See if you can spot the morality tales in the story behind the unfortunate suicide of Russell Armstrong. There are probably more than five:

EW:

Russell Armstrong was more than $1.5 million in debt at the time of his suicide Monday, according to his attorney, and his mother told Headline News that he was dreading the way he would be portrayed in the upcoming season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. “Before the new season even started, before he took his life, he said, ‘Mom, they’re just going to crucify me this season,’” John Ann Hotchkiss told HLN’s Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell. “He said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’ll never survive it.’”

Armstrong’s attorney Ronald Richards told ABC News that the show’s celebration of outrageous excess plunged Armstrong into debt “as a result of trying to keep up with expectations for the lavish lifestyle portrayed on the show.

“These couples join these shows, and then they keep trying to outdo each other and they end up spending all their money trying to sustain a lifestyle that’s unrealistic and wasn’t there prior to the show,” continued Richards. “The weekly social events, the dinners and all the BS, trying to pretend you have unlimited resources in Beverly Hills is tough. When every night is a potential sound bite or posting on a website, you end up getting addicted to it, you go out all the time.”

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Although still a young filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan has already received both widespread praise and derision for his work. After receiving praise early on for writing and directing movies like “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs,” Shyamalan’s faced a critical backlash over some of his most recent pictures, including “The Happening” and this year’s “The Last Airbender.” His latest movie is the thriller “Devil,” which he produced and wrote the story for. Although it doesn’t recapture the greatness of some of his earlier films, “Devil”  is still worth seeing.

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The story opens with a man committing suicide by jumping out of an office building. A pair of detectives arrive to investigate the scene. However, it is not the man who went “down” who merits an investigation. It is the five people who are going up — on an elevator, that is.

Shortly after the suicide, five strangers enter an elevator in a nearby building, when it suddenly breaks down. The three men and two women are now stuck and immediately dislike each other and begin arguing. One awkwardly sings a tune to liven up the mood which only annoys the other four.

Unfortunately, the elevator passengers aren’t just annoying to one another. These mean and unlikable five are also annoying to the viewer stuck watching them. Thankfully, after these lame characters are introduced, momentum is quickly regained.  (more…)

Part 2 – In The Beginning

1965.  Cafe Bizarre.  Greenwich Village, New York City.

An unknown band takes the stage and begins to play.  The electric viola weeps an unearthly, hypnotic lament, as the singer chants: “Not a ghost-bloodied country, all covered with sleep, where the black angel did weep…’”

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Perhaps The Black Angel’s Death Song was just a little too bizarre for Cafe Bizarre.  Perhaps the song’s rumored anti-communist message did no go down well in deep-red lower Manhattan.  For whatever reason, The Velvet Underground are promptly fired from their first regular gig for playing the strange and dissonant tune they had been warned not to play.

But the Velvets had secured their future nonetheless:  Andy Warhol was at Cafe Bizarre that night.  He described the audience as “dazed and damaged” after the performance – Warhol loved it.  He took them into his fold and became their manager, producer and sponsor.  He helped them secure their first record contract; he painted the cover for the first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. (more…)

Now imagine you were somebody who only got your news from USA Today. What a weird worldview you’d have.

For one, you’d think colorful pie charts solve every problem, and you’d also think our military consists of nothing but troubled head cases. In the past year or so, USA Today has done little more than paint our military as rife with suicide, mental health problems, divorce, troubled kids and of course – alcohol and drug abuse.

Let’s look at the most recent USA Today piece on alcohol abuse. The paper reported that “Soldiers…with alcoholism or alcohol abuse, such as binge drinking, increased from 6.1 per 1,000 soldiers in 2003 to an estimated 11.4 as of March 31.”

That is disturbing, no doubt – and it’s all from military data. But what happens if you compare that figure to our general population? Well, according to the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 15.5 percent of the general population report episodes of binge drinking in 2006 – and for males alone – the number jumps over 20 percent. (more…)

When script writers run out of something else to say (e.g., there are only so many times they can say everyone is uninsured and miserable about it), guns and gun makers are easily available to demonize. “Life” and “House” have both gone after guns in recent episodes.

Life’s episode “Initiative 38″ has a fairly unbelievable plot: a woman working on an initiative to ban handguns is murdered and there is one major suspect, P&K, a gun company. Here is some of the dialogue:

Detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis): We are saying that someone came here to kill your wife. Can you think of who that might be?

Harold Amis: Yes, I can. Initiative 38.

Woman who works for Initiative 38: Initiative 38 is a comprehensive ban on handguns. Lisa was working to get it passed. (more…)