I think they might end up surprised at the high ratings, if only they publicize the "thrillingly embarassing" review.

SondraK sent me this page, containing clips of the epic.

No lesser light than AllahPundit deems them "comedy gold" and proclaims this to be "the Super Bowl of Retard Movies."

Can't wait to watch "A New Haircut." I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl.

A retarded schoolgirl.

Oh, Man: This is horrible and sad.

The sad part is that there are mentally challenged people.

The horrible part is that Rosie O'Donnell is playing them.

What the hell is that "speech impediment" thing she's doing? It doesn't sound like a speech impediment at all. It sounds like she's doing some sort of bad Ed Grimley impersonation.

It does appear the movie is honestly named. Three quarters of the clips do, in fact, take place on a bus.

Who the hell greenlighted this abortion, and why is he snorting coke off a $3,000 hooker's ass while I'm sitting here trying to get a buzz off tearing my fingernails down to the cuticles?

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 PM | Comments (47)
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If you need any further proof that kneejerk partisanship causes deranged liberals to take a position contrary to Bush -- even when that position is one they supported 24 hours before Bush took it -- here is the final summation.

Bush is going to reduce SS benefits to the rich and Josh Marshall and the Daily "Screw 'em" Kos are fightin' mad about it!

Jackasses.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (168)
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Apparently the Dark Lord of the Sith wants you to know all about his opinions on Radiohead's Kid A vs. OK Computer.

His opinion? Both rock, but they're overrated, and Radiohead should have their brains scrambled via the Jedi Lobotomy Trick and forced to work in the megagypsum mines of Ballath'sphee.

Supposedly pretty funny, but I'm just putting it up here on the premise alone.

Thanks to Richard and to Ken Wheaton.

War's On Update: Don't be misled by Rebel lies; the Empire lives, and the war goes on.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (20)
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The other day I pimped this very fun story about friends "finding buried treasure" in their backyard.

But I forgot the first rule of blogging: Never trust a man who says a buddy was dancing around like a "rabid monkey":

Two men who claimed in numerous national television interviews that they found buried treasure in the back yard of a home were arrested early Friday after being questioned by police, who said the money was stolen.
Investigators believe Barry Billcliff, 27, of Manchester, N.H., and Timothy Crebase, 22, of Methuen, Mass., found the old bank notes and bills while doing roofing work.

Both men were charged with receiving stolen property, conspiracy and accessory after the fact, Lt. Kevin Martin said. They were to be arraigned Friday morning.

Crebase told investigators the men found the money in the gutter of a barn they were hired to repair, police said.

Well... they did find it, right?

What the hell was all that money doing in a gutter? Maybe it's time to do some spring-cleaning. Never know what you'll find. Maybe even a shrinking machine or somethin'.

Thanks to Ken Wheaton.

War's On Update: Situation unchanged. There's still a war on, and yet we're wasting government resources apprehending thieves.

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (14)
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First, he discovered a time machine in his attic; then, a shrinking machine.

Luckily, it turns out that his attic is just full of miracle gadgets from the far future. Otherwise he wouldn't have enough money to pay next month's subscription fees for Everquest.

I'm no expert, but it looks like it probably works to me. And the vendor himself... I don't know, he just has a look that to me projects authority and credibility.

But that's not all!

If you order now, you'll also receive:

1. the mind reading machine

2. two paper print outs of peoples thoughts

3. a postcard of four guys in a old car dated 1909 chicago, with unknown writting on back.

,,,

8. a german cook book from 1954

...

11. page out of the sunday news nov 15, 1936

High bid is currently $57 or so, which, to me, sounds like a freaking steal. I'd say just the German cookbook was worth that much.

Thanks to Rocketeer67.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (23)
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The president's press conference last night was, I think, perhaps his best ever. He was confident, in command of the facts, moderate in his views, engaging and appealing. It was much better than anything we've seen in a very long time; and it makes me wonder why his handlers keep him in such hermetically-sealed partisan settings. He's better than that; and it seems to me he keeps getting better in these contexts. ... I doubt it will shift the public mood, which is souring on the Republican hegemony. But it certainly reassured me that he is trying to tack away from the extreme right.

But compare with last night's:

Banning new books in public libraries that feature any gay characters or are written by gay authors? There are no theocratic tendencies among the Republicans, are there? ... The guy wanted to ban some Shakespeare. But Capote, Wilde, Auden, Proust and who knows who else will be barred. Government as the protector of souls. What are these "hysterics" worrying about "theocratic impulses" going on about?

And today's praise of Derbyshire, for being brave enough to agree with him on "theocracy:"

But I'm glad to see that not everyone at NRO has been drinking the big moral government Kool-Aid.

That's why the Sully Freak-Out Advisory can never drop below Chagrined. Even when he's reassured, he's still terribly, terribly concerned about the forces of Theocracy and Oppression.

From "Filled With Heart-Ache at Such Gobsmacking Vileness" to "Chagrined" in just 24 hours?

Well, as the title of my in-the-works TV sitcom says, That's My Sully!

The guy has more severe ups and downs than the Anaconda at Busch Gardens.

PS: There's still a war on, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (23)
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Allah (who actually tipped me to the Hitchhiker's review below, but I didn't hat-tip him, because I don't like him) tips to something even better: a NYT drubbing of Rosie's Emmy-bait droolfest.

This isn't going to be easy. ... I might ultimately tell you that your first impression [about this film] is right and that this is a profoundly embarrassing movie.



Ready? ... As Beth, Ms. O'Donnell dresses in wacky childish clothes and talks in a volume-inappropriate way and wears mismatched shoes and rides a hilarious bus around and around with her motley bus family. She annoys and enlightens the people she meets. And at times she shouts, in a voice you can probably imagine, "I am a person!"

... "Riding the Bus With My Sister," ... also shouts "first-class production" and "Emmy bid."

I just said that, of course. They ought to hire me.

And yet. As usual in movies about the mentally handicapped, the character of Beth is never given a coherent pathology; we can't tell whether she has physical problems, exactly, or cognitive ones or behavioral ones or all of these, or Down syndrome.

... Beth is mostly a constellation of misfit affectations - funny clothes, bipolar outbursts, a forced, garbled voice - and goofy physicality. Beth seems to be wrapped in a loose, superfluous layer of flesh, a symptom of some kind of metabolic disorder (she also gobbles sweets).

Rosie was quoted as saying it was this part of the script that "really spoke to her."

As a character, she doesn't make sense: she's socially awkward, but not consistently disabled. She's less poignant or tragic than merely clamorous and bothersome.

...

The viewer, meanwhile, is sure to cringe - and often. This is another inexplicable effort by an actor to overplay a slow, strange character and teach everybody lessons. The sanctimonious old stunt is not fair to viewers. This is a deeply - even thrillingly - embarrassing movie.

Set your TiVo's.

I seriously may live-blog this abortion.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (51)
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An unenthusiastic but positive review of the film in the NYT.

Sad: Marvin apparently gets old fast. He was one of the funniest things in the book. Alan Rickman (!) voices him, but apparently his lines fall flat, and he becomes not funny but simply as depressing as he thinks everyone else should be.

Expected: Zaphod gets old fast. That, however, is quite true to the books. Zaphod had a couple of good moments -- arguing with his shrink, arguing with Arthur, finding out from the Total Perspective Vortex that he was the hoopiest frood in the Universe -- but he always was a bit annoying and a one-schtick pony.

Very, Very Sad: Martin Freeman, brilliant as sadsack Tim in The Office and the perfect call for sadsack Arthur Dent, doesn't really add too much to the movie. Alas... Arthur Dent was boring as hell, but that made him the most irresistable and important of the characters. The only guy you could really identify with (unless you too had lost your entire family to the Great Hrung Implosion).

Rotten Tomatoes seems to agree. The film is rated as "rotten" with a 59% favorable review rate, but it takes only 60% to get a "fresh" rating. So it seems to basically be a genial but not especially memorable movie.

So, go in with lowered expectations, expect major deviations from the book and some segments that just don't work, and... Relax.

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (21)
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It's always dangerous to get into a fight with your readers, but I have to make this point.

Conservatives have been slagging Bush for not doing anything to reduce the government's out-of-control spending.

Well, now he has. He's made a controversial proposal -- likely to drop his popularity rating by 5-8 points -- to reduce the rate of growth in our ever-escalating SS benefits.

By the way, it's been argued for years the current formula is over-generous as as sop to the super-voting elderly, as the COLA adjustments (or whatever they're called now) not only beat inflation, but do so handily, and don't take into account simple reality like cutting back on beef when beef becomes temporarily expensive. (I.e., the formulas do not take into account what all consumers actually do-- substitute one food for another when one food's prices go through a temporary spike.)

So... Bush wants to cut government spending, and in a way that will substantially shore up Social Security's solvency (although a few other steps will have to be taken; but this will take care of the lion's share of the problem), and conservatives seem... angry.

Well, which is it? Do you really want government spending reduced or not? You can't argue about reducing spending all the live-long day on blogs and forums and then complain the moment Bush actually suggests doing so.

Quite frankly, it's that sort of say-one-thing-demand-another dealio that causes such dysfunction in our political system in the first place.

Does Bush (and every other president) seem half-hearted and contradictory in his impulses?

Well, he's just reflecting the will of the electorate. And if the will of the electorate is muddled, the policies proposed by the elected officials representing the electorate will reflect those muddled wills.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (27)
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Jeff and Bill seem to be making noises about quitting their radio show.

Jeff seems to be suggesting he's going to stop blogging entirely.

I hope Karol and I aren't completely awful on the Internet cough "radio."

Our basic plan is to just go in there and discover we're natural broadcasters.

We don't have a Plan B, so if Plan A goes into the shitter, we may be hangin' up our spurs two or three weeks from now, too.

Not Quite Retired Update: Jeff says he's just going to be taking it easier.

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 AM | Comments (29)
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