Watching • Video Digest: June 6, 2008

Identity theft has become a crime epidemic—so how is it that 10 years ago, the phrase had yet to be coined? The internet and the rise of online banking are why: an easily exploitable, easily anonymizable window into the lives, and particularly the banking habits, of others.




Especially timely is the story of Jocelyn Kirsch and Edward Anderton, “the Bonnie and Clyde of identity theft,” the most scandalous news from Philadelphia since… well, it is extremely scandalous. It’s the story of a terribly attractive young couple fulfilling their dreams of luxury clothing and exotic vacations and life in the society pages. The problem was that they were funding it with credit cards taken out in their neighbors’ names, bank cards stolen from friends and strangers, fake checks from nonexistent accounts, and lies, countless lies. Jocelyn and Edward were finally caught in December of 2007 after a solid year of living the life of the rich and fraudulent.




Phishing is such a common concern that PayPal is threatening to ban Apple’s Safari, one of the top three most popular web browsers, due to its lack of phishing notification. But this is shortsighted—phishing is fundamentally a social engineering exploit. Wait, wait, social engineering? Well, yes. Facebook is full of security holes, and chances are you aren’t taking half the measures you can to protect yourself there.




Technological browser enhancements may make things a bit better, but the only real solution is education. Sadly, the financial institutions whose data is most often phished are as ignorant as their customers. As numerous reluctant press releases in the last few years have shown, financial institutions are unwilling even to acknowledge the problem, let alone address it.




Granted, Nigerians did mastermind that operation, but even the local news knows that you don’t need to have intelligence, cunning, or even a computer to perpetuate credit card fraud: all you’ve got to do is have someone else’s credit card.




Remember, “Identity” doesn’t have to mean bank account and/or social security numbers. What happens when someone is pretending to be you?




But seriously, you don’t have to be smart at all to pull off a little credit card fraud.




The ease with which goons worldwide succeed in invading our lives through our computers is enough to drive a person crazy. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as The Strongman ably demonstrates.




In sum, identity theft: totally scary.




 —Meave Gallagher, Jun. 6, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: May 30, 2008

The economic outlook’s been pretty bleak this year, what with the tanking housing market and the mess it made on Wall Street, and ordinary Americans are losing their jobs. Worse, even extraordinary Americans are being forced out on the street, with not so much as a cardboard box to carry their personal items home.

It seems the only people with any job security are gas and oil company employees. Here’s a little advice, future adults of these United States: trade school. Though gasoline may not be as expensive by weight as beer or coffee, prices are still on the rise. Which means experienced pipe layers in the petroleum refinery industry can pull six-figure salaries these days.



When a person is laid off, downsized, or forced into early retirement, and has no other job lined up, what happens next? What are we doing with all the free time suddenly presented to us? Some are learning new skills to stay solvent: such as recycling for profit.



Others are losing their minds, and protesting in very dangerous places.



Even others still are spending money on career coaches, hoping their advice can offer an advantage—despite all evidence to the contrary.



All the unemployed “hurt puppies,” are learning all over again how to sell themselves in a job market that keeps shrinking.



Speaking of humor therapy, some of the unemployed are celebrating their unemployment, learning to smile when turned down for a position and roll with every punch to the gut.



The longtime jobless—those out of work for more than 26 weeks—focus on filling their empty days, with tweaker-like intensity on minute tasks and developing mild agoraphobia.



Some are feeling conflicted about receiving government money.



The most pragmatic are sending out résumés in between movie marathons on the couch in their pajamas.



But don’t worry; even without insurance, anti-anxiety medication is cheap, and the doctors at free clinics can write you a nice, soothing prescription to take the edge off. Look on the bright side: Even the Great Depression came to an end and the current straights aren’t nearly so dire.

 —Meave Gallagher, May. 30, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: May 23, 2008

Perhaps inspired by TMN’s Matthew Baldwin’s Sesame Street-themed muxtape, or the birth of my boyfriend’s nephew, I’ve been thinking a lot about kids. Babies specifically, though still in that “maybe I’d rather adopt a puppy” sort of way; my maternal instincts remain sufficiently vague for the present. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I had any until after a stint as an au pair. Five minutes making faces with a toddler on the bus is about all I need right now.

Photos of children make it frighteningly easy to idealize them, all the unpleasant things about them—hyperactivity, recalcitrance, the inexplicable tears of the preverbal—fading away before their huge eyes and funny smiles. This rarely happens with child actors, who often come across as caricatures of themselves. However much this creepy stage-father wants “to preserve that genuine quality [his son] always had,” even at his most candid, Mason Reese gives the uncomfortable impression of being an adult in an eight-year-old boy’s ridiculous clothes.




Compared to the ice cream cake man-child, there’s less artifice in this parental lecture on doll ownership by a “young mother”; no one ever told her to relax and “act natural.”




On that note, when former child stars grow up and have child stars of their own, sometimes these children grow up to sing duets about crazy, overbearing stage mothers. Although, as Liza vehemently notes, this song IS NOT ABOUT their mother. SHE JUST LIKED IT, OK?




One of Sesame Street’s big features is singing, especially when famous singers perform their hit songs—slightly adjusted for more kid-friendly themes. Especially memorable to me is Smokey Robinson’s rendition of “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” starring the letter U as baby’s first stalker. The whole thing is so creepy, would this spot even make it on the air today?




With the goody-goody messages (however relevant) of today’s kids’ songs, probably not.




As far I remember, some of the most normal kids on television were the actors on You Can’t Do That on Television. Granted, they did not all turn out to be the most normal adults, but who could tell how weird they might be with all the other insanity going on around them.




There’s no reason to include this crazy Japanese potty-training video, if only to compare it to the bland inoffensiveness of Once Upon a Potty. The enthusiasm is much catchier than those quiet little humans and their quiet little kiddy-toilet non-adventures, and who doesn’t want a bilingual child these days?




 —Meave Gallagher, May. 23, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: May 16, 2008

When I was a crazy teenager, my mom read my journals to try to find out “what was really going on” (just like Rufus Humphrey did to Jenny on Gossip Girl). When my parents thought my brother was a teenage pothead, they searched his room, too (just like Lily van der Woodsen did to Serena on Gossip Girl. That show is so true to life). As furious as I was, that’s nothing, absolutely nothing compared to how the federal government and the communications corporations have been spying on possibly every single person with a computer. The private sector has gotten in on this as well, companies that didn’t—as far as we know—participate in information collection for Bush and Cheney. Espionage: not just for the Executive Branch!

“Domestic Eavesdropping”—ha! It sounds so precious. Uncle Dick and Lil’ Georgie listening at doors, putting glasses up to walls, their eyes popping when they hear something salacious. But, nope. Welcome back to the White House, Watergate thieves; it hasn’t been nearly as evil or untrustworthy around here without you. Please take this piece of the Constitution, for your personal use as handkerchief, toilet tissue, ear swab, etc.





Remember this gem from a couple years ago? The president isn’t spying on anyone, geez; he’s monitoring Terrorist Communications! That you may be sending and/or receiving! What are you afraid of the government finding? Anything you wouldn’t want your own government to know about, you probably shouldn’t have, anyway, pervert.





Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower: “The entire data stream [phone calls, email, internet use] was copied into [AT&T’s] secret room. The splitter device has no selective capability; it just copies everything. We’re talking domestic traffic, as well as international traffic, and that’s what got me upset to begin with…Here I am, being forced to connect the Big Brother machine.”





Since the idea that a secret organization is monitoring our internet use applies to everyone by now, it’d be nice if they were a little more open about it. Then we could at least acclimate ourselves to this complete lack of privacy.





The conflict between the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Burger King, which the corporation escalated by planting spies in the S.F.A., began because Burger King refused to pay the C.I.W. one cent more per pound of tomatoes they picked. What will happen when farm workers are able to unionize? Big Food will do whatever it takes to keep those prices low; hiring an investigator implicated in an extra-creepy murder to keep tabs on one local group is, well, small potatoes.





And of course, all the crazy ways you can get burned using Facebook. Now even your friends who don’t add applications can suffer from identity theft (whoops). So if you would please stop asking me to play games or plant gardens with you, maybe we could socially network without feeling actively threatened by spyware, pirates, and Nigerian princes?





Don’t forget, Google knows everything about you. The question is, which is worse: every bit of information about you, in every conceivable form, from birth until death, in the hands of the federal government, or a private corporation? Or, of course, both.




 —Meave Gallagher, May. 16, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: May 9, 2008

I hear April was a good month for viral video. Having spent the majority of it in New Zealand, I missed all the good stuff, or so it seems. This week, a roundup of the more popular videos of the past few weeks.

Superstar Erykah Badu gives some (unsolicited?) advice for women trying to advance their careers in the music industry, which can be summed up in two words: Get naked.




Did you know that Republican presidential candidate John McCain is old? He was born in 1936! The next year, Amelia Earhart disappeared, and the Hindenberg exploded. Suspicious.




“My story begins in 19-dickety-two. We had to say ‘dickety’ because the Kaiser had stolen our word for ‘20.’ I chased him down the road but gave up after dickety-six miles…” Ladies and gentlemen, Grandpa Abe McCain.




Of course, neither Democratic presidential candidate is an old coot. Some have been accused of being young, rich, female, and even elite. Here, Jon Stewart, New York Jewish person of questionable class himself, endorses a presidency of elitism.




The elite Mr. Obama has a lot of younger supporters, many of whom are also Facebook users. The B.B.C. would like to change that, if I catch the meaning of this PSA correctly.




You’ve seen Johnny Lee’s videos by now, right? You know, the guy with the muppet voice who turns Nintendo Wii remotes into digital whiteboards, touchscreens, and head-mounted 3-D viewer. He’s a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (shout-out to Bob Kraut!), and presented some of his really awesome hacks at the latest T.E.D. Conference.




Tom Dickson has a really great sense of humor—the lab coat, the bright gloves, the flat affect—and his videos always deliver. He caused a minor scandal when he subjected the iPhone to the K-Tec test, and now he tosses in a strapless Wii remote to answer the question for the ages: will it blend?




 —Meave Gallagher, May. 9, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: April 11, 2008

Well, hello! And welcome to the world of Ms. Brenda Dickson. You may know her from her tenure on The Young and the Restless, where she played Jill Foster Abbott from the program’s inception in 1973 to 1980, then reprised the role from 1983 to 1987, when she outshone all the superbitches on Dynasty to become one of the genre’s most beloved villains.

Don’t tell me you don’t know who I’m talking about. No? Well, let’s start with a little flashback, courtesy of E! True Hollywood Story.


Now that we’re all a little more familiar with Ms. Dickson, we can get into the real details of what makes her tick. What’s that? You’re unfamiliar with this Jill Foster Abbott character; you don’t understand why she’s so beloved? Let’s watch a scene from Y&R and find out.


Feel a little better? A little closer? Admit it, you’re practically a fan of hers already. As a fan, you must be dying to know how Miss California World 1967 managed to retain her radiant good looks 20 years later, despite a grueling work schedule and personal turmoil that plagued her throughout her career. Well, you’re in luck: Ms. Brenda Dickson has made a very special video just for you.


Oh no, please, don’t let me interrupt Ms. Dickson right in the middle of a makeup lesson!


Do you feel as though you’ve learned something? I certainly have: Thanks to my vegan diet, I’ve got a cellulite-free lifetime to enjoy! How kind of Ms. Dickson to give us a glimpse of her glamorous lifestyle and her secrets to maintaining it.

Now, with any great artist comes great admiration, and as my mother always told me, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. May I now present to you Welcome to Our House, an homage to the great Ms. Dickson’s Welcome to My Home.


Remarkable, isn’t it? Those ladies are no slouches, no indeed. In fact, because they felt they had not paid their full respects to Ms. Brenda Dickson’s magical video, they made several sequels. This clip is from Welcome to Our House No. 3: Hygiene & Makeup.


Things weren’t all fruit smoothies and eyeliner for Ms. Dickson. Amid great scandal, she left Y&R in 1980, briefly married dentist Robert Rifkin, then made a dazzling comeback to the show in 1983, which she explains to this understandably star-struck interviewer here.


You must be curious about the changes to Jill Foster Abbott that took place over her three-year absence. Let me tell you, she only got wickeder.


As for Ms. Dickson’s personal life, she departed Y&R a second time in 1987 and later married an attorney, Jan Weinberg, with whom she moved to Hawaii. Tragedy struck in 2005 with ugly divorce proceedings that found our heroine jailed several times for contempt of court. The exact lawfulness of the case remains debatable; imagine what duress Ms. Brenda Dickson must have been under at this time.


Still, this unfortunate outburst should not—no, could not—tarnish the glow of Brenda Dickson’s star. Here, an homage to the homage of the timeless Welcome to My Home, Welcome to Our House, Welcome.


Oh youth! They couldn’t have chosen better models of a role model. Of course, by now you’re wondering, what is the one true Jill Foster Abbott doing these days? Lucky for us, “Hollywood” Marci Weiner has the inside scoop on Ms. Dickson’s moving and shaking through tinseltown.


And finally, the best Brenda Dickson clip show the internet has to offer.


 —Meave Gallagher, Apr. 11, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: April 4, 2008

This year’s Olympic Games are scheduled to be held in Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China. Hello, controversy! The Chinese government, with its significant involvement in the Darfur crisis, its noted history of free speech and human rights violations, its oppression of the Tibetan government, and its support of the violent militia in Myanmar-also-called-Burma, doesn’t have the most stellar reputation. Some political leaders have already refused to attend the opening ceremony—including Germany’s, Poland’s, and the Czech Republic’s, and the Japanese royal family.

Amid great national debate, the U.S. sent a team to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. A number of athletes chose to boycott the games on their own—missing out on the games with the highest number of participating nations to date. Hitler did politely remove much of the anti-Semitic signatures around town, though by 1936 he had taken away citizenship from all Jewish people, including those with only one Jewish parent, or even one Jewish grandparent, and banned all Jewish people from professional occupations. This is a scene from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia Part 1: Festival of Nations.




Perhaps it only takes 70 years for countries to learn that participating in events hosted by a nation with an especially ugly record of suppression and abuse may not reflect very highly on their own ethics. Except, hang on, as of this week no one is boycotting the Beijing games except Tibetan exiles, whose country isn’t represented in the games anyway because it quote-on-quote belongs to China. President Bush, calling the Olympics “a sporting event,” has refused to support any protest actions; on the other side of the pond, the British Olympic Association requires its athletes to sign an agreement not to comment on “politically sensitive issues.” This is not censorship because the International Olympic Committee charter already bans “political, religious, or racial” demonstrations and/or propaganda from any Olympic site. So mind your manners, everyone, and remember not to drink the tap water.

The 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, were the first games boycotted by entire national teams. Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon refused to participate because of the Suez Crisis—Australia being part of the United Kingdom and all—and following the invasion of Hungary (to end the people’s anti-communist revolution) by the U.S.S.R., Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands withdrew in protest. Finally, the People’s Republic of China withdrew its athletes from the games because of the controversial decision to let the Republic of China (i.e., Chinese Taipei; i.e, Taiwan) call itself Formosa, its name under Portuguese colonial rule.




These Olympics were called the “friendly games.” Not to be confused with the socialist-state-only Friendship Games in 1984—we’ll get to those later.




Montreal hosted the next boycotted Olympiad, the 1976 Summer Games. Included in the 30 countries that refused to attend—known as the African boycott—were the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, both of which were upset over the International Olympic Committee’s official recognition of the other’s government as legitimate. The Committee remedied the problem in November of that year, recognizing the Peopld’s Republic as the sole representative of “China,” but still allowing Taiwan to compete as part of the Chinese team. Solomons, all.

The 28 African nations who refused to participate did so on the grounds that New Zealand’s rugby team had never stopped competing against South Africa, which had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 because of Apartheid. Of course, following its reaction to the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, the South African government was hardly in a sympathetic position.




Meanwhile, Lasse Virén flew around the track in his second of three Olympics. Twenty-two years later, he ran with the National Coalition Party in his native Finland and won a parliamentary seat, which he held until 2007.




The Summer Olympics seem to be the time for boycotts. Moscow’s turn, in 1980, was protested by so many countries that they held their own, simultaneous competition, the Olympic Boycott Games. It sounds so unsporting, I know. The U.S. led the boycott because the U.S.S.R. “stepped in” to help the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which is to say, “invaded,” in December 1979, beginning a war that would last nine years.




Naturally, all staunch foes of communism (and countries arguing over the right to call themselves “China”) could not in good conscience participate in the Olympic Games hosted in the capital city of a belligerent nation. The Olympic Boycott Games, known more politely as the Liberty Bell Classic, were held in Philadelphia, and began three days before the official Games of the XXII Olympiad in Moscow.

These games were notable for breaking or setting 74 Olympic records—impressive, considering only 11 records were set at the ’84 Summer Games in L.A.




In Philadelphia, 15-year-old Luci Collins performs her floor routine. Considering the caliber of the gymnasts behind the Iron Curtain at the time, it might’ve been quite felicitous for her to have them thinned from the playing field.




Along with the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles came a tit-for-tat boycott from the U.S.S.R. and its allies, except Romania. L.A. was picked to host these Olympics without a vote, because it was the only city to bid for the honor. Apparently, Montreal had overspent so much in 1976 that no other country wanted to take the risk. L.A. was up for the challenge, and saw many Olympic firsts, including the debut of synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics. Less widely known is that the 1984 Games gave birth to the term “soccer mom,” when fever for the game was sparked in millions of U.S. hearts.

This would be one of the last Olympics that would see a U.S. men’s basketball team with any amateur players, including recent first-round no. 3 draft pick Michael Jordan.




Meanwhile, in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the gymnasts couldn’t have been more perfect. Was there something in the water at Olomouc that gave them such superpowers?




You might wonder why the bad behavior of one country 30 years ago warranted a multi-national boycott, while another’s does not. Well, you’re not alone. The torch is scheduled to pass through San Francisco next Wednesday. Based on the amount of protests planned, I suggest you keep an eye on the news.

 —Meave Gallagher, Apr. 4, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: March 28, 2008

My goodness, but we’ve had some interesting political scandals this year. Juicy ones, too, with extramarital sex and misuse of public funds. Now, when I think about sex scandals, I assume the politician is a national one, a U.S. representative or senator, certainly presidents or perhaps a governor. Local politicians, though, even big- and/or capital-city mayors, are small potatoes. Who pays attention to mayors outside of their constituents?

We all do, when they’re caught with their hands in the city coffers, or around the waist of women they know are off-limits. Mayors, it seems, have the same big man complexes as any other politician: I rule the town, I make (or break) the rules.




Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit is the most recent figure of mayoral shame, arraigned this week on eight felony counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice. This is serious business, something the Detroit Free Press has been investigating for some time. The paper’s findings as of January are summarized here:




This is the barest outline of a mayorship brimming over with scandal. Kilpatrick, Detroit’s youngest mayor, son of Congressional Black Caucus Chair and U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), naturally does not find the heap of trouble he appears to be sitting in particularly comfortable. He closed his 2008 State of the City speech on March 11 with a direct confrontation of the (umbrella) issue. To relate, imagine if George W. Bush had added a postscript to the State of the Union blaming The New York Times for his problems getting F.I.S.A. renewed.




Is there anything scandalous about your mayor? Mine is known as a playboy. Gavin Newsom, the 40-year-old boy mayor of San Francisco, has brought some unfamiliarly old-school style to city politics; in 1997, he was elected to the city’s board of supervisors as the sole heterosexual white man. Newsom has shown a predilection for blond women, having dated two since the end of his marriage (to a brunette!). Right, and he also had that affair in 2005 with his blond aide for commission appointments, who was also married to his campaign manager/deputy chief of staff. Whoops! Gavin seemed properly chastened when the whole thing came to light in early 2007.




Men across the Bay Area, however, weren’t so quick to forgive. In accordance with Burt Reynolds and the makers of Miller Lite, they found it reprehensible to have an affair with your friend’s partner. Thankfully, the boy mayor didn’t break any real laws; character flaws are best judged against the opposition in an election year, anyway.




Then there was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose affair with Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas was discovered after Ms. Salinas scooped the regional press with her story about the breakup of the mayor’s marriage, which she knew about because, you know, she was intimately involved with the mayor. And that’s not all!

(Note: For juicy mayoral gossip, it is only necessary to watch this video until about 6:35.)




Catch all that? Tell me, is it something about politics that brings out the cheat and the crook, or do people with those traits seek out positions of power that allow them to cheat and steal? To his credit, Mayor Villaraigosa has been behaving with dignity since the scandal blew over; they even let him on television to discuss post-Super Tuesday politics without asking him one impertinent question. Then again, it was P.B.S., not exactly known for its muckraking.




No, 2007 wasn’t a great year for the Golden State. Rhode Island, the littlest state, had it much worse earlier in the decade. Throughout the 1990s its entire state government was an absolute cesspool of corruption. Some were calling it the most corrupt state in the union, and that was before Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci and Operation Plunder-Dome came to light in 2001.




Oh, Buddy. He pleaded no contest to that assault—he used an ashtray and a fireplace log—and resigned, as required by law. Seven years later he came roaring back, with a mayoral campaign that would give him 10 years in office before his next scandal. After being indicted on 27 charges of conspiracy, extortion, mail fraud, racketeering, and witness tampering (sound familiar?), he made fun of the investigation and subsequent trial, and then was acquitted of all but one teensy charge of conspiracy in 2002. Rhode Island Judge Ronald Lageux: “In this mayor’s two administrations, there has been more corruption in the city of Providence than in the history of this state.”




Buddy served five years in prison, and currently hosts a talk-radio show, and serves as “chief political analyst” for the local Providence A.B.C. affiliate. Everybody loves Buddy.

The citizens of Washington, D.C. love their misbehaving mayor as well. Of course, I mean Marion Barry. He served as the second mayor of D.C. from 1979 until 1990, when, as you know, an F.B.I. sting operation caught him smoking crack cocaine. Like Buddy Cianci, Mayor Barry was charged with 14 criminal counts—three felonies and 11 misdemeanors—but ended up serving six months from one conviction of not just a misdemeanor possession charge, but a previous misdemeanor charge, from November 1989. Crime absolutely pays when you’re in charge. Not even four years after his release from prison, D.C. voters elected Barry their fourth mayor. It was during the first year of his second term in office that Mayor Barry attended the Million Man March.




Why, you might ask, why would a city elect as its leader a known criminal? When there is incontrovertible proof that Mayor Barry smoked crack, the scourge of the streets, with a woman other than his wife, crack that he was able to purchase through his city salary? I don’t know. He won with 56 percent in 1994, too, 14 percent above his Republican opponent.




In more recent news, voters in D.C. elected Marion Barry to the D.C. Council as the Ward 8 representative in 2004. In October 2005, at a hearing at which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges from an I.R.S. investigation, Barry failed a mandatory drug test: he was positive for marijuana and cocaine. The misdemeanor charges resulted in a three-year probation sentence.

Lastly, I give you Jerry Springer, the face who launched a million chair fights. Before he invited you to tell your sister on live TV that you’ve been sleeping with her husband, her boyfriend, and her husband’s girlfriend—before all that, Jerry was a one-term mayor of Cincinnati. He was actually on the city council in 1974, when he got caught paying for a prostitute with a personal check; although he admitted it immediately, he still had to resign, though he regained his seat the following year. The council named him mayor in 1978. His 1982 run for Ohio governor was unsuccessful, though; perhaps his refreshing honesty wasn’t appreciated outside of the hometown.




Mayoral scandals, as I’ve noted, don’t usually make national news unless they’re especially shocking, or the mayor is from a big city; individually, mayors don’t hold much importance outside the cities they run. As for my own mayor’s charms, well, he certainly out-classed his opponents in the most recent mayoral election, but to be honest, I prefer Willie Brown. He cuts a much finer figure.

 —Meave Gallagher, Mar. 28, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: March 21, 2008

CNN doesn’t like to give up its news crawler—you can’t escape it by watching videos on its web site. That’s how I learned in “a recent poll,” some very high percentage of “polled Americans” believe “the economy is in a recession.” It’s a national mantra now: housing bubble, oil shortage, recession, om.

On a large scale, we aren’t experiencing anything new; narrowing the scope to the twentieth century, problems with housing, oil, and a weak economy cycle through the decades. Just as hemlines rise and fall, facial hair grows and recedes, the differences are mostly contextual. At least, that’s the impression a person gets from media in the lean years.

By now, presumably every literate person understands how the housing market wound up in a wreck. You may not know that the rise and fall of homeownership directly correlates with the rise and fall of Britney Spears. (note: this video contains no paparazzi footage of breakdowns, bad driving, or head-shaving).





Oil was trading at a record $111.80 on March 17, which even in the ridiculous current dollar value cost more than it did during the oil shocks in the 1970s. Then, the government rationed gas; now, we can buy all the fuel we want—if we can afford the $65+ it costs to fill an 18-gallon tank at $3.63 a gallon, the average price of gas in California.

I’ve happily never owned a car, and I hope I won’t need to; this makes it look like nothing but punishment.





According to the Canadian Centre for Architecture, all the fun we’re having with oil too closely resembles games played 35 years ago. Will the same board, same pieces, and same players inevitably bring the same outcome?





In the U.K., the Labour Party felt the outrage of a people suffering under four years of crazy inflation that nearly doubled the price of a Sunday roast beef. Can you imagine?!





In the following commercial, BP kindly asks customers to avoid “jackrabbit starts,” so as to conserve precious BP gasoline. Hands up if you can drive a manual—please skip directly to the clip. For automatic/non-drivers: A “jackrabbit start” is when you take your left foot off the clutch very slowly, until you feel it begin to engage, at which point you release the clutch completely and jam the gas. If you don’t stall, the following happens:





I’ve heard that gas efficiency of modern automatic transmissions renders fuel savings from a manual unworthy of the extra effort, so maybe the preceding clip is as obsolete as Jimmy Carter’s 1978 wage-price guidelines. This was the last presidential attempt to directly involve the executive office in wage-price controls:





The country’s last really terrible housing crisis occurred during the Great Depression: When the banking system failed, lenders had to retrieve all due mortgages (few of which were amortized); there was no money to refinance, and people were losing their jobs by the thousands. Thus were their homes foreclosed and the bottom dropped out of the housing market. Property values were nil, banks weren’t making any more loans, and there was no one left to buy empty houses.

That sounds familiar.





Black Monday, the largest one-day decline in history, began on Oct. 19, 1987, in Hong Kong, and flew west throughout the day—the U.S. market dropped 22.68 percent. That same morning, two U.S. warships shelled an oil platform in the Persian Gulf.

Q: What country did that oil platform belonged to?
A: Iran!





Documentary break! This is the first 10 minutes of The Story of Oil, starting back in the Mesozoic Era (when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and seas!) and explaining roughly everything about it up to the present day. It’s a proper documentary, with a hypnotically deep-voiced narrator, and quick cutaways to scientists with dramatic facts. Maybe the computer-generated sea beasts will inspire you to give up your car, or something. (Note: the sound is low and fuzzy until 3:45, at which point it becomes and remains loud and clear.)





I don’t want to end on the lowest note—but remember that nastiness with mortgages and foreclosures during the Great Depression? Between 1928 and 1934, residential building construction tumbled 92 percent. The passage of the National Housing Act of 1934 started another huge increase in building, and oh what good times were ahead. The government offered amortized mortgages on furnished model houses—you could live in relative luxury for less than that rent you’d been paying on some rotten little apartment! Even better, housing values began to increase, and your little property was worth significantly more than what you’d paid back in ‘36. Thanks, Federal Housing Administration!





Since then, the Department of Housing & Urban Development swallowed the FHA, and if you didn’t know, HUD is a morass of corruption these days; when it reaches the U.S. Virgin Islands, you know something’s seriously wrong. Still, the country came out of the Great Depression eventually, and the government will be in radically different hands next year. I admit, I’ve considered stashing all my money in the mattress, lest the banks fail again; now, there’s nothing to do but wait and see. If you have better ideas, though, let me know.

 —Meave Gallagher, Mar. 21, 2008

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