Palin vs. Hillary: The Reckoning
One of the few times SNL gets seriously funny occurred this past weekend. Watch Tina Fey and Amy Poehler pretty much nail Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, and tell me that Tina doesn’t look uncannily like Palin.
Entries Tagged as 'Entertainment'
Be afraid. Be very…very…afraid…
Time to hark back to the days of yore, the 1960’s and 70’s, when celebrity vanity was in its infancy, an age of innocence and horror all wrapped up in a cloying “cannot…look…away…” vibe.
For your edification and amusement, our first sample. It was very nice of someone to find appropriate imagery to accompany what once never had video…
Consider that there is an entire album of this, and then crawl into a closet to die.
It seems that good pals were rivals as well, for Leonard’s friend Bill had to release an album too…gods help us all.
Again, audio with someone’s later creative efforts to dull the impact of that voice…
This means war, Shatner! Behold the power of Tolkien, wielded by Spock!
“Nice try, Leonard, but Taupin and I will destroy you and the go-go girls and hobbits!”
And once again, the devil Shatner proves his might, our eardrums and eyeballs bleeding in abject surrender. Nimoy slinks off into that closet to join us all in curling up into slowly dying balls of flesh.
Rise & Fall of the Clinton Reich (NSFW)
I never realized that a long-dead dictator had such insight on today’s problems, until I saw his feelings regarding the end of the High-Definition War between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (NSFW):
But now Der Führer has something to say on the subject of bloody Democratic fisticuffs. I have never seen the kind of insight into Hillary’s mind from anyone before, and it’s so very surprising. Watch and be amazed, but remember…
…both of these videos are oh-so-not-safe-for-work:
The ironies of using Hitler to make this particular commentary are too savory for me to explain, so I shall let you all enjoy its fruits on your own, but I don’t think anything else on the subject of Hillary’s candidacy need be said after this.
Bending like a Reid in the wind…
It seems I’m not the only one who saw Senator Harry Reid on the Daily Show this past week and was struck by how he was one of the worst interviews ever on the show.
At the very beginning of the interview, I could barely hear the man, and he seemed so very out of place on a show so rife with wit. And then he had the temerity to whine about how he was disappointed that the Democratic Majority in the Senate and House couldn’t get anything done.
Is he completely oblivious to the fact that it’s no one’s fault but the Democrats? Are he and his majority still stuck in the past where they were the whipping boys of Bush and his Republican sycophants? I would say so, as he sure looked and sounded completely whipped.
Stewart tried gamely to energize Reid, but was ultimately unable to give life to the corpse.
See for yourselves:
Obama’s “bitter” pill
All right, it’s been a few weeks since I really had something to say, but this last weekend has stirred my muse once more.
By now most of my American readers will have heard the accusations leveled at Senator Obama for his alleged “elitism,” stemming from a comment he made about economics and the effects a long-term loss of opportunity have on those experiencing it:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Anyone not running for president and not living the high life can see immediately that Obama has touched on yet another truth: people with no money and no prospects get pissed off, and they need someone to get pissed off at. This isn’t exactly a revelation; we’ve all experienced this in ourselves to one degree or another.
And step back for a moment and think about this: can anyone imagine Senators Clinton and McCain having the cojones to confront an unpleasant truth like this and talk to their constituents about it like they have a modicum of intelligence?
I can’t, yet Obama did the same thing in his “More Perfect Union” speech on racial divisiveness in America (watch it if you haven’t, and see someone who hints at the courage of Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin), and in many other speeches and comments. As Bitter Jon says at his site Bitter Voters for Obama:
One of the most refreshing things about Barack Obama is his fearlessness when it comes to voicing a hard truth. It’s an ice cold glass of unsweetened lemonade: hard to swallow, but unmistakably pure. The truth is, if you aren’t bitter, you’re probably voting for someone who is going to give us more of what we’ve been getting all along. And all Clinton and McCain seem to be saying is “Let them eat Lemons.”
I may not agree with Obama on everything, but there is an edge to him, unpolished and forthright, not unprincipled and smoothed over like other politicians who appear subject to the whims of voters and media.
Also, let us not overlook the blatant hypocrisy of two very well-heeled multimillionaires accusing someone of Obama’s modest income and bootstrapped origins of being out of touch with mainstream, working class Americans.
I applaud him for this, and I can see that come November, this race will boil down to one thing: whether people are so fed up with the direction of this country that they finally take a true interest in debating actual, important issues that hearken back to the debates of the Revolution and our very reason for sundering our ties to Great Britain all those years ago, or whether they lack the energy to rise up and break the hold that television and sound-bite pundits have over them, sinking us further into the moral, social, and economic quagmire in which we now reside.
I hope it’s the former, and I mean for my words here to push for that, but my hope remains dim.
As an aside, please enjoy Obama himself pointing out McCain and especially Hillary’s peacock feathers in this highly entertaining speech he gave on Sunday in Steelton, PA. Especially amusing is the reference to Hillary in a duck blind.
The Pavilion of Provisional Happiness
Utter happiness, I’d say, if you love the varieties of sweet ambrosia that can be found in any pub in Belgium.
Jupiler is building a pavilion completely out of beer crates near the Atomium, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Brussels World’s Fair, Expo ‘58.
There is no finer font of liquid happiness in the world than the land of my forebears. Drink it whenever and wherever you find it.
Dave Stevens, the Rocketeer, R.I.P.
Seems a lot of creators I grew up with are passing on lately, in all industries.
Dave Stevens, artist extraordinaire, and creator of the Rocketeer, passed away from leukemia.
I loved Dave’s work. His clean, detailed, and nostalgic art really gave a sense of history to his tales. But most of all, he loved the lines and curves of the female figure like no other. I’ll always be thankful to him as the man who introduced me to Bettie Page, through Betty in the Rocketeer.
Thank you, Dave. I only wish there had been more of Cliff Secord and Betty to leave us even more of a legacy.
The Original DM has thrown his last die…
I know I’m a little late with this and some of you may have heard the news, but an icon of my adolescence that still affects me today passed away on Monday…
Together with Dave Arneson, E. Gary Gygax created Dungeons & Dragons, the game that I have played on and off over the decades, and regularly now, in one of its computer incarnations, Neverwinter Nights.
Dungeons & Dragons was what first started my socialization in high school, with lunchtime games in Mr. Welsh’s biology classroom, and weekend, overnight crawls at the home of one or another of our little cabal of geek gamers. And now, with the advent of the internet and Neverwinter Nights, it’s allowed me to make friends beyond the local, including one who is quite close, even though we live days and miles apart.
Thank you, Gary, for the enrichment your game has given my life, and for helping turn me into the techno-geek I am today. May your legacy live on for centuries.
UPDATE: Wired magazine has a wonderful article on Gary, the development of Dungeons & Dragons, and the impact it’s had on the world and gaming. It has some nice personal insights from Gary as well, for the interviews were done not long before his passing.
It’s safe to throw away your vote in November…
…and vote your conscience.
Due to a Diebold error, the president of choice for our nation’s shadowy overlords was accidentally revealed.
Full story at The Onion.
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
I don’t know about you, but I feel like a weight is off my shoulders.
Union Cycliste Internationale fires one across the bow
UCI President Pat McQuaid sent a letter today to all ProTour teams and officials.
To me the letter is pretty forthright and meant to hit the Amaury Sport Organisation hard, a direct and open challenge to the ASO’s decision to exclude Astana from all their events.
This one is heating up fast, folks.
UPDATE: Just a few more thoughts…
What happens next if ASO tries to call UCI’s bluff (if it even is a bluff)? Will a similar letter go out regarding sanctions if ProTour riders participate in the Tour de France? Consider Le Tour with no doping controls—probably Christian Prudhomme’s worst nightmare. Will ASO have to scramble to find someone to take over all the things the UCI provides? Is that even possible?
And something else: why the hardball only with ASO and Le Tour? What about the Giro d’Italia and RCS Sport? Long-time pissing contest between UCI and ASO or something else?
Looking forward to answers to these questions and so many more.
