Caption Contests, Swampland Edition

I absolutely loathe caption contests, and yet I am always drawn to them. The reason for the latter is the same as the reason for the former. In short: the average person is not funny, and the average person purposely trying to be funny is even worse. So, caption contests invariably suck, but I enjoy checking out the responses in order to confirm that people haven't become any more funny in the past four months, when I last scoped out a "Caption This Photo!"

The C.C. du jour is this gem from TIME's Swampland blog:



Here is a sampling of the entries:

Hi, ho. Hi, ho. It's off to work we go!

Seriously? Like, did you actually think this was a winning caption?

Not only has the President relaxed the White House dress code, but he has also done away with the "all the President's men must walk in lockstep" rule of the previous administration.

In theory, this isn't horrible, but it errs massively in not being pithy. One of the rules to these types of contests is that you need it be short and sweet, 99% of the time. The other 1%, you can succeed with an extended caption if you're really, really good at capturing the sentiment humorously. This guy obviously fails.

"Into the sh**storm. You first, Joe."

I don't like the exact wording, but the idea is not bad.

I'm President of the United States and I still have to wait in line for the bathroom.

Funny on first glance. Less funny on second glance when you realize they're nowhere near a bathroom.

"Today, Miramax released promo pictures from its remake of 'The Commitments.' Not pictured is Morgan Freeman, who will appear in a cameo as Wilson Pickett."

Trying Too Hard: Chapter 1.

Joe Biden, having just secured funding for his beloved trains, proceeded to make a practical demonstration of how they work.

I like it.

High Ho, High Ho, it's off to work we go...a budget mess, a job of stress, High Ho, High Ho....

This is the type of thing I actually wouldn't be surprised to see printed in The Week or something like that. But it is really really awful.

You do realize Mr. President that there are more of us here than there were republicans that voted to save America?

Jokes like this are why HuffPo-wing Democrats are so fucking annoying to be around.

The Decemberists, "Odalisque"

Been listening to this a lot lately.

Kramer vs. Kramer

Moral 1: Do not become Meryl Streep's husband.

Moral 2: Do not make French toast when you're in a rush.

Moral 3: Do not become Dustin Hoffman's son. Maybe.

Despite a "happy" ending, this is a helluva depressing film. A total downer. Lots of parts that were hard to watch -- be it for the awkwardness, the physical pain, or the emotional stress. Shorter Kramer vs. Kramer: Streep leaves Hoffman, an absent-minded workaholic father of a little boy. He grows to bond with the boy, albeit very gradually. Fifteen months later, Streep returns, and sues for custody. She wins, but then has a change of heart.

For such an Oscar beast -- Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actress, Actor, and Screenplay -- I gather that this film isn't unanimously loved. And while I can understand that point-of-view, I disagree. Dustin Hoffman is absolutely phenomenal. The body language in this film is great; there are tons of extended scenes with minimal dialogue that serve to progress the main story arc, Hoffman moving closer to his boy, more than anything else in the film. The little kid is really ugly and annoying and bratty, but that can be overlooked. Streep is a very minor player, but gives a devastating performance in the climactic court room scene, where she gets totally ripped up in the cross-examination.

Mostly, the film is just really well made. There's very little fat on it. It has several nice touches that it uses to give you a peek into Hoffman's ever-altering state as a single parent. And it doesn't portray Streep in the divorce-court-aggressor light that has become such a cliche these days. I gather Kramer vs. Kramer was pretty groundbreaking in its day (1979), in a Benjamin Spock/Revolutionary Road fashion. It still holds up, and it isn't overwrought.

Idol Results

Did decent:

PICKS: Allison, Adam, Jesse. Nick might gimmick his way in, which is so lame. Maybe Kris?

Allison, Adam, and Kris sail in.

John Frusciante's The Empyrean

I think this album is pretty cool. Frusciante really doesn't have a good voice, but he uses a lot of white-man's-Kanye techniques and overdubs and fade-ins/outs that make it sound neat. The guitar playing is obviously awesome, and he has a sick ability to put together a catchy tune. Some real epics on this album; although it's not that different from the sound of Stadium Arcadium, he incorporates a lot of techniques that Kiedis and co. would never allow on one of their albums. I like this track:

"Fiscal Child Abuse"

What a retard.

Idol, 2/25

Randy: "Bring it!"

Kara: "It's all about doing the best you can possibly do."

Same theme. Lame.

PICKS: Allison, Adam, Jesse. Nick might gimmick his way in, which is so lame. Maybe Kris?

Jasmine: This girl is good, as I recall, and she's not bad looking. She got the bitch spot though. "Love Song"... WTF. She sucks. This isn't a song that black girls should sing, ever. Fail. Randy: "Yo, aight. You know what's funny... Pitchy." STOP SAYING "DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S FUNNY" WHEN THE THING FOLLOWING IT IS NOT HUMOROUS." Kara: "All over the place." Paula: "I agree with what they're saying." Simon: "Disappointed."

Matt: "Viva La Vida"... This guy has some star power. A certain Timberlake-y quality. Singing is whatever. I mean, Chris Martin sounds TERRIBLE singing this live, so how can anyone judge? I bet girls love him. Kara: "Just not blown away." Paula: "[I can't translate.]" Simon: "Verging on horrible." Randy: "You got madddddddddd talent."

Jeanine: "This Love"... FUCK THIS SONG. It's soooo bad. And she is not doing it any favors. Just bad, very bad. Paula: "Great legs." Simon: "Terrible." Randy: "The legs are definitely hot." Kara: "Overdone."

Nick: "And I'm Telling You"... WTF. God I hate this guy. He's like Napoleon Dynamite, except a real person. Just a total life troll. Memorable as hell obviously, but what. the. fuck. Simon: "I pray you do not go through." Oh Christ this guy needs to go. Randy: "One of the most entertaining." Kara: "We remember you." Paula: "This is America."

Allison: Wow, the interview with between this girl and Ryan is horrible. "Alone"... Meh. Whatever. I hate Idol so much. Everyone screams. Even the best people aren't good. Randy: "You just blew it out the box." Kara: "You're serious!" Paula: "You can sing the telephone book." I hate groupthink. All of you did not like this song. Simon: "You're the best tonight by a clear mile." She has a certain punky-brat quality about her. Rebel teen. Lily Allen-ish.

Kris: "Man in the Mirror"... Good song choice imo. This guy is likable, and has some heart-throb qualities about him. Decent-to-good. Kara: "Doesn't come close to Hollywood Week." Paula: "Disagree completely." Simon: "I agree with Paula." YES. GTFO KARA. Randy: "Nice jump-off, baby."

Megan: "Put Your Records On"... She's good looking. Not a good song choice. OMG. Not a good singer. Terrible. Awful. Just stop. Now. She is going to get panned. This is LOL. Paula: "The camera is in love with you." WHAT THE HELL... Simon: "Started off really well... oversang second part." Paula: "Doesn't she remind you of Nelly Furtado?" JFC. Randy: "Duffy, Adele, Winehouse..." Kara: "Package artist." I have no idea what any of them were watching. It certainly wasn't what I saw.

Matt: "If You Could Only See"... I definitely like this guy. Good voice for his music style. Personable. Simon: "Hated that song." ARE YOU KIDDING? Randy: "Boring." This is true, pretty boring. Could've used more edge. Kara: "We all like you." Goddamnit, this guy is likely gone now.

Jesse: "Betty Davis Eyes"... Finally, an interesting song. I like this chick a lot. Decent voice IMO. Really like this performance. Enigmatic. Randy: "OK." JESUS. HANG IT UP RANDY. Kara: "You took some risks... some moments I liked." Paula: "Captivating."

Kai: "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted"... Good song. Meh. Nothing memorable. Guy is gone. Kara: "Pitch issues." Simon: "Corny." Randy: "Soooo safe, man."

Mishavonna: "Drops of Jupiter"... Lame. Paula: "You can sing... but you can't sing." Simon: "You're very serious." Kara: "Loosen up." Gone for sure.

Adam: "Satisfaction"... This guy is going through -- without hearing it, I assume so. Great spot, great song, guy seems cool. Wow, this is not good though. All over the place. Wtf. He's got some high highs though. Loud applause. God. Paula: "I don't even have words..." LOL. Simon: "Parts excruciating... parts brilliant." Randy: "I loved it." Kara: "Vocal techniquing ability is outrageous."

Role Models

So-so. It has all the trappings of an Apatow production, so even though Apatow wasn't involved with it, I will label it as such. Sean William Scott was actually surprisingly good relative to my expectations. Paul Rudd was, well, Paul Rudd.

For most of the movie, however, I kept trying to work out what separates the comedy of the Wilson/Ferrell/Stiller era from the Rogen/Carell/Hill films. And there is a striking difference, but I'n having a hard time pinpointing it. The comedy in Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is worlds apart from that found in Zoolander and Wedding Crashers. Part of it, I think, is that the former group's films start out with a ridiculous premise -- see Old School, Zoolander, Starsky and Hutch, Dodgeball -- and just use the pure fantasaical nature of the storyline to drive the comedy. Contrast this with Apatow films -- Superbad, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers, 40 Year Old Virgin. While these plots aren't realistic, per se, they're certainly not on a level with a film that peeks into the trials and tribulations of an androgynous and half-retarded male model.*

So when Will Ferrell and Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughan start a fraternity, there's your humor. You don't need that many jokes if you've got that. Whereas when you have Jonah Hill and Michael Cera trying to impress some chicks in high school, you need a certain level of ridiculousness and wittiness to make up for the banality of the story. And so you have quirky characters like McLovin, who account for the comedic value lost in making a film about such an everyday occurrence. "Apatow humor" ends up being much more subdued and, thus, rewarding, than Stiller-brand jokes. I still laugh my ass off at Dodgeball, but it's even more gratifying when you have to think for two seconds before erupting into a fit of happy convulsions at Paul Rudd greeting Seth Rogen with "How are things at Buttfuckingham Palace?" It's not exactly deep humor, but it's the kind that makes you think "Man, wish I'd have written that."

*I suppose I have to forget Pineapple Express exists in order to make this argument.

I'm Hesitant To Say Underrated But...

Tough to beat.

Andy Barr Is Retarded

On the Jindal response, he writes:

Democratic governors who have delivered similar presidential responses in recent years also took their share of post-speech criticism—and it doesn't seem to have altered the arc of their careers.

Former Gov. Gary Locke (D-Wash.) is expected to be announced as Obama's Commerce Secretary Wednesday. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is thought to be the frontrunner to become the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary. Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was tapped this year to become the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Both Sebelius and Kaine drew wide mention as possible running mates for Obama.

These are all appointees. Jindal is not running to be the Secretary of Homeland Security. He is running for president. In theory. Meanwhile, TNR reminds us of the, you know, actual history:

Kathleen Sebelius’s name came up, people would talk about how impressive it is that she’s a strong Democratic voice in a conservative state and that she has true policy credentials--and then they’d say, But did you see her rebuttal? Similar deal with Tim Kaine, who was plagued by his dead fish performance in ’06. Gary Locke, Obama’s likely next pick for Commerce, gave such a bad speech six years ago that it’s a breathtaking act of charity that he’s been allowed to talk in public, in front of other people, with cameras around, again.

Why Qualify?

I know Jindal is a Rhodes Scholar. I know that he, an Indian-American man in his mid-30s, become governor of a state in the Deep South. And I know that he had the brilliant foresight to change his name to Bobby.

What I don't know is why everyone seems to think he's brilliant and praiseworthy, when there doesn't seem to be any evidence for this.

See Nate Silver:

I just want to know who wrote the speech and who vetted it. Because it was manifestly at odds with the talents of the guy who delivered it.

Joe Klein:

Bobby Jindal is a very smart fellow. Back when he was in Congress, I'd try to check in with him every six months or so, just to see what he was thinking about. At first, we talked about health insurance--his specialty. Then, about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina (he was appalled). He was fairly relentlessly conservative, but sometimes quite creative and always intellectually honest.

In short, a different fellow from the one who appeared on Meet the Press today. This Jindal was relentlessly conservative, but not so intellectually honest.

Amy Sullivan:

Jindal is a smart guy, a frighteningly smart guy. I'd love to hear his real, honest, not-positioning-for-2012 response to Obama's speech tonight because I suspect he'd have some sharp and useful criticisms.

Ezra Klein:

Jindal made a mistake accepting the GOP's invitation to give this response. Yesterday, he seemed like a different kind of Republican. Today, he doesn't.

The idea that Jindal was ever going to be campaigning for the Republican nomination for president on a "different kind of Republican" platform is mindboggling. I still don't get why anyone seriously thinks this guy could be elected -- especially given how boilerplate he has come across thus far. It's not like he broke out of the gates like Obama did in 2004.

With that said, I do wonder what Jindal's true goal is here. His opposition to the unemployment insurance component of the stimulus bill is purely political. But to what end? Is Jindal actually going to take on Obama in 2012, or is he just going to be testing the waters? Remember, he'll only be 40 or so when he begins campaigning -- Obama was 46 and his detractors always said he was way too young. Jindal just does not have a prayer in 2012. If things are actually still that bad that Obama is in a tough race, Jindal will not be the alternative who Republicans nominate.

Having said that, why the sudden push into the spotlight? Is anyone going to remember this in 2016? No. Will anyone remember it in 2011? No.

Confusing.

SNL on Jindal

Who will play him? Can't be Armisen. I honestly think Hader might be best, but they might give it to Will Forte.

This Is What Separates

The folks at The Corner from David Brooks. David Brooks isn't perfect, but most of the time, he knows how to call them like he sees them. Nobody can take The Corner crowd seriously because they're not even attempting to approach issues from anything but a partisan political framework. This is what "bothers" Derbyshire about the speech:

Was the invention-of-the-automobile flub Obama's only historical goof? He also said that the transcontinental railroad was built during our Civil War. It was in fact begun in July of the year 1865 and finished in 1869. Perhaps Obama was thinking of some other Civil War. It would be nice if a President calling us to historical challenges could fact-check his own historical references.

Yeah, the speechwriting team could've done a better job. And the pizza delivery guy could gotten my food here in 15 minutes and not 17. WHO GIVES A FUCK? You are a troll on the level of the dude under the bridge in Three Billy Goats Gruff.

On the other hand, David Brooks knows atrocious when he sees atrocious. And Jindal was atrocious.

Olbermann, re: Jindal -- "Oh God"

Caught this live, nearly died. Calderone has the video. Listen around :30 in.

K-Lo's Insta-Revisionist History

Re: the Jindal response, delusional hobbit-troll Kathryn Jean-Lopez writes:

Jindal

does exude a practical hope, rooted in things that work. And he forces the point that politics should be about ideas — competing ideas — and that the best ones should win.

You can tell, though, that he's used to just speaking (because he can) and not delivering prepared speeches.

UPDATE: The MSNBC commentators look very unhappy and Rachel Maddow was speechless.

Keith Olbermann was actually grinning, and Rachel Maddow was speechless because Jindal used the Republican response to Katrina as an example of a good thing for the party moving forward. Which wasn't what he really did. But your entry is about as disingenuous as they come. Nice rewrite bitch.

Some Things Bear Posting

Coates Likes TVOTR, They Must Be Cool

Awesome version of "Wolf Like Me." Kyp has a clearer guitar sound than usual and adds some nice improvising. Watch:

Nate Makes a Key Point

In the it-was-obviously-coming Oscar postmortem that Nate just wrote up, he touches on something worth noting:

Arguably, since Rourke's behavior was a known unknown rather than an unknown unknown, we could have gone a step further by disclaiming that the model's estimate of his chances of victory was probably on the high side. Then again, suppose that Rourke had won. We'd be saying: "see, Hollywood loves a comeback story" and feeling very satisfied with ourselves, perhaps wondering why the program had given him only a 70 percent chance of a win when it "seemed so obvious in retrospect".

While I think the amount of hands I currently play per month precludes me from describing myself as a "poker player," I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about poker, so this is obvious to me. But it trips 99% of people up. Hard. And it's really annoying. Nate gave Mickey Rourke 71% to win Best Actor, and Sean Penn had 20%. Well, Sean Penn won. And everyone is like "wow, Nate's predictions were really off." What the fuck. Yeah, they might have been. But you have no way of knowing that. There's a reason he didn't say Rourke was 100% to win. Sean Penn wasn't a favorite by his model, but still had a reasonable shot.

If you bet with anyone, on anything, with any odds, and lose, you will encounter the same problem/phenomenon.

There's 30 seconds left in a Lakers-Celtics game and Boston is ahead 95-93 with possession. I take the Celtics and lay my friend 3:1. Kobe finagles a steal and cans a three. I lose. He gloats: "Wow bad bet by you." No, GTFO.

Jim Bunning Is So Irrelevant

Yet I still LOLed when I saw this headline this morning:



Let this bit not go unnoticed: "[Jim Bunning]... explaining his support for conservative judges to a crowd at the Hardin County Kentucky Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner..." Would you even get into this party if you weren't a frothing anti-abortion, pro-Palin politroll? Jim Bunning, you look like racism personified. Your presence was sufficient; your explanation was redundant.

Not Goebbels, not Eichmann, not their terrible language...

This is why people hate Germans. These cannot be people. They are Dick Tracy characters.

Oh Hai, Would You Like a Scone?

Who would think this was a good name for a bakery?

After his death, a group of reporters — some retired, some out of work — with support from foundations and the University of California, Berkeley, banded together to continue his investigation into a local business called Your Black Muslim Bakery [...]

Body of Lies

You know, Hollywood has really not helped burnish the image of the Middle East during the Bush era. The tone of war/terrorism movies since 9/11 has really not been to the benefit of, say, Johawa Average. Whether it be Rendition, 1/3 of Babel, Syriana, The Kingdom, this, or any other of the dozen of this "genre," it's typically a pessimistic outlook and a haphazard mishmash of Islamic themes that so blurs the distinction between friends and enemies that it's like "whatever, bomb 'em all." The Hollywood Middle East Movie Formula -- while not rigidly adhered to by all of its subscribers -- goes a bit like this:



-SOMETHING EXPLODES... this is key to any flick that seeks an accurate portrayal of the Muslim world, where it's common to go down the block for a bagel and come back with half as many arms and shrug it off (pun semi-intended) like it's no big thing. This must be followed by
-A STRUMMING SITAR... because we know Mohammad Atta really dug on Ravi Shankhar. Accompanied by the
-REQUISITE SOUTHWEST ASIAN VOCALIST... She -- always a she -- doesn't exactly sing words, but rather strings together endless syllables and hums in a melodic style. Think of the tall grass scene in Gladiator and you'll know what I mean. Once the musical montage is over, the film
-CONTRASTS U.S. AND THIRD WORLD CULTURES... They're poor, we're not! We use forks and knives, they eat dirt on a plate made from dirt! Our lives revolve around soccer practices and taking out the garbage, and they're trained to use an AK-47 by age 11! DRUM THIS POINT HOME! Until...
-SOMETHING ELSE BLOWS UP... self-explanatory, followed by
-ENDLESS BUREAUCRATIC RED TAPE... NSA on the phone with the FBI, a Jordanian ambassador trying to get past CIA restrictions, the USAF screwing over the Army Chief of Staff -- it is the Middle East, ergo, the problems will be innumerable. Leading into
-BETRAYAL... Gee, that swarthy, untrustworthy slimeball named Jabar who was my Syrian liaison turns out to be a swarthy, untrustworthy slimball. No clue how this happened. And when this happens, the protagonist then
-FACES AN EXIS--
-A RANDOM DUDE WALKS INTO A MALL, SAYS "ALLAH AHKBAR," AND SUDDENLY THE PROPERTY IS IN NEED OF REDEVELOPING... I realize it's brown people, but holy fuck. How quickly are they making bombs? Continuing...
-THE PROTAGONIST FACES AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS... Why am I here? These people aren't people. This problem can't be solved. I'm just one man. I want a fucking Coke, and these sandstorms are killing my sinuses. We are suddenly brought back to reality with
-COOL HI-TECH STUFF... i.e., a satellite. And, finally
-GRATUITOUS TORTURE SCENE... If a group of Muslims has captured you, good luck walking away with 10 working fingers.

Worst Protest Ever

This N.Y.U. debacle. Far be it for me to act like I know anything about this outside this article and a few Gawker entries, but lol:

A protest by New York University students seeking negotiations with school officials over financial and academic issues ended Friday after almost 40 hours, with students leaving a dining room that had been barricaded and a school spokesman announcing the suspensions of 18 of the participants pending a disciplinary review. [...]

Ms. Quadir said that those inside the room were photographed and asked to present identification and that school officials distributed letters to N.Y.U. students that stated, “You are suspended from, and classified as a persona non grata at New York University.”

Shortly after 1 p.m., several dozen students rallied across the street from the student center to acknowledge the protest.

Among them was Ms. Quadir, who said that about two dozen students inside the dining room awoke on Friday morning to find that electricity and their wireless Internet had been cut off.

The reason?

After about 70 students took over the dining room on Wednesday night, they created a Web site (takebacknyu.com), where they listed demands, including a thorough annual reporting of the university’s operating budget, expenditures and endowment. They also asked that the university provide 13 scholarships a year to students from the Gaza Strip and allow graduate teaching assistants to unionize.

KEY POLITICAL PLAYERS.

lol @ Nicholas Kristof

Kristof is a good writer, but he is never really enjoyable. He's been in the poverty-stricken parts of Asia and Africa for so long that he's become a fanatic about contrasting how bad they have it there with how good we have it here. So while Marty Peretz is a horrible person, this is right on:

Kristof goes around (the world) looking for human misery, evoking this misery in print and then trying to put his readers on a guilt trip because most of the time there is nothing they can do about this misery. Except maybe send a $100 to some charity or other.

Which is why I nearly choked when I read the first sentence of Kristof's very next column:

I was going to begin this column with a 13-year-old Chadian boy crippled by a bullet in his left knee, but my hunch is that you might be more interested in hearing about another person on the river bank beside the boy: George Clooney.

Irony, Courtesy of Joe Klein

Yesterday, when Drudge red-headlined the CNBC rant against Obama's housing plan from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, Joe Klein wrote:

Take a look at this Drudge front page, all red and crazy. Over a CNBC commentary? It's obvious that Drudge, like Rush Limbaugh, is rooting for Obama to fail. But this sort of, well, crap, is downright pestilential. Real human beings have real investments--401ks, homes, small businesses--that are on the line. Again and again, I'm infuriated by those in the media who somehow don't understand that this crisis is real and can become worse. You can quibble all you want with Obama's stimulus plan or bank bailout or, in this case, his home mortgage relief plan, but I simply have no patience at all with those who aren't praying for these programs to succeed.

This is all good, except the day before, Joe Klein, in chastising the GOP as the "Party of No," said:

Huffpost reports that the House GOP members, who had so many wonderful things to say about the stimulus package was wending through the Congress, are now trying to take advantage of it. Politics 101 dictates the following: They should pay the price for their latter-day Hooverism. As little money as humanly, legally possible should go to their districts.

Antony and the Johnsons, 2/19

At Town Hall. Great show. His voice is really pretty phenomenal. Everyone there was either gay or from Eastern Europe. Antony was pretty chatty and likable, and drew lots of laughs as well as a few standing O's. The band was tight -- great acoustic guitarist, and nice jazzy sax player who doubled as their lead guitar on "Fistful of Love." "You Are My Sister" and "Hope There's Someone" were excellent. One of their concert staples is a pretty eery rendition of "Crazy in Love" -- something I had forgotten until he sang the end of the first verse and I was like "Oh, that's what that is!" Here's a vid of it at another show.

Also. Town Hall has some of the worst seats in history. Just awful. I'm not even a big person and I could barely fit.



Edit: Sick version of "Fistful of Love":

Interesting Dynamic in 1968

In learning more about the 1968 election, I stumbled upon this fascinating situation Nixon found himself in going into the fall. Basically, as per the polls, the election was Nixon's to lose. The DNC was a disaster for Humphrey. The violence in the streets combined with Humphrey securing the nomination through backroom finagling from Johnson to form a very bad outlook for the Democrats going into the general election. Humphrey was torn between repudiating the status quo in Vietnam, thereby losing all the machine support and Johnson men, and maintaining it, which would cost him the support of former McCarthy/Kennedy "new politics" acolytes. Plus he had no money, and Nixon was rolling in it. Early polls were breaking in the vicinity of Nixon 43/Humphrey 31/Wallace 19.

Yet Wallace had put Nixon in a weird spot. Wallace had virtually locked up the Deep South. But it was unlikely he was going to be able to take any states outside the MI-LA-GA-AL-AR corridor, with the exception of South Carolina. Wallace's role in other states, therefore, would be spoiler. And he was fairly popular in certain areas. The reason for Nixon's dilemma was that Wallace was popular with different types of people, depending on the area. For instance, in the South -- Texas, Tennessee, Florida, the Carolinas, Kansas -- Wallace's pro-segregationist stance attracted Republican voters. Yet in the industrial belt -- places like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin -- Wallace's demagoguery attracted union workers, or Humphrey's base. And Nixon's campaign men were banking on many who were picking Wallace in the polls to be persuadable, and to gravitate back to their original preferences.

So if Nixon treated Wallace like shit and dismissed his candidacy entirely, thereby invigorating his supporters, this might be positive in the North, but bad in the South. And while Nixon might want to move to the right of Wallace in a place like South Carolina, this strategy wouldn't necessarily fly in Pennsylvania. R.N. had to thread a needle, and find out a way to maintain Wallace's support in the North (so as to offset Humphrey's vote) while chipping away at it in the lower states.

Yeah, This Isn't Easy

Fuck

My predictions were backwards:

Moving on: Ricky, Tatiana, Danny -- I think. Alexis was given good points but she went early and was unmemorable. Michael wasn't great but is super likable and a redneck, so flip a coin I guess.

Danny, Michael, and Alexis move through. I guess Tatiana has a pretty sick shot in the Wild Card round though.

Hard to Resist

I need to amuse myself with commenters at TheNextRight.

serpicolugnut:

But make no mistake about it - this country is center right in its ideology (except for the West Coast and North East). All it will take for the country to remember that is a couple of years living under a socialist, and you can expect them to vote their ideology.

"Stairway to Heaven" is a pretty boring song, except for the last 3 minutes.

Michael Calderone Thinks He's Breaking News

He's not:

In three months since Election Day, at least a half-dozen prominent journalists have taken jobs working for the federal government.

Journalists, including some of those who’ve jumped ship, say it’s better to have a solid job in government than a shaky job — or none at all — in an industry that’s fading fast.

But conservative critics answer with a question: Would journalists be making the same career choices if John McCain had beaten Barack Obama in November?

First, rhetorical question handwaving is really lame and easy to do. Which is obviously why Politico does it. Second, that's not an important point. Most journalists are liberals, this much is obvious. And also irrelevant. What matters is whether they let this affect their reporting. A good goal is to pound the desk for some semblance of objectivity in reporting, not shoot for a 50/50 split in staff ideologies.

Plus, who would have wanted to work for McCain?

The National, "Brainy"

The National are a pretty tight band in all respects, but Bryan Devendorf is really a great drummer.

Something You Hear A Lot

Goes like: "Well what about all these Guantanamo prisoners, these Arabs, who are dangerous people, who seek to kill Americans, but there's not enough of a case to convict them in a criminal or military court."

Hard to believe that you know they're dangerous people but there's not enough evidence to mount a credible prosecution. Unless it's some weird cycle thing where you imprisoned them before they were dangerous, but now they're dangerous because you imprisoned them, so you need to keep imprisoning them because they're dangerous.

Michael Lewis is Awesome, But WTF?

From his Shane Battier story:

One statistical rule of thumb in basketball is that a team leading by more points than there are minutes left near the end of the game has an 80 percent chance of winning. If your team is down by more than 6 points halfway through the final quarter, and you’re anxious to beat the traffic, you can leave knowing that there is slightly less than a 20 percent chance you’ll miss a victory; on the other hand, if you miss a victory, it will have been an improbable and therefore sensational one.

If the Cavs are trailing Detroit 92-98 with 4:55 to go in the fourth, a) I'm not going anywhere, and b) if the Cavs do win, it certainly would not have to be sensational in nature.

Revisionism

TNR article on Politico:

On November 28, hours before the GOP debate in Florida, Smith got Politico's first major scoop, detailing that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had billed city agencies to pay for personal travel to the Hamptons as he was beginning his romantic affair with Judith Nathan. The story was picked up by the Times, the Post, and the three network evening newscasts. (With the news breaking just eight weeks before the Florida primary, Giuliani's campaign never really recovered.)

Oh, that was the reason RG failed so hard.

Idol, 2/17

Late edit: Wow, forgot about the rule change this year. Instead of bottom 2 get cut, top 3 move on. So we have 12 whittled to 3 this week, same next week, same week after, and then there's 9 left. That changes my calculation a bit.

Moving on: Ricky, Tatiana, Danny -- I think. Alexis was given good points but she went early and was unmemorable. Michael wasn't great but is super likable and a redneck, so flip a coin I guess.

--

First performance night.

Randy is a fucking idiot. "Yo dawg, you gotta really be in it to win it tonight." Really?

Theme: Hits From The Billboard Hot 100 Since The Charts Began

Jackie: "Little Less Conversation" ... not bad looking, but omfg awful. Shrieking. Worst outfit ever, looks like a hot fudge sundae. Her voice is actually painful. Loud cheers, inexplicably. LOL Paula -- "It wasn't a perfect performance, but perfect sometimes is boring." Jackie's dad is wearing a beret for some reason. Her mom looks like Streganona.

Ricky: "A Song For You" ...I like this guy. I mean, the type of music is awful, stuff you hear in Macy's. Pretty good voice, all in all. Randy: "The star of season 8 right here." Simon: "No star quality." Debbie Downer.

Alexis: Some Aretha song ... She looks pretty dated. And albino. I guess she has a reasonable set of pipes. Not anything to write home about. Randy: "You done found the dirt, you done found the soul." Try deciphering that. Simon gushes. She kinda looks like a girl out of Mad Men.

Brent: "Hicktown" (lol) ...This is like a techno country song. White Zombie meets Garth Brooks. This guy is cool, fills the generic flyover-state-vote-getter slot. Randy: "You're kinda like an old edge to country with a new country swagger." Paula: "I can definitely see you as a country star. Look what has happened to Bucky Covington." What the fuck. Is Bucky Covington even alive?

Stevie: Some Taylor Swift crap ...Kinda hot. A bit clownish. Her voice isn't good. If Taylor Swift was a post-pubescent male, she would sound like this girl. Randy: "That was not hot for me." Kara: "Who are you?" Simon: "Terrible."

Anoop: "Angel of Mine" ...Slumdog, Kumar, chicken tikka, Gandhi, IT support... OK. THERE ARE NO INDIAN MEN ON THE POP CHARTS. Dude, give it up. It is as if my Dell CS rep started serenading me. He looks like Aladdin. Please, just get out. Randy: "Interesting song choice." Translated: Omfg awful. Paula: "America has connected with you in a large way already." What? Anoop gives a floor speech defending his song choice to Simon. Simon seems to think "Angel of Mine" came out in 1987.

Casey: "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" ...This girl is smoking. She'll ride it Haley Scarnato-style. Which is fortunate, because her voice is really weak. Randy: "Not good." Kara: "Everything about that was wrong." Simon: "You look good." Girl is about to cry. Simon: "Karaoke." She's a lock for awhile, she's really good-looking.

Michael: That popular Gavin DeGraw song ...He is doing a really bad little dance. I would describe it as a jig. Thoroughly unremarkable. Paula cites the fact that Bo Bice, Elliot Yamin, and Chris Richardson sang the song. Not sure what that means. Simon likes him.

Ann Marie: "A Natural Woman" ...So bad. Bad bad bad. Pretty decent looking. Not much more to say. Randy: "Subpar. I didn't understand who you were as an artist from that." Kara: "I look at you, I want to hear 'Love Song' by Sara Bareilles." Simon: "The crowd... easily pleased."

Stephen: "Rock With You" ...Mostly okay, until he started screaming. Randy: "Not the joint for you to be singing." What an idiot. This dude is cool. Simon: "Pointless.. the last ten second were okay." What the hell. Total alternate reality.

Tatiana: Some Whitney crap ...I'm guessing this will suck hard. This girl blows, and she's a Jesus nut. I can barely hear her. She's actually not bad. Decent rendition. Standing O. Randy: "You had some moments there." Kara: "Who are you?" STOP ASKING THIS YOU DUMB BITCH. Paula: "I don't know who you are today." Okay, seriously, it's the first fucking episode. Shut up. Simon: "You are a complete and utter drama queen."

Danny: Some Mariah crap ...Paula just stood up. I don't get why anyone thinks that people want to hear a guy sing Mariah Carey songs. I guess it's what you have to do to win Idol. It's like courting the evangelicals. This was awful. Never again. His wife just died though, so everyone is clapping and screaming. What the fuck. Oh my god. Randy: "Blazing hot." Kara: "You are the hero." Paula: "Stellar." Simon: "Your wife is rotting in the ground so I have to say something complimentary." No, really, he said "It was good."

A-Rod

One silver lining in the A-Rod thing is that, while this certainly doesn't end the steroids-in-baseball narrative, it nearly ends a big part of it: exposing new players. Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod. Once A-Rod gets added to that list, there really can't be any more shockers. If Pujols or Guerrero or Helton get added, is anyone surprised? Jeter would a be pretty big deal, granted, but he's an anomaly. So while A-Rod doing it doesn't necessarily mean that 100% of the league was on roids, it does mean that we have all been thoroughly desensitized to this sort of thing. Which is good, because it's such a nonissue.

Duffy, "Hanging On Too Long"

Good song. Exemplifies why she's better than Winehouse. Along with having a bodyweight over 90.

You Need To Jump Off a Bridge

Some British wackjob named Nile Gardiner:

As the London Telegraph reported, Barack Obama has just returned a bust of Sir Winston Churchill to the British government. The bust was loaned to the White House in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as a demonstration of solidarity with the United States.

Obama’s surprise decision to send Churchill home is both wrong-headed and crassly insensitive towards America’s closest ally, coming at a time when nearly 9,000 British troops are fighting alongside their American counterparts in Afghanistan.

A "loan" typically indicates that the item in question will eventually be returned. Which is what Obama did. But clearly this is tantamount to Obama fucking Gordon Brown's wife and shooting 10 British soldiers.

RocknRolla

I'd be starting to wonder how it is that all the movies I watch are terrible if I wasn't consciously deciding to watch terrible movies.

How You Know Republicans Are Desperate

Crap like this:

One Million Dollars a Second

Here's another way of calculating the haste with which Congress enacted the $789 billion stimulus bill. Representative David Obey introduced it on January 26. Final passage took place on February 13. Minus Sundays, that period was all of 17 days. Including floor sessions, committee proceedings, and backroom dealing, let's generously assume that Congress was working on the bill 12 hours a day. Do the math, and you find that Congress was deliberating on the bill at a rate of just over ... one million dollars a second.

Why do I think, if Republicans had managed to tweak the bill and extend the debate until March before voting against it, he would have written a post "500 Grand a Second"?

Lily Allen, "Not Fair" -- Catchy

Obama and Gregg

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: wtf

doubleconsonant: yo

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: are you kidding

doubleconsonant: wtf i didn't even announce it yet

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: drudge

doubleconsonant: o. yeah, lol

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: fking come on, this was going to be so bipartisany

doubleconsonant: well that bill is terribad

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: obv but still

doubleconsonant: lolol

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: who else is qualified

doubleconsonant: who isnt qualified

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: good pt.

doubleconsonant: volcker?

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: he died two weeks ago, we're waiting to release it

doubleconsonant: sebelius?

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: she looks like a toothbrush

doubleconsonant: judd nelson?

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: fucking christ

doubleconsonant: is it an AA thing? need a spic or a darkie etc.

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: dude i'm black

doubleconsonant: yea sry, forgot

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: but kinda. bitches' table at the cabinet meetings is so gay. lahood, shinseki, vilsack, duncan, chu. who teh fuck even knows if solis will ever be approved

doubleconsonant: ahaha

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: your statement was retarded btw

doubleconsonant: how?

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: "always have been a fiscal conservative"? youre from new hampshire, you don't have any taxes to spend

doubleconsonant: good line tho, rite?

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: yeah n1

doubleconsonant: k i'm out

Ineedafuckingcommercesecretary: the census will fuck nh so hard, i promise you

doubleconsonant is currently baking a rhubarb pie

Pelosi and Reid

The problem with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid is mostly divorced from their policies. Everyone hyped up Obama for a new brand of politics, but what really carried him is how confident, calm, and reassuring he is, despite being of a younger generation. The same cannot be said for Pelosi and Reid. They are just terrible leaders, bumbling about and saying the same thing at every press conference (I swear Pelosi said verbatim on TV just now what she said on October 3rd). Harry Reid always looks like someone who has just been told that his dog has cancer and his son is gay. Nancy Pelosi looks like a horrific back-aisle mask from Party City. Every time they speak, I want to vomit. New leaders please.

Mindless Dickwaving

Can we stop carting down Wall Street CEOs to testify in front of Congressional representatives from North Dakota and Mississippi who went to Fuckall Divinity School and know nothing except how to shamelessly showboat? Seriously, not one piece of useful information has been gleaned from these hearings.

An Inconsistency

I've been seeing this a lot on both sides of the debate and now just capped off my Joe Scarborough and his band of minions. In discussing the Geithner "plan" that was outlined yesterday, the market is often used in place of an actual argument; "We were unimpressed by Geithner" chirps JS before citing the -380 DJIA as his evidence. Or bloggers that lambast the lack of detail in Geithner's speech, and then use the market plummet as an unquestionable display of their correctness.

However, many of these people are among those who argued "fuck Wall Street, who cares what they say, this is about real jobs, and nobody who works on Wall Street has a real job, so let's cap their pay at some random number, because they all live in Greenwich, and let's not take any more cues from them, because the eras of big bonuses or soaring profits for the investor class are over, so let's break the stranglehold that Wall Street lobbyists have on Congress." And if you are one of those who made an appeal of this sort, then please shut the fuck up about how the markets react.

Swing Vote

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad movie. It just sucks. Not much more can be said.

(Well, one thing. As we've just seen in the Minnesota Senate recount, it's really common for ballots to be miscounted on the first run through. And this is the reason automatic recounts come into effect when the difference in vote tallies are extremely tiny. Yet in Swing Vote, where the Republican incumbent, played well-ish by Kelsey Grammer, garners 266 electoral votes to the 265 for the Democratic challenger, who is played by a ludicrous Dennis Hopper, leaving only New Mexico's 5 electoral votes up to Kevin Costner's decision, as the state emerged in a dead-even tie at the end of the night, recounts would be too much of an inconvenience.)

(Also, George Lopez proves that there is absolutely no venue in which he is funny.)

Ben Nelson Is Horrible

Ezra Klein had a good post yesterday about Ben Nelson mindlessly reframing the ~$840B stimulus bill in "Nebraskan" terms. Long story short: Nelson is of the opinion that Nebraskans are of the opinion that billions of dollars is a lot of money. Great.

Two things:

One is that I'm really fucking sick of the term "conservative Democrat." The real definition is "someone who decided to run as a Democrat in a state whose citizens hates minorities."

Second is the twisted nature of the filibuster in the Senate. (Let's assume that the reason they need 60 to pass this isn't because of the budget legalese, but rather the implicit threat of a filibuster.) In theory, the Senate is supposed to be undemocratic -- proportional representation is reserved for the House. That's okay. Except on an issue like the stimulus. Now, there's no chance that a version that Obama wants to pass the House won't pass the House; nearly every Blue Dog would have to vote nay for that to happen. So the House is basically irrelevant, and the Senate is where the cutting and adding is done. Except in the Senate, not only does Nebraska have the same number of votes as New York, but Ben Nelson is somehow a power broker because a simple majority isn't sufficient. And this is why we have him saying stuff like this:

"Well, y'know, I don't know where he's from, but I'll tell you, in Nebraska, $60 billion for education on top of $40 billion, that's a pretty big commitment to education nationwide."

I guess this is what one does to represent his Nebraskan constituency: mindlessly demagogue the issue and throw out randomly huge monetary sums to wow idiot hick voters. But the idea that Nelson is wielding sizeable clout in creating the terms of a recovery package which is fairly obviously not intended to save Nebraska from it's OMFG 4% unemployment is hilarious. Are we going to give Nebraska 1/50th of the money?

The Case for Double Stuf

I can't understand why anyone still buys regular Oreos. Like, there might be a subset of people who think that creme-filling sucks, but I can't imagine these people would opt for regular Oreos over, say, E.L. Fudge or Malomars. And yet Oreos continue to sell, and sell way better than Double Stuf.

Anyone who has had both types of cookie knows it is no contest. So the only rationale I can think of for keeping regular Oreos around is so that they continue to act as a framing device for Double Stuf; without regular cookies, the double creme would not appear as big and special as it currently does. Everything is relative. If what we currently know as "Double Stuf" had instead been just "Oreos" at the time of the cookie's inception, it wouldn't be so glamorous.

Here's the solution:

1. Create Quad-Stuf. Shouldn't be hard, or confusing.
2. Get rid of the regular Oreo.
3. Rename Double Stuf as "Oreos" and Quad Stuf as "Double Stuf."
4. Profit.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 every 2 years until you hit a profit inflection point because all of your consumers have undergone coronaries.

Somewhere on the Internet

There is someone writing, without any irony, about the hundreds of man-labor hours that Obama is costing the economy with his town halls.

One Thing I Don't Get About Republicans

How do you become unified around your opposition to abortion and your opposition to federal spending? Well, that's rhetorical. Jesus. Jesus was anti-abortion. Roe means that abortions are legal in every state. Which is anti-states' rights. So we need more power for the states, and less for the federal government. Which means that anything the federal government does sucks.

There are 41 Republican senators. I think Hutchison, Murkowski, Collins, Snowe, and Specter are the only ones who are pro-choice. All, conveniently, are either women or senators who are described as "moderates" by the MSM or "traitors" by the right. It's reasons like this that Republicans will have trouble in the future, given that the country will likely be 60/40 in favor of allowing abortions by the time Obama ends his term(s).

This is one reason it's so hard for me to take the majority of Republican bloggers/writers seriously. I'll read a fairly lucid argument concerning the perils of certain stimulus measures, and it'll cause me to think a bit more, do a bit more research. But then I'll scroll down and see that only an hour earlier, that same blogger wrote about how Obama's abortion position is pro-death. It's like if at the end of an English class, your professor said "I think anyone that listens to rock music is hopeless."

Senator Nose Best

Quite a triumvirate.

2 Outta 3 Ain't Bad

I am proud of the AOTY pick though.

Robert Byrd's Desk

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Fuck me for liking this at all. Juno meets Garden State, minus the pregnant teenagers and dead mothers. Cheesily predictable and totally unrealistic (inasmuch as a film where kids drive around New York City all night can be unrealistic). Really not good, at all.

I'm torn. On the one hand, I think Michael Cera would serve the world best if he hung up his acting spikes right now, and went out -- well not at his apex, per se, but on a relatively high point on the downward slope that his career is currently stumbling along. On the other, I will continue to watch all movies featuring Michael Cera. Quite a paradoxical pickle. It could possibly be remedied by M.C. developing, oh I don't know, a second dimension maybe? Auditioning for a role that wasn't "18/M/nerd/gets hot chick"? We haven't seen any evidence that this will turn out good, true. But, it could possibly derail M.C.'s career so much that he starts getting refused for Drillbit Taylor II, so there's an upside amidst all this downside. Or I could just wait until he turns 25.

This movie is retarded for myriad reasons. Nick (Cera) plays a virtual clone of himself in Juno, with the nervous-geek-tics knob at 5 instead of 6. He wallows in self-pity and makes indie rock mixtapes for his bimbo-hot ex-girlfriend -- a relationship which seems... forced, to say the least (Things That Don't Represent Reality #1). Upon receipt of these mixtapes, the ex is constantly throwing them into the trash at Catholic school, where uber-hip but also straightedge (TTDRR #2) Norah (Kat Dennings) regularly finds them, takes them home, and adores them (TTDRR #3). Norah is Jewish, her dad is a big Jewy music exec, and at some point in the movie, she recites some Hebrew scripture bullshit, yet she goes to Catholic school (TTDRR #4).

Nick is in a high school rock band with his closest friends, who are both gay (TTDRR #5). They play a show in New York, where Nick meets Norah, and some horribly contrived teen-drama bullshit happens which did not even bear telling, let alone retelling. Nick leaves with Norah, while Nick's bandmates agree to drive home Norah's drunk friend, although this is probably TTDRR #6, since Nick and his friends live in Hoboken and Norah and her friend live in Englewood. But let's not let trivial details distract from such a revolutionary storyline.

Short story shorter: Norah's friend gets lost in New York. Apparently, in the alternate universe that is this movie, when you lose someone on a Friday night in New York City, the unquestionably correct move is to drive around aimlessly -- from Hell's Kitchen to Brooklyn -- hoping to see them on the street (TTDRR #7). This might seem blazingly retarded at first glance, but trust me: It's even moreso on second glance.

As you might be able to discern, nothing of any substance really occurs in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. The rest of the movie features Nick and Norah driving around the city, listening to his mixtapes (which, as per the standards of the aforementioned Garden State and Juno, are fairly meh), getting detached from one another (and necessarily finding each's respective SO before realizing that the status quo sucked and life could only be joyous if they refound each other and rekindled the fire of the 5 and 1/2 hour relationship), having sex in Norah's dad's recording studio (apparently the way kids do it these days is with jeans on -- who knew?) and then running around the city some more.

They tried to discuss "hip" music once, and failed on such an epic level that I must assume that the screenwriter was personally attacked in a Pitchfork album review. Norah is looking at Nick's iPod and remarks that she loves his taste in music, except for The Cure. Nick says "wat," and Norah says "well, I'm fine with their music, it's just the name -- The Cure. What are they 'The Curing?'"

I wept.

Jim Baker Was Fucking Ridiculous

Seriously:

Bush 41 aide in the 1970s.

Undersecretary of Commerce for Ford.

Ford campaign manager in 1976.

Bush 41 campaign manager in 1980 Republican primaries.

Reagan Chief of Staff, '81-'85.

1984 Reagan reelection campaign manager.

Reagan's Secretary of the Treasury, 1985-1988.

Served on Reagan's Economic Policy and National Security Councils.

Bush 41's Secretary of State.

Bush 41's Chief of Staff.

Bush 43's chief legal advisor in 2000 campaign.

--

wtf...

10 Worst Senators

This list is not based on anything other than geographic stereotypes, appearance, and general douchiness.

10. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY




New York's new Senator. Controversial. Hates Mexicans. Seems unspectacular, and thus un-New Yorky. Not that hot.

9. Mel Martinez, R-FL



Hasn't done anything. Is hated by Kirsten Gillibrand. Head was apparently squished in a vise as a baby. I get him confused with Bob Menendez.

8. Daniel Inouye, D-HI



Is actually much older than he is in that picture. Like dead-old. Represents Hawaii. He's pretty ancient. My grandfather calls him a Jap. Oh, and he's like about to die.

7. Jon Kyl, R-AZ



Helped put the kibosh on Neteller and Party Poker. Both of his names are spelled wrong. Minority Whip is a terrible position. His head looks like it should be put in a vise.

6. Byron Dorgan, D-ND



This guy isn't actually a Senator. Points off for obvious reasons.

5. Mitch McConnell, R-KY



Hasn't had a good idea in 30 years. Is married to Elaine Chao. Exudes cynicism. Takes fashion tips from the Wise Owl.

4. David Vitter, R-LA



Terrible last name. Pure obstructionist. Just turned 14 in December. Religious hypocrite. No really, he's like some random douche you knew at school that lucked into... the United States Senate.

3. Robert Byrd, D-WV



Used to be in the Klan. Isn't anymore. Still hates blacks. Loves earmarks. Was working on his first reelection when Rubber Soul was released. Not sure if he knows Obama won yet.

2. Joe Lieberman, I-Israel



No longer has friends. Hasn't had a success in awhile. Looks like a 15-year old basset hound. Wife's name is Hadassah. Couldn't swing Florida in 2000 or Connecticut in 2008. Is analogous to the black kid you picked on prejudice for your kickball team in 5th grade, only to find out that he had muscular dystrophy.

1. Harry Reid, D-NV



Hasn't smiled in years. Mormon. Somehow got elevated into a leadership position. Belongs to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Is hated by 90% of the country. Pro-life Democrat. Demagogue. Still unsure why he attends meetings with the White House and Congressional leaders -- does anybody ever say "Hey Harry, what are your thoughts on this?" Oh yeah, and he's a Mormon.

A Big. Black. Mike.

Zack And Miri Make A Porno

While it didn't take me that long to remember that this was done by Kevin Smith and not Judd Apatow, this seems very Apatow-inspired. It doesn't have the same incessant, in-your-face style of humor that Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin have. No tell a joke, then repeat the joke in a different form, and then nail it to the wall with a final coup de grace. No Paul Rudd. And yet it has a simple structure similar to Apatow's works. Some gratuitous male nudity. Friendly racism. Seth Rogen ending up with a chick insanely out of his stratosphere.

Zack and Miri have known each other since first grade, and live together in a platonic relationship in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania. They don't make much and they blow what they do make on crap. So, to keep the bills paid, they decide to make a porn movie. It's not Magnolia.

I can't decide what is most unbelievable: Seth Rogen being with Katherine Heigl, Jason Segal boning Kristin Bell, or Elizabeth Banks a) being single, b) living with Seth Rogen, c) happily agreeing to have sex with Seth Rogen, and d) eventually falling in love with Seth Rogen.

Rogen is surprisingly not tiresome, even though he's just doing the same shtick he's used in such movies as: every movie featuring Seth Rogen except Donnie Darko. Kevin Smith has a nice, understated subtlety to his writing, except for those countless instances where he decides to be the most unsubtle writer ever, such as in an early interchange between a black worker and his Indian boss, which plays out rather predictably and feels forced. I won't say this scene is an extreme outlier, because it's not, but most of Zack and Miri features a better side of Smith. Characters who happen to be funny rather than characters trying to be funny.

Elizabeth Banks is the best thing about the movie. Somehow, she fosters a degree of realism in her relationship with Rogen, and yet she (mostly) does not fall into the cliches that are usually inherent these roles; she's not an airhead, she's not overly quirky, she doesn't take off her clothes, and she's not annoying or bitchy. It's almost that Smith pushed the character so far to the unrealistic side of the spectrum (I mean, she agreed to make a porn with Seth Rogen...) that she emerged on the relatable and thoroughly enjoyable end. She's super-cheesy in the super-obvious ending, but it's a small price to pay.

Lastly -- early on, there's a high school reunion scene featuring Justin Long playing a gay pornstar (from whom they emerge with the idea to make a porn). From perusing the reviews for this movie, I get the sense that most people felt it was contrived, unfunny, and offensive, but I thought it was decently amusing. The problem is that Seth Rogen can put a damper on a lot of these one-off scenes because he's so one-dimensional. It's not so much that you know what he's going to say before he says it, it's more that you think you know what he's going to say beforehand, and then what he actually says is strikingly less amusing 90% of the time.

Frenemies

Max Payne

Oh sweet Christ.

There are bad movies that are decent (Con Air) and there are bad movies that are not decent (Paul Blart: Mall Cop). Max Payne is a horrible movie that is fucking atrocious.

When I used to play Max Payne, I never dreamt about it. And if I had dreamt about it, my dreams would not have been wild. But even in my wildest dreams, I would have never thought anyone would be retarded enough to make it into a feature-length movie. Why? Because the entire game consists of running around at night in New York and shooting everyone you see.

Unfortunately, John Moore did not receive my imaginary memo. That, and the fact that he's a fucking douche that subjected the world to The Omen. (I'm sure you recall the 6-6-06 frenzy; generally speaking, one wants to make a film and then pick a release date, not vice versa.) And so he crafted this amazingly awful work of crap, Max Payne. So let's tackle the movie as haphazardly as possible, so as to accurately convey the mood of the production. A lazy man's stream-of-consciousness, if you will.

In MP-ville, it snows every minute of every day, but never accumulates to more than an inch. The drab colors and incredibly stylized action scenes look like the work of Frank Miller's autistic stepdaughter. Somehow, Chris O'Donnell -- contrary to myriad reports -- is not dead. He's actually alive, and acting... in Max Payne. He is horrible, and -- MAJOR HOLY MCFUCK SPOILER ALERT -- he dies. Mark Wahlberg (Sir Payne) can apparently hold his breath in subzero water for multiple minutes and escape unscathed. An old guy who appears by Max's hospital bed as a friend early in the film actually turns out to have killed Max's wife and child. Pretty original, if you ask me.

Apparently, someone in casting decided that Mila Kunis (yes, this Mila Kunis) would be a natural as an Uzi-toting underworld goddess or something. That person decided wrong. I will die happy if I never have to see Mila Kunis trying to act serious again. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, this was such a minor transgression; you see, Ludacris plays an Internal Affairs detective. Based on the result, I'd say the odds that Ludacris chose to refine his chops at Julliard in between his work in Crash and this delightful performance are fairly long. To say he is token would do a disservice to men like these. His job in Max Payne is to be suspicious of Max and do a lot of snorting and huffing and screaming to get this crucially important point across as best as he possibly can. I don't think he will win Best Supporting Actor.

Perhaps most maddening about this abomination is the lack of a payoff. I don't think I could justify watching or recommending this movie even if there was a slam-bang shoot-'em-up finale (in that case, why not just youtube the final scene -- it's not like I need proper context to fully appreciate Mark Wahlberg unloading his Remington into a building of people). And yet as it is, the end of the movie totally sucks. Max just takes his super steroids and goes running through the mega-evil pharmaceutical building, pumping bullets into every moving object. Everything is dark and the bullet-time is TERRIBLE (yo dude... the Wachowski "brothers" did this a decade ago and it demolishes these FX). Like, you would think that somewhere amidst the development of this atrocity, the key players held a meeting. What made Max Payne a popular video game? Bullet time and getting the opportunity to shoot random strangers (this was pre-GTA III). What will make Max Payne a popular big screen item? This is the part of the dialogue where a heretofore quiet young Indian production intern pipes up and brings it to the attention of the rest of the downies at 20th Century Fox that they've been preempted. Twice. Actually, thrice. And it is at this point that, ideally, any director or producer who didn't have a sadistic and fucktarded sense of humor puts the kibosh on the whole deal.

Alas, this didn't happen.

A Ride In The Spin Machine

This is the article Drudge is referring to in the bottom URL. Here is the full quote:

The new president, seen by some as arrogant, was anything but on Tuesday.

"I screwed up," Obama said repeatedly during a series of TV interviews. "I take responsibility for this mistake."