Speaking of Airborne...It's Never Over...

I caught the tail end of the 1994 movie "Revenge of the Red Baron". And I have to say, Wow. Just Wow. Starring Tobey Maguire and Mickey Rooney, the movie's plot revolves around the fact that wheelchair-bound Grandpa Mickey shot down the Red Baron in WWI, and the Red Baron, he's not going to take that lying down in his grave. No, he reanimates himself into a little model plane guy who flies around in a little model plane and shoots little model plane bullets from little model plane machine guns that kill real people. Grandson Tobey has to use his own little model plane to bring the Red Baron to justice, which involves maneuvering his little model plane around high voltage wires until the Red Baron flies into them. Because, you see, the Red Baron is a sucker for a good dogfight, even when he knows there is no one in the plane and there is no reason not to go after the kid with the remote control. Meanwhile, this riveting chase transports Tobey back into WWI times where he is flying a real plane and chasing after the real Red Baron. Eventually, the Red Baron is entangled in the wires. Which of course don't have any current running through them because one wire that leads to the Maguire homestead is ripped up and disconnected. But then Mickey Rooney saves the day by connecting the wires, frying himself in the process, and igniting the Red Baron. Thank God that in this California town the electrical wires draw their power from houses, not vice versa like everywhere else in the world! And thank God Mickey Rooney is alive in the next scene!

But, as the miniature Red Baron is fond of saying, "It's Never Over". Because in the closing scene as Tobey tries to explain to his mom how he really was there back in WWI fighting the Red Baron, we see the remnants of little model parachute dangling from a life-sized tree. IT. IS. NEVER. OVER.

P.S. Here is a "greatest hits" clip from the movie. Enjoy!

P.P.S. This movie is produced by Roger Corman, who also produced a live action Red Baron movie in 1971 called "Richthoven and Brown." So is this a sequel?

If It Smells Like Christmas, It Probably Is

Last year I had trouble getting into the Christmas Spirit, which I have redefined as a "feeling of satiation and contentment that better prepares you to appreciate beauty, and which may or may not be caused by eating too many Frosted Cookies in the Shapes of Snowmen." However, a PBS program I watched on Christmas Eve, which is now on DVD here, got me into the Christmassy mood.

Speaking of which, Christmas should be more like Thanksgiving and not associated with a date. Make it the 4th Sunday of every December. If you have to travel, go in the 24th. Then get Monday off to drive home. (This year is a day off from being perfect.) On that note, enough with Thanksgiving being on a Thursday, esp. if you work for a company or the government that makes you take leave on the next day. Crap on that. Make it a Saturday and give us Friday off. Sure Black Friday will lose it's meaning but do I care? No? And all for some quiet time with my razzleberry dressing.

On Courtesy

People are taking this holding the door open thing too far. Somebody's 30 feet ahead of me, they walk through the door, and they hold it open and just stare back at me with a stupid smile. I've got alot of ground to cover to reach the door. Meanwhile, my door-holder-opener awaits. What does he want me to do, run? What's so courteous about that? Screw it, I'm staying at my pace. Make the mofo wait.

Here's a rule: Don't hold a door open for someone unless they are within 10 feet or two strides of you. Got it? Good.

I Watch "Airborne" So You Don't Have To.

Let's say it's the early 90s, and you want to develop a major theme of childhood, EXTREME!! sports vs. piddling Team Sports and their subjugation of the individual. How do you write this movie? And will it get made?

You start out with this kid, who's a GREAT surfer from sunny Orange County. But one day someone harshed on his wave, he flipped out, and next thing you know he's stuck with his cousin in Cincinnati. He feels bad for what he did to the dude who stole his wave, so he is determined to "play it cool", if only those damn Cincy kids would let him. They don't like his pretty eyes, his cool earring, how he calls them "brah" all the time, or his "own goal" in a pickup hockey game against the hated Preps, who also hate him. So what does he turn to? Inline skating, of course. Because he is a GREAT inline skater, as well as being a GREAT surfer. And he can inline skate ALL BY HIMSELF, but also with other likeminded skaters, who willingly give him top position on the halfpipe because he is so AWESOME!

He freestyles all over the place with his hang loose attitude that even his girl thinks makes him a wimp. Eventually he is roped into an inline skating race from way atop Mount Cincy 10 miles or so down to Riverfront Stadium, avoiding cars, jumping over walls, pushing hated Preps over guardrails, and the like. Which is actually kind of cool, the race, that is. At the end, the crazy rules of the race give him an opportunity to show those stupid team-sportists that his chill, EXTREME!!! sporting ways don't get in the way of him being a good teammate.

Does this movie get made? Hells yeah, brah.

**Please note Jack Black in a supporting role as the Team Bully's trusted sidekick, and Seth Green as the quirky cousin. According to IMDB, the star, Shane McDermott, now sells real estate in Texas and has no plans to return to show biz. Like they'd let him.

Where Mediocre Reality Shows Go to Die

You know how sometimes after you've had in the neighborhood of five to twenty beers, you and your friends think up what seems like the best idea ever for a reality television show? Well, it turns out there's one more thing standing in the way of those shows making it to the air (other than their general level of retardedness) -- most of them already exist.

I discovered this recently when I tuned into the Fox Reality Channel, which features such near-miss programming as:

--Corkscrewed: The Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately, this isn't wine-themed porn, but instead a show about a dude trying to make it work as a vineyard owner.

--The Family. Hosted by George Hamilton, this show sticks a middle-class New Jersey family into a Palm Beach mansion and then forces them to compete in "high society challenges" (like playing polo on the backs of tiny ponies, judging from the brief preview I saw) to see who'll win a million dollars. The show's producers have used the Sopranos/Godfather font for the title, though it's unclear what the "gangster" angle is other than the family being from Jersey.

--Outback Jack. "Twelve beautiful, high-maintenance city women are literally dropped into the middle of the Australian Outback, 12,000 miles from home. They each have to decide if they can give up their designer shoes, nonfat cappuccinos and all the comforts of home in order to win the affection of a ruggedly handsome, real-life 'Crocodile Dundee.'"

--My Bare Lady. This one is about porn, as adult film stars compete to become real actresses of the London Stage, under the tutelage of a creepy old British dude who likes to leer a lot.

--T.H.E.M. (Totally Hidden Extreme Magic). "Combines the voyeurism of a hidden camera show with unbelievable illusions and unsuspecting victims. A gang of talented street magicians sets up various scenarios to lure in potential unsuspecting targets. After the team has amazed viewers and bewildered their victims, they reveal themselves to the target — as one of T.H.E.M."

--The Block. Couples move into identical apartments with small budgets and have to "out-design" one another.

--Cannonball Run. "Loosely based on the movie of the same name," this show features teams racing across the country for a $75,000 prize.

--Looking for Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska. Like a T.C. Boyle story gone horribly awry, this show sends single women to America's man-laden icy tundra in search of Mr. Right.

And there's more. Lots, lots more. The Fox Reality Channel also replays old reality shows (which I have to admit is a pretty good idea), and if you're lucky, you can even catch a replay of Man vs. Beast I and II.

Musings of a Genially Sadistic Dictator

72. The true art of dictatorship is to strike a balance between killing your people at random for the silliest of reasons and killing them for not doing what they are supposed to, showing proper loyalty and deference, that kind of thing. You go too far in the first direction and nothing gets done, too far in the second and they all shape up and it’s just not any fun.

131. One of the really great perks of the job is that anything I say, no matter what it is, or what tone of voice I use, is interpreted to be ominous, sexual, or both. For instance, my tall, portly valet brought me a bowl of cherries, my favorite fruit. As I reached for the mound of goodness, I said, “I will eat the biggest, roundest one first.” My valet’s face fell and he ran from the room and had to be coaxed from a broom closet where he clung to a basin for his dear life. I assured him that, most of the time, I mean what I say, and had him whipped, just a little bit, so that he would remember. Another time one of my most prominent ministers visited me, along with his beautiful teenage daughter, who I had not seen for quite some time as she had been schooling abroad. “My, how you’ve grown,” I said in a fatherly tone, and she immediately stripped off her clothes and threw herself upon me. I tried to dissuade her, but she would have none of it. I felt bad for her father, and told him that he could go, but he froze because I also had a dictum that no one could leave a room that I was present in. No, no, it’s okay, I assured him, this must be embarrassing for you. But he did not budge. The whole affair from start to finish was regrettable, but he benefited immeasurably by watching me in action. I know how to please a woman.

426. Not for nothing, but a fivesome is pushing it.

About the Author: General Commander Poobah Deek Stunner Raj, Holy of all Holies, Gloriousness Itself, Shimmering Mirror That Sees All Destinies, Mountain Atop Which Wisdom Is Gained, Precursor to the Stars, Heavens, and Firmament, First Male Fertility Goddess EVER!! and Dojo with the Mojo, was educated at the Sorbonne and Sandhurst—England’s Renowned Military School—as well as at the Feet of His Dear Revered Father, Tsk Tsk II. He has ruled the little known East Asian country Dushbaj for the past 30 years with a mix of draconian rules and pogroms that are, as he notes wryly, one part police state, one part rogue nation, one part kleptocracy, and two parts despotism. He no longer exports terror, but rather his wit and wisdom about being a tyrant, which has made his books bestsellers both at home, and abroad. He is currently working on a graphic novel called “READ THIS BOOK OR DIE”.

The Barrelhouse Thesis is Proven

Remember that scene in the movie PCU, where Pigman -- who's writing his senior thesis on the Caine-Hackman Theory (that at any given moment a movie starring either Michael Caine or Gene Hackman can be found on TV) -- realizes "A Bridge Too Far" is on?

"Caine and Hackman in the same movie. This is my thesis, man! This is my closing argument! I CAN STOP WATCHING TV!"

Well, I'm not going to stop watching T.V., but I recently had a similar feeling when I realized Beverly Hills, 90210 once featured the song "She's Like the Wind" in an episode. Patrick Swayze, West Beverly High ... somewhere in the vortex of that moment this whole Barrelhouse project started to make sense.

25 Rectum Niner 7 Jinxie, on 11!

Like a team that runs out of steam and quits in the 4th quarter, so too have the Friday Night Lights writers quit on their show (NOTE TO FNL's WRITING STAFF: The previous is a football analogy--and no, not the sport that features sucking on orange quarters at half-time).

How else to explain the 12/5 episode, which featured an end zone a) without a goal post b) with fans stepping on and slightly over the end zone's back line.

Or the following dialogue from Mrs. Coach in the 12/12 episode: "Run the right strong ISO when you are in your nickel package, they have a corner who's a little slow." An ISO is a running play, and a nickel package is a defensive formation. But it sure sounded good!

Deeply Stupid Thoughts

Italian is salad dressing for beginners.

Ties are like snowflakes, no two are the same.

Pain is temporary, pride is fughettaboutit.

If only my grandfather lingered as long as his farts, he might still be alive today.

Who filters the filters?

If soccer explains the world, now I know why I don't score very often.

Shouldn't it be "Mutually Ensured Destruction"?

When life gives you lemons, piss in a bucket and call it lemonade.

Your Merry Menorah Gift Guide

This might be the awesomest non-porn website I've stumbled across in ages. Could come in handy for whatever holiday you'll be celebrating in the next few weeks.

90210 Writers, You've Been Served!

As this blog's two loyal readers know, I'm an unapologetic fan of Beverly Hills, 90210, even in the face of frequent ridicule from my friends. SOAPNet recently ran through the end of the series in reruns and started over at the beginning of Season 1, so I've been Tivo'ing the episodes and reliving the excitement that was my 9th grade Wednesday nights, only this time I have a real girlfriend who's not from church or from Canada.

It's always stuck in my craw that 90210's writers tried to wring extra years out of the characters' high school experiences. We got three years of the kids at West Beverly, which means we're meant to believe (retroactively) that in Season 1 all the main characters were sophomores.

As I've long maintained, this is ridiculous for any number of reasons: Andrea is the editor-in-chief of the West Beverly Blaze (apparently a full-time job, judging from how much time she spends in the office); Steve Sanders gets mocked for hitting on freshmen; everyone makes fun of youngster David Silver and his hapless straight-brim-hatted friend Scott (whose parents wouldn't let him attend sex-ed classes and who eventually became a cautionary tale by shooting himself in the face); Dylan McKay is approximately 34 years old.

As strong as my feelings are on this subject, I've always had to admit that my evidence -- though I certainly found it convincing -- was circumstantial. Until now, that is. Because today I was watching an episode entitled "One Man and a Baby," and Brandon said he was a junior. A junior! Not a sophomore! Ha! THE SHOW'S WRITERS ARE LIARS AND NOW I CAN PROVE IT!!!

I only wish there was someone I could take to court over this.

Instead, I called TMC and told him about my discovery, and he promptly called me a loser. I suppose a bigger man than me might not use this opportunity to point out that TMC owns The Beverly Hillbillies box set on VHS, and Mona Lisa Smile on DVD.

Anyway, if you haven't already rolled your eyes and stopped reading this post, here are some other random observations from Season 1 of 90210 that you may or may not find interesting:

**The pilot features Dijmon Hounsou, the dude from Amistad and In America, as a bouncer; Alex Desert, from PCU and Swingers ("This place is dead anyway"), as Random Friend; and the guy from Grease 2 (Maxwell Caulfield) as Brenda's potential statutory rapist. (Oh, crap: did I just admit to being able to recognize the guy from Grease 2?)

**In an episode entitled "The Gentle Art of Listening," Brenda works at a teen help line, where she gets a call three nights in a row from the same girl. Each night, at the same time, by the same guy, the girl's been date raped. While I appreciate the show's attempt to tackle the Tough Issues, is this really how date rape works? Either way, Brenda does the sensible thing, which is to stalk a bunch of girls at school until she figures out who it is, then she confronts the victim in the hallway and yells at her. And somehow, in the show's moral universe, this makes her the episode's hero.

**It's interesting to think about how we saw wealth in 1991 versus how we see wealth in 2006. In 90210, we know the kids are wealthy because Steve Sanders drives a Corvette and the girls like to shop a lot. But compare that to The O.C., where everyone lives in a giant McMansion and the school has an espresso bar. Or, hell, compare it to real life, where people invite MTV to film their $100,000 Sweet Sixteen parties. The West Beverly kids' wealth seems downright quaint these days.

**I know people always make jokes about the actors being too old for the roles, but it really is ridiculous. Dylan has wrinkles and Andrea looks like a mother of three. I guess it doesn't help that they dress her like a fourth grade teacher.

**Brandon really is a total wet blanket. He basically walks around lecturing people, either on safe sex, or cheating, or drinking, even people he hardly knows. How did he not get punched in the face more often?

Semper Funny

Via Radar online is an interesting interview with new Daily Show correspondent Rob Riggle, a former SNL cast member (remember Dr. Porkenheimer's Bone Juice) and also a former full-time Marine with tours of duty in Kosovo and Afghanistan, among other places.

The Rending of the Fabric of Time Will Be Caused by Fulfillment of Carson Palmer's XMas List

Via Deadspin is a link to Cincinnati Bengals' QB Carson Palmer's Christmas List, wherein he asks for two so mutually incompatible things, we wonder if we should kidnap him and sacrifice him to the gods in order to put off Armageddon.

Dave, can you somehow explain the following from the article??

Quarterback Carson Palmer

1. The new Kevin Federline CD, Playing with Fire. ("A lot of people don't like K-Fed, but he's all right.")

2. A new tie rack. ("Even guys from Southern California wear ties.")

3. A 10-point LTS crossbow. ("It's a new hobby of mine.")

4. Flavor of Love (Season 1) DVD. ("Flav is very smooth, and funny.")

5. A pingpong table. ("Pingpong is fun and helps your hand-eye coordination."

John Wooden Hates Black People

According to this Slate article, John Wooden, uber-successful college basketball coach and grand old sage of the hardcourt, doesn't like the "black" elements of basketball.

I helped coach an 8th grade CYO basketball team in Queens way back in 1995. During a playoff game where we had a one point lead, our backup point guard stole the ball and had an unimpeded path to the basket. He saw that the only player close to him was one of our big 6'2 forwards. Instead of laying the ball in, he decided to slam the ball off the backboard so that his teammate could catch the ball in mid-air and dunk it home. The ball soared over the head of his teammate, the other team got the ball, and was able to score and go up by one. We managed to win, but with our backup point guard on the bench.

I tacitly approved of the decision to remove our backup point guard from the game, and I realize now that I was both wrong, and racist, to privilege "white" fundamentals over "oppressed peoples" flashy fun improvisation. For this, I am truly sorry.

Year's Worst: Music

Since I love this topic of the worst things from this year, and I love talking about what's so goddam bad in music these days, I had to beat Mike to it and start up the music discussion.

Worst Overall:
Any discussion of bad music from last year has to start with my boy -- wannabe rapper, former background dancer who thinks that makes him a badass, nominal proprieter of the worst website of the year, keepin' it real pimp wansksta K-Fed, Fed-Ex, Kevin Federline. I feel like just saying his name is enough to cement the argument that he was indeed the worst artist of the year. Is it just me, or is Federline so incredibly, amazingly, profoundly untalented and self-deluded -- and consistent with both -- that he's becoming kind of awesome? Maybe its just me. I do, after all, have Road House on DVD, and I just downloaded Triumph's greatest hits (the semi-hair metal power balladeers, that is, and not the insult comic dog).

Music by People Who Don't Make Music
This is, in my opinion, the worst kind of music, and the worst thing about music today. These people are not "artists," and are probably more removed from artistry than my boy Douche-Fed. They're either confections -- made-up groups that basically lip sync dance routines to tracks laid down by badass producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes and the like. Or they're celebrities who inexplicably are enabled to lay the ghosts of their digitally altered voices over pre-produced tracks by those same producers-for-hire.

• Paris Hilton
  
• The Pussycat Dolls
  
• Fergie
  
• Anybody with the last name "Simpson"
  

Worst Song:
Dane Cook fans, callin' y'alls dumb motherfucker, tasteless, mediocre asses to the dancefloor! Get yo "My Humps" on, yo. Superfinger! Whoooo!

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
In the back and in the front (lumps)
My lovin' got you,
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me and spending time on me.
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me.

Aerosmith Award for Most Disappointing Success
Nelly Furtado, for that terrible Timbaland song "Promiscuous." There was a time, and this is actually hard to believe, so I had to go back to allmusic.com to make sure my memory (and frequently questionable taste) was right, but there was a time when Nelly Furtado seemed like she might be a combination of Beth Orton and Madonna and maybe Morcheeba. Kind of like Lily Allen right now. What I'm saying is, there was a time, after her first album, Whoa, Nelly, when she seemed like she might be legit. Or at least, like Madonna, legit lite. She was a pop singer, but not a dumb one. And she pulled elements of folk, trip hop, hip hop, and rock together in a way that was, well, it wasn't stupid or pandering or lazy, which are all of the things that Promiscuous song is. There's a difference between the Nelly Furtado album and the Paris Hilton album, but not as much as there should be, by a long shot. Nelly Furtado got lazy, got stupid, and got paid.

Meet the New Boss, Definitely Not the Same as the Old Boss:
This also doubles as the Most Disappointing and Misguided Sophomore Effort, and I'm talking about The Killers Sam's Town. I guess we should respect Brandon Flowers and the rest of the boys for not resting on their laurels and sleepwalking along the Smiths/Cure/Oasis highway for another album. But, um, well, I've heard Bruce Springsteen, boys, Bruce Springsteen was a childhood obsession of mine, and you fellas, well, you know how this ends. Thing is, if you're going to be Springsteen, or U2 -- or maybe The Alarm would be a closer target for you guys, by the way -- you have to put away the chippy synths and the Duran Duran vocals. When you keep that shit in, and you add this big sweepy Bruce/Bono like chorusus, and you're singing about "dreams round here" and "burning down the highway on the back of a hurricane," it just sounds kind of like, well, to be honest, it sounds kind of like the Hooters covering Springsteen songs. Yeah, that bad.

The Year's Worst: Books

Now that Studio 60 and Friday Night Lights have been roundly beaten about the head and shoulders, I suppose we should move on to Worst Books of the Year.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately, for all purposes other than this blog post -- I don't read too many bad books. Unlike the passive medium of television, where all too often I'm left with little choice but to switch it on and let the awfulness wash all over me, with books I have a little more power of selection. I teach at a university and have access to its library, and there are so, so many good books in the universe that I want to read. Every now and then, I find one of them to be mildly disappointing, but then I just put it down and move on to the next one.

So for this category I guess I might have to turn to books I haven't actually read. OJ's book -- If I Did It, Here's a Painfully Accurate and Detailed Accounting of Exactly How I Would Have Knifed That Bitch -- comes to mind. Or that Paris Hilton book -- did that come out this year?

Or maybe the He's Just Not That Into You book, though really that comes down to T.V., too, since the only reason I hate the book is because it's forced me to keep seeing the book's author on the tube, and that dude's like a bad cross between Dane Cook, Dr. Phil and Andy Dick.

Clearly, Barrelhouse Peoples, I am clueless. So it's up to you: Worst Books of the Year. Have at it.

Friday Night Bites

Dave mentioned in the comments to Mike's television post that he has lost faith in Friday Night Lights. I have hated that show from the beginning and could not understand the accolades it received. Perplexed, I returned home for Thanksgiving to my hometown in Ohio, a ramshackle steel town where football indeed is the only thing (in fact, my alma mater just won its second Division III Ohio State Championship in a row last Saturday against this opponent. Check our our classy fans! Since my brother graduated in 2003, the Steubenville High School Stallions have not lost a regular season game, and are currently on a 30 game win streak. Lots more cheesy Big Red stuff on the intertubes here.) I consulted my brother, a current Steubenville resident, and was delighted and reassured to hear that both he and his girlfriend hated the show also.

What exactly is wrong with it? Here are a few pointers:

The Coach is the Sanest Person in Town. Are you kidding me? College coaching semi-legend Jackie Sherrill castrated a bull in front of his team. And just the other day, www.deadspin.com linked to a story from Houston wherein a high school football coach kicked two players off the team for donating blood before practice!! They were reinstated by the school system, of course. Coaches are crazy, obsessed people. My high school coach punched us in the kidneys during school, just for fun. He once jumped into a play during practice, lining up right over the biggest kid on the team in just shorts and t-shirt. He traveled to Columbus for a Coaches Conference and stayed with two former players, students at Ohio State, and played foam-ball basketball with them in their room and totally trashed it. And won. Billy Bob was able to underplay the coach in the movie for the sole reason that he was Billy Bob and no one expected it.

Are These Kids Having Fun Yet? Yes, there is alot of pressure, unfair pressure, on the kids who play high school football. Yet, it's still fun. Plus, these kids are all wound up from Tuesday...what stupid things are they doing to blow off steam? Picking on each other, locker room antics, pranks, etc. (Our locker room antics involved the mostly light-hearted "Soap Eyes" and the more than kinda creepy "Fake Prison Sexual Assault".) Then there's Tim Riggins, so brooding and passionate, but sincere, just like his long hair. Lighten up, dude. He's banging a cheerleader and all he wants to do is "talk". Hmmmm. Not typical high school football senior behavior if you ask me. And the Matt Saracen character, so doggone sincere he can't even get words out of his mouth, his emotions are so powerful. Have you ever met a QB who wasn't a cocky SOB? Maybe there's a reason for that.

Y'all Come Back Now, Y'Hear? Perhaps the show's biggest weakness is that everyone else in town is a Stetson-sized Texas Ster-ee-o-Type. We're talking Varsity Blues territory here. You have the Corrupt Texan athletic director, the Creepy Texan former player, the Crazy Texan grandma, and the Frustrated Housewife Texans. The show is completely hopeless at illuminating the lives of the minority players (the Hispanic player picks a fight and gets kicked off the team, and apparently the show also because we haven't seen him since. The black player, Smash, is currently the victim of an after school special plot about steroids...apparently they are "bad" for you. Which must be why just about everyone in professional sports does them.) And I haven't even gotten to the hypocritical cheerleader, the sassy slutty girl with a heart of gold, the worldy, liberated-coach's-wife-who-can't-figure-out-why-girl students-are-asking-her-about-threesomes, and the Murderball guy. Well, the Murderball guy is okay. In fact if the show were just about the paralyzed QB, it would be a hell of a lot better.

Better Know Your Football And last but not least, the supposed focus of the show, the high school football games, are another weakness. The premiere was roundly criticized for the game-winning drive at the end, which in real football terms would have only worked on a 140 yard field. But just about every football game is weak. While high school teams are not known for their clock management, you run 4 plays, each going out of bounds to stop the clock, and you run maybe 30 seconds off the clock--at most--not a minute plus. And running a reverse on the game's last play only seems to happen in TV or Movie land, not in real-life land, which is where I live, mostly.

And also, if you have a party for the whole team and it's a tradition, and like 100+ people show up, perhaps someone somewhere down the line came up with the brilliant idea to rent out the local VFW or church basement or something.

The Year's Worst: Television

So yesterday I opened a forum to discuss the year's worst movies. I certainly don't mean to cut off that discussion, but I figured that here on T.V. Tuesday it might be a good time to consider the ol' boob tube's worst new offerings.

Is Flavor of Love the worst abomination ever visited upon America's small screens? Perhaps, but I think that may be the show's very point. And intent has to count for something, right? So, instead, I'll nominate two very different shows that are very bad in very different ways.

First is The Class, a show about a doofus who thinks a fun gift for his girlfriend would be to round up their shared third grade classmates for a surprise reunion. Any show in which that character's not dead by the end of Ep. 1 is, in this blogger's humble opinion, an abject failure.

Also, while I realize cliches are to sitcoms what CGI is to big-budget action flicks, this show has taken the use of cliche to glorious new heights. There's Obviously Gay Guy Who Doesn't Realize He's Gay. There's Smiley, Goofy, Aw-Shucks Romantic. There's Cynical Girl Who Really Just Needs A Good Man To Expose Her Sweet Side. There's Jackass Jock. There's Slacker Who Lives In His Mother's Basement. In the 21st Century Sitcom Wing of the Cliche Museum, there'll be wax statues of all these characters.

The only way a person might laugh at The Class is if he or she was in fact laughing at the rememberance of a better sitcom -- Friends, say, or hell, even Joey -- that used these same cliches to comedic effect.

Then again, to be fair, I didn't last beyond midway through the second episode, so for all I know The Class has taken a turn and is now completely hilarious.

My second nomination is a show I wish I'd stopped watching after an episode and a half, because then I'd still think it was good. The Studio 60 pilot was great -- fast-moving and talky in the way of The West Wing. And Studio 60 did a great impression of an aging Saturday Night Live-style show choking out its final gasps (somewhere, Horatio Sanz and Chris Kattan were simultaneously slapping their foreheads for not thinking of Peripheral Vision Man themselves).

And yet the show does a less convincing impression of a Saturday Night Live-style show that's redeemed itself. I don't know if the fault lies with the show's writers, or if lead "funny lady" Sarah Paulson is just genetically incapable of being funny. But there's a giant disconnect between the show's storyline -- which continuosly tells us just how goddamned funny Paulson's character is -- and the reality of the show-within-a-show, which is never, ever funny. I mean not even Polite Chuckle funny. It's like Nervous Shuffling In Seat While Looking Away unfunny.

I mean, c'mon: a Juliet Lewis impression as a featured sketch? At least make your bad jokes relevant to the 21st century!

Is Studio 60 the worst show on TV? No, of course not. But it's perhaps the most mediocre, and the most disappointing, since it's got so much potential.

Anyhow: your thoughts, Barrelhousers?

The Wire and the Triumph of Capitalism

According to this Slate interview, David Simon, creator of The Wire, believes that his show is about the triumph of capitalism, at the expense of human value.

I would contend that his show, especially in the 3rd and 4th seasons, is about the frustration of capitalism, or, rather capitalistic instincts--and because of that, the decrease in human value.

Characters such as Bodie and his ilk, Bubbles, Randy, and others are incredible entrepreneurs whose efforts are thwarted because the things they sell are considered illegal--mainly for non-economic reasons of a moral or public health nature.

Should these things be illegal? What is the price of enforcement, and can it be effective? I think David Simon is giving us a clear answer to the second question. And when the War on Drugs gives us no-knock raids on 93 year olds and more than mere bungling investigative work that kills innocent American citizens, you have to wonder about what reality is telling us, too.

The Year's Worst: Movies

We've been a bit dormant on the blog front lately, so I feel like we should apologize to our regular readers, both of whom have likely been reduced to reading old Love Is... strips for their daily infotainment.

What better way to revive the blog than with some good ol' roundtable snarkiness?

This is the time of year when every publication under the sun spits out a "Year's Best" list. In the spirit of contrarianness, how about a Year's Worst? And since it's Movie Monday, let's start with the cinema.

Nominations, please?

I thought long and hard about my vote. I didn't see The Da Vinci Code, but I'm pretty confident in its general level of suckery. Then again, the people who liked the book seemed to loathe the movie, and those people are buffoons, so maybe it was actually the year's best film. There was End of the Spear, which from what I understand was both boring and racist. And Larry the Cable Guy, which ... well, do I really have to explain it?

But I figured it was best to vote for a movie I actually saw, so I'm going with The Devil Wears Prada. Mainly because other people -- even people I normally respect and have intercourse with (hi, honey!) -- thought this movie was good. But it was not good. It was, in fact, very annoyingly bad. Except for Meryl Streep, whose goodness actually made the film worse, because I realized I'd rather be watching a different, better movie in which Meryl Streep wasn't surrounded by people I wanted to punch in the throat.