July 2005 Archives

The latest “crisis” in the entertainment industry isn’t that Madanna’s gone cuckoo for Kabbalah or that Tom Cruise has turned in to a “Ron-droid” (a derisive term for a true believer in Scientology) but that Americans aren’t going to the movies as much as before.

It’s true that movies make as much money as ever, but that’s only because prices are so inflated for first-run flicks that even if fewer butts are in the seats, the money still rolls in. The trouble is that going to the movies has turned into an ordeal that is unpleasant from start to finish, and most of us, unless we’re masochists, want to avoid unpleasant things.

First off is the battle to get into the theater. Since “octoplexes” have replaced the old one-screen theater almost completely, you have to find out which movie you want to see and at what time, find a place to park and then go up to a bored teenager and speak your order into the microphone. Once you enter, you have to battle past oversize snack bars bearing overpriced food and drink, past videogames and screaming children, try to find a spot in the bathroom so you don’t have a triple red-alert during the film, and then find the theater.

Oh, stay with me. The fun is just beginning.

Then, when you finally sit down, hopefully after checking to see that there isn’t too much popcorn or gum on the floor or the seat, you have to hope that someone taller than you doesn’t sit in front of you.

All settled in? Good, now listen to music and watch the inane slides projected on the screen until it’s showtime.

Well, there’s a catch there, too. The time the newspaper has for the start of the picture finally arrives, the lights go down, and you get that dreaded message: “The following preview is for all audiences. The film advertised is rated PG-13.”

Fight your way through six or seven trailers for films that are most definitely not the next “Citizen Kane” but “a love story” or a remake of a remake of a remake, or a familiar title with a Roman numeral (and, maybe even worse, a colon) in the title, and you’re ready for the ads, and the long lead-in to the feature, and then, finally, the film itself.

The film and the departure from the theater are almost anticlimactic after what I’ve just described, and the idea that you’ve just blown $30 for two to see the movie has to gall you.

So it’s no wonder that many people are buying high-end video and sound equipment, and making their own homes into home theaters. Thanks to DVDs, TiVo and other innovations, one can sit home and watch films – and even pause them; try that in a theater when you have to “go” – without being bombarded with all sorts of junk. True, DVDs have ads – some of them “forced” – but you can at least get up and do something else while the teases play.

If the above isn’t reason enough to give up on the movie experience, try this: Today’s movies are stinking up theaters. As I said before, Hollywood has sequel-itis and remake-itis, and insists on redoing or expanding on the same stories over and over.

At imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, tops at the box office this week was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (remake); “War of the Worlds” (remake); “Batman Begins” (prequel); “Herbie: Fully Loaded” (sequel); and “Bewitched” (remake of TV show).

Opening this week? “Bad News Bears” (remake). Coming soon? “The Dukes of Hazzard” (TV show) and “Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo” (sequel).

OK, to be fair, there are other movies that aren’t retreads or whatever, but the movies are just not that inspiring anymore.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

Aug. 2, 1982.

Ronald Reagan was president, the USS Intrepid museum opened in New York City and the world was a much different place.

And I was going home. Back to Elmhurst, N.Y., and my parents’ home after four years in the Marine Corps.

In October 1978, just before boot camp graduation, when I got my first military identification card, the expiration date seemed like an eternity away. At that time, Aug. 2, 1982, might as well have been Aug. 2, 2002. To a 17-year-old coming to grips with military discipline, even next week seems to be an incredibly distant time in the future.

But the day had finally come. I said goodbye to the crew in VMA-513 Avionics, said goodbye to the squadron’s Harrier jets and walked away from the “Hootowl” hangar at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz., for the last time.

If I thought there was a ton of paperwork involved in getting into the Marine Corps, there was even more in getting out.

Funny how things stay with you. I still remember the flight home: Yuma to Phoenix to Dallas-Fort Worth to JFK. Unlike my return from Marine boot camp, my first sight of the city wasn’t the World Trade Center.

It was the weirdest feeling in the world. After four years of living life as a military man, I was a civilian again. No more high-and-tight haircuts, no more duty section musters and no more stuffing those E-A-Rs in my ears when I walked on the flight line.

Yuma was a training base for F-4 Phantom and A-4 Skyhawk pilots, though those planes would soon be replaced by the F/A-18, which was still undergoing flight testing.

It was an invigorating sight, sound and smell on the flight line, as the F-4s would taxi for takeoff and run up their engines, black smoke flowing from the tailpipes.

Then the pilot would light the afterburners. In the early morning or late afternoon, you’d see the twin flames trailing a few feet behind the engines as the plane roared past and into the sky. Then, like a light switch being turned off, the afterburners would be shut down.

When their squadrons visited, we’d marvel at the F-14s as they flew over for the midfield break, wings swept back, fly the pattern with the wings slowly coming out, then come in to land with the wings extended.

A wide variety of aircraft would visit Yuma, including even Air Force F-15s. The Airedales would sneer at our little Marine Corps base and gag at our chow hall, while we Marine aviation types would show them how real military types marched and stood tall.

But we loved their sleek fighter planes.

Just before I left the Marines, I was part of a deployment to Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada, and we rode there and back in a C-141 transport. Flying as a passenger is fun, unless the plane has no windows, I learned.

I’ve sometimes wondered how my life would have been had I stayed in the Marines. I never regretted leaving, though, and see it as an experience I’ll never forget.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

I once saw a telegram.

Back in the day, before my time, there was a company called Western Union and its delivery workers all across the country showed up at houses and delivered important messages.

“Telegram for Mr. Jones,” you’d hear on movies and cartoons made through, I guess, the mid-1940s. In the modern era, though, long-distance telephony pretty much wiped out the telegram. Western Union tried “Candygrams” and even a joint venture with the U.S. Postal Service called “Mailgram,” but it was no use.

So it was something when my friend John, who lived across the street from the house in Queens where I grew up from age 6 or so, showed me the telegram his mother received one night. It must have been in the early 1970s, and it was to inform her that her father in England had died.

Even then, the idea of sending or receiving a telegram was an anachronism. It was simply faster and easier to pick up the phone and dial (or, later, punch buttons) to tell someone important family news.

The reality is that communication technology is evolving and changing. Telegrams, once seen as evidence of an advanced technological society, today have no use, though if you go to the Web site at www.westernunion.com and click on “telegram,” you can send one. Still, why would you? Some might say more’s the pity, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Some forms of communication still have a lot of life left in them, despite earlier predictions of doom. Back in the early 1980s, when I went for my job orientation at the Postal Service, the legendary then-Postmaster General William F. Bolger appeared in a film and informed us that mail volume was predicted to fall, and fall dramatically, and that the Postal Service would soon have to cut tens of thousands of jobs. Just the news you want to hear at orientation for a job.

New technology has allegedly been the death knell of the post office for almost a century, and despite that it’s still around and doing the job pretty well. Electronic mail was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin, as private companies stole the overnight business and package business, and electronic greeting cards sent by e-mail would finish the job by eliminated another source of revenue. E-mail would also make “bulk business mail,” known to all as “junk mail,” obsolete.

True, mail volume has dropped, according to one friend who still works at the Postal Service, but it hasn’t disappeared. Indeed, as e-mail inboxes became flooded with spam advertising mortgages, prescription drugs and other things no one wanted, junk mail suddenly got a new life. What was once the disadvantage of junk mail – its high cost relative to e-mail – became an advantage because messages now had to be targeted to people most likely to respond.

The Postal Service’s past attempts as being a forward-looking communications technology company were not successful. In 1982, according to the Web site about.com, E-COM was started. It stood for Electronic Computer-Originated Mail, and it offered an electronic message service with hard copy delivery.

I remember seeing the clear plastic bags with a bundle of two or three letters coming through the mailstream. It was obviously not popular, though (I could see that from the paucity of pieces that moved into the system), and the service was terminated in 1985.

In fact, the Postal Service even tried to make e-mail illegal, but to no avail. You can’t fight the technology. Today, e-mail is ubiquitous but I still check my postal mailbox every day.

Many people carry cell phones, and some have even gone completely wireless, but a lot of folks still have their old landline phones, and have no plans to abandon them. I sure don’t. The two technologies exist side by side, and probably will for a long time to come.

The truth is that technologies old and new co-exist in our world. Maybe not always well, but they do nonetheless.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

I stopped off at a supermarket recently on my way to work to pick up some lunch for later in the day at my job.

Close to my newspaper’s current offices are two of the three basic food groups, McDonald’s and Taco Bell, but I like some variety in my eating, so occasionally I pick up a sandwich and stow it in the refrigerator in the cafeteria at work.

The store was busy, but you had to be deaf to not hear the cell phone conversation that was going on. A man in his 30s, with a child in tow, was pushing a shopping cart and walking through the store while talking on what seemed to be a business-related call.

The timbre of his voice was such that his words were carrying through about a quarter of the store, and people were stopping and staring as he obliviously walked up and down the aisles and talked about the work he was going to do.

The biggest complaint people make about cell phones is when someone is holding a conversation and they can hear it. I can’t understand why such phone users insist on such public phone conversations. I mean, they get all hopped up if the FBI is listening in, but it seems that it’s OK if it’s just strangers at the supermarket or mall.

Like many other people, I have a cell phone. When I use it I try to avoid having conversations in public places, preferring to either step outside or away from others, and keeping the call short.

I think that’s just common courtesy, and it seems that even the cell phone-using public agrees. Who wants all these strangers around you to know your business?

Despite the assertions of some, people conducting cell phone conversations is not a sign of the impending apocalypse, or the collapse of society, but I recently was struck by a brainstorm as to how to solve the problem.

When I was in electronics training in the Marines, I learned about “sidetone.” On radios and land-line telephones, a portion of the outgoing audio is tapped and run into the earpiece or headphones of the person speaking. When you can hear your own voice, you’re less likely to talk too loud so that everyone in a half-mile radius can hear about your adenoids.

Next time you’re on the landline phone, notice that you can hear your own voice as you’re talking. The inability to hear their own voice is why deaf people who can talk often talk too loud. I saw this one time on a TV show, and the person was almost shouting. When you can hear your own voice, you tend to “keep it down.”

More use of sidetone on cell phones might be the key to cutting down the loudness of conversations, and might even lessen the calls for restrictions on cell phones.

Oftentimes, I voluntarily leave my cell phone in the car when I’m going to the movies or some other public event, not just because I don’t want to annoy others but because I don’t want to lose it. Also, I’m so unimportant a person that I doubt anyone will call me anyway.

Maybe someday, in the future, more people will see the cell phone as something that doesn’t have to be carried all the time.

Cell phones are marvelous conveniences, but if they’re not used with respect to others, they can quickly become annoyances.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

I dread Thursday mornings.

Not because it’s the end of my midweek “weekend,” a consequence of being low person on the totem pole of the newspaper copy desk, but because Thursday is the day when my neighborhood erupts into a cacophony of sound from 7:30 in the morning until mid-afternoon.

It’s “lawn-care” day at the town house development I live in.

Now I’m all for good lawn care, and admire those who can make grass grow, because I sure as heck can’t, but in this modern day and age of high-speed Internet access, hybrid vehicles and automatic cat-litter boxes, can someone tell me just why we have to have lawn maintenance equipment that can wake not only the living, but the dead as well?

Every Thursday, it’s the same thing: An infernal racket of various tools, each louder than the last, powered by two-cycle gas engines that, when revved for cutting, turn bucolic quiet into an urban nightmare.

The worst is that, for a grand finale of sorts, the crews then fan out with blowers that are loudest of all to blow the clippings back into the grass or, failing that, onto any cars that are around.

It’s also bad for the lawn service people, many of whom walk around wearing hearing protection and sometimes walk into the street, unaware of cars that might be passing by.

Some communities are fighting back with noise ordinances or prohibitions against early morning or evening lawn work, but a better way would be to invent quieter equipment.

If we can hit a comet with a space probe, can’t we invent something to quiet all this lawn equipment?

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

My brother Robert has redone the blogs, so I will be updating mine with random thoughts and ideas as they come up.

I changed jobs in October 2004, and the newspaper I work at is not running any of my writing (except for brilliant headlines) so the material here will not have been published in any newspaper.

If you have any comments, questions or complaints, drop me a line at vsafuto@comcast.net.

Thanks so much for reading. And now … my first brief commentary.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush recently vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature called the “road rage” bill. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the bill would have “forc[ed] slow drivers out of the fast lanes of Florida highways” (May 20, 2005).

The issue, the article continued, was whether to write into law a requirement that a driver move over for a faster vehicle coming up from behind.

In Florida, this is a major thing as the highways have gotten more and more crowded. The stereotype is that most of the drivers are grandparents cruising at 55 mph or lower in Grand Marquises, but the reality is that there are lots of diverse people driving lots of different vehicles, and some are in a bigger hurry than others – a much bigger hurry.

Florida’s Highway Patrol is pretty much a joke, with too few officers and too much highway to watch. The posted speed limit is 70 on roads like I-95 and I-75 – lower where the roads pass through or near some cities – but a segment of the population mostly ignores the limits and just drives at whatever speed it wants, unmolested by law enforcement.

I have experienced the terror of getting on a highway, setting the cruise control to 70 mph or whatever the speed limit is, and watching traffic whiz past. You name it, from econoboxes to sedans to SUVs to 18-wheelers, many ignore the posted speed limit, and almost all get away with it.

Indeed, the law, which ostensibly would have made life less frustrating for those who are speeding and thus lowered road rage, was supported by law enforcement as well as the Florida House and Senate.

I, for one, think that what’s needed is to go one step further, and simply create an “autobahn” lane, and I even have a name for it: the “SUV lane.”

Granted, not all SUV drivers are speeders, and a lot of speeders are not in SUVs, but it just seems to be a twist of fate that whenever you’re doing 70, or 75, or 80 in the left lane, there’s someone behind you who wants to go faster and wants you out of his way – NOW!

Along with lights flashing and horns blaring, there’s bird flipping as you search for a gap in traffic so you can move over. Meanwhile, the vehicle behind you is practically in the back seat of your vehicle.

Invariably, though, the most obnoxious vehicles are the SUVs, hence the name. I thought one day when I was dodging speeding Explorers, Blazers and Durangos that SUVs could come with a “tailgating” package, consisting not of the means to have a party before a football game but rather an oversize chrome bumper, lights of various colors and a three-tone horn for those too wrapped up in Mantovani to see or hear the other accoutrements of the package and get out of the way.

In the SUV lane, though, speeding would be required, and people can take their vehicles to the limit of their engines’ capacity – and fuel tank’s capacity, too.

One of my favorite things to do is to hold up three fingers on both hands as the SUVs rocket past me, which symbolizes my car’s gas mileage: 33 on the highway. Let’s see a Hummer beat that.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.