“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

U.S. Constitution: Second Amendment

First, it’s free speech. Then – before anything about fair trials or unreasonable searches – it’s the right to bear arms. Thus wrote the founding fathers of the country in which I now live, and that’s why, more than two centuries later, I was at the Arizona State Fairgrounds, in the presence of more firearms than I had ever seen in my life before. And that includes the time spent watching John Woo movies.

As a Briton, I find myself vaguely troubled by the free availability of weaponry. We do very well without it in Britain, with our unarmed bobbies, and have a much lower murder rate there (and would you like a cup of tea?). However, in America, you’re much more likely to find your mugger or burglar has a gun, and the best defense against that…is a bigger gun. Which is where the gun shows come in, letting anyone with a driving licence – and I suspect even that would probably be superfluous for the private sales taking place at the fair – and money accumulate sufficient firepower to re-enact Columbine, Dunblane and Hungerford.

They say an armed society is a polite society, and certainly, an armed show is a polite show – despite the crowds, I’ve never heard “Excuse me” and “No, after you” used with such frequency. The guns were perhaps the least interesting things on display since, hey, you’ve seen one revolver, you’ve seen ’em all. I was more interested in the stuff around the edges, some of which was fascinating, some of which was, frankly, disturbing.

On the one hand, you could buy copies of the American consitution, and targets with Osama Bin Laden’s face on them, things which celebrated America, and all that’s good about it (the first amendment, for example, the one about freedom of speech). On the other hand, you could buy copies of Mein Kampf and even letters from inmates at Dachau. Those interested in owning that kind of shit are the sort of people who really should not be permitted to own weapons.

But yet, this is the dilemma. Who am I to judge who should and should not have the right to bear arms? There’s really no difference from censorship, where someone else says what you have the right to watch. As a firm believer in everyone taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions, people should have the right to own guns – but if they abuse that right, then the full weight of the law should come down on them immediately. Yet, with so many guns around, how do you keep them out of the grasp of criminals? Laws aren’t really the answer for those who have shown themselves happy to break them.

Part of me feels sure that if the founding fathers were writing today, they’d not be quite so liberal. Perhaps therein lies the solution: you get to have any weapon you like – as long as it was available in 1789. I think at the very least, we’d see a drop in the numbers of drive-by musketings.

A small victory, following last editorial – the Internet Movie Database has severely slashed the numbers of pop-up adverts. I’d like to think this would be the end of the matter, but it’s not the first time they’ve done it, and I suspect they’ll try again sometime. We’ll be ready for them. 🙂

This is the closest I’ve come to the Olympics; first time I’ve been in the same country where they’re taking place, just a state or two across in Utah. Despite this, I have been largely unmoved by it. This is the Winter Olympics after all, which are the poor relation to begin with, and it was obvious from the opening ceremony that rabid patriotism was going to be the order of the day. I trust the United States will say nothing, if the Chinese use their opening ceremony for political propaganda when the Olympics come to Beijing…

Coverage here has been in strict proportion to American medal chances. Thus, we get a lot of snow-boarding and ice hockey, and precious little curling or biathlon, but until they include basketball on ice, it’s never quite going to capture the imagination. It says a great deal about the Winter Olympics that the major scandal has involved, not drugs (or sex or rock ‘n’ roll), but the judging in the figure-skating competition.

This is a no-brainer. Any sport decided by a series of marks for “artistic impression”…isn’t really a sport at all. As the name suggests, it’s an art-form, and should be treated as one, not included in the Modern Olympics, unless you’re also going to let sculpture, landscape painting and freeform poetry in there too. Frankly, professional wrestling is equally worthy of a place as figure skating – and I’m sure Tonya Harding would be up for both.

Giving gold medals to the Canadians sets a very nasty precedent, and will likely open the floodgates for all manner of other challenges. Boxers, done over by points decision that went against them. The 1972 USA basketball team, who lost to the Soviet Union in the final seconds and refused their silver medals. Any sore loser with an axe to grind will be taking legal advice, for it’s virtually guaranteed that this is all going to end in the courts, and the only real winners will be the lawyers.

Bad decisions are part of any competitive pastime, as anyone knows who’s ever taken part. Sometimes you benefit, sometimes you don’t, but the fundamental principle of sportsmanship is that you have to accept the referee’s decision, no matter how “wrong” it may be. And that’s the case, even in sports with well-defined rules, let alone one where the judges are dealing out victory and defeat by trading in such nebulous concepts as “artistic impression”.

The Olympic motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius”, universally accepted to mean “Swifter, Higher, Stronger” – you’ll notice there’s no mention of “prettier”, or “artier”. There’s talk of the Olympics wanting to slim down, and they need to get back to basics, limiting themselves to competitive sports, not anything involving subjective assessments. And to anyone who disagrees, I have but two words: synchronised swimming.

The Internet Movie Database used to be a totally indispensable tool for all film writers. While its accuracy was not always without question, its comprehensive nature (at least as far as English-language movies went) meant that it was the first stop for anyone wondering “What else was that actor in?”, or trying to find out who wrote the script for an obscure Hammer flick.

But now, it’s all gone horribly wrong, to the extent where I will now go to extraordinary lengths rather than endure visiting it. What happened? One word: Amazon. In 1998, the colossus of online Amazon bought out what had, up until then, been a non-commercial site, and the decline has been inexorable. As proof, one need look no further than the IMDb itself, has no qualms about blowing its own trumpet with selective reviews. However, the most recent date on these glowing recommendations comes from back in 1999 – and that link is mysteriously broken…

What’s the problem? Any attempt to use the database now results in a constant fight against pop-up adverts, often multiple ones for the same company! A form letter from the IMDb Help Desk (gosh, do you think a lot of people are are pissed-off as I am?) reveals that, “We are currently experimenting with pop-up ads and other formats because some of our advertisers have expressed their preference for these alternative methods of promoting their products and services.” The more obnoxious the better, it would appear.

But why does it need these at all? The site was founded in 1990, so survived eight years as a non-commercial entity, largely without advertising, particularly of the intrusive nature we currently endure. But now, it is drowning in features which I find totally useless. Across the top of the IMDb screen, we have: Now Playing, Movie/TV News, My Movies, Fun & Games, Message Boards, US Movie Showtimes, Help & Guide and IMDb Pro. We’ll get back to the last-named shortly, but I can honestly say I’ve never bothered with any of the others.

All these irrelevancies take up server space and processing power; if they were dumped as superfluous (and the IMDb, trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, is going to master none), the need for advertising would largely evaporate. The IMDb form letter sees it differently, however: “our advertisers help us to continue providing you with great movie information, and thanks to them we can keep offering our popular service for free and continually improve our site with new content and features.” Oh, goody: more stuff we don’t want, didn’t ask for, and won’t use.

Oh, but I forgot, it’s now owned by Amazon, a company in perpetual, desperate need of showing a profit. The irony of the following statement, taken from the official IMDb history, will be obvious: “In Jeff Bezos [founder of Amazon], the people at the IMDb saw a kindred spirit, someone who understood the internet and its community, not just its potential as a marketplace.” Hence all the pop-up adverts, eh, Jeff?

This commercialization of the IMDb has been growing for a while. A lot of their movie posters now come with a stern warning that the images are copyright of the Nostalgia Factory – I wonder what the movie studios think about that? – and you’re not allowed to right-click and “Save As…”. While a minor inconvenience at worst (tech tip: ALT+PRINT_SCRN copies your screen to a buffer, from where it may be pasted to your favourite graphics package), it illustrates the creeping nature of such things.

Worst of all, the IMDb now wants us to pay. “We have also launched a professional version of our service called IMDb Pro, which offers many new additional features and is entirely pop-up free.” The sheer audacity of this is striking: take information, freely submitted by unpaid volunteers, then turn round and sell it back to them for $12.95 a month, by making the non-subscription version a total nightmare to use.

They can do this because, buried away in the depths of the IMDb, is the following nasty little paragraph: “If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant IMDb.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media.” I wonder how many of the people who contributed the information are happy with the way Amazon are exploiting it?

We need to strike back and reclaim the IMDb. At the polite end of the spectrum, we should flood them with feedback, protesting the pop-ups – the email address is help@imdb.com. Perhaps request that an advert-free, bare bones version should be available: no “Fun and Games”, no “US Movie Showtimes”, just information on the films. More effectively, Amazon are still largely too cheap to pay for their facts, and rely heavily on users. For example, one of the features of IMDb Pro is STARmeter (TM), which is really just a count of how many people look up a given celebrity. By repeated visits, we can render this feature useless; how seriously would anyone take it if the #1 actor was Shaquille O’Neal?

We, the Internet community, created the IMDb. And Amazon would do well to remember that we can destroy it, too.

One of the things I was happiest to leave behind in Britain were the tourists. Be they rampaging backpackers, knocking out three people every time they turned around, or organised groups of Japanese, frantically photographing “amusing” street entertainers, they were the main reason why going into the center of London was a chore rather than a pleasure. Entire swathes of territory were no-go areas, particularly in the summer, e.g. from Piccadilly Circus, through Leicester Square to Covent Garden, and north to Oxford Street.

Phoenix is nowhere near as much of a tourist destination, lacking much in the way of attractions or history (it was only incorporated in 1881). What it does have going for it, particularly in the winter, is a wonderful climate, and this is what draws in the “snowbirds” – the bane of all locals, and possibly even worse than any tourist, because they actually live here. Well, for four months of the year at least.

These people are the ones too wussy to cope with an Arizonan summer, even with air-conditioning, but come flocking like flies to horse-shit from about Thanksgiving (the end of November) through to Easter – or whenever the temperature goes above 100F. The vast majority are retired, it being much harder for actual working people to take four months off. And the mindset they bring is equally and relentlessly retired – at times, it’s as if the entire state smells of wee.

These estimated 300,000 visitors a year inevitably place a severe burden on every aspect of Arizonan life. Imagine London, with every Premiership team playing at home, and the FA Cup final at Wembley too – every day, for four months. Restaurants, which the rest of the year are quiet and peaceful, suddenly become jammed with shambling geriatric zombies, ordering the senior citizen specials and gumming up the works for those of us with jobs, who are only able to have their breakfasts somewhere near breakfast-time.

Post-offices, banks, supermarkets, doctors – it’s all the same. But it’s on the road that perhaps the worst carnage takes place. All residents know to give cars with out-of-state number plates a wide berth because, put bluntly, they haven’t got a fucking clue. They don’t know where they’re going, half of them can’t see further than the end of the bonnet, and their average speed is a resolute ten miles per hour below the speed limit. “I haven’t had an accident in fifty years,” they’ll say – no, but how many have you caused frustrated drivers behind you?

The comforting thing is that, like locusts and diarrhoea, you know they’ll be gone eventually – well, save the ones who keeled over during a session at Marie Callender’s all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch. Though given how most of them look nearly-dead anyway, not sure how you’d tell the difference. Until then, I guess we’ll just have to grin and bear it, at least until we can sweep past them with a victorious cry of “Go back to Illinoooooooois…”.

Christmas with the Klan. I’m Pregnant by a Transsexual. Get Your Mitts Off My Man. And not to mention the infamous, I Married a Horse. Ah, there is nothing quite like the American talk show in its finest, most distilled form: The Jerry Springer Show.

I’ve been a fan since first stumbling across the My Teen Worships Satan episode, in a Phoenix hotel back in October 1997. But Springer has been delighting his fans, and appalling everyone else, with a steadily- mix of softcore sex ‘n’ violence, and hardcore freakishness, providing an insight into the shallow end of the gene pool, that horrifies and amuses in equal measure.

We recently rediscovered the show, courtesy of Chris’s mother, who used to sit in the living-room and watch, calling us through for any particularly startling moments. Now, we have a tiny portable screen of our own in the kitchen, and it’s somehow appropriate to watch it in flickery Grey-o-vision. The show’s credits start zooming down a back-street alley, to a trash can with a television set in it… it’s clear Springer isn’t taking himself too seriously.

It seemed a little restrained, compared to what I used to remember, and a comparison with The Best of Jerry Springer tape revealed this not to be mere nostalgia. Though if the violence was trimmed, every other guest took their clothes off instead, usually for no readily apparent reason. And, in a lot of cases, you would be looking for severe and detailed explanation to justify seeing these citizens in the flesh.

As the photo (right) shows, it hasn’t always been so: back when the show started in September 1991, Jerry was just another talking-head. It was only really when executive producer Richard Dominick came on board in 1994, that the direction changed, and things gradually evolved from there. The show is a cocktail of multiple ingredients, without which, while it would still work, the taste would be that much poorer.

• Jerry Springer, the former mayor of Cincinnati, who once paid a prostitute with a rubber cheque, is the perfect host for this kind of show. He knows when to lob in one of his barbed comments and, remarkably for a talk-host, when to shut up.
• Steve – the bald security chief – came on board as a one-off for a KKK episode when trouble was feared. The Chicago cop (who still pounds the beat!) has become a cult icon himself, even cameoing on The Simpsons.
• The Audience have become a Greek chorus with their various chants for all occasions. Whether it’s a simple “Je-rry, Je-rry…” or the ever-popular “We Love Lesbians!”, they’re a group never shy to voice their feelings, much like a WWF crowd.

Speaking of wrestling, the question of fakery has to be addressed – though personally, it’s no more relevant to my enjoyment of the show than whether The Rock and Steve Austin really are mortal enemies or not. The lines are more blurred on Jerry, however. While rival channels irregularly reveal guests who are not what they claim (“I was [supposed to] be with someone for two and a half years and I was cheating on him with my photographer. I didn’t even know the two guys.”), there certainly are some real guests involved. In July 2000, only hours after the broadcast of an episode entitled Secret Mistresses Confronted, the body of one participant was found in Florida. Another guest, the victim’s former husband is currently in jail awaiting trial for her murder. If this is fake, it’s pretty convincing.

Great Springer Episode Titles

• I Gave Myself an Abortion
• Dwarves are People Too
• Dads Who Hate Barney
• I Got My Mom Off Crack
• You Look Like a Freak
• I’m a Breeder for the Klan
• You’re Too Fat to Make Porn
• Lesbian Cousins in Love
• Honey, I’m Really a Guy!
• My Parrot Runs My Life

This kind of escapade is why the show represents something of a dilemma for Jerry’s masters at Studios USA, the company that produces and distributes the show. On the one hand, it is a major cash-cow for them, bringing in an estimated $30-40 million per year. Springer even did what no other talk-show in the 90’s managed – he dethroned Empress Oprah from her position atop the ratings, even in previously untouchable demographic groups, such as the prized “women, 18-34” category.

On the other hand, its controversial nature and ability to attract criticism has proved an embarrassment, particularly to head honcho Barry Diller (though hard to see how the man who also owns QVC and the Home Shopping Network could really complain about quality). In April 1998, they vowed to “eliminate all physical violence from the series”, and in May 1999, they said, “We will produce and distribute a program that we feel is responsible – no violence, physical confrontation or profanity.”

The month after the latter statement, they even started shopping the show around to other distributors, hoping to offload what they perhaps say as an embarrassing member of the family. In the end, however, they held onto the show, and though ratings dropped, it now remains a steady #2 behind the Book Club Queen, and is still vastly entertaining.

Though the glory days of I Married A Horse – their never-aired bestiality special from May 1998 – are now perhaps behind it, even in this (slightly!) toned-down version, the show still remains a glimpse into bizarre corners of Americana. Despite what scarily bland shows like Friends would have you think, to quote Richard Dominick, “Life isn’t just a bunch of white, middle-class people living in the city.” For reminding us of this, Jerry Springer and his team can only be applauded.