Month: December 2003 (Page 5 of 7)

Timeline

I want a catapult for Christmas.

That said, this movie would have been good if it had had decent acting, passable writing, competent production design and respectable direction. It had none of those things.

The biggest failing of this Michael Crichton time-travel “epic” is its deadly dullness. And how can you make the combination of time travel and medieval combat dull? Bad acting, writing, production design and direction, that’s how. I was especially struck by how cheap and thrown-together everything looked – it was like “Excalibur” put on by third graders. The whole movie felt like a bunch of rehearsal scenes strung together at the last minute when the final takes were destroyed in a fire.

Give this premise to, say, James Cameron, and replace the it-insults-wood-to-call-him-wooden Paul Walker with someone interesting (dare I say Colin Farrell?), and you might very well have something. This, not so much.

Quote of the day

Right-wing convert Christopher Hitchens, on 9/11 (via Atrios):

“Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldn?t analyze at first and didn?t fully grasp (partly because I was far from my family in Washington, who had a very grueling day) until the day itself was nearly over. I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration [emphasis mine. -AJB]. Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.”

Amazing that right-wingers are finally admitting, as Atrios put it, that 9/11 “gave them a big stiffy.” This sickens me. But it’s the elephant in the room – the thing that everyone knows but no one, on either side, is willing to admit: 9/11 was the best damn thing that ever happened to the neocon agenda.

I think I’m going to go throw up.

Deconstructing spam

Today I received the following spam message:

Girls + Farm Animals = Naked Girl with Farm Animals

Now this seems pretty straightforward at first glance. But upon further examination, I have to take issue with the mathematics. First, did all but one of the “girls” leave? Because on the left it says “Girls,” but on the right it says “Girl.”

Then there’s the issue of “Naked.” Do girls automatically take off their clothes when they see farm animals? Because it seems to me they’re not naked on the left, but they are naked on the right.

And combining the numbers issue with the naked issue, this is the only way I can see that this makes sense: A group of girls walked up to the farm animals, and one of them got so aroused that she whipped off her clothes, while the others watched.

Don’t even get me started on the meaning of “with.”

It’s all very confusing. Maybe I should click on the link…

That’s the ticket

How about this for a Democratic ticket in ’04:

Dean/Feingold

What do you think?

Average Joe finale

“At least I hope he’s terrible in bed.”

–David, commenting on the “Average Joe” finale last night

I must admit I was stunned when Melana picked the vacuous, childlike model Jason over funny, rich Adam. And it takes a lot to amaze a grizzled reality show veteran like me. Plus, I fell for the old “Survivor” editing trick, where Adam got so much more screen time than Jason, and the dating show editing trick where you think the first guy will be the one rejected. Damn. They even showed Jason peeking out from a window on the getaway jet as Adam got on the bus. Bastards!

This show surprised me throughout, by taking a middling premise and making it interesting from beginning to end. I don’t think Melana was all that interested in either of them, so she just thought, well, I might as well take the pretty one for a ride! Good luck with that, sweetheart.

I don’t shed too many tears for Adam, though. As my friend Wendy said last night, the millionaire day trader TV star (at least in the 15-minutes way) won’t be hurting for female attention after this. And that’s the best part of this whole show, if you ask me.

Rollback

Mrs. du Toit wants a rollback. Poor dear just can’t deal with the society as it is. Her delicate sensibilities are all aflutter. The only problem with this even-more-insane-than-usual rant is, she doesn’t say how far she wants the rollback to go. I mean, would 1899 be far enough? Get out that whalebone corset and let’s party!

Pop culture quote of the day

“Look, you crumb bum, I’m a star. Star, star, star. I don’t get a million dollars to act out of a trench. I played Miss St. John the Baptist in a trench, (she walks along in the trench and we see that she has two boxes strapped to her feet) and I played Miss Napoleon Bonaparte in a trench, and I played Miss Alexander Fleming in a furrow so if you want this scene played out of a trench, well you just get yourself a goddamn stuntman. (walks off) I played Miss Galileo in a groove and I played Mrs. Jesus Christ in a geological syncline!”

Anyone know where this is from?

The Pro-War Brigade

Dean Esmay, the du Toits, and now Adam Yoshida. (Best of all, he’s not even American!) Via Atrios. Is this guy scary or what? Be sure to read the comments – they’re 98 percent negative, which is cool.

Things that renew my faith in pop culture

Bradley Cooper (Will) back on “Alias” tonight in leather pants. I always thought he was better looking than Michael “Hatchet Face” Vartan. Put Vaughn in witness protection, I say, and bring back Will Tippin. But that’s just me.

Capitalism

I went Christmas shopping today, and bought a shirt, earmuffs, and a pair of shoes.

All for myself.