I've been pretty quiet about Clinton for months now because the whole spectacle is a little sad. I've found over the years that I'm only a Hillary fan when she's getting unfairly attacked, which has happened quite a bit over the course of her political life. I've always thought she was less than inspiring but often worth defending against the talk radio flying monkeys. I expected to vote for her, but I'm frankly relieved I won't have to.
So I don't post this picture out of malice, but because I'm mesmerized by it. Did a supporter really think "Until the Last Dog Dies" was a stirring campaign sign? There's a sad, mean fatalism here dressed up as cheer. I'm just going to assume it's a supporter and not someone playing a joke. Should someone sneak into Clinton rallies with a sign saying "Time to Kill the Last Dog"? I don't type this as just an animal-lover. Obviously, dog is a metaphor for campaign workers, money, Democratic voters and political capital. Shouldn't they be pledging some kind of success with these things rather than death.
"What do we want?"
"To be left frozen and starving on a lonely tundra!!"
"When do we want it?"
"As soon as the sun goes down and the winds pick up!!"
Difference between men's and women's basketball? Besides dunking (men) and passing (women)? The O.J. Mayo/USC scandal involves thousands of dollars, flat-screen TVs, airline tickets and stuff like that. (Pat Forde at ESPN even calls for USC to be stripped of a team for a year.)
Left Lost? Uh oh. So the producers of Lost have added an hour to each of the next two seasons, which will be the final seasons of the show. I'm glad about this. It suggests they know exactly the story they are telling. Lost can end as one of the greatest shows of all time if they stick the landing.
But in that same article, Damon Lindelof says, ""David Chase set a great example when he went off to Paris after 'The Sopranos' ending, which is great because all these people are going to be asking, 'What does it mean? What is it?' ... The fact that there's no one really around to answer that question, it forces people to come up with what they think it means. We can guarantee our show will not end with a cut to black, it will be more clear than that."
Better be. If Lost ends and I have to supply the answers, I may not watch a serialized drama ever again. Don't hold the Sopranos ending up as any kind of a positive model. Geez.
Cyber Nations I was looking around for a free, in-browser, text-based MMO that wouldn't take too much time and came across Cyber Nations. I tried Nexus Wars but didn't care for the interface and found it tedious. Not to mention the game is set up such that people can (and will) kill your character while you're signed off. Not sure about Cyber Nations yet, but I've got my first trade partnership and am fending off lots of Alliance invitations until I decide if I'm going to stick with it. If you're looking for a free game with a low time commitment and somebody you know already playing, check it out.
Gold-Titanium Alloy Man Does whatever a Gold-Titanium Alloy pig can ... d'oh!
I like Robert Downey Jr. I liked Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I think I've liked him in other things, so why is it I can only call to mind his supporting roles in US Marshalls (bleh) and True Believer? I keep wanting to say he was great in The Grifters and Grosse Pointe Blanke -- and then I remember that was John Cusack. Anyways, he was a great Tony Stark here: charming, sharp, and just this side of dissolute. (Keep in mind, I've never read an Iron Man comic in my life, so whether he's Comic Book Guy's Tony Stark is beyond my ken.) Iron Man delivers superhero/comic book fun that left me hoping the planned trilogy comes to pass -- with Favreau at the helm of all three. I liked Batman Begins, it was my last 'favorite comic book movie', but I'm really not looking forward to the sequel. I'm just not that goth, I guess. I like the bold primary colors comics more than the brooding I'm-so-dark-I'm-cool genre calculated to appeal to the NIN set. Those less dark superhero movies have been a mixed bag to this point: Superman Returns, Daredevil, Ang Lee's Hulk, Raimi's Spider-Man movies, the X-Men movies -- there's some wild inconsistency there. Hammy to stilted acting (Maguire the former, any X-(wo)man the latter, Affleck both), distractingly awful CGI, ludicrously overstuffed/semi-coherent stories, there's been something fundamentally wrong with all of them. While each of those movies had elements I liked, none of them have held up particularly well for me. The first two Spideys would be best of that lot. [Update: A day later, I find myself thinking, "How could those Afghan soldiers have been stupid enough to let Stark build the Iron Man 1.0 suit right under their noses when he was supposed to be building them missiles? Instead of watching on grainy video monitors wondering what he was up to ('Maybe he made some modifications?' one asks another) they could've asked him directly and made him show progress.) Of course, I wondered the same thing during the movie, but I stopped wondering as I got caught up in the tension of getting the suit built in time, etc. I think it would be hard to sit through that a second time.]
Downey wasn't the only actor doing fine work in this movie. Jeff "The Dude" Bridges was great as Downey's mentor and (obligatory spoiler alert, if needed) ultimate nemesis. I didn't even recognize him at first with that bald dome-full beard look. Are his meaty, arms dealing paws in this movie the same hands that balanced White Russians so delicately in The Big Lebowski? None of the performances here were so one-dimensionally bad that they distracted me from the flow of the movie. Can't say that about many (any?) other superhero movie.
I like too that Iron Man isn't as powerful as the Hulk and Superman. You don't find yourself wondering things like "Could he really pick up a whole continent like that? Wouldn't it break in half in the middle, or the weight of the whole continent focused where he's standing cause the part of the earth's crust he's standing on to sink?" And the suit has that Gundam/Mech appeal that satisfies the tech/gadget lover in me much more than Batman's token nod.
Stuck in the Middle Fittingly for a band that pissed away so much of its potential, the Replacements still haven't really gotten the posthumous treatment they deserve. Rhino will be reissuing all the 'Mats albums, the Twin/Tone era is already out and getting good reviews. Rhino generally does a good job with this sort of thing and it'll certainly be better than All for Nothing/Nothing for All the greatest hits/B-side collection that was limited to only the major label years.
Still, a slew of reissues, featuring some bonus tracks looks more like a money gouge for those of us who already have the original and some boots. I can't buy a CD for one song. I just don't work that way. Sooner or later they'll get a boxed set. Every moron with more than six albums gets a boxed set eventually, are you telling me the 'Mats won't?
I recently finished The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting, An Oral History by Minneapolis rocker and writer Jim Walsh. Good enough, I'd even say it's must ... for the fans. A really great history of the Replacements would probably be interesting even to people who didn't like indie music. The youth - Tommy Stinson really was 14 when they started - the booze, the expectations, pissing away those expectations, playing the greatest rock songs ever written, playing so poorly you get things thrown at you. All Over But the Shouting captures some of it, but it's not the history they deserve.
Apparently the story about the 'Mats sneaking back into Twin/Tone to toss their master tapes into the river is true. Manager Peter Jeperson had made other copies, making the reissues possible. Smart guy.
"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."
Don't you love how the White House pretends Bush is the victim here? Me too. Of course, the reason they weren't more specific and said mission accomplished for these sailors is that they didn't invent that excuse until months after the fact.
What a crummy article. The only fault I can see is that we all misinterpreted a perfectly clear banner and beat up a poor defenseless president. It also continues the myth that Bush flew the plane. I wonder what percentage of Americans believe that Bush was the pilot. I bet above 90.
If you'll forgive me for patting myself on the back, but that day five years ago I told anyone who would listen - not many - that Democrats were going to wind up using that image in political ads.
