Week Of September 25, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

September 27, 2006

Yes, dear readers, one month into the tenth year of The Hot Button and I am most certainly in one of those moods.

It seems to be a bit inescapable at the moment. I spent Tuesday evening surrounded by four or five of the most beautiful on-screen women of my young adulthood and still, except for a deep-felt smile about how great they look all these years later (breathtaking eyes never seem to fade), I slid quickly back into wondering about the quality of the future in this industry. I got to hang out with some of the people in this business who I really adore, both in the daylight and the dark of night, but still…

The question of why I do what I do… why I have done it for more than a decade, through good times and bad, for better or for worse… has always been, in the end, about the positive parts of doing this. I believe in the change that the internet represents, but I also believe in the value and power of Traditional Media, which ceases to be traditional when it throws out its traditions in the quest for relevance in the world of New Media.

The questions of how the new changes the old and the old manages the new are complex and often perplexing. But serious people with serious goals are trying to find answers that work.

A couple of years ago, it became clear that the publicity arms of the studios were starting to find themselves managing the negatives of the media world, on the web as well as in print and television, instead of publicizing the positive, which had, for the most part, been the tradition.

And now, I am finding that this phenomenon is reaching into journalism itself.

The business side of this industry is not set up to enforce accountability. Traditions of the past, which have long been used both to allow for coverage as well as commerce between the media and the studios are being reconsidered daily. Neither side quite knows how to behave.

In the midst of this, there are those who very cleverly take advantage of the tumult because they are evil manipulative jackasses with narcissistic tendencies. But hey, isn't everyone trying to take advantage in some way? Aren't we all just trying to get along?

I don't need pity. I have been very fortunate, have worked my ass off, and am pretty tuned in to this business. But I am frustrated. One gets to a point where the distractions of survival and aspiration effectively keep one from spending too much time worrying about the big picture. But I have had the good luck to get past that part of my career. And that leaves me thinking a lot about the big picture.

I am a person who works best when I choose objectives and move forward in a fairly specific direction. There is room for a lot of improv, but I believe that almost anything can be achieved if you can set the target and are willing to focus and not get distracted. But when you don't know where the target is anymore, it becomes almost impossible to function.

For better or for worse, I am currently finding my work undermined by a pretty intense obsession with trying to find that target again.

I am tired of calling people out for bad behavior. But I am equally tired of the bad behavior.

One outlet is currently darting around town selling a new expansion of one of its sections and somehow thinking that studios are going to start spending oodles more money with them than they did last year when a smaller, but similar effort failed. The whole thing is stupid, but while it may make amusing lunch chatter and while some journalists would be running it as exclusive breaking news, I keep thinking about the people who are worried about losing their jobs if this fails. There are a million things I can think of that they can do better, but me pissing on their grave (still open) is not really helpful to anyone.

And so, I will try to think about the blue eyes of the now-married actress or the alabaster skin of the Mensa actress who is best known for showing her body parts on red carpets and dating public freaks, and the still gentle face of the once famous teen actress… not because I am fantasizing about them and me, but because, in some ways, I cannot even consider that, realistically or otherwise. I am still embracing the vision I have of them, not the reality of who they are. And there is some great joy in that. Perhaps they are even more special in full. Perhaps not. But their glow, above and beyond body parts, still brings me joy.

Our illusions are a central point in our ability to move forward. Life is impossible for us as individuals if we don't shape our world with those boundaries…. If we don't pace ourselves with the illusions of what we believe and of what seems more than natural.

There is nothing more exciting than the things we want.

Like I said… a long one of those moods.

E Me.

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