Google
 

Global Warming caused by Plasma Screen TVs?

July 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Global Warming: Coming soon from a TV set near you.

Remember when your parents told you not to sit too close to your new 25″ Zenith color TV for fear of radioactive contamination? You ain’t seen nothing yet! A gas used in the making of flat screen televisions is being blamed for damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.

ABC News reports that NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997.

Levels of this gas in the atmosphere have not been measured, but scientists say it is a concern and are calling for it to be included in any future emissions cutting agreement.

Professor Michael Prather from the University of California has highlighted the issue in an article for the magazine New Scientist.

“One of my titles for this paper was Going Below Kyoto’s Radar. It’s the kind of gas that’s made in huge amounts,” he said.

“Not only is it not in the Kyoto Treaty but you don’t even have to report it. That’s the part that worries me.”

He estimates 4,000 tons of NF3 will be produced in 2008 and that number is likely to double next year.

Almost half of the televisions sold around the globe so far this year have been plasma or LCD TVs.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Filed Under News

Dig A Hole: Dody Goodman

June 23rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Dody Goodman as Martha Shumway in MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN

Dody Goodman, the pixyish Southern belle comedienne/character actress know for her appearances on Jack Paar’s couch as well as the mother on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Blanche Hodell in both Grease movies died Sunday at the age of 93.

Born Dolores Goodman in Columbus, Ohio on October 28, 1914 where her father ran a cigar store. For years Goodman successfully shaved 14 years off her age by listing her birth year as 1929. This minor discrepancy was upheld for decades before the past eventually caught up with her and shattered the myth.

She arrived in New York to study dance in the late 1930s. She studied at the School of American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and later graduated to Broadway musicals.

According to the Associated Press, Goodman gained a measure of success for her dancing solos in such ’40s Broadway musicals as High Button Shoes and Wonderful Town. In 1955, she stopped the show in the off Broadway production Shoestring Revue with the novelty song Someone’s Been Sending Me Flowers. She returned to Broadway in 1974 to appear in Lorelei with Carol Channing.

Jack Paar & Dody Goodman

Goodman first appeared on television in the recurring role of a waitress on The Phil Silvers Show. Adopting a scatterbrain persona, Goodman eventually caught the attention of talk show pioneer Jack Paar. Her ditzy aura and seemingly spontaneous malaprops delighted Paar and gaine national attention for Goodman who was soon invited to become a semi-regular on The Tonight Show.

“I was just thrown into the talking,” Goodman said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press. “I had no idea how to do that. In fact, they just called me up and asked me if I wanted to be on ‘The Jack Paar Show.’ I didn’t know who Jack Paar was. They said, ‘We just want you to sit and talk.”‘

Jack Paar did not take well to being upstaged and Dody’s impeccable ad-libs eventually resulted in a permanent falling out. In 1958 she was dropped from The Tonight Show’s roster, but invitations from other talk shows soon began pouring in.

She began making regular appearances on Virginia Graham’s Girl Talk, Merv, and The Mike Douglas Show. In 1970, with Paar safely out of the picture, she once again began appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

She hit her stride plating Louise Lasser’s mother on the dotty serial Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Her high-pitched voice could be heard announcing the show’s title at the beginning of each episode.

Following Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Goodman’s career gained momentum. She picked up where Marion Lorne left off playing addled neighbor ladies or eccentric housekeepers on TV’s Diff’rent Strokes and Punky Brewster, as well as movie roles in both Grease films and cartoon voiceovers on a slew of Chipmunk Adventures.

Goodman, who never married, is survived by seven nieces and nephews, 11 great nieces and nephews and 15 great-great nieces and nephews.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Filed Under Obituaries

Britain bans product placement on TV shows

June 11th, 2008 by Scott Marks

SUPPORT OUR ADVERTISERS!!!

When was the earliest example of product-en-scene? There had to have been something before Billy Wilder placed the box of Ivory Snow Flakes on the store shelf between Phyllis and Walter in Double Indemnity (1944). Perhaps Wilder was vamping on soap companies, then famous for sponsoring radio dramas, by inserting a box in his anything but sudsy film noir.

Or was Wilder attempting to bring an audience impacted by the horrors of World War II a little closer to the realities of everyday living?

The man who turned product placement into an art form was Frank Tashlin. In 1949, the former Termite Terrace animator, current Harpo Marx gag man and future Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis auteur de choix wrote, and presumably had a hand in the direction of, the rooftop climax to Love Happy (1949). With the sardine can diamonds safely secured in his trenchcoat, Harpo frolics through a glorious studio mock up of a Manhattan rooftop complete with enormous glowing signs and animated billboards all screaming brand names. Harpo’s horseplay lands him atop the Mobil Oil’s emblematic “Flying Red Horse” and the neon steed flashes him to safety.

In his live action features, Tashlin’s employment of merchandise and trademarks brought movies up to date and into the modern world he was clearly lampooning. You would no longer see a character pick up a pack of Marlboro’s with a piece of electrical tape strategically positioned over the product logo. When Tuttle’s Department Store turns on Jerry Lewis in Who’s Minding the Store?, it isn’t simply a series of animated appliances waging war, but a consumerist mentality gone haywire.

After Tash it was all about the numbers as shrewd studio marketing teams began descended on corporations to help pay the bills. It’s virtually impossible to find a contemporary American film from the 1980s that doesn’t have a USA Today box lurking somewhere in the corner of one of its frames.

The advent of the VCR caused torrents of flopsweat to flood Madison Avenue boardrooms. Viewers now had the option to scan through their precious pitches leaving only subliminal traces of their wares. TiVo obliterates commercials in record time, so now more than ever product placement is essential to advertisers and networks alike.

There must be a different mindset overseas because according to Variety, in his first big policy speech on broadcasting, the U.K.’s media minister Andy Burnham, secretary of state at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport since January, indicated that he would not accept the European Union directive allowing product placement on U.K. TV.

Burnham fears that crass commercial plug-ins would somehow “contaminate” the exalted status of British TV. He added, “As a viewer, I don’t want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director.” Burnham continued: “British programming has an integrity that is revered around the world and I don’t think we should put that hard-won reputation up for sale.”

Get over yourself. The idiot box was created to sell douche powder and effervescent denture cleaners and high class telly is an oxymoron. That goes double for prim, acting-driven and routinely unfunny British TV. Better a word from out sponsor rather than Benny Hill is what I always say.

Links:
Celebrity Endorsements
Vintage Magazine Ads

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Filed Under News