All posts by Raymond Tomlin

About Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

VanRamblings Makes Its Triumphant Return … well, kind of

VanRamblings

RADIOWEST A VANCOUVER RADIO FORUM

With all the foofaraw surrounding the sacking of the Board of Variance 11 days ago, VanRamblings ain’t exactly been in a mood to post to our little site — not that we have for some months, mind you.
And, too, we’re just a bit worried about our penchant for foot-in-mouth disease; so we’ll leave an analysis of exactly what’s been going on at Vancouver City Hall to other, more learned folks.
Here’s hoping cooler heads prevail and the Board of Variance can get back to the work we were appointed to perform. Sheesh, this has been a stressful couple of weeks. Thank God I wasn’t sacked while I was away on vacation; at least there was an opportunity for some rest before the world started to cave in around me.
Tonight, in the interests of being non-political (although I suspect there’s a great deal in the way of politics surrounding the creation of the website VanRamblings will turn you onto in this posting), we’ll leave you with a new radio website / forum, radiowest.ca, cuz we love radio (although we’re tending to listen more to XM Radio, of late, than we are to terrestrial radio).
And, heck, who doesn’t like inside gossip about the media, or any other kind of gossip for that matter?
Tomorrow, it’s back to saving the world; and truth, justice and the Canadian way. Tonight, it’s welcome to radiowest.ca.

A Docile American Press Corps Embarrasses Itself

Politics, Pop Culture

STEPHEN COLBERT AT THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' DINNER

Just click on the picture above to see the video

The most popular video in the blogosphere — so popular in fact that Google Video and YouTube.com were forced to take it down despite millions of visitors logging onto their sites — comedian Stephen Colbert’s evisceration of the President of the United at the recent Washington Press Corps dinner constitutes an act of bravery rivalled only by the actions of Cindy Sheehan this past year, as she has traveled the globe.
If you haven’t had a chance to watch Stephen Colbert’s video, it’s available by clicking on the picture above (or by clicking on the Google Video link, which actually provides a better video, even if Google’s lawyers have the folks at Google pull the video from time to time).

The Greatest Glory in Living Lies Not in Never Falling
But in Rising Every Time We Fall

Thought for the Day

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela, inaugural speech, 1994

The Last Picture Show: Why Cinemas Will Die

Cinema

WHY GO TO THE MOVIES WILL END

by Nora Ephron
reprinted from the April 7th New York Times
We went to the movies the other night. We live in New York City, where it costs $10.75 to see a movie, which doesn’t include the $1.50 surcharge for buying the tickets ahead of time online. I love buying tickets ahead of time online. One of the miracles of modern life, as far as I’m concerned, is that moment when you enter a movie theater, stick your credit card into a machine and it spits the exact tickets you ordered straight out at you. Every time it happens, I just want to say, I don’t believe it! This is great!!
On the other hand, it turns out that there’s a new technological advance in the buying-tickets-ahead-of-time department that takes all the fun out of it: you can now print out your confirmation at home, skip the machine and go straight to the ticket taker. The ticket taker then scans your printout and prints the tickets right at the entrance to the theater thus holding up all the people behind you in the ticket line, eliminating the one miraculous moment you used to be able to count on when going to see a movie.
But the other night, as it turned out, we didn’t have to give our printout to the ticket taker, because when we walked into the theater, there was no ticket taker. The entrance to the theater was empty of personnel. The other customers just walked right in without giving their tickets to anyone, and we did too.
We trooped two flights downstairs to Theater 7, expecting to bump into a ticket taker on our way to the theater, but we never did. We had also hoped to buy something to eat, but the lower-level refreshment counter was closed and the popcorn was just sitting there, getting stale.
I should probably say at this point that the theater we went to was the Loews Orpheum 7, at 86th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. I should probably also say that the Loews Orpheum 7 is owned by AMC, but it used to be owned by Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation, and when it was, I was on the company’s board.
This was a sad experience in my life because I had modestly hoped, in my role as a board member, to do something about the unbelievably low quality of the food sold in movie theaters. As it turned out, no one at Loews cared about what I thought about the food sold in theaters.
So I dutifully attended the board meetings and was subjected to a series of PowerPoint presentations that were meant to validate the company’s policy of building costly, large cineplexes, most of them conveniently situated right across the street from other costly, large cineplexes being built by rival theater companies.
One day, about two years into my tenure, I was staying in Los Angeles, in a hotel, and I attended a Loews board meeting by telephone; it was so boring that I decided to leave for a while and get a manicure downstairs.
When I got back to my room, only 20 minutes later, everyone was screaming at one another on the telephone. I didn’t want to admit I had left the room — and by the way, no one had even noticed — so I listened for a while and realized that while I’d been out having my nails done, the company had gone bankrupt.
This was a shock to me and to everyone else on the board. I never did find out why the news hadn’t been mentioned earlier in the board meeting, but that of course was one of the reasons everyone was screaming at one another. I mean, there were people on the board whose companies owned shares in Loews who had just found out that they’d lost hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of a bankruptcy no one had even had the courtesy to warn them about. It wasn’t even on the agenda!
A few months later some investors from Canada and California bought Loews at a bargain basement price. Two years later, AMC Entertainment took over, and as far as I can tell it has done nothing whatsoever to improve the food sold at the refreshment counter or anything else.
Anyway, the other night. We passed the shuttered refreshment counter, went into the theater and sat down. The ads were already playing. There were quite a few of them, including a diet cola ad involving trucks and motorcycles that was so in love with itself that it actually recommended going to a special Web site that explained how the ad had been made.

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