry Reed record, son, we got the Crude Oil Blues…

So the week before last on The Colbert Report, Stephen makes the following generalization about bloggers: “They have a laptop, an axe to grind and their virginity.”

Well, I have the laptop. And my axe. And…I wonder if there’s a prize for having all three?

Anyway, I was surfing around the net last weekend, figuring to post something smarmy about that generalization and was looking for another pic of Stephen to use. Found several. From there, I got sucked into the vortex of clicking on link after link after link until I ended up at NoFactZone.net (a Colbert Report fanblog). Since I tape The Colbert Report during the week and catch up on the weekends I was about to quickly exit the site to avoid any spoilers, but the post about a preview of this past Thursday night’s guest, Andrew Keen, caught my eye.

To make a long story short, Mr. Keen has lamented about the progress of the Internet, specifically that which is being called Web 2.0. The basis of which is the reason why Time magazine name me Person of the Year. Okay, not me specifically but “YOU!” all of us geeks with the laptops, axes, our virginity (or not), a corner of our parents basement and way too much time on our hands creating various dreck and drivel and clogging up the Internet with it. Apparently, Mr. Keen is to the point of nearly losing sleep over this. We’re all so wrapped up in being authors/creators that we’re no longer part of the audience, he says. Anybody can write a story, make a video or record a song, post it to the Internet and enjoy about fifteen seconds of fame.

He goes on to say…

Yes, the people have finally spoken. And spoken. And spoken.

Now they won’t shut up. The problem is that YOU! have forgotten how to listen, how to read, how to watch… We’ve lost truth and interest in the objectivity of mainstream media because of our self-infatuation with the subjectivity of our own messages. It’s what, in “Cult of the Amateur,” I call digital narcissism. A flattened media is a personalized, chaotic media without that essential epistemological anchor of truth. The impartiality of the authoritative, accountable expert is replaced by murkiness of the anonymous amateur. When everyone claims to be an author, there can be no art, no reliable information, no audience.

Doesn’t he know, as Don Henley has said, “there are no facts, there is no truth. Just data to be manipulated?” I don’t know what epistemological means but apparently Mr. Keen doesn’t have cable, or he’d know already that the mainstream media is already chaotic and seemingly lacking in truth, impartiality and accountability. How many times have we heard about the left wing media? The right wing media? What media are we supposed to believe now anyway? We have grown to the point that we no longer accept mainstream media as the “be all end all” of our everyday worlds. Some of us have become cynical and we take what we hear and see with a grain of salt. This is why blogs pop up. We seek out alternative perspectives and opinions. We seek to share our own alternative perspectives and opinions.

Of course, there is, indeed, complete and total crap out there, this I do not refute. For all I know, Mr. Keen probably thinks that what I produce on the Internet is crap. Crap is in the eye of beholder. (And it’s probably not very comfortable to have crap in the eye to begin with…)

And this isn’t all limited to opinion/editorials. Mr. Keen is including the creative arts of writing and music as well, along with film making. Anybody with a camera can shoot some footage, edit it together with their computer and slap it up on YouTube. I’ve been writing fanfiction for years and posting my stories online. Musicians can record their songs and post them to the Internet and find an audience. All these things can be done without having to go through an audition, or try to find a publisher or try to find a producer. No studio backing, no need for a record deal, no nasty letters saying your manuscript sucks and we only want “established” writers. No middle man.

You know though….even before the advent of the Internet, there has been mainstream dreck and crap in our films, music and books since the advent of films, music and books. Although it seems as though everybody wants to be an author/creator, we are still part of the audience and yes Mr. Keen we’re still listening, reading and watching. And the audience will decide if what’s being presented it worth partaking in. Or, as Stephen Colbert has said “the market has spoken.”

And the market says, I got about six people who repeatedly visit my blog. Dreck?

Anyway, I was extremely fired up about this last weekend but then I realized that truthfully, The Colbert Report should not be making me think this deep about anything. But now that I have caught up on this past week’s episodes and have seen the interview with Andrew Keen I have to ask….

Who the @#$%! is Andrew Keen anyway?! What makes him so damn special to make the decision that what I create and post on the Internet is crap? Oh he’s published a book. Whup-dee-doo. So I’m supposed to accept his conclusion about the internet as the be all end all of the world because….because….because he’s written a book about it?

Phbpthbpthtpbhtp!!

He’s on the back page of my newspaper again.  AGAIN!!

Pete Doherty, lead singer of the rock group Babyshambles and the dude I complained about back on March 18th, was arrested, again, back in early May. SURPRISE! And yes he was on the back page of my newspaper then but I didn’t get the chance to bitch about it at the time.  Apparently he was in court ordered rehab for possession of drugs and he got busted for (ready for this?) possession of drugs! GOLLY GEEEEEEE WILLACAS!!!!! What a @#%*&ing putz!

He was on the back page of my newspaper today, July 5th, for failing to show up at a court hearing this week and since he didn’t have a good excuse for his tardiness the judge issued a warrant. Mr. Doherty eventually showed up and I don’t remember the rest of the article because I just stopped caring at that point. What a loser. But he keeps ending up on the back page of my friggin’ newspaper.

Back in May everyone around him, I’m assuming friends and family, were telling him enough is enough. It’s either them, or the drugs. And frankly, if he picks the drugs, I’m laying $50 that he’ll be dead by the age of 30.

He’s 28 now.

Of course, if he does manage to kick his destructive drug habit he won’t be featured so much in the celebrity gossip pages will he? The purveyors of the Never Ending Story of Human Misery and Suffering will have to find some other down and out schmuck to write about. They won’t have to search hard though. There always seems to be another one coming down the pipe.

Who the hell is Pete Doherty? And why is it he seems to be a constant topic in the celebrity gossip page of my local newspaper?

This much I know: He’s the lead singer of a band I’ve never heard of called Babyshambles. Otherwise, all I know about the poor guy is he’s got severe drug problems and has had various run ins with the law. He’s also Kate Moss’s boyfriend and they were rumored to have married on New Year’s Day 2007 in Thailand. Moss’s people quickly put the kibosh on that rumor. Doherty’s people…well, I have no freakin’ idea. Does he even have “people”?

Anyway, so who the hell is Pete Doherty? I’ll admit I’m not the most up to date on contemporary pop culture, but I don’t live under a rock. I have a television, I listen to the radio, I read the news, I have access to the internet and I do go to the grocery store where I look at the magazine covers and tabloid trash in the check out aisle that scream at me for attention. BRITNEY! PARIS! JESSICA! LINDSAY!

Oh man, WHO GIVES A *$&#!*%!

I mean, really. I’ve decided that if you’re more prominent on the celebrity trash mags of the day, then you are in anything else, your career is over. Finished. Done. Unless you’re Paris Hilton, who’s entire career was born out of being featured on the trash mags and celebrity gossip columns anyway. And get this! Do you know what her claim to fame is? She’s heir to a freakin’ hotel chain. Wowwwwwww! She’s made a CD that apparently nobody’s listening to and did a TV show that very few watched. But the press is just falling all over themselves to get a picture and know every last thing she’s doing!

And I’m working my 9 to 5 job because…ah, well because I’m not skinny enough and I don’t have blonde hair apparently. And I’m not the heir to a multi-million dollar hotel chain. Damn. I wonder if I could apply to be Tom Bodet’s heir? (Okay, he doesn’t own the Motel 6 chain but I think you get my drift.)

Anyway, back to this Pete Doherty dude. Is he anybody I should give a hoot in hell about when there’s a story about him in the celebrity gossip column of my local newspaper? Cripes, he’s been featured enough times I was beginning to wonder what I was missing. Is Babyshambles the next new Beatles? Were they taking the world by storm, selling millions of albums and burning up the charts before the young Mr. Doherty succumbed to the evils of drug use and had the long arm of the law yanking him up by the collar? Should I be putting my entire life on hold to catch up on who he is and this band? I mean, if my local “Capital City Gazette” keeps featuring him in the celebrity section, he must be somebody right?

Well, no. He’s not. According to wikipedia…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babyshambles

Doherty’s claim to fame is merely the fact that he’s had drug troubles and run ins with the law. Wow! Here’s a guy’s whose poster I gotta put on my wall! Here’s a band whose records I should probably buy because it looks like it’s a miracle they actually record any albums to begin with, considering they sometimes don’t show up for their live shows, or Doherty is stoned out of his freakin’ mind and he smashes guitars on stage.

Yawwwwnnnn. Y’know The Who did all that 40 years ago. Been there, done that, please find something different to do.

Anyway, I figure actual completed records from this band must be rare. So they may be collector’s items someday.

Just like Paris Hilton’s CD. Collecting dust in the bargain bin at the local Wal-Mart.

By the way, classy looking guy eh? And what’s with that hat? Who does he think he is, John Lennon?

Not even close. And frankly, never will be.