I'm going to write an "updated" version of Madama Bovary in which Emma divorces her boring husband, gets her own apartment in town, and starts dating a bisexual 22-year-old computer hacker. Because that will help everyone understand the lives of middle-class women in 19th C. France.
I work in educational publishing. The new version of Huck Finn and PW's attitude towards it surprise me not at all.
Hey, leave the Cubs out of this.
A couple of nights ago, my husband was watching a Ricky Gervais stand-up comedy special on cable. I like Extras and the British Office, so I sat down to watch for a while. But Gervais was trying so desperately to be "edgy" that it was painful. At one point he almost seemed to panic and veered into a terrible joke about raping an old lady. That went over like a lead balloon, so to recover, he launched into his evangelical atheism routine. He read aloud from a book he got as a child about Noah and the Ark. His big argument was that there are millions of species of animals in the world, so how could they all fit on one boat? Seriously. That was the sterling logic and rigorous intellectualism Gervais brought to his atheist apologetics. Arguing with a 1973 children's book about Noah's ark. See, that's why God doesn't exist!! Oy vey. After a few minutes, I had to leave the room. It was too painful.
The saddest thing about Gervais is that he's not that much smarter than the Karl Pilkington character he's always making fun of. He just thinks he is.
Not a huge Billie Holiday fan. I'd much rather listen to Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughn. But I do love Holiday's rendition of this song.
And what has Joy been reading? The microwave instructions on her Lean Cuisine?
But Behar, Whoopi, etc., are not the real problem. They're idiots. They'll always be idiots. The real question is, who gave these shrieking buffoons their positions in the media? Who made them millionaires? The ^%$#-wits who watch The View and the media execs who will follow money no matter where it leads are the real problem. They deserve the blame.
Love Jackie Wilson. "Doggin Me Around," "Baby, Workout," "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me"....
Lucky you! I would've loved to see Wilson and Sam and Dave live.
Interesting take, and one I was glad to read. I was a big Beatles fan when I was a kid, but I was never that interested in their solo careers. I did always pay some attention to Lennon, though, and I've wondered about his real politics. He sang Imagine, yes, but he also sang Revolution. ("You say you want a revolution, well, we'd all love to hear the plans"--hilarious.) He may have had some/a lot of contradictory ideas, ideas that he hadn't worked out all the way, ambivalence ... It would've been interesting to see the person he grew into as he aged (and, presumably or at least hopefully, grew out of that godawful gasbag hippie culture). But we'll never know--thanks to Chapman.
Yeah, dude, like, totally. Thanks for, like, totally adding your articulate, carefully considered opinion to the mix. This is why I'm, like, totally stoked that Jon Stewart et al. have snapped their fingers at their Frat Boy viewers, pointed them in the general direction of the polling places, and told them who to vote for.
I was just watching a show earlier this week--pretty sure it was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia--in which a character says, "Dude, that is so gay." Didn't hear any screeching from the perpetually offended about that. They must've had their radar dish array pointed in a different direction. But it's not like using "that's so gay" as a comment from an immature or insensitive character is something new. At any rate, this is what we have to look forward to now--a never-ending stream of complaints and demands about everything from the language in throwaway jokes to the suspicion that someone, somewhere doesn't agree completely with each and every facet of the lifestyle of a small minority.
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Branch