America's Got Talent

Some Americans do have talent. Unfortunately, none of them appear in this stupid show slapped onto our television screens by N.B.C. every Wednesday night. It's a talent show of sorts in which acts perform in front of three judges. The judges can agree that the act deserves to "move on" (whatever the fuck that means) or they get bounced with 2 out of 3 no votes. And, they can hurry the hook by hitting a button in front of them much like hitting the gong in the immortal Gong Show. I don't know what is worse, the acts or Simon Cowell pal, David Hasselhoff. He attempts to be the "over the top" judge by moaning and groaning about an act one minute and giving a standing ovation to a poodle act the next. And, why does his right hand always slip below the desk whenever some post-op transexual morphadite is on stage? The Paula Abdul of the trio of judges is the incredibly famous...Brandy. How did they land such a big star? I just figured she was booked up playing the atriums of the eastride, northridge, southride and westridge malls near you. She looks drawn out like she just barfed her last parsley sandwich a minute before the show started. The British dude, Piers Morgan, is the most reasonable judge on the show and is the only one that appears to know how to pick talent. I do think the show might be ok if they would just keep bringing out acts one after another. Instead, they engage in this tedious dialogue with each contestant either before or after their act which seems to bring whatever momentum they had to a screeching halt. N.B.C. will keep this turd floating for a while because Simon Cowell is the executive producer. There is no doubt in my mind he tried to get Mark Burnett to sign on to this thing but he refused. Now there's talent!

Ann Coulter is a stupid right-wing skank

During a June 6th interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show, Republican hand-job pixie Ann Coulter described the widows of 9/11 victims as "broads" attempting to profit off the deaths of their husbands saying that she "has never seen people enjoying their husbands deaths so much". In her new book, she challenges them to pose in Playboy before their stars burn out. Ann Coulter is a boney horse faced big mouthed slut that needs to crawl back into her own slime hole to die. Here's the transcript of her interview:

LAUER: Do you believe everything in the book or do you put some things in there just to cater to your base?

ANN: No, of course I believe everything.

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process.”

And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.” Because they dare to speak out?

COULTER: To speak out using the fact they are widows. This is the left’s doctrine of infallibility. If they have a point to make about the 9-11 commission, about how to fight the war on terrorism, how about sending in somebody we are allowed to respond to. No. No. No. We have to respond to someone who had a family member die. Because then if we respond, oh you are questioning their authenticity.

LAUER: So grieve but grieve quietly?

COULTER: No, the story is an attack on the nation. That requires a foreign policy response.

LAUER: By the way, they also criticized the Clinton administration.

COULTER: Not the ones I am talking about. No, no, no.

LAUER: Yeah they have.

COULTER: Oh no, no, no, no, no. They were cutting commercials for Kerry. They were using their grief to make a political point while preventing anyone from responding.

LAUER: So if you lose a husband, you no longer have the right to have a political point of view?

COULTER: No, but don’t use the fact that you lost a husband as the basis for being able to talk about, while preventing people from responding. Let Matt Lauer make the point. Let Bill Clinton make the point. Don’t put up someone I am not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of their grief.

LAUER: Well apparently you are allowed to respond to them.

COULTER: Yeah, I did....That is the point of liberal infallibility. Of putting up Cindy Sheehan, of putting out these widows, of putting out Joe Wilson. No, no, no. You can’t respond. It’s their doctrine of infallibility. Have someone else make the argument then.

LAUER: What I’m saying is I don’t think they have ever told you, you can’t respond.

COULTER: Look, you are getting testy with me.

LAUER: No. I think it’s a dramatic statement. “These broads are millionaires stalked by stalked by grief-parazzies”? “I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s deaths so much”?

COULTER: Yes, they are all over the news.

LAUER: The book is called “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” Ann Coulter, always fun to have you here.

C'mon Matt, get some fucking balls and call her out...there's nothing fun about what she said. Ok, so let's hear from the widows:

We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens. Through our constant research, we came to learn how the protocols were supposed to have worked. Thus, we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer. Could we learn from this tragedy so that it would not be repeated?

We are forced to respond to Ms. Coulter’s accusations to set the record straight because we have been slandered.

Contrary to Ms. Coulter’s statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day.

It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11.

We are continuously reminded that we are still a nation at risk. Therefore, the following is a partial list of areas still desperately in need of attention and public outcry. We should continuously be holding the feet of our elected officials to the fire to fix these shortcomings.


1. Homeland Security Funding based on risk. Inattention to this area causes police officers, firefighters and other emergency/first responder personnel to be ill equipped in emergencies. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.

2. Intelligence Community Oversight. Without proper oversight, there exists no one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities. Without such funding we are unable to capitalize on all intelligence community resources and abilities to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.

3. Transportation Security. There has been no concerted effort to harden mass transportation security. Our planes, buses, subways, and railways remain under-protected and highly vulnerable. These are all identifiable soft targets of potential terrorist attack. The terror attacks in Spain and London attest to this fact. Fixing our transportation systems may save lives on the day of the next attack.

4. Information Sharing among Intelligence Agencies. Information sharing among intelligence agencies has not improved since 9/11. The attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented had information been shared among intelligence agencies. On the day of the next attack, more lives may be saved if our intelligence agencies work together.

5. Loose Nukes. A concerted effort has not been made to secure the thousands of loose nukes scattered around the world – particularly in the former Soviet Union. Securing these loose nukes could make it less likely for a terrorist group to use this method in an attack, thereby saving lives.

6. Security at Chemical Plants, Nuclear Plants, Ports. We must, as a nation, secure these known and identifiable soft targets of Terrorism. Doing so will save many lives.

7. Border Security. We continue to have porous borders and INS and Customs systems in shambles. We need a concerted effort to integrate our border security into the larger national security apparatus.

8. Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Given the President’s NSA Surveillance Program and the re-instatement of the Patriot Act, this Nation is in dire need of a Civil Liberties Oversight Board to insure that a proper balance is found between national security versus the protection of our constitutional rights.

(signed)
September 11th Advocates

Kristen Breitweiser
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken

War of the Worlds

I finally saw War of the Worlds over the weekend on Cinemax. It totally took me by surprise but I actually got wigged out by a few scenes. When Ray and his daughter (Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning....ah, Cruise played Ray, not the daughter) took refuge in the crazy dude's basement (played by Tim Robbins) and the big eye came to do reconnaissance, the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. Many viewers were critical of the ending but I thought it was well done. I suppose the critics would have preferred Spielberg tie everything up in a nice neat package. But, why not leave a little to the imagination. Now, don't get me wrong, it was no masterpiece. Even while my neck hairs were on end, I still managed to scream out a few "Cruise is a fucking douche!" rants. As long as you can put aside his bizarre public Scientology bullshit, Cruise can be believable as an actor. Probably the most annoying part of the film was when Dakota Fanning's character for some reason starts screaming hysterically, runs out of the basement and then reappears outside to scream some more. I wanted to slap her precious little child star face. When (not if) Mike and the guys come back to film more MST3K segments, this would be a good movie to goof on.

If you haven't seen WOW, give it a try, you might like it. And if you've convinced yourself that the movie sucks because it's too unbelievable, remember the lyrics to the MST3K theme song, "If you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts, la, la la, just repeat to yourself, It's just a showwww, I should really just relax"!

American I-dull

I'm happy Taylor Hicks won, he deserved it. The season finale was, well...interesting. It was almost like you had to watch but for the same reason you watch a train wreck. First off, who thought Meatloaf would be good television? His seizure like singing and red hanky waiving were atrocious. What would you expect from a guy who just released "Bat Out of Hell part 3" as a way to keep his one hit record going. During the duet, I half expected to see Katharine McPhee blink out an S.O.S. message like a hostage videotape. Fortunately for her, Toni Braxton's lyric forgetting disaster with Taylor Hicks overshadowed the Meatloaf debacle.

And, it's good see Clay Aiken shake off that homosexual thing. Geez, could he have looked anymore like a twinkie-fisted bungjocky? Oh, and what about Mandesa in a red dress? All I could think of was her crashing through a wall screaming, "Hey, Kool-Aid!" American Idol attempted to re-create the memorable Kelly Clarkson moment at the very end of the season one finale. The fireworks at the crescendo of Taylor's final song were as predictable as Meatloaf's overacting. Toward the end of the season, AI was starting to get hacky with all of the family member crap. I found it interesting that most of the family members were totally absent early on in the season until their relative started to achieve some notoriety. As the finale got closer, I bet the family members were fighting like cats and dogs for tickets. I'm sure it was a real treat for the family member that got to sit next to a balling David Hasselhoff. He must have heard Clay was going to be there.

Baghdad ER

In this documentary, HBO captured the sites and sounds of the 86th Combat Support Hospital in the U.S. Army's Iraq medical facility. I heard in advance that this was a "must-see" documentary. Baghdad ER was very graphic as they showed the soldiers first moments as they entered the emergency room, mostly due to injuries related to improvised explosive devices (IED's). The level of commitment by the hospital personnel and the soldiers is beyond explanation. These are the true american hero's, not the juiced up baseball player that happens to hit a good fastball. Having a newphew in Iraq is tough enough, I can't imagine what it's like for the families of those shown arriving to the ER. The documentary was visually well done. There was not much as far as lead-up or follow-up which made it appear to be a quickly released project. It would have been nice to see more in-depth coverage of the staff in order to provide more personalization. For that reason, it was just an o.k. documentary. But, chances are we'll see many more in the future so they will likely provide greater background information. Unfortunately, there will be no shortage of patients, that's for sure. Hopefully Bush and Cheney pulled their heads out of the sand long enough to see the real effects of the war.

Documentaries!

There is something about the true feel of a documentary. They were the first reality shows. The first documentary I can remember seeing as a child was about fire and its effects on the human body. My parents made a point of sitting with me to watch it since, at that age, fire was as fascinating as Tonka trucks. I remember the show graphically covering everything from accidental house fires to people lighting themselves on fire for religious reasons. The footage was sickening and I couldn't sleep for nights. But, it was also fascinating and taught me a great deal about fire and why it shouldn't be taken lightly. The lives of the fire victims were chronicled as they struggled to survive. Documentaries can change your life. From Scared Straight (1978) to Defending Our Lives (1993) to Bowling For Columbine (2002), I learned something from each one. But, you should always remember that artistic privledges are usually taken utilizing the editing process. As long as you don't take the story as complete truth, documentaries can be eye opening and extremely entertaining. The Yes Men (2003) is one of my favorites but I don't now believe that the World Trade Organization is in bed with the devil. But, it did change my mind on some issues of social reform and the aggressive tactic of the WTO. Michael Moore makes terrific documentaries. Roger and Me (1989) is also one of my favorites. But, Michael Moore knows how to tell a good story, just not the whole story. But, that's o.k., keep them coming and I'll keep watching!

Welcome to my blog, what's it all about?

When I was 4 years old, my mom sat me in front of the television to watch Sesame Street and something in my 1,500 day old brain clicked. I knew that I belonged with television and television belonged with me. It was the beginning of a long, beautiful but sometimes frustrating relationship. I think of television not as a system of electronically communicated sounds and images but rather a way of life. Thirty-seven years and thousands of viewing hours later, I think I've learned a thing or two about television. When I decided to design a blog, I wasn't sure what to blog about. Before I could DVR through another crappy commercial, it came to me...TELEVISION. Why not, I think I have something to share. I will write about everything TV (as it will be known from this point forward). I will include topics about dramas, sitcoms, specials, movies, actors, actresses, and of course, the dopes that make up reality TV. I hope you find this blog to be informative, funny, and perhaps, a little over the top. I will tell it like it is, without fear of offending anyone. And if you're concerned that this blog already contains a lot of the word "I", guess what? Get used to it genius, this is my blog so "I" will play a prominent role. So, let the fun begin. I look forward to hearing from you once you read my reviews.