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Showing posts from November, 2011

Glee No Longer Makes Me Happy

The last episode of Glee has disappointed its former fans, myself included. Gone are the lighthearted moments. Gone is the focus on dance numbers and creative costuming. Gone is the emphasis on teacher and student mentoring relationships. The old tween appropriate style and spirit of Glee is being crushed by the weight of controversial social agendas and sensationalism. Even the producers must know this as they are shifting the time slot of the show to the "mature viewing" hour. The sad reality is that many young viewers will follow the show to this new time slot and view material they may not be ready to see. There has been an increasing emphasis on homosexuality on the show. While I originally admired the show's tackling of a gay teen and parent relationship, the new episodes make it seem like homosexuality is commonplace and changeable. Two cheerleader girls, who both were previously very actively heterosexual are now "hooking up" in a relationship. Bri

An Ode to the Old Fashioned Movie Theatre

When my brother Tim and I were little, my parents would drop us off at the Lansing Cinema for a double feature. We would watch Tim Conway in the Apple Dumpling Gang . One Saturday, we watched the four-hour long epic, Gone with the Wind . The theatre was dark and musty. The velvet upholstered seats were stained and lumpy - and a few had duct tape across the arms since they were no longer safe to sit in. Popcorn was less than a dollar for a huge bucket. We could pay for our tickets, popcorn, drinks, and candy and still have change for a ten dollar bill. We had never heard of a cineplex or multiplex. The Lansing Cinema auditorium was huge and probably sat several hundred viewers. Most of the time, it was half empty. Heavy velvet drapes would part slowly, creaking as they moved, and the projectionist would start the film. A real person operated the projector, and if the movie started to skip or went out of focus, the whole theatre would yell to wake him up and fix it. At old mo