The world’s biggest media companies want to define how people will get content over the Internet. Money talks; independent content creators: take a walk. A mega-deal is reportedly in the works in which Verizon will favor Internet content from Google because Google has the spare cash to pay for preferred access. And this is being touted as the model for how content providers and Internet service providers will do business. We have seen the future, and it is exactly like the past.

The Michael Jackson Killing; His Aborted Racist Tour; the Subsequent News Blackout; & US Chemical Ignorance — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

This is a critical review of Chris Hedges’ book Empire of Illusion, with further discussion of its relevance in a society with no future.

(Crossposted at Docudharma)

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Federal District Court in New York granted Chevron’s request for a subpoena, which demands access to over 600 hours of footage from “Crude,” a documentary that chronicles a legal battle being supported by 30,000 Amazonian settlers hoping to hold Texaco (now owned by Chevron) responsible for environmental devastation in Ecuador. Local documentary filmmakers in Chicago react to the decision.

I have just written about how and why West Side Story needs to be viewed on a great big, wide screen, in a real movie theatre, with the lights down low, and my willingness to occasionally make road trips to neighboring states to do so. Here’s hoping you can all put up with yet another posting about this wonderful Classic!

This is about why I like the great movie/musical classic, West Side Story as much as I do.

I’m sure Michael Jackson is happy he’s not around to see all the psychobabble being dished up about his life.

Did the crappy upbringing really doom him to brooding unhappiness, or did it fuel his otherwordly talent? Would he have been just as strange and troubled without the fame and fortune, or was being “Michael Jackson” the only thing that kept him out of Leavenworth?

We’ll never know.

His soaring talent was obvious from

phil spector unanimously found guilty by a los angeles jury

country music and soft-rock singer-songwriter dan seals dies @ age 61.

skippy reviews “watchmen.”