This Is Not News

I was reading a few newspapers today with reviews of the new Bridge to Terebithia movie. The reviews appear to be overwhelmingly positive, but there is no way you are getting me within ten feet of that movie even if you’re armed with a cattle prod and an offer of free cheesesteaks for life.

Spoiler Warning

I still remember reading the book, I believe in the summer between fourth and fifth grade; I’m not sure if any teacher had specifically recommended it, or I’d just heard about it, but I went through it at a pretty good clip. Kids create their own imaginary kingdom, what’s not to like? My summer camp took a day trip to Sesame Place, the theme park/water park in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I figured after I got home I’d finish the thing off. So I’m happily moving through the charming adventures and then all of a sudden

WHAM!

Everything goes horribly wrong. I remember continung to read, all of a sudden needing to get to the end, because there was no way the book was possibly going to actually turn out to be such a bummer, right? I was just stunned – the reading became a strangely joyless experience. I think it may well have been the first time I read a book where the good guys don’t get a happy ending; the closest thing to a downer I can remember is Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and even there the kid gets a new dog at the end of it to make him feel better.

(Side note: speaking of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Judy Blume is responsible for my other childhood book not-what-I-was-expecting story. When I was around 10, my mother picked up some Blume books at a garage sale, without checking which books she was buying. She knew my teachers had read Fourth Grade Nothing and Superfudge, so she figured Blume was a safe choice. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I ended up reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.)

I was in quite a funk the rest of that day. So while it’s a fine book and I hope the movie is quite successful, there ain’t no way I’m gonna go poke harder at that memory and bring that back up. Some lessons I don’t feel the need to learn a second time.

Wow, this is neat news. Keith Olbermann has not only re-upped to keep doing his Countdown show at MSNBC, he’s going to be contributing essays to the NBC Nightly News and doing two prime time NBC specials a year.

I wonder if those essays for the network news will be along the lines of his Special Comments. I have to admit to a slight fear that the whole Special Comment thing has been watered down now that people are expecting it. This could very well be a silly concern on my part. But once they become something that you’re promoting for the next night’s show, there’s a certain sense of spontaneity that’s lost. Then again, Olbermann’s always said it takes him a while to get the words just right on those commentaries, and I gotta respect anyone who’s as passionate about words as he is.

The other thing that comes to my mind is that if this means we can look forward to more Chris Matthews/Olbermann tag teams on election coverage, I think someone’s head is going to a splode.

Over at his own blog, Not News contributor Earl Green has a post breaking down one of his video editing do it yourself experiments. Earl’s been doing TV editing and postproduction work for years now, but he recently managed to acquire some solid equipment for himself. It’s been a lot of fun for me to watch him try and take his game to new levels. I’ve always absorbed behind the scenes books and documentaries like a sponge, but I’ve never taken it to that next step and actually tried to do it, even as a lark. But I do find it amazing the way that technology can make things like video production and broadcasting a potentially living-room-based process. Then again, it’s also let me broadcast my own scribblings to the world, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, eh?

The train stations these days are plastered with posters for Tyler Perry’s upcoming movie Daddy’s Little Girls. What I found interesting were the first two lines of the promo copy:

She needs a good man.

He wants a smart woman.

Now, maybe this is me overthinking things. Wouldn’t be the first time. But look at the verbs there. She needs a good man – so she must be somehow incomplete or deficient without one. But the guy can apparently do without a smart woman – he only wants one. Hey, for all I know, the copywriters just didn’t want to repeat verbs. But unintended meanings are still meanings, and there’s an interesting message here about the different expectations that men and women face – and the different expectations they place on themselves.