Tucson Weekly: Media Mix (August 21

Media Mix SIGNS OF THE TIMES? The lack of parcels and buses gave us all some food for thought of late. For some, it constituted a call to arms against unfeeling corporate America. For example, on his KXCI show Xicano Fist!, local radio personality Miguel Ortega broadcast an amusing--if misdirected--rant about the rich corporate fatcats getting fatter while the poor, disenfranchised workers got poorer. Then a listener called in to inform Ortega that United Parcel Service, alas, was an employee-owned company; and that the workers were not striking against their employer's jumping on the national trend of cutting out full-time employment in favor of part-time positions, as Ortega lamented, but rather over who could better (read: more profitably) fatten the workers' pension fund, the Teamsters Union or U.P.S. management. The call to add full-time positions, while part of the union proposal, was not the issue at the heart of the August 4 walk-out. Ortega admitted he didn't actually know much about the conflict, but "supported the workers" nonetheless. Now that's the sort of blind enthusiasm we just don't see enough of in these jaded End Days. Power to the people, man.
AND SPEAKING OF SIGNS: Somebody didn't do his homework on those KVOA billboards--you know the ones, with the news team sporting those oddly fixated smiles against a rainbow of colors. For years those Eyewitless heads have been getting bigger, but this time the PR people have gone too far. There comes a point--an identifiable, tangible scale--at which the human face, even a smiling one, appears monstrous and threatening rather than familiar and friendly. An unofficial and perhaps even non-existent opinion poll by The Weekly reveals that 92 percent of commuters greeted twice daily by the horrific facade admit to a vague fear of being eaten; and that the speed of passing motorists increases an average of five m.p.h. within the billboard's shadow. The other eight percent are still pondering Joe Donlon's abduction. (For those who haven't noticed, broadcast prototype "Tank" MacNamara appeared overnight on billboards citywide, baffling non-watchers of the nightly news.)
We've come to think of them as the Stepford County news team. In various ways we try to belittle them as their gleaming mandibles and vacant, digitally enhanced stares loom over the left-hand turn home. We mutter things like, "If only their news-gathering organization had the same predatorial bite as their marketing division, they might be getting somewhere." But the Freudian maxim holds true: Laughter is just an expression of fear.
VIRTUALLY THOUGHTFUL: The cutest site we've encountered so far on the Web has got to be the Virtual Home Florist at http://www.virtualflorist.com/virtual/select.htm. Here on the Internet, you can save face, make amends, offer condolences or join the ranks of the virtual dating elite by sending your favorite email correspondent a "virtual bouquet." Electronic delivery is free, with selections ranging from the traditional dozen red roses to birthday balloon bouquets and even a Roswellian "small grey." The site is linked to an actual florist as well, for traditionalists (small grey not included).

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