Tweet of the Day: Kelly Clarkson on VMA Train Wreck

Can someone please tell Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus that their 15 minutes of fame are up?  Kelly, on the hand, can actually sing. You go, girl. You throw that shade on tasteless exhibitionists who are addicted to tabloid attention.  Enough of this trash culture!

Just saw a couple performances from the VMA's last night. 2 words.... #pitchystrippers
— Kelly Clarkson (@kelly_clarkson) August 26, 2013

Spinning Scandal-a-Palooza

I stumbled across this hilarious image while news-searching for something else entirely, but it's so pointedly relevant that I simply must post it.  (Seriously, does Obama press secretary Jay Carney even listen to himself?)

Scandal-a-Palooza!

It's getting to the point where it's hard to keep track of all these exploding government scandals (wow, the snarky guys at Ace of Spades totally called it today).  There's too much fresh hell going on (need a scorecard?).  Here's your quote of the day, complete with awesome Arrested Development reference:

pissing off the tea party, natsec hawks, the press AND russia in a week's time is a Gob Bluth level of difficulty feat.
— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) May 14, 2013

In Flagrante: Scandal and Skulduggery

Having trouble keeping up with all this?  Me too. 4 thoughts:

• Lance Armstrong, David Petraeus, and now Elmo?
• L'affaire Petraeus gets stranger and stranger to the point that ...
• This is now a headline: "CIA Director David Petraeus Is The Only Sane Person In His Own Sex Scandal."
• Something from history: Allen Dulles as comparison.  

UPDATE 1: So ... Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, David Petraeus, some FBI agent, General John Allen, all muddled up with military and security concerns.  One gloriously snarky wag just quipped: "It's not a love triangle. It's a love Pentagon."

UPDATE 2: The Onion strikes again with this fake headline: "Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal."

UPDATE 3: How bad is this train wreck?  Professor Drezner has gotten sucked in and is watching this mess as if it were a soap opera.  Yup:

Look, let's be blunt -- as a responsible foreign policy blogger, I should be trying to divert your attention away from the tawdriness that is the David Petraeus scandal.  There's no shortage of other interesting stuff happening in the world.  Things like Argentina's slow-moving debt debacle, or the discord between the EU and IMF over Greece, or even the possibility of the United States overtaking Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer.  

The thing is, I can't, I just can't.  I'm weak, and the way this scandal has metastasized is friggin' incredible. 

What the hell.  If you're going to watch, you might as well call in some pizza!

FREE ADVICE: Don't send stupid emails. Especially (a) do not send threatening emails to some other girl if you yourself are indulging in some big-time double-adultery, and (b) do not send 30,000 emails to whomever you're carrying on a fling with.  (Still, 30,000 emails?)  

RELATED: The Secret Service's not-so-secret services.  Insta-Prof - um- nails it.

This VP Debate is a Biden Train Wreck

Good grief!  Biden is vacillating between being a creepily grinning clown and being a rude, condescending, interrupting jerk.  Meanwhile, Ryan's coming across as an earnest accountant trying patiently to explain math to a shrilly aggressive blockhead. Best line so far is Ryan's: "There aren’t enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending."

As for the Biden performance?  This is symptomatic of the dynamic:

Ryan: *trying to explain tax cuts* 

Biden, flailing: "Nobody's ever done this!!!" 

Ryan, calmly: "Jack Kennedy did." 

Biden: "SO YOU'RE JACK KENNEDY NOW???!!!!" 

Me: *facepalm*

I don't know how much longer I can watch this.  Martha Raddatz can't rein in Biden, and it's embarrassing.  Well, there's always the drinking game, Vodkapundit's drunkblogging this debate, and law prof Ann Althouse's liveblogging.  Given the choice between the cool, calm, earnest Ryan and the shrieking Biden, I know whom I'd pick.  Here's a news photo hot off the Internet:

Oh, boy, this one's even better.

Come on, Ryan, hammer Biden on the administration's indefensible record.  Right now he's smacking him with Obama's broken promises.  More of this, please, plus: "We have to tackle the debt crisis before the debt crisis tackles us."

You know, the only thing keeping me watching is simultaneously watching Twitter.

PS: Ryan notes that 23 million people are struggling for work.  Let me put it to you this way: That is the entire population of Taiwan.

Whoop!  I made it through the debate with my brains only slightly scrambled while my ears keep on ringing from Biden's endless screeching.  Raddatz did a horrible job moderating.  Ryan's closing statement was good.  I think he won but not crushingly, partially because of the endless awful interruptions and Biden's sheer disrespect.  Still, advantage Romney-Ryan.  Peace, out.  Oh - one more thing.  The Onion strikes again.   One more more thing: Thank goodness the drinking game wasn't "take a drink every time Biden smirks/laughs" or "take a drink every time Biden interrupts Ryan."  That'd be almost 1 drink for each of the 90 minutes of the debate.  

MTV Cancels "Jersey Shore"

Right on the heels of this comes this glorious news.  "Jersey Shore" among my students has become a kind of  symbol for modern trash culture.  I for one won't mourn the passing of this total train wreck and its awful "stars."

DVD Reviews: "The Tree of Life" and "Melancholia" (2011)

I watched these two because both of these artsy-fartsy films got really good reviews, and I wanted to see what the big deal was.  Famous last words.  In the end, it didn't matter much to me that Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life got 84% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes or that Lars von Trier's Melancholia rated 78% positive.  I hated them both, or, perhaps it's more diplomatic to say that I couldn't get into these movies.  Viscerally they utterly failed to move me.  This isn't to say that they aren't well-crafted projects. In a number of scenes, they are striking to see.  Both of these movies were pushing the envelope of film as abstract art, and in both huge orchestral soundtracks paired with eye-popping visuals make me wonder if the directors thought them all up while under the influence of - ah, shall we say - potent recreational substances of doubtful legality.

DVD Review/Rant: "The Lovely Bones" (2009)

Them bones, them bones, them dry bones.

Bones?  The very word makes me hear in my imagination McCoy snapping, "I'm a doctor, not a moviemaker!"  At least McCoy knows his own limitations.  Some people certainly do not, which would explain why Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson's attempt to adapt Alice Sebold's bestselling 2002 novel is a complete train wreck that will henceforth be held up as a prime example of how not to adapt books for film.  There's absolutely nothing that the talented cast can do to save this thing no matter what they do, not even Stanley Tucci.  They're hemmed in on all sides by the director and his pet writers.  The real winner here is Ryan Gosling ... because he was actually supposed to be in this flick until Jackson fired him at the last minute and replaced him with the unfortunate Mark Wahlberg.  Gosling's probably breathing a sign of relief and thanking his lucky stars in retrospect that he dodged this crapulous bullet and subsequently made movies that were actually, you know, good.

Euro Notes: $170 Billion Bailout for Greece

Will it prevent a Greek default?  Everyone hopes so.  Well, you can certainly hope for the best, but the other half of that advice is "but prepare for the worst."  I'm bringing the "train wrecks" tag out of retirement.

Irony Mingled With Idiocy, Thy Name Is SOPA

Heh.  The entire SOPA proposal is a ... what's that word?  Oh, yes ... fustercluck.

Euro Notes: Eurocrats Versus the UK?

*Sigh*   Are Eurocrats haters?  Well, some, maybe.  On the other hand, some of the Brits are pushing back.  There is something surreally amusing in watching a British MEP wordplaying with the term "FU" as something not meaning "fiscal union."  Oh, my.  


UPDATE: A defiant Nile Gardiner supports Great Britain standing "in splendid isolation" and accuses Merkel and Sarkozy of "digging Europe's grave."  Are things that bad?  Wow.  I remind you of Niall Ferguson's recent prediction that the collapse of the EU is more likely than the fall of the euro ... but neither will be pretty.  I've always been skeptical of the entire EU project, but watching this current slow-motion train wreck is horrifying.  Who can blame the Brits for not wanting to be part of it?

Wait, What Just Happened Across the Pond?

I've been frantically busy with exams for the last few days, and now that I have a couple minutes to read the papers over a Sunday morning coffee, I'm seeing an absolute flood of words about the EU, fiscal union plans, an attempt to amend the EU treaty, Britain's veto, and a heap of heated commentary all around.  I better catch up!  I think I'll start with Daniel Hannan.  

Oh, my ... Questions of legality are rife and everybody's lawyering up.  For an interesting perspective, see how British newspaper headlines are shrieking.  I think we can officially declare this a train wreck.  

UPDATE: Niall Ferguson weighs in.

Euro Notes: Greece and the Eurocrats

Oh, dear.   The slow-motion train wreck that is the Greek catastrophe in recent days has reached the point at which I am compelled to have "train wrecks" as an actual blog post category tag.

Self-evident metaphor.

Movie Review : First Impressions of "Terminator Salvation"

Burnout.

I just got home from a late showing of Christian Bale's "Terminator Salvation."

In a nutshell: I had some high hopes for this film, but the flick completely obliterated those hopes. I actually got tired of looking at this movie even while I was sitting there in the theater. I got tired of looking at the endless explosions, the grimy ashen landscape, the entire post-apocalyptic scene. It's exhausting to watch. What a disappointment.

I give the flick a grade of C. RottenTomatoes has a miserable rating of 33%, as angry movie critics across America tear this flick to shreds.

Don't waste your money. I would have rather gone to see "Star Trek" for a third time.

In fact, I might not even bother writing a full movie review of this movie. The characters are all flat non-entities with no development or charisma. (Heck, I ended up actively rooting for the terminators to rub the terrible Moon Bloodgood character out of existence. Ditto for the completely worthless little kid. Don't even get me started on Helena Bonham Carter's appearance.) Not even Bale's John Connor was emotionally arresting. I just didn't care. He couldn't make me care. Yes, John Connor, savior of man against the machines, blah blah blah . . . Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Oh, OK, Anton "I'm Chekov in the new Trek, so I beg you to forget I'm in this awful Terminator flick" Yelchin turns in the most credible performance of the whole cast in his role as Kyle Reese. But he can't save this movie.

In fact, the only salvation in the flick exists solely in the title . . . and in the fact that when it ended, I could run away.

You want great "Terminator" action? Go watch the first and second flicks.

Oh, the Cinema-Mad Sibling is in a more forgiving mood. He gives the flick a B. Still, he pronounced the movie "too bleak."