The local Fox affiliate in NYC (channel 5) has been running a series on urban legends. Not necessarily of the murderous, freak-you-out variety, but more of the Mythbusters "can you be killed by a penny dropped from the Empire State building?" variety. Anyhow this segments goal was to see how easy or difficult it would be to steal a bicycle than was chained and locked to a bike rack. Unbeknownst to Jodi Applegate, the two "thieves" decided to play a prank on her. Her reaction is phenomenal. She might as well have yelled "won't somebody please think of the children".
I find it strange that she expresses concern for the children at home that might be watching... the segment on how to steal bikes. I should probably call on Alanis Morissette, the Canadian goddess of irony, to let me know if this qualifies as ironic. Under her definition it might, but under the standard definition I don't think it does.
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Maybe it is just that I don't watch enough child-oriented TV, but it seems like the Anti-Drug PSAs that air nowadays are completely uninspired. "Parents. The Anti-Drug". What is that? Sounds like a commercial to me. In my opinion, you need a PSA that kids can make fun of. That way you can mock it with your friends and the message stays with you. With that in mind I searched YouTube to find some of the more ridiculous and memorable Anti-Drug messages. The clip above is actually Rachel Leigh Cook going berserk on her kitchen. I am not sure that we knew it was her at the time it originally aired. I am guessing we didn't, otherwise she would have identified herself as a teen celebrity. Oh well. Below is a strange ad from the 80's featuring "Snake" the drug dealer. Perhaps this is why I have an irrational fear of snakes.
Last week's rumor about Heath Ledger being offered the role of The Joker in a Batman Begins sequel got a variety of interesting responses from readers of this blog. Some liked the idea, some hated it and others had a hard time picturing what he might look like. Isaac IM'd me this morning and then e-mailed me a picture he touched up with Photoshop to give Heath some of the more classic Joker features. Great work Isaac.
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Hey Kathy, here is the video I was telling you about last night. I don't think this guy scores quite as high as the other clip I posted, but from what I understand this was from a tournament, so there was a crowd and some additional pressure. Now you have to believe they are real.
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If you are one of the few who visit my MySpace page (see the right column for a link) and have discovered that my musical selection is "Come On And Get It (Up In Them Guts)" by Alan Finger, I want to give you some background. Zach Galifianakis plays Alan Finger on Dog Bites Man, my new favorite show. On the show he wrote a song called "Come On And Get It (Up In Them Guts)" which debuted during episode #3 at spring break. If you skip to 4 minutes and 20 seconds you will see Alan and Marty in the studio laying down the demo which will later be performed at spring break. Behold the hilarity of the fanny pack. It has been somewhat of a recurring joke in the show. About a minute into part 2 of the episode you see Alan and his backup dancers working out the fanny pack choreography for the live show. Unbeknownst to me, Fiona Apple featured Zach Galifianakis in her video for "Not About Love". Decent song. Back about 9 years ago Fiona Apple enslaved my curiousity for everything Fiona Apple with her video for Criminal. In what I assume is a return favor for "Not About Love", she recorded the female vocals for Zach's "Come On And Get It (Up In Them Guts)", and as a result I feel obligated to use it for MySpace. It is nearly impossible to tell on the video clip from Dog Bites Man, but if you listen to the MySpace version it is very clear.
So Fiona Apple and fanny packs is the entire story behind my MySpace music.
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Honestly this show is hilarious. This clip is from the "Team Building" episode (ep. #5) that aired two weeks ago. Last night's episode was probably as good if not better than this one, if only because it covered religion and religion is always funny. At some point I hope to get that clip posted, but right now it is nowhere to be found.
Seriously, I think it is time to start packing my bags. I have tried it here in the US, with all the crappy MTV-era reality shows like America's Got Talent, My Super Sweet 16, and Survivor that have infected our television networks. All these shows ever do is make me angry that the contestants never face any sort of real world retribution for their wildly inappropriate and/or annoying behavior. Japan on the other hand seems to have stuck to the basics. Here is a tongue twister, say it correctly or get hit in the nuts. Like peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches and Snakes On A Plane, you know exactly what you're getting and if you don't like it then that is your problem.
Congratulations Japan! On getting your own category tag on my blog.
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For whatever reason I am always totally amazed by these videos. I suppose it is because I owned the game on Xbox and was decent enough to get like halfway through the medium skill level. Just so you know, you have to be patient with this clip. It takes about 1 minute to get going.
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I am not sure how long this has been out there, but I found something interesting in a message board while reading about some new promotional contest tied into the show Lost. Evidently there has been an ongoing "Lost Experience" interactive treasure hunt. The first clues were released in May, and according the Disney Corporate Press website additional information has been "discovered" about the origins of Black Rock and the Dharma Initiative. Between now and the debut of season 3 there will be information on Alvar Hanso and the Hanso Foundation for people willing to put in the work. For more information click here.
Some people have different ideas on what they consider to be a spoiler, especially for a show like lost. So for the other, more interesting part you will have to click 'continue'.
The interesting message board information comes in regards to the numbers: 4 8 15 16 23 42. Someone took the time to plot a formatted version of the numbers with Google Maps and Google Earth. Surprise, surprise you get the approximate location of a group of small islands between Mirconesia and the Marshall Islands, squarely on the flight path from Australia to Los Angeles.
In my opinion this is not much of a revelation, but if you think of the numbers being a subtle warning as to what was about to happen (a la Final Destination), then I can see how this would be a spoiler to someone who had hoped for something more spectacular. I know at one point I was hoping the numbers would have some sort of crazy connection and significance to the characters. If they are merely coordinates, then it just serves as another disappointment in what I once thought was a flawless TV show (up until midway through season 2). CONTINUE
A website called Sports by Brooks is reporting that CBS has hired Prince to play the 2007 Super Bowl halftime show. The site is kind of a strange little outfit that reports sports news and regularly throws in pictures of hot women. It is basically the Hooters of sports journalism websites. So take this info with that in mind, because I couldn't find even a rumor of it on any other website. Anyhow this will be the first CBS Super Bowl since Janet Jackson nipplegate, and it will be the first CBS Super Bowl in which parent company Viacom will ask MTV to step away from production of the halftime show.
I couldn't be more pumped about the possibility of Prince. You know exactly what you are getting with some of the more recent post-Janet acts: Paul McCartney, U2, The Rolling Stones. But Prince has such a wide variety of music that you could go anywhere from some of the explicitly dirty songs like "P---y Control" to the more mundane "1999", or you could split the difference and end up with "Cream".
More fascinating than that is the quality of his showmanship. He is just an all-around great musician, and despite what you might think about him now with his Jehovah's Witness stuff and the whole Chapelle Show story, anyone under 30 should struggle to think of a more talented all-around musician from "our era". When I say "our era" I am referring to anyone within 20 years of your current age. I figure that even the best musician will hit need about 20 years to age before he can legitimately hit the big time. So anyone more than 20 years older than you can't really be considered a musician of "your era". Technically that puts Prince out of my era because he was born in 58 and I was born in 1980. But for argument's sake, look at what we have had since 1980 in terms of well developed, original musical acts. Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews Band followed by other acts that more or less got pigeonholed into being the next fill-in-one-of-those-bands-names. Those bands all have a front man that can do a few things pretty well, but nothing quite as dynamic as Prince. If you don't believe me check out the clip above of from the 2004 Rock 'N Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony where Prince sits back and bides his time on a collaboration of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Jeff Lynne (ELO) and Tom Petty, before hitting it out of the park on a sweet guitar solo. Tell me that Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews or Kurt Cobain could do that. On a Beatles song no less.
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Video is somewhat NSFW. She says 'Anal Sex' pretty firmly, so if you don't want anyone to get the wrong impression, use some discretion.
The latest overblown media story poised to sweep conservative America is "The Technical Virgin". Melanie Martinez, host of the PBS show Kids Sprout, was given a swift dismissal from the network after voluntarily informing them that she had recorded two satirical public service announcements called "The Technical Virgin", and that those recordings could easily be found on the internet. The official reason for her dismissal sounded like this:
“PBS Kids Sprout has determined that the dialogue in this video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host and may undermine her character’s credibility with our audience,” said Sandy Wax, network president.
Now if you don't have children or watch PBS let me give you Melanie Martinez's PBS job description:
"Airing for three hours each evening, “The Good Night Show” airs soothing stories and cartoons designed to get an audience of 2-to-5-year-olds ready for bed. Each night, Martinez guides a puppet character into dreamland. Martinez is a stage actress and mother of a toddler."
Sensationalized cable news channels will (or already have) headline the story as "Kids Host Fired After Racy Video", implying that the video she made was shown to the viewers of her current (now former) program. That is not the case. The Technical Virgin videos were made a few years ago, before she ever even got the job at PBS. It may have been of questionable judgement not to bring this up at in interview or to have participated in the videos in the first place (assuming something like PBS was a career goal). I can't really fault her for being proactive in her career and trying to make something happen prior to PBS, and I don't think they should either. I mean come on, George Carlin has hosted Sesame Street on more than one occassion, and everyone seems to know what he is most famous for. How is this any different? It certainly isn't any worse.
Okay, I just got the best birthday news ever!! The Wizard will be released to DVD on August 22, 2006, just 6 days shy of my 26th birthday.
If you were going to apply Snakes On A Plane title theory, The Wizard would probably be renamed Rain Main Plays Nintendo. Words can't express how much I enjoy this movie. If you look at the cast list, you can see how much power Nintendo was wielding back in 1989:
Beau Bridges Fred Savage Christian Slater Beth Grant (Kitty Farmer in Donnie Darko)
And, a young Tobey Maguire who plays the uncredited role of Lucas' goon at Armageddon in Los Angeles.
The basic premise of the movie is that Fred Savage (Corey Woods) and his brother (Jimmy Woods) are from a family in the middle of a divorce. The boys are about to be separated because of a custody dispute, so they run away from home. Jimmy has always been a little distant since their little sister died, so he is deemed to "have issues". Along the way Corey finds out that Jimmy is insanely good at Nintendo. I believe it happens in a diner where Jimmy starts playing Double Dragon and in an instant he has racked up like 50,000 points. That particular scene is flawed because the music of the level they say he is on doesn't match up with the music that is being played (the music if from level one). And, anyone who has played Double Dragon knows that you spend a considerable amount of time in the early levels throwing and kneeing guys in the face, two of the more inefficient ways to kill enemies, but totally necessary in order to gain the points needed to level up and become a more deadly fighter.
Anyhow, along the way they find out about video game championships in Los Angeles where the top prize is $50,000. Determined to make some coin while they are on the run, Corey decides they are destined for L.A. Jimmy has this sudden passion to go to California as well, because he keeps whining "California" in a tone that made me wonder if he grew up to become the lead singer of Phantom Planet. So while they are doing that, the good guys (Beau the dad and Christian the older brother) are desperately chasing the boys down trying to bring them back safely while the bad guys (their mom, her new husband and hired goons) try to get them back and break the family apart even more. They eventually run into a girl named Haley who lives outside of Las Vegas (I think) and more or less tags along to get her piece of Jimmy's $50,000 prize at Video Armageddon.
Somewhere in Nevada they run into a badass named Lucas, who owns the Power Glove, is dominant in Rad Racer and is also planning to enter Video Armageddon. After taking a quick beating on Lucas' turf the table is set for the Armageddon finals rematch. But what nobody knows is that the finals will be determined by who has the best score on the never-before-seen Super Mario Bros. 3. The playing field is level but then Jimmy uses his Rain-Man-like powers to sniff out a warp whistle on a game nobody has ever played!! Totally ridiculous yet equally awesome. They show him using the whistle to warp to level 7, 8 or 9 (9 I think) yet the level they show him playing immediately afterwards is Level 4 aka Giant World, where everything is oversized. It is disgusting how much I seem to know about this but oh well, it is the only good movie ever made about Nintendo.
I forgot to mention Jimmy's entrance to the finals. After the qualifying rounds, the players are given a long break. It just so happens that the bad guys show up to steal Jimmy, but before they can he escapes and hides somewhere. So the announcer comes out to introduce the finalists. The nerdy girl that sucks, Lucas and "gimme-gimme-gimme, Jimmy Woods!!", only Jimmy is nowhere to be found. The announcer calls him out a couple of times and then decides to start without him. At this point in time the main scoredboard and contestant podiums are shielded behind a large set, so that nobody will know they are playing Mario 3. Finally they open the shield, only to find Jimmy already waiting to play. A total goosebumps scene, even at 25 years old.
The denouement features both families, old and new healed by Jimmy's Nintendo prowess and on their drive from California to Utah they see this large fiberglass dinosaur. He makes them stop and get out and everyone follows him to see what Jimmy is up to. He goes inside the dinosaur and opens his lunch box full of family photos at which point the family realizes that this very dinosaur was the last time and place they were all together and happy before Jimmy's sister died. California indeed Jimmy, California indeed.
I still own an original VHS copy I bought from a video store during their going out of business sale. But to have it on DVD will be phenomenal. This will be the most satisfying $11.19 I ever spend.
The scene above is the infamous Power Glove scene. If you listen closely you can hear the diner is rocking some NKOTB "Hanging Tough" in the background. I will never not regret failing to own a Power Glove at any point in my life. I had a Power Pad for Nintendo Track & Field for a time, and the light gun for Duck Hunt, but never the Power Glove.
I got a request yesterday for an explanation regarding the easiest way to check the blog for updates. Originally I was thinking of a news aggregator, but I want to keep it simple for people who check from work. That also eliminates any sort of Newsgroup publishing in Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird. I wouldn't want an entry on side-boob to run through your mail server. So here is what I have decided would be easiest for this blog and easy updates. Firefox has a live bookmarks system. Here is a quick rundown of how everything works (click on the photos to enlarge):
2. Install the browser, open it up and come back to the blog's main page.
3. In the corner of your address bar you will see the orange RSS/XML chicklet. 4. Click on the chicklet and an 'Add Live Bookmark' menu will popup asking where you want to put it. Choose the Bookmark Tab, since that will put it on your main bookmark menu. 5. Press Ok. Then go to your bookmarks menu at the top of your browser. At the bottom of your bookmarks tab you should see this blog with right arrow next to it. Highlighting will reveal the titles of all the posts on the blog's main page sorted newest to oldest. It is the quickest one-button solution for checking to see what's new and interesting here. 6. For updates to your new 'Live Bookmark' what you will want to do is right-click and select 'Reload Live Bookmark' and it will quickly check the blog for any new posts. Like I said there are other, more detailed solutions you could use to get email delivery and such but they would involve logins, passwords and either the use of an email client at home or your email client at work. None of those sound particularly appealing.
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This weekend I had a wedding to attend. 8.5 hour drive each way... it really kicked my ass. Got home last night and slept from about 9:45pm to 9am. I went in to work late and have officially given up on accomplishing anything today. It was a great time, but not something I want to do again anytime in the near future. On top of that I hate my iPod now. Not how it works or anything, but I feel like I have listened to every relevant song it contains and unless I find a new surplus of music to load onto it, it will never regain that status as borderline magical device with infinite possibilities. I am listening to it again today but only because it is the lesser of two evils, the other being total silence. Maybe I just need new playlists. Whatever the case, I am simply staring at the clock, counting down the minutes until I can go home. There might something better than this entry a bit later in the day, but if you are looking for me to offer a well-thought-out opinion on anything besides a clip from YouTube you are probably out of luck.
The clip above is from a Japanese prank show I have named Crazy Taxi. Basically the guy in the clip is a struggling actor and his friends set him up. From what I have read in the comments from other viewers the phone call says "we would you like you to come in for an audition (second audition?) immediately." The rest explains itself.
By the way, on a completely unrelated note this is now my go-to insult when I vehemently disagree with someone's opinion on a movie, televison or anything that is totally subjective:
All of your taste is in your mouth.
Of course it won't work if we are talking about wine.
Oh and I severely regret not working this punchline in during the weekend:
Me: [delivers unusually thorough information regarding the topic of conversation]
Random wedding guest: Wow. That's interesting, are you a [professional fill-in the-topic-of-conversation]?
Me: No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
It would have been funny because we actually did. In fact everyone at the wedding did. It was the only hotel in town but nobody thought to say it. It was mine for the taking and with the help of a few Red Bull and Vodka's all of my clever planning was wasted. Damn it.
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I was listening to my iPod this afternoon and "Thriller" came up on the shuffle. Of course it reminded me of my favorite painfully awkward dance sequence from 13 Going On 30, when Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo and Andy Serkis do the Thriller dance as way of livening up a work party. In order to find it I had to do a YouTube search and as a result a little piece of my soul died today. There are hundreds, if not thousands of videos out there of people dancing to a song that came out 23 years ago. Not only that but there is nothing that explains why these videos are on there. The advent of simple digital video recording and uploading is fairly recent, and YouTube is just in its infancy. Basically these people have all had this same idea, to dance badly on camera and put it on the internet presumably in hopes of William Hung fame. You would have to drag my dead body around Weekend At Bernie's style to get me to do this on camera. But I suppose not everyone is as shy as me. So here are some of the, um, best clips:
GorillaMask has a link up today to FilmWad, who claims that Heath Ledger has been offered the role of 'The Joker' in a sequel to Batman Begins. I wouldn't normally use the same photo as the site I link to, but it is surprisingly difficult to find a photo of Heath Ledger where he looks at all aggressive or threatening. As far as the movie goes, I think this could work. The other rumored choice was Paul Bettany (Wimbledon, Firewall, A Beautiful Mind) but I think that would be a little strange. The Joker can't have an accent, and I have yet to see Paul Bettany in a role that doesn't use his English accent. Bettany is sort of like Pierce Brosnan in that they have both been typecast as clever Brits. Actors like Heath Ledger, Cillian Murphy, Colin Farell or Hugh Jackman have managed to avoid that so much that when they appear on Leno or Letterman I sometimes find myself wondering "what is up with his accent?" before remembering where they are actually from.
It will be weird seeing someone recreate The Joker while Jack Nicholson is still alive and acting, but if that is the villain they are going with in the second film you need someone with a malleable face. I think Heath Ledger has enough of a forgettable face that it will work. He doesn't have a whole lot of pronounced facial features, facial expressions or striking resemblance to lasting impression from a previous film that will leave you sitting there wondering "when is The Joker going to make out with a gay cowboy?". That is the sort of blessing/curse of someone like Tobey Maguire or Brandon Routh, which is probably why they got those roles to begin with. In Batman movies especially the villains' costumes are so over-the-top that you have to get someone who can blend in with it, so the audience can sit back and see The Penguin or The Joker, and not Uma Thurman dressed up as Poison Ivy or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. I think that is in part what failed the 3rd and 4th Batman movies. And Bat Girl.
According to FilmWad they were one of the first to break the news that Brandon Routh would be the new Superman. So they say this news is to be trusted.
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This is some kind of Japanese instructional workout video that allows women to learn english while staying in shape. Why they chose to use this particular set of phrases is beyond me. But in someway it is hypnotizing. I could get into the exuberant chanting of seldomly used phrases if they had this for english speakers trying to learn japanese.
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I don't know that the US could have come out of this thing looking any worse. Jon Stewart will cover the first two blunders from our President, while German TV has video of the inappropriate groping of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Groping is probably too strong a word to describe what happened, but its a summit on international politics! Not a lock-in at the community rec center. What's next, thinking of ways to "accidentally" touch her boob? WTF? The more I think about this the more it astounds me.
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In addition to my love of all Phil Collins-based humor, I also have a secret place in my heart for Jean-Claude Van Damme. In the last year or so the focus has been Chuck Norris and his amazing "facts". As a weird folk legend and over-the-top television star Chuck Norris wins hands down. But if you compare the quality of their movie careers by the number of times TBS, USA or TNT reruns their best movies then you have to go with Van Damme. I have probably watched all or part of Bloodsport 50 times in my life. Kickboxer a firm 15-25 times and Lionheart a good 5-10. Van Damme has tought me phrases like 'kumite' and 'Nat-su Cow' (spelled phonetically), so that if I ever go to Hong Kong I will know how to avoid entering an underground martial-arts death tournament, or easily locate the one they call 'White Warrior'. This particular scene is from 1989's Kickboxer, probably his best movie ever.
I still want an explanation for what the guy with the table was planning to do besides get kicked into the water.
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This first clip is just a great play all the way around. Nice ball in, great overlapping run to draw the defense, excellent turn and a nice, hard shot. Unfortunately it was just a bit over the bar and luckily for us an old woman walking behind the goal decided to stop the ball with her face. And down she goes like a sack of potatoes.I don't know what the deal is with the announcer. It is clearly not a tv broadcast, but it is slightly better than home video.
This clip is the timeless middle-school baskebtall full-court buzzer beater attempt. Keep an eye on the kid running down the sideline at the beginning of the clip. Also worth watching is the reaction of the crowd as the horror unfolds.
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On the radio a couple of weeks back I listened to an interview with Mike Shiley, creator of the documentary Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories. 3 years ago Mike Shiley decided to make a fake press pass at Kinko's, rent a bulletproof vest and hop a flight to Iraq with his digital video camera to get some first hand accounts of how this war was being fought. During the interview he made some pretty smart points about a possible solution for the future of Iraq. Given the ethnic diversity of the country (Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds) the future stability of the country might best be preserved by dividing it into three nations. If you look at the fallout from the Soviet Union, there were so many ethnic groups with vastly different agendas that it only made sense for those groups to form multiple (15) nations. The former Yugoslavia had such problems with the economic and diplomatic stability of the a country that was home to Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian ethnicities that in 1991 Solvenia and Croatia declared independence and brought about a series of decisions that has just this past spring finally resulted in the complete dissolution of what was known as Yugoslavia. Many of the 15 years between the first and last separations from the Yugoslavian federation were marred by horrible civil wars, ethnic cleansing and conflict. What was once one country is now five:
Serbia Montenegro Slovenia Croatia Bosnia and Herzegovina
Now rather than go through that with Iraq, wouldn't it be cleaner to divide the country into three equal parts and create one Kurdish, one Shiite and one Sunni government? I would imagine the worst case scenario is that it turns out to be every bit as difficult as uniting all three under one government. According to Shiley there are no other countries in the world that have even two of the three (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) living under one flag. The fact they have been doing so at all is a testament to the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Now, in terms of the oil reserves Shiley suggested that we take the oil reserves and treat them as an equally divided trust fund. The three new nations would form a federation similar to OPEC, where they could make joint decisions and split profits from those reserves. Of course that is an extremely simplistic explanation of how it would work, but I think it is better than putting control up for grabs and having one of the three groups take control of the oil and use the profits to fund extermination efforts against the other two.
There are some people that believe dividing the country would be in the best interest of the United States for a completely different reason: divide and conquer. Separate the two American-friendly sects (Kurds and Shiite) and then fund them ahead of the more conservative, anti-American Sunnis. Giving control of the oil reserves to our two new allies would give us two new oil streams and would force the Sunni nation to either toil in poverty or moderate their anti-American stance and ambitions. This attitude sounds like a recipe for complete disaster.
This is why I love Fark. Check out the user-submitted headlines for what would otherwise be incredibly mundane news items (if you don't understand them, just pretend that you do so our friendship remains intact):
Phil Collins' pension managers look to sell his stu stu studios (link)
T-Rex was too fast to live, and too young to die. Will be renamed James Deanasaurus (link)
Cannabis plants removed from Berlin foster home. Please, dude, may I have some more (link)
Mischa Barton isn't famous in Britain. Isn't famous in the U.S. either, except in California, California (see previous post)
MySpace tops list of most-visited U.S. websites, displacing Yahoo and Google. Weep for humanity (link)
The remaining links that I found funny are waaaayyy too "nerdy inside joke" to post.
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Mischa Barton is distraught she has to introduce herself to strangers in her British birth land because she has one of the most recognizable faces in the United States. The actress, 20, was born in London and lived there until her family moved to New York City when she was five.
Barton cannot understand why the United Kingdom hasn't taken her to its heart. She says, "I'm so surprised nobody really knows me in England. It's just unbelievable. I have to introduce myself, which I never have to do in the States."
Evidently the English are not impressed by her resume of "the girl that throws up and dies in The Sixth Sense", The O.C., and Neutrogena commercials. And now that her O.C. character is dead The Sports Guy says we can begin the countdown to Mischa Barton's nude scene in a Cinemax film:
SG: Funny you should mention this -- when she died at the end "The O.C.," I joked to the Sports Gal, "Next stop: Cinemax!" But there are a couple of mitigating factors here:
1. She's only 20 years old and one of the most attractive women in Hollywood, so her best years might be ahead of her. It's possible. For instance, Neve Campbell couldn't act either, and she wasn't as attractive as Mischa Barton, but she got hooked to the "Scream" franchise and extended her time in the spotlight for another four years. So you can't rule out something like that here for Mischa. If she's smart, she should be reading only horror movie scripts right now.
2. She could shock everybody and make a movie with tons of sex and nudity -- this decade's "Wild Things" -- which would push her career to another level and possibly cause the Internet to shut down. By the way, that movie starred Neve Campbell as well. She had the best agent ever.
3. On the flip side, supposedly Mischa asked for too much money for Season 4 of "The O.C." and they kept saying no and telling her, "Look, we will absolutely kill off your character," and her agents didn't believe them, and finally, they just said "screw it" and killed her off. Making matters worse, she spoiled the surprise on "Access Hollywood" two days before, which is the ultimate Hollywood no-no -- almost like a wrestler refusing to cooperate with the agreed ending for a match. So she might be considered poison because of that. And you can't rule out the residual bad karma either.
My prediction: I see her taking a stab at a movie career and competing with the Jessicas (Biel and Alba) for a couple of years, followed by at least one bad horror movie, followed by the inevitable comeback to TV that doesn't work (a bad sitcom where she works in a bar or something), and then a couple more bad movies, and maybe even one more bad TV show, and then a dramatic 2014 appearance in the straight-to-DVD erotic thriller "Illicit Betrayal 4," where she plays a detective who gets lured into the world of high-class prostitution while investigating the murder of a hooker, at least until the detective's ex-boyfriend and partner (played by Wilmer Valderrama) saves the day.
For the record, after looking at the upcoming projects in her IMDB profile I am going to go ahead and predict the gratuitous sex or straight-to-DVD nudity movie she will star in will be Guilty Pleasure. The plot outline says "For thrills, a young couple set up a ménage-à-trois before their wedding". Jackpot!!
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David Lee Miller of Fox News had what I have to believe is the ultimate faux pas of embedded news reporting and nearly paid a steep price for it. This might even be from today, I am not sure. He starts off this video clip by naming the street, city and pointing at the locations of Israeli tanks in their effort to police the Gaza strip. Clearly not understanding that both sides watch the news, Miller and his camera crew get shot at on live TV. They can't figure out who is shooting, but I would have it at even money between an angry Israeli and an angry Palestinian. Meanwhile the studio hosts are outraged that David Lee Miller is being shot at despite wearing a flak jacket that says 'Press' on it. Around the 6 minute mark Miller explains that it was probably Israeli fire designed to get them to move. What a dumbass.
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Wal-Mart already has or will soon have a new shoplifting policy in place. No prosecution for shoplifting less than $25 worth of merchandise. Evidently charging people with small thefts costs them too much money. Our country is seriously on a slippery slope to hell. Look at these quotes from the article:
"If I have somebody being paid $12 an hour processing a $5 theft, I have just lost money," J. P. Suarez, who is in charge of asset protection at Wal-Mart, told the paper. "I have also lost the time to catch somebody stealing $100 or an organized group stealing $3,000."
Presumably J.P. Suarez believes that organized thieves will not realize that they still come out with a 99.2% profit, down from 99.84%, if they send a decoy thief to get caught with $25 of goods while they steal $3,000.
The other thing that shocked me in this article was this passage:
[Wal-Mart] will also seek the prosecution of all suspected shoplifters who threaten violence or fail to produce identification, no matter how much they are trying to steal, according to the report, which said professional shoplifters often do not carry ID in order to avoid arrest...
...The paper said that the change also will answer complaints of small-town police departments across the country who have protested the previous zero-tolerance policy. At some stores police were making up to six arrests a day, according to the report, which said some departments had to hire extra officers just to handle the Wal-Mart arrests.
Evidently not carrying ID is a good way to avoid shoplifting arrests, and local police don't want to actually do their job.
So there you have it. A virtual "Shoplifting for Dummies" guidebook courtesy of CNN and internal Wal-Mart company documents. Their laziness astounds me. And I know what you're thinking: It makes business sense. But this assumes that everyone busted for shoplifting less than $25 will fight it all the way to trial in court. Decent video evidence and the presumably weak penalty for such a crime makes me believe most people would plead down their case and get it done with before they, the thieves that need to steal $25 worth of stuff, have to hire a lawyer and pay court costs.
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Last week when I wrote about Ted Stevens "tube theory" of the Internet, I knew that sooner or later The Daily Show would get around to having their way with his words. Last night it happened and this morning someone put it on YouTube. It's kind of a long setup, but if you stick with the entire clip it pays off at the end.
Dog Bites Man was excellent last night. Marty's dissertation on side-boob was hilariously accurate. If someone puts it on YouTube I will probably post it.
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Categories: sports, future, news, awesome According to The Guardian, FIFA has some serious doubts about South Africa's ability to prepare for and host the 2010 World Cup. And, as I verbally predicted to Nate Eastway (I think) one month ago, FIFA is considering a radical contingency plan that would find the United States as the host of the next World Cup. 2010, host nation, Klinsmann, the largest pool of American players seasoned abroad, and a 21 year-old Freddy Adu primed to burst onto the scene as the most dynamic goal scorer the US has ever produced.
The one dilemma we might have is the fate of our soccer specific stadiums. They are righftully being built for the MLS attendance, meaning they only hold about 20,000 fans. I think we will still host games in the NFL-capacity 60,000-80,000 seat stadiums.
Perhaps I have been living a sheltered life, but I was stunned to see this. I can no longer trust my eyes. I now consider Eva Longoria to be no more attractive than about a dozen women I have met in real life. The difference is just makeup and airbrushing.
Lady friends, answer me this: At some point there has been a time when I have seen some of you with little or no makeup on, right? This isn't the standard dropoff from makeup to no makeup for all females is it? I am not judging, I am just curious to know if I have been living a life of blissful ignorance about female facial care my entire life.
