Category: Entertainment

Damn

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Click and Clack are retiring:

For years now, after their broadcasts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the hosts of the public-radio hit “Car Talk,” have been ranking the listener calls they receive on a scale from five to one, with five being the most entertaining.

It’s an archival system that will soon be put to use.
After 35 years of weekly broadcasts and some 12,500 calls, the wisecracking brothers announced on Friday that they are retiring. “As of October, we’re not going to be recording any more new shows,” Tom, 74, wrote in a CarTalk.com column written with Ray, 63, who added, “We’ve decided that it’s time to stop and smell the cappuccino.”
NPR, formerly called National Public Radio, will keep the show going by cobbling together the best of the old segments — the “fives,” so to speak. The producers think that most listeners won’t notice or care that the show is dated. Nonetheless, the announcement on Friday saddened fans of the pair, also known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, whose freewheeling chat show — ostensibly about cars — has been a weekend tradition for decades.

I’m bumming.

How to Write a Sincere Apology

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I’m not sure that I’m particularly good at this sort of thing, but actor Jason Alexander is, and he shows himself to be a mensch in the process:

So, I would like to say – I now get it. And to the extent that these jokes made anyone feel even more isolated or misunderstood or just plain hurt – please know that was not my intention, at all or ever. I hope we will someday live in a society where we are so accepting of each other that we can all laugh at jokes like these and know that there is no malice or diminishment intended.

But we are not there yet.

So, I can only apologize and I do. In comedy, timing is everything. And when a group of people are still fighting so hard for understanding, acceptance, dignity and essential rights – the time for some kinds of laughs has not yet come. I hope my realization brings some comfort.

Go read the rest.

Pay Per View Review

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Well, we got around to seeing yet another movie on PPV, Thor (2011).

Chris Hemsworth … Thor
Natalie Portman … Jane Foster
Tom Hiddleston … Loki
Anthony Hopkins … Odin
Stellan Skarsgård … Erik Selvig
Kat Dennings … Darcy Lewis
Clark Gregg … Agent Coulson
Idris Elba … Heimdall
Colm Feore … King Laufey
Ray Stevenson … Volstagg
Tadanobu Asano … Hogun
Josh Dallas … Fandral
Jaimie Alexander … Sif
Rene Russo … Frigga
Adriana Barraza … Isabel Alvarez

This really isn’t a film. It’s a lead-in to the upcoming Avengers movie. Barely worth it as PPV, but I’m really glad I didn’t drop 40+ dollars on a movie tickets for the family, and lord knows what on drinks and snacks.

The two best performances are from Stellan Skarsgård, who does a really good job of portraying a Swede (go figure), and Kat Dennings, who embraces her inner sidekick when her wailings for her lost iPod sounds just like my daughter.

Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is an affable, though rather a thick oaf, which suits the script.

Natalie Portman is winsome and smart love interest, which is kind of her sweet spot of acting.

One of the truths of these movies is that the really interesting character is the villain.  Well, not this time.  Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is just weak.

I’m not sure how much of this is the script, which cannot decide whether or not he is misguided or malevolent.

Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony Hopkins playing Odin.  (Meh)

The movie takes place in two places, Earth and Asgard/Jotunheim.

The Asgard/Jotunheim bits are dull. It’s stilted, and dull. At least they don’t to the “thee” and “thine” bit that I remember as the speech of Asgard when I last read the comic in the 1970s.

Basically the lands of the Gods and the Frost Giants seems to be little more than an excuse for excessive CGI.

There are a couple of funny bits, some car accidents and what can only be described as a “hammer time” party.

For most of the movie, S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be more sinister than benevolent.

Overall, I would give a 5.5 out of 10, a firm “Meh”.

Pix after the break:



The Schadenfreude Shortage is Officially Over

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After Bill O’Reilly and his wife separated, she started dating a cop, and he used the promise of donations to a police charity to get the police commissioner to order an investigating his wife’s boyfriend:

Last summer, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly came to believe that his wife was romantically involved with another man. Not just any man, but a police detective in the Long Island community they call home. So O’Reilly did what any concerned husband would do: He pulled strings to get the police department’s internal affairs unit to investigate one of their own for messing with the wrong man’s lady.

We reported in June that Bill O’Reilly and his wife of 15 years Maureen McPhilmy O’Reilly seem to be on the outs. Last summer she purchased a separate home under her own name, and transferred her voter registration to the new address, while O’Reilly kept his registration current at their old address. As per usual, Fox News did not comment on the situation at the time. Since then we’ve learned what happened, and it’s like Bridges of Madison County meets Copland. When confronted with a potentially disloyal spouse, O’Reilly reacted by—not unlike his boss Roger Ailes—treating his local police department like a private security force and trying to damage one cop’s career for the sin of crossing Bill O’Reilly.

………

Richard Harasym is a 23-year veteran of the Nassau County Police Department who, as of last summer, had been a detective in the elite internal affairs unit for 12 years. His job was to catch crooked cops, root out corruption, and police the police. But at some point during the summer of 2010, his commanding officer, Inspector Neil Delargy, called him into his office with a highly unorthodox assignment: Harasym was to launch an investigation into a fellow officer based not on what he had done, but on who he was dating.

Delargy ordered Harasym to meet with two private detectives working on behalf of Bill O’Reilly. They had information about an NCPD officer they believed to be carrying on with O’Reilly’s wife. Delargy told Harasym to launch an investigation into the man and to tell him to end the relationship.

………

According to our source, Delargy offered Harasym no justification for investigating the detective—who is unmarried—aside from the alleged infidelity. “The order was to investigate this detective not for any misdeeds,” the source said, “but to see if they could get anything on him. Delargy also told him to tell the detective to back off.”

Delargy told Harasym that the investigation was highly sensitive for two reasons, the source said: 1) It was ordered directly by then-police commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, and 2) O’Reilly was at the time considering making a major donation to the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, a private not-for-profit foundation Mulvey helped found in 2009 to raise money for construction of a planned $48 million police training facility at Nassau Community College.

“These internal affairs cops were on the case at the behest of Mulvey in order to get O’Reilly’s funds,” the source said.

I don’t know from the story if Billo broke any laws here.  In order for him to have broken the law, he would have had make statements implying that there would be no donation forthcoming unless they targeted his wife’s boyfriend, but with allegations that Mulvey routinely offered favors to people who made donations to his charity, it does seem that there is some serious ethical lapses.

The fact that this mirrors Newscorp’s payoffs to in matters related to the phone hacking scandal in the UK makes it even more amusing.

I think that I will have a surfeit of schadenfreude to last me through September.

Yes, I Heard His Speech, and It Pissed Me Off…

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Same sh%$, different day, it’s the culture of Washington, both sides are at fault, if we do nothing disaster looms.  (False: doing nothing means letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012, and deficits drop by a lot)

It seemed to be more of a plaintive whine that people just don’t get how awesome he is, or they would go all happy non-partisan.

This is all largely an artifact of his own making, he could have gotten this all done in December, but Obama wanted an opportunity to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so we have this hostage situation.

That’s not what pissed me off the most though, it’s that, because of the speech, Maddow was preempted by that fatuous f%$# Lawrence O’Donnell.

I know that it’s not rational, but his voice sets my teeth on edge.

Olbermann’s First Night on His New Network

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The new Countdown is very similar to the old Countdown, with the only difference that he no longer has to observe the ban that MSNBC instituted against Markos Moulitsas for hurting Joe Scarboro’s feelings about a year and a half ago.

It was not one of his better shows, but it was mostly a reintroduction, and I think that there were still some rough spots.

In the long run, hope that it will be more like Countdown in 2006 than Countdown in 2010.

Meh!

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Sharon* had a conference today so I took the kids to a movie.  Because of the schedule, we saw Hop.

It’s not even worth a write up. 

It was completely unmemorable, with a standard “Santa Claus faces an evil elf revolt” and “Two slackers come to responsibility” themes intertwined.

It was simply unmemorable and inoffensive, and you already saw most of the good bits in the coming attractions.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Why Some Annoying People Are Not on the List…

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Submitted for your approval, Carlos Irwin Estevez

The They Who Must Not Be Named list, of course.

You see, some of the people who appear to be worthless are actually talented.

Charlie Sheen is a really funny guy, as this sketch shows, and I’m not sure if he’s crazy or not, because,  unlike Bill Frist and Charles Krauthammer, I don’t do diagnoses long distance, but it seems to me that even if he is a bit nuts, he is less nuts than he appears.

In any case, this video is hysterically funny, and the butt of Charlie Sheen’s jokes is one Charlie Sheen.

So he has been removed from the list.

Kathleen Parker Quits Parker Spitzer on CNN

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Well, now that she is leaving, perhaps I can check out the successor show without the right wing idoocy for “balance”:

Kathleen Parker has been dropped from “Parker Spitzer,” and the show is being replaced by a new show called “In The Arena,” the network announced Friday.

In a memo to staff, CNN President Ken Jautz said that “In The Arena” would be an “ensemble” show, with “several newsmakers, guests and contributors joining Eliot Spitzer each night.” Among the regulars will be former Fox News anchor E.D. Hill and National Review writer Will Cain.

(emphasis mine)

<Facepalm>

Then again, it maybe not.

The interesting thing here is that when Kathleen Parker took a temporary leave for medical reasons, the show’s ratings doubled.

Where Spitzer has credibility is his experience in dealing with Wall Street lawbreaking, and by larding the show up with “balance”, it makes it worse TV.

I’ll probably check it out at some point, if just because I can’t stand Lawrence O’Donnell, who is opposite to their time slot.

Is there a site online where I can see CNN streaming?

WooHoo!!!! Verizon Has CurrentTV on Their Non Premium Channels

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Channel 192 in Baltimore County.

Olbermann will be moving there sometime in the spring:

Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC anchor, will host a prime time program for Current TV, the low-rated cable channel co-founded by Al Gore. The one-hour program will begin sometime in the spring.

Mr. Olbermann will also become the chief news officer for Current, the company said in a news release Tuesday.

“We are delighted to provide Keith with the independent platform and freedom that Current can, and does uniquely offer,” Mr. Gore said in a statement.

It appears that Olbermann will be getting an equity state in the network, which is probably most of his remuneration, it currently only draws about 60,000 viewers nationwide, and would therefore be very hard pressed to pay him a salary commensurate with his media profile.

He will also become “Chief News Officer,” whatever that means.

I kind of hope that it’s not what is normally called a “News Director,” as my sense is that this would not be a good use of his skills. A news director at a cable network is someone who has to manage ……… People like Keith.

Keith is any number of things, but a calming influence he is not.