DAVID MASHBURN

Profile polling

DAVID MASHBURN — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:38:04 GMT

A look at the MySpace and Facebook profiles of the '08 presidential candidates
Facebook and MySpace represent the easiest and most efficient method of assessing compatibility for a friend, a potential hook-up, or a presidential candidate.

FACEBOOK AVATAR: But like this photo from his Facebook profile, Edwards MySpace page is a
whole lot of beige.

With the first few presidential primary debates out of the way, we can stop pretending that our vote hinges on the candidates’ positions on Iraq, the economy or healthcare reform and start judging them on a subject more intrinsically related to their potential performance in the Oval Office ― their MySpace and Facebook profiles. The candidates are striving to do something new in hopes of swaying young voters to their platform. And fittingly, their new favorite channel is being provided courtesy of MySpace and MTV.

MySpace and MTV are combining powers to host a series of town-hall style dialogues with the 2008 crop of presidential wannabes on college campuses across the country. Candidates will answer questions submitted in real time by viewers through MySpaceIM, text messages, and emails. The first dialogue is slotted for today, September 27, in New Hampshire with Democratic candidate John Edwards.

But long before these debates were scheduled, the candidates were getting busy on the social networking. But how useful are these sites to voters? We’ve all heard friends complain about the irrationality of judging someone’s character from a one-dimensional representation rather than taking the time to gauge their personality face-to-face and then making an informed decision on the value of their friendship. Or some such nonsense. For the rest of us, Facebook and MySpace represent the easiest and most efficient method of assessing compatibility for a friend, a potential hook-up, or a presidential candidate. So before MTV and MySpace air the upcoming dialogues on MTV and MTVu and webcast them on MySpaceTV and MTV.com, let’s take a few minutes to examine the profiles of the ’08 contenders. Informative? Maybe. Entertaining? Definitely.

We’ll begin in the red corner with former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney. Romney notably eschews the “Religious Views” box on his Facebook profile, though he does answer “Mormon” on his MySpace profile. Romney’s activities include “waterskiing” and “horseback riding with my wife” and his interests are “fixing our failing schools” and “winning the war against the jihadists.” Other highlights include a list of his favorite country music performers, an inspiring quote by his father, George Romney, and a four paragraph-long “About Me” section logging nearly every accomplishment in Romney’s business and political career. Following in his family-man campaign theme, his top featured friends on MySpace are his wife, Ann, and his five sons.

I scream, you scream

DAVID MASHBURN — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:51:15 GMT

A salute to ice cream trucks
Kids still stream toward the siren song and that holy grail — frozen treats in paper packaging, paradise in the guise of a push-up pop.

In 1927 Paul Hawkins rigged a mechanical music box to the roof of his ice cream truck in California and started blasting the Polish folk tune "Stodola Poompa" from it. Forget Pavlov's bells and that drooling dog. Irrefutable proof of aural conditioning is that 80 years later, kids still stream toward the siren song and that holy grail — frozen treats in paper packaging, paradise in the guise of a push-up pop.

But that little ice cream truck jingle turns out to be not so innocuous. After all, there's a thin line between the nostalgic recollection and the obnoxious cacophony reported by many Boston City residents. City Councilor Sal LaMattina worries that some vendors are trampling that line. According to LaMattina, several ice cream truck operators blare their chime at levels far above the legal limit of 70 decibels.

"We need to empower the police so that if they go out and hear loud music and loud noise they can issue a violation and fine," said LaMattina at a hearing in August. He's also suggested enacting laws similar to those in New York City that prohibit ice cream truck vendors from playing their music while parked in an effort to cut down on the “noise pollution.”.

Somewhere along the line, between Hawkin's music box and the booming digital sound system currently drawing the rancor of Boston, the ice cream truck and its jingle achieved iconic status, immortalized in pop culture. Like soda fountains and tie-dye, ice cream trucks evoke a nostalgia that has little to do with their tangible impact on our lives and more to do with their presence in the collective conscious of pop culture. Because of the threat facing ice cream trucks and in honor of the many years of service on our streets and in our television shows, films, and songs, we present the top ten ice cream trucks in pop culture.

10. “Fahrenheit 9/11”—When Michael Moore learns that almost no one in Congress read the Patriot Act before voting to pass it, he decides the only patriotic thing to do is read it to them. And how exactly to attract the attention of Congress? Logically, being a man of ample stature and not above self-deprecatory irony, he drives around in an ice cream truck playing the jingle and reciting the Patriot Act to anyone who'll listen.

9. "Today"—The Smashing Pumpkins’ video for “Today” was inspired by Billy Corgan's childhood memory of the local ice cream truck. On the day the driver quit, he passed out free ice cream to the children in the neighborhood. Maybe, like Corgan, he drove off through the desert, picking up a beautiful hitchhiker and repainting his truck to resemble the Merry Prankster's acid bus.

Political cartoons

DAVID MASHBURN — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:44:22 GMT

The 20 Best Animated Politicians in Cartoon History
Among its hordes of firsts, The Simpsons helped transplant politicians from the cartoon funny pages to our television sets.

With the aggressive hype machine surrounding the release of The Simpson Movie, you don’t need us to tell you the impact of The Simpsons on modern culture. But here are a few tidbits to mull over anyway: the show garnered 23 Emmy Awards;Time named it the 20^thcentury's best television series, and “D’oh” is in the Oxford English Dictionary. What merits the show’s now ubiquitous presence in pop culture and is its 23 Emmys is its role in removing cartoons from Disney and Hanna-Barbera’s realm and redefining them as pop culture savvy vehicles that could be crude, satirical, and hilarious.

Among its hordes of firsts, The Simpsons helped transplant politicians from the cartoon funny pages to our television sets. They lampooned political figures on prime time and provided us laughs at the expense of the political establishment, all in 2-D. The Simpsons, and those cartoons indebted to The Simpsons — Family Guy, South Park, Futurama, American Dad — have now skewered politicians with trenchant wit and caustic satire for five Presidential administrations and counting.

In honor of the July 27 opening of The Simpsons Movie, we’ve compiled the 20 best politicians in (recent) cartoon history.

20.Lil’ Bush proves that comedic timing is everything — and this show is off by about four years. Gags about Bush’s incompetence are more depressing than funny at this late stage. But Lil’ Bush does provide one good moment in the first episode when Lil’ Dick Cheney seduces Barbara Bush in a hilarious parody of the infamous “Are your trying to seduce me?” scene from The Graduate.

19.Simpsons creator Matt Groening tackles politics of the future in the Futurama episode “A Head in the Polls.” Richard Nixon’s head — attached to a giant robot’s body — wins the presidency of Earth by two votes after Fry and Leela forget its election day. Predictably, Nixon goes on a tyrannical rampage. Some things never change.

18. When Bush Sr. moves next door to the Simpsons after leaving the White House, Bart goes Dennis the Menace on his cranky ass. Right after H.W. finishes typing his memoirs — the final line is priceless: “Since I achieved all my goals as president during one term there was no need for a second” — Bart shreds the entire stack of papers and receives an old-fashioned lesson in corporal punishment over bended knee.