June 2004 Archives

OK, so just to get this out of the way: Yes, I saw Spider-Man 2, yes, it was awesome, yada yada yada. The movie explanation for why Dr. Octopus goes crazy makes a lot more sense than the comic book explanation (which was basically: "Hey, an explosion! I'm crazy now").

But this post is not about the awesomeness of a movie that you've already seen four times by now. No, this post is about what a stinking liar Spidey co-creator Stan Lee is.

Everybody who follows comics probably already knows Stan is a stinking liar. Take, for example, his tendency to retell the story of how he created Spider-Man...about twelve different ways. Some of which are physically impossible. And we all know the actual creation probably went something like this:

Stan's latest lie? I suppose he didn't expect me to remember when he said: "No, no I don't, I don't think I'm gonna have cameos in the sequels 'cause I think that gets to be a little much." Oh, is that so? Then who was that white-haired man saving someone from falling debris, eh, Mr. Lee? Or should I say...Mr. LIEBER??!?! I rest my case.

Guesses for the Instapundit "Indeed." Challenge are in!

I'm not eligible for the prize, but for the sake of competing, I'm going with 441.

I"I"C Tote Board
TARGET DATE: Nov. 2, 2004, 11:59 PM EST

---------> current count: 321
Pup: 352
Rebel Dad: 366
Andrew: 375
Pinz: 397
LiAps: 424
James: 441
Lee Katz: 450
Kimberly: 481
Isabel: 536
Ko: 601

Who will win the fabulous mystery prize? Stay tuned.

You'd probably have a tough time finding that one at Wal-Mart.

The Grand Furdell Las Vegas Trip, Mark VIII or so, is fast approaching. Friends and family will converge on the Luxor Casino and Hotel in August for a full long weekend of debauchery, eating, drinking, and, of course, games of chance.

Speaking of games of chance... I've promised a friend of the family (and lady LAW-YHERR) that I would review our blackjack plan of attack. That's coming soon, as soon as a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun replies to my e-mail about the single-deck situation downtown. Really! The word on the street... "Internet Boulevard"... is that the single-deck game is, sadly, rapidly deteriorating.

But more on that later. In the meantime, we Furdells and our friends need to take up the challenge of new gambling frontiers. We must move past the ingrained familiarity of our blackjack, our craps, our poker, and into the uncharted terrority. We must pick up the gauntlet and rush face-first into a game known as...

Pai Gow Poker.

That's right, I said it. Pai Gow Poker, bitches.

Really, it's not as incomprehensible as you might think. Don't confuse this with the dominoes version of the game Pai Gow, which is, indeed, completely indecipherable to non-Asians (and, I'm sure, to many for-real Asians as well). The poker version of the game is actually fairly easy to learn, and since many hands result in a push, chances are you can play it for a while without busting out.

You can peep the rules at The Wizard of Odds, a must-read website if you're interested in the mathematics behind any gambling game. It's always good to know what you're up against.

Basically, each player is given seven cards, with which to make two poker hands: one five-card hand and one two-card hand. The usual poker rankings apply to the five-card hand, with the exception that the "bicycle" straight (A2345) is the second-highest straight. The two-card hand can either be a pair or two individual cards. There is one Joker included in the deck, which can either act as an ace, or complete a straight or a flush. One important caveat: the two-card hand may not be stronger than the five-card hand; otherwise it's a "foul" and you automatically lose.

After the player arranges the cards, the banker draws seven cards and arranges them according to a predetermined "house way," and compares those hands to the player's. In case of a tie, which is not too likely, the banker wins. But if the player wins, there's also a 5 percent commission on the win; so, you're betting $20 to win $19.

There's one feature to this game that allows a player to occasionally act as banker, if he can cover all the other players' potential winning bets. This is advantageous to the player, even though the house still gets 5 percent on winnings. I'm not sure whether this is in effect at Luxor, but I don't remember seeing it happen while I was watching. Clearly, more field research must be done on the matter.

So who's with me? Anyone?

Hello?

And it's not going to work for this guy:

A drunken man being forced to the ground after crashing his car and punching a cop in the head Thursday pleaded for leniency by claiming to be a Catholic priest, authorities said.

People who know me know that I fulfill two of the three international standard requirements for being a complete and total geek.

1. Into computers
2. Collects comic books
3. Plays role-playing games

You'll never take me alive, role-playing games!

Ahem. Anyway, I feel the need to plug my new favorite comic, She-Hulk before it gets cancelled, which, seeing as how I like it, will happen by the time I finish this... sentence... dammit!

Marvel Comics originally created She-Hulk as a copyright stopgap measure in 1980, simply to reserve the name. In the original series, Jennifer Walters, a mild-mannered LAW-YHERRR, receives an emergency blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Hulk, thus turning her into a straightforward, female version of the Hulk, and causing her to tangle with such classic villains as "Man-Elephant."

Really.

Creatively, a second series in the early '90s changed the focus by adopting a cheesecake-and-comedy theme, breaking down the so-called "fourth wall" by addressing the reader.

The newest series builds on that comic mischievousness by placing Jen in the position of practicing "superhuman law" in the Marvel comic-book universe. Sort of like "Ally McBeal meets superheroes," but much, much better. Some of writer Dan Slott's ideas on the subject are utterly brilliant:

That's from issue #2, and it may be one of my favorite comic ideas of all time: Marvel comics, which years ago had been established as existing in the Marvel universe, can be used as evidence in court cases.

Ingenious. I like to envision this as the kind of law that all my disgruntled lawyer friends would rather be practicing.

Other favorite plot points so far:

In issue #3, Jen successfully argues that returns from the grave are possible by calling to the stand recently deceased Fantastic Four hero The Thing. She also references the Infinity War crossover of the early '90s, in which half of the Marvel Universe died and was subsequently resurrected.

In issue #4, Slott handles the obligatory Spider-Man crossover by giving the wall-crawler a chance to sue his journalistic nemesis, Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson, for libel. Sadly, Spidey is forced to drop the charges when he realizes that Peter Parker's faked photograph of Spidey-as-Electro (from Amazing Spider-Man #9) might make him equally liable. (That poor Spider-Man; he's such a hard-luck Charlie.)

Anyway, the new She-Hulk series is clever and funny, and since I like it, you should check it out before it gets utterly and vehemently cancelled. I believe Vegas has set the over/under at 4.5 more issues before that happens.

Jason Smathers, a 24-year-old software engineer working for America On-Line, was arrested earlier today for selling 92 million AOL e-mail addresses to a 21-year-old Las Vegas man, Sean Dunaway. Dunaway, who was also arrested, spammed the addresses with e-mails for penis enlargement pills.

Sadly for Mr. Smathers, late of Harpers Ferry, W. Va., he operates a web page bearing his name, much like we do. And on that page is a discussion forum that is open to everyone. Which is now filling up with angry messages, such as this one:

Dear Jason,

We hate you and hope you die.

Have a rat sandwich. Signed,
the internet.

That crazy Internet, always holding a grudge. Anyway, check out Smathers' site before it goes away.

Sometimes the internal monologues of people you come across on the Internet can get skin-crawlingly repulsive. My co-worker Andy brought today's example to my attention: pro-anorexia online communities.

As the name implies, pro-anorexia (or "pro-ana") people are anorexics who feel that starving themselves into double-digit weights is not so much a "disease" as a "lifestyle choice."

A scary, frightening lifestyle choice.

The pro-anas gather in groups to support each other in fasting, exercising too much, and obsessing over their body images, rather than encouraging each other to, you know, maintain a healthy body weight, nutrional diet, and non-insane exercise program. It's all one big, happy family of enablers.

Here are some choice examples of pro-ana dialogue:

Ok girls i am having some major difficulties here. you all probably know how i feel right now. I'm like sobbing...it's so frustrating. Now to refresh, i've been ana for like 7 years, but for the past few months i've binged like crazy out of depression. a couple weeks ago i started a restrictive diet...and i HAVEN'T LOST ANY WEIGHT.

like for instance, today i had:

2 pickles - 0 cals
1 small bag popcorn - 100 cals

100 cals, right?

And i've started taking hydroxycut today.

but...i'm STILL AT THE SAME WEIGHT. I mean i've tried EVERYTHING. I really need some help. It's making me so frustrated i don't know what to do.

- tear_ducts

The following joke is my gift to you, The Reader. Copy it, paste it into an email, and claim that you made it up yourself. And now...the joke.

In "a list drawn up in consultation with 1,000 linguists," the second-hardest-to-translate word is the Yiddish "shlimazl", which means, literally, "Hasenpfeffer Incorporated."

Come on, that was hilarious. You humorless bastards.

From "Slate reads My Life so you don't have to:"

Page 742: Strom Thurmond, 94, tells Chelsea [Clinton], "If I were 70 years younger, I'd court you!"

EWWWW.

If you're like me, you use the internet to research the background of any random thought you might have. If you're not like me, then my armies shall destroy you!

In any case, it often seems that the sites I happen upon haven't been updated in years. Why are these sites maintained? Who pays the bills? Unanswerable mysteries all. Here's a dead site you need to check out right this second.

Jujubes: The Perfect Food
Last updated: 2001

Summary
A fan site devoted to Jujubes, the chewy candy you throw at nerds in movie theatres. Features include a pronunciation guide, an essay on "Why I Love Jujubes," and a reader-provided Facts & Lore page that seems to contradict everything else on the site (including pronunciation and whether it is, in fact, "the perfect food").

Why This Site Is Awesome
* Excellent discussion of Jujube flavors; really opens your eyes to the Green Jujube Controversy, which I wasn't even aware of.
* Site author identifies all of her friends and relatives by which Jujube is their favorite. ("My father, the food scientist (he likes the red ones), is distraught that I have described Jujubes as the perfect food, since they are really only carbohydrate. Lighten up, dad.")

In a Nutshell
"All I know is that, for as long as I can remember, I have loved Jujubes. Specifically the purple ones, but the other ones are nice, too."

Leave it to MTV to screw up Clone High. The hilarious cartoon featuring clones of famous historical figures at a special high school was unjustly booted from the network when some very humorless people apparently complained about the satirical treatment of Mahatma Gandhi's clone as a fun-loving party animal.

The rest of the main characters were similarly portrayed in terms of high school TV show stereotypes. Abe Lincoln is our awkward, clueless hero; Joan of Arc is a Goth girl; JFK is a womanizing jock; Cleopatra is stuck-up and opportunistic. The evil Principal Scudworth lords over Clone High with the help of his robotic butler/assistant, Mr. Bultertron, who suspiciously looks a lot like Mr. Belvedere and calls everyone "Wesley."

Only about half of the 13 episodes aired in the U.S., as no other network ever picked up the fledgling show, which certainly deserved a wider audience. Hopefully it will make it to DVD one day (heck, they're releasing Punky Brewster on DVD, they should certainly release this).

In the meantime, here are my five favorite moments from Clone High.

If you've ever surfed around looking at political blogs, you've probably come across Instapundit at some point. Its creator, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, has been unfailingly pro-Iraq war since the beginning, and in fact is probably the foremost of the "hawk" bloggers.

Which is why it's so much fun trying to watch him squeeze around the increasingly bad news surrounding the war. No mention, for example, of the Ashcroft "torture is OK" memo, or newfound revelations regarding favorable treatment of Halliburton. While other on-line conservative pundits who actually are capable of introspection have discussed their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration lately, Insta has been chronically unable to admit that the war on terror maybe isn't in the best of hands.

But most hilarious are Insta's little tics. Sometimes, he'll post a link and say, "read the whole thing". More often, and this is my favorite, he'll post an excerpt, and give his trademark, one-word response:

"Indeed."

That's it. Indeed, period. That's often the limit to the good professor's commentary: nothing else needs to be said on the topic. Here's an example post of his on the Plame scandal:

Who were the Adminstration leakers but, more importantly, who in the CIA authorized Wilson's strange, off-budget, journey to Niger and why? Why is this more important? Because it could show people in our own intelligence agencies working against the wishes of our government, not just standard-issue partisan battling that goes on every day inside the Beltway.

Indeed.

Yeah, indeed. Indeed, indeed. Whatever.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to count up the number of times Instapundit has used the word "Indeed." just like that. What I didn't realize is that it would require a Herculean effort on my part. Instapundit.com alone has been around since 2001, and a search earlier today on his site reveals that the word "Indeed." was used in an incredible 309 posts.

So, I thought I would set up a fun graphical counter here at the Department of Homeland Furdellity. The rules are:

- Each time Instapundit posts or updates a post with the infamous one-word sentence, the Instapundit "Indeed." Counter (IIC) is incremented by one.

- Posts that contain or eventually contain the sentence more than once still only count as one.

- "indeed" and "Indeed," and other variations don't count. It has to be a standalone, one-word sentence.

- In the comments section for this post, give us the number you think the counter will show at midnight Eastern time on the night of the 2004 presidential elections (November 2). One entry per person (leave your e-mail address or URL with the comment), and once a number has been guessed, that person has dibs and it can't be guessed again. The winner is whoever's closest; he or she gets a prize to be determined, at my whim. In case of a tie, it's whoever's closest without going over, in the spirit of The Price is Right. Entries close on June 30th.

Without further ado, here's the counter. Oh wait... grrrr, it's gone up by two since I started writing this. This is going to be hard work.

Voila. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Ha ha, nothing to update. Just playin'.

Those of you who know my brother are aware that he is retarded. However, it has come to my attention that total strangers read this site and might assume, from my retarded brother's uncanny grasp of the English language, that he has insights. To those people I present the following rebuttal.

Cannonball Run has been a proud member of my extensive-yet-exclusive DVD collection for quite some time now, and I have viewed the film enough times to make me an expert.

Now, first of all I think it's important to point out that Cannonball Run is based on true, awesome events. There actually was such a thing as the Cannonball Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, organized by CB screenwriter Brock Yates. Bet you didn't know that, huh, Mr. Smart-Ass? Hmm? Didn't think so. In fact, Yates himself was on the team that dressed up a car like an ambulance, complete with a fake doctor and his wife acting as the patient (though in real life their car broke down before they reached the finish). The point of the Dash, if there can be said to have been a point, was that speed limits are not necessary as long as people are good drivers...or something. The point may also have been "hilarity."

Let us shred my brother's argument on a point by point basis.

First of all, Dom DeLuise's turn as Captain Chaos is the funniest part of this, or in fact any movie. Gentle reader, words can not convey the sheer hilariosity when DeLuise makes the inexplicably fast transformation into his costumed alter ego, whom Burt Reynolds apparently loathes. The look on Burt?s face when Captain Chaos shows up?look, I?ve seen this movie about forty times, and I still laugh so hard that milk comes out of my nose, and I haven?t had milk in years. Think about that.

Roger Moore? Okay, we all know I have a weakness for anything remotely related to James Bond. My previously mentioned DVD-collection would carry a lot more clout if it didn?t include such classics as Casino Royale and Moonraker. But I believe I can say, with total objective certainty, that Roger Moore is fantastic in this film. In one of my favorite scenes, when Moore?s concerned mother finds his gun, he regretfully must kill her. Well, it?s funnier when Roger Moore says it. Moving right along?

Yes, Farrah Fawcett is awful. In fact I?d say she?s the worst thing about this movie. But if the worst thing about a movie is a woman with a nice pair of floppy titties, then it must be the Fucking Awesomest Movie of All Time.

Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.?s drunken shenanigans are actually quite funny when you view them the way myself and Celebrity Movie-Watching Pal Matt B. did. (Hi Matt!) James, we suggest you watch the movie again, and this time keep this thought in mind: ?Hey, is this actually in the script, or did Dean Martin really just show up hammered every day?? Comedy.

Terry Bradshaw? Yeah, okay. Well, somehow he was more convincing in this role than he was playing himself in Smokey and the Bandit II. You gotta give him that.

I?m going to skip some of your other good points and skip straight to what must be the Stupidest Thing My Brother Has Ever Typed, and that is that the end of this movie is in some way not spectacular. Yes, James?s description of the ending was accurate, but he likes all sorts of movies that don?t have resolutions. Remember how much you loved Blow Up? Yes, I did go there. I just compared Cannonball Run to an Antonioni film. Deal with it!

This movie is madcap and wacky, and its ending suits it! But the outtake version of the ending, which plays at the end of the credits, has to be the funniest thing ever committed to celluloid. It?s similar to the actual ending, but it goes like this:

Again, this is something you must see for yourself, probably while finishing a bottle of something.

In conclusion, my brother is completely wrong and stupid. But don?t take my word for it; rush out and rent or buy several copies of Cannonball Run immediately. Because that way, even if you don?t like the movie, I win.

Do I hate myself?

You could make an argument for yes, since I occasionally watch some of the worst movies ever made. I could win a Nobel prize with the potential material I could write about gems such as Cool As Ice and Disco Godfather, and, um... Cool As Ice 2: Cooler Than Ice.

But there are still many bad movies out there I haven't seen, which is why I recently sat down for a viewing of the DVD of Hal Needham's 1981 classic The Cannonball Run.

Needham's movies seem to have their own oeuvre. Or niche. Whatever. Needham actually got his start as Burt Reynolds' stunt double on Gunsmoke in the '60s, but was suddenly thrust into unlikely directoral stardom with 1977's Smokey and the Bandit, a giddy chase movie with likeable performances by everyone and a great country soundtrack by Jerry Reed.

Needham brings a silly but energized sensibility to the production and an action man's need to see things moving. But he also has a distinctive feeling for relationships, and he's good with a joke. Put all that together, and Smokey is, at the very least (and unlike its sequels), a simple and original pleasure.

--Tom Keogh, super70s.com

Needham's debut was a huge hit, finishing second at the box office for the year to Star Wars. Studio bosses had a resounding answer to the oft-asked question, "Will it play in Peoria?" and were eager for more films from Needham partnered with Reynolds.

Sadly, that's when the two started to kind of phone things in. However, Hooper, featuring Reynolds as a stuntman, and Smokey and the Bandit II, a lackluster sequel that sadly gave us the first screen comedy partnership between Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, and a pregnant elephant, apparently did well enough for somebody to green-light Cannonball.

And what a star-studded affair it would be. Even today the cast list is amazing. Besides the questionable comedy team of Reynolds and DeLuise, you had:

Roger Moore
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett's nipples
Dean Martin
Sammy Davis Jr.
Jack Elam
Terry Bradshaw
Jackie Chan
Peter Fonda
Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder
Bert Convy
Jamie Farr

OK, granted, it's starting to look like the guest stars list for an episode of The Love Boat or Match Game '78 towards the end there, but that's still an impressive list, especially if you add the (by now inexplicable) box-office draw of Reynolds.

With that kind of star power, and with Needham directing, you might be able to forgive people for thinking that maybe Cannonball would be able to recapture the all-out action and light-hearted charm of the original Bandit. Or perhaps they were sucked in by the classic Drew Struzan poster artwork:

How thrilled and/or terrified they must have been, to sit in that dark theater in 1981 and hear the opening tones of the opening theme song, a bizarre mix of country, disco and synthesizer, and sung by Ray Stevens, the musical auteur who blessed us with such novelty hits as "Ahab the Arab" and "The Streak."

Following that, we learn that we're here to witness a cross-country race where the only rule is... wait for it... waaaaait for it... you guessed it, there are no rules. Then, we take an eternity of screen time to meet our contestants.

Burt Reynolds is a mechanic with the somewhat politically incorrect idea of racing in an ambulance, thus avoiding being pulled over. He also likes to, inexplicably, fly his airplane onto the main street of a small town in order to pick up some product-placed Budweiser. Power lines be damned!

Reynolds' favorite hobby is smacking around Dom DeLuise, his mentally disturbed sidekick who, in times of trouble, manifests a second personality known as "Captain Chaos," a superhero in a cape and mask who throws his oppressors through flimsy plate-glass windows. Oh, how I wish I was kidding.

Roger Moore shows up in surely his most bizarre role ever. He plays a man who is deluded into thinking he's... Roger Moore. But his name is really... Seymour Goldfarb? WTF?! Honestly, my brain imploded halfway through the scene in which Seymour explains to his mother why he pretends to be Roger Moore, so I really can't give you the full story. Every scene involving Moore includes a sound-alike James Bond-ish theme, and a quasi-"Bond girl" voiced by Rocky the Squirrel, and Moore activating some kind of spy-device on his car. Apparently the Goldfarb story element was designed to prevent Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, the Bond movie patriarch, from suing. (A lesser man would here include a joke about steamed Broccoli. Make up your own.)

Farrah Fawcett is thrown in sort of as an afterthought, playing a dippy environmental activist (ha ha, isn't the environment stupid?) who's easily tricked into aiding Burt and Dom's cause. The scene where she tries to hold a flirty conversation with Burt, while a sappy "love theme" plays in the background, will make you want to vomit up your internal organs. At least she had the decency to not wear a bra.

Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. make an appearance, and it's the kind of appearance that makes you wonder why they were ever famous in the first place. It's not evident here, as their perpetually drunk (and driving) characters dress up as Catholic priests in an attempt to evade arrest. They later lament not dressing up as Presbyterians so they could hit on women. Don't worry guys, you can always pick up some altar boys along the way.

Terry Bradshaw. The former Steelers quarterback and current Most Annoying Man on Television was apparently a favorite of Needham. He really had to stretch his acting ability here in order to play a big, dumb guy.

Chinese martial arts star Jackie Chan made his American film debut in Cannonball alongside Chinese comedy star Michael Hui. Sadly, they're playing Japanese characters here. More sadly, the intended audience probably doesn't know the difference. At least Chan does get to squeeze in a fight scene towards the end.

Bert Convy shows up as the race's defending champion. His character spends the entire movie riding cross-country on a motorcycle, and stuck in a perpetual wheelie because his back-seat passenger is so fat. (The password is "pointless.")

Jamie Farr pays homage to his Lebanese heritage by portraying a super-rich sheik. Tell me if this line would make it into a movie today:

The Sheik: My driving is rivaled only by the lightning bolts from the heavens!

Sheik's Sister: So you still intend to enter the race with the infidel Americans?

The Sheik: My dear sister, the Cannonball shall fall to the forces of Islam! I swear it!

Yeah, I kinda doubt it too.

Anyway, there are some other minor annoying characters as well. Everybody races from New Jersey to California. The racers start at staggered times and use punch cards to later on determine order of finish. This is, of course, all forgotten at the end, when they're all in a rush to get to the punch card machine, and the first one who reaches it is declared the winner. Even though the first finisher's time might have been slower than someone else's time, who had started later, and never mind, I'm thinking wayyyyy too hard for this kind of movie.

The final insult: at the end, when Burt is complaining about Dom's alter ego for the millionth time, Dom says, that's OK, I always wanted to be... Captain USA! And, all of a sudden he's dressed like Captain America. And everybody laughs. Aaaaand... that's the end.

The moral of the story is, it all makes very little sense. This isn't so much a movie as a random collection of actors having a much better time goofing off than I am watching them. I can't wait for Cannonball Run II.

(Oh wait, they made that already. Never mind.)

Tonight I watched the premiere of what can only be the very worst reality TV show I have ever seen, The Casino. There are three major reasons why this show is awful. In ascending order of severity, those reasons are:

1. Like Las Vegas, a terrible show with a dishonestly good pilot episode, The Casino is a thinly disguised attempt to shove travel brochures in your face. You may as well be watching Travel Channel's Top 10 Vegas Resort Swimming Pools. (Mandalay Bay is #1 thanks to its wave machine.) These shows would be vastly more entertaining if they focused on the dark side of Mob-Free Vegas: disaffected employees, obnoxious tourists, and the general misanthropy that everyone who lives and works in Vegas seems to feel.

2. The Casino suffers from The Jury Syndrome. (Side note: If these show titles get any blander, Google will be of no use. Next up on ABC: 'The And') The Jury Syndrome occurs when a show tries to copy the formula made popular by The Fugitive, in which an engaging main character interacts with a rotating supporting cast; but then that show forgets it needs an engaging main character. The casino owners in this show are so "Look-At-Me-I-Watched-Swingers" obnoxious, that when they say the word "baby," it is like nails on the chalkboard of my soul.

3. OK, Mark Burnett. I know some scenes from Survivor are staged. I assume the same is true of The Apprentice, and I'm sure that The Restaurant is almost entirely fabricated. But I have never seen as poor an attempt as The Casino to convince me that it is, as its website promises, "unscripted." I guess if by "unscripted" you mean "improv," then okay. But this is ridiculous.

You would think that if they're going to perpetrate a reality show, they'd at least make its conflicts enticing, right? Wrong. Here's an example conflict: the new lounge singer is asked to step aside so that a Nevada polician can butcher a song. First of all, this is such a stupid little crisis, that this guy has to stand off stage for five minutes while a wheel gets greased, and he makes it seem like a deal-breaker. But forget about that, because the whole thing is entirely fake; the scene in which the lounge singer is confronted by the entertainment director looks like a botched re-enactment, complete with slow reaction times and poor acting.

Oh, yeah, it gets worse. Consider the following subplot: A 'professional gambler' arrives in Vegas and decides to go to The Casino. Somehow, the show's cameras knew he was coming and followed him from the airport; and, even though he has television cameras following him, he almost slips under the receptionist's radar.

Now, this supposed card-counter -- who the casino knows about but mysteriously doesn't ask not to play blackjack -- makes it clear that he is looking for chicks. The camera inexplicably focuses on a woman in a hat and sunglasses, playing blackjack with some loser. We see about a half-minute of this footage, when suddenly Mr. Card Counter sidles up and talks her into going to his suite. In response to an improbably direct question from the dealer ("Did you notice that your girlfriend just left with that guy, and she isn't coming back?"), the loser claims that Ms. Hat was actually a guy. Cut to the suite, where Mr. Card Counter and Ms. Hat are lightly making out or something, and Mr. Card Counter twice remarks that Ms. Hat has a sexy, deep voice.

Say it ain't so, Mark Burnett. One would think that a man of your considerable resources and reality-TV resum? could put together something a little bit less obviously fake. What were you thinking? O, how I long for the days of Joe Schmo.

Need to learn karate? Want your relationship to light-heartedly blossom? Hope to prove Fermat?s last theorem? Hey, slow down there, cowboy. Those things take time, and we?re busy trying to figure out how to humiliate jocks and get laid.

Ah, but wait! We have an editing tool on our side! Thanks to the montage, we can do all those things in the time it takes most people to scramble an egg. And since the montage reached its cinematic peak in the 1980s, it?s the perfect thing to reminisce about! So join me on my magical voyage through the Top Five Montages ? won?t you?

As most of you probably know, today has been set aside as a one-time federal holiday as we mourn the death of Ray Charles.

As a nation, we must fall back on our emergency blind, black musical genius, who still has a few good years left in him. If you are black and blind or willing to be blinded, and can play at least four instruments and compose hit songs, please contact the White House immediately.

So I get home yesterday, and I sit down to watch some TV. Those of you who have come to my home and mooched off of my hospitality already know that my set is a widescreen projection TV. No, I'm not bragging; these details are actually relevant to the story.

So I turn on the TV, and lo and behold, there is a spider on the screen. A minor annoyance, to be sure! With courage in my heart, I arose from the couch to vanquish my eight-legged foe. I tried to shoo him off the screen, but it didn't take. That was when I realized: the spider was inside the television. Eeeeek!!

I tried tapping the screen. That made her move her legs a little, but all in all she wasn't too perturbed. (Yes, this was clearly a girl spider. Like Charlotte.) Realizing that my movie-watching enjoyment would be lessened by the ever-present spider, I did something completely futile: I called the lying dipshits at Best Buy, who I am not at all Google-bombing.

How are they lying dipshits, you ask? To answer this question, we must travel back in time to November 2002, when I purchased the set from an Atlanta Best Buy. I also bought a 4-year, $300 protection plan, even though my brother told me I would be stupid to do so. Hey, look, the sales representative was very convincing, okay?

Look, I?m willing to admit when I?m stupid, and I admit: I was stupid. I should have realized something was up, because another sales rep told me the television would only work with satellite TV (which required more hardware and a service subscription), even though common sense told me that nobody would manufacture a television that isn?t compatible with cable. I knew he was lying, at least. I also might have benefited from a more close read of the protection plan, which plainly states that it does not cover intentional or accidental damage, and then proceeds to list a whole lot of other things it doesn?t cover, including ? natch ? insect infestation, which I promise I?ll get back to shortly. The point is, I wasn?t jaded enough yet to realize that total strangers were lying to my face.

Fast forward six months. My roommate insists on using the set?s 4:3 aspect ratio mode to watch regular TV. Neither of us realizes that excessive use of this feature will lead to image burn. Sure enough, the left and right sides of the screen are oddly more yellow than the middle part. Assuming ? and I want to point out that I?m really putting myself out there by posting this, and I don?t need you to make fun of me when I?m in such an emotionally vulnerable position ? assuming that the bulbs needed to be rotated (oh god), I called the Best Buy people. This is when I was informed that the protection plan really only covers, and I quote, ?lightning strike.? I didn?t ask if it also covers lottery-winning.

Understand, gentle reader, that this television was an extravagant purchase, by which I mean ?more than I should have spent, on anything.? So when I looked at that screen with its yellowing sides and realized how much I had spent to watch movies that way, tears welled up in my eyes. Tears?of righteous rage.

It took about three days of phone-calling, ?I want to speak to your supervisor?ing, and all the whining you would expect from a person like me, before I finally got on the phone with someone in a position to make actual decisions. It was the guy who ultimately decides whether a customer gets a replacement unit or not.

What I loved about this guy was that he had emotional depth. None of Best Buy?s other phone people seemed to care about me or my situation, but this guy seemed genuinely depressed. I imagined him, sitting in his office at a distribution center somewhere in the boonies, and in my imagination he looked like a human, live-action Droopy Dog. I told him the whole story.

Seriously, I was almost ready to give him a refund. If the TV hadn?t been so damned expensive I might have let it go, but instead, when he was at his weakest, I did the unthinkable: I dropped the ?you don?t want to lose a valued customer? bomb. I hated myself even as I did it, but my replacement set was on the way. And that was the end of that aside.

So getting back to my more recent problem, which you may or may not remember was a spider behind the screen. I called the lying dipshits, and was promptly reminded that my protection plan does not cover insect infestation.

Long story short: I figured out on my own how to open up the set, and discovered that inside is a magical world of lights, wires, a big-ass mirror, and spider webs; I dispatched of the spider and scooped out about a handful of webbing, which was gross; and I charged myself $90. Then, I renewed my vow to tell the world to never shop at Best Buy.

If you absolutely must buy something from Best Buy, remember always the three rules.

1. Never believe a word the sales representatives say. They are, in ways you can not imagine, lying dipshits. In fact, if one of them tries to talk to you, kick him or her in the shin and spit in his or her eye.
2. For the love of God, do not buy the protection plan. It protects nothing and is a total scam. Best Buy is not your friend.
3. No matter how much they beg, whatever you do, never ever feed a Best Buy employee after midnight. I can?t stress that one enough.

Marvel at the music of Wing.

The best available selection is clearly Dream Lover.

Apparently MGM Mirage has made an offer to the Mandalay Resort Group. I estimate that about 70% of those of you reading these words make semi-regular trips to Vegas with me and my brother, so this news affects you directly -- especially since we always stay in the Luxor (a Mandalay property).

I'm mostly worried about the Mandalay Bay poker room, my favorite place to play poker. The dealers are friendly, the bonuses are plentiful, and it's located right next to the huge, awesome sports book. When I started seriously playing poker, which I think was a little over a year ago, the Mandalay poker room was perhaps in trouble; it was the casino's money-loser, kept around mostly to please those gamblers who might otherwise not schlep out to the very end of the strip. Then, thanks to the Travel channel, poker became (and still is) wildly popular. I guess I shouldn't worry, but any change in management or staff at the poker room could only diminish its quality.

The last time I was there, Carmilla -- one of my favorite dealers -- complained to me that the new batch of poker players, entirely lacking in skill, have found a new and exciting way to annoy poker dealers. Apparently these newbies always wear their reflective sunglasses, just like the guys on the tee-vee. Since these guys suck, they often don't realize when it's their time to act -- or maybe they're just thinking really hard, but the dealers can't tell because of those damned sunglasses. Hilarious.

Personally, I don't like to wear sunglasses inside, so I take a different approach: every time I look at my hand, I stab myself in the leg with a fork. This assures that I will react unpredictably every time, and it also distracts the guy to my left, who would ordinarily have a positional advantage.

Presenting the story of James and Kimberly's Awesome European Vacation, Featuring London and Paris. It may indeed be the Best Vacation Ever; the Good Vacation Luck Gods were smiling upon us the entire time, as well they should.

FYI, the details are long and boring and of little or no appeal to the general public. This is primarily a service to our friends, so that we don't have to bore them in person with endless details about what we did (we can bore them on the Internet instead). Don't click on the jump if you're not interested in the gory details.

Here's a new pet peeve: comic book fans who insist on declaring certain superheroes able to beat certain other superheroes, as if there's some kind of definite blanket answer. Seriously, I'm sick of this guy and his wrongness.

I'll make an example of him using the page I linked to. He's done five of these "comic book duels" pages, and they're all equally irrelevant, but I'm just going to go over the one and you can take my word for it on the others.
Continue reading only if you are a big nerd.

Looks like Prez is consulting an attourney about the Plame investigation. Hopefully we'll eventually know who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, but more importantly, how will we ever find out exactly what kinds of awesome missions she was sent on?

Perhaps our only hope is to read this week's installment of VALERIE PLAME ADVENTURES!!!

Gadzooks! Can our heroine disarm the dictator and save her husband -- all without revealing her secret identity? What will happen next?!?! Be here next week for an exciting new installment of -- VALERIE PLAME ADVENTURES!

Apparently I haven't been fulfilling my blogging responsibilities, so here, as long ago promised, is my list of the best, funniest, most outlandish Passions happenings I have seen so far.

#5 ? The past lives of Luis, Sheridan, and Antonio. Every soap opera has its super-couples, and the duo of Luis and Sheridan is the most annoying one on Passions. Not only are they madly in love in this life, but they have frequent flashbacks to their former lives in which they also, you guessed it, were madly in love. And Luis' brother Antonio is always there to complete the requisite love triangle. What's great about these flashbacks is that they are always ripping off some blockbuster movie. My favorites are the Titanic rip-off (Sheridan = Kate Winslett, Luis = a Hispanic Leo, and Antonio = Billy Zane) and the current one, a Pirates of the Caribbean rip-off, except Sheridan is in love with the Johnny Depp character, not the Orlando Bloom character, and Antonio is the upstanding Captain determined to protect his love from the blackguard pirates. When I last saw them, the trio were being attacked by some "phantom pirates." I?m rooting for the phantoms.

#4 ? Precious falls for Luis. Popular guy, that Luis. Not only are Sheridan and Beth in love with him, but so is Precious. Those of you who read my last entry may remember that Precious is the chimp that Beth hired as a nurse for her mother. Whenever Luis comes to the house to see what he thinks is his son by Beth (really his son by Sheridan, kidnapped by Beth), we, the viewers, are made to know that Precious has quite a crush on him, mostly through dream sequences of the chimp and Luis running through a meadow, dancing at a ball, giving each other foot rubs ... you get the picture.

#3 ? Theresa goes to hell. Theresa, pregnant by her boyfriend Ethan's ex-father Julian (it's a long story) and dumped by Ethan on account of it, decides to commit suicide. Since people on soap operas are always Catholic (I guess it's more dramatic than being Presbyterian), and suicide is a sin in Catholicism, Theresa goes straight to hell. She finds herself in what looked to me like a vegetable cart, being spirited along a never-ending tunnel by some "scary" demons that looked like eight-year-olds dressed as devils on Halloween. And this went on for DAYS. Theresa looking scared, having her hair blown back by a fan to make it look like they were going very fast indeed, and occasionally uttering things like, "Where are you taking me?! No! NO!" Upon finally reaching her destination, Theresa meets with the devil himself. The best description I can think of is that he looked remarkably like the devil in the Mexican movie Santa Claus, as seen on MST3K. She wound up making a deal with the devil to restore her life and spare her from hell, but I can't remember the details, and the writers seem to have forgotten all about it too, so don't hold it against me.

#2 ? Kay freezes Charity. Kay finds a magic book and uses it to freeze her cousin in a huge block of ice. See my previous Passions entry for more fun details.

#1 ? Beth?s "baby" leaks. In my favorite ridiculous Passions moment, Beth, who has been pretending to be pregnant by strapping a five-pound bag of sugar to her waist, somehow starts to leak while in the ob/gyn waiting room. As sugar pours onto the floor from her fake womb, the onlookers, instead of saying, "Hey, you're not really pregnant, you lying bitch," become alarmed for her health because, after all, it's not normal to leak sugar when you're pregnant, so there must be something really wrong with her.

And that does it for my top 5 list. I promise that the writers have more bizarre moments in store for us, and I will be sure to keep you posted.

Apparently Kt Kilborn is having a final show on Sunday. This will be my last chance to witness firsthand "Underground TRANSit" at Theatre OUTlanta. You know, gays would probably have equal rights by now if it wasn't for puns.

Anyway, I want to see this show because I knew Kt (n?e Katie) in college, before everyone started using male pronouns to describe him and before he dropped the vowels, which, as we all learned from The Letter People, are the girly letters. We didn't get along too well, probably because she took everything really seriously, whereas I found humor in every murder-suicide. Her friends were just as humorless, as evidenced by the following excerpt from an actual conversation.

But I digress. Anyway, at some point Katie -- whose greatest accomplishment up to that point was being Craig Kilborn's estranged half-sister -- set out to blur the gender binary for underground theatre audiences.

OK, I admit it, all of this is just setup for a hilarious punchline. Perusing through Kt's weblog, I noticed the following excerpt which I simply had to share. Apparently Kt's girlfriend dumped him, and his musings on the subject can only be described as "stereotypetastic." And I quote:

"It's like my best Indigo Girls/Ani DiFranco mixes are amoxicillin and this disease won't die no matter how much of them I take."

That trannie needs 50 ccs of Tori Amos -- STAT.

An L.A. man, Juan Catalan, who was accused of murder, insisted he was at a Dodgers game 20 miles away when the crime happened. Despite being able to show his ticket stub from the game, police insisted that witnesses placed him at the scene of the murder. Catalan's lawyer combed through video footage of Dodger Stadium, but was unable to make out his client in any of the tapes.

Suddenly, a sitcom came to his rescue.

Melnik later learned that HBO had been at the stadium the night of the killing to tape an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," a self-deprecating comedy starring "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David. The lawyer found what he was looking for in footage that had not made the final cut.

"I got to one of the scenes, and there is my client sitting in a corner of the frame eating a hot dog with his daughter," Melnik said. "I nearly jumped out of my chair and said, 'There he is!"'

Television: it saves lives.

(How many of our lawyer friends would kill for a case that was actually interesting and required some detective work? This one could have come out of the movies. It definitely beats re-re-insurance, or combing through 20,000 company e-mails.)

So, last night I'm all set to go out and play some poker. The game I usually play in has moved to a new location, which is conveniently much, much farther away. So I drive and drive and drive, and when I get there, the house is empty. Then I drove to the old location, and there was no answer there either. Turns out there was no game last night. It's an off-week. Arg.

That alone does not so much bug me. What bugs me is that there are now three major games in Atlanta that I know about, and every last one of them is "just inside the perimeter," be that the extreme north end or the extreme south end. I'm supposed to drive a half-hour to some place called "Jonesboro" just to play cards? By the time I get there I'll already be down $5 of gas money. That's no way to start playing poker.

Yes, yes, I do have all the materials necessary to start a game myself. But I don't like having degenerate gamblers in my house. Also, I'm barely willing to clean up after my own messes, let alone other peoples'.

Alas and alack, all at once. I've even heard about a game that's supposed to be very close to me, but the host didn't return my call and I don't want to seem desperate. I envy those of you who live in towns with easily accessible gambling.