Category: Entertainment

Day 104

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I haz a sad.

I just watched the series finale of Phineas and Ferb, and I already miss the show.

Jeff “Swampy” Marsh and Dan Povenmire, the creators/show runners next project will be
Mikey Murphy’s Law,* and I, as well as the rest of my family, will wait for this with bated breath.

*The concept of this show is that it is the adventures of the great, great, great, great, great, great, grandchild of the creator of Murphy’s Law.†
†Technically, this is historically inaccurate, because the term Murphy’s Law has its origins in rocket sled tests at Edwards AFB in the early 1950s.

Real-Life Special Forces, Heavy Metal God, Actor, Knight, Descendant of Holy Roman Emperor………

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The many faces of Christopher Lee


And Fox f%$#s it up


I will never think about the song :The Little Drummer Boy” the same way again.

I am referring to the iconic British actor Christopher Lee, who died Monday at the age of 93:

Any actor who played a definitive Dracula and Saruman in “Lord of the Rings” would surely be welcomed in the realm of heavy metal fans. But Sir Christopher Lee, the estimable British actor who died Monday, is a particular hero to fans of heavy rock.

Lee, a lifelong musician, had dabbled in vocal performance and recorded a track for the score of his 1973 film “The Wicker Man.” But Lee’s foreboding baritone and arch screen presence turned out to lend itself perfectly to a heavy metal setting.

The actor, beloved for his turns in both classic and B-movie horror, cut his first metal album at the age of 90: “Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross.”

The album, an operatic concept piece recounting the life of the first Holy Roman Emperor, remains a cult favorite in metal, and earned him a “Spirit of Metal” award at the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods award ceremony (presented by no less a figure than Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath).

Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, a fellow legend of British metal, told the site Loudwire that Lee was “a very metal guy, he embodies the whole spirit of metal.”

Lee followed it up with a 2013 sequel, “Charlemagne: The Omens of Death.” But Lee is perhaps most adored in metal for his exquisitely droll “A Heavy Metal Christmas” recordings, where he lent his gravitas to some magnificently silly holiday originals.

FYI, Lee was a direct descendant of Charlemagne.

As to the SAS bit, roll the Wiki:

Lee’s stepfather served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps, but it is unlikely he had any influence over Lee’s military career. Lee saw him for the last time on a bus in London in 1940, by then divorced from Lee’s mother, though Lee did not speak to him. Lee mentioned that during the war he was attached to the Special Operations Executive and the Long Range Desert Patrol, the precursor of the SAS, but always declined to go into details.

“ I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden – former, present, or future – to discuss any specific operations. Let’s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like.

Here is a guy who lived an amazing life.

This Is the Best Parody of a Genre That I Have Seen in a Long Time

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I just saw Kung Fury on YouTube.

Doing a parody of a genre, in this case 80s Kung Foo movies, particularly if you are going a high cheese, is dancing on the knife edge.

If you are not cheesy enough, it doesn’t work.  If you are too cheesy, the audience loses the ability to suspend its disbelief.

The director and writer, David Sandberg gets the balance almost perfect.  (Laser Raptors and David Hasselhoff)

And so I Must Add Another to the List of They Who Must Not Be Named………

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The Stupid, it Burns Us!

I must add (thankfully former) Twitter “Hashtag activist” Suey Park, who face planted with her #CancelColbert tag about a year ago.

It started with ……… Hell, just watch the attached video.

Short version:

  • Football team owner and contemptible scumbag Dan Snyder, facing criticism for his team’s name, founds the “Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation” in a ploy that not even his own mother would believe.
  • Colbert makes joke about this.
  • Comedy Central tweets punchline bereft of context.
  • Ms. Park has a Twitter fit, despite never having seen the original joke, which goes viral.
  • Colbert answers back (He is actually very gentle to her and savage on the cable news coverage) in the attached video.
  • Ms. Park becomes a laughing stock.
  • Dirtbag misogynists sent threats of murder and rape to Ms. Park, and she gets doxxed.

We can all agree that nothing that Ms. Park did merited the threats against her person.

What is also clear that, even by the incredibly lame standards of “Twitter Hashtag Activists,” Suey Park squandered whatever credibility she once had: She has become a punchline to a very bad joke.

She has made some attempt to rehabilitate her reputation (see link), but, I don’t care about her reputation, or how she feels about herself, or how she might have learned from the experience.

Until she does something that affirmatively proves that her opinions have some insight beyond what could be generated with an ELIZA program, she goes on my list of They Who Must Not Be Named.

That is all.

I Finally Have Something Nice to Say about Los Angeles

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Kudos to the “City of Angels” which has raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, including tipped workers:

The nation’s second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far for labor groups and their allies who are engaged in a national push to raise the minimum wage.

The increase, which the City Council passed in a 14-to-1 vote, comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same. In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wages by ballot initiative.

The effect is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, almost 50 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour. Under the plan approved Tuesday, the minimum wage will rise over five years.

………

Even economists who support increasing the minimum wage say there is not enough historical data to predict the effect of a $15 minimum wage, an unprecedented increase. A wage increase to $12 an hour over the next few years would achieve about the same purchasing power as the minimum wage in the late 1960s, the most recent peak.

Many restaurant owners here aggressively fought the increase, saying they would be forced to cut as much as half of their staff. Unlike other states, California state law prohibits tipped employees from receiving lower than the minimum wage. The Council promised to study the potential effect of allowing restaurants to add a service charge to bills to meet the increased costs.

The restaurant owners can, to quote Bender Rodriguez, “bite my shiny metal ass.”

There is no justification to pay slave wages to your employees, and there is no reason for a wait person to have to tolerate bad behavior from a customer because they depend on tips for their livelihood.

If your business cannot make it if you have to pay your employees a fair wage, then your business should not make it, no saving throw.

I Have Never Watched Mad Men

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And I really do not give a sh%$ about the series finale.

Except for the whole DB Cooper theory.

I spent my high school years in the Pacific Northwest, and it imbued me with a fascination with all things DB Cooper.

BTW, I never watched Breaking Bad either. 

I am so out of touch with the media habits of America’s glitterati.

I Now Understand Why Jon Stewart is Leaving The Daily Show

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After many years of commenting on cable TV wankitude, he can no longer handle watching Fox News anymore:

………

My biggest objection to Fox News, I say, is not the scaremongering, it’s the way it’s reshaped the Republican party. It will misrepresent social and economic issues, and promote the more extreme elements of the party, politicians such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, in a way that is hugely detrimental to American politics. (For the record, Rupert Murdoch disagrees, and last year claimed that Fox News “absolutely saved” the Republican party.) “Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing,” says Stewart. “I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.”

Now that he is leaving The Daily Show, is there any circumstance in which he would watch Fox News again? He takes a few seconds to ponder the question. “Umm… All right, let’s say that it’s a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family. I might glance at it for a moment until I realize, that’s Fox News, and then I shut it off. That’s the circumstance.”

OK, I get it now.

If I had to watch Fox News for a living, I’d be ……… I’d be ………

Hell, I need a full fifth of Jack and a bong full of Maui Wowie to even consider it.

Minor Freakout at the Saroff Household

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It was a good one.

I was channel surfing, and saw that The Princess Bride was about to start on one of the cable channels.

Neither of the Saroff children had ever seen this film in its entirety, so I ran around like my hair was on fire getting them down to the TV.

We also made grilled cheese sandwiches and from-scratch tomato basil soup (this started before I saw the movie).

They enjoyed the film immensely. For them not to do would be ……… Inconceivable!!!

I expect to hear quotes from the film incessantly for the next few weeks.

My Daughter, the Scenery Chewer

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I just finished watching the Lansdowne High School production of Bye Bye Birdie.

Natalie was cast as the overbearing mother, and played it with appropriately overbearing gusto.

People loved her.

But thank God that it is over.  Both shows weren’t off very well, but it appeared that the show was cursed.

There were multiple practises that were cancelled due to snow, including the full dress rehearsal, (!) and a spate of injuries, mostly sprained ankles.

They say that the show must go on, and go on it did.

Posted via mobile.

The End of the Vulcan Bar Matzvah*

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Nimoy has had a varied career, actor, director, poet, photographer, and writer.
As such, it’s hard to find his best moment, but his worst moment is clearly singing this song

Leonard Nimoy has died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at 83:

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

Seriously. If you smoke, stop today.

*It’s an old family story. My mom was talking to a friend in Alaska, Danny Plotkin, and asked how he was doing. He replied to her that he was flying down to the lower 48 to go to a “Vulcan bar Mitzvah”. It turns out that Leonard Nimoy was his nephew, and Nimoy’s son was having a Bar Mitzvah

I Haz a Sad

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Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show later this year:

Jon Stewart, who turned Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” into a sharp-edged commentary on current events, delivering the news in layers of silliness and mockery, said on Tuesday that he would step down after more than 16 years as its anchor.

Mr. Stewart disclosed his plans during a taping of the program on Tuesday. Comedy Central said he would “remain at the helm of ‘The Daily Show’ until later this year” but did not elaborate on Mr. Stewart’s next steps or the future of the show.

In becoming the nation’s satirist in chief, Mr. Stewart imbued the program with a personal sense of justice, even indignation. For a segment of the audience that had lost its faith in broadcast and print news outlets or never regarded them as sacrosanct in the first place, Mr. Stewart emerged a figure as trusted as Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow.

Bummer.

I understand where he is coming from, he’s been doing this for nearly 17 years, and his directorial debut, Rosewater, was very well received, and I really don’t think that he can take his role as the “Most trusted man on cable news” any further.

Being a comedian is like being a shark: If you don’t stop moving, you die, and Jon Stewart has no where to go as presenter on his show.

I’m Wondering who has Call-Sign Rainbow Dash………

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To quote the great Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know.”

It appears that the USAF has a Brony squadron:

Earlier this month, word hit the Internet that an Air Force unit training to fly America’s most advanced military aircraft are wearing a patch inspired by the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Now the Air Force has confirmed it: bronies are flying jets.

“We train world-class pilots who will go on to defend our great nation,” 1st Lt. Tom Barger, a public affairs officer at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, tells War is Boring. “Fostering camaraderie, morale and unity on a regular basis and through small means — like a tastefully humorous patch — enhances our ability to complete the mission when working as a team is essential.”

The pink and purple patch — first spotted by My Little Pony fan site Equestria Daily  — and worn by 24 flight students from Joint Undergraduate Specialized Pilot Class 14-05, references the cable cartoon show about a team of magical ponies. Although criticized by some as a cynical bid to get children to purchase plastic pony products (it’s a reboot from the 1980s), the show — which airs weekday afternoons on the Hub Network — became a cult phenomenon that’s now spread to the armed forces.

My son is a Brony, and he was stoked about this.

I still do not get the whole “Brony” thing.

H/t ECop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Deep Thought

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I was thinking that the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, was the oldest doctor, was the oldest actor to play The Doctor, (Do we capitalize the “The”?) and then I realized that John Hurt, at age 73, as [T]the Doctor, albeit a Doctor who never had a bit on the series.

So, is Peter Capaldi the oldest actor to play [T]the Doctor, or is it John Hurt, who played [T}the Doctor who did (or didn’t) destroy Gallifrey?

I’m curious here, but I figure that I am stirring up a sh%$ storm, but I am alcohol loading for the new year, so I do not care.

I Haz a Sad

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Arguably his finest moment

I just watched the last episode of the Colbert Report, and I am going to miss him.

He will, of course, be taking over for Letterman, but that will be Stephen Colbert the person, and not the Bill O’Reilly inspired character that he has played on his show.

I’ll miss the character.