Caption this photo 3

"I don't care too much for monkey, monkey can't buy me love!"

Psst! Brad! Remember, those movies sucked!

ComingSoon has discovered that "Fringe" co-producer and writer Brad Caleb Kane will be writing a movie based on Fisher-Price's View-Master toy. If you don't know what that is, just check out that photo above to jog your memory, I'm sure you'll know exactly what they are. These little plastic gimmicks first came out in 1939 and are designed to allow people to see a photo in 3D simply by looking through the viewfinders. Kane later confirmed the news on his Twitter adding that, "it'll be like the old 80's Amblin movies: Goonies, Young Sherlock… In that vein."

Buddha and dragon

Buddha and dragon
Originally uploaded by Crankydragon

A question from The '80s Man

How fitting is it that my new subscription to Entertainment Weekly should start not only with the Michael Jackson issue, but with the one of four possible covers being the set shot from Thriller?

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge tentatively decided Thursday to dismiss the case against a Missouri woman who had been convicted of computer fraud stemming from an Internet hoax that prompted a teenage girl to commit suicide.

Lori Drew of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., was convicted in November of three misdemeanor counts of illegally accessing a protected computer.

The decision by U.S. District Judge George H. Wu will not become final until his written ruling is filed, probably next week. Wu said he was concerned that if Drew was found guilty of violating the terms of service in using My Space, anyone who violated the terms could be convicted of a crime.

The verdict was a blow to prosecutors who indicted Drew on what some called tenuous legal grounds after authorities in Missouri declined to file criminal charges. Drew was widely criticized after the 2006 death of eighth-grader Megan Meier, an acquaintance of Drew's daughter.

If we can't do anything else...and apparently, we can't...at least we should make sure that the name and face of Lori Drew is never forgotten--and synonymous with evil.

Prosecutors said Drew, her daughter and her 18-year-old employee used a fake profile of a teenage boy to flirt with Megan online via Beverly Hills-based MySpace. Megan hanged herself with a belt after getting a message, purportedly from the boy, telling her that "the world would be a better place without you."

At the May hearing, Wu grilled Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause at length about whether the government had prosecuted Drew under the appropriate laws when it asserted that violating MySpace's terms of service amounted to a crime.

It's times like this you just have to pray that Karma is real.

All along I've been saying--probably at least a few of you remember--this was the whole problem with the case against Drew that was built up:

Instead of focusing on the fact that a couple of "adults" harassed a 13-year old girl until she committed suicide, it got diverted into the trivial matter of their using MySpace to do it.

And now, these hollow imitations of human beings are going to escape justice on the grounds that nobody really reads the "terms of service," and everybody lies.

"Is a misdemeanor committed by the conduct which is done every single day by millions and millions of people?" Wu asked. "If these people do read (the terms of service) and still say they're 40 when they are 45, is that a misdemeanor?"

Krause argued that Drew's acts were criminal because she signed up for the fake account with the intention of harming Megan by humiliating her. Drew knew her acts were illegal and deleted the account shortly after Megan's death to cover up her crime, he contended.

It fucking breaks my heart, that's all. It really just fucking breaks my heart.

I've more-or-less given up wondering why and when Amy Ephron went from being mad at me to putting me on the mailing list for her site.

Whatever or whenever, she does send out a nice holiday E-Card.



And there's a cool slideshow on the page today, called "Amazing Waves" by photographer Clark Little (You'll need to scroll down)

Um...because she's a divisive joke, Douglas?

Douglas MacKinnon, Former press secretary to Sen. Bob Dole, asks:

"Why do so many on the left have such an unhinged hatred of [Sarah Palin]? Why do so many alleged feminists and female members of the mainstream media openly and gleefully despise Palin?..."

First of all, Doug, whatever the feelings of many of the left towards Palin, they are in no way unhinged. Rather, they are a quite sane reaction to someone of such nauseating ignorance being selected to be, as they say, "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

And I like the way you say "alleged feminists," as though if you dislike Palin, you must not be a real feminist, and vice-versa. I can't speak for female members of the mainstream media, but if they dislike Palin--openly, gleefully or otherwise--my guess would be:

It's because she's a dirty politician who engages in the worst kinds of character smears and attacks. Even though she's a woman, they are allowed to dislike her for that. As am I.

And so...as Samantha Who? sinks slowly into the west...

...Christina Applegate returns, resigned, to her life of playing supporting, "best friend" roles in movies.

Christina Applegate is now family to Drew Barrymore.

A source exclusively reveals to me that the Samantha Who? star has signed on for a role in Going the Distance, a romantic comedy starring Barrymore and her maybe-real-life boyfriend Justin Long as a couple in a long-distance relationship...

Applegate will play big sister to Barrymore's character, according to my source.

Just a great new wave song...what more do you need to know, really?

Windpower (Live) @ Yahoo! Video

Some six years later, Americans finally get the response the vile Rumsfeld and most of the rest of the GOP said we would get in Iraq

...by leaving.

Per Think Progress:

Iraqis jubilantly celebrate U.S. troop withdrawal.

U.S. forces handed over formal control of Iraq’s major cities today (it is already Tuesday in Iraq), “a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country.” In celebration, Iraqis launched fireworks and “thousands attended a party in a park [in Baghdad] where singers performed patriotic songs. … Loudspeakers at police stations and military checkpoints played recordings of similar tunes throughout the day, as Iraqi military vehicles decorated with flowers and national flags patrolled the capital.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had called the withdrawal a “great victory,” declared June 30 a public holiday.

If you look at the photos included, you can almost hear the Iraqis singing,

"Na na na na...na na na na...hey hey hey...goodbye."

I got my free I Support Gay Marriage sticker in the mail today

..and ASAP afixed it to my car. So this seems like as good a time as ever to link to to this Atlantic piece. (Even though) it's about gays in the military, not gay marriage.

Asking (again), President Obama...what you been waitin' on?

Reading the whole thing is strongly recommended, but here's a little sample:

If you think about Harry Truman ending the ban on racial discrimination, you see what real political courage is like and why finessing something like this may be more trouble than it's worth.

Unlike Clinton and Obama, Truman was the Democratic president who understood that there was really no way to finesse an issue like this if it's what you believe. You just have to do it.

Probably the last Michael Jackson post for a while

...'cause I'm already (back to) feeling finished with him, especially since there seems to be an unspoken agreement that we will now forget the last 25 years of his life. But, this is worth reading, even though it does the same:

Quincy Jones on Michael Jackson.

Excerpts:

I also tried to steer him to songs with more depth, some of them about real relationships -- we weren't going to make it with ballads to rodents (i.e. "Ben"). And Seth Riggs, a leading vocal coach, gave him vigorous warm-up exercises to expand his top and bottom range by at least a fourth, which I desperately needed to get the vocal drama going. We approached that record like we were going into battle. "Off the Wall" would sell 10 million copies.

Rod also brought in "Thriller" and Michael sang his heart out on it. At one point during the session the right speaker burst into flames, which none of us had ever seen before. How's that for a sign?

Dear Republicans: See this? It's the worlds smallest violin, playing just for you.

GOP leaders have a new complaint about President Obama: He's not reaching out to them nearly as much as he did earlier this year, when he road-tested his pledge of post-partisanship, only to get uniformly rebuffed on his first big legislative initiative.

Sometimes they just make me so sick I can't even summon the energy to shudder

I do still wonder, though: Why is Obama's Dept. of Justice still protecting this man?

Via Think Progress:

Tomorrow is the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, a date Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is calling a “great victory.” But in a new interview with Washington Times radio, Vice President Cheney was still pushing the U.S. to stay in Iraq, saying that withdrawal would “waste” the sacrifice of U.S. troops

Go to hell, Cheney.

WWJD?

Nothing is real...

Here's a good 10 minutes of the Yellow Submarine movie including the opening credits and the submarine in Liverpool following Ringo ("Hey, would you believe me if I told you I was being followed by a yellow submarine?").

Why? Why not?



(But if you really need a reason...because it's good.)

A difference in interpretation

The person who posted this video to Google thinks it's "an example of how a man should hold eye contact with a woman." I think it's an example of how Kim Basinger's character in Nine 1/2 Weeks is amused by simple things. Which may explain not a few of the things she ends up doing with Mickey Rourke later.

You make the call.

Comic Books are too so art, damn it

This is pretty cool. It's classic paintings photoshopped to include superheroes and such.









Many more here.