I am going to give some big spoilers for Season 1 of "Homeland" so skip the rest of this post if you haven't seen it.

A few weeks ago I ordered Season 1 of "Homeland" on Blu-ray. Finally finished watching it last night. I see why the show is a hit. The acting is very good for TV. Damian Lewis, the main character, is a soldier who was captured, held and tortured in Iraq for 8 years. The show revolves around the question of whether or not he has been turned by his captors and plans to commit a terrorist act. Claire Danes does an impressive job portraying an obsessed CIA investigator who is both gifted and also mentally unbalanced. Mandy Patinkin is outstanding as her mentor Saul. I also love Morena Baccarin who has what could be a thankless role as the wife of the hero/terrorist soldier. She somehow gives it a touch of naivete that makes her character sympathetic without becoming a cypher. It also doesn't hurt that she's probably the most attractive woman on TV these days.

Continue reading

So I just finished up another segment on HuffPost Live, and this the time host was Abby Huntsman. Hubba Hubba. I was kind of bummed that the 'excited one' Marc Lamont Hill, who probably took the day off after getting punched around yesterday for that insensitive comment he made regarding the  deceased cop-killer, Chris Dorner, wasn't the host today.

Abby has really come along way since when I first met her at one of her dad's last Presidential primary campaign event in Miami. Great job today Abby, and please tell Marc I send my best. Bwahahaha!

Continue reading

Rhianna and Chris Brown show up at the Liberal puke awards, aka The Grammys, arm in arm and everyone hates on Chris Brown.

Why Feminist?

Continue reading

... it's great!

They're obviously going for a different demographic than the one I'm in.  Justin Bieber was just the host (and musical guest, I imagine).  I don't think he took his shirt off, but I imagine it was pitched in the writer's room. 

I mean, everyone else does.  Taking off your shirt is the new "Ayyyyyy...."

Continue reading

In response to I Resent Your Politicization of the Issue. Saturday Night Live Is Just Awful in All Respects.:

I wasn't kidding when I said I never watch it. I think the last semi-funny skit I saw on SNL was "D*** in a Box", and that might have been on YouTube, not actually on my TV.

Continue reading

In response to Wow. That Sketch Was Stunningly Bad:

I do believe you're right that the reason the sketch was met with funereal silence was that it was premised on a lie, and an obvious lie, so the audience just wasn't willing to go along with it.  As they always say, any satire must be grounded in some truth.  I can't just start calling a thin person Fatty-Fat-Fat-Butt and expect people to join in.  (Unless I'm doing a sort of meta- thing or something.)

So sure, this was a sketch doomed by politics.  Similarly they doomed their election coverage due to politics; they couldn't even find it within themselves to be as honest about Barack Obama's debate performance as Rachel Maddow.  I remember reading SNL's defense at the time; media asked them why that sketch was so bad.  "There just was anything funny there," they said.

Continue reading

In response to Getting 'Lost' Again:

John, I was a rabid "Lost" fan back in the day, but now I'm afraid to go anywhere near a box set, because I'm afraid to take that roller-coaster ride of fascination and disappointment again.  To get the bad out of the way first, that ending wasn't just poor, it was insulting.  Not just the last episode, but the entire concluding "arc" of the show.  The metaphysical parts weren't so bad, and I almost admire the cheek of capping off years of "they're all dead and the island is Purgatory!" speculation from fans by actually making that one of the narratives in the last year.  They'd introduced enough time-travel machinery to sell the "flash-sideways" scenes in the final year as an altered timeline.  That's not a bad bit of sleight-of-hand, considering that what was really happening was something the fans had expected and/or dreaded all along.

Continue reading

In his latest column, Thaddeus McCotter wrote:

[M]any lament President Woodrow Wilson’s creation of the Federal Reserve Board  and rampant internationalism. But these historical indictments pale before his  presidency’s most notorious “unforeseen consequence”: He preempted Tuesday  night’s episode of “Vegas.”

After a century of our free republic surviving its absence, it was Wilson who  revived the “long-abandoned custom” of personally delivering the “Annual Message  to Congress,” i.e., the State of the Union  address. Now, Americans reap his bitter fruit on viewing screens cluttered with  a preening political class preempting our favorite shows.

Continue reading

In response to If SNL Cuts Every Sketch That Isn't Funny, What's Left?:

 I haven't watched SNL  for years. I'm not interested in having my beliefs lampooned, or the people I admire unfairly maligned. But most of all, as Ace noted, the show hasn't been funny for ages.

Continue reading