Fifteen minutes into the movie Mean Girls, this woman strolls into the movie theatre, pressing an infant to her chest with one hand, and a cell phone to her ear with the other. She shuffles across an entire aisle full of people to get to her seat (which happens to be my aisle), crosses in front of me, then plops down right next to me to continue her conversation. The baby coos at me. I shoot a dirty look at it in the dark.

I could probably have tapped the woman on the shoulder and asked her to be quiet, ensuring two hours of mutual scowling awkwardness between us.

Or (I actually thought), if I wanted to do it guerilla-style, I could have discreetly turned on my SH066PL2A cell phone jamming device.

Sitting in the theater, I didn’t know whether such devices were commercially available, but listening to the woman babble, I thought, “Wow. What a retail coup that would be! Cell phone jamming!”

Some quick Google-fu reveals that, although illegal in the U.S., jamming is pretty popular across the Atlantic. This Slate article says it won’t stay underground for long, even here. (U.S. customers are the biggest foreign market for the personal jamming devices, according to the article.)

I think if I had access to such a technology, I couldn’t bring myself to use it. But I wonder. And I wonder what society will do when our ability to intrude on the “private” spaces of total strangers gets even more virtual.

This New Yorker article, essentially a hagiography of an Illinois politician, brought out in me a cynicism about the American political process I didn’t even know I had. The politician in question, Barack Obama, is half-black, grew up in Middle America, rose from modest circumstances to become a star at Harvard and teach law at UChicago, and claims to want to practice clean, civil, on-the-issues politics. Why am I so skeptical of this guy? Some grafs:

Abner Mikva told me,

I posted this to the Young Journalists listserv, and thought I’d ask you savvy, snarky young consumers of media as well:

Scroll through any of the numerous rants about the state of journalism you can easily find online, and it’ll likely be peppered with barbs about journalism “nowadays,” how the news media is “no longer” worthy of (fill in the unworthy thing). Search Google for the phrase “our media has become,” and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Which is, to get to the point, that critics of the media reflexively conjure this golden age of journalism. If it exists, I’d love to know more about it. The uber-example of fantastic journalism that I always hear about is Watergate — the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Woodie and Bernie, etc. But were those isolated examples indicative of an entirely different age or attitude in journalism? Were they surrounded by similar shining cases of media-as-watchdog? And I can’t imagine that when the WaPo ran the Watergate series, millions of fans of Nixon weren’t decrying how evil, monomaniacal, liberal, sensationalistic, what-have-you, the media had become.

Is “nowadays” just a figure of speech?

I don’t think it can be argued that recent years have seen huge corporate consolidation among our traditional media outlets, and that journalism has in many ways suffered as a result, but it strikes me that the burgeoning power of non-traditional, independent media is beginning to act as a tremendous counterweight to that consolidation. (I don’t JUST mean blogs, either.) We’ve gotten to the point where our individual readers, who claim fealty to no company, have appointed themselves watchdogs of individual journalists, and these independent meta-journalists actually accrue sizeable audiences of their own, in some cases bigger than the audiences of many mid-sized dailies.

In other words, newspapers and local tv stations are experiencing increasing corporate consolidation, yes, but they’re also making up a smaller and smaller part of our media landscape, especially among our generation.

To push the question even further, can anyone point to ANY PRESS, in any country, at any point in history that truly fulfilled the ideal of the media as servant of the people, ethical watchdog, beacon of goodness, etc.? What is the ideal we’re striving for?

In Norway, I’m told (might be Sweden, might be the Netherlands), news companies demand far smaller profit margins from their products than our companies do here in America, and their papers are much more widely read. Correlation, not causation, of course, but is it that the media in Norway produces journalism that’s singularly excellent in all the world?

There are pockets of stunning media brilliance and bravado all over the world, in much more dangerous and corrupt quarters than America, where daring individuals publish their works on secret presses and distribute them under fear of death. But one can’t deny that there are numerous examples of powerful, courageous journalism in the pockets of America, too.

Here I am, checking out The New York Times’ multimedia feature on garden furniture design, when I come across the following paragraph:

The classic garden bench has been reinvented. Stones, near right, by Maya Lin are made of fiberglass-reinforced concrete in three sizes, $356 to $1,156; from Knoll, www.knoll.com…

WTWWJDF??! Maya Lin, the legend, the 20 year-old second-generation American girl who probably did as much as any other artist to catapult this country into the age of modern art, the paragon of artistic integrity who etched sorrow into smooth black stone, Maya Lin is designing garden furniture?!?

Oh, but it’s true. And it doesn’t end there.

Lin’s latest corporate work reflects the themes she has developed in her 20-year career. Her Winter Garden for American Express has a water wall that offers soothing sounds and a floor that undulates like a hillside meadow. The flowing spaces in her apartment for Peter Norton, founder of software maker Norton Utilities, can be zoned off with sliding partitions, much like a traditional Japanese house. Her wall in the lobby of the headquarters of the Principal Financial Group has a creek running through it, an open invitation to feel the flowing water.

Rolling hills inspired Lin’s curvilinear lounge chair, which also conforms to the contours of the human body. Non-Western objects, such as Chinese porcelain pillows and African headrests, were models for Lin’s collection for Knoll Inc., the office-furnishings maker. The collection, called Stones, consists of seats and a coffee table made of precast concrete.

Well, if I was a bit taken aback at first, I, for one, have already mellowed. The pictures of Lin’s unembellished artistry, paired with the soothing words and phrases of Corporate America — “Aveda,” “Principal Financial Group,” “curvilinear lounge chair” — have proved an opiate to my disquiet. After all, artists must make money, right? And it’s better, isn’t it, that the corporatists should have rolling oceanic sculptures for their art than gawky metallic polluto-machines made from the fledglings of endangered species? And with her line of lawn chairs, Lin’s art won’t just be for the elite, but available to the masses, which is a plus, right? Right?

Too bad while Robin’s in L.A. he won’t be able to catch the sold out performance of selected works from the score of the Final Fantasy video game series, by the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

I’ve talked before about my love for Final Fantasy IV (II in US), but how could I get away without mentioning my love for its music? Before video games could signal emotion with actual, recognizable facial expressions (when “faces” were a few murky pixels on a 16-bit, or God forbid, 8-bit screen), the music heroically took the place of the visuals in directing us how to feel. This was usually a bad thing, of course — those midi files always teetered on the edge of being cloying and obvious.

But especially with the music of Nobuo Uematsu from Final Fantasy, the themes often had a beautiful subtlety to them. And I think Uematsu did some of his best work in Final Fantasy IV. The game’s story was so wonderfully over-the-top — it was honestly the apotheosis of epic in 16 beautiful bits. Pick a theme, any theme, it’s in there. The quest for ultimate knowledge — Adam and Eve and the Manhattan Project (“I am become death, destroyer of worlds”) — played itself out in Tellah’s quest for Meteo, the Spell to end all Spells, and the “King of Baron’s” pursuit of the sacred crystals. Folly of the elderly leads to the death of the young? You know, Daedalus and Icarus, Romeo and Juliet — look no further than Palom and Porom, the pint-size twin magicians who turn themselves to stone to save the other adventurers, or Anna and Edward, the young pair whose love is sacrificed to Tellah’s fury. Oh, and there’s a ton more — the quest for self-redemption, avenging the death of a parent, you name it.

My point is that the music had to be pretty nimble to handle all this drama. Uematsu had to go from Wagner to Brahms in the blink of an eye … and he did. Take, for example, what’s probably my favorite piece of video game music ever — the Red Wings theme. It’s an anthemic military march — in a minor key. Follow the melody as it crests and falls towards its sad, sweet high note, falls again into that ominous rat-tat-tat, then explodes into the dissonant, aggressive coda that doesn’t really resolve so much as suffer a heart attack. Once you’ve got a handle on that melody, check out where Uematsu reprises it in “Suspicion” and the beginning of “Cry In Sorrow.”

OK, I’m done showing you cheesy midi files. But clearly other people love Uematsu’s stuff, too. This isn’t the first time Nobuo Uematsu‘s work will be performed with instruments:

The first FINAL FANTASY symphony concert was held in Japan in February of 2002, performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. The sold-out concert led to a six-city, seven-show concert series titled “Tour de Japon – music from FINAL FANTASY -” which will be held this coming March and April throughout Japan. The Czech National Symphony Orchestra also performed some of Uematsu’s compositions in the Symphonic Game Music Concert held in Leipzig, Germany in 2002.

In February 2003, Uematsu formed a group called “The Black Mages,” producing a self-titled album composed of FINAL FANTASY battle music arranged in rock style. Uematsu himself performs as the keyboardist.

As video games have gotten better at feeding you emotions through graphics, sometimes even through rumble packs, the music tends more towards subtle tone-setting with occasional moments of pop/rock, which is probably the stuff the L.A. Philharmonic will be taking on.

Another example of undeniable masterpiece in video game music: the theme from the original Super Mario Bros.

If there’s one story I can’t imagine writing as a journalist, it’s this — the hounding-of-the-family-members-after-someone-commits-an-atrocity story:

In one image, Private England is clenching a cigarette between her teeth while giving a thumbs-up in front of naked Iraqi prisoners. In another that became public on Thursday, she is holding a leash attached to a naked prisoner’s neck.

The photographs have left her family and friends aghast and searching for answers. They are convinced that she would never have thought up anything so cruel on her own and that she must have been following orders.

Of course they are. Few families walk around suspecting their own of harboring despotic tendencies. What are they going to say? “That Lynndie. She always tortured insects and small mammals as a kid. I knew no good would come of it.”

Not a comforting thought, but we are all probably much more capable of atrocious behavior than we can imagine. Another article in today’s NYT recalls a 30-year-old study:

In 1971 researchers at Stanford University created a simulated prison in the basement of the campus psychology building. They randomly assigned 24 students to be either prison guards or prisoners for two weeks.

Within days the “guards” had become swaggering and sadistic, to the point of placing bags over the prisoners’ heads, forcing them to strip naked and encouraging them to perform sexual acts.

The landmark Stanford experiment and studies like it give insight into how ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, do horrible things

Because I’m back, and having been away for a while I felt the need to do a public service to the world of the Internet, and I love magazine journalism, here are all the links I could find to the articles nominated for a National Magazine Award. (Compiled before I realized Cursor did the exact same thing, only not for all the categories. D’oh!) No link means I couldn’t find it online; if you can, tell me. Whenever possible, I’ve linked to any free version I could find online (even the ghetto ones), but if it’s in brackets, you need a subscription to view it.

Finalists (winners marked with asterisk)

PERSONAL SERVICE:

Consumer Reports

– How safe is your hospital?

– Decoding your hospital bills

Men’s Health

– A tale of 3 hearts

– 100 ways to live forever

– Death by exercise

Psychotherapy Networker

– Living on purpose

Self

– Healthy breasts for life!

Time Out New York

– Your new apartment: from hunting to housewarming

LEISURE INTERESTS:

Bon Appetit

– Thanksgiving starts here

Consumer Reports

– Veterinary care without the bite

Esquire

– The $20 theory of the universe (PDF)

National Geographic Adventure

– Ultimate America

Outside

– The 25 (essential) books for the well-read explorer

REPORTING:

The Atlantic

– Columbia’s last flight

Institutional Investor

– [Misdirected brokerage]

The New Yorker

– The David Kelly affair

Rolling Stone

– The killer elite

Time

– The sum of two evils

– The secret collaborators (PDF)

– [Life behind enemy lines]

PUBLIC INTEREST:

The Atlantic Monthly

– The dark art of interrogation

BusinessWeek

– Is your job next?

– The rise of India

The New Yorker

– Lunch with the chairman

– Selective intelligence

– The stovepipe

Newsweek

– The $87 billion money pit

Self

– Pharmacy fakes

The Washington Monthly

– Malpractice makes perfect

FEATURE WRITING:

Esquire

– The league of extraordinary gentlemen (PDF)

– The falling man

Men’s Journal

– The first to die

The New Yorker

– The marriage cure

Popular Science

– Yesterday, they would have died

PROFILE WRITING:

The American Scholar

– [The Arctic hedonist]

The Atlantic Monthly

– Wynton’s blues

Esquire

– [The confession of Bob Greene]

Nest

– Francis Gabe’s self-cleaning house

The New Yorker

– Newshound

ESSAYS:

GQ

– The vulgarian in the choir loft

Men’s Journal

– Me and the X-man

Natural History

– The pleasure (and pain) of “maybe”

The New Yorker

– A sudden illness

– The end matter

COLUMNS AND COMMENTARY:

Governing

– Devolution’s double standard

– Republicans behaving badly

– Machine politics

New York Magazine

– Live from Doha

– My big fat question

– Al Jazeera’s edge

The New Yorker

– Down to earth

– Building nations

– Rush in rehab

Newsweek

– Here’s a bet for Mr. Rumsfeld

– And he’s head of intelligence?

– No way to make friends

Sports Illustrated

– Fear and clothing in Atlanta

– My big fat sports wedding

– [Yule be amazed]

REVIEWS AND CRITICISM:

The Atlantic Monthly

– The wifely duty

– Housewife confidential

– Let’s call the whole thing off

Esquire

– [Increasingly berserk developments]

– [Back to the Terminator]

– [Mr. Uncongeniality]

The Nation

– [Paint it black]

– [Vision of the sublime]

– The abstract impressionist

The New Yorker

– The thin envelope (supposedly, doesn’t work for me)

– The devil’s disciples (again, supposedly)

– After the revolution (you know the drill)

– Glacier head

– Playing for immortality

– Borrowed culture

FICTION:

The Atlantic Monthly

– Happy hour

– We have a pope!

– Yao’s chick

– What is visible

– Monstress

– Ghost-birds

Esquire

– [Presence]

– [The red bow]

– [Rest stop]

The New Yorker

– A rich man

– Runaway

– Debarking

Paris Review

– Immortality

– The final solution

– Letter from the last bastion

Zoetrope All-Story

– The phrenologist’s dream

– The smoothest way is full of stones

– [The only meaning of the oil-wet water]

PHOTO PORTFOLIO/PHOTO ESSAY:

National Geographic

– 21st century slaves

– Inhuman profit (sample)

Outside

– Tigers of the snow

Texas Monthly

– [Cuts above]

Time

– A soldier’s life

Vogue

– Alice in wonderland

W

– The Kate Moss portfolio

Some things you don’t explain. This would be one of them. Play around with it for a bit, but I’ll point you to some of my favorites.

This is all from the cruel mind of Don Hertzfeld, an animator who’s worked with the likes of Mike Judge and Bill Plympton to bring us The Animation Show.

And speaking of illustration, congrats to Robin, who completed his 24-hour comic, in case you didn’t see it.

Am I late to a now-tired Web meme? Because Subservient Chicken is really funny.

BTW, wow. Just, wow.

(Via Wiahd.)

You know that bit in my last post about people being all gung ho about a technology at first, then glimpsing the consequences of its misuse and reflexively banning not the misuse, but the technology?

That goes double for DDT, by the way.