A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

It's for your own good

I mean, how else are they going to keep you from making another Speed sequel?

Hollywood actor Jason Patric has been arrested after a drunken encounter with police in Austin, Texas. The Alamo star, 37, was arrested after challenging police to test him for drunkenness in the early hours of Monday morning. Police spokesman Kevin Buchman says there is no test administered for public intoxication and officers only need to have suspicion. According to police, Patric took an aggressive stance when they tried to arrest him, and shoved an officer. Patric was booked on misdemeanor charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Patric is guilty of the same selective legal ignorance that Michael Fay practiced in Singapore: not learning the goddamn laws of the place you're visiting. A PI arrest in Texas doesn't require a breathalyzer, and I've been on 6th Street after closing time often enough to know better than to argue with (or shove) police who've been dealing with a bunch of drunks like me for six hours. Pay the fine, say you're sorry, and go to Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon from now on.

"There's a beach there known for cancer"

Ghost Town has been around for a while. The author, a woman named Elena, kept a photojournal of her motorcycle expedition through the dead zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Plenty of others have linked to it of late (including Sheila and Scott), so who am I to buck the trend?

There's an eerie beauty to her photos, as is to be expected when one travels through a place whose inhabitants were forced to leave without the chance to pack their belongings. Think the Mary Celeste, or Stephen King's short story, Jerusalem's Lot.

The closest parallel in my experience is the town of Times Beach, MO. once easily seen from Interstate 44 when driving from St. Louis to the Six Flags in Eureka. After the dioxin contamination and the government buyout, you could still see the houses from the highway, but every subsequent time we'd drive by the trees and undergrowth had encroached a little more. At one point, the words "Times Beach" were simply blotted out with fresh green paint on freeway signage, leaving the ghost image of the words behind. The quote above is from the song Ten Second News, by Son Volt, which talks about the city's ordeal.

Since then, new signs have been installed and the old buildings razed. The EPA cleanup is complete, and the government is planning on building a new state park on the site.

Even so, you'll forgive me if, on some future trip to Six Flags, I don't stop there to play with my kids.

Not so fan-tastic anymore

As if the NBA needed another black eye, publicity-wise.

Most Houston folks have already heard the news about former Rocket and current NBA announcer Calvin Murphy getting hit with sexual assault charges. Specifically, three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and three counts of indecency. If that wasn't bad enough, the charges are being leveled by his own daughters.

Murphy, as you'd expect, denies everything:

"I am completely innocent of all charges," he said.

Whew. Glad he cleared that up. Now the city will be spared the ordeal of a lengthy...oh, wait. There's more:

Murphy has worked with children his entire life. He says to be accused by his own is the worst part of what he's facing. He has 14 children by nine women - one he married - but says that should not cloud anyone's judgment. He says he's been a good father to all.

Right. One has to give Murphy the benefit of the doubt until the trial is conducted, but come on. How in the name of Shawn Kemp can you be a good father to 14 kids, unless you and their nine mothers all live together in some compound out in southern Utah?

UPDATE: I forgot to add that it was none other than longtime APCB fan Wayne Dolcefino who broke the story on our local ABC affiliate. Apparently he has some time to kill now that he's made the city safe for exotic dancers.

You can't kill a man born to hang

APCB's intrepid hosts have braved the wilds of Jersey and survived. All systems are go, which means more crap you can't be bothered to read is on the way.

Going silent

A Perfectly Cromulent Blog will be going on hiatus for a few days while Michael and Ginger, my friends who own and maintain the Whiterose domain, load up the truck and move to Jersey. The downtime will start some time this afternoon or evening and continue until Monday night or Tuesday. My understanding is you'll still be able to read what's up on this page, but commenting and searching will be disabled.

"Commenting disabled." Every bloggers secret wish.

Anyway, regular posts will continue until they pull the plug. If you need a dose of bloggy goodness this weekend, check out any of the fine sites in the right-hand column.

"I'm like Bill Lee writing when he's in Tangiers"

Omnipresent commenter Denny hooked me up with a track called "Bug Powder Dust" by a band called Bomb the Bass. The song features ex-Supernauter Justin Warfield and some amusing trip-hop lyrics.

The song is thick with references to everything from Naked Lunch to Great Space Coaster, and deserves mention for this couplet alone (which I probably shouldn't have to explain):

Who's that man in the windowpane
Got something on his tongue and it's startin' to stain?

Solid.

Make way for Science

Now that this story has come out, we can finally concentrate our research efforts on carcinogens in underarm deodorant:

LONDON -- A miscarriage or abortion does not increase a woman's risk of breast cancer, according to a study published today that analyzed data from more than 50 previous studies.

Some of those studies had suggested a possible connection, but the authors of the report published in The Lancet medical journal said that was the result of an error in methodology.

"We hope that this research will put a stop, once and for all, to the persistent claims that abortion is a risk factor for the disease and help give reassurance to women," said Delyth Morgan, chief executive of Breatkthrough Breast Cancer, a British breast cancer research organization which was not involved in The Lancet report.

The abortion-breast cancer canard is one that anti-choice groups have been using to scare women for years. They couch their propaganda in bogo-medical terms and enlist similarly intolerant medical personnel to support their claims. One would hope The Lancet's report will put an end to their bilge, but I'm not holding my breath.

A few studies in the early 1990s suggested a possible link. But the U.S. National Cancer Institute last year concluded that those studies were flawed, and that no study undertaken since 1995 had suggested any connection.

The study published in The Lancet was done by the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer, based at Oxford University, which analyzed data from 53 epidemiological studies from 16 countries.

The National Cancer Institute and Oxford University? What a bunch of hacks.

Did you hear the one about...

...the leader of an industrialized Western nation laughing off the fact that he duped his country into going to war?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush poked fun at his staff, his Democratic challenger and himself Wednesday night at a black-tie dinner where he hobnobbed with the news media.

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

Wow, that's funny. No, I mean it, that's fucking hilarious. You should take that act on the road. Like, say, to Ft. Campbell, KY. I'll bet the families of the 62 soldiers from the 101st Airborne killed on your wild goose chase would get a good gut laugh out of that one.

For an encore, you could have Robert Novak come out at the end of each performance and rat out another CIA operative.

Crap, crap, crap

Lots of "news" to cover today. Lets get to it.

"Fogu me!"

Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar has acquired a taste for eating poisonous blowfish since working in Japan. ... She says, "I love Japanese food. They have this great fish market and you go down at like four in the morning and they cut open the fish and you just eat it right out of there. But my favorite was blowfish. It's completely poisonous so you have to slice it very, very carefully, but you wanna slice it just enough so you get a little bit of poison so that your mouth gets all tingly. It's delicious. It's so good I got a plate (but) it was a very little portion. So then I got a second plate of it. And then I was about to order my third plate when some of my castmates stopped me due to the fact that it's $85 a plate - to have poisonous fish!"

If coughing up $85 a plate to eat something with the potential to kill you isn't nascent Darwinism in action, I don't know what is. What's next for the Hollywood elite? Platinum revolvers for Russian roulette? Trepanation clinics? Pet cobras?

"They feed us Bizkits and Korn with a spoon"

Korn takes on the music business

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Embattled shock jock Howard Stern has found a theme song: Korn's "Y'All Want a Single." The song, and especially its video, is an attack on radio conglomerates and the music industry, Korn lead singer Jonathan Davis says. ... "The stuff we said in the video (is the stuff) the music industry doesn't want kids to know about," Davis says. "Everyone is in bed with everyone in the industry. One corporation owns all the video channels, one corporation owns all the radio stations, and all the venues we play at are also the promoters. It's a whole monopoly. They basically deem what kids are going to hear."

What a bold stance for Korn, who've enjoyed platinum record sales courtesy of this same record industry and who - by their own admission - have never before bothered to take up a cause (unless bitching that internet piracy resulted in slumping sales for "Untouchables" counts). Biting the hand that feeds you is obviously something that shouldn't be risked until you've tired of Maseratis and blow jobs.

Ian MacKaye must be kicking himself right now.

"[This video] is making a statement to stand up for every artist that's been screwed around," Davis says. "Ultimately, it's the fan getting screwed over [too] -- screwed out of a lot of new entertainment. There are those kids that have the energy to go out and look and find underground bands, but the average 14-year-old is fed what is cool by what the corporations are behind."

Translation: our shelf life expired some time around 1999, and now, instead of forcing kids to listen to our music, ze corporations are forcing them to listen to 50 Cent and that emo crap.

Don't go all Helen Lovejoy on us, Jonathan. "The children" will have no problem finding underground music if they want to. Hell, I managed to track down Crass and The Fall in the shadow of Kyle Field when I was 14.

"We've never been a political band," Davis says. "But if I can't say the [F-word] in the United Sates of America, I'm going to say something about it. If it gets to the point, period, where you can't cuss on TV, I'm moving to a different country."

The American public appreciates Davis' bold stance on such weighty issues. His defense of every American's inalienable right to say "fuck" on "Headbanger's Ball" puts him right up there in the pantheon with Thomas Paine as one of our true heroes.

And I wish him luck on that expatriate thing. Not many countries will be as generous as the U.S. in the adulation/groupies/narcotics department to a heavily tattooed, marginally talented, narcissist like Davis.

There's always England. They let Robbie Williams live there, after all.

Shot a Man In L.A., Just to Watch Him Die

Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are tipped to star as Johnny and June Carter Cash in a new biopic according to NME.

Sweet airplane glue of a boy named Sue, this can't be happening. No mortal frame can possibly hope to channel the primal force that was Johnny Cash.

I hope this is going to be a Lifetime movie, because anything else starring Reese Witherspoon as June Carter has to be a cruel joke. Either of these chucklheads would be better off headlining the John Ritter biopic.

Bastards.

"Please sir, I want some more."

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski says his next film will be based on Charles Dickens' classic novel "Oliver Twist."

Check, please.

"The slow zombie penetrates the shield."

"Those zombies will love Oklahoma's wide open spaces. They can run and run."

Okay, enough butchered movie quotes. Ginger points me to this Slate article which further examines the phenomenon of the fast zombie:

It's not for nothing that zombies are called the walking dead. In George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), a group of shut-ins sits in terror, watching television for the latest updates on the creeping undead menace. "Are they slow-moving, chief?" asks a reporter. "Yeah," the cop says wearily, "they're dead."

Romero's canonical trilogy, which also includes Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), emphasizes the zombie's drag-ass nature. Corpses shuffle so slowly that a potential victim can fall, brush herself off, remove her pumps, and set off again without being touched by a necrotic finger. Max Brooks' book The Zombie Survival Guide, a tongue-in-cheek tutorial for surviving the living dead, notes, "Zombies appear to be incapable of running. The fastest have been observed to move at a rate of barely one step per 1.5 seconds."

Levin continues with a brief history of the zombie in film, and rightly points out that while cinematic zombies have traditionally been slow and lumbering, this was always offset by their sheer numbers. Sure, one on one they don't present much of a threat, but the premise of most zombie movies is - as Levin puts it - "a group of shut-ins" squaring off against hundreds, if not thousands, of the living dead. It's easy to outrun a half dozen, a full battalion is another matter entirely.

As a high-level overview, it's not a bad article. However, I do have (naturally) a couple of minor points of contention:

The zombie would soon stretch its legs beyond the Caribbean and become an all-purpose horror creature. But with very few exceptions (most notably 1980's Nightmare City), the undead were weighed down by rigor mortis. Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) has a fightin' corpse who attacks a shark, but the film ends with a long line of zombies walking ever so slowly across the Brooklyn Bridge. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy, Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985), and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (1992) brought over-the-top humor and splatter to the genre, but the zombies still walked. In Michael Jackson's long-form "Thriller" (1983) video, the zombies are walking when they're not line dancing. And just like in the Romero original, the heroine of the 1990 remake Night of the Living Dead is shocked by the pace of the undead hordes: "They're so slow. We could just walk right past them. I wouldn't even have to run."

Dude, you're actually using that Lenzi piece of crap Nightmare City (aka City of the Walking Dead) to help make your point? I'm willing to bet fewer people saw that than were credited as caterers for the Dawn remake, and besides, everyone knows the true '80s progenitor of the fleet-of-foot flesheater is 1985's Return of the Living Dead. The newly risen in that film were many in number, and ran like hell. Quite the one-two combo.

It will be ironic if Snyder's Dawn remake represents the tipping point that makes fast zombies the mainstream. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, more than any other creature feature, hammered home the slow zombie's metaphorical possibilities. In the first Dawn, scores of shopping-mall-bound corpses ride escalators in an endless loop and wobble listlessly to Muzak. This new Dawn, though one of the best scare movies of the last few years, is far more concerned with zombie style than zombie substance: While Snyder's zombies may be mindless, they're less a consumerist mob than a bunch of high-strung car chasers.Maybe, as blogger Tim Hulsey argues, the obsolescence of the slow zombie signals the decline of "mobocratic" culture in favor of a modern taste for individualism. Or maybe his background as a commercial and music video director makes Snyder constitutionally incapable of creating slow monsters.

Or maybe the new Dawn was made under the aegis of Universal Studios and not independently, on a shoestring budget, like the original. Romero's Dawn was a grim indictment of consumer-driven culture (Shopping mall? Hello?) and the inability/unwillingness of human beings to work together for a common cause. Snyder's Dawn, like every other movie made in the last twenty years, prominently features soft drinks and other product placement. Oops. It's like that Britney Spears Pepsi advert, only in this one Britney has to shoot people trying to eat her. If the Horror Channel ever gets off the ground, the commercials will probably look a lot like the Dawn remake.

The new Dawn may be a decent enough horror movie in its own right, but labeling it a "remake" of one of the finest horror movies ever made glosses over the fact that Snyder and writer James Gunn have either completely ignored or totally missed the point of the original.

"That's the story of Jesus."

Finally, amidst all the hype surrounding Mel Gibson's Slashin' of the Christ, someone is finally injecting a little sanity into the proceedings:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Coming back soon to a theater near you -- a controversial film about a Jewish guy from Nazareth who is worshiped as the Messiah and crucified by the Romans.

No, it's not Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. It's Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Inspired by the runaway success -- and public furor -- over Gibson's portrayal of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus, the creators behind the 1979 biblical satire about an anti-Roman activist who spends his life being mistaken for a prophet are planning a 25th anniversary re-release next month.

Life of Brian will open at the end of April in Los Angeles and New York before expanding to other cities across the country, Rainbow Film Company president Henry Jaglom (news), whose distribution arm is reissuing the film, said on Tuesday.

Life of Brian is still the best movie about Christ next to Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter. And if there ever was a time for America to take a pill and relax with some Monty Python, it'd be now.

The only drawback will be the annoyance factor caused by the sheer number of Python geeks swelling the theater and repeating. Every. Damn. Line.

I hope I don't get beaten up.

"We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programing to The Passion," Jaglom told Reuters. "I intend it, hopefully, to serve as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel's movie."

He said marketing for the re-release would play off Gibson's film by adapting such taglines as "Mel or Monty" and "The Passion or the Python" -- "we want to give people a choice."

Yeah, I'm thinking that may not play real well in about 18 of those 25 media markets. Python = snake = serpent, anyone?

Maybe Jaglom should give these a try:

"Jesus is just zis guy, you know?"
"Christ, that's good cinematography!"
"Our Jews are funny, just the way you like them."
"100% Caviezel-free."[1]
"We speak English, just like Jesus."
"The 11th Commandment: Thou shalt buy tickets to Life of Brian (and then thou shalt visit the snack bar)."
"It's funnier than History of the World, Pt. 1."
"Come see Life of Brian, if only to keep John Cleese from having to do any more Charlie's Angels movies."

[1] The only drawback being it's also 100% Monica Bellucci-free.

Hoop Stalkings

I'm on to you, Tom Penders.

You showed up in Austin without much fanfare back in 1989. At least, not much fanfare that I noticed. It was my second year of college, and my...extracurricular schedule didn't allow me much time to pay attention to the basketball team, frankly. Still, I attended a few games. I can only assume that's when I caught your eye. Was it my wild shock of matted hair? My faded Misfits t-shirt? My erratic personal hygiene? I may never know.

You left UT in 1998. There was some story fabricated about grade scandals and payoffs, but I knew it was just because you'd finally tracked me down. It makes sense now; I moved around so much between college and grad school that I probably didn't have the same address for more than 9 months at a time, which made me hard to keep tabs on.

So in 1998 (a year and a half after I'd left), you rolled into DC. By then, I was starting to have my suspicions. I mean, what are the odds that a basketball coach just coincidentally ends up coaching teams at the two schools you attended? You made it look good, oh yes, I'll give you that. You coached GW until 2001, biding your time and secure in the knowledge that - since I'd gotten married and relocated to Texas - I wouldn't be moving around so much. It was just a matter of time before you followed me again.

And now you're in Houston. Very clever, choosing a school I've never attended to coach this time, but don't think I haven't gotten you figured out. I'm taking my family and we're moving somewhere you couldn't dare follow us without showing your hand; somewhere college basketball is such a joke no self-respecting coach would ever follow me there.

That's right, we're moving to College Station.

Galaxy of terror

[Note: This entry is actually a semi-serious look at the "war on terror" a year after the invasion of Iraq, and not - as the title would suggest - the crappy 1981 horror movie starring Erin Moran and Eddie Albert. Adjust your expectations accordingly]

Richard Clarke's allegations about the actions of the Bush administration's in the days following 9-11 are only the latest in a series of similar assertions from former Administration officials (Paul O'Neill, David Kay) who have stepped forward to discuss Bush's fixation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. I haven't had a chance to read Clarke's book - Against All Enemies - yet, but while I understand his penchant for self-aggrandizement and abrasiveness, no one can accuse Clarke of being "soft" on terrorism. He may or may not have a personal agenda behind all of this (as if that were unheard of in Washington), but the number of allegations coming out, and who's making them, are making it increasingly difficult to dismiss them out of hand.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that these latest assertions emerge at the one-year mark for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Now, I am not in any way against retaliating for attacks against our citizens and visiting harm upon those who wish death upon us. I've been saying, since the early '90s, that there is no effective diplomatic methodology there. One can't pursue traditional diplomacy with extra-governmental factions whose stated goal is the annihilation of Western society. It's difficult, to put it mildly, to reach a compromise with that sort of hatred, so - in the short term at least - they have to die. In the long term, we can act to change the mindsets of those who may end up following the examples of bin Laden and Yassin. But short of drastic actions, including my bold "Porno and Big Macs" foreign policy initiative, I don't even know if this is feasible.

Even so, the phrase "war on terror" is a misnomer in this case because terrorists will never be defeated on a battlefield. There is no arrayed force of troops for us to fight, but rather a loosely networked organization of individuals and cells who, while not joined by treaty or compact, are all united by their hatred of the U.S. and Israel. Massed troop deployments and nation-state war in such cases simply won't work.

My (eventual) point in all this is that I never thought the war in Iraq was an effective anti-terrorist strategy from the get-go. I didn't believe Bush had followed through on his so-called "single-minded determination" to pursue Osama bin Laden in the months following 9-11, and I thought the situation in Afghanistan was, at best, half-finished when we turned our attention to Saddam. And while I had my doubts about the Bush administration's claims about WMD at the time, it amuses me in a black comedy sort of way to note that even those who side with the President in the debate over the war now tacitly accept this as a lie.

In the meantime, let me just get some of this out of the way:

So, you wish Saddam was still in power? No, I just wish we'd gone after the guys who were actually responsible for 9-11 a little more emphatically. We had no problem with his gassing of people within Iraq's borders for twenty years, what's a few more months while we hunt down the ringleaders of al-Qaeda?

But Saddam was a bad guy, the world's better off without him. I find it amazing that this isn't attacked more often. There are a half-dozen "bad guys" out there as bad as, if not worse, than Saddam Hussein. People getting irate about the increasing criticism leveled at Bush and company for going after Saddam are the same ones who screamed bloody murder when Clinton authorized the use of force in the Balkans. If "policing the world" wasn't a good idea then, why is it suddenly a good idea now?

Where's the cut-off point for atrocities? Forgetting those not involved in the assumed Islamic web of conspiracy (Mugabe, Kim Jong Il), when can we expect to go after al-Bashir in Sudan? When do we stop kowtowing to Saudi Arabia, instead of meekly pulling our forces out of their territory and sitting by while the royal family continues to wink at radical elements in the country?

It doesn't matter about the WMD, we're at war and there's no time for semantics. - These "semantics" are what got us into this war in the first place. If the ends (ridding the world of Hitler II AKA Saddam Hussein) justify the means (fabricating intelligence and lying to the American public in order to mobilize support), why talk about weapons of mass destruction at all? Just come straight out and say, "Saddam is a butcher who's responsible for the deaths of thousands, and we're taking him out whether you like it or not." I'd have more respect for someone who laid it out like that, frankly.

Why do so many people find it impossible to believe that governments are capable of deceiving us to gain popular backing for their agendas? Hitler did it to invoke Artcle 48, LBJ did it to justify action against North Vietnam, and Vladimir Putin did it to drum up support for renewed actions against Chechnya. How calcified does your perception have to be to make you blind to the fact you're being lied to?

And don't switch the focus from, "We're going in to take out Iraq's WMD capabilities" to "Saddam may not have had the WMD capability we thought, but we'll still find them" to "So what if he didn't have any WMD? He was a Bad Man and we're better off without him," especially when you created that focus to begin with. Don't want the debate on Iraq framed around WMD? Then you shouldn't have built that frame in the first place. No one argues that Saddam and his brethren were scumbags, but the talk about removing him for "humanitarian" reasons didn't start creeping in until Bush had already conjured the bogey of a madman with his finger on the trigger.

Saddam's time was going to come at some point anyway, just like it would have for Qaddafi had he not chickened out, and it may still for Syria's al-Asad. However, the fact remains that Afghanistan was where we could focus on those more immediately culpable for the 9-11 attacks and their supporters, and we left before the job was truly finished. It may or may not be too late now, as they've had plenty of time to flee to the four winds (just ask Spain), which only makes the job harder. And, unfortunately, our military kind of has it hands full at the moment.

Personally, I'd beef up special forces operations and ground level HUMINT and concentrate on covert offensives. I'd "disappear" the ringleaders, then - and this is key - I wouldn't parade their corpses on CNN. Let their followers whisper about what fate befell them as we keep them on the run.

That, and lots of Big Macs.

"And you're going to spend an entire summer going blind on paperwork because a Signalman Second Class smoked a dime bag of oregano."

Now that's good garnish (courtesy of my friend Mac):

MIAMI -- Police say a 5-year-old boy brought a bag of marijuana to school and was sprinkling it over a friend's lasagna at the school cafeteria before a monitor intervened.

Police say it is unclear whether the kindergartner at Gratigny Elementary School even knew he was carrying the drugs on Monday.

...

Initially, the boy, who had tried to hide the bag with his feet when the monitor approached him, "may have said it was oregano," said Mayco Villafana, spokesman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

Sounds like Mommy was confused. If you're going to hide the weed in an oregano shaker, at least get another spice dispenser for the actual oregano. Otherwise this horrible web of lies you've woven will spiral out of control.

School police took the matter to the state attorney's office and in addition to speaking with the boy's family, police are looking into whether an older friend asked the boy to hold the plastic bag. The case was also referred to Florida's Department of Children and Families, Villafana said.

School bullies are going to be unstoppable if they realize they can start getting pot as well as lunch money from little kids. Maybe it'll mellow them out, though.

"You been goofin' with the bees?"

I know one member of my family who will be first in line to get Harry Nilsson's The Point when it comes out on DVD for the first time tomorrow.

Originally released in 1971, The Point is the story of Oblio, the only pointless person in the Land of Point. He runs afoul of the son of the evil Count, and is banished to the Pointless Forest with his trusty dog, Arrow, and has exciting encounters with the likes of the Pointed Man, the Rock Man, the Fat Sisters, and a giant pterodactyl. Somewhere in all the vague psychedelia and "point" puns, a lesson about nonconformity and discrimnation emerges. Oblio, in the end, undergoes both a physical and a philosophical transformation.

How do I know all this? Because my father, who is otherwise a decent human being, subjected his toddler son to replays of the album - by my estimation - every night for three years. Since 1978, I think I've heard the album once, but I can still remember the lyrics to "Think About Your Troubles" ("Now everybody knows that when a body decomposes...") "P.O.V. Waltz" ("There was a time, there was a time, when you were mine..."), and all the rest. They're burned into my brain like the Oscar Meyer jingle and my love for the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. I know the movie had three narrators (Ringo Starr, then Alan Barzman, then Alan Thicke), even though Harry Nilsson himself narrated the original album (I still use his sinister inflection of "good night" in my personal sign-offs). As a child, I thought the Rock Man was the grooviest cat this side of Frankenstein Jr.

I'm afraid to watch it now. I fear that The Point, like everything else entertainment-related in my childhood, was actually really lame. Luckily, I won't have to shell out the money for it, since Dad will be playing it for me every time we visit him from tomorrow on. These forced viewings will most likely continue until all of his children rise against him and put him to sea on an ice floe with copies of The Point, Nilsson Schmilsson, and the poor cat he saddled with the name 'Oblio.'

Only then will I have peace.

Shatner-ific

It saddens me to note that no one else seems to be commemorating the 73rd birthday of actor, author, horse breeder, French speaker, vegetarian, and the original (and still the best) captain of NCC-1701: William Shatner. It's not too late, though, as there are still a variety of ways for everyone to celebrate their inner Kirk:

+ Load up on Star Trek trivia at StarTrek.com. Don't get caught by co-workers or friends, however, as you may never live it down.

+ Read the editorial reviews for Shatner's Tek series at Amazon. Just don't read the actual books.

+ Head over to Shatner's official website and get the straight poop on the man himself. It doesn't hurt that daughter Lisabeth is quite the babe.

+ Repent your heathen ways and convert to the First Church of Shatnerology.

+ Relive Kirk's greatest moment.

Happy Shatner Day, everyone!

"When I was seventeen, I drank some very good beer."

Via Fark, here's Modern Drunkard's list of the 40 Things Every Drunkard Should Do Before He Dies:

1. Open and close a bar
2. Go on a bender
3. Drink a fifth of hard liquor, by yourself, in one day
4. Dance like a fool in front of a large hooting crowd
5. Spend a night in the drunk tank
6. Get drunk on the grave of your hero
7. Buy a crowded bar a round
8. Embark on an impromptu road trip
9. Get 86’d from a bar
10. Extravagantly overtip a bartender
11. Walk up to an attractive stranger way out of your league and buy him or her a drink
12. Conspire an afterhours at your favorite bar
13. Make your best friend a perfect martini
14. Buy, build or steal a home bar
15. Get carried home by your drinking buddies
16. Get drunk with your father
17. Fight a good fight
18. Visit the source of your favorite beer, wine or liquor
19. Drunkenly watch the sun come up with your best boozing buddies and a bottle
20. Sit in on an A.A. meeting
21. Hit a dozen bars in one night
22. Try at least one hundred different drinks
23. Get loaded in the land of your forefathers
24. Juice on the job
25. Split a magnum of expensive champagne with your true love
26. Give a hobo twenty bucks
27. Get loaded and tell your boss exactly how you feel
28. Send a friend a bottle of good liquor
29. Eat a pickled egg from the big jar
30. Go on a fishing trip with your pals
31. Eat the worm
32. Learn at least one traditional drinking song
33. Steal some booze
34. Spend half a paycheck on a single bottle of liquor
35. Start your long-awaited and very personal autobiography: Me and the Booze: A Love Story
36. Try absinthe
37. Watch the movie Barfly with five of your closest friends
38. Work at least a week as a bartender
39. Make your own beer, wine or moonshine
40. Go to your place of worship loaded

Modesty and matters of public record forbid me from specifying which of these I've completed. Let's just say it's more than 20. I'm sure some of the reprobates who hang around here can top that.

And Full House aired for 8 seasons

MSN Entertainment, not usually known for it's cutting edge showbiz reporting, nevertheless has a list of some interest: Top 10 Canceled TV Shows. And what would a list featured on APCB be without searing clinical analysis? Completely out of character, that's what.

10. The Tick (November 2001 to January 2002): Yeah, okay...I enjoyed the three episodes of The Tick I actually caught (there were nine total), but this one never had a chance. It featured a lead character maybe a hundred people over the age of 25 have ever heard of, and I don't think it played consecutively for three weeks in the same time slot, as Fox predictably abandoned any pretense of support (this from the same network that aired 20 episodes of The Crew).

Inexplicably, the entire run is available on DVD, which has to make it the shortest-lived network television series ever to be released on disc.

9. My So-Called Life (August 1994 to January 1995): Bleagh. I wasn't that far removed from my teen years when this series aired, which goes a long way towards explaining why I couldn't stand it. Oh, it's better than, for example, Beverly Hills 90210, but that's like saying COPS features more realistic police brutality than Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. The acting in this show was uniformly decent, but my complaint about MSCL is the same for all shows of this ilk; who the hell wants to revisit adolescence? If you're going to subject audiences to horrible memories of acne, unrequited love, and afternoon thrashings behind the band hall, at least put a humorous spin on it (see #2).

8. The Ben Stiller Show (September 1992 - January 1993): Proof that Ben Stiller actually used to be funny, Janeane Garofalo used to wear make-up, and Bob Odenkirk is still criminally underappreciated. Several sketches still hold up ("Ask Manson," "Cape Munster"), even if many seem hopelessly dated ("The Grungies," "Melrose Heights"). Taken on its own merits, TBSS is a nice warm up for the much better Mr. Show (see #1).

7. Sports Night (September 1998 to May 2000): Again I say 'bleagh.' Sports Night's enduring popularity is further proof of Aaron Sorkin's Mesmero-like hypnotic powers. How else do you explain critical accolades given to a show featuring a bunch of people repeating their lines back to each other? Repeatedly?

The mind boggles...only if Sorkin wrote it, it would be more like this:

Dan: The mind boggles.
Casey: The mind boggles?
Natalie: How does a mind 'boggle?'
Dan: It just does.

Where's my Emmy? Better yet, why isn't Get A Life listed here instead?

6. Firefly (September 2002 to December 2002): The wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanied the cancellation of Firefly demonstrated that geeks have yet to learn that genre programming stands little chance of making it on the networks. For every Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there are two dozen fantasy/sci-fi/horror TV shows without hot blonde girls in the lead that don't make it to syndication. Firefly, like The Tick, never got into a groove. Fox strikes again.

5. NewsRadio (March 1995 to July 1999): Fans of NewsRadio had to wait until the 11th hour every season to hear if it would be back on the air the next year. And a four-year run is really better than I expected for this, even though I consider it one of the funniest network TV shows ever made (and that for the "Stargate Defender" episode alone). Great ensemble cast, highlighted by Phil Hartman, Stephen Root, and Dave Foley. The show couldn't survive Hartman's death and NBC pulled the plug after 97 episodes, meaning we'd never learn if Mr. James really was D.B. Cooper.

4. Family Guy (January 1999 to 2001): Given that Family Guy is coming back to TV, I don't know if it really merits inclusion on this list. I run hot and cold with the show, myself, though there have been some great moments ("Diamonds: she'll pretty much have to").

3. Homicide: Life on the Street (January 1993 - August 1999): Does a show that aired for seven seasons really deserve to be included with those that didn't even break the ten episode mark? Besides, HBO's The Wire (written by Homicide creator David Simon) is doing it better these days. Homicide was a great show in its time, but The Wire may be the best show on TV.

2. Freaks and Geeks (September 1999 to July 2000)/Undeclared (September 2001 to March 2002): Pity poor Judd Apatow, creator of F&G and Undeclared; both cult sensations, both canceled after one season. Unlike My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks managed to make high school something I could look back on without wincing. Well, without wincing much. I never saw Undeclared, however.

1. Mr. Show with Bob and David (September 1995 to December 1998): There's a reason people get HBO, and it isn't the movie selection. HBO's original programming is top notch, as long as you ignore crap like Arli$$ and the bowel cramp-inducing Sex and the City. I've already mentioned The Wire, but by far my favorite series - on HBO or anywhere - was Mr. Show. MSN's wrong, though: HBO didn't cancel it. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross (if their website is to be believed) more or less grew sick of dealing with shoestring budgets (expressed in the occasional swipe at other HBO fare) and timeslots of the "Mondays at 1 AM" variety, and pulled the plug themselves. Some sketches were weaker than others, but I don't think there was a bad episode in its four season run. You can also see Jack Black and Sarah Silverman at the beginning of their careers, and Tom Kenny before he became the voice of Sponge Bob. The first three seasons are available on DVD, with the 4th coming (hopefully) later this year.

Now, what about Misfits of Science?

"All day, all night, we know what you like"

Tim has a nice eulogy to J.J. Jackson over at his place. Unlike most, it's actually a fairly heartfelt piece that eschews the sarcasm I've seen others write.

Tim and I are the same age. Worse - and in case you hadn't figured it out - we both grew up in the same town, went to the same high school, and probably threw up in the same peoples' backyards. I can echo almost everything he says about the early MTV experience:

As a young kid growing up in a conservative central Texas town, MTV provided a glimpse into the great expanse of Western Civilization. First of all -- MTV played rock-n-roll (such as it was) not country music. The women were usually scantily clad and at times rather rough looking (thanks Joan Jett, Lita Ford, and the chicks from Crue videos), and it was just plain fun.

After my family got cable in late 1981, MTV was one of the only channels I ever bothered to watch (along with USA - for "Night Flight" - and the occasional visit to a flickering Playboy Channel). For me, it was my first exposure to acts like Oingo Boingo, David Bowie, and Devo. Of course, Tim leaves out some of the downsides of early '80s era MTV, namely April Wine videos; 20 airings a day of "Rio" by Duran Duran, and the birth of the jump-cut, ADD culture we find ourselves immersed in now. And in those pre-Michael Jackson's "Thriller" days, J.J. was also the only black person you'd see on MTV (aside from the one Thompson Twin).

I don't know how much of "the great expanse of Western Civilization" MTV actually offered to wide-eyed suburban youth during that time, but it beat huffing paint.

And Nina Blackwood was much hotter than Martha Quinn.

"I'm going back to Maui. Hmm, I don't think so."

Amid all the "harumph"-ing going on about the Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds collaboration, this news managed to slip under everyone's radar:

Yahoo Movies reports that George Clooney is close to signing to play Magnum, P.I. in the Universal film adaptation, and that LL Cool J may play the role of the series' helicopter pilot, Thomas "T.C." Calvin.

Release the lads!

The more news like this I hear, the more I wonder if there isn't an end in sight to these kinds of films. Surely making movies out of TV shows can't continue indefinitely. For starters, there just aren't enough popular ones to keep up the trend. Magnum ran from 1980 to 1988, which - admittedly - places it squarely in the '80s nostalgia camp, but are there really that many series left that people would want to see on the big screen? Could a proposed Miami Vice feature film be more impressive than Grand Theft Auto: Vice City? Or does it matter anymore? Starsky and Hutch aside, it isn't like recent movies made from TV shows (SWAT, Charlie's Angels) bear any resemblance whatsoever to the source material. Personally, I loved the Magnum, P.I. TV series, but mostly because of Tom Selleck and John Hillerman. George Clooney is no more Thomas Magnum than Ben Stiller is Dave Starsky.

Yahoo Movies has a full spread on the remake. Looks like the movie takes place in the present day, and Magnum, Rick, and T.C. will be veterans of the Gulf War, not Vietnam. This will have a significant impact on the tone. The TV series examined the ways in which serving in Vietnam affected the characters as much as it did the so-called caper of the week. The movie, scripted by Austin Powers co-writer Michael McCullers, probably won't go for that kind of depth.

And Clooney probably won't be wearing those white nutters with docksiders, either.

More of the "Boob Tube"

I knew something was up. While The Wife and I were watching Courtney Love slowly descend into the maelstrom last night on The Late Show with David Letterman, I had a feeling she was on the verge of doing something else to ensure she never gets custody of her daughter back. Typically, just as Dave was introducing her performance, the PVR cut in to switch the TV over to record Chappelle's Show. We considered turning back, but figured it wasn't that big a deal. As a result, we missed the ensuing breast baring(s) and - from the looks of the pics I've seen - Dave's delightfully gleeful expression.

In retrospect, I might have known that she'd lack the creativity to improve on Janet Jackson's previous flash job. She should have at least clubbed Paul Shaffer with her guitar.

Póg mo thóin, dude

St. Patrick's Day, for me, ceased being a 10-hour cavalcade of inebriation around the same time I stopped being enamored of elbowing my way through crowds of what Tim Robbins would call a bunch of "amateur night drunks" to get a pint. In other words, about when I turned 23. I may only be half Irish, but even I know when to throw in the towel.

I still have fond memories of one particular March 17, however. So if you'll allow your humble author to indulge in a bit of wistful nostalgia, I'm going to dim the lights here at APCB and tell you of My Favorite St. Patrick's Day.

The year was 1999, when everyone was eagerly looking forward to that new Star Wars movie and a wholesome young Britney Spears enchanted America. The Wife (who is of suffciently Irish extraction she knew which ancestral hometown of hers we needed to visit) and I were making our first trip overseas together and, after a few glitches involved in getting lodgings and a cruel joke of a Houston to London flight, had settled nicely into the Irish way of life: do stuff until 3:00 or so, then drink. Repeat. We'd scheduled our visit for the week of St. Patrick's Day more or less by accident, but this still meant we had to bug out of Dublin and drive across the Emerald Isle to Galway, where we'd managed to secure a reservation. That was March 16.

St. Patrick's Day eve turned out to be pretty hairy in its own right, as we careened from Galway to the Cliffs of Moher as fast as yours truly, driving on the wrong side of the road and taking a short cut suggested by the Jurys Inn desk clerk, could take us. We had to catch the sunset, you see. In the end, we survived, even though none of my pictures really turned out to my liking.

The 17th was clear, cool, and dry. In short, a bit of an anomaly in the British Isles. Rather than continue the weeklong tradition of pub crawling for the day, we decided to take a charter flight from An Spiddal out to the Aran Islands. More specifically, Inis Mór. The Aran Islands (Inis Mór, Inis Meáin, and Inis Oírr) are really little more than big limestone slabs, covered with a thin layer of soil, that jut out of the Atlantic off the western coast of Ireland. They're windy, barren, and - once you leave the small town of Kilronan - almost entirely bereft of touristy crap. In short, the perfect place to avoid other drunk Americans.

We rented bikes. Apparently you can also take a tour bus, or walk, but bikes suited us fine. We meandered along the roads and rock walls, admiring the ruins of old churches, and frankly marveling that anyone could live someplace so desolate. At the same time, we were often the only people in sight. Something you never had to worry about in Dublin.

The big attraction on Inis Mór is Dun Aengus, an Iron Age fortress that is slowly but surely being devoured by the Atlantic. Large sections of its outer ring walls have already fallen prey to the implacable sea and wind, which means that visitors can walk right up to the precipice and check out the 300 foot drop into the ocean. Not me, of course. I crawled on my belly like an iguana until I was able to get a look. We hiked around, giving the edge a wide berth, while I commented on how a similar attraction in America would have warning signs spaced every 8 feet, and probably a 10' high security fence as well.

In what seemed like very little time, we had to head back to Galway. We took our time on the return trip, preferring to meander from An Spiddal back to the hotel. We had to get an early start the next morning, so we contented ourself with spending the evening in the hotel bar, where a group of drunken old men serenaded everyone with songs I couldn't even try to name. Yours truly gave his best effort to "American Pie," but that's probably something better left alone.

The Wife and I have done "Irish" things for St. Patrick's Day since, but - and quite understandably - nothing measures up to that one. You guys feel free to cram yourselves into Griff's or McElroy's, I'm going to spend the evening with a pint or two of Guinness and look through the photo albums from 1999.

Sláinte.

What's your favorite swear word?

Channel 4 has put together a rather interesting advertisement (thanks to my friend Matt for the link):

The United Kingdom television network Channel 4 has produced a commercial consisting entirely of celebrities giving an example of their favorite swear words.

The spot is the latest in a series of short promotional films produced by the network in which actors who appear on Channel 4 are asked to answer personal questions. In this case, the answers were edited together so that the entire commercial consists entirely of swearing. The examples begin at the "F" word and continue from there.

The commercial features more than 50 actors and celebrities, including a large number familiar to American audiences. Participants include cast members from U.S. shows such as "The Osbournes," "The West Wing," "Scrubs," "The O.C." and "Without A Trace" -- including Ozzy, Sharon and Jack Osbourne, John Spencer, Richard Schiff, Peter Gallagher and Anthony LaPaglia.

Check it out here. Far and away, the most popular (with the Americans) is "fuck," although hearing Janel Moloney (Donna on The West Wing) say, "I like cunt" is a beautiful thing.

I prefer a little complexity, so mine is "rat fuck son of a bitch," as uttered by Hudson in Aliens. What's yours?

What's that old joke about tiger repellent?

Fun campaign stuff from Time (via Andante, Pandagon, and a host of others):

Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration's efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

Where's a Photoshop contest when you need one?

Maybe it's me, but this seems like a pretty easy proposition for the DoHS. Every city Bush visits, pose him in front of a power plant or the city skyline, take a picture, then tack on a caption like, "If John Kerry was President, downtown Milwaukee would be a smoking crater." They can't prove it, but Kerry's supporters can't refute it either.

Eight more months.

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will windsprint the earth"

Quite by accident, I found myself watching the 10 minute preview of the Dawn of the Dead remake on the USA Network last night. Observations follow.

1. They sure don't waste any time. Five minutes of intro to our main character before the shit hits the fan. And for the record, no one I know would've let that freaky looking little girl with blood around her mouth into their bedroom. Scream talked about the rules for horror movies, somebody needs to outline similar guidelines for zombie horror films (and I don't mean the survival guide, necessarily).

2. The new trend appears to be zombies that can run at normal speeds. We saw this in Resident Evil (the dogs, anyway), House of the Dead, and 28 Days Later (sorry, that was a "viral thriller"), not to mention 1985's Return of the Living Dead. Ana's husband/boyfriend certainly hauls ass. I think it'd be more realistic if zombie speed decreased as rigor or decomp set it, but whatever.

3. More promising, to me anyway, was the way the advancing disaster was depicted. Fires breaking out, car crashes, and total infrastructure meltdown. That's how you put togeher a zombie apocalypse. I know it was only 10 minutes, but I thought directory Zach Snyder got a good start in presenting the descent into chaos.

I know plenty of people are still up in arms about Snyder and Scooby Doo scribe James Gunn having the temerity to mess with Romero's masterpiece. Suck it up. I admit I wasn't too enthused about the idea of a DotD remake, but what I've seen in the previews and last night have piqued my curiosity enough that I'll definitely check it out in the theater.

After some BBQ, I think.

Regrets, he's had a few

Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones makes some comments that are probably applicable to any rock musician from the '60s and '70s:

"I should have died around when Keith Moon did in 1978," Wood, 56, told Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper.

"Yeah, because me and Keith, we were hitting it really hard.

The obvious subtext here is that Keith Moon is remembered and eulogized as one of rock's last wild men, who lived life to its fullest and most excessive, while Wood still dodders on with Mick, Keith and company on their latest wallet-fattening sleepwalk through the "Hot Rocks" collection. Had Wood died in '78, he might be recalled as something other than "that other guitar player for the Rolling Stones."

There's still time to go out like George Harrison, however:

Doctors have told Wood if he does not quit his 30-a-day cigarette habit he is at risk of catching the respiratory disease emphysema.

Lung diseases aren't very glamorous. Unfortunately for Ron, he's already too old for his death to be categorized as a "rock and roll tragedy." His best bet at this point might be to load up on OxyCodone and fly a hang glider into a volcano or something. Musicians are artists, right? So be creative.

You've got to put one Footage in front of the other

In the annoying self promotion department, there's a new "Footage Fetishes" column at Film Threat by yours truly.

This time around, I take a look at 1941, Steven Spielberg's stab at WWII-era comedy. If, like many, you have fond memories of this late 70's effort...you won't find any sympathy here.

You sick bastards.

South by Southwhat?

"Sundance is weird. The movies are weird. You actually have to think about them when you watch them." - Britney Spears

Britney obviously didn't attend some of the same movies I did.

No reason for the above quote, really, except to clumsily segue into telling you I'm currently at South by Southwest in Austin. Once again I'm subjecting myself to multiple movie viewings so you won't have to. Screened last night, Code 46 (interesting, but ultimately frustrating) and Undead (Aussie zombie horror + alien invasion: a winning combination).

Already seen today: Nuclear Family and The Hunting of the President. After an early evening screening of Bush's Brain, I will be heading to 6th Street with others of the Film Threat crew to enjoy Austin's beer, hospitality, and annoyingly inclement weather. Hook 'em.

The Wheel in the sky keeps on droning

Dark Horizons alerts us all to the next unwanted literary adaptation (registration required):

Red Eagle Entertainment has optioned worldwide feature rights to Robert Jordan's 11-book series "The Wheel of Time." Deal includes all ancillary rights.

Red Eagle will initially work to produce an adaptation of the first novel, "The Eye of the World." Once that's achieved, adaptations of the others will follow.

"Eye of the World" begins when villagers of Emond's Field are attacked by minions of a force known as Dark One, forcing three young men to confront their destiny and begin a quest.

"Begins with" is a bit of a lie. Eye of the World meanders along for 300 or so pages before the three young men in question finally leave their village. Then...other stuff happens. Eventually. Jordan is a stickler for elaborate descriptions and making sure his readers never lack for details about every single minor character introduced. Predictably, the resultant glacial pacing has become the WoT's trademark. I gave up after the first three books, only slogging through the third thanks to the faulty sales logic of: "Hey, the guys got tens of millions of readers, they can't all be idiots, right?" But friends who continue to subject themselves to the torment inform me that in a couple of the later books, little if anything happens.

Even better, in book 10, Crossroads of Twilight, I'm told the plot actually slips backward. Much like the classroom clock in Risky Business.

"In order to meet the high expectations of the millions of devoted Robert Jordan fans around the world, we intend to make careful choices regarding the development and management of the first installment," said Red Eagle president Rick Selvage.

Jordan's most recent installment was prequel "The New Spring," which bowed at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Jordan is expected to pen at least two more full-length novels to complete the series, along with two additional prequels.

That's optimism for you. Jordan himself, in an interview available at Tor's web site, says that he's "not 100% sure" he can wrap the series up in 12 books (not including 3 prequels).

I feel for the people who have been suffering along with Jordan's case of the narrative trots for these last 14 years. An author needs to take the necessary amount of time to finish a story, I understand this (I'm still sticking with George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, though 3.5 years and counting between books is pushing it). But 15 books? What's the record for most separate books to tell a single story?

And don't answer The Bible, even the Easy-Eye version couldn't match the sheer tonnage of the Wheel of Time. What a scam.

Wish I'd thought of it.

[In case anyone cares, I've also expounded a good deal on my adult-oriented "Must See TV" post below]

I don't mind an informer, I object to a cut-rate one.*

Time will tell if Susan Lindauer will go down on espionage charges or merely be castigated for naivete in conducting business transactions with a government that sponsors terrorism. One thing's sure, she's not a very good salary negotiator:

The indictment said she accepted $10,000 for working for the Iraqi Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2002, including payments for lodging at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad and expenses during meetings in New York City with Iraqi agents.

Pfft. $10,000 including expenses? I knew the job market was soft, but jeez. Chrisopher Boyce made twice that in half as many years, and that was in the mid-1970s.

Maybe the TV-movie rights will make up for it.

*With apologies to Humphrey Bogart

"Must See TV," indeed

Way to go, Janet:

WASHINGTON - The House overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday substantially increasing the maximum fine for radio and TV indecency.

The vote was 391-22. Similar legislation is pending in the Senate.

"I am tired of hearing parents tell me how they have to cover their children's ears," Rep. Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., said during debate on the measure. "Today, we're saying enough is enough."

What an interesting way of saying, "I am tired of hearing 'parents' piss and moan about how difficult it is nowadays to plop their kids in front of the TV and ignore them for extended periods of time without the little bastards repeating the word 'autofellatio' in front of our pastor."

The bill would raise the maximum fine for a broadcast license-holder from $27,500 to $500,000. The fine for a performer would jump from $11,000 to $500,000.

Here's my recommendation for the networks: bite the bullet and go hog wild. Your need to win back viewers who have all but abandoned you for cable and satellite. Start by taking away the blurry boxes when Jerry Springer has a special on strippers, or start pumping out naked versions of hit reality shows. Playmate Fear Factor was huge, how about All-Nude Barely Legal Lesbian Fear Factor? And don't forget your regular programming. You thought ratings were impressive when Ross and Rachel got together, how big would they be if they really "got together?"

[And don't tell me nobody's going to want to see David Schwimmer's hairy ass, people have been renting movies with Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy in them for over twenty years.]

What's that you say, Courteney Cox-Arquette is balking at a little DVDA? Tack another $2 million onto her salary. Matthew Perry would do it for 1/100 of that (plus endless Vicodin refills). The fines will stack up with alarming speed, but think of the ratings! A 100 share!

Sure, the advertisers you'll end up getting might be a little on the...prurient side, but who cares when those revenues are rolling in? Kids will watch less TV, which is better for them anyway, and parents can spend more time with their children, which is more of a "family value" than whining that the government needs to make it easier for them to be neglectful crybabies.

My hat is now in the political ring, as Bill Hicks would say.

UPDATE: Mac brings up something I'd been toying with yesterday but didn't really have time to expand upon (no, not Donna Pescow): namely, the pr0n tax.

Alcohol and cigarette manufacturers have been able to stave off more punitive taxes thanks to massive amounts of money and an impressive array of lobbyists. We all know the lengths to which tobacco companies have gone in order to to keep selling their product while convincing you that they care about your health, but when do you see advertisements for porno except within the material itself, or on certain late-night commercials? The sex industry is the true success story of the American economy, yet few seem willing to discuss it. These companies depend on being low-key - skating under mainstream radar so that Mr. and Mrs. Middle America can pretend things like scat-munching don't exist. Never mind that Mr. Middle America dusts off his old copies of Shaved Orientals after mommy has gone to sleep. Or that Mrs. Middle America, who's been getting a little bored around the house lately, has taken to checking out some of the swinger web sites. Seriously, if some guy sees fit to blow 30% or more of his disposable income on Virtual Sex DVDs and the like, why should he be allowed to coast by while your garden variety alcoholic pisses over a dollar a six-pack down the drain to Uncle Sam?

As Eric Schlosser pointed out (in what used to be a free article), much of porn's profits are being earned by long-distance phone companies (Americans spent between $750 million and $1 billion on phone sex in 1996), cable outfits, and hotel chains ($175 million on pay-per-view porn, also in '96). Surely no one would argue that the telecom lobby is anything but formidable, yet does AT&T really want the messy details of their convoluted offshore phone sex program made public? Does Hyatt blanch at the thought of losing their Promise Keeper contingent thanks to the open-airing of their porno profits? Maybe, but my bet is that any large corporation trying to maintain its wholesome family image might balk at a magazine spread juxtaposing their logo with Sylvia Saint in a three-way.

The "adult entertainment industry" made more than $8 billion in 1996. More than mainstream Hollywood or the music industry. Rather than try to act like this is an embarrassing aspect of a country that goes to Defcon 1 when a breast is bared on network TV and won't let radio personalities say "fuck," the government should milk this baby for all its worth.

Granted, there are already excise taxes for this sort of thing, which is why I propose an "excess tax," which would be a somewhat harsher version of the former. Take advantage of this irrational national mindset and stick it to those smut merchants, who in turn can get the money by passing the cost on to consumers. 500% forced government mark-up for Homemade Hot Shots? All the publisher needs to do is tack a few bucks on to the cost of advertising and he's still ahead. A full-page spread (no pun intended) for advertising in Hustler costs $15,000, and a cursory glance at any of these publications shows you that easily 2/3 of page space is taken up with ads of this variety. Do the math. Government coffers are filled, the deficit is reduced, and Bush can counter ciriticism of the taxes by claiming he's making the filth peddlers give something back to society for once.

Is anybody going to complain? And before you answer that, think about how many petitions submitted from sundry adult video stores will have to be discounted due to the prevalence of "John Smiths." No senator or congressperson who values their career over political suicide will dare speak out against the taxes. The producers and distributors will complain, but there won't be much sympathy to ba had, and Eugene and Rusty will have to shell out a little more for their weekly fix. Everybody wins.

And it'd be a hell of a lot easier than legalizing/taxing drugs.

So that's what he meant by "long pig"

Guess the Canadian authorities aren't big horror fans. Anyone with at least a passing knowledge of Motel Hell or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre could've seen this coming:

VICTORIA, Canada (AFP) - Authorities in the western province of British Columbia warned that pork from a farm owned by accused serial killer Robert Pickton may be contaminated with human remains.

British Columbia Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall called on "anyone who may still possess frozen pork meat products from the Port Coquitlam farm of Robert Pickton, to return those products to police."

Kendall said federal police approached the provincial Centre for Disease Control "to inquire about potential health risks for individuals who may have consumed pork meat processed or slaughtered at the farm, given the conditions they discovered at the site."

While I can't conceive of anyone holding on to the meat for culinary purposes after Pickton was arrested in 2002, I can just bet some people are keeping it in the deep freeze until the trial. Then you can count the seconds before "Pickton Pork" starts showing up on eBay.

They say that Feldman, Corey owns one half of this whole town

Because no one else will give it to you, here's your semi-annual Corey Feldman update:

Corey would like for all visitors to help support John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential campaign!

Strangely, and endorsement from Feldman is probably less embarrassing these days than equivalent support from Barbra Streisand or Alec Baldwin.

Onward.

Corey is currently in filming a movie called THE BIRTHDAY. The film is also starring Erica Prior (and other names will be posted soon) It is a dark comedy/phsycological thriller and is being directed by Euginio Mira who is being hailed as the Quentin Tarentino of Spain.

I have no idea what this means. A cursory look through the usual search engines for +"Eugenio Mira" +"Quentin Tarantino" yielded a sole hit, the "F" page from a Spanish language online movie store that included Mira's sole directorial effort, Fade, and Four Rooms, which featured one Tarantino-directed segment. Still, it's entirely possible Mira is also a motor-mouthed pop culture junkie with a cartoony gore fetish. We'll have to wait and see.

Corey would like to thank everyone who participated in the Goonies 2 Petition - The turn-out was great and Corey will be bringing the petition to the studios shortly!

I'd like to thank everyone who signed the petition as well, for once I get my hands on it it will allow me to track each signatory down and bludgeon them to death with my autographed John Matuszak helmet.

There is currently a series in the works for VH1 which will unite Feldman & Corey Haim once again!

And today Echostar and Viacom announce they've settled their programming dispute. Coincidence? I think not.

Everything I know about the media I learned in the blogosphere

Just so I have this straight: any media outlet or news source that doesn't jibe with my views 100% is "biased," correct?

If so, that's a relief. This whole critical thinking deal was getting too hard.

Hi-diddly dee, the martyr's life for me

I don't think many people are shedding tears over former PLF leader Abu Abbas' death. True, he tried to wash his hands of the shooting of 69-year old, wheelchair bound Leon Klinghoffer during the Achille Lauro hijacking by referring to it as a "mistake." My favorite part of that story, if you want to call it that, was when Abbas told the Boston Globe that Klinghoffer was "inciting and provoking the other passengers. So the decision was made to kill him." Wheelchairs roll, Abu. Push the old man into a storage closet and get on with your business.

No, what caught my eye regarding all the angel/devil reminiscing coming out from the Palestinians and the Israelis was this little blurb in the BBC story about his death:

Abbas is being called a martyr by Palestinians

Oh come on. The guy had a freaking heart attack. I thought that a death had to mean something to qualify for martyrdom. Abbas died of natural causes in the custody of his enemies, and in a prison on terriritory occupied by his enemies. He didn't kick off trying to engineer a prison break, or start a revolt, or in single combat with Gen. John Abizaid...his heart simply gave out.

I hope to be a "martyr" someday too. Say, when I'm 93 years old, after passing out from a combination of two fifths of Irish whiskey and several dozen "pleasure enhancers" administered by an assortment of naughty nurses (I'm assuming The Wife will have come to her senses and left me long before).

We'll have a gay old (prime) time

Sometimes I suspect the AP headline writers are having too much of a larf:

Gay Republicans to Run Anti-Bush Ad

WASHINGTON - A group of gay Republicans who supported President Bush in 2000 will air a television ad opposing a Bush-backed Constitutional amendment that would prohibit gays from marrying.

The 30-second spot by the Log Cabin Republicans shows Vice President Dick Cheney at a debate four years ago saying, "People should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into." The ad begins Thursday in several states.

"Anti-Bush." That's good stuff.

He doesn't care, guys. Fact is, you're helping Bush by withdrawing your support more than you're hurting him. Running your commercial simply allows the man to go even further into the arms of the religious right (a feat I didn't think was scientifically possible, but I never was good at physics). Even conservative gays like Andrew Sullivan are finally figuring out that our current President doesn't give a rat's ass about them, and never will.

Listen for the speeches at this year's Republican National Convention saying "good riddance" to the LCR's defection. Much will be said of the threat to public morals and decency presented by homosexuals, right before everyone breaks for a screening of Mel Gibson's family-friendly The Passion of the Christ.

Begun this culture war has

Even with all the complaining the French do about the "Americanization" of their society by fast food outlets and U.S.-made movies, I bet they never figured our entertainment might be lethal:

CERGY, France (AFP) - A French teenager was hospitalised with several broken bones after he and three of his friends copied some risky stunts they had just watched on the US television show "Jackass".

The 17-year-old boy fell nearly four metres (13 feet) from the top of a parking garage which he and his friends had climbed in order to take photographs of each others' bare backsides, officers said. He suffered fractures to his wrists, knees and pelvis.

Earlier, the group had gone around their housing project complex in a northwest Paris suburb in a shopping cart while completely naked, imitating one of the key scenes of the "Jackass" series.

Only 13 feet and he broke that many bones? Someone should've been paying more attention to our popular American "Got Milk?" campaign while they were at it.

It doesn't get any better mes amis. The youth of France have spoken, and they want their lowest-common denominator, U.S.A.-produced television. Prepare for an onslaught of According to Jim reruns, The Simple Life 3 (Amiens), and the 24-hour hog-calling channel.

Maybe we should just build a NASCAR speedway over there and get it over with.

Science!

Actually, this was more of an excuse to use my Ka-Bar, but science was furthered. Sort of.

Those of you waiting in slobbering anticipation for the inevitable vivisection of the mystery pod I found in my backyard, wait no longer. The results are in, and...I still have no idea what the hell it is.

Click "More" if you think you're prepared to face the shocking truth.

Pictures. I got pictures.

First, the doomed object accompanied by the instrument of its destruction (click for larger image):

Next, the post-mortem photos. The interior was very similar to that of a pineapple, in both color and texture. It smelled, as best as I can describe, like wet plant. It also left a rather foul slimy residue on my knife.

Finally, a close up.

Science marches on, the mystery pod goes into the trash, and I wash my hands thoroughly. This is what passes for entertainment at my house these days.

No Peter Criss, no peace

I lost track of Kiss after the 18th farewell tour, but this story caught my eye:

NEW YORK (Billboard) -- When Kiss begins a five-date Japanese tour May 27 in Tokyo, Peter Criss may not be sitting atop his familiar stool behind the drums.

In a posting on his official Web site (http://www.petercriss.net), Criss says his contract with Kiss has expired and that he has not yet been informed what, if any, his future status with the group is.

The posting on his web site isn't there anymore, so maybe if we all close our eyes and say, "I believe in over-the-hill rock stars who still put on kitten makeup before wearily going through the motions of playing 25-year old songs," it'll reappear.

The only reason anyone goes to a Kiss concert anymore is because their mom slept with Paul Stanley in '78 and he still leaves passes for her whenever they swing through town. That, or to see how much the increasingly porcine Gene Simmons had to let out his codpiece this year.

On its lengthy recent tour with Aerosmith, Kiss performed without original guitarist Ace Frehley, who was replaced by former tour manager Tommy Thayer. A band spokesperson could not be reached for comment at deadline.

That's bad news for Criss. If no one cared about Frehley's absence, you might as well put the one-armed Def Leppard guy on the riser for all the controversy it'll cause. Hell, get Bez from Happy Mondays, or that bongo guy from Guster. Or a robot. Better yet, replace the whole damn band with Disney-brand animatronic puppets. They'd be about as mobile on stage as the actual codgers themselves, and the only road crew you'd need is a guy to push the Simmons-Bot's Spit Blood/Spit Fire buttons on the control console.

And to think I retired a full colonel in the Kiss Army.

I want my furshlugginer Daily Show

This sort of punches a hole in all that pro-satellite dish propaganda we've been hearing the last few years:

DISH Network sincerely regrets that all MTV, BET, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and VH1 programming is currently unavailable. Viacom owned CBS stations are also unavailable at this time.

These channels and CBS stations, owned by Viacom, have proposed excessive rate increases which we feel are unreasonable. Viacom is demanding rate increases nearly 4 times the rate of inflation for various cable channels, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in fees that would increase the cost of our services to you.

Well, tthhhhppht. Houston's CBS station (KHOU) is owned by Belo, so Bayou City fans of Yes, Dear and Still Standing can halt their preparations for self-immolation. As a DISH subscriber, I'm not going to shed any tears over the loss of MTV or VH1 (which seems to consist of an endless loop of I Love the 80s anyway), but Comedy Central is one of the few channels I watch with any regularity. Maybe if the companies who own the Food Channel and Lifetime Movie Network jacked up their rates and got those channels pulled, it might even things out.

This is an interesting stand-off. DirecTV has already agreed to a rate hike, so if Viacom blinks, DTV will likely be a little upset. If DISH gives in, subscribers' bills will probably go up. In the meantime, I'll be relegated to watching taped episodes of Travel Sick and Insomniac.

Or, you know, reading a book.

UPDATE (3/11/2004): The two greedy media behemoths have settled their dispute. And just in time for the planned Corey Haim/Corey Feldman series on VH1 (see above).

The Seuss is loose

The results of my poll asking what the greatest TV Christmas special of all time is are in. Actually, they were probably in a couple weeks ago, I kind of forgot about it. Anyway, the masses have spoken, and the winner is...

With a whopping 43% of the vote, The Grinch easily distanced itself from its nearest competitors, A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Star Wars Holiday Special. And I'm not even taking votes for the latter seriously.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came in a distant fourth, barely beating Frosty and The Year Without a Santa Claus. Poor show, antler-boy.

Be careful of the Blob

Having crapped out with the one gonzo gardening person I'm friends with, I can now throw this puzzler out to the vast APCB viewing audience. Namely, what the hell is this?

I found it in my back yard a week ago. It was situated in such a way to lead me believe it didn't fall from a tree (I have pecans and live oaks back there, which I'm pretty sure are incapable of producing such a...thing). I'm open to possible explanations, and will probably dissect the specimen (with pictures) in the next few days.

Unless someone can authoritatively tell me it came from outer space, or something.

UPDATE: Edited to scale down that entirely too large image.

Movie morsels

In celebration of surviving another week, here's a few upcoming movie tidbits of varying interest. First, our obligatory vampire update:

"Chuck Gordon's Daybreak Prods. and Adrian Askarieh's Prime Universe Prods. have optioned the feature film and TV rights to "Sword of Dracula," based on the comicbook series created by Jason Henderson. The series, published by Image Comics, is a contemporary revamp of the Dracula story in which competing military forces find themselves racing to excavate the great vampire himself."

Wampyr of the Lost Ark? Wait, wait...how about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Nosferatu?

I guess I'm having a problem recognizing Dracula's potential military applications. He'd probably want to be in a command position, which means little actual battlefield action. He couldn't perform in daylight actions, and anyone he killed on the other side might very well become a vampire as well, which is possibly a bad idea.

Speaking of bad ideas, here's the token unwelcome remake news for the week:

"Bryan Singer is in negotiations to develop and direct "Logan's Run" for Warner Bros. Singer is producing the project with Joel Silver. Originally a book by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, the novel takes place in a youth-obsessed future society where residents are euthanized as soon as they turn 21. The story centers on Logan, a police officer whose job it is to track down those who run from their fate until he decides to run as well and search for Sanctuary, a fabled place where older folks live. MGM adapted the book into a 1976 movie starring Michael York."

The only possible way I'll see this is if Singer takes a significant narrative left turn and populates Sanctuary with flesh-eating zombies.

Bah. I don't care if they cast Jenna Jameson as Jessica 6, no one will ever erase my pre-adolescent fantasies of Jenny Agutter.

And the following scuttlebutt will surprise just about no one:

A scooper called "Bristlehound" advised IGN FilmForce – as well as Ain't It Cool News – of an alleged troublesome development concerning Constantine, the Warner Brothers adaptation of the DC/Vertigo comic book John Constantine: Hellblazer. According to this source, Constantine creator Alan Moore has turned his back on the feature film version.

Bristlehound advised us that, upon reviewing the script and casting of Constantine, "Moore has done the unthinkable. He's washed his hands of the entire debacle. That's right – he's instructed (DC Comics) to not credit him as the creator of the character. And putting his money where his mouth is, he has instructed that the royalties that he was splitting with his co-creators goes exclusively to the artists (Rick Veitch and Stephen Bissette).

Call it the cherry on top of the banana split of ominous news coming out about this project. Warners is rolling the dice that most moviegoers won't be familiar enough with the character to care about the differences.

I have a lot of respect for Moore, but this is the same guy who was only too happy to take money for the grotesquely awful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even though he distanced himself from that film as well.

Of more concern is this part:

"Moore is apparently so upset at the desecration done to Constantine by producer Lauren Shuler Donner that he is stating that he will never support a film project based on his work again."

This should put those Watchmen rumors to rest for a while.

I saved the worst for last:

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's favourite monster Godzilla will bid farewell to the big screen in December with the release of "Final Wars" marking the 50th anniversary of the giant lizard's movie debut, its distributor said.

In the latest movie, Godzilla will be pitted against more than 10 popular monsters that appeared in past episodes. The film is scheduled for release in Japan on December 11, Toho Co. Ltd. said.

Damn it, this is dirty pool. The last few movies in the Godzilla universe (especially Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack) - as well as Daei's latest Gamera series - really raised the bar for kaiju. I'm not sure I understand the thinking behind Toho pulling their most popular property.

The upcoming movie, the 28th in the series which started in 1954, "will compile the fruits of 50 years' work and put an end to the series," Toho marketing official Yukihiko Mochida said.

The monsters will go on the rampage in New York, Paris, Shanghai and Sydney in the star-studded Final Wars, which will also feature the new, strongest-ever "Monster X," he said.

Well, they're not technically all part of the same series, but we'll ignore that for now. I can't be the only one looking forward to seeing Paris suffering a little monster stompage. And does this mean we're sufficiently removed from 9-11 to see NYC wiped out? I hope so.

So is Toho really putting the hammer down, or are they jerking us again?

But Toho does not rule out the possibility of Godzilla's resurrection in the future.

"Since Godzilla is our eternal asset, it may come back when a totally new generation of directors emerge or a brand-new film-making method is found to create a whole new world," Mochida said.

Is anyone else a little weirded out by the use of the phrase, "eternal asset?"

And what the hell are they talking about? Has no one in Japan seen the Lord of the Rings movies? There's your "whole new world." CGI will continue to make improvements, but it isn't as if ILM or WETA is suddenly going to perfect holodeck technology in the next twenty years so the audience will literally be "in" the movie.

Of course you know what this means: we need the same catalyst that caused Toho to jump back in to making G-films in the late 1990s...we need Sony to make another Godzilla movie.

Oh shut up. You'll thank me for it later.

Working the Kinks into the system

The New York Times broke this story last November, but now that our local rag is finally getting around to running it, I can finally throw my support behind the newest candidate for governor of Texas:

Kinky Friedman, best-selling author, country music singer, humorist, friend of stray dogs and salsa merchant, is running for governor of Texas in 2006 as an independent. Friedman is the man behind the song "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" and author of the book "Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned."

For all of those wondering why the front man for the country music group 'The Texas Jewboys' wants to run the Lone Star State, Kinky will put down his cigar and say from under his 10-gallon hat: "Why the hell not?"

Given the prospects of another disastrous term by the current lapdog in the governor's mansion, I don't see how Friedman could do any worse. He's a former Peace Corps volunteer, accomplished musician, bestselling author, and America's most famous Jewish cowboy. He's friend to Democrats (Bill Clinton), Republicans (George W. Bush), and sleazy entertainment types (Willie Nelson, Billy Bob Thornton) alike. As for his platform, let's take a look at this from his official site:

Friedman, although still formulating his full platform, has already promised to legalize casino gambling, outlaw the declawing of cats, and abolish political correctness ("it's just not the Texas way"). Quips Kinky, "The other guy has the experience. That's why I'm running." Though he jokes that his first order of business if elected will be to "demand a recount," there is no mistaking his seriousness in the matter. Governor Perry seems to agree, as his office has responded rather petulantly to Kinky's early assertions that "today's politician's do not inspire people."

I'll bet he was petulant. Those former Texas A&M yell leaders aren't reknowned for their senses of humor, after all.

But where does Kinky stand on the crucial issue of family values?

Solo, but not alone. Kinky may be a bachelor, but, as he always says, he is, "married to the state of Texas."

I'm not even sure if that's legal under the proposed Marriage Amendment, but it works for me.

And as an added bonus for Simpsons fans, "Vote Kinky" kind of sounds like "Vote Quimby."

AOL POS PSA

Trickling in with the usual assortment of credit card offers, pleas for money from schools to which I'm still paying tuition, and dead rodents in the mail over the past few months have been several AOL 9.0 CDs. It's the version that boldly proclaims, "Now! E-Mail Virus Protection Included!" One assumes the thing self-destructs when you remove it from its case.

At this point, I have more than enough spare discs to complete my "Bad Alien" costume from I Come In Peace (filmed right here in Houston, TX), and was on my way to heave the latest offering in the garbage when I saw the "1045 Hours Free!"emblazoned across the front. Wow, I thought, that's quite a few hours. I remember the late '90s when AOL gave out a miserly 500 hours per disc - barely enough time to learn how to search Usenet for "warez." Then I noticed that printed underneath this generous offer, in slightly smaller point size, were the words, "for 45 days."

1045 hours in 45 days. I've never been that good at math, but if I'm not mistaken, 1045 hours over a month and a half comes out to over 23 hours a day. AOL seem to be aggressively pursuing that shut-in/under house arrest/socially retarded market.

Actually, given their latest commercials, that sounds about right.

Catharsis

For those of you who feel that life might be getting the best of you today, click here.

Now, don't you feel better?

In Birmingham they love the governor

But not in Atlanta, where Sonny Perdue's state flag referendum is causing a stir:

ATLANTA - Southern heritage groups called for an economic boycott of Atlanta on Wednesday, a day after Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved a state flag without the divisive Confederate rebel "X."

Sellers of generic cigarettes and Moon Pies were reported to be adopting a siege mentality at news of a proposed Southern heritage boycott. Smoke shop operators are already lamenting their unsold cartons of GPCs.

About 50 people rallied outside the Capitol, saying tepid turnout for the flag referendum meant people thought it was phony. The ballot didn't allow voters to choose the 1956 version dominated by the Confederate cross of stars.

Tepid turnout for every Presidential election in the last twenty years hasn't invalidated the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations. Though I imagine the protestors aren't too keen on visiting that argument now that their guy's in the White House.

"Large segments of the Georgia General Assembly have more regard for the Yankee dollars... than they do for the wishes of their constituents," said Ray McBerry of the Georgia League of the South. "We encourage Southerners to cease doing business within the city-state of Atlanta."

"Yankee dollars?" Even in Texas I don't hear that kind of crap very much. I need to hang out at the discount tobacconist's more often, I guess.

As for that goddamned carpetbagging General Assembly going against the wishes of the voters:

Voters overwhelmingly chose to keep the red, white and blue banner adopted last year by the Legislature. About three of every four voters chose that flag over a blue flag selected in 2001 to replace the 1956 banner that was dominated by the Confederate battle emblem.

And what about that fourth voter?

Let's go over this one more time: You lost. You're lucky the Georgia state flag doesn't depict the city of Atlanta burning to the ground while a cackling William Tecumseh Sherman drives your turncoat army into the hills.

You want to dress up like the 5th Tennessee and go out on manuevers with a bunch of buddies, knock yourselves out. As a history buff, I have a grudging respect for that kind of love for the source material. But guys like those pictured above, who continue to adhere to a "South will rise again" mentality, are merely exposing their latent persecution complex. Their ancestors were beaten in a war 140 years ago and they've been whining ever since.

Hell, they should be grateful they get to vote at all.

Turn that clown upside down

Bravely taking up arms in the war against obesity, McDonald's has announced it's saying goodbye to "Supersize":

The hamburger giant has started phasing out its trademark Supersize fries and drinks in its U.S. restaurants as part of an effort to simplify its menu and give customers choices that support a balanced lifestyle, a company spokesman said Tuesday.

By the end of 2004, super size will no longer be available at the nation's 13,000-plus McDonald's outlets except in certain promotions, McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker said.

The move comes as the world's largest restaurant company, and fast-food chains in general, are under growing public pressure to give consumers healthier food options in a nation that has suddenly become aware of its bulging waistline and the health dangers that come with it.

Strange move for a company that's won, to date, every obesity lawsuit filed against it. If you consider that "Supersizing" a meal costs 39 cents extra, while ordering more fries or a larger size drink will jack the price up about $1.50, it makes a little more sense. There's your "healthier food option."

Riker said the changes started going into effect in January.

"This core menu, which has been under development since 2002, simplifies our menu and restaurant operations and provides a balance of choices for our customers," he said. "A component of this overall simplification, menu and balanced lifestyle strategy is the ongoing phase-out of the Supersize fry and the Supersize drink options."

Still carrying the Big Mac (600 calories/33 grams of fat)? The double quarter-pounder with cheese (770/47g)? How about the Sausage McGriddle with Egg (550/33g)? All certainly fit in with my conception of a "balanced lifestyle strategy."

I understand people complaing about busybodies taking away our god-given American right to eat almost half a pound of fries in one sitting, but what McDonald's serves can't even properly be termed "food." If you must gorge, find someplace serving all-you-can-eat crab legs or limitless trips to the salad bar, not the pressed beef squeezings McD's offers.

An award-winning documentary called "Super Size Me" has heaped on more unwanted publicity for McDonald's. The documentary, which chronicles the deterioration of filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's health during a monthlong experiment eating nothing but McDonald's food, won a directing prize at the Sundance Film Festival and is set for wide release this spring.

Riker said the phasing out of super-sizing has "nothing to do with that (film) whatsoever."

Just as the post-production firing of the McDonald's PR guy Spurlock interviewed had nothing whatsoever to do with it, either.

The company earlier issued a statement calling the documentary "a super-sized distortion of the quality, choice and variety available at McDonald's." It says the film is not about McDonald's but about Spurlock's decision to act irresponsibly by eating 5,000 calories a day -- "a gimmick to make a film."

I saw Super Size Me at Sundance. Spurlock had to sample everything on McDonalds' quality menu at least once, so the results aren't based on a month's worth of Big N' Tasty burgers.

The people getting on Spurlock's case are missing two key points. First, he went in to the "experiment" fully expecting adverse health effects. Everyone from his doctor to his vegan girlfriend to the nutritionists he interviewed warned him as much. Second, a good part of Super Size Me is devoted to the marketing McDonald's does to children. Adults loading up on that crap is fine and dandy, but Ronald and his cronies like nothing better than to sink their claws into consumers at a young age. McDonald's spends over a billion dollars each year on marketing their menu across the globe, and it distributes more toys a year than Toys R' Us. It's nice to know all the children who'll end up developing diabetes in their lifetime (one-third of those born in the year 2000) will have something to play with.

Fast food is only one of the reasons for America's epidemic of obesity, and McDonald's isn't the only culprit. It would be nice to see people rejecting the lure of the scary clown, but fast food is cheap, easy, and more or less ubiquitous (I really want to check out the joint in Montevideo). Meanwhile, empty gestures like removing the Supersize option when one can still freely order a 42 oz. Coke, a 20-piece McNuggets (840 calories), and a bucket of fries aren't going to do anything to stem the rising tide of adipose tissue.

Worst. Casting rumor. Ever.

Oh, please:

I was listening to a local radio broadcast from Ohio (Bob and Tom Show) while they began talking about George Clooney, Clooney is making the new A-TEAM movie and starring as Hannibal Smith. The rumor going around is that Clooney is a big fan of Mike Tyson and feels bad about Tyson's money problems, he has asked Tyson to take the roll of B.A. Barraccus in the movie. Tyson has responded that he would be interested in the role.

It's "Baracus," jackass.

And I'll bet Tyson's interested in the role. If his money woes are anywhere close to what's rumored, he'd probably be interested in playing "Dopey" in the remake of Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.

The Clooney A-Team rumor is one of those, like Schwarzenegger making I Am Legend, that have been floating around for years. But Tyson as B.A. Baracus is just stupid. You guys realize that Mr. T is still alive, right? And from recent looks at him, I think he could handle the role of B.A. quite capably.

I feel sorry for the buffoon that disrespects T. Yes, I sympathize with the ignoramus, indeed.

"In our pictures, we don't use profanity, and our nudity is only topless."

I don't remember when I signed up for the Andy Sidaris mailing list, much like I can't really recall when I found his web page (given the apparent level of HTML coding skill involved, it could've been anywhere from 1996 on). News coming out of the Sidaris camp is usually pretty slim, and the last few notices have been nothing but reminders that Hard Ticket to Hawaii is airing on TV in the near future.

There's a link to Sidaris over there on the right. At first, I kept it up as a joke, but lately I've developed a grudging respect for the man, who went from directing Olympics coverage and Monday Night Football for ABC to toiling (if making movies filled with ex-Playmates can properly be termed such) away in relative B-movie obscurity while guys like Roger Corman and Russ Meyer have become exploitation legends.

I first stumbled upon the works of the distinguished auteur back in the 1980s, probably during a bout of inebriated late night channel surfing. I'm reasonably sure the first movie I came across was 1987's Hard Ticket to Hawaii, in which former Playmates Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, agents of the mysterious...Agency, intercept a shipment of diamonds intended for a Hawaiian drug lord. Being a teenager, I was especially susceptible to Sidaris' beguiling mixture of breasts, guns, explosions, and utterly ridiculous plot and dialogue. It was like an R-rated T.J. Hooker. I spoke to no one of my shameful experience the next morning, though the director's name stuck in my head. Certainly this was a talent worth watching.

Sidaris followed me through college (the years I had cable TV, that is). Films like Picasso Trigger and Savage Beach were unavoidable if you were ever subscribed to the preimum packages. I, in turn, followed him through the early days - when Roberta Vasquez replaced Carlton as Speir's partner - through the directorial efforts of son Christian Drew Sidaris (the adventures of "Chris Cannon"), and on to the rise of Julie Strain and Shae Marks through the ranks of L.E.T.H.A.L. (Legion to Ensure Total Harmony and Law). I can tell you that a different Abilene brother was featured up until Savage Beach, when Shane became the Abilene of choice. I can also tell you Sidaris' first movie (Malibu Express) didn't feature agents Donna and Taryn, but did have the first RV vs. helicopter battle in movie history.

Plot rarely gets in the way of Sidaris' movies. Sure, there's usually something in there about Confederate gold, or giant rubber snakes, or bad guys played by Erik Estrada, but one can always rest easy knowing it'll only be a few more minutes until the next hot tub scene. He's a man who knows his limitations.

Big, bodacious limitations.

To my knowledge, none of Sidaris' 12 films (released through his companies, Malibu Bay and Skyhawks Films) have ever seen the inside of a theater, which is too bad (and makes me wonder if the Alamo might be up for a career retrospective). His audience is the same shameful demographic I once occupied: pathetic, possibly intoxicated, single guys with nothing better to do at 1:30 in the morning but pass out in front of the TV (and too cheap to pay for actual porn). There must be a lot of us, because the DVD boxed set of Andy's first six movies is for sale on his web site. And for the low, low price of *snicker* $69.95.

All mocking aside, Sidaris has become successful enough through the "bullets, bombs, and babes" genre to more or less retire, content to hang back and reap the profits from his memoirs. I figure I'll stay on the mailing list, if only to give Andy's wife Arlene someone to send her "SAVAGE BEACH ON CINEMAX AGAIN" messages. And maybe Julie Strain will notice my address on there and tell me how she's always wanted to meet me.

Lone Star State of mind

As if anyone needed reminding, today is Texas Independence Day. Nor has some good links for your perusal. I'd recommend everyone wash down their reading with a fine brew from Shiner, St. Arnold's (I'm partial to the Amber), Great Grains, or Brenham Brewery? I suppose I should include Lone Star and Pearl, even though they're both owned by Pabst.

You could also commemorate this auspicious date by checking out some great Texas music. My personal faves include:

Slobberbone (currently on a break, but lead singer Brent Best is playing some solo gigs)
The Flatlanders
Bob Schneider
Steve Earle
The Flametrick Subs
James McMurtry
The Gourds
Alejandro Escovedo
The Damnations
John Dee Graham
The Meat Purveyors
Junior Brown
Mr. Plow

You can get a much more comprehensive list of bands and tour dates over at TexasGigs, run by the lovely and talented Cindy Chaffin.

You'll have to wait until April 9 to see the latest movie version of The Alamo (starring Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, and several friends as extras). If you like fantasy, you can always check out the Duke's version.

Total Koalho

Sorry. Weak '80s music reference.

Everyone knows (or should know) the possibly deleterious effects of introducing an animal species into another habitat. So what do you do when the species in question is just too damned adorable to exterminate?

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) -- Cute, cuddly and fast breeding, thousands of koalas are eating themselves out of a home on an Australian island. But authorities are refusing to heed conservationists' pleas to reduce the population, fearing a backlash from tourists and animal rights activists.

South Australia state Environment Minister John Hill said tourism would drop dramatically if koalas were killed on Kangaroo Island.

I'm surprised tourism hasn't already suffered, what with people going out to someplace called "Kangaroo Island" only to find it full of koalas. I'd sure as hell want my money back, or at least a free ticket to Shark Bay.

Matt Turner, scientific officer for the state's Nature Conservation Society, said state authorities need to thin the koala population to preserve the ecosystem of the island, 45 miles off the coast of South Australia state. Koalas were first introduced to the island 100 years ago.

"Some areas of the island, the trees are so heavily defoliated that trees are actually dying," he told The Associated Press. "They are having a devastating effect on the island."

Pity we didn't know the ravenous little buggers' stunning destructive powers during the war in Vietnam. Nixon and McNamara could've flushed the VC out using crack koala deforestation units without exposing our troops to Agent Orange. That's the military for you, always relying on science.

Turner believes the population should be reduced to a small population of koalas that can be kept in an enclosed area for tourists to see.

"But there is no political will," he added. "When you start talking about culling native wildlife, particularly cute and cuddly ones, there is a community backlash and that is what basically has forced the government into ... a position where they cannot do any culling."

Perhaps if people were forced to live with one of the spiteful little beasts, who have a predilection for scratching and urinating on those handling them, they'd be more open to the idea. I'm curious to hear what Goldie, our resident Adelaidean, has to say about this compelling issue.

Calls for population control like this always raise hackles. There was talk of hiring people to shoot pigeons nesting in Texas A&M's Kyle Field when I was younger, and you'd have thought they'd suggested drowning kittens instead of shooting a bunch of flying disease bags. Of course, it's not the koalas fault they were plopped on the island. Call it a do-over.

I think I know the guy for the job, too. I went to Louisiana many years ago to attend the wedding of a friend of the girl I was dating at the time (everybody got that?). It was a small town, but nearly everyone living there was a person of some importance at the nearby DuPont plant and lived in a pretty impressive plantation-style house. The father of the bride had what is probably the only big game trophy room I've ever been in. He'd shot it all...lions, Cape buffalo, wolves, a giraffe(!). It reminded me of the line in Unforgiven where Bill Munny remarks that he'd probably killed everything that's walked or crawled.

The guy showed the room to me during a lull in his daughter's reception, and after expressing what I felt was the requisite amount of awe at the large carcasses, I went on to examine some of the smaller ones. Most were birds, but I'm sure there was a woverine and a badger or two. One in particular caught my eye, however. It was an otter.

I leaned in closer to examine it, not really believing someone could actually bring themself to shoot one. I asked the man, "Is this really an otter?" "Sure is," he replied, with a perfect mixture of inebriation and smugness. "Wow," I continued, "Did you have to stalk it? Or did it just run up to you and sniff your rifle?"

My date hustled me out with some speed, so I didn't get any contact information. But I figure any guy who can blow Tarka away probably has the mental flexibility required to shoot a few hundred koalas.

Lord of the dance

I find it unendingly hilarious that the same people who feel the need to bitch about the Oscars for their hype and lack of cinematic merit never fail to watch the damn ceremony (no names mentioned, you know who you are). If I hated something as much as these guys allegedly do, I'd certainly find a better way to spend my Sunday evening.

Personally, I love watching the Oscars. Admittedly, it's for the same reason I like watching crap like C.O.P.S. and Jackass: because it's a gloriously verité car wreck. You start with Joan Rivers and spawn asking the worst questions imaginable, and get rewarded by moments like Ben Kinglsey's priceless look into the camera when his response to the dessicated hag's question flew right over her head. It snowballs downhill from there: tons of cleavage, ill-thought out political commentary, and false sincerity from many of the winners all contribute to the viewing experience, particularly if you've got a drink or four in your hand.

I've watched the Academy Awards ever since I can remember, and last night was no exception. What follows are some of my random observations, tempered by several glasses of Two Buck Chuck.

+ The tributes to Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn were nice to see, though ABC could easily have padded out the broadcast to 4 hours with similar homages to Gregory Peck and, perhaps the most deserving of the lot, Jack Elam.

+ While we're on the subject of time, I'm getting bored with all the bitching about the length of the Oscar ceremony. Yes, it was 3:45 this time around (thanks in large part to the aforementioned tributes). Add the red carpet stuff and you're looking at close to 6 hours, which still doesn't equal half what we're subjected to every Super Bowl Sunday. At least movie fans don't have to put up with something like Media Week.

+ The decision to lump all the Best Song nominee performances together was great for anyone suffering irritable bowel syndrome. For the rest of us, it brought the show to a screeching halt.

+ I'm beginning to wonder if Peter Jackson got the win just so everyone could get a good look at how rumpled he actually was. Would it really have been so bad if he accepted the Best Director awars in his trademark ripped cargo shorts and a black t-shirt?

+ Lets get the hand-wringing for Lost In Translation out of the way right now. Bill Murray played Bill Murray...a more subdued Bill Murray, fine, but he was much more nuanced in Rushmore. If you're going to play yourself and win the Oscar, your name has to be Jack Nicholson. I know Murray was the sentimental favorite, but no one could come close to Sean Penn this year.

I've also grown more and more annoyed with Sofia Coppola. Her award-winning screenplay, while intermittently amusing, still came across like the work of someone who sat in a bar and cribbed other people's conversations. And there wasn't even that much dialogue to begin with, considering the number of minutes that ticked away as we lingered on Scarlett Johansson's scantily clad ass perched in a window sill. At the Golden Globes, she neglected Johannson in her acceptance speech after specifically mentioning Bill Murray, when it was the former's performance that centered the movie. Finally, it takes a lot of gall for the daughter of a revered, 3-time Oscar winning director (who deserves censure anyway for casting her in Godfather III) to act annoyed with all the attendant Academy Award hooplah. Without Daddy, she doesn't get a foot in the door and neither LiT nor The Virgin Suicides get made, period. Show a little fucking gratitude.

+ I enjoyed Return of the King, but - sue me - I still think Fellowship is the best of the three. It hews closer to the source material, introduces and skillfully develops the characters, and draws us (or me, at least) in much more capably than the other two. The rest of the movies are fine films in their own right, but spent more time lost in the humongous battle scenes than I really cared to see. Ultimately not a big deal, since this was an award for a 10-hour epic, not RotK itself.

+ On that note: no, it isn't "right" that PJ and company were given the Oscar for three movies and not a pic that, arguably, wasn't the best of those nominated. It's also not "right" that Paul Newman gets a lifetime achievement award for The Color of Money after getting passed over for Hud or The Hustler, or that Al Pacino wins for Scent of a Woman instead of Dog Day Afternoon, Godfather II, or Serpico. Deal with it.

+ Laugh of the day came from someone I read earlier (can't remember where exactly, may have been the Film Threat forums) saying The Passion of the Christ would also sweep next year. While the year in movies is still young, I hereby promise to buy one of those product tie-in crucifiction nails if TPotC gets anything bigger than Best Editing.

+ I'm with Tommy, for all the fretting the Oscar hosts say they go through about taking the gig, they've got the easiest job in showbiz. 15 minutes of shtick, a few more intros, and it's back to the green room for hookers and blow the rest of the night.

+ I went 17 for 24 on my picks, which put me in a solid 3rd in my annual contest. I didn't count on a LotR sweep, and I made a few left field selections to try and shake up the fact that everyone's top 6 looked more or less identical. It would appear Clint Eastwood's has won his last Best Director award, at any rate.