I knew then things weren’t looking good for Shyamalan’s career. His latest film The Happening also isn’t out yet, and already the mocking has begun, as evidenced by this poster, defaced by anonymous wits in NYC:

(photo by wellohorld)

Or, as this review of The Happening by Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club states:

M. Night Shyamalan used to have a vast army of fans. Now he has a dwindling network of apologists. The former frightmaster’s descent from wunderkind to embarrassment has been unusually dramatic and public…

Why? Well, first his films are bad. The only (supposedly) good thing about The Sixth Sense is the ending — and I figured it out from the previews. (Really, have you people never read a ghost story that you couldn’t see that coming?) They all feel the same: soaked in dread, self-important, and more ponderously paced than a 36-hour child birth. It doesn’t help that like his films, the man himself is dreadfully self-important, strutting around as if he’s God’s gift to film. About the only good thing I can say about M. Night Shyamalan is he has some skill at crafting a story, but he comes up short in practically every other area I can think of.

I’ve thought for years the best thing Shyamalan could do is stop his two years between films nonsense, stop trying to be the next Alfred Hitchcock, and make several different genres of films in one year. The man needs to make a musical, a slapstick comedy, maybe a crime drama. It would go a long way to expanding his abilities and informing his other films’ outlook. As it is, he just keeps recycling the same crap over and over and audiences have been onto him for the better part of a decade. I don’t even bother watching his films anymore. I just look at spoilers to confirm I once again correctly guessed the ending.

But I’m not holding my breath for any self-discovery out of “Night,” as he likes to be called. He’d first have to acknowledge that perhaps he’s not the genius mommy always told him he was.

Yes, people are so over M. Night Shyamalan. Too bad he’ll never be over himself.

I concluded that article by writing:

…can you deny George “I can hardly be bothered to show up for National Guard duty” Bush talks tough about war? If you do deny that you’re beyond hope. If you can’t deny it, which is he: fool, fraud, or both?

Wednesday, President Bush gave an interview to the Times of London expressing regret over his “tough” talk. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” he reportedly said. He further said that such remarks as “bring them on” and “dead or alive” could have wrongly “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace.”

You can, “you know,” imagine my blank, dumbfounded stare at that last one.

So, I only have two questions: Did Bush take McCain’s backhanded rebuke to heart? And how many wars do you get to start and still be considered “a man of peace?”

Some of the theories I’ve heard:

• Gamblers had the fix in so they could win.
• Bookies had the fix in so they wouldn’t lose big.
• The other jockeys conspired to box out Big Brown, not caring who won so long as it wasn’t him.
• The horse was suddenly taken off steroids, thus explaining away both his previous good performances and his last dreadful one.
• The horse just didn’t give a f**k.

On and on it goes.

Come here, I’m going to tell you the real reason Big Brown lost. Get close, I need to whisper, we wouldn’t want the conspiracy theorists to know the real reason, would we?

Big Brown lost because… he lost.

Simple, isn’t it? There’s a saying in football that on any given Sunday anyone can win. What that means is, it doesn’t matter who is supposed to win, it doesn’t matter who is better on paper, on any given Sunday it is up for grabs and anyone can walk away with it.

Big Brown lost because… any given Sunday, baby. Any given Sunday.

You need to understand: There is no such thing as a sure thing. Nothing is absolutely, 100% guaranteed.

If Big Brown had been the only horse running the Belmont Stakes, a Triple Crown win still could not be guaranteed. Even a horse running without any competition could break its leg right out of the gate, its heart could explode half way around, it could suddenly develop agoraphobia and refuse to set hoof on the track. Even in that seemingly guaranteed situation, there is still the element of doubt, no matter how slight, that the horse will never get to the finish line.

Though something seems 99.9999% locked up and assured, there’s still that .0001% likelihood of it not happening, and sometimes that .0001% will hit. Playing the percentages just means you’re likely to win, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to win. There’s no such animal. Take it from someone who’s seen that .0001% come up more times than would seem possible.

Any given Sunday, baby. Any given Sunday.

 
After spending the last four years crawling up W’s backside to be declared his heir apparent (seems you don’t have to fool all the people all the time, just enough to get yourself nominated), John McCain has this to say about cowboy politics in one of his latest campaign ads:

“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

Okay, he’s trying to position himself as being knowledgeable about war in a time of war, but who is this ad directed against? It’s not damaging Obama; Barack’s not swaggering around with the proverbial “big stick” or waxing rhapsodic about dodging bullets in Bosnia. Hillary “I’ll level Iran” Clinton isn’t a legit target. Is he trying to distance himself from the president? A little late for that. Even intimations of “God told me to make war!” won’t get him to reject that fundie endorsement.

“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

Pretty strong denouncement from someone who wants to spend another 100 years in Iraq. “That was taken out of context!” Yeah, right. McCain might not be wearing boots, but he’s got a “Yee-ha!” in his heart.

About all I can imagine is he was looking in a mirror when he said this, a little tear drop in his eye, a lot of self-loathing in his gut. It’s obviously a cry of self denouncement. “I’m a fraud! I’m a fool! Don’t vote for me!”

If that’s the case, give the man what he wants. Vote Obama.

I’m being facetious. What I think he’s trying to get across is, “I know about war and how to make it, but I also know enough not to be foolhardy about it. I’m the guy we need right now, without any worries of starting wars everywhere.” But it is poorly phrased, and not well thought out. At its heart is the idea he won’t make “unnecessary” wars, but G.W. didn’t think any of his saber rattling or wars were unnecessary either.

Sorry, John, no amount of appeasing words to pacify skittish voters can wipe the stink of Iraq or George W. Bush off you.

And to those who might take exception to the title of this article (including possibly Sen. McCain himself, who apparently can’t see meanings in his words beyond his initial intent), can you deny George “I can hardly be bothered to show up for National Guard duty” Bush talks tough about war? If you do deny that you’re beyond hope. If you can’t deny it, which is he: fool, fraud, or both? Because…

 
“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.”

The current voice of Ernie the Keebler elf sets my ears on edge every time I hear him. Worse, it’s been so long since I’ve heard the original guy, I’ve forgotten what he sounded like. But I still know it’s seriously off.

Not quite so bad but still annoyingly different from the original is the current Geico gecko. (It’s very bad in how different it is from the original — perhaps more so than Ernie — but it doesn’t grate on me as much.) Note to Warren Buffett: not all English accents are the same. The latest Geico switch is like going from Alistair Cooke to Dick Van Dyke’s Mary Poppins cock-eyed “cockney.”

And the second guy to do Fred Flintstone never sounded anything like Fred Flintstone to me. I could never stand to watch the newer cartoons.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Disney does a very good job of keeping the characters sounding the same despite many decades and many actors.

Not quite as good, but still laudable, are the casting directors of the Peanuts franchise. They’ve bungled it on the Geico gecko level a few times, but for the most part their ears have been surprisingly accurate, especially given that using real kids practically forces them to recast every time they make a new cartoon.

Go, Boston!!!!

 
I can’t believe I said that. I hope all my friends still back in L.A. don’t disown me for it. But I have reasons. Yes, I do.

I hate Kobe Bryant. I don’t want the punk to ever get another championship ring, but especially not with the Lakers. For all the talk of how much he has “changed” this year and become a team player, he is still a petulant, self-important brat who thinks the team he plays for is the L.A. Kobes. I will never understand why the team owner and management thought him so important they shuddered at his every threat and kowtowed to his every whim. Sure, he is a fine individual player, but this ain’t tiddly-winks!

Since dumping Shaq by Bryant royal decree, the Lakers have been nowhere near the championship. That’s the way it should be. I hate that they’ve gotten this far. I hate they are close enough for Kobe to be out getting his ring finger sized. (When he walked into the jewelry store, the owner said, “Oooo, another affair, Mr. Bryant?”) I hate that they ended up playing Boston. And for all the myriad reasons I hate Kobe Bryant I think the most damning and egregious of all is that the bastard made me root for the Boston Celtics.

First I move from Los Angeles. Then I cheer on the Celtics to defeat the Lakers. What’s next, buying a skybox at Yankee Stadium?

Damn you, Kobe. Damn you and the spineless corporate honchos you rode in on.

I believe it all comes down to the difference between being out here on my own versus the community atmosphere of the hosted blog. As part of the community, I knew whatever I wrote would be read and commented on. While intellectually I know I get more page views here on my website, it lacks that feel and knowing. Here, I’m more likely to blog something shorter, which I’d have felt self-conscious about over there. By the same token, perhaps I put more effort into creating longer form works, expecting greater scrutiny over there.

The same goes for updating. A blog community almost guarantees a level of readership. Knowing absolutely that a readership was regularly looking in, compelled me to update more often, to put mental energy into looking for and creating article topics to keep up the flow that sustained the readership. Without that tangible feel of a dedicated readership, the pressure to maintain my performance is missing.

I call the less personal nature of this version of my blog counter-intuitive because I’d imagine that having a sense of being adrift, being out here alone, without people looking at me, would cause me to loosen up and say things I might not if I knew certain people were watching. That hasn’t been the case. I think perhaps the community gives a false feeling that you know who is looking, as if that blog weren’t as open to the whole world as this one is. You focus down onto the group you see and forget the greater mass that you don’t. Here, there is no-one to focus on, so the greater unknown surges to the forefront of perception and consequently brings inhibition. “Hmmm, I wonder just who might read this?” In the small community, you get the false sense you know who will be reading.

Along with the community inspired delusion you know who will be reading comes the delusion you know what they will be thinking. If you know your friends (and nemeses), you have a pretty good idea how they will react to certain things. You can fool yourself into mentally gauging their reactions, thinking you know how far you can go and when to pull back. With having a stand-alone blog, with absolutely no idea who your readers are or how they might react, comes the realization you don’t know what is out of line, no idea when someone might become hurt or outraged by what you write, no imagining you know how far is just far enough or way over the line.

What it all amounts to is, no, this isn’t the same blog. In some ways it is like starting from scratch. I have to feel my way around, and master this beastie all over again.

One Israeli tourist in New Zealand, however, was fed up with the constant attention from male Kiwis, so when a rowdy band of road workers started wolf whistling she decided to put them in their place — by taking off her clothes!

Reuters quotes one Police Sergeant Peter Masters as saying, “She said she had thought, ‘Bugger them, I’ll show them what I’ve got.’”

Read the rest of the story at this link.

Apparently Chelsea wanted to try a coconut when she was 4-years-old, and Hill tried to grant her daughter’s wish. The Senator managed to find a coconut in Arkansas, but couldn’t crack it when she finally got it home. Even hubby Bill, a Rhodes Scholar, was at a loss. With 50 years of education between her and the former prez, Hillary confessed neither one of them could figure out how to break open that nut.

Note to Hill and Bill: It’s called a hammer. *

Let’s hope that 3 A.M. call won’t be about an imminent monkey attack. Hey, I’ve seen Planet of the Apes, thank you very much!

 
*You might want to hammer a nail into the coconut first to make a couple small holes and drain the milk before going all Lizzie Borden on its fuzzy hide.

What kind of “shepherd” is the wrong Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.? Does going all over television this past weekend, “defending” himself and further spouting his bigoted lunacy at the expense of his good friend and congregant (i.e “sheep”) senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama (whom Wright dismissed as acting like a politician), qualify as “laying down his life for the sheep?” Resoundingly, no! Wright showed absolutely no concern for anyone but himself.

He didn’t come off like a man defending himself, but a shameless huckster with a personal agenda to push. In fact, he single handedly negated all the prior defenses of him, most especially that we’d only seen a handful of cherry-picked, out of context snippets which didn’t truly represent the man and his beliefs. Wright himself proved that those “out of context snippets” are exactly who the man is and what he believes. Wright’s major accomplishment this weekend was getting Obama to finally denounce him and run the other way as fast as he could.

Wright not only didn’t “lay down his life for the sheep,” he saw a wolf coming (that evil ol’ “MSM”), picked up the sheep (Obama), and threw it to the wolf to save his own hide. Then he drove into town and signed a deal for his new book, How I Fought Down The Evil, Bigoted Wolf!

What did Jesus have to say about that?

“The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” (John 10:12-13 NIV)

Cares nothing for the sheep. Wright is the definition of an hireling. He’s an embarrassment to every community to which he belongs. He’s an embarrassment to Christians, he’s an embarrassment to his former congregation (especially the Obamas), and he’s an embarrassment to African-Americans (unless y’all think that talk about whitey giving you AIDS is helping you out). I hear Local 825 of the Union of Pompous Windbags is even considering revoking his membership.

For now, Hireling Wright is riding his 15 minutes of fame for all they’re worth. You can’t get rid of the guy, he keeps popping up like a bloated corpse in the Hudson River. And I’ll bet right about now that’s exactly what Obama wishes Wright was.