A Tale of Bart and Homer

Game of Thrones fever hits Springfield:

To watch more, visit tag

Doh! is coming.

Art Pepper-Spray

Gotta love the new meme of the U.C. Davis pepper-spraying cop making his way through art history. There's this article, this blog post and then then Tumblr. My personal faves:

and

Modern art masterpieces, one and all.

Block Buster

I've been enjoying those trailers for the new Fast Five movie. Hollywood talent:


Today Now! Interviews The 5-Year-Old Screenwriter Of "Fast Five"

C'mon, Oscar!

Ahead of Everyone

As good as it gets (1936):



And better (1940):

In the Pink

Hollywood is freaking out that the box office is tepid, starting to wonder if maybe we don't want to see second and third tier TV shows from our first childhood turned into yet another empty explosion-fest. There's a Battleship movie in production, for heaven's sake, a classic game but...how can I say this...not that deep. Narrative, character, theme -- you know, what books, plays and even real-life stories have that make them ripe for adaptation.

And now...this isn't even unimaginable:



I can't wait to buy my ticket.

"It's a trap!"

If you only watch one Jon Stewart clip this year, this one may be it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Apparent Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Enjoy.

D'jew eat?

Without getting into spoilers, I have the pleasure of recommending the new Coen Bros movie, A Serious Man. It's clearly their most personal film, and not just because it's about growing up Jewish in the the late 1960's in suburban Minneapolis, but because with God as a theme and the commensurate inability to discern his or her plan, it's the most clear utterance yet of the theme that runs through all their work: there is no justice.

What makes the Coens so unusual is their success with that theme. They still get to make the movies they want to make after all these years, and the box office clunkers here and there don't slow them down, usually because they bring their movies in on time and budget (thanks to their end-to-end storyboarding process). While virtually every other fictional film and about 99.9% of all Hollywood movies revolve around a morality where, no matter the second act obstacles, good is somehow rewarded and evil punished, in the Coen's world (or their take on our world) the only time that happens is by absurd accident, and usually followed by some ironic reversal, even if small.

What drew them to Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men besides the massive opportunity for suspense was undoubtedly this premise, leading to the part that seems to even disappoint some of the movie's fans, the ending with Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff recalling a dream that might as well be his fantasy of an ultimately just afterworld, but which ends with the Coen's leaving him hanging, i.e. him and the belief he clings to hung out to dry.

Likewise, in A Serious Man, for pre-tenure professor Larry Gopnick, no good deed goes unpunished. Taking their cue for centuries of internecine Jewish persecution, the Coens have even incorporated classic themes of Yiddish drama in s movie that I've already heard one non-Jew viewer refer to as "anti-Semitic," and it's easy to understand why. This film makes the Jewish satires of Woody Allen appear benign and playful. With freakish recall they paint perfectly cast pictures of the various characters reminiscent of those from my own youth in the Albany, NY Jewish community, giving the film a kind of ethnic specificity that often leads to successful crossover of an ethnic family comedy -- think Moonlighting or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The Coens, however, have little interest in cute or endearing. I mean, has there ever been a villain as terrifyingly unctuous as Sy Adelman in movie history?

A line often repeated in our faith when faced with personal trauma: "It could be worse." In A Serious Man, it always is, hilariously so. Larry is on the verge of losing his wife, his job, his home, his sanity. Larry's narrative counterpart is his pot-smoking son, preparing for his Bar Mitzvah while trying to avoid the big kid down the street to whom he owes $20 for weed. But it's Larry who awakes from the routine of his life as he's forced to look for answers, most specifically to the meaning of God's will. And one wonders by the end if God is, in fact, a serious being, or perhaps enjoys screwing around with us.

While The Book of Job from the Torah may be seen as the inspiration for the tale, this is also a classic tale of a modern (1967) day schlimazel, i.e. born loser. This is as distinct for a schlemiel, which is a bumbling or inept person. The best way to understand the relationship between the two terms:

A schlemiel is one who always spills his soup, schlimazel is the one on whom it always lands.

Don't worry, there's a schlemiel pouring it on Larry in the form of his crackpot genius brother, but I'll leave that discovery for you to see for yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy the trailer, which gives a sense of Larry's journey and quest for understanding, if not justice:



Apocalypse coming.

It's God's will.

Friday Night Stories

A beautiful story about Victoria Reggie Kennedy, new widow of Sen. Edward Kennedy, and the positive effect he had on the last eighteen years of his life.

The freakiest, hauntingest story of the year.

The heretofore untold story of enhanced interrogation techniques:


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

PolViz

Team Palin trying to belittle Romney:



Dems drawing targets on GOP:



David Simon, Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters coming back to HBO via New Orleans.

President Gore

This just in from the U.S. Supreme Court:

WASHINGTON—In an unexpected judicial turnaround, the Supreme Court this week reversed its 2000 ruling in the landmark case of Bush v. Gore, stripping George W. Bush of his earlier political victory, and declaring Albert Arnold Gore the 43rd president of the United States of America.

The court, which called its original decision to halt manual recounts in Florida "a ruling made in haste," voted unanimously on Wednesday in favor of the 2000 Democratic nominee.

Gore will serve as commander in chief from Dec. 10 to Jan. 20.

Wow, that could just make me cry. Like chopping up an Onion.

Cartoon

Political cartoonists are the first ones targeted by dictators when they want to shut down free speech. They're the ones threatened with fatwas when they draw Muhammad. So as a lover of cartoons, comics and political satire, I can't condemn Barry Blitt, even if I think The New Yorker, of which I am a subscriber, wanted to sell magazines more than it understood the difference between effective satire and Blitt's cartoon which they are running as their cover this week.

(BAGnewsNotes does a nice job of explaining the discrepancies here.)

In the spirit of open discussion, I've posted my latest video microblog segment in the little Zannel widget to the right of this post. Some folks have commented already. You can click on the Z and then on the link that's revealed to go and comment yourself.

Otherwise, just hit play and enjoy.

4th and Four

Four months from today the big decision gets made. Today the well-mannered, anti-Progressive ex-Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) has passed away. I won't pretend to mourn him politically, nor do I enjoy the white-washing (sic) the MSM is bent on doing, but do offer bloggy condolences to his family.

With four months to go we've got an outgoing President being openly heckled at a moderate-sized Independence Day event. We've got oil prices above where our nation's arch enemy, Osama Bin Laden, has wanted them since before the start of El Presidente's disastrous Presidency, Cheney/Bush essentially using their eight years of rule to give Osama the win. We've got a Republican candidate running who, in this time of economic peril and energy crunch, owns eight-count'em-eight homes.

On the other side, we've got a challenger to all of the above GOP cognitive dissonance whom they are flailing around to negatively brand, and whom is considering hosting the largest acceptance speech audience in American political history -- at Denver's Mile High Stadium.

So after reading attacks on Obama from the left, some of them even justified, most of them revealing partisan ignorance of the candidate who's being nominated, it is particularly enjoyable to read Andy Borowitz's latest juicy column full of satire, "Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election":

Suspicions about Sen. Obama's true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party's losing tradition.

"Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes," wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. "He must be stopped."

But those comments were not nearly as strident as those of Tracy Klugian, whose blog LoseOn.org has backed unsuccessful Democratic candidates since 2000.

"Increasingly, Barack Obama's message is becoming more accessible, appealing, and yes, potentially successful," he wrote. "Any Democrat who voted for Dukakis, Mondale or Kerry should regard this as a betrayal."

As a young teenager I watched the Left in this country commit ritual suicide with a combination of infighting and corruption.

Let's not let history repeat itself.

Mad Man

Of all the original Mad Magazine artists, Will Elder may have had the biggest influence. His parodies including "Superduperman", "Starchie" and "Mickey Rodent" set the standard for both Mad's take-no-prisoners satire as well as filling the panels with enough irreverent throwaway gags that you just had to read the parodies again...and again...and yet again, with no diminution of pleasure.

Elder (born Wolf Eisenberg) just died at age 86 and leaves behind a wealth of fine work, some terrific interviews, as well as his notorious "Little Annie Fanny" series with writer (and Mad co-founder) Harvey Kurtzman for Hugh Hefner's Playboy. In fact, watching this short film about Elder's work (in two parts via YouTube), you'd be forgiven for thinking that Kurtzman and Elder were the same guy.





With the originators of the Mad sensibility on the way out, leaving the few like Al Jaffee and Dick DeBartolo still producing (still first-rate) work, it's the end of an era for sure, but this usual gang of idiots has influenced our culture beyond measurement, essentially providing the bedrock sense of humor that continues to grow today.

What We Worry?

Truly Madly

I quite recently got to fulfill a childhood dream and visit the offices of uber-influential publication, Mad magazine.

Besides the joy of seeing original Norman Mingo cover oil paintings, I got to re-submerge in the deep river of Mad legacy still coursing through my consciousness, sub-conscious and hallucination, and brought up having seen legendary founding publisher William M. Gaines on the old TV quiz show, To Tell the Truth.

Our guide then pointed me to the discovery of that very clip not two weeks ago, now presented for your viewing pleasure:



Read more about it in the terrific Classic Television Showbiz blog, including comments from some certifiably Mad people...