Month: February 2004

Man on the Cross Street (Passion Survey #1)

Post author By jp
Post date February 25, 2004
15 Comments on Man on the Cross Street (Passion Survey #1)

We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ at the Jerusalem Multiplex 16 to get their opinions on this controversial film.

	“I found it hard to watch… for obvious reasons. What did I ever do to Mel Gibson?”
	“Um, it didn’t end that way. I came back, you know.”
	"Me? I don’t really remember much of the film. I tried to buy a diet Coke before it started, and they were all charging $4.50, and I’m all, ‘Fuck that!’ and got this free cup of tap water instead, which I immediately turned into el vino and promptly got wasted off my ass, sitting in the back of the theater…Jerusalem in the hoooouuuuuse!"
	"The third act…was excruciating. It was painful to watch, outright unbearable."
	“I liked the first half hour. The rest reminded me of stuff I’d rather forget.”
	“I hate to quibble since he got so much right. But Roman Soldier #6 wasn’t such a jerk to me. He actually gave me a stick of gum, which was nice.”
	“Pshaw! Like I ever knew a girl as hot as Monica Bellucci!”
	"I didn’t get to see the film…they had a ‘No Pets’ policy in the theater. They wanted me to sacrifice my lamb’s movie going experience, and I said, ‘No!…C’mon, he’s not so baaaaaaaaaaaad.’ Ha! Get it? I make jokes sometimes, you know."

Satirical Shallow

Mensch on the Street (Passion Survey #2)

Post author By matt
Post date February 25, 2004
1 Comment on Mensch on the Street (Passion Survey #2)

We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ in Brooklyn to get their opinions on this controversial film.

	“I didn’t see it. I was here to see Welcome to Mooseport, which, incidentally, is a little anti-Semitic. But I still love Raymond!”
	“If I could say just one thing to Mr. Gibson, it would be ‘Can you read my comedy script about a Hasidic Jewish crime fighter?’ What? Someone already made that movie? Well, there goes my last six months.”
	“I’m shocked. Disgusted. This place charges $4.50 for a small Diet Coke. I brought my four young children and it cost me $85 dollars. Very offensive. Very.”
	“You’d think with everyone in Hollywood studying the Kabbalah, they’d be a little more sensitive. Mel should spend more time with Madonna and Paris Hilton: he might learn some wisdom and compassion. Ha! I’m joking. Some of us have senses of humor, you know.”
	“Well, it was a lot less offensive to the Jews than the last Woody Allen film. Anything Else? I called it ‘From Hunger’.”
	“Yes, it was extremely anti-Semitic. But what movie is perfect, right?”
	“Critics need to lay off Mel Gibson. This was just one man’s opinion. One man with $25 million to spend on production and another $25 million for promotions to tell it. Like I said, just one man and his opinion.”
	“Loved it. Loved, loved, loved it! My name is Self-Hater I. Jewman, by the way.”

Grave

Talking Pod’s Memo

Johnny on the Spot: 9 PM, via satellite… 11PM, live and in the flesh
Right wing relaxed fit Beltway pundit, John Podhoretz made a comedians-turned-pundits bank shot by appearing on Dennis Miller’s eponymous CNBC show and Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. He managed to trade quips with both men without breaking a sweat or changing his flattering grey suit with matching blue shirt and yellow tie (in honor of the troops?).
What he didn’t manage to do, however, was come up with enough material for both shows. While promoting his new book Bush Country (the title of which is a deliciously naughty mnemonic tautology), he dusted off a few choice chestnuts. Very few.
From, Dennis Miller, 9PM EST, Feb. 24, 2004:
Dennis Miller: Gimme three or four the most crazy liberal ideas about our President.
John Podhoretz: Well, I think I got eight of them in the book. One of them, of course, is that he’s an idiot—which I think that anyone who believes by now is an idiot because he keeps de-pantsing people who underestimate him… The other is that he’s a puppet of his dad, uh, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, the neo-conservatives—no one can decide who he’s a puppet of because he’s not a puppet, he’s his own man… Liberals think that he’s a religious fanatic… [They] say he’s a cowboy… These are some of ways he’s mischaracterized, misrepresented.
From, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 11PM EST, Feb. 24, 2004:
John Podhoretz: I do believe that a lot of people who criticize the President do criticize him in a reckless and irresponsible and unfair fashion. As you mentioned, I go through the book, eight, what I call ‘Crazy Liberal Ideas About Bush.’ One that’s he’s a moron, one that he’s a puppet, one that he’s a religious fanatic, one that he’s like Hitler, and so on…
Repeat it one more time, and Beetlejuice will appear!

Shallow

They Found It At the Movies

Post author By matt
Post date February 25, 2004

Esquire, August 1970
“In his prerelease screenings, Mr. Gibson invited mostly conservative evangelical clergy. They in turn responded by reserving huge blocks of movie tickets for their congregations. When the film opens today, expect theaters around the country to be turned into temporary churches.”
– Kenneth L. Woodward, Do You Recognize This Jesus?, The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2004

Grave Satirical

Other Recently Proposed Constitutional Amendments

Post author By matt
Post date February 25, 2004
6 Comments on Other Recently Proposed Constitutional Amendments

Dogs Constitutionally- recognized as better than cats
No more special treatment for Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate
Paul made the Constitutionally- recognized best Beatle
Infield Fly Rule unilaterally banned
Lefties to be forced to become righties, or be burned at the stake
Discussions about the weather in elevators no longer protected by First Amendment
Super intelligent robots, should they be invented, never to be endowed with human emotions under penalty of being unplugged

Grave Satirical

About Face

Post author By jp
Post date February 24, 2004
1 Comment on About Face

[Thanks, Dave, who waited two weeks for this joke.]

Shallow

Co-opting the Friedman

The pissing contest between FOX 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman and The New York Times‘ Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has spilled over into Cynthia Cotts’ Press Clips column in this week’s Village Voice.
To be honest, Friedman’s doing most of the pissing, complaining that Waxman is boosting his exclusives without attribution. He complained to Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, who decided that Waxman had done nothing wrong.
Buried at the bottom of Cotts’ story is this nugget:

Sometimes Friedman gets it right. But anyone who starts crowing about inaccurate and unethical reporting will eventually have the spotlight turned on himself. Other scribes express varying degrees of affection and pity for Friedman. One calls him “marginal, with delusions of grandeur”; another says he wants “to be respected.”
[…]
The worst rap on Friedman is that he shills for Miramax, a charge he denies. He edited an Oscar supplement for Talk magazine in 2000, and Miramax backed the 2003 r&b documentary Only the Strong Survive, which Friedman co-produced. Colleagues say his column often repeats Miramax spin.

Reminds me of this passage from Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures:

“The most notorious example [of Harvey Weinstein manipulating the press] is Roger Friedman, who often uses his Internet gossip column, 411, to tout (and very occasionally knock) Miramax films. Says [former Miramax publicist Dennis] Higgins, ‘There’s no one in the pocket like Roger. It’s almost, “Whaddya want him to write?” We [even] got him to say The Shipping News is great.'” (p. 410)

Perhaps fittingly, Waxman writes today about factual inaccuracies in Capturing the Friedmans.

Grave

Amending prior amendments (Amended)

Post author By jp
Post date February 24, 2004
7 Comments on Amending prior amendments (Amended)

As expected, President Bush (decked out in full white-male, closed-minded power-broking asshole regalia) came out in support of a constitutional amendment today which would aim to specifically ban same-sex marriages, ostensibly in an attempt to “prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever” after the occurrence of events in California, Massachusetts and New Mexico which have indicated that “a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization.”
That fundamental institution, of course, is the ability of one man and one woman to marry. Historians familiar with the establishment of religion, the writing of the Magna Carta, the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, and the onset of the American Revolution know this firsthand: these events were each based primarily upon the ability of men and women to wed, and were in no way grounded upon issues of individuality or self-respect or self-governance or human and civil rights. Right? Oh, I’m sorry, I was reading from the rightwing playbook there for a moment.
Back to that most fundamental of institutions, marriage…
Bush went on to explain, “Our government should respect every person and protect the institution of marriage. There is not a contradiction between these responsibilities.”
Hmmm…let’s take a look at the current Bill of Rights and the other extant amendments to the current United States Constitution. I think I see some of these potential “contradictions,” to say the least, despite President Bush’s reassuring words to the contrary…

Article IX.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Article X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Article XIV. Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

If, in some burst of mass hysteria and irrationality on the part of our legislative body, this proposed 28th Amendment is passed, we can hopefully look forward to the eventual and subsequent passage of Article XXIX, which, in the tradition of Article XXI, would state, “Section 1. The twenty-eighth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”
At which point the U.S. Constitution will be nothing more than a cheapened document, comprised of little more than the expression of a series of conflicting values, borne of an “issues of the moment” ideology.
RELATED: Immigrating To Canada – Resources For Moving To Canada

Shallow

Doll (Private) Parts

“With Karen’s face obscured, it became hard to tell whether she was real or not.”
Disclaimer: The link to this story is absolutely not safe for work! (Especially if you work at a toy store.)
Grant Stoddard, Nerve‘s jolly human guinea pig, makes love to a Real Doll in his “I Did it For Science” column month.
The photos are way disturbing, especially the fact that the doll looks so much like Britney Spears.
Can’t they make a doll whose eyes close when it’s horizontal, like those dolls kids play with?

Shallow

Dirty Dancing: Rewrites

A riddle for the ages: How many screenwriters does it take to make a hit?
Apparently eight. Coming this Friday, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, written by:
1. Victoria Arch
2. Ronald Bass (writer of every movie, ever; cf. Tad Friend’s “The Two-Billion Dollar Man,” in Lost in Mongolia)
3. Jonathan Bernstein (former SPIN writer and author)
4. Mark Blackwell (former SPIN editor)
5. Pamela Gray
6. James Greer (former SPIN editor and author)
7. Christina Wayne (writer, Dominique Dunne – An American Tragedy: The E! True Hollywood Story)
8. Boaz Yakin (once promising writer/director of Fresh, more recently, director of Uptown Girls)
Can’t you just see them all in one big room, laptops networked together, ideas flying left and right? Teamwork: it’s a beautiful thing.
Of course, all of them combined couldn’t come up with a line as quotable as “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”