Not just for men anymore (TM)

Hey America, it’s time for the Oscars!

I’ve been feeling unable to form complete and wonderful sentences lately. They’ve been turning out half-done and awful. We’re just going to plow through this Oscars ceremony and see if we can get something funny or poignant going. It’s an amazing night every year, right? Lots of glitter. But let’s try to keep the cynicism to a minimum, shall we? While it’s true that nearly every year they pick the wrong film as Best Picture, it’s really more about the spectacle than the statues. This year, I haven’t seen any of the Oscar contenders, so I’m fresh out of opinions on their relative merits. It should be terrific!

The pre-show is on now, and Nearly Ubiquitous Sherri Shepherd (NUSS), Former Model Kathy Ireland (FMKI), and some dude named Jess Cagle are on the Red Carpet being Flavor Flav-style hypemen for Hollywood and all of its wonderful stars. I fully expect a lot of wondering about who is wearing whom, as if we’re all going to go out and buy that designer’s dresses if we think that Kate Winslet looks hot. Which she does, but I’m still not going to buy that dress.

First notable phenomenon of the night: Maggie Gyllenhall is really tall. She towers over the other Best Supporting Actress nominees, but that won’t help her tonight when Mo’Nique of Flavor of Love Girls Charm School beats her. Tall Maggie’s stylish bro Jake is talking to FMKI about his upcoming movie Prince of Persia, and he assures her it’s incredible. She can’t wait for it, because she’s contractually obligated to not be able to wait for it. You know, it’s funny, Kathy Ireland has a super-annoying voice that she’s mitigating by speaking an octave lower than normal tonight. She must have hired a voice coach sometime between Alien From L.A. and now. After she talked to Jake they let her talk to Zac Efron, and she was really enthusiastic about his upcoming projects, too. Apparently he was in something besides High School Musical. Oddly, he was wearing a shirt. I don’t want to be too negative, but he’s useless.

Speaking of, imagine my concern when I saw that Miley Cyrus is in a real live movie with other real actors. Imagine it. I’m asking you to imagine the thoughts that went through my head when I saw the trailer for a Miley Cyrus movie, knowing full well that it will be a hit. Just like “Party in the U.S.A.” I wonder if the movie stars Jay-Z, too. It’s not that I’m against her personally, it’s that I’m befuddled by her continued success in the face of sucking. Oh, that all of us who suck at something could become that popular.

So this happens: FMKI is forced to pronounce “philanthropy” when she interviews a possibly drunk and definitely frisky Morgan Freeman about the bracelets he and his two(!) dates are wearing. I’d make a timely joke about his multiple dates, but one of them is his daughter. Kathy’s super-impressed by those gold bracelets, and the fact that they have something to do with Nelson Mandela. Morgan tried to explain it, but he wasn’t all that lucid.

Matthew Broderick has salt in with his pepper hair. Wasn’t expecting that. Don’t know what to make of it. Totally awesome that he’s not coloring it, though. He looks old. I am old. Ferris Bueller came out when? Over 20 years ago? This sort of revelation is going to keep happening, isn’t it?

Anyone out there going to see the movie with the Twilight vampire and the girl from LOST? What, you don’t have anything better to do? It’s a bizarre combination of two very passionate fan bases. I wonder how much overlap that ven diagram has. In any case, unless the smoke monster fights vampires, I’m not interested. If it does, I’m VERY interested, especially if smokey wins. They need one of those things on True Blood.

Kathy just interviewed the aforementioned Miley Cyrus, and read a script that requires her to tell that hick that she’s “mastered comedy.” I don’t even have a line for this. Am I the only person who realizes that Miley Cyrus is basically the daughter of Cleetus from The Simpsons? People keep giving her contracts in the entertainment business, and she keeps being successful. Please stop supporting her. You’ve probably ruined her life with excess already, but we might be able to save the next one if we stop this lunacy now. Think about Demi Lovato, people. She still has a chance.

NUSS told Jeff Bridges he looks “yummy” as his wife was standing there looking pissed off. He does look yummy, though, in a wolfman kind of way.

On cue, we see Taylor Lautner’s nose. Again, am I the only person who notices this? This child is a sex symbol, and his face looks like it’s melting a la the bad guys at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Neil Patrick Harris kicks off the ceremony with a dirty, dirty song about dropping soap. Dirty. In the audience, all of Hollywood looks old. It’s comforting, really. We are the established generation now. If we wanted to, we could destroy the young. Keep that in mind, Miley.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are hosting together, and one of the people in the room with me correctly calls the first joke they do before they say it. They’re going very broad here, comedically speaking. Most of their jokes are too bad to mention here, but they bring up Hitler in a joke series about Meryl Streep, and that’s always appreciated. Steve also references The Jerk, and that makes me think of Freaks and Geeks.

Funny thing: Steve Martin’s joke about Hollywood being full of Jews. Really? I did not know this. Yes, I’m an alien who just arrived on earth. Just a stranger here.

Thankfully, that Waltz dude from Germany won for Best Supporting Actor, and not any of the other nominees. All of those roles except the Damon rugby player were extremely creepy, especially Stanley Tucci. Woody Harrellson should have been nominated for Zombieland, not The Messenger or whatever it was called. Hey, Zombieland was one of the three movies I saw this year, so I know what I’m talking about.

I don’t know much about Hollywood, but I know that if The Blind Side wins Best Picture, that town will burn to the ground by the hands of the cultural elite. Nancy Pelosi and Bill Ayers will be first in line. They hate all that normal heartwarming crap. They want Hindu-Communist allegories like Avatar or films that veterans hate like The Hurt Locker. Mostly, they just hate movies where white people and black people succeed without liberalism. In a nutshell, this is why the Oscars is ruined like cheese that’s been sitting on the counter too long.

Animated film is next, and after a cutesy intro to all the films, Up! wins, to nobody’s surprise. Up! is about a balloon that has wacky adventures, I think. The only one of the animated nominees I saw is the last half of Coraline. I need to see that Fantastic Mr. Fox thing. It looks so cool.

Miley Cyrus misspeaks, and the angels cry. Yes, I borrowed that line from The Lonely Island, and it doesn’t have any sort of point, but forget her. Please? I’m sure Oscar ratings will be way up this year solely because of her teenage fake-casual twang. I’ve figured it out: Billy Ray made a deal with the Devil. It’s the only thing that explains all of it – from “Achy Breaky Heart” to “Miley at the Oscars” and everything in between. Either that, or I’m in purgatory.

If I ever do a Playboy spread, one of my turn-offs is going to be giant gaudy rings. I want to see your hands, not a giant rock. Don’t they bother you, girl in that commercial?

INTERMISSION – I need to eat something. Also, the Oscars are kind of boring, don’t you think?

Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey are doing a great bit about actor-writer rivalry, picking up where Ricky Gervais left off at the Golden Globes. I’ll leave you with that for a while as I munch.

While I was gone, the stupid short films that nobody saw this year competed against each other for like 20 awards that nobody cared about. The high point was the speech from the winners in the Short Documentary category, where an insane and very unpleasant older lady pushed a nice gay man (the filmmaker, I think) out of the way and tried to use the Oscar mic to make some point about this documentary that nobody has seen. The subject of the film was smiling away in the audience, and I was wondering why we were hearing from the pushy unpleasant lady instead of her or the nice gay man. They never even explained who this woman was, she just pushed him out of the way and charged him with sexism for not letting her talk first. It was great.

I need to see: District Nine. Up. Up in the Air. That Precious movie, even though it stars Mo’Nique. The writer just won for adapted screenplay, and gave the best Oscar speech ever. He was so affected by it he could barely talk, and he ended up just thanking a few family members and, then, everyone. I might not be able to take that much Mo’Nique in one sitting, though.

Supporting Actress!! You know, I’m against the entire concept of Nine. After Fellini made 8 ½, did he really need somebody to come around 40 years later and add to it? Also, it looks just terrible and racked with male guilt. In other news, Maggie Gyllenhall is still a tall drink of water, and she loves Jeff Bridges. Mo’Nique is still the Ambassador of Seriousness and Positivity, and she predictably wins. She thanks her lawyer, BET, Oprah, Tyler Perry, and the Academy for not choosing a white woman. She phrased it differently, but that’s what she meant. And I’m serious – those are the only people she thanked, besides her husband. Ugh.

Goods: Ben Stiller in Avatar makeup and the touching John Hughes tribute. Bads: An Education. I realize the movie was made for people who aren’t me, but that won’t stop me from being annoyed by it. Watch – it’ll pull an insane upset and win. Wouldn’t be the first time. Shakespeare in Love, anybody? Heck, it’s not like Avatar, the favorite, is a Godfather-level masterpiece. Can we pretend for a while that any of these ten (10!) nominated films can win? Can we exist for a second in that world? No? I’m going away until the real awards are given out. This show is a sham.

Yay!  Sandra Bullock won!  She seems really nice, and her tattooed extreme husband is crying.  They love each other.

Hurt Locker wins, director and picture. Take that, Hindu Communism. Did you notice Babs Streisand mouth “It’s about time” when that Bigelow chick won Best Director? The lesson here is simple: Some people think life should be politicized, rather than bemoan the fact that it is. There’s a subtle difference there. You could argue that as a white male, the only reason I don’t want life to be politicized is that I’ve already gotten everything I want, politically speaking. I am of the Ruling Class or whatever, and see all such politicization as a threat to my power. It’s this (false) assumption about me and my ideals that has turned you into the kind of person that mouths “It’s about time” when a woman wins Best Director at the Oscars, thereby insulting everyone there who isn’t a woman. Congratulations, Barbara – you’re a full-blown arrogant buttmunch.

The problem is that life – and society — goes on whether we like it or not. That kind of naked inconsiderate “f-you” feminism would have made sense in 1980, but this is thirty years later. These days, a woman winning Best Director really is no big deal, even if it has never happened before. It’s a Little Deal. There’s a black man in the White House now. The younger you are, the more that you understand that you don’t have to turn yourself into a political construct anymore. It’s ok to just be a woman who directs a great movie and wins awards. You’ve come a long way, baby. Enjoy it.

And it’s not like she deserved it for directing Point Break, either. If anything, she should be doing penance for that.

]]> http://epthnation.com/i-watch-the-oscars-for-you-you-know/feed/ 0 http://epthnation.com/a-small-portion-of-the-copyright-post-i-always-told-myself-id-write/ http://epthnation.com/a-small-portion-of-the-copyright-post-i-always-told-myself-id-write/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:29:02 +0000 epthnation http://epthnation.com/?p=1610 Continue reading →]]> I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m confused by copyright in the US right now.  I’m a child of the 80′s — an era where magnetic tapes time-shifted anything and everything, from song mixes for would-be lovers to Thursday night’s episode of Hill Street Blues.  It turns out that all these tapes were a product of an agreement between Sony and Big Tape Makers, and Sony got a kickback for every Maxell or BASF time-shifting product I purchased.  It apparently wasn’t that making mix tapes was OK, it was that Sony looked the other way because of the kickback.  Not a perfect system, but it helped produce joy on many an acne-stained face in the Reagan, Bush, and early Clinton eras.

We never even thought about copyrights back then, we just freely did what came naturally.  Why?  Because this was the 80′s, and technology had given us a new era where we could watch TV shows later (and fast forward through the commercials).  No longer were we slaves to the networks’ insane scheduling and fascination with USA Baby’s advertising dollars.  We could, in good conscience, get a second shift job somewhere and still be able to see Alf when we got home.  Oh, what a world.  We also broke free from slavery to the record companies by being able to create tapes that combined the good songs from many different artists, rather than having to fast forward past the inevitable “filler” to get to the good stuff.  It was like the impossible-to-copy vinyl of the 70′s never existed, and that was a good thing.  And people wonder why I call the 80′s the greatest decade ever.

This copyright paradise could have lasted forever if not for the advent of the music CD.  All of a sudden, large-scale copying got easy.  And fairly exact.  And Sony had no kickback agreement for CDs, at least at first.  This led to the first of many “Copyright Freakouts” starting in the late 90′s, where record companies banded together illegally (let’s be honest here — the RIAA is a classically illegal monopolistic organization where competition is undermined for the sake of making everyone involved more money) to fight a multi-tentacled attack on their customers.  They sued Napster, a song-sharing program with a centralized database, and won.  They sued Kazaa and other song sharing programs without centralized databases, and still won.  They got William Jefferson Clinton to sign the DMCA, a draconian and blatantly anti-consumer piece of copyright legislation, which pretty much struck the concept of “Fair Use” from US law (unless you happen to be a library, which nobody is).  They sued old ladies and little kids and college students under the DMCA (at $250,000 a song!), and got a bunch of settlements that served to scare file-sharers into purchasing music with money they didn’t have.  Somehow, even after all this rampant suing, their customer base left and never returned.  In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to pretend that anyone who downloads music without paying is a criminal.  That may have engendered some resentment among the youth.  But record execs are obviously smarter than me, so they probably know what would have happened if they just let Napster exist (or take it over), sell ads on it, create a legal site to download high-quality mp3′s (or, even better, develop your own compression scheme like Microsoft did), still sell CD’s to old people, and save ALL THOSE LEGAL COSTS.  They’re right, that probably would have been a disaster.

Today, in 2010, we seem to be turning a corner on copyright.  The Big Companies are winning, mainly by getting former employees installed in government positions.  The DMCA has been unconstitutional for 12 years and isn’t going away.  Fair use is pretty much a thing of the past.  If I rip a CD to my computer, I can be prosecuted as if I were a shoplifter or black-market CD salesmen.  The world has gone insane.  I wonder:  Why even have a constitution if we can’t stop the DMCA?  Why even have a Congress if they’re going to listen to big business instead of their constituents all the time?

I’m being vague and bombastic here, I realize, but this isn’t an essay.  It’s a blog post.  I want to concentrate on the concept of fair use for a second, because it’s important.  If we’re going to have copyright law, we need exceptions to that law.  Copyright law is here to protect creativity; fair use is its necessary counterpart, and is there to protect innovation.  Without fair use, there’s nothing to stop those that create content from controlling every instance and portion of that content to the fullest extent possible.   That may not seem so bad until you realize exactly who we’re dealing with here.  If networks/record companies/movie studios/ book distributors had their way, time-shifting would not be an option unless they deemed it ok — they would want to control the when, where, and how of your television-watching.  Also,  making a backup copy of a song you purchased would not be possible.  If your hard drive crashed, you’d have to purchase the song again.  If someone broke into your car and stole all your CD’s, you wouldn’t be able to make new ones from a backup.  If a husband and wife liked the same CD  and wanted to listen to it in different places at the same time, they would have to purchase a second copy.  I promise you I’m not making this up.  This is what these big companies are aiming for, and in some cases, they have already succeeded.

Which is why we need to come to a societal consensus on fair use.  We can’t just strike it from our society because some people abuse it.  This is art we’re talking about, and if we’re going to experience innovation in art, we’re going to have to protect consumer rights so that people will create new ways of delivering content.  Would P2P technolgies like BitTorrent have been created and explored if not for indifference to copyright?  Oh, wait.  That’s right.  We WERE creating and exploring BitTorrent, but then US ISP’s (already providing terrible service and bandwidth compared to the rest of the world) were strong-armed into “throttling” torrent bandwidth.  Bye-bye, possible innovation.  Hello, terrible data rates and complaining about net neutrality*.

By now you probably see why I’ve been hesitating to write anything on copyright.  It’s a huge diamond of an issue with a crap-ton of facets.  So let’s get back to fair use.  On the one side of the spectrum, you have blatant copyright violations that everyone besides criminals would see as illegal — stuff like making a copy of a DVD and setting up a stand in front of Best Buy selling them for 5 bucks a pop.  That’s obviously bad.  On the other side, you have obviously private stuff that the government has no business making laws about — stuff like lending a DVD set to your cousin so he doesn’t have to purchase the whole thing, recording a tv program so you can watch it later, and backing up the music on your drive to an external drive or an iPod.  In the middle somewhere is making a mix CD for a friend.  There’s a legitimate debate as to where fair use ends.  I don’t mean to suggest that copyright be abolished, just that other rights be seen as just as important.  Keep your laws off my CD collection, Obama.

*  Oddly enough, a chief complainer has been the usually innovation-minded Mark Cuban, who seems to think that net neutrality would tax US bandwidth to the point that it would affect the megabits-per-second of people who aren’t using their bandwidth to play internet games or download P2P files.  If that is true, the solution is not punishing people for using the internet access they’ve paid for, it’s getting ISP’s to pay for infrastructure to alleviate any slowdowns.  What the non-neutralists want is a tiered system where those who use more bandwidth would pay more.  This would stifle any innovation that requires a constantly-working internet connection, because consumers wouldn’t want to pay for it.  It would be a constant boondoggle.  Net Neutrality forces ISPs to provide a fair product for a competitive price.  Bandwidth isn’t a product; nor is it a commodity (though Enron tried to make it one).  It’s just speed of access, that’s all.  Paying more for speed makes sense.  Paying for amount of data transfered does not.  If we’re having trouble transferring data at the promised speeds, then those ISPs need to get some more switches and wires.   This is 2010, for Pete’s sake.  Let’s get some routers up in here.

These Danes are happy.

I’m getting a little tired of having to have a point when I type these blog posts.  I mean, I want to be understood as much as the next guy, but it’s just not worth all this stress of having to reason out arguments and make coherent points.  Sometimes I just want to throw stuff out there and see if it sticks, ok?  Having thus disclaimed my entire blog, let me now proceed to write stuff:

Figure skating is really bad, I think, for America.  Those poor dudes and girls are all being forced to wear funny outfits and give up the prime of their recreational lives so that America’s female audience can be entertained.  The men’s and ladies’ singles competitions strike me as especially odd for some reason.  It’s basically a highly organized form of So You Think You Can Dance On Ice.  The girls are all young and growth-stunted, like they’ve been smoking since birth.  It’s all weird and sketchy.  The guys just look uncomfortable, like they have to constantly convince themselves that ice skating is OK.

Also, and obviously, Ice Dancing is not a sport.  It’s barely a competition.  Are we really giving out Olympic medals to who dances the best?  The ancient Athenians are rolling over in their graves.

The Olympics are just another in a long list of things that US women have ruined, a list which also includes the Lewis & Clark Expedition, elections, and our children.  Of  course, I’m kidding.  It’s just that when I see figure skating it makes me really, really sexist.  I can’t help it.

On a more serious note, I find this whole Disney obsession with princesses disturbing in all sorts of ways.  I feel like I’m the only one noticing that these movies are totally corrupting our kids.  It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone or something.  Children are, after all, our most valuable resource this side of soybeans and corn.  Monsanto owns those things, and now Disney owns our children.  What’s the deal with princesses anyway?  To become a princess, you either have to be born one, or have a Prince marry you.  Both of those things are totally random, but Disney is purposely pretending that they’re not.  And in the real world there are no princes, which means Walt Disney might as well be making movies about unicorns.  You can rest assured that if they did, little girls everywhere would be gluing toilet paper rolls to their heads.  I regard this princess thing as equally strange.

Unrealistic expectations = death.  Did you know that people from Denmark are on average the happiest in the world?  Do you know why?  Because they are content with what they have.  They take their 2% unemployment and semi-comfortable life and are content with it.  Maybe Walt Disney should start making movies about that, instead of trying to turn our children against us with toys and false hopes.  And don’t get me started on Barbie.  Yeesh, that girl is insipid and unstoppable, like Speidi crossed with Hakeem Olajuwon.

You know what else?  I don’t think there really was a secret chord that David played that pleased the Lord.  So that famous song is based on a foundation of wrongness, is what I’m saying.  I don’t really care for music, I guess.   It’s pretty, but so are princesses.  A cold and broken kind of pretty.

Also, I don’t like loud noises.  Bah!  I need some peace and quiet.  Where are my ear plugs?  There’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by ear plugs.

Whew.  That’s better.  Sorry, it’s just that sometimes these things just build up in my heart like that magnetic force in the hatch on LOST, and I have to input the numbers and press the button to release them.  If I don’t, the blast doors in my soul shut and weird-looking runes appear in my head.  I can’t carry the metaphor any farther than that, so goodbye.

This helpful picture totally explains last night's LOST

So, it’s quantum physics-esque “alternate realities,” eh?  That’s what it’s come to?  In some ways, I’m glad LOST is ending this year; there’s no telling what we’d get if those poor characters hung around for a seventh season.  Full-blown multiverses?  Flashes forward and back at the same time?  The mind boggles.

In all seriousness, though, I kid LOST because I love it so much.  There’s no other show as ambitious and crazy, and both those adjectives were in full force in the season six premiere last night.  You had the alternate universes, the devil (?) continuing to present himself as a dead guy, a whole new group of “Others” that we hadn’t seen before, Hurley seeing dead people, Miles talking to different dead people, and people coming back from the dead and talking.  Dead is dead?  Hmm…

I like how the show keeps coming back to core phrases that force the viewer to take a stand one way or the other — “dead is dead,” “you can’t change the future,” “live together, die alone,” “nothing is irreversible,” “you have a choice,” etc.  It gives LOST a framework on which to hang all the craziness.  Yes, Juliet died, but is dead really dead?  And where is she in the alternate timeline?  Why did old dirty dead Jacob tell Hurley to take the great Sayid to the temple, and not Juliet?  Is Jacob God, and the smoke monster the devil?  Where is the smoke monster’s home, exactly?  And if Jacob was, you know, a dude who could die, then can the smoke monster be killed?

But those are questions that nobody can answer right now.  So it goes with LOST.  My main problem with last night’s extravaganza, other than letting Juliet live for exactly one scene before killing her again, is that they’re cramming two separate timelines into one already-crowded show.  We’ve got sixteen more episodes to go, and now we have to deal with non-island versions of Kate and Jack and Locke and Boone and even Arzt and Frogurt (but not Shannon, or any tail section people — yet).  Sure, it was great to be reminded of what an inappropriately smiling buffoon Sawyer was when the plane crashed, but what purpose does it serve?  I trust the writers have a plan here, but what if it’s a bad one?

But enough nitpicking about things I don’t yet understand.  Here were the things I liked, in the order they come to my mind:

• Desmond showing up on the plane, then disappearing.  Gave me hope for the two timelines being merged back into one show, and that this might have been Jacob’s plan all along.  Also, I love Desmond.  “See you in another life, brotha” indeeed.
• In general, I liked the more confident/less shaken versions of the former characters.  Even Charlie seemed to know what his purpose was, even if that purpose was dying.
• Speaking of Charlie, I’ve got a (probably wrong) possible theory:  Just like Juliet seemed to grasp the fact that the bomb created an alternate timeline as she was dying, Charlie may have seen the first timeline when he “died” in the plane bathroom.  Perhaps that’s why he was staring holes through Jack as he left the plane — he knows Jack was responsible for the bomb, and therefore this whole new timeline.  When Chaz said, “I should have died” or whatever, he may have meant drowning in that underwater Dharma station.  Just throwin’ it out there.
• Sayid, as always, is awesome.  I like his way of making friends — offering to help by kicking in doors.  It’ll be interesting to see what exactly has changed about Mr. Sayid since his literal temporary death.  Is he now Jacob?  Unlikely, though he may have seen Jacob or something when he died.  Did the smoke monster take him over a la Locke?  Even less likely, due to the absence of a body, and there being no evidence that Smokey can appear as different people in different locations.  Did he just flat-out rise from the dead?  Well, he was dead, and now he’s not.  Perhaps he also got a glimpse of the whole story while he was dying or deceased.  I’m just glad he’s still around.
• The Jacob-Hurley conversation?  Awesome, and confirmed that Hurley does indeed see dead people.  Perhaps we should have seen this coming — Jacob told him as much in last season’s finale.  Nice callback, LOST.
• Kind of sad to see old jerky Jin again, telling Sun to button up her shirt and trying to sneak thousands of dollars past customs.  Sun’s dad is not going to be pleased.  So, does alternate-Sun still know English?  I like how they left that question open for interpretation.  I bet she does.
• Liked both Jacks more than I’ve ever liked Jack before — suffering confused Jack on the island, and old confident Jack the Fixer on the plane.  I never thought I’d say this, but I’m rooting for island Jack to get some redemption.  He hasn’t had a good day since season four.
• Well, they certainly put a fine point on the pathetic nature of the original Locke, didn’t they?  I like how he remains the spiritual heart of the both timelines, even though he’s dead and being impersonated in one of them.
• The Locke Becomes a Monster scene was probably the best one last night.  It confirmed what we thought we knew (namely, smoke monster=NotLocke=Jack’s dad=other people who died on the island), but also brought up a bunch of questions.  I’d like to see a Smoke Monster backstory built — was he confined to the cabin for a while?  Why did he chase the 815 survivors, starting in the pilot episode?  Why did he kill those he killed, like Mr. Eko?  Why was he referred to as “the island’s security system”?
• Ben better come up with a plan, and quick.  I hope he does, because Ben outsmarting the fake Locke would be an incredible plot twist.
• Kate’s cute, but I kinda wish she hadn’t commandeered a cab at gunpoint.  I’d like to think she learned her lesson, even if it was in another reality.  At least Claire was in the cab, though.  I liked how (just like Sun and English) they didn’t tell us whether or not she was pregnant.
• Finally, it was a nice contrast we saw between Hippie Others “It’s OK to Kill People” Cindy and Stewardess Cindy.  Good to have her back, and to get a plausible explanation as to where she was the last three years.  I wonder if Stewardess Cindy is still dating Gary Troup.

So, there you go.  I still don’t know what to think of all this, but I kinda like it.

First of all, check out an ABC summary of Seasons 1-5, in 8:15 (ha!):

I like how since the introduction of the Tail Section people at the start of Season Two, ABC and LOST have tried their best to distance from them. They are definitely the black sheep of this family. Which is too bad, because Mr. Eko and Libby will always be more important than Jack’s tattoo.

Apparently, LOST does this every year, because this was a (less-hurried) recap of Seasons 1-3, again in 8:15:

So now you know everything.

Now, behold this AWESOME “24″-style real-time video of the original Oceanic Flight 815 plane crash:

ABC has treated this year’s promos for LOST as a way to use old footage of previous seasons, as if these scenes are just sitting there on the counter and will expire if they don’t show them again. They don’t give us any real peeks at the upcoming year, which is to be expected from a show that prides itself on surprising people. Still, it would be better if they used a background song like Radiohead’s “Everything in its Right Place” to compliment philosophical jargon, a la this great Spanish-speaking promo:

I decided to watch the Golden Globes tonight, mainly because I’ll watch anything that prominently features Ricky Gervais. It’s 6:43 right now, and the culturally worthless red-carpet pre-show is on. I really hope this thing starts at Seven Central. If it doesn’t, I’m going to really regret not buying some beer today. Not that I’m an alcoholic or anything, it’s just that a cold one might really take the edge off all this “who are you wearing” crapola.

I think Colin Farrell’s there with his daughter. That better be his daughter. His daughter needs to cover up.

Natalie Morales is slumming, and Quentin Tarantino is dressed like a D&D cleric. If you need some undead turned, call him. He’s actually answering Natalie’s questions thoughtfully, and tells us there will eventually be a Kill Bill 3. Um, I’d hate to break this to ya, Q, but Bill’s dead. They should just talk to him some more…

…because up next we have a latin-american actress, and the not-slumming red-carpet interviewer I don”t recognize asks her something like, “You used to make Latin-American audiences laugh, and now you’re making Regular-American audiences laugh,” which isn’t a question. Also, it would have been way better if she had actually used the term “Regular-American.”

Weird thing just happened. Natalie had to ask a True Blood actor a question twice for some reason, the second time with a countdown. Which would be fine, if she hadn’t just asked the question with us watching. It’s bad enough she has to be out here in the rain – now she has to ask her questions twice due to production errors. Poor, rich Natalie.

Don’t tell anyone, but I think Julie Moran’s had some work done. She’s in the first stages of velociraptorization. So sad. I have a feeling my anti-plastic-surgery side will become a recurring theme this evening, especially since it seems like even young actresses are unable to resist the siren-like call of fake faces. The only problem with that is once you do it, you can never go back. Also, people will know. If you’re vain enough to get it done, you’re probably vain enough to care that they know. It’s a trap, in other words. Oh! Ricky’s on!

He starts out by taking shots at Steve Carrell, who menaces him. It’s a good bit. The audience of actors is like 2 feet away from Ricky, and he’s making fun of all of them by calling them the most important people in the world. Leo Dicraprio does not look amused. Everybody knows actors can’t take jokes about their acting. Ha! “Let’s get on with it before NBC replaces me with Jay Leno.” Double ha!

Nicole Kidman presents the Best Supporting Actress in a Movie award first. She’s had some work done, but she doesn’t look like it tonight. I mean, she looks better than she’s looked in a long time. She tells us to give our money to Haiti, and then the awards start. Mo’Nique apparently took time off being the Dean of VH1′s Rock of Love Charm School to due a movie, and apparently she was good. Beats dealing with Buckwild every day. She gives a heartfelt and tearjerking speech after her win, one that I thankfully missed due to questions re: the desk this laptop is on from one of the kids in the house. Good timing, kids.

Matthew Fox and somebody else give an award out next. LOST starts February 2 – did you know that? It’s the last season, and they’re bringing everybody back who’s not black or Shannon. It’s true. They’re going to answer everything, I just know it. As if to confirm this, Evangeline Lilly’s L’oreal commercial comes on. Everything’s coming up LOST tonight. I think Ben or Locke are up for awards or something, too. I got a good feeling about these Globes.

Ben is up against Doogie Howser, William Hurt, Jeremy Piven, and John Lithgow. Big competition there. Lithgow wins, I think for Third Rock From the Sun. Is that show still on? At least it wasn’t Piven, that’s all I’m saying. Lithgow is married to Mary Yeager, a professor of History at UCLA. He dedicates the award, the one Ben from LOST should have won, to her. She smiles. Aww.

Everyone says Up! is great. I should probably see it now that it just won a Globe. I should also probably see Coraline and The Fantastic Mr. Fox and those other movies it just beat as well.

Do we really need another Wolfman movie, after Team Jacob just happened? Really? Even with Benicio Del Toro, I would like it to not exist. I lieu of beer, I’m going to have some ice cream. And where’s Ricky Gervais? Did they fire him after he made fun of NBC?

The great thing about the Golden Globes is that there’s actually two of every movie award – one for dramas and one for comedies and musicals. So they have ten (10) best picture nominees to get through. Apparently, somebody made a musical after seeing 8 ½, and called it Nine. In this musical, Penelope Cruz says “I’ll be waiting here with my legs open.” I know this because they just showed it at the Golden Globes, in the so-called “family hour.” Perhaps I don’t understand what “legs open” means. At any rate, Nine looks like a movie I’d rather not see.

Ricky’s back, and promoting his blog and the DVD for The Invention of Lying. “One thing that can’t be bought is a Golden Globe…officially.” He’s gone and cracked himself up. I love him.

Dexter gets another award, this time for best actor. Yay for serial killer dramas, right? I kinda can’t believe he beat the Man Men guy. I’m just glad that sunglass-removing dude from CSI Miami didn’t win. Any year he doesn’t win is a win for America. David Caruso, that’s the dude.

That one girl from ER won for Best Actress in a Drama, for some show that’s produced by David Zucker. Zucker’s got an interesting body of work – Airplane, Ghost, and First Knight, to name best, middle, and worst. I’m sure it’s a great show that I wouldn’t like, whatever it is.

Harrison Ford introduces Up in the Air, another movie I need to see. I don’t mind that Mr. Ford is looking old. It’s about time, right? He’s doing fine, though – he’s got a Calista Flockhart at home, and he seems happy and serene.

Ricky Gervais takes a shot a Paul McCartney, then points to his Haiti pin in order to mitigate any potential boos. He’s on fire right now.

Amy Adams is so cute. Even when she’s introducing the nominees for Best TV Movie or Mini-Series, she’s cute. This award is dumb. Gray Gardens won, and its brain trust thanks way too many people that nobody knows, especially considering nobody saw it. Gray Gardens is about some Kennedy relatives in some old folks home somewhere. The first five plot keywords for Grey Gardens on IMDB are: eccentric, filmmaking, kittens, piano, head scarf. If that’s not a recipe for riveting television, I don’t know what is.

Ricky says he hates the stereotype that all Irishmen are hellraisers, then introduces Colin Farrel. Ha. Mr. Farrel introduces the Best Actress in a Comedy, and Meryl Streep is rightly nominated for two different roles. I know I have said that the “Julia” parts of Julie and Julia are good, but I have a hard time believing that was the best performance in a comedy by an actress this year. Maybe it was a bad year for funny or musical women. At least the chick from Nine didn’t win.

O. My. Gosh. Somebody hired Rod Blagojovich’s (sp?) hair to be on Celebrity Apprentice. Sell a senate seat, become a reality-show star. In some ways, America is not ideal.

They should have warned me they were going to do more awards for TV Movies. Do they really deserve their own awards? Think about it – they’re like TV shows that aren’t good enough to warrant a continuing story or movies that aren’t good enough to make it to theaters. It’s like giving the same award to the team that wins the Super Bowl and the best team to not make the playoffs. Just sayin’. Drew Barrymore wins for Gray Gardens. Must be the head scarves. She’s very happy to have won, though, and seems like a nice person. Good job, Drew.

Writer’s awards. Jason Reitmann thanks George Clooney for being the greatest man ever. Ooh, the TV Comedy actor award! I hope Steve Carrell wins. Unfortunately, Alec Baldwin wins for 30 Rock. He’s good, but again, let’s not kid ourselves: Just like The Office is twice the show 30 Rock is, Steve Carrell is twice as funny as Alec Bladwin is. Heck, Tracy Morgan is twice as funny as Alec Baldwin is, but you ain’t never seeing a brother gettin’ recognized by the Hollywood foreign press. They just don’t understand.

Maggie Gyllenhall promotes Haiti, and NBC Announcer informs us that the big awards are next. It’s a little early, isn’t it? How long are the Golden Globes supposed to be? I thought we were just half-done! Sadly, it’s all a lie, and this won’t end for another 1.5 hours at least.

I’m bored, and there is no beer or ice cream here. The foreign language films are being recognized, and I’m thirsty dangit. This is a bad time for me. Sophia Loren is aging gracefully, however.

Oh, great – the IMDB is broke, so I can’t look up any of these movies. Oh, wait, it’s back, and I was right – the foreign language film that won was directed by the guy who directed Cache’ in 2005. You remember Cache’, right? The film about latent guilt about Albanians that featured plot points heavily borrowed from Lost Highway? Yeah, I have nothing to say about that.

Mad Men won again. What does LOST have to do to win one of these Globes? They killed Jacob! Come on!

Oh God please no Taylor Lautner. Please no. I’ll be good. Weirdnose weirdnose weirdnose weirdnose weirdnose WEIRDNOSE! Whew. He’s gone. Lots of mediocre movies up for best comedy this year. The Hangover better win. I don’t know why I’m so threatening. I have no power here.

Ricky’s back (finally), and drinking. He’s running out of steam. I’d rather he keep making jokes about how actors are so much more important than writers, so that more actors could pretend that he’s not funny.

We interrupt this awards ceremony to worship Martin Scorsese, director of such films as Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. Certainly a deserving object of our Hollywood praise, even if it does stop down the show for 15 minutes. This is going to be a 3-hour show, isn’t it? I’m missing Human Target. And I’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press for reminding me what a terrible movie The Last Temptation of Christ is. Thanks for Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Martin. Anyway, he’s an amazing director, and he looks so cute in those glasses.

The Hurt Locker is featured. Yet another movie I should probably see. Ricky’s drinking Foster’s, which is Australian for beer. Then, the line of the night: “I like a drink as much as the next man, unless the next men is…Mel Gibson.” And out comes Mel, shaking his finger at Ricky. Noted Commie James Cameron wins the Best Director award for Avatar, even though it features a fake substance called “Unobtainium.” Yay, Communism! “Yet another film I need to see.” It seems pretty silly that I haven’t seen it, right? I mean, the rest of America has.

The Hollywood Foreign Press has messed up the comedy series award almost completely. They nominated The Office and a bunch of suckas, and then they picked Glee as the winner. Glee is a nice show, but please. It’s almost as much of a disgrace as giving it to Ally McBeal back in the day. This much we know: Foreigners don’t know what’s funny. First Jerry Lewis becomes a hero in France, and now Glee. Ok, so the British might know what’s funny, but nobody else. Ok, name your top five non-British European comedians – Go! I think I got stuck at (1) Senior Wences. I think I proved my point.

The Hangover people are introducing The Hangover! Weird. It better win. You hear me? It better!

It did! Wow! Mike Tyson is up there with his face tattoo! This is gratifying, really. It’s great to see an actual funny movie win best comedy. Screw musicals.

In other news, poor Mickey Rourke looks really confused. Is this thing almost over?

Two things: Aahhnold Schwarzenegger just ripped on NBC, and holy Mariah Carey’s dress. I don’t know what to say about it, but just holy.

Sandra Bullock and Robert Downey Jr. won awards, and gave speeches. Bert was pretty funny, actually. And I just realized that girl in the previews for Parenthood was Anne on Arrested Development. I’d been trying to place her for days. Truly, this was a successful night. Still wish I had a beer, though.

Jeff Bridges wins for Crazy Heart and hugs the lovely Kate Winslet a bit too long as he accepts his award. He’s looking like a cool old dude with a beard these days.

And Avatar won best picture. Whoops.

(sorry if not all titles are properly italicized. It’s a 3-hour show, and I’m not going back and checking more than once.)

This picture has nothing to do with this post.

Behold! A bulleted list of random-oid points regarding various movies I’ve seen and re-seen in the past couple months.

(Due to circumstances in my control but that I’ve having problems with, I am living with some saints (I hope they don’t feel bad when I call them that) who took up watching about one movie per night during the whole “December TV Rerun Month” through which we just suffered. I got to see a lot of last year’s big movies during these cold cold nights, over tea and popcorn and occasionally, squashsagna (needless to say, I’ve been looking for an excuse to use that word). So, because you demanded it, here’s another one of those amazing bulleted lists:)

• I was reaffirmed in my previous ranking of the Lord of the Rings movies: Good – Return of the King, Better – Fellowship of the Ring, Best – The Two Towers. Return of the King is great, and has the payoff at the end, but it just lasts forevvvvver (I saw the four-hour extended version). It seemed like the Mount Doom scene would never come. I guess that’s what happens when you move the spider sequence to the third book. Fellowship is beautiful, and wonderful, but The Two Towers is perfect. From Gollum-Smeagol to Faramir to Helm’s Deep to the Uruk-Hai bomb to the throne room scene with Theodin and Gandalf to the end credits, it’s nothing but a barrell of middle-earth awesome.

• Star Trek was pretty good. It loses something going from big screen to DVD, probably. It would have been fantastic to see in the theater. I usually hate the plots of Star Trek (especially First Borgtact or whatever), but this one was actually tolerable and coherent. I like how they approached the “reboot” – making it an actual one instead of just a reimaging. And “Run Fatboy Run” as Scotty? Inspired.

• Speaking of Run Fatboy Run, it was funny and fluffy. I can’t believe Ross from “Friends” directed it. Thandie Newton is way out of his or even Hank Azaria’s league, though. That was distracting, like watching an episode of According to Jim, if Jim was British and not a fricking Bears fan. (ideally, a winking smiley would go here)

• Prince Caspian was tolerable. Confession: I’ve never read any of the Narnia books save for the one with the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in it. After watching Lord of the Rings, I see where Clives Staples Lewis got his ideas from. I liked the literary nature of the story, but why were the Mexicans in Narnia again? I’d still like to think of the story ending forever at the end of the first movie. Sorry, but that’s just me. I’d also like it if The Golden Compass had never been written, so maybe I’m just not into the genre of “White British Fantasy That Pretends To Be For Children But Is Actually Really Heavy.”

• Speaking of that, I saw the Sixth Harry Potter movie. Dumbledore dumbledied. Oh, sorry…spoiler alert. Ahem. I’m still waiting for them to make “Harry Potter and the Carousel of Crap” into a movie. Which number book is that? I forget. I liked the “big mythological universe” aspect of the story, even if I roll my eyes at names like “Luna Lovegood.”

• Julie and Julia was a bad movie and a good movie, respectively. I like how the film makes it look like anyone could get a blog at Salon.com just by signing up. The Julia Child parts were compelling, though, largely because of the real Ms. Child and Meryl Streep’s incredible acting. Make no mistake, though – the “Julie” parts were a total mess. The husband gets mad because she keeps calling him a “saint” on her blog? Then they have one fight, and he leaves? There seemed to be something missing, like any character development whatsoever. Anyway, see it if you like Meryl Streep. And another thing, it’s not funny.

• I saw Food, Inc, and now refer to McDonalds as “Opression Burger.” But seriously, it was perhaps the most depressing movie ever. Big Food has taken over, and there is no escape right now. The problem? Food is yummy. They’ve got us right where they want us, and are using food’s inherent yummyness to oppress people all over the globe and make consumers ill before their time. All so they can make money. And stopping it would mean eating far less food. I gotta stop thinking about this. BUT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT BIG FOOD WANTS.

• Burn After Reading was an odd little Coen Brothers movie. I mean, it’s really cynical, and funny at times, but I still didn’t like it. Maybe the fate of the Brad Pitt character (the best one in the story, imo) soured me on it. It felt like Wild At Heart to me…a overly dark misstep from a great filmmaker.

• Saw The Darjeeling Limited again. There was more nude Portmann than I remember.  Anyway, it was quirky and funny, but too overly artistic and slow-moving for even me. It’s Wes Anderson’s worst movie, even with the Tarantino-esque “flashback that explains a bunch” towards the end. I still enjoyed it, because Wes Anderson could make a movie about anything and I’d enjoy it.

I’ve seen more stuff, but I don’t have any more bullet points in my gun. Maybe later. I’m off to Oppression Burger to make myself ill while exploiting several different working classes.

Your Green Bay Packers vs. Those Evil Seattle Seahawks — Dec. 27, 2009

Pre-Game

Rebecca Grant(?) has the Verizon Daily Preview or whatever — is she the fake-tannedest person ever? Ok, maybe that’s a little cruel. But it looks like she was built in a lab, with the tan, the makeup, the plasticity…Also, holy robotic delivery. She’s very poised and well-coached, though. She should be Miss America.

I like (today’s announcer) Brian Billick because he sometimes says interesting stuff. I don’t know if he prepares fun things beforehand, but he always comes up with a turn-of-phrase you don’t expect. Perhaps this is because he’s not very polished in the field of announcing. He’s a former coach, so whatever he says comes out very emphatically, as if you would be a total fool not to believe it.

1st Quarter

Aaron Rodgers — 28 TDs and 7 INTs? Those are Favre MVP-year numbers! Brett who?

The officials are wearing spandex scuba-gear today to keep warm. They look so cute in their dark blue bodysuits. If only they didn’t put the striped shirts over their outfits, they could be the most precious and smurfy officiating crew ever. I don’t think that was their aspiration.

13:55 — Aaron, when you have an empty backfield, you might want to throw the ball before you get murdered. We just had our first dropped pass of the day, courtesy of Donald Driver. An underrated problem this year has been the unsure hands of the Packer receivers. Add that to the long list of problems — penalites, punting, pass coverage, protecting the quarterback — Aaron Rodgers has to singlehandedly overcome every week. He’s 9-5 so far.

11:21 — Four plays in, and Julius Jones looks like Emmitt Smith one play, and Smith-Barney the next. He’s fallen down by himself twice now. Seattle has two first downs, and haven’t even tried to attack the porous Packer pass defense.

9:00 — “We’re starting to see a commitment to the run here.” Says Billick, master of the obvious, after the Seahawks’ sixth straight running play.

8:50 — Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck throws the worst pass I’ve seen this year, a screen pass to nobody but local Packer linebacker AJ Hawk. There were no Seahawks anywhere near it. AJ looks surprisingly beefy and immobile as he stumbles down the sideline past the Seattle 40. Perhaps AJ has been drinking. Anyway, now I see why Seattle hasn’t won much this year.

7:15 — Ryan Grant runs directly into the buttocks of an offensive lineman, farts, and falls down. At least I think I heard him fart. He made a farty face.

6:34 — A wonderfully executed screen pass (with no penalties!) gets Brandon Jackson into the end zone for a 7-0 Packer lead. That’s more like it. Jackson’s not very good, but Grant can’t catch and Ahman Green is old. Therefore, he’s the screen pass guy. Yeah, the screen pass has been lacking a bit this year.

Billick says, “They don’t even bother getting out the snowblower for 24 inches of snow. That’s a dusting up here.” Even taking hyperbole into account that’s still a really stupid thing to say.

I don’t know if those Bud Light “Tailgate Approved” ads are real, but I totally want that beer boombox. The mustard caulking gun, not so much.

5:37 — Nick Barnett gets a sack even though lilliputian Seattle halfback “Tiny” Forcett basically jumps on his back and tries to tackle him. No holding is called, and the announcers don’t mention it. Would have been declined anyway, I bet. Still, I want a holding call.

That accursed Fox robot is playing the guitar again. I don’t have to watch, I don’t want to watch, but yet I watch.

5:00 — Delay of game? Really? McCarthy, what are you teaching them in practice?

3:54 — Aaron Rodgers tries to pass, but the ball slips out of his hand. This kind of thing happened to Brett Favre all the time. He then jacks a pass over the head of an open receiver, which was also a Favre thing. Our little boy is growing up. By this time next year he’ll be marrying his high-school sweetheart and plotting to destroy Packer GM Ted Thompson.

2:58 — On third-and-twelve, the Seahawks throw a pass into the flat to a running back. One wonders if they’re throwing this game for a better draft pick. I mean, it’s not a draw play, but it might as well be. Didn’t they watch Pittsburgh throw for 503 yards last week against this defense? If not, what were they doing in practice all week? Calisthenics? That P-90-X thing?

2:33 — Rodgers could run for a first down, but chucks it at an unsuspecting fullback instead. The next play, Ryan Grant farts and falls down again. On third down, Seattle encroaches, thereby canceling out the previous two plays. This is also why they haven’t won much. Then Rodgers throws a fade to Jennings for 40 yards, and Seattle freaks out. Seriously — their players call time-out and start yelling at the coaches during the next play. Oh, that we could play the Seahawks every week.

:41 — Jennings makes a great move but gets tackled at the two-yard-line. This costs my fantasy team at least 10 points when Ryan Grant scores via run a play later. Boooo! What? Like Seattle ever had a chance. Wait…this is the Packers. The opponent always has a chance. Note to self: Scratch this entire paragraph.

:18 — The Packers started covering kicks better when they gave up and decided to just squib every kick. Personally, I don’t know why more teams don’t do this. You probably give up a slightly worse average field position, but you get a better chance of turnovers and reduce long returns to almost nil. It’s a solid strategy, especially when your coverage is as bad as Green Bay’s.

2nd Quarter

They keep saying that a Packer win and a NY football Giant loss means the Packers clinch a playoff spot, but I don’t understand why it wouldn’t just take a Packer win. It’s them, the Cowgirls, and the Giants fighting for two spots. If all three end up tied, do the tiebreakers really line up for those other two jokers?

13:16 — Last week’s defense just walked into the building and started giving up yards in big chunks. Luckily, this is Seattle, and a penalty leads to a second-and-twelve before they score a touchdown. Let’s see if they can prevent one here, against all odds.

12:03 — On third down, Atari Teenage Bigby (google “Atari Teenage” in quotes to see why I call him that) intercepts another bad pass in the end zone. Hasselbeck is playing for his bookie, I just know it. Did you know that he’s the brother-in-law of The View‘s token Republican, the lovely Elisabeth Hasselbeck? I love her. Why doesn’t he just borrow money from her to cover his gambling debts?

11:18 — Greg Jennings is interfered with, but no foul is called and no replay is made. Billick says, “I know these fans want a call, but defensive back so-and-so kept his eye on the ball.” Yeah, Brian, he wasn’t looking at Jennings — that’s why he interfered with him. It’s called textbook bad defense. I thought you were an NFL coach once. Perhaps the league has put out a directive that no announcers are supposed to question calls anymore? Either that, or Fox just sucks.

9:47 — Seattle does a no-huddle thing, which totally befuddles the Packer players and causes a too-many-men-on-the-field penalty and a big gain. Then they throw another first-down pass. Dear lord, it’s happening again. Oh, wait, Mike McCarthy is challenging the in-bounds-ness of that last pass. Ooo, this should be good.

The accursed Fox robot is spinning the football and riding the horsey. He does this every week. Kill me now.

9:15 — The challenge fails. It would be better if McCarthy didn’t have that challenge beanbag. Maybe someone should “lose” it for him before the game. Thankfully, Seattle commits another hold and makes it a first-and-20. They get 18 yards back on two plays, then try a run that fails. A Seattle field goal makes it 14-3. Why didn’t they try two passes into the end zone? Like the Packers can stop two passes in a row.

Carolina is beating the crap out of the NY football Giants, so if the Packers can hold on here they will make the playoffs. Woo-hoo!

6:58 — Jennings alligator-arms a potential big play into double coverage, but in the process a Seattle defensive back hurts his lower back. Trade-offs, I guess. Cut to injury commercial.

Fox’s new show Our Little Genius features a really smart kid who competes against adults for cash and prizes. He’s sassy and cocky, and being exploited.

6:08 — Rodgers runs for an important first down, then Ryan Grant bursts through the line (presumably without farting) and scores a 56-yard touchdown to make it 21-3. I would say Seattle sucks, but it looks like it was just a well-designed and well-executed play. I love the Lambeau leap. It’s so cute. Beats that stupid Viking horn by a mile.

5:30 — I’m convinced the NFL took away the two-tiered facemask penalty because the referees couldn’t tell the difference between a five-yard incidental contact and a fifteen-yard personal foul. The Pack just got hit with a lame fifteen yard penalty. Thankfully, they’re playing Seattle.

4:37 — A fight breaks out between Packer linebacker Nick Barnett and Hasselbeck. Matt’s mouth has gotten him in trouble before. Remember, “We’ll receive, and we’re going to win!” Ha, ha Matt. Good times.

3:09 — Speaking of good times, Ahman Green breaks a tackle and converts a third-and-one. His younger self was automatic at those. He also fumbled an average of twice a game, but hey, he’s the Packers’ all-time-leading rusher, so we forgive him and his Batman tattoo.

1:19 – Jennings makes another big play. At least he’s getting a lot of yards. Did you know I’m in my fantasy football league’s championship game this week? Well, this week and next — they combine the scores for both weeks. Anyway, we need some points, so hopefully we get a TD pass here. And by “we,” I mean “Team Pape.”

:08 — The Packers are at the 1 yard line. It is fourth-and-goal. If this were a close game, this play would be important. Anyway, Spencer Havner commits interference by pushing down a defender, then catches a touchdown that is taken away because the referee saw what he did. Packer kicker Mason Crosby makes a field goal, and the crowd erupts in encouraging semi-mocking applause. He’s been having problems lately, but everyone’s pulling for him. This is probably a good practice game for Mr. Crosby.

3rd Quarter

14:08 — Hasselbeck throws another INT on third-and-eleven. It’s getting ugly out there. I wonder if he misses Holmgren? Probably. Jered Bush made the pick, for once. George W. must be proud.

10:13 — Brandon Jackson makes two straight good plays and the Packers score a touchdown. I might have to rethink my meh attitude towards that guy. Are the Packer running backs actually good? Grant has the tendency to fart and fall down; B. Jackson has never ever looked good at anything besides picking up blitzes; Ahman Green is 5 years past his prime. But maybe…they just don’t suck. We’ll see.

9:19 — Atari 2600 Bigby (again, Google) gets another interception. This isn’t fun anymore. I think I’m going to stop talking about football unless it’s absolutely necessary. Did you know Advil reduces fever? I just saw a commercial. Yeah, I knew that, too. Everybody did.

I’m making quesadillas. Mmmmmmmmm. So if I seem a little distracted…Oh, would you look at that. The Fox NFL death robot was frozen, but the creepy Burger King King gave him a jumpstart with his car, and now the robot is alive again. That scenario could have ended so much better.

5:27 — Brandon “I’m proving Mike wrong” Jackson takes his third Lambeau leap, and it’s now 38-3. I believe we call this “Matt Flynn Time.” Too bad, because I could use another Aaron Rodgers TD. But I’m taking him out of the game, if I’m McCarthy.

I’m watching a commercial where a girl is waiting for a guy at a restaurant. When he gets there, she yells at him, pushes his hug away, and storms out. She was just waiting for him so she could yell at him. He texts her as she’s walking away, and her heart improbably softens. They embrace. I have no idea what it was advertising. Visa, I think. I’m totally going to use my VISA instead of my Mastercard now because of those two psychotic lovebirds.

Brandon Jackson scored his last touchdown because he successfully hid behind Aaron Rodgers at the line of scrimmage. Either Seattle didn’t see him, or they did but couldn’t figure out that he was obviously going to get the ball.

Matt Flynn, the BCS-championship-winning former LSU quarterback, is now in at quarterback for the Packers. Geaux Matt. I used the term “BCS championship” because big-time college football is the only sport in the world that refuses to crown an actual champion. They call the BCS championship the “National Championship,” but the two participants are chosen by computer from several worthy contenders. People don’t seem to realize that you either have a real championship or you don’t. When several teams can go undefeated for an entire season and fail to even qualify for your championship, you don’t have one. Period. Call it what you want, it’s just another game.

I’m not usually prone to self-hype, but my plan for the BCS is perfect. The plan was good in past years, but I think I’ve finally made the final refinements I’ll ever have to make.

(in the Packer game, struggling Packer kicker Mason Crosby just made a 52-yard field goal. This is perhaps the most significant thing that happened in the entire game. Ok, back to this college stuff…)

Worse plans than mine have been hatched by “national sportswriters.” They tend to have 16- or even 20-team playoffs, which is way too many teams. Do you want the 16th-ranked team (in this year’s case, West Virginia) involved in a potential college football championship? Of course not. The few who actually defend the BCS (more than you’d think considering the whole not-an-actual-championship thing, but still rare) would rightly point out that it makes certain games more “meaningful.” (I put it in quotes because in the absence of a real national championship, no games technically have any meaning)¹. This is admittedly true, and a 16-team playoff would rob those games of much of that “meaning.” However, an 8-team playoff would retain almost all of that mythical “meaning” while still providing a fair and exciting system for everyone. After much thought, here’s how it would work:

You have six (6) BCS conferences, and these six conferences would retain that BCS status in my system. This is to compensate for a harder game-in game-out weekly schedule. Anyway, these six BCS conferences would have four (4) automatic bids reserved for the four highest-ranked conference champions. So, the four highest-ranked champions of the six BCS conferences would be automatically in the playoff. The other four “at-large” spots would be filled by the next four teams in the rankings. The eight (8) playoff teams would then be seeded in brackets like the NCAA basketball tournament regionals, where 1 plays 8 and 4 plays 5 and so on. The rounds would not be re-seeded, because that’s stupid. You’d have a bracket, a playoff, and a championship. Who wouldn’t love that?

Take the example of this year. You have a whopping five (5) undefeated teams, three of which are playing in meaningless BCS non-championship bowl games. In my system, the four automatic bids would go to (in order) Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, and Oregon. The four at-large bids would go to TCU, Florida, Boise St., and Ohio St. On one side of the bracket, 1. Alabama would play 8. Ohio St. and 4. TCU would tangle with 5. Florida. Again I ask, HOW AWESOME WOULD THIS BE? The other side would feature a matchup of 2. Texas vs. 7. Oregon and 3. Cincinnati vs. 6. Boise St. It would be good games leading to better games leading to a real NCAA championship.

My suggestion would be to hold the first round of games in December, on the Saturday that falls 1-2 weeks before New Years Day. Then, have the semifinals in the late afternoon and evening on New Years Day, capping off the holiday’s bowl games. Again, HOW AWESOME? Jan. 8 would be the solid yearly date of the National Championship, and would become a national holiday in and of itself.

Other effects: Teams would schedule less bunnies at the beginning of the year, having to prepare themselves for meaningful conference seasons. They’d also want better teams on the schedule to bump up their potential BCS ratings. Conference games would mean everything, with more teams in the running later in the season. This would create more meaningful games, not less. Undefeated teams from non-BCS conferences would almost certainly get a birth in the playoff bracket, which gives them something to play for. It’s just a better system all around, not to mention the billions of dollars it would make for somebody. Clearly, it needs to happen, and the BCS needs to hire me to plan it.

The Conclusion of the Matter

By the way, the Packers won 48-10, clinching a playoff berth. I’d say the Pack is Back, but if you were paying attention you already knew that.

Donald Driver, Not a Traitor

I haven’t felt this good in a loooooong time.  The people I’m living with (and I certainly don’t mean to embarrass them should they ever read this) are being fantastic to me.  They bake all the time.  All.  The.  Time.  They’re also feeding me other kinds of good food, which food has nearly totally cleaned up the on-and-off intestinal problems I was having.  Sorry if that’s TMI.  Anyway, yesterday we had these awesome buffalo wings during the Packer game, and I told them that it was the greatest day of my life.  I was only 99% kidding.  They are great, their kids are almost always fun, and the whole situation has worked out far better than I could have ever dreamed.

But now it’s time to get a job.  It was probably time a couple of weeks ago, but apparently God had other ideas.  I really have tried, though, and I think this week is the week it happens.  It just has that feeling about it.  As sure as the geese that just landed in this river in Grafton are cute, I will acquire a job.

We’ve been going through old seasons of the American version of The Office.  The last episode we watched was the final one of Season 3, where Jim and Pam finally finish their awkward avoidance dance.  It was heartwarming.  Not as heartwarming as Dawn coming back to Tim with Yaz playing in the background at a Christmas party*, but still heartwarming.  Watching all the episodes in a row like that showed exactly how annoying the American version was with the whole Jim-Pam thing.  Did the length of the pain make the coming-together moment more meaningful?  Maybe.  But it was still annoying, for example, when Pam got back together with Roy for an episode.  It seemed like a penalty kill to me**.

I’m looking forward to Season 4 now, because I have fond memories of Dunder Mifflin Infinity and the extremely uncomfortable Dinner Party episode at Michael and Jan’s home.

Office HSO of the day:  Angela is the worst character on the show.  As weird as Creed is, even he is more realistic.  It seems like they started out wanting her to be a Christian prude, and ended up at oddly hypocritical psychopath who really likes cats.  It’s not that she’s not a funny character (see the time when she and Oscar fight over the “babies and saxophones” poster), it’s just that they developed her badly.

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In other news, it’s a beautiful day in Wisconsin.  This river I’m looking at is cleaner than any old river in Texas, because it’s real and doesn’t dry up every other year.  The sun is out, the trees are popping with reds and yellows, and I’m drinking “Jose.”  It’s a kind of coffee at Alterra, and it’s better than their regular coffee.  I picked “Jose” largely because he had hair, and the other choice, “Paco*****,” looked like Kojak.  So not even I am free from racism against us balds.

Oh, and like it really needs to be said:  The Pack is Back.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Pink Floyd is on and it’s time to write a book.  It’s going to be about monkeys, and it’s going to be awesome.

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* For this reference, please see the British version of The Office, which is probably still a little better, if only because it’s more concentrated.

** Because sometimes girls don’t know sports analogies***, Penalty Kill is a hockey term meaning the time when a shorthanded team just tries to run out the clock, and doesn’t try to score.  That doesn’t really explain it for the non-sportsy, but the important thing is that the team Killing the Penalty is trying to Kill Time, and not Play Hockey.  Thus, the Pam-Roy reconciliation was just there to fill up two episodes or so, as the Office was bound and determined to wait until the end of season three to finally put Jim and Pam together.  The only thing about Pam-Roy II that wasn’t a timewaste was the scene where Roy attacks Jim and Dwight pepper sprays him (which, if you think about it, could have been accomplished without any Pam-Roy dating activity).

***A la the Jan conference with the office ladies, leading to Kelly’s has her finest moment****.

**** Namely, the time when they were talking about sports analogies, and Kelly asked Jan what it means when people say that Jan and Michael got to second base, and then Kelly winks at the camera.  So now you see where I was going with all this.  Sheesh.

***** I don’t remember his real name, but I’d like to think it was Paco.  I’m too lazy to walk 20 feet and look.  Welcome to my world.

“I think it’s great we live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised. Thank you.”

So somehow this was interpreted as being against gay marriage.  And you know what?  I can see why you’d think that, since her statement wasn’t something that conformed exactly to the Gay Marriage Shibboleth Test, where you pledge absolute allegiance to a rainbow-colored flag and say something like,

“I was raised by horrible people who don’t believe in gay marriage, but I have since seen the light because TV told me so.  My parents are bastards who raised me wrong, but don’t blame them.  Blame Christians instead.  I hate Christians, even though I am one.  Civil unions are like another form of genocide.  Everyone must have equal rights all the time, or the terrorists win.  And by terrorists, I mean my parents.”

So you see, Perez Hilton’s question put her in an impossible position, especially for a Miss USA candidate.  She would have been better off playing dumb, since everyone thinks a girl like her is dumb anyway.  But by not not standing up for what she believed, she exposed herself to political forces outside her control.  The funny thing is, she made sure to explain (in her own Miss USA way) that while she doesn’t agree with gay marriage, that opinion is entirely her fault.  Furthermore, even though she disagrees with gay marriage, she thinks it’s great to live in a country that might have it.  Not only that, but she only thinks she disagrees with gay marriage.  It’s not exactly a strongly worded position.

…And she totally lost a beauty pageant because of it.  Who’s intolerant now?

ed. note — This is Epth Nation 2.6 takes no stand for or against gay marriage, nor do we believe that “If you choose not to take a stand you have actually taken a stand” B.S.

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