Published October 31, 2007
in Movies.
I confess: I like (some) romantic comedies. In no particular order I enjoyed: Sleepless in Seattle, While You Were Sleeping, IQ, Serendipity, and You’ve Got Mail. Yeah, it’s Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan heavy. They are the king and queen of the genre. But this past weekend I saw trailers for two romantic comedies you couldn’t bribe me to watch (not true, I have a price but I’m making a point). One was about Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up) being a bridesmaid 27 times and not finding the right guy. The other was Hilary Swank opening letters from her dead boyfriend/husband and following their instructions to get her life back together.
Yuck.
I understand that the romantic comedy genre is one designed from the ground up as an appeal to female moviegoers, but I felt like those films I listed as ones I enjoyed had something for the guy in them. You had the interaction between John Cusack and his best friend Jeremy Piven in Serendipity, or you had the silly WWII-As-Romance-Movie sequence from Sleepless in Seattle. But these two movies, and a host of others I’ve glimpsed in the last couple of years look like they were written for women. They’re Lifetime/Bridget Jones movies.
Doesn’t that seem limiting? 90% of the time a woman drags her gentleman to these movies, but would it hurt to throw the guy a bone so he says “Hey, that wasn’t so bad, surely you’ll come with me to Action Death Kill 7 : The Revenge with me now that I didn’t fall asleep during Romancing The Romance starring Hugh Grant?”
These movies seem to have over narrowcasted themselves. Either that or they just need more Meg Ryan.
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From the White House today:
Today, President Bush issued the first National Strategy for Information Sharing to prioritize and unify our Nation’s efforts to advance the sharing of terrorism-related information. The Strategy sets forth our plan to build upon the progress we have made in improving information sharing since the September 11 attacks and establish an integrated National information sharing capability.
God knows, the hallmark of this administration has been their willingness to share truckloads of information.
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It’s intriguing that when inquiries come from the left, the military is so slow, but when Joe Rightwingblogger calls up he’s got the entire public affairs section at their beck and call.
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Published October 31, 2007
in Iraq.
General Petraeus pals around with Ahmad Chalabi, the huckster who helped fool the country into war, stirred up horrors, and is allied with terrorists.
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A comic strip. About abortion. Starring a fetus.
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As if we needed even more proof that the press and the punditocracy don’t know what they’re talking about, the idea is taking hold that Sen. Clinton had a “bad” night in the debate last night. I think her only real misfire was her non-answer on the New York driver’s license/immigration issue and if she’s smart she’ll get out in front of that. But otherwise the debate was another status quo debate. Obama and Edwards have yet to seriously knock Sen. Clinton off of her game.
The press wants to make the race close so they have something to cover, and they will probably succeed, but the narrative - as it so often does - bears no relation to reality.
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This debate certainly benefits for the absence of Mike Gravel, a candidate on the fringe of the fringe with no discernible support whatsoever. Congressman Kucinich is able to argue from the very left without sounding like an idiot, even though I agree with him on almost nothing.
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These debates are kind of “eh”, but Joe Biden killed with “A sentence from Rudy Giuliani has three parts: a noun, a verb, and 9/11″.
Killer!
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Published October 30, 2007
in Movies.
It is rare in the last 15 years that I’ve seen a movie that doesn’t treat you like you’re a drooling dummy. As my past movie reviews have made clear, I love a popcorn movie more than the average guy. But I can appreciate one that is also written for a high school graduate.
The worst example of this was the otherwise good Bond movie, Casino Royale, during the card game sequence where one character explained to the other how the game was progressing and operating. Even if you don’t know how to play the card game (like me), the sequence would have been a lot better without the guy saying “OK, JAMES BOND NEEDS A JACK OR A KING TO WIN, OR HE LOSES THE WHOLE THING, OK, CUE THE DRAMATIC TENSION”.
I liked Michael Clayton a lot, and it could have done with a little trimming, but the sophistication of the writing and plot makes up for that: 4/5
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Published October 30, 2007
in Race.
When black voters come calling, Republicans develop scheduling conflicts.
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Amidst some of the talk about Sen. Obama sort of buying into conservative worry-speak about the strength of social security, I was reminded of a bet I made with a friend recently. He barely pays attention to the news - he’s got a wife and a new kid and work - or politics, but in one of those annoying “I saw it on tv somewhere” things he has it in his mind that social security won’t be around for him. Granted, he doesn’t need it by a long shot, but regardless he’d rather not have the money being taken away and thrown into the ether (he’s sort of a fiscal libertarian and he lives in one of the reddest states but he’s normal on the social issues). So I made him a bet. I bet him $10,000 that I don’t have that in 2037 or so when he’s eligible, he will get his social security check. I don’t bet much, and the only other bet I’ve ever been so sure of was when I bet on the Steelers in the Superbowl a couple years ago.
I told him already that I want the $10k in its 2037 equivalent.
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That’s my new label for Sen. Obama while he keeps putting out bad commercials like this. I love the guy, but this asinine strategy that he’s going to vaguely hint at the competition without being explicit that it’s Sen. Clinton is doomed to fail. That kind of naive posture is what has killed Democratic campaigns, especially at the presidential level. The intelligence of the public and the media should not be overestimated. Hit them over the head with the simplest of language. The idea that “I like good things, and some vague person or force that I never mention by name is not quite in favor of it” is mush, and the press is not going to do the work you need to do yourself by pointing this out.
I am reminded of this Pepsi ad from a few years ago where they clearly went after their rival Coke in an unambiguous manner while reinforcing their superiority.
In other words:
OBAMA: “I like puppies, some others are not as quite as fond of dogs as I am”
CLINTON: “I love puppies, unlike Barack Obama, who does not”
OBAMA: “Puppies are great, and I like them a lot. There are some people whose enthusiasm levels for puppies are not as high as my own. They are welcome to those emotions.”
CLINTON: “I give 10% of everything I own to puppies and puppy related charities. This is not what Sen. Barack Obama does. Sen. Barack Obama does not give money to puppies as far as I know, and this probably means Barack Obama does not like puppies.”
OBAMA: “My family and I have had many puppies, and we like puppies — that much is clear. Occasionally you hear about people who don’t like puppies. That’s not us.”
CLINTON: “This is the puppy I carry with me every where I go because I love puppies so much. Because Sen. Barack Obama of 123 Cedar Lane in Chicago Illinois does not carry a puppy with him - and by him I mean Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois and my opponent in the Democratic primaries in 2008 - it’s possible he kicked a puppy once.”
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So stupid they really are believing that phony story about MECHA claiming responsibility for the California fires. The story is so fake it makes The Onion seem like straight news by comparison. And yet, they are so ready to seize on the outrage of the day about “those effing Mexicans” they believe it hook line and sinker.
To paraphrase Shrub: Some people call you the drooling morons, the idiot yokels too dumb to remember to breathe, the festering sore on the ass of humanity. Michelle Malkin calls you “the base”.
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Published October 28, 2007
in NFL.
“The campaign goes on. The campaign goes on. Hail to the Redskins. Bill Belichick is a cheater. He may have had the better team by far on Sunday, but Joe Gibbs has no taint on his Super Bowl victories. Are we bitter? You bet. But our resolve is strong. We will not falter. We will not waver. God Bless America. A pox on the New England Patriots.”
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Published October 28, 2007
in NFL.
The Redskins are NOT playing well against the Patriots (currently they’re down 24-0) and I don’t know why. The Patriots aren’t doing anything special, but the Skins aren’t showing up to play. That said, the Redskins headsets mysteriously stopped working, disrupting communications between the coordinators and the players.
It’s not the first time.
“At one point we had a good drive going against the Patriots,” said one Lion who doesn’t want his name involved in this mess, but was willing to talk about it. “Mike Martz really had ‘em going. They were getting fouled up, lining up wrong, we were moving the ball. Then boom, the headset from the sidelines to the coaches’ booth goes out.
“Next possession we were moving the ball again and the same thing happened. You know it only takes two or three plays to mess up a drive.”
Matt Millen, the Lions’ GM, says he was talking to another team’s head coach at the league meetings. He started telling him the story.
“Yeah, I know,” the coach said. “Headset went out. It happened to me in Foxboro, too.”
UPDATE: 38-0. I knew there was a reason I support assisted suicide.
UPDATE 2: Ok, Bill Belichick, you go for it on 4-1 up by 38, on the 10yard line? Congratulations, your poor sportsmanship makes you the new Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees. I hope the Colts light your asses up.
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My main home machine nowadays is mostly a Macbook. I haven’t looked up the info very strongly, but is there really a compelling reason to upgrade to OS X Leopard? I tooled around for it a bit at the Apple Store today, but I couldn’t see anything cosmetic worth $100+ dollars. No, universal “cover flow” doesn’t do it for me. I’m really wary of unnecessary OS updates that slow down your system that’s working just fine (Microsoft I’m looking right at you) and I don’t have the high-end Macbook with all the RAM and horsepower of the Pro.
So anyone think it’s a worthy upgrade?
(I’m planning in the next 6-8 months to replace my HP desktop with one of the new tricked-out iMacs, though if anyone wants to gimme a Mac Pro with a gigantic cinema display for free I’m down with that as well)
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Published October 27, 2007
in Iraq.
Time to send in Michelle Malkin to go harass the mothers and children of these clearly un-American guys. How dare they insult America like this!
“When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street,” Alarcon said this week. “The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks.”
That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.
Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.
Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice — 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad — Alarcon said no: “I don’t think this place is worth another soldier’s life.”
But remember kids, we’re “winning”… according to some right wing blog somewhere that gets everything wrong.
Citizen JournalistTM John Cole is on the case to correct the media bias of this story.
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Published October 27, 2007
in Women.
Kim Kardashian is going to be in Playboy, but in an era of celebrity sex videos and the like, isn’t that sort of “eh”?
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