- McSweeney’s answers the collateral damage question with a letter from GEICO to Optimus Prime.
- The World Series of Pop Culture is back. I swear to Brak, next year, I’m trying out.
- Businesses in Scranton, PA will have a chance to meet with the propmaster from NBC’s The Office to have their promo materials, menus, et al. placed in the Dunder-Mifflin offices. ‘Office’ Fever (Dunder-Mifflania?) is probably the most exciting thing to hit Scranton since that banana truck. You know, the one Harry Chapin wrote a song about…?
- Wired has an interesting story on ‘mileage running’, as well as a revealing (by which I mean ‘almost frightening’) piece on how airlines create their price structures. (If only mileage running and business travel weren’t at the extreme opposite ends of travel spectrum.)
- My friend Margaret recently won an Emmy award for her work on Ellen. No specific link here, I’m just really proud of Margaret.
- While I’m doling out the kudos (mmm…Kudos…), Erica recently got a shout-out in the New York Times (The link to the Times story might be firewalled – hopefully I’ve gotten around that by linking through Google News.)
- Finally, I’d be remiss, considering my last post, if I didn’t link to Keith Olbermann’s special comment from the July 3 edition of ‘Countdown’:
‘I didn’t vote for him,’ an American once said, ‘but he’s my President, and I hope he does a good job.’ That, on this eve of the fourth of July, is the essence of this democracy in 17 words, and that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.
Head over to Crooksandliars.com for the video and the full transcript. (Warning: Certainly safe-for-work, but reasonably long.)
After the 2004 election, I promised myself (and those of you who read this blog on a regular basis) that I’d refrain from discussing politics. I’m going to have to break that promise.
The man pictured here is Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Several months ago, he was sentenced to 30 months in jail, 2 years probation, and a $250,000 fine. Some of us in the public, looking on at this battle of the Beltway elite, felt like some small measure of justice was achieved, and that a message was sent to our fundamentally corrupt Executive Branch. (Even those who think they’re not part of the Executive…unless and until he decides he is again.)
Fast forward to today. After having learned about, among other things, the shadow government being run by our Vice President last week, our government decides to spit in the collective face of the American public by commuting Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. That’s right – the President who swore to “Get the leaker” just gave said leaker a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”
Or, in layman’s terms, the President of the United States just gave the Bronx Cheer to the federal court system.
Approximately a decade ago, the Republican-controlled Legislative Branch attempted to impeach the sitting president for an extramarital affair. We now have a sitting president who has both obstructed justice himself and served as an accessory to the obstruction of justice, invaded our privacy, and used falsified evidence to engage this nation’s military in a quagmire in Iraq. How, exactly, isn’t this worse than getting a hummer in the Oval Office?
My friend Kevin Lawver has done a fine job of establishing the rationale for this administration’s ouster. The blogosphere in general is going apeshit crazy with rage, and really, you can’t blame them – how can any rational human being continue to stand behind this President and call themselves ‘rational’?
I was particularly struck by something Keith Olbermann (who, incidentally, will call for the resignation of both the President and Vice President in a ‘Special Comment’ tomorrow night) used to segue into his coverage of the Libby debacle this evening, and I’m going to end this post with those words:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately…. Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God,—go!”
-Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, vol. 3, part 7, pp. 34–35 (1897).
Oliver Cromwell spoke these words to the Rump Parliament in 1653, as one man frustrated with a corrupt body’s unwillingness to cede power. Seems eerily prescient today, doesn’t it?
I think this is the finale I’ve been looking forward to the most. When Heroes premiered back in September, I remember liking it, but not feeling like I’d end up staying with it for very long. (At the time, I was higher on Studio 60…but that’s for another post.) But Heroes has delivered something that – for my money, anyway (your mileage may vary) – hasn’t been in episodic television since season 1 of Alias, or the early days of Buffy…well developed characters, superb storytelling, and all-around satisfying TV that hasn’t been dumbed-down in order to cast a wide net. Sure, like all episodic TV, some episodes were stronger than others (without a doubt, “Company Man” and “Five Years Gone” are standouts from season 1), but there was no filler here, no weak episodes; only ‘strong’, ‘stronger’, and ‘holy living fuck!’.
So, enough with the preliminaries. Time to get on with Chapter 23: “How to Stop an Exploding Man”.
Anyone who knows me knows that I think the UK version of The Office is as close to perfect as television comedy gets. And while I had some initial apprehension about a US conversion of the series, the American version of The Office quickly found its own voice and comedic style. That was three years ago. Suffice to say, the American version of The Office is now appointment television for me, and there was no way in hell that I was missing this finale.
I thought that since the season finales are airing this week (with a few exceptions – 30Rock, your season ended too soon!), I thought I’d try something new. Instead of just talking to/shouting at the TV, I thought I’d share my thoughts with you in a new feature I’m calling M-D Watches the Season Finales.
I won’t be watching EVERY season finale, mind you, just the shows I’d be watching anyway. And these aren’t going to be reviews as much as they’ll be my stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the episodes (and the ads that surround them), written in (mostly) real-time – essentially, these are the comments I’d turn and make to you if you were sitting in the same room, watching the show with me. And while I’m going to try to keep things as spoiler-free as possible, since these are finales, some minor spoilers may slip through. You’ve been warned.
So, now that the formalities are out of the way, we start with the very last episode ever of Gilmore Girls.
Not much to be said here. Just read this News.com headline from earlier today. I DARE you to tell me your brain doesn’t hurt afterward.
D’oh! Looks like I need to call Verizon tomorrow and see what my options are…