"It could be nice to be alive"

On this day in 1966, Adam Horovitz, otherwise known as Ad Rock, was born in South Orange, New Jersey.

Specifically, that means that, as of today, all three Beastie Boys are now officially in their forties.


I know that this is Halloween and all, but this is more depressing than scary.

Criswell predicts!

In Fametracker's latest Galaxy of Fame piece, which concerned celebrity spouses, they presented these two fictitious quotes:

"Hi, I'm Ryan Phillippe, serious actor. How serious? I was the star of this year's Best Picture Oscar winner, Crash. And now, I'm the star of Flags Of Our Fathers, the latest film from two-time Best Director Oscar winner Clint Eastwood. I am a big, big deal. Can someone please tell my wife so that she'll let me choose what restaurant we go to or pick out colours for the new living room design she's paying for?"

"Hi, I'm Reese Witherspoon. My husband said what? ... No, whatever -- did you say 'my husband'? I could swear we fired that guy back in May. I have to make a call."

And then later that morning via the Associated Press ...

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, who started the year on an Oscar-winning high, are ending it on a low note: The couple have separated.

"We are saddened to announce that Reese and Ryan have decided to formally separate," publicist Nanci Ryder said in a statement issued Monday on behalf of the couple.

New 7 Wonders

A coworker yesterday told me about New 7 Wonders, which is a website where you can vote for a new set of Seven Wonders of the World. Six of the original seven are no longer standing, leaving the Egyptian Pyramids all be their lonesome.

Oddly enough, they included the Pyramids in the voting. I think that they should be a given for the new set and we should only vote on six to replace the ones that are gone. It's the least we can do for all that slave labor that died building the damn things.

Go and vote. Spread the word. It may be the best part of your Monday morning.

Notes on a Scandal

I can imagine Judi Dench as playing pretty much anything, from 007's boss to an alien ambassador to two different Queens back to back.

But a septuagenarian lesbian stalker?!?! Yes, folks, she can pull off anything.

Remember, Remember, The Month of November

Venturing where, I'm sure, many other bloggers have ventured before, I am going to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November. You can see the link to it right below the "Links" header on the right side of the blog. Mrs. Mosley introduced me to the idea in September, and I decided to take her up on it.

All this means that after the obligatory Forest Whitaker Quote and maybe another LEGO post, I'll be signing off for 30 days. So be forewarned!

All three of you.

LOAD "*" , 8 , 1

The two big blue cardboard boxes have sat in my mother's sewing room pretty much since I graduated High School fifteen years ago. There they sat, untouched by anyone. Then this past weekend I took a notion to rid my folks of the extra clutter by bringing it home and deciding what to do with it. Just in case, I went ahead with unpacking the boxes and hooking everything up ... and I'll be damned if that the thing still works.



Of course, a number of the disks seem to have deteriorated past the ability to play, but some of the most memorable ones still work.



I was able to pick up where I left off maybe sixteen, seventeen years ago with my party of six adventurers (Named "Palin", "Cleese", "Jones", "Gilliam", "Chapman" & "Idle") and go roving about the countryside killing Giant Bees and such. I mean, really, why blow your money on a PSP2 when you have stuff like this around the house?

"Do Geese See God?"

While the web is currently clamoring for "Weird Al" Yankovic's "White and Nerdy" video (as well they should be), his new album has another song that even further establishes his brilliance.

He decided that he would tackle Bob Dylan on this album by doing a parody of "Subterranean Homesick Blues". And when he approached this task, he made a decision: Since Bob Dylan's lyrics don't make any sense anyway (and thus are hard to do a straightforward parody of), he decided to form the lyrics completely out of Palindromes. The result must be heard to be believed. Go listen and watch "Bob" here.

Thanks to Slate for cluing me in to this song as well as providing a great essay about Yankovic's career.

The GOP attempts to get jiggy with it

Despite the picture on my profile, I am not, in fact, black. I am actually a 33 year old middle-class married white guy. Therefore, I know the cold, hard truth that white people have absolutely no business at trying to rap (as with every rule, there are exceptions). Linked to this is the truth that white people should not attempt to sound black. No matter how many 50 cent videos you may listen to, your attempt to sound gangsta ain't convincing, Cletus.

Which brings me to a Republican political commercial that is making the rounds on television. It's funded by an old white male billionaire and it's target audience are young, low income blacks. The commercial feature two young black males talking about abortion. Here's their exchange:

BLACK MAN #1: "If you make a little mistake with one of your 'hos,' you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked."

BLACK MAN #2: "That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed."

BLACK MAN #1: "Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican."

The first impression from this exchange is obvious: This canny billionaire Republican has obviously uncovered our secret plan to force all American women to have abortions if we get back in power, thus the motivation for these two guys to vote GOP. Damn. They got us dead to rights, didn't they?

But that's not what I wanted to address. This is: "Tout Suite"

"Tout Suite"? "Tout Suite"?!?

The article that is linked above takes issue with the use of the word "ho's", which is a fair argument. However, I can't get past the whole "tout suite" thing, myself. I mean, my confession does apply here in that I'm not all that familiar with modern slang. However, I'm pretty sure "tout suite" went the way of the dodo sometime before LBJ was president. Hearing the first guy use that term was so jarring that I half expected the second one to end his sentence with "23 Skidoo"! I mean, we knew that Republicans were out of touch, but come on!

And as a postscript to this, you should know that there are two spellings and meanings to this term. "Toot Sweet" was popular with soldiers during WWI as a way to say "quick as you can". It's obvious they wanted this meaning for the commercial. "Tout Suite", however, is a French term for a silent fart, which miraculously makes this entire farce even funnier than it was.

Don't let him kiss ya!

Mrs. Mosley and I were talking last night and she said the words "Turd Blossom", and I naturally asked if she was speaking of Karl Rove. She was confused, as she had never heard about Dubya's nickname for his right-hand man. To provide evidence for her, I Googled the term this morning and found an article from The Guardian that mentions the nickname in association with Rove.

In my searching, I also came across a long list of nicknames that Bush uses. I don't know as to the authenticity of each of these names, though I have read in numerous places that nicknaming is a habit Dubya uses to remember people. The names range from innocuous (Dick Cheney is "Big Time") to obvious (George Sr. is "Poppy") to downright insulting (Vladimir Putin is "Pootie-Poot").

And then there's current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom Bush apparently calls "Fredo". I don't know. Even considering how much the guy has helped Bush over the years, I'd be nervous of a nickname like that. At the very least, I'd avoid any impromptu fishing trips.

What it lacks in actual search efficiency, it gains in entertainment.

May I introduce Ms. Dewey.

I wouldn't be surprised if this whole site served as an elaborate audition tape for the actress who plays "Ms. Dewey". She's definitely a charmer.

Skippy of the Day: Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly then:

"If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?"

Bill O'Reilly now:

"Over the next three nights, President Bush will have his say. You will know exactly where he stands on the most vital issues facing America and the world. Because every presidential interview is finite - time is always a concern - I decided to concentrate on the conflicts - Iraq, Iran, North Korea and terror - rather than on domestic issues. Also, I think it's important to look ahead rather than to look back. what good does it do to rehash WMDs? Does that do you any good?"

I heard that the current bid on Ebay for O'Reilly's spine is a buck fifty.

They want the communists ... er ... terrorists to win!

Over the weekend, I watched a film my father has recommended to me numerous times: On the Beach. The story begins a month or so after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed all the nations of the earth except Australia. Unfortunately, a radioactive cloud is slowly drifting to that country and everyone is coming to terms with their eventual deaths ... and the death of the human race as a whole.

It's quite a film, and must have been rather daring when it was released in 1959. Instead of laying blame on a specific superpower, the film is more a general cautionary note against the nuclear arms race. Apparently, this was still too radical for some during the height of the Cold War. The New York Daily News took a swipe at the film in it's review:

"This is a would-be shocker which plays right up the alley of a) the Kremlin and b) the Western defeatists and/or traitors who yelp for the scrapping of the H-bomb. ... See this picture if you must (it seems bound to be much talked about), but keep in mind that the thinking it represents points the way toward eventual Communist enslavement of the entire human race."

Reading this was reassuring in a way. It shows that the language of the radical and dangerous right wing hasn't changed a hell of a lot in almost fifty years. It makes the shmucks easier to spot.

We'll throw in all nine seasons of Family Matters if you promise not to give them back

Uh ... er ... what?!?! (Via CNN):

Russia is out to find its own Brooke Shields to star in a new, local-language version of the sitcom "Suddenly Susan."

The Russian reincarnation of NBC's 1996-2000 series, which starred Shields in the title role as a San Francisco columnist, is part of a big move by the show's producer, Warner Bros., to develop foreign versions of old U.S. sitcoms, such as "Perfect Strangers," "Step by Step" and "Full House." (Warner Bros., like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.)

"Susan" is being produced in conjunction with a Russian broadcaster, CTC, which will shoot 40 episodes of the series. CTC has also committed to 40 episodes of "Step by Step" and 20 episodes of "Full House."

Meanwhile, the first episode of the Russian version of "Perfect Strangers" debuted a week ago on Ren TV. Mismatched roommates Larry and Balki have become Ivan (Artem Semakin) and Andrei (Anton Eldarov). Andrei arrives from his remote ex-Soviet republic and moves straight into the flat of his Moscow cousin, Ivan, where cultures clash between the two dissimilar characters.

I know there is still some pent up anger on the part of Americans for the now-defunct evil empire, but this is just cruel!

The "Not - Ready - To - Spend - Any - Money - On - The - Chris - Kattan - Years"

Recent news from Digital Bits informs us that, after being bombarded with a slew of single disc DVD's that focus on individual performers and themes, NBC is going to finally give us all of it.

They're giving us the whole. damn. thing.



Now think about this for a moment. SNL is currently in it's thirty-second season. It's logical to assume that they aren't going to stop at season one or even season five (though, if I ever have the inclination to buy any of these gargantuan sets, my purchases won't likely go past this point). According to the episode guide, there was a total of 604 episodes in seasons one to thirty-one. At 70 minutes an episode (90 minutes minus commercials), that means a complete set of box sets of the past 31 seasons will come to just over 704 hours of material. Watching this at a rate of, say, 16 hours a day would mean you could complete it in a month and a half.

Damn.

I can't imagine anyone who would want to do this, myself very much included. All the number crunching I did is just to demonstrate what a friggin huge amount of material this is. And a great deal of it, sorry to say, sucks.

But as I said, I may be tempted to grab at least Season One. If nothing else, it would be a great time capsule. When George Carlin took the stage as host of the premier episode on October 11, 1975, I was one day shy of my second birthday. I obviously don't remember watching it during that first run, but I did catch the truncated episodes they showed on Nick at Nite When I was in High School.

Those are good memories. Perhaps even good enough to blow eighty dollars on Season One.

"Eat you some of that puddin'. It's good for ya."

Having nothing else to post really, I present to you one of the most entertaining extras I've seen on a DVD since the 60's cartoon on The Incredibles.

This clip is from The Ice Harvest and has Billy Bob Thornton doing some Slingblade improv during one of his scenes with John Cusack. It's even funnier if you've seen both Slingblade and Ice Harvest, but it's still pretty damn funny on it's own.

"Yeeeeaaaaaah, boyyyyyyy!"

In commemoration of my birthday today, here's a generation-specific article from The Onion last Tuesday:

With recruitment down sharply, and the prospect of being held back by the nation of millions appearing once again likely, top-ranking Public Enemy officials issued an order Monday for all retired Security Of The First World personnel to return to active duty.

"In order to come to the aid of the hip-hop nation, we must regrettably ask those men who heroically served the Black Planet to once again don their fatigues and take up their plastic arms," S1W Chief and Public Enemy Minister Of Information Professor Griff said. "We have no more options. It's not as though we can simply call 911. That would be a joke."

"Some see this as a sign of defeat," Griff added. "Don't believe the hype: We will come out triumphant in this Mess Age."

S1W comprised the paramilitary security wing of the Public Enemy forces from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. Their intimidating martial presence and synchronized dance steps routinely struck fear in the hearts of concertgoers hoping to enjoy a Beastie Boys or Big Audio Dynamite performance.

Personally, I'd love to see a cage match with the entire Public Enemy group vs. about a dozen of the biggest Gansta Rappers out there today. It wouldn't even be a contest.

Where's Chuck D when you need him?

And featuring Danny Trejo as "Machete" ... again

Would you like to know what the best part of Kill Bill: Volume 1 was? Before the movie even started, a vintage animation card comes up with the words "Feature Presentation" on it. It was the very same card and very same music I remember seeing before some films in my early childhood. It is the absolute perfect device to start Tarantino's homage to Seventies revenge films.

I mention this because the trailer for his next film Grindhouse (which can be found at ComingSoon.net) seems to be even more evocative of the period than the Kill Bill films were. It's NSFW, so check it out when you get home.

Can't remember what the scale said this morning

Well, this explains a lot:

Overweight middle-aged adults tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and learning ability than their thinner peers do, researchers reported Monday.

The findings, they say, suggest that a heavier weight in middle age may mean a higher risk of dementia later in life.

Reporting in the journal Neurology, the researchers speculate that higher rates of cardiovascular disease or diabetes might help explain the link. But it’s also possible that substances produced by fat cells, such as the hormone leptin, have direct effects on the brain.

Just what I needed. You know, I always suspected that the ... uh ... what was I talking about?

Oooh, look! A birdie!

More Airplanes, More LEGO

I may have just gotten back from NYC, but I'm already boarding another plane. This time, it's for San Diego to attend a wedding of Mrs. Mosley's Uncle. In the meantime, you know the drill: Gape and stand in awe of the purty pictures until I get back next week. Bye!

Shadow of the Pedophile

If you go onto Amazon.com and do a search for "Hastert", then you will find the following items:

Dennis Hastert's 2004 book Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics

An "I Love J. Dennis Hastert" Long Sleeve T-shirt (?!?!?!)

An "I voted for J. Dennis Hastert" Keychain

The Shadow of the Vampire DVD

Huh? No, the currently besieged Speaker of the House did not star in the 2000 film with Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich. The Amazon keyword search simply picked up on an actor named Patrick Hastert, who has the honor of playing "Reporter #3" in the film.

However, it is interesting to note that the film's plot concerns a megalomaniac who discovers that someone he is in charge of is habitually out harming others. Instead of acting out so that further harm is prevented, the megalomaniac keeps it a secret so that his own plans may not be disrupted. In the end, the man who has been harming people dies and the megalomaniac goes on to reap his success.

I'm thinking the parallels are going to stop before that happens, though.

Skippy of the Day: Trent Lott

Trust Trent Lott to, when given the opportunity to clarify some controversial comments recently on The Daily Show with John Stewart, only dig himself deeper (Via Think Progress):

LOTT: "I always had trouble understanding — Iraqis look like Iraqis, and Americans look like Americans. Now I can’t tell –"

STEWART: "You mean that as unity, not as what the hell, they all look alike to me."

LOTT: "Methodist, Baptists, and Catholics live in my hometown. They all look the same to me, they all look like Americans."

I initially tried to write about this in regular paragraph form, but I'm thinking that bullet points will be easier:

• Racial breakdown of Grenada, Mississippi, Trent Lott's birthplace: 98.6% Whites and African Americans, 1.4% Other (Including Hispanic, Asian and Arabic).
• Racial breakdown of the United States of America: 87.4% Whites and African Americans, 12.6% Other (Including Hispanic, Asian and Arabic).
• Religious breakdown of Mississippi: 93.0% Christian or related sects, 7.0% Other or None (Including Jewish, Muslim and Hindu).
• Religious breakdown of the United States of America: 76.5% Christian or related sects, 23.5% Other or None (Including Jewish, Muslim and Hindu).

So, in spite of Trent not living in a terribly representative part of the country, he feels confident that only White and Black people who are Christian really look like Americans. Arabs and Muslims (and Asians and Hispanics and Jews and Hindis) do not look like Americans.

Citizenship ain't what it used to be.

"Marmaduke is going to get another shutout"

Well, this site get's my vote for "Blog Of The Week":

Forest Whitaker Quote of the Month: October 2006

Ah, what people do for their friends. Move a couch? House-sit while you're on vacation? Costar in your ill-conceived crappy sci-fi vanity project just because you were in Phenomenon together?

Yes, my droogies, we're talking about the dreaded Battlefield Earth. Whitaker plays Ker, sidekick to big alien honcho Terl (John Travolta) in all their underhanded and sadistic activities. Reviewer Ken Begg over at Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension actually makes some specific comments about Whitaker in the "Afterthoughts" section of his review:

"Unsurprisingly, Forest Whitaker provides the closest thing to a decent performance here. A real and actual actor, he gamely attempts to bring his role as it's written to life. Which is as someone who, despite being incredibly dense, persists in believing that he's slyer than those around him. (And considering how smart Terl and the rest come off, you can't really blame him.) Rather than helping, however, Whitaker's efforts serve instead to throw the film further off-kilter. The problem is that the cast brings so many different sensibilities to their performances. Whitaker, for his part, nobly tries to bring some depth and weight to his role. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast, all pretty much novices except for one obvious exception, brings a stolid, uninspired seriousness to their roles. This, in turn, serves mainly to amplify the script's already prodigious unintended humor factor."

That's pretty much spot on. But I suffered through this whole mess for a reason, and that was to bring you folks a quote. Alas, the only thing really quote-worthy spoken by Whitaker is the film's last line, which is spoken to Terl after he has been imprisoned by the humans inside of Fort Knox.

Ker: "Look at the bright side: You may not be wallowing in luxury on Psychlo, but at least you finally got your gold!"

And lest you think that everybody is a little too hard on this silly sci-fi film, I point you to the trivia section over at IMDb that says, "Forest Whitaker expressed his regret for participating in this movie". Ouch. I guess John Travolta was moving his own damn couch after this one.