WASHINGTON – A panel of collegiate professors, with specialties ranging from anthropology to religious studies, today released a 450-page report arguing for the viability of the theory of Unintelligent Design.
“We now believe that it’s highly unlikely that our magnificent planet and all of it’s wondrous life could have been created by random evolution,” said panel head Dr. Walter Potemkin, “But what kind of creator would allow a species like man to rise up and pollute that beautiful environment? Well, that proves that He or She is obviously an idiot.”
Scientists are now using Unintelligent Design to solve life’s great mysteries ranging from: why bad things happen to good people, why humans were not born with roller-skate like devices to aid in walking, and questions over the mass extinctions of species.
“Evidence for the stupidity of the universe was right here in the fossil record all along. Take a look at the dinosaurs, the most awesome thing that God ever created in It’s dumb luck, but then God destroyed them all with a meteor,” said archeologist Thomas Bertram, “It’s like when you were a stupid kid and you put your sweet G.I. Joe in the microwave. Sure, it was cool for a second in the end, you only had your lame toys left to play with, like those Captain Planet action figures. Or in God’s case, the muskrat.”
Bertram also saw evidence of the new theory in more recent examples of evolution such as the dolphin, which evolved from a water creature to a land mammal only to go back into the ocean. Bertram stated that if that’s not evidence an unintelligent creator, it’s “at least evidence of a creator that’s not very forward thinking.”
Other scholars, such as Biblical expert Dr. Laura Wright, look to scripture for evidence of Unintelligent Design.
“There is a lot of wisdom in the Bible about God’s lack of wisdom,” said Dr. Wright, “After leaving Egypt, Moses and his followers had to wander the desert for 40 years. This was clearly a sign that Yahweh had no idea what to do next. He was just making the chosen people walk around in endless circles so He could buy Himself sometime to figure out what he wanted to do by .”
Wright went on to add that, while she has had writer’s block in the past, it’s never taken her “40 years to come up with a frickin’ 10 item list.”
Dr. Potemkin closed by saying, “It’s clear now that if we view God as a great clockmaker tickering on the endless gears of the cosmos... the clock that is our universe is endlessly flashing 12 o’clock.”
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Your Trueview Forecast / My Eternal Struggle: 10 Minutes in the Life of NBC 15 Morning Weatherman Charlie Shortino
Guest Blog by: NBC 15 Morning Weatherman Charlie Shortino.
“Clear skies for Southern Wisconsin and clear skies back into the plains, we’ll go with sunshine today starting off in the teens with a 26 degree high, both 15 degrees below our seasonal average. Becoming partly cloudy tonight, low 12. Aaaaannnnddd partly cloudy tomorrow, high of 38. Seven day outlook: high of 46 on for the high temperature on Sunday, partial sunshine. That’ll be the warmest day for the next week or so but still not bad highs in the mid and upper 30s Monday through Wednesday of next week.”
For the next two hours, this graphic and I are closer than brothers.
Even though the viewers hears this forecast 3 times during 30 minutes of programming, I still know most are tuning me out within a few seconds, right after they hear today’s forecast. The viewership doesn’t really pay attention to the 3-day outlook, they only care about today. Humanity, as a species, is perhaps unique in its ability to judge the passage of time, yesterday and tomorrow are concepts we can comprehend but most choose to squander that gift and focus on the animalistic gratification of the now. As a meteorologist, I am a modern-day oracle, offering the masses a glimpse at their own future, on a climatological scale at least, which they choose to reject in their own short-sighted way. If more people paid attention to the 3 to 5 day-forecast people would start looking to the long-term forecast of global warming. Maybe if people listened to the weather forecast they would have paid attention to the all of the economic warning forecasts that were right in front of us for the last several years.
Who am I kidding? Anchor/Reporter Christine Bellport sits next to me every morning and she still doesn’t believe in global warming. I’m a degreed meteorologist, I own a weather consulting company… I know what I’m talking about when I say climate change is real. But Christine Bellport thinks she is just as much an expert as I because she can spout off pseudo-science nonsense about ‘long term natural climate shifts’ or whatever else she repeats ad-nauseum from Michael Savage or whatever other talk radio she blares in the News Room. Her ignorance knows no bounds, during the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, she thinks the most pressing issues are young girls wearing skimpy clothing and Oliver Stone’s liberal Hollywood bias.
There is no soul behind those eyes.
People ask me why I act so goofy during the newscast banter, it’s the only way I can put up with talking to Bellport. If I tried to talk to a dullard such as her with a straight face I would probably break down and cry. So I crack a joke to stifle the tears and I like making weather-based puns. They are fun.
But there are something that even I, Gold Medal winner in Madison Magazine’s Best of Madison 2008: Best TV Personality, cannot laugh about. Bellport’s fellow sycophant, Anchor/Reporter Sarah Carlson, can’t see the disgusting irony that she just delivered a report that area food pantries are dreadfully low that was immediately followed by a story on how to avoid holiday weight gain from overconsumption. People can be so cruel to ignore the suffering inherit to the gross inequality of wealth but the weather isn’t like that. The weather isn’t kind or evil, it just is. Sometimes I prefer the weather to people but there are still two reasons why I keep sitting through all of this everyday.
The first reason I stay is that I appreciate the kindness and respect the public sphere gives me for my job. I look with pride upon the NBC 15 Morning Show’s dominance in the local ratings. I know I spend much of my time disparaging the intellect of the viewing public but I still feel a need for their praise. I think about this strange dichotomy a lot, particularly during commercial breaks. Maybe I need my local fame, it may be my drug of choice, I know I get a buzz off of my top ranking in the Isthmus Madison’s Favorites for TV personalities. I love to shove in the face of WKOW meteorologist and cocky jerk Bob Lindmeyer. I’m number 1 in this town, Bob!
Suck on it, Lindmeyer.
The other reason I stay onboard through the two hours of misery is the half-hour of heaven I get every day at 11am. It’s still the same forecast but I get to sit in the presence of the angelic Afternoon Anchor/Reporter Carleen Wild. She is an almost unearthly beauty whose grace is only matched by her intelligence and kind soul. At the end of every show at 11:30, as we cut away to Family Feud, I hope I’ll be able to talk to hear about a topic of depth like poetry or music but then I get intimidated by her gorgeous chestnut hair. In my cold sweat, I only manage to stammer something about the only topic I feel truly comfortable about… the weather. Someday, Carleen, I will take you out of this studio and we shall travel the world. But for now, I will be content with the 30 minutes a day I get to share a studio with you.
You are the wind beneath my wings.
But 11am is still so far from the now. I try to get back to the morning weather by looking down at the Doppler reading on my computer monitor, looking for any shifts that would cause he to alter my next 10 minute forecast, even by the smallest amount. I look at the lines representing barometric pressure and the green blob of far-off precipitation and wonder if my forecast of the weather changes the actual weather. After all, science such as the double-slit experiment has shown that observation does change the outcome of events, at least on the quantum level, but maybe it has a similar impact on larger systems, like the weather. While this is a fascinating idea, sometimes I believe that existentialist views of perception defining reality are simply a response to their philosophy rejecting religion, their need for something beyond pure science causes them to transfer that divine spark from their cast-off God to the human brain. That’s an interesting thought, maybe I should bring that up to Carleen today at 11:30.
Bellport and Carlson have finally shut up. It must be 5:50, once more unto the breach, dear friends.
“Clear skies for Southern Wisconsin and clear skies back into the plains, we’ll go with sunshine today starting off in the teens with a 26 degree high, both 15 degrees below our seasonal average. Becoming partly cloudy tonight, low 12. Aaaaannnnddd partly cloudy tomorrow, high of 38. Seven day outlook: high of 46 on for the high temperature on Sunday, partial sunshine. That’ll be the warmest day for the next week or so but still not bad highs in the mid and upper 30s Monday through Wednesday of next week.”
“Clear skies for Southern Wisconsin and clear skies back into the plains, we’ll go with sunshine today starting off in the teens with a 26 degree high, both 15 degrees below our seasonal average. Becoming partly cloudy tonight, low 12. Aaaaannnnddd partly cloudy tomorrow, high of 38. Seven day outlook: high of 46 on for the high temperature on Sunday, partial sunshine. That’ll be the warmest day for the next week or so but still not bad highs in the mid and upper 30s Monday through Wednesday of next week.”
For the next two hours, this graphic and I are closer than brothers.We're partners.
It’s 5:40, this is the 5th time I’ve repeated that forecast and I’ll say it 7 more times before I’ve done. Every 10 minutes, I repeat the same message for 2 grueling hours during the NBC 15 Morning Show.Even though the viewers hears this forecast 3 times during 30 minutes of programming, I still know most are tuning me out within a few seconds, right after they hear today’s forecast. The viewership doesn’t really pay attention to the 3-day outlook, they only care about today. Humanity, as a species, is perhaps unique in its ability to judge the passage of time, yesterday and tomorrow are concepts we can comprehend but most choose to squander that gift and focus on the animalistic gratification of the now. As a meteorologist, I am a modern-day oracle, offering the masses a glimpse at their own future, on a climatological scale at least, which they choose to reject in their own short-sighted way. If more people paid attention to the 3 to 5 day-forecast people would start looking to the long-term forecast of global warming. Maybe if people listened to the weather forecast they would have paid attention to the all of the economic warning forecasts that were right in front of us for the last several years.
Who am I kidding? Anchor/Reporter Christine Bellport sits next to me every morning and she still doesn’t believe in global warming. I’m a degreed meteorologist, I own a weather consulting company… I know what I’m talking about when I say climate change is real. But Christine Bellport thinks she is just as much an expert as I because she can spout off pseudo-science nonsense about ‘long term natural climate shifts’ or whatever else she repeats ad-nauseum from Michael Savage or whatever other talk radio she blares in the News Room. Her ignorance knows no bounds, during the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, she thinks the most pressing issues are young girls wearing skimpy clothing and Oliver Stone’s liberal Hollywood bias.
There is no soul behind those eyes.But there are something that even I, Gold Medal winner in Madison Magazine’s Best of Madison 2008: Best TV Personality, cannot laugh about. Bellport’s fellow sycophant, Anchor/Reporter Sarah Carlson, can’t see the disgusting irony that she just delivered a report that area food pantries are dreadfully low that was immediately followed by a story on how to avoid holiday weight gain from overconsumption. People can be so cruel to ignore the suffering inherit to the gross inequality of wealth but the weather isn’t like that. The weather isn’t kind or evil, it just is. Sometimes I prefer the weather to people but there are still two reasons why I keep sitting through all of this everyday.
The first reason I stay is that I appreciate the kindness and respect the public sphere gives me for my job. I look with pride upon the NBC 15 Morning Show’s dominance in the local ratings. I know I spend much of my time disparaging the intellect of the viewing public but I still feel a need for their praise. I think about this strange dichotomy a lot, particularly during commercial breaks. Maybe I need my local fame, it may be my drug of choice, I know I get a buzz off of my top ranking in the Isthmus Madison’s Favorites for TV personalities. I love to shove in the face of WKOW meteorologist and cocky jerk Bob Lindmeyer. I’m number 1 in this town, Bob!
Suck on it, Lindmeyer.The other reason I stay onboard through the two hours of misery is the half-hour of heaven I get every day at 11am. It’s still the same forecast but I get to sit in the presence of the angelic Afternoon Anchor/Reporter Carleen Wild. She is an almost unearthly beauty whose grace is only matched by her intelligence and kind soul. At the end of every show at 11:30, as we cut away to Family Feud, I hope I’ll be able to talk to hear about a topic of depth like poetry or music but then I get intimidated by her gorgeous chestnut hair. In my cold sweat, I only manage to stammer something about the only topic I feel truly comfortable about… the weather. Someday, Carleen, I will take you out of this studio and we shall travel the world. But for now, I will be content with the 30 minutes a day I get to share a studio with you.
You are the wind beneath my wings.But 11am is still so far from the now. I try to get back to the morning weather by looking down at the Doppler reading on my computer monitor, looking for any shifts that would cause he to alter my next 10 minute forecast, even by the smallest amount. I look at the lines representing barometric pressure and the green blob of far-off precipitation and wonder if my forecast of the weather changes the actual weather. After all, science such as the double-slit experiment has shown that observation does change the outcome of events, at least on the quantum level, but maybe it has a similar impact on larger systems, like the weather. While this is a fascinating idea, sometimes I believe that existentialist views of perception defining reality are simply a response to their philosophy rejecting religion, their need for something beyond pure science causes them to transfer that divine spark from their cast-off God to the human brain. That’s an interesting thought, maybe I should bring that up to Carleen today at 11:30.
Bellport and Carlson have finally shut up. It must be 5:50, once more unto the breach, dear friends.
“Clear skies for Southern Wisconsin and clear skies back into the plains, we’ll go with sunshine today starting off in the teens with a 26 degree high, both 15 degrees below our seasonal average. Becoming partly cloudy tonight, low 12. Aaaaannnnddd partly cloudy tomorrow, high of 38. Seven day outlook: high of 46 on for the high temperature on Sunday, partial sunshine. That’ll be the warmest day for the next week or so but still not bad highs in the mid and upper 30s Monday through Wednesday of next week.”
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
6 Saddest Fanbases for Old TV Shows
This week, a trailer for the new Star Trek movie came out and it is awesome.
But a bunch of the really nerdy Star Trek fans disagreed saying that it "looked too much like Star Wars" because of the fact this movie actually has a decent budget. Or they complained about even stupider things like how this Kirk has blue eyes while Shatner has brown eyes. While all of this is bad, I found that there are far worse fanbases out there than even hardcore Trekkies. With that, I present: The 6 Saddest Fanbases for Old TV Shows.
6. Gargoyles
You might remember Gargoyles, it was that cartoon that you could watch it for like 4 episodes and still have no idea what was going on with the plot. It was that show that all the creepy kids seemed to like a little too much. Well, those creepy kids have grown up into creepy adults and they have never stopped liking this show. Gargoyles has been off the air since 1996 but the fan community has still been active, holding a convention every year where people show up dressed as their favorite Gargoyles characters.
Gargoyle costume (or cosplay) from their convention.
This is one of the most tasteful costumes.
Gargoyles fans still keep a website active, The Gargoyles Fans Website (clever name), where they somewhat frequently post new erotic Gargoyles fan-fiction and update ‘humorous’ lists, such as You Know You’ve Been Watching Too Much Gargoyles When. I’ve decided to take some of my favorite selections from the afforemented list and add in my own witty (i.e. dickish) commentary. Gargoyles fans' items are italicized, my comments are in bold.
Gargoyles Fan:You walk by a store and your immediate thought is: "I wonder if they have Gargoyles stuff?"
Me: I bet they don’t.
Gargoyles Fan: You're talking to a friend about time zone differences and he says: "I guess your gargoyles would be awake for two more hours, huh?"
Me: If my ‘friend’ said that, I would drive through the two time zones just to punch him in the mouth.
Gargoyles Fan: You find yourself going to gothic architecture webpages rather than gothic music pages...
Me: If this is true, then Gargoyles actually has some redeeming value.
Gargoyles Fan: When you are stretching in class you growl and snarl.
Me: Don’t blame your Tourette’s on Gargoyles.
Gargoyles Fan: You are constantly FLYING down stairs, and wear your coat unzipped so it looks that way too.
Me: Yes, unzipping your coat creates the perfect illusion of flight.
Gargoyles Fan: When someone asks you if you want to get stoned and you say "YES!" But then you realize he's not thinking the same thing you are.
Me: Bet this guy doesn’t have to worry about talking to friends in different time zones or any friends at all, for that matter.
Gargoyles Fan:You come home on a Friday afternoon and realize you have absolutely nothing to do.
Me: You would have this same problem even if Gargoyles never existed.
Ultra Sad Fact:
This is the description of a story in the Gargoyles Fan Fiction database just posted in October:
"Thanks to Cecile Vene's manipulations, Eris and Broyze are revealed to the Manhattan Clan who also see Thailia for the first time bond against her will by Fang enraging all of them especially Goliath. The X-Men and Marauders arrive on the scene upsetting Cecile Vene and forcing her to alter her plans to keep Thaila�s/Thailog�s real identity secret. Meanwhile, Eris�s prisoners deal with their newest imprisonment and other things they are currently learning about thanks to information provided by Titania and Demona. Timothy is faced with an unexpected situation the half human, half gargoyle didn�t count on and Chaos Lord Broyze decides to personally deal with those who dare to confront him and Eris with a display of power the likes which none of them have seen. WARNING: This round robin story contains scenes of GRAPHIC RAPE, VIOLENCE, TORTURE, MURDER, and other possible extreme subject matter that some may not find suitable to read."
There is someone out there who understands what this means and, worse, is turned on by it.
5. Dharma and Greg
Dharma and Greg was probably the least interesting show of all time. It didn’t really suck like a lot of shows but it wasn’t exactly good either. My feelings for Dharma and Greg are about the same as I feel for a rock at the side of the road. I have nothing for or against a rock, it’s just something that’s there. So I was surprised to find that there was actually a MySpace page for that nondescript rock of a show but that it happens to be one of the worst MySpace pages I have ever seen. The page is filled with so many bad graphics and YouTube links that it might crash your browser, you should just trust this screenshot.
When the creator of this page is before St. Peter, she will have to answer for this.
I can say without a doubt, this is the single worst combination of colors and words that have ever been put on a page together. Right away, the page’s creator puts at the top: “The show was cancelled because Jenna Elfman left to work on a Broadway show!!!!!!!!!!!!” It makes me wonder how many times she was written by someone saying, “That show was cancelled because it sucked,” before she decided on that aggressive defense. But she also has a strong offense with her great banner that says the following:
She could have just made that banner the link to the petition (I’m sorry: petion”) and not had to bother with the “small text” link but that would have involved learning the slightest bit of HTML and that would take away from precious time watching Dharma and Greg reruns. I also took a look at her petion and I’m not exactly sure what she is trying to get people to sign a petion for... I assumed it was to try and bring back Dharma and Greg but I think it might just be a petition to prove to the world that there are people out there who actually enjoy Dharma and Greg.
Ultra Sad Fact:
The horrible Dharma and Greg MySpace page still isn’t as bad as Jenna “Dharma” Elfman’s own MySpace page where she lets her Scientology hang right out there and posts paranoid rants against modern psychology.
4. Firefly
God created Firefly fans so Star Trek fans could have someone to make fun of. Firefly was a show that lasted less time than a bad case of the flu and featured cowboys-in-space going on traditional Western adventures… but in space. Fox quickly cancelled the show which Firefly fans blamed on the evilness of Fox executives as opposed to the fact that a statistically small percentage of the population wants to watch cowboys-in-space.
Screenshot from Firefly.
The fans took on the moniker of “Browncoats” after the rebel group that had lost the show’s space-equivalent to the Civil War and started a whiny campaign to try and bring back the show. Soon, Firefly fans were everywhere on the internet and always talking about Firefly, they became the most single-mindedly annoying group online until the emergence of Ron Paul fans.
Firefly fans hold a grudge against the Fox network to this day. It doesn’t matter that most of the Fox programming executives that were there in 2001 when Firefly got cancelled aren’t working there anymore. “Browncoats” believe that the Fox network is somehow a living, evil being that seeks to destroy their joy and happiness as opposed to a large corporation that wants to make more ad revenue.
The saddest story about Firefly fans comes from a guy I went to college with who had to work at Point Theatre on Madison’s West Side during the opening day midnight showing of the Firefly movie, Serenity. You see, the Firefly story should be a happy one, after heavy DVD sales and lots of online Firefly traffic, Universal decided to bring the show back as a movie. But still, even on the opening night of the movie, Firefly fans had to make it annoying. A number of ‘Browncoats’ got up before the movie started and gave a speech about how they had kept fighting and never gave up. You guys bought some DVDs, you didn’t fight in some great war against FOX. You nerds got what you wanted so now try acting like normal people, so sit down and just watch the freaking movie.
Ultra Sad Fact:
Firefly fans try to keep awareness of their favorite show alive by putting references to Firefly into almost every Wikipedia article possible. Getting the show mentioned in 50,000 Wikipedia articles isn’t going to bring the show back. Guys, you managed to get a major Hollywood movie out of your 16-episode series. Now move on.
3. Empty Nest
Do you remember that show that came on after Golden Girls? I remembered the title Empty Nest but beyond that, nothing. As I liked to watch a good Golden Girls now and again, I had watched several episodes of Empty Nest when I was too lazy to change the channel but have no memory of them whatsoever. Perhaps I drank away any memories of the show. Well, after taking a look at the Empty Nest fansite, I don’t really mind that I’m glad my drinking destroyed those memories as opposed to my memories of parasailing, thanks brain damage.
Brain, you made the right choice on which of these to remember.
The saddest thing about the Empty Nest fansite is how it’s different from all the other fansites I’ve seen. Most of the others sites seem to be a community effort about a range of people who all share some odd devotion to a bad tv show. But his site seems to be the work on one solitary genderless individual who decided one day to a fansite about Empty Nest his/her primary hobby. The site features every magazine article and interview about Empty Nest retyped for the webpage so that the author of the site can preserve them for the ages. It’s not unlike the Medieval monks who meticulously made copies of important documents, only the monks saved the knowledge of Western Civilization as opposed to quotes by the Empty Nest cast-members about how Richard Mulligan was hilarious on AND off the set.
Ultra Sad Fact:
Author is trying to finish “Where Are They Now?” section of website and is desperately looking for information on what happened to ‘Dreyfuss,’ the dog on the show. Dude, show’s been off the air for 14 years, pretty sure the dog is dead.
2. X-Files
It seems a little odd to me that there are devoted X-Files fans in 2008. Sure, it was a show that myself, along with many of my friends, were into in the 90’s but now… it’s like someone telling me they just got a movie on VHS or really excited to drink some Zima, it just sounds so… outdated. Even X-Files fansites look like they are stuck in the mid-90s.
I blame Bush for destroying the credibility of the X-Files. I mean, in the 90’s, we believed the government could pull off a massive secret evil conspiracy but the Bush Administration, with it’s handling of Iraq, Katrina, Gitmo and many more, showed us how the government sucks at pulling off it’s own evil conspiracies much less keeping them secret. For God’s sakes, in the first X-Files movie they had us believe that FEMA could manage to genetically engineer smart bees with an alien virus when in real life, FEMA couldn’t even handle delivering bottles of water after Katrina.
No, that's just a reflection.
Though maybe the show itself deserves some of the blame for losing most of it’s fanbase. After several seasons of bad episodes where it became ever more obvious that they were just making it all up as they went along, a few people still got excited about a 2nd movie. X-Files fans are hardcore Charlie Brown-ing it, going for that football yet again even though they know what’s going to happen. Anybody who still went to see that second movie after years of crappy X-Files is a sad, sad person.
Ultra Sad Fact:
I went to the 2nd X-Files movie on opening weekend.
1. Full House
Full House was a legend, it gave us such classic idioms as “Have Mercy,” “Cut It Out,” and “You’ve Got It Dude,” as well as the song “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. And because of Full House’s far reaching fame, there are still a ton of sad people who are still heavily invested in the sitcom with far more websites than I want to go into.. But I want to focus on one particularly sad branch of the fanbase, people who are fans of the young adult novels based on the show. Fans who so obsessed about these books that they CREATED A SEPARATE IMAGINARY UNIVERSE for them.
There are fans of this book over the age of 12.
And they are scary.
Due to the fact that the writers of the books were different than those on the Full House TV show, characters act somewhat differently. There are also inconsistencies with how things happen in the book compared to the show which sad, sad fans obsess over (OMG! Joey never moves up to the 2nd floor and continues to live in the basement in the books. Different Universe!). Now, most reasonable people would just blame this on lazy novel writers who didn’t obsess over every detail on a crappy sitcom, who would blame them? They are writing the literary equivalent of a Happy Meal. People bought these books because they had pre-meth Jodie Sweetin on the cover, not because they are great prose.
But the Tanner fans that couldn’t deal with the idea of inconsistencies in their Full House got together and used the differences in characterization and plot minutia to create a parallel ‘book universe’ that diverges from the tv-show universe. To quote these fans, in the book universe, “Jesse (is) possibly always (living) in the attic. This may have occurred because the writers felt it more likely that only actual family members would normally room on the floor with the dad and the girls. However, many fans also feel that this room placement logically explains the different personalities. The girls' uncle is the mother figure to Michelle in the TV series… With an office in the fourth bedroom, it is presumed that the girls' oldest sister D.J. filled that role early in their lives, and was able to mold them into being more mature than the sometimes rebellious Jesse.”
If that wasn’t clear enough, a guy by the name of Doug Fowler decided to explain how the timelines diverged in a 492-page epic Word file (That’s crazy! Who would post it as a .doc file? You think he would post it as a .pdf) to explain the chronology of how the Full House ‘book universe’ diverges from the Full House tv series. Let me repeat this, someone wrote 492 pages worth to explain away the simple fact that the writers of the books were even crappier writers than the writers of the show.
492. Pages. On. This.
Ultra Sad Fact:
Skimming over about 10 pages of the epic 492 page Full House chronology includes at least a dozen mentions of Christ. Fowler decided that Full House wasn’t wholesome enough yet and wrote in his timeline that the Tanners were testifying for the Lord when Good Morning San Francisco went off the air. Though his religious experience gave him experience in trying to over-explain inconsistencies in badly written texts.
Awesome.
But a bunch of the really nerdy Star Trek fans disagreed saying that it "looked too much like Star Wars" because of the fact this movie actually has a decent budget. Or they complained about even stupider things like how this Kirk has blue eyes while Shatner has brown eyes. While all of this is bad, I found that there are far worse fanbases out there than even hardcore Trekkies. With that, I present: The 6 Saddest Fanbases for Old TV Shows.
6. Gargoyles
You might remember Gargoyles, it was that cartoon that you could watch it for like 4 episodes and still have no idea what was going on with the plot. It was that show that all the creepy kids seemed to like a little too much. Well, those creepy kids have grown up into creepy adults and they have never stopped liking this show. Gargoyles has been off the air since 1996 but the fan community has still been active, holding a convention every year where people show up dressed as their favorite Gargoyles characters.
Gargoyle costume (or cosplay) from their convention.This is one of the most tasteful costumes.
Gargoyles Fan:You walk by a store and your immediate thought is: "I wonder if they have Gargoyles stuff?"
Me: I bet they don’t.
Gargoyles Fan: You're talking to a friend about time zone differences and he says: "I guess your gargoyles would be awake for two more hours, huh?"
Me: If my ‘friend’ said that, I would drive through the two time zones just to punch him in the mouth.
Gargoyles Fan: You find yourself going to gothic architecture webpages rather than gothic music pages...
Me: If this is true, then Gargoyles actually has some redeeming value.
Gargoyles Fan: When you are stretching in class you growl and snarl.
Me: Don’t blame your Tourette’s on Gargoyles.
Gargoyles Fan: You are constantly FLYING down stairs, and wear your coat unzipped so it looks that way too.
Me: Yes, unzipping your coat creates the perfect illusion of flight.
Gargoyles Fan: When someone asks you if you want to get stoned and you say "YES!" But then you realize he's not thinking the same thing you are.
Me: Bet this guy doesn’t have to worry about talking to friends in different time zones or any friends at all, for that matter.
Gargoyles Fan:You come home on a Friday afternoon and realize you have absolutely nothing to do.
Me: You would have this same problem even if Gargoyles never existed.
Ultra Sad Fact:
This is the description of a story in the Gargoyles Fan Fiction database just posted in October:
"Thanks to Cecile Vene's manipulations, Eris and Broyze are revealed to the Manhattan Clan who also see Thailia for the first time bond against her will by Fang enraging all of them especially Goliath. The X-Men and Marauders arrive on the scene upsetting Cecile Vene and forcing her to alter her plans to keep Thaila�s/Thailog�s real identity secret. Meanwhile, Eris�s prisoners deal with their newest imprisonment and other things they are currently learning about thanks to information provided by Titania and Demona. Timothy is faced with an unexpected situation the half human, half gargoyle didn�t count on and Chaos Lord Broyze decides to personally deal with those who dare to confront him and Eris with a display of power the likes which none of them have seen. WARNING: This round robin story contains scenes of GRAPHIC RAPE, VIOLENCE, TORTURE, MURDER, and other possible extreme subject matter that some may not find suitable to read."
There is someone out there who understands what this means and, worse, is turned on by it.
5. Dharma and Greg
Dharma and Greg was probably the least interesting show of all time. It didn’t really suck like a lot of shows but it wasn’t exactly good either. My feelings for Dharma and Greg are about the same as I feel for a rock at the side of the road. I have nothing for or against a rock, it’s just something that’s there. So I was surprised to find that there was actually a MySpace page for that nondescript rock of a show but that it happens to be one of the worst MySpace pages I have ever seen. The page is filled with so many bad graphics and YouTube links that it might crash your browser, you should just trust this screenshot.
When the creator of this page is before St. Peter, she will have to answer for this.
She could have just made that banner the link to the petition (I’m sorry: petion”) and not had to bother with the “small text” link but that would have involved learning the slightest bit of HTML and that would take away from precious time watching Dharma and Greg reruns. I also took a look at her petion and I’m not exactly sure what she is trying to get people to sign a petion for... I assumed it was to try and bring back Dharma and Greg but I think it might just be a petition to prove to the world that there are people out there who actually enjoy Dharma and Greg.
Ultra Sad Fact:
The horrible Dharma and Greg MySpace page still isn’t as bad as Jenna “Dharma” Elfman’s own MySpace page where she lets her Scientology hang right out there and posts paranoid rants against modern psychology.
4. Firefly
God created Firefly fans so Star Trek fans could have someone to make fun of. Firefly was a show that lasted less time than a bad case of the flu and featured cowboys-in-space going on traditional Western adventures… but in space. Fox quickly cancelled the show which Firefly fans blamed on the evilness of Fox executives as opposed to the fact that a statistically small percentage of the population wants to watch cowboys-in-space.
Screenshot from Firefly.Firefly fans hold a grudge against the Fox network to this day. It doesn’t matter that most of the Fox programming executives that were there in 2001 when Firefly got cancelled aren’t working there anymore. “Browncoats” believe that the Fox network is somehow a living, evil being that seeks to destroy their joy and happiness as opposed to a large corporation that wants to make more ad revenue.
The saddest story about Firefly fans comes from a guy I went to college with who had to work at Point Theatre on Madison’s West Side during the opening day midnight showing of the Firefly movie, Serenity. You see, the Firefly story should be a happy one, after heavy DVD sales and lots of online Firefly traffic, Universal decided to bring the show back as a movie. But still, even on the opening night of the movie, Firefly fans had to make it annoying. A number of ‘Browncoats’ got up before the movie started and gave a speech about how they had kept fighting and never gave up. You guys bought some DVDs, you didn’t fight in some great war against FOX. You nerds got what you wanted so now try acting like normal people, so sit down and just watch the freaking movie.
Ultra Sad Fact:
Firefly fans try to keep awareness of their favorite show alive by putting references to Firefly into almost every Wikipedia article possible. Getting the show mentioned in 50,000 Wikipedia articles isn’t going to bring the show back. Guys, you managed to get a major Hollywood movie out of your 16-episode series. Now move on.
3. Empty Nest
Do you remember that show that came on after Golden Girls? I remembered the title Empty Nest but beyond that, nothing. As I liked to watch a good Golden Girls now and again, I had watched several episodes of Empty Nest when I was too lazy to change the channel but have no memory of them whatsoever. Perhaps I drank away any memories of the show. Well, after taking a look at the Empty Nest fansite, I don’t really mind that I’m glad my drinking destroyed those memories as opposed to my memories of parasailing, thanks brain damage.
Brain, you made the right choice on which of these to remember.The saddest thing about the Empty Nest fansite is how it’s different from all the other fansites I’ve seen. Most of the others sites seem to be a community effort about a range of people who all share some odd devotion to a bad tv show. But his site seems to be the work on one solitary genderless individual who decided one day to a fansite about Empty Nest his/her primary hobby. The site features every magazine article and interview about Empty Nest retyped for the webpage so that the author of the site can preserve them for the ages. It’s not unlike the Medieval monks who meticulously made copies of important documents, only the monks saved the knowledge of Western Civilization as opposed to quotes by the Empty Nest cast-members about how Richard Mulligan was hilarious on AND off the set.
Ultra Sad Fact:
Author is trying to finish “Where Are They Now?” section of website and is desperately looking for information on what happened to ‘Dreyfuss,’ the dog on the show. Dude, show’s been off the air for 14 years, pretty sure the dog is dead.
2. X-Files
It seems a little odd to me that there are devoted X-Files fans in 2008. Sure, it was a show that myself, along with many of my friends, were into in the 90’s but now… it’s like someone telling me they just got a movie on VHS or really excited to drink some Zima, it just sounds so… outdated. Even X-Files fansites look like they are stuck in the mid-90s.
I blame Bush for destroying the credibility of the X-Files. I mean, in the 90’s, we believed the government could pull off a massive secret evil conspiracy but the Bush Administration, with it’s handling of Iraq, Katrina, Gitmo and many more, showed us how the government sucks at pulling off it’s own evil conspiracies much less keeping them secret. For God’s sakes, in the first X-Files movie they had us believe that FEMA could manage to genetically engineer smart bees with an alien virus when in real life, FEMA couldn’t even handle delivering bottles of water after Katrina.
No, that's just a reflection.Though maybe the show itself deserves some of the blame for losing most of it’s fanbase. After several seasons of bad episodes where it became ever more obvious that they were just making it all up as they went along, a few people still got excited about a 2nd movie. X-Files fans are hardcore Charlie Brown-ing it, going for that football yet again even though they know what’s going to happen. Anybody who still went to see that second movie after years of crappy X-Files is a sad, sad person.
Ultra Sad Fact:
I went to the 2nd X-Files movie on opening weekend.
1. Full House
Full House was a legend, it gave us such classic idioms as “Have Mercy,” “Cut It Out,” and “You’ve Got It Dude,” as well as the song “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. And because of Full House’s far reaching fame, there are still a ton of sad people who are still heavily invested in the sitcom with far more websites than I want to go into.. But I want to focus on one particularly sad branch of the fanbase, people who are fans of the young adult novels based on the show. Fans who so obsessed about these books that they CREATED A SEPARATE IMAGINARY UNIVERSE for them.
There are fans of this book over the age of 12.And they are scary.
But the Tanner fans that couldn’t deal with the idea of inconsistencies in their Full House got together and used the differences in characterization and plot minutia to create a parallel ‘book universe’ that diverges from the tv-show universe. To quote these fans, in the book universe, “Jesse (is) possibly always (living) in the attic. This may have occurred because the writers felt it more likely that only actual family members would normally room on the floor with the dad and the girls. However, many fans also feel that this room placement logically explains the different personalities. The girls' uncle is the mother figure to Michelle in the TV series… With an office in the fourth bedroom, it is presumed that the girls' oldest sister D.J. filled that role early in their lives, and was able to mold them into being more mature than the sometimes rebellious Jesse.”
If that wasn’t clear enough, a guy by the name of Doug Fowler decided to explain how the timelines diverged in a 492-page epic Word file (That’s crazy! Who would post it as a .doc file? You think he would post it as a .pdf) to explain the chronology of how the Full House ‘book universe’ diverges from the Full House tv series. Let me repeat this, someone wrote 492 pages worth to explain away the simple fact that the writers of the books were even crappier writers than the writers of the show.
492. Pages. On. This.Ultra Sad Fact:
Skimming over about 10 pages of the epic 492 page Full House chronology includes at least a dozen mentions of Christ. Fowler decided that Full House wasn’t wholesome enough yet and wrote in his timeline that the Tanners were testifying for the Lord when Good Morning San Francisco went off the air. Though his religious experience gave him experience in trying to over-explain inconsistencies in badly written texts.
Friday, November 14, 2008
I might be Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party
This week’s Isthmus has an article by Bill Lueders, discussing how the Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party(RPDC) refuses to reveal his identity to the press. He fears that public knowledge of his identity would impact his business because Liberals would discriminate against him. This didn’t seem like a good reason to me as: 1) hippies have no money and 2) as Lueders points out, conservatives like T. Wall get a ton of money from the liberal government and Democrats still buy houses from him. If the Chair of RPDC wants to stay hidden, it’s got to be something way bigger. Like it will tear everything apart if this secret identity is revealed, perhaps no one knows who the real Chairman’s identity is. Maybe even the Chairman himself.
I was thinking back to the last several months of my life and noting that there have been several times when I’ve blacked out and couldn’t remember what happened. Sure, most of those might be a result of binge drinking but what if I wasn’t either passed out or drunk dialing… what if I was secretly living a double life? What if this personality was the Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party?
Have I secretly been Tyler Durden-ing it around town? The Republican Party is a lot like Fight Club, pissed-off men meeting in darkened rooms but instead of becoming domestic terrorists, they accuse everyone else of being domestic terrorists. When I think I go to sleep, do I really just get back up and say things like, “Obama’s rise to power reminds me a lot of Hitler. Both came to power during times of economic crisis.”
Secret Republican-Party Chair Me’s plan is absolutely brilliant, hiding in plain sight. not unlike NBC’s series (and People's Choice Award nominee!!) My Own Worst Enemy where a super-secret spy has another identity during his off-hours where he is a mild-mannered guy, and get this… he doesn’t even know he’s also a spy. What better place for a rich conservative real-estate broker to hide than as a 25-year old guy who struggles with ties and whose property holdings consist of an impressive collection of Star Trek DVDs and a lamp made from an old Grand Marnier bottle.
My nestegg.
I was hoping future episodes My Own Worst Enemy would show me how to deal with my problem as Christian Slater comes to term with his multiple identities but the show has already been canceled, so I’m getting nothing from Slater. That guy hasn’t been able to give me a useful plan for anything, not since that time I started a pirate radio station. Well, maybe when I had to figure out how to take my autistic brother to video game competition but I really think Fred Savage had more to do with that so I’m giving Savage the assist on that one.
Perhaps they have to work even harder on the secrecy as parts of my daytime personality are starting to leek out while I’m serving as RPDC chair. (I know Alternate Republican me is definitely leaking into regular me, I’ve been recycling a lot less). Just look at this Letter from the Chairman from the RPDC October Newsletter. (Note: I’ve blocked out the alias I use while serving as chair)
Just read the sentence where I say that, “It’s been 24 years since Wisconsin went to the Republicans. We can do it again in 2008!” The phrase, “We can do it again,” sounds like it’s saying the Republicans can lose again, which must mean I’m sabotaging them from the inside. It’s either that or the Chairman of the Dane County Republicans is a horrible writer. And the part about celebrating Republicans ‘victories’ must be my idea of a joke. I’m a funny guy.
Am I really the Chair of the Dane County Republican Party? I don’t know, the double personality sounds ridiculous but it still sounds less silly than the really crazy theory I heard that it’s just some Real Estate guy named Mike Herl who is too scared to publicly admit his party affiliation. That just sounds wacky.
I was thinking back to the last several months of my life and noting that there have been several times when I’ve blacked out and couldn’t remember what happened. Sure, most of those might be a result of binge drinking but what if I wasn’t either passed out or drunk dialing… what if I was secretly living a double life? What if this personality was the Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party?
Have I secretly been Tyler Durden-ing it around town? The Republican Party is a lot like Fight Club, pissed-off men meeting in darkened rooms but instead of becoming domestic terrorists, they accuse everyone else of being domestic terrorists. When I think I go to sleep, do I really just get back up and say things like, “Obama’s rise to power reminds me a lot of Hitler. Both came to power during times of economic crisis.”
Secret Republican-Party Chair Me’s plan is absolutely brilliant, hiding in plain sight. not unlike NBC’s series (and People's Choice Award nominee!!) My Own Worst Enemy where a super-secret spy has another identity during his off-hours where he is a mild-mannered guy, and get this… he doesn’t even know he’s also a spy. What better place for a rich conservative real-estate broker to hide than as a 25-year old guy who struggles with ties and whose property holdings consist of an impressive collection of Star Trek DVDs and a lamp made from an old Grand Marnier bottle.
My nestegg.I was hoping future episodes My Own Worst Enemy would show me how to deal with my problem as Christian Slater comes to term with his multiple identities but the show has already been canceled, so I’m getting nothing from Slater. That guy hasn’t been able to give me a useful plan for anything, not since that time I started a pirate radio station. Well, maybe when I had to figure out how to take my autistic brother to video game competition but I really think Fred Savage had more to do with that so I’m giving Savage the assist on that one.
Perhaps they have to work even harder on the secrecy as parts of my daytime personality are starting to leek out while I’m serving as RPDC chair. (I know Alternate Republican me is definitely leaking into regular me, I’ve been recycling a lot less). Just look at this Letter from the Chairman from the RPDC October Newsletter. (Note: I’ve blocked out the alias I use while serving as chair)
Just read the sentence where I say that, “It’s been 24 years since Wisconsin went to the Republicans. We can do it again in 2008!” The phrase, “We can do it again,” sounds like it’s saying the Republicans can lose again, which must mean I’m sabotaging them from the inside. It’s either that or the Chairman of the Dane County Republicans is a horrible writer. And the part about celebrating Republicans ‘victories’ must be my idea of a joke. I’m a funny guy.
Am I really the Chair of the Dane County Republican Party? I don’t know, the double personality sounds ridiculous but it still sounds less silly than the really crazy theory I heard that it’s just some Real Estate guy named Mike Herl who is too scared to publicly admit his party affiliation. That just sounds wacky.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Comparative Election Analysis: Crazy UFO People vs. Other Crazy UFO People
On election day, (which feels like it was a lot longer than a week ago both politically and temperature-wise) I was out canvassing for Obama when a guy threatened to shoot me if I stepped onto his property. Threatened with violence for supporting a Democrat in hippie Madison? This event made me ponder the glorious political diversity all around us. In my second installment of Comparative Election Analysis, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that no group is homogeneous in it's political leanings. To showcase how omnipresent the red-blue divide, I've picked examples from a group I like to call: "Internet People Who Think They Telepathically Receive Messages From Space Aliens."
Depending on what Crazy UFO Person you ask Obama is either a Messenger signifying Earth's true dawning into new Frequencies of Light or simply another agent of the Repiloid Illuminati working to enslave us all. Which is it? Well, both sides present convincing arguments.
For: Obama as Messenger of Light
The above video is by a woman with a British accent named Magenta Pixie, who I believed was only supporting Obama because of their common membership in the Organization For People With Funny-Sounding Names (OFPWFSN Local 241). Ms. Pixie, has communed with a "powerful" group ofnine other psychics (whom, with all of their collective psychic brain power decided on the creative name of: The Nine) and decided that Obama is a "Lightworker" who will "raise our consciousness to new frequencies." Apparently, Magenta P. is from the school that believes that you can say anything and appear credible as long as you have a English accent. For further examples of instant British-intelligence look at the busty women trying to get me to invest in gold on late-afternoon television.
Many other Crazy UFO people agree with Magenta Pixie.
Merman believes that 1/4 of Earth's Population is here to assist Obama, I guess that's a bigger win than North Carolina.
Meanwhile, TheRealVerbz thinks there are more connections between Obama and Lincoln than just the fact that both of them started their campaigns at the old Illnois Statehouse.
And for those of you worried that Obama is just working for the Illuminati, wavemakerx is here to inform you that he's just going along with the master plan of Lightworking. Though I'm still not sure what the master plan of Lightworking is...
Against: Obama as Puppet-Tool of the Reptiloid Illuminati
While Magenta Pixie and others have done a fine job giving their evidence of Barack's Lightworking. The more conservative psychic UFO channelers believe he is just another tool of the group known as the Iluminati. I though this might be a good thing for a 'Lightworker', as Illuminati is Latin for 'enlightened' but apparently the Illuminati are evil and control the entire planet somehow.
xxxXhaggardXxxx has his concerns about Magenta's channeling.
Theslothmonkey starts things off by pointing out all the powers of the Illuminati/New World Order who have conspired to put Barack Obama into power. In his haste to post, he must have accidentally forgotten to add on the bibliography of his years of "analytical research."
Will points out that this may be even worse than the Illuminati...
The Reptilians are a group of aliens whose existence has been revealed to the world by British author David Icke. The Repilians (or Reptiloids, the scholarship debates the correct name) use their shape-shifting abilities to blend in with the human population and assume positions of power to slowly enslave humanity, much like the plot of the film They Live, which had coincidentally been released shortly before Icke released his theories. Many prominant world figures are actually Repilian aliens including: George H.W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, George W. Bush (makes sense, why would George H.W. have a non-Reptiloid baby?) and Kris Kristofferson. While I'm a fan of "Me and Bobby McGee" and the entire Blade trilogy, Kris Kristofferson really seems to be slacking compared to the other Reptilians when it comes to taking offices of power.
Still, Obama is merely controlled by the Reptilians, which still makes for an upgrade over W. who is a Reptilian. On second thought, maybe I should put Will's comment in the Pro-Obama section.
Meanwhile, crazvy provides more actual physical evidence to back of his/her opinion than any other commentator yet.
And of course, no matter the argument, some jackass Ron Paul supporter always shows up.
Just like those of us in the real world, Crazy UFO People are convinced Obama is either the key to our salvation or the harbinger of death for us all. Then those are those few in the fringes of the Crazy UFO People movement who decide to take an approach known as "wait and see."
It's really sad when a Crazy UFO Person realizes it's insane for anyone to vote for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it.
Depending on what Crazy UFO Person you ask Obama is either a Messenger signifying Earth's true dawning into new Frequencies of Light or simply another agent of the Repiloid Illuminati working to enslave us all. Which is it? Well, both sides present convincing arguments.
For: Obama as Messenger of Light
The above video is by a woman with a British accent named Magenta Pixie, who I believed was only supporting Obama because of their common membership in the Organization For People With Funny-Sounding Names (OFPWFSN Local 241). Ms. Pixie, has communed with a "powerful" group ofnine other psychics (whom, with all of their collective psychic brain power decided on the creative name of: The Nine) and decided that Obama is a "Lightworker" who will "raise our consciousness to new frequencies." Apparently, Magenta P. is from the school that believes that you can say anything and appear credible as long as you have a English accent. For further examples of instant British-intelligence look at the busty women trying to get me to invest in gold on late-afternoon television.
Many other Crazy UFO people agree with Magenta Pixie.
Merman believes that 1/4 of Earth's Population is here to assist Obama, I guess that's a bigger win than North Carolina.
Meanwhile, TheRealVerbz thinks there are more connections between Obama and Lincoln than just the fact that both of them started their campaigns at the old Illnois Statehouse.
And for those of you worried that Obama is just working for the Illuminati, wavemakerx is here to inform you that he's just going along with the master plan of Lightworking. Though I'm still not sure what the master plan of Lightworking is...
Against: Obama as Puppet-Tool of the Reptiloid Illuminati
While Magenta Pixie and others have done a fine job giving their evidence of Barack's Lightworking. The more conservative psychic UFO channelers believe he is just another tool of the group known as the Iluminati. I though this might be a good thing for a 'Lightworker', as Illuminati is Latin for 'enlightened' but apparently the Illuminati are evil and control the entire planet somehow.
xxxXhaggardXxxx has his concerns about Magenta's channeling.
Theslothmonkey starts things off by pointing out all the powers of the Illuminati/New World Order who have conspired to put Barack Obama into power. In his haste to post, he must have accidentally forgotten to add on the bibliography of his years of "analytical research."
Will points out that this may be even worse than the Illuminati...
The Reptilians are a group of aliens whose existence has been revealed to the world by British author David Icke. The Repilians (or Reptiloids, the scholarship debates the correct name) use their shape-shifting abilities to blend in with the human population and assume positions of power to slowly enslave humanity, much like the plot of the film They Live, which had coincidentally been released shortly before Icke released his theories. Many prominant world figures are actually Repilian aliens including: George H.W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, George W. Bush (makes sense, why would George H.W. have a non-Reptiloid baby?) and Kris Kristofferson. While I'm a fan of "Me and Bobby McGee" and the entire Blade trilogy, Kris Kristofferson really seems to be slacking compared to the other Reptilians when it comes to taking offices of power.Still, Obama is merely controlled by the Reptilians, which still makes for an upgrade over W. who is a Reptilian. On second thought, maybe I should put Will's comment in the Pro-Obama section.
Meanwhile, crazvy provides more actual physical evidence to back of his/her opinion than any other commentator yet.
And of course, no matter the argument, some jackass Ron Paul supporter always shows up.
Just like those of us in the real world, Crazy UFO People are convinced Obama is either the key to our salvation or the harbinger of death for us all. Then those are those few in the fringes of the Crazy UFO People movement who decide to take an approach known as "wait and see."
It's really sad when a Crazy UFO Person realizes it's insane for anyone to vote for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Comparative Election Analysis: Ralph Nader vs. The Guy From That Show Wings
So Ralph Nader has lost it. I admire the man's advocacy work in the 70's. I don't even mind his Presidential races every 4 years, even if they split the progressive 3rd Party vote during a year when the Green Party actually had a good candidate in McKinney. Although you would think being so environmentally conscious, he wouldn't make his supporters buy new campaign swag every 4 years, I'm imagining a reusable bumper sticker that would say "Nader - Interchangeable Ethnic Name Vice Presidential Candidate" and Nader would ship out new year stickers like the DMV mails me license plate stickers. Just imagine the joy in Nader-fans when they would get the new stickers, "The '12s have arrived. Crunchy."
But Nader really showed me how crazy he is with what he had to say about Obama on Fox News:
"To put it very simply, he [Barack Obama] is our first African American president, or he will be. And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."
Yeah, Nader called Obama a potential Uncle Tom. Really, The Dallas Morning News has the transcript and the video. After this, Shepard Smith was taken aback (Note: when you are too racist for Fox News you might have a problem) and gave Nader an opportunity to clarify which he declined to do and Nader has also refused to apologize in the two days after this. By the way, between his reaction to Joe the Plumber's "Obama=Death To Israel" comment and his shock at Ralph Nader's hate speech, I'm kinda starting to like Shepard Smith.
Nader has gone so far off the deep end that 70's safety advocate Nader would close down the pool that current Nader is in for allowing such ridiculous depths.
Shortly after realizing that Nader is quickly becoming the national equivalent of Madison's Will Sandstrom, I went over to Huffington Post where I came upon some of the most poetic and clear descriptions of what this election means in the greater context of America.
"Obama's speech echoed the rhythms of Lincoln, Kennedy and King, summoning the essences of their greatest speeches while adding the ebullient urgency of his own amazing ascension to this place, in this time. While to his detractors his intellect and grace was derided as elitist arrogance, as seen and heard tonight it is rather inescapably clear that he has emerged in order to carry out a mission: to lead us back to the path upon which America must tread in order to fulfill its destiny, not as a massive, seething, commercial venture but as a progressive land of freedom.
"Even in this day of consumerist overkill there is more to life than making money. There is a need for inspiration, for belonging, for hope, for everyone of us to feel connected and secure to a spirit that supersedes the pervasive and omnipresent materialism that has come to embody America. Eight years of spiritual drift has made us thirst for real leadership. The Bush straw man is banished for the moment (who knows for how long?); the oligarchs in their mincing approximations of folksiness having successfully assured the working classes that they should be trusted are now unmasked."
This post-consumerist rant, that goes into the need for both individual freedom and collective belonging in America was written by none other than Steven Weber, the guy from that 90's sitcom, Wings. (Quick aside: YouTube has far more Wings fanmade music videos than you would expect.)
In summation, comparing talks about the impact of massive corporations on this election and what an Obama Presidency means for working Americans, Ralph Nader has had his ass handed to him by a guy from Wings. The only way this could be more embarrassing is if it was a guy from Paul McCartney's Wings. Nader has done his time, now his fans need to pick some other figurehead to rally around before Nader fans become the next Lyndon LaRouche-ies. Nader fans, may I suggest Steven Weber? If he could last 8 years on Wings, he could handle 8 in the White House.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go spend the next few days reading the thesaurus as I'm still humbled by Steven Weber's command of the English language.
But Nader really showed me how crazy he is with what he had to say about Obama on Fox News:
"To put it very simply, he [Barack Obama] is our first African American president, or he will be. And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."
Yeah, Nader called Obama a potential Uncle Tom. Really, The Dallas Morning News has the transcript and the video. After this, Shepard Smith was taken aback (Note: when you are too racist for Fox News you might have a problem) and gave Nader an opportunity to clarify which he declined to do and Nader has also refused to apologize in the two days after this. By the way, between his reaction to Joe the Plumber's "Obama=Death To Israel" comment and his shock at Ralph Nader's hate speech, I'm kinda starting to like Shepard Smith.
Nader has gone so far off the deep end that 70's safety advocate Nader would close down the pool that current Nader is in for allowing such ridiculous depths.
Shortly after realizing that Nader is quickly becoming the national equivalent of Madison's Will Sandstrom, I went over to Huffington Post where I came upon some of the most poetic and clear descriptions of what this election means in the greater context of America.
"Obama's speech echoed the rhythms of Lincoln, Kennedy and King, summoning the essences of their greatest speeches while adding the ebullient urgency of his own amazing ascension to this place, in this time. While to his detractors his intellect and grace was derided as elitist arrogance, as seen and heard tonight it is rather inescapably clear that he has emerged in order to carry out a mission: to lead us back to the path upon which America must tread in order to fulfill its destiny, not as a massive, seething, commercial venture but as a progressive land of freedom.
"Even in this day of consumerist overkill there is more to life than making money. There is a need for inspiration, for belonging, for hope, for everyone of us to feel connected and secure to a spirit that supersedes the pervasive and omnipresent materialism that has come to embody America. Eight years of spiritual drift has made us thirst for real leadership. The Bush straw man is banished for the moment (who knows for how long?); the oligarchs in their mincing approximations of folksiness having successfully assured the working classes that they should be trusted are now unmasked."
This post-consumerist rant, that goes into the need for both individual freedom and collective belonging in America was written by none other than Steven Weber, the guy from that 90's sitcom, Wings. (Quick aside: YouTube has far more Wings fanmade music videos than you would expect.)
In summation, comparing talks about the impact of massive corporations on this election and what an Obama Presidency means for working Americans, Ralph Nader has had his ass handed to him by a guy from Wings. The only way this could be more embarrassing is if it was a guy from Paul McCartney's Wings. Nader has done his time, now his fans need to pick some other figurehead to rally around before Nader fans become the next Lyndon LaRouche-ies. Nader fans, may I suggest Steven Weber? If he could last 8 years on Wings, he could handle 8 in the White House.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go spend the next few days reading the thesaurus as I'm still humbled by Steven Weber's command of the English language.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Your Vote Matters. For Frank Caliendo.
If you are an American, before you go to the polls tomorrow, think about how your vote will effect people all over the world. It's not overstating the importance of this election to say that it will have a major impact on the lives and livelihoods of countless millions, including Frank Caliendo. For years, he has been doing impressions of celebrities on Mad TV (At least according to the internet, I wasn't willing to turn on Comedy Central and sit through Mad TV in order to fact check this) and his own show on TBS (which I can confirm exists as they advertise it during TBS's Saved By The Bell reruns). Caliendo has played George W. Bush and John Madden, not the most unique impressions, but Frank adds in the clever twists of playing fat versions of them.
Fat Madden. 
Fat Bush.
I really hope I'll get more hits to this blog with an image entitled "Fat Bush." But Fat Bush success is a fleeting one, both for my blog and Frank Caliendo. After January, his Fat Bush will be nearly useless, Caliendo knows this and is having a one-hour election special playing Fat Bush tomorrow night. While the rest of the world is watching election results, Caliendo will be trying to milk Fat Bush for one last hour.
But there's hope, with a new administration comes new political figures that could use a fat characture. A McCain Administration, though increasingly unlikely in the polls, would be very easy for Frank Caliendo. All he needs to do is take his Fat Madden costume, throw a band-aid on the side of his face, carry around a model of a house (Cause McCain owns a lot of houses!), and say "My friends" a lot. Then Frank can say hello to Fat McCain and 4 more years of TBS success.
Fat McCain.
Now Obama presents a much bigger problem. Not that Caliendo wouldn't be willing, or even eager, to wear Fat Blackface but I'm just worried that his Fat Obama would get confused for the High Life Guy or possibly a mushtache-less version of NFL on CBS's J.B.
Possible Fat Obama confusion.
But if Obama wins, I suggest that Frank try to break new ground and go for a Fat V.P. That's right Fat Joe Biden. It's simple, once again take his Fat Madden costume (which now that I look at it, I think it's the same suit that Fat Bush wears) and throw on some of that creepy fake-orange tan that skinny Joe Biden always seems to be wearing. He can even carry around Fat Madden's football because Biden is a working man and working men like football.
Fat Biden.
Maybe Caliendo can get even more creative (or as I call it: Calieative) and go into a potential Obama cabinet. If Al Gore does something for the Obama administration on global warming, Frank could do a Fat Gore... on second thought, he could do a Gore. Or Obama's people have talked about keeping around current Bush defense secretary Robert Gates. Gates is already a chubby, pasty guy. Why hasn't Frank been keying up those hot DefSec jokes for the last two years?
Holy poop, this is a Frank Caliendo impression that wouldn't suck.
I really hope I'll get more hits to this blog with an image entitled "Fat Bush." But Fat Bush success is a fleeting one, both for my blog and Frank Caliendo. After January, his Fat Bush will be nearly useless, Caliendo knows this and is having a one-hour election special playing Fat Bush tomorrow night. While the rest of the world is watching election results, Caliendo will be trying to milk Fat Bush for one last hour.
But there's hope, with a new administration comes new political figures that could use a fat characture. A McCain Administration, though increasingly unlikely in the polls, would be very easy for Frank Caliendo. All he needs to do is take his Fat Madden costume, throw a band-aid on the side of his face, carry around a model of a house (Cause McCain owns a lot of houses!), and say "My friends" a lot. Then Frank can say hello to Fat McCain and 4 more years of TBS success.
Now Obama presents a much bigger problem. Not that Caliendo wouldn't be willing, or even eager, to wear Fat Blackface but I'm just worried that his Fat Obama would get confused for the High Life Guy or possibly a mushtache-less version of NFL on CBS's J.B.
But if Obama wins, I suggest that Frank try to break new ground and go for a Fat V.P. That's right Fat Joe Biden. It's simple, once again take his Fat Madden costume (which now that I look at it, I think it's the same suit that Fat Bush wears) and throw on some of that creepy fake-orange tan that skinny Joe Biden always seems to be wearing. He can even carry around Fat Madden's football because Biden is a working man and working men like football.
Maybe Caliendo can get even more creative (or as I call it: Calieative) and go into a potential Obama cabinet. If Al Gore does something for the Obama administration on global warming, Frank could do a Fat Gore... on second thought, he could do a Gore. Or Obama's people have talked about keeping around current Bush defense secretary Robert Gates. Gates is already a chubby, pasty guy. Why hasn't Frank been keying up those hot DefSec jokes for the last two years?
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