“‘I have this little game I play in my head when someone gets an appointment,’ said Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s ‘Hardball.’ ‘And I say, “Now, how did that happen?” And then someone will say, “Well, they went to school together,” or “They live next door to each other,” or “Their wives are friends.” And you go, “Oh, yeah,” and it clicks.’ On the other hand, he said, ‘serendipity is a big part of our lives, but it grows in direct proportion to sociability.'”
– If They Gave Nobels for Networking. . ., by Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, June 5, 2005.
Further Listening: Psychoanalyis: What Is It?, by Prince Paul
Related: Letters to a Young Blogger, by David Maria Brooks
Category: Shallow
Categories
Fantastic Fall
This summer, as we eagerly await the release of yet another crop of comic book movies from the Marvel/DC Comics pipeline, Twentieth Century Fox’s upcoming Fantastic Four is looking to be quite a rough-and-tumble tale. Well, at least the trailers make this out to be the case, featuring little more than a series of elaborate, action-packed falls from buildings on the part of the film’s heroes and villains.
After all—and most studio executives will agree with us, here—nothing is more thrilling to today’s moviegoing audience than a character’s being hurled from atop a great height, right? I ask you, can an intriguing sub-plot be thrown from a skyscraper? No. A complex, well-shaded character arc? Can that cling desperately to a window ledge suspended fifty stories above street level? No, of course not.
So, here we are, with the Fantastic Four‘s fantastic falls:
An unidentified firefighter, on the verge of falling (from a bridge)
Mr. Fantastic, also on the verge of falling, but from a building
The Thing and Doctor Doom, actually falling, also from a building
Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, also falling, also from a building
The film’s director, Tim Story: soon to throw himself from the highest building in Hollywood?
Thursday evening, 8 o’clock sharp. I used to spend this special time perched atop my loveseat, giddily staring at the television set and mentally preparing to absorb the wonders of West Coast suburban culture as filtered to me via the broadcast networks.
And then summer arrived, and they all abandoned me. Not the networks, I mean…they’re still there, doling out quality product week after week. No, I’ve got a very specific axe to grind. I’m talking about Peter Gallagher. Mischa Barton. Josh Schwartz. Despots of the airwaves, each and every one of them. And Schwartz? He’s their tyrannical leader.
My kids think I have a problem. My eldest son, fully-grown and fresh out of culinary school, has scolded me for what he deems an “unhealthy” interest in the goings-on of fictitious characters and/or executive producers and/or series creators. But my son, you see, never understood my focus, my diligence…
How I hate my son for his lack of compassion. How I miss presiding over real family bonding, such as the antics of Ryan Atwood and his nettlesome older brother, or Kirsten Cohen and her Jewish husband.
Sitting here at work, gazing out the window upon the parking lot below…I’m a sour, lonely, bitter old man. To hell with my initial idea of taking laps in the pool; I think I’ll sleep in my office tonight.
Actually, I’ve never seen The O.C.; I’m sure it’s pretty good.
The O.C. used to air on Thursdays at 8PM EST on FOX, but then summer started. It’s not yet noon, and my night is already ruined.
Earlier: O.C.-centric entries, wherein we celebrated our joyous embrace of “all things Newport Beach”.
WHICH set of former has-beens-that-never-were returned to the glare of the spotlight earlier this month? WHO reissued their most prominent document of fame and fortune yet, in what is either the ultimate comeback or merely another attempt to cash in on the zeitgeist of bourgeoisie socialism? WHAT makes this sort of bougie urban politicism that far removed from an overriding cultural interest in Jessica Simpson’s techniques for obtaining a bikini-worthy body?
Unrelatedly, Maer Roshan’s Radar project is out anew this month.
And, hey, you know what? Our tried-and-true “This looks like this, which is like that, which is like this” routine never ends! We’ll be here all week.
(with thanks to Adit Nathan)
Separated at Bulge: Saddam Hussein on the cover of The Sun (via Drudge); Pat Buchanan on the cover of SPY, May 1992.
Today’s New York Daily News cover story touts the boldest of exclusives: “New York’s top lawmakers have been warned: Mess around with the West Side Stadium and the Olympics are lost.” Meaning, of course, that unless the proposed real-estate grabbing, massively bond-and-taxpayer-funded West Side stadium is erected near Penn Station, there can be no 2012 New York Olympics. (How very sad! New Yorkers have surely been pining for a long-term re-enactment of the hassle that was last fall’s 2004 Republican National Convention, right?)
Or, as the Daily News declares in their more appropriately condensed tabloid headline parlance, “NO STADIUM, NO GAMES.”
Logic and deductive reasoning? It’s, for the time being at least, another Daily News exclusive!
Of course, the rival Post won’t take this challenge sitting down. Look for their very own upcoming series of cover-story exclusives, including, but not limited to:
NO CEASEFIRE, NO PEACE
NO NEWSWEEK, NO WAR
NO TRUMP, NO BOMBAST
And, of course,
NO POST, NO PUNS
Sigh. It’s clearly time to move to Paris, huh?
The celebration of Iraqi democracy’s second launch continues. In fact, it’s moved into the wacky publicity stunt phase!
Last night, as part of the ongoing launch party for the most expensive, anticipated democratic regime since Tina Brown’s revamp of the U.S.S.R., an insurgent lackey escalated the war of words by hurling several bullets at Dr. Ali Hameed, an official from Iraq’s Oil Ministry. Dr. Hameed responded by being pronounced dead at 8 AM!
Did somebody say CATFIGHT!!!! Oh, yeah, it’s on!
Iraqi Oil Ministry official gunned down [CNN]
Lindsay Lohan at some KIIS-FM event and Janis Joplin in mid-slur
Categories
The Beautiful and the Damned
Mourning Wood: Nine out ten respondents surveyed said they’d sleep with three of the above people. Can you guess which ones? (via Yahoo/Reuters)
Related: “The harrah… The harrah…”
Have you seen The Huffington Post yet? Isn’t it sort of… funny? (Get it!?!)