Weighty issues

Congratulations go to Danica Patrick, the Indycar racer who finished fourth in today's Indy 500. While she wasn't the first woman to be in the race, she was the first ever to lead in the race and, had she not been hamstrung by a lack of fuel at the end, she could have won the whole thing.

But really I want to talk about sour grapes. NASCAR (and sometime Indycar) racer Michael Gordon says that Patrick has an unfair advantage, she only weighs 100 pounds.

Gordon, who weighs at least twice that says that her weight gives her more speed because her car is lighter and can get more mileage out of the gas. I say that Gordon is being a jerk. Patrick may have an advantage, but it's certainly not unfair. If she has an advantage, then maybe the other racing teams should jettison their more weighty drivers for those who are slimmer. I'm sure that more women would get a shot this way.

So don't let it get to you Danica. You're a great racer and you've earned your spot. Don't let sour grapes spoil your rookie season.

I know what funny is...

William Donahue is the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. William Donahue is an asshole. He's the fella who fills up our airwaves with bluster every time the subject of priests diddling young boys comes up. He's also the guy you may have seen in orgasmic delight when Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope.

Most of the time though, he's busy trying (unsuccessfully) to ban movies and TV shows. He tried it a few years ago with Kevin Smith's film "Dogma". He wasn't a fan of "The Last Temptation of Christ", either.

In his role of defender of the faith (and we all know what happened to the last one), Donahue appeared Monday on an episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit! on Showtime. The subject was "Holier Than Thou", an expose of three religious icons: the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The other two being heathens that Donahue is sure is burning in hell, he focused on Mother Teresa.

But soon after the show aired, Donahue was distraught. He'd been made to look bad when the show broadcast and parsed his own words. Now he's trying to let the stockholders of Viacom how angry he is by slipping leaflets under their hotel doors.

Donahue said, "Like most Americans, I like parodies and have no problem, per se, with irreverent humor. But when humor becomes insult, that is a different story."

So he doesn't mind parodies and irreverent humor, it's just that when it's not reverent that he has a problem. He loves reverent parodies and reverent irreverent humor. You know, the kinds of spoofs that just acknowledge how great the subject really was or is.

Like I said, he's an asshole.

The Muppets, okay?

I watched and digested ABC's telemovie "The Muppets Wizard of Oz" on Friday. It wasn't really that good. I wanted it to be, but it really moved away from what makes the Muppets the Muppets. It had forgettable songs and way too "now" references that will serve to date the movie years from now.

That said, I liked the touches from the book, the silver shoes, the magical cap that controls the flying monkeys and the ol' cereal in the Scarecrow's brain trick. I also liked the characterization of Pepe, the king prawn, as Toto.

But I'm hoping that this underwhelming movie will not kill any plans Disney has for bringing the Muppets back. I wouldn't judge the viability of the Muppets franchise from one poorly written movie.

Please, Disney, bring back The Muppet Show!

"Lost" and Found

I really don't see "Lost" on ABC being a long-term hit.

I know. I know. I've already posted about how I don't watch ABC, so how dare I say such a thing about such a popular show. Well, I think that the show just can't possible sustain interest past three seasons. It may even peter out next year, at the very least it will start to level out.

See, "Lost" is the kind of show that requires you to know about what happened before. In many ways, it's like "Twin Peaks". It's odd, it's quirky and you have to pay attention to even begin to understand just what the hell is going on.

I'm sure it had a great pilot. I know ABC wanted to pass, but it ultimately didn't. Still, I think "Lost" won the war in just beating the odds by getting on the air in the first place.

And don't get me started on "Desperate Housewives"...

CS Eyeballed

I enjoyed the CSI season finale quite a bit. From the universal fear of being buried alive to being eaten by fire ants to people blowing up to Tony Curtis' rug, this episode had every scary thing I could possibly think of in one two-hour time slot.

Quentin Tarantino's fingerprints were all over the show, from the Greg/Hodges "Dukes of Hazzard" board game scene to the bizarre autopsy hallucination scene near the end, it had moments both silly and scary.

The end had me wondering, though. Will Ecklie give Gil his guys back? I guess we'll find out this fall.

Get Arrested

Network upfronts are over and I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the results. Both Arrested Development and The Office USA were renewed and those were the two bubble shows I was pulling for the most.

If you haven't watched Arrested Development, I don't know what your problem is. It's probably the funniest show on the air and, while there's quite a lot of story that has passed since it began 2 years ago, it's very accessible due to the role of Ron Howard as narrator. He always lets you know what you need to know. The show does, though, reward attentive viewers for their loyalty with jokes they can only get, but even on its surface, it can easily be enjoyed.

The two actors I'd single out for their outstanding work on this show are Will Arnett and Michael Cera. Arnett plays GOB Bluth, the pompous but insecure eldest Bluth son. He's a very bad magician who always does his act to Europe's "The Final Countdown" The level of commitment he puts into the role is amazing. Michael Cera plays the teen son of GOB's brother. He's the consummate straight man. He won't get as many kudos as Arnett because he's the straight man, but he deserves every thumbs up. He's subtle where Arnett is bold. Each approach works for their characters.

So pick up the Arrested DVD for season 1 and when it comes back on Fox this summer in reruns. tune in. You'll be doing me a favor in helping keep this best comedy on TV on the air.

Sith Happens

I'm one of the fools who is going to see "Revenge of the Sith" tonight at 12:01 AM. Technically it'll be my birthday, so I can choose to do anything I want. That just happens to be it. I'll be joining the hundreds of Star Wars freaks in line to see if III is the prequel that lives up to the promise of the first trilogy. I sure do hope so.

It's hard to judge by the trailers and the commercials because they were pretty good for episodes I and II. And, while neither were horrible movies, they just weren't what I wanted. Maybe it was because I'm 20 years older than I was when I first saw the flicks. Whatever it is, the newer ones just haven't made me sit in wonder like I did when I saw the original holy trilogy all these years ago.

You Say Quran, I Say Koran...

I'm not going to make a judgment on the whole situation in this post, but I do find an aspect of the Newsweek/Koran flap interesting. The AP now spells it Quran which is much harder to pronounce if you're only looking at that. The spelling "koran", which I favor in English, is favored by the New York Times, the BBC and USA Today among others. I wonder what caused the AP to advocate the change in their style guide.

This reminds me a bit of the Moselm/Muslim shift that happened while I was in school. In grade school, the spelling in textbooks was Moslem. Once I reached high school, the spelling somehow became Muslim almost universally. No explanation. We were just expected to make the change.

Next time, I hope to be famous enough to get the memo on the next arabic word shift.

Peacock Front and Center

NBC announced their fall lineup today in New York. The biggest two surprises were the shows that weren't on it: Law and Order:Trial By Jury and Scrubs.

TBJ was thought to be a lock by USA Today not a month ago, but apparently NBC decided they didn't want to pay the huge license fee to itself (Well, their production arm) to fund another season. Instead, they went with a shows about a fertility clinic called Inconceivable. You can look forward to that one with Ming Na this fall.

Scrubs was a big surprise. It's not cancelled, it's stuck on the midseason replacement bench. I guess I shouldn't be shocked, but I am. I thought they'd try to find it an audience on another night. They still might, depending on when they deploy it and what NBC comedy fails first.

The Apprentice is now on two nights a week. Wednesdays has the Martha Stewart version and Donny Trump is on at his regular slot on Thursdays (the third day). I don't know if this is such a good idea. I see Who Wants to Be a Millionaire-like fatigue already and there's only one series of Apprentice on the air now.

I can see the headline now: "NBC to Trump: 'You're fired!'"

Eyes on the Enterprise (SPOILERS)

(The following contains spoilers for the final episode of "Star Trek Enterprise". If you haven't seen the final episode yet and wish to remain a virgin. Do not read any further. Thank you.)

I watched the final episode of Star Trek Enterprise tonight(missing the 8 o'clock penultimate installment) out of respect for Star Trek and out of curiousity. I felt the major happening in the episode was handled poorly. It was arbitrary and it didn't add anything to the episode or the series. I mean, it's mentioned matter-of-factly at the beginning of the episode by Troi, so there's no dramatic tension leading up to it, save for a fake out halfway through.

I mean, what was the death of Trip supposed to accomplish dramatically? No matter what it was, it didn't succeed, unless its purpose was to confuse and infuriate the audience.

And he died in a situation that they've been in and gotten out of before. I'm sure there's other ways to demonstrate how following your instinct is better than blindly following orders. Better he should sacrifice himself against orders to save the whole ship in engineering like Spock did in Star Trek II. Maybe Archer volunteers to save the ship, but Trip knocks him out so he can do it or something. That would have had more resonance.

But it doesn't seem that his death meant much. Other than the scene with Archer and T'Pol talking about what Trip would have wanted after he died, he was forgotten and never mentioned again. In fact, it's business as usual a day or two later when Archer is set to speak at the conference. All the Enterprise personnel are in the VIP section and all they do is cheerfully talk about their next assignment or complain about how far away they are from the podium. What the hell? At least Tasha Yar had a funeral!

If I didn't know any better I'd swear they just came up with the death subplot one day over lunch when the actor who played Trip asked if he could wrap for the series early so he could make it to shoot for a new pilot. It seems that poorly thought out and executed. No wonder Jolene Blalock called the finale "appalling".

I'd not go so far as to say that, but the whole thing really shows just how little the network cared for the series at the end. They could have made a two-hour telemovie event. Instead, all you have is two separate episodes stranded alone on a Friday night masquerading as a grand sendoff. Watching this episode, I see promise, which is sad, because the show is no more...but I also see an idea that was too big for its timeslot and one that could have used more time to breathe...in airtime and writing time.

I don't ABC the big deal...

The only network I don't watch anything on is ABC. Yeah, I know it's the home to Alias, Desperate Housewives, Lost and Grey's Anatomy, but none of those shows ever really appealed to me. All the successful shows on the network require you to pay a lot of attention. I usually don't dig those shows until and unless they hit DVD. ABC doesn't have a CSI or a Law and Order that can let you hop in and out of the show with little or no consequence.

You'd think it'd be a no-brainer for the network, but this is the channel that didn't even want to make "Lost" in the first place and that passed on Survivor, The Apprentice and CSI. In fact, they owned CSI at one point, only to sell it to Alliance Atlantis once it moved on to CBS.

I'm not arguing with the success that have had, but I'm almost positive that the success of the shows that are booming for the network now aren't for the long-run. Alias is falling-off and Jennifer Garner is soon off to become a mom and movie star. Lost is the kind of Twin Peaksian show that booms quickly but then gets bogged down in its own confusing mythology. Desperate Housewives can only last so long before one hausfrau kills another. So it would make sense for the powers that be to come up with a possible ol' faithful.

And then maybe I could tune into their channel, if only for an hour a week.

E!normous Blunder

I was watching a rerun of SNL on E! this weekend and anchorbabe Giuliana came on the screen to tell me the breaking news just into the E! News Room...yes, Jennifer Garner is now confirmed to have been knocked up by Ben Affleck.

Oh, there's few things worse than making me look at garbage. Tasting it is one of them. Thanks a lot, E!!.

Hijacked Idol

I'll admit to watching "American Idol" from time to time. I miss it on occasion but there's really not that much on opposite it.

One fan of the show has decided to make it a bit more interesting. He's launched a website called VoteFortheWorst.com that attempts to elevate the worst singer in the competition to the title of American Idol. He feels it's rigged so only those the producers feel are commercial advance to the finals. VoteFortheWorst had initially supported the nasally Mikalah Gordon until even she was too annoying to keep. Then they were behind the porcine Scott Savol until he was jettisoned last week.

Not to say it hasn't been moderately successful, though. Savol outlasted the far more popular faux-rocker Constantine Maroulis and Mikalah did last a few weeks.

They're calling for people of conscience to vote for Anthony Federov and his tracheotomy scar this week. I will...as long as he doesn't violate my one rule. He can't indicate the telephone number to call with his fingers to the audience. I mean, c'mon...how cheesy is that, man?

Don't Let's Start

You know, it's a tough thing getting a blog started. You have all these great ideas in your head and then you realize that, due to the sheer size of the internet, there's probably 100 million people just like you who not only have thought the same thing as you, but have already posted about it in a far more entertaining way.

But I can't worry myself about these people. For all I know, they're all friendless weasels who do nothing but watch television all day and play computer games. So, who cares what they think? Okay, I'm not much better than that, but I'm going forward with this crap anyway. Just try and stop me.

I haven't really come up with a style for my blog just yet, so if you notice things being moved around and logos being created (poorly), don't be alarmed. It's just stuff I should have done before I wrote this in the first place.

Mission Statement

For the first post of this blog, I just wanted to give a basic overview of what to expect here.

First, this is not a daily blog of things that go on in my life. I'm aiming to write for more of an audience than people who know me. I love the people who know me...except for those who think they know me and really don't Those people I hate. You know who you are.

This is a blog where I will post my thoughts on the news, the media and the women who love them. I hope to do so in a semi-entertaining style. You let me know how I'm doing. Or let me know by not letting me know. It's up to you, really.