godthedog

what the hell, i'm in. i don't think i'm in much danger of other people taking my picks. 20 rounds is a pretty long way to go, if there ends up being 15 or more participants. the music draft started 3 months ago, and it's still going. what about ten-to-fifteen rounds?

hillary HAS been the victim of sexism to the extent that all the bad adjectives the republicans used to describe clinton politics have been transferred to her, while bill's presidency hasn't really suffered in the eyes of democrats (at least the ones i know). it's more than a little strange to demonize her for doing exactly the same things (i.e., twisting the letter of rules & law to individual advantage) he did, while still getting that warm fuzzy feeling inside about bill clinton being a good democratic president.

lucasberg painted themselves into a corner with that one by holding so close to the 'raiders' formula of "exposition--big action scenes--supernatural extravaganza where the characters get lost in all the paranormal forces." when you do a finale that's so obviously supposed to be a placeholder for the original "wrath of god" finale, you're inviting the comparison. by its own standards, the ending is a huge disappointment. the effects are lame, nobody gets the contours of their body fucked with in an interesting way that we haven't seen before, and it rips on earlier ideas of spielberg that just don't belong there. did anybody seriously go "oh, SHIT" at that ending? if you look at 'temple of doom', it suffers from many things, but a lack of a "wrath of god" finale isn't one of them. the ending just isn't meant to be compared to 'raiders', it doesn't work the same way. instead of taking some chances and possibly breathing some new life into the franchise or giving the fans some surprises, lucasberg took the most ballless, soulless way out they could: they gave us the same damn ending, when it wasn't even as good the second time they used it in 'last crusade'. the whole ancient story that sets the plot in motion is fine--it's just a mythical macguffin that works as well as any other. in theory, it works pretty nicely as a tribute to the cold war b-movies of the 50s. they could use the legend of some gigantic radioactive water buffalo for all we care, as long as the execution is good. the execution just wasn't good.

i saw this a couple weekends ago, loved it. some of the family subplot stuff was admittedly half-baked and awful, but the slow-burn pacing was perfect and made those funny touches even funnier (the doctor examination, the nuclear power plant that sits right behind the house in every shot).

and don't forget the prairie dogs. what the hell. i will admit i liked the monkeys though. even though it reminded me of that part in 'the lost world' where the teen girl has to use her gymnastics skills to save the group.

meh. the same sort of aging gesture to a fading formula that 'live free or die hard' did last summer, except 'die hard' did it much better by not sentimentalizing itself so heavily. good god that shit was schmaltzy. shia lebouf has quickly become my favorite thing about otherwise crappy mainstream movies, and this was no exception. not a great actor, but very likable and has a schoolboyish charm that makes him naturally interesting to watch--reminds me a lot of john cusack. my absolute favorite part of the whole indy franchise is the interminable car chase scene midway through 'raiders', and this movie's equivalent of that was just awesome--perfect action sequence that not only refused to end, but steadily got more and more ludicrous, and not afraid to let you laugh at it. i was afraid it wouldn't be able to hold up on the action quota, but i was very wrong. also contained the only line of the movie that harrison ford delivered well: "BIG DAMN ANTS." the 'wrath of god' equivalent that took up the latter third of the movie was retarded.

edwards has already publicly said he has no interest in the VP slot again.

i completely agree with this. she just doesn't have the kind of team-first mentality that would make his presidency successful.

i was pleasantly surprised, but i can't help thinking cook's career would be better off if he'd finished second or third.

bill richardson maybe? and hillary will not try to throw the election out of spite if she doesn't make the ticket. she's driven but she's not stupid, and a move like that would effectively ruin her political career.

the detroit squad, as it stands now (without not-old ben wallace and without a coach who lit a fire under their asses), will never win another championship. they'll continue to be very good, but they'll also continue to think they're a lot better than they really are.

the dems never had a good chance to win FL anyways. i feel they'll still take MI, though it'll be close.

agreed, with the additional possibility that obama can inspire a higher turnout from his base than mccain. mccain's major weaknesses are 1) hardcore republicans aren't that crazy about him, and 2) obama basically negates his appeal to independents.

wouldn't romney have been on the way to getting the republican nom if they didn't have a winner-take-all system? i thought i remembered reading that somewhere. obama's team has finally figured out how to dictate the tempo of expectations and has gotten superdelegates so aggressively that nobody cares about west virginia (where clinton holds like a 20-point lead). if he had done this kind of long-term planning earlier and made a one-two punch of a close PA and IN-NC win, instead of buying into PA being as important as clinton said it was, then it would already be over.

20 advil isn't nearly enough to die. that's a mild-to-severe stomach ache and some kidney trouble.

i don't understand this, especially putting up 6 million dollars of your own money just for the sake of ending on a high note. howard dean has called for a dnc meeting on may 31 to address the delegate situation for michigan and florida. my guess is she's trying to buy time till then, and hope the decision favors her. this one's going to die a slow, very painful death.

according to my fiance (who reads up on all this religiously), castro is quoted as saying he wants to go home. while seacrest was advertising castro's numbers, you could see castro mouthing "don't vote."

nobody ever gets to compare their "change" in their pissy little tv fame with the change that sam cooke was talking about. ESPECIALLY if they're black. i hope she gets shot later tonight by the manager of the building she's staying in.

Someone with the American chronicle did a survey with 300 black voters who supported Obama. When asked whether they would vote for Clinton 292 said No because they'd feel she stole it from Obama. Obviously, some of them may come back into the fold but a lot of them won't. You can say 'they'll get over it' but a lot of them won't. Blacks have been the cornerstone of the democrat party for decades, they've stuck by every candidate (Gore, Kerry, Clinton) and to suddenly turn around and say that while Obama has played by the rules, has gotten the most delegates, most states and most of the popular vote, but it's going to someone else because they don't think a black man can win...you don't realise how catastrophic that would be? It doesn't matter if Hillary's a democrat. If Britney spears had a D by her name, does that mean people are still going to vote for her because she's not a republican? Mccain knows this. That's why he went to new orleans. He knows if Hillary wins, the republicans could potentially garner a lot of the AA vote. but even if blacks stayed home, how would that affect the electoral college outcome? they help in the south & urban areas, but i can't think of any big battleground states where they would sway the vote. it's not like if they stay home the democrats will lose california.

So you can get back to fellating your mulatto saint? knock that fucking shit off, seriously.

if the debate was in true lincoln-douglas style, with long amounts of time given to each speaker, i think obama would actually come out of that looking better. he's weak on short back-and-forth exchanges, and for the first 30 seconds of his responses you can almost always hear him actively trying to figure out what exactly he wants to say; but in the formats i've seen him in, the general rule seems to be, the longer you let him talk the better he does. he's pretty stellar at holding a sustained train of thought (rather than rattling off a list of talking points), and his biggest strengths as an orator shine when he's allowed to speak for 15 minutes or more. maybe clinton could get a similar kind of rhythm going (i've seen her husband do it a couple times), but i've never seen her actually do it. of course, my speculation is useless because obama would never agree to it and clinton offered KNOWING he wouldn't agree to it.

isn't louisiana at least as muggy as georgia in the summer? i grew up on the savannah river, and on a trip to new orleans in july i vividly remember it being way hotter, wetter, and more oppressive than what i was used to.

speaking of which, anybody know what happened to flyboy? i stopped paying attention one day.

but why are black people so angry? I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

it's funny to look online at past episodes and see how much this show has aged stewart. but it's much funnier (in an uncomfortable way) to watch olbermann's dripping, pleading earnestness ooze out of the screen. also, apparently there's a dispute over whether clinton won by double digits or not, depending on what decimal place you start rounding at--her victory stands now at something like just under 9.5%.