Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Miz

"Really? Really!? A Divas bull riding contest? Is that what this show has devolved to?" -- The Miz, on Raw, 2010

What is the state of pro wrestling when The Miz is the voice of reason?

Bloggers gots to blog

Josh Marshall:
How the Public Option Got Its Groove Back

Just to be clear, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't be betting the farm on a health care reform bill with a public option. To put it mildly. But just a couple weeks ago, not only did reform seem pretty much dead but any thought that a public option would be included in a deal seemed pretty much crazy. And yet, out of the blue, through a pretty organic and somewhat fortuitous process, it's back.
So he knows the public option isn't going to be in the bill, but has to blog about how it seems like the public option is BACK.

As if it ever was here in the first place.

And as if a "health care" bill was ever in doubt. One will happen. Who honestly thinks something called "health care reform" won't be signed into law?

Only tools like Josh.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Setting the record straight.

Liberals Are Ugly Cocaine Users Who Can't Speak in Complete Sentence
In fact I CAN speak in complete sentences, I just often choose not to. So there.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Beware the ‘Flying Toblerones’

The Scottish have UFOS.

There's this writer, this dude, and I read his hilarious shit on the internet and he went by the name Toblerone Triangular. And he was goddamn hilarious.

And this one time I went into this yuppie expensive supermarket at like 2am and was completed drugged out and saw these sitting in a wooden basket next to the cash register:

 

And laughed my fucking asshole off.

I guess you had to be there.

But now those dirty scots are seeing toblerone triangles in their sky. And I know the truth. You might as well submit. Because the men driving the blimps of our future cannot be stopped by conventional means.

Only I will find this post funny. But no one reads this anyhow, so I guess 100% of the readers of this post finds it really funny.

Friday, February 19, 2010

4 8 15 16 23 42

4 - Locke
8 - Reyes
15 - Ford
16 - Jarrah
23 - Shepard
42 - Kwon
I know I'm just banging my head against the wall trying to analyze Lost which is why I usually don't, but it struck me how the "big reveal" of each of the numbers being attached to a different Oceanic survivor doesn't make any sense. First off, not sure if that was planned as a "big reveal" or not. It is new information that Jacob was behind the numbers being important, but the way they use them doesn't make any sense. The thing (one of the things that continuously gets me about Lost) is that if the creators really knew what they were doing and had this stuff planned out from the beginning it easily COULD have made sense.

The numbers add up to 108, as in "you have to push the button every 108 minutes". Alright. That's cute, but so far doesn't actually mean anything.

On the other hand, Oceanic flight 815 also uses the numbers and since we now know that each number equals a person that means Oceanic flight 815 could, in a way, mean Hurley and Sawyer. That probably doesn't mean anything since this whole thing coming down to Hurley and Sawyer seems highly unlikely.

However, if they had this stuff worked out, it could have been Oceanic flight 108, which, being the total of all the numbers put together would work on a symbolic level that these people were all important and destiny brought them together to be on the flight.

You could also have switched the "108 minutes" thing in the hatch to every "234 minutes", which would still have meant nothing back in season 2, but now we'd understand it to be Jack and Locke and it would be symbolic of how Locke needed Jack to help him with the button. And that would been awesome. And if 234 minutes was too long, they could just have assigned Jack and Locke different numbers to get whatever length of time they wanted.

Sure, on some level it's still dream logic, but it would have been cool. Instead we have this big reveal in the cave that really means nothing more than seeing the numbers on the hatch door. It's weird and makes you think "wow, what does THAT mean", but then it just sorta fades into the distance as we move on to our next weirdly performance art scene of people not telling each other any relevant piece of information.

I was also struck by the new hot woman who is leaving the beach to go to the temple. It reminded me of that bit from those Star Trek reviews where the ensign brings up a bunch of great questions to Picard. When that woman starts to head off shouldn't someone just stop and go, "Wait, who are you again? Should we be following you? Did you know that plane was going to crash? How do you know about the Temple? Have you been here before? And where did you get Locke's body? How did you even KNOW about his body? Do you work for someone? You know, everyone who we've come in contact with since arriving on this island, whether they were here first or came after us have been highly dangerous and usually tries to kill us. Are you going to kill us? Do you know who Jacob is? Do you know why there are 2 Lockes? Do you know WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Because you seem to know shit. Do you want to tell us?"

Oh well!

Monday, February 15, 2010

"Thanks for letting me piss on your corpse."

"Hey... my pleasure."

Their mindless blessed lives

Is it really so shocking that an upper class white woman can get away with murder a few times?
It's starting to seem that Amy Bishop, the biology professor who mowed down three colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) last week, had not one but perhaps as many as three outbursts of homicidal violence in her life. She shot her brother to death in an incident that was ruled an accident at the time but looks much more like an argument that escalated to murder. And she was investigated but never charged after a pipe bomb (which did not detonate) was mailed to the guy who ran the lab she was working in at Harvard.
Shit, Laura Bush murdered a guy and that's never even mentioned. Yep, if you're an upper class white woman in the united states you can get away with a lot of exciting stuff.

And if you happen to get kidnapped, well fuck, everyone in the nation will not rest till they find you.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Gulp!

 A monster is about to eat a cheerleader.

What the fuck!?

Vince McMahon:
"We think that Survivor Series is obsolete, as far as that title is concerned. It was something that worked many, many years ago, in terms of a creative standpoint, various teams competing. That really is not advantageous as the consumer now looks as what actually they are buying. And it's such a broad ... Survivor Series yes, many years ago, was one of the original four pay-per-views, but it's outlasted its usage and it is one of the things in terms of re-branding, this year and going forward, that will be re-branded. No longer will we have that title, Survivor Series."
What the fuck. This is something ridiculous "Mr. McMahon" would say.

If Survivor Series is obsolete it's because they've mostly abandoned the premise of four on four elimination matches and their storylines and wrestlers are so segregated that it's nearly impossible to find four wrestlers who have any sort of relationship whatsoever with each other.

It's being reported they will abandon this format for another "gimmick" PPV. Yes, lets have another "extreme"/HIAC/Elimination Chamber PPV in an environment where medics rush out and the event stops every time someone has a nosebleed.

How depressing.

But it's true, how can Survivor Series work in a WWE world where the writers can't even develop eight characters at the same time.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

It's really obnoxious...

that whenever the northeast gets a snow storm the rest of the country has to hear about it from virtually every national media outlet in existence. Yes, we know that most of the national media lives in New York, but guess what. The rest of us really don't give a fuck.

It's not like this is Katrina. It's a snow storm. A snow storm that is pretty much nothing more than a local inconvience.

NONE OF US CARE.

Monday, February 8, 2010

If there was a singular mistake in The Prisoner remake...

it was that the original went wildly cartoonish in their art direction and the remake went understated retro. But understated retro is less weird than your local chain restaurant. Oops.

Digby begins the revisionist history eulogy

Like how Tim Russert's life was worth something. Here she is on John Murtha:
He was a complicated political figure, but he will be remembered for something very brave: it's impossible to overestimate how important it was to have this conservative, ex-marine, super patriot Democrat step up on Iraq at a time when the country needed him. He led the way for the Democrats to finally find the courage to oppose Bush and I'm not sure it would have happened without him.
Wait, when was this?

Saturday, February 6, 2010

I want to watch this show

"an alternate history where Lost was created and aired in 1967 as a campy sci-fi action series"

Republicans have deep inferiority and emotional issues.

There's this from Tom Tancredo (I think he was one of the dozen Emperor Palpatine lookalikes in the early republican presidential debates):
The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama...
...
Tancredo.... complained that "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.
Which is odd, since I thought all liberals were elitist, particular-type-of-lettuce-eating, limosine-riding, Ivory Tower college professors. I guess they are ALL that, but also illiterate illegal immigrants.


Then there's this from the National Review:
The product of divorced parents from Marin County, California (are there any other kind?), he was raised in the very crucible of cultural nuttiness at the absolute zenith of its pervasiveness. He is a child of hot tubs, amicable divorce, racial guilt, vegan diets, Chardonnay anti-Americanism, and "Teach Peace" bumper stickers. He is the product of gray-bearded radical high-school history teachers, old Volvos, public radio, world beat music, women's bookstores, pita-wrap sandwiches, and clunky brown sandals.
Alright, lets say you have conservatives views. Lets say you don't like people who have liberal views. Fine. But what is this weird obsession rightwingers have with classifying everything in existence as either a rightwing or leftwing "thing"?

Why or how are hot tubs and pita sandwiches "liberal"?

Maybe it's the end product of fearing the dreaded "Other". Republicans have turned "liberal" into a slur and now stupid people can just pour whatever isn't their exact self into the bottle of "liberal". Am I enjoying a hot tub right now? I'm not, thus it's liberal. Am I multilingual? I'm not, thus it's liberal. Do I like American Idol? I don't, thus it's liberal. Am I wearing velcro shoes? No, thus it's liberal.

I don't think it's that right-wingers even necessarily hate hot tubs (who hates hot tubs?) because if a right-winger was sitting in a hot tub, they'd be bragging about how they're the ones who know how to have fun unlike those uptight liberals. Just like how they sometimes try to brag that right-wing girls are hotter or that christian fundamentalists have better sex lives than the rest of us. Sex, just like everything else, is only liberal if they don't currently have it.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

"That was one of the times I actually questioned how fake it was"

 Kentucky Fried Wrestling on the Sammartino/Zbyszko feud:
Another fan at the time, ‘ZillaJoe, says, “You really felt the betrayal. I’ll tell ya, I can watch that whole thing unfold even today and get caught up in it. It played out very realistically. I was only 9 at the time and didn’t really have any idea to think it wasn’t gonna be a “scientific” match. As it progressed though and Larry became more and more frustrated, there was this little part of me that went ‘Uh-oh, this is gonna end badly.’” Joe cites a Zbyszko promo that sums up the emotion of the feud: “Bruno, you call me Judas? Well, we all know who you think YOU are now.”
That is one of the best lines I've ever heard. Check out the link for the whole story.

Sadly, I've never seen a Sammartino match. For as much as some shills talk up WWE Classics on Demand, their definition of classics is the Monday Night War and six month old PPVs. I'd love to see more of the truly old school stuff of the 60s and 70s. 

I've mostly seen Zbyszko as a commentator, but always loved the guy. WWE should really invest in assembling these old school feuds into individual contained package and throwing it on WWE On Demand.

This excerpt really hits home for me:
Although I hadn’t seen WWF TV at this point, at 9 years old I was stunned at the news, which was featured on the cover of the May 1980 issue of INSIDE WRESTLING, along with the dramatic headline: “Larry Zbyszko leaves Bruno … drowning in a pool of blood!” Bruno vs. Zbyszko was one of those feuds I could only follow through the Apter mags and other rasslin’ publications, making their battles larger than life to me.
I had the same relationship with ECW in the mid-90s. I was on the west coast and could only follow ECW in the Apter mags, and goddamn did I follow it. ECW was taking place in this weird foreign fantasy land and there was no internet or television to follow it on, all I got was monthly dispatches of Cactus Jack and Sabu's latest. And as undeniably great the internet is, there was something magical about words and black and white photos of bloody wrestling wars taking place a million miles away.

One of my most memorable childhood memories is my mom taking me to an indy wrestling event at a shitty casino in the bad part of town on a school/work night just so I could see Cactus Jack and Sabu in a steel cage match. It was like mythology come to life for me. Somehow I missed the previous event where Cactus piledrove Sabu into a live casino poker table, but we were there for this war (a card which inexplicably featured the Ultimate Warrior in a match during one of his many hiatuses.). They beat the shit out of each other in a steel cage and used a bunch of objects on each other. I don't remember a lot of the objects but I remember a few of them were glass and a few of them wouldn't break and they were both determined not to leave that ring until every object in that cage was destroyed on each other's bodies.

Just incredible.

In case you aren't convinced of Kentucky Fried Wrestling's awesomeness (a site I've only found in the past few months), here is a compliation of Andre the Giant being slammed:



I've followed pro wrestling for 19 years (!) and I never saw this crazy fucking spry Andre the Giant. I'm such a noob. Andre's always been an old, barely mobile man to me. Still impressive, no question, but very immobile. To see him like this is amazing.

Honest, Prophetic, and Sexy!

New kids lingerie line:
The 9 year old sister of Disney megastar Miley Cyrus is reported to be promoting a (man this feels weird to type) lingerie line for children. The highly sexualized photos that appear to to promote that clothing line show children posing around a stripper pole. Related images basically present the kids as cute li'l whores. I just vomited in my keyboard.
...

Most who read this post will (I hope) agree: promotional photos that show scantily clad and made-up little girls flirting at the camera from behind a stripper pole are totally wrong and sad. But, question. Who's to blame? The parents? The agents? The managers? The publicists? The garment company? The studios (I guess Disney, in this case)? All of the above?

Who's to blame? Clearly they think there's a mainstream market for this:



Roman Polanski:
"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!"
 Hard to argue with the guy.

I know it's fish in a barrel but still

Watched Jon Stewart's interview on Bill O'Reilly's show. Didn't think it was that good. O'Reilly seemed to be on self-parodying cruise control and Stewart seemed disinterested. He didn't bring the passion like he has in interviews past. Then again, when you're on Bill's show, why bother bringing your A game? He's too stupid to have a serious debate with, and not clever or generous enough to have a playful shared roast with.

Anyhow, the best part of the clip I watched came at the very end when O'Reilly teased the next segment. It happens at 7 minutes and 26 seconds:



This is why I can't hate Fox News. If I cared about people or the future of humanity I'd probably get really upset over them, but I'm just here for the comedy, so Fox often owns. That's why I love that O'Reilly kisses his weirdo death cult puritanical audience's ass by saying sex doesn't sell, but also using Sharon Stone's famous snatch shot as the tease video. It's a perfectly told joke. And great marketing. Present a narrative your audience eats up in public mixed with the secret, honest truth that everyone loves sex and pussy*.

* Disclaimer: Not everyone loves Sharon Stone's pussy especially in it's current condition.

update: I don't know why the video is so gigantic, but I don't care enough to fix it.

I fucking love The Fast and the Furious

Vulture sez:
Vin Diesel and Paul Walker have signed on for Fast Five, which will see the Dom (Diesel) and Brian (Walker) on the run from the law.