40-Year-Old Virgin

I rented a few movies I've been wanting to see for the weekend...

You know, the thing about this one is that cast, directed or written wrong it could have been so mean, but it isn't, it's genuinely funny and "adult" without being "raunchy" in bad way. Actually it is raunchy, but in a good way.

This one is for the Doctor Who fans

John Nathan-Turner is alive and well and doing costume and set design for Mariah Carey.

Rad, trad, and dangerous to know

Glenn Greenwald has a post about the latest attempt to paint a vulgar picture of the liberal blogsphere, of which Dictionopolis in Digitopolis is a small and not very influential part. I recommend reading it in full, but the short version is that once again, someone dug down deep to find the most fringy and cringe-worthy comments from the left. Then labeled them representative, without noticing that the big boys on the right-people who actually are influential and representative- say worse every day, and have for years.

The Right's best-selling author calls liberals traitors and urges that they be beaten with baseball bats and attacked with bombs. Its most popular radio talk show host -- with his 20 million daily followers -- has spent the last 20 years urging that liberals be deported and praising the kidnappings of his political opponents, while other favorites on Right-wing radio routinely call for the imprisonment of leading Democrats. Similarly, some of the Right's favorite commentators have urged that those who espouse liberalism be tried for sedition, or worse.

And how fondly I recall these sentiments from Sen. Jesse Helms during the Clinton years:

In an effort to dampen the furor over his Commander-in-Chief remarks, on November 22 Helms told a newspaper reporter from his home state of North Carolina that the President should be careful about visiting military bases in that state. "Mr. Clinton better watch out of he comes down here," Helms said. "He better have a bodyguard."

Can one even contemplate the reaction if a Democratic Senator today warned George Bush to avoid military bases becasue he would likely be physically attacked by a military that hated him? Granted, those threats against the President were merely from a leading Republican Senator, not from an anonymous commenter on a blog, but...

Mystery homophobic (but pro-sexual abuse) irrelevant religious figurine theatre 3000

Pope Benedict XVI had some things to say during Good Friday observances in Rome recently. He said:

"Lord, we have lost our sense of sin,"

How true. The deadliest sins are said to include avarice or greed, sines "we" clearly have no sense of whatsoever. Then there's envy and lust, which I'm guessing for this pope's followers equals this. And of course sloth-I think you know that we here in the United States dislike sloth, and would never go so far as to make a sloth a movie star or anything.
His holiness also remarked:

"Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil

But enough about the conservative republican blogs.

a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolous freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication.”

You don't win anything for guessing who I'm sure the pontiff was thinking of. Some poor misguided souls are putting it about that he meant his comments as an attack on gay families, but that can't be right. Why would the symbol of doing good works on earth so that you might be rewarded in heaven so needlessly and wrongfully hurt people on these, his most holiest of days?

I mean, if he were the sort of person who'd do that, he'd be a miserable maggot-ridden scumsucker who deserves to die immidately and burn in hell's fire for the rest of eternity.

But of course, he's the pope, so he's not.

Happy Easter, everybody.

ETA-If I were a credulous, superstitious fool, this sort of thing might worry me: Literally moments after I first posted the above, it began to hail like a mofo here in Seattle.

Fortunately, I'm not.

There's everything in this show, everything that fits, from "The Bright Side Of Life" to girls with great big...

Courtesy of our man Mark Evanier, a little more than one minute of Monty Python's Spamalot, complete with one or two quick shots of Hank Azaria in outfits that ought to keep "Huff" in therapy for years...

And on the flip side of the Reverend coin

Contrasting with the scarred, tails side representing the likes of the Reverend Wildmon below, we have an interview with the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, recently deceased, representing the shiny, heads side.

It's on NPR from 1985 and is well worth listening to.

One of these days I'm going to write "The Penis Arias"

And when I do, I'll bet the Rev. Donald Wildmon will be able to speak the title aloud with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. Which isn't the case with The Vagina Monologues, which title the Reverend's AgapePress can't even bring themselves to type.

Seriously. Via Pam's House Blend, in an AgapePress report about protests of the play being performed on the Notre Dame campus, it is referred to throughout as The V Monologues. Because vagina is a bad word.

Of course, should this prove to be a production in which the lead roles are taken by Jane Badler, Faye Grant, Jennifer Cooke and June Chadwick, that would be entirely different.

(Come on...I know Bill Sherman gets it, anybody else?)

Every day, it's-a-gettin' closer

So there's a fella named Richard Ben-Veniste. He was the Commissioner of the 9/11 Commission. NewsMax and Powerline-type Republican conservatives don't like him because he acted like he actually wanted the truth.

See, he's the fella who elicited this response from Condoleeza Rice:

RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

No, they really don't like him at all. Yesterday, he appeared on Hardball and said that in his opinion, the Bush administration should now be treated as Ronald Reagan always said (ad nauseum) he wanted to treat the Russians: Trust, but verify.

And he further went on to say (quote via Crooks and Liars):

On important, critical matters-ahh the President is now been shown not to be accurate and now hypocritical in terms of this leak investigation-the political fallout is huge in my view.

Soooooo close, Richard.

I'm telling you folks, the day people start going on television and just saying the plain and simple truth that anyone with a whole brain can see: The President is a liar-is the day we tear the roof off the place, and the walls come tumbling down.

Words are very important, and "now been shown not to be accurate" still leaves too much wriggle-room. The President of the United States is a liar. Repeat. Again. Again. Again.

My question is...

Ok, so there's a small to-do going on about the fact that Laura Bush has made it clear that gay families will be welcome to participate in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Yay. Egalia of the TGW feels this is proof that "the wrong gender is in charge of the country."

Yes, because Laura Bush is, automatically, much better than the man she married, because she has eggs. The fact that she's just standing by her man like a good little housewife should while a drunk drives his country off a cliff doesn't matter at all.

But hey, women goooooooood. Men baaaaaaaaad.

My broader question is, if you're a gay family, why the fuck would you want to go to George W. Bush's White House? (Other than to toss a few eggs in some well-directed places, perhaps)

I'm just trying to imagine what any self-respecting gay family could possibly be thinking...

"What's that, Mr. President? You say you want to make it unconstitutional for us to get married? You say you think we're a threat to marriage? You won't hesitate to "out" a gay reporter if he reports information that makes you look bad, you say? You say you actually pay anti-gay commentators? You say you refuse to formally recognize Gay Pride Month?

Oh, but if we wear ties and nice dresses we can still be used as political tools, you say? Oh, well, ok then! Dum de dum de dum de dumb..."

I say, let fools, whoops, excuse me I mean gay Republicans like Andrew Sullivan who've already twisted into pretzels trying to convince themselves Bush thinks they're human beings go. Let Matt Drudge and "Jeff Gannon" go, they're used to being used as Republican tools. And clearly intellectual honesty is not a problem for them, they don't have any.

Other than that, I can't think of one good reason why any gay family with a lick of pride would.

Still more words to live by

From Mastering Fiction Writing, by Kit Reed:

Being true to what you have to say, you will find your own level. If you're not true to it, you may not find any audience at all.

So long, Rev

The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, an inspiration for the Rev. Scott Sloan in Doonesbury, has died. Among other things, Rev. Coffin said this (via Daily Kos):

I think that hope reflects the state of our soul rather than the circumstances that surround our lives. So hope is not the equivalent of optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism but despair. So I'm always hopeful. Hope is about keeping the faith despite the evidence so that the evidence has a chance of changing.

Elsewhere, at Hullabaloo, tristero finds what he believes, and he makes a reasonably convincing case, is a lie repeatedly told about Dr. Coffin by none other than George W. Bush.

Reality and the right

And never the 'twain shall meet.

Give me a happy ending every time

Who Wants To Be A Super Hero, a new reality series hosted by Stan Lee.

Yes, really.

The eerily apt coincidence has just struck me

At the beginning of this season of "Veronica Mars," a bus full of Veronica's classmates took a dive off a cliff. It has now become unavoidable and undeniable that this is what the once "little series that could" has done as well.

Tonight's episode was a desperate attempt to make sense of several episodes worth of throwing everything they could at the wall in hopes that something would stick. You could almost hear the writers, stinking of desperation, crying, "See, see? It does all make sense, it does!"

Last season, it did. This season, not so much. And this episode had a couple of the weaknesses we've noted before as well-the insistence on introducing new characters we don't care about, and what is now clearly an obsession with cum jokes.

There are little flashes here and there of the show's former glory-putting Logan and Wallace together is inspired-but I gotta say I wouldn't be too disappointed if the forthcoming new CW network decided not to carry "Veronica" over after all.

I know most men undress women with their eyes

But in the case of Paris Hilton, I'll make an exception.

Yes, I should be paying more attention to Pink

Via Egalia, here are the lyrics to her new song, Dear Mr. President, and a link so you can listen to it.

Excerpts:

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let's pretend we're just two people and
You're not better than me
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye

Now-I don't like 98% or so of all political songs, on a purely asthetic basis. For me, they sacrifice emotion for stridency.

This one works.

Pink is not my favorite singer, the odd single aside.

This one works.

The song is just human voices and a guitar, not Pink's usual dancefloor fare, which I probably would have preferred-I'm a Pet Shop Boys fan, you know.

This one works.

Backing vocals are by The Indigo Girls, a duo whose appeal I've never really understood (though they are the basis for one of my favorite jokes in My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, so I suppose I owe them something.)

This one works.

Anyway, go, read, hear.

Republicans: This is the world's smallest violin. And it's playing just for you.

Via AmericaBlog, another Republican crybaby comes out whining about how yeah, he voted for Bush (twice) and gave money to his campaign, but please don't confuse that with actually liking him.

In fact, gosh darn it, he doesn't consider himself a Republican any longer, so corrupt, incompetent and inept-he has suddenly realized-is the party today! Well, great timing. If you'd figured out that shit even two years ago, you could have saved this country untold billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

John at AmericaBlog sees the incredible disenchantment of the Republicans as a blessing fo the Democrats, a chance to woo the disgruntled over to "our" side. I'm sure that's quite the sensible, sane attitude to take and if I had traffic like AmericaBlogs, I might feel compelled to take it too.

But since, compartively speaking, no one is reading this, it gratifies me to be able to say: If you ever voted for Bush in your life (but especially if you voted for him twice): Fuck you. And if you know anyone who did, do something for all of us: Hit them.

I miss Tony

A kind of delayed reaction hit me watching tonight's 24...it finally sunk in that they really killed the character and he's never coming back. I think that may prove to have been a mistake. Probably not a show-killing, "shark-jumping" mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

All I can say is, they'd better have a death in mind for Peter Weller's character that makes the torture he underwent as Murphy in Robocop look like a day at the fucking beach. He killed David Palmer. He killed Michelle. He killed Tony.

I want him deader than dead. I want him to suffer.

I'm also not sure I'm loving the relaunch they're doing of President Logan...it'll be interesting to re-view the season next year on DVD, to see if it fits together as well as previous seasons have. At the moment, I'm thinking not.

Billy Crystal did a funny routine about the series on The Tonight Show the other night, talking about the fact that basically, Chloe is god. He's right, of course.

I miss Tony.

Go, West young men (and women)

New York Times article on the final days of The West Wing. Interesting trivia: The writers had apparently intended to have the Democrat played by Jimmy Smits lose the election they've been running all year.

In the end, he won. The reason: They felt it would be too depressing following the death of the great John Spencer, whose character was Smits' running mate.

Some nice quotes from the actors who have been with the series right out of the gate:

Bradley Whitford, who portrays Josh Lyman, most recently
manager of the Santos campaign...

"This show is probably the first line in my obituary," Mr. Whitford said. "Everyone knows they got lucky with this one."

As the saying goes: The harder they worked, the luckier they got.

Mr. Sheen was offered an opportunity to see how his character's appeal would play in a real-life campaign. Not long ago,he said, he was approached by Democratic Party representatives from his native state, Ohio, to see if he would be interested in running for the United States Senate after he left the show. Though he would have had little trouble drafting a campaign platform — he is a fierce opponent of nuclear power and the war in Iraq, and a champion of human rights — he turned them down.

"I'm just not qualified," he said. "You're mistaking celebrity for credibility."

Martin Sheen: The flip side of Alec Baldwin and Richard "I'm speaking for the whole world" Gere, and one of the only exceptions to my general rule that actors shouldn't talk.

"In order to sometimes get a different perspective on what's going down in the world, to reach back to your humanity, you read novels," Mr. Sheen said. "We're like the reading of a novel."

And what will Mr. Sheen be doing now that the series is over?

At 65, he has decided to make good on a promise he made to himself long ago: to enroll, for the first time, in college. A graduate, though just barely, of Chaminade High School in Dayton, Ohio, nearly five decades ago, he will began taking classes next fall — in English literature, philosophy and, he hopes, oceanography — at National University of Ireland in Galway, in the country where his mother was born.

How can you not like such a man? I mean really, how cool is that?

From "One Sunday Morning," by Amy Ephron

Mary wondered, at the time, if Betsy hadn't commented on it or hadn't commented on it in quite the way she did, if it wouldn't have just passed, subsided, receded, if you will, into a faint glancing moment, one of the things you see and then forget about, rather than something as piercing as a shard of glass that becomes forever imbedded in one's memory, so that every time any one of them would see Lizzie Carswell after that, they would remember that morning when they saw her coming out of the Gramercy Park Hotel.

This is a sentence that got away from somebody.

Okay, the Seymour Hersh thing (updated)

You may have heard about a Seymour Hersh article that says Bush is planning to attack Iran, with the possibility of nuclear bombs very much on the table. And what's spookiest of all is, as Paul Krugman says:

Most strategic analysts think that a bombing campaign would be a disastrous mistake. But that doesn't mean it won't happen: Mr. Bush ignored similar warnings, including those of his own father, about the risks involved in invading Iraq.

Current polls suggest that the Democrats could take one or both houses of Congress this November, acquiring the ability to launch investigations backed by subpoena power. This could blow the lid off multiple Bush administration scandals. Political analysts openly suggest that an attack on Iran offers Mr. Bush a way to head off this danger, that an appropriately timed military strike could change the domestic political dynamics.

Or as JMM wrote in Talking Points Memo, is there anyone who thinks this presidency is not capable of this?

Meanwhile, on the talking heads shows, Hersh is saying why he feels Bush is doing do this.

HERSH: The word I hear is messianic. He thinks, as I wrote, that he's the only one now who will have the courage to do it. He's politically free. I don't think he's overwhelmingly concerned about the '06 elections, congressional elections. I think he really thinks he has a chance, and this is going to be his mission.

This goes just so far beyond this man must be stopped. This man must be stopped.

With a "hat tip" to TalkLeft.

I've been wanting to be asked these questions for about 10 years

And since I'm unlikely to be a guest on Inside The Actor's Studio any time in the near future, I scooped up this Meme, unbidden, from a fella named Tom Hilton. I may as well get my answers down somehow.

What is your favorite word? Brouhaha.

What is your least favorite word? Squat.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Good music...broadly defined, so we're not just talking about the kind you can hear on record or play on instruments (although we are talking about that). The music of birds, the music of talk, the hum of the universe.

What turns you off? Bad music. Ditto.

What is your favorite curse word? It's not really a curse word, and one or two of you will probably know where I got it: "Motherpusbucket!"

What sound or noise do you love? Gently running water. Like from a stream, trickling away low in the background. Or, waves on the beach.

What sound or noise do you hate? Loud engines like motorcycles.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? I would love to be able to be a pianist.

What profession would you not like to do? Hot Dog On A Stick girl.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"She's waiting for you."

Which yes, I know, begs the question:

Who is she? That changes.

I'm tossing this up to whoever wants it.

Ugly scars divide the nation (updated)

Update-Truthout contributor Jason Leopold:

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media.

The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.

Emphasis mine.

Journalist Greg Palast on just what crime our president has committed-and what should happen to him as a result, if we were in fact a nation of laws and not of men.

On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."

Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.

If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system.

(Aside from Ben-this is another one of those times when I'm really, really looking forward to seeing Bush's next polling numbers. Now, back to Greg)

Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment."

Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase.

Thanks to litbrit (via Shakespeare's Sister) for the link.

So you want to see 250,000 multi-coloured 'superballs' bouncing down the streets of San Francisco

We here at Dictionopolis in Digitopolis have anticipated your every need.

I'm not following this

Those of you who read the old blog may remember last May, when the networks wouldn't run an ad by the United Church of Christ which said "like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation." Although ABC, at least, was happy to provide airtime to Focus On The Family, the pro-Bush, "pro-life," anti-gay group.

Now, the UCC has come up with another ad that they feel promotes their message of acceptance. And although the broadcast networks, with their typical courage, are refusing to run this one too, it is running on cable channels including A&E, AMC, BET, CNN, CNN, Headline, Hallmark, History, TBS, TNT, E!, and Lifetime. But not, however, on LOGO, which is (nominally) the gay and lesbian network.

I'll say that again: The gay and lesbian network...is refusing to run an ad...that promotes acceptance and tolerance of minorities, explicitly including homosexuals.

You'd be well within your rights to ask: Why?

A Viacom-owned network, LOGO is operated by MTV, which states that its standards and practices could not accept the UCC's 30- second commercial "because of the political nature of its content," according to a sales associate's e-mail response on March 30.


When asked for an official reason, MTV Networks responded, "Our guidelines state we will not accept religious advertisements that may be deemed as disparaging to another religion."

Ron Buford, director of the UCC's Stillspeaking Initiative, says the 1.3-million-member denomination's four-year identity campaign was created after focus group testing revealed the depth to which people felt alienated or rejected by organized religion. The church's new "ejector" ad uses humor to convey the message, "God doesn't reject people. Neither do we."

"I guess the idea of gay TV doesn't really mean it's your community's network," Buford told United Church News. "It's just something that's targeted at you to sell product."

On a completely unrelated matter, "The L Word" jewelry and perfume lines are now avalible.

This blog doesn't get a lot of traffic from Alabama

In fact, of our last 100 drop-ins (y'all come back now, y'hear?), exactly none have come from Sweet Home Alabama.

As you can well imagine, this has long been a source of shame to me.

But now, at least, I think I finally understand it. You see, I think it's because I have, on occasion, been known to run pictures that suggest some women-in fact most, if the truth be told-have breasts.

Apparently, this sort of thing just isn't done in Alabama. A state where, BTW, it is unlawful to sell dildos while wearing bowling shoes.

We know this sort of thing just isn't done in Alabama (via Pam's House Blend) because of a woman named Loretta Nall, who is currently running for governor of that state on the Libertarian Party ticket.

An Alabama newspaper recently chose to run a photo of the candidate (not supplied to them by her) that reveals a bit of cleavage. It's not cleavage likely to appall any of us who were born in the big cities, but the columnist with whose work the photo ran was shocked-shocked!

In 55 years of political writing, that was a first for me—-a picture in my column of a woman displaying cleavage. I can only hope that my mother...and I know for a fact where she ended in the after life...didn’t see that column. She wouldn’t have approved of that picture.

Now, we here at Dictionopolis in Digitopolis have certain mixed emotions about Libertarian women with large boobs at the moment, for entirely personal reasons. But can we agree that these $&#&*^% loons are ridiculous?

Nice

Every once in a while, This Modern World hits one out of the park.

Maybe I should be paying more attention to Pink

I mean at this point, all I really know about her is that I quite like one or two of her singles, and I've seen one or two images of her I'm not unenthusiastic about either. But in recent interviews she's coming off pretty sensible.

...Pink did plenty of promo this past week, playing a secret show in New York and taping episodes of "Dateline" and "The Oprah Winfrey Show," where she got the dialogue started on the story behind her hit single "Stupid Girls."

While the celebrity angle of Pink's neofeminist critique got "Dateline" interested, Oprah Winfrey was more concerned about the lack of strong female role models. Calling her episode "Stupid Girls," Winfrey also invited onto the program four teenage girls and Karrine Steffans, author of "Confessions of a Video Vixen," to bring the discussion back to how girls are taught to act "stupid" and how to change that.

"I personally need more examples of how to be better and how to be stronger and how to go a different way," Pink said on the show. "I need more examples, so I can't even imagine being in school and looking around. And now it's cool to have a sex tape. Are you kidding me?"

Pink said she's trying not to think about all the attention the song is getting, but at the same time, this is exactly what she wanted — to start a discussion about who we choose to celebrate and why. In a world where women are still reduced to what they look like versus what they have to say, Pink wanted to make her fellow females realize how much of that has to change from within.

At the same time, Pink said the attention isn't about driving her record sales higher. In fact, she told Lauer she wishes her biggest album, Missundaztood, hadn't sold as many copies. "What?" Lauer responded. "You now have become the first recording artist I've ever sat across from who said, 'I wanted that album to sell fewer copies.' Why?"

"It sold 16 million records," Pink said. "And I didn't want that. Where do you go from there? Anything you do after that's a failure."

Prudent thinking, Pink-thats one of the things that drove Michael Jackson so batshit insane: Watching his sales fall after Thriller.

A horse made all out of wood; a dragon made out of a straw

Via the MAKE Blog; the artist is Heather Jansch.



Via Neatorama; I couldn't find a credit for the artist.

As well they might

Via TGW.

Must be an even-numbered year

Because recent experience has shown, only in even-numbered years do I ever think an episode (usually only one that year) of SNL is funny almost all the way through. Last night's/this morning's was it for 2006, thanks for the most part to host Antonio Banderas.

With all the Philadelphias and the Zorros and the Pancho Villas and the Femme Fatales and the Original Sins, you can forget how funny that guy can be. How can you not like a guy secure enough to go out on live television, declare, "The truth is...I'm a woman!" pull off a breakway suit and stand there in a red mini-dress, complete with falsies?

I don't know about you, but I can't not like such a guy.

The Mexican soap parody was also great. I'm pretty sure at least one or two of the sketches were written by the women performers just to give themselves an excuse to give Banderas a lap dance, but who's gonna blame 'em? I'd probably do the same myself if Beyonce were hosting or something.

...but the cameo by Chris Kattan hurt like an earache. And, SNL being SNL, two or three of the sketches had no endings. The obligitory Zorro sketch made me miss Chris Farley (no mean feat, I assure you).

Cut to Ben banging his head against the computer desk

Saturday...The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation presented...the 17th annual GLAAD Media Awards...winners included [Charlize Theron, for the "Vanguard Award'], Felicity Huffman's transsexual road trip "Transamerica" for outstanding film in limited release; cable TV's chic lesbian ensemble "The L Word" for outstanding drama series, and NBC's "Will & Grace" for outstanding comedy series.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying to write a love story about two people who happen to be lesbian, but more importantly, are loving, well-spoken people. I mean apparently, you can write about loveless people, give them laughably bad dialogue, and as long as you make them gay you'll win awards and get renewed.

In case you were wondering why I haven't said anything about the "Immigration Reform" thing

It's two reasons. One, I don't feel that I know enough about the issue, and although I'm sure I have, I try not to give uninformed opinions. Two, it's exactly what the GOP wants us to be talking about. It's this season's gay marriage.

Rep. J. D. Hayworth, R-AZ, declared on Meet the Press that "Immigration Reform" is the most significant issue facing America today...

In a sound bite laden appearance, Rep. Hayworth, representing a border state, and a Republican up for re-election, apparently feels that the wasteful and distasteful War in Iraq, our fostering civil war in Iraq, and the President's treason by security leak, can all be swept under the rug until after the election.

Another Example Of What John Kerry Has Done To Me

He's made me agree with Tracey Schmitt, RNC spokesman. See, Kerry has made what the NY Times (via Daily Kos' Georgia10) describes as "A Slashing Attack On The Bush Administration."

Find Osama bin Laden and secure our ports and our homeland. Bring our troops home from Iraq. Obey the law and protect our civil rights," Mr. Kerry said in ticking off his list, which also included supporting health care, education, lobbying reform and alternatives to oil, as well as reducing the deficit.

Georgia10 feels Kerry is

Plain-spoken. Blunt. Scathing in his rhetoric (yeah, I'm describing John Kerry, can you believe it?). A true Fighting Dem.

While as I say, I find myself in agreement with

Tracey Schmitt, the RNC spokesman, [who] responded in her typical catty manner and dismissed Kerry's statements ("John Kerry deserves credit for continuing to take himself so seriously, despite the fact that no one else does"),

I feel the need to say to anybody actually getting wet or hard about this "new" John Kerry something similar to that which I'd say to people star-struck by the "new" Al Gore: I am not impressed by what Democrats do when the heat's off.

John Kerry finally came to fight, eh? Woo! With the President's popularity tied to an anchor, that certainly takes bold political courage.

Blog headlines that should have been rephrased

Republican Dad gets son off in AZ sex case

Via Crooks and Liars:

"A 19 and 17 year old from Arizona, have been offered a plea deal which requires no jail time and virtually no penalty for crimes they admitted to commiting. What were these crimes? As counselors at a boys camp, the 19 and 17 year old punished 18 of the 11-14 year old boys by making them lay face down on their bed, in front of all the other boys, shoving a broomstick into their anus through their pants...One may ask how this could happen. It is really quite simple. The 19 year old, Ryan Bennett, is none other than the son of Arizona's Senate President, Ken Bennett, a Republican who is part of the effort to ban equal rights for same-sex couples in the state, viewing same-sex relationships as immoral...After his son's admission, Bennett wrote a letter to the D.A. handling the case informing her that his son could not rightfully serve time in jail, because he is prepared to leave the country on a mission - to teach the word of Christ to youth around the world..."