Retro Gamer Builds 'Super Stick'; Freud Rubs Eyes In Disbelief From Heaven

GAMERTELL.COM: A super sized Atari 2600 joystick
Posted September 16, 2007 at 06:43 PM by PJ Hruschak

In the latest issue of Make magazine, there is a page (18, if interested) devoted to a project that would make any retro gamer drool.

Titled “Super Stick,” the brief article describes an oversized Atari 2600 joystick made for the I Am 8-Bit museum exhibit at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, CA. The joystick, created by Jason Torchinsky, measure 5 feet tall, approximately 15 times larger than an original joystick. It’s made of fiberglass, coiled hose and meal plates and took a month to build.

And yes, it works.

Attendees to the gallery opening were able to jump on the joystick and give it a go, stomping on the red button and enjoying the four direction goodness, playing an unnamed game projected onto a wall.

If you’ve not heard of or read Make, it’s a DIY magazine for gadget geeks featuring things like customizing your bike, LED sweaters and mobile movie theaters. It retails for $14.99 US, but worth the hefty price for all the fun projects it offers. It comes out four times a year.

Why The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Exists

NPR: Comic-Book Store Owner on Trial for Nude Images
Morning Edition, August 14, 2007

Listen to this story... by Susanna Capelouto

Gordon Lee, owner of Legends Comic Book Store in Rome, Ga., goes on trial this week over whether he willfully gave a comic that depicted nudity to a child. His store took part in a downtown trick-or-treat celebration three years ago. Instead of candy, Lee handed out free comics. One of them had two drawings showing painter Pablo Picasso moving about his studio in the nude, his genitals clearly exposed. Lee was arrested a week later. The case worries the comic book industry, which fears limits on artistic expression.

Susanna Capelouto reports from Georgia Public Broadcasting.

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I don't think this guy should be thrown in jail for a year and fined $1,000 for what was clearly an accident. I'd question Lee's judgement for handing out anything other than a Disney, Archie, or Harvey comic on Hallowe'en (especially if you haven't read it), but I don't think a court case or yet another call for a ratings system is necessary. Take the comic back, apologize to the parents, and you're done. Thank goodness the CBLDF is around to help out!

Tainted Pet Food Alert

NY TIMES: Rat Poison Found in Pet Food Linked to 14 Deaths
By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: March 24, 2007

Rat poison has been found in pet food blamed for the deaths of 14 animals, federal and New York State officials said yesterday, but they said they were unsure how it had gotten there.

The poison, aminopterin, a rodenticide that has not been approved for use in the United States or in Canada, was found in wet food manufactured by Menu Foods of Ontario and distributed under more than 90 brands, including Eukanuba, Hill’s Science Diet and Nutro Natural Choice, and under store brands including Hannaford, Wal-Mart and Winn-Dixie. (A complete list can be found at menufoods.com/recall.)

On March 16, Menu Foods recalled at least 60 million cans of food manufactured from December to March.

The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets in Albany discovered the aminopterin in the last day or so, officials said. The substance, a derivative of folic acid, was used in past decades to treat cancer and to induce abortions.

Officials said they were unsure how the poison had gotten into the food and were testing individual components to narrow the source.

“At this point, we really don’t know where it came from,” said Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine, part of the Food and Drug Administration. “We haven’t ruled out sabotage. We don’t have any leads that indicate that sabotage may have been an issue, but we don’t have any theories as to how it contaminated one of the ingredients in the pet food.”

At a news conference in Toronto yesterday, the chief executive of Menu Foods, Paul K. Henderson, apologized to the owners of pets that had died or become ill from eating the contaminated food but stopped short of saying the company had been negligent.

Menu Foods has said that it first heard reports of a problem from callers in mid-February and that nine cats died as a result of subsequent company taste tests. Mr. Henderson said the company had not identified the poison in its initial testing because it was so rare.

After the tests, the company notified the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, which also did not find the aminopterin. The food was then sent to the state laboratories in Albany, part of a network of federal emergency laboratories equipped to test for rare substances in foods.

Before the aminopterin was identified, officials had been focusing on wheat gluten as a source of the toxin. They have not ruled it out as a source, they said, and are working to identify where it originated. Menu Foods executives said the company had received some of its gluten from China.

Dr. Sundlof said that the gluten involved in the recalled pet food was not used for human consumption and that the F.D.A. had no reason to believe that the substance had entered the human food supply.

He had no information on whether Menu Foods’ suppliers had provided gluten to other companies, but he said the F.D.A. had contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a precaution.

“We certainly don’t think there are any risks to public health,” he said, “but we can’t rule out the possibility.”

Several lawsuits have been filed against Menu Foods, including a $51 million class-action suit filed in Ontario on Thursday. The company would not comment on the suits.

Dawn Majerczyk of Chicago filed a class-action lawsuit after her cat, Phoenix, died of kidney failure on March 17. “I’m very angry. They killed my cat,” Ms. Majerczyk said. “They used something that kills rats on the street into the food we trusted.”

Jeff Lindholm of Montpelier, Vt., said he was confused and angry after finding out that rat poison was in the food he believes sickened his two cats, Enda and Trea. The cats are at home and receiving subcutaneous fluids, Mr. Lindholm said, but he wondered how the poison would affect their long-term health.

“There’s a certain trust that food is food and poison is poison, and it’s not supposed to get mixed in together,” Mr. Lindholm said. “It almost would have been better if it was some weird chemical or mold.”

Federal and New York officials said they were fairly certain that the number of pets affected by the tainted food would rise.

A spokesman for Procter & Gamble, which sells Iams and Eukanuba, said it had added staff members to help pet owners calling its hot lines.

Thomas W. Vickroy, a professor of veterinary toxicology at the University of Florida, said aminopterin was similar to methotrexate, a drug commonly used to treat cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. In high dosages, it causes renal failure, which is what the pets experienced after eating the food, Dr. Vickroy said.

Bob Rosenberg, senior vice president for government affairs at the National Pest Management Association, said that yesterday was the first he had heard of aminopterin. Rodenticides kept near food are typically stored in secure bait boxes, Mr. Rosenberg said, and the poison itself is a waxy block that should not easily break up or taint the food.

“I’ve been tracking these things for 20 years,” he said, “and to the best of my knowledge, there’s never been an instance of rodenticide contaminating anything in the U.S. food supply.”

Dr. Ann E. Hohenhaus, chairwoman of the department of medicine at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, said aminopterin was rarely found in the United States and was not referenced in many case studies or textbooks.

“We have no experience with that drug at all,” Dr. Hohenhaus said. “I have out every chemo book I own trying to understand what’s going on.”

Danny Hakim and Christopher Mason contributed reporting.

The Downside Of Guerilla Marketing

VARIETY: Cartoon Network scares Boston
Electronic devices puts city on edge
By MICHAEL LEARMONTH
Posted: Wed., Jan. 31, 2007, 2:21pm PT

Oops.

A street marketing campaign in Boston intended to draw attention to Time Warner's Cartoon Network instead drew out the bomb squads, closing major arteries and bridges in and out of the city for much of the day.

Police responded to nine so-called "devices," shutting down Interstate 93, closing two bridges between Boston and Cambridge and halting boat traffic on the Charles River. Several other roads in and out of the city also were temporarily closed.

A third-party street-marketing firm, Interference Inc., had placed little black boards festooned with LED lights in the image of a character in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force series near roads, on bridge spans and in subway stations, in order to be noticed by commuters.

And they certainly were noticed, triggering a daylong terror scare in the city that was covered intensely by the cable news networks, including Cartoon Network's corporate cousin CNN.

At least one of the packages was so inscrutable to the responding authorities that it was detonated by a bomb squad, a scene captured from above by a news chopper on the scene.

Boston police said late Wednesday they had arrested and charged Peter Berdvosky, 27, who worked with the street marketing firm responsible for the campaign, with one count each of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct for each of the devices found.

A local artist, Berdvosky called the pieces a "guerilla graffiti light installation," and his personal Web site has pictures and video of himself and a small group of others placing 22 devices around Boston.

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner and parent company of Cartoon Network, quickly apologized for the stunt and cooperated with authorities to locate the remaining "devices." In addition to Boston, the campaign is under way in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

"We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger," said Turner Chairman and CEO Phil Kent. "As soon as we realized that an element of the campaign was being mistaken for something potentially dangerous, appropriate law enforcement officials were notified."

Kent added that Turner has provided authorities with the locations of the advertisements in the 10 cities that are part of the campaign, and ordered the Interference Inc. to take them down.

Gotham-based Interference Inc., which bills itself as "a nationwide guerrilla and alternative marketing agency from ideation through tactile implementation," did not return calls. Nor did CEO Sam Ewen.

The marketing campaign is part of a major push by Cartoon Network for the show, which was made into a feature film opening March 23.

But the devices scared commuters who mistook the LED lights and wires placed beneath bridge spans and in subway stations for explosives, and called the police.

The first device, which like the others looked like an oversized circuit board with wires hanging beneath, was found in a subway/bus station beneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway.

Four more were reported around midday at the Boston U. Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge spanning the Charles River, on a Boston street corner and at Tufts-New England Medical Center. Later in the evening, another "device" was found near Fenway Park.

Local and federal authorities were not amused. "It's a hoax -- and it's not funny," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said.

Unraveling the scare "was the major focus" for the Dept. of Homeland Security on Wednesday, according to spokesman Russ Knocke.

Federal officials alerted local authorities in other major cities across the country, he said, noting such efforts "take lots of time and man-hours and resources."

It's too soon to put a dollar figure on what local and federal efforts cost Wednesday, "but people have to be smart about what they're promoting and how they're promoting it," Knocke said.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said the city was prepared to take civil or criminal action against those responsible. "This is a heavy penalty, imprisonment, two to five years for each one of them," he said. "When it comes to public safety, we are throwing everything at them."

(William Triplett in Washington contributed to this report. )

Whither The Space Station?

NY TIMES: Destination Is the Space Station, but Many Experts Ask What For
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: December 5, 2006

Once again, the shuttle Discovery is about to blast into space. And once again, it will dock with the International Space Station, and astronauts will continue the process of building the half-completed orbiting laboratory in a mission full of daunting challenges.

But the majesty of the first nighttime liftoff in more than four years, now scheduled for Thursday just before 9:36 p.m. Eastern time, will not dispel a question that has long been the subject of sharp debate among experts: What is the space station for?

In 1998, when its first components were launched as a replacement for the Mir, a worn-out Soviet-era relic, the station was billed as a manned science lab of nearly unlimited potential, with promises of advances in areas like pharmaceuticals thanks to the ultrapure crystals that could be grown in a microgravity environment.

It was to be finished by 2004, and it was to cost about $40 billion, shared by 16 nations, including the United States, Canada, Russia and the European Union.

Those goals are barely recognizable now. As the Columbia catastrophe forced a two-and-a-half-year delay in construction missions by the shuttle fleet, and as cost overruns and changing presidential administrations forced NASA to rethink its entire science mission, the station’s price tag has ballooned to $100 billion and the completion date has moved to 2010.

And questions about the station’s scientific value have grown sharper than ever. David J. Goldston, the departing chief of staff for the House Science Committee, said in an interview that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration now seemed more motivated by the need to satisfy its commitments to international partners than by any compelling scientific objectives.

“I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘We have to do this because it’s important for the future of the U.S. space program or science,’ ” Mr. Goldston said.

NASA is now focused heavily on building a new generation of space vehicles for exploring the Moon and Mars; yesterday it announced plans to establish an international base camp on the Moon by 2024.

But officials insist that today’s space system is a crucial element of building tomorrow’s. In particular, they say, the station is essential for researching the potential effects of prolonged weightlessness on astronauts: a round trip to Mars, as envisioned by President Bush in his long-term goals for human spaceflight, would take at least two years.

But the agency has also sharply cut back plans for scientific experiments. Plans to take equipment like a 10-ton centrifuge module, which was developed by the Japanese space agency and which could spin to produce artificial gravity for experiments on small animals, have been canceled.

The budget crunch for the program is so pronounced that this year, the station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini, looked into having all NASA science experiments aboard the station shut down during the 2007 fiscal year. (He has since backed away from that idea.)

Along with tight budgets, NASA faces an even tighter deadline: completing the station by 2010, when the agency is planning to retire the shuttle fleet. The next generation of vehicles will not be ready before 2014, leaving the world dependent on the Russian and European space programs, and potentially on entrepreneurs partly financed by NASA, for access to the station.

The notion of a completed station with such limited access, and potentially limited utility, led Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, to ask NASA’s administrator, Michael D. Griffin, in April, “Is this going to be a techno-whoops?”

Mr. Griffin responded, “I certainly hope not,” and explained that the need to complete the station and to develop tomorrow’s space fleet has meant making choices about how best to use the station during the construction process.

Science work in orbit had to be narrowed, he testified, with a tight focus on conducting scientific work that can help the space agency keep astronauts healthy on long missions to the Moon and Mars.

“NASA cannot do everything that our many constituencies would like us to do within our $16.8 billion budget,” he said.

The risks of space travel are anything but tamed. Maintaining the station and its equipment is a continuing challenge. Maintaining astronauts’ health may be an even greater one. Experts say that in zero gravity they suffer from osteoporosis at a rate 10 times that of postmenopausal women.

On a trip to Mars, 40 percent of them would lose more than half of the bone mineral in their hips, according to James A. Pawelczyk, an assistant professor of physiology and kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University and a former astronaut. The returning spacefarers would have hips as delicate as eggshells.

Muscle mass also declines, and efforts to prevent the process have not been very successful, said Julie Robinson, the acting manager of science projects for the station program.

“Over all, we can say we’ve made progress, but we’re not where we need to be for exploration missions,” she said. Outside experts have had reservations about the shift. In a report this year, the National Research Council said the space agency lacked a strong plan for scientific research or for use of the space station “in support of the exploration missions.”

NASA has not formally responded, but Dr. Robinson said the science was gearing up along the lines suggested by the report.

The increasing emphasis on the next step has left many experts worried that the orbiting laboratory is being treated like an albatross, to be cast aside as quickly as possible. “Low-earth orbit” — the station orbits some 220 miles above the Earth — “should not be abandoned in favor of going to the Moon and Mars,” said Jeff M. Bingham, the staff director for the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and space. “We’re sort of saying, not too fast.”

Current law requires that 15 percent of the station’s science budget still be devoted to the hard science research that was originally acclaimed in the 1990s. The legislation also officially declares the station a national laboratory, a move intended to open the station more broadly to research and financing from outside agencies and businesses.

In defense of the station’s potential, Mr. Bingham points out that it is just half finished and has half the six-member crew that the fully completed station is designed to support. “It’s not a space station that is or should be expected to be producing anything of any significance by now,” he said.

But scientists hoping to conduct research in the microgravity environment of the station say the new focus on the Moon and Mars has done great damage to their field.

“Since 1990, NASA has spent literally billions of dollars building up a world-class microgravity program that has been basically squandered,” said Peter W. Voorhees, a professor of engineering at Northwestern University. “There’s a perfect example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

NASA officials have talked of a return to the science focus once the next generation of vehicles is available to get projects up to the completed station, Dr. Voorhees said, but he added: “The problem with this is the science community is not like a water faucet you can turn off and on at will. If you turn it off now, it will be extraordinarily difficult to turn it on again down the line.”

Important scientific work will be done in space, said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. But it may be conducted by international partners after the United States has shifted its focus to the Moon.

“It would be ironic,” Mr. Logsdon said, “if research breakthroughs came through the work of our partners, rather than research that we’ve chosen to forgo.”

The station’s principal role, suggested John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a group that monitors military and scientific programs, may be as “an insurance policy, to retain a toehold in orbit, in space — to keep the program going until we can figure out a new reason for doing it.”

The worst case, he said, would be a variant of the “techno-whoops” hypothesis: a national failure of will that would leave the Moon initiative stalled and the science program mothballed. “Maybe we’ll find out that spaceflight turned out to be a historical aberration, like zeppelins,” he said, adding:

“That would be the end of the frontier. I just don’t want to go there.”

Eyes Watering, Nerds Look Heavenward In Hope

ROTTEN TOMATOES: MGM Says "Not So Fast" to the End of Jackson's "Hobbit"
Posted on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006, 03:06 AM

Scott Weinberg writes: "And the "Hobbit" arguments continue! Last we heard, Peter Jackson was divorcing himself from the project because of a legal battle with New Line. So the studio said fine, we'll get someone else to direct it. And the fans were angry. But now comes MGM to the rescue?

From Moviehole: "Yesterday, the "Lord of the Rings" director told TheOneRing.net that New Line have removed him from the project. The filmmaker’s statement also reiterated in detail his stance on "The Hobbit" -- that he is not willing to have a serious conversation about directing the film until his ongoing lawsuit with New Line over what he considers improper accounting practices over "LOTR" profits is settled.

New Line's given reason for proceeding sans Jackson is that the studio's rights to the pic are about to expire, and seeing as the lawsuit with Jackson isn't moving ahead, well, the message was that New Line is.

An MGM spokesperson tells Variety today that they're going to fight for Jackson. The spokesperson states, "The matter of Peter Jackson directing 'The Hobbit' films is far from closed."

Woohoo! Flex that copyright muscle, MGM! (For the record, New Line has the production rights for "The Hobbit" and a second LOTR prequel, yet for some convoluted reason from years back, MGM owns the distribution rights for a Hobbit flick. Fingers crossed!)"

Jackson Not To Direct Hobbit; Nerds Weep

HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE (Jeffrey Wells) - According to a letter from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh posted late last night on theonering.net, New Line Cinema has parted ways with Jackson/Walsh over a lawsuit that they had brought aainst the distributor tied to Fellowship of the Ring revenues (i.e., product licensing, "differences of opinion", etc.).

The positive-minded Jackson/Walsh had been expecting settlement on the lawsuit, which would then be followed by a deal to start work on The Hobbit plus a Lord of the Rings prequel. However, according to the letter, "last week [New Line bigwig] Mark Ordesky called Ken Kamins" -- Jackson/Walsh's manager -- "and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on The Hobbit and the LOTR 'prequel'...this was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects.

"Ordesky said that New Line has a limited time option on the [Hobbit] film rights they have obtained from Saul Zaentz (this has never been conveyed to us before), and because we won't discuss making the movies until the lawsuit is resolved, the studio is going to have to hire another director. Given that New Line [is] committed to this course of action, we felt at the very least, we owed you, the fans, a straightforward account of events as they have unfolded for us."

What's really going on here, I believe, is a reflection of the this year's sea-change attitude among distributors and producers towards coddled, overpaid wunderkind types like Jackson -- big-name talents who get rich deals for themselves and their production companies, after which they go off and strain or exceed the budget, and then their sometimes indulgent, overlong film (i.e., King Kong) comes out and does moderately well but not well enough. Result: the wunderkind makes out like a bandit and the studio is left holding the bag.

Image-wise, Universal's King Kong experience with Jackson made him into the ultimate enfant terrible poster boy for indulgent, genius-boy tendencies. Jackson's middle name is "wheeee!" -- it's what makes him what he is. If you make a movie with Jackson, provision #1 in his contract is that he gets to go "wheeee!" all through the making of it. At the end of the day the film will be in some ways awesome/brilliant/ eye-popping and what the fans want, and in other ways indulgent, show-offy, overlong and flooded with fake-looking bullshit CG shots that "wheeee!" types love to create because fake CG shots are so deliriously comic-book "imaginative."

You may make a huge profit with a Jackson film and you may not, but one thing for sure is that he and his New Zealand pallies will make out like kings plus they'll all get to go "wheeee!" for 18 months or two years, on your dime.

I'm basically saying that New Line did a good thing here. The more Peter Jackson gets cut down and has to trim his sails and stop "wheee"-ing his way through movie-making, the better. I say this because I have never suffered so acutely in my moviegoing years...I've never felt so awful, so trapped, so stuck on Devil's Island- with-dysentery as I did while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy and also the first 70 minutes of King Kong. I just know that the fewer "paints" Jackson has to work with, the better his films will turn out to be.

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I don't really this has as much to do with Jackson's excesses as it does with his unwillingness to play ball and agree to make two more films before the legal dust settled. The "below-enormous-expectations" box office of 'Kong' probably didn't help, either.

Toys 'R' Us Struggles For Survival

NY TIMES: No Playtime at Toy Chain on Its Road to Recovery
By MICHAEL BARBARO Published: November 19, 2006

LOCATED on the edge of a tired and dated strip mall here, Toys “R” Us store No. 6344 was built 14 years ago. There are weather-beaten wooden shingles over the entrance, unflattering fluorescent lights hovering above the aisles and pock-marked linoleum tiles on the floor.

But the floors are clean and shiny.

In one of his first moves at what is perhaps the best-known and most ubiquitous toy vendor in the country, the new chief executive of Toys “R” Us, Gerald L. Storch, ordered overnight cleaning crews to wax the floors of every store precisely twice as often as they did before he took over.

Mr. Storch, 50, marches briskly down the aisles, plucking toys from the shelves. “This is so cool, so cool,” he says, slipping his hand into the plastic display for a Blue Man Group Percussion Tube ($70) — a disc jockey system for 8-year-olds that, after weeks of intense deliberations, Toys “R” Us named as a top toy pick for the coming holiday season.

While Mr. Storch cast a vote during those meetings, he is clearly more comfortable crunching numbers and fine-tuning store operations than he is around toys. Discussing the future of the business in his office recently, he leapt out of his chair and enthusiastically began punching population projections into a computer spreadsheet.

As cold and detached as that may seem in an industry known for warm and fuzzy dolls, such analytical steeliness may be just the medicine that Toys “R” Us needs to survive.

Decades ago, Toys “R” Us was the very embodiment of the big-box retailer, and its huge stores redefined how toys were sold. Yet today, two of its stepchildren, the discount retailing giants Wal-Mart and Target, have pushed the company to the edge of a competitive cliff. Mr. Storch’s challenge is to reorient and resurrect Toys “R” Us before time runs out, a task that analysts say is not child’s play.

“The biggest problem, and I do not see a cure to this, is that the average consumer goes into Toys “R” Us once every nine months,” said Sean McGowan, a toy industry analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. “If they are not coming in the store more than once a year, there is only so much you can do.”

It is not only the future of Toys “R” Us that is at stake here. Major toy makers say that their profitability depends on its survival. If Toys “R” Us fails, everyone from industry conglomerates like Hasbro and Mattel to scrappy innovative upstarts like Wild Planet and Zizzle say they will be at the mercy of the penny-pinching merchants at Wal-Mart and Target.

“The reality,” said Neil B. Friedman, the president of Mattel Brands, “is that it’s not healthy for this industry to not have a healthy Toys ‘R’ Us.”

Founded in 1957, Toys “R” Us spent nearly 50 years assembling a three-pronged retailing empire — in toys, children’s clothes and baby supplies. But during the last decade it has tumbled from its perch as the No. 1 toy retailer in the country. It has also shut down its children’s clothing business and contemplated both a spinoff of its baby division and putting itself up for sale.

Last March, three private equity firms bought the retailer, then publicly traded, for nearly $7 billion, privatized it and then handed it over to Mr. Storch. As the former vice chairman of Target, where he oversaw the retailer’s supply chain, technology and financial services divisions, he was a surprise choice, given his lack of experience in the toy industry.

When Mr. Storch arrived at Toys “R” Us, he found an undisciplined company that he believed blamed others for its problems rather than facing its own mistakes. He also found a corporate culture wedded to impulsive strategic forays rather than hard data, a reactive business strategy that he believed would never allow Toys “R” Us to beat its competitors and reinvigorate employees who had given up on the toy industry.

“Toys ‘R’ Us had fallen into the pattern of being a follower, not a leader,” he said, before veering into vintage Target-speak. “Instead of buying product that is hot, we need to make products hot. We need to be like a fashion house.”

DURING the last several months, he has replaced more than half of his senior executives, begun testing a wide range of new store concepts and overhauled the company’s marketing efforts — with a decidedly Target approach.

For example, its newspaper circulars, the bread and butter of the chain’s advertising, now use thicker, glossier paper and kinetic images of children playing, rather than photographs of toys sitting idle on a table. Toys “R” Us is also using more engaging television advertising and more sophisticated marketing techniques intended to project an image as the biggest and best toy vendor.

Mr. Storch has also begun a campaign to restore the confidence of a work force badly shaken by its misfortunes. He calls his internal public relations effort “playing to win” — a slogan he has slapped on signs across the company’s headquarters, glued to employee ID badges and even adopted as the greeting on his personal cellphone.

He approaches his work force with the acuity of a headmaster, correcting employees’ grammar and taking them to task for missing meetings. He rejected the first draft of a recent internal newsletter when he noticed that a sentence ended in a preposition.

Such obsessiveness may bolster Mr. Storch’s plans to return Toys “R” Us, which has annual sales of $13 billion, into what it once was, a kingpin in the toy business. And he plans to do that by mimicking retailers like Best Buy and Home Depot that have thrived in their niches of electronics and home improvement — while plucking executives from both companies to make it happen.

Easier said than done, however. To pull it off, the company will have to juggle a number of balls: it must persuade manufacturers to provide it with even more exclusive toy lines, it must design more toys on its own and it must renovate or relocate hundreds of stores that unfortunately resemble No. 6344.

“In every segment of retail, there are dedicated specialty retailers that are succeeding against Wal-Mart and Target,” he said. “The model is out there. Best Buy is clearly thriving. Walgreen’s is the leader in pharmacy. Bed Bath & Beyond does very well in the home segment. What they all do is become the authority.”

Which, of course, is exactly what Toys “R” Us is not.

When the retailer revolutionized the toy industry, it borrowed a page from Kmart, the nation’s first major discount retailer. Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys “R” Us, piled merchandise high and drastically underpriced his competitors, betting that sales volume would compensate for thin profit margins. And it did.

The company, which began with a baby furniture store in Washington, became the dominant force in the toy industry, wiping out hundreds of independent toy stores and earning veto power over what toys manufacturers produced.

Circuit City, Office Depot, Home Depot and Lowe’s would soon mimic the idea. But Toys “R” Us was the first of what the retail industry would eventually call “category killers” — stores whose strategy of swallowing an entire category of merchandise, like office supplies or hardware, disrupted entire industries.

What Toys “R” Us and its later peers did not foresee was the rise of giant discount chains like Wal-Mart that could sell even cheaper products from dozens of categories in one convenient location.

By 1998, Wal-Mart had dethroned Toys “R” Us as the nation’s largest toy seller, a shock from which it has never quite recovered. For the people at Toys “R” Us, that outcome simply made no sense: Wal-Mart’s toy department was roughly 5,000 square feet. Toys “R” Us, as its ads boasted, was the biggest toy store in the world, selling 40,000 square feet or more of dolls, board games, bicycles and crayons.

How could it lose?

The answer, as it always is in mass-market retailing, was price. Wal-Mart could never match the broad selection of toys sold at Toys “R” Us, but it did not have to. Instead, it sold 500 toys at significant discounts.

During the 2003 holiday season, widely regarded as a bloodbath for toy retailers, Wal-Mart proved just how devastating this strategy could be. It reduced prices on dozens of popular toys, undercutting Toys “R” Us by 12 percent on average for the most popular toys. By the start of 2004, two toy rivals, F. A. O. Schwarz and K B Toys, had filed for bankruptcy. Profits at Toys “R” Us plunged by more than 50 percent.

Everyone at the chain, from the highest ranks to lower-level sales clerks, sang the same refrain when discussing the company’s woes: blame the competition. Mr. Storch would have none of that. When he arrived, he pointedly addressed what he saw as the real problem in slide shows he presented to executives and employees: “We did it to ourselves.”

Toys “R” Us, he argued, had made several obvious blunders. One of the biggest came in 1996, when executives separated the toy and child products businesses. The new Babies “R” Us stores proved popular with shoppers, but at Toys “R” Us the sudden absence of items like pacifiers and bibs caused a sharp drop in customer traffic. This was rooted in shopping patterns: most consumers buy toys once or twice a year, while new mothers tend to buy baby clothing once a month.

In addition, the company’s original store locations, typically on roads leading to and from regional malls, had become outdated as consumers began favoring smaller suburban shopping centers lined with retailers like Best Buy, Kohl’s and Target.

Toys “R” Us stores, meanwhile, remained cluttered, poorly lit and dreary, and renovations fell behind schedule, giving the entire chain a dated appearance that put off customers. Despite fierce price wars, Toys “R” Us continued to sell the same brand-name toys as its lower-priced competitors, failing to find a way to distinguish itself from Wal-Mart and Target.

In meetings with employees, Mr. Storch has repeatedly sketched out this version of events as he crusades against what he calls the company’s “victim culture.” He may literally stop people in midsentence when they begin shifting the blame away from themselves.

He has kept a list of the excuses. “Wal-Mart and Target are growing faster; kids are growing up faster,” he recalled hearing. “That’s all victim thinking — and it’s ludicrous.”

YET it still pervades the company, according to Mr. Storch. Several weeks ago, when he was visiting West Coast stores, he said, a regional manager attributed poor sales to difficulties in distributing enough circulars in his district. When Mr. Storch asked the manager how he handled the problem, the response was a blank stare. “That was somebody in New Jersey’s fault, so we are going to sit here and complain,” is how Mr. Storch characterized the manager’s complaint.

At Mr. Storch’s request, the manager flew to the company’s headquarters in New Jersey, met with marketing executives and quickly resolved the problem with the circulars. “When you learn how to lose and put the blame elsewhere,” Mr. Storch said, “the whole team loses.”

Ultimately, accountability will get Toys “R” Us only so far. The toy industry is shrinking, with sales falling at least 2 percent annually since 2003, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm.

To revive the company, Mr. Storch will have to do what few companies have ever done: steal back business from Wal-Mart and Target. That will require undoing the damage Toys “R” Us inflicted on itself by separating the toy and baby businesses.

Mr. Storch has a simple solution: reunite them. In a test he calls “side by side,” he has fused a Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us in several locations, a format he plans to expand rapidly if the results are positive. He also plans to emphasize seasonal products (a practice his predecessors had discontinued) in order to entice shoppers into his stores even when there is no impending birthday or holiday. This year, Toys “R” Us advertised a back-to-school sale, and it plans a similar sale for Halloween next year.

To position toys in the same way as the hottest of fashion items, Mr. Storch has created a senior position, director of trends, whose responsibilities will include scouring the showrooms of toy makers for the next big thing. At Mr. Storch’s direction, the chief merchants from Toys “R” Us divisions around the world — the company operates in 33 countries — now participate in monthly conference calls focused on which toys are generating buzz. (The calls invariably start with Japan, whose consumers set trends worldwide.) Managers who miss the calls face a stern lecture.

“This is the most important competitive thing we can do,” Mr. Storch said, recalling how upset he was when an executive skipped the call two weeks ago. “We have global trend power with one phone call.”

After an aggressive courtship of toy makers, Mr. Storch has gained at least 70 exclusive products for this holiday season, like the 160-piece Thomas Ultimate Train Set ($89.99), Lego Star Wars X-Wing Fighter ($49.99) and the Bratz Girlfriendz line ($14.99 for each doll).

Finally, Mr. Storch has begun fixing up his worn-down stores. A plan to renovate the shabbiest in the chain is under way. He has deployed scores of signs — at the front of stores, at the end of aisles and from the ceiling — that tell busy shoppers exactly where to find dolls, preschool toys and video games. And employees are under strict orders to approach every customer and ask if they need help finding a toy — a cost-free sales technique that Mr. Storch said had already improved sales.

WHETHER Mr. Storch revives Toys “R” Us, however, will require more than just these diligent efforts.

It will depend on whether toy makers meet his needs by giving the chain one-of-a-kind merchandise; whether Target and Wal-Mart keep a lid on their ambitions in toy retailing; and whether there is enough residual good will among consumers who have come to associate Toys “R” Us with gloomy stores, unattractive prices and run-of-the-mill products.

Though private equity firms are known to buy and quickly flip companies they pick off, Mr. Storch says he is at Toys “R” Us to revivify the business and not simply make a quick financial hit.

“I’m at a place in my life where I have the independence to do nothing or to do something,” Mr. Storch said, emphasizing that his job is a professional challenge, not a necessity. “The first choice is to make a lot of money by turning around the company. I am not a liquidator.”

Batman Does Not Need Handcuffs

DAILY MAIL: Police dress up as Batman and Robin to catch drugs suspect
Last updated at 09:28am on 13th November 2006

Two policemen dressed as Batman and Robin captured a suspected drugs offender - in a bizarre sting operation.

The Dynamic Duo - Sgt Tony Smith and PC Mike Holman - pulled on the superhero outfits in a bid to unsettle the suspected baddies.

They pretended to be drunks looking for a fancy dress party and knocked on the door of the suspect's home.

Those inside refused to answer the door to the loud, comically dressed visitors - which was what the officers wanted.

Batman and Robin then went around the back of the property in Weymouth, Dorset, while seven uniformed officers went to the front door.

Those inside the house were PLEASED to see the policemen and complained to them about the fancy dress drunks. They then invited the officers in.

However, one of the men inside the house ran out of the back door on seeing the policeman - to where the superheroes were waiting for him.

Batman - Sgt Smith - gave chase, jumped over a fence and BIFF, POW, THWACK, arrested him.

PC Kevin Eames, said: "The people opened the door immediately and said that they had been alarmed by some drunken people in fancy dress in their garden.

"So the ruse was successful and we were let in."

Sgt Smith added: "Last year police officers dressed up as carol singers, which worked well.

"This was my first costumed acting experience.

"The Batman costume was quite comfortable and not too restricting. I still managed to jump over the fence.

"But it was difficult finding somewhere to put my CS spray. There was nowhere for the handcuffs, but then Batman does not need handcuffs."

PC Eames said: "The bad thing about the operation is that we had to endure hours of terrible puns from PC Holman."

A man aged 22 has been arrested and charged with a drugs offence. He is bailed to appear before Weymouth magistrates.

There were no charges against two other men found at the property.

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This was already on Tom Dougherty's blog, but I couldn't help but re-post it! Hilarious.

Animation Glut Stories: Is There A Glut Of Them?

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Too many ’toons? Hollywood — and audiences — cope with animation frenzy
By DAVID GERMAIN AP Movie Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prancing penguins. Rascally rodents. Sociable squirrels. Saber-toothed tigers. The Hollywood hills were alive with talking critters in 2006, possibly the biggest year ever for movie animation.
With the barrage of ads for flicks about cute, fuzzy wildlife and other cartoon creations, are audiences having trouble telling one from the other, and more importantly, are they getting overloaded by animation?
“There’s definitely an overload, and I think everyone recognizes that,” said George Miller, director of the latest animated adventure, the Warner Bros. penguin romp “Happy Feet,” which opens Friday.
In the decade since Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story” revolutionized the industry with computer-generated images instead of hand-drawn cartoons, first DreamWorks with “Shrek” and then other major studios leaped into the animation business.
As with the initial novelty of talking pictures nearly 80 years ago, computer animation’s early appeal resulted partly from its fresh look. Now, CGI films have become the standard, so commonplace that the story — not the style — is more crucial than ever in a movie’s success or failure.
“What’s happened is, no longer will people go see CG animation simply because it’s CG-animated as they did when they first saw ‘Toy Story.’ Everything will have to work on its own merits,” Miller said. “Sure, when ‘The Jazz Singer’ came out, people turned up to see sound pictures. In a handful of years, people no longer turned up to hear movies. They just turned up to see a movie they thought was good. The same thing is happening with animation.”
Ten years ago, Hollywood released as few as three or four animated movies a year, with Disney the only steady player. This year, 16 films are expected to be eligible for the Academy Award for feature-length animation, only the second time in the six-year history of the animated Oscar that there were enough movies for a full field of five nominees, rather than the usual three.
“Happy Feet,” the story of a penguin ostracized because he can’t sing like his brethren but who can dance up a storm, features a voice cast led by Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Robin Williams. If the movie meets industry expectations and becomes a holiday hit, it should lift overall domestic revenues for this year’s animated films well above $1.2 billion, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
That would beat Hollywood’s previous best of $1.18 billion for 2004’s animated movies, which included the blockbusters “Shrek 2” and “The Incredibles.”
But no animated film in 2006 came close to the $300 million and $400 million returns of the all-time leaders, “Shrek 2,” “Finding Nemo” and “The Lion King.”
That’s because none lived up to the quality of those beloved films, and with a new cartoon feature rolling in every few weeks, it becomes easier and easier for audiences to shrug off yet another so-so animated comedy.
“I don’t know if it was the best year, but I think it was the biggest year for animation, with a lot of good work, but a lot of work that maybe fell short of expectations,” said Carlos Saldanha, director of 20th Century Fox’s hit sequel “Ice Age: The Meltdown.”
Disney-Pixar’s “Cars,” from “Toy Story” director John Lasseter, leads the 2006 lineup with $244 million domestically, followed by “Ice Age: The Meltdown” with $195 million and DreamWorks’ “Over the Hedge” with $155 million.
Movies such as “Monster House” and “Open Season,” both from Sony, Paramount’s “Barnyard: The Original Party Animals,” Universal’s “Curious George” and the Weinstein Co.’s “Hoodwinked” all did respectable though unremarkable business in 2006. DreamWorks’ latest, the rodent tale “Flushed Away,” also is off to a good but unexceptional start.
“There’s been a wonderful selection of films and it’s encouraging to see so many people getting into animation,” said “Flushed Away” co-director David Bowers. “Not all the films made as much money as people hoped. I think in a couple of years we’ll maybe see fewer animated films. Studios being more cautious.”
The year’s notable bomb was “The Ant Bully” from Warner Bros., which left audiences yawning despite a clever premise, a voice cast led by Nicolas Cage, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep, and the luster of “Toy Story” voice star Tom Hanks among its producers.
Critics called “The Ant Bully” a retread of past animated tales, mainly Disney-Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life” and DreamWorks’ “Antz.”
“A lot of it just comes down to the content. Story and character,” said Antran Manoogian, president of ASIFA-Hollywood, a branch of the International Animated Film Association that presents the annual Annie Awards for animation. “You can have all the flashy bells and whistles, but if nobody cares about the content, it’s hard to get people to buy into it.”
Movies about wild animals — “Madagascar,” “The Wild,” “Over the Hedge,” “Open Season” — can blur together, despite different visual styles and story lines. “Over the Hedge” co-director Karey Kirkpatrick said he thinks his movie would have done more business had it not been preceded by Disney’s “The Wild” a month earlier.
With the lineup so crowded, Kirkpatrick said he has heard people greet each new animated flick as “one more furry, talking animal movie.”
“As a filmmaker doing these, you certainly wish it was back to the day when it was just DreamWorks and Pixar going head to head. It makes them feel more special and more of an event,” Kirkpatrick said. “On the flip side, having that many, it certainly keeps you on your toes to do your best and make yours exceptional.”
Next year looks huge — though familiar — again for animation, the schedule fronted by “Shrek the Third”; another rodent tale, “Ratatouille,” from Disney-Pixar; a big-screen take on TV’s “The Simpsons”; and another penguin comedy, “Surf’s Up.”
The question is: Which films will cut through the cartoon clutter and find an audience?
“The cream always rises to the top,” said Wood, who provides the voice of the dancing penguin in “Happy Feet.” “What is truly good will be recognized as truly good. What is just part of the flock will be recognized as that.”

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Now, CGI films have become the standard, so commonplace that the story — not the style — is more crucial than ever in a movie’s success or failure.

This just in...

“What’s happened is, no longer will people go see CG animation simply because it’s CG-animated as they did when they first saw ‘Toy Story.’

Yeah. That was all novelty.