Jeez Jon

Just For The Record...

...Obama did say, several times, that he will base his decision on when to move the troops out of Iraq based on the situation on the ground.  In an interview with Candy Crowley he did last month, he said this:

"Well, you know, I'd never say there's 'nothing' or 'never' or 'no way' in which I'd change my mind," he said of his withdrawal policy. "Obviously, I'm open to the facts and to reason. And there's no doubt that we've seen significant improvements in security on the ground in Iraq. And our troops, and Gen. [David] Petraeus, deserve enormous credit for that."

"I have to look at this issue from a broader strategic perspective, though," he added. "And in terms of long-term strategy, I am absolutely convinced that the best thing we can do is to set a clear timetable, tell the Iraqis we are going to start pulling out and do it in a careful fashion."Iraqis we are going to start pulling out and do it in a careful fashion."

So, he is being consistent.  Carry on...

Movies From My Past: Looker

Have you ever watched nip/tuck and thought "You know, this show is missing James Coburn and some psuedo-science."  Well, have I got a movie for you.  One of the cable movie staples of my 80's youth was Looker, the 1981 "masterpiece" by Michael Crichton about the horrors of subliminal advertising and strobe lights.  Check out the trailer here:

A very miscast Albert Finney plays Dr. Larry Roberts, Beverly Hills' most in-demand plastic surgeon.  As the film opens, one of his clients goes through a list of very specific, by the millimeter demands for surgery done on her face. She says it's because she "acts in commercials" and "they want a certain look."  He scoffs at this and then goes ahead with taking her measurements, and that's where the credits start.  Yes, the Sue Saad theme song starts when you see the girl topless getting her picture taken.  It's the only movie I know of that has naked breasts and the film title in the same frame.  Yes, dear, those boobs really do make you a "Looker." 

We then go through several scenes of this actress and another actress being tormented by a guy with huge mustache and a weird gun.  Albert Finney gets interrogated by the police about his activities and the dead actresses.  He says he doesn't date his clients and doesn't see them socially.  Two remaining actresses are left on this death list; one does a freak out in his office and runs out in a paranoid fit saying "they are after her.  The other one? Susan Dey.  No, seriously.  And, honestly, she turns out the movie's best performance. Albert Finney goes to see the paranoid actress and witnesses her falling to her death from her balcony.  He sees Huge Mustache Man and instead of trying to contact the police, he runs upstairs to her apartment.  Oh boy.  The leaps in logic continue from there.

To make a long story short, the actresses are connected to a company that uses computers to help make commercials using subliminal messages. The evil, dastardly corporation is headed by evil, dastardly James Coburn, who is having some fun being the bad guy.  The coolest aspect of the movie -- at least to my 10 year old mind when I first saw it -- was the Looker Gun.  It shot a pulse of light that would temporarily paralyze people.  Oh, you want my lunch money, Grade School Bully?  WHAMMO!  I'm out and he's standing there like a doofus.  Anyway, you see my point.

The film does have a lot going for it: some good action scenes, Dorian Harwood, the skeezy-but-awesome fake commercials, Leigh Taylor-Young. But Looker does not age well, and the leaps in logic and the clunky anti-television rants help to push the film closer the "camp" side of the scale.  But hey, the title song is pretty cool kitschy, right?

Reason #4,973 To Vote For Obama

Stephen Baldwin promises to leave the country if Obama wins in November.  Check out the full clip from Fox News here:

Oh, Stephen... don't promise us something you can't follow through on.

[Link courtesy of Towleroad]

Following Suit

Even though both Obama and McCain agree on gay marriage -- neither is for it and both say the states should take care of marriage -- both have come down on different sides of gay marriage here in California.  McCain has sent out an e-mail in support of the anti-gay marriage amendment here in California, while Obama is against it. 

A slightly more nuanced approach was done by our Governator Arnold Schwartzenegger on Meet the Press this weekend:

MR. BROKAW: You have a lot of propositions on the ballot again this fall. One of them would mean a constitutional ban on gay marriages. Do you support that?

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I think the Supreme Court made a decision there. It was apparently unconstitutional to stop anyone from getting married. It's like 1948, the interracial marriage, when the Supreme Court of California has, you know, decided it was unconstitutional and then later on the Supreme Court of the United States followed, I think 10 or 12 years later. So I think it is, it's good that California lead--is leading in this way. I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. But at the same time I think that my, you know, belief, I don't want to force on anyone else, so I think we should stay with the decision of the Supreme Court and move forward. There are so many other more important issues that we have to address in California. So I think to spend any time on this initiative I think is a waste of time.

The governor is personally against gay marriage as well, but thinks we should just move forward, since the Court did their job. Good for you, governor.  Makes up for voting against gay marriage before. 

Confessions of A TV Junkie

As we all know, I love television.  A little too much.  I sometimes act in television, my day job is in television, I watch a lot of television; hell, one of my favorite RPG's is based on my favorite TV show.  TV is part of my DNA, part of my outlook.  But, there's one (relatively new) aspect of television I'm not up on.

I don't have a TiVo.

No, I don't have a DVR either. My friends and acquaintances who learn this about me usually give the same litany of responses:

"Oh, it'll change your life."
"I can't believe YOU don't have one."
"It's not much more than what you're paying for cable right now."
"It's so great, you should totally get it!"

Let me answer these one by one:  "I'm sure", "Weirder things have happened", "Actually, no" and "I will someday."  My financial priorities are (1) get rid of my debt, (2) build up savings and investments and (3) eventually buy a house.  So, right now, the option of getting a TiVo doesn't really matter to me. I get a good amount of the television I want (Bravo, Food Network, MSNBC, E!, SciFi, TLC, Cartoon Network) and plenty I don't (Fox News, Galavision, the Golf Channel... I mean, seriously).  I negotiate through the dreck to get to the good stuff and anything else that I do want to see, I can rent. 

The argument some make of the cost -- "It's not that much more than what you're paying for cable right now" -- doesn't hold water with me.  See, Adelphia was are cable provider since Tom and I moved in here in 2000, and we have a very low rate.  When Adelpia went belly up a couple years ago and Time Warner took over, they had to continue our rate as it is.  I'm still getting the channels I want for cheap; if it ain't broke, why fix it? 

The hidden portion of the cost argument for TiVo is "It's not that much more than what you're paying for cable right now" is "I'm assuming you're paying for what I'm paying for and that means you have HBO and Showtime."  Well, I haven't had either since I lived with my folks back in college.  And I don't miss them.  And here's another confession:  I'm not all that impressed with the HBO shows.  What I've seen of Six Feet Under is the exception here: I like that show, and will watch more of it from Netflix.  The Sopranos?  Overrated.  Sex and the City?  Fun, but it took me a looooooong time for me to get into that show and it was only after it aired on TBS that I could see the appeal. [And no, I have not watched The Wire, and I'm told it's brilliant. It's on my queue, so relax.]

It goes down to this for me:  the characters are people I fundamentally don't like.  The Sopranos?  They are a bunch of self-centered amoral louts who kill people. The first season was fun and tightly written, and I whipped through it pretty quickly.  The second season was a total slog. It hit me:  "Why am I spending time with all these assholes?" After I finished that season, I mailed off the last disc and felt relieved I would never have to be around these losers again.  Entourage? I watched 3 episodes and had had enough.  Trust me, I live in Los Angeles.  I see plenty of these shallow, self-centered douchebags every day; the last thing I want to do is watch a show that celebrates them.  Rome was okay, but at least it's done as more of a historic melodrama where you have good guys and bad guys. 

The same can be said for the Showtime shows I've seen.  The American Queer As Folk I turned off after the pilot 'cause I hated all the characters and found it very tedious.  I've seen one episode of Weeds, and was not impressed at all.  I'm sure some of my opposition is my zero tolerance drug policy, but again, it goes back to the characters.  Do I want to spend time with these people?  The answer with all of the examples above is no.  The TV shows that I like are populated with characters whose company I thoroughly enjoy.  Cheers?  Hell yeah.  Buffy?  Of course!  As Time Goes By?  Any time!  I deal with assholes and idiots every day; why would I want to take my leisure time to subject myself to more douches?  There are shows where the characters do make mistakes and do err but are still entertaining and the characters are likable where I care about them correcting themselves (Brothers And Sisters, I'm looking in your direction).  But, if I think the characters are all jerks, why would I care about them at all?  If I have written them off in the beginning as assholes, I'm not invested in them improving themselves (Tony Soprano, et al). 

So, I have the shows I like and the shows I want to watch.  Throwing a hard drive with R2D2 noises into the mix doesn't really make sense to me right now.  I will probably get a TiVo or a DVR a few years down the road, but not right now.  I mean, I don't have an iPod either, and that's a bit of a higher priority. 

One Bit of Good News

My car is completely paid off.   That sound you just heard was me letting out a huge sigh of relief.

John McCain's Gay Pride Message?

The Madge mashups continue.

Oh boy...

[Link courtesy Towleroad]

Word Usage Amongst Douchebags

Apparently, someone threw a shoe at Queen of the Stone Age's lead singer Josh Homme at a recent concert and hit him.  Understandably, he got quite upset, and proceeded the chew the kid out, dropping the "faggot" word several times and threatening the teenager with anal rape.  After getting flack for his words, he then issued a non-apology apology that he's not homophobic and people need to lighten up about their language. Here's the video: [Warning:  the language is very rough]

 Okay, look. Here's the deal.  If someone threw a shoe at me, I'd be pissed too.  Yes, I'd even yell at the kid who did it.  And yes, I'd use some rated-R language.  But what I don't understand is the leap from "What the fuck did you just do" to "I'm going to buttfuck you in front of all of your friends", as if this is the most humiliating insult one could to to another.  So that insult?  Is homophobic and yes, douche, that makes you, in that instant, a homophobe.  And then to go on and say that people need to lighten up about their language then just cements how much of a total douchebag you are, Josh Homme. 

For me, it's the same thing as Mel Gibson's anti-Jewish tirade when he was arrested and other public figures who say horrible things under the influence of either drugs, alcohol or flu medication (like Josh Homme).  Just because you are under the weather doesn't excuse any behavior you do, and that includes saying horrible things.  The excuse of "Oh, that's the alcohol talking" or "I was mad" or "I had a fever" really doesn't cut it with me.  At all.  No one I know, myself included, ever saying anything way out of character if their drunk or buzzed or under the weather.  They may say some loopy things, but never something completely out of context with their character or something that they didn't believe.  I've been buzzed plenty of times but I've never said the earth was flat and gravity was a myth.  I've been sick before, and not once have I ever start saying that Jews are the root of all evil or that golf is a fascinating sport to watch.  Doesn't happen. 

So, why did Josh Homme make the leap from being mad to dropping the f-word and threatening sexual violence on a teenager?  Because he's a homophobe. Dude, seek some help and when you issue an actual apology for your words, then come talk to me.  Before then, keep your distance, douchebag.

Objects In Motion

I'm now back in the fold here at Trading Spaces after having finished on Frothy Basic Cable Docu-Soap.  I'll be here throughout the summer and into the beginning of the fall. Couple this with no travel planned for the foreseeable future and you see how the concept of settling in has taken over my brain.  I have my job ahead of me, some auditions in the horizon (...okay, one, but that's better than nuthin'), the general election campaign well under way, and summer movie season already upon us.  Kinda in the mood to just go with the flow, and let things ride. Work, hang out, repeat:  my decadent Hollywood lifestyle. 

Part of my routine is, of course, the commute. When I previously worked on Trading Spaces, my commute ranged between 55 minutes to 1 1/2 hours each way.  And that's just from my apartment in NE Los Angeles to Beverly Hills.  Fortunately, this time around, they have moved offices.  So my new commute?  Between 10 to 20 minutes.  That's it.  Quite a relief, as you can imagine. During said commute, I usually listen to NPR or whatever CDs that are parked in the player.  For the past couple weeks, it's a New Order box set and the new Madonna.  So, usually after my drive, my head sounds like this:

Not bad, huh?

He's Not Just A Bill

I like my politics mixed with humor. So, imagine my delight when my eyes saw an anti-McCain video done a la School House Rock.

So good.

[link courtesy of Towleroad]