Invasion of the Androids

Take me to your market leader -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Today’s blog entry approaches a topic for which I’ll admit I lack expertise – it’s just my fledgling experience (in-store test runs) at work. The topic is Android devices, the latest techno-rage in the USA. I mean “devices” to include both phones and tablets although my admittedly few trials have been with tablets only.

I’m a self-described Apple fan, so there’s some partiality to their products up front. Apple is not a religion for me however, and I think I can look at Android devices with sufficient honesty and objectivity. I’ve even committed to this financially – just ordered the Archos 28 tablet on-line. It should be here in a few days and I can have an up-close, lengthy experience (and maybe a follow-up blog article).

MSNBC’s business beat reports that Android has captured 53% of the smart phone market as of January 2011. That market is scattered across many brand names (HTC, Dell, Samsung, ViewSonic, etc). iPhone is still the champ as the single best selling phone brand. Apple’s IOS4 is #1 and 3G is still coming in at #4. These Android phone developments are actually pretty good – the tablet scene (at least now) is probably not looking as lucrative ...

I recently looked at the handful of Android tablets now being offered at Fry’s and Best Buy, here in Dallas. I’d like to preface my review by noting that both stores had broken, non-functioning display models and scant sales people on hand to help or explain. These weren’t mockups – they were real devices which were supposed to be plugged in and functional. The Best Buy at Midway Road (not the Best Buy closest to me which had all dead units) actually had some functioning models – ViewSonic, Velocity Cruze, Archos and Samsung Galaxy. I have some “across-the-board” impressions as well as individualized comments.

If iPad is the benchmark, these devices are woefully small and oddly proportioned. The iPad purposely is dimensioned like a small magazine (say, National Geographic). It’s large enough that you have a magazine-reading experience right off the bat – little eye strain and little training or explaining. Some of the Androids look more like a PS2 controller – small and weirdly-shaped. The displays on most of these models seemed fuzzy and the responses seemed a little slow. I pressed what looked like the “home” button on a couple of units and got no response. The interface appeared to be iPad-inspired and yet the experience was more like Linux. I saw an array of unfamiliar icons and unresponsive buttons. I’m sure operator error was a part of this but iPad never threw any curve balls at me when I was getting familiar with it.

Nowhere is “you get what you pay for” more certain than with Androids. The Samsung Galaxy towers over its Android siblings. It’s larger, with a bright HD display and an iPad ambience. It should be better because it costs way more than the others ($799 without a phone contract versus @$200 for the others). And for all that Samsung shines, it still looks to me like a poor man’s iPad. If you really think about what essential thing iPad lacks, the main thing is flash player. Lack of flash player has only bothered me a few times (e.g., the free version of Hulu). In just about every other way, iPad gets the blue ribbon.

“Customer experience” is the operative phrase here. Android joins Linux and Windows as a platform that suffers next to the seamless ease of Apple's interface. Apple came out with iTunes for Windows in @ 2004 and 7 years later there really isn’t a Linux/Windows answer to iTunes. Apple gives a vibrant, consistent one-stop shop for just about everything. Maybe 3 shops now – iTunes, AppStore and iBook Store. I look at other platforms and am lost in the woods trying to figure out which site or conduit can give me new movies, music, audio books, games etc. You have a mishmash of Amazon, windows media center and the Jumbo software web site. Android does have Android market which is OK but has some big shoes to fill. My little Archos 28 should arrive pretty soon... we’ll see how well it works. Who knows, I might like it. And if I do, a new blog entry will need to address that fact (or at any rate, a comment here)... Stay tuned.

© 2011 blogSpotter

Celebrating Gleekdom

Sue Sylvester sounds off -- Picture courtesy of FOX

by blogSpotter
When I watched Glee’s first season episodes (2009-2010), I wrote it off as a silly teen soap opera -- an improbable mix of student and staff with a big musical backdrop. Then during season two, I noticed that my Tuesday night channel surfing would always land me on FOX TV, glued to a Sue Slyvester diatribe or a spirited new rendering of an 80’s rock song. When a TV show pulls people in magnetically, whatever their stated preferences may be, that show has great potential. I first viewed Glee as a guilty pleasure, best not shared with the world at large but then my feeling changed …

I asked a close friend who is a self-dubbed TV critic, master of arts and letters (not :-)). He said that they “ruined” Glee in the second season by focusing on celebrity guests (eg. Carol Burnett, John Stamos and Gwyneth Paltrow) and elaborate dance numbers. He thought they should return to the reasoned situations and sincere dialog of season one. OK -- I think season one was a corny, overly dramatic creation still finding its way. There are several ways it could’ve gone from there. Season two is admittedly over-the-top and extremely campy. Sue Sylvester as the Grinch? John Stamos as a dentist who appears in dreams? The Rocky Horror Halloween special? What I have to say is that this show gained tremendous altitude when it decided to push the envelope in every way possible. The wackadoo situations, guest stars and non sequitur dialog are the crux of Glee’s success.

In days of yore, I thought that humor always had to “make sense” and that silverware should always match at a place setting. OMG -- don’t spoil the tone or break into a fantasy sequence. I've since come to realize that maestros can and frequently do break the rules. (I’m not a maestro in any sense -- just saying). Am reminded of Madonna on her Truth or Dare tour telling her choreographers, “Break all the rules”. She added, “If you run out of rules to break, make up some new ones and break those”. She surely had her tongue in cheek, but the point was received. Novices need to observe the rules to learn basic tempo and structure. But people who stay too close to a rule book will give you a bland, vanilla article that fails to inspire anything but a yawn and a click to the next channel. The spirit has to soar beyond the gravity of “what would really happen” or "what would my college film instructor think?".

So is Glee totally insane? Of course it is. How many high schools do you know of that have a Hollywood caliber dance troupe and orchestra that can break into ebullient musical extravaganzas? How many schools have a Sue Sylvester much less a Coach Beiste? I think there is a lot of relevant human communication that shows through all the glibness and gloss. The students’ lives are fraught with all the baggage one might expect in teens -- bullying, sex, sexual identity, fidelity, love, honesty, physical adequacy, etc. There is some “real” dialog after all and it carries a great impact.

I’m not really doing justice to this excellent show and its cast. Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer have been nominated for various Globe, Emmy and SAG awards. Chris Colfer won Best Supporting Actor at the recent Globes -- many other accolades have been given. If you have an hour to give over to joyful escapism, tune in to Glee. It won’t be dark or violent like so many other TV shows, and that’s also a good thing.

© 2011 blogSpotter

The Politically Incorrect Landlord

You're two months behind -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I just watched a little-known gem from 1970, The Landlord, starring Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Pearl Bailey, Lou Gossett Jr and several other notable actors. The movie was Hal Ashby’s directorial debut. It has a gritty, urban, hip attitude that might make you think it’s a much newer movie. Bridges plays Elgar Enders --a rich, spoiled 29 year old “tweener” (before tweener was even a concept) who buys a tenement house in Brooklyn’s Park Slope hood with the intention of gentrifying it.

Before Elgar can repaint and remodel, he must evict an assortment of poor black tenants. He doesn’t remain long on his high horse -- he soon becomes friends with Marge the Psychic and Fanny the beautiful hair burner. I won’t wade too far into the plot line with spoilers… Suffice it to say that Elgar becomes very deeply involved in his new milieu; he also becomes a bit estranged from his conventionally white, elitist family.

The movie was an excellent time slice from 1970 when it was released. The clothing styles have a certain panache that’s lacking now; the background vocals by the Staple Singers give the movie a nearly gospel sensibility in places. What I have to say more than anything is that The Landlord would never be greenlighted in 2011. Political Correctness has made such a pronounced takeover of our society that a plot involving a rich white landlord and black tenants would be deemed inherently racist. (Who exactly is offended? All parties are shown with depth and compassion). This movie makes extensive use of the word “nigger” which has been banished from all 21st century publishing, to be replaced by “N-word”. The people using the word look far more ridiculous than anyone else -- it doesn’t bestow class to anyone saying it.

In this age of Obama, some people (clueless Republicans and white limousine liberals) like to fantasize that racism, sexism and homophobia are all in the past. I need only think of one black coworker who (recently) couldn’t get service at a car dealership until he wore a suit and brought his wife. I need only think of how recently LGBT people had to fight tooth and nail to be admitted to military service and how women are still trying to level the military playing field.

There’s a large, grey nebulous cloud of politically correct “oneness” that hangs over all our heads. We’re not even to broach certain topics or utter the words -- it means that we’re somehow uncool or unenlightened. We’re all assumed to be on some “same page” … and I myself have to ask, “What page is that?” The page that says redlining, redistricting and denial of marriage rights is all OK? Because those things are not OK and they still exist.

What I like about movies and TV from the early 70’s is that they dared to utter the word and ask the question. Butterflies Are Free, All In the Family, Sanford and Son, Harold and Maude, The Landlord … several others too … we pulled up some chairs and had ourselves a meeting. We did some much-needed soul-searching. If you look at our pop culture now in 2011, it’s basically “Don’t Ask, Don’t Discuss” on a much grander scale than ever was done with LGBT’s in the armed forces.

I remember when sitcoms like Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley overtook the socially relevant shows like Good Times in the late 1970’s. Mainstream pop culture basically played into the hands of a palliative, complacent status-quo. Our teachable moment washed away like a chalk picture on a rainy-day sidewalk. Discussion closed. In recent days there has been discussion of taking the word “nigger” out of Huckleberry Finn. I can think of no worse form of cultural castration than to erase our history and remove the touchstones of who we are and who we have been. It opens a Pandora’s Box of “what next?” I know words like faggot, bitch and whore have peppered other works -- do we need to go after those with politically correct White-Out?

I think we need to open the doors to our past unashamedly and ask all the relevant questions. There may be some colorful words and painful expressions in the process. We can do it no other way -- butterflies must remain free.

© 2011 blogSpotter

Iris' Number One Fan

Jodie Foster as Easy Iris -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Anyone 40 or older probably remembers an urgent news bulletin from March 30, 1981: "Young man tries to assassinate President Ronald in Washington D.C.". The young man was John Hinckley Jr., a deranged 26 year-old. Hinckley was also an aspiring song-writer and vagabond who periodically resided with his wealthy parents in Evergreen, Colorado.

His gunplay didn’t kill anyone although it did plenty of damage. Press Secretary James Brady, policeman Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service man Tim McArthy were all directly struck by the hail of bullets. The President sustained a chest injury from a ricocheted bullet. By far the worst injury was sustained by Brady who was paralyzed for life on the left side of his body. Hinckley didn’t try to run; in fact he viewed the shooting as a photo op. He wanted his "lady love" to view his rageful behavior with a Rohm revolver on TV.

Hinckley was a Texas Tech drop-out who tried however briefly to be a song-writer in Los Angeles in the mid 70’s. When that didn’t pan out, the disturbed young man withdrew into a macabre fantasy world which blurred movie plots, historical assassinations, and other acts of desperate violence into a macho, psychotic “alterverse”.

The movie which so obsessed Hinckley was 1976’s Taxi Driver which portraits an equally psycho (albeit fictional) Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro. De Niro plays a would-be assassin with a bizarre crush on Iris, an under-aged teen prostitute. Hinckley is said to have watched Taxi Driver hundreds of times and somehow imprinted himself with the Bickle character. So thorough was the imprinting, he began stalking Jodie Foster (age 18 in 1981), who portrayed Iris in the actual '76 movie. In the “creepy facts file”, Hinckley actually dropped notes at Foster’s home and talked to her briefly on the phone. In 2010, one must hope that celebrities can be more unreachable and anonymous with regard to wack job stalkers.

Hinckley decided that, like Bickle, he should kill a president to impress Jodie/Iris. He first tracked Jimmy Carter but was arrested on weapons charges in Nashville. His wealthy family managed to get him psychiatric care for what was clearly to them just untreated clinical depression. Shortly thereafter, Hinckley “succeeded” in his bizarre quest – he completed the 1981 violent assault against Reagan and his team. What followed was a slap-on-the-wrist trial where Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. One cannot dissociate the verdict from other significant circumstances; the Hinckleys were wealthy, staunch Republicans – good friends with V.P. George H. W. Bush. Hinckley’s brother Scott was even scheduled to have dinner with Neil Bush the night of the assassination attempt. Hinckley was remanded to the care of St. Elizabeth’s hospital where he has remained (more or somewhat less) since 1981.

So great was the public outrage over this verdict, several states modified state laws to restrict expert psychiatric testimony. Three states -- Idaho, Montana and Utah did completely away with the insanity defense. This was much ado considering that wealthy citizens frequently can side-step the established writ, no matter how passionately it’s supported by the general public.

For “tough love”, three-strikes advocates you should quit reading now. Hinckley’s incarceration at St. Elizabeth’s has unfolded more like a Club Med vacation stay than any typical inmate story. He summarized his daily routine as:

“See a theapist, answer mail, play guitar, listen to music, play pool, watch TV, eat lousy food and take delicious medication”.

In addition, he’s been granted increasingly long (two week) visits with his family which have given him the liberty of a driver’s license and opportunity to date two women on the outside. He was almost sprung completely in 2007 but public outcry, buttressed by the concerns of Reagan’s family kept him in St. Elizabeth’s where he surely belongs.

There is much to mull over in this tale and much impact to the national psyche..
- The insanity plea was reconsidered and reworked in several states
- Gun laws were strengthened
- Censorship advocates were emboldened by a clear case of copycat behavior
- Public advocates argued about privileged treatment for wealthy people

Reagan himself couched the event humorously in '81: “Honey, I forgot to duck”. He also was surprisingly benign about Hinckley himself saying only that he, “hopes the young man gets help”. In point of fact, Hinckley was given the help of a cushy hospital and lengthy outside visits. It would be hard to assert that his help was corrective or meaningful in any significant way. Whether his outburst was an insane lark or "rational" choice, he needs to be kept away from a world which is an action movie blur in his addled mind.

CINEMATIC ADDENDUM -- 1/8/2011

Today I actually watched Taxi Driver from 1976; the last time I watched it was as a college sophomore in the theater. The movie is a tour de force, easily earning its position on the AFI’s list of all-time great movies. It is Martin Scorsese’s dark vision of Travis Bickle, a disturbed and mentally deteriorating Vietnam Vet. Travis is played by a handsome, lean and then-young Robert De Niro. The cast is a stellar one where even bit roles are played by future luminaries like Harvey Keitel and Albert Brooks. Jodie Foster is amazing as the street-smart Iris and Cybill Shepherd is equally great as Betsy.

It puzzles me that John Hinckley saw Travis as a role model -- the entire screenplay presents Travis as an unhinged loser, living in a violent, adolescent fantasy world. The last three minutes of the movie are controversial -- they suggest that Travis has been received as a hero for “rescuing” Iris and brutally killing Iris’ pimp, bordello bouncer and Mafia john.

This is arguable from a couple of standpoints …
1) The last 3 minutes are gauzy and surreal like something in the dream sequence of a dying man.
2) It wouldn’t make sense factually. The pimp, john and bouncer were unsavory people but they had done nothing to provoke the attack. Bickle would be guilty of 2nd degree homicide if nothing else, he wouldn’t be received as a hero.

However you see the ending, please see this incredible film. The gritty essence of New York’s mean streets have never been more brilliantly shown than in this timeless masterpiece.

© 2011 blogSpotter