More on Christmas, consumerism...

Quick list of articles for this week's 'toon:

• Check out a damn funny article, by a City Pages writer who attempts to spend a whole week inside Minnesota's Mall of America. He's warned at the beginning, "spend too much time here, and you'll go insane." In the end... yeah, he basically goes insane.


• I haven't seen the new Morgan Spurlock-produced "What Would Jesus Buy" yet, but I've seen some clips and read a few articles. While I'm a fan of Spurlock and I definitely agree with the message of this film (discouraging out-of-control Christmas consumerism), I don't think I'll bother to watch this one. I've never really been a fan of "prank humor," unless the purveyor is damn good at making some kind of comment about why the victim of the prank is a moron (think Borat or the Daily Show), and not just making the victim look like a moron for the hell of it. In this case, the prankster is a New York performance artist who calls himself "Reverend Billy" and walks around with a megaphone and a mock church choir hassling the $5.85/hour kids working the counter at Starbucks. I think this kind of satire would be better suited for a commentary on televangelism; here, it just seems pointless. Plus, Reverend Billy is not all that great at articulating the message. The interview he did with the always subdued and businesslike Amy Goodman was painful to watch (he called her "sister Amy" repeatedly, and she never cracked a smile).


• Check out some great commentary on the enigmatic phenomena known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and why the media is complicit in forcing these corporate-invented pseudo-holidays down our throats.