What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Friday, January 19, 2007

   THE VIOLENCE OF THE LAMBS

That line, right there, is reason enough to see this movie.

It's the funniest thing I've seen this week, along with (wow, again) Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock. His character was asked if he liked Phil Collins' music and he replied, "I've got two ears and a heart, don't I?"

That's just genius.

Labels: movies, silliness, TV

Hey, I think I've nearly kicked that flu (and not a moment too soon)!

I note with much amusement that, a mere day after I posted that video clip of Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock, I received this e-mail from the fine folks at YouTube:

Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal...

Apparently, I am stealing the network's property. I suppose it's an honest mistake -- I thought was helping them out by drawing public attention to their charming little TV show, rather than the press they normally get as a massive free-speech-suppressing media subsidiary of a toxic-waste-dumping, weapons manufacturer and arms dealer. My bad.

Fine then, don't watch their crappy show. See if I care.

Labels: health, Orwell says hi, TV

A strange thing happened on 60 Minutes last night: the President sat down for an interview with someone other than a Fox News puppet and was asked (what?) serious questions...

SCOTT PELLEY: "You know better than I do that many Americans feel that your administration has not been straight with the country, has not been honest. To those people you say what?"

PRESIDENT BUSH: "On what issue? Like the weapons of mass destruction?"

PELLEY: "No weapons of mass destruction."

BUSH: "Yeah."

PELLEY: "No credible connection between 9/11 and Iraq."

BUSH: “Yeah.”

PELLEY: “The Office of Management and Budget said this war would cost somewhere between $50 billion and $60 billion and now we're over 400.”

BUSH: “I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha.”

PELLEY: “The perception, Sir, more than any one of those points, is that the administration has not been straight with...”

BUSH: “Well, I strongly disagree with that, of course. I strongly reject that this administration hasn’t been straight with the American people. The minute we found out they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so.”

Oh, for pity's sake -- STOP LYING. Dubya consistently makes Bill Clinton sound like George Washington, and Richard Nixon like Mother Theresa. How low does this bar have to drop?

Okay then, George, I do this for you and that sad, strange 25% of Americans who still cling to these imperial fantasies that kill. For the last bloody time...

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
-- George W. Bush, March 18, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
-- Gen. Tommy Franks, Mar 22 2003

We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.
-- Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003

"Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit."
-- Tony Blair, April 28 2003

"In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
-- George W. Bush, May 1 2003

"U.S. officials never expected that we were going to open garages and find weapons of mass destruction."
-- Condoleeza Rice, May 12 2003

"Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction."
-- Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 26 2003

"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction [as justification for invading Iraq] because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
-- Paul Wolfowitz, May 28 2003

"I don't think they existed."
-- David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, Jan 23 2004

"I didn't think it through...It was a damned discoverable thing that other people brighter than I should have known. The lesson of life is that the 'obvious' isn't."
-- Jay Davis, former head of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Mar 17 2004

"I would say that Saddam Hussein clearly had the intention of having such weapons."
-- Colin Powell, Sept 17 2004

"We didn't find the stockpiles we thought would be there...Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision."
-- George W. Bush, Sept 18 2004

Of course he would. When Pelley quite reasonably asked if Bush feels at all "crushed" by the Iraq fiasco, Bush said, "Quite the contrary. My spirits are strong, and I’m blessed to be the president." Blessed! I'm sure that'll warm the hearts of military parents as the next round of fallen soldiers are announced.

C'mon America, there's a solution for all this: it's called impeachment. It's not that hard. You did it to Clinton without blinking. Since Bush's May 1 2003 "we have prevailed" speech, you've spent more time in Iraq than you did in World War II. Put a fork in it! The fat lady has sung! And with 3000 dead soldiers and counting, the song's getting old.

Labels: America, George W Bush, media, Middle East, repair, war - what is it good for?

Despite once knowing a guy who insisted that government-sponsored flu shots were part of a grand science experiment on the public, I've faithfully taken one for the last few years. That guy was too paranoid -- even for me -- and I knew that the government's motives were more mercenary: the cost of flu shots is far less than the cost of nursing a public epidemic. Even with doubts as to their efficacy, I always got the shot.

This year, however, a packed work schedule combined with an apathetic 'oh, what's the worst that could happen' mentality and I skipped the shot. One week into the new year and I have been destroyed -- brought low by the worst thing I've had in years.

So yeah, I think the flu shot works.

This past week has been a nightmare of phlegm, no sleep, body pain, cough syrup, diarrea and...oh why go on? We've all been there.

If there's any bright spot, it's that my cover story on New York photographer Joe Oppedisano was already put to bed before I was, and I've certainly been able to catch up with what's on TV. I've been watching Dexter and The L Word and Nip/Tuck -- all them fascinating, clever and taboo-busting in various ways -- but I confess it's the sitcoms that have really helped me through this flu.

First up, I was able to track down 30 Rock, the new show from former Saturday Night Live headwriter Tina Fey, who also wrote the witty movie Mean Girls. As a parody of her former workplace, I expected her new show to be more snide but instead, it's like soda pop, sweet and fizzy like its adorable 50s-pop credits. The best thing about the show is that it's providing a solid showcase for the man-who-can-do-anything, Alec Baldwin. If Fey's aiming to be a 21st-century Mary Tyler Moore, Baldwin is playing Ed Asner and Ted Knight at once.

Of course, it also reminds me of the days when Fey and Baldwin first met -- he's always been great hosting SNL and this National Public Radio parody still makes me laugh out loud:



Meanwhile, there's the aforementioned How I Met Your Mother, a show that seems like a standard Friends clone until you realize that, with each week, it's getting smarter, funnier and stranger -- like this bit with the gang worried for Robin's little sister, followed by the now-nearly...wait for it...legendary "Slap Bet" episode where she reveals her dark Canadian secret:





Of course, if that's all just too silly for the rest of you, there's always the intense 24, a show I've long avoided, out of a belief that its politics and mine wouldn't get along. From what I'd heard, the show's hero was way too fond of using torture as a quick-and-simple way to foil terrorist plots (by that logic, the horrors of Abu Gharib should've ended the War on Terror by now) and the show is absolutely beloved by right-wingers. Last summer, the Heritage Foundation hired Rush Limbaugh to host a panel discussion called "24 and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?" "Does it matter?" What the hell kind of question is that? Oh wait...next week's seminar is "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." Never mind.

At any rate, all this had me avoiding a TV show that people have talked about for years, one that then won the big Emmy awards this year -- Best Drama, Best Actor. Meanwhile, in his Entertainment Weekly column, Stephen King echoed my misgivings about the show's "gleeful" use of torture while still calling it "the best thing on TV" so when the first four episodes started floating around the Internet this week -- in advance of this weekend's two-night, Sunday-Monday premiere -- the curiosity finally got to me:



Hours later, I can see exactly both why I resisted the show and why so many people love it. The opening episode hinges in part on whether or not the nice Muslim family down the suburban California street are terrorists. That's the kind of paranoic race-baiting that makes my teeth clench. Meanwhile, an innocent Muslim leader is unfairly detained (okay, some balance, I guess) but wait -- he uncovers part of the terrorist plot while in custody. You see? Locking him up was a good thing!

Yes, the underlying biases in 24 are unsettlingly fascist if you stop to ponder them but the reality is that the show never stops moving long enough to let you. I've never seen anything so relentless -- not on TV, not on film. Kiefer Sutherland is indeed terrific and the plot grabbed me in, held me there and then, at the end of episode four, threw out a truly-jaw-dropping climax to an hour that was already the most harrowing thing I'd seen on TV since the infamous car-jacking on Six Feet Under. Yep, I'm forced to admit it -- I'm hooked, dammit. I was already watching too much TV as it is!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, Orwell says hi, silliness, TV, writing