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directorcommentary | jasonbentley.org

Jason Bentley, Santa Clara, California: writing, photography, graphic design, music, audio, video, technology, life

October 28, 2004

This Election Is Stupid

I turned on CNN today and was immediately reminded of why I've tuned out so much of this election. It's not so much the fierce, bitter vitriol. It's that this election is the most inane I've ever experienced. The election of 2000 didn't really enter surreal farcehood until after November 2. This one started out weird and has remained so.

Tonight's question from Paula Zahn:

What celebrity do you think will bring out more voters:

a) Arnold Schwarzenegger
b) Bruce Springsteen

I mean Jesus. And soon she'll air a segment on psychics and other predictors of the election outcome. I'm switching to Jim Lehrer. I knew better anyway.

All the news about the Red Sox reminds me of when the Detroit Tigers won the series in 84.

84. Hmm.

I'm just thankful I live in a state that the paries have already written off to the Democrats, so our political TV spots amount to local elections and ballot proposition advocacy, which are slightly less hateful than the presidential ones. It's funny, though, seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger on TV barking in his opposition to this proposition or that, or hugging some candidate he wants on his team.

I recommend the Living Room Candidate, a museum website that features political ads from 1952 to today. It's really good, and really shows the downward spiral our political culture is in. Have you seen the "wolves" ad yet? And yesterday, I saw an Army recruiting commercial that featured graphics of nite-vision crosshairs focused on a swarthy guy in a turban. This was during on Comedy Central after The Daily Show and Drawn Together, and at that time of night Comedy Central gets a little butch.

Still, man, it's a crazy time.

jb | | # |  

Roger Ebert Rulez the Univers

So I'm happy to report that Roger Ebert's rockin' the Univers on his new website:




Univers 57 and Univers 67, if I'm not mistaken. Not exactly a bold choice - Univers' name only fortold its eventual ubiquity, but always a solid one. It's probably my favorite font. Along with Futura. But you knew that. I like many different fonts, but I seem to have special affection for sleek san-serif Euro fonts. In fact, sleek, san-serif Euro anything is pretty cool, which is why Ikea and I get along so well.

Anyway, sadly this is about all that's good I can say about the design on Roger Ebert's new website. I've given it some time so that I could live with it a while or for it to hopefully change but, nope, it's remained the same ill-considered movie auditorium burgundy "velvet" motif, full of inexplicable high-contrast raster lines that make it a literal chore to the eyes.

The banner above is a good example. There's venerable Univers, doing what it can in front of those damn lines and a murky photo of, I suppose, a glossary, with a bunch of semiopaque words in American Typewriter Condensed. Another good choice: it's a standard "typewriter" font and the way to go if you want to say lexicon. Ultimately, though, the final result just looks muddled and difficult, like one of those sci-fi movies that drench everything in night and rain to cover up seams in special effects. Plus the (overused) drop shadow on the "g" is inconsistent. There should reasonably be some minimal drop show for the bottoms of the rest of the text if it has to be there at all.

The whole look reminds me, somehow, of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. "What does Roger Ebert think Missus Torrance?"

I realized I'm biased here, but I miss the blue icy cool of the original Chicago Sun-Times version of Ebert's site, avilable only as a digital memory, courtesy of archive.org:




Pretty. No unnecessary drop shadow anywhere. This is the basic look for all of Chicago Sun-Times's website, and it's really easy to deal with. Now this:




Ebert's now forlorn expression seems to convey his heavy heart each day the Bush Administration destroys the fabric of his beloved America. Maybe that's a bit much, but you get my point. It's just no fun at all.

So now that I know rogerebert.com has its own editor, Jim Emerson, I'll just say, "Yo, Jim, let's rethink this and lighten up. I like all the new amenities of the site, but if yer gonna frontload a bunch of images of The Grudge and Donnie Darko and Dennis Hopper, we need a cheerier context, and Roger should't look like he's inviting us to enter of our own free will. We can say movies or even movie theatre without evoking a high-contrast Merlot with Butterscotch custard. Contact me at jasonbentley@jasonbentley.org. I am available."

*snaps out of it* And that's what I'd say to him...if he were really here. :-)

jb | | # |