Here's the full list of National Review's Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs. Although they admit having to rip songs out of context, it's still pretty bad. Check out #25, "The Battle of Evermore." Obviously, it's about The Lord of the Rings. So it's about good versus evil. Okay. And thus a metaphor for the Cold War. Really? And Democrats and liberals were on the side of the commies during the Cold War. Wha?
I guess if you sing in Latin, quote Coleridge or think about small towns, it's conservative. And I thought Lord of the Rings was a fantasy.
A new dinosaur has been discovered and named after Hogwarts. Dracorex Hogwartsia, meaning Dragon King of Hogwarts, is apparently decended from the domehead-butters pachycephalosaurus - an ugly dinosaur with a fun name. Dracorex Hogwartsia has a flatter, spikier head and does look a little dragon-like. Not that it's all about looks ... (via boing boing)
See, conservatives can be so cool! So the National Review will be putting up its list of the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock-n-Roll songs. And any second now conservatives are going to get hip to Ray-bans. Anyway, check out Pandagon's commentary on some of these choices, including this take on song #1, The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again":
The fact that they fall for the “small government” line and continue to elect Republicans who drive up deficits and curtail civil liberties demonstrates that conservatives are in fact easy to fool over and over and over again. Anyone who still trusts Bush after he lied to get us in the Iraq war is demonstrating a depth of gullibility previous unmeasurable by any instruments known to man.
While I'm in a list mood, I'll link to this - The 50 Greatest Marvel Characters. It claims to be compiled from a bunch of people, but that's clearly not the case. This list is too idiosyncratic to have emerged from the minds of 200 nerds. Admittedly, I haven't picked up a comic in almost two decades, but Galactus at #4? Why? Storm doesn't make the list but the Black Panther does? Alright, maybe something's been going on in comics - Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man did something interesting? - but this looks like the work of one person.
In a way, that's good. The list is funnier. On the Punisher:
Frank Castle's solution to this fracas al fresco was to strike back. Not necessarily at the mobsters that killed his family, but at any mobsters he could find, and probably a few cheery pizzeria chefs, respected character actors and monkey-taunting plumbers along the way.
Still, this is one person's list. No 200 random comic readers would place Dr. Strange ahead of Daredevil, with all due respect to neilalien, from whom I've stolen this link. The funniest ranking is right at the top. The greatest Marvel creation, ahead of Spider-Man, is Dr. Doom. Look, anybody who puts clothing on over armor is not a good character. Does Darth Vader wear a fez? No. Iron Man ever wrap himself in a toga? No.
Too bad the finale was probably the worst show of the year. The president went from having duplicitious sex with the first lady to kidnapped and questioned under the threat of death to giving a speech to arrested in about 45 minutes! And that's inefficient compared to those Chinese! They learn Jack's alive and kidnap him right out from under a few hundred agents and have him tortured on a slow boat to China in time for the closing credits. Good thing you can taser the Secret Service, kidnap the President and threaten him with a gun and they'll let you go in about five minutes. I know, complaining about this is like complaining about sand at the beach, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Last night, it didn't.
So the New York Times has collected a list of the 25 best American novels of the past 25 years and gets pretty much what you'd expect. (Nice to see Richard Ford's Independence Day, but if Sebold's The Lovely Bones or Franzen'sThe Corrections aren't better than Winter's Tale, I'll eat all three books.
Meghan O'Rourke at Slate uses the list to examine our American bias towards "big" novels. And by "Americans," I mean "those who read." I've always had a penchant for a writer's "smaller" novels, such as Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 over V, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises over For Whom the Bell Tolls, even Heinlein's Starship Troopers over just about everything he wrote afterwards.
C-Dog Family Additions As many of you know, Mrs. C-Dog gave birth to twins on Saturday, May 20th. All are healthy and happy, at least when not turning bright red and howling.
It's been kind of a roller coaster so, if you're one of the many people to whom I've forgotten to send pictures, just drop me a line -- cdogzilla [at] yahoo [dot] com -- and I'll make sure to get some out to you as soon as possible. (If you're one of my flickr contacts, you can also see them here ... let me know if you'd like to be added as a contact as that is where most pictures will go as opposed to mass emails.)
If you're one of those who had a wager at your local parimutuel or just like stats: Blake Connor was born 9:53am, 6lbs, 19.5" with a little light reddish brown hair; Amelia Claire was born 9:55am, 6lbs 8ozs, 19.5" with slightly more, slightly darker hair.
Thanks for all the well wishes and support, we truly appreciate every bit of it!
Humanzee All I can think is that there must have been some Helena Bonham Carter-ish proto-chimps back when the proto-humans were broadening their horizons, so to speak.
I've always thought Terry O'Quinn as Locke does the best and most charismatic acting job on Lost, but now that I've seen Evangeline Lilly's singles/phone sex commercial, I'm divided. I mean, she can play Kate and a sexy single who is "going to do something for me." Do you think Locke could sell the fun and impulsiveness of phone sex?
Bear vs. Monkey I don't know why but this article made me think that it's time to update Rock-Paper-Scissors and do Bear-Monkey-Shark or something like that. Bear obviously beats Monkey. Monkey would beat Shark (sharks would be helpless in the jungle, totally unable to swing through the trees -- and I never heard of Shark Kung Fu). Bear vs. Shark is tricky though ... can anything beat Bear? Bears can swim and, if dolphins can beat sharks, I'm sure a bear would maul a shark. Maybe the game should be Bear-Monkey-Ditka?
"Troubadors are personae non gratae around here." As Bonedaddy alerted us a month or so back, Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, and Chloe from 24 were singing it up on the streets in tonight's Gilmore Girls. Thurston Moore looks goofier than ever.
10 Worst Blockbusters of All Time. Hard to argue when there's so much at rock bottom. I think Titanic is a decent movie and doesn't deserve to be on the list, but even deleting it doesn't make room for all the junk left out. Godzilla. Con Air. Jurassic Park II.
There's no such thing as "bypassing" the law! There is a fundamental problem with a President saying he gets to pick and choose which laws apply to him. We have a Supreme Court (who don't seem to understand their role any better than he does, but that's another sad story) that decides if laws are constititutional or not, the President doesn't get to do that. And, this should be fairly obvious to a sixth grader after the first week of social studies class, shouldn't need to get legal scholars to debate the issue.
The President is not above the law. We have a Constitution that was written expressly to prevent what this President is doing and yet still it's like it's an open question whether he has the powers he claims he has. He does not. Sadly, Congress and the Supreme Court have no respect the Constitution either, so here we are.
(I'm taking a page from Steinbrenner's book. When A-Rod commits costly errors, Big Stein bashes him in the press and refers to him as "the third basemen," as if his name is too distasteful to let pass his lips. That's how I feel about "this President," so ashamed I can't bring myself to utter his name.)
Billie Piper apparently would like the role and may have a good shot at it. I think she'd do well. And there is a precedent for a Time Lord regenerating in the form of someone else -- back when Romana regenerated during the 4th Doctor era.
No hurry to boot Tennant though, I hope. He's settling in as well as Eccleston did ... and those weren't easy footsteps to follow in.
It's been a bear getting a complete episode off usenet and YouTube has been a spotty resource as well. Keeping an eye out now to Sci-Fi will pick up the second season. They're doing a woeful job promoting the show and the ratings don't look that hot, despite the fact it's the best thing they've got going.
So a lot of people are having fun with our President's statement that his greatest moment as President was pulling a 7.5 pound perch out of his lake. There's just too much fun to be had here, but I'll start with the idea that Bush is, for once in his whiny, miserable life, telling the truth. The best moment of his presidency for him and us was when he was on his ranch, not doing a thing to hurt anybody except the fish.
Now there's a better than average chance that Bush was lying or at least mistaken about his fish - freshwater perch don't grow that big and if he meant bass, 7.5 pounds really isn't that impressive. Also, it's probably a stocked pond, so the whole manly-man pose is a little like Cheney shooting pen-raised quail. What Bush meant to say was, "I watched as Karl Rove and a RNC operative pulled a three pound perch out of my lake and nobody shot anyone in the face."
Anyway, I'd like to tie in it with my latest Boneyard. Even the simple stuff with Bush has to have lies and just when you think it can't get worse it does. So I'm guessing instead of Bush in a lake with a 7.5 pound perch it was Bush in a garage with a brick of herion. Just saying.
Of Egg Creams and Phosphates The egg cream is documented but not the vanilla phosphate? I suspect the ones we got at Shelly's Deli were just seltzer and vanilla syrup but it would be nice to confirm it.
Unsatisfied Looking over the list for the upcoming Replacements greatest hits CD"Don't You Know Who I Think I Was?", I have to say the best thing about it is the title and the two new songs. Not that the other songs are bad. They're all great songs and this is much better than All for Nothing, the previous greatest hits release that only used the major label stuff.
Still, I'm not sure who this is for. Is someone still trying to sell the Mats to new fans? Mats fans who don't get iTunes and will buy the thing for two new songs? Bottom line, the Mats deserve a box set. The B-sides from their entire career have never properly been released and I think a serious box set should contain two live CDs titled "Drunk" and "Almost Sober." If you're going to do a mere greatest hits thing, the 'Mats should fill up two CDs worth, anyway. (Echo and the Bunnymen have a box set...)
From Doctor #9 to Prisoner #6 Christopher Eccleston will play the McGoohan role in the new Prisoner series. He was brilliant as the Doctor. HD, if you weren't already looking forward to this, I think the Eccleston casting means it's safe to start now.
As far as the Doctor goes, Tennant has not dropped the ball. I've seen the first two episodes and a large chunk of "School Reunion" (which featured the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 [about to get his own animated series, btw] as well as Anthony Stewart Head in a decidedly un-Gilesish role) and I think the series is actually getting better!
Semi-RSS-able ... If you use Netvibes, My Yahoo, or some RSS feed aggregator or other, I've created a pseudo-feed using Ponyfish so you can see when TC gets updated. Unfortunately, I don't know a way get something other than the timestamp to show in the feed. I think to get it to work we might have to change our template to give posts titles.
