You Are Dumb - Television

Frum Here To Stupidity

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:12:46 -0500

Wingnuts, 28 July 2008

Memo to David Frum: GUESS WHAT YOUR NAME RHYMES WITH?

David Frum is angry. David Frum is upset. David Frum may not actually be in a tizzy, but You Are Dumb Dot Net's DopplerPlus ChildSafe Weathalert Stupidity Radar has him approaching a tizzy at forty miles an hour, with gusts up to fifty-five. And why is this? Why are David Frum's panties in such a bunch that they approach Panty Singularity? Because someone had the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to edit his televised interview to make him sound stupid.

Now, normally, I would be unsympathetic to David Frum, on the grounds that, well, he's David Frum, and Frum's always been kind of a fucktard. On the other hand, playing fast and loose in the editing booth IS one of the many crimes against humanity committed on a regular basis by the news media. So, which bastion of alleged journalistic ethics warped Frum's words? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I was certainly impressed to see a clip of myself in the Stephen Colbert program Monday night. The clip, which runs from 5:20 to 5:27 in the broadcast, has me saying this: 'Here you have one of - the oldest man ever to seek the presidency. When you look at the polls, you can see there is much less enthusiasm for his candidacy. That's a pretty exciting story.' Colbert wryly comments afterward: 'Exactly. McCain is old and nobody likes him. That's an exciting story.'"

Oh. Guess I can safely wrap my sympathy in linen and pack it away in my cedar chest. Looks like I won't be needing it anytime soon. Frum's upset that he got taken out of context by a comedy show. I toyed, briefly, with the notion that Frum didn't realize The Colbert Report was comedy, but no, he actually thinks Stewart and Colbert should be held to standards as high as their cable news counterparts.

"In making their point, they themselves violate every kind of journalistic ethical rule. They say, "It's OK for us - we're fake news." That's a convenient excuse. But it's not really an adequate one. Yes, the blow-harding and bias and herd mentality of the rest of the cable media are pretty bad. But outright deception? A few days ago, Colbert scoffed at my friend David Brooks for referring to the "salad bar" at Applebee's - when Applebee's doesn't feature salad bars. An error - how ridiculous! But conscious fabrication? I guess that's OK, so long as it's done in the sacred name of comedy."

Frum's choice of analogy is awesomely hypocritical. First, nobody scoffed at David Brooks for merely referring to the salad bar at Applebee's. By taking Brooks' quote out of context, Frum deliberately hides the fact that Brooks was giving his expert opinion on Obama's ability to connect with everyday Americans. It's funny because Brooks doesn't know shit about connecting with everyday Americans, as evidenced by his thinking Applebee's has a FUCKING SALAD BAR. It wasn't just an error, it was an error that exposed how foolish it is to listen to anything David Brooks has to say.

On the other hand, the "conscious fabrication" of Frum's words wasn't even used to make fun of Frum! I watched that episode as it aired, and I didn't even notice it WAS Frum. He wasn't edited to be the punchline, he was edited to be the SETUP. Frum wasn't made to look particularly stupid by the Colbert Report. Especially compared to the full context of his remarks, revealed by Frum himself in his whiny little blog post:

"Barack Obama is one of the most — maybe he used to be interesting, but in this campaign he's been one of the most boring candidates ever. Content-free speeches, (INAUDIBLE). Meanwhile, in contrast — and if, by the way, the shoe were on the other foot, every journalist in America would see it. Here you have one of the — the oldest man ever to run for president, winning his party's nomination against the odds through sheer hard work and tenacity, and getting up earlier and campaigning harder than men 20 years his junior? That's a pretty exciting story.

Dude, Colbert did you a FAVOR. You spent five minutes trying to fluff John McCain's flaccid campaign on CNN in what appears to be a desperate attempt to diminish Obama's foreign trip. You should be thankful Colbert distilled your remarks down to seven seconds, but you're too damn busy marking down timecodes and missing the point to realize how easily you could have been the punchline.

Needless to say, Frum's concern with assembled quotes stops with Colbert. It's odd how he doesn't even mention the biggest fabricated quote of the past week - when CBS took bits from two different questions to hide the fact that John McCain credited the troop surge of 2007 for the Anbar Awakening of 2006. Katie Couric's crew trimmed all the bad parts out of the answer, lifted some words from another answer to help rebuild the word count, and when called on it, claimed it was just "time constraints" and didn't change the meaning of what McCain said.

But to David Frum, his seven seconds of Colbert Report faux fame are much more worthy of attention. Because Frum's a narcissistic, hypocritical clown.

Too Soon?

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:36:00 -0500

Nerds, 29 May 2008

Memo to rabid Whedonoids: YOU ARE DUMB.

It's funny. Yesterday, Ubisoft announced "Beyond Good and Evil 2". It's the next project from talented game designer Michel Ancel. The first "Beyond Good and Evil" was an undisputed* masterpiece that nobody bought, due to the holiday glut and limited distribution. Damn shame.

This sequel news makes me happy. So happy that I approach a level of giddiness most of you probably think is impossible. I hope it's good, and I hope it finds the audience it deserves, and odds are, on its eventual release date, I'll be hurling myself at Best Buy with as much velocity as I can get away with. But that's where it fucking stops.

It's not my job to help Ubisoft sell the game. And I'm sure as hell not going to mount some sort of preemptive evangelism campaign out of fear that, if I don't, I'll never get to play "Beyond Good and Evil 3". I'll buy the game. If it's good, I'll tell friends who might like it about it. And that's all.

Which, getting to my point, makes me a better person than Nathan Nolastname, who's trying to kick off a fan campaign to make sure "Dollhouse" doesn't get cancelled. No, don't berate your DVR for not catching the premiere of Joss Whedon's new show. This campaign is predating the show by a good seven months, apparently under the theory that a bad idea is just a good idea without a decent head start.

Why bother in the first place? Because Whedon nerds are still fucking nerds, that's why. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I obviously know that it's abnormal to start a campaign like this so early, but I have watched so many shows end badly and talked with so many people who have stated 'I wish we had done this earlier'. We know that FOX is under new regime and are supporting the show completely. We would like the fans to be just as proactive as the network and hype the show to the best of their abilities -- so no one can ever say 'we should have done this, we should have done that'. - The Dollhouse forum leader himself.

Don't worry, dude. You'll never hear "you should have done that" from this corner. Here at You Are Dumb Dot Net, we concern ourselves with should NOTS. Like you should NOT use the word "proactive", ever. You should NOT be emotionally scarred by cancelled television shows. You should NOT believe that the reason all those fan campaigns failed was due to a lack of nerd dedication and early nerd action. If we've learned one thing from Snakes on a Plane and Serenity, it's that the combined force of the most dedicated nerds in the country can move maybe a million people, tops. And unless the first five thousand of them have Nielsen diaries, you're fucked anyway.

But don't take my word for it. Enjoy this brief listing of the five worst ideas for promoting a TV show to the general public known to man.

#5: "Why don't we make little cardboard dollhouses and set them up all around towns. A viral marketing campaign that gets people thinking 'WTF are all the dollhouses for?'" - Ultamatt.

Um, because viral marketing campaigns only work if you can pay them off with a big reveal. Otherwise, anyone who wonders what the dollhouse for in the first place will never actually find out. Also? Littering. You won't save the show, you'll just make Iron Eyes Cody's corpse weep.

#4: "You could make it artistic, with writing all over it, creepy, or just a dollhouse, like the personalities for the characters, the combinations are endless, but the vessel is the same." - Further elaboration from Ultamatt.

Amend my above comment. This is now littering that will get you profiled as a serial killer, and you'll probably be arrested for the murder of Iron Eyes Cody.

#3:"My suggestions are to use the principles of Word of Mouth Marketing and keep it cheap or free. Get the influencers to buzz about it. Get it on WWdN. You already got it on Whedonesque. Get everyone you know to Twitter it... Get regular updates on io9. Continue to get the blogging community to buzz about it, and then start spreading the arms of the virus beyond the standard scifi blog community and over to more mainstream blogs. Make some LOLcats. Get your friends involved in the facebook fan page... Can we set up a Dollhouse in Second Life? - "babydoll".

Put down the Web 2.0 and back away slowly, babydoll. I don't know who these mysterious "influencers" are, but I guaranfuckingtee you that if one of these influencers sees a Dollhouse-themed LOLcat, their next action will not be to call all the people they influence and influence them to watch Dollhouse. Even if said cat is in ur dollhouse, wastin' ur fuckin' time. Also, you can set up a dollhouse in Second Life, as long as you don't mind a parade of avatars coming through and fucking all the dolls.

#2: "another idea is for those that do fan art, where ever you post it (livejournal, fansites, fanpop ect) why not slash dollhouse with other scifi/fantasy shows like smallville or supernatural and post on sites and comunities such as that" - "amazondebs".

And this is why fan campaigns fail. Fans think the "broader audience" is people who enjoy Supernatural fan art. Also, since the show is seven months away, the only Dollhouse fan art people will draw are pictures of Eliza Dushku in tank tops, or Eliza Dushku in tank tops having sex with Sonic The Hedgehog.

#1: "What I would like to see happen is EVERYONE spreading the word about Dollhouse to their friends, web-friends, coworkers, and whomever else will listen and may be potentially interested. The point is not to come off as a superfan of a show that hasn't even aired yet (I agree that is quite annoying when people do it to me), but to show genuine interest in a show and make them believe that they MUST at least watch the first episode and make their own decision. - Forum Overlord Nathan.

That's the most awesome advice ever. Tell everyone who will listen, whether they choose to associate with you, are stuck being related to you, happen to reside in the next cube from you, or can't get away from you on the bus that they MUST watch the first episode of a TV show that won't air until January. But make sure you don't do it in a way that's annoying or comes off as a superfan. And if you can pull that off, I guarantee you you'll win a gold fucking medal the very first year they host the Asperger's Olympics.

*Or at least it damn well better be as long as I'm in earshot, fuckers.

Crawled Up His Own Sass*

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:00:32 -0500

Television, 26 March 2008

Memo to Bill Gibron: YOU ARE DUMB.

Here's the thing. I love Frisky Dingo. Bill Gibron, reviewer at DVDTalk.com, also loves Frisky Dingo. Now, by the transitive property of love, which I learned all about in my faith-based sex ed class, I should therefore love Bill Gibron. But I don't love Bill. I hate Bill.

I didn't want to hate Bill. It just kind of happened as I read his review. I actually went out of my way to check his reviewing history, because he writes the kind of review I'd feel bad about mocking if it turns out that DVD Talk let disadvantaged sixteen-year-olds write reviews for credit in their high-school English class. But this, sadly, is not the case. Frisky Dingo is Gibron's five-hundred-and-ninety-eighth review. Which means, on DVDTalk, there are five hundred and seventy nine reviews of even lesser quality, as Gibron found his voice and developed his talent since that fateful day, in January 2004**, when his review of MTV's Making The Band 2 - The Best of Season One took cheap shots at Puff Daddy's many names before offering up a "Highly Recommended" rating.

Six hundred reviews, and the damn thing reads like a book report. A section on "The Product". A section on "The Plot". The plot? In a Frisky Dingo review? Surprise surprise, his plot summary is really just a summary of the first episode, which goes on almost longer than the first episode, and largely misses the point, as Frisky Dingo's plot is a flimsy wire upon which a metric fuckload of jokes are hung.

And then, because these things apparently have to hit a minimum word count, he gives us one-sentence summaries of each of the episodes on the disc. Yay! I wasn't going to buy it at first, but now that I know that in the episode called "Kidnapped", Killface tries to kidnap Xander Crews, I can't get to Target fast enough. But just as you're wishing the dull recitation of easily-Googlable facts would stop, it does. And the analysis starts. Followed shortly thereafter by the screaming. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Frisky Dingo is the perfect example of a 'larch' style satire. Remember the moment in the classic Monty Python sketch when an ongoing slideshow depicted the now notorious tree without a single frame of familiarity of contextual reference? That's how this show functions. We recognize its (forest) familiarity, but have no stinking idea why it's frequently freaked out elements are part of the parody."

What. The. Fuck? "The Larch" isn't satire! It's nothing like satire! There can't be a perfect example of larch-type satire, because larch-type satire doesn't exist. It's absurdism. So is a lot of Frisky Dingo. I didn't think it was necessary to mention this, but there is more to comedy than satire and parody, even now. There are, for example, just jokes. Something Frisky Dingo is full of. And speaking of being full of, allow me to present to you the single most astonishing sentence you're likely to see this year... in an Internet review... of an Adult Swim DVD.

"It's not a new approach - most of the post-modern irony oriented work that passes for humor today uses this kind of comedy as a smarmy, smug retort. But Frisky Dingo has enough sass and verve to get away with it."

OK. I love language. And I'm a firm believer that we should use all the words. But only when the words are right. And unless you're 97 years old and discussing a flapper you banged in the Roaring 20s, "sass" and "verve" are not the right words. Or maybe if it's 1957, you own a bank, and your secretary, sick of your sorry uptight ass after ten years, finally tells you off. So you tell her she's got sass, she's got verve, and she's got to look for a new job. Apart from that, just say no to sass, just say no to verve, and under no circumstances cross the sass and verve streams.

Since I am not the type of person who thinks it's good form to mock reviewers for merely being wrong, I will not mention that, towards the end of the article, Gibron refers to "The Venture Bros." as "questionable content", and "funnier in theory than in practice". That's just a matter of opinion, and he's no more wrong than someone who, say, thinks orgasms are "more enjoyable in theory than in practice". So on that point, I will leave Gibron alone.

But I will say this. If you're going to try to get away with a summing-up paragraph like "To think it easily accessible or instantly likable is foolish in its own right. However, Frisky Dingo is not a dada-esque descent into pointless self-parody***. Instead, it's a show that has ambitions above and beyond its meager animation foundation. What those aspirations are remain a mystery, a conundrum concocted out of a familiar TV type.", you'd fucking well better know that it's a story ARC, not a story ARCH. Needless to say, we can file Gibron under Fail, Epic.

*Bonus alternate title: "Doosh!"

**While this is certainly a striking parallel to a certain grey, hate-filled website we all know and love, the similarities end there.

***Well, you would know, motherfucker.

One Hundred And Ten Percent Stupid

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:53:36 -0600

Television, 9 January 2008

Memo to American Gladiators: YOU ARE DUMB.

Now, here's where I fess up. I'm not actually irritated by American Gladiators coming back as a matter of principle. People are always so derisive when they talk about "bread and circuses", but you know what? Bread is yummy, and circuses are fun. And if we are in the waning days of the American Empire, we should at least be able to reap some of the benefits of our decadent fall from grace, and if it can be narrated by the Orange Divorcee Terry "Hulk" Hogan? I see that as icing on a delicious cake.

Let's face it. Despite it being 2008, we as a society are woefully inadequate when it comes to exploitative futuristic death-sports. There's no Death Race, no Running Man, no Rollerball. We're not inventing new sports. And no, finding new prefixes for -boarding does not count as inventing new sports. No Speedball. Certainly no Speedball 2 Brutal Deluxe. Not even Triangle, in either its plastic panty and bike helmet version or war-torn refugee variant. The only new sports America has invented in the past 30 years are rhythmic gymnastics and soccer.

Which is why I love American Gladiators. It's a futuresport. Well, sort of. It's what the poor, primitive cavepeople of the early 90's thought sports would be in the far-flung future world of, oh, about 2005. It's like a floating car with big-ass fins on the back. It's retrofuturistic. And some of the people involved get that, because the remake is startlingly unchanged from the original.

And some of them clearly don't get that, because it's been infected with the worst excesses of modern reality TV to such a degree that you'll want to beat the producers repeatedly about the head and neck with a foam baton. And where this plays out the most is with the contestants.

First of all, everyone's got a goddamned mom, OK? And most people have kids. It's how we as a species propagate. What that means is, it DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPECIAL. Do you know what that means? That means I don't care if you have them. And I don't care that you're doing this for them. And really, when you consider that what you're doing is jumping around on foam mats engaging in mildly homoerotic horseplay with bland bodybuilders, maybe your kids or your mom or your dead friend would rather you did it for someone else.

Second of all, if every single goddamned one of you is giving one hundred and ten percent, as you all will freely admit every single time Hogan gives you the opportunity, then that's what we call a level playing field. In three hours, only ONE contestant realized this, and promised to give a still meaningless but mathematically more important two hundred percent. Also, for the record, technically, "giving it your all" is giving it 100%, and thus should really not appear in the same sentence as "giving it 110%".

And third, I know that technically, one of the prizes in the new American Gladiators is that the finalists get to be Gladiators in the second season, but first of all, none of us are hoping that the writers strike goes on that long, and second of all, this does not mean you have to try and personify your stereotype this early in the contest. Especially the dickwad from Tennessee, who spent the whole goddamned hour braying about his momma chasing him up a tree, and hog wrestling at the county fair, and calling himself "Big Country", which is at least one gratuitous syllable right there. And then he ended up losing anyway, because in Tennessee, they haven't invented treadmill ramp technology yet, and it flummoxed his poor, cornpone mind.

Just stop talking to the contestants. Stop telling us their life stories. Remember that we're dealing with a futuresport here, and in a futuresport, the only contestant we care about is the tough rebel who bucks the system and brings the game crashing down. And since that's not gonna fucking happen, that means every single body that straps on the oversized plastic bike helmet is fodder for the dunk tank, not a heartwarming story of triumph over adversity.

Keep your propaganda out of my bread and circuses. They are not three great tastes, and they do not taste great together.

Unions Supporting Democrats

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:07:23 -0600

Democrats, 5 November 2007

Memo to South Carolina's Democrats: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Even though you're lucky.

It's said that the two biggest supporters of Democrats are Hollywood and labor unions, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what they meant. Because the only thing between the decision to keep Stephen Colbert off the South Carolina ballot and a huge, fucking blunder for Democrats is the Hollywood writers' strike.

Last Thursday, the executive council of the South Carolina Democratic Party voted 13-3 to keep Colbert's comedy-based, South Carolina-only, snack-chip sponsored presidential campaign from moving forward. Why? Because people like Waring Howe don't understand comedy. You would think a guy named Waring Howe would have heard a lot of jokes in his life, but if he did, he didn't learn from them. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"He's really trying to use South Carolina Democrats as suckers so he can further a comedy routine. He serves to detract from the serious candidates on the ballot."

That's precisely the kind of fucked up false choice Democrats excel at. You know, like how they think they can go along with the President OR be criticized as weak on national security. Keeping Colbert from running won't keep him from using South Carolina Democrats as suckers to further a comedy routine. The only thing that could stop that would be if, oh, say some external circumstance forced him off the air for weeks.

And just because it's happening this time doesn't mean Democrats should pat themselves on the back. It was still a stupid move. Yes, Colbert's presidential candidacy was a joke. But the choice wasn't between being part of the joke, or being serious about politics. The choice was being a participant in the joke, or the butt of it.

The biggest possible downside for Colbert's run would be how well he actually performed in the primary. So? So he pulls down more votes than three or four of the bottom-feeders? Whoop-de-shit. Anyone who gets beaten by Colbert in South Carolina already knows they're not going to be President. They've already been knocked out by the media, and by "the media", I don't mean late-night cable comedy. Colbert on the ballot is the least of their worries.

By denying Colbert, all they did was drop a great big fucking boulder in the naturally-flowing comedy stream. The joke WAS heading in a way that would make Democrats look BETTER, not worse. Thanks to the filing fee thing (Colbert tried to get on the Dem ballot because it only cost $2,500, compared to the $35,000 for Republicans), the GOP wouldn't be getting nearly as much of the show's time. And while not all press is good press, this would have been good press. For, ironically, the exact reason those 13 doofuses thought it would be bad press.

We're supposed to be the party without the stick up its ass. Or if there is a stick up its ass, it's shorter. And not a platinum rod encrusted with pearls. Pearls made from the ground up and compressed bones of homeless people. It's George W. Bush who was so bothered by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that he was followed this year by Rich "Not Edgy Enough For Branson" Little. What's wrong with positioning Democrats as the party that can take a fucking joke? There's a general undercurrent of frustration with the status quo in this country. And bumping Colbert off the ballot is definitely status quo.

So they're really, really goddamned lucky that Colbert won't be able to hammer on them for weeks or months on end. The writers strike will likely keep him off the air for who knows how long, and the interruption may end up derailing the presidential campaign bit entirely. Not that Waring Howe and his baker's dozen of no-fun power brokers could have planned on that. They were much too busy trying not to be seen as suckers. Good job with that, guys.

B-I-N-G-NO

Thu, 24 May 2007 22:17:36 -0500

Television, 25 May 2007

Memo to ABC: D-15. U-8. M-72. B-42.

I know I've been all cynical and angry and political the last couple of days, but I just can't be mad on Fridays anymore. Oh, sure, back in the day, Fridays used to be dreaded by the general population. It brings the end of glorious capitalist productivity, the fear of awful chicken wings, and thoughts of sketch comedy from the 80's. But all that is gone now, the slate wiped clean.

Because Friday is now National Bingo Night.

Yes, Bingo! The sport of kings! Long have we been regaled with bingotastic exploits in that one song about that dog! And why not? Bingo is a quintessentially American pastime. Forget baseball, with its chaw, shortstops, and steroid scandals. How many of you are actually capable of playing baseball? I thought so. But all it takes to play bingo is the ability to recognize five different letters, numbers of two digits or fewer, and knowledge of what constitutes a straight line. Which means that bingo is accessible to at least 72% of all Americans in as many as 48 states.

It's less athletic than slot machines, more egalitarian than sudoku. It's like Scrabble for illiterates. Unfortunately, bingo had gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years. It's been portrayed as an activity for shut-in elderly people with absolutely nothing better to do. But ABC has changed all that, turning bingo into a game that can also be enjoyed by shut-in YOUNG people with nothing better to do.

I'll admit, I didn't watch the premiere of National Bingo Night on ABC last week. Partly because any new show needs a few episodes to shake out the kinks and develop the plot, but mostly because years of abuse has left my heart unable to contain the sheer excitement caused by the convergence of bingo and ABC's attempts to jazz up bingo. There are lights and sounds and, yes, giant fucking balls everywhere.

But after visiting ABC's website and having a bald British host tell me that Bingo is "one of the simplest and most fun games ever invented", I'm ready to jump on board the bingwagon. The bandbingon. Whatever. I cannot wait to employ my masterful bingo strategy and play along at home. Thank goodness the bald British host also informs me that "At National Bingo Night, we play five-across bingo". My genius strategy doesn't work with two-across or Mandelbrot Bingo.

I enjoy sarcasm as much as the next guy, but seriously, what the fuck? For the past 20 years, we've been told that stuff like saying "son of a bitch" in a show, or Beavis and Butthead, or Dennis Franz's hairy ass, or South Park, or the worst excesses of reality TV are going to bring about the end of culture and entertainment as we know it. They were harbingers of a crude apocalypse where anything was permissible - live sex shows, organ harvesting, or the hunting of political prisoners by crazy enforcers in hockey outfits.

But it's not an orgy of blood, violence, and sex these shows were driving us to. That honor belongs to National Fucking Bingo Night. Any idiot can put up pictures of two people fucking and get people to watch. For reference, see the entire history of human art. But it takes a special kind of deranged depravity to think you can get away with airing BINGO on a Friday night and getting people to tune in and play along. Either that, or it's all part of a conspiracy to put the Onion out of business by making the funniest headlines real ones.

Adama And The Angst

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:45:45 -0500

Television, 28 March 2007

Memo to Ron Moore and company: YOU ARE DUMB.

Note to readers who care - this column will spoil the living shit out of the Battlestar Galactica season 3 finale from this past weekend.

This is what happens when people start to believe their own press. The new Galactica is a darling amongst critics, nerds, and nerd critics. Some of it's deserved. Hell, most of it's deserved. But that doesn't mean you get a pass for pulling one of the most laughable, bone-headed stunts I've ever seen.

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, here's a quick update. Humanity is on the run from the Cylons. The chrome-plated, monotonous killing robots you may remember fondly from your youth have become human-looking cyborgs, many of whom have large breasts and the ability to have sex with you in your head. There are twelve different models of humanoid Cylon, which makes no sense but means job security for the twelve people playing them. For three years, we've gradually learned about seven of the twelve, with the mysterious "final five" being part of a huge pile of mystical wank.

This, by the way, is one of the perils you run into when making Battlestar Galactica - you're basing it on a show that had a lot of pseudo-mystical wank. Bits of Mormonism mixed with Erich von Danikin and Greek mythology all served as a backdrop for Richard Hatch's feathered hair. Which means Moore and company feel free to throw in oracles and portents and destinies and shit whenever they feel the need.It's one of many inexplicable things they've kept from what is, by all measures, an incredibly stupid bit of source material. The mystiwank, the planets named after Zodiac signs, and the weird future-sport where you have to slam-dunk a lacrosse ball into a glory hole. But, you know. They took out the robot dog, so we should all be thankful or something.

Anyway, five unknown Cylons. In the finale, we learn who four of them are. The deck engineer/space Norma Rae guy! The old guy who's drunk all the time! That guerrilla fighter guy who was really good at the Glory Hole game! And that woman the president hands folders to! ALL CYLONS. No word yet on how their devious scheme to refuel a Raptor with booze while taking a memo about having sex with Starbuck will actually play out long-term, but I'm sure it's very sneaky. They're Cylons, after all.

And we find out they're Cylons because they all have bits of a song running through their head that nobody else can hear. And over the course of the last couple of episodes, we hear more and more, until it's revealed to be a sitar-heavy cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower". Which then plays in all its sitar-y glory over the end of the episode, turning it into one of those crappy fan-made music videos you get stuck watching if you wander into the wrong room at a convention.

The space robots know they're space robots because they all have Dylan cover bands in their heads. I shit you not. That's not the only problem with the episode. There's the whole Trial of Baltar, in which hotshot space lawyer Eurotrash McLudicrous the Third harnesses the ungodly power of Adama Trauma to win his case, slide on his narrow shades, and not-limp into the sunset. But the secret-hippie-space-robots-with-the-song-in-their-hearts really take the cake.

I can only assume we're meant to believe that the Cylons are actually super-evolved forms of iPods. And that next season, they'll discover the Ship of Lights, which, in retrospect, always did look a lot like Apple Stores do now. And they'll meet with Steve Jobs there, who'll talk for 20 minutes about a bunch of shit nobody cares about, and then do his "Oh, and one more thing..." bit and make the surprise announcement of his newest product, the iBlis.*

But seriously, it's just a stunt. A stylistic flourish. A juggler with eight balls in the air who sets them on fire in the hopes that people won't notice how many he's dropping. And it's going to be horribly dated. I can only imagine the cringing and fast-forwarding that will be going on down the line as the episode is released on DVD, Blu-Ray, holographic cube storage, and is eventually available for direct brain download from our Cylon nee Apple overlords. Can't get no relief, indeed.

*Joke annotated for those with a reasonable and healthy amount of pop-culture knowledge.

Basically

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:51:46 -0600

Main Column, 7 March 2007

Memo to Warner Todd Huston and Ilk: YOU ARE DUMB.

Normally I wouldn't want to do a second day on Faggotgate, but the biggest Official Talking Point in Coulter's defense is such an insane case of false equivalence that I can't just let it lie.

If people want to know why Ann Coulter is in trouble, and Bill Maher is not, it's because Ann Coulter did something bad, and Bill Maher did not. It's that fucking simple, and only a fucking simpleton could genuinely fail to see how simple it is.

Most of the people saying it, of course, don't actually believe it. They just need to throw up chaff, confuse the issue, and create a "debate" where none exists, because it's possible that the number of people who actually think it's good that Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot is below the President's current approval ratings, and could possibly cut into the Crazy Third.

Warner Todd Huston, writing in The Conservative Voice, provides the most egregious example of this awful argument. He spends a lot of time talking in circles, but what it boils down to is this. Here's what Ann Coulter ACTUALLY said:

"I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards."

And here's how Huston described what Coulter said:

"Coulter called Edwards a derogatory name equating him to a man that likes homosexual sex, a name that is tinged with the cultural meaning of not being a "real" man, being an effete, and a weakling."

OK. Compare the two. Measure the distance, and the direction of the vector. Got it? Pencils down. Now, here's what Bill Maher actually said:

"But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow... No, I’m just saying that if he did die, other people – more people would live. That’s a fact.

And here's how Huston described what Maher said:

"Bill Maher, on the other hand, basically called for the assassination of a sitting American vice president! Of the two Maher's comments are by far the more egregious.

Basically.

Five is equal to a hundred, you see - for sufficiently large values of "five" and sufficiently small values of "a hundred". If Ann Coulter had gone before CPAC and said that John Edwards likes homosexual sex, and Bill Maher had gone on Real Time and called for the assassination of a sitting American vice president, then Huston and everyone else calling for equal punishment and coverage might have the beginnings of the inklings of a fucking point.

At most, Bill Maher implied that the world might be better off without Dick Cheney in it. Now, we know it's not a universal rule that claiming the world would be better off without Person X in it is inappropriate or out of bounds. The Bush administration has said it about any number of people it doesn't like over the years. Which means that it's a sentiment that's only considered bad based on WHO you slot into it.

Are there any circumstances under which "Person X is a faggot", on the other hand, is appropriate or in-bounds? Only one that I know of - when the person on the receiving end is (a) gay, and (b) is known to be OK with it. Like the first couple of years of Dan Savage's column.

Beyond that, it's perfectly possible for someone to think the world would be better off without Dick Cheney, and still think it would be WRONG TO KILL HIM. For example, oh, every single person against the Iraq War. We all felt the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and all thought it was wrong to kill him. There are sane, rational processes for removing even seriously evil bastards like Cheney from positions where they can cause harm, and if a few more percentage points had BEEN sane and rational in 2000 and 2004, those processes would have worked.

There is nothing at all wrong with what Bill Maher said, unless you happen to like Dick Cheney. There's nothing at all right with what Ann Coulter said, unless you happen to hate gay people. And claiming that the two are somehow standing side by side on a vast, flat moral plain requires feats of rhetorical terraforming that only the most idiotic of assholes or partisan of hacks are capable of. Which category does Huston fall into? Who cares? Either way, he's dumb.

As Hard As I Can

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:18:40 -0600

Terrorism, 1 February 2007

Memo to Boston: YOU ARE DUMB.

No, not the band, although they certainly bear a certain responsibility for their musical crimes over the decades. No, I'm talking about the city of Boston. Although I will admit, their collective hissyfit does mean I get out of talking about Racist Joe Biden, which is a welcome relief.

I mean, don't get me wrong, calling Barack Obama "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" makes me cringe. It's Old White Patronizing at its worst, and yet another data point on Biden's less than stellar race relations chart. But even his weaseling out of it is boring, because at the end of the day, it's simply impossible to pretend to care about Joe Biden. And thanks to Boston blowing up the Mooninites, I don't have to try.

For those who didn't notice, Boston spent all day yesterday in the grips of pants-shitting, transit-closing, send-in-the-robot BOMB SCARE TERROR because someone said they saw wires coming out of something stuck to a wall. The devices were removed, some, according to news reports, were detonated. At least one, according to a sensationalist caption, was "neutralized with a water cannon". Presumably, and apologies to Joe Biden, with extreme prejudice.

Here is a picture of one of the "bombs". NOT ACTUAL BOMB TIME!

It's IGNIGNOKT. For fuck's sake. I mean, I don't expect every member of the Boston Public to be familiar with the Mooninites, but Aqua Teen Hunger Force has been on for six years. The movie's out this year - probably what these signs were advertising. Someone should have twigged. Turns out they're just magnetic lights. Does that look threatening to you? Hell, Ignignokt doesn't even have a beard. I'm not sure what prompted people to think a pixelated blob flipping them off would explode, but that's life in the post-9/11 mindset for ya.

The best part of the whole thing for me is the way everyone, desperate to justify their jobs even after learning that they're just tiny advertisements, tiny advertisements that have been placed in nine other cities without a single bomb squad getting called in, kept describing the signs in dark, foreboding terms. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The exact nature of the objects was not disclosed. But authorities said some looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them." - The Associated Press, whose story had, a few paragraphs before, disclosed the exact nature of the objects.

Also desperate to seem useful was the government. Massachussets governor Duval Patrick proclaimed his outrage thusly: "It's a hoax - and it's not funny." Patrick's new at this, so I'll cut him a tiny bit of slack, but it's not a hoax. A hoax would be Cartoon Network planting things that looked like bombs on Boston subways so that people would think they were bombs. And that wouldn't be funny. What ACTUALLY happened was that Cartoon Network put up some ads that some Bostonians mistook for baaaaahms. And that IS funny.

Similarly, Boston mayor Thomas Menido. "This is not playing around. It's about keeping a city on edge. It's about public safety." It's about people getting freaked out by pixels flipping them off. Yell all you want about how people have to be suspicious and people have to be alert, but the fact is, they were suspicious of and alert to a fucking LITE BRITE. So, you know. Threaten fines and prosecution all you want, but don't expect us not to laugh at you the next time you throw yourself on an Etch-A-Sketch in an act of pointless faux-heroism.

Boston needs to stop watching "24" and start watching "Frisky Dingo". Because if anyone does plant a real bomb in a Boston subway, I can guarantee three things. One, you're not going to spot it. Two, you're not going to save everybody from it, and three, it's not going to have a picture of a cartoon character on it. Can you see this? Because I'm doing it as hard as I can.

LAST-MINUTE UPDATE: Since I penned this, they've now arrested a college student in connection with the events. Which means they're really desperate to not look stupid. Yay.

Anti-Social Networking

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:46:35 -0500

Main Column, 19 April 2006

Memo to MySpace: KEEP YOURSPACE OFF MY TVSPACE.

Ah, MySpace. Now that all the self-obsessed middle schoolers of LiveJournal have moved on to high school, where with the self-obsessed middle-schoolers make the ugliest websites on the planet? MySpace of course!

Seriously. Pull the half-dozen listenable bands with MySpace pages off of there, and what you're left with is just the latest step in an evolutionary chain that included AOL and GeoCities before them. But MySpace is the current belle of the ball, so the money and offers are pouring in almost as fast as local news anchors can warn you ominously about how your kid's MySpace page will get them alley-raped by a school janitor.

And one of those offers is... television. No, really. Take an ordinary show, and integrate MySpace into it. Because I know the last time I was watching Battlestar Galactica, the experience wasn't complete without knowing what some dork and his extended network were thinking. How, exactly, would this work? How, to quote MySpace marketing president* Shawn Gold, will they be "integrating social networking into the TV show and their traditional TV buy"?

Well, we can get an idea from some of the past attempts at interactive TV, starting with when the art form peaked.

Those of you of an appropriate age, and from the eastern portion of our great nation, may recall an early ITV innovation - kids would call in and shout into the phone, and every time they would shout, some poor soul at the station would press the fire button on an Atari 2600. There were prizes involved. Since then, it's all been downhill.

From CNN anchors reading blog contents on-air, to Total Request Live, attempts to merge the Internet and TV have been doomed to failure. Remember when The Smoking Gun got a TV show? I love The Smoking Gun, but someone, somewhere had to realize that police blotters, nerds, and cameras were not a winning combination.

And, of course, there's Star Trek 2.0. Which you'd think would be a stupid way of marketing Star Trek: The Next Generation, but no. It's actually O.G. Star Trek reruns on the increasingly-not-about-video-games G4 cable channel. What makes it 2.0? It's SMALLER.

Yes, they've taken classic Star Trek and given it a two-inch grey border. And in that grey border, they have added what they like to call "additional content", and what I like to call "shit on toast".

One side of the screen includes episode trivia. Which is not an awful idea, except that since 1969, the world has been gradually assembling itself into two groups. One group knows every bit of Star Trek trivia in existence, and the other group isn't interested in knowing any bit of Star Trek trivia in existence. And like Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio, the two sides are locked in eternal conflict.

Another side includes Trek Stats, which is like Trek Trivia, only less interesting. It's like a drinking game crossed with chartered accountancy, without the booze. Various pointless categories are established and tallied as the episode progresses. And while I'm sure that means Bjo Trimble's note paper budget just got cut by two thirds, I don't think that's why I pay for cable.

And then there's the on-screen chat! Yes! If there's one segment of the Internet whose views needed broader exposure, it's gamer geeks with laptops and Wi-Fi who stay up late at night watching Star Trek reruns. If I wanted to hear more from those people, I'd... have to cut back on my sleep time, actually.

And finally, the Spock Market. It's some kind of interactive game. Again, an unpleasant association with accounting rears its ugly head. I'm not sure how it works, because my dedication to this column knows certain limits. But I know wildly unappealing when I see it.

So if MySpace really wants to merge its exciting mix of blogs, bands, and mental retardation into the living room, they should take a long, hard look at the dozens of lemming corpses at the bottom of the cliff. And make the right choice.

*That's the Web 2.0 job title for what, in Web 1.0, we called "Minion of Satan".

My Troop Support Deficiencies

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 22:15:43 -0600

Television, 13 February 2006

Memo to the "Midwest Heroes": I WITHDRAW MY SUPPORT.

I know we're supposed to support the troops. And I have been. I mean, not to the extent of doing anything. I haven't even put a magnetic ribbon or twelve on my car. I haven't chipped in for body armor, I voted for John Kerry, I write angry left-wing screeds on the Interweb. But I still support the troops, because, well, I'm led to understand it's necessary, and anyone who doesn't constantly repeat that they're supporting the troops is assumed to be spitting on the baby-killers in their spare time.

However, I'm going to have to take a risk here and officially withdraw my "support" from the Midwest Heroes, of midwestheroes.com, specifically Lt. Colonel Robert "Bob" Stephenson of Woodbury and his friends. But it's OK, really! They don't need my support. Their support cup runneth over like a backed-up toilet.

Because they're being quite well-supported by the Progress For America Voter Fund. If you're unfamiliar with them, it's because they were too busy raising $30 million for Bush in 2004. And, with no Bush to re-elect in the immediate future, they're dropping tall dollar on a new campaign to take us back to 2002.

Yes, that glorious time post-invasion when things looked so bright and sunny. When Saddam was still a missing bogeyman and not a ranting nutjob in his underwear whose trial is a collapsing joke. When the elections would fix everything and freedom would reign any day now. When you could still say "Al Qaeda" and "Iraq" in the same sentence and not get yelled at.

That's the weird time warp reflected in the ad produced and paid for by Progress For America, starring Stephenson and company, and airing now in Minnesota. I don't know how much they spent, but I do know I saw the ad on prime-time during the Olympics, leaving me once again holding the torn scraps of my dream to one day watch propaganda-free luge. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The media only reports the bad news. But American troops are making real progress securing free elections, and defending our country from radical Al Qaeda terrorists who want to destroy America, starting in Iraq."

God, it makes me almost nostalgic. The good stuff isn't being reported! By the media! It's not like a bank robbery, where one day they report on the robbery, and the rest of the week they report on the many successful deposits and withdrawals made at the ATM outside. The media hates freedom!

And Al Qaeda wants to destroy America... starting in Iraq? That sounds like a shitty plan to me. I mean, ignoring the fact that their, er, plan to destroy America, such as it is, didn't start in Iraq in the first place, you'd think if you wanted to destroy America, the last place you'd try to do it is in a country on the opposite side of the globe America could just walk out of.

The ad then goes on to remind us that Saddam Hussein was bad, which we knew, thanks. Don't tell me Hussein was bad. It's not like I was caught on film shaking that motherfucker's hand. That's crazy talk, shaking the hand of a mass murderer.

"You'd never know it from the news reports, but our enemy in Iraq IS Al Qaeda."

You know, even reading the occasional New York Times article, I was able to figure out that one of any number of enemies we have in Iraq is Al Qaeda. Hell, by media accounts, they've got hundreds of "top deputies" in there who keep getting killed off. Building strawmen at that rate is admirable, but it won't help the Army meet its recruiting goals.

The ad goes on to tell us that Al Qaeda is bad. Which, again, is a bit like Exxon telling us to buy gasoline from them. We've got that message, thanks. If I didn't know better, I'd think this ad was the product of a bunch of grumpy, patronizing neocons with poll numbers gripped tightly in one clawed fist.

"American troops overwhelmingly support the mission President Bush has given us." - which, depending on how you define "support", is either a lie, or the inevitable product of the chain of command and stiff penalties for insubordination.

"Where do you want to fight terrorists? We want to fight them, and destroy them, in Iraq." - Well, bully for you, Lieutenant Colonel False Dichotomy. But you know, it's taken almost four long, exhausting years to get a tiny fraction of this bullshit expuncged from the minds of the American public. And it must be working, because otherwise you wouldn't be shelling out piles of cash in an attempt to shove it all back in there. And interrupting perfectly acceptable luging in the process, shitheads.

The End Of The Spears

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:12:14 -0600

Main Column, 8 February 2006

Memo to NBC: YOU ARE DUMB.

And what's worse, you think I'm dumber than you are. Look, if you're going to cave to every right-wing fucko that complains to you, that's fine. Go ahead. Cave to your heart's content. Spelunk your asses off from Monday to Friday. Replace Dateline with the 700 Club. Go nuts. Replace Keith Olbermann with Fred Phelps. I don't care. I don't watch NBC.

But don't fucking lie about it. Or, if you MUST lie, try to come up with something even remotely plausible, something that insults our collective intelligence less than the average episode of "Joey". This is not too much to ask. We know you can lie. You're a TELEVISION NETWORK, for fuck's sake. If you can't trust network spokesman to do a credible job of dissembling, what's this world coming to?

The situation, as you may or may not know, involves the final season of Will and Grace. You know, the show about the celibate gay guy. Apparently, Will has a talk show on a gay cable network. I don't know if he always had a talk show, or it was something they added later, like K.I.T.T.'s "Super Turbo", but that's neither here nor there.

Last week, NBC announced that the April 13th episode would feature Jack's network, "Out TV", being bought out by Christian conservatives. And, in a move familiar to anyone who's seen a cable channel change hands, instead of just replacing all the gay programming, the new owners just add Christians to the existing shows. This is where Britney Spears comes in.

I know. Bear with me. Britney, according to NBC, would be playing Jack's new Jesus-lovin' co-host, and would have a cooking segment titled "Cruci-Fixins". Which is when Donald Wildmon's anger was redirected. See, I don't think Donald Wildmon ever stops being outraged. He's like a light-cycle. He's always going forward, all you can do is hope to do is change his direction and hope he runs into a wall.

Wildmon yelled. Letters were written. And NBC caved. But did they say "OK, that's a bad idea, sorry?" No. Did they suddenly realize it would be a cruel trick to play on viewers if, after eight years, they were to suddenly allow a funny joke into a "Will and Grace" script? No, they did not. Here is NBC's excuse. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Some erroneous information was mistakenly included in a press release describing an upcoming episode of 'Will & Grace' which, in fact, has yet to be written. The reference to 'Cruci-fixin's' will not be in the show and the storyline will not contain a Christian characterization at all. We value our viewers and sincerely regret if this misinformation has offended them."

That can't be true. What kind of chickenshit press outfit must NBC have if it WERE true? That somehow, fairly detailed plot and character information was made up out of whole cloth and inserted into a press release? It's impossible for NBC to have hired enough 24-year-old college dropouts to make a mistake that big, because they're all apparently working for NASA now.

They caved. They caved because they already got yelled at once over "The Book Of Daniel", which apparently depicted Jesus as some kind of tolerant hippie liberal. When they canned that, they said it was because the ratings sucked. And you looked at the ratings, and the ratings did in fact suck. So there you go. But for this one, they so blatantly caved they made Ford Motor Company and Microsoft look like floats in the Gay Pride Parade.

But choose an audience and stand by it. If you want conservative homophobic Christians to watch the show with the gay guy in it, then by all means, pull any Jesus jokes out of the script. If, on the other hand, you want liberal, educated, comedy-loving people like me to watch Will and Grace... well, actually, you're screwed. The competition's just too fierce. It's up against, um, an episode of X-Play I've seen three times before, or a Home Movies DVD, or a nap, or something.

But I'm sure there's some crossover audience who would have loved the "Cruci-fixin's" joke, yet was willing to tune in to "Will and Grace". So pick Wildmon's crew, or pick the rest, and stick with it. Because you're not fooling anybody.

The Ten Million Dollar Penis

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:27:44 -0600

Television, 23 November 2005

Memo to Jeffrey Bedford: YOU ARE DUMB.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of reality TV. But I generally don't rail against genres, so I don't run around yelling about our civilization going down in flames because they won't stop making seasons of "Survivor".

I don't love reality TV, but I love love love love LOVE reality TV lawsuits. Because a reality show is, at its core, an agreement with a group of people who want to fuck you over in exchange for putting you on TV, and a group of people who desperately want to be fucked over in exchange for getting on TV.

Which means it has to take some seriously egregious fucking over to get someone into court. And that's where the fun comes in. Seeing what circumstances people like Jeffrey Bedford think are egregious. Which brings us to the ten million dollar penis.

Jeffrey Bedford lives in Oklahoma. There's your first clue right there. Jeffrey Bedford signed up for "Wife Swap". And the pieces start falling into place. Not pieces Jeffrey Bedford wanted anywhere near him, but pieces nonetheless. Thanks to the miracle of reality TV, Jeffrey Bedford swapped his wife for a gay guy.

None of us, of course, would think this is a big deal. I mean, these shows don't let you fuck the new spouse. That's not part of the deal. You just have to live with them for a while. On TV. No cooties are exchanged. I believe there's a strict no-cootie rider in the contract. But Jeffrey Bedford was having none of it.

According to the suit, Bedford was "distraught over the misrepresentation to the point of nonparticipation." Translated into the native Oklahoman, that means he said "I ain't doin' no show with no queer."

According to the suit, "Bedford conducted a Bible study for the Haileyville Baptist Church, wherein the gay swap participant invited a gay coalition into Bedford's home for the study.". Translated into the native You Are Dumban, this means SET YOUR TIVOS. Because gay activists + Oklahoma bible study is comedy gold.

According to the suit, "Defendants threatened if Bedford did not film the show that they would not tell him his wife's location and would not pay for her to be sent home." Translated into the native language of TV producers, that means "We came all the way to Oklahoma. We're not leaving without some footage of that bible study group."

Bedford also had to drop a college class because of scheduling conflicts - he was, as far as I can tell, too busy being forced to live with a gay guy to do his homework. The good news is, by even starting a college-level course, Bedford will do wonders for Oklahoma's 2005 education statistics.

ABC and the production company have a pretty solid defense - the contract says you might get stuck with a dude. If true, Bedford will not get the $10,225,000 he is claiming in recompense and punitive damages for the extra few ounces of meat his new spouse was swinging. That's five million dollars a ball. And he never even had to look at them.

But hey, at least he's gonna be on the TEEVEE!

A Question Of Purity

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:12:10 -0600

Television, 15 November 2005

Memo to America's fine cable channels: STICK TO YOUR FUCKING GUNS.

The camel needs a chiropractor. Its load of straw has been infinitesimally increased, and the total load borne now exceeds the animal's capacity to bear it. It has gone too far, and it needs to stop.

If you have started up a cable channel devoted to a specific subject or topic, and you feel the need to "expand" or "evolve" your programming beyond that topic, go fuck yourself. Then, when you're done fucking yourself, go back to work trying to come up with new, better, or even halfway decent shows about your topic.

And no, this is not a rant about how MTV doesn't show videos anymore. MTV gets an out, because MTV's been around for 25+ years. When MTV started, there weren't all that many cable channels. And half the ones that DID exist seemed to do so only to show the Andy Griffith Show non-stop. So it's understandable that over time, MTV's scope would shift from music, to shows about music, to shows about people who make music, to shows about people who listen to music, to shows about people who barely have the mental capacity to detect music. I'm fine with that.

The music video is an artform whose time has passed, anyway. And if it won't die on its own, R. Kelly looks like he'll be more than happy to play Peeing Kevorkian.

What I'm talking about are present-day networks, formed in a 400-channel environment where all you have is your niche. Yet, inexplicably, the channels abandon that niche in search of "broader appeal", and just end up pissing me off.

Once upon a time, there was a Game Show Network. All it showed were "classic" game shows. Crappy-ass game shows. Mostly from the 70's and 80's. And that was fine. Certain things are vital cultural artifacts, and The Gong Show, Match Game, and The Pyramid Of Varying Dollar Amounts are amongst them. Hell, they even started making their own game shows. But that wasn't good enough for them. They rechristened themselves "GSN", relegated the game shows to hours of the day where, just like my childhood, I'd have to be sick or insane to watch them, and filled prime-time with reality shows and Celebrity Blackjack. FUCK YOU.

Charles Nelson Reilly could, right now, kick Omarosa's ass, and we all know it.

G4. The video game network. It's graced these pages many a day, but always for some fucking stupid shit they put on that was, and this is crucial, ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. Sure, it's sad that their best show was something they acquired from another network, but again, ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. Then it started to get weird, with some auto racing shows that aired late on weekends. Easily avoidable.

Then, they picked up the rights to "Fastlane", the one-season, McG, retardo action show that's been on at least three other cable networks before this. Its connection to video games is completely nonexistent, yet the fucking thing is ALWAYS ON. And when it's not on, they're showing reruns of The Man Show.

WHAT THE FUCK. I know videogamers are frequently, and justly, portrayed as sad masturbators, but The Man Show? Four times a day? No. More shows about video games, please. I'll even take a second round of Videogame Vixens. I won't WATCH it, but it won't piss me off. Well, OK, it'll piss me off, but it'll piss me off less than it would have before you started running the Kimmel-Corolla Functional Illiteracy Hour.

All this has been going on for a while, but a commercial yesterday forced my hand. As a sign of things to come, it's a dark harbinger indeed. This weekend, on the Cartoon Network, they will be showing Tim Burton's 1989 film, "Batman".

Now, if any station has a mandate with a hard and fast line that shall not be crossed, it's the Cartoon Network. They are the Cartoon Network. They show cartoons. Cartoons are animated. They do not have Jack Nicholson's body in them. You can stretch the "animated" definition all the way down to "12 Oz Mouse", but stretching it the other way, to a movie full of nothing but people and a complete absence of drawings, is completely fucking ridiculous.

SHOW CARTOONS. There isn't a shortage of 'em. You've got a whole second channel devoted to running the ones you don't have time to run on your main channel. This isn't too much to ask, really. It's not a burden. Those two hours next Saturday could be filled by virtually anything and get ratings as good as Batman. And it wouldn't cause an ontological crisis, as long as it was a FUCKING CARTOON.

Go down this path, and within six months, Lifetime could be showing a movie that isn't about a woman in danger. And then we'll really be through the looking glass, won't we?

I Have A Little List...

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 14:22:52 -0500

Main Column, 12 April 2005

NOTE: The April 13 column will be posted around 4:30 p.m.

Memo to the following individuals and/or groups: FUCK OFF.

Yes, it's that time again. Time for the buckshot of hate, the issuance of official You Are Dumb Dot Net fuck-offs to the minor annoyances that grate on us every day like sandpaper gloves on the universe's chalkboard.

Mariah Carey: FUCK OFF. - Her new album is called "The Emancipation of Mimi". Mimi, in this case, is apparently what her friends call Mariah Carey when they don't want people to overhear them, and it's developed into a nickname. Yay. And the "emancipation" does not appear to be from sucking. I think, deep down, that Mariah Carey knows that Mariah Carey doesn't get to use the word "emancipation" without being told to FUCK OFF, but only at a gut level, not at an actual rational level that would stop her from doing it. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I didn't want to call it The Emancipation of Mariah Carey. That would have had connotations of the whole celebrity thing, and all the misconceptions and baggage that come along with that." - Sentiments about the whole celebrity thing that "Mimi" has now expressed to dozens and dozens of journalists as she pimps her new "emancipation", complete with guest shots by Snoop Dogg and Nelly. Mariah also bitches about not being taken seriously as an artist, so she's apparently spent the intervening time since the release of "Glitter" firmly ensconced up her own ass.

Rick "Silent P" Santorum: FUCK OFF. Your pathetic attempt to distance yourself from Tom DeLay this weekend fools nobody. Well, except the national media, who dutily reported your mealy-mouthed Sunday morning comments about how DeLay needs to answer questions about his slime trail even though you're sure he did nothing wrong.

At least if DeLay goes down, and it's not, despite the hopes and prayers of us all, a foregone conclusion that he will, but if he does, he'll go down old-school, kicking and screaming like the embarrassing little Jim Henson's Nixon Baby that he is. DeLay may be a slug, but it's better to die on your monopod than live on your knees, as they say. And you're just an opportunistic weasel who's terrified that the rank hate and homophobia that got you into office in the first place may not be enough to keep you there when 2006 rolls around. It's a tricky political maneuver. When the handle gets pulled to flush DeLay, can you stay close enough to the rim to stay afloat, but still be seen as part of the Big Tent Toilet? As amusing as your little dance is to watch, you can fuck right off, Rick.

Pitt's Penis and Jolie's Vagelina: FUCK OFF. As little as I care about each of these body parts individually, they still dwarf, by several orders of magnitude, my interest in whether the twain have met. And where. And when. And how often. And how many times they deny it. Or, at least, Pitt denies it. Jolie appears to be keeping her nerf lips sealed about the whole non-issue. There's a first. A situation in which Angelina Jolie is the role model.

Buca patrons: FUCK OFF! Another Pope-related pointless furore. For those of you not in the Midwest, there's this chain of Italian restaurants. Buca di Beppo. And apparently, at Buca, there were private dining rooms, and the private dining rooms had Pope John Paul II busts in them. Don't ask me. I think it'd be creepy pulling mozzarella sticks off a platter while the Pope stared at me, but apparently, people love that shit. Someone ought to open up a "Planet Vatican" chain, the way things are going.

Anyway, after the Pope died, the restaurant decided to take the 90 busts out of the dining rooms, maybe give them to Catholic schools to remind children that Pope John Paul II was an albino with no arms or lower torso who frequently had marinara stains all over him. And the customers got cranky, saying the "pope rooms" weren't the same without a pope.

What surprises me most, to be honest, is that the Roman Catholic church doesn't already have a rule covering this. I can't believe, in two thousand plus years of cataclysms, lactates, or whatever the hell the Catholics call their version of the Magic: The Gathering Rules Errata, that the subject of how to dispose of papal busts from an overdecorated American-Italian chain restaurant never came up.

I hope they reach a compromise. And I hope that the compromise involves 90 funny hats and a bucket of Krazy Glue.

Cookie Whiners: FUCK OFF. Seriously. Unless you are either younger than six years old, or work in the children's television industry, there is nothing interesting, relevant, or erudite you can say about the fucking Cookie Monster. You don't own things just because you grew up with them. And if the Sesame Street people want their blue-furred bulimic to deliver a more healthy eating message, it's not some betrayal you get to bitch about.

It's not like it matters to most of the people who are complaining. Their memories of Cookie Classic are still intact. They're not, or at least I fucking well hope not, avid watchers of current Sesame Street. They can pretend Cookie Monster never sings "Cookies are a sometimes food", and PBS can go about its business of being a barely viable alternative to TMNT toys at Taco Bell.