Across the Great Divide

Selling Air.

Via SCSU Scholars, why popcorn costs so much at the movies.

The clip is to promote a book on microeconomics and doesn't really answer the question, though it does provide some interesting information about popcorn pricing. You knew already that popcorn has a huge mark-up, but maybe not what accounts for the price differences and margins among the various sizes.

Marginal Revolution linked to the same video and attracted revealing comments from a former theater worker:

Popcorn kernels are cheap to buy and easy to store. Unlike other food items such as soda, candy, or ice creame, where we traded in part on the name of the brand, which the firms used to increase costs and lower margins [? i.e., the candy companies raised the cost to the theaters and lowered the theaters' margins?], popcorn has no such associated costs. Towards the latter part of my work there, they added a "bulk" candy apparatus, for lack of a better term, and positioned it prominently in the lobby area, again because this candy was not sold as a brand was a far higher grossing product.

And from a popcorn marketer:

One of my first jobs out of school was running the popcorn division of a Fortune 500 food company. I attended meetings of the Popcorn Institute, followed planting patterns, inspected acreage, had meetings with our food chemists, and attended seminars on new popcorn hybrids. We had grocery, concession, and institutional buyers. What I remember most about about the concessions, primarily theaters, was they were all focused on the expansion ratio of the kernel. At that time we could deliver up to 40:1, but they wanted more. It was inventory, storage, and pricing issues. If they could have filled a 1 quart cup with 15 kernels that had an expansion ratio of 300:1, they would have bought it (selling more air). That was why we only sold them butterfly kernels instead of the superior mushroom kernels.

After the War Room.

I'm running with this because it's so brilliant — not to be anti-Clinton — but ouch!

Via A Tiny Revolution [h/t The Mississippifarian]

Has Pawlenty Seen Metropolis?

I was out in Colorado watching Metropolis screened with a new soundtrack performed live by the composers, while Gov. Pawlenty was busy in Minnesota with the bonding bill.

I was convinced I'd seen the Fritz Lange classic silent picture in college (turns out, I had no memory of the film). But the score was the attraction — plus the fact that the local supply of novel cultural experiences is still a bit lacking on a given night unless you are willing to include Texas Hold 'em.

The plot and storytelling are plodding and quaint to modern sensibilities, but visually the film is still compelling. And though the moral — heart must mediate between hands and head — is laughably didactic, the struggle between the remote masters and the  workers in the depths seems pertinent still. The "heads" would follow their pleasures down to hell rather than give them up. Meanwhile, the "hands" engage in a futile rebellion that means their own destruction.

Which brings me back to the Governor's gambit. Joh Fredersen, who runs the Metropolis, is willing to risk the city's destruction in order to defeat the workers forever. This post reminded me of the movie I'd just seen.

But it's safe to say that Pawlenty's veto of a project that has long been in the works, a project that has bi-partisan support and will be the backbone of a future transit system for the Twin Cities metro area, and a project that he previously supported is a desperate measure for a desperate man who sees his political power waning. The only lever he has left is marked "auto-destruct".

Joh Fredersen set in motion the auto-destruct and watched both the elites and the workers celebrate as their children are threatened with oblivion. But that was only a movie.

Colorado Weekend: Big Gun Coming to Town.

I'm not trying to set up Joel for our next gun discussion, really I'm not.

After all, Minneapolis has a ripe current case that provides a provocative example of the ambiguities surrounding self-defense claims.

I'm just showing that out here in Colorado, where the buffalo roam, the varieties of gun news have a different tenor right now.

(The 32 buffalo were shot near my great grandmother's former homestead, a place the columnist called "the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness," which must make Denver the center of everythingness.)

*****

Some exciting news from where I sit. Dick Cheney's coming next week to the far left part of the state — a better description might be "to the right of Utah" — for Senate fund raiser for Bob Schaffer — a good description would be to the right of Mark Kennedy... or maybe near the center of nothingness.

I'm wondering if would be worth 150 bucks to get close to Cheney and really confuse the hell out of anyone checking out my political donations.

*****
My brother-in-law had Tombstone on when I went over for dinner. Damn, they ran a tight ship back then. Oh, sure there were murders and all. But they kept all traces of horse manure off the main street day and night, and the dirt stayed as smooth as my living room floor. Clothes were always clean, women were hot and well kept, except for the one doing the laudanum, and the good guys were are all pretty sensitive for the 21st century, let alone the 19th.

Even when there was bloodshed and Kurt Russell had blood up to his elbows, he could caress his dying brother's forehead and never leave a print! The bar and rooms, including the jail? Immaculate. The consumptive Doc Holliday? Pale, yes, but otherwise, Paul Verlaine with six guns. Three bad cowboys went to Boot Hill in curved glass-topped coffins that looked better than any piece of furniture I've ever owned.

Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs, the town where I grew up, and making the little hike up the mountain to see his tombstone was like going to Mall of America. (It's what you did when you had visitors and didn't know what to do with them.)

My grandfather's ranch (not the Colorado side of the family) was near Tombstone in Cochise county. I don't recall any woods like they rode through, but maybe life was better around there in the frontier days, and we don't realize how bad we have it.

Preview of Coming Attractions.

Spending two weeks foreign tongueless and voluntarily cut off from phones, internet and news media (which include, barely, television), invites new ways of listening, seeing and experiencing.

[In any year, what returning Minnesotan could not predict the fall headlines: "Vikings need fixing" and "Gophers have second-half meltdown"?]

I expected to return from our trip to Portugal with new images and fresh thoughts about cycling, politics, culture, public investment, cities, demographics,  transportation, wealth and poverty, religion, hotels, food and drink, books,  communication, relationships,  misunderstandings and serendipitous connections. In other words, the stuff that normally fuels this blog and will, with an Iberian flavor, in the coming weeks.

But we have to start with movies.

The question, suggested by a cafe discussion with my domestic partner, concerned how we mentally edit our daily experience. Not in reflection or in preparation for public display, but in real time. Where do we point the camera? How often does it move? Who is included in the foreground or allowed to comment on the action?

Are we inevitably in a star-driven vehicle, featuring Jennifer Anniston in a stretch limo or Jack Nicholson still pretending he's just one of the Easy Rider gang? Or are we hitting the road in an Eric Bogosian-style one-man show or swimming alone to Cambodia and points beyond? Or are we more the auteur and, if so, are we Leni Riefenstahl, John Huston, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Kevin Costner or Orson Welles?

On another day, I might have a different answer, but this morning, the only proper response would be: I am Mr. Bean.

Over the two weeks, we negotiated every form of non-driving transportation available, save animal-drawn, leaping from bicycle to bus to trekking and train to metro to cab to airplane, all the while keeping track of our baggage. We almost made it home.

This morning, however, at 5:30 a.m., I awoke in my own bed to the dreaded post-vacation question: "Where's my black bag?"

As in, the black bag containing all my DP's cycling clothes and her bicycle seat. As in, the black bag I had already once retrieved from a departing train after we'd momentarily misplaced it in a distant compartment while finding our proper seats on the way to Aveiro. As in, the black bag I'd assumed responsibility for as our impedimentia increased during the trip.

As in, the black bag I'd no doubt been referring to when I said, as we left the light rail station at First Avenue, "I feel one bag lighter"

In a perfect world — maybe even in a normal one — we'd have realized that was because I was one bag lighter, and I would have turned around and retrieved the missing bag. In a Mr. Bean movie, I would have continued another block, before racing madly after a departing train, leaving a food-poisoned Susan with all the baggage, no money and surrounded by a band of gypsies.

In fact, the only difference between reality and the Mr. Bean movie — which we watched together on the return flight, and which touched on all the aforementioned themes, including alternative movie edits — was the lack of gypsies and our jet-lagged capacity for mutual self-delusion.

Now we must wait until Monday to discover what happened to all those loose plot ends involving bicycles, self-involved movie directors, lost articles, trains, food revulsion and the rest. Unlike a Mr. Bean movie, my subsequent posts will deliver just the best bits.

My Dinner with Samuel, Partie Deux.

[Part one is here.]

The plan was to meet for dinner at the Nepalese restaurant on Main, then weave through the shut down street, past four blocks of truly local farmer's market offerings, to the art film house, a restored 1920s-era theater and music venue called the Avalon. La vie en rose, the new Edith Piaf biopic, was playing.

"Do you know Edith Piaf?" Samuel asked.

"Yes."

"Do you like her?"

I was hoping this was not code. "As much as any French chanteuse."

He laughed.

Most of our pre-movie dinner discussion would be of little interest to anyone but us — and really only half was all that interesting to me. I gave the well-rehearsed museum tour of life's last 40 years, one I'd run through in a more truncated version over the coming reunion weekend. I reminded him of ways he'd influenced me, and he probed for how I had recognized talent in young writers during my business years.

Did they have some commonality, he wanted to know. Except for a desire to be good and willingness to work at it, I thought not. Each was different. Now, I would probably say the key was spotting the difference, not the commonality, that makes a writer unique. I think that's what Samuel did, but now his focus is on the shared metaphysical, the molecular and spiritual matter than flows through us all.

That's what got him in trouble as a teacher. He was still trying to awaken individual students, but doing it with increasingly fringe thoughts about the essence of life — in a town where even today, "this is a Christian nation" is broad public sentiment and many think if you fly only one flag on your property, it better be the Stars and Stripes. His growing interest in amulet-and-angel explanations was even more problematic 25 years ago than today, and Samuel would not accommodate narrow thinking just to keep his job.

He put it that he and the school administration parted ways over his bringing metaphysics to the classroom, but it was bringing in photos from a sojourn to the Philippines that I suspect convinced school officials he had to go. He did not talk about this, but my aging recollection is that the photos documented a healing ceremony where the shaman extracted palmed chicken entrails from a diseased person and claimed them cured.

The bogus pagan rite was bad enough. The sacred sweat glistening on the naked participants made it worse. And the presence of the teacher in some of the pictures made this impossible to ignore.

Hearing about it from afar, I thought I knew how he meant it — as an exotic but vital piece of information about the universe, something for his students to consider before their minds locked down within the local mores. Instead, it was physical evidence of the metaphysical dangers his opponents needed.

I wanted to hear more about the things that excited him now, about the events of the previous week he believed were going to be very significant for the earth. But time for the movie was fast approaching, and we had to take up fate of the planet later...

I have been given information about our planet which can help fire her bio-electrical nervous system and jump start her heart into healing and a new phase of restoration for the coming phase of humanity.

Weekendgame: It's Hard to Live Free or Die.

A hacker and Live Free or Die Hard hero John McClane have narrowly averted another incendiary assault by unseen bad guys. As they pick their way through the rubble, the overwhelmed hacker echoes Princess Leia's query of Han Solo:

Do you have a plan?

Yeah, kill all of them and rescue my daughter.

I meant "plan" as in how we do it.

I wish that didn't sound so familiar.

*****
London police foiled a pair of planned car bomb attacks this week, almost two years after suicide bombers attacked the London transit system and killed 52 people, and a second bombing attempt failed.

Trying to capture the plotters and avert further attacks back then, British authorities mistakenly tracked a Brazilian electrician to the underground and shot him without apparent provocation. The final police report, which took well over a year to be made public, revealed that Jean Charles de Menezes was restrained by an officer as he was shot seven times in the head at point-blank range.

Early reports of his acting suspiciously were not upheld by the investigation. Details from eyewitness accounts used to justify the brutal killing turned out not to be true. People at the scene were confused, yet bloggers continents away broke it down in real time as if they were dealing with gospel.

In the cartoon world of Die Hard, the good guys always manage to be in the right place — except when a loved one is about to be taken hostage. They operate without official oversight or backup. They shoot straight and shake off wounds. They miraculously connect with the one other person in the world who can help them. They are modest yet determined in discharging grave responsibilities. They might make mistakes but they get the job done.

Putting yourself on the line as the righteous and effective defender of all that is good in America is noble, of course, but for those not actually in the military or law enforcement, it's mainly an appealing fantasy. The farther you are from actual danger and real fighting, the easier it is to see yourself as John McClane or Captain America.

I do not oppose citizens' rights to bear arms; I just question the necessity of putting guns on the street in the hands of people with less training, less physical conditioning and a hell of a lot fewer special effects than your average John McClane.

*****
A while back, I got into a contretemps with some bloggers who had a different interpretation of events surrounding the shooting of an off-duty cop by a conceal & carry permit holder during a road-rage incident three weeks ago. My interest in that event, as in the de Menezes shooting, was not to show I had the correct interpretation, but to note how our searches for the "truth" are influenced by our own beliefs, experiences and ideologies. With cops in the family, I'm inclined to look a little harder at the guy who shoots a cop. A responsible conceal & carry advocate who distrusts the media and the government is a bit more likely to look for exculpatory evidence favoring the shooter.

That report, too, is slow in coming, leaving us all time for speculation.

Joel Rosenberg, a firearms safety trainer and gun rights advocate, has published the 911 transcripts from calls related to the shooting. Ambiguous, as far as I'm concerned, but highlighting why a thorough investigation is needed.

*****

I'm going out on a limb here... None of us will single-handedly save American life as we know it, or even rescue our daughter from violent hostage takers. We will not foil a rape, halt a bank robbery or help authorities outwit hijackers. We will not stop a terrorist from blowing up a night club.

This is not because we are cowardly or don't care. It's not even because we lack the requisite skills.

We simply won't get the opportunity.

If we do get the opportunity to save a life, it likely will be because we know CPR and first aid, think to use our cell phone, and have maintained a level of fitness that allows us to function mentally and physically in a high-stress situation.

Or more likely, we will be at work and a report will come to us that says some people exhibit a high rate of mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer associated with asbestos. We will not cut the funding for more study. We will not table a new report that shows a growing incidence of the disease. We will not suppress science and fire those who bring dangerous issues to public attention.

However, this kind of heroic behavior is apparently quite difficult and the circumstances are far too nuanced for quick and decisive action. But shooting brown people? Let's roll!

*****

One of our regular rides takes us past a small, charming stucco church near Lake Minnetonka, the New Thought Church of Religious Science. We'd think of stopping to investigate the strange name, but never did, and now it's too late.

The church building is now under new ownership.

Oh, it's still a church. A choir could be heard practicing, and a man dressed like a hotel doorman deliberately swept the front walk in preparation for the morning's service. In fact, this was more life than we'd ever seen there.

On my return, I checked out the church. The original New Thought denomination grew out of the writings and "medical" practice of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who also influenced Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science.

Quimby believed reason could erase ailments. It certainly allowed him to accept the prospect of death, which he simply considered to be "the change." On his deathbed, he anticipated W.C. Fields:

I am perfectly willing for the change myself, but I know you all will feel badly, and think I am dead; but I know that I shall be right here with you, just as I always have been. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to Philadelphia.

The new owners of the little church? Why, it's Mac Hammond's Living Word Ministry, bring the prosperity gospel to the Lake People.

*****

Like any good actor, though, non-presidential non-candidate Fred Thompson has got our backs.

We were just talking earlier, and I remember the figure that stuck out to me -- in the year 2005, we apprehended over 1,000 folks that originally has come from Cuba. If they're coming from Cuba, where else are they coming from? And I don't imagine they're coming here to bring greetings from Castro. We're living in the era of the suitcase bomb. We can't be talking seriously about national security while that's going on.

Of course! The Cubans! They've been playing us all along!

Fun According to the Taxpayers League.

If the Taxpayers League blog allowed comments, I wouldn't have to comment here. David Strom approvingly quotes a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on why European economies lag the U.S.

Another interesting thing to note: Americans are more satisfied in their jobs than Europeans, putting the lie to the idea that the Europeans trade off wealth for other satisfactions. Apparently not.

David, I thought you knew there are other satisfactions in life besides jobs and wealth. Apparently not.

Bambi vs. Gozdilla Second Round is Coming.

Since June 2005, the Harper's containing David Mamet's essay, "Bambi vs Godzilla: Why art loses in Hollywood," shuffled from my living room to bathroom to bedside as other outdated publications were kicked to the curbside. I'll get around to it, I swore, and last night in span of wakefulness, I did, madly circling quotes all across the pages.

The essay isn't available online, but it was just announced Mamet has expanded it into a book to be released in February 2007.

Before he gets around to the artist's plight, he places moviemaking in its proper context: that show business is a business, and that business is a form of gambling.

People may buy a stock becuase it is heavily touted, the stock may be thrust down their throat, they may buy the stock because it seems undervalued, they may buy it knowing it is worthless in the hope of selling it to a greater fool.

The price of the stock has no relationship to the worth or prospects of the company traded, the stock does not know the trader is betting on it; it is, essentially, inert, a marker in a gambling game.

Gambling, of course, is purely about the advancement of fortunes by extraction, not creation. Competition, collusion and deception are all part of the contest.

Mamet describes politics as a ritual entertainment.

One party suggest retreat to an imaginary past, one advance to an impossible future. One party sells fear, one hope. And all pre-election skirmishing is, essentially, to guess which label, at that time, is preferred by the electorate.

These elections would be the stuff of comic books, except that, curiously, the two combatants wear identical costumes.

Once elected, the leader still has a gambling problem, or at least the gambler's hope of a few more good rolls that will change everything, and then, the power to

institute all of my Good Ideas. Would it not, then, be in the best interests of all concerned for me to devote my energies to subversion of the needlessly and foolishly "democratic" system, which prevents me from doing so?

Thus, the enlightened is self-schooled to devote his energies not to the stated tasks at hand — government, corporate oversight, statecraft — but to the consummation of Power, which, once achieved, will make all tasks easier.

Here, he explains how the reality-based candidate is at a severe disadvantage:

Law, politics and commerce are based on lies. That is, the premises giving rise to opposition are real, but the debate occurs not between these premises but between their proxy, substitute positions. The two parties to a legal dispute (as the opponents in an election) each select an essentially absurd position. "I did not kill my wife and Ron Goldman," "A rising tide raises all boats," "Tobacco does not cause cancer." Should one be able to support this position, such that it prevails over the nonsense of his opponent, he is awarded the decision. (The criminal propensity of business: Buy Low, Sell High, sell the sizzle not the steak, etc., and its resemblance to a lying cotnest is, I believe, generally acknowledged.)

In these fibbing competitions, the party actually wronged, the party with an actual practicable program, or possessing an actually beneficial product, is at a severe disadvantage; he is stuck with a position he cannot abandon, and, thus, cannot engage his talents for elaboration, distraction, drama and subterfuge.

I expect the book will spend more time in Hollywood, but since politics  is ever closer to show business, it may be hard to tell it from Washington. And, perhaps, one would hope, some editor will find, by then, the use of commas less essential.

Number of the Day: 23

Because 12 + 11 = 23