Your Thanksgiving Turkey

Apparently Conyers only reads the articles.

Look at this: Mr. Smut Goes To Washington

Really makes you proud of our elected officials.

President Pee Wee

Now I don't want to get all "wee-wee'd up" here at the end of summer vacation, but this morning I realized our young President is clearly getting all Pee-Wee'd up.

I guess Axelrod's Tele-Prompter can't help much when a fella insists on riding a girl's bike with the seat too low. Even Pee wee had a boy's bike fer-cryin'-out-loud. What was the dinosaur media's word for imagery this summer? Oh yeah, "optics". Now those are some seriously bad self-inflicted optics, buddy.

R.I.P.

At the bottom of that pit lies a big, big man.

Something About Nothing

It used to be that people who said they didn't like or didn't listen to country music would, if pressed, say that k.d. lang or Lyle Lovett were their favorite country artists. The fact that neither enjoyed much success with country radio probably only made them more appealing to non-country ears. They were the two favorite country acts of people who hated country music.

After Rick Rubin produced those sessions for Johnny Cash the Man in Black became the artist that non-country fans pointed to as the country act they liked. My guess is that very few of them actually listen to Cash, and even fewer listen to any of his pre-Rubin output.

Now I have enjoyed country music ever since living in Oklahoma in the late 1970's. I enjoy Lyle Lovett but don't consider him a country artist. I never cared for lang. But, other than "Walk The Line" and "Ring of Fire" I don't care much for John Cash. There I said it. Many country artists I think highly of regard Cash as a revered founder of the genre. That's fine. But I would much rather listen to Merle or The Possum if I want some old school country.

Back To Earth (With a Thud)

A parade float of Obama The Redeemer from Germany's Spiegel online.

h/t Mark Steyn in The Corner

3D Mania

The Persian people want the world to know that they have been at the cutting edge of new technologies throughout world history. In our current age Iranians don't believe they should take a back seat to the West on advances like, oh, nuclear bomb making and Member's Only jacketry.


So it was no surprise to see today that, in response to the huge success of Hollywood USA's Avatar, the Iranians premiered their own 3D feature last night. Here's the Iranian president at the first screening of "Lectures from the Ayatollah in 3D" We hear it was one groovy night at the flicks.

Happy 75th

The King is 75 today. Last we knew he was living quietly in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Happy Birthday to Elvis. Still the King of rock 'n' Roll.

photo by Alfred Wertheimer, Memphis, TN, 4th of July 1956

Wonderful Life

Ah, Christmas week is here!

Time for the annual viewing of a Wonderful film co-starring the great Lionel Barrymore. As much as I enjoy that movie just once I'd like to see Mr. Potter win out. Pottersville looks like a pretty swingin' little burg after all.

"Merry Christmas to you... in jail!"

Sequel In May 2010

Were you a fan of the Iron Man movie with Robert Downey Jr.?

Well, the trailer for IM2 is out. Check it.

Can't wait 'til May. Hold it. I won't see it until I can get it from Netflix... so, I can't wait until this time next year when it comes out for Christmas 2010.

Pull Up A Chair

This sounds about right. Always finding laffs at Hope n' Change.

CMA's

Great show last night. The awards might not have come out the way I wished but, hey, I voted in it enough years to know how that works. ABC's production was first rate and almost every performance was excellent. Congratulations to Lady A for winning a big award with your debut album.

Glad to see Billy Gibbons on stage with B&D-- the song wouldn't be the same without him.

And King George providing The Possum's part on the Barbara Mandrell tribute by Martina was fantastic.

It was surreal watching a teenager win Entertainer of the Year over Strait, Chesney, Paisley, and Urban. But it's all part of the show.

As for me, I need a little more twang.

Not The Nobel Prize, Put Pretty Darn Good

We are pleased to award Hillary Clinton First Place in the "I can sound just as dumb as Slow Joe Biden!" contest.

Her winning entry:

"I carry with me a personal conviction that nothing can be allowed to interfere with our determination and our resolve and our conviction."--Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Cairo, Egypt. Bloomberg, Nov. 5, 2009

Congratulations to Hillary for that excellent example of frontier gibberish.

And the winner in the visual category is President B.H. Obama for this classic:

That's just wrong on so many levels.

Have a great weekend.

Halloweenie

I hope nothing scarier happens to you this weekend than this picture:

That leaves a lot of room for fright.

R.I.P. Soupy Sales

He was born Milton Supman on Jan. 28, 1926 in Franklinton, North Carolina. But when I was a wee lad, watching a fuzzy black and white TV picture coming in through rabbit ears from far away exotic Detroit, he was Soupy Sales. The SoupMan's show was everything Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, and school for that matter, were not. He was pure chaos. It was happening live, on the fly, in front of your little kid eyes. Constant motion, nothing calm, Black Fang and White Tooth were "Roo, Aroo, Aroo, Aroo"-in'. And we were screamin' even before the first pie flew. It was crazy fun when there didn't have to be a deeper meaning.

Like The 3 Stooges it was slapstick and juvenile. Girls didn't like it much as I recall. Parents discouraged it as comedy for dumb kids. Of course, this only made it more fun for us-- it was a little boy's thing. No girls or frowning parents allowed. (Which of course meant lots of college kids and some dads loved it too!)

People just a little bit younger only know him as a New York/ Hollywood game show guy. But for those of us who saw Soupy Sales when he did local TV for us 50's kids--- well, it's a big deal that Soupy Sales is dead at 83.

Ghoulardi's been gone for a while now. Soupy joins him. We're gettin' old. But, you knew that.

Ol' Plugs Is Back

"My grandpop used to say -- there was a suburb of Scranton called Minooka. He said, ‘When the guy in Minooka's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother- in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression. Well, it's a depression -- it's a depression for millions of Americans, through no fault of their own."

-Slow Joe Biden October 19, 2009

Less than a month ago Joe was telling a group of governors that the "stimulus" was working beyond his wildest expectations. That wild success will come as cold comfort to the mooks in Minooka, I reckon.

Of course, Slow Joe's political life has been marked by multiple plagiarism scandals. But a US politician trotting out the quote above, even if his dear old Grandpop actually said it, is slow indeed. Because, as we all know, the quote is linked forever to Ronald Reagan, who quite famously said:

"A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job. And a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job."

I guess I can understand why Slow Joe didn't quote The Gipper.

Hail to Summer, Oh Hail

It's hard to believe that we're heading into the final week before Labor Day. The crabgrass is at its August zenith of fescue-choking activity. The two college-age Dartlads have been back at school for two weeks already. Other than a three day weekend in the Lowcountry we didn't have a "vacation". (Nothing new there.) No doubt about it-- summer is over in a week. All we can do now is relax vicariously through others more fortunate than we... you know, movie stars, rock stars, big-wigs, poobahs, moguls, and the like.

That Tyler guy from Aerosmith took a nasty fall at the big biker rally in South Dakota. But it looks like he's up and about and able to get out in Boston and rub elbows (ouch! watch the sling, dude!) with the riffraff. Lookin' better than evah, Steve...


We've always enjoyed Jack Nicholson's screen performances despite our lack of enthusiasm for his favorite sport, basketball. Let's catch up with Hollywood's biggest Superstar at the ol' swimmin' hole...


Whoa.

One of the movies Jack made that we missed was that one with Diane Keaton. She was great in Annie Hall, wasn't she. Better put that Nicholson/ Keaton movie in the Netflix queue. Wonder what Diane's been up to this summer?


Ya know... I already have 96 movies waiting in my Netflix list so maybe I'll just hold off a bit on the Diane Keaton film festival.


That "man's man" Harrison Ford was one of our favorite action stars for years. We've kind of lost track of him over the past few years. What's he been up to this summer I wonder?



Apparently he's had an operation that we didn't read about.

Yikes!

Wow, I feel better about my summer already. Thanks Hollywoodsters for showing me how good I have it! Life here is pretty darn good. Ya know, I'm gonna knock off early, head over to the lake, and read my new book.

I heard it's a real page-turner.



Written by Splash.

That'll Make Ya Walk Funny

John Cleese is settling up his third divorce. He isn't pleased by the settlement in California.

The Telegraph has the story.

Excerpts:

“At least I will know in the future if I go out with a lady they will not be after me for my money.”

Michael Winner, the former film director and acerbic restaurant critic who has been Cleese’s closest friend for 30 years, said: “It is an extraordinary world which means John is left with much less than his former wife even though he is the star who did all the work. The settlement defies human belief. John is extremely cross about it and I don’t blame him. The settlement comes after two years of harrowing legal argument. John has worked all his life and will now have to continue working because he has seen a huge chunk of what he has worked for going to his former wife who he rescued from a council flat.”

Cleese added: “I got off lightly. Think what I’d have had to pay Alyce if she had contributed anything to the relationship.”

Calming Down

Photographer David Friedman has a site called Ironic Sans. One of the things he does there is show 60 second films he's made. The general idea is to take a static shot of a fairly mundane thing for 1 full minute (approximately). For example, he shoots a tree for 60 seconds without moving the camera. It just so happens that there's a fireworks display going on behind the tree. One of his best is a 60 second masterpiece shot across up and down escalators with the camera tilted so the moving stairs seem like horizontal moving sidewalks-- which makes the people going up & down appear to be leaning at extreme angles.

We are all used to lots of camera movement and jump cutting in the visuals that bombard us these days. If you've ever watched an old baseball or football game on ESPN Classic, MLB TV, or The NFL Network you'll be struck by the difference. They feature fewer cameras, shots held longer without a cut, no wooshing sounds, and minimal graphics. Commercials, films, TV programs-- all of the visuals dart around and swoosh about today. Jump cuts are the rule. Even in TV dramas made today people don't sit still and talk-- they walk down halls yakking. No producer or director can take the chance that you'll get bored for a second. We watched the pilot episode of Mannix the other night. Remembered as an action packed sleuth show it now looks slow as molasses. (Still the best theme song this side of The Rockford Files though.)

By the way, I'm not saying that it was better back then. This isn't a guy saying, "Why back in my day we watched NFL games shot with just four cameras, you snot-nosed whippersnappers with your ipods and twitters!" I'm just saying it's dramatically different and that sometimes it's good to sit still and watch a minute-- just a minute-- of a static camera shot.


It doesn't have to be of anything much. It can even be a film about windows at an airport.

For The Weekend

Michael Ramirez in IBD.

Vacationing in Hell

Sunday's Day by Day was a classic. The opening panel:

Day by Day, every day, here.