Bernie Sanders, free speech advocate
Newly knighted Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has wasted little time in embarrassing his constituents by teaming up with noted kook Dennis Kucinich (among others) to attempt to dig up the corpse of the abhorrent fairness doctrine.
Nat Hentoff puts it well in an Op-Ed in the Washington Times
Bit-O-The-Week is in full working order.
**Thanks to the Status Joe for tireless pursuit of a way to do it**
Last summer, I took a course on sound mixing. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in getting into that field. The teacher is very well qualified and a really good guy. At the end of the course I was asked if I would allow my picture to be taken for use on the website for promotional purposes. I agreed. You can find that picture here.
Imagine my surprise when scrolling through the job listings on a certain high traffic industry job site, I find myself staring back at me (albeit intermittently) as the focus of a banner advertising said class.
I don’t know what to think about this
I even took a screenshot just incase it was a fluke thing. And to prove this isn’t something I did on Photoshop. But as of today the ad remains.
My question of course is…where is my money?
Someone from the Phile Hendrie fan site Sweet Feathery Jesus put together an animation to go along with one of Phil’s old bits using The Movies Game.
The bit features Phil doing the voices of Art Bell (of Coast to Coast AM fame,) General Johnson Jameson, and Adolf Hitler.
Preface
In an attempt to boost the sagging hit statistics of this blog, I decided to bring in a guest blogger with some real respect in the blog community. What a coup it was to convince TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year (2006) to take a brake from not posting on his blog over at The Red Lion. Dave and I met nearly two years ago on the set of a highly successful show which will remain classified. I credit much of the show’s success to Dave the person, his work ethic, and leadership ability…not to mention a fool proof formula and low grading curve as ratings go.
Dave and I caught “Children of Men” about two weeks ago at The Grove in Los Angeles. We went in with high hopes, certainly not with the intention of roasting the film after viewing it. That would be a waste of money. I save those types of films for Netflix or Blockbuster trips when I can struggle through the film in more digestible bits and pieces.
That said, after the lights came back up and people began to filter out of the theatre, Dave and I remained in our seats for a moment. We shared the same expression. What did we just see? It wasn’t an awful film by any means. In fact it was way above the average in a strictly technical sense. It had a great premise that lured us to the theatre. It had capable actors to carry out the script and direction.
I will only speak for myself here, but the movie left me with a sense of regret. Not a regret of wasted time or anything like that. More of a regret of an intriguing concept that missed its mark when put into practice. A sense of emptiness at a blown opportunity. Maybe even a slight feeling of betrayal or being tricked. Or maybe my stomach was still turning from a ridiculous and unnecessary shot of a prosthetic vagina.
Here are the thoughts of TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year (2006):
“Children Of Men”: A Review
It wasn’t a dull film. It wasn’t a shitty film. It was a somewhat silly story with a few pretty cool shots that make you wonder how the fuck did they do that?. Clive Owen does his usual tall, dark silent type – which he does very well, certainly better than Jim Carrey. Michael Caine does his goofball character, not my favorite of his. The film isn’t completely bland, but it is the kind of film that leaves you thinking what a shame it is that all those people spent so much of their lives, energy, time and money making a movie that is pretty much forgotten before it’s released.
That’s the film in general.
Now, I like to read into the politics of any film. And the politics in “Children Of Men” are written in big, bold capital letters on that kind of paper they use in kindergarten with the lines that are far apart and the dotted line down the middle of each row so the kids know how high their lower case letters should be.
Every film is a reflection of it’s time in a mirror held and purposely positioned by the director. And none more so than a sci-fi film. To director Alfonso Cuaron’s credit, he does paint the tree hugging, granola crunching hippie activists as self-centered opportunists who are only concerned with furthering their own agenda no matter what the cost. But for the most part, it is the right-wing totalitarian government that is the villain in this film. It is a bleak world that Cuaron projects from today’s current events.
The War On Terrorism is to blame for chaos in the world, for nuclear explosions in New York and Washington D.C, for debilitating terror attacks (self defense retaliation against the War On Terror) around the globe. It was the War On Terrorism (which we all know was started by George W. Bush) that has led to American storm troopers persecuting all Muslims for the actions of a few by invading Seattle area mosques which left Muslims in the northwest no choice but to lay siege to the city. And this is all before the film even really begins.
Once the film is up and running, we find ourselves in a world that is so depleted of natural resources that London’s famous black cabs have been replaced by motor-scooter rickshaws and traffic is virtually nonexistent. The world has become so polluted that the skies are thick with gray smoke from all the coal burning factories that now dot the countryside everywhere you look. And since they never explain the entire premise for the whole film that all women are infertile, one has to draw their own conclusion, which based on the information Cuaron provides, appears to be due to an overly polluted world which is a direct result of George W.. Bush not signing the Kyoto Treaty upon taking office in 2001 (never mind that since the Kyoto Treaty is a “treaty”, it has to be ratified by Congress before the President can sign it and that President Clinton and Vice President Al “Global Warming Fearmonger” Gore sat on the treaty for 3 years after it’s worldwide adoption in 1997).
Maybe Cuaron never explains the premise – why all the worlds’ women (save one) are infertile – because that’s not really the point of the movie. No, the point of the movie is to illustrate the evils and horrors of immigration policies. When you have immigration policies, then certain people are deemed “illegal” immigrants. And classifying any immigrants as “illegal” is on par with Nazis cattle-training Jews, gypsies and homosexuals to gas chambers.
Though the film is set in the UK, it is clearly a comment on US immigration policies as there are explicit scenes of poor, innocent illegal immigrants kneeling in line, surrounded by cages with black hoods being pulled over their heads. I imagine instead of wasting time drawing the storyboards for this particular scene, Cuaron merely taped together a few photographs released from Gitmo of poor, innocent Al Qaeda terrorists chained and on their knees.
The morally wrong persecution of illegal immigrants in Cuaron’s near future becomes so pervasive that cages full of predominately Eastern Block, skeletal, crying, old women immigrants line the city streets and train platforms as way stations on the journey to a small coastal city that has been walled in and fashioned into a neo-concentration camp, the depiction of which again makes one think of Gitmo upon first arrival. But once inside the camp, it is clear the inmates run the asylum. Chaos reigns and misery abounds. And instead of thinking how awful it is that all those people are locked up, one can’t help thinking thank god they are locked up or else that same chaos and crime would rule on the city streets and civilization would be overrun.
Even Clive Owen can barely stand to watch
The most disturbing scene of all is what appears to be a Hamas funeral. Our heroes gently make their way through the marching, angrily shouting, AK-47-toting crowd. My impression was that Cuaron wanted to demonstrate how harmless the marchers were – they pay no attention to the heroes – but at no point in the whole film do you feel they are in more danger than at that moment. Surely, the scene is meant as a comment on our biases against gun-toting, crazed terrorists with hearts of gold. Well, then color me biased. But the sorry reality is that outside of film fantasyland, our two heroes likely would have been shot dead if they had come upon that mob anywhere outside the director’s viewfinder.
In the climax, the right-wing totalitarian government’s henchmen (aka, the army) have been called in to quell the democratic free expression of opinion that is random killing by thugs – the aforementioned smelly hippies. The army proceeds to blow up an apartment building full of innocent bystanders in an orgy of collateral damage all in an attempt to kill a couple of crunchies. Our heroes make it out of the building alive with the baby in tow – oh, spoiler alert: she has the baby – and they saunter into what is the most preciously disgusting scene in the entire film as the cacophony of death is brought to a deafening halt by the simple, dear sound of the baby crying. And for just a moment, there is peace in the world. And then they go back to blasting everyone away.
Sure. All war will go away if we just think of our children and strive to provide a better future for them. Actually, I think Cuaron is onto something: we can bring about world peace by sending babies into all the war zones and making them cry, perhaps with a little pinch or something, and all the soldiers, insurgents, terrorists and war reporters will stop what they’re doing so they can ga-ga-goo-goo the little tyke. I’m sure that will work as well as Yoko Ono’s suggestion that we invite terrorists to join us in “creating peace unity and light” in order to get them to stop killing us.
This is all a long way around to say that this is a film about agendas and about people who have agendas. And how an innocent pregnant girl is pulled in many different directions by opposing groups who want to use her unborn baby as a media tool to shed light on their cause for the express purpose of garnering mass support for said cause regardless of the wishes and well being of the mother and the health and welfare of the unborn child. All in all, I liked this film better as “Citizen Ruth”.
Thanks for the time Dave. I was just joking about your blog, you’ve posted three entries today while also submitting a 1,285 word movie review. Great work!
Good news for all of you horror fans. Michael Jackson has re-upped with Lions Gate Films to reprise his roll as the doll on the tricycle in Saw 4. I know I’ll be there opening night!
Jackson has thrilled millions as tricycle boy in three installments of the Saw franchise
** A Jay Santos “tip of the cap” to Eliza for the wonderful blog idea! **
Saturday night, my roommate and I made our way down to San Diego with the hopes of scalping a pair of tickets to the Patriots/Chargers game in the divisional round of the playoffs. I’ve always been a big Patriots fan, but in all the sporting events I’ve attended, and there have been many, I never had the chance to attend a pro football game. I’d been to several college games, and they were always exceptional.
Of course I wanted the Patriots to win, but the desire to see them advance to the next round was magnified by the Colts win the previous day. I’ve passionately rooted against Peyton Manning since he was in college, and I don’t want to ever see him in the Super Bowl, and the more times he can be foiled by the Patriots in particular makes it even more enjoyable.
Ellis Hobbs enjoys the ending
We arrived at Qualcomm Stadium around 10:30 am for a 1:30 pm start time. After exiting the trolley we were informed that we could not escape the station without a ticket for the game. That was something we did not have. We were trapped! Forced to take the trolley back the way we came one stop and walk toward the stadium in order to access the street, we encountered two large gathering groups of ticket scalpers. Exactly what we were looking for!
Going in, our goal was to obtain two tickets together at a maximum price of $300 total. Our planned strategy was to haggle with these deviants until approximately game time when prices should drop sharply when desperation sets in for the scalper to get at least something as opposed to nothing. Alex was to play good cop and I was to play bad cop. We also toyed with me being a lone ticket buyer and Alex posing as another scalper. The scheme was for me to talk a scalper down as far as I possibly could, then, just as I am ready to relent and buy at his price, Alex swoops in and undercuts him, forcing the scalper to drop his price or lose the sale. A cleaver plot indeed.
Once we were absorbed into scalper town the playbook went out the window. After talking to several scalpers we found a gentleman who offered us two seats right at our target price. We were able to talk him down to $290 for both seats and ended up taking the deal 2 1/2 hours before game time. Not at all what we planned, but we felt fortunate to get what we wanted below how much we were willing to pay and decided not to risk the scalper finding someone else who wanted the tickets and having the price raised or having the tickets sold. Yes, had we stuck it out we might have saved some money, but we decided not to push it.
There was the matter of the tickets and their questionable appearance, something I was very concerned about. The tickets were halfway torn, looked like they were printed on someone’s home computer, and only identified the game as “2006-07 Playoff Game” instead of the Divisional Championship Round. It also included the mysterious date of 02-Jan-07 while the game was on the 14th. The scalper’s explanations were not as strong as we would have liked and it certainly game us pause, but we took a shot anyway.
One of the suspicious tickets
With two tickets (allegedly) in hand we braved the anti-Patriot parking lot to meet up with Alex’s brother Brian to tailgate for a while. There were plenty of Pats fans on the trolley and in the parking lot, and the anti-Patriot teasing was mostly in good fun.
We didn’t spend much time in the parking lot, the suspense of knowing exactly where we stood in regards to the validity of our tickets was to much to bear by noon. We tried to find out at the ticket office but they informed us the only way to know is to have our tickets scanned, at which time we must enter the stadium and there is no re-entry. We decided to go inside, where we would be able to watch the ending of the Bears/Seahawks game on the big screen above the field.
We waited in line…hearts pounding…did we just get screwed out of $300? We get to the front of the line, trained to hear the beep-boop of the scanner reading the barcode on the tickets. The usher puts the scanner to Alex’s ticket. Nothing. No beep-boop. She tried again. Not a peep. Again? Nothing. We’ve been had! What a downer. “Don’t worry,” the usher says “sometimes it doesn’t read it right” she assures us. Beep-boop. He’s in! Beep-boop. I’m in!
We get to our seats and they are better than we thought. What a beautiful day. I won’t spend time recapping the game. You can find that here. But I will say we both got sunburned on a day where the morning felt like a January morning in Vermont, certainly not one in San Diego. My lips are still burned and chapped. The stadium stopped playing the other playoff game while in overtime in order to supply us with real time footage of LaDainian Tomlinson warming up for a half hour straight. We were unable to access the score on our phones, which were only good for text messaging at our height.
The game was excellent and the ribbing between Charger fans and Patriot fans was all in the right spirit, that is, until the Patriots came from behind and won in spectacular fashion, as is their signature. After that, all bets were off.
We made our way out of the stadium, long gone was the feeling of excitement and the smell of bratwursts being cooked in the backs of SUVs. Now walking in the lot felt much like I imagine side streets in Baghdad to be. Large pockets of Charger fans gathered throughout, blaring gangster rap and saying things to Patriot fans along the lines of “just give us a reason to hurt you.” We saw several fights, nearly all picked by sorrow filled San Diegans.
As we got further from the stadium the police presence dissipated and the packs of Charger fans ruled the roost, looking for isolated New England fans wandering in an area unfamiliar to them. Patriot fans traveled in large groups, employing the safety in numbers rule.
Alex and I were lucky enough to be incognito. I wore a Patriots beanie but it did not include names or logos and was pretty much ambiguous. We were not bothered, but the feeling of hostility was palpable. I received a text from a buddy I used to work with who was also at the game in Patriots gear. He confirmed that the feeling of hostility was not our imagination.
In the end we made it out alive, having experienced a great game on a near perfect day. I will leave you with a pre-game prediction from roid-raged Chargers linebacker and chronic lip licker Shawne Merriman for you to laugh at.
** Much thanks to Eliza and Joe for letting me stay not one but two nights in their wonderful apartment in Pacific Beach **
** UPDATED **
A whole lot of people pulling their feet out of their pie holes:
And Tom Brady deserves equal time:
I’m not a CSI fan. I’m not a hater either. The show just never seemed to interest me enough to tune in. I like William Petersen, so that’s not it. I like cop shows like Homicide and Law and Order, so that’s out. Maybe its just the part of me that resists enjoying popular things (which in the end only causes me to show up late to the party so to speak.)
Anyway, I finally saw an episode of CSI while on a cross country flight back home…and…I hated it. It was awful. The acting was overdone with facial expressions that were painfully rehearsed; the lighting in a normal police office was incredibly uneven and unmotivated. Five characters held a conversation; each of them had half of their face fall into complete shadow to the point where you couldn’t even see their eyes (and not even on the same side!) The camera movements were choppy, over thought, and unnecessary.
The cast of CSI
I suppose you think I’m a critical jerk. Why in the world would I focus on the details and not the story? Well, because I kept my earphones plugged into my ipod and not the audio of the show. It is absolutely amazing how the mirage of a created world falls apart when you strip away a layer of its facade.
Television and movies rely on several different layers of deception to make you believe what you are watching is real (or could be.) Remove one layer (e.g. picture, actors) and you usually don’t have a show. The only thing you can remove and still have something of any kind of substance is the audio. Watch a show or movie (not reality) on mute. You will find the editing more apparent, the acting unbelievable, the camera movements distracting, and the lighting sometimes questionable.
When all factors are intact, they work in concert to create a world that you can be lost in, but when you mess with that mix, a larger burden falls on the others, and they crumble.
I’m dying to know what I would have thought of that particular CSI episode had I watched it as a normal viewer. Would I have loved it? Maybe. But I bet that show sucks.
I had been several years since I had knowingly turned the channel to MTV, let alone watch an episode of ”The Real World.” All good things come to an end though, and I had an “opportunity” to check up on what our old friends on the channel famous for its musical garbage programming, when I turned on the TV hours after my sister turned it off. And I do mean old friends, because if you have watched more than one season, you begin to suspect you are watching the same people every season.
The current cast of “The Real World.” Anybody look familiar?
It wasn’t always this way, but the casting is now down to a science, the show fill quotas for worn-out stereotypes passing as people. It is as if the candidates are interviewed until they find someone who allows them to check every box on their list. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I thought you might be comforted that the same conversations are happening now that were happening five years ago and beyond.
I guess the more things stay the same…the more they stay the same.
I’m sick of guitar players. I’m sick of tuning into Letterman around 12:20 am and seeing some nearly anonymous string strummer making faces into the camera during their solo, looking like they have electrodes hooked up to their cheeks and chin while someone is zapping away liberally.
Please believe me, if you are a guitarist for a band by the name of “Kelly Osbourne” you have zero right to scrunch your face like your are pulling off some amazing Jimi Hendrix riff or cleaning out your colon. If you play guitar for Ashlee Simpson, please act accordingly.
G.E. Smith was the worlds biggest mugger while on SNL
** Blog topic requested by The Status Joe during one such performance **
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You Know What I’m Saying?
