Hi there!
It's been a while since I blogged. There's a good reason which I'll expound on soon. The real reason for this particular blog was to move that horrid Jim Carrey trailer picture down on my blog so I could see my other blog links.
What a waste of space huh?? :)
Blog you soon!
Friday, October 30, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Hello, your 15 minutes are up, thank you, good bye....
Last night I was doing some writing with the TV going in the background and I heard the advertisement for Disney's "A Christmas Carol" with Jim Carrey.
It struck me as I listened to it that even if I had not heard the name Jim Carrey, I would have known it was him simply by the fact that I've heard it all before... again and again and again. He's like Tom Cruise; a good actor, but he's not the character he plays, he is himself AS that character. Jim Carrey is not Ebenezer Scrooge, he's not the Grinch, he's not Ace Ventura, he is Jim Carrey pulling out the same sight and sound gags that he's beaten the dead horse with since he first played Fire Marshal Bill on In Living Color. Don't get me wrong, it was funny... 15 years ago. Since then it's as old and predictable as Cats.
So while griping on FB last night about Jim Carrey, I thought of others that are far extending their time of fame and really do need to step aside or come up with something so new we don't recognize that it's you! Here's the top list of offenders in my humble opinion....
Obviously... Jim Carrey - See rant above
Jack Black
WTF is this fool about anyway? I've never missed a Disney movie in the theaters since Aladdin came on the scene, but I didn't see Kung Fu Panda in the theaters because I just couldn't get past the fact that this idiot was at the helm. I did, ultimately, see the movie and I do like it. Mostly because A) the rest of the cast is fun and Dustin Hoffman is priceless. and B) You don't actually SEE Jack Black. I remember seeing The Holiday and thinking it was a cute story, but was SURE that Kate Winslet's inner monologue was:"Bloody Hell! Cameron gets to snog on Jude Law and I get.... THAT?!?!?" Where's my agent?"
I guess not since Andy Kaufman has there been someone who continued to be famous just for being an idiot.
Jay Leno
I actually like Jay Leno. Not as a talk show host, but as a stand up comedian he was priceless. I think the reasoning behind his show this fall isn't so much that "Ooohhh... America loves Jay and will revolt and fall into the ocean if we don't have him on TV somehow" it's more "We don't want to have to pay for another series in the 10pm slot so let's just pay one and take him well past his 15 minutes." Still, he could have said no. Did Johnny Carson keep milking that pig? NO... Sorry Jay, time to go.
Twilight & Vampires
Now before Lea in SC throws an aneurysm, let me define this one a little differently. I don't think Twilight's time has come and gone, but we're close if you don't hurry up and launch this damn movie. Was the first movie good? Yeah, it was OK.... if I were a 16 year old girl I may have enjoyed it more as we took incredibly LOOOOOOOONNNNGGGGG boring shots of Kristin Stewart pining inwardly for the vampire boy she wants, but maybe shouldn't have because her hangnail could mean her instant death but her heart will go on blah blah blah.... yeah, young teen love is great, but let's get to more killing.
Anyway, this movie sparked Vampalooza and created so many vampiric spin offs that the market was quickly saturated with a fad that could not last. The first movie was uber-hyped and produced an overall 'meh from much of the world, yet we do want to see the next installment. However, this phenom has hit its apex and Vampire popularity is starting to dwindle. If Twilight wants its moon to stay new, it better launch before we're so tired of Vampires it's not tossed into the same "ho hum" heap that CW's Vampire Diaries was in before it even had a chance to be liked. Twilight, your 15 minutes aren't up, but you're rounding 10 minutes and to reset the clock you need to get going.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Racism is Alive and Well on CTA
Or Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right
I take the X80 Irving Park Bus twice a day five times a week. I also take the Blue Line between Irving Park and Harlem twice a day five times a week. I noticed something about a year ago and since then I've kind of kept a watch on it just out of curiosity and today's incident prompted me to write.
A little back story for the non-Chicagoans. CTA offers an "X" route or eXpress route on some of it's longer and more high traffic routes. Coming from Lakeview's Center of the CTA Bus Universe that is Irving Park Road and the lake, the 80 Irving Park Route is a popular option for getting from my area by the lake to the Blue Line and on to the airport.
Flash forward to the past year. In the mornings I walk to the Broadway stop where there are at least two buses parked at any time. More often than not there is one 80 and one X80. You can easily guess which one I will get on.
Often times you'll see people still at a stop that is not serviced by the X80 and, as they should, the express bus goes right past them. Sometimes, on the rare occasion, the bus WILL stop. I notice these times and I also notice this:
The rider waiting to be picked up is black and the driver is black. OR the rider waiting to be picked up is Hispanic and the driver is Hispanic. I've never seen a driver stop at an undesignated stop for someone of a different racial group. While yes, it's a nice thing to do, two wrongs don't make a right. There are those screaming "Well it's what white people have done for ages!". To those I have two rebuttals; not THIS white person so get off the generalizations, and does that make it right to be done in retaliation?
There are so many things done these days in the name of this "retaliation" that it is clear to me that racism will NEVER fully die. Not as long as it is kept alive by the ones who say they're the victims of it. Once a black woman was making racial slurs toward a white guy. Someone called her a bigot. She said "I'm not a bigot, I'm not white".
I guess it's time for me to go out and persecute and throw rocks and slurs at the straight folks and beat them within an inch of their life so I can tie them to a barbed wire fence to die.
What, that would be wrong??
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Bad Side of Good News
Today it was announced that a major step forward in the prevention of HIV infection occurred. From MSNBC:
Yes, overall, I'm SUPER pleased! It's a very small step. It was only effective in 30% of the cases and it is really only effective on one of the strains in Thailand. BUT that's all more than we had last year.
What made me even consider a dark cloud about this was the line in the article that says it is likely to be "many years before a vaccine might be available".
Why am I bitching about that? Because if in the early 1980's HIV had been touted as the cataclysmic, earth shaking bug that Swine Flu is now, we could be enjoying the fruits of HIV research NOW... not YEARS from now. But because it was first called "Gay Cancer" then called "Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease" or GRID the general (i.e. religious republicans...) wouldn't touch it. Many were saying it was God's punishment on the Gays.
It was several years and hundreds (if not thousands) of AIDS related deaths after the discovery before our "beloved" president, who is SUPPOSED to represent EVERY American even said the words HIV and AIDS in public. Until then nothing was being done. People were dying and no one in the establishment gave a rat's ass because who's going to miss a few fags out in San Francisco?
A group called ACTUP decided they'd had enough of seeing their friends die; dropping like flies around them. My guess is that less than 10% of the people reading this post truly know what that is like. ACTUP did just that... They acted up! In the joking words of my faux family back in South Carolina they "Showed ass at....." and fill in the blank where applicable.
I don't want to turn this into a rant the length of the Bible, but if you heard me say anything even minutely negative about the great leap forward in AIDS research that we experienced this week, I wanted you to know why. This is a GREAT DAY!!!! I'm just disappointed it couldn't have been August 8, 2001.
So back to the sunshine that today is! It is a great leap forward and we're that much closer to finding a vaccine to prevent and then hopefully one to cure.
BANGKOK - For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.Today on Facebook a friend posted to my home page the question "What are your thoughts?" along with the link to the MSNBC article above. My first thought was "GREAT!" Then, as you would suspect, the rest of my mind kicked in.The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results “instilled new hope” in the field of HIV vaccine research, although researchers say it likely is many years before a vaccine might be available.
Yes, overall, I'm SUPER pleased! It's a very small step. It was only effective in 30% of the cases and it is really only effective on one of the strains in Thailand. BUT that's all more than we had last year.
What made me even consider a dark cloud about this was the line in the article that says it is likely to be "many years before a vaccine might be available".
There's a vaccine for swine flu coming out this fall
and that pig hit the fan last year!
and that pig hit the fan last year!
Why am I bitching about that? Because if in the early 1980's HIV had been touted as the cataclysmic, earth shaking bug that Swine Flu is now, we could be enjoying the fruits of HIV research NOW... not YEARS from now. But because it was first called "Gay Cancer" then called "Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease" or GRID the general (i.e. religious republicans...) wouldn't touch it. Many were saying it was God's punishment on the Gays.
It was several years and hundreds (if not thousands) of AIDS related deaths after the discovery before our "beloved" president, who is SUPPOSED to represent EVERY American even said the words HIV and AIDS in public. Until then nothing was being done. People were dying and no one in the establishment gave a rat's ass because who's going to miss a few fags out in San Francisco?
A group called ACTUP decided they'd had enough of seeing their friends die; dropping like flies around them. My guess is that less than 10% of the people reading this post truly know what that is like. ACTUP did just that... They acted up! In the joking words of my faux family back in South Carolina they "Showed ass at....." and fill in the blank where applicable.
I don't want to turn this into a rant the length of the Bible, but if you heard me say anything even minutely negative about the great leap forward in AIDS research that we experienced this week, I wanted you to know why. This is a GREAT DAY!!!! I'm just disappointed it couldn't have been August 8, 2001.
So back to the sunshine that today is! It is a great leap forward and we're that much closer to finding a vaccine to prevent and then hopefully one to cure.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Creeping me since 1979
One of the benefits of being in a small town and being a latch key kid (and also being tall for my age since birth) was that occasionally I got to see movies I wouldn't normally be able to. Specifically horror movies.
Now before you start tsk tsking my mom and her parenting ability, there has actually been a very positive outcome from this. After growing up seeing blood, guts and gore in movies, I was essentially desensitized to gore by the time I started working in the Emergency Rooms of my health care career. Broken bones, blood, guts, brains shot out... nothing bothered me to the point of not being able to handle it. Don't get me wrong. I felt for the people, I felt bad and was impacted by these injuries, but the affect was that to this day I can NOT understand people who say (and do) "I faint at the sight of blood" wuss...
So while I join millions who still enter the planet's oceans fearing either sharks or cellos with their forever known duuuuuuh dum..... duuuuuuuh dum. dum dum dum dum dum dum..... ( it's the Jaws tune... work with me) There is another, much more seemingly benign fear that I have to this day as a 43 year old thanks to a horror movie, and that's the fear of 3:15am.
If you didn't see or read The Amityville Horror, you don't know. Part of the story was that the 'evil' of this house continually woke up George Lutz (played by James Brolin) at 3:15am and all sorts of evil would ensue.
There have been times in my life where I would wake up in the middle of the night and it would be 3:13am... and I'd lie there (under the covers) petrified until the clock read 3:16. I'd often give it until 3:20 because who knows, maybe evil missed the L and was running a little late. But still, from the time I saw this movie until last night when I woke up at 4:00am on the dot needing to go to the bathroom I still at the very least NOTICE the time in the middle of the night.
One of the last times my entire family was together before mom passed, I found out through telling the story that my brother MaleSib ALSO had this 315aphobia. My first reaction was I was glad I wasn't the only one. My second was a sense of relief that he never found out until I was an adult because he didn't need any more ammo to scare the bejeezus out of me as a kid! Being the web based tech geek that he is and loves, he was surfing about and found an online auction of pop culture items and sent me a link to a couple of them. The first was a computer panel from Star Trek: First Contact. The second was this:
It's not only A clock reading 3:15, it's THE clock from the movie.... SEE... if he had known I was afraid of 3:15 as a kid he'd have set his clock every night until I was in a padded room!
Luckily the bidding starts at several hundred dollars and a gag gift isn't worth all that. Although, perhaps if we got it we could have a sledge hammer party and bring closure as he said.
But then the hammers would start to bleed, the flies would come out in the winter and some pig's eyes would appear in the broken glass and turn away suddenly with a OINK!
Don't get those last references? Good, that means you'll be sleeping well tonight. Me, I'll be taking some Tylenol PM and not drinking water after 8pm.
Now before you start tsk tsking my mom and her parenting ability, there has actually been a very positive outcome from this. After growing up seeing blood, guts and gore in movies, I was essentially desensitized to gore by the time I started working in the Emergency Rooms of my health care career. Broken bones, blood, guts, brains shot out... nothing bothered me to the point of not being able to handle it. Don't get me wrong. I felt for the people, I felt bad and was impacted by these injuries, but the affect was that to this day I can NOT understand people who say (and do) "I faint at the sight of blood" wuss...
So while I join millions who still enter the planet's oceans fearing either sharks or cellos with their forever known duuuuuuh dum..... duuuuuuuh dum. dum dum dum dum dum dum..... ( it's the Jaws tune... work with me) There is another, much more seemingly benign fear that I have to this day as a 43 year old thanks to a horror movie, and that's the fear of 3:15am.
If you didn't see or read The Amityville Horror, you don't know. Part of the story was that the 'evil' of this house continually woke up George Lutz (played by James Brolin) at 3:15am and all sorts of evil would ensue.
There have been times in my life where I would wake up in the middle of the night and it would be 3:13am... and I'd lie there (under the covers) petrified until the clock read 3:16. I'd often give it until 3:20 because who knows, maybe evil missed the L and was running a little late. But still, from the time I saw this movie until last night when I woke up at 4:00am on the dot needing to go to the bathroom I still at the very least NOTICE the time in the middle of the night.
One of the last times my entire family was together before mom passed, I found out through telling the story that my brother MaleSib ALSO had this 315aphobia. My first reaction was I was glad I wasn't the only one. My second was a sense of relief that he never found out until I was an adult because he didn't need any more ammo to scare the bejeezus out of me as a kid! Being the web based tech geek that he is and loves, he was surfing about and found an online auction of pop culture items and sent me a link to a couple of them. The first was a computer panel from Star Trek: First Contact. The second was this:
It's not only A clock reading 3:15, it's THE clock from the movie.... SEE... if he had known I was afraid of 3:15 as a kid he'd have set his clock every night until I was in a padded room!Luckily the bidding starts at several hundred dollars and a gag gift isn't worth all that. Although, perhaps if we got it we could have a sledge hammer party and bring closure as he said.
But then the hammers would start to bleed, the flies would come out in the winter and some pig's eyes would appear in the broken glass and turn away suddenly with a OINK!
Don't get those last references? Good, that means you'll be sleeping well tonight. Me, I'll be taking some Tylenol PM and not drinking water after 8pm.
Friday, September 18, 2009
OK, I'm back sooner than I thought...
But for good reason!
I'm starting up again to take part in the Susan G. Komen for the Cure 3Day walk in August.
My mom, who you all know if you've read my blog, passed away in 2005 and I really want to do the walk to honor her. So cough it up! (Lea, you're set) I'll be posting on my Walk For Patsy blog as I get ready and there will be a comedy benefit with me, my fellow blogger Stephen and another of our comedy friends and (hopefully) a surprise REAL get-paid-for-it comedian in Chicago in February so if you're local, get ready!
Meanwhile, get out the credit card and help out!
Donation Page
Yes I'm shamelss... go give dangit!
Yes I know.....
It's been forever since I posted. (well, a week in blog time IS close to forever)
Work has been oppressive as we prepare for our annual conference in Anaheim, California. The highlight of which, aside from seeing someone after 6 months, will be finally getting this albatross of a conference over with.
However, I have several postings that I've started, but left unfinished as work pulled me away.
I'm going to turn my United flight 556 into my writer's office and the four hour flight into my catch up time. That... or I'll read Kathy Griffin's new book and laugh annoyingly out loud for my fellow passengers :) Am I sitting with my coworkers? No. They know better than to sit next to the 6'7" person who doesn't fit into anything commercial.
Watch for more posts to pop up after September 26.
If you don't, blame Kathy Griffin
Work has been oppressive as we prepare for our annual conference in Anaheim, California. The highlight of which, aside from seeing someone after 6 months, will be finally getting this albatross of a conference over with.
However, I have several postings that I've started, but left unfinished as work pulled me away.
I'm going to turn my United flight 556 into my writer's office and the four hour flight into my catch up time. That... or I'll read Kathy Griffin's new book and laugh annoyingly out loud for my fellow passengers :) Am I sitting with my coworkers? No. They know better than to sit next to the 6'7" person who doesn't fit into anything commercial.
Watch for more posts to pop up after September 26.
If you don't, blame Kathy Griffin
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