Scariest pop culture moment of the week

Thumbing through the TV Guide, and happening on a photo of the plastic-surgery-damaged Mary Tyler Moore with granny glasses and a grey wig, playing an 80-year-old woman in the TV movie “Blessings.” Yeow. I want to open up my head and use a scrub brush to get this image out of my mind.

I was going to scan it and show it to you, but flames started shooting out of the scanner, so I stopped.

Things I learned watching “Thirteen”

1. I’m never going to have children. Ever.
2. If I was 13 today, I don’t think I could hack it. I really don’t.
3. I’ve finally forgiven Holly Hunter for “The Piano.”

This movie is an Afterschool Special on crack. You jump from one confrontation to the next, without a break; the jumpy digital video camerawork emphasizes the uneasiness. I had a similar reaction to this as I did to “Magdalene Sisters” – it would have been more effective if they would have dialed back everything a few notches. As it was, I felt numb by the halfway point. That’s not good for a movie where there’s really no one to root for.

There’s good performances by Holly Hunter as the bohemian hairdresser mother and Evan Rachel Wood as her daughter. But that’s not enough to counter the unrelenting dread that unspools without much of a purpose.

Since the allegations of sexual misconduct and Hitler admiration by California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger have surfaced, his candidacy has resembled nothing so much as the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

I said at the time that Thomas’ confirmation should have focused on his qualifications (or lack of them) to join the highest court in the land, not whether he told Anita Hill he had a pubic hair on his Coke. But those allegations became the central (and really only) issue in his confirmation. That was wrong.

Plus, it became a “Witness for the Prosecution” situation with Thomas. If those irrelevant accusations are discredited, he’s OK to join the court. Well, no.

And with Arnold, I remain amazed that no one – not the press, not the voters – has ever asked, what makes this man qualified to be governor of the most populous state in the union? These allegations against Arnold allow both sides to occupy their time with pointless debates about things like, was his behavior “assaultive” or “playful”? That’s rubbish, frankly, when you’re talking about handing the reins of a huge state with serious problems over to a guy with absolutely zero qualifications other than celebrity.

Memo to Bill O’Reilly

Apologize.

UPDATE: Even though they’ve finally admitted there are no WMDs in Iraq, they still want $600 million to keep searching. Isn’t that like giving money to the “Help O.J. Find The Real Killers Fund”?

The “West Wing” last night was OK, but not great, I thought. If it were me, I would have extended the kidnapping/interim president story one more episode, and given us a less anticlimactic ending than “we just up and found her somewhere, here she is, now everything’s back to normal.”

But what was brilliant about the whole arc, as I said last week, was how it mirrored our current situation with the “war on terror” and the Iraq conflict in particular. Especially good was the scene right at the beginning, when Leo McGarry talks to a pollster about the situation with the president’s daughter.

“If she’s found dead, his numbers will go through the roof,” the pollster says ruefully.

That made me think of our “real” President, and how his poll numbers have fallen back down to pre-9/11 levels. Isn’t it sad to think that should there be some sort of attack in this country, his poll numbers would shoot back up again? And the larger and more horrible the event, the bigger the bump?

He was the same guy on 9/12/01 as he was on 9/10/01. This magical transformation from Moe Howard into Churchill just didn’t happen, and it won’t happen if something bad hits us between now and election time next year, either. We just don’t learn, do we?

This just in

I was right all along. I’m like Nostradamus or something. With fish.

Just a few headlines recently:

–Uproar over Halliburton puts administration on defensive
–Ashcroft ties may undermine inquiry
–Lawsuit to be filed over loan by actor
–Harassment allegations dog Schwarzenegger
–Limbaugh resigns from ESPN

Pinch me – I must be dreaming.

Listening to…

“If I Were Smart”
-Shelby Lynne, Identity Crisis

Actually, the whole album is pretty good. But this song is wonderful.

The contract

There’s been some discussion on this site lately about the contract between a writer and reader, specifically between weblog writers and weblog readers. I felt that I should clarify exactly what my position is on this. (I’m doin’ a lot of clarifyin’ today.)

I write this site primarily because it’s fun for me to do. I get to flex my writing and thinking muscles, and figure out how I feel about a lot of things by writing about them. I also try my best to make it entertaining for readers. And I admit, I look at my logs, and I love (crave?) getting comments and hits.

But how open I am about my personal or emotional life, or how I choose to express that, is completely up to me. If people get frustrated or unhappy that I’m not revealing more (or even the opposite), that’s the choice I make and the chance I take. Anyone who’s read this site for any length of time probably knows me pretty well already. And my reticence is also part of who I am.

So my “contract” with you, the reader, is a loose one. I’ll do my best to entertain you while I play in the sandbox. And if you like what I’m doing, let me know. It’s as simple as that. Thanks.

Hello? Anyone still there? OK, good. Thanks. Boy, when you start trying to be more open, weird things can happen, things you never expected in a million years. That’s why they call it “a can of worms” and not “a can of beautiful bright flowers.”

I want to thank everyone who’s contacted me over the last couple of days. It means a lot to me. When I wrote the “how I am” post, it was mostly just to get it out of my head so I could move on to other things, you know? There was no crisis; but it’s definitely something I need to work on.

I have nothing against therapy and I’m sorry if I gave that impression in any way. It’s helped a lot of people, and that’s great. I may even give it a go sometime, who knows.

I was thinking of taking the horoscope post down, since it had some unexpected bad reactions. But I was just feeling like it was all too much, right at that moment, so the sentiment fit my instantaneous emotional state. If anyone was offended, or felt like I was telling them to fuck off, that wasn’t what I meant at all and I sincerely apologize.

There. Now don’t we all feel better? 🙂