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Last time I tried my own list, Coheed and Cambria fans came crawling in off Twitter and all hell broke loose. So in honor of RedEye’s three-year anniversary (and it besting CNN’s prime time lineup in the coveted 25-34 demo) here’s the show’s 10 worst albums of the decade.

When the Japanese decide to use Star Wars to sell tuna, all hell breaks loose…

h/t Serious Eats

Stalag 17 (1953)
A cynical serviceman in a World War II POW camp has to prove he’s not an informer. Cast: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger. Dir: Billy Wilder. BW-120 mins, TV-PG, CC. 10:00 PM EST. TCM

I love POW movies… probably because my Grandpa spent 11 months in a German POW camp and rarely talked about it. He thought Hogan’s Heroes was high-larious. What manner of man was this? Anyway… Holden is fine here (did he invent cynical and morally compromised?) as is Otto Preminger. Informing is serious business in most areas of life. It’s deadly serious here — even the suspicion of it.

Earlier in the day is George Washington Slept Here — a very underrated (read “hilarious”) comedy with Jack Benny and Ann Sheridan. One of the mysteries of the ages is “Why didn’t Jack Benny do more films?” On right before for the 9 millionth time is Ninotchka and the bachelor and the Bobby Soxer with Myrna Loy, Cary Grant and Shirley Temple.

After Stalag 17 is Network, Tender Mercies with Robert Duvall and in the deep middle of the night is Trading Places… which raises the other age-old question… “Will TCM show Jamie Lee Curtis’ boobs?”

I wondered how long into Monday’s post-Super Bowl coverage it would take for the “Manning choked” meme to spread, and it didn’t take long. On ESPN this afternoon was a full-bore segment on “Manning’s legacy.” Given Manning possibly has five years left in his career – at the least – it may be early to evaluate, but that won’t stop the talking heads from the toy department, who will find little to pontificate between now, spring training, and the NCAA basketball tournament.

Manning’s interception came with his team trailing. It came on a 3rd-and-5 play. It also came with the intrinsic knowledge that if the Colts didn’t run the clock down to at least 30 seconds before tying it, New Orleans was probably going to win. Once New Orleans worked its way around Indianapolis’ early scheming, they were unstoppable, especially on those mid-range seam routes that eat up so many yards and no one knew this better than Manning, who had to sit on the bench for most of the last three-quarters of the game and watch it be taken out of his hands.

Favre’s play came when his team had an opportunity to win the game, when he didn’t have to throw the ball. Manning’s pass at worst was a bad read, more likely a great play by the New Orleans defensive back, who was sitting on the route. On Favre’s mad dash turned to disaster, he broke nearly ever fundamental rule of quarterbacking players learn starting in sixth grade. He threw across his body, he threw back across the field, he took a chance when his team didn’t need it, and he cost his team sure points.

If anyone admires Brett Favre, it is I. I sat in a hospital waiting room one Monday night years ago while my brother had surgery. I was playing in a sizable football pool at the time. If not for Favre’s bootleg touchdown run against the Jaguars that night, I wouldn’t have that mattress sitting in my bedroom. I like the guy, but the media gushing over his “school yard” approach has fueled him to play in ways that any other quarterback in the league would be derided for.

Manning is no Favre. Minnesota would still be a decent team without the Mississippi quarterback – the Colts wouldn’t even be in the playoffs without Manning.

God knows I didn’t agree with the guy on damned near anything (plus he’s a Pitt grad), but fellow Pennsylvanians still. Rest in peace, Mr. Murtha, and may He have mercy on your soul.

It’s a geostationary banana.Thank heavens we got that straightened out.

Seven Days In May (1964)
An American military officer discovers his superiors are planning a military coup.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner Dir: John Frankenheimer BW-118 mins, TV-14. 6:00 PM EST. TCM.

Yeah I know its politics suck (but hell I thought the POTUS in this film was a weakling too) but what bad paranoid politics! Frankenheimer’s second paranoid home run in the early 1960s. Burt Lancaster is great… and Ava Gardner plays the aging mistress a little too well and nobody does righteous anger better than Kirk Douglas — especially since he shares General Scott’s disdain for his CinC’s policies. This is part of a four-set — along with Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove, and LBJ’s Daisy Ad — of early ’60s media that seem to foretell the poison in politics to come.

Later in the day is Sophie’s Choice and earlier is Now, Voyager, Mr. Smith (which for me one viewing is sufficient — and I’ve seen it 4 times) and The Devil and Daniel Webster.

*** Can’t guarantee I’ll be here the entire game — especially if it starts to suck, but feel free to comment on ads, game, half-time, Katrina mentions…

Here is that outrageous and woman-hating anti-choice Tim Tebow ad that those homophobic zombie-worshiping Christianists aired in the Super Bowl pre-game. Stay tuned during the game for more woman-hating propaganda. Watch it — if you can.

/snark off/ Anyone who sees anything sinister in this ad needs some serious spiritual help. You are dead in your soul.

First… kudos to Marvel for setting the upcoming Captain America movie back in the 1940s so they could make him more patriotic. Jeers for thinking that only the 1940s would support a flag-waving (and wearing) patriot without any risk of eye-rolling. I’ve always thought Cap would be difficult to film — I mean the suit is a bit ridiculous — especially on a battlefield — at least a 20th century one. As these attest:

And don’t forget Reb Brown!

I mean — it’s no more ridiculous than a Zouave uni.

So color me a bit skeptical if they make Captain America a USO performer. How else to deal with that uniform? I’m sure the muted color approach will work, but it will take some disbelief suspension to make it work. From the L.A. Times blog on The First Avenger: Captain America:

I wanted to come back to the idea of Steve Rogers as a reluctant performer with United Services Organizations, which famously brought Bob Hope and other entertainers to morale-boosting events for troops overseas.

“So he’s up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can’t wait to get out and really fight. When he does go AWOL, he covers up the suit but then, after a few things happen, he realizes that this uniform allows him to lead. By then, he’s become a star in the public mind and a symbol. The guys get behind him because he embodies something special.”

There will be more than one costume in the film, too.

In the first USO sequences, the frustrated patriot will be wearing a version that is closer to the classic Jack Kirby-designed costume, but then later as the super-soldier hits the war zone he will be wearing a sturdier, more muted version that he makes himself that is more like battle togs. The stripes across his mid-section, for instance, will be straps, not colored fabric.

“He realizes the value of the uniform symbols but he modifies his suit and adds some armor, it will be closer to the Cpa costume in some of the comics in more recent years . . . this approach, it’s the only way we could justify ever seeing him on a screen in tights, with the funny boots and everything. The government essentially puts him up there as a living comic-book character and he rips it off and then reclaims some of its imagery after he recognizes the value of it. We think it’s the best way to keep the costume and explain it at the same time.”

h/t: Big Hollywood marquee

Mike posted yesterday on BHO’s outrageously narcissistic “buried in an Obama T-shirt” moment. That made me think of this… it’s a little out of context, but the first two parts of the Chuckles the Clown episode are on YouTube (for now) to flesh it out. There’s a way for such things to be said and laughed off… it IS funny. But not to Barry Obama. He needs a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down his pants….

Barely…

George Soros’ gigantic waste of money, Media Matters, is upset at the National Review and The Daily Caller for not adequately correcting allegations about the hit-and-run incident involving blogger Jim Treacher.

Points of contention? Treacher blamed the Secret Service initially (based off an eye-witness account), but it was the diplomatic division of the state department. Not a true correction, though both the Caller and NRO kept readers updated on the changing status of the story (my paper no longer runs corrections, so I can’t see the beef). Also, the accident wasn’t “technically” a hit and run since the agent who ran over Treacher did stop and call The Daily Caller office. He also failed to identify himself at the scene, and only identified himself as the driver when Tucker Carlson performed a rather contentious phone interview with him a day later.

The driver did have enough time to call his place of employment, which promptly sent an agent to follow the DC police to Treacher’s hospital room, where Treacher was handed a jaywalking ticket as he sat delirious from painkillers.

As for Treacher, he had surgery performed on his knee and is now suffering from a pulmonary embolism, or what my talented and medically-employed wife put, a blood clot.

In the days to follow, Media Matters will surely assemble the pieces of this effort to cast down big government, hastily constructed by the neo-conservative mainstream media complex. That same media complex which employs Democrats by a factor of nine.

What’s lost on Media Matters in this insanity is the simple truth of bureaucratic malfeasance. Unless Treacher was somebody with stroke in the government, chances are his fate wouldn’t have been different if he was a Democrat or a Republican. That simple truth should raise the ire of everyone in the blogosphere. But we are far from the days of yore, before media business was about afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. Still, there is ways to go before the press catches the government in that regard.

If you have ever been curious about what a real no-shit fighter pilot is like, that was Robin Olds.

He passed away in June of 2007 but his spirit and legend continue on.

In April his biography will be released he was writing it when he passed…it should be awesome

Get all the info HERE. You can pre-order through amazon.com right now.

Here’s a little bit about him in case your not familiar…

The Robin Olds Factor

By Walter J. Boyne

The famous ace influenced generations of pilots, and he always led from the front.
Few American airmen have had the kind of dazzling talent and charisma possessed by Robin Olds. His persona loomed equally large whether from the cockpit, the lectern, or in face-to-face encounters.

Olds was big, tough, smart, and swaggering, not to mention brave and highly skilled. Even Hollywood would have had a hard time portraying the genuine article on the big screen. He was a truly dynamic force, one who had a positive impact on the Air Force for more than 60 years.

“His influence upon who we are as an Air Force today can hardly be overstated,” Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, remarked on the death of the retired brigadier general last June. Olds was “a staunch advocate for better fighters, better pilot training,” and the innovative tactics that the Air Force still uses today, Moseley said…

…(Robin Olds addressed) countless groups around the country, often beginning his talks with four words that truly characterized him. Olds would stand before the group—sometimes military people, sometimes a Rotary Club, it didn’t matter. He would square his shoulders, wait for a few tension-filled seconds, then shout, “I AM A WARRIOR.” No one ever doubted him.

Though he never seemed to seek it out, his popularity continually increased.

Olds continued to write influential papers on his ideas about aerial warfare. It is the mark of the man that when technology at last reached a point where his ideas on training and tactics no longer applied, he welcomed the change.

Olds realized that the advent of stealth, precision guided weapons, and sophisticated command and control forever changed the dynamics of air combat, and he said so.

He also labored over an autobiography that was not completed by the time of his death, but that would be massively welcomed by his legion of fans.

After a long fight, Robin Olds succumbed to congestive heart failure on June 14, 2007, surrounded by his family and friends. He was interred at the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery with full honors and a unique missing man formation. Four Phantoms roared over, and instead of the customary pull up by the lead’s wingman, in this instance, the lead himself pulled up. It was an appropriate salute to the one, the only, Robin Olds, a leader all his life.

Read the whole article HERE. We could use a few more leaders like Robin Olds.

Rebecca (1940)
A young bride is terrorized by the memories of her husband’s glamorous first wife.
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson Dir: Alfred Hitchcock BW-130 mins, TV-PG. 1:45 PM. TCM

I’m not gonna lie — I’m watching football tomorrow, but that’s why God made DVR isn’t it? Something for everyone tomorrow… I dithered between this and Foreign Correspondent, but I loves me some Gothic tales. Samson and Delilah is also on — and I loves me some Hedy Lamarr. Wuthering Heights is on again (already a Pick O’ the Day last month). The original Pink Panther is on and except for the fights with Cato and some spots those films have becomes mostly dated. In the evening is Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Juliet of the Spirits. And overnight is On the Beach — a nuclear war horror tale.

Who Dat?

Apparently there is a bit of a ruckus over who owns the rights to print the words “Who Dat?” on a t-shirt.

LA Senator David Vitter claims that the city of New Orleans owns that phrase

The NFL is trying to stop a local T-Shirt vendor from making shirts with the phrase saying the Aints Saints in fact hold the rights to that saying.

Fighter pilot and raconteur Ed Rasimus says neigh to both.

New Orleans “owns” the two-word phrase says the law-maker.

Well, riddle me this.

The chant started in the ’80s. From the establishment of the team in 1967 until then there was no connection to the phrase. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.

I went to USAF pilot training in 1964 at Williams AFB in Arizona. The student pilots were assigned to a Student Squadron, the 3526th Sturon. The squadron also included the instructors for all academics and for officer training. The squadron patch was a white shield with a standing Sylvester the Cat, nemesis of Tweety Bird. Sylvester was zipping into a tiger suit and had a flying helmet under his arm. Of course, the primary trainer was the T-37 Tweety Bird.

Distinction was made between students and instructors in the squadron by different patches. The instructor patch had “Who Dat” on the patch with one word on each side of Sylvester’s shoulders. Student patches did not have the phrase. The image and slogan were used with permission of Looney Tunes.

Sue the hell out of them Ed!

Andrew Breitbart got into an argument with Joseph Farah from Stephanie’s long-lamented World Net Daily over the birther issue, which some crazies continue to try and drag into the tea party movement. From Hotair:

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart. “She was asking me if I thought it was was to bring it up, and I said, no. We have a lot of strong arguments to be making, and that is a primary argument. That is an argument for the primaries that did not take hold. The arguments that these people right here are making are substantive arguments. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all won not on birther, but on substance. And to apply to this group of people the concept that they’re all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it’s not a winning issue.”

I think Breitbart could have been a bit more heavy, but he’s right on point.

I can’t seriously believe that Farah, or World Net Daily, finds the birth certificate issue a winner for Republicans. But it is a winner for them. It’s a trough to feed the conspiracy-minded and factually-challenged who find it easier to believe the worst about the other side than to disagree on the basis of fact. It’s something to scream about, not to debate. Most of the movement is copycatted from truthers and other left-wing conspiracy theorists.

I had more than a little chuckle when I found the supposed FEMA concentration camp being built in Gary, Ind. was put under construction by the Bush administration. Soon after Nov. 2008, my dad showed me a Web site of the same supposed “camp” saying it was being built to house dissidents by Obama. Just because you’re crazy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be original.

For those reading who still harbor such ill-feelings, the Hotair story has a link to the release of Obama’s birth certificate in 2008, as well as record of his birth in the Honolulu newspaper in 1961.

Wankette mentioned this bizarre Obama moment yesterday, but some things you just have to see to believe:

What’s most interesting to me is what occurs after the President says that the woman requested she be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

The crowd laughs, because they really don’t know what else to do.  When you genuinely like someone who is saying something odd and embarrassing, it’s a natural reaction to laugh—to give him the opportunity to brush off what he’s said as a joke.  (A joke about a woman who has died of cancer would of course be in bad taste.)

But Obama doesn’t take the out.  Look at his face as the crowd chuckles.

The President is pissed off.  He mentioned the woman’s dying wish so that his audience would understand that her death was not just an individual or family tragedy.  Those are a dime a dozen.  This was about Obama, and therefore no laughing matter.

Gerard Alexander, in a column that will surely lead to his Inbox exploding and his computer to be hacked, takes on liberal condescension in the media and in the body politic. Alexander traces liberal moral and ideological superiority through the 50s to today, citing Paul Krugman and Barack Obama heavily. A great read.

What it leads to – crass elitism and a style government not exactly for the people.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank’s best-selling 2004 book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on “guns, God and gays” instead of economic redistribution.

And speaking to a roomful of Democratic donors in 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama offered a similar (and infamous) analysis when he suggested that residents of Rust Belt towns “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” about job losses. When his comments became public, Obama backed away from their tenor but insisted that “I said something that everybody knows is true.”

In this view, we should pay attention to conservative voters’ underlying problems but disregard the policy demands they voice; these are illusory, devoid of reason or evidence. This form of liberal condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall meetings or “tea party” gatherings, it might be politically prudent for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually listen.

Alexander takes it all on – from “code word” racial language, to using moral issues as a distraction from economic issues.

He concludes his article by taking on Democratic notions of government acting in the public’s best interest, when more often then not, actions are decided by politics. The left has vastly ignored the union payoff for GM, the money TARP banks piped back into the pockets of incumbents, or the special-interest payoffs and handouts that were stockpiled into the health reform bill.

…to get a set of pom-poms?

From the Seattle Times Weekly:

Benjamin Grundy is a student at Garfield-Palouse High School (local population: 1,100) who says the school is discriminating against his wishes to do what all the other cheerleaders are doing. Namely, dance, wave pom-poms, wear a proper uniform and not just stand like there like a statue moving his arms.

That’s what Grundy and his mom say he’s been reduced to since the cheerleading coach instructed him he couldn’t gyrate his hips like the girls do and the athletic director allegedly suggested he be the team mascot. Since writing letters to ACLU and a local congresswoman, Garfield has offered Grundy a uniform and pom-poms. But that’s not enough, says his mom.

If the federal government cannot force this school to allow Benjamin Grundy to gyrate his hips at football games, what the hell is it good for?

An America in which a gay, mentally challenged, biracial male cheerleader is subjected to this sort of rank discrimination is not the America I know and love.  How can any of us sleep when we know that somewhere in our own country there exists a gay, mentally challenged, biracial male cheerleader who feels like he’s not fitting in?

————————————–

“First they told the gay, mentally challenged, biracial male cheerleader he could not gyrate, and I said nothing, for I was not a gay, mentally challenged, biracial male cheerleader…”

Yet to catch this.

Christopher Hitchens, in Slate, writes a review of the book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matter by B.R. Myers

Hitchens begins:

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial “minder” whom I’ll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world’s most hysterical and operatic leader-cult. One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he’d heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity.

He continues on how Myers’ book changed his outlook:

Karl Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire wrote that those trying to master a new language always begin by translating it back into the tongue they already know. And I was limiting myself (and ill-serving my readers) in using the pre-existing imagery of Stalinism and Eastern deference. I have recently donned the bifocals provided by B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent “Constitution,” “ratified” last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian “military first” mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia.

Notice the part about how Kim Jong Il is really an extreme rightist. I’d quibble with that characterization, but I think that argument is beside the larger point: North Korea might mean what it says. And there’s this encouraging bit:

Myers also points out that many of the slogans employed and displayed by the North Korean state are borrowed directly—this really does count as some kind of irony—from the kamikaze ideology of Japanese imperialism. Every child is told every day of the wonderful possibility of death by immolation in the service of the motherland and taught not to fear the idea of war, not even a nuclear one.

The regime cannot rule by terror alone, and now all it has left is its race-based military ideology. Small wonder that each “negotiation” with it is more humiliating than the previous one. As Myers points out, we cannot expect it to bargain away its very raison d’etre.

And then Hitchens concludes as only he can:

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

One irony… as right as Hitchens usually is when he writes on North Korea — and Myers’ book sounds fascinating even if I disagree with him on where on the political spectrum the regime is — the belief system he ardently apologizes for: atheism… is the root of this evil. Psychology and biology don’t explain it. The belief in no higher authority than might and the individual in charge gives rise to this version of evil.

General Stanley McChrystal,, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, gave a relatively upbeat assessment of our prospects for 2010 in Afghanistan in a recent speech in Turkey. Upbeat compared to his September assessment of a deteriorating situation. From the London Telegraph:

“I still will tell you that I believe the situation in Afghanistan is serious,” said Gen McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

“I do not say now that I think it’s deteriorating. I said that last summer and I believe that that was correct. I feel differently now.

“I am not prepared to say that we have turned the corner. So I’m saying that the situation is serious, but I think we have made significant progress in setting conditions in 2009 and beginning some progress, and that we’ll make real progress in 2010.”

The Marja offensive is widely viewed as the first major test of Gen McChrystal’s counter-insurgency doctrine.

But the Nato commander linked the Marja operation to the twin American and British-led Operations Khanjar and Panther’s Claw, which were launched last June just after he took over in Kabul following the firing of his predecessor Gen David McKiernan.

“What we’re doing in the Helmand River valley writ large, we really started last summer increasing security in a number of areas,” said Gen McChrystal. “You saw where the Marines went in. And British forces, Danish forces, Estonian forces went in.

“And they started to create a series of bubble security zones – pretty classic counter-insurgency. But they were not contiguous, not connected.

So what we’re doing is, we’re expanding that, increasing the areas that will be under government of Afghanistan control.”

Gen McChrystal conceded that it was “unconventional” to announce the Marja offensive beforehand because it gave the Taliban the opportunity to flee, bury bombs and fortify. The aim, however, was to send a message to insurgents that “it’s about to change” and to Afghans that the writ of their government was about to be extended.

“If they want to fight, then obviously that will have to be an outcome.

But if they don’t want to fight, that’s fine, too, if they want to integrate into the government.

In honor of Superbowl 2010’s Cheetos/Fritos/Doritos/Tostitos Halftime Show (and a Threedonian’s request that we compile a list for the halftime act), I bring you the return of the Battle of the Bands.

Every song is one point for that group, and every number one is five points.  I’ll post the winner on Monday, along with that pic of Jimmy Page I used last time.  Just because, I can.

5. Walk This Way (Aerosmith): This song was sung, loudly and frequently, by a whole lot of high school girls who had no idea what they were singing about.  I was one of those girls.

4. Pinball Wizard (The Who): Half-credit, because I prefer Elton John’s cover.

3. Behind Blue Eyes (The Who): The Ache; the song about all of us, pleading to be known for who we really are, instead of what we pretend to be.

2. See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You (The Who): This is one of my favorite rock anthems ever, amen.

1. Dream On (Aerosmith): “Sing with me/if it’s just for today…”  Along with “Smoke On the Water” and “Sister Christian”, one of those air-guitar-in-your-head, standing-on-your-chair-waving-a-lighter, sing-’til-you’re-hoarse, Klassics.

The whereabouts of the elusive Texas Protest Banana remain unknown.

Happy 99th… Rest in Peace.

You might remember this Douche.

Well, the FBI has rolled him up. Read all about it HERE.

Thanks to CDR Salamander, X Brad TC and everyone who got involved to see this tool arrested and hopefully punished.

From BlackFive

If you ever hear anyone ask why on earth we should be fighting these monsters in Afghanistan, I want you to think of this…

They attached a bomb to my sister Nahida. They tied rectangular pieces to both her arms, and a black strip was wrapped around both her legs.

Then they connected the whole thing. She told my brother the bomb was heavy and she could not walk.

He said she would be comfortable once she was sitting down in the car.

They gave her medicine. But she was crying very loud for my mother. She kept going to her and hugging her. When my sister looked down at the bomb, she shivered.

Then my brother and my father started beating my mother, and they were shouting: “Why you are distracting the girl from her mission?”

I heard my sister saying: “Where is Meena? I want to see her.” But I didn’t have the strength. My heart couldn’t take it.

My mother fainted when they put her in the car. My brother said my sister’s attack was in Afghanistan.

I always think about my sister. She was healthy and a very nice girl. She was younger than me, but she was wiser. My mother used to tell me that I was an idiot, but she was very wise.

What a bunch of sick, sick F@#kS!

The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Seven American gunmen hire themselves out to protect a Mexican village from bandits.
Cast: Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson Dir: John Sturges C-128 mins, TV-PG. 12:30 PM EST. TCM

I don’t care if the theme is a cliche — I still get chills when the music plays dammit. Better than the Kurosawa source material — suck it film school student. Tomorrow is Steve McQueen heaven… this, The Great Escape and Bullitt (see below). Also How the West Was Won and The French Connection at night. It might be a hunker down with a 12-pack kinda day.

Building a Super Bowl team takes a lot of preparation. The Wall Street Journal published this study on the man hours spent yearly by an NFL franchise – the numbers are stunning.

According to an operational study of National Football League teams prepared for The Wall Street Journal by Boston Consulting Group, the typical NFL season requires 514,000 hours of labor per team. That’s about eight times the effort it took to conceptualize, build and market Apple’s iPod, according to BCG, and enough time to build 25 America’s Cup yachts. If both Super Bowl teams dedicated themselves to construction rather than football, their members could have built the Empire State Building in seven seasons.

If you divide a team’s total preparation time by the number of yards its offense gains on the field in a season, you’ll find that an NFL team moves at the rate of about 32 hours per foot. And it’s only getting worse: According to interviews with NFL personnel, the study’s authors say the total prep time per team has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.

Worth it, or in the words of Mr. Shatner, a complete waste of time?

Your (Canadian) tax dollars at work:

An Argentine artist called Caesar Saëz applied to the Canada Arts Council and le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and was given, between the two bodies, a grant of $130,000 to create a 300-metre long flying banana that would float over Texas protesting the policies of George W. Bush.

Why Canadian taxpayers are subsidizing Argentine artists to violate U.S. airspace is a topic best left to the next Summit of the Americas.

The artiste got the money & promptly scarpered, leaving the world with only the following dim  prognosis: The whereabouts of the banana are unknown.

I love this idea so much I will be encouraging Threedonians and their loved ones to be on the lookout.  Together, we can find the banana!

The current Democrat candidate for Illinois Lieutenant felon Governor

In the grand tradition of George Ryan, Rod Blagojevich and Paul Powell, the newest Illinois Democratic leader has burst onto the scene from out of nowhere. Scott Lee Cohen surprised everyone by winning the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor on Tuesday. Cohen is a businessman who was a virtual unknown in the state before the election. He beat five other candidates, including four state legislators, largely because Cohen spent $2.5 million of his own money campaigning for a job that is pretty unimportant in most states. But, in Illinois, the Lieutenant Governor spends most of his time waiting for a United States District Attorney to create the inevitable job opening above him.

Now that Cohen is unexpectedly on the ticket, people are naturally curious: who is this guy? The media, belatedly, has provided some surprising answers. The allegations (so far):

Continue reading We’re Proud – So Very Proud

comes this from CDR Salamander.

Saints fullback Kyle Eckel used to be a Midshipman at the Naval Academy. Greg Doyle wants to know why Mister Eckel isn’t serving alongside his brothers. Good question.

If you came here looking for answers, you’re out of luck. I have no answers. Not when the topic is New Orleans Saints fullback Kyle Eckel. And not when the question is this: Why is Eckel, who ran for 1,147 yards at Navy in 2004, playing in Super Bowl XLIV instead of fulfilling his military obligation in the United States Navy?

That’s a big, meaty question. And I’m but a small, scrawny sports writer, one who cannot answer it. Nor will I fill in the blanks with my version of Right and Wrong. Not this time. Not on this topic. It’s too large, too powerful. Too real.
…
U.S. soldiers are dying in Afghanistan. One died just Monday in southern Afghanistan, blown up by an improvised bomb. And I’m supposed to sit here in my cozy media work room in Miami and demand to know why Kyle Eckel is playing football for the Saints while some of his classmates are tiptoeing around IED’s in Kabul? Sorry. Can’t do it…

Enquiring minds want to know. For more on this go HERE.

I believe the statute of limitations has passed for the guys that did this flying. Who doesn’t love low passes by supersonic jet fighters? I mean besides commanders, safety folks and humorless tree hugging hippies.

Stolen from 67Cougar.

We were down for over 8 hours today. I’m not one for hyperbole, but it took me back to the dark days of the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-80… 444 days/8 hours what really is the difference? I just wanna celebrate.

www.threedonia.com was down for over eight hours today because:

1.  Steve Jobs’s evil Apple minions hacked into our server because we slammed the iMaxiPad iPad?

B)  NAMMB (National Association of Men with Man-Boobs) issued a court injunction against us, claiming our site practices hate speech?

3.  A Russian syndicate hit us with a denial of service attack protesting the absence of new Crap of Bull segments from Porvaznik?

IV)  Rufus did something stupid?

(answer in the comments)

The Shootist (1976)
A dying gunfighter tries to set his affairs in order.
Cast: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, James Stewart Dir: Don Siegel C-99 mins, TV-14. 10:15 PM. TCM

True Grit is on before this for which John Wayne received his only Oscar, but this is my favorite of the two films and a fitting capstone to the Duke’s career — and especially poignant given Wayne’s death from cancer 3 years later. Earlier that morning Katherine Hepburn is in Little Women (a great flick and probably a better “film”, but like I’m gonna pick Kate over the Duke. Also Lady Sings the Blues follows The Shootist — a great flick — and sad and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?, which is OK in my book, but dated and more of a historical curiosity than a timeless classic.

We’re doing a mini-thon: Pain Meds for Jim Treacher, one of the OGs (Original [Daily] Gutters), who apparently got hit & left for dead yesterday by the Secret Service.  Or Keith Olbermann.

Edited to add: My new slogan: The banana’s whereabouts are unknown.

What to get the 9-year old that has everything? Noah Cyrus (Miley’s kid sis) Lingerie. No shit. Go to the link for more info… Our current economic situation is but a symptom of a deeper crisis.

h/t: BoingBoing

Insert lawyer joke here. The US DOJ is looking for retarded lawyers. The job description for the opening of Trial Lawyer dealing in Voting Rights of the Civil Rights Division reads (bolding mine):

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine. Applicants who meet the qualification requirements and are able to perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation are encouraged to identify targeted disabilities in response to the questions in the Avue application system seeking that information. For additional information for applicants with targeted disabilities, please contact the Civil Rights Division’s Disability Program Manager, Diane Petrie

As pointed at The Volokh Conspiracy… this has to be boilerplate language inadvertently put in with no editing.

h/t: Volokh Conspiracy

Oh… and damn I miss Phil Hartman

Desperate Journey (1942)
American pilots stranded in Germany during World War II fight their way to freedom.
Cast: Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Coleman, Raymond Massey Dir: Raoul Walsh BW-108 mins, TV-PG. 9:15 AM EST. TCM

Tomorrow is an Errol Flynn kinda day. Captain Blood is on right before this (7:15 AM) and The Adventures of Robin Hood is showing at midnight. This is one of the movies that Dirty Harry turned a lot of us on to.

Ah… Rahm Emanuel… it’s funny to see him ride the PC short bus with disability advocates . But really… they need to get over it. And he needs to be more circumspect.

“It’s a dessert topping.  No, it’s a floor wax…”

Has a man with less ability ever made so much selling so little?  In my opinion Steve Jobs has been selling more sizzle than steak, a lot more, and charging a premium mark-up for that sizzle for years.  The iPad is a perfect example of this.  Is there anything it does that hasn’t been available for years, at a lower price?  I have had several dumbfounded conversations with people, attempting to discuss concrete specifics for why they want one, and nobody can give me any constructive reason, yet the conversation ends with them insisting they have to have one.

I thought this exchange with James Lileks and his preternaturally astute and observant daughter captured the essense of the iPad perfectly:

Continue reading From the Mouths of Babes…