stupid people should not be allowed to produce television

Perhaps it's because I never watched, and thus never got sick of, American Idol, I'm semi-enjoying "Grease: You're the One That I Want," a new talent show that has gotten rather poor reviews. What appeals to me is that the judges have a real decision to make and that they are the people to make it. They are casting a Broadway show and their goal in the first episodes is to make sure all the finalists will do a decent job, because they know that once the American public gets to vote on who should win they will certainly vote for one of the lesser talents, as is always the case in talent shows (like Dance With the Stars) that allow the public to decide who is better at something.

So I think there is something inherently interesting in the show, but apparently the people making it disagree, because they are gimmicking the hell out of it. It's not just the standard gimmicks of showing you the deluded no-talents or building auditions into little stories or having meaningless cliffhangers before commercials in which we are left in suspense and something absurdly trivial; they also use the movie Grease as a crutch, pulling out scenes from it to remind the presumably dim-witted audience what Grease is and interviewing Olivia Newton John.

Which isn't good, but isn't horrible. But Grease manages to stick in a really grating, moronic gimmick, which is to bring its co-hosts in as some sort of audience surrogates. They actually have these hosts standing on the wings, making faces of horror or approval as the contestants sing. It's horrible. It's embarrassingly bad. The hosts will whisper to the camera things like, "who, I hope he gets through, I really like him." To which I would say, who the fuck cares. Do I really need a host to tell me whether a performer is bad or is cute?

And that's the problem with the series. It doesn't trust the audience at all. It thinks they're brain dead idiots. And I'm sure many of them are. But the fact is, the reality shows that show the most respect for their audiences, like Survivor or, in the first couple of years at least, The Apprentice (which seems to be getting stupider and more gimmicky each year) are usually the most successful. The most pathetic, desperate reality shows, the ones that throw a constant barrage of cutesy tricks at the audience, usually die early deaths. Unfortunately a lot of television producers don't get that.

I'm feeling borderline on this show right now precisely because of all the stupid stuff. I am generally inclined to keep watching, but if they keep having the hosts mugging the camera and being "personalities" then I will probably give up on it. Watching this show is going to be a week by week decision.

everything you thought was hilariously improbably is now true

Let's take a moment to admire cynical, pessimistic humorists, because they see the future so clearly. Or so it seems to me after reading a piece in the Times on the way advertisers are using every available space for advertising, including subway turnstiles and the actual eggs you buy in the supermarket.

I've seen this before, and it was in Mad Magazine perhaps 30 years ago. I can't remember what the title of the piece was, or the author, but it was talking about the next step beyond billboards, and there was an illustration in which everything had an add on it. The ads were probably more clever than the ones in the real world; I remember one company name was elegantly built into the metal grillwork of a bridge. But the idea is the same, and it is always fascinating when things that seem so extreme that it's funny suddenly become the norm.

For me the greatest example of that is still an ad in the first year of Saturday Night Live for what I think was called the "Track 3" razer. This was after the first two-bladed razer cartridges had come out, so SNL just made an ad similar to those for the two-blade cartridges but with 3 blades. Then, years later, 3-bladed razors came out, and now I think there are 4-bladed ones and for all I know 5-bladed ones. And before the were even invented, SNL perfectly summed up these future razors with their slogan for their fictional product. "The Track 3 - because you'll believe anything."

All praise humorists, because they see things so clearly in a world in which everyone else swallows bullshit whole and asks for more.

I allow myself a bit of optimism, fully realizing that I am bound to be let down

Our new New York governor Eliot Spitzer's
plans for New York are a great example of the difference between Republicans and Democrats. I mean, can you imagine a Republican coming in and saying, the first thing I'm going to do is get health insurance for all children and move towards publicly financed elections? It's really pretty cool. I don't really think he'll get much of any of this, because government seems designed to impede social progress, but if he's as effective as he is ambitious Spitzer could turn out to be a real winner.

Or maybe I'm just woozy headed from the rush of Democrats coming into office.

The magic of DVRs

I have my DVR set up to tape tons of series, and as while I watch the ones I really like pretty quickly (Scrubs, Desperate Housewives), some shows just sit there a long time, sometimes until they are automatically erased but often just until there's nothing better to watch. 30 Rock falls in the latter category; it's usually boring for the first half then gets funny so every time I watch it I start thinking, I'm going to stop recording this and then by the end say, well, one more week.



This is the reason why I just saw an episode in which a character says, "maybe we'll be pre-empted by a big national story. How's Gerald Ford's health." Fascinating timing.



So that makes the show prescient. Sort of. Most notably it was the first episode that was quite funny all the way through, so maybe it turned a corner, or maybe when I watch the next episode I have recorded it will be back to hit and miss.

Kate Beckinsale's breasts; now there's a title that will drive some traffic to my blog

Recently I saw the awful, awful movie Click (very funny for the first half hour or so, just to trick you to keep watching). Kate Beckinsale, who has been very good in much better movies, had an uninteresting part in this one, and as I was looking at her I thought, she's so perfect looking, I wonder if she's had plastic surgery. Because so many people have their faces rebuilt that you really never know nowadays.

Googling on the topic, the first thing I check out was Beckinsale's nomination for The Ugliest Breasts In Hollywood at awfulplasticsurgery.com, a site whose purpose is pretty clear from the name. They do look oddly high and they do have stretch marks, although I read elsewhere that Beckinsale denies it, saying the stretch marks are from pregnancy and the change in breast size is from gaining weight, which she said she was asked to do by movie producers (I've always heard movie producers ask actresses to lose weight, but that's her story). Other articles say she later had the implants removed.

But I wasn't wondering about her breasts, I was just wondering about her face, and there's less about that. I did find something on Beckinsale's face at savingfaceforum.com, another plastic surgery site (there are tons of places devoted to celebrities and plastic surgery; I have a friend obsessed with her perceived bad nose job who scours these sites). There someone posted a bunch of pictures throughout Beckinsale's career and then everyone comments about how much plastic surgery they think she's had. Pretty much everyone says she's had a nose job, some say her lips were shrunk and one or two said her chin was elongated. But I don't really see it. Her face has narrowed a bit, as generally happens with age, but the nose looks basically the same to me in all the pictures, and the lips don't vary enough to be any more than you could get by differing lipstick application. I'm not saying she hasn't had plastic surgery, but I do wonder if people obsessed with celebrity plastic surgery are actually a good source for information.

Anyway, it does look like she was always extraordinary looking, although I think in all cases celebrities aren't going to look as good in real life as in movies, where professional makeup and lighting people can create the illusion of perfection.

Beckinsale says she doesn't want to be thought of as the sort of person who would get plastic surgery, saying "That implies a kind of insecurity, shallowness and thoughtlessness that I don't feel applies to me very much." If she has had plastic surgery, well, then it's a dumb thing to say, but could be taken the way one takes closeted homosexuals decrying gay marriage; as a panicky attempt to distance herself from something she's embarrassed by.

But if she hasn't had plastic surgery then the quote bothers me, because I think it's incredibly judgmental for someone who is drop dead gorgeous to look down on people who want to be but weren't born that lucky. I used to be very down on plastic surgery (and I'm still down on breast surgery, because I have never seen breasts I didn't like so see no reason to shove silicone in a pair), but there are people I wouldn't date because I don't find them attractive, and there are people (many many people) who wouldn't date me because they don't consider me attractive, and really, why shouldn't we all get to be gorgeous and sought after like Beckinsale? (On the other hand, plastic surgery can only do so much; Paris Hilton has apparently had tons of it but she's still not in the same league as Kate).

What I find interesting is the reason there is all this discussion; actresses generally won't admit to having plastic surgery. I don't know if it's embarrassment at being perceived as vain, or actual vanity, or a perception that this will effect their career, but I think a lot more celebrities have plastic surgery than admit to it. Plastic surgery is often treated as a crime and celebrities will put on a defense; Tara Banks actually brought a doctor on her talk show to feel her up and pronounce them real (perhaps she should have other celebrities come on the show and do the same; it would probably be a popular segment).

Because this is such a moronic subject, I feel I have to point out that I don't spend all my time googling celebrity breast jobs. Just yesterday after watching some of Leonard Bernstein's Candide on PBS I went on a wikipedia hunt that took me from Candide to Gottfried Leibniz, whose theodicy was being attacked, possibly somewhat unjustly, in Candide, to an article on how various philosophers reconcile the existence of God with the existence of evil (evil is necessary, God isn't all powerful or he/she isn't all good, etc.), to a little reading on Taoism (which I love; my favorite Tao Te Ching translations are here and here). But none of that seemed as worth writing about as Kate Beckinsale's breasts.

Addendum: Unsurprisingly, this has been the single most popular blog post I have ever written, so I am just, apropos of nothing, going to put a link here to my Wii games site, because I get paid by the page view and have to drive traffic somehow. Please go there now. There are just as many pictures of Kate's breasts on that site as there are in this blog, so what the hell.

being fat, another thing that you can no longer be judgmental about

Apparently how fat you are isn't just a matter of eating too many donuts and sitting too long on the couch. Scientists have found obese people have a different bacteria in the intestines than the rest of us. They're not sure why, but apparently switching bacteria in mice affects their weight. So have another twinkie and tell folks, it's not the twinkie, it's just my bacteria. Because that might actually be the case.

Wii Wii Wii, Me Me Me

There's a very good article in the Times by David Pogue on the health benefits of the Wii, but for me the main reason to read it is the first sentence:

I don’t ordinarily review games or game consoles; The Times has an excellent game reviewer in Charles Herold.

I've never been called excellent in the New York Times before; it's kind of cool. I probably get more excited about it than the game designers I've called excellent.

It's so funny when someone is dying of anorexia

I was pretty disturbed watching Countdown and seeing Keith Olbermann and some guy from In Touch giggling hysterically about Nicole Ritchie weighing 85 pounds. My vague impression of Ritchie is she's some dumb, shallow pseudo celebrity, and normally I'm all for making fun of such people. But clearly she's suffering from anorexia, which suggests she's very ill, needs help, is self-destructive and could very well wind up hospitalized or even dead. I know Olbermann likes to make fun of celebrities, but I do think there's something distasteful about laughing so hard at someone, no matter how ridiculous she may seem, who is so psychologically damaged and such a danger to herself.

Celebrities are just people with too much fame and money, and hating and ridiculing them really isn't any better than obsessing over and worshiping them.

The difference between retarded and stupid

I just love

this story. A guy has been pretending to be retarded for years to defraud the government, insisting he couldn't read or drive a car. Then he goes to traffic court to challenge a ticket. Clearly the guy is not as retarded as he's been claiming, but he's sure no rocket scientist.

FOX News: Believing their own lies

The Huffington post has an interesting internal Fox News memo from the VP of news in which he encourages reporters to keep an eye out for indications that the terrorists are thrilled that the Dems have congress.

It's not surprising that people at FOX are sending out memos on how to slant the news - that's their job - but what surprised me is the memo's sincerity. I always assumed this talk of how the terrorists wanted the Democrats to win was just cynical posturing, that the Republicans knew perfectly well that was bullshit, that the Bush administration has been crucial for terrorist recruitment.

So apparently the folks at FOX aren't really just cynical hacks; they are clueless, but sincere, morons.

Good to know.

Ding dong, the witch has had her power to screw up the country severely curtailed

I was scared.  The Republicans have used voter fraud, scare tactics and flat-out lies to stay in power, and I thought in spite of all the polls they might have a few rabbits to pull out of their hats.  And Bush and Rove’s inexplicable confidence made me fear the fix was in.  But nope, turns out Bush and Rove were just as dumb about the election as they were about Iraq, Katrina and pretty much everything else.  Now if the Democrats can just play their cards right they could get back the White House and begin to repair the insane amount of damage Bush has done to this country and the rest of the world.  In the meanwhile, at least he should be fairly impotent.  I mean, Democrats are into working together in a non-partisan way so if Bush met them even a third of the way he could probably still get some stuff done, but Little Lord Bush didn’t even work well with his own party if they didn’t tow the line so I doubt he’s capable of playing well with others.

The horrifying thing is, though, that most of these racers were really close in spite of incomprehensible incompetence by the Bush administration and an amazing run of scandals that could prove if you believe in him that God himself thought it was time the Democrats took charge.

Torn between gladness and pity

When I first heard right wing, anti-gay Republican adviser and preacher Ted Haggard had been accused of, and finally admitted, having gay sex with a prostitute, I felt delight in seeing yet another right wing hypocrite unmasked. But as it's dragged on, I've begun to feel sorry for Haggard. Basically you've got a closeted gay guy who hates himself who has pretty much had his life ripped to shreds over this. And like a lot of right wingers, he's just dealing with his demons in the worse way possible.

So I'm tending towards the more nuanced attitude of the surprisingly reasonable-sounding evangelical Christian and author David Kuo, who seems to feel Haggard's failing is less his gayness, which Kuo says is, biblically speaking, a minor sin like gossiping, and more the harm he has done to the reputation of Christianity and to his disillusioned followers.

On the other hand, considering these hypocritical Christians and their oblivious followers have blindly assisted George Bush to wreak havoc on this country and the entire world, it does seem like they're all getting what they deserve. So I guess I'll describe myself as at least a little pleased. Perhaps soon every right winger will have their sins revealed and they'll all finally have to shut the fuck up.

Letterman, hero or just a reformed idiot?

A lot of attention has gone to David Letterman taking on Bill O'Reilly on Letterman's show. The initial reaction is, like my reaction to anytime the Republicans are on the defensive, is hurrah. But an
interesting article by Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone does a good job talking about how people like Letterman were once complicit in this disaster by supporting it, and even goes so far as to say that the middle-ground flip floppers who were for the war and then against it show less real conviction than Bush's gang of idiots - they may have fucked up abominably, he suggests, but at least they're sticking to their guns. I'm not sure I agree the Lettermans of the world are worse than the Bushes, but I would agree you can't congratulate people to much for figuring out years after the fact that something was utterly moronic, and saying so when it is politically safe to do so. The Dixie Chicks or Susan Sarandon slamming Bush years ago is a lot more impressive than Letterman doing it now.

On the other hand, it's great to see Republicans on the ropes at last, even if they're being pounded by a bunch of hypocrites.

Time for a new slogan

Doesn't the Bush administration seem to be nothing more than a big advertising agency coming up with pith slogans? Now Bush has
dropped "stay the course" because, well, because it made him sound like a clueless idiot who couldn't comprehend that the course is totally fucked up. Who knows, they may even have to drop the slogan "cut and run," because I think at this point a lot of people are inclined to say, yes, cut and run, that sounds good.

But you know Bush will soon have some new slogan just as meaningless as "stay the course."

Getting beat up at school? Blame a video game!

The videogame Bully has been generating controversy since it was first announced. Just the idea of a videogame about bullying in school gives some people apoplexy and now that demands that they game be scuttled have failed there are many saying
don't buy it.

Now, I happen to know a lot about bullying because I was one of the kids everyone picked on. And I don't think Bully is the problem. Sure, it's a game in which you have to make your way through a school full of delinquents, and there is fighting in the game, and from what little I played there's an unpleasantness about it all (and I did not see any of the "hilarious" humor many reviewers are describing).

But in my experience, bullying happens because teachers and parents and school administrators let it happen. I was teased constantly in school, because it made me cry and of course making people cry is tremendously fun for a certain segment of the population. What did my school do about the kids who bullied and taunted me? Nothing. The basic idea everyone had was that I was the problem. I was sent to a shrink, I was put on ritalin, I was basically encouraged to calm down and chill out. And yes, if I had been less prone to hysterics the situation probably would have calmed down. But then, if bullies had been consistently punished, I think the situation also might have calmed down.

Near the beginning of the movie Dazed and Confused there's talk of a yearly tradition in which the high school seniors pretty much hunt down and torture freshmen, or something like that. And it's just accepted. Bullying is always accepted, it's see as just part of growing up and the kids that don't handle it well are despised as weak even by those who claim they're trying to help them.

Of course I've been out of school for a long time, but recently I was talking to a high school teacher. And I asked her, is it any different now? After all the concerns raised about bullying after Columbine and all the talk about how a videogame is going to encourage bullying, are teachers and counselors and administrators actually really doing any more about bullying than they were 30 years ago? And she said no, she thinks it's just the same.

So all those people spending all this energy whining about a videogame should, IMO, spend a little more time worrying about actual bullies and their victims. You don't stop bullying by stopping representations of bullying in media; you stop bullying by stopping bullies.

Bush, is he overconfident or does he just know something we don't

It's going around that Bush and Rove
seem oblivious to the possibility the Republicans may lose the House and possibly the Senate. People are suggesting that this could be another example of the Bush administration's cluelessness or that they're just showing a brave face to keep morale up, but while I hate to sound like some nutty conspiracy theorist, I'm kind of worried that they simply have a plan in effect for nationwide election theft. They've got Diebold machines all over the place and they've been pretty good at stealing election in the past, both through outright fraud and through playing games with voting places to discourage voting in certain neighborhoods, and I'm worried that no matter how many scandals hit the Republicans and no matter how low their poll ratings that they will miraculously squeak by in victories where they need to. I mean, this is a president who has made it legal for him to throw people in jail forever with no right of appeal if he feels like it, so we know there is nothing that is beneath him, and certainly he would steal the election if he could. The only question would be whether Republicans could get away with that sort of massive fraud. And since we seem to be turning into some sort of third world dictatorship, where that sort of fraud is common, I wouldn't be that surprised.

Am I just being cynical?

So Senator John Warner has suggested the possibility that we should consider changing course in Iraq, considering all options, and a couple of other
unnamed Republicans agree. That's what they say.

The pundits seem to accept this at face value - Warner went to Iraq and saw how bad the situation was and is now having second thoughts about the "stay the course" policy. They're saying this is bad for the president, weakening him. But Warner was also one of three senators who stood up demanding that we protect the Geneva Conventions and then rolled over, giving Bush almost everything he wanted.

All the pundits believed Warner that time too, but in retrospect it looks more like a way to make Republicans look like something other than Lemmings following Bush off a cliff, even as they are in the act of following him off that cliff.

So here's what I think. After the November elections, Warner will say we need to consider some options, they'll have some sort of hearing, and the Republicans will conclude that hey, the president's right after all and we should stay the course.

Yes, it's probably a bit too cynical to say the way to tell if a Republican is lying is that his or her lips are moving, but considering what I've seen these last few years, it doesn't seem far off from the truth.

Wandering Republican minds

Does the Republican party collectively suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder? It would explain a lot. Condoleeza Rice can't recall a meeting in which terrorist threats are starkly outlined, a nice follow up to her non-response to a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Hastert can't for the life of him recall hearing that Foley might be a child molester. And of course no one in the current administration seemed to have realized, in spite of warnings, that Hurricane Katrina was the sort of big disaster one should plan for.

Which leads one to wonder if Republicans actually listen when people talk to them. Perhaps they are constantly distracted, riveted by a beam of sunlight or a shiny medal or just sitting there so focused on what they're going to say next that they sort of blank out on what they're being told.

I'll admit it's a somewhat unlikely idea, but then, when you see so many utterly bizarre and inexplicable actions you can't help but try and put the pieces together into some sort of coherent picture.

Foley handling: a study in Republican tactics

Recently Bill O'Reilly showed some footage of pedophile Republican Mark Foley that described him as
a Democrat. Innocent mistake? Well, since we're talking about FOX News, I kind of doubt it. The Republicans have been doing everything they can to turn their scandal around and make it a Democrat scandal, whether it's Katherine Harris stating that Republicans didn't know about Foley's predilection but Democrats and the media might have or Sean Hannity claiming the Democrats were hypocrites because Clinton had done the same thing when he had sex with 19-year-old Monica Lewinsky (the problem with that statement? She was 22 at the time).

Of course, anyone who takes Fox News seriously would vote Republican even if Bush and Cheney were caught eviscerating babies and making necklaces out of their fingernails, but it is fascinating to see just how far FOX will go. A cute little piece on newshounds.us mockingly compares FOX's initial Foley report with what would have happened if Foley had been the Democrat FOX so fervently wishes the public to believe he is.

Impressive bullshit or awesome cluelessness?

Say what you like about Republicans, they sure have balls. Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News talking about why
the Republican leadership did nothing for months after discovering Mark Foley had sent inappropriate email to a congressional page.

Gingrich's explanation: "... I think had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would also have been accused of gay bashing." This is a fascinating statement, because it relies on two absurd premises; that "gay" is the same thing as "pedophile" and that Republicans are concerned about offending gay people.

No arguably premise one might not, in Newt's eyes, be a lie. Perhaps Republicans are so utterly moronic that they really do consider all gay people to be homosexuals. Certainly we are knocked over the head by new proofs of the idiocy of the Republican party pretty much every day. On the other hand, I think Gingrich isn't so obtuse that he wouldn't have realized that no one in the country has missed the Republican's "screw the gays" platform. And I'm going to guess that he probably actually does understand the difference between gays and chicken hawks. And that with a straight face he told a lie of such impressive grandeur that one has to admire, at least a little, his ability to do so without blushing.

Another thought: I just realized that I hadn't even taken in the whole scope of Gingrich's grand lie. It occurred to me when I heard that on his show, Bill O'Reilly said that "there have been rumors about Foley's homosexuality for years." And a light went off in my head. The Republicans are actually using the revelation that one of their own is a pedophile to gay bash by attempting to link pedophilia and homosexuality. This is a perfect example of Republicans getting lemons and making lemonade. The evil genius of these people is truly remarkable. For them, everything is an opportunity to further their agenda, and even in the midst of crisis they are thinking of new ways to attack their enemies.

They're all like linguistic supervillains, twisting the truth in impossible ways.