Also.

Interjecting "ah" for emphasis midstream in your feelgood "Good News for Modern Man" prayer sounds bizarrely archaic, pretentious, and completely false. He should have dealt with the fact that he's neither Tennyson nor Wordsworth and crossed it out of the text. All things considered, I'd rather have heard Jesse Jackson; at least he knows how to make a prayer sound like more like a prayer than a seminar on getting in touch with your feelings.

Call me an unremitting bitch...

...but "empower us" is not a phrase I care to hear in the opening prayer for Reagan's funeral. Fuck that newspeak gibberish.

Public service announcement.

Because Paula called it to my attention that the Blogger comment system wants--nay, nearly demands that you register, I've re-enabled the old backBlog comments. I hate registering and I'm all about the communications. Feel the love, people.

Pots and kettles.

Angela just forwarded the following AJC article to me (requires registration):

Rabbi calls Madonna 'slut'

This is, of course, on a par with "Pope declares water wet"--but there's an added dollop of irony:

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the former friend and adviser to Michael Jackson, has attacked the Material Mom, calling her a "slut" and a "vulgarian."

The cherry on the cake, the reaction of Madonna's "people":

"I find Rabbi Boteach's comments regarding Madonna frightening," said Liz Rosenberg. "His vile attacks on her character and as an artist are staggering for someone who professes to be a religious person. ... I suggest this man take a look at his own character and what problems he may have that would make him feel that he should make statements about a truly beautiful human being that he does not know in the slightest."

"Frightening"? Really? How is calling her a slut and a vulgarian "frightening"? And, by the way, we all "know" Madonna; she's been very insistent about foisting herself on the public at all given opportunities. As Bernadine always used to say, you can't yell "Free Cookies!" at the top of your lungs and then get mad when someone tries to take one.

Black Walnut Ice Cream

Puree in a food processor (about 2 min.):
1/2 cup black walnuts
2 Tbsp. white corn syrup

Scald in a heavy saucepan over medium heat:
1 cup half and half

Stir into hot half and half until dissolved:
1/2 cup sugar

With the food processor running, pour hot half and half mixture into nut puree and process until completely smooth. Pour through a seive into a clean bowl and allow to cool slightly, then stir in:
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. black walnut extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup heavy cream

Refrigerate until very cold (about 4 hours) or overnight. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions, adding 2 Tbsp. of black walnut meats in the last 5 minutes of freezing (or to taste).

You're welcome.

Roland Emmerich can stuff it.

Guilty pleasure: I love disaster porn, the more spectacularly ridiculous the better. As I was telling Angela last night, who doesn't want to see LA ripped apart by giant tornadoes? Who doesn't want to see the Statue of Liberty up to her armpits in water? Not in real life, of course, but I'm talking about the kind of giggly frisson you got the first time you saw the Statue of Liberty's head on the beach in Planet of the Apes and realized Charlton Heston was on Earth. I was actually set to pay matinee price to watch The Day After Tomorrow, despite the fact that I know in advance the "science" it's based on is absolute horseshit.

And then I read this translation of a German interview with Emmerich in Tim Blair's comments [Note: Today's Bleat does a better job dissecting the interview than I have. Feel free to skip all the following and go read that.]

Q: Will the anti-Bush mood outside of America be conducive to the success of the film?

A: I had no idea that Bush would get up to all the things he did eventually. During the last election campaign I was already writing the script. I hope America comes to its senses. They have been so lied to by the government. For us Europeans this is crystal clear, but also for a few Americans. However there are still 50% of Americans who want to vote for Bush – this is absolutely inconceivable for me.

Q: Don´t you get into all kinds of trouble when you as a German take such a stand?

Hold it right there. What a stupid fucking question. No one in the US gives two shits what some German filmmaker thinks about our system of government. No one in the government, no one in the private sector--no one.

A: As I already told my mother, they probably won´t let me back in. (laughs)

If only.

Q: But you are not the only one fulminating against Bush. Many filmmakers think the same way.

A: That is indeed new and it is good. I admire colleagues who are commited to political awareness and engage in a critical discourse with people.

No, it is neither, but neither is it terribly surprising. "New"? We've had all the usual suspects spouting the same tired lefty crap about Bush being Hitler (now, there's critical discourse for you) since he got elected--er, stole the election. It's like you ninnies are all singing from the same hymnal, if you'll pardon the Christian metaphor.

[Skipping his laughable recap of the last presidential election.]

Q: Are these things really communicated in the open?

A: Yes, for the first time there are now open discussions.

I love this. This is my favorite quote. Like the US has been behind an Iron Curtain and is just now emerging into the glorious light of liberty for the first time. You know, like when the wall finally came down in East Berlin. In Germany. [polite cough]

Q: Whereas the infamous Patriot Act has even succeeded in muzzling media.

Sadly, the Patriot Act hasn't even dampened their ardor.

A: That is a giant problem. As soon as you criticize something, you are no longer a patriot. What about that?

1) Roland--you're not an American. You aren't a patriot, at least in regards to the US, and never were. 2) Regarding those of your acquaintance who are US citizens and feel aggrieved because some of their fellow citizens have expressed displeasure with their opinions--tough. It amuses the hell out of me that leftists always bleat about wanting debate and reasoned discourse, and they're the first ones to shout down a conservative speaker at a rally or a campus lecture, and the first ones to cry that their feelings are hurt when a contrary view is expressed. And you know what? When you actively work against the interests of your own country, you're not a patriot.

America is the oldest democracy in the world. Since then they have totally developed beckwards. Euope was most of the time under monarchic influence [sic], but is today three or four times as democratic as America. I hope this will soon change. I think that will work out.

I think what we have here is a confusion in terms. Europe isn't a democracy; the individual countries that comprise Europe may have, to varying degrees, elected governments, but the top EU posts in Brussels are not elected. If Emmerich is happy with that situation, good for him, but that doesn't make it a democracy.

There's more, and it would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying. The upshot is that I'm not spending a single cent to see any movie Emmerich makes from here on out. It's the least I can do as a patriot.

Casting disasters.

Gwyneth Paltrow as Marlene Dietrich. Let me think about it.

Ok, that's enough: No. It's like casting Ben Affleck as Cary Grant.

Great news.

The first volume of The Complete Peanuts is out. (But buy it here, it's cheaper.) Excellent review in the American Spectator.

[Found via the Western Standard.]

Troy.

I'm astonished at the level of vitriol being dumped on this movie. Yes, we all know it's more fun to write a negative review, but while Troy is hardly a perfect film, it certainly doesn't deserve the scorn being heaped upon it by people who should know better (I'm looking at you, Ebert.) In fact, if I were to damn the enterprise with faint praise, the least I could say for it is that it beats the hell out of Gladiator, which travesty of history was greeted with swooning delight by critics and the public at large. Still, the audience will judge a work as they see fit. But there are a few points I'd like to make in defense of the film:

The film isn't called The Iliad for a reason, and that reason is that it's not a direct adaptation of The Iliad. Homer didn't originate the story of the Trojan war. He wrote the best-known versions of two parts of the saga in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but these are not the only source materials. The choice of Paris (i.e., the selection of the most beautiful among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite and subsequent awarding of Helen) does not appear in the Iliad. Neither does the abduction of Helen. Neither does the Trojan horse. Neither do the deaths of Achilles, nor Paris, nor Agamemnon. Criticisms based on a supposed lack of fidelity to the Iliad would seem to miss the point in this regard.

For those waxing wroth over the fact that Troy compresses the timeline and doesn't present the story as a ten-year seige: I'm absolutely agog to hear suggestions as to how to keep the narrative on point and cover ten years in a three hour movie. Hell, it took Peter Jackson THREE MOVIES and something like TWELVE HOURS to adequately cover the events of a single year in the Lord of the Rings saga, and even with that much space to spread out in he completely hosed up the pacing in the third film so that it appears to be a 15-minute ride to the Morannon from Minas Tirith, despite the fact that the same journey took Frodo half the length of the film. (Granted, he was walking/staggering.) The narrowing of the scope of the film seems an entirely sensible compromise.

For those further waxing wroth over the absence of the gods: you've got to be joking. Has it really been so long since Clash of the Titans that you're actually prepared to swear you'd treat the movie seriously if you'd seen Paris being wafted away in the middle of his fight with Menelaus on Aphrodite's cloud? Because that's precisely how he escapes being butchered in the text, and I frankly can't imagine not snickering. The film isn't being presented as mythology; it's being presented as a quasi-historical version of events--much as King Arthur is purported to be (the critical drubbing being extended to Troy doesn't bode well for this film. I can already hear the weeping over the abandonment of Mallory's text. Gad.) Besides, apart from the issue of believability, the movie already has a large cast; adding the gods to the script would only further diffuse the focus of the story.

Having seen it twice I find some of the casting criticisms bizarre, but I won't argue with subjective opinion. I think Brad Pitt is just fine as Achilles. Eric Bana is as steady and somber as Hector ought to be. Orlando Bloom is perfectly-cast as Paris (the worst character in Western literature); he's a doe-eyed prettyboy--which is kinda the point--if a bit too much of a thickie as written. As a bonus, he and Bana also actually looked quite a bit like brothers on-screen. Brian Cox is gloriously hammy as Agamemnon; Brendan Gleeson is good as Menelaus (my personal favorite scene in the film is the ass-kicking he gives Paris. He just looks completely nuts from the helmet-cam perspective. Sure, it's cheesy. But it adds an indefinable something.) I'm pleased to say Peter O'Toole brought his screen presence with him, and as an added bonus you get Nigel Terry as his spiritual advisor. All the women are fine in their parts, under-written as they are; even Helen doesn't get a lot of dialog, but the film never purported to be an exploration of her tormented soul, and I'm good with that.

In all, it's not the greatest film I've ever seen and it didn't force me to reevaluate my entire existence, but I don't generally require that of a film. It's just an engrossing story competently written, shot, acted, and directed. I wouldn't think to ask for more.

Addendum: Bill McCabe may never forgive me if I don't point out that the legendary Sean Bean is excellent as Odysseus.

That was a hell of a thing.

I just watched Randy Johnson throw a perfect game against the Braves. Just when I finally get fed up enough to shun the game of games, something like this happens.

Out of their gourds in Cannes.

Like that's news to anyone.

First item: Fifty Million Frenchmen and Fat Fuck Michael Moore can, in fact, be wrong.

Second item: Sean Penn thinks there aren't nearly enough political films. The money quote:

Penn saw his Oscar win as a sign of hope.

"I think what it says is that while it's absolutely a real concern that the venue for debate is being diminished, that the tolerance for it is still in the will of the American people, still in the will of the business I work in and evidently in the will of the audience," he said.

Is it even remotely possible he thinks audiences vote for the Oscars? Moreover, I don't see how pushing a leftist agenda constitutes "debate". Michael Moore's bullshit documentaries, worshipful biopics of undertalented Stalin-lovin' painter Frida Kahlo, and Ollie Stone mash notes to jackbooted thug Fidel Castro seem to be the only political "art" mainstream Hollywood finds itself capable of producing--and that's not debate. That's propaganda. That is the will of the business Penn works in, and the will of the people be damned.

Links via Drudge.

Quick Van Helsing review.

Cartoonish CGI, assaultive score, bad script, some bad accents. Kevin J. O'Connor is wasted under a makeup job so cheesy ST:TNG would have rejected it, his few soft-spoken wisecracks obscured by the blaring soundtrack and sabotaged by the editing. Hugh Jackman spends his time trying to look sensitive and serious in a role that would have benefitted from some over-the-top swagger. (C'mon, guy, you've got a gas-powered machinegun-action crossbow. Rambo it up a little.) Kate Beckinsale labors to deliver turgid lines in a wavering Bela Lugosi accent. Richard Roxburgh has borne the brunt of the acting criticism for a hammy performance, but when contrasted against the rest of the performances, he was at least moderately entertaining.

Look, it's a popcorn movie. Don't pay full price. Hit the matinee, take some cotton for your ears, sit back and let it wash over you, and don't ask too many questions.

No, I don't know either.

Neither why it's taking for fargin' ever to load this stupid page, nor why the links are hosed. As God is my witness, I typed the anchor tags in the previous post out manually; how Blogger managed to mangle the second and third ones is beyond my ken. It probably has something to do with the fact that I get an error every time I try to publish, although the page publishes anyway. Nice relaunch, guys. The playpretties are no good if they don't actually work.

Update: Ok, now the links are fixed, though I'm not quite sure how I did it. Publishing is still a mess, at least on my end.

Like school, you keep me young.

All the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I might as well join in and flaunt that oh-so valuable English degree (and possibly reveal the parochial nature of my literary tastes.) Titles in bold have been sucessfully completed; titles in italics have been attempted and abandoned either temporarily or out of varying degrees of exasperation.

Beowulf – Verse and prose translations.
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot – Hell no.
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans – I liked it. I don’t care what Twain says.
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays – “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Whatever you say, Ralph.
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll’s House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior – The one interesting book in that damned ChickLit course.
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain – the big thing was Death in Venice when I was in college.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick – I liked the technical whaling info. It was Billy Budd that made me want to kill.
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni – Beloved - Also The Bluest Eye. Agh.
O’Connor, Flannery - “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
O’Neill, Eugene - Long Day’s Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar – Good God, no.
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales – I’ve read them all.
Proust, Marcel - Swann’s Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver’s Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair – The wittier version of War and Peace.
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

There’s a strong whiff of multiculturalist revisionism coming off this list (not to mention a dearth of Roman authors); putting Alice Walker on the same level as Jane Austen is a crime against literature. Personal additions (by no means exhaustive):

The Arabian Nights
Aristophanes – Birds, Clouds, Frogs. Take your pick.
Bunyan, John - Pilgrim's Progress
Gilgamesh
Gogol, Nikolai - The Nose, The Inspector General
Graves, Robert - I, Claudius
Grimm, The Brothers - Grimm's Fairy Tales
Machiavelli, Niccolo - The Prince
Milton, John - Paradise Lost
Mitchell, Margaret - Gone With the Wind
Scott, Sir Walter - Ivanhoe
Shakespeare - Julius Caesar and King Lear
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Tacitus - The Annals and The Histories
Vergil - The Aeneid


Poets: Auden, Dickinson, Donne, Frost, Nash, Pope, Pushkin, Tennyson, Wordsworth.

Feh.

Typically shitty Blogger implementation.

Update: The big kink seems to be the publishing feature, which keeps hanging up. Just like it used to. I wish they wouldn't break the parts that work.

Blogger changes.

Looks like Blogger has changed its interface yet again and added comment ability. Likely to be some confusion around here till I get this straightened out; old comments are likely to be snuffed out at some point.

Baseball is dead to me.

MLB strikes a sweetheart deal with unrighteous Mammon:

In the latest example of a sponsor's stamp on the sports world, ads for the movie "Spider-Man 2" will be placed atop bases at 15 major league ballparks during games from June 11-13.

According to an article Paula sent me yesterday, they originally wanted to spiderweb the foul nets behind the plate, but it was conjectured that that might interfere with play, for some reason.

The promotion, announced Wednesday, is part of baseball's pitch to appeal to younger fans - and make money along the way.

You know what? Screw the younger fans. 1) they can't see the bases from the stands anyway, and 2) chances are they're too busy playing grabass and flicking boogers on each other to care.

"This was a unique chance to combine what is a sort of a universally popular character and our broad fan base, including the youth market we're trying to reach out to," said Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer. "It doesn't impact the play or performance of the game."

No, it doesn't impact the play (I hate using impact as a verb, btw.) It does remove whatever tattered shreds of dignity remained to the game and exposes everyone involved as the whores they are, though.

[...] The ads, about 4-by-4-inches with a red background and yellow webbing, won't appear on home plate.

Again, no one's going to be able to see them, except via camera.

[...] "We need to reach out to a younger demographic to bring them to the ballpark," Parkes said. "They are looking for nontraditional breakthrough ways to convey 'Spider-Man' messaging. ... It's the future of how we generate excitement inside the stadium and about the game itself."

What about my demographic--you know, people who work and have disposable income? How the fuck is a 4" square ad going to generate excitement for anybody?

Baseball will receive about $3.6 million in a deal negotiated by Major League Baseball Properties with Marvel Studios and Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony Inc., a high-ranking baseball executive said on condition of anonymity.

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will get more than $100,000 each, one team executive said, also on condition of anonymity. Most of the other 13 teams playing at home that weekend will get about $50,000 apiece, the team executive said.

Of course the Yankees get extra. It wouldn't be baseball if the distribution was equitable.

[...] Ralph Nader, a presidential candidate and consumer advocate, criticized the deal. He wrote Tuesday to baseball commissioner Bud Selig, denouncing the decision to have ads on uniforms during the season-opening series in March between the Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays in Tokyo.

"It's gotten beyond grotesque," Nader said. "The fans have to revolt here. Otherwise, they'll be looking at advertisements between advertisements."

Ten thousand devils plague Bud Selig and his minions for this: they have forced me to agree with Ralph Nader on something.

[...] In separate promotions, the bases also will feature pink ribbons Sunday as part of a Mother's Day promotion to raise breast-cancer awareness, and they will have blue ribbons on Father's Day, June 20, to raise prostate-cancer awareness.

Brief side rant: ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING RIBBONS. I'M FUCKING AWARE. THE RIBBONS HAVE LONG SINCE STOPPED REMINDING ME OF ANYTHING BUT THE WEARER'S PRETENSIONS TO MORAL SUPERIORITY.

And now the best part of this whole thing:

John Hirschbeck, head of the World Umpires Association, said the ads won't make it harder for umpires to make calls at the bases. And it wouldn't bother him if umpires' uniforms had ads - as long as they share the profit.

"We've got it on jockeys' pants. Why not?" he said.

If you don't know, Hirschbeck, you ignorant slut, I guess there's no point in talking about it. All my baseball shit goes in the dumpster tonight.

Shut up and drink the Kool-Aid.

Because there is no silly game I won't play:

1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don’t name the band, nor the album-title.

Along about round-up time In Texas way out West
I lost a friend and a pal, boys I laid him down to rest
I weeped and moaned over his grave and to me boys it was sad
'Cause I knew down beneath that mound lay the best pal I ever had

[Emily gets the credit or blame, because I saw it there first.]

Couple o' links.

Neurotically Yours, via Dean Esmay (from a day or two ago; so funny I want to be able to find it again, so I'm posting it here.)

And from the where-are-they-now files, today's Wham update on Ace o' Spades. Be warned: the picture is startling.

Boycott the Derby.

It's what the jockeys were threatening to do if they didn't get to wear ads on their pants.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Jockeys can wear advertising patches during the Kentucky Derby, a judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II's decision two days before the country's premier horse race applies only to seven jockeys who sued, including Jerry Bailey, Alex Solis, Jose Santos, and John Velazquez.

They cited the First Amendment in successfully asking that the judge grant a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of a state rule that bars jockeys from wearing advertising, promotional or cartoon symbols during races.

I wasn't aware the founding fathers were so prescient that they actually drafted a right to sell advertising space on one's clothing right into the Constitution. Silly me, I thought the first amendment only applied to political speech. Guess that's why I'm not a goddamn US District Judge.

The jockeys issued a statement after the ruling, saying the ads would be tasteful.

Oh, heavens, yes. Just like NASCAR, which we all know is all about the tasteful.

"We are very sensitive to the traditions of our sport and our goal is not to offend anyone," said Bailey, a two-time Derby winner who will ride Wimbledon on Saturday.

If you were actually sensitive to the traditions of the sport, this issue wouldn't have come up.

"Jockeys work very hard and risk our lives on a daily basis. We have earned the right to make additional income," he said.

I look forward to the opening of the jockey brothel next door to the Downs, then.

Jockey Pat Day, not part of either lawsuit, said before the ruling that the case could have a major impact on the sport.

"The industry is going through some dramatic changes," said Day, Churchill Downs' winningest rider. "It would be nice to stick with tradition, but we also have to do what's best for the game and for the longevity of the game."

I'll be goddamned. I didn't know Bud Selig had branched out to other sports. [Thanks to Paula for the link.]

The first stirrings of unease re Kong.

First, the good news: casting.

Naomi Watts will play the big ape's love object, Ann Darrow. Adrien Brody will play Darrow's boyfriend, former WWII pilot Jack Driscoll, and Jack Black will be blustery adventurer Carl Denham, who imports Kong to Manhattan.

Jack Black is perfect for Denham. Watts and Brody will be adequate, if dull. Now the bad news: Peter Jackson has lost his fucking mind.

"Everybody's image of 'King Kong' is that it's this amazing beauty-and-the-beast love story. And when you look at the original film, there is as sense that Kong is feeling an attraction toward Ann-probably the first empathy he's felt in his life toward another living creature. But Ann is not giving him a thing. She just looks at him as an object of horror the entire time. She screams at him, she's terrified. Her relationship with Kong doesn't go beyond that. We're having a lot of fun making it more psychologically real."

DUDE. You're making a movie about a giant goddamn monkey. What the hell does that even mean in this context, psychologically real? Are we going to be forced to sit through three hours of Watts and Brody crying like hobbits? Look, this is not Shakespeare. You've basically got a freakishly large monkey, a chick, and the Empire State building to work with. Do not fuck this up by drenching it in emotional excess.

Somewhere Julia Child is laughing her ass off.

We're apparently in the middle of a renaissance of variety meats, which is excellent. If the trend comes down to my being able to buy lamb and veal kidneys at Meijer I'm for it. (For steak and kidney pie. Stop looking at me like that, it's delicious.)

[Via Arts & Letters Daily.]

Torturing Clio.

Once again Hollywood prepares to savage the muse of History so Tom Cruise can put caviar on the table:

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN WAS WON BY A SINGLE AMERICAN AIRMAN (...OR SO HOLLYWOOD IS ABOUT TO TELL US)

Winston Churchill said it was our "finest hour", but yesterday it was revealed the Battle of Britain was won single-handedly by Tom Cruise. Amid outrage from the West's war veterans and military historians, a new Hollywood film will claim that one American, Billy Fiske - played by Cruise - was responsible for the 1940 victory.

Ok, so filming hasn't started yet, and I'm jumping on the bash-Hollywood bandwagon before it's properly left the gate. Not to mention the fact that the people quoted in the article frankly sound like they have an enormous chip on their collective shoulders regarding America's part in WWII. When it comes to Cruise, however, any gun-jumping I do before the fact is absolutely justified--nay, righteous--since he so often proves me right after the fact.

Resign yourself. There will be bitching.

[Via Plastic Gangster, who's just a bit peeved by the news.]

Nothing like having your finger on the pulse of the nation.

One would think a film that's grossed $361M domestically in two months would have no problem being picked up for television re-broadcast, particularly a film pitched toward the Easter holiday season like "The Passion of the Christ". One would be wrong, of course.

The movie's graphic scenes of Jesus' crucifixion are said to make broadcasters skittish, particularly in the post-Janet Jackson era, when government officials are closely watching what goes on television.

Not to make untoward comparisons about Janet Jackson being martyred or anything, but are we really going to conflate the scourging and crucifixion of Christ with tit-flashing during a major sporting event?

Besides the film's violent content, a network that airs the film would also inherit controversy about it.

Yes. And we all know no one ever made any money off controversy.

Brushes with greatness.

Mike Toole shares his probably-soon-to-be-infamous story about Tom Brokaw.

My own encounters with celebrity are even more peripheral:
--spotted Col. Harlan Sanders dining in a Red Lobster in Louisville when I was about 14. Said nothing.
--ended up walking behind Rick Monday at a Mets/Dodgers game at Shea in when Paula and I got lost looking for the bathroom. I don't remember saying anything, but Paula may have asked him where the exit was.
--was snubbed by Mike Piazza at Spring training at Vero Beach the year he got traded; he signed for Elaine (with my pen), skipped me, signed several more, and ducked into the clubhouse.
--was snubbed by Stevie Nicks at a concert I went to with Angela, handshakes right and left of me.
--once briefly stalked Richard Karn outside a movie theater in Louisville.

Suzanne: "Hey, that's Al from Tool Time.
Me: "Yeah, I think you're right."

Elaine and Loraine were in the back seat and didn't see him. We went in, saw whatever movie we were there for, and as we were getting back in the car Elaine and Loraine spotted him again in the parking lot.

Loraine: "Hey, that's Al from Tool Time."
Suzanne and I: "We know. We told you that earlier."
Elaine, slipping into double-naught spy mode: "Follow him."

So we did. Down Hurstbourne Lane a couple of blocks, when he copped to the fact that he was being followed by four chicks with glasses, panicked, and zipped into a closed car dealership, so we zipped in after him and pulled up beside him. I'm not sure what he thought we were going to do to him, but whatever it was he wanted no part of it; with a look of naked, screaming terror he slammed his rental into reverse and roared out of the lot.

Elaine: "Step on it. He's getting away!"

But I suddenly came to my senses and we let him get away. I've wondered for years whether he ever mentioned it to anyone.

More in the continuing theme of undeserved hyperbole...

Michael Lind dissects Peter Singer's anti-Bush diatribe in the New Statesman; after pointing out Singer's lack of intellectual rigor (and internal consistency), Lind closes with this rather curious statement:

Bush, the worst president of my lifetime [emphasis mine, obviously--k], has the power to reduce otherwise intelligent people to sputtering rage. Singer's polemic, which tells us nothing we did not already know about Bush's beliefs, proves that it is a bad idea to sputter in print.

Granting that Lind might have been an infant during the Carter years, in consideration of the nature of the administration that ran dangerously amok during the eight years prior to Bush's ascension, I find the phrase "worst president of my lifetime" an incredible formulation, and I mean that literally. And that's really all I have to say about it; Lind has been classified and filed as a silly jackass. Moving on.

Radio shrapnel.

In response to a USA Today article about Blender magazine's compilation of the 50 worst hit tunes ever, Angela lists her five most-hated songs of all time:

1. "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo
2. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" by Culture Club
3. "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship
4. "Beth" by Kiss
5. Any whiney love ballad by Tim McGraw. Just pick one. I hate them all.

Can't really argue for the artistic merits of any of those...but are they *really* the worst songs you can come up with?

The rules as expressed by Blender are somewhat arbitrary; had to be a hit, but for some damn dumb reason they excluded "I'm Too Sexy", "The Macarena", and "Who Let the Dogs Out" on the questionable grounds of intentional cheesiness, then they apparently axed the bulk of the 70s because it was too easy. So really, they just indulged themselves in a little 80s hatefest; indeed, six of the top ten (or bottom ten, if you will) date from the 80s (seven if you count Vanilla Ice. He probably stole--er, recorded "Ice Ice Baby" in 89.):

1. We Built This City - Starship 1985
2. Achy Breaky Heart - Billy Ray Cyrus 1992
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight - Wang Chung 1986
4. Rollin' - Limpbizkit 2000
5. Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice 1990
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll - Huey Lewis & The News 1984
7. Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin 1988
8. Party All the Time - Eddie Murphy 1985
9. American Life - Madonna 2003
10. Ebony and Ivory - Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder 1982

Sure, they all suck--but can anyone honestly tell me any of these songs are worse than Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life"? Are the lyrics to "We Built This City" really any dumber than the Holy Grail of rock tunes, "Stairway To Heaven"? So off the top of my head here's my top five of the moment, with new rules: 1) had to get radio play; "hit" is is a pretty arbitrary term these days, 2) has to make me lunge for the station button like my very life depends on not hearing the rest of the song, 3) nothing off-limits.

1. You Light Up My Life - Debbie Boone, 1977
Like an ice pick in the ear. A song tailor-made for cheesy midwestern weddings. I hate weddings.

2. Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin, 1971
Faux populist profundity with the added tangy zest of faux nihilism. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", my ass.

3. Do Ya Think I'm Sexy - Rod Stewart, 1979
This song has nothing to redeem it.

4. Last Kiss - Pearl Jam, 1999
Eddie Vedder's clench-toothed monotone does this already shitty song no favors.

5. Home Sweet Home - Motley Crue, 1985
Mawkish sentiment is ill-paired with Roman orgy excess. One or the other, guys.

Senator Miller, I love you, and I want to have your babies.*

March 30. 2004

U.S. Senator Zell Miller
Floor Statement: 'A House Divided Cannot Stand'
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

After watching the harsh acrimony generated by the September 11 Commission - which, let me say at the outset, is made up of good and able members - I've come to seriously question this panel's usefulness.

I believe it will ultimately play a role in doing great harm to this country, for its unintended consequences, I fear, will be to energize our enemies and demoralize our troops.

After being drowned in a tidal wave of all who didn't do enough before 9/11, I have come to believe that the Commission should issue a report that says: "No one did enough in the past. No one did near enough."

Then thank everyone for serving, send them home and let's get on with the job of protecting this country in the future.

Tragically, these hearings have proved to be a very divisive diversion for this country. Tragically, they have devoured valuable time, looking backwards when we should be looking forward.

Can you imagine handling the attack on Pearl Harbor this way? Can you imagine Congress, the media and the public standing for this kind of political gamesmanship and finger pointing after that "day of infamy" in 1941?

Some partisans tried that ploy, but they were soon quieted by the patriots who understood how important it was to get on with the war and take the battle to America's enemies, and not dwell on what FDR knew when.

You see, back then the highest priority was to win a war, not win an election. That's what made them "The Greatest Generation."

I realize that many well-meaning Americans see the hearings as "democracy in action." Years ago, when I was teaching political science, I probably would have had my class watching it live on television and using that very phrase with them.

There are also the not-so-well-meaning political operatives who see these hearings as an opportunity to "score cheap points."

Then, there are the Media Meddlers who see this as "great theater" that can be played out on the evening news and on endless talk shows for a week or more.

Congressional hearings have long been one of Washington's most entertaining pastimes. Joe McCarthy. Watergate. Iran Contra. They all kept us glued to the TV, and made for conversation around the water coolers and arguments over a beer at the corner pub.

A Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. is the ultimate aphrodisiac for political groupies and partisan punks.

But, it's not the groupies, punks and television-sotted American public that I'm worried about. This latter crowd can get excited and divided over just about anything. Whether it's some off-key wanna-be dreaming of being the American Idol, or what brainless bimbo The Bachelor or Average Joe will choose or who will Donald Trump fire next week.

No, it is the real enemies of America that I'm concerned about.

These evil killers who right now, right now are gleefully watching the shrill partisan finger pointing of these hearings and grinning like a mule eating briars.

They see this as a major split within the Great Satan America. They see anger, they see division, instability, bickering, peevishness and dissension.

They see the President of the United States hammered unmercifully. They see all this and they are greatly, greatly encouraged.

We should not be doing anything to encourage our enemies in this battle between good and evil. Yet, these hearings, in my opinion, are doing just that.

We are playing with fire. We're playing directly into the hands of our enemy by allowing these hearings to become the great divider they have become.

Dick Clarke's book and its release coinciding with these hearings have done this country a tremendous disservice, and someday we will reap its whirlwind.

Long ago, Sir Walter Scott observed that revenge is "the sweetest morsel that ever was cooked in hell."

The vindictive Clarke has now had his revenge, but what kind of hell has he, his CBS publisher and his axe-to-grind advocates unleashed?

These hearings, coming on the heels of the election the terrorists influenced in Spain, bolster and energize our evil enemies as they have not been energized since 9/11.

Chances are very good that these evil enemies of America will attempt to influence our 2004 election in a similar dramatic way as they did Spain's And to think that could never be in this country is to stick your head in the sand.

That is why the sooner we stop this endless bickering over the past and join together to prepare for the future, the better off this country will be. There are some things - whether this city believes it or not - that are just more important than political campaigns.

The recent past is so ripe for political second-guessing "gotcha" and Monday morning quarter-backing. And it is so tempting in an election year. We should not allow ourselves to indulge that temptation. We should put our country first.

Every administration from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush bears some of the blame. Dick Clarke bears a big heap of it because it was he who was in the catbird's seat to do something about it for more than a decade. Tragically, it was the decade in which we did the least.

We did nothing after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and injuring more than 1,000 Americans.

We did nothing in 1996 when sixteen U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers.

When our embassies were attacked in 1998, killing 263 people, our only response was to fire a few missiles on an empty tent.

Is it any wonder? Is it any wonder that after that decade of weak-willed responses to that murderous terror, our enemies thought we would never fight back?

In the 1990's is when Dick Clarke should have resigned. In the 1990's is when he should have apologized. That is when he should have written his book. That is, if he really had America's best interest at heart.

Some will say, "We owe it to the families" to get more information about what happened in the past and I can understand that. But no amount of finger-pointing will bring our victims back.

So, now we owe it to future families and all of America now in jeopardy not to encourage more terrorists, resulting in even more grieving families, perhaps many more over the ones of 9/11.

It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps: the wimps and the warriors.

The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill him them before they kill us. And, in case you haven't figured it out, I proudly belong to the latter.

This is a time like no other in the history of this country, and this country is being crippled with petty partisan politics of the worst possible kind. In time of war, it is not just unpatriotic; it is stupid, and it is criminal.

So, I pray that all this time, all this energy, all this talk and all this attention could be focused on the future instead of the past.

I pray we would stop pointing fingers, assigning blame and wringing our hands about what happened on that day David McCullogh has called "the worst day in our history" more than two years ago.

And instead, pour all of our energy into how we can kill these terrorists before they kill us - again.

For make no mistake about it. They watch these hearings. They are scheming and smiling about the distraction and the divisiveness they see in America. And while they may not know who said it years ago in America, they know instinctively that a house divided cannot stand.

There is one other group that we should remember is listening to all of this - our troops.
I was in Iraq in January and one day when I was meeting with the 1st Armored Division, a unit with a proud history known as Old Ironsides, we were discussing troop morale, and the Commanding General said it was top notch.

And I turned to the Division's Sergeant Major, the top enlisted man in the division, a big, burly, 6-foot-3, 240 pound African American and I said, "That's good, but how do you sustain that kind of morale?"

Without hesitation he narrowed his eyes, and he looked at me and said "The morale will stay high just as long as these troops know the people back home support us."

Just as long as the people back home support us. What kind of message are these hearings and the outrageously political speeches on the floor of the Senate yesterday sending to those marvelous young Americans in the uniform of our country?

I say Unite America! Before it is too late! Put aside these petty partisan differences when it comes to the protection of our people.

Argue and argue and argue and debate and debate and debate over all the other things - jobs and education and the deficit and the environment - but please, please do not use the lives of Americans and the security of this country as a cheap-shot political talking point.

Thanks to Kathy C. for the original link.

*For extra credit, to whom did Edmund Blackadder address the quote, and which episode is it from?

Pointless fun.

Via Emily, via Ben Kepple, a game:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"All right, I tried," I said, and fingered it out and forked it over. -- Gambit by Rex Stout.

(Since the random obscurity of the sentences seems to be the point, I won't explain who the speaker is or what he's talking about.)

Bitch, please, part II.

This just goes right through my egalitarian soul: Spain's Prince Felipe subject to search at Miami International Airport; knickers reportedly in a twist.

"The prince and his bodyguard felt they should not be subjected to the screening, but if they do not have an escort from the State Department or the Secret Service, it is required,'' Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Lauren Stover said. "It's the law.''

The couple had only given six hours notice instead of the standard three days required by the State Department for an expedited security check, the newspaper reported.

Am I supposed to take European royalty seriously now? Hell, I didn't even realize Spain still had a crown prince. Seems a bit...anachronistic.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas sent the royal family a letter of apology about what he called a "lamentable situation.''

"The facts I have received thus far indicate an apparent disregard for protocol and disrespect of His Highness and his delegation. ... I have called upon our County Manager to conduct a complete investigation into this matter,'' he wrote Thursday.

As far as I can see, the only breach of protocol was committed by the prince, who evidently thinks of the US as some colonial outpost where the local peasants should bow him through security with appropriate forelock-tugging and a touch of groveling. Nice to see the mayor accomodating him.

A Spanish consular official in Miami, who refused to give his name to the paper, said it would be Consul General Javier Vallaure's decision whether to file a complaint.

"We don't consider this the proper way to treat our future king,'' the official said. ``It's a breach of protocol.''

Know what? if your future king wants to travel through the US, it behooves him to follow our protocol, which, apparently, requires a 3-day notice or at least a security escort. We're in the middle of a war your country is in the process of pussying out of and we have security issues with foreigners, so just shut your freakin' cakehole and follow instructions. Otherwise your prince can just get in line with the other shlubs and have the security people pawing through his undies. Fuck'm.

Bitch, please.

Deeply religious superstar Madonna

There are many words that would play better as a modifier there than "religious". Psychotic is one.

will play no Friday night gigs on her upcoming world tour - because the teaching of the Kabbalah forbids it.

How much longer is she going to pretend she's serious about this? She's done some half-assed reading and decided this belief system will make a nice accessory, like when she used to wear a crucifix (how's that for blasphemy?)

The "Holiday" hitmaker has pledged to respect the Jewish practice of Shabbat, the religion's sabbath, by dining with her close family every Friday rather than working. And Madonna, who is married to British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, hopes her move with convince the world she is very serious about the mystical teachings of the Kabbalah. A source says, "This shows just how much Madonna is influenced by Kabbalah. She is completely focused on following her beliefs no matter what lengths she has to go to."

"Until it becomes inconvenient, of course, at which point she will abandon this set of deeply-held beliefs like all the others."

Besides, why should I respect her committment to her religious beliefs when she blithely-even deliberately-tramples on the beliefs of others?

You are David Brooks! You're exceedingly smart, but
your writing is as compelling as wallpaper. You
are a thoughtful though hard-line conservative,
but lack any of Safire's verbal pyrotechnics.
In addition, you dress like you're colorblind.
Fall down, juvenile.


Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
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I'd argue if I could. Via Plastic Gangster.

According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz:

Why don't you check it out? Or we cut off your Johnson!

I'm not, really. I just have trouble relating to people sometimes.

[Via Ryne McClaren.]

Memo to Jimmy Carter.

Shut your hole and know your role, you embarrassing relic from a thankfully dead age of American malaise and impotence.

"President Bush's war was ill-advised and unnecessary and based on erroneous statements, and has turned out to be a tragedy," Carter said. "And my prayer has been that brave young American men and women, and others who are there, that their lives will be spared and there will be some peaceful resolution of the war."

My prayer is that we actually win the damn war and they can come home knowing they changed the world. The only way this war becomes a tragedy is if you have your way and we cut and run like a scalded dog.

Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002,

Hardly the first or only time that particular award has been so hilariously misdirected.

also blamed what he called Bush's pro-Israel policies for engendering animosity against America.

"The prime source of animosity towards the United States is the lack of progress in dealing with the Palestinian issue," Carter said, adding that past U.S. administrations since Harry Truman's have maintained a "balanced position" in dealing with the rights of the Arab population within the Jewish nation.

So...if you're right (and you're not) that anger over our "balanced position" on the Palestinian cause culminated in the fiery death of about 3,000 Americans, who in their right mind would advocate unbalancing our position in favor of the side that did the killing? Ludicrous. Moot, of course, since the rest of the Arabs don't give two shits about the Palestinians except for their utility as wedge between the US and Israel. And if this country ever abandons Israel, God help us.

[Link via Allahpundit.]

Today's dose of Schadenfreude.

In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, "HAha."

Trojan Horse Attacks Mac OS X:

Until now, Mac users have prided themselves [Have they ever. -ed] on running a system that has been largely virus-free. Few Mac OS X users run antivirus software, or are wary of double-clicking files they've downloaded or received in e-mail.

And why is that? Is it because the wicked cool Apple OS is so special, so unique, it's virtually virus-proof? Er...no, actually.

Security consultant and virus expert Ken Vanwyk, said there was nothing special protecting Mac OS X, or Linux for that matter, from malicious code.

"They're all susceptible to viruses and Trojans, just as Windows is," he said. "They just haven’t been targeted yet."

Vanwyk cautioned OS X users not to open e-mail attachments unless they were expecting them.

"If OS X users are being careful, I don’t see they should be rushing out to buy antivirus software," he said. "But if it goes the way of Windows, anti-virus product is in their future."

Davis said the Trojan most likely appeared because of Apple's growing influence in digital music.

"Given Apple's previous market share, OS X wasn't a challenge," he said. "As Apple becomes more visible, it's more of an attractive target."

I just thought about Lileks and smiled sadistically. I don't particularly want him hit with a virus, of course, but his occasional Odes to Apple make me grind my teeth.

[Thanks to Angela for the link and the shared glee.]

Notes from half a game.

Went to the Dayton Dragons opener last night and they lost like Mets (11-3). I mention this only to report that as I was walking past Brixx bar on my way to the game they were playing "Loser" by Beck on the patio outside. I'm sensing a lack of love for the team, but it could have been coincidence.

Anyway, I left after the 4th because I'm a dumbass and didn't take a jacket, and got home to discover the Mets also losing like Mets (10-8), didn't check the details, then this morning I find out Erickson wasn't pitching because he strained a hammy during the warmup.

Ahem.

Strained his hammy during the warmup. Is this some kind of karmic payback for something? Did Nelly Doubleday lay a curse on the guys when he sold out, or is it something more sinister? Maybe something connected to Kevin Mitchell cutting the head off his girlfriend's cat? Continuing to monitor the situation.

The Alamo opens this weekend.

Despite, or maybe because of, the generally bad reviews, If I can convince Angela to see it I might go (she's a transplanted Texan and therefore the control subject by which I will set the bullshit meter), but I must point out there has never--and I mean never--been a good movie made about the Alamo. It's a cursed property. The advance word on this one is particularly bad; months ago when they were running it for test audiences I heard disturbing rumors of Davie Crockett all but wetting himself during the battle. Call me a rube, but I prefer my heroes steely eyed and devil-may-care, and I don't care to see the King of the Wild Frontier gibbering in the corner with fear.

Excellent snark:

No one here gets out alive, not the director, not the screenwriters (a phone book's worth), not the cast, and not the audience, who, a few dollars lighter and a few hours closer to death, get a chance to glimpse their own mortality reflected in the dead, shark-eyed glare of the bankruptcy of another big-budget prestige picture.

That's just good writin'.

Because they can't.



Sometimes I have to wonder just what kind of dimwits are running the show in Iraq. If our troops can't fly Old Glory, they might as well be wearing baby blue helmets.

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
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That was satisfying.

The world goes on turning in my absence.

For those who might be wondering where the hell I was last week (and there can't be many of you), I spent the entire week riding around in a Big Truck with my older brother, getting filthy grimy (2 showers in six days--I repulsed myself by Thursday and was near-hysterical in my demands that we halt and ablute ourselves at a truckstop), eating terribly (road food report: Snyder's makes a mustard and Vidalia potato chip, as well as like-flavored Funyun type snack rings. Found the chips at a diner outside Pittsburgh and the rings at a Truckstop on I-74 in Indiana. Also, the Hostess apple spice cupcakes have a harsh chemical overtone that coffee really brings out, unlike the orange cupcakes.), and not sleeping. We had a near-miss on a delivery that stressed me out so much I think I induced Sean to have an anxiety attack, causing his left hand to go numb. (We made it with 3 minutes--THREE--to spare.) I learned that big trucks have three enormous batteries, that it's sort of hit-or-miss cranking the engine when you only have two, what a battery smells like when the posts burn off, that a forklift *can* move a truck loaded with 40-someodd tons of steel enough to push start it, that it's possible to restart the engine by popping the clutch on a truck rolling uphill if you have enough momentum, and that hooking one of the batteries up backwards is a Very Bad Thing.

But it was fun. Steel mills are interesting, and trucking is a weird profession. I'd been out on a truck before with Michelle, but she was what Sean refers to as a "lazy drop-and-hook bastard" (meaning she doesn't drive a covered wagon or a flatbed and doesn't have muscles like a stevedore.) Anyway, I'm back, so further posting delays are due to indolence rather than absence.

Ride your pony.

How to dance properly.

[via Ace of Spades.]

The joke that writes itself.

Via Jonah Goldberg in The Corner: Fitness icon Richard Simmons cited for slapping man

Simmons, 55, known for his tank tops and outrageous manner, was ticketed for misdemeanor assault after allegedly striking the man across the face while in line at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Wednesday night, police said.
''He apparently said 'Hey everybody, it's Richard Simmons, let's drop our bags and rock to the '50s,''' said Sgt. Lauri Williams, a reference to a series of his well-known videos. ''Mr. Simmons took offense and said he had to 'bitch slap' him.''

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

This is the good part: There's going to be a limited re-release of Life of Brian (LA, NY, check local listings.)

This is the ass part:

Rainbow president Henry Jaglom says, "We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion."

"Important"? "Counter-programming"? Handy rule of thumb: when you become more pompous than the people you're trying to spoof, you have jumped the shark.

Babylon's a-fallin' to rise no more.



Compelled by one of the best reviews of anything I've ever read, by Matt Labash in the Weekly Standard, I just bought the most extraordinary cd box set I've ever heard, Goodbye, Babylon, a six-disc set of early 20th century gospel that runs the musical gamut, as Labash notes, of "everything from Sacred Harp singing to hillbilly romps to field-holler prison chants to front-porch blues to jubilee quartets to old-timey country to Sanctified-congregational singing to Pentecostal rave-ups." The sixth disc is devoted entirely to sermons, mostly from the twenties. (Sure, I got a few odd looks when I pulled up to the gas pump with a sermon about the Black Diamond Train and its passenger manifest of liars, gamblers, and thieves blaring from my car speakers. I maintain this is not only no worse than blasting Eminem so my neighbors can hear it, it's infinitely better.)

The review is amusing, maybe slightly more so for those of us raised as Southern Baptists, but the music is divine. If you have any interest in gospel or old time music, it's well worth acquiring.

Well, this is kinda pleasant, actually.


You are Walt Whitman! Champion of the
Transcendentalist American Ideal, Walt Whitman
is one of the first poets to use the "free
verse" form in America. He has been
imitated, but will never be duplicated, just
like you! Except for by everyone else who gets
Walt Whitman ;)


Which famous poet are you? (pictures and many outcomes)
brought to you by Quizilla

Cool. I dig Whitman.

[Via Rodya.]

Wanton hubris.

That's what Patrick Stewart's got, assaying one of Peter O'Toole's seminal roles in Showtime's ill-advised remake of "The Lion In Winter". The project has disaster written all over it; Stewart and Glenn Close are about as subtle as a matched pair of sledgehammers, and I suspect it's going to resemble a Master Thespian skit more than a serious attempt to invoke Goldman's vision of a Plantagenet family Christmas.

[Via Dean Esmay, via a heads up from Bernadine.]

The re-Reconquista

Victor Davis Hanson analyzes the Spanish elections.

Anything I could add would be de trop.

One of those good news/bad news things.

The good news: there's a project afoot to film Beowulf. And they want to cast Sean Connery as Hrothgar.

The bad news that will render the good news irrelevant: they have no fucking idea what they're doing.

Beowulf prefers to see himself as an ordinary man, but for his particular skill in slaying monsters.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The monster in this case is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood - immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged. Beowulf wants to do the right thing, but what the right thing is, becomes increasingly unclear.

I just love it when filmmakers decide it's a good idea to force a modernist mindset on an ancient property. Apparently the Northmen are supposed to ask themselves why Grendel hates them. Maybe at the end they'll all hug and beat their swords into plowshares. Pass.

Post script: I should also point out that removing the mythological underpinnings makes the struggle just another pointless pissing contest. How can you have a guy who has a "particular skill in slaying monsters" and then make the monster not a monster? I mean, seriously, what the hell?

If you love Looney Tunes, buy this.

Movie roundup.

I saw The Passion of the Christ the Saturday after it opened, but I haven't been able to post about it for a couple of reasons. First, because I don't really have anything distinctive to add to the Babel of voices raised for and against it already, and second, because my reaction to it was intensely personal and I've been struggling to find the words to express my amazement with the film. I cannot describe how far it exceeded, even transcended my expectations.

To be honest, I was initially interested primarily in hearing the dead languages being spoken; I'm a language freak and studied Latin in high school, and that was the offbeat note that caught my interest when I first heard Gibson was interested in making the film. Like most people, I thought he was probably going to lose his shirt, making a film with such a tiny niche market--who in their right mind thought John Q. Public would sit still for two hours of Jesus movie in languages no one speaks anymore?--and I admired him for being determined enough to go ahead and do the project because it obviously meant a great deal to him. This was a novel experience, as I had never previously had cause to admire Mel Gibson for much of anything; I've never been a fan of his acting or his direction.*

It was therefore an enormous surprise to find that he is capable of coaxing incredible performances from more talented actors than himself (Jim Caviezel is wonderful, but Maia Morgenstern absolutely broke my heart.) It was further a surprise to find that he was able to put together a movie about grotesque human brutality, and to focus unflinchingly on that brutality, but to put the visual sequences together in such a way that the camera turns away just as it all becomes too much to bear. I know many people found the violence bordering on the pornographic; I can only say I didn't find it so. Sam Peckinpah, The Matrix, Bonnie and Clyde--that's the pornography of violence. To me the difference is that the violence here is not glorified--it's simply presented as a fact. I've seen reviews that question the authenticity of the gore--I can only wonder if any of them have done any research at all into Roman culture. They didn't own most of the known world because they shrank from violence.

Speaking to the other concerns I think are legitimate, the questions of anti-semitism and the quasi-absolution of Pilate--well, those are to a certain extent, within the eye of the beholder. I was never taught and have never felt that the Jews were to blame for the death of Christ; I watched with what I hope was a critical eye and never felt that the movie was trying to say otherwise. I recognize that Gibson's father has said some woefully ignorant and hurtful things, but I wouldn't tar Mel Gibson with his father's brush, and think it's shameful of others to do so. He's a grown man, he has his own mind and has made his own statement. Judge him on that. The characterization of Pilate is sympathetic, but as his actions don't deviate far from the Gospel, I see that as an interpretive call, and I'm not prepared to argue either way.

Because none of that is the point of the story. The sacrifice was inevitable; no one could have stopped it had they wanted to, apart from Christ himself. Complaints that the movie didn't show enough of His teachings fall on deaf ears here; King of Kings is for rent any time you want to see it. Complaints that the resurrection wasn't emphasized enough also seem to me to miss the point of the scope of the movie. This is an illustration, limited by human imperfection, of the suffering and sacrifice upon which the Christian faith is founded. And many people want to be moved by that message. The fact that there is apparently a great spiritual thirst for this movie, at this time and in this place, gives me greater hope for the future than I have had in a long time. It's certainly not a perfect film, none of them are. But for the here and now, it's good enough.

*Braveheart's an interesting movie, if wildly inaccurate, but the performance in it that catches my eye is not Mel's grandstanding martyr, but Patrick McGoohan's fascinating, imperious, dominant turn as Edward Longshanks. He made me believe he was a Plantagenet.

---

On a much less serious note, I saw Hidalgo this past Saturday. I have a confession: I just don't much like Viggo Mortensen. I didn't really like him as Aragorn, even; I find him pretentious and earnestly dull on screen, and his inability to use his eyes expressively leaves me utterly cold. The good points of his performance: his Western drawl wasn't excessively painful (I've heard much, much worse) and the one thing I must concede: the man sits a horse beautifully. In a horse movie this is, naturally, of primary importance. He also fights well, in sudden bursts of energy, and has a few moments of levity that threaten to bring the character to life before he sinks back into Hamlet's brooding melancholy yet again. That inky cloak must have been the first thing he threw into the saddle bags when he left.

The bad: well. He mumbles. His voice seems to be trying to come out through his nostrils. He's supposed to be half-Lakota; letting the question of blue eyes and recessive genes go for the moment, why does he have to have blond hair? I know it's a nitpick, but it was distracting.

But it would be unfair of me to say that Mortensen actually spoils the film; that's accomplished more by sloppy writing and editing that has the energy of the film dissipated long before the supposed climax of the action has been reached. I didn't and don't object to the fact that it's not really based on a true story ("This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."*), but the modernist agenda of the script (written by the hack who wrote "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron", yet another anthropomorphic horsey whitey-is-evil piece of animated tripe from Disney) makes the dialog painful to hear, and clumsy side plots involving nascent feminism among the Arabs (Shyeah. Right.) and the purchase of a slave boy (apparently only included in the film for the sake of ethnic diversity, as he's left at loose ends at the conclusion) weaken the narrative frame, and made me yearn for the days of John Ford. My advice: you'd be better off buying a copy of The Searchers or Cheyenne Autumn. If you're going to let yourself be manipulated, at least let a master do it and not some hamfisted amateur.

*The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Update: Ian Hamet informs me, correctly, that I attributed "Spirit" to the wrong company. Dreamworks, not Disney, was responsible for that particular fiasco.

Excellent.

I scored a mere 25 (out of a possible 160, apparently) on the Libertarian Purity Test. This pleases me. If I'd scored much higher I'd worry about my conservative bona fides.

Up yours, George.

Word from IMDB about Clooney's next project after "Ocean's 12":

Syrina is based on See No Evil, the memoirs of former CIA operative Robert Bauer and claims that meddling by "White House and Pentagon pen-pushers" sealed the fate of the thousands that died in the tragic 9/11 terrorist heist in September 2001.

Rot in hell, you stupid lefty fuck.

Interesting.


Heart of Glass


What is Your Heart REALLY Made of?
brought to you by Quizilla

And thank you very much Quizilla for putting that song in my head. [Via Ben Kepple.]

Everyone's crazy but me and thee...

...and sometimes I have my doubts about you.

James Bowman on the quadriennial entertainment of the LaRouche campaign, and why it's not substantively different from the campaigns for people we don't necessarily think of as having lost their minds.

Why I hate the Oscars.

Sean Penn? Sean freakin' Penn gets best actor for that one-each by-the-numbers pot boiler? Worse, Tim Robbins collects yet another undeserved award for his tics and grimaces. Charlize Theron's best actress role: lesbian, check. Serial killer, check. Uglied up for the role, checkcheckcheck. Guaranteed Oscar bait. And finally, the "we realize we fucked up two years running so here's every Oscar you've been nominated for this year, no matter how undeserving the film in question may have actually been" series of make-up Oscars for Return of the King. (For my money, the most egregious of these was the soundtrack award to Howard Shore.)

I regret it every damn time I break my standing rule not to watch this massive waste of time.

Here's the WWI flying ace...


You are Snoopy!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Those who know me are laughing about the "sheer joy for life" line. They can, of course, bite me.

(Via Bill McCabe.)

I do swear a lot.

You're The Catcher in the Rye!

by J.D. Salinger

You are surrounded by phonies, and boy are you sick of them! In an
ongoing struggle to search for a land without phonies, you end up running away from
everything, from school to consequences. In this process, you reveal that many people
in your life have suffered torments and all you really want to do is catch them as
they fall. Perhaps using a baseball mitt. Your biggest fans are infamous
psychotics.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

"Phonies" is harsh. (Via Mike Toole.)

I really don't know why this stuff catches me off-guard.

Roger Ebert's just weird. I was reading his review of "Welcome to Mooseport" (his is one of the very few positives), and ran across this:

We question that such a naive and innocent town could exist in America, and are almost relieved to find that the movie was shot in Canada. Has it seemed to you lately that Canada is the last remaining repository of the world Norman Rockwell used to paint?

No, Rog, it hasn't, and you really need to get out of Chicago more.

Strictly from Dixie.

Via Farm Accident Digest, the Yankee or Dixie quiz. I scored a solid 68% to the Dixie side; would probably have been more definitively Dixie but for the fact that my parents moved up to Chelmsford, Mass. for a little over a year when I was learning to talk. So I drawl a bit, but I do it very quickly.

Shillin' for George.

It's a fulltime job.

Ryne McClaren, an otherwise excellent blogger, defends the indefensible:

And is it just me or is there something sort of sick about the mind of John Henry here, whining about the Yankees acquiring a player that Boston was also chasing? It's as if he believes that a second set of rules should apply to the Yankees, just because they're not drowning in their own half century of embarassment.

I think it's more that he's pissed that there's already a second set of rules for the Yankees.

"There is really no other fair way to deal with a team that has gone so insanely far beyond the resources of all the other teams," Henry said in an e-mail to reporters.

This coming from the man who wrote the checks for baseball's third highest payroll last year.

The difference between poor ol' John Henry's club last year and the 2003 World Champion Marlins? Only $48,112,879 bones.

The difference between 2003 Champs and Steingrabber's also-rans: about $100M. Hmm.

This year, John-boy is going to drop $125.1 million on the boys in Beantown.

So John Henry, spare me the crocodile tears, m'kay?

"The Yankee payroll will account for approximately 9.6% of total MLB payroll in 2004." Can you possibly think this is a good thing for the game as a whole? Or does that just not matter?

Responded Steinbrenner: "Unlike the Yankees, he chose not to go the extra distance for his fans in Boston."

And so continues the history of the Yankees and their whipping boys to the north.

There's that sweet-natured joshing that's made Yankee and Yankeefan alike beloved throughout the baseball nation.

Required reading for Mets fans.

Mike Toole* captures the exquisitely ironic joy of Metsochism : Arod's timeline as a New York Met.

*Huge thanks to Sheila O'Malley for recommending Mike Toole's blog in the first place.

James Cameron looming threateningly on the horizon of history once again.

That's a long-winded way of saying I hate Titanic.

Anyway, this is what the King of the World is contemplating: a 'fictionalized' story about the destruction of Pompeii taken from Charles Pellegrino's Ghosts of Vesuvius, which is non-fiction. But this is what has me worried:

Variety says that the Lightstorm trio will sift through the book to create a fictionalized account, which likely will tie into the politics of Rome, an empire whose demise may have been hastened by the devastation of Vesuvius.

Er, probably not. That's like assuming the US government would collapse if a hurricane took out the Hamptons.

Al Leiter feels my pain.

Probably more keenly than I do, actually. I can tune it all out if I have to.

"I find it curious that this was a deal that somehow only the Yankees could get done," Leiter said yesterday from his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "I mean, any team, or any team with the financial ability -- and there are more than a few -- would gladly spend $16 million a year to get Alex Rodriguez, as great a player as he is."

Leiter was referring to the financial burden the Yankees will assume when all the money changes hands and questioned how a tentative deal with the Red Sox was not approved while this one was.

Well, that's the multi-million dollar question, now, isn't it? My own case of sour grapes aside, the whole thing reeks of bad faith. Every time Selig opens his mouth I see George Steingrabber's fingers moving in the back of his throat.

[A]t least before he was buried away down in Texas. Now he's just a few miles away across the river in the Bronx, and we get to hear about his exploits all the time.

"I don't think salt in the wound describes it enough. It's more like rubbing salt, and then pouring hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol and rust in there at the same time."

Yeah. Just like that. But lemon juice instead of hydrogen peroxide.

The insolence of office.

Ian Hamet rails against the boobs in T-Mobile's customer service department, saving me the trouble of considering them for my next cell contract.

Better and better.

The Yankees don't just get ARod, they get him cheap:

Rangers - 3 years/$140M
Yankees - 7 years/$120M.

Yeah. The great thing about baseball is it's so fair.

Yankee pact with Satan all but confirmed.

Announcement any day now.

Bubba Ho-Tep DVD

Due out May 25.

Sheila's going to be pissed.

Nothing like a good literary dust-up: modern Irish writer Roddy Doyle declares that James Joyce 1) could have used a good editor on Ulysses, 2) wasn't Ireland's best writer, and 3) that his reading 3 pages of Finnegan's Wake was a "tragic waste of time". And hilariously, he chose a Joyce birthday celebration to air his views.

[Via the Creator of Worlds.]

This is why I read Farm Accident Digest.

For quotes like this:

"That evil, uncaring man daring to act like he doesn't want to blender up all those common folk into a slurry prized by the rich for its ability to enhance the look of caviar when viewed through a monocle."

Envy me again.

Bubba Ho-Tep comes to Dayton.

Shake your groove thang.

Hilarious AICN spoiler-riddled review of 'street dance' movie "You Got Served" here. (Again, though, it's hard to spoilerize a film when you can smell the stench coming off the premise months in advance.)

More fun than a barrel of Gaugins.

Mr. Picassohead. View my artistic genius here.

(via Midwest Conservative Journal.)

New debit card.

My credit union just replaced my old debit card, which expires this month, and I noticed that the card art, which used to feature a closeup of a pile of money bathed in a warm, golden light, has been replaced with a picture of a carefully selected group of people unknown to me. By the lack of uniforms and the age and ethnicity groupings (African-American couple in their 20s, white couple that could be anywhere north of 60, and white middle-aged family grouping with token adolescent female sprog) I would say this group is intended to represent me, the customer. Unfortunately I, the customer, would prefer to be represented by a glamorously lit pile of anonymous coin and paper, since I don't particularly care for pictures of people I don't actually know. (I am also mystified by the ubiquity of the anyonymous "hunk" calendar. Actors, ballplayers, singers--fine. At least I can be sure they can speak or sing or run or do something other than pout suggestively while flexing their rock-hard abs.) So much for aesthetics.

Re the Superbowl flashing incident.

1) Is "I'll get you naked by the end of this song" an appropriate sentiment for the Superbowl? If yes, defend your answer.

2) That sun thing looks damned uncomfortable.

3) Suggestion: bring back the marching bands with the half-time salute to the history of mayonnaise. Seriously.

Like to take her ticket and punch it for her.

Gwyneth Paltrow, having recently declaimed that she couldn't possibly entertain the thought of raising her children in a dangerous country like America, now asserts that England's hospitals aren't good enough for her to give birth to the little darlings--and nothing will do but that she must have them in LA, on Madonna's advice. Way to win friends and influence people in both countries.

I see a pattern here.



create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

One of these days I'm going to have to go take a northern vacation and finish the CONUS, at least. [Via Bill McCabe.]