Christopher mentioned centaurs.

Surprisingly, the dirty centaurs sketch is available on YouTube.

Bonus: Do you like Christopher Walken?

Do you like Poe's The Raven?

What if you could somehow combine those two enthusiasms?

Played straight (I think), and halfway between a good reading and a kinda-silly Walken deal.

More... Now I'm desperate to find William Shatner reciting it -- which I guessed he'd done, and it seems I was right.

Haven't found a recording of that yet. But here's an odd 1974 concept album of rock (well, hippy-rock) interpretations of Poe's poetry. You can listen to the Raven one; it's not really all that horrible. Not particularly good, but not bad.

No Closer To Shatner's Raven... But running into odd things.

What the hell were these things supposed to be?

God I hated them. Though I think they had a Three Musketeers cartoon that I liked.

Posted by: Ace at 05:38 PM | Comments (76)
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Trouble is both headlines are based on the same poll.

Well, not exactly. The "optimism" story relies heavily on anecdotal tales of optimism. The doom and gloom one relies more on the actual poll findings.

Still-- if you can spin the same poll as yielding two perfectly contradictory results, doesn't that mean neither is correct? And that really the MSM is far too in the business now of not doing straight reporting but providing "overarching narratives" and engaging in "storytelling"?

One poll, two contradictory stories -- you can choose to run either one in your newspaper. AP can sell you happy or AP can sell you sad; the truth doesn't matter much, so long as you have an AP story running.

Question: Is anyone else happy to see 2006 go? A true annus horribilus. ("Annus horribilus" is a Latin term for "Andrew Sullivan.")

2007's gotta be better. Right?

Please: Is anyone going to do a photoshop/animated gif of the ball falling in Times square, except with Saddam dropping from the gallows?

People, you've got like three hours left.

Gank: Annus horribilus, not terribilus. Duh.

Thanks to Francesco Poli for pointing that stupidity out.

Posted by: Ace at 05:27 PM | Comments (29)
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...according to a doctor (not one treating him, just asked for comment), whose opinion is now deleted from a WaPo article.

Dr. Keith Siller, director of the Comprehensive Stroke Care Center at NYU Medical Center and assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, said it is unusual for a patient to be sedated after brain surgery for more than a few days.

"The two-week period is longer than I would be happy with," he said.

Question: Why was this quote deleted? Did they get the quote wrong? Did they discover Dr. Keith Siller was not an expert on the subject? Or did they just decide they didn't want to add fuel to the low-heat fire to remove Johnson from the Senate and thus imperil Democratic control?

Remember when I suggested a Schiavo-Johnson comparison? Mickey Kaus credits Tim Noah as being the "only" person with "the balls" to speculate on a "partisan do-si-doh" on Johnson, with liberals now believing so long as you're alive, you're alive.

Well, he's an idiot and he wasn't the first.

Actually, he doesn't knock liberals. It's Kaus who more-evenhandedly suggests a change in position by both sides.

Noah, an absurd hack, of course sees this through the prism of conservative hypocrisy only, wondering if Tom DeLay would support legislation to prevent a feeding tube being removed from Tim Johnson, should it come to that.

Well, that's jackass; how about looking at the liberal hypocrisy? Are liberals now maintaining that someone who as of yet demonstrates no motor, speech, or other higher brain activity can remain a sitting Senator?

Terry Schiavo was in much worse shape, as I've said, but the issue there was only if she should be permitted to live, not permitted to continue "serving" as a US Senator in a seriously impaired state.

So there's not really any conservative hypocrisy on this. We pressed to keep Terry Schiavo alive, not to put her in charge of, say, the TSA.

Although, seriously, she wouldn't have been worse than the current regime.

Posted by: Ace at 05:08 PM | Comments (62)
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Damn, I was looking for this clip for days.

I don't know how often James Brown did this. I know it's often-parodied (Paul Schaffer spoofed it on Letterman), but maybe he just did it once.

Still, it's the stuff of show-business legend.

I liked his claim of being "The Hardest-Workin' Man In Show-Business." Putting the emphasis on hard work, not natural talent. Nice. Although, of course, he had an awful lot of talent, too.

He helped that claim along with this stunt, which is so cheesy it's perfect. The silliness starts at 4:30.

The clip shows helpful bandmates trying desperately to lead James Brown off the stage -- apparently concerned for his health, as he was giving "too much show" for one man's constitution to handle -- and the indefatigable Brown refusing their medical intervention, determined to give just a little more, no matter what effect it might have upon his very life.

Legendary.

Via PajamasMedia, blogging out the old year and blogging in the new.

Posted by: Ace at 04:35 PM | Comments (21)
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Yeah, I was surprised too, but everyone I know who's seen it liked it. It got savaged by the critics, but who cares, because critics 1) are horrible judges of comedy and 2) despise anything that isn't indy or indy-ish -- and this movie, of course, with its conspicuously commercial high concept, is the antithesis of the quirky indy flick.

Give it a rent. You'll be surprised.

Of course, I went in (as most people I've discussed this with) with low expectations, an advantage I'm stripping away from you by recommending it; still, I think it will hold up. Just don't get your expectations absurdly high. It's a fun, chuckle-every-few-minutes light romantic comedy; it's not Anchorman or anything.

And if you want a great superhero double-feature, rent it along with the huge surprise of last year, Sky High.

Lefty Idiocy: From the amateur web-zine Slate's amateur web-zine reviewer, who finds a silly movie about a neurotic, controlling superheroine to be far too "enranging[ly]" "misogynistic" for her tastes.

Certainly it plays upon the hoariest stereotypes about women -- like how they, you know, sometimes throw a 1500 pound great white shark through your bedroom window. I mean, come on, it's 2006. Didn't we leave that bit of chauvanism back in 1955 with Donna Reed?

A less willfully misogynist movie might have made Thurman's double identity the starting place for an exploration of female power, super- or otherwise. What would you do if your girlfriend not only made more money than you, but knew how to stop an incoming missile with her bare hands?

Oh yeah -- a summer-movie rom-com "exploration of female power."
Sounds like comedy fuckin' gold to me.

That review is from the same silly cow who insists Margaret Cho is screamingly funny via the curious route of not being funny, by the way. So you know where she's coming from. Apparently it's a rule that women can never be portrayed as less than 100% virtuous and psychologically balanced or else a film is "misogynistic."

I have a feeling this movie hit a little too close to home for Dana Stevens.

Stupid Feminist Watch: It's sad that some people are so agenda-driven even when it comes to silly frivolities. I like this anecdote from Fred Wolf, onetime SNL writer, now a screenwriter/actor.

Is this stupid or what?

I had this one sketch. It was about five idiot guys who were working on oil rigs in North Dakota. And they're drilling a hole deep into the earth and out of that hole pops some sort of a subterranean human-- some crazy alien person. And it's Jeneane Garofalo. And these five idiots see her come out of the hole and she tells them that she lives in an underground kingdom, that they've been watching earth's progress over millions of years and they have all the answers to any question that we might have about life on earth. And that she has five minutes until exposure to the air will kill her. [She offers:] "Ask any question you'd like."

Well, when she first pops out of the hole, Chris Farley screams a really high-pitched scream, so after she gives her speech about how they could ask any question they want, the next thing out of Adam Sandler's mouth is, he turns to Farley and says, "What the hell kind of scream was that? When you saw the fish lady pop out of the hole, you screamed like a girl." And then they proceed to spend one minute of her last remaining time on earth arguing over how he didn't screalm like a woman, he screamed like a man. And back and forth. The point of the sketch was that theese guys were idiots and that they were blowing their chance at, you know, at great knowledge.

Jeneane Garofalo raised hell with three or four people before I got wind of it that I was being "disrespectful to women" in that it is a fault of a guy to scream like a girl, that because Farley screamikng like a girl would bring chastisement, she said that meant that women therefore are deserving to be chastised when they scream. It was one of the most convoluted, strangerst, most ridiculous reasons I've ever heard to dislike a sketch.

Posted by: Ace at 04:03 PM | Comments (16)
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Very cool with a suprise twist at the end.

Via Garfield Ridge, who links a strangely un-PC and violent narwhal action playset.

That's right, I said it -- narwhal action playset. That just happened.*

* Second best line from Talledega Nights, after the line about using a second knife to pry out the knife lodged in Ricky Bobby's thigh.

Posted by: Ace at 03:41 PM | Comments (17)
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A good starting point, it seems to me.

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (20)
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For a potential net pickup of +20 seats, though, as everyone now clarifies, that would assume all of these seats would in fact be red. Which they won't be; they'll just be in red states, and red states have lots of blue areas. In fact, maybe it's the blue areas, the cities and adjoining suburbs, which will get almost all of the new seats.

Barone thinks it's good for a +10 pickup, at best.

But for presidential election purposes, that's +20 voters in the electoral college controlled by voters in red states.

Not too shabby.

Of course, with all of this movement south and west, one also has to consider that some of the migrants from the blue northeast and midwest might flip a red state to purple or even blue. Colorado seems one of the lower-hanging of fruits. And of course there's always Florida.

Posted by: Ace at 03:23 PM | Comments (14)
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Special rights for gay sheep. Who will speak for the straight sheep? Apparently you can still molest them 'til your heart's content.

Actually it's about experiments to "cure" gay sheep of teh gheyitude.

SCIENTISTS are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.

Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?” She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.

But the researchers argue that the work is valid, shedding light on the “broad question” of what determines sexual orientation. They insist the work is not aimed at “curing” homosexuality.

..

The scientists have been able to pinpoint the mechanisms influencing the desires of “male-oriented” rams by studying their brains. The animals’ skulls are cut open and electronic sensors are attached to their brains.

By varying the hormone levels, mainly by injecting hormones into the brain, they have had “considerable success” in altering the rams’ sexuality, with some previously gay animals becoming attracted to ewes.

Thanks to MK and Charley Fox.

Posted by: Ace at 03:05 PM | Comments (26)
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More expertise for y'all.

Posted by: Ace at 02:54 PM | Comments (10)
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