Ask yourself the question, which one of the Presidential Candidates is most like our TV President Martin Sheen.  That is a good measure for qualification, I'm sure.

This is surely the best 2 minutes of Television I have ever seen, a little hope for troubled times.

YouTube – The West Wing – 20 Hours In America

I don't recommend drinking heavily on thursday nights, but this thing is gonna be hard to watch.
Political Radar: Debate Drinking Games Offer a Shot of Politics

Sara Bareilles is the reason that Leona Lewis really isn't that big of a deal.  I don't care what clive davis thinks.

Just a short post to encourage you to check out this new episode of This American LIfe about the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of Bobby Dunbar. One of the most interesting stories I've heard in a really long time. One of the quotes, from one of the many interesting people, "...she was ugly as homemade sin".

Classic.

I have to admit that I'm as shocked as the next person at the untimely passing of Heath Ledger at age 28. He stood out as one of the better actors in a film industry plagued by mediocricy and corrupted by the bottom line; I think a lot of movie fans expected great things from him, but it's fair to say that he accomplished a lot already at age 28. Sad to see him go, and I suspect that once the cause of his death is revealed, it will raise more questions about living and living in despair in our culture.

Rest in Peace

There's something on TV called "Run's House". I don't really know what it is, but occasionally my bitTorrent client will start downlading it because it thinks that it is the tv show "house" (generally quite a good show except for the fact that it's not on the air because there's some kind of strike going on so now there's no tv but only lots and lots of reality shows). What is this world coming to. Wasn't there a movie about this? Some kind of thing where it was like 500 years in the future, and due to the inbreeding of dumb people we wound up with a situation where the only things that people did were eat fast foot, drink beer, and sit around watching NASCAR and reality TV?

What movie was that anyway?

Oh yeah, back to Run's house. I've never watched it, but the article above mentions out some subtleties about the show that lead me to believe it has lots of great examples of both the shortcomings of reality tv AND everything that's wrong with the so called Health and Wealth Gospel.

Examples:

What was your family's reaction to the idea? (of doing a reality show)

I told my family and they were down. I said we're gonna go minister to the world on MTV. When we work, we understand that it's unto God, so we're serving. Serving in the capacity of a reality show.

?!?

My ministry is family. It's a church that leads by example instead of preaching to you. Showing you the lifestyle that comes from serving God. Not so much the cars and the house, but the peace and health that's in my home.

Translation: Please disregard all this bling. I save that for the actual church, not the metaphorical church of my family.

If you don't want the cranberry sauce on the buffet, don't eat it.

Translation: You don't need to eat your vegetables kids. Do whatever you want.

How did you become a reverend?

I didn't like what was happening in my life. I started going to church. I kept going every day and the collar just kind of got wrapped around my neck.

Translation: I rule; other people know I rule.

What do you hope to accomplish for the duration of the show?

God has given me a pioneering spirit. It's a Tyler Perry type of thing. How do you get God into the movie theater and entertain people? It's a blessing. It's huge. In Times Square, me and all my family are covering every window of MTV and I have a collar on. That's the most unbelievable thing in the entire world.

No Translation, I just wanted to point out two things.

1. Tyler Perry's "pioneering spirit" gave us Liv Tyler, so I'm gonna go ahead and say that is a good thing.

1. he didn't remotely answer the question.

   The first time I wrote this post, I put "all in good fun" here, which some took to mean that I was kidding about the whole thing or taking it back. Not the case. I'm being critical, but I also admit that I've never seen "Run's House" and probably wont, so Run might be the sauce on my gravy, which wouldn't really surprise me. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that reality tv is evil. It's not spam and Christian industry marketing¹ evil, but it's pretty evil.

   
   
   1. see also: pimping-out-jesus-for-cash [ƒ]
   ]]> http://draynet.com/342/who-the-heck-is-run/feed/ 7 http://draynet.com/335/will-smith-for-president-i-mean-great-leader/ http://draynet.com/335/will-smith-for-president-i-mean-great-leader/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:43:53 +0000 dray http://draynet.com/335/will-smith-for-president-i-mean-great-leader/

   There's a lot of speculation as to whether Will Smith, the greatest movie star of all time¹, is now turning to scientology because of his friendship with Tom Cruise² I know this is big news, because it's dominating my Google News Sidebar, even replacing the likes of She that shall never be named on this blog It's also bad news.

   From the New York Daily News...

   Will Smith has joined the ranks of Hollywood power players actively recruiting for the Church of Scientology.
   
   Big stars traditionally distribute "wrap presents" to crew members after completing a film. His recent gift after wrapping next summer's comedy "Hancock" was a card good for a personality test at your local Scientology center.

   I have a few problems with this "news":

   Will Smith being described as "best buddies with Tom Cruise". I'm pretty sure that it's been well established that Will Smith is best buddies with Martin Lawrence from the Bad Boys movies. Martin is a cool, funny, violent Miami police officer and there's no way that Will would rather be friends with a washed up superspy like Tom Cruise

   This Greatly hurts his chances to be president. I was pretty much guaranteeing my vote to Will Smith for the '12 election. After Hilary destroys our country and lets it be conquered by extremist foreign interestests/interstellar oxygen miners, I'm pretty sure that we're going to need a galactic experienced leader like WS to put things right. But even in that situation, nobody's going to vote for a Scientologist, cause they're just nuts.

   I Really don't want to join Scientology. I really like being a Christian, but if WS does confirm his new religion, I'm going to have to make a hard choice between my favorite movie star and the 18 years I've already invested into my current religion.

   And that's just scratching the surface. I don't really like posting gossip news, I'm pretty sure the purveyors of this new fad of tracking every celebrity's life day by day, which is becoming all to popular, are reserved for a special place in hell alongside child molestors, the inventors of spam, Rush Limbaugh, the Nazis, Tim Allen, and anyone who's ever published a picture of She that shall not be named on this blog, unless of course Scientology turns out to be true, in which case you and I are pretty much hosed.

   
   
   1. I'm not sure if you knew that, so I included it [ƒ]
   2. Who used to be a great actor, but is now better known as a freak of nature. [ƒ]
   ]]> http://draynet.com/335/will-smith-for-president-i-mean-great-leader/feed/ 1