Bobo the Monkey Tank Goes to Mongolia You might think it's a bedtime story I made up for the babies, but it's actual news! Which may end up being converted into a bedtime story for the babies.
Recently Watching: Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor and FitTv's Deadly Arts. The meerkats are fascinating to watch, like dogcatmonkeyroos, they scamper around and whatnot. I'd love to see a show like this (or The Monkey Prince) about the chimps in Gombe. Animal reality tv so much more interesting than human reality tv.
Deadly Arts follows Josette, a 40 something French (or French Canadian?) with a bad knee around the world as she studies a variety of martial arts with masters in their discipline. From karate to capoeira to kalaripayattu, no method of punching or kicking another person is left unexplored. Good stuff. But, for crying out loud, if she's just going to complain every week about how much her knee hurts, can't we get someone able to actually train to do the show? Where the meerkats are at home on Animal Planet, I think someone at ESPN's original entertainment wing should be taking note and trying to get a Donnie Yen or Mark Dacascos signed on to redo this one.
So a school removes one book from its summer reading list and is quickly hit with a list of 19 more. Go figure. The list of 19 books is interesting. I see Alice Sebold's Lucky starting to make appearances on "ban this book now" lists. That's just sad. E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime is just baffling. I loved it when I read it, but that was years ago and I have no memory of why it would be banned. Because it's a challenging and complex book that makes American history interesting? Because we should stand up and cheer if a high school student wanted to tackle it? Scan down the list of books "Parents Against Bad Books In Schools" wants to ban. If you're surprised by the number of ethnic authors this group wants to ban, you're probably not cynical enough.
More Misheard Lyrics So my four year old daughter kept singing "Don't call me dog wing!" Over and over. Any idea what song she was misquoting? (Some of you have a distinct advantage here, I think.)
What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference!, the title of Fred Kaplan's deconstruction piece in Slate, implies that there could be another kind coming from this President. Anyway, worth reading if you feel the need to brush away any cheerful feelings you may have. I disagree with his point at the end that Bush has no strategy for Iraq. He's going to continue mouthing bankrupt and failed platitudes until handing the problems (and, he surely hopes, the blame) off to his successor. It's not a good strategy and it's designed to help his legacy more than our country, our troops or the Mideast, but it's a strategy.
Following c-dog following Joss Whedon following James Gunn, I'm tossing my top 25 TV characters off the top of my head and in no order:
Gob Bluth The wannabe magician on a Segway. His lines were funny, but so were his looks, reactions and movements. He wasted nothing. Fox Mulder The most ineffective hero ever. Hardly ever won a fight, hardly ever got the bad guy/monster and so borderline insane his fake-out suicide was completely credible for his bosses at the FBI and the viewers. Also, Duchovny was likeable enough as Mulder he could start an episode shivering in a tub covered in someone else's blood with no memory of what happened and no one freaked out that this nut was our hero. Kramer At the risk of having an all crazy list ... Willow I get why c-dog picked Xander. If he hadn't, I probably would have. I like that Willow changed - the witchcraft, the lesbianism - while still being Willow. Good thing they never did anything stupid like try to make her evil and ended the series after season 5. Jack Bauer Possibly the luckiest and unluckiest person on Earth. Dwight (American Office) I'm not into ringtones, but if they would sell a ringtone of Steve Carrell's Michael pleading through the phone after burning his foot "Don't send Dwight! Don't send Dwight!" I'd buy it. ("I'm coming Michael!") The Daily Show correspondents I'm copping out, but they do all sort of play the same character. Jerky, self-centered, right-wing blowhard who, like the news, exasperate Jon Stewart. Steven Colbert, Steve Carrell, Rob Courdry, Samantha Bee, Ed Helms. That's a murderer's row of funny. No wonder they keep getting poached. Kermit the Frog Everyone missed this? Bugs Bunny What, they have to be people? Rocket Romano (ER) He was a one note character, but ER needed that note desperately. When every character, even the once hard-asses, had weepy centers every week, Romano added a spark of scorn to every scene. He blew into scenes and knocked everyone else back to their weepy storylines. Hawkeye Pierce A pre-slacker slacker with some genius and heart. Also funny, funny alcoholism. I never wanted to be the cops on CHiPs. I wanted to be Hawkeye Pierce. Homer Simpson I'm old enough to remember resenting the early shift in The Simpsons from Bart to Homer. I understand it now. Children aren't always funny. Homer almost always is, not that I've seen the show in five years. Tom Servo Other lists, I find, have too many people on them. Maggie O'Connell If you're just talking about the idea of the character, I could pick anyone from Northern Exposure. Chris in the Morning was my early favorite but they over used him so points off. Dr. Johnny Fever "I've killed a lot of old people in my day." Many people seem to think House is the first crank on TV. Dana Scully A lot of credit for this goes to Gillian Anderson. Scully was probably designed as little more than a foil to Mulder but Anderson, and eventually the writers, made her much more than that. Niles Crane At some point somebody said, "Okay, we need to surround Frasier with new people. How 'bout we make someone more uptight and arrogant and fussy than Frasier?" Probably didn't sound like a good idea at the time. Angela Chase (My So-Called Life) If I need to justify this to you, you never saw it. Bender Like Servo, only with drugs and violence. #6 Because he kind of is a number. Lt. Worf A lot of these characters on my list got worse as their shows aged. Worf got better. In the pilot, he's so dumb and violent he tries to shoot a phaser at the bridge's screen. In the end, he became the best way the show had to explore the idea of being an outsider in the often too cute federation. Alex P. Keaton A rightwing, overachieving kid and you didn't want to punch him? How'd they do that? President Logan What Alex P. Keaton turned into when he realized that rightwingery doesn't work and nobody really likes him. Since I've double dipped, I'll add Jim (American Office) Anybody else notice that his glances to the camera function like the laugh track they don't use? I'm just pointing that out because I don't want to get all sappy about the Jim and Pam thing. Locke More than anybody else on Lost, he embodies the whole confusing experience.
Just Because You Are A Character Doesn't Mean You Have Character Joss Whedon lists his Top 25 TV Characters. I'd like to give that a try. Here are mine (reserving the right to revise) in no particular order:
Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) - I just think about the character and start laughing. Kind of like how I can't control myself when I think about the bear jumping on John Candy in "The Great Outdoors".
Basil Fawlty (Fawlty Towers) - Right up there with Larry David as funniest character ever.
Archie Bunker(All in the Family) - Sublime.
Kramer (Seinfeld) - More funny.
George Costanza - (Seinfeld) - Shaking his hands, glasses off, pleading shrinkage. Falling on the floor, pants around his ankles.
Swearengen (Deadwood) - Badass. More than a little evil. Pure capitalist.
Jayne (Firefly) - Badass. Goofy, but a little evil.
Xander (Buffy) - Should I have started with two Whedon characters? So many are so good! I pick Veronica later over a strong supporting cast, so why Xander over Buffy? Maybe it's because when the show started to slide, Buffy became insufferable. And Xander was our 'in'. Willow got witchy, Cordy left, Giles was a watcher, Buffy was the Slayer, and Xander was pretty much just Xander all the time.
The 4th Doctor (Doctor Who) - Tom Baker, all teeth and curls, petulant and proud.
The 9th Doctor (Doctor Who) - Eccleston was brilliant for the role. Sad to see him go.
#6 (The Prisoner) - So aggrieved, even when he's trying to be charming and act like he's playing along, you can see the simmering hatred and rage.
Mrs. Peel (The Avengers) - I don't feel the need to justify this!
Lorelai (Gilmore Girls) - Hyper-realistically charming, all that dialogue to blast through, and yet still engaging.
Veronica Mars (Veronica Mars) - I can't believe Whedon picked Logan. The show could live without him, not without Veronica. I mean, c'mon, it's not just because it's named for her.
Jeremy (SportsNight) - Smart and principled, his struggles with Natalie make him just right (and wrong) enough to be sympathetic.
Bertie Wooster (Jeeves and Wooster) - Whedon picked Hugh Laurie for House, but as much as I like him there, I think comedy is so much harder -- and he aces Wooster.
Frank Pembleton (Homicide) - Nobody was better in the box than Frank. TV is littered with cop shows but Pembleton stands out as the detective's detective.
Jack McCoy (Law and Order) - An arrogant prick, dallying with ADA's, pig headed and sometimes wrong ... not a likeable person ... but the best character in the L&O franchise. Except for maybe ...
Bobby Goren (Law and Order: Criminal Intent) - Sherlock Holmes of the Major Case Squad.
Fox Mulder - (The X-Files) - I feel like it's too easy and obvious to take the lead character on some of these shows, but as much as I like Scully, Mulder was the show.
Simon Templar (The Saint) - Going way back to my youth here.
Jean Luc Picard (Star Trek: TNG) - Best of the captains.
Dwight - (The Office [US]) - I know I'm supposed to take Ricky Gervais's character on the original, but Dwight kills me and I've only seen a couple eps of the original series.
Bill McNeal - (NewsRadio) - Half-truths and gorilla dust.
Joel Fleischman (Northern Exposure) - I see him as Mac from "Local Hero" -- one of my all time favorite movies -- translated to TV. For all the references to inspiration for this show, I'm surprised LH is never mentioned.
Revisionism W now admits Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11. After he answers the question, "what did Iraq have to do with the attack on the World Trade Center?" by blurting out what he's known all along, "Nothing," you can actually see the neuron fire right after it comes out triggering him to start dissembling and resume the smoke and mirrors dance to get back on the "Freedom Agenda" message.
Everyone's glad we caught the vile bums, but this rant might make you question the plausibility of the terrorists' plot to combine chemicals on a plane, and the surrounding 'security theater' of throwing out shampoo. It must be Ned Lamont's fault somehow: the victory in Connecticut for a more rational response to terrorism probably motivated Bush to play the 'fear card' again, or it motivated Osama to greenlight the attack, since the 'war of civilizations' and Iraq war Bush is giving him is exactly what Osama wants and he doesn't want it to end.
The Axis of Liberalism WEEI's morning sports talk hosts, Dennis & Callahan, bash and malign liberals like Ann Coulter on amphetamines. I get a kick each morning out of how they blame every bad thing that happens in the world on liberals and Democrats. Case in point, a piece of the Big Dig falls and kills someone: Tip O'Neill's fault ... I'm not kidding.
When they start going off on liberals, the names they reel off as the worst of the worst are Ted Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Mike Dukakis and Jimmy Carter. A new name has cracked their Rogue's Gallery of Libs ... Ned Lamont. Somebody in England questions whether some wiretaps were legal, Kerry and Ned Lamont must be behind it!
Blogger Upgrading There's a new Blogger Beta out there. Looks like some of the new features may be appealing to the Cryptonauts -- it will feature, among other things, privacy settings. (via TechCrunch)
Caliendo on Letterman A couple impressions -- I could do without the Lazy Comedian's Template #3 "Anything Jack Nicholson Says is Funny" bit (in this case it's "Al Pacino Says Something Childish") -- but the Madden and W takes are chuckleworthy. [via Digg]
Looks like K-Free can still put it in the bucket just fine. Freeman remains one of my favorite Huskies, not a star, but an outstanding role-player who always seemed to play huge in the big games.
Wiki list of musicians with degrees. Everyone knows about the guy from Bad Religion, but did you know that the lead singer of Squirrel Bait has a Ph.D? The Angry Somoans never made it big so I guess it's good that Gregg Turner has that mathmatics Ph.D. to fall back on.
LaMonster! Voting for Clinton in '92 - and only in '92 - gave me a pretty good feeling, but voting for LaMont yesterday was my most satisfying vote ever. I did my usual push the lever down three hard times to make sure I really voted bit. The contrast between the two speeches last night was breathtaking. If Joe's plan was really to limp over to the right, crying about how the mean ol' lefties are beating up civility and decency, he might have been smarter to begin with a speech that wasn't mean and completely lacking in civility and decency. (If Joe fought Ali.) As a newly registered Democrat, it's insulting to have Joe's supporters tell me why I voted or that my vote doesn't count because it was a "one issue" vote. Mr. "Three way tied for third in New Hampshire" doesn't know how to lose.
Except in Florida. If he fought half as hard in 2000 as he's doing now, Gore might have won the recount.
Debtors Retreat Escape Metafilter post tracks dubious Lieberman camp allegation against Lamont camp and the snarky reply by the Lamonsters: pay your rates.
My Plymouth vacation had its share of strange sights. One of the oddest was a roadside sign I probably passed about twenty times. It read simple and boldly, "FREE THE MARINES". For a couple of days I thought this was simply an anti-war message. Free the marines from the bloody civil war surrounding them, free them from this rudderless war, free them from their pointless danger. Then I thought it might be the opposite, an echo of the idea many mistakenly have about Vietnam - that our soldiers weren't allowed to win. Free the marines from whatever rules are holding them back. Geneva Conventions, distinctions between civilian and enemy. Lack of an exit strategy, whatever. Bring on the Nukes!, if you will.
This sort of misplaced sentiment has historical precedent. When the My Lai massacre was revealed, many protested this unfair attack "on the military." Nixon even released William Calley for his appeal, meaning it didn't hurt him much to do so. This misguided attempt to support the military, if that's what "Free the Marines" is, is sad not just for the possible pro-murder and pro-rape sentiment behind it but also because it's an attack on the military. Let's remember who's bringing the charges here. It sounds like a "Shut up you stupid hippies!! I wish the news would stop telling me things that happened" shout, but really, "Free the Marines"? Who's holding the keys? The military.
And if it's an anti-war sign, it really should be more clear.
