Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Dustin Lance Black and Us
Monday, June 28, 2010
Trevor Project
Saturday, June 26, 2010
My commute
Friday, June 25, 2010
Leyton Lunging from Reuters
This is so cool. I was all quoted at 59E59 Theaters
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I gave a great review to a show Freed, because I really liked it. I wasn't alone - but my review was good (it's here).
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Anyway, I thought this was totally cool.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Trevor has a Boo Boo
Hot Hot Hot
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One fun thing is that Thomson Reuters shows the World Cup in the office, so that is knd of cool.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
With apologies to my friends that have them, but...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Supreme Court Nincompoopery!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Idiotic "Opinion" Piece in the New York Times
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Tight Race in the Pool (Phil on Top Joey Racing Up)
Father's Day (An Ode to "Mitch", "Big Dick", "Flicker" - my dad) (UPDATED)
So it’s Father’s Day, and I wanted to say Happy Father’s Day to my dad – even though he is long dead.
I had a odd relationship with my father – who was a confused young man. When he wasn’t married (between wives), he was a kick. He was always more of a friend than a dad – but that was fine. He was a pretty damn good friend. He always worked to convince me not to make his mistakes, but as an older friend – he had no problem owning up to them. Selling pot, driving cars of questionable legal ownership, driving in an impaired state, relationships with women with boyfriends (although married women were acceptable - less prone to get you beat up) – these were all things he warned me against as a pal.
And he played when he wasn’t married. Not like “toss the ball with your son” play, but like let’s pick up girls, let’s go cause trouble, let’s crash a party, let’s climb on the roofs of buildings downtown. Granted this was in the short period from 7 – 11 years old (when he married my nemisis), but it was great fun.
On the other hand, when he was married, he was a bit of a spineless chameleon. He tried to be the husband and father – but having no sense of how to do it, he would follow the lead of his wife. And for a long time he was as Deanna, a woman as uptight in public as she was a pot-smoking sex vixen in private.
He could never please her publically, as you can see from the body language in this picture of her and her family. But then Deanna could never please her mother (who I think was born with a cranky disposition and the name LaVon). The youngest son hit the drugs and didn’t try, which just made Deana try harder and LaVon judge her worse.
But reliving life with the ice-queen isn’t the point of this post. The point is that my dad was a lot of fun sometimes – even though he stole money from me and would forget me for days on end. (Hey it taught me to be self-sufficient!) I am not complaining.
We spent two weeks one year flying kites in Palos Verdes because he got into kites (and he pulled me out of school to do it – because he wasn’t working and was bored – and because I was ahead of the class anyway). We surveyed downtown from the Bonaventure Hotel roof before it was open. He’ld pick me up the middle of the day for a road trip to San Diego where he would drop me off at the Sand Diego Zoo for 3 hours. Now granted, he used the 3 hours to go across the border to score a shopping bag of pot for reselling in Inglewood – but hey, he didn’t take me with him over the border - that's count for good parenting in my book :-). And I had Grandma Early’s number in San Diego if he got picked up.
He was a lousy father, but a great friend. I tried to tell him that, but he only heard the bad. I even started with the good – but if I didn’t start “you were a great dad”, he tuned me out. I so he never heard my thanks or my “I appreciated what I had”. Too bad. I don’t think he ever really learned why I did love him.
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FYI, My mother, not wanting to appear mean, wrote me personally to question the nickname "Big Dick". I have to explain. Zela (my grandmother) once told me that while he was in High School a friend called the house and asked for "Big Dick". My Grandmother explained they had the wrong number. My father raced to the phone to say that was his new nickname (self-given). When Zela and my grandfather couldn't stop laughing at him and telling his friends it was inappropriate "Mitch" dropped that name :-).
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Unintended Consequences: Alvin Greene
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Friday, June 18, 2010
A Hep 'O New Reviews
Humidity blows in like Santa Anas
Shakedown? Apparently he was miscontruticated.
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Shakedown definition: Slang. Extortion of money, as by blackmail.
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Extortion is, by the by, "Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage." or "An excessive or exorbitant charge."
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First, the money is going into an escrow account to pay people effect by the spill, and so of course since this isn't going to the President Crazy Joe is wrong on multiple counts.
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Michelle Bachman claims this is wealth redistribution, but she is so freakin' crazy it doesn't really count.
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Since then Joe Barton has apologized for his apology in the most bizarre statement I have seen in a while. "I want to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible and should in every way do everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident," he said. "And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued to the opposite effect I want to apologize for that misconstrued misconstruction."
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Misconstrued misconstruction. Really? What the hell does that mean. I think he is saying, if I can parse this, when he apologized to BP for the illegal extortion of money by the White House; what he meant is "I mean the opposite of the following statement - I did NOT apologize to BP for the White House NOT conducting a shakedown."
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By the by, this is the man that the Republicans want to be in charge of over site of oil companies. Sweet!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Very Very Busy with Friends and Shows
Monday, June 14, 2010
Art still in 1st, by others closing in (but not me :-(
Vuvuzela: The Annoying Sound of the World Cup
Hard to Compete with a Memory
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Lee Blessing has a new play out that I will review when it opens (June 17th) about George Bush and my expectations were too high. Rather than pull this into the review, I am going to try to explain why now.
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I saw Lee Blessing's A Walk In The Woods in London. It was the first play I ever saw in London and maybe my first grown up play ever. I had seen Agnes of God in New York on a trip, but it was Carrie Fisher's first night and I sat in back of Paul Simon (dating her at the time) and Art Garfunkle and it was a "thang" more than a show.
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No, A Walk In The Woods was a half price show I walked into blind, my first time in London and alone. I saw Alec Guiness! Alec freakin' Guiness! And after 20 minutes, he wasn't Obi Wan, I was mesmerised by this play.
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It covers a year of negotiations between the US and USSR (this was right after during Ronald Reagan) and shit yes the world teetered on the edge.
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And this play showed so much of the "game" of nations..
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I was young and felt that a a curtain had been pulled back showing me the Truth with a capital T.
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Well with that remembrance (and a Pulitzer prise finalist), anything else he does has a high standard of excellence. I expected too much from his new work I fear.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
OMG!! Promises Promises was freakin' GREAT last night
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Then, last night we all went to see "Promises Promises."
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Now, Eddie and I saw it a few weeks ago with Gavin and Mickey and it was really good. Well last night, Kristen Chenowith was on (she was sick last time) - and the show ROCKED!!! Literal, every single person was more fun and "on" and funny! and sang beautifully. It was wonderful.
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Then Char, Kelly and I walked home and we saw Sean (Hayes) in our building and he was charming spoke with the girls. Generally it was an amazing night.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Entertainment Weekly Agrees with Me on Hegal - but blames the script..
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But I prefer to go with a dissection of the wreck that is Heigl's character, Jen. In the course of 100 minutes, Jen is presented as
1) a lonely, uptight loser (disguised by the flawless body and blonde prettiness of the star who plays her) who has been recently dumped by a man;
2) an infantilized adult woman whose parents micromanage her life;
3) a ditzy girl-woman who knows how to wear sexy lingerie but not how to own her sexuality;
4) a competent working woman (she does something corporate that requires her to wear sleek, feminine office-wear) who gets flustered when asked to make an important presentation;
5) a stereotypical girly-girl who unhelpfully screams EEEEEEEEEEE!!! when she and her husband face danger and who demands answers to her questions at really inopportune times like when the couple are being shot at;
6) a woman who's too gullible;
7) a woman who's impractical;
8) a female character who chews noisily on junk food in the movie world's universal lazy symbol for unladylike behavior;
8) a woman who handles a firearm as if it were a snake;
9) a wife who requires ''managing'' by her husband;
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10) a female character stapled together with every dispiriting, routinely accepted trait so popular and so soul-killing in the female characters we find in CARCs like Killers
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Prop 14 and New York Primary Madness
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
LAST CHANCE to enter World Cup Pool PS To the Harrises
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You have created a group called Nincompoopery and added your pick set, nincompoops. To allow other people to join this group, send them the Group ID# (22112) and the password (scott).
This is a Dane from the Danish National Team.
Did you hear this: Quantum Teleportation
In previous experiments the photons were confined to fiber channels a few hundred meters long to ensure their state remained unchanged, but in the new experiments pairs of photons were entangled and then the higher-energy photon of the pair was sent through a free space channel 16 km long. The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University in Beijing, found that even at this distance the photon at the receiving end still responded to changes in state of the photon remaining behind. The average fidelity of the teleportation achieved was 89 percent. " .
links.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Giant Baby Anteater
On the Hunk and Hottie Scale
Jake is very cute and works very hard in Prince of Persia, but he never really has a chance to slow down and act. Which is the opposite of "Brokeback Mountain" where all he did was act (and he acted the hell out of that movie).
Monday, June 07, 2010
El Rushbo and Wife number 4
Glen Greewald makes some interesting points about Rush Limbaugh and his costant push for "Tradional Marriage" (El Rusho pictured here with new wife (#4).
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As always happens when this issue is raised, there are several people in comments and elsewhere confusing the point. The issue here is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when someone preaches "nobody should do X" and then proceeds themselves to do X -- such as preaching that "nobody should break the law or consume illegal drugs" and then proceeding to consume huge quantities of illegally obtained oxycontin. That's hypocrisy. That's not what this is.
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Hypocrisy occurs when there's a disparity between the actions one advocates and the actions one undertakes. Here, the disparity is between (a) what same-sex opponents such as Limbaugh claim they advocate (the law's recognition of only Traditional Marriages) and (b) what they actually advocate (having the law recognize completely untraditional marriages, such as Gingrich and Limbaugh's multiple, serial unions). They don't really advocate the law's recognition of Traditional Marriage, as they claim; rather, they only advocate that the law bar the untraditional marriages they don't want to enter into (same-sex marriages) while recognizing the ones they do (multiple, serial "marriages"). The point is that one cannot oppose same-sex marriage on the ground that the law should only recognize Traditional Marriages, while simultaneously demanding that the law recognize third, fourth and other multiple marriages following divorce: at least one cannot do so coherently.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
World Cup Hotties (and game)
If you want to vote by cuties - The Daily Beast has a nice wrap up here...
The boy above is the American (Carlos Bocanegra) our captain.
The hottie below is a EyeTie.
"Bang Bang" in "Bloom"; Rinko Kukuchi
So last night we watched "The Brothers Bloom" from Netflix. A twisted story that had just my sense of humor (until the ending which left me slightly unfufilled). Anyway - although she is a nearly mute sidekick - my favorite character was "Bang Bang", Rinko Kukucki.
In looking Kukuchi-san up, I see she is Japanese and this was her only English picture. I do not have any idea why she was chosen for this role. But she was fantastic.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Coach Wooden Joined Wife of 53 Years, Nellie, In Heaven
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Goodbye.
Coach Wooden (nearly always "Coach" to everyone in Pauley Pavilion) had retired the year before I graduated High School.
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But, even before I went to UCLA as a student, I went to UCLA Basketball games and Coach and his wife were sitting in the stands. Lower level, a few rows above the UCLA bench.
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I don't think there were many games where he wasn't there - a touchstone for the Bruins. He didn't hold press conferences and complain about his legacy, he didn't go coach somewhere else and coach for a zillion dollars. He was always charming and supportive. When interviewed about the Bruins he was always positive about the school and supportive of whatever coach was there.
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He was a gentlemen decades after it had moved from sweet to quaint to obsolete.
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The UCLA family, the basketball family and sporting family has lost a hero in him.
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His wife Millie attended each game with him until she was too ill. She passed away in 1985 after 53 years of marriage. Right after that, we named the court for him (there is a "Wooden Center" as well) and he was pleased, but he never looked for fame.
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Long after he left, he continued to hold Camps, both in Basketball and Leadership (he felt they were the same). Many of my friends, but most of all Steve Coyne, attended these and he (like my friend Clay) brought Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success into his life.
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Take a look at Coach Wooden's pyramid - it is a legacy as important as the Championships - and just as familiar to true Bruin fans (although we don't brag about it nearly as much as the 10 National Championships ;-) .
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I remember pointing John Wooden out to Ed at our first game. Ed was a little surprised to see him in the stands the first time - the guy was just sitting there - not mobbed - no huge amount of attention. After Nellie passed away Coach Wooden sometimes came with family, sometimes with famous players and coaches he knew - but always just as a fan of the game and the school. Eddie quickly got used to the quiet gentlemen. Coach Wooden made everyone (even a Badger) a member of the family.
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Friday, June 04, 2010
Bizarro Jerry Day in New York
Bad Idea # 621
The Brotherhood of SantÃsimo Sacramento de Minerva, who organise the festivities chase people around the town throughout the day.
[4][5][6] The festival has been rated as one of the most dangerous in the world.[citation needed] The origins of the tradition are unknown but it is said to cleanse the babies of original sin, ensure them safe passage through life and guard against illness and evil spirits.[7][8][9] Pope Benedict has asked priests in Spain to distance themselves from the El Colacho, or La Octava Festival")
Ahh... Joys of Geography Majors
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The joke here is that South Africa (which is explicitly named on the poster) is NOT in South America (which is explicitly named on the map) - and no one catches this.
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In the news caster's defense, it includes two things Americans don't really care about, geography and the world cup.
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In the new caster's offense however, this is Chicago's WGN - a superstation that claims to play with the big boys.
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Ahh... geography trips us up again....
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Just don't ask me to spell the countries' names right.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Oh how stupid they think we are..
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They are by Israel's Ambassador to the United States - Michael B. Oren (An Assault Cloaked in Peace) and by Damiel Gordis, A Vice President of the Shalem Center (A Botched Raid, A Vital Embargo).
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There are some misstatements and misinformation - starting with a graphic that shows a ship bursting with missiles - of which there were none.
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Then look at this compound sentence from the Ambassador. There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas. I say part 1 is true, but part 2 (and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas) is not. A lot people believe that starving an innocent population is wrong. In the article itself, they blame Hamas for the takeover put are starving the entire population of 1.4 million for this.
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I do love the explanation that they are letting in 100 truckloads of food and medicine a day. That is 1 truck for every 14,000 people - plenty of food and medicine. And some of the items they embargo'ed, wheelchairs (which can be turned into metal clubs).
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Then Mr. Gordis' comment that "Israel’s attempt to enforce a blockade becomes an international crisis, while most of the world shrugs when North Korea sinks a South Korean ship." This is a common and incorrect refrain. The "shrug" included new military ties between Japan, South Korea and the US, discussions in the UN Security Council and the fall of the Japanese government. Bitching at Israel is not an "international crisis".
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He also says, "Our problem is that though most Israelis want peace with two states — one Jewish and one Palestinian, living side by side — we cannot find anyone to make a deal with us. A decade ago, President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak, tried, but Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, walked away. Now the supposedly moderate Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, refuses to negotiate, as of course does Hamas. " True - Yasir walked away. But since then the PLO has had elections in Palestine (as called for in the treaty - we just didn't like the results), stopped the intifada (credit to Israel primarily - but Palestine too) and Israel built a walk across territory it had agreed to give back and continued to build settlements on disputed land after agreeing not too. Blame is a too way street here. Israel's promises are no more followed than Palestine's.
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I am not saying that we should turn our back on Israel - but let's have an honest discussion - not pretend that Israel is the saint of the Mideast.