Category Archives: Popular culture

Snopes says anti-God rumor is TRUE

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Just got one of those e-mails that warn folks about some wicked, anti-Christian conspiracy out there, but this one was different. Often, I check such things out at Snopes.com, and send the debunking results back to the sender to prevent him/her from perpetuating the hoax any further.

This message, from a fellow parishioner at St. Peter’s, included its own link to Snopes, validating the rumor. The e-mail I received was along these lines:

You may already know about the kids movie
coming out in December starring Nicole Kidman. It’s called The Golden Compass,
and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of
children’s books about killing God (It is the anti-Narnia). Please follow this
link and then pass it on. From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of
kids to see the movie – which won’t seem too bad – and then get the parents to
buy the books for their kids for Christmas. The quotes from the author sum it
all up.

The books are written by one Philip Pullman, who according to Snope characterizes his books thusly: "My books are about killing God." Here’s the more complete quote, from the The Sydney Morning Herald:

"I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s
been taking all the flak. I’m a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the
people – mainly from America’s Bible Belt – who complain that Harry
Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven’t got enough in
their lives. Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things
that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My
books are about killing God."

So there you have it. Forget all those Dark Arts fears regarding Harry Potter; this guy’s the real deal. As rumors go, this one appears to me of the man-bites-dog variety.

There’s something refreshing about having a proper, no-bones-about-it villain for a change.

And after all that perfectly good sucking-up, too…

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The Dems have officially said no to Stephen Colbert.

Bet he regrets all that free champagne poured on Sunday. Or not. This is, of course, a no-lose deal for Mr. Colbert. He can just as well run a sham write-in campaign as a sham conventional one.

Actually, this is a win-win for him on another level. He told the assembled Dems Sunday that he, for one, is not worried about the threatened Hollywood writers’ strike. If the writers are gone, he just keeps "campaigning," and his character’s story line progresses without missing a beat, and without recourse to reruns.

Meanwhile, not that it matters, but I wonder what the reasons were for the committee stiffing my most fameful fan? Could it be that they didn’t want anyone making a joke of their primary? If so, they’re far too late.

Don’t take the brown museum!

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My man McCain keeps going on about this proposal Hillary had for a Woodstock museum, and I can’t help that the old dude’s missing the real problem here. I keep thinking: a museum? For Woodstock?

There’s something extremely uncool about that. Museums are where established, older-generation culture is stored and entombed in cold marble, right? It’s where the Man puts his stuff.

Wasn’t Woodstock — to the extent that it was about anything other than being a rip-roarin’, get-high-and-get-nekkid sort of party — sort of about the opposite of that?

Where was Hillary’s head at?

Oh — and in case you’re not digging where my headline is at, here’s a link.

Was it all Democrats? You betcha

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A reader noted that he saw no Republicans in the photos or videos from the Stephen Colbert brunch, and he’s absolutely right.

The invitations to the event were sent out by Dwight Drake, and seemed to include a lot of his friends. Beyond that, it was staged as though "Candidate" Colbert were making a pitch to S.C. Democrats to let him onto the ballot for the state’s presidential primary.

Dwight had hinted ahead of time that one Republican would be there for a special presentation, but it didn’t work out because the GOP token had a family emergency.

See the above video as a partial guide to who was there. At bottom, you’ll see a clip that shows Colbert making his "pitch" to the party honchos.

Emile DeFelice to Colbert: Put Your State on Your Neck

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Colbert_062

We all know that Emile DeFelice, hog farmer and sloganmeister extraordinaire (when I told him I had missed his twice-monthly alternative farmers market yesterday because we were having a garage sale, he responded "Put your Junk in your Trunk"), is a real consciousness-raiser when it comes to putting S.C. first.

Here, he takes advantage of Stephen Colbert‘s having mentioned South Carolina peaches to present the South Carolinian comedian/presidential candidate with neckwear more appropriate to his surroundings. (Note the slogan Emile put on the box the tie came in, below.)

Candidate Colbert, ever ready to pander, immediately effected a change, without pausing in his patter.

Colbert_048

Reserving judgment on Colbert

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Having just received an e-mail solicitation to this effect…

Adam invited you to join the Facebook group "1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert".

… I am faced with the necessity of making a decision: Do I want to be associated with such tomfoolery?

I’m just not ready to decide, though. I’ve been invited (by his attorneys) to brunch Sunday with this Mr. Colbert, so I’m going to wait until then to gauge how seriously I want to take him. Between now and then, I have got to get access to cable TV, and find out who he is… For all I know, he’s some empty name-dropper.

Zogby finds that a lot of y’all are LOSERS

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Hot on the heels of the "whom do you hate most" poll, Zogby makes us doubt whether we want to know what his respondents think, reporting this pathetic result:

It won’t make you dinner or rub your feet, but nearly one in four Americans say that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time, according to a new poll released today by 463 Communications and Zogby International.

Even though it’s only one in four, that’s sad, people. And that’s without even asking whether we’re talking porn sites here.

Further, the poll found that while maybe we aren’t loser nobodies, a lot of us are willing to become nobodies if the money is right:

What’s in a Name? And while there are well-documented fears about identity theft, many Americans would gladly give up their name for a cash windfall. If they were offered $100,000 by someone who wanted to adopt their name, more than one in five Americans said they would change their name to something completely different. Thirty-four percent of 18 to 24 year olds were prepared to take the offer.

I wonder how much higher the numbers would have been if the money was a little better. Think about it — most of us couldn’t even pay off our house notes and credit card bills with 100 Gs, much less launch a new life.

The good news is that only 11 percent of us are willing to have our brains wired to receive the Internet direct, without need of exterior devices. Unsurprisingly, more than twice as many men as women would opt for this "convenience." Me, I wouldn’t go for it unless the display in my head was really high-quality.

Open up your mouth and feed it

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This morning, I heard Michael Jackson‘s "Beat It" on the radio for the first time in a long, long time. (Steve FM says they play anything they want, and they apparently mean it.)

Anyway, here’s what struck me about it: It wasn’t nearly as interesting, or as enjoyable as a listening experience, as Weird Al Yankovic’s "Eat It." Yeah, the music and arrangement might be Michael Jackson’s, but his original lyrics are eminently forgettable. Only with Weird Al do you get the whole package. I mean, who’s going to remember…

You better run, you better do what you can

Don’t wanna see no blood, don’t be a macho man…

… when you’ve heard…

How come you’re always such a fussy young man?
Don’t want no Captain Crunch, don’t want no Raisin Bran…

Well, maybe you would, but I wouldn’t.

Um… who’s gonna tell the Maharishi what this looks like?

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Do you sometimes get e-mail that makes you think somebody is sending you up? I certainly do, and I’m not just talking about the stuff I get from the S.C. Democratic and Republican parties….

Today’s prize-winner is in a category of its own. What do you say about a developer who wants to put up a "Tower of Invincibility" — I am not making this up! — in downtown Washington, D.C.?

Oh, wait, I’m not finished. What do you further say when the design of the building tempts you to say such things as "Is that the design or are you just glad to see me?" and "What — the Washington monument wasn’t phallic enough for you?"

I’m just getting warmed up… the developer says he got the idea to build the tower from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Really. If the Maharishi dreamed this up, maybe there was something to those rumors about Mia Farrow.

Finally, the developer is asking the public to tell him where he should put his tower. Honestly — you can’t make up stuff like this. I can’t, anyway.

Maharishi, what have you done?

Hessians: This Year’s Model

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Reading an editorial for tomorrow about Blackwater, I wonder that we haven’t heard an appropriate lyrical allusion from bill on the subject. Well, I guess I’ll just have to do it myself:

 Don’t you know I got the bully boys out/
changing someone’s facial design…

Come to think of it, why not just use the whole song?

Hand In Hand
No, don’t ask me to apologise.
I won’t ask you to forgive me.
If I’m gonna go down,
you’re gonna come with me

You say ‘Why don’t you be a man about it,
like they do in the grown-up movies?’
But when it comes to the other way around,
you say you just wanna use me. Oh,
you sit and you wonder whether
it’s gonna be syndicated.
You sit with your knees together.
All the time your breath is baited.

Hand in Hand.
No, don’t ask me to apologise.
I won’t ask you to forgive me.
If I’m gonna go down,
you’re gonna come with me

Don’t you know I got the bully boys out
changing someone’s facial design,
sitting with my toy room lout,
polishing my precious china
Don’t you know I’m an animal?
But don’t you know I can’t stand up steady?
But you can’t show me any kind of hell
that I don’t know already.

Hand in Hand.
No, don’t ask me to apologise.
I won’t ask you to forgive me.
If I’m gonna go down,
you’re gonna come with me
Hand in hand, hand in hand, hand in hand…

Now, for serious commentary on the subject, you’ll have to read tomorrow’s editorial page. In the meantime, I’ll say the performance of these rent-a-commandos are about as perfect an example of the problem with privatizing the natural functions of government as you’re ever likely to find.

Having shrunk the segment of government with this responsibility (the military), although thankfully not quite enough to drown it in a bathtub, we have generated a private-sector demand that is sufficiently lucrative so as to make it unbelievably tempting to some of our best warriors to go private. That weakens the U.S. military at a time we can ill afford it, and turns these exemplary soldiers into "weapons-free" mercenaries who are unconstrained by the military’s rules of engagement.

So we find ourselves, at a time when we’re painstakingly working to win hearts and minds to the counterinsurgency cause (the Petraeus strategy), with these hyperagressive private Rambos running around giving our country (and our allies’ countries, for that matter) an increasing worse name with the local indigenous population.

Privatization might work in some areas (although far, far fewer that the libertarians fantasize), but there’s one area where we must have political accountability: War-making.

Feliz Nueve de Juan Lennon

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bill reminds us what today is. I thought of it earlier today, but hadn’t gotten around to acknowledging it yet.

Yes, boys and girls, it’s John Lennon’s birthday. I don’t know what days the other Beatles were born on, but I never forget this one, for two reasons. First, it’s just a few days after my own birthday, and I feel a vague-and-completely-irrational kinship with fellow Libras.

More relevantly, I had an excellent mnemonic device drilled into my head at an early age. From 1962-1965, when I was in the fifth and sixth grades (after having completed the 4th grade with a tutor to catch up with the difference in school years), I lived in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Nueve de Octubre was the biggest deal on the school calendar. We got a whole week off for that, and only a day and a half for Christmas. It was sometime later that I read that that John Lennon was born on Guayaquil Independence Day, and the association stuck.

‘Historic Myrtle Beach’

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One of the pitfalls of being attention-span-deprived (and also one of the blessings, since it makes life so much more entertaining), is that the smallest thing can cause me to miss entirely the "important" parts of a message or document or presentation or whatever. I’m always too busy digging the one little thing that grabbed my attention.

Today, when I read this from the S.C. Republican Party…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   CONTACT: ROB GODFREY
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2007

2008 South Carolina Republican Party Presidential Candidates Debate media credential request form released
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The South Carolina Republican Party today released the 2008 South Carolina Republican Party Presidential Candidates Debate media credential request form…
    “We are extremely excited to extend a warm South Carolina welcome to journalists from across the country and the world to our historic event,” said South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson.  “Last May, our debate attracted hundreds of members of the media worldwide, but this next debate will attract even more.  Journalists understand the significance of having a debate just nine days before our primary election, and they know the 2008 presidential election could be decided on our stage that night.”
    In August, the South Carolina Republican Party announced that it had partnered with FOX News Channel to present a live, nationally-televised Republican Party presidential candidates debate on Thursday, January 10, 2008, in historic Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  The debate will be held at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center….

… the only thing I got out of it was "historic Myrtle Beach."

What an odd modifier to choose. "Historic Charleston," sure. "Historic Beaufort," certainly. Maybe even "historic Columbia," although that’s a stretch.

But Myrtle Beach? Historic? There are other modifiers I could think of, both complimentary and un-, but that one wouldn’t crowd out the others on the mad rush to the tip of my tongue.

And yet, when I think about it (which I can’t help doing, such is my curse and blessing), I realize that in terms of history that is truly relevant to my life, the moniker sort of works — if you think of "history" as the changes that come with passage through time.

Charleston is what it was when I lived there as a baby. "Historic," but in a static way — sort of frozen in time, like a museum exhibit. Yes, Joe Riley has done a lot to make it better, but a lot of what he’s done has been to revitalize what was once there — essentially, to make the museum livable, vibrant and dynamic.

But Myrtle Beach has been like America — a rowdy, hand-over-fist, unruly thing growing and changing like a weed and just as ugly, but always with an eye to what the people want right NOW. (And yes, the America I love is many other things as well, but this is a facet of America.)

I remember when there was the Pavilion amusement park and arcade, Chapin’s department store, and ONE hamburger joint, as far as what I took notice of…

It was the place kids growing up in South Carolina wanted to go, a la "Shag: The Movie." A generation before the time when that movie was set, the place we think of essentially didn’t exist. Then, it was the center of this youth culture, the one place in South Carolina that reflected the Southern California car culture of "American Graffiti." It was also a low-rent but picturesque resort of homey, idiosyncratic hotels and shacks and bungalows — a far more warm, inviting place than what it became after Hugo, with nine identical "houses" on stilts jammed together on a lot that previously would have held one battered low-slung getaway.

In the early 80s, the growth started to metastasize, the scrubby foliage that once surrounded beach homes giving way to condos by the thousand. And the equally scrubby stuff that gave the place its charm started disappearing. For me, the greatest blow came when the little family-oriented amusement park down in Surfside gave way to a high-rise Days Inn, but for most of us the ultimate crash didn’t hit until after the turn of the century, with the demolition of the Pavilion at the heart of the city itself.

It’s history that has certain visual styles to accompany each phase of my life, old pictures you can dig through like archaeologists  digging through strata of an abandoned aboriginal village.

So yeah, I guess "historic" works.

 

How does ‘The War’ measure up?

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Something occurred to me this morning. I was thinking about something I needed to get done, and thought I might try to get it done tonight, and then I thought, "No, you can’t: You have to watch ‘The War.’"

At that moment it struck me that I’m watching the program as much out of a sense of duty as fascination, and that surprised me.

"The Civil War" was riveting; I could hardly wait to see the next installment. The images, the words, the music all stuck in my head for a long time. All of that was so even though I have never been overly interested in that period of history.

Meanwhile, all of my life, I have been fascinated by the Second World War. I’ve never been able to get enough of films, books, what-have-you on the subject. I consider "Band of Brothers" to be the finest program ever made for television.

And indeed, I’m enjoying this program. But mostly, it’s a matter of going over familiar ground, just this time through yet another set of individual stories. It’s well done; it holds my attention. There’s no question that it is vastly superior to anything else I might watch on broadcast or cable television. (Of course, that’s not such a high standard in my view, since I consider about 99 percent of TV programming to be trash. I basically keep a TV set in order to watch DVDs.)

But after two installments, it doesn’t have the force as a cultural phenomenon that the series that made Ken Burns famous did. Maybe it’s because I learned a lot from The Civil War since, unlike so many of my fellow South Carolinians, I’ve never been one to obsess about it.

I don’t know. Thoughts?

Here are two froods who really know where their towels are

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This is wonderful. These two guys have come up with a way to unify our fractured country, and everybody can take part:

    It seemed to them that the nation was more divided than ever over the war and politics, not to mention immigration, race and abortion. So the two of them — Bruce Johnson, a former disc jockey who delivers local fruit and vegetables, and John Maielli, who has a silk-screening and painting business — came up with a wildly ambitious plan for national reconciliation.
    What the country needs, they thought, was a unifying, rally-like event that would be free from politics and in which everyone could participate. Waving a towel seemed perfect…. "A certain amount of energy is released when you wave a towel," explains Mr. Johnson. It’s democratic. It doesn’t require skill or money. Wavers feel kinship with fellow wavers.
    As the event was envisioned, millions of Americans across the country would participate in a National Wave, simultaneously twirling above their heads a red, white and blue towel called the "Official Uniting Towel of America." Organizers picked Friday, July 4, 2008, when people are more inclined to feel patriotic. It would take place at 9 p.m. Eastern time, before most local fireworks go off on the East Coast and at a decent hour in the West. To give enough time for stragglers to join in, the National Wave would last 15 minutes.

It’s simple, to the point that one could easily call it stupid. But its very simplicity, its utter lack of inherent meaning, makes it a blank slate upon which we can all write our hopes and dreams for the country, and most of all express our desire for brotherhood in spite of all our bitter differences.

I’ve got my towel, and I know where it is, and I’m more than ready to use it as a means of reuniting my country. With your help, I hope to keep track of this growing movement, and promote it as the chance arises.

Bruce Johnson and John Maielli — now there’s a couple of froods who really know where their towels are.

Hillary Uber Alles — on video, that is

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Can I call ’em or can I call ’em? P.T. Barnum’s got nothing on me when it comes to knowing what the public wants. On Aug. 25, I predicted the following:

But wait — my Hillary’s Heckler video is moving up at an unprecedented
speed, having passed 6,000 views in only 3 weeks. (What’s faster than Blitzkrieg?)
I’m thinking that within a month, that clip of Mrs. Clinton and her
detractor at the recent College Democrats’ confab will outpace
everything, and put the Nazis in its shadow.

And here we are on September 19th, and my heckler video, shot during the College Democrats’ confab at the end of July, is now my most-watched video clip ever. It’s also the first ever to surpass the 8,000-view threshold — and it shows no signs of slowing down. (Yesterday, it was in third place.)

This is a good sign for the public’s tastes, as it finally eclipsed the previous favorite, which shows a Nazi leader talking about the Confederate flag on our State House steps. (OK, maybe a heckler isn’t the height of good taste, but it’s an improvement.) I’m also proud that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?" — probably my finest use ever of my celebrated voice-over technique, not to mention its social relevance — is holding firm at third place. Indeed, until the heckler’s last-minute surge since yesterday, it was in second place.

Yeah, I know — nobody cares about this except me. But it takes a lot of work to produce these babies, and so I care a lot. That is, I care enough to bring you once again my Top Five Most-Watched Videos:

  1. "Hillary’s Heckler," only 6 weeks old, zooming at Ludicrous Speed to 8,059.
  2. "Nazi Presidential Candidate Defends Confederate Flag"
    — 5 months old, with 7,906, this was the fastest-riser
    ever before Hillary.
  3. "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?"
    — 6 months old, still probably my masterpiece in terms of sheer
    artistry (the YouTube critics give it 5 stars). 7,810 views and also rising quickly. This is the feel-good hit of my repertoire.
  4. "The Alpha and Beta of Thomas Ravenel"
    — 11 months old, with 6,996 views, and falling farther behind as the scandal fades into the background. T-Rav is no longer box office magic.
  5. "Nazis Defend Confederate Flag II." My shameless exploitative sequel, shot and released the same day as the first hit, a la LOTR. 5,269 views.

Scooped by the newsroom

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Yesterday, Zeke Stokes sent me the above video, with the following terse comment:

Just when you think we’re making progress.

Once again, this was Zeke Stokes, not some guy who gets his jollies making fun of the S.C. public education system.

I looked at it and thought, "the poor kid," yet resolved to put it up on the blog as inherently interesting — but only after I put up several other things that had more substance. I didn’t get around to posting those things yesterday, and since Jon Ozmint is coming in in a few minutes to talk about all this, and we still have pages to produce, I’m probably not going to get to those things today, either.

Meanwhile, the blasted newsroom scooped me on this. They even blogged about it. Ah, well.

What it WAS, was a warning…

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Survival would be impossible in this doggy-dog world without friends to give us a heads-up when danger approaches. Here’s one I got today:

I have eight tickets for
this Saturday’s football game –  and we are making them available for members
of Senior Staff to purchase if any of you are interested.
 
First come, first served. 
Email me back.  The tickets are $35 each. 
 
Thanks.
 
Kathy

Of course, as a veteran of 20 years of this craziness, I knew just what to do. I immediately scribbled,

(note to self: Don’t try to come in to work this
Saturday)

Without such an early-warning system, things could get ugly…

Nazi Blitzkrieg rolls over Ravenel; Hillary’s Heckler in hot pursuit

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Thomas Ravenel’s notoriety is fading on YouTube.

My most popular (among fascists, who seem to be a fairly large constituency on the Web) video of Nazis defending the Confederate flag on our State House grounds has now taken the number-one slot among my most-watched clips. Disturbing, isn’t it? Of course, there was a certain car-wreck rubbernecking quality to the fame of the Ravenel video, so it didn’t exactly put the human race (or the master race, either) in a flattering light.

But wait — my Hillary’s Heckler video is moving up at an unprecedented speed, having passed 6,000 views in only 3 weeks. (What’s faster than Blitzkrieg?) I’m thinking that within a month, that clip of Mrs. Clinton and her detractor at the recent College Democrats’ confab will outpace everything, and put the Nazis in its shadow.

In any case, here’s where things stand:

  1. "Nazi Presidential Candidate Defends Confederate Flag"
    — 3 months old, with 6,862, this was the fastest-riser
    ever before Hillary. It’s resuming the number-one spot it held just before the Ravenel scandal broke.
  2. "The Alpha and Beta of Thomas Ravenel"
    — 10 months old, with 6,850 views.
  3. "Hillary’s Heckler," only 3 weeks old, coming up at Ludicrous Speed, at 6,235.
  4. "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?"
    — 4 months old, still probably my masterpiece in terms of sheer
    artistry (the YouTube critics give it 5 stars), with my first effective
    use of the voiceover technique. 6,054 views and also rising quickly. This is the feel-good hit of my repertoire.
  5. "Nazis Defend Confederate Flag II." My shameless exploitative sequel, shot and released the same day as the first hit, a la LOTR. 4,416 views.

I don’t know how to break it to you, but you got scooped on this one

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Just got an op-ed submission,  and the e-mail containing it had this heading: "Timely op-ed on Diana’s death."

That would be Diana Spencer, who used to be married to the royal Brit with the ears. The proffered piece was titled,"What I learned from the Death of Princess Diana and the Life of Mother Teresa," and was authored by one Les T. Csorba.

Gosh, Lester, you got scooped by about 10 years. The competition totally spanked you on this one. Maybe you should drop the "timely" bit. Sorry, pal.

Well, not all that sorry. I’ve about had it with my e-mail slot being overwhelmed with unsolicited pooge.