A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

"No time to debate this in committee!"

Remember arguments?

The Wife and I are watching Across the Universe, last night - "meh" film, basically Hair with a Lennon/McCartney soundtrack, or a really long episode of American Dreams - and got into a discussion about our favorite Beatles albums. Hers is Rubber Soul, meanwhile I hemmed and hawed on mine.

There's one decent disc in The White Album, I offered. But I could find merit in everything from Meet the Beatles to Abbey Road. In fact, I said, the second half of the latter album, which features "Here Comes the Sun" and that medley including "Mean Mr. Mustard," "Golden Slumbers," and "Carry That Weight," is one of my favorite album sides of all time.

The Wife: "What else is on the album?"
Pete:"...Uh, 'Come Together'...'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'...I don't think 'Get Back' was on it, was it?"
TW: "What album is 'Paperback Writer' on?"
Pete: "Uh, maybe A Hard Day's Night?"
TW: "No it wasn't."

And so on. Now, in the old days - say for example my '80s college years - a vigorous debate would've ensued, culminating with a 3 AM trek to our Beatlemaniac friend Mike's dorm room to rouse him from his slumber and settle things once and for all by making him produce the album in question. Last night, as is mostly the case these days, I simply turned on the computer and looked online; Wikipedia, to be specific. We learned two things: that "Get Back" was on Let It Be, and "Paperback Writer" was never released on an original album, though it was featured on several compilations.

I realize that debating such easily determined questions is pretty much a waste of time when the answers to all life's questions can be found on the internets, but it used to be kind of fun. To name two other examples:

1. We had a game during college called, creatively enough, The Movie Game. This was pre-Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, so the rules involved giving someone the name of two actors and having them find the shortest distance movie-wise between them (Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. to Tura Satana, for example). Names would be proffered at breakfast, and solutions discussed at dinner. Needless to say, the arrival of the IMDB rendered that game about as entertaining as cheating on the New York Times crossword puzzle.

2. I spent three weeks suffering the insults of a contingent of UT theater folk who refused to acknowledge the existence of a non-Richard Harris version of Camelot (that would be the official Broadway recording, with Richard Burton as Arthur and Julie Andrews as Guinevere). I had to endure their effete mudslinging for almost an entire month before I could return home to secure my parents' copy of the album. Even then, I had to play them Roddy McDowell singing "The Seven Deadly Virtues" to convince them it wasn't an elaborate sham.

I guess my point is that arguing used to be more fun when not everything could be resolved. Or maybe we're just more efficient now, though I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Now all The Wife and I really argue about is money, and unlike the Movie Game, I never win.

Free moustache rides

Apropos of nothing, here's me and the deadCenter folks cultivating our mouth gardens at Maggie Mae's in Austin earlier this month:

Blow it out your ass, Keith Hernandez.

Life is just a fantasy

Can you live this fantasy life?

I've played fantasy sports for a little over 10 years. No great stretch, mind you, but I've tried to make up for my relatively brief tenure by participating in as many sports as possible (and doing barely well enough to justify the expense to The Wife). From NFL and MLB to PGA and World Cup soccer, I've tried just about all of them. Whether it's because I'm easily distracted or due to some pathological need to gamble I leave as an exercise to the reader.

For example, right now I'm in Peenman's Bracket Challenge on CBS SportsLine (thanks a lot, Georgetown and Pittsburgh), a baseball league (more on that later), the Hollywood Stock Exchange (my handle is "pete_vh"), and I've been screwing around some with Fantasy Congress.

Like I said, I've generally done well enough at this that I can still play (mostly) guilt-free. I've never won any of them outright, but have mostly my money back. Mostly.

Except for those goddamned NCAA brackets.

The technology available today on places like ESPN and Yahoo makes me briefly nostalgic for my first fantasy football league, when our commissioner still got stats from the Chronicle sports page and faxed us all our results on Tuesday morning. Before faxes, I guess they phoned everybody (and before that, I imagine you could get the rushing yards for your favorite Racine Cardinals RB via telegraph). Don't get me wrong, career/projected stats at your fingertips and up-to-the-second injury reports are great, but I'm still not convinced leveling the playing field so much that guys like me who - quite honestly - don't follow the games all that closely is a good thing. Unless I win this year, in which case it's a great idea.

Anyway, baseball season started this week, and like the lazy idiots we are, my league is just holding its draft tonight. I'm not sure how we're going to work everything out, but most of us are pretty casual about it. Andit's a keeper league, so I've already got Brandon Webb and Jose Reyes, which helps.

Anybody else? Surely I'm not the only roto dork out there.

UPDATE: Here's my roster...

C: G. Soto, CHC
SS: J. Reyes, NYM
1B: N. Swisher, CHW
2B: C. Utley, PHI
3B: R. Zimmerman, WAS
OF: A. Rios, TOR
OF: C. Hart, MIL
OF: J. Francoeur, ATL
DH: J. Hamilton, TEX
SP: B. Webb, ARI
SP: J. Verlander, DET
SP: J. Vasquez, CHW
SP: J. Maine, NYM
SP: A. Pettite, NYY...I know, I know
RP: B. Jenks, CHW

Wow, that's a lot of Mets.

"Life's sweetest reward..."

There's a nostalgia post on MetaFilter about The Love Boat, a show I've been unable to purge from my memory banks, in spite of decades spent murdering brain cells to achieve that very result:

If you were a North American kid (well, a kid stuck at home, younger than driving age) in the late 70s/early 80s, your Saturday nights were likely spent in front of the television watching The Love Boat. The show subsequently gained worldwide popularity. Did you know that the Pacific Princess is still ferrying the lovelorn across the blue abyss, and that she has a bridgecam? Did you know there were Love Boat action figures? For your nostalgic pleasure: complete episode guide, complete guest star list, theme song video (variations 1, 2, 3), lyrics and chords, and song facts.

Hey, I was a North American kid stuck at home in the late 70s/early 80s. This post is relevant to my interests.

Here's how Saturday nights went down at our house: Love Boat at 8, Fantasy Island at 9 (my ineptness with the opposite sex can, in part, be traced to the diabolical influence of Aaron Spelling). I'd try to stay awake through the news at 10 so I could watch Saturday Night Live, though I usually started crapping out around 11:45, when the second musical number aired. About half of the time I'd get my second wind in time to watch Monty Python on KUHF at midnight with Dad, but rare was the day I could last to the end of Doctor Who, which started at 12:30.

It isn't like we had a lot of options in 1978, what with a whopping four channels, and yet the subsequent 30 years haven't done a lot to cushion the memory of how bad TV was back then. What's worse, I just spent an inadvertant five minutes watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians and was forced once again to come to terms with the fact that we've gotten a hell of a lot dumber since.

For a while I only retained vague memories of the show itself, and I didn't watch it much after 1982, (my change in Saturday night activities not so strangely coinciding with the onset of my teen years), robbing me of the pleasure of seeing Julie's sister Judy McCoy and the sublime Ted McGinley as "Ace," the ship's photographer. I do remember how great it was that everyone on a cruise ship became your friend for a weekend, and that Bernie Kopell set the improper doctor-patient relationship bar so high even George Clooney couldn't clear it

And then I went to college. There's a huge gap in my TV viewing history for the years 1987-1990, when I didn't own a TV, but as freshmen a group of us regularly fled the confines of UT's Jester dormitory and wandered across I-35 to our friend Kyle's place so we could smoke harmless tobacco and watch shitty TV, including late night Love Boat reruns And if you haven't checked the show out since the advent of AIDS, you really should. Even in 1988, we callow youths were amazed to (re)discover that absolutely everyone on something called a "Love Boat" was making the sign of the two-humped whale.

Every show was the same: Act I introduced "guest stars" like Jamie Farr and Barbi Benton, establishing each of their particular dilemmas. The next two acts portrayed the characters dealing with their own brand of heartache, as well as the burgeoning love they found with their fellow lizard-skinned/lesiure suit-wearing passengers. After the final commercial break came the denouement, invariably leading off with the guest stars (and cast members; that Lauren Tewes got around) leaving the cabin of whomever it was they happened to hook up with at the last evening's formal dance. When you consider that the captain, purser, and cruise director were likely boning a different stranger every week (and Doc Bricker was probably slipping roofies to three times that number), it's hard not to see the Pacific Princess as a potential plague boat.

Of course, our reaction was not: "What a curious juxtaposition between latter-era sexual revolution mores and those foisted upon us by the current chilly sexual climate" but rather the plaintive lament that we were all stuck going to college with a bunch of women who'd been taught that one-night stands were potentially deadly and to be avoided at all costs. Not the kind of females likely to listen to a skeevy ship's bartender telling them to "go for it."

More's the pity.

"You know how hard is it for me/To shake the disease"

Last month both The Wife and She Who Shall Not Be Named fell victim to illness. I somehow managed to escape unscathed, which - now that I've written that out - means I'll be getting hit with a robust case of malaria any day now.

The Wife had a fairly virulent strain of stomach flu, and outside of requiring a few extra trips to the store for fluids and NyQuil it didn't disrupt things too much. Then SWSNBN woke up one day with a fever and a nasty looking rash on her face and chest. Being internet savvy parents, we initially thought it was chicken pox, which was really great news for yours truly, as I've never actually had that particular affliction and wasn't looking forward to getting my zoster on.

A trip to the pediatrician, however, revealed it was not chicken pox at all, but something called "fifth disease:"

Fifth disease has been called the "slapped cheek" disease because it causes a red rash on the face that looks like a slap mark. A lacy red rash may also appear on the child's torso and limbs. Fifth disease doesn't always make a child feel ill, but it can feel like a cold early on, before the rash shows up.

The cryptic name is a holdover from medical lingo a century ago, when a French physician assigned numbers to the common childhood diseases characterized by rashes. For example, measles was "first disease," scarlet fever was "second disease," and so on.

The Wife mentioned SWSNBN's ailment to her own GP when she visited him the other day, and he said that "slapped cheek" was running rampant in Houston last month. I wish I'd been there, because a malady that resembled physical abuse could be a great boon to parents, and I was really hoping to get some feedback on more of these suspicious sounding "diseases," like "Blackened eye disorder," "Handprint on ass syndrome," and "Mysterious series of neck bruises that look suspiciously like interlocked fingers fever."

Just trying to get a jump on SWSNBN's sass-talking period.

I hope the theme song is "Emotion Lotion"

It's gratifying to complain about something (the demise of Mr. Show with Bob and David) and receive a favorable resolution in so short a span of time.

I'd say it's "oddly" gratifying, except there's nothing odd about it. While I'm at it, I'd like to bemoan my lack of ten million dollars and chiseled six-pack abs.

Anyway, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross are returning to TV (via MetaFilter):

The "Mr. Show" duo of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross are returning to HBO with "David's Situation," a new comedy pilot starring Cross.

Odenkirk and Cross co-wrote the project, which will star Cross as himself. He leaves Hollywood to move into a suburban, gated community where he has two roommates, a right-wing conservative and a liberal hippie.

"We feel it's really strong and important to the health of America," Cross and Odenkirk wrote about the project on their Web site, BobAndDavid.com.

Odenkirk will direct the pilot, which is slated to film in May. Odenkirk and Stu Smiley will executive produce, with Dionne Kirschner serving as producer.

The premise sounds like it could go either way. Cross playing himself could easily become a chore, and casting the roommates will be key (Mr. Show regular Paul F. Tompkins would make a great conservative), but I'll most definitely check it out.

And just when I was about to cancel HBO. Fuckers.

In other news, my vaguely insensitive review of Drillbit Taylor is up.

"You see what happens, Larry?"

Oh, now this just breaks my heart:

Borders, the nation's second-largest bookseller, said Thursday it may put itself up for sale and has lined up $42.5 million in financing to help the chain continue operations.

Borders has lost market share both to online companies and to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
[...]
After postponing its scheduled fourth-quarter earnings results Wednesday, the company reported net income of $64.7 million, or $1.10 a share, compared with a loss of $73.6 million, or $1.22, during the same period last year.

Revenue fell 2 percent to $1.35 billion, from $1.37 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected profits of $1.42 per share on sales of $1.37 billion.

Quarterly results included a $7 million loss from the sale of Irish and British businesses for $13 million.

In yet another sign of pressures on retailers nationwide, Borders suspended quarterly dividends, which it will plow into operations.
[...]
Ann Arbor-based Borders said J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. have been retained as the company's financial advisers to assist the company as it explores strategic alternatives.

The company said it can give no assurances that a transaction of any kind will occur.

Revenues, shmevenues. Everybody knows this is spectral vengeance for the W. Alabama store knocking down my beloved Ale House.

All good things...

22 in a row is still pretty damn good, but not good enough to overcome the Celtics:

The Rockets lost to Celtics tonight at Toyota Center and were unable to extend their club record 22-win streak to 23 games.

That's some fine coverage. Then again, the game just ended five minutes ago.

I'm not much of a basketball fan, but it was hard not to get caught up in the Rockets' run, especially when they kept it up even after Yao went down 12 games in (and because football's over and baseball hasn't started yet).

And it would've been nice to see more than 50% of the crowd sticking around for the end of the game. Fine, they were down 20 with two minutes to go; stick it out and give the players a hand. They still have the second longest win streak in NBA history.

But if I was a gambling man (uh, pay no attention to those half dozen Final Four brackets I've filled out), I probably would've bet on the Celtics tonight. More interesting - and more ominous for the West - is Boston's performance on this road trip. They beat San Antonio last night, took the starch out of Houston's shirts tonight, and take on the Mavericks Thursday. That's potential bad news for the West's prospects in the post-season (and a consarned embarrassment to Texas pride).

One win away from a perfect NFL season, two World Series titles in three years, the best record in the NBA...when the hell did Boston get so good at everything?

"Are these the things we think of, when we think of the Irish?"

Originally posted March 17, 2004.

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 sufficiently Irish extraction she knew which ancestral hometown of hers we needed to visit) and I (descended from Protestant Ulster teetotalers) 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 narrow hewn-from-the-living-rock road and taking a short cut suggested by the Jury's 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," the better to appease some rather demanding French tourists, 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 Kennealy's, I'm going to spend the evening with a pint or two of Guinness and look through the photo albums from 1999.

Sláinte.

"He went into a state of torpor."

Two (vaguely) President-related posts in one month? It's like the History Channel up in this bitch:

A decade later, I'm still bitter about the demise of Mr. Show with Bob and David. Many of those involved with the show, especially Tom Kenny, Sarah Silverman, and Jack Black have gone on to greater success in recent years, but the selfish fan in me wishes they were still languishing in the Sunday 1 AM timeslot on HBO, entertaining me with more tales of Titannica and Ronnie Dobbs.

Of the show's two major players, David Cross has fared somewhat better than Bob Odenkirk. appearing in everything from Wonder Showzen to Alvin and the Chipmunks. He also has a fairly successful stand-up career, which should continue to be lucrative as long as the Republicans are in the White House.

Bob has had a tougher time of it, appearing in smaller TV shows and directing the grievously unfortunate Let's Go to Prison. But he's maintained a pretty high level of hilarity on the web (at Bob and David.com), mainly in the form of video subjects like "The Truth About Lincoln:"

I appreciate the fact that Bob knows exactly what sort of thing his fans look for in his comedy, and I like that he doesn't feel the need to write a 1600-word rationalization for continuing to make shitty movies.

And most of all, I want to believe.

C'est incroyable

The trailer for The Incredible Hulk, directed by Louis The Transporter Leterrier and starring Edward Norton, Tim Roth, William Hurt, and a strangely mute Liv Tyler, is up over at MTV.

I admit, I wasn't too jazzed by Ang Lee's take on the Great Green One, but subsequent viewings have softened my opinions somewhat (though not of "hulk dogs," or spending 2/3 of the movie waiting to see some mayhem). And since rebooting the franchise after less than five years is apparently the new hotness (see also The Punisher), I guess we can look forward to the Brett Ratner version - starring Chris Tucker as Bruce Banner - in 2013.

Now, far be it from me to pile on a movie sight unseen, but...uh, this really didn't look very good. I assume the Hulk vs. Abomination fight is the big climax after Banner more or less suppresses his rage for 75 minutes? The villain is - once again - another product of gamma experimentation? At least throw Zzzax in there to mix shit up.

And why does the Hulk look more like Wes Bentley than Norton?

Frankly, I'm more excited about the other trailer on that page. Yes, that one:

I've never been happier to see Corey Feldman, who promises more gore and plenty of naked C-list startlets in Lost Boys: The Tribe. and I like how the plot apparently mirrors that of Rambo, only with vampires instead of SE Asian military..

Of course, it's a pretty safe bet there won't be any Dianne Wiest or Jason Patric, who I'm sure is really busy gearing up for his Downloading Nancy publicity tour. And I'd say the odds are pretty steep against this ever seeing the inside of a theater, but as long as oily saxophone player Timmy Cappello makes a return appearance, I'll buy a copy.

Oh yeah, that's the stuff.

Almost forgot

So I'm in line for...something at the Alamo, and there's a guy and a girl in front of me from New York, The girl is holding forth, very passionately, on the subject of prescription drugs in the water supply:

Random Girl: So there was this report in the New Yorker about how there's all these drugs in the public water supply, because the filtration plants can't separate it all out.
Random Dude: Oh yeah?
RGSo just think about it: the water you drink could contain Xanax...Paxil...Prozac...[glances in my direction]
Pete: Sweeeet
RG: [baleful stare]
Pete: What brand of cigarette is that you're smoking?

To be fair, we struck up a conversation after that and they were both very nice folks. I just like that the smoker would be worried about the threat of impurifying their precious bodily fluids.

Oversize me

I swear, every other vehicle on I-10 coming back into town today was a truck carrying an "Oversize Load." As if my windshield didn't have enough cracks already.

First of all, my wireless access in Austin was shit-tay these last few days. Posting that entry on Sunday was the last time I've been online until today, so I apologize to everyone I didn't hook up with.

Sunday night was what I'll call the "Cautionary Example" evening. I played Rock Band for the first time at the FT party. My debut performance was singing Weezer's "Say It Ain't So," and according to the game, I am a "messy" vocalist. The party was held in the BSide offices up on Brazos, with such luminaries as Doug Super High Me Benson and Michael Melvin Goes to Dinner Blieden in attendance. Cacky and Melissa from deadCenter showed up about halfway through and spirited me away to the Alamo South for the Nerdcore Rising premiere and then to Maggie Mae's. The last four two hours of that evening are something of a blur, but I managed to make it back to the hotel without incident.

Rising at the crack of noon, I lurched over to the Alamo Ritz to take my place in line for Explicit Ills, sort-of starring Paul Dano and Rosario Dawson. From there it was on to the Paramount to line up for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the latest from the Apatow gang.

There was already some talk about the growing trend of studios/filmmakers saving seats at their SXSW premieres (apparently only about 12 badge holders got into Explicit Ills on Saturday), and after getting into Sarah Marshall, Mark, Don, and I noticed that at least 100 seats had been blocked off by Universal for cast, crew, and contest winners. We at FT aren't in the habit of sending the entire crew to the same movie (unlike certain other web sites), but it's become something of a tradition for us to attend at least one premiere together (last year was Knocked Up). Seeing all the reserved seats soured us a bit on the experience, however, and Mark and I elected to bail, in the hopes that at least two of the couple hundred still lined up would be able to enjoy the film.

And it allowed us to join the Rainbow Around the Sun crew for more drinkage. Don got out of Sarah Marshall and we checked out...another Rock Band party, this one thrown by Next New Networks. Drinks were free, and I was fully prepared to give my all to "Suffragette City," but unclear technical issues ended the gaming early (perhaps Bowie, fearing my mad skillz, threw a wrench into the works somehow. Mark did take his shirt off to promote the site, however. So that's...something. After that it was to the apparently doomed Ginger Man for a few farewell beers.

As always, I have returned from SXSW in need of extended detox and a couple days' sleep. And the hope that I never hear the word "mumblecore" again.

Deep in the heart of South By

Rolled into Austin Friday afternoon, and - in the words of Diamond Dave - I hit the ground runnin'. Four movies under my belt so far (The Wife was in town last night, and we reconnected with some old friends, so no movie fun for me until this afternoon).

Only one review up - Rainbow Around the Sun, directed by one Kevin Ely, who - as some of you may recall - gave yours truly a ride home from a party at last year's deadCenter Film Festival. I don't like to think how awkward OKC would have been this year if I hadn't liked the movie.

Forthcoming reviews include The Upsetter: The Life & Music of Lee "Scratch" Perry, The Order of Myths (about Mardi Gras in Mobile, AL), and We Are Wizards (about various aspects of Harry Potter fandom, including wizard rock and Potter War).

That last movie introduced me to the works of Brad Neely of SuperDeluxe.com, who created the online video "Washington, Washington," which earned me several raised eyebrows as I just now watched it, laughing my ass off, here in the Austin Convention Center. You can see it here (NSFW).

I don't want to shut down, as I have one of the only seats down here with access to a power outlet, but in the words of Louis Tully, I gotta have a shower. More movies today, then the Film Threat party (in association with BSide Entertainment) tonight. This year, I will not drink 8 vodka & Red Bulls.

I hope.

Pray for Ben Gazzara

With Jeff Healey passing away last week and Patrick Swayze getting diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, might Road House be the new Conqueror?

Nah, probably not.

Still, my thoughts go out to the The Swayze. I've had my issues with the guy's work, but Red Dawn is one of my favorite movies (seriously), and I have nothing but respect for a guy who managed a 30-year career after debuting in something called Skatetown, U.S.A.

Go easy, Bodhi.

The dogs of war

Marine kills dog. Nation World froths at mouth:

A US Marine has become the target of a massive internet hate campaign after a mobile phone video appearing to show him throwing a puppy off a cliff in Iraq became a viral hit.

Some 150,000 people watched the video in less than two days before it was taken down from the YouTube website this morning. More than 4,000 posted comments, overwhelmingly negative, although many questioned whether the dog was already dead.

The low-quality video shows two Marines in combat joking as one holds up what appears to be a motionless black and white puppy, which he then hurls into a rocky gully. A loud yelping sound is heard as it flies through the air.

Major Chris Perrine of the Marine Corps Base Hawaii says it appears the man is based with a unit in the islands. In a statement the Marines called the video "shocking and deplorable" and said it violates "the high standard we expect of every Marine".

Wow. Someone prone to animal cruelty somehow made it through the uplifting and nurturing Sunday picnic known as Marine Corps boot camp. I'm speechless.

A number of US websites named the perpetrator as David Motari, a 22-year-old from Washington state who has recently returned from Iraq and is based in Hawaii. Mr Motari's profile on the social networking site Bebo was closed down yesterday.

Some sites posted his personal details, phone numbers and even a picture of his car, while other bloggers called for him to be ostracised. Others said that the video was simply bringing home the horrors of the Iraq war.

This massive outpouring of outrage tells me we've been going about this process all wrong, anti-war comrades. We shouldn't be clamoring for an end to the campaign in Iraq because of the the naked falsehoods put forth by the Bush Administration in order to justify our invasion, the constantly shifting rationales, the almost 4,000 dead American soldiers, or the over 70,000 dead Iraqi civilians; no, we need to stop the war for the sake of all those innocent puppies.

Seriously, I hope this doesn't have a negative impact on sales of the 101 Dalmatians DVD.

"He built an independent treasury..."

She Who Shall Not Be Named acquired two more potential nicknames this weekend (to go along with "La Destructora" and My Justification for Owning Firearms), those being:

Polk: Our wonderful daughter has acquired the occasional tendency to come into our bedroom around 3 AM and enforce her own particular Manifest Destiny on the bed. Last Saturday, she drove The Wife off in her toddler version of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and forced me into my own Oregon Territory. Being married for almost 12 years, I'm well acquainted with occupying the West Coast of a mattress, but SWSNBN adds a new wrinkle by laying laterally upon the bed and jamming her feet into the small of my back. Hail to the Chief.

Zorba: Because she broke two plates this weekend, even without the benefit of ouzo.

So there's that. I also have two new reviews up:

Semi-Pro - **
Penelope - **1/2

That Will Ferrell. Hilarious.

So beautiful, so dumb

It's how Alfred Hitchcock once described Ingrid Bergman, and it also apparently applies to the most recent Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard (via The Fat Guy):

Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard is facing criticism after footage of her apparently questioning the 9/11 attacks surfaced on the internet.

In an interview she reportedly gave a year ago, the star is shown commenting on the events of 11 September 2001.

"I think we're lied to about a number of things," the Paris-born 32-year-old is seen saying in French.
[...]
In the interview, given to French TV show Paris Premiere, Cotillard appears to suggest the attacks on the World Trade Center were staged to avoid the expense of refurbishing them.

"We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned?" she asks. "There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours.

"It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

The Twin Towers, she claims, were a "money sucker" that would have cost much more to modernise than to destroy.

She can at least take comfort in the fact that she didn't blame "the Jews" for the collapse.

Cotillard joins APCB favorite Willie Nelson, who also recently - and regrettably - appears to have imbibed the "9/11 Truth Movement" Kool-Aid.

And she didn't stop there...

The actress goes on to cast doubt on the Moon landing of 1969. "Did a man really walk on the moon?" she asks.

"I saw plenty of documentaries on it and I really wondered. In any case I don't believe all they tell me."

Where'd I put that picture...? Ah yes: