A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

White riot

Thousands of Caucasian Houstonians gathered today to protest government spending...in a taxpayer-funded public space:

Protesters turned out by the thousands Wednesday in Houston and other cities across the nation to voice their displeasure with big government spending and what they called the erosion of people's constitutional rights.

Among those taking part in the Tax Day Tea Parties was Tim Volzer, who took an hour away from work to attend a rally of 450 people in Pearland pushing for less government spending. The roofing company salesman wore a sign on his back that summed his feelings: "No taxation without representation, Bro."

At Jones Plaza in downtown Houston -- where several thousand people filled the venue to capacity, forcing police to close it off with barricades to prevent more protesters from entering -- Monte Evans, 51, of Houston, wore a T-shirt proclaiming, "I love my Bible and my gun."

Finally, Americans have found their backbone and are standing up to the disastrous effect of massive deregulation, the funding of illegal wars, and the reckless and irresponsible spending policies of the previous admini...wait, what?

The Houston and Pearland rallies were among a dozen locally organized to protest the federal government's billion-dollar economic stimulus packages and bailouts for the banking and auto industries.

Funded by tax dollars...MY tax dollars. You know, the taxes Obama are lowering for most Americans. Those not making over $250K a year, that is.

I'll admit, I'm...curious about how the bailout is going to play out, and I'm not pleased with the lack of oversight for some of the money already distributed, but can we please stop pretending this is some sort of non-partisan, "grassroots" movement. Hmm?

"We're standing up -- Republicans, conservatives, Democrats and Libertarians," said Felicia Cravens of Katy, who organized Houston's Tea Party protest.

"Throw out your labels -- we're Americans!" she yelled to a cheering, raucous crowd standing shoulder to shoulder in Jones Plaza.

Outside the plaza, Rick Tolliver, 55, of Waller, discussed his unhappiness with the national government without singling out any particular political party.

"I don't think either party has represented the American people for the last 35 years," Tolliver said. "Our government has sold us out to larger corporations and to other countries.

"Finally people are starting to get tired of it, and they're starting to do something about it. I don't think the American majority has been represented for a very long time."

I must have missed all those protests - funded and organized by FreedomWorks and Americans for Propserity and endlessly promoted by Fox News - that were taking place during the last eight years. Or does representation somehow end when the guy you voted for lost?

And for the cherry on this nut-covered sundae, I give you Governor Perry:

In Austin, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he had never before seen a grass-roots efforts so animated, focused and coordinated as he did Wednesday.

"My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that."

Because it worked out so well in 1861. In the meantime, I guess Texas will be giving back that FEMA money and sening those border troops back, right?

Why I oughta...

I don't care that various movie blogs are reporting it.

I don't care that Entertainment Weekly is reporting it.

I don't care that the goddamned New York Times is reporting it.

Yahweh himself could assume the form of Shemp Howard, descend from on high and whack me in the face with a pipe wrench while permamently giving me a bowl haircut and I'd still refuse to believe all these reports about a Three Stooges movie (directed by the fucking Farrelly Brothers) are anything more than a cruel and elaborate April Fool's Day hoax:

According to Variety, Sean Penn -- coming off his best actor Oscar win -- is set to play Larry; Jim Carrey is in negotiations to play Curly; and Benicio Del Toro is being considered to play Moe. In development, first at Columbia, then at Warner Bros., the project is now at MGM, which says that production will begin in early fall for a 2010 release.

The immediate reaction in Hollywood was, well, a big yawn. MGM keeps making big splashy announcements about upcoming projects, but it's hard to find anyone in town who believes that the studio has the money to make a credible number of movies. Most insiders suspect that this was yet another carefully crafted announcement story aimed at persuading Wall Street that MGM could somehow put together a slate of films with real movie stars.
[...]
As for the casting, Penn has said for years that he'd like to star in what Variety would call a "laugher," having been in comedy jail ever since he costarred with Robert De Niro in the monumentally un-funny 1989 comedy "We're No Angels." If Carrey is actually in negotiations to play Curly (Variety says the actor has already made plans to gain 40 pounds to belly-up to Curly's ample girth), it would be a coup for the actor, who is currently off most studios' comedy A-lists, having fallen out of favor because of shaky box-office performances in recent years, which has led studio execs to believe that comedy audiences are more interested in Judd Apatow-style relationship comedies than Carrey-style high jinks. But in his defense, his recent movie "Yes Man" posted strong numbers both here and overseas.

Some ideas are so catastrophically awful that it is the responsibility of saner minds to step in and put an stop to them before serious damage is done. When they don't, you get things like Goober Grape and Operation Barbarossa. If this story is real, someone at MGM needs to intervene before it becomes necessary to land Marines in Los Angeles.

Can we tax these douchebags already?

And would you homos please stop getting 'gay' on the Pope?

Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

He explained that defending God's creation is not limited to saving the environment, but also protecting man from self-destruction.
[...]
Pope Benedict XVI warned that gender theory blurs the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race.

Gender theory explores sexual orientation, the roles assigned by society to individuals according to their gender, and how people perceive their biological identity.

When the Roman Catholic Church defends God's Creation, "it does not only defend the earth, water and the air... but (it) also protects man from his own destruction," the pope said.

"If tropical forests deserve our protection, humankind... deserves it no less," the 81-year-old pontiff said, calling for "an ecology of the human being."

Okay, first: you're not really allowed to use the word "ecology" if you're the head of an institution that rejects natural selection and the most basic tenets of evolutionary theory, both of which play pretty heavily into the concept of ecosystems and biodiversity.

Second, the "gay threat" comes in at about, oh, 750th on the list of things that are going to wipe out mankind. Among those ranking higher: global climate change, the increasing scarcity of water resources, "Captain Trips," Ming the Merciless, C.H.U.D.s, and genetically engineered dinosaurs running amok.

The Catholic Church opposes gay marriage. It teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are.

Which, when you think about it, is pretty much a total reversal of their position regarding pedophilia.

Bi-Polar disorder

Knock it off, Disney.

Thanks to Winnie the Pooh sheets, Ariel underpants, and a near-constant media/retail assault that would've made Joseph Goebbels shake his head in admiration, you mercenary pricks already have your hooks set into most of our kids since birth (and maybe earlier, if the Princess Jasmine speculum is successfully patented). You've insinuated yourselves into our lives to such an extent I no longer offer even token resistance when She Who Shall Not Be Named brings me the Little Mermaid DVD case and the remote control.

Though I must say, her rendition of "Part of Your World" would make even the surliest among you crack a smile.

I'm willing to accept a certain amount of cultural omnipresence, as you can see, but what I'm not going to stand for is the annual push to make The Polar Express the next holiday movie classic.

[EDIT: I (think I) knew Warner Bros. actually made Polar Express, but the push I'm referring to is by ABC and the ABC Family channel, both of which are cramming PE down our throats, and both are owned by Uncle Walt.]

The 2004 adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's book is, hands-down, one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Much hay was made about the groundbreaking technology used to capture the live actors' movements ("actors" meaning Tom Hanks and, like, three other guys), and the result is admittedly pretty eye-popping. Trouble is, the overall impression is that of a bunch of Real Dolls suddenly brought to herky-jerky life. There were also reportedly some screw-ups during the final stages of production, resulting in scenes where elves go sliding across the screen with apparently frozen extremities. Advanced technology or not, everything still looks desperately fake, and not in a good traditional animation way,

What's really funny is that the book takes about 15 minutes to read, but because filming a true adaptation wouldn't justify the outlay required for all this "revolutionary" motion capture technology Robert Zemeckis and company went on to bloat the film with instantly forgettable musical numbers and nonsensical action sequences. And what kid wants to endure an hour and forty minutes of this garbage just to see Hero Boy and Token Black Character Hero Girl finally reach the North Pole, a true Industrial Age wonderland where all the workers look the same and Aerosmith is the musical act of choice.

We already have enough Christmas-themed movies to play 24/7 the entire month of December, and that's not counting the holiday cluster bombs released every year (Fred Claus, Deck the Halls). There's always room for a worthy addition every five years or so, like Bad Santa, but I'm not prepared to push aside true classics like A Christmas Story and Die Hard just yet. Disney, you grossed $160 million with Polar Express during its release, I suggest you quit while you're ahead.

Ain't no party like an AIG party

'Cause an AIG party don't stop:

Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week.

Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement.

"AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property," KNXV reported.

A hotel employee told KNXV reporter Josh Bernstein, "We can't even say the word [AIG]."

A company spokesperson, Nick Ashooh, confirmed AIG instructed the hotel to make sure there were no AIG signs or mention of the company by staff.

"We're trying to avoid confrontation, keep our profile low," said Ashooh. "Some of our employees have been harassed."

"What do they have to hide," asked Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who said he had been promised by AIG CEO Edward Liddy that the company would stop such "junkets."

"They came to us and said they were drowning and needed help. A person who is drowning doesn't jump up and start partying," said Congressman Cummings.

You were doing so well there, Elijah, and then you screwed up the metaphor. A better way to put it would have been, "A person who is drowing doesn't jump up and sodomize the person who threw them the life preserver with a five battery Maglite."

We saw the story on the news last night, and were barely finished rolling our eyes when ABC followed it up, unironically it would seem, with this piece:

Three years behind schedule and almost $360 million above budget, the Capitol Visitor Center prepares to open its doors to millions of tourists who now must endure long lines without food, restrooms or shelter to catch a glimpse of the halls of Congress.

The underground center, the largest single construction project in the Capitol's two-century history in terms of size and expense, is to open to the public on Dec. 2. The final cost of the project is put at $621 million, more than double the $265 million estimated cost had the center been completed on schedule in December, 2005.

And I'm driving an eight-year old car.

"Quimby: If you were running for mayor, he'd vote for you."

I see you there, stocking the bar and licking your chops in anticipation of tonight's VP debate/bloodbath. You've watched those YouTube snippets of Sarah Palin unable to answer Katie Couric's softball questions (and probably those Miss Alaska talent show clips as well) and are positively salivating at the way Joe Biden is going to "pwn" her ass.

Not a chance.

For starters, the McCain camp has been level-setting for weeks, "leaking" alleged rumblings about her lack of preparedness and predicting disaster Thursday night. Expectations are so low for Palin that as long as she doesn't show up drunk, it'll be declared a victory.

And the newly Palin-friendly debate format won't hurt her either:

The Obama and McCain campaigns have agreed to an unusual free-flowing format for the three televised presidential debates, which begin Friday, but the McCain camp fought for and won a much more structured approach for the questioning at the vice-presidential debate, advisers to both campaigns said Saturday.

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

But, but she's so experienced.

My prediction: Palin remembers her lines. Well enough, at least, that her supporters can claim it as proof that she's "ready to lead." The format will also reign in Biden's bloviating, and he'll mostly keep his tongue. He probably won't be able to resist a couple of body blows, which will likely prompt McCain to step in once again to defend his pit bull from the nasty Democrats.

Me? I'll be drinking myself blind. Which, come to think of it, is how I spend most election cycles.

In other words, Moe could've refused to re-insert the crayon into Homer's brain because he wasn't a snake-handler

"That's right, I'm an HHS Secretary."

The Bush administration proposed stronger job protections Thursday for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections.

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said health care professionals should not face retaliation from employers or from medical societies because they object to abortion.

"Freedom of conscience is not to be surrendered upon issuance of a medical degree," Leavitt said. "This nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience."

The rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

Can anyone pursuing a career as a doctor or pharmacist please do the rest of a favor? If you're going to be one of these people whose religious convictions are so strong that they will cause these horrible crises of conscience, please consider another line or work.

Like, say, professional chainsaw juggler.

The 36-page rule seeks to set up a system for enforcing conscience protections in three separate federal laws, the earliest of which dates to the 1970s. In some cases, the laws aim to protect both providers who refuse to take part in abortions and those who do.

The regulation is written to apply to a broad swath of the health care work force, not doctors alone. Accordingly, an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments used in a particular procedure would be covered. Also covered would be volunteers and trainees.

The underlying laws deal mainly with abortion and sterilization, but both the laws and the language of the rule seem to recognize that objections on conscience grounds could involve other types of services.

I used up my repository of oh-so-clever assholery in my other entry on this subject, so I'll just say I sincerely hope this blows up in these fuckers' faces. I hope a Muslim doctor at Bethesda refuses to treat Cheney's cirrhosis. I hope a Catholic pharmacist refuses to provide Viagra to any man married to a woman past child-rearing age. I hope a black surgeon refuses to perform life-saving surgery on Trent Lott.

More than that, I want it to be January right now so these psychos will be out of office for good.

More like "Incontinental"...am I right?

Back from Virginia. Took some gnarly pictures that will end any lingering dispute about my post-graduate education. Unfortunately, they were on a digital disposable camera (which will encourage any lingering debate about my photography skills) so you'll have wait until I pick up the photos from Walgreen's.

The stay itself was just dandy. Close proximity to Chicago-style pizza, several bars, and a decent gym meant I returned home only slightly wider than when I left. Unfortunately the trip was bookended once again by shitty flights on Continental, the airline that is rapidly becoming the Dr. Zin to my Benton Quest.

In a nutshell, my flight from Intercontinental to Dulles on Saturday was delayed nearly three hours by rain. I know they "can't do anything about the weather," as they're so fond of reminding us, but maybe instead of dropping a few zillion dollars for a new terminal that's two miles walking distance from the parking garage, you could buy some planes that can take off in winds over 15 MPH. Just a thought.

Then I arrive in Dulles, only to find that my bag didn't. This would be more than a mild irritant if I wasn't one of those idiots who always fails to pack toiletries or extra clothes in their carry-on. I really had no one to blame but myself for that, so I resolved to stink it out until the next day, when my bag would be delivered to the hotel, and drove my swanky rent-a-PT Cruiser to Annapolis to hand out with the Seadogs family. Killing a bottle of Bushmills once there didn't hurt.

Fast forward to yesterday, where - upon arriving at Dulles - I'm informed the Houston flight has been delayed another two hours. And since I always assume I'm getting the high, hard one from Continental anytime I fly with them, my reaction to the desk agent telling me the news was merely a raised eyebrow* while muttering, "What a shock."

Since I had a few hours to kill, I wandered the B Terminal at IAD. Who knew our nation had it's own store? And so emphatic:

Fuck yeah.

Got in a little after 11 PM last night. Just in time to elbow The Wife in her sleep before she flew out this morning at 6:30 for Cleveland. Her flight left on time, but then, she's flying Southwest.

Oh, and Mom: I know you like those Eddie Bauer luggage tag/locks. Unfortunately, so does the TSA. This is the second one they've cut off a bag of ours.

* This is a lie; I can't actually raise only one eyebrow.

Funny, I don't remember a lot of parental guidance when visiting Grandmom

Excerpt from my e-mail invite to the advance screening of Star Wars: The Clone Wars:

YOU MUST PRESENT THIS E-MAIL AND PHOTO I.D. AT THE DOOR FOR ADMITTANCE
 
ADMIT TWO
RATED PG for "sci-fi action throughout, brief language, and 
momentary smoking"

The 'brief language' escapes me, but I'm sure it was Obi-Wan saying "Blast!" or some such. No, it's the "momentary smoking" we have to worry about. The Wife and I have discussed this, and we both agreed that the seeing our relatives smoke when we were kids was sort of the opposite of cool. Women shouldn't sound like Harvey Fierstein.

And in the movie, the only character who smokes is Jabba's creepy uncle. I can imagine the post-movie conversations:

"Mommy, why is smoke coming out of Ziro the Hutt's nose?"
"Because he's FLAMING."

Yes, Ziro is a big gay Hutt. Here's a pic:

"Hellooooo Sith lord."

My review will be up tomorrow, meanwhile I want it known that I'm the first person to use the expression "Padawana Montana."

Random airing of grievances

I know Festivus is still a ways off, so bear with me while I blow off some steam.

1. The Pointedly Oblivious: People in online forums responding to topics concerning celebrities/TV shows by saying "Who?" or "Never heard of him/her/it." Unless you just returned from a 12-year float down the Zambezi, you're lying. And if you're not lying, you have Google. I know we all wish we didn't know who Kim Kardashian was, but signing on merely to demonstrate how iconoclastic you are in your ignorance of pop culture only cements your douchebaggery.

2. "Mancation:" Why in the name of Lee Marvin is it suddenly suspect for dudes to hang out for a weekend? In fact, why are people so eager to dub the simple act of getting together for a few beers a "man date." Does my long-standing friendship with Seadogs count as a "bromance?"

We only kissed once.

3. Gambit: Seriously, he throws cards people. Add an old lady who knits radioactive tea cosies and an alien badminton player and you'd have the lamest superhero team since Power Pack.

I only bring #3 up because of the number of people shrieking in appreciation at his appearance in this footage from the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine trailer from ComicCon.

Blob was part of the Weapon X program?

EDIT: I knew they'd pull it. For the time being, it's available here.

"Hey, did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical School too?"

Funny story.

There's this family: mom, dad, daughter. Everything's hunky dory during the first couple years. Daughter looks normal until shortly before her second birthday, when she - for lack of a better word - "crashes:" loss of language, attention problems...the light in her eyes goes out.

So what do the parents do? Everything they can think of: tests (MRI, EEG, chromosome work-ups) and visits to the pediatric neurologist seem to confirm what everyone's been telling them: she's autistic. Going by the advice of the neurologist, the parents start her on applied behavior analysis and speech therapy. The prognosis is uncertain, but they're willing to do whatever it takes to help her.

And yet, all during this time the parents - specifically the mother - question the diagnosis. The daughter just doesn't look like the other kids at her school. Her comprehension comes in and out when it should be consistently absent. Same with language. They mention this to the second neurologist (long story), and he tells them no further tests are necessary. And why should they doubt him? He's one of the best in the world in his field.

The one person who doesn't brush them off is the daughter's pediatrician, who has consistently been the only person to give them honest/thoughtful feedback. She recommends yet another neurologist, who actually turns out to be in a different field, but through this doctor they get to the fourth neurologist, who schedules another EEG. The results come in, and they're similar to the results of the one the daughter had done two years earlier. Only this time, the "abnormalities" that the previous doctor found "benign" are anything but. The parents are told the daughter has a neurological disorder called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, which affects the parts of the brain governing speech and comprehension. More importantly, many of its symptoms mimic autism.

This comes as a bit of a surprise to the parents, especially when they're told it can be treated with anticonvulsants. The doctor is unwilling to give a definite prognosis because, well, he's a doctor, but there are indications that some of the daughter's problems with attention and learning can be overcome. Even better, seizures generally stop around puberty. She'll still need speech therapy, and will require a ton of work to get her even close to her peers in terms of development, but there's a chance. And that's more than they thought she had six months ago.

Good news, right? Everyone the parents have told seem to think so. And so it is, but maybe the parents can be forgiven for wondering why it took two years and - literally - a hundred thousand dollars to come to a correct diagnosis? Why the leaders in pediatric neurology and childhood development at UTMB and Texas Children's were so eager to dump their daughter in the "autism" bucket and wash their hands of her? And what happens to kids whose parents expect the "experts" to always have their child's best interests in mind?

Never mind, I think I know the answer. Now that I think about it, this story isn't all that funny after all.

A clarification

I am here to stand by comments made on this blog last week stating that 99 perecent of talk radio hosts are self-loathing closet queens and that the entire talk radio industry is, in fact, a fraud and a racket resulting from a lack of firm parenting. Further, I vigorously maintain the position that the desire to host a radio program is a direct byproduct of not having a father around to keep them from wallowing in their own excrement while listening to repeated playback of Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits.

These comments were meant to "boldly awaken" listeners to the radio community's attempts to produce an atmosphere where messianic blowhards provide them with inaccurate information to keep them in a perpetual state of ignorance and xenophobic paranoia. Many radio listeners are also being victimized by their inability to discern bullshit from the truth, which may not exist in all radio programs. Let the truly discriminating turn their radios off and read a book, let the willfully ignorant get a swift kick in the ass.

Now, I'll concede that the "99 percent" statement may have been a "little high." That's because it was hyperbole, which as we all know is that thing you try to shield yourself behind when a wider audience becomes aware of your idiocy and calls you on it. Still, I'm glad to have prodded discussion on the subject, and I plan to give over my entire comments section today to further discussion on whether Michael Savage is a vile sack of shit because his daddy didn't show him enough love, or if he was simply born that way.

Context

"Your balls itch?"

Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what '80s movie that pharmacist-delivered line is from.

Anyway, I guess it's a good thing these assholes weren't around when my friend Louden got crabs our junior year:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That's because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John's and a Kmart, will be a "pro-life pharmacy" -- meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients' rights against those of health-care workers who assert a "right of conscience" to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

It's a long article, filled with the usual bilge about how these noble beacons of moral supereminence are simply following the hallowed American tradition of "following their conscience." I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, but I'm just going to quote a few choice (har) bits:

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

Then fire them. I'm sure it varies, but aren't health care workers in a state-regulated system required to provide treatment when the prescription/diagnosis is legitimate? Take any of these homunculoids who refuse to provide the services they've been licensed for and shitcan them so they'll be free to preach their 17th century gibberish in whatever ratholes these people inhabit.

"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.

I'm not linking the web site, but here's a list of the pharmacies:

- David's Pharmacy, Cartaya, David and Carmen RPhs - 2302 W Martin Luther King Blvd, Tampa, FL
- Andrew Eells, BSP, Greta Pharmacy, 1475 W Okeechobee Rd, Ste 5, Hialeah, FL
- Richmond Apothecary, Rokosz, David RPh 1626 East Main Street - Richmond, IN
- DuPlantis, Lloyd J, PD , Lloyd's Remedies, PO Box 1780, 3696 W Main St, Gray, LA
- Koelzer, Michael G, RPh Kay Pharmacy and Home Medical Equipment, 2178 Plainfield Rd NE, Grand Rapids, MI
- Superior Pharmacy, Lane L Hawley, RPh 348 N Central Ave, Superior, NE

Alternatives are probably easy to find in places like Tampa, Hialeah, and Grand Rapids. But tough shit for the woman who needs Plan B in Gray, LA (50 miles from New Orleans) or Superior, NE (75 miles from Lincoln). Or the out-of-towner who loses their birth control pills in Richmond, IN. And I guess it never occurs to these people that The Pill and other contraceptives are often prescribed for uses other than legitimizing those pagan orgies Bauer and her ilk see lurking behind every script for Ortho-Novum.

"We try to practice pharmacy in a way that we feel is best to help our community and promote healthy lifestyles," said Lloyd Duplantis, who owns Lloyd's Remedies in Gray, La., and is a deacon in his Catholic church. "After researching the science behind steroidal contraceptives, I decided they could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child. I decided to opt out."

Some critics question how such pharmacies justify carrying drugs, such as Viagra, for male reproductive issues, but not those for women.

Yeah.

This is the standard fallback, that these maladroits somehow care about women's issues in a way that those who dedicate their entire lives and careers to women's health somehow don't understand. It's beyond disingenuous: it's bullshit. Any pharmacist that refuses to fill legitimate prescriptions or stock contraceptives yet have no problem doling out boner pills has shown their true self: not a concerned practitioner bravely standing up for his individual rights, but rather a delusional misogynist whose attitude towards health care has more in common with Theodoric of York than any human being educated in the last 50 years.

"Go ahead...throw your vote away!"

I admit, I've always thought it'd be neat - in a creepy kind of way - if things like the Loch Ness monster or werewolves or the Wellborn Goat Man actually existed. My inner skeptic prevents from really believing, in the Mulderian sense, but I still keep an eye open for news stories about such phenomena, just in case.

And then there are those phantasmagorical creatures I never thought I'd encounter:

A hard core of Hillary Clinton's supporters are threatening to resist Barack Obama's nomination right up to the party's convention in August, leaving the Democrats dangerously divided ahead of next November's elections. Some may even abstain or vote for Republican John McCain in protest against Obama's candidacy.

The long Democratic contest exposed sharp divisions in support between Obama and Clinton. In contest after contest, Clinton beat Obama among middle-aged and older white women, white working class men, Latinos, and Jewish voters.

Mass defections to McCain are unlikely, said Thomas Mann, a politics expert at the Brookings Institution. "The vast, vast majority will just automatically come over," he said. "What we are talking about is only the hard core - 20% or below of her supporters will be angry enough to vote for McCain or not at all."

I've been hearing this stuff for a couple of weeks, but always put it down to a few loud cranks with a sore loser complex getting excessive airtime on Fox News. That was until I heard one of them at dinner last night. She was an older woman, eating with her husband and another couple. Everybody talks pretty loud in Tony's, and we were sitting right next to them so I heard most of their conversation regarding the election primaries and Obama's impending nomination. That was when the woman said, plain as day, that she - a lifelong Democrat - would sooner vote for McCain than Obama.

We all say things when we're pissed off that we regret later, so I'm hoping that was the case with this person. And yet I almost couldn't resist the urge to grab her by the padded shoulders and shake her while politely asking:

Are you out of your fucking mind?! John Paul Stevens is almost 90 years old! Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75! McCain has marched in lockstep with Bush for almost eight years and will continue embracing religious intolerance and rolling back civil liberties in the name of "security," and you're going to vote for him because your candidate never apologized for helping send us to Iraq? I hope you choke on that flauta!

But then, it was just me and my daughter, so I contented myself with flicking borracho beans in her hair and blaming She Who Shall Not Be Named.

I tend to think Clinton's hardcore faithful are just blowing off steam and will come back on board by November. At least I hope so, because you can bet your ass McCain will be dangling Obama's "inexperience" and "naivete" like bass lures over them for the next five months.

For Your Review - May 30-June 1, 2008

My review of Sex and the City (**) is up at Film Threat. Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with my particular tastes can probably guess my reaction, but I tried to give it a fair shake.

And honestly, I try to give them all of fair shake. Directed by Brett Ratner? Okay. Starring Scarlett Johannson? Sure. Written by Uwe Boll? Well, actually, I haven't seen one of his movies since a bootleg of BloodRayne, but I'd take the hit.

Not everybody agrees, of course. There's been a message board on the FT site for several years now, It's largely silent (when we're lucky), which may ultimately be a better fate than ending up like the Ain't It Cool News talkbacks, or the Rotten Tomatoes forums, or the fucking IMDB boards, which make AICN look like the Algonquin Round Table.

But recently Film Threat implemented a user comment feature, and my reaction to that was the same as when the Houston Chronicle or any other publication has done the same: awesome! After all, merely giving out the author's contact information and dedicating server space to message forums just doesn't allow enough "interactivity" for readers who can't wait to call Mayor Bill White a douchebag (on the Chron page) or call me a homophobic asshole (on my SatC review).

I welcome this new culture of feedback with open arms. In fact, I think the current situation doesn't go far enough. I say give readers edit access to the articles and reviews themselves, that way they can put their opinions right there in the article in question. No longer will they be forced to go through the extreme inconvenience of completing two fields in order to register for a comment account, because how fair is that when you want to register your immediate outrage over the fact that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull "took a shit on your childhood?"

People feel strongly about their mass-produced corporate entertainment. I'm just trying to help.

"Science has faltered once again in the face of overwhelming religious evidence."

I love organized religion.

We lived in Salt Lake City, UT for six years when I was a kid. The Mormons who surrounded us were always very helpful in pointing out why my Roman Catholic soul was boned - in between intermittent ass-whippings. After we moved to Texas, I kept my burgeoning atheism (mostly) under wraps and learned to (mostly) keep my mouth shut for the rest of my public school tenure, only occasionally surfacing to further solidify my status as "undesirable" among the toothsome ladies of Young Life.

The act that did the most damage was, ironically, an act of pure nerdery and not outright blasphemy: at a 9th grade party, I ejected Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger in favor of Rush: 2112. Caren, our mortified hostess, was certain that Geddy Lee was shrieking, "We are the priests/of the devil."* My protestations fell on deaf ears, and my reputation as a neo-heretic was cemented.

So you can imagine how thrilling the last eight years have been for me, with evolution under increasing fire in our schools, the rise in popularity of VeggieTales, and the new prospect of being blinded with creation "science:"

Are you searching for cutting-edge scientific justification for a Biblical account of Earth's origins?

Then search no longer: the first issue of the Answers Research Journal, the "professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework," is now online!

In this case, I suspect "peer-reviewed" means some of the '9-11 Truth' folks came over to check their work.

Edited by Australian geologist Andrew Snelling and published by the founder of the Creation Museum, Answers is free, fully downloadable and reviewed by a "large network of well-qualified creationist researchers, scientists, and theologians who are the best thinkers in their fields of creationist research," assuring that it meets "the highest scientific and theological standard."

Is this what speaking in tongues sounds like? Because none of those terms make any sense. "Creationist research?" "Australian geologist?" Please.

Snelling has actually hit upon a reliable strategy: he simply cites other scientific articles that back up the non-bullshit components of his article, then refers back to his own work when he gets to the whole "divine nuclear decay" concept. Similar shenangians helped me get 'A's on most of my college research papers, but then, I wasn't trying to convince the world at large that Nag and Nagaina were actually sympathetic liminal characters in "Rikki Tikki Tavi: Kipling's Paean to Imperial Racism."

And they have excerpts, including:

Proceedings of the Microbe Forum, June 2007

The task of understanding and observing the microbial world is daunting when we consider that we have only documented around 5,000 bacterial species. In addition there is much yet to be learned about algae, fungi, macro-parasites, and the enigmatic "chimeric" lichens. Could there be other creatures composed entirely of microbes of which we are unaware? In addition, how do we classify microbes taxonomically from a creation perspective? Do they fit into conventional or baraminic taxonomical convention? How do we view them biblically? What day were they created?

Uh, 5,000?

I'd like to see a graphical representation of this. If traditional Linnaean diagrams represent a tree, I'm guessing the creation-based model is essentially "God" -----------> "everything." This probably makes studying for AP biology exams in Kansas a little easier.

* Of course, everyone who's anyone knows the line is actually, "We are the priests/of the Temple of Syrinx."

I guess Hard Candy wasn't on their list

Sweet, sweet schadenfreude:

"Clean" Movie Maven Arrested For Teen Sex

(CBS) A Utah retailer of family-friendly tapes and DVDs - Hollywood films with the "dirty parts" cut out of them - has been arrested for trading sex with two 14-year-old girls.

Orem police say Flix Club owner Daniel Dean Thompson, 31, and Issac Lifferth, 24, were booked into the Utah County jail on charges of sexual abuse and unlawful sexual activity with a 14-year-old.

CBS Station KUTV in Salt Lake City reports that the shocking discovery came when a mother found a $20 bill in her daughter's room last week and questioned her about where the money came from.

The girl confessed that she and a friend had been paid for sexual favors by an older male.

Lifferth was additionally charged with patronizing a prostitute and was also in possession of a prescription drug medication without a prescription.

Thompson's Flix Club was one of several Utah-based video outlets that traded in edited versions of R- and PG-13-rated films, catering to clientele who wanted to watch hit movies without nudity, sex, language or graphic violence.

Thomson and Lifferth were obviously in the same "Throw 'Em Off the Trail" class as Larry Craig.

In defense of Mr. Rogers

I was prepared to be appalled by tonight's 60 Minutes story about "The Millennials," that magical generation born between 1980 and 1995 who are going to throw such a monkey wrench into America's corporate culture we'll all be scrambling to provide in-cubicle Xbox 360s to keep them happy. These technologically savvy kids, after all, are the products of an America that gives trophies for participation and tells every child out there that they're winners, even when they haven't really won anything.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. I admit, there are drawbacks to being sandwiched between what I've been repeatedly told are the two most narcissistic generations in history, but I prefer to delude myself into thinking my sterling employment record will measure up favorably against that of some emo-haircut sporting, iPhone-jockeying, Heelys-wearing jagoff.

Anyway, The Wife and I are goofing on the whiny kids talking about how they're going to shake up America, when Morley Safer brings in Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Zaslow, who went on to rehash his six-month old column laying the blame for this generation's narcissism at the feet of Mr. Rogers:

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

Now Mr. Rogers, like Dr. Spock before him, has been targeted for re-evaluation. And he's not the only one. As educators and researchers struggle to define the new parameters of parenting, circa 2007, some are revisiting the language of child ego-boosting. What are the downsides of telling kids they're special? Is it a mistake to have children call us by our first names? When we focus all conversations on our children's lives, are we denying them the insights found when adults talk about adult things?

Some are calling for a recalibration of the mind-sets and catch-phrases that have taken hold in recent decades. Among the expressions now being challenged:

"You're special." On the Yahoo Answers Web site, a discussion thread about Mr. Rogers begins with this posting: "Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. ... Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice."

Zaslow and his cronies are - not to put too fine a point on it - fucking idiots. Fred Rogers no more spent years telling "little creeps that he liked them just the way they were" than he did exhorting them to mass suicide. No, Mr. Rogers made a living by telling kids who didn't hear it anywhere else that they meant something. That's all. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood first aired in 1968, well before the embarkation point of the entitlement generation, and his mission was never to empower the unworthy, but to make everyone, no matter who they were, feel good about themselves for 30 minutes a day. What a crime.

I'm as guilty as anybody of making fun of the guy when I was younger, but then, I wasn't one of those kids who actually needed something in their life called a "Neighborhood of Make-Believe."

Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can't be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting."

Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.

Come on. I don't know any kid born post-1980 who paid attention to Fred Rogers. Hell, my sister was born in the 70s and she never watched an episode (she was a big Dukes of Hazzard fan, however). He's an easy target for piling on because 1) he's dead, and 2) even if he was alive, he wasn't the kind of guy who'd get involved in a public media imbroglio. All Rogers is to these old assholes is the latest in a series of scapegoats for the newest generation they're unable to understand. Are "the Millennials" annoying twats? Sure, but as with anything else, the parents are perfectly content to assign blame anywhere but themselves. Is your 20-something child a self-entitled douchebag who's never punched a clock in his life yet expects $60K starting salary and his own office straight out of college? Must be Mr. Rogers' fault.

The only surprising part of the 60 Minutes story was that career whiner Andy Rooney didn't show up to complain as well.

"Why don't you all just f-f-fade away?"

ABC News has a story on their evening broadcast tonight about how the first of the Baby Boomers (Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, born 12:00:01 AM on 1/1/46) has applied for Social Security benefits. There were the usual comparisons between the post-war generation's saving habits versus those of their parents (the Boomers are better at it, probably because nobody who lived through WWII expected humanity to avoid annihilating itself) and the ominous theorizing about the deleterious effects of 76 million people draining the nation's SS trust fund. Casey-Kirschling herself was interviewed - in front of her new boat - and attempted to adopt a somber tone when discussing her children's futures, just before she sailed out to international waters to enjoy some choice Peruvian blow.

I can't speak for anyone else of my generation, but my retirement saving strategy was implemented with the assumption that Social Security wouldn't be around when I finally called it quits (at age 87, by current economic indicators). Obviously, certain other family considerations have caused us to recalculate some things, but so far we're looking okay.

But ABC misses the point (or - more likely - selectively ignores it). The primary negative ramification of our rapidly aging population isn't the future depletion of our nation's retirement coffers, but the present-day horror of TV advertising. Thanks to this, I now know how to medicate myself against physiological horrors both real (hypertension) and imagined (restless leg syndrome). The phenomenon is so pervasive I now have to pause my DVR for 10 minutes at the beginning of Adult Swim (on the Cartoon Network, of all places) so as to avoid the Cyclopean horror of "Bob" from those Enzyte commercials.

And then there's this:

Jesus christ on a pogo stick. The sight of doughy 50-somethings "jamming" at some mythical roadhouse miraculously bereft of blue collar alcoholics and speed-addled bikers before roaring off to give their undoubtedly weary wives a right good rogering is one of the worst things I've ever seen, and I review Brett Ratner movies.

Part of me finds it endlessly amusing that the generation that once rallied to "Hope I die before I get old" is now desperately trying to stave off its advancing decrepitude. And I say this as someone whose own age cohort will someday have to answer for Vanilla Ice and the Star Wars prequels. But the other part desperately wants to watch Sunday NFL games and the MLB playoffs without being constantly reminded of the grim specter of death.

Or impotence. Whatever.

"I just want to watch Honk If You're Horny in peace!"

Part of the problem in suffering from long-term memory issues while writing a blog for (*sigh*) almost four years is that I sometimes...okay, most of the time...get myself all motivated to write about something, only to realize I've written about it already. On several occasions.

Case in point, there was yet another toddler at yet another horror movie (The Reaping) last night. The mother-of-the-year candidate this time chose to lurk around the corner in that little hallway leading to the exit so she could continue watching while her child assumedly couldn't see the disturbing images of chldren strung up in a tomb or Idris Elba stooping to play the loyal black sidekick after a great run as Stringer Bell in The Wire. Problem was, the kid continued doing things kid's tend to do, like cry, babble, cry, and screech at nothing in particular. And everyone in the theater could hear him.

I've already beaten this subject to death. Twice. So I decided I'm going to join the fun. Wednesday night is the Grindhouse screening here. The Wife has a meeting, so she won't be able to pick She Who Shall Not Be Named up until right before the movie starts. In the meantime, I'm going to bring my daughter into the theater, possibly wrapped in an oversized Reservoir Dogs t-shirt. I'll loudly proclaim to anyone listening that she loves Takashi Miike and how much she's looking forward to Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" trailer.

Of course, nobody will care. More to the point, no one will say anything, so used are they to assholes bringing their spawn to inappropriate movies. In the face of this depressing realization and apropos of nothing, here's a flowchart from Mrs. Basshole, inspired by that stupid German "Hammerzeit" image I posted and forgotten lo these many months:

What a fabulous decade it was.

She's a lady

First, a little history:

Far be it from me to criticize a band for sucking - as Fall Out Boy clearly does - or to lament the "good old days" when there was at least a miniscule gap between the time a band became popular and when it started whoring out its music to all takers. The truth is, the above Vcast ad makes me laugh, solely because Film Threat's Mark Bell and I got so much hilarity out of it at SXSW.

Every time the phone rang, it was "my lady." Every emphatic conversational point was punctuated by a swirling index finger thrust. Every remotely rocking song got. Us. "Pumped!" A sentiment we made sure to express with big, vaguely psychotic, shit-eating grins on our faces.

Mark now tells me there's a new commercial that (I think) features a gay guy in a dog park, but I can't bring myself to watch it. I shared something memorable with that tousel-haired meathead. It just wouldn't feel right.

"I've heard how this ends, it turns out the secret code was the same nursery rhyme he told his daughter!"

Saw Zodiac last night. Good movie, though at 2 hours 45 minutes I'm a bit Ruffaloed out.

Anthony Edwards has a fairly large role as Inspector Toschi's partner, Bill Armstrong. This may or may not be Edwards' first big role since ER, and frankly I'm too lazy to look it up. I feel pretty safe in saying that was probably the last major part most moviegoers are familiar with.

Now then, whenever I finally get around to writing my epic masterwork about why going to the movies these days is roughly as pleasurable as having a Russian strongman massage your taint with a giant emery board, I'll have a section on audience members talking. And I will maintain at that time that the absolute worst people to see movies with are old people.

You see, young folks can generally be intimidated, and those with crying kids or talking on phones are on the outs with the majority of the population anyway, but old people...old people simply don't give a shit.

The group of four sitting behind me last night were certainly thrilled to recognize so many stars on the big screen tonight. "He's from ER," they helpfully informed me. One lady did me the favor of reminding me where I'd seen the main suspect earlier in the film. And, of course, one of the men wondered aloud (and I do mean loud) if that was the same person who played Spider-Man in the role of San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith.

I am a man of restraint, eroding though it may be, so at no point did I leap to my feet, point at the offenders like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and scream, "Yes! Anthony Edwards played Dr. Mark Green on ER. No, Jake Gyllenhaal did not play Spider-Man, that was the other guy. But here's the thing: these are all ACTORS. They play different roles in different movies because that's their JOB. It would be like me walking behind you at Luby's and yelling, 'There! That's the old bat who cut me off on Richmond the other day! Doesn't she look different with a wig?'"

But no, it wouldn't matter. They'd just sit there, chatting about that nice young man who was in Wonder Boys while enjoying the Social Security payments I'll never get to see. Meanwhile, the police would be laying into me with truncheons outside.

You can see I've thought this through.

Do you spell "quack" with two 'A's?

All I want for Christmas is a little schadenfreude:

Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.

Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.

On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department.

Mallard Fillmore, about a conservative duck, appears in almost 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Indianapolis Star.

And from the "About the Comic" section on the King Features homepage:

Tinsley created Mallard for what he saw as the conservative underdog. The strip is for "the average person out there: the forgotten American taxpayer who's sick of the liberal media and cultural establishments that act like he or she doesn't exist," he says.

Evidently Tinsley's alcohol problems stemmed from the Herculean amounts he needed to imbibe in order to silence the endless keening of his monstrous victimhood complex.

And it makes today's strip seem like something of a bad choice.

The right to arm bears

Yet another reason to hate Nashville. Not only does the music suck, but the musicians themselves are morons:

Troy Gentry, who pleaded guilty this week in Minnesota to a misdemeanor charge of falsely registering a captive bear as being killed in the wild, said the ordeal has been "a humbling experience."

"I relied on the experts around me for guidance, and I regret that today. Not so much because I was fined and punished, but because it appears that I don't have respect for the law," Gentry, of the hit country singing duo Montgomery Gentry, said Monday in a statement.

"This has been a humbling experience for me, and one which I deeply regret."

Lest anyone thinks these so-called "experts" were ambiguous about exactly what was going on, there's this tidbit from a previous story:

Gentry told the court he bought the bear from Greenly with the understanding they would videotape a hunt inside the bear's enclosure, which was surrounded by an electric fence.

"Lee and I made a deal about harvesting this bear," Gentry testified. They also agreed to report it was killed in the wild 6 miles east of Sandstone instead of on Greenly's property south of the town.

Full disclosure: I've been hunting once. Infrequent commenter MacInFla brought me along several years ago, and I equate the entire experience to taking a 10-hour hike with a rifle slung over my shoulder. Had I seen a deer, I doubt I could've brought myself to shoot (at) it. Nor did I bother with the plentiful goats in the area.

Whatever your feelings about hiding in the trees and shooting an animal with a high-powered rifle that propels a bullet at 3,000 fps, at least most hunters don't go down to the zoo and plug the Malayan sun bear, which is about the degree of difficulty Gentry was working with. He also agreed to lie about the location of the kill, which seems less like "expert guidance" and more like "giving misleading information to the cops."

Under the plea announced Monday, the 39-year-old singer agreed to pay a $15,000 fine, give up hunting, fishing and trapping in Minnesota for five years, and forfeit both the bear's hide and the bow he used to shoot the animal in 2004. The bear, named "Cubby," was killed in a 3-acre private enclosure.

My bad, Gentry was hunting with a bow and arrow, which is how Ted Nugent and the Native Americans did it, after all. Though I doubt a couple of guys with Remington 673s were backing up the Chippewa. They also probably had better names for their bears.

Three acres surrounded by an electric fence. Ah, the cagey resourcefulness of the wily hunter.

"If you don't watch the violence, you'll never get desensitized to it."

I don't rant too much about movie remakes here. Well...anymore. Mostly because I consider it about as effective as voting Democrat on a Diebold machine. Your favorite movie, unless it happens to be one of the cherished few American classics (Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, Bambi vs. Godzilla ) is probably going to get remade by Frank Darabont at some point in the very near future and there isn't a goddamned thing you can do about it except cry like a little girl on your weblog.

So here I am. First, from an e-mail I received last week:

From filmmaker Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” [2003], “The Amityville Horror” [2005]) comes a remake of the 1986 terror classic. Dave Meyers is directing the new film, which tracks the terrifying cross-country trajectory of Grace (Sophia Bush) and Jim (Zachary Knighton), two traveling college students who are tormented by the mysterious hitchhiker John Ryder, a.k.a. The Hitcher (Sean Bean).

Color me surprised. Seriously, after Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, I didn't think it was possible to hate Michael Bay any more than I already do. Certainly I'm not the only one looking forward to panoramic slow motions shots and PG-13 style violence from Cecil B. DeMousse's production company.

Remakes only have merit when the original could somehow be improved upon by modern technology or a new perspective. The Hitcher update offers none of these; it apes the plot of the original, and - while I like Sean Bean quite a lot (even in the Sharpe's Rifles series) - he's no Rutger fucking Hauer.

I mean, come on:

"Find a Whataburger or I cut her throat!"

No one will ever mistake the original Hitcher for high art. There are too many plot contrivances, Ryder is almost Voorheesian in his immortality, and the whole thing is too fantastic to take seriously. In spite of all that, it was a great atmospheric thriller featuring a much more complex hero-villain relationship than most films of its ilk.

And Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a pivotal role. You could almost say she's the lynchpin of the film.

For our next exhibit, we have even better news:

OK, the true-blue horror geeks can generally deal with it when you remake something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because everyone knows that flick, but when it comes to titles like, say, Near Dark -- we tend to get pretty protective. (It's sorta like you and that one band you loved -- years before everyone else loved 'em.) Word out of all the different horror sites (well, the three I trust, anyway) is that not only will there be a new rendition of Kathryn Bigelow & Eric Red's brilliant cult classic Near Dark, but a screenwriter has already been hired for the gig.

The good news is that Matt Venne, the guy who just turned in his screenplay for White Noise 2, seems to have his head screwed on where Near Dark Redux is concerned. As quoted at Fango, Venne says "there are images in the original film and in Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow’s screenplay that are absolutely beautiful. Completely dreamy and captivating. Pure poetry. It’s an incredible project, and I’m honored to be writing it."

So the good news is, the screenwriter recognizes the special nature of the original film. The bad news is, his vast writing resume includes the fucking White Noise sequel and an episode of Showtime's lousy Masters of Horror series.

Oh, and this is going to be another of Bay's Platinum Dunes productions, in case you weren't aware.

Near Dark, for those who haven't had the pleasure, is a blisteringly cool Southern-fried vampire noir from 1987 that was written by Eric (The Hitcher) Red and directed by Kathryn (Point Break) Bigelow. Although the flick features strong performances from Adrian Pasdar as one unlucky lad and Tim Thomerson as his devoted pop, the three blood-soaked standouts had just gotten done working together in Aliens. As a devilishly evil trio of bloodsuckers, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton are just perfect together.

That's right: Eric Red is getting the double shaft. Don't feel too badly for him though, from the look of things, Bay's going to be giving audiences the Ted Haggard treatment many times over for years to come.

Henriksen is on record as saying he'd be up for the remake, now rumored to be a prequel, which makes no sense if he's supposed to play a younger version of his characters in a movie that won't come out until over 20 years after the original. Lance was in the When A Stranger Calls remake, however, so his enthusiasm is hardly encouraging.

"What is it, Asshole Day?"

So The Wife mentioned an article she'd read yesterday about TV-watching as a possible cause of autism. Disorders on the so-called autistic spectrum are pretty varied, both in severity and in characteristics, so I sort of take any sweeping causation argument with a large block of salt, especially one I haven't bothered to read.

Then, while checking Eric Berger's SciGuy weblog, I see he's also talking about it. Then I read the line that suddenly brought everything into focus:

Gregg Easterbrook of Slate has a rather inflammatory piece on whether TV viewing by young children could cause autism later in life.

Gregg fucking Easterbrook. The same guy who told women that men force them to have sex because their masculinity demands it and who equated Hollywood's love of violence with the filthy Jew's love of filthy lucre is still getting paid to report on things about which he knows fuck all:

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.
[...]
The Cornell study is by Waldman, a professor in the school's Johnson Graduate School of Management, Sean Nicholson, an associate professor in the school's department of policy analysis, and research assistant Nodir Adilov.

Wow, a study appearing on the school's business school website should certainly be given as much credence as an article appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, shouldn't it? I eagerly await the Johnson Graduate School of Management's guidelines on avoiding heart disease and maintaining proper dental hygiene.

But the fact that rising household access to cable television seems to associate with rising autism does not reveal anything about how viewing hours might link to the disorder. The Cornell team searched for some independent measure of increased television viewing. In recent years, leading behavioral economists such as Caroline Hoxby and Steven Levitt* have used weather or geography to test assumptions about behavior. Bureau of Labor Statistics studies have found that when it rains or snows, television viewing by young children rises. So Waldman studied precipitation records for California, Oregon, and Washington state, which, because of climate and geography, experience big swings in precipitation levels both year-by-year and county-by-county. He found what appears to be a dramatic relationship between television viewing and autism onset. In counties or years when rain and snow were unusually high, and hence it is assumed children spent a lot of time watching television, autism rates shot up; in places or years of low precipitation, autism rates were low.

So...rain causes autism? No wait...humidity causes autism. Hold on, I've got it...Doppler radar causes autism. Quick, somebody find a university web page that upholds my assumptions.

Everyone complains about television in a general way. But if it turns out television has specific harmful medical effects—in addition to these new findings about autism, some studies have linked television viewing by children younger than 3 to the onset of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—parents may urgently need to know to keep toddlers away from the TV. Television networks and manufacturers of televisions may need to reassess how their products are marketed to the young. Legal liability may come into play. And we live in a society in which bright images on screens are becoming ever more ubiquitous: television, video games, DVD video players, computers, cell phones. If screen images cause harm to brain development in the young, the proliferation of these TV-like devices may bode ill for the future. The aggressive marketing of Teletubbies, Baby Einstein videos, and similar products intended to encourage television watching by toddlers may turn out to have been a nightmarish mistake.

I don't think anyone would argue that TV is somehow beneficial to children, but printing up this kind of scare tactic bullshit - bullshit that has no basis in any kind of scientific or medical research, I might add - is typical of Easterhack's irresponsible need to drum up controversy without bothering to devote a scrap of critical thought to his endeavors. ESPN fired him for his Jew comments, and yet people continue to give this douchetastic jagoff money to crap out the occasional column, blog, or rambling football piece stuffed with clumsy puns and creepy cheerleader fetishism.

How the hell do I get that gig?

Bigmouth strikes again

Hey Morrissey, shut the fuck up:

Singer Morrissey has waded into the controversy over the new Oxford animal research laboratory by warning those working on the site �we�ll get you�.

The singer used a concert at the city�s New Theatre on Thursday night to hit out at the �20 million biomedical research laboratory site currently under construction in South Parks Road.

He branded Oxford �the shame of England� for allowing the laboratory and told fans: �If you agree with vivisection, go and be vivisected upon yourself.�

The vegetarian former Smiths frontman and animal-rights activist, who is currently promoting a new album Ringleader Of The Tormentors, has long courted controversy.

In an interview with fanzine True to You earlier this year, he said he supported �the efforts of the Animal Rights Militia in England� and understood �why fur-farmers and so-called laboratory scientists are repaid with violence - it is because they deal in violence themselves and it�s the only language they understand�.

Please tell me you've never been vaccinated, my mopey Mancunian friend. In fact, you should probably eschew all medications, including aspirin and antibiotic salves, since maximum dosages for those were determined - that's right - by animal testing. Not only that, but just about every piece of medical equipment and procedure out there is in existence thanks to it as well. The comfort of your entire petulant existence is provided to you by the very experimentation you deride.

Animal-rights activists are, he said �usually very intelligent people who are forced to act because the law is shameful or amoral�.

Congratulation, posturing like that puts you on the same moral plane as the Army of God and Eric Rudolph. Stick with the topics you're most familiar with, Stephen, like Oscar Wilde, pomade, and men's fashion, and leave science to the scientists. A simple "thank you" for not having to die of smallpox wouldn't hurt, either.

And Johnny Marr was the heart and soul of the Smiths.

What would Jesus protest?

I've been puzzled by some of the most recent religious protests in a number of predominantly Christian countries, so maybe someone more tuned in to their spiritual side could tell me, given the following options, which do you think would have the King of Kings/Number One Son/El Christo up in arms the most?

1. Fictional movies like The Da Vinci Code and The Last Temptation of Christ - one of which has the temerity to suggest that Jesus got married and had children, the other only showing it in a dream sequence.

2. Madonna's latest tour, in which she warbles a 20-year old song while suspended from a cross.*

3. The removal of a feeding tube from a woman whose brain was all but non-functioning, the act of which neverthless managed to mobilize both state and federal governments with a speed not seen since some washed up singer flashed a boob during the Super Bowl.

4. The development of a vaccine which could prevent the development of 70% of HPV-related cervical cancers. The kicker: it may be more effective when administered to girls at puberty.

5. The Catholic Church's sustained pattern of obfuscation and buying off the victims of decades of systematic child abuse committed by members of the clergy.

Now guess which one(s) have garnered the most passionate response from church and "family" groups? I'll give you a hint: it's not #5.

*I'm 100% in agreement with Scott; if she really wanted to be edgy and provocative, she'd hang herself from a Muslim crescent.

Burning down the (White) House

I'm assuming most of you have seen Stephen Colbert's fantastic speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner last weekend. If not, you can check it out here. Go on, I'll wait:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Full link here, I think.

I can't decide if the AP intended this as an intentional whack job when they invited him to speak, or if everyone was just unbelievably clueless. Regardless, Colbert managed - in 20 short minutes - to shred not only the President, but the lickspittles in the media who've allowed his crimes to go unchallenged for six years.

The 15 of you who read this blog (18 when the Chron links to it) have grown used to the occasional barb flung Bush's way, and there are plenty of other bloggers out there with a much greater readership doing a much better job. But Colbert managed to singlehandedly tear down much of the sycophantic and misleading bullshit surrounding the current Administration on a national stage, and he did it with the President sitting not 15 feet away. The man has, as Bullet Tooth Tony might say, "big brave balls."

Predictably, the apologists have come out in force to describe how Colbert "bombed." Right. The reporters, military officials, and government lackeys in the audience weren't laughing because he had them dead to rights. If someone on stage was calling me out as a toadying coward (the WH press corps) or a spineless yes-man (the military), I probably wouldn't be laughing either.

Unless I was Antonin Scalia, apparently. That boy ain't right.

"...a worthless shred of human debris"

Rush never inhaled:

Firebrand radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was charged Friday with fraudulently concealing information to obtain prescription drugs, but prosecutors will drop the charge after 18 months if Limbaugh remains in treatment for drug addiction, his lawyer said.

Limbaugh also agreed to pay the state of Florida $30,000 to help cover the cost of the investigation into the conservative radio personality's alleged "doctor shopping," a felony in Florida.
[...]
The single charge will stand until Limbaugh has finished 18 months of drug treatment. Then, under the agreement with the Palm Beach County state attorney, the charge will be dropped, [Limbaugh attorney Roy] Black said.

"As a primary condition of the dismissal, Mr. Limbaugh must continue to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past two-and-one-half years," Black said. "This is the same doctor under whose care Mr. Limbaugh has remained free of his addiction without relapse."

During the investigation, authorities seized prescription records from several drugstores from which Limbaugh obtained 2,000 pills over six months, prosecutors said.

Last year, Black said Limbaugh was prescribed eight hydrocodone pills a day for seven months, "which is not excessive and is in fact a lawful dose."

Hydrocodone is a potent painkiller that can become addictive.

Mmmm...sweet, sweet hydrocodone.

Sorry, where were we? Here's some things Rush previously had to say about the scourge of drugs in society:

"And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

"Too many whites are getting away with drug use...Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."

Limbaugh had no problem with the ACLU, whom he'd previously vilified, coming to his defense either.

I haven't listened to Limbaugh since I moved to D.C. in 1995 and had nothing but an AM radio to entertain me on my two-day drive in the U-Haul. I was soon faced with a choice: drive off I-30 into a river near Fulton, AR, or turn the radio off. I opted for the latter, and am generally happy I did so.

With stories like these, I generally err on the side of hoping the person in question gets the help he needs. Not so much here. Limbaugh has waged a 20-year campaign of disinformation in this country with little or no check on his lies. His influence may be lessened, but his legacy is set, and would best be capped off by forced retirement from the airwaves, a brief stint in the "Wayland Flowers and Madame seat" on Hollywood Squares, and an anonymous, bitter death.

Which means we can look forward to a post-rehab book and attendant publicity tour in about a year.

"The Church Police!"

Big surprise, the Catholic group Opus Dei is displeased with their portrayal in a certain hit novel:

The conservative religious group Opus Dei has asked for a disclaimer on the upcoming film based on the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code."

Opus Dei, portrayed as a murderous, power-hungry sect in the novel by Dan Brown, wrote in an April 6 letter to Sony Corp. that a disclaimer would show respect to Jesus and to the Catholic Church.

"Any such decision by Sony would be a gesture of respect toward the figure of Jesus, to the history of the Church and to the religious beliefs of viewers," Opus Dei wrote in the letter, which was posted on its Italian Web site.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it exceedingly hilarious/pathetic that the Church is more concerned about the portrayal - in a work of fiction - of a Catholic organization as a bunch of ruthless murderers than they are in addressing or correcting the very real evils perpetrated by members of its clergy for the last fifty years.

In reality, they should be thanking Dan Brown, because depicting Opus Dei members as badass albino ninjas is sure to have thousands of 13-year old boys clamoring for membership. Maybe that was the intent all along.

Ollie Ollie insight free

Normally I leave the point-counterpoint with the likes of Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg to those with the steely resolve required to actually read their bilge all the way through. However, this one, written by none other than Oliver North, caught my eye:

Yesterday, November 10, was the 230th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps. Today, November 11, is Veterans� Day. Lance Cpl. Aaron Mankin, USMC, observed both celebrations from Brooke Army Medical Center here in San Antonio. He�s been here for months�recovering from burns and wounds he received earlier this year near Al Qaim, Iraq. I was there, covering his unit for FOX News when the Assault Amphibious Vehicle he was in was blown apart by an improvised explosive device. This week, I was privileged to spend part of this year�s Marine Corps anniversary with him here in San Antonio. It would have been nice to have introduced him to some of the fools in Hollywood.

It�s pretty clear that those making movies in Tinsel Town don�t know any real men like Aaron Mankin. They apparently prefer cowardice over courage; witless whiners to real patriots; gutless wimps and hollow phonies to men who know the meaning of self-sacrifice and integrity. That�s the only conclusion one can draw after seeing Hollywood�s latest anti-military travesty: Jarhead.

Three and a half stars on Film Threat! Goddamned pinkos.

The newly released film is loosely based on an anti-Marine screed crafted by Anthony Swofford, who purports to be a �veteran� of Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-91. Mr. Swofford maintains it is an accurate depiction of his military experience, from boot camp�where he claims to have been abused and belittled by a maniacal drill instructor�to his mutinous �tour of duty� in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War.

"Purports?" That would seem to be an easy thing to check out. And I thought we were all on board with the abusive DI as being essential to all post-Vietnam military comedy.

"A witty, profane, down-in-the-sand account of the war many only know from CNN, this former sniper's debut is a worthy addition to the battlefield memoir genre," says a book review by Publisher's Weekly. But this is no �Battle Cry��by Leon Uris�a real battle memoir by a real Marine. The plug for CNN could easily have read, "ABC," "CBS" or "NBC" � for all the so-called mainstream media have covered war and warriors with equal disdain. And just in case the reader is dense enough to misunderstand what the work is really about, the reviewer helpfully notes that Mr. Swofford "questions whether the men are as prepared as their commanders, the American public and the men themselves think they are."

One might conclude from the book and movie reviews that this is simply another antiwar epic. But this isn�t Red Badge of Courage or All Quiet on the Western Front�two great books and films that accurately depict the horror and carnage of war. Nor does Jarhead contain any of the cutting, satirical humor of M.A.S.H. or Catch-22�both of which portray war�s futility.

Uh, Jarhead isn't supposed to be satire. And Swofford comes at war from a completely different angle than Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front. Swofford has issues with the bureaucracy that keeps a soldier from being outfitted with the correct equipment and receiving conflicting orders, while Remarque concludes that all such endeavors are ultimately futile. Both agree, however, that even the soldiers who survive combat are essentially screwed.

It�s not that Hollywood has always failed those who fight our wars. During and after World War II, every studio produced films that encouraged a war weary nation�and showed American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines as committed, courageous and compassionate. But that was the "good war"�and as the fictional Saving Private Ryan proved�both in critical acclaim and at the box office�decades after it ended, Hollywood remains comfortable making movies about the great crusade against fascism.

Every studio was also receiving government money to produce pro-war propaganda. We'd have to wait until after the "good old days" of the late '40s and '50s to see realistic accounts of the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, or the internment of Japanese-Americans. And we're still waiting for an accurate film representation of the Roosevelt Administration blocking European Jews from entering this country during the Holocaust.

But clearly, "winning" a war isn�t a prerequisite for a positive portrayal on the silver screen. Though the Korean War ended in stalemate�the first war we didn�t "win"�film-makers were still able to show the Americans who fought there in a positive way. The Bridges of Toko-Ri�based on Michener�s novel�has a tragic ending like the war in which it was set�but it is still a saga of bravery and self-sacrifice.

This really appears to be North's whole beef with Jarhead: nobody dies. Bravery - such as when Swofford and his squad advance into enemy territory - is pointless if it turns out they weren't facing any actual enemy. The fact that these guys didn't know that is lost on our humble narrator.

Even the much-maligned Vietnam War has a small handful of films accurately depicting the valor and perseverance of those who served there. We Were Soldiers Once, based on the account of Gen. Harold Moore and reporter Joe Galloway, of the events of November 14-16, 1965, when 450 U.S. soldiers were airlifted into Ia Drang Valley and immediately surrounded by elements of the North Vietnamese Army's 66th Regiment is an example.

Wow. One film apparently equals "a handful." Add The Green Berets and you've got a bushel. Then again, you have to ignore Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, Hamburger Hill, and one of my favorites, 84 Charlie MoPic.

Other "losing campaigns" have been chronicled by cameras without denigrating those who served. The magnificent film, Blackhawk Down�depicting the true-life story of Rangers and Army Delta Force operators who were sent on a disastrous raid into the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, is a case in point.

Black Hawk Down was this generation's Heartbreak Ridge: a gung ho representation of a conflict that, in the larger scheme of things, meant almost nothing. Black Hawk Down is to 9-11 what the latter was to the 250 Marines getting blown up in Beirut: a way to make us feel better about our growing impotence in an increasingly unstable and insurgentcworld.

Given these profitable precedents, why do the power brokers and financial geniuses in Hollywood choose to make a movie such as Jarhead and release it coincident with a Marine Corps birthday and Veterans� Day? The film has absolutely not one character or scene containing any redeeming virtue or value. It is an excessively vulgar movie without a moral or a point. With our nation at war�this film is not just antiwar�or rotten to the Corps�though it is certainly that. Jarhead is anti-everything that is good and decent.

For starters, I imagine the "financial geniuses" didn't really care about it being Veterans' Day. They're in this to make money, not worry about trampling your delicate sensibilities. Then again, Jarhead was released a week beforehand, so maybe Ollie's a little off.

As for "no redeeming virtue or value," those are pretty big words coming from the guy who let David Keith play him on TV.

During a week when Americans honor the Corps and thank their veterans, Jarhead cheapens and distorts the heroism, warrior spirit, superior intellect and selflessness of America's fighting forces. Those who participated in making this nihilist flop deserve nothing but scorn in return.

That being the case, what's the appropriate reaction to a guy who sold arms to terrorists in order to use the profits to flout the U.S. Constitution and sell arms to the Contras? How about a guy who was found guilty of perjury and shredding documents to cover his ass? Is "scorn" enough? How about "pointing and laughing at the traitor who writes for the same web site as Ann Coulter?"

Catching up with APCB

This was one of the things I'd hoped to write about this weekend while the Whiterose.org connection was wonky. It's probably not as funny now. Assuming it ever was.

Over the next few months, posters reading "In God We Trust" will appear in every Glynn County school classroom.

Although the school board knows the posters have potential to stir up controversy, it feels they are legal under state law because no tax dollars are being used, reported WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Fla.

The posters are the idea of Brunswick's First Baptist Church, which is paying for the printing and framing. Boy Scouts will distribute and hang the posters -- expected to be in every school by next year.

"'In God We Trust' is the national motto -- it's on every single dollar bill," said Debbie Brown of First Baptist Church. "It's just important that our students understand, one, where our foundations are based, and, two, it's connection to our country."

Seeing as how the so-called "national motto" didn�t actually appear on the dollar bill until 1957, maybe Ms. Brown would consider these options, all taken from Warner Brothers cartoons of that same year:

"Hassan chop!"
"Kill the wabbit!"
"Wild turkey surprise?"
"What? That rabbit�s name over mine?"
"I need, I say, I need a pointer. And that dog�s got just the head for it." (might be too wordy)
"Consequences, shmonsequences�as long as I�m rich."
"Magic helmet?"
"Acres and acres of Tweety Bird!"
"I�m rich! I�m a happy miser!"
"When in Slobovia, do as the other Slobs do."
"What�s up, duck?"

Selecting any of these would be just as logical as asserting that our country swears fealty to the monstrous nuclear chaos known as Azathoth (I assume that's the "god" to whom she's referring) while ignoring the doctrine separating church and state.

Motivation

How hard can writing a book be, if this gasbag can do it?

The book is about turning MSM conventional wisdom on its head and showing that the standard caricature of conservatives as angry/racist/bigoted/violence-prone crackpots is a much better description of today's unhinged liberals than of us.
[...]
It�s not Republicans taking chainsaws to Democrat campaign signs and running down political opponents with their cars. It�s not conservatives burning Democrats in effigy, defacing war memorials, and supporting the fragging of American troops. And it�s not conservatives producing a bullet-riddled bumper crop of assassination-themed musicals, books and collectible stamps.

Yeah, all the Republicans are doing is fabricating and massaging intelligence information to start a war, intimidating those who oppose such actions* by bullying them publicly and outing their covert operative spouse, or otherwise performing acts that would've gotten you shot had they been committed during our last "good war."

Did the Democrats start rumors about the Clinton Administration murdering Vincent Foster (or circulating the "Clinton Death List?"). Were the Democrats the one who spread lies about McCain's wife, or that he might have fathered a child by a *shudder* black mother? Or organized the Swift Boar Liars? Or smeared Max Cleland?

And those are just a few of the examples from the "crackpots" who are actually in power. I don't have the time and you don't have the patience to go tit for tat regarding the unending tide of horseshit spewing from the likes of Savage, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Malkin herself, who seems to think a few defaced signs and a couple of thrown pies(!) are equivalent to perjury, slander, and sending 2000 Americans to die for no good reason.

To see just how deeply this unhinged disease has infected the entire party leadership and its liberal body politic, you'll have to buy the book.

$18.45? For 231 pages? Thanks, but my usual brand of TP is only .79 a roll.

* Something which is guaranteed us in the Constitution, as some who cry "treason" whenever something is pointed out that goes against their talking points seem to forget

"Now they'll never save your brain, Hitler"

California Nazis. I hate California Nazis:

Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.

They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.

Known as "Prussian Blue" � a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes � the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.

An all-white crowd in Bakersfield. Like that's a tough proposition.

Congratulations to the white supremacists. It only took you 14 years (Blood in the Face, which is where I first heard the idea put forth, came out in 1991) to raise some cute teenaged girls to put an attractive face on your ideology. Maybe in another decade and a half you can assemble an all-male group that doesn't cop the overcompensating closet case look.

"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white � we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

Trust me, you don't need to sing White Power ballads to "keep being white." Short of joining the Blue Man Group or getting the wrong color blood in a transfusion, I'm pretty sure the girls will stay Caucasian for the rest of their lives.

As for the alleged disadvantages of "muddling" our racial purity, I frankly wish there was a little Guatemelan or Vietnamese in my background. Maybe then my predominantly German-Irish digestive system could handle something spicier than corned beef and cabbage or Braunschweiger.

Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."

April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs � specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

What is it about home schooling that attracts the fundamentalist and the bigot? Oh right, it allows them to shield their kids from anything that might make them realize Mom and Dad are full of shit.

And a swastika on the pickup? Finally, Chevy and Ford owners have a common cause to rally against.

Songs like "Sacrifice" � a tribute to Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer � clearly show the effect of the girls' upbringing. The lyrics praise Hess as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up."

"It really breaks my heart to see those two girls spewing out that kind of garbage," said Ted Shaw, civil rights advocate and president of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund � though Shaw points out that the girls aren't espousing their own opinions but ones they're being taught.

C'mon...Hess parachuted into Scotland to try and convince Britain to let Germany fight the Soviet Union unmolested. That the man had slightly more respect for the lives of the English over those of the heathen Communists hardly makes him a pacifist.

And while I agree with Shaw to a point, these kids are getting to the age where they need to start questioning what they've been taught. I find it horrible that they've been brought up the way they have, but if they're ever going to free themselves from Mom's brainwashing, now's the time.

Seen at Blog d'Elisson

"Wow...info-tainment."

If you're a college professor and you want to take a day off from lecturing, why not just show a movie like they used to do in high school? It amounts to the same thing:

Hollywood beauty Cameron Diaz gave students at Stanford University a huge shock on Thursday when she turned up unannounced to give a lecture on environmentally friendly design. The Charlie's Angels star's appearance was filmed for the MTV series Stand In, where celebrities such as Marilyn Manson, Melissa Etheridge and Kanye West have appeared as guest lecturers at colleges across America.

I'm torn on how to react to this. My thrifty adult self considers the idea of Diaz, Manson, or West lecturing me on anything other than: the Justin Timberlake nobody knows, how to smoke opium laced with human bones, or why the CIA wants to kill all black people (respectively) laughable, and would likely ask the university to refund my tuition for those credit hours.

Then again, my college-aged self probably wouldn't have shown up for class anyway, since I'd most likely be sleeping off the cumulative effects of a twelve-pack of Mickey's Big Mouth and an all-night Gamera marathon.

And sometimes, the jokes write themselves:

Earlier last week, Madonna surprised students at New York's Hunter College when she turned up to take a film class.

Oh, to have been a student a Hunter College last week...

"Could you compare and contrast the research required for your roles in Who's That Girl? and Desperately Seeking Susan?"

"If you ever get nominated for an Academy Award, do you think we'll see the frogs and the waters turning to blood, or will it just skip straight to three days of darkness and the slaying of the first-born?"

"Do you feel Jodorowsky is the true surrealist heir to Bu�uel, or do you think his later films like The Rainbow Thief betray an antiquated...just kidding, what's Lori Petty really like?"

Rollin' down the street, smokin' White Owls
Sippin' on Dole prune juice

It seems the "de-gangstafication" (coined after watching this movie) of yet another hip-hop figure has taken place.

Snoop Dogg could be forgiven for Old School, which was - at least - an R-rated comedy. Even that show he did for MTV upheld his image somewhat (though not as much as his critically acclaimed series of Girls Gone Wild videos). But TV commericials with Lee freaking Iacocca are too much.

Yeah, yeah...Chrysler needed someone recognizable to the kids to offset the fact that nobody under the age of 20 has any idea who Iacocca is. But if Snoop hadn't stepped up, I'm sure Ashton Kutcher, either of the Olsen twins, or Beyonce would have been only too happy to oblige. Lovingly referring to the CEO of Chrysler as "Mocha Cocca" and "Icazizzle" while sporting pastel-colored golf togs means the de-gangstafication of Snoop Dogg is complete. A pair of APCB bowling shoes and a Dale Earnhardt sticker (the number "8" "3" with a halo) are in the mail.

"I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a shadow."

Wonder if there's any way to revoke their polio vaccines:

A Staffordshire farm is to stop breeding guinea pigs for medical research after years of intimidation by animal rights activists.

The family-run Darley Oaks Farm in Newchurch has been at the centre of a campaign of abuse.

Owners and staff have received death threats during the six-year onslaught.

The family said they hoped the decision would prompt the return of the body of their relative Gladys Hammond, whose remains were stolen from a churchyard.

You know, I'm not unsympathetic to the animal rights crowd, but there's a difference between spraying Chanel No. 5 in a rabbit's eyes and using guinea pigs and mice to test medicines and cures for disease. And what bold activists we be, targeting a relatively undefended farm and robbing a freaking grave to get their point across, which is just the cherry on top of years of harassment:

It all started back in 1999, when John Hall and his brother Christopher's farm was raided by the Animal Liberation Front. They claimed that the guinea pigs bred there were kept in appalling conditions - a claim denied by the Halls.

Protestors also objected to the animals' use in laboratory experiments. A campaign was set up, called Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs, to force the Halls to close down their business.
[...]
What ensued was a violent campaign of intimidation that has seen people besieged at night inside their own homes.

They have had bricks thrown through their windows, their cars paint-stripped and buildings have been arson attacked. Smear campaigns alleging paedophilia, death threats, even threats against young children have left people traumatised and living in fear.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought one of the useful components of activism was winning others over to your cause. I'm still unclear on how screaming at little kids about murder outside a KFC or terrorizing an elderly woman accomplishes that.

Mrs Hudson is no vivisector, animal farmer or laboratory technician. She is simply the Hall family's cleaning lady. But in the highly charged atmosphere that has pervaded the campaign to shut Darley Oaks Farm since the Animal Liberation Front filmed guinea pigs in overcrowded conditions there six years ago, she is seen by some as a collaborator.

Bricks have been thrown through her windows, incendiary devices left outside her house, and a lifesize rag doll, with a noose round its neck, a knife in its chest and a note on its body saying: "This is me next," has been deposited at her front door.

Of course, to hear those suspected of involvement in this case, campaigning for the rights of "overcrowded" guinea pigs is only the latest effort in a grand tradition of civil disobedience:

Janet Tomlinson, 62, is accused of "stalking" the Halls with the frequency of her protests. Born and bred in Burton, Ms Tomlinson has much in common with Mrs Hudson. In her 60s, she also lives alone and has been touched by cancer, having been diagnosed with a malignant breast tumour last year.

But Ms Tomlinson said she had no sympathy for the cleaning lady. Although she denied any involvement in direct action, she blamed the police and Tony Blair for forcing legitimate protesters to adopt more extreme tactics. "The police have prevented lawful protest and forced people to take other actions. It's like the suffragettes when they used to lobby MPs at the Commons and then follow them home and smash their windows. It's like any pressure group - first you are ignored, then you are ridiculed, then you are bullied and then you win."

I wonder if the ALF people were in the same "Introduction to Bogus Analogy and Idiotic Hyperbole" classes as the members of Operation Rescue.

I want credit for this

Blogmarch (bl�g*m�rch)
v blogmarched, blogmarching, blogmarches

1. the blog-specific act of collectively piling on an individual for actions that are contrary to the authors' political beliefs, especially to portray that person in a negative light while selectively avoiding any sacrifices/contributions they may already have made

Example: Boy, the chickenhawks sure are blogmarching Cindy Sheehan around a lot lately.

q.v. frogmarch
see also smear, besmirch, malign, Michelle Malkin

Reaching out to the youth

This doesn't quite qualify as a panhandler story, because the kids in question were actually collecting money for a school-related function. I just found their...attitude fairly amusing.

So I'm going into Cactus Records for something (probably to drool over the boxed sets), and a couple of young black teenagers (wasn't that a band?) selling M&Ms or some such come up to me:

Kid #1: Excuse me sir, but we're selling candy to help our basketball team go to a tournament in Dallas.
Pete: I'm sorry guys, I don't have any cash.

This was actually a true statement. I remember the days of selling crap for high school groups, and how much it sucked, so I generally try to help out. On this particular occasion, however, I didn't have a dime. So I headed into the store.

Kid #1: Okay, thanks anyway.
Kid #2 [angrily]: I bet if it was for hockey you'd have the money.

That stopped me short, and I checked to make sure I didn't have my Aeros t-shirt on. Nope. Hot damn, that kid just racially profiled me.

I turned around.

Pete: What the hell did you say?
Kid #2: Nothing.
Pete: Look, goddammit. I don't have any money. I don't care if you're out here for basketball, hockey, or Australian rules football. I'm tapped.
Kid #1: Sorry.

I turned to go back into the store. I wasn't sure if they felt guilty or not, but I was having uncharacteristic remorse for snapping at the kid, who probably had been standing out there all day while yuppie shmucks like me walked in and out without giving them a thin dime.

Still, I have a reputation to maintain, so over my shoulder, I said:

But if it was for hockey, I'd go to the ATM.

Okay, not really. I do wish I'd thought of it at the time, however.

The Edumacation President

More stirring words from our Fearless Leader:

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Translation: "You're asking me whether or not my plummeting approval ratings mean I feel even more of a need to pander to my far-right evangelical supporters, who were a mite cheesed off at the Roberts nomination anyway, and if this is the easiest bone I can think to throw them, the answer is yes."

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation.

Well sure, what possible other explanation could there be except for some big, bearded guy shooting lightning from his fingertips? You know, like Emperor Palpatine, only without the hatred for the Jedi.

After five years of this shit, not much surprises me anymore, and I don't know if I can keep summoning up the righteous indignation necessary to address it. Besides, considering how his foreign policy, energy, and environmental policies have all been such overwhelming successes to this point, why wouldn't Bush go ahead and put his distinctive stamp on education?

Of course, as is usually the case, he's going about this all wrong. The name "Intelligent Design" automatically raises hackles. Call it something like "Freedom Science" or "Origins of Mass Destruction" and everyone will sign off, no questions asked.

Monday Offspring Blogging

David Brooks is a pansy (registration required):

It's summertime, which means many people these days are flying with children, an experience that can be enriching and exciting, and is followed by memories that linger even after the shell shock, nightmares and trauma-induced facial tics have faded away.

Any airplane trip with children begins before boarding in the airport gate area, where the parents, dreading the next four hours of high-altitude agony, will be laying down a bed of psychic tension that will be the karmic foundation for everything that is to come. They will be coaching their children on how to behave, spreading maniacally upbeat good cheer and exuding the waves of anxiety that are almost clinically certain to produce a toddler meltdown.

I can see something like this happening for parents flying with children for the first time. After that, they adopt the attitude recommended to me by a helpful flight attendant on SWSNBN's first airplane trip (to Philadelphia) when she was about two months old. She was letting me hole up in the galley for a bit after a diaper change, while the little poopsmith dropped back off to sleep. I thanked her, saying I was sure the other passengers appreciated not being near a crying baby. Her response? "Fuck 'em. You have just as much right to be here as they do. They can take the bus if they don't like it."

I made a quick mental note to avoid eye contact from that point on, even as I nodded my assent.

Since then, my daughter has flown four more times. I recently added a DVD player to my laptop so she could watch her baby crack Elmo DVDs, but half the time on this last flight she didn't need them, being content to play with the airphone, the window, or the assortment of books and magazines we brought. Not since her maiden trip, however, have I experienced anything approaching "waves of anxiety."

That is, no more than usual when boarding a giant metal coffin that will soon be hurtling through the air at unnatural speeds.

The airlines helpfully have families with small children board first, which gives parents an extra 45 minutes to play peekaboo even before the plane takes off. As the craft fills up, it becomes clear they and their kids have been seated in a special sadist section, among Idi Amin, the etiquette committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution and a perfect 4-year-old wonder child who will spend the whole flight quietly reading The Economist.

Parents in these early stages of a flight usually devote their fevered energies to entertaining their children. Many parents begin by reading board books in that super-attenuated nursery school tone of voice, and then, sadly, singing to their children every song they know, beginning with age-appropriate lullabies and ending up with a medley of hits from the Spice Girls.

Easy there.

Toddlers sense when their parents are running out of first-rate material and begin squirming and rebelling. This causes the parents to frantically redouble their efforts to distract and entertain, and soon they are behaving like Jerry Lewis on a sugar high - acting out any desperately silly routine they think will occupy their little ones' minds and keep them from letting out their inner Damiens.

Here's a hint for future parents out there: pre-boarding is for suckers, and for precisely the reasons Brooks describes. All getting on the plane early does is provide an extra 45 minutes for your kid to get bored with being on the plane early. We spend the initial boarding calls letting SWSNBN run around the gate and tire herself out, then get on with the rest of the stragglers.

We also don't have any more gear than anybody else, save for a diaper bag that's malleable enough after 19 months of use to squeeze, rat-like, through cracks 2 inches wide. It's no problem to crush it into the overhead bin. While everybody else's kid is freaking out after being read all their Dr. Seuss books twice, ours is still enjoying the fabulous bargains offered in the SkyMall catalog.

It is an iron rule of plane travel that the parents who are trying to hush their children are more annoying to their fellow passengers than the children who are being hushed. Accordingly, other fliers in the area begin to develop hostile feelings toward the desperately shushing parents.

Right. An "iron rule." Makes me wonder where "shushing parents" rank in inflight annoyance alongside drunks, those with poor personal hygiene, and guys who yell across the aisle at each other about what great golf games they had.

Anybody who thinks it takes a village to raise a child has never sat near a crying baby in first class. In these circumstances, if it were up to the village, somebody would be stapling the brat's mouth shut and somebody else would be locking mom in the overhead storage compartment.

Brooks has now effectively lost the 99.5% of his audience that doesn't fly first class. Shit, I've been flying for 30 years and have only been in business class once, and that was thanks to a British Airways flight attendant who took pity on us during the Great Passport Crisis of 1999 (a story for another time).

The children are now completely out of control and are behaving as if they were raised by feral wolves. They will be pummeling the seat in front of them with their feet or else playing other manic airplane games, such as Tray Table Trampoline. Amid the frenzy, parents will observe that one child has turned green, which means that every passenger along the aisle between them and the restroom will be an unwitting participant in a contest called Air Sickness Roulette.

This whole thing reads like a bad stand-up routine. I kept waiting for him to start talking about the food next.

The final hour of the flight is aptly captured by Picasso's painting "Guernica." Parents are strewn about in heaps, hardened air marshals are weeping under the strain, the kids look like flesh-eating Beanie Babies, and the pilots emerge to complain that because of the kids' crying they can't hear the air traffic controllers (this actually happened to my family).

Gee Dave, you must sit in...First Class.

I keep these "offspring entries" to a minimum because I know few of my childless readers want to constantly hear about what a blessed wonder my perfect genius of a baby is. Even when I do, I try to avoid the mistake Brooks is making, i.e. telling hyperbolic tales of his valiant adventures in parenting. You chose to have kids, Dave. So did I. Raise them without acting like a martyr and maybe they'll grow up less whiny than their dad.

Wiener take all

This is getting as embarrassing as Australia's run of America's Cup victories in the 1980s:

For the fifth straight year, it was a victory Takeru Kobayashi could truly relish. Kobayashi, 27, captured the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest Monday, gobbling a nauseating 49 dogs in 12 minutes � but missing his own world record of 53 1/2, set at last year's July Fourth competition.

The win means the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt will return to Japan for the ninth year out of the past 10. New Jersey's Steve Keiner, who won in 1999, is the only American to capture the title in the past decade.

Kobayashi, of Nagano, stands 5 feet 7 inches and weighs just 144 pounds.

Shameful, my countrymen, utterly shameful. As if it wasn't bad enough that our technical and scientific prowess has succumbed to "brain drain" and the encroachment of fundametalist dogma masquerading as biology and paleontology, now a nation that once proudly held the title of "world's fattest" can't even seize the hot dog eating crown for some scrawny Japanese guy?

The runner-up was Sonya Thomas of Alexandria, Va. � known as The Black Widow on the competitive-eating circuit � who set an American record by downing 37 hot dogs in the same 12 minutes.
[...]
Thomas, who weighs a remarkable 105 pounds, is a rising speed-eating star. Last December in Atlantic City, N.J., she finished off 89 meatballs � about six pounds' worth � in 12 minutes. And in August, she captured a lobster-eating contest in Maine by consuming 38 of the creatures in 12 minutes.

I absolutely love the coverage this shit gets. Even better is getting to watch something like this on ESPN, which gave up being a "sports" channel when it started running poker tournaments 18 hours a day. For the record, anything you can do as well or better while drunk is not a sport, and binge eating certainly falls into that category[1].

If they insist on showing this crap on sports stations (and not, say, the Food Network), the least they could do is air a follow-up program on Discovery Health or TLC where the contestants can go to the next logical step and have a Puke-Off or something similar. In the interest of being thorough, they really owe it to us to provide full coverage.

It's nothing less than these role models deserve.

[1] As do bowling, darts, billiards, cards, dogsled racing, and golf.

"Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant."

Fight the power, Mr. Blackitts.

Everyone knows condoms prevent pregnancy and protect against sexually transmitted diseases. But how well do they work? That question is at the center of a debate over whether the labels on condom packages should be changed.

On one side are abstinence advocates, including a conservative congressman who is blocking appointment of a new federal drug agency chief until the labels are changed. On the other side are "safe sex" advocates who fear label changes could undermine confidence in condoms and increase the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Each side has some truth in its argument: Condoms are very effective against the AIDS virus, but data for their effectiveness against some other STDs is surprisingly spotty.

"They do not provide 100 percent protection, but for people who are sexually active they are the best and the only method we have for preventing these diseases," said Heather Boonstra, a public policy official with the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.

Boonstra said Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, a physician from Oklahoma, and the abstinence-promoting Medical Institute for Sexual Health are "manipulating this data to drive home their own anti-condom, anti-contraceptive message."

Sorry to break in, but the "Medical Institute for Sexual Health" is a hilarious name. The only way it would be any better is if they called it the CompuGlobalHyperMegaInstitute for Scienceology.

Oh, and is he a Congressman or a Senator? Could he be both? That's Oklahoma for you.

The Medical Institute for Sexual Health's board chairman, Dr. Tom Fitch, who has previously pushed FDA officials for label changes, said some STDs are much more easily spread than others. In addition, STDs such as herpes and human papilloma virus, or HPV, can be transmitted by contact with skin not covered by a condom.

Fitch said he would not discourage condom use, but his group advocates abstinence or monogamy and it trains teachers how to teach students about abstinence.

Honestly, I don't disagree witb his assertions about contact risk, but it's one thing to provide information for different risk percentages and another entirely to use scare-mongering to foist your anti-sex agenda on us.

Man, remember when people used to worry about herpes?

Yeah, neither do I.

That's an "unrealistic explanation" for young people, said Dr. Shari Brasner, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York who has patients as young as 13 who are sexually active. "These conservatives are the same people that are trying to limit access to the morning-after (birth control) pill. They'll leave us with nothing."

Here's an idea...as long as we're hung up on truth in advertising, lets agree to change the wording on condom labels to reflect relative risk factors, provided Sen. Coburn's church posts a big sign out front that states the following:

"Despite this church's claims that it more accurately presents the word of God than its competitors, in reality, there is no way to determine the accuracy of that particular allegation. In truth, there's no substantial evidence the assertions made by those calling themselves 'Christians' are any more valid than similar ones by Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, pagans, or animists.

Actually, when you get right down to it, there's really isn't any proof that a supreme being even exists. For that reason, we can't be held responsible for your prayers going unanswered, your puppy not getting into heaven, and the continued existence of homosexuals and fornicators, no matter how hard you wish 'god' would strike them dead."

I'm going out on a limb and assuming the guy isn't Buddhist.

"Blood stains, speed kills
Fast cars, cheap thrills"

I do so love a thoroughly researched, cogently argued grass roots campaign:

I appreciate the notice (addressed to "Speed Humps" at my address) that these are actually going to be put in, since I hadn't heard any updates since I signed the petition in favor of their installation last year.

I'm not sure who the Brainiac who hastily scrawled this missive is, especially since he was too chickenshit to leave a return address, but I've pretty much narrowed it down to the assclown who drives his crappy Mustang at 50+ MPH, or one of the dickheads who's fond of zipping his mini-bike up and down the road for hours at a time.

While always a bit ambiguous on the subject, I gave my support to the proposal anyway. I mean, even though I don't "allow my children to play out front unattended," that doesn't quite translate to allowing our neighborhood high schoolers to barrel down the street at will, blithely assuming no toddler will end up tangled in their undercarriages.

Hopefully, my neighbors will realize that claims the humps will "ruin you front end" and lower our "property value" are bullshit. Unfortunately, I still don't know what "No Speeders" means. Are they saying nobody speeds on our street now? 'Cause that's a load of crap. Maybe he's lamenting the fact that we won't have the god-given American right to endanger the citizenry by putting the pedal to the metal once these socialist speed humps are installed.

Anyway, "speed humps" is a funny term. It makes think of either a porno movie about a serial premature ejaculator or a documentary about camel racing.

"Abortions for some. Miniature American flags for others."

Peter Durkin, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Houston and SE Texas wrote an editorial that appeared in yesterday's Houston Chronicle commemorating the 20th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut:

Forty years ago, on June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut recognized an individual's right to privacy in family planning matters and provided the first constitutional protection for legal access to birth control. In its ruling, the court struck down a Connecticut law that made the use of birth control by married couples illegal. The court's decision came five years after oral contraceptives became available to American women and nearly 50 years after Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States.

This historic decision paved the way for the nearly unanimous acceptance of contraception that now exists in this country. The Griswold decision has resulted in profound and beneficial social and health changes, in large part because of women's relatively new freedom to control their fertility. Maternal and infant health has improved dramatically, the infant death rate has plummeted, the unintended pregnancy rate has also declined and women have been able to fulfill increasingly diverse educational, social, political and professional aspirations.

That "nearly unanimous acceptance of contraception" Durkin describes is less and less widespread every day, unfortunately. In Texas, some high school textbooks don't even include state-mandated contraceptive information, choosing instead to instruct students to "get rest" in order to avoid STDs.

Despite the societal advances made since granting access to birth control, 40 years later we find ourselves still fighting to protect the fundamental right to decide when and if to bear children. We hear of pharmacists who refuse to fill doctors' prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception, health insurance companies that don't cover birth control but do cover drugs such as Viagra, and state legislatures, including our own, that misguidedly focus on the more politically and morally charged debates over abortion rather than striving for common ground on preventing unintended pregnancies.

That last part is really the crux of it. No one wants more abortions. But those that do occur should be conducted in a safe environment, and everyone should have correct information about birth control.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment, however:

Yes, well, the one SURE way to prevent an unintended pregnancy is by abstaining from sex, but Planned Parenthood is against abstinence being taught in schools. And some of us don't consider killing babies on-demand, to be a societal advance.

For starters, Planned Parenthood isn't against the teaching of abstinence, but rather against it being the only option in sex education. Because we all know how effective that is.

The "killing babies on-demand" line makes for tasty propaganda, however. The image of women lined up in front of the clinic, impatiently looking at their watches while they wait to enter the abattoir is conveniently appalling, and - of course - ignores the emotional anguish most PP clients go through in making their decision. And that's before they have to maneuver their way through dozens of mouth-breathing scumbags thrusting doctored pictures of fetuses in their faces.

Durkin is the same compassionate person who celebrated the fact that abortion procedures have risen dramatically over the past twenty years:

Abortion procedures: 2,882 vs. 6,876. This growth in clients is thanks to our Fannin and Bryan staff, our medical director and other staff physicians.

That is so offensive.

Offensive? Hardly. Clumsily worded? Perhaps. Let me give it a try:

This growth in clients is thanks to our Fannin and Bryan staff. Specifically, our workers who provide such helpful assistance to our clients and our volunteers who assist them in entering our facilities (in spite of verbal abuse and harassment of not just themselves, but also their families and friends). Our medical director and other staff phsyicians, who continue to provide services to low-income women even while their associates are murdered and they and their families are threatened by cowards hiding behind anonymity and cloaked in self-righteous fundamentalism.

Besides that, they missed another key number in the newsletter:

Total client visits: 55,885 vs. 104,000 today. this remarkable growth is thanks to our hard-working clinic directors, clinicians, and medical services staff.

Wow, look at that. Almost 100,000 people visited a Planned Parenthood clinic for things like birth control, pre-natal care, and gynecological examinations. Funny how that never seems to come up, but then, I suppose it doesn't jibe with the anti-choice crowd's image of Planned Parenthood as a collective of slavering butchers dragging teenage girls out of cheerleading practice to have their wombs involuntarily scraped.

And it's not even Peter Gabriel's best album

Ginger has some comments about the state of homeland security. Specifically, the hoops she had to jump through to see the Statue of Liberty:

First you go through an airline-style screening before you get on the ferry to go out to the Statue and Ellis Island. They advise you to arrive two hours in advance of your ticket time at the Statue to go through security. The boat takes about 10-15 minutes to get there.

When you enter the Statue, you undergo a second round of security that�s even tighter than airport security. Backpacks and other large bags have to go in lockers and you have to get rid of your food and water (the latter being particularly important on a hot day when you�ve been standing in line for a long time).

In addition to x-raying your purse and walking through the metal detector, you go through a machine that effectively pats you down with air puffs. If the security guys don�t like what they see, they pat you down and make you empty your pockets.

I don't doubt that the SoL would be a fine symbolic target for "the terrorists," but all this seems pretty extreme. Two hours? And the thing won't even start walking around like it did in Ghostbusters 2? What a rip-off.

I'd like to try that air puff thingy. You'd have to go commando to really enjoy it, however.

Back in 1993, I spent some time backpacking across Europe (this is a bit of an exaggeration, as my father was living in Strasbourg at the time, which provided me the opportunity for at least a few decent meals and a couple nights' sleep every week or so). My flight back home left Frankfurt at 7 AM, and I entered the terminal having not slept the night before (all-night train ride) or the night before that. I had six weeks growth of beard and the red-rimmed eyes of a man who'd spent the previous month and a half drinking his weight in Fischer Amber and sleeping on couches and in train stations. Needless to say, I wasn't the most attractive of foreign travelers.

The German army provides airport security, and they take the job pretty goddamn seriously. Obviously noting my resemblence to Billy Hayes, one of the soldiers standing sentry at the entrance took me by the arm and threw me against a wall, casually aiming his MP-5 at my kidneys while his comrade frisked me and went through my duffel bag. Not finding much besides dirty underwear and Bay City Rollers bootlegs, they sent me on my way.

I recall being somewhat surprised by the search, but not overly so. This was the land of Baader-Meinhof, hijackings, and that little imbroglio they called the Cold War, after all. I even remember commenting about this to people here after 9-11, that Americans were going to have to get used to their airports being more like European ones have been for the last 30 years.

Now I'm not so sure.

The gap between "increased security" and "police state" is still fairly wide, but I don't see how anybody can argue that preemptive arrests, random car searches, and backscatters aren't pushing it closer together. We all want to feel safer, but multicolor alert systems and a hysterical media aren't helping. Maintaining a climate of fear is in the Administration's best interests, though, because it justifies pretty much anything they do.

And a terrorist isn't going to stand in line two hours to blow up the Statue of Liberty. He's going to use a jetski, a la Will Smith.

Wouldn't it be easier just to hate her for On Golden Pond?

Enablers, one and all:

Jane Fonda's new movie Monster-in-Law has been banned by two Kentucky cinemas, in protest against the veteran actress' anti-American stance during the Vietnam War. Pictures of Fonda controversially clapping with a group of North Vietnamese soldiers in 1972 were displayed outside the Elizabethtown Movie Palace, as a sign of the owners' disgust. And a notice outside the Showtime Cinema in nearby Radcliff simply informs film fans, "No Jane Fonda movie in this theater." Elizabethtown resident Ike Boutwell, who trained pilots during the Vietnam War and is leading the campaign against Fonda, says, "I think when people do something, they need to be held responsible for their actions. When you give the enemy aid, it makes the war last longer." In the film, Fonda plays Jennifer Lopez's villainous prospective mother-in-law who desperately tries to stop J.Lo marrying her son.

Fonda's "enjoying" more attention in the last few months than she's had for years. First there was Michael A. Smith, the guy who waited and hour and a half in line to spit tobacco juice in her face, now this, all because of her 1972 trip to Hanoi.

Not being very aware of my surroundings at the time, I couldn't really tell you what effect Fonda's visit had on the war itself. The situation in Vietnam was bad enough in 1972, from what I understand, that Fonda's little tour doesn't seem like it would've swung the tide of public opinion against the war. That said, I understand the rancor some veterans feel at her actions.

Then again, has the spitter also gone to Robert McNamara's house to deliver his trademark brand of slobbery justice? McNamara, after all, had more to do with the deaths of 58,000 US troops (and millions of Vietnamese) than Fonda ever did. Smith famously fled the scene after expectorating on Fonda, but maybe he was rushing to urinate on the graves of LBJ and Nixon. No?

I've never ascribed treasonous motives to Fonda's actions because I think almost all of the big moves she's made in her life and career have been calculated solely to bring attention to Jane Fonda. She must have figured protesting the war and calling returning POWs "liars" when they described torture at the hand of their captors was safe enough in the climate of the time, and did everyone one better by going to North Vietnam. Little did she know her publicity stunt would come back to bite her on the ass for as long as it has. Her VC junket was her belated way to cash in on the protest movement, just as she glommed onto the fitness craze in the early '80s. Even her recent "apology" was timed to coincide with the release of her autobiography and her return to feature films.

Theater owners are, of course, free to decide what movies they want to show, even if Boutwell is wrong that Fonda ever gave the North Vietnamese aid. It's not my business if they want to keep the spotlight focused for a few more minutes on her. I just have to wonder if either theater ever screened Fog of War.

The song remains the same

Having recently discussed my love-hate relationship with the music of Ryan Adams, I thought tonight's conversation with The Wife was somewhat interesting.

While in the car on our way to our favorite smoke-filled bar, the new song by Adams and his band The Cardinals, "Let It Ride," came on the radio. There was a distinct pause in our conversation, after which The Wife piped up with the line that had playing around the fringes of my consciousness at exactly the same time: "God damn Ryan Adams."

"Let It Ride" is a great song: tuneful, finely written, and just long enough to leave you wanting more. Once again, the spoiled brat of singer-songwriter music has produced something of sublime brilliance, which only makes some of us resent him further.

As the song ended, I presented the missus with my associated moral quandary. To wit: is it ever acceptable to steal/bootleg an artist's work if you find the person reprehensible in some way? Maybe the guy has a record of spousal abuse, or is on record as making anti-Seimitic statements, does it then become a matter of measuring the artist against your own code of ethics when deciding whether or not to download a free copy of their work?

I opined that this could be the case, for instance if the artist in question was a rabid pro-lifer (Tad Williams), or had espoused homophobic sentiments (Shaggy, Axl Rose). The Wife, being less philosophically intransigent than yours truly, said she'd be more forigiving of someone having different political beliefs, but would have fewer qualms about bootlegging the work of someone she regarded as an asshole (i.e. Adams).

My views on the issue are somewhat more black and white. I tend to think ripping off another's work is wrong, and if you really have that big of a problem with another person's beliefs or actions, you should just avoid their work altogether (which ties in with my view that any sports team that continues to use Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part 2)" at their games is enabling his child porn addiction).

Going beyond that, if you look hard enough at any artiste, you can probably find ample reason to view them with distaste. Lewis Carroll has a penchant for little girls, and Dave Sim is an unrepentant misogynist (among other things), to name but two blatant examples. I guess too many Stella Artoises(?) have gotten me rambling, but the question I would put to you is: what sort of criteria (if any) would you use to justify downloading free copies of the works of certain singers/authors/actors/directors, if you weren't simply going to ignore them in the first place?

In Cod We Trust

Because there's no issue so troubling we can't find a way to merchandise it (via MetaFilter):

Do you believe God belongs in government?

Do you believe President Bush is doing The Lord's Work?

1) If so, congratulations - you enjoy a medieval concept of society shared by the likes of Osama Bin Laden and fundamentalists from Iran to Indonesia. Funny old thing, life.

2) I've heard that the lord works in mysterious ways, but sending (at last count) 1600 kids to their deaths for a lie and using fear and hatred to create a nation of quivering, obediant automatons sounds like something the other guy might get behind.

Sorry, were those rhetorical questions?

Now you and I both know that merely coexisting with those of other faiths is for pussies, but - unfortunately - you still have to share the roadways. If only there was some way to demonstrate your moral superiority to other motorists...

If you are tired of secularists telling you that The Lord has no place in our government and our public institutions, then show them that you disagree.

This symbol, this site, and this car magnet have been created for the millions of Americans who support the President and his vision for a government that embraces religion, morality, and family values. It shows worship to the Lord, respect for the President, and hope for all.

Finally, something to proudly display next to your "Support Our Troops" ribbon (made in China) and the one commemorating your child's perfect attendance at Eisenhower Elementary[1]. Because nothing demonstrates your insecurity in your faith and weak grasp on the Constitution better than plastering your vehicle/house with jingoistic knick-knacks.

I thought this site was a joke, a la Landover Baptist, but haven't found any evidence to that effect yet.

[1] "Memo to self: blow up Eisenhower Elementary." - Cobra Commander

Down in front

Everyone's hailing this news like it actually means something:

If you're a moviegoer who hates sitting through the Fandango sack puppets, coming attractions and Inconsiderate Cell Phone Man, here's some really good news. Loews Cineplex Entertainment will begin advertising movie showtimes with a note saying most movies actually start 10 to 15 minutes later because of all those commercials, public service announcements and previews.

The note will start appearing in newspaper and Internet listings for the theater chain beginning next month, said John McCauley, Loews' senior vice president for marketing. Loews owns 200 theaters nationwide.

I hate "The Twenty" (Regal Cinema's excruciating barrage of ads and NBC program previews) and the fact that my $7.50 still doesn't keep me from having to sit through Toyota commercials as much as everyone, but this is pointless. And here's why:

So Loews thinks its helping matters by encouraging people not to show up until the movie actually starts (in other words, after the lights have already dimmed and during or just after the previews)? Marvelous, I can't wait for the legions of conscientious movie consumers standing in the aisles and squinting into the darkness while muttering to each other, "What about up there?" and, "Is there anybody sitting by her?" or, "Do you mind scooting down?"

Yes, Cletus, I do mind scooting down. See, I got here on time, meaning I get to sit wherever I want. If I choose to have an empty seat between myself and the thyroid case spilling over his armrest two seats over, and all that's left for you and your date are two end seats on the third row, well, try showing up early next time instead of plying the little lady with just one more drink in the hopes of getting some theater gropeage.

I admit, I'm spoiled. Most of the movies I see are press or promo screenings. The latter usually consist of a dozen or so people in the theater, and the only drawback is having to listen to a bunch of Pauline Kael wannabes drone on in industryspeak for 20 minutes. The promo screenings are another matter, as they're usually thrown by a radio station and feature loud and pointless trivia contests beforehand. Generally, I can tune it out, but it's occasionally hard to avoid the shrieking and wild gesticulation of the borderline shut-in behind you trying to get their hands on a crappy undersized t-shirt simply because, hey, it's *free*.

The change was a response to complaints from moviegoers, he said.

Yet, McCauley said he thinks few people will arrive later because of the notice.

"We still think people enjoy coming early, getting their popcorn, finding their seats, talking amongst one another," he said.

It's a legitimate complaint. Hell, when we finally went to see Sin City last month, I almost gnawed through my own foot sitting through "The Twenty" (and I'd even missed half of it because I was standing in line for drinks).

But what McCauley is leaving out is the fact that "talking amongst" ourselves is now "yelling at each other" because the goddamn ads are so loud. A better stance for Loews would've been, "Hey, people are already getting reamed at the box office, why are we forcing them to pay for a slew of annoying commercials and crappy entertainment 'news' segments."

Or if they are going to keep the advertisements, how about charging less than $4 for a Coke?

Poor Time-ing

I don't have a lot to add to what I wrote last year (and please excuse the comment spam) about the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. The murder of 168 people remains the second worst terrorist attack on American soil, and recent upswings in militia and white supremacist activity serves to remind us that the threat of domestic attack is far from over.

Adding insult to injury, Time Magazine has seen fit to put Ann Coulter on their cover this week. For those of you who are only familiar with Coulter from her delusional hyperbole about America-hating liberals, here's what she had to say on the subject of the OKC bombing (courtesy of This Modern World):

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
--Ann Coulter as quoted in the New York Observer, Aug. 20, 2002

"RE: McVeigh quote. Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'"
--Ann Coulter, from an interview with Right Wing News

There's also an e-mail link so you can let Time's editors know how you feel about their decision to legitimize this cadaverous harpy's deranged rantings. Feel free to use it.

I have the phrase "cadaverous harpy" copyrighted, however.

And it goes a little something like this

While out on a top secret mission Saturday night (the subject and details of which I will most likely divulge here at a later date), I had occasion to drive around several of Houston's finer drinking establishments. Of those I visited, I have to single out Han's Bier Haus on Quenby, recently purchased by some friends of ours. If Canadian beer and bocce ball are your thing, you owe yourself a visit.

Anyway, as I was pulling into my final destination of the evening, I became aware of a car driving nearby with its stereo turned up to "eardrum apocalypse" levels. This is nothing new for Houston, or anywhere people with no knowledge of tinnitus or bass distortion dwell, but what made this particular instance amusing was the person driving the car in question.

After a few initial winces, I was able to determine that the song playing was, in fact, "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed (best known for its use in the ending credits for the Dawn of the Dead remake). Nothing shocking here. After all, n� metal ranks behind only hip hop and shitty Latino radio for car stereo popularity in Houston. No, what made this particular aural offense so delicious was the fact that the guy driving was easily in his mid-40s: bald except for patches of graying hair over the ears, Drew Carey-style eyeglasses, and that gleam in the eyes of a man whose wife and kids are out of town and he's gonna PARTY, goddammit.

As someone who has demonstrated - time and time again, and always while The Wife and child were out of town - that I lack the alcoholic fortitude of my early 30s (much less my mid-20s), I can appreciate the guy's walk on the "wild" side. Think about Joel taking the Porsche out in Risky Business. Except, in this case, "Joel" is in denial about the onset of middle age, and instead of a 928, he's driving a Subaru Outback. His choice of music really bothered me, however, and while I always knew it was related to the age issue, only now am I able to articulate it.

I'm not going to lie and say I don't blast my music when I'm driving. Sometimes, on those rare Houston days when one can do so, I even play it with the windows down. However, I always abide by one rule: you can't play loud music that was released when you were older than, say, 25.

Now, I don't know exactly what that age is. It's arbitrary, like when you should get married or the rules of soccer. I'm going to guess it's the mid-20s, which would still put the song in question well out of this guy's acceptable range of use. I chose 25 because that's when males finally get a break on their car insurance, but feel free to use whatever criteria you feel comfortable with. Provided it's not over 30, because that's just silly.

One minor codicil: you're allowed to continue playing songs by bands that you were listening to at the age of 25. So most everyone can play Creedence, for example, at "11" if that's their bag.

This addendum also conveniently allows me to keep annoying my neighbors with "Los Angeles is Burning" by Bad Religion.

Flinch along with Mitch

Oh Mitch, what would Morrie say?

Best-selling author Mitch Albom apologized Thursday to readers of the Detroit Free Press for incorrectly reporting that two former Michigan State players were at Saturday's NCAA basketball game. He said he wrote the column before the game took place.

Albom said he based the column on what former Michigan State players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson told him they planned to do. He said he wrote the column in the past tense, as if the events already had happened, because the story had to be filed Friday afternoon -- a day before the game -- but would appear Sunday.

The Free Press said in a correction Thursday that Cleaves and Richardson were not at the game against North Carolina after all -- their plans changed because of scheduling conflicts.

That's good journalism. I suppose it would've been too hard to write something like, "Cleaves and Richardson are planning, along with many others, to sit in the stands in their MSU clothing and root for their alma mater."

As factual errors go, it's hardly up there with Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair (the latter of which Albom himself publicly denounced in his column some time ago), but it leads me to wonder how many times this has happened before. Filing stories early based on speculative information is hardly something new, and if the Free Press digs deeper and find this is part of a continuing pattern, well, the guy gets what he deserves.

I'm of two minds about the whole thing. On one hand, do we really hold "entertainment journalists" to the same standards as actual news reporters? If so, why don't more people (aside from the subjects themselves, that is) get up in arms over egregious info printed in People or US Weekly? Albom screwed up, but it sounded more like actual laziness than willful intent to lie at first glance. It isn't like he made up rumors about a ballplayer's sex life.

On the other hand, we have his "apology:"

While it was hardly the thrust of the column -- which was about nostalgia and college athletes -- it was wrong just the same. You can't write that something happened that didn't, even if it's just who sat in the stands. Perhaps, it seems a small detail to you -- the players still love their teams, they are still nostalgic, they simply decided not to go after the column had been filed -- but details are the backbone of journalism, and planning to be somewhere is not the same as being there.

So I owe you and the Free Press an apology, and you have it right here. It wasn't thorough journalism. While our deadlines would have required some weird writing -- something like, "By the time you read this, if Mateen and Jason stuck to their plans, they would have sat in the stands for Saturday's game" -- it should have been done. We have high standards at this newspaper, and I have high standards for myself. We -- the editors and I -- got caught in an assumption that shouldn't have happened. It won't again. Thanks.

Wow, that was like one of those mea culpas that weren't really mea culpas I used to give griflriends when I'd pissed them off ("I'm sorry for whatever I did that might have upset you"), Except Albom doesn't even say he's sorry. And as for the factual error "hardly being the thrust of the column," if you actually read the column you realize the whole damn thing was devoted to Cleaves and Richardson and their recollections. He didn't write something as (relatively) harmless as "among those in the stands at Saturday's game were..." but actually used them as the centerpiece of the article, with quotes and everything. I know, he interviewed them beforehand, but the impression he leaves you with is that he was talking with the guys at the game itself.

Finally, I need to divulge that I have a deep and abiding loathing for Mitch Albom and his work. His columns, which only use sports as a metaphor for whatever mealy-mouthed inspirational message Albom feels like pimping this week, are loaded with the kind of sanctimony I hope dies off with Andy Rooney. The condescension of his column about why "Star Wars geeks need to get a life" was the direct inspiration for my spiel about why the bahavior of sports fans isn't far removed from that of so-called nerds, behavior-wise.

The less said about the reverse peristalsis-inducing Tuesdays with Morrie, the better.

After seeing Albom doing the interview rounds for his latest manipulative work of genius, The Five People You Meet in Heaven (subtitled: "For Those Who Found It's A Wonderful Life Too Complicated), it became apparent to me that Albom doesn't believe any of this bilge he's selling. He mouths his platitudes and offers his groundbreaking inspirational insights (he could�ve just written �I�m okay, you�re okay� on an index card and been done with it), but you can see the dollar signs in his eyes as visions of #1 on the New York Times bestseller lists dance in his head.

All the same, I can't honestly hope for him to be fired. If he is, that'll just give him time to write more books.

Dem bones

After my umpteenth time hearing someone refer to a dangerously underweight person as "Skeletor," I feel compelled to step in and say, "Now I am Master of the Universe "Enough."

This is Skeletor:

As you can see, he's not a slender overlord. Ridiculously low body fat? Sure. Skinny face? Absolutely, but unless it's only in reference to one's head, using his name to deride an emaciated person is incorrect.

In the future, may I suggest the following to replace "Skeletor" when referring to bony adversaries:

Twiggys
Lara Flynns
McBeals
Pumpkin Kings
Harryhausens

You get the idea. Leave poor Skeletor alone.

Good news, everyone!

Even if you're unable to walk, talk, nourish yourself, change your own clothes, or communicate in any way whatsoever with the outside world, the government will still make sure you'll be fed by a tube for the remainder of your cognitively inactive days:

The House of Representatives stepped in with legislation that would delay removal of a feeding tube from a brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband has been given permission by a state court to let her die.

The House acted late Wednesday evening after a Florida appeals court refused, earlier in the day, to block the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
...
The House bill, passed on a voice vote, would move such a case to federal court. Federal judges have twice turned down efforts by the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, to move the case out of Florida courts, citing a lack of jurisdiction.

Senate Republicans are introducing a separate bill to give Schiavo and her family standing in federal court, and they hope it can be debated on Thursday, a GOP aide said.

Finally, we can add "Persons in Persistent Vegetative State with No Likelihood of Improvement" to "Zygotes and Blastulae" on the comprehensive list of Organisms the GOP Care About. Poor children, pregnant women, and just about anybody else can go piss up a rope, apparently.

Fifteen years. Forgive me, but I don't care what kind of rudimentary swallowing relexes have been witnessed, fifteen years without speaking or moving independently seems pretty demonstrative of "vegetative" to me. Let the poor woman die already.

Under the House legislation, a federal judge would decide whether withholding or withdrawing food, fluids or medical treatment from an incapacitated person violates the Constitution or U.S. law.

It would apply only to incapacitated people who had not left directives dealing with being kept alive artificially and for whom a state judge had authorized the withholding of food or medical treatment.

Consider this another argument for getting your living will in order, I guess.

It's been asked before, but are there any actual conservatives left in the Republican party? Now they're going to clog up federal courts with this kind of case? I guess states' rights only apply to things over which the Christian right don't get their panties in a bunch.

The Florida appeals court said in Wednesday's ruling that the issues the Schindlers' raised were not new ones and had been dealt with previously by numerous courts.

"Not only has Mrs. Schiavo's case been given due process, but few, if any similar cases have ever been afforded this heightened level of process," Chief Judge Chris Altenbernd wrote.

Silly judge. Now, more than ever, there's no facet of your life the federal government isn't happy to screw up. If we allow Terri Schivao to die, it will be yet another victory for the terrorists who don't value the culture of life the way we do.

And we'd appreciate it if you didn't bring up those 35 people Florida executed in the last 15 years, mmmkay?

As if they didn't have enough PR problems

How bad does it piss off the Catholic Church off they can't just ban the damn thing, like in the good old days?

Genoa Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who previously was a high-ranking official of the Vatican's office on doctrinal orthodoxy, told Vatican Radio on Tuesday that the runaway success of [The Da Vinci Code] is proof of "anti-Catholic" prejudice.

Allegations in the novel that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and has descendants have outraged many Christians and have been dismissed by historians and theologians.

Hold on a sec...yep, just had to check that the definition for "novel" on Dictionary.com still starts out with the words, "A fictional prose narrative." Bertone makes it sound like people won't be able to tell the difference between the made-up events of The Da Vinci Code and the indisputable and unalterable facts of the Gospels. And that's just nutty.

"The distribution strategy has been absolutely exceptional marketing, even at Catholic bookstores � and I've already complained about the Catholic bookshops which, for profit motives, have stacks of this book," said Bertone, who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II.

Shocked, shocked I am to learn that businesses associated with the Catholic Church might be interested in making money. That's as crazy as saying an organization dedicated to eradicating abortion would also counsel against using birth control.

Asked about commentary that the book's success is "only further proof of the fact that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice," the cardinal exclaimed. "It's the truth."

"There's a great anti-Catholic prejudice," Bertone said. "I ask myself if a similar book was written, full of lies about Buddha, Mohammed, or, even, for example, if a novel came out which manipulated all the history of the Holocaust or of the Shoah, what would have happened?"

Admittedly, the only ones who seem to get all "jihad-y" about their respective holy men being dissed in a work of fiction are radical Muslims, so you're in good company there, Cardinal.

As for novels about the Holocaust, I'm sure they're out there, but I imagine the Jews have their hands full dealing with so-called "experts" claiming it never happened in the first place.

"It's a big old shit sandwich and we're all gonna have to take a bite."

Four more years? The first one's barely started and already we get this:

Erasing medical bills, credit card charges and other debts in bankruptcy soon will become more difficult under landmark legislation that has vaulted its last major hurdle before Senate passage.

The legislation gliding toward congressional passage following Tuesday's procedural vote in the Senate would constitute the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. bankruptcy laws in a quarter-century.

Banks, credit card issuers and retailers have pushed for eight years for bankruptcy revisions that would force more people to repay at least part of their debt. It nearly passed in 2002 � failing when the Senate accepted, but House Republicans rejected, a Democratic amendment barring protesters from using bankruptcy to avoid paying court fines for blocking abortion clinics.

This year, with four more Republican senators, the abortion provision was rejected Tuesday on a 53-46 vote. Later the Senate voted 69-31 to limit further amendments, close the debate and hold a final vote this week.

Those with insufficient assets or income could still file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which if approved by a judge erases debts entirely after certain assets are forfeited. But those with income above the state's median income who can pay at least $6,000 over five years � $100 a month � would be forced into Chapter 13, where a judge would then order a repayment plan.

Critics say that's unfair because many people who file for bankruptcy have lost their jobs, or are going to lose them.

Not in the eyes of the idealogues and corporate whores pushing this bill. To them, people filing for bankruptcy belong to the same category of lazy Americans who breed to increase their welfare checks and charge up big screen TVs to their Visa, then laugh all the way to bankruptcy court. It also just happens to catch all those indolent slugs who go bankrupt due to catastrophic illness, or from owing credit card companies who - thanks to this same bill - are now free to charge over 30% for some debt.

According to current law, a bankruptcy judge determines under which chapter of the bankruptcy code a person falls � whether they have to repay some or all of their debt.

Sensing a long-elusive victory at hand, Republican backers exulted Tuesday and urged colleagues to move speedily through remaining Senate deliberations.

"The sooner we finish work in the Senate and get the bill to the House, the sooner our bankruptcy system will be focused as it should be on helping those with real need, and less vulnerable to abuse by consumers who have the ability to repay their debts," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the bill's primary author.

Except for the wealthy, who are allowed to create trusts to protect assets like homes in some states. Trusts cost a lot of money, meaning you and I are out a house if faced with bankruptcy. An amendment to eliminate this (S.AMDT.42) was defeated, as were these:

S.AMDT.15 - Requiring credit card companies to disclose how long it would take to pay back a debt if the consumer only made minimum payments.

This Administration obviously has little faith in our math skills. First they won't provide accurate figures for the future of Social Security, now this.

S.AMDT.16 - Protecting servicemen and veterans from means testing in bankruptcy, among other things.

I guess those yard signs are wrong: you can support the troops or you can support President Bush. Supporting both woud seem to be symptomatic of someone who'd had their corpus callosum severed.

S.AMDT.17 - Providing a homestead floor for the elderly. S.AMDT.29 - Protection for medical debt homeowners.
S.AMDT.32 - Preserving existing bankruptcy protections for individuals experiencing economic distress as caregivers to ill or disabled family members.

"Fuck the old and the sick" is going to be an interesting campaign position for these guys in 2006.

S.AMDT.37 - Exempting debtors from means testing if their financial problems were caused by identity theft.

Serves them right for leaving their identity out there all sexy like that. They were probably asking for it.

S.AMDT.47 - To keep harassing and violent abortion protestors from hiding behind bankruptcy laws.

Pro-lifers are swiftly becoming the most coddled group in the country, legislation wise, though you wouldn't know it the way they bemoan how oppressed they are and equate their struggle with that of Martin Luther King, Jr.

S.AMDT.49 - Protecting employees from being deprived of earnings and retirement if a business files for bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, they'll keep bailing out the Enrons and Worldcoms who run their companies in the ground after buying ivory backscratchers and plundering their emplotyees' 401(k)s.

Never mind, I just saw some queers who want to get married. Forget I said anything.

"You dropped your tampons, Satan."

I caught part of a commercial the other day for some product I don't remember (but was probably for a pill that gives old men boners), but what I do recall was that the set-up featured a young man enduring the apparent supreme embarrassment of buying a box of tampons for his girlfriend. Various recognizable touchstones of the experience were used, including the dreaded price check over the PA system and the pointing and laughing of his peers.

Sweet Tampax of AMPAS, is this still something guys worry about? I suspect not. More likely, those savvy advertising types have run out of CG babies and beer-fetching dogs to shill their useless crap and so have resorted to the next best thing: the attempted emasculation of the red-blooded American male.

Meh. Most guys realized early on that the key piece of information communicated to the rest of the crowd at Albertson's while standing in the checkout line with a box of Playtex, or depilatory cream, or panty hose, was that we were actually enjoying the intimate company of a member of the opposite sex. Next time you fine gentlemen tending to your SO's needs feel shamed, ask the guy with the copy of Maxim and the Totino's Extra Cheese which hand he's going to use that night.

And besides, how many times has that special someone brought home a six-pack or a couple of burritos for you? Your alleged manhood can take the hit.

Shhhh, the grown-ups are talking

Sounds like somebody struck a nerve:

American comic Rob Schneider has furiously labeled movie critic Patrick Goldstein "unfunny" and "pompous" for his attack on his contribution to cinema. The former Saturday Night Live star has taken out a full-page advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter attacking Goldstein's article on January 26, in which he blasted movie studios for making lackluster sequels like Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

Goldstein is obviously "unfunny" because he refuses to recognize the subtle comic genius of Schneider's oeuvre, a sampling of which I've listed below (with their respective freshness ratings from Rotten Tomatoes):

Home Alone 2 - 20%
Judge Dredd - 17%
Down Periscope - 11%
Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo - 24%
The Animal - 29%
The Hot Chick - 21%
Around the World in 80 Days - 32%

And that's not including the movies Schneider appeared in thanks solely to his coat-tailing of Adam Sandler.

There are movie critics who specialize in crankitude, to be sure, but ratings like those are hard to ignore. What they say, Rob, is that the reviewing community as a whole tends to feel your contribution to cinema has been sub-par, to put it politely.

But since we all know movie reviewers are bitter assholes and failed actors/writers themselves, and in the interest of keeping things from getting too "pompous," I decided to check the Internet Movie Database user rankings. IMDb users are notoriously forgiving of most crap, so maybe they'd offer a more honest perspective. And I suppose they did: the movies listed above averaged a 5.2 user rating (and I was kind...I left Surf Ninjas out).

What this means, Rob, is that the everyday IMDb user finds your movies to be bigger wastes of celluloid than Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (6.4). How's that for a mandate?

Schneider writes of Goldstein, "Most of the world (has) no idea of your existence. Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for 'Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter'. I can honestly say that if I sat with your colleagues at a luncheon, afterwards they'd say, 'You know, that Rob Schneider is a pretty intelligent guy' ... whereas, if you sat with my colleagues, after lunch, you would just be beaten beyond recognition."

Which "colleagues" are those? Does Stallone still return your calls? Do you and Kelsey Grammer get together for squash on Thursdays? Frankly, unless you've got Jackie Chan on your buddy list somewhere, I don't think Goldstein has anything to worry about.

As someone who's been on the receving ends of threats from the director of a movie I slagged (this one, if anyone cares), I find it hilarious that Schneider blew good money on a full-page magazine ad to whine about how unfairly he's treated by the critics. You make $1 million plus per contrived and obvious movie...what the hell do you care what Patrick Goldstein says? You want financial success? Keep making the same old formulaic - and yes - unfunny crap. Want critical acclaim? Make better goddamn movies.

You've built a nice little career out of jokes about fat chicks and retards and appearing in your slightly more humorous comrade's films. The life you've been allowed to carve out for yourself by not underestimating the American public's tolerance for lowest common denominator humor is a comfortable one, so don't get all pissy when somebody calls you on it.

A prince among assholes

Amazing to think the kid's handlers let him go through with something like this:

Britain's Prince Harry apologized on Thursday after he wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party two weeks before Queen Elizabeth is due to lead the country's holocaust memorial events.

In the latest of a string of gaffes, Harry, 20, wore a red and black swastika armband and an army shirt with Nazi regalia at the party at a friend's house on Saturday.
...
"I am very sorry if I have caused any offence," Harry, youngest son of the late Princess Diana and heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, said in a statement. "It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize."

Saying he's sorry "if" he caused offense shows how sincere he is in his sentiments. As for the costume itself, You be the judge:

Well I remember the fate that befell the guy who wore an SS uniform to a Halloween party a few years back. I'm sure there are plenty of old timers who'd be only too happy to bury the little inbred idiot up to his neck in a Victory Garden in lieu of that non-apology.

Be my baby

BREAKING NEWS: Today's couples discover raising kids is, like, hard and stuff:

Struggling to divvy up child-care duties after their little boy was born a year ago, Tina Anderson and her husband, Greg, almost hit the rocks. "We had a fight over whether to bathe the baby with a sponge or a washcloth. I was ready to get in the car and leave him. That's how nuts it gets," said the Colleyville mother.

More couples are finding the shift from partnership to parenthood a painful surprise. Too often, the transition to starting a family brings the opposite of the idyllic closeness couples dreamed of � including arguments, conflict and strife.

The pattern is so pronounced that a prominent research group, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., said in its 2004 annual report, "Children seem to be a growing impediment for the happiness of marriages."

First off (and seeing as how I have successfully reared another human being to the venerable age of one and am now an Expert), if you're fighting over sponges versus washcloths, you might as well call it off now. At least before you get to the whole "whole vs. 2%" milk debate.

Speaking only for myself, I never thought having a child was going to be "idyllic." I'd seen enough of my peers transform into the living dead as a result of sleep deprivation and Wiggles exposure. As a pessimist, I can only say I'm pleasantly surprised our child hasn't vomited on my collection of Sgt. Rock comics. Yet.

Fretful parents also are taking on debt to gear up as never before; marketers have shrewdly positioned a flood of costly new products, from $300 crib-linen sets to $700 stroller-bassinet combos, as aiding babies' development. Average inflation-adjusted debt among households headed by parents younger than 35 has soared 33 percent since 1994, to $80,000; child-related spending is a major cause, said SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, a research firm in Princeton, N.J.

I assume this sort of thinking goes away with time, especially when parents realize their precious little darling is happier playing with a wooden spoon or cardboard packing tube than he/she is with that $75 Baby Mensa Cyrillic Block Set.

To avert the strain, some couples are taking new-parent training classes that go beyond the usual labor-and-childbirth instruction.

Reading this, I thought I'd finally found something in this article I sympathized with. Understand, I am a man grown. I've seen friends die and come close to dying myself, but I don't know that I've ever felt anything close to the fear that came from the nurse handing me my two-day old child and saying, "Good luck." I'd read baby books, but each one contradicted the other in significant ways (my own parents were no help, being all smug headshaking and assertions that I'd "get the hang of it"). The fact that somebody was trusting me - a guy who considers Campbell's Tomato Soup and Velveeta sandwiches acceptable sustenance for every meal - to raise a new life without accidentally dropping a bowling ball on it filled me with the blackest dread I'd ever known. So a training course consisting of something more substantial than a five minute diaper changing lesson and cloth vs. disposable diaper bullet points sounded like a great idea.

Then I kept reading...

In one example, a six-week, federally funded public program at the University of Washington in Seattle called "Becoming Parents" (www.becomingparents.com) has taught 235 expectant couples how to improve communication amid the demands of infant care.

Because that's really the most important part, isn't it? Knowing how to politely call your significant other a clueless boob when they put the Huggies on backwards?

How much if Randall Terry shows up?

I think this is just nifty (via Metafilter):

It's an ingenious idea. Create a no-win situation for anti-choice protesters � the more picketers who demonstrate outside a Planned Parenthood clinic, the more donations the Planned Parenthood clinic receives.

A number of Planned Parenthood affiliates have created different versions of this scenario. Here's how it works at Planned Parenthood of Central Texas (PPCT) in Waco, where the Pledge-a-Picket program is going strong: Each time a protester shows up at the clinic, a donation is made to PPCT. This campaign makes lemonade out of lemons by allowing Planned Parenthood supporters to pledge between 25 cents and one dollar per protester.

Despite the low pledge cap, which is designed to encourage donations, the money adds up, especially since the picketers never go away. Every month, participating donors get a short update on activities and a monthly billing for their pledge. It's like sponsoring a runner in a charity marathon.

There ought to be variables, though. I'd like to see increased percentages for every time one of these loving Christians calls a client a "slut," or maybe a set amount for when a member of the family values crowd thrusts a doctored picture of an allegedly aborted fetus in the face of a child coming in with their mother.

Once a week, PPCT puts a sign outside its clinic that says, "Even Our Protesters Support Planned Parenthood." To date, the Pledge-a-Picket program has raised $18,000 for PPCT. While not a significant chunk of its overall revenues, Pledge-a-Picket contributes greatly to PPCT's patient assistance fund, which helps clients who don't have resources get the care they need.
...
According to organizers, when the program was first launched, some of the protesters would shout, "Count me, count me!" not realizing apparently that they were raising money for the organization they were protesting.

It's hard to believe that the same people who tried to convince us abortion was linked to breast cancer might not understand something like this, I know. It's almost as if...they're missing the point entirely.

"Mind if I smoke?"
"No. Mind if I burp pastrami belches in your face?"

As if air travel wasn't relaxing enough (via Fark):

Passengers taking to the skies for U.S. flights could be checking e-mail and surfing the Web through high-speed Internet connections in a couple of years. And the day when travelers can chat away on cell phones while in flight might not be far behind.

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday approved technology giving airlines what could be a cheaper option to provide Internet connections. The commissioners also voted to solicit public comment about ending the ban on in-flight use of cell phones.

Give me scat munching at 20,000 feet or give me death.

I suspect a lot of the public comment will be along the lines of, "Huzzah: crying babies, misbehaving children, a beverage cart banging my shoulder every 20 minutes, and now the aromatic gentleman sitting next to me with shingles and the wet cough can loudly discuss his plans for spaying the dog with his wife. Are you going to issue handguns along with the peanuts?"

Left undecided by the FCC was how many companies would be allowed, through an auction, to offer the service. Verizon Airfone, which is the only company that offers seatback phone service, maintains that letting one company handle the service would ensure the best quality.

That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.

The FCC is concerned that cell phone use in an airplane might interfere with cell phone use on the ground. It will start taking public comment on the issue in early 2005, and a decision could be made within a year.

"The ability to communicate is a vital one, but good cell phone etiquette is also essential," FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said. "Our job is to see if this is possible and then let consumers work out the etiquette."

No wait, that's the funniest thing I've heard all day (and I have SATELLITE RADIO). I already hate to fly, and not in a "sweet jesus the wings are going to fall off" or "there's a gremlin tearing apart the engine" kind of way, but because I'm not what you'd call a people person. I'd rather drive halfway across the country than sit for an hour in an airport, sit three hours on a plane listening to Taylor and Jordan compare hair extensions, then stand 45 minutes waiting to see if the baggage handlers managed to punch another hole in my suitcase.

The only exception to this will be the day that cell phone usage is allowed on plane. I want to be on one of those flights, just so I can jump up, phone in hand, while the attendants are taking drink orders, and yell, "Let's roll!"

And Kathie Lee Gifford was airlifted in for moral support

OMG, like, who would've suspected a billion dollar retailing giant might pay its garment workers slave wages in order to keep prices low? As if:

Teen millionairesses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen demanded retail giant Wal-mart provide female factory workers in Bangladesh with maternity leave and benefits in New York Thursday. The Full House stars, 18, were horrified to discover the workers creating their Olsen Twins clothing line, which is sold in Wal-Mart stores, were working in poor conditions. Just hours after a protest by members of America's National Labor Committee (NLC) began at Washington Square Park near New York University, where the sisters are studying, Mary-Kate and Ashley signed the petition for Wal-Mart to give workers the "legal right to maternity leave with benefits".

"We were shocked," The Olsens added, "All this time we were sure our line of affordable cutting edge apparel was lovingly crafted by elves and pixies in the mystical Forest of Snickerdoodle, under the watchful yet compassionate eye of the Faerie Queen."

"Bangladesh" sounds silly enough to be made up. Maybe that's where they got confused.

"You're dirty, you hear? Dirty!"

I don't read Lileks, though I used to check out his Institute of Official Cheer and the Gallery of Regrettable Food way back when. My question is, has he always been a holier-than-thou crank, or is this a recent development?

He takes up the bugaboo of "morality" in one of his latest columns, using Clarence Darrow's closing argument from the Leopold and Loeb trial as his template. He also makes snarky asides asserting that we all really believe some greater power is behind our actions, even if we don't admit it and subsequently hide behind bogus explanations for our behavior like, say, "biology" and "mental illness."

The devil makes them do it. Oh, and there�s no devil. There�s �nature,� and �genes,� and other �mysterious� factors that combine to make us victims of our boiling synapses. But isn't it odd how the sociopath unable to constrain his desires never kills women on the courthouse square, but spirits away hookers in back alleys at 2 AM? It's almost as if he can control himself, isn't it.

Right. No one ever gets murdered in broad daylight in a public place. If nothing else, Lileks has single-handedly justified the criminal defenses of Mark David Chapman and Dan White, since it's apparently only sociopathic behavior if everyone can see you.

Finally, he gets to what I assume was the point of his piece, those damn, dirty airwaves. He specifically cites Howard Stern and "sex-shows in the Super Bowl," which I'm still waiting to check out, myself:

I suppose it comes down to this: you should have to seek these things out instead of having them come to you. Otherwise the coarsening of the public arena continues unabated, and the good & decent fathers who fought hard for Howard Stern�s right to say shit � literally � find themselves without an argument when the billboard across from their kid�s elementary school uses the same words. Today�s crusading moderate is tomorrow�s prude.

I guess his TV doesn't have an "Off" button.

Watch out when someone uses words like "coarsening" and "dirtying" and "filth" when referring to the broadcast spectrum, because all they really want to do is bring back the glory days of family TV, when Little House on the Prairie was the highest rated program, and cop shows got no dirtier than Dragnet. "Morality" doesn't equate to whether or not Stern (or Dale Jr., for that matter) lets slip with an f-bomb. Maybe my encroaching senility has erased the lessons of the logic class I once slept through, but when did bad language and more skin on HBO lead to matricide and pederasty?

Then he goes off the deep end:

It's amusing to read reviews of "Closer", a film that sounds like 100 minutes of attenuated gum surgery: four shallow bitter people trading lacerating quips with their transient sex partners. If you believe that puddle-deep self-obsessed people engaged in two-backed beast construction is somehow the most illustrative example of the human condition, I suppose the movie will strike you as high art, but the notion that trivial people screw a lot and argue afterwards is as illuminating as the fact that dogs don't get married after they knock paws. Of course, that's the nature of art: it celebrates the abberant, be it the abberantly lovely or the abberantly horrid. But try and sell the critics and producers on the idea that a happy marriage with kids has more to say about the human heart than a tale of a 40 year old man who throws over his family for a 16-year old stripper. Hah!

I wish he'd make up his mind. Is the fact that people sleep around and bitch about it afterwards as commonplace as dogs humping? Or is it "aberrant?" Lileks would have you believe that no movie released these days celebrates "family values," and that Closer, an intelligently written film that actually delves a little deeper into the human condition than "all you need is love" or "don't worry be happy" (or "Run, Forrest, run!"), is really the norm.

For the sake of argument, let's take a look at last weekend's box office:

1. National Treasure
2. Christmas with the Kranks
3. The Polar Express
4. The Incredibles
5. Closer
6. The SpongeBob Square Pants Movie
7. Alexander
8. Finding Neverland
9. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
10. Ray

Yeah, there's a lot of depravity on that list.

Not that it matters, but here's very little nudity in Closer, unless the fleeting boob shots as one of the characters passes through a strip club are too much to handle. There's no graphic depiction of sex, either. Sure, Natalie Portman bends over to show Clive Owen her goodies, but the scene is about manipulation, not arousal. Oh, and no one "leaves their family" for a stripper, 16 years-old or otherwise (Portman's character is in her 20s). Shockingly, Portman's character is left for someone else.

Of course, had he bothered to actually watch the fucking movie instead of simply knee-jerking his way into righteous indignation like self-appointed stewards of the public good always do, he'd already know this.

UPDATE: Title changed. Because I didn't like the old one.

Today's spleen venting is brought to you courtesy of a post seen on World O'Crap.

"Can't learn nothin' in school they don't teach you on the streets"

Many others have remarked on this story already, but the stupefying nature of the report demands my immediate harrumphing:

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

Well, some of that is sort of accurate. Touching another person's genitals certainly can lead to pregnancy. If you touch them with your genitals, that is.

In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.

Medically inaccurate information? Pfft. That's where your buddies come in. Who else is going to tell you that you can't get pregnant your first time, or if the woman's on top (just to take a few examples from my own childhood)? Only nerds need "comprehensive sex education."

The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.

Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:

Oh man, this is going to be good.

� A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."

Cute trick for something without an actual brain. And yet even at 43 days, a fetus can exert exactly as much mental effort as Bush did when he approved funding for these programs.

� HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.

And spinning wheels.

Actually, "scientists" with the Medical Institute of Sexual Health (which developed much of the material in dispute) have now confirmed that HIV is transmitted by a tiny demon that lives in your pancreas and shoots the virus out through your navel.

� Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

Again, as long as you're wearing them properly (over your navel), you won't have any problems.

Congress first allocated money for abstinence-only programs in 1999, setting aside $80 million in grants, which go to a variety of religious, civic and medical organizations. To be eligible, groups must limit discussion of contraception to failure rates.

President Bush has enthusiastically backed the movement, proposing to spend $270 million on abstinence projects in 2005. Congress reduced that to about $168 million, bringing total abstinence funding to nearly $900 million over five years.

Now the agenda is clear, by teaching both creationism and sex for procreation, the government is hoping to create legions of breeders that will produce similarly ignorant offspring, who will of course vote Republican.

In order to rake in some of that funding for ourselves, APCB is going abstinence-only, starting today. Our days of meaningless, non-procreative sex with other blogs is over, which should be good enough for a $500K grant.

Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

It's also scientific fact that you should never ask, "Is in it yet?"

I don't know about you, but a princess who could tell me how to slay dragons would be quite the catch. Bet the prenup would be a bitch, though.

And it Stoned me

I've been wondering lately if Oliver Stone didn't deliberately make Alexander a piece of crap so he could bitch about everything else in the movie business. His latest complaint? Those consarned DVDs:

Although Oliver Stone's 19-year-old son Sean has shot the behind-the-scenes documentary for Alexander and while the video package is likely to include an examination of the actual life of the Greek conqueror and other informative material, Stone himself has indicated that he is not at all enthusiastic about the coming of age of DVDs. Video Store magazine quotes him as saying during a recent press event, "It's the end of movie-movies the way we know them. ... If you walk into a room with 5,000 DVDs, how are you going to respect movies? How do you know the good ones?"

He actually makes a pretty good point (and to no less an authority that Video Store magazine): how do you determine which films might be worth your valuable leisure time? If only there was some repository (or database, if you will) of movie information, perhaps linked together through a series of networked computers, that could provide this service.

No matter. To help everyone out, I'm going to steer you beleaguered consumers around some of the pitfalls in your local movie aisle by reviewing some of the films you might come across in your travels. More specifically, Stone's films.

The Hand (1981) * - Stone's first feature directorial effort isn't available on DVD, but that doesn't mean we can't bash it. The Hand features Michael Caine as a comic book artist who loses his hand in a car crash (Damn you, irony!) and suffers from depression while the hand goes on a killing spree. Not as entertaining as it sounds, though it's fun to look for all the other films Stone ripped off in putting this together.

Salvador (1986) **1/2 - A solid performance from James Woods helps keep this from sinking into a morass of multiple subplots and Stone's politics. Not a bad film at all, but faced with a selection of "5,000 DVDs" you can surely do better.

Platoon (1986) *** - Decently-made semi-autobiopic that just misses ascending to the ranks of war movie greatness thanks to the unlikely black-and-white moral stances of Taylor's two "father figures," Barnes and Elias. Still, in the wake of crap like Rambo, Platoon was a welcome addition to the Vietnam War catalog, but Full Metal Jacket is still better.

Wall Street (1987) *** - Charlie Sheen's last good role comes in a film that doesn't age well at all. I remember thinking, when I first saw Wall Street, that the whole yuppie thing was a bit played out by '87 (and that I really wanted hookers to ride around with me in a limo while I did some blow). Stone gets his point across, though I can't really think of any reason a modern day viewer would want to seek this out unless they're really into '80s fashion. You can watch the news (especially here in Houston) for far worse characters than Gordon Gekko.

Talk Radio (1988) **** - It shouldn't surprise anyone that this is my favorite Oliver Stone movie, mostly because Stone didn't write it. Sadly, it's almost like Eric Bogosian purged everything from his system in this, as I haven't really liked anything he's done since. Stone manages some nice touches here and there (the circling backgrounds during Barry's final monologue), but mostly he just turns the camera on and let Bogosian go.

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) ***1/2 - Stone's ideological tour de force, bolstered by a fine performance by Tom Cruise. Much of the reason Stone used to be considered heir apparent to the directorial greats can be found in Born, even if Kovic seems to change his mind about the war in the span of a few minutes.

And I always wanted a sequel where Ron Kovic fights Forrest Gump.

The Doors (1991) *1/2 - More mythologizing of the bad poet who became a rock star and rode an early death into immortality, this time from Stone, who appears to have swallowed the Morrison legend hook, line, and indecency conviction. Val Kilmer is great, Stone's literal interpretation of Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman's No One Here Gets Out Alive isn't. Doubly excruciating for those of us, like myself, who don't really care for their music.

JFK (1991) ** - Stone assembled an all-star cast (JFK is a great link for the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game) for his conspiracy film. I'm certainly not going to argue that the Warren Commission didn't reach some questionable conclusions, but focusing on Jim Garrison, who can charitably be called "eccentric," and his bizarre court case doesn't help Stone's cause. Speculation in lieu of facts does not a compelling narrative make.

Natural Born Killers (1994) *1/2 - The technical plaudits heaped on this are, in a way, understandable. Visually, NBK is something to behold, but it's hollow like a chocolate Easter bunny. Stone bitches and moans for 2 hours about the media's love of violence less than 3 years after rubbing out noses in the Zapruder film 30 times in JFK and lovingly showing us wartime atrocity and battleground footage. There's no desire for a better tomorrow here, just joy in the main characters' excesses while trying to make the audience feel guilty about them.

Nixon (1995) ** - Bet you didn't see this coming: a sort-of sympathetic portrayal of Richard Nixon. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Stone is conintuing his projection upon his subjects. Nixon loathes the media, is misunderstood, and labeled a crank, much like our esteemed director, but as Hopkins plays him, you're amazed the guy ever got elected dog catcher. Stone's obviously not a fan of the 37th president, but give the man some credit for political savvy.

U-Turn (1997) *1/2 - Feh. You're only renting this to see Jennifer Lopez naked.

Any Given Sunday (1999) ** - We get it, Oliver: football players are modern day gladiators. Putting Charlton Heston in as the Commissioner was merely overkill.

Alexander (2004) *1/2 - I think we've covered this.

So there you have it. Out of 13 major Oliver Stone films, I can recommend four, which only leaves you with 4,991 to choose from.

Don't mention it.

Powell not angry, just disappointed in ABC

The fallout from the inexplicably "controversial" Monday Night Football intro featuring Terrell Owens and Nicollette Sheridan continues:

The nation's chief media regulator expressed disappointment Wednesday over the steamy locker room opening to ABC's "Monday Night Football" broadcast.

"I wonder if Walt Disney would be proud," said Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co.

Proud? He'd probably say, "When the hell did Nicollette Sheridan become a man?"

Followed shortly by, "Somebody call the police, there's a darkie in here claiming to be the head of the Federal Communications Commission."

And finally, "Prepare my flight to Haiti. I have to crack the whip on those shiftless child laborers in our garment factory."

Spare us your Ward Cleaver-isms, Mike. Disney was as big a bastard as anyone in entertainment, even if you seem to have fallen for the myth of kindly "Uncle Walt." The woman wasn't even naked, and certainly showed less skin than every low angle shot of the Cowboys' cheerleaders ABC's cameramen so lovingly provided for us.

Powell questioned the judgment of those who decided to air the scene.

"It would seem to me that while we get a lot of broadcasting companies complaining about indecency enforcement, they seem to be continuing to be willing to keep the issue at the forefront, keep it hot and steamy in order to get financial gains and the free advertising it provides," Powell said during an interview on CNBC.

In what suburb of Mayberry is that clumsily staged vignette considered "hot and steamy?" The only thing remotely titilating is a flash of Sheridan's bare white back after she drops the towel, right before she jumps into the arms of the big, black...

Okay, now I get it. People weren't complaining about the synthetic Sheridan getting naked, but about her getting naked with a brother. And an "uppity" one at that.

An FCC spokeswoman said the agency has received a number of complaints about the ABC broadcast, though she declined to say how many.

If past complaints are any indication, it could've been as few as three.

As for Powell himself:

As for his tenure at the agency, Powell said he'd be around for "a while yet."

"I still am having fun. There are still things that are really significantly important to me to complete," he said.

"Such as driving every person in America with a sense of humor and a healthy attitude towards nudity away from free public broadcasting and into the arms of cable and satellite TV and radio. Stay tuned for The Red Buttons Show, sponsored by Sambo's Restaruant and Injun Orange Drink."

Just a sweet transvestite

Gay him up, Rodrigo:

Note to boys in the tiny Spurger, Texas, school district: Put away those high heels and pleated skirts. Instead, wear black boots and Army camouflage to school Wednesday.

This will also make it easier for the armed forces recruiters to single you out.

A parent's concerns prompted the district 150 miles northeast of Houston to scrap its annual "TWIRP Day" -- when boys dress like girls and girls dress like boys-- in favor of "Camo Day."

TWIRP stands for "The Woman Is Requested to Pay," and for years Spurger schools hosted the day during Homecoming Week to give boys and girls a chance to reverse social roles and let older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas.

Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute issued a news release Tuesday reporting that it "came to the aid of a concerned parent requesting an excused absence for her children on official cross-dressing day in her children's elementary school."

Uh oh. Anytime I see "Plano-based" I have to make sure someone's not creeping up behind me in order to perform a stealth baptism. Sure enough, LLI seems to spend most of their time filing amicus briefs in cases involving heathens trying to prevent good Christian folk from using school property for their prayerfests or sprinkling crosses on public property "near" an abortion clinic.

In that light, it's hardly surprising they'd leap to this poor victimized woman's defense.

"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in East Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said in the release.

Tanner T. Hunt Jr., the school district's attorney, called Sasser's statement "inflammatory and misleading." Hunt said the district never planned or conducted a "cross-dressing day."

"They are a tiny little East Texas school district," said Hunt, a Beaumont attorney. "It never occurred to them that anyone could find anything morally reprehensible about TWIRP Day. I mean, they've been having it for years, probably for generations, and it's the first time anybody has complained."

How is this not like any other dress-up day? Is wearing a costume mandatory? Should my mother have sued for mental anguish when my high school had "Joe Cool" day and I didn't have a goddamned thing to wear?

Delana Davies, a 33-year-old mother of three, said she contacted Superintendent Angela Matterson on Tuesday after reading a school notice about "TWIRP Day."

Davies, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend Spurger Elementary, said she viewed the day not a silly Homecoming Week activity, but as an effort to push a homosexual agenda in a public school.

"It's like experimenting with drugs," said Davies, who also has a 2-year-old daughter. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

And just think about what those queers are doing to the soil.

Sorry, but did she just describe school-sponsored dress-up days as a "gateway" to cross-dressing? I'd think that would make her happy, seeing as how the majority of cross-dressers are heterosexual.

Unsurprisingly, this isn't the first incident of its kind:

In Illinois, parent Laura Stanley complained this month about an "opposite sex" dress-up day at Carrier Mills-Stonefort Elementary School.

Stanley said the activities sent a message of gender confusion and risked subjecting her young daughters to sexual harassment by "a bunch of adolescent boys who have suddenly grown breasts and are groping themselves."

You'd prefer they practiced on your daughters? Shit, if it keeps such incidents down, give every teenage boy a pair of falsies and let him go crazy. Make them really big, too. That way adolescent girls won't seem as appealing.

In New York, officials at Hastings High School put a stop to Cross-Dressing Day in October after school officials suggested guys in chiffon skirts and brassieres and gals with painted-on mustaches were distracting and disrespectful to transgender people.

Got nothin' for that one.

Just so my biases are out in the open, I've infrequently experimented with wearing women's clothing. There was the Mardi Gras party my senior year of high school, two non-consecutive occasions in college, the '70s party (should've told The (Then) Girlfriend my plans in advance, boy howdy), and the years 1998-2000, inclusive.

I'll see if I can find some pics.

And burn them.

"Sex? I had sex!"

My hat's off to the religious right for drumming up attention for a film that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Kudos.

Religious conservatives and family-values groups are planning to wage a battle against Fox Searchlight's Kinsey, about the pioneering sex researcher, when the movie opens in limited release on Friday. In a statement on Wednesday, Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America charged that the movie "lionized" a man whose "proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror flick mad scientist." Knight went on to assert that Kinsey "was the godfather of the homosexual activist movement, the campaign to mainstream pornography, and even the campaign to strike down abortion laws." The youth group Generation Life, composed of "virgins and renewed virgins," announced that it would picket theaters showing the film. And the conservative WorldNetDaily.com has taken aim at the movie in the current issue of its monthly magazine Whistleblower, in which it charges that Kinsey transformed America "in five decades from the Leave It to Beaver innocence of the 1950s to today's wanton, 'anything-goes' sexual anarchy."

"Renewed virgins?" Did they have surgery? Drink some of that Paul Newman Lemonade? How many do-overs do you get?

WND can take their "Leave It to Beaver" innocence and shove it up their tight asses. I laugh a bitter laugh every time someone references the "good old days," when the darkies knew their place and no one said boo if you gave the little woman a light thumping if she left the roast in too long.

If Luther Campbell were dead, he'd be rolling over in his grave from spasmodic laughing fits. These people just don't get it: every picket sign that shows up on the evening news, every corpulent white man with a community college divinity degree who gets interviewed on Access Hollywood, and every unfortunate child trotted out in a sandwich board by his "sex for procreation only" parents is one more ticket sold for this movie. The marketing division at Fox Searchlight will be feasting on lobster and Cristal tonight, because you just saved them $5 million in advertising.

Who the hell is Robert Knight? And why is he the spokesman for Concerned Women of America? Wait, here's an easy one: where does this jackass get off equating Kinsey with the Nazis?

Sex is fun, you idiots. Try having some.

The need for speed

A friend of mine got a speeding ticket recently. She hadn't received one in quite some time, so she was allowed to take defensive driving. She opted for the home video, which requires you to watch two video tapes (all DD courses are a mandatory six hours), then call in and take a multiple choice test by phone. As is the case with these things, the test itself is ridiculously easy (the video doing little more than hammering the same dozen points home repeatedly). What annoyed my friend was the time involved: she watched both tapes in one sitting, then endured the forced wait period between sections. All told, a full evening.

However, I have a hard time feeling much sympathy. I got my first speeding ticket when I was 17, and back in those days, there was one option for defensive driving: a classroom session that lasted from 8:00 to 4:30 on a Saturday. The wonders of video defensive driving, stand-up comedy defensive driving, and internet defensive driving were still years away, so a ticket meant spending half of an otherwise glorious weekend listening to traffic cops tell stories about peeling bodies off the asphalt. Entertaining, sure, but not the way anybody wants to blow a day off.

Nowadays, you can take three days to watch the videos, two days to attend the stand-up sessions (I've seen part of one, and they're frigging horrible), and pretty much as time as you want with the online class. None of them are attractive options, but there's a lot more flexibility here in the wondrous 21st century.

After that first ticket, I went four years before getting another one. Do I attribute the long period in between infractions to the grisly stories told by those cops, or the sobering filmstrips we watched? Hardly, I owe it all to the fear of sitting in a classroom with 20 other sad sacks looking out the window at my friends sitting on my car in the learning annex parking lot, drinking beer. And I guarantee you if that was still the only option, there'd be a lot fewer tickets.

Gimme that old time education

Door's open, boys:

GRANTSBURG, Wisconsin (AP) -- School officials have revised the science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.

Members of Grantsburg's school board believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum "should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory," said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

In other words, the science curriculum should include references to the creation of human life from a rib (cloning!) and emphasis on why car dealerships aren't open on Sunday. Kudos, Wisconsin. All you need to do now is define marriage in the schools and you'll have caught up with the enlightened state of Texas.

Wonder if they'll try to work in the talking burning bush and the pillar of salt thing.

There have been scattered efforts around the nation for other school boards to adopt similar measures. Last month the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania voted to require the teaching of alternative theories to evolution, including "intelligent design" -- the idea that life is too complex to have developed without a creator.

Yeah, well, I'd have thought last Tuesday put the last nail in the "intelligent" design coffin.

Won't somebody please think of the child rapists?

Gee, I'm really broken up about this:

British courts will be deciding this month if director Roman Polanski will be allowed to sue for libel in an English court, without risking extradition to America. Last year Vanity Fair magazine alleged Polanski tried to seduce a woman while she was dining with another man in a New York restaurant in 1969, shortly after the brutal murder of his wife, actress Sharon Tate. But the Polish-born Oscar winner - who has lived in Paris since fleeing the US in 1978 while awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl - wants to defend his name, and sue the magazine under English law.

Unfortunately for Polanski, if he sets foot on British soil to fight the action, he'll be arrested, thanks to a new treaty between the US and Britain. Polanski is seeking to fight the case without actually appearing in court, which hasn't ever been done before.

Poor guy.

The girl testified that she left the Jacuzzi and entered a bedroom in Nicholson's home, where Polanski sat down beside her and kissed the teen, despite her demands that he "keep away." According to Gailey, Polanski then performed a sex act on her and later "started to have intercourse with me." At one point, according to Gailey's testimony, Polanski asked the 13-year-old if she was "on the pill," and "When did you last have your period?" Polanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" before he "put his penis in my butt." Asked why she did not more forcefully resist Polanski, the teenager told Deputy D.A. Roger Gunson, "Because I was afraid of him."

Following his indictment on various sex charges, Polanski agreed to a plea deal that spared him prison time (he had spent about 45 days in jail during a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation). But when it seemed that a Superior Court judge might not honor the deal--and sentence Polanski to prison--the director fled the country.

I'm not sure the fucking 101st Airborne could defend your name, Roman.

The American Non-Voter

I wrote the following for a mailing list on Election Day, 2000. Sadly, not much has changed. It's a more or less accurate reconstruction of a conversation I had the night before the election. "They" are a person in their late 20s (at the time), employed, and college-educated.

Me: "So, ready to vote tomorrow?"
They: "No."
M: "Still 'undecided?'"
T: "No. I don't vote."
M: "...wow, ever?"
T: "No."
M: "Can I ask why not?"
T: "I just think it's pointless."
M: "Well, it's true that Texas is going to Bush, but there are a bunch of local races that are pretty interesting."
T: "I don't have time to follow all that stuff."
M: "You don't care about the arena deal?"
T: "No."
M: "Don't care about Bentsen vs. Sudan?"
T: "Who?"
M: "So you don't view voting as a civic responsibility so much as, say, a pain in the ass?"
T: "And who has time to go anyway? I can't take off from work early just to go vote."
M: "You know, the poll's are open until 7."
T: "..."
M: "And they open at 7 in the morning."
T: "I'm not getting up at 5:30 in the morning to vote."
M: "You know, I think I'm going to go get a drink."

And I did.

Get out there and vote your conscience, everyone. And lacking a conscience, go ahead and vote for Bush.

"And God bless the United States of America." - Elwood Blues

Holy hypocrites, Batman!

That's right, old chum; the leader of the wealthiest church on the planet is telling us we spend too much time trying to get paid:

Pope John Paul II urged listeners to think more about the inevitability of death than on becoming richer, more successful or more powerful.

The 84-year-old pontiff, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, denounced "the constant tendency of mankind to cling to money," thinking of it as a force capable even of overcoming death.

He told an audience of about 20,000 people huddling in the rain in St. Peter's Square that many people "seek at all costs to ignore the reality of death, casting it to the horizon of their thoughts," rather than seeing it as the "fundamental point of arrival of human existence that cannot be avoided."

Or maybe, realizing the inevitability of death is what makes us grab for all that stuff to begin with. I don't think money can prevent death (not yet, anyway), but it sure makes the ride easier.

Still, it's hard not to ponder the omnipresence of the Grim Reaper when you see stuff like this:

Dude, you know how many Oriental massages and Vicodin you could buy with the Catholic Church's money? At least three refills, I bet.

News recaplet

Missed Debate #2, so no pithy analysis from me here (The Wife's uncles all insisted Kerry got his ass handed to him, which didn't quite jibe with the coverage I saw on MSNBC and CNN, but what do those pinko networks know?). I'm pretty burned out, election-wise, to the point that whenever someone brings it up I tend to zone out to my happy place of free beer and video games. Sort of a media-generated thousand yard stare of political ennui.

Fortunately, there's always other news:

Teen singer and actress Hilary Duff has reportedly hit out at arch-rival Lindsay Lohan in a song on her latest album. The Lizzie McGuire blonde, 17, has been enemies with the 18-year-old redhead since they both discovered they were dating pop heart-throb Aaron Carter at the same time last year. In Duff's eponymous second album, the singer's track "Haters" is aimed at the Mean Girls actress, according to gossip site The Scoop. One insider says, "Hilary thinks that Lindsay has been directing negativity at her for too long."

Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't these bimbos be saving their anger for the guy who dogged them both at the same time? The possibility of a Lohan-Duff catfight at the Nickelodeon Awards must be too tantalizing for anyone to point this out, but I just find it a little hard to believe Carter - Unstoppable Sex Machine or not - doesn't get a little more flak for the situation. These feelings are, of course, tempered by resentment at the realization that I could never have gotten away with something similar.

Next, another misguided lawsuit:

Three of Hollywood director Richard Linklater's ex-classmates are suing Universal Studios, after enduring jokes over characters based on them in Dazed And Confused. Richard Floyd, Andy Slater and Bobby Wooderson claim Linklater never asked them if he could use their surnames for characters in the cult film. The men say they have been viewed in a different light by neighbors and friends ever since the 1993 movie, about a group of alcohol and drug-consuming students on the last day of school in 1976, was released. Slater's lawyer Ernest Freeman says people assume his client takes illegal narcotics because of the marijuana and LSD-loving character, played by Rory Cochrane, in Dazed and Confused. And Floyd, who now works at a car showroom in Huntsville, Texas, says, "We had fun in high school, but there is nothing true about that movie. Yet I am having to deal with it all the time."

Deal with what? Being associated with one of the coolest characters in a great film? Is the connection hampering your upward mobility at a freaking Huntsville car dealership? Afraid your buddies at the penitentiary will make jokes?

Of course they're "viewed in a different light." Their friends and neighbors used to think they were boring, middle-aged dorks, now they allow for the possibility that this may not always have been the case. If this lawsuit had a chance at succeeding, it would have to have been filed by people with names like O'Bannion, Clint, and Darla.

Finally, Eminem is as cutting edge as ever:

Eminem's hilarious new video features the rapper poking fun at Madonna, Michael Jackson, Pee Wee Herman and MC Hammer. The fun-loving rapper's new video "Just Lose It" features Paris Hilton, Eminem's 8 Mile co-star Mekhi Phifer, Erik Estrada and Bad Santa star Tony Cox. In one hilarious scene, Eminem, as Jackson, dashes into the toilet featured in the opening scenes of 8 Mile in an attempt to douse the fire in his hair - after an onstage pyrotechnics accident with Madonna. When the Jackson character comes face to face with the real Eminem, the rapper vomits all over him. Poking more fun at Jackson, Eminem, playing the pop superstar, accidentally knocks off his own nose during a disco scene and has to scramble around on the floor looking for it.

Wow, that's pretty edgy. No confirmation yet on rumors that Slim Shady's next video will feature his "in your face" takes on John Tesh and the movie Gigli.

Open letter to that kid at the Galleria yesterday

Wow. That took some gall. Not balls, which is what I attribute to someone who takes a stand in the face of popular sentiment, and not nerve, which is what's required when you need to get it together to do something gutsy, but gall. Gall is that special something needed to commit an act of such outright assholery it defies rational description. And honestly, that's the only reason I can imagine someone would walk around one of the largest shopping malls in the country wearing a swastika t-shirt.

On Yom Kippur.

I admit, I've been kicking myself all day for not running right out of that restaurant and kicking you in the ass. I can only give two reasons for my inaction: one - I was busy trying to wrestle my crabby infant back into her stroller while simultaneously preventing her from grabbing a fork and knocking over a tray of glasses, and two - I was quite frankly stunned into temporary immobility. Surely, I thought, I can't be seeing somebody walking around in the fourth largest city in the United States wearing something regarded as universally offensive to all but mouth-breathing skinheads and some idiot merchants in South Korea, and on a Jewish holiday, no less. Maybe I didn't see it right, I thought, maybe it was the counterclockwise swastika, or manji, Buddhist symbol of night and magic (perhaps you're a big Blade of the Immortal fan). But no, it was unmistakeable: a black swastika in a white circle on a red t-shirt.

I hustled everything together at that point and headed out into the mall, not really sure what I was planning to do (run over your toes with the stroller?), but feeling obligated at the very least to confront you about it. Unfortunately, you and your three cohorts had disappeared. I continued to look around for the remaining hour or so we wandered around, but you had - wisely - made yourself scarce.

At the very least, I had questions. For example, what exactly were you thinking? Was this some act of teenage rebellion (I gauged you to be about 16)? In a world filled with peers piercing themselves in every conceivable place and covering every square inch of flesh with tattoos, did you feel this was the only way to express your individuality?

And what about your friends, if they can truly be described as such? Did none of them have the common sense to tell you what an ass you were about to make of yourself? Or should I blame your parents, either for not being aware of what their child was wearing or for allowing him to go out in public dressed like some jagoff white supremacist?

Or are you all simply ignorant assholes? I guess it's possible you and your friends don't know the significance of the swastika because you were behind the band hall huffing paint when they showed Schindler's List in your history class, but I tend to doubt it. Someone, somewhere along the chain of events leading to your arrival at the mall yesterday had to have known.

I hope it was worth the laugh. I can't imagine how you could be so blind to the countless people you must have shocked, outraged, and saddened with your little excursion - some of whom had to have relatives or loved ones who died in WWII or the camps, and whose reactions you must have noticed at some point.

But what I really hope, in my blackest of hearts, is that you ran into a couple of Jews in the parking garage who, already irritated from fasting for the last 18 hours, set upon you with a tire iron and let you know exactly how badly you screwed up.

Sing, my pretties

"It's hard on a fella
When his plane lands in some strange town
If I can't ditch the TSA
I'm pretty sure they'll say
I'm gonna have to turn around
Another Tuesday night, and I just got deported"

Can any government policy that prevents aging ex-folk singers from crossing our borders really be all that bad?

Homeland Security officials said Yusuf Islam � formerly known as singer Cat Stevens � will be deported Wednesday after being denied entry to the U.S. Stevens had recently been placed on a government "no-fly" list after U.S. authorities received information indicating associations with potential terrorists, a government official said.

The former singer was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 919, en route to Dulles International Airport from London when the match was made Tuesday between a passenger and a name on the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

They'll ban Gordon Lightfoot next.

Converting to Islam was the best career move Stevens ever made. After the success of Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman (and the Harold and Maude soundtrack), Stevens began to suffer unfavorably from being lumped in with the "Martha's Vineyard sound" of James Taylor and Carly Simon. He released a greatest hits album in 1975, but never recaptured the success of his eary career. As the '70s came to an end, he had to ask himself: would morning break again? Or would the moonshadow finally capture him and leach away his precious bodily fluids?

Islam, who was born Stephen Georgiou, took Cat Stevens as a stage name and had a string of hits in the 1970s, including "Wild World" and "Morning Has Broken." Last year he released two songs, including a re-recording of his 1971 hit "Peace Train," to express his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites).

He abandoned his music career in the late 1970s and changed his name after being persuaded by orthodox Muslim teachers that his lifestyle was forbidden by Islamic law.

Uh huh. His past actions actually support my theory. He was quick to jump on the fatwah bandwagon against Salman Rushdie, but years later claimed he was misinterpreted, and has publicly criticized the September 11 attacks as well as the massacre at Beslan. The prevailing winds have shifted since those heady days when Arab groups could protest about their unfair portrayal as terrorists in movies, and Yusuf is obviously feeling the pressure.

That, or Natalie Merchant really scared the piss out of him.

Either way, no terrorist mastermind would be bopping around with the last name "Islam" these days. For that reason, and because we believe in giving people a second chance, I preset you with A Perfectly Cromulent Blog's Top 11 Alternate Names for Yusuf Islam:

11. Yusuf Freedom
10. I Choo-Choo-Choose Yusuf
9. Yusuf Fluffy Bunny Pants
8. Yusuf Hannity
7. Yusuf Lohan
6. Tickle Me Yusuf
5. Yusuf Smirnoff
4. Yu-Suf-Oh!
3. Yusuf G in Da House
2. What Yusuf Talkin' Bout?
1. Yusuf Friendly

I also considered "Yusuf Crazy," a la Martin Lawrence, but didn't think that would help his case.

I think murder's still a sin, "Reverend"

Q: What's a good way to renew interest in your ministry, especially if it's been on the decline ever since your infamous dalliances with the oldest profession?

A: Bash them queers (via the Burnt Orange Report):

According to a transcript of the program, Mr. Swaggart said: "I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."

Kinda throws a kink in that whole "omniscient supreme being" concept.

Swaggart is another in a seemingly endless line of repressed straight guys who labor under the false impression (or hope) that armies of leather-clad homos are just lurking behind every corner, waiting to take them unawares and subject them to a rigorous ass-pounding. Anytime I hear similar sentiments, I'm struck by how much the entire thing sounds like some sort of oft-replayed fantasy scenario.

What's even more hilarious is that these same words are coming from a guy who had to pay to get a look at a woman's goodies. If, as a TV evangelist, you can't score with your own congregation (hell, Jim Bakker did it, and he's the guy for whom the term "rat-faced scumbag" was invented), what makes you think any self-respecting gay man would give you s first glance, much less a second?

And I say this as a guy who - by my own estimates - hasn't been attractive to homosexuals for almost twenty years.

Finally, I see ole Jimmy's pushing 70. Were I in his shoes, I wouldn't be making nonchalant statements about the ease of stomping anyone, gay or not. The 70 year-olds I know can't take much of a beating.

Of course, that might be part of the aforementioned fantasy.

"A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."

Speculation continues over whether or not Jeopardy superdude Ken Jennings has finally lost a game. CNN ran a story last week citing TV Week's report that Jennings lost in his 75th straight appearance after raking in $2.5 million in cash and prizes. Most impressive.

The reaction I've been hearing, however, only confirms my own feelings on the matter: it's about damn time. No one is denying the guy has a grasp of trivia that makes most of us NTN regulars look like pikers, but enough is enough. The gym I go to usually has Jeopardy on in the afternoons, and I grew so weary of that ferret-faced Mormon bastard I almost resorted to reading Golf Digest.

Naturally, I have no empirical evidence for how widespread this sentiment is. That will not, however, keep me from making sweeping generalizations like the following: America hates winners.

What's that? You thought Americans loved winners? Not exactly. Americans love it when a hard luck team finally makes good - like the Denver Broncos or the 1969 Mets - or when someone overcomes incredible odds or comes from behind to win it all (e.g. the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team). Americans like underdogs to win, which is why every time the Cubs or Red Sox are within 2 games of the playoffs in September, every idiot out there has to speculate about the possibilities.

The flip side, of course, is that we hate perpetual winners. Americans have short attention spans, true, but their memories are long enough to know they're tired of the Yankees, and the Cowboys, and the Lakers. If any Americans paid attention to hockey back in the '70s, they would've gotten sick of Montreal. No one is more fun to shoot down than a popular entertainer (who owns a copy of Thriller?), or a career politician. Americans tolerate success...to a point.

Which brings me back to Jennngs. Nobody begrudged the guy when he won his first five or ten games (the show commemorated its 20th anniversary by lifting the 5-game win limit), but as the streak dragged on and on, and Jennings went from "Aw shucks" wunderkind to evil spectre of game show doom, I suspect more and more people got sick of him. You'd need a radar gun these days to clock how fast their hands go to the remotes when he appears on screen. Jennings had a nice run, but he needs to go off somewhere and count his money.

After he's tithed the requisite 10%, that is.

Sorry about your penis (continued)

I thought for a moment, as I read this story, that I was perusing The Onion. Alas:

For the driver looking for more of a pickup -- one that dwarfs the Hummer and the Ford F-350 -- Navistar has just the ride for you.

The new CXT -- short for commercial extreme truck and built from the same platform as the heavy truck maker's typical tow truck or cement mixer -- will be sold starting this week by Navistar's International Truck & Engine subsidiary.

At 258 inches, or 21-1/2 feet long, the CXT's about 4-1/2 feet longer than the new Hummer H2 pickup, and about 2 inches longer than the F-350 Crew Cab.

But how it really towers over what's on the road now is in height. At 108 inches, or 9 feet, the CXT stands only a foot below a basketball rim and more than two feet above the Hummer or the F-350.

Nine feet? To borrow a phrase from Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, I didn't know they stacked shit that high. Do you need a commercial license to drive one of these beasts? What about heavy vehicle training?

I can already predict they'll overwhelmingly be manned by middle-aged white men, either under 5' 5" in height or prematurely bald.

"It's not going to fit into the standard garage," said Mark Oberle, a spokesman for Navistar, based in Warrenville, Ill., outside Chicago. "We can see it a as a vehicle for business people who want to make distinct impression. For personal use, it's for people who want to make a statement.

A variety of statements spring to mind, but all run along the lines of, "The contempt I feel for the safety of my fellow motorists and the preservation of our natural resources is rivaled only by my intense feelings of self-loathing."

Seriously, if you ever discover that you've plopped down a hundred grand (the price ranges from $93,000 to $115,000) for one of these monstrosities, do us all a favor and drive it over a cliff.

Buyers will also have to have a fair amount of money to fill it up -- it's projected to get between 6 and 10 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.

The vehicle weighs about seven tons empty and can carry another six tons in its truck bed.

A hippopotamus, by comparison, weighs five tons. It's only five feet high, though. And it gets better mileage.

What Navistar doesn't see is the vehicle being mass-produced. It expects to sell only about 50 this year and doesn't expect it to challenge the market niche of the H2 sport/utility vehicle, which saw sales of 34,529 last year.

That's a depressingly large number of H2 buyers, even when you eliminate professional athletes and hip-hop artists. A man needs something he can drive to the pharmacy to pick up his Viagra, I guess.

Open letter to that guy at the movies last night

Hi there. You don't know me, but I can see you sitting a few rows up. Normally, it would be tough for me to get a bead on you, it being dark here in the theater and all, but you've made it especially easy today. For you see, you went and brought your baby along.

I know, complaining about people bringing their offspring to the movies is about as original as bitching about airline food, and normally I'd look the other way and swallow my bile. After all, who doesn't expect children in an afternoon matinee? Or at a Disney/Pixar film? Hell, a guy would have to be on the bad side of W.C. Fields to get up in arms about the presence of little house apes in those situations. Even kids in PG-rated films are getting more commonplace. Just a sign o' the times, as Prince Charles once said.

So it helps that I'm not talking about those situations. You see, this is a late night screening. Of an R-rated movie. About zombies. And the child in your arms is obviously screaming because of the big, scary, pus-covered corpses that keep showing up on screen. Or maybe it's the deafening explosions, or the scary mutated dogs. Perhaps the kid - who doesn't look more than 2 years old - just doesn't want sit still for 90 minutes, but something's got your little one all worked up, darn it all.

Oh good, I see they're about to ask you to leave, but before they do I thought I'd offer a few words of advice, one parent to another.

You're an asshole. Did you even try to justify your moronic decision to bring a small child to a horror movie before you got in the car? Did you think he'd sleep through the nonstop screaming and gunshots? I suppose its possible you've just returned from exile on the Galapagos Islands and are completely ignorant of the attitude of the American moviegoing public, who tend to side with me on issues involving wailing toddlers in the theater. Those in attendance sans rugrats don't have the patience to spare on your kid. Many of them probably went through the added effort of obtaining a sitter for their own children, precisely so they could enjoy a night at the cinema without listening to their crying baby or subjecting anyone else to one.

The idea of finding someone to watch your child probably never entered your mind, or maybe it did. Maybe you tried valiantly to get a babysitter and failed. That's too bad, but instead of following the correct course of action and staying home to watch the Colts-Patriots game, you decided that keeping your child out until almost midnight attending a scary movie is no big deal. Bad dad. No biscuit.

I'm not a perfect parent, by any stretch, and I've barely had nine months to do psychological damage to my own child, but yours is one mistake I won't be duplicating. My kid has plenty of time to freak herself out by sneaking into the living room at night to watch monster movies on TV, or reading horror comics by flashlight, or watching local news. I don't need to help her along by subjecting her to movies she shouldn't be exposed to until she's old enough to sneak into a theater on her own.

Get the hell out of here and take that poor kid with you. And I hope you enjoy sitting up with him all night.

"Blow ye winds
Like the trumpet blows
But without that noise"

Tony Perkins, morning weather personality extraordinnaire, was on Good Morning America today sporting a jaunty patch over his left eye due to injuries sustained while covering Frances' tap dance across Florida this weekend. Specifically, Tony got a scratch on his cornea from sand blown into his eye at 80 mph. Serves his dumb ass right.

He appeared to be the only unlucky weather-related weatherman casualty this time around. True, some idiot reporter for The Weather Channel had to get dragged out of the way of a car bumper getting blown at her, and meteorological stud Jim Cantore made a point of filing his reports standing at a 45 degree angle (the better to demonstrate the storm's powerful winds), but none of our other precious TV personalities were seriously injured.

Unless getting blown onto your ass counts, in which case this whole weekend was like the Confederate hospital scene in Gone with the Wind.

As I've said before, as soon as one of these people files their report from a bar or an indoor "hurricane party," drink in hand, and remarks, "You'd have to be a complete moron to be outside in a storm like this," I'll know I've found my weatherperson. Until then, I'll just have to keep watching the TV coverage until Jim Cantore gets a piece of siding through his chest.

In search of...

There have been a number of news stories this week about the search for extraterrestrial life. First, there was an apparent detection of a radio signal from space by SETI, then the quick debunking of such claims, and finally a CNN story about how alien civilizations might use physical means to contact us, rather than radio waves.

All this fills me with a feeling of dread. My conception of alien visitors has been shaped by movies like Alien and The Thing, not ET and Close Encounters. This attitude is a direct result of conversations with my grandfather, a retired general who apparently served in some clandestine military organization. We aren't allowed to visit him anymore, but I still write when I can.

Digging through some old papers, I discovered a letter my grandfather sent me after I wrote him about the SETI@Home project, which uses home computers to analyze radio telescope date. He wasn't pleased, to put it mildly. I've transcribed the letter here, for your edification. It's a bit long, but well worth the read.

It was with growing trepidation and concern that I read your letter explaining the purpose of the so-called "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence." If I understand correctly, a group of overpaid horses' asses are sending radio signals into the cosmos in the hopes(!) that some...thing on the receiving end will respond. What happens after that is probably unclear to these eggheads, so let me be the first to throw a bucket of water on the high-tech circle jerk going on.

As a military man, it doesn't surprise me to hear this kind of pie-in-the-sky horseshit from a bunch of Ivy Leaguers who've never seen the business end of an Arcturan spine liquefier. Apparently some in this country have forgotten those hellish days, not so long ago, when mankind fought for its very existence against all manner of slimy, intergalactic fiends. Certainly, there were sycophants and toadies on this planet even then, those who told you that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an "allegory for McCarthyism," or similar nonsense. We who had been in the trenches knew, of course, and we foolishly waited for the rest of the mouth-breathers on this planet to wise up.

We'd be waiting a long time, as it turned out. Soon enough, that acid-dropping bastard Roddenberry foisted his twisted Utopian view on the good television viewers of this country. Gone were the (accurate) scenes of giant, bug-eyed daughter thieves from the Death Nebula. They were replaced by the (wildly erroneous) images of a goody goody, hand-holding, hippie paradise where man and alien worked, lived, even slept together. The mindless sheep of America ate this Star Trek garbage up with a spoon, forgetting everything they'd learned about triffids, Metalunans, and the Krell. Before I knew it, people were joking about alien abduction and wearing flying saucer tee-shirts. All the work we'd done seemed for naught.

Given today's appeasement-minded climate, it took little to wipe the last of my doubts away. And obliterated they were, like the frogs at Dienbienphu, by the foolhardy embrace of the so-called "SETI Project." It's no longer enough to shoot primitive signals into the ether or send rickety probes beyond the solar system. Voyager - that's a hoot. Imagine if the Incas, in their infinite wisdom, had sent a bottle across the Atlantic for Pizarro to pick up that contained not only detailed schematics of their soft underbellies, but a for Christ's sakes MAP to Peru. Obviously, the fact they did no such thing doesn't exactly help them now, but what's to stop some interstellar conquistadors from snatching up our crude attempt at reaching out and following it all the way back to the third planet in the Sol system? Only to them it's not "Sol," but rather "Harvest Sector 97767D."

Now these pencil-necked geeks are actively participating in this insanity. I'm told one can actually download a program, called "SETI@Home," no less, that allows your home computers to be compromised. The horror...thousands upon thousands of interconnected machines all stained by this madness. The time has come to set the record straight, to sound the call to arms, and pull the wool away from our eyes before it's too late.

Extraterrestrial infiltration is a fact. Those bureaucratic suckholes you mindlessly send to Washington, DC every four years have been compromised since before the Civil War. In fact, if not for John Wilkes Booth you'd all be vacuuming algae in the Crab Nebula. Sic temper tyrannis indeed.

These people, with your fancy-ass degrees and their fluffy prose, sitting in those opium dens they call homes, smoking "chronic" and watching that X-Files garbage. Forget Roswell and all your trendy Hollywood conspiracy theory crap. The truth is HERE, I know. My fellows have fought these sonsabitches and their pungent human lackeys since the Tunguska Incursion of 1909. I was but a whelp then, but rest assured I'd been cleaning EBE clock decades before that Chris Carter punk wet his pants viewing those first episode of Night Stalker.

I've watched, helpless, while men in my battalion, men I considered brothers, were ruthlessly and repeatedly probed. I led a special battalion in the incineration of "compromised" civilians. The press called us barbarians. How, they asked, how could we set upon a town full of innocent people? With about thirty USMC-issue M240 flame-throwers, was my answer. I would have had that meatloaf-headed Andromedan back in 1982 if it wasn't for those darn kids and their illegal flying bicycles. Hide one goddamn grey and it's curtains for the human race, mark my words.

I know they think you're being helpful, but wake up. When the invasion begins, we're not going to be inundated by cute little Muppets, like in that terrible third Star Wars movie, but by giant asteroid dwelling worms, like in that fine second Star Wars movie. And you stooges with code signatures like herpes all over their computers will be the first into the vat, my friend.

The Gipper had it right; the SDI system was perfect, only it wasn't designed to be directed earthward, but outward! The best military minds of the 1980's conceived of a brilliant defensive shield against alien incursion, and those bleeding-heart pansies killed it. Of course, they'll whine and bitch about preserving a few measly acres of South American trees, but when it comes to saving the whole planet, they somehow can't grow a pair. Well, I hope those hippies enjoy the rest of their lifetimes in galactic servitude. When they come for me I'll have a little surprise waiting for them, and it won't be Richard Dreyfus playing some goddamned neon music box, either.

Thank you, and God bless the United States of America and Planet Earth.

Maj. General "Buck" Vonder Haar (Ret) USA

Sorry, he signs all his letters that way.

Thou shalt not be an asshole

I'm pretty sure that's the 11th Commandment. I think I saw it in one of those hotel Bibles.

A friend forwarded this story, from the Albany Times Union, about some particularly dimwitted abortion protestors (I know that sounds redundant, but bear with me):

Parents of a newborn were erroneously targeted Wednesday by about 50 abortion protesters who raised posters of mutilated fetuses and called "Evil dwells here" through a bullhorn.

The problem is they had the wrong house, said Tricia Lehra, who was on the receiving end. The group apparently thought Lehra's Washington Road home belonged to a doctor who performs abortions. Lehra, who has a 2-month-old daughter, is a Shenendehowa Central Schools counselor; her husband, August, is an electrical engineer. The target of the misplaced protest was a neighbor, Paul Drisgula, an executive of Planned Parenthood Mohawk Hudson.

"I feel terrorized," said Lehra, who was not home when the group arrived.
Still, later that evening two teens bicycled past her house and screamed "No
abortion," she said. "They do not have their facts straight," she said of the protesters. "They took pictures. Is my house going to end up on their Web site? I feel victimized in my own home."

This would be funny if it wasn't so repulsive. Oh wait, no it wouldn't. Having an assemblage of underemployed nutbars randomly descend upon your house can't be anything but unnerving, especially if you have no idea why they've decided to visit.

I didn't see any pictures of their house on either the ScriptureWall or Operation Rescue web site, but it's a valid question, considering OR links to the Nuremberg Files, which posts "wanted" posters of doctors and other such examples of Christian love and tolerance.

The 90-minute parade angered some neighbors on the quiet, maple-lined street, drawing them to the sidewalks at around 2:30 p.m.

"I heard them yelling, 'A murderer lives on your street,' " said Brian Whitter, who lives up the block from the Lehras and was getting ready for work when he saw the parade shortly after 2 p.m. "They were shouting about homosexuals. It was really offensive."

"The police told us to go inside because we were arguing with them," Amy
Cremo said. "My 8-year-old came in and asked, 'What's abol-chion?' I couldn't let my kids outside. They're coming to a residential area with these disgusting signs, saying 'You have blood on your hands.' They don't know what we believe. They said, 'There's a gay couple on the street.' I said, 'What's next, you're going to come with burning crosses?' It was rude. It was just a circus."

These guys must share a marketing firm with PETA. At the very least, parading around with 4' high posters of dismembered fetuses in a residential neighborhood is going to alienate a number of people who might actually be sympathetic to your viewpoint, but displaying the same thing or screaming about "sodomites" in front of someone's kids is going to net you nothing but hostility. And trotting your own bewildered toddlers out, as these mouth-breathers are known to do, doesn't make it all right.

This marks the second year in an August campaign called "Oh Saratoga!" organized by The Rev. Francis McCloskey, a Roman Catholic priest from East Durham, Greene County, and Flip Benham, director or Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, a militant group of abortion opponents based in Dallas. Neither Benham nor McCloskey could be reached for comment Thursday.

Big surprise. Benham doesn't talk publicly if there's the slightest possibility that he can be called on the carpet for his misinformation and smear tactics.

Linda Scharf, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, said the protesters were wrong to approach anyone's home. "We feel this is creating a climate that leads to violence and it has crossed the line, using free speech to attempt to coerce," Scharf said.

"I don't feel we disrespected their neighborhood or their rights,"
countered Lawrence Willette, a marcher and deacon at St. Clements Catholic church in Saratoga Springs.

That settles that, I guess.

Apparently no one bothered to ask Willette how he'd feel if picketers showed up outside his house, informed all his neighbors that he was a hatemonger who derived some perverse thrill from harassing innocent people, and then posted pictures of him, his home, and his car on the web. Shouldn't be a big deal, since anti-choice groups practice such tactics all the time.

Yeah, I know, none of them "officially condone" such practices. Pull the other one.

The group didn't violate any laws, said Scotia Police Chief John Pytlovany, who had several officers accompany the group of parents, children and grandparents after an earlier protest outside Planned Parenthood in Schenectady. While McCloskey did pray in the street, he did not impede traffic or block pedestrians, Pytlovany said. Police asked Lehra's neighbors not to argue with the protesters because they wanted to keep things calm, Pytlovany said.

Lehra said police told her she was overreacting. One officer "stated that
we're not in any danger because this is a religious group. I told him I lived in Buffalo when Dr. Slepian was killed. I've got a baby in here. I'm afraid."

Wow. That's one stupid cop. Lehra's answer is a good one, but she could have just as easily countered that al-Qaeda, Aum Shinrikyo, the IRA, Hezbollah, the Sudanese Janjaweed, and the Branch Davidians are all "religious groups" (and that's without even bringing up the major churches).

"I was raised Catholic. I consider myself to be a Christian," added Lehra, who has a large cross on her living room wall. "This is not Christian behavior. The fact that these people are terrorizing people in their homes in the name of Jesus is outrageous. What accountability is there for this kind of thing?"

Well, if you're a Christian, I guess you could just wait until they stand in judgment before your god and he casts them into the Pit for being such intolerant scumbags.

Or you could have a friend dress as Jesus, walk down the street to where they're assembled, and ask them to stop. Probably wouldn't work, though. Today's on-the-go fundamentalist doesn't have time for that "love thy brother," tree-hugging, hippie New Testament crap.

I'd probably just turn on the sprinklers, open the windows, and play some Minor Threat.

And release the hounds. Mustn't forget the hounds.

Stiller-born

Seeing Ben Stiller's latest appearance on The Late Show, where he "hilariously" plummets to his death while throwing a dodgeball from a rooftop, I suddenly came to the startling conclusion (which many of you probably reached years ago) that the man just isn't that funny.

Further, I've come to realize that he never has been.

He fooled me for a while, I admit. I've still got some old episodes of The Ben Stiller Show taped, and while I always knew Bob Odenkirk was the funniest one on the show ("Maaaaanson!"), I must not have paid that much attention to the great writers the show had: Odenkirk, Judd Apatow, David Cross, Robert Cohen. Cohen and Apatow have worked on some great shows you may have heard of (the former on The Simpsons, Apatow on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared). Stiller's only other current writing credit, on the other hand, is for the sporadically amusing Zoolander. And aside from a few decent celebrity impersonations on his show, he never really pulled off any big laughs.

Before taking a look at his entire career, I attributed his lack of funny to the natural tendency of formerly "indie" stars to abandon their quality acting pursuits to take an increasing number of mainstream roles as they get older (paging Steve Buscemi). Then again, I'm pretty sure Stiller's old stuff like Empire of the Sun and Next of Kin (Stiller and Swayze together for the first time!) don't exactly count as indie films. In other words, it's not the material, it's the performer. I don't even think he's a bad actor, just not a particularly funny one.

UPDATE: Comments are open now. Sorry about that. Now click below for the rest of the entry.

These last few years, he's made some pretty questionable casting choices. Increasingly, every time I'd see Stiller in one of these bad roles, I'd try to recall the times he actually made me laugh in the hopes of reminding me that I used to find the guy amusing. Trouble is, I realized I'd been cobbling together bits recalled from across his career - not just one or two juicy parts - and several that he had little to do with: the "It's just a bunch of guys" comment from Zero Effect, for example, or his exchange with Harlan Williams in There's Something About Mary. Perhaps the funniest thing I can actually attribute to him is when Mr. Furious tells Casanova Frankenstein not to correct him because it "sickens" him (in Mystery Men), and even that is merely a dig at the genius that is Shatner.

Stiller's comedy movie parts (going back to 1994, anyway, when he started toplining) can be broken down into three basic templates: the stammering nebbish (SN), put upon by individuals and forces outside his control; the manic/angry freak-job (MF). who channels his emotions into comically positive results; and the sadistic asshole (SA), pretty self-explanatory. There's some overlap here and there, but you get the idea.

As I went through his filmography, I started to get progressively more annoyed with myself, because I could have sworn I found the guy funny at some point. Here's what I came up with, judge for yourself.

Reality Bites (SN) - I remember being occasionally amused by this when I first saw it, thanks to my current (at the time) crappy employment situation and tempered by my unbridled loathing for Ethan Hawkes' grungy Nazi character. Later viewings, however, have shown me the error of my ways. Advertising jingles are used as a subsititute for actual dialogue, and Stiller's bad guy (who's one of the few somewhat sympathetic characters in the movie) is neurotic yuppie so annoying his name is actually "Grates." Delicious. I sometimes wonder if Stiller didn't direct this movie just so he could make out with Winona Ryder.

Heavyweights (SA) - Stiller's fat camp owner who drives his hefty charges to mutiny (Tony Perkis sounds suspiciously similar to Dodgeball's White Goodman) might be his best role. Of course, this was written by Apatow, so Stiller had it easy.

Happy Gilmore (SA) - Stiller's retirement home orderly was his second sadistic asshole character in as many movies. It wouldn't be his last.

If Lucy Fell (MF) - Showcased our hero as a borderline psychotic, but in an allegedly humorous way.

Flirting with Disaster (SN) - A low-key role, but not bad. Also not that funny, however. Watching it all the way through is tough to do, unless you buy the premise that someone who looks like Patricia Arquette would ever be married to the vaguely simian Stiller.

Though she did date Nicolas Cage, didn't she?

The Cable Guy (SN) - Less memorable for Stiller's small role than the fact that this was his second big screen directorial effort. TCG got a lot of flack when it came out because it wasn't what people had come to expect from a Jim Carrey movie. I suspect that means they didn't find it funny, and they'd be right. No, no, hear me out. There are some amusing bits (the Medieval Times/Star Trek fight scene), but continuous pop culture references - also overused in Stiller's first director's gig, Reality Bites - do not comedy make (just read this blog for any length of time). and watching Jim Carrey portray a psychotic with a speech impediment for two hours isn't nearly as knee-slapping as it sounds.

Zero Effect (SN) - More straight man shenanigans for Stiller, this time to abet Bill Pullman's take on Sherlock Holmes. I liked this movie, but more for Pullman's performance and the gradual way the story unfolds. Stiller's not bad in it, but I think just about anyone could've handled the role of Arlo.

There's Something About Mary (SN) - Widely considered the high point of Stiller comedies, despite the fact he's the foil to Matt Dillon and Chris Elliott. The "franks and beans" scene is funny because of everyone's reactions, not really in how Stiller sells it, but the rest of the movie generally finds him befuddled by the goings-on around him. TSAM also marks one of the first appearances of Stiller's trademark mispronunciation gag, where he draws out the vocalization of an allegedly comical sounding word for alleged comical effect (see also Mystery Men and Meet the Parents). In this case, "Favre."

Your Friends and Neighbors - Uh, not a comedy.

Permanent Midnight - Also not a comedy, but damn I never get tired of films about successful people who piss their lives away for drugs. For my money, Hollywood can't make enough of these. Really.

Mystery Men (MF) - I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit. Stiller, however, couldn't match the performances of William H. Macy (The Shoveller) and Paul Reubens (The Spleen). And Geoffrey Rush was excellent as well. Stiller got to misquote common phrases ("I'm a Pantera's box you do not want to open") and mispronounce words ("cadre") though, so I'm sure somebody found that amusing.

Keeping the Faith - Arf. Next.

Meet the Parents (SN) - The hype factor really fooled me on this one, as did all the "best comedy of the year" accolades. All we really get is Stiller settling into the twitchy Everyman groove that will define many his later comedy roles. I did find the idea of a septic tank leaking at an outdoor wedding to be amusing, however.

Zoolander (MF) - Stiller's third directorial effort is a scattershot collection of mild satire and dumb humor. An inspired Will Ferrell brings Mugatu to life, and also has the best lines, leaving Stiller to bludgeon us over and over with the fact that his character is really, really stupid. I appreciated the male model theory of political assassinations, but could've done with less of Stiller and Owen Wilson mugging on screen.

The Royal Tennenbaums (SN+MF) - It's probably my fault that I expected something as slyly hilarious as Rushmore from Wes Anderson, but TRT - while visually stunning - didn't do a lot for me. I can't really blame Stiller for this one, since most of the cast (with the exception of Bill Murray and Kumar Pallana) is mired in the same "is this a comedy or not?" conundrum.

Along Came Polly (SN) - Stiller plays an amped up version of Greg Focker from Meet the Parents. "Plays" might be an overstatement, as I'm convinced Stiller is now capable of flicking an internal switch in his hyopthalamus and knocking out a neurotic romantic comedy performance on autopilot.

Starsky and Hutch - Not seen at blog time.

Envy (SN) - Thank the box office performance of School of Rock for resurrecting this almost straight-to-video piece of crap, which is in the running for many "Worst of 2004" lists. Not even Christopher Walken as a deranged homeless man can take the pain of Stiller and Jack Black's phoned-in performances away.

Dodgeball (SA) - In a surprise twist, this movie produces a few laughs in spite of one of its lead actors. That actor being - who else - Stiller. "White Goodman" is possibly one of the most obnoxiously unfunny characters in cinematic history (he gets a good last line, I'll admit). Luckily they got Vince Vaughn, Rip Torn, and Steven Root to make up for it.

In retrospect, it does indeed appear that I was mistaken in finding much jocularity in Stiller's past performances. Fortunately, it doesn't look like I'll have that problem anytime soon: next up for Stiller is Meet the Fockers and the next Dreamworks SKG animation project, Madagascar. He stars in the latter with Chris Rock, who actually has a worse record in comedies than Stiller does, so you know I'm looking forward to this one.

"Oh Smithers, I would have said anything to get your stem cells."

Laura Bush stepped up to defend her husband on the issue of stem cell research:

LANGHORNE, PA. - First lady Laura Bush defended her husband's policy on embryonic stem cell research Monday, calling Democratic rival John Kerry's criticism "ridiculous" and accusing proponents of overstating the potential for medical breakthroughs.

"We don't even know that stem cell research will provide cures for anything � much less that it's very close" to yielding major advances, Mrs. Bush said.

"Forget about that infernal polio vaccine, Salk. We're justing going to stick with the gamma-globulin."

The first lady weighed in on the highly charged political and scientific issue on the third anniversary of Bush's decision to limit federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to only the 78 stem cell lines in existence Aug. 9, 2001.

Religious groups oppose the scientific work in which culling of stem cells kills the embryos, equating that with abortion, and had urged Bush not to be the first president to fund the research � even with limits.

I'd comment more on this passage, except I'm having a bitch of a time getting my head around the phrase, "Religious groups oppose the scientific work." I wasn't aware that medical research made the baby Jesus cry.

With polls showing overwhelming support for stem cell research, Kerry has promised to give scientists more freedom. He has used the word "ban" to describe Bush's actions when what the president has done is limit the research.

"That's so ridiculous," Laura Bush said in an interview with The Associated Press, calmly fielding questions about her husband and his presidential race.
...
Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said Bush's restrictions apply to 99.9 percent of potential stem cell lines that could be studied. "If that's not a ban," he said, "we don't know what is."

Unusually combative, the first lady said Kerry was trying to make a political issue out of her husband's policy "without saying what's right. I imagine he knows better."

I hope she used that "stern librarian" tone when saying it. That's so hot.

"I hope that stem cell research will yield cures," the first lady said. "But I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now and the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right, and it's really not fair to people who are watching a loved one suffer with this disease." ... "It's not fair" to raise false hopes "because stem cell research is very, very preliminary," said Laura Bush. Alzheimer's contributed to the death of her father in the 1990s.

By my count, that's three times Mrs. Bush referred to the "preliminary" status of stem cell research. I'm no expert on genetics, like the First Lady is, but my understanding of such things is that scientific progress takes, like, years and stuff. Even more importantly, it helps to have the actual necessary materials to work with. Of course any potential cure for Alzheimer's, or Parkinson's, or stinkfoot is years away, but using that as an excuse for not doing anything is akin to saying we should stop cancer research because we haven't managed to cure anything in fifty years.

Proponents and members of the medical community say more than 100 new cell lines have been created worldwide since Bush's decision � some with new techniques that may make them more scientifically useful � and could be studied under more open rules. An exact count isn't possible because private funding means much of the work is done without any public scrutiny.

Yeah, but they were created by those godless Scandinavians. Why would we want to have anything to do with them?

Americans may be more equally divided over concerns about terrorism and the economy, but the stem cell issue is one where his alliance with the religious right is really going to hurt Bush. Worse, the US is starting to slip behind other industrialized countries in science and technology, while the Administration continues its practice of suppressing or smearing those facts and research it doesn't agreee with. Placing America's Den Mother in front of the press to put a friendly face on her husband's ugly policies only worsens the problem. That's my hypothesis* anyway.

*"Science" word

Sorry about your penis

But at least there's a new Hummer on the way to compensate for it:

DETROIT � The brawniest SUV is about to get brawnier when General Motors Corp. gives its Hummer line a high performance makeover next year. The Hummer H1 Alpha will go on sale next spring � bringing high-performance to the off-road brand.

The 2006 H1 Alpha�s 205-horsepower gasoline engine will be replaced with a 310-horsepower Duramax diesel powerplant. The new engine will give the $100,000 H1 more power and off-road capabilities while lowering emissions and enhancing fuel economy.

Any improvement on 6 MPG has to be considered an "enhancement," I suppose. And with a mere $100,000 price tag, they'll soonhave the market cornered on upscale off-road enthusiasts.

All three of them.

GM confirmed Tuesday it will build the H3, a mid-size SUV that will arrive at dealerships in the first half of 2005 as a 2006 model.

It will be priced at about $30,000 and make the Hummer brand more affordable. "

Which will finally allow middle-class weekend warriors with sexual adequacy issues to join their wealthier brethren. After all, why should rich guys be the only ones to blow half a tank of gas driving their rugged, off-road vehicles to the Gap on weekends?

In an interview last month, Hummer General Manager Mike DiGiovanni said there�s no chance Hummer will grow any bigger than the H1, but it could shrink smaller than the H3 in size and price.

�We could go down market,� DiGiovanni said, �but it has to be a real Hummer.�

He continued, "I mean, we can't have people buying affordable, regular sized automobiles that get reasonable gas mileage and don't pose a hazard to their occupants or others on the road, could we? That would be downright nutty."

"That's why you're the judge and I'm the...law talkin' guy."

Kerry picks Edwards, who was really the only choice (Lieberman? Gephardt? Come on, people). Now if he can just arrange for Edwards to speak at every engagement between now and November, Kerry may be good to go.

And this quote might be of interest to those in the Bush camp who feel the need to pile on Edwards for being a lawyer:

"I am sure there is a place for young George Bush somewhere. However, in light of his grades on the LSAT exams, that place is not the School of Law at the University of Texas." - Dean Page Keeton, University of Texas Law School

Bush isn't a lawyer, true, but not for lack of trying.

Thanks to Len for the quote.

He was a crook

Some 20,000 pages of telephone transcripts from the Nixon White House were released earlier this week, including a segment where Henry Kissinger describes how President Nixon was once too drunk to take a call from British Prime Minister Edward Heath at the height of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Now MSNBC has some more excerpts from the transcripts here. I've included a few of my favorites:

"You know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates. [...] Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. [...] You know what happened to the popes? It's all right that popes were laying the nuns. That's been going on for years�centuries." �Nixon in May 1971

"I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."
�Nixon in May 1971 declaring the Northern Californian city "is the most faggy god----ed thing you could ever imagine"

"We're going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family�let people like [New York Sen.] Pat Moynihan ... believe in all that crap. But I don�t believe in it. Work, work�throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key ... I have the greatest affection for [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."
�Nixon in May 1971

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."
�Nixon to H. R. (Bob) Haldeman in May 1971

But, you know, he went to China.

I can't help but shake my head whenever someone pops up with some revisionist bullshit about what a Great President Nixon was. This delusion was particularly prevalent in the days immediately following his death, but for my money, Hunter S. Thompson penned the best eulogy:

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
...
Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man -- evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him -- except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.
...
Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Just think of the new transcripts as sprinkles on top of the whole fetid banana split of the Nixon presidency.

"Is it me? It's him, isn't it?"

Halle Berry's man trouble continues:

Halle Berry has a new stalker concern after a former Navy SEAL made threats against her life and those of her manager and publicist. The actress has won a restraining order against Greg Broussard, who insists he's destined to marry Berry. Legal papers obtained by American scandal show Celebrity Justice outline a history of harassment, targeting the actress and her manager Vincent Cirrincione. The documents claim the Louisiana man even showed up at Cirrincione's office to threaten him verbally, and state, "Mr Broussard has stated that he intends to become betrothed to Ms Berry, and incorrectly believes that Mr Cirrincione is Ms Berry's father." The statement continues, "He has stated repeatedly that, while 'he does not want to hurt anybody, ' he will not be prevented from meeting with Ms Berry and Mr Cirrincione." Given Broussard's military background and erratic behavior, the plaintiffs have been advised to treat this stalker incident more seriously than any other.

I guess. Far be it from me to make fun of a stalker situation, especially when the guy in question is probably proficient in 43 forms of unarmed combat and could pull out your heart and show it to you before you died. With his tongue. But it's even worse when you realize how seriously deranged Broussard must be.

Consider the facts: it's possible (even likely) that David Justice was in the habit of cruising hookers in Cracktown before he married Berry. And while I've never personally known anyone suffering from sex addiction, I guess (second husband) Eric Benet must've had it bad if he needed to cheat - repeatedly - on a woman widely regarded as one of the most beautiful in the world (or the parts where Revlon commercials regularly air, anyway).

My hypothesis, however, is that close proximity to Halle Berry causes normal men to lose their minds. Not in the generally harmless, Tex Avery bug-eyed wolf kind of way, but in the 28 Days Later "rage" kind of way. Could be she's too much of a ditz, could be she nags incessantly, or it could be her men are driven insane with jealousy over her success and public adoration. All I know is, you'd have to be a little unhinged to want to voulntarily enter into matrimony with that. Given this evidence, I wouldn't get a restraining order against Broussard, I'd put him down like a dog.

"Become wrath."

"Because I envy your normal life."

If Gore had made that face a little more often in 2000, he might've mobilized a few more voters.

Bush, on the other hand, has been making that face since his Harken days, why should he stop now?

I knew there had to be some reason for Jessica Simpson's popularity

Turns out many of her juvenile fans are hopped up on goofballs:

As more children take pills for attention-deficit and other behavior disorders, new figures show that spending on those drugs has for the first time edged above the cost of antibiotics and asthma medications for kids.

A 49 percent rise in the use of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drugs by children younger than 5 in the last three years contributed to a 23 percent increase in usage for all children, according to an annual analysis of drug-use trends by Medco Health Solutions Inc.

"Behavioral medicines have eclipsed the other categories this year," said Dr. Robert Epstein, Medco's chief medical officer. "It certainly reflects the concern of parents that their children do as well as they can."

Of course, it might also reflect the success of pharmaceutical companies in convincing doctors and parents that their kids will be irrevocably screwed up if they don't get on the latest wonder pill.

Antidepressant use rose 21 percent, and use of drugs for autism and other behavior disorders jumped 71 percent, compared with a 4.3 percent rise in antibiotics.

So the good news would appear to be that our children's immune systems are faring better than their personalities. The bad news is that parents are rushing to medicate their kids for every "syndrome" physicians and drug companies come up with, like that "Asperger's" nonsense.

"It's not necessarily a bad thing that these medicines are being used more," said Dr. James McGough, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California Los Angeles' Neuropsychiatric Institute.

McGough said kids on attention-deficit drugs tend to avoid substance abuse and other problems and do better in school.

However, McGough said rising use of antidepressants among adolescents is a concern, because there's little proof they work in young people and evidence has surfaced that they may increase suicidal tendencies.

The "ironing" is delicious.

Why aren't these kids self-medicating with Olympia Gold like the red-blodded American boys and girls of my youth?

Overall, 5.3 percent of children took some type of behavioral medicine in 2003, including 3.4 percent on attention-deficit medicines and 2.3 percent on antidepressants, according to the study. Some children are on both types of drugs. That compares with 44 percent who used antibiotics at some point, 13 percent on asthma medicines and 11 percent who used allergy drugs.

Frankly, I don't think these percentages are high enough for today's slack-ass kids. Modern parents are busy coping with the pressures of erectile dysfunction and worrying about how to afford gas for their SUVs, and now we're supposed to pay attention to every little niggling problem are offspring are whining about this week? Screw that. Keep the little bastards doped up until they're 18, then send them off to college or, more likely, whatever war we're currently fighting. Nothing helps with withdrawal from anti-depressants like military grade weaponry.

Praise the Lord and pass the quarterly earnings statement

Today's Houston Chronicle has an article about how Southern Baptists are drawing criticism for holding millions of dollars of stock in a cruise line that sponsors a gay excursion. It had some great quotes:

"The Baptists don't believe in gambling, liquor or pornography, or gays," said Don Allmon, a deacon at First Baptist Church of Dyer, Tenn.

But, they believe in you, Don.

"When I say that, we love gays, but we don't like their lifestyle."

Also known as, "love the sinner, hate the sin as long as we can make (you'll pardon the expression, Lord) assloads of money off of it."

The Baptist board owns about 26,200 shares of Carnival in its Equity Index Fund and 337,600 shares in its Value Index Fund as of Dec. 31, together valued at $14.5 million, according to the Associated Baptist Press, an independent Baptist news service. The board also has holdings in satellite and cable TV companies that provide on-demand or premium-priced pornographic programming.

According to the board's statement, its guidelines prohibit investments in any company publicly recognized "as being in the liquor, tobacco, gambling, pornography or abortion industries." Between 300 and 400 companies are on the board's restricted list, the statement said.

Sorry to break it you guys, but if you hold stock in any satellite, cable, or telecom company, you're investing in a company "publicly recognized" as being in the pornography industry. Phone sex was a $1 billion dollar business way back in 1996, and pay-per-view porn (broadcast by companies like AT&T) was a mere $750 million. Seems like the righteous thing to do would be to divest from such companies. Money can't be that important to the saved, right?

Right.

And yet, just because Carnival sponsors one big, gay boat ride every year hardly makes it a porn business. If the Baptists want to boycott a cruise company for immoral and tasteless behavior, they should go after Pacific Princess. That Love Boat was, hands down, some of the most disgusting TV I've ever seen.

"I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched."

The slippery slope grows steeper:

The entertainment industry has been under considerable pressure to rein in indecent broadcasts on TV and radio, and now may face the same criticism for depictions of smoking.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, pushed for the hearing after several recent meetings between anti-smoking advocates and entertainment industry executives.

I find my health and well-being irreparably harmed by romantic comedies starring Julia Roberts, classic film remakes, and so-called "horror" movies directed by Kevin Williamson. Where's my lobby?

Hollywood's top lobbyist, Jack Valenti, is scheduled to testify along with LeVar Burton, co-chair of the Directors Guild of America's social responsibility task force, Madeline Dalton, associate professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School, and Stan Glantz, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco School of Medicine.

Dalton wrote a recent study claiming that smoking in movies entices young people to pick up the habit. Glantz is one of Hollywood's leading social critics who pushes for R ratings for movies in which the actors light up.

I can't, off the top of my head, think of any recent "young people" movies that glamorized smoking. I think one article mentioned 101 Dalmations, but is Cruella DeVille really a role model to kids?

Movies aimed at adolescents are another thing, I suppose, but if the flicks your teenagers are watching don't show young people doing anything worse than smoking, consider yourself lucky.

While Motion Picture Assn. of America chief Valenti has worked to get the anti-smoking message out, his trade group says it's a filmmaker's right to have the characters smoke or not.

Another reason to be happy Valenti is on his way out. Of course, only the freakishly na�ve among us actually assumed he wouldn't continue to look for ways to make movies as bland as wedding receptions in Provo, UT.

And if smoking is enough to garner a film an 'R' rating, what about movies showing fat people? Obesity's going to pass up smoking as the #1 killer of Americans in the next few years, after all, should someone shown binging on H�agen Dazs elicit censure? What about a kid eating a bowl of Froot Loops?

As long as we're devolving into a nation of people incapable of thinking for themselves or making informed decisions about their entertainment choices, here are some things I'd like to see earn a film an 'R' rating:

- CGI babies or domesticated animals
- Jar Jar Binks
- Ashton Kutcher
- Climactic scenes in romantic comedies where the hero/heroine has to race to be with their beloved after previously deciding the relationship was not to be, usually to the strains of some 1960s song
- Eddie Murphy in a classic comedy remake/Disney theme-ride film/anything
- "Bullet time"
- The "twist" ending. On a related note, a ten-year moratorium should be imposed on the films of M. Night Shyamalan.
- Woody Allen/Sean Connery/Jack Nicholson paired up with a leading lady forty years younger
- Action stars firing two handguns accurately
- Anytime the central character is prominently attached to a certain product (e.g. E.T.'s Reeses Pieces, James Bond's BMW Z3, or the entirety of the film Josie and the Pussycats)

That should keep everyone occupied until all that's left to us are the Left Behind and Veggie Tales franchises.

Apropos of nothing

Every so often, I feel the need to get a few things off my chest...

- The next time I hear a white guy in his late 30's wearing a golf shirt and a pair of Dockers greet another similarly clad white guy in his late 30's with the expression, "What up, dog?" I'm going to give him an eagle claw to the throat, Dalton from Road House style.

- In the same vein, and to the Delux_247 lookalike and his wannabe Slim Shady companion I saw at the music store the other day, maybe you fellows should go look up what FUBU stands for. You might understand why all the black register guys were snickering at your outfits.

- There is no such thing as "heighth." It's "height."
- It's "moot," not "mute" (pay attention to your Rick Springfield).
- "Irregardless" isn't a word.
- Also, unless you're Prince, don't subsititute "U" for "you" if you're writing me.

- Ben Stiller hasn't been funny since 1998's Permanent Midnight, when he mistakenly decided he was a serious actor.

- I'm as much of an '80s hair metal aficionado as the next guy, and while I get the joke, I just don't think the Darkness are that good.

- What tear in the fabric of reality occured that made Dr. Phil a diet guru? When can we look forward to his companion volume on avoiding hair loss?

- Finally (and what actually spurred this fiesta of froth), why is it that every vending machine in my building is out of Diet Mountain Dew, yet fully stocked with bottles of Tropicana Strawberry Melon that have been there since January?

What's in a name?

For a while now, I've noticed a growing number of minivans and SUVs sporting a back window sticker or two that's something along the lines of a megaphone with a girl's name - representing their daughter the cheerleader, or a football with a boy's name - representing their son the bench jockey. Haven't seen any chess pieces or circular saw stickers yet, leading me to believe either a) the chess club doesn't advertise, or b) parents aren't maybe a little selective in what makes them crow about their offspring.

Then I read on Fark about the new trend: stick figure window stickers that show Mom, Dad, and the kids, all with the family member's names underneath. Kind of takes all the romance and intrigue out of being a child predator, doesn't it? In the old days stalking a youngster meant somehow coaxing the name out of a friend or family member, or skulking around their house and stealing their mail, at least. Now all you have to do is drive around your favorite suburb. If you're really lucky, you might even find a home with signs posted in the yard with the kids' names on them.

How convenient is that? No more suspiciously tailing vehicles or doing those creepy low speed drive-bys with your lights off, now that Mom and Dad are doing all your legword for you.

I've always felt vague annoyance with those "My child is an Honors Student" bumper stickers. I tend to ascribe evil motives to most people, and I always suspected the parents sporting such decoration on their cars were engaging more in one-upmanship with other parents than actually expressing pride in their kids (hard to believe, I know). Now, since that's not enough, they're telling everyone their kids' names and at least one of the extracurricular activities in which they participate. Combine that with the Old English letters spelling out the last name that I've seen on other cars around town and you might as well put the kid out on the curb for pick up

Okay, maybe not. I'm still a little squirrely about it, however.

"Boy, what in the hell are you talking about?"

All it took to get Bush to acknowledge the fallen servicemen and women of the Iraq War was for a picture to be published in a major metropolitan newspaper:

NAPLES, Florida (CNN) -- President Bush has seen the photographs of caskets of slain U.S. military personnel returning from Iraq and was "moved" by them, according to a White House spokesman, who defended the policy against making such pictures public.

"We must pay attention to the privacy of the families, that's what the policy is based on," White House Spokesman Trent Duffy told reporters, calling that "our first priority."

I think I just got whiplash. Almost any American is going to be "moved" by these images, dude. That was one of the reasons they were taken in the first place.

The pictures aren't that detailed, but how is the privacy of any soldier's family being violated? This isn't the equivalent of showing an airman's corpse being dragged through downtown Mogadishu, after all.

He said the images are a stark reminder of the sacrifices American men and women have given to protect freedom, and said those sacrifices are why the United States "must win."

Does this guy have any more sides of his mouth to talk out of? Not to sound cynical, but if the coffins are such a "stark reminder" of why we "must win," why isn't the White House insisting they get splashed on the front page of every daily in the country? If Duffy and his bosses really believe in their propaganda value, there shouldn't be any problem with releasing the photos, because they'll unite Americans behind the war effort.

Unless, of course, they don't.

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.

"Well, to cheer you up, I rented a couple of videos: Boxing's Greatest Weigh-Ins, and Yentl."

I loathe Blockbuster, and often go out of my way to rent fine video products from Audio/Video Plus, which is slightly less convenient, but good for your soul. People have their own reasons for avoiding the place, but my enmity towards Blockbuster can be encapsulated by two things: lack of selection - space is made for new arrivals by gutting the already underwhelming classics section - and self-imposed censorship - who else will protect us from the director's cut of Requiem for a Dream?

So when The Wife and I decided we'd like to check out Lost in Translation, I figured I'd suck up my ill feelings and go to our local B-Buster franchise (it's right by our local grocery store, where I was headed anyway).

I knew I was in trouble when I entered the store and, after the sincere greeting thrown my way by the nearest register jockey, didn't see a big poster for the movie. LIT only came out on DVD this week, so any promotions (like Blockbuster's "Guaranteed In Stock" deal) should've been obvious. Indeed they were, for several other movies I don't care to mention, but when I got to the Lost in Translation shelf, it was as I'd feared. No copies were to be found, and none were being held up at the front, meaning I pretended to make friends with that register guy for nothing.

Fine, it's a popular movie, but what spurred this whole diatribe in the first place was that, compared to Translation's meager 6 cover display ("translating" to roughly 40 rental copies), Cuba Gooding Jr.'s latest masterpiece, Radio was featured on three shelves, with some 20 cases on display, equating to some 120 rental copies.

Let me put this another way. Lost in Translation is up for a slew of Academy Awards, and is one of the most critically lauded movies of last year. Radio, on the other hand, is widely viewed as a new nadir, even for Cuba Gooding Jr. movies. And yet for some reason, Blockbuster management decided to devote as much shelf space to LIT as they did the Married Couples, Single Sex series.

I didn't realize Mr. Gooding was so popular.

Bounced Trek

Rick Berman is reportedly out as Big Man on the Federation campus. Good.

And as I reported earlier, the set is still awash with concern that within a month or two, there may be a new 'captain' in the Executive Producer's chair. There is concern that Rick Berman's future with the beloved TREK franchise may be coming to an end, making less certain than before the future of ENTERPRISE and a possible fourth season.

My disenchantment with the Trek franchise came some time during The Next Generation's run. I'd always been a fan of the original Star Trek, in much the same way I enjoyed old Tom Baker episodes of Dr. Who: both were cheesy, familiar fun.

And yet, somewhere around the 28th time a "If Data Only Had a Heart" episode aired, or the 900th time another bullshit technological solution was found to a seemingly insurmountable problem (firing a particle beam into the sun?), I just got tired of it all.

DS9 was, to me, the most engaging of the recent Trek offerings (and, not so coincidentally, involved the least meddling from Berman). It was nice and dark, with little of the touchy feely crap so prevalent in TNG or (later) Voyager, two series which veered dangerously away from Roddenberry's "Wagon Train in space" concept. Neither featured the sense of conflict or danger present in the original Trek, instead settling for a strange tendency towards conflict avoidance, screwing with continuity (a huge fanboy no-no), and yawn-inducing story arcs.

The franchise also suffered seriously from overexposure. After TNG became one of the highest rated syndicated shows of all time, the market was soon flooded with Trek properties. They may have belatedly realized the profit potential of Star Trek, but Paramount lost no time in milking the cash cow until it contracted mastitis.

Berman - as the number one guy - is clearly to blame for the bulk of these problems, and his ouster would be well-deserved. Next up, get rid of that hack Brannon Braga and let the franchise lie dormant for at least five, preferably ten years. Then bring writer Ron Moore in to take the helm, and start over. I don't know if you need to go even further into the future (Next, Next Generation?) or do something entirely different. Many fans feel that Joss Whedon should be brought in, which is an intriguing idea. Firefly displayed a number of elements I think would be welcome in a Trek series: it had a wry sense of humor, plenty of action, and featured (or was starting to, before it was canceled) a compelling long-term plot - something lacking from any of the recent Trek series ("trying to get home," a la Voyager, doesn't cut it).

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Like I said, I'm not much of a Trek guy (I think the best thing that's come out related to the franchise in the last fifteen years was Shatner's turn in Free Enterprise), but given the quality of programming on the Sci Fi Channel, fans need all the help they can get.

Sunday reading

The Sunday New York Times had a couple things that amused/annoyed me yesterday, to wit:

1) Ranked slighty lower on the front page than the electrifying bulletin that - hey, it sure gets cold in New England in January - was a story about the increasing length of credits at the end of films. This scandalous news item centered on the fact that credits for Return of the King clocked in at a mammoth 9 minutes and 33 seconds. This beat the previous 7 minute marks set by Titanic and Waterworld (Kevin Costner's hair weave stylists reportedly took 90 seconds by themselves).

I don't think it really matters a gaffer's damn if the producers of a film see fit to include the infant co-star's booger wrangler or the lead's Scientology adviser. It's their film, and no one is strapped down in their chair and forced to watch. There's a price to pay if you want to hear that Annie Lennox song, after all.

2) Much as I wanted to mock Emily Nussbaum's article, "My So-Called Blog," which appeared in the NYT Magazine, I would've felt too much like I was stomping on baby seals, or nuns, of baby nun seals. The piece focuses exclusively on high school weblogs - written by sensitive, angsty boys and callow, cruel girls - and also makes the groundbreaking comparison of blogs to diaries. I'd argue that a diary is something never meant to see the light of day, while a weblog seeks...nay, craves validation from the author's peers. I can, however, understand teens not concentrating on the fact that anything written online is open to mockery from the entire world.

Here's a handy guide to all the high schoolers in the audience: adolescent life sucks; people are going to make fun of you (especially if they catch you baring your soul on LiveJournal); the hot guy/girl in your class is, most likely, never going to notice you; the supremacy of the rich, white, jock-ocracy exists well into adulthood. Many of you may find this hard to believe (and don't trust me; I've over 30, after all), but living with your parents and having little else to worry about other than whether or not to ask out that girl in Biology is about the easiest you're ever going to have it. I'll leave you with a quote from Middle Age Crazy, where Bruce Dern is fantasizing about speaking at his son's high school graduation: "Give 'em back their damn diplomas, give 'em back their silly fucking hats, and stay 18 for the rest of your life."

I'll make a hell of a guidance counselor.

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead"

But former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet is still alive. What's more, today is his 88th birthday. Conveniently, this year also marks the 30th anniversary of the CIA-backed coup that removed Salvador Allende from power and installed Pinochet as dictator of Chile.

How about a little career retrospective?

+ 180,000 tortured during his first year in power
+ Numerous assassinations performed abroad by Pinochet's secret police (DINA), including that of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC
+ "Operation Condor" - before it was a Jackie Chan movie, it was a joint effort by the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to monitor, abduct, and torture political enemies regardless of where they were living at the time[1]
+ Routine torture of "dissidents" using electrical shock, beatings, and sexual assault throughout his presidential tenure

And let's not forget our own government's compliance, which is depressingly unsurprising, given the popularity of supporting "friendly dictators" during the Cold War. Present day spin artists like to present Pinochet as a hero in the struggle against Communism, based on how instrumental he was in preventing the Red Menace from achieving a strategic toehold in the Andes and seizing the precious alpaca herds.

Courts have ruled Pinochet is mentally unfit to stand trial for human rights abuses. He suffers from diabetes, has a pacemaker, and was recently hospitalized for bronchitis and a broken wrist. He is unrepentant about crimes committed during his time in office, and insists he always acted "in a democratic way."

Congratulations on lurching to another birthday, you murdering scumbag. I hope it's your last.

[1] Pinochet's suspected involvement in the abduction and "disappearing" of 79 Spanish nationals/Chileans of Spanish descent from Argentina formed the basis for his arrest in London in 1998.

Starve your head

While leafing through an old magazine earlier, I came across an advertisement for these clowns:

That's the band "Mushroomhead." If it wasn't bad enough that their music is mostly "Pantera Lite," and that they share that "we're not going to show our faces 'cause it's freaky" motif with other gimmick "metal" bands like Slipknot, just look at them for a second.

...

For me, a few things spring to mind:

1. Does the gay Nazi thing really get the chicks? I know, the SS had the best uniforms and all, but damned if those guys don't look like extras from the Blue Oyster scene in "Police Academy"

2. How many members does a band need? I've listened to their music and I can't figure out what half the people pictured are doing. Is this a Public Enemy thing, where half the guys are security and Ministers of Information and such like? Or does one guy bounce around like Bez from Happy Mondays, one guy plays the never-ending keyboard note like the dude in EMF, and another guy plays tamborine?

3. Nothing is worse than being the one guy in the "mask band" who doesn't get to wear a mask. Not even the faux Waffen Gebirgs Division armband can distract groupies from your Bub the Zombie makeup job. I feel for you, brother.

Or rather, I would if you and your band weren't a bunch of white suburban malcontents wailing about how tough it is to be a white suburban malcontent.

Put the load right on me

The Internet Movie Database has the latest dispatch from the War on Realistic Body Types:

Buxom screen star Liv Tyler is risking her Hollywood career - by refusing to lose weight. The 26-year-old has been told by movie bosses she risks missing out on top film roles unless she reduces the size of her shapely figure. But Liv - who trimmed to a svelte 57 kilograms for her part as heroine Arwen in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy, before piling 13 kilograms back on after shooting wrapped - insists she is happy with her weight and doesn't want to diet.

I'm all for Ms. Tyler's stance, especially if it kills any chance for a follow-up to "Armageddon."

70 kg = 154 lbs. Tyler's 5' 10" tall. That someone with those dimensions should feel pressured to diet or can be referred to as "buxom" says more about Hollywood's idiotic standards than anything I'd be capable of writing.

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Connelly, and Lara Flynn Boyle in "Charlies Angels 3: Back to Bergen-Belsen."

Back in blacklist

As entertaining as all the hooplah around people jockeying to get on the NRA's blacklist is, it's ultimately a waste of time. They might as well sign up to be censured by Philip Morris or the makers of Real Doll, for all the risk they're taking. Still, I suppose their hearts are in the right place.

As for the NRA, someone needs to inform them that the purpose of a blacklist is to actually make those who aren't included want to avoid inclusion. The NRA's blacklist is so ridiculously broad it's pretty much meaningless.

For example, one could assume from their list that no one in the NRA will ever require quality legal representation (which seems unlikely) or health care, since they've blacklisted both the American Bar Association and the AMA. Need a brain tumor removed? Better go to Mexico, 'cause the Congress of Neurological Surgeons is on your list. So is the National Parks and Conservation Association (no camping, I guess), Hallmark (handmade cards are more sincere, I think), and Levi Strauss (Wranglers are coming back).

Since NBC, ABC, and CBS are also on the blacklist, NRA members must watch a lot of "Simpsons"...but wait, "Simpsons" producer James Brooks is on the blacklist too! That just leaves "The O.C." and "COPS," or cable.

They just better be careful who their provider is, because Time-Warner's a no-no (that means no HBO, either).

A significant number of NRA members must be Muslim, Hindu, or "other," since the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United States Catholic Conference, the United Methodist Church, the General Board & Church Society, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Congress of National Black Churches, the Govt. Affairs office of the Evganelical Lutheran Church, and the Mennonites are all blacklisted.

NRA Parents are also in a bit of a bind, as Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Nickelodeon President Herb Schannel are also listed. There's always "Davey and Goliath," I suppose.

Here's a thought for the NRA: perhaps the ludicrous number of organizations, individuals, and corporations assembled against you are indicative of a fundamental flaw in your policies? Maybe instead of spasmodically adding every C-list celebrity like Marla Maples (Marla Maples?!) to your enemies list, you should reexamine the stances you've taken on assault weapons and firearms purchasing so you can pare down the "Omni-List" and craft into an effective boycott tool. Then it might actually, I don't know, mean something.

But what do I know? The only firearm I own is "Love Gun" by KISS.

Can you hear the drums, Orlando?

Sounds like someone's a little defensive.

Bloom Annoyed at McKellen Quip

Movie hunk Orlando Bloom lashed out at "Lord of the Rings" co-star Sir Ian McKellen at a film awards this week after the gay actor after said he wanted to kiss him. McKellen had joked at London's British Independent Film Awards on Tuesday night that he was only attending in the hope of smooching hunky Bloom. However, when the 26-year-old arrived and was asked about the cheeky remarks he failed to see the funny side. He coldly shot back, "I'm not gay. I've got a girlfriend."

Lighten up, Butch. That nasty queen's not out to steal your precious bodily fluids.

Unless you can come up with another variation on the shield surfing gambit from "The Two Towers," he will steal your spotlight, however. But don't worry, I'm sure the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise will keep you employed for years.

Nudes of the world

You gotta hand it to that Spencer Tunick; where some guys have been scheming for centuries on how best to get women out of their clothes, Tunick's figured out some of them will willingly disrobe for art's sake:

NEW YORK - The women crossed their arms to keep warm in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal early Sunday as they prepared to pose for Spencer Tunick's latest human art installation. All 450 of them were nude.

The women, all volunteers, arrived at about 3 a.m. Sunday, stripped off their clothes and composed their bodies into sculptural shapes and formations meant to imitate streets, buildings and cityscapes. The building had been closed to the public during the shoot.

To quote Montgomery Burns, "I may not know art, but I know what I hate." I'll stop there.

Tunick appears to be a capable photographer, but it seems like he'd be better suited to coordinating gala events or choreographing halftime shows. Surely the hard part of all this is actually getting hundreds of naked people together in one place. If you can convince them of that, how hard is it to take their picture while they're lying on the floor?

Get them to play dodge ball, at least, or throw little pickles at each other.

Potable quotes

Like any failed struggling writer, I've spent a good portion of my adult life in bars. They're great places to pick up dialogue and story ideas...and to drink, coincidentally. As with most things, for every decent conversational snippet you happen to overhear there are several dozen that make you doubt the future of mankind.

The following examples, from my favorite bar, are actual statements overheard during Game 6 of the ALCS between the Yankees and the Red Sox. All were uttered by the same guy, who was no more or less intoxicated than anyone else in the general vicinity:

[on the new $20 bill] "Jackson looks awful. They might as well have used a post-mortem picture of him after he got shot by Aaron Burr."

I hope I don't have to explain to anyone that Alexander Hamilton, not Andrew Jackson, was shot by Aaron Burr. At first I figured the guy must have thought he was looking at a $10 bill, which sports Hamilton's portrait. He clearly said "Jackson," however.

[regarding Hideki Matsui's troubles fielding a ball in some high winds] "They must not have winds like that in Japan."

No, they have typhoons. But thanks for playing, gaijin.

[recommending a movie to a friend] "Shakespeare in Love" is brilliant, I watch it at least twice a year."

Movie prefences are, as always, judgement calls. Whether or not you feel that "Shakespeare in Love" is "brilliant" or is actually "Shakespeare for Dummies," most sophisticated moviegoers understand that the only movies deserving of multiple screenings per year are: "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Empire Strikes Back," "The Breakfast Club" (but only the TV version that airs on TBS with the hilarious profanity edits), and "Santo vs. the Vampire Women."

Thoughts on a morning commute

Stopped at a traffic light this AM, and a car with a pit bull in it pulled up next to mine. The dog immediately started barking at me, even though I had the windows rolled up and wasn't doing anything more aggressive than frantically pushing radio buttons to get off the station playing Neil Diamond that I'd, uh, accidentally tuned in. More likely, I'd violated the dog's zone of aggression, which probably has something like a 120' radius.

I have the same opinion of pit bull owners as I do of people who own .50 caliber Desert Eagle handguns: y'all are seriously overcompensating. I know, I know: there are responsible pit bull owners out there. Something tells me this guy - yakking on a cell phone while his dog lunged precariously out the passenger side window at passers by - wasn't one of them. As the wannabe badass' dog of choice, you're not going to see many pit bull owners who aren't either a) poser thugs or b) trailer park meth dealers. You guys aren't tough. A tough man can walk a poodle, a chihuahua, and a Pomeranian down the street at the same time without anyone laughing at him.

Back to the guy with the pit bull in the car next to me this morning: nothing tops off that smooth criminal motif like the mustard yellow Volvo you were driving. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Sexual Assault for Dummies

Ginger clued me in to this article by The New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook, whose assertion that "'no' doesn't always mean no" proves he doesn't have a very good grasp of the English language:

Here's a good rule of thumb for any guy who is afraid, as Mr. Easterbrook frets, that they will be falsely accused of rape: STOP. If there is any ambiguity about the consent issue, if the woman you're with seems like she may be uncertain about the encounter, if there is any fucking question that what you're doing might be construed as non-consensual sex...get up and leave. That's right: zip up and walk out the door. The ignominy of jerking off in your bathroom is a thousand times less repulsive than taking things too far when you don't have explicit permission to do so.

Easterbrook asserts that, because it's such an ordeal for women to accuse a man of rape, prosecuting attorneys (and jurors) automatically assume such accusations to be true. He then goes on to bemoan the hordes of victimized men who suffer false accusations at the hands of vindictive women, which is the same manner of chauvinistic paranoid bullshit that Joe Eszterhas put forth in "Basic Instinct."

Easterbrook doesn't argue that a woman shouldn't be allowed to instigate a "social ritual that often leads to sex," which is very enlightened of him. No, he asserts something far more sinister:

...because in the real world "no" does not always mean no--speaking the word "no" is not the ideal way to communicate to a man that what is happening has changed from persuasion, or pressure, to compulsion. Men not only want sex, the male mindset holds that overcoming the woman's "no" is part of manliness. Few men will rape if that's what they think they are doing. Many try to push past "no" and tell themselves that what they are doing is manly persuasion of the naturally hesitant female.

Gregg Easterbrook must watch a lot of Cinemax. "Overcoming the woman's 'no' is part of manliness?" "Naturally hesitant female" or not, if you hear "no," you sit the hell up and start grabbing for the car keys. Better safe than incarcerated, as my grandfather used to say.

But wait, Gregg has an idea for how we can sort through all this confusion:

Here's my proposal: If the line is crossed, women should say, "This is rape!"

The statement is clear, unambiguous, and can't possibly mean "not now, but maybe after more wine," which is what men often think the first "no" means. Saying, "This is rape!" won't stop the hardened criminal rapist, who already has decided to commit a crime. This phrase should work on the majority of men who are not criminals. Just hearing the word "rape" in this context would give chills to the majority of men who are not criminals.

By Jove, I think he's got it. But don't stop there, think about how this could be applied to other crimes:

"This is a carjacking!"
"This is molestation!"
"This is homicide!"

We can all sleep soundly knowing that such behavior will prevent the majority of those "who are not criminals" from going forward with their heinous deeds. Hardened criminal rapists, after all, make up the vast majority of sexual assault perpetrators.

Of course, that's not the case. The "vast majority" of rapists are men who know - personally - the women they're victimizing. Articles like Easterbrook's, which encourage the delusion that most women somehow "want it," are more damaging than anything represented in the Harlequin Romance dimesnion that Gregg Easterbrook seems to occupy. Does he really share the company of men who think the first "no" is just an invitation to pour a little more Cabernet? If so, I suggest he start reading something besides Maxim and try to peel himself away from daytime soaps.

Stay tuned for Easterbrook's next article, where he defends the use of Rohypnol because it cuts through all that annoying "age-old male-female play."

Bastard.

Read a banned book

Pop a cap in your inner fascist by celebrating Banned Book Week. It's the 21st anniversary of BBW, and the American Library Association has a number of resources on their web site, including a detailed list of relevant First Amendment cases and a rundown of the 100 most frequently challenged books. It's worth noting that many of the books featured are merely challenged and not actually banned. Even so, the fact that some of these books even made the list is disturbing.

And no, I'm not referring to Madonna's Sex. Hell, I considered burning that.

So what books have been banned (physically removed) by school libraries in the great state of Texas? You can get a list of the 36 that made the cut at BannedBooks.info (a spin off of the Texas ACLU and the Texas Library Association). Here are some highlights:

- Phyllis Reynolds Nalor should get some kind of award for having three books on the banned list, three on the restricted list, and three on the pending list. I'm not familiar with the Alice series, but maybe I need to check it out.
- Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume: Some things never change. I remember the stink this book caused when I was in junior high. It had the predictable effect of making me and every one of my friends want to read it.
- All Stephen King books: I didn't think anyone but high school students still read King.
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving: I kind of agree with this one. Kids should read The World According to Garp instead.
- The Cold One and Die Softly: Die Softly by Christopher Pike: I'm surprised Pike was up to writing at all, after what happened on Talos V

Sorry. Lame "Star Trek" joke.

I also noticed that How to Eat Fried Worms is on the restricted list. Obviously Texas children are in danger of learning about the protagonist's struggle to down earthworms without puking and will be eager to try it for themselves.

I think I'm going to plant copies of Naked Lunch in some local schools. Seeing some of the books on the ALA's list - like Flubber ("flenser" must be Belgian for "rimjob") and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ("zen" being a "mystical" term) - really makes me look forward to joining the PTA.

All the news that's tits

News to me:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When you think about news shows, what comes to mind? There's "Meet the Press." And "Face the Nation." And now, Howard Stern's radio show.

That's right. The Federal Communications Commission ruled Tuesday that Stern's raunchy radio program is a "bona fide news interview" program.

This says more about the farce that is the FCC than about Stern's show, which convinced legions of morning DJs that commuters are somehow titilated by listening to them interview topless women.

The decision was in response to a request made by New York-based Infinity Broadcasting Operations Inc., which wanted a ruling that its widely syndicated Stern show is a news program and exempt from equal time requirements for political candidates.

The decision will allow Stern to put actor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the air without having to offer time to the scores of other candidates running for governor in California.

Schwarzenegger if he's lucky. I imagine Stern's schedulers are angling for Mary Carey and Gary Coleman first, since they fit better with Stern's core demographic. You'd have a tough time convincing me Cruz Bustamante or Tom McClintock would go within a five mile radius of the show. Though why they wouldn't to have a wide-ranging discussion on the size of their genitals or how many women they've slept with is beyond me.

Still, the same exemption has been given to "Jerry Springer" and "Sally Jesse Raphael," so it's hard to get to irate about it. Still, someone found a way:

The FCC's latest decision didn't go over well with Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a Washington-based media watchdog group.

"Howard Stern isn't 'bona fide' anything," Schwartzman said. He said the decision "mocks that system by equating Howard Stern with Tim Russert," host of NBC's "Meet the Press."

And Russert mocked the system himself by regularly appearing on the radio program of a known racist and homophobe.

Not guilty

Entertainment Weekly has been pissing me off lately. First they did a list of the Top 50 Cult Movies that didn't so much exclude legitimate cult films as it did include ones that had grossed tens of millions of dollars, thereby excluding them from "cult" status, in my opinion. In their current issue, they've put together a list of alleged "guilty pleasures." And while arguing with anyone over their completely subjective list choices is an exercise in futility, you'd expect them to at least correctly define the parameters of the exercise.

A guilty pleasure should be something so dreadful it embarrasses you to admit liking it, which by definition would seem to exclude something large numbers of other people like as well (safety in numbers and all that). This is where I have a problem with several of EW's choices:

For example, they include as a category the movies of Kurt Russell, but two of the ones they single out - "Tango and Cash"and "Tequila Sunrise" - grossed over $100 million between them. If they wanted to strengthen their argument, they should've listed "The Deadly Tower." Or "3000 Miles to Graceland."

Another of their choices, the tabloid TV show "Celebrity Justice," wouldn't appear to qualify either. Nosing into celebrity peccadiloes has already made things like The Smoking Gun popular. If you want to feel ashamed for watching a TV show, check out "Cheaters."

"Coyote Ugly?" I can count on one hand the number of fellows of my acquaintance who have seen this and don't admit to enjoying the spectacle of well-endowed, scantily clad women spraying water on each other...unless their significant others are around, in which case it's not guilt; it's common sense.

Liking "The Family Circus" isn't a guilty pleasure either. Why? Because no one likes "The Family Circus."

I do not feel guilty for occsasionally watching "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch." I do, however, feel that way for finding Aunt Hildegard (Caroline Rhea) oddly attractive.

See? That's what I'm talking about with the guilt. It was kind of mortifying to write that part about Aunt Hildegard down, which is the whole point.

Of EW's remaining selections, only "Seventeen" by Winger really counts as a true guilty pleasure. Plenty of my peers liked the movie "Just One of the Guys," for example, and I have difficulty believing anyone who actually sits through Fox's atrocious NFL pregame show would feel the slightest bit of shame at ogling Jillian Barberie.

But Winger? That's just sick.

Listing to Starboard

Admittedly, I'd never visited Right Wing News. The fact that I'm not a conservative probably has something to do with that, however while perusing Larry's blog I saw this link to an article where conservative bloggers selected the 20 Worst Figures in American History.

According to the results, Jimmy Carter is worse than Alger Hiss, Hillary Clinton is worse than Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton is worse than Timothy McVeigh.

Carter must've sunk himself by giving away the Panama Canal.

Traitors are apparently a big deal, yet Aldrich Ames got fewer votes than famed blowhard Al Sharpton. I must have missed the news the day Sharpton also blew the cover of two dozen American operatives in the USSR, leading to ten of them getting executed.

I can only assume the votes for Jane Fonda(!) were for her support of the Atlanta Braves, and not for her asinine Hanoi publicity stunt of over 30 years ago. Anyone thinking Jane "Milk the Fitness Craze for All It's Worth Then Marry a Billionaire" Fonda is left wing has serious reality issues.

She Emotes Hard for the Money

I've followed the Oscars pretty closely for the past twenty years. And while the jibes at my masculinity have been hard to take, I've managed to notice a few disturbing recent developments. The most notable of these being the quality of performances in the Best Actor category versus those won Best Actress. Simply put, the guys aren't really pulling their weight.

Consider these examples of Best Actor winners, and the "acting" they had to do to win, culled from the last thirteen years:

> Al Pacino, "Scent of a Woman" - Portray a blind man who spends the movie drinking and bellowing, which is what most of us do when we drink. Blind, as we all know, is the easiest handicap to play.
> Tom Hanks, "Philadelphia" - Fake an interest in opera. Go on a juice diet. Die.
> Tom Hanks, "Forrest Gump" - Act incredulous against a blue screen. Repeat.
> Nicolas Cage, "Leaving Las Vegas" - Get drunk a lot and feel up Elisabeth Shue.
> Geoffrey Rush, "Shine" - Jump on a trampoline. Smoke. Coast on the great performance of the kid who played the younger 'you.'
> Jack Nicholson, "As Good As it Gets" - Act like Jack Nicholson.
> Roberto Benigni, "Life is Beautiful" - Act like Roberto Benigni
> Kevin Spacey, "American Beauty" - Play a middle-aged guy who likes to smoke weed and fantasize about his teenage daughter's friend.
> Russell Crowe, "Gladiator" - Kick hell out of Joaquin Phoenix.

Spacey had it tough. And now for the ladies:

> Jodie Foster - Go through FBI training. Fend off advances from a crosseyed entomologist.
> Emma Thompson, "Howard's End" - Endeavor to make it through a Merchant-Ivory production without going batshit and killing everyone.
> Holly Hunter, "The Piano" - Put on a brave face at having to choose between Sam Neill and Harvey Keitel.
> Jessica Lange, "Blue Sky" - Overcome the stigma of appearing in 1976's "King Kong."
> Susan Sarandon, "Dead Man Walking" - Not only play a nun, but act like you have sympathy for Sean Penn.
> Helen Hunt, "As Good As it Gets" - Feign romantic interest in Jack Nicholson.
> Frances McDormand, "Fargo" - Do a convincing Minnesota accent.
> Hilary Swank, "Boys Don't Cry" - Dress and act like a man the entire movie. Get raped and murdered.
> Halle Berry, "Monster's Ball" - Feign enjoying sex with Billy Bob Thornton, possibly the creepiest man alive.
> Nicole Kidman, "The Hours" - Wear a prosthetic Virgina Woolf nose for two hours without everyone in the audience snickering at you.

There are exceptions, of course. Anthony Hopkins actually did a hell of a job in "Silence of the Lambs," while the 2000 Best Actress award could've just as easily gone to Julia Roberts' push-up bra. And I couldn't think for any justification for Gwyneth Paltrow or "Shakespeare in Love" winning anything. In general, however, it sure seems that the ladies in Hollywood are doing a lot more work for their little shiny, gold, naked guy.

This, and playing "Knights of the Old Republic" for 20 hours, is what I did with my weekend.