11/28: Bumpkin Pumpkins
• Uh-oh. Jesus at a Christmas festival. Egads. Actually, I think a better argument would be complaining about the commercialism of Christ’s birthday, but whatever. This reminds me of an episode of M*A*S*H* when Hawkeye and McEntire were trying to get some medical device and eventually ended up at a general’s press conference. After the general said some powder-puff remarks, our commie surgeons started asking what M*A*S*H* units weren’t properly equipped with devices that could help save soldiers. The reporters then began following up on this inquiry. Flustered, the general says, “This is a press conference. The last thing I want to do is answer a bunch of questions.” Not sure if this is relevant here, but it just popped into my mind.
A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film "The Nativity Story" might offend non-Christians.
New Line Cinema, which said it was dropped, had planned to play a loop of the new film on televisions at the event. The decision had both the studio and a prominent Christian group shaking their heads.
"The last time I checked, the first six letters of Christmas still spell out Christ," said Paul Braoudakis, spokesman for the Barrington, Ill.-based Willow Creek Association, a group of more than 11,000 churches of various denominations. "It's tantamount to celebrating Lincoln's birthday without talking about Abraham Lincoln."
He also said that there is a nativity scene in Daley Plaza - and that some vendors at the festival sell items related to the nativity.
The city does not want to appear to endorse one religion over another, said Cindy Gatziolis, a spokeswoman for the Mayor's Office of Special Events. She acknowledged there is a nativity scene, but also said there will be representations of other faiths, including a Jewish menorah, all put up by private groups. She stressed that the city did not order organizers to drop the studio as a sponsor.
• Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards doesn’t like Wal-Mart, even though his staffers don’t mind trying to get Playstation3s from the retail giant.
John Edwards, a vocal critic of the retailer, asked his local Wal- Mart store for help in getting the potential 2008 presidential candidate a Sony PlayStation 3. Edwards said a volunteer did so by mistake.
Edwards told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart a day after his boss criticized the company, saying it doesn't treat its employees fairly.
"My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people," Edwards said. "That staff person mentioned it in front of a volunteer who said he would make an effort to get one. He was making an effort to go get one for himself.
"Elizabeth and I knew nothing about this. He feels terrible about this. He made a mistake, and he knows he should not have used my name," Edwards said.
Edwards said the volunteer was "a young kid" unaware of what he called flawed Wal-Mart policies. He called the Wal-Mart statement an effort to divert attention from its own problems.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. This is funnier:
Former Sen. John Edwards is to spend an hour at the Manchester Barnes & Noble tonight promoting his new book. We find his choice of venue very interesting.
In Manchester, the local Wal-Mart store sits right behind the Barnes & Noble. It has more floor space, a parking lot several times the size of Barnes & Noble's, and is easier to access by car or public transportation.
But Edwards would not be caught dead inside a Wal-Mart. Saying that the company pays its employees too little, Edwards has embarked on an anti-Wal-Mart crusade. He instructs his staff members and all Americans not to shop at Wal-Mart.
"Wal-Mart makes plenty of money. They need to pay their people well," Edwards said at a Shittsburgh anti-Wal-Mart rally in August.
So naturally Edwards is holding his book signing at Barnes & Noble instead of Wal-Mart. Which is too bad for his anti-low-wages campaign, because in Manchester Wal-Mart pays hourly employees more than Barnes & Noble does.
The Barnes & Noble where Edwards will hawk his book pays $7 an hour to start. The Wal-Mart that sits just yards away pays $7.50 an hour.
...
Asked back in January what he thought would be an appropriate minimum wage, Edwards told The New York Times, "My view is it should be $7.50 an hour, and I can make a great argument for it being a lot higher than that."
Maybe the reason limousine liberals don’t like Wal-Mart is because it doesn’t offer valet parking.
• So I was goofing around with Comcast's On Demand again and came across this gem of a movie called “Pumpkinhead.” Oh dear God. I’m not going to bother talking about the plot, so let me rip off what someone at IMDB said.
A group of city kids go into the country to relax. While there, one of them is involved in a biking accident that takes the life of the son of the local storekeeper (Lance Henrikson). In a fit of rage, the storekeeper has a witch unleash an unstoppable demon called "Pumpkinhead" to kill the group. When he realizes he's gone too far, the storekeeper attempts to save the kids, but is continually afflicted by visions of peoples' deaths through the eyes of the monster.
OK. First question. Who the hell would name a demon Pumpkinhead? Oddly enough, rather than looking like a pumpkin, this demon looked more like that thing from the Hellraiser movie that just roamed around in that hallway and fought the leading lady over that hippie cube toward the film’s climax. Pumpkinhead was one of those movies that was so bad I couldn’t stop watching. I will say that I liked how the guy who called up Pumpkinhead slowly turned into him, or whatever the hell it was he did. And at least the dog lived, or I think it did.
Oh, man. There are Pumpkinhead sequels? I’m sure they will appear On Demand in the next month or so.
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