Swompdonkey

2010-01-28T19:39:00.002-05:00

It is a new decade!

Time to work on my New Year's resolutions:

Get ripped up abs like The Situation, bro. Fistpump!

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Live by important latin proverbs:

Absit reverentia vero

(The truth should not be silenced to spare someone)

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Be classy like Conan:

Before we end this rodeo, a few things need to be said. There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can’t say about NBC. To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want. And what I want to say is this: between my time at Saturday Night Live, The Late Night Show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over twenty years. Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways. But this company has been my home for most of my adult life. I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.

Walking away from The Tonight Show is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Making this choice has been enormously difficult. This is the best job in the world, I absolutely love doing it, and I have the best staff and crew in the history of the medium, and I will fight anyone who says I don’t. But despite this sense of loss, I really feel this should be a happy moment. Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second. I’ve had more good fortune than anyone I know and if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-11 parking lot, we’ll find a way to make it fun.

And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

Say what you will about him, but the man knows how to make an exit.

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Kick Ass like Weng Weng

2009-12-18T07:36:00.003-05:00

History Geek Corner

Back to blogging? Would not count on it! But every once in a while I may run across something that compels me to post something.

The other day, for instance, I was doing a search for something and I stumbled across a very very old photographic portrait. I'm talking 1840s-1850s. What was even more remarkable was that it was a portrait of a very old person. So not only was I looking at an actual photograph of a man who live 150 years ago, I was actually looking at a man who had been born in the mid eighteenth century. For some reason, I found this mind-boggling.

After a bit of searching, I found this site, which features photos of American Revolutionary War veterans in the autumn of their years. Never mind the fact that these men faced down the redcoats and saw George Washington with their own eyes... One of these fellows, Conrad Heyer, was alive during the Seven Years War. He was ten years old when Wolfe and Montcalm fought on the Plains of Abraham, 250 miles north of his home. And he was already a man in the prime of his life the year his country was founded.

Conrad Heyer of Waldoborough, Maine: Born 1749, died 1856 at the age of 107. He may well be the earliest born human ever photographed.

2009-10-07T18:00:00.002-04:00

Worked Up

Let's face it, the blog is moribund. At this point --with the arrival of the twins imminent-- it takes something truly outrageous to sufficiently get my dander up to the point where I feel compelled to post.

That something is the Polanski case, and more specifically, the myriad of "industry" types who have flocked to Roman's defence ever since he got his stupid ass pinched, in Switzerland, of all places.

By now, all the myths and misconceptions around this case should have been thoroughly debunked. It was rape, plain and simple. And Polanski pleaded guilty. And then he fled from justice, and has been a fugitive ever since. Any artistic achievement coming either before the crime, or in the intervening years has absolutely no bearing on the truth of the fact that Polanski never paid for the crime he committed.

If you were looking for evidence that Hollywood's moral compass is irretrievably broken, you can cease searching: Here it is.

Remember the names of these child-rape apologists, folks. Remember them the next time you queue up at the box office.

I hate Bill Maher. But he is 100% right:

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Also: Afghanistan is an ungodly mess. It was supposed to be the "good war", remember? In contrast to the "wrong war" that was Iraq, the Afghanistan conflict, with the imprimatur of the UN and the collaboration of NATO, was the one that even the most doveish of the Democrats could get behind. I'm now worrying about it in a way I never worried about Iraq.

Even in the darkest days, I figured Iraq was winnable --as a search through my blog archives will attest. With Afghanistan, though, I have never been certain, and following the debacle that were the recent elections and other developments. I'm less certain than ever. For one thing, the two freelance journalists who were most reliable on what was really going on on the ground in Mesopotamia throughout that conflict, the Michaels Yon and Totten, always gave a realistic picture of that conflict, so in my book they have credibility.

On Afghanistan, both have sounded, and continue to sound, pretty pessimistic. Yon, in particular, seems to have a real understanding of the situation, and his insights are pretty frightening. It really does seem that things need to turn around there, and quick. Frankly, I'm not sure if the Obama administration has the stomach to do what needs to be done.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

2009-08-08T07:56:00.003-04:00

Why Bother?

I've been blogging so sporadically lately, that I feel like Dan Aykroyd, popping by Studio 8H with my lifetime pass for an SNL cameo, blithely ignoring the fact that I have not done anything that merits an appearance in decades.

Well I'm about to become a dad for a second and third time (twins!) so I've had to engage in some radical re-prioritizing. Here's some stumbled-across content from my hiatus

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I think Detroit is the new Palenque--hey that ain't a bad idea for a tourism slogan! Behold, its Feral Houses

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My brain don't work so good. What's the highest form of patriotism again? I keep forgetting that neat little aphorism I kept reading everywhere during the period of 2000-2008.

Mark Steyn:

Well, on mid-day on January the 20th, pretty much everyone ripped off those bumper stickers off the back of their car, and told us now what was important that we should all be united. We should all be one. We should be in effect a one-party state.

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Behold, the worst wrestling match ever:

Nice fireball!

From what I gather, this match basically finished Jim Hellwig as a wrestler once and for all. Given what followed, one could argue that Hogan never recovered from this debacle either.

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The suberb miniseries Generation Kill has been on HBO all summer, and viewing it has motivated me to hunt down The Wire, which was produced by the same people. This is some truly good storytelling, people. Maybe because it was based on a book written by Rolling Stone's Evan Wright, who was embedded with The Marines of First Recon throughout the invasion of Iraq, it somehow rings true. Maybe it is the way that the filmakers refuse to adhere to tired tropes or engage in Hollywood shorthand and supply us with the usual lazy archetypes within a group (i.e. the black one, the southern one, the jewish one...). Rather, we gradually come to know a few of these young, vulgar and phenomenally brave young Americans in striking, character-revealing moments amidst the crucible of a strangely improvised war. The producers do not condescend to the audience, either: In the end, you are neither pressed to cheer the conquering heroes nor moved to deplore the amoral aggressors, you are merely left to contemplate what you have seen, and draw your own conclusions. It is as if we are being told: "This all happened... now, what do you think?"

One who was there, and has been fairly open about what he thinks, is Nate Fick, who in the miniseries is depicted as the young Lt he was in 2003 when First Recon stormed across the Iraqi border in its Humvees. Here you can see retired Captain Fick, author of his own memoir on his time as a Marine Officer, speaking on his experiences.

Interestingly I had read somewhere that one of the members of the cast was not a professional actor, but an actual marine who played himself. I could not guess who it was while viewing miniseries, and was surprised when I learned it was Rudy Reyes.
Here is an article on a most unique member of the USMC. Check out the comments section for a few chuckles.

2009-07-10T08:59:00.001-04:00

With the British Army and the ANA in Helmand

2009-07-05T20:45:00.002-04:00

More Leftovers

With some new stuff thrown in for good measure:

Slate has a piece on single-topic-blogs, which I must admit enjoy as a kind of guilty pleasure. My favourite: LATFH

Related: Carnivore? Keep Being Awesome!

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RIP MJ

Anyone remember this?

I love the WAAAOOH! scream.

Weird! Good music though.

...Come to think of it, that statement applies as much to the man himself as the videogame.

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A baked Kevin Smith gets poignant:

We have a symbiotic relationship, the fan base and I. In a weird way, they get to live vicariously through me, since I'm the tubby kid who made it good, who comes across less like an artist and more like your buddy who suddenly won the lottery of life. They see how I "handle" it, and they're into the fact that it would appear I'm the same person now as I was before I started making films. Plus, I inspire them, in that "If a guy like that can make it, then maybe I can, too" kinda way.

What I get from the fan base is unconditional support. They may not like all the flicks I do, but they'll give each one a shot—which is the most you can ask for from any audience. Contrary to what the haters think, the fan base doesn't lounge around like a giant caterpillar, taking hits off the hookah of my collective body of work; they're normal people with normal lives who just relate to what I write/say. And the relationship doesn't end at the theater: These are folks I play poker with. I spend my birthdays with them (onstage or at a home-made prom). I played hockey against and beside them just last week in Brantford, Ontario, at Walter Gretzky's 3rd Annual Street Hockey Tournament. It makes sense we'd all get along, as we share a common interest: Kevin Smith films. But, Jesus—you can only talk about those for so long. And when the "Then what'd Jason Lee say?" chatter dries up, you find they're more friends than fans.

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Neda may be dead, but she just won't go away

"Staged"?

Yeah, sure, Mahmood... in fact, it was probably staged by them non-existent gays, eh?

Related: Hitchens

There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran's internal affairs. The deep belief that everything—especially anything in English—is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the theocracy.

It is a mistake to assume that the ayatollahs, cynical and corrupt as they may be, are acting rationally. They are frequently in the grip of archaic beliefs and fears that would make a stupefied medieval European peasant seem mentally sturdy and resourceful by comparison.

The tendency of outside media to check the temperature of the clerics, rather than consult the writers and poets of the country, shows our own cultural backwardness in regrettably sharp relief. Anyone who had been reading Pezeshkzad and Nafisi, or talking to their students and readers in Tabriz and Esfahan and Mashad, would have been able to avoid the awful embarrassment by which everything that has occurred on the streets of Iran during recent days has come as one surprise after another to most of our uncultured "experts."

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Bill Murray is just great

Local reporter drops sly reference, reaps reward.

How cool would it be to tell your kids that you once talked to Carl Spackler at the U.S. open?

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Frank Sinatra Has A Cold

The hoodlum from hoboken was cool back when being cool was a character trait and not a lifestyle choice. They don't make like Frank Sinatra any more, and they don't write stuff this good very often either. You don't event need to be a fan of the Chairman of the Board to dig this article, an early example of the "new journalism".

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She's resigning to spend more time with her media consultant

Sara Palin has been in the news so much lately, I could not help but recall the amusing misadventures of a certain amateur Catholic theologian and part-time gynecologist!

One of the nastiest takedowns I have read in a long time:

Through the Looking Glass with Andrew Sullivan

2009-06-14T12:32:00.002-04:00

Cleaned out the Freezer

Amazing what you find back there! Haven't been blogging much lately, mostly because I have been hanging out with the little guy during my vacation. I'm a bit out-of-the-loop as far as pop culture and current events go. Nevertheless, here are a few frost-bearded hunks of months-old leftovers and tidbits

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Because I never get tired of people picking on the UN

A great piece found on ForeignPolicy.com: Some Dissasembly Required

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IDF video on Hamas tactics

Whether you think this is “Zionist propaganda” or a painstaking reconstruction of Hamas tactics during Operation Cast Lead, it's a pretty fascinating video with amazing computer graphics.

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Dante's Inferno

Cool site if you are interested in one of the classics of Western literature:World of Dante.

Apparently the Ciardi translation is the best, though I don't think that was the one I read. I'll have to re-visit...

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Scambaiting is Fun!

Not that I would encourage that potentially dangerous pastime, but some of these elaborate ruses are pretty insane! Incredible what some people are willing to go through if they think that there is a big payoff at the end.

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Rough start for Conan

In honour of David Letterman being number one again for the first time in like 15 years: Cracked presents Letterman's 9 most hilariously awkward moments

Also, not necessarily awkward... just bizarre: Chris Elliott on Letterman

Actually, if you have seen what he is spoofing, it is pretty funny. If you haven't, look up Shatner Rocketman on Youtube.

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Douglas Copeland attempts to bring back his 90s zeitgeist, does not succeed

From a Diogenes Borealis post from last November: Hideous Public Art.

Mr. Copeland, your ironic slacker installation blows in almost every way, but at least it looks vaguely military. So, congrats on your partial FAIL.

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This will be good for your brain

Trust me

...now this was TV, people!

see why Bill Buckley is missed so?

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Last but not least, two random cool sites

Cabinet of Wonders

The British Library Online Gallery, featuring the Lindisfarne Gospels

2009-06-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

In honour of Conan's Move to the Tonight Show

Bob Goulet!

2009-05-31T09:44:00.002-04:00

The Islamic Civil War

Remember that nasty homecoming surprise that the Royal Anglian Regiment got in Luton a few weeks ago? This time, Luton's moderates drive off the nutjobs

Mr Latif said: 'We have been fighting these Muslim extremists for you. They represent nobody but themselves.
'The community decided to move them on because the police won't. We have asked them, but they did nothing.
'I don't know if they will be back. We have been the victims twice over - from the stupidity of Muslim extremists who metaphorically pour petrol and fan the flames of the right-wing extremists.
'This was a peaceful demonstration and we hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them.'

Thank goodness that some mainstream Muslims are at long last awakening to this mortal peril in their midst. They must definitely be feeling the squeeze by now, as the far-right in Britain feeds off the anger provoked by the Islamist fringe. Unfortunately, the moderates can continue to expect no help whatsoever from their Government, which, to its eternal disgrace, stands with the extremists.

Incidentally, the worst insult an islamist can level at a "fellow" muslim?

Angry words were exchanged and scuffles broke out between members of both groups, with the extremists shouting 'Shame on you' and 'Get back to your synagogue'.

What a disgrace.

2009-05-24T09:23:00.002-04:00

Idolology

I managed to avoid American Idol, for the most part, for six-and-a-half seasons until last year, Nesrine called me into the room to listen to David Cook tear the roof off the place during one of his bravura performances. For the first time, this year I managed to watch beyond the early episodes -- you know, the ones where cruel people like me get to indulge our shameful schadenfreude as Simon Cowell systematically dismantles the hopes and dreams of deluded mediocrities-- and I actually found myself getting into it!

I picked Danny Gokey to win early on, but as the Idol contestants headed into the homestretch, I found myself thinking that Danny-Boy was starting to flag. Maybe this is just hindsight, but in retrospect his last couple of outings just did not pack the punch that earlier performances had shown he was capable of delivering. What's more, when I saw how the final five was shaping up, I starting to think that inverse vote-splitting (vote consolidation?) would come into play. I thought I knew who the final three were going to be (Danny, Adam, and Kris)--and when it turned out I was right, I told Nesrine who I thought was going to win: "it's either Danny or Kris".

Nesrine, who was a Glambert backer from Day-1, thought I was nuts, so I explained my theory:

Danny and Kris, for all their stylistic differences, were essentially from the same AI template: The safe, radio-friendly boy-next-door unit-mover. Adam, however, was an alien from another planet. Sure, the theatrical, sexually-ambiguous vocal powerhouse had all the pundits on his side, and by the time we got to the final three, conventional wisdom was that he was a lock to win, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that the math did not add up.

I tried to imagine, in some alternate universe where the Idol results were determined by preferential ballot, how many people who picked Danny or Kris as their first choice would likely pick Adam as their second. I just could not see it being that many. The kind of people who dug the earnest, religious guy from Arkansas' brand of easy-listening adult contemporary music would probably be drawn more to the earnest, religious guy from Wisconsin's brand of easy-listening adult contemporary music. And on top of it, Adam's opponents appear to have hedged their bets with some effective attack ads:

Let's leave it to others to comment on the red-state/blue-state subtext to this year's finale. I'll stick with the facts: Given that American Idol viewers voted two fairly similar contestants into the top three, it stands to reason that third-place-finisher Danny's fans --those sufficiently motivated to continue voting, at least, would be more likely to switch to something similar, i.e. Kris. That means that Adam, our odd-man-out, would have to have a pretty commanding lead going into the finals if he hoped to see off a contestant who might be boosted by "second choice" votes from disgruntled Danny supporters. Anecdotal evidence prior to the finals suggests that was not the case.

Adam, a juggernaut when it came to buzz and hype from music-biz types, turned out to be more vulnerable when the voting public had their say. After all, he came in the bottom two(!!!) during Rat Pack standards week. Maybe his legion of fans got complacent that week and forgot to vote, but anyone with a huge lead would not have slipped that far down the rankings. So maybe Adam was the giant with the feet of clay, and maybe Danny, who seemed to me to be the superior singer, concealed his own vulnerability with a smug grin as his performances contined to deliver increasingly diminishing returns. I think humble Kris was more than just a dark horse. Just go have a listen to his version of Kanye's Heartless, and tell me that isn't marketable to the Tweens.

With his likeability/inoffensiveness, and his undeniable talent, Kris Allen may have been the stealth frontrunner the whole time.

2009-05-15T08:26:00.002-04:00

Aziz and Star Trek

Aziz Ansari is awesome

Aziz Ansari stars in Parks and Rec

Aziz Ansari says beware of phoney IMAX!

Well, I just saw the very well executed Star Trek reboot at a real IMAX, and I thought the performances were great all around, but the true standouts were a hilarious Simon Pegg as a Glaswegian Scotty (since they changed the timeline could the alternative timeline have shifted where Scotty grew up to the West Central Lowlands? The mind boggles.), and Karl Urban, who as Dr. McCoy so effectively replicated DeForest Kelley's speech patterns and Georgia drawl without doing an impression or a parody.

I think that in the sequel, they should bring Federation weapons specialist Mohinder aboard the Enterprise to help battle Klingons, and I think I know just the man for the job! Mr. Ansari, clear your schedule...

2009-05-14T07:46:00.004-04:00

Startling

Old-timey photoshop job of a 2009 snapshot or Great-great-great Grandpa as a young dandy, circa 1850?

This is the most strikingly modern-looking 160-year-old photo I've ever seen. The handsome young subject, smiling enigmatically as he gazes at something out of our view, seems like he could almost leap out of the frame. How often does one see happy expressions in pictures from the 19th century? The superb quality of the shot reveals details like the texture of the man's jacket, the wrinkles on his (open!) collar, and the carefully curled locks of what may or may not be a wig.

To me, he has the look of a time-traveller, grinning to himself as he contemplates his success at blending into 19th century society!

More great shots like this at Shorpy.com.

2009-05-13T00:55:00.000-04:00

SABBATH!

2009-04-28T21:50:00.002-04:00

Minutiae and Trivia

The Office and the Peter Principle

The Office has turned into a pretty great show, mostly thanks to the clever way they have developped the character of Michael Scott. Just when you think that they have pushed his incompetence and cluelessness to almost ridiculous levels, he goes and reminds everyone that there was a reason he was made manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin in the first place: The man knows how to sell paper.

I like the idea that Michael Scott is an idiot-savant; that he is generally mediocre and yet displays excellence in one very specific area.

Does that very specific skillset compensate for his gross incompetence as a manager? Of course not, but it at least gives him a somewhat believeable backstory and makes him more sympathetic. I think the Peter Principle is something most viewers of The Office can relate to. After all, how many of us have seen genuinely good workers turn into piss-poor leaders upon promotion? Heck, some corporate cultures seem hard-wired for that sort of thing.

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For no particular reason: A bit of culture

The first time I saw a Masaccio fresco, in the Brancacci Chapel, I actually experienced Stendhal syndrome (no fooling). It seems unreal that those six-hundred-year-old works, still so bright and vital, are considered the birth of Renaissance painting.

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I got a funny e-mail at work the other day...

Not the kind of funny that makes you laugh, though. Apparently, some of my older neighbours have been accosted by local members of the street community under the influence of controlled substances (a.k.a. drunks and crackheads), and are therefore warning everyone to be on the lookout for non-resident interlopers. There are a number of healthy younger guys on my block, and given the fact that there are also a few children around, I don't expect that many of us will be too concerned about the niceties if and when we have to see an unwelcome harm reduction advocate off.

Apparently Ottawa has one of the lowest serious crime rates in the country, but stuff like that makes me seriously consider moving my family away from the downtown very, very soon... before anything like this, anyway.

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A little late for Easter, but still worth a read:

Why was Jesus Crucified?

An enlightening historical examination of a particularly gruesome form of judicial execution. No wonder the early followers of Christ were not big on using the cross as their symbol!

Also worth a read: 101 Bible Secrets That Christians Don't Know

Some mind-blowers here. Among my faves:

Long-haired Jesus is a pagan god

Were Christians Communists?

Did Moses Stutter?

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In Honour of Alfie's Rapidly Diminishing Cup Hopes...

Ten Top Players Who Never Hoisted Lord Stanley's Mug

BONUS:

More fun with campus fascists

"He was not able to practice his hate speech," said Oakley. "You have to respect the right of people to assemble and collectively speak."

2009-04-10T09:06:00.002-04:00

Americans Don't Bow to Foreign Potentates!

uh...

except when they do. From the excellent Miniseries John Adams:

Of course, performing courtesies to the representative of a thousand-year-old royal dynasty is one thing. Bowing and scraping to the son of history's luckiest desert raider is entirely another!

Interestingly, I recall someone saying that Obama is the first President in a very long time whose father was a British subject. So maybe Britain's complicated history in Kenya has something to do with his relative coolness towards his father's colonial overlords.

2009-03-31T22:42:00.002-04:00

Slumdog Instant Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is coming out on DVD, and I'm really curious to see what the fuss is about. I have always been a fan of Danny Boyle, who seems to have a knack for crafting nifty genre pictures that always seem slightly askew to me. Trainspotting was not quite a black comedy, and 28 Days Later was not quite a zombie flick, but both were quite excellent.

After all the hype about the explosion of India's vibrant film industry, it is rather startling to read something like this, that really brings the gulf between Bollywood and Hollywood into sharp focus. In some ways, Bollywood is still small potatoes.

The woman who has vaulted ahead of the Aishwaryas, Bipashas, and every other female Indian superstar to become the highest earning female actor in the country is a neophyte actress with exactly one movie credit under her belt so far. How that must irk the Bollywood divas.

In fact, Freida Pinto is not technically a "Bollywood star" since almost everyone agrees that what Danny Boyle has made is not a Bollywood movie, although it does offer a tip of the hat to the genre here and there. Some in Bollywood have actually criticized Boyle's flick as exploitive, calling it a cheap trashy mediocre version of erstwhile Bollywood hits, although that criticism seems a bit rich to me, considering that countless western films have been shamelessly mined, plagiarized, and ripped off by Bollywood.

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Plus:

David Brooks provides us with some hope for Afghanistan. It isn't much, but it's more than we've had for a while.

2009-03-26T23:56:00.002-04:00

The Love Guru: What Went Wrong

If you have the Movie Network, you may recently have gotten a whiff of a rancid comedy while flipping channels and wondered "What is this fetid stinkbomb, and now how do I get this smell off my clothes?"

If the suspicious cinematic toxin featured a mustachioed Justin Timberlake as a quebecois Goalie and a hirsute, profoundly unfunny Mike Myers as an Eastern Mystic, you got Love Guru on yourself. Quick, go take a shower.

Simply put: The Love Guru ain't really that funny. Worse, it is a self-indulgent and tedious flick that actually makes us like and respect Mike Myers less as a comedian for having spawned the character of Guru Pitka and the movie that revolves around him.

It is hard to overstate how badly things went wrong for Myers, a prickly perfectionist who apparently laboured over Pitka, his latest comedic creation, for months and months before "perfecting" it to the point of deeming it worthy to commit to celluloid. The lack of self-awareness on display here is staggering.

This is no indifferent hack we are talking about, after all. Myers must have really thought that Pitka would be a big hit, else he would not have built a movie around him! Remember, this is the guy that refused to give us a "Dieter" movie he could not get behind 100% artistically --in spite of the fact that he had co-written the script, a courageous stand that resulted in a lengthy suit with Universal Studios, and indirectly, the creation of the cinematic abortion The Cat In The Hat, as a by-product of the settlement. Evidently, we can thank Myers for refusing to allow the legacy of "Sprockets" to be defiled a la "Night at the Roxbury".

One of the best deconstructions of the cinematic travesty that is The Love Guru --as well as an examination of the hubris of the man primarily responsible for it-- can be found on the AV Club Web site as an entry in Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops feature: Kicking A Man While He's Down, Case File #132: The Love Guru. It is a dynamite piece that really cuts to the heart of why and how this movie failed, while marveling at the level of effort Myers put into the creation of this failure. One of my favourite musings from the piece:

A smart, talented, accomplished writer-actor like Myers spending years meticulously creating, rehearsing, and refining an obnoxious one-note cartoon like Guru Pitka is a like a group of brilliant scientists working around the clock for a decade to build a malfunctioning fart machine: a surreal waste of time, energy and manpower.

That's a pretty good example of Rabin's irreverent style. It's also right on the money. I just hope that Mike Myers learns from this fiasco and that this undoubtedly talented man, who after all brought us Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers and Shrek, can bounce back!

2009-03-22T00:57:00.002-04:00

Not Funny

There is nothing funny about Afghanistan right now.

The Afghanistan house is burning down and these people are taking the piss out of Canada's Army --One of the few forces that has actually been in real, sustained combat over there? How tone-deaf can you get? Canadians have been eating it in Kandahar for quite some time, and given the gravity of the situation in that benighted land right now, this light-hearted ridicule from a bunch of chuckleheads is both offensive and really clueless. Newsflash: Things are dire! This thing is far from won. This isn't a time to mock your allies.

At least the Canucks are there in a serious way, which is more than you can say for many other NATO countries. Afghanistan is about to make Iraq look like the invasion of Grenada, and we have lighthearted topical comedy about Canada's mission coming from these clowns. We'll see how much everyone is laughing in a year's time...

2009-03-15T16:52:00.002-04:00

Looking for laughs in Luton

So some of the local islamist shit-disturbers decide to crash the Second Battalion's Royal Anglian Regiment's homecoming parade from Iraq. Oddly, some were not having it. Here's what ensued:

Of course, not surprisingly, the British National Party is making hay of this incident.

The islamists, brandishing the victim card, could not give a rat's ass, promising more to follow. Meanwhile the apologists are chiming in, right on schedule. Laughably, some reports refer to these folks as "muslim anti-war protestors" when many of them are likely far from "anti-war", having enthusiastically provided material support and comfort, if not manpower, to the other side.

To me, all the incipient street violence has a bit of a whiff of the Weimar Repubic, circa 1929, about it. Nonsense, right? Well, things were not that bad in the Weimar republic of 1929, even if the seeds of disaster were already sown. I mean, sure, before the economy really went south, you had your marginal elements of society making themselves known in the streets, with the reds of the KPD sometimes going toe-to-toe with some right-wing jerkoffs, but nobody remembers them anymore right?

Look, the point is that when the economy goes south, any unrest and resentment already festering within a society will only get worse, as people look for scapegoats; e.g. "immigrants", "jews", whatever tickles your fancy! And things are not too bad in the UK, at least not yet, but I don't think I am going too far out on a limb in saying we can expect this type of "difference of opinion" to occur more and more often, as fairly ordinary people reach the point of exasperation take matters into their own hands with the endlessly accomodated, constantly aggrieved, and newly emboldened recently arrived muslim supremacists in their country.

If history is any type of a guide, unless brazen provocateurs are denounced and marginalized, and unless the UK government discontinues its folly of pandering to islamists, the mainstream moderate voices in Britain will gradually give way to the folks on the fringes, peddling their simplistic, yet undeniably compelling solutions to the complex problems Britain finds itself faced with.

2009-03-05T08:23:00.002-05:00

Hitler is a Fanboy

Warning: Major Watchmen Spoilage
Second warning: Not for those who take themselves too seriously

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIhHema5PNg

If you explore the related videos on Youtube, you'll find creatively subtitled videos of Hitler reacting badly to bad news from his underlings(not being able to get a Wii Fit, Hannah Montana releasing a new album, etc). It's a meme based on scenes from the acclaimed German film Downfall. I hope this catches on because, let's face it, seeing Hitler throw tantrums over ridiculous stuff is pretty funny.

2009-02-28T11:48:00.002-05:00

It's Official

Christianity in Britain is over.
(...)it is difficult to know what the late Beatle would have made of the Church of England's decision to ring out the tune of his most famous solo work, the anti-religion anthem "Imagine", from the bells of Liverpool Cathedral this summer. Rehearsals on hand bells will begin in March.

The 1971 song, which contains the lyric "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try, No hell below us, above us only sky", will be performed from the world's tallest bell tower, which is 100.89m (331ft) tall, as part of the Futuresonic Festival in May.

Lennon described it as "anti- religious, anti-nationalistic, anti- conventional, anti-capitalistic".

A cathedral spokesman said he saw no contradiction in performing the piece, as much anti-capitalistic as it is anti-religious, from Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's celebrated church because Lennon's passionate embrace of the peace movement chimed perfectly with Christian values.

He said: "We obviously took into consideration sensitivities surrounding the song's lyrical content. The cathedral has been very much at the heart of Liverpool's Capital of Culture celebrations and is delighted to embrace the city's artistic energy. The proposed performance will inspire thought as it yearns for peace in a broken and troubled world. We also anticipate that the performance will be a very moving and spiritual experience and will engage with all people including those who do not usually interact with places of worship."

(...) The festival director Drew Hemment, who founded Futuresonic in 1995, said: "When the idea of John Lennon's "Imagine" being broadcast over church bells was suggested I realised that it had to happen in Liverpool and the Anglican Cathedral would be the ideal partner. The cathedral's support for the project has been fantastic and reflects this city's famous tolerance and courage. This special event celebrates the unique spirit of Liverpool that runs through both the Cathedral and Lennon's secular message."

When you have someone like Rowan Williams as your shephard, is it any wonder that the flock can go so far astray? Rumour has it he endorsed the Liverpool gig after being talked out of sponsoring a Finnish black metal festival in the courtyard of Canterbury Cathedral (not really).

***

About the NYU debacle (and my post from a few days ago):

Alex Lotorto is the camera guy, and here, a blogger named Blake schools him in the vagaries of the real world --you know, the place that people like Lotorto have almost no clue about? Alex actually stops by to defend himself, which he has been doing all over the place apparently, providing even more laughs. What a generous soul, this Lotorto kid.

Is this whole "activism" fad a generational thing? I mean, I was in university about fifteen years ago, and I can remember things like the political correctness craze, which never really went away, but I cannot recall the type of "anti-authoritarian" farce seen at NYU happening very often --don't get me wrong, even prior to the No Logo Naomi Klein era there were plenty of attempts at imposing leftist dogma upon the student body.

A bit of an aside here: For an illustration of the staleness of Naomi Klein's ideas, and to see how far Ms. Klein has fallen since her halcyon days a decade ago, read Jonathan Chait's comprehensive dismantling of her and her silly little book "The Shock Doctrine" in the New Republic, which, by the way, is hardly a right-wing rag.

Anyway, what I was getting to is that nothing I ever saw or experienced in the pre-WTO Seattle era compares to the magnitude of "activism" we have seen lately, some of which is both deeply subversive and profoundly illiberal. I mean, listening to this kid Lotorto's running commentary, you have to marvel at the effectiveness of his indoctrination. It's like his profs and mentors really stepped up and brought their "A" game: He really is a "true believer", with all the "peace-building" consensus jargon and doublespeak and everything; one of those useful (in his case, useless) idiots.

Is it that the aging boomers of the left who run post-secondary education in the Western hemisphere are, at long last, beginning to contemplate their imminent passage into oblivion? Perhaps it is this awareness of their rapidly approaching dotage and destitution that has spurred some of the greying intelligentsia, who are now stepping up their efforts to indoctrinate young people into their "me generation" world view, with predictable results.

***
My far-fetched prediction for 2009

The character Rorschach will become a folk anti-hero of the right following the theatrical release of the film adaptation Watchmen. Watchmen, by the way, is the best graphic novel ever written. If you only ever read one "comic book" in your life, this should be it.

2009-02-26T07:50:00.002-05:00

We're using democratic process here, I don't know if you guys understand that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q6KAg6qEGY

Ain't the Internet great?

I mean, in the pre-WWW days, we would have read some sterile account of the last moments of the NYU Kimmel occupation, and never really grasped the full extent of the narcissism, self-delusion and sheer douchebaggery on display, but with a video like this being made public, the would-be campus radicals are exposed for what they are: a pathetic bunch of poseurs not fit to carry Abbie Hoffman's sweaty jockstrap! The reviews have not been kind.

I bet the camera dude thought he was pretty clever recording events for posterity. He told himself he was ensuring that any repressive tactics or "human rights violations" would be documented for future use.

Great.

Except the cameraman is hoist on his own grassroots vegan petard!
Campus authorities come across in the best possible light: Patient and eminently reasonable, particularly in the face of such irritating and contemptuous behaviour from the "activists". The vanguard of the proletariat, on the other hand...
I mean, it's all there on damning display in the footage folks:

The incredibly irritating use of jargon like "consensus" and "hierarchy" --particularly coming from a guy who seems like he could not reach consensus on a piss-up in a brewery... how long does it take to gather 10 people in a corner, you tool?

The inevitable multiple explanations of how they are going to "collectively decide" how to proceed... only they don't.... ever!

The patently untrue accusations of "brutality". Son, if you think this is brutality, you ain't ever seen brutality.

Nice random use of uncalled-for profanity and aggressive language from one of the other campus revolutionaries nearby: "Dirty scumbag fucks"? I mean really... If you keep this up, Dad will take away your Prius for two weeks, Justin!

The threats of litigation (Subtext: Do you know who my father is?)

Strange, mute peace-sign girl who seems to be in some kind of tofu-induced trance.

The odd inability to understand, even in the face of all evidence, that the jig is up, and that the radicals simply have nothing and no one to negotiate with.

Hilarious derisive reference to "corporate water" (as opposed to the non-corporate macbooks, ipods, and assorted other revolutionary items found in backpacks)

As a bonus, check out the comments section. Almost universal opprobrium! One particularly vicious one I like:

I love at the end when he's going through their back packs: Macbook, iPod, charger, bottled water, etc. Anything missing? Yeah - TEXTBOOKS.

I'd ask who teaches these kids this shit, but I think we already know the answer to that.

They really don't make dissidents like they used to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA

2009-02-21T13:47:00.003-05:00

I'm Definitely Getting Old

Because every time I hear M.I.A.'s caterwauling, monotonous Paper Planes

I want to yell "What the f__ did she do to STRAIGHT TO HELL!?!"

I get sampling. But there's sampling, and then there is defecating on a classic.

If he had not ascended straight into punk heaven, Joe Strummer would be rolling in his grave!

***

File Under: News That Should Not Surprise Anybody

Dubai Property Prices Are Crashing

"Wait, you can't build an economy through speculation on real estate built by foreign laborers and fueled by petro-dollars? Why didn't you tell me sooner!"

***

How House-flippers Have Brought on the Apocalypse:

From Life With Father:

"The real villains here, the truly bad seeds at the heart of this crisis, have gone unpunished thus far and are still in operation," writes Pressler. "They are Jeff Lewis and Ryan Brown of Bravo's Flipping Out, Armando and Veronica Montelongo of TLC's Flip This House, Kristen Kemp of TLC's The Property Ladder, Kendra Todd of HGTV's My House Is Worth WHAT?, and the TLC, Bravo, HGTV, and Fine Living networks in general. All of them encouraged people to take out massive loans in order to buy and renovate homes and sell them at a profit when, really, most people have terrible taste, and furthermore, are bad at laying tile. These shows are still on! WHY?"

2009-02-10T19:49:00.003-05:00

Christian Bale Goes Apeshit

God love him, he's apologized for it, but this very NSFW rant is worth revisiting, even after all the remixes, mash-ups and laughs at his expense, because I think he almost broke his brain:

Bear with me for a sec... what do you notice about the way he is speaking? His accent... what kind of accent is that? Did he drop character and speak with his normal accent? Nope. Bale is from Wales. Then was it the American accent of his character John Connor? I've heard Bale do a much better American accent than that. Remember, he played Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, and his accent was flawless in that film.

My jokey theory is that the reason he is speaking in a half-British/half-American accent is that in his rage, he somehow got lost halfway between Welsh actor Christian Bale and American resistance leader and Terminator-slayer John Connor. In other words, he was for several scary moments both Bale and Connor! This is frightening.

In all seriousness though, you hear about these so-called “method” guys all the time: like how Daniel Day Lewis walks around in character 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on those rare occasions when he takes a part, or how De Niro put on seventy pounds of weight to play a fat, old Jake Lamotta in the final scene of Raging bull. These stories are the stuff of legend. Thing is, contrary to popular belief, the “method” isn’t really about “becoming” a character temporarily… it is about drawing on your own real emotions or experiences to “interpret” a character.

The way it has been explained to me is that whereas an instinctive actor will, in the context of their performance, determine the emotion their character needs to display (i.e. “sadness”) at a particular moment, given the plot and circumstances, and will attempt to approximate a reasonable facsimile of the emotion (“look sad”) through expressions and behaviour, an actor trained in Konstantin Stanislavski’s method goes a whole different route.

The "method actor" will use things like sense and memory, tapping into their own very real emotions (“feel sad”) to achieve a greater degree of realism. When you hear a rant like this, you can't help but wonder if guys like Bale may be taking things a step too far in their desire to really inhabit a part and do justice to whatever role they take on. Anyone who has read about the pre-conditions that Bale laid out for Joe McGinty Nichol (I refuse to call him "McG") in order for him to take the role of John Connor will understand the degree to which Bale takes his work seriously.

Does that mean that the crew need to be on tenterhooks around someone like Christian Bale when he is doing his thing in a scene that calls for him to “feel angry”… I think his angry tirade is proof that you do.

***

Update: I made some edits put up a spoiler warning for the link to the Wired blog because it is SPOILERTASTIC... seriously, don't go there unless you are willing to have major plot points of Terminator Salvation revealed to you. One of the posters in the comments section calls the Wired editor who posted the article a "Clownshoe" for not providing a spoiler warning. I'm just not sure I can deal with being called a Clownshoe, so you've been warned.

2009-02-08T12:21:00.002-05:00

Despair is a Sin

But when you look at the state of the Holy Land as it really is, not as we would have it, it is often hard to see the situation as anything but hopeless...

It is worth checking out Michael Totten's blog. Scroll down a bit on Totten's site and you can read some very bitter commentary from Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist whose matter-of-fact explanations, many contrary to conventional wisdom (i.e. the relative merit of Fatah vis-a-vis Hamas),illustrate the yawning gap between reality and rhetoric in the Middle East and neatly encapsulate the pessimism people have about the whole sorry mess. No pie-in-the-sky platitudes about the "peace process" to be found here!
Some of the more jarring excerpts:

You gave Yasser Arafat money to open a TV and radio station. And on this TV and radio station Arafat said “Jihad, jihad, kill the crusaders, kill the Jews, kill the infidels, kill everyone but me.” Now you may ask yourself why Arafat was inciting against his peace partners in Israel, why was he inciting against the Americans and Europeans who were feeding him? It doesn't make sense.

Well, to us it does make sense. This is how our Arab dictators survive. They constantly blame the miseries of our people on the Jews and the West and the Crusaders and the infidels and the Zionist lobby and the imperialists. They use all these slogans. Arab leaders always need to make sure that their people are busy hating somebody else, preferably the Jews and the Americans. Otherwise their people might rebel, and God forbid they might demand reforms and democracy.

This is exactly what Arafat did, but he did it in Arabic. The international community – and even Israelis – did not want to listen to what Arafat was saying in Arabic. They only cared what he said in English. They said that what he said in English was good.

I said “Excuse me, folks, but in Arabic Arafat is telling people to kill you.” But they did not want to listen to the incitement. They underestimated it. They said “you Arabs are all corrupt and don't know anything about democracy so you deserve a dictatorship.”

This incitement drove people into the open arms of Hamas. Arafat was telling people how evil the Jews are, and people then said “Hamas is right, Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs. Why should we make peace with them?”

(...) Israelis brought the PLO into the Palestinian areas, armed the PLO, helped create all these security militias and gangsters and mafias, and then said they needed to protect themselves from their peace partners. And how did they protect themselves? By imposing restrictions and curfews, by surrounding Palestinian communities with checkpoints. Why? Because they needed to protect themselves from the militias and mafias that they brought into the West Bank and Gaza. So Palestinians lost faith in the peace process.

All this radicalized Palestinian society to the point that when Hamas decided to run in free and democratic elections under the banner of “change” and “reform” they won. It was all very obvious. The writing was clear on the wall that anyone who challenged Arafat back then....believe me that if even Ehud Olmert had run in the Palestinian elections promising change and reform and democracy he would have won. Because in January of 2006, the parliamentary elections that were held in the Palestinian Authority were largely about internal reforms in the Palestinian areas. Hamas was ready to deliver. What did they do? They came to the Palestinians and said “Listen, folks. You've tried all these PLO people. They're corrupt. They're bad. Arafat was a thief. Abu Mazen is also a total failure. These guys stole your money. These guys are US agents, they are CIA. Why don't you try us now? We will show you that we can establish good government. And, by the way, look at what we've done for you since 1988. We've established a vast network of educational, social, health, and economic services. Arafat built a casino, and we built two universities. Arafat gave his wife 100,000 dollars a month so she can do her shopping while we gave poor people money. Arafat built bars and restaurants in Ramallah while we built orphanages and charities.” So the Palestinians said “Let's try Hamas. If they come to power there is nothing left to steal. They can't be more corrupt than the PLO.”

That was the basic line. I'm not saying all those who voted for Hamas in 2006 were registering a vote of protest. We have to be very careful. Hamas does have a lot of supporters. What I'm saying is that had it not been also a vote of protest against the PLO , Hamas would not have won. Why? Because I know Christians who voted for Hamas. I know centrist Palestinians who voted for Hamas. I even know PLO people who voted for Hamas because the name of the game back then was “Let's punish the PLO.” And how do you do it? By voting for Hamas, their main rivals. And it worked. And Hamas came to power.

What has been happening since then is also very interesting. The U.S. government, with the help of some Europeans and some Israelis, after Hamas won the election, they went to the guys who lost the election and said “folks, here are guns and here is some money. Go bring down this democratically elected government.” And what was the result of this U.S. meddling in Palestinian affairs? It backfired. It played into the hands of Hamas and even boosted Hamas' popularity on the street.

Reading this kind of stuff, one must really begin to wonder if there is any way out of this godawful mess. Will our great-grandkids be reading about the Arabs and Jews , still slugging it out in the Middle East?

2009-02-04T23:19:00.002-05:00

Return of Slim Shady

This article claims Mr. Mathers has stockpiled over 300 songs during his hiatus. That's more than both Biggie and Tupac released after death combined!

Eminem --who is very much alive-- could end up owning the music scene the next five years, just as he owned the end of the last millennium and the first five years of the new one.

2009-02-02T08:31:00.003-05:00

Idiots at Guardian Annoy Kiefer Sutherland, Somehow Escape with life and limbs intact

I mean, seriously?

But if, I ask, 24's influence were demonstrably proven, would he then feel any obligation for the show to modify its depiction of torture?

"No," he says flatly. "24 and 20th Century Fox and Sky TV are not responsible for training the US military. It is not our job to do. To me this is almost as absurd as saying The Sopranos supports the mafia and by virtue of that HBO supports the mafia. Or that, you know, Sex and the City is just saying 'everybody should sleep together now'." He looks increasingly exasperated. "I have never seen anyone - and I really do not believe this - I have not seen an average citizen in the US or anywhere else who has watched an hour of 24 and after watching was struck by this uncontrollable urge to go out and torture someone. It's ludicrous.

"So when I put it like that, do you understand?"

Actually, when he puts it like that, I think he's being a little disingenuous. Sutherland is too intelligent not to know that television's influence can be more subtle than that. 24's creator, Joel Surnow, who has described himself as a "rightwing nut job", has certainly given the impression of being not unhappy if 24 impacts on public opinion, saying: "America wants the war on terror fought by Jack Bauer. He's a patriot." The Fox executive who bought the show has said candidly, "There's definitely a political attitude on the show, which is that extreme measures are sometimes necessary for the greater good. Joel's politics suffuse the whole show." The essential message of 24 is not just that torture can be morally justifiable, but, more importantly, that it works. And in the absence of other more accurate sources of information in American popular culture, it's hardly surprising if the viewing public believes it.

Sutherland repeatedly invokes the phrase "in the context of a television programme", and stresses, "this is a drama", but there are moments when exactly who is confusing TV and reality is unclear.

Thank goodness we have those condescending dickheads at the Guardian, benevolently pointing out instances when the hopelessly unworldly and easily duped American public may become confused between TV and reality. Lord knows how the rest of the world could have stood by and let these yokels possibly not elect Barack Obama! Someone should have struck a committee at the UN or something.

But did I interpret that last bit correctly? Is the Guardian actually insinuating that Sutherland is confusing TV and reality? Would that it were so! Had Sutherland "momentarily confused himself" into thinking he was Jack Bauer, he might have been a little less "Tommy Douglas" with the interviewer. I would have loved to have seen a few expletives (or TV-friendly dammits at least )thrown into the mix.

Maybe next week, the intrepid Guardian journalists can go after Bruno, and hold him to account for his part in the stereotyping of Gay Austrian TV personalities!

2009-01-29T07:48:00.002-05:00

Amin al-Ansari: Scholar‏

Your downer of the day

Warning: Very Disturbing Images

Is it a bit disingenuous of me to post something like this and claim that al-Ansari's "scholarly" take is an accepted version of history and his views representative of widely-held opinions in a certain part of the globe? Fair enough, I won't make that claim.

What do I suspect, however, is that this particular "interpretation" of history is common and accepted at least enough to be broadcast on television in an authoritarian state. Res ipsa loquitur, right?

Given the brain-melting historical revisionism by a cleric who I can only presume is marginally acceptable to his viewers as an authority on his religion (would he be on TV otherwise?), if not on the perfidies of the Jews, I can only conclude that those idealistic naifs who think peace in the Middle East is within reach will inevitably realize they have an Everest of ignorance and hatred to conquer before it even becomes a remote possibility.

After all, this is no "man on the street" interview with a crackpot bigot, or truther conspiracy web-based video nonsense. This is a TV host in the studio of a publicly broadcast channel educating his viewers --you know, just like over here, with Oprah and all the other celebrities telling us what to read and how to vote!

If viewers over there accept that what this guy tells them is the truth (like middle class ladies eat up Oprah), how could they ever contemplate peace with the state --or should I say "entity", of their avowed and implacable foe?

As long as this is the type of "history" being peddled and accepted at face value in certain parts of the world, peace is not within reach.

I'm not "hopeful"

2009-01-25T14:22:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama, Right-winger

Lorrie Goldstein of the Ottawa Sun imagines what it would be like if the new U.S. President got the kind of coverage in Canada usually reserved for politicians with his positions:

Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, an ideological neo-conservative irresponsibly poised to introduce broad based, middle-class tax cuts, despite a huge and growing U.S. deficit and global recession.

Obama's fiscally reckless promises of $275 billion in tax cuts this year, and $2.9 trillion over the next decade, will condemn the U.S. to years of structural deficits, for which future generations will have to pay, say leading economists.

Boasting on the official White House website that his massive tax giveaway will result in a $3,700 tax cut for a married couple earning $75,000 with two children, one in college, Obama ignored the devastating impact such policies, designed mainly for short-term political gain, will have on future generations and on government programs Americans hold dear, such as social security.

Sadly, thoughtful observers aren't surprised by this latest move by Obama, whom some have already dubbed "George Bush Lite."

This, given Obama's support for everything from escalating Bush's disastrous "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan, to his support for capital punishment, to his insistence so-called "clean coal" technology can be part of America's solution to combating global warming.

Indeed, "clean coal" is a major element in Obama's suspect promise to significantly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, a plan that at best, according to leading environmentalists, will continue to fall far short of the Kyoto Accord, thus shaming America before the global community.

Then again, what else can be expected of a former state senator from coal-rich Illinois, who once voted in favour of a bill condemning Kyoto and prohibiting the state from regulating greenhouse gases, at the urging of that state's powerful coal lobby?

Meanwhile, Obama's knee-jerk support for Israel in its latest confrontation with Hamas, lacked the nuance required of a statesman seeking the role of honest broker in the Mideast.

Instead, Obama delivered a harsh, uncompromising message to the Arab and Muslim worlds last week, through his secretary of state designate, Hillary Clinton.

Making it clear she was also speaking for Obama, Clinton pointedly told her Senate confirmation hearing: "We cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements ... The president-elect and I understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel's desire to defend itself under the current conditions and to be free of shelling by Hamas rockets."

Where, one must ask, was a similar expression of concern for Palestinian lives, raising fears Obama may be pandering for support from the well-organized, influential and well-financed pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.?

All this, plus Obama's hurtful remarks during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois that while he supported civil unions for homosexuals, he could not endorse same-sex marriages because, "I'm a Christian," have raised fears progressive forces in the U.S. will find themselves under assault for the next four years of Obama's administration.

Indeed, while Obama has publicly toned down and even modified some of his more controversial views over the years, many worry this may all be part of his "hidden agenda" to impose his values on Americans over the long term.

On the other hand, he ain't right wing on every issue. Reading this BBC piece on the Vatican's early criticism of the Obama administration reminded me that I had seen a pretty clever ad recently:

Whatever your position on the issue, it's a thought-provoking spot.

2009-01-24T14:49:00.002-05:00

The Idiossey

Iowahawk does Homer. The whole epic poem is pretty funny (featuring Hildusa the Gorgon and King Chimpos), but my favourite part is at the end:

What now?” said Obamacles, irked at Oracle’s salty impertinence and the interruption of his famous pop ‘n’ lock. “For I have conquered all, and there is no challenger left in all the Beltway.”

The Oracle spoke out from the depths of the guacamole:

“I bid thee welcome to the White House
where your true test now begins:

Markets deaf to happy buzzwords
Blind to Shepard Fairey’s art,
Heeding laws of economics,
Not the wishful laws of man;

A world of of evil filled with monsters,
who are unmoved by flowery talk,
Invulnerable to race cards
or leftwing blogger insults,
Who Hope for Change in megatons.

Do not despair! For look before you,
The noble army who brought you here:
Thespians and hiphop moguls,
Graphic artists, hipster twats,
The academic scribes of Athens,
basic cable sycophants.

These are the arrows in your quiver,
for the coming epic tests;
Use them well, but first remember:
They’re waiting on those magic tricks.

Good luck with that, well-spoken hero,
I think I’ll grab a snack and watch.”

When things get tough, it is comforting to know that the administration will have Keith Olberman, P. Diddy snd Ashton Kutcher onside, right?

2009-01-22T07:58:00.002-05:00

Really?

Maybe that's just something they got into in the early days in Chicago... you know what freaky cats Chicago Lawyers can be!

Barely a day or two into the new administration, and Fox is already bringing the crazy...

***

Mick Foley on The Wrestler

For someone who has taken multiple chair-shots and fallen off very large structures, Foley writes like a dream!

I highly recommend picking up anything the Artist formerly known as Mankind has written, and not just his autobiographies, either --the retired grappler is a budding novelist, with at least a couple of fiction titles under his belt.

After Cactus Jack's glowing review, I have another good reason to catch a film I had already been eager to see --Aside from being a sucker for comebacks, I'm a big Mickey Rourke fan, and I loved Pope of Greenwich Village

2009-01-15T00:03:00.002-05:00

Asterix et les Financiers

From Agence France Presse:

The daughter of comic book author Albert Uderzo has accused her father of selling out his most famous creation, the pint-sized Gallic warrior Asterix, by ceding control of the series to his publisher.

France's biggest publisher Hachette Livre took a 60 percent stake in the Asterix books' parent company, Editions Albert-Rene, on Tuesday, days after 81-year-old Uderzo confirmed the series would continue after his death.

The remaining 40 percent stake in the bestselling series remains with Uderzo's daughter, Sylvie Uderzo, who attacked her father's decision in an article written for Thursday's edition of the French daily Le Monde.

"Today, I'm rebelling. Why? Because Asterix is my paper brother," she wrote. "I find myself entering into battle against, perhaps, Asterix's worst enemies -- the men of industry and finance."

Sylvie Uderzo said that her father had always wanted to keep the rights to Asterix within his small company, and had intended -- like Tintin's creator Herge -- that no more adventures be written after his death.

The daughter accused her elderly father's entourage of advisers of pushing him into a "180 degree turn" and making him "deny the values with which he brought me up: independence, brotherhood, friendship and resistance."

Read more...

SVP M. Uderzo, don't let this happen. We all saw what the Muppets turned into after Jim Henson died...

***
Bonus:

A "Great" "Site"

2009-01-05T14:26:00.000-05:00

Baptazia

Get Your Praise On!

2009-01-03T14:21:00.002-05:00

Reassessing Bush's Intellect

It is said that journalists write the first draft of history. As the current U.S. administration limps into its final days, most current affairs commentators are already eagerly looking ahead to the Obama presidency, consigning the Bush regime to the archives, where it will be dissected by future historians.

But before they shut the vault in the basement, the current President and his proxies and spokespersons have done their best to stake out the ground for his legacy. The Administration's defenders have been busy laying out, sometimes retroactively, and occasionally in a revisionist manner, the overarching goals of the administration and the criteria by which Bush should be judged.

Bush's defenders often point out, for example, the fact that the United States has been free from terror attacks on its soil since 2001, and use it as justification for the many controversial policies the White House brought in following 9-11. They also point to the successful Iraq "surge", which was a measure that went against the prevailing media narrative and conventional wisdom of the time, which held that the war was lost and that the American military needed to extricate itself from a quagmire, as an example of Bush's leadership and his willingness to sacrifice political expediency in order to do what was right.

His critics, naturally, counter with examples of the many ways in which the President and his administration miscalculated, practiced petty politics, deceived, engaged in abuse of power, and generally failed the country. A good summary, drawing from a multitude of sources, can be found in An Oral History of the Bush White House, in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

The explanations offered for these failures are legion, but already, we see that a few of the old, easy favourites are being rebutted and discredited as serious, thoughtful observers weigh in with their impressions of the man that led the most powerful nation on earth for eight years.

As the Bush era comes to a close, it would appear that the old canard of the imbecilic president as religious zealot, a staple of hack comedians and lazy intellects for years now, has an increasingly limited shelf-life. Witness an exasperated Chris Hitchens go off on Bill Maher and his audience:

Richard Cohen recently noted in the Washington Post, that there may have been more than a bit of artifice in the President's public persona, a sort of pantomime stupidity of a type we once saw here in Canada during the Chretien Years, where a canny political player and longtime Ottawa insider at the centre of power for decades managed to portray himself as some kind of Shawinigan rube:

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong. Still, in fairness to these critics (see Rove above), Bush himself has encouraged this approach. Aw shucks is an infuriating defense of a policy.

Let's just consign the "Bush is a moron" stuff to the dustbin of history. It is a silly slander that trivializes and dismisses the very serious issues that arose through the misadventures of his Presidency. It is far more disconcerting to think that a reasonably intelligent and well-meaning man could fail the test of leadership on critical issues like torture and the Constitution. That should be something serious to occupy our minds.

2008-12-30T21:04:00.002-05:00

Forgive Him Father... He is a Robot From The Future

Somehow Mad TV finds a way to bring Christianity and the Terminator mythos together:

Christian Bale stars in Terminator Salvation in 2009. The trailer looks promising, at least to these jaded eyes.

Incidentally, one of the founding castmembers of Mad TV, Artie Lange, has just had his autobiography published. My brother Joe gave it to me as a gift for Christmas. I tore through it in two days flat.

Well worth a read, Too Fat to Fish is the funny, poignant, occasionally harrowing tale of a talented comedian from New Jersey who was also a compulsive gambler, cokehead, drunk, and heroine addict, and a guy who could have thrown it all away and ended up as a second-rate Chris Farley clone, but somehow survived the nineties to become an obese and messed-up funny guy on Howard Stern's show.

Definitely worth a read!

2008-12-19T19:38:00.002-05:00

Gabriel's Message

An old piece of basque sacred music, given English lyrics (as interpreted by Sting)

1.

The angel Gabriel from Heaven came,
his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame,
"All hail", said he, "thou lowly maiden Mary,
most highly favoured lady," Gloria, Gloria!

2.

"For know, a blessed mother thou shalt be,
all generations laud and honour thee,
thy Son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold.
Most highly favoured lady," Gloria, Gloria!

3.

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,
"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said,
"my soul shall laud and magnify His holy Name,"
Most highly favoured lady, Gloria, Gloria!

4.

Of her, Emmanuel, the child, was born.
In Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn,
And Christian folk throughout the world will ever say,
Most highly favoured lady. Gloria!

Retrieved from "http://www.choralwiki.net/wiki/index.php/Gabriel%27s_Message_%28Traditional%29"

2008-12-18T22:01:00.000-05:00

What a Neat Trick

Been away for a while, but in that time I have noted a couple of things (exactly two, actually)

FIRST:

A surprisingly clever turn in Tropic Thunder, and now with the Christmas release of Valkyrie, a thriller set during WWII and featuring an all-star cast of top-notch thespians, it looks like the rehabilitation of the couch-jumping alpha-Thetan is just about complete.

Not so fast, mein herr.

As surely as they love Hasselhoff, Germans hate Scientologists.

Hierarchy, rigid discipline... what's not for a German to love?

***

SECOND

Is it just me, or does live action Shrek look like a certain NBC talk show host in some post-apocalyptic nightmare?

For those of you wondering what a radioactive, horribly mutated Jay Leno might look like, wonder no more:

CREEPY

2008-12-17T09:40:00.000-05:00

Crazy Press Conference Disruptions

I'll see your Iraqi shoe-bomber and raise you a flying phallus:

2008-11-12T18:46:00.002-05:00

Post-Mortem

A couple of interesting pieces on Election 2008 that you may enjoy:

PJ O'Rourke on how Conservatives blew it

Some dead-on stuff here, like:

The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances. People are always needing more government resources to feed, house, and clothe them and to pick up the trash around their FEMA trailers and to make sure their self-esteem is high enough to join community organizers lobbying for more government resources.

If the citizenry insists that abortion remain legal--and, in a passive and conflicted way, the citizenry seems to be doing so--then give the issue a rest. Meanwhile we can, with the public's blessing, refuse to spend taxpayers' money on killing, circumscribe the timing and method of taking a human life, make sure parental consent is obtained when underage girls are involved, and tar and feather teenage boys and run them out of town on a rail. The law cannot be made identical with morality. Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many could be enforced even by Rudy Giuliani.

The Michael S. Malone theory on media bias during the last campaign

This piece came our before election day, and thanks to Drudge, Malone's thesis --that the journalism establishment got behind Obama in an attempt to protect their sinecures and stave off their inevitable demise, basically by backing the reintroduction of the fairness doctrine and other sneaky moves-- has received a thorough airing, but far be it for me to let a dead nag go unbeaten. Some of my favourite bits:

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Gov. Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the Big Leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play. The few instances where I think the press has gone too far - such as the Times reporter talking to Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends - can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha Bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a Presidential candidate. So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

Now what I'm awaiting is for the other shoe to drop. What happens when the media gets back to doing their job and starts to give the new administration the business? After all, whirlwind romances often go sour, don't they?

2008-11-04T23:46:00.000-05:00

The Great Republic

That`s what Winston Churchill called it, and the moniker still fits. After an arduous, hard-fought campaign, the American people have spoken.

They argued, they debated, they campaigned, they mobilized, and they voted. Sure, there were irregularities, and it is certain that a legion of lawyers will find employment dealing with the petty squables that will inevitably follow the process; recounts, inconclusive results in some races, public officials contesting their defeats and such. But all this will be done in an orderly manner, free of violence and civil strife, and the transfer of power will be peaceful.

The fact remains that the Americans have once again shown the world that in the United States of America, the greatest democracy on earth, it really is the people that decide.

Now I'm going to listen to a powerful orator give what I hope will be an inspiring speech, and just maybe I'll go to bed feeling, dare I say it... hopeful?

2008-11-03T08:19:00.000-05:00

One More Day... Then Everything's OK!

It is entirely appropriate at this juncture to declare that the American media have abdicated their role. They are no longer in the journalism business, but in the Obama-electing business. I’m also looking for the “landslide” calls to start coming in sometime early in the evening. Game over, people, why bother fighting the inevitable?

Of course, not everyone in the media has settled comfortably into this new job. Nobody has laid a glove on Ovama for months, and now with seconds to spare, some are belatedly waking up to the fact that he has gotten a bit of an easy ride? "Quick, fellahs uh, come up with something! Anything!!!" says the drowsy editor as he comes out of his year-long stupor.

Slate thinks the campaign should release their donor's list? Are you kidding me? Don't you think Obama's people have better things to do? Like planning the victory rally!?! Besides, how the hell do they explain all those silly pseudonyms if they do that! Sheesh, the nerve of some people.

Contrary to most of the unconverted, I blame none of this on Obama himself. His campaign would have been stupid to not take advantage of the felicitous circumstances they have found themselves in for months now. But if (or, as some would have it, when), we discover that the emperor has no clothes, the media will bear a share of the responsibility.

At this point, expectations have been raised to such a ridiculous level that the chosen one could not possibly deliver on everything he has pledged. The result, of course, will be bitterness and dissappointment for some when the Obama begin to artfully scale back those expectations, as some claim they have already begun doing.

What has driven this twenty-month phenomenon? Is it idealism? The immense personal charisma of one man? The dream of a new golden age? The desire to turn the page on race once and for all? The unseemly urge to be “liked” by the rest of the world, as if that was of any consequence? I'm baffled, but I look on in amazement as America takes this titanic leap of faith into the abyss.

2008-10-20T19:32:00.000-04:00

Season of Uncertainty

I was sitting at home with William a few nights ago wondering about the future. Through some strange confluence of circumstances, we found ourselves in the midst of American and Canadian election campaigns at the very moment that the world economy had begun to sputter like an old jalopy. "William, my boy" I said, "I'm afraid you won't be going to college". William grinned and drooled, but I could tell he was as concerned as I was.

Experts tell us that in the next few weeks a course will be set that will either lead to economic catastrophe and worldwide upheaval, or else a near-miss that will leave us all chastened and thankful for having dodged a mortal bullet.

And the crazy thing is that here in Canada the electorate has had a real say in determining the direction we will take... after all, we all just voted right?

Normally, we would shrug and hope for the best when something like the credit crunch and stockmarket drop happened, knowing that whomever occupies 24 Sussex essentially has a free hand to chart an economic course through the tough times. But this time around, because things started going tits-up smack dab in the midst of our federal election campaign, the citizenry got their say, and gave PM Harper the nod.

For now, the individual who will chart the course of the U.S. has not yet secured command of the vessel, and each of the candidates await the judgment of the electorate as the rest of us look on. These are serious times, folks.

The seriousness of recent events has begun to cast a shadow over the trivialities of this political "silly season", which has seen the hyperpartisans in each camp, abetted by the media, attempt to score points of the other side in the most asinine ways imaginable.

Most recently, after McCain invoked the exchange his opponent had with some plumber on a ropeline to condemn Obama's philosophy (re: the government's role in "spreading the wealth around") and score points during their third and final debate, the MSM, adopting its now-default mode as the Obama campaign's propaganda arm, rushed to dutifully report the stunning revelation just handed to them by the Democratic fact-checkers: "Joe the plumber isn't really a plumber!"

As if the status of Joe's license or his personal failings negate the relevance of the debate between the advocates of neo-Keynesianism, and those who favour Hayek at a time when the instruments of world capitalism are heading for a major retrofit.

No, it is far more easy for the campaign aparatchiks to try to discredit the man instead of adressing the ideas he raises. Besides, Joe questioned the truth of the gospel. He is a heretic. Burn him. This is just lazy and cynical.

On the other hand, the simplistic labelling of Obama as "socialist" by the other side, does make the possibility of a reasonable philosophical discussion more difficult. That toxic euphemism suggests a link between the Senator from Illinois's political philosophy and the horrors of Maoist China, or Castro's Cuba. That's just silly. For starters, Obama is far too much of a pragmatist and opportunist to ever credibly be called an ideologue of any kind -- would Colin Powell endorse a socialist, I ask ya?

In actual fact, like so many other words used by the senator's opponents, it is simply shorthand, suggesting something "un-American" in Obama's ideas, which to a certain segment of McCain's rapidly-diminishing fear-based coallition of the unwilling, is just about the greatest indictment one can level at someone running for office in the U.S.A.

McCain's campaign has done little to raise the tone of the discourse, and McCain's indignation at the debates was laughable, given the kind of nonsense some of his surrogates have been putting out to stoke the flames of "fear", some of which has nearly accomplished the herculean task of diminishing McCain's character and shrinking the American hero in the eyes of his nation. Memo to McCain: When Hitchens throws his hands up in disgust, your goose is cooked.

It looks like that discussion on economic philosophy will have to wait for some other time.

***

Update

Iowahawk dispenses with the funny, and
lays it out for ya:

We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it's meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it. I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

Will the new narrative of this campaign be about the revolt of the Joes?

Perhaps, but at the same time, people need to chill. A little perspective please.

Some conservatives don't like the --gasp- leftist/Bush-Derangement-Syndrome-like panic the thought of an Obama presidency has provoked among some on the right. In other words: show some dignity, for God's sake, you are supposed to be conservatives!

Obama’s agenda is liberal boilerplate – the same crap they’ve been advocating for 30 years. It isn’t communism. It isn’t socialism (Obama is not going to guillotine the rich and throw their money to the peasants in order to “spread the wealth.”). In fact, Obama’s and the Democrats’ ideas are egalitarian in nature. They can be traced to the Utopian movements of the 19th century and early progressives of the 20th century who saw government as something that could be “perfected” scientifically.

We conservatives know the folly of believing in such nonsense. We also know what this “tinkering” means; threats to private property rights, threats to individual liberty, threats to the free market, threats to the civic values that we believe are essential in order to ensure a just and moral society.

We will fight these threats with every ounce of our strength and through whatever means we have at our disposal. But we will do it free from the fear that Obama and the Democrats want to turn the US into a Soviet style state or destroy the Bill of Rights.
.

Well put, sir. I commend your sang-froid.

2008-10-05T10:33:00.000-04:00

Even Better Than the Real Thing

Thanks to all the vitriol that had been expended on her over the past weeks, Palin exceeded expectations by simply not sucking, but Joe Biden won by giving a good performance and sounding in command of the facts even when he actually wasn't.

Truth matters, but perception is everything: Joe Biden may have made some factual errors, but Sarah Palin missed almost every chance to call him on his multiple inaccuracies because she did not know they were falsehoods. This just goes back to what the (rational) critics of Palin had been saying: She simply did not have the depth to go toe-to-toe with Biden on most issues--energy being a notable exception. Therefore, Biden came across as authoritative and knowledgeable, and Sarah, not knowing any better, let him.

For a change, the McCain camp adopted the right strategy and prepped Palin to go short on details-long on rhetoric in her answers. She sometimes avoided a question on which she was weak --near the begining of the debate, she had announced that she would "speak directly to the American public", a tactic that let her work her significant charm (wink wink), even when the substance just wasn't there. The camera really does love this woman, and I got a chuckle watching the line representing the male members of the CNN focus group spike on the reaction-meter when Sarah got flirty or conspiratorial with the viewer.

Palin also managed to get in a couple of zingers in her singular down-home way, but because Biden did not rise to the bait nor come off as a blowhard by belittling or condescending to her, he kept to his message, kept to the game plan, and he won.

2008-10-02T19:42:00.000-04:00

VP Debate tonight!

The Leader is Good
The Leader is Great
We surrender our wills
As of this date!

2008-09-28T10:01:00.001-04:00

Let's call a Spade a Shovel

Watch this:

The bloom is off the rose, and I have to say I have been asking some serious questions myself every time I catch myself cringing, on the edge of my seat, as I watch the trainwreck-ish segments of Palin's first major interviews since the Republican convention. Of course, neither of the interviews (Charlie and Katie) were entirely disastrous, but in the era of the ten-second-soundbite, a VP candidate only needs to slip up badly once during a one-on-one for it to stick. And there have been plenty of sticky soundbites to be cringed at in the last couple of weeks.

In the case of the clip from the Couric interview Cafferty played, it is clear that Palin was trying to steer things away from the bailout and talk about job creation, but the result was nonsensical, to say the least. I see a total failure of strategic communications: This appears to be a case of a woman who has been briefed, overcoached and scripted to death, and is now being subjected to a scrutiny so intense that her natural charm and political skills, so evident at the convention, are beginning to fail her. Does she know the answers? Maybe, maybe not. Does she demonstrate a mastery of a wide range of policy issues and appear capable of delivering substantive responses in a coherent manner at a level befitting a Vice President. Not so much.

But the funny thing is that the overwhelming idiocy of the knee-jerk ractions to her selection from various media doofuses has made it all the more difficult for those same people to raise some substantive and relevant concerns with Palin. In foolishly stooping to ad hominem attacks, or cheapshots against largely irrelevant facets of her persona (so she hunts moose, so her daughter is pregnant... deal with it, jackasses), they have made it all the more difficult for themselves as they now attempt to tear her down for legitimate reasons. What's more, we now see that people have risen to her defense time and time again are continuing to do so, even in the face of mounting evidence that she may in fact be a political lightweight.

David Frum stands apart from so many of his media colleagues because although he was one of the early Palin doubters, he came to his conclusions somewhat more dispassionately. Here is what he wrote shortly after the Palin announcement in August:

The longer I think about it, the less well this selection sits with me. And I increasingly doubt that it will prove good politics. The Palin choice looks cynical. The wires are showing.

John McCain wanted a woman: good.

He wanted to keep conservatives and pro-lifers happy: naturally.

He wanted someone who looked young and dynamic: smart.

And he discovered that he could not reconcile all these imperatives with the stated goal of finding a running mate qualified to assume the duties of the presidency "on day one."

Sarah Palin may well have concealed inner reservoirs of greatness. I hope so! But I'd guess that John McCain does not have a much better sense of who she is, what she believes, and the extent of her abilities than my enthusiastic friends over at the Corner. It's a wild gamble, undertaken by our oldest ever first-time candidate for president in hopes of changing the board of this election campaign. Maybe it will work. But maybe (and at least as likely) it will reinforce a theme that I'd be pounding home if I were the Obama campaign: that it's John McCain for all his white hair who represents the risky choice, while it is Barack Obama who offers cautious, steady, predictable governance.

Here's I fear the worst harm that may be done by this selection. The McCain campaign's slogan is "country first." It's a good slogan, and it aptly describes John McCain, one of the most self-sacrificing, gallant, and honorable men ever to seek the presidency.

But question: If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?

See how easy that was? He did not have to stoop to personal attacks or unfounded accusations. Frum, a right winger, simply did not allow himself to be swept up in the hype that envelopped most Republican partisans. He cast a cold analytical eye on the bill of goods being offered in the selection of the Governor of Alaska as McCain's running-mate, and found that the cons outweighed the pros.

Frum has paid attention to the big picture throughout the McCain run, and sees the Palin pick as one of many tactical moves in a campaign that has lacked an overarching message and strategy.

This predilection for increasingly ineffective stunts and hail-marys may now be killing the McCain campaign, one flesh-wound at a time.

2008-09-27T21:04:00.000-04:00

GOOP much?

So the onion AV Club tells me Apple and Moses’ mom and Chris Martin’s part-time punching bag has a new website up.

It is called, problematically, GOOP, which I theorize (absent any evidence) stands for Gareth, Owen, Ophelia, and Percy, which are the names of her next four kids as selected by Coldplay’s singer. Proper English names, they are, not like Apple bloody Martin or Moses ("that’s it, no more sodding silly names from you, love" said Chris). Her intro essay reads:

My life is good because I am not passive about it. I want to nourish what is real, and I want to do it without wasting time. I love to travel, to cook, to eat, to take care of my body and mind, to work hard. I love being a mother who has to overcome my bad qualities to be a good mother. I love being in spaces that are clean and feel nice....

Make your life good. Invest in what's real. Cook a meal for someone you love. Pause before reacting. Clean out your space. Read something beautiful. Treat yourself to something. Go to a city you've never been to. Learn something new. Don't be lazy. Workout and stick with it. GOOP. Make it great.

The AV Club reacts angrily:

Your first sentence should read, "My life is good because I'm Gwyneth Fucking Paltrow and I'm really good friends with Mario Batali, who asks me to travel around Spain with him eating delicious food and going to spas and then the whole thing is sponsored by Chipotle and shown on public television because, again, I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. GOOP that, suckers."

I was watching that show for a minute or two, and it kinda blew my mind. The whole time I am thinking: "So let me get this straight, Gwynneth... you won't be sinking your chompers into some pata negra? You disgust me".

Gwynnie and Mario: BFF!

Anyway, I like her writing style. And it is easy to imitate. Just string together a bunch of random oblique commands in no particular, and presto, you have Gwyneth Paltrow advice!

The AV club commenters can lend a helping hand to get you started:

Make your life good. Invest in what's real. Cook a meal for someone you love. Pause before reacting. Close cover before striking. Not exactly as illustrated. May contain peanuts or process cheese food. Clean out your space. Read something beautiful. Treat yourself to something. Don't talk with your mouth full. Don't fidget when I talk to you. Stop tracking mud across my nice, clean floor. Don't give me that look. Go to a city you've never been to. Learn something new. Don't be lazy. Workout and stick with it. GOOP. Make it great. Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the face, the brute, brute heart of a brute like you.

Oh, there's plenty more...

****

BONUS
My thoughts on the first Obama McCain debate, in twelve words or less:

It was a draw. McCain needed a win. Obama wins by default.

2008-09-19T19:07:00.000-04:00

Let's Get Silly

"The film is just me in front of a brick wall for an hour-and-a-half. It cost $80,000,000"

***

Awesome site: Garfield Minus Garfield

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

***

McCain Sings Streisand

I'd sooner buy the McCain album than listen to Babs drone on about those "drums of war" at some Obama fundraiser!

***
So the neanderthal says to the troglodyte...

Really Old Jokes

Yes, unbelievably, these pre-date Bob Hope.

***

In an alternate universe:

Midwest John Travolta looks like a younger Joey Travolta

Creepy!

***

John Cleese and the "God gene"

About time somebody takes the piss out of bothRichard Dawkins and fundamentalism in the same bit!

***

Are you kidding me?

Ignatius Reilly: Found beaten to a pulp in an alley behind the cineplex for his heresy

***

At last, the truth about Sarah Palin:

Has she no decency?

***

Ludacris fills cups like double Ds

Black community to Luda:

STFU!!!!!!

On the other hand, if you hold the head steady, he gon' milk the cow.

***

Insane Tattoos

Oh God.

No... just...no

***

Leland Orser

warning: strong language

Leland Orser is just amazing. When a script calls for someone to freak right the hell out, casting directors know who to call. Seriously, does anyone lose their shit as well as Leland does?

My wife tells me he plays a very calm doctor on E.R... yeah right, a very calm doctor who will most definitely go postal before the season finale. You know this in your heart.

***

Last but not least

menwholooklikeoldlesbians.blogspot.com

Self-explanatory.

2008-09-13T08:55:00.000-04:00

Quizzical

I just checked out Salon.com's hi-larious Bush or Palin Quiz. Take this quiz and guess who made which insane or ridiculous statement. Was it Chimpy McBushitler, the War criminal cowboy of Crawford, or was it Caribou Barbie,the Alaskan dominatrix brood-mare? Fun for the whole family!

The Salon piece really enlightened me, and I look forward to more such quizzes, such as

"GUESS WHO SAID IT?
Jeremiah Wright, or a mentally-ill derelict on the streets of Chicago?"

or "WHICH OBAMA-ENDORSING CELEBRITY HAS THE HIGHER IQ?
is it high-school dropout "I don’t know what our government does except put us into debt and blow up other countries." Madonna, or high school dropout Barbra "Drums of War" Streisand?

Incidentally, I don't know about you, but I take all my cues on how to vote from celebrities, who, as we know, are among the most selfless, well-informed and thoughtful citizens out there.

I mean, really, it is clear that Obama supporters like Fergie and Will.i.am, who did that really kick-ass video, have obviously done their homework.

In all seriousness,regular people who support Obama (you know,the non-millionaires who are actually most affected by the results of the election) should be starting to get worried about all this celebrity involement in their man's campaign.

Though they may be trying to help their guy by spouting off about the "Alaskan hillbilly" a heartbeat from the presidency,
if recent polls are any indication, every time a Matt Damon, Pammy Anderson or Maria Bello flap their gums, another thousand independents go over to the other side.

Maybe the more out-of-touch celebrities and snobby journalists in the tank for Obama beat-up on Governor Palin and point out her obvious flaws and shortcomings, the more ordinary folk are identifying with her... who can say?

All I know is that the Obama campaign's next memo to all their celebrity supporters should go something like this:

Dear Celebrity Douchebag

Until November 5, 2008, kindly shut the f*ck up.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama, Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America

2008-09-06T08:40:00.001-04:00

Momentous

Well, that was a heck of a thing! The Republican convention, like the Democratic one before it, started out pretty slow. In this case, it was partly mother nature's doing.

Strangely enough, even as Hurricane Gustav wreaked devastation on the Gulf Coast, it may have been a blessing in disguise for the GOP. After all, what a contrast the Jindal and (admittedly largely symbolic) McCain responses made to that of Blanco, Brown and Bush a few years back.

Only trouble was that last time around was the one that really counted, and both the Republican Prez and the Democratic Governor of that state blew it, so it was almost a bit like bombing on opening night of a Broadway show, getting reviews so bad you are forced to close early, then putting on one great performance in the final week of your run... too little, too late.

On the interwebs, the reviews for the GOP festival to stave off despondency were mixed. Nevertheless, even the most strident leftist blogger can hardly deny the historical significance of the nomination of Sarah Palin and the momentousness of her subsequent acceptance speech. We are talking about a forty-something woman being given a spot on the ticket of the supposedly reactionary American party, people. Regardless of if it was done cynically, in desperation, or with genuine forethought, the fact that it was done at all speaks volumes of American society in the first decade of the Twenty-First Century.

If the scale of attacks on a candidate is any indication of concern and outrage from the other side --and seeing how the right went after Obama, I think it is fair to make that correlation, then some on the left are both very concerned and very outraged about Palin indeed! Whether you love her or loathe her, Palin definitely has buzz.

I had a good laugh the next day when I overheard two left-leaning people talking about how hockey moms were real bitches compared to soccer moms (heh heh). Proof, to me, that the whole hockey-mom thing had struck a nerve, even with those who disliked her. I also heard some more nonsense that day, with some attempting to diminish the feat she pulled off, i.e. "she basically just read a speech that a Bush speechwriter crafted for her... how hard is that?"

Well, first of all, if you really believe that Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidates normally write their own speeches all by their lonesome, I have an exciting real estate investment opportunity to tell you about. Second, Palin did not exactly just "read" off the bloody TelePrompTer... oh, the TelePrompTer myth has been debunked, yes indeed, but no one can tell me that what they witnessed that night was some woman "reading a speech".

What Palin did was deliver a speech, and deliver it with a skill that few politicians I have seen could match, including, in my humble opinion, the Democratic V-P nominee. So credit where credit is due: as is the case when Obama speaks, regardless of what you think of the content, the delivery is dynamite.

In contrast, McCain's speech I found plodding, earnest, and serviceable at best, except for the section where he spoke about his time in North Vietnam, which is something everyone else does alot for him, but he has seldom done himself, at least until recently. That portion, and the brief section at the very end where he began to show some passion ("Fight With Me!") were the highlights of the acceptance speech given by a man not known for his oratory, but as the signs said for putting "Country First".

There were a couple of lines in each speech that I really found effective.

Palin:

"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change,"

McCain:

"We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change
us."

Funny, I had just been thinking about that neat metaphorical device I kept hearing over the past few weeks (the Democrats used it too) but could not quite pin down, and then Juliet Lapidos of Slate comes along and names it: Antimetabole.

Probably the most famous example of this is JFK's exhortation from his 1961 inaugural address:

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your
country

I tried to think of some Canadian examples of antimetabole, but couldn't, so like any mediocre memory-deficient blogger would, I googled it. I came up empty. I guess Canadian pols are not as fond of that rhetorical technique as their American counterparts.

The Slate article actually mentions one of the most resonant ones of the 2008 campaign, somewhat in passing:
"In the end the true test is not the speeches a president delivers, it's
whether the president delivers on the speeches."

That one was spoken by Hillary Clinton, and it may well be the premise upon which the entire election hinges:

Can I trust this person's words? Can I trust them to bring about the change they have promised?

2008-09-02T18:58:00.001-04:00

Sexism: Alive and Well

Sexism and Sarah Palin
'We will defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we like her or support her, but because that's how feminism works.'

Last update: 4:27 p.m. EDT Sept. 2, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 02, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- As part of its Stop The Silence on Sexism campaign, WomenCount sent this email to its members today:

It started Friday afternoon with John Roberts on CNN, and then in a slow build over the weekend it became clear what the leading sexist charge would be against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin: Is it appropriate for her to accept the vice presidential nomination given the magnitude of her current family responsibilities?

The question came not just from members of the media but also from voters around the country who wrote in to news organizations and on blogs.

The obvious retort is whether anyone would ask the same question of the father of a four-month-old with Down Syndrome and a pregnant teenager. We think not.

Radio talk host Ed Schultz on CNN Monday night took things even further by declaring that Palin would not be able to focus on her job given her family distractions.

And Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn wrote: "Of course, women can be good mothers and have careers at the same time. I've done both. Other women in public office have children ... but ... a mother's role is different from a father's."

The message? Sarah Palin: bad mother.

On that count we have no doubt these accusations would never be made about a man. In that sense, Sally Quinn is right -- and that's why things have got to change.

The very notion that Sarah Palin should not have accepted this nomination because she is a mother with demanding challenges underscores just how far we have to go.

Throughout the weekend, we have been asked about WomenCount's views on Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee. It is important to distinguish between the broader issue of sexism and the ideology of an individual. WomenCount was born of the passion its founders had for Hillary Clinton's clear view of social issues and progressive values. We cannot pretend that Governor Palin meets any standard of progressive politics or social values.

Regardless of the candidates' ideology, we will work to stamp out sexism when we see it on the campaign trail. To paraphrase the words of one blogger who said it best over the weekend: We will defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we like her or support her, but because that's how feminism works.

WomenCount PAC was created to ensure that the 51 percent of American citizens who are women have their values and votes counted in the political process. So far in the 2008 election cycle, WomenCount has run a series of ads related to the presidential campaign and made contributions to several women candidates for Congress.

Contributions to WomenCount PAC are not tax-deductible. Contributions will be used in federal elections, and are subject to federal law regarding prohibited sources and limits. Contributions to WomenCount PAC are limited to $5,000 per calendar year and contributions from corporations and labor unions are prohibited. Federal law requires us to use our best efforts to collect and report the name, mailing address, occupation and name of employer of individuals whose contributions exceed $200 in a calendar year.

Paid for by WomenCount PAC

Bravo ladies. Way to stick to your principles, and way to point out a the double-standard that has been so evident since McCain's VP pick was announced.

This kind of principled stand brings to mind the oft-quoted and misattributed statement (Voltaire did not say it) about disagreeing with someone, but fighting for their right to say it. Just because she is a Republican poster-girl, and darling of the religious right, does not make her fair game for the kind of nonsense, frankly, she has been subjected to thus far.
If the shoe were on the other foot, how would people react to Hillary being subjected to this kind of crap by Republican smear artists?

****

Update: Bad blogging etiquette! i should have linked to this.

BTW, speech-wise, it ain't exactly going so great for the Republicans in St Paul, is it? Sure Thompson was fine, Lieberman was... uh, Lieberman, but honestly, nothing like the Clintons' or Obama's speeches last week. And the less said about President Bush's canned address the better. Palin has to knock it out of the park tonight.

2008-08-30T08:43:00.001-04:00

What to make of all this?

Quite an eventful week in American politics. The Democratic love-in got off to a bit of a slow start, but thanks to deft speeches by Mr and Mrs. Clinton, a surprisingly lively one from John Kerry, and an effective, if not overly "inspiring" address by the candidate for the Presidency himself, the Dems had themselves a pretty great convention.

Barry's speech at INVESCO field on the final evening was actually quite impressive, and even a bit reassuring, salted as it was with policy details instead of windy rhetoric. For those who were wary of the young first-term Senator from Illinois, with his messianic pretentions and the cult-like devotion he has inspired in true believers, it was actually nice to have the candidate put some meat on the bones of his lofty pronoucements about change and show that he is not all charisma and grand speeches devoid of substance. It was also nice to get a sense of just who this guy is... I write this notwithstanding the Grand-Canyonesque-holes in his carefully expurgated biography, as evidenced by the neat little introductory film they showed prior to the speech --just what was he doing between the ages of 8 and 28, frinstance? And what about all these half-siblings we keep hearing about?

On the negative side, I cannot believe that some of Obama's supporters are still saying that Hillary did not go "far enough" in her endorsement of their chosen one. She came right out and said that her supporters should vote for Obama!... as did hubby Bill, which incidentally, must have really stuck in his craw. What more could people want? I suppose they would have her throw herself at his feet like Magdalen and beg for absolution, if that was within their power. Seriously, after reviewing the text of Senator Clinton's speech, any reasonable observer would have to say that she went further than either Ted Kennedy or Ronald Reagan ever did in their respective convention concession speeches, which hardly endorsed the other guy:

This anxiety over the Clintons' support speaks to a very understandable concern among Democrats that they must move forward fully united as a party if they are to defeat a resurgent McCain come November. And it is clear that even after Hillary's entreaties, some Clinton supporters are still smarting, still bitter, and still reluctant to grit their teeth and get behind Obama... especially now that John McCain, in a real game-changer, has
thrown a major-league curveball at American voters.

No one is going to convince me that there was not an element of cold pragmatism, if not outright tokenism, in McCain's veepstakes calculus. Go ahead and tell me with a straight face that if Alaska's governor was a dude, he would be on the Republican ticket. That being said, in Tina Fey doppleganger Sarah Palin, McCain has a young, telegenic, accomplished --if decidedly conservative-- partner; one who might very well appeal to some Independent or Democratic women while reinforcing his bonafides with the party's base. Oh, and Palin is the only one of the four politicians on the ticket with executive branch experience... weird, that!

The level of condescension coming from the more rabid partisans is hilarious. Let's face it, being elected as the governor of any state is a singular achievement. I dare say that ANY female Democratic governor, even one with the lightest of resumes, would never be subjected to such dismissiveness from the ranks of the Democrats. On the other hand, the Obama campaign is being more circumspect. It's almost like this choice was so unexpected, so out of left field, they hardly know what to make of it.

Will the audacious choice of Palin bring over alot of Hillary supporters? Doubt it. She is pro-life, for one. Some feminists recoil in horror at her. "Not one of us!" they sneer, insulted by McCain's cynical one-upmanship and openly contemptuous of a woman who refuses to adhere to their orthodoxy.

But the point is, with 18 million votes going to Hillary during the primary season, McCain doesn't need to peel off all that many Clinton supporters. If things are as close as they seem to be shaping up to be, one twentieth or perhaps even one fiftieth of those Hillary votes going to McCain could make a difference, especially in some of those battleground states where an authentic, charming, folksy, working mother of five could conjure some real magic on the stump... And has anyone noticed that Hillary hasn't exactly blasted McCain for his selection? At least, not yet.

Things are really starting to get interesting!

2008-08-28T08:07:00.000-04:00

Iraqracy

Newsweek has a great interview with General Petraeus, the man who will never admit victory --a wise strategy, given the history of "mission accomplished" in the Iraq War.

It is clear by now to even the most ardent advocate of American withdrawal from Iraq that Petraeus' surge transformed the situation on the ground. While the political settlement remains tenuous, nearly all serious observers of the conflict are saying that the bulk of American forces in Iraq could and should go... it is now a matter of when and how America makes its exit that occupies the discourse --A remarkable thing, when you consider the dire state of affairs in that country two years ago.

Watching the Democratic Convention, it is indeed interesting to see how the narrative of this war has been transformed from that of a "lost war" to one of an "unecessary and costly war" that America must extricate itself from so that it may redirect the $10 billion a month it is costing somewhere else... a sum particularly galling to many when one considers the almost grotesque gobs of oil money that the government of Iraq is now raking in.

Meanwhile, politicians from every part of the political and ideological spectrum are congratulating themselves on their shrewdness and foresight, cherry-picking their own statements and nuances to demonstrate their wisdom and foreign policy acumen in advocating "the surge" or "timetables" or "staying the course" or whatever, cheerfully disregarding anything they got somewhat or utterly wrong.

And through it all, the American military, cast adrift by the politicians and foresaken by a significant part of the populace, continues to do what it has done throughout the hard months of the surge, competently and professionally executing the mission laid out by superiors and through dogged stubborness and the use of intelligent counterinsurgency tactics, snatching success from the jaws of failure and ignominy.

My favourite bit of the interview is this:

Petraeus: I think it's true that they are past Al Qaeda. They are past ... an organization that embraces an extremist ideology, employs indiscriminate violence, and practices oppressive social actions such as forced marriage or cutting fingers off smokers.

Newsweek:Forget that, no smoking ...

Petraeus: That was the tipping point when they cut the fingers off the first person who was smoking. I mean, can you imagine an Anbar sheik being told he can't smoke?

Will historians in decades to come say that Al Qaeda was defeated because of its opposition to tobacco use? As someone with personal experience in the matter, I can tell you that an Arab having a nicotine fit is a fearsome adversary!

2008-08-20T19:31:00.000-04:00

Rolling Stone's
500 Greatest Songs of All Time

...and Love Will Tear us Apart is only #179?

Regardless, all things considered, it's a pretty good list

2008-08-20T19:08:00.000-04:00

Happy Anniversary, Baby!

August 20, 2006

2008-08-17T10:41:00.001-04:00

Stuff That Makes Me...

Happy:

Canada's rowers
Canada's female wrestlers

Movies like this one that aren't afraid to offend:

Dana Stevens of Slate brings up a good point :

In her review in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis points out that the Les Grossman character that Tom Cruise plays, a grotesque caricature of a vulgar Jewish movie mogul, is arguably the most offensive thing in the movie, amounting to a kind of "Jewface." Maybe it's because Stiller himself is Jewish, or maybe it's just that Tom Cruise was so unexpectedly hilarious in that role, but that one rolled right off my back.

As has been said countless times, this movie is making fun of HOLLYWOOD --not Jews, blacks, or those with intellectual disabilities. Besides, in my book, any flick that can rehabilitate Tom Cruise's image is a towering achievement.

Sad:

The Conflict in Georgia --where the hell are the anti-war protesters that turned out in their thousands and hundreds of thousands to protest the Iraq War? Code Pink? A.N.S.W.E.R.? Bueller? Bueller?... oh, this isn't American aggression, is it? In that case, as you were, peace activists.

This trailer

Bill O'Reilly is not funny. He is the King Midas of not funny. Everything he touches becomes not funny. Anything within a 10 yard radius of him is automatically not funny. Anything he even considers remotely funny is automatically not funny. Ergo: This movie is not funny.

George Lucas : How can we explain what happened to this guy? how can we explain his latest cinematic abominations? I have a theory that, although once a pioneering visionary, George Lucas’ evolution as a storyteller has been shaped both by the birth of his children and by his gradual poisoning through the ingesting of large quantities of lead and aluminum over two decades…. Something which drove him mad and turned him into the megalomaniac he is today.

2008-08-09T14:35:00.001-04:00

Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out

So John Edwards has thrown it all away. And the lowly National Enquirer was the rag that gave his political ambitions the Coup-de-Grace? Shameful!

Just who is this femme fatale that managed to lay low a man who aspires to the most powerful position on earth? New York Daily News sez:

She is one of millions of other girls, not smart enough to make it as a writer, not pretty enough to model or act.

Oh, and she used to do alot of blow and sleep around NY... She's a keeper!

And by the way, loyal spouse Elizabeth Edwards has cancer, remember? But it's cool, right? Because Edwards "didn't love" this Hunter lady, and he ain't that baby's daddy, ya'll.

Classy guy!

In the wake of these revelations, and the feckless way in which the former Senator has "managed them" , even some Liberal Bloggers are shaking their heads in disgust and disappointment. They are generally a forgiving lot, these progressives, but Edwards has so comprehensively beclowned himself, that many erstwhile supporters seem ready to introduce the well-coifed attorney from North Carolina to the underside of the bus (Mind you, over at the Daily Kos they are all La La La I can't hear you!)

What is it with some powerful alpha-male Democrats? These are guys married to accomplished, overachieving, and sometimes quite attractive women, and if they wanted to they could probably date models or playboy bunnies or rocket scientists on the side... depending on what they prioritize.

Yet time and time again we find them getting sleazy with very,very, average women, or when they do get involved with lookers, they turn out to be hookers!

Perplexing!

2008-08-03T11:57:00.000-04:00

You Can Be Better

Triumph gives it to ComicCon 2008

2008-08-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

Why So Serious?

I'm not really a big fan of the caped crusader. As a teenager, I was a big fan of ultraviolent movies, like many my age, and my "comic book vigilante" tastes ran more toward the antics of Frank Castle, better known as The Punisher, a deeply disturbed Vietnam Vet who saw his entire family slaughtered by mobsters and embarked upon an almost suicidal one-man-war on crime that continues to this day. In those days, the anti-hero Punisher seemed grounded in a certain gritty 1980s "war-on-drugs" era reality, and there was a grimness and sense of despair in Frank Castle that appealed to my adolescent self, I suppose.

That is not to say that the more fanciful Batman mythos was not without some appeal, but not being a big D.C. comics reader, the film and TV interpretations were my only real exposure to Bob Kane's iconic creation in my youth.

As a 14-year old,for instance, I found little charm in the campy 1960s incarnation in reruns on the TV, and was greatly disappointed by the grotesquely overhyped Tim Burton take on the character. The ludicrousness of Bruce Wayne's modus operandi, i.e. dressing up like a giant bat in a stiff, rubbery suit to "scare criminals" had an air of the ludicrous, which was not helped at all by the stilted action depicted in the Tim Burton-helmed movies. Throw a punch? Please! Michael Keaton could barely raise his arms in that getup.

Frank Castle's persona and methods, on the other hand, manifested more realism. The Punisher had no real gimmick or mask or secret identity: his imposing physique, perpetually grim expression and Kevlar armour emblazoned with a giant skull were all he needed to intimidate criminals... and besides, I think killing the criminals was higher on his priority list then intimidating them.

The further 90s iterations of the Batman franchise only served to renforce my antipathy toward the character: I was completely uninterested in the animated versions, and found the ridiculous Joel Shumacher films annoying. I was first introduced to Harry Knowles's site, as many others were, when I caught wind of his now-legendary obliteration of the third sequel, Batman and Robin, an event that some say simultaneously ushered in a new era in the internet (the era of the uber-powerful online movie geek?) and put the moribund franchise on ice for almost a decade. Good riddance!

But then, three years ago, Chris Nolan made Batman Begins. Was it the perfect superhero movie? No, of course not. There were some false notes: Katie Holmes in over her head as the love interest, some bad fight-scene editing, and some groan-worthy expository dialogue during the runaway-L-train climax immediately spring to mind. But you could feel that Nolan was on to something with his "re-boot" approach. Instead of simply swallowing the Batman's 1930s origin story holus-bolus and proceeding as if it were a given, Nolan chose to re-interpret and update it, grounding the Batman's origin story in a reality that today's filmgoer could swallow.

I remember thinking that it was almost as if all the comics and films that had come before had been legends, that is to say, embellished retellings of a story that had actually taken place; tales about a mysterious man who really had existed, but whose exploits were now lost in the mists of time, like those of the heroes of Troy, or the knights of the round table. Batman Begins seems to be offering us a more reality-based take on the mythical character known as "the Bat-Man", showing us the "facts" that form the basis of that myth. Batman, this version shows us, is not some supernatural being, but rather a man who has harnessed extraordinary wealth and physical gifts, and trained himself rigourously in order to put them in the service of good, all the while cultivating an aura of mystery so as to strike fear into the criminals he stalks. Batman, we learn, is really just a ninjitsu-trained billionaire masquerading as a playboy in order to pursue his virtuous vigilanteism.

Perhaps it was purely coincidence that Batman Begins came into being in an era where films like Troy and King Arthur were offering stripped-down versions of two of the legendary stories most central to Western society, removing the centuries of accretions and interpretations to get back to, if not the historical basis of each myth, at least more plausible versions grounded to some degree in "reality" --which did not prevent mostly justifiable accusations of historical innaccuracy and fabrication in each case, incidentally.

With Troy, this re-interpretation meant excising "the gods" from the story almost entirely, and offering compelling explanations for iconic references like Achilles' famous heel and the Greek gift of a wooden horse. In King Arthur, it meant losing the supernatural elements and questing beasts, turning Merlin into a loincloth clad druid, and stripping off the late medieval period plate armour common in so many depictions in favour of late roman chain-mail more appropriate to the post-roman Britain in which the historical Artorius likely lived (By the way, another film that adopts this approach is 2007's Last Legion, which starred Colin Firth, and which would not otherwise merit a mention, given that it was mostly crap and anachronistic in the extreme).

The relatively unspectacular box-office take of these films illustrates that re-envisioning beloved legends and mythical archetypes is an endeavour fraught with peril, not to be taken lightly, but Chris Nolan's deft handling of the problematic areas of the Batman mythos also shows that it can be pulled off.

Batman Begins offers alot of explanations to questions that have never been satisfactorily answered before. i.e. Why Bruce Wayne really picked the bat as his symbol; How he was trained to do what he does; Where he got the equipment to begin his mission; What his ultimate goal is. And at every step, we find that the explanation is plausible... far-fetched, certainly, but definitely not supernatural.

Now, with his very dark follow-up, The Dark Knight, Nolan takes us one step further into this plausible world he has created, and in its disconcerting realism, we find it more nightmarish than we could have imagined. In this sequel that surpasses the first film in every way, Nolan has created a surprisingly moving tragedy and a really effective crime drama featuring horrifying moral dilemmas and very effective action set-pieces.

I'm not going to parrot everything the critics have already stated about the "Godfather II of superhero movies", but I will say that the comparisons to Michael Mann's Heat strike me as quite appropriate. Tonally, and in terms of their style, ensemble cast and scope, the movies are indeed comparable. The performances in the Dark Knight are everything you have heard they are too, and a startling turn by the late Heath Ledger as a nihilistic psychopathic Joker is every bit as haunting and disturbing as reported --it will stay with you. If there is a weak link in the chain, it is Ms. Gyllenhaal, whose status as a sex symbol and "it girl" continue to baffle me and countless others.

Regardless, this movie is grim, brutal, unforgiving. Characters are forced to compromise their integrity, characters we want to see succeed fail and some we care about die. The film will punish you, but it will also reward you.

Maybe the Dark Knight will be the movie that finally manages to transcend the "superhero movie" genre, and be recognized for the masterpiece it is.

Go see this movie, and see it in IMAX.

2008-07-18T18:46:00.000-04:00

Thanks

"We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents."
-- Henry Ward Beecher

Ain't that the truth!

I learned so much in these past few weeks:

I learned that you can become so incredibly attached to someone you have never even laid eyes on.

I learned that a 3-D ultrasound does give you a pretty good idea of what a baby will look like, so much so, that when William finally arrived, I exclaimed "that's the kid from the picture!"

I learned that my wife really is as tough as I suspected.

I learned, or rather confirmed, that my mother really is as generous as everyone always said she was.

I learned that family is not only the most important thing, it is really the only thing.

Now comes the really hard part...

2008-07-15T23:12:00.000-04:00

William Timothy Charbel Ellard

Born July 11, 2008 at 14:42

2008-07-03T09:06:00.001-04:00

Desiderantes Meliorem Patriam

What an eventful week, both in the news and on the home front! The folks came up to spend some time with my wife and I, now that Nesrine is in the final days of her pregnancy. That meant that I got to watch La Selección's moment of glory with my dad last Sunday. Though the scoreboard may have said the score was 1-0, the truth of the matter is that the Germans looked thoroughly outclassed by the Spanish side, and that it could of easily been 3 or 4 nil. Sure, grim-and-bloodied German captain Michael Ballack and his squad gave Spain's fans a couple of frightening moments but the result was never in any real doubt.

I basically missed Canada Day altogether, as Nesrine and I had a little hospital stay which turned out to be a false alarm --the stork got diverted by bad weather, I gather, but I did catch wind of the controversial appointment of Dr. Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada on our nation's birthday some time after the fact. Perhaps I found this news so very dispiriting because my wife is in her final days as the vessel for what is most manifestly a little human being who has for some months now displayed his own personality, individuality and even habits.

There are so many reasons that this appointment, a manifestation of what John Paul II called the culture of death, should be considered offensive, but I think David Warren's column says it best, so I am attaching it in its entirety:

How Morgentaler exposed the chasm between elites and the rest of Canada

David Warren
The Ottawa Citizen

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Let me tell my reader about an "epiphany" I once had -- a long time ago, yet seemingly yesterday. Some things, especially memories of love, remain vivid for the duration of one's life. The experience occurred when I was 17, travelling through India by third-class rail.

I had left Howrah Station in Calcutta the day before, bound for Raxaul on the frontier with Nepal. I rode 25 hours continuously on an unbelievably hot and crowded train (often thinking I might die of suffocation), to some obscure distant junction. There I changed trains, as instructed, boarding a flatbed, to my relief -- with crudely built railings and grid of low benches to hold the passengers in place -- wonderfully open to the sky. Another 20 hours, making every stop across the state of Bihar.

An atheist at the time, I almost prayed for rain.

In such a carriage, one does not choose a seat. It chooses you. I found myself physically merged with an extended family, consisting of two sisters, their frail-looking husbands, a sprightly grandma, and about 15 small children. The elder sister, sitting high in the middle of the mob, was also quite pregnant. And beaming with joy.

When I say these people were poor, I am describing a phenomenon beyond the comprehension of most North Americans. They had the rags they were wearing, a bedroll or two, a tiffin stack of simple food. (If they had any valuables, they were effectively concealed.) But what they also had was a treasure beyond postmodern understanding. They had each other.

I was passed a little baby soon after the train moved (so slowly, I thought I could outrun it). A little boy was also set on my left knee; there being nowhere else to put him. Rags were stretched against the scorching sun; a cool breeze puffed them. The magnificent scenery of the Gangetic Plain rolled by in splendour -- the little farmer's fields, the galaxy of villages. Chaos at every stop.

Eye contact was made with each member of this family in turn, and I was now fully adopted. Language was unnecessary: I followed the conversation in their eyes. There was some singing; there were some prayers. When mealtime came, I was passed my share -- a chapati, with a spoonful of lentils on it.

After a few hours of this, the profound happiness of this extended family had communicated itself to me. I felt an inner exhilaration of belonging, such as I had never felt; a profound joy in being alive. For these people knew: that life is holy.

"I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life."

Yes, this is a sermon. That would be Moses speaking, in the Book of Deuteronomy. I don't think I began to grasp this idea until I was 17, riding those rails through Bihar: that we choose life, or we choose death; for ourselves, for others. The rags you wear are of no great importance. It is important to live; and living, to rise, towards the Love that made us. "Rise, let us be on our way," in the words of the last Pope.

Like many, many, many Canadians, I took the appointment of Henry Morgentaler to membership in the Order of Canada -- proclaimed on "Canada Day" -- as a stick in the eye for everything we believe in. As a gratuitous insult to the memory of three million aborted babies.

It was intended as that. The perpetrators of this hateful deed -- presenting an abortionist as a model for "humanism" and champion of women -- knew perfectly well what they were doing. As I had learned even before the event, protocol had been breached in making the appointment. There was no consensus on the appointment committee; the chair, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, had failed to recuse herself. It was done deceitfully, after the Governor General's office had assured outraged callers last February that Morgentaler would not be on the list this year. And last weekend, as the rumour spread, a fresh round of outraged callers were being mocked -- given the phone number of Campaign Life Coalition by the Rideau Hall switchboard.

The announcement was then delayed -- another irregularity -- until after the Parliament Hill celebrations, to prevent a large pro-life demonstration from coalescing there. And, instead of denouncing the appointment, our cynical prime minister had "talking points" distributed to his caucus before the fact.

A very dark thing was done, as such things are always done -- in a very dark way.

Yet I think it may be for the best, in a longer view of things. We might often grumble that the "ruling class" in Canada -- the smug, self-serving, "progressive" political, legal, academic, and media elites, including the prime example at Rideau Hall -- belong to some other world than the one from which they suck taxes. But seldom is there an event so stark, that we see them as they are. The Morgentaler award revealed that to so many Canadians.

2008-06-27T07:47:00.000-04:00

Gaudent magni viri rebus adversis non aliter, quam fortes milites bellis

Seneca wrote that. It means great men rejoice in adversity just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Now that we know that Conrad Black will stay in jail, we will see whether or not he rejoices in his adversity.

Black steadfastly refuses to fade away quietly in disgrace. During his incarceration, he has taken to teaching as well as writing. It is said that his jailhouse history seminars are standing room only.

Here he is in fine form, still writing in the NP:

No one knows if there are more people who would vote for an African-American president to prove that they and their country are tolerant than would vote against him because of intolerance. I suspect there are, but no prudent person would predict the outcome of this election. Accordingly, I reaffirm my prediction that McCain will win.

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to admit that Lord Black seems to have made some premium lemonade out of the lemons life has handed him.

2008-06-23T08:14:00.000-04:00

Politicians Flee Category Five McCain

The Republican nominee for POTUS was big news round these here parts last week when he came to town. He waded through the tumbleweeds and past the creaking saloon doors of the ghost-town that was end-of-parliamentary-season Ottawa to give an address at the local speakeasy.

Paul Martin was in the news recently too. Why? Who cares?

Nobody appears to have any time for him anymore. He is the rare electoral loser leader among the pantheon of Liberal winners --He and John Turner rate a shared alcove next to the restrooms. When it comes to Martin, PMPM loyalists could drive themselves crazy with tantalizing “if onlys”. For example: if only he had waited for the fall of 2004 or later to have the writ dropped for his first election as PM, the sponsorship stuff might (might, I said) have blown over somewhat and he would not have lost his majority in the 2004 election, right? Who knows what Martin could have achieved if only he had built on, or at least kept, the majority that the Little Guy from Shawinigan handed him when he left…

But hey, isn't it funny how some Canadians who claim that seventy-year-old John McCain is “too old” to be President are the same Canadians who would have gladly followed Paul Martin had he won that imaginary majority back in late 2004 and then decided to take the Liberals into the next election this fall as
a seventy-year-old PM and party leader?

2008-06-17T20:27:00.000-04:00

Pulled from the Fishwrapper

Eddie On the Socks:

The thing is, I understand how the complainants feel. They probably feel the same way I and other Jews feel when we go to the Canadian Islamic Congress website and read "editorials" with headlines such as: "Zionist Israel at 60 -- A History Built on Ethnic Cleansing" and "Israel: An Armed Ghetto by Choice."

***

Afghanistan: It's a mess.

Sarah Chayes, one of the few Westerners living "outside the wire" in Kandahar, decries rampant corruption in a pretty good Scott Taylor piece:

"If the Afghan government is a criminal enterprise and Canada’s stated mission is to support the government of Afghanistan, then what the hell are you achieving?" she said. "Is NATO here to make five people happy or to make the whole province happy?"

***

NYT sez Mrs. Obama will be a target

Ya Think?

E.D. Speculates on the secret gang signs that Obama and wife are using:

Shortly after this, Ms. Hill received a "terrorist fist jab" right out of her slot in favour of someone slightly less retardulous.

***

Apres Lucien, Gerard

Andre Pratte on two brothers well acquainted with the canibalistic tendencies of the sovereignty movement

Then in the comments, sovereigntists wine, snivel, spout conspiracy theories, and denounce as they usually do whenever someone confronts them with reality.

2008-06-12T08:27:00.000-04:00

Scott Thompson and Kurt Cobain

Stuff like this is the reason I love The Kids In The Hall. Who else besides boy-faced Dave Foley could take a somber topic like the death of a rock icon and say something in such poor taste to bring down the house? As is the case with Monty Python, another troupe that defined comedy in an earlier era, most of the stuff the members of KITH did after the end of their show does not hold a candle to their groundbreaking early work, but occasionally they can blow you away with something daring, like Foley did here.

Here is a favourite from their TV show:

2008-06-11T08:24:00.001-04:00

More Campus Fascism... now Fascism comes clad in ersatz religious headdress!

Colby Cosh introduces us to Gilary Massa, who wants to choke off and suffocate the insolent pro-lifers on her campus:

It is certainly wrong to take money from some students and use it in a lopsided fashion to promote the opposite side in a legitimate, ongoing public debate. And what else is the executive of the York Federation of Students doing by meeting during the summer to sneak through a ban on funding and access to SU resources for pro-life groups? Properly understood, the YFS's actions are not so much a free-speech issue as a simple instance of theft.

This analysis depends upon the status of the debate over therapeutic abortion as a "legitimate" one. YFS vice-president Gilary Massa, reportedly the chief engineer of the YFS ban, hopes to win this point by denouncing pro-life groups as "sexist" and "demoralizing" to women who have had abortions, or who may wish to have them. This constitutes an obvious attempt to raise the poorly defined crime of "sexism" to the same level of social intolerability as racial prejudice or political extremism

Gilary is both a practicing muslim (presumably, given the pictures I have seen with her sporting a hijab), and apparently a hard-core feminist too!
Cognitive dissonance... head swimming... must sit down...

Ah that's better! Now where was I? Oh yeah, the devout member of the umma who happens to favour abortion-on-demand, and thinks pro-lifers are "sexist"... yeah, that's actually the position she appears to have staked out. The mote in thy neighbour's eye, the plank in thine own...

What about mainstream Islamic scholarship's rejection of unrestricted abortion, deriving from this sura of the Quran:

Kill not your offspring for fear of poverty; it is We who provide for them and for you. Surely, killing them is a great sin.
Qur'an 17:32

Yeah, I also know about the Shiite Zaidiva and their dissenting position, but I'm willing to bet Gilary ain't Shi'a --not too many of them originate in Africa. So suffice it to say Gilary and islamic scholarship do not appear to be on the same page on this issue. Is the evidently pious Ms. Massa actually advocating something that goes against what her religion teaches?

Ah heck, you know what? Screw it.

It is obvious that my association of islamic orthodoxy and the hijab is nonsense, because given her rather un-islamic position regarding abortion on demand, clearly this woman's hijab is not so much a religious garment signaling her adherence to the tenets of islam, as it is a political statement, so my whole point is moot.

Political statement you say?

Do go on...

Well, it just so happens that Percy Grainger provides an intriguing tidbit on the National Post Full Comment page for this article:

Here's the text of a letter that Ms. Massa wrote to the York University administration, dated February 21, 2008, which as of today is posted on the YFS website:

"The York Federation of Students (YFS), representing 45000 undergraduate students and the Graduate Students

(GSA) at York University representing 5,700 students, are shocked and dismayed to hear that your administration along with the McMaster Students Union has banned the use of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” on campus. This strange and unprecedented ban is a blatant violation of democratic freedoms of speech and dissent, and an

attack on students’ right to organize. It is the position of the YFS and GSA that universities are sites where discussions and debates about difficult geo-political questions should be promoted, not stifled. International controversy about use of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” cannot be resolved through repression, but through ongoing intellectual exchange.

The YFS and GSA strongly support the United for Students’ Rights (U4SR) coalition at McMaster in their demand that the disgraceful ban on the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” be rescinded in accordance with a basic commitment to freedom of expression and organization in the democratic context of the public university."

It is obvious - Ms. Massa only believes in "democratic freedoms of speech and dissent" where she agrees with the point of view being expressed. The level of inconsistency is astounding!

So, to sum up:

The abortion debate is settled.
Gotcha.

The Israel-Palestine debate is not settled?
OK.

So my inevitable question:

Says who?

Oh yeah, right: the growing ranks of the new campus Fascists. They are legion.

***

Other Things Worth Checking Out:

What if we lived in Facebook?

***

A Toronto Star profile of an Afghan Policewoman

"For men, it is particularly insulting to be arrested by a female officer. Too bad."

***

Ten Countries Islamic Terrorists Avoid

Interesting as much for what countries are not on the list, as for which ones are.

2008-06-09T10:39:00.000-04:00

"Dad, how come those old dudes call themselves New Kids On The Block?"

Hey, what do you know... it's a catchy tune!

2008-06-06T08:09:00.000-04:00

Some Comedic Cruelty courtesy of the New York Daily News

Topic: Sex And the City Premiere --Sara Jessica Parker has a horse-face.

Discuss!

SJP ugly? Perhaps

The comments in the forum… now those are definitely ugly.

***

Marvel vs DC

2008-06-04T08:42:00.000-04:00

The Great Human Rights Punch-up

Ezra Levant and Andrew Coyne liveblog the Human Rights Tribunal circus from Vancouver.

Good for a couple of laughs... or tears, if you consider the implications of the fact that this farce is actually taking place in Canada.

As far as I'm concerned, the most disconcerting thing by far to come out of this tribunal is the revelation that Awan, a lawyer-in-training, had never heard of the Library of Alexandria until he read about it in a Barbara Amiel article(?!?!)

The barbarians are truly at the gates.

2008-05-29T09:02:00.000-04:00

My reply to Ian's Obama's Media Groupies

Notwithstanding my smarmy comments, my real problem in this case is specifically with the content of Olbermann's hyperbolic rant, not his general disposition toward Hillary or Obama. Olbermann is just one of the more egregious examples of media people who have declared a verdict and now want to proceed to the sentencing, but I won't get into that.

Simply put --I don't like his attitude. I have a real problem with Olbermann declaring from on high that certain things "cannot" be said. So now that his diktat has been promulgated, we should all move on? The media (our betters) are the arbiter of what speech is within the bounds of acceptability for politicians now?

If you have been reading any of my nonsense lately, you may be aware that we have a bit of a free speech issue in Canada at the moment (google human rights commission, macleans, and levant for more details). The idea that "certain things are not to be said" really gets under the skin. As far as I am concerned, Hillary can claim Obama is a crypto-muslim black radical who will lead the U.S. into WWIII and therefore she has to stay in the race, but it isn't up to Olbermann to anathemize her speech. Sure, he can denounce her for what she says (or even for what she "seems to be saying"), and let the good citizens of the U.S. do their duty by exercising their option to consign her to oblivion, but he should not get to tell her and the American people what is and is not acceptable rhetoric. That path leads nowhere good.

As far as the Clinton "gaffe" being the invention of Obama's "media groupies" and/or the Obama campaign itself... I'm no Hillary partisan, and therefore am not prone to lying or dissembling to stick up for her. For the record, I don't give a rats ass about her or what she meant. I'm mad on principle: My problem is with Olbermann adopting the imperative and saying she cannot say something (as opposed to saying "she should not have said it").

Now, if you were to argue that this was simply a rhetorical device of his own, or that he was playing a role --that of grand media inquisitor, perhaps?-- I would still be annoyed, because I've become a free-speech nut, I'm afraid, and I don't like media, government, church, whatever, telling me or anyone else (even Hillary) what we can or cannot say!

And if you were to say that, unlike the state, Olbermann cannot exercise coercive power and that therefore my point is irrelevant I would simply revert to sophomoric namecalling: Olbermann is a douchebag, and I don't like his pompous windbaggery and the idea that what he says might influence the way people think about speech: "Oh, we simply can't say that! What would Keith Olbermann say?"

As far as all the contextual stuff goes (i.e. first time in history there is a black candidate for president, Michelle Obama's fears), once again, not the point. There are plenty of well meaning people up here in Canada trying to shut down debate and free discussion of issues for all the right reasons: combatting "hate" and "anti-semitism" and "islamophobia", but that does not make what they are doing any more justified.

BTW, did somebody say free speech absolutist? In Canada, like in the U.S., we actually have rules that govern free-speech, and the fact is that incitement to violence is illegal. You worry that some nutcase might feel "empowered" by her remarks. I maintain that regardless of whether or not it was in good taste (and since when has good taste been a criterion for political discourse?), what Hillary said was not incitement, and therefore fair comment... "hurt feelings" or not. This is a point we could argue.

You and I both know that Clinton is done. Why the hell do people need to stiffle her now? At this point, one would think they should just stand back and let her bury herself with increasingly outrageous and "catastrophically inappropriate" comments as she grasps at straws. Like your fellow holding the sign there, who is doing such a brilliant job of persuading people not to vote for his candidate.

Frankly, reckless and innapropriate rhetoric is what makes American politics so damn interesting to me! Maybe I just have more faith in the wisdom of the American people (or the effectiveness of the Secret Service) than you do.

I think your Johnson/King point is bang-on...but I would not let Clinton off the hook by saying she is just doing what so many whites do with black rivals. The Clintons have a unique brand of parochialism and condescension all their own!

Oh incidentally, Michelle Obama is going to drag her huband down as this campaign wears on. Somebody get that woman some talking points! She is bad news.

By the way, you really must listen to a Rex Murphy monologue in the original Newfie dialect:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rex+murphy&search_type=

Peace out, buddy!

2008-05-27T08:05:00.000-04:00

Chest Pain

So much ink spilled lately on Ms. Couillard's chestal region, and yet only Rondi Adamson made me snicker:

After all, Couillard can't help the size of her breasts. From the looks of them, they are real. The idea that she should keep them covered because they may, er, distract, is foolish and parochial. But she did choose her boyfriend and husband, one presumes. And she chose to date a politician. One thing lost in the salacious headlines is Bernier designated Couillard as "a spouse" for travel purposes. This means Canadians paid for her (and her breasts) to fly to goodness-knows where with Bernier on his budget. We should be grateful the price of airline tickets aren't decided by an individual's weight.

har har har!

****

Olbermann: the lickspittle, the pontificator:

Outrage much, Keith?
Uh, what? Hillary "cannot say this"? As history has shown, the Clintons can and will say anything, when they need to. Besides, this is the frigging nomination race, and in spite of the most fervent wishes of Obama's media groupies, Senator Clinton is not yet ready to concede that prize and prostrate herself before the annointed one. And so, she is being immolated for a simple statement of an inconvenient historic fact.

Rex Murphy, as usual, said it best in this weekend's Globe and Mail:

There are nights when watching Keith Olbermann of MSNBC - who is to Obama as Igor was to Dr. Frankenstein, a slavish servant and a groupie - pound away at Hillary Clinton, when I've been tempted to call The Hague. Specifically the war crimes tribunal headquartered there.

2008-05-20T22:23:00.000-04:00

Death Spiral

Appeasement!
Appeasement!
Appeasement!
Appeasement!
Say it enough times and understanding what the word actually means won't really matter, right?

Kevin James should be ashamed of himself. He makes Dana Perino look like a Rhodes scholar. I think it was Jon Kay that said that this type of "pundit" gives conservatism a bad name. Amen to that!

Is this what the Republicans have been reduced to? God help them if that's the case.

*****
Zohan: Zionist Propaganda or feel-good movie of the summer?

Adam Sandler's latest flick, opening June 6th, is called You Don't Mess With the Zohan. The official site provides the following synopsis:

In You Don't Mess With the Zohan, a comedy from screenwriters Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel (Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), Sandler stars as Zohan, an Israeli commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream: becoming a hairstylist in New York. Dennis Dugan directs.

What they don't tell you: The Zohan's love interest is, gasp, a Palestinian!!!

Will Sandler forgo his usual insipid nonsense in favour of a nuanced comedic portrait of a Romeo and Juliet-style romance against the backdrop of modern cultural and religious conflict? A thoughtful and sensitive commentary that will inspire a desire for peace among two troubled peoples, and succeed in bridging the most intractable geo-political divide of the past sixty years?

Nah, probably not, but it might be good for a couple of laughs (maybe...)

FAIR WARNING: Mariah Carey will appear in it. Rob Schneider too, obviously

2008-05-13T21:15:00.000-04:00

Things I am Pretty Sure About

Hillary Clinton does not know how to lose . Whenzitover?

When they drag her twitching bloodied carcass across the convention floor of the Pepsi Centre in Denver and pry the crown from her stiffening fingers.

She's not going away! Mwah hah hah hah haaaah!

***

If the hallmark of a compelling TV show is that it makes you want to learn more about its central character, then HBO's John Adams was great TV.

What a history dork like me can particularly appreciate is that such great attention was paid to historical detail throughout the production without sacrificing the narrative. While being "true to history" is important in these types of dramatizations, you can't be slavishly devoted to replicating history in every detail, for one because nobody can say with 100% certainty how things really occured, and also because it would make for tedious viewing -a point made very convincingly in this article.

What also struck me is that the producers also refused to pander to the lowest common denominator by "modernizing" the dialogue or the interactions of characters. It really is striking to hear eighteenth century Americans speaking to each other in the elegant vernacular of the period. The manners are strikingly not our own. Gentlemen, even the closest of friends, seem to address each other formally, while managing to convey their emotions and humanity. When men speak publicly, their words are deliberately and carefully chosen to convey true meaning (and not to baffle and confound like the politicians of our day).

The characters in this miniseries also communicate in an English that sounds somewhat alien to the 21st century ear, and even a bit "British", although it is unmistakeably not the King's English that people are speaking, even at this early point in the evolution of America.

I already knew that Paul Giamatti was a fine actor, but this role proved that he really can carry a serious big-budget project. I thought the the cast was superb as well, with standout performances by Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin, and an almost unrecognizable David Morse as George Washington.

Oh yeah... and the opening theme is pretty rousing too...The kind of music that promises you are about to witness something monumental.

The show more than lives up to the promise.

And incidentally, who would have thought that Tom Hanks would become one of the pre-eminent producers of quality history miniseries?

I already own The Band of Brothers boxed set, also co-produced by Playtone, and I plan on buying John Adams as well as the upcoming miniseries The Pacific, which will tell the story of Marines in the Pacific Theatre during the Second World War, and which I can only assume will be of the same high quality as Band of Brothers.

2008-05-11T00:28:00.000-04:00

You Do Him No Credit

Is it just me, or is Mark Steyn also a bit irritated by the closed mindedness and dismissiveness of some of his fans?

I mean, don't get me wrong... I think Steyn is bang-on 90% of the time, but I have noticed that any time someone does not appear to bow down and unquestioningly accept the Gospel of Mark, some Steynies feel that that is their cue to immediately begin leaping to conclusions, bashing and/or tossing around the labels dismissively, e.g.:Well, this person is obviously a liberal/ leftist/ trudeaupian/ hippy scumbag… so therefore I despise them and dismiss them summarily.

I know that is just the nature of the blogosphere, the greatest echo chamber yet devised, but one needs to remember that Steyn is a journalist and political commentator as well as a conservative hero (to some), and that broader debate and discussion of the kind we have seen recently in the “mainstream media” (i.e. outside the right-wing echo chamber) is Steyn’s bread and butter. He ain't always preaching to the converted.

Snarling pitbulls who emerge every couple of weeks from the basement to bite and tear at his critics and drones who mindlessly absorb and regurgitate every notion and sometimes parrot Steyn ad nauseum are not much use to him or anyone else in the larger marketplace of ideas. In fact, I suspect they may be a hindrance: Oh no, not another one of those Steyn wingnuts!

I don’t think Mark Steyn has much use for unthinking, reflex denouncers and “hyperpartisan halfwits”, to use his own term… and apparently he does not approve of those who would automatically and unfairly blast people like Heather Reisman and Strombo, who were quite reasonable with him, in a misguided effort to support their hero. Ezra Levant chides some of these more zealous folks on his site, albeit in an elegant and gentle fashion.

I wrote the following to my sister in exasperation the other day:

Frankly, sometimes I find it hard to hold conservative opinions when I see the collection of close-minded reactionaries and bigots that share my political views.

Unthinking and slavish obedience to the Gospel of Mark should be anathema to a true believer in enlightenment and modernity. Hey if you agree with him all the time, good for you!... but leave the enforcement of orthodoxy to the ayatollahs, will ya?

2008-05-09T00:22:00.002-04:00

My Head Hurts

Ezra Levant writes on his blog that Mohamed Elmasry, the Canadian Islam Congress Grand Vizier who dispatched the Sock Puppet Three to take on Macleans and Mark Steyn, once faced him in a debate…

Now the pugnacious Mr. Levant wants to debate Warren Kinsella, but the usually scrappy Kinsella doesn’t want to debate Levant ...he wants to debate Steyn, and Macleans and Steyn want to debate...you guessed it: Mohamed Elmasry!

Can’t we just get all four of these cats into the ring and let them go at it WWE tag-team style? Steyn/Levant vs. Kinsella/Elmasri. Now, THAT would be a battle worth witnessing! A real "slobberknocker", as good ol' J.R. would say.

Catch that TVO debate cooked up on the fly between Steyn and Elmasry's kids? Steyn basically goaded and taunted them on live TV to come out and start the debate they claimed they had been looking for all along. Although initially reticent, to their credit, they eventually agreed. Here is part 1 of 5, featuring Khurrum and company:

You gotta love it when instead of suing each other and taking each other to human rights commissions people actually, you know, discuss and debate issues they cannot and likely will not ever agree on. Ain't free speech grand? Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

***

Update:
Levant must be very pleased with the success of his campaign to delegitimize the entire Human Rights Commission apparatus in this country. I mean, would anyone have imagined they would ever read anything like this account of an editorial board meeting with the Canadian Jewish Congress in the National Post? This kind of rough handling of reps of the entrenched Jewish establishment puts paid to the idea that the "islamophobes" are simply using attacks on the HRC as a way to persecute Muslims. Clearly, true free speech believers are being consistent, and what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as the aggrieved and embattled CJC are now finding out, much to their chagrin.

***
Updatier:
I have been informed that my association of the "SP3" (as I have now taken to referring to The "sockpuppet three" and which makes them sound like a cool 90s rap group, no?) to the lawiscool blog is completely haram, verboten, and totally not kosher, since there is apparently no link between SP3 and law is cool since Daniel Simard recused himself from the proceedings. Furthermore, I am told that I am a total douche for using the nickname "sockpuppet three" (I'm paraphrasing), hence my rechristening of the law students as "SP3", pending the creation of a new, more righteous and totally awesome nickname.

2008-04-30T23:12:00.000-04:00

Various Amusing items:

The 110 Best Books
How many have you read? (Sadly, I only read comic books)

***

Dorktastic!
The 10 best Internet Fads. I can has cheezburger?

***

The Moxargon Group

Xran the Fleshrender does some particularly hard-hitting pieces, but my favourite will always be Remulak Moxargon himself, mostly because he has displayed such baffling magnanimity as Overlord of the Ultra-Galactic Empire in consistently declining to disintegrate the earth.

***

Your old picture of the day
Some are over 150 years old. Definitely worth a look, if only to behold the improbable facial hair of 19th century dandies.

***

Wikipedia reveals the disgrace that is Kwame Kilpatrick. Yeah, well it does look pretty bad when you lay all those scandals out, end-to-end all the way down the page!

***
Youtube Gold: Ayaan Hirsi Ali blows Jazeera-bound Lewis' mind

"They shoot abortion doctors in the United States!" sputters Avi, reeling from the brain-melting pro-American juju that this crazy lady is laying on him.

"Your faith in American democracy is just delightful" he smirks. But Ali just smiles and keeps putting out the good vibe. Avi is so upset he loses his cards.

Ali's closer: "You grew up in freedom, so you can spit on freedom, because you don't what it is not to have freedom"

You said it, sister

***
Also found, a quote by P.J. O'Rourke: "Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen."

2008-04-23T21:57:00.000-04:00

Linda Crosses the Line, And more same-old, same-old

There’s stupid

There’s real stupid

There's offensively stupid

Then there is Linda McQuaig:

Did these men somehow feel their military affiliation entitled them to behave like thugs?

This raises the disturbing possibility that these young reservists considered the Rambo-like posture of Canada's top general, Rick Hillier, gave them a licence to behave aggressively.

Certainly Hillier – who announced his retirement last week to much fawning in the media – set a very different tone for the Canadian Forces, referring to the enemy in Afghanistan as "detestable murderers and scumbags" and suggesting the role of the Canadian military is to "be able to kill people."

Damn you Hillier! Damn you and your fascist kill-bots!

***

Tarek Fatah is pissed!

And he doesn't pull his punches in this NP piece:

Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, however, said that for the Commission "to refer to Maclean's magazine and journalists as contributing to racism is bullshit, if you can use that word."

He said the Commission has unfairly taken sides against freedom of speech in a dispute within the Canadian Muslim community between moderates and fundamentalists.

"There are within the staff [of the Ontario Human Rights Commission], and among the commissioners, hardline Islamic supporters of Islamic extremism, and this [handling of the Maclean's case] reflects their presence over there," Mr. Fatah said, identifying two people by name.

"In the eyes of the Ontario human rights commission, the only good Muslim is an Islamist Muslim," he said. "As long as we hate Canada, we will be cared for. As soon as we say Canada is our home and we have to defend her traditions, freedoms and secular democracy, we will be considered as the outside."

Melanie Philips wrote about just this kind of thing, in the context of the British Government's acquiescence to islamist assertiveness in the public forum, in the conclusion to her book Londonistan:

The key issue is the inability to grasp that just because a problem has a religious character, this does not mean that all members of that religion suffer from that problem. There is a distinction to be drawn between Muslims and Islamists. Islamism is the politicized interpretation of the religion that aims to Islamize societies. Many Muslims in Britain and elsewhere would not subscribe to this ideology(....) the most bitter criticism of the government's subsequent appeasement of the Brotherhood has come from liberal British Muslims, who understandably feel betrayed as the ground is cut from under their feet.

As in the UK, in Canada, the well-meaning, the self-righteous and the stupid reinforce all the old victimhood pathologies with bunk about "racism" and "islamophobia". In doing so, they are making common cause with fundamentally illiberal islamists, and making life difficult for those muslims who rather than showing up with a list of demands, would work to bridge whatever supposed gap exists between the muslim worldview and that of Western democracies. The Phillips book is definitely worth a read, by the way.

***

Theo Caldwell on why Obama will never be president.

God help us if they don't elect the guy! It seems that many people think America somehow owes the world Obama. It's quite certain that his supporters think that America owes itself Obama, but what is also becoming increasingly clear, if it wasn't already evident in the mentality exhibited by certain "advisors" and "mentors", is that racism will be among the many bugbears that will be dragooned into service to explain to angry people why America rejected Obama if McCain wins in November. It could get ugly, folks.

***

Zawahiri: People! Listen, it was us... no foolin'! SHEESH Just what the hell does a jihadi gotta do to get credit for sticking it to the Great Satan?

Related:

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Brought to you by The Onion

***

AQI: Endorsed by OBL

This post reminded me of the egregious Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) omission in the film No End In Sight. Just as one had to question the reasons behind the film's conspicuous exclusion of AQI -- after all they were active in Iraq since at least 2003-- one also has to ask why some journalists, when they are not attempting to deny its existence altogether, continue to represent AQI as an Iraqi-led movement. This is demonstrably not the case. AQI's leadership has come from outside the country: Zarqawi was a Jordanian, al-Masri, an Egyptian.

I think the problem with AQI is that its existence goes against the grain of the now-dominant narrative that “the insurgency” was and remains a spontaneous uprising by disaffected Baathists and Iraqi nationalists caused by ham-handed mismanagement by L. Paul Bremer and his cronies, a narrative that was so excellently laid out in NEOS.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, it is posited, is basically an opportunistic "islamist cloak" worn by one of the multitude of militant groups which really just want to see the Americans leave Iraq so that Iraqis can get on with re-building their country.

But AQI continues to refuse to play its part in this neat little story, no doubt exasperating the media and experts with its apocalyptic ravings on jihad, its mosque bombings, its videotaped executions, its continued allegiance to OBL, and its gleeful, indescriminate butchery of innocent Iraqis, Sunni and Shi'a alike--the people they are ostensibly trying to "liberate" from the Yankee agressors.

Seriously, though... when you can't even keep the Sunni tribes onside for some good old fashioned Shi'a persecutin' --historically, a very popular pastime-- and its gotten to the point where the Sheikhs in Anbar are so fed up with your atrocities that they are actually teaming up with the Zionist Crusaders to kick your ass out of Iraq, it may just be time to revise your strategy!

***
Some amusing stuff:

From across the millenia the Neanderthals speak. Spooky!

Company! To the foetus... Pre-sent ARMS!

Laughing Baby: Laughing for us sinners

2008-04-20T20:54:00.000-04:00

Failure Pile In A Sadness Bowl

Patton Oswalt's riff on the most popular item at KFC:

"Yes, we can pile that in a bowl, but we can also arrange it on a plate like you're an adult with self respect and dignity"

Related: The AV Club does a taste-test

2008-04-20T19:27:00.000-04:00

Punching in the Name of the Lord

Greek, Armenian Christians clash at Jesus' tomb on Orthodox Palm Sunday

Each denomination jealously guards its share of the basilica, and fights over rights at the church have intensified in recent years, particularly between the Armenians and Greeks.

Father Pakrad, an Armenian priest, said the presence of the Greek priest during the Armenian observances violated the status quo. "Our priests entered the tomb. They kicked the Greek monk out of the Edicule," he said, referring to the tomb area.

Pakrad accused the Greek Orthodox Christians of trying to step on the Armenians' rights. "We are the weak ones, persecuted by them for many centuries."

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch in the Holy Land, Theofilos III, told The Associated Press that the Armenians are pushing to change the rules, challenging what he said was the dominance of the Greek church in the Holy Land.

"This behaviour is criminal and unacceptable by all means," he said. "They wanted to trespass on the status quo concerning the order that regulates the services between the various communities."

***

Bartian: We believe that God's last prophet, Bart Simpson preached a message of tolerance, and love.
Bartmanian: We believe the holy Bartman preached a message of understanding and peace, before he was betrayed by his follower, Milhouse! And pulled apart by snow-mobiles, until he died.
Bartians: Eat my shorts!!!
Bartmanians: Cowabunga!!!
(Both sides wage war)

from The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star

2008-04-17T23:37:00.000-04:00

Sens Lose

Bah, Life goes on. Emery goes this summer, so does Redden, maybe Spezza, and next year is a fresh start.

I still say that the lame Spartan from the Game three jinxed the team...

***

Tough old bastards rule

Canada's Chuck Norris?

Kim Robinson, the man who caught triple child-slaying suspect Allan Schoenborn, is a hunter and dog breeder from BC. The Ontario-born Robinson, 51, lived 30 years in Merritt, working at logging and as a hunting guide. He owns two traplines in the area, and keeps a dozen hounds for hunting big game.

I watched him interviewed on TV… what a character. He’s a hard-bitten throwback… not so much Chuck Norris, but more like a Canadian Lee Marvin or John Wayne, with a hint of Don Cherry for good measure.Here's some of what he had to say about his encounter with the half-starved Schoenborn:

"I got a lot of friends out there. Some think I'm a good guy, some think I'm an outlaw"

"It wasn't a matter really of wanting to take it on. Right now I'm not doing anything. I have the wherewithal. I got a four-wheel-drive truck. I got dogs I'm used to listening to,"

"I'm not working right now. I had time on my hands. I wasn't worried about bumping into the guy or getting lost in the woods."

"He didn't 'survive.' He looked like anyone else who had gone for 10 days with no food and was too stupid to drink."

"He said, 'Are you going to kill me?' I said, 'No, but I will if I have to.'

"I'm 240 pounds and I've done hard shit all my life."

"I did thump his dog once when he was trying to bite me, but I did not hurt him. I was just trying to let him know that I was not the right guy to try and bite,"

"I thought he was some kind of drug addict. I even asked him that, 'What kind of dope are you on that has peeled all your meat off you?'"

"I'm glad it's over. It was a shitty mess. Not a positive thing about it."

A fiercely individualistic, self-sufficent, coarse, eminently quotable mountain n(of a) man is Mr. Robinson!

2008-04-15T22:49:00.000-04:00

This Ain't Sparta

Seriously, Game 3 opening... WTF?

One can imagine the scenario: Two PR douches present their pitch for a pre-game show to Ottawa Senators executives:

PR Douch #1: So Senators, right? We need to leverage some excitement from the fan base through a theme

PR Douche #2: so here’s what we are thinking… forget Spartan Cat,… that does not play.

PR Douche#1: What the kids like now, what’s big this year is those half-naked guys from that movie 300

PR Douche #2: What are they called?

PR Douche#1: Greek dudes

PR Douche #2: Yeah, so we rent a costume, and we get some miked-up greek dude to come out to inspire people to cheer

PR Douche#1: Full fanfare!

PR Douche #2: He’s got the greek helmet, and greek cape, and a shield.

PR Douche#1: Now that says Senators!

PR Douche #2: And we get him to walk down the ranks of the Sens

PR Douche#1: With the greek-ish music and everything.

PR Douche #2: And he’ll do some lines from the movie and get people to cheer.

PR Douche#1: you know, motivate the team and the fans.

PR Douche #2: It will be something uniquely Ottawa Senators

Was it really as bad as I make it sound?

Yup.

In a pre-game opening that was supposed to symbolize Captain Daniel Alfredsson’s return, a buffed wannabe Spartan warrior took to the ice and spewed clichés from the movie 300. Unfortunately, hampered by a microphone malfunction and a teetering helmet, the effect was lost on most. Somewhere in the world, Gerard Butler was having a good laugh while King Leonidis must’ve been turning in his grave.

Homoerotic? Really? I would not go that far.

It was pretty terrible that they tried to pass off Frank Miller's stylized version of a Spartan Hoplite as a Roman Senator, though.

Oh yeah, Sens lost. They now face a sweep.

Here's a somewhat more accurate depiction of the appropriate roman armour, plus a pretty kickass battle scene:

2008-04-14T18:08:00.001-04:00

400th Post

"There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained”
Winston Curchill

I had no idea I was about to reach this milestone until I signed into my blogger account and looked at my dashboard... so I figured for my 400th post, I would just put up a picture of my family, from our last get together: Easter 2008 --we had just left mass and I snapped this photo in the parking lot.

It isn't quite a "complete" picture: Joe and Michelle could not make it down. I suppose as you get older and welcome spouses and offspring into your family, it gets harder to get everyone in one place at one time. That's why when it does happen, you cherish it.

Some members of the clan are heading to Spain for a cousin's wedding. We wish them a safe trip, and hope they make the best of their time over there.

***

The latest on the whole HRC farrago:
Paul Wells weighs in

If Paul be Against You, Who Can be With You?

2008-04-11T18:43:00.000-04:00

Two Down

It was a valiant effort, but it wasn't enough. So the Sens go back to Ottawa down two games. It is gut check time

Go look up a picture of the Penguins' Tyler Kennedy. I won't put a picture up here, that would be wrong. But just do it.

Who does he remind you of?

The debate rages here

Some say he looks like Manbearpig,

Some say a bat,

Some say he's the spitting image of Paperboy

At one point, a compromise is suggested: Paperbatpig

Anyway, I say he’s the illegitimate son of Chief Clancy Wiggum! Nya!

2008-04-10T01:18:00.000-04:00

Did You Drove or Did You Flew?

The Olympic flame was in San Francisco

Things did not go well

***

The playoffs have started.

Ottawa played their first game against the Penguins.

Again, things did not go well.

Ask Wade Redden, who played a bit of pokey-chest with Sid the Kid

Also Volchekov took a puck to the face, just as a bonus.

The good news is that Gerber came to play tonight.

The bad news is nobody else on the team did.

2008-04-05T01:14:00.001-04:00

Harry Knowles

a.k.a. the big red dude
a.k.a. Headgeek

has diabetes.

the founder of AICN drops that tidbid on his loyal readers rather abruptly in this review of the new flick The Ruins. After his review, I think I just have to see this film… you see, I too was at Palenque, and I can recall that the jungle did indeed loom threateningly…

The big surprise is the outpouring of geek love and support in the talkbacks. In the past, some people have been absolutely vile with Harry, mocking his obesity along with his idiosyncratic writing style and his self-regard. This time, there is concern and good wishes.

He’s rather ludicrous -- by his own admission -- almost a cartoonish figure, is our Mr. Knowles, with his gigantic ginger head fringed with a chinstrap beard and long hair “like an irish setter” as he has described it. To me, he looks like a cross between late Jerry Garcia and Slimer from Ghostbusters, or rather, Slimer’s unseen red cousin.

Harry and Slimer: kindred spirits

And I loathe his ridiculous politics, as do many denizens of AICN, who regularly implore him to stick to movies, and not spew his leftwing nonsense in his reviews. Take for example, the poster who wrote the following nasty diatribe after Harry commented on the film Day Zero in his inimitable style: Imagine that John McCain wins the next election (this isn’t the premise – but merely how we could get to the premise in our reality) and decides to truly create a 100 year presence in Iraq.

Harry, you're a fucking moron slave
by expert_40
Feb 26th, 2008
07:35:22 AM

"Let's say if John McCain gets elected."

I despise ideologues, Harry. I despise them on both sides, because they truly don't know how stupid they sound when they let ridiculous statements like that escape their mouths. They don't understand how much of a slave they are, listening to others to know what to believe in. Sheep.

First of all, there's a reason why the military in this country is the best it's been since WWII. IT'S ALL VOLUNTARY. There's a saying we have in the Marine Corps: U Signed the Mother-fucking Contract.

The draft will never be reinstated, and for people to even insinuate it would be is ideological bullshit. Especially if they insinuate John McCain would do so. ESPECIALLY if they say "if he gets elected" like that gives him the power to do so without consent of Congress.

Harry, for the love of God, for someone who claims to love things like individuality and open-mindedness, you're a sheep who's only open-minded to his own beliefs.

Open your fucking eyes, stop inundating every word you write with your ideology and free your mind from slavery. Politics should be about voting your consciences, voting for the best person, no matter what party they are, or what color or gender they are. That's the way Jefferson wanted it. Man, I thank God I'm not a devoted slave like you or Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken or Ann Coulter.

"Imagine if John McCain got elected," well, Harry, I know that freezes your heart, but I can think of scarier things than 4 years of a moderate who doesn't walk in lockstep with his party, who gets along with the Democrats and doesn't mind working TOGETHER for real change, instead of you know, just talking about this abstract thing, "change," like one of the other candidates. That being said, I haven't yet made up my mind (isn't it great to actually be able to use your mind instead of it being enslaved to the left or the right? I think it is) yet, but when I do, my conscience, not ideology will guide me. No political party tells me what to believe in or who to vote for.

We know you're a fucking slave, Harry. So, for the love of God, stop reminding us with every post you write.

But nevertheless, there is no denying the man loves movies in a way few other people do... and I have to admit that his joy and wonder is infectious: He has gotten me pretty jazzed up about a movie through his sheer enthusiasm more than once.

His is a deep abiding love that has seen him through some major trials, including the death of his mother, his near paralysis, and 20 years of state and federal Bush regimes –Eagle Scout Knowles is a Texan, but he’s no red-state cowboy… he’s one of those exotic lefties from the Democrat enclave of Austin.

At any rate, diabetes is a disease that demands a serious commitment to healthy living, and Mr. Knowles has not been known for that type of thing during his decade-plus in the public eye… but I’m a believer in “second acts”, and as someone who has struggled to stay trim for almost his entire life –and who recently ran his first 10k run in nearly 2 years, I wish him well as he embarks upon this significant lifestyle change.

Bonne Chance, Headgeek.

2008-04-02T22:17:00.000-04:00

Part 1 in a 37 Part Series: The Wit and Wisdom of Gisele Bundchen

Gisele on Acting:

“It was not like I was taking myself seriously and being like, OK, now I'm going to be an actress and I'm going to do a Shakespeare movie.”

“I think it's better when you're natural, when you just do whatever you want, instead of doing classes where I see all these other people holding back because they've been trained with certain skills or techniques. I'm like, whatever.”

“I'm not an actress, you know. I don't know what's going on. And I'm supposed to be the villain.”

“There always are these nightmare people around. Ugh. Anyway, they're always bugging. And they did get some pictures of me. They're so stupid.”

Gisele and Lebron Leibowitz cover sets back race relations 70 years; Obama yet to comment

***

I have to admit, Hillary made me laugh

Her husband, however, is starting to get scary: As we feared, Bill is going f-ing mental!

***

Go Sens Go

(At this point, what else can you do but cheer them on and hope for the best?)

2008-04-01T19:53:00.000-04:00

Three Games To Midnight

Wayne Scanlan plays Cassandra :

Beware, Sens Army !

Three games to avoid infamy

Wayne Scanlan

The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The shock is not that a bunch of teams are scrambling for a playoff berth in the final days of the NHL schedule.

That's just hockey business as usual.

The shock is to find, on April 1, the mighty Ottawa Senators among those teams.

Securing an 11th-hour playoff spot? That was always the patter from below, the noise of mice and their scurrying little feet trying to make a meal out of year-end table scraps.

Hockey's aristocracy -- and the Senators have been among them for the past four seasons -- were more concerned with the loftier business of resting their stars and aligning their talent for playoff detail.

Fine tuning a big machine for the bigger days head.

Let the middle class of the league fight to the death in the dying days of an 82-game schedule.

Well, welcome to the middle class, Ottawa. See how the other half lives.

It comes down to this for the Senators -- finish strong in the final three games, beginning with tonight's vital game against the physically battered Montreal Canadiens at Scotiabank Place -- or risk being associated with one of the biggest collapses in NHL history.

"It's not anything we're thinking about," says defenceman Chris Phillips, of the possibility of Ottawa missing the playoffs for the first time since 1996.

They would be thinking about it if it were to happen -- because no one would let them forget it.

The Senators would go down with baseball's 1964 Philadelphia Phillies and other infamous meltdowns late in the season.

For the first three months of the season, the Senators were the best team in the East, if not the best in the entire NHL.

When the Senators defeated the Detroit Red Wings in a January game, there were those who claimed the Senators were the class of the league.

By then, their mortality was already showing. Defensive mistakes were leading to big goals. The goaltending was an issue, whether Martin Gerber or Ray Emery was in net.

(They were both tardy -- Emery getting to practice; Gerber getting back into position after a save).

The captain, Daniel Alfredsson, got hurt, and he continues to play hurt. As the losses piled up, the team's confidence slipped away.

Ancient history, says Senators general manager and head coach Bryan Murray, using every ounce of his guile and experience to hold this thing together, to hold his own cool while the media pile on.

"This week," Murray says, "is all I can concern myself with."

It's concern enough for the entire team. For all of the so-called Sens Army that supports them in the stands and on the street.

It comes down to this: three games, all against divisional rivals (Montreal, Toronto, Boston). If Ottawa can win two of three, it has nothing to worry about until the first round of the playoffs begins. But if the Senators lose two of three games in regulation, they may have to worry about Washington or Carolina squeezing them out.

As Murray reminds us, this microscopic examination of a frightening scenario is hardly Ottawa's alone. Other teams currently just below, and even just above, Ottawa in the standings are also living dangerously.

Those teams, though, didn't start out with a 15-2 record to start the season. Those teams weren't 25-8-4 two days after Christmas.

Still, it's too early to fully dwell on how far the Senators have fallen because there remain three games to break the fall. Three games to get it right after so much went wrong.

After 79 games, the defending Stanley Cup finalists have given up an astounding 240 goals against -- more than any team in the East except Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Toronto. Not exactly the kind of company a team wants to keep.

The Senators haven't given up this many goals in a season since the post-expansion season of 1995-96, when a four-year-old Ottawa franchise surrendered 291 goals while finishing last overall in the NHL with 18 victories and 59 defeats.

"We're trying to stay positive," Phillips says.

Thanks for the reminder. Let's not dwell on how miserably things have gone when there are three precious games left to create a do-over in the postseason.

There is hope, and it comes draped in bleu, blanc et rouge.

The Canadiens, still trying to nail down first place in the Northeast Division, have had a hard time with the Senators this season. Already losers of five of the seven meetings, Montreal has been ravaged with injuries lately.

Captain Saku Koivu and top defenceman Michael Komisarek are out. So is defenceman Francis Bouillon.

Everything is there for the Senators to take a giant step toward a playoff spot, with a single win against a rival it owns on home ice.

"There's no sense getting in the playoffs if you can't win some games to get in the playoffs," Murray says.

"So, let's do it."

Last season at this time, the Senators had a "magic" about their play, says the coach.

Minus the magic, the Senators hope some old fashioned hard work might be the answer.

It's how the working classes deal with their problems.

Subscribers can read previous columns by Wayne Scanlan at ottawacitizen.com . He can be reached at wscanlan@thecitizen.canwest.com.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

Montreal Delenda Est !

2008-03-31T23:29:00.000-04:00

All Out of Bubblegum

If you recognize that cryptic title as the tail end of a movie line, then like me, you probably had your mind blown by a John Carpenter 1980s classic.

I watched They Live again recently, and it is every bit as awesome as the A.V. Club would have us believe it is it is.

It features perhaps the craziest most balls-out street fight I've ever seen. Keith David and Hot Rod go at it like a couple of rabid dogs over their differing perspectives on eyewear:

If there was any justice in this world Roderick Toombs would be a genre superstar on par with Kurt Russell.

***

Other odds and Sods

I was on the fence over whether Obama deserved plaudits for "the speech"

Then I read Hitchens:

But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it "controversial." It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

As usual, he is right. Sorry, Barry. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

***

Guaranteed to give Cherniak an aneurism:

Lionel Chetwyn's History of the Trudeau Era

2008-03-30T10:14:00.000-04:00

Yes, Virginia, There Are Commies

So says Zombie of San-Francisco-based Zombietime:

The communists are still here, and they're just as dangerous as they ever were, and have not relinquished their goal of overthrowing the United States and bringing an end to the capitalist system. And the reason I'm aware of this fact perhaps more than the typical person is that I often attend anti-war rallies, which is where communists really come out of the woodwork. In fact, not only are many of the people at these rallies up-front communists, but the rally organizers -- groups like ANSWER and World Can't Wait -- are themselves communist organizations. I'd even go so far as to venture that the entire anti-war protest movement has been completely taken over by communists.

Not pseudo-communists. Not people whom I'm insulting by casting an outdated epithet at them. Not people who in all innocence have some overlap with communist philosophy. Not mere left-wingers. Communists. And I'm tired of being afraid to lay it on the line and call it as I see it. I know history very well, and communism is a failed ideology that has only brought misery and oppression wherever it has triumphed. There. I've said it.

So, since when is it forbidden to mock one's ideological opponents? If the Rethuglicans can poke fun at the Demoncrats and vice-versa, why can't I taunt the communists by calling them by their least favorite word, commies? Who exactly could I be offending here -- except for the communists themselves? And if they're imaginary, then I'm not offending anyone, right?

What follows is a disturbing little photo essay, featuring the bottom-feeders from A.N.S.W.E.R and other assorted radical leftist malcontents, and at the end, Zombie concludes:

Now, to be frank, I don't think that these up-front kind of communist groups have any real chance of success at actually overthrowing the American system by force. They're almost buffoonish in their obviousness. But who I really do worry about are the "stealth communists," who introduce Marxist thought and collectivist philosophy into academia and mainstream entertainment without announcing what they're doing. These much more clever communist ideologues follow (knowingly or not) the writings of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist theorist who proposed infiltrating the schools and the media so as to subtly indoctrinate generations of youngsters, eventually paving the way for a "soft revolution" once a tipping point is reached in society. Already, Marxist thought patterns have become so standard in American mainstream cultural discourse that most people don't even know they're mimicking communist slogans.

But that's a different essay altogether.

There are legions of well-meaning principled anti-war protesters who believe in democracy, the rule of law, and the values that form the foundation of our society... I just think some of them should seriously consider whom they are making common cause with when they choose to participate in marches organized or sponsored by anti-democratic/revolutionary groups.

Something to ponder the next time you consider strapping on the ol' paper-mache head and joining the costumed capering performance artists prancing around an anti-war march.

2008-03-20T20:15:00.000-04:00

Iraq Five Years On:

I just watched No End In Sight, the Academy Award nominated documentary about the Iraq war. It's a remarkable film, and will no doubt bolster the already robust case that the people that sent American troops into Iraq really had no plan (or at the very least, a severely flawed plan) and no clue of what to do once they had won the war.

My guts were in knots watching the anguish on the face of the former Colonel and CPA official talk about how his Iraqi counterparts greeted Jerry Bremer's de-Ba'athification order and the disbanding of the Iraqi army with chagrin and disbelief. No wonder. The movie point to those two measures, among others, as catalysts for the Iraqi insurgency and while this is probably an oversimplification, it is obvious in hindsight that no good could come from firing a million able-bodied Iraqis from their jobs and setting them loose on the streets with weapons within reach.

The movie has its flaws, of course, and it must be viewed with a critical eye --nary a mention is made of the animals that came to call themselves Al-Qaeda in Iraq, for example, and the Iranian infiltration is also glossed over. The eye-rolling and smugness of Obama's now shitcanned policy advisor Samantha Power becomes tiresome, particulary when during an interview she smirks annoyingly as she offers an anecdote about a Lebanese diplomat referring "bullets in the eyes" of American representatives -- botching it, according to my wife, who knows the actual expression in Arabic.

It is particularly tragic to think that some of the logical measures advocated in those early days and weeks are only now, five years on, being implemented in that tortured land with almost startling success, those ideologues who opposed them (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld) having been consigned to ignominy, and the dustbin of history.

For what it is worth, I think this gets the Iraq narrative right, even though the tinfoil hat brigade will still squeal “it's all about oil!"

If that is the case, my only question is

What the HELL happened?

***

9-2?

Way to run up the score, jerks!

Did Probert feed some poor bombardier his jersey too?

I'm kidding. Classy move by some NHL greats to play road-hockey with the boys.

2008-03-19T21:30:00.000-04:00

Muy Blanco

I don’t like Anne Coulter most of the time, but every once in a while, she writes something like this piece about Elliot Spitzer, and I can't help but chuckle.

One shudders to imagine the sepulchral gloom pervading the Spitzer home this week. At least Hillary would liven the place up with some lamp-throwing.

***

I was recently directed to this site, which offers a helpful anthropological primer designed to assist “ethnic” people in their dealings with Caucasians, ostensibly by offering insights into the habits, beliefs cultural practices and customs of the caucasoids with whom they must share the planet.

I decided to peruse this site thoroughly and see how many of these articles apply to me in order to discover how white I actually am, relative to other crackers.

Turns out I am moderately white.

How did I figure this out? I deployed all my grade 12 math skill to come up with a mathematical formula I call the Whiteness Quotient. How does it work?

Step one: Get over yourself, honky.

Step two: Read each of the entries in this blog, and as you go, make note of how many apply to you, how many could apply to you somewhat, or in some circumstances, and how many are completely foreign to your experience.

Step three: Deal with your reality – You are a hopeless cliche

Step four: Divide number of positive responses by number of total items (currently 90 or so, but they are constantly adding new articles), giving half marks for an equivocal or noncommittal response. That will give you your whiteness quotient.

I have created the following scale of whiteness:

0.0-0.9 low risk of blancmange
0.1-0.29 somewhat prone to caucasianisms
0.3-0.49 Moderate WASPishness
0.5-0.69 Significant hipster contamination
0.7-0.99 Full blown whitey douchebaggery

My Whiteness quotient is: 0.297 ... I have been found to have trace elements of Donnie Osmond:

***

I don't know what the creepiest website out there is, but I know photoshop disasters sure creep me out! How about you?

2008-03-17T22:15:00.001-04:00

Alistair Cooke

Most people know Alastair Cooke as the host of Masterpiece Theatre, but I'll always think of him as the author of the book that first kindled my interest in American History, the companion tome to his famous 1970s miniseries of the same name: Alistair Cooke's America.

Cooke was a journalist who spent his years chronicling life in the U.S. with his American Letters. He lived through and reported on the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam and Watergate, and was only yards away from RFK when he was assassinated in 1968.

When he first arrived in the US in the 1930s, Alistair Cooke met the famous jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Holmes, who was a young Union officer during the Civil War, had once met Abraham Lincoln (he called the President a fool for standing up in battle).

So until he died at age 95 in 2004, when Alastair Cooke met a young person he was fond of saying "You have just shaken the hand of a man who shook the hand of a man who shook hands with Lincoln."

Cooke had a long and distinguished career as a media personality, but perhaps the ulitmate tribute to this cultural giant is that one of the best recurring parodies that Sesame Street did was based on his show:

Oh yeah, and his bones were stolen after his death by criminals involved in the illegal body-part trade. Yuck!

***

An Irish Blessing for Saint Paddy's Day:

May your shillelaigh be all knotted with boils

OK, you got me...It's from the Aristocrats.

2008-03-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

Chuck Norris For President

...OF IRAQ

"Truthfully, I didn't know who he was. I asked the Americans, and they said he was a great fighter, and that's why they named me after him. They showed me a video, and it's true, he's a great fighter" said police trainer Mohammed Rasheed.

***

The Ottawa Citizen on Campus Totalitarians:

If you want to see totalitarianism in action, you don't have to travel overseas to some impoverished, politically backward society. Just head over to York University in Toronto.The face of totalitarianism is one Kelly Holloway, president of York's graduate students' association. It was she who pushed for the cancellation of a public debate on abortion. The event had been booked and the fliers printed, but it never happened. "This debate, over whether or not women should be able to have an abortion, is not acceptable in the student centre," said Ms. Holloway. Not acceptable in the student centre? Abortion is among the most controversial issues anywhere. Theologians, ethicists and doctors - not to mention ordinary people - have been wrestling with abortion for many years. Even though abortion is widely available, there is still no philosophical consensus on the morality of killing a fetus.

But Kelly hath decreed that the matter endeth here! Surely this closes the discussion?

Er, no. I'm afraid it ain't over, Kelly

It's good that York University started acting like a university again!

2008-03-09T11:05:00.000-04:00

The People - and by "People", I Mean Celebrities - Have Spoken!

Jessica Alba: I would like to see, um, uh cleaner earth for... my child, that I'm bringing into the world very soon.

Done! Obama has already promised that all commercially available potting soil will be required by legislation to contain at least one quarter loam, one quarter leaf mold, and no more than one part per hundred bacterial contaminants, excluding pig and cow excrement!

Ryan Philippe: I think it's time for change... I want a better future for my children.

Yes! Obama will push congress to legislate more change... up to 10 million additional quarters and 5 million additional dimes will be produced by the United States Department of the Treasury every year during an Obama presidency!

Some attractive black woman: I would like our environment to be safe

No problem! Obama has already arranged funding for Al Gore's next movie: An Inconvenient Truth II: Electric Boogaloo

Some attractive hispanic woman: Esto es nuestro America, mi America, tu America

Por supuesto! Viva Obama, el commandante en jefe! viva el socialismo!

Guy who got punched: Someone to actually make a difference in my generation

Obama: People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation!)

Hip guy in interracial couple: I would like to see us in a world without fear

Indubitably! Obama will ask congress to introduce legislation outlawing boogey-men, as well as their more rare variant, bogey-men.

Attractive hispanic woman again: Basically, ooommm, I want the war to end

Obama: War is oooover, if yooou want it

Jessica Alba again: I would like the world to think highly of our amazing country

You got it! Obama has pledged to pursue aggressive diplomatic and/or military action against anyone who does not think highly of the U.S.

Another attractive black woman: I think the thing that inspires me most about Obama is he really is going to be the President of the United States, you know, he's not going to be the president of the top ten percent, or the president of the most powerful corporations, or the president of the most powerful lobbyists, he's going to be our President, he's going to speak for us, cuz we put him there

Obama refuses to be president of the top ten percent, the lobbyists, and the corporations. Immediately following his inauguration, he will have those three groups expelled from the country. Unfortunately, numerous entertainers and hollywood types will need to relocate, since they fall into that first category.

John Leguizamo: That's what Obama is about... unity to this country, and changing America's face to the world

Russia: America, have you had some work done?
America: You noticed!
China: America, you look just fabulous! Who's your surgeon?
America: Dr. Birnbaum... he's in Beverly Hills

George Lopez: Obama es el cambio, que representa esperanza

Obama: Dos cervezas por favor

Will.I.am: This is my America, your America, our America

It's Obama's America, we only live there

Woman of colour: And he stands for... not just black people, but all people... uh, he's almost like a revivalist...

Obama: Hallelujah!

Woman of whiteness: I believe in Barack Obama, because he believes in us

Actually, Obama believes in you because you have the good judgment to believe in him!

***

My favourite two comments on the videocracy site:

if this wasn't made by private citizens, it would legitimately qualify as propaganda, right?

and

...those least affected by any particular administration (the wealthy) are demanding change. How inspiring.

2008-03-08T13:59:00.001-05:00

The nature of censorship

Steve Paikin has a great show. Here he discusses Bill C-10 and the limits of censorship with Len Rudner, Rebecca Shechter, Jon Kay, and Charles McVety.

I find one part very revealing: about halfway through where Rebecca responds to Charles about his opinion on what is in bad taste and offensive (and his right not to have to pay taxes for this type of stuff) "YOU have a problem, Canadians don't have a problem" to which Steve Paikin says "Rebecca, you think he is the only guy in the whole country who has a problem with this?"

Rebecca's freudian slip speaks to the reaction that some otherwise very nice and reasonable people have when confronted with a guy like Charles McVety, who tends to speak in language very alien to progressives, using terms like judgment, decency and morality when making his points. They marginalize him because his point-of-view sometimes appears to be bizarre, reactionary, and completely outside the "mainstream", hence her attitude: of course a bible-thumper like McVety is going to object to an entirely reasonable proposition.

And yet, notwithstanding the alien "morality" rhetoric, his point is solid: McVety is simply saying that as a general rule, the government should not be empowered to decide what movies get made, but that it is the arbiter of taste when it comes to deciding which movies get funded; a proposition you may not agree with, but an entirely legitimate viewpoint.

Jon Kay, the journalist who speaks the language of "the mainstream", makes a valid point too: As a free-speech advocate, he doesn't like the idea of government mandarins making decisions of any kind relating to censorship, whether it is deciding what movies get funded, or what he can and can't say. As an opponent of Human Rights Commissions as they are currently run, he also thinks that people need to "toughen up and lighten up" when it comes to getting offended and seeking redress through quasi-judicial bodies.

Len Rudner disagrees with him on technical grounds, i.e. the HRCs do a good job of screening out the vast majority of "nuissance complaints", so therefore they are not a problem... although I don't see how this supposed bureaucratic efficiency justifies their existence if it is the principle they are functioning under that is being questioned.

I'm increasingly coming around to the Jon Kay/Ezra Levant/Mark Steyn point-of-view of free speech absolutism, not because I am in favour of unfettered free speech (and incidentally, I am not in league with neo-nazis, notwithstanding what someone like Warren Kinsella might contend), but because I believe our society is already on a slippery slope when the state starts going completely in the opposite direction, "sanctioning" and approving public debate. This type of state control is something I think will end up being far worse than "too much freedom" in the long run.

Rebecca Schecter has a funny viewpoint: she is in favour of censoring hate speech, but not "smut", because she has a vested interest in preserving that particular freedom (the freedom to promote filth, or whatever you want to call it). In other words, she is holding two contradictory viewpoints, and attempting to rationalize her positions with some dubious logic. At least, I wasn't convinced... you can watch the video and judge for yourself.

Ms. Schecter is far from the only person to display this kind of paradoxical logic. A couple of days ago, Jon Kay wrote an article about Kelly Holloway, a detestable functionary in the student government at York with a bright future as a censorship commissar:

I've been writing a lot lately about free speech. My view on the subject is pretty basic: You have to tolerate the speech you hate in order to guarantee protection for the speech you love. Once you go down the road of ideologically motivated censorship, it never stops: Government hate-speech laws that are designed to shut up neo-Nazis eventually get used to harass legitimate commentators like Mark Steyn.

Of course, censorious activists and lawmakers never actually concede they are engaged in "censorship." Invariably, they try to argue that the speech they are targeting is so offensive as to not even constitute legitimate expression. Consider, for instance, what has been going on at York University, in Toronto. Here's a snippet from a March 5 news item in The Excalibur, a York University newspaper:

"A planned debate on abortion rights at York University’s Student Centre was canceled less than three hours before it was scheduled to begin. At an emergency meeting on Feb. 28,members of the Student Centre Board of Directors ... voted unanimously to cancel the debate that was to be held later that day ... Student Centre vice-chair Kelly Holloway said the debate was cancelled because it was an equal rights issue. 'The reason is that it’s an equity concern for the Student Centre. Having a debate over whether or not women should be able to choose what to do with their own bodies is tantamount to having a debate about whether or not a man should be able to beat his wife,' Holloway said. 'The issue is violence against women, and women in this country have a right to choose what they do with their bodies. They have a right to have an abortion, and we don’t want to validate a debate that wants to threaten that right.'"

According to Holloway, in other words, the millions of pro-life Canadians who would presume to voice their objection to abortion do not have "valid" viewpoints. They deserve to be shut up because all they're doing is expressing de-facto threats against women, akin to urging spousal violence.

What's interesting is that, on another issue dear to her left-wing heart, Halloway is quite capable of sounding like a free-speech purist. Just two weeks ago, Holloway signed her name to a Feb. 21, 2008 letter complaining that the university's decision to ban anti-Zionist "Israeli Apartheid" activities on campus is "a blatant violations of democratic freedoms of speech and dissent." The letter also goes on about the "democratic context of the public university" and asserts that "universities are places where discussions and debates about difficult geo-political questions should be promoted, not stifled."

So what is the confused Ms. Holloway — a censor or a free-speech champion? Both and neither. Rather, she is a symbol of the basic human instinct to permit speech we agree with while shutting up one's opponents — and then finding some tortured logical argument to reconcile the two. The only thing unusual about Holloway is her public hypocrisy. She is a perfect example of why vesting the power to censor in politically correct mandarins — be they from Ottawa or a student government — is always a bad idea.

The Schecter and Holloway cases are merely anecdotes, to be certain, but they are important signposts: In essence, what we are seeing is the gradual de-normalization and deligitimization of fairly mainstream Christian viewpoints in the public domain, under various banners. I say: free speech for all.

***
Update:

Wow, link from Steynonline.com... I guess I better do a better job proofreading my rantings if I'm going to be getting visitors of that calibre.

2008-03-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

Explain this please:

Seriously, what the Christ is this? The annoying little macarena-style dance and jingle in the ads from a few years back were bad enough. They tended to put me in a bad mood when they came on TV. But now this latest batch of ads takes it one step further, with strange auditions featuring abrasive dorks of various ethnicities who can't even get the jingle right. How is this supposed to sell the product?

And don't even get me started on this guy:

The feelings this particular commercial bring up in my are, in order:
Surprise, bewilderment, contempt, and finally, shock and anger right at the end when he yells.

Now my stomach feels all upset. I think I'll go take some Tums or Rolaids.

2008-03-05T00:58:00.000-05:00

Never Count the Clintons Out

Hey, wouldn't it be something if it turned out Obama lost Ohio because some political hack from north of the border blabbed to the media about a supposed conversation between campaign officials and Canadian diplomats concerning NAFTA?

And just think, some conspiracy types say the Yanks are the ones always messing with our elections!

***

Chris Hitchens says: Oratory? They are just a bunch of cliches, people!

2008-02-28T20:16:00.000-05:00

El Cid Campeador

When I was young --like maybe 10 or 12 -- I remember watching a movie about some cool knight named Rodrigo who went around Spain getting into fights with everyone. He fought a bunch of Moors (Muslims living in Spain), but refused to hang them after he beat them. This led to him getting mad respect from them and getting called "Cid" which meant "Lord". He fought his girlfriend's dad and killed him, which kind of put a damper on their relationship, as you can imagine. He fought fellow spaniards, he fought African invaders... he even fought the law, but the law won, if you can believe that.

This was of course Anthony Mann's EL CID, starring my main man Chuck Heston in the title role, and the lovely Sophia Loren as Chimene, the love of his life.

Well, when I found out that they were releasing this bad boy on DVD, I just had to get myself a copy. I watched it again this week for the first time in twenty years.

Is the movie as good as I remember it being as a twelve year old? I'm happy to write that it is.

Not only did I find it hugely entertaining, I would actually say it stands head and shoulders above some of the other gargantuan historical epics from that era (the Fall of the Roman Empire, Cleopatra), and it compares favourably with the best of them, including Spartacus and Ben-Hur, two of my favourite films.

The tone is set at the very beginning of this film, when we are introduced to the main baddie played by Herbert Lom: the Fanatical Ben Yusuf, poster boy for the Jihad (11th century edition). Here he is going to town on the Emirs of Al-Andalus:

The Prophet has commanded us to rule the world. Where in all your land of Spain is the glory of Allah? When men speak of you they speak of poets, musicmakers, doctors, scientists.... Where are your warriors? You dare call yourselves sons of the Prophet? You have become--women! Burn your books! Make warriors of your poets! Let your doctors invent new poisons for our arrows--let your scientists invent new war machines! And then--Kill! Burn! Infidels live on your frontiers--encourage them to kill each other. And when they are weak and torn--I will sweep up from Africa--and the empire of the One God--the True God, Allah--will spread, first across Spain, then across Europe, then--the whole World!

How odd... how unfamiliar... Can you imagine any movie including that kind of character speaking dialogue like that nowadays? What a grotesque unrealistic caricature!

Uh, maybe not, actually. Although fictionalized, the character is based on Yusuf ibn Tashfin, a Berber Almoravid who invaded Spain in the 11th century seeking to conquer new territories for the Umma and bring orthodoxy and a puritanical version of islam to the muslims already inhabiting the peninsula, who had up to that point been busy doing silly stuff like creating a civilization, and preserving culture and knowledge.

Come to think about it that does seem familiar!

Of course, Ben Yussuf represents one side of the Islamic coin, and the presence of many honourable and noble Moorish characters in this movie, including Al Kadir and Moutamin, who were allies of the Cid and vassals of the Spanish King, reflects the reality of the time, just as the existence of moderate muslims is a reality today, notwithstanding the bad press the entire religion tends to get as a whole. Largely thanks to the Ben Yusuf types.

But lets be honest, here, you aren't going to watch this movie because you want a history lesson or treatise on relations between the religions in 11th century Spain, you are going to watch it because you want an old fashioned epic full of pomp and spectacle, romance and adventure.. and this flick delivers on all those counts. In fact, the climax of the movie is one of the most memorable bits of filmaking I have ever seen. It is the one scene in the movie that has stayed indelibly etched in my memory for the past 20 years.

Behold, the climax:

Tell me you don't get a shiver down your spine when the Cid rides through the gate and the organ begins to play!

2008-02-23T12:14:00.000-05:00

A Unified Theory of Tarantino

Pretty entertaining short, but is this anything new? As a big fan of the video store clerk from Tennessee who influenced a generation, I appreciate that somebody actually went to the trouble of outlining and organizing every observation, stray thought and half-formulated theory that me, my friends and a legion of other drunken guys of my generation came up with in our rec rooms over a few beers.

Tarantino movies have been dissected to death by every movie geek who came of age in the nineties, so none of this is new. Tarantino is the fountainhead for post-eighties cinema, and will probably be remembered as a towering figure in the history of filmaking. That being said, however, I'm beginning to see that the law of diminishing returns applies even in the case of the guy who wrote and directed possibly the coolest film ever committed to celluloid.

I just saw Grindhouse and, it pains me to write this, Deathproof got tedious.

Not the whole thing, of course. QT is still too dynamic and imaginative to ever descend to hack-like levels of mediocrity, but it still feels lazy.

We know the formula by now... Cast one iconic, slightly-past-his-best-before-date genre actor as a lead character: Keitel, Travolta, Carradine, and in this case, Snake Plissken himself, Kurt Russell; surround with compelling, quirky supporting cast, preferably including at least one or two hot women (this flick has several babes-du-jour); be really self-referrential by casting people who have appeared in other Tarantino/Rodriguez movies as similar yet-not identical characters (step forward Rose McGowa, star of Rodriguez Grindhouse entry Planet Terror ), and insert liberal amounts of violence, genre aesthetics, pop culture references, and signature Tarantino Dialogue. Why screw with the formula? It works .

Except, this time, it didn't.

Not for me. Not completely, anyway.

If you are going to make the kind of dialogue-heavy movies that QT makes, you better make sure the dialogue is up to snuff. If it ain't, the talky bits can be a bit much. For the first time, I found myself viewing a Tarantino movie and thinking "Get on with it, already!". I watched in dismay as Tarantino descended into self-parody, with absurd parabolic profanity-laced riffs that contributed nothing to the plot and went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't that the characters were badly-written, it was more that at times they seemed to be working to arrest the plot, rather than propel it forward. Of course, this being Tarantino, he did manage to redeem himself with virtuoso action set-pieces and some compelling character work from Kurt Russell, among others, so the movie is still very much worth seeing, especially the parts where Stuntman Mike is onscreen.

It becomes very clear when you watch the Grindhouse special features on DVD that Quentin is a man still very much enthused and besotted by film and the art of filmmaking. I trust that for his next work --supposedly the long-awaited Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino will recover his footing and deliver a war flick that will cement his place among the giants of contemporary cinema.

2008-02-20T21:55:00.000-05:00

Empty Suit in Need of Filling

Terrence Corcoran thinks November is a long time from now. Now that he is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, very soon Obama is going to begin to come under much heavier fire, and eventually his followers won't be able to just shrug it off and go right back to spewing their same old vague platitudes about "change" and "inspiring people" --the kind of thing I have really enjoyed, since it has usually led to steam shooting out of both Bill and Hillary's ears. The continue to look on, incredulously, as everything they toss at Obama just slides right off of the media-applied teflon coating. By the time Hillary's run ends, both Clintons should be certifiable.

Already, there are signs that the honeymoon is over. Barry Obama's wife is taking hits for saying that for the first time in her adult lifetime, she is proud of her country and for whining about the student loans that paid for the ivy-league educations that enable her and her hubby to make a nice fat six-figure salaries. Even some of his acolytes have been forced to come to terms with the fact that he is not Jesus. Check out erstwhile Obama fluffer Chris Matthews beat the piss out of Kirk Watson

Embarrassing. Chris Matthews did the Obama campaign a favour. He gave them a bit of a preview of what is rolling on down the road towards them as the Republicans coalesce around their man and load up the rocketlaunchers. They better hand out some meatier talking points or else prevent starry-eyed goofballs like this from championing their man in the media.

***

After all the craziness of the Kinsella/Levant Blogwar of 2008, which I'm not going to rehash here, it is great to read something so genuinely thought provoking on such an important topic like this piece from Andrew Potter. On a not-entirely-unrelated subject....

In Slate, Christopher Hitchens does one of his trademark imolations on another religious target, and on this occasion I can't help but agree with his disdain for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Because what the Archbishop said was a disgrace :

just look at how casually this sheep-faced English cleric throws away the work of centuries of civilization:

[A]n approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts"—I think that's a bit of a danger.

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don't yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough? For the women who are the principal prey of the sharia system, it is often only when they are shipped or flown to Britain that their true miseries begin. This modern disgrace is deepened and extended by a fatuous cleric who, presiding over an increasingly emaciated and schismatic and irrelevant church, nonetheless maintains that any faith is better than none at all.

Williams should really consider giving up his position as putative head of the Anglican Communion.