Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

We still have time to mess this up!

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Petty moves from a petty man.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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187Comments

  6. 6.

    The Dangerman

    Would I be embarrassing myself if I revealed that I have no idea who Frank Caliendo is?Was he on the Red Neck tour with Bill Engvall (funny), Ron White (fucking hilarious), that Cable Guy (not funny at all), and whatever the fuck his name was?

  7. 7.

    jl

    And what is wrong with monster trucks, exactly, Mr John Snooty Pants Elitist Cole?

    And demolition derby highlights aren’t popular?

    Cole clearly lives in an elitist enclave.

    Edit: just to be clear, I damn well liked jalopy races, demo derbies and monster trucks at the county fairs in the Central Valley, growing up as a lad, walking uphill in the snow both ways to school. If thems was good enough for me, they’ll be good enough for you dang kids go away and quit playing on my lawn.

    Edit edit: I think it was because, at a dinky county fair horse race circuit, you could see the jalopies go all the way around, which made the car racing far less boring than it usually is (which is reeallll boring).

  10. 10.

    New Yorker

    @The Dangerman:

    He’s the guy who does the John Madden impressions on the NFL pregame show on FOX every Sunday.

    And the ads for his show were all over TBS during the 2007 baseball playoffs (one of a number of things that sucked about that postseason).

    Also, John? A word please? You’re in West Virginia. What do you expect?

  11. 11.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    The local favorites near me (Salt Lake City) include Brian Regan: Standing Up, Soapdish, Bob the Builder: Lofty’s Favorite, Modern Marvels: Las Vegas, Man of La Mancha. The last one has Sophia Loren on the cover so it can’t be all bad.

  14. 14.

    Tsulagi

    If you want to get more in touch with your inner Dem elitism and anti real American tendencies by watching a foreign film, try El secreto de sus ojos/The secret in their eyes. Won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film last year. Just saw it on DVD last week. Might not show up on your local favorites, but excellent movie; rated over 8 at Imdb. Was afraid it was going to be solely a chick flick, but it’s not.

  15. 15.

    New Yorker

    Also, my local favorites (Brooklyn, NY) are “Hannah and Her Sisters”, “La Haine”, “Badlands”, “Paid in Full”, and “Do the Right Thing”.

    No tornado chasing documentaries yet…..

  16. 16.

    Warren Terra

    Arggh, I got moderated for using the socia|ism word – I’ve trained myself not to type it at this site, but I was blockquoting.

    Well, trying again:

    As I’ve said before in other open threads, if you’re not reading Charles P Pierce’s weekly Friday letters to Eric Alterman on politics, you’ve got only yourself to blame. A taste of the peroration in this week’s letter:

    Well, it seems that the momentum of conservative bullshit has caught up with Newt, and maybe gone past him. The Right has constructed an entire self-contained political BioSphere. It has its own science; every single GOP senatorial candidate in New Mexico, New Hampshire, and New York is a climate-change denier. It also has its own history. This is what’s driving the intellectual side of the coming election. This history has its Ur-texts; Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve is one of them. But things have really been heating up over the past decade, as rightwing designer history from rightwing design shops found its mass audience. The weird signs accusing the president of being a fascist and a socia|ist simultaneously can’t be understood without reading Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg’s hawk-a-loogie doorstop from a few years back. Along with gold swindlers and glycerined tears, Glenn Beck’s bunco schemes include the construction of his own personal animatronic Founding Fathers, all of whom speak in the voices Glenn hears in his head.
    __
    This is not really about creating a counterhistory, though. This is about creating a simulacrum of history, just as Gingrich is a simulacrum of a historian. It’s about creating a salable narrative that can put a faint intellectual gloss on what you are prone to believe anyway. Narratives are more malleable than actual history is, and more easily dispensed once you achieve the political power for which you created the narrative—and, ultimately, this self-contained political universe—in the first place. So, when Newt recently summoned up his professor’s voice and accused Barack Obama of acting out of “a Kenyan anti-colonial worldview” that the president imbibed from his late father, he borrowed the trope from a piece in Forbes by the noted charlatan and Mark Warren-fearing coward Dinesh D’Souza, which is rather like getting your drinking water from one of those pig lagoons in North Carolina, but never mind.The important thing to watch was how a rather, ahem, unique view of history went so smoothly from a reputed conservative thinker to an allegedly intellectual Republican politician and thence to a public so credulous that it may be well on its way to electing an entire Congress full of walking, talking produce.

  17. 17.

    debit

    If the goal of the guy running the commercial with the one red eye and one blue eye is to make me turn the channel the second it comes on, mission accomplished. Sheesh.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: Sweet!

    Edit: what about the other half dozen critters at your place? How are they handling Homer?

    Edit 2: I still have your “refresh Bj” photo on my desktop for laughs now and again. Just looked at it a few minutes ago when someone made a reference to Palin writing on her palm in another thread. You really ought to post that again.

  19. 19.

    New Yorker

    Also, too, I think it goes without saying, based on those films, that I live in the center of elitist Fake America.

  20. 20.

    Southern Beale

    WOW did not even know there was a local favorites option. The husband usually does all of our Netflix stuff.

    The top 5 in my area are:

    1-Nashville
    2-Waiting for Guffman
    3-Aziz Ansari: Intimate Moments
    4-It Might Get Loud
    5-Sophie’s Choice

    I think I live around a bunch of latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening elites.

  23. 23.

    The Dangerman

    He’s the guy who does the John Madden impressions on the NFL pregame show on FOX every Sunday.

    Ah, there’s the problem; don’t watch the pregame shows. Especially during the Super Bowl, when they last, what several hours?

  25. 25.

    scav

    Chicago: Derrida (oh, wait, that’s extra-tagged for me, sheesh!), Claudine, Dorothy Dandridge: An American Beauty, Gates of Heaven, Nights and Weekends, Sour Grapes, 500 Years Later, Benji Brown: In Touch with Reality, 25 Years of Improv Comedy, Trust Us, This Is All Made Up . . . somehow, I’m not believing this list. . . I’ve seen the neighbors.

  26. 26.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    John, “Arranged” is on instant (I think) and it’s an excellent indy film. It’s not action packed but you get a feeling about Semites and how the orthodox Jewish culture and Muslim culture align. It’s about two Brooklyn teachers and the ties that bind them.

  28. 28.

    jeffreyw

    @WaterGirl: Buddy is very jealous whenever his dog momma has Homer out. Bud has made mock runs at the poor kitty hoping for a good hearty chase and a high five with Jack. Homer stands fast and confounds those high expectations. Jack is trying to ignore Homer. Mrs J hasn’t let Toby or Bea near kitty yet. They know he’s here, I saw Tobe standing and staring at Homer this morning. He made no move to approach.

  29. 29.

    hilzoy

    Seriously Funny, The Honeymooners, Problem Child, Wired!, Crooklyn. I do not think that I have heard of any of these, except for Crooklyn. (The Jackie Gleason Honeymooners, yes; the 2005 remake, no.)

    No monster trucks. (I like monster trucks!) No pigmentationally-challenged people either. Curious that three of the five are stand-up.

  34. 34.

    MikeJ

    @Cliff: No doubt, but it’s rude to tell people that they absolutely must read this thing and not save them the trouble with a link. He’s wasting the second and a half it would take me to highlight the text, right click, and select “Search Google for…”

  35. 35.

    Mike G

    Re: Netflix, around here it’s mostly surfing movies, environmental-type documentaries (“The Cove”) and cerebral and/or foreign dramas. I live in a good place (and I pay through the nose for it).

  38. 38.

    Comrade Kevin

    Huh, I hadn’t noticed that local favorites before either. The list I got was rather weird: Red Riding Trilogy: Part 2: 1980, Raajneeti, Departures, Ajami, Shades of Ray. I know absolutely nothing about any of them.

  40. 40.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    My family eats A LOT of arugula and we sip the occasional latte. I took my three year old to the Monster Jam at Reliant stadium in Houston and it totally rocked.

    I (we) had a blast and I will definitely be going back.

  42. 42.

    Warren Terra

    @MikeJ:

    @Warren Terra:

    you’ve got only yourself to blame.

    Couldn’t I blame you too for not putting in a link?

    Oops – the version that got Moderated to death for using the S-word had a link, and I forgot to insert it in the second version. Sorry about that. The link to the main page for Alterman’s blog is here; click there for this week’s entry where it says “Slacker Friday” (they’ve got to have about the worst blogging platform in the world there).

  43. 43.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    Today I saw The Town which was entertaining even for a wimp like me. My stomach does not do well watching shoot em up movies but I really like Ben Affleck and decided to sit through it. For those in the New England area, he captured the feel of Charlestown with all its unique characters. I’m anxious for others to see it because it did leave me with an unsettled feeling which might be due to the fact that I’m older but not necessarily wiser now. My son who came with me said it was a fair remake of Heat which I can’t attest to because I never saw it.

  44. 44.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    @comrade Kevin – those red riding movies are supposed to be fantastic. definitely on my list, which never moves because my kids make it impossible to watch movies, read books, go out, watch football… I still find time for balloon juice though!

  45. 45.

    Breezeblock

    Mr. Cole, you should Netflix friend me.

    I’m into Noir, silents, and foreign. Oh, and classics.

    My DVD q is 500, and my Instant Q is getting there.

  46. 46.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    @CynDee: Did you not see the earlier posts where John said he was sick with a fever and chills and not to expect a post from him until Monday??
    Poor John,…Oh, yeah that was one of his earlier posts. He’ll probably have pictures up soon.

  49. 49.

    Janet Strange

    From the People’s Republic of Austin:

    Frontline: Heat
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
    Beyond Belief
    Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet
    The Education of Shelby Knox

    John Aielli was going on about Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet on Eklektikos yesterday. Makes me wonder about the overlap between Netflix users and public radio listeners in Austin. Seems an odd one to make it to the local favorites list otherwise.

  52. 52.

    Ken J.

    I would like to second @Tulagi’s recommendation for “The Secret In Their Eyes.” (resp:#14).

    The other movies I am pushing on people: “How To Train Your Dragon” (the lead dragon is modelled on a cat, I am sure of it). And, from the art film pile: “Coco Before Chanel”, “The Last Station” (outstanding scenery chewing in a historical story about Leo Tolstoy), “The Kids Are All Right” (sexual content advisory on that one) and finally, “Winter’s Bone,” a chilling story with almost no on-screen violence which had darn well better win an Oscar or two next year.

  53. 53.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debit: as Olbermann said, even though I usually don’t even like to bring religion into politics to score a point off the thumpers, how in the hell can such loudly self-proclaiming Christian be so eager to let people die so he can keep a little bit of money? It really does make my head spin

  55. 55.

    scav

    @Janet Strange: there’s something not quite right about the lists at times. I had a lot of standup too, and how they managed a personalized local recommendation of Derrida from a history of watching Doctor Who, things by Almodovar, various BBC series and a lot of Shakespeare is mas weird.

  56. 56.

    Nick in PA

    John, you ARE in West Virginia. I mean. come on. That said, Modern Marvels is the best show on TV. Not necessairly the ‘Monster Trucks,’ ep, though.

  58. 58.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    @Corner Stone: You would not want to sit next to me when I saw The Departed. I tend to grab and hit arms and knees when I’m tense. Don’t think that Heat is for me. Al Pacino was great in Scent of a Woman though.

  61. 61.

    morzer

    Well, round here we get

    The Battleship Potemkin
    Great Arugula Recipes
    Nailin’ Palin

    Simple folk, we Somerville MA heartlanders…

    At least we are past that terrible period when it was all Albanian coming-of-age movies…

  62. 62.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Whenever I see the subtitle “The revolution will be supervised” at the top, I keep thinking “The revolution will be televised”.

    For some reason that sounds better to me.

  63. 63.

    burnspbesq

    Yo, Mr. Cole, I have a record recommendation for you.

    There is a new set of the complete Beethoven piano concertos, with Paul Lewis (whose complete Beethoven sonatas won every award worth winning a couple of years ago) and the BBC Symphony conducted by Jiri Belohlavek.

    Not spectacular, but very thoughtful approaches are taken to all five concertos, all of the playing is impeccable, and the recording is extremely good.

    You will like this.

  68. 68.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @burnspbesq:

    Maybe that’s why I keep thinking it…lol! Faux has created the ‘revolution’ and they are televising it.

    Maybe amend it to “The ‘revolution’ is being advertised”.

  69. 69.

    mem from somerville

    My local favorites the other day included this one–which I wouldn’t have probably found otherwise:

    LoudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies

    But today the list is:
    Big Night
    Thelma & Louise
    The Baxter
    Objectified
    Puccini for Beginners

    I love my neighbors. And morzer’s list was good too.

  70. 70.

    MikeJ

    @Corner Stone: I was staying in the Westin for E3 while they were shooting Heat. Every morning for a week I was awakened by gunfire as they shot the bank robbery escape scene 20 floors below on the street.

    That CHUNKCHUNKCHUNK sound? not great at 6:30am when you spent the previous night tripping at video game parties.

    Inside the hotel they were shooting that Depp flick where his kid is kidnapped and he has to kill the gov.

  72. 72.

    Raenelle

    We rescued a 10-year old cocker spaniel 6 months ago. His owner got Altzeimers, so we took him. He is a very, very good boy, and we fell in love with him almost at once.

    A couple of months ago I noticed a fatty-like growth on his right front leg. I assumed it was just a fatty tumor. But it grew rapidly, and our vet said it had to come off.

    Morgan, his name, went in for surgery this morning. We dropped him off, and soon thereafter the vet called. Morgan had had surgery on that leg before. We didn’t have any records for Morgan; no history at all. The vet assumed it was cancer, however.

    A bit later, he phoned again. He was in the middle of surgery and had found that the growth was a cancer, which though slow-growing, was virtually impossible to completely cut out. In addition, the growth had wrapped itself around a major blood vessel. Our options were to cut it out, though it would be back in six-months to a year, or to remove his leg. The vet said that the cancer was not the type that went into the blood vessels, so it hadn’t spread beyond the leg or into the bones, which would have meant a return of the cancer later. If we amputated the leg, the vet was confident we would get all the cancer. So, we had the vet cut his leg off.

    After surgery, the vet called and, for the first time, sounded optimistic. He really expects Morgan to live the rest of his life healthy and happy.

    I know this will be hard, initially, for the little guy, but I’m practically giddy with relief. I though I was going to lose him. All we lost, instead, was a leg.

    He comes home tomorrow. I can’t wait to take care of him. From what I’ve read since this morning, dogs with three legs do quite well ultimately. The only real thing you have to do for them is make sure that their food and water is elevated. They figure out the rest.

  75. 75.

    El Cid

    This is pretty interesting.

    If you read the first paragraph in a front page New York Times story about a physicist and his wife attempting to sell nuclear bomb secrets:

    A physicist and his wife, who both once worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, were arrested Friday and charged with a criminal conspiracy to help Venezuela build an atom bomb.

    you’d probably think that Venezuela was trying to pay a US scientist to help it build an atom bomb.

    I bet that’s what you’re going to hear from pundits and idiot news.

    But Venezuela never had anything to do with this. The scientist attracted the attention of the FBI, and from then on out it was all an undercover sting.

    They were charged with handing over secret weapons information to an F.B.I. agent posing as a Venezuelan spy. The [US] government did not accuse the Venezuelan government, or anyone working for it, of seeking weapons secrets…
    __
    …According to the indictment, Dr. Mascheroni told an undercover agent in March 2008, that he could help Venezuela develop a nuclear bomb within 10 years and that under his program, the country would use a secret, underground nuclear reactor to make plutonium, a type of bomb fuel.
    __
    In July of that year, the F.B.I. agent provided Dr. Mascheroni with 12 questions supposedly from Venezuelan military and scientific personnel…

    It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if Hugo Chavez is will be blamed on this story for trying to kill us all with atom bombs.

  76. 76.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    I just looked at what the folks are watching in my area and I was surprised.
    Mad Men
    The Loss of a Tear Drop Diamond
    True Blood
    Pride and Prejudice
    Not bad for a southern republican stronghold who thinks Nathan Deal is not a crook.

  77. 77.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @El Cid: I would think that it depends largely on whether some one discovers a need to demonize Chavez as part of the fall campaign. Another factor would be whether some of the more pants-wetting fear bloggers become aware of it.

  78. 78.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    @El Cid: It could have happened. Of course the FBI could pose as Japanese or Israelis too but that’s not what happened so Chavez could have done this. See how it works..

    EDIT Meant to say also, too..

  82. 82.

    El Cid

    It’s not video, but you should listen to this past week’s This American Life in an episode called Right to Remain Silent.

    One of the stories is about a Brooklyn cop who gets a gift of a small digital audio recorder, and begins recording his every shift for years.

    This leads to him being targeted by the department when he refuses to go along with trumped up arrests and tickets and ignoring actual crimes (including a serial rapist so as not to bring the dept’s stats down) and the recordings he has ends up taking down the bad cops.

    But not without cost.

    From the Village Voice, which led reporting on this including publishing the recordings, which have shaken up the entire department including criminal charges against many of the department heads.

    On orders from that deputy chief, Schoolcraft was then thrown to the floor, handcuffed, dragged from his Queens apartment, and taken against his will to a psychiatric ward at Jamaica Hospital. His forced hospitalization lasted six days. Police officers also removed papers from his home that documented his concerns about NYPD operations. Jamaica Hospital officials charged him $7,000 for his stay—and another $86 to obtain his own medical records.
    __
    Schoolcraft has been introduced to Voice readers as the Bed-Stuy cop who secretly taped 117 roll calls at the precinct, as well as many other conversations with his fellow cops. In our series, “The NYPD Tapes,” the Voice has been making these recordings public, and they show a pattern of police downgrading crimes, intimidating crime victims, and enforcing quotas for writing tickets and performing “stop-and-frisks.”

    It’s an amazing insight into the real world operations of cops in one of the nation’s largest police force.

    If the police had caught the recordings before they went public, maybe he’d still be in some psych ward or maybe a country like Syria being tortured.

  83. 83.

    NobodySpecial

    Don’t do Netflix, so I don’t care what my ‘neighbors’ watch. At least they didn’t complain about me watching Mindcrime Live At The Moore, so I’m all good.

  84. 84.

    El Cid

    @Omnes Omnibus: No, there is always a need to demonize Chavez. From the US foreign policy establishment to liberal hawks to hawks to ultra-rightists.

    For example, the US continually slams Venezuela for not doing enough to stop drugs trafficking when the source of the drugs moving through Venezuela are Colombian narco-traffickers which nowadays are mainly the former paramilitary allies of the US-beloved Uribe government. But, you know, it’s Venezuela’s fucking fault that Colombian narco-traffickers not being controlled by Colombian forces cross the uncontrollable jungle and river country bordering the two nations and make it out.

  85. 85.

    J.W. Hamner

    My current local top 5:

    The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    The Paper Chase
    Brief Encounter
    Shall We Kiss?
    The Edukators

    Ah, Cambridge…. two foreign films and a 70s movie about Harvard Law. I think it would be cooler if we had the monster trucks.

  86. 86.

    srv

    John, I live in f’ing Valhalla, and here’s what’s on my Instant:

    Exiled
    Election
    Kontroll (you’ve never seen a Hungarian movie, so go!)
    Archer Season 1
    The Chaser (kinda brutal to watch)
    Zero Effect
    Noise
    The Sand Pebbles

    If you watch any of those and dislike them, I’ll pay your Netflix for a month.

  87. 87.

    Betsy

    Speaking of Netflix, my sweetie and I are about halfway through the most recent season of Dexter. Just finished episode 5 or 6 a few minutes ago. Fun show.

  89. 89.

    Keith G

    @Raenelle: I bet you are wrung out. What a time, but it sounds like things are heading in a good way.

    Years ago, I spoke with a vet about a similar incident and she said that we anthropomorphize dogs to an outlandish degree. They live in the here and now and do not process emotions like regret.

    Morgan will be fine. He his going to start living each day with this new reality and will not be dealing with any human-type baggage.

  90. 90.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @El Cid: I was talking about the need to amp it up for this election season. A candidate who needs that extra little push over the cliff, well, Hugo and the nukes could give that candidate his chance to turn things up to eleven.

  91. 91.

    Duke City Roller

    @El Cid:

    It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if Hugo Chavez is will be blamed on this story for trying to kill us all with atom bombs.

    Don’t forget about the inevitable comparisons to the Rosenbergs

  92. 92.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    @El Cid: Thank you. I did not listen yet but will in the morning. It doesn’t sound like a bedtime story.

    I’m not sure that they’re fellow GA’s around but it appears that Deals son-in-law has declared bankruptcy before and maybe should not have declared bankruptcy now. Of course, the repubs in the state won’t mind because if Deal wins he will be able to create his own TARP fund. Bailouts for me but not for thee.

  94. 94.

    debit

    @JGabriel: Well, luckier than our late Cocker; she underwent surgery three times in one year for cancer. When it came back yet again, the vet said she’d have to lose a leg and he only gave her another 6 months after that before the cancer would come back again. We decided to let her go.

  95. 95.

    MikeJ

    @J.W. Hamner: Hey! Aren’t you the guy who came in here one night and wanted to talk about the ad Hoc cookbook and there were no cookery people around? I’m working my way through Bouchon right now, but I have done most of ad Hoc.

  97. 97.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Open Thread? Good!

    I have a question for the thread, especially for any linguistic types hanging out in these parts:

    Hebrew : Yiddish/Ladino : : Arabic : ?

    Is there any langauge or dialect or even a pidgin or creole of Arabic that is remotely equivalent to the diasporic transformation of Hebrew into something combining the vernacular with the ancient tongue? Honestly don’t know and would be interested in some info, including what such a language or variant would be called.

    Thanks. I fully trust the BJ Brain and would rather ask you guys than Mister Google.

  100. 100.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @formerly demo woman: You’re making me dizzy with all the name changes. I started at the end of this thread, so now I’ll go back, start at the beginning, and catch up with conversations about Nathan BadDeal when I get to them. (Are you going to be around at 3:00 a.m.?)

  103. 103.

    Anne Laurie

    @Raenelle: Congratulations on Morgan’s ‘good’ news! I’m sure he’ll adjust just fine to his new tripod status — other dog lovers I’ve known say it can be harder for the owner to adapt than for the dog, because dogs don’t dwell the way we do, they just get on with their lives.

  108. 108.

    LanceThruster

    You’re lucky, actually.

    My neighbor’s tend to drive their monster trucks up and down the street so’s everyone else in the hood can see how awesome they are (boom stereo mandatory). It’s become a little enclave of off-roaders that simply must install exhaust modifications that add considerable extra “growl”. Proof of this ultimate awesomeness is established by winding out every acceleration as if they were just off of the line for a quarter mile burst of growly thumping awesomeness.

    For the life of me I do not understand why those who so love the amplified sound of the internal combustion engine did not buy homes on a busy highway instead of a once quiet oasis. Now it sounds like an ongoing construction zone.

    I think they might drive someone over the edge to the point of them digging tiger pits fitted with spiked power poles across the pit’s bottom (tipped in elephant dung – and not the sweet smelling kind). Probably once they’ve engineered an automatically resetting trap door (sound activated so as not to do away with those few remaining courteous neighbors).

  109. 109.

    Anne Laurie

    Okay, where on the Netflix site is this “local favorites” button? They will offer me 10,000 different iterations of stuff I may like (GI Joe the Rise of Cobra? Not hardly), but I can’t find a way to eavesdrop on what my neighbors like…

  114. 114.

    dlnelson

    @JPL(formerly demo woman): Mad Men, True Blood and Breaking Bad, if you need to nest for the weekend, totally worth your time. Breaking Bad is about a science prof, with lung cancer, totally messing with all he believes in. True Blood, honestly is the most fantastic tv show, music and all. If you are expecting a rotten weekend and need to hang out, this is the ticket. Breaking Bad, is way under the radar, and I think the lead won an award. OT, why do all the really weird political folks get the most air time, and some of the best tv shows are shunned. Just asking. Just a moroone, from the great states of MN and CA.

  116. 116.

    Cliff

    @debit:

    LOL saw it!!

    want the screen cap of “turn off those lights” or whatever it was she closed with as she ducked under the cape

    =)

  117. 117.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    @SiubhanDuinne: That is way past my bed time. According to the AJC Deal’s son-in-law declared bankruptcy before but did not list it this time. Seems like you can declare bankruptcy more than once during an 8 year period. EDIT Red State will blame the confusion on Obama.

    As far as the name change, I’m just going back to the olden days..lol

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debit: IIRC she did work in landscaping (or has some connection with landscaping); this might be an excuse for the dirt. I know about these things because my wife is originally Romanian.

  119. 119.

    beltane

    @SiubhanDuinne: There are regional variations of Arabic throughout the middle east but the situation is not analogous to Yiddish vs Hebrew and is much more comparable to Aramaic vs. Hebrew. During the diaspora Hebrew was a liturgical language that was never used in everyday speech, and even in pre-diaspora times many Jews spoke Greek or Aramaic, not Hebrew.

  121. 121.

    WereBear

    Look what I got for my birthday.

    As long as he can handle a multiple cat home, and we have to keep him inside only, which we already do with our other cats; then he’s ours. Three or four weeks old, he still has the “jelly legs.”

    A friend came to my birthday dinner with that picture in her phone. Her niece had found him in a field. His cries became so insistent they had to give up on his mother finding him and take him to the vet.

    We’re naming him Tristan but he’s already got three nicknames.

  122. 122.

    Tattoosydney

    @Tattoosydney:

    Funny, given the “dogs with missing legs” conversation – the fishing cat in my photo has three legs, having had one amputated after an accident.

    It’s quite a lovely creature, and seems quite happy with its lot. I can see it giving Tunch a run for his money, even with one leg missing.

  123. 123.

    J.W. Hamner

    @MikeJ:

    That definitely sound’s like something I’d do, but I don’t specifically remember it… I’ve had Ad Hoc on my Amazon wishlist since it came out. However I’ve never tried any of Keller’s cookbooks for reals, though I’ve made a variation on his quiche that I think was in Bouchon (it was awesome). How do you think they’d work for relatively novice home cook?

  124. 124.

    dlnelson

    moderation sucks, and I do not fit in. Love reading this sight, but it is ( you fill in the blank). I was only commenting on True Blood and Breaking Bad. Great tv series, you folks will not let anyone new in. D from CA and MN

  125. 125.

    Anne Laurie

    @Breezeblock: Not for me, dammit… I only get a choice of Taste preferences, Previews, Top 100, New Releases, Your Account, Queue, and Watch Instantly. Maybe I’ve just been a member too dam’ long?

  127. 127.

    LiberalTarian

    I’m telling ya, neat stuff on Pawn Stars. Cannons, Viet Nam era ejector seats from planes, old guns (and how to keep their value), 1960s cars, boats, etc. Confederate money, armor, etc. They have experts on to verify and authenticate, which is super cool. :)

  131. 131.

    Breezeblock

    @Anne Laurie:

    AL, if you want to share/Netflix friend, let me know. Herzog, Almodavor, Scorsese.

    I can’t believe, Almodavar’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” FINALLY available!!!

  133. 133.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Rachel as Lesbian Vampire? Laughed myself stupid.

    Also too, really liked her interview with Elizabeth Warren at the top of the program.

    For JPL/demo woman and other Georgians: not sure what I can add to the Nathan Deal discussion. Surely bankruptcy in and of itself isn’t a (sorry) deal-breaker, nor is helping your adult kids set up a business. But from my limited knowledge (I’ve been travelling, and the news seems to leak out and change every day anyhow) it does look as though he’s got something he’s trying to hide, and the fact that he’s being so noisy about releasing his tax returns (essentially just the summary cover sheets) but no supporting docs makes me think he’s trying some distraction.

    I’m not the world’s biggest Roy Barnes fan, but he’s a decent guy and he was totally fucked over in 2002 by Sonny Perdue & Co. I wouldn’t mind seeing him do some powerful oppo on Deal. If it gets ugly, it gets ugly. C’est la guerre.

  137. 137.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @beltane:
    And fuck if the Professional Left ™ isn’t already taking credit. C&L:

    We did it! Today, President Obama names Elizabeth Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — and become a White House economic adviser with direct access to the President.

    Who’s this “we,” kemo sabe?

  139. 139.

    Arclite

    Local Netflix favorites in Honolulu:

    Red Cliff, The Warlords, Tai Chi Master, and Mother. You’re welcome to move here!

  140. 140.

    beltane

    @arguingwithsignposts: They’re veritable Miss Cleos over at MyDD. They know that Obama is so cunning he’s using the Warren appointment to trick gullible progressives into voting in November.

    There comes a time when you have to chalk some things up to emotional issues.

  141. 141.

    RSA

    Raleigh, NC: Wire in the Blood: Prayer of the Bone; Sinbad: Afros and Bellbottoms; The Importance of Being Earnest (2002); My Best Friend; Diary of a Tired Black Man.

    No clue. I did like the stagey 1952 Earnest, though.

  145. 145.

    Cain

    Around here in beaverton we got:

    A town called panic, The Gamers:Dorkness Rising, Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead, Kathy Griffin: She’ll Cut a Bitch, The Legend of Tillamook’s Gold, Paranoid Park, Metropolis, and Hidden Fortress

    +1 for Doctor Who!

    cain

  146. 146.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @beltane, MikeJ:

    Thanks for the good info. I have absolutely no reason for asking or wondering except that the question suddenly popped into my head. I mean, I don’t *need* to know or anything, it’s just interesting.

    @WereBear: Happy birthday. Tristan is a total cutie heartbreaker.

    @jeffreyw: So is Homer, I am besotted.

    @Tattoo Sydney: I had never spent time in your gallery until today. Your photos are just wonderful! (Koalas sleeping in trees! Giraffes sticking out their tongues! Too cute.) Do you, I hope I hope I hope, have plans to write/illustrate additional chapters of “The Man, the Fat Cat, and the Barky Dog” (I might not have that quite right)?

  147. 147.

    Corner Stone

    @Breezeblock: I like movies in English. Preferably made after my DOB. They aren’t there to edumacate.
    What I find funny here is you are saying you like Classics, Silents, et al and yet calling me your grandpa.
    You fucking dbag.

  149. 149.

    New Yorker

    So the National Weather Service survey from the storm that hit New York City yesterday is in:

    Park Slope in Brooklyn was chewed up by a tornado.

    Middle Village and Forest Hills in Queens were smashed by straight-line winds.

    Flushing and Bayside in Queens were hit by a second, stronger tornado.

    I’m not sure about Staten Island, but given the funnel cloud that was videotaped just on the Jersey side of the Arthur Kill, and given the eyewitnesses who said stuff was spinning in the air over Staten Island, I would be shocked if there was no tornado there too.

    So to sum up, Manhattan is likely the only borough not to have been struck by a twister this year. Jesus.

  150. 150.

    Tattoosydney

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    You’ll make me blush.

    I’m taking two months off at the beginning of next year for my mid life crisis, and “The Fat Man…” is on my to do list, as a distraction from other more intensive projects, so yes, I firmly expect there will be more.

    I know my drawing skills are only so-so, however, so I’ve been looking out for someone who can draw to make it a joint project…

  151. 151.

    beltane

    @New Yorker: The pictures out of Park Slope were incredible. On one block the tornado uprooted 100 year old trees and tore apart the sidewalk like a jackhammer. But Al Gore is fat.

  153. 153.

    Breezeblock

    @Corner Stone:

    Fuck off shitwad.

    How was that? You cocksucking piece of crap.

    I didn’t say your taste in movies sucked ass, but, apparently it does.

    HA! When is next showing of 300?

    Dick.

  154. 154.

    MikeJ

    @J.W. Hamner: Ad Hoc is fine for a beginner. Heck, if you deal well with failure, French Laundry is. The big thing with Keller’s books is every minute little step that sounds too trivial to deal with is important.

    If he say to cut the carrots this way, do it that way at least once. Even if it adds an hour. Ok, the carrot cut won’t add an hour, but he really does have steps that you won’t understand, and in the end you’ll be glad you did every stupid step. If you later want to cut the prep time for something down to a few hours you can guess what you can cut, but do it his way at least once.

    Anyway, ad Hoc is certainly the easiest of his books, as far as that goes. Bouchon will require a step up, and Keller himself says the French Laundry book is a couple times a year kinda thing.

  155. 155.

    MikeJ

    @MikeJ: And to follow up myself, I cooked nothing Keller inspired tonight during the interval I was gone. Friday is fish day, and Metropolitan Market had decent looking fresh chinook. Cedar planked that bitch with some polenta on the grill. mmmm. But the cheap Washington pinot noir was good

  157. 157.

    New Yorker

    @beltane:

    I’d be careful about attributing individual weather events to a region’s climate. Remember, that’s what Rush Limbaugh did when DC got a record snowfall this past winter. I mean, New York gets its fair share of thunderstorms. This one just happened to be particularly bad.

  158. 158.

    Corner Stone

    @Breezeblock: Now we’re getting somewhere you lil bitch.
    Hell yeah. I’ll take 300, Ronin, Heat, anything with Gabriel Byrne, Daniel Craig or a hundred other outcomes before I ask someone to please put on a silent movie.
    Shit. I’d turn down getting laid if it meant something ridiculous like that.
    Live in this century bro. There’s entertainment here too.

  159. 159.

    Corner Stone

    “Oh, my precious sugar teated kumquat. Please place the latest Talkie on the phonogramatophical playing apparatus.”

  160. 160.

    RareSanity

    @Southern Beale:

    I guess it goes without saying that “local favorites” filters out porn?

    Wait….Netflix has pr0n?

    (clears throat)…if you all will excuse me for a moment…I have to…um…check the local favorites to post back here…

  161. 161.

    J.W. Hamner

    @MikeJ:

    I am absurdly fascinated by intricate recipes and experienced enough in my n00bness that I find my many failures to be learning experiences… so his books have always called to me, though I often doubt whether I have the skill set to even execute his recipes for the masses.

    Have you ever seen Bourdain’s visit to The French Laundry from “A Cook’s Tour”? It’s pretty awesome.

  162. 162.

    RareSanity

    Seriously though…

    I just got back from spending a week in Japan.

    I never realized how LOUD this country (USA) is until I went there. I don’t think I have ever been so calm in my whole life.

  166. 166.

    MikeJ

    @J.W. Hamner: Wow. I’d never seen that. 4 diners, 20 courses, everybody has something different. That’s just. Wow.

    Since tomorrow is Saturday and I’ve got all day and *finally* have ripe tomatoes[1], I’m doing his oven baked tomato sauce, meatballs and pappardelle tomorrow. It’s in Bouchon.

    [1] I live in Seattle. I finally just pulled the plants inside and hit ’em with the plant light 24/7.

  167. 167.

    Xenos

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Is there any langauge or dialect or even a pidgin or creole of Arabic that is remotely equivalent to the diasporic transformation of Hebrew into something combining the vernacular with the ancient tongue?

    Sicilian? It maintains a Semitic grammatical system from the time when it was an Arab controlled island. If I remember my research well (courtesy of the noted linguist Mario Puzo) this is why other Italians find Sicilian utterly incomprehensible.

    You could contrast that with KiSwhahili, which is structurally a Bantu language in spite of half the vocabulary being Arabic or derived from Arabic.

    Throughout the Muslim world young people are educated through teaching the teaching of classical Arabic. This is not dissimilar from Jews learning Hebrew in Hebrew school. So as generations of kids have learned Arabic that vocabulary has found its way into local languages. So if you learn non-Semitic languages like Pashtun, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Urdu, whatever it is that Berber and Indonesian people speak, you will find a local language that has mixed with Arabic but maintained its original structures. Much like Yiddish being a German language, just for a distinctive German tribe.

  168. 168.

    Origuy

    The closest analogue to Yiddish for Arabic might be Maltese. It’s descended from the Arabic spoken in Malta, Sicily, and southern Italy in the Middle Ages. It has a lot of Italian and English words and is written in the Latin alphabet.

  169. 169.

    Steeplejack

    @Warren Terra:

    Don’t know if you’ll see this–late shift checking in late, as usual–but what I do is substitute a capital i for the lowercase L in sociaIism (and related filter-triggering words). In the font that Balloon Juice uses it comes out looking the same (at least on my computers and awesome new Droid Incredible phone that I love). Don’t always remember to do it, but it looks better than the sucko alternatives (IMO).

  171. 171.

    Steeplejack

    @JPL(formerly demo woman):

    Heat is a very good movie that has held up remarkably well over the years. One of those that gets better with age. Lots of good performances even from the minor characters. (The ending falls apart a bit, but that’s almost a given with caper movies.) And it’s one of the few movies where I can stand Val Kilmer. Which reminds me of the apocryphal Hollywood story about a producer who supposedly said that Kilmer is such a diva that he (the producer) wouldn’t hire Kilmer to star in The Val Kilmer Story.

  174. 174.

    Steeplejack

    @Raenelle:

    Which leg was lost? My brother’s (rescue) greyhound lost her back left leg about a year ago and has adapted pretty well. Think I might even be able to put up a video on Flickr or something.

  177. 177.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Hey, girl. Got in late from work–slowest, slowy-slow-McSlow manager was closing–and I’ve been decompressing and catching up with the two or three most recent threads. Feel okay, but I’ve got to tee it up and do it again tomorrow afternoon. Then my weekend. Yay!

    Are you doing NaNoWriMo again this year? Someone was asking on a previous thread, and I threw out your name. Is it in October or November? I might be game this year. (I registered but wussed out once a few years ago.)

    I am going over to my brother’s house on Sunday, and I might try to capture some video of Wendy the greyhound with the (relatively) new Droid Incredible (which I love, love, love). Just got the OS upgrade a week or so ago that ups the resolution of video that it will do, and I’m interested to check that out.

  178. 178.

    Raenelle

    @Steeplejack: Front right leg. The vet says that’s harder than a back leg, but he can adjust nonetheless. I feel fairly encouraged, and I appreciate the feedback. I’ll let you all know how he’s doing in about a week. Thanks.

  179. 179.

    Steeplejack

    @Raenelle:

    Yes, I believe front legs are harder than back legs. Let us know how it goes. I have a lot of pointless layman’s observations about post-op behavior, care, etc., that I will be all too happy to share.

  180. 180.

    Anne Laurie

    @Breezeblock: Hah, I don’t need any help — I’m never able to get my queue much below 495 as it is, partially because the Spousal Unit has a ton of ‘place markers’ for various anime series he wants to get around to watching eventually. (Also, you’d be appalled by my lousy tastes.) I’m just nosy about what’s popular in my working-class, retiree-heavy enclave in the Peoples’ Republic of Taxachusetts.

  181. 181.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Steeplejack: Sucky on the slow manager.

    NaNoWriMo is in November. I might do it again, but as I answered in that thread, the writing part has never been my problem–it’s the editing and submitting. We shall see. It does light a fire under my ass to finish a whole novel in a month.

    @Raenelle: Good luck with Morgan. Sending positive vibes your way. Let us know how it goes.

    @Anne Laurie: I have fifty movies on my queue. If I want to add another one, I have to kick one off. Why? Because it’s how I roll (OCD).

  182. 182.

    Montysano

    Long, long day on my feet at a technical theatre conference. 2 hour drive to get home at 9:00 PM, then another 40 min. drive to catch the Carolina Chocolate Drops live at a little outdoor festival in Decatur, Alabama (wut??). It immediately goes into my top15 live shows ever.

    Monty +4

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