| You Are Adventurous... Sometimes |
 You like an adrenaline rush as much as the next person. You like your thrills in small doses. You're generally pretty calm and level headed. But sometimes you have to go wild and have a crazy adventure. |
Review: Terry Gilliam's TidelandI'll wait for his next film (although I will probably rent the DVD of this).
The newest Terry Gilliam movie is best described as nightmarish. With no particular point, the end of the film evokes relief and embarrassment, as if you have just finished witnessing Gilliam pass an enormous
gallstonekidney stone. One feels the urge to let go his clammy hand, pat him gently and ask him if he feels better.The film stars young Jodelle Ferland (Silent Hill) as Jeliza-Rose, daughter of an aging, dysfunctional, but still affectionate smack addict, Noah. Jeff Bridges, reprising the Dude with harder drugs, plays Noah with an intense sympathy--the most engaging and intriguing member of the cast. Jeliza's unnamed (and ambiguously fat/pregnant) mother (Jennifer Tilly), spends the eight minutes prior to her heroin overdose alternately deprecating and cuddling Jeliza, and cramming handfuls of chocolate into her smeared, sad mouth. Then she dies in a grotesque splay, and it is all Jeliza can do to keep Noah from setting the horrible woman on fire.
The girl's life consists of playing nursemaid to her junkie parents and maintaining a shrill, running narration by her variously-personified disembodied doll heads. Ferland does all the voice acting for the dolls, which take on greater independence as the film goes on. Each of them possesses uncomfortably differentiated accents, and eventually Jeliza's mouth ceases to move at all when the dolls speak.
Post-overdose, Jeliza and Noah hop a Greyhound and head for the prairie, and Noah's family homestead. Here the beauty of the film is most apparent. Gilliam spends ample time on the yellow and grey expanse, fascinating the viewer with dry-rotted wood, silver sky, and the secrets of the undergrass.
Eventually Jeliza is left entirely alone and, muzzy and malnourished, the film begins in earnest. A bee-fearing, taxidermist witch (Dell, played by Janet McTeer) and her lobotomized brother (Dickens, Brendan Fletcher) enter stage left, making up the rest of the cast.
The most fascinating aspect of the film is the sickeningly believable attraction of Jeliza to Dickens, who becomes boyfriend and eventually husband in the personally-narrated fantasy world she maintains throughout the film. In Dickens, Jeliza finally finds an aspect of her life she can influence and possess. She takes advantage of the feebleminded young man in a familiar game of seduction, assertion and befuddlement that is instinctually exercised by pre-pubescent girls.
It's not quite make-believe, but treating it as such offers a certain amount of protection to the seductress. If things get too serious, she can always turn away and retort, "I was just kidding." Dickens, having been given a not-unpleasant crash course on this sort of thing by Jeliza's grandmother in the very same house, bashfully reprises his role as "a little sweetie". He maintains his own made-up continuum, the captain of a submarine and arch enemy of a mythical monster shark, and so implicitly accepts Jeliza's fantasies. Jeliza has found a perfect mate: a man old enough to accept and enjoy her feminine advances, but in all other ways, an eternal boy. And the audience squirms.
You cannot call Tideland "bad". There is much of the old genius here, but it is strangely muddled and sad, perhaps from years of disappointment (see "Lost in La Mancha"). I see it as the acid reflux from the hideous disappointment of the Brothers Grimm, a movie so completely useless that I cannot imagine Gilliam escaped unscathed. Disappointment is, perhaps, the driving theme behind Tideland, from Noah's unrealized dream to move to Jutland and become a Norse chieftan, to the almost-friendships of Jeliza-Rose with the resident nutjobs-on-the-prairie. It can be thought of as the inbred, mutant cousin Pan's Labyrinth, with both movies directly challenging the ability of tween girls to muffle themselves in fantasy.
But having gotten Tideland off his chest, I think we can anticipate Gilliam's triumphant return.
After hairdressers refused to shave her head, Britney grabbed a pair of clippers and sheared off her locks herself.Apparently, you can bid for some of Britney's hair on E-Bay.
Salon owner Esther Tognozzi said: "I tried to talk her out of it, but she said, 'No, I absolutely want it shaved off now.'
"Afterwards she looked in the mirror and said with tears in her eyes, 'Oh, my God, I shaved it all off. My mom is going to be so upset with me.'
"I asked her if the buzz cut was a symbol of a new beginning and she said, 'Yeah, something like that.' "
An hour later Britney went to the Body and Soul Tattoo parlour and had pink lips etched onto her wrist and a black, pink and white cross on her lower hip.
One onlooker revealed: "She said she was tired of having things plugged into her. She seemed distraught and disturbed, like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
Later that night, troubled Britney was seen at Beverly Hills' Cedars Sinai Medical Center wearing a dark wig.
She went into a private room and was seen by medical staff before leaving an hour later.
PRINCETON, NJ -- More than 6 in 10 Americans say they have a favorable opinion of former President Bill Clinton, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Clinton's favorable rating is up slightly from last summer, and is at its highest level since February 1998. His favorable rating reached historical lows in 2001 as Clinton sparked many controversies as he left office. But since that time, Clinton's favorable rating has gradually improved and is now close to his historical high, a 66% rating just prior to his inauguration in 1993. A comparison of Bill Clinton's favorable ratings and Hillary Clinton's favorable ratings show that Americans rated the Clintons similarly following their departure from the White House, but in recent years, the former president has been viewed more favorably than his wife.
Americans' Opinion of Bill Clinton
The Feb. 9-11, 2007 poll finds that 63% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the former president, while 35% have an unfavorable opinion of him. Clinton's favorability is somewhat more positive now than in June 2006, when 59% had a favorable opinion and 37% had an unfavorable opinion of him. These ratings are also the highest Gallup has measured since February 1998, shortly after Clinton's relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was first reported in the media.
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Read the whole analysis of the poll here.Bill Clinton vs. Hillary Clinton
Although the former president's role in his wife's campaign for president is not fully clear at this point, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton referred to her husband as her "full-time political counselor" in a speech in New Hampshire this weekend. In the latest poll, Hillary Clinton's favorable ratings are slightly lower than her husband's, at 58%. Americans' opinion of Hillary Clinton have improved; when last measured in November 2006, 53% of Americans viewed her favorably.
During the first two years of the Clinton administration, the Clintons' favorable ratings closely mirrored each other on the basis of yearly averages. Americans viewed Hillary Clinton more negatively than Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1996, most likely due to Whitewater and the problems with healthcare reform. The public then viewed Hillary Clinton more favorably than Bill Clinton after the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment proceedings in 1999. Then, from 2000 through 2004, Americans again rated the Clintons similarly, but since that time, Americans have grown more favorable toward Bill Clinton than they have toward Hillary Clinton. The current situation may reflect the fact that Hillary Clinton is still highly involved in partisan politics while her husband is involved in the less controversial pursuits typical of an ex-president.
Although Valentine's Day has come and gone and won't be back for another year, it may be a nice idea to remind ourselves that just because the other 364 days of the years aren't specifically designed for a romance, it certainly does not mean we can't keep our relationships nurtured and nourished.A healthy relationship exists because the people involved put their intention toward making it so. It becomes its own entity with with its own energy and flow. Each partner contributes to that energy, but the relationship is more than the sum of each person's intention.
It may be unrealistic to have every day of the year as romantic as Valentine's day and we certainly don't need to go overboard by trying to make it so, but we also don't want to forget that one day of the year is not enough romance to keep a relationship alive and vibrant.
Keep in mind the beauty and intimacy that comes from attending to your relationship. Notice how the relationship has a sense of vibrancy and life as we take the time to reflect on the love we hold for our partner.
This doesn't mean we need to constantly purchase gifts, or go out to a special restaurant each week. It does mean we need to focus on the relationship and invest our time and energy to keep it healthy.
While, the intensity of romance and intimacy wanes or grows, keep in mind the strength and depth that come when focus and attention are given to your intimate relationship.
Love grows when we provide it with the energy and light it requires.
I have always liked Pandagon, and I was pleased to see Amanda make it into the "big leagues." I'm sorry that she was forced to resign due to the right wing crazies.My main concern about the relationship between my personal blog and the campaign blog was that I wouldn't have enough time to keep my personal blog updated as frequently as the readers had come to expect, a problem I solved by inviting other bloggers to join. I thought some about content concerns, but my opinion had always been that bloggers who work for campaigns should feel free to have personal blogs, so long as they disclosed their employment to their personal blog readers and refrained from using their personal blogs to bash other candidates.
"Reasonable people," I thought, "can tell the difference between a personal blog post and those I'll write for the campaign." What I naively failed to understand was that there is no relationship between what reasonable people think and what will be used in a partisan bout of mud-slinging.
What I also failed to understand was how much McEwan and I would stick out. I was aware that I didn't exactly fit the image people have of bloggers who join campaigns -- the stereotype being 30-something nerdy young white men who wear khakis and obsess over crafting their Act Blue lists. I wasn't aware that not fitting the image would attract so much negative attention. In fact, I mostly saw this all as a baby step in the direction of diversity, since McEwan and I differed from the stereotype mostly by being female and by being outspoken feminists.
I announced that I was taking the job on Jan. 30, and the same week, I noticed a small flare-up of oddly aggressive and misogynistic comments in my moderation queue over a short, irritated post I wrote about the coverage of the Duke lacrosse rape case on CNN. I assumed that some anti-feminist blogger had linked me and so, in frustration, I went and rewrote my by-then week-old post to mock the commenters by spelling out my views in childish, easy-to-understand language. This may have been the first indication that the right-wing noise machine had noticed me and was looking for something with which to hurt me and my new employers.
None of this was especially surprising. The right-wing noise machine's favorite trick, possibly its only trick, is to select a target and start making a fuss, hoping that by creating the appearance of smoke, just enough people will be fooled into thinking there's a fire. Unfortunately, it works. It was the method used to railroad Bill Clinton (Whitewater, Vince Foster, state troopers) and the method that ushered the nation into war with Iraq (WMDs and so on). This time they were only attacking a lowly rookie staffer on a Democratic campaign, but the M.O. was the same.
Why does the left allow the right to do this? It's nothing new, yet they are continually successful in taking this approach. When Bill Donohue, the head of the Catholic League, an organization that claims to exist to fight anti-Catholic bigotry, got into the mix, that was the beginning of the end for Amanda and Melissa.
Too bad.
| Your Brain is Orange |
 Of all the brain types, yours is the quickest. You are usually thinking a mile a minute, and you could be thinking about anything at all. Your thoughts are often scattered and random - but they're also a lot of fun! You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about esoteric subjects, the meaning of life, and pop culture. |
Fox's answer to "The Daily Show"
"The 1/2 Hour News Hour" will apparently be Fox News Channel's long-awaited attempt to ape the success of "The Daily Show." But did they hire monkeys to write it?
Joel Surnow, "24" producer and Rush Limbaugh pal, is producing the show, which stars Kurt Long and Jenn Robertson and will go for a test spin the next two Sundays at 10 p.m. It's essentially a righty version of SNL's "Weekend Update." But there seem to be some obvious problems with that. First, "Weekend Update's" targets don't ever seem terribly agenda-driven: When they work (and admittedly, that's not that often ) it's because of the universality of the joke. "Weekend Update's" mildly amusing Barack Obama sketch worked because it snatched a controversy (one shaken by Salon's own Debra Dickerson) and poked at it in a hilarious way (much the way that Stephen Colbert had). Played out to its ludicrous extreme, all sides can get a yuk out of it, without any one side feeling assaulted. Success! But making fun of Obama for using drugs -- when he's admitted in a book and on "60 Minutes" to using coke as a kid -- is so cringingly ideological, you can practically hear Karl Rove slapping his knee in the background.
Speaking of which, are they actually going to use a live studio audience, or stick with these canned hams? Because there's nothing like a fraudience to make your whole knock-off show, which happens to spoof another show, really seem like ... well, you know. A fraud.
And here is a clip of the proposed show that focuses on Barack Obama:
Legislation introduced in Tennessee would require death certificates for aborted fetuses, which likely would create public records identifying women who have abortions.Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Republican, said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed. He predicted it would pass in the Republican-controlled Senate but would have a hard time making it through the Democratic House.
"All these people who say they are pro-life _ at least we would see how many lives are being ended out there by abortions," said Campfield.
The number of abortions reported to the state Office of Vital Records is already publicly available. The office collects records _ but not death certificates _ on abortions and the deaths of fetuses after 22 weeks gestation or weighing about 1 pound.
The identities of the women who have abortions are not included in those records, but death certificates include identifying information such as Social Security numbers.
Campfield's bill, introduced Monday, would give abortion providers 10 days following an "induced termination of a pregnancy" to file a death certificate.
House Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley, a Democrat, called Campfield's proposal "the most preposterous bill I've seen" in an eight-year legislative career.
"It is totally inconsistent with everything the law contemplates as it relates to anything close to that subject," he said.
Read the rest here.
It's about freaking time. Forcing the kids in that state to learn creationism and intelligent design as actual science should be considered a form of child abuse.
Kansas: Anti-Evolution Guidelines Are Repealed The State Board of Education repealed science guidelines questioning evolution, putting into effect new ones that reflect mainstream scientific views. The move was a political defeat for advocates of “intelligent design” who had helped write the standards being repealed. The intelligent design concept holds that life is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. The board removed language suggesting that basic evolutionary concepts were controversial and being challenged by new research. It also approved a new definition of science, limiting it to the search for natural explanations of what is observed in the universe. The state has had five sets of science standards in eight years, each affected by the seesawing fortunes of socially conservative Republicans and a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans.
