i m N s h o

CNBC Hires Dennis Miller to Host Show "Dennis Miller, the sardonic comedian who delivered a fake newscast on "Saturday Night Live" and told jokes in the "Monday Night Football" booth, will host a prime-time political talk show on CNBC." Those of you who didn't see this coming, please step forward now for your slap across the head. (Although, if it keeps him from running for office, it's probably a good thing.) And to think I used to like Miller. Guess that was before his knee-jerk conservatism reared its ugly head.

I'm getting a little tired of the "it's not my fault" defense… Bush Steps Away From Victory Banner 'The triumphal "Mission Accomplished" banner was the pride of the White House advance team, the image makers who set the stage for the president's close-ups. On May 1, on a golden Pacific evening aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, they made sure that the banner was perfectly captured in the camera shots of President Bush's speech declaring major combat in Iraq at an end. But on Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush publicly disavowed the banner that had come to symbolize what his critics said was a premature declaration that the United States had prevailed. "The `Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," Mr. Bush told reporters. "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff. They weren'

I'm reading The Picture of Dorian Gray right now. It's been one of those books on my "gotta read this one of these days" lists for years now. Dani's been in this book club for a year or so and the last couple of books have actually been ones I'd consider reading (unlike, say, The Nanny Diaries from a few months ago) so I tagged along for this one. (I also read the DaVinci Code and joined in that discussion… I'm perilously close to becoming a member of the group!) So there's a scene about a third of the way when Dorian's talking to the wife of one of the main characters (Lord Henry's wife, Victoria). They're discussing the Opera he's seen Lord and Lady Henry at recently (Wagner's Lohengrin) and she remarks, "I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says." She'd be right at home at the local AMC any night of the week. C

A couple of week's ago in an email debate, I self-mockingly called myself "paranoid" when discussing Dick Cheney and calling him the power behind Bush's throne. (My friends, both on the conservative side, were talking about how you haven't seen the VP much recently and wondering if he was out of favor with Dumbya. I commented that you never see him much, that he's the most invisible VP in recent memory and remarked that it's because he's really the one that's been pulling Bush's strings. They went on with the discussion, ignoring my remarks, which left me disparaging my own comments as paranoid.) The very next day, I happened to walk past a newstand and see that week's US News & World Report and, on the cover, a picture of Dick Cheney with the title "The Man Behind The Curtain". Gotta say, I did feel a bit reassured that I'm not simply being paranoid and that others share that opinion. (Hmm, I guess this qualifies as m

That he actually believes this, or that he figures we'll all agree this is a good idea: Bush's Filtered News Bush prefers his news heavily filtered. "I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor," he told Brit Hume of Fox News last month. But, "I rarely read the stories" because "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, "I get briefed by [White House Chief of Staff] Andy Card and Condi [Rice, the national security adviser] in the morning." The president concluded, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." God knows you wouldn't want any of those pesky opinions getting in the way of your decision making. Apparently, I've been mispronouncing his nickname all this time. It's not Dubya. It's Dumbya. (God, this is the "leader of the fr

I went to see Out of Time yesterday. Been seeing some pretty decent reviews and, while his movies may not always be great, Denzel is almost always worth watching ( Training Day , for instance, was a deeply flawed movie, but his performance in it was impeccable—no surprise he won an Oscar for it). Since I had time to kill and it’s one of the films NOT on Dani’s “must see” list, I figured I’d check it out. Now, keeping in mind that one of the reviews I read described it as “…an entertainingly deft sleight-of-hand thriller…” I have to say that I expected something… more. Not that it’s necessarily a bad movie (god knows, after this past summer, I’ve seen many worse!). It’s just that it was so damn obvious. Maybe, as I smirkingly remarked above, I’m simply too smart for movies lately. Maybe, as I’ve been griping for months now, the trailer’s to blame and it simply gave away too much of the story. Or maybe it’s just that they did such a great job of channeling Body Heat in the openin

Interesting review in this week’s Entertainment Weekly on The Matrix Reloaded. Their main point is that what’s wrong with Reloaded isn’t ham-handed dialogue (compared unfavorably to the latest of Lucas’ writing—quite the accomplishment) nor pedantic overacting, nor even overblown action scenes that never seem to end. No, the problem they had with Reloaded is Neo and the fact that he is, for all intents and purposes a superhero… “Fighting a hundred Agent Smiths is a neat trick, but when Neo can just take off when things start to get iffy, the scene carries no narrative weight.” What’s interesting about this for me is that I came across almost that exact same argument, nearly word for word, on one of the Matrix sites I’ve visited recently. (It’s probably a blog, but I don’t remember which one.) I guess it’s safe to say that if you look through all the stuff on the Internet about The Matrix, you’ll be able to find virtually every theory, criticism and review imaginable (kind of lik

Looks like I fell for that same media sensationalism I was bad-mouthing earlier this month. Turns out the report from David Kay, Chief US Weapons Inspector in Iraq, while it might have floated the idea that Saddam was bluffing about weapons, was also pretty highly critical of the Administration's assumptions and "intelligence" which led to our invasion of Iraq. Not nearly the whitewash it sounded like in the articles I quoted from the Washington Post & MSNBC. Not that this will stop Rumsfeld, et al, from trying to put their own spin on the report (they were quick to remind everyone that this was an interim report, of course). Nor does it change in any way my opinion about the Bush Administration. But I figured I should acknowledge that I was probably wrong about Kay's report.

That the people calling Tuesday's Recall election "an excercise in democracy" are almost all people that supported the recall? I wonder if they'd have felt the same way if the recall lost? Just wondering.

I'm the kind of person who tends to "rehearse" conversations in my head. Sometimes its about upcoming discussions I'm about to have and I want to make sure I've got all my ideas in line. Sometimes it's conversations that I've had that are nagging me and I end up either rehashing the conversation to see where it went wrong or continuing the conversation to see if I could make my point better. It probably stems from my theatre training and my writer's impulses… I want to rehearse things till I get them right, or at least make them better. So this morning I'm listening to the radio, doing the typical getting ready for work morning bs, and I've got this conversation running through my head and I'm tweaking the discussion here and there, making fabulous points that I never manage to make in real life (because, really, when you're the only one in the discussion, you get all the good lines). And, while making a point to myself, I used the

I think this is what’s annoyed me about the Schwarzenegger “campaign” from the onset… the absolute lack of any definitive content, plans, agendas (beyond getting elected, of course) or anything resembling a platform. I’m sorry, “I’m for education in California” and “I’m going to fix things in Sacramento” don’t count as a platform. Arnold’s entire campaign has been run like one big movie promotion… including visits to Larry King and bus tours with exploding special effects ( Steve Lopez: Points West from the LA Times). It’s all smoke and mirrors and, just like in Wizard of Oz, we’re asked to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Arnold may turn out to be a great governor. Stranger things have surely happened. He may actually HAVE a plan for fixing this state. Not that he’s ever communicated one detail about it. What we do know is that he’s “put together a team” to tackle this problem. And he may have put together a truly brilliant team of consultants who can turn

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I used to really enjoy movie trailers. That is, until failed film students (or overachieving marketing grads) took over making them and are apparently under the misapprehension that it’s their job to tell you the whole damn story in their freaking trailer! I bitched about this a while back with The Italian Job , when it was clear that every major plot twist was shown in the trailer. And it’s pathetically obvious with nearly every comedy that comes out these days… there are more laughs packed into one trailer than there are most movies, simply because the fools making the trailers seem determined to show you every punch line to every joke in the movie. The latest, most egregious examples, though, aren’t in the comedy realm. No, it’s the trailers for Secondhand Lions and Veronica Guerin . The Secondhand Lions trailer is, arguably, the worst (although, with that movie, watching the trailer might be a better option than seeing the film). But

Mice to test Bush’s food in Thailand Gotta love these high-tech solutions to ancient problems. Or is that the other way around?

A prime example of why you don't let techies create new words… glurge (GLURJ) n. A sentimental or uplifting story, particularly one delivered via e-mail, that uses inaccurate or fabricated facts; a story that is mawkish or maudlin; the genre consisting of such stories. (from The Word Spy mailing list) Granted that a word to describe this kind of junk mail SHOULD exist… I have to ask… "glurge"? Sounds like something your 5 year old would come up with. (Hmmm, how about " treacle "? Kinda captures the whole concept and it doesn't sound like I'm coughing up a hairball to say it! Naw, won't work. Too… "old world".)

First off, let me say that I actually do believe in respecting copyright laws. I’m a writer, for Christ’s sake, of course I believe in them. Having said that, I have to say that every time a spokesperson for the RIAA (or that asshole lawyer for Metallica) opens their mouths, I want to run out and start downloading MP3s just to spite them. Here’s the problem, as I see it. The RIAA sees sharing copyrighted music files as an illegal activity (hmmm, that’s a real stretch). And, because they had so much trouble with Napster in the bad ole days, their response to the whole idea of downloadable music is… uh uh, no way… you’re breakin’ the law there, sonny! (The Metallica lawyer put it succinctly “you can’t compete with free”.) Except, here’s the problem with that logic. I love music. I listen to a lot of different things and I’m always looking for new stuff. You’d think I’d be a big MP3 guy, but I never really got into it. The main reason for me had nothing to do with the copyright pro

Musicals used to be huge at the movies—one of the staples of the business. But over the years, this has become less and less true, to the point today where they’re an all but dead genre. But, between Moulin Rouge & Chicago, the trend seems to be reversing. I’ve had a theory for years about why musicals don’t work in movies any more and was pretty convinced that Rouge and Chicago validated that theory. What it boiled down to was that musicals did well in the early days of film because they were big, fantastic spectacles. Movies weren’t about realism… the sets were obvious, the backdrops transparent, the effects laughable. Musicals could thrive in this climate because they too were not realistic. People don’t burst into song and dance spontaneously and the crowds on the street aren’t going to be high kicking in time to your rhythms. But, as movies and their budgets became bigger, as the sets became more elaborate and shooting on location became the norm rather than the except

“With no chemical or biological weapons yet found in Iraq, the U.S. official in charge of the search for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction is pursuing the possibility that the Iraqi leader was bluffing, pretending he had distributed them to his most loyal commanders to deter the United States from invading.” ( Iraqi WMD may have been bluff on MSNBC.com or the original article Hussein's Weapons May Have Been Bluff on WashingtonPost.com) Are they HONESTLY trying to spin this idea? Honestly? I mean, all those months of Iraq denying it had any weapons of mass distraction were a smoke screen? They were telling us the truth, knowing we’d assume they were lying and hope that would scare us off? I assume then, that all this “misdirection” led us to “misinterpret” all our intelligence reports and believe that he WAS lying and they DID have WMD, right? MY GOD, are they freaking channeling PT Barnum in the White House? Are we all THAT STUPID? Please, tell me someone