The Meme of Four

"She who smokes not in the Skull Cave" (Becca) tagged me, as I knew someone would, with "The Meme of Four."

The deal for this one is

you give four responses to each question and then add a new question of your own at the end

I knew this was coming, so let's see if I've saved up any good answers or not...

Four jobs I've had or currently have in my life:



1. Writing for a college newspaper. It's where I found out that I...if you've seen Ratatouille, you know the scene where Remy freaks out because Linguini's ruining the soup? That's me when I see bad writing.

2. Night manager at The Best Used Bookstore In The Bay Area. This is not just my opinion, we were so voted...

3. Playwright. Hey, I was actually paid to do it (or rather, to have done it) once...

4. Babysitter, years and years and years and years and years ago.

Four countries I have been to:

I've rarely been out of the United States, although I have been to Tennessee which I think ought to count. There's a few places I'd like to visit, especially in Europe, and one, Mexico, that I intend never to set foot in as long as I live. Oh, and I've been to Canada.

Four places I'd rather be right now:
1. In a theater directing a play
2. California, although the whole "governor Arnold Schwarzenegger" thing might make me rethink.
3. New York, but only if I had money. I'd see every show on one side of Broadway and then the other.
4. Utopia. What?

Four foods I like to eat:
1. Weird ones
2. Goldfish cheese crackers
3. Burger King hamburgers (has to be. They're just better than McDonald's).
4. Andrea Trindle (and in the unlikely event that she finds this, hi!)

Four personal heroes, past or present:
1. Kevin Smith- Yes, his overage fanboy ways have really worn on me, and I'm nowhere near as much of a fan as I used to be, but there's no denying he's got my ideal job.

2. Harlan Ellison- How many different ways can I say it? All-time favorite. Described by Neil Gaiman as

"...partly one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and partly an ... impish and furious 11-year-old boy -- and at the same time a cranky old Jew who doesn't just enjoy his cranky old Jewdom. He revels in it."

Now that's a man.

3. Alan Moore- Because he knows the score. And BTW, the news that Watchmen is "finally" coming to the big screen does not fill me with joy. Maybe, maybe if they were doing it Lord of the Rings style and committed to making a series of films. And if they got Terry Gilliam to direct them.



4. Peter Milligan- When he was writing Shade and before he ruined it.

Four books you've just read or are currently reading.
1. Fire with fire : the new female power and how it will change the 21st century by Naomi Wolf
2. Two books by Charles Grodin
3. Dating dead men by Harley Jane Kozak
4. White knight; the rise of Spiro Agnew by Jules Witcover

Four words or phrases you would like to see used more often
1. Mindermast
2. "The Jack Benny Program!"
3. "All aboard!"
4. "George Bush and Dick Cheney left The White House today following the first joint impeachment in our nation's history."

And the question I will add to this meme is:

If you had a Tardis and could use it to see any four performances in history, what would they be?

1. Olivier in Macbeth
2. Frank Sinatra's first "retirement" concert.
3. Burt Lahr in Waiting For Godot.
4. Bob Fosse's Big Deal.

Tagging RAB, Dr. Zaius, Mana, and J.D.

your uncertainty will be the death of me. But I lose my will and if looks could kill I've been struck down dead by your beautiful eyes

Photos via Flickr is Crack

Words & Image (or, Some sort of a visual poem)

Leaving alone..flying above you...

Goodbye to my friends



my home and my family



I'm not coming home

you know that i'll miss you...

The rays of the sun

the sea of the sky




Frozen in time



you're asking me why...



Feeling alone



flying above you



I'm not coming home


now i know, now i know that i love you...



(Words by Thompson Twins. Images found on Google.)

Women my own age

In a little over two weeks time, I will officially be closer to 40 than 30. I think it'll soon start seeming wrong for me to spend so much time "appreciating the asthetics" of women in their 20s. (Although when it comes to "appreciating asthetics" Becca and the Sam Frog make me look like Dan Quayle. )

Besides, when I watch interviews with women like Julia Stiles or Claire Danes, I find what I'm thinking more often than most is..."She's so young." And I don't mean that in the creepy "come over here, little girl" way.

I mean that if I actually met someone from their generation, we'd have little or nothing to talk about. And yes, actually, that matters to me.

Obviously, it's not age that's preventing me from meeting such a someone. But I just thought it would be a good idea to start reminding myself of the women with whom I share at least semi-common experiences.

Plus I also thought it would be good to feature a few different women than the ones who usually star around here (Sylvia Kristel, Nicole Kidman...). And if nothing else, I thought it would make a good series of blog posts.

So that's what I'm going to start doing for the next couple of weeks. Every day in this spot, there will be appreciations of "women my own age." These are all women born within one year of me (on either side).

Today we'll start with stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, born September 3, 1970. She's really funny, quite possibly nuts, nice to look at, gifted at doing voices, and darned surreal. How have I possibly not dated her?

Here's about a two-minute sample.



Next, Aisha Tyler, born September 18, 1970-in San Francisco, yet.



Tyler is hot--obviously--and has shown herself to be an able actress in appearances on shows like 24, Friends and the Santa Clause sequels. She also appeared on I Love The '80s, so you know there's a connection there.

I also think so far she's been the best of the rotating co-hosts filling Roger Ebert's chair on TV during his illness. Fire Roeper and just give her the show till Ebert gets back, I say.

And Natasha Gregson-Wagner, born September 29th, 1970.



I'll be honest with you, I've only seen Gregson-Wagner in a few films, and I only remember her in a couple of them. But what I do remember is that she's very cute and has what I would call perfect breasts.

I never said I was completely renouncing my shallow ways, now did I?.

Watch this space...

Why does Hollywood hate redheads?

Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother was on the Craig Ferguson show this morning. I watched a couple of episodes of that sitcom its first season, but it rarely if ever made me laugh, so I haven't watched since.

So maybe this is old news, but seeing a clip from the show, during his appearance, was the first time it really sank in that Alyson Hannigan had seen fit to dye her lovely red hair black. It took me a moment to recognize her.

It's a conspiracy, I tell you. Probably some sort of "red-state bashing" thing.

Ah well.

ABC has pulled "The Nine" from its schedule again. Because, as in the case of "Veronica Mars," the sad-but-true fact is that not enough people wanted to watch it:

"The Nine," a drama about the survivors of a hostage ordeal at a bank, drew a shade under 3 million viewers in its return on Aug. 1. That number dropped to 1.9 million last week,

That's barely better than a show on The CW. It's a shame, but that's the way it is. So I can't bring myself to get too crazy about this now-you-see-it-now-you-don't summer return. After all, nothing lasts forever.

But I wish that it had been otherwise.

Ladies...I beg of you...

Please, please tell me this wouldn't work. Short article about the kid, now 17, who posed for the famous cover of Nirvana's Nevermind album. You remember that, one of the best album covers ever and totally unlikely ever to end up on this website.

Anyway, it quotes him as saying,

being known as the Nirvana Baby comes in handy with the ladies. "I have to use stupid pickup lines like, 'You want to see my penis ... again,'" he says.

Ladies...I beg of you...

When "a woman's right to choose" goes too far

At If I Ran The Zoo, Deborah has an entry in which she seems to cast a mother's response to her daughter being molested by a man she first "met" on the internet...as both sexist & anti-sex, and anti-technology. You can read the entry there and also see a reply that I posted, but i decided I had more to say.

The crux of her argument seems to be that this girl "chose" to have sex with a man in his 40's. As if there is such a thing as consensual sex where a child is involved (tip: there isn't). So the mother shouldn't blame the computer for making it easier for that to happen.

She even seems to blame the mother for taking her daughter's computer away as a result of her actions. Deborah is a parent and I'm not, but...I think that's what I'd do, too. For starters.

Deborah (apparently grudgingly) admits that yes, this man was a pervert. But she doesn't seem to get even half as much exercised about that as she does about the idea that this mother might actually have a reaction to what happened to her daughter.

What's weird is that I agree, in the broader sense, that 99% of those "sex predators on the internet" stories are inflated scare tactics. But in a case like this, where something actually happened...that's a draw a line in the sand moment for me.

Ok, time for my weekly look-in on the Canadian Second City reality series

Use the search up top for previous chapters, fans.

I'm afraid this show is now starting to lower my opinion not only of the Second City school of comedy...but of Canadians in general.

I've never been a serious student of improv, but I'm not a totally uneducated, disinterested observed either and I remember something about one rule being to always work from the top of your intelligence.

If that's what this current crop of Canadian comedians is doing, I cry for the country (and apologize for the aliteration).

But really, the biggest fault does not lie with the cast members, or with the judges, or with the "mentors" from the current Second City cast. The fault lies with the concept. A Second City reality series, at least done the way this one is, was a terrible idea and the result doesn't make it as good TV, comedy or otherwise.

It's become like watching a road accident, you know it's wrong but you...you can't look away! Tonight's big scene was an American Idol parody, which is not quite as stale as last week's Survivor swipe, but still at least one year too late.

Once again, no celebrity guests...am I cyncial to think they caught a whif of what this show was turning out to be? More than any reality series I've ever seen (which admittedly is not a lot) this one brings to mind images of producers banging their heads against their laptops.

For those cast members (or their friends and family) looking themselves up...I realized watching tonight's episode why I don't want to try to rate you any more. I'll have more about that in a minute.

That said...

Jeannie Cole won my sympathy this week in dealing unapologetically with her admitted lack of singing ability...and picked up a little more when the producers were snotty about it.

Two cast members whom I've liked from the beginning, Kayla Lorette and Megan McDowell, were asked to improvise an eighties pop song. This is what's known in the trade as "baiting me." They actually did a good and credible job, but the performance, like most of them, was lessened by being accompanied only by a piano.

You can't play eighties pop without a synth. You can't play folk without an acoustic guitar either, which was also tried, but I know they had a synthesizer there, it was visible in-shot...mocking me.

Further to my musical-nerd-qualities, Ali Rizvi lost a point or two by not knowing who Leonard Cohen was. And you call yourself a Canadian artist. And possibly by misidentifying Art Garfunkel as the writer of "The Sounds Of Silence" (I thought that was Paul Simon...but I could be wrong).

Is it fair to condemn an aspiring comedian for his limited musical ear and/or poor memory for songwriting credits? Certainly not. But this show doesn't give me much to go on to judge him, or any of them, as a comedian...

I don't watch series like America's Got Talent or So You Think You Can Dance, but maybe someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this: On such shows, don't you get to see an entire performance, whether it's a dance routine or anything else?

On the Second City reality series, all I'm getting to see is what somebody has decided I should see. If, for some reason, the producers decided they wanted to favor one cast member or another, they could easily make them look better via editing. Or vice-versa.

This removes almost any investment that I might have as an audience member. American Idol fans are invested in their favorites, as I know from painful experience. But since I'm never allowed to see one of this show's cast members in an uninterrupted performance...who am I to judge them as sketch comedy/improv performers?

Charisma Carpenter nudes are their own justification

I do think Carpenter is an underrated actress, he added semi-guiltily, but I'm not even going to pretend this post has anything to do with that. Or with anything, really, apart from the easily apparent fact of her also being a fabulous babe.

Holy sweet merciful lord in heaven, and click to see original size...

John Gibson is a dick even by Fox News' standards

I don't know how many of you out there were watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart six years ago, but if you were, you probably remember his first show after 9/11. It was a memorable one, and showed why in only a few years some of us would come to think of him as a national treasure.

I think I could probably find video of it somewhere, but the point I want to make is that what he said was memorable, so most of these quotes are from memory.

He had no interest in mocking the President that night, nor I believe did 99% of the country, including me. What he did show interest in was connecting with his audience.

I remember him addressing the camera as he often does, usually to hilarious effect. But that night he said all he wanted to ask his viewers was..."How you doing? You OK?"

Speaking softly, and evidently from his heart, he talked about how George W's habit of mispronouncing words (or just making up his own) just didn't seem funny anymore. He hoped it would be again one day, because that would mean that maybe things were back to normal.

In other words, or at least as I read it, if that was the biggest pie a satirist could throw, then Bush would have done pretty good.

Well, now it's six years later.

None of you reading this need me to enumerate all the things George W. Bush has done to make himself a deserving target of satire and mockery at the very least. Both from professionals like Stewart and those who make snarky comments on the internet.

But that night, Stewart also said this.

And this next bit is not from memory, it's his actual quoted remarks:

The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce, and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that.

Now. What kind of a truthful, wise and loving human being could find anything worthy of ridicule in a statement like that? Who would express his contempt for a man's thoughts and ideas at a time like that and, more, be willing to accuse that man of insincerity?

Ladies and gentlemen, John Gibson of Fox News.

75 years from now, who will we know and remember?

Someone at Carole & Co. found the August 1934 issue of Photoplay magazine, including the "13 Most Irresistable Women" in Hollywood at the time. Looking at it, I found myself thinking about the fact that it's almost 75 years later, and I know about two-thirds of the names on the list. I can easily conjure mental images of about half.

So I'm wondering, who in today's Hollywood will still be recognizable 75 years from now. I'll probably be dead---and so will you, sorry to bring you down---but will our (hypothetical) grandchilden know the names of...Julia Stiles and Claire Danes?

I tend to doubt it. Call me a dinosaur if you must-somebody else already has today...

I don't know what this means, but I like it

I think because it sounds so musical. There's something both mysterious and youthful about the name, isn't there?

If it weren't so expensive (and if I travelled more than I do) I think I might take any overnight journey by train. I went from here to California once by train, and found out I'm one who really enjoys the sensation of being rocked gently in a train bed at night.

You're the Blue Train!

While lots of people think that you're sad, your land is a
happier place now than it ever was in the past. You represent a good deal
of wealth and privilege, and even a bit of what was wrong with your land,
but you've managed to turn things around. Traveling with you really beats
marching, though you still like to sing about marching sometimes. You love
to wear capes, especially into town.


Take the Trains and Railroads Quiz
at RMI Miniature Railroads.

My nephew is going to be so psyched

You're a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

You can't stop talking about the "good old days" of the past. While
you remember everything being so much better and more glorious back then, you've
got to realize that times have changed! It's time to move on, time to bring in
the new technology and advancements! Still, there is some charm to your olden
out-dated ways. Children seem to love you, for example, as do some historians and
scientists. And you should really eat something... your bones are starting to
show.


Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Fading through the door into summer

Take the Hey Hey, Which Monkee Are You? Quiz.


Mickey had the better voice, but I can totally live with this. I would have been happy to have been Peter, too-just anybody but Davy...

Things like this are probably why Bill Hicks had to get out of Houston

This is freaky-on last night's Saving Grace--which Holly Hunter seems to have made a hit almost by sheer force of will--someone gave her a hypothetical: A mad bomber is holding a child in front of him for protection. What shot do you take?

None, was her instinctive response. You might hurt the baby.

Meanwhile...

In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn baby, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. Now the man says the baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.

Now-there's more to the story than that. As you read further into the AP item, you start to get the idea that the father has, shall we say, some credibility issues.

Child Protective Services has custody of the baby because of a history of domestic violence between [the father] Lewis and his wife, Jacqueline Gray. Agency spokeswoman Estella Olguin said the infant seems in good health.

Lewis was arrested and charged with endangering a child. A grand jury in May declined to indict him on that charge, but charged him with retaliation, accusing him of making threats against [the security guard].

Lewis denies both charges. He said he is considering suing the hospital but has not filed any legal papers.

So. What we're left with here is the possibility that the father is unlikable and unpleasant. Unfortunately, doesn't matter once you've fired a stun gun at him while he was holding a child.

Texas, ladies and gentlemen. A state known for men given to misdirected overreaction that does nothing for anyone it might have been said to be for...(and for women who take no shit, something I sure hope Ms. Gray turns out to be).

Oh...what the fuck am I doing?

You know, sometimes I still can't get the bad taste of Huff's second and last season out of my mouth. Here was a show the first season of which I so appreciated, that was so fine, so smart, with characters who were so belivably and sympathetically fucked up.

Then the second season came along and it turned into a pandering mess.

But, at least I do have the first season on DVD, and I don't have to accept that anything after that actually took place.

This is the great opening credits sequence (with one of W.G. “Snuffy” Walden’s best themes ever).

What purpose is singing? I like to sing.

According to CNN, I:

...have a gift for expression. Whether it's writing, drawing, creating objets d'art or making music, you see the world in a unique way and are able to convey that to other people.

Say, do you think that means I could quote them on a book jacket?

"Ben Varkentine has a gift for expression...he sees the world in a unique way and is able to convey that to other people."-CNN.

Shouldn't have to lie...

No doubt you doodle on napkins and meeting notes,

Well, no. I can't draw and I'm not much of a doodler.

are always humming a new tune,

I do often have a tune in my head-but it's more likely to be The Lightning Seeds than anything new.

have already read the latest fiction releases,

I'm always reading something, but again, it's not likely to be new and it's almost never fiction. With the exception of a few mystery writers I follow and my recent investigations into the world of chick lit.

and know all the local art galleries' schedules by heart.

Nope.

You might like hobbies like sketching,

See doodling, above.

photography,

No-rather than take a photo of something I see, I'd try to write about it later.

sculpting,

Actually I wouldn't mind trying this, but I'd probably be in it just for the nude models.

playing an instrument,

It's true, I would love to really be able to play the keyboards.

singing,

More often than I hum, really.

journaling,

I suppose blogging is a form of this...

scrap-booking

Absolutely not.

or designing clothing.

If you'd seen the clothes I buy, you wouldn't suggest this.

When your life seems too difficult to rise above

This is from a dinner to honor the songs of Noel Coward; it's Pet Shop Boys lip-synching and miming to their record of his "Sail Away."

With "Gilmore Girls" cancelled, "Greek" is the most girly show I watch.

This makes it official.

ABC Family has ordered an additional 10 episodes of its new college drama series "Greek," which airs at 9 p.m. Mondays and centers on college life and the Greek system. ... “Greek’s” third episode last week posted a series high in several key demographics, including females 12-34 (476,000), teens (370,000) and female teens (302,000).

Next question?

One or two times people have given me shit about how lightweight the '80s pop stars were compared to the grungy '90s. I looked them right in the eye and said

"'80s: Live Aid. '90s: McWoodstocks '94 and '99."

At Live Aid, stage time was at such a premium that even a singer as firmly placed in the pantheon as Elvis Costello (my reservations aside) was only allotted one song. This is what he sang, introducing it as "An old Northern folk song."

Another image of the first woman I saw naked onscreen

Thanks for the memories, Mike Wieringo

I don't have anything too much to say about the loss of comics artist Mike Wieringo this weekend. I never knew him, met him at a convention or anything, or even crossed paths with him online.

But I wanted to take just a very few words, because I remember when he started on Flash with Mark Waid, with whom he would go on to co-create Impulse. It took an issue or two for his work to feel rewarding to me, but it had a definite energy, and eventually...

Or, why I stopped going to clubs...

Oh, fabulous.

You're Libya!

It seems that these days, you just say things to get attention.
Shock value is the really important thing for you now. You used to have
a cause, and this made you seem like a threat to the established order, but now you
just want to say wacky stuff once in a while. Air travel doesn't really mesh
with your lifestyle, and you'd probably scare the security guards somehow
anyway.


Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid



Well...

On the bright side, my leader's son gets to have dinner with Nicole Kidman...but it's not going to go well.

The odds of my ever playing host to a season of The Real World are remarkably low.

And maybe Albert Brooks will come to see me.

On the other hand, I apologize for the role my people played in the gunning down of Emmett "Doc" Brown. Things were said in anger, mistakes were made, and maybe they were wound a little too tight.

And anyway, the thieving cur had stolen material we need for our nuclear reactor...not that we have a nuclear reactor, because we don't.



Oh, and Top Gun was a bad movie even with your American devil cover girl next door sweetheart Meg Ryan.

Damn her for making our pulse race.



This is the work of one of my artists.

"Happy dreams any her humanitarian, sleep...any her The justice."




This is not the work of one of my artists, but a Londoner, Janet Cree. Her husband, a famous lawyer

John Platts-Mills had a fascination with more than one killer dictator, for, when his dutiful and self-effaced wife is somewhat surprised by his absence from home, she rings his Chambers to ask his whereabouts: well as it happened his image just appeared flittingly on British TV screens as a guest standing behind Colonel Ghaddafi, on a visit to Libya. This was the time of the Libyan embassy crisis in London, at which point the imperturbable Janet would answer quietly:

‘Well, in that case I will not lay out the table for tea.’

We are inspirational.

And yeah, we torture, but so does the U.S. military, so I wouldn't run your mouth about it until they stop. But then in fact, you get off on it in your films and flicks, don't you?



Finally, check out lawyer Aisha Gaddafi. Some call her the Claudia Schiffer of North Africa, and we've certainly never heard any bad things about her.

We've never heard any bad things about her because people who say things about her that her father doesn't like...tend to disappear.

The Girl in the Black Helmet [and not much else]

Louise Brooks in the thirties.

Random Flickr Blogging: 1844

This week's un-looked-for theme: Nude adult models, then and now.

Credit

I had no smartass remark to make about this one, I just think it's a stunning sculpture (and photo).



Credit

I'll be honest with you, I liked this picture a lot better until I found out the woman on the left is a Penthouse Pet, and the one on the right a pornstar. Or maybe it's vice-versa...

Pirate Meets Girl Waiting For A Star To Fall

Introduction:

For the sake of your sensitivities, I do not ask that you watch each of these videos in their entirety. A minute and a half or so of each should suffice to illustrate my point, or at least to embed something in your head the way it's been in mine...

This is the cheesiest song from The Pirate Movie, itself fabled in song and story as one of the cheesiest films ever made. To say that the lyric is full of double entendres is to give it too much credit. It's so lewd and vulgar I can't even believe they got it into a movie whose target audience was 10-year-old girls and gay boys.



And what about this end song from the same film? Try to decide which is worse, the performances, the lyrics, the choreography, the costumes...



Both these songs were nominated for the 1982 Worst Original Song Razzie award; the first "won" it. They're really bad songs, is what I'm saying.

But are really that much worse than Boy Meets Girl?

This is Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For A Star To Fall.



It was one of the top-selling hits of 1989, yet it's long sounded to me like it could have been written for the same movie.

See if you don't agree.

Speaking of Batgirls...

Yahoo! TV has an item about Mary-Louise Parker, of whom you may remember a certain picture in a Batgirl t-shirt. The item is about the lesbian icon and Emmy-nominated actress's return in the third season of her Showtime series, Weeds, in which she plays a dope-dealing widow.



I've tried Weeds and found it to be not for me (maybe I didn't inhale), but I've appreciated Parker and her work as far back as Grand Canyon in 1991; including of course The West Wing and Angels In America.

Which is why I maybe shouldn't have been as surprised as I was to read this little factoid: "Parker is just a few days past her 43rd birthday."

!

Mary-Louise Parker is 43?

In one word: Damn. She still looks young enough that, if she said she wanted to play Keitha, I would have to give it some very serious consideration.*

PS: And she's given birth, too.








*Yes, this is in a magical candyland in which Emmy-nominated actresses are lining up to play my characters. Don't go snapping your fingers to bring me out of it, ok? I'm so much happier here...

Nice...

So you want to look at a story in which a redheaded girl in skintight (really, really skintight) leather kisses a blonde girl in a leotard, miniskirt and boots. Then, after laying her head on the blonde's breast, she slides a hard little piece of rubber into her mouth, making her suck on it.

Then the blonde girl, now on her knees....

Well.

Suffice it to say that once again, we here at Dictionopolis In Digitopolis have anticipated your every need...





Credits: Via Dr. Zaius and glaurung_quena. Story and art by Elliot S! Maggin and Curt Swan.

Actually, that's closer to the way I feel about her

Gaije has what should probably be the last words on Hillary Clinton's cleavage "problem," including:

All this is largely by way of explaining my initial reaction to Washington Post fashionista Robin Givhan's July 20th article, "Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip into New Neckline Territory."

Rereading Ghivan's article...I became aware of something [odd]. I realized just how frequently she'd used words rarely used to describe Senator Clinton. Words like "tentative," "noncommittal," "tortured," and "ambivalent," all in the service of exposing Clinton's hitherto unnoticed lack of confidence. Odd, really, isn't all that?

It's true, those are all words I would use to describe my own feelings about Mrs. Clinton before I would use them to describe her apparent feelings about herself.

Well, maybe "tortured" under some cirumstances...

Morphing is inherently creepy

-something I observed back around 1992, when the video for Michael Jackson's "Black Or White" song came out. If you don't remember, it featured a seeming cast of thousands of beautiful people in different colors, one morphing into the other.

In support, you see, of the song's statement that it indeed does not matter if you are black or white. Well, great. Except that my first reaction upon seeing it was, and I have a clear recollection of saying this aloud in my friend Marco Pecenco's apartment..."That is postively creepy."

And it had nothing to do with the then-not-yet-criminally-accused Whacko Jacko The Batshit Insane And His Chimp Bubbles.

It's just that, for me at least, morphing only works when it's supposed to creep me out. There's something almost reptilian and humanity-debasing about it, something that sucks the warmth out of any image to which it's applied.

Even when you have one lovely woman morphing into another.

Someone has put together a morphing video of great-looking actresses from Carole Lombard to Sophia Loren to Holly Hunter. Beautiful women whom any straight boy would be all-too-happy to get romantic with.

But as presented here....(shudder)...well, it doesn't activate my sentimental side...it makes me feel more like I was supposed to feel about Venom in Spider-Man 3, but didn't.

PS: BTW, I stole that video link from Mark Evanier.

I don't know who he stole it from...

I know, you know, they just don't have any proof

Let the record show that it is now 9:18 PM. Having just seen in a promo that tonight's episode of Psych features horse racing, I'm going to test my own psychic abilities: I predict that the fake-psychic, pop-culture obsessed detective will make at least one reference to Hot to Trot.

ETA: Okay, I was wrong, but I'm still happy. The promo for next week showed that the actor John Amos will be a guest star, which means the links between this series and West Wing continue unabated.

John Amos was Admiral Percy "Fitz" Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on West Wing. An episode of Psych earlier this season was directed by Tim Matheson, who played Vice President John Hoynes on WW.

And as previously noted, Dule Hill (Charlie) and Kirsten Nelson (the young Mrs. Landingham) are regulars on Psych.

Well doesn't that just Smurfing Smurf.

Which 80's cartoon character are you?

Papa Smurf You get a little blue when things go sour but you know how to relax and have a good time at home. Then again you are just an old man.

How do you compare? Take this test! Tests from Testriffic

Don't shoot, it's only me...and my team of writers

The writer and director Mel Shavelson died yesterday.

As this obituary notes, among his credits was the 1958 romantic comedy Houseboat, with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. I remember watching that movie one summer, and liking it, but...well, an imdb user (also named Ben) describes it as a "family-friendly comedy." With all due respect to my fellow Ben-brother, no movie starring Sophia Loren is family-friendly. Not if you're in the throes of puberty while watching it, anyway.

Shavelson also directed and co-wrote The Seven Little Foys, with Bob Hope. I've yet to see this one, but it's frequently mentioned as a high point in Hope's career-and one of the few in which he actually tried to act.

With those two Oscar-nominated screenplays under his belt, this hardly seems mentioning, but I also thought Shavelson wrote "with" Hope the best of his many cobbled-together "autobiographies," Don't shoot, it's only me : Bob Hope's comedy history of the United States.



Shavelson came up as a gag writer for Hope's radio show (where I actually think he was funniest), so probably it's no wonder he could write most believably in Hope's voice-he only helped create it...

This song is a classic

Just accept it.



I have a distinct memory of lying in my bed at night sometime around 1984; hearing this for the first time on the radio, and thinking that. Then the DJ back announced who it was, and...well, I didn't exactly sit bolt-upright and cry, "WHAT?" ...but that was kind of how I felt.

I think that's when I began to get an inkling that if you strip away all the publicity, what you're left with is one of the best pop writers...

Roulette and blackjack, builders of paradise

This is a good song by one of the greatest groups of the new wave era coming out of England in the '80s. And a bitingly acidic take on the temptations of self-indulgence, besides.

Martin Fry and Mark White had a chance at being one of the finest songwriting duos techno-pop has produced. But they couldn't sustain it for more than a couple of albums, and not in a row.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Hoo boy

Mana has called me out with a meme...

(1) Explain an issue that you are most passionate about.

(2) Why should all others (ignoramuses that disagree with you) accept your position?

(3) Why do the rest of us (ignoramuses who disagree with you) just not get it?

(1) I don't know if there are any, this morning. Sorry but I'm feeling kind of apathetic.

There are things that I care about. Gay rights is one, and has been since before I created my two lesbian characters who have never really left my mind since. As I like to say, I'm not gay, but I'd like to think I could be. But passionate? I dunno. I just think it's inevitable.

It's weird maybe, but one of the things in my life I've gotten the most angry about is when I see performers exhibiting what I think of as bad showmanship, when I think they're abusing an audience they don't know what to do with.

At times in the past, I may have been passionate to defeat Bush & Cheney, but now, as recently noted, I'm just licking my wounds from the realization that everybody in the world knows what we have to do, but no one in a postion to do so is going to do it.

I'm passionate about protecting kids. And maybe about the idea that that the most anti-sexist position you can take is to be willing to criticise women when you think they're wrong...just as you would a man.

(2) Damned if I know. Where I am right now, I despair of ever convincing anyone of anything. The way I view the world is the way I view the world, and it was knocked into me a long time ago it was a view I couldn't necessarily expect anyone else to share.

(3) “Why do the rest of us (ignoramuses who disagree with you) just not get it?” Well, some of you were raised differently...better, in most cases, I'd like to think, than I was. Most people believe things for all kinds of reasons, and only a few of them are intellectual.

I also think a lot of people have trouble truly having empathy for others...but you can't go by me, I'm having one of my cynical-to-the-point-of toxicity mornings.

Thanks, this was fun.

Anybody else want to play?

I've never been so glad to be full-lipped.

Women see masculine-looking men as more unsuitable long-term partners but men with more feminine features are seen as more committed and less likely to stray, researchers said Wednesday.

Scientists at the universities of Durham and St Andrews came to the conclusion by asking more than 400 British men and women to make judgments on character after looking at digitally-altered pictures of men's faces.

The web-based test asked participants to rate the face for traits such as dominance, ambition, wealth, faithfulness, commitment, parenting skills, and warmth.

Men with square jaws, larger noses and smaller eyes were classed as significantly more dominant, less faithful, worse parents and as having less warm personalities.

Those with finer facial features, fuller lips, wide eyes and thinner, more curved eyebrows on the other hand were viewed as a better bet for long-term relationships.

I really think I am the only non-Canadian watching this, and I may be the only person in the world blogging it

In the words of dreamy British duo Scarlett & Black, feeling exclusive can't be described, so I can’t share it...

I'm starting to get the feeling that the people making the Second City reality series from Canada realized, after already committing, what a bad idea it was for a weekly show. You can really feel them straining to fill up an hour.

It's a shame because I can believe the cast members have some talent (inasmuch as I can tell). But I'd much rather watch a documentary of them trying to put together a sketch show than the...detours this series keeps taking.

Especially when those detours come at the expense of presenting the cast members in a better light. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think they know it.

In the name of what was apparently felt would be "good reality television" (wrong) tonight's show devolved into a limp and dated Survivor parody. In improv, I have to believe that when Drew's Line Is It Anyway beats you to something, it's a bad sign.

(Even with a cast most of whom have at least some improv training and experience, this show is guilty of one of the marks of bad TV: Telling us things three times. Yes, okay guys, we got it that you punked the other cast members into believing you had a meal with Martin Short when you really didn't. Whoo! Good for you. But we got it. We got it, okay? We got it.)

(for some reason, the real, in-the flesh celebrity guests seem to have dried up).

No one's reading this (well, not no one, but I'll get to that in a minute). Still, I would say, if asked: Let us see more of the sketches. Let us-the people who are actually watching-decide who we'd eliminate or not.

I don't mean via an AI-style phone vote, necessarily, I just mean for ourselves. (Besides, even if they did it by phone, I probably wouldn't be eligible to vote, being in the US and all)

I am seriously starting to get the feeling that a documentary of what went on behind the scenes of this show would be better than the show itself.

BTW, I'm compelled to keep posting about this because Sitemeter and a comment or two indicates that people are finding this blog through searches for names of the cast members. I take these people to be friends and family of those cast members, or maybe the cast members themselves.

But whoever you are, to you: Hi! I'm still sticking with Jeannie Cole and Kayla Lorette as the ones I like most. But after this week that's more about stubbornness than because they were allowed to show me much--if any--of their improvising and/or acting stuff.

Once again though, on the bright side, the person eliminated tonight was the same one who I would have eliminated, were it up to me.

But I still hate the way they're trying to force Dave Thomas "as" Simon Cowell...

Made me sad

On the new game show the Power of 10 tonight, Drew Carey gave away a million dollars to a 19-year-old kid. The boy correctly guessed (within an acceptable margin, as set up in the rules) what percentage of women polled said they considered themselves feminists.

The percentage? 29%.

All I can say is that if I'd been on that show I would've lost a lot of money, because I would have put it at much, much higher-like around 80. I think this is another one of those situations where I'm naive.

(I also couldn't help noticing, he noted dryly, that this was a case of one rich white man making another. And by virtue of his cynically if correctly assessing his countrywomen's definitions of themselves, too.)

(Better start practicing now: President Rudy Giuliani...)

(But I digress)

But I'd also be really curious to know if that's exactly the way the question was phrased. I subscribe to the belief that if you tell most people, and certainly most women, what feminism actually means--

advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men

--they support it. Sometimes it's a real wake-up call for me to reminded of just how much the word "feminists" has been devalued.

If this isn't ripe material for turning into a metaphoric political song, I don't know what is

A Crocodile fell to earth in a Russian nuclear town.

Take it, Pink.

In case I haven't mentioned it, my grandfather was Russian

Bill Clinton:

Once when we were walking through my hotel together, a Russian journalist asked [Boris Yeltsin] if he was happy with our meeting. He responded quickly, "Happy? One cannot be happy outside the presence of a beautiful woman. But I am satisfied."

-My Life

Ah, me. Where hath flown the opulence of yesteryear?

Once again, Carole Lombard:




Via Carole & Co.

Not only don't they make dresses like that anymore, but how many actresses could wear them if they did? Can you see Julia Stiles or Jessica Biel wearing something like the above? Okay-maybe, maybe Emma Watson...

Two for Tuesday

This is Paul McCartney's "Spies Like Us" video from 1986 along with, at the end, the final part of a morning show interview he did at the time. The song's one of McCartney's homemade numbers that tries to get by on cuteness and charm, but to be fair, it does.



And this is Olivia Newton John singing "Magic" from 1980. There are some songs in life that you just need, and this is one of them. For me anyway. I also think she's particuarly sexy in this clip, even though (again, for me anyway) that was never a huge part of her appeal.

The only thing that makes Xanadu worth watching is the songs, and this is the best of those.

I probably ought to stop banging my head against this computer desk

[Stephenie Meyer] got up, started writing really for the first time in her life, and just three months later finished a 500 page book about a regular girl named Bella and her gorgeous vampire boyfriend Edward. Readers immidiately bit-so far [Meyer's books] have sold a hefty 1.3 million copies...

Entertainment Weekly

Bam (ow) Bam (ow) Bam! (ow) BAM! (OW)...

Mark Evanier has plagiarized me!

These are examples of a series of posts I made to my old blog, The Sound of the Crowd, back in 2005.

This is Mark, today.

You'll hear from my lawyer in the morning, Evanier.

Holly Hunter laughs that laugh one always hopes beautiful women will laugh when one says something funny

Differences in approach

Ever just read someone who you end up wanting to make write "Brevity is the soul of wit" 50 times on a blackboard, Bart Simpson style?

At Feministing, Cara has found a head-smackingly dumb ad. All that is really needed is to call attention to how head-smackingly dumb it is, something which shouldn't take more than seven words, tops.

Cara? 453 words. With the dumb puns (hers), and the offensive and the misogyny this, and the women as sexual objects that and the overkill overkill overkill overkill....

And then, to wrap things up, she ends on a cum joke.

The head-smackingly dumb ad isn't funny (at all), but it's still funnier than the cum joke.

Admittedly something like this is not a feminist problem as much as it is a blogging problem, or maybe, for me, a "world" problem. But I suspect that things very much like it are part of what makes strong, smart, fantastic and pro equal-rights women hesitate before calling themselves feminists.

It's certainly part of why I do.

Resolved:

This blog is about to get a lot less political.

I know it's not terribly political now, what with the cult tv show and movie references, reviews of obscure (at least in this country) Canadian reality shows, posting other people's homemade videos and clips from my favorite movies, observations on whatever "chick lit" I'm reading this week and arty portraits of naked women.

But I do still look in on the news at least once or twice a week. That is about to stop. Why?

This is why.

Despite the clamor from the Democratic political base for the more drastic step of impeaching Bush, Cheney and Gonzales, Democratic congressional leaders have avoided making any moves that voters might see as a political vendetta.

I was being deadly serious when I said, a few weeks ago, that when people say things like this it makes me want to scream. I tried to be funny about it what with the Daffy Duck picture and all, but I was deadly serious.

It just makes me want to scream. In fact that's what I did when I read that paragraph. And that's when I knew that I was going to have to stop keeping even one eye on the Democrats, Bush, Cheney, Gonzales et all for a while.

For the good of my own mental health, and for this blog's aesthetic value. Because, if I keep reading news items like that, you're going to keep reading blog posts like this:

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!

THEY STILL DON'T GET IT!!

BILL CLINTON HAS TAUGHT THEM NOTHING!!!

The voters can-and could always-tell the difference between an impeachment that was a political vendetta and one that is a necessary corrective. It is only--and I do mean only--the senate and congressional "leaders" and the pundit class who cannot.

That is why the disgust level with the Democrats keeps rising and rising. Because everybody--everybody--can see that the Bush administration has been and is a hateful, murderous disaster.

And everybody can now see that these people...the people we charged with catching these, these lizards with delusions of humanity...are too afraid to do anything about it. Because they fear somebody might say they're being mean.

There is nothing mean about standing up to bullies. Even the bullies know that. It's what real men and women do. It seems there are very few of either in Washington. And none with the juice to actually get anything done.

Now I ask you...

Would you rather read a lot more posts like that, or would you rather I start posting more nudes?

That's what I thought.

Random Flickr-blogging 5382

Credit

When Marie, Mary, and Miriam found their joint ex-boyfriend Pierre in the recycle bin and realized what had happened, they all had a good laugh about it.

Is it wrong that I totally want to meet this person?

One of the 35 books that I have checked out from the library right now (yes, you read that right) is My Life by Bill Clinton. Now-at my library, as perhaps at yours, when you check out books you have the option of having a printed "receipt" listing their titles and due dates.

I rarely do this, because I'm practically fetishistic about checking the library web site, and almost always know what's due, what I have waiting for me on hold, etc. But, sometimes you find these scraps of paper left in the books by people who had them before you.

There are no names or other identifying marks, of course, but it can be interesting to see what else people who have read what you are reading, have checked out from the library. Like for instance, someone who had the Bill Clinton book before me also checked out at the same time:

Ella enchanted
DVD

W.i.t.c.h. Graphic novel #2, by Parke Godwin

Hello Kitty & friends. 3.

Now, the way I see it, there are two possibilities here. The first is that there is someone else out there who likes Anne Hathaway, graphic novels, Parke Godwin, adorable cartoon characters and pop culture, but who also likes to be intelligent and informed about recent events.

Clearly I must find this person so I can make her my queen.

Of course, the other possibility is that this person is a teenage girl who just had a report due on Clinton, in which case, yes, it is wrong that I totally want to meet her.

However, I choose to believe that she's just emotionally still a teenager, like most of us.

Might I remind you, this is art

"NU ALLONGE"

I don't want to hear anything about any of you getting hard over it.

You either, gentlemen.