There’s a lot of things to discuss with TAL lately. Even though TSOTAL only yielded a couple dozen episodes, I remain an ardent fan. I’m preparing for the second TAL Austin Brunch Club, and just as I return from a vacation in The Big Apple, a live TAL theater event will be broadcast around the country. Most recently — just this morning as a matter of fact — I’m pondering episode #353: The Audacity of Government.
Ira and Jack Hitt take us through a number of disturbing events in the government/legal realm of late, and it reveals a disturbing trend. Repeatedly the Bush Whitehouse has decided to sign away laws, create rules that don’t exist, or ignore the rules altogether. What were formerly binding agreements with the US, are now worthless. Why does any foreign country trust us, except their obligation to our massive financial powers…and what will they do when that goes away? (Sidebar: Yes, Alex P Jones is a nut but you should listen to what he has to say about our flailing economy and follow the trail of Alan Greenspan’s investments outside the US.) Where the Justice Department once relied on the justice system, now they invent their own rules when necessary and redact the ones they dislike. How can the people of this country trust the JD when the say “we can decide to do whatever we want without explanation on our part or recourse on yours”?
Jack and Ira spend the last few minutes of the episode discussing the fact that the now meaningless boundaries of the legal system are the real issue of this election year, and how the potential candidates have responded to Bush’s abuses. I feel it is not enough to have the lip service of the candidates. Watching Horten Hears A Who today I felt immense empathy for the poor Whovillians — helplessly tossed about in a world they can no longer control. We must stand together in the face of our government and make as much noise as possible.
We are here! We are here! We are here!
Horton Hears A Who is not the return of Toy Story days, but it is very well done and quite funny. Be careful that your children don’t see it or they may start to question authority.
p.s. Is it silly to lay the seriousness of our dire political situation alongside the animated adventures of an elephant? Dr. Suess, the Lorax and even the Onceler would say it is not.
p.p.s. Do we refuse to vote for John McCain because he will carry with him many of the same advisers that have stolen justice from us in the last 8 years — a form of punishment to show the GOP that what has transpired on their watch is unacceptable? or do we trust that he is somehow the anti-GOP within the GOP that will return it to a path of sensible government FTPBTP?
Consider this a public (in so many ways) bookmark. I heard the tail end of this story on NPR a while back. I was suddenly reminded to go look it up by today’s Dilbert.
The interesting thing is that many times, free things are good but the question is, what happens when free actually has a downside.
At work today my co-worker asked “guess what?”, so I gave him the apropriate response…then I could only, also, remeber the response to “guess why”. Thank goodness we have the internet.
Guess who? Chicken poo or Chicken coo(p).
Guess what? Chicken butt.
Guess when? Chicken pen.
Guess where? Chicken underwear.
Guess why? Chicken pie. Chicken thigh.
Guess how? Chicken luau. Chicken Kung pao.
And Change isn’t something that you get from the gas station. I’ve buried most of this below the jump – it’s a bit out there, and I’d like to spend a moment thanking the good people of Wyoming and Mississippi for a bit of sense over the last few weeks.
After years of dealing with recovering right-wing idealogue guilt, I can finally put my finger on why Sen. Clinton rubs me raw.
When she was declaring victory in Ohio, the crowds began chanting “Yes, She Will”, a riff on Sen. Obama’s “Yes, We Can”. Which manages to be pandering, insulting, and a rip-off all at the same time. I fear that any election featuring Sen. Clinton will continue to be a referendum on the politics of the personal instead of any actual issues. Which is kind of a shame for her, but it is what it is.
By the same principle, I’m fundamentally opposed to, say a Jeb or Jenna Bush run.
Read more!During the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year at college I worked at Watertown, USA. Late on Saturday nights as the park was approaching closing time, someone would volunteer to drive to the nearest liquor store and grab a box full of bottles. We would bury them in the ice machines, slip the occasional sip, and by the time we closed the gates and drove away, we were all three sheets to the wind1. I worked the “canteen”, earning my tan from a massive burger machine with flames shooting out the ceiling during the lunch and dinner rushes, and I had a crush on the hottest little lifeguard with big brown eyes and the kind of mechanically straight hair you could only find in the 80’s. One night, high on Boone’s Farm, I told her I loved her and she gave me the “your sweet, but creepy” look. When she ran away at the end of the summer2 with a wanna-be biker, I was ready to move on.
The Wackness may be set in 1994, but it touched a place in my head that reminded me of that summer, and several other times in my life where I was in love with a girl who would just give me the time of day, but nothing more. (It, also, reminded me of a year or so of my life ¡ when I was invincible ¡, smoking inappropriate things at inappropriate times without a care in the world.) Josh Peck (formerly of Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”) makes a clear break from his family-themed roots, playing new high school graduate pot dealer, Luke Shapiro, in NYC who trades some of his stash for counseling sessions with Ben Kingsley’s psychiatrist character, Dr Squires…who is, also, the father — step father — of Olivia Thirlby’s Stephanie, the girl that Shapiro is in love with. Everyone is performing at Oscar levels here, including all-too-brief cameos from the lovely Jane Adams, and excepting an all-too-annoying cameo from Mary-Kate Olsen. It is especially nice to see Thirlby step out of Ellen Page’s (va)ginormous shadow, achingly portraying the enigma that is blossoming young women. The story is beautifully, slowly paced (as any story should be when they smoke as much as Shapiro and Squires do) with several brief moments of hilarity (see previous parenthetical statement). I am betting that Sony Pictures holds onto this Sundance-buffed gem until closer to Oscar Season in hopes of snagging the annual Little Miss Sunshine media frenzy. Try not to forget about it, because it is worth seeing.
Oh!, and the soundtrack is a great mix-tape of 1994 rap cornerstones from the Shapiro character with classic rock from the Squires character. Oh, baby !you!….you got what I nee-eed…
1 Keep in mind: this was the late ’80s. 18 year olds could buy alcohol in Louisiana, and it was ¡ ok to drive drunk ¡ .
2 That girl — how sad is it I don’t remember her name — had an older brother who really was a biker, and he called and threatened me because he found my number pitifully written down on a scrap of paper but never called. There was something twisted going on that Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer would’ve made money from, but when I left for college I decided to let that story go.
3 There is no footnote 3, btw. I’m just learning how to use them…inappropriately…so I thought I’d add another one.
Yeah, I’m one of those Austinites who came here ¡ all the way back in 1992 ¡ and I was sick of “SouthBy” before it even started last week. You wouldn’t believe how many skinny boys in pencil jeans with 80’s hairdos were wandering around downtown yesterday evening looking so much cooler than me. Still, if you are doing that kind of thing this weekend I am obliged to recommend some shows that friends are involved in that are noteworthy.
The kid who taught me how to beat1 Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out is all grown up and playing “four-string guitar” for Chris Denny who is in the Billboard showcase tonight. Denny is, also, on the new cover of Billboard magazine which some might say is a pretty big deal. If you go to the showcase, throw your panties or boxers at this guy on the right.
Wednesday night I attended a screening hosted by Chicken Ranch Records — run by my college radio buddy, Mike Dickinson — of J.D. Wilkes’s premiere film Seven Signs. It’s a top notch indie doc that is a perfect parallel to the eclectic kind of neo-anything-revival bands that Mike likes to sign. His regular showcases have already happened, but you can still catch his day party at Bull McCabes tomorrow from 1-5pm.
1 This lesson on the original 8-bit NES set the stage for learning patterns in a way that I previously had never seen/grasped in video games. If not for the young Chris Atwood, I would never have completed future Zelda, Mario and other games…much to my wife’s chagrin.
You know you’‘re eavesdropping on Yankees when someone has to ask “Are you a fan of Smokey and the Bandit?”
…and the answer is “Not really.”
Speaking of more ironic/funny/hipster websites that are making the rounds, I couldn’t pass up posting the most recent strip from Garfield Minus Garfield:
due to Jon’s fourth-wall glance. That is some really eerie kismet joke-inside-a-joke shiznit going on there.
I <3 Lloyd Doggett!
Torture is no proper tool in the arsenal of democracy. Torture is foreign to our values, foreign to our history, foreign to our religions, foreign to our laws, and to our international commitments. There can be no compromise. No middle ground. There must be zero tolerance for torture.
I apologize if some are already familiar with the genius that is this blog, but it’s too good (i.e. scarily accurate) not to pass on. Enjoy…
Baghead has been making the festival rounds since Sundance and it may be the perfect festival film. There are a few brief moments where things don’t work quite right, but overwhelmingly this simple independent film works perfectly. It is one of those movies that you will be glad you saw “cold” (without any ideas about what it is or what you might compare it to) and if you love independent film — any kind of independent film — you will love this movie. If I say any more I might spoil it for you, so I’ll leave you with the plot outline from IMDb:
The Duplass Brothers explore the minutiae of relationship dynamics in this in-depth study of a group of desperate actor friends. And a bag […on] a head.
Stephen Chow is one of my top 5 favorite directors (and actors), as much for his effervescent delivery as the diversity of stories he has overlaid with his kung-fu parody base. From celebrity chefs and wanna-be actors to soccer training and twisted 1940s dance-sequence versions of Seven Samurai, his consistency of laugh-out-loud frivolity and heart-warming characters is unmatched in cinema world-wide, not just Hong Kong. His new movie CJ7 is another step into unfamiliar topics and genres wrapped in his comfortingly familiar trappings. As an uneducated dirt-poor father of a young boy he struggles to pay for his son’s private schooling, picking the bulk of their food and lifestyle in their airy hovel from the garbage dump. When he brings home a green rubber sphere from the trash heap in hopes of compensating for not being able to buy the latest electronic robo-dog, it reveals itself to be an advanced dog/toy/tool from outerspace. Conflict, hilarity and even a little bit of kung fu ensues much to the viewer’s delight.
It is difficult to market foreign family/children films to the US because of the breadth of cultural differences and acceptances, not to mention that, if American adults are so afraid of subtitles, how can they be expected to teach their children the joy of foreign cinema. With words like d—-head and bull—-t spelled out clearly in the subtitles (once for the former, twice the latter), some parents will find themselves having to define/explain them…hopefully after the movie. However, with the introduction of Ni Hao, Kai-lan maybe we are seeing a shift to accept even more cultures into kid-fare entertainment and more parents will want to expose their children to warmth of this touching movie that is, in the end, better than most US family fare.
I think the professional analysts will get into this statistical morass eventually, but I have to consider whether some GOP voters in Texas were casting Hillary ballots as Dems since McCain has a much better chance against her.
This is the turnout for the 2004 primary.
| 2004 | d | r | total | registered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| total | 839231 | 687615 | 1526846 | 12264663 |
| % | 6.84% | 5.61% | 12.45% |
This is the turnout for the 2008 primary.
| 2008 | d | r | total | registered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| early | 1285444 | 561907 | 1847351 | |
| day | 2856813 | 1380907 | 4237720 | |
| total | 4142257 | 1942814 | 6085071 | 12752417 |
| % | 32.48% | 15.23% | 47.72% |
Sure, the Dems are fired up about finally having viable candidates to support — and I think I heard something about dissatisfaction with something about current events or whatever — but I have to believe that former GOP voters contributed to the 2:1 party turnout when four years ago the ratio was almost 1:1.
p.s. This table created with Textile shortcuts. Check out this advanced tutorial on the topic.
Is Iron Man the movie that the Conservative Hawks were trying to force Hollywood to make? Maybe, but it certainly looks like it kicks ass.