Yesterday ESPN.com ran the following headline:

Couples takes six holes in Skins Game

Now that's a sporting event that I'd like to see!

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Sometimes posting to a blog is like being in a food fight: throw enough pie and someone's GOT to get hit in the face. (This column is going Larry King style, baby!)

• Bravo Channel is showing both The Princess Bride and Back to the Future today. Could those be two of the best movies ever made? I say yes!
• Huge underdog University of Georgia today beat (nay, CRUSHED!) the mighty Auburn Tigers, destroying any hopes Auburn had of running for the national title. Go Dawgs!
• Television advertising execs just don't understand: the current Bellsouth ads use the song "Stuck In The Middle With You" to promote that product. The song was written about sitting between recording executives. Can telecom execs be that different?
• Of all the cars I've ever owned/driven, the one I miss most is a 1985 Ford Crown Victoria LTD Country Squire Station Wagon.
• Recent studies say that happy people are sick less often than people who are optimistic or active. That means that a cynical asshole like me will likely outlive the rest of you bastards so long as I'm happy being a cynical asshole. Hooray for science!
• Julia Roberts' single sexiest film role was as Tinkerbell in Hook. Does that say worse things about her or me?
• The National Football League has a patent on confusion; it is simply impossible to tell who is any good from week to week. Some may call this parity or equality but I call it exciting. Chicago: undefeated. Dolphins: incompetent. Final score: Dolphins 31, Chicago 13. I say this, I sure look forward to December 31, when the Dolphins play the currently undefeated Colts.

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I've watched entirely too much television this week. I'm ostensibly supposed to be painting the exterior of my mother's house, but what with uncommonly cold temperatures and sporadic rain, I've spent more time polishing heavily tarnished brass fixtures in front of the idiot box than I have with a paintbrush in my hand. A brief sampling of what I've seen:

• Oprah. I hate her: she panders and preaches to the lowest common denominator, the same strata of American society that needs to be led but doesn't much care who does the leading.
  
• Fox News. I swear that they said that the U.S. Forestry Service was dropping retards on the California forest fire. What a great idea, I thought; that takes care of two problems at once! Unfortunately, they corrected themselves quickly to say that they were dropping retard-ant. I think they're missing an opportunity.
• Leave it to Beaver. Why is it that Wally always seems to know more than the Beaver? How did the older brother grow up to know everything and pass none of it down to his slightly younger brother? And how is Ward right about everything? It's like the man is omniscient.
• Without a Trace. There is a trend among televised cop/law shows in which the culprit is only caught at the last minute when he gives himself up under interrogation. I suppose I should blame Perry Mason for this. It makes for some very boring drama when you know that the cops aren't smart enough to get evidence (despite their fictional high-tech forensics), and they have to rely on the crooks' egos or consciences to break the case.

It sure makes me wish that there had been a Kolchak: The Night Stalker marathon this week. Or even Galactica 1980. Or even >ick< The Six Million Dollar Man.

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On October 2, Emerson Electronics sued GE because NBC showed a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running InSinkErator brand garbage disposal on the show Heroes. Emerson manufactures the InSinkErator and claims that NBC's parent GE, also a manufacturer of garbage disposals, was trying to sully the InSinkErator brand name by showing the damage it could cause to a human. Money.CNN reports the lawsuit, including the plaintiff's argument that "according to data from the government's Consumer Products Safety Commission, you are actually ten times more likely to get injured by your dishwasher than your garbage disposal."

First of all, I should think that InSinkErator would be pleased to demonstrate what it can do to a human hand. If it can destroy bone, it damn well should be able to take care of a few apple cores and potato rinds. Secondly, why does the government track and study how likely you are to get injured by a dishwasher? Are we in imminent danger of invasion from insurgent dishwashers? (Well, I guess possibly so if you count Mexicans.)

So the lesson here, NBC, is that next time you should show a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running GE brand dishwasher. You'll save yourself money in the long run.

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I recently read that Pope Benedict XVI's chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth believes that Hitler was possessed by the Devil. First of all, I would like to point out that this, taken literally, would make a GREAT movie. Secondly, why does the Pope have a chief exorcist?

To quote Father Amorth from a Vatican Radio broadcast:

One of the key requirements for an exorcism is to be present in front of the possessed person and that person also has to be consenting and willing. Therefore trying to carry out an exorcism on someone who is not present, or consenting and willing would prove very difficult.

If the possessee has to be present, consenting and willing, isn't an exorcism more like an intervention? The language used in the above quote seems very... less than supernatural. Couldn't any behavior that is clearly contrary to the tenants of the Roman Catholic Church be considered satanic in nature? Therefore do Catholics see exorcists instead of psychologists? Exorcisms don't seem nearly as exciting as Dr. Strange would have had me believe.

Note, please, that Father Amorth is also the founder of the International Association of Exorcists, an elite band of professional, church appointed exorcists. (Priests can now take exorcism classes at the Vatican's Pontifical Academy. I hear that the exorcism classes fill up fast, behind only "Why You Can't Put Holes In Holy Water And Other Confusing Catechisms Explained," and "Holy Eucharist, Altar-Boy!".) He has said that "behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil." And who would know better than Vatican City's official exorcist?

By the way, Father Amorth considers The Exorcist his favorite movie. Go figure.

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I just remembered that the world was supposed to end today. Maybe it did and I just wasn't paying attention.

The remake of Richard Donner's film The Omen was released today. I really liked the original and find it completely unnecessary to remake the film. (In fact, I'm opposed to remakes on general principle, though I can see the validity if the remake were to improve on an overlooked or poorly funded original. No one needs to remake Citizen Kane, but maybe we could do with a new Quatermass Xperiment (a precursor to the fundamentally similar John Carpenter's The Thing which was itself a remake) or Kingdom of the Spiders (though I would insist that this remake must feature Shatner in a prominent role, maybe even a reprisal of his role as the charming Dr. Rack Hansen).

On a related note, about this time of year, my friends begin demanding my presence at the movie theater for the blockbuster summer releases. As a loud-mouth sour-puss, they like to bring me along as the honorary Mikey of Life cereal fame. Since I hate everything, if I enjoy a movie, it's got to be good. (And if I don't like a movie, at least they get an entertaining ear-full of why it stunk.)

Since everyone loves lists, at least so far as VH1, E, and Bravo are apparently concerned, may I present my chronological 15 Worst Films of the Past 15 Years list. Please note that these films are not bad in the pedestrian I-don't-know-how-to-make-a-film way. (This, therefore, disqualifies all Roger Corman and Ed Wood films from the list.) I'm also disqualifying sequels, because they are intrinsically bad: they are unimaginative, restrained remakes of earlier films made purely to capitalize on previous films' characters and premises. The following films are bad in the I-know-better-than-to-make-this-movie-but-I-did-it-anyway category. (In other words, they are were big-budget, major studio, national release movies that sucked.)

• Oscar (1991) - Sylvester Stallone as a comic gangster. Most people will tell you that Stallone's Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is worse. It's not. Estelle Getty has some funny lines in that one.

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) - What a bit of inspired casting! Alan Rickman plays a bad guy. Morgan Freeman plays a sidekick. And Kevin Costner plays a long-winded American pretending to be English nobility turned hero of the common man. Couldn't Kevin Costner just hire a hooker to give him a hand-job so that we don't have to watch his films anymore?

• The Good Son (1993) - I knew when I saw this film that one day Elijah Wood would be a star. I also knew that Macaulay Culkin wouldn't be one for much longer. Theoretically, this film would be a stirring psychological thriller, but I find that the really plodding pace and horrible acting makes it a good cure for insomnia.

• The Firm (1993) - What do you get when you take a script based on a best selling novel, add box office gold with Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, and Gary Busey and let Sydney Pollack direct them? You get a cliched legal drama that lasts for 2 and a half painful hours and a cop-out ending. Thanks!

• Greedy (1994) - This is a movie that proves that an ensemble cast of talented actors (yes, it includes Ed Bagley, Jr. -- I said it was an ensemble cast, didn't I?) aren't necessarily greater than the sum of its parts. Though filmed before Kirk Douglas's stroke and Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease, you'll never be able to tell the difference.

• Pocahontas (1995) - This film is mind-blowing in its mediocrity. That's saying something for a Disney "Masterpiece" film. This film won an Oscar for best song, but you probably can't tell what that song was anymore, can you? Nothing about this film is memorable. Fiction dressed as history, this sleep-inducing bore-fest marked the end of the second renaissance of Disney animation. Can you believe that someone wasted their time to make this crap one painting at a time? (And now Disney is reduced to Bambi II.)

• Independence Day (1996) - There is nothing that this movie does that many other better movies before it didn't do better. (Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers had saucers blowing up Washington D.C., Alien had scary aliens, and Spaceballs had Bill Pullman.) In fact, this movie can definitively be said to be the end of Randy Quaid's career as a film actor. He now exclusively plays parodies of his character in this film: a stupid, fat slob.

• Air Force One (1997) - I'm often accused of failing to suspend my disbelief during a movie. Sure, I can accept Harrison Ford as the president of the United States. Sure, I can accept that Air Force One is like an office building in the sky. Sure, I can even accept mid-air rescue from a flying 747. But I totally have to draw the line at a female Vice President. "Get off my plane!"

• Titanic (1997) - "Wait, that's a good movie," you say? No, it's not. If you don't immediately fall for the overly-sappy love story between a bratty street punk and the spoiled bitch, you're left with a very, very long wait to see a large, animated boat sink. This movie is about James Cameron's love affair with a sunken wreck, nothing more.

• Godzilla (1998) - Americans love foreign films. Wait, no we don't. We love remaking foreign films, replacing the inspired bits with tried and true cliches. Which is exactly what Godzilla is. Gone is the classic and beloved man in a rubber suit terrorizing a model town. Now we get ugly CGI that makes the monster look more like a constipated t-rex than an electrified monitor lizard. Have I mentioned the really horrible casting on this film, yet? Really, this is just an excuse to destroy New York City on film, again. We americans are also a bit masochistic.

• Armageddon (1998) - While this movie might suck, at least it should get credit for being appropriately named. Who says that there is no truth in advertising? Another ensemble picture that totally blows. It's movies like this that make Michael Bay a running joke. (Note that J.J. Abrams, brainchild of Lost, wrote the screenplay for this trash. And now I'm supposed to be excited that he's attached to the new Star Trek movie?) Though I'm ranking these movies in chronological order, this film should get a special commendation, as I do believe that it is the absolute worst film ever made.

• Planet of the Apes (2001) - Not really a remake as much as it is a pile of crap. I used to like Tim Burton (Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is a spectacular film), but based on this film, I refuse to watch anything Burton does anymore. Sorry, Tim, this is too bad for words. The action merely crawls along without any real suspense or plot since we all saw the much superior Heston film years ago. And the deus ex machina twist at the climax only adds insult to injury. Remember, kids, nuclear power is forever.

• Minority Report (2002) - Once upon a time, Steven Speilberg could do no wrong: Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Schindler's List... damn, that's an impressive list. But then, sometime around Saving Private Ryan, Mr. Spielberg lost touch with the rest of the human race. His movies became a series of incredibly unnecessary visceral moments that no longer have any cohesive narrative use. And then he gave us AI. Just like AI, this film poses as insightful and thought-provoking in the same way that Fox News poses as fair and balanced. There is a lost eyeball sequence in this film that would make Vincent Price proud. Plus, this movie features Tom Cruise as a holier-than-thou super-cop with fatherhood issues and an addiction to fantasy. Quite the stretch for you, eh, Tom?

• The Core (2003) - I almost didn't include this movie here, because so far as I'm concerned, it's really just a spiritual sequel to Armageddon. But it is bad. Very, very bad. In yet another masculine role, Hillary Swank tries to drive a phallus-like drill into the "core" of the world in order to trigger an explosion that will make the world move. (Lets see, she's been the next Karate Kid, a teenaged boy, a police detective, an attorney, a space shuttle pilot, a boxer.... Is no man's role safe from the manly grip of Ms. Swank?)

• The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - From Roland Emmerich, the director who brought you Godzilla and Independence Day (see above), comes a(nother) tale of the destruction of New York City! With Ice! I think that the FBI should be investigating Mr. Emmerich for terrorist activity based on the number of times that the has destroyed New York on film. There oughta be a law against Roland Emmerich.

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I was complaining the other day about the preponderance of Crime Investigation shows on television. It seems that every other primetime TV show is about how to solve a crime or how to get into the mind of a killer. CSI (pick a city), Law and Order (pick a subject), Criminal Minds, Navy NCIS, Bones, Numb3rs, Without a Trace... Clearly, America really craves this sort of show.

Despite my irritation, the "police drama" is nothing new to television. Dragnet is the grandfather of the genre on TV and deserves its accolades. However, Jack Webb was obsessed with realism and truth at the expense of entertainment value. Webb's Dragnet has more in common with today's "reality television" Cops than with any of the shows that I listed above.

Today's police dramas are more T. J. Hooker than Joe Friday. They play fast and loose with technology and procedure in order to craft a more dramatic storyline. Computers can run DNA tests in just under an hour, digital images can be focused to provide a crystal clear magnification, and putting yourself in the figurative shoes of a deranged killer, while stressful, always achieves a tidy solution. (So, turning our police into a group of coordinated, sadistic serial killers is a good thing, then?)

Granted, television is now and always has been about formula. People watch TV to relax and be entertained. Television shows with successful formulas are always predictable and therefore lucrative. (In time, even the innovative, creative shows like Hill Street Blues or NYPD Blue, both very similar to begin with, probably because they had the same creators, develop predictable plot patterns.) And police cases are very formulaic by nature: a crime is committed, the police investigate, suspects are identified then culled, and the guilty party is finally determined based on evidence gathered. Anyone who can't turn that process into an hour long drama doesn't even need to be writing for USA Today.

My concern is not so much with the fact that modern TV has turned to so many make believe crime dramas. (TV has always been rife with fantasy police detectives on shows ranging from Burke's Law to Miami Vice.) What bothers me is that there are now so many of them on the air at once. Every night of the week there are hours of television devoted purely to police stories. In recent years, a police drama -- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation -- has ranked in Nielson as the #1 rated show of the year, something that a police drama has never done before in television history. Why does America suddenly want to see so much crime get solved? Is this another, prolonged reaction to 9/11? If we can't win the war in Iraq, at least we get to see some schlub go to jail on TV based on pubic hair evidence? >Ick.< Or is it something closer to home? As a generation grows up addicted to the internet and traditional socital mores are failing to take root in an impersonal environment, could our neighbors in fact be the very beasts that we see on the evening news raping our children and killing our grandparents? Quick, everyone, grab a pirchfork and bolt your doors! Save us, TV!

America, I propose a change. If it's escapism that you want, I say it is escapism that you should get. Let's abandon all of this pretend crime and turn back to the absurdist fiction of Fantasy Island of The Gong Show. Wait, I see that you're ahead of me. Thank you, television, for giving us Lost and American Idol (which actually suplanted CSI as the number one rated show last year). Now we can forget about all that crime and turn back to the things that are really important: celebrity couples.

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I'm sitting here, working on preparing eBay listings of Happy Meal boxes and toys that my mother has collected from various restaurants over the past 30 years. I'm also listening to BBC News on NPR cover the growing crisis with the Italian presidency. These two separate and completely different activities have led to this:

Perhaps Sir Shakes-A-Lot should be the new president of Italy, the country whose Supreme Court recently declared that it's ok to rape women if they aren't virgins. He may be spastic, but at least he understands the Chivalric Code.

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All this week, the national media has been abuzz about the spat between South Park and Scientology. Apparently, Scientologists are crazy. (Thetans. There, I've said it.) But is that really news?

I'm no expert in the matter, but it is my understanding that Mormons wear special underwear. (Underwear is next to godliness.) I've read that Catholics consume the actual body and blood of the son of their god. (And we give them a hard time about their preference for young boys!) I've seen Southern Baptists prohibit the use of playing cards while allowing dominos. (A rose is a rose, unless you're a Southern Baptist.) I've witnessed Jews celebrate oil that burned much longer than it was advertised to burn. ("Tightwad" was originally a Yiddish word.) And I've even heard that Muslims receive 100 virgins in heaven. (I hope those virgins aren't going to stay virginal for eternity? As my friend Chris said: "Dude, virgin pussy sucks.")

So every religion has it's share of wacky ideas. And now we're going to fight over whose ideas are the stupidest? That's like entering siamese twins in a beauty contest and then arguing over who looks better in the swimsuit competition. Grow some thicker skin, people. Or better yet, a sense of humor about yourselves. Now quit throwing stones at each other so I can go back to watching news that really matters: is Britney is pregnant again?

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I just heard that Miss Deaf Texas was struck and killed by a train in Austin yesterday. Initial reports claimed that she was crossing the tracks, ignoring the train's warning horns. There is a valuable lesson buried in this story, I just know it.

In a seemingly unrelated story, national networks recently broadcast the story that a blind teen in Chicago must take and pass Driver's Education classes before she can graduate high school. In Chicago the tracks are probably safer than the roads; blind drivers aren't so good with stoplights.

Even more bizarre is the story of an eighteen year old who became a quadriplegic in a Lubbock juvenile detention center after an employee dared him to attempt a back flip off a picnic table in December. (Yes, everything is stranger in Texas.) Of course, the teen is suing the state, because he didn't know better than to try to flip backwards off a table. Please note that he was in juvie because he assaulted a teacher, yet he's willing to blame another authority figure for his debilitating spinal injury. Go figure. At least we don't have to worry about this fellow hitting the road anytime soon. (Unless, of course, he falls out of his wheelchair.)

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