No kids reading?  Good. 

Your attention please:

1. There is no tooth fairy.
2. The Easter Bunny is only a metaphor.
3. Pro wrestling is fake.
4. “Reality TV” shows are carefully edited to maximize dramatic value, especially confrontation.  Don’t be surprised if a more-talented contestant gets booted from a “reality” competition to produce a catfight.  Call it “The Santino Syndrome”.
5. If an organization shares both goals and office space with a George Soros front organization, a reasonable person might infer there’s a connection. 

That is all.

With Scottish independence looming as a real possibility, it’s especially appropriate to note that it’s Robert Burns’ birthday today.  And nobody notes these things like Sheila:

He was born poor, in the middle of the 18th century. He had a lot of brothers and sisters, and his parents were farmers. Yet his father decided that Robert, his eldest, should have a bit of an education. A tutor was hired, and Robert, in between the farm chores and hard work, learned how to read and write. And a whole world opened up to him through language (as it is wont to do). Writing came naturally to him. He started writing poems and songs almost immediately, some of which are still famous today.

The thing about Burns, his time and his place that fascinates me is its commentary on education.  Burns came a bit before the “Edinburgh Renaissance”, but he was something of a model for that blossoming in technology, politics and art – mostly self-educated, a polymath, one of many brilliant people who leapt out of normal class distinctions through the sheer will to learn and intellectually conquer; men who didn’t distinguish between conquering technology and mastering art, since they went hand in hand; people who didn’t need academics to pronounce them fit to contribute, but who learned what they wanted and needed and proceeded to change the world. 

Happy Birthday!

I loved Hounddog the first time I heard it…

Back when rumors first began to circulate, the film now known as “Hounddog” existed only in script form and was officially referred to as the “Untitled Dakota Fanning Project.” As principal photography got underway, however, talk of possible child abuse both in the film and in the filming began to surface online. At the center of the controversy a rape scene involving Fanning’s character.

…when it was called Bastard Out Of Carolina.

Blah.

Kids taken care of?  Check.

Snacks and pop laid in?  Check.

Warnings about making noise after 8PM?  Check.

That’s all I’m saying.

I loved Freedom Writers – the story of a plucky teacher who breaks all the rules and refuses to knuckle under to an uncaring racist system – the first time I saw it.

When it was called Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Save The Last Dance, Math Club ‘n Tha Hood, To Sir With Love and Save The Dangerous Chess For Ms. LoveSir.

Please see to changing this.

Thank you.

From WhatTheCrap –  Elder, Lileks, and that other guy:

Man.  I never knew expressing utter ignorance of a cultural icon and branding yourself (TV-wise) as a nanny-whupped latte-drinking nancyboy could turn out so cool!

I never watched Friends – could someone put me in flagrante with Courtney Cox? [*]

(more…)

Richard Schickel notes the fiftieth anniversary of Humphrey Bogart’s death:

[Director Raoul] Walsh observed the melancholy beneath his grousing bluster and cast him — in 1941, when Bogart was over 40 — in his first truly memorable role, Roy “Mad Dog” Earle in “High Sierra.” He played an escaped con “rushing toward his doom,” as another character describes him. Something almost soulful emerged in this performance.

In “The Maltese Falcon” (released the same year), everyone thinks Bogart is a shady private eye. But he cautions people not to understand him too quickly. The man has a code, which he refuses to articulate until the very end. And why bother? It is sufficient that he knows what it is and acts out of its principles.

As the years have gone on and I’ve learned more about Bogart, I’ve only gotten to like him more.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Peeps is slowly losing it. After years of Hewitt’s denigrating abuse – all the figure skating jokes, the hockey jokes, yadda yadda – Elder’s finally gone around the bend:

Am I the only one in America more concerned with what happens tonight on Top Chef than the latest adventures in a day in the life of Jack Bauer?

Speaking for the real Americans – yes. Yes, you are.

The implausible plot set-up behind “24” remind me nothing more than the insipid “Speed” movies with slightly better acting.

I’m trying to imagine life at the Elder house when he was – er, younger:

ELDER: “Oh yeah – like a resistance leader would really escape from a concentration camp and go to Casablanca!”

ELDER: “A talking moose? And a talking squirrel? Who are they trying to kid?”

As to comparing 24 to Speed – what? And did you skip United 93 because it was too much like Snakes on a Plane?

And let’s get something straight; Top Chef is a feeble knockoff of Project Runway.

Fortunately, Atomizer puts down his martini and intervenes:

Elder…perhaps you should watch 24 once or twice before you dismiss it out of hand. I’m quite curious as to how you’re so certain about the “implausible plot set-up” without ever having seen an episode.

As a 24 addict since Day One, I can tell you that the plot has a tendency to morph into unrecognizable shapes on a weekly basis…that’s what makes it so compelling.

Yep. It’s not a History Channel documentary. It’s an exercise in audience manipulation, in ginning up 96 cliffhangers every season. And it’s fun.

At the very least though, try to spend a minute or two each week watching shows that feature actual men. If you get scared, you can always turn the channel.

To be fair to Elder, he might need to wean himself up from Top Chef up to 24. Perhaps he should start with Real World/Road Rules Challenge; I don’t think that’s too aggressive.

No, not lately.

Without spoiling anything…

…that’s gonna be hard to top in Seasons 7 and 8.

…who was the first person, for example, to think of frying an egg.  “Hm – here’s the slime from those things the birds leave lying about; let’s put it on a griddle-shaped piece of granite and fry it up with some tabasco sauce and see how it goes?”

Ditto truffles.  “I just wrenched a piece of fungus from the mouth of this warthog.  I smell delicacy!” 

Nice to know that I’m not the only one who wonders these things.  Doug from BoGold ponders the clam.  Who?  Where?  Why?:

There’s really nothing about a clam that convincingly resembles “food.” It’s a hard shell with something resembling phlegm inside.

And yet, at some point in history, someone put one in his mouth and swallowed it. Was culinary history made by the equivalent of that kid on your grade school playground who would eat a bug for a quarter? Was it more of a hazing incident that had a surprisingly tasty upside? Was someone starving on a desert island and it was either eat a clam or feed the seagulls with your own carcass?

And so while I don’t feel any better informed about these things, I feel a little less lonely…

Caught the first two hours of 24 last night.  I’m going to try to watch this season’s original broadcast (I was only able to watch sporadically during the first four seasons; enough to make me want to watch the whole thing, but not enough to get me caught up enough on each day’s plot to really enjoy it – as I did when I watched the first four seasons in five weeks.  Of course, if I miss an episode, I’ll have to call it all off and wait for the DVD).

And I figure it’s time for me to put out either a pool or my first meme; the combination CTU Deadpool/24 plotpool.

The questions follow.  My answers will be below the fold:

1. Who will Morris – Chloe’s sleazy squeeze – end up working for?
2. Who will be the mole(s) in CTU?
3. Who will be the mole(s)/turncoat(s) in the Chris Rock Wayne Palmer administration?
4. How many levels above Fayed will the real conspiracy lie?
5. Which CTU members are going to buy it?
6. The only job more dangerous than a red-shirt on Star Trek is a member of the tactical team on 24 – and the  only job more dangerous than that is CTU/Los Angeles Leader.  So what’s going to happen to Nadia?
7. Bauer sort of raised the bar for taking out a perp in Episode 1 (I won’t spoil it).  Where can he go from there, carnage-wise?

My answers below the fold.

(more…)

I love this site, especially this story.

(Via Red)

Counting the hours until the new season of 24:

Oh no they di-in’t.

That’s what you’ll be saying when you see the first four episodes of the new season of 24, which begin this very Sunday night on Fox.

I’ve just finished watching them, and I can tell you that not only should Kiefer win an Emmy for his first five minutes on screen alone, but also that this damn show has done it again. Just when you thought you knew the formula, knew the players, could possibly predict what might happen next, the storyline bitch-slaps you into an entirely different hemisphere. And oh, it is good.

Don’t bother calling tomorrow night.

Chevy Chase on the the guy who launched was the reason for  his career:

Chase, 63, was an original cast member on the trend-setting late-night comedy television show “Saturday Night Live” and frequently opened the show pretending to be Ford stumbling and falling. The parody in 1975-6 helped reinforce a popular image about Ford’s clumsiness, even though the president had been a star athlete in college.

Chase proceeded to make that (and Fletch, which was basically the Ford bit tacked onto a private eye) his whole career.

Was he grateful?  Well, eventually:

“He had never been elected period, so I never felt that he deserved to be there to begin with,” the actor said about Ford, who died on Tuesday at age 93. “That was just the way I felt then as a young man and as a writer and a liberal.”

“Later on we became friends and he was a very, very sweet man,” Chase said in a telephone interview from a Colorado ski resort. “He took my wife and I on a whole lovely trip through Grand Rapids to show us where he had been as a child and what not. We kept in touch and he was just a terrific guy.

Wow.  Are Republicans supposed to be “terrific guys?”