Blogger Melissa Lafsky, the latest editor of the blog The Infrastructurist, joined the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast today, where she chatted with hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy‘s Matt Van Hoven about the site that she described as an “ongoing conversation about how we get around and how we’ll get around in the future.”

“The joke with infrastructure is that no one pays much attention to it until it breaks down,” she said. “And right now we’re looking at a pretty existential break down [in] that we rely on certain fuels in order to get us to work in the morning and to get us around period, and these fuels are limited in capacity and will eventually run out. So the larger conversation is what’s the future of energy that’s going to run this country as well as the rest of the developed world.”

After talking about infrastructure in the U.S. and around the world, particularly in China and India, Melissa talked about another one of her gigs, as the “Horror Chick”, writing about horror movies for The Awl. Then, Jason asked her for a reaction to Roland Emmerich‘s latest disaster film, 2012, from a horror and infrastructure point of view. Melissa said she boycotted the film because she hates “apocalypse porn” but she still had something to say about it.

“The point of film is to take you to somewhat dark places,” she said. “A movie like this is raw, unbridled apocalypse porn. The premise is so ridiculous I don’t even have to tell you…But the point of this movie is just, ‘We’re going to take Independence Day and make it look like Little Miss Sunshine.’ That is probably the conversation that they had in the greenlight producer’s office.”

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

Veteran and motivational speaker J.R. Martinez honored at last night’s Heroes Gala Photo: Brad Barket/PictureGroup

You’ve seen the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) commercials: They’re the ones on TV and on Hulu where a young man returns home from war and is greeted with empty streets reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic Roland Emmerich movie. Suddenly, another man in camo comes out to a street corner and shakes the man’s hand. IAVA’s slogan for 2009? “We’ve Got Your Back.”

And got your back they do: In 2008, Paul Rieckhoff, Iraq veteran and founder of IAVA, lobbied Congress to pass the G.I Bill which ensures affordable college education to all veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. This year, the IAVA is also working to increase health care coverage of veterans by $4.5 billion.

The stars were out last night at New York’s Gotham Hall for the third annual Heroes Gala of the D.C. grassroots lobby group, but nobody was looking at the celebrities. Instead, the real stars of the evening were the servicemen and women themselves, who populated the non-profit, non-partisan event hosted by Brian Williams, as well as Rieckhoff, MTV‘s Van Toffler and veteran-cum-actor-cum-motivational spokesman J.R. Martinez, who delivered the night’s most moving speech after being awarded for his courageous service for veterans.

More photos from the night after the jump

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