Bill Moyers Runs My Game on Bill Maher's HBO Show

Eminent progressive journalist, thinker and public television personality Bill Moyers was a guest on Bill Maher's HBO show this weekend (clips here, here and here).

I learned of this reading Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com. Greenwald quotes Moyers at length; I'm going to quote only the portion that sparked the title of my post (emphasis mine):

Money in politics -- you’ve had in the last 30 years, money has flooded politics . .. the Supreme Court saying "money is free speech."  It goes back to the efforts in the 19th Century to give corporations the right of personhood -- so if you as a citizen have the right to donate to campaigns, then so do corporations.  Money has flowed in such a flood into both parties that the Democratic Party gets a lot of its support from the very interests that -- when the Republicans are in power -- financially support the Republicans.  

Yup. That's what I've been talking about.

(I haven't read the rest of Greenwald's post--I popped over here to make this post--so don't take me referencing Moyers' quote as an endorsement of any of the other stuff Greenwald quotes at length.  I'm not saying don't read it; I'm just saying I haven't yet.)


Ok. Take these thoughts about how thoroughly corporate influence is woven into our legal-political framework, combine them with the second half of Paul Krugman's latest NYT column, and you've got a rough picture of what it is I think we're up against.

No punchy send off. This shit scares me too much.
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Teen Wolf: The New Bacon

Everybody knows Bacon is dangerously overexposed. Everywhere you look there's another paparazzi photo of Bacon, sloppily infusing a vodka being guzzled down by the newest heartthrob on the CW. Bacon, no matter how tasty, so rich in savory-sweet goodness, barely on the pan or burnt to a crisp, uh, yeah, Bacon has jumped the shark.  It's only a matter of time before Bacon goes into rehab Farmer John and comes out Sizzlean. 

Fear not, for this is an opportunity!

Back when everybody knew how awesome Bacon was, but nobody had to be all show-off-y about it, it was a simple pleasure. On your burger. With your eggs, Headlining for the LT's (what do you suppose they're up to now that Bacon's left them behind?), eaten by the pound all by itself (or is that just me?)

Now crazy fools are making bacon shoes and bacon bras and stupid shit like that. All for a few hits on their FaceSpace page and some internet dollars. Sullying Bacon's good name for their own tawdry agendas. Feh!

No more!

Like the savvier members of our military, I, too, have learned the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq. You want to win, you've got to fight asymmetrically.

So, Teen Wolf. That's right, Teen Wolf.

Teen Wolf is The New Bacon.

Just like Bacon, people know how awesome it is. That's well-settled fact. Just like Bacon, you can watch Teen Wolf morning, noon or night.

Bacon has the bacon bra, Teen Wolf can give you bootleg t-shirts.  Bacon-infused vokda? It's no smash dance sensation--make that a hipster-certified smash dance sensation. Gourmet bacon chocolate? Surfing atop the Wolfmobile. Bacon has Kevin Bacon. Teen Wolf has Boof.

You get the idea. It's high time to launch some other greasy, high-calorie, goes-with-anything treat into the pop culture stratosphere to knock Bacon off its perch. The Time for Wolf is now.

And yea, though the Hindus speak of karma, I implore you: give Bacon a break. Let Teen Wolf into your life. Embrace it. Quote it liberally, so that others may quote it illiberally.  May Coach Bobby Finstock's Three Rules* spread like the internet wildfire that was Chuck Norris. May craven obsessives pervert its form while they wring riches from its downy pelt.

The sooner this day comes, the sooner "Bacon" can return to being "bacon" and regain the quiet, sizzling dignity it had in your youth. And in your mouth.


*"There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."
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Quick Hit: Inglorious Basterds

I loves me some Tarantino, no doubt. Saw Reservoir Dogs on VHS at a friend's house in the summer of 1993. Saw Pulp Fiction the night it opened, in a packed, old-timey theater in Berkeley. The crowd was primed, buzzing. A fired up Friday night full of lit up film geeks (before there was any cultural cachet to being called a film geek). Everybody started cheering as the opening credits rolled and the music started. I've never seen anything like it since and doubt I ever will.

Anticipated the hell out of Jackie Brown. Liked it in the theater, love watching it over and over on cable. Whenever I surf to it, I stay til it's over. So watchable. The film just looks warm and inviting, despite the hardcore shit that transpires. That's Los Angeles for ya! Robert Forster plays worn-at-the-heel, lion-in-winter bail bondsman, Max Cherry. A man you can count on. A man that thinks things over as he drives around listening to "Across 110th Street" on his Cadillac's tape deck. And Robert DeNiro taking a bonghit. You know what? This is Tarantino's Lebowski.

Kill Bills, 1 and 2 were fun as hell. I loved the mixed media in 1, as well as the one-for-the-ages fight at the teahouse. I loved David Carradine doing a Pulp Fiction-y Grasshopper kinda thing in 2. And Uma snatching out Daryl Hannah's eyeball in the greatest fight in a double-wide trailer you'll ever see. Two pieces of solid entertainment with legs, rewarding multiple viewings.

Deathproof had one of the great all-time car chases. Kirk Russell creeped everybody out as Stuntman Mike. Zoe Bell is fucking fearless. And some chicks said stuff that may or may not have been annoying. Did I mention the car chase?

Inglorious Basterds, the subject of today's quick review (I didn't say anything about the setup, did I, heh), was slow, boring and uninteresting. Kills me to say it. Stuns me, too. I went in with zero expectations, so this review has nothing to do with let-down. But I gotta say I didn't think Tarantino was capable of this--I don't know how else to say it--he failed. In a 2 and 1/2 hour movie, nothing interesting happened until the final 30 minutes. There were some fine performances, the finest delivered by Christopher Waltz, the Third Reich's "Jew Hunter". Mega-star Brad Pitt was entertaining enough, chewing the scenery and letting his charisma out on a leash. But his performance comes in and out of the movie, since it's not all that central to the movie. But then, everybody--and nobody--is central to the movie--which means the story is a failure. Sure, there are some engaging moments of dialogue, as you'd expect, but they stand out because they're not in service of anything you care about, and it isn't nearly enough to carry the day.

One never knows, but I strongly suspect this won't be one I watch again and again on cable. Here's hoping QT gets back on track with the next one.
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Top Shelf Entertainment, Tomorrow Morning on Fox Soccer Channel

Arsenal and Manchester United square off tomorrow in the first battle between any of the Premier League's "Big Four" (Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea; so named because they have finished in the top four spots without exception for the past several years).

There was a time when Arsenal and Man U players would butt heads in the tunnel on the way out onto the pitch, when some players (allegedly) threw pizza at the opposing manager, when an otherwise even-tempered veteran ran up to and screamed in the face of an opponent who just missed a penalty shot. Ah, good times.

The tenor is more subdued now, and the managers share more than a modicum of respect for each other. Nevertheless, both the teams are capable of playing fluid, exciting football. Arsenal especially are on fire right now, having scored 10 goals in their first 2 Premier League games.

The old adage is that the League isn't won or lost in August (or September, or October), but everybody knows that a decisive result will serve notice to the rest of the League that the winner is for real.

Arsenal's Spanish superstar, Cesc Fabregas, is listed as 50/50 for whether he'll be fit enough to play. Obviously this is a big match, and you'd love to have your biggest playmaker, but the following week holds the prospect of international World Cup qualifiers. If Fabregas is fit enough for tomorrow, he's fit enough for Spain. And if not really, really fit, then maybe he might make his injury worse by playing tomorrow and next week. I hate to evaluate things so conservatively, but Arsenal's squad is a bit thin, esp. in central midfield. As (almost) always, the manager, Arsene Wenger, knows best.

I'd look for striker Robin van Persie to come up big tomorrow.  Of the 10 League goals, none have been scored by a striker.  Van Persie will want to get on the sheet sooner than later, and perhaps United will focus too much on Arsenal's midfielders.

I'm sure there are some pertinent things to be said about Man U, but fuck them. They lost the best player in world, the poncey gel-slicked Portugeezer Christiano Ronaldo, who fucked off to Real Madrid for bags of cash (literally--I think they're putting bags like this in his locker every two weeks. They also lost a talented Argentine, Carlos Tevez, who fucked off for similar bags of money--though not as far as Ronaldo, Tevez went to hated crosstown rivals Manchester United, much to the delight the Gallagher brothers (the Champagne Supernova chaps, not the feuding watermelon smashers. As for black Gallagher, I'm not sure how he feels about it.)

Tomorrow's match is on Fox Soccer Channel at 9 a.m. Eastern. The pub in Manhattan that draws all the footie watchers, Nevada Smith's, is showing it on tape delay at noon, after having already shown Chelsea at 7 and Liverpool at 10. I have visions of a drunken, crowded clusterfuck, so I think I'll stay home and bite my nails in silence and solitude, thank you very much. I'll save the pub for the inglorious mid-week matches against the likes of Wigan or Birmingham in the middle of the season.

Yes, it's 6 a.m. out West. That's what Tivo or lesser cable company dvr's are for!

And if, somehow, you miss it, the English Premier League Review Show airs on FSC on Sunday at 5 p.m., sometimes 6. It's an excellent way to keep abreast of the results and see the best plays of the week.

Cheers!

And say a prayer for poor Liverpool. Their fans are hanging their heads right now, fearing their season is over...even though it's still August. Buck up, chums! It can't get worse...can it?
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Quantum Mechanics In Pop Culture

Catching up on Nurse Jackie episodes last night (I'm referring to the episode from two weeks ago), Eddie, the hospital's pharmacist and Jackie's paramour-slash-opiate hookup, used a moment of post-coital bliss in the pill storage room to posit that--due to the tenets of quantum physics--he and Jackie might exist in a separate, parallel universe where they wouldn't have to hide their relationship.

Specifically, he used the ol' one-electron-can-be-in-two-places-at-the-same-time gambit. Eddie, you sly dog, you. You know the ladies can't resist such mind-bending pillow talk!

(Ignore the "Read more click-through)

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