We Love Websites with Hawaiian-Sounding Names

Hulu is NBC and News Corp's attention to create a video website. I signed up for the beta AGES AGO and just got my invite today.

It's pretty cool. Very clear video with perfect quality sound, and they have whole episodes of stuff like "Family Guy," "30 Rock," "The Simpsons" and even "Heroes." Plus, a lot of shorts, the kind of content that gets pulled from YouTube quickly whenever anyone dares put it up. Like this:



But my favorite feature is the "Custom Clip." You can take just a portion of any video and embed only the part that you want. Which means I can do this:



That's not bad.

Sherri Shepherd Continues Sapping My Will to Live

Sherri Shepherd is the newest host on "The View" and one of the most insane idiots on television. And I'm including animated characters here. She gives Jabberjaw a run for his money. (Jabberjaw, you young'uns won't recall, was an animated shark who talked like Curly from "The Three Stooges" but nonetheless frequently uttered Rodney Dangerfield's catchphrase, "I don't get no respect." Ripping off two comedians at once was considered a divine outpouring of imaginative brilliance at '70s Hanna-Barbera.)

Anyway, you may remember Shepherd's previous CBI appearance, in which she claimed to have no opinion on the pressing, urgent matter of the shape of the planet. Barbra Walters asked if the Earth was flat, Shepherd answered, and I quote, "I don't know. I never thought about it." Now, "Yes" is the incorrect answer to Walters' question.

"Is the world flat?"

"Yes."

Wrong. Cut and dry.

Shepherd somehow manages to go beyond the wrong answer, to come up with something even more incorrect. At least the person who thinks the world is flat has considered the nature of the world around them for a fleeting moment. Shepherd obviously has nothing going on whatsoever upstairs, to the point that she has never paused and actually had a thought about the universe and her place therein. Now that's pow'rful stupid.

I'm not sure if it's theoretically possible to top that abysmal episode for sheer dumbassery. But Shepard seems determined to try. Here she is destroying what miniscule shards remained of my faith in humanity, mangling a Christmas carol in a slavish act of devotion to her sponsors, the woefully misguided suckers at Dodge Caravan.



Now consider this - the scene you have just witnessed is meant to advertise the Dodge Caravan. They want you to see this woman swerve around their habitat-decimating vehicle like a disoriented panda, howling like a mental patient, and model your own behavior on hers. Best of luck with that, chief.

Boys Becoming Men...Men Becoming Wolves...

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, a one-off joke from an October episode of the fall-down funny "30 Rock," is now a bonafide cultural meme, and I couldn't be more pleased. No, really! Gawker informs me that WBM provided the theme for a New York hipster Halloween party. And if providing the theme for a New York hipster Halloween party doesn't make you a cultural meme...well, then I don't really know what the term "meme" means. And I'm fairly certain that I do. Let's say, 65% so.

Tracy Morgan has graciously now recorded a full version of the song, and College Humor has appropriately made a little photo-montage video to mark the occasion. Enjoy.

Criss Angel Disproves Shit You Already Knew Was False

So, apparently NBC has this show, "Phenomenon," that's like "American Idol" for magicians, and one of the two judges is that Criss Angel "Mindfreak" guy who pretended to have sex with Britney a little while back. Now, I would never watch this show, because I'm generally not a huge fan of magic, but this clip is HI-larious.

One of the contestants is this immense goober Jim Callahan, who claims that he can physically contact the spirit world. He has Raven-Symoné choose a mystery object at random and put it in a box filled with salt, then allows a spirit to actually use his body to write out the box's contents live on stage. (She chooses a toy truck, which is so Raven!)

Honestly, it's one of the silliest performances I've ever seen. He jerks around and makes noises and rolls his eyes into the back of his head - he even has the host caution the audience that his gyrations may be disturbing beforehand. Whoopi Goldberg doesn't take her performance this far in the film Ghost, and she's playing the scene for laughs.

Anyway, Callahan correctly "guesses" that the object in the box is metal and has four wheels. He's being coached by a ghost and he still can't come up with the word "truck"? What, does this ghost only speak in puzzles? Is it the ghost of Frank Gorshin? We're supposed to find this impressive somehow? I mean, seriously, this is such an old, tired line of bullshit...Fake mentalists used to pull this routine all the time, sending assistants into the audience to find random objects which the performer would then identify using code words. (For example, the assistant would say, "Can you tell me what I hold in my hands?," and this meant it was a pocket watch, whereas "What is the object I'm holding now?," would mean cigarette lighter. I'm sure Callahan's act is based on something similar.)

Criss Angel is having none of it, and just completely faces this Callahan guy on national television by holding up two more mystery envelopes and demanding to know what's inside. The ensuing tantrum, with Callahan calling Angel an "ideological bigot" (for not believing in magic!), may be one of the year's TV highlights:



That video was actually posted to YouTube BY Callahan, who seems to think that Angel's a hypocrite for not believing in spiritual possession. I'm not actually sure whether or not Angel has ever insisted that his magic is real and not just entertainment-themed illusion, so I can't speak to the claim of hypocrisy, but I do know that the term "ideological bigot" is really stupid and that Jim Callahan is a massive, ridiculous fraud. And not just a fraud, but an angry, insecure fraud. Which is funny.

Like Eating a Hot Circle of Garbage...

"Office" fans may be interested to know that both pizza restaurants mentions on the show a few week's back - "Pizza by Alfredo" and "Alfredo's Pizza Cafe" - have websites online. They are not, of course, REAL, but you've got to admire the effort NBC's putting into turning the fake world of Dunder-Mifflin into an online reality. In addition to multiple character blogs and the Dunder-Mifflin Infinity destination, they're now getting into the phony pizza business.

(These new sites are so realistic, I actually almost believed they were legit until reading this debunking post from Best Week Ever.) I wonder if this strategy is actually having any effect whatsoever on the show's ratings. Do people who wouldn't otherwise watch "The Office" discover the hilarity via these web destinations? Just strikes me as unlikely...

Perhaps it's just about keeping the viewers they already have engaged and watching...Or maybe the idea is that they can get more viewers to log into NBC.com, thereby discovering other NBC programming? Anyone actually know the strategy here?

Tell Them You Want Them to Wait...That's an Order...

I'd love to embed the execrable new abstinence PSA that my tax dollars are sponsoring (during football games, no less!) here on the blog, so you all could see what I'm about to discuss conveniently. But, alas, the geniuses at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have yet to discover this newfangledy technology called the YouTube what might allow them to disseminate their message of ignorance and Victorian sexual panic to the masses more speedily. So you'll have to go over to their website to watch it and then come back.

The ad features children addressing the camera as if they were speaking bluntly to their parents. "Talk to me about sex," they plead. "Otherwise, I'll learn everything from the Internet, which will likely result in a life-long diaper fetish."

It's a little weird, but there's nothing so horrifying about most of this content. The kids in the commercial are uniformly to young to be having sex...only a real creep would object to parents instructing an 8-year-old to reconsider before trying out his first Hot Karl. As Bob Saget might say 100,000 per hour without getting a single laugh, "That's just wrong!"

But the last little section of the commercial really rubbed me the wrong way, no pun intended. A disembodied but stern voices pipes up and instructs you to "Tell your children to wait until marriage to have sex."

Um...what? Why should I do that? I mean, I don't even have any children, but if I did, I think I'd be okay with them having pre-marital sex. I'm 28 years old and I've never been married. If I had taken this advice to heart as a young man, I'd pretty much be a Judd Apatow movie at this point.

Did we have some kind of vote making this society's Accepted Carnal Standard that I missed out on? Cause the last time I checked, the only people who made a moral commitment to abstaining completely until marriage were religious weirdos. Granted, I'm getting an inaccurate sample because I've spent my entire adult life in Los Angeles, but I'm not certain I've ever known any single, celibate individuals my own age, at least since high school. (And back then, celibacy amongst my peers was not so much a personal choice as an unfortunate state of affairs.)

That's not to say it's a bad choice. If no sex until marriage works for you...hey, best of luck. Seems kind of irresponsible to me, like making a major purchase without shopping around for the best deal first, but I try not to judge. But why is our government buying up air time with my money to peddle this notion?

It's a rhetorical question, of course...I know why...Because these bureaus have all been stocked by lifelong conservative fundie whackjobs and Bush cronies, and thus they no longer represent the majority of Americans, but a small sliver of extremely vocal crazy people who want to enforce their own narrow, theocratic agenda on the rest of us.

Still, all the blog posts and books and newspaper articles laying out exactly how this cabal took hold of and exercised power over every level of our national leadership doesn't prepare you for actually witnessing their handiwork on television. What a disgrace...

[Hat tip: Yglesias]

Quarantine: Day Four

DeathCold 2007 just keeps on rolling here in my apartment. In addition to my myriad other ailments and complaints, I've actually developed a sore neck from sleeping so much lo these past 96 hours. Heading out to the doctor at 3, so hopefully he'll have some helpful advice that doesn't include the old "drink plenty of fluids" line. I've imbibed a ton of fluids, usually orange juice, during every cold I've ever had in my entire life, and I'm not convinced it has ever done me any good at all. Not once have I chugged a liter of Tropicana and bounded out of bed eagerly greeting a new, no-longer-infected day. Usually, the citric acid burns the back of my throat, I get pulp mixed in my post-nasal drip for the rest of the day and that's about it.

I'm even running out of non-online reading material. I finished Bret Easton Ellis' "Lunar Park" yesterday and may have to swing by the bookstore on the way home from the doctor for my next selection. Four hours of essentially solitary confinement has made me fairly desperate for entertainment. I actually watched about 2 hours of the Emmy Awards last night before I couldn't take any more, so you know it's getting ugly around here.

A few questions about the Emmys last night for anyone else who watched:

- Has Robert Duvall lost his marbles? I'm not trying to be mean. The guy's a brilliant actor; I'm a fan, even though he makes approximately 22 bad films for every good one. But he made two really weird, rambling speeches last night that almost made me question his sanity. In the first speech, he went on and on about Westerns being the great American genre right before waxing nostalgic about filming his most recent Western, the three Emmy-winning Broken Trail, in Alberta, Canada. The second "speech" made even less sense, and wasn't really even for him, but was intended for the film's producers. Just strange.

- The little mini-films introducing the writing staffs for the nominated variety/comedy shows was the highlight of the entire broadcast. That seems kind of sub-optimal for the Emmy Award producers, seeing as it's, comparatively, kind of a minor award.



- I get that Frankie Valli is from Jersey, and The Sopranos are from Jersey, and Valli's even made a few appearances on the show, but what the hell was up with that "tribute" featuring the guys from "Jersey Boys"? I mean, a montage of "Goodfellas" with the Four Seasons in the background, okay, that I get. (He even gets name-checked in that film. "Who the hell do you think you are? Frankie Valli or some kind of big shot?") But Sopranos is set in the present day and the music is largely contemporary. They should have booked Journey.

- I'm no fan of the Fox network, but in the interest of fairness, can we agree that they probably censored Sally Field for saying the word "goddamn" and not because she was talking about Iraq? Sally Field always irritates me at award shows (and, more generally, in life). She's won a ton of these things at this point, it should be totally old hat to her, but she still has to do that lame, over-excited, spazzy, "Oh I didn't expect this!" act every single time. Compare her faux-jittery, discombobulated style to the composed grace and impeccable wit of Helen Mirren's speech. It's just embarrassing.

But watch the video for yourself...They let her rant (meaninglessly) about Iraq for a few moments, even getting in that hacky old line about "if moms ran the world, there'd be no war, blah blah blah..." They only cut her off when she started swearing.



It's a separate matter whether or not you should be allowed to blaspheme on television. I think you should. You're allowed to say racial and sexist slurs on television ("30 Rock" laced one hilarious episode this past season with epithets ranging from "queerburger" to "faggotron"), so why not "suck it, Jesus" or "goddamn"? But still, those are the rules and it seems to me, in this case, they were applied as fairly as possible. With so much to be genuinely outraged about these days, including AT&T's genuine censoring of Pearl Jam's anti-war sentiments, this is a distraction.

- What was up with that Tony Bennett/Christina Aguilera thing? They sang for about 4 minutes, the dancers in front of them were distracting and not particularly impressive, and he looked like he barely knew what was going on. Plus, she's very pregnant. What's she doing climbing on top of a piano?

- The thing about Lewis Black's whole persona and style of comedy is that the jokes themselves have to be really funny. If he's working with sub-par material, as he was last night, the whole yelling-ranting-psycho schtick just gets kind of desperate and irritating.

- Was it me or did Ryan Seacrest actually do an okay job? Not that I laughed at any of his jokes, but hiring Sanjaya Malakar's foil to host a big awards show seemed like a basic error in judgment to me. But he kind of pulled it off, kind of. Only improvement would have been to have Randy and Simon at the foot of the stage critiquing his performance mid-broadcast.

- "Hell's Kitchen" wasn't even nominated for Best Reality Competition Show. WTF?

- Was happy to see "30 Rock" win. It really is the best comedy on television right now.

This concludes the Pathetic Sick Bastard's Frustrated Guide to Watching the Emmys Because He's Too Nasally Congested to Sleep.

"Laguna Beach," "The Hills," "Newport Harbor"...Fake, fake, fake

I've been saying this for years, that these shows are clearly pre-scripted. You couldn't make documentary-style reality TV into this kind of glossy, multi-camera show. It just doesn't work. But people would never believe me. Seriously, I've had at least 10 arguments in the past two years on this very subject.

"I'm telling you, 'The Hills' is fake. They just make up pseudo-realistic stories about these kids and then have them act it out like it's happening to them live."

"But they cry on cue and stuff! No way Lauren Conrad's that good an actress!"

Surprise, surprise...It's FAKE:

They call MTV's "The Hills" a "reality" show, but we've had our doubts for some time. Fueling our skepticism, on Tuesday night, the star, Lauren Conrad, showed up at Da Silvano for dinner with three friends and a camera crew. One irked diner told us, "It was clear that this show is not a reality show. They took five takes of Lauren ordering dinner. The film crew took over the outside eating area by setting up lights and cameras everywhere. They should go back to California."

Massive Egregious Sopranos Spoilers To Follow

WARNING: DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE FINAL EPISODE

Okay, so, for a second there...I was really pissed off.

They make us wait a whole season, they build up this whole face-off with New York, they go through all this terrorist-FBI nonsense and then it just ends with no closure whatsoever, while we're listening to Journey?

But then I gave it a few minutes...and I realized how much sense it made. So, okay, clearly Tony does get shot, and the last thing we see is the last thing he sees - the doorway at the front of the restaurant as Meadow's about to enter. The entire show has been, in many ways, about the conflict between Tony's suburban home life and the violence and horror of his criminal occupation. So it ends with the sudden and permanent interruption of Tony's life as he enjoys a family dinner, the ultimate ritual of suburban familyhood. We feel it as he would. "Hey, what just happened? I was all set to eat dinner with the family here!"

(You'll recall last week, when Tony remembered talking with Bobby about being killed, about how it all happens so fast, you don't even know what's going on. Foreshadowing!)

But beyond the significance of that final scene, it was just a brilliant episode throughout. I noticed that it was far more skittish and chaotic than a typical entry, skipping between brief scenes of no more than a minute or two for much of the time. At first, I suspected this was an attempt to tie up all kinds of loose story threads, as if writer/director David Chase had simply run out of time. But on further consideration, I think it was probably intentional. Possibly as a way to compensate for the audience's extreme expectations, that this one hour was going to "make sense" of the 85 that had come before, which of course isn't even possible. Or perhaps it was simply a reflection of Tony's increasing agitation and anxiety of his safety and that of his family.

The scene where he visits Junior was one of this final episode's best. Recognizing that the enemy he's been hating for months no longer remembers who he is, Tony begins to probe around the edges of his uncle's awareness. Does the old man remember his own brother? Does he remember that the two of them used to run North Jersey? All that power, all those years of scheming, and now it's all lost. He can't even remember.

Tony, as it turns out, was the same way, always intending to do more and to feel better but never quite getting there. Once he's dead, does all that struggle and inner turmoil add up to anything? Even if he had survived (and I don't think he did), it wouldn't be much of a life. Ever-dwindling returns on investment from an ever-shrinking crew. This season made clear that everyone pretty much considers the New Jersey mob to be small time. Phil Leotardo thought that three hits would bring down the entire organization, after all.

(Talk about someone incapable of change. His indifference toward compromise caused him to be literally crushed, in a classic bit of David Chase gallows humor, by a van containing his own grandchildren.)

People have compared the show to classical tragedy, but it's more like one of those parodies of classical tragedy that satirically elevate pedestrian or lowly narratives to the level of an epic.

Tony's just a thug. Chase has given us this opportunity over the last seven years to examine him closely, to see that even a thug still has a soul, but in this final season, he had to pull back and remind us once again that this is a terrible man who does terrible things. I guess it's the only responsible thing to do.

The scene where he offers A.J. a real chance to do something with his life, one that reflected some amount of attention to the boy's interests and needs, struck me as a real positive development for Tony, which pretty much signaled that Chase would have no choice but to kill him by the end of the episode. Finally, for the first time, Tony seems capable of adjusting his expectations to satisfy someone he loves. Rather than lash out at A.J. for not being the son he wants him to be, Tony alters his approach and comes up with an equitable solution.

This is the one thing he's never been able to do, so he may have actually learned a little something. And that's not really how things work on "The Sopranos." Once you gain a little genuine insight and prove capable of genuine growth, you're generally killed. I just realized I'm going to have to begin referring to the show in past tense. How depressing...

Kid Nationalism

When I first read the synopsis of CBS's new reality show "Kid Nation," it sounded like the greatest single idea for a TV show of all time. Abandoning 40 kids in the middle of New Mexico and telling them to construct a new society. You could just call it "Lord of the Flies," but I suppose that might cause some copyright issues, so instead "Kid Nation" would do.

Holy crap, that would be amazing. No adult intervention or supervision whatsoever, just cameramen who promise not to intervene, and let the little bastards loose on one another. It'd be like a weekly Battle Royale only REAL! Forget The Running Man...This is a much better concept.

But, no...It was not to be. I watched the preview over at CBS.com and it's really a wimp-out kiddie version of "Survivor." Kids are divided into four teams and then they compete one another for amenities and candy and blah blah blah. But because it's Kiddie Survivor, none of the kids even get voted off! They can CHOOSE to go home if they get homesick, but otherwise everyone stays. PLUS one kid gets a "gold star" worth $20,000 each episode!

Lame lame lame. Sounds like sleepaway "Double Dare." And for all the "we're letting kids build their own society!" talk, it doesn't seem like the kids really have to do much other than physical competitions to win the prizes each week. They're not exactly raising a barn or irrigating or anything. Disappointing...You came close, CBS. Better luck next year.

No Cure for Cancer

What the fuck is going on with Katie Couric? When did she become a total nutbar?

[John] Edwards, 53, admitted that he'd "been focused on Elizabeth and the family,'' since he and his wife found last week that the cancer that had been in remission since 2004 had now spread to her bones.

In an interview Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes,'' correspondent Katie Couric suggested to Edwards that people could view his decision to continue running for president in the face of his wife's illness as either callousness or "insatiable ambition.''

Those are tough questions, Edwards said, looking tired this morning in his conversation with Bay Area reporters, but Couric "asked the questions American people are asking themselves. The American people deserve answers from me and Elizabeth.''

That's John, gracious as usual. But this is some pretty ugly business. Going after a candidate for President because his wife has cancer?

And, yes, this is definitely Katie going after Edwards. She tries to pull a Hannity, to float the topic as a secondary source. "You know, Alan, some have said that Hillary Clinton met her husband Bill while working at a Tijuana donkey show. What are your thoughts on this development?"

The ol' "some have said" maneuver. Same move here. "Some may think about perceiving you as callous." I mean, Katie, either you're suggesting that he's callous or you're not. This "some people may interpret..." bullshit is just a diversionary tactic meant to throw off the incredibly stupid. They will, of course, eventually come to believe that this is their own idea formed rationally within their own heads.

"Hey, I just realized that I view John Edwards' decision to continue running for president in the face of his wife's illness as either callousness or 'insatiable ambition!' I am really insightful, isn't I?"

If anything, I think Katie should have to explain this concept that she pre-supposes some voters will eventually settle upon. How exactly does Elizabeth Edwards helping her husband campaign reflect any callousness on his part? Is there any reason to believe he is coercing her into helping him out?

I mean, okay, if she had a terrible case of the flu, and he was dragging her all around town kissing hands and shaking babies, fine, then I could understand the argument. "Hey, that asshole's making his wife run around town kissing hands and shaking babies, when she should be home in bed sipping delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice and watching The Price is Right."

Fair enough. But Elizabeth Edwards isn't ever going to get better. (I'm sorry to be blunt, and I feel terribly for them both, and find their actions of the past few weeks more than a little heroic, but that's the long and the short of her condition. It's terminal.) I think there's ever reason to believe she and her husband sat down and had a serious discussion about how they would spend the rest of her life. And they settled upon "campaign for the American presidency." Most terminal patients have to settle for much less excitement in their final months/years. It could be worse.

So, okay...What does that have to do with callousness? A "serious" couple would spend their final years together (and Elizabeth could potentially live for 5-7 years by most estimates) sitting in a darkened room waiting for the end to come? Curling up in the fetal position and quietly sobbing? Life goes on, even if your cells have gone rogue and turned on you. I mean, shit, this critique just doesn't make any sense at all.

And "insatiable ambition"? Is that anything like "unbridled enthusiasm"? Because, you know, that's what led to Billy Mumphry's downfall.

Seriously, though, anyone who is running for President is ambitious. Unambitious people don't run for President. Some of our best Presidents have been our most ambitious, starting with our first, who led a ragtag, half-equipped army against one of the greatest Colonial armies ever amassed! But he would have given it all up if Martha developed a nasty case of gout! Believe you me! To think otherwise would be exceptionally callous and even gauche by Katie Couric's genteel standards.

Oh, excuse me...By the standards of the hypothetical people Katie Couric has conjured for the purpose of humiliating John Edwards and kickstarting a nasty right-wing meme. Way to go, America's Sweetheart!

Also, I should add that the phrase "insatiable ambition" is pretty meaningless. If you achieve your goal, you would then cease to be ambitious. Therefore, all ambition is insatiable, by definition. If John Edwards wants to be President in any way, shape or form, this is an ambition that will be insatiable until such time as he becomes President, at which point he will no longer have ambition to be President. He will be President.

Now, if Katie means that campaigning along with his Cancer Wife reflects John's deep-down authoritarian Will to Power, an "insatiable" drive to conquer all that he surveys, then once again, I'm afraid I don't follow.

Fanjayas Unite!

Oh, man, Sanjaya is totally going to win "American Idol" and it's going to be ridiculously awesome. It's not that the guy has absolutely no talent. It's that the guy has absolutely no talent and is incredibly creepy.

I think it was that hula dance. There was something genuinely unsettling about this entire sequence. His total lack of self-awareness, his willingness to be exploited and made to look ridiculous in front of literally millions of people. It was almost inhuman, that performance, and therefore compelling. You keep thinking, what's going on in his head? Doesn't he realize how poorly this is coming across? How lame he will be made to appear?



Sweet...

What's even more incredible than Sanjaya's combination of talentlessness and determination to go on television weekly to prove said talentlessness is the fact that some people out there genuinely like him! For reals! There's an actual community of people online who believe that Sanjaya haters like Simon Cowell dislike the guy because they are racist homophobes! (Trust me, none of it's worth linking to.)

I'm not sure who's more sad...The Sanjaya-lovers, either be deaf or abnormally attracted to shit-eating grins, or the Sanjaya-haters who are actually emotionally invested in the outcome of "American Idol."

Take the woman who has promised to fast until Sanjaya is kicked off the show. Wow, really? Doesn't she realize that she could do herself serious harm before next week's results come in? Maybe she's Jew-fasting, which is really more like having a late lunch when you get right down to it.

Why Kwame Sucks

I would never tell Kwame Brown that he sucks to his face. The guy's 6'11". A friendly back slap from this guy would put me in the hospital for weeks.

Yet tonight, I felt perfectly comfortable lobbing this insult towards him from not very far away. (He was also informed that his perpetual sloth and lackadaisical attitude towards his occupation resembles a co-worker of mine named Rupak, though I'm thinking that sort of inside reference would go right over his head. If such a thing were possible.)

Through a benevolent act, 20 co-workers and I managed to get into one of those luxury boxes at Staples Center to see the hometown Lakers (sometimes known as the "Gay-kers" to those who insist upon hating on popular basketball franchises AND homosexuals simultaneously) take on the Portland Trail Blazers. It was, in a word, awesome. In two words, it was "totally awesome."

I am not a basketball fan in any sense of the word. In fact, going into the Staples Center tonight, I realized (to myself, of course) that I could only NAME two active Lakers. Kobe Bryant, who is a celebrity icon and alleged rapist first and a famous athlete second, and Lamar Odom. I have no idea how it is that I have come to know of Lamar Odom, and not only to recognize and remember his name but to know his team affiliation. It must be some kind of holdover from my days of living with rabid sportsman Matt, who would take advantage of my perpetually stoned collegiate inertia and dominate the television for weeks at a time.

Matt's theory went something like this...All I wanted to watch were old TV shows like "The Simpsons," most of which I had seen and all of which would surely be re-run at some future date. He, on the other hand, wanted to watch live sporting events or sports recaps, programs that could only be seen and enjoyed at that exact moment in time. (Recall, these were those horrible, dark days before the advent of TiVO and the DVR. How did people manage to entertain themselves?) Most of the time, I was too spaced out or lazy to argue.

I thought I had forced all of that "SportsCenter" information out of my head and replaced it with rock songs, film theory and shrill anti-Bush blog posts, but some random scraps have remained.

For what it's worth, I also remember that this guy looks creepy:

...and that this guy...

...was arrested in 2001 with 213 pounds of marijuana in his van.

Which is hilarious on many levels. Who breaks traffic laws when they're driving around with 213 pounds of marijuana? Who even needs 213 pounds of marijuana? I mean, obviously it wasn't for personal use. Even Nate couldn't be that many tokes over the line. But being an NFL player, you're already making a lot of money and, even worse, you're extremely visible. Which is the last thing you want to be if, you know, you're a fucking drug dealer!

Anyway, despite the above references being pretty much the extent of my sporting knowledge (okay, I also know that Barry Bonds is a dick and that Ice Cube can get a triple-double, even when he's just messing around), I had a great time at Staples tonight.

And it wasn't only the free booze and food and the kickass suite, although that stuff never hurts. A fridge full of Heineken keg cans, some garlic french fries, pulled pork sandwiches and Snickers Pie will, in fact, buy you several hours of my time and not a small amount of loyalty. But beyond the sybaritic delights, I actually enjoyed just watching the basketball game. Perhaps all this time, I have been bored by basketball because it is on television, which consistantly renders live events as flat and uninteresting, or because of bad views in horrible seats. Really, I'm not sure I've ever attended a sporting event before and had what anyone would reasonably consider a good seat. So, like, of course I've always found them boring.

Well, not baseball. That's genuinely boring. I mean...come on...There's a liesurely game and then there's a bunch of dirtbags spitting and scratching themselves and sometimes trotting around in a circle. It's not even a particularly fine line. The only people capable of really getting into baseball are seriously confused nerds. See, they should be focusing all that energy on exciting careers in accountancy or in the high-growth field of Star Trek memorabilia collection, but instead, they have become obsessively focused on compiling and arranging meaningless statistics. Reading an intense baseball fan blog is pretty much identical to reading an advanced academic paper on String Theroy. Except in the latter case, brilliant minds are struggling to answer the grandest, most significant questions our species has ever posed about the universe, and in the former case, a bunch of douchebags are trying to figure out which left-handed sluggers are the most consistant in windy conditions. Otherwise, though...it's uncanny...

In fact, I think there's very very little chance I could ever become a fan in any way, shape or form of any sport aside from basketball. I prefer it to all other sports because it is well-paced, the games and seasons are short enough to remain interesting all the way through (though the Playoffs take too long) and because it is not baseball.

My infrequent opportunities to watch and enjoy basketball is no one's fault but my own, of course. I don't like sports and would never set aside any resources of my own to attend a sporting event. If I go, I go because someone else invites me, and why would they shell out hundreds of dollars on my non-sports-caring-about ass?

Think of it in these terms. If you had only ever seen Lawrence of Arabia on a video iPod, or projected on a bedsheet 100 yards away, you probably wouldn't think it was a terrifically interesting movie. But check it out in 70mm widescreen some time.

I'm bringing up this theory as a remote but intriguing possibility, not because I firmly believe it to be true. I mean, I know that one reason (among many) that I can't get into hockey is because it's too taxing to follow a tiny little puck as it races between the legs of hulking guys wearing body armor around a big white rink for several hours at a time.

No, it's far more likely that the beer, the chicken fingers and the lively, enthusiastic company made the game compelling. That and the newness of the experience. (I had only been to Staples once before, and it was for a Crosby Stills Nash and Young concert, and I was in a normal bleacher seat. I believe the last time I watched a professional basketball game was when I was 8 or 9 years old, back in Philadelphia, checking out a Sixers game at the Spectrum. I could be mistaken about that, but I don't think that I am.)

That and the fact that it was an abnormally involving match-up, fairly close almost the entire night and notable for a startling, barely-human feat of strength from Kobe Bryant. Probably all of the above.

The Ellen Show

Ellen DeGeneres? Really? I just don't see the whole "get a TV host to host the Oscars" theory. All this talk about Hollywood's Big Night, all the Glamour and whatever of the Academy Awards, and then they turn the show over to someone who's constantly blathering on TV every other night. I thought Jon Stewart did an okay job, certainly an improvement over Billy Crystal and David Letterman, but he's just out of his element on the Oscars.

I think they should give it to an old timer. Have Martin Scorsese host the Oscars. Or Warren Beatty (or Beatty and Annette Benning together). Lauren Bacall. They don't have to be goddamn comedians, after all. Some opening comedy sketch that someone else (not Bruce Vilanch) writes, a brief introduction, BOOM, right into the show. Why not give it a try? It's got to be better than a desperate, grasping Chris Rock or Steve Martin or (ugh) Whoopi Goldberg bookending each and every commercial break with painful, "improvised" one liners.

Anyway, here are all the nominees:

BEST PICTURE

The Departed
The Queen
Little Miss Sunshine
Babel
Letters From Iwo Jima

It's a rare year when I don't see all the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, usually based on hype before they're even officially nominated. But I just couldn't bring myself to watch Letters From Iwo Jima. I just don't care. I'm not even saying it's not great. Maybe it's great? But Clint Eastwood's stately earnestness has just worn me out over the course of the past few years.

I'm sure I'll catch it on DVD.

Anyway, out of the other four, my choice would be The Departed, though I wouldn't mind seeing The Queen win (it won't). I liked Little Miss Sunshine, but the suggestion that it's one of the five best pictures of the past year is ludicrous on its face. Almost as ludicrous as, I don't know, suggesting that Steve Carell is the world's foremost Proust scholar.

I mean, where's Children of Men? Where's Borat? Both films are far more interesting and had more of an impact on the culture than Babel or Little Miss Sunshine. Nevertheless, I think Babel will win.

Letters from Iwo Jima is in Japanese, featuring an all Japanese cast, and Clint Eastwood already won big two years ago. (Of course, I'm biased. If Letters From Iwo Jima wins Best Picture, its producer, Paul Haggis, will accept that award a staggering three years in a row. He wrote and produced Million Dollar Baby, wrote and directed Crash, and produced Iwo Jima. Holy shit, this cannot happen.)

Little Miss Sunshine isn't really all that great, and it's pretty slight. I don't think Academy voters would feel right about themselves in the morning if they cemented its place in the American canon with an Oscar win.

The Queen is incredibly British and unseen by almost anyone not in Britain or coastal America.

The Departed could win. It was a huge box office success, Scorsese has been denied over and over again, and pretty much everyone loves it.

Then there's the whole "it's the best movie nominated" thing. As you faithful readers know, this means absolutely nothing. In fact, I'd say the biggest strike against Departed is that it's the best film nominated, and the best film nominated never wins. I also think its frequent, gory violence will give the aging Academy voters pause.

In many ways, the Best Picture is seen as representing the Hollywood "brand" to the rest of the world. Think Titanic. That was an easy choice. That's pure 100% Hollywood escapist filmmaking entertainment. That's the brand. The Departed makes us look like psychopaths.

I guess you could say that Gladiator is a violent movie that won Best Picture, ditto Braveheart, but they give heavy spoonfuls of uplift and pomp along with their bloodletting. Departed is just a brutal, nihilistic bloodbath. I mean, a great one. But still...you get what I'm saying.

What's left? Innaritu's non-controversial, not-particularly-exciting ensemble drama. Some social commentary, but tinged with hope. Some solid performances. Some big stars. Some critical praise. And it has a diverse cast, a Latin director. I think it's the safest, surest pick, and I think it's how the voters will go. But what do I know?

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

I have not seen any of these movies. Wow. A first, definitely. Still, I think Whitaker will win.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

Mirren will win. I would say hers was probably the best out of the four performances I have seen (still haven't caught Volver), but Winslet and Dench were both terrific as well. Ironically, Dench is nominated all the time and won previously for a movie in which she barely appeared. (Shades of Streep's nomination this year for Prada, a film defined by her absence.) This year, she has the leading role in a great film with several nominations, and has no shot at winning.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

I'd give it to Wahlberg, who was arguably the best part of The Departed. Which means he was showing up Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Ray Winstone. No easy task. I mean, granted, his character got all the best dialogue, but that's really Marky Mark dominating the focus whenever he's on screen. Totally unexpected and awesome.

I'm inclined to say it's going to Alan Arkin or Eddie Murphy though. This is probably the hardest category to call. Both guys have had huge careers, and Arkin was actually nomianted for his first film role ever in Norman Jewison's The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming. (It's not very good!) And though I haven't seen Dreamgirls, I understand Murphy's great. Arkin's easily the best part of Little Miss Sunshine, and they do tend to give the Supporting Actor award to the greatly loved, popular, audience favorite movie (like Jack Palance in City Slickers).

So I'm going to guess Arkin, with slight reservations.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

My favorite performance, believe it or not, was Kikuchi's in Babel. If the Japanese segments had been removed from all that other stuff (particularly the wandering, ambiguous and ultimately inscrutible Mexican oddessy), it would have been a great film. A brief one, but still. It was subtle and strange and centered entirely on Kikuchi's wordless, manic turn as the deaf and defiant Chieko.

But I think it'll go to Jennifer Hudson. Which will mean that it only took "American Idol" six years to go from silly teen sensation to an Oscar and Grammy factory. How weird. Why not just eliminate the middle man and start giving Oscars to reality TV stars? Seriously, Trishelle deserves some recognition.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

I'd go with Monster House, all the way. It was a really good scary movie for kids and the first time I have seen the motion capture technique used effectively as a storytelling device. These characters did not have the glassy-eyed, uncanny stiffness that plagued the evil Polar Express, which looks like a Christmas movie co-directed by Satan and Dr. Caligari. You'd better watch out, indeed.

But Happy Feet seems the obvious choice. A bonafide sleeper hit that continued the penguin's peculiar dominance of the American box office. Unfortunately, as in all his other entertainment projects, Bob Saget's Farce of the Penguins somehow failed to capitalize on this wave. He was on "Full House," though. Remember "Full House"?

ART DIRECTION

Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

I've only seen three of these. And to be honest, Dreamgirls looks like it has awesome art direction from the trailers. I kind of wish I had gotten around to that one, but my theater-going has been off this past month.

Out of the ones I have seen, I'm inclined to go with The Prestige. I wasn't all that taken with the film, but it looked amazing, really capturing the detail of the period without romanticizing it. So many period films look upon their settings with awe; look at how wondrous and elegant everything looked back then! 2006 was a year in which many films, from The Proposition to Marie Antoinette to The Prestige kind of rejected this vision. Its late 19th-century London is a world of iron and grime. Only when the setting moves to the Rocky Mountains, and the strange experiments of Tesla, does Nolan's camera open up to find room for beauty and wonder.

Pirates looked great as well and had some truly remarkable sets. The Flying Dutchman, the fortune teller's hideout, the tropical kingdom. Great stuff.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige

Two period magician films in the same category? Odd.

The Illusionist is a pretty stupid film that nonetheless looks AMAZING. Time-worn and underlit and just gorgeous. I remarked when I reviewed the film that it resembled a Rembrandt come to life. I have since read that cinematographer Dick Pope used gaslights to light some scenes to get that perfect, amber effect. It works.

Black Dahlia as well was beautifully shot, and it's nice to see the movie get some recognition despite being universally reviled.

I think, however, this award should go to Children of Men. Some of these films are about magic, but Lubieski's camera in this film is legitimately magical. Alfonso Cuaron and Emanual Lubieski won't even talk about how they accomplished some of these extended shots (some appearing to last several minutes in length and filled with chaotic action and effects). This film should win in pretty much every category in which its nominated and some in which it isn't. And I think it will win, at least in this category.

COSTUME DESIGN

Curse of the Golden Flower
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette
The Queen

Marie Antoinette probably should win (though, again, haven't seen Dreamgirls or Golden Flower), but it very well may go to Devil Wears Prada. The whole point of that movie was the clothes, anyway.

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Babel
Paul Greengrass, United 93
Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima

I think it's Marty's year. He deserves it, he directed the hell out of this movie. What more is there to say?

Outside chance Eastwood will get it again, because the Academy loves him, and I could even see Greengrass receiving the award as a dark horse. Man, I hope not. That would really piss me off. If only because his film seemed to scream "Give me an award! I am Paul Greengrass, the lens through which Americans view themselves and their world!" and we would be walking right into his trap. Just like George W. walked into Osama bin Laden's.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Deliver Us From Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Jesus Camp
My Country, My Country

I think Gore's film will probably win. It was pretty well-made, I suppose, but hardly the BEST documentary film of the year. (That's The Devil and Daniel Johnston). Perhaps the fact that it's about the most important issue and had the biggest influence on American opinion is enough. Out of these, bearing in mind that I haven't seen My Country, My Country, I'd say Deliver Us From Evil is the best film. But it'll be nice to see Gore up there getting an Oscar. Maybe if he gets the Nobel as well, he'll run for President.

FILM EDITING

Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed
United 93

Children of Men, all the way. Though I could see Babel or Departed or United 93 or even Blood Diamond winning this as well. Always a hard category to pick. I think they'll give this one to Children of Men because it won't win much else and it was easily among the year's most impressive technical achievements.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

After the Wedding
Days of Glory
The Lives of Others
Pan's Labyrinth
Water

Pan's Labyrinth is clearly the favorite and will almost assuredly win. I preferred Germany's entry, The Lives of Others, which I really ought to review on here in full one of these days. I know Days of Glory was also supposed to be spectacular, but I haven't had a chance to see it yet.

BEST MAKE UP

Apocalypto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth

Didn't see Apocalypto, but nothing about Click was award-worthy. I repeat, NOTHING. If they were giving an award for Best Film of 2006 About a Magic Remote Control Starring Adam Sandler, I would abstain from voting.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Babel
The Good German
Notes on a Scandal
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen

Notes on a Scandal had one of the year's worst scores, a Phillip Glass abomination that continually intruded on the main action with its droning repetition. (And, yes, I know it's supposed to be repetitive but that didn't make it less annoying). I have liked Glass scores in the past (Truman Show has a great one), but this one nearly ruins several scenes fo the film.

I thought the music in Pan's Labyrinth was effective. That's how I would probably vote. Can't say how it'll go, though, as I really have no idea which of these five is more or less likely to win.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Poseidon
Superman Returns

Except for Pirates, which is filled with eye-popping effects work throughout, these other two films have been nominated for specific scenes. The only part of Poseidon that was in any way enjoyable was the brief scene in which the boat sinks. Everything after that is (pun intended) a wash. Superman Returns has that one tremendous sequence where he saves the shuttle-plane, although that's such a retarded idea, to attack a launching space shuttle to a plane in flight, that you almost feel like the Man of Steel should let them crash to teach humanity a thing or two about physics and aerodynamics.

So I think you have to go with Pirates. No movie this year was bigger or had more going on visually. The entire crew of the Flying Dutchman must have required painstaking months of work. Plus, the Kraken scenes were ridiculously cool.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen

My choice would be The Queen, a very wry, unexpectedly funny take on the clash between tradition and progress in modern England. I thought the weakest aspect of Pan's Labyrinth was Del Toro's distracted, oddly conventional screenplay, and that the script for Babel is downright incoherent, saved by Innaritu's sharp direction and the skill of his actors. And I'm sorry, I know a lot of people felt strongly about it, but Little Miss Sunshine is slight. It's a good vehicle for some very talented actors and a lot of the gags work well, but this is hardly original or award-worthy work. In spots, it's downright hacky. (Who could believe Carell runs into his ex-boyfriend and colleague on a random highway turn-off in middle America at that exact moment? That's almost insulting.)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Children of Men
The Departed
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal

These are all pretty strong contenders. Little Children DQ's itself for the totally unnecessary use of narration. In fact, one need only see the beautiful, perfectly-scripted narration in Notes on a Scandal to realize all that is wrong with the dry, flat narration of Little Children, in which a disembodied, kind of creepy voice, tells us what's happening, in the hopes that we don't forget this movie was based on a really excellent novel that the screenwriter also wrote.

Naturally, I'd like to see my Movie of 2006, Borat, take the prize. I will say, however, that its nomination in this category is nonsensical. The best moments in Borat were improvisational. Even though Baron Cohen created the character and obviously pre-scripted many of the character's trademark one-liners and witticisms (you don't just improvise the phrase "liquid sexytime explosion"...it takes hours of careful preparation), it's obvious that his genius lies in performance, not writing.

He should be nominated for Best Actor and he should win. I'm thinking Departed will, quite deservingly, take this category. Monahan's script was brilliant and hilarious and near-flawlessly executed. Like Batman Begins or Big Lebowski, it's one of those scripts that's, to me, kind of awe inspiring. How could any human being have the patience to concoct something so intricate and ceaselessly creative?

If It Bends, It's Funny. If It Breaks, It's Not Funny.

The other day, I posted a clip from Fox News' new "comedy" program "Red Eye," in which several unfunny conservatives talk over news footage. Since then, the blog of host Greg Gutfeld has disapprovingly linked here, insinuating that my criticism of the show derives from my political viewpoint rather than my honest appraisal of the humor.

Remember: If you don't agree with it, it's not funny!

See, blogger Jim Treacher is here implying that I don't like the show because I disagreed with its viewpoint. If he had read my blog post (and I believe he did because he left a comment there), he would know that I did not take issue with the content of the clip. Only the lack of any kind of humor. In fact, the clip was mocking something I have made fun of myself on this very blog! Namely, Joe Biden's dumb, possibly racist remark about Barack Obama.

So, Greg and Jim, I disliked your show because you didn't tell a single joke that worked. Really, the clip seemed to feature very few intentional jokes. One guy does a lame riff playing on Biden's choice of the word "clean," the chick makes a bizarre and out of place reference to affirmative action and that's pretty much it. Or did I miss a bunch of subtle witticisms and inside references that only your conservative fans would get?

How could Greg and Jim not realize that the show isn't funny? They can certainly appreciate humor, right? Greg's the former editor of Maxim UK, so you know he knows quality comic material, am I right? Their blog also links to Neil Hamburger, so at least they have some sense of what's funny.

I think possibly this may bring us to the real barrier for conservative comics, and honestly, for some left-wing comedians as well. Staunchly ideological, partisan kind of thinkers are rarely as funny as those who can see both sides of an issue. I don't always agree with moderates, but they're more funny. Great satire can be designed to convince an audience, but the best jokes are usually focused solely on being jokes as opposed to expressing a political viewpoint.

This isn't a hard and fast rule. Plenty of great comedians are strongly ideological. Richard Pryor and George Carlin come immediately to mind (though bear in mind that their politics are most often reflected in their personas, not so much their specific jokes).

"The Daily Show" is a perfect example. Yes, the show has a lefty ideological bent, more or less. But they frequently skewer Democrats and liberals. In fact, I'd say almost every episode features at least one joke at the expense of someone on the left wing. Considering that conservatives have run the government for pretty much the entirety of Stewart's tenure on the show as well determines the content to some extent.

Now compare that to "Red Eye." The show would never go after a conservative, and if it did, it would do so in an intentionally light, jovial manner, as compared to the sharp barbs reserved for Gutfeld's ideological opponents. When it's obvious that your jokes are designed to ridicule one specific group relentlessly as a way to propagandize, audiences will quickly lose interest in your phony shenanigans.

"Chappelle Show" is another great example. Certainly, the show was very political and outspoken. But it also was not specifically about one party over another or one brand of American politics. Dave Chappelle looks at political issues through a personal lens. He's not about mocking Republican Senators. He's about mocking white people. He's not trying to espouse on the benefits of affirmative action. He's just trying to show that racism still exists, no matter what Tony Snow has to say.

In short, he has interesting opinions worth expressing, and he does so in a unique and clever way. If Gutfeld could manage that, he'd have a funny show, and I PROMISE YOU, I would not be afraid to admit that. I disagree with almost everything Sam Kinison had to say, about everything, ever, ditto Howard Stern, but I think both of those guys are fucking hilarious.

(As I said before, I don't limit this phenomenon to the right-wing. There are lefties who strike me as overly partisan and ideological, such as Margaret Cho and Al Franken. I'm sorry, I liked him on "Saturday Night Live" and all that, but he's totally not at all funny. Because he's about convincing you of the rightness of his political position, which is not the right attitude for successful comedy. It's not irreverent enough. Fortunately, guys like Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black totally get it.)

It's not that hard to figure out, really, which is what makes this Doug Giles column from Townhall so fascinatingly wrong-headed. (Link via World-O-Crap.)

I know I’m not supposed to say this as a conservative and as a Christian, but Steve Colbert, John Stewart, David Letterman, Carlos Mencia, Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher are funny hombres. Even though I radically and fundamentally disagree with most of their content, funny is as funny does. They’re like farts. Most folks don’t really like farts, but farts are funny. Period. Especially, when it’s yours and it’s silent.

Well, I appreciate his honesty, but I can't believe he included Carlos Mencia on that list. Yuck. Ned Holness is not at all a "funny hombre." It's also kind of odd to praise these guys in one sentence and then turn around and compare them to farts. I mean, David Letterman never sold himself as a political leader. He's a professional comedian, and Doug clearly finds him amusing. Isn't that enough to not be deemed a "fart," just because he disagrees with you on some fundamental issues about running the country?

Look, as far as comedy goes, Mr. and Mrs. Conservative, you must bow and kiss the Left’s ring. They slay us. You can count on one hand how many conservatives are making a semi-distinct blip on the comedic scene. Who do we have? Dennis Miller, Brad Stine, Julie Gorin, and ________ . I had to google “conservative comics” just to add a third person to that list.

(1) Who the fuck is Brad Stine?

(2) Dennis Miller has sucked ever since he converted to conservatism. And even a bit before that. If he's the best your side has to offer, you guys are less funny than Ingmar Bergman reading The Bell Jar at a memorial service for the victims of United 93 on top of the Wailing Wall the day after the annual Dead Puppies and Onions Festival backed up by Itzhak Perlman playing his score from Schindler's List on the world's smallest violin. Babe.

Why can’t conservatives get their comedic act together? The liberals, on a 24/7 basis, are tossing us soft balls that we should be driving out of the park in a humorous, prime time, way.

Exactly. You'll never come up with something funny if you go in with that attitude. "I've got to find something some liberal has done to make fun of!" It's lame and predictable. First, find something FUNNY. If you need to do political comedy, then find something political that's FUNNY. Then talk about that, and your ideology should come through naturally. If you have any talent as a comic.

It’s so easy it’s stupid. All we have to do is just read the crap that the left does, out loud, and it’s hilarious. We don’t even have to be that imaginative and try to develop quips, as they provide an endless supply of ammunition. We couldn’t make up the stuff they do even if we wanted to—no one on the planet is that creative.

Am I crazy or does Doug contradict himself here? First, he says that conservatives aren't funny. Then he says that all conservatives need to do to be funny is say the things liberals do out loud. Obviously they already do that. So he DOES already think they're funny.

From Hollywood to the Hill, the Left and those who lean that way, do more psychotic stuff than my one-eyed uncle Joe does on a three day weekend binge when he’s all liquored up. They are a MadTV, SNL and HBO Special waiting to happen. There has to be some conservative capital lying around that can be earmarked to gather no holds barred comedians to paper shred these little darlings on TV and in film.

Care to give us a single example of something wacky a liberal has done that no one makes jokes about? I mean, when liberals do funny things, people make fun of them. How many Bill Clinton jokes were flying around during the late '90s. It was all Jay Leno talked about for, like, 5 years.

So why don’t conservatives crank out comedians? Here’s why I think our comedic contributions are weak.

Oooh, I can't wait. Because Doug knows comedy, folks. He's seen every episode of "Mind of Mencia"!

1. Conservatives, obviously, don’t think comedy is important. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report don’t have The Factor numbers. Thus, they don’t seem to be as important as O’Reilly, or Rush or Hannity in an immediate sense. And they’re not. However, Steve and John do have the ear of millions of 18-35 year olds, who will, uh . . . hello, be at the wheel driving this nation a few short years from now. That’s kinda significant.

Conservatives don't think comedy is important? Guh? Are they robots?

His point, I guess, is that conservatives don't bother to be funny because they don't think it's a good way to get votes. But liberals aren't doing comedy because they want people to vote for John Edwards. They're doing comedy because it's funny, and they want to be funny and make people laugh. You know, laughter? It's that think humans do?

2. We spit out lame comedians. When it comes to conservatives and Christians doing comedy, like soup in a bad restaurant, their brains are better left unstirred.

What the fuck does this mean?

The reason why? Well, I think they’re too nice. They don’t really set the hook. They don’t really deliver the dig. For some reason, the laughmeisters of the Right are PC addled.

Wait, what? I thought we of the Left were the ones who were too "PC"? Now the right-wingers aren't funny because they're too politically correct? You mean, like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter? Jonah Goldberg calling us fascists and Dinesh D'Souza blaming us for 9/11, they're holding back? They're too nice? Constrained by political correctness? (I'd pick on some right-wing comedians, but there aren't any. But these guys never say anything correct or sensible about world affairs, so I figure they count as entertainers).

3. We’re too serious. With our War with whacked out Islam and our ideological battle with the Secularists who whiz on traditional American values, the conservative can become a sober and somber person, which is understandable.

That doesn’t mean we can’t laugh, or more specifically, mock our enemies.

You know what Doug does better than pretty much any other rightard I've ever read? Answers his own questions. He doesn't realize he's doing it! He sets up rhetorical questions and then answers them unintentionally. It's actually kind of brilliant. See, here, he's saying "I guess maybe we're too serious to be funny." Then right away, he turns around and says "We should make jokes in order to mock our enemies."

But humor isn't about picking on one's enemies. That's what bullies do, and bullies are only funny to themselves. Humor is about recognition. It's inherently sympathetic. We laugh because we relate. So if you're all about pointing out the flaws of a group you have deemed "the enemy," your "comedy" is going to be mean-spirited and bilious, which is only funny to other mean-spirited, bilious people. Which pretty much explains "Red Eye" and the whole of contemporary conservative comedy today.

Even Stephen Colbert, the sharpest satirist of the right-wing working today, comes at the satire from a standpoint of AFFECTION. He calls Bill O'Reilly "Papa Bear." He frequently has right-wing guests on his show, and he goofs on them, but in a warm and engaging way, not as a jerk. This is a far more artful form of ridicule. He makes his targets look like blind partisans whereas he manages to remain above the fray. The South Park guys frequently employ the same technique. Stan and Kyle remain the straightlaced, sober ones, reacting to the madness all around them. Gutfeld doesn't come off like the standard-bearer of reasoned discourse in that clip from "Red Eye." More like the coked-up lunatic.

Nowadays, we won’t dare do cartoons about Osama and his ilk lest we tick them off. Are you kidding me? We’re trying to kill the terrorists, right? Let me see if I get this correct: we can kill them, but we can’t insult them with cartoons or sitcoms?

Oh, Doug Doug Doug Doug Dougie...

Let me set this straight for you. The cartoon controversy was about offending Muslims, not terrorists. I don't think anyone really cares if they offend terrorists (though I'm not sure who you actually mean when you say that vague, essentially defunct word.) I personally am with you on the cartoon thing. Though I didn't find the cartoons amusing, and probably wouldn't have wanted to run them if I owned a newspaper, I don't think a paper should allow angry fundamentalists to determine its content. As I would if it were an offensive cartoon of Christ or Buddha or whomever, I support the paper's right to publish anything they damn well please.

But conflating those who protested the cartoons with terrorists? Racist, my friend. Straight-up racist.

One of the reasons why some young people no likey conservatives is because no one is making them look at the Left and then laugh their butts off at them. It seems shallow, but that’s reality. I believe we need to change this by going Monty Python nuts. I’m willing to give it a try. My wife says I’m pretty funny, especially during sex. I’m not quite sure what she means, though.

Sad...Just sad...

The Dakota Fanning Show

Post-Will Ferrell, I've maybe watched 3 actual episodes of "Saturday Night Live." I liked Amy Poehler on "Upright Citizens Brigade" and, like the rest of America, I thought "Lazy Sunday" was hilarious. But I feel like every time I flip past the show in progress, they're in the middle of the most asinine one-joke sketch imaginable, and I get bored immediately. Or pissed off, even.

But this skit, with Poehler playing Dakota Fanning, actually made me laugh. The impression's actually pretty spot-on, considering that it's an adult impersoning a young child.



Thanks to Golden Fiddle for the link.

RIP Vicki Lynn Hogan

There are all kinds of theories on celebrity worship. Some people feel that it's because Western Europe and America are no longer dominated by monarchies. Without royalty, we must focus our rapt attention on randomly selected alpha-specimens, based on looks or charisma or a host of other inscrutible attributes. This is a compelling theory.

But I think certain individuals capture the public's attention because they uncannily remind us of ourselves in ways we're not normally allowed to consider. Now, I don't mean people who are famous for a good reason, like talented or beautiful actors or musicians or news anchors or whatever. I mean, it's not hard to discern why Scarlett Johansson's famous. We've all seen Ghost World.

I'm talking about your Paris Hiltons, your Cisco Adlers, your K-Feds. The person who epitomized this phenomenon to me as a child was Zsa Zsa Gabor. I was too young to know that she and her sister had at one time actually performed in real, authentic vehicles of entertainment. I only knew there was this horrible old woman with a horror-movie accent that seemed to make a living being famous (and, on occasion, assaulting police officers).

But the phenomenon of famous-for-fame's-sake celebrities has really exploded now, what with YouTube and "American Idol" and MTV's entire line-up and the whole concept of celebrity meta-devouring itself. And I think that certain people become elevated to iconic status, sometimes overnight, because there is something familiar about them. They're social synechdoches - their accidentally exposed private parts stand for our whole.

Lindsay Lohan's totally like this. In fact, she plays the part of the perpetual adolescent so well, pivoting constantly between genuine grief over her vices and outrageous bouts of Dionysian indulgence, I occasionally feel like it must be an act. Surely, Lindsay's just the Andy Kaufman of our time, always inhabiting her rebellious junkie "persona" and never letting us know that she's in on the joke. How could anyone be this out of control for so long? It would be funny if it weren't so...Okay, it's funny.

Which brings me to Anna Nicole Smith, whose death from heart explosion today is not at all funny. So just forget I made that "heart explosion" crack.

If La Lohan reflects Americans' twisted nostalgia for the Girls (and, yes, Guys) Gone Wild they once were and Paris Hilton provides a safe outlet for our disgust at our own excesses, what service did Anna Nicole Smith's legend provide?

A high school dropout who worked at a fried chicken restaurant, a 26 year old stripper who seduced and married an 89 year old billionaire, an alcoholic whose negligence almost assuredly led at least in part to the death of her 20 year old son only months ago, Anna Nicole Smith has kept America captivated since my early teens.

Now, I'm not trying to bash the woman on the day of her passing. She had a tough time of it, particularly in the last year, and I felt badly for her more often than not.

I've followed her career largely via appearances on "The Howard Stern Show," on which she often seemed drugged, imbalanced and frequently incomprehensible. (Full disclosure: I have also seen many episodes of her ludicrous reality show, which mainly consisted of her waddling around, apparently doped up, while an extremely feminine interior decorator arranged cushions and set the cause of gay rights back a few decades.)

Clearly, Vicki Lynn aka Anna Nicole was the embodiment of the Gold Digger archetype. In essence, her life could be seen as a morality tale: It seems like getting money from that old man will make you happy, but it will only cause you grief. This only works if you're exceptionally small-minded, but we're not talking about conscious, rational connections here. We're talking about why several million Americans would give a shit about a wholly unremarkable and unappealing Texan. (They had already elected one President, after all, and that hadn't worked out too well.)

Speaking of Anna Nicole's gold, it's kind of odd, isn't it, that both she and her son have died within the span of a few months, leaving the future of J. Howard Marshall's billions uncertain? Could her shadowy lawyer and possible baby-daddy Howard K. Stern (not to be confused with the King of All Media) have done her and her heir in hoping to get his hands on the money? (This would explain the recently paternity kerfuffle as well...If he can establish that he and Anna were married and had started a family, he'd have a more compelling case for being cut in on the eventual deal.)

Or have the billionaire's children, who have long sought to gain access to the family fortune via the judicial system, given up on ever winning the day legally? Did they hire someone to get the obstacles out of the way and "make it look like an accident?" Two mysterious, sudden deaths with all this money at stake...Something must be up, right?

Now, I'm not saying that Anna Nicole Smith was definitely murdered and that I have the secret surveillance tapes to prove it, but I am saying that if you happen to represent a sleazy and disreputable tabloid newspaper, you should Paypal me $500,000 to find out. No! I mean, I'm saying that...well, I don't know what I'm saying. I just know that this is a sad and peculiar situation that somehow speaks to the tragedy that is modern American life.

She briefly represented glamour, then decadence, then physical and mental collapse. Like Kate Moss, only with curves and a more appealing, if somewhat regrettably dead, husband.

Shadows and Hog

How could any reasonable person look at this picture and see a penis?

That does not look like a man holding his penis. First of all, penises don't usually have pointy arrow-shaped heads like that. I mean, there's a slight tapering off at the end of the organ, but it's a genital, not a common piece of Bronze Age weaponry. Also, most nude men don't have peculiar curly protrusions extending from their shoulderblade to their crotch. It would make wearing conventional pants all but impossible.

No, if I had to look at that picture, I'd say, "It looks like a man holding a crazily-shaped guitar. Possibly Prince." Because I know he's into that sort of thing. And of course, I'd be 100% correct.

In the sensitive post-wardrobe malfunction world, some are questioning whether a guitar was just a guitar during Prince's Super Bowl halftime show.

Prince's acclaimed performance included a guitar solo during the "Purple Rain" segment of his medley in which his shadow was projected onto a large, flowing beige sheet. As the 48-year-old rock star let rip, the silhouette cast by his figure and his guitar (shaped like the singer's symbol) had phallic connotations for some.


I mean, a lot of things have potentially phallic connections. The Washington Monument has phallic connections. And that tower on the Stanford campus? From afar, it looks like the entire city of Palo Alto has a hard-on. (Cut them a break though...Half Moon Bay is totally hot and dresses like a skank.)

Frankly, I'm still not seeing it here. Perhaps this was intentional - he gripped the neck of his guitar in sihlouette to suggest rubbing one out or something. Prince is pretty much a total perv, so I wouldn't put it past him necessarily. But if you were watching that Super Bowl halftime show and saw this fleeting image and suddenly went, "Oh my God it totally looks like a cock!," then you have cocks on the brain, my friend. It's got nothing to do with His Purpleness.

A number of bloggers have decried "Malfunction!" — including Sam Anderson at New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer. Daily News television critic David Bianculli called it "a rude-looking shadow show" that "looked embarrassingly rude, crude and unfortunately placed."

Bianculli, I'm looking in your direction.

Seriously, the dude is a television critic, and he thinks Prince's Halftime Show was crude and rude? (How could he forget "lewd," by the way? Those three always go together.)

We're talking about a medium in which Charlie Sheen is widely hailed as a mainstay of the Family Hour. Each weeknight, television invites Simon Cowell, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray and Tyra Banks into our homes, so that they might slowly poison our minds with corporate propaganda and shallow psychobabble, choking us to death on a flavorful yet highly toxic cocktail of narcissism, greed and passionate, deeply-felt anti-intellectualism. One of the classiest, most universally praised shows on television right now could be easily summarized as "Gilligan's Island only with invisible monsters." That's pretty much the state of the medium.

But the outline of a rock star holding a guitar? OH MY GOD THE HORROR OF IT! To think, it almost sort of possibly looked like he was holding a portion of his body in his hand behind a curtain! How will David explain this phallus-related incident to his possibly autistic and apparently anatomically incorrect children? "You see, Timmy and Bernice, Prince was simulating the act of masturbating via the clever use of an elaborately-designed musical instrument, spotlights, a satin sheet and several million spectators. Hey, stop watching those commercials and poking one another, I'm trying to explain something to you about Prince's cock!"

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said Tuesday that the network has received "very few" complaints on Prince's performance. CBS last aired the Super Bowl in 2004 when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's "wardrobe malfunction" sparked criticism and a subsequent crackdown on broadcast decency from the Federal Communications Commission.

But this time, it was the NFL that produced the halftime show (MTV had in 2004). Spokesman Greg Aiello said the league has received no complaints.

"We respect other opinions, but it takes quite a leap of the imagination to make a controversy of his performance," Aiello said. "It's a guitar."

Shit, it's this thing again. Truly, that was the Nipple Slip Heard Round the World. What's funny is that men AND WOMEN all around this country visit sites like Egotastic, The Superficial and Gorilla Mask each and every day purposefully seeking out photos of celebrity nipple slips. It's one of those unpredictable Internet cottage industries, genres of websites that popped up from a genuine and previously-unknown demand. (Hot or Not?)

But show them one (singular!) nipple slip, even a non-accidental one that's largely covered by jewelry and cut away from quickly, and there's still outrage two years later! "In this post-wardrobe malfunction world, even the outline of a man holding an electric guitar is enough to send shockwaves throughout America! Will we ever feel clean again?!?"

I think the attempt by our government and our corporate media to terrify the American public has worked too well. They just wanted complacency, a willingness on our part to look the other way so they could loot the Treasury and ship off our young people to foreign oil fields, but instead they've created something truly scary. A far more menacing threat than 50 al-Qaedas. Millions of panicky, ignorant, hopeless Americans, most of them heavily armed.

We saw it just the other day with this nonsensical Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare in Boston. A Lite Bright of Err the Mooninite, I'm sorry, looks absolutely nothing at all like a bomb you fucking morons! Oooh, it has wires in it! Look out, it's gonna blow! Too late, your head a-splode!

Aren't there a lot of universities in Boston? Couldn't someone with half a brain have spoken up at some point? "Umm...Everyone? The Mooninites just like smoking cigarettes while they flip people the bird. And possibly stealing DVDs. And they do have a Quad Laser but it doesn't work very well. They mean you no physical harm unless you are a sentient meatball. Please go back to your heavy drinking."

But everyone in this stupid country's in such a constant state of vigilant catlike readiness, it doesn't take a lot to set them off. You can't just tell people they're about to die at any moment for five, six years without having some kind of mass psychic impact. We're like a couple hundred million little ticking timebombs waiting to explode all over some new cause or scandal or sovereign nation at any moment. Next, it'll be Iran (I've been calling that one since CBI started, by the way...) But I can't see how it's ever going to stop at this point, if all it takes is Prince's theatrics to shock and disgrace the Heartland. Everyone will just keep pivoting to the next existential threat, and off we go.

Was Prince's pose phallic?

"The short answer is, of course it is," says Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Gavin Edwards, who points out that on Prince's "Purple Rain" tour in the mid `80s, he performed with a guitar that would ejaculate, squirting water out of its end during the climax of "Let's Go Crazy."

"All that said, it didn't seem like a sniggering little puppet show," adds Edwards. "I think it was one of those things because a guitar at waist level does look like an enormous phallus."

But that's a crucial, crucial separation right there. Something that, in a vague way, could potentially resemble a phallus is not inherently dirty or inappropriate. I would think that, without the suggestion of actual nudity or sexuality, there's no possible way to be offended by a phallic shape. Otherwise, you'd walk around horrified and appalled all day long. Pens, pencils, gear shifts and emergency brakes on cars, scissors, pill bottles (small penises only), soda cans, paint cans, long wooden spoons, pipes, cigars, cigarettes, Slinkies, garden hoses, cardboard paper towel tubes...They're all somewhat penile if you think about it.

But our minds are able to recognize that something is in the same shape as a dick without thinking, "Oh my god, gross! A dick!" Right? RIGHT?

By enlarging his shadow, it's possible Prince intended to accentuate this aspect of his solo, but it's just as likely it was accidental. (You can find videos of the halftime show at YouTube.com.) A message left with Prince's publicist Tuesday wasn't returned.

It's just as likely? You don't think it's a little more likely? That maybe Prince just meant to have a shadow appear on a sheet to make his performance a bit more dramatic, and then some undersexed TV critics tried to make it sound provocative and controversial? I mean, yeah, maybe that's it...or maybe Prince simply practices that most subtle form of seduction...

Stagecraft!

Your Moment of Zen

At last! It's "Red Eye," the Fox News answer to "The Daily Show"! Check out this exclusive clip, borrowed from Sadly No!, in which the wacky right-wing gang discusses Joe Biden's "clean" remark about Barack Obama.



Now, I don't know if you noticed how they zoom the camera in and out all the time, but it really makes the whole show youthful and edgy. Well, that and the one pundit's adolescent facial hair.

I think the inability of Republicans to find a single quality entertainer on their side has gone from hilarious to tragic. There was a time that it amused me to think of Hollywood-hating Republicans having no choice but to embrace Toby Keith, Larry the Cable Guy and Patricia Heaton for all their entertainmentual needs. But seeing these four "comedians" floundering around, desperate for ANYTHING even remotely resembling a punchline, just makes me ache. It's anti-humor, the kind of shrill, hacky wanklitude that ensures you won't be able to laugh at anything else for the rest of the day.

I mean, they're discussing Joe Biden complimenting Barack Obama on being articulate and clean! How can you not get at least one solid joke out of that? These guys have nothing. The whole bit becomes that one guy in the red shirt playing on the word "clean," suggesting that Biden really meant that people who don't shower can't be President. Well, hardy har har. Look out, Samantha Bee! Andy Samberg's ugly younger brother is coming for you!

It's not fair, really. Think about the crop of talent with which "The Daily Show" has had to work. Beloved comedian and chat show veteran Jon Stewart. The genius of Stephen Colbert AND Steve Carrell, two of the funniest men in America today. Newer cast members like John Oliver, John Hodgman and Rob Riggle. And let's not forget Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, FUCKING LEWIS BLACK, Mo Rocca, Beth Littleford, Dave Attell, A. Whitney Brown, Matt Walsh from "Upright Citizens Brigade," Paul F. Thompkins and Laura Kightlinger and Jerry Minor from "Mr. Show"...And I could keep going!

Conservatives would have to not only hire every funny Republican in history but convert a lot of hilarious liberals in order to compete with a stellar line-up of performers like that. Unfortunately, it looks like they just assembled the first four semi-youthful, loud Republicans they could find and seated them around a TV showing C-SPAN. Kind of like VH1's "I Love the '80s," only they couldn't even get Michael Ian Black to show! That's how long Fox has sunk.

Seriously, most of the "jokes" don't even make any sense! They're talking about how liberals are secretly racist, because they demand that all acceptable black people be light-skinned. (Of course, this requires that one make the rather absurd assumption that Joe Biden reflects the universal thinking of all American liberals, which if true would probably make him a viable candidate rather than a national joke.) So, while they're pretending to think that all liberals secretly hate teh blacks, one of the correspondants chimes in with this common:

"Well, it's affirmative action."

What does that even mean? What on Earth does affirmative action have to do with liberals favoring light-skinned blacks? Is that a joke?

When they're not being nonsensical, they're being vile and mean-spirited, and I think it's here that the comparison to "The Daily Show" becomes a bit more interesting. Stewart's show has some satirical bite, sure, and Stewart's style is definitely sarcastic, but he's rarely if ever caustic. The "host" of "Red Eye" looks like he desperately wants to punch a liberal in the face, if only he could get his hands on one. At the very end of the clip, he mocks Sen. Robert Byrd by commenting that he's "unable to stand," which is untrue, nonsensical (what's funny about his standing or not standing?) AND mean-spirited. All in one rank, unfunny package!

(And the thing is, there's a potential joke there! Biden said something racist, Byrd is a well-known virulent racist...Someone with a sense of humor and half a brain could put a quip together. But, no. Instead we get a "Robert Byrd is old and therefore infirm" joke and a lot of eye-bulging and fake laughter.)

This clip made me want to shoot myself. So, naturally, I figured I'd share it with all of you. Enjoy.