by Matt Martinez

Morning Meeting

"Morning Meeting" is a recap of our daily editorial meeting. If we had a show today, these are some of the stories you would probably hear.

We're back, well-rested and one of us has started a new low-fat diet, but I'm pretty sure Chipotle will end that for me in about an hour.

It is hot. And it's not just us here at BPP World Headquarters — high temp records will be broken on both coasts today — and the Midwest is baking too, with temperatures reaching into the 90's in Kansas City and Chicago (and that's not including the heat index, which always bumps the temps to near 100.) The weather is on our radar today, as well as the flooding in Texas and Oklahoma and the fires in the West — all would be part of our newscast...

NEWSCAST — Recap of the Live Earth events from around the world, debate over the annual defense authorization bill begins in Congress today, Pennsylvania shuts down, the NAACP buries the 'N' word, Federer wins Wimbledon, the new Seven Wonders of the World are announced, Boeing's Dreamliner debuts, the Vatican allows the Latin Mass to return, PlayStation cuts its price, a Pakastani mosque remains under siege and The Transformers breaks box office records.

 

IRAQ DEBATE — The Iraq debate continues this week with just as much intensity and much more support for scaling down American military presence. Congress returned from a holiday break and the Senate immediately went to work on a major military spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. Several Republicans have broken ranks on the Iraq issue, most notable was last week's defection of Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico. A talk with a political reporter — perhaps David Sanger from The New York Times, he's been burning plenty of shoe leather on the story and has a great piece in this morning's paper.

WIMBLEDON — The Roger Federer/Rafael Nadal saga continues! Win put it perfectly this morning when he said, "If it weren't for Federer being the best tennis player in the world, Nadal would be the best tennis player in the world." Federer won Wimbledon, but barely. Nadal can beat him on clay, but Federer has the upper hand on most every other surface. Win wanted to have a conversation about these two, obviously amazing, players. He suggested Tom Perrotta of The New York Sun, who was at the match.

LATIN MASS — Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree over the weekend allowing wider use of the Latin Mass, which was greatly curtailed under the Second Vatican Council. The story was widely reported over the weekend, and is making a couple paragraphs of ink in today's papers, but there's something that's being glossed over in the coverage: The Latin Mass' prayers for Jews. Many Jewish groups are calling for clarification, asking if a missal for Good Friday will still contain this passage:

Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of
redemption.

The Latin Mass could also cause some headaches for priests, mostly because they are not familiar with it as most masses are now said in the local tongue. It's an interesting discussion, probably something the good folks over at Beliefnet could help us out with today.

PLAYSTATION SLASHES PRICES — Sony slashed the price of their 60GB PlayStation3 by a hundred bucks, so now it only costs $499. Sales have been lagging for the PS3, and we here at the BPP have a couple of theories. Luke thinks it all has to do with the runaway success of Nintendo's Wii (which it does), I think the Wii looks a lot like an Apple product, so more people are drawn to it over the PS3 purely because of aesthetics and Win just thinks that the PS3 games suck. We want to have a conversation with Jennifer Tsao, the managing editor of Electronic Gaming Monthly. This is a big move by Sony, kind of like they're running up the white flag for Xbox and Wii.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE — First off, The Transformers movie is awesome. But you wouldn't know that listening to NPR. (sigh) Regardless of this network's ridonkulous smackdown of one of my beloved childhood cartoon franchises (The others: He-Man, Thundercats and Strawberry Shortcake) the movie made gobs of money over the weekend, breaking box office records. While we would definitely talk about this on the show, what we really want to talk about is...

THE BEST TRAILER EVER — A trailer airing before The Transformers is creating quite the buzz. It's for a new movie by producer J.J. Abrams (of Alias fame) that's set for release early next year. I won't try to describe the trailer here, I'll only say, "It gave me chills." It's codenamed "Cloverfield," but there is no official title for the movie, no big actors and it is rumored to have been filmed, or is being filmed (we don't know! It's top secret) entirely on handheld cameras. The studio is keeping the project under wraps but, with the trailer, has unleashed a brilliant marketing campaign — which we'd want to talk about. /Film published their usage statistics after the 8p Monday showing of The Transformers tracking the mass of people trying to figure out what the Abrams trailer was all about. And there's now a website attached to the movie, but it's just as confusing as the trailer, which is below.

THE RAMBLE — News worth a brief mention: Good news from the Pacific Northwest, a missing hiker was found after walking 20 miles in the wilderness, Tom Perkins built a ginormous boat and there are pictures to prove it, Sprint cancelled the cell service of people who called customer service too much and Miss New Jersey is being blackmailed over some yet-to-be-seen pictures. I'm sure the Internet will provide any day now, it always does.

I BET YOU THINK THIS BLOG IS ABOUT YOU — A professor at Louisiana State University says that Mr. Rogers raised one of the most spoiled, narcissistic generations ever. Okay, so he doesn't say exactly that, but that's the gist of it. Professor Don Chance says that Mr. Rogers' constant message to kids that they are special has created a generation of entitled little snots. We wanted to get Mr. Chance on the line and quiz him about his theory. Oh, gotta run...the trolley to the neighborhood of Make-Believe is here! Bye, bye...!