Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

THE USELESSNESS OF AMAZON.COM RATINGS: Okay, which has a higher star rating from the customers -- The Best Years of Our Lives or Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm? No cheating! Give up? Okay, it's the former -- by a half-star. We'll grant too the '46 Best Picture Os-CAR® winner has 141 comments next to Bill-'n'-Joe's junk's five. Of course the site (and the whole godforsaken Web) is full of pop-culture monomaniacs who'd call Jackass a masterpiece. But I'm trying to assemble a first-class DVD collection and I'm not getting any younger. And the thing is the customer ratings can be quite useful when judging home electronics or small appliances. People won't hold back on a bad experience there; if enough have had one you know a product's not worth buying. By contrast when it comes to movies or CDs they join the crowd. There are exceptions, to be sure, but they're mostly related to glorified manufacturing glitches, as with some Universal double-discs -- and most notoriously with WKRP in Cincinnati, which was chopped up due to epochal music-rights problems, not to mention Animal House, preceded on its first DVD issue with undefeatable trailers. Don't get me wrong, I want fluff along with the genius; there's a place in my collection for Hogan's Heroes and the dread Pink Panther cartoons. (Of the Valenti era I have other thoughts.) Heck I just bought the Frankie and Annette Collection. But dammit why should I have to believe cotton candy is every bit as good as caviar?

And just to go one step further: How many of the hyperactive blurb machines among the Amazon Top Reviewers would have five-starred THIS work but for an inconvenience?