Giant Lego folk rising from the earth to enslave us.

And I had to go and put all my money on Zombies.

Darn.

Like me, I’m sure that most of the Broncos faithful will feel that justice is finally being done. The only bad part is this nagging feeling that “Ponytail” Harris isn’t quite getting what he deserves. Five years in prison seems awfully light for someone who acted as an accomplice to murder.

To be fair, though, every time I think of someone coming up to a parole board, I think of one of the wonderful scenes in Raising Arizona:

Parole Board chairman: They’ve got a name for people like you H.I. That name is called “recidivism.”
Parole Board member: Repeat offender!
Parole Board chairman: Not a pretty name, is it H.I.?
H.I.: No, sir. That’s one bonehead name, but that ain’t me any more.
Parole Board chairman: You’re not just telling us what we want to hear?
H.I.: No, sir, no way.
Parole Board member: ‘Cause we just want to hear the truth.
H.I.: Well, then I guess I am telling you what you want to hear.
Parole Board chairman: Boy, didn’t we just tell you not to do that?
H.I.: Yes, sir.
Parole Board chairman: Okay, then.

I might have a skewed view of these things.

Read the rest.

I dunno. I think I’ve already seen that one.

What the world needs is more government officials micromanaging the war against the epicureandistrial complex. Which is why I’m so darned glad about this moment of brilliance coming to us from New York.

Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.

“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.

The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz , D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation.

Mr. Ortiz, thank God there are brave Assemblymen out there like you protecting me from the hazards of table salt.

God be with you, sir.

Read the rest.

Poor, stupid, little boy.

The tragedy isn’t so much that he ended up dead of a drug overdose (accidental or otherwise), but that he represents a wasted life. He couldn’t grow up enough to take responsibility for his life, he couldn’t be strong enough to stop abusing drugs, and that he threw away the friendship and opportunities that he had in his too short life.

To be honest--although not without a point--the world didn’t lose a hugely talented actor. Neither of the Coreys were great actors, they were great, fun personalities. Where Corey Feldman seems to have grown up and moved on with life, Haim just got stuck. The value of a life isn’t in how good an actor a person is, but in what they do with the years that are given them; the world didn’t lose a great actor, it just saw another person who failed to find a way to give his years any meaning.

I’m sad for the people who cared for him, but I wonder how many of them are actually surprised? I watched a part of the A&E show The Two Corey’s and knew that sooner or later he would end up dead or in jail because no matter how many chances he had, no matter who reached out to him, he had an amazing drive to self-destruction.

Poor, stupid, little boy.

I’m watching American Idol. I’m working. I’m helping my wife with a computer project. I’m reading the news.

That is what should commonly be known as “stupid-tasking.” Where the hell did my ability to focus go? I kind of miss it.

Nonetheless, those of you who might have missed the

Katie Stevens is cute for a ten year old. Okay, that’s not fair. She must be at least thirteen. She sounds moderately okay in a bland and boring kind of way, but inspires a hearty eh, whatever, from me and not much else.

Randy didn’t like it much and pulled out the dreaded karaoke critique. Ouch. Ellen is nicer, but still thinks that the li’l girl couldn’t pull off the emotional aspect of the song. Kara damns with faint praise. I personally prefer to damn with harsh language. Like “damn.” Simon says: “You kind of sucked (long pause) the energy out of the room.” Or something to that effect, which was unintentionally ouchie.

Siobahn who is cute, apparently of age, quirky, and potentially not particularly bright. Or, perhaps, constantly stoned. Dunno. She’s also consistently interesting even though I didn’t find her “House of the Rising Sun” to be quite convincing tonight. I would chalk it up to trying too hard, but that’s just me.

Randy butters her up with kindness and admires her risk-taking behavior and then proclaims it “hot.” Ellen calls her spectacular. Kara digs, too. Simon says: “I wasn’t quite such a fan of that.”

Once again, Simon is the voice of reason. He is, however, extra bitchy this year.

When darling girl sees Lacey Brown , she asks, “She’s still here?” Funny moment and not a bad point: Brown hasn’t been so good to this point in the competition and certainly hasn’t lived up to her auditions. Tonight, she does pretty well--emphasis on the pretty--until a bum note at the end of the song.

Randy calls it her best performance in a long time. Ellen agrees and says it was a great song choice (I agree). Kara liked it, too. Simon says: “I didn’t love love the song, but you sang it really well.”

Nicely done.

It’s almost unfair for me to critique Katelyn Epperly performance of “I Feel the Earth Move.” ‘Cause I hate this song and even if she’s doing it well, I’m going to hate the song. So, regardless of artistic merit, sitting through it was painful for me.

Randy says it felt put on--"a little sleepy, a little boring.” Ellen doesn’t feel like being very nice, either. Kara’s not feeling the love. Simon says: “I like your hair.” But it goes down hill from there.

When Didi Benami is singing well, I absolutely love her voice. I also love her doing Stevie Nicks, who was one of my earliest and naughtiest crushes because conservative boys do so love their hippy chicks.  That said, the audience seemed a little confused…

...And so did Randy, although he liked it better than the previous week. Ellen gives her credit for bouncing back from the previous week and gives a mildly positive review. Kara says it was one of her favorite moments of the year so far--which seems a bit much to me, but I did enjoy it. Simon says: “I have to agree with Kara.”

Good for Didi.

Paige Miles goes for a subdued and ridiculously boring “Smile.” Wobbly and uninvolving, unfortunately.

Randy goes for the smack down. Ellen continues the downward smack. Kara adds in a sideways slap or two. Simon says: “Such a shame because you had so much potential...but the problem is you have no idea who you are.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to see her going home, although she’s playing the rarely played “Michael Jackson is dead” card. Which, that’s a surprise move.

I do like Crystal Bowersox in spite of her white girl dreads, which are wrong wrong wrong. Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” is a good fit and lets her stretch her voice a bit. Not only is it fun, but it’s the first lively song of the night and she looked like she enjoyed it. Love her.

Randy gives it lots of love. Ellen and Kara, too. Simon says: “Uh, you are one million billion percent going to be in the top 12 next week.”

The world loves Bowersox.

Stupid Traitor Bitch Aside: Stupid traitor bitch. What the hell goes so wrong in her head that she decides to undertake terrorist training and commit herself to murdering a fucking cartoonist? Hate isn’t a big enough word for how I feel about Colleen “JihadJane” LaRose.

You can never go wrong with Patsy Cline. Well, almost never. “I Fall to Pieces” as sung by Lilly Scott, who had previously been one of my favorites, was surprisingly bad. Her vocals were unsteady, although the audience seemed to enjoy it.

Randy liked the mandolin and called it “hot.” Ellen, too. Which makes me wonder just how different it sounded in the theater because, no. Kara was nice about it. Simon says: “It didn’t have the wow factor.” But he doesn’t much criticize the performance, so who knows…

The funniest news of the morning comes to us from AdFreak:

This is awesome. The New York Post reports that Lindsay Lohan is suing E*Trade for $100 million, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing “milkaholic” named Lindsay in the company’s Super Bowl commercial...from Grey Advertising was clearly modeled after her. “Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E*Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Lohan’s lawyer says. “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

I had been wondering where the insane little starlet had gone; it’s good to know that she hasn’t lost all her crazy.

(Okay, no, I wasn’t really wondering where the insane little starlet had gone. It just fit the flow of the narrative.)

...I exhibit the desire to defend actor Sean Penn from, well, I guess from anything, remind me of the little jerk’s deep sea dive into dumb.

Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should—truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

Moron.

Read the rest.

...And Tyler Perry shows up to present an award. He had this to say: “They just said my name at the Oscars. I’d better enjoy it because it’ll probably never happen again.”

Yeah, that’s probably true. Thing about Tyler Perry is that, firstly, he seems like a nice enough guy, secondly, his heart seems to be in the right place in his films, and, thirdly, he doesn’t come close to deserving an award. Of course, many of the movies don’t deserve their awards, but his tend to be phenomenally bad. Not only does he scrape up every racial stereotype possible, but the scripts, the direction, and the acting are usually atrocious.

The same kinds of people who will tell you that Tyler Perry movies are good in any kind of an artistic sense are the same kinds of people who would tell you that the Left Behind books are artistically satisfying, that The Gamers: Dorkness Rising had good art direction, and that contemporary Christian pop music is something other than uninspiring pablum.

Okay, there may be a few exceptions to that last part, but the point still stands.

Those people so strongly believe in the subject matter that they entirely ignore the artistic flaws. There is a difference between artistic merit and personal preference; the Oscars may not always find the artistic merit, but it should always be their goal. Tyler Perry doesn’t deserve that kind of recognition, regardless of how nice of a guy he is and how much he tries to make moral movies.

The Oscars this year were a bit of a fumble, though, weren’t they? A few funny bits here and there, a fun intro with the resurgent Doogie, a great dance number, and some worthy winners were nice. It was also (up to the point where I am writing this, at least) pleasantly politics-free.  On the other hand, the camera cuts were horrendous (especially noticeable at the beginning of the memorial section), the Baldwin-Martin team was uneven (although not horrendous), and a goodly number of the presenters proved themselves incompetent without a script and without good editing (Cameron Diaz, you’d be number one on that list).

Cheers to Jeff Bridges (goofy, strange acceptance speech aside) and all the other winners on the night, though. Whatever lack the show might have, it is always an honor to be recognized by your peers.

On a more important note, now that I know that Morena Baccarin is in it, I might have to watch V.

Update: Forest Whitaker’s introduction of Sandra Bullock for the Best Actress nominations was top notch. Some of the others, for both Best Actor and Best Actress, were nice, too, but Whitaker’s was pitch-perfect.

Update to the Update: The previous note was convenient since Sandra Bullock won and gave a touching and funny speech of her own. Love her.

That said, leave it up to Barbra Streisand to point out that we could have the first female or black director winning an Oscar this year. It turned out to be the first woman (Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker) and a well-deserved win on merits.

But did it really need to be about that? Couldn’t it just be about the movie or even just about her talent?

Tom Hanks just noted that Casablanca was the winner the last time there were 10 films up for consideration. I watch it somewhat regularly and, though it’s a little old-fashioned, it has maintained its relevance artistically, culturally, and even politically through the decades. A wonderful movie.

Will any of the movies nominated this year wear as well? A few of them might, but I doubt that any of them will be as well-remembered as Casablanca. Which isn’t to say that it was a horrible class of movies (I liked Up, Hurt Locker, and Inglorious Basterds. I’m still pondering A Serious Man. Both District 9 and Blind Side were surprisingly good.

Casablanca is tough to live up to, though, in the same way that Lawrence of Arabia would be hard to live up to.

All that prologue aside, Hanks’ announcement of Hurt Locker winning Best Picture was a bit anti-climactic, wasn’t it?

My wife, the lovely woman that she is, has no appreciation for the classics. For example, after fifteen minutes watching Caveman streaming from my Netflix account, she stated flatly: “This might be the dumbest movie ever.”

Crazy talk. Ringo Starr has never been better (well, never been better as an actor, anyway) and neither has Shelley Long. Dennis Quaid, on the other hand, did go on to bigger and better things.

Maybe I’ll make her watch the Dudley Moore anti-classic, Wholly Moses later…

Okay, let’s play Imagination Time for a moment.

Imagine that you are a lesbian living in the Denver area (imagining liking girls is pretty easy for me; imagining the change in plumbing is a little tougher). Imagine that you are also a parent of a pre-school age child and are looking for a good school for your kid. Now, tell me what that school would look like?

Would it be a Baptist school? Why or why not?

Would it be one of the Denver Waldorf schools or a Montessori school? Again, why or why note?

Lastly, would it be a Catholic school? Why or why not?

Whether I like them or not, the religious schools very well could have policies against accepting or keeping students who are living in families that don’t adhere to their standards of conduct. Not only is it legal, it’s entirely understandable. Yes, I also understand why the parents might have wanted their kid in a religious school, but that doesn’t really change the other side of the equation.

The story of a lesbian couple whose kid is not being allowed back into a private Catholic school is raising a bit of noise around the area, though. Even school staff is voicing (anonymously) disappointment in the Denver Archdiocese decision.

According to the Archdiocese, parents who enroll their kids at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School are expected to follow the Catholic Church’s beliefs.

“No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school’s philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese,” the statement said.

Because this student’s parents are homosexual, the Archdiocese says they were in clear violation of the school’s policy.

School staff members, who asked to remain anonymous, say they are disgusted by the Archdiocese’s decision.

For those staff members who disagree so strenuously, I suggest that you tender your resignations. For parents who disagree, I suggest you withdraw your children. Register your disagreement in the best way you know.

Still, the “disgust,” especially on the part of the staff, is either incredibly naive or merely over-dramatic. What did they really think would happen? They do happen to work in a Catholic school. For that matter, for the parents, I feel fairly sure that they must have been actively subverting any code of conduct and policies that they had to agree to before placing their child in the school.

I say again: what did they really think would happen?

Last year when I was looking for a new job, I came across one that I was reasonably well-qualified for at a local Christian college. I started the application process and came to the code of conduct that I was expected to agree to and live up to as a requirement of employment.

Now, I really wanted a job and the idea of working on a Christian college campus appealed to me to. I know that this will be shocking to some folks out there, but I truly do take my religion seriously; I mean it when I call myself a Christian. That doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to find me to be a perfect fit for the teaching of any one church, and I have a hard time reconciling the areas of disagreement with my desire to be involved in a church.

When I came to that code of conduct, though, I knew that I would not be able to sign it in good conscience. It might not be readily apparent to anyone at the school and I might well be able to talk my way into the position, but it would be starting my employment based on a lie. I could not sign that code of conduct because it would have been a lie.

I have enough respect for myself to stand up for those things in which I believe. I have enough respect for others to not lie to them about the same.

Read the rest.

"Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues her promise to run ‘the most goat-rodeo Congress in history.’”

That’s the stuff.

Read what Goldstein has to say because he’s right.

If you were hoping that you could join me in listening to semi-random music while working late into the night, then here’s your chance. A late night list of tunes to nudge your creative spirit (or irritate the neighbors).

I consider both to be worthy goals.

The time of beauty pageants in America is coming to an end. Or, at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

TLC has announced that it won’t renew its deal to run the Miss America Pageant, the one-time major TV event that fell on hard times over the past decade.

I’m entirely okay with that.

The pageants for young girls are freakish and the girls are a ridiculous mockery of feminine beauty. The women and girls who compete in pageants are airbrushed and perpetuate a focus on physical beauty as the standard of a woman’s value to the world.

If I were a dad, I wouldn’t want my little girl taking part in pageants. Not because I wouldn’t want her to be beautiful or to feel beautiful, but because I would want her to understand that her ultimate measure of value in the world is in the things that she does, the lives she effects, and the things she accomplished--and, just as importantly, not in how good she looks in a bathing suit.

I’m sure that many of the parents and many of the participants are good people. I’m sure many lead happy and good lives and that the pageant system didn’t do them any harm.

But what I value in life is decidedly at odds with what I believe those pageants teach young girls. If the Miss America Pageant were to die off completely, I wouldn’t shed a tear.

Read the rest.

Robert Mugabe continues to find creative new avenues to lead Zimbabwe down a path of self-destruction. He’s talented that way.

Statutory Instrument number 21 was imposed by Robert Mugabe, the president, without any consultation with his partners in the coalition government, notably Morgan Tsvangirai, the prime minister from the Movement for Democratic Change.

The law gives any relevant business with assets of more than $500,000 (€369,000, £333,500) just 45 days to submit a plan for achieving this transfer of ownership within five years. Companies based in Zimbabwe declined to disclose whether they were preparing any such plans.

But economists, business leaders and trade unionists warned Mr Mugabe’s law would wreck any chance of attracting foreign investment and strangle the economy’s weak recovery.

“We are just coming out of a self-inflicted economic crisis,” said Lovemore Matombo, head of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. “This law could create fears that the process could be chaotic, just like the land reform, which will affect the economic recovery of the country. We do not need this right now as we need investment.”

Brilliant.

Read the rest.

...that’s probably my fault.

Sorry about that.

Since I was a little boy watching James Bond movies, I’ve loved Aston Martins. Fast, exclusive, and beautiful cars. I obsessed over them for years and, when it looked like they would be another casualty of the self-destructive tendencies of the British auto industry, I applauded when Ford stepped in and rescued them from the dustbin of automotive history.

In the early 90’s, I bartended at the Embassy Suites near the Denver airport. One of the bonuses of living in Denver is that you occasionally see cars going through their high altitude testing regimens. Engineers and cars with strange paint jobs and camouflage, would show up in our parking lot on a semi-regular basis. The guy from Lotus didn’t like to be bothered and would talk about his car. The occasional domestic manufacturers didn’t interest me because, well, their cars were the kinds of things I could actually expect to drive within my lifetime. Which, by its very nature, doesn’t have the kind of drama or interest that something out of reach like a Lotus or a Bentley.

One day, I showed up to work and there was an Aston Martin DB7 in engineering garb. A little computer set-up inside for diagnostics, a few bits sticking out here and there to gather information, and one of the most beautifully pure shapes of any car I’d ever seen. Real artistry in auto design is rare--which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy looking at even fairly common cars, but that the forms that made up the DB7 were close to perfection both in the subtleties of its curves and in the cues that brought it in line with the rest of the Aston Martins through history.

This was after the car had been introduced at an auto show (Geneva auto show, if memory serves), so I knew what it was. After staring at the thing for a bit, I walked in and told anyone who would listen that there was a real, live Aston Martin in the parking lot. The kicker was that later that night, while I was working the bar, a group of a few British engineers came in, talking about cars and beer and where they had to go the next day. Someone said something about Tom Walkinshaw Racing--and it clicked in my head. I knew that Aston Martin had farmed out engineering work on the DB7 to TWR--these guys were the engineers. These were the guys that got to drive around in that car.

I comped them their drinks. I talked to them about cars, impressed them with my knowledge of the British auto industry, chatted about politics, told them about my truck (at that time I was driving a new Mazda B4000 extended cab). I listened to them tell me about the car, about Aston Martin, and about how many free drinks that thing got them while they were driving through all of their testing grounds.

Over the next year or so, they dropped in for more testing. They brought a few cars each time, they had a rotating group of engineers, and we got along spectacularly.

The comped drinks helped.

Then we started going places in their cars. First it was to a gas station down the street just so I could get the feel. Then it was to a bar where my wife was working. Then it was me driving the test car to my apartment complex to show the car to my wife and then it was a buzzed engineer asking if I wanted to drive the car while we went out drinking. Which I did.

Oh, boy, did I. I had the thing going over a hundred by the end of an on-ramp at one point--a ridiculous and unreasonable speed that I was sure any police officer would understand if he I could only get him to imagine what he himself would do if he were in my situation. Luckily, I didn’t have to test my theory.

The last time I saw the crew--Nigel, Steve, Martin, Dan, Chris, Mickey, and Phil--they gave me some gifts (including their autographs on the box of a Maisto Supercar Collection model of the DB7). I treasure those gifts. I won’t say who let me drive those cars since it might have some effect on their jobs, but I was in contact with them through 1997 and probably would have kept contact if it hadn’t been for the brutal dissolution of my marriage getting in the way of my normal life.

And I continued to lust after the car I couldn’t have. As it grew up into the DB9 and the same design basics extended to the rest of their line-up, I lusted after Aston Martins. The new DBS doesn’t have quite the same perfection and beauty of the DB7 and the DB9, but it inspires warm, tingly feelings in me. When a new Aston was demolished in Casino Royale, I groaned. Loudly enough that my wife gave me dirty looks in the theater, in fact.

I tried to explain to her later: “Beautiful things shouldn’t die senseless deaths.” She didn’t really understand.

Now it is time for me to stop loving Aston Martin. Not because I’ve grown up or become a better person or because their cars have suddenly become horrible, but because they have committed the unforgivable sin. If your brand is built on exclusivity, if your brand is built on beautiful design, if your brand is built on the perfect melding of old British charisma and forward-thinking design and engineering, you damned well cannot sell out and have your brand plastered on overpriced, ugly, supposedly collectible Nike Hyperdunk shoes.

It’s embarrassing. It cheapens the value of the logo. It’s an immature venture for a mature (or, at least, wealthy, mid-life crisisey) brand.

When your brand is associated with the mystique of James Bond, that’s just good decision-making. When your brand is associated with pitifully designed, empty marketing efforts like the Hyperdunks, then someone should be fired.

It’s been a dreary day here in Denver. A gray, weepy game with drizzling, cold rain and snow. For a melancholic soul like me, it’s a catalyst for the worst of my own mind. Fears, worries, and a creeping, spidery awareness of my own failings poke at the back of my head, needle sharp and insistent. Much of it comes from memories that play in my head as if the I was living through some of the worst moments of my life again.

I can see, hear, smell, and feel everything that happened in those moments. Sometimes I think I understand junkies and alcoholics. If you can’t turn off the noise in your head by shear force of will, if you can’t find a way to get away from the most vicious bits of yourself, then drugs and booze are a hell of a temptation.

Which is one of the reasons I stopped drinking at one point in my first marriage. Not that it saved us, but I started to understand why I liked drinking so much, and it wasn’t a very happy realization.

Some of you know that I lost a friend when I turned 21. He died an ugly death around the same time I started bartending--a death directly attributable to his alcoholism. I had been drinking since I was about 13, but his death was almost like someone firing a starter pistol and I was racing to the bottom of the bottle. Most people that I knew then were drinking because it was part of the party; I was drinking because I wanted to kill myself. I had a very specific view of myself and I wanted to destroy the person that I saw, I wanted him to sink away and never come up for air.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way and it wasn’t constant--which is why I never quite made it to either addiction or suicide, why I still had friends, and why, when I grew up some, I found out that I could be okay. That I could start shaping my life to be something better, something happier and more full. I think I also learned that loneliness is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But some nights, old habits crawl back in.

Which, if you know me well, probably explains my taste in music. If I have to relive the worst bits of my life, then the soundtrack should fit, right?

With that introduction, here are a few songs that I’ve been playing today. Enjoy.

Good writing, ishambat. Impressive logic, too.