Love and Loyalty

Palin congratulates Palin -- who
with his partner Davis reached the
finish line in 6th place this year.
People Ragazine reports Todd Minnick
and Nick Olstad placed first.








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Order your Speedwerx gear here.

GW Plus

Used to wait until George Washington's Birthday, now it's Presidents Day, so here ya go:

Harold & Kumar & W

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H/T, Romano.

NutFlix

Did we need more proof that Netflix is nutty? Here's their latest recommendation for me:

UNIQUE FOR YOU
Contento, we think you might enjoy:
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains
Our best guess for you 4.6
Customer average rating 3.4

Allow me to paraphrase NetFlix' crack team of annotators:

This too-intimate portrait of Billy Carter's brother soft-sells the worst ex-president-ever's despicable justification of Palestinian-Islamobarbarism while shadowing him on his shadowy national book tour. During this episode of his endless publicity scam, the peanut farmer is accused of being a liar, bigot and anti-Semite. Why state the obvious? Or make a movie about it? Don't ask me; ask director Demme. But it's Miss Lillian's son's smarmy responses to the observations that reveal to the discerning ear that the Deliverance state nail-hammerer is indeed a liar, bigot and anti-Jew. If he speaks, he lies.

The NetFlix recommendation is based on my interest in:

The Grocer's Son
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Elite Squad
Little Miss Sunshine
Amelie
The Last King of Scotland

I could comment on each of those films but tonight I'll simply note that unless NetFlix is comparing Carter to the racist Branaugh in Rabbit-Proof Fence -- and I don't grant them that much connect-the-dots acumen -- none of these movies has anything to do with any other on that list and less to do with the malicious peanut farmer and former governor of the former penal colony for British debtors. How NetFlix links these films to Carter and the Carter film to me tis a puzzlement.
No, obviously "we" don't think over there at NetFlix. Haven't we mentioned before that they need to tweak their algorithm?
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What the heck, I can comment on these films:
The Grocer's Son: French: C'mon. Nicolas Cazale resents his dad as well as anyone. Le Clan. Le Grand Voyage. Le Needisaymore?
Rabbit-Proof Fence: Australian: A perfect movie. David Gulpilil. Did I say perfect?
Elite Squad: Brazilian: Rio. Favela. City Of God. City Of Men. And: Wagner Moura ... what else do we need to know?
Little Miss Sunshine: Hollywoodian: Paul Dano. Not sure I approved, but it made me laugh.
Amelie: French: Audrey Tautou ... really, again, what else do we need to know? Audrey Tautou. Can't say that enough.
The Last King of Scotland: British: James McAvoy was robbed. He should have received the Oscar. Not Forrest Whitaker. And what? You never watched Shameless on BBCAmerica or now on Sundance? Losers.

Nasty Surprises Are Always Nasty

We can expect to
see a lot of them
over the next several
months.

Calling Dr. Bombay. Calling Dr. Bombay. Emergency! Come right away!
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Thanks, Wes, see you Tuesday.

Shabbat Shalom

I Dream Of Second Hand Jeanie

Oh man, this is too good.
Now will someone please pay
off my Sallie Mae thing?

Still Cain't Move On

Sorry, Sis

I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like.

Education Chicago Style

More Chicago-Chavez-Ayres-Annenberg-You-Know-Who education reform you can believe in:

...reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student's neck.

In the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist, which they kind of enjoyed, wishing it were a harder application of welcomed pain.

Read it all here.

Previously Oprah exported Chicago methods to Africa.

Enjoy another Chicago teacher style story here.

Cry Me A River

Here she is.

Musical Interlude

Musical Interlude With Beer

C'mon

Ya gotta admit it's kinda funny.

Poofs On Broadway -- But I Repeat Myself

Will Ferrell, poof.

The military is the military. It isn't going to whine. It isn't going to organize a team of protesters to cause a ruckus in front of the Cort Theatre. It is just going to keep its head down and drive on. The military's finest men and women will continue to be ignored at best and loathed at worst. No Medal of Honor winner will get even one percent of the publicity Ferrell will generate with this show. For every hundred books written about the failures in Iraq, there will be one paragraph written about the post-surge turnaround.

But is it too much to ask for our war dead to not be ridiculed by wealthy comedians? Maybe those who fly on private jets, live in closely policed communities with surveillance cameras covering every inch of their property and send their kids to private school don't understand that there is such a thing as public security, and that it isn't a joke.

Chad Allen, Colin Ferrell, Nick Cazale, Judith Light

I see on your FaceBook page you've become a Fan of Film Movement. Nice.

No time to do the movie reviews you asked for but I can tell you what I’ve been watching. Did the Jean Reno thing over the holidays. A couple more to go and I’ll be caught up Netflixwise. And I’m doing the Robert Duvall thing now. But there’re so many Duvals that one has to take a break from time to time. I don’t own many movies but I do own Geronimo: An American Legend and I fired it up last week, mostly for Duvall, fired it up even though Matt Damon is in it and I didn’t feel like watching an idiot even if his work in a particular piece is good enough. More about Geronimo later, mostly because I watch it regularly and like it.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a Chad Allen thing recently. Mostly knew him from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman when he was just a kid and which I watched some early in its television run. In film I first happened on Allen in Save Me, which I thought would be pretty stupid since it’s about curing homos from their homo-ness and all I knew of it came from the Netflix description and of course Netflix annotations are pretty densly written so you never know what to get -- or what you're actually going to get -- if you go by their inept come-ons. (Yet they won’t hire me to guide their writers and clean up their silly style. Go figure.) Save Me started out pretty good with a drugged up Chad Allen having some torrid, anonymous, man-on-man ess-ee-ex in a cheap motel. One thing leading to another, he ended up detoxing in a hospital and then in a group home for “recovering” homos.

I'm a generous film viewer and hardly critical; I'm thick skinned, don't seek offense, yet cautious with my time. Live and let live. Why not? That said, two things about this Hollywood movie: 1) The Christians who led the recovery stuff were presented with their flaws, you bet, but were not ridiculed by the film makers. Refreshing and surprising for Christians to be given a fairly neutral presentation by film makers who you know disagree with the particular Christian stance. And 2) they were not presented as necessarily theologically, doctrinally ridiculous for their belief that homo-ness is bad, needs to be cured, can be cured. Refreshing again.

Rottentomatoes gave this one a 68% fresh on the Tomatometer though my score might be higher. Rottentomatoes described the group home thing thusly: "Genesis House is the life mission of Gayle (Judith Light) and her husband, Ted (Stephen Lang). Haunted by her past, Gayle is determined to save young homosexual men from their personal demons."

Lofty goal, that. Would that we could all be saved from our personal demons.

I had no idea who Judith Light is but it turns out she’s a stage actor and she's a tv actor – soaps and sitcoms – and since I don't watch sitcoms and to my knowledge she's never been on All My Children, I didn't know her. Judith Light was stunning in this movie. If the movie had a villain she played it. Yet you wanted her to be right, that’s how good she was. Even while you wanted Chad Allen to be happy, whomever he turns out to be and to love.

Chad Allen? I knew little about him either. Turns out he is homosexual. And out about it. Don’t know if that makes it braver of him to play gay than if he weren’t gay and out. What did L. Tomlin used to say when she’d play a straight part? You don’t have to be one to play one. But I digress. I know Save Me is playing on Showtime this month, but get it from Netflix so you can watch the bonus features on the DVD, the interviews and the making of and the commentary. Nice stuff from these professionals who have an opinion, a point of view, yet see no need to demonize those with whom they disagree. Sweet.

I’m doing the Chad Allen (gay) private eye movies too, but have nothing much to say about them now other than another one is to be released on DVD this month and that makes three in my Netflix queue.

However, Allen plays a Christian missionary in the jungle of Ecuador in End of the Spear. I've loved jungle movies since Johnny Weissmuller; this one's not simple like old Tarzan movies (yeah, yeah, I know; they are what they are), or fun like Emerald Forest nor lush and uber-violent like Apocalypto and there’s no perfect Nick Cazale (in an Apocalypto haircut) like in that unwatchabe, dubbed-into-English, French version of (jungle/desert isle) Robinson Crusoe (fast forward through the first half of the movie until Cazale shows up in a thong/loin-cloth to play Friday to the old white guy and then watch as long as you're enjoying Cazale in his g-string. I'm just saying), but stick with End of the Spear through to the end and you’ll be glad of it. It's a true missionary story. With your background, you'll relate intimately. We all know I was conceived, birthed and bred solely to be a missionary, so I related too.

I read somewhere that some “Christian” folk were upset that the main character in Spear was played by a gay actor and it makes one think: Shut the heck up. Get lives you losers. Perhaps homos can be devout and maybe the Good Lord don't care and either way your holiness ain't tainted and neither is the story tainted by Allen's good work here.

Like Save Me, End Of The Spear is about redemption. Couldn't we all use some'o'that too.



One more thing. Last night I watched In Bruges. Colin Ferrell. I’ve seen 10 or 12 of his movies.
Including Alexander. Ugh. I keep watching him because I’m sure he’s good. More than an interesting face. Thought so since I first saw him in Tigerland. Finally, in In Bruges, playing a hit man, uh huh, he’s as good as he was in Tigerland eight years ago. Worth the wait and glad I wasn’t wrongo. Ferrell's Irish too, that's always a plus.





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Bonus Pics: Ferrell in Tigerland and Cazale in The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

More Lessons From Dad

Creeping

It stays creepy with this thing.

One woman wrote that when she couldn’t get to sleep at night,
she “lay in bed and thought about the Obama girls in their rooms
at the White House. I thought about Marian Robinson up on the
third floor. And about Barack and Michelle, a couple who clearly
have a ‘thing’ for each other, spooning together in bed.
It helped me relax

.”

Mother of Chastity Nearly Joined Sonny

Grammy award-winning singer and Academy
award-winning actress Cher told CNSNews.com
that living under Republican rule almost “killed" her,
and she does not understand why anyone would
want to be a Republican.

The Mother of Chastity is still alive? Who knew?
Another Bush/Cheney failure.
Any of the Mother of Chastity's fans who can read and are so inclined will find the article here.
Video included for those who don't read.

Shabbat Shalom

February 6

Birthday video here.

Best Four Year Vacation I Ever Had

Derbyshire's often yakking about the college racket. He ain't wrong. Some of us need the education thing. Others of us should try to get rid of any we got. Others need none. I got mine and am glad of it. Still paying for it, but so what?

Derb's advice to the academically non-brilliant young from un-wealthy families, one more time:

If you have a high threshold of boredom and cherish financial security above all else, get a government job — any one will do. Master a few bureacratic survival tactics — avoiding responsibility, advancing by stealth, etc. Settle back. Life's a couch.

If you're more adventurous and independent, learn a useful skill that you can parlay into a small business and take with you to another country if you get the travel bug, or if the U.S.A. folds. Stay clear of the college racket and the student-loan sharks. Keep fit. Life's an adventure playground.

It's all over at The Corner, somewhere, though you'll have to scroll to find it -- and the link to the Forbes piece. Wait, I can give up the Forbes link. Be sure to show it to your college counselor.
Pardon my French but it's too bad I didn't listen to myself and pay that shit off last spring when I still had some money in my 403B. Feh.
Next up: I need a gummint job 'cos I posess the skills, especially the infinite capacity to endure boredom. Need 3 months off every year though. Prefer the desert southwest. Keep in touch if you spot anything.

More From That Spawn Of Satan

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Citing intelligence reports, Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration — “that’s about 11 or 12 percent” — have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”

Read it all here.

Hey, who am I gonna believe? The Western Gentleman or another eastern dilettante? Asked and answered.

More Old Campaign Videos

Smokin'

This from Time/CNN:

The president gives himself some wiggle room Tuesday when asked if he's still lighting up.

Tells CNN he has not been smoking "on these (White House) grounds"-- and doesn't elaborate

Sometimes boys and men gotta smoke.
Leave the Mr. President -- and Michael Phelps -- alone.
Hey, I smoked a pack of Davidoff's myself last summer.
What was I doing smoking? JMax got me a pack for Father's Day. And some ceegarz. It's her fault then. But I take full responsibility.

5. THE REAL SLIM SHADY

Little did we know:

...the only book Eminem read as a child was the dictionary. He pored over it, searching for words that rhymed with each other that could later be pulled out of the bag during the freestyle rap "battles" that provided his education in hip-hop.
The years spent studying the English language lie at the core of his technical brilliance.

It's always a who knew? with this guy and his brilliance. New CD available for pre-order here. Watch this space for upcoming anger interludes.

Lashbama Barnes

Out. Thanks John Thune

Forget the tax cheatin'and the lobbyin',
the double-dippin' and the influence peddlin',
forget the slimey wheeelin'n'dealin'
and forget the nickname "Puff" Daschel.
Forget even the crooked wife.
The glasses alone are the disqualifier.









Need we say more?While we're at it, can't pass this up. Thanks again Senator Thune and the people of South Dakota.

Hope Is Contagious And I Feel It Coming On

From this week's email interchange. California/Texas, Contento/KCD:

Bro,

How's your weekend going? Ready for Sunday?
Ready for Springsteen fighting the Man? Heh.
More importantly, are you ready for Monday?
And the next seven months sans futbal?

Always thinking about you and your needs.
Never a care for myself.

xoxo

-- Me
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Hey,

You sound drunk and frisky; come see me.

Yes, I do descend in to a blue funk this time o’ year.
The bell-jar has me in its sights.

How was your Evening With La LaBelle?

Looks like I may be under contract, selling the house.
I’m thinking southwestern Florida. You in? How about
a road-trip this summer on your break to poke around?
Home prices are good down that way and there’s lots of
foreclosures awaiting Obama-dollars.
I too await my check.
Did I tell you my back has been bothering me?
(Read: disability check.) I’m going to get terminated,
see how much free shit I can get and write
a book about it called Parasite!
Will you edit?

I love you, too.

Damn straight I'll edit. And index. Might add a chapter or two while we're at it.
Scam or be scammed. That's my ethic. Heh.
What did KCD say when I sent that pic of me at Turtle Bay in my hammock? Oh yeah:

"Classic; you in a hammock while freeloading."

KCD know me too very well. And yeah, despite my low-brow beginnings, I have attained classic-hood. You betcha.
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PS1 Because I stole a word: TOMCC
PS2 Picture Credit: JMAX of The North Shore
PS3 Not to change the subject but the opening of Death Wish takes place not far from where that hammock swings. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Kersey at Turtle Bay. I'm just saying.
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Taylor's Six-Pack