Ah, the promise of the new year. Ah, the promise of Gregg Easterbrook’s first column of the year. Ah, the promise of the playoffs.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Archive for the ‘TV’ Category
TMQ Watch: January 7, 2014.
Wednesday, January 8th, 2014TMQ watch: December 31, 2013.
Friday, January 3rd, 2014More “we’re just not feeling the clever this week”. Might as well just open the box. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
TMQ Watch: December 17, 2013.
Thursday, December 19th, 2013You know that comment we made yesterday, about “Start writing or stop talking about it” being pretty good writing advice?
Speak up, I can’t hear you.
Wednesday, December 18th, 2013If you must know, I was looking up the “Ding Fries Are Done” meme when I stumbled across this entry at KnowYourMeme: The Family Guy Effect.
You. Don’t. Say.
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.
Saturday, December 14th, 2013Once upon a time, a long time ago, I loved the “worst” lists published in various places. Jeff Millar‘s worst movies list in the HouChron. Siskel and Ebert’s “worst movies of the year” episode. High points, things I looked forward to every year.
(On a side note, it fills me with delight down to the bottom of my coal-black little heart that Siskel & Ebert.org has the complete 1992 worst up on their site. This is the year that Roger lost the coin flip and picked Shining Through as his worst movie of the year, complete with the interminable strudel scene. Really. I kid you not. Melanie Griffith just goes on. And on. AND ON. Here, watch for yourself:
Edited to add: Actually, go over to their web site and watch there, because whoever runs the site has decided to make embedded videos auto-play.
The Shining Through section begins at about 15:30, but you should really watch the whole thing.)
But things have changed. Siskel and Ebert and Millar are all dead. For a while, the AV Club was an acceptable substitute.
But this year’s AV Club is a little off. Take their worst movies of the year, for example. I admit I have not seen Planes (I don’t care for Pixar films) or A Good Day to Die Hard. But were they really among the worst movies of the year, in a year that included The Purge and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone? Worse than Last Vegas or the Carrie remake? At least Battle of the Year made their list. (Didn’t see it, but saw the trailer for it.)
Smurfs 2 came out this year. It isn’t on the AV Club list. Enough said.
Likewise, a “worst TV” list that doesn’t include Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, or Raising Hope is pretty much worthless, and tells me that the AV Club writers are either on drugs or taking payoffs from Fox.
But there is one thing I can count on, although it technically isn’t a “worst” list (except maybe of family disasters): the Carolyn Hax Hootenanny of Holiday Horrors. The 2013 edition is here.
All of the sudden she stuck out her hand and bellowed “SPOOOOOON!” at which point someone meekly handed her a spoon and she proceeded to stir the gravy.
(And dryer lint really is great for starting fires. Especially with a flint and steel. At least, that’s what I learned in the Boy Scouts.)
Edited to add more: someone on the AV Club posted a link to “The Dissolve”, aka “Where Many of the AV Club’s Most Interesting Writers Went to Languish In Obscurity”. And they have their own worst list, which I find…kind of credible.
Yeah, okay, the Die Hard movie is on it, and Smurfs 2 isn’t, but they do get points for reminding me of some other candidates for year’s worst movie. For example, The Internship, aka “A Two Hour Long Commercial for Google”, and Movie 43. Might be worth keeping an eye on this site in 2014.
Historical oddities (part 1 of, yes, yet another ongoing series).
Saturday, December 7th, 2013Discovered while Wiki-wandering: Charles Nelson Reilly was a survivor of the 1944 Hartford circus fire.
Western Civilization is doomed.
Friday, December 6th, 2013TMQ Watch: November 26, 2013.
Wednesday, November 27th, 2013Over the past few years, we have come to the conclusion that the word “professional” is becoming the most abused word in the English language. “Professional grade” pickup trucks; as a dedicated amateur, can I save a few bucks by purchasing a non-professional grade one? “That’s not professional” has become a commonly used phrase in business; what that really means, as we see it, is “I don’t like it, but if I invoke the word ‘professional’, you can’t argue with me.”
What does this have to do with TMQ? Well, in this week’s edition, after the jump…
Random notes: November 22, 2013.
Friday, November 22nd, 2013What a way to start the morning:
Hunting rats. With dogs. In Manhattan.
This is legal in Bloomberg’s New York?
…
Save horce racing! Put USADA in charge!
The state of Alabama has granted posthumous pardons to Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems and Andy Wright. You know them better as three of the nine Scottsboro Boys.
TMQ Watch: November 20, 2013.
Wednesday, November 20th, 2013There are no undefeated teams left in the NFL this season. The Kansas City Chiefs lost on Sunday.
We all know what that means, right?
Or do we?
TMQ Watch: November 5, 2013.
Tuesday, November 5th, 2013Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone. Let’s just get into it, shall we?
This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
That ’70s post.
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013Ah, the 1970’s. What a time.
Remember Alexander Calder, the noted sculptor? Died in 1976? Well, he had a dealer, Klaus Perls, that he worked with exclusively. It was, by all accounts, a close and very friendly relationship.
Was.
It looks like the Perls family stipulates at least part of these claims, specifically the parts about the Swiss bank accounts. But they also claim that part of the reason Perls had a Swiss bank account is so he could transfer profits to Calder’s Swiss bank account.
I knew there was a reason I liked Alexander Calder’s work.
The 1970’s were also a time when it was much easier to get your hands on explosives. Especially if you were 17 years old. And if you were peeved at the California Department of Water and Power.
The blast ripped apart a 4-foot-wide steel gate that regulates the flow of water to the aqueduct. Windows were blown out of the gatehouse atop the spill gates and its concrete floor buckled.
About 100 million gallons of water meant for Los Angeles were instead flushed into Owens Lake, which had been dry since the Department of Water and Power opened the aqueduct in 1913.
Nobody was injured. Mark Berry, one of the two men responsible, spent 30 days in juvenile detention. And he now works for the DWP.
(I love this telling detail: “The air was filled with the banana-like smell of nitroglycerin.”)
(And this one: “Berry said his father, as yet unaware that his son was one of the culprits, boasted to a neighbor, ‘If I ever find out who bombed the gates I’ll buy him a steak dinner.'” Gardner Dozois and Edward Abbey, please call your offices.)
(Since I made a “That ’70s Show” reference, I believe I have to link to this Penny Arcade. Especially since I am all about fish out of water prison dramas.)
TMQ Watch: October 22, 2013.
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013We were vaguely hoping TMQ would address the Grambling State situation this week. We know that sounds weird, but we were hoping he might have an original or interesting take on it. Or, failing that, something we could mock.
We also thought maybe he’d have something to say about Bum Phillips. Or Bud Adams. He’s usually pretty good about doing tributes to significant NFL figures who have passed away.
Nope.
So what does TMQ write about this week? After the jump…
TMQ Watch: October 15, 2013.
Tuesday, October 15th, 2013Let us start off with one of TMQ Watch’s patented musical interludes. This one even has a small amount of relevance to this week’s TMQ:
You’ve got to love YouTube comments:
stephen scazzafavo 2 weeks ago
thumbs up for REAL COUNTRY none of this new age shiit
Yeah. About that, Steve.
Anyway, with that diversion out of the way, let’s get into this week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Doesn’t seem like there’s a lot going on right now.
Friday, October 11th, 2013So, here, have some crap:
The complete “Mama’s Family” is being released on DVD, for those of you who were looking forward to this. And if you were, may God have mercy on your soul.
Burnett considered the “Family” sketches to be “Tennessee Williams on acid.”
Highly local, but mildly interesting to me, and also picked up from the LAT: Mayor Garcetti has more or less fired the head of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Chief Brian Cummings, who announced his retirement Thursday, never fully recovered from his management team’s admission in March of last year that highly touted 911 response times were inaccurate, making it appear that rescuers arrived faster than they actually did.
Subsequent Times’ investigations documented widespread delays in processing calls for help, routine failures to summon the closest medical rescuers from nearby jurisdictions and large disparities in getting rescuers to life-threatening emergencies in different areas of the city.
I don’t know what to make of this NYT article, so I’ll throw it up for grabs.
The brief summary: In 2010, Sheriff Deborah Trout of Hunterdon County, New Jersey was indicted, along with two of her deputies, on charges that included
What happened next?
The paper of record is not helpful in explaining why the state attorney general’s office took over a county prosecutor. That just doesn’t make sense to me; where is the legal authority for the attorney general to just simply take over a county prosecutor’s office, barring something on the order of massive corruption within the office?
But let’s set that question aside for right now. You can probably guess what happened after that:
And you can probably guess what happened after that: one prosecutor was fired, and two others (including the one who secured the indictments) were “forced to retire”. The news peg for this is that the fired prosecutor has filed a wrongful termination suit, which has led to the release of the grand jury records for the original indictment.
Here are my problems:
- I don’t trust the New York Times to be fair and objective in their reporting on a prominent Republican, especially one who is being spoken of as a possible presidential candidate.
- I don’t trust Chris Christie, either. I think he’s a RINO. I know he’s no friend of gun owners, no matter what he’s saying now. When I think of the man, I’m reminded of “Arlen Specter is for winning.“. If he gets the nomination, I’m voting Libertarian. (Okay, who am I kidding? I’ll be voting Libertarian no matter what.)
So I report, you decide.