Deep Throat Revealed!!

Holy crap! The identity of the Watergate informant code named Deep Throat has been revealed as Mark Felt, the number two man at the FBI at the time. Very exciting! Blows away my theory that Deep Throat was really Hal Holbrook and he cleverly played himself in All the President's Men to allay suspicion. You can read the whole Vanity Fair article here.

Deadwood

I spent most of my Memorial Day finishing watching Deadwood via HBO OnDemand. Not exactly honoring our fallen soldiers, but a worthwhile pursuit nonetheless. Like The Wire this series takes the possibilities opened up by the Sopranos and takes it to the next level. Yes its better than The Sopranos. And While not quite as tense as the first season, this season was full of sex, violence, and foul language. If you haveIts great to see what the West was really like in all its ugliness. But its not all bloody cocksuckers. There is a great deal of humor and romance as well. They whole Bullock/Alma romance is bordering on epic, with all the restrained rules of society keeping them apart. If Ian McShane doesn't win an Emmy for his performance as Al Swearengen, then they can just go fuck themselves.

iDrudgery?

As glorious as the iPod is the worst part is definitely burning all my music on to my computer. I feel like I'm a slave to the process. I definitely see why people would use one of those iPod upload services. Luckily it will all be worth it once I have everything on the hard drive then I can have all my music right at my fingertips and easily switch music on and off my 20GB iPod.

All Hail Cronenberg!

David Cronenberg has long been one of my favorite directors even when I was a pre-teen. I think it was The Dead Zone and The Fly that hooked me on him. And I remember forcing my family to go see Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch in the theater. i lvoed them to death while everone else was seriously freaked out bot the films and the fact that I loved them. His films are always so raw with a distinct, yet not flashy, visual style. I honestly think he's only made one bad film in his career. The rest have been good to great. Each new Cronenberg film is a bit of an event in my life and the trailer for his next film A History of Violence looks stellar. It doesn't look at all weird but certainly looks intense. Possible Oscar fodder? I sure hope so.

Don't Call It Ping Pong

Ok this has to be one of the most peculiar web pages I have ever encountered: Celebrities Playing Table Tennis. Wow all your celebrity table tennis image needs in one place! From a shirtless Fidel Castro to Gene Kelly to Henry Miller. I guess I should say "god bless the internet", errr maybe not. Also this picture is visually sums up why John Kerry couldn't win the Presidency:


Jeeze no wonder this guy didn't crossover to the NASCAR crowd!

Tom Cruise Crazy Tour Continues

Tom Cruise was on Access Hollywood being insane. Defamer has the scoop. This time more it was more about Scientology than Katie. At least know what the driving force behind this craziness is.

I do wonder what will become of Scientology in a century. Will it have disappeared or will it have become more or less legit religion like Mormonism? Hopefully the former. If there has to be a religion based on the works of 20th century science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard is the worst possible choice. Now Asimov or Herbert that would have been cool. Especially Herbert.

The Redemption of George?

Revenge of the Sith unequivocally does not suck! A huge improvement over Phantom Menace, which totally sucked, and Attack of the Clones, which half sucked. Like many of my generation I was a huge Star Wars fan as a kid, so it was great fun to see all the bad stuff go down. All of the light saber duels were very cool. Yoda was awesome throughout. Ewan McGregor was superb, selling even the dumbest dialog. It is too bad the prequels couldn't have been more about Obi Wan Kenobi. Ian MacDiarmid was super hammy as the Emperor. Unfortunately, the love scenes are still painful, but luckily there are far fewer in this film than there were in the last one. Lucas has to take the blame there as Portman and Christiansen proven to be great actors in other films. Seeming Darth Vader at the end was very cool but not as cool as I’d hoped.

All in all Revenge of the Sith is almost as good as Return of the Jedi which is pretty high praise for me. Does it redeem the whole prequel enterprise? Absolutely not, but it does save it from total disaster.

Bonus: here is a goofy anti-prequels song that I found out on the internets. I don't agreeee with sentiment but it is funny.

“George Lucas Raped Our Childhood”

Whoa, Canada

As an esteemed holder of a Canadian Studies degree*, I feel obligated to point out this article in the New York Times. I think Canada is a fantastic place but as the article points out anyone that thinks its some kind of perfect utopia is kidding themselves.

Canada is on the side of the angels on many important social issues like gay marriage and drug laws. But that’s not the whole story. They have corruption and government mismanagement there too. Basic civil rights can always be put on hold with a simple act of parliament. They have big corporations doing what ever they want. They have serious systemic problems with their health care system; different problems than we have but problems nonetheless. They have a growing gap between rich and poor. Basically the vast majority of the problems we have here are also found in good ol’ Canada.

Why? We'll it probably has something to with humanity being shitty where ever you go. So I guess if things in the US have you wanting to move north, don’t because you won’t escape basic problems that are inherent to the human race. You are better off working to improve things here that running away from something that you can’t ever really escape.

*University of Washington, Class of 1999! A degree so useful I went straight on to graduate school!

Newsmaniax

My best friend at work Nicole (aka FCW) has left for another position in our company. She still works with our team but works out in Issaquah now thereby depriving me of a daily stream of brilliant and silly conversation. She is very much missed but her new job (managing a small corporate library) is way cooler than her old one and I was lucky enough to inherit one of her cooler tasks, compiling a daily media and entertainment News alert and a thrice weekly video game news alert.

Compiling these news alerts is a lot of fun and it really makes my mornings zip by. For instance today, I sent thousands of people a link to an article about Motley Crue and the other day it was the Cannes Film Festival. Today I found what looked like a promising article by Conan O’Brien on "The Future of Television" in Newsweek, but then I read it. It is hilarious but not something I could send out, so read it and bask in the glory of Conan’s genius.

Nicole, you are desperately missed around here but I love getting to read goofy articles as part of my job. It is so much easier to get up in the morning now. Now if I can just manage make my subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly and Game Informer in tax write-offs...

Tom Cruise is Officially Ape Shit Crazy

Tom Cruise was on Oprah with Katie Holmes yesterday. He was completely insane Defamer has the evidence.

I don't know what is so profoundly creepy about Tom and Katie. I don't think its the age thing. It could be Cruise's creepy personality and Scientology obsession. But I think mostly that Katie Holmes will alwyas be Joey Potter to me. And I know Joey would never date Tom Cruise. I have no idea who Katie Holmes really is so maybe Psycho-Cruise is her dream guy, but Joey? She would be having none of that shit.

Returned

No excuse for my long break between posts. Sure I've been working a fair amount of OT and just got a new computer and iPod that have been dominating my free time, but I can't continue to neglect successlessness! Anyhow here are some quick thoughts:

The Sonics played above and beyond their capablities. They should have one any games in that series but managed to take it to 6 games. Way to go.

I'm resolved to stop being an eltist ass to people. I don't often notice it when IO do it but it must stop.

My iPod is changing my life everytime I use it its really freakish technology.

I have new post up at Soapnix. Check it out.

Star Trek is over. Enterprise is over and there are no new shows or movies in the works. That's likely a good thing for now.

Life is good in the greenhouse, Rrather be a plant than be your Mickey Mouse.

Christine Gregoire had been a good governor. I really didn't think that was possible.

The new Washington State anti-secondhand smoke ads are annoying and wrong.

Am I geek because I tivo Meet the Press, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Face the Nation, and Upfront With Robert Mak every sunday? Umm, yep!

The BBC's Alan Partridge is almost as funny as The Office.

Safeco field is still a great place to see a game, even when the M's suck hard.

This video is too funny. Britsih troops are cool. All credit to the last ditch for the link.

More to come later this week.

Go Sonics!

After watching the Sonics eliminate the Kings last night. I think the Sonics may have what it takes to go all the way. Ray Allen has been unstopable and when Jerome James and Nick Collison are coming through big anything is possible. Bring on the Spurs!

They Call Him the Kid

Ex-GBV frontman Robert Pollard's new vinyl only "comedy" album Relaxation of the Asshole has to be the silliest thing (with the silliest title) I have ever purchased at full price. There is no music just Bob's drunken and hilarious stage patter from GBV shows of yore. I'm glad I have but I highly doubt I'll listen to it more than a few times. On the other hand Pollard's first post-GBV solo EP ZOOM is pretty rad and is getting repeated listens already.

Baaaaaaad Movies

I need to stop going to the movies with Merychippus. Well at least paying to see movies with him. We saw the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the
Room and for free and it was excellent. But Fever Pitch and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were both awful.

I should have known that the mere presence of Jimmy Fallon was going to doom Fever Pitch from the start. The movie offended me both as a sports fan and as a human being. All the conflict in this film is bullshit and based on the stupidity of the characters. I don't expect all movies to reflect how people act in reality but I like to at least be able to understand why people did do things in a movie. The answer should never be well he did that so there would be conflict. Anyway Bill Simmons slammed the film far better than I could in his review.

I have read all of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker books but am by no means a geek for them (if you want me to geek out bring up Dune). Still I was looking forward to the film. I thought it was well cast and went into the film pretty excited. But man what a disaster! What was with the tacked on love story? Why were most of the jokes, like the towels, never full explained. I felt like I needed to have just read the book to figure out what was going on. Halfway through I was totally bored. Still not as bad as Fever Pitch though!