Exactly how were we *saving* daylight?

If since March 11 we've been "saving" daylight then conceivably we should have a seven-month stockpile from which we could redeem some of that saved-up daylight and not have it be so dark when we leave work tomorrow.

"Daylight Saving Time" my ass; it was Daylight Having Time and we squandered it during summer when there was plenty of daylight already.

(Clearly linguists were not consulted when the policy was named.)

Spider-Man, Spider-Man does some things sort of like a spider can

Recently I saw a time-lapse video of a spider building a web, and thought:

Spider-Man really should shoot webs out of his butt to better replicate what actual spiders do. And have a healthy appetite for insects.

Obviously that's a more educational than entertaining take on the character, but eventually they'll run out of alternative reboot ideas, so feel free to run with that, Sony.

Father stays on Facebook; domestication of the dog continues unabated

Recently a friend on Facebook posted that he moved the app to the last screen of his iPhone, out of a desire to have it take up less of his time. Then he shared a link to an article posted on the ABC News site titled "Mom Deletes Facebook From Phone and These 5 Things Happened" (because unless a story is in list form no one will read it). I clicked over and read it (gleaning the gist of how the writer had an almost addiction-based relationship with social media), then left a comment on my friend's post "#6: Mom writes self-congratulatory article."

Then he perhaps jokingly responded he expected a Dougression about that. But instead, I give you this:

That comment was, of course, a glib reaction. Undoubtedly, there was probably some element of subconscious envy on my part fueling that, given the writer got her piece on a major news site and I just have my intermittent posts on the blahg here that get read by 12 people (because I'm not inclined to write in list format). However, it's also merely the sort of response that fit in with the amount of time I had in that moment to say something pithy (and perhaps hold a modicum of being worth read by the other friends of this friend who may see it).

Noah... right

When I see trailers for the upcoming Russell Crowe film telling the story of Noah, looking like a big-budget action flick, I am not interested.

 It's not that I have anything against the Biblical subject matter; it's that it doesn't appear to be based on the best source material out there: Bill Cosby's stand-up on his 1963 album Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow – Right!

In that Noah is a bit... incredulous... upon hearing from the Lord about being told to build the Ark. Somehow I don't get the impression that's how Crowe will play it.

Here's Bill performing it thanks to the wonder of YouTube:



You and me, Lord…

~

Let me know when they've made that movie. (Oh, like Hollywood wouldn't take that and screw it up.)

World Series... uh, yeah

Tonight the World Series commences with the Red Sox-Cardinals match-up I prophesized after watching the Tigers and Dodgers squander their excellent starting pitching with no ability to have the bullpen hold the lead or to get runners in scoring position across (it's not out of the question to imagine both having gone up 3 games to 0 rather than be down 2 to 1 after three, making their odds of continuing on much higher). It's arguable whether the victors played that much better than the losers in their respective series but that they merely did what they needed to do in order to win (which, really, is what winning teams do). So we have a rematch of the 2004 Series, where whichever team comes out on top will have its third title in the past decade.

And the question is: Which team is more worthy of rooting against?

Before 'After Earth'

Coming to a theater near you today, latest Fresh Prince of Bel Air blockbuster aspirant, After Earth.

Judging from the trailer the premise laid out in the short preview appears to be: Humanity fled the planet a millennium earlier—presumably due to having screwed it up to the point where it was nigh-uninhabitable—and now the elder and younger Smith men are on a space ship that crashes to our species' point of origin. The flora and fauna have flourished in our absence. Then we see the two humans battling CGI animals who understandably see them as prey,  interspersed between scene snippets with the tag line "Danger is real. Fear is a choice."

Why Museums Confuse Me

Earlier today my wife and I visited the Getty Villa, seeing (among other things) their exhibit on Pompeii. Afterward we stopped in the museum gift shop, and I noticed this book on a shelf on that topic, called Pompeii: The Living City:

Okay. Fair enough.

IKEA's alarming prophecy

IKEA has this commercial wherein a child ("Leo") is placed on "time-out" by a mother who then disappears from the room, and the boy then proceeds to crash himself into the kitchen cabinets repeatedly. The tag line offered in voiceover at the end: "Some things won't last 25 years. Some things will."
While I presume the implication of that statement is touting the durability of the cabinetry offered by the Swedish-based furniture store, I cannot help but think the flip side is suggesting this sort of absentee parenting will prevent the child from reaching his 25th birthday. Although I don't necessarily disagree, based on what we see in the ad, it does seem a rather morbid take on trying to sell affordable home products.

It even backfires on that. Heck, in that scenario there's no point in saving for college, so you may as well go buy better cabinets than would be offered at IKEA. 

This shows why watching DVR'ed shows and fast-forwarding through the commercials is actually better for advertisers; there's nothing to over-analyze at double-speed.

Paul Ryan's musical limitations

Last night I happened to hear part of Paul Ryan's speech at the RNC on the radio. Toward the end he made a little joke about the music that Mitt Romney preferred was the sort he tended to hear in elevators, and then he distinguished his tastes by noting his iPod "starts with AC/DC and ends with Zeppelin."

And my brain, being the way it is, thought, His collection doesn't have any artists alphabetically after L?

Olym-picks

I have this vague recollection of some international event in the recent past that caused me to be emotionally invested, but now I cannot quite remember what or why.

You'd think that something that so dominated my attention for a couple weeks would have a lingering effect, but apparently not.

Only the stakes of nations competing can draw us in to obsessively follow the sports that lack powerful organized leagues. The rest of the time it's merely athletes trying to do their best for themselves, and how can we care about that?

Showtime smokes Mary-Louise Parker's bosom

For some time now I've been noticing the billboards for the new season of Weeds featuring this picture of the show's star, the lovely Mary-Louise Parker:

However, every time I've noticed it, rather than inspiring me to subscribe to the premium channel and watch, I've had the same reaction:

Showtime really should be able to hire someone to do a better airbrush job to enhance her cleavage.

Although she should be plenty attractive as she is (and let's face it, our eyes would drift to that anyway), clearly they felt compelled to play up the mammary curves when trying to draw attention from passing motorists. But still it shouldn't look so egregiously fake, right?

Probably looks better when you're high...

Obama comes out for same-sex marriage

The hullabaloo this week has been first the Vice President on Meet the Press Sunday and then the President in an interview that aired on GMA today but was widely leaked yesterday saying they support same-sex marriage. Obama may not have done the interview had Biden not been so seemingly brazen with his opinions a few days ago, but I'm hard-pressed to think that anything said on TV in an election year is glib or uncalculated; candor is not a luxury politicians can afford.

While many have been praising the President about this, with an "it's about time" caveat—and certainly I concur with that sentiment—I am cynical enough to temper that with a bit of this:

Okay, Obama campaign, you've seen that your other tactics haven't distanced your ticket from Romney and you see the need to double-down on your base to ensure that they head to the voting booth in November. I'm not taking away from finally expressing a non-equivocated stance that is what should have been your position all along, but there seems little chance this happening now is coincidental. You're conceding a voting block to the GOP that probably wasn't going your way, so it's not as risky as it might seem.

Commenting about commenting about TV

There's no shortage of people writing about and commenting on various television shows on the various media available these days*, and even limited only to the areas of "new media" (internet, podcasts, social media) there's many people who devote much more time and energy to the shows they review and/or follow than I spend thinking that critically about the shows I watch.

That admitted, let's also acknowledge that the beauty of this era is that anyone who has even the slightest inclination can get his/her thoughts out there without needing to put all of that effort into a massive production… like, say, a TV show on any network.

A Rock-y time

On a recent WTF podcast Marc Maron interviewed Chris Rock, and as expected it was a good interview which I certainly recommend if you like Chris Rock even slightly.

Toward the end they touched on Rock having dinner with Woody Allen, and Rock alluded to how Allen was big on the president, which led Maron to ask Rock his opinion of Obama.

(Stick with me.)

Rock said he was fine with the president; like everybody he wished for more action, but he noted how all presidents' first terms are essentially four years of running for a second term, at which point they can actually do something. He referenced how even with George W. Bush it wasn't until the second term that he could "really fuck up the world," so perhaps in a second term Obama could really "do some gangsta shit" (euphemism for actually accomplish something, I presumed).

(Egad, I'm not presenting this part of the interview well. Please keep reading anyway.)

Debt ceilings, and 2012 in that swamp by the Potomac

The more I think about the debt ceiling debacle in our government (the abject inability of the participants to achieve the goal without putting us at the brink, whether you like its outcome or not), the more I envy dictatorial regimes. Sure, they're horrible to live under, but at least there's no delusion that the government is supposed to be working for you.

Or perhaps, through reinforced mass brainwashing, the delusion that the government does work for you effectively makes you believe it does.

Nothing is as depressing as utopian rumination.

~

Sure, the poor economy is not a positive harbinger for the President in 2012, but more and more I wonder: Why the hell would Obama want to be re-elected? Congress is against him, what he's tried to do that he thought was good was roundly spun to seem bad, and his personality and compromising tendencies clearly are out of step with what it takes to actually get done what presumably he'd want to get done in the current political climate; why would he want to subject himself to another four years of this?

The Change Lantern

Another movie trailer mash-up:

In The Change-Up (opening today) it appears from the trailer that Ryan Reynolds plays a womanizing bachelor and Jason Bateman plays a button-down father and husband, and somehow they switch bodies, Freaky Friday-style, so each can experience the other's lifestyle.

When Reynolds, in Bateman's body, has to change diapers, I imagine the first thing he mutters is something about wishing he still had the Green Lantern power ring.

Talk about evil he does wish could escape his sight...

Big buck resolution-off

So, who had the NFL lockout being resolved before the Debt Ceiling talks?

Of course, most Americans would be upset about no football this fall more than they would if the economy falls apart—no one seems to be exactly sure what would happen if the U.S. defaults on its debts, but the country would definitely go to shit if there's no pro football on Sundays as the leaves change color—so clearly the more important battle over ridiculous amounts of money got done first.

Or at least it proves that some organization with opposing sides grasps that if they cannot come to some agreement in time, everybody involved loses.

127 Hours Down in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Upon seeing ads for the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie with James Franco, I found myself thinking: Okay, in this movie, when he falls in the crevasse, it's the ape he taught sign language that cuts off his arm.

That taste of dismembering humans must be what puts the apes on the road to overthrowing humanity.

~

Yeah, let's stop this before someone starts to wish that a chimpanzee were writing this.

Nation-building

So, if we're going to start "nation-building at home," as the President noted in his televised address last night, will we first have to erect some statues of Saddam Hussein that can be toppled when we welcome our military as liberators?

Eh, if it gets us billions in foreign aid from the U.S., I say we do it...

Making it out of a riot

Yesterday the news was abuzz about a photo of a couple apparently making out in the street during the post-Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver.

Rich Lamm, Getty Images

The Canadian media tracked down the couple, and then it was suggested the guy was apparently trying to break into acting and for a while some believed it may have been a ploy for him to get exposure.

Now that the whole story has been revealed, it was merely that woman was knocked down by the police and her boyfriend bent down to assist and comfort her, and that the photographer, preoccupied with the police in his face, merely happened to capture the instant when the man gave her a little kiss.

Although it proved to be another case of much-ado-about-nothing, I did come away from the speculated-but-ultimately-false scenario with something important.

Should I ever find myself in a riot, when there's cops with clubs coming to break up the rioters and me in their path, I now have a game plan for avoiding police beatings by proving to be as unthreatening as possible: find someone, drop to the ground and start making out; no matter how hideous a kisser that person might be, suffering that for a minute seems preferable to a truncheon to the skull.

(At least until that person sues me for sexual harassment...)