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Archives for January, 2007

January 30, 2007

Why all my friends hate me

Daniel Radosh

everywomanpic.gifA friend of mine who writes for a major women's magazine cc'd me on an e-mail seeking "witty comments" from her "guy friends" to include in an item about a survey finding that 49% of women want sex at least once per day. "What do you think?" she asked. "Duh? Shocking? Where have these women been all your life? Yes, for the first two months, then not so much?"

My reply: "Yeah, but never in the ass. It's like, Thanks for nothing, bitch."

I hope they run it.

January 30, 2007

Travel tips

Daniel Radosh

• Remember my crusading journalist pal? I'd be remiss if I neglected to mention that he also has a deliciously low-brow blog. Seriously, it doesn't get more low brow, or delicious, than this.

• Speaking of blogs, did you know that Playboy has one? You know — Playboy. The magazine. Yes, it's still publishing. (Confidential to Stephen R: how's that?) Truth is, it's actually pretty swell. Just yesterday I learned from it that the Las Vegas Police are embracing the whole Sin City thing a little too eagerly, and that this is likely to be the best movie ever.

teethposter.jpg

January 30, 2007

Protestitutes

Daniel Radosh

3039595_2.jpg Dr. Mark E. Duckenfield, Lecturer in the Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics and bane of the New York Times letters page, alerts me to the new trend in protest babes.

They refuse to rally for neo-Nazis, but as long as the price is right a new type of German mercenary will take to the streets and protest for you. Young, good-looking, and available for around 150 euros (£100), more than 300 would-be protesters are marketing themselves on a German rental website.

Pick one up today at Erento.com. And please, someone launch an American version. It's the only way UFPJ is ever gonna stop the war.

Earlier protest babe pics: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. (I really should've been using tags from the start.)

January 29, 2007

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Daniel Radosh

I'm not talking about last night's snowfall, lovely though it was. I'm talking about the gift that will apparently keep on giving: reviews for Peter Landesman's Trade. Here's my auto-summary of Variety.

Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller... fear-mongering... Troubling signs are as immediate as the opening credits... ghoulish... nasty... sordid sensationalism... gaping holes in logic... undercuts its own worst tendencies for stoking fear and paranoia by letting auds off the hook with at least four happy endings... sleaze.

Well at least it's faithful to the source material.

January 29, 2007

Funniest movie you'll see this year

Daniel Radosh

In last week's Times' coverage of Sundance, Virginia Heffernan Manohla Dargis made a snide comment about an allegedly overhyped comedy that, from her description, may have been The Ten, an ensemble sketch film that sold on Friday for $4.5 mil.

If that was the film she was talking about, Heffernan Dargis has her head up her ass. I saw a rough cut a few months ago (a friend of mine is the editor) and laughed as hard as I later would at Borat. ThinkFilm's prexy calls it a ""a very smart brand of seemingly dumb comedy". That's pretty accurate, though I'd have said that it's smart comedy about dumb comedy — a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker movie for the irony generation. Watch for it in August.

January 29, 2007

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #85

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's winner.

contest.jpg

Winner
"My wife! My best friend! My laptop! My copy of Entertainment Weekly! My alarm clock! My lamp! My bed table! I'm pretty sure the glasses are yours." —Francis

Finalists
"I'm sorry. Double penetration sounded really hot in theory but in practice, it turned out to be--I don't know--a little gay." —nell

"I'm a burglar alarm salesman." —mypalmike

Continue reading "The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #85" »

January 28, 2007

And I would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids and your Internets

Daniel Radosh

So a friend of mine, Frank Koughan, wrote an article for Mother Jones last summer about how the FAA's abdication of its safety inspection role is putting passengers at risk..

This week he writes that his story has gotten results — just not the ones he expected. The FAA is trying to fire his source. Since talking with the press is not itself a violation of any rules, the FAA is instead claiming that the source took Frank to a repair facility under the pretense of conducting official business and identified him not as a reporter but as “an individual who was helping the FAA gather data on surveillance methodology.”

Unfortunately for the FAA, Frank is now telling the true story, complete with an uploaded audio recording of his source introducing him to the repair facility's director by saying, "Roger, this is Frank. He’s a reporter. He’s following me around doing an article on what aviation inspectors do." Of course, he told all this to the FAA investigators first, but they chose not to care. Unbelievably, they are sticking to their story in spite of the considerable evidence proving that it is false.

Can Frank save his source's job by going public? Only with the power of the blogosphere behind him!

So, probably not. But it's worth a shot.

January 27, 2007

The dubious results are in

Daniel Radosh

.teaiki_cover_lg.jpg ..and the winner of the Dubiouser Achievements 2007 contest is Jesse Lansner who correctly identified four of my ten jokes in this month's Esquire.

I'm not sure what it says about me (by which I mean, I know exactly what it says about me) that virtually every contestant thought I had written the Dora the Explorer titty fucking joke. I did not. And while we're on the subject, not even graphic sex could improve that idiotic show. I've developed a pretty high tolerance for pre-school culture over the last year — to the point where I can appreciate the musical talents of The Backyardigans — but every time I am forced to see an episode of Dora, I can not fathom how such a brain-dead, unimaginitive crap fest has become the most popular programs of its type.

Also, most people gave me credit for, "And helps her remember which one is hers," which I did not write, though I sorely wish I had. My actual 10 DAs after the jump.

Continue reading "The dubious results are in" »

January 26, 2007

I should probably just go ahead and give the book to Old Hag

Daniel Radosh

The end of the contest to win a copy of Kevin Shay's The End As I Know It is almost here and the field is still wide open. The current score leader has only 4 out of 10.

Of course, if you find it easier to just buy a copy of the book, that's certainly OK with me. Promotion is the whole point of the contest, after all. And of course it's even easier to bookmark Kevin's site, particularly the on this day pre-Y2K page, which reprints real posts from 1998-2000 bulletin boards. Here's a typical one.

Can any sound thinking person ignore this issue? What good are itsy bitsy “we’re compliant” stories in the face of an oil supply that is about to belly up? Are we to think the power companies can generally feed the grid what it demands if the oil supply is interrupted or reduced? Are we to think that itsy bitsy, teeny weeny Wall Street computers, or Federal Reserve bank computers can operate more than a few days or weeks without central power? Who the hell are we kidding, anyway?

By the way, I'm asking myself the same question about this contest.

January 26, 2007

Rough Trade

Daniel Radosh

alicja_bachleda_curus1.jpgTime now to dust off the "where are they now" file for a look at recent developments in the career of Peter Landesman, award-winning, basement apartment-leaving journalist.

When we last left off, production was underway on the movie version of The Girls Next Door. Two things have changed since then: Milla Jovovich has dropped out and the title has been changed to Trade. Apparently, someone in marketing had the perfect answer — alliteration! — to the question, "How can we fool audiences into thinking this movie will be just like Traffic." Also, there's a nascent web site and a catchy tag line: "Every year, more than 1,000,000 people are trafficked [!] across international borders... against their will." I guess if your story is "not about numbers" (in which case, the tag line, like the cover line before it, is the best place to put them), then it doesn't matter if you just make those numbers up. The film's figure is inflated by 200,000 to 400,000 over the already inflated State Department numbers. I wonder why they didn't go with "Every year, perhaps as many as 15,000 people are trafficked into the United States, mostly to work in farms or sweatshops, but at least some, maybe even half, in brothels"? What, doesn't grab you?

Anyway, the film debuted at Sundance this week, and The Hollywood Reporter has the first review. Here's an excerpt.

A lackluster lump... generic... humdrum... lumbers... leaden... drab... uninspired... slow-footed... "important" [scare quotes theirs]... further slowed... tentative... lackluster... dreary and listless... sloppy cutesiness... [unfavorable comparison to] Walker Texas Ranger.

January 24, 2007

Any friend of Friends of God is a friend of mine

Daniel Radosh

Periodically over the last year I'd contact some Christian pop culture ministry to line up a visit for research, only to have them say, "Oh, we just had a gal from HBO down here." I pretty quickly found out that the gal was Alexandra Pelosi. I don't know how many of the same places we ended up visiting — Pelosi's project was not specifically focused on pop culture, the way my book is — but I'll find out tomorrow when Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi debuts.

Pelosi's insistance on shooting everything with a dinky handheld camera is a mixed blessing, as her diverting-but-not-engrossing breakthrough doc, Journeys with George, showed. It's unobtrusive, which gets her subjects to let down their guard, but the cinematic quality suffers, to say the least. Still, she's got an interesting topic here (I hope), so this should be worth a look. I used to get worried whenever something touching on my own subject matter would hit the market before mine, but my editor kept telling me that we should hope they all do well, to prove there's a audience. So go ahead and check out Friends of God tonight, and in a year or so you can see who captured the material better.

January 22, 2007

The guitar's not the only one

Daniel Radosh

"The Beatles' original handwritten signed score for 'Whilst My Guitar Gently Weeps', the last piece of Beatles memorabilia ever created, sold for $690,00 at the Barrett Jackson Auction in Scottsdale, Arizona." —Reuters photo caption

January 22, 2007

Losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don't even try

Daniel Radosh

The big contest to win a copy of The End As I Know It is still wide open. So far, no one has gotten more than 3 out of 10 answers correct. You've got a pretty good shot even if you choose by having a chimp throw darts at the screen.

Warning: Throwing darts at monitor may invalidate warranty. Also, if you have a chimp, you probably don't need a book. Chimps are much more fun than books.

January 22, 2007

Speaking of cryopreservation

Daniel Radosh

Today in The New Yorker I have a Talk piece on sandboxes in city playgrounds. You may well ask why I'm writing about sandboxes in the middle of freaking winter. I'm not. This article was written back in the summer. Of 2005. The magazine purchased it at the time (and actually cut a check, which seems only reasonable but is in fact highly unusual in this business), but it kept getting pushed back until it was no longer seasonal. I half hoped it could be resurrected last summer, but by then it was no longer fresh — though as far as I could tell people were still using sandboxes.

And then, last week, my editor called me up to ask if I'd seen the zone-flooding New York Times' coverage of the new David Rockwell playground, and if there was some way to fashion a new lede for my piece. In 14 years of freelancing, I think this is the first time this has happened to me. I hope you enjoy the deliciously reconstituted result.

January 22, 2007

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #84

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's winner.

A12156.jpg

Winner
"And I said 'Rectum, damn near... uh oh.'"—mobuck

Finalists
"Unless you can tell me how the ability to turn the lower half of your body into a door and the power to pour cascades of granola from my empty hands would be more effective against crime than, let's say, a trained cop with a gun, I still say we're doing more good for society by giving women greater confidence and self-esteem. Now get your scrubs on. Those 34-D's aren't going to implant themselves." —Walt

"A tip? Here's a tip: grow some fucking legs"—Dick Trimble

Continue reading "The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #84" »

January 19, 2007

That shirt, however, is hilarious

Daniel Radosh

This is not gonna help Valleywag's credibility. The Silicon Valley blog has named me one of The 12 Funniest People On The Internet. It's like being named the tallest person in a midget colony! (Do they still have midget colonies?)

It's also demonstrably untrue. Since most of what I do here isn't even intended to be funny (it's hard to take credit for the anti-caption contest, since you do all the actual comedy), I thought I'd at least welcome Valleywaggers with links to some of my all-time funniest posts — and then I couldn't think of any. That's how totally wrong Valleywag is (even if some of their other picks are pretty spot on; and I do want to get credit for being the first person to introduce you to Brad Neely).

So, strictly for the sake of preserving the last shred of Nick Denton's dignity, please let me know in the comments if you've ever seen anything on this site that has really made you laugh, and I will dig it out of the archives and link it up.

January 17, 2007

Explainer explain thyself

Daniel Radosh

Slate's Explainer this week answers the question, How long can you keep an embryo frozen? I have no problem with the article itself, but there's something not right about the teaser photo used in the table of contents and elsewhere on the site. Below are two images. The first is the one Slate uses. The second is a picture of an embryo at the stage when embryos are commonly frozen. See if you can spot the differences.

070115_EXP_Embryo.jpg ... 300px-Embryo,_8_cells.jpg

Further bad news for future Google image searchers: The image tag Slate uses is "embryo.jpg." It is, of course, a fetus. You could freeze one, but it wouldn't be much use to you once it thawed.

January 17, 2007

A dubious Radosh.net contest!

Daniel Radosh

teaiki_cover_lg.jpg With a not-at-all dubious prize!

Here's your chance to win a copy of The End As I Know It, the debut novel from radosh.net tech guru Kevin Shay. It's the book hailed as "sublimely multilayered" (LA Times), with a "sharp wit" (San Francisco Chronicle) and a "light and witty touch" (USA Today). Store it wherever you store other things that are also both sharp and light (switchblade feathers? balloonsaws?).

I want this excellent prize to go to someone who really knows, and perhaps even loves, this blog, so I've devised a challenge that tests your knowledge of my own "sharp yet light wit" (source needed). Esquire magazine has just posted its annual Dubious Achievement Awards, a feature to which I am a regular contributor. Earlier, I posted my rejected submissions, but some of my jokes actually made the cut. Of the 66 Dubious Acheivements posted on the Esquire web site, I can take credit — or blame — for 10. To win the contest, tell me which ones I wrote. Please choose exactly 10. The prize goes to the person with the most correct answers. One entry per person. Entries with more or fewer than 10 guesses will be discarded. In the event of a tie, I'll see if I can get more books out of Kevin's publisher; if not, a winner will be selected at random.

Please submit your answers by e-mail, with an appropriate subject line before Friday, January 26 at 5pm EST.

Please note: I submitted multiple headlines for some news items, so the fact that an item appears on my reject list does not necessarily mean that I didn't write the accepted headline for the same item (although it is more likely).

And while we're on the subject, here's one of my entries that made the magazine, but not the web site, which is too bad since it happens to be my favorite.

WHY NOT? CBS SELLS ADVERTISEMENTS ON 'TWO AND A HALF MEN'
US Airways announced that it would sell advertisements on its air-sickness bags.

January 17, 2007

Even Dubiouser Achievements 2007

Daniel Radosh

It's become a January tradition. Every year I contribute a handful of funny jokes to Esquire's Dubious Achievement Awards — and am left with a giant pile of not-so-funny rejected ones, which I then inflict on you. (Which ones were accepted? You tell me and win a fabulous prize.)

Here are the Dubious Achievement Awards Esquire wanted nothing to do with this year.

Continue reading "Even Dubiouser Achievements 2007" »

January 16, 2007

Last impressions

Daniel Radosh

I'm getting a little fed up with everyone declaring that the coming military escalation in Iraq is the last chance for success. Does anyone imagine that when this new tactic inevitably fails, the pundits and media outlets currently using the "last chance" formulation — Mort Kondrake, Christopher Hitchens*, Front Page, etc. — will actually tell Bush that he is now out of chances and demand withdrawal? Face it, anyone who still thinks Bush has a last chance is going to give him as many more last chances as he asks for.

It's gotten so bad that what passes for straight talk is John McCain saying, "This may not be our last chance, but it's as close to our last chance as anything I can think of," and Chris Matthews declaring it Bush's "second to last chance." Tom Friedman hedges his last chance talk by giving Bush a laundry of list of conditions there isn't a chance in hell he's going to meet — and then giving him a full year to meet them.

People who see through the smoke: Melinda Henneberger, Leonard Pitts.

*Hitch uses "last chance" only in the headline, which may well have been written by someone else. Also, his piece predicts utter failure for the surge, though he still holds out hope for something that will save his war.

January 16, 2007

Golden Globes still more reliable than Huffington Post

Daniel Radosh

A few days ago, HuffPo's Robert Elisberg debunked the myth that the Golden Globes are a good predictor of the Oscars.

The Golden Globes as a "Precursor to the Oscars" is not only not close to true, it's worse than not close to true. Which is near-impossible. Keep in mind that six of the 13 Globe categories are split into drama and musical-comedy - which allows for twice as many chances to be "right." Some categories have had as many as nine nominees. People watching at home eating cheese dip probably get half the Oscar winners right by pure guessing.

So far, so... wait a second. Since the Oscars notoriously hate comedy, nobody really thinks that the Globe's musical/comedy nominations are a good precursor. It would seem more fair to just analyze the drama entries. So how does Elisberg conduct his analysis?

Pick a random year. Say, 2001. The Globe winner for Best Picture musical/comedy ("Almost Famous") wasn't even nominated for the Oscar. The two Golden Globe winners for Best Actor were Tom Hanks and George Clooney. Swell actors, but the Oscar went to Russell Crowe ("Gladiator") - and Globe-winner Clooney didn't even get an Oscar nomination.

Wait — pick a random year? What kind of test is that? And then he somehow neglects to mention that Russell Crowe did win the Globe for best actor in a drama, which would seem to undermine his "worse than not close to true" assertion.

"In fairness, that's only one year and hardly definitive," Elisberg admits — before adding, "Unfortunately, the results were as dismal the year before. In 2000, the Golden Globes gave their two Best Actor awards to Denzel Washington and Jim Carrey - but the Oscar winner was Kevin Spacey (and Carrey wasn't nominated)."

Well, yes, but the Golden Globe pick for best drama that year — American Beauty — did win the Oscar. So that's one more year at random and one more piece of missing information. Some fairness.

Certainly, other years may show better results. Or...okay, maybe not. But the bottom line is that the Golden Globes do not "predict" anything. Set that in granite and plant the gravestone, once and for all.

By this point, I was getting wary. I love a debunking of conventional wisdom as much as anyone, but why didn't Elisberg actually calculate how good the Globes are at predicting the Oscars? It's easy enough. I know, because I just did it.

Looking at the last 10 years of the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, it becomes clear that the Globes are close as a precursor of some things, not close as a precursor of others, and "worse than not close" at pretty much nothing. Looking only at the Golden Globe drama categories, here's what I found"

• Of 52 films nominated for best picture, 29, or 56%, were also nominated for Oscars. It's also worth noting that every time the Academy Awards nominated a musical or comedy for best picture during those ten years, the Golden Globes also nominated those films and usually gave them the top prize for that category.

• Of the 10 films that won best picture Globes, 6 went on to win best picture at the Oscars — and in the 2 years that the Oscar went to a musical or comedy, both of those films won the Golden Globe too, putting the Globes' predictive ability at a very respectable 80% it's worth noting that in the 2 years that the Oscar went to a musical or comedy, both of those films won the Golden Globe too.

• Of the 10 actors who won Globes for dramatic films, only 3 went on to win the Oscar.

• Of the 10 actresses who won Globes for drama, 5 went on to win the Oscar. And in the two years that the Oscar went to an actress in a comedy or musical, the winner was the same woman who had won the Globe in that category.

As for Elisberg's more defensible opinion — since it is only an opinion, not stats — that the Globes are a joke because they're selected by 86 junket whores, it should at least be noted that in both cases where there was a disagreement over best picture, the whores arguably picked the more deserving film: Brokeback Mountain over Crash and The Aviator over Million Dollar Baby.


January 15, 2007

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #83

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's winner.

A12157.jpg

Winner
"The walk-in oven seems to put off our Jewish friends." —LV

Finalists
"Actually it's the latest in home security. The burgler enters the house, thinks to himself 'giants must live here' and makes a quick exit" —/\lex

"I can't believe 'Think Big' went out of business. We were in there like every week!" —Nell

Continue reading "The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #83" »

January 12, 2007

Of course, we give Ritter bonus points for that

Daniel Radosh

How the media meritocracy rewards those who were wrong on Iraq and punishes those who were right. From Radar and Alterman. [Via Romenesko]

January 11, 2007

Countrypoo?

Daniel Radosh

taylorswift_2_copy.jpg Maybe I've been wasting my time with these pop tarts. This here is 16-year-old country singer Taylor Swift, a farmer's daughter from Wyomissing, Pa., a town I've actually been to, for reasons I'll tell you all about someday. Her sound is 100% Nashville, though.

Her first single is a classic summer love number called Tim McGraw. You can listen to it on her web site — but if you're gonna bother, you should really watch the video, because let's face it, if it were Tim McGraw singing a song called Taylor Swift, you wouldn't be half as interested. The album is a little overproduced for my taste (here's a stripped-down live version) but the girl can sing, and, at least according to the publicity material, write her own stuff. And did I mention she's a stone fox? And so very proud of her country! Yee-haw!

January 10, 2007

I just remembered

Daniel Radosh

frankiry5007679718045950.jpg After like seven years with Movable Type, I've finally fixed the "remember personal info" feature in the comments.

Well, I didn't fix it. Kevin did, with help and a spur from longtime (and apparently frustrated) commenter Dean, via this guy. Thanks, all.

January 10, 2007

The most important blog post of my career

Daniel Radosh

"Tonight's speech may be most important of [his] presidency" —The Myrtle Beach Sun-News, 1/10/07

"This could well be the most important speech of President Bush's entire second term." —Lou Dobbs, CNN, 5/15/06

"Tonight's State of the Union Address will be the fifth for President Bush. It may also turn out to be one of the most important speeches of his presidency." —Harry Smith, CNN, 1/31/06

"George W. Bush just delivered what may be the most important speech of his presidency..." —John Podhoretz, New York Post, 1/6/06

"In one of the most significant speeches of his presidency, President Bush yesterday specifically named the threat the United States faces today." —The Washington Times, 10/7/05

"Bush strode across the empty lawns to give one of the most important speeches of his presidency." —Howard Fineman, Newsweek, 9/26/05

"The Iraq policy speech President Bush will deliver on national television tonight is one of the most important speeches of his presidency." —Dallas Morning News, 6/28/05

January 10, 2007

Bible Battle

Daniel Radosh

Big time Bible publisher Thomas Nelson has just announced the principal cast for its new audio Bible, The Word of Promise, which will compete with rival Zondervan's star-studded, bestselling The Bible Experience. Here's the tale of the tape.

Jesus
TBE: Blair Underwood
WoP: Jim Caviezel
Analysis: Underwood is best known for LA Law. Caviezel is best known for The Passion of the Christ. This is not an even match. Plus: Blair is girl's name. The era of the effeminite Jesus is over. By the way, I finally buckled down and watched The Passion and while I was prepared for the gore and the Jew-bashing, the most horrifying aspect was something I hadn't seen mentioned anywhere: the ending strongly suggests that Jesus rises from the dead to get payback for everything that was done to him. No fooling. The last five minutes are a classic Gibsony revenge fantasy, complete with martial drumbeats and a (gotta be intentional) visual quote from The Terminator.
Edge: WoP

God
TBE: Samuel L. Jackson
WoP: Terence Stamp
Analysis: To be sure, General Zod is no slouch in the commanding department, even if he did gay it up for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And we loved him in The Limey. But come on. Samuel L. Jackson, motherfucker. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Not to mention, I've had it with these motherfuckin' snakes in this motherfuckin' garden.
Edge: TBE

Continue reading "Bible Battle" »

January 9, 2007

Odd film alert [RSS users beware of Children of Men SPOILER]

Daniel Radosh

Very Short List puts Tears of the Black Tiger at the intersection of Tarantino, Looney Tunes and LSD. From the trailer I'd say they missed the most obvious reference: Powell and Pressburger (in addition to the German dubbing, YouTube does not do justice to the colors; fortunately Criterion DVDs are available). Which definitely means it's something to keep an eye on.

Meanwhile, I finally saw Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth, and both have shot right to the top of my rather pathetic best of the year list. This is a terrible cliché, but they're the kind of movies that remind you why you love movies. You feel like you're living in them for hours after the movie is over. If it's not a complete oxymoron, Children of Men felt like a neo-realist Brazil. And those single-shot action sequences! Altman and Welles never tried to blow stuff up while they were doing it. Pan's Labyrinth, meanwhile, was an anti-fascist Alice in Wonderland, and a huge leap forward from the interesting but one-note Devil's Backbone.

Problem that keeps Children of Men from being perfect after the jump. MAJOR SPOILER OF A MOVIE YOU DON'T WANT SPOILED. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Continue reading "Odd film alert [RSS users beware of Children of Men SPOILER]" »

January 8, 2007

I hope she's not expecting a raise

Daniel Radosh

My colleague Eric noticed something incongruous in this attack on Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison by Beverly Schlegel in the Roanoke Times.

The symbolism of using the Quran at a ceremony where Ellison will swear to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States should raise questions about the obvious conflict of interest that Ellison must have in fulfilling such an oath...This political ideology of radical Islam is a clear and present danger in this country and throughout the civilized world... This is the line we are drawing. We need to know who is standing on our side of the line.

So who is this fired-up pundit?

"Schlegel, of Montvale, works in the hospitality industry."

January 8, 2007

Jailbait taken

Daniel Radosh

REvolution pic.0.jpg At last, a kidporn raid I can get behind. Kevin Alfred Strom, founder of the National Vanguard white supremacist group, was arrested for possession of child pornography. The racist bulletin boards are overheating with talk about a Zionist conspiracy (or perhaps merely an ugly divorce from his white trash hot wife) and one of KAS's leading defenders is his friend (and ours) April Gaede, the brains behind (and spawner of) white power porn kiddies Prussian Blue (dba Dresden Angels). Anyone want to take bets on who's posing in those illicit jpegs?

Lest you think I spend my time monitoring racist discussion groups, I discovered this thread because one user linked to a post on radosh.net as evidence of "an Israeli connection" to the child pornography industry. One hint: It starts with Huck and ends with apoo.

January 8, 2007

If Joel Stein married Michelle Malkin

Daniel Radosh

Their son would be — yes, horribly ashamed, but also, War Nerd, eXile's crazed chronicler of military wackiness. Here's the WN on...

Why World War II is overrated.

The biggest lie about WW II is that it was a war between good and evil. Bullshit, because there were no good European countries.They Were ALL Fascists. At a military level, let's face a nasty fact: WW II was Stalin vs. Hitler. The rest was window dressing. Stalin won because--because what, he was a nicer guy? Nope, he won because his brand of fascism was actually way more ruthless and bloody and effective than Hitler's smalltime snobbery, and because Stalin had the whole US industrial machine backing him. There's no moral lesson in that that I can see.

Of course, most of these WW II fans try real hard not to think about Stalin, so they prefer to think about Britain and the rest of Western Europe. Those are officially the good guys. Well, got some bad news for you: they were all fascists too, just weaker than Stalin and Hitler, more sly and suckup-y. The only lesson they've got to offer is that if you want to survive, start out as a raving fascist and when that becomes uncool, turn coward and start pretending you were always in favor of niceness. Europe before Stalingrad was an alien planet, as crazy and bloodthirsty as any Aztec priest. Nobody realizes the complete flip-flop Europe did in 1945. Before that, it was a continent full of insane fascists. Some were braver, better soldiers, or smarter; those are the only real differences. And when I say "smarter," I don't want to overdo it, because the Greatest Generation was a bunch of morons. Hitler was the stupidest of all, I grant you that, but he was just the standout in graduating class full of mongoloids in fedoras.

Continue reading "If Joel Stein married Michelle Malkin" »

January 8, 2007

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #82

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's winner.

A12155.jpg

Winner
"Hello ACLU? We're being harassed by a religious fanatic." —al in la

Finalists
"I've got to go. Apparently that wasn't the Tree of Unlimited Anytime Minutes." —charles

"Spying on us, eh? Well, this stick of dynamite should keep you distracted!" —Pat Broderick

Continue reading "The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #82" »

January 5, 2007

Deliciously high levels of rockingness

Daniel Radosh

Music blog I Rock Cleveland has assembled Let's Go Pop, an awesome 24-track power pop mix for your downloading pleasure. You can quibble with the selection (the title alone makes me wish The Figgs were represented), but not the price.

Limited availability, act now, etc.

January 4, 2007

Dead horse jokes definitely count as "and so on"

Daniel Radosh

bilde.jpg Welcome Associated Press readers. The caption contest you're looking for is here.

You may also enjoy this one.

January 4, 2007

Is Christopher Hitchens writing their headlines now?

Daniel Radosh

Time.com goes with a contrarian headline for last week's big news.

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Totally predictable context after the jump.

Continue reading "Is Christopher Hitchens writing their headlines now?" »

January 4, 2007

Out of the pop loop

Daniel Radosh

Heroes-ClaireRibs1.jpg Listen, people. You all know that I've been searching for a replacement for Huckapoo. So why has nobody informed me that Hayden Planetarium is recording an album? I'm sure it will break all sales records — and then regenerate them right before our eyes!

First listen on the irresistably-named compilation, Girl Next, which has been out so long it should be called Girl Last. Ha! [Via Stylus]

January 3, 2007

When we come back, death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people. But first, here's Tom with the weather.

Daniel Radosh

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Kevin Guilfoile — living proof that at least one person watches The CW — forwards this clip from his hometown morning news program, which gave a local spin to its obligatory Beauty and the Geek promo. "The premise," he writes, "was to have three 'Beauties' and one 'Geek' go toe to toes in a trivia contest. The geek was asked questions about fashion and shopping while the three young women, competing as a team, were asked general knowledge questions. The point, I guess, was to show that the geek knew nothing about fashion and shopping while the women knew nothing about anything."

I'd have given bonus points to the lady in white for wearing that outfit when it's 34 degrees out (and to the one in black for wearing that one in 2007), but sadly the beauties lost. "But in their defense," writes Kevin, "the question they lost on should probably be disqualified on at least four technicalities."

Get out your pens and start circling the mistakes after the jump.

Continue reading "When we come back, death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people. But first, here's Tom with the weather." »

January 3, 2007

Dead horse update

Daniel Radosh

Still dead.

January 3, 2007

Sugar shock

Daniel Radosh

pumpgirls.jpg From the Ecclesiastes 1:9 file: Dave at Cure for Bedbugs had a brilliant idea: The first bubblegum pop band made up entirely of teen girls with juvenile diabetes! With tunes like "We Got the Sugar in Our Blood (Beaties Theme)," "Your Love Is Like Ketones," and "I'm Low," Dave thought, the Beaties couldn't fail!

Huckapoo, great as they are, are singing into the wind because hypocritical audiences have turned their backs. Their loss, sure, but it's the ARTISTS who suffer most. Anyone turning their backs on a group of superstar Type 1 diabetics would have to be such a despicable character as to merit greater public scorn than any confessional starlet could muster from even the lowliest tabloid or musical opinion-havin' idiot.

And then, just before he went public with his scheme, Dave did a quick Google search... and discovered The Pump Girls.

Damn. Is narcolepsy taken? That could be hot.

January 2, 2007

Get your Boykin on

Daniel Radosh

Remember our friend Boykin Curry, whose fauxhemian utopia in the Dominican Republic was written up in The New Yorker last March? Despite his hope that some of us would learn to love him after getting a chance to see Playa Grande for ourselves, he apparently forgot to invite us to his big New Year's bash.

Don't worry, though. The Playa Grande web site is now up and running, which means you can make a reservation for yourself. The resort isn't built yet, but feel free to sign up for a tee time at the golf course. Eventual activities to be added include "tennis, horse-riding, hiking trails, surfing, spas, SCUBA & shooting."

Ooh. I wonder if he'll let me shoot a hobo.

January 2, 2007

Where to find the best music of 2007

Daniel Radosh

Regular anticaptioner J has created a chart of music bloggers' year end best lists. By figuring out who shares your tastes, you'll know which blogs to follow from now on. You can dive into the spreadsheet if you dare, or browse by album.

Also, be sure to let him know if any of the albums on his chart are "gay." That's the kind of information he needs.

January 2, 2007

Fans of the 25th letter will add it to Y and Ys on their year's best lists

Daniel Radosh

teaiki_cover_lg.jpg The blog you're reading now would pretty much not exist without the technical skills of Mr. Kevin Shay, implementer, troubleshooter and, not least, inventor of the plug-in that keeps my comments spam free. But it turns out that Kevin doesn't just have skills (skilz), he also has talent. Last week, Doubleday published his first novel, The End As I Know It. Watch your back, Guilfoile.

I haven't gotten my copy yet, but I love the premise.

It’s 1998. Or, as Randall Knight sees it, Y2K minus two. Randall, a twenty-five-year-old children’s singer and puppeteer, has discovered the clock is ticking toward a worldwide technological cataclysm. But he may still be able to save his loved ones—if he can convince them to prepare for the looming catastrophe. That’s why he’s quit his job, moved into his car, and set out to sound the alarm.

There's much more at Kevin's new site. In addition to all the usual book promo stuff, he's created an on this day pre-Y2K blog to resurrect hilarious pre-2000 Internet comments from Y2K doomers.

January 2, 2007

I didn't bother with the geography crap

Daniel Radosh

I thought I did well on the Times news quiz, but I only got 53 out of 80. That's 66% — barely a passing grade. Really, though, did anyone do a whole lot better?

January 1, 2007

Worst best/worst list ever

Daniel Radosh

You know I would never use this blog to inflict a year-end best/worst list on you. But Bob Sassone invited me to submit one to his blog, so here's what I dashed off. I should note that I have not yet seen the three films I've looked forward to most all year: Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men and The Queen. Also, I have only read books with pictures.

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So what about you. What's on your list?

January 1, 2007

AP: Have a happy/miserable new year!

Daniel Radosh

To usher in 2007, the Associated Press conducted a single poll on Americans' attitudes about the year to come, and then assigned two different reporters to write it up. The result: something for everyone!

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