BECAUSE THE YEAR IS 2112

It's 1976 and you're, what, 17?

Life support

Slaps is singlehandedly trying to save the blog from its facebook induced demise. Well done, sir.

P.S. I don't think Alex Knepper is representative of conservatives. I understand Reason likes to take on conservatives as well as the socialists, but sparring with a gay undergrad who writes on David Frum's blog is not really probative of the state of conservatism.

"I'm not a witch!"

This new Christine O'Donnell ad missed a fantastic opportunity.

I was thinking something more along these lines:

Where dost thou stand, modern conservatism?

Reason:

"Conservatism is about supporting the Republican Party, except when it requires us to vote for a Democrat, because the Democrats agree with the Republicans more than someone Knepper is afraid might be a serious libertarian. And that is being serious about electoral politics, conservatives."

Ouch, FrumForum.

Re: Rush documentary

That Rush documentary was pretty fantastic. Some random reactions:

--Rush toured with KISS?! A lot!? And Gene Simmons ripped on them hard because that was during their kimono-wearing phase (so they kinda deserved it).

--Teenaged Neil Peart looks like Jarrod.

--After the flabbergasted fan reaction to Hemispheres, instead of writing commercial songs Rush comes right back with... another concept album! Awesome.

--The keyboard/guitar feud is way overblown. The keyboard never really left (until Vapor Trails), they just started using more piped-in sounds and letting Geddy play bass during the live shows.

--Neil comes off as pretty likable in his interviews, but I would be extremely uncomfortable to be around him.

--The last few segments of the documentary gives me a new appreciation for Vapor Trails. The album holds up really well.

Horowitz on Hitchens

Here is part 1 and part 2 of an essay David Horowitz has written about Christopher Hitchens in part about Hitchens new memoir, Hitch-22. Horowitz lets Hitchens have it although I believe they are on friendly terms.

I read Horowitz's memoir, Radical Son, a long while back. I thought it was pretty good. Horowitz, like Hitchens, is a pretty good stylist. I might have to get a copy of Hitch-22. I suppose my prejudices make reading stories of second thoughts by leftists more enjoyable than they would those of differing political persuasions.

As an aside, Hitchens has cancer. I saw that somewhere in the last few weeks. I don't know how bad off he is.

As another aside, here is an excerpt from Hitch-22, Hitchens's thoughts on how to drink. If you want to make yourself feel better about your drinking this will help. Apparently a bottle of wine and a few glasses of scotch per day is moderate. I'd be rather worthless on that intake.

OH MY GOSH

Rush documentary!!!!

I've got my ticket for the Boston show in September. I am so psyched!

Ah, the good old days....

What if the Muppets were in Street Fighter?

Here's your answer.

Most sportswriters went to college and that makes me sad

Matt Welch has a charactistically entertaining rant about Obama, sportswriters and sports. As an aside, I hate sportswriters. They are terrible writers. For some reason I started getting Sports Illustrated in the mail. I started to read the first issue and threw it away after about 5 minutes of skimming articles. Now they go directly in the trash.

David X. Cohen on the return of Futurama:

And I wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

Some choice tidbits that made me laugh this morning:

"One of my favorite episodes of the year is one where Bender tries to pass a ballot initiative called Proposition Infinity to legalize robosexual marriage, which is the marriage between a robot and a human. "

"Nixon will be back. We have a whole head-related episode. It’s discovered that you get a “head trip” if you lick one of the heads in the jars. So Fry licks George Washington’s head and it sends them off on a Revolutionary War adventure. That’s a plot line you wouldn’t see on most sitcoms."

All will be well in the world this summer.

It puts the lotion in the basket or else it gets the hose again

Movies R Fun.

We stand for what Robert Taft stood for!

I second that emotion. Slaps that is fantastic stuff. Too bad that guy is a bit kooky.

At the risk of posting too much

/too much Tim and Eric:



I don't lie when I say Best. Thing. Ever.

Dear Nick,

Here is the full length Mega Man movie. MegaMan. Movie.

I need to open another bottle of wine before I watch this.

I told you about the preview.

Kentucky GOP primary debate

Holy smokes this is fantastic entertainment:

!!!

Confusing

This:


is a cover of this:


Discuss.

Re: Robocop

"The point of Robocop, of course, it is a Christ story."

I'm totally stealing this line for all sorts of stuff. Just replace 'Robocop' with whatever the subject happens to be. (e.g. 'The point of John Edwards' Sex Tape, of course, it is a Christ story.')

Robocop is apparently a Jesus metaphor

LoLWin

Some Star Wars

In keeping with the name of this blog, RedLetterMedia's 9-part review of Attack of the Clones is up. It's pretty insightful (but not quite as cutting as the Phantom Menace review, which has more to do with storytelling and story structure); this one is more focused on the general incoherence of the movie within the greater Star Wars universe.

The one claim that I didn't find quite as convincing (it happens somewhere in the middle parts, between 4-6) was that Samuel L. Jackson was added to appeal to black audiences. I totally buy the idea that Jackson was added because he was a box-office draw (and it seems like Lucas and co. were truly concerned that they weren't going to make tons of money), but I just don't buy the idea that they were slicing the demographic pie so finely in an attempt to market the movie to every conceivable group. If that were the case, we'd have seen a Hispanic on the Jedi Council, or a Jewish person somewhere in the Galactic Senate.

Re: Literature

I love shit like that. It's like catnip to me.

I love it when authors claim they're changing the world and breaking new ground because you can find pretty quickly what formulas they're using and who they're cribbing from. There's also this Dan Brown Sequel Generator that's pretty fun to play with.

Also, apropos of nothing, I kind of liked Lady in the Water, and I'll watch the whole damn thing every time it comes on TV. It's the kind of story that should have worked, at least on paper, and would only get made as a movie when someone with the balls and ego and lack of awareness of M. Night Shyamalan decided to go for it. Which is just another way of saying, it's a story that really doesn't lend itself to easy categories or influences. That doesn't stop the movie from being a huge heaping pile of crap, but, hey, points for originality.

Literature!

Because we all know Nick loves him some Nicholas Sparks.

I still do the clapping when I hear "Too much time on my hands"

I was not aware it is embarrassing to love Styx. Now my unanswered request for "any classic Styx" at the department Christmas party makes sense....

Frum: Modern Day Machiavelli?

I know that David Frum doesn't have many friends around here for his numerous and well-reported apostasies, but I did find this summary run-down of his current position on conservatism convincing. I'm not sure about his big claims surrounding gritty day-to-day politics, but his critiques of the profits-over-results conservative media entertainment industry are persuasive, in my view (and, to be fair and state the obvious, the political entertainment industry is not just a creature of the right, or something that was invented with Fox News--MSNBC is just as bad and frequently far worse).

Just to lay all my cards on the table, one of the reason's that I find National Review so difficult to stomach these days (other than what Jarrod might label a slouchy leftward drift on my part) is the fact that so many of NR's contributor's have bought into the model of conservative-thought-entrepreneurs. No doubt these will be lucrative years for many of them.

NFL Overtime

I have to agree with Brad Childress. If they are going to change the rules, they need to change them for the regular season too. It doesn't seem like a bad rule though. A coin toss and a field goal is kind of a lame way to end a football game.

New NFL Overtime Rules

So what do y'all think?

I don't have strong opinions either way. But... I'm interested to see how the change plays out. Will it make overtime games more exciting? Probably, but they were already pretty exciting. The rules sound to me like they build more risk into the equation; which is to say, you can't get a decent return, a good pass or two, and then run three times before kicking a field goal. Since they're going with it anyways, I'd like to see the rule in the regular season, so we could see Belichick going for it on 4th down in overtime to get a touchdown.

Toyota

I'm beginning to become a conspiracy theorist on the Toyota front. Government (with the UAW) takes over GM and Chrysler. All the sudden Toyota is the most evil corporation on the planet and just happens to be the most successful (and non-unionized) car company in the world.

Just a thought...

Exorcising Toyota’s Demons

The Toyota Tort Circus

Andrew Breitbart

Slate ran an interesting piece on Andrew Breitbart today.

Some money quotes:

"Bill Clinton comes in, and his entire M.O. is mowing down as much trim as he can. … Yet the feminists ignored Bill Clinton and they excoriated Clarence Thomas. That's everything to me."

Breitbart traces everything he despises about cultural liberalism to his college days. "When I told my parents I was an American studies major, they were like, 'That's fantastic! Did you read Mark Twain?' 'No, I didn't.' 'What did you read?' 'Marcuse, Adorno, Horkheimer, Michel Foucault.' 'They don't sound American!' 'They're not.' " Luckily, recalls Breitbart, "I was too drunk to be completely indoctrinated by it."

There's a maxim that Breitbart wants to be "the Arianna Huffington of the right." Nonsense, he said. "I'd rather be the Ted Turner of the right." The analogy is one of scale as much as politics. He doesn't just want to be a parasite and critic of the mainstream media. He wants to displace it.

"Mom: 'How's school?' 'Loving it.' 'How's that $30,000 a year going?' 'Oh man, I'm having a great time, thanks for sending me to college. It's really cheery stuff. I've read about raped black women in the South, there's women being used in [the] sex slave trade, men are really bad, and white men are even worse, and our Founding Fathers are a bunch of fucking fuckheads."

"I don't care if Andrew Sullivan dreams of me as a bear. He could torture me and I'd allow for it."

Well?

This is so nerdtastic I think only Nick can sufficiently explain it. I mean, pick out the obscure references:

ROGER WHITTAKER

He was Gordon Lightfoot before Gordon Lightfoot was Gordon Lightfoot:

Negative dodge!?

Too awesome to be fake:



I'm going to memorize some of these quotes to break them out when necessary:

"It's too hard!!!!!" "Ludicrous!"

"Our tanks can't tank with a 20% dodge nerf!!!!"

"The Blood Princes are ludicrous!"

"... negative dodge!?!"

"... obviously not because there's Borg!!"

For Bert (and maybe Nick)

Ron Paul's Son

Rand Paul is running for U.S. Senator from Kentucky. And thankfully, he's not named after Ayn Rand as I wrongly assumed.

Citizens United

While I think the Court got it right, I have a feeling it'll be a political boon to Democrats (albeit a small one). They historically get their money in large chunks, especially from unions. Corporations don't really have ideological reasons for supporting either party and do not support Republicans as liberals would have us believe, especially these days when corporations are lining up to get in bed with the Fed, White House, and the Treasury, not to mention large companies' interest in a tolerable amount of regulation to discourage competition.

For the most ridiculous take on the case, and to see predictions that won't materialize, and perhaps one of the most imbecilic commentaries I've ever had the patience to watch 11 minutes of see Keith Olbermann's rant. He says Citizens United is even worse than Dred Scott and Sarah Palin will be the pretty face of the new corporate fascism. I kid you not. Somehow the man gets dumber every time he opens his mouth. You'd think there'd be a floor at some point...

I'm the man. Haven't I told you?

‘Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.' -President Obama

Suck on that Bill Clinton

This is spectacular:

Worst decade ever.