YouTube Tuesday: Beam me up, Frosty

The internet has been great for adding to the canonical base of classic holiday children's programing. We all remember the classic Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and Santa Clause is Coming to Town stop motion animation specials.

And now thanks to online video distribution, new classics are emerging, not the least of which is today's YouTube Tuesday entry. We follow the exploits of a lovable Snowman as he endeavors to bridge the gap of interstellar communication, bringing the true meaning of Christmas and saving the world.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, humor, Christmas, snowman, alien

A Salute to KU and Lew Perkins

3AM presents Real Men of Genius
Real Men of Genius!

Today we solute you...
Mr. Abe Vigoda look-alike athletic director.
You totally look like Salvatore Tessio

Like an old Sicillian don, you've shown you're adept at getting what you want no matter how many lives it destroys.
Is that a decapitated horse head in Mangino's bed?

To you, KU Athletics isn't just a family, it’s a family business. Whether it's kickbacks to bowl officials, extortion of local businesses, or just your garden variety academic fraud, you know that the bottom line is the bottom line.
Gotta keep the money rollin' in!

And while you don't mind having abusive people on you staff, when your biggest earner fails to bring in fat wads of cash, you know it's time to make him an offer he can't refuse.
Tonight he sleeps with the fishes...

So leave the gun and take the cannoli, oh floppy eared arbiter of lesser men's fates. Because firing the best coach your team has ever had is a sure way to keep the rest of your organization in line.
Mr. Abe Vigoda look-alike athletic director!


RELATED POST: A salute to KU and Mark Mangino

tagged: KU, Lew Perkins, Mark Mangino, Abe Vigoda, The Godfather, Real Men of Genius, football

Random Photo XXI: Lonely Flint Hill

I like the way the sun brings out subtle hues of the Flint Hills this time of year.

I know it's not for everyone. I get that a lot of people consider it barren looking. But to me, it kind of feels like the real-life version of a Mark Rothko painting.

tagged: random, photo, Kansas, Flint Hills, sunset, Mark Rothko

Movie Mini Review: The Blind Side

Title: The Blind Side

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron

Plot Summary: An affluent white Southern family adopts an athletically gifted homeless black teen. They provide a bed, home, food and educational assistance that eventually allows the teen to pursue a football career.

My Thoughts: The Blind Side is based on Michael Lewis' book (same name) about physically gifted but socially disadvantaged teen Michael Oher.

The story is fairly well known by now, and the movie is directed as the quintessential holiday feel-good hit. It wastes no time charging the emotions with a sad soundtrack to match the tragic life circumstance of the principal character, Oher.

I have some pretty mixed feelings about the film, and it could be that I'm just over thinking it.

It does deliver on the tugging-at-the-heartstrings mission of the typical holiday hit. Pretty much all of the ladies in the theater were tearing up within 20 minutes of the start of the movie. By the time Michael Oher admitted that "I've never had a bed before" there wasn't a dry female eye in the house.

But there was something about how the film was executed that just made me felt a little uneasy. It's a good story, don't get me wrong. But I don't know if it was the directing or the editing or what, but it just came across to me a bit exploitative.

One problem is that the story is rife with stereotypes. From the affluent southern bigot to the redneck southern bigot to the black gangster thug to the poor ghetto junkie mother, there was no real character development even in the primary characters.

The other problem I had was what I perceived to be a not-so-subtle mixture of white guilt and White Man's Burden. The implication was that these white folk could save the black folk. It was a simplistic portrayal of race relations, where there was an opportunity to take a serious and sincere look at social issues that still exists.

Finally, Sandra Bullock's portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy really was tragic. I guess it could have been the director's fault, but Bullock managed to take what should have been one of the most sympathetic characters -- the woman who took a black kid from the projects into her home, fed him, clothed him and championed his education -- and make her an unlikable shrew.

Bullock's interpretation of Tuohy was that of an uptight, bossy, entitled harpy. Really, I remarked to my Supermodel Wife at about the 30-minute mark that "That woman hasn't smiled once yet." A few minutes later, she managed to squeeze out the ghost of a grin, but made it look painful, like it was about to break her face.

It was really almost enough to make me racist in reverse.

The rest of the cast did an okay job. Tim McGraw played an Everybody Loves Raymond househusband and Jae Head channeled Macaulay Culkin circa 1990 as the youngest sibling. Kathy Bates... was in the movie.

The best acting job probably goes to Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher, though the sparse dialogue and understatedness of the character made it easy for him.

I hate to get too down on the movie. Like I said, a lot of people really liked it and it is a good story -- maybe even inspiring if you don't think too much about it. I would recommend the book over the movie, though.

Final Rating: Two out of five stars.



tagged: movie, review, The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock, Michael Oher, football, Tim McGraw

YouTube Tuesday: You always take things too far...

There are so many lessons to learn in this video, but I think the most important one is that spiders are evil -- like, Twilight Zone evil.

The setup on this one takes a while, but the ending is totally worth it.



tagged: Spider, Youtube, Tuesday, movie, dark humor

Gravity check

So I'm cruising easily down the K12, the quadruple black diamond run at the exclusive ski resort where our family traditionally spends our Thanksgivings.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the snow was... well, sitting lightly on the mountain side. It was truly bucolic and I basked in the bucolicness as I passed through 20, 30, 40 miles per hour down the mountain.

I was basking all bucolic-like when suddenly I saw out of the corner of my eye a little white snow bunny dart out from behind a tree, right into the path of my slicing skis. It was only my expert skiing ability that saved the delicate rodent creature from certain decapitation, as I executed a triple-axel-reverse-front-gainer to avoid dealing the death blow.

But as bad luck would have it the tip of my ski lightly clipped an overhanging spruce limb, throwing my equilibrium off just enough that I landed slightly askew on my left foot.

The pain was instantaneous as all my weight combined with my downward and frontward momentum transferred and compressed on my left ankle. I heard a sound like the cracking of knuckles, and while I remained upright on my skis, I made the rest of the run down the mountain in severe pain.

Yeah. That sounds pretty good. Pretty heroic and not at all stupid like the actual true story.

You know, the actual true story where I decided not to wake up our six-month-old daughter, instead carrying her to the nursery to sleep. Then, since I was carrying her and unable to see where I was going, I don't realize when I get to the bottom step of the staircase that there is actually one more step to go.

Then I step out to walk down the hall, but there's no floor there and I end up tipping forward, landing on the side of my foot, having it fold under my ankle and hearing that tell-tale knuckle-cracking sound that (I find out three days later) is also the sound of foot bones fracturing.

Yeah, falling down the stairs is totally lame.

tagged: ski, story, K12, stairs, broken foot, fracture

YouTube Tuesday: It's like the turkeys mounted a counterattack

In honor of the upcoming heartburn holiday later this week, today's edition of YouTube Tuesday remembers one of the greatest Thanksgiving moments in TV history...

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, classic TV, WKRP In Cincinatti, turkey drop, Thanksgiving

Bullitt list -- 11.20.09

Today's category: Goin' Rogue

• Lot's of news on the ladies health care front. First a group appointed by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services (Kathleen Sebelius, proprietor) said women don't need to get mammograms until they're 50 (rather than 40) and they don't need to get them as often.
  
  Next, another group said women don't need to get Pap smears as early nor as often.
  
  It’s pretty clear to see where this is going. When the Gubmint takes over your health care, they're going to need a way to cut spending. The solution, tell you that you don't need as much health care and then not give it to you. Problem solved.


• I heard the talking heads on the insipid morning show this morning bemoaning the departure of Oprah Winfrey from the airwaves in 2011.
  
  The final comment that made me leave the room was when one of the ditsy hosts asked a guest "expert" "How will the audience fill the void left by the departure of Oprah's show?"
  
  Are you kidding me? Look at the ratings, toots. There is no void left by Oprah's show. Why do you think she's calling it quits to begin with? When you're best ratings come from an interview with Sarah Palin, you're probably doing well if you can keep yourself from taking a flying leap off the Hancock Center.


• Think the Great Banker Bailout of 2009 was fun? Well, just wait until next year when we all get to bail out the entire state of California.
  
  The LA Times reported that there's no end in site to CA's budget woe's -- currently in a $21 billion deficit -- even after the latest tax increases and draconian cuts in state services.
  
  It's okay though. California has a plan. They have enacted stricter energy efficiency standards on televisions sets that will probably increase the price of the TV's and encourage people to buy new HDTVs in Nevada or Arizona or Tijuana.
  
  So at lease we know the CA legislature has its priorities straight.


• And here's a final WTF story to end your week on: Peruvian Police have busted a gang that they say was killing people to harvest their body fat.
  
  Check this out:

  Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts say they doubt a major market for fat exists.
  
  Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have been involved in dozens more, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said one suspect claimed the gang wasn't the only one doing such killings.

  According to the story, the suspects claim the bottles of liquid human fat they were carrying when they were arrested would fetch $60,000 a gallon on the international market.
  
  Given that, I'm thinking KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins might want to think twice about firing Coach Mark Mangino. I don't know if they can afford to loose that kind of natural resource.

tagged: Bullitt, movies, mammogram, Pap smear, health care, Kathleen Sebelius, Oprah Winfrey, Hancock, pop culture, California, TV, Peru, fat, Mangino

Vocabulary

I was doing my dadly duty last week, taking my 7-year-old daughter to a school skating party.

She had missed the previous skating party and was totally jonesing for a skate. She was so eager to go to the party that we were able to hold it over her blackmail-style and get some extra good behavior and chores "or else your not going to get to go skating."

Anyway, we get to the skating rink, put on her skates and let her out on the floor to knock herself out -- not literally of course, she's not a great skater but she only fell two or three times. And with the exception of a quick snack break, she spent pretty much the whole time on shuffling around the skate floor.

Toward the end of the skating party, I was standing on the carpet waiting for her to come out to return the skates. She rolled off the floor and we went over to a bench to change shoes.

She pulls me down to say something into my ear.

"One of those bigger kids out there said the 'F Word'" she said.

I just kind of blinked and I think I may have done a short sigh.

"Well, just don't listen when you hear that," I replied. I was pretty calm. I said it in the same tone you might use when saying "Just remember to wash your face after the dog licks all of the peanut butter off."

You see, I'd done this quick calculation in my mind. I don't want to fly off the handle and make "The F Word" seem like it's this big magical mystery word. I don't want to encourage her to say the word by banning her from uttering it. It's human nature to want to do something that someone tells you you can do.

I didn't want to turn "The F Word" into some kind of forbidden fruit.

But I also want to let her know that I do not approve of her using that word at her age.

But later, when we got home, I know she was still curious. Out of earshot of her Supermodel Mother, she came and whispered in my ear once again...

"Do you know what the F Word is," she asked, as if she were privy to secret information that I didn't have. "Do you want me to tell it to you?"

"No" I said. "I don't want to hear it and I don't want you to say it."

I don't think the issue is over. I'm sure she heard it at school. In subsequent conversations, she implied that one of the boys (Boys... sheesh... don't even get me started!) in her class had been saying it.

Well, I guess first grade is when you start learning these things...

tagged: family, vocabulary, parenting, F Word, first grade, fatherhood

YouTube Tuesday: Fear and Loathing in the Major Leagues

No real theme to today's edition of YouTube Tuesday. It's just that I ran across this amazingly entertaining story of the role of LSD in a major league pitcher's no-hitter back in the '70s.

Here's what the YouTube description has to say:

In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years weve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.

Check it...

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, LSD, drugs, baseball, Dock Ellis, culture