The AFC West in Week #1

The Chefs were the only winners this week, wiping out the Jets 27-7. Both the Broncos and Chargers died, with the Broncos suffering the more ignominious fate by losing 34-10 to last year's doormats, the Miami Dolphins. We already know, of course, what happened to the Oakland Raiders against the Patriots.

It's ill advised to read too much into the first games of the season, but I do have some observations to make.

1) The Broncos look like they're in huge trouble on both sides of the ball. The Dolphins dominated them from beginning to end. Champ Bailey, who cost the Broncos so much last year, couldn't handle WR Chris Chambers, who torched him repeatedly for big plays. I guess this is one man who'll really hate seeing Randy Moss twice a year. They didn't just look bad, they looked incompetent. It was a nasty, humiliating, epoch-shattering loss for Denver. Whatever problems the Broncos have they need to fix quickly, or the rest of the division will make them suffer (starting with the Chargers next week).

2) The Chargers looked like they were in trouble defensively the entire game. They allowed the Cowboys to convert 7 of 11 third downs en route to suffering a 28-24 loss. The Cowboys' defense, by contrast, held Ladanian Tomlinson to only 72 yards on the ground and ended the game in dramatic fashion with an interception in the end zone with twenty-some seconds to go. Next week, the Chargers have their star TE Antonio Gates back. We'll see if they look any better against Denver.

3) Kansas City was impressive both offensively and defensively against the New York Jets. Larry Johnson and Priest Holmes combined for over 200-yards of rushing offense, while the K.C. defense forced six fumbles from QB Chad Pennington and held Curtis Martin under fifty yards. The amount of pressure that K.C. was able to apply to Pennington should give the Raiders' offensive line a few sleepless nights as they think about protecting the less-mobile-and-now-fumble-prone Kerry Collins. In the plus column, the Raiders held the Patriots to seventy yards rushing, so it looks like Holmes and Johnson will draw a tougher assignment next Sunday night. Anyway, because they got the only win, K.C. is so far the class of the division.

People of Faith are Pissing Me Off

Just seconds ago I decided I was fed up with the term "people of faith". This, and its cousin, "faith-based organization" conceal religion under a baby-soft, p.c., bullshit cover term. I'm not sure if the coinage originates with Bush, whose Orwellian uses of language are far more frightening and frustrating than the malaprops for which he's famous, but he was quick to grab it for his policy of funneling money to religious organizations. If you go to the FEMA website right now, you can find prominently listed Operation: Blessing, a religious charity belonging to would-be Presidential assassin Pat Robertson. Secular charities, conversely, remain off the FEMA lists.

Religious organizations love the "faith-based" term because it allows them to slip into schools and government offices without scrutiny. Creationism is religious dogma. Intelligent Design is a faith based alternative to Darwin. Sounds nicer, doesn't it? And so the blessings of ignorance are secured.

To all news organizations. Catholic Charities is a religious charity organization. It's correct to call it that. The Pope is a religous leader. It's correct to call him that. Pat Robertson is a dangerous lunatic. It's correct to call him that. Intelligent Design is right-wing religious dogma in a mask. It's correct to call it that.

That's today's message from your Uncle Jim, a fact-based writer.

People of Faith are Pissing Me Off

Just seconds ago I decided I was fed up with the term "people of faith". This, and its cousin, "faith-based organization" conceal religion under a baby-soft, p.c., bullshit cover term. I'm not sure if the coinage originates with Bush, whose Orwellian uses of language are far more frightening and frustrating than the malaprops for which he's famous, but he was quick to grab it for his policy of funneling money to religious organizations. If you go to the FEMA website right now, you can find prominently listed Operation: Blessing, a religious charity belonging to would-be Presidential assassin Pat Robertson. Secular charities, conversely, remain off the FEMA lists.

Religious organizations love the "faith-based" term because it allows them to slip into schools and government offices without scrutiny. Creationism is religious dogma. Intelligent Design is a faith based alternative to Darwin. Sounds nicer, doesn't it? And so the blessings of ignorance are secured.

To all news organizations. Catholic Charities is a religious charity organization. It's correct to call it that. Pat Robertson is a dangerous lunatic. It's correct to call him that. Intelligent Design is right-wing religious dogma in a mask. It's correct to call it that.

That's today's message from your Uncle Jim, a fact-based writer.

Conrad's Killers

The New York Times Book Review has an article on Joseph Conrad's tales of terrorism. I've read only one of his pieces--The Secret Agent--but based on the descriptions in the article I think a trip to the library may be in order to catch the others.

Tuck Rule Spin

I hate to wade into this again, but for a Raider fan, the "tuck rule" game is a bit like the Kennedy assassination--the story that won't go away. This time its ressurectionist is the Page 2 columnist, and Patriots fan, Bill Simmons, who said this:

"Every time the Tuck Rule Game gets mentioned, three other things should also be mentioned: First, Gruden had second-and-3 to close out the game, ran the ball twice up the middle, didn't get the three yards, then punted on fourth-and-inches. If they had gotten those three yards, Brady never gets the ball back. Everyone seems to forget this. And second, on the famous play, WOODSON CHOPPED BRADY IN THE HEAD TO CAUSE THE FUMBLE!!! Not only is that illegal, it's one of the few guaranteed "we're calling that every time" whistles in football. Everyone forgets this, too. And third, not only was the rule interpreted correctly, but they voted on keeping it at the next Rules Committee Meeting.

"To recap: Raiders fans have spent the last four years complaining about a play in which (A) their player should have been penalized, (B) the rule was interpreted correctly, and (C) it never should have happened in the first place because their coach choked away a second-and-3 situation and lacked the testicular fortitude to go for it on fourth down. Those are the facts. If you want to keep complaining, so be it."

A few problems with Simmons' facts:

1. "And second, on the famous play, WOODSON CHOPPED BRADY IN THE HEAD TO CAUSE THE FUMBLE!!! Not only is that illegal, it's one of the few guaranteed "we're calling that every time" whistles in football."

The reason the ball left Tom Brady's hand was that Charles Woodson's hand stripped it. It had nothing to do with any chopping to the head. Woodson's hand may have slightly grazed Brady's helmet on its way down (the replay doesn't seem all that clear to me on this point, though Patriots fans admit no doubt, calling the hit vicious. So vicious perhaps that it induced amnesia in everyone watching as well?), but the target was clearly not the head, it was the arm, which Woodson's hand struck. If C-Wood did chop Brady to the head, and it's one of those penalties that they call "every time", the referee, standing right there, didn't seem to notice. (And since when have the referees ever failed to notice an Oakland Raider committing a penalty?) The referee called the play a fumble, something apparent not only to the Raiders, but to the sportscasters, the crowd, both coaches, and, let's not forget, Brady himself, who walked off the field looking like someone told him his dog just died. He didn't jump up and complain, or gesture that he had been in the act of throwing. Brady's demeanor at that moment indicated consciousness of guilt, which is appropriate because he was, in the eyes of anyone with simple common sense, guilty.

2. "And third, not only was the rule interpreted correctly, but they voted on keeping it at the next Rules Committee Meeting."

Partly true. The Rules Committee did vote to keep the "tuck rule" at the next meeting, but not because they were happy with it. Indeed, most thought the rule was ridiculous, and for a while it looked as if they might throw it out. The trouble was that the committee couldn't come to any kind of consensus on what the new rule should be. It was quite clear that, at the moment Brady fumbled, he had no intention of attempting a pass. (Quick, tell me who the intended receiver was supposed to be. Was David Patten running a curl pattern in Brady's shoe?) Brady was holding the ball, trying to reset, when he was hit. Unless we interpret the rule in such a way as to say that a quarterback need only pump and hold the ball away from his body to immunize himself from fumble calls, it's hard to say that the ruling from the booth was remotely sensible. (I wonder. Could Brady have scrambled around like that, holding the ball out, and then, if hit, claim that he was still in his motion?) I'm in favor of ditching all the legalistic mumbo jumbo about what does and doesn't constitute a fumble and let the referee make the call based on his own best judgement of the events of the play. Rule #1, if a ball comes out of a player's hands when he is neither down by contact nor clearly attempting to throw a forward pass, that player has fumbled.

The play may have been, within the narrowest technical definition, legal, but so is marrying a 14-year-old in Nebraska (or is it Kansas?) or stopping a manual recount in order to make George W. Bush president. Right now, in my state, it is legal to fuck a cow, because nobody ever bothered to pass a law against it. To be legal is not to be right, or even reasonable. Ask any coach not connected with the Patriots whether that play resulted in a fumble, and I'll bet most would say yes. (I haven't actually taken a poll, but Mike Holmgren and Jeff Fisher have both gone on record saying it was a fumble, while none, to my knowledge, agreed with the replay official. Gruden will never change his mind, understandably.) The Patriots ultimately got the game, just as Bush got the Presidency and Washington's cow-fucker got off (pun intended), but we call these things bullshit because, legality notwithstanding, that's just what they are.

3. "First, Gruden had second-and-3 to close out the game, ran the ball twice up the middle, didn't get the three yards, then punted on fourth-and-inches."

This one I don't have much of a problem with, except to say this in Gruden's defense. Given that Gruden had one of the biggest offensive lines in football and that he had in Zach Crockett perhaps the best short-yardage running back around, I can see why he went that way. He was trying to run the clock out using plays that had been money for the Raiders much of the year. 20-20 hindsight allows us to see that a quick slant to Rice or Brown might have been the better option. (I'm sure Al Davis thought so, and the way the game ended helped lead to Gruden and Davis parting ways after the 2001 season.) None of this is relevant to the main issue, though. The result of that Raider drive doesn't remove the stench from the ruling the Patriots received minutes later.

It doesn't matter much to football as we play it now, but it is the thing that grudges are made of. I didn't hate the Patriots after they beat the Raiders in the 1985 AFC Title Game. Marc Wilson lost that one for us, and besides, the Patriots got theirs against the Bears in the Super Bowl. I don't hate the Steelers for the Immaculate Reception play. It's hard to tell whether the ball hit the ground or not on that one. But the snow job sticks in my craw. When "The Sports List" called it the 2nd worst call of all time, I wondered why it wasn't higher. (Actually, I can see it. The worst call in any game I ever saw was in a college game where Colorado got an extra down that allowed them to win the game.) What I hope for though, is revenge. Right now, Mr. Brady, have your fun. We've been in a coma for a while, but when we awaken, we, like The Bride, will arrive at your door to remind you that we have unfinished buisness.

Well, That Could Have Gone Better

Raiders 20; Patriots 30.

You have no idea how much I hate typing that. The disgusting vomitous masses from Boston win. The game turned on a Collins interception (it looks more like a fumble in the replay, but it was an interception). The Raiders had just forced the Patriots to turn the ball over on downs and looked like they had some momentum going, but then Collins loses it. It's a damn shame because up to that point Collins was doing all right. He had touchdown passes to Moss and Courtney Anderson, and the Raiders were only behind by three.

A few observations:

1) Turner should never let the Raiders use a three-down lineman set again. Brady was able to stand back and shred Oakland for the entire first half because of this lineup. When the Raiders switched to the 4-3 for the second half, they were able to apply good pressure to Brady and force him to miss throws.

2) Chris Carr is a damn good kick returner.

3) Randy Moss may be Neo, capable of entering bullet time at any moment, but that doesn't mean that Collins needs to go after him all the time. I saw several plays where Porter or Whitted was available elsewhere when Collins passed them up to challenge the Patriots' double and triple coverages. He also had a habit of locking his eyes on receivers. He needs to learn that you can look off to Moss and then throw to other receivers. This, in turn, will produce more opportunities for Moss. (At least, that's the way I'd explain it to him.) Moss had an impressive opening game, but the Raiders need to see to it that Collins looks for other options as well.

4) LaMont Jordan is a beast. Just get the ball to him and let him produce.

5) Warren Sapp looked a lot more comfortable this year than last. He seemed to be around the ball a lot. Also, the Raiders' run defense is much improved over last year's model.

The wheels really did come off with the Collins interception though. God, I miss Gannon. Turnovers are killers, especially on the road, and especially when they occur at your own 20-yard line. I can't think of too many occasions when Gannon lost the Raiders a game. (The Tampa Super Bowl doesn't count. Tampa's defense did the same thing to everyone that year. That's why they were the champs. Gannon didn't lose that game; Sapp, Barber, Simeon Rice, and Derrick Brooks won it.) The Collins interception put the Raiders in a pressure situation from which few teams can emerge victorious, especially against the defending world champions. Sea Bass's missed FG didn't help either. (Please don't tell me he has gout again.) But...dammit Collins!

The Raiders play at home against the Chiefs next. They'll need this game, because a week later they face Philadelphia (on the road again--that whole NFL conspiracy thing is starting to make a whole lot of sense), and I don't know how well this team could handle an 0-3 start.

Some other observations:

1) For a moment there I was looking forward to seeing the return of Monday night NFL highlights during halftime. I remember the old days with Howard Cosell narration "And on the next play, number 34, Earl Campbell, breaks through the line and runs sixty-six yards for the touchdown." If my team had won that week, I'd stay, glued to the set, waiting for him to describe the best plays. If my team had lost, well, I went to the kitchen for a sandwich. Anyway, as I say, I was looking forward to it, until Al Michaels (how I hate him) informed me that we wouldn't get narration. Instead, they'd show the highlights as a montage for Tim McGraw to sing variations of his hit "I Like It, I Love It" to. Why is this good? I realize this may appeal to hicks, but, speaking as someone who is not a rube, a kadodie, a shitkicker, or a cracker, I think it sucks. And no, I wouldn't be any happier if they used R.E.M., Lou Reed, Henry Rollins, or William Shatner with Ben Folds. Just show the damn highlights, jerks.

2) I also hate the dumb personal segment section where we get some player describing his biography to us. And no, I didn't just hate it because this week's bio was Tom Brady's. I just don't give a damn about the lives of sports figures. A few are interesting, but most of their stories are just dull recitations that all sound the same: "I grew up [insert city here]. I used to [do this exercise/do this non-sports job/have this disease/farm this crop]. From it I learned [to throw/to catch/discipline and character/to love rutebegas]. My idol was [Joe Montana/Muhmmad Ali/My father/Ray Rutebega and His All-Root-Vegetable Jug Band]." Who gives a fuck? If an player isn't huddling up, getting set, running, throwing, catching or hitting, why do you ask me to pay attention to him?

3) I don't think I'd hate the Patriots half as much if everyone in the organization wasn't described as such pluperfectly, wonderful, character-possessing, help-old-ladies-across-the-street, sweetheart-type people. Al Michaels spent half tonight's game sucking Bob Kraft's cock. It was nauseating. Are you a sportscaster, Al, or do you work in the Patriots's PR office? You know what I'd like to see? Tom Brady accused of shooting a small child. I'd like to see Corey Dillon picked up for exposing himself at the mall. Bob Kraft caught raiding a pension fund and moving the money to Switzerland would make my year. The encomia are enough to give me diabetes.

4) I miss Dan Dierdorf. He could keep Al Michaels in line. That is, of course, the likely reason for his absence.

The reason I can devote so much energy to venting about the game is that my relatives turned up alive in New Orleans on Sunday. They're in Houston now, staying with some of my other relatives; they'll have to figure out what happens next. I don't know.

That's your ball game.

Yeah, I've been Absent

Sorry about that, but some of me and mine are in New Orleans, and many more of my relatives have lost their homes and livelihoods. There's nothing I can about either but both absorb my attention. Any readers out there who can send money to the Red Cross or other relief agencies need to do so.

Worst Titles For Good Movies

Roger Ebert's current movie answer man (to which I can't link because the link will soon expire. Go to rogerebert.com and find the one dated closest to this entry in the archives) contains a letter that asks why the wheelchair-polo documentary Murderball has played so poorly. Ebert has an answer from the movies's co-director:

'David Alan Shapiro, "Murderball's" co-director, tells me: "It is indeed odd, as I reckon we're one of the best-reviewed films of the year, if not the decade. The press has been so kind, and as mainstream as it gets. Maybe people just don't like wheelchairs. Maybe we alienated our base by trying to gloss it up and go mainstream: big theaters, no festival laurels, no 'documentary.' Maybe the title paired with Zupan's goateed mug scare off half the audience. For better or worse, people are hearing 'sports film.' Maybe the sportos don't want to see a wheelchair doc, and the doc-heads don't want to see a sports flick. Maybe everybody thinks it's one of those cue-the-violins 'inspirational' weepies. Who knows?"'

Mr. Shapiro, I don't think that's what anyone's hearing with Murderball, which sounds less like a sports movie than it does a 1960s Roger Corman exploitation flick. Titles are so desperately important with movies. The good ones--Star Wars, Goodfellas, The Silence of the Lambs, or The Lion King--not only have a certain magical rhythm to them, but also give you a hint of the style and tone of the movie you're about to spend money on. When I hear that Murderball is doing poorly at the box office, I don't think "Oh, that poor documentary. I need to head down there, buy a ticket and give it a fighting chance." I think "You mean that piece of crap with Ice Cube in it? Good. Maybe the executroids will finally learn." I have to remind myself that a) it's a documentary and b) it's about wheelchair athletes. Any title that doesn't give you a hint about the subject of the movie is bad, but a title that gives the potential viewer the wrong impression is disasterous.

It got me thinking about good movies with bad titles. It's too easy to think of bad movies with bad titles, but try a good movie. It's hard. Here's what I came up with:

1. Murderball
2. About Last Night...(originally Sexual Perversity in Chicago
3. Playing By Heart...
4. The Exorcist III (originally Legion, and if they'd kept it that way they wouldn't have needed to add the superfluous exorcism scenes to the movie.)

I Meant Take Him Out To Dinner and A Show

It warms the cockles of my heart to see Pat Robertson take a pummeling for calling for the murder of Hugo Chavez. Now he says he was "misinterpreted" when he said that covert operators should "take him out". Just for history's sake, Media Matters reminds us of what he said:

ROBERTSON: You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Apparently he wants us to forget that he employed the word "assassination" earlier in the paragraph where he said "take him out". And he hopes we'll ignore that after he said "assassination" he added "we really ought to go ahead and do it". What else could this be but a call for assassination? Will he next argue that when he said assassination he didn't mean "high profile political murder" but instead meant "kidnapping" or "an afternoon of tennis followed by a seven course dinner at The Tavern on the Green, and brandy, cigars and hints of indiscretion at 21"? This goes way beyond Bill Clinton's "definition of 'is'", occupying the same territory as those David Irving books that claim that all statements by Hitler, Himmler, and the crew about "ausrotten" the Jews meant anything but what "ausrotten" means--to exterminate. Next we'll talk to Pat Buchanan and Christopher Hitchens, who'll explain why there's nothing wrong with that.

This country would be much more fun to watch from a safe distance. Unfortunately, I don't know any place that far.

Are Peace Movements Known For Hurling Spears?

AP Headline: 'Peace Mom': Spearhead of Peace Movement?

I hope this was AP's moment of headline irony for the day.

Seven Deadly Sins

Bitterspice tagged me, so here we go.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Anger

1. Who did you last get angry with? There must have been several thousand on the 405 today who learned how I felt about them.
2. What is your weapon of choice? A devastating insult, especially one involving yiddish words.
3. Would you hit a member of the opposite sex? If I suspected physical danger, yes.
4. How about of the same sex? Yes, and I would also cut off their faces and use them for masks during my escapes.
5. Who was the last person who got really angry at you? Bitterspice was upset with me a while back. I'm sure there have been others, but only her anger is in any way significant to me.
6. What is your pet peeve? Like George Carlin, I don't have pet peeves. I have major psychotic hatreds. Let's see. I hate weakness, racism, sexism, stupidity, willful ignorance, George Bush, Ann Coulter, the entire religious right, religion in general, salespeople, publicists, the questions Charlie Rose asks authors, Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Brady, the New England Patriots, Seattle traffic, whiny Seattle neighborhood activists who fuck up any attempt to alleviate Seattle traffic, Dick Cheney, anyone associated with George W. Bush in any way (including dog groomers and other minor functionaries), marketing people, cops, that BTK guy, terrorists, fundamentalists, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines (11 hours from Seattle to Chicago, you miserable fucks?), and anyone who started a letter writing campaign for Enterprise.
7. Do you keep grudges, or can you let them go easily? Tom-fucking-tuck-rule-Brady. I'll hate him three years after he dies.

Sloth

1. What is one thing you're supposed to do daily that you haven't done in a while? I've slacked off a little on pilates.
2. What is the latest you've ever woken up? Three in the afternoon.
3. Name a person you've been meaning to contact, but haven't? I can't think of any.
4. What is the last lame excuse you made? Can't remember. (That's one, isn't it?)
5. Have you ever watched an infomercial all the way through (one of the long ones?) Yes. Tony Robbins can be hypnotic sometimes.
6. When was the last time you got a good workout in? Monday.
7. How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock today? Twice.

Gluttony

1. What is your overpriced yuppie beverage of choice? I like vanilla lattes, but I don't buy them more than once or twice a month.
2. Meat eaters: white meat or dark meat? I like anything dead. Hell, I like sushi, so I'll even eat anything unconscious.
3. What is the greatest amount of alcohol you've had in one sitting/outing/event? A few years ago I drank a bottle of wine during a Raiders-Broncos Monday night game. It was very necessary.
4. Have you ever used a professional diet company? No.
5. Do you have an issue with your weight? I'd like to lose a bit, but I'm okay.
6. Do you prefer sweets, salty foods, or spicy foods? Spicy.
7. Have you ever looked at a small house pet or child and thought "LUNCH"? Mmmm...other people's children...Sorry, I was channeling Albert Fish.

Lust

1. How many people have you seen naked (not counting movies/family)? Fifty or so.
2. How many people have seen YOU naked (not counting physicians/family)? If you subscribe to my webcam, you could be one of them.
3. Have you ever caught yourself staring at the chest/crotch of a member of your gender of choice during a normal conversation? Yes.
4. Have you "done it?" Yes.
5. What is your favorite body part on a person of your gender of choice? It's all good.
6. Have you ever been propositioned by a prostitute? Yes. In Kenya.
7. Have you ever had to get tested for an STD or pregnancy? Nope.

Greed

1. How many credit cards do you own? Ask me again in two weeks.
2. What's your guilty pleasure store? I've never felt guilt about any place that I've shopped.
3. If you had 1 million dollars, what would you do with it? A million doesn't go very far. I'd probably invest it so that I could keep the career going.
4. Would you rather be rich, or famous? Wealth would be nice, but fame is more likely, given my career choice.
5. Would you accept a boring job if it meant you would make megabucks? No. I wouldn't be very good at it and would lose it quickly.
6. Have you ever stolen anything? I once jacked the Lawrence University student store for a can of soup. I was damn poor then.
7. How many MP3's are on your hard drive? Plenty, and I paid for all but maybe a dozen of them.

Pride

1. What's one thing you have done that you're most proud of? Wrote a novel that won an award.
2. What's one thing you have done that your parents are most proud of? The same, I'd imagine.
3. What's one thing you would like to accomplish in your life? To live well off my fiction earnings.
4. Do you get annoyed by coming in second place? It depends one who I lost to and what the stakes were, but generally no.
5. Have you ever entered a contest of skill knowing you were of much higher skill than the other competitors? Sure
6. Have you ever cheated on something to get a higher score? Yes, and I got caught. (It involved a metal shop toolbox in 8th grade.) I learned then and there that I have no talent for crime, forcing me to give up my dream of becoming a sophisticated international jewel thief.
7. What did you do today that you're proud of? Managed to survive three-and-a-half hours of traffic without slaughtering my fellow motorists.

Envy

1. What item (or person) of your friend's would you most want to have for your own? Nothing. I'm trying to limit my assets these days.
2. Who would you want to go on "Trading Spaces" with? Famed set designer Ken Adam.
3. If you could be anyone else in the world, who would you be? Brad Bird.
4. Have you ever been cheated on? I doubt it.
5. Have you ever wished you had a physical feature different from your own? Roger Moore's hair.
6. What inborn trait do you see in others that you wish you had for yourself? The ability to tolerate stupidity.
7. Do you wish you'd come up with this survey? No.

And finally, what is your favorite deadly sin? Lust. Especially as played by Raquel Welch in the original Bedazzled

I'd pass this on to someone else if I knew anyone. So at least as far as I'm concerned, the chain stops here.

Einer Kleiner Nachmittag Debunking

One of my students recently asserted, in response to my expressed hatred of spiders, that human beings swallow an average of eight spiders per year. Having heard this one before and with my own spider sense (or bullshit detector) tingling, I took it upon myself to check it out.

Find the answer here. Hint: don't you think natural selection would have taken care of predators dumb enough to crawl inside the mouths of larger predators? Spiders have infested the planet for millions of years, and show tremendous survival skills. I mean, yes, there could be the odd Inspector Clouseau spider, but his clumsiness and stupidity would injure other spiders, and predators who were trying to kill him, rather than himself. (Inspector Clouseau spider taps lightly at a human's lips: "Kato?") This would drive the Inspector Dreyfus spider crazy and he'd try to kill the Inspector Clouseau spider and this would inevitably lead to me extending this joke too far.

Also, if this were true don't you think that would mean waking up with an unswallowed spider in your mouth at least once? Men, have you ever had this happen to you? Man at water cooler: "I'm having the worst day. I was brushing my teeth and hooked this" (Picture of Spider). Well BILLY MAYS HERE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE SPID-Y-B-GONE MOUTH GUARD IN A VOICE SO LOUD THEY CAN HEAR ME ON NEPTUNE! WOW!!!!

Yes, but then, what about the nose?

And Here I'd Just Assumed It Was A Remake

Apparently, the producers of Michael Bay's megaflop The Island didn't pay the producers of Parts: The Clonus Horror for the rights to their story, despite the films being so close to one another in theme and plot that even a cursory glance at plot summary for The Island made anyone who'd seen PTCH say, "My God, why would you want to remake that piece of shit? Oh, yeah, it's Michael Bay we're talking about." Indeed, months before the movie came out, the Internet Movie Database had it listed in its "Movie Connections" segment as a remake of PTCH, and no one bothered to demand a correction or issue a denial.

You can read about the suit here. It's kind of fun. I guess if the PTCH producer wins his suit (and it seems to me he has Bay and Dreamworks by the balls), he can finally quit his job. Maybe I shouldn't root for him too hard though. He might use the proceeds from the judgement to make a sequel.

Response to Raiders' First Preseason Series

I only heard it on radio, but everyone seemed pretty sharp. Lamont Jordan caught passes and ran well. Collins was sharp. The offensive line blocked well, and the defense held the 49ers to a three-and-out. Nice.

Friday's Movie Challenge

Via Majikthise:

"Amanda sets Friday's movie challenge: list your favorite well-drawn female characters in movies. I found this exercise much more difficult than I expected."

Me too. In some ways, and this is pretty sad, television has been kinder to women than film has. (Roseanne, Maude, The Sopranos, and Mary Tyler Moore leap to mind.) Still, I can think of some, and here they are:

Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte in Lost In Translation.

Halle Berry as Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball

Pam Grier as Jackie Brown in Jackie Brown

Nicole Kidman as Alice Harford in Eyes Wide Shut

Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze in Lolita (1962)

Jessica Lange as Julie Nichols in Tootsie

Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill in Goodfellas

Margot Kidder as Lois Lane in Superman II

Every woman (Monroe included) who appears in All About Eve

Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in Psycho

Susan Sarandon as Annie Savoy in Bull Durham

Faye Dunaway as Diana Christensen in Network

Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher in Network

Piper Laurie as Sarah Packard in The Hustler

Diana Rigg as Teresa D'Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service

I think I'll stop here. I found quite a few, didn't I?

Placing Yourself In the Wrong Company II

Gee, first Orrin Hatch compares John Roberts to Jesus, then Michael Bay says this:

"Everyone from Spielberg to Zemeckis to Kubrick — they've all had big flops," he said. "I was five for five. You know it's going to happen."

"It hurts," Bay added. "It's always the director's fault."

Spielberg, Zemeckis, Kubrick and Bay. Which of these things is not like the other? Which of these things just doesn't belong? Spielberg has run hot and cold in his career. It's sometimes hard to believe that the same man who made Schindler's List and Raiders of the Lost Ark also made Jurassic Park II and 1941. I'm less familiar with Zemeckis's failures than with his successes. I can say I vastly prefer Back to the Future to Forrest Gump, though both movies show a zest for their themes. Kubrick was one of the greatest film directors in movie history. Even his least interesting pictures have 1,000 times the appeal of Micahel Bay's best. (Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen a Kubrick movie that I've disliked.) What separates these three from Bay is not so much talent, though all three exceed by millions of times Mr. Bay's meager store of the substance, as it is a conception of film making as something other than a means of separating a few million popcorn-munchers from their money. The other three directors were surely interested in money--it's hard not to be in a business where production costs are so high--but they also wanted to produce something worthwhile, something that would be remembered when they were dead, something that both honored the great fictions of the past and compelled future generations of artists to respond.

If Mr. Bay saw himself this way, he would never claim that he was "five-for-five." He'd know what everyone else knows; he's a hack. He doesn't make movies. He makes 140 minute commericials for movies. Now that he's had his big failure he'll discover something else. There are a lot of hacks out there who can make junk, and they'll do it at half Bay's price. I hope, for Bay's sake, that he saved his money. He may very well need it.

I Once Again Read Nick Kristof So You Don't Have To

Logline: Isn't it sad that celebrity news overshadows genocide? Tone: simultaneously scolding and self-congratulatory. Chance of it making a difference: are you kidding?

"The Island" Is A Flop

Michael Bay can't defend his career with the "All my movies are successful" crapola. The Island took in $12 million last weekend, for a 4th place opening. (Charley and the Chocolate Factory, in its 2nd week, made $28 million over the same period.)

It's not schadenfreude because I am not ashamed of my glee. Bay's film will sink and die, and lose over $100 million in the process. The next time I fly to L.A., I might see him behind the Burger King counter at the terminal, trying to talk someone into buying an Island collectors cup.

Oh bliss! Oh bliss and heaven!

Overplaying Their Hand?

Orrin Hatch just described Bush's supreme court pick thusly:

"They're against any Republican. We knew that just no matter who it was -- it could be the greatest person in the world, and Roberts is, is that -- they would come out against him."

The greatest person in the world? The world, Orrin? I don't mean to tell you how to do your selling job, but shouldn't you at least stick to the realm of the remotely plausible? Oh, I forgot, you're a Republican. Never mind. Greatest person in the world. Whatever, dude.

Raiders re-sign Ricky Dudley

Ricky Dudley returns to the Raiders after a long period in the wilderness. I'm not sure what he adds, really. Teyo Johnson and Courtney Anderson have much greater upside. Maybe there's something on special teams they want him to do.

James Doohan Died

And another part of my past vanishes. I hear it'll get worse.

Review: The Killer Shrews

I remember shrews from my younger days. My cat used to bring them in the house. They'd wander around stupidly, passing up open doors and bumping into table legs. Incompetant little critters, they live to be cat food.

Thus there is something comical about the idea that the shrews have grown large, taken up a pack mentality, and beseiged a group of hard partying, chain-smoking scientists in Ray Kellogg's The Killer Shrews. Basically, James Best and his first mate (who, being black, is pegged from the beginning as a killer shrew buscuit) show up on an island populated by two incomprehensible Swedish scientists, a guy who sounds like he wandered in from the industrial film next door, and a hispanic man of uncertain profession. The scientist explains that he has picked a location for his experiments whose isloation and inaccessability to all forms of transit make it ideal for a grade-z monster thriller. These experiments transformed ordinary incompetant shrews into Siberian huskies who wear distressed carpets on their backs. They need to eat three times their body weight every day, and so have munched every living thing on the island except the scientists, who are now holed up in an adobe house with an industrial grade wood fence, twenty cartons of Lucky's, and three thousand cases of Jim Beam. (Instead of doing rodent research, they should have airlifted in some roulette wheels and hookers and called it Cubasphere II.)

So we watch these people smoke and drink while James Best puts the moves on an incomprehisible Swedish woman who is involved (on some unclear level) with the guy who played Festus on "Gunsmoke". Festus, in this story, drinks and smokes a lot, and combines two functions in one figure. He's the Jealous Boyfriend who hates the hero, and he's the Panicky Idiot who complicates things for everyone before he dies stupidly. The husky-shrews ultimately burrow into the house, killing the hispanic fellow of uncertain profession. (We know he's hispanic because, while he speaks better English than much of the cast most of the time, he still says "Senior" and "Si".) The shrews then kill the industrial film guy. (Apparently, in addition to turning into Siberian huskies under carpet, they also somehow became venemous, so that a single scratch from their teeth will kill any secondary character.) They fail however to get the two Swedes, or the hunky James Best, who build armor out of welded-together oil drums and duck walk to the ocean, where Best's boat waits for them. Oh, Festus does die as well, but in a scene so silly and arbitrary it's as if he said to himself, "I was fairly safe up on the roof, but now I think I'll run out into the middle of the shrew-ridden forest so that the movie won't have loose ends." If I cared about his character, I'd have felt cheated; but instead, I only wished his death had come earlier, and more slowly.

Gee, the way I wrote this, I made THE KILLER SHREWS sound like a tough sit. It wasn't. Get some friends together with some hard liquor, turn on this movie, and see if the characters can drink you under the table.

Sorry, Charlie

I hear from Majikthise that the creator of Charlie the Tuna died. What base lessons we teach when we die. When John Denver died the lesson was let the guy top off your damn fuel tanks when he offers. When JFK Jr. died the lesson was don't fly at night over the ocean if you're not instrument rated. The lesson here (and in the case of Bill Shatner's late wife as well I guess) is don't swim in backyard pools by yourself if you're old or drunk. Of course, you can't avoid death forever--though I, like Yossarian, plan to live forever if it kills me--but you should make it work to get you. The irony is that Charlie's creator would probably have told you yesterday that swimming a few laps every day was the key to his longevity.

So it goes.

Aside

Because I brought up "My Mother the Car" in the last post, I decided to look it up. IMDB gave me the following advice:

If you like this title, we also recommend...

"Mary Tyler Moore" (1970)

Actually, if you like "My Mother the Car", I recommend intensive psychotherapy combined with powerful mind-altering drugs, specifically, a beach-ball sized dose of Haloperidol. How did IMDB make that leap? My guess would have been that if you liked "My Mother the Car" you would also like to watch videos of a morbidly obese man who'd trained his cat to pick lint out of his belly-button.

Wait! Everybody freeze! I think I can pitch that to ABC. Don't think of stealing this from me! I own full rights, damn you!

About PBS

What I find touching about Joel Stein's call to end the PBS subsidy is his belief that a) market forces will produce better television, and that b) all the worthwhile shows will find homes on private networks. A) can be falsified by simply watching television. Market forces made "Baywatch" the #1 show in the world for years. "Baywatch" my friend. Forty-seven minutes of prime-time T&A. The current TV market is mostly dominated by clones. "Law and Order", "Law and Order Special Victims Unit", and "Law and Order: Criminal Intent". There are at least five thousand cities in which CSI is currently operating. Then you've got a wide variety of lame magazine shows--which are handy if it's November or May and you're jonesing to look at prostitutes. And this leaves out the frillions of reality shows that wind up on the tube every season, each slightly stupider than the last. If market forces have advanced us an inch since "My Mother the Car" slithered its way onto CBS, I've yet to see the proof. A tiny percentage of any television is worthy. I find it particularly useful when football season comes around. But I'd rather eat a bug than watch most of it, and market forces haven't changed that.

As for B) well, let's see..."The News Hour" and "Frontline" will end up on CNN or MSNBC? I don't think so, unless they can replace Jim Lehrer with Chris Matthews, who will gain another hour to shout questions at Howard Fineman and Peggy Noonan; and unless "Frontline" would be willing to bring its hard hitting investigative approach to the question of what makes Tom Hanks so wonderful:

"This man, whose face we're concealing so protect his identity, recently testified before a Philadelphia grand jury that Tom Hanks is a truly stupefyingly beautiful human being who would bring him soup when he was sick."

Maybe the "Discovery Channel" can buy up "Nova", and put its staff to work delvering the scientific goods on why Ronald Reagan is "The Greatest American" or explaining what it is that makes the "American Chopper" guys so fucking cranky. "Bravo" might buy "Masterpiece Theater", though they just as easily might replace it with their most recent abomination, "Being Bobby Brown".

The networks that Stein thinks will buy these admired pieces of PBS are notoriously fickle enterprises, given to changing their formats in ways that completely obliterate their original purposes. TLC was at one time The Learning Channel, showing documentaries on nature, science, and, during sweeps, sex. Now, they're The Lifestyle Channel, and they educate people mainly about how to inflict their horrible taste on their neighbors for $1000 or less. The Discovery Channel is spending an increasing amount of its energy on cop programs and their "American Chopper" series. "Mythbusters" is the only show on that network I find at all interesting. Starting tomorrow, any or all of these networks could decide to abandon educational programming entirely and switch to full contact female dwarf tosser mud wrestling.

It's true the PBS has put up fewer good shows in recent years. (I'm really sick of watching George Ray stuff his face.) Budget cuts and their status as a political football over the lsat ten years have taken their toll. Pledge breaks have increased in frequency and duration, and with them the regrettable appearances of Dr. Wayne Dyer. Still, PBS's audience is far larger than any of the cable networks Stein is talking about. In a contest between Lehrer and CNN, it's Lehrer in a blowout. It's an asset that can be improved and strengthened with the right management. Over the years PBS has created some enormous winners, and quite a few losers, but they never, never, and I mean never made "Being Bobby Brown." For this reason alone, they should live, and others should die.

Review: Friday the 13th

Yes, it's twenty-five years late, but I finally watched Friday the 13th. It was a hard sit. I usually don't watch movies on television because of the commercials. In this case, the commercials were something to look forward to.

Friday th 13th is kind of like a Hamlet where all the characters are replaced by Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. Everyone's sole purpose in the movie is to die messily. (Unlike Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, however, we are supposed to see these people either nude or near nude before they die. See, if Shakespeare had added that element, Hamlet could have finished behind The Empire Strikes Back at the box office in 1980, and then he really would have been a player, baby.)The most shocking thing about this movie is that it is a screaming bore. Each character's fate is a foregone conclusion, so most of the movie involves waiting...and waiting...and waiting for the poor little teenager to die. Even the climatic battle between Alice and Mrs. Voorhees is loaded with padding, largely because Alice keeps dropping weapons and passing up oppotunities to kill the miserable old bat when she has the chance. She manages to fumble away a baseball bat and a rifle, and she refuses to pick up Mrs. Voorhees's machete when the besweatered harridan loses consciousness and is, presumably, at Alice's mercy.

The way they leave room for the sequel in this movie is pathetic. The movie suggests that Jason Voorhees is "still out there", which radically shifts the movie's tone from a psycho-mother slasher picture to a more supernatural horror story in the final five minutes. If the real story was Jason Voorhees's return from the grave, what the hell was the rest of the story for? And why does he rise from the grave anyway? Did his mother have something to do with it, or did he just wake up or...oh, for fuck's sake, why am I bothering with these questions? You'd be better off looking at blank screen than watching this movie, although, as dark as the picture is, you'd be doing a lot of that if you did watch this moive.

Haw! Haw!

Oh, to be Nelson Muntz.

Bush falls off a bike. Remember all that crap about what an athlete he was supposed to be back in 2000? This is twice in two months, isn't it? When I was in high school I rode my bike to school four days out of five (sometimes on icy roads) and didn't manage to fall once. It's bad enough he's a vicious, lying, tyrannical sociopath. He's a clumsy vicious, lying, tyrannical sociopath.

Actually, if Bush and I were both nicer people, I'd express concern about his health. But since I really don't care what happens to the man--haw! haw!

In the Plus Column...

...He is the first man from Kennewick to ever take a college exam.

Publication. Sweet, sweet publication

Don't get excited. Steve Corkran of the Contra Costa Times just answered my question:

Q.

With the Philip Buchanon trade to Texas, who are the Raiders looking at to fill the role of Kick/Punt returner? Do either Fabian Washington or Stanford Routt have any experience in that area?
Jim S., Seattle, WA 7/01/05

A.

Jim, With Phillip Buchanon gone, the Raiders have several options on kick and punt returns. They will try both of the rookies you mentioned, Fabian Washington and Stanford Routt, along with Carlos Francis, Doug Gabriel, Justin Fargas and perhaps even Ronald Curry. Whoever they settle upon at punt returner can't do any worse than Buchanon fared last season, so look for an upgrade there. Francis, Gabriel and Fargas have done well on kick returns in the past and should assume that role this season. Take care. Sincerely, Steve.
Steve Corkran 7/05/05

I'd forgotten about Carlos Francis, the fastest guy in the 2004 NFL Draft. With Fargas, I always feel a twinge of worry about his ball carrying. I don't know if I'd want to see Ronald Curry returning kicks. He's too valuable in the slot. (Though Tim Brown used to do it, even later in his career.)

It looks like we won't have much to worry about in this area. Now about that linebacking corps...

Ten Favorite Sports Moments

Kevin Drum did his, and because my students stood me up this evening (how they explain all the penalty charges to their parents I don't know) here's my list of the ten greatest sports moments I've watched live:

10. George Foreman vs. Michael Moorer. (1994) Why do you have a George Foreman grill? This is why. George Foreman was behind on all the cards in the ninth round, but knew that all he needed was one clean shot. He got that clean shot when Moorer blundered into a solid right from Foreman that, well, it reversed his direction, then dropped him to the floor. Moorer was out, and as I recall, he stayed out for quite some time.

9. Jimmy Connors vs. Patrick McEnroe. 1991 U.S. Open (2nd or 3rd round). This was the defining match of an incredible run at the U.S. Open for Connors that ended against the King of Bland, Jim Courier. Connors played what had to be the most improbable match I've ever seen, including a sequence when he lobbed two or three overhead smashes in a row back at McEnroe from the wall behind the baseline. He went on to win the point.

8. Venus Williams vs. Lindsey Davenport. July 3rd, 2005. Wimbledon Finals. I'd been up all night revising a screenplay, when I remembered that the women's match would start at 6am. I thought it would run an hour, an hour-and-a-half at most, so I stayed up. It went on for another thrilling hour and twenty-five minutes as Venus kept coming back from what looked like certain death to survive tripe match point in the second, a tiebreaker, and a break point in the third, to finish Davenport 9-7 in the final set and take the All England Championship.

7. Chicago Bears vs. New England Patriots. Super Bowl XX. It wasn't much of a game to look at, but it was the crowning achievement of one of the greatest football teams ever assembled. They also whipped the Patriots, a team I've grown to detest. Whenever I see footage of Dent sacking Tony Eason, I pretend it's Tom Brady. Open the gates!

6. Kirk Gibson Homers: You've all seen it. It's a gorgeous play. Songs will be sung of it. Epics will be written. All of that.

5. Raiders vs. Broncos. Veterans Day, 2002. With the Raiders at 4-4 facing the 6-2 Broncos at Mile High, I feared the worst. When I left work, I turned on the radio and the announcer said that Jerry Rice had been tackled on the 7, but he didn't say which 7. I couldn't move until Gannon floated a pass to Rice in the end zone to put Oakland in the lead and answer my question. From there, or at least, from thereabouts, Gannon completed twenty passes in a row, (nearly beating Joe Montana's record) to rip Shanahan's Broncos 35-10. Another highlight worthy of framing: Rod Woodson's 96-yard interception return. This victory set the Raiders up for a run to the AFC Title. (Rumor has it there was another game after that, but I don't seem to recall it.)

4. 1984 NBA Finals. Celtics vs. Lakers. This was the first of three epic finals battles between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. The Celtics ended up taking the series 4-3, but it was a war to the final buzzer. It think I was visiting my grandmother in Pacific Palisades that summer, and wherever I'd been all day, I always made sure I was back for the games to cheer on the Celtics with my dad.

3. Buster Douglas knocks out Mike Tyson, Feb 11th 1990. There was something about that night that told me it would be Tyson's last night as champion. Tyson never seemed able to cope with Douglas's jab, which rendered him incapable of landing his usual array of vicious inside punches. The accumlation of blows from Douglas closed Tyson's eye, and ultimately took him out. Tyson was never the same.

2. San Francisco 49ers vs. Cincinnati Bengals. Super Bowl XXIII. As much as I loved watching the 49ers dismantle the Broncos (and believe me I loved it), this was the greatest of them all. That final drive is deservedly legendary, and unlike a certain NFL quarterback who will remain Brady, Joe Montana didn't need the refs to grease the skids for him.

1. LA Raiders vs. the Patomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons. We whipped their asses. My favorite moment was Marcus Allen's amazing 71 yard run to the end zone in the third quarter. Not even the great Bo Jackson could quite match it. (He performed a similar move against the Bengals, ran 90 yards, but some safety brought him down at the five.)

I know. I stretched the definition of a moment quite a bit in some cases. (The 1984 Playoffs are a blur, and the NBA website doesn't have a page showing highlights. I think I can safely assume that Bird, Magic, Kareem, and McHale made some spectacular moves over the course of those games.)

Deep Impact

Tried to see Tempel 1 through my telescope, but Seattle's light pollution left me with little chance of distinguishing its fuzziness from simple poor seeing. (The atmosphere was not particularly stable tonight, at least from where I was viewing.) I did get an okay look at Jupiter and the four Galilean moons. I haven't heard if the probe hit yet.

Update: Yes it did.

Quote of the Day

"An autobiography is the most treacherous thing there is. It lets out every
secret its author is trying to keep; it lets the truth shine unobstructed
through every harmless little deception he tries to play; it pitilessly
exposes him as a tin hero worshipping himself as Big Metal every time he
tries to do the modest-unconsciousness act before the reader. This is
not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical personal experience; I
was never able to refrain from mentioning, with a studied casualness that
could deceive none but the most incautious reader, that an ancestor of
mine was sent ambassador to Spain by Charles I., nor that in a remote
branch of my family there exists a claimant to an earldom, nor that an
uncle of mine used to own a dog that was descended from the dog that was
in the Ark; and at the same time I was never able to persuade myself to
call a gibbet by its right name when accounting for other ancestors of
mine, but always spoke of it as the 'platform'--puerilely intimating that
they were out lecturing when it happened."
--Mark Twain, "Christian Science"

Sorry about the formatting. I can't figure out what the trouble is. It shows up just fine in Preview. Hmmm.

O'Connor Is Out

And many of us want to get into the fight. Sadly, our win/loss record in battles of this sort is not promising. We can never seem to get together on a stategy to shut people down on ideological grounds. (Could someone please tell me what's the matter with Borking a nominee who, like Robert Bork, would hold democracy in contempt?) The only way we seem to be able to come close to shutting these guys down is if Bush nominates someone who treats his subordinates badly. I'll join the fight, but given the Democrats' political weakness in Congress and the determination of W. to do really awful things, you'll forgive me if I'm pessimistic from the start.

Frank Blethen Wants More Money

F.B., the owner of the Seattle Times, stopped by his editorial department to get them to write this little gem about inheritance taxes. (F.B. prefers the Luntz formulation of "death tax", but I prefer accuracy. Inheritance taxes.) F.B. wants to cast this as if he is but another poor victim of revenue services that slaver at the prospect of taking his family business, and in doing so makes a number of ridiculous claims.

"The Seattle Times, which is a family-owned business, believes the right rate of death tax is zero. We pay taxes, and we believe in paying them as an ongoing business, but we see no fairness in a punitive tax that falls due only when an owner dies. That said, there is a good deal of difference between a top rate of 55 percent, which it will be after 2011, and 15 percent, which may now be politically possible in Congress."

Leaving aside that the sorts of family businesses large enough to be subject to estate taxes are usually structured in such a way as to avoid them or minimize their impact (my mother has done living trusts and corporate work, for the rare client who has actually needed those services), the typical effective rate (the tax rate once exemptions are taken into account) individuals pay in inheritance taxes is 19%, and with the increase in exemptions coming in future tax years, that number should drop without Congress taking another step. In effect, F.B. would already pay more or less the rate he says he could live with, so what's the problem?

The problem is that he wants to have the inheritance rate top out at 15% before exemptions, so that he can reduce his liability to practically nothing. He's asking the Republicans to offer a "concession" that doesn't actually concede anything.

"The issue ought to have been one of straight economics — of what is the least job-killing way to collect the government's income. Considered that way, the death tax wouldn't have a chance. But it has become politicized, with Republicans championing repeal and Democrats tending to portray repeal as a gift to the rich. Each side has made a moral issue of it, to work their constituents for donations; what gets lost is sensible policy."

The estate tax has been around for the past hundred years, and somehow the American economy has managed to chug along. Though the economy has been through some tough times, I don't think the estate taxes were the principal cause of the Great Depression, the World Wars, 1970s stagflation, or either Bush recession. It's a standard conservative habit to suggest that high taxes automatically suppress economic growth, but as we saw during the Clinton years, saying it doesn't make it so. Finally, Democrats portray estate tax repeal as a gift to the rich because it is. Wealthy Americans, the only ones who have to pay estate taxes, will receive a trillion dollar windfall (over ten years), at the expense of poorer Americans, who, if they want government services like health care or roads, will have to pick up that check.

"It is common sense that tax rates on assets should be lower than on income, because assets do not renew themselves every year. The top rate of federal income tax is 35 percent for wages and salaries. For income from selling a capital asset, it is 15 percent, and on the gain only. A death tax, which is on the whole estate, ought to be at a lower rate still — but certainly not any more than 15 percent."

It's common sense if you're wealthy and don't feel like you should have to pay taxes. And what's this about assets not renewing every year? If you own an asset--a business, shares of stock, real estate, and the like--you not only get the immediate benefit of owning it, but you can also derive a substantial income without having to dirty your hands with anything as base as work. Widows and idiot sons in this country can literally sit on their assets, living off interest, dividends, and capital gains, and through various shelters and trusts pay astonishingly little tax, while those who draw salaries subsidize their lifestyles. Paris Hilton doesn't usually bother me, but she'll piss me off big time if I and my working and middle class friends wind up paying any more of her taxes for her out of our wages.

F.B., I thought you were full of shit when you made your paper endorse George W. Bush in 2000. I won't say this is worse, but it's just as bad. J.K. Galbraith once said that conservatism in the 20th century amounts to an attempt to find some philosophical justification for selfishness. F.B. just showed us that, at least in one sense, the 20th century hasn't ended.

By the by, if you want to read more about the estate tax, click here.

Brian, No

Imdb reports that Brian DePalma wants to make a prequel to "The Untouchables" called "The Untouchables: Capone Rising". Why not "The Untouchables Episode I: Capone Rising"? A long time ago, in a lakeside metropolis far, far away...Yoda can say "Full of anger, this young mobster is."

I've seen "The Untouchables" a few times, and at no point did I ever think "Gee, I'd like to know what happened before this movie. It's just not complete for me." Brian, no. Please don't do this. This movie does not need to be made. Antione Fuqua does not need to direct it. Whoever you're hiring for best boy doesn't need to best boy it.

Remember life before this obsession with remakes and prequels? It was sunny and warm. There were puppies and kittens. Little kids flew kites on windy days. People seemed to laugh more then.

Shhhhh!

Mr. President, could you please stop talking--preferably for the rest of my life. Devout people often take vows of silence, George. Please be one of them. I'm so tired of you, and if I have to suffer with you and your miserable cronies in office for the rest of my life, it would make things so much easier if you plundred the treasury, misspent our youth, slaughtered the innocent, ignored the guilty, and otherwise carried on cranky quietly.

The people at the TPM Cafe were kind enough to provide us with a transcript of Bush's remarks tonight. If you must read it out loud, do so at a whisper, please. Some of us are trying really hard to tune him out:

“Global war on terror, September the 11th, 2001, terrorists, terrorists , totalitarian ideology , freedom, tyranny, oppression, terror, kill, terrorists, September the 11th, freedom, enemy , war, terrorists, kill, murderous ideology , terrorism, terrorists, free nation, war on terror, freedom, violence and instability, dangerous, violence, bloodshed, violence, sacrifice , war on terror, violence, killers, freedom, criminal elements, hateful ideology, freedom, liberty, democracy, terrorists, war on terror, terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, murder and destruction, enemy, terrorists, car bombs, enemy, terrorists, suicide bomber, enemy, terrorists, violence, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists , freedom, enemies, September the 11th, Bin Laden, enemy , free, tyranny, terrorists, anti-terrorist, free, al Qaeda, free nation, terrorists, terrorists, enemy security terrorists, anti-terrorist terrorists, terror, enemy, tyranny , enemies, freedom, freedom, ideologies of murder, atrocity, September the 11th 2001, car bombers and assassins, freedom, freedom, flying the flag, freedom, freedom, September the 11th 2001, enemies”.

Dammit. I said read it quietly!

Remakes, Remakes Everywhere

The LA Times puts its finger on the reason I won't blow my tiny wad of disposable cash on movies that much this summer:

"CNN did an online poll Friday, asking what movie people were most likely to see over the weekend. The new films 'Herbie,' 'Bewitched' and 'Land of the Dead' received 27% of the vote. The landslide winner, with 73%, was 'None, I'd rather rent a DVD of something good.'
"Isn't it wonderful when a business has so many satisfied customers?"

True, online polls aren't scientific, but let's face it. Why should we watch remakes, particularly remakes of bad movies by undistinguished filmmakers, when we can rent or buy something worthwhile? If we want to have mediocre product with a shitload of commercials shoved down our throats, we don't have to leave home. That's what TV is all about.

Producers of the world, listen up. We want new movies. We want good movies. We want movies worth the trouble of parking, standing in line, paying $10 and enduring sticky floors and slack-jawed nimrods for. We want you to shut down the movie-making committees because the pictures they greenlight bore and insult us. The play testing, market research garbage is making bad movies, and, surprise-surprise, losing you dinks money. If movies ain't new, they're through. "Herbie: Fully Loaded" and "The Island" ain't new, and if you guys keep making this shit, you're through.

Poke My Eyes Out and Leave Me With A Snake if I'm Not

Elle Driver (California Mountain Snake)




You're Elle Driver! Sly and evil, you can manipulate people in order to get whatever you want. You're usually alone, but that's the way you like it. You hate having others nearby to order you around (unless it's Bill, of course... but even then you're still hesitant).

Kill Bill: Which Deadly Viper Assassin Are You? (Vol. II spoilers... results with pics)

(Probably) The Best Movie of the Summer

"War of the Worlds" may be able to overtake "Batman Begins" as the best of this summer's meager offerings, but "Batman" writer/director Christopher Nolan has set the bar so high that even a Steven Spielberg on a hot streak ("A.I.", "Catch Me If You Can", "Minority Report") may be unable to clear it. I loved "Batman Begins." It is the smartest big-budget picture since "Minority Report". It is DVD purchase-worthy. I plan to see it many, many times. The movie is fresh, smart, sly, willing to take chances, and unwilling to stoop. See it, live it, love it, be it, and watch it. In fact, when Michael Bay's born-to-be-crummy "The Island" comes out, go buy a ticket to "Batman Begins" just to let them know which movie deserves dollars and which doesn't.

"Batman Begins" is an origin story, and wow what an origin. Bruce Wayne, haunted by the deaths of his parents and his inability to avenge himself upon their killers, is recruited by a shadowy organization called the League of Shadows. He accepts their training but is unwilling to execute a criminal in order to complete his initiation in the order. When they reveal their plan to destroy Gotham City to teach the world a lesson about the wages of corruption, Wayne returns home in hopes of using his vast fortune to save Gotham. With the help of his butler and his company's head of applied sciences, he fashions the tools that will make him Batman. He then sets out against the head of organized crime, as well as the dark force of the League of Shadows, which is using the mob's services to do something truly fiendish to the citizens of Gotham.

Christian Bale's work in "Batman Begins" is lovely. He's serious without falling into a mannered gloom, and he makes his funny lines seem like wit instead of rehearsed one-liners. This is in part a testment to Chris Nolan's writing but it also tells us about Bale's ability to handle multiple aspects of Batman/Bruce Wayne's images while still suggesting that there's a real person underneath all the personas. Gary Oldman made for a great Jim Gordon. A less imaginative director would have placed Oldman in the villain role, having seen his showy performance in "The Fifth Element". Here, Oldman is pared down, quiet, almost mousy. I liked it. And you can't miss Michael Caine as Alfred or Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, Batman's armorer. Katie Holmes doesn't have a tremendous lot to do in the movie, but I appreciate it that Nolan never let her part become more than it was, and that he never insisted on a romance that the story hadn't earned. She represented Wayne's conscience and his reason for believing that Gotham was still worth fighting for. That was all she needed to be. And Liam Neeson's role allows him to make a nifty pivot from the good-guy-mentor character he played in "Star Wars Episode I".

On Bitterspice's and my way out of theater, a couple of employees were arguing over whether "Batman Begins" was superior to "Star Wars Episode III". How could there even be an argument here? "Batman Begins" is better than "Revenge of the Sith". It's better than the original "Star Wars". It deserves to sit in the pantheon with "Jaws", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Superman", "Superman II", "Star Trek II", "Batman", "The Matrix", and "Minority Report". It's a movie that reminds you why movies are wonderful things. (And after a dismal season with another Bay movie in the pipleline, I was starting to forget.) Vote with your feet, America! The Dark Knight and smart moviemaking in general need your support! You'll have a blast, I promise.

If I could blow off a half an hour:

Bitterspice did hers. I'll do mine.

If I could be a scientist: I'd head to South Korea to do stem cell work.
If I could be a farmer: I'd sell out and move to the city. I've no head for agriculture.
If I could be a musician: I'd go on tour with the Rollins Band, just for the stories.
If I could be a doctor: I could finally afford health insurance.
If I could be a painter: my cousin, the painter, could develop a sneering hatred of me.
If I could be a gardener: see the farmer sentence.
If I could be a missionary: I'd spread the good news that God is dead.
If I could be a chef: I could finally work with my own Tandoor.
If I could be an architect: I'd rebuild the White House in an early medieval theme to better fit its current inhabitants.
If I could be a linguist: I'd definitively isolate the Seattle accent.
If I could be a psychologist: I'd subject Michael Bay to my Michael-Bay-Film-Aversion protocol.
If I could be a librarian: I'd tell the FBI to fuck off.
If I could be an athlete: I'd be the starting SAM linebacker for the Oakland Raiders.
If I could be a lawyer: I'd try to secure legitimate legal hearings for the GitMo inmates.
If I could be an innkeeper: I'd...yes, dear, I'm doing it, dear!
If I could be a professor: I'd be the mighty famous bigshot who's always on sabbatical.
If I could be a writer: I'd be me.
If I could be a llama-rider: I'd name him Floyd Flewellan the Llovlley Llama of Tywysogaeth Cymru.

Movie Lines We Can Do Without

--"I'm just trying to say...[insert sentiment here].": The most popular sentiment for this one is "I'm sorry", but you can really put anything there. I suppose the point of including this kind of prefacing is to make it clear that the character is saying something that is difficult to admit, but it's time for someone to write a new preface, or just trust the actor to find a way to the moment without words.

--"She's gonna blow!" Action movies are, obviously, the worst offender here--with Jerry Bruckheimer movies leading the pack. The irony is that the more often someone says "She's going to blow" the more likely the movie is to, well, you know.

--"How can you say this to me?" Well, through the coodinated use of diaphragm, lungs, laryx, lips, teeth, and tongue. Usually meant to register offense, this line does so in the dullest, most perfunctory way possible.

--"The clock is ticking." A superfluous line. When tension is already present, it adds nothing to it; when it isn't, you don't need it because you're already checking your watch.

--"Why!?! Why!?!" Why? Primarily because its use in "The Lonely Lady" has made it impossible for me to hear this heartfelt cry at the basic injustice of the universe without laughing until I pee.

--"Watch your back." (Variation "I've got your back") Beyond the difficulty of doing this without prehensile eyes, this line collapsed for me when I saw this exchange in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" (Not exactly classic Mel Brooks but still...)
"Watch my back!"
"Your back just got punched twice."
"Thank you."
The trouble with this line is that it has been used so much that its meaning is no longer clear. Is it saying that one should fear for one's life or that one should merely be cautious? As a warning, wouldn't "Don't let anyone jump out from the shadows and stab you in the back of the neck." work better? If mere caution is called for, wouldn't "the people in there would trade your mom for a packet of dried semen" convey the opposition's ethics (and intelligence) better?

Feel free to nominate other lines for retirement. I've got real work to do.

Hypocricy

Bitterspice called me this afternoon to tell me about a book about Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and all the other reasons why I don't watch cable news. In this book someone wrote a long essay about Ann Coulter's hypocricy, and it got me thinking about the relative severity of hypocricy as a sin. It seems pretty venial to me. In Ann Coulter's case, I'd take the hypocricy. It's the bigotry, the bile, and the calls for terrorist bombings of major newspapers that I have trouble with.

Ted Bundy's hypocricy (manifested by his work in a rape crisis center) was the least of his faults. The big one had to do with his penchant for capturing women and bashing them over the head. If he'd been just an ordinary, closet misogynist, we'd have just called him a wanker and gone on with our lives. Yes, George W. Bush is a hypocrite, but his worst faults have to do with his serial dishonesty on matters that get people killed or maimed. Bill Clinton's faults look harmless by comparison, so when Ken Starr confronted us with his hypocricy, we called them both wankers (with Starr, deservedly, getting the worst of it for taking up the nation's time with such trivia) and returned to more important things.

We're all hypocritical in at least one area of our lives. And certainly it is silly for someone to think that politicians, who have to go through their lives without doing anything that offends anyone, can survive without a certain measure of hypocricy. It is only when other faults are added that the hypocricy charge starts to sting, but once those faults emerge, hypocricy seems like the least of the person's problems.

The pupu platters of my what?

I had no idea Frank Bruni had removed his lips from W.'s butt to devote them to the cause of restaurant reviewing, but now that he has, what a sentence! (Via Majikthise)

"Skewers of duck breast arrived with a miniature grill of sorts and thus recalled the participatory theater of the pu pu platters of yore."

Ah, where have you gone, you pupu platters of yore! Across the mists of time I search for you. Yearning, yearning, ever ever yearning for the sweet yet nutty embrace of the pupu I enjoyed just as the war began, when the world was in uproar and to this young stripling everything seemed possible.

Bulwer-Lytton, the search is over.

I Read Tom Friedman's Column So You Don't Have To

Tom learns that teachers are great.

Next week:

Tom goes to Davos to learn the true meaning of the month of June.

My Name's Paul and This Shit's Between Y'all

Over at TPM Cafe the assembled bloggers seem to have religion on their minds. In particular they have in mind how to reach out to the religious voters in the red states, and elsewhere, who seem to think that us city folk are all left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers, without alienating left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers like me.

I'll have you know I'm not gay.

Here's the thing for me. Religious people who are of a centrist or liberal bent feel uncomfortable being lumped in with the James Dobsons of this world, and I can appreciate their position. As a secular person I'd hate to be lumped in with Objectivists. I certainly encourage devout lefties to do all they can to separate themselves from the religious right and I wish them well. The trouble is that apart from that there really isn't much more I can do. I'm outside the whole religious right/religious left conversation, largely because on one level I think both sides are full of crap. They both bought into the whole invisible man in the sky thing, and I can't follow them there. Their arguments over which elements of a common holy book they wish to emphasize bore and sadden me. I think they do a lot to stunt human progress and I wish they'd stick a cork in it so that we could get on with the problems of the real world.

I usually don't get what I want, though, so if you on the religious right and left feel you have to have these tiffs over the relative value of Leviticus or on whether commandment #5 applies to abortion doctors, go ahead I guess. I'll be the one impatiently tapping my feet while eyeing the British Airways flight schedules.

Well Put

Wil Wheaton has this post on the new SAG deal with Video Game Producers. It sounds like a reasonable deal, though actors still are underpaid given the game industry's profits. My favorite bit is here though:

"And while I'm talking about things producers should do: I'm really sick and tired of employers and non-actors lecturing actors about how useless and replaceable we are. If it's so easy to replace us with Dave from Human Resources, then go for it. Otherwise, show us just a tiny bit of respect for the craft we practice, and the value we provide to your movies, TV shows, commercials, and, yes, video games.

"I recently reviewed Area 51 for The Onion AV Club, which meant that I played it for about 7000 hours in three days. The gameplay is great, and I enjoyed it . . . but the story made it more than just another shooter, and it was the reason I kept playing until the end. And guess what? If you watch the "making of" features, you'll discover that just about everyone at the company thought it was important to hire actors who could bring "unique" voices to their characters, like Marilyn Manson, David Duchovny, and Powers Boothe. Maybe I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt that Kenny, the Hot Topic kid from the IT department, could bring the same energy and creepiness to the project as Marilyn Manson."

Yes, as funny as the guy who gave us the "AWWKISH HOORDE" from Warcraft 2 was, he just doesn't bat in the same league as actual thespians. I just finished another round of "James Bond: Everything Or Nothing" and, though I respect the crew who worked on the previous 007 games, it is so much better having Judi Dench, John Cleese, and Pierce Brosnan for this outing. Sean Connery is preparing to do the next Bond game, and Clint Eastwood will add his voice to a Dirty Harry title. Clearly this is serious work for a highly lucrative enterprise, so give the actors their due.

And the writers, while we're at it.

Not the World's Most Encouraging Words

Brett Ratner promises not to screw up "X-men 3". He then proceeds to sound like a major league doofus. No wonder his "Red Dragon" stank. My guess he didn't understand half the things the characters were saying.

I found this especially funny:

"I'm not Joel Schumacher," he said of the fan-despised director behind "Batman Forever" and the even more poorly received "Batman & Robin," "and I'm not ... um ... who did the third Superman?"

That would be Richard Lester. "I'm Brett," Ratner said, "and all I know is what I know, what I can do and what I have to work with."

Well, he doesn't know much, because Richard Lester didn't just direct "Superman III"; he also directed "Superman II" (widely considered the best of the series), "The Knack", "A Hard Day's Night", "Help!", and "The Three Musketeers". People have been watching his movies for thirty years, a feat Brett Ratner will be unlikely to match. I will agree on this, he is not Joel Schumacher, but then again, neither am I. So I don't see how that's a qualification to direct "X-Men 3".

I should say I don't have a stake in who directs "X-Men 3". I'm not a fan. I just like busting the chops of stupid people.

Parting shot: Yes, Brett, someday Brandon Routh will die, and I'm sure that someone will call it tragic. This will also be true of Dean Cain and Tim Daly, and you, and (unfortunately) me.

Republicans Trying to Shut Down Free Wi-Fi

Majikthise has the story, via Dailykos.

I keep wondering how Democrats can make in-roads into rural America, and pushing government sponsored high-speed internet sounds like a good way. Municipal high speed internet service is the only way a lot of small towns can get reasonably priced high-speed internet, and, in doing so, keep their local businesses competitive with their urban rivals. (A lot of little towns see their businesses either shut down or leave the area because of a lack of high-speed access.) If we were to push it, we could set ourselves up against the telcos and cable companies--whom everybody hates--while connecting the Republicans with the usual allotment of big business types who want to screw the little guy.

Come on, Dems. Get in the fight. It won't win everything, but it could help.

Ooh, That's Not Good

From IMDB

"Sony, which began showing a trailer for its upcoming The Pink Panther movie preceding the release of Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, has yanked the film from its scheduled August 5 release date following disparaging reviews on a number of websites, Reuters reported. One review on JoBlo.com remarked, 'How could anything with Kevin Kline and Steve Martin be so unfunny?' The film, also starring Beyonce Knowles and Jean Reno and directed by Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen), is now scheduled to be released on Feb. 10."

February 10th! A fate second only to direct-to-video.

I'm not sure why people keep trying to ressurect Inspector Clouseau, because it seems impossible without ressurecting Peter Sellers. Clouseau is not James Bond (in many, many ways). You can't simply plug a handsome actor from the British commonwealth into the role and expect the formula to function. Clouseau requires the gifts peculiar to Sellers, in the same way The Little Tramp required Chaplin or Mr. Bean requires Rowan Atkinson. Any other portrayal isn't so much an actor playing Clouseau as it is an actor playing Peter Sellers playing Clouseau. It has to be, because if the actor doesn't do that, we won't recognize that he is playing Clouseau. The role is a trap for anyone other than Sellers, and Sellers is dead.

So, Sony, instead of releasing more Clouseau films, just restore and re-release the ones Sellers made. You'll have better luck.

If Nixon Were President Now...

A nifty little thought experiment from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

Hmm, Feeding Them to the Wolves...

"It turns out that my readers think the proper role of insurance companies is to be dismembered, their office towers reduced to rubble, and their executives fed to the wolves."

--Kevin Drum

Actually, I'd like to give insurance company executives the option of being broken on the wheel or impaled before they are fed to the wolves. Still, what all this is about is a proposal a guest blogger is making for health care vouchers--i.e. vouchers issued to all taxpayers so that they can buy private plans. On the surface, this sounds inoffensive, but I do have a fear. Insurance companies like making profits, and the quickest way for them to make profits is to find inventive ways to cut off the poor or the sick. (His idea that companies will climb over each other to serve the unhealthy and destitute sounds comical to me.) However tightly regulated an insurance company may be, they have armies of lawyers and they can jigger their rules or their lists of preferred providers any way they like to keep the working poor and the desperate out. What'll the poor do? Sue?

In the meantime, the insurance companies will lobby to give themselves as many regulatory loopholes as they can slip into omnibus bills. The uninsured become the "effectively" uninsured, costs rise, and eventually the system collapses.

Which brings us back to breaking on the wheel or impaling.

The World's Smallest Violin Plays for Dino

This is what happens when you have no case. Now Dino, take your unctuous grin and that sleazy torturer vice-presidential friend of yours and sod off.

ApTel

I just finished watching Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote address. He managed to make the transition from Power PC to Intel CPUs look fairly innocuous. Certainly it'll be less of a hassle than the move from OS 9 to OS X. The trick he pulled where he did all of his demos on an Intel based Mac before announcing the move was exemplary. It looks like he'll have developer backing, and I'm comfortable with Rosetta and its method of assuring backward compatibility of software.

I doubt Apple will make the move, however, of porting OS X onto all Wintel machines. Apple's main advantage is that it builds its OS for a limited number of devices. Thus it avoids a lot of the compatibility problems that plague Windows. If Apple took on those issues, it would lose one of its major selling points against XP and (eventually at some point in the far, far future) Longhorn.

I also doubt Apple will have to deal much with clone-makers. I don't think it was ever the CPU that made Apple technology proprietary. Power PC chips have shown up in lots of other devices, including game machines and, for die-hards, the Amiga. (Though there are also Amigas, as I understand it, that run on Intel chips). I'm sure Apple has lots of proprietary elements in their systems to frustrate cloners, and the switch to Intel won't make much difference.

Give It Time

Matt Yglesias wades into the whole question of the gulag reference in the Amnesty International report and moral equivalency and so on. He makes a very good point when he says:

"Indeed, one might say that the clearest signpost that a truly noxious rot has taken root in our culture is that it even occurs to people to argue in this manner. Can you imagine Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot all sitting in a dock somewhere in hell pointing fingers at each other and maintaining that they should be let off because the others were worse? 'Stalin killed the most!' 'But Pol Pot killed the most percentagewise!' 'But just think what Adolf here would have done if he'd won the war!' I like to think we wouldn't take such statements very seriously. And, no, George W. Bush is not as bad as Pol Pot. Good for him -- mom and dad must be proud. He even compares favorably to Richard Nixon in most respects (albeit not in his attitude toward very poor Americans). Let's give him a medal."

But for me, it goes beyond this. When people compare Gitmo and the other prisons in our new system to the gulag, they compare it to the gulag at its height, when our system is still fairly young and still developing. A more appropriate point of comparion would probably be to the Gulag system of 1922 or the concentration camp system in 1936. Both systems were in their infancy then, but they share features with our current system that should chill any sensible person looking at our system of suspected-terrorist confinement.

1. Secrecy: Inmates are confined without due process of law, or through a process whose methods are secret and beyond the ken of the prisoner. Families and lawyers are not allowed access to the prisoner. Prisoners can be moved without notifying relatives and with no records kept of their transfer. (In other words, they disappear).

2. Torture: Inmates are subjected to physical and psychological torture both as a means of punishment, of extracting infomation, or of amusing their captors.

3. Deceit: Government officials willfully misinform the public about the actions taking place at these prisons, or, in some cases, pretend such facilities don't exist.

Both the Gulag and the concentration camp system started small. As time passed and circumstances changed, the governments administering these programs expanded their prison programs and, to a degree, changed their purpose to fit new priorities. As the Germans captured large swaths of Eastern territories, and the Einsatzgruppen proved inefficient at disposing of Russian Jewry, the Germans expanded already existing camps and built new ones to absorb the larger populations and modified their concentration camps for the purpose of holding mass executions. They built the genocide on their already extant prison structure.

What scares me is that there are people, both in and out of our government, willing to justify the abuses of the current system and to see it as a success. When people see these kinds of tactics as a legitimate tool, they feel the temptation to apply that tool to ever wider populations of victims. Once you decide that some people deserve this treatment, it becomes easier to think that other people--ordinary criminals, political opponents, homosexuals, unpopular minorities--deserve it too. These places, and these tactics, look like the beginning of something awful, something we kept telling ourselves couldn't happen here. We may not be at the Stalinist gulag yet, but it's become a lot easier to see since we started moving toward it.

Oh, Yeah. They Shouldn't Make That One Either

I had known that Michael Bay was making "The Island", but I blocked that information out. Michael Bay already forced me to bear the cinematic pain of "Armageddon". (My summary line in my IMDB comments sums up my feeling about that shit-slab movie: "I wanted to walk out on this movie, and I was on a plane") I took "Pearl Harbor" on myself--or the first two hours of it anyway. There was no way I was going to burn calories switching DVDs for that time-wasting prick. I did enjoy the Henry Rollins story about what blue-veined dicks Bay and Bruckheimer were when they auditioned him for "Bad Boys 2".

Why does Michael Bay want to remake "Parts: the Clonus Horror"? Try this on. He has no taste. He has no class. He's a intellectual pygmy and a moral idiot. That he makes more money than the urchins begging for change on University Avenue is evidence that there is neither God nor justice in this wicked world.

The Wrong Worry

Stephen Pizzo doesn't want Hillary Clinton to get the nomination in 2008. While I'm not sanguine about her chances--or any other Democrat's chances--in 2008, this is the wrong reason to say no:

"All's fair in love, war and politics. So expect all that Kenneth Starr variety crap about the Clintons to make a big comeback. I know that Starr and his Dark Side minions failed to prove most of the allegations against the Clintons. But the Clintons' own sloppy ethics provided the very fuel on which the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy ran. If Hillary runs for president the Swift Boat Veterans will be back in a new form, but in full form. They will pound her relentlessly. Unfair? You bet. Go tell it to John Kerry."

This is exactly the thing we shouldn't worry about when picking the nominee, because as the Republicans proved in 2004, they'll pound anybody relentlessly and without justification. Karl Rove once attacked a Democrat whose background was working with poor children by inventing a group to accuse him of child molestation. The Democrat managed to show, to anyone who would listen, that the charges were untrue, but it ruined him politically. So it doesn't really matter who we pick. Our nominee will face the same attack machine that ruined John Kerry, and in the unlikely even that our candidate is elected, the attack machine will continue until the Presidency is destroyed. If anything, this is an argument for Hillary. That she, like her husband, has managed to survive so much and remain a going concern in electoral politics, makes it clear that she will be very hard for Rove and company to kill.

The question is not who can avoid the Swift Boat Veterans, but who can survive their torrent of lies and return fire. I would prefer a nominee whose riposte would be so devastating that Rove runs screaming back to the fleabitten cur who begat him, a nominee who understands that when the Republicans put one of yours in the hospital, you need to put one of theirs in the morgue. We need a nominee who understands the Chicago way.

Two potential candidates come from Chicago: Wesley Clark and Hillary Clinton.

Ha Ha

This is pretty fucking funny. I guess we should feel sorry for Bret Schundler. Sure he's a tool of evil plutocrats, but he really just wants to be loved--or at least, to look as if he's loved.

Someone needs a hug.

Come on, Ted, Take Your Network Back

Ted Turner doesn't like the direction that CNN is headed in. I don't blame him. It was a lot better when he ran it. Remember "Earth Matters"? Or "CNN World Report"? Or "Future Watch"? Those were good shows, and made for a much happier viewing experience than the combination of administration shilling and courtroom analysis that CNN's current bosses seem to think will help them compete with Fox News. They'd be much better off understanding that they're not really competing with Fox News. Fox News exists for the purpose of befogging the gullible and extolling the vicious. If NewsCorp wants to corner the market on that, let them. CNN would be better off if they got back to who they were, with one addition--a prime time news show, replacing "Larry King Live"--that spent a full hour debunking Fox News's whoppers. They'd never run out of material, and it would be fun enough that I might consider getting expanded basic cable to tune in.

Ted, it's time to get back to where you once belonged.

Speaking of Movies That Shouldn't Be Made

While farting around on imdb, I discovered this. Please no. No! NOOOOOOO!

Yet Another Thing the 49ers Are Bad At

So, what do you do if you can't throw, can't catch, can't tackle, can't defend, and can't run? You play for the 49ers. We've known that for a while. But it turns out that there are more requirements for a job in the organization. You can't act, write or tell jokes either. At least, that's what the video their ex-PR flack made indicates. It's supposedly 15 minutes long, but I felt like the second segment involving the Asian stereotype character and his endless sexual malaprops lasted for at least six weeks. It was bad enough to make we yearn for someone to come on and do a twenty minute "New York is different from L.A." set. If the overgrown Butthead who wrote this crap read this post, he'd have probably stopped at "organization" because it contains the word "organ" huh-huh-huh-huh.

Though I guess we should count our blessings on this one. The 49ers have at least picked a harmless new vocation at which to suck. Let's keep them in comedy (at which they're clearly better on the field than off) lest they scratch an itch to try heart surgery.