Bull Moose Strikes Back

Hey, Tom Hanks: Shh….

I was all excited to watch “The Pacific,”  HBO’s new mini-series produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg, which starts to air on Sunday. I was just about to temporarily subscribe to HBO in order to watch it. After all, they are marketing it as a companion piece to HBO’s previous WWII mini-series “Band of Brothers,”  which Hanks and Spielberg also produced and which I thought was fabulous.

And then, Tom Hanks started talking.  I like Tom Hanks. And in the context of Hollywood, I thought what I thought was his “soft-left” politics (which Spielberg seems to share) were almost courageous. But when he is apparently trying to make the Pacific Theater or WWII a stand in for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and in the process getting the motivation for all of them wrong (see also video here), I have to wonder if I care what his new mini-series says about anything.

Now I note that “Band of Brothers” was produced at the end of the Clinton era and aired just before full-scale BDS really kicked in.  In fact, the first episode or so aired before 9/11.  I also note that “Band of Brothers” was based on a book by Stephen Ambrose, with Ambrose’s involvement. Say what you will about Ambrose’s overblown alleged plagiarism scandal, but I doubt he’d have let the war in Pacific theater be portrayed as “a war of racism…”

Was there plenty of race hatred that sprung up in the thick of the fighting and in propaganda? I doubt anyone would deny that. War is dehumanizing. But Hanks, especially in that video clip, seems to suggest it was a cause rather than an effect of the war.

Hmm… Now do I want to shell out to watch this thing?

UPDATE: I’ve decided that I’ll just watch it on Blu Ray when it comes out this summer.  That’s more about not wanting to pay for 3 months of HBO than anything.

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First off, I don’t know what was more lame, the Tebow ad or that anyone got upset over it. There was supposed to be a stance on abortion in there? OK. (I couldn’t find a video to embed, but it is available at the Focus on the Family website.
(UPDATE: Found it on YouTube.)

Was this ad a funny tweaking of environmental political correctness or a chilling vision of the future? You decide:

I think it’s the latter. At least Cheap Trick got a check out of it.

I like how Coke paid to use Simpsons IP, but not for Harry Shearer or Hank Azaria or any of the more expensive voice actors to voice the IP:

This ad was just obnoxious:

My daughter saw this ad and responded by trying to tear off her shirt. We had to have a little talk.

The only ad I laughed out loud at was this one:

That ad of course was a call back to this ad from the last time CBS had (and the Colts were in) the Super Bowl:

That one is kind of creepy in light of recent news about Letterman and women who get invited to his in-studio apartment…

This was my least favorite ad. Probably because it falsely implies that a French woman who would marry an infidel American would have a baby. Come on, let’s keep it realistic.

And I’m throwing this one in, because I’m pretty sure it would be my wife’s favorite. (She only got to watch half the game.)

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Sometimes I get blue after the Christmas season. The lights come down, and it is dark and cold and wet. The fact that my birthday is in January used to cheer me up, now it just drags me further down.

However, tonight Jack Bauer arrives for twenty-four “24″ episodes. Those twenty-four “24″ episodes will lead me through this dark time of year and right into May when my favorite time of year begins.

Huzzah Jack Bauer! Who needs a Happy Light when we have you?

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The Onion’s AV club made a list of the 30 best TV series of the ’00’s. Here’s my take on the list:

30. The West Wing: Crap. They left off 24 but put this claptrap on? For some reason I actually watched the first five or so episodes of this show until I realized it was just Hollywood’s attempt to keep the Clinton era running after its expiration date.

29. Wonder Showzen: On MTV2, so I never watched it, or anything else on MTV2. One look at it tells me they were trying to hard to be ironic, but not successfully being ironic about being ironic like Aqua Team Hunger Force did. Speaking of which, why the hell isn’t that show on this list?

28. Eastbound & Down and 27. Flight Of The Conchords: I’ve heard a lot of good things about these and have caught a few minutes here and there. But neither was going to inspire me to pay 10 bucks a month to get HBO.

26. The Venture Bros.: I always thought of Venture Bros as the second string of Adult Swim coming in well behind the aforementioned ATHF and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. Reading the Onion’s take on it makes me wonder if I didn’t shortchange the series.

25. Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Had I known what I was missing at the time – and I’m mostly talking about Alyson Hannigan making out with other women – I probably would have watched it.

24. Dexter: People keep trying to talk me into watching this. Maybe someday.

23. Undeclared: Finally, a show that I actually watched. This premiered the same season as Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Greg the Bunny. I thought one of them would survive. Nope, Fox decided it didn’t actually want my eyeballs on any other night but Sunday and killed them all. I hate you Fox.

22. Six Feet Under: What’s the premise? Ugh. Sounds tedious. Again, not paying 10 bucks a month for that.

21. Curb Your Enthusiasm: The best thing about this show, is that of the people I know who watch this show, the ones who like it the most are the very ones being skewered by it.

20. Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!: It is possible that Adult Swim is the best thing to ever happen to American TV.

19. Big Love: I have a suspicion that this show was created for the express purpose of trying to sink Mitt Romney had he won the 2008 Republican nomination.

18. How I Met Your Mother: I started watching this show late, but if I were to put one network TV sitcom in a time capsule to sum up the ’00’s, this would probably be it. But that’s because I figured out that I’m Marshall, with Wisconsin changed to Minnesota and Seattle changed to New York to get around paying me anything. (The guy made up a song to remember his password to check bar exam results, come on.)

17. Firefly: Remember what I said about Fox in #23. That goes double here. I described this show as: The Millennium Falcon with a bigger crew before Han (Malcolm) meets up with Luke. Only there are no aliens. What might have been if the Firefly universe had been allowed to fill in.

16. Friday Night Lights I’m as surprised to find this show, one of my current favorites, on this list as I was to find it coming back this season. Not because it isn’t very good, but because it is very unnoticed.  Too bad only those with DirecTV get to watch this gem during football season. Unlike a lot of high school football movies/shows, it is clear that someone high up on this show actually played football at some point.

15. Veronica Mars: I was completely unaware of this show until Kristen Bell started showing up in other stuff. Which is good, because she was in high school in the show, right?

14. Futurama: This is about 10 or 12 spots too far away from 1. For a glorious couple of years, this was the smartest, funniest show on TV. Even if it did occasionally pander to Al Gore. (His daughter was a writer on the show.) The episode about Fry’s dog which ends for the dog waiting for Fry’s return to the 21st century until it grows old and dies was certainly the most unexpected emotional wallop that I received from TV all decade. At least Fox let this one run awhile before killing it off.

13. 30 Rock: I can’t get past the self-referential circle-jerkery that goes on in this show. Tina Fey to me has always been the smug, self-centered girl in every college and law school class that I can’t stand. Plus, unlike Futurama, pandering to Al Gore actually harms this show. Tracy Morgan deserves his own show, though.

12. Battlestar Galactica: Another show that should be higher on the list, even though the series was about one-and-a-half seasons too long. Sci-fi has always been a great area to explore philosophy and religion, and BSG built up a good mythology to work from.

11. The Office US: The British office comes closer to 1 on The Onion’s list, and to be sure that’s the hip placement, usually with some bullshit justification about the UK version being more subtle, but I think they should be flip-flopped. How I Met Your Mother might have some stiff competition for which network sitcom goes in the time capsule.

10. The Shield: I intended to watch this show, I really did. But now that Sons of Anarchy is one of my favorite shows, I’ll have to go back and watch them on DVD, since this is set in the same Sutterverse.

9. Deadwood: Another one that I intend to watch on DVD when I get around to it.

8. Lost: I was on board with this one from the start. It’s become hip to trash how confusing the mythology can be. The show can pack an emotional punch without being manipulative. The memorable death scene being played out while the music soundtrack swallows the sound has become such a JJ Abrams trademark that he even worked it into first 10 minutes of the Star Trek movie he directed. The best call the creators of Lost made was deciding to end the show 3 seasons in advance. So many shows with this many characters and story rush to wrap it all up in 10 episodes and do it poorly. Hopefully Lost has it mapped out a little better.

7. The Office UK: Covered above at #11.

6. Breaking Bad:  I just watched the first season on DVD. It is spectacular. Who knew that chemistry had a practical application? And Malcolm’s dad picked a great project to cut against type after being Malcolm’s dad for so many years.

5. Mad Men: The show that answers the question: What would my grandpa have been like if he was evil, or a sociopath, or whatever Don Draper’s problem is. The honest (I think) portrayal of America in the early ’60’s is the real draw for me.

4. Freaks And Geeks: What to hear a dirty secret? I’ve only seen a couple episodes of this show. I really need to catch up one of these days. I think I saw that it wasn’t going to last and was sick of being screwed by network TV.

3. Arrested Development: Half the thrill of this show was wondering whether it was going to be on the next week. It certainly seemed to smart to garner ratings which justified it being placed in a sweet Simpsons led-in spot. And it was… eventually. The show’s writers figured out how to keep Jason Bateman the soul of the show while spotlighting the goofy comedic actor’s antics in a way which kept it from being either too sappy or too much like a straight goofball comedy.

2. The Sopranos: I have to admit that near the end of the show’s run, I ceased caring about whether Tony would ever achieve enlightenment. Mostly because it would seem phony if he did. Tony was an evil summbitch, and to pretend that he could be otherwise would seem cheap. That might be why the ending kind of worked for me. He was the same guy he was when the show started, so why have an ending that suggested some kind of arc. Little Stevie should have won multiple Emmys for his role, but was overlooked.

1. The Wire: I watched the first few episodes, then decided that the show insists on itself. Seemed to work to impress people like The Onion AV club writers.

Where the hell is:

• 24: I’m going to assume this is merely an oversight. There is no way that 24 should not actually appear on a list of the 30 best series of the last 10 years. (They actually have a lame reason for not including it here.)
• South Park: Yeah, it was bigger in the culture in the ’90’s, but the best of the series has been in the last 10 years. Up until the most recent half-season it just seemed to be gaining speed.
• The Big Bang Theory:  Sure, it’s only in it’s third season, and it is a conventional sitcom, but it is a sharp, well written, well executed sitcom. And it is nice having a sitcom where the people look like they might in real life, not underwear models, ah, aside from Penny. And I love that it doesn’t stop to explain its nerd/science/sci-fi jokes, but will still be funny to even to those unfamiliar with the in-joke territory.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s easy to write off as a kid’s show and a piece of Viacom IP, but name a TV show that will have a bigger influence on the culture as today’s 2-10 year-olds grow to be 22-30 year-olds and beyond. And that might be OK. SpongeBob is loyal, loves to work, loves school and doesn’t let the negative personalities that surround him bring him down. Given that the show’s run almost exactly overlaps the decade, I think it was a big miss not including this on the list.

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Oh, man this is funny:

“Our self-involved narcicism is beginning to feed back upon itself!” It reminds me that I don’t miss going to school by Capitol Hill every night.

This is from a show called Super News. It runs on Current. I would have never seen it, except that the DVR thought it was taping the Rotten Tomatoes movie review show.

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While waiting for “The Goode Family” to start a few weeks ago, I caught some of “Wipeout.” I was putting my son together for sleep – with his spina bifida he needs to be outfitted like a 15th century knight for sleep – and it held his attention. So we watched it from the beginning the next week, and it has become official father/son bonding time now.

For those of you who don’t know the show:

At first I thought he was laughing because I was, so I stopped. He kept laughing. He even said, “funny” a few times to clarify. His favorite part is when someone faceplants or flips off of the giant balls.

Yes, TV and I have taught him a valuable lesson: Pain is funny if it is happening to someone else. And I figure he’s been in enough pain in his first few years that it won’t hurt for him to laugh at someone else’s.

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• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: This movie was of particular interest to me because I’m aging like Benjamin Button, but in reverse. Fincher needed to cut about 25 to 30 minutes out of this meandering story. I realize the slowness of the movie was a way for Fincher to get the lifetime span of the movie across, but I checked my watch.  I went into watching it very cynically, but it won me over at the last second. B.
• The Wolverine Origin X-Men Movie: The problem with this movie was that the first three X-Men movies were pretty much just Wolverine movies with a supporting cast, and Wolverine isn’t interesting enough on his own to support four movies in ten years. The interesting part of the Wolverine story was wrapped up before the opening credits ended. Plus, I don’t really understand what Gambit was doing in the movie. C-.
• Night at the Museum 2: The first Night at the Museum movie wasn’t exactly a classic, but it was cute and clever. The makers of the sequel forgot that and just crammed as many “exhibits coming to life” moments they could think of into the movie, story be damned. Two things keep this movie from a grade of “F”: 1.  Amy Adams running around in tight slacks; and 2. A few good Hank Azaria moments, especially his criticism of Darth Vader. D.
• “The Goode Family”: The first episode was the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in quite some time. (”It’s not important that you wasted gas, it’s important that you feel guilty about it.”) I don’t know what future a TV show that makes fun of the people who elected Obama has in 2009, but I guess if “American Dad” could survive in 2005, there might be hope. Plus, if you don’t live in the Seattle, Bay, Boulder, Austin, or Madison areas you might not fully get it. In any case, I’m going to enjoy it while I can. A.
• Guns ‘n’ Roses “Chinese Democracy”: When G’n'F’n'R released their last studio album, er, albums, I was 17 years-old, had all of my hair, weighed 70 pounds less and could bench 100 pounds more. I’m afraid that Axl and company aged like me. There’s a few good things left on the platter, but not like there once was. It is kind of hilarious that Axl jammed every musical cliche that came and went in that time on the album somewhere. (Break it down!). C+.
• Bruce Springsteen’s “Working on a Dream”: The awful “Devils and Dust” aside, The Boss had a creative upswing in the Bush years. Unfortunately, that was due to inspiration derived from 9-11 and the darkest days of the Iraq War – (”The Rising” and “Magic”). Throw in the very fun but oddly named “Seeger Sessions” (odd because there were no Seeger songs on the album) and the Bush years were good to the Boss. “Working on a Dream” begins the downslide to what will surely be the lazy Obama years (like the Clinton years were). There are some good songs – “Outlaw Pete” especially – but it is as meandering as “Magic” was tight. The title cut – used at Obama rallies – is tainted by a self-congratulatory feel. Otherwise there is a lot of “meh” on the album. Fortunatly for Springsteen, his “meh” is masterwork for most musicians working in popular music today. B.

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• I’ve got two long pieces I’ve been peculating for a long time. I just need to get the time and motivation to write them out. Go figure that when I sit around writing bullcrap all day for work I don’t feel like sitting around writing bullcrap in my free time.
• My wife is traveling to DC on business this week. “Baching it” used to be a lot more fun when I didn’t have a 4-year-old and a 20-month-old left with me. The only time my Xbox 360 has been turned on so far is to stream “The Water Horse” through the Netflix function for my daughter.
• The “No dishes dinner plan” tonight was KFC. Tomorrow we’re going to the Chinese buffet. Wednesday will probably be Costco pizza – Canadian bacon and pineapple since we can’t get that when mom is home. Thursday is pending.
• I also told my daughter I would buy her a Topsy Turvy at Walgreens if she didn’t give me much grief this week. She might have gotten her grandpa’s green thumb. However her grandpa is also the one that killed any green thumb I might have had.
• Here’s one from last week: “The budget deficit has been revised up to $1.84 trillion. The Democratic Congress and President are spending…. ZOH MY GAWD WANDA SYKES SAID SHE HOPES RUSH LIMBAUGH DIES IN A COMEDY BIT!!! OUTRAGE!!!” Let’s not be so easily led around by the nose, people.
• I’m finally getting around to watching the last few episodes of “Life on Mars.” After it ended I had no motivation to keep up. It’s nice to see that how much I like a show is still directly proportional to the chance that it will not survive the season. Now where am I going to get my Harvey Keitel fix?
• I was swore into the bar on Friday. Surprisingly I haven’t been forcibly relocated to Bainbridge Island nor has Satan been by to collect my soul.
• 70’s and sunny for Memorial Day weekend in Western Washington? Sounds too good to be true.
• Who the hell are these people that still have questions about the digital TV transition?
• I’m back to the portion of the half-marathon training where 5 miles feels like a short run. The Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon sold out, so we needed to move the training up three weeks to the North Olympic Discovery Marathon, which seems like a nicer run anyway. Plus it will give us to do a 5k circuit run around the bridges right near my house. I do that 5K during training anyway, might as well do it for a good cause.
• I don’t think there’s much chance of the drive-in theater playing Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation as the double feature this weekend.
• If a school my kid went to showed “The Story of Stuff“, they could expect to have a long conversation with me. And my first question would be why they don’t understand things like “prices”. My second would be why they don’t questions statements like “More than 50% of our tax dollars go to the military.” (It does… if you take out Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. However, if you take out military spending, it takes up 0%. Makes as much sense) or “We have less than 4% of our original forests left.” (We have about 80% of the forest land that we had in the lower 48 in 1776 (PDF). I know it is hard for an East Coast Liberal to imagine, but fly out and I’ll show it to you.) And of course: Why the hell are you showing a video which tells kids that it is the government’s job to “take care” of the people? And that’s just a few of the questions in the first few minutes.
• Governor Gregoire just signed the “Everything but marriage” bill into law. It gives gay couples the same rights as married couples without using the word marriage.  Much like California, a group is going to try to overturn the law by referendum. It’s going to get noisy around here.

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Since I’ve been studying, I haven’t been able to get caught up in the Super Bowl excitement. (Is it still called the Super Bowl when the Cardinals are in it?)

However, I did come across this piece where some guy picks the ten funniest Super Bowl commercials. Aside from “Beard Combover,” which is awesome, I could take or leave most of them, but “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker” actually inspired me to try to change careers. My last place of employment could have really used an office linebacker. (”You kill the Joe, you need some mo’,” was one of the things I was always yelling at the always-thinking-of-others caring “liberals” that I worked with.)

Now that’s a job.

The long form that was on Reebok’s website:

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“Sorry for the running-you-over prank.” “Prank?”

This is why I hate the local news. That was the first three minutes of the KIRO local news tonight.  I know it sucks for the guy and his family, but I’m not sure why his mom crying belongs on the news.

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I think I’ll see if I can get my money back for the bar review and just buy this game instead:

Man, I really miss that character. And Troy McClure.

BTW, that is a parody of this game.

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I’d say my roommates in college and I could have had the exact discussion that starts at about 1:02 into this clip from last night’s “The Big Bang Theory,” but I don’t think any of us would have defended Star Trek V, even compared to Star Trek I.

I agree that Star Trek V is the standard against which all badness is measured. (What does God need with a starship?)

I’m an unapologetic fan of both “The Big Bang Theory” and “Worst Week.” Those shows make me laugh and ease the sting of Monday.

Speaking of Star Trek movies, they showed a new commercial for the Star Trek movie reboot coming out next summer during “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”, and it looks extremely promising.

Why yes, I do watch a lot of TV on Monday.

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I was going to lay off posts from The Onion, since I’ve had too much Onion-based content lately, but this one had me doubled over laughing.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

I should probably be sad because I know a couple of these guys. I swear at least a couple of my classmates surrendered 10 percentage points of class rank in order to create more time to harangue people about Obama.

Meanwhile, the South Park guys did a pretty good job re-creating the scene on Seattle’s Capitol Hill Tuesday night:

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Oh, Matt and Trey! I was wrong to doubt you! (Or kind of doubt you, seeing as how my first theory was apparently correct.)

Preview of tonight’s new South Park:

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I thought it was kind of strange that South Park passed up the target-rich environment of this year’s election. Four years ago right before the election, Matt Stone and Trey Parker famously let their views be known when the boys had to choose whether to vote for a giant douche or a turd sandwich in an election. (Supposedly we can figure out which candidate was represented by which object and who they voted for if you watch the episode closely.)

They also weren’t shy about releasing Team America: World Police just before that election. While the movie rips hard on all sides of the political spectrum (as well as montages and Michael Bay), I always took the climactic “dicks fuck assholes” speech as kind of a vulgar semi-endorsement of the Bush Doctrine.

But this year they chose to use the two weeks prior to the election to run a two-part episode making fun of movies like Cloverfield and Quarantine. I can’t say I wasn’t a little dissappointed.  Not that the hand-held shaky-cam movies aren’t ripe for lampooning, but they do have a few more weeks of episodes this season and an entire spring season coming up. They are aware of that there is an election coming up, Hillary campaigned in South Park in the show’s 24 satire episode.

In the DVD commentaries, Parker and Stone always complain about running out of ideas at the end of the season, so why was election humor MIA this election cycle from the best living satirists in America? Some theories:

• They have outlines of a killer post-election episode and didn’t want to step on it. Obama being ahead in the polls makes this more likely, I think.
• The obvious absence of the subject matter is a statement in itself.
• They already had an episode where Cartman was imprisoned for calling someone “black” rather than “African American” and didn’t have another Obama joke.
• The self pro-claimed Libertarians don’t want to be seen as taking sides and don’t have another clever “douche or turd sandwich” device.
• They are tired of political humor after eight years of shrillness and didn’t feel like getting near it again.
• They now have so much money they don’t care and crappy movies are more likely to impact their day-to-day lives.

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Fellow nerds might find this as funny as I did:

Personally, I’d like to see Saul Tigh debate Barack Obama. It’d be over real quick.
“Obama, you frakking wimp!” (Punches Obama in the throat, downs half a bottle of moonshine.)

Much more nerdy fun at TighRoslin.com

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Bernie Mac, Issac Hayes… did any black entertainers survive the weekend? Well, Chris Tucker. Goddammit now there’s probably going to be a Rush Hour 4.

When I heard Bernie Mac died, I thought, “Why, oh why couldn’t it have been Cedric the Entertainer instead?”

As for Chef, where do Scientologists go when they die? Or do the thetans just find new bodies?

R.I.P. big black dudes. We’ll miss your baritone voices.

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Oh no! Bennigans is closing!

Chin up, Raisins is still open.

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This work of genius has been pulled because a couple of the gays don’t like it.

Why are the offended gays offended? Who said that guy is gay? I’ve seen plenty of effete men who are heterosexual. Maybe the gays objecting to this ad on the grounds that it is “homophobic” ought to be the ones to learn some sensitivity.

And you know what ads I don’t like? The ten other commercials surrounding that one featuring a family where the white dad is an ignorant buffoon. Just kidding, that actually doesn’t bother me that much because I’m not a hypersensitive jackass with a keen sense of to be an attention whore by crying “victimhood!”

Apparently Snickers wasn’t cut any slack for this Super Bowl commercial below. Or was this one ‘homophobic” too? I can never remember what everyone is supposed to be offended by anymore.

H/T: Moonbattery

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I think I heard The Wilhelm Scream in The Dark Knight last night, can anyone confirm this?

I always love hearing The Wilhelm Scream, even though it sometimes takes me out of the movie. It usually takes a few times seeing the scene to hear it, fortunately.

Some of you I’m sure have no idea what I’m talking about. The Wilhelm Scream is a scream from The Charge at Feather River which for some reason has been the scream of choice for Skywalker Sound and presumably some other mixing studios for TV shows and movies for decades since.

These two videos should sum it up. There are some repeats, but it gives a nice sampling. Extra props to the second one for throwing in a scene from the Star Wars Holiday Special:

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