Just in Case...

So it turns out that most people do not know too many Supreme Court cases other than Roe v Wade and even in that case most people have no clue what Roe (pro-choice) and Wade (pro-life) stood for. Fortunately, most people are not running for public office, unfortunately Sarah Palin is. So here is a good Wiki link for everyone to the most important Supreme Court decisions (she might want to look into the following Alaska Supreme Court case just in case she can't see the US Supreme Court cases from her house...). Joe Six Pack Americans should have enough pride in their own history to know more than Palin does about the country (forget world) she lives in.

Just to name a basic few: Brown v Board of Education (desegregation of schools); Miranda v. Arizona (anyone who has ever watched Law and Order should know about Miranda rights); Romer v Evans (gay rights); Hustler Magazine v Falwell (i.e., the People vs Larry Flynt); US v Nixon (President is not above law, ok, maybe Republicans forget this one a lot). If nothing else she should have been able to invoke Edwards v Aguillard (which voted against the teaching of Creationism), Gonzalez v Carhart (on partial-birth abortion), and the recent DC v Heller (which reinforced Second Amendment rights... ermm, that's the one about guns Palin).


By the way, for all those people still blathering on about how Palin's complete lack of experience (much less basic knowledge) should be read as a virtue, they should be reminded that it's not necessarily the best idea to let people with no training undertake a job that they do not understand. There's a reason WHY Joe Six Pack isn't President. Case in point: remember what happened to Homer Simpson's millionaire brother when he lets Homer (the ultimate Joe Six Pack) design "The Homer" at a credit-crunch price tag of $82,000? That's change we can't afford!

Don't Follow the White Rabbit

I never would have thought there was any 'milk' in those candies in the first place so it is all the more shocking that they some were made with melamine tainted milk. Americans will get on their moral high horses again and rant about those sneaky slanty eyed Chinese all the while failing to remember who it is clamouring for super-cheap consumable goods. I remember back when White Rabbit candies were a novelty and honkys would try to peel off the rice paper. Heheheh. Speaking of whiteys...

Elsewhere in today's lack of serious news reporting: Marc Quinn proves that cliches are hugely profitable. His uber-crapola Siren (solid gold statue of Kate Moss in yoga pose... poor man's version of Hirst's equally crapola diamond encrusted skull) can now be added to the list of lame-o sculptures of unworthy celebs and should be paired with Daniels whathisname's Britney Spears Monument to Pro-Life sculpture. Neither can top Jeff Koons' truly inspirational Jacko and Bubbles (above). Quinn's and Edwards' one-liners are sad, shoddy gimmicks. OK, who cares, everyone is all geared up for the great debate on America's Got No Talent.

Hard Times News

The so-called credit crunch seems to be hitting really big time now that even Somali pirates are slashing their ransom rates!



Elsewhere, the Palin ticket really is turning into Miss Congeniality as McCain's election team goes into over-drive to prep Caribou Barbie for the VP debate - no that's a still from the movie, not a photo op of Biden and Palin...

Maybe they can have a talent contest instead, it's Beauty Queen vs Dancing Queen:

I Think She's Turning Japanese, She's Turning Japanese...

Maybe it's her hi-tech Japanese ninja glasses that enable her to see Russia from her house. Kazuo Kawaski thinks so.

But what will the residents of Obama, Japan say?

8 more houses or 8 more years?

Did I not say that McCain was way too Manchurian Candidate to be president?



I know it's totally biased, but hey, McCain's having a bad time. He's being out polled by his own VP candidate Miss Congeniality... (yes, he does seem like he's trying to take off his wedding ring while giving SP the ol' elevator eyes treatment in that vid with Ms Con).

Eight of the world's most unlikely people to have anything in common with each other joined together in their dislike of SP:

1. Alec Baldwin
2. Pam Andersen
3. Matt Damon
4. Lindsay Lohan
5. Chevy Chase
6. P'Diddy (the legion of angry anti-P'Diddyists are pretty funny too)
7. Crowd of Alaskans
8. Pigs and pitbulls (because they are much smarter than hockey moms with or without lipstick)

p.s. Can someone explain the dinosaur/creationism thing? Were they really around 4000 years ago when the Chinese and Egyptian empires were running smoothly or was there an episode of Land of the Lost that I missed? And did John McCain invent the Blackberry? I thought he said he didn't know how to use computers...

911

Seven years since W was too busy reading a book about goats to figure out what was happening in the world. Seven years since this stupid War of Terror was declared and nothing came of it except for a lot of dead people and a bunch of computer games inspired by the War on Terror. Seven years that have been worse than watching Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet. On such a sad occasion, we can only turn to the power of chimps to make us still laugh because the one in power is just too sad and it seems like the US is falling for the Wrinkly White Dude and America's Next Top Model:

The Mamma Mia Ticket

Does this need any comment?

Everyone keeps telling me it's photoshopped but it only matters marginally.

What about this one of 'George Bush in Lipstick'.

Read the article at the Huffington Post...

Bill for President

This is the missing chapter from Obama's account of his life in Dreams from My Father - Fat Philadelphia Years (alias 'Bill' seen here standing in the middle on the right). He was always the good kid in the Junkyard Gang wasn't he?

And from Paris, we have the following (Wrinkly Old White Hair Dude):

The Koala is not かわいい* (but Keanu is)

*kawaii = cute

From the producers of Calamari Wrestler comes this postmodern journey into the psychic life of... Executive Koala. Cute on the outside, but does he have a split personality? Is he a brutal killer, an innocent victim, an overworked salary man trying to get by, or just a man in a suit? Watch it now at crunchyroll.com.

OK, this film is totally whack, I mean beyond Machine Girl whack. But it's actually kinda spellbinding. Whereas Machine Girl was just buckets of fake blood and a pretty limp storyline, this might just be one of the lost masterpieces of indie cinema left to be discovered. The best part has got to be when the courtroom dream sequence is reduced to a musical. I think this undoes all the pain that was caused in my brain from having to witness Richard Gere in Chicago. The bit about inserting nice memories was also a nice nod to Strange Days, Ghost in the Shell, and Paprika. Part Donnie Darko, but also thoroughly existential. The kungfu scene at the end kicks Keanu Reeves' butt - is it OK if a girl gets completely slammed against a wall by a koala bear? The completely absurd ending would have left Brecht in utter awe. Nice one... definitely to be watched completely wired on Coke and gummi bears.

Edison's Invention

Beyond John Edwards' and Georgia's respective meltdowns, it's been a slow month for shocking news, but here's an alarming comparison of anatomies: Hawaii Five-O Part II vs. Small Guy Trying To Look Big

Nice V-neck tan line Obama...

Also, all the hype about Dark Knight was mostly hype. Great effects, but it wasn't dark enough and what was up with the Darth Vadar/Batman voice over? But everyone in that film has been cursed: Edison Chen had all of his porn stolen from his pink Macbook and uploaded onto the internet by mysterious "Kira", Heath Ledger OD'ed (who, by the way and with respect to the dead, does not deserve an Oscar - crazy is easy to play, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon was much more impressive), and then Morgan Freeman got into a car accident. But what gives - Edison Chen is so completely STILL in Dark Knight. When Morgan Freeman gets to Hong Kong (what a fantastic waste of money for a great shot of Batman standing above Central) he is greeted as he enters the skyscraper by... yes, Edison, speaking perfect English (obviously) while everyone else is speaking Cantonese and "Lau" inexplicably speaks Mandarin (inexplicable because Lau is a Cantonese surname; Liu is the Mandarin equivalent - maybe it is a nod to Andrew Lau or Andy Lau?). Anyway, so I checked up online and some reports say he was supposed to be a cop, others insist that Chin Han replaced him as Lau, which would make him the bad guy instead of a cop. Anyway, all's well that ends well. I knew he'd be able to pull a Hugh Grant on this one. Gillian too. Fools, people in sex scandals sometimes even become president. I wonder what John Edwards will be doing next year...

p.s. Zhang Yimou does not disappoint, he is still the biggest director of eye candy for obese Western audiences (check out Kajui's shakedown on the opening ceremony and further comments on EastSouthWestNorth).

Happy 08-08-08!!!

Hope every one had an auspicious one. OK, no time to blog at the moment but highlights include Dark Knight and Man on Wire as far as movies about men in black hanging out on the top of buildings (more on Batman later). In the middle of Olympic-mania, Obama's Hawaiian vacation, McCain's bitch slap from Paris Hilton, and Russia and Georgia on the brink of war (no wonder Putin looked so unhappy at the Olympic opening ceremonies), the best absurdist news story of the week has got to be this one reported on BBC about an over-enthusiastic man in a Welsh town called Pontypridd who had his stereo and music seized and destroyed after he refused to stop blasting Cher and U2. Here's a little vintage Cher to redefine Patriot Act:

Almost 08/08/08!!!

OK, go away for a couple of weeks and the biggest wedding since Charles and Diana happens under your radar - Tony Leung and Carina Lau (wedding announced some time a couple of weeks ago) finally wed after dating for almost 20 years. Not big for most people but FREAKING big for HK, China, and Taiwan and that's over a billion people + so important for 1/4 people in the world. Wong Kar-wai and William Cheung 'curated' the wedding (whatever that means). ON the topic of The Talent Mr Leung, began watching pirated RED CLIFF DVD in Toronto, but it was, as the Pacific Mall salesgirl told me, only 'camcorder quality' so not even '90% DVD quality'. I like old school hand held pirated DVDs because it preserves the sense of the cinema as a public space - e.g., you can hear everyone laughing their heads off when the actors say something ridiculous that will just appear very 'Oriental' in the official DVD (e.g., any glossy but lame-o Zhang Yimou martial arts film). It's good to have a clued-in public present to judge how silly things are (I think I've been reading too much Gramsci this week, but on this see also Laikwan Pang). Back to John Woo's The Battle of Red Cliff: in one scene, Tony Leung's and Takeshi Kaneshiro's characters challenge each other to sing but then have a gu-zheng-off instead (contest on flat stringed instrument... last seen in Kung Fu Hustle) and everyone in the audience got the giggles. Sadly never made it to the end so can't report on film but watched it with my teenaged cousin who kept substituting everyone with Lord of the Rings characters (hee hee). But hey, it's John Woo so we can count on trustworthy themes - brotherhood, blood, and diagonal shooting (hmm, that will be more difficult with axes and cross bows but I'm sure he'll manage).

ps. here's a follow up to previous blog courtesy of Vanity Fair featuring John and Cindy McCain (can you take someone named Cindy seriously?):

Barack Osama

Don't know why but all I seem to be blogging about these days is the Golden Child (on second thought, Coming to America is a more apposite Eddie Murphy reference here). I definitely want Obama to become president because he wins on fun factor (remember when Jesse Jackson was prompted to say "I want to cut his nuts off"? -- that's funny politics). McCain is a little too Manchurian Candidate to be a laugh. Thing is, you couldn't find a joke funny enough to make about him like the one The New Yorker made about Obama and his wife. OK, so two funny/terrifying things: people who can't take a joke and Michelle on the View. What is up with that show? It should be re-named Desperate Housewives in the Sexless City. Ick. Glad I was never in a sorority. Gross.
I guess none of those "loyal" bleeding hearts who love The New Yorker remembered the March 2008 cover from not too long ago or indeed the Radar cover from back in November 2007 when people thought that Giuliani (The Man Who Forgot To Run For President-Giuliani or was it The Man Who Got Too Lazy To Fundraise-Giuliani?) would be the man to challenge Hillary. Yeesch, lighten up people! Have these devoted readers of The New Yorker ever met New Yorkers? Ya gotta love any identity group who would carpet bomb Madonna's car with pebbles and other Central Park debris because she has disgraced their beloved Yankee so appropriatly named A-Rod (OK, this story is admittedly reported from the same Radar of the dubious magazine cover--i.e., can you really trust people who thought Giuliani was The One?).

OK, people who can laugh at what is funny about racial stereotypes should check out Russell Peters' comedy act Outsourced (funny guy living in L.A., he would be Canadian wouldn't he...):

Springtime for Hitler

Haven't had time to post anything, but here is another one from the BBC for the wax lovers: 'Waxworks Hitler Beheaded in Berlin'. Not quite as odd as the woman who pinched the Oceans Thirteen wax figures or nearly as heroic as Paul Kelleher who beheaded a statue of Thatcher back in 2003, but pretty weird all the same.

Big Brotha

Is it finally over? My god, I am SO sick of hearing about Billary vs the Junior Senator from Illinois. She should divorce Bubba and get Obama to nominate her as his next Supreme Court Justice and then she will have lifelong power, which is what she seems to crave more than anything else. And just when this painfully long, tedious "election" of popularity has finally come to a possible end, it has been announced that the 9th season of the crapola-thon Big Brother has begun in the UK. That has always been the beginning of summer in London in my mind, which is becoming mush from all this democracy. Wonder how things are going in Zimbabwe...