Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

pesky’apostrophe points us to the latest report of Airport Girls Gone Wild!

Lionel Richie’s daughter Nicole had to show her breasts to airport security staff after her nipple ring triggered off metal detectors.

Nicole, who stars with Paris Hilton in US reality TV show The Simple Life, was travelling from Reno, Nevada to New York City.

She says: “I said: ‘I’m pierced,’ and that usually is the end of it. And she said: ‘Well, what are you gonna do about it?’”

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“So they brought in two female officers and took me not to necessarily the most private place in the airport and made me take off my top. Thank God I’m not a shy person, but what if I was shy?

“You know what, you guys are letting lighters on the plane and stuff like that, but I can’t have a nipple ring? What am I gonna do – poke someone in the eye with it?”

I shudder to consider the plight of the hapless airport security worker. On the one hand, she had probably been told that she had to visually clear any- and everything that set off the metal detectors. After all, the last time I traveled through airport security I was forced to undo my belt so they could clear my midsection and verify that it was the buckle setting off the metal detector and not, say, a hidden belt-bomb.

So here’s an airport security worker who has been told to clear anything that sets off the metal detector. Now, obviously, there are few things that could be hidden by a breast – but can you imagine the fallout the first time an airport security worker fails to check out a “piercing” and discovers that the double-D cup he just let through security was actually hiding a shiv under her mammary? So even though the security worker in this case had no reason to believe that it was anything other than a piercing and no reason to believe that Richie was a terrorist, she was still under orders to check everything that sets off the detector.

I still find it a little bit amazing how hyper folks are getting these days.

Or maybe it’s part of a secret plot. Snoop Dogg is bribing Airport Security Workers to force girls to lift their shirts at checkpoints, and then he sells the security tapes on late-night television as part of his new “Weary Travelers Gone Wild!” series.

They’ve just gotten off of a three-hour plane ride and are in a rush to get to their connecting flight so that they don’t get stranded in Reagan Airport. The plane was out of honey-roasted peanuts and those little bottles of Parrot Bay Rum, their luggage is three stops behind them, and the souvenir statuette they bought for their little nephew is already broken into three pieces. And you won’t believe what these girls will do to get through security! It’s “Weary Travelers Gone Wild!“

Over in Lewisburg, PA, they offered free tickets to Fahrenheit 9/11 to Republicans. And some actually took it. For the most part, they reacted the way staunch Republicans could be expected to react – but it’s a big step forward that they actually took the time to see it.

“I don’t think you can consider it a documentary, because I don’t think both sides were represented,” Brubaker said. “I don’t think this movie would have been made if Al Gore had been elected president, and I don’t think Al Gore could have stopped what happened on Sept. 11. I don’t think anyone could.”

Still, Brubaker said he’s glad he saw the movie – and disappointed that more Republicans didn’t come for the free showing. A month ago, before Michael Moore’s documentary indictment of President George W. Bush was released, Brubaker hoped no one would see the movie.

“On the other hand,” Brubaker said, “I think it’s important to properly discuss the movie with Democrats who believe it.”

I’m happy to hear Brubaker say that it’s important to see a film before you discuss it – that’s a big step, considering that the White House has been sending people out with the message that Republicans don’t have to see the movie to know what it’s about.

But I take issue with the idea that you can’t call Fahrenheit 9/11 a real documentary simply because it didn’t represent both sides of the issue. For starters, a documentary is not the same as a news report. The documentary is filtered through the director’s mind, and the director more often than not has something that they want to say – as opposed to straight journalism, where the issue is a clear and unbiased reporting of the facts.

And when we get down to that, I take issue to Fox News being called a “real” news organization. Folks like Bill O’Reilly aren’t reporters and they don’t give you news – they give you editorials. Fox News is staffed more by people given to making editorials than by any real journalists.

I also take issue with CNN being called “real” news (I’ll leave MSNBC out of this because, frankly, I’ve never bothered to watch it) because CNN doesn’t like to report facts, either. But while Fox runs editorials, CNN runs whatever they’re handed. They don’t engage in investigation, even when the subject they should be investigating is a widely-known matter of public record that would be easy to check on and report. Instead, they like to report what’s being said. “Democrats fear that the Bush administration’s tax cut benefits only the wealthiest ten percent of Americans. The White house, however, says that that’s not true.”

Excuse me? It’s a tax cut proposal. Which means it’s written down. Which means you can freakin’ read it yourself, dangit! There’s such a thing as fact checking. An activity that few of the news organizations around today seem to partake in, and one which the more conservative-leaning news organizations definitely don’t want happening around their offices. Then they’d have to evaluate the the things coming out of the mouths of people like O’Reilly and Kopel.

Speaking of which…

But the point is this: CNN, Fox News, and all of the other outlets out there have a duty to actually practice fair and balanced reporting – a duty which many are now neglecting, but one which is nevertheless theirs if they truly wish to represent themselves as “news.”

Filmmakers, however, have no such duty. While it’s important that documentary filmmakers speak the truth and check their facts (which, admittedly, Moore falls down on a couple of times in F 9/11), they have no duty to represent the other side. Especially if they feel – as Moore does – that the mainstream media has already done a bang-up job of reporting that side.

Good ideas never die. For that matter, neither do mediocre ones. Radio Free ArtMachine is back – This time as an audio blog!

radiofreeartmachine.blogspot.com will take you to my newest audio outlet, where you can hear my silken rumblings as transmitted over a cellular network and re-encoded as low-bitrate mp3’s. It’s the wave of the future!

Ed Cone writes that Seymour Hersh has some disturbing things to report [link via TalkLeft]. For those of you who don’t remember (and who don’t have Google a click away – for shame), Hersh is an investigative reporter who’s been writing on Abu Ghraib for a long time.

Guess what? It seems there’s more to report.

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking,” the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was “a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher.”

(I transcribed some of his speech from this streaming site. Hersh starts at about 1:07:50.)

He called the prison scene “a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway… war crimes.”

The outrages have cost us the support of moderate Arabs, says Hersh. “They see us as a sexually perverse society.”

Hersh describes a Pentagon in crisis. The defense department budget is “in incredible chaos,” he says, with large sums of cash missing, including something like 1 billion that was supposed to be in Iraq.

“The disaffection inside the Pentagon is extremely accute,” Hersh says. He tells the story of an officer telling Rumsfeld how bad things are, and Rummy turning to a ranking general yes-man who reassured him that things are just fine. Says Hersh, “The Secretary of Defense is simply incapable of hearing what he doesn’t want to hear.”

Let’s see. A war that’s looking increasingly unjustifiable. Domestic economy? In the crapper. Citizen’s rights? What the heck could you be talking about? Torture and rape of prisoners by a “peace-loving” nation, and the military in turmoil over missing money and misappropriation of funds.

Tell me again why four more years would be a good idea, Dubya.

Because I – like my brother – can’t get enough of deadlines, I have accepted an invitation to join the crazy crew over at 600 Seconds.

Today’s subject was “locked desk drawer.” I like locked things.

I love it when the studies and the theories start on a new group. In this case, there seems to be an awful lot of focus on Netflix subscribers. There’s a whoe slew of Netflix-related blogs out there, and they’re catching some interesting stories.

Like Netflix Fan, who found the results of a Motley Fool study into who really subscribes to Netflix. Apparently, we’re people who don’t have a ton of money, like movies, and enjoy variety. What’s really interesting to me, however, is that Netflix claims that in any given year, a full 99% of their movies get rented. Meaning that virtually every movie on Netflix gets seen at least once a year. I like that. That means lots of little movies get their day in the sun. I’m happy when movies get an audience.

Then there’s the Mercury News, which reports on the phenomenon of “Netflixia” and the “Netflictims” struck by it.

Netflix would be, we hoped, the silver lining in our decision to cancel cable television to save money before a move. We thought the service would be a wonderful way to catch up on all the great recent movies we have missed and on classics that we should have seen but didn’t. We were right, and that has been disastrous.

Unfortunately, most of the classics—and even most of the contemporary movies that we managed to miss seeing on the big screen—are of the depressing variety. When Jen and I sat down to choose the movies that we wanted sent to us at Netflix’s Web site (www.netflix.com), we did not think like DJs. We did not consider the mix of films we would get.

I can remember my first time around with Netflix. I started off with all of the great art films on my gueue along with heavy fare like HBO’s Oz. By the time I cancelled my Netflix subscription while making a move, my Netflix queue was dotted with a few art films scattered far and wide, and heavily peopled with DVD’s of Doctor Who and movies from Roger Corman and the Something Weird crew. You have to work your queue like a DJ – keep things moving in between hitting the heavy stuff. It’s the only way to avoid becoming a Netflictim.

In other news, I’ve decided to add the word “queue” to my list of fun words to write and say. “Queue.”

Even die-hard Trekkies have been wondering for a long time if the franchise is dying – in fact, the greatest debate on the subject doesn’t seem to be whether it’s dying so much as when it died.

Maybe somebody should mention this conversation to Rick Berman.

In his latest interview with the STAR TREK Communicator, STAR TREK producer Rick Berman elaborates on recent remarks about a “prequel” feature film in development. Berman for the first time says in the new article that the eleventh STAR TREK film will be a prequel set before the time of ‘James T. Kirk’, but that it will not be related to the fifth television series ENTERPRISE.

Berman’s ENTERPRISE partner Brannon Braga let even more loose when discussing the fourth season of the show, according to an excerpt published at TrekToday.

“It’s certainly one of the things that we’ve been discussing,” Braga said when asked about future Romulan involvement in the prequel series. “But there’s also a prequel feature in development regarding the Romulan Wars, so we might have to stay away from that.” [link via Dark Horizons]

So, let me get this straight. There’s going to be another Star Trek movie. It’s not going to be a Next Generation flick because even though those movies just kept getting better (in my not-so-humble opinion), the last one didn’t do so hot at the box office. It’s not going to be DS9 – even though the DVD release of the series has finally allowed it to come into its own as some of the best Trek on teleision – because… well… I’m not really certain why. I guess I should just be happy that Berman’s not taking the opportunity to defile it. And it’s not going to be Voyager, nor will it be Enterprise. Instead, it will be a completely new cast, but one that falls between Enterprise and the original series, and—
You know what? In trying to think like Berman, I think I may have sprained my brain.

Ouchie.

Hey! Maybe we can get Berman to contact the Terry Nation estate and the next Star Trek movie can have Daleks in.

I need to take some time now and thank four great iStockPhotographers. As some of you may know, I’m having a bit of difficulty thanks to a recent clarification of iStock’s license that is causing me to have to replace cover designs for the books in my store.

I am pleased to announce, however, that thanks to three iStockPhotographers, the cover for The Mouser’s Tales will remain as it is.

The cover for The Mouser’s Tales features the work of three different photographers. On the front cover, the image “Finger in a Mouse Trap” appears courtesy of Greg Nicholas, while the image “Shy Mouse” appears courtesy of Roel Dillen (iStock portfolio). On the back cover, you’ll find “Russian Wedding Rings,” which appears courtesy of Rene Mansl (iStock portfolio).

I owe all three of these people a great debt of gratitude. Thank you for your generosity.

Also, while I’m giving thanks, I can’t neglect to mention another great iStocker. I had to withdraw from Designs on the White House earlier this year, but the Passing the Buck World Tour! design I submitted has been selected for an honorable mention. I owe thanks to Nathan Blaney (iStock portfolio), whose superb image “US White House” features prominently in my design. In contacted Mr. Blaney about the image in question, and he has given me permission to continue to use the image in this design. Thank you for your support, Mr. Blaney – and your excellent image.

Now, for the rest of you – go buy some images from these guys. Just make certain you read iStockPhoto’s license carefully before you go using them.

I’m about to disable comment registration and enable comment approval.

Why?

Because I just had to delete two more spam comments! Gah!

I enable comment registry to stop spam, and I get spammed, anyway. So I’m doing comment approval. At least until I get sick of disapproving fifty spam comments a day, in which case I might just decide it’s time to hunt down these comment spammers like the dogs they are….

CNN reports that somebody at the New York Post dared to dream.

The New York Post, in a front page gaffe reminiscent of the 1948 headline wrongly announcing President Truman’s defeat, proclaimed Tuesday that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would select Rep. Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

“KERRY’S CHOICE,” read the headline over the page one “exclusive” story. “Dem picks Gephardt as VP candidate.”

The story, which ran without a byline, was accompanied by a file photo of the Missouri congressman and the Massachusetts senator.

With everybody declaring that of the three “short listed” candidates for Veep, Edwards was the best choice and Gephardt the weakest, it just seems to me that it would be a little, say, logical not to leap and declare Gephardt the winner of the “veepstakes.” But, then again, the Republican-boosting Murdoch publication just went with its ideal situation – Kerry choosing a running mate with limited appeal and a record of failed leadership in the legislature.

See, the Post wants to get all old-school on the new media’s ass. It wanted to hit the streets with the big scoop of the day – but they forgot the way it’s supposed to go down. When time is money and more valuable than paper, you don’t just pick a rumored winner and run with it – you print up all three. Then you have your distributors park at the newsstands with a load of all three papers and wait for a signal telling them which one to drop off. Hell, in this day and age it’s even easier than it used to be – now you can equip your distribution trucks with CB’s and cell phones and beepers. In the old days, they used to park outside of the courtroom to see if their reporter waved a red or a white flag out the window.

Of course, this could just be a conspiracy for the Post to sell extra copies, having created the most collectible newspaper since “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”