Notes from Underdog.

A handy list of Koch Brothers products to boycott (and why).

First, here's some information on why you should not give money to the Koch Brothers:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/01/147376/koch-polluter-bailout/

And related links:

• On First Day Of New Congress, Koch Operatives Met With GOP Chairman Planning To Gut The Clean Air Act
• Exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution
• Polluter-Funded Groups Spending Almost $70 Million On Anti-Clean Energy Ads
• Koch-Funded Book Argues Against Mine Safety Laws In West Virginia
• Koch-Funded Oil Rally Calls Global Warming A 'Hoax,' Dismisses Oil Spill, And Attacks Democrats
• 'Grassroots' Opposition To Clean Energy Reform Bankrolled By Foreign Oil, Petro-Governments (Updated)
• A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating: How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured 'Climategate'
• Right-Wing Billionaire David Koch Funding SwiftBoat Campaign Against Global Warming Science

Second, here are links to other sites with more information on their products:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/boycott-koch-brothers-products-where-to-start.php

http://inspirationgreen.com/koch-brothers-products.html

Third, here's a summary of their main products - mostly paper goods - to not purchase. Print out and save! Send to your friends! Post on your fridge! Use instead of Koch Brothers' toilet paper!  I'll be the first to admit it's sadly nearly impossible to avoid their products in some form -- whether it's gasoline for your car or the construction materials in your home -- you've probably even unwittingly got or will continue to use one of their products. But this is a start, and if nothing else, for peace of mind it's helpful to know you're not giving your hard-earned money to them. 

THE LIST:

Koch Industry Gasoline: 

Chevron 
Union
Union 76
Conoco

Koch Industry/Georgia-Pacific Products:

• Angel Soft toilet paper
• Brawny paper towels
• Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
• Mardi Gras napkins and towels
• Quilted Northern toilet paper
• Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper
• Sparkle napkins
• Vanity fair napkins
• Zee napkins 

Koch Industry/Invista Products:

COMFOREL® fiberfill 
COOLMAX® fabric 
CORDURA® fabric 
DACRON® fiber 
POLYSHIELD® resin 
SOLARMAX® fabric 
SOMERELLE® bedding products 
STAINMASTER® carpet 
SUPPLEX® fabric 
TACTEL® fiber 
TACTESSE® carpet fiber 
TERATE® polyols 
TERATHANE® polyether glycol 
THERMOLITE® fabric 
PHENREZ® resin 
POLARGUARD® fiber and 
LYCRA® fiber

Georgia Pacific Building products

Dense Armor Drywall and Decking 
ToughArmor Gypsum board 
Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood 
Flexrock 
Densglass sheathing 
G/P Industrial plasters (some products used by a lot of crafters)- 
Agricultural Plaster 
Arts & Crafts Plaster 
Dental Plaster 
General Purpose Plaster 
Glass-reinforced Gypsum (GRG) 
Industrial Tooling Plaster 
Investment Casting Plaster 
Medical Plaster 
Metal Casting Plaster 
Pottery Plaster

FibreStrong Rim board 
G/P Lam board 
Blue Ribbon OSB Rated Sheathing 
Blue Ribbon Sub-floor 
DryGuard Enhanced OSB 
Nautilus Wall Sheathing 
Thermostat OSB Radiant Barrier Sheathing 
Broadspan Engineered Wood Products 
XJ 85 I-Joists 
FireDefender Banded Cores 
FireDefender FS 
FireDefender Mineral Core 
Hardboard and Thin MDF including Auto Hardboard, 
Perforated Hardboard and Thin MDF 
Wood Fiberboard - 
Commercial Roof Fiberboard 
Hushboard Sound Deadening Board 
Regular Fiberboard Sheathing 
Structural Fiberboard Sheathing

 

 

Wondering out loud...about LA-bashing.

Watching the Lakers being dismantled by the Celtics in Game 6 of the NBA finals - and congrats to the Celtics, this Lakers fan can admit they were the better team and deserved their championship - but hearing a few rounds of "Beat LA" during the game made me start wondering aloud about where the tradition of that chorus comes from. I hear it much more often here in San Francisco, as a Dodger fan in "enemy territory" (and I say that good-naturedly). It makes sense here, in a way, because of the longtime Dodger-Giants rivalry, and the geographic proximity the two cities have. But as one who has lived in both southern California, including LA for two years, and for a long time San Francisco I can vouch for the fact that they are much more vociferous about hating Los Angeles up here than they are in LA about SF. Angelenos tend to not care very much. Sure, Dodger fans hate the Giants, but it rarely becomes about the city.

And then with Boston of course a lot of it comes from the long historic rivalry the LA Lakers and Celtics have had over the years, going back to the 60s and up through pretty much every decade except the last one. There's been some bad blood, animosity between the teams, that's spilled over to the fans and that's just part of that tradition. But a lot of it stems from stereotypes people have about LA, and the hatred starts to get beyond reason.

Those stereotypes are played up in the media; you can see it when the Lakers play on TV. There's the celebrity montage, cameras finding whatever celebrity they can find in the crowd, playing up the Hollywood angle. (Of course, there were about as many celeb Celtic fans seen in Boston this series, but because LA = Hollywood, it makes sense that people would have the stereotype that most Laker fans are movie stars.)  There's the "LA is a horrible place to live" stereotype and "people who live there have had their minds rotted by too much sun and bleach" -again these stereotypes have a grain of truth to them (and Woody Allen would agree with both of them), but they get played up beyond reason  to where people are almost rabid in both their beliefs and their hatred.

There were a few columns written by Bill Simmons on ESPN about LA vs. Boston that are so contemptible (and basically meant to be, as sportswriter Simmons switches to his fan hat and tosses journalistic integrity out the window in an attempt to stir up the masses) that I won't even link to them here. You can search and find them.  But they're just an example of that sort of crass, almost propagandistic one-dimensionalizing of LA.

But Los Angeles and its people make up such a complex place, it's huge, it's almost mind-boggingly diverse. And even though the film industry is absolutely one of the major employers in the place, and proudly so, the majority of the people working in that industry are much more blue collar than people outside that world realize. Of course we just see the in-front of camera glamor and the famous directors, but the people who work in that field -- and I was one of those grunts -- are much more regular Joes (and Josephines). It's ethnically diverse: 44% non-white + 17% Hispanic, and is home to people from more than 140 countries speaking 224 different identified languages. (As Wikipedia notes:) Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Tehrangeles, Little India, Little Tokyo, and Thai Town provide examples of the polyglot character of Los Angeles. It's also home to an array of some of the nation's finest museums, an incredible  choice of music,  some of the finest restaurants in the world, many great universities, and so on. 

All that said, there admittedly were things about LA I couldn't stand, and I'm very happy living in the Bay Area (though I left LA to return to SF for a family illness, as well as a job offer, not directly because I hated LA), but San Francisco certainly has flaws, too. And I came to have some affection for Los Angeles after leaving it.

But "Beat LA" is a chant that isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and that's fine. I only hope people will leave it as a superficial sports thing and not carry it into the realm of irrational hatred and stereotyping. There's a smugness that I've seen from people  who don't live in LA about LA that only serves to reflect back on them.

Bloggers Under Attack! Next, on HBO.

UPDATE 5-5-08: I thought I'd put this at the top because it's important. While it doesn't fully make up for the depths to which he sunk on HBO (more below), Buzz Bissinger's interview on The Big Lead blog goes a long way to make up for it. He is contrite, apologetic, and what's more seems so much more open-minded about blogs, as well as admitting the danger of making sweeping generalizations, that it's almost a relief, especially to those many of us who were fans of his writing in the past. And he makes a good point about the overall dumbing-down of society as well as a general tone of mean-spiritedness and derision in public & media conversations these days (ironic, of course, considering his own behavior). But, still, it's a start.

-----

It's already fairly infamous, and frankly, as I'll point out below, many others have discussed it at length much more satisfyingly than I could at this point. But it ties in with what I've been thinking about for months anyway.

What am I talking about? The latest "attack" on the blogosphere from an Established Journalist™, in this case writer Buzz Bissinger going bananas on sports blogger Will Deitch (Deadspin) and all sports blogs and all bloggers who blog about everything, on Bob Costas Live. In fact, that ten minutes may be the low point of Bob Costas' career. The roundtable consisted of Bissinger, Deitch, and, oh yes, for no reason whatsoever, Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who has no connection to blogging but must have been booked to be on the show that day no matter what. It was all an utter embarrassment, but it's Bissinger, author of a fantastic book on football, "Friday Night Lights," who should be most ashamed of himself.

First, watch the video clip (partial, not the whole sequence).

Second, read:

Deadspin's reaction.

And for more>>>

A world of pain: A commentary on comments

You want to tap into the undercurrent of anger and hate running through American society in this age - and I don't know why you would, except out of masochism or a need to see whether I'm right - all you have to do is look at the comments that appear on a lot of popular news sites these days. I'm not talking blogs; I'm talking about a mainstream newspaper web site like SFGate, and on Sports sites like Yahoo! Sports (in their news/rumors section, which is basically a blog within their site). Reading through the comments in the former, on all walks of news stories - from a celebrity's death to the MSNBC comments on Chelsea Clinton (read the comments there and see if you don't believe me) - and you'll see all walks of commenter, but the general mood there is attack: attack the subject of the story, attack other commenters, attack the "left," childhish, churlish stuff even from people who are clearly adults, often even very intelligent adults. Reading through page after page of comments on any given popular story will leave you with a bad, bad taste in your mouth on the future of society. The Yahoo Sports comments will make you worry more about literacy than mood.

It's not just news sites; ever read through the posts on Craigslist, in some (not all) of the forums? One of my favorite sites since its inception and probably one of yours. While there continues to be a spirit of support and community running through many places on that site, there are many other discussion threads (both in their forums and in a sort of call and response that happen sometimes on the missed connections and so forth) in which people behave downright cruelly, anything but supportive. If that kind of thing is seen on a generally positive community-oriented site like CList, you can only imagine some of the frightening vitriol coming from fingers and keys of anonymous Americans elsewhere.

I don't mean to sound like a schoolmarm nor as a suppressor of free speech. It's more that I worry about this country's broken zeitgeist and how it manifests itself in the way people speak and treat each other online.

What causes this? A more laissez faire attitude towards manners and decorum? (As seen on TV?) General depression, despair, anxiety? Anger about the state of affairs? A president who said he was a uniter not a divider and then spent his entire 8 years in office doing nothing close to uniting any of us.

Red state, blue state, left, right, Black, White -- everyone's angry these days. Even with the light at the end of the tunnel, the genuine excitement and cautious hope that comes with this year's big election, the possibility for change, even with that comes more anxiety, more personal disappointments, financial hardship, job stress, safety, the environment, you'd think we could find more common ground, but instead we act as if we've met the enemy and it is "everyone else but me."

I don't know if this is anything more than a simple cry in the wilderness, a desire to see people treat other people with more respect, both in public and, just as much, in the more anonymous comfort of the internet. We can freely have arguments and debate - it's one thing that still makes this country great - but the hope here is that people realize there are ways of debating that require careful thought, some facts in your arsenal and a willingness to listen to an opposing point of view. And even if they're wrong (heh), a compassion for them as a fellow human being. Have we reached the point where we even have to ask for such a thing? Yes, we have. And it makes me sad.

The Strike Looms, and Gloom Strikes?

As you no doubt know, there's a great deal of buzz about the possibility of a writer's strike
in Hollywood, as soon as the beginning of next month. Even more likely, if that's delayed, is a strike on a larger scale, next June.  As noted on the Guardian UK, and Variety (via IGN-->): "The WGA had been expected to join forces with the DGA [Directors Guild of America] and the SAG [Screen Actors Guild] in the summer, rather than on November 1, when its current contract with studios expires. The possible strike is over royalties from sales of movies over the Internet and on DVD, which are not covered in the current deal between the various guilds." Today's Variety adds that a "possible lockout is also being discussed."

More on the Defamer, which looks for a silver lining: "While the looming™ possibility of a strike is certainly upsetting, it's still possible to find a silver lining streaking the clouds that would blanket Hollywood during the nuclear winter of a work stoppage. Even a quick scan of other stories of today's trade papers indicates that the studios will be making every effort to keep audiences entertained during a prolonged walk-out, rushing into production the kind of high-quality, Michael Bay-produced, recycled film projects that might have tragically languished in development hell without this newfound sense of urgency."

More from Variety (via Jon Weisman), on the effects specifically on the TV season.

 

So what does this all mean for people with scripts circulating out there at various studios? Will they have a better chance of getting a project greenlit soon, out of desperation, as studios panic into rushing projects forward to make sure they're covered next year? Or if it doesn't happen now, and then a strike does happen, will they be screwed into screenwriter purgatory for a long while?

Only time will tell, and I have no idea how this affects my own project floating out there - probably not very much given it's only being looked at independently right now - but my gut feeling is that a) a strike will happen, and then b) won't last more than a month.

Medved espouses on motherhood.

Ah, Michael Medved, you gotta love him. No, you really don't. But you gotta love Chris Kelly's takedown here:

Medved Minute 5/22: Motherhood

I become more and more convinced that "Michael Medved" is actually a Philip K. Dick character, living in a reality only tangentially related to ours, and haunted by mental problems only space drugs can control. ..Med. As in "Meds."

"Ved." As in "Vacuum Erectile Device."

These days "Michael Medved" is mad as hell at an interview Katherine Heigl gave USA Today where she said she wanted to adopt children rather than have a "gruesome birthing scene" like the one depicted in her upcoming Universal Pictures release Knocked Up.

Now, here on Earth One, most people- - even made-up film critics -- understand that "actresses" on "junkets" have to answer endless moronic questions as if they have a deep and special bond with their character in the project.
Read the whole thing...

His Majesty, the Dork.

Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States practicing his etiquette on Her Majesty the Queen.

    THE QUEEN

Whither Greensburg, Kansas?

    THE PREZ

Aw, they'll be fine.

    {winks}

Jack Valenti

Well I guess Jack Valenti's death today would be a tasteless time to recommend everyone watch Kirby Dick's This Film is Not Yet Rated...  So I won't.  Valenti was certainly an important man in 20th Century film history, there's no doubt about that.

Coultergeist Strikes and CNN Snoozes.

So the increasingly deranged Ann Coulter calls Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" at the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday, which was met with laughter and approval by the audience and captured for all the world to see by C-Span, and CNN ignores it.  (Go ahead, try and search their site for it.)  They were obviously too busy incessantly covering the Anna Nicole Smith burial saga, understandable, because nothing's really more import than that.

You can find write-ups on it at quite a few newspapers and their web sites, and online sites like Huffington Post and Monsters and Critics. But CNN and for that matter ABC and CBS - pretended it didn't happen. Couldn't find anything online at C-Span, either. Nothing on MSNBC, either. (They do have a piece on the object of Coulter's affection, Mitt Romney, and footage of a surfing golden retriever, however.)

The New York Times covered the conference in an article that even mentions Coulter - but fails to mention the slur. (Ironically, Fox News' web site did cover it.)

Now some may argue that the best way to get rid of someone like Coulter is to ignore her until she goes away - sort of like an imaginary monster can't exist without acknowledgment. However, the reaction to her comments is the story here - no apologies, no dismissal or disowning from the GOP, laughter from the audience. If a Democrat had said something hateful about one of the GOP candidates, you'd bet we'd have shock, horror and demands for an apology from the right. Instead, it's like it didn't happen. Pretending Ann Coulter doesn't exist is understandable; pretending the Republican party's schizophrenic beliefs and tolerance of the intolerant is not.

So the question is, what are they afraid of - the word "faggot"? Offending anyone who wasn't offended by the word "faggot"? Giving too much PR to Coulter? By acknowledging this story it means it exists? If an epithet is uttered at a conservative PAC meeting and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

What are they afraid of?

End note: MediaMatters reported on this and hearkened back to last year: As Media Matters for America documented, Coulter called former Vice President Al Gore a "total fag" on the July 27 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, claiming immediately that the comment was "a joke." At the end of the interview, host Chris Matthews said: "Thanks for coming on. And a smart lady. Her book's called Godless. Sometimes being smart isn't enough for a civil discourse. We'd love to have her back."

(Poor John Edwards: smeared in reality and smeared in virtual reality.)

This just gets better and better. Later at the CPAC, Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, said of Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq: "She's an idiot." (Link)

Update! Looks like the NY Times finally caught up with the story, whee. And a few other news sources, too, once GOP candidates started denouncing her comments. Well, that's a start anyway, even if it's hard to take seriously as long as they keep inviting Coulter to events.

Update 2! John Edwards' wife Elizabeth posted an perfectly worded response to all this on the Edwards campaign blog. Read this.

Open Letter Re: Oscar Nominated Docs

On the GC Daily, David reprinted Iraq in Fragments director John Sinno's open letter to the Academy irked about both the Oscar ceremony - and Seinfeld's jocular intro for the doc nominees - and the Academy's change in the rules for documentary Oscar consideration.

Open Letter (on GC Daily) >>

It's the latter, more than Jerry Seinfeld, that particularly worries me. Requiring documentaries to have played theatrically in 75% more cities than previously will make it nigh impossible for most of them to get a fair shake for an Oscar. What happened to the idea that the Oscars could help promote a deserving film, rather than making it a popularity contest for the few films that are fortunate enough to receive distribution? This is an unfortunate decision with broad ramifications, and, like Sinno, I hope the Academy reconsiders it.

As for Seinfeld introducing the category, I wondered how documentarians would take it - particularly those who were nominated this year. While his comments, to me, were humorous by themselves, they did seem a little callous - ranging from off topic to dismissive (though calling all the nominees "depressing" wasn't really that inaccurate, it dismisses their ability to move and change anyone who views them). However, I wouldn't blame Seinfeld; that's what he does.   Blame the Academy for having a comic introduce what may the most sober of categories compared, as Sinno points out, with how respectful the intros were for most of the other categories.

But again, this is less bothersome than is the Academy's decision to up the number of theatrical runs a doc needs in order to qualify. Up the Academy, I say.