Funny In Hindsight

From the "Chicago Ties" ad that McCain ran against Obama:

A Low-Resolution Hype Williams "Collage"

Hire ethnic women. Have them dance. Hold camera near the ground. Profit. Immensely.



Classic Hype, giving me what I always wanted -- front-row seats to Usher doing the moonwalk at a French airport, through the eyes of a piranha.



Not very Kate Moss-y, if you ask me.

I don't want no scrub
A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me
Hanging out the passenger side
Of his best friend's ride
Trying to holler at me
I don't want no scrub
A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me
Hanging out the passenger side
Of his best friend's ride
Trying to holler at me

HOW THE FUCK IS THIS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SONG?



Hype, it seems like you might be unfamiliar with forests. Here's some advice: they do not contain billboards.



-"Okay, so throw out some ideas."
-"Well, I bought way too many garbage bags on Saturday."
-"Let's run with that."



One of the great 1990s videos. Has all the staples of the era: dancing girls, fisheye, obscenely colorful sets and costumes, exploding lights (?), red Yankees caps, Bentleys, Puffy pretending to be Tiger, Mase floating in a zero-gravity chamber...



Those headlights were pretty damn awesome when they first came out.



Will Smith is FORTY years old now. His cardio is probably finite.



What. The. Fuck.



You can't understate Hype's impact. He taught a fucking puppet how to play the piano.



Busta Rhymes was so damn lucky he found Hype. Has anyone ever actually stuck a Busta Rhymes album in a CD player and hit play? Without video accompaniment?



DMX spits such hot game that it actually looks like the mic is on fire.



Jesus was a big fan of Vitamin C.

Videos: Q-Tip, "Vivrant Thing"; Usher, "Nice and Slow"; Kanye West, "Stronger"; TLC, "No Scrubs"; R. Kelly, "I Believe I Can Fly"; Missy Elliott, "The Rain"; Notorious BIG ft. Puff Daddy & Mase, "Mo Money, Mo Problems"; Mase, "Feel So Good"; Will Smith, "Gettin' Jiggy With It"; Busta Rhymes ft. Janet Jackson, "What's It Gonna Be"; Blackstreet, "No Diggity"; Busta Rhymes, "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See"; DMX, "Get At Me Dog"; Nas ft. Puff Daddy, "Hate Me Now."

Fuck Charlie Wheelan

Holy shit, this ad is so so so so awful. He'll probably win too, since it has a certain Shamwow quality to it.

A Bargument You'll Never Hear

Mama Cass or Michelle Phillips?

Tori Spelling At Her Ugliest (Hottest?)

Ron Christie's Fairy Tale

Ron Christie, former Cheney aide and future cartoon character, was just on MSNBC and was asked to discuss the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which just passed. He said something along the lines of "Oh, this is a great moment that all Americans can get around, a bill that enjoyed bipartisan support and really goes past the same interparty wars."

Yeah, except for the fact that the bill passed 61-36, with 5 of 41 Republicans (Murkowski, Hutchison, Specter, Collins, and Snowe) voting to pass it. Of course, instead of a "dude... wait what?" from MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, she just glossed over the "error" and praised the fact that the U.S. could come together around a common cause.

Fun Times at the WSJ

First, they totally bury the lead in their article on the stimulus passing in the House:

The House passed an $819 billion tax-and-spending bill Wednesday, in a recession-fighting effort that would extend the reach of the federal government across the U.S. economy by reshaping policy on energy, education, health care and social programs.

The House bill is one of the largest single stimulus packages in history, almost equal to the entire cost of annual federal spending under Congress's discretion. A parallel Senate measure, which is expected to come to a vote next week, is now valued at nearly $900 billion.

The fact that the bill got no Republican support is the story. The bill had no chance of not passing the House -- this much has been clear for awhile. The only question was the support breakdown among moderates and Republicans, a fact made evident by the media attention given to conservative Congressmen over the past week. And no mention of the big goose egg comes on the front page of the WSJ today; it takes 8 full paragraphs for the reporters to make note of it.

But no fear. Murdoch quickly corrected this mistake by offering up a new stimulus plan. Well, he didn't, per se. He just published the much-sought-after thoughts of MIT macroeconomist Rush Limbaugh:

Keynesian economists believe government spending on "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects -- schools, roads, bridges -- is the best way to stimulate our staggering economy. Supply-side economists make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound. That happened under JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.

Nearly Everyone I Know Who Plays Scrabble

...is the type to play STRAIN when his rack is SETRAIN. So I don't know who to turn to with this "problem" I encountered yesterday.

My opening rack was ZONORS?. I went first. I haven't checked Quackle or similar but I'd hazard that SNOOZER is the only bingo here. So the only choice is whether to play the Z on the DLS (and thereby open myself up to a SNOOZERS/something two-way TWS, which kinda sucks enormous dick), or play it in some other fashion. The former is worth 100 points, the latter is worth 82.

Of course, it's not like my opponent is a lock to have an S or a blank, especially since I am using two of them in my bingo. So there's a (4/93)*(7) chance that he draws an S/blank, which is ~=.30. (This probability is the same for me, but he gets to "go first.") So 30% of the time he can play a word that will, on average, be worth 16 (value of SNOOZER(S)) + 9 (seems like a decent estimate of the EV of the word he can play vertically, factoring in the times he can only play TUNES with the times he gets to play JILTS or something similarly massive), all times 3 since it's all on a TWS. So 75 points, 30% of the time = EV of 22.5 points. This cannot be that far away from his "normal" EV, if I just play SNOOZER with the S on the DLS.

It seems like it would have been worth it to play the Z on the DLS, and go for the full 100 points. I do imagine that the correct play has a lot to do with the skill of the players involved -- both relative and absolute. Like, if I were playing someone that wasn't very good, I'd have to assume that starting out with 82 points would make me a virtual lock to win the game. So it would not make as much sense to go for 18 more points and give him a very good opening. Yet if the game featured two expert players, the thin edge becomes much more germane, and thus playing SNOOZER 8H has to be the correct move.

How Is X Stimulative?

Gibbs' presser right now has just touched on a good point. Some of the opposition to the stimulus bill seems to totally miss the picture. A currently common refrain is "How is redoing the National Mall stimulative?" Look -- if you disagree with Keynes, say so, and say why, and suggest something else. But otherwise, don't act like an idiot. Obama's not saying that we need more grass in Washington's parks in order to stimulate the economy. He's saying that hiring people to take care of that grass is what will get things on the right track.

When Does Shipley Say No?

Bob Herbert, July 12th, 2008:

Phil Gramm will have none of your complaints: Get over it! Stop whining and eat your gruel. This recession’s all in your head.

No one (not even John McCain, who tended toward the rapturous when describing Mr. Gramm’s economic bona fides) could mistake this sour-visaged investment banker for a populist. [...]

In that kind of atmosphere, it’s beyond obscene to have to listen to some platinum-card-carrying fat cat tell us, in a tone dripping with condescension: “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession.”

Bob Herbert, July 29th, 2008:

This anxiety is pervasive, and it was clearly evident a little more than two weeks ago when Phil Gramm, then John McCain’s key economic adviser, callously remarked that we were suffering from a “mental recession” and that the U.S. had become “a nation of whiners.”

Bob Herbert, September 8th, 2008:

Phil Gramm was one of the lead architects of the breathtakingly irresponsible policies (No more restraints! No more regulation!) that led to the subprime mortgage meltdown and the current credit disaster.

A corporate insider in the Bush-Cheney mold, Mr. Gramm was thought to be in line to serve as treasury secretary in a McCain administration until July when he put his foot very publicly in his mouth. To Senator McCain’s great embarrassment, Mr. Gramm dismissed the economic downturn as a “mental recession” and complained that the U.S. had become a “nation of whiners.”

Bob Herbert, September 30th, 2008:

He [Bush] should have said that he, along with his irresponsible Republican colleagues and their running buddies in the corporate and financial sectors, put the entire economy in danger. John McCain and his economic main man, Phil (“this is a mental recession”) Gramm, were right there running with them.

Bob Herbert, January 27th, 2009:

Maybe the Republicans don’t think there is an emergency. After all, it was Phil Gramm, John McCain’s economic guru, who told us last summer that the pain was all in our heads, that this was a “mental recession.”

DUDE, STOP.

Hey, It Could Happen

Reader suckonmyd1zzle emails:

With all the current fuss over the early days of the Obama administration and the debate over the stimulus bill, I feel your blog has not given due attention to the negative effects of the 1950s building of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Opine, please.

This is an excellent topic that I don't think gets covered enough in grammar school history courses. Most 5th graders that I discuss this with have a fundamental misunderstanding of the arguments at hand. On the con side, of course, the highway's creation ripped apart areas of the lower Bronx and made previously bustling neighborhoods despondent and morgue-like. I know this because my grandparents were militant NYC activists during their heyday, and I have 1400 pages of their journals that I keep next to my toilet. But, the way I prefer to think of it is this. Let's say Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant want to make an omelette. Now, the decision of how to make the omelette takes awhile, because they both agree they want it to contain 3 eggs -- yet Garnett likes cage-free and organic and Bryant has stated his preference for omega-3. So they flip a coin for it, and Kobe (Robert Moses and NYC commuters) ends up trumping Garnett (poor black people). And that's not even the end, because when an egg is broken, a future chicken life is destroyed. And again. And again.

But you have to view this negative as being on a scale with the positive -- Garnett and Kobe's enjoyment of a delicious 3-egg omelette snack. In my view, seeing the Cross Bronx Expressway through this lens will help elucidate many of the common misconceptions I consistently hear about it.

I'd also recommend Paul Krugman's definitive study on this topic, which he conveniently published this morning. (H/T: Google.)

It's a Technical Term

What Was The Argument?

NRO's Lisa Schiffren inadvertently sums up the idiocy of the Geithner/tax cheat talking point:

Wow. Senator Susan Collins of Maine just announced that she will be voting against making tax cheat Timothy Geithner our next Treasury Secretary on ethical grounds.

Always good to see spine at the squishy end of GOP—over anything, really. I just wish someone had organized all of the potential votes against Geithner, Clinton, and Holder—and done that famous Senate horsetrading to make sure that at least one of the three goes down. Personally, I think Holder is the biggest problem, both ethically and politically. He is also the most easily replaced. Liberal lawyers with agendas and government experience are a dime a dozen. Clinton is clearly the most venal. But she is bulletproof. Geithner will do the least harm of the three, unacceptable negligence notwithstanding.

I never understood what the real anti-Geithner argument was based on, other than the simplicity of the "head of IRS can't do his taxes" NY Post-style headline. I mean, did people think Geithner was deliberately evasive? Possibly -- though not likely, since he's a millionaire who skimped on $36K, all of which he ended up paying -- but if so, "negligence" wouldn't be the operative word here. So then, did people think he was just dumb? The dude isn't exactly a random guy off the street, and if he was passed over as Treasury Secretary, he'd still have a massive role in the future of this debacle as head of the New York Fed. Either direction you go has tons of easily-pokeable holes. Plus, if you're a conservative, you were not going to do much better than Geithner. He's about as middle-of-the-road as an Obama economics appointee is gonna get.

Feingold Amendment

Russ Feingold is proposing an amendment to end gubernatorial appointments for vacated Senate seats:

“The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute. As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, I will hold a hearing on this important topic soon," says Feingold in a statement.

While this is a popular position in the blogosphere as of late, I'm not sure I totally agree. For one, Senate elections are really expensive. And it seems like a rushed Senate election would produce a result not all that dissimilar from a gubernatorial appointment anyway. Who has the clout, who has the money. Governors want to gain something from it too, they're not just going to go appointing randoms who won't help them. The millions of dollars that will get wasted cannot be worth the "gain" that any one group may feel -- how much are you willing to spend on the illusion of democracy?

Another point is the hypocrisy of this whole thing. The law is fine until it's not fine. You're introducing an amendment because of a corrupt governor who was indicted and was in the process of being impeached when the time came for an appointment to be made? It's not like this situation is going to happen again. And I don't see what the issue is with the Paterson side of it. He didn't pick Kennedy -- who the voters demonstrably did not want -- so the process is a failure? Nice, fair-minded approach, Russ.

Run Lola Run

I don't know what to think. On the one hand, what the hell just happened? On the other, it's like an extended music video (the kind where there's a 105-second plot building sequence before any actual music is heard), the framing device is cool, Franka Potente always has this great Euroaura around her, and I like to run.

It's a good thing it is so short, at 75 minutes or so, because its small-world/revisionist/what-if/counterfactual trope does wear on you after round three. With that said, Run Lola Run is very artsy and compelling in its own way (although 43% of its compellingness of it can probably be chalked up to Potente's hair color). I'm not a philosophical type, so while the existentialist ponderings didn't fly over my head, they didn't really enrapture me. How-much-can-man-really-affect-things and similar Camusisms permeate the whole movie, and an amusing -- if oddly unnecessary -- roulette win at the film's end invokes the lurking demon of chance.

It definitely has a Pulp Fiction brand of comedy within it, whereby it often makes fun of itself for being so absurd. This especially comes out in an hilarious store-robbery scene, where the haste handling of a gun safety results in an accidental headshot -- very Marvin-in-the-car-esque, without the laugh-out-loud moment.

I'd definitely need to watch it again in order to offer a more final judgement. With a Chemical Brothers-y soundtrack, the psychedelic directorial style and the antiquatedness of the scenes in which actual dialogue takes place, it feels both very 90s and very throwback at the same time. Worth seeing, if overly interpretative.

Murdering a Metaphor

Fall Out Boy star and brilliant political mind Pete Wentz on Obama as president:

President Obama faces a challenge like Lauryn Hill after her album "Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" won five Grammys or the Coen Brothers after Blood Simple won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Will it take a while for his own Fargo or No Country for Old Men?

Barack Obama is exactly like John Travolta. His ascendence to the State Senate was his "Welcome Back Kotter." Then he exploded with his 2004 DNC speech -- his Grease and Saturday Night Fever rolled into one. That was pretty impossible to follow up though, so he just laid low for awhile in the Senate, while Travolta did the same with the Look Who's Talking series. And yet all this time, everyone was like "Fuck this, Obama should be prez," and "Where's John -- he's one of Hollywood's finest!"

Then he roared back with his very own Pulp Fiction -- announcing his candidacy for POTUS. And yet despite a lot of hype, he was about to learn that Hollywood -- err, campaigning, was anything but easy. He tried to cast himself as different, in Michael and Phenomenon -- not adherent to the same old stale rules. And after the agents and strategists tirelessly toiled for many months, they seized the day.

His win in Iowa was his Swordfish. We are going to change things forever. No more of the same old lobbying or trite action sequences. Yeah, he had to deal with the Clintons to get here, but so did John in Primary Colors. Some detractors would say hey, this guy is just more of the same; hey, bullet-time slo-mo has already been done. But he'd pitch my own message to the people he cares about. Just like Travolta would break through the old Jewish-Hollywood mold with Battlefield Earth, Obama would take Ohio and Texas and Pennsylvania and say FUCK OFF, I'm winning Nebraska and Idaho.

He'd flaunt his fame sometimes, embarking on a gawdy Euro-tour in the summer, and stretching his wings a la Wild Hogs. He reclaimed old themes when he starred in Hairspray and selected Joe Biden as his running mate. But he knew he needed to connect with normal people -- the masses -- in the debates, which is why he buckled down and laid out his vision. His Bolt, if you will.

And then Obama became president and Travolta's kid died, which is where the analogy goes to shit.

Photogenic

Atonement

Atonement is a trip. Loved it. Exquisitely shot, terrifically innovative score, all-star performances from McAvoy, Knightley, and Saoirse Ronan, and a top-notch story.

Little girl (Ronan) "sees" her sister (K.K.) engaging in the Britain-in-the-1940s equivalent of hardcore sex with the family servant (McAvoy). Then she reads an accidently-sent and very lewd letter sent between the two. And then she catches them fucking in the library. So naturally, an opportunity arises that night for her to pin a rape charge (unrelated) on the housekeeper, and the young girl seizes it. She is incredibly naive and imaginative, and yet she comes across as willfully malicious. Ronan gives a blisteringly evil performance; subdued yet heavily layered.

The rest of the film focuses on the ramifications of this first scene. It is set during World War II in Britain, and... well, talking about it anymore would be a disservice to those who have not seen it. Suffice it to say, the ending is phenomenal -- perhaps I should have seen it coming, but I was totally shocked, and fairly moved.

What stuck with me:

-The British justice system is HORRIBLE.

-The beginning of Atonement struck me as very Clue-like -- if, at the beginning of the game, you just guessed "Mr. Boddy, with his penis, in the library" and, irrespective of whether this was right or wrong, you won. Plus Mrs. Peacock looks like a troll, and, well, Keira Knightley does not.

-There's a truly epic ~5-minute long take toward the middle, tracking Robbie (McAvoy) around an Allies-held beach in France. The scene is a marvel, the type of camerawork where you just look past what is actually happening on screen and start tallying the dollars it cost to set up this shot in your head.

-If you are a nurse in a war hospital, and you prematurely unwrap a prisoner's head-gauze and part of his brain falls out, the correct play is to quickly stuff his head back together, rewrap the bandage, and not tell anyone.

-The little girl, Briony, is terrific in all 3 stages (Ronan is replaced by two different actresses for the older ages). She's very pale, quiet, eccentric, and sneaky. She'd likely be a Marilyn Manson fan/black nailpolish type if she were born 50 years later. But in the film, she comes off as vindictive, and then remorseful, and then pathetic as the true weight of her misdeeds hit her. The ending, I must say again, truly wowed me. Like a slight sock to the stomach -- it made the whole experience, which was already pretty down, even more saddening.

-Have the damn thing FedExed next time, Robbie.

Context

It seems en vogue now for everyone to bash on Slumdog Millionaire since it's the clear frontrunner for Best Picture. This is dumb for a few reasons. One, it's a movie everyone can get behind, and in the wake of Mumbai, it gets thrown around in the Oscarsphere with a bit more of a topical glow than anything else (save for Milk, maybe). Two, it's the Oscars. Yeah, better than the Golden Globes, but still: it doesn't matter. You've already complained about Crash and Titanic and Raging Bull. This is hardly a major infraction in the scheme of things, if one at all. Third, look what it's up against. The Curious Case, Milk, The Reader, and Frost/Nixon, none of which anyone will remember by this summer. But perhaps most importantly -- you wouldn't be bashing it if you had seen it two months ago.

Context is everything, sure. But it most cases, it's lame. Think about Juno last year. People saw previews for it and were like "heh, looks amusing." Then it gets absolutely rave reviews across-the-board, and tons of people see it and love it. Then Diablo Cody finagles her way into an Oscar nod, followed by an Oscar win, and this -- in addition to the fact that the movie itself received a Best Picture nomination -- is enough for people to start souring on it. Hard. "Nobody talks like that, booo." "I don't see what's so special about it -- I mean, it's a comedy. Nobody even died!" "Ellen Page is just a pudgy whore." "Michael Cera acts the same in every movie." So on, so forth. A virtually total 180 in a matter of weeks. Part of this is because of unjust hype, which can indeed ruin a movie if you buy into it -- such was the case with myself and Borat. But part of it is just a douchy nonconformist tendency.

And so we must take Slumdog through this prism. If this movie wasn't released wide in the U.S., and was just available in NYC and LA and on DVD screeners online, the buzz would be insane. "ABSOLUTE OMG BEST movie you haven't heard of -- must see!" and "Wow Hollywood sucks, why don't we do movies like this anymore?" would likely be two common refrains. And yet now, since everyone in suburbia has fallen in love with this movie, in order to be cool, you must think it was "meh." It's fine (and correct) to think it wasn't the Best Picture of the year. But don't pay attention to that. A.O. Scott's review of No Country For Old Men didn't go "man, with this taking Best Pic over There Will Be Blood, I thought I was about to experience something on par with The Godfather. The ending didn't really do anything for me, and Woody Harrelson was dumb. Plus LOL @ Chigurh -- nobody talks like that!"

Just view the movie on your own terms.

Jonathan Martin is such a douche

This video is pretty neat though. They're so deferential when he swoops in. From Michael Calderone:

"Partisan Witch-hunt"

Whenever Congressional Republicans -- or Democrats, but mostly Republicans -- talk about why Barack Obama should let things lie and not investigate the crimes of the Bush administration, one of the reasons they give is that they don't want it to turn into a partisan witch-hunt. Which, besides just idea-leeching from Obama's plan to "end partisanship," makes no sense. The people that are investigated will be members of the Bush administration. These will be Republicans. The people doing the "investigating" will ostensibly be members of Congress, which has quite a sizeable Democratic majority. Not only that, but those spearheading the fight will obviously be Democrats, because barely any Republicans will want to be near this. So there's no real way to avoid the fact that the optics of this will invariably look partisan.

Excellent Use of Time

Watching this first White House Press Briefing by Gibbs. It's pretty neat. Gibbs is humorous and deliberative. The press is gay. They pressed him on the ramifications on closing Guantanamo, which is good, but they got up in arms about the whole reswearing in. Who cares.

Helen Thomas though, was like 9th or so, and used her time wisely:

"Is the President against torture?"

Senator Leahy = Rip Van Winkle?

Apparently Pat Leahy doesn't know what's up these days:

After Republicans lauded George W. Bush’s choice of Alberto Gonzales as the first Hispanic attorney general, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy told reporters: “It would look like a horrible double standard... to turn down or hold up the first African-American to be attorney general...”

Leahy said that Holder is "the most qualified person in decades to be nominated for attorney general."

Wait... what? The MOTHERFUCKING PRESIDENT is African-American. I don't think Harlemites are sitting on their couches every night with heads in hands, distressed over the possible blockade of Eric Holder's confirmation. You effectively said he's the most qualified person for the job. This is sufficient. You don't need to go parading around as some 21st century incarnation of William Lloyd Garrison. Apparently you were sleeping yesterday. Now that you have awoken, let me tell you that you are a retard.

Harry Reid In A Nutshell

At the Senate Democratic Progressive Media Summit:

Shorter Harry Reid

Carl Levin will investigate previous administration.

Union card check is important, don't yet have the needed 95 votes.

Underappreciated 1990s Music Video Dump

Billie Myers, "Kiss the Rain"



Blackstreet, "No Diggity"



Mase, "Feel So Good"



Savage Garden, "I Want You"



Bush, "Swallowed"

For Posterity

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

There was a moment about halfway into Vicky Cristina Barcelona when I realized that I really liked this film. The only problem is that I can't put my finger on the moment, because VCB is simply a progressive string of countryside bike rides, hot sex scenes, occasionally humorous voiceovers, and endless Woody Allenisms. There are no real impactful scenes, and, while it is certainly a film that is much greater than the sum of its parts, it is not especially memorable, despite being very good.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are 20-somethings who travel to Spain and meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who is supposed to be a tragic European artist (except he gets to fuck any woman he glances at, so it's hard to sympathize), and they engage in a sort of bastardized love triangle that has all the trappings of something about to go terribly awry, but then it doesn't, because Vicky is engaged and she calls her angle of the triumvirate off, so then Cristina and Juan Antonio scamper off into rural Spain and live an idyllic lifestyle, until Juan Antonio's psycho-ex (Penelope Cruz) comes back and things get intolerably spicy. It is a very subtly amusing movie, rife with sexual tension, and ultimately very compelling. Key points:

-Woody Allen, at age 104, is still a perv. Hall, Cruz, and Johansson all look great, and, although no breasts are shown, the director's intentions could not be more clear.

-The film looks beautiful. Very real-looking, lots of green and yellow shades, many great shots of the aforementioned Spanish countryside.

-The writing is classic Woody Allen; as such, it's very funny. Nothing is contrived, even though it would be an easy plot to write bullshit lines for. In the film, Bardem has a knack of tripping over his English, and it seems totally natural.

-It is a better film than Bangkok Dangerous.

-If you stood 5 feet in front of Penelope Cruz, and she were armed with a handgun, I'd short "You Don't Survive This Encounter" at 3 on InTrade.

-The film's ending just kinda... ends. It's not really disappointing, since the rest of VCB is so mellow and cool that I wouldn't have expected anything else. But it leaves me wondering if there's really anything meaningful to take away.

-VCB is like one long montage, and as such, the soundtrack is pretty important. And it totally delivers. It's one big mood piece. Long walks, red wine, cobbled streets, a beautiful villa, mysterious paintings, lesbian sex in a dark room between Johansson and Cruz... it's a big stew. And it's accompanied by an omnipresent Spanish guitar, strumming away slowly when the atmosphere dictates it and ratcheting up the pace when things get increasingly heated. While I liked the acting a lot (it gave me a whole new appreciation for Anton Chigurh), the reason this movie is so cool is how it flows in and out of each relationship in a very subdued and carefree way.

The Olbermann-to-Maddow Hand-Off

Every night at 8:59 and some decent amount of seconds, Countdown segues into The Rachel Maddow Show. Sometimes, they just fade to black with Olbermann and start up anew with Maddow. But maybe 50-60% of the time they let K.O. and R.M. onscreen at the same time, and they usually engage in some light pitter-patter, a series of "lol, Bush" winks and some childish giggling, before Maddow's show actually begins. It's hard to decipher the subtext of these moments, but I'll do my best.



OLBERMANN: ...Good night, and good luck. We now turn over to The Rachel Maddow Show. Good evening, Rachel.

Goddamn, I love being me. I'm going right outside to Rockefeller Center after this, and I'm going to put on a pink hat and goosestep around the block four times, because fuck it, what's stopping me?

MADDOW: [Smiling] Good evening Keith...

I've been sitting here in this chair for 23 minutes watching you excoriate the entire evening line-up of Fox News, and now I have to interview Sherrod Brown? What the FUCK are my producers doing?

MADDOW: ...that was very funny.

Warren, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Prop 8, Iraq, Warren, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Prop 8, Iraq, Vagina, Vagina, Vagina.

OLBERMANN: Yeah I thought so too. I especially liked the part where I spoke extemporaneously for 9 minutes and 16 seconds on why Obama needs to close Guantanamo Bay.

Listen. You're gay, I'm bi... I didn't major in math, but there has to be something that can be done here.

MADDOW: [Laughing] ...Oh Keith, that's great. Thanks again. And thank you for sticking with us...

I'd need about a fifth of Jim Beam in me for this to work.

MADDOW: ...We have a lot to talk about tonight.

I get to discuss Iraq with Jim Webb, who thinks I should be either a) blowing him or b) making him waffles, and then I have the pleasure of debating politics with Pat Buchanan, whose ideal world would be one in which I were stoned to death.

You Are Terrible at Prioritizing

MSNBC

Seriously, how are Maddow, Robinson, Matthews, and Olbermann co-hosting this inauguration coverage? This isn't even under the pretense of evenhanded journalism. Maddow is scoffing at Rove and Bush flying back to Waco after the ceremony. Matthews is saying nobody will remember Bush. Keith and Gene are debating Nixon vs. Bush... WTF? This is such blatant trolling.

Too Good!

NROFL on the highlights of Bush:

As George W. Bush prepares to leaves the White House after eight misunderestimated years, National Review Online asked a group of experts in policy and politics to assess his presidency.

Jay Nordlinger

He defeated two men who would have been lamentable in the Oval Office: Al Gore and John Kerry.

He nominated excellent judges, including his two on the Supreme Court. He was widely derided for his nomination of Harriet Miers (later withdrawn). He still insists she would have been an excellent justice. Who knows?

Andrew Breitbart


I felt Chris Matthews–like tingles throughout my body at every White House Correspondents’ Dinner as I witnessed Bush at the podium. I was always proud to have him as my president. And I believe honest historians will help redeem his artificially tainted image.

Heather Mac Donald

Notwithstanding our current credit crisis, American technological innovation and entrepreneurship thrived during the last decade, aided in part by a saner regulatory and tax environment.

William McGurn

I went to Washington in 2005 never having served in government, and only because our nation was at war. My view was then and is now: If we fail in Iraq, nothing else will matter.

The President did not fail in Iraq. We are safer for it, and we are stronger for the fight ahead.

George Weigel

After the triangulation of the Clinton years, after 9/11, and in the face of the biotech challenge, America badly needed a president who didn’t govern by focus groups and polls. That so many people resented this says, I fear, more about our political culture than it does about George W. Bush.

This is from a major conservative outlet, too.

An Odd Lens Through Which to View Things...

In a Letter to the Editor in the NYT today, FDR's grandson and future biographer writes:

While I emphasized F.D.R.’s rapport with the American people, I failed to make a basic point. It is that the American people picked up on Roosevelt’s attitude. They may not have understood much about the host of new agencies created, but they did understand that their president cared, that he was concerned for them.

How F.D.R. managed to convey this feeling I do not know. But later, I learned firsthand from my grandmother Eleanor Roosevelt that “Pa’s great strength” lay in what was behind his thinking — his caring, a genuine sense of starting programs that addressed the places and issues where Americans were hurting. (And in the process saving capitalism for this country.)

That F.D.R. could have assumed dictatorial powers, but didn’t, illustrates the point.

Elliott Smith's 10 Best Songs

1. "A Fond Farewell"
2. "A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free"
3. "Bottle Up and Explode"
4. "Sweet Adeline"
5. "Angel In The Snow"
6. "Son of Sam"
7. "Wouldn't Mama Be Proud"
8. "Waltz #2 (XO)"
9. "Needle in the Hay"
10. "Ballad Of Big Nothing"

This Inauguration Sucks

I don't really get it. U2, Usher, Stevie Wonder, Tom Hanks, Tiger Woods, Steve Carell. Millions of fans screaming and singing in the freezing cold, and paying lots of money to do so. And it's not like there's anything to see. He won Iowa, and gave that speech, and everyone was like wow, he's going to be President. He raped throughout February, and then it became clear that wow, he's going to be President. He verbally owned Wright in Philadelphia, and even conservatives were like wow, he's going to be President. And this was before he de facto won the nomination in June and gave that speech. Before he gave his speech in Europe. Before he gave that speech between the Greek columns. Before he gave his victory speech. What the FUCK could he possibly say tomorrow that makes it worth it to sit outside for hours in 25 degree weather while feeling your bladder slowly fill up until it nears explosion?

It's like the NFL playoffs. It's in January and it's outside. Dude, just watch it on TV.

Good, blacks hate Tyler Perry too

At least the internet-using ones do:

House of Payne

Quite possibly the worst TV show ever. Perry fired four of his writers who tried to get union coverage. That’s appalling; if anything, they should have been fired because the dialogue resembles something a 13 year old would write. Every single character is a walking stereotype: a mammy figure, a crazy uncle, a crackhead, some thugs, and each of them has this…halting…way…of…speaking during dramatic moments. There is absolutely no awareness of tone, plot progression, or the basic conventions of storytelling. I have relatives who swear by Tyler Perry’s movies and plays but refuse to watch his TV show. That's a sign. TBS and Fox bought 100 episodes based strictly on Perry’s immense popularity and success, which means that the show will be running nonstop in syndication for years. Embrace it.

Very funny!

lol Krugman

He's just asking for it:

Needless to say, everyone I’ve mentioned is politically conservative. That’s their right: economists are citizens too. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that all of them have decided on political grounds that they don’t want a spending-based fiscal stimulus — and that these political considerations have led them to drop their usual quality-control standards when it comes to economic analysis.

Has there been any comparable outbreak of mass bad economics from good liberal economists? I can’t think of one, although maybe that’s my own politics showing. In any case, what’s happening now is pretty disturbing.

If I were an anarchist troll...

Bangkok Dangerous

You might think that a film in which Nicolas Cage, suited up in a manner which defies classification (throw "dirtbike rally," "1983," "transsexual," and "Joy Division" into a blender, I guess), bounds around Thailand as an uber-hitman who, despite seemingly having nary a moral, has a soft spot in his heart for elephants, is not an odds-on favorite to be a good film.

You might also think that a film which devotes a significant portion of its time to a puppydog relationship between the merciless Nicolas Cage and a deaf Thai chick who works in a pharmacy has a fairly good chance of being one you would refuse to watch on TV at 4 A.M., blazed out of your skull.

In both cases, you could be a lot farther from the truth.

I won't watch this again, but I still liked it (translation: I will watch this again, more than once, even though I really didn't like it). It is pretty cheesy, and Cage is way past his prime, and films that are set in Asia and made by Asians but released in America are almost always the most trite pseudo-art imaginable. And the plot is not exactly a fresh one: hitman does "one last job" in Bangkok, outsources some of his duties to a young kid with street smarts, completes 3 of the 4 "kills" before encountering minor issues, which then snowball into major problems, and all this is capped off by the hitman realizing he can't kill the kid at the completion of the task (as he normally does) because he befriended him, and he can't even complete the 4th kill because the target is a politician with a family, and yada yada...

And yet Cage always (well, almost always -- not The Wicker Man, The Weather Man, or The Family Man brand of "always") draws me in. I'm reluctant to say he's charismatic, because he's not. It's more that he's a caricature, and an endlessly unintentionally entertaining one at that. He hasn't had a plausible role in a decade, and yet he's probably made more dough in that time period that anyone save a few A-listers. Which is testament to... something, although I don't know what, exactly.

Bangkok Dangerous doesn't dilly-dally though, which is more than I can say for a lot of films. It is pretty frenetic throughout, a quality which causes about 45% of the movie to not make a lick of sense, but still, it moves along quickly through its nonsense. The action scenes are pretty bad for a 2008 film, and the ending leaves a lot to be desired. And I have no idea why Asian bad guys always need to make the fakest sounds when they get beaten or killed. But I'd still say, overall, I was mildly entertained.

Fuck My Life

Brad Blakeman, Douche Extraordinaire

Blakeman, GOP hack lifer, was on Fox News this morning discussing his thoughts on the inauguration. Or, more accurately, responding to the leading questions dished out by the talking head of the hour. The highlight was this: when Blakeman was prompted with a question about the OMGHUGE size and scope of the inauguration ceremonies, he said essentially that "if you just contemplate the amount of people coming to Washington, and there's going to have to be enough food for them, and places for them to stay, and enough security and portapotties, that this is proof positive that the era of big government is finally back, on Day 1 of the Obama presidency."

Which is hilarious on its own, but is even more funny if you imagine a scenario in which there had NOT been sufficient amenities available to the inauguration-goers, and Blakeman had gone on national TV to criticize the Obama team for not caring about normal people who "came to Washington to celebrate, on their own dime, and were not treated kindly by the rookie President."

"We know sometimes that the Bidens make verbal gaffes..."

Nice work, Jill:

Appearing on Oprah Winfrey's program today, Jill Biden, wife of Vice President-elect Joe Biden, said that her husband had been offered his choice of either the V.P. slot or the job of Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

That's not the sort of information meant for public consumption, as Joe Biden quickly made clear: The soon-to-be-veep shushed his wife immediately after she made the statement, the Associated Press reports, prompting laughter from the audience.

IE Removed From Windows in the EU

I was wondering what was weird about this when I first read it:

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union said Friday that Microsoft’s practice of selling the Internet Explorer browser together with its Windows operating system violated the union’s antitrust rules.

It ordered the software giant to untie the browser from its operating system in the 27-nation union, enabling makers of rival browsers to compete fairly.

So, if you don't have Internet Explorer when you first install Windows, how do you get on the web?

I don't like Matt Taibbi that much

But this is so on-point and hilarious:

Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”

First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.

--

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: “I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.’” And off he goes.You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don’t notice that tri-planes don’t have headlights.And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There’s so much shit flying around the book’s atmosphere that you don’t notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.

Editorial Fail, or...

This still below from the constantly-airing Manning brothers/Williams sisters ad is annoying:



Now, if it's the Mannings, you are referring to both siblings. Williams is the actual name of both Serena and Venus. Ergo, for the sake of continuity, the correct form would be Williamses, the plural of Williams. Yes, everyone is used to "Williams" from "Williams sisters," and Williamses looks clunky. But it's also "Manning brothers," not "Mannings brothers." So this is a definite fail, albeit probably not a very important one in the scheme of things.

Jon Meacham Is Many Things

A creator of good analogies is not one of them:

“I think a weekly magazine is a standing dinner date, or the fourth person in your bridge game,” said Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek. “Sometimes they’re the most delightful person in the world, sometimes they get drunk and throw up on you. But enough times in a year, when something happens, that’s the first place you want to go to hear what they have to say.”

Barakarta

Really?

One of these is not like the other:

BARACK OBAMA’S victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that we were ready to see a black man as president. Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in the real White House but in the virtual America of movies and television. The presidencies of James Earl Jones in “The Man,” Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact,” Chris Rock in “Head of State” and Dennis Haysbert in “24” helped us imagine Mr. Obama’s transformative breakthrough before it occurred. In a modest way, they also hastened its arrival.

Washington: An Easy Game

Jonathan Martin on Barack's bipartisanship:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Minority Whip, has met with Obama and is in frequent contact with Rahm Emanuel, the House member turned presidential chief of staff, via cell phone and BlackBerry.

“I have met with Rahm and spoken with him several times and he said, ‘Look, you need to understand — working in a bipartisan manner is something the president-elect takes seriously,’” Cantor noted. “It has thus far been a very efficient process.”

Excellent news. We all know that the most important step toward efficiency in government is... talking to one another. Let's just pack it in and call it a term.

Righteous Kill

Yeah, this was awful. I can't say I thought it would be good, but I was holding out a modicum of hope. I wish I had known 50 cent was in it beforehand. I still would've watched it, begrudgingly, but at least I would have lowered expectations accordingly. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are old. And they are not like a fine wine. They are like a fine cottage cheese. Pacino, shockingly, underacted, and I found myself at times trying to will him into a "and she's got a... GREAT ASS!" moment, but to no avail. These are legends, and their acting wasn't even good. Which should tell the whole story about Donnie Wahlberg and Mark Leguizamo, who I'm not sure are real actors. They just say "fuck" a lot, i.e., in every utterance in every scene. The movie isn't good cop-bad cop, it's more like bad cop-worse cop, except both cops -- obviously -- are card-carrying AARPers, which takes any sense of drama or mystery and totally wrings the everloving life out of it.

I laughed during two moments. The second was when 50 cent's character said something along the lines of "if he gonna go all Hannibal Lecter on me, I don't want Jodie Foster coming to save me, I want the whole cavalry." For obvious reasons, the idea that 50 cent is able to make Silence of the Lambs references is hilarious.

The first was one of the most retarded epic script fails ever. Internal investigations guys are interviewing Pacino and De Niro separately, and, after some time, one guy remarks "these guys are like Lennon and McCartney -- not an inch of daylight between them." Which of course is true if you believe the popular view of things, that John and Paul were BFF and that they wrote all their songs together. But which is the polar opposite of true if you aren't retarded.

Vampire Weekend

Here is a decent version of one of their better songs, "M79," live in NYC. I considered going to this show about a month ago, but one of the things that I deem relatively important when choosing whether to go see somebody is crowd composition. I like Cut Copy a lot but they seem to attract venues and crowds that morph into gay bars in seconds. Interpol is great but I expect everyone at their concerts to be packing steel-toed boots and 10-inch knives. Lil Wayne is catchy but come the fuck on.

I can't decide whether I made the right call with Vampire Weekend. It seems like a ton of annoying chicks, which is standard for Terminal 5 shows and indie shows in general. The question is whether they're primarily in the 18-23 range (good) or the 12-16 bracket (fail).

Jaguar Love's Take Me To The Sea

I guess this album came out late last year, so I was late on the uptake, but whatever. This is one of the catchiest albums I've heard in awhile. It's weird because Jaguar Love is simply a derivative of Pretty Girls Make Graves and The Blood Brothers, neither of which I really like. The only thing I really liked about The Blood Brothers was Johnny Whitney's voice, which has been likened to the sound a child makes when he is being tortured, but even then, it wore on me pretty fast. I'm just not really into hardcore stuff.

This however, is great. It's like, hmm... Rage Against the Machine's throttle meets Built to Spill's knack for melodies, and they get married and have a son, and Geddy Lee and Robert Plant somehow artificially inseminate a woman and have a daughter, and these two kids get hitched and start a band after listening to a ton of Cat Power and The Mars Volta. Which sounds fucking awful, but trust me, it's good. It's amazing how musical Whitney's voice can be, as seen on "Jaguar Pirates" and "Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers," and yet most of the time it's superfluous, because the rest of the ensemble is so tight that there's no dead space; in the spots where albums traditionally tend to meander aimlessly, these guys just insert another hook. Although they don't really sound similar, I was reminded of the first time I listened to Yeasayer's All Hour Cymbals, because of how surprisingly original they sound, when, at the heart of it, they're not really breaking any new ground. It's simply a songwriting frenzy. And the production is top notch, which is a rarity for a lot of sideshow bands these days.

Highlights: "Georgia," "Jaguar Pirates," "Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers," "The Man With the Plastic Suns."

Scathing Piece on Steve Jobs

Joe Nocera rips Steve Jobs to shreds in today's NYT:

Last week, he said he had a “hormone imbalance.” Now it’s “more complex” than that — whatever that means. If he really wants people to stop speculating about his health, as he claims, he sure has a funny way of dealing with it. Let’s be honest here: when you are a) a survivor of pancreatic cancer; and b) the world’s most charismatic, and possibly its most irreplaceable, corporate executive, putting out a press release announcing that your problems are “more complex” is only going to fan the flames, not douse them. [...]

It is really hard to write about Steve Jobs and his health problems. What you really want to do is root for him, not criticize him. Everybody — myself very much included — hopes that he will get well and come back to work. I can even understand why he doesn’t want to disclose details about his medical problems — it’s distasteful, and Mr. Jobs also believes strongly that it’s nobody’s business except his and his family’s.

But he’s wrong. There are certain people who simply don’t have the same privacy rights as others, whether they like it or not. Presidents. Celebrities. Sports figures. And, at least in terms of his health, Steve Jobs. Once again, his health is a material fact for Apple’s shareholders, and more disclosure is required. His vagueness about his health, his dissembling, his constantly changing story line — it is simply not an appropriate way to act when you are the most important person at one of the most prominent companies in the country. On the contrary: it is infuriating.

Seems pretty much on the money, even though it can't be easy for Steve Jobs to air his laundry to the world. Although I do wonder about the significance -- practical and symbolic -- of Jobs remaining at the helm.

Are All Apple Execs Anorexic?

Or is heroin chic just part of the iPod look?


Old:



New:

Biden's Senate Farewell

I watched most of this last night on C-SPAN. It was actually really cool, albeit long. He made a big deal about how his time in the U.S. Senate caused him to befriend people whose (ostensibly bad) ideas were among the chief reasons he ran for the Senate to begin with. He really lavished some heavy "praise" on Strom Thurmond's political-racial metamorphosis over his ~50-year Senate career. Which may not have seemed odd, except there were two black women seated behind Biden whose reactions I was forced to scrutinize, thus causing me to divert attention away from the great tales of Biden and Daniel Inouye, who Biden mentioned no less than 281 times (seemingly because he was the only Senator from his era who bothered to come; Leahy is just a terrible person, Kennedy is a walking corpse, and Byrd hasn't actually attended a Senate meeting for 3 years).

I did like this one little factoid, which Biden explained by removing his Senate desk drawer and lifting it for the audience to see. Apparently every Senator to ever serve etches his or her name into their desk drawer. So if you remove the papers from a random desk on the Senate floor, it looks not too dissimilar from a random booth at Gino's in Chicago. Except it's Barry Goldwater and Pat Moynihan instead of Tony C. and Johnny Ray.

Futility of Approval Ratings

Per Nate, Gallup's final approval-disapproval for Bush is 34-61, for a net of -27.



But, as you can see, they were 29/67 when Obama was elected, for a net of -38. You could argue that that was just at the height of a pro-Dem wave, and that his ratings now are simply reverting back to the mean, but that's ignoring the economic woes of October, which will remain one of the "hallmarks" of his presidency. So what has happened in between now and then? Economy has, on its face, seemed to not decline at such a rapid rate as before. Bush and Cheney have done their exit tour. And I guess the autos got a semi-bailout. But these things don't amount to anything good. So Bush has basically done nothing. And he's shot up in Gallup.

I get it that the public is fickle, but come on, this is a terrible metric.

Drudge Can Be Hilarious

As of 2:50 P.M. today, amidst a flurry of "OMG - SNOW..." blue and red URLs, Drudge featured this excellent headline tandem:



I guess we'll take Waxman first. I mean, this guy is hideous in general, and looks like a failed Jurassic Park experiment or something, but how in the hell do you ever position yourself at an angle that makes you look like such a subhuman rodent? The photographer, after vomiting on himself in the dark room, must've been on cloud nine for a month.

The Pelosi/Boehner thing nearly caused me to choke on my water. Matt Drudge rules our world, clearly.

So Terribly Sad

Oprah's huge again, and her trainer-guru, Bob Greene, is struggling:

She is not the only one reeling. Just as Ms. Winfrey was making her announcement, Mr. Greene’s new book, “The Best Life Diet Cookbook,” and the second edition of his earlier best seller, “The Best Life Diet,” were hitting shelves.

Mr. Greene is now trying to promote his diet books as the whole world marvels over how much weight his star client has gained. It is not exactly the sweet spot that an author, or his publisher, Simon & Schuster, dreams about.

But he's optimistic:

But like the loyal Oprah disciple he is, Mr. Greene is not complaining.

“It doesn’t bother me in the least,” he said in a telephone interview from his Chicago hotel room just hours before Monday’s Webcast — which bore the unenviable title, “Falling Off the Wagon With Bob Greene.” “Everyone knows she follows my plan, but when she doesn’t, she gains weight, and when she does, it’s the only thing that works for her,” said Mr. Greene, who has staked a good chunk of his professional reputation on his star client’s waistline.

I have another theory about why it doesn't bother him. Because he's the personal trainer of a billionaire and the most famous woman in America, and has been for 17 years.

MSNBC, Get Rid of Michelle Bernard

For so many reasons. But mainly because she's just an idiot. She's a net negative in every appearance, at every roundtable. She doesn't know anything about anything, and yet I'm supposed to listen to her blather on about Eric Holder's confirmation? Usually, political talking heads come from one of a few brands. They're either former politicians, former or current journalists for major publications, or former political advisers. Bernard doesn't seem to be any of these. She's just a black female conservative, which makes her a fucking white tiger in MSNBC land. All she talks about is either how fast her heart was beating during some random Obama speech, or, when she's forced into the opposition role, how "Obama will have to be careful..." or some other dumb handwaving comment. Fire her please.

I like Dalia Lithwick

On Rachel Maddow's show last night, she made a pretty good point about all this fuss about the ins and outs of will-he-or-won't-he wrt the prosecution of Bush and co. for war crimes:

LITHWICK: Well, one of things that‘s so intriguing to me about this whole conversation we‘re having and as you point out, we had it on in the New York Times on the op-ed page, as though this is an open legal question. Crimes happen. Should we prosecute or not?

You know, this is a really thorny one. And one of things that I think is really interesting about this conversation is that as you say, this isn‘t a legal conversation. If we were talking about a bank robbery and the arguments against prosecuting we‘re, “Oh, well, these people were really stressed out. It was a crisis. They didn‘t think they were breaking the law. Let bygones be bygones. Let‘s just turn the page.”

You‘d laugh at me. This is not a legal conversation. This is a pragmatic conversation, a political conversation and that‘s fine. As a legal matter I don‘t think there‘s no question and I cited to it in my “Time” piece this week. Laws have been broken. There are war crimes that have been committed. It seems that, as you say, at least three people were waterboarded. The ACLU has collected over 100,000 pages of documents linking the White House to torture policy. It‘s on their Web site. It‘s has now come out in a book.

Joke of the Day

What did the bored guy do when he was forced to listen to music because his ISP went out?

He rocked out with his Cox out.

Saw V

Wow, where to begin?

I would not wish this movie on anybody. It is terrible, and not terrible like the original Saw, but exponentially worse, and borderline unwatchable.

The acting -- obviously -- is horrible. WTF is it about the Saw franchise that requires this intricate mix of failed pornstars and soap rejects? I get it that 70% of the movie is either an unintelligible "AAAHHH" or "FUCCKKKKKK!!!!", but seriously, these guys make Skeet Ulrich in Scream look like Daniel Day-Lewis.

As has become a progressively worse trend as each new Saw is pumped out, the gore is lame, the suspense nonexistent, and the Jigsaw methodology completely uninspired. The opening killing had me chuckling nervously, which any Saw viewer is required to do in order to balance his reaction to the film's gruesome nature with his instinct to just laugh at how horrible the whole thing is. Maybe one of Jigsaw's "experiments" in Saw VI will be forcing people to watch each previous installment in order to live.

Not to mention that this franchise is one of the biggest offenders of revisionism I've ever seen. Every fucking movie they change the background information used in the previous movies. As such, about half of each new movie (and this one was only 90 minutes) is simply flashbacks to previous editions, which should mean that they can use this freed up room in the budget for better FX or actors, but then this gets circular...

WOULD SOMEONE TURN ON THE LIGHTS? Nobody uses any lights in any of the Saws. It's ridiculous. Someone walks into the main office of a police station and everyone is toiling in the dark. WTF?

The whole Jigsaw idea is dead. He has totally lost his appeal. He is Barack Obama in 2014. Just, for the love of fuck, stop. I'm sick of the little cackling dummy, the gruff voice, the ability to acquire infinite free warehouse space in which to concoct your human experiments. Plus you're totally getting lazy. In this movie you threatened people with nail bombs, beheadings, and body crushing. It's death... there are a million ways to do it. Get creative. And you're just killing people randomly now. You used to do it for "moral" reasons; get a paroled killer off the streets, teach a drug addict a lesson, and so forth. In this movie you said "I want to play a game" to people that were guilty of GRAFT AND PATRONAGE. You're a fucking fictional serial killer, not Patrick Fitzgerald. GTFO.

Don't. Ever. See This.

Anh Cao's Confused

A few nights ago I caught an interview with GOP Rep. Anh Cao (Louisiana's 2nd district, Republican who unseated the corrupt dude in December). He was very pleasant, although not really well-informed, and not, personality-wise, all that different from the last 5 guys who delivered my Chinese food. He fully admitted that he pretty much fluked himself into office. But he has some thoughts.

He likes Barry:

CAO: Well, I admire President-Elect Obama. I believe that he’s an extremely talented man, a gifted man. And I believe that he can be the great president if he’s willing to work with everyone, including Republicans.

And he believes he won because...

CAO: That’s correct. And it’s also the seat that was held by a Democrat for at least 100 years. So it was – it has been very difficult for a Republican to even get close to winning the seat. But fortunately for me there was change in the atmosphere.

Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. But, let's give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you are a change agent.

LAMB: The Republican Party has, I believe, besides you, three minorities in the entire House of Representatives, all, I think, Cuban-Americans based and from Florida. I may have missed one on that. But why would you, as a minority, pick the Republican Party?

CAO: Well, as you know I’m also a Roman Catholic. And as a Roman Catholic, I’m very much a pro life, and also being a father, having two children, I also espouse the family values that the Republican Party stresses.

So you're an across-the-aisle kinda guy, an Obama fanboy, and a self-professed example of the benefits of new blood in Washington who believes that... the members of the party with the current supermajority in Washington don't have wives or kids, or if they do, they don't really care about them? Because clearly if Barack, Hillary, and Nancy had been informed of this little family rule, they'd be on the other team. Too bad.

MoDo wat?

In her latest, Maureen Dowd sounds loony:

Take Tim Geithner, the hot nerd tapped by Obama to fix the colossal mess left by W. and Henry Paulson, a man who played with live snakes and dead-on-arrival ideas.

How does a guy on the fast track to be Treasury secretary fail to pay $34,000 worth of federal taxes ($43,200, including interest), or forget to check on the immigration status of a house cleaner — the same sort of upstairs-downstairs slip-up that has tripped up other top-drawer prospects on their way to top jobs here? Americans expect the man who’s in charge of the I.R.S. to pay his own taxes.

First of all, as I understand it, these two "offenses" were made clear to the Senate Finance Cmte. in November, when Geithner was tapped. Second -- and I don't have a maid, so I wouldn't know -- is it common for people to continually be checking on the expiration date of your housekeeper's visa? I mean wtf, who does this? And WHO CARES? Same with the Mitt Romney/Rudy Giuliani flap in the debates -- seriously, who thinks this is important?