Cher and Cher Alike

I'm at the local record store a short walk from my house. Everytime I buy something there, the clerk says something about the purchase, and usually it's an esteem boost, a slam dunk, a compliment about my taste in music. Sometimes he says nothing -- let's just call it a knowing glance of approval.

This time, the approval is 2/3 guaranteed, because I have two Bob Dylan CDs to buy, along with ... Cher: The Greatest Hits.

What will the clerk say, I think to myself, as I sift through my potential purchases? As I approach the register I stack the CDs with Dylan on top twice, and then Cher.

He checks out the first CD, looks at me, nods, and approves.

Next Dylan CD: He glances up, eyebrows raise. Approval.

Then he sees Cher's greatest hits. There's a pause.

"Wow, I didn't see that coming," he says.

I pay the bill and slowly leave.

Tony Awards Are Tonight

Let's. Go. La Cage!

More on that spectacularly entertaining 2010 production sometimesthis week.

Cars Have No Color Anymore Nowadays in Today's Society at the Present Time

So muted, so dull, so conservative: a blaze of whites, greys and blacks. No pizazz, no punch, where the heart of the matter is just blending in.

I'm talking about car colors. Look at a supermarket parking lot. Drive down the highway. Look outside your window.

I thought about this the other day while watching Bewitched. Look below at that glorious yellow convertible Bonneville that Samantha drives! And look at the other cars behind her, especially that "Hurley-blue" Dharma Initiative baby blue van, and the bell pepper red "Old Thyme" car.



We need more cars like this on the road now. Wouldn't it brighten our outlook?

Our current pallet of drab cars ... what does it say about us? Should we blame the sour economy? 9/11? I'm told by interior designers that "in" colors for housing interiors generally mirror the national mood. Is this what has happened to our cars? Did eight years of George Bush ring all the fun out of us, did the War in Iraq coat us in gloom so much that a colorful car became ... tacky and inappropriate?

I say let's keep hope alive and bring the color on.

Come on, bright orange "Brady Bunch kitchen" Ford Focus! Let's go, Powder Blue Altima! It's time for you, lime-green BMW 7-series!

Let's bring some color back to our cars, OK?

Just Because

Wow!

The film below won an Oscar last month. How the producers didn't get sued, I have no clue, but this is a terrific, wonderful, stupendous ... and thought-provoking piece of filmmaking

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

"You Ever See a Grown Man Naked?"

Loved him in Mission: Impossible. Loved him in Airplane.

Michael Pollak at the New York Times captures the career of Peter Graves nicely in the first 29 words of his obit.

Paula Who?

I'm not sure I love this season of American Idol, in terms of the contestants. But I do love, love, love, love, love, love Ellen DeGeneres!

My As-of-This-Second 5 Favorite Characters on TV

1. Gloria from Modern Family. Because she's from COLOOOOOOOMBIA.
2. Barb the Cougar from Cougar Town. How can you not like a horny, sexy, confidant 40-something who seems to have a cccktail surgically attached to her hand?
3. The "new guy" on 30 Rock, Danny, played by Cheyenne Jackson, who gives Neil Patrick Harris a run for his money as America's favorite (openly) gay actor. A great talent.
4. Senor Chang from Community. !El es muy tonto!
5. "Clive Bixby." If you know the reference, you're probably getting an ab workout from laughter right now. I predict that "pulling a Clive Bixby" or "CliveBixbying" will soon enter the urban cultural vernacular in various forms: as a noun, a verb, an adverb and an adjective. Next stop: Webster's.

Just curious

Do you suppose that it might just be against some state or federal law to use Snuggle in a Downy ball?

If it is, I need to find a good lawyer.

Latest WTF News From the Supreme Court

Free speech by corporations = same thing as free speech by individuals?

Huh?

Many thoughtful Americans had just one reaction to this ruling:

Whatever Happened to the Real Serpico?

Find out here.

'Luck Trumps Death'

On Friday Wally and I watched The Hurt Locker, maybe the greatest movie to date about the War in Iraq and one of my Top 3 movies of 2009.

If you've seen the movie, check out these articles in today's NYT -- here and here - that explore the real life soldiers who work defusing homemade bombs that the military refers to as improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s. Thankfully, this front-page story of a solder who steps on an I.E.D. doesn't end in a bang.

I'm Not Mature

So just now I'm reading one of my favorite blogs, Andy Towle's Towleroad, and I see this ad interspersed in the copy:



Since when does "38" qualify as "mature"?

I'm the same age as Andy, 42, and although I'll gladly accept the term "middle age," I am most certainly not "mature."

In more ways than one.

That said, I hope Eric, 38, and Robert, 41, eventually find the maturity they require, even if that means dating a senior citizen in his late 40s.

I Would Like to Hear His Own Faux Conservative Outrage If This Involved Somebody Else

Shameful.

I'd Be Laughing If I Weren't Crying

Johnny Spreads His Seeds, Doesn't Feel So Pretty, Gets 'Hands Dirty' With Photo Op

Yesterday, two years late, John Edwards admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock. I heard it on the CBS radio network news on the drive home from work.

The reporter played a quote from his wife, who said she is supportive. The story ended by mentioning that John Edwards was doing relief work in Haiti, and that Mrs. Edwards found out about his whereabouts ... from the reporter. Classy.

Remember the hair incident with Edwards? It was a YouTube video of Edwards grooming, in a way-too-admiring and "primping" way, with "I Feel Pretty" as the background music. And remember the "he's building a 28,000-square-foot house he says is carbon-neutral while portraying himself as an environmentalist" stories?

I'd say that both stories were blown way out of proportion at the time, in a Howard "he really didn't scream" Dean kind of way. Media focused on the hair and the house obsessively. The world has bigger issues, which the media were all-too-happy to not mention thousands of times, unlike all the harping about primping and Edwards' version of Monticello/Mt. Vernon/The Hermitage.

But, looking back, I'd say both were "windows into the soul" moments. Both betrayed a narcissistic streak in Edwards that made him all-too-capable of cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, lying about his out-of-wedlock daughter and coming to the conclusion that no other American would make a better leader for the free world.

The Invincible Mr. Edwards would have made him a terrible president. Next.

Just Because

Marty Gracias

Martin Scorcese won a special award at last night's Golden Globes.

Here's the trailer for one of my "top three favorite" Scorcese films, "The King of Comedy."

Not Funny: Part I

NOT FUNNY: Part II

Not Funny: Part III

The mentally "questionable" contestants who will inevitably appear on tonight's premiere of American Idol, who are oblivious to their lack of talent, who will be edited to look as foolish as possible, and all in the name of ratings. I'm not talking about the obvious posers and fakers, those seeking 15 minutes, but those people who are sincere, hopeful, talentless and clueless -- presented, cruelly, for ridicule and ratings.

Facebook Status Updates I'd Like to See (But Probably Won't)

INSERT NAME HERE has explosive diarrhea.

INSERT NAME HERE is pleasuring himself.

INSERT NAME HERE is pleasuring herself.

INSERT NAME HERE is taking the Activia 14-day Challenge.

INSERT NAME HERE is using too many exclamation points!!!!

INSERT NAME HERE became a fan of rectal thermometers.

INSERT NAME HERE has her panties in a bunch.

INSERT NAME HERE has his panties in a bunch.

INSERT NAME HERE became a fan of Incomplete Sentences.

INSERT NAME HERE became a fan of Becoming a Fan of Things.

INSERT NAME HERE can't spell, punctuate or communicate.

They're Just Simple Cavemen!

From this morning's New York Times: Meet some "meat eaters," a subculture in New York of men (and women) who just want to be a simple cavemen.

The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture. Mr. Durant believes the human body evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and his goal is to wean himself off what he sees as many millenniums of bad habits.

These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.

Keyrock (and his BMW) would be proud!



One more thing: Who doesn't miss the wonderful Phil Hartman?

Miscellaneous Facebook Ruminations

Are people with more than one ga-zillion Facebook friends really popular or really superficial?

I didn't like you in high school. Why would I want to be your Facebook friend now?

Farm World. I hope there's a level where at some point players, somehow, and in some way, are able to "get a life."

Meow!

Gotta run, cuz I got something cookin' in Cafe World (limited menu: toast and bacon) and I'm eligible for a Farkle bonus game in exactly 37 minutes.

Like Something from a Bad Gilligan's Island Episode?

I just remembered my blogger username and login after 10 months of amnesia (or was that apathy?). It was jarred back into my conscious mind just moments ago, when I heard Glenn Beck say something stupid.

But is anybody there? Does anybody care?