Stratovania

Beth and I did some other things in California besides OzCon, so here are a few of them. We flew into LAX on Tuesday, and stayed at a motel within walking distance of Knott's Berry Farm, which we visited on Wednesday. The park is surprisingly close to Disneyland, and not far from Kellogg West. Too bad we had to go to Culver City in between the two. It's very common for amusement parks to have an Old West area, and at Knott's, it was probably the biggest section in the park.

You could even sit on a bench with some hookers. Well, dancers, anyway.

They also had parts with fifties and Mexican themes, as well as Camp Snoopy for kiddie rides. I think it might have been the first park to license the Peanuts characters, although they're at a lot of them now. The only berry-themed ride was the seemingly obligatory one where you shoot stuff on a screen, in this case to help bears get stolen pies back from some coyotes.

The guns had pull strings, and it was hard to tell what you were shooting. I kind of wonder why the bumper cars weren't called Traffic Jam. They had several roller coasters, including the Pony Express, the surf-themed HangTime (which included a part where we were suspended at the top of a hill for a little while), Silver Bullet, Xcelerator, and the wooden GhostRider.

That was our last ride of the night, and we were on the last train they ran that day, about an hour after the official closing time. Another coaster, Jaguar!, was closed. The carousel had a lot of unusual animals. We rode ostriches, but I was also fascinated by the cats with fish in their mouths.

The Calico Mine Ride was pretty cool, featuring old animatronics. That was also the one with the know-it-all kid in front of us in line. We rode the Calico Railroad, and a guy dressed as a bandit called me "Bowser" because of my Super Mario hat. We did not, however, have a chance to ride the stagecoach.

On Thursday, we ate breakfast at Denny's, then went on the Sony Pictures tour, checked in at Kellogg West, and ate at a fast food hot dog place called Wienerschnitzel. We also went to a Circle K for the first time in our lives. After OzCon, we met with Stephanie and her dog Chelsea on Sunday and went to the John Waters exhibit at the Academy Museum, which had a good collection of props and memorabilia, including stained glass pictures of some of his characters.

After that, we went to the Oracle Mystic Museum in Burbank, which had an interactive exhibit with moving parts based on horror movies.

The neighborhood where it was located had at least two year-round Halloween stores that didn't allow photographs, and also this elephant.

I wonder if they know Kabumpo.

Before catching our plane back east on Monday night, we stopped at two other museums and a mausoleum. The Bunny Museum in Altadena was something Beth found out about on Reddit, and someone there said they found it disturbing.

It's a small building, but it's absolutely packed with stuff, all rabbit-related. Of course, it came nowhere close to being exhaustive, as bunnies are very heavily represented in our culture. I think humans are genetically inclined to find them cute. One room was all holiday stuff, including Hocus Pocus from Frosty the Snowman.

A kitchen and patio had relevant stuff, and another room had creepier and more adult stuff, like Frank from Donnie Darko, Playboy Bunnies, and weird old masks.

I particularly liked the red guy with horns. Another reminded me of my mom's rabbit mask that I wore when I dressed as Wag for the Munchkin Convention, which apparently Johnny Galecki also owns.

This might have been why the museum was listed as unsettling, although when you're dealing with old toys, some of it is going to be disturbing to modern audiences even when it wasn't intended to be.

Upstairs, they had some original art.

Bugs Bunny, the Trix Rabbit, the Quik Bunny, My Melody from Sanrio, the Energizer Bunny, Harvey, Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh, Roger Rabbit, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and the bunny suit from A Christmas Story were all represented as well.

And they had two sets of the Uncle Wiggily Game, which I played a lot as a kid, and which is similar in structure to the Wonderful Game of Oz.

There were also some informational signs, on such topics as rabbit-related expressions, anthropomorphic bunnies, the origins of magicians pulling rabbits out of hats, someone in a bunny suit who followed David Bowie around in 2004, and the meaning of the name of Spain.

I would have liked to have seen some of John R. Neill's rabbit pictures, but no such luck.

After this museum, we visited the Mountain View Mausoleum, which had some cool art and a pretty garden.

Both that and our next destination, the Museum of Death in Hollywood, were suggested by a couple we met at OzCon.

The Death Museum didn't allow pictures, so you'll have to trust me when I say it was very graphic. It included exhibits on serial killers, death cults, taxidermy and preservation, car accidents, and cannibalism. They had a taxidermied dog who had died with Jayne Mansfield. One of the employees had a lot to say about Heaven's Gate, and another was impressed that Beth was able to correctly identify the film Orozco the Embalmer.


That's mostly what we did in California, but I'm also going to include our activity from yesterday, Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Williamsburg, which is difficult to reach from where we live and work. We actually ended up being a few minutes late. The theme was twins, also including doubles, doppelgangers and clones. David Gregory (not the one from XTC) talked about the many Bruce Lee imitators who starred in rip-off movies, and co-host Chris Cummins discussed the various imitations of Archie Comics. Tenebrous Kate discussed the Barbarian Brothers, twin bodybuilders who were somewhat popular in the eighties and nineties, including starring in a movie that was largely a Conan rip-off. Another presentation was on Waluigi, and what the deal was with him, which I don't think anybody knows for sure. He's pretty much only ever around for sports and party games. There was a mention of how, according to Nintendo, he and Wario aren't even related, although since Nintendo went back and forth on whether the Koopalings were Bowser's kids, who knows what their current story is? He does seem to have gained a certain amount of popularity, although that could be BECAUSE of how bizarre and relatively obscure he is. One bit was on Alice Cooper, and how he criticized conformity and then became pretty conservative. I'm not sure I knew that he recently made a transphobic comment, but I do remember him speaking positively of George W. Bush. And Kevin Maher showed clips of characters realizing they were clones or duplicates. The Kindest Cut for the night was of Big Business, a twin mix-up comedy starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, which Beth saw when Clementon Park was closed for rain.

We spent Thanksgiving at Beth's mom's house, although hardly anyone else came over for dinner. I don't love turkey, but I always have some anyway, as it's traditional. There was also ham, which is more suited to my tastes. On the next day, we went to the Creamy Acres Night of Lights, which again this year was a drive-through instead of a hayride. You get a better view and it's easier to take pictures with the latter, but I guess they're still trying to play it safe, and maybe save on some expenses. They have more lights every year, but I mostly noticed the ones they have every time, mostly with Santa doing various things: fishing, driving a train, shooting a pretzel from a cannon, riding a dinosaur, being a lobster man, etc. I've taken better pictures of most of these things on earlier visits, but I might as well share some more anyway.

They didn't have the Snow Miser and Heat Miser displays they did in previous years. There was, however, a creepy singing and dancing tree in the gift shop.

Afterwards, we went to eat at a diner, and I had the pizza steak. There's a place near where we live that makes a good pizza steak, but overall it seems to be more common in the Philadelphia area. I usually get that at a diner if I don't get breakfast. Also, Beth's mom gave me a haircut.


This past Thursday, we saw the only live Kevin Geeks Out show of the year at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. There was another one planned for earlier, but it fell through.

This was the Christmas special, with several guests. Another Kevin, Kevin Cecil, talked about Ernest Saves Christmas, for which the original plan was for Ernest to become Santa; but Disney, who distributed the film, insisted they change it. As such, he's kind of a supporting character in his own movie. Cecil discussed the history of the character, how advertising executive John Cherry based him on an annoying guy who worked for his father, and how Michael Eisner helped bring Ernest from commercials to film. There was also discussion of how someone being locked out of a house on Christmas was a recurring theme for Cherry and Jim Varney's projects. Dan McCoy and his wife Audrey Lazaro hosted the Kindest Cut, of A Dogwalker's Christmas Tale from MarVista Entertainment, introduced as making stuff similar to Hallmark but with way lower quality. Gena Radcliffe discussed Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa, a weird special from 2002 done partially to promote cheap animation software, and it very much looks cheap. Strangely, it had some famous voice actors, including Nancy Cartwright, Jodi Benson, and Mark Hamill (who's apparently only in it for forty-five seconds). Glen Heroy, who's worked as both a clown and Santa, showed slides of other Santas whose promotional pictures were kind of disturbing. We saw the premieres of two shorts Kevin Maher worked on, one where he played a car dealer who was traumatized by his son's death, and an animated bit about an aging Santa learning it's okay to get help. Glen was the narrator in the latter, and there were references to several other specials where someone had taken Santa's place. And we played the game where we had to guess whether there were easily available pictures of certain celebrities in Santa suits (Photoshop or just the hat didn't count). I've been to three shows where we played this, and both this time and the first I was out on, like, the second one; but I was the last person standing for the second. I guess it's largely luck, unless you have a photographic memory for famous people in Santa suits.

Not too much happened this weekend, although we did go out to New Jersey to shop at Kmart and Shop-Rite, and to eat at the Olive Garden. At Kmart, there was some guy doing a promotion for jewelry with Swarovski crystal, and we ended up buying a ten-dollar necklace with a lobster-claw catch. Beth wasn't able to get it open, but she did have a promising start for a Childlike Empress cosplay.

We walked a little on the Mill Creek Marsh Trail, but they're supposed to close at sundown and we didn't want to be locked in, so we were only there very briefly.

I'll sometimes take pictures of things at the store that I find weird or notable, but I suspect they're very normal to a lot of people who shop more often than I do. This time, it was Mexican (I think?) Cocoa Krispies with an elephant on the box.

Also, these female nutcrackers look kind of cross, but I guess I know better than to tell women to smile. No one ever says that to the male nutcrackers, do they?

But they crack nuts not with their jaws, but with their cleavage? I guess that's the same kind of energy as this.

And on that note, Gruss vom Krampus!

So, work. Not a whole lot to say about it, but there are a few things I thought were worth mentioning:

• In some ways, the machine that prints out the receipts is much more advanced than others I've worked with. It automatically separates the receipts so you don't have to rip them, and the register tape is easy to replace. What's weird is that it waits until after you're finished with an order to print the receipt, yet it still includes mistakes. For instance, if I accidentally scan an item twice and then use a void to correct my error, the second scan and the void both show up on the receipt. Since it doesn't print as it goes, shouldn't it be able to filter out those unnecessary slips of the keyboard or scanner? It can only be confusing to the customers, and it's kind of embarrassing to hand someone documented proof that I still haven't totally mastered scanning.
  
• Every Wal-Mart I've been into in the past few years, including the one where I work, has what they call a carousel of bags. I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. While probably introduced to make bagging faster, since you can start packing another bag before the customer grabs the one you just packed, it mostly just seems to be confusing. People are always forgetting to take what they just paid for. I've done it as well. The rational explanation would be that this is a result of some of the relevant bags facing AWAY from the customer due to the nature of the carousel, but I have to suspect that there's also something about that device's construction that impairs the thinking of anyone around it, customer or employee.
  
• Bags in general can get a little crazy sometimes. I don't like to bag an item all by itself unless I really think it's hard to carry otherwise, but I ask the customers to make sure. And it strikes me that some people drastically overuse bags. I know I've heard some people say they have to catch a bus or something, in which it probably really IS easier to keep track of things when it's all in bags. If you're just going straight home, however, putting some items in bags just creates extra work for everyone involved. You also get people who think they need a bag to prove they paid for something, when that's actually the purpose of the receipt.
  
• The photo department is apparently a totally different culture localized in the middle of Wal-Mart, like an Indian reservation or something. When someone brings pictures to the front, there's usually no barcode on them, and even when there is it rarely works. What the cashier then has to do is to look through a series of sheets with photograph barcodes, and then make sure to choose the right one, even though the photo sleeves have next to no information. Fortunately, I don't have to ring up pictures that often, probably because most people pay in the photo reservation itself.
  
• It still doesn't look like the managers have work out the scheduling. In fact, this past Tuesday, I was scheduled to work from 6:30 AM to 12:30 the next day! I knew this had to be wrong, since it brought my total hours for the week over forty, which I don't think is allowed for part-time employees. Not to mention that I had class that evening, so I couldn't do the evening hours even if I wanted to. Even after I called and asked about my hours for that day, however, the messed-up hours still appeared on the schedule right up until the actual day. While this has only happened once so far, I've been scheduled again for time when I'm going to be in class, so I'll have to discuss that with someone.
  
• I'll never get over the number of customers who are totally excited over the "As Seen on TV" items that are up near the register. Dudes, do you REALLY think a Shake Weight actually works? There's another line called Pillow Pets, for which I've never seen the commercial, but I hear people quoting it all the time. Apparently the jingle is something along the lines of, "It's a pillow! It's a pet!" They're basically stuffed animals that you can use as pillows, which isn't a bad idea, but I really don't find them at all appealing.
  
  At least I can kind of see why kids want these, though, while I'm baffled over children begging their parents for Snuggies. Really? You find a backwards robe to be an exciting concept? What's wrong with kids today? Then again, as a kid, I used to like to wear my robe a lot, and my house got really cold in the winter. So maybe I would have been interested in these things if they'd come out a few decades earlier.
  

I don't work tomorrow, but I really do have to gather the articles for my literature review, and I'm still not sure what my topic should be.

Since I already wrote about Rainbow Brite today, I might as well keep the rainbow theme going with my weekly mythology post. In Greek mythology, the goddess of the rainbow is Iris, the daughter of the sea god Thaumas and the sky nymph Elektra. Like Hermes, she serves as a messenger for the gods, sometimes between themselves and other times with the mortal world. Some sources suggest she typically served as the personal messenger and herald for Hera, but Homer has her delivering several messages for Zeus. She is usually portrayed with wings, and is said to be married to Zephyrus, god of the west wind. In the Percy Jackson books, the children of the gods communicate via Iris-messages, which can be sent through any rainbow with an offering of money.


In Norse lore, the name for the rainbow is Bifröst, and it is used as a bridge between our own world of Midgard and the gods' abode in Asgard. The color red at the top is a burning flame, which prevents the frost giants from crossing it. The guardian of Bifröst is Heimdall, son of Odin, who keeps constant watch over the world. During Ragnarok, the giants will finally manage to cross over the rainbow bridge, and it will shatter with their weight. There's apparently a school of thought maintaining that the bridge between Earth and Heaven was originally thought to be the Milky Way rather than the rainbow, but common association still identifies Bifröst with the colorful arch.


The rainbow is also featured in the Biblical book of Genesis. After the great flood (you know, Noah's Ark and all that), God placed the rainbow in the sky as a sign that He'd never flood the entire world again. It's a good thing we have the rainbow, then, because otherwise He'd probably be causing worldwide floods every other week. The big guy must have memory problems, but that's not surprising for someone His age.


So what about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? I'm not sure exactly how that started, but it seems to have originated in Europe, and is especially identified with Ireland. One possible origin is a story about a leprechaun who grants a wish to a poor couple, and when they wish for riches, he tells them that their prize is at the end of the rainbow. Since it's impossible to get there, they never actually get the money, which is the leprechaun's punishment to the couple for their greed. This page says that some versions of the legend say that only a naked man can claim the gold, which sounds like it could be another leprechaun trick. The identification of leprechauns and pots of gold with rainbows is now so culturally ubiquitous that it can safely be referenced in children's cereal commercials.

It's weird when a video game is a blatant commercial. And I'm not talking about simple product placement like the Pizza Hut billboards in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, or the can of Pepsi in Maniac Mansion. I mean a character or idea from commercials getting an entire game made around them. I remember when my brother rented the Cool Spot game, based on a 7-Up mascot that was omnipresent at the time. The Spot didn't really last that long as far as mascots go, especially when you consider that Lucky the Leprechaun has had the same shtick for almost fifty years. Since it and the Super Nintendo were both prominent around the same time, however, the Spot got a game. I don't remember it being either particularly good or bad, but simply a generic side-scroller. I do recall that it played on the use of the term "1Up" to refer to an extra life, and there was an item that would net you seven lives in one go. More recently, the Burger King and M&M's have featured in sports games. But this idea really goes back a long time, at least as far back as 1983, when a Kool-Aid Man game was released for the Atari 2600.

While the beginning does show the Kool-Aid Man crashing through a wall, I don't think he does that within the game itself, which seems like kind of a gyp. Isn't that like a Mega Man game without Robot Master weapons, or a Wolverine game where you can't use the claws? Then again, that probably WOULD have been the case if those games had been released on the 2600.


The Angry Video Game Nerd did a review of another mascot-centered video game, McKids:

I'm sure plenty of people have pointed this out by now, but CosMc actually was in some commercials, I think in either the late eighties or early nineties. Still, I do think it could have used more classic McDonald's characters.


Also, don't forget about Yo! Noid, which I think I'm only aware of because I remember seeing it at a video store, but never rented it. It features the one-time Domino's Pizza mascot trying to save New York or something, even though he was an agent of destruction in the commercials. Actually, according to the Wikipedia article, this game has an interesting history. In Japan, it actually had nothing to do with pizza, but instead starred a ninja character. Why change a ninja into the Noid? I have no idea, but I guess Domino's had more disposable income back then.


I think, however, that there should be more games featuring long-standing mascots. Where's the video game about the dog with the record player, or the Morton's Salt umbrella girl? Actually, you know how they're coming out with a game involving Mickey Mouse in a cartoon wasteland, with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as the main villain? They should do something similar with commercial mascots. You know it would never happen, but who doesn't want the chance to stake Count Chocula and squeeze Mr. Whipple?

For the most part, the Simpsons episode last night was pretty good. Moe was both amusing and sympathetic throughout the show. I didn't care much for the ending, though. It seemed sort of like the writers said, "We're almost out of time, and we can't leave Moe dating this girl, so let's just break them up really abruptly." Also, was the subplot with Marge using the surveillance software really necessary? It's not like anything really came of it. By the way, I wonder if the leader of those bully babies was another one of Kearney's kids. I think it pretty obvious that he was supposed to be related to Kearney in some way.

No other new cartoons last night, but I do feel I should mention that I recently finished reading Peter Pan. I believe that Barrie first wrote the story as a play, and the book actually seems rather self-annotated, expanding upon ideas that he couldn't fully get across in dialogue, and making an effort to explain Peter and Captain Hook's thought processes. One thing that I might have heard before, but that I didn't really think much about before, is how Peter is essentially an updated version of the god Pan, represented as a perpetual human child instead of a goat-like deity.

Finally, this ad keeps coming up on my LJ page, and I have to wonder if I'm the only one who thinks this girl looks a bit like Polychrome. It's probably at least partially because the black semicircle at the top (which isn't actually supposed to be part of the picture) reminds me of the skullcap that Neill drew Polychrome as wearing.

The Simpsons episode was pretty half-assed, which is kind of a shame, because I think it had potential. The writers apparently forgot that Homer met Ned for the first time when he moved into his current house in the "Lisa's First Word" flashback, but that wasn't even my main concern. It was more that there were only a few good jokes, and the fact that they stuck in two different flashbacks made it difficult for them to really flesh out either one.

Family Guy wasn't great, but I did enjoy New Brian's over-the-top positive attitude, and was amused by the return of Buzz Killington and the crocodile at the alligator convention. Once again, I think American Dad was the best of the three, even though the characters other than Steve hardly even appeared. It seems like they would at least have brought in Roger to help Steve with his revenge. Oh, well.

And hey, 'tis the season for commercials for crappy Christmas movies again! I sure missed those during January through October! There are also a lot of commercials for products with touch screens, for which I fail to see the appeal. I'd rather not get the screen all smudgy with my fingerprints, thank you.

I'm not sure whether this will become an ongoing Monday feature, but probably not. I do like making posts like this on occasion, though, as I have a lot of things to say that are too short for regular entries (yeah, I know there's no minimum length, but I don't like to make really short entries unless they're important), and too long for Twitter. Anyway, I have five items today.

1. One thing I've heard people say about Bill Clinton is that he was calm during a crisis. (Yeah, maybe it was because he'd always get a blow job before addressing the nation, but hey, whatever works, right?) It seems like Obama, who always appears to be cool and composed, might be the same way. He also has charisma, an area in which John Kerry was seriously lacking. I think there's a good chance these traits will prove beneficial to him in the election. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of racism in the country to work against him.

2. Sometimes, when I hear people talking about how badly the stock market is doing, I kind of want the whole thing to fail. I mean, I don't really (after all, I probably wouldn't have been able to pay for college if it hadn't been for my family investing in mutual funds), but I do think the system needs SOME incentive to change. Isn't it a bit absurd that the basis of our economic system involves people on Wall Street gambling?

3. When I did my post about annoying commercials, there was another kind I'd meant to list, but forgot. Those are the ones that show Ashton Kutcher playing with his camera. Maybe I should feel sorry for the guy, though. He can't get any acting roles anymore, and the only way anyone will pay him any attention at parties is if he shows off his camera.

4. Speaking of commercials, colbyucb reminded me of how Subway's "hey, we're healthy" campaign is rather irritating. I'm not even sure they started down that road until Jared, and his weight loss plan involved a lot of walking and eating the veggie subs. No one is going to get into shape by having an Italian BMT every day, you know?

5. bethje and I went to PetSmart last week, and looked at the cats they had available for adoption. It really bothers me when one of the cages says something like, "My family moved, and left me behind." Why would anyone DO that? Poor kitties!

bethje, Dorothea, and I went out to eat at Ruby Tuesday last night. I had some Parmesan Shrimp Pasta thing, which was good, if a bit light on the actual shrimp. But then, most shrimp entrées are, unless you get all you can eat, and even then they tend to refill your plate rather infrequently. Ruby Tuesday also has flavored lemonade, with free refills. The flavor is strong enough that I usually don't want to get as many refills as I do with soda, though. I'm sure they're counting on that. Anyway, those things were good, but what's not so good is that they discontinued the Strawberry Tallcake, and changed the Chocolate Tallcake. It's still mostly the same ingredients, but it's now served sideways on a plate instead of upright in a glass, which means the name "Tallcake" is no longer particularly appropriate. Essentially, it's now just a piece of chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream on the side. Pretty lame, really. Dorothea also mentioned how they used to have pumpernickel bread at Ruby Tuesday, and they no longer do. What's with all the changes? I mean, I know their very name indicates that they change with every new day, but still.

Speaking of changes, I never quite understood why those old ("old" meaning "from when I was a kid") T.J. Maxx commercials implied that never being the same place twice was a good thing. I want consistency in my businesses, damn it! I want to go to a place I haven't been in three years and have it be exactly the same! Having some new stuff is fine, but don't get rid of the old! (Yes, I realize that this would cause space issues for stores, but not so much for restaurants.)

And while I'm ranting, I heard second-hand that someone said gas prices would never go down to $2 per gallon again. I'm sure this is true, but, um, are they trying to imply that $2 is a LOW price? I first started driving in the latter half of 2002, and it was a while before I even had to pay $1.50 for a gallon. I think prices first went over $2 in this area during Hurricane Katrina, and they quickly rocketed up to $3, but then dropped down again. I think the price I paid today was slightly less than last time, but I've kind of stopped paying attention. You know how, when numbers are really big, it's difficult for the human brain to really conceive of them? Billions and trillions are more or less the same thing to many of us under normal circumstances, and it's the same way with gas prices over $2. I guess prices will go back down again if they move forward with that offshore drilling, though! (Yeah, right. Just like Americans were hailed as liberators in Iraq.)

Finally, happy belated birthday to countblastula, and happy actual birthday to kristenjarrod!

I recently read The O'Reilly Factor for Kids, which was actually a wedding present from slfcllednowhere. In truth, I didn't think it was as bad as I would have expected. In fact, I think the main problem with it is that Bill doesn't really practice what he preaches. He has a chapter on bullying, which is good since it's a problem a lot of adults seem to ignore, but he constantly bullies people on his show. Aside from that, the Most Ridiculous Item of the Book is his attempt to talk to kids in their language, which comes across pretty awkwardly. Not that I know how kids talk nowadays (and I had only a rudimentary idea of how they talked when I actually WAS one), but I probably wouldn't even make the attempt. There's also an undercurrent of the conservative "work hard and you'll succeed in life" philosophy, but I'm sure that's par for the course in kids' advice books (and probably adult advice books as well). At one point, O'Reilly dismisses cynicism as "lazy thinking," which I would say is cynical in and of itself. Of course, I'm a professional cynic, but my heart's not in it. So anyway, I didn't think most of its advice was that bad, which is probably a good thing for the kids who receive this book from Fox-loving relatives, but not so much for those of us who enjoy seeing what absurdity the Falafel King will come up with next. Maybe I need to read Culture Warrior.

Speaking of O'Reilly, a little while ago Newt Gingrich was on his show, and the two of them were talking about how great Fox News is. I've seen this kind of thing other times as well, and it just makes me figure that they have to spend a lot of time talking themselves up because watching the channel itself generally gives the impression that it's actually just a bunch of holier-than-thou old guys regurgitating Republican Party talking points. It's like how the people who make a point of saying they have a good sense of humor are often the ones who couldn't laugh if ordered to at gunpoint. (Okay, it would probably be hard for ANYONE to laugh if they had a gun pointing at them. Bad metaphor, but you get the idea, right?) By the way, Newt was promoting the two books he'd just written, one of which was fiction. (All right, they were probably both fiction, but he actually admitted that one of them was.) Is anyone at all surprised by the fact that the fiction book has a picture of something exploding on the cover?

Oh, and you know that GoPhone commercial with Meat Loaf in it? Earlier today, I saw an Internet ad for the same product was Sonic the Hedgehog in it. I felt that was worth mentioning, even though it has nothing to do with the rest of this entry.