My Sundry Best

By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, July 15, 2005 8:48 AM

Like that Easybeats song that David Bowie once covered, " I got Friday on my mind ."

Summertime Fridays can turn into the laziest days of the year in the news business, and today, at least on the tech beat, is no exception unless you count Apple's big iPod news.

But you can read about that anywhere. I, meanwhile, turned up a few fun nuggets that remained in the shadows for the past week. The first shows how teenagers are using the power of the Internet to fight for their right to go to the mall.

The Associated Press reported that a Massachusetts teenager posted a petition on his Web site to get the Holyoke Mall in Ingleside to revoke its policy that people under 18 years of age must be accompanied by adult escorts when they show up on weekend nights.

"Michael A. Lemme of Chicopee posted his petition on the Web at noon Wednesday and by midnight 665 names were added. Many added comments such as 'this is an outrage!' Lemme told The Republican of Springfield that he and his friends are upset. "It's ridiculous," the 15-year-old Chicopee Comprehensive High School student said. 'You shouldn't have to be a certain age just to go to the mall with your friends. You should be able to go at any age, as long as your parents let you.' ... Lemme wants to obtain 1,000 signatures in hopes of persuading mall owners to dump the new rule. But William J. Rogalski, general manager of the mall owned by The Pyramid Companies, said the decision stands."

The story first appeared in the Springfield Republican , which reported that the mall made the move to put a stop to "fighting, horseplay, harassment and offensive language." Rogalski put on his best condescension tone, saying in a second article in the Republican : "We won't change our mind. ... I do applaud the fact that they're doing this, whoever took the initiative."

I remember the mall as being the place where we'd go when we couldn't get our hands on anything that was simuutaneously mind-altering and ingestible. Then again, we didn't have e-mail back then either.

Crow Sings for Dell

Say what you want about Sheryl Crow, but she's no intern.

The popular singer made a deal to hawk personal computers and consumer electronics manufactured by Dell Inc., the Austin American-Statesman reported . The television spots -- scheduled to start airing last night -- also are designed to get fans and casual music listeners excited about her new single, "Good Is Good," the paper said:

"Although it's limited to a few products, this campaign is Dell's highest-profile advertising initiative since it retired one featuring a cast of earnest Dell 'interns' in 2003. And the new ads underscore the company's effort to keep driving sales in the consumer market. ... The commercials feature Crow at home, playing around with her guitar and Dell's home entertainment products. At one point, she watches her new video on a Dell plasma TV and flips through on-screen menus using the media center remote control. The initial spots will hawk the Dimension 5100 desktop PC with Microsoft Corp.'s media center software, which is designed primarily to play and manage digital media, including music, photos and TV. The package comes with a digital tuner built in and will go for $849."

The Hollywood Reporter said more deals could be in the works: "Additional ideas involving Crow are being explored, said Michael Farrello, Dell's vp electronics and accessories. These might include a partnership with Yahoo!'s MusicMatch digital music service or having Crow's music come preloaded on a Dell DJ portable music player."

Crow is no stranger to digital media, as Jordan Running noted on thep2pweblog . He pointed out that she is vice president of the Recording Artists' Coalition, and is among the ranks of major-label artists to speak out against illegal music sharing. Here's an excerpt from a statement she released in April:

"P2P systems are clearly inducing infringement by the users -- those systems need to be held accountable. They can and should incorporate filters to prevent the illegal downloading of copyrighted material and until such time as they do, Grokster and similar, competitive systems should be held liable for the infringement and damage they are doing to the creative community and the public-at-large."

I'm curious about how she would respond to this comment posted on the blog by Adam Wheeler : "Does Sheril Crow realize that if all of her albums were sold by her own company for $3 per copy, in digital form or not, she would be more than doubling her income!"

A more burning question is whether she realizes that her name is being spelled differently without her express consent.

The New Jersey Odd Blogger's Local #4

Regular readers might notice my affinity for all things Garden State. Who can blame me? I lived near Cherry Hill for years ( Haddonfield Memorial High School '91, for those of you who know what that means), and I grew up on a regular diet of dairy bars, the Cowtown Rodeo , trips to the shore (not beach) and the Jersey Devil .

That's why I enjoyed this article from the New York Times , "In New Jersey, Blog Carnival Is WWWeird." The story profiles New Jersey's finest oddball specimens such as Sluggo of Sluggo Needs a Nap , Smadnek's "Cripes, Suzette!" entry and the great reference to one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, " If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn-mower ."

The best I can say is that you're in for an treat that feels half "Sopranos," half "Fellini Satyricon."

As the Times's Peter Applebome wrote, "The state is small enough that whether you live in Bergen or Hunterdon you still have an opinion on the best pizza or sausage and pepper sandwich at the Jersey Shore, drive on the same turnpike, and both contribute to the Jersey Joke syndrome and bristle at it. The politics are so obviously dysfunctional everyone shares everyone else's pain. Everyone has an attitude. And over the past decades, almost without people realizing it, the pop culture New Jersey of Springsteen/"The Sopranos"/"Garden State," etc., has changed the way people think about their state." Abbondanza!

Bleepin' Bloggers!

Salon.com published a piece nearly a week ago that I couldn't fit into the column before, but I didn't want the rest of the week to slip by without mentioning it. Zachary Roth's "Beware of the Halli-bloggers" article detailed the evolving self-definition of the blog. It's worth signing up for the daily site pass to check it out, but I'll cheat and give you one particularly interesting excerpt here.

It was Carol Darr , director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet in Washington, testifying before the Federal Election Commission on whether blogs should be regulated:

"[Darr] laid out a scenario in which Halliburton could choose to take advantage of a blanket media exemption for bloggers by investing in a blog that was supportive of its favored candidate. The 'Halli-blogger,' as Darr put it, with unlimited and undisclosed funding from Halliburton, could then create a slickly produced television-style ad on behalf of a candidate, even consulting with the campaign to design as effective a message as possible. The blogger could then, as part of the normal journalistic function, send this ad out over e-mail, or on an RSS feed, to activists and swing voters. The ad could even be sent to news outlets, as is standard practice for modern campaigns, where it would be featured in news segments, increasing its visibility and injecting its message into the bloodstream of the campaign."

Roth detailed the potshots other bloggers took at this idea, but you have to admit, Darr's scenario would keep us on our toes if it happened ... ahem, if it's not happening already.

Who Reads This Rag Anyway?

You didn't think I was talking about The Washington Post, did you? No, I'm poking tongue into cheek on this one, and even trying to see if I can wrap it around some of the harder words in various languages I've learned over the years.

The reason why? I feel like readers won't have to depend on me anymore to bring them the latest news on the France-and-Google saga , now that they can get the translations done for free at WatchingAmerica.com . It's a new Web site that translates foreign newspapers' articles into English so Americans can see how the overseas press portrays their country.

The Christian Science Monitor ran a profile on the site's creators: "Robin Koerner, cofounder of the site, sees its value as one of opening minds. 'If I want to conduct any kind of relationship, even a personal relationship, I need to know how what I say and do affects the person on the receiving end,' he explains. To emphasize the point, he quotes the English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill : 'He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.'"

Al Tompkins, a journalism teacher at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and publisher of the " Al's Morning Meeting " news roundup e-mail, said that many Americans might not go for it: "Americans are not incredibly open-minded about others who says critical things about America," he told the CSM.

Here's an example the paper quoted from Iraqi newspaper Azzaman : "If Columbus was alive today and witnessed the scandals of abuse and torture inside the U.S. detention centers of Abu Ghraib, Umm Qasr, Guantánamo, and Afghanistan, he would have discovered the magnitude of his error and headed back to Spain ... to apologize to the world for the wars, disasters, and calamities that he had brought forth."

Say what you will; at least it's a free press -- one of America's finest traditions.

Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com.