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Weather: It was cold all weekend. I stacked up a whole garbage can's worth of exhausted flowers from the annuals around the house and deck, but there's still more planters to empty. I mixed some hardy alyssiums in with my transplanted catnips, so they will look better.
Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click -- just click, to trigger a contribution from a sponsor!
Media Watch: Jimmy Carter was on CSPAN, but his host Brian Williams was often recycling GOP talking points, and wasn't listening to the best ex-president we've ever had in our lifetime.
Gina Gershon sighting! She plays the director of FEMA in CBS's miniseries Category 7: End of the World, with Randy Quaid, Shannen Doherty, Tom Skerritt, James Brolin, and Swoosie Kurtz. I wanted to say she's been getting better roles than playing sexual deviants, thieves, and criminals, but is the Director of FEMA a "good" role in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Some people's luck ...
NFL Football -- Donovan McNabb needs an operation. Philly isn't going to the Superbowl or the playoffs unless he's healthy. Terrill Owens was suspended from that team too, but that's a whole other matter.
Pre-Game Follies -- Frank from MAD-TV was extraordinarily funny on Fox's pre-game show -- he impersonated G.W. Bush trying to dodge questions at a press conference.
Jillian Barbarie's weather-girl segment co-starred Pamela Anderson, promoting her new sitcom unfortunately named "Stacked."
Jillian was trying to keep things light and funny, but Ms. Anderson was acting her too-familiar role of a ditzy blond, and the omnipresent bad taste of mostly-unspoken big-bust jokes put everything under a cloud.
Barbarie's humor relies on taking sexual stereotypes right up to the line of harassment, and then daring someone to cross it. The laughs come when she lets the tension go away with a throwaway line or dismissive gesture. When the four-man panel comes back on-camera, they are usually laughing about Jillian taking one or more of them down a peg.
Yesterday the panel had their heads down, and were uncharacteristically silent afterwards. It turned out to be one of those things that might have seemed to be funny before the show, but died onstage. Y'know what? Barbarie and Anderson both looked beautiful, and neither of them said anything unladylike. There was a "right way" of doing this idea -- too bad it didn't happen that way.
Ride of the Valkyriesby Arthur Rachkam, from Ring of the Niblung 1910
Sing along with Elmer Fudd: "Ki-ill the Wabbit, ki-ill the Wabbit..."
otherwise you'll be thinking about Apocalype Now or (gasp!) even Richard Wagner.
I towally agwree that Jimmy Carter is the best ex-president that we have had so far. He was a pretty good president, too, I think, except I often had some independent thoughts about the boycotted Olympics.
ReplyDeleteNow did you begin that post with President Carter and end that post with "Ki-ill da Wabbit, Ki-ill da Wabbit," because of Jimmy's narrow escape in his rowboat from that lethal wabbit? (-; Or was that a wittle subconscious coincidence?
All kidding aside, what all of our other former Presidents combined have done for our society after their terms are a mere shadow in comparison to President Carter's contributions and sacrifices.
I'm with you all the way, Bud!
Your Friend, Gayle
Chuck Jones made a cartoon in 1957 called "What's Opera, Doc?" where Elmer Fudd emerges onstage singing the melody of Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries with the words "Ki-ill the Wabbit! Ki-ill the Wabbit! ..."
ReplyDeleteI think it is good to laugh at Wagner whenever possible -- despite the beauty of his best music -- because his art was used to exalt cruel Militarism and anti-Semitism.
Arthur Rackham's illustrations for The Ring are gorgeously barbaric, with Pre-Raphaelite echoes and just a subtle hint of then-current Art Nouveau and gone-but-not-forgotten Gustave Dore.
The Jimmy Carter connection was just a funny coincidence.