Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Scumbag DujourThis story is a classic example of how vile some on the left are. Many posters on the Huffington Post were wishing death on Tony Snow when he was diagnosed with another tumor. And while Cathy Seipp lie dying of cancer, some talentless hack decided to create a fake website pretending to be her and attempted to trash her family and everything she believed in.
If he was one of the immature teenagers that frquent sites like Digg or Youtube that would be one thing, but he’s a 54 year old man named Eliot Stein. How pathetic can you get?
One of the things that bothers me about lefties is how full of hate many of them are, and they have no problem doing things like this. It doesn’t speak well of their political views when alleged humanists are so inhumane.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
American Idol: 3/27/2007
Another great show. This time Gwen Stefani was the coach, which is unusual. More often they get singers way past their prime like Barry Manilow or Kenny Rogers as coaches. Stefani is current and still making hit records. But the show has become such a CD seller for guest coaches, many artists are clamoring to be on it now.
Here’s a run down of the performances.
Lakisa Jones did Donna Summer’s Last Dance, one of my favorite disco songs. She did it real justice, though no one can touch Summer at her game. The judges loved it, and praised her all over. However, I think it wasn’t great, just really good. She’ll be safe. It certainly made people forget Breena Gethers version last season.
Chris Sligh sang the Police’s “Every Little Thing”. His voice was great. But he was off track with the band. The judges tore him up. Simon made it sound like Chris is all but gone and I suspect he may be tonight.
Gina Glockson sang “I’ll stand by you” beautifully. It was her best performance to date. The judges thought so. Safe. This is a song more suited to her voice than some of the ones she did before. She doesn’t have a lot of range. But she can sing.
Sanjaya Malakar sang “Bathwater” by No Doubt. What can I say? Someone once stated that youth is wasted on the young. Based on the kids voting to keep Sanjaya in this show, I’d say, damn straight. It was really-freaking-bad. But not nearly as bad as his hairdo. W-T-F was that? A faux-hawk? The dude is fast becoming the show’s clown, without meaning to. And watch, he’ll be safe again. The judges gave up on judging him since nothing they say seems to matter. Last season people were complaining about 16 year old Kevin Kovais, but he’s Frank Sinatra in comparison. I just hope Sanjaya is gone in a week or two. It’s hard watching talented people like Stephanie Edwards go so this dufus can stay.
Haley Scarnato sang True Colors by Cyndi Lauper. She tried to make it a power ballad. Not a good move. I suspect she’ll be gone if Chris isn’t. But as the remaining (semi) hot chick on the show, she might stay another week. As long as she keeps showing off her legs.
Phil Stacy sang another Police song. “Every Breat You Take”. And he did, I think, his best performance to date. And a really good version of the song. Stefani must be a Police (and Donna Summer) fan because she chose the songs list tonight that they had to pick from. In Stacy’s hands, Sting should be proud. It was excellent.
Melinda was next and she picked Donna Summer’s Heaven Knows (which was a duet with her husband at the time). Great song and Melinda nailed it again, flawlessly. She doesn’t even need to be on this show except the music business is too stupid to hire people like her unless they go on Idol. She’s in a class by herself. Simon knocked her for the first time, but all he could complain about was her outfit. I think Melinda is coming in #1 each week, so he is probably trying to knock her down a peg. Won’t work. Super-safe.
Blake Lewis did an almost Sade-like version of I will Always Love You by the Cure. No beat box or rapping this time. No funky dance moves. I thought it was very nice. It’s one of my favorite Cure songs. I think they would have liked this. Anyway, safe. The judges loved it. Simon said he was the #1 guy in the show right now. I pretty much guessed that from the get go with him.
Jordin Sparks sang Hey, Baby by Stafani. Stafani liked it, but it wasn’t that great of a singing example. A decent performance. I’m not sure if it will help her. She might be in the bottom three tonight, even though she did good. We’ll see.
Finally, Chris Richardson in the pimp spot, did Don’t Speak by No Doubt. I think he did a nice job. Not earth shattering, but very good. He’s probably safe even though he was in the bottom two last week.
As far as judges go, Stefani seemed ok. She’s apparently a fan of the show since she was familiar with all the singers. Unfortunately, none of the singers seemed to listen to her advice when given.
UPDATE: I was right. Too obvious. Next week it will be either Phil or Haley, I suspect. It should be Sanjaya but he seems bullet proof so far.
BTW: Elliot Yamin’s new CD debuted at #2 on the Billboard top 200. Daughtry is #4.
Day Watch
I have to say, I liked the Russian film Night Watch even thought it disappointed me the first time. On repeat viewings I have come to see it as a visionary film in some ways. I like the fact that the hero is a total loser. Night Watch is sort of a cross between Ghost Busters and the X-Men if the X-Men were a bunch of sorry F-ups. It’s not a comedy, exactly. But it is very wild and it’s shot entirely in Moscow. It’s based on these popular books over there, so there is a lot of Mythology you have to absorb which is why it’s better after a couple viewings.
Here’s the trailer to part two of the trilogy: Day Watch, coming soon. Looks very impressive. I read the third film will be shot in the US.
The Night Watch are the bad guys, supposedly. They represent the forces of darkness. The Day Watch are supposed to be the good guys. They represent the forces of light. I don’t know what the third film is called yet.
Operation Wetback
How Eisenhower beat back illegal immigration successfully (and why politicians today don’t).
In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.
Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing’s close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.
One of Swing’s first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.
Then on June 17, 1954, what was called “Operation Wetback” began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.
By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas.
By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.
Aside from the un-PC name, I doubt they would have the will to do this today. More importantly, the corruption in the political class is so endemic, it’s the biggest roadblock to immigration controls. Too many politicians are not only letting it happen, they are encouraging it.
The New face on Mars
An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission.
NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.
“This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides,” said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We’ve never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn’s thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you’d expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is.”
The Golden Compass
This is a first look at the first movie in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Hilarity DujourBehind the scenes: Lily Tomlin and director David O Russell on the set of the (craptacular film) I heart Huckabees.
Blast from the Past
Once upon a time (I was only able to catch a glimpse of them as a little kid), they used to run these cool commercials for the snack bar between movies. Yes, up until the ‘80s you could see two movies for the price of admission. Drive ins were especially big on these commercials. I happen to love them. They make me feel all nostalgic.
10 Minutes of Drive In Commericals
Compilation of Commericals
Let’s All Go to the Lobby
Candy Cowboy
Butter Cup Popcorn
Armour Franks
Good Tribute commercial It has a lot of clips from real commercials.
Californians
As a native Californian (going back 5 generations on my mom’s side), most of the annoying and crazy Californians you hear about came there from somewhere else. It used to be one of the greatest places to live. Then, people started moving there in droves from all over.
Comedian Gallager had a joke that California was like granola. What ain’t fruits and nuts is flakes. But almost all our serial killers and weirdos, if you bother to check, came from another state originally.
The state’s move to a demented socialist experiment is relatively recent, also. So don’t blame us natives.
It’s dead inside Favorites bar this afternoon, where the propped-open door spills a bit of light onto the ancient Elvis pin ball machine and the grumpy man puffing on a cigarette in front of the video poker machine.
There’s no food here, unless you count the vending machine against the green wall. Owner Ray Medrano had to make a choice: Close the kitchen or ban smoking in the joint altogether. His customers love their smokes more than their food, so the kitchen lost.
For Medrano, there’s only one despicable group of people to blame for Nevada passing a smoking ban that eliminates smoking in restaurants and bars that also serve food: Californians.
Story continues below ↓advertisement“California has a negative influence on our society,” he said, glancing around as cigarette smoke fills the stuffy place. “They should keep their world in their world.”
I’m a Californian who left the state 10 years ago for Nevada, but I came here to get away from the crap this guy is complaining about. I loved the fact that Nevada was old school. Very libertarian in many ways. But that has been eroded over time, and housing prices, which were once very reasonable, have gotten as almost as criminally absurd as California. I’ve railed against this to everyone who will listen to me, so I totally sympathize. It’s greedy speculators and control freaks who somehow took over in my home state. And they spread their virus elsewhere.
I remember in the 70s, how you could walk down the street and total strangers would smile and say hi to you. Everyone was nice. Crime was pretty low. If you saw that movie Annie Hall, there’s a scene where one of Woody Allen’s friends talks about how great it is in California. When people see that now they think it’s a joke. But it used to be fairly accurate.
Sure we had crime. A lot of famous crime. But most of the time, the place was wonderful.
But I watched in dismay as people started pouring in, not just across the borders, but from other states, bringing their crappy attitudes with them. Lots of New Yorkers moved there in the 70s with their “I heart NY” bumper stickers on their cars. I wanted a I HATE NY bumper sticker after listening to all these people complain about the weather and how nice everyone were. Why did you move there, then? They brought a lot of negativity and East Coast liberalism, and started getting into the state and local governments. Slowly but surely, a truly liberal state became the faux-liberal socialist republic of California.
So while I perfectly understand the sentiments expressed by some in this article, the problem goes back to control freak, fake “liberals”, aka Crypto-Marxists, who want to ban everything they don’t approve of and tax everyone to death so only elitist rich people can live decently.
Not satisfied with ruining my state, they have to try to ruin all the others nearby. I really hope there will be some kind of backlash to this nonsense. I’m really sick of it. I want my old state back.
Great Frank Miller Interview
I missed this NPR interview from January (found it on Macker’s review of 300). It makes me interested in reading Holy Terror, Batman now. I wasn’t sure about it before. And I can see why so many left-leaning reviewers hated 300, because its politics are a slap in their face. (And notice what a huge success it is. What does that tell you?).
