Balls!!!

* Clips of Colbert's performance are being pulled from video sharing sites due to rights issues, so some of the links below may now be obsolete. Try this one if you're having trouble finding the guts, where the truth lies... =)

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Stephen Colbert addressed W and company at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night!

Who would know to expect such great television on C-SPAN? I wonder if this came up as a recommendation for Tivo users who watch the COLBERT REPORT?

Joe and I were just singing praises for the king of the No-Fact Zone this week - how consistently sharp, quick, and brilliant Stephen Colbert's work as Stephen Colbert has been. This man is a scalpel applied with surgical precision to removing the cancer of poisonous facts that is crippling the health and weakening the power of our very American American government.

Or... really, he's the surgeon... and his show is the sharpened scalpel...

Or... perhaps he's the radiation treatment... because you can never be 100% certain with surgery. At least, that's what my gut tells me.

Or... No, no, no. I know! He's the legally prescribed marijuana the country takes to soothe and counter the violent nausea that arises from the combinations of truthy treatments used to fight the facts.

Except... I'm pretty sure he's against that sort of thing.

Right, well, regardless of your choice in metaphor, he is Good for the country - watch, listen, laugh until/because it hurts...

Let the eagle soar!~


Thanks to Joe for pointing me to this, and to onegoodmove for editing and posting. I've dug up some more video watching options, including Colbert's audition tape for White House Press Secretary. Check them out if you've got some time.

It's funny because it's truthy...

Keep on keepin on~

animated United Rhapsody commercials...

I've recently caught two gorgeous animated commercials for United Airlines. I know they're just ads, but I have to say, they've gone and done them right, found animators, and storytellers, worthy of accompanying Gershwin greatness. More animated shorts than commercials, I turned off my replayTV's "commercial advance" feature to watch them when I caught a few seconds of their visual goodness before the skip jumped past them.

After clickin around online, I found United's home for these commercials, but it seems that the two I just saw and dig so much aren't (yet?) included. (The ones that ARE featured online by United are definitely worth a look, tho.)


One of them (which first aired during the Superbowl I've found out - boy, how late am I on THIS, right? yeah, well, I'm not a huge hockey fan, y'know?) is a paper-cutout/puppet style animated story about a father leaving for a trip, and his son's dream of the father's journey. In the dream he's transformed into a businessman-knight, who joins forces with his round table brothers to battle a dragon in the forest. The style is just gorgeous.

The other is what looks like color pencil sketches w watercolor animated story about a woman's efforts to make her ideas known to a committee of clients or superiors, each portrayed as an animal in business wear. She travels to meet them face-to-snout, muzzle, and beak, and swings them over to her point-of-view. On her return trip, a mysterious stranger takes the seat next to her...

It really is surprisingly good less-than-a-minute crack. Try not to skip or leave the room if you catch a frame or three of animation or a couple bars of piano riffing on "Rhapsody In Blue" once the 24 clock winks out, or LOST or VERONICA MARS pops to black.

Keep on keepin on~

friday night vball afterglow...

It's about 1am, Friday night. I'm back home from a BVA fundraiser coed-reverse 4s tournament, showered, and sitting down in front of my screens with a nutritious, mostly orange, late night dinner...


Would you believe I'm a single guy?

Wack! Maybe next time I'll pass on the trip to Star Market and just click, eh? Check out the 5-star "Meaty" review!

Actually... Check it *all* out. The features, product description, and the sad detail that gift wrapping is NOT available for this item. Nuts.

=)

It was a fine evening of volleyball. I'd played in a number of Friday night 6s tournaments in the past couple months and never quite felt tip-top about the evenings. Keri was captain of all of them, including tonight's team, and she consistently assembled some great players. We played well enough together, but with each tournament I felt like I was getting a bit worse, and generally uncomfortable with the CR 6s format in general. I'm basically feeling like sharing one side of the court with five teammates is getting to be too crowded, y'know? I supposed it's partly a seasonal thing. I'm subconsciously registering the higher daily temps (altho still colder than perfect on average) and the longer daylight and itching to start playing outdoors and doubles.

I made a remark about the 6s claustrophobia to Keri at the end of this evening and explained that 4s is definitely a step in the right direction, even if it's only just a gateway to doubles. Heh. =)

Tonight Keri wrangled Jill, myself, and Will S. for our foursome. It was a very good and complementary combo. Will's got a good head for setting up for defense. Whenever he could, he loaned Jill some of his know-how and instinct, and together w Keri, our defense was really solid.

I could swear Will introduced himself to me as Will, but I heard Jill and Keri call him Bill a few times. Halfway thru the evening I was interchanging the names when I called out to him to hit 10s.

It was a good night of sweating. We went past 11pm with pool play. BVA was supposed to be out of the gym by then, so they had to drop playoffs. Finishing up so late got me thinking a bit of a summer between sophomore and junior years that I spent as an intern at a small architecture firm on Newbury Street. I started playing indoors with a regular group of students and alum at M.I.T. in the evenings. I'd wander over to Rockwell anytime after 6 or so, jump on a court w these guys and play 2s thru 6s, depending on how many we had, and when the gym closed for the night - I think it was supposed to lock up by 9, but depending on who was working, we sometimes had the courts until 10 or so. But when that happened, the gang would head across campus to a gym on the top floor of a building along Mem Drive, next to several outdoor tennis courts... Frack. I can't remember the name of the building now...

Anyhow, the top floor gym was pretty old, with red, or reddened, hard wood floors, and marked for a short basketball court and a volleyball court. We'd set up the net when we got there and play and play and play all night until morning. We'd start with 6's if we had it, and as we pushed on thru the a.m. hours, we'd lose people and whittle ourselves down to the last four nutjobs playing doubles. I was always one of them, surprise surprise. =)

Those last doubles matches weren't about beating the heck out of our opponents, they were more like sparring, or peppering, y'know? We'd do everything we'd do in a regular match - dig, set, swing - but our hits were, as deliberately and controlled as possible, delivered to and directed AT whoever was on the other side of the net. As hard as we liked, but y'know, totally GET-able. It was a beautiful thing playing doubles while the sun was coming up... *sigh*

Sometimes we'd just split up when we finished, and others, we'd carpool out to IHOP for some breakfasts. That's how I first sorta found out about the Soldier's Field Rd. IHOP. Those were some of the best bleary eyed mornings ever.

Would LOVE to find a place where I could play volleyball all night long again...

It was good to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in weeks, not that I really got a chance to play a lot of catch-up between playing and reffing matches. Mostly I just saw them thru the net while playing them, and I never feel quite okay with pushing "real" conversation w anyone while games are on. Kinda sad how many people whom I like are folks I only see at league vball nights.

I'd taken nights off from league over the last two weeks so that I could hit my thirteen screenings and eight buckets. I'll hafta pilfer some new email addresses for my nahant roundups this summer. I should really get a central email address book type resource. Each summer I end up building a new list of regulars from scratch, and end up adding people as the summer goes along. I recently went thru the same process w my movie update emails for the IFFB, just went thru and addressed them to anyone I could think of when I was writing them up. Thusly, I probably left a couple dozen regulars from last year off the list.

And apparently, included a few people who'd rather not be, having received more than a couple "unsubscribe" email requests. Fair enough. What with the fest being the fest and all, I DID kind of harass people pretty hard over a short period of time.

I am so babbling right now. It's 2.10am. I'm puttin the kibosh on this bit o blog...

Keep on keepin on~

STRANGERS prequel!

Check out the trailer for the STRANGERS WITH CANDY film - the prequel to one of the greatest high school dramas ever on TV. So many classic teenage rites of passage (like telling the boy whose cherry you popped that you gave him syphilis)... so many tough lessons learned (like don't have unprotected sex with EVERY cab driver who asks)... so many lives changed (ummm... that boy got syphilis from you, and you never told him it needs to be treated).


Heavy heavy issues, truly. For some reason, though, the show's on Comedy Central. I suppose that's, like, ironic, or something...? Go figure. You can still catch it in reruns at odd programming hours, although I'm sure that will change in the ramp-up to movie release.

After you digest an episode, might I suggest you skip over to Cartoon Network and see if MORAL OREL's on? For something a little lighter, but still with those "old school" (I hope I'm using that right? I heard some teenagers use that on the Music Television channel - by accident, by accident!) family values I know you treasure as much as I.

=)

Keep on keepin on~

after the IFFB... movies and stuff...

So, what does a spot in the IFFB schedule do or change for its films and audiences...?

Heh. Well, I have to admit that for the first time ever, I bought a couple of big bags of Utz potato chips this week when I went grocery shopping. Utz was one of the corporate sponsors of the IFFB (as they were last year), and probably one of the most visible. The festival throwers had boxes of snack sized bags of Utz chips available for free at all the screenings, and I partook more than a couple times, it's true. The little cartoon Utz girl kinda freaks me out a bit, comes across in my mind as a strung-out/wired Nancy, w the munchies, hand in the bag and all. Happy enough, but just, like, a little bit crazed... I mean, what's in the bag? Chips? A .38? A forty? Sluggo's severed head?


I've never bought them before, but, when I was at the store this last time, looking for my chips fixx for the week and change, well, I saw the Utz label and felt kindly towards them for helping to enable my recent five days of movie madness. =)

I got the rippled Utz chips. Ain't no Ruffles, but they do just fine next to my hot dog w peanut butter and jelly or roast beef sandwich.

So, although at the times of the screenings, I pretty much scoffed at the acknowledgement of sponsors before each show, in the end, I can't deny that the sponsorship definitely had *some* effect... Although, it doesn't mean I'm in any hurry to buy a new Ford, jump a weekend flight on JetBlue, or buy or rent a high-rez kickass quality digital projector from Rule Broadcasting.

At least, not until I hear the correct trigger word.

Movies-wise... There are a number of movies that New England-premiered at last year's IFFB that are just this week being screened in theaters in Boston. It doesn't seem quite right that it should take a year for some of these films to find distribution and win theatrical release, but I suppose, unfortunately, it comes with the "independent" territory.

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For a week at the Brattle, starting Friday, April 28, see BLACKBALLED: THE BOBBY DUKES STORY! Saw this at last year's IFFB and dig it mucho =)

Local comedic talent - Rob "C'mON!" Corddry of the DAILY SHOW, and comedian DJ Hazzard, regularly seen at comedy venues around town - along with members of the comedy troupe the Upright Citizens Brigade, bring to life a hilarious mockumentary about the sport of paintball. Cordry is Bobby Dukes, legendary paintball champion, forced into early retirement years ago, now looking to make a comeback. Alas, his departure from the game a decade back was under sketchy circumstances, and he's having troubles finding old friends and players to join his comeback squad. Hazzard plays an excellent Patton-esque paintball coach-patriarch who helps Dukes with his bottom of the barrel recruiting. Can Bobby turn a roster of paintball's rejects and newbies into his winning team? And just what happened ten years ago in the championship finals that got him ejected from the sport in the first place...?

Check the site for venues and showtimes in your area.

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Playing this week at the Coolidge, is MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA, a documentary on the wonders of globalization that follows the inequities of the network and flow of wealth, quality of life, and consumerism by tracking the "beads trail." From the factories of China to the streets of New Orleans, you'll follow the path of the famed beaded necklaces of Mardi Gras - made notorious in Girls With Low Self Esteem videos - from their factory worker manufacture in China to their international commercial sale to their party-going distribution and their ultimate New Orleans bartering/exchange for clothing optional services...

I haven't seen this, but heard great chatter about it among moviegoers at the festival last year. It's playing in the Screening Room at the Coolidge, the very comfortable digital projection room upstairs at the theater.

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Coming soon to the Coolidge, SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS. Saw this at last year's IFFB and was schizophrenically touched. Confusing description of my reaction, eh? Well, consider that it's about a company of thespians, dedicated to the production of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," who also happen to be inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky. They are bad men, judged on their deeds by society according to the law, and sentenced to serve time as their punishment. The film, covering the inmate-actors' rehearsal, workshop, production, and performance of the play, portrays them as men before convicts. It's disarming, and surprising, how sympathetic you may find yourself to these men's situations, given their cold-blooded histories. It's an excellent heart-puncher of a film.

A couple of random media crossover experiences with this film's topic...

From bookybooks... A few weeks before I saw the movie last year, I'd just finished reading a book about a woman who volunteers her time at a correctional facility teaching Shakespeare's plays. Her accounts are very much in line w the documentary's.

From TV news... Just last week sometime, I caught a news teaser on television about a program that offers youth offenders a choice between some form of detention and participation in a study or production of Shakespeare. I wonder how long Shakespeare has been employed as part of the U.S. correctional/rehabilitation process and at what levels.

Keep on keepin on~

what the Jack?!?

Did one eighth of a day last night w the 24 gang. That is, we caught up on the last three hours of 24. I looked it up and we've got five hours left of season/day 5. The plan is to abstain for three weeks and watch the next three hours together. Then watch the two-hour finale the week after. Should be a fun time.

In the dictionary next to "intensity" you'll find...

Some odd zaniness - perhaps mostly in my head - from the three hour chunk we consumed this week...

For the past nine hours or so of the show, I've noticed the music being somewhat... out of sync with the action. Not in an actual rhythmic way, but in style, or show-character, y'know? In the show, but not quite OF the show...

I mean, there were a couple hours where they introduced some heavy electric guitar licks, which I can't recall the show *ever* using before...? And not in a manner that really complemented the action on screen. After a few of these odd musical moments, I got the idea that whoever's scoring this season is getting a bit self-conscious about using and re-using themes or even small musical hits, and in trying to keep things diverse is going thru the studio's music library and grabbing anything and everything for use in the second half of this season.

Did you notice, in the last couple hours... Chloe's got theme music...?

James Bond-y theme music...?

Which I think is fun, actually, for the fans. I don't know that it works-WORKS, but I guess because I did actually get a kick out of it, it at least *works* y'know? I mean, once we were aware of it, the music got something of a disbelieving, snarky, laugh out of all of us, y'know? Maybe the writers are purposefully having fun with things...?

"Bloggers and posters on the message board LOVE Chloe - she should get her own theme music, y'know? Maybe something old school super spy, like THE AVENGERS, or BOND!"

"Yeah, we can do that! We'll just add a couple of cuts where Chloe's alone retasking a satellite or maybe walking down the hall to the bathroom, and hey, we can push the theme music right then! Perfect!"

Crazy talk...? Perhaps.

Speaking of the writers...

How bout that scene with the Writers?

Heh. That's what I called the guys behind the guys behind the guys, y'know? That sporty penthouse or board room or whatever it is with Dr. Romano from E/R on the phone with Henderson, telling him what his priorities and motivation should be. Do you see what I'm saying? The Henderson character called up the writers of the story/show to find out what he's supposed to be doing because, frankly, w the show WORKING at topping itself over and over again, adding layer upon layer to the web of conspiracy, the plot and subplot threads are just getting away from the characters on their own. I'd love to have Romano and stooges be the writers. I KNOW that's not what's going on, but I'd metalove it just the metasame.

Incidentally, do you remember Dr. Romano from FAME? =)

Wow. What about an hour that's done all in song and dance?

Oh crap. If I can think of it, it's gonna happen. It's just a question of when, isn't it?

24...

The musical...

Or wait, it would hafta be 24! with the exclamation mark. Would be a helluva show for audience AND performers... 24 hours. =)

Have you noticed how President Logan holds his head up straight when he's being the decider and all openly malevolent, but when he's the tiresome whiny little bitch, his head's tilted consistently at about 20 degrees? Schizo? Gollum?

HA. When Audrey stops at the gas station and Chloe talks her through locating the transmitter on her car... she finds it, removes it, and then, because there isn't a small animal around to feed it to, she walks over to the heavy duty tow truck and slips it under one of its fenders.

I had this thought, "There's, like, a TON of other transmitters under there!"

Cuz that week, on every show on TV where someone has to lose a tail who's tracking them by a magnetic transmitter attached to their vehicle, the driver stops somewhere, finds the lo-jack, and pulls the switcheroo on the trackers by fixing it to a heavy duty tow truck that just happens to be parked or idling nearby. Wouldn't that be excellent?

Or, it could simply be all the other people that CTU, Homeland Security, Secret Service, CIA, FBI, the Covenant, the Millenium Group, and L.A.P.D. are tracking in 24's Los Angeles. Then you could get agents of all those groups in the same place and the same time for some donuts and coffee. Wouldn't that be fun?

Yeah, I have a rich televisional fantasy life. I get more satisfaction out of the goofy what-ifs and "Brokeback" moments (so many!) in the show than what's actually going on.

Oh, Aaron. What happened to you? Have you taken a bullet for the First Boob?

Keep on keepin on~

Random unrelated televisional thought...

What if LOST's Oceanic flight 815 didn't fly out of Sydney, Australia... but Sydney... Bristow...?

Wack!

=)