I can't decide: It's "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World":
A fine actor and, if "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" is to be believed, an out-of-control son of a bitch, at least in his drugged-out youth. But he will be missed. What comes to mind first- "Easy Rider"? "Blue Velvet"? "Apocalypse Now"? "Hoosier"? "Speed"? The first season of "24"?
Adam Serwer, on Andrew McCarthy's nonsense-filled new book:
In the deranged, spittle-flecked parallel universe of Andy McCarthy, the fact that there are a few lawyers working in the Justice Department who once advocated for due process for people accused of terrorism is proof that the Obama administration is actively working to aid al-Qaeda. Aside from being detached from reality, McCarthy's thesis is ripe with all the usual right-wing contradictions: Liberals are alternately unstoppable and vicious, but also weak and frightened. They are socially permissive but can't wait for Osama bin Laden to come in and force a burka onto every woman in sight. Liberals seek a "transformation" of the existing constitutional order, while it is McCarthy who dreams of a world where any Muslim accused of terrorism can be locked away forever and waterboarded to the point of insanity without ever seeing a lawyer or the inside of a courtroom.Once a celebrated prosecutor, McCarthy has been reduced to a boiling stew of the worst kinds of right-wing paranoia, Bircherism, McCarthyism, and Birtherism all churned together with a teeth-chattering Islamophobia. But it's important to understand that it's not the terrorists who are the real focus of McCarthy's wrath; it's anyone who disagrees that the executive branch should have limitless, unchecked power to fight Islamist terrorism. These people, to McCarthy, are indistinguishable from someone who steps onto a plane with a bomb in their shoes.
ALOTT5MA looks at the different media interpretations of the great Gary Coleman's catchphrase. Alan Sepinwall's obituary is well worth reading, by the way.
I really, really love the Blackhawks' goal-scoring music, "Chelsea Dagger" by the Fratellis. It's also known for being used in an Amstel Light commercial, and is also the goal-scoring music for dozens of soccer teams throughout the world, including (of course) Chelsea itself.
In "Avenue Q," that is. He'll stop being in the show when the Internet stops being for porn, I'm guessing.
But we all knew that, didn't we?
One of the favorite stars of my childhood has passed away. Rest in peace, Gary.
An Angelo Cataldi caller today blamed the Phillies' recent swoon- they've been shut out four of their last five games- to the fans' attention being focused on the Flyers instead of them. Even though the last three losses were on the road, the entire in-studio team agreed with this utterly nonsensical analysis.
I look at the latest gadget-related malfeasance in the newest Week in Electronics Crime.
Listen to The Hold Steady on XPN's World Cafe Live a few weeks ago. I would've gone, had I not been on a plane to Minnesota at the time, although on that trip I totally forgot to call up Holly the Hoodrat.
Hope to finally see them in October.
They let Yankee fans into Target Field, and this is what happens:
Paul Waldman, making a good point about how Obama's opponents see the president they wish he was:
Pick a contentious issue, and there's an imagined Obama being fashioned. For example, in 2008, gun advocates were told that if the senator from Illinois were elected president, he would immediately send out his jackbooted bureaucratic thugs to begin confiscating weaponry. Upon his inauguration, sales of guns and ammunition soared, as Second Amendment fans stocked up for the inevitable bans. Yet nothing happened... Ascribing the most nefarious of motives to our political opponents is standard fare, of course. But basing your political arguments not on what those opponents have done or have proposed to do but on what they "would" do, frees you from the need to keep a hold on even the slightest tether to reality. Who needs evidence of the other side's evil, when you can just imagine what lies in their hearts?"
NYT's Tony Scott on the film:
Yes, it’s supposed to be fun. And over the years audiences have had the kind of fun that comes from easy immersion in someone else’s career, someone else’s sex life, someone else’s clothes. But “Sex and the City 2” is about someone else’s boredom, someone else’s vacation and ultimately someone else’s desire to exploit that vicarious pleasure for profit. Which isn’t much fun at all.
David Edelstein on "Sex 2":
The most depressing thing about Sex and the City 2 is that it seems to justify every nasty thing said and written about the series and first feature film... The film is an epic eyesore. It’s as if they set out to make a movie that said, “You’re right! We are hideous!Let's just say he's right.
Alonso Duralde reviews the "Lost" finale, despite never having seen the show before. Pretty funny stuff, especially since he refers to Sawyer as "Boomhauer" and Richard Alpert as "Batmanuel."
Gregg Easterbrook tees off on Jack and Co.:
Through the course of the eight-year series, the United States had five presidents, and the fifth was about to announce her resignation as the series ended. Through the eight years depicted, a nuclear bomb went off near Los Angeles, a former president was murdered by the CIA, Air Force One was shot down, martial law was declared, U.S. nuclear missile launch codes were stolen, Russian nuclear missile launch codes were stolen, the Secretary of Defense was kidnapped and government computers were taken over. Jack Bauer solved all these problems (except the Los Angeles explosion) single-handedly, always by running from place to place, shouting at everyone he met, then shooting people using one of those special guns that never runs out of bullets, while thousands of rounds fired back at him at close range missed their target. Bauer also single-handedly foiled a nerve gas attack on diplomats, a radioactive dirty-bomb attack on New York, five other nuclear bomb attacks on U.S. cities, and an attempt to cause several U.S. nuclear power plants to melt down. This veered well beyond nonsense, even given Jack's amazing ability to move across town -- or across country -- during commercials. Another sci-fi aspect: The countless conspirators of "24" endlessly discuss their conspiracies, in specific language, over cell phones!
Lindy West obliterates "Sex and the City" in one of the funniest reviews I've ever read. If nothing else, the movie will lead to some very fun negative reviews I'm sure.
SPOILERS FOR ALL
- "Lost" Opinion seems to be mixed, but I loved it. It was exciting, moving, and gave satisfying ends to most of the characters. Loved the Jack/Locke fight, and the various romantic reunions too.
The flash-sideways explanation would've sounded silly if someone had described it to me outside the show, but the way it was dropped in made sense. And I guessed the final shot the first time I saw the bamboo, although I'm guessing some fans guessed in Season 2 or something.
As I've said before, I didn't watch "Lost" until this year, when I decided to watch the last season, and since i've become an addict, devouring old episodes on Hulu as fast as I can. Not watching all along is probably my top pop culture regret of the decade. (Although, going to see "Sex and the CIty 2" tomorrow night may prove even more regrettable.)
- "Law & Order" The night after "Lost" ended with a two-hour recap, a two-and-a-half-hour finale, and an hourlong Jimmy KImmel wrapup= the culmination of a planned three-year wind-down- "Law & Order" ended its two-decade run with no clip show, no special episode, and not even any acknowledgement that it was the finale.
It was a pretty nondescript episode, save for the celebration at the end and a really great Jack McCoy-yelling-at--the-teachers-union-boss moment that had to have been the New York Post's favorite L&O moment ever.
No, "Law & Order" isn't going anywhere, but I'm still going to miss it.
- "24" Jack, of course, should have died, and would have were it not for the need to extend the franchise with a movie. And the last moments of the episode, with the Jack/Chloe phone call, were actually quite affecting. But the biggest problem with "24"'s final season was that its last third made no sense at all. There was no terror threat, and the plot was a battle between Jack and the president, both of whom were wrong (Taylor lied, imprisoned journalists and committed all sorts of other misdeeds to secure a peace treaty, while Jack killed a couple dozen innocent people in order to scuttle it. And, he stole a helicopter.)
Reed Diamond, meanwhile, gets the distinction of being shot dead in both the first episode of "The Shield" and the last episode of "24." He did manage to last three seasons on "Homicide" and didn't die at all.
- "How I Met Your Mother." No, not the series finale. But it might be time to start thinking about this show's endgame. Despite a few inspired half hours, this was the show's weakest season by far, and not only because it made so little progress on the mother-finding front.
The best things about the show have always been the characters, the storytelling and the elaborate continuity, and it became clear this year that the creators are running out of ideas for all three.
News Item: Vikings' Jared Allen, pre-wedding, shaves off mullet
It'll grow back in time for the season, right? I find that question much more compelling than either Starcaps or Brett Favre.
The Richard Blumenthal stuff is pretty abominable- why would anyone lie repeatedly about having gone to Vietnam and not expect people to notice?- but now that Rob Simmons has dropped out of the race it looks like the GOP candidate will be... Linda McMahon?
This is just shocking to me- aside from all the questionable content stuff over the years, World Wrestling Entertainment is one of the shadier companies in the country- have you noticed that some wrestler from the '80s seems to die just about every other week? That WWE - which has always resisted unionization- spits out wrestlers and leaves them with no money, no health coverage and painkiller addictions? I've got a feeling this will come up in the fall campaign.
If you did a version of that for "Law & Order," it couldn't be more than ten seconds long.
Kenny G bashing has sort of become a neglected field in recent years, but Pat Metheny revives it with this interview:
Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.I hadn't even thought of Kenny G in about 15 years, but that was worth the wait. I also love the first comment to the song on YouTube:This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird... when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.
"what the fuck is this shite? kenny g is a musical terrorist."
I really think Cuse and Lindelof should sue these people:
I review the pretty awful Russell Crowe "Robin Hood" on Philly.com.
Garfunkel and Oates:
I guess now I'm in good company- I've been dissed online by Buzz Bissinger. After he tweeted that "Werth not worth nearly what he thinks. Plus close to 40," I wrote:
@buzzbissinger "Close to 40"? Werth is 31 years old, bud.Buzz replied:
@StephenSilver I was joking douche juice. He will want big fat four year deal. Rather have Oswalt right now. Trade him.Now, I happen to agree that the Phils would be ill-advised to lock up Werth, as the team needs to start getting younger and locking up another past-30 slugger leads them towards the day when everyone on the team gets old at once. But what will they trade him for? Roy Oswalt? You'd think Houston would want prospects back for him.
Also, "douche juice"?
The latest Noah blog post- including his bris last Sunday- is online here.
A pretty awesome World Cup ad from Nike, complete with flash-forwards:
Write The Future from Nalden on Vimeo.
Pretty eventful Tuesday night this week, huh? All sorts of stuff going on all at once in the worlds of sports, politics and TV. Let's take them one by one:
- Election. Anti-incumbency fever! A repudiation of Obama! A sign of Republican weakness! I guess everyone's going to interpret last week's results to their preconceived notions. I voted for Joe Sestak and I'm glad he defeated Specter, and I'm hopeful that he can take down Club For Growth cultist Pat Toomey in November. I also voted for winning gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato. I guess the question is, what does Specter do now? Hopefully this also means the end of his sports radio-calling career.
- NBA Draft Lottery. The Timberwolves lose again, continuing their unblemished record of never, ever getting the #1 pick or moving up in the lottery. They'll get a good player, sure, but I don't quite see DaMarcus Cousins or Derek Favors leading a franchise resurgence- and I'm sure we won't be seeing Ricky Rubio either. And Cole Aldrich just has "Future Timberwolf" written all over him- if the Wolves are thinking "the Twins have a hometown guy, so we should take one too," I foresee a problem.
As for the Sixers, getting the #2 pick, provided they take Evan Turner, could mean the beginning of the team's return to relevance in Philly, because right now, NO ONE cares about them.
- Hockey playoffs. Three weeks ago, my friends and I were debating who the Flyers would try in goal next year, seemingly forgetting they were still alive in the playoffs and even leading their first round playoff series at the time. Now, the team has pulled an '04 Red Sox and come back from a 3-0 deficit to beat Boston, and they've used consecutive shutouts to take a 2-0 lead against Montreal. No, I still don't really care about hockey, but I'm edging dangerously close to the bandwagon.
- "Lost." I was in the minority in liking the Jacob/Man in Black episode, and not only because it cast C.J. from "The West Wing" as the godmother of the universe. But this week's was even better, and I can't wait for the finale. And yes, at some point I'll get around to watching seasons 1-5.
- "Glee." Yes, I know how flawed this show is but I love it anyway, and last night's Joss Whedon-directed effort, guest-starring Neil Patrick Harris, was one of its best hours. I like the culture we're in now, where a star with a great singing voice like NPH can find plenty of outlets for using it- "Glee," SNL, awards shows, the occasional Broadway show- without having to hide it. And duh (SPOILER) of course Idina Menzel turned out to be Lea Michele's mother. Their resemblance is such that they're practically the same person.
A pointless but hilarious list.
MC Chris, with a 20th anniversary rap tribute to David Lynch's masterpiece:
It's the best thing MC Chris has done since this.
Last Friday I had the chance to visit my third different ballpark of the season- and I haven't yet been to a Phillies game- as my dad and I watched the Twins play the Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. We saw the Twins lose to the Yanks 8-4 after Ron Gardenhire inexplicably walked Mark Teixiera to face Alex Rodriguez, who promptly hit a grand slam.
The ballpark, however, was a huge improvement over its predecessor. Just as the old Yankee Stadium was renovated in the '70s to make it look more like a '70s park (i.e., round, concrete-dominated, and awful), it has been reconstructed in the '00s to make it look more like the parks of the current age, a much more successful transition.
The concourses are wider, the food better, and the sight lines improved. Gone, also are that weird black hole in centerfield, as well as the super-steep upper deck steps that made me think I was going to fall to my death every time I went up there.
And not only that, I couldn't believe how nice the fans were. Sure, a few douchebags got into the "Twins suck!" thing. But about ten different came up to us and said some variation on "you guys have a pretty good ballclub! Too bad we couldn't get Mauer." My only complaint? They did the wave. Seriously. I thought it was based from East Coast ballparks.
The Twins lost Saturday too, bringing us to Sunday, the day of my son Noah's bris. The Yankees were leading in the eighth but the Twins had runners on, but we had to turn the TV off, because it was time for the bris to start. Once it was over I got the word that the Twins had hit a grand slam off Mariano Rivera, and went on to win the game, their first victory at Yankee Stadium in two years.
I don't know whether to attribute these events to baseball, to God, or to the Baseball Gods, but no question, a great miracle happened there.
Ladies and gentlemen, Pat Buchanan!
Of course, Pat obviously thought there were too many Jews on the Supreme Court back when there was just one. I for one think there are too many neo-fascist, racist, anti-Semitic, Nazi-defending hatemongering demogogues working as commentators on MSNBC.
What this vile, hateful man is still doing with a mainstream career- on the liberal network, no less- remains a huge mystery- what does he have to do to get fired, order a pogrom on live TV?
And I'm all for this petition by the National Jewish Democratic Council for the Creators Syndicate to drop Buchanan's column.
I've gotta say- you have to admire the chutzpah of the "24" producers, in turning their hero, Jack Bauer, into a serial killer in the show's final episodes. He's always been a badass, I get that, and cutting the sim card out of that guy's stomach was sort of cool. But on last night's episode, he casually assassinated three or four Secret Service agents, among the dozen or two other people he's wiped out in the last few hours. Not so heroic of him, right?
Not to mention, between "Lost," "24," and "Law & Order," being a long-running series with a protagonist named "Jack" has just been a death knell this year.
News Item: NBC cancels "Law & Order"
No, since the hundreds of re-runs are shown around the clock on numerous cable channels, it doesn't really matter than no more original episodes will be produced (or will they?) I have, however, always enjoyed the show and even watched most first-run episodes on NBC.
I always loved spotting the ripped-from-the-headlines cases or the reverse, reading about an old murder case and realizing "hey, I remember the 'Law & Order' based on it!" So what if there are more murders in Manhattan each year on the show than in real life, all of them investigated by the same two detectives and prosecuted by the same two district attorneys?*
There's something comforting about the show's formula, which always stayed the same regardless of casting changes. And yes, the original was always worlds better than the generic "Criminal Intent" or the nightmare-inducing SVU, also known as "The Rape Show."
*This isn't nearly as disconcerting as the also-canceled "Cold Case." How many decades-old murders do you think get solved in Philadelphia each year? One? Two? On that show it's every episode.
Obama is a complex symbol, more than any of our previous presidents. The fact that he's black counts for a lot. It signifies, I think, to a lot of people around the world that America really is the democratic place it claims to be. Every last person around the world who knows the slightest thing about politics knows that the worst thing about America has always been its racism against blacks... So the fact that America has elected a black president and the fact that the black president is attractive and appealing communicates a message, in Reagan-like fashion, in a way that's not even conveyed necessarily through words. Reagan was said to be a master of the photo op, but Obama is a walking photo op. If he just stands there, he's a photo op. It's as if he has beautified the American flag.*I'm wondering how anyone, in 2010, can still talk about "Bush Derangement Syndrome." That was just an excuse the right used to deflect any and all anti-Bush criticism. A lot of it, we know now, turned out to be valid.
Alicublog on the freakout over Muslim Miss USA:
These people are just mad they're not old enough to have protested Jackie Robinson signing with the Dodgers.
News Item: Ronnie James Dio dead at 67
Two big memories I have of Dio- I remember hearing ads for a concert tour in the early '90s when Dio was touring with Black Sabbath, and the lineup was billed as "The Original Heaven and Hell Black Sabbath." And a decade later, when I saw Tenacious D, Jack Black kicked off their tribute song, "Dio," by proclaiming that Dio rocks so hard that "Black Sabbath fired Ozzy, because he didn't rock as hard as Ronnie James Dio." Some highly entertaining revisionist history, that.
Onion: New David Simon Project To Investigate Happy, Upper-Middle-Class Streets Of Wilmette, Ill
That could work, if it were a "Lost"-like sideways universe of "The Wire," complete with McNulty and Lester as, I don't now, happy science teachers or something.
I'm still liking "Treme" a lot, but the smugness sort of gets to me at times, it's something has always shown in Simon's interviews and op-eds but never did on "The Wire." I feel like the show's message is "if you're not from New Orleans, and want to visit, you're not authentic, and you suck."
News Item: "Field of Dreams" field in Iowa is for sale.
I guess all the people who come are already tired of coming.
Shouldn't the Blyleven motion have been him mooning the camera?
Adam Serwer on the predictable right-wing freakout over the new Miss USA being- horror of horrors!- a Muslim woman:
I'm not really a fan of beauty contests, but the tone and substance of the fever swamp's reaction to an Arab-American winning a beauty contest is at least useful for pointing out how some people's political opinions aren't based so much in questions of policy as anti-Muslim animosity. The level of anger is just so plainly disproportionate to the matter at hand as to be self-implicating. These people aren't worried about terrorism -- they're offended by the idea of Muslims being integrated into the most mundane and banal aspects of American society.At least they didn't ask for her papers. Not yet, anyway.
I review "Iron Man 2" on Philly.com.
My son has a new blog post, with much more to come in the next day or two.
That's about where I am these days when it comes to Israel. It's a larger tent than they probably think.
"Penis" is one of those words you just can't use casually.
News Item: Obama reportedly refuses to play golf with Rush Limbaugh.
Please. Like Rush would ever play at any golf course that allows black members.
News Item: MySpace simplifies privacy settings
This guy's cowboy cred is sort of undercut every time he mentions Facebook:
At least he doesn't try to "slander" his opponent by claiming he believes in evolution.
Instant classic from Lewis Black:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's | ||||
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See if you can guess which side I'm on? Hint: the one that doesn't involve making fun of someone having cancer.
This story made me smile:
Someone out there hates 610 WIP morning host Angelo Cataldi so much that they sliced his caricature off the walls full of faces at the Palm (200 S. Broad). Palm GM Jim Haney, who noticed Cataldi's mug missing this week, says that to his knowledge the last cartoon defaced was that of O.J. Simpson during his murder trial.
That's really just the setup of this excellent Stewart segment, of Fox News types discussing "Obama's Katrina," "Obama's Afghanistan," etc.:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Release the Kagan | ||||
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But remember Fox DURING Katrina? Their primary interest was saying it wasn't Bush's fault, the governor and mayor were to blame, etc. etc.
Howard Eskin the other day played a clip of Sen. Arlen Specter, giving one of his frequent interviews on the station about local sports, and in the process mangling the names of several athletes. Eskin:
And that's why State Senator Arlen Specter should never give interviews about sportsSpecter, of course, is a U.S., and not a state senator. But I can forgive Howard the mistake; Arlen's only been in the U.S. Senate for 30 years.
I review "Babies" on Philly.com.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| American Apparently | ||||
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TBS host Conan O'Brien to host fundraiser for Senator Al Franken
An alleged "yo-yo expert" pulls an elaborate prank on a morning TV station:
The backstory is even funnier.
My son blogs about his first visit to the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
Grover Norquist loses it completely:
This remark is the equivalent of using the 'n' word. It shows contempt for middle America, expressed knowingly, contemptuously, on purpose, and with a smirk. It is indefensible to use this word. The president knows what it means, and his people know what it means. The public thought we reached a new low of incivility during the Clinton administration. Well, the Obama administration has just outdone them," ATR president Grover Norquist tells Inside the Beltway.You know what I have to say to that? Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger Teabagger
I went last night for the first time. My first impressions:
- In short, it's great. In the upper-echelon of the 2000-and-later ballparks, along with Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and San Francisco, and way ahead of Cincinnati, CitiField, Washington and St. Louis. They did just about every little thing right; when the biggest complaint you have about the team is that the statue of Kirby Puckett doesn't really look like him, they've done a pretty good job.
- I know opinions are divided on the limestone facade, but I love it. To be great a ballpark has to have one unique thing that identifies it (the bridge in Pittsburgh, the cove in San Fran), and the Minnesota Limestone is it for Target Field.
- Concourses? Awesome. Wide, and high, and you can see into the field from just about anywhere. Food? Even better. And how can you not love Hrbek's bar? How could there possibly not be one?
- I also love how much attention the Twins paid to their team history, with jerseys and memorabilia and retired numbers everywhere. My favorite part was a picture, probably from 1984 or '95, of five players sitting on the bench together- Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Tom Brunansky, Gary Gaetti and Roy Smalley. They looked like little kids.
- Of course, the best thing about Target Field is the team in it. They truly look for real, and I saw them beat the Tigers 10-4 Monday night. Scott Baker had his first good outing in awhile and the offense was a juggernaut was once again, even without Joe Mauer in the lineup. But Wilson Ramos had his second straight torrid game in a row.
Wouldn't it be something if Ramos turned out to be the second-best catcher in baseball? Then again, if he could play third base, and do it well, all of the Twins' problems would be solved.
- All in all, I loved it. Can't wait to come back in August.
Here's what this blog would look like as a GeoCities page. Cute. My first-ever web home page was established this time ten years ago, but a Brandeis server upgrade a few months after I graduate meant it's lost to history.
I review the "Death at a Funeral" remake on Philly.com. It's now about to be summer movie season- "Iron Man 2" this week, and "Robin Hood" next. Will Bryan Adams be re-recording "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" for the occasion?
Either that, or he's just funnier. That's the impression I get from their respective White House Correspondent's Dinner speeches. Obama's routine was sharp, self-deprecating, and even a bit biting. Comparing John Boehner to the "Jersey Shore" people was inspired, and I bet it made The Situation's year when the president of the United States said his name.
Leno's jokes, on the other hand, were obvious, stilted, forced, and every other adjective typically associated with Jay's comedy since 1996 or so. No surprise, of course, that he recycled several bits. It's almost like Obama had Jon Stewart's writers, and Leno had his own (actually, that's exactly what happened.)
So yes, there is a plan for a new Vikings stadium, a bipartisan scheme that would levy taxes on hotels, sports jerseys and other things, in order to give the Vikes a new home.
Is it a good idea? I don't know. I'd like to see the Vikings remain in town, of course, but they go ahead with the tear-down-the-Dome-and-replace-it-with-a-new-stadium plan, they will have built a pair of publicly financed football stadiums, with a couple of miles of each other, in only four years. It's just insane that the Vikings and Gophers couldn't come together and build one shared field.
I agree with what my dad said- there's no serious justification for a new Vikings stadium, except that the team owners are a little bit less profitable than they'd like to be. He thinks the legislature should just give Wilf a few million dollars a year, but I don't think any politician could ever justify voting for that.
At any rate, I'll be shocked if the bill gets enacted this year, especially since Tim "No New Taxes" Pawlenty would likely return from Iowa or New Hampshire in order to veto it.
Another sports highlight from my trip to Minnesota- I watched "The Sports Show," the weekly Sunday night sports wrap show featuring elderly local media figures Sid Hartman, Patrick Reusse and Dark Star. Listening to these guys sit around and mumble about sports reminded me of my grandfather and a couple of his friends bitching about the Vikings over an early-bird special at Denny's.
I don't know what was my favorite part about this low-production values affair- when a dog (I'm not kidding) wandered onto the set mid-show, or when the conversation drifted to Ryan Howard's contract and Star opined to Hartman that Howard "is going to be an old man" when the contract runs out. When that happens, Howard will be 36. Dark Star is in his 70s, and Hartman is 90.
I was laughing at it, until I realized that Sid and Reusse are still probably the two most influential sportswriters in town.
I look at the Apple-ordered police raid on Gizmodo, and other recent retail crime incidents, in the latest Dealerscope roundup.
There's been another outrage at Citizen's Bank Park.
No, I'm not talking about the taser guy, although I love that we have to have this are-Philly-fans-jerks-or-does-the-media-overreact debate every week- the fact that something happens every week to cause it says something. Such as, say, another guy running out on the field the next night.
Anyway, here's a video of a fan at Citizen's Bank Park catching an opposing team's home run ball, and then motioning his young daughter's arm to throw it on the field.
This is really terrible, and not in an oh-those-Philly-fans sense. Throwing an opposing home run ball back is one of the worst fan traditions in sports- on top of being bad sportsmanship and reeking of sore-loserdom, it's a waste of a perfectly good souvenir. Catching a ball at a game is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most people, especially kids. Why not just keep it? It's not like throwing the ball back makes it not count.
Eskin is on Twitter. No, that's not the outrage. But he is.
I'm speaking of one morning last week, when Angelo Cataldi was discussing the Howard contract. I'm paraphrasing here, but Angelo said something along the lines of, he's happy Howard is staying and Donovan McNabb is going, because Howard represents everything positive about professional athletes, and McNabb represents everything negative.
Really? Everything? Because he did things like give wrong press conference answers, smile at the wrong time, and "throw teammates under the bus"?
What a vile, cretinous statement. Athletes in this country do a lot of bad, bad things. They commit rapes and robberies and murders. They assault women. They run dogfighting rings. They drive drunk and kill people. They have staggering amounts of neglected and unsupported illegitimate children.
Donovan McNabb has never done any of those things, or even been accused of such. On the list of Worst Professional Athletes, he's not even in the first 100,000. In fact, I can think of two quarterbacks on NFL teams only in the state of Pennyslvania- Ben Roethlisberger and Michael Vick- much more worthy of the Worst Person in the World title than McNabb.
Sean Burns on "Babies," echoing my sentiments exactly:
See, there’s the rub. If you happen to personally know the kid, or even the parents, then children can provide untold wonders of fascinating minutiae as they go about their uneventful day-to-day activities. When my nephew first arrived, we’d all just stare at him for hours on end in such rapt fascination that my sister coined the phrase, “Watching Brandon TV.” Spending time with a baby you know is a moment-to-moment journey of miraculous discovery.Babies are like fantasy football teams. I love my own. But I don't need to hear about some complete stranger's.But when it’s a stranger, who gives a shit?
News Item: Tarvaris Jackson says he has previously "wanted change"