• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Come on, man.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Republicans in disarray!

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Open Thread

by John Cole|  September 17, 20107:41 pm| 187 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

FacebookTweetEmail

I’m looking at the local favorites on Netflix, which shows me what people around here like to watch, and I think I need to move. Frank Caliendo? Really? Modern Marvels: Monster Trucks?

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « The Murkowski name
Next Post: She bop »

Reader Interactions

187Comments

  1. 1.

    quaint irene

    September 17, 2010 at 7:44 pm

    Modern Marvels: Monster Trucks?

    Sounds like you live near the Simpsons.

  2. 2.

    Patty K

    September 17, 2010 at 7:45 pm

    Come to Chapel Hill! It’s much more your style than W Va!

  3. 3.

    Ron Beasley

    September 17, 2010 at 7:46 pm

    I think I need to move

    You just now figuring that out?

  4. 4.

    arguingwithsignposts

    September 17, 2010 at 7:46 pm

    Terre Haute, IN: Care Bears, Popeye, and Beer for My Horses.

  5. 5.

    Kobie

    September 17, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    Hey, that Frank Caliendo does a good John Madden impression.

    What’s that? That’s all he does? Oh.

  6. 6.

    The Dangerman

    September 17, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 7:48 pm

    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).

  8. 8.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    I’m just not buying “Annie Frost”.
    Sorry NBC.

  9. 9.

    Cliff

    September 17, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    Puppy neighbor followed me home, tried taking him home a few times but till humans are there he keeps following me back to my place.

    http://mollymaesden.blogspot.com/2010/09/neighbor-puppy-followed-us-home.html

    He sure loves playing with Molly.

  10. 10.

    New Yorker

    September 17, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    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.

  12. 12.

    jeffreyw

    September 17, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Annie has reached a truce with Homer.

  13. 13.

    Warren Terra

    September 17, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    (removed because it had a word tripping the [email protected] filter)

  14. 14.

    Tsulagi

    September 17, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    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.

  21. 21.

    jeffreyw

    September 17, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    Pasta? Or maybe…Pizza!

  22. 22.

    Southern Beale

    September 17, 2010 at 8:02 pm

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

  23. 23.

    The Dangerman

    September 17, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    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?

  24. 24.

    MikeJ

    September 17, 2010 at 8:03 pm

    @Warren Terra:

    you’ve got only yourself to blame.

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

  25. 25.

    scav

    September 17, 2010 at 8:05 pm

    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)

    September 17, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    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.

  27. 27.

    Cat Lady

    September 17, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    @ Warren Terra

    We here in Boston get to read Charlie’s sports blog and to see him regularly on tee vee. Sports made even more awesome, if that’s possible.

  28. 28.

    jeffreyw

    September 17, 2010 at 8:07 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:08 pm

    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.

  30. 30.

    Cliff

    September 17, 2010 at 8:08 pm

    @MikeJ:

    if you google a sentence or paragraph, the odds are extremely high that you will find the source.

    Just sayin’

  31. 31.

    Nemo_N

    September 17, 2010 at 8:09 pm

    Random recommendation: “Poirot” movies are highly entertaining if only because of David Suchet.

  32. 32.

    jeffreyw

    September 17, 2010 at 8:09 pm

    @WaterGirl:
    OK, lol

  33. 33.

    BottyGuy

    September 17, 2010 at 8:10 pm

    Wow, I was sure that your neighbors were watching Let the Right One In its excellent and available instantly.

  34. 34.

    MikeJ

    September 17, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    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).

  36. 36.

    Chat Noir

    September 17, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    @Cat Lady: Stephanie Miller has him on most Tuesdays in the 10:30 a.m. ET hour. He’s very funny.

  37. 37.

    Earl

    September 17, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    Sounds like you could be living on Da Range…

    Or, as W put it, the “Iron Ridge”

  38. 38.

    Comrade Kevin

    September 17, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    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.

  39. 39.

    CynDee

    September 17, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    The local favorites some of us would most like to see are Tunch, Lily, and Rosie. Hint hint.

    Thnx

  40. 40.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    September 17, 2010 at 8:18 pm

    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.

  41. 41.

    Keith G

    September 17, 2010 at 8:19 pm

    Amazing young men doing a thankless task with monumental skill and bravery. Not a film…life.

    http://www.globalpost.com/video/commerce/100916/location-firefight-kunar-province

    I’ve watched it twice. Tears each time.

  42. 42.

    Warren Terra

    September 17, 2010 at 8:23 pm

    @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)

    September 17, 2010 at 8:24 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:25 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    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)

    September 17, 2010 at 8:28 pm

    @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.

  47. 47.

    LiberalTarian

    September 17, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    Pawn Stars is surprisingly entertaining.

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    September 17, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    Watching Countdown, I think Mike Huckabee blew out his stomach staples.

  49. 49.

    Janet Strange

    September 17, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    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.

  50. 50.

    debit

    September 17, 2010 at 8:42 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That man is scum. I was sickened watching him.

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 8:43 pm

    @JPL(formerly demo woman): Get thee to a Heat viewing, stat.
    Somewhere with surround sound.
    CHUNKCHUNKCHUNKCHUNK!!

  52. 52.

    Ken J.

    September 17, 2010 at 8:44 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    @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

  54. 54.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    @Breezeblock:

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

    IOW…*yawn*.

  55. 55.

    scav

    September 17, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 8:48 pm

    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.

  57. 57.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 8:51 pm

    BTW, get the Top Gear instant streaming.
    Balls, straight balls.

  58. 58.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    September 17, 2010 at 8:53 pm

    @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.

  59. 59.

    Delia

    September 17, 2010 at 8:53 pm

    @Janet Strange:

    Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet

    Maybe it was on the required viewing list this week for AP English.

  60. 60.

    wasabi gasp

    September 17, 2010 at 8:57 pm

    Balls, straight balls.

    Ball finicky?

  61. 61.

    morzer

    September 17, 2010 at 8:58 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    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.

  64. 64.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 9:03 pm

    @JPL(formerly demo woman): Sounds kinda nice.

  65. 65.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 9:04 pm

    @wasabi gasp: Homosexual balls are fine too. As long as they fucking bring it.

  66. 66.

    Mark S.

    September 17, 2010 at 9:05 pm

    Geez, John, you live in rural West Virginia. What were you expecting, 8 1/2 and Rashomon?

  67. 67.

    burnspbesq

    September 17, 2010 at 9:06 pm

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    But, but but …

    The Revolution will NOT be Televised.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qoalKUt0mo

  68. 68.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    September 17, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:12 pm

    @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.

  71. 71.

    Cliff

    September 17, 2010 at 9:17 pm

    @Warren Terra:

    Total link Fail.

    woops. LOL it happens to all of us .. my original comment is still the fastest way to find it, otherwise here is the link to the guys main blog: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation

  72. 72.

    Raenelle

    September 17, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    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.

  73. 73.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    @MikeJ: I like the scene in the empty drive-in movie theater.
    Awe. Some.

  74. 74.

    BR

    September 17, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    Just watched The Thin Blue Line for the first time. Great and sobering documentary.

  75. 75.

    El Cid

    September 17, 2010 at 9:23 pm

    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)

    September 17, 2010 at 9:25 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:29 pm

    @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)

    September 17, 2010 at 9:29 pm

    @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..

  79. 79.

    debit

    September 17, 2010 at 9:30 pm

    @Raenelle: Thank FSM you caught it in time. Morgan is a lucky boy.

  80. 80.

    JGabriel

    September 17, 2010 at 9:33 pm

    debit: I doubt that Morgan is feeling the luck right now, though, as Raenelle noted, he’ll probably adjust.

    .

  81. 81.

    Betsy

    September 17, 2010 at 9:33 pm

    @morzer:
    Hi, neighbor!

  82. 82.

    El Cid

    September 17, 2010 at 9:34 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:36 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:36 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    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.

  88. 88.

    Betsy

    September 17, 2010 at 9:39 pm

    @J.W. Hamner:
    Dang, there are a lot of Cambervillians around these parts! Fucking east coast liberal elite.

  89. 89.

    Keith G

    September 17, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @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)

    September 17, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    @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.

  93. 93.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    September 17, 2010 at 9:44 pm

    @The Dangerman: don’t watch the pregame shows. Especially during the Super Bowl, when they last, what several hours?

    The Super Bowl’s? Several months.

  94. 94.

    debit

    September 17, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 9:47 pm

    @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.

  96. 96.

    srv

    September 17, 2010 at 9:48 pm

    @JPL(formerly demo woman): Meh, The Departed was a sucky remake of Infernal Affairs.

    Hong Kong kicks Hollywoods ass.

  97. 97.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 17, 2010 at 9:51 pm

    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.

  98. 98.

    MikeJ

    September 17, 2010 at 9:54 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Wikipedia says Nubi and Juba are spoken in Sudan and Babalia in Chad. But that’s my only source, so take it for what you will.

  99. 99.

    SIA

    September 17, 2010 at 9:55 pm

    @jeffreyw: That is too cute! Looks like they’ll be best buds.

  100. 100.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 17, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    @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.?)

  101. 101.

    Raenelle

    September 17, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    Thanks for the comments about Morgan. I AM wrung out, and the comments help.

  102. 102.

    Tattoosydney

    September 17, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    @BottyGuy:

    Let the Right One In

    Seconded. A really wonderful, and wonderfully scary, movie.

  103. 103.

    Anne Laurie

    September 17, 2010 at 9:58 pm

    @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.

  104. 104.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    September 17, 2010 at 10:00 pm

    Rachel Maddow is a lesbian vampire? Cool!

  105. 105.

    debit

    September 17, 2010 at 10:00 pm

    Rachel Maddow: Lesbian vampire. I, Am. DYING.

  106. 106.

    Breezeblock

    September 17, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    @Corner Stone:
    How are you doing Grandma?

  107. 107.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    September 17, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    @debit:

    Hey, at least she’s on our side!

  108. 108.

    LanceThruster

    September 17, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    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…

  110. 110.

    Cliff

    September 17, 2010 at 10:03 pm

    @Raenelle:

    even 2 legged dogs can have a brilliant happy life

    with 3 they will hardly notice if you don’t.

  111. 111.

    debit

    September 17, 2010 at 10:05 pm

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Just be careful if someone named Woddam moves in next store and seems to have several large boxes of dirt.

  112. 112.

    Breezeblock

    September 17, 2010 at 10:05 pm

    @Anne Laurie:

    WAY down on the bottom of the BROWSE.

  113. 113.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    September 17, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    Shit, there’s a rental open next door!

    We’re Dooooomed!

  114. 114.

    dlnelson

    September 17, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    @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.

  115. 115.

    Tattoosydney

    September 17, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    I’m going to drop a link to my new photos in for the evening shift as well – an Australian finch, a giraffe with attitude and this beautiful fishing cat.

  116. 116.

    Cliff

    September 17, 2010 at 10:09 pm

    @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)

    September 17, 2010 at 10:10 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:11 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:11 pm

    @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.

  120. 120.

    Betsy

    September 17, 2010 at 10:12 pm

    @Tattoosydney:
    LOVE the giraffe tongue.

    The last time I was at a zoo, there was a giraffe and her baby giraffe. The cuteness was off the charts.

  121. 121.

    WereBear

    September 17, 2010 at 10:13 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:13 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:15 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:22 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    @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?

  126. 126.

    slag

    September 17, 2010 at 10:26 pm

    @jeffreyw: There’s just waaaaay too much cute in that photo.

  127. 127.

    LiberalTarian

    September 17, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    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. :)

  128. 128.

    arguingwithsignposts

    September 17, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    OT, but via GOS: Obama sold us out! Warren with the big stick.

    Bully pulpit ™ bitchez! /obot

  129. 129.

    slag

    September 17, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    @WereBear: Happy birthday! Good present.

  130. 130.

    beltane

    September 17, 2010 at 10:31 pm

    @arguingwithsignposts: Most of the comments are positive, but I have no doubt the “Elizabeth Warren will sell us out” contingent will arrive shortly.

  131. 131.

    Breezeblock

    September 17, 2010 at 10:34 pm

    @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!!!

  132. 132.

    JPL(formerly demo woman)

    September 17, 2010 at 10:34 pm

    @beltane: I just hate that the President appointed a consumer advocate to run the agency. What about the poor bankers?

  133. 133.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 17, 2010 at 10:36 pm

    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.

  134. 134.

    arguingwithsignposts

    September 17, 2010 at 10:37 pm

    @beltane:
    They just got there (posting a mydd link).

    You knew it was coming. Like the sun rising.

  135. 135.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 10:40 pm

    @Breezeblock: Shit. How old are you, Sonny?
    Your list sounds like a granny, if they were able to program Netflix for themselves.

  136. 136.

    Batocchio

    September 17, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    Caliendo does some great impressions and has some good stand-up routines – but I heard his show wasn’t so hot.

  137. 137.

    arguingwithsignposts

    September 17, 2010 at 10:44 pm

    @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?

  138. 138.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 10:44 pm

    @Breezeblock: Noir, Silent, Foreign and Classics.
    You are breaking the fucking bank amigo.

  139. 139.

    Arclite

    September 17, 2010 at 10:51 pm

    Local Netflix favorites in Honolulu:

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

  140. 140.

    beltane

    September 17, 2010 at 10:51 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    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.

  142. 142.

    Breezeblock

    September 17, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    OK grampa. Whatever. I like what I like = Not Disney.

    Corner, gimme what you got?

  143. 143.

    arguingwithsignposts

    September 17, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    @beltane:

    trick gullible progressives into voting in November.

    If he is, I hope he succeeds in his quest, because i’d hate to think what happens if the DFH vote stays home.

  144. 144.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    September 17, 2010 at 10:55 pm

    @arguingwithsignposts: Just so you know the world is still on its axis, Glenn Greenwald says Obama is picking on him.

  145. 145.

    Cain

    September 17, 2010 at 10:55 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:58 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 10:59 pm

    @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.

  148. 148.

    Corner Stone

    September 17, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    “The Man, the Fat Cat, and the Barky Dog

    I think it was, “The Fat Man, the Fat Dog. the Fattest Cat and the Barky Dog”.

  149. 149.

    New Yorker

    September 17, 2010 at 11:02 pm

    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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:06 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:08 pm

    @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.

  152. 152.

    NobodySpecial

    September 17, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    @arguingwithsignposts: You didn’t get the memo? DFH’s don’t count and have no influence, the way it should be.

    Right?

  153. 153.

    Breezeblock

    September 17, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:10 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:13 pm

    @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

  156. 156.

    wasabi gasp

    September 17, 2010 at 11:17 pm

    Fuck off shitwad.
    How was that?

    Never even heard of that one. I gotta get a Netflix account.

  157. 157.

    New Yorker

    September 17, 2010 at 11:24 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:45 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:49 pm

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

  160. 160.

    RareSanity

    September 17, 2010 at 11:52 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:54 pm

    @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

    September 17, 2010 at 11:57 pm

    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.

  163. 163.

    Mornington Crescent

    September 17, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    Netflix has “The Thing With Two Heads”, one of the more bizarre blaxploitation movies from the 70s, starring Ray Milland and Rosey Grier, on instant view.

    Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWHNA_j7h5A

  164. 164.

    BDeevDad

    September 18, 2010 at 12:03 am

    I was just happy that Defiance was added to instant play when I went on a business trip this week.

  165. 165.

    J.W. Hamner

    September 18, 2010 at 12:06 am

    I’m casually watching Robotech on instant watch. Netflix ftw.

  166. 166.

    MikeJ

    September 18, 2010 at 12:07 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 12:12 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 12:14 am

    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

    September 18, 2010 at 12:28 am

    @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).

  170. 170.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 12:29 am

    @jeffreyw:

    Awesome picture.

  171. 171.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 12:37 am

    @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.

  172. 172.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 12:43 am

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Probably because of this, the ur–text: Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

    ETA: I see Burnspbesq has already answered.

  173. 173.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 18, 2010 at 12:51 am

    @jeffreyw: Congrats on your new addition. Homer is too adorable. Give him hugs and pets for me.

    @Cliff: Is this the poor guy with cropped ears?

    @Raenelle: Thank you for taking in Morgan and for giving him the love he deserves. He will be fine!

  174. 174.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 12:51 am

    @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.

  175. 175.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 1:03 am

    @Corner Stone:

    It’s okay to like movies made before 1980.

  176. 176.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 18, 2010 at 1:04 am

    @Steeplejack: Do it. I would love to see a pic. How you be, Steepman?

  177. 177.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 1:17 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 1:18 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 1:33 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 1:45 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 2:08 am

    @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

    September 18, 2010 at 2:15 am

    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

  183. 183.

    Steeplejack

    September 18, 2010 at 2:16 am

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Because it’s how I roll (OCD CDO).

    Fix’d.

  184. 184.

    Cliff

    September 18, 2010 at 3:14 am

    @asiangrrlMN:

    @Cliff: Is this the poor guy with cropped ears?

    yup, that him, looks a lot different than he did when we first met…

    http://mollymaesden.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-neighbor.html

  185. 185.

    CynDee

    September 18, 2010 at 9:45 am

    @JPL(formerly demo woman): Ooops.

  186. 186.

    asiangrrlMN

    September 18, 2010 at 10:38 am

    @Steeplejack: You got it!

    @Cliff: Poor poor puppeh. Though, he still looks happy.

  187. 187.

    burnspbesq

    September 18, 2010 at 11:02 am

    @beltane:

    What’s the point of having storms like that in NYC if Yankee Stadium is not destroyed?

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

2023 Pet Calendars

Pet Calendar Preview: A
Pet Calendar Preview: B

*Calendars can not be ordered until Cafe Press gets their calendar paper in.

Recent Comments

  • NotMax on Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in Memphis (Jan 29, 2023 @ 1:21am)
  • mrmoshpotato on Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in Memphis (Jan 29, 2023 @ 1:21am)
  • HumboldtBlue on War for Ukraine Day 338: Russia Unloads on Ukraine Again (Jan 29, 2023 @ 1:19am)
  • NotMax on Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in Memphis (Jan 29, 2023 @ 1:17am)
  • Another Scott on War for Ukraine Day 338: Russia Unloads on Ukraine Again (Jan 29, 2023 @ 1:13am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Favorite Dogs & Cats
Classified Documents: A Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup

Front-pager Twitter

John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
ActualCitizensUnited

Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice   

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!