I hear a lot these days about the dumbing down of public discourse, and a general decline in civic involvement. I generally chalk these up to oldsters giving vent to their frustrations over their own lost youth. But the recent death of William F. Buckley, Jr. reminds me that perhaps there is something to those complaints. Buckley's long lived interview program Firing Line was the very model of restrained, intelligent debate. And sadly, I suspect that its like will never be seen again. Watching a FL episode and then viewing the evening's offering of Bill O'Reilley is enough to cause any thinking person to cry tears of blood. Firing Line makes Hannity & Colmes look like The Jerry Springer Show. Or worse.
So take a moment to view this classic debate from 1969 between WFB and Noam Chomsky. Spirited, but never uncivil. May your God love you and keep you, Bill.
How many minutes do you think it'll be before someone posts a protest about the Sales Genie commercial about the pandas who run the furniture store and talk like Charlie Chan? I assume the first one is being written even now (8:34pm ET). Remember when the same thing happened to Abercrombie?
By the way, Giants, you had too many men on the field. Way to use that challenge flag, Coach.
UPDATE: Well, it took until this morning, but someone has registered their (qualified) displeasure here.
Just kidding. The title of this post is an idiotic catch phrase dreamed up by a publishing executive who wanted obese housewives to think he was clever and understood their troubles. Forget that. Nevertheless, trendy diet regimens that one finds detailed in popular self help books are generally equaled in their frustrating uselessness only by their obnoxious ubiquity. With that in mind, please enjoy the following video.
Right now I'm watching a vintage episode of the late 70s/early 80s sitcom Alice, which you'll remember was set in a diner wherein the eponymous main character pursued the vocation of waitress. In this installment ("The Wild One," originally aired on December 11, 1981) Alice has an aggressive new suitor, a hard-edged biker names "Bones," played by none other than late night TV kingpin Jay Leno.
Yes, kids, that really is Jay Leno. No one is born on the A-list.
In a way the role is fitting given Leno's well known love for motorcycles, though I must say he comes across as the least believable head of an outlaw biker gang this side of The Village People. That said, God bless you, ION network, for keeping this gem in syndication.
It seems I've become painfully parochial when it comes to the offerings of humor-related websites, because I've just become aware of the profanity-infused weirdness to be had at Cracked.com. This might be because, when I was a kid, Cracked magazine was a painfully unfunny also-ran to Mad, which, to be honest, itself loses a lot of its edge once one approaches traditional Bar Mitzvah age.
So I was especially interested to read the "5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World" entry. Here is a taste of just their #5, complete with a scary background music clip from some nature documenting TV show. This one is about the Japanese hornet, known to scienticians as "Vespa japonica". When I first saw the name I assumed that Vespa Japonica was the title of a sequel to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, wherein yakuza types travel to the streets of Rome to mix it up La Dolce Vita style, but I was terrifyingly wrong. Read on:
Here's how the Japanese hornet treats other insects (and would presumably treat us, if we were small enough). An adult hornet will fly miles to find some squishy shit to feed to its children. Often times, it finds its food in, say, a hive inhabited by thousands of bees.
What to do? Well, Vespa japonica sprays the nest with some of the acid/pheromone and brings in reinforcements, usually consisting of 30 or so fellow hornets. They then descend upon the beehive like an unholy plague of hell-born death engines and proceed to make this world a scary goddamned place. This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance.
Behold the hornets systematically seize them with huge, wicked jaws and literally fucking cut them apart, one by one by one by fucking one. In three hours, there are piles of limbs and heads and just fucking bits of things that could possibly have been alive at one point, and the hornets have stormed the hive and flown away with all the bee's children. Who will then be eaten.
So I'm sitting here watching Ace of Cakes, my favorite Baltimore-based cake-themed show currently on cable television.
And suddenly I remember how excited I should be: I just found out that someone I know knows Duff's dad, who (presumably) knows Duff himself pretty well. We're practically bros. I hope I can get him to introduce me to Geof someday.
It was a chilly day in Foxborough, but the Patriots were able the keep the Chargers to field goals while themselves completing three touchdowns. And so went game 18 - another one in the win column.
With the Giants' somewhat unexpected victory against Green Bay, Superbowl XLII is set. There will be a lot of preperation to do before the big day, though. I wonder if there's anyplace in DC that can do one of these:
