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?

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.

"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.

Fuck yes.

I don't like when people say they enjoy something "ironically". You either enjoy it or you don't. I didn't watch Jersey Shore because I liked it "ironically". I fucking liked it! It was funny and the characters were likable. There's no such thing as guilty pleasures. There are pleasures and non-pleasures.

And a pleasure is a third Fast and Furious movie starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. The last one was disappointing only because Michelle Rodriguez wasn't much around, but it was fun and memorable. Can we hope that Michelle's character really isn't dead? Probably not, but that would own.

Vin Diesel needs to be in more movies and so does Michelle Rodriguez.

Obama can see the end of his presidency from his house

I am not a Barack Obama fan. I'm not a democrat. If forced to label myself, I'm a progressive; a liberal, if the term hadn't been tarnished by both the republicans, who use the word as a slur, and the democrats, who give the label its awful connotation of cowardice, incompetence, and corruption.

Obama's hysterically awful presidency may not give us anything tangibly helpful, but just like he's followed Bush's lead on everything else, Obama sure can bring the laughs.

With the first anniversary of the deadline for a health care bill coming up in August (Mission Accomplished!) we've watched for a year as Obama and his trusty band of democrats collapsed into themselves like a dying star. Now health care reform is on the back burner on life support or something. So the democrats, in their typical coordination style of a hundred blind, retarded cats trying to flee a burning building, are releasing various confused talking points, trial balloons, and attempts at spin to save their alleged agenda.

What I've gathered is this: They will get back to health care because it's very important, but they're changing their focus to a jobs bill because it's all about job creation, and in conjunction with that they will focus on fixing the banking industry and all the bailout problems, also there's going to be a spending freeze and serious efforts at deficit reduction, and then also, health care reform.

After reading several days of this stuff and feeling deja vu I realized what the democrats' current game plan reminded me of:



Voting for "leaders" in the united states is like playing russian roulette with every chamber filled.

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