rangelife

Weekend Head Cheese

Three questions that George Stephanopolous forgot to ask at Wednesday night's debate:

• Do you think that Disney should already be writing High School Musical 4, when part 3 is still in production?
• Should the NFL have taken harsher punishment against the New England Patriots for Spygate?
• Does anyone really think I should be moderating this critical debate when I owe the entirety of my career to one of your spouses?

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I spotted this multimedia collage across the street from the Mint. I call it 1944.

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Karl Lagerfeld appears in GTA4. And Ricky Gervais, too. I have this game on pre-order, mofos. It may be the last thing I ever buy. Highest possible review score from OXM.

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Speaking of reviews, the new Pacino thrilla 88 Minutes is scoring a 12/100 on Metacritic. That ranks it lower than Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered.

Christ, what was Pacino's last good movie? The Insider? I keep expecting Pacino and DeNiro to reunite for a movie adaptation of Falcon Crest or some Laser Cats thing.

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John Edwards was phenomenal on Colbert last night. Jet skis for everyone!

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"It's the incorrect context, stupid."

OK, let's fix this once and for all. From Reuters this morning:

It's still 'the economy, stupid' in Pennsylvania

In 1992, Bill Clinton used the phrase "it's the economy, stupid" to win the White House amid a recession. Sixteen years later, his wife Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination by promising relief from more hard times.

No no no no no. I'm going to kill myself if I ever read this again.

"It's the economy, stupid" was not a Clinton campaign slogan. The phrase was one of James Carville's tenets for keeping the campaign on message, as seen in the documentary The War Room. Pinned to the wall was:

Change vs. more of the same
It's the economy, stupid
Don't forget healthcare

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Here's how Carville would write those for the Hillary '08 campaign:

More of the same vs. more of the other same
It's my turn, assholes
Please forget Hillarycare

And for McCain:

Sunnis vs. Al Qaeda (what?)
Five years in captivity, stupid
Don't forget Bush hates me

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Punks and Rockabillies vs. Emos. With violence. Mexico-style.

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A picture of a package on the package? That's the Droste Effect, my friend.

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And praise to you. Have a happy matzo-filled weekend.

A Religious Lesson, Digby Chicken Caesar, and Ellen Page's Peach Fuzz

Good Friday, to my Christian people. This is day when the Romans crucified Jesus, which is why Christians call it Good Friday. You know, like calling a bald guy "Curly" or a giant guy "Tiny." It's ironic fun.

That was today's religious lesson from a guy who's been to about eight Christian services in his lifetime.

One of those religious services was an Episcopalian Sunday in West-by-God Virginia, circa 1994. And my hosts to that service was a Republican family -- mom was running for Congress, while daughter (my college buddy) had been proudly flying the GOP flag on a sick-in-the-head campus that made Berkeley look like BYU. In some sense, I didn't blame this family for its Republicanism. In W.V., after all, the Democratic party is dominated by reformed KKKers, carpetbaggers, and corrupt mining barons. Hell, I'd be a Republican there.

But I raise this story, not just because the aforementioned college buddy has recently had the good taste to relocate to the Bay Area, but because she has decided to swallow the Bay experience whole and endorse Barack Obama, much to her own disbelief. Go, Rox, go.

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If you get BBC America, thou shalt Tivo the Season 2 premiere of That Mitchell & Webb Look tonight. America's best TV critic profiled the show this morning, and I couldn't agree more. It's the cleverest sketch program since Mr. Show.

Por ejemplo:

And that's Numberwang!

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While not as brilliant an observation as, say, AdamRiff's official font of shitty comedies, you gotta love the Hollywood protocol of listing actors' names in contractual order, no matter how the promos or posters are designed.

Por ejemplo:

Who knew Ellen Page could grow such an impressive mustache at her age?

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Speaking of Ellen Page, people keep asking me what I thought of Juno. Well, I haven't wanted to see it. Because I saw Hard Candy. When you're grinding up a guy's nuts in the garbage disposal one minute, you don't just leap to heart-warming hipster ha-has the next.

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The Assimilated Negro vs. Stuff White People Like

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Yo I need a pet lion

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And a happy Easter to everyone! This is the day when Christians commemorate Jesus coming back from the dead by... shit, something with a bunny and pink eggs and yellow marshmallows. I don't know. Hey, March Madness!

Live Free or Die Hard: False Dichotomy?

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this, but isn't Live Free or Die Hard a stupid title? I know it's a riff on New Hampshire's license plate, but:

1. As near as I can tell, the movie doesn't take place in New Hampshire -- although that would be pretty awesome. Yes, how about a terrorism movie that's not in NY, DC, Vegas, or California? Eh? Charlotte and Houston are looking pretty soft these days, for example. Just saying.

2. Shouldn't it be Live Free and Die Hard? Those are both very admirable actions to abide. The movie title seems to demand that we choose between liberty and life. Now that Will Smith ruined the pursuit of happyness, why should we kick aside one of our last two unalienable rights.

What kicks ass about America is that we live free and we die hard. The Economist gets it:

Bad ass, isn't it?

You see, we can gluttonously gorge on foreign goods purchased with easy credit, while all our primary survival skills are exported overseas to be forgotten. Our military can be overextended in a global clusterfunk. Our public health, our carbon-burning lifestyles, our popular culture can be so stagnant that our brains and bodies reveal nothing but sweaty flab. Our big questions can consist entirely of "Is science real?" and "Is he or is he not the father"? Our minds can be sedated with bullshit**. Our leading presidential candidates can be uniformly underqualified twats who have never run any organization more complex than the Yale Law Review.

But check the papers. We're still the Dapper Don of the world, and nothing gets done without us. OK, nothing gets done with or without us, but you get the idea.

Why is this so? Why will our precious idiocracy continue to pummel the rest of the world's wannabe powers? It's not just because God loves us most. We also sport a dynamic economy with liberal labor laws, a powerful work ethic (don't laugh until you spend five minutes looking at western Europe); the closest thing to an actual meritocracy by human standards; and the prospect of new leadership in a little more than 18 months.

In other words, America dies hard by living free(ly).

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** This perfect phrase is from a lovely post by Rob of Demonbaby. I like his idea: Next time somebody asks you, "Did you hear what Paris Hilton did?" respond with "Do you know who your Senators are?"

Fight the Secularist Hollywood Cabal for Only $9.00

We all love spam. If it weren't for spam, how would we have achieved this utopia of 11-inch wangs and universal penny stock prosperity?

But every now and then, a spam comes that transcends the missives from Nigerian royalty in exile.

Subject: Great way to stand up for Christmas

Special message from Concerned Friends For Christmas

Seamus,

The secularists and the media have once again ramped up their aggressive assault on Christmas. But even worse... The media and entertainment elites are trying to ignore the one effort from Hollywood in the past 50 years to bring the Christmas story to the theatres!

Of course, you already know about the War On Christmas, the silent assault being funded by an international cabal of Jewish financiers who hate Christianity.

The Nativity Story (now playing across the nation) marks the first time in 50 years that a Christian Bible story has been turned into a major motion picture by a major movie studio -- New Line Cinema (which gave us the Lord of the Rings trilogy).

...and also The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Devout Christians, those New Liners.

This week, take a personal stand against the secularists and the media elite -- and more importantly, FOR the Christmas story -- by taking your family to see The Nativity Story. The Nativity Story represents a dramatic departure from Hollywood's usual despicable treatment of Bible-believing Christians.

Again -- those who want to strip any sign of Christmas from our communities do not want this movie to succeed. Please take your family to see The Nativity Story this week.

Concerned Friends For Christmas

Who are Concerned Friends for Christmas? Nobody.

And in case you can't make it to the multiplex this weekend, you can always stick it to the Hollywood Homosexua-cracy by answering the U.S. Taxpayer Census. Hint: This census reveals the shocking truth about the gay-loving AARP.

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Speaking of international Jewish financiers trying to destroy America, George Soros demands you worship his villainous and stunningly-rendered visage in Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century, a graphic novel commissioned by the heroes at the National Rifle Association.

Also righteously demonized -- Michael Moore, Rosie, and the all-powerful Ray Nagin.

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Dryel allows you to clean dry-clean-only clothes in your home dryer. And who could provide a theme song for such a powerful domestic consumer product? Go the Dryel website, and listen to the ad that starts running on the homepage. Hint: Sharif won't like it.

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Word up to my man Dalton for his "Hello My Name Is" project. Brooklyn never looked so good.

 

Definitely Not a Porn Star Name

The most important topics in the world this week:

Last night I watched Volume 1 of The Vice Guide to Travel, which is, as the magazine is, a dim survey of global realities with a deep, dark humorous wink. In a nutshell, hipsters travel to some of the world's most dangerous locales -- a drug-lord-funded street party in Rio's favelas (slums), an arms market in Pakistan's tribal area, and what's left of Chernobyl.

Some of it is astonishing -- especially the ease with which they find an atomic detonator for sale in Bulgaria -- but most of the segments are ultimately disappointing, with their brevity precluding any depth. And punchlines seem to be missing; on the occasions when the intrepid correspondents fail their quests, they don't try to make up for it with anything. They just give up and move on, and the segment credits roll. Blah.

But do check out the extras, including David Cross enjoying the Super Bowl in Shanghai. "Awesome! Once again, America wins the world football championship! USA! USA!"

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Two weeks ago, I shared my fascination with Brittanie Mountz, our mayor's fresh new girlfriend. One commenter noted the inappropriateness of a late-30s bachelor scromping a college babe, but that just demonstrates a fundamental non-appreciation for the mindset of the newly divorced dude. So Gavin fixed his hair and poached a sorority sister. Good for him. Now he just needs a new Porsche for the trifecta.

Another commenter noted that "Brittanie Mountz" has the ring of a pseudonym an adult actress might proffer, which encouraged some astonishing responses, such as:

who ever said that thats a porn star name needs to go fuck them selves because i personally know her and thats real name and shes a nice person so whoever is talking crap needs to shut up.

...and this educational gem...

Whoever said her name sounds like a porn star name, is a complete retard, have you not noticed that porn star names are easy to spot cause they're made up.

Mags, there it is: You're a complete retard. Porn stars totally make up their names. I hope you can live with that fact.

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A WaPo-ABC News poll reveals that 30% of Americans believe recently falling gasoline prices are due to pre-election political manipulation, while 35% believe they're due to changes in supply and demand.

Also, Bush stopped the hurricanes this year.

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Two weeks ago I predicted, based entirely on their ad positioning, that Harold Ford would defeat Bob Corker for Bill Frist's seat in the US Senate. The race still looks too close to call, with all polls coming within the margin of error.

I also predicted that Joe Lieberman would play Israel to Ned Lamont's Lebanon, and that seems to be happening, with Joe-mentum consistently leading Lamont by two digits across multiple polls.

How do I keep up with this stuff? Two sites are super-handy:

• Electoral-Vote has a handy map that's currently projecting a Democratic Senate. Warning: said map has a little design flaw -- it only measures each race as Dem-vs.-GOP, which means that Connecticut is blue because you'd need an electron microscope to find the Republican candidate. And its House races are mostly projected based on whether Bush or Kerry carried the district in 2004.
• CQ Politics also does a map, but with actual human intelligence watching the races. It's projecting between zero and six Republican seat losses in the Senate (six would give the Dems a 50-49-1 majority), and between two and 15 losses in the House (11 would give the Dems a majority). Additionally, Dems seem to have a serious chance at winning a majority of governorships, which would be an astonishing reversal of the last decade of state politics. And governorships matter -- this is where each party builds their bench strength.

Honestly, this is the most exciting mid-term season since '94. I'm all a-twitter. Baseball playoffs? Please.

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I thought I'd seen the worst of moviegoing America when that irresponsible twat brought three small kids to a late-night showing of Pirates II. In all honesty, I didn't fear for the kids, I just felt pissed for the rest of us who had to feel like we were in some mommy's living room.

But it got topped. I went to see The Departed last Friday, same theater (Daly City Century 20). Sure, a few elements of the Barney crowd were scattered around the theater, but that didn't bother me as much as it did, say, the Huffington Post. Because before the movie, as we were waiting for them open our theater, we watched the crowd making its way into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. We watched the 16-year-old girl dragging along her 10-year-old sister. We watched the young man lugging his toddler. And we watched the obese, twin Tongan security guards post up outside the theater door for no particular reason.

Really. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

All the Chainsaw's Massacres

Now if only we could see Sean Penn as Leatherface...

(Spotted at Loew's at Le Metreon.)

Miami Vice: Fair

First, let's get something undeniable out there: Miami Vice was a kick-ass television show. In 1984, Vice was like a bolt of lightning that revived a moribund cop genre. It was stylish, violent, multicultural, and morally corrupt, just like the chaotic city of its title. Granted, Don Johnson's stubble and pink t-shirts and white suits and shower scenes with Sheena Easton may seem ridiculous in the Oh-Six, but when you work so hard to be of-the-moment, you're going to have to look dorky and dated until the 20-year retro-nostalgia cycle completes.

Much has changed in Miami since Miami Vice, the series, collapsed under its own weight, but more has remained the same there, and 2006 seems like as good a time as any to reimagine the show. That's exactly what the show's executive producer Michael Mann decided to do.

Good news: Mann has eschewed the remake formula of recent years, which would have featured incessant mockery of the original and obligatory cameos by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas, and instead reinvented the franchise as a credible, exciting, mostly watchable crime/action movie. He gives Miami's marvelously seedy locations a starring role, spending more time in its ports, marinas, freeways, and trailer parks than the neon-lit clubs on South Beach.

Bad news: Some poor decisions by Mann render a sizeable chunk of Vice cringe-worthy:

• Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx often seem to be doing voice impressions of Johnson and Thomas. Seriously.
• Gong Li as the bad gal/Crockett love interest is an even more egregious miscasting than Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane with a Pulitzer and a kid in school. Usually, Gong's great, but I can't imagine why Mann thought she was the supreme choice to manage business for a South American crime kingpin, besides imagining that she'd help sell more tickets in Asia. Plus, she bears the burden of the most hideously overwrought lines in the movie, which sound all the dopier through her syrupy accent. Would someone who clearly just learned English say this? "Is it December?" (Crockett: "What do you mean?") "Did Christmas come early?"
• The soundtrack -- always a highlight of the TV show -- sounds like 2003-era Clear Channel rock radio. Don't be fooled by the diversity of the CD; the action is backed by Audioslave, Linkin Park, et al. Where the muthafuckin' Trick Daddy?
• Justin Theroux's sidekick character -- who's really no more a part of the movie than Tubbs' kitchen table -- says to a well-heeled informant in a $4 million condo, "Or, you could watch Marlins highlights on your 60-inch plasma TV." With the exception of the '97 and '03 World Series, no one has ever suggested deliberately watching Marlins highlights.

Mixed news: This ain't a McG joint. Miami Vice is a Michael Mann movie through and through. Those who've seen even pieces of Ali, The Insider, Heat, or Collateral know exactly what that means: grainy, underexposed shots, claustrophobic close-ups, muffled lines, and chaotic pacing. Does that work for this type of movie? During a kidnapping scene, hell yeah. During an extended love scene in Havana, well... that's a great time to relieve yourself of your $4 Pepsi.

For all its flaws, Miami Vice is a good time at the movies. The crowd of KMEL contest winners didn't seem too impressed, so expect a big week-two dropoff after the killer opening. In the meantime, Seamus says check it out.

Overall grade: B

Hooray, US and A!

Are you ready for Borat? I don't think you are.

Borat's official home page. It nice, like sex with #1 prostitute!

Trailer for the feature film. Prepare to feel your cchrum get all tingly.

V for Vasectomies Needed

This is one of those good-news-bad-news stories.

Movies theaters pretty much have something for everyone this week -- an A-list thriller, a movie for slow children families, a McConaughey date movie, shirtless Abercrombie boys, a top-quality political sci-fi flick, and the horror-movie-of-the-week. (What is it with these cookie-cutter horror movies lately? Is Iran-building-nukes not scary enough for you people?)

And so it was against this competition that Lions Gate vomited up Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. Because, you know, the only thing funnier than "Larry" hooking up cable is "Larry" having some kind of state authority over hygeine.

I had always feared the inevitable day when "Larry" would get his movie, and yet no matter how I prepared myself -- the all-bananas diet, the extra seven minutes of sleep a night, the cappucino enemas --  I still plotzed myself the moment I saw the bad news on Daily Pepper.

Watching the trailer for LTGC:HI didn't settle the stomach one bit. In the film, "Larry" the character is apparently transported to a big city filled with the types of people who don't think a faux-Southerner drawling "GIT-R-DONE" is inherently hilarious, and he has a series of encounters with hairy Jewish merchants, rude French waiters, squinty Japanese sushi chefs, and a whole Democratic National Convention of otherness. Ching chong ching chong. LOL.

So here's the good news: LTCG:HI was not the breakout comedy hit for 2006. It earned a mere $7 mill on its 1,700 screens, which makes it more like Joe Dirt than Ace Ventura.

Here's the bad news: Even taking into account all the children in the audience, somewhere north of a million people paid to see "Larry" the Cable Guy's magnum opus on its opening weekend, and did so in public where everyone could see them.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and this development necessitates the invention of an aerosol that sterilizes humans, or at least causes extreme anti-spawning urges. It would work great on this kind of crowd, because most of them breathe with their mouths.

Okay, biotechies: GIT-R-DONE!

Redneck Mountain

Everything that's hateful and ignorant about Redneck America appears on today's USA Today letters page. (For a change.)

Oscar speaks loudly

Brokeback Mountain's surprise loss in the best-picture category at the Oscars should send a clear message that when only a small percentage of the public sees a movie, it's probably not worth viewing.

If the movie industry keeps trying to push its out-of-mainstream agenda — in this case, Brokeback's story about two gay cowboys — then it should expect to not win in a big way. I applaud the fact that Crash defeated this horrible movie.

D. B. Larkins

Clarksville, Tenn.

First, let's look at the box office to date (as of last weekend):

• Brokeback Mountain: $75.3 million
• Crash: $55.3 million

Crash is clearly not worth viewing. Of course, the number one movie of 2005, Star Wars, Episode III earned $380 million, which means that, excluding repeat viewings, somewhere around 10% of the American public went to see it. Therefore, no movies are worth viewing, especially The Passion of the Christ, which earned millions less than Shrek 2 or Spiderman 2 in 2004.

Second, one of the most laughable claims of the religious right is that they don't hate fags, they just oppose the "gay agenda," which apparently includes putting gay characters in movies.

This is the great shame of Brokeback Mountain, that America is much too immature to handle its existence. If Americans were actually to see this movie, they'd observe that it has no political agenda, no Christian bad guys, no advocacy for gay marriage or gay adoption or all those other equal rights that so offend people. Brokeback is a rich story about a couple of people who fall in love and have no idea how to manage it in an unaccepting world. But in our pathetic, reductionist Culture War Without End, merely buying a ticket for this fantastic movie becomes akin to flying a rainbow flag from your Subaru's radio antenna. And both sides bear fault. (Ebert gets it, even if he thought Crash was great.)

D.B. Larkins, you hate gay people.