Posts Tagged ‘Media’
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Monday, September 12th, 2011
In recent years, we’ve all heard the FDA and other food experts talk about food addiction in the same way one might talk about a heroin addiction, withdrawals and all. And with obesity still on the rise in theUnited States, experts are trying to link the neurological impulses of the brain to the insatiable desire to eat.
But what happens when a person begins craving things that aren’t really food?
Pica is a medical disorder characterized by a person’s desire to ingest non-nutritive substances- in other words, things that aren’t really food. This can range anywhere from clay and dirt, to toilet paper and cleaning products. Although there is surprisingly limited research on this disorder, most believe it is caused by a mineral deficiency and is the body’s way of trying to self-medicate.
Although it has not been widely research, it has recently been widely publicized with TV shows such as TLC’s “My Strange Addiction” and “Freaky Eaters.” These shows center around the lives of people who have lost the ability to control their cravings to non-food items. One woman scours the hillsides looking for rocks to eat; another eats ashes directly out of ashtrays; still another has been slowly eating her couch cushions down to small nubs.
Check out this clip from TLC’s My Strange Addiction:
Another “My Strange Addiction” participant, Bianca, is a young girl who has been addicted to eating pottery for four years. A non-smoker, she has recently graduated to licking cigarette ashes- sometimes straight from the ashtray. “I can’t live without it. It’s something that the body just craves,” she said on the show.
What is causing these people to put their health and, indeed, their lives at risk? As with most addictions, the compulsive nature of this disorder seems to allow them to “forget” that what they are doing is harmful. Side effects could include intestinal blockage, vomiting, and even death. In the case of Bianca, she is more at risk of developing certain types of cancer. And while there are many theories circulating as to why this behavior occurs, there seems to be no known and definitive cure. Most doctors suggest mineral supplements and behavioral therapy, but also assert that it also may just go away on its own. Who knows though- the sufferers on TLC seem to feel strangely connected and emotionally attached to their addiction of choice. Most seem unwilling to stop.
I am always wary of shows like this; the ones that almost seem to glamorize people’s unfortunate and sometimes hopeless situations. It seems like the more willing we are to put these stories on TV, the more people surface to tell their stories. Which leads to the question, does television create these disorders, make them seem alluring and attractive? Or does it simply prompt more and more people to tell their stories without feeling judged? Perhaps both. Either way, Pica fascinates me. I’ve never had any strong urge to drink laundry detergent or snack on paint chips so it’s almost, dare I say, addicting to watch.
But if nothing else, perhaps these television shows call attention to the fact that there is much more research to be done and much more help out there. It is a very real and potentially harmful disorder… not just an entertaining show on TLC.
-Jennie Whistler
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
DCRTV Breaks Stories, Spreads Rumors and is a Daily Must-Read
By Buzz McClain
Photography by Seth Freeman
You half-expect the headquarters of DCRTV.com to be a fortified bunker. It is, after all, where Dave Hughes daily, sometimes hourly, lobs bombs at the local media industry via his website by that name. Throughout the day he raises his head above the parapet to throw explosive news briefs and self-described “rants” about content, talent and management. Those notes can have repercussions when it comes to hirings, firings and the general business dealings of the region’s TV outlets, radio stations, media websites and publishing houses.
The last several months have been particularly intriguing, as stations and newspapers have changed formats, fired executives, frozen wages, dismantled departments or gone out of business completely—and the news is either broken first or anticipated well beforehand by the seemingly omniscient Dave Hughes.
The DCRTV bunker, as it turns out, is a walk-up condo in Reston, distinguished inside by how tidy it is. More college dorm than foxhole, the walls are lined with shelves of CDs (lots of bands from the ‘80s) and DVDs (lots of sci-fi B-movies and TV shows). A den boasts two folding tables that have neat piles of advertiser files and ratings printouts. The kitchen is distinctive in that it’s obvious nothing is ever prepared or consumed there.
The “nerve center” of the website is in the living room, which is given over to a small makeshift table with keyboard, monitor and PC. Next to it is a TV stand with small flat-screen TV and four remote controls neatly lined up under it; next to that is a bookcase with HD, satellite and terrestrial radios.
“This is it,” Hughes says. “This is where it all happens.”
If the headquarters of DCRTV doesn’t quite live up to the war-like image, at least Hughes, 51, doesn’t disappoint. He’s wearing faded camouflage pants and a white T-shirt. Later he’ll pull a camo cap over his shaved head to complete the urban soldier image. His long gray goatee and bushy moustache entirely obscure his mouth, so you don’t know if he’s smiling when he says that his website gets “40,000 to 50,000 unique readers a day, half of that on weekends and holidays.”
Fifty-thousand a day? “Yes,” he confirms. “It’s hit a million in a month.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” says Jim Farley, vice president of news and programming at WTOP news radio, who says he’s checked those figures. “[Newspapers have] virtually stopped covering local radio and TV, but people are curious about what’s going on in the industry. In the absence of that is this little gossip forum that begins to get news tips and, lo and behold, the stuff he’s breaking are pretty big stories. He’s got an advantage—he can print rumors—but an amazing percentage of what starts off as rumors come to pass.”
According to one major FM station executive (who asked not to be named because his company has a policy of not reading DCRTV), “I’d say 80 percent of people in the business read him. He has knowledge, but the rule of thumb is to take what he says with a grain of salt. Some of [the rumors] are complete bull from someone with an ax to grind, but [Hughes] is not to be taken lightly.”
“Anyone who says they don’t read it is lying,” says longtime radio wiseguy David Burd, now at WTOP. “The bone I have to pick is he doesn’t do his research. If he wants to be an expert and be taken seriously he needs to check facts. And tell him the Unibomber look is done.”
DCRTV began as a page of Hughes’ personal website in the mid-1990s when he “realized everybody started going to my website just for the page on radio,” he says. “I started up a little chat thing with people about radio, and that’s where DCRTV was born. I started to realize, OK, that’s where I’m going to focus my website, and all of a sudden people started to come, and it started to build up.”
The site, now a dozen years old, is supported by advertisers—he says he has some 60 to 65 regular ones—and nearly 300 individual donors (donors have access to DCRTV Plus, including an archive of historic photos and other material). Hughes says he’s “just about breaking even,” but also takes the occasional web design freelance gig, and he contributes to Baltimore sport site www.PressBoxOnline.com.
Hughes’ father worked for Xerox, and his mother was a nurse. The family relocated when Hughes was a teen from a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia—where young Hughes was exposed to New York City ‘60s pop radio powerhouses—to Northern Virginia, where he scanned the airwaves in search of something similar. He consequently became familiar with AM stations WPGC, WEAM, WEEL and the like before discovering the joys of free-form rock on WGTB-FM and WHFS-FM in the ‘70s.
After graduating from James Madison University in 1980, he worked as a journalist, first at a Reston weekly, then for broadcasting trade publications. After launching his website, Hughes’ mother fell ill. His move back home to care for her made him the object of ridicule on the air, particularly with Don Geronimo and Mike O’Meara on WJFK-FM, who would try to diminish any DCRTV blurbs by pointing out they were from a grown man living in his mother’s basement.
“Which I was,” Hughes says. Although he’s not longer confined to a basement, he seems to have little physical contact with the world beyond his door. “I’m in contact with a lot of people but not in person. I’ll be in contact with 100 people every day, but it’s emails or the phone. It’s not for everybody.” (If the news side of DCRTV is slow, check out the Mailbag tab, where Hughes moderates a volume-heavy chat.)
He forces himself outside by taking walks and going out for lunch, usually before 11 a.m. For an astute music buff, he doesn’t attend live shows—“my ears can’t take the noise”—and he doesn’t cook, declaring that the electric stove was last turned on during the walk-through with the realtor. Movies are his main outlet, and he says he takes in “two a week or so with friends, or whatever.”
Hughes perks up at the mention of his own fantasy radio station. “I would do a really cool adult-rock station,” he says animatedly. “I’d get Weasel and Cerf [from WHFS’ glory days], Jon Ballard at BIG[-FM]. I’d give the deejays a certain amount of freedom but there would be a playlist. We’d make it a quarter classic rock and deep cuts—the Beatles and the Cars but stuff you don’t hear all the time; the Stones, but something deeper.”
“Then I’d throw in a quarter of stuff that was New Wavish from the ‘80s. The Police, The Talking Heads, stuff like that. New Order, Depeche Mode. Then a quarter of it dependent on the date and deejay preference, and then another quarter just familiar [music], mix it all up. Something like that, but give it its own real personality.”
But how to handle the industry FM average of 23 minutes an hour of commercials?
“It’s a problem,” he says. “I’m not an advertising guy. That’s where I wouldn’t do well in radio. The problem with radio these days is you have to put the advertisers ahead of listeners: Play what the listeners want, and advertisers may not like that.”
The station that comes closest, Hughes says, is WQSR-FM 102.7 in Baltimore, the Jack. “On weekends it’s all ‘80s—Flock of Seagulls, ABC—probably me and five other guys in their late forties are listening.”
And would he be a host on his own station?
“No,” he demurs. “I hate the sound of my voice.”
(July 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, May 21st, 2009
By Brian Truitt
“The Sign”
By Raymond Khoury (Dutton, $26.95 hardcover)
Meet the second coming of Dan Brown. Khoury sold more than a million copies of his debut “The Last Templar,” and he’s back mining religious themes a la “The Da Vinci Code” in his third effort. “The Sign” begins in Antarctica of all places, where a CNN news report broadcasts a flash of light in the sky, and several parts of the world become convinced it’s a sign from God that He’s on the way. It’s the job of a journalist and her peeps to figure out if it’s true, or if something far more nefarious is afoot.
“Pop Apocalypse”
By Lee Konstantinou (Harper Perennial, $13.99 paperback)
Imagine Paris Hilton attempting to prevent Armageddon. Yeah, scary, huh? This satirical tome fast-forwards to 2029. All the signs of some kind of Rapture are upon us: California is rebelling against the rest of the United States, the Middle East is being run by a pop singer, and the celebrity heir of an all-too-powerful televangelist who’s trademarked the Apocalypse has to keep everything from going kablooey. Enter red cows, an evil twin and a host of other absurdities that make for an entertaining read.
“Hunt at the Well of Eternity”
By James Reasoner (Leisure Books, $6.99 paperback)
Lovers of old-school serials and the extended catalog of Indiana Jones will get a whip-crackin’, globe-trottin’ kick out of this new adventure series starring Gabriel Hunt, a treasure hunter of the highest sort. The damsel in distress and knockout punch on the cover tell you all you need to know, as Hunt visits China, Egypt, Turkey and other countries and wiggles out of many a trap to save the girl and his own skin. The only thing not in the book: the seatbelt to strap yourself in.
(May 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
“Amberville”
By Tim Davys (Harper Collins, $19.95 hardcover)
Noir crime fiction with stuffed animals—now you’ve read everything, right? This mash-up of “Animal Farm” and the works of Raymond Chandler does have a couple cliched plot devices, as in when an ex-gangster is coerced into getting back with his old gang for one more mission. But the fact that the main character is a teddy bear, his wife’s a rabbit, the major heavy is a dove, and the gang consists of a snake, a crow and a gazelle? That kind of moral allegory always equates to must-read material.
“Dust and Shadow”
By Lyndsay Faye (Simon & Schuster, $25 hardcover)
Professor Moriarty? Pffft. For those who always wanted to see Sherlock Holmes take on a proper villain worthy of a master detective—like, oh, say, Jack the Ripper—here’s your mystery. A tribute to the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Dust and Shadow” sics Sherlock and his partner Dr. John Watson (who pens the proceedings) on the resident serial killer of the Whitechapel section of London. The fact that he was never caught adds an even more entertaining aspect to the fascinating “What if?”
“Shadow and Light”
By Jonathan Rabb (Sarah Crichton Books, $26 hardcover)
In his new historical fiction, Jonathan Rabb keeps German chief inspector Nikolai Hoffner as the heroic holdover from “Rosa,” but throws him into a Berlin that’s getting to be darker every day. In 1927, a film executive is found dead in his bathtub, and Hoffner calls on legendary director Fritz Lang and crime boss Alby Pimm to solve the case. More than just murder is happening, as the German political climate is changing and Hoffner finds he’s losing his oldest son to the beginnings of the Nazi Party.
(April 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Courtesy of Magnet Releasing
“Let the Right One In”
(Magnolia, $26.98; $34.98 Blu-ray)
“Twilight” may have received all the press, but another young vampire romance flick garnered all the critical love. The Swedish “Let the Right One In” delves into a supernatural crush between a 12-year-old boy who’s bullied by classmates and his mysterious next-door neighbor, a little girl who has a need for blood. Bonus features include a poster gallery, deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes documentary.
“Murnau”
(Kino, $99.95)
Before he came to America and directed “Sunrise,” F.W. Murnau made a name for himself as one of the great German filmmakers of the silent-movie era in the 1920s. This new set collects six of his finest in restored editions, including the early vampire flick “Nosferatu,” The films are exquisite fodder for screen fans, and the historical material adds to a continuing cinematic education.
(April 2009)
Kudos to our Local Beard Foundation Awards Contenders
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Monday, March 23rd, 2009
The finalists for the 2009 James Beard Foundation Awards are now official, and we’ve got a host of hometown talents vying for the coveted food industry prizes.
Restaurant Eve toque Cathal Armstrong,
(Photo: Jonathan Timmes)
Rasika chef Vikram Sunderam and Peter Pastan (2Amys/Obelisk) [*my apologies to Pastan for leaving him off the original post*] are all in the hunt for the Best Chef – Mid-Atlantic mantle.
Chef Johnny Monis got a nod in the Rising Star category.
(Photo: Jamie McCarthy/wireimage.com)
The now bi-coastal José Andrés could theoretically score a Beard Foundation hat trick if he were to take the top honors in the web/radio, best new restaurant and outstanding chef categories.
(Photo: Bernardo Peréz)
Meanwhile, Washington Post dining critic Tom Sietsema racked up two nominations (newspaper features about restaurants and/or chefs, restaurant reviews) while the WaPo food section is in the mix for best newspaper food section (stellar work, Mr. Yonan!).
As for other media, several cookbooks/food tomes that we’ve recommended in our print edition are gunning for more widespread prestige (as if that were even possible), including: Cooking Up a Storm (American cooking category), Fat (single subject category) and Milk (reference and scholarship category).
You can view the full slate of 2009 nominees here.
To see the winners get their due live, you’ll have to break out your fancy duds and make your way up to enwhycee for the May 4 Awards Gala. The Beard Foundation is offering $50 discount for all ticket orders placed before April 4.
If you’ve never been, the event is quite an eye-opener. At least it was last year.
–Warren Rojas
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Keith Donohue further weaves ‘Stolen Child’s’ threads of mysticism in ‘Angels of Destruction’
By Brian Truitt
Author Keith Donohue says his second novel, “Angels of Destruction,” spawned from readers’ reactions to his first, “The Stolen Child.” Courtesy of Shaye Areheart Books
If Vladimir Nabokov was indeed right when he wrote, “The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales,” then best-selling area novelist Keith Donohue might really be on to something here.
And yes, even though his business card officially calls him the director of communications for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (in other words, the grant-making arm of the U.S. National Archives in Washington), Donohue, 49, does consider himself a true novelist. So does the rest of the world—his 2006 magical allegory on identity and childhood, “The Stolen Child,” won phenomenal reviews.
So armed with that long title and all the duties that come with it, where does he have time to write? On the Metro, naturally. “I have about a half hour each way, and I try to pack it in during the subway ride,” said the Pennsylvania native, who always writes his first drafts out using pen and paper. “And at lunchtime, I’ll go out, grab a table, eat some lunch and knock off a couple hundred words. If you do that every day, by the end of a year, you’ve got a draft.”
Donohue, of Wheaton, Md., has wanted to write ever since he was a kid, even flirting with the thought of being a Washington Post reporter after the Watergate days of Woodward and Bernstein, but didn’t get his shot at fiction until he finished his dissertation at Catholic University following a 10-year stint to earn his Ph.D. The result of this pent-up creativity was “The Stolen Child,” which follows a changeling, the kidnapped boy he replaced in the real world and the path of their two lives’ convergence over time.
Angels of Destruction / Courtesy of Shaye Areheart Books
His second novel, “Angels of Destruction,” in stores this month, was partly inspired by fan reaction to “The Stolen Child.” In “Angels,” a 9-year-old girl with magical powers mysteriously shows up on a woman’s doorstep, answering prayers she’s had for years after her own daughter went missing. After “The Stolen Child” was released, Donohue said, “I had a lot of people tell me that they heard changelings and fairies out in the woods and so forth, and thought, Wow, that’d be pretty interesting: Why would you believe in something you can’t see?
“It’s about that whole idea of why we believe in things [for which] we have no proof.”
Does he personally believe in angels? Donohue’s keeping that secret and leaving it up to the readers to make up their own minds. But one thing he will admit to maintaining belief in is using literary fantasies to tackle such heady issues as faith and redemption. They’re “a good vehicle for the human questions that interest me,” he said. “One of the purposes of reading is to escape this world or to find its illusive enchantment, and that’s why I write the way I write.”
(March 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Friday, February 20th, 2009
By Brian Truitt
Courtesy of Neil Davidson/Hat Trick Productions for Masterpiece
“God on Trial”
(PBS, $24.95)
Perhaps you missed the PBS airing on “Masterpiece Theatre,” yet if deep conversations on good and evil are your thing, then “God on Trial” will get you thinking. The film is based on a reported legend that prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II convened a mock trial against God to discover the real reason behind so much suffering in the world. Believers and atheists alike have their say in this fascinating look at faith amid a place lacking of hope.
(February 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Friday, February 20th, 2009
Song site opens forums for lyric interpretation
By Brian Truitt
OK, so you’ve figured out that Jimi Hendrix didn’t actually sing, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” and found all your favorite lyrics sites on the Internet. Now you have a new problem: What the heck do they mean?
That’s where SongMeanings.net comes in. Thanks to nearly 400,000 of your fellow music nerds chiming in on everything from the Beatles to Beyonce, you can go a long way in trying to decipher the lyrics of musicians both famous and on the cusp. More than 35,000 artists and 415,000 songs are represented on the site, which features a lot of innocuous “I love this song!” comments and random sniping, but also offers some impressive user insight. Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” sort of speaks for itself, but even John Lennon might not have made a connection between Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
(February 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Friday, February 20th, 2009
By Brian Truitt
“A. Lincoln”
By Ronald C. White Jr. (Random House, $35 hardcover)
This month marks the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, so a comprehensive biography of the man whom many historians argue holds claim to the title of America’s greatest-ever president would be all too apropos.
Author Ronald C. White Jr., previously tasked with writing about Lincoln’s eloquent speeches, aims to tells the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the national leader in the tome.
“Drood”
By Dan Simmons (Little Brown, $26.99 hardcover)
While historical fiction may be one of the most thought-provoking genres of literature, it’s awfully hard to think of Charles Dickens—the same guy who set Scrooge straight—as a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-type oddball. That said, Dan Simmons writes “Drood” as a thriller of the highest sort, with Dickens’ friend narrating a tale that ties Dickens’ mysterious jaunts into the opium-laden underbelly of 19th-century London to the author’s half-completed farewell to the literary world, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
“I Saw You…”
Edited by Julia Wertz (Three Rivers Press, $12.95 paperback)
Anyone who’s spent time on Craigslist has probably wasted a minute or two peeking at the ads for missed connections, those snippets of unrequited romance that wonder just what would have happened had that shy girl asked out that handsome barista. Julia Wertz and a number of her fellow indie cartoonists have taken several and turned them into art for this oft hilarious comics collection. At the very least, it may prompt you to consider talking to that same girl who runs by your townhouse every morning.
(February 2009)