Blogocentric Formulations

Le Car Ban & The Voice of God

PROMPT: Provide your thoughts/opinions on a newspaper/magazine article or a radio/television news story from the past week.


The article that caught my attention this week was this one about Paris' partial ban on driving in the French capital.  

While I do applaud any effort to combat the environmental impact of motor vehicles, this just feels like it's headed in the wrong direction. It was rushed through in order to gain political favor, and there are so many corollary concerns that they just didn't seem to take into account when they passed this ban. If you're really going to implement a ban where only half the cars can drive on the roads during any given day (odd or even days based on the last digit of your license plate), how do they plan on addressing the following:

          How will this be enforced?
          How will this affect public transportation?
         *cargray* Is this a long-term solution?

To be honest, I think this is an election-year idea that will quickly be forgotten once it's proved unenforceable. I mean, are French police going to devote a ton of time and resources to checking the numbers on people's license plates to make sure no one's trying to drive on one of their banned days? On the days that half the city can't drive, is there enough public transportation infrastructure in place to support half the city being unable to drive their cars? It just seems like, while maybe well-intentioned, this is just an idea that's destined to fail because it doesn't appear that anyone's thought about the logistics involved in actually accomplishing the greater goal. I think they'd be far better off trying to develop some kind of incentive plan so people voluntarily choose public transportation rather than having it legislated for them.

Still, at least people are trying to do something, I guess.

--------------------------------------------------

PROMPT: Which deceased actor or actress do you miss the most?

DON LAFONTAINE
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0480963/

Okay, so technically Don LaFontaine was a voice actor, but I think his presence might be missed just as much as any individual actor. If the name doesn't sound familiar, LaFontaine is the voice-over narrator of more than five thousand film trailers and hundreds of thousands of advertisements and commercials. Nicknamed "Thunder Throat" and "The Voice of God," LaFontaine's work often included his own catchphrase, "In a world..." During the height of his career, LaFontaine would sometimes record as many as 60 promotions a week, and sometimes rattled off 35 in a single day.

He was the inspiration for Lake Bell's movie about voice-over artists called IN A WORLD (which also takes its name from LaFontaine's catchphrase), and he parodied himself on this classic GEICO commercial:

I very nearly chose Heath Ledger or Raul Julia for this topic, but instead I decided to go with someone that many people might not immediately recognize, but whose work they're familiar with and who was a huge loss to the entertainment industry when he passed away.