Mark Morford should be fired.
For offenses against the English language.

"some mutant shellacked Maria Shriver-like perma-saluting mannequin"

"all fake smiles and bleached teeth and Botoxed worry lines and pumped-up, silicone-enhanced flag-waving bravado"

"an entirely new, politically purified, blazingly conscious, peace-seeking vision"

"run roughshod over your id like an SUV crushes a bird's nest"

That's just painful.

He winds up his 9/11 retrospective with this gem:

It all comes down to this: Can you, on the deepest and most acute levels possible, in a raw and divine way that does zero dishonor to the various tragedies of your world but instead injects them all with mandatory doses of perspective and divine drunkenness and hot screaming love, can you, with every fiber or your being, with the deepest breath you can possibly take, laugh at the cosmic carnival of it all? .

No, I can't. Bite my ass, shitnugget.

[Via Michele, whose page will no longer load as I post this.]

Not for nothin'...

...but what use does Subway have for giant cans of "Country Sausage Gravy"? Do they even serve breakfast?

Never forget.

I stink at being thoughtfully somber and I don't have the eloquence to do justice to the day. These people do:

Damien Penny.
Sheila O'Malley. (And here.)
Emily Jones.
Michele Catalano. (Andrea Harris concurs.)
Ian Hamet.
James Lileks. (Second half of the entry.)
Mark Steyn.
Christopher Hitchens.

Zevon.

Like everyone else, I have my favorites:

10) Play It All Night Long -- Sweet Home, Alabama, play that dead band's song/turn those speakers up full blast and play it all night long.

9) Mohammed's Radio -- Don't it make you want to rock and roll, all night long.

8) Mr. Bad Example -- I'm proud to be a glutton, and I don't have time for sloth/I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross.

7) I'll Slow You Down -- You know I hate it when you stick your hand inside my head/And switch all my priorities around/You think you're pretty tricky but you're simply overbred/Go on without me, I'll just slow you down.

6) Turbulence -- We've been fightin' with the Mujahedin/Down in Afghanistan/Comrade Gorbachev/Can I go back to Vladivostok, man.

5) Splendid Isolation -- Don't want to wake up with no one beside me/Don't want to take up with nobody new/Don't want nobody comin' by without callin' first/Don't want nothin' to do with you.

4) Poor, Poor Pitiful Me -- Met a girl at the Rainbow Bar, she asked me if I'd beat her/She took me back to the Hyatt House...I don't want to talk about it.

3) Lawyers, Guns, and Money -- And I'm hiding in Honduras/I'm a desperate man/Send lawyers, guns and money/The shit has hit the fan.

2) Werewolves of London -- I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain...

1) Renegade -- Some prayers never reach the sky/Some wars never end/And some dreams refuse to die/Next time I would rather break than bend

Bad taste alert.

Ok, I could almost understand the Chinese not grokking the opprobrium associated with all things Hitler. The Italians, however, really ought to know better.

Depp redux.

Also via Tim Blair, Johnny Depp now claims his "dumb puppy" comments were--say it with me--taken out of context:

The magazine quoted the actor as saying "America is ... like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive." He was further quoted as saying he wanted his children to "see America as ... a broken toy" that they should explore, get the feel of, then "get out."

Explaining his comments a day later, Depp he had been using a metaphor that was taken "radically out of context," adding, "There was no anti-American sentiment."

America as a broken toy isn't anti-American?

"What I was saying was that, compared to Europe, America is a very young country and we are still growing as a nation," he said. "My deepest apologies to those who were offended, affected, or hurt by this insanely twisted deformation of my words and intent."

Is it me, or is 'taken out of context' this decade's 'just good friends'?

Update: Ben Kepple of Ben Kepple's Daily Rant went so far as to pull the transcript for the interview in question.

Second update: The more I think about the questionable judgment exercised by the interviewee, the more I giggle. At least America doesn't have "Wino Forever" tattooed on its collective chest as the sad and tatty reminder of a lame attempt to expunge an ill-advised tribute to its neurotic goth ex-girlfriend, Johnboy.

Satchmo Berlusconi.

Via Tim Blair, this Spectator interview with Silvio Berlusconi:

We are now confronted by a new world situation. We have passed from the confrontation of two blocs because the Russian federation has decided, under the guidance of Mr Putin, to be part of Europe and the West. That is a very big fact. I had the occasion to be president of the G8 in Genoa in 2001, and I was the host of the dinner, trying to bring everyone into the conversation, and I was making jokes as usual. I asked Schroeder about his experiences with women because he has been married four times, and I made him laugh. And I decided after a while just to push my chair back from the table and let them talk, and I saw Blair joking with Chirac, and Putin joking with Bush, and I was joking with everyone, and suddenly I thought, ‘Look, here I am, a man who has felt on his skin the second world war, since I was born in 1936. I saw my father dressed as a soldier, and I thought, ‘What a wonderful world.’

I just can't help liking the guy.

Depp opens his piehole.

And to no one's particular surprise, stupidity falls out.

"America is dumb, is something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth — that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," Depp was quoted as saying.

I hope the painfully inept phrasing is due to some kind of problem with translation. If that's the original English, I'm embarrassed to say we were educated in the same state.

Of course, Depp has cheekbones. That covers a multitude of shortcomings. [Link courtesy of Paula.]

There's such a fine line between brilliant and stupid.

Two engrossing articles from Arts & Letters Daily; the first a consideration of French intellectuel and rockstar-like media darling Bernard-Henri Levy and his new book, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, the second a review of the rather limp contributions made by writers and intellectual types in the aftermath of 9/11.

From the first:

"I am someone who thinks he can influence things," he says. "France, as Karl Marx said, is the country of politics, of the revolution and of universalism. It's these factors that maximise the role of the intellectuel and which maybe explain why there is such a large place given to these bizarre personnages, intellectuals, who proclaim 'le vrai, le juste et le bien', and who see a great nobility in political causes. It contrasts with the empiricisim, pragmatism and intellectual modesty of the Anglo-Saxon world, where there's a caution when it comes to the universal. There is no mythology about politics as there is in France. In England, politics is not a noble calling. It's a normal social activity - perhaps it's better like this."

In February 2002, his diplomatic role was made official when President Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin, his socialist prime minister, agreed - itself a rare enough event - to appoint him their special envoy in Afghanistan with a brief to advise them on the role French culture could play in a future aid programme. The idea of France sending a philosopher to a war zone was greeted with amusement internationally. At a time when the US was deploying combat aircraft, missiles and special forces to eradicate Taliban forces sheltering al Qaeda terrorists, Levy's arrival in Kabul captured the very essence of all the deep and longstanding differences in the way the world is viewed in Washington and in Paris.

But on Paris's Left Bank, where Levy and Dombasle maintain one of their sumptuous residences, his recommendations were received in deadly earnest. Le Monde, the pre-eminent newspaper of the French establishment, devoted more than 3,000 words to extracts from the 100-page report, which Levy submitted to the president and the prime minister in early April 2002. Its somewhat surreal proposals included training Afghan army officers at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy; the creation of an "Afghan ecole Nationale d'Administration" to imbue the civil service with Cartesian rationality ("We did it in Algeria, why not in Kabul?"); the establishment of a French cultural centre in Kabul; and the formation of a crack team of "hussars to spread the values of 1789" through the Afghan towns and villages.

This is precisely the kind of thought process that I find so perplexing in the French--is this really the best they can do? This is the best their educated elite can come up with? Hussars? And just what the hell are the values of 1789, apart from lopping the heads off the people who don't agree with you and dictating the price of bread?

Anyway. The second article is interesting for slightly different reasons, as a general reminder of the response of the international intelligentsia to 9/11, which ranged from the merely stupid (Alice Walker: "I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love.") to the outright offensive (Karlheinz Stockhausen: "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.") It seems harsh to say that no creative types rose to the occasion, but I'm damned if I can think offhand of any who did.

Peter and the Lupine-American.

Via the Corner: Bill Clinton violates the classics.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sergei Prokofiev's musical fairy tale Peter and the Wolf is popular with children but not with wolf lovers, and two former world leaders -- Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev -- aim to put that right in a new recording.

They have teamed up in a new recording that couples the tale with a contemporary version featuring the same two protagonists but a very different ending.

Prokofiev's version ends with Peter capturing the wolf and leading a triumphant procession to the zoo, paining music-loving environmentalists with romantic visions of wolves in the wild.

In the new version, narrated by former U.S. president Clinton and called Wolf Tracks, Peter again captures the wolf, but this time repents of his act and releases the animal, who howls a grateful goodbye.

"Forgetting his triumph, Peter thought instead of fallen trees, parched meadows, choked streams, and of each and every wolf struggling for survival," Clinton narrates.

"The time has come to leave wolves in peace," he adds.

So now Peter's just going to abandon his erstwhile friend, the duck, and let the wolf eat him? What about the duck's struggle for existence?

French composer Jean-Pascal Beintus wrote the score for the new wolf-friendly version while former Soviet leader Gorbachev provides an introduction and epilogue.

Ok...so no Prokofiev, either. What about this piece is going to persuade me to buy it, if I don't agree with its obviously lupicentric appeasement politics?

"In Prokofiev's classic, man dominates, but Wolf Tracks expresses quite different values of balance and tolerance. All of us hope for a future where these values are lived every day," Gorbachev said.

Oh, fuck you. It's still a wolf, and it's still going to eat the duck. Is that the future you're looking forward to, you swine?

There are recorded versions by everyone (including Peter Ustinov, Patrick Stewart, Jose Ferrer, Jack Lemmon, Dudley Moore, John Gielgud, Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, PDQ Bach, Captain Kangaroo, Dom Deluise, Sting, and David Bowie) already out there. My personal favorite version features Sean Connery. I can't imagine buying this.

Nice mental image.

The BBC’s credibility is floating in the Thames like a gangster’s corpse.

Geez, Tim, tell us what you really think.

Language peeve of the day.

Grizzly vs. grisly: the first is a bear, the second a synonym for "bloody" or "gruesome". Try not to confuse them.

Zevon on VH1 tonight.

Which is good, because I missed it Sunday. 8 Eastern.

Part of me is wondering if they're just going to run it in heavy rotation until he finally drops.

Two Towers comes out on DVD today.

And yet somehow I'm not moved to rush out and buy it. I guess the elf army showing up at Helm's Deep bothered me more than I thought it would.

And I don't think I need a statuette of Gollum. Bookended towers would have been nicer.

Key phrase: sputum tsunami.

Funniest thread I've read in ages. [Via the Corner.]

This is why I hate the NY press coverage of the Mets.

Joel Sherman, covering Piazza's return to the lineup from the DL last night (where Piazza was 3 for 5 with 5 RBI in their 9-2 stomping of the Giants):

"I don't want Steve Trachsel or Al [Leiter] to suffer for my learning on the job," Piazza said in explaining why he is not playing first. Of course, Piazza never offered the same concerns about them suffering due to his clumsy receiving and woeful throwing as a catcher. It is just another lame excuse to avoid what should really be done. The Mets are only playing for the future now, and Piazza should be playing first base every other day to provide his organization clues about how to construct future rosters.

Yeah, his catching skills are so clumsy Trachsel allowed one damn run and four hits in seven innings. I absolutely despise the way Sherman and Klapieceofshit and a number of other press pinheads in New York have taken the bit in their teeth about moving Piazza to first and will not relent, even when his performance proves them wrong.

Enterprise redux.

Evidently Greg took offense to my dismissal of Rick Berman's latest Star Trek^tm brand schlock, "Enterprise". [See 8/6 post "Enterprise", below.]

I'm tired of hearing people whine about Enterprise. People criticize it without watching it. You say, "Yeah, I've watched it." No, you haven't. You looked at it but you didn't watch it.

I viewed an episode. I wasn't aware that I had to commit to a full season before uttering a word of criticism.

And again, why can't people say "I don't like it." instead of "It sucks."?

In my case, because I was disappointed by its lameness, and in my judgment, it sucked.

It's more true to the orignal series than any of the others. Space exploration without much support from home. No holodeck. No transporter to get them out of every little jam. And no reconfiguring the sensor array to emit a tachyon pulse every time something gets in their way. Archer is a "down to earth" (pardon the expression) Captain. He's not a tea-sipping Shakespeare quoter like Picard, a messiah wannabe like Sisco, or an "I've been a science offcier so I can solve any problem on my own, why do I need the rest of you" bore like Janeway. There are some bad shows out there, people. Some bad, bad, bad TV goin on. This ain't part of it. You know what "sucks"? Stargate SG-1. Don't have even see the eye makeup wearing black guy to know its faggot food.

That's damning with faint praise, if the best you can say about "Enterprise" is that it's better than all other other horrifyingly bad series Berman's produced. Whether it's "faggot food" or not never crossed my mind.

Chicago sucks. Hate the town, hate the cast, hate musicals. Never saw it. Never gonna. Also faggot food.

The fact that you're closed-minded about musicals as a genre, in combination with the fact that you haven't actually seen it, pretty much renders your judgment on whether Chicago sucks or not moot. That's like someone who hates westerns passing judgment on The Searchers (or Bob Klapieceofshit passing judgment on the Mets. But I digress.) I've watched Star Trek literally since infancy, and this show, in my estimation, was as painfully pointless and derivative as TNG. I concede it's possible I saw the worst single episode of the show, but it sure as hell didn't make me want to see any more.

Btw, my father, not exactly a faggot, enjoyed Chicago immensely.

The West Wing sucks. Painfully obvious liberal platform and cast. Where's Squeaky Fromm and John Hinkley when you need em?

Well, yes, "West Wing" does suck.

And I'm tired of people complaining about the theme song to Enterprise. Sorry you don't got a new blaring orchestra piece to add to your dusty John Williams collection. Grow up, stand up and walk out of the comic book shop and into the sunlight.

What the hell? I'll put my musical tastes up against yours any day of the week. Nor do I frequent comic book shops, not that it would be relevant if I did.

It was a Rod Stewart song. If you actually listened to it, and I know not one of you did, it fits the Star Trek ideal completely. If you don't like Rod Stewart, too bad. He didn't sing it for the series, Russel Watson did. It's the most innovative, appropriate opening I've seen for a series in a long time and it's wasted on you closed-minded, unimaginative people as is the show.

I don't care who sang it, nor do I care about its pedigree. I physically cringed when I heard it, and that's where I draw the line. If Celine Dion suits your ideal of Star Trek, fine, but it doesn't suit mine.

Surprised the hell out of me, too.

Happy birthday to me.

And Lileks, apparently.

Loose canon.

Via Andrea Harris: Starting with East of Eden, Oprah Winfrey is throwing her considerable cultural influence behind some literary works with at least debatable status as classics; the only question seems to be whether she has the standing to choose which works can be designated as such.

"I hope you know that you are stepping into the middle of what the '90s called the campus 'culture wars,'" said University of Louisville English professor Dale Billingsley.

(Gratuitous quote included because it's by one of my two favorite professors at the old alma mater, and a man of considerable sense.)

I spent some years at U of L during the early/mid 80s in pursuit of an English BA, sorting through both canon literature and the hot contemporary writers at the time (mostly ChickLit and PoMos, with all the attendant axe-grinding everyone pretended to find so terribly interesting.) If Oprah wants to uphold some semblance of literary tradition and actually gets the people who normally wouldn't touch Steinbeck with a ten foot pole to want to read him--I'm all for it. Even if East of Eden isn't really part of the canon, it's still well written. And the more good writing you get people to read, the better able they're going to be to decide for themselves what is and is not worth their time.

Idolatry.

Matt Labash in the Weekly Standard covers all the reasons why I despise American Idol (and its ilk) in one snarkily hilarious column:

I'M NOT SURE exactly when I began feeling myself turning from "American Idol" friend to "American Idol" foe. Perhaps it was when I got a good look at the kind of company I was keeping. When Ruben sang his smash hit, "Flying Without Wings," many in the audience began sticking out their arms to make soaring motions (the song says "flying without wings"--keep up, people).

Or maybe it came with the ill-advised he said/she said gang war. The fellas sang a swinging version of Frank Sinatra's "The Lady is a Tramp," while the girls kept interrupting with Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious," singing "I don't think you're ready for this jelly." Indeed, I wasn't. Or perhaps the show's nadir came when Ruben and Clay pretended they were quarreling while crooning the Paul McCartney / Michael Jackson song, "The Girl Is Mine." Like Jackson before him, it's hard to imagine Clay even liking a girl, let alone fist-fighting over one.

Or perhaps it was when all of the Idols took the stage for a hokey, pyrotechnic shooting rendition of Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American." It felt a bit like the Icecapades without the ice. Whenever it was--maybe during the Bee Gee's medley--I decided I'd finally had enough.

The horror. The horror.

Must see tv.

Ladies and gentlemen, set your VCRs (or Tivos, if you're more technologically advanced than I am.) JKRank of Sofia Sideshow has a project airing on SciFi this Saturday night: Deep Shock. Features giant, evil electric eels, melting polar ice caps, nuclear warheads, and a villain named Chomsky (near-choked on my diet root beer over that one.) Critters gone bad!

Update 8/8: spelling correction. Gentlement?

Enterprise.

Just saw my first episode.

1) Theme song sucks. Words fail me in describing just how much.

2) They have turned the Klingons into a culture of lawyers, and forced them to operate their "tribunal" according to the rules of modern American jurisprudence. If I may be permitted a descent into full geekdom, I would like to point out that a Klingon trial of an outsider would probably more closely resemble either a Soviet show trial or Judge Roy Bean, trial to be followed by execution and lunch.

3) I was told this was supposed to be closer in spirit to the original series. I didn't realize this was limited to recycling old TOS plots with a patina of TNG socialism.

And I still hate those fucking prosthetic foreheads.

This show sucks.

True confessions.

Ok...I have to come clean. I'm not actually reading any of the books at the bottom of the page right now because I took a fiction break to read the entire Flashman series by George Macdonald Fraser. Then I kind of got distracted by I, Claudius. And I'm still in the middle of Livy's Early History of Rome, but I've been messing around with that for six months.

Phew, that's better. I was starting to feel like a fraud.

Britain's mass bastardy.

Theodore Dalrymple's phrase, not mine. But I like it. Dalrymple looks at the revolution in British manners and the erosion of restraint in modern culture in general.

Buzzword of the day: Peterpandemonium.

I had a pretty good childhood, but I don't want to relive it, and this is just creepy:

London has become a magnet for young men and women determined to relive their childhoods. Every weekend thousands of twentysomethings dress up in school uniforms, to go clubbing at School Disco. People from all walks of life - doctors, computer programmers, hairdressers, lawyers - enthusiastically embrace this retro nostalgia. The young men in white shirts and blazers and the young women in short 'school' shirts take great delight in pretending that they are naughty teenagers having a snog on the dance floor. The School Disco scene has spread northwards, to Newcastle and Leeds; in February 2002, the School Disco Spring Term album went to number one in the charts.

God save us from the people who peaked in high school and don't ever want to leave. It gets worse:

Retro nostalgia is not just an Anglo-American phenomenon. 'Hello Kitty', a white kitten whose trademark is a flower or red bow, is hugely popular among Japanese adults. Female professionals and office workers bring Kitty stationery into the office; when they hit the bars they chat on their Kitty mobiles and offer cigarettes from their Kitty cigarette cases to businessmen wearing Snoopy neckties.

I do not get the whole "Hello Kitty" thing. There's something wrong with having a cartoon themed cigarette case. Personally it gives me sort of a combination Norma Desmond/pedophilia case of the willies.

Our society is full of lost boys and girls hanging out at the edge of adulthood. Yet we find it difficult even to give them a name. The absence of a readily recognised word to describe these infantilised adults demonstrates the unease with which this phenomenon is greeted. Advertisers and toy manufacturers have invented the term 'kidult' to describe this segment of the market. Another word sometimes used to describe these 20- to 35-year-olds is 'adultescent', generally defined as someone who refuses to settle down and make commitments, and who would rather go on partying into middle age.

Give it a snazzy label and it's mainstream. This would seem to be part and parcel of the neo-barbarian youth culture that believes in the twin virtues of piercing and unemployment. Or maybe I'm just reacting to this with horror because I'm hitting middle age and these are the people who were supposed to keep society going when I'm old. That's going to be difficult to do if you can't pry the fucking Nintendo controllers out of their pudgy little fingers before 40. Three pieces of advice for the 20 somethings:

1) Buy clothing that covers all your private parts. Nobody wants to see that shit.
2) Take that bone out of your nose, Shaka. This ain't Borneo in the 1800s. Nobody wants to see that shit either.
3) Move out of your parents' basement, even if it means leaving the big screen and the Playstation and selling off your mint condition Star Wars figures.

You'll thank me later.

[via Arts & Letters Daily.]

Cultural backwater, or Irony, USA?

So Sunday I'm here watching Key Largo on the big screen from the balcony. On the way out the elderly ladies next to my friend Jim and I start chatting about the movie.

Lady A: So did you like it? I know you don't care for these shoot-em-ups.

Lady B: Well...it was ok.

Lady A: You'll like the one next week better.

I checked the schedule. Next week is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Better than Key Largo.

You make the call.

Huzzah.

Courtesy of Andrea Harris, all hail the return of Sine Qua Non. Adjust your links accordingly.

More casting from What The Hell, Inc.

I already have a problem with Tim "Underlit" Burton directing the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (aka Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to non-readers.) Now he's in the process of killing whatever hopes I might have cherished of it not becoming another ill-conceived Burton Gothfest through his possible choices for the lead (well...if you think of Wonka as the lead, anyway): Michael Keaton, Christopher Walken, and--most likely at the moment--Johnny Depp. Now, it's not that I don't think all three are fine actors. And God knows, they're all quirkily charming enough to pull off the character. But none of them are British. For a project they're touting as an attempt to be faithful to the story, and therefore "not a remake" of the 1971 movie, shouldn't they start with an English cast?

But when can I actually see the movie here in Dullsville?

Bubba Ho-Tep trailer.

Fuckwits of the month.

MSNBC, for naming Mike Piazza as their "whiner of the week", based on a widely-discredited (and vehemently denied by Piazza himself) Pete Caldera article from Sunday that alleges that anonymous sources "close to him" said that Mike Piazza said he didn't want to play for the Mets anymore:

There should be a rule that only athletes who are actually playing can complain about the way their team is going. One of the most annoying things to hear is a player who’s been injured since the Reagan administration crying about how he doesn’t want to play anymore for the team he’s not playing for anyway.
Mike Piazza, our Whiner of the Week, hasn’t played for the New York Mets since May, when he tore a groin muscle that will keep him out until sometime in August. The Mets have been awful in his absence, but that’s not Piazza’s gripe.

According to The Bergen Record, Piazza has begun crying that he doesn’t want to go into the Mets’ clubhouse and he wants to be traded. Apparently, part of his animosity dates back to New York manager Art Howe mentioning off-handedly to the media before Piazza was hurt that maybe it was time for the catcher to start taking ground balls at first base.

Howe wasn’t breaking news. Piazza is one of the worst defensive catchers in the game,

Wrong. Granted, he throws like a girl. If that were all there was to catcher defense, this jackass might have a point.

and last year his offensive numbers fell drastically as he battled injuries.

Yeah, and he still ended up at the top of the catcher heap offensively. Gee, at this rate of decline he might hit like a league average catcher in another ten years or so.

He’s in the line-up for his bat, and many have long said he should either move to first or be traded to the American League, where he can DH.

"Many" have also said Jorge Posada's a great catcher. "Many" are idiots.

The problem is that Piazza wants to break all the offensive records for catchers so he can go in the Hall of Fame.

He's already smashed so many of them, the catcher HR record is just a cherry on the cake of his career. He's going to the HOF, like it or not. And he says the record isn't as important as the team, so why are you crediting someone who won't attach his name to the story over Piazza himself?

Some might call it selfish.

"Some", like "Many", are mouth-breathing morons.

Piazza and the Mets issued predictable denials of the story, with the Mets catcher whining more about the coverage. "I guess I’m the monkey this week?," Piazza asked. "That’s pretty funny.

"You’ve got to fill lines with something, right? It’s like I’m not even playing and I’m the monkey. It’s kind of cute. I guess it’s flattering, really. It’s kind of like, how do you answer something so far-fetched? It really makes no sense."

Then there's the idea that Caldera and his anonymous "sources" are just muckracking for all their pitiful lives are worth.

He’s had little to do with the team all year, and he’s in no position to cry about having to play for a team that’s done nothing but treat him like a baseball deity.

Nor has he. MSNBC hasn't done shit about covering the team, either, but that doesn't stop them from having their idiotic--and, tellingly, anonymous--say.

Not long ago, he was saying he wouldn’t move to the American League and wouldn’t move to first. Now he’s saying he’ll move anywhere. If we were a Mets fan -- if any such animals even exist -- we’d help him pack.

You don't have the nuts, guts, or brains to be a Mets fan, pisher. I'm guessing your tastes run more to soccer.

Note that there's no way to leave MSNBC feedback for this irresponsible dreck. Sports journalism--the biggest oxymoron since jumbo shrimp.

Exorcism.

Rumor has it the Reds are going to fire both The Devil and his right-hand imp (Bowden and Boone) at noon-thirty today. Three cheers and a tiger.

Of course, the attendant implication that they're going to let Ray Knight manage the team in the interim is like a dog returning to its vomit.

Amazon shipment.

On the viewing schedule for tonight: The Master of Ballantrae (1953) and Zulu (1964).

Satisfactory.

Uday and Qusay are dead.

Feeling vaguely uncomfortable now.

I just added a link to my bloated Amazon wishlist over on the left. I feel like I just asked strangers for money.

Newly identified ethnic group migrating north.

Identified as "Dismayed Americans" (Americanus Disgruntulus?) in this CNN article, at least four US citizens ["A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York", as the sentence fragment identies them.] are planning to move to the Great White North in order to glom onto "free" healthcare and officially sanctioned gay marriage.

"For me, it's a no-brainer," said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.

Oh, dear God. We've already driven most of the mimes north. What are we going to do when all the puppeteers have gone? Who will be left to mock?

"It's the most amazing opportunity I can imagine. To live in a society where there are different priorities in caring for your fellow citizens."

What kind of puppets does she work with, I wonder? I mean, are we talking about full-blown marionettes, or is she climbing into a big latex dinosaur suit or something? Finger puppets? Punch & Judy? Kukla and Ollie? What?

For decades, even while nurturing close ties with the United States, Canadians have often chosen a different path -- establishing universal health care, maintaining ties with Cuba, imposing tough gun control laws.

Saddling Alberta with paying for everyone else's healthcare, supporting that twisted fuck Castro in his quest to keep his entire populace dumb and miserable, and interfering with the rights of their populace to defend themselves. Ahh--paradise.

Two current Canadian initiatives, to decriminalize marijuana and legalize same-sex marriage, have pleased many liberals in the United States and irked conservatives.

I wouldn't say I'm irked, really. Just indifferent and quite glad I don't live there. Skipping a bit.

Mollie Ingebrand, 34, said she has felt an affinity for Canada for many years, fueled partly by respect for its health care system.

Health care pop quiz: which of the following countries recently experienced a serious SARS outbreak:

a) Canada
b) the US

Answer: not the US.

Her doubts about the United States go back even further, to a childhood spent with liberal parents in a relatively conservative part of Ohio.

"In school I was always told this is the best country on earth, and everyone else wants to be American, and that never really rang true to me," she said.

Because your liberal parents told you otherwise?

"As I got older, it occurred to me there were other choices."

Of course there are, you ninny. As long as you don't mind lowering your standard of living.

At Georgia State, Hodges [the college student--K] said some conservative schoolmates have challenged his proposed move to Canada, saying he would be abandoning his homeland.

Conversely, Mollie Ingebrand says some of her friends -- people who share her left-of-center views -- argue that she should stay at home to battle for changes here.

"I've been there and done that," Molly said. "I don't want to stay and fight anymore. I can have that bittersweet love for my country from somewhere else."

Snark. Yeah. Right.

Morning spit take.

Courtesy of Silvio Berlusconi in Time magazine [via The Corner]:

What do you really think of German tourists? Ich bin ein Berliner.

Don't ever change, Silvio.

What the hell have I been doing?

I took off all last week to lay around the old home place with my family, play some music, read, buy a new car, and go to a bunch of movies.

T3: In the immortal words of my friend Suzanne, I was happy, my expectations were low. Shwarzenegger looks surprisingly close to T2 form; I was expecting big saggy manboobs, but either they did some amazing CGI work on his pecs or he actually managed to get back into something close to his 1991 form. The chick cyborg was more effective than I expected, and the mayhem is non-stop. There were some stupid moments, but overall I think I liked it about as well as T2 (The Terminator is a cut above either; T2 might have been on a par with it if Cameron had been able to control himself and spare us the infamous thumbs-up gesture as Arnie melts into a big pile of molten goo at the end.)

Pirates of the Caribbean (twice): Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp chew the scenery with gleeful abandon, while Orlando Bloom turns in a somewhat uneven performance (with a couple of nice comedic moments) as the Flynn du jour. Keira Knightly manages to be feisty without becoming overwhelmingly annoying. I am admittedly biased in favor of pirate movies, and this one might even be good enough to rescue the genre from oblivion. It's not "Against All Flags" or "The Sea Hawk", but it's not bad.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Sean Connery does the Alan Quatermain thing, Stuart Townsend plays an hilariously arch Dorian Gray. Lots of suspension of disbelief (and common sense) necessary (really, just how deep do they think the canals are in Venice?) but the visuals are nice, the action is rousing, and the comic relief isn't overplayed.

The Hulk: Don't be misled by the cheesy trailer. It's good, and the closest to the actual feel of a Marvel comic of all the comicbook movies, the more so because of the way Ang Lee deliberately uses comicbook transitions between scenes and multipanel shots. The people who didn't like the angsty nature of the hero and the lack of non-stop action probably didn't read the comics much. Better than Spiderman, better (in some ways) than the X-men movies (not to damn them with faint praise.)

My new car.




Picked it up on the 5th and just broke 1500 miles. Heh.

My new favorite website.

From an initial prod from James Lileks' column today, a great collection of quasi-musical drek. Includes a link to a video of William Shatner performing "Rocket Man" circa 1978. Is there a German term for mingled horror and delight?

Updates soon.

Vacation, new car, moviegoing, more forthcoming.

Just a thought.

The current anti-tobacco PSAs that feature various obnoxious teenagers with enunciation problems make me want to smoke. Desperately.

O...k.

On the recommendation of a friend (Rick), I checked out Tough Crowd on Comedy Central.

Holy mother of God, these people are politically retarded.

Now, I knew going in that I was going to be dealing with political opinions from comedians, but damn--out of 4 guests and a host, did they ALL have to be raving leftists? Couldn't we have one token conservative guy, maybe Dennis Miller? One guy (Jake Johannsen) actually complained about the T-ball league Bush has play on the lawn at the white house, saying he ought to be spending the time he spent on the T-ball game tending to the economy (and apparently all his other waking moments as well.) And yet, it was just jim dandy for Clinton to waste his time banging interns in the Oval Office, apparently. The token chick (Judy Gold) was an embarrassment; her main complaint seemed to be that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq unless we were prepared to invade every other dictatorship on earth, and that we just invaded Iraq for--you guessed it--OIIIIIIIILLLLL. I don't have the time to waste on this crap. I could be reading Flashman and the Mountain of Light in my quest to avoid my copy of the new Harry Potter.

Verdict: pollice verso.

Shame on you, Jon Stewart.

Watching what I can only assume is a re-run of the Daily Show, possibly from last night, possibly earlier, on Comedy Central, and he's reporting on the extension of child tax credits to families making less than $24,000 a year--and he doesn't mention that these people don't pay income tax in the first damn place. Ain't partisanship grand?

Al Sharpton, uncrowned king of irony.

"If President Clinton had told the lie that George Bush has told, he would have been impeached."

In boca al lupo.

Tim Blair is right: Silvio Berlusconi rocks.

Berlusconi slaps down France over Israel trip

ROME, June 17 — Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told France on Tuesday it should ''shut up'' about his Middle East policy, further straining relations with Paris just as Italy is preparing to take over the European Union presidency.
''They missed a good opportunity to shut up,'' Berlusconi told reporters in response to French criticism of his decision not to meet Palestinian leaders during a recent trip to Israel.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said this week that Berlusconi had ''not satisfied the European position'' by holding talks only with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during his June 9 visit to Jerusalem.
''I went (to Israel) as the prime minister of Italy. There's no way France can issue criticism over something that was the sole right and responsibility of the Italian prime minister,'' Berlusconi said, clearly bristling with irritation.

So much for playing Io to France's Jupiter.

With US tourism to France on a sharp decline, allow me to suggest our ally, Italy, as an excellent European vacation alternative. They're friendlier, they're funnier, they cook better, and they don't sing through their noses.

Matrix Reloaded

Greg finally talked me into seeing it over the weekend. I really don't see why it excited all the bad reviews. Yes, Keanu Reeves has exactly one facial expression and the same vocal inflections he sported in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure--but that's not exactly a departure from the first film, is it? For all I can tell, that's why they hired him. There was a substantial cheese factor in the action sequences, which bore more resemblance to dance numbers than actual fights--but that's not really a departure either. I didn't think it was unbearably talky, either (in fact, the dialogue was possibly less annoyingly pseudo-intellectual than the first installment). Stuff blowed up real good. Much black leather was worn, and much sunglass. There was a plethora of Hugo Weaving. This is all good. So what's with the bitchfest?

And please, I don't want to hear "they left the ending hanging." You KNOW it's the middle movie in a trilogy. Of course they left it hanging. Thank your lucky stars this isn't another Lucas wait-five-years-for-the-disappointing-ending-while-your-stars-age-beyond-recognition production.

Welcome to has-been Hell.

Via Drudge (where the picture makes him look startlingly like Tim Robbins): Adam Ant arrested.

LONDON (Reuters) - Former British pop star Adam Ant has been arrested after apparently running amok and stripping off in a London cafe.

Police said on Thursday they had arrested a 49-year-old man on suspicion of criminal damage, while The Sun newspaper showed pictures of the former 1980s heartthrob being held by two burly policemen, a blanket wrapped around his waist.

Newspapers said Ant, real name Stuart Goddard, had "gone berserk" near his north London home on Wednesday before stripping off his trousers in the cafe.

The outburst follows an episode last summer when he threatened customers at his local pub who had laughed at his cowboy attire. He walked free from court in October after judges ruled he was suffering from temporary mental illness.

Walked free? That was a cry for help. If they cared, they'd have committed him to a term on "What Not To Wear".

Ant's career saw him selling 15 million records, including punk-pop hits like "Prince Charming" and "Stand and Deliver." Police said he had been released on bail until mid-July.

That's the most offensive thing in the article: "punk-pop"? Adam Ant? If he was punk the Backstreet Boys have street cred.

And there was much rejoicing.

CBS Sportsline says the Mets finally bit the bullet and fired GQ, replacing him with Jim Duquette in the interim. None too soon, either; his lame ass should have preceded Valentine's out the door.

That's the last time I order anything delivered.

I am officially a freak magnet.

My pizza delivery guy last night spent twenty minutes on my front porch telling me his supposed life story. How he's not only a mathmatical genius (this came up during the change-and-tip exchange), but a big rock star--the guy who was supposed to replace David Lee Roth in Van Halen, no less--who's had amnesia since '86 because his ex-wife hired some thugs to crush his skull (or, alternatively, whose ex-wife merely knew about an outside conspiracy to crush his skull--that part was pretty murky), and who just recently found out who he was because the parents of the heiress to the Iams dog food fortune spent $10,000 on a background search because said heiress was desperately interested in dating him. David Lee Roth and Bob & Tom (of The Bob & Tom Show) are also involved in the tale of woe; apparently Diamond Dave was desperately looking for this guy to go on tour with him and Sammy Hagar, and using the Bob & Tom show to put out a call for this guy to come pick up a check for $100,000,000 (yes--one hundred million dollars) for what they owed him (it was unclear precisely what they owed him *for*, but there was some reference to a t-shirt design that evidently made the fortunes of the band--who knew? All this time I thought it was the albums.) He's also apparently the only man the Earnhardt family will ever let drive car #3 in public again, but there's some kind of conspiracy on the part of Van Halen to keep him off the NASCAR circuit for another six months or so, because there's some kind of technicality requiring that he complete his first NASCAR race by the age of 48. Oh, and "Forrest Gump" was based on his life story. I'm not really that easily spooked, but I was thoroughly wigged out by the time the guy got the hell off my porch and drove off. And my pizza was stone cold.

So I spent the rest of the night with the doors locked and my gun close at hand, because the phrase "if you can't get in the front door, go around the back" cropped up a couple of times in reference to the machinations of his Salt Lake City lawyer trying to get him his cut of Van Halen's money. It doesn't help that I live in the weird crime epicenter of Ohio, and now a certifiable nutbar has my address and phone number. Bleah.

Poet's corner.

Kevin Parrott, the brooding poet at Hep to the Jive, has published an hilarious ode to Time-Warner Cable.

Fat Rajah still balked at 299.

Thanks, Karros.

What? I hope you didn't think I was going to be gracious about it.

HA!

Via Dean Esmay: Howell Raines resigned.

And I thought the little SOB was going to skate. He probably did too.

My burning question answered.

Thank God for Tim Blair and Stefan Sharkansky.

it's Lileks as in lie'-licks almost like lilacs, not Lileks as in lill'-ucks.

Bern, you were right. Go to the head of the class.

Wailing and gnashing of teeth dept.

With all due respect to my dear friend Angela, the consummate Braves fan, the Braves displayed their justly famous good sportsmanship in the wake of a losing weekend series at Shea:

Atlanta pitchers were furious after the game with the Questec Umpire Information System, saying it caused plate umpire Lance Barksdale to shrink the strike zone on them.

In other words, they didn't get the specialized Braves Strike Zone^tm, which is traditionally the size of Rhode Island.

"I wish I was close to the machine, so I could break it,'' said Ray King, who gave up a go-ahead single to Rey Sanchez. "The umps are more worried about the machine than calling the game.''

Translation: "The umps were more worried about not being exposed as our paid lackeys than they were about our win/loss record."

Eight days earlier in Phoenix, Arizona pitcher Curt Schilling attacked a Questec camera. The commissioner's office has not determined whether to discipline him.

Unless they want a rash of equipment loss, they'd better. Duh.

"This system is one of the worst things that has happened in baseball,'' said Darren Holmes, who gave up Burnitz's homer on a 3-1 pitch. "They are going to feel ramifications because of the system. it's a joke.''

Actually, Darren, I'd say you were the one feeling the ramifications. From where I sit the feeling's pure Chuck Mangione so far. Feels so good.

Lest I be accused of film snobbery...

I did see X2: X-Men United over the holiday, and I liked it very much. Better than Spiderman (and I quite dug the look of Spidey, but it must be said: Tobey Maguire has a nerd voice. And what the hell was up with Kirsten Dunst's teeth?) I thought the continuity with the first film was good*, the acting was decent, and I wasn't seized with an urge to punch Patrick Stewart like I usually am, probably because they didn't give him any extended soliloquies to perform and the wheelchair limited his Heroic Posing options. On the whole, I was able to suspend my disbelief and plunge in, and that's all I ask of an action flick.

*Admittedly, I'm not a nitpicker in this area when it comes to comic book movies, so don't leave any lists of continuity errors in the comments unless they're really amusing. And no, I will not use the term "graphic novel", since I was born before 1970.

Bruce Almighty review.

Well-written, scathing review in the Washington Post. I have no personal animus against Jim Carrey, apart from the fact that I find him too antic to watch half the time and don't share his love of the butt joke, but a number of red flags went up on this one. The director from Patch Adams? To quote a friend's reaction, "Yikes."

Strange Bedfellows Dept.

Bob Geldof: "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."

Well, he's half right.

[Link via the Corner.]

Flash in the pan.

Lileks panned Matrix 2. I haven't seen it, but I'm not really inclined to, as I don't care for invulnerable protagonists. Neo's Deus Ex Machina man, like Harry Potter on steroids, and the villains aren't interesting enough to make me want to see it. Pass.

Paging Canute.

Vlad Putin is planning to micro-manage the weather in St. Petersburg, seeding the clouds with dry ice so that it'll rain before they get to the city in order to ensure dry weather for his summit and the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Doesn't seem quite sporting, somehow. [Via Drudge.]

Not earth-shattering, just interesting.

What I don't want to see covered on the news.

Reality TV (Survivor, American Idol, The Bachelor, blah blah f'n blah.) If I cared I would watch it. The line between reality and tv is blurry enough without acting like this crap matters.

Professional gravytraining.

Angela pointed me to this bit of Clintonia in the NY Post gossip section (5/22/03 edition):

With opening day less than two years away, officials at the Clinton Presidential Library Foundation are putting up so-called "Bill" boards along major highways leading to Little Rock, Ark., as well as in Memphis, Tenn., where foundation director Skip Rutherford is involved in partnership talks with Graceland, The Hill newspaper reports. Rutherford's theory is that anyone interested in touring The King's mansion will want to drive 140 miles south to learn more about Clinton because "Elvis was the president's musical hero," he explains. The Clinton Library plans to stage a special preview exhibit of Clinton's collection of Presley records, scheduled for later this year at Little Rock's Cox Creative Center. "He had records, memorabilia, all kinds of things," Rutherford says. "Clinton was 'Elvis.' That's what the press nicknamed him. I think there's a natural linkage."

The only natural linkage between those guys is an unnatural love of porkrinds. Spare me.

Nitpickery.

Even the great James Lileks is not immune to inadvertent transpositions:

Recall that classic line from the classic Bogey movie “The Maltese Falcon,” spoken classically by Bogie to Elijah Wood: the cheaper the gunsel, the gaudier the patter.

Of course that would be Elisha Cook, Jr., not Elijah Wood. The mental image of Bogart exchanging hardboiled cracks with a hobbit is hilarious, though.

Those sophisticated Europeans.

Via Psycho Muse on Museblog, this Hollywood Reporter account of the swanky goings-on at Cannes:

Guests were waiting in a line to allow VIPs to go up the red carpet for the opening of Francois Ozon's "Swimming Pool." As they shuffled along, waiting their turn to climb the stairs, a prominent financier and another colleague felt something like rain on their legs. Looking down, they saw that a well-dressed woman in front of them was urinating on the carpet, oblivious of those around her. Said the financier, "I skipped the film and went home to change and wash my legs." The offender continued on into the cinema.

(You people have no idea how much self-control was required not to make the obvious pun on 'European' here.)

Hey.

I republished my archives this morning, and they're kinda half-assed working. Neat.

Obligatory Mets content.

As of Friday, Piazza's out with a nearly-torn groin muscle (cringing as I type that), probably for a couple of months. I delayed bothering to post about it because the season started out so pissy I'm already well beyond wailing and gnashing of teeth. If Piazza can't catch anymore (and I think that's a possibility that deserves some serious consideration), I'd like to see him traded to the AL as a DH, but the injury and his impending 5/10 status makes that a real hard sell. So it looks like we're stuck with an aging, injury-hobbled former superstar and a collection of assorted stiffs. Tom Glavine's probably about ready to call the Braves with a heartfelt mea culpa right about now.

And that's about all I've got to say about that. Sidelining Piazza seems to have relieved whatever pressure the team was feeling and they've been playing looser (at least for the past couple of games.) Time to kick back with a cold one and see how this develops.

Well, that came out of nowhere.

Ari Fleischer resigned. He'll be gone come July, according to the AP. Now waiting for the follow-up scandal.

[Link via LGF.]

All I needed to know about Janeane Garofalo.

From an interview in The Progressive :

Q: Do you think it's possible to have a liberal media network?

Garofalo: It is possible. What's not possible is to penetrate the wall of opposition. The myth is it can't work. Phil Donahue was working, but MSNBC took it off for their own rightwing agenda. [emphasis mine--K]

The point of Donahue being cancelled was that he wasn't working. His ratings, which were measured by the same tools they use to measure every other show on television, were abysmal, therefore they took him off the air. The fact that Garofalo needs to explain the workings of the market to herself with a right-wing conspiracy theory is just pathetic.

[Interview link via Andrea Harris on Spleenville.]

Lady Thatcher.

"There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it."

Just read it. Why are the British so much better at public speaking than we are? [Via the American Scene, 5/16.]

Eric Idle not quite dead yet.

In fact, he's writing and directing a Merchant-Ivory parody, "The Remains of the Piano", which has a fairly impressive cast in addition to Idle: Geoffrey Rush, Anjelica Huston, Patrick Stewart, Catherine O'Hara, Orlando Bloom, Alfred Molina, Neve Campbell, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Michael York, Julian Sands, Will Kemp and Jim Piddock.

So Julian Sands isn't dead either. Good to know. [Hat tip to Paula for the heads up.]

We can all relax now.

Bernadine alerted me that Mo has checked in; he was just running around getting fourth and fifth opinions on his knee and trying to disassociate himself from the on-field disaster that is the Mets. Best line, though:

The Post reported exclusively yesterday that Vaughn probably would not return to action in 2003, according to someone familiar with his situation. Team officials refuse to speculate publicly.

Exclusively, yet. Like the idea that he probably won't play again hadn't occurred to anyone else. Pfffft.

The show that never ends.

Mooo Vaughn is missing. Even his parents claim they don't know where he is. What the hell is wrong with this team?

Oh, just shut the hell up.

Gary Carter wants Piazza to move to first. This is because Gary Carter is insanely jealous of Piazza, a likely first-ballot HOFer due to his prodigious offense as a catcher.

"I can't think it would be any worse or any different if he agreed to play first base," Carter said. "He made one throw that hit in front of the mound. There was a game against the Marlins where they stole six bases. Is that worse than missing one or two grounders at first base?"

Ok, Gar, you tell me: would you rather give up a base or an out?

You can expect we have some kind of plan.

NY Post (it was the best of coverage, it was the worst of coverage):

Mike Piazza took about 10 minutes of grounders at first base before 2 p.m. yesterday as part of the Mets' early workout group. Manager Art Howe, wary of his previous comments on the subject, downplayed the event, however.

Inference: he looked like shit.

Piazza wouldn't comment before the game and after the 9-6 victory repeatedly answered three or four questions about it with, "We'll get back to you on that one."

Translation: I looked like shit.

There was tension in the visiting manager's office as reporters asked Howe about the subject, and media relations vice president Jay Horwitz later said Piazza would not speak about it. The decision to take grounders was up to Piazza, Howe said.

"Nothing to make out of it," Howe said. "Just the first day."

Translation: he looks like shit.

Added infield coach Matt Galante, who hit the grounders, "It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't a question of how he looked."

Translation: he looked like shit.

Howe said there was no timetable on the situation and added, "He's a long way from ever getting at first base in a game. I'll let you know when he's getting close to playing in a game there."

Translation: he looked like shit.

Assistant GM Jim Duquette, on the trip instead of Steve Phillips, was slightly more forthcoming.

"You can expect we have some kind of plan," Duquette said. "The first step is we'll see if he can play first base before we put him over there."

And then we'll put him over there anyway. Even though he looks like shit.

For the record, re moving Piazza to first, if Joel Sherman's for it, I'm against it. Period.

It's like watching them set themselves on fire.

Pretending to sympathize with Piazza now that the Mets have submarined him regarding a move to first base, Bob Klapisch actually seizes on the opportunity to advocate trading the Mets' best player to the AL--for the good of the team, of course. (See also Mike Lupica's recent column, which was badly written enough to have been written by Klapieceofshit himself. And can I just ask, is it even possible for Lupica to write a column on the Mets without forcing it through a pinstriped filter first? How does a column ostensibly written about Piazza suddenly become an advocacy piece for the flailing Giambi?)

There's plenty of blame to be apportioned for the current fiasco. To Howe for being so incredibly inept at handling the media (at the moment I’m not ready to attribute to malice what can be reasonbly explained by wretched stupidity.) To the NY press for raising their annual hue and cry about Piazza moving to first to a fever pitch due to the team’s abysmal start—like forcing him to move to first is suddenly going to make everyone else do their jobs. And most of all, to the Wilpons and GM Steve Phillips for not addressing the situation during Spring training, when it would have behooved them to have Piazza start working on making the move. It’s not like this is a novel idea; it’s been bandied about since Piazza came to the team in ’98 and they got a good look at his throwing arm.

The fact is, Piazza is not a great athlete. He’s a great hitter, and God knows he tries, but he’s not particularly gifted, physically. He doesn’t know where his feet are most of the time. Moving him to first base isn’t going to be like moving Biggio to second, or even like moving Zeile from third to first. It’s going to be like moving Hundley to left field. And the people who witness it—particularly if they force Piazza to move mid-season—are going to be brutally judgmental; Mets fans are not known for their deep sympathy and sweet, understanding natures. The NY press, who love nothing better than a good feeding frenzy, will call for a trade—as Klapisch and Lupica have already done—and the team, who apparently see nothing wrong with letting team policy be driven by public opinion, will trade the best hitter they’ve ever had, most likely for a handful of magic beans, to appease them, bringing what was supposed to have been a golden era to a sad and tatty end.

Every year they make it harder to stand by them. Every fucking year.

Embracing my inner geek.

Via Variety (login may be required, I'm not sure), Indiana Jones will be coming to DVD on Nov. 4th. Pertinent factoids: 4 disc set, all 3 movies. THX digitally remastered, wide- and full-screen versions, Dolby 5.1 remastered soundtracks. $50 anticipated pricetag. Disc o' goodies with interviews, possible deleted stuff.

It's good to be the king.

Also via Drudge, Prince William wants to come live in the US for a couple of years, putting his art history degree to use at an auction house. Article chiefly notable for the mention of his pickup line, "Hi, I'm the future king, wanna pull?"

I was going to say it couldn't hurt to have Britain's monarch on our side in a crisis, then I remembered they don't actually do much of anything useful. But what the hell; it couldn't hurt his character development to have a real job, either.

Looting the UN cafeteria.

I'll just say this: I want Kofi Annan presented with the bill for all the stuff that was stolen, including the silverware. Fucking ridiculous behavior. [Link via Drudge.]

Nailing Norman.

Dennis Miller examines Norman Mailer like something he scraped off the sole of his shoe in the WSJ opinion journal.

Media critique.

Johnathan Foreman in the Weekly Standard on why the reportage from Baghdad has been so grotesquely inaccurate:

Perhaps this is just another case of reporters with an anti-American or antiwar agenda. Perhaps living in Saddam's totalitarian Baghdad has left some of the press here with a case of Stockholm syndrome. It may also be a byproduct of depending on interpreters and fixers who were connected to or worked with the approval of the Saddam regime. And you cannot underestimate the herd instinct that can take over when you have a lot of media folk in a confined area for any length of time. But whatever the cause, the result has been very selective reporting.

Why, tell us more, Johnathan.

The Associated Press's Hamza Hendawi, for instance, massively exaggerated and misrepresented the nature of the looting in Baghdad in the first days after the U.S. armored forces took key points in the city. Like so many Baghdad-based reporters, she described an "unchecked frenzy" that did not exist at that time (the looting was targeted and nonviolent, in the sense that the looters attacked neither persons nor inhabited dwellings). Read her pieces and you'll meet a veritable parade of Iraqis who are angry with the United States.

Then there were those exaggerated reports of April 18 claiming (as Reuters' Hassan Hafidh put it) that "Tens of thousands of protesters demanded on Friday that the United States get out of Iraq. . . . In the biggest protest since U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, 24-year-long rule nine days ago, Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established." Demonstrators did come out of one mosque, but reporters seem to have confused them with the large numbers of Shia Muslims gathering for the pilgrimage to Karbala--a pilgrimage long forbidden by the Saddam regime.

Reporters who don't have any idea what they're looking at? I'm shocked. Shocked.

More irritating is the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed--in particular the hospitals and the national museum--while guarding the Ministry of Oil. The museum looting is turning out to have been grotesquely exaggerated. And there is no evidence for the ministry of oil story. Depending on the article, the Marines had either a tank or a machine gun nest outside the ministry. Look for a photo of that tank or that machine gun nest and you'll look in vain. And even if the Marines had briefly guarded the oil ministry it would have been by accident: The Marines defended only the streets around their own headquarters and so-called Areas of Operation. Again, though, given the pro-regime sources favored by so many of the press corps huddled in the Palestine Hotel, it's not surprising that this rumor became gospel.

I have a feeling I'm going to be pointing people to this article again and again. When I think about how readily the idea that the US guarded the oil ministry over the museum was swallowed by people who should have known better, it just pisses me off afresh. Not that my opinion of the press in general needed any lowering. (Link via Tainted Bill McCabe, who got it from Glenn Reynolds.)

My stomach hurts from laughing so hard.

Sheila A-stray at Redheaded Ramblings has posted one of the funniest, shrieking-with-laughter-so-loud-the-neighbors-think-I'm-being-murdered, tears-streaming-from-the-eyes things I've ever read. Not the collected slam reviews of Battlefield Earth I originally went to her blog to read (link via Dean Esmay), though those are hilarious, but the post about her acting experiences in truly horrendous plays. (Since it's Blogspot the links are fucked up. It's the 5/3 entry entitled "Battlefield Recap".) She's going on the blogroll.

Neo-barbarians at the gates.

This is what the Australian universities are wasting their money on.

Last week, The Australian newspaper's brow-creasing Higher Education liftout carried a perfectly serious front-page story with a picture of a London artist wearing a corset over his face.

It reported, without a whinny of amazement, that Sydney's Macquarie University was hosting an international conference of academics, plus artists like this face-flattened Brit, to discuss "Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves".

The conference organiser, Queer Studies lecturer Nikki Sullivan, explained that they would for three days discuss how we pierce, tattoo, brand, stretch, suction and slash our bodies, and how bad people are to judge us for doing so.

She raised the example of people volunteering to have a leg or arm amputated, simply because they do "not feel at ease with it, or would prefer the look or feel of a radically altered body".

It was wrong to dismiss such people, proudly hacking off their healthy limbs, as mentally ill. This was, as the paper put it, actually a "legitimate phenomenon".

"What is self-mutilation and what is body art -- that line is very unclear," said Sullivan, a mother with five tattoos and piercings in her nose and ears.

No, it isn't.

[snip]

Don't think Sullivan is on a frolic of her own deep in the flatulent bowels of Macquarie's Department of Critical and Cultural Studies. Let me demonstrate by giving you the titles of some of the other papers delivered at her conference, which is sponsored by the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia.

The show kicked off with "A Straight Boy's Experiences of Getting a Prince Albert Piercing (of his penis)", and not surprisingly moved on to "The Phallus as Freak-Show", followed by "White Trash Get Down on Your Knees, It's Time for Cake and Sodomy". An Indian academic then talked of this "Elective Amputation", before things perked up with "Performing Muscular Drag in Circus".

Then came "How to Murder Barbie, F... Mommy and Live Forever", and "Am I 'Becoming-Rat' or Losing My Ear?", Before the fun ended with "What an A..e Can Do", "He F...ed Me on National TV" and "I Make Myself in Hurting Myself".

Sullivan herself spoke on "Queer Ethics: On (Not) Reading the Face of Michael Jackson". And the keynote speaker was Del La Grace Volcano, a "queer, lesbian photographer" who became a "Gender Terrorist, an Intentional Mutation and Intersex by Design" -- a "he" who "subverts . . . the notion that only two genders exist, male and female".

And to think I giggled at the "Self and Other" PoMo conference they had at U of L when I was there as an undergrad in the early 80s. If they'd had a freak show like this I'd be obligated to torch my diploma as a worthless piece of garbage.

Queer Studies. Judas Priest, that'll get you a job in the real world.

[Via Tim Blair. The 5/02 entry, scroll to the post about Rupert Murdoch.]

Not quite sure what to make of this.

Janeane Garofalo will be starring (and I use that term inadvisedly) in Ash Tuesday, a movie about the immediate aftermath of 9/11. She'll play a woman who works in a health food store and doesn't want to leave her apartment. She does look like someone who would work in a health food store, at least.

Bring me the head of Steve Phillips.

Mike Lupica makes a compelling case for firing Steve Phillips (which frankly should have preceding Valentine's firing) in today's Daily News (with bonus Timeline of Shame^tm!)

Meanwhile, Mo Vaughn (note that I refrained from referring to him as "Moo" this time) teases Mets fans by hinting that he might retire, having suffered the ignominy of having to remove himself from a game after one at bat when he made himself nauseous by taking "supplements" on an empty stomach. The Mets, ladies and gentlemen. Baseball's brain trust.

Bruce Springsteen's America.

This is somewhat old, but it came up recently on one of the Mets groups I'm in (time to talk about anything but the team), and I'd be somewhat remiss if I didn't mention it here. Bruce Springsteen thinks the quashing of the Dixie Chicks' dissent is "unAmerican":

The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American.

To me, they're silly asses who tried to ingratiate themselves with a foreign audience by trashing the government that protects their right to be silly asses. NPR aside, radio is a business, not a public service. It is not incumbent on country radio to make sure they have a wide spectrum of political views represented on their playlists. (If it were, Steve Earle might get more airplay, the talented pinko commie bastard.)

The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom.

What the fuck are you talking about? The pressure is coming from The People, and "big business" in this case is bowing to popular pressure. You think they like taking the Chicks out of rotation and having to look for a replacement? And just once I'd like to see a specific example of governmental pressure cited, rather than this infantile generalized scaremongering about the evil, shadowy Republican administration.

Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.

If people don't want to hear the Dixie Chicks, you can't force them. If it's no longer the will of the people to hear your music, sucks to be you. That's what freedom's all about, baby.

I don't know what happens next,

Dogs living with cats...

but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.

Then buy a radio station and program the Chicks 24/7. Or write them a check. But don't tell the market what to do. That's un-American.

Frank J. interviews Condoleeza Rice.

Frank: What do you think of today's military technology?

Rice: I think we have a huge technological advantage over our enemy. I mean they're a bunch of dumb turds with second hand AK-47's, and we have laser guided missiles that can fly through space. And, with our advance accuracy, we can avoid civilian casualties.

Frank: And it is the administration’s position to not kill children?

Rice: Yes, even the stupid smelly ones. That's why we have cruise missiles that can fly miles and miles and then accurately hit a target about the size of Michael Moore.

Frank: So why is Michael Moore still around.

Rice: He runs a lot faster than you'd think.

IMAO. Cutting edge blog journalism.

"From director Rob Zombie."

That's a sentence fragment that should only occur when monkeys are given typewriters.

Jon Stewart re-ups with Comedy Central.

It's the smart move. Laurence Simon at Amish Tech Support lays out the reasons why he'd be an idiot to move to broadcast, which covets him:

Jimmy Kimmel went from Comedy Central's Man Show to that piece of shit he's got on Disney's ABC that stinks up the airwaves after Koppel.
Bill Maher got away with a lot of lefty gaffes when he was on HBO, but Disney wiped him out in spades when he screwed up on Disney's ABC. He's back on HBO, I believe.
Dennis Miller tried to go from an HBO series to Monday Night Football on Disney's ABC, then got bumped for some burned-out fat old guy
Wait... I see a pattern here... hold on... wait... wait for it...

Nope. Lost it. Must have just had Post Disney Traumatic Disorder there or something. Sorry.

In the same post Laurence also notes that Colin Quinn may have found his niche on Politically Incorrect. Haven't seen it, but the commercials do make it look interesting.

Update: The spelling of Mr. Stewart's first name corrected at Emily's behest.

I am the consumer of worlds. Fear me.

As I have noted in comments elsewhere, humanity would require 9.6 planets if everybody lived like I do. Not that the quiz is biased, or anything. *cough*

DChix redux.

Drudge follows up the Dixie Chicks tempest in a teapot by excerpting bits of an interview they've done with Diane Sawyer that hasn't aired yet. [Link via Tainted Bill McCabe.] I don't have much in the way of commentary, except to note that they use the word "compassion" the way the Smurfs used "smurf" and its derivatives, and then there's this bit:

MAINES: …I ask questions. That's smart. That's intelligent. To find out facts not to just, 'Okay, we're going over here now.' I say, 'Why are we going over there?' And I don't mean to Iraq, I mean across the room. Since I was tiny, you've had to tell me why I have to do something…

Asking stupid questions isn't particularly smart, and certainly not when the answers to your questions have been spelled out, in detail, ad nauseam, for the prior several months. If you didn't know why we were going, it's not through any failure on the part of the president or his cabinet to spell it out for you so much as your failure to listen.

Cruel and funny.

My favorite combination. Via the essential Jim Treacher*, Fametracker's Ten Least Essential Summer Films. Note that I link to this list despite the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean comes in at number 6, higher than Bad Boys II (though I am not clear on whether that position means it's more or less likely to suck), and I am currently in serious denial about its potential hideosity because I really, really want to see a good pirate movie like Against All Flags, though I secretly suspect this may not be it. The involvement of Jerry Bruckheimer can't be a good thing.

*Judas Priest, is Blogspot ever going to fix the damn archive problem? First entry on 4/23/03.

Mickey Kaus on the museum looting.

Via David Nieporent's Jumping to Conclusions, though this passage wasn't his primary focus:

P.S.: I don't see why it gets the U.S. off the hook if the looting was an "inside job." You can protect against inside jobs too, by preventing things from leaving the building -- like priceless statues that take ten men to lift. The issue isn't who did the stealing, but whether or not we screwed up and failed to do what we could. To the extent that our forces were taking fire from the museum and unable to safely protect it, we obviously didn't screw up. To the extent our forces didn't even know for several days that there was a museum there to protect (but did know there was a bank), or to the extent they decided to protect water storage facilities and other infrastructure rather than art work, it was a screw-up. Islamic terrorists twenty years from now won't be wooing recruits with the story of how the evil Americans smashed a water storage facility. They will be telling them about how the Americans burned ancient copies of the Koran and destroyed the heritage of the Arab world. ...

They'll be lying, then, because it wasn't the Americans looting the museum, it was fellow Iraqis. I can't say it often enough: I do not give a shit about this because they robbed themselves, and if they were that concerned about preserving their cultural heritage, they could have done something about it themselves. Museums are not the US military's primary concern, nor should they be; those institutions that were protected by the military--yes, including the fucking oil ministry--are far more necessary to post-war efforts to rebuild the country's economic and political structure than the damn museum. The people who survived this war to bitch about the loss of their artifacts twenty years hence should count themselves lucky to be able to do so.

Gents, doff your caps.

Nina Simone has died in France at the age of 70. [Via Drudge.]

Feet to the fire.

Steve H. at Little Tiny Lies follows up on the pre-war utterances of several anti-war celebrities. Behold a sample of the carnage:

Hmm…George Clooney. Let me begin by saying, “Solaris.” Saying Solaris to George Clooney is like running into an MSNBC board meeting and yelling “Donahue.” With that irrelevant yet satisfying insult behind me, let me remind everyone that George Clooney said we couldn’t beat the Iraqis. “We can’t beat anyone,” said Furious George. No word from The Man in the Big Yellow Hat.

Maybe he was right. Maybe Saddam let us capture ten thousand soldiers and occupy all of his major cities as part of a master plan we’re just too dim to appreciate. Or maybe it was performance art. Or sarcasm. A huge practical joke…sort of like…conning a movie studio to give you millions of dollars to make a movie about the host of The Gong Show! We’re still waiting for the punchline on that one, George. I have a great title for the next movie you direct: O Audience, Where Art Thou? How about Attendance: Eleven?

George never did explain his reasoning. Our last two visits to Iraq were so easy, Bush considered training for this one by scheduling war games against the Girl Scouts. But Furious George thought it was only a matter of days before the Republican Guard occupied Bel Air, put all the chippies in burqas and confiscated his gigantic stockpile of exotic condoms and acyclovir. Relax, George. Thanks to Tommy Franks, you can get back to your life’s work.

That's just good stuff.

Vin Diesel.

Best single-sentence review of "A Man Apart": Even the fisticuffs make no sense.