Major League Baseball pitchers and catchers start 2reporting for Spring Training around the league today and over the weekend (actually the Indians reported yesterday, but who cares?)
Cubs? Today. Twins? Sunday.
I’m just going to chant “baseball” to myself and wash the smell of this past few weeks out of my mind for a bit.
…during the Grammies last night: The only way to make Kate Beckinsale any better…
…would be to wrap her in bacon.
That is all.
…don’t try this…
He bought about $20 worth of bacon and Italian sausage from a local meat market. As it lay on the counter, he thought of weaving strips of raw bacon into a mat. The two spackled the bacon mat with a layer of sausage, covered that with a crunchy layer of cooked bacon, and rolled it up tight.
They then stuck the roll — containing at least 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat — in the Good-One Open Range backyard smoker that they use for practice. (In competitions, they use a custom-built smoker designed by the third member of the team, Bryant Gish, who was not present at the creation of the Bacon Explosion.)
Mr. Day said his wife laughed the whole time. “She’s very supportive of my hobby,” he said.
…then I sure can’t.
My intestines are rebelling just looking at it.
Although my taste buds are ready to go all Jack Bauer on my lower digestive tract…
I had no idea that this was an established photographic technique, and given the warped sense of perspective involved, I was afraid my odd reactions in viewing these sorts of photos was a symptom of some kind of vertigo.
Happily, the answers are “yes” and “not necessarily”.
It’s a season of celebrations; Christmas, Chanukkah, Eid, Solstice, New Years, the Saint Paul Winter Carnival…
…and, to wrap up the season of celebrations, Reagan’s Birthday is coming up in a mere 12 days.
And to commemorate this solemn yet happy day, Shot In The Dark presents a special artistic achievement over the next 12 days. Suitable for a National Endowment for the Arts genius grant, it is nonetheless being done entirely on the free market.
Tune back at noonish.
A couple of seasons ago, I thought I’d pretty much figured out the formula behind Bravo’s lifestyle-reality shows – like Project Runway and Top Chef and a few other vastly less-interesting ones. Each season, the final 3-4 contestants would be:
This season, Top Chef‘s producers must have read this blog and decided to change it up a bit.
Oh, some of the picks seem easy enough: Stephan, the prickly, boundlessly arrogang German, seems a shoo-in for the arrogant guy title. And Fabio the hilarious Italian and Jeff the cool, calculating Floridian seem like solid shots for the Mr. Competent slot.
But the Hot Babe title seems to be heading for a let-down – which is a double-shame, given the bumper-crop of fantasticality that the show stasrted with. Of course, Lauren – the Army wife from Savannah – was the standout in the bodacity department, but she flamed out on Week 1; the other obvious frontrunner, Jill, got ejected in Week 2. Things plateaued at a good level for several weeks – with the ever-so-cute Radhika and the very-hot-for-40 (hey, I’m 46, and you find looks where you can) Ariane holding out until mid-season. But both the latter were ejected in consecutive weeks, right after the non-standout Melissa, leaving the show with only the plucky, overly-tattoed lipstick lesbian Jamie, the talented but bizarre Carla (who never seems to blink) and Leah, who seems to have survived primarily because the romantic tension with the cartoon-y Hosea has got to be like catnip to the producers.
So we’ll see.
As a consolation prize, it’s fun to see that Chicago’s greatest linguistic trait – the city’s natives’ facility and gusto at swearing – crosses ethnic lines; Radhika, a first-generation child of Indian immigrants,at a party for the ejected contesants,cusses with the joie de blasphématoire of a second-generation Pole from Joliet or, perhaps, the governor.
(Not safe for audio at work…)
From the FOX show schedule description of tonight’s epi of 24:
Jack takes matters into this own hands.
As distinguished from all those episodes where he unimaginatively followed “the book” and didn’t rock the boat?
…you’ll have to go to Bogus Gold for your AmIdol coverage…
…because I’m sure not going to watch it.
Kids and I are settling down for the season premiere of 24 in about a half hour.
I hope Joel Surnow learned some lessons from Day Six; if we wanted DC intrigue, we’d flip over to West Wing.
I know, I know; it’s not unlikely that this season could be worse than last season – which was not even a pathetic shadow of Days 1-3.
But I hasten to recall that the first six hours last season were not half bad. So there’s potential.
Fingers crossed. Nacho fixings staged and ready for irradiation. Pop stored in fridge, ready to deploy.
…so I watched a bit of Kathy Griffin and Anderson “Brillo Hair” Cooper’s New Years’ Eve show on CNN.
Now, Cooper is neither fish nor fowl as far as vacuous prettyboy talking heads-masquerading-as-journalists go. But I kinda felt sorry for him as I watched…
…because there’s a reason Kathy Griffin is on the “D” list.
“What a deeply obnoxious person”, I thought – knowing, of course, that that’s exactly why she was hired. She barged in on pretty much everything Cooper said – not that that made us miss anything, of course, because he was playing the straight man. But Griffin gives “classless and vulgar” a bad name, I thought, flipping the TV off after about five minutes.
Turns out I was right, and missed the “fun” part:
Comedienne Kathy Griffin may be doomed to life on CNN’s S-list after answering a heckler with a shrieking, vulgar tirade during the network’s live New Year’s Eve broadcast.”Screw you,” she told the heckler. “Why don’t you get a job, buddy? You know what? I don’t go to your job and knock the d- – – out of your mouth.”
[Joke about how “that’d explain a lot about the evening’s bookings” deleted for propriety’s sake].
The raunchy exchange, which occurred well after the ball dropped at midnight, was received with guffaws by the camera crew.
Hopefully it’ll be the start of Griffin’s voyage to the 2011 season of “Rock of Love” or “I Love New York”.
I started writing an autobiography once. I figured, “what better way to get out of a financial hole than to tell my thrilling story to the masses”.
I got to about chapter 27, when I realized my story – growing up in a middle-class home in North Dakota, moving to Minneapolis after college, going through a few careers – might
need a little “punching up” to really crack the big market and get optioned as a script.
So with the help of my agent, I’ve been working on it.
My agent once pondered over lunch “How lucky must those dang Holocaust survivors be? I mean, sure, losing their whole families sucks, but holy cow, there’s a story that doesn’t need anything to punch up the drama! I mean, zowie – every Holocaust survivor has a story that’ll get on the Oprah book club!”
I thought about what he said, while reading this story, about a Holocaust survivor who did feel the need to gussy up his story:
On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat’s memoir, “Angel at the Fence.” Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.
Rosenblat, 79, has been married to the former Roma Radzicky for 50 years, since meeting her on a blind date in New York. In a statement issued Saturday through his agent, he described himself as an advocate of love and tolerance who falsified his past to better spread his message.
“I wanted to bring happiness to people,” said Rosenblat, who now lives in the Miami area. “I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world.”
And he did.
Where “good” is defined as “splattering egg on Oprah’s face“.
Beyond that? Not so good.
Oliver Stone’s next project?
Oh, was there really any suspense at all?
Stoned, the famed director who brought us the Bio on fifo now plans on making another Bio on fifo’s pimp, Hugo Chavez. Read it here.
Yep all those “progressive” mother jones, huffington post, daily kos, readers can watch another movie starring their idol from caracas.
I’m waiting for Stone’s hagiography of Mao.
I’m not sure now who has the bigger ego. Oprah Winfrey or Barack Oprahma?
BEVERLY HILLS (AP) — Although Oprah Winfrey worked hard on Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, she never considered going to work for the president-elect’s administration, the talk show host said Friday.“I have a few full-time jobs already and a few full-time commitments, you know — contractual commitments that say I have to be where I am,” Winfrey told AP Television. “So, it never ever occurred to me, not even occurred to me.”
Winfrey said she would stay put, even if the president-elect came calling.
And he hasn’t.
The article didn’t once mention that Obama in fact had her in mind or that there was even speculation. There’s a lot of real news out there boys. Why don’t you get out there and get it.
BACKGROUND: Oops. I thought I’d posted this on Friday. I apparently did not. And since this piece is intended to mock the story behind this post, it’s probably only fair that I actually post this, and pronto. I apologize for any confusion, stress or altered worldviews due to this mixup on my staff’s part).
———-
There are plenty of conservatives who scoff at the idea of art as a noble goal in and of itself – at the notion that art can be something other than decoration or background music.
I’m not one of them.
But I’ll say this; when art becomes a creature of subsidy – a hothouse flower that can only exist when the government foots the bill – then it’s dead.
Sisyphus at Nihilist in Golf Pants details the “winners” of Minnesota State Arts board subsidies – grants from a couple of hundred bucks up to $6,000.
There are the usual predictable howlers:
Peter B. Becker Nelson, Minneapolis
$6,000 — to purchase video equipment and create a new video work that explores themes of relationships, empathy, sexuality, and genderWonderful. The taxpayers of Minnesota are buying this guy video equipment to explore themes of relationships, empathy, sexuality, and gender – themes that would never be artistically explored without our tax dollars. Once Mr. Nelson is done with that, perhaps he will do a video version of his mustache series (a previous work where he drew mustaches on photographs of people).
…
John S. Jodzio, Minneapolis
$5,700 — to finish his short story collection, If You Lived Here, You’d Already Be Home
Finally, someone has written a short story collection based on the popular apartment rental sign!
Now, I’m not one of those guys who’s going to mock an “artist” for producing something that reeks of smug self-indulgence – art often reflects the artists, and an awful lot of artists are smug and self-indulgent, and that’s just fine.
And I’m not one of those people who thinks art needs to be “accessible”.
I do think, however, that art benefits greatly from the struggle to create it. And judging by the almost uniformly dismal quality of the “art” produced on the public nickel…:
Arlene Atwater, Duluth
$3,000 — for time to polish two new short stories, record them in her own voice on MP3 files embracing the new literary dimension of voice-only literature, and submit them to boundoff.com and Write On Radio, KFAI
…much of what we’re funding could use a little struggle.
The goal of art isn’t necessarily to last forever – but why do I suspect the “art” we’re funding has a shorter-than-average shelf-life?
As I noted the earlier in a piece I thought I’d posted Friday, but did not, Sisyphus at Nihilist In Golf Pants commented on the State Arts Board’s grants of taxpayer money to “promising” “Minnesota” artists and their art.
Now, for years I’ve said that conservatives need to get engaged in the world of the arts; to stop ceding this utterly important aspect of the human condition to the grant-pimps, the pseudoacademic weenies – the left. Conservatives need to make their presences felt in literature, music, theatre, film, multi-media, comedy (albeit I think we can, and must, continue to cede dance to the left, since I have no idea how to take a conservative swipe at that particular medium. I’m open to suggestions).
In this spirit, Sisyphus takes a game swat at proposing his own grant applications (and, it seems, granting them, if only fictionally):
1. $3,000 to purchase extra large glass basin and cases of light beer for composition of art work in which an entire year’s worth of Nick Coleman columns are submerged in the collective artists’ urine.
Sisyphus makes a fantastic effort at getting the ball rolling. But we need to build on this to achieve more.
So here’s your assignment: Read the State Arts Board’s list of grants. And fill in your own applications in the comment section. We’ll be taking applications for
Take your best shot. The best? Well, maybe we’ll just forward them to the SAB and see what happens.
You never know.
A Canadian Jon Stewart fan is miffed at being “snubbed”:
Hell hath no fury like a Jon Stewart fan scorned. A Canadian Jon Stewart fan? Well, that’s like bitter times infinity, because while we have the charismatic Barack Obama, with his blackness and his dancing on Ellen and his straight-faced puppy talk, they have Stephen Harper, a conservative hockey fan (aren’t they all?) who looks like he wants to sell you this beautiful 1996 Oldsmobile. In other words, you can’t blame Canucks for projecting all their little hopes and dreams southward, feeling like no-one gets them in Winnipeg or Medicine Hat.
In other words, if Harper wins another term we’ll have Geddy Lee and Norm McDonald threatening to move to the US?
So we read with sadness the tale of Sharilyn Johnson, a woman who has traveled from Toronto to New York City to attend Daily Show tapings so many times, she’s on a first-name basis with “Teri” and “Jessica” from the audience department. Yet when she flew down last week for the Daily Show’s Election Night Special, she waited in line and watched as seats filled with VIPs… and then the unthinkable happened: She was turned away at the door. (Only about 21 or so folks got in. Johnson was No. 40 out of about 250.)
[Gratuitous reference to liberal single-payer healthcare plans removed d/t excessive obviousness]
How could this happen?! She reserved her tickets 7 months ago! And she’s the biggest fan ever! And she took vacation days from her job, booked a hotel, and traveled FROM TORONTO (that’s a 52-minute flight!)! Gawker excerpts Johnson’s emotional HuffPo screed about the incident, and here are some context-free highlights: “I am owed,” “robbed of an experience,” “emotionally empty,” and our favorite – sorry, favourite – “How do I stand outside under that awning again?”
I’m trying to think of a one-word summation of the story that links Ms. Johnson’s credulous naivete and liberalism’s corrosive elitism. I know what I’m shooting for, but I’m coming up zilch.
Help me!
For one reason or another, I usually wind up driving somewhere on Saturdays between 5 and 7 – if not for the entire two hours, at least in bits and pieces.
And one of my favorite rituals during that time is to flip over to MPR to listen to A Prairie Home Companion. Say what you will about Garrison Keillor’s politics (hard left) and personality (a**hole); I just plain like the show. The music’s usually great; the sketch comedy’s often good, sometimes great; “News from Lake Wobegon” may be a funny fictional ramble to most people, but if you grew up Scandinavian in the Midwest, it’s more like a documentary.
But listening to Keillor’s post-election show, I couldn’t help but think: for eight years in defeat, Keillor was graceless, venal and churlish; it stands to reason that in victory, he’s utterly insufferable.
Being a conservative, I don’t generally much care about celebrities’ political leanings (and was embarassed by the slavish devotion to pop culture and the celebrity party circuit that seemed to preoccupy the local Sorosphere in the weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul).
But this bit on “right-leaning celebs”, along with a few “no, duhs”, had a few surprises.
Of course, plenty were just plain obvious: Chuck Norris, Richard Petty, Trace Adkins, Tom Clancy, Ahnold, Ben Stein, Tom Selleck and Elizabeth Hasselback? Pretty much public knowledge.
A few others made some waves, largely for the act of “coming out”: John Voight, Angie Harmon and Stephen Baldwin.
A few, I gotta confess – and remember, I’m a conservative, so I really don’t pay that much attention to the subject – surprised me: Bruce Willis, John Elway, Pat Sajak, Dennis Hopper, Rick Schroeder and Robert Duvall?
And seeing the list, I’m starting to figure out why it took Susan Lucci so long to win that Daytime Emmy…
Still, if only Mike Ditka had managed to run against a young Barack Obama for the Senate; he’s have won with 95% of the vote, he’d be president today, per-capita income would have doubled, and Franklin Raines would be doing push-ups and wind-sprints in Leavenworth.
Seriously.
Reason number 10,393 I dig Sarah Palin:
So get this … we found out when Sarah Palin checked into the Omni Berkshire Hotel in NYC for her “Saturday Night Live” performance, she used an alias — first name, Tina.
I smell a “Crocodile Dundee”-style remake here…
In the process of reading The Other 90% by Ken Cooper I came across a vignette about Art Tatum, a man that overcame seemingly insurmountable physical challenges and triumphed as one of the world’s foremost jazz pianists.
Born in Ohio in 1909, Tatum suffered from blindness in one eye; partial in the other.
Blessed with an extraordinary ear for music and largely self-taught, Tatum layed his hands on a player piano one day and while it played his fingers grasped the movement of the keys. He learned to play the piano and repetition lead to mastery. This despite his blissful ignorance of the fact that player pianos at the time played as though two pianists and four hands were at the keyboard.
When you listen to his work, the range, tempo and touch he exhibits leaves you unable to imagine one man’s fingers dancing with such pace and perfection. Other artists of the 1930’s called his performances “impossible.”
Ironically…
“Art Tatum’s incredibly fast playing style requires a level of precision beyond the capabilities of conventional player piano systems,” said John Q. Walker, founder of Zenph Studios
In fact, watching a player piano perform probably his most representative work “Tiger Rag,” reveals an amazingly complex range of keystrokes and leaves one wondering how any one artist could play the song.
Videos of his performances, rare as they are, reveal an exceedingly calm but rapid command of the keys. I don’t know much about jazz, so I poked around the web, looking for tidbits on this remarkable artist and was inspired by his ability to overcome, to produce such a large volume of work and to inspire other artists.
Sources:
The bad news? They’re doing a remake of Red Dawn. The movie – one of the guiltiest pleasures in all of guilty pleasuredom – was both a terrible movie and the original “America! F**k Yeah!” for a generation of people who, frankly, needed it.
The good news? They’re doing a remake of Red Dawn. Which will make the leftymedia a richer target than a convoy of Nicaraguan trucks spread out in the draw below the Wolverines’ machine guns.
The perfectly-named David Plotz sniffs, phumphers, and finally waterboards the context of the story and its times to the point where even John Milius would gag. The conclusion?
It’s really a metaphor for Iraq!
The insurgents are at first merely scared, angry kids, but they’re hardened by the viciousness of the Soviets. Seeing nothing to lose, they become suicidal terrorists who assassinate, bomb civilian targets, gleefully murder wounded and captive Russians, and eventually martyr themselves in theatrical, insane ways. Howell faces down a helicopter gunship with nothing but a rifle, screaming, “Wolverines,” as its machine gun cuts him to confetti; Swayze and Sheen make their inexplicable suicide assault on a base with hundreds of soldiers and heavy weapons; Jennifer Grey, mortally wounded and afraid of being tortured by the occupiers, booby-traps her own body so when a Soviet soldier touches her, it sets off a grenade that kills both of them. Ultimately, the insurgency and the anxiety of occupying a hostile land take their toll on the invaders. By the end, the Cuban commander is submitting his resignation, demoralized by his job of brutalizing the Americans.
After which Jennifer Gray and C. Thomas Howell baked the Cuban’s children in an oven as the mother watched in mute horror before being fed into a plastic shredder?
Maybe?
No?
Sorry.
Red Dawn is not an exact parallel to our situation, of course. The Iraq we invaded was no functioning democracy; our Army does not execute civilians; many Iraqis favor the American occupation. But Red Dawn certainly didn’t stir the mad, patriotic fervor I felt when I heard Howell shout, “Wolverines” 24 years ago. MGM is so far tight-lipped about the plot of its Red Dawn remake, but I wonder: Will the new Wolverines be us—or fighting us?
Read the whole thing and count the “conservatives are nuts because of this 24 year old B movie” references.
And ponder the question – if David Plotz sproings wood over Quentin Tarantino movies, is it a symptom of “liberal nutterdom?”
“Diversity Lane” is a new-ish conservative comic-blog.
And when I read the piece below, I couldn’t help but replace “Jayson” with Georgia, and “LaDuane” with Russia.
It fits!
Kudos to Zack, the proprietor. When it’s good, it’s very good. And we need to support conservatives in these kinds of areas.
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