It is, according to pop musician Prince.

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” pop legend Prince told the Daily Mirror in an exclusive interview today.

Puzzling, then, that the musical icon also said he deplores online and other digital means of music distribution.

“The Internet’s completely over,” he said. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

Prince’s famous and longstanding battle against the web gained steam in 2007, when Prince declared his intention to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay for users’ appropriation of his music. He’s banned such sites from using it, and he’s also refused to work with legal, legitimate outlets such as eMusic and iTunes.

And don’t try to find his official site; it’s been shut down, as well.

“The Internet’s like MTV,” the star said to The Mirror’s correspondent. “At one time, MTV was hip, and suddenly it became outdated.”

I imagine my immediate response to this was the same as anybody else’s: “Wha?”

These comments make Prince seem horribly out of touch with today’s consumers. However, upon thinking about it, I’d say he does have a point. Fads come and go. If you’re around for long enough, you see a lot of them. Prince has been around for a few decades now. Surely his comments at least have their merits.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s right in this case, though. Prince’s comparison between the Internet to MTV is a telling sign of the faults in his argument.

The logic goes something like this. MTV, in its heyday, was the most important thing to happen to music. MTV eventually fell out of fashion. The Internet is currently the most important thing to happen to music. Therefore, if MTV fell out of fashion, then so will the Internet–if it hasn’t already.

I’m loathe to spell out the obvious, but MTV and the Internet are two very different things, in just about every imaginable respect. That includes music.

What was MTV?

MTV, as it applied to music, was a system of advertisement. Music videos were–in the simplest sense–very expensive and elaborate commercials for new music. Record companies financed these videos in hopes that the viewers would go out and buy the vinyl records, or the cassette tapes, or the compact discs. The videos didn’t distribute the music, so much as promote the songs and the artists.

Like any advertisement, the purpose of the music video was to raise awareness in the mind of the consumer. The end goal was always to get people to go out and buy the music on a piece of physical media–a record, a tape, or a CD. That was the real method of distributing music.

MTV, like FM radio, featured advertisements disguised as entertainment. Or advertisements that were also entertainment, if that’s what you prefer.

When people lament that MTV never shows videos anymore, they’re essentially lamenting that MTV now only shows commercials that they aren’t as interested in. The decline of the music video isn’t mysterious at all. One form of product promotion becomes obsolete when a better one rises up to take its place. Enter…

The Internet

One can liken the Internet to MTV as a tool of promotion. But it’s important not to ignore that the Internet changed many other things about music as well. Not only has the Internet displaced MTV (and, arguably, FM radio) as the primary method of advertising music, but it has also displaced physical media as the primary method of distributing music.

This is what Prince is ignoring. This is why he’s wrong. “Paradigm shift” is a naughty pseudo-intellectual term, but it absolutely applies here. As momentarily significant as MTV was, it did not force a wholesale change in the way the music industry did everything. The Internet has, however.

The moment that online music distribution became feasible, the days of physical media were numbered. Consumers will, if nothing else, follow the path of least resistance. Convenience is one of the greatest incentives to buy a product, and there is nothing more convenient than punching the name of the product you want into a search engine and acquiring it with a simple point-n-click. (Define “acquiring” however you like.)

No more driving out to the record store and pawing through everything in hopes that the album you want will be in stock. Hell, no more ordering CDs online, paying the shipping fees, and waiting for it to come to your house. Today, the music can be in your possession almost as soon as the thought enters your head.

We’ve gotten to the point where acquiring music online isn’t even new or exciting anymore. It’s just something that we do.

This is what Prince is fighting against. I don’t think he’s going to win.

“Liberated by the state of the music business.”

Not every musician is reacting to the Internet with hostility. Rush drummer Neil Peart is open to the new possibilities.

What’s happening with Rush? I read on your blog that you were going to meet in November to discuss your future. What happened?

Well, in fact, we’ve just started working on new material. So we plan to get some writing and recording done. And we’re considering doing everything this year — maybe even a bit of touring. We are in action.

And we feel a bit liberated by the state of the music business. Even since 2006, when we started Snakes and Arrows, the album has become less significant in these times of iTunes and shuffle settings and whatnot. But perhaps we can take advantage of that and work in a whole different way. So we decided, when we did meet, that we’re not constrained by the patterns of the past, where you spend a year writing and recording, and the next year touring. Anything’s possible now; we can record a couple of songs and put them out and then go on tour if we want. So at this point, we’re just embarking on writing, but keeping ourselves open to all those other possibilities. One of our early titles for this year was Research and Development. That’s where we’re at.

So you might start making music in smaller increments?

Or larger. I went to see a band called Porcupine Tree not long ago. And I was talking with (singer-guitarist) Steven Wilson. They just put out a 55-minute piece. That’s a finger to the whole iTunes shuffle thing, and he intended it as such. And I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s another way of rebelling against it — by just saying no.’ There’s too much lost in giving up the integrity of an album — what it represents to you as a musician, and as a human being, for that matter. So I like that approach. That’s very possible for a band like us. So there are no limitations; we might go big or we might go small.

In a nutshell, Peart is saying the album format no longer governs the way musicians release music.

(For purposes of this argument, the album format involves making new music in chunks ranging from 30 to 80 minutes. This may or may not involve dividing the chunks up into discrete mini-chunks, usually by song.)

Though Peart talks about resisting some of the changes brought on by new technology, his perspective is realistic and forward-thinking. How we buy music affects the form it takes–that’s what Peart understands. With less and less music being bought on physical media, it is no longer necessary to format music with physical media in mind.

New music releases can be as short as a few minutes or as long as an hour. And it is no longer necessary for long-form music to be divided up into short tracks for convenient CD play. If bands want to release a few songs here and there just to stay in touch with their fans, they can. If they want to tour with a new batch of material that doesn’t necessarily conform to the traditional album, they can do that, too.

The Internet brings new freedoms for artists, but the decline in physical media also means that it’s now a lot harder for them to make money with their recordings.

“Giving it away is the best thing we ever could have done.”

For decades, the accepted modus operandi for music artists was this: record an album of material, play live shows to promote it. Record sales were the big moneymaker. This business model is quickly becoming untenable.

Record sales are now in permanent decline, and the “99 cents per song” policy on iTunes is doing a modest job of filling the breach.

Many bands are toying with the usual M.O. Some, like Umphrey’s McGee, are turning it on its head entirely. Vocalist/guitarist Brendan Bayliss explains:

The first time we played Colorado, we had never even been there. We sent out 1,000 CDs about a month or two before we went there for a show we were playing, and it sold out. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, and giving out the music will only come back in ticket sales. We don’t make money from selling CDs. The typical music model doesn’t really apply. I definitely think giving it away is the best thing we ever could have done.

Umphrey’s is relying on recordings of their music to raise awareness of their live shows, which is where they make their money. It’s the opposite of yesterday’s business model.

For anybody unfamiliar with this band, this is how it goes. The group makes studio recordings, but doesn’t rely on them as their main source of income. They do it primarily because concert venues want bands to have professional studio music available. It’s a sign of legitimacy.

Where Umphrey’s McGee really shines is in live performance. No two Umphrey’s performances are alike. Songs are regularly extended, twisted around, and changed every night. Their shows are the main draw; fans who see the band two nights in a row can expect surprises on both nights.

Fans are allowed to bring recording devices to the concerts. The fans will upload the audio from the concert to the Internet. The unique music from that particular show will circulate online, where it is freely downloadable to fans around the world. Far from complaining that this is money out of their pockets, the band members encourage this behavior.

As an additional incentive to make it out to the live shows, the band itself has recording equipment on hand. At the end of the concert, fans can take the performance home with them in the form of an inexpensive, official CD recording. It’s one more way of using recordings not necessarily as a method of making money, but as a way of building consumer loyalty to the real product: the concert.

As Bayliss says in the interview above, word of mouth is the best form of advertisement. Encouraging fans to freely trade recordings is the primary way that Umphrey’s McGee spreads awareness of its shows. This, in turn, enables the band to stay in business.

Postscript

There is another band that originally gained popularity through word of mouth. In the early years, fans would make unofficial copies of the music and circulate it throughout the community. Awareness of the music would build, and more and more fans would come out to see the band perform.

On the strength of that early fan awareness, the band became the biggest in its genre. It eventually became the seventh highest-grossing musical act in the world.

It is therefore ironic that this band was also one of the most prominent resistors of online music technology in the 1990s. Much in the way that Prince is doing now, the band decried the Internet for taking money out of its pocket. It didn’t understand the boundless free advertisement that online music presented.

I won’t bother with the name, because it’s still big enough that anybody reading this knows exactly who I’m talking about.

The Internet did not financially crush this band, and its members are still phenomenally rich and famous. They eventually figured out that resistance is futile. The Internet isn’t a technological nuisance or a passing fad. It’s a new way of doing things. It’s the new way of doing everything. If they didn’t know it then, they sure as hell know it now.

They decided to play the game. Prince, on the other hand, is taking his ball away and going home. If his recent comments make him seem out of touch with the times, it’s because he is.

Perhaps it’s part of the reason why Prince’s star doesn’t shine as brightly as it used to. Talent isn’t all it takes to stay relevant in the world of popular music. Musicians need to understand and care about the wants, needs, and tech-savviness of today’s music listeners. Prince seems to care only about where he’s at with respect to new technology.

I’m not sure that Prince gets to decide that the Internet is over. But I’m certain that the Internet will determine whether or not he’s over.

Ronnie James Dio (1942 - 2010)
- An American rock vocalist. His credits include some of the best years of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and his eponymous rock band, Dio. After 53 years in the field, Dio’s legendary voice was sadly silenced when he succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 67.

Westboro Baptist Church
- An Independent Baptist organization led by Pastor Fred Phelps and populated mainly by his own family. The WBC is most widely known for its radical Christian views, and for hate speech directed mainly against gays and Jews. The organization gains publicity by staging protest activities at the funerals of dead American soldiers and high profile figures.

Draw Muhammad Day
- An organized protest that occurred on May 20, 2010, encouraging artists to depict Muhammad in their artwork. The event was designed to uphold free speech, and to condemn the belief that people should have to abide by the rules of a religion that they don’t subscribe to. The protest grew out of Comedy Central’s unilateral censorship of a South Park episode that included a depiction of Islam founder Muhammad.

—–

Dio’s public memorial is tomorrow, and it’s probably common knowledge by now that the Westboro Baptist Church intends to picket it. To put it in their own words:

WBC to picket this public memorial to remind you who worship that old Serpent, Satan, that your time is very short. You know 67 year old, Satan-worshiping (or at least one of their enablers) Ronnie James Dio (of showing his devil horns to the world each time he goes in public) Black Sabbath fame is dead, right? We’ll be there! Just because the chances of any of God’s elect being amongst this group of heavy metal sycophants is slim to none does not mean they should not get some good words. Yes, it is true that Ozzy Osbourne did “accidentally” bite off the head of a bat, but THAT is the least of their sins (little nasties!), they currently do not do that, but they throw raw meat to the audience and encourage violence of EVERY FORM! Here you have the list of admitted sins of this now dead and in hell pervert: 1) He hates his neighbor(s) starting with Ozzy Osbourne 2) He hates God. Pay especial attention to the fact that he changed his original sir name from Padanova to Dio, which means “God” in Italian. 3)Ronnie the simpleton enabled, and encouraged Sorceries: everything he was about including the little finger horn thing (he got this from his mother which is an incantation to ward off the “evil eye”) to the drugs, bloody raw meat and his fellowship with those pentagram necklace wearing freakish band members. Yes, Ronnie James Padanova (NOT DIO) is currently residing in hell. When all those who worship him and his false gods meet him in hell it will be just like this: Isaiah 2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: Isaiah 14:11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. Praise God all ye, His people. The Great Day of the Lord draws nigh. AMEN!

The sheer wrongness of the Westboro Baptist Church, its views, and its activities is self-evident. The reactions that it inspires in people, often virulent, are absolutely understandable. Many would gladly see the church sued out of existence or its members attacked with physical violence–again, understandable.

But if the Muhammad controversy is to remind us of anything, it should be that free speech is fragile and worth protecting. I certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep tonight if Fred Phelps were to die this instant, but I might lose a few winks if his basic human rights were abridged. A mourner threatening to do violence against the WBC flunkies is no different from a Muslim threatening to do violence against an artist who depicts Muhammad. If free speech is to be protected, then that includes all speech. Even that which is vile, hateful, and horribly misguided.

Phelps and his band of idiots should be allowed to protest this memorial, free of litigation or physical harassment. For the fans who will have to tolerate this unpleasantness, I guarantee that the tremendous love for Dio and his music outweighs the petty, small hate of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Preamble to the United States Bill of Rights

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent starts of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

The flyer for “Draw Muhammad Day,” including the original cartoon that inspired it.

Ronnie James Dio, performing the horn gesture that he popularized. Rock in peace.

Myself, playing “Children of the Sea.” It can be found on Heaven & Hell, Dio’s first album with Black Sabbath.

I don’t want to expend too much energy on it, but I thought I might chime in briefly on the results of Oscar Night 2010. I didn’t catch the first part of the ceremony, but I caught the rest once I ran out of better things to do. Here is a list of observations, culled either from the broadcast itself or from summaries of the parts I missed.

1. An honorary Academy Award for Gordon Willis.

This guy’s work with low-exposure photography on the Godfather movies is legendary. That he hasn’t been acknowledged for it until now is shocking, even for the Academy. Was he even nominated for the first two? I don’t think so.

2. Best Film Editing goes to The Hurt Locker.

This will be one of the many remarks I’ll make in this post over how The Hurt Locker, for all its virtues, has no business beating Inglourious Basterds in a number of categories. This is one of them. The Hurt Locker features the “run ‘n’ gun” style of shooting and cutting that I’ve come to despise. It’s not much of an offender—it manages to maintain its coherence—but at the same time, I’ll take the classic technique and clarity of Inglourious Basterds any day.

3. Best Cinematography goes to Avatar.

No. No no no no no. This is one gaffe on the Academy’s part that isn’t just a matter of taste, but of pure, factual wrongness. I won’t deny that Avatar’s stunning images are commendable, but cinematography—by definition—involves actually shooting the footage with a camera. Cinematography is the art of manipulating and capturing light through the lens. Avatar’s visual wonders are almost exclusively dealt with through computer animation. Cameras have nothing to do with it. If there ever was a reason to not take the Oscars seriously…

4. Best Original Screenplay goes to The Hurt Locker.

Is The Hurt Locker really a writer’s movie? It seems to me that you don’t see The Hurt Locker for the dialogue or the story developments, but for the visceral experience of spending time in a bomb suit in the streets of Iraq. The Academy has a tendency to give certain movies a “sweep” of the categories, as a matter of putting as much of its dubious clout into one cause as it possibly can. In this particular case, it looks like The Hurt Locker is the lucky winner. There isn’t much else of an explanation for why this award didn’t go to A Serious Man or (yes) Inglourious Basterds, which are much more written movies.

5. Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz, Best Supporting Actress for Mo’Nique

Shockingly, these are the winners I was pulling for in these categories.

6. The John Hughes and horror movie montages

Somebody please convince me that these two show padders weren’t a complete waste of time. Clips from mostly bad horror movies? A tribute to a man who was a fine enough writer but an unremarkable director? I realize that pandering to fair-weather viewers is the theme of this year’s Oscars (just look at the size of the Best Picture category!), but isn’t this too obvious and counterproductive?

7. Best Actor goes to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Sometimes people praise a movie when they mean to praise an actor. Crazy Heart is one of those movies. I’m not sure it deserves the acclaim it’s gotten, but Jeff Bridges more than pulls his weight, and he’s an excellent actor overall. And you have to love a guy who uses the word “groovy” in his acceptance speech.

8. Best Director goes to Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

I think I might be getting blue in the face. I’m actually not going to deny that this is a well-directed film. The atmosphere and the tension isn’t in the script or the acting, but in the way the images are put together and the way it pulls us in by our shirt collars. That’s the hand of the director.

That said, Bigelow over Tarantino? Hurt Locker over Inglourious Basterds? Remember, we’re talking about direction here, and if The Hurt Locker pulls us by our shirt collars, Inglourious Basterds sits us down, gives us a shoulder massage, feeds us, and slowly strangles us in the meantime. In a good way.

9. Best Picture goes to The Hurt Locker

I suppose this was predictable. What wasn’t predictable was the four seconds it took for Tom Hanks to appear, open the envelope, and read the name. Check it out when they cut to the backstage camera. Kathryn Bigelow didn’t even have time to get to the snack table before her movie’s name got called. I realize the Academy is raring to break the glass ceiling by showering a female director with as much praise as possible. But when you factor in all that praise, the choice of song, and Streisand’s comment about making history, it all smacks of condescension. It’s one of those calculated superstar moments.

I don’t think it’s at all diminishing to Bigelow, her excellent movie, or her tremendous talent to say that, either. I think it’s diminishing for the Academy to ignore actual merits in favor of imagined ones.

That’s probably all I have to contribute to the discussion over this year’s cavalcade of acceptance speeches, unconscionably expensive clothing, and badly scripted comedy routines. Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker for victories perhaps partially deserved, and my sincerest condolence to Quentin Tarantino for the 100% undeserved losses of Inglourious Basterds. I don’t know if it truly is his masterpiece, but it—along with the criminally overlooked A Serious Man—is one of 2009’s movies to see.

It is absurd to want or expect the U.S. Government to just give comprehensive health coverage to all of its citizens. It would be unbelievably hard on our pocketbooks, place an even greater distance between competition and quality of care, and further entrench the already deep-seated problems of a badly flawed system. There. I said it.

Don’t get me wrong. If somebody has a serious injury or illness and can’t afford the medical care for it, it is imperative that they receive aid in the form of universal health insurance. There is no excuse for a nation of our wealth and human rights record to leave its unfortunate citizens in the cold in these situations. Many people believe this, and I am one of them.

These two positions are not irreconcilable. However they may seem to be, you have to step back and look at the whole picture.

Pretend you’re Alexander the Great, staring down the Gordian Knot. (Some people read comics. Some people listen to Iron Maiden. I do both.) You’ve ridden into town and you find a cart tied to a post. You’re told you have to remove the cart in order to receive the kingdom of Asia, but the ropes are so densely knotted that no previous visitor to Gordium has been able to figure it out.

Health insurance is the rope—the realm in which the problem takes place, where all the parameters are set. The logistical problems with the current health legislation make up the knot. The problem is only insoluble if you allow the knot to dictate what you can and cannot do in your problem-solving, when it’s really the parameters that dictate the problem and not the other way around. Forget that you’re looking at a knot. Remember that you’re looking at a rope.

Universal health coverage, as it is currently on the table, has a number of obvious obstacles. Our current idea of health insurance covers everything medically related, in whole or in part. To give this to everyone would be unmanageable at today’s prices, without some serious bending over on tax day. If we can’t do anything about that, then maybe we can reframe health insurance itself in a way that will bypass the obstacles.

We could start by reexamining the idea of total coverage, which is where a massive amount of revenue in the current system goes. If all things medical are handled through insurance companies, then everything is controlled by enormous, overarching bureaucracies that stifle competition and obscure the true cost of the procedures and products involved. You’re basically inviting prices that climb steadily every year, in stark contrast with glacial technical advances.

What if we tossed the idea of total coverage out the window? Think of it like car insurance. For unexpected problems such as a collision with another vehicle, you’d file a claim. It doesn’t matter if you can’t cover an unforeseen auto repair bill, because there’s a safety net in place. But the regular stuff, like routine maintenance, you’d pay for yourself. With budgeting, you can plan and afford to pay for it. Filing an insurance claim would be ridiculous. Total coverage for automobiles is widely viewed as a wasteful idea.

If health insurance were more analogous with auto insurance—that is, if we generally handled routine checkups and other stuff we can plan for on our own, without interference from insurance companies—then the world of medicine would be subjected more directly to the market forces that keep prices down and advances up. The consumers would have more of a hand in their own destinies. And there would still be a safety net in place in the event of unforeseen health problems, and likely a much less expensive one. If anyone is having trouble budgeting for their routine health care, they can apply for government vouchers. For a much better overview of this argument, I recommend reading this article. It’s a lengthy read, but very illuminating in comparison to the myopic ideas currently being kicked around by our legislators. (Thanks to VI on the Freak Safari Forums for the heads-up on that article, by the way.)

For anyone who doesn’t read comics or listen to Iron Maiden, Alexander removed the cart from the post by drawing his sword and cutting the rope. In bypassing the knot altogether, he laid the groundwork for centuries of needlessly erudite references that pad the word count of articles like this one.

As for the title of this entry, I had a lot of possible set-ups, some of which were painfully clever. (“Universal health care: treatment or cure?” Try that on for size.) In the end, I couldn’t settle on any of them, so I went with the least clever, most irrelevant one I could think of.

Famed ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews has been horribly violated. Video of her nude body has been leaked to the Internet, forever depriving herself of the respect she used to receive for her insightful commentary and her message of equality in treatment of the sexes. Things have changed so that nobody will ever again be able to watch one of her televised appearances without thinking about her body, because her very public image has been suddenly, irrevocably sexualized. How could one heartless pervert be responsible for ruining her chances at being taken as seriously and viewed with the same chaste respect as her male colleagues?

The answer is, he probably can’t.

When it comes to sexy sportscasters, apparently there’s Erin Andrews, and then everybody else.
ESPN’s leggy, lovely sideline reporter pulled in nearly 40 percent of the votes to win our poll in a landslide.

The results might not come as a huge surprise. Erin is the subject of fanatic adoration in every arena or stadium she visits, and she even has YouTube tributes lovingly devoted to her. The former Florida Gator basketball team dancer is now one of ESPN’s marquee names, and it’s always a pleasure to watch her sideline reporting during ESPN’s college football telecasts.

That’s according to the 2008 edition of Playboy’s “America’s Sexiest Sportscaster” poll. You might notice the complete absence of any reference to Andrews’ qualities as a reporter, aside from the basic identification of her as such. In the same feature, Playboy also boasts that

The first-ever sexy sportscaster, Jayne Kennedy, posed for the magazine in July 1981. Our inaugural 2000 poll featured, among others, the ultimate winner, ABC’s Jill Arrington, Monday Night Football’s Melissa Stark, CBS reporter Bonnie Bernstein and The NFL on Fox’s Lisa Guerrero, who posed for the January 2006 issue of Playboy.

What does being sexy have to do with sports? A lot, actually.

Football, to use just one example, is a relatively safe sublimation of a smorgasbord of basic human instincts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because those instincts, acted upon in a less vicarious and structured way, might be unsafe to society at large. Watching refereed tribe-on-tribe violence on TV is probably safer than acting it out in real life.

There is no deeper, more powerful basic instinct than the sex instinct. If anything is good, the addition of a “leggy, lovely” female will make it better. And when the situation combines the sex instinct with another set of ancient tendencies–e.g. in the form of sports–there is a certain synergistic effect. (Cheerleaders, try not to fool yourselves into thinking you’re around for any other reason.) It isn’t necessary to combine sports with sexual titillation, but the combination is a powerful one.

Marketers and television programmers have a great understanding of this concept–perhaps as good or greater than that of the best scientists in the relevant fields of study. They know of the close links among sex, violence, and bandwagon behavior. And that’s where Erin Andrews comes in.

It’s nice that females can do the things that males do. It’s nice that females have ambitions to succeed in fields that are overwhelmingly dominated by males. It’s nice that they might even have the merits to do so. But make no mistake; the number one thing most people appreciate about Andrews isn’t the insightful commentary she adds to the events she covers. They appreciate the mental image of her without clothes.

Again, I stress, this is not necessarily wrong. Icky? Yes, but entirely understandable, and probably a sign of good health. The wrong doesn’t lie in the simple act of wanting to watch sports and see a leggy, lovely female at the same time. The wrong lies in the fact that the People In Charge will take advantage of the simple, healthy tendencies that lie at the heart of this behavior and stoke it into a national obsession. It fosters a climate in which Erin Andrews’ sexuality is put so far out there that she’s all but primping herself nude for the viewing pleasure of the world.

Perhaps it wasn’t as shocking or dreadful as it should have been when a video surfaced on the Internet in which Andrews actually was primping herself nude. In fact, it seems almost like the next logical step. First, marketing essentially encourages the viewers to imagine this woman with her clothes off. It took someone, perhaps only one, whose respect for interpersonal boundaries had evaporated just slightly further than that of the average Andrews viewer, to realize that fantasy. And, as always, Andrews’ appearance was broadcast to the world, the sexuality only slightly more overt for having dispensed with the clothing.

Until now, Andrews has (ostensibly) been sexualized and transmitted on her own terms. Most people can understand the difference between being filmed for your job and being filmed without your knowledge in a private location, but I wonder if there’s much of a difference besides that. Aside from the sanctity of her own room on her own time, the only thing that seems to have been taken away from her and distributed to the world is a simple choice. Does the audience ogle Erin Andrews’ body with clothes on or off today?

P.A.C.E. stands for Parking And Code Enforcement. If you’re a student, employee, or visitor at Michigan State University, P.A.C.E. is the organization responsible for monitoring the parking meters and garages scattered around campus. You’ll see them on foot with portable citation devices in their hands, or driving around in trucks labeled “motorist assistant vehicle.”

I think I speak for everyone at MSU when I extend my gratitude to P.A.C.E. for their exemplary service to us all. In fact, I can’t think of another organization that operates with such a high level of focus, dedication, and efficiency.

See, I was running late for my job this morning, so instead of parking in my usual space just off campus, I decided to park at a meter nearer to where I needed to be. I put in 75 cents, which buys 30 minutes—the maximum amount of time allowed. Returning within half an hour was a little unfeasible, but I hurried and managed to get back to the meter not long after that. Uncannily, not only had I already been ticketed, but, judging from the time stamp, the ticket was written literally within a minute of my time expiring.

Oh, I knew there was a good chance I’d be ticketed, and seeing a ticket flapping under everyone else’s wiper blade on the way to my vehicle was a bad omen, but this was something else entirely. These people are ticket-writing ninjas. They’re like a SWAT team, called in especially to handle our most important parking enforcement crises. In fact, I’ve dramatized their exploits in the following image:

Heart-pounding, isn’t it? There’s Jack Bauer, there’s MacGyver, there’s Batman, and then there’s the current P.A.C.E. officer on duty. (Usually an underpaid student goon with apparently no regard whatsoever for the social suicide that the job entails. I, for one, respect that kind of self-esteem.) Prior to this morning, I had no idea they were so tightly coordinated or precisely timed. No idea whatsoever! I wasn’t enlightened until the final second of my parking time clicked by and the agents of P.A.C.E., exactly on cue, rappelled down from their quietly hovering Boeing Chinook. With a machine gun tempo, they slapped ticket after ticket on everybody’s windshield and vanished back into the cold morning clouds from whence they came, so quickly that any onlooking students could have easily blamed the sightings on their own excessive drug use.

Compassion is, of course, a human weakness that is filtered out early on in P.A.C.E. training, which takes place in a reinforced bunker beneath campus that can only be entered through camouflaged access points. Even in the event that you can successfully narrate the exact 334 character passcode, your body might be torn to leaflets by the machine gun emplacements to the left, right, top, and bottom of the triple-layered steel doors. All it takes is for the guards or their dogs to sense even a hint of trouble, and your body is given more zippers than a Levi’s factory.

It is of no concern to them that the only non-metered, non-hourly parking options for non-staff are the far-flung commuter lots. It is of no concern to them that the bus ride between those lots and campus, already at least 10 minutes in length, has been increased more than twofold by indefinite heavy construction. It is of no concern to them that none of the parking options are priced especially within reason, and that their exorbitant citations further compound that expenditure. And it is of no concern to them that every expense the students must pay is in addition to MSU’s tuition costs, which puts many of its students into insurmountable debt by the time they graduate.

No, P.A.C.E. will make no allowances or exceptions. They must do their job, and they do it well.

Thank you, P.A.C.E. For everything.

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