Category: Entertainment

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The Tonys

Neil patrick harris

As a rule I don’t watch award shows.

Last night I noticed that Neal Patrick Harris was hosting and figured I’d tune in briefly to see him. 

I’m impressed with his talent. I had no idea that he could sing & dance. His performance kept me interested enough that I wanted to see more… of him. So I did watch the Tonys on fast scan.

Thankfully I’d managed to buffer about an hour of the show while watching the season opener of True Blood.  Had it not been for my ability to skip the emotionally draining tearful thank you speeches and endless commercials I couldn’t have made it through the whole program. 

I kept skipping to Neal and enjoyed him thoroughly. I even managed to make it to Trey Parker and Matt Stone taking the stage after having to go “real time” on the DVR.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually like going to the theater, I wish I had more money and time to do so. I’d especially like to go to NY and actually take in a Broadway show on Broadway.

I just can’t stand award shows or award ceremonies of any kind. I think most of them are pretentious and frankly even non-entertainment awards aren’t about who’s best, they’re about who’s kissing the asses of the people giving out the awards.

On the other hand I’ll probably be watching for Neil Patrick Harris on other award shows and tune in… Even if it is only to fast scan to Neils’ parts.

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Always Been a fan of the movie Dogma

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If you haven’t seen the movie it’s well worth your time.

There are a lot of pious religious folks that really hated the movie because they didn’t like it’s portrayal of the church, angels, and it’s generally irreverent take on God.

Personally, I suspect that God was sitting in the audience laughing right along with the rest of us.

I bring this whole thing up because I’ve been really ill with a cold / sinus / allergy? thing for going on 7 days. God created the world in 7 days… I’m done with feeling lousy!

As I was sitting in my favorite chair last night flipping aimlessly through TV channels all I could think was “When is this going to end?”

Which led me to Alan Rickmans line “It never ends” as he’s wiping the blood off his jacket with the hem of Gods clothes.

Strange what you think about at 3 am when you realize that your body is putting up a good fight. In the process the bug that you’ve caught is finding all new ways to inflict pain. Then you realize that  the bug in question hasn’t any clue whatsoever that it’s making you want to stick you head in a microwave.

Who knew that your teeth could hurt in such exquisite ways. Not a toothache per-se but a whole palate of pain that would make what Dustin Hoffman endured in the movie “Marathon Man” seem like Sunday at the park with Ice cream.

Much later last night, I noticed that every time there was a breeze through the house or indeed if I moved the comforter on the bed I’d start coughing violently. This led me to ask why?

I’d noticed a lot more pollen than usual in the air over the past few days. I started wondering if part of the problem was that there was so much pollen my body was simply trying to expel yet more foreign bodies.

When I say pollen… I mean that everything that can bloom is blooming. There are clouds of the stuff so thick at times it looks like dust storm. Everything in the house is covered with a pale yellow dust.

You want to talk sick??? Think of the pollen this way it’s cum!

Yeah you read that right it’s plant spooge, and you’re breathing it, eating it, and you can’t get away from it. Makes what you do in the bedroom seem pretty tame don’t if?

Don’t even try to tell me you don’t swallow!

LCARS

At this point I was actually thinking about sleeping in the back seat of my car.  I could even program it to fire up the fans and suck filtered air into the cabin  ever 4 hours.

It’s been in the garage for the past week. Sealed like a space capsule, all the cabin filters in place. A beautiful leather clad oasis of clean air oh my!

Sleeping in the car was looking better and better. The space craft metaphor is strangely true in the case of that car.. There are times when I expect to hear Majel Barrett Roddenberrys’ voice saying something like “Warning you’ve entered a personal hazard zone.” As I drive through Southern California.

Ok yeah it’s weird.

Tell me you’ll do better after the 6th consecutive night of getting 2 hours of sleep and coughing so hard your’e tasting blood then wondering if your lungs are coming up next. I double dog dare you!

As the morning light dispelled the insanity of the witching hours a simple plan began to gather like the light in the East.

It dawned on me that an experiment to find out if it’s the pollen or if I have a cold would be to close the house, (limiting the introduction of more pollen) and turn on the A/C.

The recycled air is filtered albeit not well, but limiting the introduction of additional pollen might go a long way toward removing the irritants. Much as I hate to have the A/C on this early in the year I figure I can run the experiment for 48 hours and see what happens.

Which leads me back to “Dogma”

There’s a scene where one of the demons says “No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater… than central air. “

So here I sit having a cup of coffee house darkened by drawn shades the sexual sinning hum of the A/C compressor occasionally heard from outside. And You know what? I’m not coughing as much. The real test will be tonight when I try to get some sleep.

Meanwhile the Dogs are more than happy with the A/C being on. They’re snoring loudly on their beds.

Now you’ve been through part of the rabbit hole that is my brain.

I hope you’ve incurred no permanent damage.

 

Here’s a bonus question… The control panel shown above, what fictional species does it belong to?

—– Update —–

Running the A/C & keeping the house closed seem to have helped. I also got a whole 6 hours of sleep. It was restless sleep but sleep nonetheless.

2012 BMW i8 Concept SpyderI haven’t braved the big bad world outside yet today. According to the weather reports it’s supposed to get windy in the valleys starting today so I’m guessing we may see the wind pick up a little bit here. More blowing pollen oh joy…

Part of the restless sleep was that I kept dreaming about driving through Germany after having picked one of these babies up in Leipzig . If you’re going to have restless dreams you should at least make them worthwhile.

This is the BMW i8. I know I’ll never be able to afford one even if it makes it out of the concept stage. I can dream though can’t I?

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Maybe I’m just out of sorts…

Or maybe I’ve just been pushed over a  threshold.

There was an article in the Daily Mail talking about actor Jim Parsons. The article seems to have been trying to whip up some shock value about Mr. Parsons being gay, in a 10 year relationship and never having brought his other half to any events or award shows.

The author  LINDA MASSARELLA appears very interested in the fact that Mr. Parsons hasn’t revealed his lovers name.

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SAY WHAT????

Ms. Massarella I have to ask… What the hell business  is it of yours?

There may be some very good reasons for not doing a Hollyweird REVEAL.

Mr. Parsons other half could be working in any one of a 1000 businesses where the knowledge that he is gay could limit his advancement or terminate his career.

I’ve seen American Business up close and personal. I’ve watched what happens when a fundamentalist boss decides an employee is gay.

No more promotions

No more raises (or fractional percentages)

Business needs trumping the suspected gay employees vacation at the last moment. Or vacation requests not being approved at all because of business needs.

The gay employee is sent on every business trip (hey they’re gay… they can go to a bus stop and have sex.) This phenomena is especially evident around holidays. The US Office of Personnel Management lists 10 days as federally recognized holidays in 2012.

Most American companies don’t recognize four of those holidays. That means that if a business trip is likely to take an employee away during a holiday, the employee that is ordered on the trip will be single and probably gay.

Contrary to popular belief… being gay in American business often demands living in the closet. It’s not about being ashamed of being gay… it’s about making sure that promotions, raises, and career advancement isn’t artificially limited.

Even if an employee has a good boss when they come out there’s no guarantee that the next boss won’t be a fundamentalist or even a mostly moderate Christian hell bent on punishing the evil gay sinner.

For those people reading this who are thinking “Well you can sue for discriminatory practices“. Yep you’re right, you can… If you can prove it and the burden of proof is on the employee being discriminated against. Even in California! 

If you consider the rather volatile nature of a performers income, it’s possible that Mr. Parsons other half was the primary breadwinner in the relationship. They built a life together based on faith, trust and the overwhelming desire to help each other achieve their dreams.

Mr Parsons desire could have been funded by his other half working in business providing financial stability while Mr Parsons went to auditions, taking any parts offered. They probably never counted on Mr Parsons landing a recurring part in a hit TV series. Mr Parsons probably took care of a lot of the day to day household things so that his man could focus on moving up in his career, come home in the evening, have a drink and relax.

They likely built their lives around their combined income and lived modestly. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if they were still living a mostly modest life where the rules haven’t changed much. As anyone in long term relationships knows the roles each party chooses don’t really change much over time.

Ms. Massarella cites an Out Magazine article written by Michael Musto as support for her thesis that somehow Jim Parsons is less than honorable because he hasn’t outed his other half. The Musto article says absolutely nothing about performers outing their other half. It says that the group in the glass closet is shrinking. And that it’s finally become honorable and sensible for performers to bust out of the glass closet.

Between the time the Musto article was published and Ms. Massarellas piece in the Daily Mail… Mustos point has been proven. Jim Parson is now standing in the rubble of his shattered closet.

So Ms. Massarella… before you imply someone is dishonorable you really should think about what you’re saying.

 

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Psycho News #1

The recent flap over Ted Nugents comments started me thinking…

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More often than not I read or watch news broadcasts and find myself saying WTF? It’s led me to the conclusion the reason the world thinks we’re nuts is beacuse of News like the following bits of psychosis.

Here for your amusement is the first installment of Psycho News…

Mr Nugent said some things that the liberal media blew up into a “potential threat”. The media flap cost the American Taxpayers a chunk of change because the secret service felt obligated to investigate.

Really?

Ted Nugent NEVER, I REPEAT never threatened the president. At worst his comments sounded to me like he expected to be in jail because of his participation in protests of acts of civil disobedience. It’s not like we haven’t seen people arrested in recent years during protests… That Nugent said it was possible that he might be dead speaks to a general belief among conspiracy theorists that vocal dissenters end up having “Accidents“.

It’s all in how you choose to interpret the information. In this case a simple statement was blown out of proportion by an overly sensitive liberal sensationalist media.

Then I saw an interview on 60 Minutes with Leslie Stahl where she was interviewing a former CIA operative Jose A Rodriguez Jr. about his book Hard Measures.

 Leslie StahlAs I watched the 60 Minutes piece I couldn’t help noticing the squeamishness of Ms. Stahl while Mr Rodriguez calmly and rationally explained the mechanics of getting information from detained terrorists.

Ms. Stahl appeared at points downright argumentative. She kept using the word torture like a hammer.  Yeah by any stretch of the imagination we tortured detainees. We didn’t slit their throats, or saw off their heads on camera. We engaged in “Torture Lite”, we had protocols and rules and with few exceptions we followed those protocols. 

My opinion of the interview was that Ms. Stahl was trying to spin the CIA, Mr. Rodriguez, and our interrogation methods as negatively as possible. 

I found Mr. Rodriguezs reasoning sound. In defense of my nation well…. In all honesty I would have been far less humane about how I gathered information. I’m a firm believer that communication is best facilitated when you’re speaking the same language.

In the case of Al Qaeda and The Taliban the language that they use to make their point is a language of brutality and torture. Torture, I might add that is far worse than anything the CIA has done.

I could see dusting off Torquemadas‘ and the Marquis de Sades‘ reference books on the subjects of compliance and conversion then pulling out all the stops. Just imagine The Rack powered by a wench motor!

However, were I to speak to Al Qaeda and The Taliban in this language I’d be labeled a “War Criminal” and no doubt be brought to trial.  In the case of the Al Qaeda and Taliban murderers… It’s obvious there will never be any changes filed in any court either here in the US or in The World Court at The Hague.

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Last Sunday a preacher in North Carolina advocated torture of effeminate boys as he ranted against a ballot measure 1. So much for freedom and tolerance guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution… and where the hell is Leslie Stahl? Shouldn’t she be interviewing people in this church? Where is the liberal medias sensitivity in this case?

What does it mean when we’ll express concern over torturing combatants in war, and yet remain silent when a man of the church espouses torture of our own children because of perceived sexual orientation in prepubescent boys. Dr Robert Cargill asks a chilling question at the end of a blog entry about this story. The question is below, Dr Cargill’s blog is worth reading don’t pass it up.

“at what point can we conclude that advocating violence against children – for whatever reason, but especially for reasons of bigotry – from a Christian pulpit is ABSOLUTELY NO different than when militant preachers of other religious traditions advocate violence from the pulpit?? Can we condemn one and not the other? And can we go ahead and admit that inciting violence in the name of God is reprehensible and unworthy of the protections commonly afforded religious institutions?“

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Yet we have National outrage because a woman in New Jersey took her child to a tanning salon. It’s not even clear if the woman allowed her 5 year old to be in the tanning booth. The mother in question looks like a poster child on the ills of tanning and skin cancer and is seriously scary looking. That however doesn’t automatically make her a bad mother or a criminal. 

This week, Mitt Romneys campaign lost Richard Grenell due to the so called religious base in the GOP bitching because Grenell is an out Gay man. This is hysterically funny since as an out gay man he’s living his life honestly.

Think about it, what kind of scandal is likely to come out of an open gay mans life? The worst the GOP base had to worry about is that Mr. Grenell might be caught in bed with… a woman (gasp)!

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The scandals that have rocked our country have been those created by “Discovery” that the Jerry Sanduskys, and Larry Craigs are “straight” but like sucking or fucking boys or men in restrooms or public showers.

The GOP Religious wingnuts ignore those facts and instead bitch and whine loud enough that the best qualified person for the job feels compelled to step aside for the benefit of the campaign and arguably for the benefit of the American People as a Nation. Not because he’s ashamed or intimidated, but because he was concerned about the controversy damaging the campaign

Presumably Grenell believes that Mitt Romney is the best man for the office of President. If you get right to it, by extension he was attempting to act in the best interests of our Nation by working for the Romney campaign.

By that logic… you can argue that the GOP Wingnuts did a disservice to the country, because they may have weakened Romneys staff.

 

 

That’s it… These are the news stories that have left me saying WTF this week.

As I sit shaking my head I sometimes consider getting my backpack, tent, Bow and supplies and just heading out into the forest.

Perhaps there is such a thing as too much information….

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A friend of mine has an Apple TV and…

One of the problems with iTunes, and video formats, and DLNA is that there’s not much in the way of cross platform compatibility.

Since this household is a mixed platform house. That means that we have multiple video formats, all of which play just fine on their respective computers.

The problem is that if you want to play a video that you’ve purchased on iTunes you can’t play that video directly on your 55″ DLNA enabled flat screen TV unless you have an appliance (Either Software or Hardware). Or you can root around behind your big ass tv that’s hanging so neatly on the wall and connect your computer to it then hope that you can get decent audio out of your computer to an amp or something.

I’ve done it. It’s a serious pain in the ass.

The other alternative is to reprocess all of your video files into whatever format IS playable from your DLNA enabled player. Time consuming, prone to error, and often you end up with degraded audio and video.

Here was my situation.

I have video stored on a main drive that acts as a media server. The video is shown as available to all the DLNA devices. In this case, the Xbox, the TV, and surprisingly the DVR satellite box. What’s annoying is that not all of the video will actually play on any single one of the devices. And NONE of them will play any of the video that I purchased from Apple.

So I’m playing around with my computer at a friends place and notice that he has an AppleTV thingy. Sure enough, if I can play the video in iTunes… I can direct it at the AppleTV and bang… I have video and audio. The really cool thing is that Once the link is made between my computer and the AppleTV, I can navigate the whole library from the AppleTV, I don’t have to mess with the computer other than to make sure it’s on and running iTunes.

LESS THAN 24 Hours after leaving my friends house…

I have an AppleTV connected to the TV in the bedroom. I’ll probably end up with another AppleTV in the living room connected to the big ass TV too.

As I’ve explored the AppleTV i’m impressed… I can access anything on Netflix, I can access not only my purchased Apple video on my computer, but I can also access those videos from the cloud.

AppleTV also has various networks pay per view offerings available. Which has lead to a discussion about the merits of keeping the Satellite service.

It breaks down like this.

I watch, exactly one sitcom.

Two or three adventure / drama programs from the networks

and BBC America

I’ll tune into The Simpsons but most of the other shows on Fox Sundays are… well Crap!

I watch the news, and SciFi channel. The news is always annoying, talking heads breathlessly decrying the latest atrocity or providing second by second commentary on the latest high speed car chase. (High speed?!?! Most of these morons never get above 100!)

I’ll watch the National Geographic channels, the history channel, and several of the learning type channels.

I’ll watch comedy central for SouthPark, or Futurama

I pay for Stars just so that I can watch Spartacus

I pay for HBO just so that I can watch True Blood.

So the question I find myself asking is this…

Am I getting value for the price I’m paying?

Survey SAYS!  Not really. At over 100.00 a month, it’s not really worth it to me.

Of the 300+ channels available to me I don’t watch most of them. I couldn’t care less about BET, or ION, or the Spanish language channels.

I’ve long thought that as a PAYING CONSUMER… I should be able to pick and choose those channels that I wanted. I shouldn’t have to buy a package or packages just to get the one or two channels from each package that I actually watch never tuning to ANY of the ones that I don’t.

I’m considering doing what my buddy and so many other people I know have done… I’m thinking that pulling the plug on my satellite box might be reasonable.

I was raised on TV I’m a child of the ’60s. I’ve never known a life without broadcast TV. I find myself wondering if taking complete control of what I watch and when I watch it isn’t a better option.

If I re-allocate the 1200 a year from satellite to Netflix, Hulu, BluRay, or iTunes purchases… That’s a lot of entertainment that I can suddenly afford to see, on my terms without commercials.

Of course I’ll miss the local news broadcasts… But I can get most news on the internet… Who knows I might just start reading the newspaper again….

Oh and to my friend who is the cause of all this, laughing his butt off in his office…

LAUGH WHILE YOU CAN MONKEY BOY!

Remember I’m the one who usually causes the chaos… Be careful or I’ll remind you of a certain LaserDisk purchase…