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10 media vampires that should have been spiked long ago

beak Ms. Beak

Ten years after the dawn of CityBeat, the San Diego media landscape looks like a scene from The Terminator, with the rotting carcasses of journalists littering the hillsides. It’s the day-after for San Diego media, and it’s not a pretty picture. The bastions have crumbled, torn down by nerds with digital toys. In just 10 short years, every aspect of the business has changed, the rivers diverted; bizarro world is now reality.

Look at the Union-Tribune—er, U-T San Diego—where the survivors of the purge cower in their cubicles waiting for the building to be torn down to make room for the World’s Largest Wendy’s. never considered much of a paper in its heyday, it’s now the subject of national mockery, the play-thing of a delusional Citizen Kane wannabe, who’s vowed to use the paper to make sure everyone in San Diego is familiar with the size of his penis.

Turn on TV or radio and the airwaves are filled with ghosts of the past, dispossessed spirits wandering through a fading media world. they hang on to their jobs for no apparent reason, desperately thankful that they can still get into the Del Mar Fair media party.

Then there’s CityBeat, which refuses to die. Like a VD-resistant cockroach, CityBeat scurries forward, beating the odds and annoying the hell out of certain politicians. CityBeat is the successor to SLAMM, which was first printed on the back of used Trader Joe’s bags. By one recent count, approximately 6,343 weeklies have appeared and disappeared since SLAMM was first tossed into a convenience store near you. When the current owners took over, there was the usual grumbling about carpetbagger scum. some thought the paper would lose that brewed-in-the-bathroom vibe and develop into one more failed attempt at a happy-face alternative to the Reader.

But that never happened. CityBeat actually covers news and publishes the likes of Edwin Decker, who has developed into a Voice for San Diego, proving that CityBeat never abandoned authors willing to run their nails across the chalkboard.

In 2003, when the head of the U-T editorial board—a talentless, bow-tie-wearing hack named Robert “Bob” Kittle—threw a hissy fit over one of this writer’s columns, CityBeat editor David Rolland refused to back down, flashing the type of cojones rarely seen these days in local media. Today, Kittle is long gone, dumped by the paper when the accountants realized that a trained chimp could write with the same eloquence.

If you want to get all truthful and crap, a lot of guys like Bob who lost their jobs during The Cleansing should have been banished to the PR farms long ago. yet, many Bobs are still out there, preying on San Diego, oblivious to the curse on their souls.

So here are 10 San Diego media vampires that should have been spiked long ago:

1. Roger Hedgecock: Once considered a smart guy, he tossed aside intelligence for a desperate attempt to become the next Rush Limbaugh. now he’s just another Tea Party toadie pandering to the wackos, a smirking icon of talk radio ignored by anyone with an IQ over 32.

2. San Diego reality show contestants: Once upon a time, San Diego was best known for obedient killer whales, nice beaches and the occasional mass murder. now the face of San Diego is a drunken frat girl who will gladly show her tits for the promise of warm beer and a chance to meet Jonny Moseley.

3. U-T San Diego editorial writers: No one has actually paid attention to newspaper editorials since 1898, yet the arrogant hacks continue to pound out the drivel. Naming President Obama the worst president in history put the current crop of U-T editorial writers in the intellectual class of the drooling 90-year-old Glenn Beck fan who thinks Obama is a fascist Kenyan socialist who fathered a two-headed baby with an alien.

4. John Coleman: Working a schtick that went out of style in 1976, Coleman continues to babble on, his crazy-clown smile a reminder that TV was once a very weird and scary place.

5. Local TV news: The local stations treat news as the “stuff that goes in between the weather reports.” Anchors and reporters display the personality of greeters at Scientology offices. No one cares. Reruns of Two and a Half Men provide more intellectual stimulation.

6. Jeff and Jer: Seriously, these guys are still employed? this is how radio is fighting the wave crashing over its old static-filled life? exactly who is the person out there who gets up in the morning and says, “Gosh darn, those dudes sure are funny”?

7. Kimberly Hunt’s plastic surgeon: OK, maybe her carefully sculpted hard-edged look is simply the result of clean living and sharp journalistic standards. either way, the KimBot is sad evidence of the fate of aging anchor babes who are still forced to tighten and hone their Barbieness to stay on the air.

8. U-T San Diego entertainment writers: Let’s not get into names here, but a lot of these guys were old and boring 10 years ago. now they are just older and more boring.

9. Reader cover stories. OK, we get it. they are different. Quirky. but after all these years of staking out the esoteric high ground, would it really kill the editors to run a cover story that people may actually want to read?

10. mark Larson: The official jokester of San Diego’s Christian right couldn’t get a gig at the Barstow Chuckle Room. Only in the Des Moines of the West is “being around forever” a qualification for on-air employment.Ms. Beak wrote “San Diego Munch” until 2005.

Write to editor@sdweekly.com

10 media vampires that should have been spiked long ago

The Doctors Live Recap: Procrastinate? Don’t Wait, Lose Weight! (4/19/12)

Today's the Doctors: Don't Wait, Lose Weight!

Are you always waiting for the perfect moment to do something? Did you know there’s never a “perfect” moment? We’ve all fallen to procrastination at one time or another, and today on the Doctors we discuss beating procrastination to lose weight and fight our bad habits. Catch the liveliet updates only here on Nerdles News for Nerds!

Our first topic for today touches on an anti-prejudice pill. According to an Oxford University study, a beta blocker like a propranolol pill, may lower “implicit” racial attitudes. since beta blockers slow our heart rate, blood pressure, etc., the theory is people may be less stressed so they’ll be less inclined to be prejudiced, too.

Up next, the Doctors discuss the rumors about Ashley Judd getting plastic surgery. It seems like her face has gotten quite puffier from a recent media event and some are speculating that she’s gotten some work done. Check out the photo. what do you think? Ashley Judd and her representatives say that the rumor isn’t true, and that rather, Ms. Judd has been battling a serious infection and flu. As for the Doctors, they analyze the photo and conclude that maybe she’s just gained some weight. if anything, we should just give Ashley the benefit of the doubt and let her be.

Did she or didn't she, get plastic surgery?

Now on the show, the Doctors feature a woman addicted to the color pink. our guest today has a complete addiction to pink – everything in her home is pink, even her dog! in fact, she tries to even eat pink but she says that’s quite tough to do. the Doctors say her addiction is so bad either. the color pink can be a stress-reliever, and there are even pink foods that are quite healthy like pomegranates, grape fruit, meat, and even pink wine! that sounds like a complete meal to me.

Back from a break, we have a guest, Christie, who’s concerned about all the fine lines and deep wrinkles on her skin. She never took care of her skin when she was younger so now she’s paying for it – she has melasma, crows feet, chicken skin, and others. Fortunately, our doctors have hooked her up with a miracle peel Christie can do from home. Check out the before-and-after shots in the photo.

Before & After a miracle home skin peel.

Do you constantly twist and pull your hair? That’s a bad habit that both damages your hair and a sign of anxiety disorder (which can also lead to OCD, eating disorders, etc.). in fact, this is a true medical condition called trichotillomania.

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Up next, we have another story about a woman named Catherine who is addictied to nicotine gum. She only smoked for two years, but has been chewing nicotine gum for over four years. She asks the Doctors for help, and they our guest to the best hypnotist in the country, Tom Silver. he puts her in a receptive state of hypnosis so that we can get rid of her bad habit and “install” a new program of thinking in her subconscious. does it work? I’m quite doubtful from the video, but on the show, Catherine says it was a “positive” experience.

Is it possible for a person to NEVER feel full? Scientists have found what they call a “gluttony” gene that can prevent people from ever feeling satisfied when they eat. the Doctors now feature a story about Charles D’Angelo who used to weigh 360 pounds. his stomach used to be so large that when he sat down, his stomach would obscure his view of the TV. but in just two years, he lost 160 pounds of fat. his motto is: “Take charge.” Check out his book called, “think and Grow thin.” his biggest secret? It’s all about your mindset. the Doctors sent him to help fan named Lulu to help her get ready for her wedding. She has a real problem with controlling her bad food habits. She likes pizza, burgers, etc. When she finally meets Charles, she’s in for a shocker. he completely “cleanses” her kitchen. he kicks out the cola – there’s 10 teaspoons of sugar in just ONE can of soda. Lulu now guests on the show, and she admits that she’s now finally ready to kick her bad eating habits and change her mindset. our doctors remind her (and us, too) that your goal shouldn’t just be for a wedding or special occassion. rather, it should be a life long goal.

Dr. Lisa feels Charles' abs who used to weight 360 pounds!

Mob Wives star Renee Graziano now guests on the show to talk about a plastic surgery experience that nearly killed her. in her first surgery, the doctor suggested quite a few things to get done – tighten up some skin here and there, etc. but the surgery went wrong. She was put under anesthesia for too long, and when she finally woke up and sat up, an incision in her back burst open. She lost over 6 pints of blood, and had to stay in the hospital for about 6 months. Fortunately, she did her research and found a skilled and respectable surgeon, Dr. Micheal Fiorillo, to fix her last doctors mistakes. She’s now getting corrective surgery on the wound on her back, and return some padding over the spinal bone that was exposed. Nonetheless, our doctors points that despite all that’s happened to her, she still looks pretty good.

When a surgery goes wrong, TV personalities feel the pain, too.

Allergy Solutions from Allegra are next. We should clean our homes regularly to avoid dust colleting and irritating us. if we go outside, make sure to check out the pollen levels to avoid our allergies acting up. Lastly, during the worst of our allergy season, let’s take a anti-histamine to help prevent and relieve our allery symptoms.

Photo courtesy of The Doctors.

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The Doctors Live Recap: Procrastinate? Don’t Wait, Lose Weight! (4/19/12)

‘Win Win’ and ‘Source Code’: The pleasures of the character actor

I have a theory about film actors, and I think it is mostly borne out by the facts: I think most successful film and television actors were not high-school drama nerds, but weirdo jocks. Film is a visual medium that relies very heavily on the spectacle of physical action, and the truth is that, for the most part, kids like the one I was — tall, thin, unmuscular, and decidedly hangdog — don’t look credible leaping off buildings with guns in both hands. but you get somebody from the track or basketball team with an attractive face and expressive eyes and, holy cow, box-office gold.I came up during the ’70s, when the situation was reversed — it was the era of the character actor, with movies’ stars cast for their distinctive faces and extraordinary personalities. And so we had, say, Walter Matthau starring in “The taking of Pelham One two three,” a taut thriller in which an old Jewish man with hunched shoulders and a face like a well-worn shoe chased after professional criminals in New York’s subways. Gene Hackman was a star then, and, sure, he was physically capable — he had been a marine for four years — but I don’t expect he was cast in “The French Connection” because of how good he looked sliding along the hood of a car so much as how well he wore a porkpie hat. Make no mistake, I’m a fan of James Franco, but he’s no Popeye Doyle.So it is heartening that film still has a place for somebody like Paul Giamatti, who can be seen now in “Win Win.” He’s a heavy actor with hair, where he has it, like steel wool and a face like a doleful basset hound. Steve Martin once wrote a story in which Michael Jackson’s face, which had so much plastic surgery that it was incapable of expressiveness, envied Walter Matthau’s; it would envy Giamatti’s as well. the whole of “Win Win” is composed of a selection of wry looks from the actor; he always seems to suspect he may be the butt of a joke that he’s not entirely getting.And the whole film is cast like a ’70s movie. My god, the faces in this film! there is Amy Ryan as his wife, and she has one of the loveliest smiles in film nowadays, but on a remarkable, pointed face that’s not the characterless, almost cartoonish prettiness of many young actresses. the plot has Giamatti, a lawyer in a small Jersey town, taking responsibility for an older man, mostly as a result of a financial crisis. the older man is played by Burt Young, one of the classic film character actors from the ’70s, a man with heavy-lidded, humorous eyes and a mouth like a contemptuous hawk, if you can imagine such a thing. Young’s grandson shows up, escaping a somewhat miserable home life, and he’s played by a newcomer named Alex Shaffer, who has an unkempt head of startling blond hair, a long face, and a quiet self-confidence that is masking a whole range of deeper wounds. As it turns out, the young man is a potential champion wrestler, and Giamatti coaches the high-school wrestling team.And there’s your plot. It’s small and sweet, with enormous focus on character, all of whom are carefully cast. Giamatti’s assistant coaches, as an example, are played by two of today’s most appealing character actors, Jeffrey Tambor and Bobby Cannavale, and both are given as much screen time as they need to inhabit their characters’ eccentricities. And although the previews sort of present this movie as a sports film, it isn’t, really; Giamatti’s team is terrible, almost to a bad News Bears level, and it  never really improves. but Shaffer is good enough that he could potentially get a college scholarship, and the conflict in the film is that his deadbeat mother shows up and wants him back. It’s all very well detailed by writer/director Thomas McCarthy (who was responsible for the similarly excellent “The Station Agent“), and his decision to populate it with expressive faces, rather than attractive nonentities, makes the film irresistible.

<a href="http://www.minnpost.com/maxsparber/2011/04/05/27187/win_win_and_source_code_the_pleasures_of_the_character_actortag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.minnpost.com/maxsparber/2011/04/05/27187/win_win_and_source_code_the_pleasures_of_the_character_actorTue, 05 Apr 2011 14:56:40 GMT 00:00″>’Win Win’ and ‘Source Code’: The pleasures of the character actor