All The News

The New York Times - you remember, the one that prints all that news that's fit - has clearly picked up the slack in the news business today as most other reporting resources seemed to be poured into covering Michael Jackson's memorial.

Now, I'm not putting down all the coverage. It's important to know about the matching suits and ties and single sequined white gloves worn by the guys who, I assume, will now be called The Jackson Four when they go on the oldies circuit.

And it's always newsworthy when Maya Angelou writes another poem, even though I think with lines like this it may not have been her best effort:

We are missing Michael Jackson
But we do know we had him
And we are the world

But enough of that. Despite wall-to-wall memorial coverage, there were other things going on in the world. Missiles in Korea. Riots in Tehran and Tegucigalpa. Obama and Putin reducing nuclear weapons. Sarah Palin fishing.

And yes, those stories were in the Times today. But I want to catch you up on the big news reported by the Times today - and it's news that you probably didn't see if you were locked into those networks obsessed with the memorial.

It seems that porno films do not have much of a plot anymore.

That's right. In a story in the Media section, the Times' Matt Richtel goes in search of a Pulitzer for investigative journalism by uncovering the fact that porn movies are short on dialogue and long on action. Well actually, not that long. It appears that the movies are now being filmed in short segments that can be viewed on the Internet.

In a pretty good example of saying something without actually using the words, Steven Hirsch, an executive at one of the porn production companies says, "On the Internet, the average attention span is three to five minutes. We have to cater to that."

The intrepid journalist even discovered an unhappy star, Savanna Samson, who bemoans the fact that there's not much script any more. "I used to have dialogue," she says, and complains that just having one sex scene after another just isn't that much fun.

But my favorite bit of news out of the report is that in place of plots, at least one studio is substituting themes. As the report states: "Among the new releases from New Sensations, a studio that makes 24 movies a month, is “Girls ’n Glasses,” made up of scenes of women having sex while wearing glasses."

Which more or less brings this post back to the beginning. I think I am going to try to supplement my pension by submitting a proposal to New Sensations for a movie made up of scenes of people having sex while wearing one sequined glove. We'll call it a tribute and charge twice as much.