Christopher J. Arndt fights a never ending battle for truth and justice...


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Steranko Discoveries

I was not previously aware that noted comic book creator, artist (especially because of his all-too-brief run on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Jim Steranko had some involvement in the film industry.

Now could someone tell me if the Steranko.com that I found is actually his?

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/28/2006 01:59:00 AM | |

Simultaneous Auto Racing

On Sunday March 26th, 2006 the world found IndyCars racing on ABC the same time that Fox presented a fresh race of NASCAR.

I just found it freaky.

I wonder how ratings compare. Which is truly more popular: IndyCar racing or NASCAR?

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/28/2006 01:10:00 AM | |

Hammer... Space?

These idiots are taking this stuff way too seriously.

The entry is yet another reason why Wikipedia is crap. Or rather this entry is an example of why I cannot take Wikipedia seriously as a full reliable and useful resource.

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/23/2006 03:39:00 AM | |

Wednesday Night is a Crime (Drama)

I watch Lost on Wednesdays. That's about it. The rest of the time the TV is on as noise. There is no actual reason to have it on otherwise; it's sad that it's on at all for that matter.

(Hopefully I can comment on Lost later).

Both ABC and NBC have launched two new crime dramas, entitled The Evidence and Heist, respectively. ABC has square-jawed white guy Rob Estes and Orlando Jones, best known to me for Evolution and The Time Machine, neither of which seem quite preparatory for hard-edged crime drama, but maybe that's just me. Maybe Orlando Jones has range. The advertising bills it at as a sort of CSI where the audience is presented with the "evidence" ("what will we name this show?") before the characters get to see it, play with it and whatnot. The promotion for Heist doesn't list the players but tries to sell the show with a style sort. Wednesday night for NBC means Law and Order but NBC actually moved the show from 10 PM to 9 PM, in part to promote the new show, I believe. Heist is implied to be important enough that Law and Order changed time slots and NBC presented it as a big deal. The advertisement actually states that there is a new first for the program and it does "something that it has never done before. Change times". I wish I was joking. The Evidence starts after Lost with a 10 PM time slot. I'm sure it is more interesting than Invasion. I am more interested in The Evidence than Invasion. I won't watch The Evidence either.

CBS has its current crime shows from Criminal Minds at 9 and CSI: New York at 10 PM. Of course it has sitcoms at 8 PM. There's a strange comedy with Henrey Winkler and Jennifer Tilly and either one of those two creeps me out. 8:30 has an odd comedy that I am sure those TeeVee folk wish would die already. At least Courting Alex delivers a paycheck to Jenna Elfman and a refugee from Ed; the other refugee ended up as an unloved monkey. Criminal Minds is a psychological thing with weird "genius" freaks spouting pretentious things while catching killers. One of the co-stars used to play Greg on Dharma & Greg and the titular Alex for that sitcom is played by the woman who was Dharma. I think some show scheduler is overly proud with himself for how clever he thinks he is.

ABC also starts its Wedneday night line-up with sitcoms. In the early fall it used to be the encore episode of Lost but apparently that was only temporary; it doesn't matter since Lost has so many reruns now that tonight having a new episode was actually a shock. The sitcoms are The George Lopez Show and the Freddie Prinz Jr vehicle. It's called "Freddie". Tonight actually had the gayest crossover I have ever seen. I had Lopez's show on for noise while I was washing dishes and while George and his sidekick waited to beat the head in of a supposed pervert we the audience finds the pervert to be Freddie and his sidekick. I only wondered for three seconds if it would continue into the next half-hour. Five minutes later my minimal thinking was confirmed. I didn't watch the second program all the way through. It cannot be done.

Fox has Bones. They moved the show from Tuesday to Wednesday night a few weeks ago. I can almost enjoy the program and certainly enjoy it more than the sitcoms but if Bones had one effect similar to engraining itself into my brain... I didn't notice that effect. I'll put it simply. I forgot it was on. That's easy for me to do. The shows after that were a half-hour of American Idol and then Fox's bunker game show.

I won't go into Pax's shows. I will say that I wish I could have see the PBS programs, but I was busy. It had space and stuff.

I also did not see the Heat-Pistons game. I always assume that the Pistons win, regardless of who Shaq thinks he is.



posted by Chris Arndt at 3/23/2006 01:21:00 AM | |

duty motivation morality responsibility

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/20/2006 01:54:00 AM | |

Ping-o-Matic

This link alerts the updater services as to new publications and productions on AD. Whenever it is clicked little imaginary digital automatons scurry across the vast internet at lightspeed only to be stopped for reading. (Information is transmitted at the speed of light, from what I can tell; modems don't).

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/19/2006 05:08:00 PM | |

Late Sunday Afternoon Programming

In defiance of TitanTV listings we have the following.

CBS continues March Madness. Fox switched off to affiliate programming instead of NASCAR and so WSYM Fox 47 threw us an ending of Frasier and an episode of DaVinci's Inquest. WXMI Fox 17 gives us some Soul Train Music Awards special.

NBC has more golf. I hate gold on TV.

The early Sunday afternoon sucked as it was mostly sports with no alternative. Fine interest to some but hardly universal; it's a good reason to read a book. I think I used the time to sulk; I don't know why.

PBS consists of WKAR rerunnig Mark Phillips' wine-tasting program. That seems mildly entertaining.

I don't know what ABC is doing nor do I care.

For Pax we follow WZPX 43 which has switched to a time share of WB and so is playing an old episode of Charmed from a couple of seasons ago. This small story arc introduces Rose McGowan to the show; she's most well-known to me for this series and also for showing up to an awards show as Marilyn Manson's date while wearing practically nothing. Ironically is she didn't try dressing to stun she would practically anyone as she is quite quite quite pretty. She's also a busty redhead. If Pax wasn't WB we'd see from WPXD 31 that it would just be infomercials.

As for anything further I do not want to go into it.

WKAR 23 started out swell this afternoon with the McLaughlin Group. I love that show; I wish I could see it earlier in the weekend.

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/19/2006 04:39:00 PM | |

Early Sunday Afternoon Programming

Putting it simply.

CBS has March Madness, the NCAA basketball championship tournement.
ABC has an NBA game with the Lakers at the Cavs (the Cavs won by a single point).
NBC has professional golf.
Fox has NASCAR.

Pax had infomercials. PBS has pledge week with WKAR doing something on old people living longer.

Late afternoon has it all thrown up into the air but I am not talking about that.

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/19/2006 04:28:00 PM | |

Rihanna S.O.S. Rescue Me

Soft Cell Tainted Love

too similar to be true

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/16/2006 07:53:00 PM | |

Comparing Bush to Hitler

from writer Michael Hutchison

I've wanted to write about this for some time but I've never taken the time to set up my own political blog.

Encountering those "Bush speech vs. Hitler speech" web sites, I've looked into those and concluded that they ARE similar. No, really.

Bush praises the fine men of the American army and hopes God will watch over them in battle.
Hitler praises the fine men of the German army and hopes God will watch over them in battle.

Bush talks about America having a destiny.
Hitler talks about Germany having a destiny.

Bush thanks his hosts for a lovely supper.
Hitler thanks his hosts for a lovely supper.
:-)

In other words, if you took all of Hitler's speeches and removed all the gun seizures, forced relocations, annexations of neighboring countries, racial purity, socialism, denial of all rights and property to ethnic groups, the required yellow stars and pink triangles, the encouraged destruction of stores and businesses belonging to certain ethnic groups, and, oh yeah, all the Jew hatred, cattle cars and death camps, then you'd be left with speeches of which several very generic and common politician phrases could be similar to Bush.

Because Hitler's crimes were, as you know, his speeches. It's his speeches that were bad. When you look up Hitler in the Encyclopedia, it says, "Made speeches about patriotism and God. History's greatest monster."

I guess it was inevitable. Hitler and the Nazis ruined a lot of fairly common and acceptable things, like short moustaches, the goosestep and the up-til-then innocuous swastika symbol... and now they've ruined generic phrases about being proud of your country and asking for God to watch over the military.

Goosestepping creeps us out, but that's because we mentally associate it with a regime that killed six million Jews. There isn't actually anything intrinsically wrong with goosestepping. If some guys in a marching band started goosestepping, we may tell them that it's socially inappropriate because it reminds us of the Nazis...but we wouldn't immediately conclude that the marching band WERE Nazis.

Hitler mentions God a lot, but if anything this just strikes me as playing the crowd. Does anyone really believe that Hitler dropped to his knees to pray, read from the Bible regularly or actually believed in Christ's teachings? Here in America, we're used to hearing politicians talking religion while not actually believing in it; this doesn't mean all politicians mentioning God are just engaging in manipulation. I think Bush is a believer and Hitler isn't, and just finding sentences where they say similar, fairly common sentiments about God does not prove anything.

On a related note, love of country was not invented by Hitler.

In so many important ways, they are dissimilar. Hitler said, "All of our problems are caused by the Jews. Let's take away their rights and property, destroy their stores, relocate them into ghettos, then finally cart them away and kill them." Bush says, "Islam means peace. We should not suspect all of our neighbors just because of the actions of a few of their religion who were from other countries. I'll visit mosques and invite Muslims to our 9-11 ceremonies. We'll even strip search old white ladies, wheelchair-bound Japanese men and black two-year-old girls, even if no one ever seizing a plane has ever fit that description, and we'll prohibit nail clippers and sewing scissors and take away the pointy-edged Medal of Honor from a veteran, all at great inconvenience, wasted effort and wasted billions, just so Arabs and Muslims won't feel singled out at the airport." That's a fundamental and important difference.

We won't even delve into the distinction between the Jews' biggest crime being that they owned stores in Europe, whereas America was attacked by Muslim terrorists. It's just not the same thing.

originally posted on March 02, 2006 at 17:54:19 with IP:129.42.161.36

How do you make Bush like Hitler? According to Eric Spratling, "you have to think like a complete moral imbecile." Let's not let the inconsistencies between a Hitler speech and a Bush speech stop us.

See, here's how you get around those inconvenient facts:

You equate gun seizures with the government retaining the option to see who's checking out books about how to build bombs from GOVERNMENT libraries.

You equate forced relocations of seemingly-arbitrary ethnic groups/cattle cars to death camps to with Guantanamo Bay, a holding area for prisoners of war with yearly reviews for detainees. Where detainees are given, three meals a day, health care, regular religious services, and other "luxuries" that the majority of the detainees didn't get in their home countries. It must be the only death camp in history where the detainees leave literally heavier than when they came in.

You equate racial purity with, um... "house Negroes," I guess.

You equate denial of all rights and property to ethnic groups with "denial" of marriage rights to homosexuals... which is ludicrous, of course, because homosexuals never had marriage rights to begin with, and the argument is about the definition of marriage-- to say that the government is denying gays the right to marry makes about as much sense as saying the government's denying me the right to have a two-way conversation with my refrigerator-- but never mind that.

You equate yellow stars and pink triangles with, um... civil unions, I guess. Or maybe long lines at airport security. Yeah, that's it.

You equate the encouraged destruction of minority-owned business/property with... question-asking visits from the FBI or Secret Service to local Arab foreign nationals whenever the President is going to come to town, maybe. Or warrantless wiretaps, perhaps. Sorry guys, I'm running on empty; I can only force my brain to think like a complete idiot for so long.

Seriously, though: that's all there is to it. Just fill yourself up with mock outrage about non-starters, and BAM! Everyone you don't like is a Nazi, and therefore you are always the hero for standing up to them. It's fun for the whole family!

There. All set.

Spratling postered on March 02, 2006 at 18:57:27 from South Korea with IP:211.50.59.78

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/03/2006 07:09:00 PM | |

religious retreat

I will be gone on a religious retreat until next Saturday.

Feel free to keep stopping by daily and buy stuff through Amazon so my hit count doesn't fall in the meantime.

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/03/2006 03:33:00 PM | |

Garrison Keillor Goes Robert A. Heinlein?

In his latest column, Garrison Keillor, the comforting voice and host of the Prairie Home Companion radio program, actually suggests passing "constitutional amendment requiring that a candidate for president have at least two years of full-time military service." This has echoes of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, where recognition as a Citizen with all rights thereof is only granted to those with public service, usually military. Mr. Keillor is not a right-winger by any means, politically, so this view surprises me. I can't really support the amendemnt but the idea and the sentiment surrounding it sound and good.

When you think about it only one American President in the past thirty years has not served in our Armed Forces.

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/03/2006 03:29:00 PM | |

Bus Stop (lyrics) by the Hollies

Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella

All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella, we employed it
By August, she was mine

Every morning I would see her waiting at the stop
Sometimes she'd shopped and she would show me what she bought
All the people stared as if we were both quite insane
Someday my name and hers are going to be the same

That's the way the whole thing started
Silly but it's true
Thinkin' of a sweet romance
Beginning in a queue

Came the sun the ice was melting
No more sheltering now
Nice to think that that umbrella
Led me to a vow

Every morning I would see her waiting at the stop
Sometimes she'd shopped and she would show me what she bought
Other people stared as if we were both quite insane
Someday my name and hers are going to be the same

Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella

All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella, we employed it
By August, she was mine


from here

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/03/2006 01:26:00 AM | |

Firefly Theme

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me...


from here

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/03/2006 01:24:00 AM | |

Yes. It's 20 Bucks

Television series put on DVD, especially cancelled ones with the total output packaged in one set, tend to b expensive, and tend to take a long time for the pricepoint to drop. Typically sales are rare. Really good sales are rarer still. I found out about the baragain at slickdeals.net and then shared it with my buddy Hutch. Feast your eyes.

To get free shipping I will shell out five dollars more for something I would have gotten anyway at some point or another. I will buy Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons, all of them!
I love Superman. I hate paying thirty bucks to get a twenty-dollar item but I'd hate paying $25 and not getting $25 worth of stuff. At least now I get stuff worth the money.

More importantly I get Firefly. Now to get a job.

posted by Chris Arndt at 3/02/2006 12:23:00 PM | |