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THE QUOTE
“You worry too much.” — Big Mike
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BIG DOINGS AT THE PENCIL’S WORLD HQ
I won’t be doing my usual thing here for the next four days or so. I’m gearing up for the long-awaited, many-times delayed marriage of this communications colossus with Bloomington’s venerable print and cultural institution, The Ryder magazine and film series.
That’s due to happen Wednesday, November 21st, when the Ryder’s new issue hits the streets. The Ryder’s redesigned website will debut that day as well. All I wanna say is, you’ll love it.
One of the main reasons you’ll swoon is that I’ll be Peter LoPilato’s online editor. I’ll be posting the Ryder’s stories, reviews, previews, and everything else that you normally get in the hard copy. I’ll also be shifting my GO! Events Listings to the Ryder site, only it’ll be called Event Horizon.
That’s Peter’s name for it and I’m cool with it. It inadvertently references an astrophysics phenomenon that science ultra-geeks might refer to as the Schwarzschild radius in some cases or as the Kerr or Kerr-Newman event horizon in others.
Basically, it’s a boundary around a stable black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape. Again, don’t worry — you’ll never be near one so you won’t have to check your life insurance policy to see if you’re covered.
Anyway, my plan is to dash off my Daily Hot Airs in quick order for the next several days so I can work on the new site, all the while planning for a mass invasion of Glabs into Bloomington for the holiday. So if my posts seem a tad terse, you’ll know why.
In fact, I may even miss a day if my work backs up too much.
Don’t worry; you’ll live.
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NO (STRONG) GIRLS ALLOWED
Here, I’m gonna let another guy do my work for me today.
Roger Ebert points out the sad demise of one of those great weekly alternative papers that many big and medium-sized cities have, the Niagara Falls Reporter in Buffalo, New York. Some new guy bought the paper from its founder and seems to have turned it into a weird right-wing vanity rag. The Reporter’s movie reviewer found himself being censored by the new publisher and asked why. After some digging and a lengthy trans-Atlantic phone call, the publisher sent the reviewer a Dear John email.
It is the template for the belief system of every man who was mortified by the reelection of Barack Obama. See, it wasn’t just racists, oligarchs, and plutocrats who wet their pants merely thinking about another four years of Obama. The president represents an entire sea-change in this holy land. The browns, the blacks, the Latinos, the homosexuals, and, perhaps most terrifying of all, the women are coming. The new demographics have delineated a terrifying event horizon and many men find themselves being sucked into the black hole of our future.
Don’t you just love how I tie things together?
So, just read the publisher’s email to his suddenly-former film reviewer, whose name is Michael Calleri. The email is reproduced exactly as written:
Michael; I know you are committed to writing your reviews, and put a lot of effort into them. it is important for you to have the right publisher. i may not be it. i have a deep moral objection to publishing reviews of films that offend me. snow white and the huntsman is such a film. when my boys were young i would never have allowed them to go to such a film for i believe it would injure their developing manhood. if i would not let my own sons see it, why would i want to publish anything about it?
snow white and the huntsman is trash. moral garbage. a lot of fuzzy feminist thinking and pandering to creepy hollywood mores produced by metrosexual imbeciles.
I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.
where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.
i believe in manliness.
not even on the web would i want to attach my name to snow white and the huntsman except to deconstruct its moral rot and its appeal to unmanly perfidious creeps.
i’m not sure what headhunter has to offer either but of what I read about it it sounds kind of creepy and morally repugnant.
with all the publications in the world who glorify what i find offensive, it should not be hard for you to publish your reviews with any number of these.
they seem to like critiques from an artistic standpoint without a word about the moral turpitude seeping into the consciousness of young people who go to watch such things as snow white and get indoctrinated to the hollywood agenda of glorifying degenerate power women and promoting as natural the weakling, hyena -like men, cum eunuchs.
the male as lesser in courage strength and power than the female.
it may be ok for some but it is not my kind of manliness.
If you care to write reviews where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character (if there are such movies being made) i will be glad to publish these.
i am not interested in supporting the reversing of traditional gender roles.
i don’t want to associate the Niagara Falls Reporter with the trash of Hollywood and their ilk.
it is my opinion that hollywood has robbed america of its manliness and made us a nation of eunuchs who lacking all manliness welcome in the coming police state.
now i realize that you have a relationship with the studios etc. and i would have been glad to have discussed this in person with you to help you segue into another relationship with a publication but inasmuch as we spent 50 minutes on the phone from paris i did not want to take up more of your time.
In short i don’t care to publish reviews of films that offend me.
if you care to condemn the filmmakers as the pandering weasels that they are…. true hyenas.
i would be interested in that….
Frank
You think Frank’s the only guy in this nation who thinks this way? Think again.
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