David Letterman did the unthinkable.

Apologized for a really inappropriate joke.

“As they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke,” he said. “I take full blame for that.”

“I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed,” he said.

“So, I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke,” Letterman said. “I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future.

Nearly unprecedented I reckon.

Then again, it’s sort of like your buddy apologizing for passing gas on a road trip in the winter. You hear the apology and all but your eyes are still burning and watering for miles.

While I watch little television, especially that late at night, I have watched enough Letterman over the years to classify it as the high-fructose corn syrup of the medium.

David Letterman really has no nutritional value either.

Letterman’s joke…

…that (Sarah) Palin’s “daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez” at a recent Yankees game, still insisted he was referring to Palin’s 18-year-old, Bristol, who gave birth to a boy in December, and not her 14-year-old, Willow.

…wasn’t funny, but given the source it really wasn’t surprising.

Or relevant.

What is interesting is that David Letterman, in apologizing, forwent a potential Donald Trump v. Rosie O’Donnell-esque battle that would have most assuredly been a ratings boon for Letterman, who is reportedly already beating upstart Tonight Show host Conan O’Somethingorother in the ratings.

Then again, maybe it isn’t really all that interesting and I should go to sleep now.

Sorry I wasted your time.

Who’s less excited about the new Sacha Baron Cohen film than I am?

Austria:

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen currently still has a massive fan base in Austria, but that is soon to change as the media dubs his latest film “dull”, “insulting” and a threat to the country’s world image – and economy.

To be fair, most Americans haven’t been aware of anything from Austria since Yahoo Serious.

Yeah, yeah, I know – funny show, groundbreaking comedy, yadda yadda.

Look, don’t get me wrong; I like The Simpsons.  I liked Life In Hell, the  comic that brought creator Matt Groening to scuzzy, underground prominence in the eighties.  I liked The Tracy Ullman Show, on which The Simpsons started as a series of interstitial shorts.  I even enjoy watching the show, usually (except for the last five or ten years, when the show hasn’t been nearly as good as the first ten or fifteen years, or whatever).

No, it’s not The Simpsons I dislike, per se.

But The Simpsons are a lot like Star Trek; it’s not  the show itself that bugs me.  It’s the fans.

Over-the-top Simpsons buffs – the people who sneak show references into the most mundane bits and pieces of everyday life, who sit around cafeterias and trade show trivia for day after day, who answer serious questions with vaguely-appropriate Homer quotes – remind me of Star Trek fans, the kind that’ve adopted “Gene Roddenberry” as their worldview and live the creed in their daily lives.

They’re just like the Comic Store Guy…

…oh, crap.  Now I’ve done it.

Conventional wisdom is that Rocky is the only part of the franchise worth watching (or was, until Rocky Balboa, the sixth part of the series, came out).

But I beg to differ, from the CW and from most critics; I loved Rocky III.

The film featured Sylvester Stallone and “Mister T” – both of them at the brink of the “caricature” phases of their careers (from with Stallone only emerged in the mid-nineties, and T has not), but not quite there yet.

I saw this film about the same time I was drifting toward conservatism.  And that may have been one of the reasons I loved it; Rocky, the old-school plugger and ex-kneebuster from Philly (along with former foe and now-teammate Apollo Creed) were the old school; T’s Clubber Lang represented all that was gauche and vile about modernity.

And yet, for a film that basically was a cartoon, I loved the Clubber Lang character; T played it with visceral, uncompromising anger that went – I thought, and still think – way past the material.

Look, Mister T will probably never do Shakespeare in the Park – but after watching Clubber Lang, I was always disappointed he wound up on “The A Team” and chattering “I Pity Da Fool” for the rest of his career.

Rocky was, of course, a classic – one of my favorite movies ever.  Rocky II was, of course, utterly predictable; there was never a moment of suspense; you knew Apollo Creed was going down (and even though I’ve seen Rocky at least a dozen times, it’s still got suspense).

And even though I was a Republican by that time, Rocky IV was too obvious a “morning in America” Cold War movie even for me, the newly-minted Reagan voter; I knew the entire plot as I walked into the theater; First Blood was a much better movie.  I have yet to see V, and Balboa was another whole thing altogether (a great movie, but just…different).

But Rocky III?  I felt that one.

It’s a wrecking crew.

I know, I know.  Barney’s irritating.

My apolitical friends hate Barney because of his relentless, up-beat cheeriness and, of course, the voice.

My “conservative” friends – or at least some of the ones that look too hard to find political significance in life’s pettiest minutuae – detest him because of his cushy, relentlessly PC world.

And truth be told, there’s much about Barney, the long-running PBS show for toddlers and pre-toddlers, that’ll drive you nuts. The music is relentlessly simple.  The supporting cast – Baby Bop’s voice and sing-song delivery will drive you to cheap liquor, and the kids at the fictional daycare are, let’s just say, not gifted actors.

But my various friends and I all have one thing in common.  We’re not two years old.

Too obvious?  OK.  Most of my Barney-hating friends and acquaintances had never spent a day at home with a pre-toddler.

It’s hard to explain to them; I owe that purple dinosaur my sanity.

Let me explain.

Years ago, when Bun was a baby, I was working nights.  Her mother worked days.  So during the day, I watched the baby.  Indeed, Bun was a pretty active baby – so I didn’t do a whole lot but watch the baby.  Bottles, diapers, doing stuff – there wasn’t a whole lot of time for luxuries and dissipations like going to the bathroom.

But every day, I could count on two half-hour breaks in the action, where baby Bun would be glued so firmly to the screen (also strapped so firmly into the Snugli) that I could go grab a glass of water and a quick (quick!) trip to the bathroom without fear of getting jolted to reality by a squall of screaming. Bun was mesmerized, which was thirty minutes of being tethered to the baby by 25 foot cable, rather than a three foot leash.  Barney was on twice a day back then, and those two showings were my little rewards to myself that kept me going through the day.

So yep.  I owe that dinosaur.  Bigtime.

And whatever you want to say about the tone of the show (as an adult, and not the show’s audience), the theme song was the first song Bun ever learned.  And there’s nothing in the world more cute than a toddler singing her or his first song – it wouldn’t matter if it were a Throbbing Gristle song.  Although thankfully it wasn’t.

So anyway.  Step off the dinosaur.

I’m not sure why I hate Seinfeld.

I know; it’s funny; hilarious, even.  I watch it, and I laugh.  Sometimes really, really hard.  Even at Kramer.  The show is well-written, no doubt about it.

And yet I find myself gritting my teeth and getting antsy when I watch it, just like I do when I’m behind some yapping, whiny, self-centered dolt in the line at the grocery store – the kind that argues over the price they thought they saw on the shelf.  When I’m not laughing, the show irritates the bejeebers out of me.

Part of it is, yuks aside, watching Michael Richards has, for me, always been like listening to fingers scratching on chalkboards.  I’ve had an almost-visceral distaste for Richards ever since Fridays, the abortive ABC whack at Saturday Night Live’s market back in 1980. Richards/Kramer is funny, occasionally? Sure.  Irritating?  Always, always, always.

But the biggest problem I’ve always had with Seinfeld is the overall attitude of the show.  If Seinfeld were a person, it’d be fussy, uptight, nit-picky, whiny, infantile and grating.

Watching too much Seinfeld for me would be like being snowbound in a hotel room with Mike Gelfand.

So I laugh.  And I grit my teeth.  And, usually, just don’t tune in.

I feel so much safer with the new administration. Don’t you?

According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president.

Good news for General Electric, owner of NBC: Saturday Night Live hardly needs to hire writers anymore.

To: Distribution List (below).

From: Mitch Berg

Re: 15:01

If you are listed below, your fifteen minutes of pop-culture/reality show fame are officially over.  Please depart the public eye until the unlikely event you are asked to return. 

1. Omarosa
2. Gene Simmons
3. Ozzy Ozbourne
4. Shanna Moakler
5. The cast of Little People, Big World
6. “Dog” Chapman
7. The Real World
8. Tori Spelling
9. The Real Housewives of [anyplace]
10. The entire cast of Flipping Out.
11. Tyra Banks

Thanks for your cooperation.

That is all.

Speaking of Red Dawn, from yesterday’s discussion; once I heard that Hollywood – as in Big Hollywood, not John Milius, the author and director of the original – was going to remake the movie, I wondered: in today’s PC environment, just who would be air-dropping into our plucky Colorado town?

I figured the most likely suspects would be:

• Fundamentalist white Christians
• Jewish settlers
• Catholic Priests
• Wall Street Hedge-Fund Managers

So I was almost relieved – and only briefly so – to see the breakdown, from a leaked version of the script:

The bad guys/invaders will now be the Red Chinese, who knocks off America in the first 20 pages, and gets help from those stinkin’ Russians later in the movie. The cause of the invasion? Oil, of course.

I did say briefly, didn’t I?

There are hints that America is kinda to blame, too. In today’s PC environment, that’s not too much of a surprise.

– Our heroes: Jed is now a former Marine back from Iraq and Matt his high school star quarterback brother; Erica is now an Asian-American cheerleader; and Danny is the African-American star running back
. Basically, all the original characters will return (including keeping the same names) but as different archetypes.

I dunno.  I don’t see quite the same angst about the Chinese.

(Yet).

As noted in the previous article, I hate crap.

Unless it’s good crap.

Or, if it’s bad crap, at least let it be bad crap that does something good.

Let’s be clear; Red Dawn is a crap movie.  It’s so crappy, only Quentin Tarantino should direct the remake.

And yet I love it.

It had everything a teenage guy (or in my case, a twenty year old, which in college is just about the same thing) could want.

It had all your best buds, out on a really serious adventure!

It had blatant cold-war emotional manipulation!

It had you…er, Patrick Swayze and all your buds kicking righteous ass!

It had Ferris Buehler’s sister and that Caroline In The City chick whose name eludes me, with guns!

Jennifer Gray and Lea Thompson!  I didn’t even have to look it up!

I noted long ago that I’ve only walked out of two movies in my life; Tom Hanks’ wretched The Burbs, in 1988, and Little Nicky in 2000.  Red Dawn was nearly the first; during the scene where the student council president (who later betrays the group) calls for the vote on going back to town after the invasion?  I started getting my things together to get up and go – but since it was a cold night and only homework at college awaited me, I stayed put. 

And there were more justifications for getting up and going; any scenery that Lea Thompson doesn’t shoot or blow up, she chews; you can see Powers Boothe silently cursing his agent in every scene; the ending is mawkish and awful.

But it’s a John Milius movie.  And Milius has a way of making “marinading in testosterone” fun, and even thrilling.  Dirty Harry was only a few steps above Tarantino-level dreck – but there’s not a person in the film-going world that doesn’t love it; there are people in Sri Lanka whose only English is “Go Ahead, Make My Day”, and they all get it.

And as bad as the movie is, Milius is in fine form, pushing all the same buttons that get otherwise-sophisticated Americans to get a little verklempt at “God Bless the USA”, or sing along “we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way!” with Toby Keith. 

It’s manipulation.  It’s crap.  It’s glorious. 

It’s almost a rite of passage, these days.  I watch it with my kids, partly to point out the crap, and partly to pass on the great two-generations-from-white-trash folklore of the whole thing. 

Wolverines!  F**k Yeah!

Now, I’m going to go listen to “This American Life” to rebalance my chi.

Take two patties of crap.

Mold them around a piece of pungent, sharp swiss cheese to form a “Juicy Lucy” patty.  Grill the patties to perfection, and put them on a fresh, just-crusty-enough Kaiser bun, with Jamaica onions, tomatoes, a little smear of garlic paste, dijon mustard and ketchup.  Plate it with some impeccable steak fries with pepper-catchup and ranch dipping sauce. 

You’ll have a real work of culinary art and craft on your hands, a testimony to the skill of the cook and the quality of the ingredients…

…or you would, if it weren’t for the fact at the center of it all it’s still just a crap sandwich. 

Film buffs tell me I’m supposed to looooove Quentin Tarantino.

I can’t stand him.

Oh,  Pulp Fiction is all right; it’s entertaining, but terribly overrated.  But a little of it goes a looooong way.

Which is better than I can say for the rest of his filmography.  Reservoir Dogs is like Diner for people who were raised by bad dog trainers.  The Kill Bills  were like the sandwich above; crap sandwiches, albeit well-crafted with with the occasional “ooh, cool!” piled between the patties of crap and the bun.  I never saw Grindhouse, but I’ll take a guess and wager “crappiest” was the adjective I’m looking for.

But here’s my big beef (as it were); what would we say if, say, a music producer came to the fore whose entire oeuvre was recapturing the magic of Tommy Roe or Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods?  We – people who care about actual music – would shake our heads, mutter etro Uber Alles people have gone too far”, and go about our business.

If a chef opened a high end restaurant featuring Tang, Space Food Sticks and Cap’n Crunch, what’d the culinary crowd say?

Well, we know what some of them – the crowd that flocks to Chino Latino to get abused by the surly hipster waitstaff, the ones that get their yuks at just how tacky people used to be by wallowing in faux irony.

And that’d explain Tarantino.  He’s a one trick pony; his only trick is endless, pointless homage to the kitschiest, ugliest, shabbiest things American moviemaking has ever done.

Wheee.

Tracy Eberly at Anti-Strib once said that my dislike of Tarantino was a musician thing:

Mitch Berg has highlighted the massive chasm that exists between movie people and music people.

He actually admits to hating Quentin Taratino’s movies!

No.  It’s a “I dislike, and refuse to celebrate, crap” thing.  Accepting Tarentino as a good example, much less as the sine qua non of American filmmaking is like going to Manny’s and ordering a cow flop steak with all the trimmings.

Look – just for future references:  Doesn’t matter if it’s crap music, crap literature, crap dance or crap movies.  And it really doesn’t matter if it’s just a well-crafted, lovingly-obsessive, irony-drenched homage to crap, or the first-generation variety. Crap is Crap. 

Tarantino: he may not be crap.  He’s just built a career out of repackaging crap for those who idealize crap or, worse, think that paying homage to crap ennobles it. 

Go ahead, Quentin.  Pull.

…and Perez Hilton sought permission to film a video in your living room, whatever your opinion of gay marriage, you might tell Hilton “Karma’s a Bizzatch”, that actions and words have consequences, and to sack up and go do his filming in, say, Miss Oregon’s place.  Right?

In the same light, and even though I’m not Catholic, I can’t help but wonder why Ron Howard is making hay with allegations that the Vatican might have obstructed filming of his latest Dan Brown fiesta of anti-Catholic defamation?

When you come to film in Rome, the official statement to you is that the Vatican has no influence,” he said. “Everything progressed very smoothly, but unofficially a couple of days before we were to start filming in several of our locations, it was explained to us that through back channels and so forth that the Vatican had exerted some influence.””Was I surprised? No. Am I a little frustrated at times? Sure,” he said.

Nevertheless he said he felt that he was able to preserve the overall “Angels & Demons” experience despite the restrictions by recreating scenes on sets. For the Sistine Chapel alone, some 20 members of the production crew — posing as tourists — took photos of all the frescoes, floor mosaics and paintings of the tiny chapel where popes are elected — until they were told to stop, the film’s Web site says.

Did I say “anti-Catholic defamation?” Why, yes I did.

On the show 24 this few seasons, I’ve noticed (along with a few million other fans) that Cisco Systems must have paid huge money to the producer to have not only the government, but the terrorists, using their “NetMeeting” virtual conferencing system (in a very, very slicked-up Hollywood version utterly unfamiliar to those of us who’ve been using the more mundane versions for the past several years).

And then I noticed – everyone on the show uses Heckler and Koch firearms; Jack Bauer dropped his SIG 226 and switched to a USP back during Season Three; the various redshirts “tactical” guys all carry MP5s; this past several seasons have seen Jack, his friends and his enemies blasting at each other with G36, MP5, MP7, PSG1 and the HK416; indeed, the slick black HK pieces seem to have displaced pretty much everything else on the show.

And they’re popping up on other shows as well.  And I joked “H’nK must be paying great money for product placement!

And when I joke about something like that, it seems to turn up as reality as often as not:

The German gun maker Heckler & Koch (H&K) intensifies a marketing strategy of product placement in movies and TV-series, a feature of the British TV-station Channel4 has found: “You can’t advertise guns on TV, so what do you do?” According to that report the Oberndorf based company has increased its efforts to convince armourers in Hollywood of its newest models. Already in 2004, the then spokeswoman of H&K, Andrea Franke, confirmed to the Greenpeace magazine that the U.S. subsidiary of H&K closely cooperated with the movie makers.

I’ve heard from friends that Hollywood’s “armorer” community – the prop-wranglers that handle firearms for movie shoots (which are usually done in places like California, New York and Vancouver, places with institutionalized government paranoia about guns) are among the most eagerly-awaited guests.

While there is no secret that the owner of the German pistol producer Carl Walther travels himself to the movie sets of each James-Bond-sequel to hand over the PPK or lately the new P99 for 007, it is not known whether H&K’s owners Andreas Heeschen and Keith Ralston, who are both part of British High-Society anyway, do likewise. However, it is noteworthy that Bond defeats his adversary in “Casino Royal” (2006) with the submachine gun HK UMP which is used by many special police units in the US. The poster for the new film “Quantum of Solace”, which is due to be released in November 2008, shows Bond’s silhouette with H&K’s MP5 submachine gun (http://movierls.info/?p=9). And the expert on war cinema Peter Bürger points to the fact that Bond’s opponent in “Die Another Day” (2002) uses an XM29, which H&K had developed for the US-Army.

Of course this piece was written by someone from the pants-wetting set (emphasis added):

Also, in the successful TV series “24”, which has evidently inspired some US soldiers to torture, agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his colleagues use some current H&K weapons, the assault rifles G36 and HK416 [and the USP, UMP, MP7, MP5 and PSG1.  Amateur].

This is the first I’ve seen Jack Bauer -a  fictional character – replace Karl Rove and Dick Cheney in that claim.  Fact-check time; the only real life torture the show has ever inspired was a desire on the part of fans to waterboard the writing staff after Day Six; the urge was communicated clearly enough that 24 seems to have done the improbable – having jumped the shark in Season 6, it feels like it’s actually jumped back this year.

What was that gun you saw in that movie?

Fear not – you can find it on the Internet Movie Firearms Database.

Maybe.

Andrew Breitbart says Republican is the New Punk rock – by which he presumably means less “Richard Hell passing out in a  puddle of his vomit in the dressing room at CBGB”, and more “anti-establishment”.

And the premise makes sense:

Johnny Cash was punk rock. The birth of rock came when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Cash toured small towns and set the youth on fire. Parents were outraged. The long dippity-doo hair atop gyrating men “dancing like the negroes”  before frothing young girls set mainstream culture against this rebellious little movement. It was our first smell of anarchy and it scared the establishment.

“God Bless Ronald Reagan and God Bless America” – Johnny Ramone, longtime closet Republican on his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Never before has rock been so central to the inauguration of a president. Bono is an ambassador in sunglasses who still knows how to pull a string and get an audience of thousands to put their fist in the air.

But rock cannot be both establishment and anti-establishment. It can’t be a rebellious underdog while endorsing and distributing the status quo. And yes, President Obama is the status quo of unlimited spending and government expansion he supposedly opposed during the election…This is the mainstreaming of the bad boy, complete with rat-pack suit and cigarette in hand. A snappy skin spread over the boring, failed, liberal Democrats of the sixties. Hope and Change was nothing more than a repackaging of policies that have no right to be associated with hope or change.

I’ll cop to it: I initially thought Breitbart had a stretchy thesis.

But one of the conceits “artists” cling to is that they give people a different approach to perceiving the world around them – both physically and intellectually.  And for much of recent Western history, art in its various media and genres (to say nothing of the culture of the “artist”) was by nature critical of the “establishment”, whatever that was.  This predates rock and roll, by the way; Beethoven thought that societies needed, and needed to exalt, artists precisely because they were uniquely qualified to look beneath the surface of society’s institutions.

Of course, in the past two years America’s “artistic” community has pretty much abandoned that role to serve as shills for Barack Obama. Indeed, American “art” follows three tracks: academic “art” is beholden to a politically-correct academic establishment that is inextricably tied to the left; non-commercial art has turned itself largely into an entitlement-driven industry that is financially beholden to, and uncrically supportive of, the left; commercial art (think music, movies and publishing) have been in the bag for, and uncritical of, Obama all along.  Beethoven may have had a point in 1815 Berlin; what passes for America’s artistic community today is little but cheerleaders for the newest incarnation of the Establishment.
Breitbart:

The arts have failed. They no longer keep mass culture in check with thought-provoking art that challenges the establishment. Now they’re in charge of spreading the mainstream mandate of the Liberal Vatican. There isn’t an original thought among them, just a thousand-mile stare, a blue logo and the drone-like vocabulary of emotive, vaguely inspiring chants.

I was about to write “think Socialist Realism” – but then Obama-based art basically resembles the old official genre of the Soviet Union anyway:

Breitbart:

We’re the new rebellion against the majority juggernaut that doesn’t take kindly to dissent. Make a fist and show them what happens when they tell you what to think, feel and believe.

(Uh oh, Andy – that’ll get you labelled an “extremist”).

If you want me to unite to your cause, then end abortion, give the people back the money they earned, fight terror, keep your hands off free speech on the radio and enable job creators to make more jobs. Until then, screw your hope and screw your change.

I’m totally the Mick Jones of conservatism.

But I digress. Read the whole thing.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is going to be on “Weeds” this season.

Showtime says the 47-year-old actress will appear on the fifth season of the hit dramedy, which premieres June 8 on Showtime. Leigh will appear in “at least two episodes” as the older sister of Mary-Louise Parker’s character.

Now, I don’t even have Showtime. So why do I note this?

Because for the past twenty-odd years, I have never been able to tell Parker or Leigh apart, or at least have always mixed the two of them up. I couldn’t tell you (without looking at IMDB) which one was in Rush and which was in Fast Times.

In fact, all of that generation of actors that adopted three part names – Sarah Jessica Parker, C. Thomas Howell, Doogie Houser Harris – kinda blend into one big blur for me.

…production that Lindsay Lohan has been in in quite a while.

Sari Gordon Mwrites about moving to the country to be a writer:

I coerced my husband into moving out here so I could pursue what so many other writers dream of, a nice place to be alone with my thoughts. My husband went along with it because the farmhouse came with a huge new garage.

Another “slick urban fish in a rural pond” story?  More “I can’t find kickass Oaxacan tacos, and my neighbors are bible-thumping gun-toting rubes!” anecdotes?

My dream was inspired by Dolly Parton. The story goes that, once a year, Dolly spends a week in her childhood cabin in the mountains alone. She ditches the wardrobe, the make-up, and the wigs. In the cabin she has no phone, electricity, no plumbing. And once she gets there, she fasts for five days. After that, she says, the songs come, and she writes.

OK.  I’ll cop to it.  I wanted to hate the story.  I tried to hate the story.

But it’s not bad.  Worth a read.

Especially for the slick urban fish.

…direct to my brain, it’s Sheila again:

I sometimes feel like I don’t quite fully exist during the off-season, because it seems like something is missing. I can’t put my finger on it. What is it … what is missing …Oh, that’s right. Baseball on giant television screens in every bar you pass.

I don’t feel totally myself until it all starts up again.

Whew.  Let’s wash all that greasy NBA, NHL and NFL out of our hair and get life underway!

…another promising career….sacrificed in the name of Hopey Changey^®.

In case you haven’t heard (because its so relevant to the average American) Kal Penn’s character, Dr.  Lawrence Kutner offed himself on last night’s “Can’t! Miss!!!^®” episode of House, M.D., and they are making an insipid attempt to make it “real” with a tribute video and memorial web site.

The next day (he should have waited three, maybe?) he is resurrected.

Actor and longtime Obama supporter Kal Penn is joining the Obama administration, the White House confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

What’s he going to be doing, what with all the qualifications he now possesses, having not been a doctor but playing one on TV?

The actor will be part of the White House Office of Public Liaison, which is run by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Penn will be primarily involved in dealing with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and the arts community.

Come again? So he’ll be liaising (yes, its now a word) with Obama and his peeps.

Not what you’d call a lateral move.

Subliminal advertising in the form of product placement in entertainment programming is nothing new. 

24 in particular – which seems to have performed the unthinkable, and re-jumped the shark and become watchable after its terrible sixth season – has indulged in some really bald-faced placement this past few seasons; Cisco has insinuated WebEx (or some special counter-terror version of WebEx that looks utterly unfamiliar to those of us who’ve been teleconferencing with it for years, now) into the dangedest places on the show this season.

But I noticed something else earlier this season, and it came to a head this past Monday.

In Season Three, Jack Bauer switched from his trademark handgun of the first two seasons, the SIG-Sauer P226 (the Audi of handguns) to a Hecker and Koch USP (the BMW of handguns).

Fair enough.

But for the past two seasons, and especially this season, every time someone picks up a long arm (who isn’t an obvious M16/M4-carrying US serviceperson), it’s a Hecker & Koch weapon; MP7s and G36s have been joining the Redshirts‘ CTU Tac Teams’ FBI’s MP5s in the big shootouts.  Bauer has chased through at least a couple of firefights this season with the esoteric MP7.

And then, this past episode, Agent Hotpants called in that Quinn had used “a Hecker and Koch UMP Submachine Gun” to kill Senator Red Foreman.  Now, you never hear the full make and model of firearms on TV, outside of reality or fictional cop shows (CSI or occasionally Law and Order), and even then only very rarely, and almost always very generically (“Beretta”, “AK”, “Smith and Wesson”).

So I gotta wonder – is H’nK paying for placement on 24?  Perhaps to help move their excellent products from their brand new American factory? 

And if so, could they perhaps try advertising on blogs as well?

Because either way it’s pretty dang cool.

Paintings/sculptures made from recycled cassette tape

Flickr user iri5 has an impressive series titled ‘Ghost in the machine’ of portraits of well-known musicians (such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Ian Brown, …) made from recycle [sic] cassette tape.

I suppose you could do them with eight-track tapes, but only for artists from before like 1976…

As much fun as I have dinging on Garrison Keillor (I mean, it did put this blog on the map), I gotta confess, I do love A Prairie Home Companion. I listen to it as often as I can, usually live (because, due no doubt to copyright issues, the only part you can actually get via podcast is the “News from Lake Wobegone” segment; it’s good, but it’s not the whole show.

Still, the show has its downsides – parts that make me tune out.

So, due to popular demand, I present – A Prairie Home Report Card: the top and bottom five things about APHC:

The Five Persistent Questions A Prairie Home Companion Gets Wrong: 

5. Keillor’s Relentless Upsucking To The Dems: Goes without saying; just wanted to get it out of the way.
4. The Guy With The Knock-Knock Joke Song Every Year: Ka-nock, Ka-knock. Who’s there?  Tawanna.  Tawanna who? Tawanna eat a Beretta when I hear this song!
3. Garrison Keillor Trying To Sing Harmony With Opera Singers: What did the sage once say about ordering a tuna sandwich at a steak joint?

2. BeBopAReeBop Rhubarb Pie: Perhaps it’s because I have a viscerally bad reaction to the term BeBopAReeBop from childhood – but please, for the love of almighty Vishnu, give this bit a rest.
1. Pat Donohue’s Songs: Donohue’s a great guitar player.  But do we need to have a different fake “blues” song about the mundanities of Minnesota life every episode?

OK, there’s the yang.  Now, the yin:
The Five Things About A Prairie Home Companion That Are Strong, Good Looking and Above Average:

5. Fred Newman’s Sound Effects: I do know, basically, how he does it – but it’s still friggin’ amazing.
4. Real Lives Of The Cowboys: Better than Guy Noir.  And that takes some doing.
3. News From Lake Wobegon: Whatever Keillor’s other flaws, he’s got small-town Scandinavian-America dialled in.  And even though he’s been doing the same bit, really, for almost forty years, it still never gets old to me.

2. The English Major: Yes, it cuts too close to home.  Who cares?
1. The Ketchup Advisory Board: Funniest fake commercials ever. Funnier even than the Bud Light “Real American Heroes” spots.

That should settle any issues.

The Minnesota Twins Mpeg discount tix prices to the Dow:

The Twins will discount certain seats for Monday home games, based on the Dow Jones Industrials. The promotion will tie the cost of tickets in the “Home Run Porch” area in lower left field to the number the Dow closes at on the preceding Friday.

For example, if it’s in the 8,000s on Friday, those seats will cost $8 on Monday. If it’s in the 7,000s, it’s $7.

The regular price of those seats is $21. The deal excludes the April 6 opener and Memorial Day, and there’s a limit of eight tickets per person.

The way forward from this is obvious: as long as Obama is in office, we can count on more carnage on the Dow.  So I plan on borrowing some friends’ tickets, short-selling them in anticipation of big Monday morning selloffs reacting to bad economic choices Obama tries to hide after 5PM Friday, taking the call-back, and making a ton of money.

Then, I plan on offering a derivatative security based on the price fluctuation in Twins tickets, not so much because I think it’s a good idea for a security as the incarceration of Petters, Madoff and Stillwater leave a huge hole in the “ready to pluck a sucker” market, and what could be better to plug that gap than a derivative based on the shorting of baseball tickets?

Soon, I’ll own the Netherlands – hopefully before the Ticket Bubble bursts.  And best of all, the Obama Administration will bail me out!

Go Twins!  And Go Bears!

Normally, I can’t say as I pay much attention to the comings and goings of Vikings players.  I mean, if they, mattered, they’d play for the Bears.

So the departure of Matt Birk to the Ravens doesn ‘t really affect me in the least.

Or so I thought.

Because while I could care less about the football, Birk’s departure might at least in part explain the shuttering of “Matty B’s”, Birk’s downtown Saint Paul watering hole, former home of one of the better happy hours in downtown.

Now it’s impacting me…