Our friend Mark S. Allen got into a bit of trouble yesterday when, during an interview with Joan Rivers, he made a joke about Rivers’s daughter Melissa. Rivers was so offended she stopped the interview and told Allen not to get “so fucking smart.”
To which Allen proudly responded, “I’ve NEVER been smart!” Actually, Allen’s joke was pretty funny, and Rivers should be able to take it given how much she’s dished out over the years. The video can be seen here.
Following the grand tradition of late 70s television dramedy Eight is Enough, the protagonist of the new movie The Ugly Truth, played by Katherine Heigl, works for a fictional news agency in Sacramento, California. In Eight is Enough the fictional news agency was the newspaper The Sacramento Register, while in The Ugly Truth it’s a fictional news channel.
Surprised? I was when I heard the news today on Jeffrey Callison’s radio show Insight, broadcast by our local NPR affiliate, Capital Public Radio. But apparently the dogged reporters at Good Day Sacramento had already broken the story, asking someone promoting the movie if Good Day Sacramento was the inspiration for the film’s plot. They were joking (sorry, I couldn’t find the video), but there were also rumors that the characters in the movie played by Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins were based on real-life retired married co-anchors Dave Walker and Lois Hart. Heck, while we’re at it, couldn’t Gerard Butler’s character, a chauvinistic media personality, be based on Rush Limbaugh, who got his start in Sacramento?
The movie’s getting mixed reviews, so I’ll probably wait till it comes out on DVD. Unless I hear next that Deirdre Fitzpatrick is in it . . .
For Audrey’s recent 30th Birthday I made her two doodle-decorated mix CDs. I’m pleased with how these little caricatures turned out, especially since I didn’t do any preparatory drawings, so here are the CDs along with their respective play lists.
Cool Pool Party
Birthday Comedown
The first page of my new comic starring Tim and Matt. I haven’t picked a title for the book yet, but this first chapter is entitled, “The Lost Woods.” To see a larger version, visit the comics section of my web site.
He seems to be taking styling cues from a certain Austrian fashion reporter, nein?
In his “Bites” column for the July 16, 2009 issue of Sacramento News & Review, columnist Cosmo Garvin points out that since The Sacramento Bee will no longer be publishing movie reviews by their film critic Carla Meyer, “[. . .] Mark S. Allen will now be the most influential film critic in the region.”
We’re doomed I tell you, DOOMED!
Incidentally, I saw Mr. Allen while out at a restaurant a few months ago, and he was a lot smaller than he appears on TV.
2009.
Photo 2009 by Brendan McCrae.
The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. … It’s an absurd situation again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
Former CIA official Michael Scheuer on the Glenn Beck Program. Link via TAPPED.
I am loath to disagree with the reasonable Michael Scheuer, but Osama bin Laden is fortunately not our only hope for a better America. Osama, like many foreign workers, may be cheaper than our own labor supply, but in the debate between free-markets and protecting American jobs I must respectfully side with Lou Dobbs on this particular issue: Americans can do it better.
Rather than simply waiting for a new terrorist attack, our military should carpet bomb a major American city to help put Republicans back in power. Of course, the patriotism Osama bin Laden inspired on September 11th only lasted so long, which is why our military should periodically attack its own citizenry, so that the dangers of Democratic rule are constantly in our minds.
While I would prefer that no Real American cities are destroyed, I know that the Democrats will insist on protecting the elitist, coastal cities that make up their base, so to make things fair I propose that every American city be entered into a lottery, similar to the one proposed in Shirley Jackson’s Utopian short story, to determine which city should be sacrificed to remind Americans that freedom isn’t free.
