snap culture: February 2005

What better way to fight the `04 blues than to start focusing on `08! The National Governors Association meeting features a number of governors who are mentioned in the long list of potential candidates. William

The B-list secret

2/27/2005 Add a comment

Normally, she's quite annoying, but Kathy Griffin lets loose a funny little secret about staying in the B-list spotlight: get yourself on a "worst-dressed list" and do everything you can to stay there. She'll never be on the best-dressed list with Kidman and Zeta-Jones, so why not concentrate on getting your picture in US Weekly the opposite way? William

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Conservative Chris (Rock)

2/25/2005 Add a comment

Is Chris Rock a conservative? Evidently, a lot of his jokes have a family-values bias if you read deeply enough into them. William

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just when i think he's out...

2/23/2005 Add a comment

the sports guy comes back with two fantastic columns about his experience at the NBA All-Star weekend. Here's #1, when he played Shaq in a game of P-I-G and #2 on the parties and the game. Also, my unsubmitted application to his intern contest can be found here. ben

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Make it plain

2/22/2005 Add a comment

On the forty year commemoration of his assassination, PBS aired a fantastic special on Malcolm X, Make It Plain. Yet another superb effort from American Experience on an incredible and uniquely American personality whose influence stretched around the globe. If you missed it, check your local listings for reruns. ben

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Bush on Bush

2/20/2005 Add a comment

Doug Wead, a former political operative with ties to the Bush dynasty, made secret tapes of his conversations with George W. Bush before Bush's run at the presidency in 2000. William

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Catching up on "Jeff Gannon"

2/20/2005 Add a comment

Frank Rich with another winner on the recent Jeff Gannon saga, which, if you haven't been paying attention, is quite an outrage. The complicity on the White House's part is quite apparent, or else there was a major security breach if a person who consistently gave a fake name was allowed into the White House on a daily basis. William

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The new Cosby show

2/20/2005 Add a comment

Can Bill Cosby talk like W.E.B. DuBois when he faces allegations of behaving like Kobe Bryant? He preaches changes to black culture, but he suffers from skeletons in the closet. William

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this just in...

2/18/2005 Add a comment

Libel is hard to prove. Looks like Jose Canseco can't be touched:

"In order to win a libel suit, they would have to prove what Canseco is saying is not only false, but known by him to be false or suspected to be false."

Yep, that's the definition of libel alright. ben

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Where are Meth & Red?

2/17/2005 Add a comment

Oh man, this sitcom looks hilarious. Here's the premise: 50 Cent moves out of the projects and into the wealthy Hartford suburb, and the town is turned upside-down, with everyone wanting a glimpse of the rap superstar.

Wait, this is real? And these people really want to hang out with Fitty? Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Shouldn't you lose some street cred when you move to Farmington Freakin' Connecticut? Oh well, if the peeps at the gourmet market and the garden club still like him, he'll sell records. ben

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Let the games begin

2/16/2005 Add a comment

Mike Greenwell wants his 1988 AL MVP that he lost to a "juiced" Jose Canseco. Hitting .325 with 22 homers and 119 RBIs in that era seems like a legitimate case, but how do we know that Greeny wasn't on anything either? Not that he ever looked it or his power numbers reflected it. Though I would argue that 17 years is a bit late. Stick to selling real estate, Greenwell.

Just a guess, but this is going to open the floodgates...Piazza over admittedly juiced Caminiti, Frank Thomas over "I'm sorry" Giambi, lots of home run crowns and MVP awards to dispute. Do we have to go back to Roger Maris to find our asterisk-free home run champ? I say yes. ben

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William: Maybe Greeny used . 2/17/2005
William: It's supposed to say "Maybe Greeny used Greenies," but blogger is acting up. The link is on the period. (Or "full stop" as the Brits say... which is really weird when they say something like, "And that's it, full-stop!" when they mean to say "And that's it, period!" 2/17/2005

$590,400

2/16/2005 Add a comment

Wow, two "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings were auctioned for $590,400 yesterday, worth every penny. That St. Bernard is a bluffing genius.

ben

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Steak 'n' Shake and the Fat Man

2/14/2005 Add a comment

I often have trouble deciding if I like Roger Ebert, but now I'm reminded why I do. Sometimes he can come off a bit preachy, a bit pompous. But ultimately, he's a good guy, I think, as this NYT Mag piece shows.

I agree with him the most about food. Perhaps it's our shared central Illinois roots.

for example:

Thing he misses most about America when abroad: No-nonsense restaurant meals. There is a peculiarity -- especially in France -- that it almost always takes longer to get the check than it does to order and eat. They seem reluctant to give you the check.

Last meal: Something from the Steak 'n' Shake, a chain of restaurants in the Midwest. I'd get a super steak burger with onion and pickle, ketchup and mustard, an order of chili mac, a side of fries and a Coke. My first restaurant meal was held at the Steak 'n' Shake when I was 3, and I've been going back ever since.

If you've never eaten at Steak 'n' Shake, make a pilgrimage now. It is the single greatest restaurant chain in the United States. Why they haven't moved beyond the midwest and south, I don't know. William

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Chaste lesbian action!

2/10/2005 Add a comment

Thank god it will be over soon. Femmes Marissa and Alex will finally make it to first base tonight on The OC. (Hey, it's a good show. Don't look at me like that.) The show has been hyping the snail-paced Marissa-Alex relationship for the last three weeks, and it's getting on my nerves that things have dragged on so slowly. And this is definitely not because I want to see Mischa Barton hooking up with Olivia Wilde, which will undoubtedly be a disappointment, thrill-wise. Instead, it's annoying because the lesbian-kiss plotline has been so overdone in recent years. Thank you, Virginia Hefferman, for writing about this today.

You know, a lesbian kiss just isn't that big a deal anymore (e.g., former Next Karate Kid actress Hilary Swank won an Oscar for a role that had her playing a cross-dressing lesbian in Boys Don't Cry all the way back in the 1990s.), unless you're a member of the Parents Television Council, which gives the OC a red light. Or, perhaps, the FCC, but there wasn't any physical action on "Postcards from Buster," although maybe we'll never know. The NYT followed up with a story about the child whose family was featured in the PBS series.

William

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The Onion's Guide to Spin-offs

2/09/2005 Add a comment

Wow, did the boys at the Onion's office do their research on this one. I mean, I knew that "The Facts of Life" was a spin-off of "Diff'rent Strokes", and I even vaguely remember "Top of the Heap", but "The Art of Being Nick?" Genius. ben

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Rock and roll, hoochie koo

2/08/2005 Add a comment

Joey Gaydos, Jr., who played a young guitar prodigy in Jack Black's cliche-yet-funny "School of Rock," has continued with his music, releasing an album at age 13. The kid's got talent, as evidenced by these samples, but his riffs and songs feel blatantly borrowed and he's surrounded himself in a heavy sonic blanket that detracts (or maybe masks?) his guitar. "Oz" sounds strikingly like Rick Derringer's "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo." The opening to "Dizzy" sounds like the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK." Perhaps the problem is that he hasn't had time to develop much as his own artist and is still learning from the "masters." (via whatevs.org)

In other interesting stories, Slate explains the world of high fashion, which we know next-to-nothing about, in better ways than Tyra ever has.
William

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Osama found!

2/07/2005 Add a comment

You may remember the Virgin Mary grilled cheese, and the ridiculous $10,000 or so it fetched, so how about investing in a piece of Osama bin Laden toast? Seems to me that this "miraculous" image was engineered. (via Wonkette.) William

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The little city that couldn't

2/05/2005 Add a comment

So with all of the Super Bowl hype happening before Sunday's game, one story that has caught our attention is how poorly Jacksonville has been ready for the big game. It is the smallest city to have hosted a Super Bowl, evidently, is very spread out, and has something like only 300 taxi cabs. Bill Simmons has been hammering this point all week in his dispatches, even that there isn't enough good coffee around. The Boston Globe says that there are so few hotel rooms that some people are staying in Atlanta (4 hours away) or Tampa (3 hours). And don't forget about the limo shortage! William

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booyakasha!

2/01/2005 Add a comment

In Roanoke, Virginia, Ali G, aka Borat was up to his old tricks. Eventually he's going to have to come up with new characters if he's getting identified in places like Roanoke. But given that it was after-the-fact, I guess he doesn't need to give up the Borat character just yet. The best line is about George Bush drinking the blood of every Iraqi...classic. We'll have to wait and see it on Season 3, even though no plans have been announced ben

snap culture: February 2005

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