URLs du Jour

2008-04-21

  • Missed this in yesterday's phony campaign update: John Dickerson's Saturday report from the Obama campaign in Slate.
    As the Senator's campaign train wound from one speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics to the next speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics, his campaign hosted a conference call to engage in the practice the candidate was busy denouncing. I suppose it would have been an even greater act of chutzpah for the Obama campaign to host the conference call while Sen. Obama was denouncing that kind of behavior, but not much more of one.
    That's damn fine phony! And hot! (Via Captain Ed at Hot Air.)

  • All it takes is a decent memory to point out that the current outrage felt by leftists about the media bringing up "tangential character issues" was nowhere to be seen in 2004, when the character belonged to George W. Bush and the issue was his service in the Texas Air National Guard.

  • Janice Brown at Cow Hampshire has cow content. Unfortunately, she tells us we missed celebrating World Cow Chip Day. But she also points out we're right in the thick of Cowboy Poetry Week.

    Since Janice is also a genealogist, this gives me an excuse to boast that I am a distant relation to Chris Sand, aka "Grandpa Boots", once Poet Lariat of Wolf Point, Montana.

    There's also strong circumstantial evidence of an even more distant relation to a younger Chris Sand, aka Sandman, the Rappin Cowboy.

  • And—not that this item has anything to do with the previous item, cousin—you might enjoy—for sufficiently small values of "enjoy"—the most annoying song ever. Based on an online poll of annoyances, it contains elements of or references to:
    … holiday music, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children's chorus and the concept of children in general (really?), Wal-Mart, cowboys, political jingoism, George Stephanopoulos, Coca Cola, bossanova synths, banjo ferocity, harp glissandos, oompah-ing tubas and much, much more.
    I can testify that the more musically sensitive members of the Salad family were begging for relief when I played it.

  • The MinuteMan has changed the subtitle of his blog:
    Clinging To My Blog Out Of Economic Frustration Since 2002
    As they say: heh!

Death at a Funeral

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)
[3.0
stars] [IMDb Link]

This comedy is ostensibly British, but directed by an American (Frank Oz, who will always be Miss Piggy to me). Also one of the Brits is played by very American Alan Tudyk, but he does a decent accent, at least to my ears.

The idea is that a family is getting together to pay last respects to its recently-deceased patriarch. But the family is a collection of neurotics, with various forms of insecurities, There is also one (1) drug dealer and one (1) very short former acquaintence of the deceased (played by Peter Dinklage, also American, but he's playing an American, so that's all right). The recipe is: put these people in confined quarters, stir, and watch frantic chaos and hilarity result.

It's not bad, but it's hard to attach to any of these silly caricatures.


Last Modified 2024-02-01 5:39 AM EDT