From Rio: A Tale of Two Images in Sportsmanship

The Egyptian judoka refusing to shake his Israeli opponent's hand vs. the gymnasts from North and South Korea taking a selfie together.

🔴Deux images des @jeuxolympiques, deux volontés diamétralement opposées. #Rio2016
Vouloir faire la paix ou la guerre pic.twitter.com/4UCPXY4WEW

— Jean-Paul Ney (@jpney) August 12, 2016

Crushing the Competition ... and Commentators' Puny Vocabularies

The NBC Olympic commentators have been - as a collective - ludicrously bad this time around. I couldn't believe I actually read these words just now about the US women's gymnastics juggernaut led by Simone Biles and Aly Raisman:

The commentators, whose voices normally bounce with enthusiasm, sounded suddenly weary. Would people care about a competition that wasn’t competitive? Would they grow bored of greatness? Or, as one of them plaintively asked, "How many times can you say ‘Wow!’ and ‘That was amazing!’?"

What kind of question is that? As my buddy Alessandra says, "There's no kill like overkill."  When greatness is on full glorious display, you don't ask why. You watch and are glad you were there!

By the way, commentators, let me suggest this.  On second thought, if you can't come up with words, then just be silent. That alone would improve the broadcasts immeasurably.

Friday Fun: Cockatoo vs. Kittens

Advantage: cockatoo.

The Awesome Diversity of Team USA

Here's something you might not know! 48 members of Team USA were born in 30 different countries on 6 different continents. The melting pot is in the hunt for medals in Rio!

Monday Therapy: Take a Chance

Lawd, another Monday.  Here's a little Shakira to help get you ready to face another work week.   The song is featured in the animated movie Zootopia, so that's why the Colombian songbird appears as a gazelle with hips that don't lie.


By the way, Zootopia is probably the best movie I've seen this entire disappointing year of films.  No, really!  I'll try to write a full review, but it's an A+ movie.  It's also now on DVD, so hop to it!

Movie Madness: DC Fans vs. Rotten Tomatoes

HAHAHAHA - Apparently this is for real!  DC fans have started a petition to shut down movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes because the collected reviews for Suicide Squad stink.  Isn't that like shooting the messenger?

Personally, I've about had enough of DC movies. The idiotic and grimly pretentious Batman-Superman smackdown was stupid and awful, and I said so at the time.  After that mess (how did you screw up both Superman and Batman so badly at the same time? AND Lex?) I lost all hope that Suicide Squad could be any good.  After this latest kerfuffle I think I'll just save my money ... and maybe go see the new Jason Bourne flick instead. (Here's just one review out of hundreds.  The phrase that caught my eye: "Suicide Squad amounts to an all-out attack on the whole idea of entertainment.")  The DC movie universe is a joyless, grayscale cesspool where fun goes to die be brutally murdered.  In the rain.

Besides, this little temper tantrum by fans about reviews is pretty indicative about how DC as a wider community can't get its priorities straight.  Usually I'm slamming the studio and execs, but today my target is DC fans, and my accusation is the same.  Your priorities are all screwed up, dude.  How about you take your rage out on DC for making a crappy movie that reviewers hate instead of on reviewers for hating a crappy movie?  DC bigwigs:  How about you quit making crappy movies? 

Here's something relevant that made me laugh out loud:

Anyway, the only thing the DC moviemakers are doing with any effectiveness is driving me into the arms of Marvel.  Ah, Marvel, fun, colorful, freewheeling, quippy, whose problems and peccadillos now seem like mere nitpicking trivia after the sort of total self-immolation DC keeps performing.  How's this for a conspiracy theory: DC's movie division is run by a cabal of Marvel undercover agents who have managed to infiltrate DC at the highest levels and who have been tasked with destroying DC root and branch.  Seriously, DC couldn't be doing a better job of alienating its fans and destroying itself if it were trying.

Friday Fun: Nike's New Ad

Now here's a fun ad!  You may recognize the narrator. That's Oscar "Poe Dameron" Isaac. Keep an eye out for famous cameos, too.

Rio Games Start Today

The Rio Olympic train wreck hoopla's about to start, so it's time to cut to the chase: here's a half-snarky ranking of all the Olympic events so you can plan to watch or not watch.  By the way, I totally don't think equestrian sports should rank so low ... Then again I'm living up (or down) to the stereotype that girls love horses, right?

Also: some sports are pretty much servings of world-class eye candy.  Let's make a deal, ladies and gents: let's not accuse each other of ogling and objectifying so we can get on with watching - respectively - men's water polo and women's beach volleyball, OK?

I might not have much free time these days, but I will be watching the opening ceremonies tonight because - get real - I can't resist making stupid comments, especially about fashion choices in the Parade of Nations.  Every time at least one delegation wears (designer!) clothes that look like they were pulled out of Rio's festering, disease-ridden waste dump of an ocean.  Still, perhaps this year's most fashion-forward outfit might be mosquito netting.

By the way, I will also assuredly be punching the mute button on my remote control A LOT.  For the most part the TV commentators are completely insufferable. Bob Costas at least has a streak of sassy smart-aleck that makes him occasionally entertaining, but the others are an undifferentiated mass of Joker-like Botox grins and inane hype-spewing chatter.     

I may not have reached this point of grumpiness, but I'm getting really close.  I do think this argument has some substance to it, by the way, especially given that the IOC is now approaching FIFA-level amounts of scandalous self-absorption, corruption, and Scrooge McDuck-like piles of money. 

Sweet Christmas, I'm getting annoyed just writing this post.  I have no real interest in the Rio Games other than a morbid desire to see whether they (and the media coverage) are going to be as horrendous and silly as I think they're going to be.  Oh, all right, and also because anything's an improvement on the current nonstop media coverage of Hillary and Trump.  Yup, coverage of an actual toxic stew of sewage and trash is still better than coverage of those two figurative toxic stews of sewage and trash.  

Oh, all right. One last thought: on the up side. You all know that I hate the "everyone's a winner" sappy mentality of school culture where everybody gets a trophy just for showing up.  At least the point of the Games (the brutal REAL point, not the happy-slappy propaganda talking point) is flat-out WINNING. For the next two weeks, despite all the inevitable nonsensical claptrap about whatever and retch-inducing images of NBC broadcasters attempting to samba, we're also going to get coverage about athletes training and working hard and having goals and being dedicated and embracing discipline and aiming for excellence.  We're going to get coverage of just how bloody hard it is to get really good at something.  And I'm all for that as an antidote to the milquetoast, maudlin approach that celebrates general mediocrity.  Hey, thrill of victory and agony of defeat and all, competition and contest, winners and losers on the field, and even if you didn't win, you worked and trained and competed hard in the attempt to win or at least to improve yourself.  There's a life lesson to be learned.

Monday Therapy: Everyone's a Food Critic

How to tell if your cooking sucks.

Friday Fun: Korean Movie Theaters!

Feel like seeing a flick this weekend?

True Confessions: Instead of Watching the RNC or the DNC ...

Seriously! Instead of watching the GOP's and the Dems' dueling dumpster fires (*insert banjo music here*), I did just about anything else.  Sure, some people will complain that I'm not doing my civic duty or whatever by not watching ... to which I say, DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY OWN EYES.

On one night (I forget which), I actually watched the following flick on Syfy instead. The thing is laugh-out-loud horrible, but hey, at least (a) it was entertaining and (b) I know for a fact that neither Sharktopus nor Whalewolf is going to be the next president.

   

Yup, that was the dude from Starship Troopers, another laughably awful flick. (The Robert A. Heinlein book on which it's based is much better. Trust me on this, will ya?)

 

Then I proceeded to binge-watch a bunch of shows on Netflix.  I'm thinking of giving the coveted Mad Minerva endorsement to this candidate or possibly this one.

Friday Fun: Real-Life Pokémon Go in NYC

OK, I laughed out loud.  Enjoy!

Star Trekkin' Across the Universe

I've had about all I take of political nonsense all around, so I'm just going to enjoy the fact that the new Star Trek movie is finally premiering.  Until I can get to the theatre and come back with a review for you lovelies, take a gander at this fan film:


And then watch this:

The Fur Flies In UK Politics

Quote of the day: "There are tensions in Parliament. Stand-offs, bristling, screeching and hissing. And no, we aren't talking about the Labour Party."

If you thought people fighting in UK politics is bad, you have another think coming.

The Few. The Proud. The Pokémon Trainers.

Look who's playing Pokémon Go!

Get off the firing line, Pikachu! That's a safety violation! pic.twitter.com/WilmXFBHlf

— U.S. Marines (@USMC) July 11, 2016

Life Imitates the Onion On Every Front

A few days ago I thought I had found the perfect visual distillation of this deplorable year.  As so often happens in situations like this, the year has, within the span of a mere week, somehow managed to get even worse.

Today is a day in which these things exist in the universe (in no particular order and with no attempt at being comprehensive):

• This loopy argument about an utterly reprehensible human being somehow still makes a certain kind of sick sense if you want the news media to stop being the lapdog of the executive branch and go back to being a watchdog. (Sweet Christmas, did I just say that?)
• This fangirly writeup about Nigel Farage, one of the UK's most hated public figures, doesn't seem to be ironic.  I'll say this for him: he said he wanted the UK out of the EU, and he actually saw his once-quixotic dream come to pass.  How many politicians can say that?  I mean, really.
• Since we're talking about the Brits ... The Tories have descended into a rocket-powered roller coaster of backstabbing and power-grubbing, and last I looked, the two top contenders are embroiled in a catfight of hiss-terical proportions because one apparently said something of such grandiose stupidity that it can't be real ... can it? One of these two is supposed to be the heir of Maggie Thatcher?
• Meanwhile in Australia, some frightened French holidaymakers had to call the cops to save them from "spiders as big as dinner plates." Bonus Aussie goodness: the cops said offhandedly that the tourists really should have been more worried about the 6-foot-long snake that had crawled into in their camper without being noticed. Riiiiiiiiiight.
• Oh, well, we can escape the nonstop bad news and overheated political polarization by enjoying a little art, right? NOPE.
• Now from the bastions of cherished academic freedom ... Haha, just kidding! That's PROFESSOR Big Brother to you! 
• Hell, you can't even play the universe's hottest new game without running into corpses.
• Et tu?  ET TU?  The whole thing reeks of a tawdry publicity stunt showmance as paparazzi-bait, and I definitely thought you had better taste than to stoop to that.

So let me sum up the current state of everything: "dumpster fire."  I was going to go with "omnishambles" since there's so much Britishness in the word, but I think the image of a mountain of combusting trash is so much more evocative.  In fact, I'll even hit you with some linguistic factoids about the terminology for this epic dumpster fire of a world in which we all are living.

Oh, all right. Not everything is horrible. Some things are merely batcrap crazy. Behold my pick for Headline of the Day: "A Fleet of M&M-Shooting Drones is the Black-Footed Ferret's Last Hope." And you thought it was Obi-Wan. 

Happy Fourth of July! The Original Brexit

On this quintessential American holiday, haters gonna hate ... but living well and having fun is the best riposte and response!  Enjoy your cookouts and fireworks!

You can sign the Declaration yourself at the National Archives online, indulge in some deliciousness, and/or enjoy this snippet from the delightful musical "1776":

The Perfect Metaphor for 2016

Nothing that I could possibly write about Brexit or US politics or Venezuela or anything else (and all related mass hysteria on social media)  could be better than this image as a metaphor for the entire kit and kaboodle:

#Flood water pushes a burning #home down a creek in #WestVirginia. #wvwx
🎬 Amanda Carper pic.twitter.com/zJSMe95nLk

— AMHQ (@AMHQ) June 24, 2016

Why the TSA is So Terrible

It's always been terrible.  Now it's just more terrible.  Abolish the entire thing and hire private security measures.  

British Business Leaders Write a Letter to the Editor

Dear sir ...

A Revolutionary Surgical Procedure ... and the Perfect Patient Name

*checks the calendar to make sure it's not April 1*

OK, here's the press release.  The transplant recipient's name is MANNING. No, really.

Movie Review: 3 Superhero Flicks (2016)

OK, darlings, let's do this in chronological order: Deadpool, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Captain America: Civil War.

                 

Short version for the impatient: 

• Deadpool:  Irreverent, gleefully meta-misbehaving R-rated romp. B+
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: As sleep-inducing as rhino tranquilizers and as vacuously pretentious as college freshmen. D
• Captain America: Civil War:  Imperfect but entertaining anyway!  A-  (Was there a teensy bit of grade inflation due to comparing this face-off with DC's?  You betcha.)

For those of you who want more details, read on!

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

The school year is finally coming to an end!  I can guarantee that the exhausted instructors are far happier about this than the exhausted students. Still, as I start to emerge from the black hole of school to look around at the world, all I see is TRUMP/HILLARY/BREXIT panic-mongering and media madness, and I'm tempted to dive right back into the black hole.

Anyway, as proof of life, here is a hilarious ad that I got from a friend of a friend. Let's have some fun with stereotypes and sport rivalries, shall we?

Out of This World! Space Exploration as Art

Science can also be beautiful wall art!

Movie Madness: "Ben-Hur" (2016)

Here's the trailer for the remake of 1959's Oscar-winning epic Ben-Hur, and I am all kinds of unexcited about this project, even if it somehow got Morgan Freeman to bring some dignitas by sheer dint of his voice:


Maybe the remake will surprise me and actually not be a disgraceful insult to the splendor and substance of the real Ben-Hur (i.e., Heston's, obviously), but I have my doubts.  Heston won the Best Actor Oscar for his turn as the complicated lead character, and I am pretty darn sure nobody's winning anything for the action-filled mess that is the remake if the trailer is any indication.

"Remaking what?"

When I watch the new Ben-Hur and write a review, I might end up having to rehash my Exodus: Gods and Kings review where I said:

I seriously contemplated framing it all as a "I'm sorry, please take me back, I love you!" letter to Chuck Heston. 

... Come on, babe.  You know it's always been about you.

I should never have left Heston's Moses aside to watch Christian Bale's.  It was no contest, and the storytelling was garbage.  Seriously, how do you screw THAT up?  Well, in much the same way people are probably going to screw up the Ben-Hur narrative, I guess?  Come on, the story is supposed to be about the fractured ties between Ben-Hur and Messalla, and the all the trailer can do is have Messalla yell, "Are we having fun now, brother?" like a snippy teenager.  Is that really the best you can do?

Anyway, people tried remaking Ben-Hur as a TV mini-series back in 2010 (yes, this really did happen), and that project made no impact whatsoever.  

Dang it, stop remaking Charlton Heston classics already!  

Contemporary movies are getting to be so much sound-and-fury, CGI pixel insanity kinds of nonsense (with notable exceptions).  Maybe I should start doing reviews of more classic "old" movies to remind everyone, myself included, not to forget the great cinematic achievements of the past.  Sure, they were all made long, long before I was born, but I'm a history buff: we shouldn't become so engulfed in the present that we forget the things that went before and start thinking that the short-term, attention-deficit cult of Now is the only thing that matters.

Longing for a hero on a white horse?  How about four?

Happy Easter 2016! Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Best wishes to all for a happy, contemplative, and restful Easter!  This year's art of the Resurrection comes from Baroque Venetian painter Sebastiano Ricci and dates around 1715-16.  Currently it resides in the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.  Click the image to enlarge for better detail.

Usually for holiday art postings I go for something from the Renaissance, but Ricci's vision has such a wonderful sense of color and composition.  Immortal angels and all-too-human soldiers alike are stunned by the sheer power of the figure of Christ risen in sublime glory.

For more Easter art (and related items), see the archives here.

Movie Madness: Terrible Movie Reviews 1, Ben Affleck 0

The reviews are rolling in for the much-anticipated Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and they are pretty brutal.  Look, La Parisienne and I were sure from the get-go that the flick would suck, but "30% on Rotten Tomatoes" is the kind of soul-crushing, black hole level of suck that not even I thought the thing could plunge into.  That's barely better than the 26% rating of the worst superhero movie I ever actually paid to see (that would be Green Lantern from 2011 ... and I still want my money back!).

So when someone edited a sad, sad song into this snippet of an interview with Ben "Batman" Affleck and Henry "Superman" Cavill, the internet ate it up with a Schadenfreudelicious spoon.  This thing is equal parts tragedy and comedy, and I suppose I should feel bad that I laughed, but ... The dead, glazed eyes of surrender just killed me.  At the same time, bless Cavill for bravely - nay, even heroically - soldiering on with a smile.  Take a look for yourself.  Oh, dear.  Oh, oh, dear.

PS: In case you're wondering, I still intend to go see this train wreck ... but maybe I should see Zootopia first (it may be a cartoon, but it's got 99%!).

Help Wanted in Japan

Think you're up to it?

Care For Some Politics on the Ides of March?

Heh:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Two ambitious senators have the opportunity to stop a pompous would-be tyrant from destroying the republic. To do so, they need to team up and take him down on the Ides of March.

Apply to Rubio, Cruz, and everybody's bête noire, Trump.  Hey, the essay is good for a laugh, especially with this imagined Trump-ifying of Shakespeare's Caesar:

"And no one is more constant than me. No one. Maybe the North Star. Maybe. But I gotta tell you, the North Star gets hidden behind the clouds. It's true. It happens. But no cloud ever hides me. I can promise you that. Always I am Trump."

Quote of the Day: Ian McShane on "Game of Thrones"

The great British actor sums up the show in 5 words in this interview, which is itself well worth a read for its sheer personality.  By the way, if you've never seen McShane in Deadwood or Kings, you really should.

John Oliver on Apple and Encryption

Happy Pi Day!

Bake accordingly, darlings.

Absolutely Awesome: Solar Eclipse Seen From the Air

More delightful details here!

March Madness 2016 Is Here!

Had enough politics?  (Here's an interesting piece if you haven't.)  The rest of us, though, can rejoice that March Madness is upon us at last!  SO, SO HAPPY.  Feast your eyes on the official brackets for the men, and get ready to cheer for your favorites!

Movie Review: Don't Do What I Did

I've been collecting data for a while, and now I finally have enough to write this post.  File the following under I've made a huge mistake. 

I have a pretty high tolerance for silliness, especially in the name of "so bad it's funny" and therefore "so bad it's good," but sometimes a project has absolutely no redeeming qualities of entertainment whatsoever.  Please take my word for it and don't waste any time or money on these gigantic steaming piles.  They all get a grade of F, and in my world "F" means "something I'll never, ever watch again."

Nerd News: Ice Cream Class!

Free Speech on Campus: A Depressing Update

UGH.  

Thank goodness for FIRE and sensible campus defenders of free speech like Chicago.  Remember, kids: speech codes are unconstitutional!  I should report, too, that not every campus is a basket case: the student government at UC Santa Barbara just voted in favor of free speech ... though I have to shake my head that this is even an issue at all.

Film Culture Commentary: Spectacle, Storytelling, and "Interstellar"

I've been thinking about movies lately (heck, anything is better than thinking about the current political campaign season!), and I owe you a review of Deadpool, so here's something for the interim. Check out this rather nice analysis of Interstellar (a movie I had reviewed here):

Nerd Scandal: Plagiarism and Crossword Puzzles

Well, well, well ...

Oscars 2016 aka What the Heck Did I Just Watch?

I didn't really watch the Oscars last night as much as I had it on while I was doing other things, but with increasing frequency I had to push the mute button on the remote control. The Oscars are always a big self-congratulatory party for Hollywood, and I've never taken it seriously as anything other than a fun fashion show where people get to show off plumage both beautiful and bizarre, but this year's Oscars were ... I don't even know what to say.

A few highlights and low points of this hot mess:

• Host Chris Rock's intro monologue was a little ... er ... rocky (I wished he would stop laughing at his own jokes), but when he landed his punches, he landed them hard, and he targeted just about everybody.  On this year's Oscars race relations controversy he didn't spare anybody from Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith ("It's not fair that Will wasn't nominated for Concussion.  But it it also wasn't fair that he got $20 million for Wild Wild West" and "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties. I wasn't invited!") to the Hollywood elite's "sorority racism" ("We like you, Rhonda, but you're just not a Kappa," to which he added flat out the term "white liberals!"  Wow).
• Louis CK was funnier and more real in his two minutes than the entire battalion of other Oscar presenters.
• On a related note, C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB-8 were warmer and more spontaneous than nearly all their stilted, unfunny human counterparts.  Shoot, the Minions, Buzz Lightyear, and Woody were better. How about next year we dispense with the humans entirely?
• Rock getting Girl Scouts to sell cookies to the audience was actually pretty funny.  
• The evening's attempt to address issues (both internal and external) turned out to be an exercise in surreal, heavy-handed virtual-signalling and tonally weird calls for action.  What was freaking Joe Biden doing on the Oscar stage?  Why were actors giving Crazy Uncle Joe a standing ovation?  Was that really the president of the Academy out there trying to tell people the Oscars were going to fix themselves?  Did the Oscars actually do a musical number about sexual assault? WHAT?
• DiCaprio finally won his Oscar, so maybe people can now quit yapping about his quest for that statuette.  Then he proceeded to turn his acceptance speech into a bully pulpit about global warming, and I pushed the mute button.  The most entertaining thing about The Revenant at the Oscars was the guy in the bear suit applauding in the seats.
• Mad Max did very well in the technical categories!  Still, Ex Machina won the special effects Oscars. SERIOUSLY?
• Whoever wrote the "jokes" and "banter" for the Oscar presenters should be booted. The stuff was not only unfunny or boring, but cringe-inducing for most of the show. Ugh!  How about we stop trying to script banter from here on out?  Watching Russell Crowe attempt to engage in unfunny repartee with Ryan Gosling was agonizing.  Just get out there, announce the nominees, anoint the winner, and go away!
• The In Memoriam segment, surprisingly, wasn't terrible.  Iconic video clips from departed icons Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, and David Bowie were very good, and the Oscars achieved its only moment of emotional resonance for me by ending the montage with Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek 2 with that line.
• Sam Smith somehow won the musical Oscar with his miserable tune from Spectre. Horrible.

Enough of this mess. Let's get to what really matters: the outfits on the red carpet. The fashion was as much a hot mess as the rest of the show.  Oh, I miss Joan Rivers' acid-tongued commentary.  A few people managed not to look awful, but ...

• Kate Winslet wore a shiny black trash bag.
• Olivia Munn in her orange dress looked like a traffic cone.
• Charlize Theron and Olivia Wilde clearly thought they were competing for the Oscar for Most Exposed Sternum.
• Cate Blanchett kept her dress in the pantry too long, and it had started to sprout by the time the Oscars rolled around.
• Rooney Mara dug out a dress from a previous century but failed to notice that moths had eaten a huge chunk out of the middle.
• Refreshingly, Chris Rock pointed out that people always ask the girls what they're wearing because all the guys are wearing the same thing (black tuxedos): "If George Clooney wore a lime green suit with a swan coming out of his [butt]," Rock proclaimed, "you can bet we'd all be asking what he was wearing - !"

Quote of the Day: Oscar Nominees

Enjoy this bit of brutal honesty as one anonymous Oscar voter takes on this year's various nominees.  Here's a taste of it:

"I am voting for Mad Max solely because I want to stop The Revenant."

I didn't even bother going to spend my hard-earned pennies on Leonardo "always the Oscar bridesmaid, never the bride" DiCaprio and The Revenant, but I did very much like Mad Max: Fury Road (and The Martian).

Speaking of brutal honesty ... 

Campus Culture: a lecture by Professor Gad Saad

I had not previously encountered evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad of Concordia University  (his faculty website is here), but I found this recent lecture of his to be fascinating indeed.

Winter Wonderland

It looks cool and all, but I'm not cleaning that up.

I Promised Myself I Wouldn't Blog About Politics. I Lied.

I'm sorry.  But I ran across this piece by Camille Paglia about the New Hampshire primary, and I can't help quoting it:

"Despite emergency efforts by Gloria Steinem, the crafty dowager empress of feminism, to push a faltering Hillary over the finish line, Sanders overwhelmingly won women’s votes in every category except senior citizens. Last week, when she told TV host Bill Maher that young women supporting the Sanders campaign are just in it to meet boys, Steinem managed not only to insult the intelligence and idealism of the young but to vaporize every lesbian Sanders fan into a spectral non-person. 

Steinem’s polished humanitarian mask had slipped, revealing the mummified fascist within. I’m sure that my delight was shared by other dissident feminists everywhere. Never before has the general public, here or abroad, more clearly seen the arrogance and amoral manipulativeness of the power elite who hijacked and stunted second-wave feminism."

BOOM.  In fact, it's so simultaneously mordantly hilarious and accurate that I'm giving Paglia her own tag from here on out.  

So basically you're telling me that Steinem and then Madeleine Albright reverted to outright, cynical, sexist bullying in their attempt to eke out a desperate win for Hillary.  If you're a woman, you must vote for Hillary!  NOT A CHANCE, SISTER.  (And, yes, I am using "sister" in utter sarcasm.)  If I'm not going to let a man tell me how to think and vote and live, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm not going to let any woman do it either.  Thanks, by the way, for confirming every sneaking suspicion I've ever had that a lot of the hot air being bandied around under the banner of "feminism" is, at its core, about the snarling, grasping pursuit of raw, naked power.  How's that for "mean girls"?

Stephen Fry vs. Twitter

Twitter isn't fun anymore. In fact, it's become a gigantic cesspool.  Occasionally I find something amusing on it (or about it), but that stalwart of British comedy Stephen Fry hits the bull's-eye with this commentary.  Here's an piece of it:

" ... let us grieve at what twitter has become.  A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know.  It’s as nasty and unwholesome a characteristic as can be imagined.  It doesn’t matter whether they think they’re defending women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists … the ghastliness is absolutely the same."

By the way, Twitter is complicit in its own degradation.

Taylor Swift 1, Kanye West 0

You go, girl.  She stood her ground with conviction and class at the 2016 Grammys.

Lights Out For Compact Fluorescent Lamps

GOOD RIDDANCE to those dim, curly, toxic miseries that Greenies shoved down the throats of an unwilling populace.  I hate those things.  Anyway, bye bye bye!

I love incandescents, and, thanks to heroic geeks from MIT and Purdue, there is new hope for their renaissance.

Since we're on the topic, let's revisit one of my favorite Remy videos:

Couch Potato Chronicles: Cabin Fever Edition

In case you haven't heard, this past holiday weekend was pretty much a disaster for the East Coast, which got absolutely slammed with completely ridiculous temperatures.  Here's one example from the Big Apple.  In my corner of Nerdworld, just about everybody I knew (and I) stayed indoors the entire time.  It's not the same as being properly "snowed in," but the effect is the same.  On the bright side, you can't get frostbite from sitting on the couch and bingewatching TV shows.

Speaking of, here is the list that I marathoned via Netflix and Amazon Prime during WindChillpocalypse 2016:

• Extant.  I'm always looking for new sci fi.  This one somehow managed to land Halle Berry, of all people, as an astronaut.  Season 1 was bumpy but interesting even if it wasted some good actors and really didn't fulfill its potential.  Season 2 was pretty much silly and overwrought, but I stuck with it mostly for Jeffrey Dean Morgan's dimples.
• Stargate SG-1.  It was time to revisit an old favorite.  The show is a rarity: it's the only example I can think of right now of a movie spinoff TV show that is actually better than the source movie.  In all honesty, SG-1 was really only good as long as Richard Dean Anderson and Don S. "Hammond of Texas" Davis were on the cast, but it's still way better than its spinoff Atlantis.  I spent a lot of time wanting to slap Michael Shanks, but I'll also love Teal'c forever, the perfect deadpan straight man.  Indeed.
• X-Files.  You know I've already been at this, but I kept going.  The truth is out there, even if the 90s special effects look really dated now.
• Justified.  I finally got to the last season of US marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) taking on his nemesis, the almost unsettlingly articulate villain Boyd Crowder (Walter Goggins).  Givens has a great cowboy vibe, right down to the hat and drawling voice and all.  Besides, Nick Searcy as his often frustrated avuncular boss is a great supporting figure.
• Vikings.  Way more entertaining than I thought it would be.  Season 1 has - get this - Gabriel Byrne as a Viking chieftain.   The Cine-Sib gives his seal of approval too, especially to shield maiden Lagertha because she's "a badass."

Passive Aggressive Text Messages: A Primer

Happy Valenswine's Day with Bacon Roses!

Couch Potato Chronicles: Enough Politics. Let's Talk About X-Files.

Yes, the new X-Files miniseries is here, and even though - let's be honest - it's been kind of disappointing (except for that hilarious episode with the lizard guy), the sheer reunion factor is enough to make me keep watching.  Come on, Scully and Mulder are back, and they're bringing a 1990s nostalgia bomb with them!

So, in the spirit of things, the Cine-Mad Sibling and I name some of our favorite X-Files episodes that we (and you) can watch streaming online at Netflix.  Here they are in no particular order ...  

• "First Person Shooter." Yup, it's the one where Mulder gets stuck inside a video game.  The special effects haven't aged well at ALL, but the episode is a complete hoot.  Three words: "Jade Blue Afterglow."
• "Arcadia." Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married couple in an unsettlingly perfect Stepfordesque neighborhood where residents keep disappearing.  You'll never look at a pink plastic lawn flamingo the same way again.  The Sib and I quote this often-hilarious ep endlessly. "Woman, make me a sandwich!"
• "Drive." Bryan Cranston.  Nuff said.  Bonus: This was the episode that introduced then-X-Files writer Vince Gilligan to Cranston ... a meeting that would later turn into the incomparable Breaking Bad series.
• "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." The men in black have never been so good.  That's Alex Trebek!
• "Beyond the Sea." X-Files does Silence of the Lambs via Brad "Grima Wormtongue" Dourif.
• "Bad Blood." It's like Rashomon. With vampires.
• "The Unnatural." Baseball-playing aliens.  Because why not!  I love TV eps about baseball.  That one from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Take Me Out to the Holodeck") is a lot of fun too, by the way. 

Finally, we'll point out "The Host," not because we like it per se, but because it totally creeped us out when we were kids.  I personally don't much care to ever see the Flukeman again. Like, EVER. 

We'll sign off with this, and get ready for some retro 90s tech hilarity:

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog vs. the 2016 Election

Once you get past Triumph's usual naughty schtick, you just might decide that the puppet's made the best political satire of this entire insane election cycle.  (Caveat: this isn't for kids, heh. Triumph never is or has been, after all!)

There's also an entire segment with Triumph taking on some college students over trigger warnings and whatnot, and I laughed out loud.

Zing! The Best British Political Insults on Record

With all due respect ... (Those words that always precede a truly ruthless attack, natch.)

Your Snowzilla Soundtrack

I am pleased to report that I am still alive and kicking in the massive blizzard that's dumped a metric ton of the white stuff on a huge section of the country.

I am also pleased to report that Snowzilla has produced a peerlessly party-tastic soundtrack that is all the more remarkable for being from a rather unexpected source.  Let's just say that's the best thing to come out of DC in months, if not years.  Listen to this soundtrack to a livestream of the weather, and you'll see why people are freaking out about this.

2016: Annus Horribilis Already

2015 was darn awful and pure dagnasty evil, and we were all happy to see the end of it.  Now I'm not so sure we're happy to see the start of 2016, or at least I'm not.  From the recent Iran incident to the utter predation on full display in Cologne to a truly surreal and absurdist State of the Union address that actually - I swear I'm not making this up - spotlighted Obama putting Joe Biden in charge of curing cancer, from the devastating death of David Bowie and then right on the heels of it the passing of Alan Rickman, it's enough to drive one to drink.  

I have only this to say to 2016: I'VE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF YOU, PAL.

Awesome: Star Wars on Spanish Guitar

Friday Fun: the Honest Trailer for "The Martian"

I very much enjoyed The Martian, and the Honest Trailer is hilarious too:

Today in History: Galileo Discovers 4 Jovian Moons

Using a homemade (!) telescope, Galileo discovered 4 moons of Jupiter on this day in 1610.  Today the moons Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io are also called the Galilean moons in his honor.

New Sci-Fi and Fantasy TV in 2016

I hope some of these new upcoming shows will be good or at least decent, but I'm cynically inclined to think most of them will be terrible.  

One Does Not Simply Walk Into Google Translate

HEH.

MM in the Kitchen: Buttermilk Roast Chicken

Fast, easy, and  delicious.  Thanks, Nigella!  Serve with a crisp green salad since we're all trying to eat more healthily after the unabashedly rapacious caloric orgy of the holidays.

Meet MacGyver the Parakeet

Awwww.

Oberlin Food Fight: A Cook's Perspective

You're going to want to read this.

Awesome: Fan-Made Trailers for Original Star Wars Trilogy

They're delightful.  Here's the first one for your delectation:

Friday Fun Video: Star Wars Trigger Warnings

Satire alert as the wags at Reason take a potshot at "trigger warnings" and people looking to be offended:

2015 Retrospective: Dave Barry's Year in Review

2015 was a crazy year, and it looks even crazier in humorist Dave Barry's zany, satirical retrospective.  Here's a bit of the section on January 2015:

In Paris, 1.5 million people march in a solidarity rally following the horrific terrorist attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Eyebrows are raised when not a single top U.S. official attends, but several days later, Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrives in France with James Taylor, who — this really happened — performs the song “You’ve Got a Friend.” This bold action strikes fear into the hearts of terrorists, who realize that Secretary Kerry is fully capable, if necessary, of unleashing Barry Manilow.

Zing.

The Professor and the Waitress: Thoughts on Life

Worth a read.

Belated Christmas Gift: the Honest Trailer for "Die Hard" (1988)

FINALLY!  Just today Screen Junkies has released an Honest Trailer for the best Christmas movie of them all!  La Parisienne, this one's for you, babe.

MM in the Kitchen: Olive Oil Chocolate Mousse

Everybody's predictable resolutions to diet and exercise don't kick in until January 1, so you can still indulge a teensy bit, right? 

Quote of the Day: Glimmers of Hope at Brown University

There are still defenders of free speech and open inquiry on campus.  As one of them just said in an interview with FIRE, if he were a university president, he would say this:

"I would make some sort of public statement—whether unprompted or prompted by one of these events—in which I said, 'This is academia and you have the right to say anything, no matter how radical it is, no matter how offensive it may seem to existing power structures. You are not required to uphold ideals held by mainstream America at all.'

Every time one of these issues came up, I would say, 'You can say here whatever you want. We can't police what you say. We can police what you do. And even though we can't police what you say, we discourage students in the strongest of terms attempting to shut down other students and we reject the notion that there are no open questions on controversial matters.'"

He then boldly slams Brown's administration for its deplorable spinelessness.  Kudos.  More of this, please.  Nobody cares much if teachers push back, but if more dissenting students do, it matters more in these ongoing and increasingly nasty campus culture wars.

Disgustingly Cute Monday Therapy: Kittens vs. BB-8

"The Saudi Arabia of Maple Syrup"

Smuggling, shenanigans, and skulduggery!  Oh, Canada.

An Author Considers How to Create Characters

Fascinating read.  Here's a bit of it:

"... your bad guys need to be great. They need to be so interesting that they potentially upstage your good guys. Hans Gruber versus John McClane. I’m rooting for McClane, but Hans steals every scene with his casual, clever villainy (best Christmas movie ever, by the way). "

If you don't think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then I have nothing to say to you.

P.J. O'Rourke on the GOP's "Least Insane Candidate"

Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar. 

Still, I do NOT want to revisit this topic.

Star Wars: the Premake

Check out this incredible work by a fan:

   Star Wars: The Premake from John D'Amico on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy this traditional Latin Christmas carol sung by a great tenor who happens to be a Franciscan friar.  He's Italian, because of course.

NORAD Tracks Santa 2015

The delightful annual tradition continues!

Movie Review: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015) ~ No Spoilers!

More powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Gentle reader, the hype is real!  I had hardly let myself hope that this movie would be actually good.  I was only hoping that it (a) would not completely suck and that (b) it would be better than the Phantom Menace (but I repeat myself).  Still, after raking in $238 million over opening weekend in the US (and $517 million worldwide!) to smash all box office records, Star Wars: The Force Awakens will not only make you forget all about the horrible prequels but also do the seemingly miraculous: it makes the entire franchise fresh and exciting and - yes - fun once more.  The magic is back, that hard-to-describe and even harder-to-create kind of enthralling delight in a rip-roaring adventure tale that transports you straight out of the ordinary into a new world (or, for us here, a new world in touch with a beloved old familiar one).  You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cheer, and you'll walk out of the theatre thinking about how soon you can go back to see this again.  These are the celluloids you're looking for!

I could go on (and on and on), but I dare not reveal spoilers, no matter how small, no matter how inadvertently.  I'm always cautious lest I spoil a movie, but I have it on good authority that if I spoil this one, my friends are going to throw me into a Sarlacc pit.  Let me say this, though: When the opening crawl began and I read absolutely nothing - zilch - nada - diddly squat about galactic trade federations and space taxes and planetary blockades, I knew things were going to be OK!  

I'll indulge in a few brief passing observations: Oscar Isaac, king of the arthouse film, is here as a dashing pilot, and I was happy to see him take on an action role.  Fresh faces John Boyega as Finn and Daisy Ridley as scavenger Rey bring new blood and great energy.  A new spherical droid named BB-8 is this year's Dancing Baby Groot in terms of sheer winsome appeal, and everyone I know wants his or her own.  Update: I can't resist pointing you to this tweet (or should we say "fightin' words"?) by geek lord Neil deGrasse Tyson:

In @StarWars #TheForceAwakens, BB-8 is waaaaay cuter than R2D2.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015

It is now common knowledge that Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, and I'll say that THIS is how you bring Ford back in an iconic role; THIS appearance is the utter polar opposite of the misfire that was the return of Indiana Jones in 2008.  One more thing: Star Wars Episode VII is a JJ Abrams project, so see if you can spot the now-traditional cameo inclusion of his old friend Greg Grunberg.

Mad Minerva gives Star Wars: The Force Awakens a grade of A+.  Abrams has made lightning strike twice: as he did with the Star Trek reboot of 2009, here he takes an iconic pop culture icon and made it new for a new generation even while remembering its initial past greatness.  Thank you, JJ, for the best Christmas present this year!

RottenTomatoes gives this flick the nearly unparalleled Fresh rating of 95%.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens runs for 135 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sci fi action and violence along with a few disturbing images.

Here is the trailer:  

UPDATE: The torch passes from Jurassic World to Star Wars: the Force Awakens, and this is too cute to ignore:

Cheers to J.J., Kathy, the cast and crew, and DIS/LFL marketing teams! #TheForceAwakens @Disney @StarWars @Bad_Robot pic.twitter.com/oa0zwuAb2Q

— Frank Marshall (@LeDoctor) December 21, 2015

Ready for the New Star Wars? "Come on, JJ. There's No Way You Can Do Any Worse Than This."

Hooray!  Screen Junkies has finally done an Honest Trailer for Revenge of the Sith as part of the Overwhelming Universal Hype about the upcoming new Star Wars movie.  Let's now cheerfully ladle hate on the entire prequel trilogy at once, shall we?

Jeremy Lin on Academic Pressure

Food for thought during exam time.

Incredibly, there have been haters responding to Lin's deeply personal account of his own struggles.  Well, screw those people.  I for one am grateful that he shared his vulnerability and offered a space to discuss the sometimes overwhelming pressure to perform, be it academically, athletically, or any other form.  You know, the fact that someone is prominent and successful does not mean that his or her psychological pain and lived experience are any less real or significant.  Let us all make an effort to be better, kinder, and more compassionate to each other, OK?

Satire Alert, Final Exam Edition: Look, We Can Either Study Or ...

The end of the academic semester is always a grand display of sadism, masochism, insomnia, human folly, general misery, operatic despair, and - occasionally - flashes of mordant wit.  In that vein, enjoy this relevant bit of exam-time lunacy from the reliable McSweeney's.

And That's All She Wrote

This pretty much sums up what I think about the entire Donald Trump circus (about which I've purposefully posted almost nothing). 

Arguably one of the few things worse than Trump in all this is the media.  GOOD LORD.

Monday Therapy: The Bluesy Prince of Bel-Air

Nerd News: Campus Protests and Free Speech

Worth a read.

Movie Review: "Spectre" (2015)

The world seems to be spinning into unimaginable lunacy and madness, so let us take a break and seek a tiny bit of cinematic escapism, shall we?  Bond is back, and here is my long-delayed review.

Live and Let Sigh.

The 007 universe brings back an iconic villain, but he and even Bond himself find themselves playing second fiddle in the end to traditional supporting characters who emerge from the wings to command the screen.  Give us a movie with Q, M, and Moneypenny (Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris ... and why not throw in Rory Kinnear's faithful Tanner too) on adventures right there beside Bond, and we might be onto a great twist to this venerable franchise.  As Spectre stands, though, it is a mixed bag of forgettable entertainment with tonal dissonances that threaten to push the movie into the world of camp at the most untoward moments.  Skyfall this movie isn't ... and more's the pity, because Skyfall set up the Bond universe with a promise of new greatness, but it's a promise that Spectre can't keep.

I'm not saying that I didn't like the movie.  I'm saying that I thought it could have been - and should have been - better than it is.  I suppose in the scale of Bond we should be glad that this is nowhere near as bad as Moonraker or Die Another Day or (since we're in the Age of Craig) Quantum of Solace, but for a movie that purports to give us none other than SPECTRE itself and that casts the indisputably great Christoph Waltz as the villain, Spectre fails to live up to its potential.  Missteps big and little keep dogging it and dragging down the already-bloated 2 hour 30 minute running time.  Let me try to explain.  Better get yourself a martini shaken, not stirred.  While you're at it, would you mind getting me one too, darling?

My Commentary on Current Events

Yes, this about sums it all up, from domestic politics to foreign policy:

Monday Therapy: the Star Wars That I Used to Know

What with all the recent hype about The Force Awakens, I thought it'd be fun to look back a little, both at Gotye (remember this once-ubiquitous music video?) and the Star Wars prequels:

MM in the Kitchen: Kimchi Mussel Bouillabaisse

East meets West as a Korean food icon meets a French one!