On "the Metro"

It’s especially amazing to me to look at the state of the pamphlet they themselves loosely call a ‘newspaper’; The Metro. On a regular basis, I find grammar that could only have been minced by a brazen unregulated spell-check. Keep in mind a near 50% of this product is full page ads, and that’s not including the half and quarter page ads the actual content is on (seriously 14 out of 30 pages).

I’m pretty sure there’s no consideration between content and the ad that sits beside it. Witness the dating page section (page 15 for today May 4th) hosting a picture of a happy couple clad in dripping wet bathing suits, man holding woman up in his arms, both embracing in profile- staring at the camera caught in an ecstatic mid laugh. Next to this picture in 32 pixel font- “NO MORE CONSTIPATION HEMORRHOIDS OR GAS!”

What worries me is that this shill of a paper is consulted more often than not, that some won’t see it as the trashy biased piece of …. Digression. I have yet to count the number of times “call now for your risk free drug trial!” appears but I’m positive it’s over 30. What I’m trying to say is hey, its ok to read the Metro just don’t READ the metro, realize its not real news. Free is a great price, until you realize you’re getting what you’re paying for. I mean they ARE giving it away arent they?

Dinner and a movie...

Recently the White house Correspondents Dinner held on Saturday night had a speaker who is close to my heart. I speak, of course, of Steven Colbert. Don’t worry, through the modern marvel of the internet, you can still download it, (no transcripts yet!). Colbert covered a surprising variety of topics; Fox news, new press secretary Tony Snow, boxing a glacier, Valerie Plame, just to name a few. It takes an inscrutable amount of balls to bring material like that to such a room. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he covered the same things in his speech that he did in his show- but I was. Probably because, most of the issues he mentioned are still being avoided rather than answered.

In other things-you-dont-want-to-know™ I saw Lucky Number Slevin this weekend, It might be worth your time. Its not your usual Hollywood crap, (unless that's your thing).